The Senate’s latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow the Department of Energy to spend $5.63 billion on defense environmental cleanup operations in fiscal 2019. That matches the department’s request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, but it is $50 million lower than the level authorized in the House NDAA.
The Senate measure was released on Wednesday, a week after it was advanced by the upper chamber’s Armed Services Committee. A floor vote could happen next week.
Defense nuclear nonproliferation is the largest funding tranche for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which oversees cleanup of legacy nuclear-weapons activities at 16 sites around the nation. The department also receives funds for non-defense environmental cleanup and for remediation at former uranium enrichment sites through the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund. Those are not covered by NDAAs.
At the Hanford Site in Washington state, the NDAA would authorize $1.4 billion in defense environmental cleanup funds for the Office of River Protection, which oversees management of radioactive tank waste, and $658.2 million for the Richland Operations Office, which is charged with remaining cleanup operations. The House NDAA would allow for $708 million in spending on the Richland Operations Office while meeting DOE’s $1.4 billion request for the Office of River Protection.
Among other major cleanup sites, the House NDAA puts defense environmental cleanup spending at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee at $226.2 million; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina would be authorized for up to nearly $1.5 billion; and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would get $396.7 million.
While the House NDAA authorizes $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal, covering interim storage and the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, the Senate measure allows for no such spending. That is in line with the two chambers’ divide over Yucca Mountain: The House energy and water funding bill for fiscal 2019 provides for $270 million to resume licensing of the repository, while the Senate version zeroes out all Yucca funding.
The NDAAs provide direction, but not actual funding, for congressional appropriations committees that set actual defense spending levels.
