WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday he is considering candidates to sit on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but will not insist that the person he picks oppose a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Reid said he is weighing a successor to Edward McGaffigan on the five-person NRC, which regulates the nuclear industry and the handling of nuclear materials and nuclear waste.

McGaffigan, 58, announced early this year he is suffering from an aggressive cancer and will resign when a replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Although President Bush makes the formal nomination, McGaffigan occupied a Democrat slot on the commission. That gives Reid, D-Nev., the opportunity to submit candidates to the president.

Reid said several senators have suggested candidates to him "but none of them sounded that good to me personally." He did not say who they were or why they were unacceptable.

"I would hope we could have somebody who is a scientist and somebody who has some government experience so they are not in the dark as to how government works," Reid said.

But Reid said a candidate's views on the Yucca Mountain repository will not determine his choice.

"I don't think that is something I will get into with them. I think it would be inappropriate," Reid said.

"I am not going to litmus-test. If somebody is a good scientist and understands government, that will speak for itself."

The NRC commissioners eventually will play a key role in licensing a nuclear waste site that Reid and most Nevada elected leaders argue will be unsafe and have battled for years.

In 2004, when he was in the Senate minority, Reid blocked action on 175 White House appointments until reaching a deal with President Bush to appoint Gregory Jaczko to the NRC. Jaczko was Reid's science adviser and chief aide on Yucca Mountain matters.

Despite initial opposition from Senate Republicans and the nuclear industry, Jaczko has served without controversy and was reconfirmed last May.

Regarding Reid's current activity, "We can do nothing more than take the senator at his word," said Patricia Conrad, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Political science professor Eric Herzik said Reid "is saying exactly the right thing" by stating Yucca Mountain politics will play no role in his selection.

"He is being statesmanlike," said Herzik, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno. "Reid has taken some forceful positions against Yucca but by the same token he is in a position now where he has to show evenhanded treatment. He isn't just a Nevada senator."

But, Herzik said, "If a person has worked for the nuclear industry or has written work praising Yucca Mountain, that person might expect to get a lot of questions."

In the end, Herzik said, "the person selected likely will be one that Harry Reid is quite comfortable with."

The Senate is expected to debate NRC nominees later this year. It is expected that McGaffigan's replacement will be considered at the same time as a successor to outgoing NRC commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield, who occupies a Republican seat.

Nucleonics Week, a publication of the Platts energy information group, reported earlier this month that industry officials and others were circulating the names of possible McGaffigan successors including Michael Ryan, a health physicist who is chairman of the NRC nuclear waste advisory board; NRC general counsel Karen Cyr; and Madelyn Creedon, a Democratic counsel on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to the publication, possible Republican nominees include Martin Hall, chief of staff on the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Kristine Svinicki, a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer and former aide to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Gail Marcus, deputy director of the nuclear energy branch of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.