WHAT: Workers at Japan’s 40-year-old Fukushima nuclear power plant are now coming forward with eyewitness accounts contradicting the official government version of the triple reactor meltdown.

HOW: The whistle-blowers say Fukushima’s cooling and recirculation pipes broke apart and at least one reactor cracked after the earthquake — not after the “unique, unforeseeable” tsunami that struck 40 minutes later.

WHY IT’S OUTRAGEOUS: If a large earthquake — much more common in Japan than a tsunami tidal wave — was enough to knock out a nuclear plant, then every other Japanese reactor is at much greater risk than previously acknowledged.