The full House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday is scheduled to mark up a fiscal 2018 spending bill that would give the Energy Department about $30 billion, including a big boost for nuclear weapons funding, and provide $120 million for the agency to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste.
The proposed spending is part of a roughly $38-billion Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill the committee will consider in a double-header markup set to begin at 10:30 a.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building. The committee will also mark up the Agriculture Appropriations bill in this session.
The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee on June 28 approved a 2018 DOE budget of roughly $30 billion, within which the agency’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) would receive some $6.4 billion: about what the office got this year under the omnibus appropriations bill signed into law May 5, and slightly below the $6.5 billion the Donald Trump administration requested.
Within the EM total, the subcommittee’s bill provides roughly $5.4 billion for defense environmental cleanup: the account that pays for remediation of Cold War nuclear-weapon sites across the country. That also is about even with the 2017 appropriation, but 2-percent less than the current White House request.
Meanwhile, the House subcommittee’s bill would give DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration almost $14 billion in fiscal 2018: more than a 7.5-percent increase from the current budget, and in line with the Trump administration’s request.
The bill also includes some $950 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: a roughly 5-percent year-over-year budget cut that still provides $30 million to review the Energy Department’s revived application to license Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste repository.
A detailed bill report, including proposed funding for sites across the DOE nuclear complex, is expected to be released Tuesday. Fiscal 2018 begins on Oct. 1.
