Fuel rod removal: Fukushima’s most dangerous operation yields first successes

[FBaggins]

61. That doesn't make them harder to remove.

The process is identical in either case.

The greatest fear the anti-nuke crusade brigade is pushing is the chance of dropped (or even touching) fuel bundles achieving re-criticality and forcing Tokyo to evacuate. While the chance of that has a whole mess of zeroes after the decimal (and before any other digit)... the unused fuel is at least theoretically more likely to do that. In fact... most of the creative fiction they were working on a week or two ago was that the unused bundles were the dangerous ones.

The equipment can't lift either of them out of the water, so the only real radiological risk would be if the transfer cask is dropped and bursts open (also unlikely in the extreme)... but that's after removal and little different from other fuel movement at undamaged reactors since we're now about three years from their last fissioning (and over the dry-cask 5-year line for the vast majority of the pool contents).

Those of you that accused me of being a monster will be glad the hear that I am working on microgrids now.

I don't remember accusing you of anything.