In the heavily damaged Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima, the salvage of radioactive fuel rods from reactor 3 has begun. This was confirmed by the operator TEPCO today. In the coming year, a total of 566 fuel rods will be removed from the plant’s decay tank.
The fuel rods from reactor 4 have already been recovered. However, this had shut down at the time of the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The three reactors in which it had come to the meltdown, have not been cleaned.
In Fukushima, after a major earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986. Because the cooling system failed, it melted in three of the six reactors. The area has been radioactively contaminated and has been uninhabitable ever since. The purge of the entire nuclear power plant is likely to drag on for decades.
