Nuclear Disaster Was Predictable

Maebashi Regional Court on Friday ordered the Government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Company ¥38.55 million of payment to evacuees from Fukushima caused by the severe accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. The court recognized the fault of TEPCO, neglecting necessary measures for possible severe damage on the plant caused by huge tsunami, and concluded that the accident could be avoided. It was the first court decision on a series of collective lawsuits of the evacuees in all over Japan.

The lawsuit in Maebashi was filed by 137 of evacuees from Fukushima to Gunma region, requiring ¥1.5 billion of compensation as a whole. TEPCO released a long-term estimation in 2002 that a great earthquake with magnitude 8 could be occurring along the Japan Deep in offshore Fukushima with 20% of possibility within coming 30 years. Chief Judge of Maebashi Regional Court, Michiko Hara, concluded that TEPCO could realize the danger of huge tsunami as soon as few months after it released the estimation, and had even predicted it in 2008 when it calculated possible height of tsunami.

Hara also accused TEPCO of its negligence of necessary safety measures, such as moving the switchboard to a higher place, and blamed the company that it had put priority not on safety but on economic efficiency. She realized the responsibility of the Government of Japan that it did not ordered TEPCO to take necessary measures after recognizing difficulty of voluntary action of the company.

The court calculated how much the accident violated evacuees’ “right for peaceful life.” The decision ordered the defendants to pay compensation within the range from ¥750 thousand to ¥3.5 million to each of 19 evacuees out of 76 leaving home in the evacuation ordered area and from ¥70 thousand to ¥730 thousand to each of 43 voluntary evacuees out of 61.

TEPCO has been arguing that it had been taking necessary safety measures as much as possible for years. The court decision denied them as insufficient. Although even the experts of geology did not have a common knowledge on likeliness of great tsunami, the court argued that prediction of nuclear accident had been strongly expected in Japan. It is obvious that TEPCO was incompetent in prevention of nuclear disaster.

The complaints of similar lawsuits were encouraged by the decision. The evacuees from Fukushima are suffering not only from invisible radiation, but from loss of home town, discrimination in the schools or local community, or uneasiness for their future. Salvaging of the sufferers of nuclear disaster is still at the beginning.