The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive its full budget request for the upcoming 2021 federal fiscal year via the House Appropriations energy and water development legislation unveiled Monday.
That covers $849.9 million for the core operations at the federal regulator, plus just under $13.5 million for the NRC Inspector General’s Office. That would be good for a total of $863.4 million.
Congress would appropriate $123 million for the agency, which collects 90% of its funding from annual and services fees for licensee and license applicants.
There is no language in the 100-page bill on the commission’s nuclear waste disposal activities – the NRC for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 did not ask Congress to appropriate money to resume its review of the Department of Energy license application for a waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The NRC and DOE requests to restart licensing after a decade died on Capitol Hill in each of the prior three years.
Within the NRC total in the appropriations measure, $9.5 million could be directed for salaries, travel, and other support expensed within the Office of the Commission. Just over $17.7 million would be applied to establishing the regulatory framework for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. The bill would give the NRC about $13.3 million for international activities.
The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the $49.6 billion bill starting at 3 p.m. today.
The legislation would provide $210 million for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), while again nixing the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer management to the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management.
That amount would be $10 million above current funding for the radioactive contamination remediation program and $60 million above the Trump administration’s request for fiscal 2021. The Army Corps in total would receive $7.6 billion, $1.7 billion more than sought by the administration.
FUSRAP provides environmental remediation of properties contaminated into the 1960s by nuclear-weapon and power operations under the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission. The program was overseen by the Energy Department from its inception in 1974 until October 1997, when Congress sent it to the Army Corps. The White House first proposed returning it to DOE in its budget for the current 2020 budget year.
