Budget & Policy

Congressman Joe Wilson, 77, whose district abuts the Savannah River Site, was hospitalized in Washington Tuesday night after taking ill, according to his office’s post on website X. Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) son, South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson, said on the website X that the congressman was experiencing “stroke-like symptoms,” according to doctors at […]

WASHINGTON — House speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday in Washington that he was pulling his stopgap six-month GOP spending bill that would extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets from its scheduled House floor vote. The bill was mostly clean for the Department of Energy aside from an anomaly that grants the agency permission “to sustain […]

WASHINGTON — In a committee hearing here Wednesday about his nomination to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Matthew Marzano said he agreed with a sometimes controversial commission’s decision to require fresh environmental reviews to relicense a nuclear power plant. “I think what the commission did in that case was appropriate,” Marzano said in response to […]

The House speaker’s plan to extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets into the first six months of fiscal year 2025 faced more opposition Tuesday from inside and outside of his own party. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a letter to congressional appropriators, dated Sept. 7, that a six-month continuing resolution would put the schedule […]

President Joe Biden (D) would veto a Republican-authored bill to extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets into the first six months of fiscal year 2025, according to a Monday statement. The bill, H.R. 9494 Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act for 2025, would make only one exception to 2024 budget for the Department of Energy by […]

A member of the House subcommittee on strategic forces said Friday that the U.S. and allies must invest in its nuclear arms and missile defense to keep up with adversaries. “Every nuclear state run by an authoritarian regime is heavily increasing its weapons and capabilities,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in the opening sentence to […]

By the numbers, House and Senate appropriators are within 2% of agreeing on a budget for nuclear-weapons cleanup for fiscal year 2025, but election-year politics could stand in the way of a resolution when Congress returns to Washington next week. Overall for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the House Appropriations Committee […]

A Senate committee on Sept. 11 will hold a hearing to consider the nomination of Senate staffer and nuclear engineer Matthew Marzano to fill the last open slot on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Marzano is currently detailed as an advisor from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National […]

By the numbers, House and Senate appropriators are within 2% of agreeing on a budget for nuclear-weapons cleanup for fiscal year 2025, but election-year politics could stand in the way of a resolution when Congress returns to Washington next week. Overall for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the House Appropriations Committee […]

A Senate committee on Sept. 11 will hold a hearing to consider the nomination of Senate staffer and nuclear engineer Matthew Marzano to fill the last open slot on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Marzano is currently detailed as an advisor from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National […]

During a time of much political division in the United States, Democrats and Republicans both support nuclear energy, but lack concensus on nuclear weapons, according to their 2024 party platforms. Now that the Democrats and GOP have concluded their respective national conventions in Chicago and Milwaukee, Exchange Monitor scanned their policy platforms with an eye […]

OMAHA — The U.S. should focus on the air- and sea-based legs of the nuclear triad rather than the land-based leg, a California member of the House Armed Services Committee said last week. “Should we spend $170-80 million on the triad, on the ground based ICBM system, or could we better achieve deterrence using the […]

Collecting more reliable information on the condition of decades-old facilities around the nuclear weapons complex and sharing the data with Congress could improve the Department of Energy’s management of its aging infrastructure, a federal panel heard Wednesday. Government auditors and executives from the American Nuclear Society, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. Army Corps […]

OMAHA — The U.S. “cannot add additional stress” to the National Nuclear Security Administration to up its strategic capabilities, a former Department of Defense official said at a strategic command symposium in Omaha, Neb. Tuesday. “We have a nuclear enterprise that is sized for a post Cold War era,” Vipin Narang, former Department of Defense […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee wants the Department of Energy to help New Mexico pay for improving roads to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and also keep eye on contamination under a decaying building at the Hanford Site in Washington state. These are a couple of recommendations the Senate panel made in its report about the […]

While the U.S. Air Force says it is restructuring the Sentinel next generation nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile program, Senate appropriators are recommending adding $200 million in funds in fiscal 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee would bump the $3.7 billion Air Force request for the Northrop Grumman Sentinel to $3.9 billion. The added $200 million would […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee would give the requested $800 million to the Uranium Processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for 2025, $40 million less than House appropriators recommended. The budget for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), part of the 2025 energy and water development and related agencies appropriations bill the Senate committee passed Thursday, would […]

A longtime GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee who represents the largest Department of Energy cleanup site is second in an open primary in Washington state, while a Democrat active in nuclear issues in Missouri lost her party’s primary. Incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), trails a fellow Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, […]

A longtime GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee who represents the largest Department of Energy cleanup site is second in an open primary in Washington state, while a Democrat active in nuclear issues in Missouri lost her party’s primary. Incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), trails a fellow Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, […]

While the U.S. Air Force says it is restructuring the Sentinel next generation nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile program, Senate appropriators are recommending adding $200 million in funds in fiscal 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee would bump the $3.7 billion Air Force request for the Northrop Grumman Sentinel to $3.9 billion. The added $200 million would […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee would give the requested $800 million to the Uranium Processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for 2025, $40 million less than House appropriators recommended. The budget for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), part of the 2025 energy and water development and related agencies appropriations bill the Senate committee passed Thursday, would […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee wants the Department of Energy to help New Mexico pay for improving roads to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and also keep eye on contamination under a decaying building at the Hanford Site in Washington state. These are a couple of recommendations the Senate panel made in its report about the […]

WASHINGTON — Modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons and delivery systems is moving too slowly and the Pentagon has heard about it, Nebraska’s senior U.S. senator said here Tuesday at a think tank. “When we’re in classified briefings and I hear from the military and the department, they give me dates on when things are going […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is looking for sea transport of nuclear materials from east Asia, according to a solicitation posted Friday on a government contracting database. Offers are due August 16, and work would be done within two years of the solicitation, according to an unclassified statement of work appended to the solicitation.   […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would receive $8.4 billion in fiscal 2025, under the Energy and Water appropriations bill rolled out Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee, more than House appropriators sought. The figure is less than the nearly $8.5-billion appropriated by Congress for fiscal 2024, which ends Sept. 30, but more […]

Senate appropriators this week approved a roughly $1.7-billion budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, more than requested but less than what House appropriators recommended. The fiscal year 2025 budget, approved unanimously on Thursday by the Senate Appropriations committee as part of a larger Energy and Water appropriations act, is down $10 […]

The Department of Energy’s $8-billion nuclear cleanup office needs better oversight of contractors doing big, expensive infrastructure projects, according to a federal audit released Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) wants DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) to better monitor performance “and hold contractors accountable,” according to the new report. “GAO reviewed five selected EM […]

On Tuesday, more than two-dozen advocacy groups with an anti-nuclear bent called on the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund a federal nuclear watchdog agency at the $47.2 million level sought by President Joe Biden for fiscal 2025 and the panel came close.  Senate appropriators took up their version of the legislation Thursday and  called for […]

A bill introduced in the House Tuesday would charge companies for emitting greenhouse gasses and reserve some of the proceeds for states and tribes hosting permanent nuclear-waste disposal sites. Filed in the second half of a contentious presidential election year in which control of Congress teeters on eight seats in the House and only one […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration would get more than its requested budget for 2025 but fewer funds for nuclear weapons, under a bill Senate appropriators passed unanimously on Thursday. But with a companion spending bill stalled on the House floor and the Senate headed out of town until after Labor Day, a compromise […]