On Wednesday, almost halfway through the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, congressional appropriators announced they would pass a final 2024 budget for the Department of Energy and other agencies next week.
In the meantime, to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday, when funding for DOE and other agencies was set to expire, appropriators will pass yet another short-term continuing resolution that will largely hold federal agencies to their 2023 budgets, according to a joint statement from congressional leadership posted on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s website.
Under the continuing resolution, which would be the fourth since fiscal year 2024 began, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) gets the annualized equivalent of roughly $22 billion for its nuclear weapons programs. That’s about $2 billion less than the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed in separate 2024 spending bills written last year.
In the previous continuing resolution, the NNSA got special permission to exceed 2023 spending levels at the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which has fallen behind schedule and run over budget.
Elsewhere in DOE, the Office of Environment Management will receive the annualized equivalent of an $8 billion budget for cleanup of shuttered nuclear-weapon production sites. That is about $300 million less than the House approved in its full-year 2024 spending bill and nearly $500 million less than the Senate Appropriations committee approved in a separate 2024 spending bill.
Meanwhile, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy would receive the annualized equivalent of $1.47 billion, less than either House or Senate appropriators approved. Last year, Senate appropriators produced a bill with a 6% raise for the civilian nuclear energy and nuclear-waste office, in line with the White House’s request.
House Appropriators on the other hand included unrequested increases to advanced reactor programs within the Office of Nuclear Energy as part of a spending bill that would give the office roughly a 20% raise year-over-year.
