The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch should not see a significant near-term decrease in its budget for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina because control of the federal complex is being transferred to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a budget and planning official said last week.
“Most of our funding is for liquid waste and operation of H Canyon,” and those two things are not going to change, Steve Trischman, head of budget and planning for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, told members of DOE’s Environmental Management Advisory Board Dec. 1.
Trischman’s remarks came during a hybrid meeting of the advisory board, which originated from New Orleans.
Trischman was asked if the Environmental Management budget at the Savannah River Sites, roughly $1.6 billion in fiscal 2022 and more than $1.7 billion sought by President Joe Biden’s administration for fiscal 2023, could slip dramatically, to below $1 billion after the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) takes over in 2025.
The Environmental Management budget at Savannah River “would not substantially change” in the short term after the transfer of responsibility occurs, Trischman said. The details of the transfer are still being worked out, DOE has said.
The nuclear-weapons agency has been playing a larger role at the Savannah River Site in recent years and in 2018 said it would rely on the complex along the Georgia border to make most of its new plutonium pits used in nuclear weapons cores.
The current landlord contractor, Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, recently received a contract extension that could keep it around through September 2027.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management expects to be winding down its liquid waste cleanup program at Savannah River by the late 2030s, although other remediation work would continue.
