TOKYO – The former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, who led the emergency response after the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and was accused of being responsible for the failure as senior management to prevent the disaster, has died while his lawsuits are still ongoing. He was 84 years old.

TEPCO said Thursday that Tsunehisa Katsumata died on Oct. 21 but did not provide further details, including the cause of death.

Katsumata was TEPCO chairman when Fukushima Daiichi was hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 and suffered a triple meltdown. He led the emergency response after the company’s then-president resigned due to health issues and served until mid-2012.

He later became a defendant in high-profile criminal and civil lawsuits seeking liability for TEPCO management for its alleged failure to predict the massive earthquake and tsunami and take preventive measures.

In 2012, nearly 6,000 Fukushima residents filed criminal complaints against several former TEPCO executives, including Katsumata, accusing them of professional negligence in the deaths of more than 40 elderly patients during or after the forced evacuation following a meltdown that released large amounts of radiation. to the environment.

Katsumata and two other former executives were charged with a citizen’s prosecution investigation in 2016 after prosecutors dropped the case and were forced to stand trial in the only criminal case related to the Fukushima disaster.

Katsumata and two other defendants pleaded not guilty, saying it was impossible to predict the tsunami, and were acquitted in district and high court decisions. The case is currently pending in the Supreme Court.

Katsumata also faces a civil lawsuit filed by a group of TEPCO shareholders and was ordered by the Tokyo District Court in 2022 to pay damages in excess of 13 trillion yen ($85 trillion), along with three other former executives. The case continues in Tokyo High Court.

Katsumata, who was chairman of TEPCO from 2002 to 2008, was also responsible for damage control and shoring up corporate governance in the wake of the utility’s previous data cover-up scandal. He joined TEPCO in 1963.

As president of the powerful organization, Katsumata also held important positions in business organizations such as Keidanren and had great influence on Japanese politics and industry.

Today, more than 13 years after the accident, Fukushima Daiichi is being decommissioned; a process that has been going on for decades and is still in its infancy.

In recent months, TEPCO has struggled to retrieve the first small amount of molten fuel residue from one of three damaged reactors using a remote-controlled robot. If successful, the return of the sample would be a milestone that could contribute to further research into analyzing the molten fuel and developing the technology needed to remove the 880 tonnes of molten fuel residue remaining inside the three reactors.