Feds hold meeting to discuss nuclear plant's cooling towers

Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tried yesterday to reassure people attending a hearing in Brattleboro that recent problems with the cooling towers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant are not symptomatic of the rest of the plant.

NRC officials held a news briefing followed by a public meeting Tuesday to share their findings about sagging and leaking that occurred in the cooling towers in July.

The session followed last week's release of an NRC inspection report giving Vermont Yankee a warning about how it had responded to earlier problems in the towers.

The problems with the cooling towers first came to light in August 2007, when part of one of the two towers collapsed. The incident was capture in spectacular photos of a broken, 6-foot-wide pipe spewing thousands of gallons of water onto a pile of rubble below.