Former managers operator Tepco had appealed
A Japanese high court canceled a sentence that ordered the former operator of the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), to pay the damage to the company for not having been able to prevent the catastrophe of March 2011.
The decision of the upper court of Tokyo came after, in July 2022, a district court had established that the former managers should pay compensation of about 13,000 billion yen (79 billion euros). Both the former managers and the shareholders who requested compensation had appealed to the sentence.
The District Court had considered the four former managers responsible for the exhuous compensation after the impact of the tsunami which followed the magnitude 9 earthquake in the north-east of Japan, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters of history, with the subsequent propagation of radiation on a wide range of the territory. The central debate of the appeal process focused on the validity of the decisions taken by the management, and if the countermeasures against the tsunami were appropriate, despite the estimates of the same Tepco, in 2008, they did not exclude that a tsunami with waves greater than 15 meters could have hit the plant, based on the government’s assessments on the earthquakes made public in 2002. Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former president Masataka Shimizu and the former vice -presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro. The cause of Katsumata, who died in November last year, was carried out by his family members.
