Legal challenges mounting for TEPCO over Fukushima disaster

I can't believe no one is in jail, no one has been fined and the same bozo's running the company still are! Worse that a wall street bail out.

Good riddance. Why are the public footing the 25% levy on power again?

Legal problems are perhaps the least of the worries if what this nuclear expert reports is true.

http://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education/fukushima-daiichi-decommissioning-follow-the-money

The ongoing migration of extremely radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi is making the cleanup 100 times more complicated and 100 times more expensive than Chernobyl. To date, the cleanup of the Chernobyl site has cost more $3 Billion without adding in the cost of the ongoing exclusion zone wildfires that are spewing massive amounts of radioactivity back into the atmosphere. Fukushima will cost half a trillion.

To date at Fukushima Daiichi, not only have the equivalent of 23,000 truckloads of radioactive water been leaked into the Pacific Ocean, but the soil under the nuclear plants is now highly radioactive as well. The expanding radioactive contamination will necessitate at least a quarter of a million truckloads of radioactive dirt to be removed. What place on earth would willingly take that waste and how would it ever be contained for the 250,000 years necessary?

Japan’s Energy Corporations borrowed tens of billions of dollars from Japan’s banks in order to pay nuclear power plant staff during the last four years. The only way Japan’s banks can be compensated for this tremendous cash outlay is if those shutdown nuclear plants are restarted. My contacts in Japan continue to tell me that the banks are putting enormous pressure on Japan’s Parliament to start up Japan’s nuclear reactors so the banks can get paid back for their investments.

The criminal and civil legal cases do not threaten financial ruin for TEPCO

That's a real shame

But the document introduced as evidence in the shareholders’ suit after a judge forced TEPCO to produce it, appears to challenge that. The “Tsunami Measures Unavoidable” report, dated September 2008, was filed with the Tokyo District Court in June, but has not been widely reported.

Smoking gun? Who knows, but it's not being reported shows the actual power TEPCO holds over the press in keeping it quiet.

Hopefully with this lawsuit the entire country will be aware of TEPCO's liability and act accordingly.

Hope the challenges are heard by judges nearing the end of their careers, thus with little to fear.

There are records dating back to the 9th century of tsunamis of the scale of those in 2011. And they had their backup generators in a basement when flooding was a significant risk. There's no way Tepco should be able to get out of its responsibility to the people whose livelihoods and communities its negligence has destroyed by hosing down some buildings and removing a few inches of topsoil. This was a totally man-made disaster. Those of us who have no choice but to buy electricity from Tepco will pay for it; I would rather be doing that as a taxpayer than as a customer. At least that way I'd be paying civil service salaries to the people who would have taken over had it been nationalized, rather than to the hand-picked favourites who succeeded the corporate executives responsible.

"They include a judge’s forced disclosure of a 2008 internal document prepared for managers at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) warning of a need for precautions against an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe."

B-b-b-b-b-but TEPCO said they were never warned and could not possibly have known or taken the proper countermeasures. In fact, at this very moment we're hearing the same kind of denial that predated the 3/11 disasters from Kyushu Electric: "Nothing needs to be done at this time. There is no risk," etc., with a volcano only a few kilometers away on the verge of a MAJOR eruption -- on the island FORMED by volcanic eruption.

@Star-viking

Fairewinds is run by Arnie Gundersen, a well-known nuclear scaremonger. I would not consider anything he had to say in any way realistic.

Is he a "scaremonger" because he disagrees with your apparent pro-nuclear stance? He seems to be reporting actual facts about the amount of highly contaminated water and soil that must be stored and about the very real long-term difficulties of decommissioning and cleaning up. He also makes a good point about the banks applying pressure on legislators to restart power plants to recover their loans. How is what he states scaremongering? Well, yes, the reality of the dangerous waste, huge costs and poor management is frightening, despite efforts by the government to downplay these.

@Star-viking

He's the one who claimed SFP4 was dry, and then that TEPCO couldn't clear it. He claims Reactor 3 suffered a nuclear explosion. He claims a million will die from Daiichi... But no one will know it!

That's scaremongering to me.

So would you say that people who warned about the dangers of a human-made nuclear disaster before 3.11 were scaremongering because one hadn't happened? And what would you call them now?

And what would you label all those people who claimed that nuclear was perfectly safe and a human-made disaster such as the one at Fukushima was impossible or highly unlikely?

Meanwhile, TEPCO posts a profit on the stock market - at the expense of Japanese tax payers. Cue judge Dread. "I am the law!"

Soak these TEPCO criminals in tar, then drag 'em through feathers. A retro approach of questionable efficacy, but more satisfying than the mollycoddling they're expecting.

Nuclear advocates have an ace-in-the-hole, they stuck every citizen's neck in the noose of Nuclear.

"The criminal and civil legal cases do not threaten financial ruin for TEPCO, which is now backstopped by Japanese taxpayers" - article

No matter the level of negligence and incompetence, the Nuclear advocate has tied the anchor of Nuclear's inevitable failure around the neck of every man woman and child in Japan. Japanese people aren't stupid. They have been made the fall guy for Nuclear's disaster forever.

Many are calling for the punishment of TEPCO's management. Who will be punished for tying the Japanese people to the sinking ship of Nuclear? Sadly, every man, woman and child. Nuclear has euthanized a nation.

Warispeace,

He's the one who claimed SFP4 was dry, and then that TEPCO couldn't clear it. He claims Reactor 3 suffered a nuclear explosion. He claims a million will die from Daiichi... But no one will know it!

That's scaremongering to me.

Entombment of Fukushima Daiichi is the only answer, since the clean up being done there is because Parliament wants the retrieval of the reactors corium. This is impossible with our current technology.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/features/201503312108.html

The Japanese "justice" system will see that these lawsuits are not resolved for decades. Most of us will be long dead before they decide that Tepco did nothing wrong.

TEPCO and J Gov could have preempted all of these suits by allowing the US army to entomb Fukushima Daiichi days after the accident. The US Gov offered to do so....

http://enenews.com/former-japan-official-us-army-planned-to-entomb-fukushima-reactors-days-after-311-given-permission-to-use-yamagata-airport

REDRUM....REDRUM!!!

Warispeace,

Fairewinds is run by Arnie Gundersen, a well-known nuclear scaremonger. I would not consider anything he had to say in any way realistic.