Fuel rod removal starts at Fukushima

Nuclear engineers in Japan are preparing to move uranium and plutonium fuel rods at Fukushima, their most difficult and dangerous task since the plant's runaway reactors were brought under control two years ago.
Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) is expected this month to begin removing fuel rods from a pool inside a reactor building at the tsunami-hit plant after months of setbacks and glitches.
Experts say the operation is a tricky but essential step in the decades-long decommissioning after the worst atomic accident in a generation.
But, they add, it pales in comparison with the much more complex task that awaits engineers who will have to remove the misshapen cores of three reactors that went into meltdown -- probably relying on technology that has not yet been invented.
More than 1,500 nuclear fuel assemblies -- bundles of rods -- must be pulled out of the storage pool where they were being kept when a tsunami smashed into Fukushima in March 2011.
The reactor which the pool serves -- No. 4 -- was not in operation at the time. But hydrogen from Reactor No. 3 got into the building and exploded, tearing the roof off and leaving it at the mercy of earthquakes, storms or another tsunami.
TEPCO says it has not yet found any damage to the assemblies at No. 4, but will be monitoring for abnormalities, such as rust.