The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2017 energy and water spending proposal would provide more money than requested for the Department of Energy’s Hanford, Idaho, and Savannah River sites, plus additional funds for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., according to a bill report released Monday.
All told, the House bill would provide $6.15 billion for the DOE Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2017; that is roughly even with the $6.19 billion the White House requested, about 1 percent lower than what Congress approved for 2016, and some 4 percent less than the Senate’s version of DOE’s 2017 budget, which now awaits a floor vote in the upper chamber.
While proposed spending for DOE legacy waste cleanup is generally lower under the House’s bill than under the Senate’s, policy prescriptions are substantially the same in both bills — save that the House would expressly prohibit DOE from closing down the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Senate bill would not. Without that facility, more downblended weapon-grade plutonium could end up at WIPP.
After passing the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee last week, the next stop for the lower chamer’s bill is the full House Appropriations Committee, which will decide whether to advance the measure to the floor in a markup scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Funding levels proposed in the House bill include:
- About $755 million for Hanford Site cleanup managed by DOE’s Richland Operations Office: roughly 5 percent more than what the White House requested for 2017, 11 percent less than what the Senate bill would provide, and more than 18 percent below 2016 levels; cleanup work on the river corridor is largely winding down this year, as expected. At Hanford’s Office of River Protection, the bill report forbids DOE from giving contractor Washington River Protection Solutions the go-ahead to start construction on a Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment Facility “until an independent cost estimate has been performed,” the bill report says.
- About $382 million for the Idaho Site: close to 5.5 percent more than requested, 5 percent more than the Senate bill, and about 3.5 percent below the 2016 appropriation.
- Some $290 million for WIPP: about 7 percent above the White House’s request, 5 percent more than what the Senate was willing to give, and roughly 3 percent below 2016 levels.
- About $1.2 billion for the Savannah River Site: some 5.5 percent less than requested, about 3.5 percent less than what the Senate would provide, and nearly 1.5 percent above the enacted level. The House’s bill also would stop the agency from building a seventh Saltstone Processing Facility disposal unit at the Savannah River Site by zeroing out more than $9.5 million DOE requested to start construction on the plant in 2017.
- Just under $700 million for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund: nearly 3 percent less than what the Senate bill would provide. The fund pays for remediation of former uranium enrichment facilities at DOE’s Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth sites. The White House wanted to pay for this cleanup in 2017 by tapping into the U.S. Enrichment Corp. Fund and levying a new tax on commercial nuclear generators. Neither the House nor the Senate went along with that plan.
