When President Trump signed a multiagency appropriations package Friday afternoon, it assured the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management about $7.2 billion in funding for the 2019 fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
The DOE-funding “minibus,” approved by Congress earlier this month, provides the largest budget for the department’s nuclear cleanup office since it received almost $7.3 billion in fiscal 2005. It is $53 million more than the fiscal 2018 enacted level and $578 million above the administration ‘s request. That covers more than $6 billion for defense environmental cleanup; $310 million for nondefense environmental cleanup; and about $841 million from DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, which pays for environmental remediation at three former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
As a provision of the 2019 budget package, the Energy Department will not trade or barter any uranium to defray cleanup costs at the DOE Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The funding plan increased the portion of the fund designated for work at Portsmouth by $60 million above the administration request, to $366 million, to offset suspension of the uranium barter program.
The Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state will get roughly $1.57 billion, well above the $1.44 billion sought by the administration and more than the $1.56 billion budgeted in fiscal 2018. Hanford’s Richland Operations Office will get $865 million, $2 million more than its 2018 level and a major spike from the $658 million sought by the administration.
The $410 million budgeted for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is $10 million more than the $400 million enacted for 2018 and far above the $226 million in the administration request.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina is budgeted for about $1.39 billion in the upcoming fiscal year, up from the current level of $1.31 billion but less than the $1.47 billion requested by the administration.
The cleanup-related budget for the Idaho National Laboratory was set at $433 million, just below last year’s $434 million, but above the $349 million sought by the administration.