Former Tepco chief grilled over Fukushima disaster

TOKYO ( Reuters) — The

former president of Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. faced questioning for the first time yesterday by a high profile investigative panel

seeking to uncover the causes

of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Members of the panel appointed by parliament will likely grill Masataka Shimizu over whether he planned to abandon the tsunami-devastated Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis in March

2011, as reactors melted down and the situation was in danger of spinning out of control, threatening Tokyo itself.

Then-prime minister Naoto Kan and two other ministers handling the disaster response have told the panel that Shimizu had planned to

withdraw all of his utility’s workers as explosions rocked the plant and three reactors melted down, spewing radiation across northeast Japan.

Shimizu, 67, was also widely criticized for vanishing from public view three days after the disaster struck. He was later hospitalized for dizziness and

high blood pressure, leaving the utility’s chairman to supervise

operations during his absence.

Shimizu’s testimony coin

cides with efforts by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s government to restart two idled nuclear reactors in western Japan to cope with possible power shortages when electricity demand peaks in July and August.

All of Japan’s 50 reactors have gone offline since the crisis and

Tokyo has been trying to win

local communities’ agreement for the restarts despite persistent public concerns about safety and delays in setting up a new nuclear regulator.

The government is also thrashing out a new energy strategy after scrapping a 2010 plan that would have boosted nuclear power’s share of electricity to more than 50 percent by 2030 from around 30 percent before the disaster.

Shimizu, who stepped down

in June last year as president

of the utility, known as Tepco, has been questioned in parliament but yesterday was the

first time he appears publicly in front of one of the three main inquiries that have looked into the disaster.

AP Photo shows the inside of the tsunami-crippled No. 4 reactor building during a press tour at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma Tuesday.