HOUSE APPROPRIATORS RESTRICT DOE URANIUM TRANSFERS IN SPENDING BILL

By ExchangeMonitor

House appropriators added a provision requiring the Department of Energy to report on the impacts of its uranium transfers on the mining industry to the Fiscal Year 2013 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill that cleared the House Appropriations Committee yesterday. The changes came in a manager’s amendment offered by House Energy and Water Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), and included language focusing on the Department’s use of uranium transfers to provide non-appropriated funding for projects. “The Committee is also concerned that the Department’s practices attempt to circumvent the oversight that is needed to ensure that these transfers do not adversely impact our domestic uranium mining industry, and the Committee directs the Department to clearly outline all potential impacts to industry when it submits its excess uranium inventory management plan,” the amendment states.

In addition, the amendment adjusts $8 million of Environmental Management cleanup funding from levels that were included in spending bill that passed the House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee last week. The amendment increased the amount provided for the Office of River Protection’s Tank Farm Activities by $8 million to $473 million. But while the bill originally had come in $6 million above DOE’s budget request for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund for cleanup at Paducah, that was cut to fall in line with the request of $92.7 million. The revision also cut $2 million from funding for Oak Ridge nuclear facility decommissioning and decontamination, for a total of $65.5 million.

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