i'm also pleased to be at the table today with christine svinicki. if confirmed, i look forward to working with commissioner svinicki and others. they are all talented individuals engaged in the high calling of public service. and i look forward to forging a collegial relationship with them if confirmed. over the last week and a half, i have had the opportunity to meet some of the talented staff of the nrc who have provided me with a number of briefings on some of the important issues before the nrc. while i was aware of the staff's reputation, these briefings have reinforced my observations about both the quality of the nrc staff and their level of commitment to the mission of the commission. that boils down to a simple concept, protecting the safety of the american people and the environment. the nrc's main mission is to protect public health and safety, promote common defense and security, and protect the environment. and my background has prepared me for all of these mission areas. my background as a scientist and public policy scholar, we are tra

alison macfarlane and renomination of christine svinicki to the nrc. nuclear energy has been critical to meeting our energy needs and it is an emissions free energy source that provides one fifth of america's electricity. my state of new jersey, our four nuclear power reactors provide the state with more than half of its electricity. but as we saw in japan last year, there are also many reasons to be cautious. in order to operate plants safely, the united states must have an effective policy for disposing and storing spent nuclear fuel. right now, most nuclear power plants store more than 1,000 tons of nuclear waste with and spent fuel pools on sight. it's not a sustainable situation. nuclear waste is nuclear waste stored on-site at our four nuclear reactors, and some is in dry cast storage. but most is in spent fuel pools which rely on a steady supply of water and electricity. in japan when the tsunami knocked the power out, we saw rescue workers desperately spraying water from fire hoses into the spent fuel pools. more than half a year later, there a

christine for seven years, time for me to know what an impressive person she is. she was born and raised in jackson, michigan, a mid sized town in the southern part of the state. her grandfather svinicki came to work in the iron mines of michigan. she's the youngest of seven children. her father was an army veteran of world war ii, although her father never spoke about his war experience experiences as is so often the case. she and her siblings were moved to learn after his death, he had two with bronze stars which he never talked. after the war, amol was the first of his family to go to college, attending the illinois institute of technology, in chicago studying architecture. she was raised to understand that her parents valued education, above all else. so although she lost both of her parents to illness by the time she was 20, she knew that they would want her to finish her college degree, which she did, graduating from the university of member misch with a bachelor of science and nuclear engineering appropriately. since then, christine has been a true public sefb ant applying her many talents to the nation she loves so dearly. approaching now three decades of public service. after