$42 MILLION FUNDING GAP FOR USEC PROGRAM REMAINS

By ExchangeMonitor

After the transportation bill passed by Congress Friday failed to grant the Department of Energy transfer authority for a program supporting USEC’s American Centrifuge technology, Hill staff are questioning how the Department plans to make up $42 million in additional funding needed to complete the program. The two-year research, development and deployment cost-share program is funded through November by $88 million provided by a DOE uranium tails liability last month and an additional $22 million from USEC. DOE’s total share for the program comes to $280 million, leaving a balance of $192 million. However, the Administration’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2013 only included $150 million for the program, and the $42 million gap has not yet been accounted for. When the Department first announced that it intended to pursue the RD&D program last fall it requested transfer authority from Congress to utilize funds from other programs for the project in FY12. The Senate version of the transportation bill granted that request, but the version of the bill that passed Friday dropped a host of controversial provisions not dealing directly with transportation, including the RD&D program.

With few additional pieces of legislation expected to pass between now and the next Fiscal Year, Hill staff are wondering whether DOE will look to the FY13 appropriations bill to provide the extra $42 million on top of what was already requested. But USEC officials are still hoping for Congress to grant some form of transfer authority to both make up the shortfall and carry the project past November in the likely event of a Continuing Resolution. “There’s been some language around providing options for budget transfer authority in FY 2012. I think that’s probably where people will be looking at right now,” USEC spokesman Paul Jacobson told NW&M Monitor. “There are usually two or three different venues that can be explored, and that’s probably the phase we’re operating in right now, looking at what transfer authority or other options beyond the tails transfer that was announced on it a couple of weeks ago.”

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