Defense Environmental Cleanup, the largest pot of funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, would be authorized for a little more than $7 billion under the defense policy bill. That’s roughly the amount requested by the Biden administration.
The bill gives DOE authority to accelerate nuclear cleanup in instances when doing so would benefit modernization or replacement of weapons stockpile facilities for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A bicameral committee of lawmakers from the House and Senate hashed out compromise funding levels for the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NNDA) last weekend behind closed doors.
The bill should appear on the Senate floor early next week, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday. The measure passed the House Wednesday, despite widespread, but not unified, Democratic opposition, linked in some cases to the last-minute addition of language that banned some medical treatments for the transgender-identified children of service members.
Within the unified NDAA, Defense Environmental Cleanup money for DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state would be authorized at $2.97 billion, a shade under the $3 billion requested by the administration.
The bill still shows the funding split between the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection although DOE formally consolidated the Hanford offices into one on Oct. 1.
