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A court in Tokyo on Wednesday ordered former executives at the Fukushima nuclear power plant operator involved in the 2011 disaster to pay around 13 trillion yen ($94.8 billion) in damages, local media said.
Four ex-bosses of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have been ordered to pay damages in a lawsuit filed by shareholders over the nuclear disaster triggered by a massive tsunami.
The plaintiffs emerged from the Tokyo court holding banners reading “Shareholders Win” and “Responsibility Recognized.”
Hiroyuki Kawai, an attorney representing shareholders, said when the lawsuit was filed that senior executives at TEPCO would be asked to pay.
“It must be warned that if you make wrong decisions or do something wrong, you will have to compensate with your own money,” he told a 2012 news conference.
“You may have to sell your house. You may have to spend your retirement years in misery. In Japan, nothing can be solved and no progress can be made without delegating personal responsibility.”
Shareholders argued that the disaster could have been prevented if TEPCO chiefs had listened to the research and taken preventative measures such as placing an emergency power source at a higher level.
However, officials argued that the studies presented to them were not credible and risks could not have been predicted.
In a statement read by a TEPCO spokesman to AFP, the company said, “We once again sincerely apologize to the people of Fukushima and members of society at large for causing the anger and concern caused by the disaster.”
However, it declined to comment on the verdict, including whether there would be an appeal.
Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were operating when a massive underwater earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami on March 11, 2011.
They went into a meltdown after their cooling systems failed when waves swamped emergency generators.
The accident was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and led to the declaration of an evacuation zone around the power plant.
Tens of thousands of residents around the Fukushima plant were asked to, or chose to, evacuate their homes.
About 12 percent of the Fukushima region was once declared unsafe, but no-go zones now comprise about two percent, although the population in many cities is far lower than before.
TEPCO was prosecuted in court by survivors of the disaster as well as shareholders, and this year six plaintiffs took the company to court over claims that they developed thyroid cancer from exposure to radiation.
In 2019, a court acquitted three former TEPCO officials in the only criminal case stemming from the disaster.
They faced up to five years in prison if convicted of professional negligence, but the court ruled they could not have predicted the magnitude of the tsunami that triggered the disaster.
TEPCO is currently engaged in a decade-long effort to decommission the facility, a costly and difficult process.
No one was killed in the meltdown, but the tsunami left 18,500 dead or missing.
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