Tokyo Power Executives Found Not Guilty in Fukushima Disaster Trial
Tokyo Power Executives Found Not Guilty in Fukushima Disaster Trial
(Bloomberg) -- Three former Tepco executives were found not guilty of charges related to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown in Japan, the only effort to hold individuals criminally liable for one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
The verdict Thursday, reported by NHK, closes one chapter of the ongoing cleanup and recovery at the Dai-Ichi plant on the eastern coast, which is expected to take as long as 40 years and cost nearly $200 billion. The executives, including former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, had been accused in Tokyo District Court of professional negligence resulting in death.
After prosecutors initially declined to bring charges, lawyers appointed by the court indicted the three in 2016, arguing that the executives could have prevented the disaster and demanded five-year prison terms. Lawyers for the victims’ families have said Tepco failed to take appropriate safety measures because the executives thought they were too costly.
“Tepco executives ran away from the responsibility for the nuclear disaster,” Saki Ohkawara, a 67 year-old woman from Fukushima prefecture and one of the plaintiffs said after the decision. “Our land and water are still being tainted by Tepco.”
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake, the biggest ever recorded to hit Japan, triggered a massive tsunami that overwhelmed the plant, knocking out power to cooling systems and leading to meltdowns of three reactor cores. About 160,000 people were forced to flee, with some of the evacuated areas still uninhabitable.
The defense had argued it was impossible to predict the severity of the wave that hit the plant, estimated to have been about 13 meters (42 feet) high. Lawyers for the court countered that lower-level Tepco officials earlier warned that tsunamis topping 15 meters were possible.
“If you had to consider every possibility associated with tsunamis and be required to take necessary measures, it would be impossible to operate nuclear power plants,” the court said in a statement.
Tepco in a statement apologized for the nuclear disaster and said it was putting all its effort into nuclear safety measures and revitalizing the Fukushima region. The utility declined to comment on the outcome of the trial.
The deaths related to the charges refer to 44 people, mainly hospital patients, who died when emergency crews couldn’t rescue them due to high levels of radiation. Katsumata stepped down in June 2012 as chairman of the company, known officially as Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. The other two, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, are former executive vice presidents.
--With assistance from Stephen Stapczynski.
To contact the reporter on this story: Aya Takada in Tokyo at atakada2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anna Kitanaka at akitanaka@bloomberg.net, Aaron Clark, Ramsey Al-Rikabi
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