Fukushima nuclear disaster: Three former execs charged

Members of a media tour group wearing a protective suit and a mask walk together after they receive a briefing from Tokyo Electric Power Co. employees (in blue) in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma.

Ex-Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, then-vice president Sakae Muto and former vice-president Ichiro Takekuro were formally charged with professional negligence resulting in deaths and injury.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant suffered a series of meltdowns following a massive natural disaster and tsunami.

The announcement comes after a judicial review panel composed of ordinary citizens ruled in July – for the second time since the accident – that the trio should be put on trial, compelling prosecutors to press on with the criminal case under Japanese law.

The executives were charged without arrest for professional negligence, according to a Tokyo District Court official who asked not to be named because of internal policy.

But as prosecutors decided not to file charges, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the group narrowed down its target and asked the committee to examine whether the prosecutors’ decision was appropriate.

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from the area near the Fukushima meltdown, the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The committee has said the former executives received a report by June 2009 that the plant could be hit by tsunami as high as 15.7 meters and that they “failed to take pre-emptive measures knowing the risk of a major tsunami”.

They are accused of being responsible for injuries sustained by 13 people, including security forces personnel, from hydrogen explosions at the six-reactor plant on the Pacific coast and the deaths of 44 patients evacuated from hospital. TEPCO and government officials say nobody died of a direct impact from radiation leak caused by the accident.

“The court proceedings that will now follow should reveal the true extent of TEPCO’s and the Japanese regulatory system’s enormous failure to protect the people of Japan”, said Hisayo Takada, deputy programme director at the organisation’s Japan office.

A 2012 parliamentary report also said Fukushima was a man-made disaster caused by Japan’s culture of “reflexive obedience”, but no one has been punished criminally.

Japan’s national broadcaster NHK said they planned to plead not guilty on the grounds they could not have anticipated the size of the tsunami.

The disaster resulted in Japan taking all of its nuclear power reactors offline for checks.