Looking Back the Nuclear Compensation Process in the Tepco Nuclear Power Plant Accident (Tentative)

Four and half years passed since the East Japan Disaster occurred. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) nuclear power plant accidents caused nuclear contamination in a huge area in East and North Japan, ramifications of which still overshadow lives of the people in the region. TEPCO paid damages for real property to most claimants in 2014 and began to terminate the payment of compensation for evacuation as the Government gradually lifted evacuation orders in the region. Although thousands still have not received compensation, the payment process for nuclear compensation for economic loss is approaching to the final stage. This paper looks back the whole process of nuclear compensation from the setting up of the Nuclear Compensation Dispute Review Commission in April 2011 to early summer 2016. Lawyers have tried to manage individualized claims of victims mainly through the Nuclear ADR, but they failed to reach victims effectively because of their lack of the human resource and internal conflicts inside the legal profession. The TEPCO and the government which controls the TEPCO have dominated the whole process of compensation, deciding the amount of compensation and terminating payment based on government’s schedules. The courts are virtually invisible except only in scattered few cases. The nuclear power plants have been constructed as a national policy of the conservative party and the compensation process has been heavily affected by the policy that would keep nuclear power as a significant part of the energy resource in future.