The Senate on Tuesday passed a national security appropriations package that would boost the Department of Energy’s radiological safety efforts in Ukraine and seed a new commercial uranium refining industry.
The bill includes $2.7 billion for DOE contracts that could help the federal government acquire high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), plus about $150 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration to help Ukraine oversee nuclear power plants that have been taken over by Russian invaders.
The bill picked up a few votes since Thursday in the Democrat-controlled Senate, passing the upper chamber 70-29 with 22 Republican votes and one abstention. Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the bill is dead on arrival in the lower chamber, which as of Tuesday morning had yet to schedule debate on the proposal.
Most of the funding in the roughly $95.3-billion bill is war aid for Ukraine, which Russia invaded again in 2022. The bill began life in the Senate as a bipartisan national security package that at first included immigration control policies for the U.S.’ southern border with Mexico.
After former President Donald Trump (R) the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, opposed the border-control bill, most Senate Republicans said they would not vote for the measure. Senate Democrats then amended the bill to remove the immigration policies and won back enough Republicans to pass it.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, all voted no on the Senate’s bill, alongside 26 Republicans.
