Caption: Yucca Mountain
Nuclear energy programs would receive $936 million in
fiscal year 2016 under an energy and water spending bill
approved by the U.S. House of Representatives’
Appropriations Committee.
As part of the bill, the House committee budgeted $175
million to continue licensing activities for a nuclear waste
repository at
Yucca Mountain in Nevada, including $150 million to the
U.S. Department of Energy and $25 million to the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The administration had only
requested $27 million as part of an effort to terminate the
project.
The committee reduced the NRC’s budget by $25 million, or
2.5 percent, in order to implement recommendations the NRC
made to improve efficiency and effectiveness. NRC’s current
budget is slightly more than $1 billion.
President Obama’s proposal to impose a 10-year, $2 billion
tax on the nuclear industry for the decontamination and
decommissioning of uranium enrichment facilities that the
DOE operated in three states was again rejected.
“The nuclear energy industry believes the Appropriations
Committee has acted properly and decisively with immediate,
concrete action to right-size the NRC’s budget,” said Alex
Flint, senior vice president for governmental affairs with
the
Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). “As the NRC itself
acknowledges in its Project Aim report, the public interest
and the agency’s safety mission will be better served once
the NRC is right-sized and increases discipline throughout
its regulatory processes. Industry and NRC resources alike
must be focused on those areas with high safety
significance.”
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