The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch would see its annual budget swell to nearly $8.3 billion, or $359 million than the $7.9 billion it received during fiscal 2022, under an omnibus 2023 spending bill released Tuesday.
It’s the same figure the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended this summer after the House approves the $7.9 billion budget the White House requested.
Under the omnibus, Defense Environmental Cleanup, which accounts for most of the spending at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, would receive more than $7 billion, or about $315 million more than what congress approved for fiscal 2022.
Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup spending would increase by nearly $25 million year-over-year to about $359 million. The Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning fund would also grow, to $879 million or $19 million more than the prior year, according to the explanatory statement posted by House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
Leaders in the House and Senate are pushing to adopt a full-year appropriations bill and avoid a government shutdown that would occur if nothing is passed before the latest spending band-aid bill expires Friday Dec. 23.
Fiscal 2023 began Oct. 1 and Congress has kept its agencies running via a series of continuing resolutions, keeping outlays at the equivalent of fiscal 2022 levels. The most recent extension, for one week, was approved by the Senate last week.
The administration of President Joe Biden initially requested a flat budget for the Office of Environmental Management: $7.9 billion. The House approved that level of spending in July. The Senate Appropriations Committee subsequently recommended $8.3 billion, which is the figure in the omnibus bill.
The Hanford Site in Washington state, Environmental Management’s most costly cleanup property, would again get about a third of the total cleanup budget. The two operating offices at Hanford, Richland and the Office of River Protection, would together receive $2.74 billion under the proposal, or $150 million more than last year’s combined $2.6 billion.
In providing more than $1.7 billion for the Office of River Protection, the omnibus bill reminds DOE that startup of Direct Feed Low Activity Waste operations must remain the agency’s “top focus” at Hanford. While DOE wants to start turning low-activity tank waste into glass by the end of 2023, a revised consent decree gives the agency potentially until 2025 due to time lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. A DOE budget official recently said the startup could slip into 2024.
Like Hanford, most Cold War and Manhattan Project cleanup sites are slated for increases.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina’s environmental spending would grow to $1.65 billion, up from $1.59 billion in 2022, with “risk management operations” getting $50 million more at $523 million.
The Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee would receive $505 million in environmental funding in the bill, up $19 million compared with the 2022 appropriation.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico would receive $459 million in the bill or $15 million more than 2022’s appropriation.
