THE OPERATOR OF Japan’s ruined Fukushima I nuclear power station has reported a loss of €5.15 bn ($7.35 bn, 571 billion yen) for the three months between April and June.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (‘TEPCO’) blamed its massive losses on the huge compensation bill it faces for the partial meltdown at the Fukushima I station following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The losses reported for the quarter, the first in TEPCO’s financial year, were over a hundred times greater than the company’s losses for the same three months of 2010.
The company’s president insisted, however, that the company would survive the mounting financial losses, pointing out that almost 400 billion yen (€3.62bn) had been set aside on a once-off basis to cover TEPCO’s compensation bill for the Fukushima I incident.
“We will not fall into negative net worth once the funds start flowing in,” Toshio Nishizawa told a news conference.
“Since the funds to be provided by the entity will be valuable taxpayer money, we will do as much as we can on our own through streamlining efforts,” he added.
TEPCO’s shares were priced at 389 yen (€3.52) apiece on the Tokyo stock exchange when trading closed today. The same shares had been worth 2,121 yen (€19.23) when trading closed on March 11, the date of the tsunami which led to the Fukushima I explosions.
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