Using leftover appropriations, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget for fiscal year 2024 would be essentially what the agency requested, if a proposal approved last week by Senate appropriators becomes law.
An energy and water appropriations bill passed Thursday by the Senate Appropriations would provide a net appropriation for the NRC of about $940 million. That is roughly $20 million less than the Joe Biden (D) administration’s request, which the House Appropriations Committee matched about dollar-for-dollar in late June.
However, Senate appropriators directed the NRC to carry over $62 million in unspent funds from prior appropriations into the budget year that begins Oct. 1, according to the detailed budget report the full Senate Appropriations Committee released Thursday.
The carryover funding would allow the agency, if the bill is signed as-is, to spend essentially at the requested levels for all of its main accounts, plus spend $16 million on grants and research projects under the commission’s Integrated University Program, for which the White House requested no fiscal year 2024 funds.
The White House had proposed carrying over about $27 million in unspent appropriations into fiscal year 2024.
NRC’s big accounts are Nuclear Reactor Safety, Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety, Decommissioning and Low-Level Waste and Corporate Support.
The NRC offsets most of its annual appropriation with the fees it collects from the nuclear power plants and other licensees. For 2024, the Senate committee estimated that the commission will collect some $807 million in fees, leaving a net appropriation of about $134 million. That’s about $30 million more in fees than the agency collected in 2023.
Both the House and Senate committees’ appropriations bills awaited floor votes in their respective chambers as of Monday afternoon.
Also in the report for the latest energy and water budget bill, Senate appropriators ordered a briefing on NRC’s telework policy. Appropriators asked for “detailed metrics to evaluate staff performance and productivity as a part of implementing its telework policy,” and requested an annual briefing about remote work at the agency.
The Senate bill report also calls for NRC to streamline the licensing of advanced nuclear reactors, and to “submit to Congress a report providing options on how to improve organizational management to review and advanced reactor license applications for first-of-a-kind nuclear reactors. The report shall review and assess the NRC’s existing organizational structure and identify potential gaps in the current organizational licensing approach.”
