ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of the legal questions presented by the aftermath of the nuclear accident in Fukushima and how the Japanese government responded to them. In retrospect, the failure to prepare for the aftermath of the serious nuclear accident was a critical error. The law had not anticipated the fallout of a serious nuclear accident. All the difficulties in the aftermath of Fukushima could be related to deeper failures of law in Japan: the bureaucratic attitude toward law and its unwillingness to change the fundamental framework of post-disaster reconstruction established following the precedent. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government have already published a long-range roadmap to final decommissioning of the nuclear reactors. TEPCO and the central government had already given up on the idea of reusing the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant shortly after the crisis began.
