After a delay last week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday is set to consider the Trump administration’s three nominees to fill expiring posts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Then, on Wednesday afternoon, the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee will consider the Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The White House proposed roughly $1.4 billion for the agency for the budget year beginning Oct. 1: over 7.5 percent more than Congress approved for 2017 in an omnibus spending bill signed in May.
Of the three NRC appointees senators will consider Tuesday only two, Annie Caputo and David Wright, are new to the five-person civilian nuclear regulator. The third, Kristine Svinicki, is rounding out a five-year term slated to end June 30. Trump elevated Svinicki to NRC chair soon after he was sworn in.
Caputo is a nuclear engineer and a longtime Capitol Hill staffer who is now a senior policy adviser to Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wy.). She would fill out the remainder of a five-year term that expires June 30, 2021.
Wright, current consultant and former state lawmaker in South Carolina, would serve the remainder of a five-year term that ends June 30, 2020. Wright has led both the South Carolina Public Service Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
The other two active NRC members besides Svinicki are former House staffer Jeff Baran, whose term runs out June 30, 2018, and attorney and former commission Chairman Stephen Burns, whose term ends June 30, 2019.
The Senate, which has already delayed this hearing on NRC leadership by a week, must act soon to avoid leaving the commission without a quorum; by law, NRC requires three members to conduct its business.
The Environmental and Public Works Committee is set to gavel in at 10 a.m. Tuesday to consider the NRC appointees. A business meeting on Svinicki’s nomination is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday.
The Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee is scheduled to begin its NNSA budget hearing at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. Agency Administrator Frank Klotz is scheduled to be among the witnesses.
