Senate appropriators have asked the chamber’s Armed Services Committee to hold a hearing about the mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel approach that President Barack Obama nixed in his fiscal 2017 budget request in order to guide the Appropriations Committee on a path forward for a project that, for now, it plans to fund.
Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday during the panel’s markup of the energy and water funding bill that he recognized “that the authorizing committee for the MOX project is the Armed Services Committee,” and that it is not in the purview of the Appropriations Committee “to decide whether to authorize the project or to change its mission.”
“That ball is now in the Armed Forces Committee court for a while,” Alexander said, noting that this panel will “give us instructions about how we are to proceed in the appropriations process.”
The fiscal 2017 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill released Tuesday meets the administration’s $12.9 billion funding request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), but opposes the Department of Energy’s plan to cancel the project meant to turn 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into commercial fuel under a nonproliferation agreement with Russia. The bill provides $340 million for the construction of the MOX facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, despite the president’s earlier proposal to cancel the program and put $285 million toward an alternative dilution and disposal approach.
The Senate version of the bill was not released Wednesday. According to a committee press release, it provides the same amount of funding for the NNSA as the House bill.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the decision to punt the MOX deliberations to the Armed Services Committee was made earlier in the day at a “very useful” meeting that included several members of Congress and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. “My thinking is that the $270 million that we provide in this budget [for MOX] should contain a resolution; in other words, by the end of this next year we should be able to figure a solid recourse,” Feinstein said. The $270 million is part of the Senate bill proposal, according to Feinstein.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been a particularly vocal critic of the proposal to terminate the MOX project. “If you think you’re going to cancel the MOX program and not have a viable path forward, then you’re going to be in for a rude awakening, unless the Congress wants to abandon the agreement with the Russians,” he said. “How do the Russians feel about that?” he challenged, citing reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s withdrawal from the latest Nuclear Security Summit stemmed at least in part from his view that the U.S. broke the agreement by unilaterally proposing a change in the plutonium disposition method.
“I want to thank the committee for rejecting the idea of terminating the program,” Graham said. “I think you were wise enough to know that there’s a lot to be done before you terminate this program.”
Both the House and Senate subcommittees moved their version of the appropriations bill to the full committee for consideration. The Senate Appropriations Committee will take up the bill on Thursday, while its House counterpart has not scheduled a markup session. Funding in both bills for the NNSA includes $9.3 billion for weapons activities, $1.4 billion for naval nuclear reactors, and $1.8 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation.
