Cleanup spending, aside from Hanford, could be trimmed in Trump plan

President Donald Trump’s administration signaled Friday it envisions moderate belt-tightening at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management during fiscal 2026.

“The Budget maintains the Hanford site in Washington at the 2025 enacted level but reduces funding for various cleanup activities at other sites,” according to a topline or skinny budget request document rolled out by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The administration said it will request the Environmental Management (EM) topline be reduced by $389 million. Nearly half of that reduction, however, “reflects a reduction of about $178 million for the transfer of responsibility from the EM program to the National Nuclear Security Administration for the Savannah River site in South Carolina, where plutonium pit production capabilities would be developed.”

NNSA assumed landlord responsibility from EM for the Savannah River Site on Oct. 1, 2024.

In fiscal 2025, EM was budgeted at about $8.2 billion with the Hanford property, where plutonium production took place for decades, accounting for about $3 billion of the total EM appropriation.

The Office of Environmental Management, is in charge of cleaning up 14 Cold War and Manhattan Project Sites. EM also oversees the nation’s only underground disposal site for transuranic waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

The topline budget document distributed publicly Friday did not include tables detailing the site-by-site budgets.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is expected to discuss funding priorities Wednesday when he appears before the House Appropriation Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee.

The new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.