MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The Public Service Board on Monday approved the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s request to boost its power output by 20 percent.

But the board conditioned its approval on an “independent engineering assessment” to be performed at the plant in addition to the usual review by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“As conditioned in this order, the power uprate of Vermont Yankee should have minimal additional adverse impacts, while at the same time providing additional energy to the region and economic benefits to the state of Vermont,” the board said in the introduction to its nearly 150-page ruling.

An independent review such as the one ordered by the board had been sought and was welcomed Monday by a nuclear watchdog group that had opposed increasing the power output of the 32-year-old reactor.

New England Coalition had called for an “independent safety assessment.” Asked whether the “independent engineering assessment” called for by the board was the same thing, NEC’s Raymond Shadis said Monday, “Close enough for government work.”

Shadis called that part of the board’s order “a grand thing. It shows that at some level they’re (the board’s three members) advocates for the people and the environment of Vermont.”

Messages left with two spokesmen for Vermont Yankee were not immediately returned.

The board said it sent a letter to the NRC on Monday requesting the special analysis.

But it could be threading a needle in asserting its regulatory authority in contrast to that of the NRC. The board noted its role is to approve the construction aspects of the project. Once those changes are made at the Vernon reactor, the NRC then reviews the nuclear safety issues before issuing permission for the power boost.

New England Coalition and other critics of the plant have charged that the NRC is a lax regulator when it comes to allowing plants to increase power output. An NRC spokeswoman recently said the agency had approved more than 90 power boosts among the nation’s 104 commercial reactors, and had not rejected any.

Entergy plans to do the vast majority of the estimated $60 million worth of work on the plant during a scheduled shutdown this spring, nearly a year before the NRC review process is expected to be completed.

“Independent safety assessment” has become rallying cry for anti-nuclear activists. One previous assessment of that type, at Maine Yankee in the late 1990s, ended with the NRC ordering the plant’s owners to make extensive changes at the Wiscasset, Maine, reactor. The owners said the cost would be too high and shut the plant down.

The board’s order made clear it envisioned an unusual regulatory approach in which it would approve physical plant changes and new equipment but seek to withhold final approval for the power boost until after the independent review is completed.

The board said it “must necessarily decide whether to authorize the on-site engineering work without the benefit of seeing the results of the engineering and safety reviews the NRC will conduct.”

But it said that because of the conditions it was attaching to its approval, “we can and will see the results of the NRC’s analysis before allowing actual operation at increased power levels.”

Louisiana-based Entergy Nuclear, which bought Vermont Yankee in 2002, asked last year for permission to increase the plant’s power output by 20 percent – from its current capacity of about 510 megawatts to about 620.

The state Department of Public Service, which is responsible for representing ratepayers before the quasi-judicial board, at first was cool to the power increase, questioning whether it provided a benefit to Vermont.

The department agreed to support Entergy’s request in November, after the company said it would provide the state with a package of benefits said to be worth up to $20 million. They included money to help pay for cleaning up Lake Champlain and help low-income Vermonters pay energy bills.

The board rejected earmarking those funds, saying payments by Entergy to the state should go to the general fund and through the normal legislative appropriations process.

The board also said the department’s estimate that the benefits it bargained for were worth $20 million was more than double the actual benefit, which it estimated at $7.7 million.

AP-ES-03-15-04 1912EST