A Tokyo District Court on Wednesday found four former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) responsible for operating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant liable for its 2011 meltdown. The court ordered the four defendants to pay damages of around 13 trillion Yen (US$ 94 billion) to TEPCO shareholders for negligence and failure to exercise due care in preventing the disaster.

The court recognized that executives have a social responsibility in running a company, as per a statement from one 0f the plaintiffs in the case.

The panel of judges ruled that the former chairman of TEPCO, Tsunehisa Katsumata, and three other executives failed to act in time and additionally did not heed warnings based on scientific data that outlined the massive risk posed to the power plant by a tsunami. A group of 48 TEPCO shareholders brought the suit in 2012 with a sum of 5.5 trillion yen (67 billion US$) demanded in compensation from five former executives including Katsumata, for failing to prevent the tsunami-induced disaster.

The ruling contrasts to a 2019 criminal trial in the Tokyo District Court where the court did not hold the former executives to be professionally negligent. This was based on the reasoning that they could not have foreseen a tsunami of such a massive scale.

The shareholders and their supporters gathered outside the court after the ruling. Local news reported that they were holding “shareholders victory” banners in celebration.

The court notes that the compensation amount in the verdict is considerably large. The amount is even beyond all the wealth the former executives possess. Regardless, the plaintiffs believe the payout will subsequently come from whatever financial assets and savings the executives currently have.

The Fukushima disaster of 2011 saw the three nuclear power cores at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant suffer a meltdown. This trigger for this was multiple power outages and cooling system failures. The failures and outages came from a 15-metre tsunami triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Though the meltdown did not immediately cause a large number of deaths but the evacuations during the disaster are estimated to have killed more than 2,000 people, with many additional deaths resulting from long-term radiation damage.