Crews at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan are starting to remove fuel rods from a storage pond at one of the four reactors.
The delicate operation is seen as a necessary step in stabilising the site, which was crippled by the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, 2011.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company said removal of the first 22 fuel rod assemblies would take about two days.
They will be deposited into a more secure storage pool with a cooling system.
More than 1500 assemblies are to be removed in a risky and dangerous operation that will take a year.
The fuel rod assemblies are four-metre tubes containing pellets of uranium fuel, and the fear is that some may have been damaged during the disaster.
After months of planning and preparation, the removal process began at 3.18pm local time on Monday.
The BBC reports a recently installed crane is being lowered into the pool and hooked on to the assemblies to place them inside a cask.
