The Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee will mark up its recommended Energy Department budget for fiscal 2018 on Tuesday, with an eye toward moving the measure to the full Appropriations Committee for consideration Thursday.
The subcommittee, which had not released the text of its energy and water bill at deadline Sunday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, will provide an audio-only webcast of its Tuesday markup, which is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. The full committee session is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
The Trump administration has requested a major funding increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear weapons programs, more cleanup projects for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), and a total of $150 million — split between DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to restart the department’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste from weapons programs.
The House Appropriations Committee last week advanced a 2018 DOE budget recommendation that would essentially meet all of those requests.
It is not clear whether the Senate would go along with all of those plans.
In budget hearings last month, Senate subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) reiterated his long-standing preference that DOE open an interim storage site for U.S. spent nuclear fuel before starting work on Yucca Mountain.
“[T]he quickest, and probably the least expensive, way for the federal government to start to meet its used nuclear fuel obligations is for the Department of Energy to contract with a private interim storage facility for used nuclear fuel,” Alexander said in prepared remarks during a hearing about DOE’s 2018 budget request.
One project about which Alexander appears to agree with the White House is the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, wants to cancel MOX. Alexander appeared open, if not committed, to the idea during a June budget hearing with NNSA officials.
Fiscal 2018 begins Oct. 1.
