Congress still had not rescheduled final negotiations over the Department of Energy’s 2019 budget bill at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, according to spokespersons for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
The House and Senate were set to meet in conference to produce a unified 2019 appropriations bill on Thursday, but the meeting was abruptly called off only minutes before it was scheduled to begin.
A House appropriations committee spokesperson last week cited “scheduling conflicts,” but did not elaborate.
The Department of Energy’s 2019 budget is part of H.R. 5895: a so-called minibus appropriations act for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. In the bill, the House proposed $35.5 billion for DOE in fiscal 2019, while the Senate recommended about $35 billion.
Within the total DOE budget, the Senate proposed about $14.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons, nonproliferation and naval reactors programs. The House recommended some $500 million more: roughly $15.3 billion.
Elsewhere in the budget, both chambers recommended about $7 billion in 2019 for the Cold War nuclear-waste-cleanup programs run by DOE’s Environmental Management office.
The House’s minibus also proposed $270 million for DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing programs for the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear-waste repository. That is $100 million more than the White House sought for the project in 2019. The Senate, as it did for 2018, recommended no funding for Yucca.
Yucca has yet to receive an appropriation since President Donald Trump took office and recommended restarting the process to license the site as a permanent waste repository.
Finally, the minibus includes funding for all the civilian radioactive waste programs managed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate recommended a little under $900 million for the independent federal agency, which is about $50 million less than what the House proposed.
