In a budget bill released Tuesday, Senate appropriators agreed with their House colleagues that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should get about $850 million in fiscal year 2021, with $27.5 million for a non-Yucca-Mountain consolidated nuclear-waste storage facility.
The proposal released Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee recommends the requested $849.9 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), plus the requested $13.5 million or so for its Inspector General’s Office. The NRC Inspector General also covers the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Net of estimated revenue that comes mostly from NRC’s service fees for license applications, the Senate’s proposed 2021 appropriation for the commission would work out to about $123 million for the NRC.
If signed into law, the Senate’s 2021 spending bill would boost NRC’s budget by about $10 million, compared with last year. The 2021 funding would pay around 2,870 salaries – down by just over 100 from last year. Like the rest of the federal government, the NRC is funded at 2020 levels under a stopgap budget that runs through Dec. 11. The lame-duck Congress will either have to extend the stopgap or pass a permanent budget. In January, the 116th Congress will end, and Democrats will take control of the White House.
Senate appropriators also joined their House counterparts in recommending a requested $27.5 million for the Department of Energy to begin consolidating spent nuclear fuel from around the country in “one or more” private or government interim central storage facilities. No such facilities exist, yet. The Senate bill also recommends $10 million for the DOE secretary to contract for spent fuel management.
The House recommended that $7.5 million of the $27.5 million be derived from the Nuclear Waste Fund, but the Senate didn’t mention it.
Bill report language says priority should be given to accepting waste from shutdown reactors and to investment in waste transportation to storage facilities. Neither the bill nor the report mentions anything about Yucca Mountain, the proposed permanent nuclear waste facility in Nevada.
After failing to get any traction with Yucca Mountain during President Donald Trump’s term, the White House did not even bother requesting 2021 funding to license the Nye County, Nev., facility as a permanent waste repository. The Obama administration effectively withdrew DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain with the NRC in 2012.
The Senate also recommended $17.1 million, down from the House’s recommendation and NRC’s request of $17.7 million, to establish a regulatory framework for advanced nuclear-reactor technologies.
For other nuclear-waste cleanup, the Senate legislation would provide some $250 million – up from the House’s request of $210 million – for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). Like the House, the Senate refused to fund the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer FUSRAP activities to the DOE’s Office of Legacy Management.
The Senate’s proposed FUSRAP budget would be $50 million above current funding for the radioactive-contamination remediation program and $100 million above the Trump administration’s request for fiscal 2021. The administration claimed shifting the program to DOE would result in some administrative savings. FUSRAP remediates land contaminated by early U.S. nuclear weapons projects.
Elsewhere in the budget, Senate appropriators decided against using their spending bill to expand the size of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which provides technical oversight of DOE’s nuclear-waste programs.
The independent federal board wanted a little more than $5.5 million for 2021: about a $2 million raise from the 2020 budget of roughly $3.5 million. The board wants the extra funding to hire more staff — something appropriators said requires a change in federal law that should be made outside the appropriations process.
“Congress has not yet acted on the Board’s legislative proposal,” the Senate’s bill report reads. “Accordingly, the Committee does not recommend funds for this request at this time.”
The Senate also included a recommendation for no less than $1 million for the Epidemiologic Study of One Million U.S. Radiation Workers and Veterans, a research initiative originally approved by the Office of Science in 2012.
