Vermont Yankee Brattleboro Reformer
July 5, 2005
By The Associated Press

VERNON (AP) -- Entergy Nuclear has offered to expand the margin of safety at the Vermont Yankee plant in a bid to win federal approval to generate 20 percent more power at the plant.

The details of Entergy's proposal have not been released because the company and its chief subcontractor, General Electric met privately with federal regulators at Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters outside Washington, D.C.

John McCann, Entergy's director of licensing, told NRC staff that the company would agree to "operating restrictions" that would increase safety margins.

It also said it would provide an additional analysis requested by the NRC at a later date. The nature of that analysis and the date by which it must be supplied were not made public.

Entergy has proposed to produce 20 percent more power with more efficient equipment, but also with more and fresher nuclear fuel inside the reactor. While the temperature inside the reactor would remain the same, around 400 degrees, the company plans to pump more water through the reactor to keep it cool. More steam would be created to produce the extra 110 megawatts of power.

The NRC had called the status conference at its headquarters in Bethesda, Md., to discuss Entergy's still incomplete 2003 application. The NRC has for about a year repeatedly requested additional information from Entergy about its Vermont Yankee plans.

Most of those questions deal with what Entergy and GE would do differently at Yankee to avoid problems seen at similar GE-designed reactors that have also boosted their power.

During the public portion of the NRC-Entergy meeting Thursday, dozens of anti-nuclear activists and members of the public listened in via telephone conference call. Entergy and the NRC later adjourned behind closed doors to protect sensitive proprietary information about Yankee and the proposed uprate, officials said.

Entergy has been stymied by federal regulators, who over the past year have been asking safety and technical questions about Entergy's plan to increase power at the 33-year-old reactor. As a result, Entergy is already more than a year behind its original schedule, and is facing another critical deadline: its next refueling outage is slated for October.

The refueling would be Entergy's opportunity to set up the reactor core for higher output.

NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said after the closed-door meeting that there was "progress," but declined to offer any specifics.

Safety and security are the top priorities of everyone at Vermont Yankee The increase in power production by 20% will in no way compromise the safe operation of the plant. Working closely with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we are committed to making any and all necessary adjustments to insure that the plant, which has operated safely for 33 years, continues to meet the stringent operational requirements which have enabled us to produce one third of all electricity in the sate of Vermont. The 20% increase in output will not require an expansion of the plant or an expansion of transmission and distribution lines.