The fiscal 2017 congressional omnibus budget awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature would reduce fees and appropriations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by about $65 million from the amount it requested more than a year ago. The funding cutback, though, would be partly alleviated by more than $20 million in unspent funds the agency is authorized to carry over from the last budget.
The NRC requested $970.2 million in funding for salaries and expenses in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1; $851.2 million would come via fees from the nuclear industry and the remaining $119 million from Congress, according to the NRC budget justification published in February 2016.
After a series of continuing resolutions that largely sustained federal funding at prior-year levels, the House and Senate voted this week to approve a spending plan to complete fiscal 2017. The proposal, though, would cap NRC salaries and expenses at $905 million: $794.6 million from licensing fees, inspection services, and other revenue streams; and up to $110.4 million in appropriations.
That $905 million would be roughly 10 percent less than the agency’s fiscal 2016 enacted funding, the Nuclear Energy Institute noted Thursday.
The NRC Inspector General’s Office would receive just over $12.1 million in separate funding, which is in line with the original request. In both proposals, $10 million would come from fees and the rest from congressional appropriations.
Roughly 90 percent of the NRC’s annual operations are funded via fees from its licensees.
House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said the reduced appropriation was based on savings identified by the NRC. She noted the language of the congressional proposal “also directs the use of $23,000,000 in prior-year unobligated balances.” It was not immediately clear to which operations that money would be applied.
The NRC’s original budget plan for fiscal 2017 covers 3,525 full-time equivalent personnel, down by 90 FTEs from the enacted fiscal 2016 budget as the agency advances “Project Aim” – the initiative begun in 2014 to right-size the agency and increase efficiency.
It would encompass licensing and oversight operations for more than 100 operational nuclear power reactors and corresponding work at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station and other plants being decommissioned.
In the $213 million funding request for nuclear materials and waste safety activities, the NRC planned to spend $37.2 million on the spent fuel storage and transportation and $41.6 million on oversight of decommissioning and low-level waste. Congress, though, provided $113.7 million for this segment, covering spent fuel and transportation and other business lines; it separated out another $27.2 million for NRC work on decommissioning and low-level waste.
Major activities in the spent fuel and storage segment include, according to the NRC budget justification: evaluating scores of applications for licenses, license amendment, and license renewals; safety inspections of storage and transportation cask vendors, producers, and designers; and reviews of security operations for radioactive material.
Decommissioning and low-level waste work also encompasses a host of operations, including licensing reviews and oversight of dozens of decommissioning power plants, research and test reactors, material sites, and uranium recovery facilities.
The NRC is also likely to use “rebaselining” – identifying operations that can be halted or conducted with fewer resources without a loss of efficiency – to help cover any budget shortfall. Per the congressional explanatory statement covering NRC funding: “The agreement reflects additional savings identified by the Commission as part of its rebaselining efforts. The agreement does not include the savings from the rebaselining proposal to reduce resources devoted to maintaining expertise in deep geological repository analysis.”
The Trump administration for fiscal 2018 has requested $120 million to advance development of interim storage sites for U.S. nuclear waste and to restart the Department of Energy’s license application with the NRC for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste geologic repository in Nevada.
The Department of Energy filed the license application for Yucca Mountain in 2008 and sought to withdraw it in 2010 after the Obama administration suspended the project. The NRC has said the review involved agency staff and contractors with expertise ranging from seismology to structural geology to various types of engineering.
The full fiscal 2018 budget proposal for the NRC, and all federal agencies, is expected later this month.
