The White House on Tuesday proposed a fiscal 2017 budget that would clear the way to send tons of diluted, weapon-usable plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico and shrink the energy the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear-waste cleanup budget by just over 2 percent to about $6.1 billion.
The $6.1 billion proposal encompasses $5.23 billion for Defense Environmental Cleanup, about 1 percent lower than the 2016 appropriation; $218 million for non-defense environmental cleanup; and roughly $674 million from the United States Enrichment Corporation Fund. The latter would pay for cleanup work at DOE’s Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth sites that is currently funded through a different fund called the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund.
According to the budget summary DOE released soon after the budget request — and as reported by ExchangeMonitor Friday — the department plans to cancel construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The facility was funded at $340 million in fiscal 2016. The White House proposal for 2017 calls for $270 million for a “Change in Plutonium Disposition Approach.”
DOE EM’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford site near Richland, Wash., would get a roughly 6 percent boost in fiscal 2017 under the White House’s request. The administration proposed $1.5 billion, or $85 million more than the 2016 appropriation, for the office to “support the Department’s proposal to amend the Consent Decree between DOE and the State of Washington for completion of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant and retrieval of waste from 19 single shell tanks.” However, funding for Hanford’s Richland Operations Office, which oversees Columbia River corridor and central plateau cleanup work, would drop from a current $990 million to $800 million in the next budget.
