Japan’s top court absolves government of liability over Fukushima disaster

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – Japan’s top court on Friday absolved the government of any liability over the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.

This is the first verdict from the Supreme Court in at least four lawsuits filed against the government in Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba and Ehime provinces.

The six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi plant on the Pacific coast was flooded by tsunami waves exceeding 10 meters (32 feet) triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11, 2011, causing the reactors’ cooling systems to lose their power supply.

It was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl crisis.

Around 3,700 people were evacuated due to the disaster, following which at least 30 cases were filed against the government for damages.

“Japan’s top court … dismissed claims that the government should pay damages in cases involving around 3,700 people whose lives were seriously affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, absolving the state of responsibility for the crisis that led to mass evacuations,” Tokyo-based Kyodo News reported.

It added the top court ruling “leaves Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, solely responsible for slightly over 1.4 billion yen ($10.5 million) in damages in the four lawsuits.”

Japan’s lower courts have been “split over the extent of the state's responsibility for the disaster as the regulator of the company, also known as TEPCO.”

In the four lawsuits, high courts had found the state responsible, except in the Gunma case.

The main point in the four cases was whether the government and TEPCO “were able to foresee the huge tsunami that hit the seaside plant on March 11, 2011, and take preventive measures beforehand.”

Plaintiffs argued the government had assessments done by the earthquake research promotion unit that had “predicted a 20% chance of a magnitude-8-level tsunami-triggering earthquake occurring along the Japan Trench in the Pacific Ocean within 30 years, including the area off Fukushima.”

“The government and the company, for their part, claimed that the assessment was not established knowledge, and even if they had foreseen a tsunami higher than the site of the plant and taken measures against it, they could not be held liable as the scale and direction of the actual tsunami differed from estimates,” the report added.