Ex-official denies pressuring TEPCO not to say 'meltdown'

A Japanese opposition leader who was a senior official during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant crisis denied on Friday that he or the prime minister at the time pressured the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co not to use the term "meltdown".

Democratic Party Secretary-General Yukio Edano called a special news conference to refute a finding in a new report that then-TEPCO president Masataka Shimizu apparently came under political pressure not to use the word. The report did not find direct evidence of that.

"The fact that I or then-prime minister (Naoto) Kan ordered or requested then-president Shimizu to avoid using the term `meltdown' under any circumstance does not exist," Edano said. He said the timing of the report was suspicious ahead of an Upper House election next month.