TOKYO, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Workers at Japan's quake-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began the dangerous process Monday of removing fuel from a damaged reactor, officials said.
The project is expected last about a year.
The task undertaken by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the power-generating plant disabled by a massive earthquake and tsunami March 11, 2011, involves emptying the spent-fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor unit.
The No.4 unit did not have a nuclear meltdown that struck three other reactors because it had been shut down for periodic maintenance and all of its fuel was being stored in the spent-fuel pool, Kyodo News reported. The No. 4 reactor building, however, was damaged by a hydrogen explosion.
The latest process will be a major step in the decommissioning of the entire plant, which may take decades, and will require extreme care to prevent any radiation leak, officials said.
As a precaution, Tepco set up a large cover, supported by steel frames, around the reactor building.
The work will involve hoisting each of 1,533 assemblies containing fuel rods with a fuel-handling machine, Kyodo said.
Each assembly, nearly 15 feet in length, will then be placed inside a container for transportation. Once a container is filled with 22 fuel assemblies, workers will take it to another pool in a different building, about 340 feet away, that is reported to be stable enough to keep the fuel cool.
Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka has warned the hydrogen explosion caused many small pieces of rubble to be strewn in the pool area.
"The fuel has to be handled very carefully. There is a need to make sure that a fuel assembly is not pulled out [from the fuel rack] by force when it gets stuck because of the rubble," he said.
Kyodo said Tepco also plans to remove fuel from the spent-fuel pools of the remaining three reactor units.
