The three current members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are scheduled to appear before the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee Wednesday to testify on the agency’s fiscal 2019 budget proposal.
The nuclear industry regulator has requested $971 million for the budget year starting Oct. 1. That would be up from the $911 million annualized budget under the continuing resolution that was in place at the time the latest spending proposal was rolled out in February.
The major change would be adding $48 million to resume the NRC’s adjudication of the Energy Department license application to build an underground nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The agency asked for $20 million in the current fiscal 2018 budget, but the funding was not in the short-term measures that kept the federal government operating for months and was zeroed out of the omnibus budget signed into law last month.
The Energy Department is requesting $110 million for its own Yucca Mountain work, as it did for fiscal 2018. Congress also blocked that funding, and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has vowed to ensure the same result in the next budget.
Energy and water development subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has in recent years focused on consolidated interim storage as the quickest and cheapest way for the federal government to meet its congressional mandate to take spent nuclear fuel off the hands of utilities. But he said in a hearing earlier this month that Yucca Mountain “can and should be part of the solution to the nuclear waste stalemate.”
Licensee fees pay for about 90 percent of the NRC budget, so the congressional appropriation for fiscal 2019 is projected at $155 million. That would cover 3,247 full-time equivalent positions, a drop of 149 from the annualized fiscal 2018 budget under the continuing resolutions.
The Senate panel hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. in Room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The scheduled witnesses are NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki and Commissioners Stephen Burns and Jeff Baran. The other two commissioner spots remain vacant.
