President Donald Trump on Monday signed the $717 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2019, officially setting budget limits for the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons and cleanup operations.
Trump did not mention either program during a signing ceremony before several hundred people at the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum in New York state.
Congress in recent weeks approved the compromise version of the separate House and Senate bills, which set spending ceilings and laid out policy guidelines for defense programs for the budget year starting Oct. 1. Both chambers passed the bill with overwhelming support: the House on July 26 by a vote of 359-54, followed by the Senate on Aug. 1 by a vote of 87-10.
The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration is authorized to spend $15 billion under the measure, roughly in line with appropriations levels approved in the House and Senate.
The NDAA would allow the agency to spend $65 million to create a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, by making modifications to certain existing W76 warheads. House and Senate appropriators have already separately agreed to provide the $65 million in 2019, but have yet to produce a unified DOE appropriations bill for Trump to sign.
The NDAA also authorizes $220 million for continued construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Trump administration wants to cancel the project, intended to convert 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel, and convert the facility to produce plutonium nuclear warhead cores.
The legislation also authorizes more than $5.5 billion in defense environmental cleanup funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which accounts for most of its annual budget. The NDAA calls for prompt reporting to Congress following release of any airborne contamination at the Hanford Site in Washington state. It also includes language enabling the energy secretary to impose civil penalties on DOE contractors that run afoul of nuclear safety rules.
The DOE-funding appropriations bills passed by both chambers also call for spending in the neighborhood of $7 billion for DOE’s nuclear cleanup office.
The final version of the NDAA authorized no money to send high-level nuclear waste produced by U.S. defense programs to the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The White House sought $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal in fiscal 2019.
