Station Blackout

Inside the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and Recovery

By: Charles A. Casto

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

On March 11, 2011, 50 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Charles A. Casto (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Interesting!

As someone who has been in the nuclear industry for over 34 years, the story of Fukushima is one of heartbreak. The story told here provides great insights into the disaster. The only thing I didn’t care for was the narrator’s voice. There was little inflection in his voice, so the story was a bit flat.

interesting details but you need a little patience

On the whole I enjoyed the book. I bought the book looking for some ground-level view into the events and aftermath, and I got that and more.
You will need some patience to wade through a chapter or two of leadership pontificating - or just skip them.

File Under Leadership

If you are looking for the Fukushima version of Midnight In Chernobyl, keep looking. This is actually a pretty good book on Crisis Leadership. The author comes across, partly on account of the narrator’s style, as very full of himself. However, maybe he deserves to be. I just didn’t like the constant first-person chest thumping as the management examples where unpacked throughout the story. The audiobook of course lacks the oft-mentioned PDF file of pictures, diagrams, and schematics, which made the disaster scenes harder to visualize. Also, the timeline of the disaster is told four times: from the Daichi plant operators perspective, from the operators at Daini, from the authors’ bureaucratic wrangling, and then a disjointed timeline of lessons learned that leverages all three and more. If all you want are the facts and events as they unfolded in chronological order, without an MBA-style discourse on crisis management, there must be better options.

A Master Class in Crisis Management

Charles Casto, the United States' top nuclear crisis manager, delivers a very compelling account of his experience advising his Japanese counterparts on how to handle the crisis the world collectively calls Fukushima.

As senior advisor to the American Ambassador to Japan, Casto found himself in new territory as he was learning the various "languages" the people involved spoke (military, diplomatic, cultural). Roughly the first half of the book was a recounting of the accident. The second half was a master's class in crisis management.

For readers/ listeners who only want details of the accident, the second half may not be interesting. For those looking to learn the principles of crisis management, the first half of the book is an important foundation for the lessons to follow in the second. In reality, to have a better understanding of both the crisis and how it was handled, one has to listen to the entire book.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in what I wrote above. The story is clear and concise. The narration is excellent. Overall this is an excellent book.

no thanks

I don't recall the authors name, but that us kinda the point of this review. The story is about the accident(?) and what did/has happened. I found myself listening to this guys account of what he did and how amazing it was that the parties engaged from the US adapted to some japanese customs, etc ... It was as if the author duscovered the concept. I just found the story quite self-serving and intensely boring. Strong pass recommended.