Cleanup of former uranium enrichment plants at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites would be spared the ax under the short-term budget bill Congress is working to pass before Sept. 30, a draft of the legislation released by the Senate Appropriations Committee shows.
Legally binding language in the draft continuing resolution stipulates that funding from DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund “may be apportioned up to the rate for operations necessary to avoid disruption of continuing projects or activities funded in this appropriation,” according to budget language the Senate committee released Thursday. The next fiscal year begins on Oct.1.
The continuing resolution, if passed, would extend until Dec. 9 the federal budget approved in the 2016 omnibus bill signed Dec. 18, 2015. The Energy Department would be funded for those two months at the annual equivalent of roughly $29.5 billion.
The Paducah Site in Kentucky would get the annual equivalent of about $200 million, if the continuing resolution becomes law: 3 percent less than the White House requested for fiscal 2017, and even with the budget bills the House and the Senate produced before the appropriations process collapsed this summer. Fluor Federal Services is handling deactivation of the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant under a three-year, $465 million contract that expires next year. The plant was active as recently as 2013.
The Portsmouth Site in Ohio, meanwhile, would get about $225 million if the continuing resolution is signed, which is roughly 14 percent less than what the White House sought for 2017 and roughly 20 percent less than what the House and Senate proposed for the site in their draft appropriations bills this summer.
At the Portsmouth Site, the bill averts an annualized $80 million shortfall that would have put a crimp on continuing decontamination and decommissioning activities handled by Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth under a contract worth $2.6 billion, including options, over the 10 years ending March 28, 2021. The spending leniency proposed in the stopgap budget would also let Fluor-BWXT continue with plans to build a new on-site waste disposal facility at Portsmouth.
To avert a government shutdown, Congress must get a budget bill to President Barack Obama for his signature before midnight on Friday.
A more detailed spending breakdown for other Department of Energy nuclear-cleanup programs managed by the roughly $6-billion-a-year Office of Environmental Management was not included in the bill language just released. Congressional spending prerogatives are often spelled out line-by-line in bill reports; no bill report has yet been released for the short-term continuing resolution being debated on the Hill.
