The Department Energy’s nuclear remediation branch would see its total funding slide to $7.64 billion under the Joe Biden administration’s budget request for fiscal 2023, down from almost $7.9 billion appropriated for fiscal 2022.
If Congress approved the requested funding, it would return the DOE Office of Environmental Management to roughly its fiscal 2021 appropriation.
Preliminary details about the request for Manhattan Project and Cold War cleanup were included in the 2023 federal budget request rolled out Monday by the White House and the budget in brief published Tuesday by DOE.
Within the total, Defense Environmental Cleanup would get $6.5 billion for 2023, up from $6.7 billion in fiscal 2022. That excludes, however, some $417 million that under the request would be transferred to the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund that pays for cleanup of shuttered gaseous diffusion plants in three states.
Defense Environmental Cleanup is the largest tranche of funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). The requested top line in the Biden budget was $6.9 billion, to allow for the transfer to UED&D.
UED&D overall would in the Biden budget get $822 million for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, down slightly from the $841 million for the year ended Sept. 30.
Like the Donald Trump administration before it, DOE under Biden has sought ways to financially shore up the UED&D Fund.
Non-defense environmental cleanup, meanwhile, would get some $323 million under the request, down from about $334 million in the fiscal 2022 budget.
