RAW VIDEO: TEPCO Releases Video of Nuclear Fuel Pool

Japanese operator of the stricken nuclear plant releases video of the nuclear fuel pool ahead of rod removal.

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over 1 year ago

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Technology, Science, Scientific Research

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Technology

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scientific research, nuclear plant, nuclear energy, nuclear power, japanese nuclear crisis, fuel, tepco

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EDITORS NOTE: CONTAINS CONVERTED 4:3 MATERIAL(ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION)Operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) released new video on Friday (February 10).It shows the spent nuclear fuel pool at reactor number 4 as the company prepares to remove the fuel rods from the pool.The plant, on the coast 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.While this is not the first time the pool has been filmed, this video was filmed to measure how transparent the water in the pool was ahead of plans to begin removing the 1535 fuel rods still inside the damaged building.Japanese media reported that the fuel rods in the reactor No. 4 fuel pool will the first to be removed as the plant begins the long road towards decommissioning.The video itself shows debris in the pool covering some of the nuclear fuel rods, TEPCO said that the fuel rods in the No. 4 pool did appear to have changed shape or be damaged.While the plant was declared to be in "cold shutdown" last December, the government has said that decommissioning the plant will take three to four decades.