The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant completed on Thursday the removal of the first fuel rods from a cooling pool high up in a badly damaged reactor building, a rare success in the often fraught battle to control the site. The batch of 22 unused fuel assemblies, which each contain 50-70 of the fuel rods, was transferred by a trailer to a safer storage pool, the last day of a four-day operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement. Carefully plucking the damaged fuel assemblies from the reactor building is being seen as a test of Tepco's ability to move ahead with decommissioning the whole facility - a task likely to cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades. The hazardous removal operation has been likened by Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, to trying to pull cigarettes from a crushed pack.
via Health News Headlines - Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/start-long-operation-fukushima-removes-first-fuel-rods-094710413--finance.html
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