House Appropriations schedules first FY 2020 DOE Budget Hearing
ECA Staff | 3/22/2019
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development has scheduled its first budget hearing for the fiscal year (FY) 2020 appropriations cycle.
On Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 10:00 AM ET, Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry is scheduled to testify to the panel on the President's budget request for FY 2020.
The hearing will be held in 2362-B Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC. Proceedings will be streamed on the Committee's website here.
NUCLEAR SECURITY
Rick Perry agrees to provide timeline on removing plutonium from Nevada
Review Journal | 3/20/2019
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said Wednesday that Energy Secretary Rick Perry promised to give her a firm timeline as to when the weapons-grade plutonium that was secretly shipped into Nevada last year will leave the state.
Earlier this month, Cortez Masto pledged to hold up nominees for the U.S. Department of Energy until she received a commitment from Perry that no more plutonium would be shipped into the state and a time frame for when the half-metric ton that the Energy Department already shipped to a federal site roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas last fall would be removed.
Cortez Masto, speaking to reporters in Carson City after addressing a joint session of the Nevada Legislature, said Perry called her Friday to voice his concerns with her hold on his department’s nominees. She said she wanted his commitment in writing before she would lift her hold.
“We had a very good, cordial conversation. He said he would give me that commitment, so we left that conversation with both of us agreeing to have designated staff to work on the written letter, and we’ll go from there,” Cortez Masto said.
The state’s senior senator said they discussed a three- to five-year time frame, but she added she’s “waiting to see what I have in writing.” In August, the Energy Department sent a letter to Nevada officials, notifying them of plans to ship half a metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site.
Hear from other Nevada delegates:
NUCLEAR SECURITY
Aiken County resolution supports efforts to create plutonium pit facility at SRS
The Augusta Chronicle | 3/20/2019
Aiken County Council unanimously passed a resolution at a recent meeting supporting the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s decision to use Savannah River Site as one of the two sites for its plutonium pit production mission.
The resolution said that council “finds that the plutonium associated with pit production is a national asset and will have beneficial use in our nation’s nuclear deterrence” and that the “plutonium pit production mission is critical for our national security and important for both the future of SRS and for sustaining the economy in Aiken County.”
Council requested that “South Carolina’s Congressional delegation make every effort to ensure that funding through DOE is secured for this new mission.”
COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR
Trump to Finalize $3.7 Billion in Aid for Troubled Nuclear Plant
Bloomberg | 3/19/2019
The Trump administration will finalize $3.7 billion in loan guarantees to Southern Co. and its partners who are building a troubled nuclear reactor project in Georgia -- the last of its kind under construction in the U.S. -- according to two people familiar with the matter.
The guarantees, expected to be announced Friday when U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry visits Plant Vogtle alongside Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Southern Chief Executive Officer Tom Fanning, represents a critical lifeline for the project, which is more than five years behind schedule and has doubled in cost to $28 billion.
The additional help also puts taxpayers on the hook for more money if the project were to collapse. Southern and its partners in Plant Vogtle were already recipients of record $8.3 billion in federally-backed loan guarantees from the Obama administration, but asked the Trump administration to come to their aid amid ballooning costs and setbacks caused in part by the bankruptcy of a contractor, Westinghouse Electric
Co.
The plant, near Waynesboro, Georgia, is seen as critical to the nuclear industry’s future because existing reactors are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas and renewable energy. Scana Corp. abandoned its plans to build two reactors in South Carolina after expenses spiraled above $20 billion.
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