The widow of an official who committed suicide after lying to investigators during a probe into a 1995 accident at the Monju experimental fast-breeder reactor filed a damages suit Wednesday against the operator of the reactor.
The widow of Shigeo Nishimura, 49, a deputy administration department chief at what was then Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., which ran the reactor, is seeking 148 million yen for the death of her husband on Jan. 13, 1996.
She filed the suit at the Tokyo District Court, claiming her husband killed himself because he had been forced to assist in covering up the accident.
Nishimura leaped to his death from a Tokyo hotel in the early hours of Jan. 13 after lying at a news conference the previous day.
Monju, Japan's first prototype fast-breeder reactor, has been shut since a sodium coolant leak sparked a fire on Dec. 8, 1995. It is in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture.
Nishimura was a key figure in the probe, which was trying to shed light on an attempt to conceal a videotape of the reactor that was shot shortly after the leak.