The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday advanced a $37.6 billion energy and water funding bill that would give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission slightly more money than it requested for fiscal 2018.
The appropriations legislation passed on a voice vote following a markup session that featured no discussion of the nuclear industry regulator. The full House has not scheduled time to consider the measure.
The bill would provide $954.1 million for the NRC in the next budget year, which begins Oct. 1, including $15 million in carryover funding. The agency asked for $952 million, down by close to $45 million from its fiscal 2016 budget.
The House proposal would meet the NRC’s request for $30 million from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund to resume licensing activities for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“The funding will support continuation of the licensing proceeding for the potential construction authorization of a repository,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email Thursday. “Principal activities would include support to, and the restart of, the adjudicatory proceeding. The resources budgeted assume that the applicant (U.S. Department of Energy) is prepared to participate as a party to the adjudication.”
The Department of Energy would get $90 million through the House budget for its end of the licensing process for the facility that would permanently store spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Those line items are sure to draw the ire of lawmakers from Nevada, who vehemently oppose making their state home to others’ nuclear waste but have no seats on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Obama administration DOE suspended its licensing work on Yucca Mountain in 2010, and the agency ultimately pursued a plan for development of separate repositories for commercial and defense nuclear waste in consenting communities. The Trump administration, though, has turned back to Yucca Mountain.
A federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the NRC to continue with the licensing process even while it was suspended at DOE. NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki noted last month that the regulator had spent all but roughly $700,000 of the $13.55 million in unobligated Nuclear Waste Fund dollars it had at the time of the ruling. Work done since then has included completing a safety evaluation report on the project and producing a supplement to the site environmental impact statement. More recently, the agency has been contesting a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas demanding progress in building the Yucca Mountain storage facility.
The NRC budget would also feature $113.1 million for nuclear materials and waste safety oversight operations and $27.9 million for decommissioning and low-level waste activities.
Congress provides 10 percent of the NRC’s annual budget through the appropriations process, with the rest coming from fees on licensees and license applicants.
The House bill would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to further study its staffing and resource needs, beyond the Project Aim initiative established in 2014 to right-size the agency and increase efficiency. The agency had increased staffing in prior years in anticipation of an increase in nuclear power plants that failed to materialize.
The number of full-time equivalent employees at the NRC is down by 500 since 2014. The agency requested funding for 3,284 FTEs in its fiscal 2018 budget plan.
“The NRC is directed to provide to the Committees on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress by February 5, 2018, a report on the actions taken to improve the fidelity of agency estimates of necessary FTE levels and to optimize the structure of the agency over the next five years, including a review of the size, function, and number of program offices and regional offices,” the House Appropriations Committee said in the detailed report attached to the funding bill.
Separately, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board would receive $30.6 million in funding for fiscal 2018, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board would get $3.6 million.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its version of the energy bill.
