Budget & Policy

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 proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada could conceivably end up receiving 150,000 metric tons of radioactive waste by the second half of this century, according to a Nevada state government analysis of a proposed U.S. Senate bill to speed up that project. The April 29 memo from Bob Halstead, executive director […]

Noted anti-nuclear Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced legislation that would legally cap U.S.-deployed long-range nuclear warheads at New START levels by mostly prohibiting funding for deployments beyond the limits set by the arms control treaty with Russia. Markey introduced the bill Friday and posted a copy of the 18-page measure, the “Save Arms Control […]

The head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office assured a congressional panel Wednesday she will get to the bottom of its mushrooming environmental liability. “We are going to find out,” Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said when asked about the cause of escalating liability, by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), during a […]

By John Stang Officials from Nevada sent mixed signals this week to the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee regarding upcoming legislation intended to kick-start the stalled nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain. On Tuesday, nine of Nevada’s 17 counties indicated support for the legislation in a letter to committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wy.), […]

Officials from Nevada sent mixed signals this week to the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee regarding legislation intended to kick-start the stalled nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain. On Tuesday, nine of Nevada’s 17 counties indicated support for the legislation in a letter to committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wy.), the bill’s sponsor, and […]

The head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office assured a congressional panel Wednesday she will get to the bottom of its mushrooming environmental liability. “We are going to find out,” Assistant Secretary of Environmental Management Anne Marie White said when asked about the cause of escalating liability, by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), during a […]

A trio of U.S. senators on Tuesday took a third swing at legislation that would remove management of the federal nuclear waste program from the Department of Energy in hopes of finally driving it forward. The 2019 version of the Nuclear Waste Administration Act appears identical to the iterations of the bill introduced in 2013 […]

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) is reviving legislation aimed at moving the federal government closer to resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste. Barrasso on Wednesday unveiled the discussion draft of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, which is largely identical to the same-named bill introduced in 2017 by Rep. […]

Cleanup plans for the Hanford Site in Washington state, along with remediation milestones established under the Tri-Party Agreement, are in “serious jeopardy,” the Hanford Advisory Board said Wednesday in its annual budget advice letter to the Department of Energy. “The HAB views the combined lack of compliant budget appropriations, the unanticipated problems at Hanford, and […]

The Energy Department’s growing environmental liability will be the subject of a May 1 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee. “The Department of Energy faces nearly $500 billion in environmental liabilities related to cleaning up nuclear and hazardous waste left over from Cold War weapons production and federal energy research,” […]

WASHINGTON — While more than three months have passed since the public comment period closed, the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) is “trying to keep this conversation going” on reinterpreting what material should be deemed high-level radioactive waste (HLW) by the Department of Energy. That was the word Wednesday from the ECA’s director of nuclear energy […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation office needs to end programs that have served their purpose, the head of that office told a panel of scientists here this week. “We know how to start a project, but we don’t know how to kill it,” Brent Park, NNSA deputy administrator for defense […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation office needs to end programs that have served their purpose, the head of that office told a panel of scientists here Wednesday. “We know how to start a project, but we don’t know how to kill it,” Brent Park, NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear […]

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) is reviving legislation aimed at moving the federal government closer to resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste. The discussion draft of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is nearly identical to the same-named bill introduced in the last Congress by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). […]

Watchers of the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear waste and weapons budgets will endure another week of added uncertainty about those programs after Congress blew town for an extended spring break without making progress on a deal to avert automatic spending cuts that will kick in on Oct. 1. The House did make an opening […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plan to produce the fissile nuclear-weapon cores known as plutonium pits in two states is “potentially achievable,” according to a new study the agency publicized, but did not release, this week. Congress last year ordered the secretary of defense, in consultation with NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, to commission a […]

Watchers of the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear waste and weapons budgets will endure two more weeks of added uncertainty about those programs after Congress blew town for an extended spring break without making progress on a deal to avert automatic spending cuts that will kick in on Oct. 1. The House did make an […]

The House Armed Services panel that writes nuclear weapons law will reveal its plans for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s future plutonium-pit production complex, low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead and more on June 4, when it marks up part of the lower chamber’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sets policy […]

A bipartisan pair of senators last week introduced a bill to tighten ethics and transparency requirements for members of federal advisory committees: expert groups that advise federal agencies including the Department of Energy. The bill from Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) would require, among other things, that agencies creating and maintaining such […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plan to produce the fissile nuclear-weapon cores known as plutonium pits in two states is “potentially achievable,” according to a new study the agency publicized, but did not release, on Wednesday. Congress last year ordered the secretary of defense, in consultation with NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, to commission a […]

A bipartisan pair of senators last week introduced a bill to tighten ethics and transparency requirements for members of federal advisory committees: expert groups that advise federal agencies including the Department of Energy. The bill from Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) would require, among other things, that agencies creating and maintaining such committees openly […]

Watchers of the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear waste and weapons budgets will endure two more weeks of added uncertainty about those programs after Congress blew town for an extended spring break without making progress on a deal to avert automatic spending cuts that will kick in on Oct. 1. The House did make an […]

Top casino and tourism executives in Nevada on Monday told Congress that moving forward with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could be devastating for the state’s economic future. In an open letter to the members of the House and Senate, Las Vegas Sands President and CEO Sheldon Adelson and 11 other executives said Yucca […]

The House Armed Services panel that writes nuclear weapons law will reveal its plans for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s future plutonium-pit production complex, low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead and more on June 4, when it marks up part of the lower chamber’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sets […]

WASHINGTON — The head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) told members of Congress here Tuesday he hopes the Department of Energy will “fix” a controversial rule that could limit board access to nuclear weapons facilities during the agency’s upcoming one-year review of the directive. In May 2018, the department issued the controversial […]

Limited record keeping at the old Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado might have factored into an April 2018 waste drum “explosion” at the Idaho National Laboratory, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Chairman Bruce Hamilton said Tuesday. There were “marginal records kept” on drums of Rocky Flats-origin sludge waste buried at INL for […]

The U.S. Department of Energy is seeking the $50 million it believes it needs to design and build a facility intended to reduce the cost and time of cleaning up nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The request in the fiscal 2020 budget rollout comes after a two-year standstill regarding the […]

The House Armed Services Committee should get access “in the very near term” to 810 authorizations the Department of Energy granted to still-unidentified U.S. companies to export nuclear-power technology to Saudi Arabia, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administrator (NNSA) said in congressional testimony. “The Department is moving aggressively to provide information and I […]

There is little hope for a consent-based approach to selecting the site for a U.S. radioactive waste repository, a key appropriator in the House of Representatives said Tuesday. “I know of no community that will become a permanent repository for nuclear waste based on consent,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), ranking member of the House […]