14 DAY TRIAL // Tepco has announced that, on November 25, Fukushima's Reactor No. 4 was 22 fuel rods lighter.
In a press release, the company also says that cleanup activities are going according to plan, and that no major incidents happened while workers were removing the 22 fuel assemblies and transferring them to a safer location.
“Each step was conducted in accordance with the procedure manual. Each step was found to have no particular problem in conducting the fuel removal work,” Tepco writes.
Furthermore, “Radiation exposure of workers was managed to be low compared to the assumed atmosphere dose rate.”
When cleanup operations began, the nuclear reactor contained a total of 1,533 fuel rods. Of these, 1,331 are spent ones. The remaining 202 are unspent.
As previously reported, the latter are the ones that the company first wants to remove and relocate.
Tepco estimates that the nuclear plant's Reactor No. 4 will be completely fuel rods-free in about a year.