Budget & Policy

The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee said Monday the practice of bartering excess government uranium to help fund remediation of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio will not be allowed in fiscal 2020. Instead, the subcommittee’s appropriations bill for the next budget year would provide Portsmouth with $60 million above the Donald Trump […]

The House Appropriations Committee this morning will resume the debate over funding licensing of a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The fiscal 2020 energy and water development bill scheduled to be marked up in committee starting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time zeroes out the White House request for roughly $150 million for licensing […]

A 2020 spending proposal from the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee directs the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to tap the independent group of JASON scientists for at least one, and perhaps two, new studies. After the Pentagon ditched the JASON contract in April following more than 50 years, the NNSA picked up […]

A proposed nuclear weapons budget due for a committee vote in the House of Representatives today would tap the brakes forcefully on the next intercontinental ballistic missile warhead and sharply curtail another pair of nuclear weapons programs. That is according to a detailed bill report released Monday by the House Appropriations energy and water development […]

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee recommends funding the Navy’s analysis of alternatives (AoA) for a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), but has concerns and directs the Secretary of the Navy to submit a report estimating costs. The subcommittee marked up a draft FY 2020 defense appropriations bill on May 16, making recommendations to the […]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is among a growing list of presidential candidates voicing opposition to disposal of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. “Trump is proposing to send our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain,” Sanders tweeted on May 16. “That would be a disaster. We must stop building new nuclear power plants, and find […]

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations Committee is set to vote early next week on a 2020 budget bill that would increase the National Nuclear Security Administration’s 2020 budget overall, but provide fewer dollars than requested for active nuclear weapons programs. The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee approved the unamended, $46.4 billion Energy and […]

The Department of Energy was criticized Wednesday for failing to provide important information for discussion at a meeting on the fiscal 2021 budget for environmental remediation at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Participants at the meeting in the nearby city of Richland said they did not receive specific information on work that will be […]

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled Tuesday to review an energy and water bill that would reverse the Trump administration’s plan to cut $700 million in funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. The White House in March asked for just under $6.5 billion for the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) for […]

The House Appropriations Committee appears ready to reject the Trump administration’s request to transfer a nuclear cleanup program from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy. In its spending legislation for fiscal 2020, released Tuesday, the panel’s energy and water development subcommittee proposed $155 million for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial […]

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled Tuesday to consider an energy and water funding bill that, for the first time in years, provides no money to resume federal licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Instead, the legislation would offer an unspecified appropriation for initial interim storage operations for spent reactor fuel […]

By John Stang The majority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes its updated nuclear power plant safety rules contain measure determined necessary to protect the public. Agency Chairman Kristine Svinicki offered the message in a May 3 letter to Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). She was responding to concerns the lawmakers raised in […]

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee on Wednesday sent the first draft of the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2020 budget bill to the full Appropriations Committee for consideration next week. The subcommittee will reveal its preferred spending levels for key programs in a detailed bill report to be published Monday, a […]

Despite complaints from two senior Republicans, the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee on Wednesday signed off on a new spending bill that would provide no money for licensing the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The $46.4 billion energy and water appropriations legislation for fiscal 2020, filed Tuesday, includes funding for the […]

The House Appropriations Committee appears ready to reject the Trump administration’s request to transfer a nuclear cleanup program from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy. In its spending legislation for fiscal 2020, released Tuesday, the panel’s energy and water development subcommittee proposed $155 million for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee sliced $600 million from the Donald Trump administration’s 2020 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in a spending bill unveiled Tuesday. If signed into law, the energy and water appropriations legislation would give the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch around $15.9 billion for the fiscal year […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s initial fiscal 2020 funding bill for energy and water development operations would sustain funding for the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office at nearly $7.2 billion. While even with current funding, that would be $706 million more than the Trump administration proposed in March for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The White […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s draft fiscal 2020 energy and water bill provides no money to resume federal licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Instead, the legislation would provide an unspecified appropriation for initial interim storage operations for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, according to a press release from […]

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers on Tuesday introduced legislation intended to help the federal government finally build a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is a slightly updated version of legislation introduced in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That bill made it out of the […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee is scheduled Wednesday to mark up a $46.5 billion spending bill that will include the panel’s proposed fiscal 2020 budget for the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a subcommittee markup, appropriators typically reveal only a summary of their proposed bill before voting to send […]

Lawmakers over the past week filed a pair of bills to prop up the U.S.-Russian New START arms-control treaty, one of which aims to unite Congress in support of the bilateral pact, the other aiming to bind the U.S. to the treaty’s nuclear weapons limits even if Washington and Moscow do not extend the deal […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill did, according to spending limits published this week by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill, […]

A big, mostly Democratic group of lawmakers from both sides of Capitol Hill wants the Pentagon to explain why it ditched its decades-old consultancy contract with the MITRE Corp.’s JASON group of scientists, a move that prompted the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to step in and fund the contract That is according to a […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration were set to meet Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) in Nevada on Friday, about a week after after the Silver State’s senior senator stopped blocking nominees for senior Department of Energy jobs because of a contentious plutonium shipment last […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission budgets will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill did, according to spending limits published Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 Energy and Water Development […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the budget for the Department of Energy will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill, according to spending limits published Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 energy and water development appropriations bill, which […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday voiced support for his agency’s potential reinterpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste. The Department of Energy proposed the reinterpretation in October and is now reviewing public comments submitted through Jan. 9 on the matter. Ultimately, DOE could determine the definition should emphasize the radiological threat waste poses […]

An article in the Wednesday edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have said that J. L. Shepherd and Associates manufactured the cesium blood irradiator removed from a University of Washington building, and that a DOE Radiological Assistance Program crew from Richland, Wash., responded to the contamination incident that arose from the machine’s attempted transport off-site.

The U.S. Congress would be officially in favor of extending the New START nuclear-arms-control treaty, if  bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday in the House becomes law. The bill from Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would if signed by President Donald Trump make […]

A big, mostly Democratic group of lawmakers from both sides of Capitol Hill wants the Pentagon to explain why it ditched its decades-old consultancy contract with the MITRE Corp.’s JASON group of scientists, a move that prompted the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to step in and fund the contract That is according to a […]