Funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program would rise and funding for its nuclear-waste-cleanup programs would fall slightly year-over-year, under the fiscal year 2025 budget request President Joe Biden (D) released Monday.
The Department of Energy had not released detailed budget justification documents as of Monday afternoon, but according to a document published Monday by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Biden administration has requested:
- $51 billion for DOE overall, more than $750 million above the 2024 appropriation signed into law late last week.
- $25 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its portfolio of nuclear-weapons programs, roughly $1 billion more than the 2024 appropriation. Almost all of the NNSA’s proposed increase would go to the Weapons Activities account, which funds the semi-autonomous DOE agency’s bread-and-butter nuclear modernization and maintenance programs. Weapons Activities would get about $19.9 billion if the request became law, about $1 billion more than the 2024 appropriation just signed.
- Roughly $8.3 billion for the Office of Environmental Management (EM), which cleans up shuttered nuclear-weapons production sites. That would be about $250 million less than the 2024 appropriation and in line with the cleanup office’s fiscal 2023 budget. In prepared remarks at the 2024 Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, William “Ike” White, DOE’s senior advisor for Environmental Management, called the request another “significant investment” in EM.
- Roughly $1.6 billion for the Office of Nuclear Energy, which is responsible for DOE’s civilian nuclear waste programs. That would be just under $100 million less than the 2024 appropriation.
Biden released his 2025 budget request only days after signing a package of appropriations bills that fund federal agencies including DOE through Sept. 30, the end of the 2024 fiscal year.
Owing to congressional gridlock, DOE and the rest of the government were funded until last week by a series of four continuing resolutions that held budgets to 2023 levels for nearly half of fiscal year 2024.
The gridlock was driven in large part by a faction of conservative House Republicans who were unwilling to compromise on spending levels and, with the help of a united Democratic caucus, ousted their own speaker for compromising with Democrats to support a continuing resolution. Republicans control only the House of Representatives. Democrats have the White House and the Senate.
