Budget & Policy

The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal sustains its predecessor’s plan to terminate the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s $13.9 billion budget proposal includes $1.8 billion for the defense nuclear nonproliferation account, of which $279 million would go toward nonproliferation construction – a […]

By Wayne Barber The Nuclear Regulatory Commission budget request for fiscal 2018 puts funding back into licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada even as it reflects overall belt tightening and a continuing reduction in employee headcount at the agency. The regulator is requesting $952 million for the budget year that starts Oct. […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The Air Force’s fiscal year 2018 budget request contains billions of dollars to ramp up development work on several major new aviation and missile programs, including the B-21 bomber and the Long Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO). The B-21 Raider, which will replace aging bombers, would receive $2 billion in FY 2018, up from […]

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), the House of Representatives’ de-facto dean of Yucca Mountain, cheered the White House’s plan to resume work on that planned nuclear waste repository Wednesday, while another congressional Dean, one Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), slammed the proposal as anti-Nevada. The Trump administration’s proposal to spend $120 million on Yucca Mountain and interim […]

Budget figures for certain Department of Energy Environmental Management facilities cited in an article in the Wednesday Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (“Proposed DOE EM Funding Increase Dwarfed by Cost of Taking on NNSA Facilities”) included only partial funding at the facilities covering Defense Environmental Cleanup and Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning.

The Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Monday in observance of Memorial Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Tuesday, May 30.

WASHINGTON — There is no firm timetable for release of the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s detailed budget request for fiscal 2018, the office’s acting head told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Tuesday. The Office of Environmental Management (EM), for which the Donald Trump administration has proposed a roughly $6.5-billion budget for the fiscal […]

The $88 million top-line increase the Donald Trump administration proposed Tuesday for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2018 is two-and-a-half times less than the office would spend next year to start decontaminating disused nuclear-weapon facilities now owned by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The administration’s new budget plan, if approved by Congress, […]

The White House has officially proposed $1 billion in additional funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration in fiscal 2018, almost all of it for the agency’s weapons activities account. The Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday released President Donald Trump’s spending request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, which would grant the Energy […]

The Air Force’s fiscal year 2018 budget request contains billions of dollars to ramp up development work on several major new aviation and missile programs, including the B-21 bomber and the Long Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO). The B-21 Raider, which will replace aging bombers, would receive $2 billion in FY 2018, up from $1.3 billion […]

The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal sustains its predecessor’s plan to terminate the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s $13.9 billion budget proposal includes $1.8 billion for the defense nuclear nonproliferation account, of which $279 million would go toward nonproliferation construction – a […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission budget request for fiscal 2018 puts funding back into licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada even as it reflects overall belt tightening and a continuing reduction in employee headcount. The regulator is requesting $952 million for the budget year that starts Oct. 1, including 3,284 full-time equivalent employees. […]

The Donald Trump administration requested $120 million for fiscal 2018 to resume the Energy Department’s application to license Yucca Mountain as a nuclear repository, while also asking for $10 million to begin work on an interim waste-storage program. The request, $120 million in total, would be funded within DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. “This request […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would get about $6.5 billion for fiscal 2018, including a small increase for the agency’s major closure sites and a small overall decrease for uranium-enrichment cleanups, according to a leaked document a Washington, D.C.-based think tank said contains the White House’s upcoming budget request. The spreadsheet was released […]

The White House sent Texas insurance lobbyist Dan Brouillette’s nomination to be deputy secretary of energy to the Senate on Thursday, marking the Donald Trump administration’s first substantial change to DOE’s leadership since Rick Perry was sworn in as secretary of energy in March. Brouillette, said to have been handpicked for the job by Perry, […]

The White House is angling for a sharp $1 billion increase to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons activities budget in fiscal 2018, according to a spreadsheet that appears to show line items from the president’s full budget request to be released next week. The spreadsheet, obtained and released Thursday by the centrist Third Way […]

The Trump administration has taken issue with 3-year-old, bipartisan bill language the codifies the right of U.S. lawmakers to request sensitive information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The language, a standard rider on most budget bills since 2014, was introduced that year after then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) objected to the NRC’s revision of its Internal […]

The Department of Energy is months late in providing Congress with a mandatory annual report on the MOX program at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to documents released Thursday. SRS Watch, a local nuclear watchdog, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 15 asking DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to provide […]

The Pentagon said Wednesday that Elbridge Colby has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. Colby has been working as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank focusing on U.S. national security policy. Colby’s role in the Senior Executive Service will involve advising […]

The Trump administration has taken issue with 3-year-old, bipartisan bill language the codifies the right of U.S. lawmakers to request sensitive information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The language, a standard rider on most budget bills since 2014, was introduced that year after then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) objected to the NRC’s revision of its Internal Commission Procedures to […]

The nuclear power lobby asked the Donald Trump administration not to reinstate a utilities tax favored by the Barack Obama administration to cover a projected $20-billion shortfall for uranium-enrichment cleanup in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. “The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), and the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition (NWSC) […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) got an annualized budget of about $6.4 billion for fiscal 2017, some 3 percent more than last year, under the omnibus spending bill President Donald Trump signed today. The budget passed with more than half of fiscal 2017 already gone, and with only five months to write, […]

The sponsors of nuclear no-first-use legislation accepted Wednesday on Capitol Hill roughly 500,000 signatures collected by nongovernmental and anti-nuclear advocacy groups in support of the bill. Just days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) introduced in their respective chambers of Congress the Restricting First Use of Nuclear […]

The fiscal 2017 congressional omnibus budget awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature would reduce fees and appropriations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by about $65 million from the amount it requested more than a year ago. The funding cutback, though, would be partly alleviated by more than $20 million in unspent funds the agency is authorized […]

The head of the lobbying arm for the nuclear energy industry is urging the Trump administration to halt what she called “misleading budget tactics” by its predecessor related to the Nuclear Waste Fund. The account collected more than $20 billion from nuclear utilities over several decades, with the ultimate intent of paying for a geologic […]

The fiscal 2017 omnibus spending bill approved by both chambers of Congress provides $12.9 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $142 million from the fiscal 2016 level and $63 million more than former President Barack Obama’s request for the current budget year. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into […]

There is no funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada in the omnibus appropriations bill Congress passed this week to keep the Energy Department and the rest of the federal government funded through September. The bill was awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature on Friday afternoon. The Trump administration wants to restart […]

President Donald Trump is expected today to sign into law an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal 2017 that largely maintains funding for construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina while leaving room to study former President Barack Obama’s proposed alternative method of plutonium disposition. This means questions about the future of […]

The sponsors of nuclear no-first-use legislation accepted Wednesday on Capitol Hill roughly 500,000 signatures collected by nongovernmental and anti-nuclear advocacy groups in support of the bill. Just days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) introduced in their respective chambers of Congress the Restricting First Use of Nuclear […]

The White House is expected to release its fiscal 2018 budget request on May 22, leaving only about a month-and-a-half worth of work days for Congress and the Donald Trump administration to reach an accord on federal spending for the budget year that starts Oct. 1. The full budget request was slated to drop May 15, […]