The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is the catastrophe that everyone wishes would just go away. After all, it's out of the headlines, so surely it's not such a big deal a whole year later, right?
Wrong. The Unit #4 spent fuel pool (SFP) at Fukushima is in grave danger of collapsing. This SFP is a matter of a few feet from the ocean. Only a modest earthquake would be needed for the structure to collapse, and if this should happen a much larger explosion and fire, and a radiological release far more vast than any that has occurred so far is almost certain.
Many people, including experts like Arnold Gunderson, Chairman Jaczko, and interested observers such as myself have been very worried about this very possibility for much of the past year. Now, according to Reuters, Senator Wyden of Oregon has declared that the situation at Fukushima is "far worse than he expected". Thus, he's raised the alarm at the diplomatic level in hopes that the world can collectively preempt even more devastating planetary radioactive contamination than has already occurred. He is making a push for the nations of the world to collaborate on this problem, Manhattan project style, to secure the nuclear material in SFP #4 at Fukushima before it's too late.
This is an important problem because this SFP that's in jeopardy holds the equivalent of thousands of bombs worth of nuclear material. If SFP #4 goes bad, we're talking some very serious nuclear fallout worldwide.