The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee sliced $600 million from the Donald Trump administration’s 2020 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in a spending bill unveiled Tuesday.
If signed into law, the energy and water appropriations legislation would give the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch around $15.9 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1: a year-over-year funding increase of about 4.5% that would nonetheless be some 3.5% less than the White House’s $16.5 billion request.
Bill language and a press release from committee Chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) did not explain exactly which programs would not get the funding the White House requested. However, DOE’s lead House appropriator spent several hearings in April fretting over the roughly 12% increase the Trump administration sought for NNSA Weapons Activities, even as it proposed cuts for other DOE programs, including the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation budget.
NNSA’s Weapons Activities office would get about $11.75 billion under Kaptur’s budget, up 6% from 2019 but some 5% less than the White House requested. Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation would get about $2 billion in the next year, up about 7% from 2019 and 4% more than requested.
The NNSA Naval Reactors program would receive about what the White House sought: $1.6 billion. That is down some 9% compared with 2019 as the agency finishes development of the nuclear reactor to power future Columbia-class submarines.
The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee is set to mark up the legislation in a meeting starting at noon Eastern time today. The subcommittee plans to webcast the session.
In Tuesday’s press release, Kaptur mentioned only one NNSA program by name: the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project the agency plans to replace the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The press release did not say how much money the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project would receive in 2020; the White House sought about $80 million.
Line-by-line details of the proposed NNSA budget will not be released until a day before the full Appropriations Committee marks up the year’s annual energy and water budget bill. The full committee had not scheduled its markup at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
