The Department of Energy will not release its detailed budget request for fiscal 2019 until sometime within the next two weeks.
That is according to a Tuesday message from a Department of Energy (DOE) official reviewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The official also said the annual “budget in brief,” a summary that might or might not include details already provided in press releases Monday as the White House rolled out its latest budget plan, would be released late Wednesday.
Meanwhile, even the House Appropriations Committee, which will write the first draft of DOE’s annual budget bill, had not received a copy of the detailed budget justification, a committee aide said by email Tuesday.
On Monday, DOE limited its public budget breakdown to a four-page summary covering the broad scope of its operations, from environmental remediation to nuclear stockpile stewardship.
However, the agency has not published a multivolume detailed budget justification for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. In previous years, those documents have included comprehensive descriptions of DOE’s funding plans, including changes to major programs and proposed new projects.
For 2019, DOE requested about $15 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Most of that nearly 17-percent increase would go to active nuclear weapons programs, while NNSA nonproliferation programs would see a small cut.
The federal agency also requested about $6.6 billion for Cold War nuclear cleanup programs run by the Office of Environmental Management: a small step up from the current budget of $6.4 billion.
The DOE budget also includes $120 million to resume licensing Yucca Mountain Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository. The independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission would get just under $50 million for its role in the Yucca licensing process.
Meanwhile, Congress still has not passed a permanent 2018 budget. Every government agency except the Pentagon is running under the fifth continuing resolution of the current budget year, which essentially freezes budgets at 2017 levels.
