Japanese justice condemned Wednesday July 13 four former leaders of the electricity company of Tokyo (Tepco) to compensate shareholders of the company. The Tokyo court accuses them of not having been able to prevent the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 by not taking the necessary measures against the tsunamis.
The president of Tepco at the time of the tragedy, Tsunehisa Katsumata, the CEO, Masataka Shimizu, and two vice-presidents, Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto, were sentenced to pay 13,321 billion yen (97 billion euros) to forty- eight shareholders who lodged a complaint in 2012. Also implicated, the managing director, Akio Komori, was not sanctioned.
This is the first time former power company officials have been ordered to pay damages following the March 11, 2011 disaster. The earthquake and tsunami, which struck northeastern Japan that day , caused the melting of three of the six cores of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
The worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl
The worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 caused the evacuation of 240,000 people from the region, the contamination of a vast swath of small towns, farmlands and forests, territories for some still forbidden of access. Resolving the damage to the damaged plant, including extracting the melted cores, is expected to take several more decades.
The plaintiffs claimed 22,000 billion yen (160 billion euros) in compensation. They criticized the leaders for not having anticipated the tsunami of the magnitude of that of March 2011, despite several studies evoking such a risk.
The defendants argued that these studies were unreliable and stressed the unpredictability of the magnitude of the 2011 disaster. Yet in 2008, a Tepco department estimated that a tsunami of up to 15.7 meters could hit the central. This analysis was based on the government’s assessment of long-term earthquakes, made public in 2002. Plant officials ignored these reports and the recommendations they contained. The preventive measures were effective only against a wave of 3 meters.
Paid in 2019
For the court, the former leaders are therefore guilty of not having implemented adequate protection measures against the risk of tsunami.
This judgment contrasts with that rendered in September 2019. MM. Katsumata, Takekuro and Muto were then acquitted in a lawsuit filed for “negligence resulting in death” – 44 people had died during the evacuation of Futaba hospital, a few kilometers from the site, organized in the days following the nuclear disaster.
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