Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), whose district includes the Savannah River Site, yesterday urged the House Budget Committee to provide adequate funding for Department of Energy programs at the site. Wilson noted in testimony before the Committee that the impacts of sequestration will be felt heavily at the site, with the furloughs of thousands of employees likely. “From H-Canyon to the Tank Farms, environmental cleanup funds have been slashed,” he said, according to a release. Noting that the Committee “has some extremely tough choices ahead” he asked that workers at the site receive “the tools they need to get the job done for nuclear non-proliferation and environmental cleanup.”
He also stressed strong support for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which has been targeted for cuts, emphasizing the nonproliferation objective of the facility as part of a plutonium disposition agreement with Russia. “If we default on our end of the Agreement, Russia will have no incentive to dispose of their own excess weapons grade plutonium,” he said. With regards to Savannah River National Laboratory, he emphasized that the Lab “cannot benefit monetarily from its inventions and does not possess a line item within the Budget, making it heavily reliant upon trickle down funding from other facilities within the DOE Nuclear Complex.”
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