Energy and Water Development: FY2008 Appropriations

Energy and Water Development:
FY2008 Appropriations
Updated January 31, 2008
Carl E. Behrens, Coordinator,
Anthony Andrews, David M. Bearden,
Nicole T. Carter, Mark Holt, Nic Lane,
Daniel Morgan, and Fred Sissine
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Jonathan Medalia
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Carol Glover
Knowledge Services Group

The annual consideration of appropriations bills (regular, continuing, and supplemental) by
Congress is part of a complex set of budget processes that also encompasses the
consideration of budget resolutions, revenue and debt-limit legislation, other spending
measures, and reconciliation bills. In addition, the operation of programs and the spending
of appropriated funds are subject to constraints established in authorizing statutes.
Congressional action on the budget for a fiscal year usually begins following the submission
of the President’s budget at the beginning of the session. Congressional practices governing
the consideration of appropriations and other budgetary measures are rooted in the
Constitution, the standing rules of the House and Senate, and statutes, such as the
Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
This report is a guide to the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year.
It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate
Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water Development. It summarizes the status
of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related congressional activity, and is
updated as events warrant. The report lists the key CRS staff relevant to the issues covered
and related CRS products.
NOTE: A Web version of this document with active links is
available to congressional staff at [http://beta.crs.gov/cli/level_2.
aspx?P RDS_CLI _ITEM_ID=73].

Energy and Water Development:
FY2008 Appropriations
Summary
The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill provides funding for
civil works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the
Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the Department of Energy (DOE), and a
number of independent agencies.
Key budgetary issues involving these programs include
^!the distribution of Army Corps of Engineers appropriations across
the agency’s authorized construction and maintenance activities
(Title I);
^!support of major ecosystem restoration initiatives, such as Florida
Everglades (Title I) and California “Bay-Delta” (CALFED) (Title
II);
^!funding for the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain, Nevada, and proposals to store nuclear spent fuel
temporarily (Title III: Nuclear Waste Disposal); and
^!the Administration’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
to supply plutonium-based fuel to other nations (Title III: Nuclear
Energy).
The FY2008 Energy and Water Development bill was enacted as Division C of
the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY2008 (P.L. 110-161). The omnibus
funding measure was passed by Congress December 19, 2007, and signed by the
President December 26, 2007. The act provides $31.4659 billion for Energy and
Water programs, about $1 billion below the FY2007 appropriation and about $500
million above the Administration’s request.
The House Appropriations Committee reported out its FY2008 Energy and
Water Development Appropriations bill, H.R. 2641 (H.Rept. 110-185), on June 6,

2007. The bill as reported did not contain indications of funding for specific projects.

On June 20 the bill was debated on the House floor, but was not voted on pending
submission by the Appropriations Committee of a supplement specifying funding for
individual projects. That supplement was voted by the committee July 12, and the
House approved the bill July 17, 2007.
The Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development Appropriations
approved its version of the bill on June 26, and the full Senate Appropriations
Committee approved it June 28, 2007 (S. 1751, S.Rept. 110-127).

Key Policy Staff
CRS
Area of ExpertiseNameDivisionTelephone
GeneralCarl BehrensRSI7-8303
Carol GloverKSG7-7353
Corps of EngineersNicole CarterRSI7-0854
Steve HughesRSI7-7268
Bureau of ReclamationNic LaneRSI7-7905
Betsy CodyRSI7-7229
Solar and Renewable EnergyFred SissineRSI7-7039
Nuclear EnergyMark HoltRSI7-1704
Science ProgramsDaniel MorganRSI7-5849
Nuclear Weapons StewardshipJonathan MedaliaFDT7-7632
Nonproliferation and TerrorismCarl BehrensRSI7-8303
DOE Environmental ManagementDavid BeardenRSI7-2390
Power Marketing AdministrationsNic LaneRSI7-7905
Bonneville Power AdministrationNic LaneRSI7-7905
Fossil Energy ResearchAnthony AndrewsRSI7-6843
Strategic Petroleum ReserveRobert BambergerRSI7-7240
Energy ConservationFred SissineRSI7-7039
Budget Data and Report PreparationCarol Glover KSG7-7353
^Divⁱ^sⁱ^on^abbrev^iation^s^:^R^S^{I = R}^e^s^o^u^r^ces^{, Scien}^{ce, an}^{d In}^du^s^t^ry^{; FDT}^{= Foreig}ⁿ^A^f^f^a^irs^,^Def^eⁿ^s^{e, an}^d
^T^r^{ade; KSG = Kn}^ow^ledg^{e Serv}^ices^Grou^p.

Contents
Most Recent Developments..........................................1
Status ...........................................................1
Overview ........................................................2
Title I: Army Corps of Engineers......................................3
Key Policy Issues — Corps of Engineers...........................4
Project Backlog and Agency Priorities.........................4
Everglades ...............................................6
Hurricane Katrina Repairs and Coastal Louisiana Restoration.......7
Title II: Department of the Interior....................................7
Central Utah Project and Bureau of Reclamation: Budget In Brief........8
Key Policy Issues — Bureau of Reclamation........................9
Background ..............................................9
CALFED ................................................9
Loan Guarantee Program...................................10
Security ................................................10
Water 2025..............................................10
General Provisions........................................11
Title III: Department of Energy......................................11
Key Policy Issues — Department of Energy........................14
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy......................14
Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.....................15
Nuclear Energy...........................................17
Fossil Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration........22
Strategic Petroleum Reserve................................25
Science .................................................26
Nuclear Waste Disposal....................................28
Loan Guarantees.........................................29
Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship......................29
Nonproliferation and National Security Programs................42
Environmental Management................................44
Power Marketing Administrations............................52
Title IV: Independent Agencies......................................54
Key Policy Issues — Independent Agencies........................54
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.............................54
For Additional Reading............................................56
CRS Products................................................56

Table 1. Status of Energy and Water Development Appropriations, FY2008...1
Table 2. Energy and Water Development Appropriations, FY2001 to FY2008..2
Table 3. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Summary..........2
Table 4. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Title I: Army
Corps of Engineers.............................................3
Table 5. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Title II: Central
Utah Project Completion Account.................................7
Table 6. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Title II:
Bureau of Reclamation..........................................8
Table 7. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Title III:
Department of Energy.........................................11
Table 8. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Programs..............16
Table 9. Fossil Energy Research and Development Programs..............23
Table 10. Energy Policy Act of 2005 Title IV Authorization...............24
Table 11. Funding for Weapons Activities.............................30
Table 12. NNSA Future Years Nuclear Security Program.................31
Table 13. DOE Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs...............42
Table 14. Environmental Management Program Appropriations............48
Table 15. Office of Legacy Management Appropriations.................52
Table 16. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Title IV:
Independent Agencies.........................................54

Energy and Water Development:
FY2008 Appropriations
Most Recent Developments
The FY2008 Energy and Water Development bill was enacted as Division C of
the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY2008 (P.L. 110-161). The omnibus
funding measure was passed by Congress December 19, 2007, and signed by the
President December 26, 2007. The act provides $31.4659 billion for Energy and
Water programs, about $1 billion below the FY2007 appropriation and about $500
million above the Administration’s request.
The Bush Administration’s FY2008 budget request was released in February
2007. The House Appropriations Committee reported out its FY2008 Energy and
Water Development Appropriations bill, H.R. 2641, on June 6, 2007. The bill as
reported did not contain indications of funding for specific projects. On June 20 the
bill was debated on the House floor, but was not voted on pending submission by the
Appropriations Committee of a supplement specifying funding for individual
projects. That supplement was voted out by the committee July 12, and the House
approved the bill July 17, 2007.
The Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development Appropriations
approved its version of the bill, S. 1751, on June 26, and the full Senate
Appropriations Committee approved it June 28.
Energy and Water Development programs were funded for FY2007 in the
Revised Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2007 (H.J.Res. 20, P.L. 110-5). On
March 16, 2007, the Department of Energy (DOE) submitted its “operating plan” to
Congress, detailing funding for individual programs not specifically identified in P.L.

110-5.

Status
Table 1. Status of Energy and Water Development Appropriations, FY2008
Subcommittee
MarkupHouseHouseSenateSenateConf.Final ApprovalPublic
Re por t P assage Re por t P assage Re por t LawHouse Senate H ouse Senate

5/30/076/26/07H.Rept.110-1857/17/07S.Rept.110-127NoneNone12/19/0712/18/07P.L. 110-161

Overview
The Energy and Water Development bill includes funding for civil works
projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the
Interior’s Central Utah Project (CUP) and Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the
Department of Energy (DOE), and a number of independent agencies, including the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Appalachian Regional Commission
(ARC).
Table 2 includes budget totals for energy and water development appropriations
enacted for FY2001 to FY2008.
Table 2. Energy and Water Development Appropriations,
FY2001 to FY2008
(budget authority in billions of current dollars)
FY01 FY02 FY03 FY04 FY05 FY06 FY07 FY08
23.9 25.2 26.1 26.7 30.2^a 36.7^b 29.4 31.5
^No^te:^Fig^u^r^es^r^e^p^r^esen^t^cu^r^r^en^t^d^o^llar^s^{, ex}^clu^d^{e p}^e^r^m^an^en^{t b}^u^d^g^{et au}^th^o^r^{ities, an}^d^r^e^f^l^{ect r}^e^scissioⁿ^s.
^{a. F}^o^{r F}^Y^{2005 an}^{d l}^a^t^e^{r, t}^o^t^a^lⁱⁿ^cl^u^d^es^D^O^E^prog^ram^s^f^o^rm^erl^y^f^uⁿ^d^edⁱⁿ^t^h^e^In^t^e^ri^or^an^{d R}^e^l^a^t^e^d
^A^g^en^cies^appropriatio^ns^bⁱ^{ll an}^{d tran}^s^f^{erred to th}^{e En}^erg^y^an^{d W}^a^{ter Dev}^e^lopm^en^t
^ap^p^r^o^p^r^iatioⁿ^s^b^ill.
^b^.^Iⁿ^clu^d^{es $}⁶^.⁶^b^illioⁿⁱⁿ^em^er^g^eⁿ^c^y^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^r^th^{e Co}^r^p^{s o}^f^En^gⁱⁿ^eer^s.
Table 3 lists totals for each of the bill’s four titles. It also lists several
“scorekeeping” adjustments of accounts within the four titles, reflecting various
expenditures or sources of revenue besides appropriated funds. These adjustments
affect the total amount appropriated in the bill but are not included in the totals of the
individual titles. Amounts listed in this report are derived from the Administration’s
FY2008 Congressional Budget Requests, from H.Rept. 110-185, to accompany H.R.
2641, from the S.Rept. 110-127, to accompany S. 1751, and from the explanatory
statement for the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764, P.L. 110-

161).

Table 3. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Summary
($ millions)
FY2008
Title F Y 2007 Request H ouse Senat e F i nal
Title I: Corps of Engineers$5,340.2$4,871.0$5,584.4$5,448.1$5,587.1
Title II: CUP & BOR1,054.71,001.41,065.41,144.31,150.9
Title III: Department of Energy24,228.224,762.725,243.125,896.924,446.6
Title IV: Independent Agencies306.0251.5237.8301.0281.3
E&W Subtotal 30,794.130,863.632,130.732,790.231,465.9
Scorekeeping Adjustments

FY2008
Title F Y 2007 Request H ouse Senat e F i nal
Undistributed Pay Raise33.0
Title II
Central Valley(44.0)(51.6)(51.6)(51.6)NA
Title III
Colorado River Basins, WAPA(23.0)(23.0)(23.0)(23.0)NA
Uranium Fund(446.0)(463.0)(463.0)(463.0)NA
Excess Fees FERC(19.2)(17.5)(17.5)(17.5)NA
E&W Total30,294.930,308.531,575.632,235.1NA
^Source:^A^d^mⁱⁿⁱ^s^t^ratⁱ^oⁿ^F^Y²⁰⁰⁸^bu^dg^et^requ^es^t^;^H^.^R^e^pt^.^110-^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^{127. C}^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^,
^{2008, P.L}^.^110-^161.
^No^te:^D^e^t^aⁱ^l^s^m^a^yⁿ^o^t^{add t}^o^t^o^t^a^l^s^du^{e t}^o^rouⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^.^In^cl^u^d^es^t^h^{e acros}^s^-^t^h^{e board res}^cⁱ^s^sⁱ^on^(S^{ec. 312). N}^A^:^N^o^t
^av^ailable.
Tables 4 through 16 provide budget details for Title I (Corps of Engineers),
Title II (Department of the Interior), Title III (Department of Energy), and Title IV
(independent agencies) for FY2005-FY2006.
Title I: Army Corps of Engineers
P.L.110-161 provided $5.587 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; it
was an increase over the Administration’s budget request of $4.871 billion and 5%
above the FY2007 appropriations (not including supplemental funds) of $5.340
billion. The omnibus funding measure rescinded a total of $4.9 million of prior
appropriations for the Corps.
Funding for the Corps’ civil works program is often a contentious issue between
the Administration and Congress, with final appropriations typically providing more
funding than requested, regardless of which political party controls the White House
and Congress. Generally around 85% of the appropriations for the agency is directed
to specific projects. Often Congress will direct funding to projects not included in
the Administration’s request.
Table 4. Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Title I: Army Corps of Engineers
($ millions)
F Y 2008^a Senat e
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H ouse Comm. Final
Investigations and Planning$162.9$90.0$120.0$172.1$167.2
Construction 2,336.5 1,523.0 2,004.2 2,059.5 2,289.3
Mississippi River & Tributaries396.6260.0278.0375.02,243.6
Operation and Maintenance (O&M)1,975.12,471.02,655.22,292.0387.4

F Y 2008^a Senat e
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H ouse Comm. Final
Regulatory 159.3 180.0 180.0 180.0 180.0
General Expenses167.2177.0171.0175.0175.0
FUSRAP^b 138.7 130.0 130.0 140.0 140.0
Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies — 40.040.050.00.0
Office of the Asst. Secretary of the Army4.0 — 6.04.54.5
Total Title I5,340.24,871.05,584.45,448.15,587.1
^Sources^:^F^Y^{2008 Bu}^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^;^A^r^m^y^C^o^rps^of^En^gⁱⁿ^eers^Cⁱ^vⁱ^l^Work^s^:^F^Y^{2007 Work}^Pl^an^(March^{19, 2007);}
^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^127.
^{a. T}^h^es^{e f}ⁱ^g^u^r^es^accouⁿ^t^f^o^{r res}^c^is^sⁱ^on^s^.
^b^.^“^F^o^r^m^e^r^l^y^Utilized^{Sites Rem}^e^dⁱ^{al A}^c^tioⁿ^P^r^o^g^r^a^m^.^”
Key Policy Issues — Corps of Engineers
Project Backlog and Agency Priorities. The policy debate on how to
structure the Corps’ budget and priorities is ongoing. The Corps civil works program
has been criticized by some observers as an agglomeration of projects with no
underlying design. These observers see the Corps’ backlog of authorized activities
as an example of this lack of focus. Prior to enactment of the $23 billion
authorization bill for the agency known as the Water Resources Development Act
(WRDA) in November 2007, estimates of the backlog’s size had varied from $11
billion to more than $60 billion, depending on which projects are included. Although
some observers view the backlog as nothing more than a Corps “to do” list, others
are concerned that projects face construction delays and related cost overruns as
available appropriations are spread across an increasing portfolio of projects.
The Corps’ backlog of authorized projects and concerns about the fiscal
planning and management of the agency’s portfolio contribute to support for
performance-based criteria for structuring the agency’s budget and for concentrated
appropriations on a small set of priority projects. Others also express concerns about
the agency’s fiscal planning and management, yet reject both the use of performance-
based criteria that have been proposed and the focus on 6 to 10 priority projects.
These critics argue that the criteria used are too simplistic and that basing the Corps’
budget on performance criteria does not produce an integrated multiyear program for
the agency. They also argue that the focus on priority projects has resulted in a
disproportionate amount of the agency’s budget being concentrated on a few
projects, resulting in less investment in other authorized, cost-beneficial projects and
in those regions of the country that do not have priority projects.
Performance-Based Budgeting. One way recent Administration requests
have tried to address the backlog of Corps projects has been the application of a
performance-based budgeting approach for determining which projects to include in
its requests for construction and maintenance funds; the performance measures were
based on their economic and environmental returns and protection of human safety.
The construction projects selected for funding were chosen largely on their having
either a high ratio of benefits to costs, or, for environmental projects, a high cost-

effectiveness. The FY2008 budget request continued the Administration’s movement
toward presenting the agency’s budget according to “business lines” (e.g., navigation,
flood control, recreation, hydropower). For example, of the $4.871 billion budget
request, $2.009 billion (41%) is for commercial navigation, $1.384 billion (28%) is
for flood and coastal storm damage reduction, and $274 million (6%) and $110
million (2%) are for the agency’s relatively new roles in aquatic ecosystem
restoration and environmental stewardship, respectively. The agency’s regulatory
responsibilities represent $180 million, 4% of the agency’s budget.
Although little of the debate about performance-based budgeting is reflected in
the omnibus report language, the earlier House and Senate reports illustrated
differing opinions about how best to manage the Corps’ budget. H.Rept. 110-185
generally supported the Administration performance-based budgeting approach; it
states: “While the Committee agrees in large part with the prioritization of projects,
it does not believe the level of funding provided by the Administration is sufficient
to meet the needs of the Nation.” In contrast, the Senate Appropriations Committee
report stated: “From the Committee’s perspective, the Corps’ budget seems to be
developed exactly in the opposite manner that it should be.” It then echoes the House
by stating “the country needs to invest more heavily in its water resources.” The
Senate Appropriations Committee report criticized the Administration’s focus on a
small number of projects, and its lack of support for projects at the different stages
of development (e.g., planning). It also questioned the effect that focusing on a few
projects would have on the ability and interest in partnering with the Corps of the
local project sponsors for the Corps’ other authorized, but unbudgeted, projects and
studies.
Priority Projects and New Starts. To address the backlog of authorized
Corps activities, the Administration’s request limited the number of new activities
started to only two planning activities and one maintenance assessment. The
President’s request would fund construction projects that could be completed in
FY2008 and six projects considered by the Administration to be priorities, similar to
the President’s FY2007, FY2006, and FY2005 requests.
Although little of the debate about new starts is reflected in the omnibus report
language, the earlier House and Senate reports illustrated differing opinions about
how best to manage the Corps’ budget. H.Rept. 110-185 expressed general support
for the Administration’s no new start policy as applied to the FY2008 budget for the
Corps. The exception noted by the Committee is that it “will consider funding for
the major rehabilitation” at specific locks on the Ohio and Mississippi River systems
because it “does not view the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure as a new
construction start ... but rather a necessity.” The Senate Appropriations Committee
recommended a limited number of new construction starts. Numerous construction
projects that were not included in the President’s request were included among the
projects funded in the omnibus report language.
Financial Management and O&M Budgeting. Unlike previous budget
requests, the FY2007 and FY2008 requests did not specify the amount that individual
Corps projects would receive for O&M. Instead, the Administration’s recent requests
divide the country into 21 regions and specify O&M funding for each region for six
different categories of activities — commercial navigation, flood and coastal storm

damage reduction, environment, hydropower, recreation, and water supply. The
Corps has provided estimates of how much individual projects are expected to
receive; however, these estimates are not part of the agency’s formal budget request
and budget justification package. This budgeting approach appears to allow the
agency flexibility to move money across projects within the region as O&M needs
arise, without being subject to many of the reprogramming restrictions put into place
with the agency’s FY2006 appropriations. Some project stakeholders are likely to
be uncomfortable as a result of the decreased certainty in the O&M funding available
for particular projects under this regional O&M budgeting approach.
Although little of the debate about new starts is reflected in the omnibus report
language, the earlier House and Senate reports illustrated differing opinions about
how best to manage the Corps’ budget. H.Rept. 110-185 was critical of how the
Administration developed its request for each of the 21 regions, and it adopts the
regional approach to O&M funding by specifying an O&M funding level for each
region. The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended rejecting the regional
budgeting for O&M, arguing that this budgeting tactic serves no real purpose other
than circumventing reprogramming guidance and that Corps projects (not regions)
are authorized by Congress. The omnibus report language did not adopt the O&M
regions. Instead it directed the Corps to prepare integrated O&M budgets for four
regions — the Ohio River, the Great Lakes, the Texas coast, and the California coast.
The omnibus report language also provided direction to the Corps on
reprogramming of funds, five-year budget plans, budget submission materials, and
the use of multi-year continuing contracts.
Everglades. The Corps plays a significant coordination role in the restoration
of the Central and Southern Florida ecosystem. The agency received $131 million
for FY2008 Everglades restoration activities in the omnibus report language. The
FY2008 budget request was for $162 million, down from the $164 million requested
and provided for FY2007.
The FY2008 funds consist of Central and Southern Florida Project ($82 million,
down from the $91 million requested), Kissimmee River Restoration Project ($31
million, down from the $33 million requested), Everglades and South Florida
Restoration Projects ($8 million, up from the $4 million requested), and Modified
Water Deliveries Project ($10 million, down from the $35 million requested).
FY2006 was the first year that funds for the Mod Waters project were included in the
Corps budget request and enacted appropriations; previously, the project was funded
solely through Department of the Interior appropriations. The omnibus report
language noted appropriators’ concerns regarding the changing design of the Mod
Waters project. The report directs the Corps to submit to the Appropriations
Committees its plan for completion of Mod Waters, and it provides direction to
Interior regarding its funding of the project. (For more information, see CRS Report
RS21331, Everglades Restoration: Modified Water Deliveries Project, by Pervaze
A. Sheikh.)
In addition to funding for Corps activities through Energy and Water
Development appropriations, federal activities in the Everglades are funded through
Department of the Interior appropriations bills. Concerns regarding the level of

appropriations and progress in the restoration effort are discussed in CRS Report
RS20702, South Florida Ecosystem Restoration and the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan, by Pervaze A. Sheikh and Nicole T. Carter.
Hurricane Katrina Repairs and Coastal Louisiana Restoration. The
Corps is responsible for much of the repair and fortification of the hurricane
protection system of coastal Louisiana, particularly in the greater New Orleans area;
to date, most of the Corps’ work on the region’s hurricane protection system has been
funded through emergency supplemental appropriations, not through the annual
appropriations process. The Corps has received more than $7 billion in emergency
supplemental funds for flood protection and water resources repair and recovery
work. The vast majority of the enacted and requested supplemental appropriations
for the region are for structural hurricane defenses; coastal wetlands restoration
activities by the Corps have received less than $200 million of the enacted Katrina^th
appropriations. The 110 Congress enacted emergency supplemental legislation with
an additional $1.64 billion for the Corps, largely to continue repairs and accelerate
completion of flood and storm damage reduction projects in the New Orleans and
south Louisiana area. Previously appropriated funds were insufficient to complete
these activities because of increased costs, improved data on costs, and other factors.
Title II: Department of the Interior
The Department of the Interior requested that Congress provide an increase in
funding for the Central Utah Project (CUP) Completion Account and a reduction for
the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) for FY2008. The total approved by P.L. 110-161
for Title II funding is $1.1509 billion — $149.5 million above the President’s
request.
Table 5. Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Title II: Central Utah Project Completion Account
($ millions)
F Y 2008 Senat e P.L.
P r ogram F Y 2007 Re que s t H ous e Comm. 110-161
Central Utah Project Construction$31.4$40.4$40.4$40.4$40.4
Mitigation and Conservation0.91.01.01.01.0
Activities
Oversight & Administration1.71.61.61.61.6
Total, Central Utah Project34.043.043.043.043.0
^Source:^C^eⁿ^t^ral^U^t^ah^Proj^ect^C^o^m^p^l^e^tⁱ^oⁿ^A^c^t^,^F^Y^{2008 Bu}^dg^et^Ju^s^tⁱ^fⁱ^catⁱ^oⁿ^.^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;
^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^{127., P.L}^.^110-^161.

Table 6. Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Title II: Bureau of Reclamation
($ millions)
FY2008SenateP.L. 110-
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H ouse Comm. 161
Water and Related Resources$874.7$816.2$871.2$950.1$949.9
Policy & Administration57.358.858.858.858.8
CVP Restoration Fund (CVPRF)^a52.159.159.151.659.1
Legislative Proposal — SJRRF^b — (7.5)(7.5)0.00.0
Calif. Bay-Delta (CALFED)36.631.840.840.840.1
Gross Current Authority1,020.7958.41,022.41,101.31,107.9
CVP Collections^a(43.9)(51.6)(51.6)(51.6)(51.6)
Net Current Authority 976.8906.8970.81,049.71,056.3
Total, Title II1,054.71,001.41,065.41,144.31,150.9
^Source:^Bu^reau^of^R^ecl^am^atⁱ^oⁿ^F^Y^{2008 Bu}^dg^et^Ju^s^tⁱ^fⁱ^catⁱ^oⁿ^.^H^.^R^e^p^t^.^110-^185;^S^.^Re^p^t^.^110-^127,P.L^.
^110-^161.
^{a. I}ⁿ^{its r}^e^q^u^{est, B}^O^{R lists CVP}^Co^llectioⁿ^s^{as an}^“^o^f^f^s^{et.” Co}ⁿ^g^r^{ess d}^o^e^{s n}^o^{t f}^o^llo^w^th^{is p}^r^o^ced^u^r^e.
^{b. FY2008 ref}^l^ects^a^legⁱ^s^l^ativ^e^propos^al^{to redirect}^{$7.5 m}^illion^{collected f}^r^om^Frian^t^Divⁱ^sⁱ^on^w^a^ter
^use^r^{s t}^o^t^h^e^ne^w^Sa^{n J}^o^a^q^ui^{n Ri}^ve^r^Re^st^o^r^a^tⁱ^o^{n Fund}^.
Central Utah Project and Bureau of Reclamation:
Budget In Brief
The Administration requested $43.0 million for the CUP Completion Account
for FY2008 (Table 5). The FY2008 request for BOR totaled $958.4 million in gross
current budget authority. This amount is $62.3 million less than enacted for FY2007.
The FY2008 request included “offsets” of $51.6 million for the Central Valley
Project (CVP) Restoration Fund, yielding a “net” current authority of $906.8 million
for BOR. The total budget request for Title II funding, Central Utah Project and
Bureau of Reclamation, was $1.0014 billion.
BOR’s single largest account, Water and Related Resources, encompasses the
agency’s traditional programs and projects, including construction, operations and
maintenance, the Dam Safety Program, Water and Energy Management
Development, and Fish and Wildlife Management and Development, among others.
The Administration requested $816.2 million for the Water and Related Resources
Account for FY2008 (Table 6). This amount is $58.5 million (6.7%) less than
enacted for FY2007.
The House Appropriations Committee recommended funding at the amount
reflected in the President’s Budget for CUP (Table 5), Policy and Administration,
and the CVP (Table 6). The Committee recommended increases of $55 million for

Water and Related Resources and $9 million for CALFED (Table 6). The Committee
initially made no recommendations for specific water projects within Water and
Related Resources, indicating that it would consider individual project allocations
after further analysis. The Committee’s final recommendation for Water and Related
Resources matched the President’s request for facilities and operations and
maintenance (O&M). The additional funding recommended by the Committee was
on the Resource Management side of the Water and Related Resources budget.
The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended funding at the amount
reflected in the President’s Budget for the CUP and Policy and Administration.
Recommended funding for Water and Related Resources is $134 million more than
the President’s request and $79 million more than the level recommended by the
House. The CALFED recommendation, an increase of $9 million over the President’s
request, matches the House. The Committee provided $7.5 million less funding for
the CVP Restoration Fund, indicating that the Administration’s proposed San
Joaquin River Restoration Fund (which was included as an offset) was not yet
authorized.
The House and Senate agreed on final appropriations for the BOR that were
close to the levels recommended by one or both chambers previously. Policy and
Administration remains unchanged from the President’s request at $58.8 million. The
CVP Restoration Fund remains at the level requested by the President, $59.1 million.
However $7.5 million that the Administration and House intended for the proposed
San Joaquin River Restoration Fund (SJRRF) was reallocated to other CVP
Restoration Fund programs because the SJRRF was not authorized. Water and
Related Resources and CALFED are both funded at levels similar to those passed by
the Senate: $949.9 and $40.1 respectively. The total approved by P.L. 110-161 for
Title II funding is $1.1509 billion — $149.5 million above the President’s request.
Key Policy Issues — Bureau of Reclamation
Background. Most of the large dams and water diversion structures in the
West were built by, or with the assistance of, the Bureau of Reclamation. Whereas
the Army Corps of Engineers built hundreds of flood control and navigation projects,
BOR’s mission was to develop water supplies, primarily for irrigation to reclaim arid
lands in the West. Today, BOR manages hundreds of dams and diversion projects,
including more than 300 storage reservoirs in 17 western states. These projects
provide water to approximately 10 million acres of farmland and 31 million people.
BOR is the largest wholesale supplier of water in the 17 western states and the
second-largest hydroelectric power producer in the nation. BOR facilities also
provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. At the
same time, operations of BOR facilities are often controversial, particularly for their
effect on sensitive fish and wildlife species and conflicts among competing water
users.
CALFED. The Administration requested $31.8 million for the California Bay-
Delta Restoration Account (Bay-Delta, or CALFED) for FY2008 (Table 6). The
bulk of the requested funds were targeted at three main program areas, including the
environmental water account, the storage program, and conveyance. The remainder

of the request was allocated for science, water quality, planning and management,
and ecosystem restoration.
The House Appropriations Committee recommended that all programs within
CALFED be funded at the level in the FY2008 budget request, except for a $1
million reduction in Planning and Management. The Committee also recommended
$5 million each for Water Use Efficiency and Delta Levees, which were not in the
President’s Budget. The Committee indicated that funding for Delta Levees is to be
transferred to the Corps of Engineers. The recommended $10 million addition and
$1 million reduction result in a recommended net increase of $9 million over the
President’s request.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved funding at the amount
recommended by the House Appropriations Committee. The final appropriations
level agreed to by both chambers is $40.1 million for CALFED. (For more
information on CALFED, see CRS Report RL31975, CALFED Bay-Delta Program:
Overview of Institutional and Water Use Issues, by Betsy A. Cody and Pervaze
Sheikh.)
Loan Guarantee Program. BOR requested $1 million in FY2008 to
establish a loan guarantee program. Reclamation is establishing this program to
guarantee private loans to water districts that have responsibility for funding O&M
or rehabilitation costs on Reclamation facilities. Because the federal government
retains title to these projects, it may be difficult for water users to secure loans from
private lenders. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees recommended
funding this program at the level requested.
Security. Under BOR’s Water and Related Resources account, the
Administration requested $35.5 million for site security for FY2008, a decrease of
$4.1 million compared with that enacted for FY2007. The bulk of the request is for
facility operations/security. Funding covers activities such as administration of the
security program (e.g., surveillance and law enforcement), antiterrorism activities,
and physical emergency security upgrades. (For more information, see CRS Report
RL32189, Terrorism and Security Issues Facing the Water Infrastructure Sector, by
Claudia Copeland.)
The FY2008 request assumed that annual costs for guard and patrol activities
would be treated as project O&M costs, and hence would be reimbursable based on
project cost allocations. These costs were estimated to be $18.9 million in FY2008,
of which $11.6 million would be in up-front funding from power customers and $7.3
million would be appropriated funds which are reimbursed by irrigation, municipal,
and industrial users and other customers. BOR would continue to treat facility
fortification and antiterrorism management-related expenses as nonreimbursable.
The House and Senate Appropriations Committees both recommended funding
this program at the level requested, and the final appropriation was $35.0 million.
Water 2025. This program, part of the Water and Related resources account,
is intended to reduce water use conflicts by increasing certainty, diversity, and
flexibility of water supplies. In 2008, BOR plans to focus program resources on

areas where water conflicts exist currently or are likely to develop in the future. The
2008 budget request for this program is $11.0 million, a decrease of $3.5 million
from FY2007. The House Appropriations Committee did not include funding for
Water 2025, citing a lack of authorization for the program (however, see General
Provisions below for Water 2025 authorization). The Senate Appropriations
Committee recommended $14 million for Water 2025, indicating that funds above
the President’s $11 million request are intended to provide for efficiency and water
improvements related to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. Ultimately,
$5.9 million was agreed upon by both chambers.
General Provisions. Final appropriations language includes a number of
general provisions authorizing approximately $66 million in Nevada for water
projects such as dam removal, fish passage, municipal water treatment, and
watershed inventory (§208). Section 210 authorizes two water reuse projects: the
Inland Empire and Cucamonga Valley in California. A total of $30 million is
authorized for these projects. An additional $20 million is authorized for the
Southern California Desert Region Integrated Water and Economic Sustainability
Program (§214).
Though no funding is specified, §204 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior,
acting through the Commissioner of Reclamation, to fund grants at a 50% cost share
aiding irrigation or water districts and states in their planning, design, and
construction of projects to conserve water or improve water use efficiency. This
language appears to authorize the BOR’s Water 2025 program.
Title III: Department of Energy
The Energy and Water Development bill since FY2005 has funded all DOE’s
programs. Major DOE activities historically funded by the Energy and Water bill
include research and development on renewable energy and nuclear power, general
science, environmental cleanup, and nuclear weapons programs, and now includes
programs for fossil fuels, energy efficiency, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and
energy statistics, which formerly had been included in the Interior and Related
Agencies appropriations bill.
Table 7. Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Title III: Department of Energy
($ millions)
FY2008
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H o use Senat e Conf .
Energy Supply & Conservation
Energy Efficiency &
Renewables $1,474.3 $1,236.2 $1,873.8 $1,715.6 $1,722.4
Electricity Delivery
& Energy Reliability137.0114.9134.2169.4138.6
Nuclear Energy482.2801.7759.2719.6961.7

FY2008
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H o use Senat e Conf .
Environment, Safety,^a
Health27.8 — — — —
Legacy Management33.235.1 — 35.133.9
Total, Energy Supply
& Conservation 2,154.52,187.92,767.22,639.72,856.5
Fossil Energy R&D592.6566.8708.8808.1742.8
Clean Coal
Technology (Deferral) — (58.0)(58.0)(58.0)(58.0)
Naval Petrol. & Oil
Shale Reserves21.317.317.321.320.3
Strategic Petroleum
Re serve 164.4 331.6 163.5 163.5 186.8
Northeast Home
Heating Oil Rsrv.5.05.35.312.812.3
Energy Information
Admini stration 90.7 105.1 105.1 105.1 95.5
Non-Defense
Environmental
Cl eanup 349.7 180.9 286.0 195.4 182.3
Uranium
Decontamination and
Decommissioning
F und 556.6 573.5 618.8 573.5 622.2
Sci e nce^a
High Energy Physics751.8782.2782.2789.2688.0
Nuclear Physics422.8471.3471.3471.3433.0
Basic Energy
Sciences 1,250.3 1,498.5 1,498.5 1,512.3 1,270.0
Bio. & Env. R&D483.5531.9581.9605.8544.0
Fusion 319.0 427.9 427.9 427.9 287.0
Advanced Scientific
Computing 283.4 340.2 340.2 334.9 351.0
Other 292.2 351.5 417.7 361.5 450.3
Adj ustme nts ( 5.6) ( 5.6) (5.6) (5.6) (5.6)
Total, Science 3,797.34,397.94,514.14,497.34,017.7
Nuclear Waste
Disposal 99.2 202.5 202.5 202.5 187.3

FY2008
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H o use Senat e Conf .
Environment, Safety,^b
Health — — 31.8 — —
Departmental Admin.
(net) 153.8 148.6 143.0 146.8 148.4
Office of Inspector
Ge neral 41.8 48.4 47.7 47.7 46.1
Innovative
Technology Loan
Guarantee — 8.4 — 8.44.5
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Weapons 6,275.66,511.35,879.16,489.06,297.5
Nuclear 1,818.3 1,672.6 1,683.7 1,872.6 1,336.9
Nonproliferation
Naval Reactors781.8808.2808.2808.2774.7
Office of340.3394.7415.9394.7402.2
Administrator
Total, NNSA9,216.09,386.88,786.99,564.58,811.2
Defense
Environmental 5,731.8 5,363.9 5,766.6 5,690.4 5,349.4
Cleanup
Other Defense636.3764.0604.3765.5754.4
Activities
Defense Nuclear346.5292.0292.0242.0199.2
Waste Disposal
Total, Defense15,930.615,806.815,449.816,262.415,114.1
Activities
Power Marketing Administrations (PMA)
Southeastern 5.6 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.4
Southwestern 30.0 30.4 30.4 30.4 30.2
Western 232.3 201.0 201.0 231.0 228.9
Falcon & Armistad2.72.52.52.52.5
O&M
Total, PMAs270.6240.4240.4270.4267.9
FERC 221.9255.4255.4255.4258.1
(revenues) (221.9) (255.4) (255.4) (255.4) (258.1)
Total, Title III 24,228.224,762.725,243.125,896.924,446.6
^Sources^:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2008 C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^Bu^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^,^F^e^bru^a^ry^2007;^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^.
^110-^{127. C}^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^,^{2008, P.L}^.^110-^161.

^{a. Fig}^u^r^esⁱⁿ^{italic f}^o^{r th}^{e Of}^fⁱ^{ce of}^Sci^e^nc^e^ha^ve^b^e^eⁿ^adj^u^s^t^{ed by}^C^R^S^f^o^{r th}^{e acros}^s^-^th^{e board}
^res^c^is^sⁱ^on^{(Sec. 312) bu}^{t n}^o^{t f}^o^{r a s}^p^ecifⁱ^{c res}^c^is^sⁱ^on^of^{$44.6 m}^illionⁱⁿ^prior-^y^{ear f}^uⁿ^d^s^.
^{b. En}^vⁱ^ron^m^en^t^,^S^a^f^e^t^y^an^{d H}^eal^t^h^m^o^v^e^{d f}^r^om^En^erg^y^S^u^ppl^y^an^{d C}^oⁿ^s^erv^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^f^o^{r F}^Y^2008.
The Administration’s FY2008 request for DOE programs was $24.7627 billion,
compared with $24.2282 billion appropriated for FY2007. The final omnibus act
provides $24.4466 billion, $218 million above FY2007 but $316 million below the
request. The FY2008 total reflects an across-the-board rescission on all DOE
programs imposed by Section 312 of Title III, Division C of the act. Section 312
requires all funding levels in the explanatory statement to be reduced by 1.6% of
earmarked funds and 0.91% for all other funding. Summary tables at the end of the
explanatory statement reflect the Section 312 rescission, but the detailed tables do
not. DOE is required to submit a report to the Appropriations Committees within 30
days with detailed numbers reflecting the rescission.
Key Policy Issues — Department of Energy
DOE administers a wide variety of programs with different functions and
missions. In the following pages, the programs are described and major issues are
identified, in approximately the order in which they appear in the budget tables in
Table 7.
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The omnibus appropriations
act provides $1,722.4 million for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy (EERE) for FY2008, which is $486.2 million more than the request and
$248.1 million more than the FY2007 appropriation. Table 8 shows the FY2008
funding amounts by program. Relative to FY2007, the FY2008 appropriation
provides key increases of $25.0 million for Vehicles, $22.7 for Weatherization, $17.5
million for Hydrogen, $14.8 million for Geothermal, $9.9 million for Water (Marine
and Hydrokinetic) technologies, and $9.1 million for Solar. The FY2008
appropriation also includes $30.9 million less for Facilities. This reduction does not
affect the level of funding for facilities operations; instead, it reflects a reduced level
of spending on construction of new buildings. The main cuts in FY2008 are $9.5
million less for International Renewables (which terminates the program) and $5.4
million less for State Grants.
As Table 8 shows, DOE’s FY2008 request sought $1,236.2 million for the
EERE programs. The Administration’s Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI, part of the
American Competitiveness Initiative) “aims to reduce America’s dependence on
imported energy sources.” The AEI includes hydrogen, biofuels, and solar energy
initiatives that are supported by programs in EERE. The Hydrogen Initiative aims
to “facilitate a decision by industry to commercialize hydrogen infrastructure and fuel¹
cell vehicles by 2015.” The Biofuels Initiative seeks to develop transportation fuels,
such as cellulosic ethanol. The Solar America Initiative’s goals are to cut the cost
of photovoltaics (PV) technology, increase its commercial use, and displace natural

¹ U.S. Executive Office of the President, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal
Year 2007, Appendix, p. 390. Also see DOE, FY2007 Congressional Budget Request:
Budget Highlights, p. 41.

gas use for electric power generation. The President’s 2007 State of the Union
address set out a goal to reduce gasoline use by 20% and to increase the production
of “alternative” fuels, including cellulosic ethanol, to 35 billion gallons by 2017. To
support the AEI and those fuels goals, the FY2008 EERE budget request proposed
significant increases for the Biofuels, Hydrogen, and Solar programs.² At hearings
on the FY2008 DOE budget request, concerns were raised about DOE’s proposed
termination of the Geothermal and Hydropower programs.³ The House approved
$1,873.8 million and the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $1,715.6
million for FY2008 EERE programs.
The House Committee report includes several policy directives to EERE. First,
on page 59, it directs DOE to quantify and track the progress and impact of the
investments in the EERE portfolio and brief the Committee annually on the return
on investment for each of the accounts. Second, on page 60, the report directs DOE
to implement an aggressive program that focuses on using Historically Black
Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions to deepen the recruiting
pool of diverse scientific and technical staff available to support the growing
renewable energy marketplace. Third, on page 65, within funding available for the
State Energy Program, the Committee directs DOE to implement section 140 of the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 to support state-wide pilot programs that encourage
reduced electricity and natural gas use.
The report of the Senate Appropriations Committee directs DOE to draw from
available funds to study and report on five special topics. First, on page 131, DOE
is directed to conduct a study on “the feasibility of increasing consumption of
ethanol-blended gasoline with levels of ethanol blends between 10%-25%, including
a study of production and infrastructure constraints on increasing consumption.”
Second, on page 131, the Committee requests that DOE prepare updates on the
National Biofuels Action Plan and deliver the final plan by the end of January 2008.
Third, on pages 131-132, the Committee recommends that DOE report on its planned
procedure for holding a reverse auction for cellulosic biofuels grants, as directed by
the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (§942). Fourth, on page 134, the Committee directs
DOE to study methods of increasing the fuel efficiency of alternative fueled vehicles
by improving their ability to use E-85 (85% ethanol) fuel. Fifth, on page 138, under
the Electricity Program, the Committee encourages DOE to identify the potential for
distributed energy equipment to provide energy savings and reduce transmission line
losses. DOE is directed to focus the study on commercial potential.
Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The FY2008 request included
$114.9 million for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE).
The House approved $134.2 million and the Senate Appropriations Committee
approved $169.4 million. The omnibus law provides $138.7 million. The Senate
Committee report directs OE to increase energy storage efforts in support of

² The Energy Independence and Security Act (P.L. 110-140, H.R. 6) also addressed those
goals.
³ Secretary Bodman’s Senate testimony is available at [http://energy.senate.gov/public/
_files/BodmanT estimony.pdf].

intermittent wind and solar power production and to increase support for deployment
of distributed generation equipment.
Table 8. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Programs
($ millions)
F Y 2008 F Y 2008 F Y 2008 F Y 2008
ProgramFY2006FY2007 RequestHouseSAppCConf.
Hydrogen Technologies$153.5$193.6$213.0$194.6228.0211.1
Biomass & Biorefinery Systems89.8199.7179.3250.0244.0198.2
Solar Energy81.8159.4148.3200.0180.0168.5
— Photovoltaics58.8 — 137.3149.0145.3136.7
Wind Energy38.349.340.157.557.549.5
Geothermal Technology22.85.00.044.325.019.8
Water Power (Hydro/Ocean) 0.50.00.022.010.09.9
Subtotal, Renew. & Hydrogen386.6606.9580.6768.4744.5657.0
Vehicle Technologies178.4188.0176.1235.4230.0213.0
Building Technologies68.2104.386.5146.5137.0109.0
Industrial Technologies55.956.646.057.057.064.4
Federal Energy Management19.019.516.827.023.019.8
Subtotal, Efficiency R&D321.4368.4325.4465.9447.0406.2
Facilities & Infrastructure26.1107.07.0195.77.076.2
Program Management115.2110.2118.3128.9118.3114.9
R&D Subtotal849.21,192.61,031.31,558.91,316.81,254.3
Federal Assistance
— Weatherization Grants242.6204.6144.0245.6240.6227.2
— State Energy Grants36.158.845.549.555.044.1
— Renewables Deployment38.218.415.419.912.010.9
— Cong.-Directed Assistance^b — 0.00.0 — 91.2 185.9
Federal Assistance Subtotal316.9281.7204.9314.9398.8468.1
Total Appropriation, EE & RE1,166.11,474.31,236.21,873.81,715.61,722.4
Office of Electricity Delivery &^a158.2137.0114.9134.2169.4138.7
Energy Reliability (OE)
^Sources^:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2007 O}^p^eratⁱⁿ^g^Pl^an^;^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^.^110-^127;^Joiⁿ^t^Ex^pl^an^at^ory^S^t^at^em^en^t^on
^t^h^{e C}^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^of^{2007 (C}^on^g^.^R^{ecord, D}^{ec. 17, 2007, p. 15587 an}^{d p. H}^15940).
^{a. T}^h^{e D}ⁱ^s^t^ri^bu^t^e^{d En}^erg^y^Prog^ram^w^a^s^m^o^v^e^{d f}^r^om^EER^{E t}^o^O^Eⁱⁿ^F^Y^2006.
^{b. In}^F^Y^{2006, t}^h^{ere w}^a^s^$159^.⁰^m^illioⁿⁱⁿ^coⁿ^g^r^essioⁿ^ally^-^d^irected^f^uⁿ^d^{s sp}^read^o^v^{er EERE acco}^uⁿ^t^{s. Fo}^r
^F^Y^{2008, t}^h^{e H}^o^u^s^{e approv}^{ed (H}^.R^ept^.¹¹⁰^-^185,^p^a^r^t²⁾^{$104.3 m}^illion^f^o^{r con}^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^ally^-^d^irected
^as^sⁱ^s^t^an^{ce to be tak}^eⁿ^f^r^om^av^{ailable f}^uⁿ^d^s^.

Nuclear Energy. For nuclear energy research and development — including
advanced reactors, fuel cycle technology, nuclear hydrogen production, and infrastructure
support — DOE received $1.037 billion for FY2008. That amount is substantially higher
than the FY2007 funding level and the Administration’s request, but it includes large
transfers from other accounts and eliminates most of the Administration’s proposed increase
for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI). The higher AFCI funding would have
allowed DOE to continue developing a demonstration plant for extracting plutonium and
uranium from spent nuclear fuel, as part of the Administration’s Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership (GNEP). The nuclear energy program is run by DOE’s Office of Nuclear
Energy, Science, and Technology.
DOE requested $801.7 million for FY2008, nearly 30% above the FY2007 funding
level. The request would have boosted funding for AFCI from $167.5 million in FY2007
to $395.0 million in FY2008. The omnibus appropriation holds AFCI to $181 million and
shifts the mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel program — totaling $281 million — to the nuclear
energy program from the nuclear nonproliferation program. That brings the nuclear energy
total to $970.5 million ($961.7 million with the rescission), about 20% above the request.
An additional $75.9 million provided in the Other Defense Activities account brings the
Office of Nuclear Energy’s total spending level to $1.046 billion ($1.037 billion with the
rescission).
Overall, the House had provided a funding level of $835.2 million for nuclear energy,
including $74.9 million from the Other Defense Activities account and $167.8 million
transferred for the MOX program. The Senate Appropriations Committee had recommended
$795.5 million for nuclear energy, including $75.9 million from Other Defense Activities,
while opposing the MOX funding transfer.
According to DOE’s FY2008 budget justification, the nuclear energy R&D program is
intended “to secure nuclear energy as a viable, long-term commercial energy option,
providing diversity in the energy supply.” However, opponents have criticized DOE’s
nuclear research program as providing wasteful subsidies to an industry that they believe
should be phased out as unacceptably hazardous and economically uncompetitive.
Under the Administration’s GNEP initiative, plutonium partially separated from the
highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors would be recycled into new fuel to expand
the future supply of nuclear fuel and potentially reduce the amount of radioactive waste to
be disposed of in a permanent repository. Under the initial concept for GNEP, the United
States and other advanced nuclear nations would lease new fuel to other nations that agreed
to forgo uranium enrichment, spent fuel recycling (also called reprocessing), and other fuel
cycle facilities that could be used to produce nuclear weapons materials. The leased fuel
would then be returned to supplier nations for reprocessing. Solidified high-level
reprocessing waste would be sent back to the nation that had used the leased fuel, along with
supplies of fresh nuclear fuel. However, a GNEP Statement of Principles signed by the
United States and 15 other countries on September 16, 2007, preserves the right of all
participants to develop fuel cycle facilities while encouraging the establishment of a “viable
alternative to acquisition of sensitive fuel cycle technologies.”⁴

⁴ See GNEP website at [http://www.gnep.energy.gov]

Although GNEP is largely conceptual at this point, DOE issued a Spent Nuclear Fuel
Recycling Program Plan in May 2006 that provided a general schedule for a GNEP
Technology Demonstration Program (TDP),⁵ which would develop the necessary
technologies to achieve GNEP’s goals. According to the Program Plan, the first phase of the
TDP, running through FY2006, consisted of “program definition and development” and
acceleration of AFCI. Phase 2, running through FY2008, was to focus on the design of
technology demonstration facilities, which then were to begin operating during Phase 3, from
FY2008 to FY2020. The National Academy of Sciences in October 2007 strongly criticized
DOE’s “aggressive” deployment schedule for GNEP and recommended that the program
instead focus on research and development.⁶
Nuclear critics oppose GNEP’s emphasis on spent fuel reprocessing, which they see as
a weapons proliferation risk, even if weapons-useable plutonium is not completely separated
from other spent fuel elements, as envisioned by the Administration. “As the research of
DOE scientists makes clear, the reprocessing technologies under consideration would still
produce a material that is not radioactive enough to deter theft, and that could be used to
make nuclear weapons,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.⁷
The omnibus appropriation cuts the Administration’s GNEP request to $181 million,
including $30 million for upgrades to existing facilities. The remaining $151 million is for
research, development, and design activities, with no funds for constructing facilities for
technology demonstration or commercialization. The GNEP budget totals, as well as the
remaining nuclear program numbers cited below, do not reflect the 0.91% across-the-board
DOE rescission.
Nuclear Power 2010. President Bush’s specific mention of “clean, safe nuclear
power” in his 2007 State of the Union address reiterated the Administration’s interest in
encouraging construction of new commercial reactors — for which there have been no U.S.
orders since 1978. DOE’s efforts to restart the nuclear construction pipeline have been
focused on the Nuclear Power 2010 Program, which will pay up to half of the nuclear
industry’s costs of seeking regulatory approval for new reactor sites, applying for new reactor
licenses, and preparing detailed plant designs. The Nuclear Power 2010 Program, which
includes the Standby Support Program authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L.
109-58) to pay for regulatory delays, is intended to encourage near-term orders for advanced
versions of existing commercial nuclear plants.
Two industry consortia are receiving DOE assistance over the next several years to
design and license new nuclear power plants. DOE awarded the first funding to the consortia
in 2004. DOE requested $114.0 million for Nuclear Power 2010 for FY2008, more than
40% above the FY2007 funding level of $80.3 million. The omnibus act provided a $21.0
million increase from the budget request, as recommended by the Senate Appropriations
Committee, for a total of $135.0 million. The funding increase is intended to accelerate

⁵ DOE, Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycling Plan, Report to Congress, May 2006.
⁶ National Academy of Sciences, Review of DOE’s Nuclear Energy Research and
Development Program, prepublication draft, October 2007.
⁷ Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Initiative, [http://www.
ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/US_Nuclear_Fuel_Reprocessing_Initiative
.html].

progress on the new reactor licenses. The House had approved flat funding for the program,
contending that funds should not be provided for reactor design work.
The nuclear license applications under the Nuclear Power 2010 program are intended
to test the “one-step” licensing process established by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (P.L.
102-486). Under the process, NRC may grant a combined construction permit and operating
license (COL) that allows a completed plant to begin operation if all construction criteria
have been met. Even if the licenses are granted by NRC, the industry consortia funded by
DOE have not committed to building new reactors. The following two consortia are
receiving COL assistance under the Nuclear Power 2010 program:
^!A consortium led by Dominion Resources that is preparing a COL for an
advanced General Electric reactor. The proposed reactor would be located
at Dominion’s existing North Anna plant in Virginia, where the company
received an NRC early-site permit with DOE assistance. Dominion Energy
submitted a COL application for a new unit at North Anna on November 27,

2007.

^!A consortium called NuStart Energy Development, including Exelon and
several other major nuclear utilities, which announced on September 22,
2005, that it would seek a COL for two Westinghouse reactors at the site of
TVA’s uncompleted Bellefonte nuclear plant in Alabama and for a General
Electric design at the Grand Gulf plant in Mississippi. The Nuclear Power
2010 Program is providing funding for review and approval of the
Bellefonte COL, which was submitted to NRC on October 30, 2007.
The Nuclear Power 2010 Program also helped three utilities seek NRC Early Site
Permits (ESPs) for potential new reactors in Illinois, Mississippi, and Virginia. NRC issued
the first of these on March 15, 2007, to Exelon Generating Company for a potential new
reactor at the company’s Clinton, Illinois, nuclear plant. Under Nuclear Power 2010, DOE
paid half the $15 million cost of the Clinton ESP. NRC authorized a second ESP on March
27, 2007, for the Grand Gulf site in Mississippi, and a third, for the North Anna site in
Virginia, on November 20, 2007. The holders of those ESPs will not have to revisit site-
related issues if they seek licenses for new reactors at those locations during the next 20
years.
Generation IV. Advanced commercial reactor technologies that are not yet close to
deployment are the focus of DOE’s Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Initiative, for
which $36.1 million was requested for FY2008 — about the same as the FY2007 funding
level. The omnibus measure nearly tripled the request to $116.0 million, with $74 million
devoted to the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP). At least $38 million of the NGNP
funding is to be spent for developing a conceptual design and baseline cost estimate, and $36
million is for NRC pre-licensing activities. Under DOE’s current plans, NGNP will use Very
High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) technology, which features helium as a coolant and
coated-particle fuel that can withstand temperatures up to 1,600 degrees celsius.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorizes $1.25 billion through FY2015 for NGNP
development and construction (Title VI, Subtitle C). The authorization requires that NGNP
be based on research conducted by the Generation IV program and be capable of producing
electricity, hydrogen, or both. Phase I research on the NGNP is to continue until 2011, when

a decision will be made on moving to the Phase II design and construction stage, according
to the FY2008 DOE budget justification.
In conjunction with the GNEP Technology Demonstration Program, the Generation IV
Program will also focus on developing a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). Existing U.S.
commercial nuclear reactors use water to slow down, or “moderate,” the neutrons released
by the fission process (splitting of nuclei). The relatively slow (thermal) neutrons are highly
efficient in causing fission in certain isotopes of heavy elements, such as uranium 235 and
plutonium 239.⁸ Therefore, fewer of those isotopes are needed in nuclear fuel to sustain a
nuclear chain reaction (in which neutrons released by fissioned nuclei then induce fission in
other nuclei, and so forth). The downside is that thermal neutrons cannot efficiently induce
fission in more than a few specific isotopes.
In contrast, “fast” neutrons, which have not been moderated, are less effective in
inducing fission than thermal neutrons but can induce fission in a much wider range of
isotopes, including all major plutonium isotopes. Therefore, nuclear fuel for a fast reactor
must have a higher proportion of fissionable isotopes than a thermal reactor to sustain a chain
reaction, but a larger number of different isotopes can constitute that fissionable proportion.
A fast reactor’s ability to fission most heavy radioactive isotopes, called “transuranics”
(TRU), makes it theoretically possible to repeatedly separate those materials from spent fuel
and feed them back into the reactor until they are entirely fissioned. In a thermal reactor, the
buildup of non-fissile isotopes sharply limits the number of such separation cycles before the
recycled fuel can no longer sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
“Given the benefits of continuous recycling, at this time GNEP-TDP is focused on the
development of fast reactor technologies, recognizing that fast reactor operating experience
is much more limited than thermal reactor operating experience, and that fast burn reactor
fuels, or transmutation fuels, are not fully developed,” according to the DOE Program Plan.⁹
The House Appropriations Committee report directed DOE to make the gas-cooled
NGNP a higher priority than fast reactors for GNEP and begin a competitive solicitation for
a commercial demonstration plant at the Idaho National Laboratory. The Senate panel also
emphasized gas-cooled reactors in the Generation IV program.
The Generation IV program is also monitoring international research on lead-cooled fast
reactors, gas-cooled fast reactors, and supercritical water-cooled reactors, according to the
FY2008 budget justification.
Fuel Cycle Research and Facilities. The omnibus act places the Advanced Fuel
Cycle Initiative within the new category of Fuel Cycle Research and Facilities, along with
Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication, which was transferred from the nuclear nonproliferation
account (described in a separate section of this report). Funding for the new category totals
$462.3 million.

⁸ Isotopes are atoms of the same chemical element but with different numbers of neutrons
in their nuclei.
⁹ Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycling Program Plan, p. 8.

The FY2008 funding request of $395 million for AFCI, the primary component of
GNEP, was more than double the FY2007 funding level of $167.5 million, which in turn was
more than double the FY2006 appropriation. The omnibus act reduced AFCI to $181.0
million, as discussed above. According to the DOE budget justification, AFCI will develop
and demonstrate nuclear fuel cycles that could reduce the long-term hazard of spent nuclear
fuel and recover additional energy. Such technologies would involve separation of
plutonium, uranium, and other long-lived radioactive materials from spent fuel for reuse in
a nuclear reactor or for transmutation in a particle accelerator. Much of the program’s
research will focus on a separations technology called UREX+, in which uranium and other
elements are chemically removed from dissolved spent fuel, leaving a mixture of plutonium
and other highly radioactive elements. Proponents believe the process is proliferation-
resistant, because further purification would be required to make the plutonium useable for
weapons and because its high radioactivity would make it difficult to divert or work with.
FY2008 funding was also to have been used for conceptual design work on an
Advanced Fuel Cycle Facility (AFCF) to provide an engineering-scale demonstration of
AFCI technologies, according to the budget justification. At the same time, industry design
teams were to complete conceptual designs for nuclear fuel recycling demonstration facilities
to be used for GNEP. However, the omnibus measure specifically rejected funding for
development of AFCF in FY2008.
Removing uranium from spent fuel would eliminate most of the volume of spent
nuclear fuel that would otherwise require disposal in a deep geologic repository, which DOE
is developing at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The UREX+ process also could reduce the heat
generated by nuclear waste — the major limit on the repository’s capacity — by removing
cesium and strontium for separate storage and decay over several hundred years. Plutonium
and other long-lived elements would be fissioned in accelerators or fast reactors (such as the
type under development by the Generation IV program) to reduce the long-term hazard of
nuclear waste. Even if technically feasible, however, the economic viability of such waste
processing has yet to be determined, and it still faces significant opposition on nuclear
nonproliferation grounds.
Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative. In support of President Bush’s program to develop
hydrogen-fueled vehicles, DOE is requesting $22.6 million in FY2008 for the Nuclear
Hydrogen Initiative, about 10% above the FY2007 funding level but below the FY2006
appropriation. The omnibus measure provides $10 million for the program. The House had
provided flat funding for the program, and the Senate Committee had approved the full
request. According to DOE’s FY2008 budget justification, the program will continue
laboratory-scale experiments to allow selection by 2011 of a hydrogen-production technology
for pilot-scale demonstration by 2013.
Fossil Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration. The Bush
Administration requested $566.8 million in the FY2008 omnibus act for Fossil Energy
Research and Development (see Table 9). This is about 20.7% more than the $469.7 million
requested in FY2007. (Final funding under the FY2007 Operating Plan showed spending
of $592.6 million). Major funding categories and amounts in the FY2008 request include
the President’s Coal Research Initiative (Clean Coal Power Initiative, $73 million;
FutureGen, $108 million; and Fuels and Power Systems, $245.6 million), Program Direction
($130 million), Fossil Energy Environmental Restoration ($9.6 million), and Special

Recruitment Programs ($0.7 million). Coal and coal-related activities accounted for more
than 75% of the FY2008 Fossil Energy R&D budget request.
The FY2007 funding bill (P.L. 110-5) as enacted deferred $257million in unobligated
Clean Coal Technology balances to FY2008. The FY2008 omnibus act transfers $166
million to the Fossil Energy Research and Development account in FY2008, and
recommends the deferral of $149 million in Clean Coal Technology balances until FY2009
(as proposed by the Senate and not the rescission of balances proposed by the House). The
FY2008 act provides $750 million for Fossil Energy Research and Development (an across-
the-board rescission of 0.91% reduces this to $742.8 million). Under that heading, $70
million is marked for the Clean Coal Power Initiative ($3 million below request); $75 million
for FutureGen ($33 million below request due to unused prior-year funds); $352.9 million
for Fuels and Power Systems ($107.3 million above request); $20 million for Natural Gas
Technologies; $5 million for Petroleum-Oil Technologies; $150 million for Program
Direction; $13 million for Plant and Capital Equipment; $0.7 million for Special Recruitment
Programs; $5 million for Cooperative Research and Development; and $48.9 million for
congressionally directed projects.

Table 9. Fossil Energy Research and Development Programs
($ millions)
^FY²⁰⁰⁷
^Op^.^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸
^C^l^ean^C^oal^T^echⁿ^o^l^ogy^Plan^Request^Hou^s^e^S.Cm^t^e^.^Appro^p^ria^t^io^ns
^D^e^f^.^uⁿ^oblⁱ^g^at^{ed bal}^{., F}^Y²⁰⁰⁷^257.0
^D^e^f^.^uⁿ^oblⁱ^g^at^{ed bal}^{., F}^Y²⁰⁰⁸^-^257.0^257.0^257.0^257.0^257.0
^D^e^f^.^uⁿ^oblⁱ^g^at^{ed bal}^{., F}^Y²⁰⁰⁹^-^149.0
^R^e^s^c^is^sⁱ^on^{, u}ⁿ^c^om^m^{itted bal.}^—^-^149.0^-^149.0^-^149.0
^T^r^an^s^f^{er to C}^l^ean^C^o^{al P}^w^{r. In}^it.^—^-^58.0^—^-^73.0^-^70.0
^T^r^an^s^f^{er t}^o^F^u^t^u^reG^eⁿ^—^-^108.0^-^108.0^-^88.0^-^75.0
^T^r^an^s^f^{er to Fu}^els^&^P^o^w^e^{r Sy}^s^.^-^58.0^-^21.0
^T^r^an^s^f^{er to Fos}^s^{il En}^erg^y^R^&^D^-^5.0
^T^r^an^s^f^{er t}^o^C^a^rbon^S^e^qu^es^t^r^atⁱ^oⁿ^-^58.0
^T^o^t^a^l^—^-^58.0^-^58.0^-^58.0^-^58.0
^FY²⁰⁰⁷
^Op^.^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸^FY²⁰⁰⁸
^Fo^{ssil Energ}^y^{R & D}^Plan^Request^Hou^s^e^S.Cm^t^e^.^Appro^p^ria^t^io^ns
^Clean^Co^{al P}^o^w^e^r^Iⁿ^itiativ^e⁶⁰^.⁴⁷³^.⁰⁷³^.⁰⁸⁸^.⁰⁷⁰^.⁰
^F^u^t^u^reG^eⁿ^54.0^108.0^108.0^88.0^75.0
^{Fuels &}^P^o^w^e^r^Sy^stem^s
^I^nno^va^tⁱ^o^{ns fo}^r^e^xⁱ^s^tⁱ^{ng p}^l^aⁿ^t^s³⁶^.⁴
^A^d^va^nc^e^d^I^G^CC⁵⁴^.⁰
^A^d^v^aⁿ^{ced tu}^rbin^es^24.0
^C^a^rbon^s^e^qu^es^t^r^atⁱ^oⁿ^120.0
^F^u^el^s^25.0
^F^u^el^C^e^l^l^56.0
^A^d^v^aⁿ^{ced res}^earch^37.5
^S^u^bt^ot^al^311.3^245.6^375.6^374.0 (^352.9
^N^a^t^u^ral^G^a^s^T^echⁿ^o^l^o^gⁱ^es^12.0^—^12.0^20.0^20.0
^Pet^r^ol^eu^m^-^Oⁱ^l^T^echⁿ^o^l^o^gⁱ^es^2.7^—^2.7^10.0⁵^.0
^Prog^ram^Dⁱ^rectⁱ^oⁿ^129.8^130.0^127.0^150.0^150.0
^P^l^an^{t &}^Cap^{ital Eq}^uⁱ^p^m^en^t^—¹³^.⁰
^Fos^s^{il En}^erg^y^En^v^.^R^e^s^t^oration⁹^.7^9.6⁹^.6^16.6⁹^.6
^{Special R}^ecru^itm^en^{t P}^r^og^ram⁰^.7^0.7
^C^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^ally^Directed^48.0
^O^t^h^e^r^12.7⁰^.7⁰⁷^61.6
^T^o^t^a^l^592.6^566.8^708.8^808.1^750.0*
^Sources^:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2007 O}^p^eratⁱⁿ^g^Pl^an^;^D^O^E^F^Y^{2008 Bu}^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^;^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^127;
^C^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^{al R}^{ecord, Decem}^{ber 17, 2007.}
^*^doesⁿ^o^t^ref^l^ect^{a 0.91%}^acros^s^-^t^h^e-^{board res}^cⁱ^s^sⁱ^on^.

The Clean Coal Power Initiative is intended to demonstrate advanced clean coal-based
power generation technologies on a commercial scale capable of achieving 45% thermal
efficiency. The FutureGen project will partner with industry to build the advanced coal-
based Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant that can produce electricity at
45%-50% efficiency at a capital cost of $1,000/kilowatt (in 2003 dollars) and can integrate
CO² separation, capture, and sequestration. The FutureGen Industrial Alliance, Inc., has
selected Mattoon, Illinois, as the plant site. The Fuels program is a key component of the
Hydrogen Fuel Initiative and will provide the hydrogen production supporting R&D for the
FutureGen project. The Fossil Energy Environmental Restoration program remediates the
National Energy Technology Laboratory at the Morgantown, WV; Pittsburgh, PA; Tulsa,
OK; Fairbanks, AK; and Albany, OR, sites.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58, Title IV) authorizes the annual
appropriation of $200 million in FY2006 through FY2014 for the Clean Coal Power
Initiative (see Table 10). Of the funds made available, 70% (i.e., $140 million annually) are
to be used only in funding coal-based gasification technologies: combined cycle, fuel cell,
coproduction, hybrid, and advanced technologies capable of producing concentrated carbon
monoxide — technologies aimed at FutureGen. The Coal and Related Technologies
Program is authorized $611 million in FY2007, $626 million in FY2008, and $641 million
in FY2009, in addition to programs for research, development, demonstration, and
commercial application of coal-based power generation through gasification, advanced
combustion, and turbines for synthesis gas derived from coal.
Table 10. Energy Policy Act of 2005 Title IV Authorization
($ millions)
^EP^A^c^t
^Autho^r^iza^t^ioⁿ^F^Y0⁶^F^Y0⁷^F^Y0⁸^F^Y0⁹^F^Y1⁰^F^Y1¹^F^Y1²^F^Y1³^F^Y1⁴
^C^l^ean^C^o^al^Pow^e^r²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰²⁰⁰
^F^u^t^u^reG^eⁿ^rel^a^t^e^d¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰
^F^o^s^sⁱ^l^En^erg^y⁶¹¹⁶²⁶⁶⁴¹
^Source:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2008 Bu}^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t.
DOE had proposed terminating programs in Natural Gas Technology and Petroleum-Oil
Technology in FY2008. OMB rated both programs as ineffective based on its Program
Assessment Rating Tool. Nor had DOE requested funding for Plant and Capital Equipment
or the Cooperative Research and Development program (believing that research center
sponsored work can compete for Fossil Energy funding through the competitive solicitation
process, DOE had not requested funding in FY2007 or FY2008). Congress has reinstated the
funding of these programs.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), authorized
by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (P.L. 94-163) in 1975, consists of caverns formed
out of naturally occurring salt domes in Louisiana and Texas in which roughly 690 million
barrels of crude oil are stored. Current capacity is 727 million barrels; the SPR currently
holds 690 million barrels. The purpose of the SPR is to provide an emergency source of

crude oil that may be tapped in the event of a presidential finding that an interruption in oil
supply, or an interruption threatening adverse economic effects, warrants a drawdown from
the reserve. A Northeast Heating Oil Reserve (NHOR) was established during the Clinton
Administration. NHOR houses 2 million barrels of home heating oil in above-ground
facilities in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
Program costs for the SPR in recent years have been dedicated principally to
maintaining SPR facilities and keeping the SPR in readiness should it be needed. Any fill
activity was accomplished by accepting deliveries of royalty-in-kind (RIK) oil to the SPR in
lieu of cash royalties on offshore production being paid to the federal government. The
Administration request for FY2007 for the SPR was $155.4 million. DOE’s 2007 operating
plan set FY2007 spending at $169.4 million, including $5.0 million for the NHOR. The
FY2008 request for the same activities was $168.8 million. However, the request included
an additional $168.1 million to launch the Administration’s plan to expand the SPR to 1.5
billion barrels, for a total of $331.6 million. At present, expansion of the Reserve is
authorized to 1 billion barrels by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58). The FY2008
request from the Administration was intended to achieve capacity of 1 billion barrels by
adding 115 million barrels of capacity at three existing sites and establishing a new site, in
Richton, Mississippi, where 160 million barrels of capacity would be created. The FY2008
budget request indicated that the Administration would seek authority at a later date to
expand the SPR to 1.5 billion barrels, and that planned spending during FY2008 would be
a start toward that goal.
The proposal to raise spending significantly to expand the SPR was anticipated to be
controversial. In its report on the bill (H.Rept. 110-185), the House Committee on
Appropriations indicated that it did not support expansion of the SPR at this time, noting an
estimate that it would cost $10 billion for creating additional capacity and $55 billion to fill,
and expansion would not be completed until 2027. The Committee said the plans for the
expansion lacked “analytical clarity,” citing recommendations in a 2006 report from the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) that a new assessment be made of the optimal mix
for the SPR of sweet and sour crudes, as well as the appropriate size of the SPR. The
Committee recommended $163.5 million for the SPR program in FY2008, and approved the
Administration request of $5.3 million for the NHOR.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations had the same reaction as the House
committee. Citing the same statistics as in the House report, the Senate committee also
settled on a recommendation of $163.5 million. The omnibus bill provides $188.5 million,
an increase of $25 million, which is directed to be spent to acquire land at a new site. The
explanatory statement on the bill is explicit that the Appropriations Committees do not
support expansion of the SPR to 1.5 billion barrels.
Meanwhile, fill of the SPR with royalty-in-kind (RIK) oil continues to be controversial.
Critics argue that it is inadvisable to add oil to the SPR when markets are tight and prices are
touching inflation-adjusted historic highs, and that the additional oil adds little to U.S. energy
security. Supporters of RIK fill argue that the fill rate is too little to have a discernible impact
on markets, and that currently high product prices are sustained owing to factors other than
crude supply, which is more than ample at this time. Deliveries of RIK oil to the SPR totaled
4.3 million barrels during FY2007. Deliveries of RIK oil during FY2008 are estimated at
19.1 million barrels. Deliveries of roughly 15 million barrels are scheduled through July

2008.

Science. The DOE Office of Science conducts basic research in six program areas:
basic energy sciences, high-energy physics, biological and environmental research, nuclear
physics, fusion energy sciences, and advanced scientific computing research. Through these
programs, DOE is the third-largest federal funder of basic research and the largest federal¹⁰
funder of research in the physical sciences. For FY2008, DOE requested $4.398 billion for
Science, an increase of 16% from the FY2007 amount of $3.797 billion. This unusually
large increase reflected the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), which President
Bush announced in his State of the Union address on January 31, 2006. Over 10 years, the
ACI would double the combined R&D funding of the DOE Office of Science and two other
agencies. The House provided $4.514 billion for Science. The Senate committee¹¹
recommended $4.497 billion. The final appropriation was $4.018 billion, which was $380
million less than the request but a 6% increase from FY2007.
The requested funding for the largest Office of Science program, basic energy sciences,
was $1.498 billion, a 20% increase from FY2007. Much of the requested increase was to
expand facility operating time, as called for by the House and Senate appropriations reports
for FY2006. The House provided the requested amount, and the Senate committee
recommended a further increase of $14 million. The final appropriation was $1.270 billion,
less than the request by $229 million but a 2% increase from FY2007. The explanatory
statement did not explain how this reduction relative to the request should be allocated to
particular activities. In particular, it did not mention the operating time issue. It did state
that the final bill included “less funding than requested for two projects where the start of
major construction activity can be delayed,” but the total request for construction in this
program was only $121 million.
For high-energy physics, the request was $782 million, up 4% from FY2007. The
budget justification stated that the program’s “highest priority R&D effort is the development
of the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC).” The House provided the requested
amount, including the requested increase for the ILC. The House committee also
emphasized its support for the NASA/DOE Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), for which
it said “DOE has done its part” but “NASA has failed to budget and program for launch
services.” The Senate committee also recommended the requested ILC funding, although
as in previous years it expressed concern that the ILC “will crowd out other valuable
research”; it provided a $7 million increase to “aggressively ramp up” JDEM and related
activities. The final appropriation was $688 million, $94 million less than the request and
8% down from FY2007. The final bill provided $15 million for the ILC, $45 million less
than the request; the explanatory statement directed DOE to proceed with JDEM during
FY2008, together with NASA, but if the two agencies cannot agree on a joint approach, to
provide no support for space science satellite missions in future years. The Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) received about $52 million less than requested, and the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) received about $25 million less. The directors

¹⁰ Based on preliminary FY2006 data from Tables 29 and 22 of National Science
Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Federal Funds for Research and
Development: Fiscal Years 2004-06, NSF 07-323 (June 2007).
¹¹ Adjusted for the across-the board rescission (Sec. 312) but not for a specific rescission of
$44.6 million in prior-year funds.

of Fermilab and SLAC have announced plans to lay off 200 and 125 employees
respect i v el y.¹²
The request for biological and environmental research was $532 million, up 10%. The
House provided an increase of $30 million for biological research and an increase of $20
million for climate change research. The Senate committee recommended an increase of $73
million, mostly for congressionally directed projects. The final appropriation was $544
million, an increase of $12 million. In past years, biological and environmental research has
been the main location for congressionally directed projects in the Science account. The
explanatory statement for FY2008 grouped all such projects (for the entire Office of Science)
in a separate category, for which it provided $124 million.
For nuclear physics, the request was $471 million, up 11% from FY2007. As in the
FY2007 request, no funds were included for construction of the Rare Isotope Accelerator
(RIA), despite direction in Section 981 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) that
construction of this project must begin no later than the end of FY2008. A National
Academies report on the RIA was released in December 2006 and is available on the nuclear
physics program’s website.¹³ The House provided the requested amount and endorsed
DOE’s decision to fund additional R&D rather than build the RIA. The Senate committee
recommended the requested amount and did not mention the RIA. The final appropriation
was $433 million, less than the request by $39 million but 2% up from FY2007.
The request for fusion energy sciences was $428 million, up 34%. Almost the entire
increase was for the U.S. share of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER), a fusion facility now under construction whose other participants include China, the
European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. The House provided the requested
amount, but rejected the proposed creation of a new activity in high energy-density physics
and instead redistributed its requested $12 million among existing non-ITER activities. The
Senate committee also recommended the requested amount, but it supported the new
program in high energy-density physics and encouraged DOE to expand it in future years.
The final appropriation was $287 million, less than the request by $141 million and 10%
down from FY2007. The requested $150 million for U.S. contributions to ITER was not
included, although $10 million for related R&D was, and DOE was directed not to use
reprogramming to restore ITER funding. According to press reports, ITER officials expect
no immediate impact on the project’s planned start in 2008, but “what the other ITER
partners now want from the United States is clarity” about its future plans.¹⁴ Under an
agreement signed in 2006, the U.S. share of ITER construction costs is 9.1%, or an estimated
$1.122 billion through FY2014.

¹² Pier J. Oddone, director of Fermilab, presentation slides from an “all hands” meeting on
December 20, 2007, [http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/files/All_Hands_Meeting_122007.ppt];
Persis S. Drell, director of SLAC, presentation slides from an “all hands” meeting on
January 7, 2008, [http://today.slac.stanford.edu/misc/AllHands-010708.ppt].
¹³ National Research Council, Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the
United States, online at [http://www.sc.doe.gov/np/program/docs/RareIsotopeScience
Assessment.pdf].
¹⁴ Dennis Normile, “U.S. Wavers Again on ITER,” ScienceNOW Daily News, December 21,

2007 [http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1221/1].

The request for the smallest of the Office of Science research programs, advanced
scientific computing research, was $340 million, up 20% from FY2007. The House provided
the requested amount. The Senate committee recommended $335 million. The final
appropriation was $351 million.
The request for laboratory infrastructure was $79 million, up from $42 million in
FY2007. The House provided $152 million: the bulk of this increase was to accelerate
facility cleanup, replacement, renovation, and upgrades at Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory (PNNL). The Senate committee recommended $89 million, expressed its
continued support for the affected PNNL facilities, and questioned why the budget request
did not fund an agreement on those facilities signed by DOE and the Department of
Homeland Security in 2006. The final appropriation was $65 million. It included $10
million less than the request for PNNL, but the explanatory statement directed DOE to
increase future funding for PNNL by $10 million to restore the baseline.
Nuclear Waste Disposal. DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management (OCRWM) is responsible for developing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain, Nevada, for disposal of nuclear reactor spent fuel and defense-related high-level
radioactive waste.
The omnibus appropriations act provides $386.5 million in FY2008 for the nuclear
waste program (including the rescission), about $50 million below the FY2007 level and
more than $100 million below the Administration’s $494.5 million request. The funding cut
may affect OCRWM’s plans to submit the Yucca Mountain license application to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 30, 2008, and the current goal of opening the
repository by 2017. The House had approved the full request, while the Senate
Appropriations panel had voted to hold the program at $446.1 million, about the FY2007
level.
Funding for the program is provided under two appropriations accounts. The
Administration requested $202.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund, which holds fees
paid by nuclear utilities. An additional $292.0 million was requested in the Defense Nuclear
Waste Disposal account, which pays for disposal of high-level waste from the nuclear
weapons program in the planned Yucca Mountain repository. The omnibus measure
provides $187.3 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund and $199.2 million under the Defense
Nuclear Waste Disposal account (with both figures reflecting the rescission).
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA, P.L. 97-425), as amended, names
Yucca Mountain as the sole candidate site for a national geologic repository. Congress
passed an approval resolution in July 2002 (H.J.Res. 87, P.L. 107-200) that authorized the
Yucca Mountain project to proceed to the licensing phase.
NWPA required DOE to begin taking waste from nuclear plant sites by January 31,
1998. Nuclear utilities, upset over DOE’s failure to meet that deadline, have won two federal
court decisions upholding the department’s obligation to meet the deadline and to
compensate utilities for any resulting damages. Utilities have also won several cases in the
U.S. Court of Federal Claims. DOE estimates that liability payments will total $7 billion if
Yucca Mountain begins receiving waste by 2017 and $11 billion if the repository’s opening

is delayed until 2020.¹⁵ (For more information, see CRS Report RL33461, Civilian Nuclear
Waste Disposal, by Mark Holt.)
Loan Guarantees. Congress established the DOE Innovative Technology Loan
Guarantee Program in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The act authorized loan guarantees
for energy projects using “new or significantly improved technologies” to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.
The omnibus act allows DOE to guarantee repayment of up to $38.5 billion in loans for
energy projects during FY2008 and FY2009. Of that amount, $18.5 billion is for nuclear
power plants, $6 billion for coal projects that incorporate carbon capture and sequestration,
$2 billion for advanced coal gasification, $10 billion for renewable energy and energy
efficiency projects, and $2 billion for uranium enrichment and other “front end” nuclear fuel
cycle facilities. DOE must submit an implementation plan to the House and Senate
Appropriations Committees at least 45 days before issuing the loan guarantees.
In the FY2008 request, the Administration sought $9 billion in loan guarantee authority
(including $2 billion previously requested for FY2007). The House approved $7 billion in
loan guarantees for FY2008, allocating $2 billion for coal, $4 billion for biofuels, and $1
billion for electric transmission and renewable power systems, specifically omitting the
Administration’s mention of nuclear power. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s
version of the bill did not cap the loan guarantee level or specify eligible technologies.
Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship. Congress established the Stockpile
Stewardship Program in the FY1994 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 103-160) “to
ensure the preservation of the core intellectual and technical competencies of the United
States in nuclear weapons.” The program is operated by the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA), a semiautonomous agency within DOE that Congress established
in the FY2000 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 106-65, Title XXXII). It seeks to
maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Stockpile stewardship consists of all activities in NNSA’s Weapons Activities account.
The three main elements of stockpile stewardship, described below, are Directed Stockpile
Work (DSW), Campaigns, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities (RTBF). Table
11 presents funding for these elements. NNSA manages two programs outside of Weapons
Activities: Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, discussed later in this report, and Naval
Reactors.
Most stewardship activities take place at the nuclear weapons complex, which consists
of three laboratories (Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM; Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, CA; and Sandia National Laboratories, NM and CA); four production sites
(Kansas City Plant, MO; Pantex Plant, TX; Savannah River Site, SC; and Y-12 Plant, TN);
and the Nevada Test Site. NNSA manages and sets policy for the complex; contractors to
NNSA operate the eight sites.

¹⁵ Statement of Edward F. Sproat III, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management, Before the House Budget Committee, October 4, 2007.

Table 11. Funding for Weapons Activities
($ millions)
ProgramFY2007FY2008House SenateConsolidated
OperatingRequestApprops.Approps. Act
PlanCmte.
DSW $1,425.7 $1,447.2 $1,336.6 $1,409.5 $1,413.9
Campaigns 1,979.0 1,866.2 1,725.2 1,933.2 1,890.7
RT BF 1,613.2 1,662.1 1,479.6 1,659.2 1,652.1
Other^a 1,257.7 1,535.7 1,337.7 1,487.1 1,398.9
Total 6,275.6 6,511.3 5,879.1 6,489.0 6,355.6
^Sources^:^D^O^E^F^Y²⁰⁰⁸^C^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^Bu^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^,^v^o^l^.^{1 (N}^N^S^A⁾^{, p. 59;}^U^.^S^.^D^e^part^m^eⁿ^t^of^En^erg^y^,^FY
^{2007 O}^p^er^atⁱ^{ng Pl}^{an by Appr}^oprⁱ^a^tⁱ^on,^March^{16, 2007, pp. 15-}^{21; U.S. C}^o^ngr^e^s^s^.^Hou^s^{e. C}^o^m^m^{ittee on}^th^st
^A^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^.^Eⁿ^e^r^g^y^a^{nd W}^a^ter^{Development Appr}^opr^iations^{Bill, 2008,}¹¹⁰^Co^ngr^e^ss,¹^S^e^s^sⁱ^on^{, H}^.^R^e^pt^.
^110-^{185, pp. 136-}^{140; U.S. C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^s^.^Sen^a^{te. C}^o^m^m^{ittee on}^A^ppropriation^s^.^Eⁿ^er^{gy and W}^a^t^e^r^Appr^oprⁱ^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^th^st
^{Bill, 2008,}¹¹⁰^Co^ngr^e^ss,¹^Ses^sⁱ^on^{, S.R}^e^{pt. 110-}^{127, pp. 193-}^{198; an}^{d U.S. C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^s^.^Hou^s^{e. C}^o^m^m^ittee
^on^R^u^l^e^s^.^T^ext^of^t^h^{e H}^ous^{e Am}^endm^ent^s^t^o^Senat^{e Am}^endm^ent^t^o^H^.^{R. 2764 — St}^at^{e, For}^eⁱ^{gn O}^p^er^atⁱ^ons^{, and}
^Rel^a^t^e^{d Pr}^ogr^am^s^Appr^oprⁱ^a^tⁱ^ons^Act^,^{2008 (}^C^ons^olⁱ^dat^{ed Appr}^oprⁱ^a^tⁱ^ons^A^c^t^,²⁰⁰⁸⁾^.^J^oⁱⁿ^{t Ex}^p^l^an^ato^r^y
^Statem^en^{t to A}^ccom^p^an^y^C^oⁿ^s^olidated^A^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^m^en^dm^en^t^,^Dⁱ^vⁱ^sⁱ^on^C^—^En^erg^y^an^d^Wat^e^{r, pp. 58e-}
^58h^.
^No^tes:^Do^esⁿ^o^t^r^e^f^l^ect^ap^p^licab^{le r}^e^scissioⁿ^{s. Details m}^a^yⁿ^o^{t ad}^d^to^to^{tals d}^u^{e to}^r^o^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^.^DSW^,^Dir^ected
^Sto^c^k^p^{ile W}^o^r^k^{; RT}^B^F^{, Read}ⁱⁿ^{ess in}^T^echⁿⁱ^{cal B}^a^{se an}^d^Facilities.
^{a. I}ⁿ^clu^d^{es Secu}^r^e^T^r^an^sp^o^r^tati^oⁿ^{Asset, Nu}^clear^W^eap^oⁿ^{s I}ⁿ^cid^eⁿ^t^Resp^oⁿ^{se, Facilities an}^d^Iⁿ^f^r^astr^u^c^tu^r^e
^R^{ecapitalization}^P^r^og^ram^,^En^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal P}^r^oj^ects^an^d^Operation^s^{, Saf}^e^g^u^a^rds^an^{d Secu}^rity^{, an}^{d s}^e^v^e^ral
^a^d^j^u^stm^e^nts.
The FY2008 request document includes data from NNSA’s Future Years Nuclear
Security Program (FYNSP), which projects the budget and components through FY2012 (see
Table 12).
Table 12. NNSA Future Years Nuclear Security Program
($ millions)
F Y 2008 F Y 2009 F Y 2010 F Y 2011 F Y 2012
DSW $1,447.2 $1,483.4 $1,520.5 $1,558.5 $1,597.5
Campaigns 1,866.2 1,916.6 1,941.1 1,933.7 1,942.0
RT BF 1,662.1 1,698.4 1,765.5 1,862.7 1,952.6
Other^a 1,535.7 1,606.6 1,677.0 1,756.0 1,831.9
Total 6,511.3 6,705.0 6,904.0 7,111.0 7,324.0
^Source:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2008 C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^Bu^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^,^v^o^l^.^{1 (N}^N^S^A⁾^{, pp. 59, 60.}
^No^te:^Doesⁿ^o^{t ref}^l^{ect applicable res}^c^is^sⁱ^on^s^.^Deta^ils^m^a^yⁿ^o^{t add to totals}^becau^s^e^of^rouⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^.

^{a. I}ⁿ^clu^d^{es Secu}^r^e^T^r^an^sp^o^r^tatioⁿ^A^{sset, Nu}^clear^W^eap^oⁿ^{s I}ⁿ^cid^eⁿ^t^Resp^oⁿ^se^,^F^a^{cilities an}^d^Iⁿ^f^r^astr^u^c^tu^r^e
^R^{ecapitalization}^P^r^og^ram^,^En^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal P}^r^oj^ects^an^d^Operation^s^{, Saf}^e^g^u^a^rds^an^{d Secu}^rity^,^an^d^s^e^v^e^ral
^a^d^j^u^stm^e^nts.
Nuclear Weapons Complex Reconfiguration. In testimony before the House
Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water Subcommittee in March 2004, the Secretary
of Energy agreed to conduct a review of reconfiguring the nuclear weapons complex (the
“Complex”). The committee’s FY2005 energy and water report contained a requirement for
that study. The committee was concerned about high costs, the security of fissile material
distributed among many sites, and the size and age of the Complex. A task force of the
Secretary of Energy Advisory Board released its final report in October 2005. It
recommended a Consolidated Nuclear Production Center (CNPC) that would make nuclear
components (such as those of uranium or plutonium) and would assemble and dismantle
nuclear weapons. It recommended consolidating uranium and plutonium, and probably
closing several current sites. The House Appropriations Committee, in its FY2007 report,
supported the task force’s recommendations and rejected NNSA’s “Complex 2030” plan to
modernize the Complex with less consolidation. The committee recommended $100.0
million “for transition planning, site selection, and preliminary design and development for
a consolidated nuclear production site for reliable replacement warheads and stockpile
support.” The bill as passed by the House provided this sum. NNSA had not requested funds
for this purpose. The Senate Appropriations Committee did not recommend funds for this
purpose, and the DOE FY2007 operating plan did not include such funds. For FY2008,
NNSA did not request funds for CNPC, but did request funds throughout its proposed budget
for upgrading and consolidating the Complex. In January 2007, it submitted a report to
Congress on its plan for transforming the Complex. This plan included evaluation of CNPC
in a draft Supplement to the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programmatic
Environmental Impact Statement for Complex 2030.
The House Appropriations Committee, in its FY2008 report, expressed extreme
displeasure with the Administration’s rationale for the nuclear weapons program and with
NNSA’s plan for the Complex. It stated that the Reliable Replacement Warhead program
(RRW, discussed below) and Complex 2030 “are being proposed in a policy vacuum without
any Administration statement on the national security environment that the future nuclear
deterrent is designed to address.” Accordingly, “The Committee believes it is premature to
proceed with further development of the RRW or a significant nuclear complex
modernization plan, until a three-part planning sequence is completed.” This sequence has
three elements: “a comprehensive nuclear defense and nonproliferation strategy”; a detailed
description translating that strategy into a “specific nuclear stockpile”; and “a
comprehensive, long-term expenditure plan, from FY2008 through FY2030....” “The
Committee views completion of this three-part planning sequence as a necessary condition
before considering additional funding for Complex 2030 and RRW activities.” It noted its
“strong reservations” on Complex 2030 and stated that “NNSA continues to pursue a policy
of rebuilding and modernizing the entire complex in situ without any thought given to a
sensible strategy for long-term efficiency and consolidation.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee expressed concern with NNSA’s plans for the
Complex. It felt that there was an inadequate linkage between warheads, the Complex, and
strategy. “Congress should have a more vigorous analysis and debate of our national
strategic defense policy prior to deciding whether to continue or terminate RRW
development.” Further,

The Committee rejects the Department’s premature deployment of the NNSA Complex
2030 consolidation effort. This plan was based on the adoption and deployment of the
Reliable Replacement Warhead systems. The Government Accountability Office found
this proposal to be lacking critical details about the size and military mission of the RRW
system, which of course would dictate the size and makeup of the future stockpile
including the necessity for a new pit manufacturing capability.
The committee also expressed concern about “sustaining the science capability at the
laboratories.” It directed DOE to provide (1) a comprehensive, long-term strategy for
computation at the labs and (2) an R&D plan “that addresses unresolved physics and
materials questions.”
The joint explanatory statement accompanying the consolidated appropriations bill said,
“The Congress agrees to the direction contained in the House and Senate reports requiring
the Administration ... to develop and submit to the Congress a comprehensive nuclear^st
weapons strategy for the 21 century.”
On December 18, 2007, NNSA announced its plans for the Complex, called Nuclear
Weapons Complex Transformation. This plan, to be more fully described in a draft
supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement to be released in January 2008,
would retain existing sites, reduce the weapons program footprint by as much as one-third,
close or transfer from weapons activities about 600 structures, reduce the number of weapons
workers by 20-30%, dismantle weapons more rapidly, and build several major new facilities,
such as a Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 Plant, a Weapons Surveillance Facility at
Pantex Plant, and a Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility at Los¹⁶
Alamos National Laboratory.
Directed Stockpile Work (DSW). This program involves work directly on nuclear
weapons in the stockpile, such as monitoring their condition; maintaining them through
repairs, refurbishment, life extension, and modifications; R&D in support of specific
warheads; and dismantlement. The FY2008 DSW request would support life extension
programs for the B61 gravity bomb and the W76 warhead for Trident II submarine-launched
ballistic missiles. It would fund surveillance and maintenance for eight warhead types,
dismantlement and disposition of retired warheads and components, and management and
technology work linked to multiple warhead types or to no specific warhead type. It also
included funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program.
RRW originated as a funded program in the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act,
P.L. 108-447, which included $9.0 million for the program and described it as a “program
to improve the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons and their
components.” For FY2006, Congress appropriated $24.8 million. The FY2007 operating
plan included $35.8 million, and the FY2008 request is $88.8 million. Outyear projections

¹⁶ U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “NNSA Releases
Draft Plan to Transform Nuclear Weapons Complex.” Press release, December 18, 2007,
at [http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/newsreleases/2007/PR_2007-12-18_NA-07-64.htm];
National Nuclear Security Administration, “Nuclear Weapons Complex Transformation,”
with links to plans for each site, at [http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/complextransformation.htm];
and Walter Pincus, “Administration Plans to Shrink U.S. Nuclear Arms Program,”
Washington Post, December 19, 2007, p. 1.

are FY2009, $99.8 million; FY2010, $109.2 million; FY2011, $167.4 million; and FY2012,
$179.9 million. (See CRS Report RL32929, The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program:
Background and Current Developments, and CRS Report RL33748, Nuclear Warheads: The
Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program, both by Jonathan
Medalia.)
Although RRW is a small part of the NNSA budget, the House Appropriations
Committee, in its FY2006 report, viewed it as enabling large changes, such as transitioning
the Complex “from a large, expensive Cold War relic into a smaller, more efficient modern
complex” and allowing “long-term savings by phasing out the multiple redundant Cold War
warhead designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete production technologies.” The
Senate Appropriations Committee stated that the recommended funding increase for RRW
is “to accelerate the planning, development and design for a comprehensive RRW strategy
that improves the reliability, longevity and certifiability of existing weapons and their
components.” The conference report emphasized that RRW “must stay within the military
requirements of the existing deployed stockpile” and “must stay within the design parameters
validated by past nuclear tests.” P.L. 109-163, the FY2006 National Defense Authorization
Act, section 3111, set seven objectives for the RRW program, including “[t]o increase the
reliability, safety, and security of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile” and “[t]o
further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground nuclear weapons testing.”
For FY2007, the Administration requested $27.7 million for RRW. The House
Appropriations Committee linked RRW with a restructured, smaller, and consolidated
nuclear weapons complex: “The Committee supports the RRW, but only if it is part of a
larger package of more comprehensive weapons complex reforms.” It recommended $52.7
million for RRW but restricted use of the additional $25.0 million until NNSA delivered an
infrastructure plan to Congress. The committee also directed NNSA to have the JASON
Defense Advisory Group conduct a peer review of competing RRW designs and to analyze
the premise of RRW — that a new warhead can be designed and deployed without nuclear
testing. The bill as passed by the House left these provisions unchanged.
Also under DSW, the committee (1) reduced the $232.7 million request for warhead life
extension programs by $80.0 million, directed NNSA to terminate the life extension program
for the W80 warhead for cruise missiles, and used the funds to support weapons complex
transformation, and (2) increased funding for warhead dismantlement from $75.0 million to
$105.0 million to accelerate that activity. The bill as passed by the House left these
provisions unchanged.
The Senate Appropriations Committee supported RRW. It found, “The directors of Los
Alamos, Sandia and Livermore National Labs and the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command
share the belief that maintaining incremental modifications to the existing and highly
optimized legacy systems [i.e., life extension programs (LEPs) of warheads now in the
stockpile] is not sustainable.” It “urges the NNSA to accelerate the transition to a responsive
infrastructure and to proceed expeditiously with the RRW design.” It noted that DOD and
the Nuclear Weapons Council no longer support the W80 LEP, and provided $10.0 million
for a design competition for a second RRW in lieu of W80 LEP activities. It recommended
$62.7 million for RRW and reducing funds for warhead dismantlement to $35.0 million,
preferring to ensure that facilities for disassembling pits and for fabricating mixed-oxide fuel
will be built before providing full funding. DOE’s FY2007 operating plan included $35.8

million for RRW, $264.4 million for Life Extension Programs, and $75.0 million for
weapons dismantlement and disposition.
NNSA requested $88.8 million for RRW for FY2008. (The Navy requested an
additional $30.0 million for RRW; those funds are in the defense appropriations bill and are
not discussed here.) NNSA had planned to use the FY2008 RRW funds mainly to develop
a detailed cost, scope, and schedule baseline for RRW. Other DSW funds requested for
FY2008 include $238.7 million for Life Extension Programs, $346.7 million for Stockpile
Systems, $52.3 million for Weapons Dismantlement and Disposition, and $720.8 million for
Stockpile Services. The latter category includes, for example, funds for production support,
safety, and other work supporting multiple warhead types or otherwise not linked to one
specific warhead.
The House Appropriations Committee expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the RRW
program. Its FY2008 report stated, “The Committee finds the RRW program the DoD and
NNSA have pursued at the direction of Congress goes far beyond the scope and purpose of
the original congressional language and intent.... The Committee is unconvinced that
pursuing the RRW design competition to a production phase is necessary at this time.”
Further,
A particularly troubling issue for the Committee related to the RRW proposal is the
contradictory U.S. policy position of demanding other nations give up their nuclear
ambitions while the U.S. aggressively pursues a program to build new nuclear warheads.
The Administration needs to develop a policy rationale that explains why the RRW
program is not contradictory and does not undermine our international nuclear
nonproliferation goals.
As noted above, the committee felt it necessary to have the planning sequence described
earlier before continuing RRW design activities; accordingly, it recommended providing no
funds for RRW for FY2008.
The committee recommended providing $1,336.6 million for DSW, a reduction of
$110.6 million from the request. This reflects reductions of $88.8 million for RRW, $27.4
million for Stockpile Systems because of the termination of W80 warhead activities, and
$115.5 million for Stockpile Services, and an increase of $121.0 million for weapons
dismantlement and disposition. Regarding the latter category, the committee stated that DOE
“must view dismantlement as a priority in and of itself, rather than as a workload leveling
function to fill-in for down times in the life extension workload at Pantex.” The committee
also recommended transferring NNSA’s activity to build a Pit Disassembly and Conversion
Facility from the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation to the Office of Defense
Programs, and directed DOE to begin the siting process to build the facility at Pantex Plant
(TX) rather than at Savannah River Site (SC) to avoid security risks in transporting pits from
Texas to South Carolina.
The Senate Appropriations Committee provided $66.0 million for NNSA for RRW in
order to complete Phase 2A. As noted earlier, it made clear that it was not committed to
proceeding with Phase 3 but wanted “a more vigorous analysis and debate” first. It wanted
more information to help with this decision, such as characteristics of the future stockpile,
the possible effects of RRW on U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and comparative costs
of RRW vs. LEP. “It will be incumbent upon NNSA to provide specific details as to how

many RRW weapons will be manufactured, how the Department of Defense intends to
integrate the system into the stockpile and how many weapons from the existing deterrent
can be retired.” While it recommended funds to continue Phase 2A work on the first RRW
type, it barred the use of funds for initial research on a second RRW type. In other areas of
DSW, the committee recommended a net reduction of $37.7 million ($22.8 million from
RRW, and $14.9 million, the entire amount requested, from “responsive infrastructure,” a
management program to support decisions on the Complex). It expressed concern with cost
growth in the W76 LEP and commended DOE for recent efforts to increase the rate at which
it dismantled nuclear warheads.
The consolidated appropriations bill eliminated NNSA funds for RRW. The
explanatory statement said, “Congress believes a new strategic nuclear deterrent mission
assessment for the 21^st century is required to define the associated stockpile requirements and
determine the scope of the weapons complex modernization plans.” The largest change
under DSW was to increase funding for weapons dismantlement and disposition from $52.3
million requested to $135.9 million. The bill also provided funds for the Pit Disassembly
and Conversion Facility at Savannah River Site rather than at Pantex.
Campaigns. These are “multi-year, multi-functional efforts” that “provide specialized
scientific knowledge and technical support to the directed stockpile work on the nuclear
weapons stockpile.” The FY2008 request includes six Campaigns, each with multiple
components: Science, Engineering, Inertial Confinement Fusion and High Yield, Advanced
Simulation and Computing, Pit Manufacturing and Certification, and Readiness. Many items
within Campaigns have significance for policy decisions. As one example, the Science
Campaign’s goals include improving the ability to assess warhead performance without
nuclear testing, improving readiness to conduct tests should the need arise, and maintaining
the scientific infrastructure of the nuclear weapons laboratories. Campaigns also fund some
large experimental facilities, such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrotest Facility at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, and the Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Applications Complex at Sandia
National Laboratories.
NNSA’s proposal to build a Modern Pit Facility (MPF) had been controversial for years.
A pit is the fissile core of a nuclear weapon that is used to trigger a thermonuclear explosion.
The United States has been unable to manufacture pits that can be certified for use in the
stockpile since 1989. Los Alamos has a small-scale pit manufacturing facility, called TA-55;
NNSA’s plan is that TA-55 would be able to manufacture 10 pits per year by the end of
FY2007 and 30-50 RRW pits per year by FY2012, but NNSA saw that capacity as
insufficient to maintain the stockpile and favored building MPF, with a capacity of perhaps
125 pits per year. H.R. 2419, the FY2006 Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Bill, as passed by the House, eliminated MPF funds until “capacity requirements tied to the
long-term stockpile size are determined” and “until the long-term strategy for the physical
infrastructure of the weapons complex has incorporated the Reliable Replacement Warhead
strategy.” The bill as passed by the Senate provided the amount requested for MPF, $7.7
million. The appropriation bill, as passed, provided no funds for MPF. Conferees on the
energy and water bill directed NNSA to focus instead on improving manufacturing capability
at TA-55. NNSA requested no funds for MPF for FY2007 and instead planned to increase
capacity at TA-55. It requested $237.6 million for the Pit Manufacturing and Certification
campaign for FY2007; H.R. 5427 as passed by the House provided that amount, and the
Senate Appropriations Committee recommended that amount. The FY2007 operating plan

included $242.4 million for this campaign, and the FY2008 request is $281.2 million.
NNSA envisions a new pit manufacturing facility able to deliver 125 pits per year to the
stockpile by 2022 as part of Complex 2030.¹⁷
The House Appropriations Committee recommended providing $150.0 million for pit
manufacturing and certification for FY2008, a reduction of $131.2 million on grounds that
the request has funds in multiple lines “that assume a preferred future programmatic
approach” that “ensures unnecessary expenditures and lack of accountability.” It linked pit
funding to the strategic plan discussed above:
The Committee will not continue to fund activities that are not part of a clearly
articulated facilities strategy. Until the Committee receives a new nuclear weapons
strategic plan that addresses the future requirements for plutonium production, including
specifically how plutonium facilities factor into supporting the future stockpile, the
Committee will not support funding activities that assume a modernization-in-place
strategy for the current nuclear weapons complex.
The Committee recommendation includes no funds for the consolidated plutonium
center proposal.
The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $256.3 million for pit
manufacturing for FY2008, a reduction of $24.9 million. It “does not endorse the
consolidated plutonium center and has not provided any funding for this activity” because
DOD “has been unable to articulate a coherent policy and pit requirement for the stockpile.”
The consolidated appropriations bill provided $215.8 million for pit manufacturing and
certification. It provided no funds for the consolidated plutonium center. According to the
explanatory statement,
Until a modern nuclear weapons strategy, including required pit production capacity
defined by nuclear stockpile requirements, is developed, the NNSA is directed to
constrain the out-year planning for plutonium operations to a pit production capacity no
greater than 80 pits per year. The NNSA Administrator is directed to provide quarterly
reports to the Committees on Appropriations on pit production, with the first report due
on April 1, 2008.
The appropriate test readiness posture — the time between a presidential order to
resume testing and the conduct of the test — has been contentious. The posture was set at
24 to 36 months after the Cold War, but NNSA and others expressed concern that it had
become 36 months or more. The Administration and Congress sought to shorten it, but there
was a dispute over how much. NNSA and the Armed Services Committees favored an 18-
month posture on grounds that it would take that long to prepare a test but that any testing
should not be delayed beyond that time. The Appropriations Committees favored a 24-
month posture, seeing an 18-month posture as provocative and more costly. The FY2006
appropriation was $19.8 million. In its FY2007 request, NNSA stated that it achieved a 24-
month readiness posture in FY2005 and planned to maintain that posture at least through
FY2011. It stated that the posture is 18 months “under current law” but that it “has thus far

¹⁷ U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Office of Defense
Programs. Complex 2030: An Infrastructure Planning Scenario for a Nuclear Weapons^st
Complex Able to Meet the Threats of the 21 Century, DOE/NA-0013, October 2006, p. 11.

been limited to 24 months by Congressional funding.” The FY2007 test readiness request
was $14.8 million, and NNSA’s operating plan included $14.6 million.
For FY2008, NNSA requested no funds for test readiness, but plans to request funds for
FY2009. The House provided $20.0 million for test readiness to restore funding to this
activity and keep it from being degraded. The House Appropriations Committee stated that
it was “baffled by the Administration’s decision to eliminate funding for nuclear test
readiness after four budget cycles of insisting that shortening to an 18-month test readiness
posture was required for national security reasons.” The Senate Appropriations Committee
recommended no funds for test readiness. The consolidated appropriations bill provided $5.0
million for this activity.
The consolidated appropriations bill provided $15.0 million for a new campaign,
Advanced Certification, to be “focused very narrowly on addressing the long-term scientific
issues related to continued certification of the nuclear stockpile without underground nuclear
testing and [certain] scientific uncertainties.”
The Engineering Campaign includes the Enhanced Surveillance Program (ESP), which
seeks to develop “predictive capabilities for early identification and assessment of stockpile
aging concerns ... to give NNSA a firm basis for determining when systems must be
refurbished.” It is conducting experiments to determine the service life of pits based on
plutonium aging characteristics. The FY2007 request for ESP was $86.5 million, the
operating plan provided $87.5 million, and the FY2008 request is $80.6 million. The House
provided the requested funding both for ESP and for the entire Engineering Campaign,
$152.7 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended providing the
requested funding for the Engineering Campaign, excepting an addition of $20.0 million for
Enhanced Surety to “accelerate efforts ... to increase the safety, security and improved
surveillance of nuclear weapons in the existing stockpile by developing modern surety
technologies. ...” The consolidated appropriations bill provided $171.1 million for the
Engineering Campaign, vs. $152.7 million requested. It added $9.6 million for Enhanced
Surety and authorized transfer of $10.0 million for refurbishing an ion beam laboratory at
Sandia National Laboratories.
According to NNSA, the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and High Yield Campaign
“is to develop laboratory capabilities to create and measure extreme conditions ...
approaching those in a nuclear explosion, and conduct weapons-related research in these
environments.” A key part of this campaign is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is already the world’s most powerful laser.
NNSA plans to complete the NIF project by March 30, 2010.
Cost growth of NIF has been of concern to Congress. Total project cost was originally
estimated at $1,073.6 million in FY1996; the current estimate is $3,502.4 million.¹⁸ For
FY2007, NNSA requested $451.2 million for this campaign, of which $111.4 million was
for NIF construction. H.R. 5427, as passed by the House, provided $528.2 million for this
campaign, including the requested amount for NIF construction. The Senate Appropriations
Committee said NNSA was pursuing “a NIF-at-all-costs strategy.” It continued, “The NNSA

¹⁸ U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2008 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, National
Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/CF-014 (February 2007), p. 160.

has pursued this agenda as a means to justify an aggressive spending baseline at the expense
of more compelling stewardship responsibilities in the ICF campaign. The NNSA has
proven unable to maintain a balanced ICF and high yield research program. As such the
Committee has reallocated funding out of NIF demonstration and Construction activities to
ensure that there is adequate program balance.” It recommended funding the campaign at
$412.3 million and, within that sum, funding NIF construction at $81.4 million. The FY2007
operating plan included $489.7 million for this campaign, of which $111.4 million was for
NIF construction.
The FY2008 request is $412.3 million, including $10.1 million for NIF construction.
NNSA states that this latter decrease “reflects ramp down of construction work as the project
nears completion.” The House Appropriations Committee recommended increasing the
request by $111.8 million to support reaching the 2010 ignition goal. The Senate
Appropriations Committee recommended increasing the request by $46.9 million, of which
$28.9 million was shifted from RTBF, mainly “to fully reestablish experimental capabilities
on the refurbished Z facility” at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. The Z
facility is an inertial confinement fusion machine that uses high-energy x-rays (instead of
lasers, as with NIF) to generate high energy densities for such tasks as research on materials
and components, to evaluate performance of plutonium in nuclear weapons without nuclear
testing, and to provide data used in validating computer simulations for stockpile stewardship
including the Life Extension Program. The consolidated appropriations bill provided $474.4
million for the Inertial Confinement Fusion campaign, including an additional $15.1 million
to accelerate NIF target development, restoration of $29.7 million for the Inertial Fusion
Technology program, and an additional $13.0 million for Z machine operations. The bill
provided another $28.9 million for Z machine operations under Readiness in Technical Base
and Facilities.
Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities (RTBF). This program funds
infrastructure and operations at nuclear weapons complex sites. The FY2007 operating plan
included $1,613.2 million, and the FY2008 request is $1,662.1 million. RTBF has six
subprograms. The largest is Operations of Facilities ($1,150.1 million in the FY2007
operating plan, $1,159.3 million requested for FY2008). Others include Program Readiness,
which supports activities occurring at multiple sites or in multiple programs ($75.2 million
in the FY2007 operating plan, $71.5 million requested for FY2008), and Material Recycle
and Recovery, which recovers plutonium, enriched uranium, and tritium from weapons
production and disassembly ($70.0 million in the FY2007 operating plan, $70.0 million
requested for FY2008). Construction is a separate category within RTBF; the FY2007
operating plan included $262.5 million, and the FY2008 request is $307.1 million.
For FY2007, the House Appropriations Committee recommended reducing RTBF by
$27.0 million from the request, including an increase of $73.0 million for Operations of
Facilities and a reduction of $100.0 million, from a request of $112.4 million, for a
Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement (CMRR) at Los Alamos. CMRR
would replace a building about 50 years old that, among other things, conducts research into
plutonium and supports pit production at TA-55. The committee stated that CMRR
construction should be terminated and “[p]roduction capabilities proposed in the CMRR
should be located at the future production site that supports the RRW and long term stockpile
requirements.” The committee noted that NNSA proposed to build a Consolidated
Plutonium Production Center by 2022, so that “CMRR will serve its primary production
support function for only eight years before it is made obsolete by the new plutonium

facility.” The House did not change these provisions in considering H.R. 5427. The Senate
Appropriations Committee recommended $1,780.8 million for RTBF, including the amount
requested for CMRR: “The Committee firmly believes [CMRR] will continue to play a
central role in the plutonium mission at Los Alamos and is needed to support the research
and chemistry mission of plutonium activities.” The FY2007 operating plan included $53.4
million for CMRR, and the FY2008 request includes $95.6 million.
The House Appropriations Committee recommended the following amounts for RTBF
for FY2008: for the entire program, $1,479.6 million, a reduction of $182.5 million from the
request; Operations of Facilities, $1,041.4 million, a reduction of $117.9 million; Program
Readiness, $71.5 million, as requested; Material Recycle and Recovery, $73.0 million, an
increase of $3.0 million; and construction, $236.5 million, a reduction of $70.6 million. The
committee recommended no funds for CMRR, instead of the $95.6 million requested, to halt
construction at the facility. It stated,
Proceeding with the CMRR project as currently designed will strongly prejudice any
nuclear complex transformation plan. The CMRR facility has no coherent mission to
justify it unless the decision is made to begin an aggressive new nuclear warhead design
and pit production mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The NNSA is directed
to develop a long-term plan to maintain the nation’s nuclear stockpile requirements that
does not assume an a priori case for the current program.
The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended the following amounts for RTBF
for FY2008: for the entire program, $1,659.2 million, a reduction of $2.9 million from the
request; Operations of Facilities, $1,126.4 million, a reduction of $32.9 million; Program
Readiness, $71.5 million, as requested; Material Recycle and Recovery, $65.0 million, a
reduction of $5.0 million; and construction, $352.1 million, an increase of $45.0 million.
The committee recommended the $95.6 million requested for CMRR.
The consolidated appropriations bill provided $1,652.1 million for RTBF, $10.0 million
less than the request, including $74.8 million for CMRR construction.
Other Programs. Weapons Activities includes four smaller programs in addition to
DSW, Campaigns, and RTBF.
^!Secure Transportation Asset provides for the transport of nuclear weapons,
components, and materials safely and securely. It includes special vehicles
used for this purpose, communications and other supporting infrastructure,
and threat response. The FY2007 request was $209.3 million and the
FY2007 operating plan included $209.5 million. The FY2008 request is
$215.6 million, and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees
recommended that amount. The consolidated appropriations bill provided
$213.4 million.
^!Nuclear Weapons Incident Response provides for use of DOE assets to
manage and respond to a nuclear or radiological emergency within DOE, in
the United States, or abroad. The FY2007 request was $135.4 million, and
the FY2007 operating plan included $133.5 million. The FY2008 request
is $161.7 million, and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees

recommended that amount. The consolidated appropriations bill provided
$160.1 million.
^!Facilities and Infrastructure Recapitalization Program (FIRP) provides for
deferred maintenance and infrastructure improvements for the nuclear
weapons complex. NNSA states that the purpose of RTBF, in contrast, is
to “ensure that facilities necessary for immediate programmatic workload
activities are maintained sufficiently.” The FY2007 request for FIRP was
$291.2 million. The House Appropriations Committee recommended
reducing the latter sum by $145.0 million, and “directs the NNSA to
reassess its out-year planning for FIRP projects to ensure coordination
between FIRP funds and the reduced facility requirements consistent with
the consolidation of the complex under the long-term Responsive
Infrastructure planning.” H.R. 5427, as passed by the House, left these
provisions unchanged. The Senate Appropriations Committee made a
number of changes to FIRP and recommended $283.2 million. It said the
funds were “to restore, rebuild, and revitalize the physical infrastructure of
the nuclear weapons complex.” The FY2007 operating plan included
$169.4 million. The FY2008 request is $293.7 million; the House
Appropriations Committee recommended $137.7 million on grounds that
NNSA should reassess how it will use the final years of FIRP funding in a
way that is consistent with long-term plans for Complex transformation. The
Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $262.7 million, urging that
the “old facilities” that FIRP addresses “continue to be a drain on resources
and should be demolished or disposed of as quickly as possible.” The
consolidated appropriations bill provided $181.6 million.
^!Safeguards and Security (S&S) provides operations and maintenance funds
for physical and cyber security, and related construction. In the wake of
9/11, the relevant threats and the Design Basis Threat changed. Ambassador
Linton Brooks, then Administrator of NNSA, stated in 2005, “We must now
consider the distinct possibility of well-armed and competent terrorist
suicide teams seeking to gain access to a warhead in order to detonate it in
place. This has driven our site security posture from one of ‘containment
and recovery’ of stolen warheads to one of ‘denial of any access’ to
warheads. This change has dramatically increased security costs for ‘gates,
guns, guards’ at our nuclear weapons sites.” The cost of S&S is a major
concern for Congress and NNSA. Many changes have been proposed to
reduce Complex security costs, such as reducing the area to be guarded by
reducing the footprint of several sites and by consolidating uranium and
plutonium at fewer sites. The FY2006 S&S appropriation was $797.8
million. The FY2007 request was $754.4 million, and the FY2007 operating
plan included $761.2 million. The FY2008 request is $881.1 million. (The
foregoing figures do not reflect S&S offsets for work for others of $32.0
million for FY2006, $33.0 million for FY2007, and $34.0 million for
FY2008.) The House Appropriations Committee recommended $911.6
million for S&S, an increase of $30.5 million. The Senate Appropriations
Committee recommended $893.1 million, an increase of $12.0 million. The
increase would be used to complete cyber security upgrades of a secure
network at Los Alamos. The committee expressed its frustration with “the

continued climb in funding” for S&S, and recommended that the National
Academy of Sciences report on S&S issues, including cost growth. The
consolidated appropriations bill provided $907.6 million. It added $14.8
million to refurbish one building and complete another at Idaho National
Laboratory to consolidate and store uranium and plutonium, and for other
missions.
Nonproliferation and National Security Programs. DOE’s nonproliferation and
national security programs provide technical capabilities to support U.S. efforts to prevent,
detect, and counter the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide. These nonproliferation and
national security programs are included in the National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA).
Table 13. DOE Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs
($ millions)
F Y 2008 Senat e^d
P r ogram F Y 2007 Re que s t H ous e Comm. Final
Nonproliferation & Verification R&D$270.4$265.3$440.4$322.3$365.8
Nonproliferation & International^a128.9124.9144.9210.9151.4
Security
International Materials Protection,472.7371.8831.8391.8630.2
Control and Accounting (MPC&A)
Elimination of Weapons-Grade225.7181.6191.6152.6181.6
Plutonium Production
Fissile Materials Disposition470.1609.566.8^b666.566.8
Global Threat Reduction Initiative115.5119.6251.3185.6195.0
Use of prior year balances^c — — — (57.0)(322.0)
Total 1,683.3 1,672.6 2,070.6 1,872.6 1,336.9
^Sources^:^D^O^E^F^Y^{2008 C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^Bu^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^;^P.L^.^110-^5;^D^O^E^F^Y^{2007 O}^p^eratⁱⁿ^g^Pl^an^;^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;
^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^{127, Ex}^pl^an^at^ory^S^t^at^em^en^t^of^C^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^.
^No^te:^N^u^m^b^e^r^{s m}^a^y^no^t^a^d^d^d^u^e^t^o^r^o^undⁱ^ng.
^a.^Iⁿ^c^l^u^d^{es f}^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^r^tw^o^f^o^r^m^er^ly^sep^a^r^a^{te p}^r^o^g^r^a^m^s^{: Ru}^ssian^T^r^an^sitioⁿ^Iⁿ^itiativ^{es an}^d^{HEU T}^r^an^sp^ar^en^cy
^I^m^p^l^em^en^tatioⁿ^.
^{b. Fu}ⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^{r MOX plan}^{t tran}^s^f^{erred to Nu}^cl^{ear En}^erg^y^{, an}^{d P}^{it Dis}^a^s^s^e^m^b^ly^plan^{t to NNSA}^.
^c.^From^th^{e R}^u^s^sⁱ^an^Fis^s^{ile Materials}^Dis^pos^ition^prog^ram^,^{MOX con}^s^tru^c^tion^,^an^{d FY1999 em}^erg^eⁿ^c^y^s^u^pplem^en^tal.
^{d. T}^o^t^a^l^fⁱⁿ^a^l^appropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^ref^l^ect^s^S^ectⁱ^oⁿ^{312 res}^cⁱ^s^sⁱ^on^{, bu}^t^s^u^bprog^ram^am^ouⁿ^t^s^{do n}^o^t^.
Funding for these programs in FY2007 was $1.818 billion, including $135
million appropriated in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery,
and Iraq Accountability Act, 2007 (H.R. 2206, P.L. 110-28). For FY2008, the
Administration requested $1.673 billion. The House Appropriations Committee
recommended $1.684 billion, not including two construction projects for which the

Administration requested $393.8 million and which the Appropriations Committee
recommended moving to other programs. The omnibus funding act transfers the
construction projects as recommended by the House and includes additional offsets,
resulting in a net appropriation of $1.3369 billion (reflecting the across-the-board
rescission).
The Nonproliferation and Verification R&D program was allotted $262.4
million in DOE’s FY2007 Operating Plan; for FY2008, the Administration requested
$265.3 million. The House Appropriations Committee, citing “the urgent need to
develop advanced proliferation detection technology and nuclear explosion
monitoring capability,” boosted funding for this activity to $484.3 million. The
omnibus act provides $390.8 million, not reflecting the rescission.
Nonproliferation and International Security programs include international
safeguards, export controls, and treaties and agreements. They would have received
$127.41 million in the FY2007 request, including the transfer of two previously
independent programs: Russian Transition Initiatives and HEU Transparency
Implementation. These three programs received $133.2 million in FY2006. The
House bill and the Senate Appropriations Committee recommendation followed the
Administration’s request. The DOE Operating plan allotted $128.9 million for
FY2007. The FY2008 request was $124.9 million. The House Appropriations
Committee recommended increasing funding to $144.9 million. The omnibus act
provides $151.4 million, not reflecting the rescission.
International Materials Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A), which
is concerned with reducing the threat posed by unsecured Russian weapons and
weapons-usable material, would have received $413.18 million under the President’s
FY2007 request, compared with $422.73 million appropriated for FY2006. P.L. 110-
5 specified $472.7 million for this program. The FY2008 request was $371.8
million. The House Appropriations Committee recommended boosting MPC&A
funding to $831.8 million, labeling the move “clear congressional direction to the
Administration to shift the nuclear nonproliferation issues beyond marginally
supported security programs to one accorded the highest priority in the war on world
wide terror.” The omnibus measure provides $630.2 million, not reflecting the
rescission.
Requested funding for the Fissile Materials Disposition program for FY2006
was $653.1 million. The program’s goal is disposal of U.S. surplus weapons
plutonium by converting it into fuel for commercial power reactors, including
construction of a facility to convert the plutonium to “mixed-oxide” (MOX) reactor
fuel at Savannah River, South Carolina, and a similar program in Russia. The House
Appropriations Committee cut funding for the Savannah River facility sharply for
FY2006, citing delays in agreement with Russia over the program. The final
appropriation for FY2006 was $468.8 million.
For FY2007, the Administration, noting that the issue that had delayed the
program in Russia had been resolved, requested $603.3 million. However, the House
Appropriations Committee report said “in 2006 it has become clear that the Russian
government is not going to participate in the MOX-light water reactor” plan that the
United States has proposed, and the House-passed version of H.R. 5427 would have

cut the funding drastically to $248.0 million. The move would have shut down the
MOX-fuel construction project at Savannah River.
The Senate Appropriations Committee in its FY2007 report likewise expressed
disappointment that the Russian government was not pursuing its program to convert
surplus weapons plutonium to MOX, but supported the continuation of the U.S.
program to convert its own surplus weapons plutonium to MOX with continued
construction of the facility at Savannah River. The Senate version of H.R. 5427
would have funded the Fissile Materials Disposition program at $618.4 million, $15
million more than requested by the Administration.
P.L. 110-5 specified that the “Secretary of Energy may not make available any
of the funds provided by this division or previous appropriations Acts for
construction activities for Project 99-D-143, mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility,
Savannah River Site, South Carolina, until August 1, 2007.” DOE’s FY2007
Operating Plan allocated $470.1 million for Fissile Materials Disposition, including
$262.5 million for Project 99-D-143.
For FY2008 the Administration requested $609.5 million for Fissile Materials
Disposition, including $393.8 million for construction. The House Appropriations
Committee, noting that Russia had decided in 2006 not to pursue plutonium
disposition in light water MOX reactors but to build fast breeder reactors instead,
declared the bilateral agreement a failure and asserted that the $1.7 billion previously
appropriated for facilities to be used in the U.S. side of the plutonium disposal
agreement was “without any nuclear nonproliferation benefit accrued to the U.S.
taxpayer.” The committee recommended transferring the MOX plant and another
project, the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF), both at Savannah
River, SC, to the nuclear energy program and NNSA’s weapons program
respectively.
In contrast to the House action, the Senate Appropriations Committee
recommended $609.5 million for the Fissile Materials Disposition program,
including full funding for the MOX plant and the PDCF, instructing DOE to
“proceed expeditiously with construction” of the two facilities and to “focus on
delivering this project at cost and on time.” In view of the delays in the Russian side
of the program, the committee said it is “not backing away from the United States
obligation to provide assistance to this program” but instructed DOE to rescind $57
million already appropriated to be directed to the U.S. construction projects.
The omnibus funding act adopted the House position, transferring the MOX
plant and PDCF to other programs. The net appropriation for the program was
reduced to $66.8 million, not reflecting the rescission.
Environmental Management. In the late 1980s, the United States ceased
its production of nuclear weapons, due to military projections that the nuclear
weapons stockpile was sufficient to protect national security and respond to future
threats. The past production of these weapons generated substantial quantities of
radioactive and other hazardous wastes, and resulted in contamination of soil,
groundwater, and buildings. As a consequence, environmental problems arising from
this past production continue to present challenges today. However, potential health

and environmental risks vary considerably among individual sites, depending on the
type and quantity of waste and contamination present at each site, and the potential
for exposure to wastes and contaminants.
The adequacy of funding to address health and environmental risks resulting
from the past production of nuclear weapons is a long-standing issue. DOE
established the Office of Environmental Management in 1989 to consolidate its
efforts to administer the cleanup of former nuclear weapons sites. These efforts
include the disposal of radioactive and other hazardous wastes, management and
disposal of surplus nuclear materials, the remediation of soil and groundwater
contaminated from such wastes, and the decontamination and decommissioning of
excess buildings and facilities. Through this program, DOE also administers the
disposal of wastes and remediation of contamination at sites where the federal
government conducted civilian nuclear energy research. Altogether, there were 114
“geographic”¹⁹ sites in 30 states where these activities resulted in the generation of
wastes and contamination.
Some of the ongoing issues associated with the disposal of wastes and the
cleanup of contamination have been the adequacy of risk-based approaches to
address these needs; the technical soundness of waste treatment facility designs; how
to safely remove, treat, and dispose of high-level radioactive waste stored in
underground tanks;²⁰ the effectiveness and cost-savings of incentive-based cleanup
contracts; and the pace and adequacy of cleanup overall. The challenges of the
Environmental Management Program to dispose of wastes and clean up
contamination are substantial and require significant resources. As such, this
program represents approximately one-fourth of the Department’s total budget.
Congressional Action on FY2008 Appropriations. The Consolidated
Appropriations Act for FY2008 provided a total of $5.75 billion for DOE’s
Environmental Management Program. However, the final funding is subject to two
across-the-board rescissions, somewhat reducing the appropriation. Nearly all of the
$5.75 billion is subject to a 0.91% rescission, whereas $17.5 million of that amount
for congressionally designated projects is subject to a higher rescission of 1.6%.
These rescissions apply to funding not only for the Environmental Management
Program, but to all DOE activities funded in Title III of Division C, as required by
Section 312 of that title. Prior to the final bill, the House had proposed a higher
amount of $6.21 billion for the Environmental Management Program, and the Senate
Appropriations Committee had recommended $6.00 billion. The President had

¹⁹ DOE makes a distinction between its “geographic” sites, which represent entire facilities
and the lands they occupy, and the thousands of discrete contaminated sites located on each
facility that have been, or need to be, cleaned up. One of these geographic sites, the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, was constructed as a repository to dispose of
transuranic radioactive waste from other sites. Although this facility is not a cleanup site,
its operation is essential to the cleanup of transuranic waste at many sites where such waste
is removed and prepared for permanent disposal off-site.
²⁰ See CRS Report RS21988, Radioactive Tank Waste from the Past Production of Nuclear
Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress, by David Bearden and Anthony Andrews.

proposed the lowest amount under consideration for FY2008, requesting $5.66
billion for the program. Congress appropriated $6.19 billion for FY2007.
Although the House initially had proposed the highest amount for FY2008,
nearly $200 million of its increase would not have provided additional resources for
the program. Rather, this increase was due to the House’s proposal to consolidate
funding for the Office of Legacy Management with the Environmental Management
Program. This office has been funded independently under other accounts, and is
responsible for long-term site care after cleanup is complete under the Environmental
Management Program. In its initial bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee had
rejected the House’s proposal, and recommended that the Office of Legacy
Management continue to be funded in other accounts independent of the
Environmental Management Program. Taking this accounting difference into
consideration, the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee had
recommended similar levels of funding for the Environmental Management Program
as a whole. In the final bill, Congress followed the approach of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, and did not consolidate funding for these two functions.
See the “Office of Legacy Management” section later in this report.
The FY2008 enacted appropriation of $5.75 billion (prior to rescissions) for the
Environmental Management Program is significantly less than the $6.19 billion that
Congress appropriated for FY2007. However, this difference in total funding is
largely because of a $425.7 million decrease in funds for “accelerated closure” sites
where all planned cleanup actions are complete under the Environmental
Management Program. These sites include Rocky Flats (CO), Fernald (OH), and
several other defense sites. Congress had increased funding at these sites for several
years to speed the pace of cleanup. These sites were suitable for accelerated cleanup
because the challenges were more technically feasible to address than those at more
complex sites. Now that most of the work is completed at some sites, and nearing
completion at others, there has been a corresponding downward trend in funding as
these needs have diminished.
Although DOE has accomplished much in accelerating cleanup at the above
sites, substantial challenges remain at many other sites where cleanup is not complete
and large quantities of wastes and contamination are still present. For these and other
pending sites, there are varying decreases and increases in funding when comparing
the appropriation enacted for FY2008 to the initial recommendations of the House
and the Senate Appropriations Committee, the President’s FY2008 request, and the
appropriation for the prior year in FY2007. (See Table 14.) These differences in
funding are due to differing priorities among other competing needs within the
federal budget, opposing views on the adequacy of funding to meet cleanup needs,
and varying factors at individual sites, such as the technical complexity of cleanup,
the prioritization of remedial actions based on health and environmental risks,
scheduling of actions to meet time frames in regulatory agreements, and numerous
other considerations.
The Hanford site is the largest and most complex site administered under the
Environmental Management Program. This site alone represents about one-third of
the funding for the entire program. The adequacy of funding to clean up Hanford
has been particularly controversial for many reasons, including potential risks from

radioactive contamination migrating through groundwater into the Columbia River
and the delayed construction of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. This
facility is a key element in DOE’s plans to treat the substantial volume of high-level
radioactive waste to be removed from the underground tanks at Hanford, and to
solidify that waste for permanent disposal in a geologic repository. This task is one
of the more costly cleanup challenges across the complex of sites.
Various engineering and design issues have delayed construction of the Waste
Treatment and Immobilization Plant at Hanford. The President had requested $690.0
million for the construction of this facility in FY2008, the same amount as Congress
appropriated in FY2007. The request also included $273.4 million for the
management of the wastes still stored in the underground tanks, slightly less than the
FY2007 appropriation of $277.1 million. Prior to rescissions, the appropriation
enacted for FY2008 included $690.0 million for the construction of the waste
treatment plant, and $288.4 million for managing the tank wastes while the
construction of the plant continues.
The House initially had proposed $590.0 million for the waste treatment plant,
and the same amount as the President requested for managing the tank wastes. In its
initial report, the House Appropriations Committee had indicated that its proposed
lower funding for the plant could have been augmented with $100.0 million in
“uncosted balances” carried over from FY2007 because of slow construction
progress, raising the total available to the President’s request of $690.0 million. The
Senate Appropriations Committee had recommended the full request for the waste
treatment plant without the use of these uncosted balances, and had recommended
a higher amount of $326.0 million for managing the tank wastes.
Table 14 indicates appropriations that Congress enacted for the Environmental
Management Program for FY2008, compared to the initial recommendations of the
full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee prior to the enactment of the
final bill, the President’s request, and the prior-year appropriation in FY2007.
Amounts are indicated for each of the three statutory accounts that fund the
Environmental Management Program, and for selected sites and program activities
within those accounts in which there has been broad congressional interest. The
amounts enacted for FY2008 are as presented in the Congressional Record of
December 17, 2007, which do not reflect the across-the-board rescission of 0.91%
for ongoing program elements, and 1.6% for congressionally designated projects.

Table 14. Environmental Management Program Appropriations
($ millions)
Environmental F Y 2007 F Y 2008
Management Enacted Senat e
Program AccountsRequestHouseCommitteeEnacted
Defense Environmental
Cleanup
Accelerated Closure Sites$468.1$42.4$42.4$55.9$42.4
Ashtabula $1.3 $0.3 $0.3 $0.3 $0.3
Fernald $254.8 $0.0 $0.0 $13.5 $0.0
Miamisburg $39.9 $30.3 $30.3 $30.3 $30.3
Rocky Flats$115.5$0.0$0.0$0.0$0.0
Closure Sites
Admi nistration $56.6 $11.8 $11.8 $11.8 $11.8
Hanford $1,802.4 $1,840.5 $1,813.4 $1,966.4 $1,873.0
Richland Office$835.3$877.1$950.0$950.4$894.6
Office of River
Protection $967.1 $963.4 $863.4 $1,016.0 $978.4
Waste Treatment
Plant $690.0 $690.0 $590.0 $690.0 $690.0
Tank Farm
Activities $277.1 $273.4 $273.4 $326.0 $288.4
Savannah River Site$1,113.4$1,206.1$1,160.5$1,200.1$1,141.6
Idaho National Laboratory$526.9$504.0$600.8$532.9$513.0
Oak Ridge Reservation$203.9$179.3$235.3$179.3$192.3
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant$228.8$219.7$219.7$250.7$236.7
NNSA and Nevada Off-
Sites $306.5 $271.1 $271.1 $361.7 $292.9
Technology Development$21.4$21.4$108.1$55.1$21.4
Safeguards and Security$275.9$273.4$278.4$273.6$261.7
Program Direction^a$294.5$309.8$341.8$309.8$309.8
Program Support$38.0$33.1$35.1$41.9$33.1
Federal Payment to
Uranium Enrichment D&D^b
Fund $452.0 $463.0 $463.0 $463.0 $463.0
Defense Legacy^a
Manage me nt $0.0 $0.0 $148.1 $0.0 $0.0
Material Consolidation^c$0.0$0.0$50.3$0.0$0.0
Congressionally Directed
Proj ects $0.0 $0.0 $0.0 $0.0 $17.5
Subtotal Defense^d
Environmental Cleanup$5,731.8$5,363.9$5,768.0$5,690.4$5,398.6
Transfer to ES&H^e$0.0$0.0$-1.5$0.0$0.0

Environmental F Y 2007 F Y 2008
Management Enacted Senat e
Program AccountsRequestHouseCommitteeEnacted
Total Defense
Environmental Cleanup$5,731.8$5,363.9$5,766.6$5,690.4$5,398.6
Non- De f e ns e^a
Environmental Cleanup$349.9$180.9$286.0$195.4$183.9
Uranium Enrichment^b
D&D Fund$556.6$573.5$618.8$573.5$627.9
Uranium Enrichment D&D^b
Fund Offset$-452.0$-463.0$-463.0$-463.0$-463.0
Total Environmental
Management Program$6,186.3$5,655.3$6,208.4$5,996.3$5,747.4
^Sources^:^{Prepared by}^t^h^{e C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^R^e^s^earch^S^e^rvⁱ^ce^wⁱ^t^hⁱⁿ^f^o^rm^atⁱ^oⁿ^f^r^om^H^.^R^e^pt^.^110-^185,
^S.R^e^{pt. 110-}^{127, an}^{d th}^{e j}^oⁱⁿ^{t exp}^l^aⁿ^a^t^o^r^y^s^t^atem^en^{t accom}^p^an^yⁱⁿ^g^T^{itle III of}^Divⁱ^sⁱ^on^C^of^th^e
^C^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^a^t^e^d^A^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^f^o^{r F}^Y^{2008 (P.L}^{. 110-}^{161, H}^.^R^.^{2764), as}^pres^en^t^e^{d i}ⁿ^t^h^e
^C^ongr^es^sⁱ^onal^Recor^d^{, Decem}^{ber 17, 2007, Hou}^s^e,^p.^H^{15942, an}^{d pp. H15948-}^{H15950, w}^h^ich^does
ⁿ^o^{t ref}^l^{ect applicable res}^c^is^sⁱ^on^s^.
^{a. T}^h^{e Hou}^s^{e A}^ppropriation^s^C^o^m^m^{ittee recom}^m^eⁿ^d^{ed th}^{e con}^s^olidation^of^th^{e Of}^fⁱ^c^e^o^f^Leg^acy
^Man^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^tⁱⁿ^{to th}^{e En}^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal Man}^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^t^P^r^og^ram^,ⁱⁿ^clu^dⁱⁿ^g^{$11.0 m}^illion^w^ithⁱⁿ^th^e
^P^r^og^ram^Direction^lin^e-^itemⁱⁿ^th^{e Def}^eⁿ^s^e^En^vⁱ^ron^m^en^tal^C^l^ean^u^p^accouⁿ^t^{, $148.1 m}^illion^as
^{a s}^e^{parate lin}^e-^item^w^ithⁱⁿ^th^{at def}^eⁿ^s^{e accou}ⁿ^t^{, an}^{d $35.1 m}^illion^as^{a s}^e^{parate lin}^e-^item^w^ithⁱⁿ
^th^{e Non}^-^Def^eⁿ^s^{e En}^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal C}^l^ean^u^p^acco^uⁿ^t^{. C}^o^m^bⁱⁿ^{ed, th}^{e Hou}^s^e^Ap^propriation^s
^C^o^m^m^{ittee recom}^m^eⁿ^d^{ed a total of}^{$194.2 m}^illion^f^o^{r th}^{e Of}^fⁱ^ce^of^L^e^g^acy^Man^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^t^{. T}^h^e
^P^r^es^iden^{t requ}^es^{ted th}^is^s^a^m^e^am^ouⁿ^t^,^bu^tⁱⁿ^dif^f^e^ren^t^accouⁿ^t^sⁱⁿ^w^h^ich^C^oⁿ^g^r^es^s^h^a^s^prov^ided
^t^hⁱ^s^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^gⁱⁿ^p^a^s^t^y^e^a^r^s^.^Th^e^P^r^e^sⁱ^d^eⁿ^t^r^e^q^u^e^s^t^e^d^$159^.¹^m^illioⁿ^f^o^r^def^e^ns^e^L^e^g^acy
^Man^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^t^w^ithⁱⁿ^th^{e Oth}^e^{r Def}^eⁿ^s^{e A}^c^tiv^ities^accouⁿ^t^{, an}^{d $35.1 m}^illioⁿ^fo^rⁿ^oⁿ^-defens^e
^L^e^g^acy^Man^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^t^w^ithⁱⁿ^th^{e En}^erg^y^S^u^pply^an^d^C^oⁿ^s^erv^a^tion^accouⁿ^t^{, f}^o^{r a total of}^$194.2
^m^illioⁿ^.^T^h^e^S^eⁿ^a^{te A}^p^p^r^o^p^r^iatioⁿ^s^Co^m^m^{ittee r}^eco^m^m^eⁿ^d^ed^sim^ilar^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^w^ithⁱⁿ^th^e
^ex^is^tin^g^accouⁿ^t^s^t^ru^ctu^r^{e, as}^w^a^s^{adopted in}^th^{e f}ⁱⁿ^a^{l bill bu}^{t in}^{a s}^lig^h^tly^low^e^{r am}^ouⁿ^t^.
^{b. D&}^{D = Decon}^t^amⁱⁿ^ation^an^{d Decom}^mⁱ^s^sⁱ^onⁱⁿ^g^.^{Federal pay}^m^en^t^t^o^t^h^{e Uran}^iu^m^En^rich^m^eⁿ^t
^D&^{D Fu}ⁿ^d^{is ty}^pⁱ^cally^tr^eated^{as an}^o^f^f^s^{et to}^th^{e to}^{tal f}^o^r^th^{e En}^vⁱ^r^oⁿ^m^en^{tal Man}^a^g^e^m^eⁿ^t
^Pr^og^r^a^m^.
^{c. T}^h^{e Hou}^s^{e A}^ppropriation^s^C^o^m^m^{ittee recom}^m^eⁿ^d^{ed a}^ne^w^Of^fⁱ^ce^of^Materials^C^oⁿ^s^olidation^,
^w^hⁱ^c^h^w^a^sⁿ^o^tⁱⁿ^cl^u^d^{ed i}ⁿ^t^h^{e Pres}ⁱ^d^en^t^’^s^F^Y^{2008 requ}^es^t^.^T^h^{e Sen}^a^t^e^A^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s
^C^o^m^m^{ittee did n}^o^{t recom}^m^eⁿ^d^an^y^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^{r s}^u^ch^an^of^fⁱ^{ce, n}^o^{r did C}^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱⁿ^c^l^{ude an}^y
^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^{r t}^hⁱ^s^of^fⁱ^{ce i}ⁿⁱ^t^s^en^act^m^eⁿ^t^of^appropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^f^o^{r F}^Y^2008.
^{d. P}^.^L^.^110-^{5 prov}^{ided a total of}^$5,730,448^,⁰⁰⁰^f^o^{r th}^{e Def}^eⁿ^s^{e En}^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal C}^l^ean^u^p^accouⁿ^t^.
^{DOE allocated $5,731,839,000 f}^o^{r th}^is^accouⁿ^tⁱⁿ^its^F^Y^{2007 Operating}^P^l^an^{, bu}^{t did n}^o^t
^ex^pl^aiⁿ^t^h^{e di}^f^f^e^ren^{ce f}^r^om^t^h^{e s}^t^at^u^t^ory^appropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^p^r^o^vⁱ^d^{ed i}ⁿ^P.L^.^110-^{5. T}^h^{e H}^o^u^s^e
^A^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^C^o^m^mⁱ^t^t^{ee report}^s^p^eci^fⁱ^{ed t}^h^{e s}^a^m^e^am^ouⁿ^t^of^f^uⁿ^dⁱⁿ^g^f^o^{r F}^Y^{2007 a}^sⁱⁿ^D^O^E^’^s
^Op^er^atin^g^P^l^an^{. T}^h^{e Sen}^a^{te A}^p^p^r^o^p^r^iatioⁿ^s^Co^m^m^{ittee sp}^ecⁱ^fⁱ^e^d^{a slig}^h^tly^hⁱ^g^h^e^r^am^o^uⁿ^t^o^f
^{$5,731,849,000 i}ⁿⁱ^t^s^report^.
^{e. ES&}^H^{= En}^vⁱ^roⁿ^m^en^{tal Saf}^e^ty^an^d^Health^acco^uⁿ^t^{. T}^h^{e Ho}^u^s^{e A}^p^p^r^o^p^rⁱ^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^C^o^m^m^ittee
^reco^m^m^eⁿ^d^ed^{a tran}^sf^{er o}^f^$¹^.⁵^m^illioⁿ^f^r^o^m^th^e^Den^s^e^En^vⁱ^roⁿ^m^en^tal^Clean^u^p^acco^uⁿ^t^to^th^e
^En^vⁱ^ron^m^en^{tal Saf}^e^ty^an^{d Health}^accouⁿ^tⁱⁿ^{FY2008. T}^h^{e Sen}^a^{te A}^ppropriation^s^C^o^m^m^ittee
^di^{d n}^o^t^recom^m^eⁿ^d^t^hⁱ^s^t^r^an^s^f^{er of}^f^uⁿ^d^s^,ⁿ^o^{r di}^{d C}^ongr^e^s^sⁱⁿ^cl^u^d^{e s}^u^ch^{a t}^r^an^s^f^{er i}ⁿⁱ^t^s
^en^act^m^eⁿ^t^of^appropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^f^o^{r F}^Y^2008.
Estimated Future Funding Needs. The need for annual appropriations of
several billion dollars to clean up nuclear waste sites has motivated ongoing concern
within Congress about the long-term financial liability of the United States to meet

these needs. Accordingly, there has been much debate about how to ensure public
health and safety, and the protection of the environment, in the most expedient and
cost-effective manner. DOE reports that it had cleaned up 81 of the 114 geographic
sites as of the end of FY2006.²¹ Although DOE has disposed of substantial quantities
of waste and remediated many areas of contamination at the remaining sites, much
work remains to be done to complete cleanup at many of them. DOE expects to
complete cleanup at certain sites within the next few years. However, the
Department anticipates cleanup to continue for decades at the larger and more
complex sites, such as Hanford, Savannah River, and the Idaho National Laboratory,
where high-level radioactive waste is in need of treatment and disposal, and soil and
groundwater contamination are generally more severe. Based on recent assumptions,
DOE expects cleanup and disposal of wastes to be complete at Savannah River in

2031, at the Idaho National Laboratory in 2035, and at Hanford in 2042.²²

Accurately assessing the time and funding needed to complete cleanup and
dispose of all radioactive and other hazardous wastes is difficult at best. Developing
reliable estimates is especially challenging for the larger, more complex sites where
many final decisions have yet to be made because of technical limitations and
uncertainties, such as the “end state”²³ of many sites. DOE periodically revises its
estimates of outstanding costs to complete cleanup and dispose of wastes as
individual project baselines and assumptions change. These estimates have varied
widely over time by many billions of dollars. DOE reports its financial liabilities for
the Environmental Management Program, and all of its other program
responsibilities, in its annual financial statements contained in the Department’s
performance and accountability reports. DOE’s most recent Performance and
Accountability Report for FY2006 estimated that $159 billion would be needed to
complete cleanup and dispose of wastes at the remaining sites administered under
DOE’s Environmental Management Program. The $159 billion estimate is in
FY2006 dollars, and DOE notes that “future inflation could cause actual costs to be
substantially higher than the recorded liability.”²⁴

²¹ DOE, Office of the Chief Financial Officer, FY2008 Congressional Budget Request,
February 2007, vol. 5, Environmental Management, p. 31. DOE referenced 108 geographic
sites, as it excluded six Nevada off-sites proposed for transfer to the Office of Legacy
Management. The total of 114 geographic sites noted above includes these six sites.
²² Ibid., p. 40. Two separate offices within the Environmental Management Program
administer cleanup and disposal of wastes at Hanford: the Richland Office and the Office
of River Protection. The projected completion date for activities of the Richland Office is
2035, and the projected completion date for activities of the Office of River Protection is
2042. The primary purpose of this latter office is to remove, treat, and dispose of high-level
radioactive waste stored in underground tanks near the Columbia River.
²³ DOE uses the term “end state” to denote the intended condition or land use of a
contaminated site once cleanup is complete. Determining the end state is critical to making
cleanup decisions, as the degree of cleanup required, and the specific action to achieve that
degree of cleanup, are dependent on the potential pathways of human exposure that would
occur as a result of how the land will be used in the future. Land uses resulting in greater
potential for human exposure generally require a greater degree of cleanup.
²⁴ DOE, Performance and Accountability Report for FY2006, DOE/CF-0012, pp. 173-175.

In addition to inflation, other factors could cause actual costs to exceed the $159
billion estimate. For example, actual costs could be higher than expected, depending
on whether federal and state regulators may require more stringent and costlier
cleanup actions than DOE plans to take. Costs also could rise if initial cleanup
actions prove inadequate to protect human health and the environment over the long-
term. Future performance of cleanup actions is especially critical for nuclear waste
sites because of the rate of decay of radioactivity, which can be thousands of years,
depending on the particular radionuclide. Predicting the effectiveness of methods to
contain radioactive wastes over such long periods of time is challenging, if not
impracticable, in some cases. Consequently, additional funding could be needed at
sites where cleanup was thought to be complete, if the initial cleanup proves
inadequate over time.
DOE’s $159 billion estimate also does not include the costs of long-term care
of sites once wastes are disposed of, and cleanup remedies are in place, to ensure the
protection of human health and the environment into the future. DOE’s Performance
and Accountability Report for FY2006 estimated that, as of the end of FY2006, $18
billion would be needed for cleanup and post-closure site responsibilities after work
under the Environmental Management Program is completed.²⁵ These
responsibilities include surveillance and monitoring, long-term operation and
maintenance of soil and groundwater cleanup remedies, and disposal of excess
materials remaining on-site after closeout under the Environmental Management
Program. DOE estimated that this $18 billion cost would be incurred over 75 years
through FY2081.²⁶ DOE expects some long-term site care to be needed beyond this
time, requiring additional funding. However, the Department “believes” that costs
beyond 75 years cannot “reasonably” be estimated because of uncertainties inherent
to such distant time frames.²⁷ Funding for long-term site care, and other related
responsibilities at these sites, is discussed below.
Long-Term Site Care. Once a site is cleaned up and there is no continuing
DOE mission, responsibility for long-term care of the site is transferred to DOE’s
Office of Legacy Management.²⁸ This office also manages the payment of pensions
and post-retirement benefits of former contractor personnel who worked at these
sites.²⁹ As indicated in Table 15, Congress appropriated a total of $190.6 million
(prior to rescissions) for the Office of Legacy Management in FY2008. Of this
amount, $156.4 million was allocated to defense sites, and $34.2 million was
allocated to non-defense sites. The House initially had agreed to the President’s total
request of $194.2 million for the Office of Legacy Management, while the Senate had

²⁵ Ibid.
²⁶ Ibid.
²⁷ Ibid.
²⁸ When there is a continuing mission, long-term site care is transferred to the program
office within DOE responsible for administering that mission or is the “landlord” of the site.
²⁹ Likewise, at sites with a continuing mission, payment of pensions and post-retirement
benefits is assigned to the program office within DOE that is responsible for administering
that mission or is the “landlord” of the site, rather than the Office of Legacy Management.

recommended a slightly higher amount of $194.7 million. All of these amounts are
a large increase above the $64.1 million that Congress appropriated for FY2007.
As discussed earlier, the House had recommended consolidating the funding for
the Office of Legacy Management with the Environmental Management Program.
In its initial report, the House Appropriations Committee had noted its expectation
that the Office of Legacy Management continue to operate as a separate office within
the Environmental Management Program. The effect of this proposed consolidation
would appear to have been a shift in funds among accounts, rather than a change in
the office’s administration or function. The Senate Appropriations Committee had
not recommended this change in accounting, but had proposed funding within the
existing account structure, as was adopted in the enacted bill but in a slightly lower
amount.
Although the appropriation enacted for FY2008 is somewhat less than the
President requested and the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee had
proposed, the enacted amount is still a $126.5 million increase above the FY2007
appropriation. The reason for such a substantial increase is primarily because of
greater funding needs for long-term care, and pension and post-retirement benefits,
at defense sites transferred from the Environmental Management Program after
physical cleanup is complete. As more sites are transferred upon the completion of
cleanup in future years, funding needs for Legacy Management will grow
accordingly.
Table 15. Office of Legacy Management Appropriations
($ millions)
FY2008
Type F Y 2007 Senat e
of SiteEnactedRequestHouseCommitteeEnacted
Defense $30.9 $159.1 $159.1 $159.6 $156.4
Non-defense $33.2 $35.1 $35.1 $35.1 $34.2
T otal $64.1 $194.2 $194.2 $194.7 $190.6
^Sources^:^Prepared^by^t^h^e^C^oⁿ^g^r^es^sⁱ^on^al^R^e^s^earch^S^e^rvⁱ^{ce w}ⁱ^t^hⁱⁿ^f^o^rm^atⁱ^oⁿ^f^r^om^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185,
^S.R^e^{pt. 110-}^{127, an}^{d th}^{e j}^oⁱⁿ^{t ex}^plan^atory^s^t^atem^en^{t accom}^p^an^yⁱⁿ^g^T^{itle II}^I^o^f^Dⁱ^vⁱ^sⁱ^on^C^of^th^e
^C^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s^A^c^t^fo^r^F^Y^{2008 (P.L}^{. 110-}^{161, H}^.^R^.^{2764), as}^pres^en^t^e^{d i}ⁿ^t^h^e
^C^ongr^es^sⁱ^onal^Recor^d^{, Decem}^{ber 17, 2007,}^Hou^s^e,^p.^H15941^an^{d p. H15950, w}^h^ich^doesⁿ^o^{t ref}^l^ect
^a^p^p^lic^a^b^le^r^e^sc^issioⁿ^s.
Power Marketing Administrations. DOE’s four Power Marketing
Administrations (PMAs) — Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), Southeastern
Power Administration (SEPA), Southwestern Power Administration (SWPA), and
Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) — were established in response to the
construction of dams and multipurpose water projects operated by the Bureau of
Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers. In many cases, conservation and
management of water resources — including irrigation, flood control, recreation or
other objectives — were the primary purpose of federal projects. However, these

facilities often generated electricity to meet project needs; PMAs were established
to market the excess power. (For more information, see CRS Report RS22564,
Power Marketing Administrations: Background and Current Issues, by Nic Lane.)
Priority for PMA power is extended to “preference customers,” which include
municipal utilities, co-ops, and other “public” bodies. The PMAs sell power to these
entities “at the lowest possible rates” consistent with what they describe as “sound
business practice.” The PMAs are responsible for covering their expenses and for
repaying debt and the federal investment in the generating facilities.
The Administration’s FY2008 request for the PMAs was $240.4 million (Table
7).³⁰ House Committee funding recommendations for the PMAs are the same as the
Administration’s FY2008 Budget Request. The Senate Appropriations Committee
recommended funding for SWPA and SEPA at the same levels requested in the
President’s budget and recommended by the House. However, the Senate
recommended a funding increase of $30 million for WAPA. The increased funding
for WAPA is based on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s concern for
transmission system reliability due to WAPA’s increased reliance on alternative
financing. This additional funding is for construction, program direction, and O&M
— program areas whose funding WAPA intended to offset with alternative financing
efforts. The final bill enacted by Congress provides approximately $30 million above
the Administration’s request for WAPA, as recommended by the Senate.
PMA appropriations are affected by a 0.91% across-the-board rescission on all
Department of Energy discretionary accounts. Reflecting the rescission, the final
appropriation for the PMAs is $268.0 million.
In FY2008 WAPA, SEPA, and SWPA proposed to assign “Agency Rates” to
new obligations. The Agency Rate is the rate at which federal corporations and BPA
borrow. This change was expected to have a rate impact of less than 1% (the Agency
Rate was 0.4% higher on average than PMA rates from 1997-2005). However,
section 310 of P.L. 110-161 prohibits this change.
BPA receives no annual appropriation but funds some of its activities from
permanent borrowing authority, which was increased in FY2003 from $3.75 billion
to $4.45 billion (a $700 million increase). BPA plans to use $538 million of its
borrowing authority in FY2008. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees
recommend no additional borrowing authority for BPA. Beginning in FY2008, BPA
proposed to use secondary net revenues beyond $500 million to make advance
amortization payments to the Treasury on BPA’s bond obligations. BPA is expecting
this additional revenue to be $130 million in FY2008. The Appropriations

³⁰ This figure does not include -$23.0 million for the anticipated difference between
WAPA’s Colorado River Basins Power Marketing Fund (CRBPMF) expenses and offsetting
collections. DOE tables indicate a net request for the PMAs of $217.4 which reflects the
difference between CRBPMF expenses and offsetting collections. Congressional tables do
not follow this practice.

Committees have opposed similar proposals in the past and indicate that they hope
the Administration will not purse this proposal in FY2008 or FY2009.³¹
Title IV: Independent Agencies
Independent agencies that receive funding from the Energy and Water
Development bill include the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the
Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and the Denali Commission.
Table 16. Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Title IV: Independent Agencies
($ millions)
FY2008
P r ogram F Y 2007 Request H ouse Senat e F i nal
Appalachian Regional
Commi ssion $65.0 $65.0 $35.0 $75.0 $73.0
Nuclear Regulatory Commission821.6916.6933.8919.3926.1
(Revenues) (667.4)(765.1)(765.1)(765.6)(779.1)
Net NRC (including Insp. Gen.)154.2151.5168.7153.7147.0
Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board21.822.522.522.521.9
Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board3.63.63.63.63.6
Denali Commission49.52.01.831.821.8
Fed. Coordinator, Alaska Gas
Projects — — — 2.32.3
Delta Regional Authority11.96.06.012.011.7
Total 306.0 251.5 237.8 301.0 281.3
^Source:^F^Y²⁰⁰⁸^Bu^dg^et^R^e^qu^es^t^;^H^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^185;^S^.^R^e^pt^{. 110-}^127;^C^oⁿ^s^olⁱ^d^at^{ed A}^ppropri^a^tⁱ^oⁿ^s
^A^c^t^,^{2008, P.L}^.^110-^161.
Key Policy Issues — Independent Agencies
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) received a total budget of $926.1 million for FY2008, including $8.7 million
for the NRC inspector general’s office. The FY2008 appropriation is about $10
million above the Administration’s request and more than $100 million above the
FY2007 funding level of $824.9 million. Major activities conducted by NRC include

³¹ Joint Explanatory Statement to Accompany Consolidated Appropriations Amendment, p.

56. See [http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/omni/jes/jesdivc.pdf].

safety regulation and licensing of commercial nuclear reactors, licensing of nuclear
waste facilities, and oversight of nuclear materials users.
The NRC budget request included $216.9 million for new reactor activities,
largely to handle anticipated new nuclear power plant license applications. No
commercial reactor license applications have been submitted to NRC since the 1970s,
but higher fossil fuel prices and incentives provided by the Energy Policy Act of
2005 (P.L. 109-58) have prompted electric utilities to announce plans for more than
30 reactor license applications over the next few years. NRC’s proposed budget also
included $37.3 million for licensing DOE’s planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
repository, with the expectation that DOE would submit a repository license
application in FY2008.
For reactor oversight and incident response, NRC’s FY2008 budget request
included $246.4 million. NRC plans to oversee about 150 annual reactor security
inspections, including 21 force-on-force exercises, during FY2008. (For more
information on protecting licensed nuclear facilities, see CRS Report RS21131,
Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack, by Mark Holt and Anthony
Andrews.)
The omnibus appropriations measure reduced NRC’s nuclear waste licensing
request by $8 million, “given the almost certain delay in the Department of Energy
filing a license application for the Yucca Mountain Repository,” according to the
explanatory statement. Added to the NRC budget were $15 million to support
nuclear science and engineering education, and $2.2 million for enhancing foreign
security over radioactive material.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 permanently extended a requirement that 90%
of NRC’s budget be offset by fees on licensees. Not subject to the offset are
expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for waste repository licensing,
spending on generic homeland security, and DOE defense waste oversight. The
offsets in the omnibus measure result in a net appropriation of $147.0 million, $3.5
million below the request.

For Additional Reading
CRS Products
CRS Report RL31975. CALFED Bay-Delta Program: Overview of Institutional and
Water Use Issues, by Pervaze Sheikh and Betsy A. Cody.
CRS Report RL33461. Civilian Nuclear Waste Disposal, by Mark Holt.
CRS Report RS20866. The Civil Works Program of the Army Corps of Engineers:
A Primer, by Nicole T. Carter and Betsy A. Cody.
CRS Report RS21331. Everglades Restoration: Modified Water Deliveries Project,
by Pervaze A. Sheikh.
CRS Report RL30478. Federally Supported Water Supply and Wastewater
Treatment Programs, by Betsy A. Cody, Claudia Copeland, Mary Tiemann,
Nicole T. Carter, and Jeffrey A. Zinn.
CRS Report RS21442. Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Vehicle R&D: FreedomCAR and the
President’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, by Brent D. Yacobucci.
CRS Report RL31098. Klamath River Basin Issues: An Overview of Water Use
Conflicts, coordinated by Betsy A. Cody.
CRS Report RL33558. Nuclear Energy Policy, by Mark Holt.
CRS Report RS21131. Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack, by
Mark Holt, and Anthony Andrews.
CRS Report RL31993. Nuclear Warhead “Pit” Production: Background and Issues
for Congress, by Jonathan Medalia.
CRS Report RL32130. Nuclear Weapon Initiatives: Low-Yield R&D, Advanced
Concepts, Earth Penetrators, Test Readiness, by Jonathan Medalia.
CRS Report RL32131. Phosphorus Mitigation in the Everglades, by Pervaze A.
Sheikh and Barbara Johnson.
CRS Report RL32163. Radioactive Waste Streams: Waste Classification for
Disposal, by Anthony Andrews.
CRS Report RL32189. Terrorism and Security Issues Facing the Water
Infrastructure Sector, by Claudia Copeland.