Station Blackout

The nuclear safety expert shares a gripping, blow-by-blow account of how he led the response to the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. On March 11, 2011, fifty minutes after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit eastern Japan, a forty-five-foot high tsunami 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 Tokyo Electric Power Company called Dr. Chuck Casto for help.  In Station Blackout, 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 who 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.