TEPCO feeling generous

January 10, 2013

TEPCO intends to accept compensation claims beyond legal time limit

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130110p2g00m0dm071000c.html

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that it intends to accept compensation claims over the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster beyond the three-year legal time limit for seeking compensation.

"We do not intend at all to say 'that's it' after three years...We hope not to create concerns among the people affected," the utility's President Naomi Hirose told Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato in Fukushima Prefecture, adding that his company is now discussing in detail the legal matters concerning the issue.

Hirose said that his company plans to announce in the near future how it will respond to the problem.

Sato, meanwhile, reiterated his request to scrap not only the crippled Nos. 1 to 4 units at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but also the remaining Nos. 5 and 6 units that achieved a cold shutdown in the early stage of the nuclear disaster, as well as the Fukushima Daini plant, located adjacent to the Daiichi complex.

"I have also told Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that it is the collective will of the people in the prefecture to decommission all the reactors (in the prefecture)," the governor said.

TEPCO has so far only made clear that it will scrap the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors. Hirose told reporters later that his company will make a decision on the issue "in a comprehensive manner" in relation to the national energy policy.