Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in the fourth reactor building at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, March 22, 2011.
Residents whose houses or farms have been hit by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant will file a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government.
Japanese lawyers said on Friday that at least 350 residents were to file a case with Fukushima District Court on March 11, the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, to seek damages from the government.
On March 11, 2011, a nine-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that inflicted heavy damage on the six-reactor Fukushima plant. Cooling systems of the plant’s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactivity.
Japan’s entire nuclear reactors were gradually taken offline for two months for maintenance or safety checks after the tsunami.
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs are also planning to sue the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), and seek more than 500 dollars in compensation for every month that the residents have been displaced because of the disaster.
The lawyers also called the lawsuit as the largest class-action on the matter against the state with one of them saying that the Japanese government promoted “nuclear power as a national policy and has been closely involved with it.”
“Being fully aware of the danger of losing power due to a tsunami, the government neglected its duty of preventing such an event,” said Izutaro Managi, a Japanese lawyer.
In July 2012, a Japanese parliamentary panel found that the incident at the Fukushima nuclear plant had been a “man-made disaster” and not only due to the tsunami.
The report, which was released on July 5, also criticized “governments, regulatory authorities and Tokyo Electric Power” for lacking “a sense of responsibility to protect people’s lives and society.”
The 2011 incident at Fukushima “could and should have been foreseen and prevented” and its catastrophic effects “mitigated by a more effective human response,” the report said.
MR/HSN
