Hanford Targeted For Significant Funding Cut
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
3/04/2014
The Department of Energy is seeking a total of approximately $5.6 billion for the Office of Environmental Management in its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, the initial details of which were released today. DOE’s FY15 request for EM is largely in line with what the Department had sought for cleanup activities in FY 2014, but represents a cut of approximately $200 million from the funding levels Congress enacted for FY 2014. More details of DOE’s budget request for EM and other programs are expected to be released by the end of this week. The site-by-site funding levels released today do not include safeguards and security funding. “The Administration has requested $5.6 billion to continue progress on the cleanup of the sites that supported this nation from the beginning of the Manhattan Project throughout the Cold War,” DOE said in a statement. “The funding level in the FY 2015 request positions EM to meet the enforceable agreement milestones due in FY 2015.”
The site that would take the hardest funding hit in DOE’s request is Hanford, according to budgetary documents. The Department is proposing a sharp cut in funds for work overseen by the Richland Operations Office—$848 million compared to RL’s current funding level of $941 million. The request would continue to maintain annual funding for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant at $690 million, while funding for cleanup work at the Hanford tank farms would see a slight increase—$545 million compared to the current funding level of $520 million. The proposed cut to Hanford funding was quickly met with criticism from Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.). “At a time when the Administration is proposing an increase for DOE overall, it’s difficult to understand why funding for meeting the federal government’s existing legal cleanup obligations is cut significantly in this request,” Hastings said in a statement today. “Any way you slice it, cleanup would undoubtedly be impacted by a cut of this magnitude to the Richland Operations Office. Today is just the beginning of the process and in the weeks and months ahead, I will work to secure appropriate funding for the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection.”
Funding for most other major cleanup sites would largely be kept at current levels. For the Savannah River Site, DOE is proposing a budget of $1.15 billion, a slight increase from the site’s current funding level of approximately $1.13 billion. Cleanup activities at DOE’s Idaho site would receive $367 million, down $20 million from current levels. Cleanup activities at National Nuclear Security Administration sites, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, would receive a total of $294 million, largely in line with current total funding. Defense environmental cleanup activities at Oak Ridge would be funded at $207 million, a cut of $8 million from current funding.
Request Again Seeks To Reauthorize D&D Fund
DOE’s FY 2015 request also proposes reauthorizing payments into the federal uranium enrichment D&D fund, which helps cover cleanup costs at the Oak Ridge, Paducah and Portsmouth sites, and would include $463 million for a federal payment. However, the Department has tried to reauthorize both federal payments and payments from the nuclear industry into the fund, with little support for the idea from Congress. For D&D activities at Paducah next year, DOE is seeking $207 million, a cut of $58 million from current funding levels. D&D activities at Oak Ridge’s East Tennessee Technology Park would also see a funding cut through DOE’s request—$138 million, down $58 million from current funding. However, D&D activities at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant would receive a slight bump in funding through the Department’s FY 2015 request—$160 million compared to a current funding level of $138 million.
In a statement, the Nuclear Energy Institute criticized the request to reauthorize the D&D fund. “It is highly disconcerting that the Obama administration again is trying to im-pose a 10-year tax of $200 million annually on nuclear energy companies to finance the cleanup of DOE enrichment facilities in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee,” NEI said. “Previous Congresses have rightly rejected this attempt to force the industry to again pay into the Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, given that the industry long ago met its $2.6 billion financial commitment under a 1992 law for this important environmental protection program.”
