The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday ruled out bartering of excess government uranium to help fund remediation of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio in fiscal 2020.
To make up for funds the government would have reaped through uranium barter, the energy and water development bill for the next budget year would provide Portsmouth with $60 million beyond the Donald Trump administration’s budget request from Congress for cleanup.
The information was included a detailed report to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The committee voted 31-21 in favor of the bill, which includes $7.2 billion for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which is flat with the current fiscal 2019 but well above the $6.5 billion sought by the White House.
The uranium swap program was last employed for cleanup funding in fiscal 2018. This would be the second year in a row that Congress has excluded barter and instead supplemented the Portsmouth appropriation.
The bill would provide DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund with $873 million in fiscal 2020. That is $32 million above the $841 million enacted level for fiscal 2019 and $158 million more than the White House proposal, which would have retained the uranium swap.
The UED&D Fund helps pay for remediation of retired gaseous diffusion plants in Piketon, Ohio; Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Portsmouth’s decontamination and decommissioning would be funded at $367 million, roughly equal to the amount for the current fiscal year and far above the $305 million congressional appropriation proposed by the White House.
The Energy Department’s idea was that the funding gap could have been supplemented through uranium barter, though Energy Secretary Rick Perry has publicly called it a “poor way to run a railroad.”
During an April hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Perry committed to suspending uranium barter in fiscal 2020, as was the case during the current budget. The promise was solicited by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.), who says barter undercuts the market for domestically produced uranium from Wyoming and other states.
