DOE Requests $30M Reprogramming to Fund American Centrifuge

The Department of Energy this week told lawmakers it aims to reprogram $30 million for the American Centrifuge Project from National Nuclear Security Administration’s Weapons Activities account, and also transferred an additional $2.9 million in nonproliferation funds, according to the NNSA. The Fiscal Year 2014 omnibus spending bill passed early this year gives DOE up to $57 million in transfer authority subject to approval by Congressional appropriators. USEC is currently continuing work on the American Centrifuge Project under an 18-month subcontract with Oak Ridge National Laboratory that began in May and is expected to amount to $33.7 million this fiscal year.

 

DOE provided funding to the program in several earlier incremental actions—$6.7 million on May 1 to fund the first month, $5 million on May 30 and an additional $1.7 million last week. “NNSA continues to fund efforts to maintain the American Centrifuge technology and plans to do so for the rest of the fiscal year,” NNSA spokesman Derrick Robinson said in a statement. “The current year funds appropriated specifically for this effort have been exhausted and so NNSA is making use of the reprogramming and transfer authorities provided by congress in the FY14 Consolidated Appropriations to continue this important work.  To that end, we carried out two internal reprogrammings for $7M, the funding was distributed to ORNL who has a subcontract with USEC.  Further, on Tuesday, June 24, 2014, the Department notified congress of the transfer of an additional $2.9M from nonproliferation funds to support the project and requested the reprogramming of $30M of Weapons Activities funds to sustain the work into the new fiscal year.”