In separate hearings on Wednesday, Senators will consider the Donald Trump administration’s 2018 budget request for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House’s nominees to round out the two vacant spots on the commission.
The NRC double-header is set to kick off at 10 a.m., when the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee will consider the Trump administration’s proposal to nominate Annie Caputo and David Wright to fill two vacant seats on the commission, and to renominate current NRC chair Kristine Svinicki for another five-year term.
Svinicki, a commission member since 2008 who was appointed chair soon after Trump office, is rounding out a term set to expire June 30.
Caputo is a nuclear engineer and a longtime Capitol Hill staffer who is now a senior policy adviser to Committee Chairman Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.). She would fill out the remainder of a five-year term that expires June 30, 2021.
Wright, current consultant and former state lawmaker in South Carolina, would serve the remainder of a five-year term that ends June 30, 2020. Wright has led both the South Carolina Public Service Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
The other two active NRC commissions besides Svinicki are former House staffer Jeff Baran, whose term runs out June 30, 2018, and attorney Stephen Burns, whose term ends June 30, 2019. NRC requires a quorum of three to conduct business.
After the nomination hearing, the NRC action continues at the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, which is set to consider Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request for the commission at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.
Witnesses for the budget hearing are the three current NRC commissioners: Svinicki, Baran and Burns.
The Trump administration has proposed a little more than $950 for NRC in 2018: about a five-percent increase compared with the 2017 appropriation. Of the proposed 2018 budget, $30 million would support the commission’s role in considering the Energy Department’s as-yet dormant application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste. The latter category includes waste created by DOE and its predecessor agencies for Cold War nuclear-weapons programs.
