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 ind

dr. mcfarlane. my home state of wyoming is an abundance of domestic uranium. permitting of these sites is met with a lot of bureaucratic delay and red tape. these sites, good-paying jobs, american jobs for folks in my states, other states where uranium is found. do you believe domestic uranium production is preferable to being dependent to importing foreign uranium? >> first of all i think wyoming is one of the most beautiful states in the union. that aside, the job again of the nuclear regulatory agency is to assure safety and security. not to opine on policy positions. but given that and my past views on things, certainly it's important for the united states to have as diverse a supply of energy as possible and to have as much domestic supply as possible as well. >> what assurances can you provide the commission that you'll not unduly delay commission decisions, ensure that all the perspectives and opinions of your colleagues are dealt with in a respectful and timely manner? >> i assure you wholeheartedly. >> commissioner, you've had a number of questions as

dr. mcfarlane is an academic and cleaning ailty. and i am proud to support her for this committee. the members of the committee will be as impressed by her professional, academic distinctions and qualifications for this profoundly important position. >> thank you, senator. senator sessions is going to reintroduce the commissioner. >> thank you, chairman bofler and rappinging member inhofe and members of the committee. it's a delight for me to be able to introduce you to christine saviniki. she's no stranger to the committee having appeared before us several times, i've penally known 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

dr. mcfarlane, you can start. >> thank you. thank you for the question. as a safety regulator, if confirmed, my main concern would be ensuring the safety of the storage on-site at reactors. let's limit it to on-site at reactors right now. reactors need spent fuel pools. you cannot operate a light water reactor without a spent fuel pool. when it's discharged, it's thermally and radioactively hot. it needs that 40 foot deep swimming pool to sit in and have the water circulated around so it remains cool. after five years, though, it's cooled off enough that you can actually put it in what we call a dry cask. there are a lot of in any event designs. there's mostly concrete and steel structures which are passively cooled. and so you need -- you don't need the dry casks but you can use them but you do need that spent fuel pool. and we know in terms of safety from recent experience with dry casks, both at the japanese facility in fukushima, and the one in virginia at north anna, where there was an earthquake last summer you guys might recall, those dry casks per