Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has said that it has halted the cooling of fuel rods in one of the units of the plant to remove two dead rats.

The company said that it has halted the cooling of the No. 2 unit pool that is used to stores spent uranium fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site. The company had to halt the process for a few hours to remove and it also installed a net to stop rodents from entering. This is the third time in five weeks that the cooling was halted due to the rodents at the rite.

The cooling process of fuel rods was earlier halted for 29 hours in the previous month after the company lost power at the site reportedly as rats caused damage to a temporary switchboard. On another occasion, the workers attempting to install net also caused outage to the process. The latest incident comes after a host of incidences including the leaking of the contaminated water from underground storage pits.

Entire areas of Fukushima have been evacuated following the tsunami and the nuclear disaster. The evacuations began as reactors in Fukushima faced a meltdown because the plant was swamped by the 2011 tsunami. Experts have said that the some areas will remain inhabitable for daces to come.