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TEPCO Officials To Be Tried for Role In Fukushima Meltdown

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,

A Japanese citizens’ judicial committee has overruled government prosecutors and forced them to bring three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to trial on charges of criminal negligence for their inability to prevent the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But it appears unlikely that the defendants can be convicted.

The decision by the panel of 22 anonymous citizens, was reached July 17 but not announced until July 31. It overrules two previous decisions by the Tokyo prosecutors not to indict the former executives. The defendants are Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. at the time of the crisis, along with Sakae Muto, 65, and Ichiro Takekuro, 69, who were then vice presidents of the utility.

Decisions by the prosecutors in September 2013 and in January 2015 said they lacked sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the three men. In response, the citizens’ panel voted twice to demand the former executives’ indictment, trumping the prosecutors’ decisions.

Such citizens’ committees became a powerful features of Japan’s judicial system after World War II in an effort to combat government abuse of power. Their members are chosen by lottery and the panelists’ identities are kept secret. While they’re powerful, these committees are seldom used.

The committee concluded that the three defendants hadn’t taken necessary steps to reinforce the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, situated on Japan’s Pacific coast and therefore vulnerable to severe damage if it were struck by a tsunami in the earthquake-prone region.

That fear was realized in March 2011 when a Pacific tsunami slammed into Japan, causing widespread destruction, including such heavy damage to three of the four reactors at Fukushima Daichi that they melted down and began leaking radiation. The accident forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the general vicinity of the power plant.

The decision was good news for surviving victims of the disaster. “We had given up hope that there would be a criminal trial,” said Ruiko Muto, who leads the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Plaintiffs Group, which represents about 15,000 people, including residents displaced by the accident and their supporters. “We’ve finally gotten this far.”

But the victory may be merely symbolic because most legal observers say it’s unlikely the rigors that the defendants will face will go beyond giving public testimony at trial. There’s also little likelihood any of them will be convicted of a criminal charge because Japanese prosecutors, with 99 percent conviction rates, rarely bring charges unless they are virtually certain they can win the cases.

Cases imposed on them by citizens’ judicial committees are generally those in which prosecutors have concluded lack enough evidence to convict. One former prosecutor, Nobuo Gohara, told The New York Times that virtually all of such cases end in acquittals.

In the TEPCO case, for example, Gohara said the prosecutors now must prove that the defendants were guilty of criminal oversight of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant by failing to predict the huge tsunami that caused the disaster and neglecting to protect the facility sufficiently.

Further, Gohara said, it will be extremely challenging for the prosecutors to prove that the meltdowns at three of the plant’s reactors even killed anyone. Several people died while the area was being evacuated in 2011, but most were elderly who were too weak to be moved during the chaos of moment. But he stressed that no one so far has died from radiation poisoning.

“This is a very unusual case,” Gohara said. “The hurdles to conviction are high.”

 

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Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:16 | 6391638 Sanity Bear
Sanity Bear's picture

There's really only one just solution, which is to send them into the reactors to fix as much as they can before they die of radiation.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:23 | 6391661 indygo55
indygo55's picture

I thought that sign looked like Mickey Mouse. How appropriate. 

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:27 | 6391669 cossack55
cossack55's picture

No one died. WTF. USS Reagan anyone?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:21 | 6391802 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

I should be happy for one small victory (however brief) against the psychopaths at TEPCO. No, really... I should. The Japanese could actually stand up to their masters even though they pretty much have never bothered throughout this whole ordeal.

Kind of like all the times when the banksters here in the U.S. are investigated. I mean - come on - there's always a chance that they're going to be convicted and sentenced to years in prison, right? It's a theoretical possibility. It might happen someday. That's why it's called the Justice Department, right? These bastards have to pay - it's inevitable.

Yeah... and monkeys might fly out of my butt someday, too.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:30 | 6391835 Freddie
Freddie's picture

Will the person or people who gave the Yakuza the maint contracts get in trouble or the Yakuza?  I am sure nothing will happen to them.   Japan is as F'ed Up as Amerika.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:14 | 6391858 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

"...Japan is as F'ed Up as Amerika..."

Yeah, but they do it with that certain fascinating Asian flair... it's nice to see a different flavor of corruption, nepotism and psychopathy than the usual uninteresting, bland fare that America serves up day after day.

And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until this happens and frys some heavily-populated region in the good ol' U.S. - the denials, censorship and government cover-ups will be f'king EPIC in that 'Americans are exceptional' kind of way. The Japanese will be awestruck.

TEPCO and the Yakuza will both cringe in humiliation when they see the brain-shattering evil the U.S. is capable of if we ever have a similar meltdown here.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:23 | 6391662 eatthebanksters
eatthebanksters's picture

At least they will face the public disgrace and humiliation of the damage they caused during a trial...that in itself is worse than any punishment the court could mete out in Japan.  

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:54 | 6391893 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

TEPCO 2020

Wed, 08/05/2015 - 05:54 | 6392557 samcontrol
samcontrol's picture

Pathetic, they want to investigate what happened before the sunami not AFTER , dumb fucks. Lets just die and get it over with.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:16 | 6391639 willwork4food
willwork4food's picture

Damn. I wish that we could do that.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:26 | 6391995 Vullsain
Vullsain's picture

WOW.. citizens actually have a say in Japan and have the ability to circumvent the corrupt bought and paid for federal prosecuters!!

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:19 | 6391650 Skateboarder
Skateboarder's picture

Blame it on some three people, done dealio. Whether they're "charged" or not, the real perps are outta trouble. Meanwhile the dang thing oozes out mutagen daily, and we are all busy cheering on the next transfucktard teevee star.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:19 | 6391652 Pumpkin
Pumpkin's picture

Yeah, they should've....  should've..... I ain't coming up with anything.  Earthquake and tsumani, are these people gods?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 23:24 | 6392292 pine_marten
pine_marten's picture

No, they are liars.  They told the world the reactors were in "cold shutdown" and there was nothing to worry about.  The reality was quite different.  One nuclear power plant complex released more deadly radionuclides  than all of the atomic bombs ever detonated.   Do some research. ......

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:21 | 6391659 ZippyBananaPants
ZippyBananaPants's picture

They are rerry rerry srorry!

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:31 | 6391679 Save_America1st
Save_America1st's picture

Are they sure the whole thing wasn't caused by some Indian dudes daytrading in their parent's basements???

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:34 | 6391684 stormsailor
stormsailor's picture

yeah, he wondered what that scram button was on his fukushima trading platform

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:42 | 6391702 Jack Burton
Jack Burton's picture

TEPCO was gifted with a faulty design for a coastal nuclear plant subject to tsunami. Hindsight of course. But if the plant layout is presented to someone, it shows the back up generators and all the needed wiring  in the basement of buildings facing the sea, you start to see the problem. They assumed the sea wall was too high for a tsunami to breech. They were wrong. The earthquake trigger proper safety measures and all the reactors were shut down, with only latent heat left to cool, but no generators could pump the water, because on a coastline, subject to giant tsunami, they were placed in the basements. They could have been placed behind the rectors on the sloping hill side, they were not. Now, who signed off on that?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:53 | 6391728 g speed
g speed's picture

bean counters --aka management --you know-those guys with golden parchutes and no chips in the game

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:32 | 6391836 Rusty Shorts
Rusty Shorts's picture

I heard that the Rothschild's owned the plant, in fact, I think they own all NPP.

Wed, 08/05/2015 - 02:47 | 6392490 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

Not Larry 'Pull It'?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:42 | 6391706 blindman
blindman's picture

have they found and stopped the core melt
down situation yet? if not, what good is executing
morons?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 19:49 | 6391723 NubianSundance
NubianSundance's picture

Must be strange living in Japan, with a big no go zone to the North which will be uninhabitable for decades, and a big foreign run arms base to the South stuffed with nukes.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:18 | 6391955 blindman
blindman's picture

once upon a time "they", who ever they
are, made great and
affordable automobiles; even so,
maybe still? with 50 + nuclear power plants
sneaked underneath the petroleum sucking
objects of post modern consumption,
related infrastructure and culture(life style).
.
like pre-german, germans, experimental
germans. reminds me of some sorta axis
.
there is always much more to the story.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:01 | 6391756 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

Putting executives on trial? Positively un-American!

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:04 | 6391768 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

If this were America, the execs would be off the hook - but our lawyers would bring Mother Nature to trial for creating the tsunami and our judges would convict her!

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:07 | 6391775 Stormtrooper
Stormtrooper's picture

Perhaps 3 courtroom hari-karis to show their shame and remorse?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:09 | 6391781 gwar5
gwar5's picture

Couple thoughts....

Tepco's logo looks like Mickey Mouse, so no wonder they acted fucking Goofy.

Second thing, why can't we sue Goldman sachs and JPM  for the 2008 financial meltdown?  That was a lot more foreseeable than an earthquake-Tsunami 1-2 'Act of God' punch in the gut, and a lot more costly. Truly a man made disaster. 

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:26 | 6391820 Infinite QE
Infinite QE's picture

USS Reagan even more top secret than the events involving the USS Liberty.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:35 | 6391844 johnlocke445
johnlocke445's picture

Didn't this whole Fukushima catastrophe start with an earthquake and a sunami? Why would individuals be responsible for what happened?

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:16 | 6391951 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

Hey.. You're right! Who was it that was really responsible for the earthquake and tsunami, anyway??

Damn you, Putin!

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 20:38 | 6391850 Rusty Shorts
Rusty Shorts's picture

Want to know way they can't find the melted cores?? It's because the cores vaporized and was vented out some safety valve...I think it was SPV valve. They had no choice. 

 

So the cores and spent fuel pools are now floating around in the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:12 | 6391937 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

"...So the cores and spent fuel pools are now floating around in the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere..."

Not true any more, thank God. Much of the most dangerous radiation has been rained out over the ocean and taken up and concentrated by these ingenious carbon-based radiation absorbers they use today. Almost like nature's little radionuclide vacuum cleaners. Of course, they haven't removed 100% of it, but they gobbled up one hell of a lot of the most dangerous stuff. Some of them are full and have stopped working, so that's no good.

I'm trying to remember what the call those collection devices. Hmm???

Oh, I remember now: whales, porpoise, sea lions, seals, tuna, salmon, krill... 

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:15 | 6391945 Rusty Shorts
Rusty Shorts's picture

Yes indeed.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:11 | 6391941 scatha
scatha's picture

Another symbolic fiction of justice of those gluttonous and murderous corporate types that are cancer to Japanese society and an insult to tens thousands of victims, many not found or identified yet. Lawlessness is all around us, in Japan and elsewhere when apology for killing thousands is all there is to it.

It’s been over Four months since I posted the below comment on ZH and nothing really changed since then except another failure of some robotic toy. So here I go for those who missed it.


Over 4 years passed since Fukushima disaster so it’s time for quick recapitulation of the situation:

Two of four reactors suffered complete melt down, one partial meltdown and fourth which was not operational at that time still has big spent fuel problem which cannot be removed, posing threat of explosion if another disaster hits.

In four years what they accomplished was merely pouring water on cores of melted reactors and pumping it into hundreds of storage tanks build in the vicinity of NPP while having no clue what to do with it. Attempts to decontaminate it failed.

The vessel containments of melted down reactors have failed. They developed concrete cracks as well damage of pressure piping during disaster and in aftermath. Through those fissures some of nuclear fuel and highly contaminated water’s pouring into ground water system.

 The fact of bridging containment vessel (prelude to China syndrome) alone leads to horrifying conclusions that the problem is unfixable at all, short of currently impossible task of removing all melted nuclear fuel from vessel and/or wherever it went. The truth that anyone involved in mitigation of this disaster wouldn’t even utter.

On the top of it after four years TEPCO does not have good account of state of melted down reactors or complete list of damages, since supposedly world leading powerhouse robotics nation cannot produce one dammed good robot that would work in such extreme conditions. Several attempts to deploy robots have been proven complete failure.

 It is shocking but they simply do not know what to do. They are in loss, confusion and panic.  There is neither plan, nor technology invented yet to tackle the problem. In desperation thousand retired workers indebted to Japanese mafia were being sent there into these reactors, for two minutes each, to senselessly die on orders of Japanese Oligarchs. It is that bad.

Since rate of process of removing radiation from highly contaminated water is many times lower that rate of pumping newly contaminated water into new, freshly built storage tanks, the whole effort is hopeless from engineering point of view. All this is just Sisyphus work, which lead to nowhere since they have to keep pumping water to cool and moderate fission material inside leaky damaged reactors so they will not blow up again. Now many those tanks are also leaking profusely back to ground water adding to chaos. All the contaminated water leaked from reactor vessels and storage tanks ends up in the ocean continually bleeding radiation and all frantic attempts of preventive measures such as “ice wall” utterly failed.

Japanese MSM media, in 1984 style propaganda of changing past to control present, covers up gruesome reality of the Fukushima situation with its human implications, not to mention ignores severe problems with remaining 100 aging Japanese nuclear reactors put offline after 03/11/2011.

The official talk about Fukushima NPP decommission process planned for about four decades supposedly already started is a cruel fairy tale in context of utterly hopeless situation on the ground. The apparent inertia and indifference of the government, busy destroying Japanese economy with QE, cannot be explained in any other way than deliberated criminal, genocidal act against Japanese nation and world community unless you believe in fairy tales.

Situation at some US nuclear power plants and decommission efforts:

https://sostratusworks.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/devils-good-intentions/

and propaganda lies about renewable and nuclear energy, an excerpt from

https://sostratusworks.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/engineering-renewable-delusions/

about fallacy of the concept of peaceful application of nuclear power.

The Nuclear power however, is neither clean nor sustainable and is simply a cruel hoax, masquerading as power generating technology. There is no such a thing as peaceful or civilian nuclear power. Little history. When in early fifties nuclear weapons race between US and Soviets and later China was in its apex a problem aroused of running huge operation of producing nuclear weapons in total secrecy. The issue was necessity of running secretly many nuclear reactors fueled with over 99% of U238 and less than 1% of isotope U235 which after controlled fission burning produced 3-4% of isotope U235 ready for subsequent enrichment in order to produce nuclear weapon grade fuel. Another problem was that further enrichment of uranium U235 and Plutonium Pu239 isotopes required enormous amounts of electricity, for running of hundreds of thousands mechanical centrifuges 24/7 affecting whole national power system with variety effects that were not easy to conceal.

To the rescue came bunch propagandists from Pentagon or W.H. and devised peaceful use of nuclear energy mantra, brilliantly conceived method of hiding massive nuclear war preparation effort as a benign service to humanity as proclaimed by president Eisenhower as early as  in 1953. As a result first so-called US Civilian Nuclear Power Plant was born in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957, with moderate redesign of original military nuclear reactor and adding steam turbine and electric power generators. Even deadly adversaries of US in Soviet Union did not openly attack Eisenhower, by calling him liar and hypocrite in editorial of “PRAVDA” newspaper as they usually did but instead they were uncannily receptive to supposed “peace” overtures. They must have understood the point and figured out that they can also use this propaganda ploy to keep readying to nuclear confrontation while utilizing previously useless steam to light up half of Siberia, all in the name of world peace. No need to go on.

 

Ignoring inherited environmental dangers and flaws in basic concepts of design, nuclear power plants were never meant for civilian use for one reason alone. Namely complete lack of any technology enabling utilization of deadly, lasting up to billion years, nuclear waste for any further civilian use and fairy tales about new breeder reactor technologies do not change anything in that matter. The Fukushima NPP disaster is prime example of deadly results of reckless design based more on war contingencies than consideration for civilian lives, combined with complete criminal incompetence of private operator focused solely on profit. The medium term effects are starting to show up in form of 6000% increase in cancer cases in Fukushima prefecture while authorities call area safe.

A robot that failed in Fukushima:

http://phys.org/news/2015-06-small-robot-interior-fukushima-daiichi.html...

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 21:51 | 6392059 SSRI Junkie
SSRI Junkie's picture

Putting the switchgear for the back-up power in a basement at or below sea level was pretty dumb.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 23:07 | 6392261 Rusty Shorts
Rusty Shorts's picture

...as planned, remember, these are monsters we are dealing with.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 22:49 | 6392219 q99x2
q99x2's picture

They better hang the people that funded the project or I'm going to be pissed.

Tue, 08/04/2015 - 23:47 | 6392330 nah
nah's picture

garbage in garbage out

.

its simple math

Wed, 08/05/2015 - 01:21 | 6392442 ThorAss
ThorAss's picture

Anybody else notice how much the Tepco logo looks like Mickey Mouse?

Wed, 08/05/2015 - 01:21 | 6392445 ThorAss
ThorAss's picture

... with 3 ears ...

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