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To simplify the other more detailed response, It's just Uranium at that point. Even highly enriched Uranium isn't that radioactive by itself, it's once you start operating the reactor that it starts generating highly radioactive waste.

The new fuel rods going into it are totally safe from a radioactivity perspective. Here's a picture of a man holding a fuel rod bundle with nothing more than gloves on. http://nuclearstreet.com/images/img/dw037.jpg

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One can't help but notice from his shirt and his hair that the picture was taken in the 1970s. Lots of awful practices still existed then; who's to say this isn't a picture of that?

Here's a photo series from 2005 at a Swedish nuclear fuel facility showing how uranium turns into fuel pellets and fuel rod bundles:

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/multimedia/photoessays/train...

At all stages the material can be handled with no more protection than gloves. It is roughly as dangerous as handling lead fishing weights until the fuel actually attains criticality.

It still produces a fair bit of alpha, so avoid particulate ingestion.

I don't know why people downvoted this, it's entirely correct. Although I guess the larger concern than the radiation would be the heavy metal poisoning but in any case it's still fine, just treat it like you would any other heavy metal.

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