Tokyo Electric Power Company says underwater photographs from a remotely operated robot indicate there are no obstacles to removing the 615 radioactive fuel rods from the storage pool at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO plans to use a crane to lift out the fuel rods, with removal to begin between fiscal 2024 and 2026.

Staff at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant failed to properly follow damage assessment protocol that would have allowed the meltdown to be reported earlier, Tokyo Electric Power said on Wednesday. The company's guidelines state that a meltdown occurs when at least 5% of a reactor's fuel rods have been damaged. By March 14, 2011, about 55% of the fuel rod assemblies of unit 1 and 25% of the ones at unit 3 were impaired, said Yukako Handa, a spokesperson for the utility.

The removal of melted nuclear fuel and fuel debris from the first three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan might only begin around 2020, said Tokyo Electric Power. "They have passed the first, most precarious period. Nevertheless, there are various problems and there's no other way but to tackle them one by one," said Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority.

Tokyo Electric Power said workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan short-circuited one of the two thermometers used to monitor temperatures at the bottom of a reactor vessel that contains nuclear fuel. The error caused about 100 tons of highly radioactive water to leak from a storage tank, TEPCO said. Company officials said a new thermometer would need to be installed through a pipe, but the company has no immediate plans to replace the equipment because of high radiation levels surrounding the reactor building.

Temperatures at all three damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors have dropped below the boiling point, allowing Tokyo Electric Power to proceed with efforts to bring the units to cold shutdown. "We have cleared the temperature issue and taken a step forward towards achieving cold shutdown by the end of this year," said Takeo Iwamoto, a spokesman for the company. But TEPCO won't declare a cold shutdown until it fulfills other conditions, such as bringing down radiation emissions.