Arrests Over Japan’s Nuclear Accident

T O K Y O, Japan, Oct. 11 -- Police today arrested six former executives and employees of JCO Co., the company at the center of Japan’s worst nuclear accident.

The arrests, on suspicion of professional negligence, werethe first made in connection with the accident at JCO’s Tokaimurauranium processing plant, which resulted in the deaths of twoworkers and exposed at least 439 people to radiation.

“After thorough investigations, we have arrested six JCOofficials on suspicion of professional negligence,” said a policeofficial in Iberaki prefecture, home of the JCO plant.

Among those arrested was Yutaka Yokokawa, who was supervisingthe two workers who caused the accident by mistakenly puttingnearly eight times the normal amount of uranium into a container,causing a nuclear chain reaction that took 20 hours to bringunder control.

The two workers died from massive radiation exposure, andYokokawa himself was hospitalized for three months.

Systemic Violations

Police believe systematic violations at JCO, such as a lackof safety training and illegal operations, were to blame for theaccident on Sept. 30, 1999, at the plant in Tokaimura, some90 miles northeast of Tokyo.

But environmental groups and anti-nuclear activists haveblamed Japan’s Science and Technology Agency, a government branchoverseeing the nuclear industry, for failing to properly enforcesafety regulations in the industry.

Police will also seek charges against JCO as a corporate bodyand against former JCO President Hiroharu Kitani, 62, for allegedviolation of laws regulating nuclear reactors, Kyodo news agencyreported.

JCO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd. Following the accident, it lost its license as a punishmentfor illegally revising operation manuals.

Arrests Were ‘Natural’

The future of the industry itself has been put under a cloudsince the accident, causing Japan’s big power companies to scaleback the number of planned new reactors to 13 over the next 11years, against a previous target of 16 to 20.