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host sam shad a no holds barred political forum. now from the "nevada newsmakers" broadcast headquarters, here is sam shad. >> back on "nevada newsmakers," we are pleased to welcome for the first time to the program, john scire, adjunct faculty political science at unr. job wrong. >> thank you very much. program, sir. one thing senator reid was pleased about there was no monnethere for yucca mountain. at this point in time, do we presume that as repository for nuclear waste that yucca mountain is truly dead? there may be other uses down the road, but reality this is dead. >> the reality is it is on hold, not dead. and what i've advocated for year, it not be used for storage until waste is reprocessed. if you reprocess nuclear waste, you reduce volume of storage down to about 5% of the total.

the nuclear waste because it is 104 sites around the country, target for terrorists. >> what way would they be able to use this for terrorism? >> you got above ground storage of nuclear waste casks, they are supposed to be able to withstand explosion. for example, within 15 miles of washington, d.c., nuclear power plant on chesapeake bay that has nuclear waste, not buried deep underground, which is what yucca mountain would do, but access by 747 loaded with terrorists. i think the nuclear waste thing in the time of terrorism we have now is a security issue. but fthey reprocess the nuclear waste, they can use the fuel that they get out, the dangerous fuel used as nuclear weapon can be mixed into the regular fuel that goes into nuclear power plants and burned up. >> are we still seeing reprocessing going on in europe?

on in france and going on in russia and we used to reprocess and jimmy carter killed it off because of potential, you have weapons grade plutonium, that is a securities issue. we have plutonium all over the country, nuclear weapons. >> do you think once obama administration is gone, do you think with chuck shumer becoming minority majority leader, whatever he may be and paul ryan, unless it is hillary clinton, the odds are we will see something happen with yucca mountain? >> there are senators from many states with nuclear waste stored near their city that want it out of there. the government walked away from studying other sites many years ago. the only site thoroughly evaluated has been yucca mountain. >> senator reid talks about other things being discussed regarding nuclear wastes, do you

>> i do not know. i agree with a lot of what senator reid has done. i disagree with yucca mountain. in terms of a national perspective, it is a security issue, but also an economic issue it's a climate change issue. we shut down nuclear power plants, they produce no co2. >> i know, great irony to this. then again, you look at things like fukushooishgs maima and it scares the population. many years turn chernobyl, it scares people. >> the potential of fukushima, shouldn't build fault at sea level, i guess. >> not only that, it seems as though the japanese government was just completely irresponsible in management of the site. >> absolutely >> and the follow-up. >> absolutely. >> that begs the question.

understand the benefits of nuclear power. it seems we've been wreckless on the other side of it, the public has every right to be terrified. >>the public has a right to be cautious about it. when you think about where the nuclear power plants are, in the middle of nowhere, is one thing, there are nuclear power plants near new york city, washington, d.c., near urban areas. >> san diego. >> san onofre, i was in the marine corps and used to guard san onofre. >> it is being shut down now. >> it should be. >> because of the age of the facility. where is the research going on in terms of nuclear power? >> going forward, research being done in universities around the world. i can't give you specific one, no, there is new emerging nuclear power solutions besides the boiling water reactor we have now. >> for example?

with lithium and there's fusion reactors that they played with engineering scale, but not industrial scale yet. those sorts of things. i'm not an expert on that. >> do you believe companies like ge are still moving forward with nuclear power? other places far from the u.s.? >> i think ge profitability is not coming from nuclear power, but gas turbines to replace plants. if they can continue toward nuclear power, they will. we talked about reprocessing, they have been reprocessing nuclear waste at idaho national labs for years, the metallic rods that come out of nuclear submarines and carriers are reprocessed at idaho national lab, it is different type of reactors. >> when you heard the story that came out of southern nevada, the eco-lab site where they had some kind of reggients there, did that concern you that would cause problems again in terms of

>> i think that any stories about leakage of anything radioactive does cause concern, but i'm not for the taking yucca mountain and gather up the rods from all over the country and stick them in there. i think they need to be reprocessed and volume reduced and they should be looking at other sites. here is why. how many nuclear power plants on the west coast? i think four left, maybe. vast majority of them are east of the mississippi river and i think about where i grew up in maryland, pennsylvania and virginia, you have old abandoned coal mines going back 200 years there. there has to be places to reprocess it. otherwise you ship massive amount of stuff across the united states to nevada. i think focusing on nevada as only storage site was definitely bad politics. >> well, maybe it was good politics at the time, turns out

>> do you think there is any place saying at this point in time, we will be willing to be the place nuclear reprocessing, nuclear waste sites -- >> not that i'm aware of. >> let's take a break. more on this topic when we come back. >> 12th annual "nevada newsmakers" teen edition is brought to you by pro group management, the nevada trucking association, the nevada builders

nevada and the >> closed captioning of "nevada newsmakers" is brought to you by the nevada trucking association, trucking moves america forward. >> now back to "nevada newsmakers" with sam shad. >> back on "nevada newsmakers," we continue our conversation with john scire, he is adjunct faculty political science at unr. so you know, one thing you deal with is what is going on in the world.

again again. shi shiate verse s sunni, saudi arabia takes stand in this cleric, other countries are lining up against them. where do you see this going and is this in reality a response to the price of oil in terms of saudi arabia government does not have enough money to keep the population happy by giving them money because they used up a fifth of reserves in the last year and do you think that this sunni shiite fight is there to replace that? >> i believe that there is several factors. the first thing that happened was in 2011, the arab spring. our president was urging democracy on a lot of middle east countries that may not have been ready for it. saudi arabia was arch enemy in terms of the arab spring.

religious organizations the counter forces to arab spring. saudi arabia sent troops to bahrain when bahrain was demanding more freedom, democracy, as the cleric that was just executed was demanding. and so saudi arabia was offended by obama's pushing of democracy. that is the beginning step, now the thing with iran and having negotiated denuclearization of iran and bringing them back into the world and getting rid of the sanctions, that absolutely upset the saudis, they have more competition selling oil, if for no other reason and they wor beiran attacking saudi arabia. so i think saudi arabia in this decided they needed to -- there is democracy thing which they

anything to pay back, if you will, obama's urging of democracy, i think they would do it. but the saudi religious sect of the sunni religion is conservative and provide money to many causes around the world. built mosques preaching conservative islam. >> where osama bin laden came from. >> exactly. bin laden crashed the planes, he didn't, his guy dids it, because of our support of the kingdom of saudi arabia. that government,which he found aggressive. saudi arabia is partially responsible, i think for 9/11, our support of them. >> no disagreement there. we already have proxy wars between saudi arabia and iran. >> right. >> it is not like that is not going on. do you see likelihood of iran actually attacking saudi arabia?

unlikely, as long as iran thinks we will support saudi arabia. saudi arabia flies planes, uses weapons, etc, it is clear to kingdom of saudi arabia, the king and princes that obama is moving away from the middle east and the united states, i believe statistics are total amount of oil that we consume in october of last year, came from saudi arabia, less than 6% of our total consumption of oil, the whole persian gulf was only 9%. we don't need their oil anymore, we can walk away and when you look at our budget and the wars we fought there since 2001, a lot of those wars have to do course. whose side is saudi on? >> there is two sides, kingdom the government and rest of the population. >> that is right. >> they are not the same thing.

was part of demonstrations for more democracy, he's not anti-sunni, he's saudi. he is saudi of shia belief. he wants shias and saudis to work together. he was in bahrain and eastern provence of saudi arabia. >> when you say, we have a minute left, you say we're not buying that much oil from saudi arabia and middle east in general, but really oil is a world commodity. >> absolutely. >> everything goes into the pot and gets withdrawn from the pot. >> we don't have to buy it. here is the thing most people don't understand. our total import of oil, right now three million barrels per day in october came from canada, two million barrels a day from mexico, venezuela and other parts of central and south america. so we don't need to be importing oil from middle east. china needs to have it. let china do the peace keeping then. you know, they need it, they can

>> that is a topic for another day. thank you for being here. please come back, fascinating discussion. >> it was a pleasure. i enjoy your show. >> thank you. we'll be right back. >> "nevada newsmakers" is brought to you in part by the

pro group management, and the >> this is "nevada newsmakers." >> back on "nevada newsmakers," we have great power pundit panel as always, dan mason is here, program director kkoh at 3 o'clock in the afternoon monday through friday and he is mad dog mason. >> happy new year, sam. >> great to have you here. >> elisa cafferata, lobbyist with planned parenthood and fred lokken professor of political science truckee meadows community college. let us start with president's executive order for new gun control measures. >> good public relations in the scheme of things, it will not really change a darn thing. most americans seem to be okay

he's going forward with whatever he can accomplish, but in the end not going to prevent san bernardino or anything like it. something. >> elisa. >> planned parenthood, we've never had a position on laws that deal with guns and background checks and after the incident in colorado springs, of course, we have taken a position. i do think the universal background checks, closing the loophole at gun shows, would have prevented the situation in colorado springs and it is the question that is on the ballot in nevada. and so, obviously a huge, huge question in nevada with our early caucus. >> one of the things that is fascinating to me about, any time we have gun control measures, this has been go og through the entire obama presidency, gun sales are through the roof. >> 100 million guns in american society during the presidency of barack obama.

today, so whatever any president does, republican or democrat, that genie is out of the bottle. i think there is real frustration, we seem helpless to be able to deal with this senseless violence, i think a lot of americans will feel comfortable with the president's action, even though it is executive order, i think we should wonder why the government does not sit down and reflect on why as society we have these violent actions that occur and find what the solutions are going to be, if improved mental health rather than gun control. this is not going to go away, only getting worse and frankly have to do something. >> you know, for somebody like me, doesn't own a gun, no gun in my house, except a pellet gun, my wife likes. >> be careful. >> she's never aimed it at me, i'm happy to say. fred points out 400 million guns, what astonishs me and i said on the program before, more often.

in this country and sadly mental health is an issue and there are crazy people out there. it only shocks me that it doesn't happen more often. >> we spend a lot of time talking about the mass shooting incidents as we should, we don't spend enough time talking about what is happening in the intercities and chicago is a great example. gangs, drug lords, thugs, whatever you want to call them. they are shooting people every single day, in large volume in the cities. while we talk about the mass shootings, i understand that the larger problem is this is going on all the time in every city across america. >> well, the "we" who talk about it would be the media, although it is interesting, the portrayal of gun violence really in nevada, you know, women are most likely to be killed by an intimate partner with a gun. and so the real place that the violence is happening is in homes and domestic violence

at media, you will get colored views of what kind of violence is happening. >> why do you think that is? >> well, media, maybe part of the process is to sell papers and sell ads and so then we now have media that has narrative story, so whatever fits into the narrative, whether it's thugs in big cities or whatever the narrative is, then that's the story that gets told. >> give us a view of that, fred. you have two perspectives there. >> i was just thinking of other things, i mean, it's unresolvable, in my view, we have something that is so in our dna in our nation, our definition of entertainment is violence, we don't care if it is violence against women or intercity violence. we get some odd adrenalin kick from watching it. our video games -- >> you know what, though, the

were a child watching cartoons, cartoons are incredibly violent. cartoons we grew up on in the disney era in the '50s and '60s, they were violent, it didn't mean you were going to be roadrunner and zoom off the cliff. >> i know, odd tipping point, people are acting out and of course we have some of the worst mental health support in this country, we allow people who the streets. i agree, we're shocked we're not seeing far more violence. >> that is called budget cuts. >> quickly, we have less than a minute left. the situation in oregon is fascinating because at this point the federal government has gone hands-off, leave it to the sheriff, and all the neighbors are saying we want no part of this, the hannons have gone to jail, quick response.

point of any of it is, just don't. >> right. again, it's, you know, if the folks were different color and they were occupying a federal building, i think the media story would be very different. so -- >> we'll be right back. >> the 12th annual "nevada newsmakers" teen edition is brought to you by pro group management, the nevada trucking association, the nevada builders

of nevada and the el >> next broadcast, reid hamilton