36 MARCH-APRIL 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL for International Development (USAID); and nuclear experts from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). I was in Washington at the time of the accident, managing the flow of data from the DOE team deployed to Japan and reporting to the Secretary of Energy and the White House. I was also responsible for tasking our national laboratories with technical analyses to support high-level decisions, including on the level of risk faced by population centers in Japan and the U.S. itself. A Catastrophic Nuclear Accident When the tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at around 3:30 p.m. on March 11, 2011, waves surged high over the seawall intended to protect the reactors. They flooded areas of the plant housing vital equipment, most notably backup diesel generators. The earthquake 40 minutes earlier had already disabled the facility’s connections to the outside power grid, so the plant was now almost entirely without electrical power. Although automatic controls had safely shut down the three operating nuclear reactors, they still needed to run electric pumps to circulate cooling water to keep their nuclear cores at a safe and stable temperature. A prolonged electrical blackout would stop this active cooling, putting each of the reactors on a path to overheating and, eventually, to irreversible core meltdown. Responsibility for containing this spiraling nuclear disaster largely fell to the operating staff of the reactor. With only limited communications with the outside, and confronting technical challenges far beyond those anticipated in their emergency operations manuals, operators improvised imaginative approaches to combat the accident. To relieve internal pressure, they allowed some radioactive steam to escape while using fire trucks to inject cooling water into the damaged reactor cores. As supplies of fresh water ran out, they shifted to injecting sea water. Despite these heroic efforts, plant operators were unable to prevent core meltdowns at the three reactors, resulting in substantial releases of radioactive materials and hydrogen gas explosions that partially destroyed the reactor buildings. External power and reliable cooling were not restored to the damaged reactor cores until some two weeks after the quake, leaving 9,000 square kilometers of contaminated land, 160,000 people evacuated from their homes, and a decades-long problem of cleanup and recovery. U.S. Assistance The United States offered assistance to Japan almost immediately after initial reports of a major earthquake and tsunami. President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Naoto Kan on March 12 to offer all possible help, an offer that was quickly reinforced by Ambassador John Roos and Embassy Tokyo in their outreach to Japanese counterparts. Following well-established protocols for U.S. response to overseas natural disasters, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance within USAID dispatched a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to Japan to coordinate response activities by U.S. government civilian agencies. USAID’s ability to offer an integrated and rapidly deployable package of assistance that was already certified to meet relevant international standards facilitated quick acceptance by a Japanese government that had few preparations in place to receive aid from other countries. Cranes near Reactor Unit 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on October 11, 2011, months after the megadisaster. GIOVANNI VERLINI / IAEA
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