Members of the House and Senate were set to formally kick off final negotiations for the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee announced.
The leaders of the two chambers’ Armed Services Committees were set to appear briefly in public in the Senate Dirksen Office Building on Wednesday before moving to a closed-door meeting with other lawmakers to attempt to meld two separate National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) into one.
The annual bill sets spending limits for defense programs, including nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapons cleanup programs at the Department of Energy. Appropriations for DOE and other nuclear agencies run through Jan. 29.
Also at stake in NDAA talks this year is a Senate-approved package of major nuclear-energy policy reforms for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These reforms are largely geared at making it easier to export U.S. nuclear technology, but they would also extend federal liability limits for the nuclear industry and set new waste-reporting requirements for DOE.
Owing to resistance in the House, however, things are looking grim for the proposed nuclear power reforms, according to their author, Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.).
For DOE’s defense nuclear programs, both the House and Senate NDAAs would authorize close to what the Joe Biden (D) administration requested.
Under the Senate NDAA, the NNSA would be authorized for about $22 billion, including $590 million more than requested. The House NDAA would provide roughly $725 million more than the request.
For the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management defense environmental account, which funds the clean-up of shuttered nuclear-weapon production sites, the Senate version of the NDAA allows roughly $8.3 billion. The House would allow $7.96 billion. Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley said he would vote against any version of the NDAA that did not include extra funding to clean up Manhattan Project-era radioactive contamination in Missouri.
The NDAA, like all authorization bills, is separate from the appropriations bills that actually provide money to federal agencies from the treasury.
Congress is not close to passing appropriations bills for the 2024 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but lawmakers have kept the government open with a continuing resolution that extended 2023 budgets into January, in the case of DOE and some agencies, and February, in the case of the Department of Defense and other agencies.
