Ex-TEPCO Officials To Be Indicted Over Fukushima

AmiMoJo writes: Three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company will face mandatory indictment over the March 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The prosecution inquest panel of randomly-selected citizens voted for the indictment on Friday, for professional negligence resulting in death and injury. "Tokyo prosecutors in January rejected the panel's judgment that the three should be charged, citing insufficient evidence. But the 11 unidentified citizens on the panel forced the indictment after a second vote, which makes an indictment mandatory. The three are former chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, and former executives Sakae Muto, 65, and Ichiro Takekuro, 69. Citizens' panels, made up of residents selected by lottery, are a rarely used but high-profile feature of Japan's legal system introduced after World War Two to curb bureaucratic overreach."

Comments

Re:better late than never

[tlhIngan]

I do kind of wonder about one thing, though... why are the engineers who designed that beast not being indicted? After all, nearly all of the vital pumps and generators were in the basements of both the Daiichi and Daini sites, with much of the critical equipment right next to the water, instead of uphill where they should have been (and at least not in basements... WTH, people?)

Actually, the generators being under was not the problem. You can run generators underwater, provided you have a source for fuel and air above water and can keep it reasonably water tight.

The real problem was the distribution gear got flooded.

As in the electrical panels. Once the tsunami flooded the panels, they shorted out. The generators were running just fine with the water level, and even then, the generators were a backup to a backup.

The first thing is if the reactors go offline, the power station draws power from the grid to run the equipment. And the plant was doing that since there was still power going in. That's the first backup. The second backup is if the grid power goes offline, then you have local generators.

All of which means diddly when your electrical distribution panels get soaked and short out your switchgear, taking with it BOTH backup mechanisms. So now it doesn't matter that the generators or grid power was available - the panel's shorted out and you can't use either system.

Lying, Sheer Incompetence and Disregard for life

[Anonymous Coward]

All this really does is cause these poor guys to face charges that prosecutors now must try to prove. Given that all the other methods of getting an indictment on these guys failed, one can easily infer that the chances they get convicted of anything is next to nil.

This is basically a political witch hunt by some PR hounds who want to make it look like the accused are somehow guilty of gross negligence because it was their plant (which satisfied the government's safety requirements) blew up and made a mess after some natural disaster that nobody foresaw or even considered possible happened. It's like holding the tornado shelter installer criminally liable for not protecting the occupants of the shelter from earthquake damage and chemical attacks.

Do some research before commenting. Corporate TEPCO repeatedly lied to the public and the government, was incompetent (sending water needed to cool the reactor in drinking water bottles) and obstructive to the point of disregarding human life (ordering sea-water injection to be shut off based on how the prime minister's "mood").