Tokyo court only holds utility responsible to compensate Fukushima evacuees and reduces damages

abcnews.go.com:

A Tokyo court has ruled that only the operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant had to pay damages to dozens of evacuees, relieving the government of responsibility

TOKYO — A Tokyo court has ruled that only the operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant had to pay damages to dozens of evacuees, relieving the government of responsibility. Plaintiffs criticized the ruling as belittling their suffering and the severity of the disaster.

The Tokyo High Court also slashed the amount to half of a lower court's decision, ordering the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, known as TEPCO, to pay a total of 23.5 million yen ($165,000) to 44 of the 47 plaintiffs.

Tuesday's ruling backpedaled from an earlier decision in March 2018, when the Tokyo District Court held both the government and TEPCO accountable for the disaster, which the ruling said could have been prevented if they both took better precautionary measures, ordering both to pay 59 million yen ($414,400) in damages.

Motomitsu Nakagawa, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said he was infuriated by the high court ruling, which he called a “copy and paste” of an earlier Supreme Court decision relieving the government of responsibility.

The decision comes at a time when Japan's government is trying to accelerate reactor restarts to maximize nuclear energy to meet decarbonization targets, while seeking to tone down the impact of the nuclear disaster 13 years ago, and its memory gradually fades.

Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant melted after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11, 2011, releasing massive amounts of radiation in the area and displacing more than 160,000 people at one point. About