US Senate passes fiscal year 2006 Energy Dept budget of $25-bil

Washington (Platts)--1Jul2005

The US Senate passed a spending bill Friday giving the Energy Dept a little
more than $25-bil in fiscal year 2006, a $778-mil boost over DOE's current
funding level and $1.2-bil more than the Bush administration requested in the
pared-down budget it unveiled in February. The bill, which passed 92-3, must
now be reconciled in conference with a House of Representatives measure that
gives DOE about $425-mil less funding. 

The House and Senate bills also differ on some key policy matters, such as
developing "interim" storage sites for spent nuclear fuel stacking up at power
plants because of delays in DOE's repository project in Nevada. Both Senate
and House provided $577-mil for the repository, on a par with current funding
level. But the Senate bill says nothing about developing interim storage,
while the House measure earmarks $20-mil for it. That could be a contentious
point between Rep David Hobson (Republican-Ohio) who authored the interim
storage provision, and Sen Pete Domenici (Republican-New Mexico) who fought to
keep it out of the Senate bill.

The Senate bill also provides $368-mil for construction of a mixed-oxide
plant, which Domenici says would reduce nuclear proliferation threats and
solve some of DOE's environmental management problems. The House bill, though,
provides no funding for this program. The Senate bill provides slightly less
than the House measure for cleaning up now-defunct nuclear weapons sites, but
both bills offer more than the administration's budget request.

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