Tepco Successfully Removes First Nuclear Fuel Rods at Fukushima

[bananas]

5. No, they never announced that.

I assume you're referring the euronews article here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014649672

That euronews article was very poorly written and gave the wrong impression.

It mentions two separate delays:

1)

"The operators of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have postponed the extremely complicated and difficult task of removing damaged atomic rods."

I think that refers to the two-week delay that just ended - TEPCO was originally going to start moving the fuel two weeks ago, but realized they should do some practice runs first.

2)

"The inital plan called for the clean-up in the affected towns to be finished by March this year but the government now says the work will be delayed by as much as three years."

This 3 year delay is for decontaminating the surrounding towns, not for removing the spent fuel rods.

There's also a lot of other work to be done - for example, there are several more spent fuel pools.