The company conceded that it violated both normal safety standards and legal requirements, and criminal charges are being laid. The fact that the plant is a boutique operation outside the mainstream nuclear fuel cycle evidently reduces the level of scrutiny it attracts. Japan's atomic energy insurance pool said would make a payment to JCO in respect to the accident, its first such payment ever. The plant's operating licence was revoked early in 2000. Mainstream fuel fabrication plants in Japan are fully automated, engineered to ensure that criticality does not occur, equipped with neutron monitoring systems and fully prepared for any possible criticality accident.
Most plants use a dry process in any case, which is intrinsically safer.
While this was Japan's first such accident, similar criticality incidents have occurred, especially in US and Russian military plants and laboratories. All but two of these were prior to the early 1980s. The last of these was the single previous criticality accident at a commercial fuel plant, in USA, resulting in one death. Another 22 occurred in fuel cycle facilities, all but one military-related, and resulting in seven deaths. The fuel preparation accidents were all in wet processes, due to putting too much uranium-bearing solution in one tank.