Two Nuclear Nominees Get a Hearing President Obama's nominee to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that the nuclear industry's share of American electricity production, steady at 20 percent for the last decade, could decline in coming years. Nonetheless, a diverse electricity supply requires continued use of nuclear power, she said. The nominee, Allison M. Macfarlane, has made few if any public statements about her position on nuclear power; this one, predicting a possible decline in the industry, was unusual for a commission nominee. The commission is supposed to regulate nuclear power, not promote it - a job that Congress gave to the Energy Department - but its members seldom sound so grim about the commercial prospects. Democrats and Republicans sniped intermittently at Dr. Macfarlane, the Democratic choice for chairman, and at Kristine Svinicki, a former Republican staff member who has been nominated for a second term as commissioner. But approval of both is considered highly likely - possibly next week Republicans repeatedly pointed out that Dr. Macfarlane has very slender management experience. The Democratic chairman of the committee, Barbara Boxer of California, accused Ms. Svinicki of having tried to conceal some of her work on a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and said she would vote against her approval. Republicans countered that Ms. Svinicki had listed an article she had written about Yucca Mountain at the top of a summary of her work experience. There were frequent references to someone who was not present, Gregory B. Jaczko, who announced recently that he would resign as commission chairman when a successor was confirmed. Dr. Jaczko was accused by the four other commissioners of withholding information from them and manipulating decisions to limit their input. He has denied any wrongdoing. Dr. Macfarlane did not mention Mr. Jaczko, but said, "I look forward to forging a collegial relationship" with the other commissioners. "My background is as a scientist and public policy scholar,"" she said. "We are trained to be objective, analytical, and to treat our peers as equals."" While Republicans cited the various accusations against Dr. Jaczko, some Democrats defended him for having fought for prompt improvements in safety at American reactors after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns of March 2011 in Japan. The senators also expressed interest in finding a place to bury nuclear waste. Dr. Macfarlane was a member of a Blue Ribbon Commission appointed by President Obama to study the issue after he canceled the Yucca project; she pointed out that she could speak as a former member of that commission but that finding a site was the job of the Energy Department, not the commission. The commission would rule on a license for a waste repository. Dr. Macfarlane is a strong proponent of two ideas that are gaining adherents in Congress: taking more waste out of spent fuel pools at nuclear plants and putting it into dry casks, and moving dry casks from sites where reactors have been torn down to centralized locations. Some nuclear safety advocates have been pressing since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 for moving spent fuel from pools to dry casks. As a commission member, Dr. Jaczko said he favored moving more of the fuel to dry casks, but he reversed himself when he became chairman. The commission's current policy is that either wet or dry storage is safe. The industry's position is that moving fuel involves some risk and radiation exposure and should not be done until necessary. But Dr. Macfarlane is the co-author of a 2003 paper that calls for emptying the spent fuel pools to the extent possible to reduce risk. In an e-mail to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday, David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote, "Let's get it right, or at least get it less wrong.""