Tokyo
Act Daily News
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The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday acquitted three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) executives, discovering them not responsible of manslaughter over the 2011 triple reactor meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday.
The High Court’s ruling was a choice on an attraction towards a 2019 judgment by the Tokyo district court docket that discovered former Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former govt vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto weren’t responsible {of professional} negligence on the grounds they may not have foreseen the tsunami that wrecked the plant.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast triggered the tsunami that flooded the plant’s reactors, inflicting the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl and forcing lots of of hundreds of individuals to flee their properties.
The High Court case centered on whether or not the tsunami may have been predicted and whether or not the accident on the nuclear plant may have been prevented.
The prison case towards the executives follows a civil case by which a Tokyo court docket in July 2022 ordered the three males – together with Tepco’s former President Masataka Shimizuto – to pay 13 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages to the operator of the wrecked plant.
That ruling, which got here after shareholders filed a lawsuit in 2012, was the primary to seek out former Tepco executives legally answerable for the nuclear plant catastrophe.