Station Blackout: Inside the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and Recovery

by Charles A. Casto

Overview

On March 11, 2011, fifty minutes after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit eastern Japan, a tsunami 45-feet high engulfed the nuclear power plant known as Fukushima Daiichi, knocking out electrical power and all the reactors' safety systems. Three reactor cores experienced meltdowns in the first three days, leading to an unimaginable nuclear disaster. The person the Tokyo Electric Power Company called for help was Dr. Chuck Casto. In Station Blackout, Chuck Casto, the foremost authority on responding to nuclear disasters, shares his first-hand account of how he led the collaborative team of Japanese and American experts that faced the challenges of Fukushima. A lifetime of working in the nuclear industry prepared him to manage an extreme crisis, lessons that apply to any crisis situation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635764024
Publisher:	Radius Book Group
Publication date:	12/04/2018
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dr. Charles (Chuck) Casto, president of Casto Group Consulting, helps great companies in the areas of corporate performance, operations, engineering, plant support, and regulatory conformance. A career nuclear safety and regulatory professional, he has thirty-eight years of experience in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the commercial nuclear power industry, and the U.S. Air Force. He was a member of the Senior Executive Service at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), where he last held the position of Regional Administrator, Region III. He was awarded as a Distinguished Executive in 2012, by President Obama.
Chuck served for 11 months as the Director for Site Operations in Japan during the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. He participated in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) mission in Japan to help reestablish their regulatory body after the Fukushima accident and helped to establish criteria to restart shutdown nuclear plants in Japan. He has completed three International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) missions including to Slovenia to review their regulatory programs another on an expert team that reviewed the destruction of 32 reactor fuel bundles at the PAKS reactor in Hungary.
His strong history of mentorship and leadership development success is evidenced in his service on a Congressional Fellowship as a Legislative Assistant to a U.S. Senator where he succeeded in developing energy policy issues for the Senator. He has been asked on numerous occasions to resolve many highly complicated policy issues for clients and Congress.

Specialties: Educational and Business Consultations
• Cobb County School System Blue Ribbon Education Committee – Chair and member
• Cobb County School System Facilities and Technology Committee – Chair and member
• Cobb County Government Citizens Oversight Committee - Appointee
• State of Georgia, Department of Early Childhood Education and Learning - Consultant
• Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Making of a Crisis Leader 7

Chapter 2 Extreme-Crisis Leadership 13

Chapter 3 Overview 21

Chapter 4 March 11, 2:46 p.m., the Great East Japan Earthquake Strikes 32

Chapter 5 Next Challenge: Venting 55

Chapter 6 Desperation 62

Chapter 7 How the Other Fukushima Survived 79

Chapter 8 Our Arrival 91

Chapter 9 Heroic Acts 96

Chapter 10 Pump Up the Volume 99

Chapter 11 Starry, Starry Day 106

Chapter 12 Fears for Unit 4 114

Chapter 13 Keep Calm and Get Organized 122

Chapter 14 "Help Me" 134

Chapter 15 Flood the Building 139

Chapter 16 Radiophobia 144

Chapter 17 Kantei Meetings/Hosono Process 150

Chapter 18 Kondo Theory 159

Chapter 19 J-Village and First Trip to Daiichi and Daini 164

Chapter 20 Little Texas 185

Chapter 21 The Big Takeaway 191

Chapter 22 June 2014 Trip to Fukushima Prefecture 206

Notes 215

Index 219