A bipartisan omnibus spending package awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature would increase the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy budget from 2021 levels but still come in shy of the agency’s request for the current fiscal year.
If the compromise budget bill becomes law, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) would receive around 1.65 billion for the 2022 fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, according to the explanatory statement published with the bill. That figure comes in at roughly $145 million more than the office got in 2021, but is around $200 million below the $1.85 billion NE requested for the current fiscal year.
Some of NE’s back-end programs would fall short of the White House’s request under the omnibus, which by Friday had cleared both houses of Congress. President Joe Biden has already said he will sign.
The omnibus keeps NE’s Integrated Waste Management System line, part of Fuel Cycle Research and Development, flat at $18 million in 2022. The Biden administration had requested adding $20 million to integrated waste management this year for “additional work-scope on interim storage-related activities.”
Congress, in an explanatory statement appended to the omnibus, said the integrated waste management program “is directed to continue site preparation activities at stranded sites, to evaluate the re-initiation of regional transport, and to undertake transportation coordination efforts.”
Another R&D line, Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition Research and Development, would get around $50 million, down about $12.5 million compared both with the fiscal 2021 budget and the White House request of $62.5 million.
Overall, the Fuel Cycle Research and Development program would get a roughly $11 million year-over-year raise to about $320 million which would still be almost $50 million short of the request.
DOE overall under the omnibus would get around $44.8 billion, down around $1.7 billion from the roughly $46 billion the agency requested.
Meanwhile under the omnibus, funding for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the executive branch’s autonomous civilian nuclear power regulator, would remain relatively flat in fiscal 2022 at around $874 million. Around $745 million of that funding should come as recuperated licensing fees and other NRC revenues, the budget report said, leaving federal appropriations at roughly $128 million.
Also, the independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board would receive $3.8 million, consistent with its 2022 request and up just $200,000 from the previous year.
