Workers wearing protective suits and masks carry out an operation to remove fuel rods from a spent fuel pool inside the No.4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture November 18, 2013, in this handout photograph taken and released by TEPCO. REUTERS/Tokyo Electric Power Co/Handout via Reuters
TOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant took the first step on Monday in the long and hazardous process of decommissioning the facility, extracting four fuel rods from their container for later removal.
Tokyo Electric Power Co, known as Tepco, said it transferred the rods to a steel cask within the same cooling pool in a badly damaged reactor building, beginning the delicate and unprecedented task of removing 400 tonnes of highly irradiated spent fuel from that reactor.
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