everyone topped out the weather in coats with their hair flapping in the wind. i guess somebody thought it would be a good idea to get married the second weekend in april in the sierra. >> there are so many things you worry about on your wedding day that if it's just cold, you can just focus on the survival. and wonderful things like that. best of luck to the bride and groom. you, for joining us and we hope you will be back tonight at 11:00. janelle wang: this is an nbc bay area news special. we investigate: a fleet of retired cars bought with taxpayer money finally being moved to get auctioned off after sitting in a south bay parking lot for four years. eugene bradley: people have to hear about this from a news organization.

it's just--it's stunning. janelle: hundreds of female prison guards suing the state over how they were treated after they became pregnant. lia mckeown: there is no accommodation. there is no putting you anywhere. janelle: san francisco's millennium tower is now shored up and shouldn't lean any further to one side, but new tests show it might be sinking somewhere else instead. harry poulos: with all tall buildings, there is a tendency for the center to settle more than the edges. janelle: silicon valley labs using lasers to turn up the heat to 180 million degrees. steve wang: if we can produce abundant energy, that's how we're gonna change the world. janelle: is nuclear fusion the next gold rush? janelle: thank you for joining us. i'm janelle wang. we start this evening in the south bay with a fleet of public transit cars that remained parked in the same spot for years until we reported it. within a few weeks, this happened...

the cars are now being prepped for auction. nbc bay area investigative reporter candice nguyen first broke this story, and tonight shows us the transit agency's quick response. candice nguyen: i sat down with the chair of vta's board who's also a county supervisor. she tells me the board had no idea of these taxpayer-funded vehicles wasting away until they saw our investigation. she says changes are being made so this doesn't happen again. candice: after more than four years, santa clara valley transportation authority, or vta, is taking action on 95 retired paratransit priuses and vans that it left to depreciate in san jose parking lots since before the pandemic instead of selling them years ago while they were years younger. this month, our cameras were there as vta finally started moving the vehicles. vta board chairperson and county supervisor, cindy chavez, says

they're now being prepared for auction so vta can recoup some of the millions of public dollars it's spent on them. cindy chavez: i was not aware of the issue. i had a chance to watch your story, and that gave me an opportunity to have a conversation with the staff. so, thank for doing it. candice: the cars were used. most have more than 100,000 miles on them after driving around some of the south bay's most vulnerable riders--like zsa zsa taylor, a wheelchair-bound cancer patient who relies on the vta paratransit to get to work. zsa zsa taylor: that seems like a waste. they really should be selling these back. candice: but the problem with properly retiring these vehicles, vta said, was caused by staffing issues and the pandemic delaying the county service that handles the auction. chavez says she's concerned vta may have missed a window to sell the vehicles when the used-car market peaked. cindy: and our obligation is to get as much money back that, you

know, that we can 'cause those were public dollars that were spent. eugene: so, the fact that a news organization--people have to hear about this from a news organization. it's just--it's stunning. candice: eugene bradley with silicon valley transit users, a vta watchdog group, says the agency has more than missed a window to sell. it's compromised the cars. eugene: when you leave an entire fleet of decommissioned cars out in the elements, unprotected from anything, for four years, that's--the only people that i know that would buy that stuff would be scrap build--would be scrapyard people. candice: even more than wear and tear, we told you about thieves stealing catalytic converters from some of the abandoned priuses. eugene: it's just stunning. candice: moving forward, chavez says, she is speaking with vta staff about new processes to ensure the agency is reminded of when retired vehicles are ready for auction.

she's appreciative of whistleblowers who come forward, she says, and public transit riders who shared their concerns. female: i love public transit, and i am such an advocate for it. i want so much for it to work. cindy: we have to get better at what we do. when we make mistakes, we have to acknowledge those mistakes and then identify the path that we're gonna use to fix them. janelle: vta started advertising those 95 vehicles for auction in march. the actual auction is at the end of april. and if the cars don't sell, they'll go back into the auction process so the agency can try to get back some of that public money. more problems for the troubled millennium tower. it's been six months since the luxury high rise was fully supported to bedrock to stop it from sinking and leaning any further. and guess what? it appears to have worked. but nbc bay area investigative reporter jaxon van derbeken has learned while the high rise is no longer sinking to the side, new data shows it could be sinking in the middle instead.

jaxon van derbeken: here at the millennium tower, you can see the construction crews and scaffolding are all gone, and even the cracks that once marred the front of the high-rise are now gone. jaxon: no signs of the three-year effort to stabilize the millennium tower by supporting two sides with 18 piles sunk to bedrock. fix engineers had predicted once that was done, the tower's weight would shift on to the other sides and eventually right the tower by as much as 4 inches, but they now acknowledge that projection was overly optimistic, seeing the soil under the building is not acting as predicted. instead of sinking at the opposite edges and offsetting more of the tilt, the tower now appears to be sinking in the center. harry: with all tall buildings, there is a tendency--even though the foundation may be quite thick, there is a tendency for the center to settle more than the edges.

jaxon: harry poulos is an internationally recognized expert on tall-building foundations. he says the data suggests that even as the sides are not sinking as much as hoped, the tower is still settling at an overall rate of about a tenth of an inch a year. harry: a tenth of an inch is not that much, but it's not heading in the right direction, and that would be a little bit of a concern for the longer term. robert pyke: the overall situation is very complex. jaxon: geotechnical engineer, robert pyke says center sinking, known as dishing, can trigger cracking under the foundation. robert: that should've been obvious that there was a possibility of further increasing cracking and water intrusions into the foundation. jaxon: pyke says this buried wall under the opposite side of the foundation may be another hitch. engineers figured the wall would sink when more weight was shifted onto it and help right the building a bit, but so far, pike says, monitoring data shows the wall is holding fast. the designer of the fix project, ron hamburger, told us in a

statement, "the remainder of the building continues to settle as we always anticipated, resulting in tilt recovery, albeit at a slightly lower rate than modeling predicted." he added, "we believe the lower rate of settlement was because stress relief on the soils under the building has been more effective than originally forecast." as it stands, the tower is now tilting about an inch less than before, now leaning just under 29 inches at the northwest corner. jaxon van derbeken, nbc bay area news. janelle: up next, the race for cleaner and cheaper energy. these powerful lasers are creating temperatures hotter than the sun. how it could change how we power our world, we investigate.

janelle: it is no secret that burning oil, coal, and gas are polluting the earth and changing our climate. so, tech companies are now in a race to harness what's believed to be a cleaner and even cheaper form of energy. it could one day power everything--from high rises and homes to cars and airplanes. senior investigative reporter bigad shaban explains what it is and when we can expect to benefit. bigad shaban: inside an unassuming warehouse in berkeley, carl bass is hoping to change the world. carl bass: we would have virtually limitless power.

bigad: bass with his company, alpha ring, is building miniature nuclear reactors. carl: the first ones will fit on this table. bigad: small enough to store in a closet, but big enough to power entire neighborhoods. bigad: so, we're not talking about a massively large device. steve: no, we are not. bigad: steve wang oversees research and development at alpha ring and gave us a tour of one of the company's labs in monterey. steve: if we can produce abundant energy, that's how we're gonna change the world. female: three, two, one. bigad: alpha ring is working to create a totally different kind of energy source than what's currently fueling america's more than 50 nuclear power plants. those facilities rely on nuclear fission, where atoms are split apart to produce massive amounts of energy, but it can also emit harmful radiation. alpha ring's reactor doesn't utilize nuclear fission. it uses nuclear fusion. instead of splitting atoms, they're fused together to create bursts of energy.

fusion doesn't emit carbon or radioactive waste, and the materials needed to create the reaction are plentiful--found all throughout the world. carl: we really can produce energy at a fraction of the cost with almost none of the problems of the current energy infrastructure. bigad: this essentially would be a much cleaner way of powering our lives. carl: for almost everything we do. you can imagine a small reactor in a vehicle, certainly in a boat or a ship. almost everywhere where we need to use either heat or electricity, we could produce it differently and much more cleanly. bigad: for all the benefits, there is one major complication: no one has ever been able to turn nuclear fusion into a viable energy source. bigad: the only place fusion occurs regularly is among the stars, powering, most famously the sun, but on earth scientists believe we are the closest we've ever been to creating and sustaining that kind of power. john edwards: but not a matter of if, but when.

bigad: physicist john edwards invited us inside the lawrence livermore national laboratory, where earlier this month, government scientists managed to create a nuclear fusion reaction, their fifth over the past year, where the power produced measured more than what went in to jumpstart the ignition. john: if you think about, you've got a pile of wood and you know you can get energy out of the wood if only you can light the fire. and so, what we managed to do is show that we could actually light the fire in fusion fuel. bigad: that ignition was sparked by 192 lasers. john: see here, these are the laser beams. bigad: their aim: to replicate the sun's scorching heat. bigad: the lasers are inside these massive aluminum tubes, and together their beams are able to create temperatures topping 180 million degrees. that's six times hotter than the center of the sun. bigad: is there anything as hot as that in our solar system? john: only when we do another one. bigad: here in the lab? john: here at the lab, yep. bigad: actually relying on fusion power could still be

years, if not decades, away. even the most successful reaction here lasted less than a billionth of a second and barely produced enough energy to heat up two pots of coffee. the process needs to generate about a hundred times more energy to be considered commercially viable, and the frequency of reactions would have to increase exponentially, essentially running nonstop. bigad: so, you would need to go from about once a month to ten times a second. john: ten times a second, yep. bigad: private companies are hoping to speed up the innovation and are seeing a surge of investments--more than $6 billion last year. that's over a billion more than the year before. john: if we wanna do this relatively rapidly, it's gonna be critical that we would be partnering with the private sector. it's a consumer product. without private industry, i don't see how we get there. bigad: around the globe, there are over 40 companies currently experimenting with more than 20 different methods to figure out how to sustain nuclear fusion reactions.

ed morris: solving that problem would change life in a fundamental way. bigad: engineer ed morris is a berkeley professor and author on nuclear fusion. he says he's skeptical about eager tech companies touting scientific solutions to complicated problems that have remained unsolved for decades. ed: if anything sounds too good to be true, it probably is. bigad: you don't think the science is quite there yet. ed: sometimes it will never be there. some of these concepts are really bad, all right? others are passable. carl: so, this is closer to what the reactor will look like. bigad: alpha ring's process for producing fusion is considered unconventional, but the company says its science has led to more than 15 nuclear reactions. the energy generated each time has only been enough to power a light bulb overnight, but the company says some of its reactions have extended more than 19 hours. remember, at the nation's premier government lab in livermore, fusion has only lasted less than a fraction of

a second. carl: the accomplishment of this is just such a big deal. one of the important things when you make a claim like this, where many people will be skeptical, is that this will be able to be reproduced by others. bigad: to prove that, alpha ring plans to submit its findings to a slew of scientific journals for review. the company hopes independent researchers will eventually determine the technology really does have star power. with the investigative unit, i'm bigad shaban. janelle: coming up, risk your pregnancy or face a pay cut. we investigate the choice hundreds of california prison guards say they had to make when they got pregnant.

janelle: welcome back. hundreds of female prison guards have been fighting a lengthy legal battle against the california prison system. they say they were denied reasonable accommodations or lighter duties unless they took a pay cut during pregnancy. investigative reporter hilda gutierrez has the story.

hilda gutierrez: correctional officers across the state claimed they suffer miscarriages and lost wages as a result of a pregnancy accommodation policy that changed in 2015 without explanation. their lengthy legal fight might soon come to an end. lia: i've had punches thrown across my face, i've been hit, i've been kicked, stuff thrown at me. i've had feces thrown at me. hilda: as a correctional officer at the california medical facility in vacaville, a medium security men's state prison, lia mckeown says she expected those incidents, but not after she became pregnant. lia: i knew i was gonna have to continue to work. i had never seen anybody pregnant working there, or if they did, they were upstairs in payroll, or they were in the mail room. hilda: that was 2016. just a year prior, mccowen's employer, the california department of corrections and rehabilitation, had quietly replaced the policy that required them to provide light

duty accommodations to pregnant officers for reasons it refuses to explain. lia: there was no accommodation. there was no putting you anywhere. you would have to kind of, basically, figure out a way to go hide yourself. hilda: how did that make you feel? lia: awful, absolutely terrible. hilda: but she says she continued working 16-hour shifts while carrying a 15-pound work belt around her waist. lia: i would have inmates say like, "what are you doing? like, what--why are you still working on the line?" hilda: this was mckeown's second pregnancy, but her first under the new policy. she says she and her husband wanted a large family, and in 2018 she was pregnant again when she took part in an emergency cell entry, where she had to remove a heavy locker. lia: so, i moved it and pretty much, instantly, i felt pain in my back, which i thought i just kind of tweaked my back, but it

ended up--i ended up miscarrying. hilda: mckeown is one of nearly 300 female correctional officers suing the state department for discrimination, retaliation, and denial of pregnancy disability rights. arnold peter: it's a lawsuit about equality, of women in the workplace. hilda: arnold peter is mckeown's attorney. he says cdcr violated california law, adding that other prison systems and most law enforcement agencies provide accommodations for pregnant officers. arnold: we're asking for the same treatment that any other woman in the state of california would be entitled to. hilda: according to calhr data, since 2017, between 15% to 16% of cdcr's correctional officers have been women. cdcr's website shows the first female correctional officers were hired in the 1970s, and they claim to currently hire women at a higher rate than the national average. melissa glaude: so, i work in the mental health side of it and

have my entire career there. hilda: melissa glaude is also a correctional officer at the vacaville prison and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. she says she was 24-weeks pregnant when she was asked to do an emergency cell entry. melissa: and i refused and then went home. i emailed my doctor, like, as soon as i got out to the parking lot, and i let him know what had happened, and he took me off of work and put me on disability that same day. hilda: glaude says she only received 50% of her pay while she was on disability, but she considers herself one of the lucky ones since multiple plaintiffs claim they suffer miscarriages. melissa: sorry. it's just sad. i mean, i got to bring my babies home, but not everybody did. hilda: the state's civil rights department responsible for enforcing workplace discrimination laws also filed its own lawsuit, seeking a return to the pre-2015

pregnancy policy. facing lawsuits in a bill to address the issue in 2020, cdcr reverted to its pre-2015 policy, but not before mckeown suffered another incident while pregnant for the fourth time. lia: the inmate fought, and he fought us, he broke the threshold, he kicked, he punched, he did everything he could. hilda: her baby survived, but she hurt her back and couldn't work for three years. the california department of corrections and rehabilitation refused to talk with us, but in an email, told us a settlement to the class action lawsuit is in the works, and the proposed settlement will provide significant benefits to members of the settlement class and acknowledges that the underlying disputed policies have ended. arnold: they all understand they signed up to undertake a very dangerous job. that was their decision, they're are adults, they appreciate that. however, they did not sign up their children to be placed in

this situation. hilda: attorney arnold peter and his clients say they reached out to governor newsom's office, asking him to intervene since state prisons fall under his purview. that never happened. his office told us they don't typically weigh in on matters involving active litigation. the class action lawsuit has expanded to include other female staff of the prisons, an estimate of more than a thousand women who were pregnant between 2015 and 2020 under cdcr's prior policy. with the investigative unit, i'm hilda gutierrez. janelle: hilda, thank you. and we'll be right back.

janelle: some of our most impactful investigations come from you with your tips. if you have a story for our investigative unit, please give us a call at 888-996-tips. you can also go to our website, nbcbayarea.com/investigations. that's all the time we have tonight. i hope you enjoyed watching just some of our in-depth coverage. i'm janelle wang. on behalf of our entire team, thanks for watching nbc bay area, where we investigate.

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