Budget & Policy

Members of Congress are scheduled to offer their opinions about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget on Wednesday in a Members Day hearing of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee. The session is a middle point of sorts in the annual appropriations cycle, scheduled between the subcommittee’s initial investigative hearings on the […]

With new leadership and more money for U.S. Energy Department environmental cleanup, community leaders and contractors attending an Energy Communities Alliance event Thursday were in an upbeat mood. Anne Marie White, sworn in March 29 as assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, appeared during a welcome luncheon at the organization’s annual conference in Washington, […]

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Wednesday pressed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ensure that a focus on particular projects at the Hanford Site does not come at the expense of others. Perry and other Energy Department officials appeared before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee to discuss the agency’s $30.6 billion budget request for […]

The Department of Energy and its regulators at the Hanford Site will hold their annual meeting on budget priorities on April 23. Representatives from both DOE Hanford offices – the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection — will provide an overview of cleanup work completed and work to be done. The meeting […]

WASHINGTON — After the first wave of hearings on the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget, key House members still want to turn Yucca Mountain in Nevada into a permanent nuclear-waste repository as soon as possible, while key senators continue to hedge their bets. On Thursday, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee […]

In a wonkishly detailed descent into the weeds of Yucca Mountain policy, a U.S. congressman on Thursday asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry who is to blame for the continued lack of an Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: a moribund bureaucratic organ for managing the Energy Department’s work on the proposed nuclear waste repository. The […]

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) took over as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, but the leadership of the subcommittee in charge of the Department of Energy’s annual budget bills has not changed. Shelby replaces Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who retired April 1 due to ailing health. In a press announcement, the senior senator […]

The ranking Democrat on the Senate panel that writes the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) annual funding bill said Wednesday she would not vote for a budget that keeps the B83 nuclear gravity bomb in service. Meanwhile, New Mexico’s senior senator laid into the Energy Department subagency’s top official about plans to move production of nuclear-weapon cores […]

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Wednesday pressed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ensure that a focus on particular projects at the Hanford Site does not come at the expense of others. Perry and other Energy Department officials appeared before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee to discuss the agency’s $30.6 billion budget request for fiscal […]

Senate appropriators on Wednesday did not forbid the Department of Energy from turning Yucca Mountain in Nevada into a permanent nuclear waste repository, but they also did not promise to give the agency funding for the project in fiscal 2019. As it did last year, the department has requested $120 million for paper and preparatory […]

Uniformed Air Force and Navy officers will join senior Pentagon officials today in the Senate for a hearing on nuclear weapons policy, programs, and strategy. The hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Eastern time. Invited witnesses are: Guy Roberts, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and […]

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) took over as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, but the leadership of the subcommittee in charge of the Department of Energy’s annual budget bills has not changed. Shelby replaces Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who retired April 1 due to ailing health. In a press announcement, the senior senator […]

The House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee will hold a hearing on the Department of Energy’s fiscal-year 2019 budget request on Thursday. The subcommittee is a Department of Energy (DOE) policy overseer and does not write the agency’s annual budget bills. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time and will be webcast from […]

Laying out the annual weapons budget for some of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) major sites over the last decade yields little in the way of surprise: generally, the weapons budget is going up. Source: DOE Congressional Budget Requests (Laboratory Tables). Link: Interactive Version of Chart. Figuratively speaking, these trends were written on […]

The U.S. Energy Department will provide the University of Arkansas with $10 million to complete the environmental remediation of the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR). Two members of the state’s congressional delegation, Sen. John Boozman (R) and Rep. Steve Womack (R), announced the funding this week. The money is included in the fiscal 2018 […]

The newly signed $1.3 trillion federal government omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2018 provides a boost for environmental remediation of the Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, Tenn. About $639 million will go toward cleaning up Oak Ridge’s Manhattan Project and Cold War sites—$141 million over 2017’s enacted levels and $125 million more […]

Laying out the annual weapons budget for some of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) major sites over the last decade yields little in the way of surprise: generally, the weapons budget is going up. Source: DOE Congressional Budget Requests (Laboratory Tables). Link: Interactive Version of Chart. Figuratively speaking, these trends were written on […]

The Savannah River Site will receive $637.1 million for liquid waste treatment and cleanup in the current fiscal year – the largest chunk of the $1.31 billion designated for the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. The amount for liquid waste operations included in the fiscal 2018 omnibus signed last week is $37 million […]

The U.S. Energy Department is prioritizing installing a new permanent ventilation system and replacing aging infrastructure at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in New Mexico, according to the newly released fiscal 2019 budget justification document for the Office of Environmental Management. The $403 million WIPP budget request for the budget year starting Oct. 1 […]

Scores of Democratic congresspeople wrote to President Donald Trump this week to complain that the White House’s plans to add new low-yield nuclear warheads to the U.S. arsenal is dangerous and fiscally irresponsible. That was the takeaway of a letter dated March 26 and signed by 43 Democrats, including Rep. Adam Smith (R-Wash.): ranking member of […]

The Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal 2019 justifies spending cuts for cleanup of the Hanford Site in Washington state by focusing on some of the work that will soon be completed. The proposed budget would trim funding for DOE’s Richland Operations Office at Hanford to $747 million, down by $169 million from the enacted […]

The House Armed Services Committee plans to start marking up the fiscal 2019 defense authorization bill, which will include policies for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in late April. All six of the Armed Services subcommittees are scheduled to conduct their markups on April 26, the committee said. That includes the strategic forces subcommittee […]

The nearly $50 million the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requested for fiscal 2019 could be enough to restart the quasi-judicial, and long-moribund, adjudication on licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository, the head of the commission wrote in a letter to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki […]

The nearly $50 million the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requested for fiscal 2019 could be enough to restart the quasi-judicial, and long-moribund, adjudication on licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository, the head of the commission wrote in a letter to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki […]

The Savannah River Site will receive $637.1 million for liquid waste treatment and cleanup in the current fiscal year – the largest chunk of the $1.31 billion designated for the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. The amount included in the fiscal 2018 omnibus signed last week is $37 million more than provided in fiscal […]

There was no word Monday on whether three nominees for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission might finally get up-or-down votes on the Senate floor after the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada was blanked on funding for fiscal 2018. There had been chatter on Capitol Hill that zeroing out the underground repository might […]

Scores of Democratic congresspeople wrote to President Donald Trump on Monday to complain that the White House’s plans to add new low-yield nuclear warheads to the U.S. arsenal is dangerous and fiscally irresponsible. That was the takeaway of a letter dated March 26 and signed by 43 Democrats, including Rep. Adam Smith (R-Wash.): ranking member […]

The Energy Department’s fiscal 2019 budget request includes $41 million for the On-Site Waste Disposal Facility at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. That is up from the $39 million funding included in the final fiscal 2018 budget passed last week, according to the recently released DOE Office of Environmental Management budget justification package and the […]

The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved Brent Park to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s roughly $2-billion-a-year nuclear nonproliferation branch. It took the Senate a little over a month to confirm Park, a physicist and associate director at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. President Donald Trump […]

The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill President Donald Trump signed this week would give the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) warhead refurbishment programs the 30-percent boost the White House requested, but it would also sustain a major nonproliferation construction project the agency has tried to cancel for three years. Overall, the permanent, government-wide spending bill […]