As expected the former Tepco executives were found not guilty of criminal negligence in the Fukushima nuclear disaster. That despite all the obvious, as a guilty verdict would harmed Abe’s government nuclear policy. Never mind the victims, Abe’s regime safety comes first.
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Tsunehisa Katsumata (left), former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., arrives at the Tokyo District Court in Tokyo on Thursday.
Former Tepco executives found not guilty of criminal negligence in Fukushima disaster
 
September 19, 2019
Three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. were acquitted Thursday on charges of failing to prevent the Fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
At the Tokyo District Court, former Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 79, along with Ichiro Takekuro, 73, and Sakae Muto, 69, both former vice presidents, had argued they could not have foreseen the massive tsunami that crippled the Fukushima No. 1 power plant and caused core meltdowns.
All three pleaded not guilty to the charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, arguing that the data available to them beforehand was not reliable.
The three were indicted for failing to implement tsunami countermeasures leading to the deaths of 44 people — including patients forced to evacuate from a hospital — as well as for injuries sustained by 13 people in a hydrogen explosions at the plant.
Court-appointed lawyers acting as prosecutors had called for five-year prison terms for the trio, claiming they would have prevented the nuclear disaster if they had fulfilled their responsibility to collect information and implement safety measures.
The three were charged in 2016 by the court-appointed lawyers after an independent panel of citizens mandated indictment.
The panel’s decision came after Tokyo prosecutors twice decided not to charge the men over the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The trial focused on whether the former executives should have foreseen the massive tsunami and prevented the accident, given that it was calculated tsunami waves of up to 15.7 meters could strike the Fukushima plant based on the government’s long-term evaluation of quake risks in 2002. The estimate was reported to Tepco in 2008.
The defense team argued the three could not have envisaged tsunami waves on the scale of those that hit the plant based on the government evaluation — which the former executives considered unreliable — and said installing coastal levees would not have prevented the disaster.
On March 11, 2011, the six-reactor plant on the Pacific coast was flooded by tsunami waves exceeding 10 meters triggered by the magnitude 9.0 quake, causing the reactor cooling systems to lose their power supply.
Reactors 1 to 3 subsequently suffered core meltdowns, while hydrogen explosions damaged the building housing the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 units. Around 160,000 people evacuated at one point.
 
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Women hold banners reading “Everyone is not guilty, unjust sentence” in front of Tokyo District Court in Tokyo, Japan in this photo taken by Kyodo September 19, 2019
Tokyo court clears former Tepco executives of negligence over Fukushima disaster
September 19, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – A Tokyo court cleared on Thursday three former Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) executives of negligence for the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the only criminal case to arise out of the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
Former Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and one-time executives Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro were all found not guilty by the Tokyo District Court.
The trial, which started in June 2017, was conducted by state-appointed lawyers after prosecutors decided not to bring charges against the executives of the company known as Tepco.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station, located about 220 km (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March 2011, sparking three reactor meltdowns and prompting Japan to shut down its entire fleet of nuclear reactors.