Recovering the more than ¥15 trillion the government has extended to Tokyo Electric Power for compensation and other costs from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident will take up to 39 more years, the Board of Audit has estimated.
The board published the projection as part of its review of the support, which covers payouts tied to the accident at the plant.
The money is public, routed to the utility so it can meet compensation claims it could not cover alone. Under the estimate, the last of it would not return to the national treasury until the late 2060s — decades after most of the children living through the accident reach retirement age.
The Board of Audit, an independent body that examines government spending, did not give a shorter or longer range in the published summary.