By Wayne Barber
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday easily passed a fiscal 2018 energy and water spending bill that includes a $25 million cut to the budget request for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The nuclear industry regulator requested $952 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, encompassing all salaries and expenses and funding for the NRC Inspector General’s Office. The Senate panel signed off on about $927 million, but threw in another $10 million in NRC carryover funding.
Of the base amount, $807.8 million could come in the form of revenue from NRC licensees and license applicants, up slightly from the $803.4 million NRC estimate; however, the congressional appropriation for the agency would be dropped from the requested $135.7 million to $106.2 million.
Agency nuclear materials and waste safety funding is proposed at $113.1 million, and decommissioning and low-level waste at $27.9 million.
“In developing this recommendation, the Committee has consulted with the Commission to ensure it maintains its gold-standard health and safety mission while reducing low-priority work,” according to the legislative report for the budget bill.
This bill includes no money for licensing the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, breaking with the Trump administration and House of Representatives’ energy spending bill – both of which propose to give the NRC $30 million to resume review of the Department of Energy license application.
The House energy bill, which the lower chamber’s Appropriations Committee passed last week, would give the NRC a bit more than it asked for: $954 million.
While there was some discussion of Yucca Mountain and strategies for storage of spent fuel from U.S. commercial reactors, Thursday’s markup featured no direct discussion of the NRC funding plan.
Appropriators voted 30-1 to report the bill to the full Senate, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) being the sole no vote in objection to the bill’s language terminating the MOX plutonium disposal project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in his state.
The $38.4 billion legislation sent to the Senate is effectively the same proposal that was advanced Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.
It includes $6.2 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, of which $117 million would be directed to the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
That’s $1 million less than the Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal 2018 for the program to remediate U.S. sites contaminated by nuclear weapons and energy programs from the 1940s to 1960s. The corresponding House bill would meet the Army Corps’ $118 million request for FUSRAP.
The Senate has not scheduled a floor vote on its energy appropriations bill. The House is expected to vote next week on a “mini-bus” appropriations package that would include the energy legislation and other measures, according to a House aide.
