Huge losses at Japan nuclear plant firm

The utility company behind the unfolding Japanese nuclear disaster has reported a 571.7 billion yen (€5.17bn) quarterly loss, and its president is expecting the red ink to swell further over restoration and compensation costs.

Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was sent into meltdown by the March 11 quake and tsunami, and has still not been brought under control.

Some 80,000 people have been evacuated from a no-entry zone, and residents, farmers and fishermen are demanding damage payments.

The company’s president Toshio Nishizawa said today he still does not know the size of the losses the company will suffer overall because of various unknown factors.

Mr Nishizawa, who took office recently after his predecessor resigned in disgrace over the nuclear disaster, said he did not know how much of a government bailout may be needed to ride out the disaster, but promised that his company was trying to take care of problems on its own by selling assets and cutting costs.

“We will put in our best effort,” he told reporters at Tokyo headquarters. “We have not been able to make an assessment at this time.”

But a bailout is expected to be needed to deal with the fiasco.

It is unclear when people will be able to return to their evacuated homes, if ever, and beef and vegetable shipments have been banned because of high radiation readings.

The utility, known as Tepco, had a loss of 5.4 billion yen in the April-June quarter the previous year.

At least three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi were damaged, and began spewing radiation into the air and ocean, after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake set off a towering tsunami that damaged back-up generators for critical cooling systems for the nuclear fuel.

Another factor hitting Tepco’s bottom line is how Japanese companies are cutting back on electricity consumption by 15% because of possible power shortages caused by the Fukushima Dai-ichi woes.

Another nuclear plant, in central Japan, has also been shut down over growing fears about the safety of plants against quakes and tsunami.

Tepco said electricity sales in the fiscal first quarter slid 12% from the same period the previous year.