A Japanese expert panel on July 5 issued a report claiming that the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was preventable. In the 641-page document the panel claims that the accident was not caused solely by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, but the inability of the government, regulators and the Fukushima Daiichi plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO [2]), to act quickly enough to prevent the disaster. Among the criticized was also the then-Prime Minster Naoto Kan who resigned last year after a widespread criticism of his handling of the natural disaster and Fukushima nuclear crisis. The experts claimed that regulators have failed to adopt global safety standards that could have prevented the crisis.
In June more than 1,300 people filed a criminal complaint [3] against TEPCO for the March 2011 crisis and for the plaintiffs' resulting radiation. The complaint named as defendants Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of TEPCO, Masataka Shimizu, the former president of the company, and Haruki Madarame, the chief of the Nuclear Safety Commission, along with 30 other executives. In March, the executives of the company faced another complaint [4] filed by a group of shareholders in the amount of $67 billion for similar claims. They claimed that the company failed to take appropriate measure to mitigate damages in the event of an earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
From Jurist [5], July 5. Used with permission.
See our last post on the ongoing Fukushima disaster [6].
