MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The Public Service Board on Friday removed the last major obstacle to plans by Vermont’s nuclear power plant to increase its output by 20 percent.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave its permission to the so-called uprate on Thursday, ending a two-year review process by federal regulators.

But still outstanding was whether Vermont’s Public Service Board would agree that the NRC decision had met conditions it set two years ago when it gave its blessing to the uprate.

On Friday the state regulators said it did, clearing the way for Vermont Yankee to go ahead with the power boost.

The key condition set by the state Public Service Board had been that the NRC conduct an “independent engineering assessment” of Vermont Yankee.

The board laid out some of the specifics of the assessment, including that it should be conducted by experts “independent of any recent or significant regulatory oversight responsibility” of Vermont Yankee.

The NRC conducted an inspection in 2004 that it said found no significant problems at the Vernon reactor.

Last spring the PSB held a hearing in which members said they did not believe the NRC inspection met their definition of an independent engineering assessment.

“We want to make clear that we don’t think this process is complete,” said Michael Dworkin, the acting chairman of the board.

But then in January an NRC-affiliated panel called the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards issued its assessment of the uprate and concluded that the inspection by the NRC was adequate in judging the health of the reactor and plant systems to handle generation of the increased power.

In Friday’s order the PSB conceded the NRC inspection was neither independent nor as extensive as the board had sought. But the state regulators said they were persuaded that the federal inspection met the concerns raised by the board.

“We recognize that the NRC’s inspection did not employ precisely the methodology we had requested, but it appears to have, nonetheless, achieved the same purpose,” said the board.

“The inspection report makes clear that the review was both detailed and extensive, covering both safety and engineering issues,” said the board. “In particular, the NRC makes clear that it gave special consideration to components that would be affected by the power uprate.”

Vermont Yankee is due to begin increasing power at the plant this weekend. The increase will occur in stages, with engineers assessing the impact on various systems at each stage. Vermont Yankee officials say the reactor would not reach its new higher level output for several weeks.