According to Japanese judge Yoshihide Asakura, the four people involved have failed to fulfill their managerial duties, not promptly ordering them to adopt the countermeasures necessary to reduce the possible effects of a tsunami. According to the judge, the accident could have been contained by acting in time and adopting safety measures to prevent flooding of the main buildings of the plant and in the rooms of critical equipment. Instead, the impact of the tsunami caused the melting of three reactors and the contamination of billions of liters of water.
The verdict therefore proved the 48 shareholders who filed the lawsuit against Tepco officials right. including former director Tsunehisa Katsumata, aged 82, and former president Masataka Shimizu, aged 78. According to the plaintiffs, the managers did not listen to the requests and research submitted by the shareholders and the government, according to which it was necessary to place emergency generators on nearby hills, which would have been spared from the tsunami and allowed to keep in operation. emergency shutdown systems for reactors. At the time, however, before the disaster occurred, the executives refused to act, arguing that the studies presented were not credible and the risks were not predictable.
In a statement reported by France24, a spokesperson for Tepco expressed "once again our heartfelt apologies to the people of Fukushima and members of society at large for causing problems and concerns" with the disaster. However, the company refused to comment on the sentence, even with respect to a possible appeal.