UPDATE 1-Entergy Vermont Yankee reactor up to 90 pct power

(Updates with NRC comment)

NEW YORK, April 4 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp's (ETR.N) 620-megawatt Vermont Yankee nuclear power station in Vermont ramped up to 90 percent power by early Friday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

The company reduced the unit to about 40 percent power this week to look for a condenser tube leak, a spokesman at the NRC said Friday.

The spokesman said the operators did not find the leak, which he described as small (about a quarter of a gallon per minute) and not necessarily a problem for the reactor coolant system.

The spokesman said the company would likely have to try to find the leak at its next opportunity. He could not say when that opportunity would occur.

Vermont Yankee, which entered service in 1972, is located in Vernon, in Windham County, about 80 miles north of Hartford, Connecticut.

Entergy in January 2006 filed for a 20-year extension of the unit's original 40-year operating license. The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hold an evidentiary hearing in July on some contentions by a group known as the New England Coalition.

The State of Vermont is sharing in those contentions, which would allow the state to pick up the contentions in the unlikely event the Coalition drops out.

Separately, Entergy in November 2007 said it wanted to create a separate publicly traded company to operate its non-utility nuclear reactors, including Vermont Yankee. The company hopes to complete the spin-off in the third quarter of this year.