BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) – A 20 percent increase in the power output of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant could result in the plant violating Vermont’s standards for radiation releases by as much as 26 percent, the state Health Department has concluded.

Vermont Yankee officials dispute the state’s method for measuring radiation emanating from the plant, and Vermont’s health commissioner said Thursday that the state’s 30-year-old limit for radiation measured at the plant’s fence line may be too low.

The method for measuring existing radiation releases has been in dispute even as the plant gears up to raise its power output from a rated capacity of 540 megawatts to 650 megawatts – a move that is expected to raise the amount of radiation emitted from the plant.

The change could leave the plant exceeding the state’s standard, which limits the amount of radiation that would be received by someone standing at the plant’s fence to 20 millirems a year, William Irwin, radiological health chief for the department, wrote in a report prepared for the Windham Regional Commission. The corresponding federal standard is 25 millirems per year.

But Health Commissioner Dr. Paul Jarris said he did not believe the plant would pose a health hazard.

“It is not a health risk, but there is a possibility it violates state regulations,” he said. The current state limits, he said, where not a “science or health-based limit.”

Robert Williams, spokesman for Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear, said Vermont Yankee would not violate state standards. If it does, he said, the plant will take steps to reduce the radiation it emits.

He said Entergy and the state were in dispute over the state’s 2004 fenceline reading at Yankee, which was double the radiation level claimed by Entergy. The state’s measured level was on the edge of violating the state standard at Vermont Yankee’s existing power level.

The Health Department said the dispute is being reviewed by a third party for “objective scientific evaluation” of the different reporting methods.

A spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission said staff there also were reviewing the methodology that Entergy uses to calculate its radiation releases.

Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman, said Entergy used an unusual methodology not employed at many nuclear reactors. He said the methodology is based on calculations of readings taken from a steam line inside the plant, rather than the traditional monitors such as those used by the state.

AP-ES-01-27-06 0714EST