It is sometimes difficult to feel the ripple of a $10 million tweak to a $30-billion appropriations bill, but at a citizens-group meeting near the Savannah River Site (SRS) this week, an executive with the Department of Energy’s prime liquid-waste contractor there painted a clear picture of how such a seemingly small change could spell big headaches for the site’s salt-waste operations.
The House’s proposed energy and water spending bill, which was defeated on the floor last month but still figures to influence the ongoing appropriations process, would refuse a $9.5 million request by DOE to begin building Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 7 at SRS in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
“No funds are provided to support a new start for Saltstone Disposal Unit #7,” the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee wrote in a 183-page report appended to the chamber’s now-defeated 2017 spending proposal that includes DOE’s 2017 budget. “The Department does not have an approved mission need or pre-conceptual design for this project and did not provide the basic details of its project plans in its budget request justifications.”
Down at SRS, losing this money in fiscal 2017 would disrupt contractor Savannah River Remediation’s schedule for increasing available space for saltstone disposal, a contractor executive said.
“SDU 7 needs to be ready in 2020. And that seems like it’s a long way away, but it’s nominally four years to build one of these from when you start site prep through ready for service, so that means we need to start working on this [in] November of this year, which is FY17,” Pete Hill, system planning manager for Savannah River Remediation, said in a Tuesday presentation to the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Waste Management Committee.
There is more than 30 million gallons of liquid waste at SRS. The waste is distilled into a salty solid, along with highly radioactive cesium and actinides. The salt waste is mixed with grout and turned into saltstone that is stored on-site in disposal units, while the highly radioactive waste is mixed with glass and prepared for eventual storage off-site. The next on-site disposal unit, SDU 6, is being patched up after a leak was discovered earlier this year. DOE and SRR nevertheless expect it to be ready when needed in 2018.
Overall, the House bill would provide 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 2016 level. The Senate’s bill would give DOE all the funding it requested for SDU 7.
The House’s bill died on the floor May 26, voted down in part because of ideologically controversial amendments that had nothing to do with U.S. energy or water policy. The House this week proposed a conference with the Senate: a meeting in which the two chambers could create unified legislation based on the $37.5 billion Energy and Water Appropriations Bill the Senate passed May 12.
A Senate aide said Tuesday the upper chamber was unlikely to accept the House’s proposal. The conference proposal faces a 60-vote threshold to pass, and the language of the defeated House bill — which drew a veto threat from the White House — has been largely unpalatable for Democrats.
ExchangeMonitor staff reporter Karl Herchenroeder contributed to this report from Washington.
