Defense and civilian nuclear programs at the Department of Energy would all get raises for the 2024 fiscal year under a compromise appropriators package that congressional leaders and the White House have said they support.
The House approved the bill on Wednesday by a vote of 339 to 85, the Senate was still debating the measure at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, with vote scheduled for later in the day. Federal funding for DOE and other agencies covered by the appropriations package was set to run out after midnight.
DOE and other federal agencies are still operating under a short-term continuing resolution that holds spending to 2023 levels through Friday, at the latest. The compromise bill, which rolls up six of the 12 annual appropriations bills into one, would replace that band-aid spending bill and keep the doors open at DOE through Sept. 30.
Under the compromise bill, the Office of Nuclear Energy would get about $1.7 billion for 2024, about a $200-million raise and closer to what the House proposed than what Senate appropriators offered last year. Also within the office, according to a bill summary released Sunday, “$3.7 billion in Infrastructure Law funding is repurposed to support small modular reactors and domestic uranium enrichment.” That is largely in line with the House’s vision for the Nuclear Energy office this fiscal year.
