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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Nuclear waste, the worst type of garbage for raccoons to get into. Now, it's a substance that we all know is dangerous, thanks to movies like this.

Speaker 2

00:13

They tormented him until He had a horrifying accident and fell into a vat of nuclear waste. Melbourne became the Toxic Avenger, the first superhero born out of nuclear waste. His face is so terrifying...

Speaker 2

00:28

Ah! ...We can't show it to you now. You'll have to see the movie for yourself.

Speaker 1

00:34

Honestly, you really don't need to see the movie, because his face really isn't that terrifying. This is it. I mean, it's bad, but it's so ugly, it's almost cute again.

Speaker 1

00:45

It's like someone melted a candle shaped like a pug. But the point here is, nuclear waste, the radioactive and toxic byproducts from making nuclear energy and weapons, is a serious health hazard, and America has a lot of it.

Speaker 3

00:59

There are more than 71,000 tons of nuclear waste stranded at the nation's 104 reactors. Put all those spent fuel rods together, and you'd get a pile as big as a football field and more than 20 feet tall.

Speaker 1

01:13

Or you could put them in a pile as big as 2 football fields and 10 feet tall, or half a football field and 40 feet tall, or 20 football fields 1 foot tall. The point is, we have a lot of nuclear waste and it's very fun to play with. And look, that is just the waste from nuclear energy.

Speaker 1

01:30

We also have more than 100 million gallons of hazardous liquid waste from producing weapons. And you may live closer to nuclear waste than you think. 1 out of 3 Americans live within 50 miles of high-level nuclear waste. Some of which, like plutonium, is lethally dangerous and will be around for an incredibly long time.

Speaker 4

01:49

Even microscopic amounts of plutonium, if ingested, are deadly.

Speaker 5

01:54

1 of the characteristics of it is it has an extremely long half-life. Plutonium-239, for example, has a half-life of about 24,000 years.

Speaker 1

02:03

It's true. 24,000 years. And that just scratches the surface.

Speaker 1

02:06

It takes 10 half-lives for plutonium to become harmless. So that's 240,000 years. A unit of time more commonly known as 1 English patient. And as any adult with an American Girl doll collection eventually finds out, if you want to keep something around for a disturbingly long time, you have got to find an appropriate place to put it.

Speaker 1

02:28

I cannot live with your murder dolls anymore. Felicity stares at me while I sleep. She stares at me! She stares, I'm blinking!

Speaker 1

02:38

And look, I'm not the first person to make this point. Look at this news report from 1990.

Speaker 6

02:44

Almost half a century after nuclear power was harnessed, there still is no agreement on where to store the waste. We have built the house, said 1 critic, and forgotten the toilets.

Speaker 1

02:55

A home with no toilets, or as a realtor selling a Brooklyn loft is calling it right now, artisanal composting. Wait, You're suggesting that I shit in that potted plant? Well, you and I both know that I will do that, because this is convenient to public transport and it has both northern and eastern exposures.

Speaker 1

03:12

But look, it has been 27 years since that clip and our country still doesn't have a nuclear toilet. And that is our subject tonight. Why do we not have a nuclear toilet? And it's actually easy to understand how we got into this situation, because during World War II, we rushed to develop nuclear weapons because we were trying to defeat the Nazis, who, fun fact, pretty much all Americans agreed were bad at the time.

Speaker 1

03:37

Anyway, the thing is, we didn't really have a plan for what to do with all the radioactive byproducts that we produced, and this initially led us to some mind-blowingly stupid solutions. For instance, for years, we actually did this.

Speaker 7

03:52

They loaded the, radioactive waste, and it was in barrels, 55-gallon barrels of, radioactive waste with concrete poured over it.

Speaker 8

04:03

It's funny, the ocean don't glow out there outside of Red Bank, New Jersey. --HAHAHA. --AUDIENCE GROANS, LAUGHTER Really, because we dumped a lot of barrels out there.

Speaker 8

04:12

--AUDIENCE

Speaker 9

04:12

GROANS, LAUGHTER

Speaker 1

04:12

-- That is true! We didn't just dump barrels of radioactive waste in the ocean, we did it off the coast of New Jersey. That is so horrifying.

Speaker 1

04:22

I am surprised that Jersey Shore was the title of a light-hearted MTV series and not the name of a harrowing documentary. An entire generation of children was born without thumbs, a phenomenon known to locals as the situation. -♪ The situation... ♪ -$5,000.

Speaker 1

04:37

And incidentally, not all of those barrels sank. In fact, in 1957, when 2 barrels were caught floating off the shore, naval aircraft were summoned to strafe them with machine gun fire until they sank. That's right. They shot barrels full of nuclear waste with machine guns.

Speaker 9

04:54

That has

Speaker 1

04:54

got to be 1 of the most terrifying sentences ever said out loud. Right after, Donald Trump is the president now, and... Wait, wasn't Felicity on a different shelf when we went to bed last night?

Speaker 1

05:04

Oh, my God! Felicity is a waking nightmare! -♪

Speaker 9

05:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1

05:09

yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Although, although, the truth is, tossing barrelfuls of nuclear waste into the ocean and shooting them with machine guns is actually preferable to at least 1 genuine other idea that was thankfully rejected, and that was blasting it into space. A concept with a pretty clear flaw.

Speaker 10

05:28

Unfortunately, We don't have a great record with getting rockets out into the atmosphere. If any 1 of them blew up, that would basically contaminate a large portion of the Earth with radioactive material. So that's probably not a great idea.

Speaker 1

05:52

Yeah, you're right. That's probably not a great idea. I mean, a really great idea would be also filling the rockets up with confetti, so at least that way, if there's a horrific accident, there's also a party!

Speaker 1

06:04

Now, over the years, we have dumped nuclear waste all over the country, and in many places, there have been frightening leaks. Take the Savannah River site in South Carolina, where waste from poorly stored material leaked into the groundwater. And just watch this alarmingly laid-back man explain the consequences of that.

Speaker 11

06:21

There are radioactive alligators on the site. -♪ ♪ -$30,000. Radioactive materials are in the sediments.

Speaker 11

06:28

-$30,000. -$30,000. It's gonna go up the food chain, and there's gonna be radioactive alligators.

Speaker 1

06:36

Yeah. Radioactive alligators. They even have names. Tritigator and Dioxidator, after 2 of the wastes that poisoned them.

Speaker 1

06:45

And that's actually very clever, because if I had to give them names, I don't know, I'd probably have gone with something like, -"Oh, holy shit! A fucking radioactive alligator!" -$30,000! And, -"Oh, no, fuck me! There's another 1!

Speaker 1

06:55

What nightmare hath God wrought!" -$30,000! And it's not just reptiles who've been impacted by nuclear waste. Researchers are now studying an area in North St. Louis County, Missouri, where tons of waste from the Manhattan Project was improperly stored, some near a creek that winds through residential communities.

Speaker 1

07:12

And people who live there have noticed some alarming trends.

Speaker 12

07:16

I got on Facebook in order to reconnect with people from high school, and we all immediately started noticing that so many of us were sick. We've discovered that the Department of Veterans Affairs officially recognizes around 21 cancers associated with exposure to ionizing radiation, and compared that list to what we had, we had all of those cancers. Every single 1.

Speaker 1

07:41

That is an incredibly depressing thing to discover on Facebook, and it's hard to know how to respond. I mean, you definitely don't want to use the like button because then it looks like you really like the fact they just got cancer. Now, there is that new sad emoji, which would really be perfect if you hadn't already cheapened it by using it to respond to the news that Chris Pratt and Anna Forrest were separating.

Speaker 1

08:01

I mean, it is sad, it is sad, but it's not 21 cancer sad. It's 9 cancer sad tops. The point is, thankfully, 60 years ago, our government and the scientific incentives came up with a solution. In 1957, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report urging the creation of a permanent storage facility deep underground.

Speaker 1

08:24

Basically, a nuclear toilet. And while we did build a repository for lower level waste in New Mexico, We still haven't built 1 for the most dangerous, high-level waste. And as a result, it's essentially been left wherever it was made, which is not good, because those facilities were not built with the idea that they would be storing waste indefinitely. So to continue the toilet metaphor, We've basically been shitting in bags, leaving them all over the house and praying that they don't leak.

Speaker 1

08:52

And the most frightening example of this is the Hanford site in Washington State, which created two-thirds of the plutonium in the U.S. Arsenal, and is currently storing 56 million gallons of highly toxic and radioactive waste underground. And over the years, there have been so many issues at Hanford that they've achieved a dubious honor, as 1 local news station reported, with an almost prideful tongue.

Speaker 13

09:15

The most contaminated place in the entire Western Hemisphere isn't at a polluting factory or an old chemical plant. It's right here in Washington State.

Speaker 1

09:25

Oh! It's right here! We did it, guys! Washington State!

Speaker 1

09:29

Home to the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere. Thousands of acres of apple orchards and several of Ted Bundy's grisliest murders. We did it! Right here!

Speaker 1

09:40

-♪ It's a... ♪ -There have been a string of problems at Hanford, from explosions to toxic vapor releases to over a million gallons of waste leaking out of their tanks over the years. It has been so bad, the government has had to pay out nearly 1 and a half billion dollars in compensation to thousands of workers for illnesses stemming from exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals there. A local news station has done a series of reports on Hanford, and after a tunnel collapsed this May, they found some of the infrastructure there is almost comically badly put together.

Speaker 13

10:11

Mistakes during construction are factors in the dangerous state of the tunnels. They're 55 and 60 years old, well beyond their expected lifespan. In addition, wood beams holding up the tunnels are eroding, and what corrodes timber beams?

Speaker 13

10:28

Radiation.

Speaker 1

10:30

Yeah. You can't build something out of wood and expect it to last forever. You're supposed to have learned that from the second dumbest of the 3 little pigs. -♪ ♪ -♪ Hanford, Hanford is a gigantic problem.

Speaker 1

10:43

And even though it hasn't produced anything for 30 years, the Department of Energy still spends nearly 2 and a half billion dollars a year on cleaning it up, which is close to 10% of its annual budget. And it is pretty weird to find out that a place you just heard about is getting that much of the DOE's money. It's like finding out that half the Department of Agriculture budget goes to this moose named Gordon. I mean, I don't know the right amount, but that seems like a lot.

Speaker 1

11:11

And in case you're thinking, well, I'm definitely glad that I don't live near Hanford, Remember, there are nuclear power plants storing waste all over the country. Lots of it in so-called spent fuel pools. That's where nuclear fuel rods are supposed to be temporarily placed to cool down, and then put into dry containers, and then moved to permanent underground storage sites. But remember, we don't have 1 of those.

Speaker 1

11:34

And in many places, those pools are just accumulating more and more rods. And while experts say it's highly unlikely, if a Fukushima-like accident happens at 1 of those, the results could be catastrophic.

Speaker 4

11:46

The Northeast has a number of nuclear power plants, including the Indian Point plant, just outside of New York City. If any 1 of those were to have a severe spent fuel pool accident... You're taking away a lot of big cities, a lot of farmlands, a lot of the United States for decades, perhaps centuries.

Speaker 1

12:05

That's right. Lots of big cities. New York, Hartford, Boston, and that last 1 is a real shame, because as I understand it, they only just got un-racist yesterday.

Speaker 1

12:16

So, I mean, at least they could get to enjoy their new life. So... So look, it is pretty clear, we need to find a permanent facility to store our most dangerous waste. And 30 years ago, we actually settled on a site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Speaker 1

12:32

Congress passed a law designating it as our sole candidate for waste storage. Now, since then, we've spent $15 billion prepping the site, as you can see from this rather upbeat video. ♪♪

Speaker 14

12:50

Located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Yucca Mountain is the most thoroughly researched site of its kind in the world. Experts throughout the world agree that the most feasible and safe method for disposing of highly radioactive materials is to store them deep underground.

Speaker 1

13:08

That's right. The best place to put nuclear waste is in a hole deep underground, much like Felicity. Wait.

Speaker 1

13:16

Wait. If she's not there, where is she? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ! Fuck me!

Speaker 1

13:21

Jesus fucking... Get the fuck out of here! Jesus. Jesus.

Speaker 1

13:27

-...

Speaker 9

13:29

Okay.

Speaker 1

13:32

It's all right. It's all right. I'm fine.

Speaker 1

13:33

It's fine. It's fine.

Speaker 9

13:35

It's fine. It's

Speaker 1

13:37

fine. The point is... So Yucca Mountain is our permanent storage site. So the problem is solved, right?

Speaker 1

13:45

Well, no. Because while the site has been deemed safe, and the people in the immediate area, Nye County, actually support the project, many Nevadans elsewhere in the state really don't want it. And their former senator, Harry Reid, lobbied hard, eventually managing to get Yucca shut down. Now, to be fair, he did have an alternative plan for all the states sitting on their nuclear waste, but to put it mildly, it was not exactly scientifically sound.

Speaker 15

14:08

Leave it on site where it is,

Speaker 7

14:10

leave it where it is, and dry cast storage containers. If you're smart, what you would do is, leave the... Leave it where it is.

Speaker 9

14:18

-...leave it where it is. -...leave it where it is.

Speaker 1

14:20

If you're smart, what you would do is leave the thing where it is, is terrible advice for dealing with nuclear waste. Although it is, coincidentally, the title of Britain's best-selling book on parenting. But...

Speaker 1

14:31

But... Here... Here is the truth. The scientific consensus for decades has been that leaving it where it is is a really bad idea.

Speaker 1

14:40

The shuttered power plant at San Onofre in California is storing nuclear waste, and it's on a fault line right next to the ocean. And that sounds like something you learn in the first scene of a movie starring The Rock that you watch on a plane. And look, maybe Yucca is the best place to store our growing supply of radioactive garbage. Maybe it's not.

Speaker 1

15:00

I am not a nuclear scientist, I just have the face of one." And our new energy secretary, Rick Perry, yes, Rick Perry, has said that he is optimistic about fixing the whole problem, which does sound great, although he didn't exactly do a great job at dealing with this disaster. -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 9

15:18

AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING

Speaker 1

15:20

-♪ ♪ -♪ AUDIENCE LAUGHING Yeah, that was him on Dancing With The Stars, and on the basis of that, managing volatile energy is not really his forte. -♪♪♪ -♪♪♪ But here's the thing, we've been saying that we are going to fix this for decades now, and we seem to be no closer to a solution. And let me show you something that really drove that fact home to us, because we've been researching this story for a couple of weeks now, and just yesterday afternoon, we stumbled on a TV special from 1977, the year that I was born.

Speaker 1

15:47

♪♪

Speaker 16

15:54

NBC News presents...

Speaker 1

15:56

♪♪

Speaker 16

15:59

Danger, radioactive waste.

Speaker 1

16:02

Yeah, this problem is so old, they reported on it back when the news was kept in an America-shaped vault that you had to open with a crank. And as we watched that yesterday, we gradually and chillingly realized that by pure coincidence, it hits every beat of the story that we just told you. It opens with footage of sailors throwing barrels into the ocean, it looks at the facilities at Hanford, it talks about radiation's impact on workers and on families who live nearby, and while it doesn't have a radioactive alligator, it does have radioactive cows, which is still good, although I did prefer our alligator.

Speaker 1

16:37

I liked it when he went... -...pfft! -...pfft! But the most chilling moment in that documentary might be the 1 where they sit down with someone in authority and demand to know exactly when this will be fixed.

Speaker 16

16:49

When you ask, when the problem will be solved, you get answers like this.

Speaker 10

16:54

What's the realistic timetable?

Speaker 17

16:56

Realistic timetable is scheduled to have a repository in operation by 1985, with the selection of the sites by the end of 1978 for detailed work.

Speaker 1

17:07

Exactly. Nuclear waste is a problem we were supposed to have dealt with in the 1980s and still cannot solve, much like this Rubik's Cube that I always carry with me. You are my Jean Valjean Cube, and 1 day, I shall defeat you. -♪ ♪ -♪ And at the end of that special, remember, 40 years ago, the correspondent delivers this special message.

Speaker 16

17:31

The waste increases every minute. The solution of where to put it is years away, and none of the previous solutions has worked. We are accustomed in this country to act only in times of crisis.

Speaker 16

17:45

But with nuclear waste, when the crisis comes, it will be too late.

Speaker 1

17:49

And that was from 4 decades ago. We've already waited way too long to resolve this issue, and we are dancing with trouble here. So if anyone says the government can just continue to wait, They are, much like

Speaker 9

18:06

a house with no toilet, absolutely full of shit. -♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey hey...

Speaker 1

18:12

♪ -♪

Speaker 9

18:13

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey... ♪ You