Accidents and controversies
Safety incidents
On August 29, 2002, the government of Japan revealed that TEPCO was guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents. All seventeen of its boiling-water reactors were shut down for inspection as a result. TEPCO's chairman Hiroshi Araki, President Nobuya Minami, Vice-President Toshiaki Enomoto, as well as the advisers Shō Nasu and Gaishi Hiraiwa stepped-down by September 30, 2002. The utility "eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities". Upon taking over leadership responsibilities, TEPCO's new president issued a public commitment that the company would take all the countermeasures necessary to prevent fraud and restore the nation's confidence. By the end of 2005, generation at suspended plants had been restarted, with government approval.
In 2007, however, the company announced to the public that an internal investigation had revealed a large number of unreported incidents. These included an unexpected unit criticality in 1978 and additional systematic false reporting, which had not been uncovered during the 2002 inquiry. Along with scandals at other Japanese electric companies, this failure to ensure corporate compliance resulted in strong public criticism of Japan's electric power industry and the nation's nuclear energy policy. Again, the company made no effort to identify those responsible.
2008 Kashiwazaki-Kariwa shutdown
In 2008, Tokyo Electric was forced to shut down the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant following the 2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake. To meet demand, the company purchased electricity from competitors and restarted thermal power plants, resulting in significant additional oil and gas consumption. These activities caused the company to post its first loss in 28 years.
2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster
On March 11, 2011, several nuclear reactors in Japan were badly damaged by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
The Tōkai Nuclear Power Plant lost external electric power, experienced the failure of one of its two cooling pumps, and two of its three emergency power generators. External electric power could only be restored two days after the earthquake.
The Japanese government declared an "atomic power emergency" and evacuated thousands of residents living close to TEPCO's Fukushima I plant. Reactors 4, 5 and 6 had been shut down prior to the earthquake for planned maintenance. The remaining reactors were shut down automatically after the earthquake, but the subsequent tsunami flooded the plant, knocking out emergency generators needed to run pumps which cool and control the reactors. The flooding and earthquake damage prevented assistance being brought from elsewhere. Over the following days there was evidence of partial nuclear meltdowns in reactors 1, 2 and 3; hydrogen explosions destroyed the upper cladding of the building housing reactors 1 and 3; an explosion damaged reactor 2's containment; and severe fires broke out at reactor 4.
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The Fukushima nuclear disaster revealed the dangers of building multiple nuclear reactor units close to one another. This proximity triggered the parallel, chain-reaction accidents that led to hydrogen explosions blowing the roofs off reactor buildings and water draining from open-air spent fuel pools—a situation that was potentially more dangerous than the loss of reactor cooling itself. Because of the proximity of the reactors, Plant Director Masao Yoshida "was put in the position of trying to cope simultaneously with core meltdowns at three reactors and exposed fuel pools at three units".
The Japanese authorities rated the events at reactors 1, 2 and 3 as a level 5 (Accident With Wider Consequences) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, while the events at reactor 4 were placed at level 3 (Serious Incident). The situation as a whole was rated as level 7 (Major Accident). On March 20, Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano "confirmed for the first time that the nuclear complex — with heavy damage to reactors and buildings and with radioactive contamination throughout — would be closed once the crisis was over." At the same time, questions are being asked, looking back, about whether company management waited too long before pumping seawater into the plant, a measure that would ruin and has now ruined the reactors; and, looking forward, "whether time is working for or against the workers and soldiers struggling to re-establish cooling at the crippled plant." One report noted that defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, on March 21 had committed "military firefighters to spray water around the clock on an overheated storage pool at Reactor No. 3." The report concluded with "a senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has many contacts in Japan sa[ying that]... caution... [as] plant operators have been struggling to reduce workers’ risk... had increased the risk of a serious accident. He suggested that Japan's military assume primary responsibility. 'It's the same trade-off you have to make in war, and that is the sacrifice of a few for the safety of many,' he said. 'But a corporation just cannot do that.'"
There has been considerable criticism to the way TEPCO handled the crisis. It was reported that seawater was used only after Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered it following an explosion at one reactor the evening of March 12, though executives had started considering it that morning. TEPCO didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until March 13. Referring to that same early decision-making sequence, "Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at a Pennsylvania power plant with General Electric reactors similar to the troubled ones in Japan, said the crucial question is whether Japanese officials followed G.E.’s emergency operating procedures." Kuni Yogo, a former atomic energy policy planner in Japan's Science and Technology Agency and Akira Omoto, a former TEPCO executive and a member of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission both questioned TEPCO's management's decisions in the crisis. Kazuma Yokota, a safety inspector with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, was at Fukushima I at the time of the earthquake and tsunami and provided details of the early progression of the crisis.
The Fukushima disaster displaced 50,000 households in the evacuation zone because of radioactivity releases into the air, soil and sea. In 2012, it was reported that 8.5 tonnes of radioactive water had leaked from Fukushima Daiichi No.4.
In June 2012, TEPCO revealed, that in 2006 and 2008 TEPCO employees made two studies in which the effect of tsunami-waves higher than the "official" expected height of 5.7 meters was studied on the performance of the reactors. This was done after the large Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The conclusion from the simulation in 2006 was that a 13.5 meter wave would cause a complete loss of all power and would make it impossible to inject water into reactor No. 5. The costs to protect the plant for such an event was estimated to be about 25 million dollars. In 2008, the effect of a 10-meter-high tsunami was calculated. TEPCO failed in both cases to take advantage of this knowledge, and nothing was done to prevent such an event to happen, because the study sessions were conducted only as a training for junior employees, and the company did not really expect such large tsunamis.
TEPCO subsequently signed a partnership with French company Areva to treat the contaminated water.
In 2016, three former TEPCO executives, chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and two vice presidents, were indicted for negligence resulting in death and injury. All were acquitted by the Tokyo District Court on September 19, 2019.
Company future
On March 30, 2011, the president of TEPCO, Masataka Shimizu, was hospitalized with symptoms of dizziness and high blood pressure in the wake of an increasingly serious outlook for the Fukushima plant and increasing levels of radiation from the stricken plant, as well as media reports of TEPCO's imminent nationalization or bankruptcy triggered by the situation at the Fukushima plant.
On July 31, 2012, TEPCO was substantially nationalized by receiving a capital injection of 1 trillion yen ($12.5bn) from the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund (currently Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation), a government-backed support body. The Fund holds the majority (50.11%) of voting rights with an option to raise that figure to 88.69% by converting preferred stocks into common stocks. This Japan's biggest utility had received by the end of February 2016 at least 5.7609 trillion yen in state support since the tsunami. The total cost of the disaster was estimated at $100bn in May 2012. In April, all Japanese nuclear reactors were closed.
Response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
TEPCO has continued its business operations in Russia, including the purchase of Russian gas despite international sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Unlike the many international corporations that have scaled back or ceased their activities in Russia, TEPCO has opted to maintain its engagement. Research conducted by the Yale School of Management categorized the company in the "Grade F" tier, labeled "Digging In," which denotes entities that have defied calls to exit or reduce operations in Russia. This decision has drawn criticism for undermining global efforts to isolate Russia economically and exert pressure to end its aggression.
