Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, owner of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is trying to stem the exploding cost of decommissioning the plant reactors, decontaminating the area, and compensating the victims.
For the time being, the Japanese government is helping to shoulder the 170 billion dollar price tag, which has increased fourfold from original estimates and is more than the GDP of New Zealand, another island nation twice the size of Japan.
The Japanese government has 50.1 percent of Tepco’s voting rights through the government’s Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp and has some bureaucrats from the ministry working at the utility to help reallocate Tepco’s profits and modify its management.
A newly announced plan, however, is to split the power company into retail sales and power generation (business operations) on the one hand, which can focus on generating profits, and the Fukushima disaster (Fukushima operations) on the other, which would stay under government control.
It is hoping to release the business operations from government control in the near future and eventually seek reimbursement from Tepco if possible.
Other Japanese power companies are contributing some to the burgeoning cost, but that fee just gets passed on to their customers. Which begs the question: who is really paying for Tepco’s missteps?
