The Department of Energy would receive about $53 million less than requested for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in fiscal 2019 under legislation advanced Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee.
All told, the DOE facility in South Carolina would receive $1.38 billion under the energy and water funding bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 – about $96 million less than the budget request but $64 million more than current funding levels. That includes $752 million for liquid waste treatment and tank stabilization, much less than the $805 million requested in the March proposal but more than the $637 million enacted for the current fiscal year.
The bill does not offer justification for the reductions, and the DOE office at Savannah River said it does not comment on congressional appropriations. Senate Appropriations will markup the energy and water bill on Tuesday and the full committee will tackle it on Thursday.
The SRS liquid waste mission covers management and treatment of roughly 35 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in more than 40 underground tanks, a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons production. About 10 percent of that material is sludge waste being converted into a glass form suitable for safe disposal. The rest is salt waste that has been treated using a pilot process, but DOE aims to begin operating the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) in fiscal 2019. The House bill would provide of $65 million for the facility, which should cover the remainder of testing and commissioning and much of the first year of operations.
The bill also says the site should use carryover dollars from construction of Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6) to help fund building SDUs 7, 8, and 9. These units are 30-million-gallon salt waste disposal concrete structures that permanently store treated salt waste on site. Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 was completed in July, but it is unclear how much money remains from that project. The unit cost $118 million to build, about $25 million less than the original estimate. SDU 7 is slated for completion in fiscal 2019. Construction has begun on 8 and 9, but projections for their completion have not been issued.
The House bill cuts funding in other areas at Savannah River. The Energy Department asked for $517.4 million for risk management operations, which also includes nuclear materials work at the site, but it would get $496 million if the committee recommendation survives the appropriations process. Details on how much will go toward risk management and nuclear materials activities were not immediately known. But the 2018 request for nuclear materials was for $323 million, so that mission likely is receiving the overwhelming bulk of the money.
Risk management includes monitoring and assessing potential issues throughout all phases of the site’s missions. Nuclear materials management includes the storage and processing of foreign and domestic stockpiles of uranium and other types of spent nuclear fuel.
Separate line item dollars were not included in the House bill or the budget request. But a paragraph in the House bill says $3 million of the nuclear materials pot would go toward the processing of High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) cores, which are highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This material would be converted into low-enriched uranium, which can then be repurposed as an energy source for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The bill did not include how much money the mission received in this fiscal year; but a cost analysis for the entire project is expected to surface this summer.
The House committee also recommended $10 million to upgrade security systems for multiple areas of the site, including K Area, where plutonium stockpiles are stored. That budget item was not included in the DOE budget proposal. If the dollars are approved, the Energy Department would have to submit a project data sheet that includes the work scope, cost estimates and schedules for the upgrades. That would be required within 30 days of enactment.
