Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it found no significant abnormalities in a bundle of unused nuclear fuel rods removed from the storage pool of the No. 4 reactor of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it found no significant abnormalities in a bundle of unused nuclear fuel rods removed from the storage pool of the No. 4 reactor of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.Two unused fuel rod bundles were removed in mid-July in a preliminary effort to ascertain whether they were damaged by a hydrogen explosion that rocked the reactor building after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami last year.TEPCO carried out a visual examination of one of them on Aug. 28.Each bundle is roughly 4.5 meters long and weighs 300 kilograms.TEPCO said grit found in spaces between the rods was likely from concrete walls in the No. 4 reactor building that blew apart in the hydrogen explosion.The storage pool contains 1,533 spent and unused fuel rod bundles.TEPCO intends to begin removing all the bundles in December 2013.