[Prickle]

To be fair, TEPCO is completely and absolutely untrustworthy. There is evidence of severe miss-management, as well as 2 cases where they deliberately ignored safety warning from government agencies.

As a Japanese citizen, I would feel safer seeing the TEPCO corporation dismantled, and it's leadership behind bars. But the courts declared them not guilty.

A late addition, but I should also add info about Onagawa Nuclear Powerplant. It survived the exact same disaster with no melt down, only because the manager staunchly refused to back down on constant safety training and disaster drills. Of course, to the frustration and chagrin of upper management.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[ammo1662]

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230824/k10014172021000.ht...

and also

https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...

They seems to be more willing to put money on propaganda instead of actually dealing with the problem. Just check the page 7.

- Discharge into the sea: 3.4 billion yen

- Vapor release: 34.9 billion yen

- Hydrogen release: 100 billion yen

- Underground burial: 243.1 billion yen

And for propaganda, 70 billion yen

[freetime2]

Japan has spent more than ¥4 trillion on the decontamination effort so far. So it's definitely not true that they have spent more on propaganda than "actually dealing with the problem".

> Total decontamination costs have exceeded 4 trillion yen as of the end of December. Going forward, additional costs are projected to grow by trillions of yen. [1]

Is ¥70 billion a lot? Sure. But to put it in perspective, more than $14 billion (¥2 trillion) was spent on federal election campaigns in the US in 2020 [2]. Gaining public favor is expensive in a democratic country. And misinformation is a real problem with real costs (e.g. to Japan’s fishing industry) - so it makes sense economically as well as politically.

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fuku...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United...