A subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on Wednesday advanced legislation that would expand the mission of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) to aiding permanent disposal of U.S. radioactive waste.
The waste language is one part of the much broader ARPA-E Reauthorization Act of 2019 from Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), which the House Science energy subcommittee has now sent to the full committee for consideration.
The legislation would update language on ARPA-E’s goals, as laid out in the 2007 America Competes Act that established the energy technologies development organization. If Johnson’s measure becomes law, ARPA-E would be tasked to “provide transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.”
“This bill … authorizes ARPA-E to better address DOE’s significant nuclear waste clean-up and management issues, for which the Department currently spends billions of dollars every year trying to manage with current technologies,” Johnson, who chairs the House Science Committee, said in a prepared statement for the subcommittee markup.
As of deadline Thursday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, the committee had not scheduled its markup of the bill.
Johnson’s legislation is similar to an ARPA-E reauthorization bill from Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.). The Lucas proposal offers slightly more granular language on the types of waste to be addressed by ARPA-E’s “transformative solutions”: low-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, and high-level radioactive waste.
Johnson’s bill would authorization increasing spending at ARPA-E in coming years, from $428 million in the upcoming fiscal 2020 to $1 billion in fiscal 2024. The subcommittee rejected an amendment from Rep. James Baird (R-Ind.) that would have limited the funding authorization below $400 million for each year through fiscal 2022.
Lucas proposed much tighter authorizations, from $392.8 million in fiscal 2020 to $500 million in fiscal 2024. The Republican’s bill has not yet gotten a markup in the House panel.
