The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled Tuesday to vote on the first draft of the 2023 spending bill that funds nuclear weapons and waste programs at the Department of Energy and other agencies.
Defense nuclear weapons and waste programs at DOE would receive roughly the funding requested for 2023, under the bill approved last week by the House energy and water development subcommittee.
Year-over year, the bill would raise the nuclear weapons budget at the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) by more than half a billion dollars to about $21 billion, some $180 million below the request.
The bill would provide about $7.9 for the nuclear-weapons-cleanup budget at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to about even with the request — to which the Joe Biden administration added about $190 million in June for more Hanford Site cleanup — and the 2022 omnibus appropriations passed in March.
DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, responsible for civilian nuclear energy and nuclear waste programs, would do better. The office would receive some $1.78 billion, a raise of about $110 million, compared with either the Joe Biden administration’s request or the 2022 appropriation. That includes $10 million in new proposed funding for communities that might be interested in hosting a federally operated interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel.
The committee’s markup was scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington. The committee planned to stream the debate online and was expected to post the detailed report for the bill, which explains the puts and takes proposed for line items, at 10:00 a.m. on Monday.
Editor’s note, 06/28/2022, 2:35 p.m.: the story was changed to include the correct proposed appropriation for the Office of Environmental Management.
