The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 92-7 to approve the conference version of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, sending it to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature.
The compromise bill authorizes nearly $619 billion in spending through the end of the budget year on Sept. 30, the vast majority at the Pentagon and its military branches. The NDAA also sets allowed funding levels for the Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and the controversial Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
How much DOD and the NNSA will actually receive this year is not yet known. The federal government is operating under a short-term budget resolution through Friday that freezes funding at fiscal 2016 levels. The House Appropriations Committee this week introduced another continuing resolution (CR) that would last to April 28, by which time President-elect Donald Trump will have been in office for over three months. The House signed off on the CR on Thursday, but the Senate was wrangling over the legislation as of NS&D Monitor’s deadline on Friday, and a brief government shutdown appeared possible.
The continuing resolution would keep the NNSA’s annualized funding at $12.5 billion. That funding amount is $600 million less than the $13.1 billion authorized under the fiscal 2017 NDAA — $9.4 billion for weapons activities, including research, development, and production activities in support of the U.S. nuclear arsenal; $1.9 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation operations; and the remainder for nuclear reactor work and salaries and expenses.
The House approved the conference report last Friday by a vote of 375-34.
Congress made it clear in the CR that it continues to oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to kill the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which is being built to process 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium for eventual use as commercial reactor fuel. Disposal of the material is mandated under a 2000 U.S.-Russian agreement recently suspended on Moscow’s side by President Vladimir Putin.
The Energy Department says it has an alternative that would cut tens of billions of dollars from its estimated $50 billion life-cycle price tag for the MOX project, and wrap up the program decades earlier. It requested $270 million in fiscal 2017 specifically for winding down the program.
The NDAA conference report instead authorizes $340 million to continue construction of the facility. It also removes language from the House version under which the energy secretary could waive the mandate to conduct construction and support operations for the MFFF by meeting a number of conditions, including submitting to Congress an updated performance baseline and project support for the MOX program and a commitment “to remove plutonium from South Carolina and ensure a sustainable future for the Savannah River Site.”
The NDAA conference language requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Chief of Engineers, acting as an owner’s agent for DOE, to prepare a report on the “contract for the construction, management and operations of the MOX facility,” covering contractual, technical, and managerial risks for the agency and its project contractor, CB&I AREVA MOX Services. The report would also consider parts of the contract that could be shifted to a fixed-price provision, fixed-price with incentive fee provision, or other contractual method to lower both risk to DOE and the project’s cost.
“For years the administration has been using inaccurate and skewed reports to misrepresent the status of the MOX project,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said in a statement to NS&D Monitor. “A report from the Army Corps of Engineers would provide a clear reflection of the project’s schedule and cost. I am confident in its importance for the American people.”
The Department of Energy has projected the life-cycle cost of the MOX project at upward of $50 billion, $5 billion of which has already been spent. DOE says it could save tens of billions of dollars by diluting the plutonium using existing facilities at Savannah River and storing the processed material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. However, MFFF contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services has put the life-cycle price tag at $19 billion. The sides also differ on the timeline, with DOE saying construction would finish around 2048 and the contractor eyeing completion in 2029.
While the White House has in statements of administration policy this year directly opposed NDAA language to keep the MOX program alive, there have been no signs yet that Obama would veto the conference report.
