Eco R Geo: First of four Fukushima reactors cleared of nuclear fuel (VIDEO aljazeera)

Saturday, December 20, 2014

First of four Fukushima reactors cleared of nuclear fuel (VIDEO aljazeera)

One of four heavily damaged reactor buildings at Japan's tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant has been cleared of radioactive fuel rods, the operator said on Saturday (Dec 20).
It was a significant step in the decommissioning efforts, but workers still have three heavily crippled reactors to clean up after they were sent into meltdown in the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster. The overall clean-up work of the Fukushima plant is expected to take decades.

A total of 1,535 fuel rod assemblies have been now taken out of the building after Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO's) year-long operation, a company spokesman said. "Completion of the removal work is a milestone, but the decommission work will continue," plant chief Akira Ono told reporters.

The nuclear fuel was removed from a pool used to store the rods - which were mostly spent - in the reactor number 4 building, which was offline for regular check-ups at the time of the March 2011 disaster.

The tsunami battered the plant's cooling system and sent reactors number 1 to 3 into meltdown, setting off the worst atomic accident in a generation.

TEPCO will remove fuel rod assemblies from the pools of other damaged buildings before extracting the melted fuel from the reactors.

- AFP/al

[channelnewsasia.com]

20/12/14