Defense and civilian nuclear programs at the Department of Energy would all get raises for the 2024 fiscal year under a compromise appropriators package, released Sunday, that congressional leaders and the White House have said they support.
DOE and other federal agencies are still operating under a short-term continuing resolution that holds spending to 2023 levels through Friday, at the latest. The compromise bill, which rolls up six of the 12 annual appropriations bills into one, would replace that band-aid spending bill and keep the doors open at DOE through Sept. 30.
Under the compromise bill:
- The National Nuclear Security Administration would get about $24 billion for what remains of fiscal year 2024, an annual raise of about $2 billion in line with what House and Senate appropriators proposed in separate budget bills last year. The final bill would also provide $70 million to develop a W80-4-variant warhead for the nuclear Sea Launched Cruise Missile.
- The Office of Environmental Management would get about $8.5 billion for fiscal 2024, roughly what Senate appropriators recommended. The final bill would give the office, responsible for cleanup of shuttered nuclear weapon production sites, about $200 more than what the House had proposed. Environmental Management had been funded at about $8 billion in 2023.
- The Office of Nuclear Energy would get about $1.7 billion for 2024, about a $2-billion raise and closer to what the House proposed than what Senate appropriators offered last year. Also within the office, according to a bill summary released Sunday, “$3.7 billion in Infrastructure Law funding is repurposed to support small modular reactors and domestic uranium enrichment.” That is largely in line with the House’s vision for the Nuclear Energy office this fiscal year.
The House and Senate had not scheduled votes for the compromise spending bill as of Monday morning.
