The full Senate was set to vote Thursday on a temporary budget bill for fiscal year 2023, setting up most Department of Energy nuclear programs to continue operating with this year’s budget through Dec. 16.
On Tuesday, Senators voted 72-23 to invoke cloture on the bill that will become the continuing resolution, removing a procedural hurdle that cleared the way for a vote on the budget itself Thursday, a day before the Senate was set to return home to campaign ahead of November’s midterm elections.
That would give the House of Representatives, where Democrats have more than enough votes to pass bills without Republican help, more than a day to approve the measure and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
The 2022 fiscal year ends at 12:00 a.m. on Oct. 1.
For the first two-and-a-half months of fiscal year 2023, the stopgap bill would give DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration about the $26.65 billion it got in fiscal year 2022, plus an extra $35 million “to respond to potential nuclear and radiological incidents in Ukraine, assist Ukrainian partners with security of nuclear and radiological materials, and prevent illicit smuggling of nuclear and radiological material,” according to a bill summary.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, responsible for cleanup of shuttered nuclear weapons production sites from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War, would receive the 2022 budget of about $7.9 billion.
DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, which is in charge of civilian nuclear waste programs, would get its roughly $1.65-billion budget from 2022. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the autonomous civilian nuclear power regulator, would get about $874 million.
