The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive just under $1 billion, as requested, for 2024, under a spending bill the House Appropriations Committee was to mark up Thursday.
Separately, a much smaller nuclear waste agency would also get its requested budget if the 2024 energy and water development appropriations bill becomes law.
NRC is the primary regulator of civilian nuclear power plants and the waste those plants create. The agency would be in line for a 2024 budget of about $960 million, under the appropriations bill that was to be marked up Thursday.
That’s according to the detailed bill report the committee released Wednesday. In all for NRC, the bill would provide a budget hike of about 5%, or around $50 million, compared with the 2023 appropriation of roughly $910 million.
Appropriators matched President Joe Biden’s (D) 2024 request for NRC dollar-for-dollar, recommending exactly what the White House sought for the agency’s main accounts: Nuclear Reactor Safety, Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety, Decommissioning and Low-Level Waste and Corporate Support.
The NRC offsets most of its annual appropriation with the fees it collects from the nuclear power plants and other entities it regulates. For 2024, the agency and the committee estimate NRC will collect some $807 million in fees, leaving a net appropriation of about $152 million. That’s about $30 million more in fees than the agency collected in 2023.
In their bill report, appropriators also recommend that the NRC let employees give anonymous feedback about the agency in a new survey.
Lawmakers suggested that the commission “develop and deploy an anonymous, optional survey to NRC employees with the intention of discovering potential avenues to ultimately improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency overall, without the fear of reprisal,” according to the bill report.
The report also directs the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, to report on nuclear power plant safety.
The office would have a year-and-a-half to finish the report, if the bill becomes law. Citing reactor safety problems at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, the bill report tells GAO “to provide a report on NRC oversight of nuclear power plant safety and mechanisms for ensuring adequate protection of public health and safety.”
Outside of NRC, the independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board would get its requested budget of roughly $4.1 million, about even with the 2023 appropriation.
The 11-member board, staffed by part-timers, provides independent technical advice about the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste disposal program, stalled for decades without either a permanent radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain or an interim storage site.
“The Committee expects the [board] to continue its active engagement with the Department [of Energy] and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on issues involving nuclear waste disposal,” the House Appropriations Committee wrote in its bill report.
