FUKUSHIMA--Three residents of Fukushima Prefecture filed a criminal complaint with police on Sept. 3 against Tokyo Electric Power Co. over leaks of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
FUKUSHIMA--Three residents of Fukushima Prefecture filed a criminal complaint with police on Sept. 3 against Tokyo Electric Power Co. over leaks of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The complaint, filed with Fukushima prefectural police, said TEPCO and its 32 current and former executives are suspected of violating the environmental pollution offense law.
Individuals named in the complaint include Naomi Hirose, TEPCO president, and former company Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata.
The complaint said the utility’s lax management of contaminated water led to the leaks of large amounts of hazardous water.
The complaint was filed by Ruiko Muto, leader of a group that previously filed a criminal complaint with the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office over residents’ exposure to radiation after the nuclear accident, and two other members.
Filed in June 2012, the initial complaint said former TEPCO executives and other individuals are suspected of violations, including professional negligence resulting in death or injury.
At a news conference on Sept. 3, Kazuyoshi Sato, deputy leader of the Muto group and a city assembly member of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, explained why the new complaint was filed with police.
“Compared with prosecutors, prefectural police, who searched for those who went missing (in the 2011 tsunami), see things more like ordinary residents,” Sato said. “We expect them to open a criminal investigation, something the prosecutors failed to carry out.”
On Aug. 20, TEPCO said 300 tons of water containing an estimated 24 trillion becquerels of radioactive materials escaped from a tank at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority assessed the leakage as Level 3 (serious incident), the fifth severest on the eight-level International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
The government has also said an estimated 300 tons of groundwater have been flowing into the ocean each day after being contaminated on the plant premises.
The complaint filed with police said TEPCO failed to perform its duties, such as switching to tanks with standard levels of strength and safety at an early date.
It also said the utility did not reroute groundwater from the mountainside to avoid contamination and put off dealing with the problem for fear of adversely affecting the company's financial bottom line.
The environmental pollution offense law prescribes punishment for individuals and businesses for damaging human health with emissions from factories and other facilities.