Proposed 2023 funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear power authority, which runs the agency’s civilian nuclear waste programs, was about flat compared to 2022 appropriations, according to budget documents released this week.
The White House proposed around $1.67 billion for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), according to its budget request published Monday. That figure was roughly the same funding approved for 2022 by Congress in a bipartisan spending package passed in early March.
Around $422 million of the total budget would be reserved for NE’s fuel cycle research and development program, according to the agency’s latest budget-in-brief document published Tuesday. Within that spending, roughly $20 million would be used for DOE’s ongoing interim storage inquiry. In the previous fiscal year, that line item was included in the agency’s Nuclear Waste Fund budget alongside physical security spending for Nevada’s moribund Yucca Mountain repository.
The $422 million fuel cycle program request for 2023 represents some of the biggest proposed spending increases at NE for the coming fiscal year. The 2023 request is up around $101 million from the $320 million fuel cycle R&D received in the 2022 omnibus package.
NE’s budget proposal also included the roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, signed into law in November as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The administration’s budget plan split that ticket into $1.2 billion increments to be authorized from 2022 until 2026.
The nuclear power industry and its professional network reacted throughout the week to the proposed NE budget. Everett Redmond, a senior technical advisor at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) trade group, told RadWaste Monitor in a statement Thursday that the organization was “pleased to see the administration’s continued support and recognition of the crucial role nuclear energy will play in meeting our climate and job creation goals.”
NEI is also happy that “DOE is continuing to foster the development of interim storage for commercial spent fuel,” Redmond said. “We urge the department to move quickly to support … the siting process for interim storage.”
John Starkey, public policy director for the American Nuclear Society (ANS), told RadWaste Monitor in a Wednesday statement that the planned fuel cycle R&D funds “have the potential to accelerate progress on managing and disposing of the nation’s spent fuel and high-level waste.”
ANS was also pleased to see roughly $45 million proposed for Idaho National Laboratory’s Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) — which missed out on funding in 2022. “[I]t’s expected that [funding] will be cut during the appropriations process,” Starkey said. “ANS will work hard this spring to try and keep VTR funding alive in FY23.”
Over at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the regulator for civilian power plants, the White House proposed a fiscal 2023 budget of around $929 million, according to budget justification documents published Monday. That’s roughly 4.5% more than the 2022 budget of about $877.7 million.
In 2023, NRC said it expects to recoup around $792 million in licensing fees, leaving a net funding request of $137 million, just $6 million more than its 2022 request of around $131 million.
The agency’s request for its decommissioning and low-level waste segment was around $24 million for fiscal 2023, according to budget tables the agency posted Monday. That’s just around a 4% increase from the roughly $23 million appropriated by Congress for the current fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the agency requested around $135 million for its nuclear materials and waste safety activities, up roughly 25% from the roughly $107 million that segment got for fiscal 2022. As in the current fiscal year, NRC’s nuclear reactor safety program would receive the lion’s share of federal funds under the agency’s spending plan — around $491 million, or about 3% more year-over-year compared to $477 million.
