Fukushima reactor cooling system restarted

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has restarted a fuel pool cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after several hours of suspension. TEPCO says an alarm went off at around 2:30 PM on Friday, signaling electric trouble at the plant's Number 3 reactor fuel pool. Officials confirmed the failure. The pool contains 514 units of spent fuel rods and 52 units of unused rods. The utility says the pool's temperature was 15 degrees Celsius at 2 PM and that it would take about 2 weeks to reach the in-house safety threshold of 65 degrees. The utility says radiation levels at monitoring posts near the plant did not changed during the suspension. Tokyo Electric says the alarm went off while workers were installing wire nets around an outdoor power distribution board to keep small animals away. The utility says the nets may have accidentally touched the board. TEPCO decided to install the net after a small animal, possibly a rat, touched a switchboard outside a building and caused a power failure at 3 reactors last month. The trouble halted cooling systems at the reactors for up to 29 hours. Apr. 5, 2013 - Updated 09:03 UTC