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.

NARRATOR: They tormented him until he had a horrifying

accident and fell into a bag of nuclear waste.

Melvin became The Toxic Avenger,

the first superhero born out of nuclear waste.

-His face is so terrifying... -(SCREAMS)

NARRATOR: ...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, 'cause...

his face isn't really that terrifying. This is it.

I mean it's bad, but its-- it's so ugly,

it's almost cute again.

It's like-- it's like someone melted a candle shaped

-like a pug. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

But-- 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.

ANCHOR: 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 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 ten feet tall

or half a football field and 40 feet tall.

Or 20 football fields, one foot tall.

The point is, we have a lot of nuclear waste and it's very fun

-to play with. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

And look, that is just the waste from nuclear energy.

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.

One out of three Americas lives within 50 miles

of high level nuclear waste.

Some of which, like plutonium, is lethally dangerous,

and will be-- will be around for an incredibly long time.

NARRATOR: Even microscopic amounts of plutonium,

if ingested, are deadly.

One 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.

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

It takes ten half-lives for plutonium to become harmless

so that's 240,000 years.

A unit of time more commonly known as one English patient.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

And as any adult with an American girl doll collection

eventually finds out, if you wanna 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!"

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, CHEERS) -"She stares unblinking!"

And look,

I'm not the first person to make this point.

Look at this news report from 1990.

NARRATOR: 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 one critic,

"and forgotten the toilets."

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -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

while you and I both know that I will do that

'cause this is convenient to public transport,

and has both northern and eastern exposures.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

But 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 Two,

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. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Anyway, the-- the thing is,

we didn't really have a plan on 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...

MAN: They loaded the, uh,

radioactive waste and it was in barrels, 55 gallon barrels,

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. (CHUCKLES)

Really. 'Cause we dumped a lot of barrels out there.

-(AUDIENCE GASPS) -That is true.

We didn't just dump barrels of radioactive waste

in the ocean, we did it off the coast of New Jersey.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

That is so horrifying!

I'm surprised that Jersey Shore was the title of a lighthearted

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." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

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 waste

with machine guns!

That's 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!"

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Oh!

Well, 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 flaw.

WOMAN: 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 radioactive material.

(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

WOMAN: So that's probably not a great idea.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -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!

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Now, over the years, we have dumped nuclear waste all over

the country and in many places, there've been frightening leaks.

Take the Savannah River Site in South Carolina,

where waste from poorly-stored material leaked

into the ground water.

And just watch this alarmingly laid back man explain

the consequences of that.

MAN: There are radioactive alligators on the site.

(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

MAN: Radioactive materials are in the sediments.

-(ALLIGATOR HISSING) -(CLANGING)

MAN: It's gonna go up the food chain and...

there's gonna be radioactive alligators.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -Yeah.

Radioactive alligators!

They even have names,

Tritagator and Dioxinator,

after two of the wastes that poisoned 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,

(SCREAMS) "Holy Shit! A Fucking Radioactive Alligator!"

And, "Oh No, Fuck Me, There's Another One!

What Nightmare Hath God Wrought?"

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,

and people who live there have noticed some alarming trends.