The three sitting members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are scheduled to make two appearances on Capitol Hill this week to testify on the agency’s fiscal 2019 budget and other matters.
NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki and Commissioners Jeff Baran and Stephen Burns are due to appear this morning at a joint hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy and environment subcommittees. They’ll then go before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for an oversight hearing Wednesday morning.
For the budget year beginning Oct. 1, the nuclear industry regulator has requested a budget of $970.7 million. That would be an increase of $59.8 million from the prior-year budget, largely due to work anticipated on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada and continued development of the regulatory means to evaluate advanced nuclear reactor systems, Svinicki said in her prepared statement to the House panels.
The NRC is the adjudicator for the Department of Energy license application for Yucca Mountain, which has been largely moribund since 2010. The agency has asked for $47.7 million in fiscal 2019 to restart the licensing proceeding, up from its $30 million request for the current fiscal 2018.
The House signed off on the 2018 money, but there has been no funding for Yucca Mountain in the short-term budgets that have kept the government operating for nearly six months and none anticipated in the omnibus that would support operations through the remainder of the fiscal year. The Senate gave nothing for Yucca for fiscal 2018, and there has been no sign its attitude has changed for the next budget.
The NRC’s Nuclear Material and Waste Safety program, which manages licensing, regulation, and oversight of nuclear materials, would get $183.7 million in the fiscal 2019 budget proposal. That would be up by $46.8 million from the current annualized amount in fiscal 2018, almost entirely due to the Yucca Mountain line item, Svinicki said.
