S4 E22: Nuclear Waste, Steve Bannon & Charlottesville: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

what [Music] welcome welcome welcome to R way tonight Andel Oliver thank you so much for joining us and we begin We Begin tonight with the White House still a beautiful building despite what's currently happening inside it it's not the House's fault hash it's not the House's fault well on Friday there was some big news another shakeup at the White House today Chief strategist Steve Bannon is out yes yes Steve Bannon is on presumably to spend more time sucking his own but but he leaves behind he leaves behind a legacy defined by quasi constitutional xenophobia unfulfilled campaign promises and a definitive answer to the question what would happen if Martin Sheen ate nothing besides sea salt for a thousand years and while it was shocking Bannon is just the latest in a string of recent departures this picture of the president in the Oval Office with his top advisers was taken just days after the inauguration now National Security adviser Michael Flynn gone press secretary Shan Spicer gone Chief of Staff R creus gone and finally today Steve Bannon wow he is surrounded he is surrounded by four white nothings and Mike Pence so let's make that five white nothings but but the truly depressing thing about bannon's departure is just how utterly unsatisfying it actually is because yes one pan to White nationalists has left the White House the problem is the one he was working for is still very much there and on Tuesday Trump doubled down on his remarks about the groups marching in Charlottesville last weekend not all of those people were neo-nazis believe me not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch you had some very bad people in that group but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides no no they weren't and tell you why because if you are Marching with white nationalists You Are by definition not a very nice person if if let me put it to you this way if Malala yfai had taken part in that rally you'd have to say okay I guess Malala sucks now I mean I'm confused I don't know why she's there but Malala definitely sucks that's the only conclusion you can draw now thankfully condemnation of trump came fast sometimes from unexpected quarters a key White House advisory Council of Powerhouse CEOs voting to disband many of those Business Leaders Democrats and Republicans speaking out like the CEO of Campbell Soup saying racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville wow when you become CEO of Campbell Soup you do not expect to have to start your public statements with the words racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible you expect to start them by saying yes we're very sorry but again you're the one eating clam chowder from a cow now meanwhile commentators who are usually in Trump's Corner had a genuinely tough time defending his remarks and none tougher perhaps than Fox news's Melissa Francis he didn't say there were very good people among Neo-Nazi protesters there were very good people on the other side there are people that were opposed stat look at look can I tell you this I am so uncomfortable having conversation and that's what this woman said before this because I know what's in my heart and I know that I don't think anyone is different Better or Worse based on the color of their skin but I feel like there is nothing any of us can say right now without being judged well here's here's a tip if you're getting emotionally overwhelmed and feeling judged for defending Trump in his Nazi sympathizer phase stop doing it it's that simple no one is making you do it also and I cannot stress this enough how did you manage to make this about you that's almost impressive now it it was also fascinating to watch Trump's own party tried desperately not to deal with what he had said take Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell whose office initially responded with a statement that he had no new response to Trump's news conference although by Wednesday a new new rumor had started making the rounds sources close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell describ him as very concerned and very upset McConnell's office denies that yes that's right Mitch McConnell had the moral courage to deny Anonymous sources who had said he had some moral courage I will not stand idly by why people drag my name out of the mud leave my name in the mud where it belongs now others others tried to delicately thread the needle condemning the Nazis without explicitly mentioning the president take Paul Ryan a man whose spine ran away from home 10 years ago and is now living on a spine commune in Northern Vermont he tweeted that white supremacy is repulsive but did not mention Trump and come on you can mention him he is not Voldemort he's just a terrifying entity who viciously attacks his enemies and judges People based on their Birthright you know what I do hear it now I hear it now I take that back and look that is not to say that no Republicans condemned him by name because some did let's take a look at just how many republican lawmakers have called the president out by name over his response to Charlottesville now this is really only a handful of the roughly 300 republicans in Congress exactly and that's actually generous because that graphic includes John Kasich who isn't even a member of Congress and Jeb Bush who holds no government position whatsoever he's currently and this is true running his own frozen yogurt shop in Orlando apparently their tropical mango flavor is fine it's fine it's it's not going to change your life it's it's it's fine but the fact is after the president of the United States implied that good people were marching with Nazis the overwhelming majority of Republicans opted not to condemn him by our count out of 292 Republican members of Congress only around 54 could be bothered to unequivocally condemn Trump by name and that is less than 20% and the problem with not mentioning him is that that suggests that he is somehow not a key part of the problem here so in the words of the poets beonce and the other ones say his name say his name go right on to Fox News say Donald I condemn you if you ain't running game so look although this week has been repeatedly called a turning point much as though I would love to believe that I really don't see it because every day has felt like a turning point we're not so much turning anymore as spinning we are basically On a Carousel that will not stop we vomited so much there there's nothing left to throw up and there's just no way to get off because an unstable race baiting Carney is operating the controls and we're probably going to go through a lot more before Republicans ever decide to do anything cuz the hard truth here is that nothing is really going to change in the white house until one more person in that photo finally gets shown the door and now this and now local news answers the question should you stare at the Sun by now it's been pretty well established that you should never look directly at the sun you'll risk permanent eye damage if you look at the sun without proper eye protection peer through a dark beer bottle wrong spray paint glass don't do it never ever do not look at the sun like this we cannot stress this enough it is always dangerous to look at the sun you cannot look at the Sun or else you'll be taking a trip to the hospital you're not supposed to stare right at the sun unless you hate your eyes be warned you could go blind you're not going to go blind but it is going to cause significant damage to your eye according to my optometrist there is actually no amount of time that's safe to look at the sun if you look at the sun through a telescope without an appropriate filter you lose your eye pretty much instantly do not stare at the sun obviously do not stare at the sun don't stare at the sun don't stare at the sun don't stare at the sun it's the last time I'm going to say it folks do not look at the sun despite all the warnings everything we've been talking about for like a year about this Eclipse you're going to look straight into the sun yeah I'm afraid I am yes moving on our main story tonight concerns 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 they tormented him until he had a horrifying accident and fell into a vat of nuclear waste Melvin became the Toxic Avenger the first superhero born out of nuclear waste his face is so terrifying we can't show it to you now you'll have to see the movie for yourself honestly you really don't need to see the movie cuz his face really isn't that terrifying this is it I mean it's bad but it's it's so ugly it's almost cute again it's like it's like someone melted a candle shaped like a pug but but the point here is nuclear waste the radioactive and toxic by products from making nuclear energy and weapons is a serious health hazard and America has a lot of it 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 or you could put them in a pile as big as two football fields and 10t Tall or half a football field and 40t Tall or 20 football fields one foot tall the point is 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 we also have more than a 100 million gallons of hazardous liquid waste from producing weapons and you may live closer to nuclear waste than you think one out of three Americans live within 50 miles of highlevel nuclear waste some of which like plutonium is lethally dangerous and will be will be around for an incredibly long time even microscopic amounts of plutonium in if ingested are deadly one of the characteristics of it is has an extremely long halflife plutonium 239 for example has a halflife of about 24,000 years it's true 24,000 years and that just scratches the surface it takes 10 half lives for plutonium to become harmless so that's 240,000 years a unit of time more commonly known as one 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 I cannot live with your murder dolls anymore Felicity stares at me while I sleep she stares at me she stares unblinking and look I'm not the first person to make this point look at this news report from 1990 almost half a century after nuclear power was harest there still is no agreement on where to store the waste we have built the house said one critic and forgotten the toilets 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 in that potted plant well you and I both know that I will do that cuz this is convenient to public transport and it has both Northern and Eastern exposures look it 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 anyway the the thing is we 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 they loaded the uh radioactive waste and it was in barrels 55 gallon barrels of of uh radioactive waste with concrete poured over it it's funny the ocean don't glow out there outside of Red Bank New Jersey really cuz we dumped a lot of barrels out there 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 I surprised that Jersey Shaw 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 and and incidentally not all of those barrels sank in fact in 1957 when two 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 w with machine guns that has got to be one 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 oh my God Felicity is a waking nightmare although although the truth is tossing Barrel fulls of nuclear waste into the ocean and shooting them with machine guns is actually preferable to at least one genuine other idea that was thankfully rejected and that was blasting it into space a concept with a pretty clear floor unfortunately we don't have a great record with getting Rockets out into the atmosphere if any one of them blew up that would basically contaminate a large portion of the Earth with with radioactive material so that's probably not a great idea 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 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 groundw and just watch this alarmingly laidback man explain the consequences of that they are radio active alligators on the site radioactive materials are in the sediments it's going to go up the food chain and and there's going to be radioactive alligators yeah radioactive alligators they even have names trator and dioxin nator after two of the wastes that poison them 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 a Radioactive alligator and oh no me there's another one what nightmare ha God wrought and it's not just reptiles who 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 and people who live there have noticed some alarming Trends I got on Facebook in order to reconnect with people from high school and we all went 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 one that is an incredibly depressing thing to discover on Facebook and it 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 now now there is that new sad emoji which would really be perfect if you hadn't already cheapened it by using to respond to the news that Chris Pratt and Anna forest was separating I mean it is sad it is sad but it's not 21 cancer sad it it's nine cancer sad tops the point is thankfully 60 years ago our government and the scientific consenters came up with a solution in 1957 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report urging the creation of a permanent story facility deep underground basically a nuclear toilet and while we did build a repository for lower level waste in New Mexico we still haven't built one 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 to continue the toilet metaphor we've basically been in bags leaving them all over the house and praying that they don't leak and the most frightening example of this is the Hanford site in Washington state which created 2third of the plutonium in the US 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 Hamford that they've achieved a dubious honor as one local news station reported with an almost prideful tone the most contaminated place in the entire Western Hemisphere isn't not a polluting Factory or an old chemical plant it's right here in Washington state oh it's right here we did it guys Washington State home to the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere thousands of Acres of apple orchards and several of T Ted Bundy's grizzli murders we did it right here there have been a string of problems at Hamford from explosions uh 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 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 collapse this may they found some of the infrastructure There is almost comically badly put together 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 radiation 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 Three Little Pigs Hanford Hanford is a gigantic problem and and even though it hasn't produced anything for 30 years the department of energy still spends nearly $25 billion dollars a year on cleaning it up which is close to 10 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 do'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 and in case you're thinking well I'm definitely glad that I don't live near Hamford 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 one of those 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 one of those the results could be catastrophic the Northeast has a number of nuclear power plants including the Indian Point plant just outside of New York City if any one 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 that's right lots of big cities New York Hartford Boston and that last one is a real shame because I as I understand it they only just got unraced yesterday so I mean at least they could get to enjoy their new life so look it 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 yucka mountain in Nevada 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 [Music] Video located about 100 miles Northwest of Las Vegas yucka 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 that's right the best place to put nuclear waste is in a hole deep underground much like Felicity wait wait if she's not there where is she oh Jesus Christ me just get the out of here it's all right it's okay I'm fine it's fine the point is so yucka mountain is our permanent storage site so the problem is solved right well no because while the site has been deemed safe and the people in the immediate area NY 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 yaka 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 leave it on site where it is leave it where it is and drycast storage containers if you were smart what you would do is uh leave this leave it where it is if you're smart what you would do who 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 but here here is the truth the scientific consensus for decades has been that leaving it where it is is a really bad idea the shuted power plant at Sant an offre 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 yucka is the best place to store our growing supply of radioactive garbage maybe it's not I am not a nuclear scientist I just have the face of one and and our 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 [Music] 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 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 NBC News [Music] presents danger radioactive waste 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 Hamford 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 which is still good although I did prefer our al alligator I liked it when he went but but the most chilling moment in that documentary might might be the one where they sit down with someone in authority and demand to know exactly when this will be fixed when you ask when the problem will be solved you get answers like this what's the realistic timetable 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 exactly nuclear waste is a problem that 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 Val Jean Cube and one day I shall defeat you and at the end of that special remember 40 years ago the correspondent delivers this special message 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 but with nuclear waste when the crisis comes it will be too late and that was from four decad decades ago we have 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 a house with no toilet absolutely full of and now this and now some of the actual responses from potential jurors excused from The martinelly Trial I'm aware of the defendant and I hate him no no no no by the time I came in and sat down and he turned around I felt immediately I was biased he kind of looks like a dick when I walked in here today I looked at him and in my head that's a snake not knowing who he was I just walked in and looked right at him and that's a snake I think he's a greedy little man you'd have to convince me he was innocent rather than guilty the only thing I'd be impartial about is what prison this guy goes to is he stupid or greedy I can't understand he disrespected the wuang clan wuang Clan Ain't Nothing To that's our show we're off for the next couple of weeks back September the 10th thanks for watching good night w [Applause]