The first of four sets of spent nuclear fuel rods has been removed from a damaged reactor building at Japan’s Fukushima power plant, scoring a major success in an effort to dismantle the quake and tsunami-wrecked facility.
Three other reactor buildings are holding almost 1,400 fuel assemblies in storage pools, and they must be recovered too. The operation started with Reactor 4 because it was damaged most in the March 2011 disaster due to a series of hydrogen explosions inside the building and is in danger of collapsing.
