The House Appropriations Committee late Tuesday afternoon brought Congress one step closer to a bicameral confrontation over whether to keep the mostly abandoned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility in Nevada on life support, and how strongly to protect the Mixed-Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility now under construction at Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The committee approved its version $37.4-billion 2017 energy and water spending bill by voice vote, following a marathon markup session covering funding for agriculture and energy programs in which lawmakers battled over amendments unrelated to the DOE nuclear enterprise. The Senate sent its version of the DOE funding legislation, part of $37.5-billion spending package, to the floor last week. Neither chamber’s measure was scheduled for floor action, at press time.
The House’s proposed DOE budget totals nearly $30 billion: roughly flat from the current appropriation, but about 5 percent less than the Obama administration requested. The Senate bill would give DOE just under $31 billion, a roughly 3.5-percent boost from fiscal 2016, but about 2.5 percent less than requested.
Within the House total, the National Nuclear Security Administration, responsible for materials and weapons for the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal, would get $12.9 billion in 2017: nearly 3 percent more than in 2016, and about even with both the Senate’s proposal and the White House request.
The House committee also approved $340 million for the MOX plant, and told DOE in bill language not to close that facility. The MOX program is supposed to turn 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel. The Senate provided $270 million for MOX, and left the door open for cancellation. The Obama administration intends to halt the project in favor of downblending the plutonium and storing it at the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The House bill would give DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages cleanup of the Pentagon’s legacy nuclear projects, roughly $6.15 billion: about even with the $6.19 billion the White House requested, around 1 percent lower than what Congress approved for fiscal 2016, and some 4 percent less than the Senate’s version of DOE’s 2017 budget.
Separately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would get about $936 million under the House bill to carry out its duties, including licensing and oversight of nuclear reactors. The agency recovers about 90 percent of its budget from license fees, so the net House appropriation is about $149 million. The Senate recommended about $940 million with a net appropriation of about $116 million. The House bill also proposes $103 million for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Site Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), even with the Senate proposal.
NRC would also, under the House bill, be responsible for completing the licensing process for Yucca Mountain. The House committee approved $150 million to carry out the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which designated Yucca Mountain as the only site for a national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and $20 million for NRC to complete licensing procedures for the facility; that funding would come from the $34 billion Nuclear Waste Fund. The Senate provided no funding for Yucca, and instead would appropriate $61 million for an integrated waste management pilot program — a perennial feature of committee-level Senate bills that has not made it into a final spending package, yet.
Fiscal 2017 begins on Oct. 1.
