As the Department of Energy prepares its Fiscal Year 2013 budget request, DOE appears to have centered on a funding level far lower than the $970 million it planned to request as part of a modified funding profile for the WTP established last year. Though talks with the White House Office of Management and Budget are ongoing, DOE is now pursuing a funding level closer to $800 million, with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu believed to pushing to keep funding above the $740 million level provided this year. The exact impact of an $800 million funding level for the WTP next year remains unclear. Both DOE and WTP project contractor Bechtel National have said the modified funding approach—which entails a shift from a flat annual funding level to increased annual spending over the next few years and then ramping down spending as the project nears completion in 2019—is necessary to increase confidence that the vitrification plant can be completed on schedule and at its current cost estimate of approximately $12.2 billion.
DOE has been forced to take a new look at its funding plans for the WTP, though, in response to a lack of support from lawmakers for the modified funding profile and the overall budgetary needs of the Office of Environmental Management in a tough fiscal climate. “If it [funding] all goes to one project, that’s fine as long as you’ve got a lot of resources. When resources are tighter, then you probably have to strike a compromise,” acting Assistant EM Secretary Dave Huizenga said last month. “The Secretary [of Energy] really wants to bring this project home on as tight as schedule and as close to budget as possible and that’s what we’re working to try to achieve. That being said, if we’re not going to get the kind of support that we thought we would need to optimize that construction project, then we will have to rebaseline it and we’ll have to look at … perhaps strik[ing] the right compromise with appropriators on what they’re willing to fund and what the other sites are going to need to continue to do the good work and important work that needs to be done at other sites,” Huizenga said.