Chris Schneidmiller
WC Monitor
12/18/2015
The congressionally approved omnibus budget for fiscal 2016 would provide nearly $6 billion for remediation of legacy Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities across the nation.
House lawmakers voted Friday morning 316-113 to approve the $1.15 trillion spending package, and the Senate quickly followed suit with a 65-33 decision. The White House has indicated President Barack Obama will sign the bill, which would keep the federal government open through Sept. 30 of next year.
The energy and water development segment of the budget includes just under $5.3 billion for defense environmental cleanup activities overseen by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM), which would be $234 million more than requested for the fiscal year and nearly $290 million above the amount enacted in fiscal 2015. Close to another $674 million is included in the uranium enrichment decontamination and decommissioning fund — $131 million more than DOE requested and almost $49 million more than it received in the last budget.
The funds would be spread around cleanup operations at 16 active EM sites in 11 states.
The Hanford Site in Washington state would in total receive $2.3 billion, with more than $922 million directed to the Richland Operations Office, which is charged with remediation of nearly all waste streams from the former plutonium production facility, and $1.4 billion provided for the Office of River Protection, which oversees the site’s waste tank farms and construction of the Waste Treatment Plant.
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the Obama administration’s original budget would have cut funding for the Richland Operations Office by close to $100 million from the fiscal 2015 enacted amount. The final funding is $19 million below what the office received in the last budget. The Office of River Protection, meanwhile, would get over $200 million more, including a $75 million boost for construction of the WTP and associated facilities.
“The federal government has a legal and moral obligation to clean up Hanford, which is why I fight year in and year out to make sure that commitment is maintained and Hanford gets the resources it needs to get the job done,” Murray said in a press release.
The funding bill would also bump up funding for decontamination and decommissioning of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site from the Obama administration’s request of $131 million to $203 million. Project contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth was preparing to lay off upward of 500 workers on the project due to the tight funding level. Assuming the omnibus bill is approved, that danger appears to have been averted, for this year at least.
“Workers at the Piketon Plant have dedicated their lives to cleaning and restoring this site for future use,” Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in prepared comments. “This bill protects jobs at Piketon, giving workers and their families needed peace of mind and ensures that their important work can continue. Ongoing cleanup at the site is critical to southern Ohio’s economy now and in the future. Moving forward, we can accelerate that progress by seeking greater funding for these operations and making sure Piketon and its workers don’t experience ongoing uncertainty about the plant’s future.”
Brown noted that he had joined the other members of the Ohio congressional delegation to press for continued funding for the project in fiscal 2017. The Obama administration is likely to roll out its budget plan in February, and Brown has called on Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan to provide for the Portsmouth D&D effort.
DOE, under the bill, would also receive $50 million in funding to maintain operations of the sole U.S. industrial-scale cascade of advanced centrifuges at the American Centrifuge Project site in Piketon. The facility had been set to close, with DOE funding only research and testing at the ACP facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which would also receive $50 million under the omnibus.
"This legislation reflects a broad, bipartisan consensus about the need for a domestic uranium enrichment technology," Daniel Poneman, president and CEO of ACP operator Centrus Energy, said in a press release. "Centrus looks forward to continuing the essential work we are doing to support America’s national security and is grateful to the Members and staff from both parties and both houses of Congress who have helped advance this funding through this legislation in support of the President’s budget."
Other budget items:
- The defense environmental cleanup account would include just short of $300 million for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, with $148 million to be used for operations and maintenance and $82 million for recovery from the February 2014 fire and radiation release that halted nuclear waste storage operations at the facility. The total funding would be down by $20 million from fiscal 2015 but up by over $56 million from the DOE request.
- The cleanup of the Paducah site in Kentucky would receive just under $200 million, with $1.2 million for building solid waste management units and the rest for D&D of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
- DOE EM would also receive $255 million for non-defense environmental cleanup, covering the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state and several other sites. That would be $35 million more than requested and $9 million more than provided in the last budget.
- The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent agency that provides oversight of safety issues and EM and National Nuclear Security Administration facilities, would receive just over $29 million for the year.
