Tokyo: Tokyo Electric Power Company may sell assets, reduce pension benefits and eliminate jobs to shore up finances as it struggles to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl and compensate victims, Japanese media reported.
The utility, known as Tepco, may sell Toden Real Estate as part of a restructuring programme, the Yomiuri newspaper reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information.
The unit has 180 billion yen (Dh8.2 billion) in assets including about 460 commercial and residential buildings under management, the report said.
Tokyo Electric may also sell At Tokyo Corporation, a unit that operates a data centre, Yomiuri said.
No decisions have been made on any sales, Tepco said in a statement on its website Friday. The owner of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant is under pressure to raise at least 600 billion yen to scrap reactors and compensate victims of the disaster, which was triggered by a record earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
The Fukushima plant suffered three reactor meltdowns after the quake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators, crippling its cooling systems. The disaster displaced 50,000 households in the evacuation zone because of radiation leaks.
The International Atomic Energy Agency last week released a 160-page report in which it concluded Tepco's planning against the risk of a tsunami was inadequate. Yotaro Hatamura, an engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, is conducting a study for Japan's government into what went wrong at the nuclear plant, and how to prevent any repeat.
