Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Prosecutors Request Prison Time For Executives (npr.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader reporter shared this article from NPR: The former chairman and two vice presidents of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. should spend five years in prison over the 2011 flooding and meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japanese prosecutors say, accusing the executives of failing to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe. Prosecutors say the TEPCO executives didn't do enough to protect the nuclear plant, despite being told in 2002 that the Fukushima facility was vulnerable to a tsunami....

"It was easy to safeguard the plant against tsunami, but they kept operating the plant heedlessly," prosecutors said on Wednesday, according to The Asahi Shimbun. "That led to the deaths of many people." Former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 78; former Vice President Ichiro Takekuro, 72; and former Vice President Sakae Muto, 68, face charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury....

All three have pleaded not guilty in Tokyo District Court, saying they could not have predicted the tsunami.

Comments

No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[Greyfox]

Except the guys who predicted the tsunami back in 2002, when they told you the place was vulnerable to a tsunami. Which they have a lot of in Japan.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[lgw]

Once upon a time I read Atlas Shrugged. It seemed so poorly written, as the political and industrial leaders seemed like such simple caricatures. But more and more I see examples of exactly those behaviors in real life.

Rand's cartoonishly incompetent industrial leaders would blame failures of heavy industry on the weather. "No one could have predicted that storm! We're doing all we can after the fact." Left unsaid was that bad storms (or in this case tsunamis) are certain to happen eventually, and it's your job to be ready for them.

And here we see it in real life, with these guys defending themselves with "no one could have predicted that specific tsunami, all we could do was manage the disaster afterwards". You know, when you start sounding like a villain from an Ayn Rand novel, maybe you should hire different lawyers, as it's hard to do worse than that.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for Rand the corporate owners were not villains. The government trying to regulate and protect the citizens was the villain as well as anyone with social consciousness.
Rand glorified the dog eat dog capitalism. She was too naive to think that people can raise upon merit.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has been harmed by Fukushima radiation (not even the case where they 'legally' attributed a death with no medical basis

ahem

Japan has announced for the first time that a worker at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant died after suffering radiation exposure.

The man, who was in his 50s, died from lung cancer that was diagnosed in 2016.

Japan's government had previously agreed that radiation caused illness in four workers but this is the first acknowledged death.

Funny definition of "nobody" you have there.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[lgw]

Except for Rand the corporate owners were not villains. The government trying to regulate and protect the citizens was the villain as well as anyone with social consciousness.
Rand glorified the dog eat dog capitalism. She was too naive to think that people can raise upon merit.

If you're going to criticize, at least read the Cliff Notes, so that you can do better than being completely wrong about the work you're complaining about. Plenty of stuff to criticize in the actual books she actually wrote, without just making stuff up.

The premise of Atlas Shrugged was that there are very few competent CEOs, heads of R&D, operations managers, etc, in a sea of incompetence, and if those rare competent leaders were suddenly out of the picture, the whole economy would collapse.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[doom]

You skipped the fact that there's another nuclear plant in the same region of Japan that came through okay because their backup generators were placed up on higher ground.

I don't know enough about the social situation in Japan to pin blame (was it TEPCO, was it the regulatory body?) but off hand I don't have any objections to going after management on this one, and I'm pretty strongly pro-nuclear.

If there's no penalty for a screw-up of this magnitude, then what's the incentive to keep management from rolling the dice again?

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[doom]

Our Republican friends have been looking like Ayn Rand villains for years now. Take a look at Enron again some time.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[doom]

Claiming that "nobody" was affected by the radiation would be hard to prove, even if you excluded the workers at the plant-- on the other hand, there was an intense amount of alarmism surrounding the Fukushima incident, and that has essentially turned out to be completely wrong. Democracy Now was running "worse than Chernobyl" headlines; for years afterwards I was tyring to convince people in the SF Bay Area that they really and truly weren't going to die because of leakage in Japan...

What did kill people at Fukushima was an evacutation panic. If you're anti-nuclear, you think "well of course, nuclear is inherently scary!", if you're pro-nuclear, you wonder why no one ever holds the anti-nuclear side accountable for their fear-mongering...

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had an even rudimentary understanding of radiation risk and the types of cancers and the typical onset patterns, you'd know that this cancer was almost certainlyl not from Fukushima radiation. There are plenty of articles that explain how this was just some lawyers and politicians following a liability rule, and there were no medical professionals who made this attribution. In fact there are no doctors at all that attribute this to Fukushima radiation.

Basically, the law says anyone who worked at Fukushima and gets cancer, they will attribute it to the plant no matter what.

The foremost expert in field has explicitly explained why this was not based on science.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/06/top-scientist-says-japans-decision-to-financially-reward-fukushima-worker-is-not-based-on-science/#2d6ba6e56a55

But the public is easily misled, as are the media lemmings who copy en-masse without any thought. You can be one of them if you choose.

Re:No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

If an electrical fault from a faulty appliance burns your house down (but nobody dies because you got out in time), your focus would be on how you don't have a house anymore, not on how nobody died. If your friend kept telling you "But nobody died!, so no big deal!", and ignored your house, you'd want to punch him in the face.

It's just very, very suspicious that all the pro-nuclear people want to talk about is how nobody died in Fukushima, but never seem to mention the 30,000 people who lost their house, business, not to mention the billions of dollars it cost.

You seem to be focusing in on all the initial over-reaction to the incident, but want to ignore the real problems here. I don't think having to abandon little chunks of the planet for 100 years when one of these things melts is really a good outcome for nuclear power. I'm not terribly comforted by how it wasn't as bad as people's worst imaginations.

Re: No One Could Have Predicted the Tsunami

[uncqual]

Then wouldn't the officials who approved the extension be just as criminally liable as the executives of TEPCO?

It's About Time.

[MrKaos]

The entire Fukushima Disaster was more a disaster because it was entirely preventable. Whether is is malfeasance or nonfeasance it is plainly criminal because it is quite plainly negligence. For anyone with any doubts please refer to The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission.

This is an ongoing disaster, the destroyed reactors are still in an earthquake and flood prone area. TEPCO has proven itself completely corrupt, incompetent and incapable. It is in the interests of all Pacific nations to resolve and this issue demands an international response to control and contain it. It is clearly worse than Chernobyl.

I hope TEPCO's board rots in jail.

Re: It's About Time.

[mysidia]

Not the Tepco board only. For any public corpiration that makes profit all the stockholders should also go in prison.

No.... stockholders are definitely immune to personal liability for the actions of the corporation whose stock they own (other than the value of the stock can become worthless). The board and management of the corporation have the duty to ensure that actions of the corporation are compliant with the law.

Re: It's About Time.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reactor design is fine. The backup systems were a total failure. The generators were installed too low are flooded. Power lines to the grid were washed away. Emergency procedures also required the shutdown of the only remaining source of power to keep the reactors cool, the reactors themselves.

Re:It's About Time.

[Ol Olsoc]

The entire Fukushima Disaster was more a disaster because it was entirely preventable. Whether is is malfeasance or nonfeasance it is plainly criminal because it is quite plainly negligence.

This disaster illustrates the fatal flaw of nuclear power generation.

It isn't the plants themselves. A nuc plant can be made pretty safe. The problem is humans.

Everything that happened in Fukushima was preventable. From the siting to the design to the seawalls to the back-up system.

But we have deadlines, finances, hubris, corruption and stupidity.

My research on the disaster included a "how could this have been avoided" section. After noting the freely available historical and physical evidence was ignored, it was clear that the site beside the ocean was one of the worst siting options. Further it was possible to come up with a much better site in a few minutes. Along a river, above the historic Tsunami height lines, and therefore much safer.

Why this didn't happen, why seawalls were built that were a dead lock to be overwashed was not the fault of nuclear power, but the results of humans being in charge of it. And it is foolish to think that all nuc plants except Chernobyl and Fukushima or TMI have non-corrupt humans involved.

It all comes to a shitload of energy packed in a small space. With not only kaboom aspects, but using poisonous materials that will take a long time to mitigate if it does go kaboom.

Nuc power can be made safe. History shows us that it is impossible to make humans safe.

Re:It's About Time.

[whoever57]

I don't think the seawalls were the ultimate problem.

I think the ultimate problem was the siting of the backup generators. Had they been positioned higher, and continued to operate, the meltdown would have been avoided. They actually put some of the backup generators in a basement. This was an issue that was known about well before the disaster. There was no deadline issue involved in moving the generators to a safer location.

Perhaps it's time to stop blaming the disaster on technical issues and blame greed instead. That's why it is right that some people should go to jail.

Re:It's About Time.

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't think the seawalls were the ultimate problem.

I think the ultimate problem was the siting of the backup generators. Had they been positioned higher, and continued to operate, the meltdown would have been avoided. They actually put some of the backup generators in a basement. This was an issue that was known about well before the disaster.

Yes - the overtopping of the sea walls allowed salt water to ingress to the emergency generators. But the walls were overtopped by 14 meter waves. The seawalls were 10 meters in height. The big problem was that the area was historically known for bigger waves.

To make matters weirder, the site was originally on a 35 meter bluff, but they scalped 25 meters off it so they could rest the reactor on bedrock.

The generator placement was definitely bad, but if they had not scalped the mountain, and raised the seawall to a height that was able to withstand tsunami that was simply going to occur, the precipitating problem of soaking the generators wouldn't have happened.

There was no deadline issue involved in moving the generators to a safer location.

Perhaps it's time to stop blaming the disaster on technical issues and blame greed instead. That's why it is right that some people should go to jail.

I don't disagree. The pity is that the people who originated the terribly bad decisions in the first place are probably dead now. That doesn't absolve the following people's liability, so punish away.

Re: It's About Time.

[fustakrakich]

Ah, but you can't stop there. You gotta go after anybody who buys their products from them directly, or anybody in their stock portfolio, or pays taxes to a government that protects their copyrights and patents and international trade agreements. Yes, that means you!

Five years

[jd]

I'd be ok with that, provided it was in a psychiatric ward to deal with their obviously disturbed minds and to rehabilitate them to the point where they were fit to live in society.

There were plenty of predictions of the tsunami, when it was likely, how severe it was likely to be, etc. TEPCO chose to ignore those, because they were expensive, and to go with considerably cheaper predictions of a much smaller, more frequent, event. You can prove anything, if you constrict the type and date range of the evidence sufficiently. Particularly if you can make it show what is convenient for you.

Re:Five years

[drinkypoo]

I'd be ok with that, provided it was in a psychiatric ward to deal with their obviously disturbed minds and to rehabilitate them to the point where they were fit to live in society.

That's how we should treat everyone, though. As long as we're treating anyone the other way, these guys "deserve" it more than most of the people we've got in prison now.

Re:Five years

[Ol Olsoc]

There were plenty of predictions of the tsunami, when it was likely, how severe it was likely to be, etc. TEPCO chose to ignore those, because they were expensive, and to go with considerably cheaper predictions of a much smaller, more frequent, event.

Yup - human hubris.

And of course, disasters seldom have one single cause. But this one had one huge glaring red flag 5-alarm problem. The site.

In the true nature of human interaction, I suspect that someone made a real killing off the siting decision.

No excuses for bad engineering

[mysidia]

All three have pleaded not guilty in Tokyo District Court, saying they could not have predicted the tsunami.

Duh, they could not have predicted THAT particular event, BUT Tsunami's are a known and foreseeable natural event, so
they definitely could have predicted that there would be the possibility of one or more tsunami's in general (over long periods of time),
and when installing and operating a nuclear plant: you have a duty to ensure that radioactive material created and stored in/about
your plant creates does not endanger the survivors after a foreseeable natural event.

So if a particular Tsunami strength and size would not be guaranteed to kill everyone within 100 miles of your plant: your plant had better not be a threat to the public within 100 miles during/after that tsunami.

The only regret is that they waited until AFTER the event to arrest them.
There should be 3rd party reviews and audits of overall power plant designs and operations, and the capability of charging executives for crimes,
mandating jail time and/or plant shutdowns BEFORE a catastrophic tsunami, etc, actually occurs..

Re:No excuses for bad engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I live a few miles from a nuclear plant on the East Coast. It's entirely possible that a tsunami could hit this area (likely spawned off the African coast). It's also possible that a large hurricane could hit. We have also had earthquakes. Any of which might take out the power plant. It already operates on razor thin margins. Should they spend millions to protect against these natural disasters? Where will the money come from? Increase power costs and put the population under even more financial stress? Should the federal government give out a bunch of free money to fix it?

You should to a little tsunami research. Tsunamis can hit just about anywhere, but the chance of a large tsunami hitting any particular spot varies widely over short distances. It is dependent on shoreline shape, depth and profile of sea floor near the shore, and distance from potential sources. If you worry about a particular plant, you should look up its exact location, elevation, then find a tsunami study that details that exact piece of shoreline. Or, you can live in fear and ignorance if that pleases you.

"The deaths of so many people"

[scsirob]

According to the WHO and Japanese gouvernment, the direct death toll of the Fukushima disaster was: Zero.
https://ourworldindata.org/wha...

The indirect results from radiation related issues and evacuation stress was not zero, but I find it hard to argue that the executives are directly responsible for the deaths of so many people. The tsunami itself caused tremendous devastation and evacuation was a given, with or without the nuclear plant there.

Re:"The deaths of so many people"

[fabriciom]

I find it fascinating how people in the US defend companies. Like they think of your best interest and exist to help you and humanity.

Re:"The deaths of so many people"

[cirby]

I find it fascinating how people, when confronted by those silly things called "facts," respond with non-sequiturs.

The actual Fukushima death toll is still zero, no matter how much you hate capitalism.

Re:"The deaths of so many people"

[prisoner-of-enigma]

You seem to be out of the loop regarding something we call: news.

Then perhaps you'd be so good as to post a source link for your "news." Every article and news site I've read since the disaster says the death toll directly attributable to the meltdown is zero, precisely as the GP stated.

Should you present evidence from a reliable, unbiased source then I'm more than willing to accept it as fact. However, until then, all the "news" available on the accident refutes your assertion.

Re:"The deaths of so many people"

[dunkelfalke]

Several workers have died during the cleanup of the power stations.

In the US

[DaMattster]

Senior management in the US should be held to the same standards and should go to prison for white collar crimes that they commit. Wealth and position should never be a get out of jail card.

Re:In the US

[ZombieCatInABox]

Deliberately voting to the white house a known and well established narcissist, psychopath, compulsive liar, scammer, con-man and child molester for the sole purpose of pissing off half the U.S. population and wilfully destabelizing society and risking plunging it into chaos should be considered an act of treason punishable by prison time.

Errors in thinking often occur.

[Futurepower(R)]

Maybe humans are not sufficiently careful to have nuclear facilities. Errors in thinking often occur.

Re:Errors in thinking often occur.

[Gavagai80]

Maybe humans are not sufficiently careful to have nuclear facilities. Errors in thinking often occur.

The problem is, coal has been killing millions of people a year by spewing out radiation and other pollution. And yet human psychology says it's better to kill millions intentionally with coal rather than risk killing thousands by accident with nuclear. Accidents scare us more because we assign fault to them, perhaps. We can accept any number of routine matter-of-course cost-of-doing-business deaths, but we cannot abide a single dramatic accidental death.

Re:Errors in thinking often occur.

[CrimsonAvenger]

rather than risk killing thousands by accident with nuclear.

Of course, Fukushima, TMI, and Chernobyl combined didn't kill thousands. More like hundreds.

Of those, ONE (1) was killed by Fukushima. He died this past year.

TMI didn't kill anyone.

Chernobyl killed a couple hundred firefighters (and if Chernobyl were non-nuclear, it would probably have killed the same number of firefighters....).

You must place trust SOMEWHERE

[Bruce66423]

The desire to find someone to blame and punish them severely is human nature, but the reality is that we need to be able to trust in order to operate at all. One of the issues of making a senior manager responsible for certain issues to the point of criminal liability is that it may become impossible to get anyone to accept the responsibility if they aren't able to show that they acted reasonably in response to the information they had when making the iffy decision. Given that there is ALWAYS a trade off between safely and operating (you drive your car faster than 10 mph - therefore you choose to take the risk of hurting someone seriously if you hit them), we need to balance those. Now I agree in this case they seem to have got it wrong - although there is also a failure with the regulator who didn't force them to act on this.

Could not have predicted the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only a few centuries of Japanese paintings depicting massive waves, affecting Japan. It's not like the word "tsunami" is Japanese, so why should they anticipate such a remote, unfamiliar event?

The Japanese people have no experience with nuclear disasters or big waves, and this was completely unforeseeable.