Both House and Senate appropriators plan to provide more than $100 million in extra funds for recovery of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant following incidents earlier this year, though the two chambers disagree on where the funds will come from. The Department of Energy is expected to need significant funding to restore operations at WIPP after the February radiation release and underground fire. The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee’s Fiscal Year 2015 spending bill would give authority to transfer up to $120 million from contractor pension plans. “The budget request includes more than $400,000,000 to avoid potential future costs predicted in the [National Nuclear Security Administration’s] latest outyear projections for its contractor defined benefit pension plans,” states House report language released yesterday. It adds: “The Committee notes that the intent of contributing funds above requirements is to avoid future programmatic risk if changes in market conditions require large variations in future required payments. However, the actual needs today at WIPP outweigh the hypothetical future benefits of overpaying into plans.”
While the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee version of the bill would provide $102 million above DOE’s FY’15 budget request for WIPP recovery, but panel members disagree with the House approach. “I am concerned however, that the House proposal to find resources will not materialize because they anticipate funds from unspent pension payments,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M) said at a markup of the bill yesterday. “The labs in New Mexico tell me they’re concerned about taking pension funds to pay for WIPP recovery. I believe we’ve taken a much better approach than the House in terms of looking at unspent pension funds which we don’t know whether they’ll materialize or not.”
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