Firm Fined £5,000 for Japan's Worst Nuclear Accident

Six former executives of a Japanese nuclear fuel processing company were given suspended prison sentences yesterday for their part in the country's worst nuclear accident, in which two employees were killed and 439 people were exposed to radiation.

The company, JCO, which has already been stripped of its licence to operate the plant, was fined ¥1m (£5,375). It has set aside ¥12.6bn (£68,000) to meet individual compensation claims.

Defence lawyers and environmentalists criticised the court for failing to find the safety authorities negligent.

"The government should be held responsible for regulating these sorts of facilities to ensure that they are safe," said Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action.

"It is very clear that they didn't carry out their oversight responsibilities, but judicially they have got off scot-free."

More than 300,000 people were forced to cower in their homes for 18 hours after the incident in Tokaimura in 1999.

Judge Hideyuki Suzuki said: "The accident gravely shocked society and vastly undermined public confidence in nuclear power."

He rejected JCO's argument that the government had failed to ensure adequate safety standards at the plant.

The two dead workers received fatal doses of radiation when they started an uncontrolled chain reaction by pouring enriched uranium into a vat of acid from a bucket, rather than using a mixing machine.

It later emerged that the company used a shadow manual which encouraged workers to bypass the slow and laborious task of mixing the material by machine.

Government inspectors had been lax in their oversight because they had assumed that a chain reaction could never happen in such a small plant.

The judgment is welcome news for the Japanese nuclear industry. Cover-up scandals, unfavourable public referendums and safety concerns have plagued the industry, which provides 34% of the country's electricity.

The cabinet spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, noted that the authorities had not been implicated in the ruling but promised that the government would tighten the safety standards.

"We must do whatever we can to ensure nuclear safety so such an accident will never occur again," he said.

The president of JCO, Tomoyuki Inami, said the company would not appeal against the sentences, which ranged from two- to five-year suspended jail terms for negligence resulting in death.

"I am relieved the measure is lenient," he said."Our company is painfully aware of its grave responsibility."