When Ryusuke Kobayashi came across an online ad for a position with the government’s newly established nuclear watchdog in the summer of 2013, he was instantly interested.

It was more than two years after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant suffered a triple meltdown. The watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), was established in 2012 and the position was with its secretariat.

After the accident, Kobayashi felt a sense of duty to contribute to the cleanup, given his two-year stint at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.

The Three Mile Island incident was the most severe in the history of U.S. commercial reactors.

Kobayashi studied nuclear fusion at graduate school before he joined a Japanese engineering company. He became involved in identifying exactly where and how much nuclear fuel remained in the pipes at the U.S. nuclear plant. He also managed radioactive waste there.

He said he was inspired by contracting companies joining forces with the operator of the Three Mile Island plant to combine their highly specialized expertise in taking on the formidable task of decommissioning.

Ever since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, he has been keen to use his experiences at the U.S. plant to help decommission the Japanese facility.

But his company was not directly involved in decommissioning, although it gives advice when requested from government research institutions working on devising ways to clean up the crippled facility.

When he noticed the secretariat position with the regulatory authority, he was 57--an age deemed too old to apply for a job in Japan.

But he submitted his application anyway and made his case to the interviewers that he is passionate about contributing to the decommissioning work in Fukushima with what he learned and had carried out at the stricken U.S. facility. His wish was granted.

Kobayashi joined the NRA secretariat in December 2013 at the age of 58. After working at a section overseeing decommissioning at its headquarters in Tokyo for about two years, he was assigned to the NRA Regional Office near the plant as an inspector in March 2016. He took the helm of the office in July 2017.

Kobayashi and his subordinates remain at the Fukushima plant around the clock on a rotation.

Their primary responsibility is to verify whether workers involved in decommissioning follow government-mandated procedures. The most important task is to lower the risk of radioactive material leaking into the environment.

Their job also requires raising red flags when the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., is not doing enough.

Three years ago, a flurry of problems beset the plant. A key part in that turned out to be the inability of the utility's employees to speak the truth to management.

Kobayashi informed the NRA that the problems stemmed from “the fact that TEPCO employees at the plant find it extremely difficult to speak up about the paucity of manpower on the ground.”

The utility was aggressively pushing for cost-cutting measures, leading to the work being compromised with only a limited number of personnel on hand.

Kobayashi had heard TEPCO employees and others voice concerns about the situation. He shared their concerns with the NRA.

“We can locate the cause of the problems if we communicate better with the workers,” he said.

Kobayashi said the expertise in radioactive waste management that he acquired while working at Three Mile Island is applicable to Fukushima. But he concedes that the decommissioning work in Fukushima is far more challenging than at the U.S. power plant.

The contamination on the premises is pervasive and serious, and the volume of radioactive waste is on a scale several orders of magnitude higher.

In some cases, this has forced TEPCO to keep radioactive waste outdoors for a much longer period than usual.

Kobayashi has now worked at the NRA Regional Office for six and half years. Evacuees have returned to their old homes, albeit just a fraction of them, and the comings and goings of people in the region have increased over the past few years.

“After witnessing those changes, I renewed my vow to work harder,” he said. “I do not want to forget to make a constant effort to improve and make things better.”

Employees at the NRA secretariat normally retire at 60. But his retirement age was extended to 65 as his position as inspector requires a high degree of professionalism.

Kobayashi continued to work as a special inspector even after he reached the mark for retirement. But the end of his career at the agency is fast approaching, with a year and half left at most. Still, he said, he approaches every day with a resolute attitude about the importance of the task.

“I go to work with a strong sense of determination to work for Fukushima for the rest of my life,” he said.