“The fuel removal work from the spent fuel pool of Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station Unit 3 was completed with the removal of all 566 units at 13:59 on February 28,” said a statement on the company’s social media feeds.
The removal of fuel from Unit 3’s storage fuel pool began in April 2019 after several years of work to remove debris from the reactor building service floor.
The work required the removal of huge pieces of damaged equipment that fell into the pool during the explosions that hit the nuclear site in Fukushima, in the days after a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and emergency cooling.
Tepco said its aim was to complete the fuel removal during fiscal year 2020, which ends this month, in accordance with its decommissioning roadmap.
The company announced that the final six fuel assemblies from the used fuel pool had been removed from their transport containers and placed into a fuel rack in the common storage pool.
The assemblies were removed using a crane operated by a team about 500 metres away, Reuters reported.
Fuel assemblies have already been removed from the pool at Unit 4, but the work has yet to start at Units 1 and 2.
