Court blames Tepco, not state, for crisis

Operator to pay out for Japan disaster

TOKYO: A Japanese court yesterday ordered a power operator to pay damages over the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant following a deadly 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but dismissed claims against the state.

It is the second time a court has ruled against Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) in a suit filed by people who were forced to leave their homes as reactors that lost cooling functions caused meltdowns and spewed massive amounts of radioactive materials into the air.

The Chiba District Court awarded a total of ¥376 million to 42 people. They are among the 45 plaintiffs who fled Fukushima Prefecture to Chiba prefecture near Tokyo and filed the suit in March 2013, seeking a total of around ¥2.8 billion in damages from the government and plant operator.

The focal point of the Chiba case was whether the government and Tepco were able to foresee the huge tsunami that hit the seaside plant on March 11, 2011, and take preventive measures beforehand, with conflicting claims made by the parties regarding the government’s longterm earthquake assessment, which was made public in 2002.

The assessment, made by the government’s earthquake research promotion unit, predicted a 20% chance of a magnitude-8-level tsunami-triggering earthquake occurring along the Japan Trench in the Pacific Ocean within 30 years, including the area off Fukushima.

Based on the assessment, the plaintiffs argued that, with the plant standing on ground roughly 10 meters above sea level, a tsunami higher than the ground striking the plant could have been predicted.

They then claimed that the disaster was therefore preventable if emergency power generation equipment had been placed on higher ground, and that the government should have made Tepco take such measures.

The government and Tepco claimed the assessment was not established knowledge, and that even if they had foreseen a tsunami higher than the site of the plant and prepared for it, they cannot be held liable as the actual tsunami was much higher at around 15.5 meters. The government also argued that it obtained regulatory powers to force Tepco to take anti-flooding measures only after a legislative change following the disaster.

In yesterday’s ruling, the court found the government not liable, saying that while t he government i ndeed has such powers, not exercising them was not unreasonable.

The Chiba case is among around 30 similar lawsuits brought by groups of people who were forced to evacuate from their homes due to the nuclear disaster.

In March, the Maebashi District Court in Gunma prefecture recognised negligence on the part not just of Tepco but also the government, saying they were able to foresee a tsunami high enough to inundate the plant. It was the first such ruling issued among around 30 suits of the same kind and the first to rule in favour of plaintiffs.

The Maebashi court acknowledged that the government had a regulatory authority over Tepco even before the accident, noting that “failing to exercise it is strikingly irrational and illegal”.

The court awarded to 62 of 137 plaintiffs a total of ¥38.55 million in damages, far less than the ¥1.5 billion sought.

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, causing multiple meltdowns and hydrogen blasts at Dai-ichi. Around 55,000 people remained displaced both within and outside Fukushima as of the end of August.