{"id":89522,"date":"2019-04-15T07:02:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/removing-fuel-rods-japan-hits-milestone-in-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup"},"modified":"2019-04-15T07:02:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:02:12","slug":"removing-fuel-rods-japan-hits-milestone-in-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/removing-fuel-rods-japan-hits-milestone-in-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup","title":{"rendered":"Removing Fuel Rods, Japan Hits Milestone in Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/removing-fuel-rods-japan-hits-milestone-in-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The operator of Japan\u2019s ruined Fukushima nuclear power plant began removing radioactive fuel rods on Monday at one of three reactors that melted down after an earthquake and a tsunami in 2011, a major milestone in the long-delayed cleanup effort.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of former residents have been barred from the area around the plant for years as crews carried out a large-scale <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/03\/11\/world\/asia\/struggling-with-japans-nuclear-waste-six-years-after-disaster.html?module=inline\" title=\"\">radioactive waste cleanup<\/a> in the aftermath of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The process of removing the fuel rods from a storage pool had been delayed since 2014 amid technical mishaps and high radiation levels.<\/p>\n<p>The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said in a statement that workers on Monday morning began removing the first of 566 spent and unspent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant\u2019s third reactor. A radiation-hardened robot had first <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/11\/19\/science\/japan-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-fuel.html?module=inline\" title=\"\"> located the melted uranium fuel<\/a> inside the reactor in 2017.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/15\/world\/asia\/fukushima-japan-fuel-rods.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The operator of Japan\u2019s ruined Fukushima nuclear power plant began removing radioactive fuel rods on Monday at one of three reactors that melted down after an earthquake and a tsunami in 2011, a major milestone in the long-delayed cleanup effort. Thousands of former residents have been barred from the area around the plant for years [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}