The Senate on Tuesday began debate on the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget bill, but adjourned after voting only on a few amendments unrelated to the agency’s nuclear weapons and waste programs.
Senators were set to resume debate Wednesday and could vote on the measure this week. Like the House, the Senate is considering the DOE budget for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 as part of a so-called “minibus” appropriations package that includes a total of three separate spending bills.
Overall, the Senate’s bill has $35 million for DOE, including a little under $15 billion for the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and about $7 billion for the Office of Environmental Management portfolio of Cold War nuclear-weapons cleanup.
The Senate bill also includes around $910 million in 2019 funding for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent agency that regulates civilian nuclear power and waste.
The minibus the House passed in May would provide about 3.5 percent more funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration than the proposal before the Senate, around 4.5 percent less for the Environmental Management office, and about 5.5 percent more for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The bill on the Senate floor would provide no funding for DOE to restart its application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent repository for civilian and military waste. The House, which strongly supports Yucca, would provide almost $270 million for the licensing work at DOE and the NRC. That is $100 million more than the White House requested.
The budget bill before the Senate, like its House-approved counterpart, would provide $65 million for the NNSA to begin work on a new low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead called for in February in the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review.