Ahead of a long budget debate set to begin today on the House floor, the Donald Trump administration offered grudging support for the chamber’s proposed fiscal 2018 energy appropriations bill, while also criticizing lawmakers’ plans for nuclear waste storage and legacy nuclear cleanup programs.
The legislation funding the Department of Energy is part of a so-called minibus appropriations package that also includes spending proposals for the Defense Department, the Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.
In a statement of administration policy released Monday, the administration decried the House’s bill’s proposal to fund only $75 million of the $225 million the administration sought to transfer facilities no longer needed by the National Nuclear Security Administration for active nuclear weapons programs to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management for cleanup.
The White House also slammed House appropriators for a provision of the 2018 DOE budget bill that would forbid the agency from withdrawing money from the Nuclear Waste Fund to work on consolidated interim storage sites. The House prefers the proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., to interim storage sites that would take temporary custody of the spent nuclear fuel now stored at U.S. power plants across the county.
The White House likewise objected to the House’s plan to continue funding the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The Trump administration, like the Barack Obama administration before it, wants to cancel the unfinished facility, which is designed to turn surplus weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
Still, the White House “supports House passage” of the bill lawmakers will take up this week and said staff would recommend Trump sign the measure if it reached his desk. The Energy Department would receive about $30 billion for 2018, with some $14 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration and $6.4 billion for the Office of Environmental Management, if the House’s minibus appropriations package became law.
That is unlikely to happen, given some very different budget recommendations in the Senate version of the energy bill. For example, while the House’s 2018 DOE budget bill would provide the $120 million for Yucca Mountain the Trump administration requested, the Senate’s bill includes no money for the project. The Senate legislation also includes even less funding for transfer of excess weapons facilities to DOE’s Environmental Management office than does the House’s — $55 million, compared with the $75 million.
