Shimizu Resigns as Tepco President after Japan`s Biggest Corporate Loss
Baku, May 20 (AZERTAC). Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Masataka Shimizu resigned as the utility posted the biggest loss by a Japanese company, triggered by the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Toshio Nishizawa, 60, a managing director at the utility, will replace Shimizu, 66, Tokyo Electric said in a press release. The company known as Tepco reported today a loss of 1.25 trillion yen ($15 billion) in the year ended March 31, eclipsing the 812 billion yen loss posted by Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. nine years ago.
Tepco`s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant north of Tokyo has been releasing radiation since a magnitude-9 quake and tsunami took out cooling systems on March 11 and caused at least one of six reactors to melt down. Management has been criticized by the prime minister for its handling of the crisis and Shimizu didn`t visit Fukushima until a month later.
“Their response has been no good at all,” Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said on March 25, describing Tepco`s reaction to the crisis. “It`s been slow.”
On March 15, an hour-long delay in Tepco informing Prime Minister Naoto Kan of a reactor fire prompted him to demand of utility officials: “What the hell is going on?” Kyodo News and other news agencies cited Kan as saying within earshot of reporters.
Shimizu met with Fukushima`s governor Yuhei Sato on a visit to the prefectural capital on April 22 to apologize for the accident, after the Tepco president was refused meetings with Sato on April 11 and March 22.
Shares in Tepco have fallen 83 percent since the day before the disaster. The stock closed at 367 yen today, before the earnings announcement, up 2.5 percent.
The Fukushima disaster came less than four years after a temblor shut Tepco` biggest atomic plant at Kashiwazaki Kariwa. Shimizu took over as president in June 2008 after the 6.8- magnitude quake damaged the station and stoked mistrust among the Japanese public about nuclear safety.
Shizumi`s predecessor, Tsunehisa Katsumata, himself became president amid controversy. He was promoted in October 2002 after Hiroshi Araki and Nobuya Minami, chairman and president at that time, stepped down to take responsibility for fake safety reports at three nuclear plants, including Kashiwazaki Kariwa.
On May 15, more than two months after the disaster, Tepco said conditions were worse than believed in reactor No. 1 after it found all uranium fuel rods had melted.
Beside radiation leaks into the atmosphere forcing about 50,000 families near the plant to evacuate, more than 10 million liters (2.6 million gallons) of radiation-contaminated water have leaked or been released into the sea.
Millions of liters of radiated water have also filled basements and trenches at the station from leaking reactor vessels and piping.
Tepco faces as much as 11 trillion yen in compensation claims after the disaster, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report on March 29.
Japan`s government in April raised the severity rating of the Fukushima crisis to the highest on an international scale, the same level as the Chernobyl disaster. The station, which has experienced hundreds of aftershocks since March 11, may release more radiation than Chernobyl before the crisis is contained, Tepco officials have said.
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