The congressional conference version of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes the Senate spending allowance for defense environmental cleanup: the single-largest bloc of annual funding at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management.
The Senate version of the NDAA met the Energy Department’s request for $5.63 billion in defense environmental cleanup funding for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. The House authorized more: $5.68 billion. Without explaining their decision in more detail, conferees settled on the Senate authorization, according to a joint explanatory statement of the annual defense policy bill published Tuesday.
The NDAA sets ceilings for defense-related spending in a given fiscal year, with actual funding provided by separate appropriations bills. The 2019 Senate minibus appropriations bill covering the Energy Department would provide $7.2 billion for the Office of Environmental Management, which oversees remediation of 16 Cold War nuclear-weapon sites around the nation. The House version of the minibus proposed $6.9 billion for Environmental Management. The two chambers have yet to reschedule final negotiations on that spending bill after a bicameral conference meeting was abruptly canceled July 12.
The NDAA would also:
- Extend DOE’s Office of River Protection, which oversees radioactive tank waste operations at the Hanford Site in Washington state, through Sept. 30, 2024. That is in line with the House recommendation. The office would otherwise have had to stand down on Oct. 1, 2019.
- Include the Senate proposal directing the secretary of energy to request a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine evaluation of cleanup operations under the Office of Environmental Management.
- Require the secretary of energy, or the secretary’s designee, to notify Congress within two days of any reported airborne release of radioactive or hazardous material from Hanford waste. The contamination release would have to be “above applicable statutory or regulatory limits” to trigger the congressional notification.
Meanwhile, the compromise NDAA would not authorize any funding to send defense-related high-level nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nye County, Nev. Yucca, which Congress has not funded, despite the Trump administration’s request to do so, is intended to hold both spent fuel from civilian nuclear power plants and high-level defense waste from the weapons complex. The White House sought $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal for 2019.
The House could vote on the bill by Thursday; the Senate has not scheduled a vote on the compromise measure.
