Photo/Illutration The Supreme Court in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The Supreme Court on March 5 finalized not guilty verdicts against two former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Co. who were accused of negligence concerning the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The top court upheld lower court decisions that said the magnitude of the tsunami that led to the triple meltdown at TEPCO’s plant in March 2011 could not have been predicted.

Therefore, the defendants, Ichiro Takekuro, 78, and Sakae Muto, 74, could not be found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, the ruling said.

Takekuro and Muto were both vice presidents at TEPCO on March 11, 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the tsunami that flooded the nuclear plant and knocked out its power.

Former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata was also forcibly indicted in the case, but he died in October last year at age 84.

His trial was terminated, and his earlier acquittal was allowed to stand.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office had initially decided not to indict any of the former executives.

But a citizen review panel called for their prosecution on two separate occasions, leading to their mandatory indictments in February 2016.

Court-appointed lawyers acted as prosecutors in their trial.

According to the indictments, the TEPCO executives could have foreseen a tsunami causing an accident at the nuclear plant located on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture.

But TEPCO neglected to construct adequate seawalls or take measures to prevent flooding of the plant’s buildings, the indictments said.

The prosecutors argued that this negligence led to the deaths of 44 people, including inpatients from nearby Futaba Hospital who were forced to evacuate to locations with insufficient medical support.

In 2019, the Tokyo District Court ruled that it was uncertain whether flood prevention measures could have been completed before the 2011 earthquake, even if TEPCO had started implementing them immediately after the earliest available alert.

The court argued that the only way to prevent the accident would have been to halt operations at the plant by early March 2011.

Considering the significant economic impact of shutting down the multiple reactors at the plant, the court determined that the executives would have needed to predict a tsunami exceeding 10 meters to justify such a decision.

In fact, TEPCO engineers did estimate a potential tsunami of up to 15.7 meters in 2008, based on a long-term seismic evaluation released by the government in 2002.

However, the district court questioned the reliability of this evaluation and concluded that the executives could not have been expected to foresee a tsunami of that magnitude.

The Tokyo High Court upheld this ruling in 2023.

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