The Donald Trump administration on Monday requested $6.1 billion for the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management during fiscal 2021, which would be an 18% reduction from the $7.5 billion enacted by Congress in the current budget year.
It also represents a $400 million slice from the $6.5 billion the White House sought last March for DOE nuclear cleanup at 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites. Congress eventually bumped that up for the budget year starting Oct. 1, which has been the annual pattern for Environmental Management thus far during President Donald Trump’s term in office.
The administration released top-line figures for the $35.4 billion DOE budget proposal, which is about 8.1% less than the 2020 enacted level of $38.5 billion.
Proposed funding for Defense Environmental Cleanup, which accounts for most of the Environmental Management budget, is $5 billion, about 20% less than the $6.25 billion enacted for that category in fiscal 2020. Nondefense Environmental Cleanup would receive $276 million under the proposal, down from $319 million in the current budget. The Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund would stay flat at $881 million.
The department wants $1.3 billion for the Office of River Protection, which oversees management of 56 million gallons of radioactive liquid and chemical waste held in underground storage tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The figure is well below the office’s almost $1.62 billion in the office’s current budget at the former plutonium production complex.
Material released Monday indicates $655 million is being requested for Hanford’s Richland Operations Office, which is well below the $912 million for the office that manages contractors and oversees sitewide infrastructure at Hanford.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina would receive $1.7 billion for environmental remediation, according to the request, up from the $1.45 billion in fiscal 2020. The request seeks $432 million for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, below the $450 million cleanup budget in the current cycle.
The Energy Department, in budget documents released so far and in a conference call between agency leadership and reporters, did not offer any real explanation for the reduced numbers for Environmental Management.
One popular theory put forward by Washington, D.C., insiders is that the $19.8 billion requested for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), far above the $16.7 billion during the current budget year, leaves less cash for the nuclear cleanup office.
