Department of Energy defense-nuclear programs will keep their 2024 budgets for almost half of fiscal year 2025, under the year’s second continuing resolution, signed into law Saturday.
President Joe Biden (D) signed the bill early Saturday, the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere, hours after federal funding had technically lapsed under the previous stopgap budget, signed in September.
The bill has some anomalies that let the Department of Energy exceed its 2024 budget in a few instances, mostly to continue work on critical, mostly unspecified, programs and to repair damage caused by summer hurricanes. Outside of these, DOE will keep its 2024 budget through March 14, almost six months into fiscal year 2024.
The DOE defense-nuclear anomalies in the bill just signed are the same as those found in an early version of the continuing resolution, which Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) pulled from the floor without a vote after President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, came out against the bill.
The bill signed Saturday was the third continuing resolution House lawmakers unveiled this week. The second failed because every House Democrat voted against it, along with some Republicans who opposed federal debt relief that Trump wanted in the bill. The third bill had no debt relief.
Overall under the third bill, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would get about $24.1 billion for its active nuclear-weapons programs, less than requested for 2025, while the agency’s Office of Environmental Management would get a little more than requested: $8.5 billion or so.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would have gotten the equivalent of about $1.7 billion, a little more than the roughly $1.6 billion White House requested for fiscal 2025.
The anomalies
On top of the 2024 budget, NNSA’s Weapons Activities account would get roughly an extra $1.9 million “for necessary expenses related to damages caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.”
Defense Environmental Cleanup, which pays for nuclear-weapons cleanup in the Office of Environmental Management, would get about $2.4 million more than the 2024 appropriation, also for expenses related to Helene and Milton.
Elsewhere in the Department of Energy’s defense-nuclear portfolio, the bill would let DOE spend whatever it deems necessary “to sustain specialized security activities.” If DOE chooses to exceed the 2024 specialized security budget of roughly $350 million, the Secretary of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget must notify Congress within three days, the bill says.
DOE would also get an extra $1.75 million in the continuing resolution in its Other Defense Activities account “to conduct risk reduction and modification of National Security Systems.”
The bill’s biggest nuclear-related anomaly is outside of the NNSA: roughly $5.7 billion more than the 2024 budget for the Navy’s Virginia-class submarine program.
