3/11 charges for Tepco execs delayed by three months — The Japan Times; Japan prosecutors set to rule on possible Fukushima indictments — Reuters

Updated Oct. 27, 2014, The Japan Times: ” Prosecutors have delayed for three months a decision on whether to charge three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Co. for their handling of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, an official with a panel that requested the indictments said Friday.

The Tokyo District Prosecutor’s Office had been re-investigating the case after an independent judicial panel of citizens ruled in July that three former Tepco executives, including then-chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, should be indicted over their handling of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.

Prosecutors on Friday informed the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution of its decision to extend the probe by three months through the end of January, saying it was too difficult to reach a decision by the end-of-October deadline.

By law, prosecutors can extend investigations for up to three months.

Prosecutors decided in September last year not to indict the former Tepco executives, including Katsumata, saying it had been beyond the company’s imagination to foresee the scale of the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that triggered the nuclear crisis.

Residents had accused more than 30 Tepco and government officials of ignoring the risks of a natural disaster and failing to respond appropriately when crisis struck. ”

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Posted Oct. 23, 2014: ” (Reuters) – Japanese prosecutors must decide this month whether to charge Tokyo Electric Power Co former executives for their handling of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, in a process that could drag the wrecked nuclear plant’s operator into criminal court.

The judicial review is unlikely to see the former Tepco executives go to jail, legal experts say, but rehashing details of the meltdowns and explosions that followed an earthquake and tsunami will cast a harsh light on the struggling utility and will not help Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s unpopular effort to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors.

The Tokyo’s District Prosecutors Office last year declined to charge more than 30 Tepco and government officials after investigating a criminal complaint from residents, who said officials ignored the risks to the Fukushima Daiichi plant from natural disasters and failed to respond appropriately when crisis struck.

But a special citizens’ panel opened another legal front in July, asking prosecutors to consider charges of criminal negligence against three executives over their handling of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Under the review system, the prosecutors must respond by the end of the month.

If they again decline to take up the case, as some experts expect, the 11-member panel of unidentified citizens can order prosecutors to indict, if eight members vote in favor.

Prosecutorial Review Commissions, made up of citizen appointees, are a rarely used but high-profile feature of Japan’s legal system introduced after World War Two to curb bureaucratic over-reach. In 2009, they were given the power to force prosecutions.

A panel in 2011 forced the prosecution of former opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa over political funding. He was acquitted in 2012 and remains an opposition figure.

Tepco already faces a string of civil suits, a decades-long, multibillion dollar decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi and a struggle to restart a separate undamaged power station, the world’s biggest.

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All 48 of Japan’s reactors have been idle for more than a year under a safety regime that incorporated the lessons of Fukushima, where 160,000 people were forced to flee from a huge plume of radioactive material that left large areas uninhabitable for decades.

Backed by Abe’s pro-nuclear government, Kyushu Electric Power Co recently won approval from safety regulators to restart a plant in southwest Japan but faces opposition from some neighboring communities.

Nationwide, a majority of people has consistently opposed restarting nuclear power, according to opinion polls since the disaster.

The citizens’ panel said Tsunehisa Katsumata, Tepco chairman at the time of the disaster, and former executive vice presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro failed to take protect the Fukushima plant despite warnings it faced big tsunamis.

The prosecutors are unlikely to change their minds, said Shin Ushijima, an attorney and former public prosecutor.

“Prosecutors exhaust all means in their investigations and certainly would have in a special case like this, so if they were convinced they could not prosecute Katsumata and the others earlier, they will not reach a decision to indict now,” he said.

“There is a 50 percent chance that some or all of the three ex-Tepco executives will be indicted and 99.9 percent chance those indicted will be found not guilty,” Ushijima said.

“How can you prove one person, Katsumata for example, is liable or guilty, when such a big organization was behind such a large accident?”

Tepco faces huge compensation claims and has set aside just a fraction of the funds needed to decommission the Fukushima plant.

A court recently ordered the utility to pay compensation to the family of a woman who killed herself after being forced from her home because of the disaster. A group of Fukushima workers is also suing the company for unpaid wages. ”

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Colossal volcanic eruption could destroy Japan at any time: study — The Japan Times; Japan warns of increased activity at volcano near nuclear plant — Reuters

Updated Oct. 27, 2014, The Japan Times: ” Japan could be nearly destroyed by a volcanic eruption over the next century that would put nearly all of its population of 127 million people at risk, a new study says.

“It is not an overstatement to say that a colossal volcanic eruption would leave Japan extinct as a country,” Kobe University earth sciences professor Yoshiyuki Tatsumi and associate professor Keiko Suzuki said in the study, released publicly on Wednesday.

The experts said they analyzed the scale and frequency of volcanic eruptions throughout the archipelago over the past 120,000 years and calculated that the odds of a devastating eruption at about 1 percent over the next 100 years.

The chance of a major temblor striking Kobe within 30 years was estimated at about 1 percent just a day before a 7.2-magnitude quake struck the port city in 1995, killing 6,400 people and injuring nearly 4,400 others, the study noted.

“Therefore, it would be no surprise if such a colossal eruption occurs at any moment,” it added.

The Kobe University researchers said their study is critical because Japan is home to about 7 percent of the volcanoes that have erupted over the past 10,000 years.

A disaster on Kyushu, which has been struck by seven massive eruptions over the past 120,000 years, would see an area with 7 million people buried by flows of lava and molten rock in just two hours, they said.

Volcanic ash would also be carried by westerly winds toward the main island of Honshu, making nearly the entire country “unlivable” as it strangled infrastructure, including key transport systems, they said.

It would be “hopeless” trying to save about 120 million living in major cities and towns across Honshu, the study said.

The study called for new technology to more accurately grasp the state of the “magma reservoirs” that are spread across the Earth’s crust in layers a few kilometers deep. ”

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Posted Oct. 24, 2014: ” (Reuters) – Japan warned on Friday that a volcano in southern Japan located roughly 64 km (40 miles) from a nuclear plant was showing signs of increased activity that could possibly lead to a small-scale eruption and warned people to stay away from the summit.

The warning comes nearly a month after another volcano, Mt Ontake, erupted suddenly when crowded with hikers, killing 57 people in Japan’s worst volcanic disaster in nearly 90 years.

Ioyama, a mountain on the southwestern island of Kyushu, has been shaken by small tremors and other signs of rising volcanic activity recently, including a tremor lasting as long as seven minutes, an official at the Japan Meteorological Agency’s volcano division said.

“There is an increase in activity that under certain circumstances could even lead to a small scale eruption, but it is not in danger of an imminent, major eruption,” the official said.

The warning level on the mountain has been raised from the lowest possible level, normal, to the second lowest, which means that the area around the crater is dangerous, he added.

Ioyama lies in the volcanically active Kirishima mountain range and is roughly 64 km from the Sendai nuclear plant run by Kyushu Electric Power Co, which the Japanese government wants to restart even though the public remains opposed to nuclear power following the Fukushima crisis.

Critics point out that the Sendai plant is located about 50 kms (31 miles) from Mount Sakurajima, an active volcano that erupts frequently. Five giant calderas, crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, are also in the region, the closest one 40 kms (25 miles) away.

The plant still needs to pass operational safety checks as well as gain the approval of local authorities and may not restart till next year.

Before giving its initial greenlight to restart the plant in July, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said the chance of major volcanic activity during the lifespan of the Sendai nuclear plant was negligible.

On Friday, the warning level for the Sakurajima volcano, which erupts frequently, was at 3, which means that people should not approach the peak.

Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” – a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes around the edges of the Pacific Ocean – and is home to more than 100 active volcanoes.

Experts warn that the mammoth 9.0 March 2011 quake may have increased the risk of volcanic activity throughout Japan, including that of iconic Mount Fuji. ”

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Japan leader faces crisis over minister for trade — The New York Times; Japan trade minister in conflict of interest row over Tepco shares — The Guardian

The New York Times: ” TOKYO — The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faced a new political crisis on Friday amid revelations that his recently appointed trade minister owns stock in the company whose cleanup of the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant he would oversee.

The cleanup by Tokyo Electric Power Company, which ran the plant when it suffered a triple meltdown, has already been plagued by problems, including the leaking into the sea of tons of radioactive water.

The news about the minister’s stock ownership, first reported in local news media, came soon after revelations that the minister’s aide had visited a club featuring sadomasochistic performances, then reported the visit as a political expense.

Taken together, the revelations have prompted growing calls for the resignation of the trade minister, Yoichi Miyazawa, just days after his predecessor and another cabinet minister stepped down because of financing scandals. Another resignation could be a crippling blow to the government of Mr. Abe, whose first term as prime minister ended seven years ago after a series of scandals in his cabinet.

In a hastily called news conference, Mr. Miyazawa, who is also a lawmaker, said his ownership of 600 shares, worth about $2,000, in Tokyo Electric “won’t affect my decision making,” according to local news media.

“Honestly, I thought it was my duty as a politician to possess them,” Mr. Miyazawa said, according to Kyodo News, saying that ownership of the shares had allowed him to keep an eye on the company’s efforts to clean up after the 2011 nuclear accident.

As trade minister, Mr. Miyazawa leads the committee that oversees the complicated cleanup of the site, which was covered in radioactive material after the meltdowns. The disaster, which happened before Mr. Abe’s second term, has been blamed in part on a cozy relationship between the government and the nuclear industry that led to lax regulation and oversight.

Members of the Abe government have so far dismissed the possibility of Mr. Miyazawa’s resignation, in an attempt to weather yet another scandal at a time when the economic recovery that Mr. Abe has led is showing some signs of faltering. Mr. Abe’s government is still reeling from the back-to-back resignations on Monday of the two cabinet ministers, a double blow that presented the prime minister with the first big political crisis of his current term.

On Friday, opposition lawmakers vowed to press for more details about Mr. Miyazawa’s ownership of shares in Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, calling it a conflict of interest.

They seized on the problems to criticize the governing Liberal Democratic Party, which so far has enjoyed strong public support on the basis of Mr. Abe’s economic policies to revive growth.

“Why couldn’t the governing party do a better job of vetting the cabinet members?” said Tatsuo Kawabata of the opposition Democratic Party, adding that Mr. Miyazawa should at least have sold the stock before becoming minister.

The problems with the new trade minister began on Thursday, when news reports claimed that the aide’s visit to an S-and-M club had been included in a list of political expenses filed to Mr. Miyazawa’s office. Later on Thursday, Mr. Miyazawa acknowledged that the aide had been reimbursed 18,230 yen, or about $170, for the visit four years ago to Mazan, a bar in Hiroshima.

Mr. Miyazawa said he had no knowledge of the visit, and had never been to the bar himself.

“I have no interest in such things,” he said. He said he had ordered the aide to repay the money to his office, and to delete the charge from the expense report. ”

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A related article by The Guardian that shares additional details: ” Japan’s government is reeling from its third scandal in a week after the trade minister, who oversees nuclear energy, faced questions over his shares in the company that runs the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Yoichi Miyazawa had already faced embarrassment on Thursday when it was revealed that members of his staff had claimed expenses for a visit to a bondage bar. On Friday, Miyazawa denied there was any conflict of interest over his shares in Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), saying he had decided to place them in a trust rather than sell them.

Miyazawa was appointed only days ago after his predecessor, Yuko Obuchi, resigned over a political funding scandal involving her support groups. Hours after Obuchi quit, the justice minister, Midori Matsushima, resigned amid claims that she had violated election laws by distributing paper fans bearing her image to constituents.

The double resignation, combined with the furore over Miyazawa’s shares, have dealt a significant blow to the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, as he nears a decision on an unpopular tax rise and attempts to win public support for the restart of a small number of nuclear reactors. … ”

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