Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) made a plea on the Senate floor Tuesday to increase the fiscal 2017 budget for a waste-disposal facility under construction at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio.
As part of a $37.5 billion 2017 energy and water spending bill that includes almost $31 billion for DOE overall and just over $6 billion for the agency’s legacy nuclear waste cleanup program, the Senate recommended about $42 million for Portsmouth’s 15–U–408 on-site waste disposal facility — almost double what the facility received from Congress in the current budget, and about even with the White House’a latest request.
“I’m hoping that the House will even increase that money for that disposal cell a little more,” Portman said on the Senate floor.
The House’s fiscal 2017 E&W bill, which provides about 3 percent less for DOE’s legacy waste cleanup program than the Senate’s proposal, nevertheless proposes a larger increase than did the upper chamber for the 15–U–408 facility: $58 million in 2017, or about 60 percent more than the 2016 appropriation.
DOE and the state of Ohio decided to build an on-site waste disposal facility at Portsmouth in 2015. The 100-acre facility is expected to cost some $340 million to build, according to the DOE budget request the White House released in February. The facility would permanently store most of the roughly 1.3 million cubic yards of waste expected to result from the demolition work remaining at the former uranium enrichment site, DOE said last year when it announced the decision to build the facility.
The full Senate is slated to wrap up debate on its 2017 DOE spending bill Wednesday. The House Appropriations Committee passed its version of DOE’s fiscal 2017 budget on April 19, but the measure had not been scheduled for floor action at press time Tuesday.
