At deadline Friday, President Joe Biden’s administration had yet to publish a detailed Department of Energy budget request for fiscal 2022, but figures provided May 28 by the Office of Management and Budget show that the White House is willing to spend big on nuclear-weapons cleanup.
The nearly $7.6-billion fiscal 2022 request for the DOE Office of Environmental Management is much larger than requests for nuclear cleanup made during the Donald Trump administration but, if enacted by Congress, would result in a roughly flat budget, compared with the 2021 appropriation of about $7.5 billion.
In February 2020, the Trump White House requested $6.1-billion for the Office of Environmental Management (EM) for fiscal year 2021, which runs through Sept. 30, and by the time the president signed the final appropriations bill, Congress had increased the figure to more than $7.5-billion.
The year before, for fiscal year 2020, DOE sought $6.5 billion for EM, which ultimately was increased by Congress to nearly $7.5-billion.
Likewise in March 2019, the agency requested $6.6-billion for EM, and Congress eventually increased that to $7.2-billion for fiscal 2019.
In May 2017 the DOE requested $6.5-billion for EM, which eventually grew to $7.1-billion. That appropriation became law in March 2018 as part of an omnibus bill.
For fiscal 2017 President Barack Obama requested a $6.1-billion budget for the DOE cleanup office, which Congress subsequently increased to $6.4-billion.
If Congress has any appetite to bargain for more EM funding this summer, lawmakers will start from a much higher floor than in previous years.
Meanwhile, under the Biden budget proposal, most of EM’s larger cleanup sites would stay at or near their fiscal 2021 spending levels.
The Portsmouth Site in Ohio, however, would see its budget increase to $467 million from $430 million, under the request. The Paducah Site in Kentucky would see its money from the same fund decrease to $199 million from $240 million, according to the request.
The West Valley Demonstration Project, the one-time home of a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Western New York, would be level-funded at $88-million, the same as in fiscal 2021.
The DOE Environmental Management funding for small sites, such as the Moab Tailing Project in Utah and the Energy Technology Engineering Center at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California, are penciled in for an increase to $129 million in the fiscal year set to start Oct. 1, compared with $111 million in the current fiscal year
The small sites tend to be properties in advanced stages of cleanup, closure or post-closure environmental work, according to the OMB document.
Given the limited number of Congressional work days between now and Oct. 1, one industry source said this week a continuing budget resolution that would temporarily hold spending at fiscal 2021 levels is a good bet.
Cleanup Spending Would Rise at NNSA Sites Under White House Request
Spending would increase funding for environmental cleanup of past weapons work at several National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites.
The Environmental Management budget for physical cleanup of this legacy contamination would rise by about a third, to $436 million from $328 million, if enacted by Congress, according to the OMB figures.
“Funding is included to support the deactivation and decommissioning (D&D) of specific high-risk excess facilities by the Environmental Management program” for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The Environmental Management office is also in charge of tackling the cleanup for NNSA sites such as the Nevada Nuclear Security Site, Sandia National Laboratories facilities in New Mexico and the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU). Citing completion of remediation at SPRU, DOE in December said it was transferring the property at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, N.Y., back to the DOE Office of Naval Reactors, although two-dozen containers of transuranic waste remain onsite.
Meanwhile, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which serves as something of a watchdog for DOE nuclear facilities, would be level-funded at the fiscal 2021 level of $31 million, according to a budget document posted by the board this week. The board’s full time staffing would be 115, about the same (114) as the current fiscal year.
