[en] NRG has, in cooperation with the German partner Hoefer and Bechtel, performed a radiochemical characterization of the control rods from a German Pressurized Water Reactor. To perform the cutting and sampling of the spent control rods at the reactor site NRG has developed a dedicated, remotely operated tool. This tool enabled the sampling of both the stainless steel tube and the absorber material from the upper, middle and lower parts of selected rods. The samples were transported from the reactor site to NRG's laboratories at Petten, the Netherlands, were they were analysed chemically and radiologically. Due to the different chemical constitution of the control rod tubes and the absorber, the procedures for the chemical separation of the different compounds, prior to the radiological characterization, varied. The route for the stainless steel tube samples turned out more complex than that for the absorber samples: there are more nuclides to be determined, and therefore more treatment steps and component separations were necessary. Subsequently to the component separations, the radiochemical characterization was performed using alpha and gamma spectrometry and the Liquid Scintillation Counting (LSC) technique. The results of the measurements in combination with simulations performed with a reactor physics code provided for a better understanding about the distribution of radionuclides in absorber rods, both in the rod tubes and the absorber core. In addition, the results of the measurements can be used to validate reactor physics codes. (authors)