Tokyo Court Orders Ex-Heads Of Fukushima NPP's Operator To Pay $98Bln In Damage - Reports

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th July, 2022) A Tokyo district court ruled on Wednesday that four former heads of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's operator � Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) � must pay shareholders 13.3 trillion Yen ($98 billion) to compensate for losses incurred as a result of the 2011 nuclear disaster, Japanese media reported.

The first court would be the first to recognize the personal financial responsibility of company's former management in connection with a nuclear power plant accident.

In 2012, a group of TEPCO shareholders filed a lawsuit against five former TEPCO executives demanding that they pay 22 trillion yen in damages, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. The shareholders cited huge losses caused by the need to pay for the dismantlement of the NPP reactor, and compensate evacuees and victims of the Fukushima disaster. The lawsuit claimed that the TEPCO leadership could have predicted a large tsunami based on 2002 studies and could therefore have taken appropriate measures to prevent the damage.

The former executives have argued that a long-term forecast would have had low credibility and that, even if they have succeeded in predicting consequences of the disaster, they would not have had enough time to take appropriate measures, the broadcaster reported.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility experienced core meltdowns as a result of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The accident became the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl crisis, leading to massive radiation exposure and contamination of surrounding lands and waters.