into the discussion and increase their participation? >> thanks for the question, senator. i am very dedicated to hearing all sides and all points of view on all of these topics. and my experience as a commissioner with the blue ribbon commission was that we were most successful when everybody felt that they were heard. >> one more question, dr. m mcfarla mcfarlane. you remember the president's blue ribbon commission. they made a number of proposals that would require transporting significant amounts of nuclear waste across the country. what steps might be taken to protect the communities that live near the railroads and the highways where nuclear waste will be transported? >> wow. that's a long answer to your question. there are many steps that could be taken. and the blue ribbon commission did specifically look at the issue of transportation and relook at the issue of transportation and suggest that there's actually a lot of work that can be done now because there's a lot of the issues that

have to do with rail -- >> it can be transported safely in your -- >> yes, yes, absolutely. and they are in many other countries. >> can i ask if you would put something in writing about that? >> sure. >> for us? because i'm very interested in us. now the votes have started. we call on senator bozeman. >> thank you, madam chair. thank both of you for being here. we appreciate your willingness to serve, dr. mcfarlane, and we also appreciate your service, commissioner, and your willingness to get back into this. dr. mcfarlane, the question's come up about trying to get our safety issues resolved in five years. and we're all part of the bureaucracy up here. what do you see as some of the pitfalls in actually getting that done? i assume that you're committed to doing that in five years. but what's lurking out there that you see that might be a problem? i've had road projects that have taken longer than that to get approval. >> certainly.

thank you for the question, senator. i'm still learning exactly all of the different aspects of what the nrc is planning to do and has requested of the licensees. i understand that it will take two outages to go through and fulfill the orders that have been issued. these outages occur every 18 to 24 months and that's part of this five-year time frame. the first outage to try to understand, especially with placing vents, where they could be placed, how they would be done, and the second outage is actually doing it. so that's part of it. so those are some of the issues. >> okay. the former chairman used tactics like simply not voting or delaying votes on, oh, decisions with licensing and things for plants. can you assure us that you won't use those kind of tactics?

>> i -- certainly. >> i yield back. >> thank you. obviously we've had many lessons learned because of the fukushima accident. two things i'm particularly concerned for new york i'd like your thoughts on. first, in the area of exemptions, license amendments, renewals and waivers, given that we give licenses for up to 20 years, given that many waivers and exemptions have been given, and given the technologies improving very rapidly, have you given any consideration to relooking at these current rules and guidelines in terms of timing? because i think given what we've learned from fukushima, we may want to have license renewals have shorter time periods, we may want to create a mechanism whereby waivers can be relooked at given what we've learned. second, with new york specifically, we have india point.

i know, dr. mcfarlane, you have some expertise in geology. do you plan to look at things like potentially active fault lines, what the risks are, what can be done to protect these existing sites? and then last, also highly relevant to the new york issue, have you given consideration to relooking at issues of evacuation for large-scale populations, making sure that there is such a plan for that kind of large evacuation, if there is some damage or emergency situation? >> thank you for the question, senator. in terms of license renewals, et cetera, i think that is very important to periodically review lessons learned from the process, and i believe that the nuclear regulatory commission has done this and is doing this in this case. in terms of india point and assessing seismic risks, there has been a new seismic hazard

analysis that the u.s. geologic survey has issued. i think it's important for all reactors to go and assess the new analysis. and i would certainly be interested in following that issue vis-a-vis reactors and specifically with india point in mine. then in terms of looking at the issues around evacuating people, thinking about india point, i do believe that under the activities that the nrc is undertaking regarding the fukushima accident, that they are reconsidering the emergency planning zones and looking at that as well. and i would definitely follow that up as well. >> senator, i don't have too much to add to what dr. mcfarlane said except that as a specific action post-fukushima, all nuclear power plants including india point have been ordered to do a seismic re-evaluation. so that has already been -- that requirement has been imposed by the commission.

and again, as dr. mcfarlane said, the evacuation and emergency planning issues are also under re-evaluation by the nrc staff. >> thank you, senator. i'm going to close with a couple of points and rush off. there is something i need to do in order to make sure that these nominations can be forward. would you both be ready to answer these questions? do you agree if confirmed to appear before this committee or designated members of this committee and other appropriate committees of the congress and provide information subject to appropriate and necessary security protection with respect to your responsibilities, answer yes or. >> yes. >> yes. >> do you agree tone sure the testimony, briefings, documents, electronic and other forms of communication or information -- of information are provided to this committee and its staff and other appropriate committees in a timely manner? >> yes. >> yes. >> last, do you know of any matters which you may or may not

have disclosed that might place you in any conflict of interest if you are confirmed? >> no. >> no. >> all right. record will show those answers. senators' questions are due at noon tomorrow, nominees' answers are due monday at noon, we're trying to move this forward. so my couple of last parting questions are, i asked my staff to put together a list of the -- what is this nuclear waste contain? now, chairman, you're expert at this and chairman to be, and commissioner, i know you're an expert at this too. so i looked at some of the half-lives here and they said, well, neptunium-27 has a half-of 2.1 million years. plutonium-239 has a half-of 24,100 years. would you agree with this and do you agree that when you're dealing with this waste, it is very, very serious business? commissioner? >> yes, chairman.

>> yes, of course. >> all right. and my last -- i have two more points. after the three mile island accident, the nrc chairman's duties were really changed. and they were strengthened. and the chairman became not only known as the chairman but the principal executive officer of the commission who directs, and i quote, the day-to-day operation of the agency and the nrc's response to nuclear emergencies. are you aware of this law? >> yes, chairman. >> okay. and will you respect the role of the chairman? >> yes, i will. >> even when she may not agree with you? >> yes, absolutely. >> and when she does agree with you? >> yes. >> i would ask our home future chairman, if reconfirmed, do you understand this authority and will you exercise it if necessary? >> absolutely. >> because i think that's key. there was such confusion over that after fukushima and the arguments went back and forth. and the last point is, i'm

really glad senator inhofe put page 33 of commissioner fin thatky's answers about yucca into the record. senator boxer, so you didn't work directly on yucca? answer, i did not. i don't believe that's true. when i don't vote you, commissioner, it's because i have reasons that go with my view of your candor or lack of same. and also the record in terms of safety. i hope and i truly pray that this commission, with your leadership and yours, can get off on a different -- in a different direction. we can have the deepest divisions of opinion. this is america. that's what we're known for. they don't agree on things but we have decent relationships with each other. and i just really want to underscore that. as one day we had all the commissioners here and the chairman and i said, you should

all go out after work and have a beer, soda, something. and, you know, they all looked at me like, what planet was i on for that to even be possible? that's got to be possible. it could be tea or coffee. could be anything. but you get my point. and so dr. mcfarlane, you're walking into a tough situation. but honestly, after meeting with you and watching you here today, i sense in you the ability to bring people together. and i know as a mom myself, you've got to do that a lot around the house. as well as in the workplace. so i think you're going to bring a different touch. i think it's necessary. and i would say, commissioner svinicki, i hope as a long time member of this commission, and despite my opposition, i know that you're going to be confirmed to this. i hope you will do your best to

help our new chairman find her way. and if there's disagreement, let's not make it personal, let's not make it some kind of vendetta one to the other. let's just bring those disagreements out to the fore, and recognize that's how this country is. we are great because we allow that debate. we certainly do it here in the senate. and we can go out for a cup of coffee afterwards. so i hope that will happen. i am very, very pleased that you're both here today, that we had such an important hearing, that it was so civil. and i'm just feeling good today and i'll feel even better when we get the highway bill done. thank you very much. up next on c-span3, a summit

on jobs and the economy from the u.s. chamber of commerce. then a senate hearing on a bill to prohibit employment discrimination because of sexual orientation. >> this week the leveson inquiry has been continuing its investigation of the relationship between the british media and politicians. at 5:00 a.m. eastern, british prime minister david cameron goes before the commission. earlier this month, the prime minister's former aide, andy colson, was charged with perjury in a phone hacking court case. you can see live coverage on c-span 2. >> one of the quotes from a house staffer i thought was inspiring. once you realize the magnitude of difference you can make in public life, everything else will pale in comparison. >> so i think it was best put this week when brian kamoy said

a quote, those who think they're crazy enough to change the world are the ones that actually do. >> mr. bryan, the same man christopher was talking about, said, choose carefully and execute relentlessly. that meant a lot to me because too many times we find ourselves taking too many things on and not really focusing on that one thing that should be our top priority. >> every year the u.s. senate youth program brings students to washington for a week of government and leadership education. this year brian kamoie made an impact. he's a senior director on the white house national security staff. >> i started with a mindset of, what is it like to be them? now that i'm in this role, what could i share with them that either i wish i had known along the way or that they will remember when they leave washington week, which as you've mentioned is a very intense, rapid-fire experience? so if you leave a few key encouraging messages at a time where you know it's very easy to be cynical about politics, it's

a good thing to encourage young people to pursue public service. >> more with bryan kamoie sunday at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span. next, the u.s. chamber of commerce hosts a forum on jobs and the economy. coming up, a panel discussion on how specific states are doing in the current economy. later, we'll also hear from a number of state governors. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. we're going to talk a little bit about sort of the big picture and then a little bit about what some of the takeaways were. you know, i'm not one to say that the private sector's doing great. but i have to say that america really is in a very strong position. if you go and you travel around the world and work in other

countries you realize how incredibly strong the united states really is. and what our opportunities are going to be in the future. so i think the key thing is for states and for communities is, you know, you can hear all the new normal, you can't do this, you can't do that. but the reality is a lot of states and communities are already overcoming these problems and they're really taking advantage of some of these bigger friend trends that we see as very, very positive for the u.s. the first one -- let's see if we can get there. is we take a look at what's going on in agriculture. you know, agriculture, people don't think of it as an important industry. but mostly people around the world need to eat. and the fact of the matter is we now have a growing number of consumers in developing countries who are demanding higher and higher quality food. as you can see, american agricultural exports are going quite high. we have the largest amount of good, arable land of any country

in the world and our ag sector is without question the most advanced in the world. and this drives a lot of employment and food processing. actually, if you look at some of the agriculturally-based states they have very, very strong economies. so i think this is one of the key things that i think the u.s. economy can really perform and stay ahead on in the years to come. remember, there's going to be a lot of people. you take a country like china which has a very large population, does not have the agricultural capacity to feed that population at the level which they are expecting. i think there's an enormous opportunity for us throughout the world. probably the biggest game-changer right now is happening with natural gas and oil production. i think if there's any critical issue in this election that people should be thinking about is how do we take advantage of the fact that the united states has now really resurged as a major energy producer? i've spent time in places like

louisiana and texas where you can see how jobs are being created. a very important thing about u.s. energy production is it produces about 200,000, 250,000 jobs in the last decade, but they're very high-paying jobs. and what's very critical in this era in which we're worried about upward mobility, there are many good blue collar jobs. you can get a job in oil refinery or in the oil field at $80,000, $90,000 a year, you don't have to have gone to stanford to get it. this is extraordinarily important. the other thing is as we begin to become a more energy self-sufficient country, in some areas exporting, particularly natural gas, we cut about half our trade deficit away. so anyone who's really interested in the long-term future of this country has got to be looking at oil, natural gas, as a driver in the next 10 to 20 years. and you can also see it as you

look in the report and you see those states that have had the strongest gdp growth, many of them are in the energy belt. particularly the areas between texas and north dakota. but that's beginning to spread to parts of the midwest. and i think there's going to be a real game changer and a great opportunity for a lot of states. the other thing that's very related to this is manufacturing. the shale boom alone by some estimates will create somewhere about 1 million to 2 million jobs. there are all sorts of support services. i've been in parts of ohio, for instance, where they're now opening up steel mills in places that steel mills were closing for the last 40 or 50 years. you have tremendous growth now beginning to take place. the industrial resurgence is also driving something that people don't generally pay attention to, which is when we look at stem jobs -- science,

technology, engineering, mathematics-related jobs -- jobs that generally pay pretty well. what we find is those states that have strong manufacturing growth also have the strongest s.t.e.m. growth. the idea that high-tech is guys with hoodies, with somewhat bogus stock offerings, is really not the future of the high-tech economy. the genius of america is the fact that we have this ability to do things that had been done traditionally, now we do it differently and we do it better. whether agriculture or energy. so when we take a look at s.t.e.m. job growth, some of the fastest growth and some of the biggest numbers are actually in states like michigan. we have to understand the auto industry today, manufacturing today, energy today, agriculture today, aerospace today, much more high-tech oriented, lots of great opportunities. and driving those kinds of jobs is going to create the kind of high-tech future that is much broader-based than the high-tech

future that you have in, let's say, if you just have a bunch of software companies. that's great that the the software companies -- what you really want is a base, an industrial base, that will deed those goods and services and be a more steady, long-term player. the last big advantage we have in the united states is really the fact that we still make babies. probably our best product. although as anyone who's a party -- parent knows is they can be a pain in the butt too. the fact is the united states is the only major industrial country in the world that is now producing anything close to what we call replacement rate. in other words, 2.1 kids. i know no one's ever had a .1 kid. basically the way it works out mathematically, 2.1. right now our birth rate is tetering a little bit down because of the recession but for lots of reasons, americans still have kids. a lot of it has to do with we

have space, we still have single-family homes though some don't think we should. we have a little stronger belief in religion. for whatever reason, people who are religious tend to have kids more than people who aren't. it has really been one of the great positives of this country. immigrants also have more children than native-born. what this means over the long-term is something that's going to be important fiscally, that is, the number of retirees relative to the people who are working. down the road, countries like japan and germany are going to be in a situation where they're going to have, in some cases, more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. by 2030, that's where singapore's going to be. that's where spain's going to be. what you have is a system which is almost impossible to support the needs of the elderly. as you can see in this chart,

the u.s., although we are ageing, is not aging nearly as rapidly as many of our competitors. but this leads us to one last thing, which is both a great blessing and a great challenge. and this is really what i think this job summit is all about. that is really the question of, the united states is going to have an expanding workforce. we have children. the children one of these days are going to move out of the house. but the fact of the matter is, we have children. that means those children are going to have -- they're innovative and sometimes crazy ideas, sometimes good ideas, but they're going to have new ideas. japan which is rapidly aging, very hard to generate new ideas. where are you going to have a future market? you look at countries like germany and japan. part of their problem is they have no growth in their domestic market. so it's very hard to stimulate their economies internally. so the united states is going to have between 2000 and 2050, 30%

growth in the working-age population. japan, you're talking close to 40% decline. korea, 30% decline. eu, 21% decline. china is going to be about a 10% decline. but what you're going to have is societies that are aging extremely rapidly. including some of the developing countries. and what we have in america is this great wealth, which is our children. and it is our job, our generation's job, talking as a boomer, to be able to drive the economic growth so that our children not only end up staying around the house playing video games, but actually can contribute to the future greatness of the country. so i just hope that we can focus much more on the question of jobs, because that really is the legacy that we need to leave our kids. >> this is joel's last light on the labor force growth that he was talking about.

i'd like to take a quick look at some of the highlights of the 2012 enterprising states study. we looked at five major policy areas. entrepreneurship and innovation, infrastructure, talent pipeline, taxes and regulation, and exports and international trade. and what i'll do is talk about some of the recent developments in each of those. and i'd like to begin by talking about a little bit of the difference between last year and this year. in 2011, this was really a year where there were a lot of hard choices made. ways to bring spending under control and ways to modernize and reform government. it was this year when the governors and the states really began to crystallize their agendas for action. so we found it very interesting as we looked at what was happening this year as to what was going on. in a lot of states it was ways to accuracy the disadvantages and their debt.

leverage existing, natural resources, and industry strengths. then finally, how do we approve our enterprise-friendly environments? these are kind of the major themes of the study this year. the first one that i'd like to talk about is taxes and regulation, and particularly dirt busting. delays on certain deregulation and taxes. this year we found some of the states had moratoria on new rules and regulations. new ways of fast-tracking permitting. ways to eliminate rules, regulations and statutes that are job-killing. impact statements for newly proposed rules and regulations. then one-stop offices for government services. i'd like to highlight a few of the things with the states represented here today. in utah, for example, the cabinet reviews all business regulations. and either modified or eliminated 368 of them.

in wisconsin, all new rules and regulations were subject to cost/benefit and impact analyses related to jobs. governor walker was recognized by the institute for legal confirm of the chamber this year for litigation reform in that state. on the tax and regulatory front, we also see that these are used as incentives in some fashion. so we saw a lot of tax credits for investors in startup and expanding businesses. tax credits for hiring employees. and then there was a lot of targeting of investments and tax credits in particular industries. for example, data centers, aerospace, and some of the other manufacturing sectors. we also saw that regulatory environments were tailored for specific industries. and i'll talk about some of those. but we saw those in financial energy and vehicles. in california, for example, they're very strong on targeting

zero-emission vehicles. in nebraska and delaware this year, personal income -- personal income tax relief was provided. in nebraska there was tax incentives for data centers. in utah, they have a very interesting industrial banking regime that really has contributed to driving financial services sector growth in that state. tax and regulatory system kind of the dirt-bussing and the incentives and part of it as well. on the infrastructure side, we saw increased expansion of access to broadband targeting and incentivizing of specialized infrastructure, data centers being one of those. grid systems for energy and power distribution. for states where ports and airports are important, and they are important in all states but places that have these were making improvements across the

board. some states established state infrastructure banks and funds. and then i'd say across the board there was a lot of encouragement of public and private partnerships. build nebraska for example will generate $60 million to $70 million per year for infrastructure investments. in delaware they have a new jobs infrastructure fund that is capitalized at $55 million. so those are a couple of examples of what's going on in that area. skilled workforce is very important for economic growth and job creation, of course. we saw more and more industry-specific programs at colleges and universities. one that sticks out i think is in washington state where they've created programs at 11 universities and colleges related to aerospace skills development. we've -- s.t.e.m. initiatives at

both secondary and post-secondary level. an increased emphasis on middle skill jobs that require less than a four-year degree. and then finally, a number of internship programs that have really been successful. in delaware, for example, they have a s.t.e.m. council and a blue collar training program which is directed at providing skills across the board. wisconsin wins as a unique program that connects businesses directly with the unemployed. we see a lot of those kinds of programs across the states as well. exports and international trade, i think this year we've seen a lot more emphasis by the governors as economic diplomats. their agencies are identifying high-potential foreign markets. the governors are traveling there, making a pitch. they're connecting with partners abroad. they're also identifying