A new and delicate operation started at the Fukushima plant: they remove the fuel from the reactor 3

Tepco, the operator of the Fukushima accident center, began to remove Monday the fuel stored in the reactor pool 3, one of the most damaged, a delicate operation that has been delayed several times and will last about two years.

This is the second time that such an operation is performedafter the reactor pool 4 was emptied between 2013 and 2014. But the state of the reactor in question was different because its core, unlike No. 3, did not melt because it was empty.

The reactor 3 deactivation and cooling pool contains 566 nuclear fuel unitsr, bulky parts that must be removed before performing the rest of the tasks in the building, which has undergone a major explosion.

Building 3 of the reactor was transformed after the accident into a forest of junks that had to be evacuated. The pool, located at the top, was also full of garbage of all kinds.

After the installation of special equipment, including a crane, to be able to take out the fuel units one by one.

Preparations took longer than expected.

"At first, we thought we could start the withdrawal at the end of 2014, but there was a lot of waste and we had to act with caution because of the radioactivity", A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) told AFP.

Tepco will begin by removing the seven unused units, which theoretically presents less risk. The rest of the operations will take longer.

The removal of fuel from the pools of reactors 1 and 2, the other two units whose nuclei merged, will begin in early 2023.

The central Fukushima Daiichi, located about 220 km northeast of Tokyo, was flooded on March 11, 2011 by a huge tsunami after a powerful earthquake.

The supply of cooling circuits has been cut, which caused the fusion of the nuclei of three of the site's six reactors and violent explosions due to the accumulation of hydrogen by chemical reaction in the building covering the units in which the pools are located.

(With information from AFP)