Three Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives are now facing criminal prosecution for negligence in failing to anticipate a monster tsunami that cut off electricity and inundated back-up emergency generators, causing a cessation of cooling in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reactors that precipitated three meltdowns in March 2011. How were they to know?
At the time, Tepco kept insisting that the 15-meter-high tsunami was sōteigai (inconceivable), an act of nature that absolved them of all responsibility. And, just in case the public was not buying this grand shirk, malicious rumors disingenuously scapegoated Prime Minister Naoto Kan, in a failed attempt to shift blame to him. Subsequently, Kan has been vindicated while Tepco remains guilty in the court of public opinion.
In mid-2012, Tepco released the results of its own investigation into the nuclear accident and, with unseemly chutzpah, absolved itself of all responsibility. It was so embarrassing in its exculpatory excesses, and thoroughly contradicted by all three of the other major investigations into the Fukushima debacle, that Tepco disavowed this whitewash in October 2012, conceding allegations of numerous failures; this mea culpa was at the insistence of a panel of international experts hired by the utility.