Prosecutors Have Opened a Criminal Investigation of the Fukushima Disaster

TOKYO — Japan’s prosecutors officially began investigating Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its former top executives on criminal charges today in relation to the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima following last year’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

TEPCO was formally nationalized yesterday, July 31, after a trillion yen government cash infusion. This recent turn of events coud be very bad news for the remaining executives. Most criminal sentences in Japan also include hard labor as punishment.

The responsibility for the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant has been a point of contention for over a year but an unprecedented special investigatory body created by the Japanese Parliament, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) released a report that put the blame squarely on the shoulders of TEPCO and the Japanese government. It concluded: “the accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.” The report also said that the possibility an earthquake played a major role in the meltdown, long before the allegedly “unprecedented” tsunami knocked out power supplies could not be ruled out.

[link to fukushima-diary.com]