In 2007, a powerful earthquake ripped into Japan's northwest coast, killing at least eight people and causing malfunctions at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, including radioactive water spills, burst pipes and fires. The Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of Tokyo Electric Power Company was formed June 7, 2011 by the Japanese government as an independent body to investigate the March Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Apart from the criminal trial, some rulings in around 30 damages suits filed by disaster victims seeking compensation from the state and TEPCO have determined that the utility could have predicted the tsunami and prevented the disaster. Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga declined to directly comment on the ruling. The three former TEPCO executives were charged in 2016 with professional negligence resulting in death and injury by the court-appointed lawyers after an independent panel of citizens mandated indictment. The just-approved compensation deal between the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the Japanese government is being rushed out before the May 30 evacuation order for residents in radiation-threatened areas of Fukushima. A day earlier the region in which the power plant was located, was hit by a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake. On March 11, 2011, the six-reactor plant on the Pacific coast was flooded by tsunami waves exceeding 10 meters triggered by the magnitude 9.0 quake, causing the reactor cooling systems to lose their power supply. A former vice president of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. denied Tuesday his responsibility in the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, saying he did not procrastinate on taking measures against tsunami waves that flooded the nuclear power plant and caused fuel meltdowns. That makes us worried," said Taku Harada, chief executive of the Tokyo-based Internet startup Orinoco. But Suga, the chief Cabinet secretary, said, "The government should play a role so that such an accident will never take place again," based on the lessons of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Tepco -- the utility that supplies power for Japan's capital and biggest city -- accounted for nearly a third of that market capitalization, though its shares have been battered since the disasters, falling 65 percent over the past week to 759 yen ($9.6) Thursday. | KYODO NEWS, KYODO NEWS March 18, 2008 -- TEPCO is informed by one of its subsidiaries of the possibility that a tsunami as high as 15.7 meters could hit the plant, an estimate based on the long-term risk evaluation. Fukushima remains in a dangerous state -- as the northeast of Japan suffers numerous aftershocks, engineers and technicians are still battling to restore the … Like the 75-year-old Kanno, who traveled to the court for more than two hours from the home he was relocated to in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, many people had assembled to hear the verdict, with 835 queuing for the 45 seats in the court that were open to the public. "We still don't know the long-term effects of radiation," he said. Radiation did not leak from the facility. In one case, workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine, so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Struggling to recover from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. is considering collaborating with other utilities to … "It would be impossible to operate a nuclear plant if operators were obliged to predict every possibility related to tsunami and take necessary measures," Kenichi Nagafuchi, presiding judge of the Tokyo District Court, said in handing down the ruling in the first and only criminal trial over the nuclear crisis. 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