TOKYO, January 18 – RIA Novosti. The agency said the Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court decision and found three members of the TERCO administration, the operator of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, not guilty. Kyodo.

In 2019, the Tokyo District Court acquitted three senior employees of energy company TEPCO, accused of endangering lives during the Fukushima-1 nuclear accident.

The court ruled that the defendants TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, former vice presidents of the company Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro could not have foreseen the tsunami that occurred during the earthquake and could not prevent the accident that became the most severe after the earthquake tragedy. Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The prosecution accused these people of causing the death of 44 people, including patients in the hospital, during the evacuation from the disaster area due to their inaction and unwillingness to take action against the tsunami threat.

Later, a civil court ordered company management to pay 13 trillion yen ($100 billion), including the three defendants.

The Tokyo Supreme Court’s second decision, announced Wednesday, is expected to mark a turning point in the case. The debate revolves around two points: whether it is possible to predict the giant tsunami that caused the accident and whether it is possible to avoid the accident. In particular, the court learns how reliable the government’s long-term government forecast, made nine years before the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, is that there is a probability of an earthquake and a massive tsunami in Fukushima Prefecture within 30 years. is about 20%. The first court judged the prediction to be “credible and specific, but rationally dubious” in the first point, and “impossible to assess the danger and stop the station” in the second, thus acquitting the leaders. In the second meeting, the representative of the prosecutor’s office insisted that the conclusions of the experts were reliable, that they predicted a tsunami of more than 10 meters, so we can talk not only about the stopping of the station after the accident, but also about the fact that the company management, in addition to protecting against flooding in the power units, a dam had to take measures to build it. Company management continues to insist that these estimates are scientifically unreliable and that containment measures take time and they will not have time to complete the work before the earthquake occurred in March 2011.

In March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Japan. After the tremors, a 14-metre tsunami wave made landfall, flooding four of the six power units of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant and shutting down the reactor cooling system. During the accident, hydrogen explosions occurred in the first, third and fourth reactors.