Summer is a great time for fluff reading, but Station Blackout is anything but fluff. In fact, a large part of it read more like a thriller. It follows what happened in the minutes, days and months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant problems after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

The timing of this book is coincidental, but for people who were pulled into the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, Station Blackout is a great read for the people who wanted more after the miniseries was over. The book sucks you in, investing you in the men and women who worked at great danger to themselves to try an avoid a disaster even greater than what happened in Chernobyl.

And around the intense story of what happened is an examination of leadership and how it can help or hinder in a crisis. These parts include things that readers can incorporate into their own lives as needed. The author clearly knows what he is talking about.

My only complaint was that after the intensity of the start of the book, the end sort of dribbles away. Mind you, that is the way real crises go. All the adrenaline is at the start, but the cleanup goes on for years, as do the investigations.

Hopefully the nuclear industry has learned from the mistakes that were made, and hopefully the real heroes are still lauded in Japan.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for letting me read this

On the 11th of March, 2011, an earthquake of a magnitude hitherto unseen, ravaged the prefecture of Fukushima. The dust had barely settled upon the havoc wreaked by the mega earthquake, before monster tsunami waves as tall as 45 feet whipsawed the region decimating everything that was in its wake. Unfortunately standing in the wake of Mother Nature’s wrath were two powerful Nuclear Power Plants, Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daiini. The Tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi’s electrical power, along with the safety systems of all the reactors. Buildings exploded releasing it their wake unknown levels of radiation across the countryside.With a view to assist Japan tide over this extraordinary crisis, United States instituted a joint operation titled “Operation Tomodachi (literally "Operation Friend(s)"). The operation took place from 12 March to 4 May 2011; involved 24,000 U.S. service members, 189 aircraft, 24 naval ships; and cost $90 million. Charles Casto, formerly of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was part of Operation Tomodachi executing the role of a nuclear expert supporting the Japanese government, following the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima in 2011. In his revealing book, “Station Blackout”, Mr. Casto holds forth on the magnitude of the disaster and the magnificence of the heroics displayed by both the Japanese and Americans in curtailing what otherwise would have been a catastrophe. Mr. Casto considers the events of 3/11 the “Quintuple Disaster”, because, “in reality five events were unfolding simultaneously: the earthquake and the tsunami, plus, nuclear, social, and policy crisis. The social and policy problems were part of a ‘system failure’ surrounding the accident, similar to the one we experienced during our own Hurricane Katrina – i.e. local, state, and federal policy all failed.”The heroes of Fukushima represented a myriad assemblage. Taylor Anderson and Monty Dickson, both Americans and both in their early twenties, were English teachers in Japanese elementary schools. Donning the mantle of early responders these two brave souls sacrificed themselves in an attempt to save school children when they were swallowed up by the giant waves. Mr. Casto describes the leadership qualities displayed by the people at ground zero, to be one “in extremis.” This kind of leadership also known as extreme-crisis leadership, is defined as “a discrete episode or occurrence that may result in a great and intolerable magnitude of physical, psychological, or material consequences to or in close physical or psycho-social proximity to organization members.”Mr. Casto, in particular dwells at length about the leadership abilities of three important leaders. Ikuo Izawa at Daiichi was a control room shift supervisor for Units 1 and 2. Employed by Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”), Izawa showed tremendous calm and ingenuity in the aftermath of the disaster. Takeyuki Inagaki, a maintenance manager was responsible for the recovery strategies from the Emergency Response Centre (“ERC”). Masuo Yoshida, site superintendent at Daiichi was the third important personality who punched beyond his weight. Mr. Casto also highlights the perils of a lack of leadership during unpredictable chaos. For example, upon hearing the magnitude of the disaster the Prime Minister of Japan at the time reached out to the ERC, only to, “commence shouting, blaming, and criticizing everyone involved.” Mr. Casto adds, “they (ERC) later told me that this was not the kind of leadership they needed at this point; it was not real leadership at all.” On the other hand, the workers at the site itself showed exemplary courage and extraordinary resilience. “At the time of the earthquake, there were around 2,000 workers at the plant, including about 400 technical workers. Some 250 of these were official members of the emergency response team, and they gathered at the ERC. The remaining 150 evacuated to a baseball field nearby. Virtually no one left the site within the first hundred hours…. The first technique that Masuda used to try to comfort the workers was to be transparent about the conditions. He actually used a whiteboard to log each aftershock and the height of the tsunami that followed, so that he could show the workers that the aftershocks were somewhat subsiding and the conditions were not getting worse. So that was one of the techniques he used in the transparency area. So what you learn from that, and what we talk about in the article, is that information is an antidote to fear. So the more information you can give workers, the more comfortable they’ll feel and be ready to face whatever challenge that comes.As Mr. Casto elaborates, confusion reigned on both the American and Japanese sides. “It appeared that pandemonium was rampant in Washington. I noticed that the less data there was, the more confusion, and came to call this the Casto Pandemonium Curve.” With a view to minimizing such confusion & maximizing clarity, Mr. Casto introduced the mechanism of “listen, learn, help and lead.” This meant, “listen from their perspective, learn the issues as they see them, help them solve the issues as they see them, and then perhaps with the trust that this process builds, lead the way to a good solution.”The need for quicksilver thinking and employ of ingenuity may at times necessitate a direct disobedience of orders. The move by (TEPCO), to use seawater doped with neutron-absorbing boron in the reactors' pressure vessels because the normal and auxiliary cooling systems, which circulate purified water to keep the fuel rods from melting down, failed, was in direct contravention to an order issued by the Prime Minister himself.Mr. Casto’s book, while not dealing with the nuts and bolts of the disaster itself chooses to focus on the consequences of extreme-crisis leadership and focused co-operation. While thousands of unsuspecting people lost their lives following the earthquake and tsunami, not a single death resulted from radiation exposure itself during the accident. The cancer rates are also expected to be kept in check and not rise appreciably. Japan’s Nuclear Safety Institute (“JANSI”) has evolved into an organization equal in competence to NNSA in the United States.“Station Blackout” is a stirring testimony to the courage, capability and composure of humanity in the face of unimaginable adversity.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake struck eastern Japan. It was followed by a 45 foot high tsunami. After the water left, miles of land were contaminated and 15,870 were confirmed dead. Station Blackout is the story of what happened within the two nuclear plants most impacted by the disaster.

Station Blackout is four tales smashed together. It is an autobiography of the author’s career working with nuclear energy. It is a memoir of the author’s time in Japan immediately following the tsunami. It is an almost minute-by-minute account of what happened during the earthquake, the subsequent tsunami and the mitigation efforts that were made. Finally, it is a story of four leaders, how their leadership had to flex with the changing conditions, and how being calm might have prevented an even larger disaster.

The first two tales were boring compared to the last two. They seemed in the book more as filler than anything else. However, the last two stories were spectacular. They read like a Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler adventure tale. The reader is placed in the seat of the leaders of the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants. Would you have the strength to destroy the reactor even though your company’s leader as well as your nation’s government is telling you not to do it? Even if it could overt a nuclear meltdown and subsequent nuclear fallout for miles around the plant? The 1980s movie China Syndrome had a frantic Jack Lemmon trying to prevent the exact same thing in America. The scariest part is that this story is real!

Even though Station Blackout is non-fiction, it is a great choice for thriller readers. Just skim the autobiographical details and don’t read the Introduction if you don’t already know details about what happened. 4 stars!

Thanks to Radius Book Group and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Casto has written a PHD level disertation on crisis response leadership. His thesis is what does a highly trained leadr do in a situation totally beyond any situation or complication ever contemplated. Military and first responders routinely are faced with these things but not but not a nuclear power plant operator. I had hoped this book would go into more detail over the earthquake and resulting tsunami and effects at the nuclear power plants. Make no mistake, this is a book about leadership.

The author lead an integrated US Government and Nuclear Regulatory Commission task force sent to Japan to provide advice to the US on the situation and suggestions to the Japanese on potential actions. This book is pretty scary as it describes how close the Fukushima plant came to being much, much worse than Chernobyl. But it is equally a book about leadership in a crisis situation.
There were some great parts - the description of the actions taken over the first week by the Japanese operators, the initial visit to site and the destruction caused by the tsunami and the communication problems faced by Casto. There were also some seemingly out of place parts - an initial chapter on two US teachers and a weird comment on Iraq's WDMs both added little to the book.
Nonetheless it's an interesting book as a case study into crisis management, leadership and trying to influence a foreign country without established personnel relationships.

Review to come. Here's my initial response.

Wow. This book goes in depth into the Fukushima disaster, its many casualties, and the leadership it took to start to come back from this catastrophic event.