Court ordered four Tepco ex-executives to pay 100 billion USD compensation

Photo : Reactor 3 in 6.2015 [URL]

 

On the 13th of July, 2022, the Tokyo district court ordered four former Tepco executives to pay 100 billion USD (97,057,178,988 USD). The Presiding Judge ruled that Tepco, led by these four executives, neglected tsunami countermeasures. This is the first time that the former management is held responsible for the nuclear accident, and it is believed to be the highest amount of damage compensation ever in a domestic lawsuit.

The four executives are former chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata (82), former president Masataka Shimizu (78), former vice president Ichiro Takekuro (76), and former vice president Sakae Muto (72). The amount of compensation is the sum of (1) approximately 11 billion USD for decommissioning, (2) 52 billion USD for compensation for damages to victims, and (3) 33 billion USD for measures such as decontamination.

The lawsuit was filed in March 2012. The points of contention were whether it was possible to foresee a huge tsunami based on the “long-term evaluation” of earthquake forecasts released by a government agency in 2002, and whether the accident could have been prevented by measures such as flood control.

The ruling acknowledged that the long-term evaluation was “based on knowledge with scientific credibility”. In 2008, based on a long-term evaluation, TEPCO estimated that a tsunami of up to 15.7 meters would reach the Fukushima nuclear plant.

It also concluded that if tsunami control measures had been implemented in the main reactor buildings, “there was a good chance that a serious situation could have been avoided.”

After the ruling, TEPCO said in a company statement that it would refrain from commenting on individual lawsuits.

In the criminal trial, Katsumata and three others were forcibly indicted for professional negligence resulting in death and injury. The first trial was not guilty, which indicates the judgments were divided into criminal and civil cases. An appeals court decision is scheduled for January of 2023.

 

[Source]

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This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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