The Department of Energy (DOE) is planning a significantly greater investment in the maintenance and repair of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facilities, with a fiscal 2017 budget request for the agency’s deferred maintenance that exceeds the currently enacted amount by $17 million. Overall, DOE’s $32.5 billion budget request includes $12.9 billion for the NNSA, up from $12.5 billion appropriated for the agency in the present spending plan.
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Tuesday that DOE has “large infrastructure risks and needs” and pledged that “we will not allow [deferred maintenance] to keep growing.” The NNSA’s $3.7 billion deferred maintenance backlog was previously projected to grow due to budget constraints. NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said Wednesday on a conference call that the agency is “fully supportive of the secretary’s guidance to stop the growth in deferred maintenance. In fact, we were one of the ones who were pushing for that.”
“It has meant we have had to make some trade-offs elsewhere in the NNSA budget, as well as the DOE budget to do it, but we think it’s extraordinarily important . . . that we address some of these long-term maintenance issues,” Klotz said.
The DOE’s $2.7 billion infrastructure and operations funding request, $443 million greater than the fiscal 2016 amount, is included under the Weapons Activities budget request. It involves efforts to stabilize the growth of deferred maintenance; dispose of the Bannister Federal Complex in Kansas City, Mo.; upgrade aging infrastructure via recapitalization projects; decrease operating costs; and fund Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) construction at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
The increased infrastructure and operations request offers $294 million – including the additional $17 million from the fiscal 2016 amount – to address deferred maintenance at the NNSA; an additional $300.9 million for recapitalization projects; and $115.6 million more for construction, namely for the UPF, which is set to be completed by fiscal 2025 at a total cost of $6.5 billion.
The $294 million request is meant to fund maintenance at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium, tritium, and other facilities; equipment maintenance at the Sandia National Laboratories; and uranium and lithium operations maintenance at Y-12, among other projects.
