The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will stay on hold and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will escape a proposed budget cut until at least Dec. 22, under a short-term continuing resolution Congress approved on Thursday.
At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, President Donald Trump was expected to sign the stopgap budget bill before midnight, when federal funding under a previous short-term spending measure was slated to expire.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), like the rest of the federal government, has been held at fiscal 2017 spending levels since September, when Congress signed a continuing resolution after failing to produce a permanent federal budget bill for fiscal 2018. The ultra-short stopgap approved Thrusday extends the sunset date of the old continuing resolution.
The NRC, which regulates civilian nuclear power and waste, would receive the annualized equivalent of just over $1 billion. The Donald Trump administration requested just under $1 billion for fiscal 2018, which began Oct. 1.
Also under the stopgap CR, neither the Department of Energy nor the NRC would get any of the money the administration requested for 2018 to resume licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear-waste repository. The White House sought $120 million for DOE and $30 million for the NRC to resume licensing operations halted under the Obama administration.
