Proposed DOE Budget Keeps Nuclear Power Funding Intact, USEC Would Receive $150 million

In the 2013 federal budget proposal released Monday, the Obama administration asked for a temporary reprieve for USEC’s American Centrifuge Project and left funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear power branch largely unchanged from this year.

Overall, DOE requested $27.2 billion from congressional appropriators for fiscal year 2013. Within that, the budget sets aside roughly $770 million for the department’s Office of Nuclear Energy, compared to $768.66 million approved by Congress for this year. As with the current budget, the proposal includes funding to aid development of small modular reactors, with DOE proposing $65 million for 2013. DOE also requested $60 million for nuclear waste research and development related to the recent recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.

As anticipated earlier, DOE plans to set aside funding for a research, development and demonstration project for the American Centrifuge Project. According to a release from USEC, the $150 million requested for 2013 would help support construction of a 120-machine cascade that would be replicated in 96 identical cascades at the Piketon, Ohio, plant. While the project is funded on an interim basis through next month, USEC will also need funding to keep it going through the end of this year. That money could come either from Congress or from DOE through the transfer of depleted uranium from USEC to DOE.

USEC began developing its centrifuge technology in 2002 and started work on the plant in 2007. The project stalled last fall, though, after more than three years of unsuccessful negotiations for a $2 billion DOE loan guarantee.