Workers at the Yankee nuclear power in Vernon, VT, found two spent fuel rods that were reported missing earlier this year, Entergy, the owner of the plant, announced this week.

The missing fuel rod segments were found in a 40-inch aluminum cylinder in the plant’s spent fuel pool, the company said in a release. The cylinder is not the type of container the spent fuel is normally stored in.

“We earlier had checked all the containers in the pool, but when we learned that General Electric had designed and sent a pipe-like cylinder for the fuel-rod pieces, we rechecked the videotapes,” Jay Thayer, vice president of Entergy’s Vermont Yankee Site, said in a written statement.

Officials at the plant then used a video system to check the inside of the cylinder, and found the spent fuel.

“We are pleased that they are able to account for the material,” Diane Srenci, spokeswoman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said. “The important thing is that it was found. It does demonstrate the importance of good record keeping.”

Thayer said the plant was reviewing its procedures to ensure that a similar incident does not happen in the future.

The fuel rods were reported missing in April, the same month in which several other thefts had sparked homeland security concerns in that part of the country. One was the theft of a tank trailer from Pennsauken, NJ, and another was the theft from two New Jersey locations of more than 10,000 gallons of a potentially dangerous chemical, Rheocrete, that can be combined with other agents to concoct a bomb like the fertilizer bomb that was used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The fuel rod disappearance was not connected to the thefts in New Jersey, but came at a time of public concern over so-called “dirty bombs,” conventional bombs that are used to spread radiation through the air.

The tanker trailer from the New Jersey incident is still missing.

- by Mark H. Reddig, associate editor

Mark Reddig can be reached at mark_reddig@landlinemag.com.