DEFENSE BILL CONTINUES TO SUPPORT NNSA, EM, AND OTHER DEFENSE FUNDING AT HISTORICAL LEVELS

ECA Staff | 12/12/2023

As we will discuss tomorrow at ECA webinar (registration here) "Planning for the Upcoming Congressional Year: How to Communicate Priorities" last week the House and Senate conferees finished and released the conference report on H.R. 2670. Under this agreement the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would authorize $886.3 billion towards defense programs. The NDAA is considered a must-pass bill, as it authorizes all defense activities from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Environmental Management (EM) to pay raises to troops and weapons system procurement.

This discretionary total would include about $842.2 billion for the U.S. Department of Defense and $32.3 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE). The NDAA is crucial for defense as it controls everything, but it also is crucial to the authorization of energy-related national security programs. The NDAA includes authorizations for NNSA, EM defense cleanup up, and Office of Legacy Management, among others.

The conference report would authorize the following amounts for various DOE-related national security programs:

$24.05 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA);

$7.04 billion for defense environmental cleanup;

$196 million for the Office of Legacy Management (LM);

$160 million for nuclear energy.

In NNSA’s $24.05 billion authorizes: over $2.6 Billion for Plutonium Pit Production Mission ($1.76 billion for Los Alamos Plutonium Modernization; and almost $921 million for Savannah River Plutonium Modernization.)

The $7.04 billion for defense environmental cleanup would authorize: $921 million for the Hanford site; $447 million for the Idaho National Laboratory (INL); $1.9 million for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); $61.95 million for the Nevada Test Site; $273.8 million for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); $505 million for Oak Ridge; $1.58 billion for Savannah River Site (SRS); and $464.3 million for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).

This NDAA would authorize new plant projects, such as the Naval Reactors Facility Medical Science Complex in Idaho Falls ($36.5 million); Plutonium Production Building ($48.5 million) and Protective Force Facility ($48.5 million) at LANL; and Z-Pinch Experimental Underground System Test Bed Facilities Improvement at the Nevada National Security Site ($80 million).

The report would also: prohibit expansion of the Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction Systems (ARIES) at LANL’s PF-4 plutonium facility until NNSA can certify to Congress that at least 30 plutonium pits can be produced per year; and direct DOE to establish a program that will increase the quantity of low-enriched uranium and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) produced by domestic nuclear energy companies.

As of now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked for cloture, which would end debate and lead to a vote on the adoption of the conference report. For this to happen Schumer would require the support 60 senators.

On the House side, they are scheduled to consider the compromise this week. For the conference report to pass a two-thirds majority is required.

The House and Senate passed their respective FY 2024 defense policy bills in July of 2023. The House passed H.R. 2670 on July 14 by 219-210 and the Senate passed S.2226 on July 27 by 86-11 vote, then amended H.R. 2670 with its language to set up a conference.

ECA will continue to provide updates as the conference report progresses through.