On Wednesday, Jan. 18, the Tokyo High Court upheld the earlier not-guilty verdicts of three former Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) executives, The Guardian reports. This news came as a shock to campaigners demanding that the company accept legal responsibility for the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster.
Tsunehisa Katsumata, former chairman of Tepco, and former vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto were cleared of professional negligence resulting in death by the court.
After being hit by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant experienced multiple meltdowns, contaminating vast areas around it with radiation.
No One Expected the Meltdown Says Jury
A district court in September 2019 acquitted all three men of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, arguing that the Fukushima disaster was challenging to predict.
On Wednesday, the Tokyo High Court upheld the acquittal, saying it "cannot determine" a causal relationship between the defendant's actions and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdowns.
The decision is a roadblock for victim lawyers who have led legal action against Tepco and its former executives. "We are disappointed with today's ruling, but we will continue to fight for compensation for those affected by this tragedy," attorney Hideaki Omori said in a statement released after the ruling on Wednesday.
The Fukushima Meltdown
The 15-meter-high tsunami on March 11, 2011 knocked out the power supply and cooling systems of three of the plant's reactors, which caused the cores to melt.
The World Nuclear Association says that the accident was rated level 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the highest level on the scale, due to the high level of radioactive releases over several days. It was assumed that radioactive materials were released around 940 PBq (I-131 eq).
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All four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant shut down due to the damage sustained in the accident, resulting in a loss of 2719 MWe net. Despite the accident's severity, no deaths or cases of radiation sickness were reported.
It is estimated that around 80,000 people living near Fukushima were forced to flee their homes due to the radiation released by Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit it on March 11, 2011.
More About the Ruling
The ruling will likely cast doubt on Japan's current legal system's ability to hold corporations accountable for catastrophic events.
Campaigners claim that despite repeated warnings about the risk of tsunami flooding at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant issued before March 2011, Tepco failed to take sufficient action that could have prevented or reduced the severity of the disaster.
The court's decision contrasts sharply with a separate decision in July 2022 in which the court ordered a civil case against the three men and Tepco's ex-president Masataka Shimizu to pay 13.32 trillion yen for failing to prevent the Fukushima disaster. However, lawyers involved in the case stated that they would be unable to pay such a fee due to their limited resources.
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