TEPCO ordered to pay 600m yen to Fukushima evacuees

March 23, 2018

Iwaki, Fukushima Pref.- A Fukushima District Court branch ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. on Thursday to pay a total of 610 million yen in damages to 216 residents of areas for which the government issued an evacuation order following the March 2011 nuclear accident at TEPCO's Fukushima No. 1 plant following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

The compensation amount ordered by the Iwaki branch of the court is a fraction of the residents' demand for about 13.3 billion yen. Their lawyers criticized the amount as too small to reflect the reality of the nuclear disaster's severe impact on their lives.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs did not name the government as a defendant as they hoped to see the case finished promptly.

To confirm that TEPCO is at fault for the triple meltdown, meanwhile,at the plant, the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit under the Civil Code, not just the law on compensation for nuclear damage, which stipulates that nuclear plant operators should pay compensation, regardless of whether they are at fault.

The court, however, avoided giving a ruling under the code and taking a position on whether TEPCO was able to predict the catastrophic tsunami unleashed by the 9.0-magnitude quake.

It then ruled under the nuclear compensation law that TEPCO should pay more than its estimates under government-set standards. Jiji Press