(Kyodo) — Tokyo Electric Power Co. showed to the media on Tuesday its work to remove fuel from a nuclear reactor at the Fukushima Daini plant, the first time to do so after a huge earthquake and tsunami hit the complex and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March last year.
The plant operator, known as TEPCO, plans to remove 764 fuel assemblies inside the No. 4 reactor to the spent fuel pool located next to the reactor. It will also check whether there is damage inside the reactor by using an underwater camera. The Fukushima Daini complex, located about 12 kilometers south of the Daiichi plant, was affected by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, with three of the four reactors temporarily losing key cooling functions.
The damage the plant suffered was smaller than the Fukushima Daiichi and workers achieved a cold shutdown of the reactors several days after the earthquake and tsunami.
