Latest news with #nuclearaccident
Japan Times
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Japan Times
Tepco ordered to pay ¥100 million in damages over 2011 disaster
The Tokyo District Court ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings on Wednesday to pay about ¥100 million ($675,000) in damages over the 2011 accident at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Presiding Judge Masahiko Abe ordered the payment mainly as compensation for damage to property and consolation money for life during evacuation while dismissing the claim against the state. In the lawsuit, Katsutaka Idogawa, 79, former mayor of Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, blamed the central government and Tepco for their inadequate handling of the accident, arguing that it led to his exposure to radiation. Futaba is one of the two municipalities that host the northeastern Japan nuclear plant, which experienced meltdowns after being hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. He sought a total of ¥755 million in the suit. Idogawa claimed that he suffered from health problems such as atrophy of the thyroid gland due to radiation exposure. However, the judge said he cannot accept the claim that the plaintiff was exposed to radiation exceeding the annual limit set by the state. There is no objective evidence to support a causal relationship between his health problems and radiation exposure, the ruling said. Additionally, the court decided that there was a strong possibility that a similar accident might have occurred even if the state had obligated Tepco to implement tougher measures against tsunamis. On another complaint that the state failed to share data on radiation levels and other information necessary for evacuation after the accident began, the court denied the state's liability. It was determined that no causal relationship existed between the state's handling of the accident and harm caused to Idogawa, nor was there any notable impact on the evacuation. Between March 11, 2011, when the accident began, and March 19, when mass evacuation to Saitama Prefecture took place, Idogawa was leading the town's evacuation. He filed the suit in 2015.
NHK
19-07-2025
- Politics
- NHK
Low-level radioactive soil in Fukushima arrives at PM's office grounds for reuse
The first batch of soil removed for decontamination after the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has arrived at the grounds of the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo for the first reuse in the country. Bags of soil were unloaded from a 10-ton truck onto the front yard of the office on Saturday morning. The soil had been stored at an intermediate storage facility in Fukushima Prefecture. By law, soil removed during decontamination work in Fukushima Prefecture shall be disposed outside the prefecture by 2045 after an interim storage. The government plans to use low-level radioactive soil for public works and other projects to reduce the volume for final disposal as much as possible. This is the first case of reuse in the nation except of the use in a demonstrative project in Fukushima Prefecture. Two cubic meters of soil will be buried at the depth of 60 centimeters in the front yard. It will be overlaid by a layer of regular soil that is at least 20 centimeters thick. The work is to take two days through Sunday. As of March this year, 14-million cubic meters of soil was stored at the interim storage facility. The government standard for reuse sets a limit of 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of soil. The limit was set so that additional radiation doses to workers and residents near the soil will not exceed 1 millisievert per year, the international standard for the allowable dose to the public. The radioactive cesium concentration in the soil being buried is 6,400 becquerels per kilogram, within the government's reuse standard. The Environment Ministry will measure radioactive levels around the yard once a week or so and publish them on its official website. Ministry officials say they hope the first case of reuse will help enhance public acceptance of the removed soil.
NHK
07-07-2025
- Politics
- NHK
NGOs warn Zaporizhzhia plant at high risk of nuclear accident
Ukrainian non-governmental organizations warn that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is at an elevated risk of a nuclear accident. Officials from two Ukrainian NGOs described the current situation at the Russian-occupied plant during a news conference in Tokyo on Monday. The groups examine Russian war crimes based on satellite imagery and interviews with relevant persons. Their news conference came after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that all external power lines supplying electricity to the plant were down for several hours on Friday. The NGOs said they are investigating what caused the outage. The groups, however, said they are aware that the outage coincided with air raid alarms in the region. The organizations warned that the Zaporizhzhia plant is at a heightened risk of an accident. They said that its personnel have been tortured and that Russian troops have militarized the plant, placing their weapons in and around the compound. The NGOs said they have identified seven locations in the vicinity of the plant where nuclear engineers and civilians were tortured by Russian forces. They said some of them were tortured by electric shock. An NGO official said Russia's military infringes on human rights and is threatening nuclear safety. The official stressed the need for the entire international community to consider how to response to war crimes committed by Russia's military, as well as to address a possible nuclear accident.
Russia Today
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Russia abandons nuclear deal with new NATO member
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered that an information sharing agreement with Sweden on nuclear accidents and nuclear installations be abandoned, after Stockholm joined NATO last year. The relevant document was signed by Mishustin on June 24 and published on the state portal for legal information on Friday. The deal, signed by the USSR and Sweden in 1988, taking force of April that year, stemmed from the 1986 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, in which the agency's members agreed to notify each other of any nuclear accidents on their territory that could affect other countries. Scientists at the Swedish nuclear power station at Forsmark were among the first in the west to detect increasing radiation levels on April 28th 1986, two days after the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. Sweden joined NATO in March 2024, abandoning its long-standing policy of neutrality. Stockholm has provided almost $10 billion in military and other assistance to Kiev since February 2022, while also announcing a major rearmament program at home. Russia constitutionally remains a successor state of the Soviet Union, having exclusively incurred the bloc's debt upon its dissolution, and Moscow recognises international treaties signed by the USSR. Russian ambassador to Stockholm Sergey Belyaev told RIA-Novosti in May that Stockholm's stance 'indicates that Sweden has completely lost its status of a neutral country and is turning into a springboard for the implementation of NATO's militaristic ambitions.'
NHK
06-06-2025
- Business
- NHK
Japan's high court overturns earlier ruling in Fukushima Daiichi damages suit
The Tokyo High Court has overturned a lower court ruling and has dismissed a claim by plaintiffs for former Tokyo Electric Power Company executives to pay damages to the utility over the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The ruling handed down on Friday does not hold the defendants liable. TEPCO shareholders had filed the lawsuit against five people who were in top managerial posts at the company at the time of the accident that followed a powerful quake and tsunami in March 2011. The plaintiffs said the accident occurred because of poor safety measures at the plant. They demanded that the defendants pay damages to TEPCO worth over 23 trillion yen, or about 160 billion dollars, to cover the costs the company incurred in compensating local residents who had to evacuate, decommissioning the plant and conducting decontamination efforts. Earlier in 2022, the Tokyo District Court ordered four of the defendants to pay the utility a total of 13.3 trillion yen, or about 92 billion dollars, in compensation. The amount of damages is believed to be the highest ever ordered by a court in Japan. Both the plaintiffs and the defendants appealed the ruling. At issue was a long-term assessment of possible seismic activities issued by a government panel in 2002. The lower court ruling said the assessment was found scientifically reliable. The presiding judge said the assessment made it obligatory for the company's managers to take measures against tsunami. The Tokyo High Court Presiding Judge Kino Toshikazu said on Friday that while the nuclear plant operator should have respected the assessment, it cannot necessarily be judged that the operator had been legally liable to take anti-tsunami measures.
