The fiscal 2018 omnibus budget bill signed by President Donald Trump on Friday would provide $7.1 billion for Department of Energy’s environmental management activities, $706 million above the $6.4 billion fiscal 2017 enacted level. That amounts to roughly an 11-percent increase on a year-over-year basis.
Congress by early Friday approved the $1.3 trillion budget that covers the budget year that began Oct. 1, 2017, less than 24 hours before the current short-term spending measure expires. Trump had tweeted a threat to veto the bill, but went ahead with signing early in the afternoon.
The EM budget includes $6 billion for defense environmental cleanup of DOE sites contaminated by previous nuclear weapons production.
The budget provides significant funding to launch new decommissioning and demolition (D&D) work on excess facilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Idaho National Laboratory.
That covers $100 million for the demolition and decontamination of the B280 Pool Type Reactor and other excess facilities at Lawrence Livermore, $125 million in funding for the D&D of the Biology Complex facilities at the Y-12 National Security Complex, and $10 million to tear down and decontaminate excess facilities and infrastructure at INL.
In addition, Oak Ridge would get $10 million for an on-site landfill and $17.1 million for a mercury treatment facility.
Also, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is getting $10 million above the Trump administration’s original budget request of $323 million for the year, in order to address infrastructure needs. WIPP officials said at a conference this week in Phoenix, Ariz., they need to upgrade a variety of infrastructure that has been in place for more than 30 years at the underground waste disposal facility.
