A Tokyo Electric Power Co. employee stands next to the spent fuel pool inside the building housing the Unit 4 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on Nov. 7.
Operators at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant started the slow and precarious task of removing radioactive fuel rods on Monday.
More than 1,500 uranium and plutonium rods must be pulled out of a storage pool in the plant’s reactor 4 building and transferred to a more stable storage area nearby, according to AFP.
It is the most dangerous task Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, has faced in decommissioning the facility so far, and is scheduled to take more than a year.
If the rods were to break or overheat, they could cause a nuclear chain reaction similar to the meltdowns that occurred after the nuclear plant was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Bloomberg reports.
[AFP]