House appropriators this week reversed course and agreed to the White House’s request to move interim spent fuel funding out of the Department of Energy’s dedicated Nuclear Waste Disposal account, according to a draft budget report.
Interim storage funding proposals in the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee’s 2023 budget report, published Monday, appeared in line with the Joe Biden administration’s March request to move funding for DOE’s ongoing interim storage inquiry to the Integrated Waste Management Systems subprogram from the Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program’s Nuclear Waste Disposal account.
The subcommittee report proposes roughly $53 million for Integrated Waste Management Systems, adding around $35 million to the $18 million suggested for the subprogram in the fiscal 2022 budget report.
The full Appropriations Committee favorably reported the budget bill on a 32-24 party line vote Tuesday.
According to the report, the bill sets aside about $10 million for the Nuclear Waste Disposal account, to be used for safeguarding the moribund Yucca Mountain site. That’s roughly $17 million, or 63%, less than the $27 million or so than the overall Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program got in fiscal 2022, when Congress insisted on keeping the money for DOE’s interim storage search in the disposal account.
The White House attempted to shuffle its interim storage budget this way in fiscal year 2022, but Congress didn’t play along. Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, in separate bill reports, nixed DOE’s 2022 request to move interim storage funding out of the Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program.
Last week, energy and water subcommittee ranking member Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told RadWaste Monitor that doubted DOE’s new accounting would survive this year’s appropriations process.
“If they funded [interim storage] and it didn’t subtract from nuclear energy funding, then I probably wouldn’t have a problem,” Simpson said. “Why not leave it where it actually ought to be?”
Appropriators on Monday also renewed their reminder to DOE that it should continue its interim storage work with the understanding that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) “provides for a wide variety of activities that may take place prior to the limitation in that Act.”
NWPA, which governs U.S. nuclear waste disposal, forbids DOE from building an interim storage site, also known as a monitored retrievable storage facility, before the agency builds a permanent federal repository for spent nuclear fuel.
The only permanent repository authorized by Congress — Yucca Mountain in Nevada — was mothballed in 2010 by the Barack Obama administration and remains unfinished in 2022 after the Biden administration refused to fund its construction. The Donald Trump administration tried, but failed, to start the project back up.
Meanwhile, House appropriators recommended the Nuclear Regulatory Commission get the roughly $911 million the agency requested in March for the upcoming fiscal year. That figure represents a roughly 4.5% increase from NRC’s 2022 budget of about $877.7 million.
Within that spending, the budget bill proposed around $23.8 million in funding for the commission’s decommissioning and low-level waste management subprogram, an increase of around $1 million year-over-year from $22.8 million. Spending for NRC’s nuclear materials and waste safety program was also up to around $111.5 million from the $107 million or so it received in 2022, according to the bill report.
NRC usually recuperates the lion’s share of its budget from licensing fees. The agency said in budget justification documents published in March that it expects to receive around $792 million from licensees in 2023, leaving its net appropriations request for the upcoming fiscal year at just around $137 million.
Meanwhile, the House proposed Monday appropriating the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) roughly $3.9 million in fiscal 2023. That’s about 2.6% higher than the $3.8 million or so the country’s independent nuclear waste auditor got in 2022, but it’s consistent with the Joe Biden administration’s March funding request.
Founded in 1987, NWTRB is responsible for providing technical oversight of the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste disposal programs.
