WORK has started to remove radioactive fuel rods from a reactor at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, a crucial first step toward a full clean-up of the earthquake and tsunami-damaged plant.
The Unit 4 reactor was offline at the time of the March 2011 disaster and its core did not melt as the other three did. But hydrogen explosions blew the roof and walls off the building and weakened the structure, leaving it vulnerable to earthquakes.
Tokyo Electric has since reinforced the building but experts say keeping so many fuel rods in a storage pool in the building still poses a major safety risk.
"The operation is an important step toward decommissioning Fukushima Dai-ichi, which would take 30 to 40 years," the firm's president Naomi Hirose said yesterday.
A massive steel structure has been built next to and partly over Unit 4 to mount cranes for the operation. It will take at least until the end of 2014 to finish moving the 1533 sets of fuel rods, including 202 unused sets, to a safer location.
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