Nuclear remediation sites overseen by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would receive another small bump in funding for safeguards and security in fiscal 2021, according to budget tables released by the Donald Trump administration early Monday.
The proposal for $321 million in the budget year beginning Oct. 1 is a step up from the congressionally enacted levels of $313 million in fiscal 2020 and $304 million for fiscal 2019.
The safeguards and security program is generally designed to protect people, facilities, nuclear material, and sensitive information across the weapons complex.
Protective forces would again account for the largest chunk of the funding – $191 million, compared to the current $189 million.
The second largest line item would again be roughly $39 million for cybersecurity, which the document cites as a “significant focus” of the budget request. The funding will pay for “incident response” for potential cyber incursions, along with upgrading or retiring old information systems, fixing vulnerabilities, and other services.
The Energy Department headquarters will coordinate cybersecurity for smaller nuclear cleanup locations.
Physical security systems would be funded at about $29 million, up from $27 million in fiscal 2020.
The funding is scattered across at least seven sites: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico; the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the Paducah Site in Kentucky; the Portsmouth Site in Ohio; the Hanford Site in Washington state; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; and the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York.
As with the Environmental Management office budget in general, Hanford receives the most security funding. The administration proposed more than $96 million in fiscal 2021, up from $87 million enacted in 2020. In addition to cyber improvements the budget increase would include money for an updated 10-year Hanford Security Infrastructure Plan.
Not all sites have their own individual safeguards and security program. Some draw funding from other entitles such as the DOE Office of Science or the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
