WASHINGTON — As contractors and local stakeholders wait to learn how much more funding their Cold War nuclear-cleanup projects might get under the Trump administration’s proposed $500-million budget increase for the Energy Department office that manages this work, the head of that office focused ruminations about the fiscal 2018 federal budget here Wednesday on projects that haven’t yet begun.
The Trump administration in April released a limited budget blueprint that proposed the boost for the Office of Environmental Management [EM] starting Oct. 1, with the caveat “that some of the $6.5 billion that has been dedicated to EM should be used for infrastructure and excess facilities,” Sue Cange, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, said in a panel discussion on Capitol Hill co-hosted by several community and industry groups.
Excess facilities, a perennial thorn in DOE’s side that routinely puts different parts of the agency in competition for limited budget dollars, includes those the Energy Department no longer needs for active nuclear weapons programs, but which are maintained at the government’s expense because Congress has not appropriated enough money to tear them down. In December 2016, DOE estimated its various departments and offices had almost 2,500 of these among them, which would cost more than $30 billion to safely demolish.
Cange said the office she leads on a temporary basis has “been told to work on a couple of sites that have some of the highest-risk excess facilities.” She did not say which facilities these might be, and through a spokesperson declined to speak with Weapons Complex Morning Briefing after her prepared remarks.
“Risk,” in this context, means the cost of maintaining the facilities threatens the smooth operation of active weapons programs.
In its December estimate, “Plan for Deactivation and Decommissioning of Nonoperational Defense Nuclear Facilities,” DOE said it would cost about $11.5 billion to tear down the 203 highest-risk facilities in the nuclear complex. If the $500 million annual increase the Trump administration proposed was made permanent and earmarked solely for excess facilities, it would still take DOE more than 20 years to tear down those 203 sites.
The agency did not say which of these facilities are the riskiest to maintain.
Editor’s Note, 04/06/2017: The story was corrected to reflect that there are about 2,500 excess facilities throughout the nuclear complex.
