The Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons budget would increase year-over-year for 2023 but come up short against the Joe Biden administration’s request, under legislation a House subcommittee planned to debate on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, under the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee’s recently unveiled bill, the budget for cleanup of shuttered nuclear-weapons production sites handled by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would remain about flat year-over-year at about $7.9 billion, which is still more than $235 million above the administration’s initial request.
For the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency, the subcommittee proposed about $21.2 billion, short of the request by almost $180 million, or 1%, but about $576 more than the 2022 appropriation.
A lower-than-requested proposal for the NNSA’s bread-and-butter nuclear-weapons refurbs, officially, Weapons Activities, accounts for most of the difference between the subcommittee’s proposal and the White House’s request.
Weapons Activities would get $16.3 billion in the bill, about $150 million less than the request but over $410 million more than the 2022 appropriation. On the other hand, NNSA’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Account would get about $2.4 billion in the bill, compared with the $2.3 billion requested to match the 2022 appropriation.
For the Office of Environmental Management, the House subcommittee’s bill beats the request across the board, proposing higher-than-asked-for budgets for cleanup of defense sites and non-defense sites alike.
For the office’s single largest account, Defense Environmental Cleanup, the subcommittee proposed $6.7 billion, $225 million above the request and $12.5 million above the 2022 appropriation. The account funds cleanup of Cold War and Manhattan Project sites and operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico.
The office’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, which pays for cleanup of former uranium enrichment plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, would get more than $820 million, which is about $18 million below the 2022 appropriation but almost $1 million more than requested. As it was last year, the fund’s appropriation would be funneled through the Defense Environmental Cleanup account.
Meanwhile, Non-defense Environmental Cleanup, which includes among other things the West Valley Demonstration Project in upstate New York, would essentially keep its 2022 budget of about $334 million, under the bill. That’s about $10 million more than requested.
The subcommittee was scheduled to mark up its bill at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. The debate was to be webcast. After the subcommittee approves the bill, the full Appropriations Committee will consider it. Subcommittee markups are often quick and free of controversial amendments. Lawmakers often hold contentious debates in the full committee markup, which may trail the subcommittee mark by a week or more.
Usually, subcommittees do not reveal their detailed bill reports, which explain the precise puts and takes lawmakers propose for individual programs, until a day before full committee markups.
