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U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today detailed President Barack Obama's $26.4 billion Fiscal Year 2010 budget request for the Department of Energy, highlighting the Administration's commitment to transformational discoveries, breakthrough science, and innovative technologies in the nation's effort to secure reliable, clean, safe and secure energy, create new jobs and fight climate change. While the budget makes important investments in energy independence and job creation, it also cuts back on programs that don't work as well or are no longer needed. "The President's budget for energy reflects his commitment to ending our dependence on foreign oil, restoring our scientific leadership and putting Americans back to work through investments in a new green energy economy," Secretary Chu said. "It also demonstrates his commitment to using taxpayer dollars wisely - cutting spending on programs we don't need so we can make strategic investments in our economic future." The President's FY10 budget complements $38.7 billion the Department of Energy will invest as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Specifically, the President's FY10 budget:

"The fiscal 2011 budget for the Hanford nuclear reservation would increase at least $22 million from the current year's budget to about $2.1 billion under the Obama administration's proposal released Monday. That money would be in addition to $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money being spent on Hanford cleanup from spring 2009 through fiscal 2011. In early budget talks, the administration had considered cutting the budget for environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons sites such as Hanford by 20 percent, or about $1 billion, nationwide. But the Washington congressional delegation stepped up to get funding restored in the proposed budget, with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., personally visiting the White House to discuss her concerns, said Gary Petersen, vice president of Hanford programs at the Tri-City Development Council."

"The budget request for Oak Ridge National laboratory is about $1.65 billion, based on what I'm told by lab officials and seeing in budget info released by the administration. The actual budget request for ORNL is about $1.18 billion, but once you add the work for other agencies, such as NOAA and DOD, etc., the total budget is expected to be about $1.65 billion. Energy and nonproliferation are key areas. I'm still working to get information on Y-12. I'm told there is a full allotment in place for the Uranium Processing Facility, perhaps in the range of $130 million, but I haven't found any documents that say that -- at least not yet. NNSA chief Tom D'Agostino is supposed to have a media briefing at 4 p.m."

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

"Throughout the Senate debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) one of the central issues has been funding for nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, President Obama asked Congress for the largest nuclear weapons budget in history. However, Republicans, led by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), continually question whether the nuclear weapons stockpile and its supporting industrial infrastructure are adequately funded. With the release of a new government report, it appears that both Senate Republicans and the administration may lack sufficient information for either side to determine how much money is actually needed for long term maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report titled "Actions Needed to Identify Total Costs of Weapons Complex Infrastructure and Production Capabilities" detailing the federal government's loose budgeting and accounting practices for nuclear weapons programs. According to GAO, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is responsible for maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile, determines its future budgets by simply looking at each of its program's prior year budget and then adds or subtracts money based on programmatic changes. This means, rather than looking at what programs actually cost in any given year, NNSA simply assumes that it is working with the right numbers. "

After receiving the smallest budget in its history through the work of Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will be shutdown. "It's over with -- Yucca Mountain is gone," said Reid. The Obama Administration's budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year, officially released today, follows through on the president's commitment to end the failed Yucca Mountain proposal and instead pursue responsible alternatives for storage of the nation's nuclear waste. The project will have a budget of less than $197 million - a cut of more than $90 million from last year. Remaining funding for Yucca Mountain will be spent on the Blue Ribbon Commission examining alternate options and on phasing out work on the project in preparation for its final shutdown.

NRC requested $1.071 billion for fiscal 2010, up about 2% from the $1.046 billion approved for FY-09. Both of the agency's program areas -- nuclear reactor safety, and nuclear materials and waste safety -- would receive modest funding increases under the proposed budget. The agency anticipates making about $5.3 million in cuts to some of its programs, including the Office of General Inspector's budget, which would receive about $758,000 less than the FY-09 funding. In the budget proposal released May 7 by President Barack Obama's administration, NRC asked for $56 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund for reviewing DOE's high-level waste repository application. NRC Chief Financial Officer Jim Dyer said the requested funding would not be an increase over the $49 million allocated in FY-09 because NRC has an additional $10 million in carryover funds from FY-08, bringing the total available funding through September to $59 million.

"The Energy Department would get the ability to guarantee an additional $36 billion in loans for the construction of new nuclear plants under President Obama's budget request, twice as much as the previous loan guarantee program. The loan guarantees would sharply reduce the financing cost of capital-intensive nuclear plants, and proponents hope it would help jump start an additional half-dozen nuclear power plants. The budget would eliminate funding, however, for the long-discussed Yucca Mountain, Nev., repository for nuclear waste. The budget proposal says that Yucca "is not a workable option." "

"The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration would receive a 13 percent increase to $11.2 billion in 2011 to support the Obama administration's efforts to manage the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons and achieve the president's goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material in the world within four years. Overall, the department's discretionary budget would increase more than 7 percent to $28.4 billion. Energy programs outside of NNSA would increase less than 3 percent overall. The budget proposes $300 million for the new Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which would bankroll cutting-edge advanced energy technologies that will reduce the country's dependence on foreign energy imports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ARPA-E, which was modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created in 2007 but only recently funded with an initial $400 million from the Recovery Act. Energy's budget proposes $5.1 billion for science research, an additional $217 million; $108 million above the $371 million approved this year to advance research into wind, solar and geothermal energy sources; and $500 million in credit subsidies that would support between $3 billion and $5 billion in energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects."

"The Department of Energy and the White House are at odds over how steep to cut the Yucca Mountain budget for fiscal 2011, according to reports. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is balking over the White House plan to slash the budget for the nearly-doomed nuclear waste dump north of Las Vegas, according to reports in Energy Daily and the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, the White House wants to zero out the $46 million in the Energy Department's request in the president's new budget due next month. Chu sent a letter to White House budget director Peter Orszag last month arguing that at least $25 million was needed to close out the Yucca Mountain office, including for the retention of "critical knowledge and data.""

The Department of Energy plans to spend less money in coming months at its environmental cleanup sites including Hanford than was approved by Congress in a continuing budget resolution for spending through early March. DOE's goal is to be conservative and not overspend in the first five months of the year as the funding amount for the rest of the year still unclear. DOE will use the administration request for funding in fiscal 2009, which would cut annual spending on DOE cleanup nationwide from a little more than $5.7 billion in the fiscal year 2008 budget to $5.5 billion. The fiscal year started Oct. 1. At Hanford, the budget for cleanup under the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office would drop from the $886.5 million approved for fiscal 2008 to $851.8 million under the administration's request for fiscal 2009. That's a decrease of $34.7 million.

Each year, the administration releases its federal-spending blueprint - usually in a series of phone book-sized tomes that must surely weigh eight to 10 pounds. And of course, the first thing most of us look for is what programs are slated for big gains - or excisions. Well, team Obama made looking for the big cuts a little easier this year. This morning it issued a 120-page volume: "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010." Barack Obama entered office with the nation facing a record $1.3 trillion budget deficit for the current year. "Just as families across the country are tightening their belts and making hard choices so must Washington," the new budget document says. The 121 programs that it recommends should die or diminish substantially could save taxpayers $17 billion. First, there are the terminations: more than five dozen in all. Among them:

"In the midst of initiating a federal spending freeze, it is shocking that President Obama's FY 2011 Budget Request released this week pours billions of dollars into two unnecessary nuclear weapons construction projects. There is no demonstrated requirement for either the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex nor the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). "Contrary to the spin, neither of these facilities are needed to ensure the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons," says Peter Stockton, POGO Senior Investigator. In addition, DOE does not even have an estimated cost for completing the projects, as the budget describes their total costs as "TBD." "To Be a Disaster," is what POGO fears that term means, based on DOE's atrocious record of soaring construction costs and overruns. For example, the cost of the Highly Enriched Uranium Manufacturing Facility (HEUMF) at Y-12 ballooned from $97 million to $549 million. "

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that the new president will essentially zero-out funding for Yucca Mountain when he releases the fiscal 2010 budget to Congress after taking office. President-elect Barack Obama's transition office declined this week to discuss budget plans beyond Obama's previously-stated opposition to the nuclear waste dump. But Obama told Reid during last week's sit-down meeting in the Capitol that the budget would be zero, or close to it, the senator's office said.

Yucca Mountain was supposed to be where the highly toxic material was sent. But Obama's energy budget leaves it out. ** sound: Reporter Gail Chaddock discusses the proposal to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain and why it's not in President Obama's budget. ** Washington - President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 all but sinks prospects to store America's nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But it leaves wide open the role of nuclear power in building "a new economy powered by clean and secure energy" - and the question of what to do with existing, highly toxic nuclear waste. "The nation has already accumulated 60,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste, and the material is going to have to be isolated from the environment for hundreds and thousands of years," says Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

* IAEA to get first budget boost above inflation since 2003 * U.S. welcomes hike, citing spreading proliferation threats * ElBaradei wanted much more to stop IAEA's "bastardisation" By Mark Heinrich VIENNA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Member nations approved the first budget rise above inflation for the U.N. atomic watchdog in six years on Monday after heavy U.S. lobbying for more resources to shore up the fight against stealthy nuclear proliferation.

The U.S. Department of Energy today released a fiscal year 2010 budget request that increases funding for developing next-generation nuclear power plants and used nuclear fuel recycling, but does little to support construction of reactors that are expected to be built over the next two decades, according to The Nuclear Energy Institute. The FY10 budget proposal -- the first released by the Obama Administration -- also cuts funding for DOE's used nuclear fuel management program to $196.8 million, only $98.4 million of it from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund. The fund, established in 1983 to finance the federal government's program to manage used nuclear fuel, is paid for by users of nuclear-generated electricity through a monthly surcharge on their electric bills. The $196.8 million request is only one-fifth of the interest that accrues annually on the $22 billion fund. The Nuclear Power 2010 program -- a cost-shared, industry-government partnership designed to reduce the technical and regulatory uncertainties associated with construction of advanced nuclear power plant designs -- would receive only $20 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The program receives $177 million in the current year, a sum matched by industry. The industry intends to invest $121 million in the program in FY10 and had expected DOE to match that commitment, which would complete the program.

In his first 112 days as the U.S. Energy Secretary, Steven Chu has presided over unprecedented changes at the Department of Energy (DOE). The stimulus bill signed into law in February provided $39 billion to the agency--a sum that Chu acknowledges is straining the agency as it attempts to sort through proposals for distributing this money. The money is in addition to the agency's yearly budget of about $25 billion. Most recently, President Obama's proposed 2010 budget upped DOE's budget by $400 million and called for increased spending on climate science and nuclear security, as well as support for many alternative-energy projects.

A US House of Representatives subcommittee on Thursday approved a $26.9-billion budget for the US Department of Energy in fiscal 2010. The budget largely supports an Obama administration proposal in May that included substantial increases for energy efficiency and renewable energy and a reversal in DOE's plans for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. It includes $2.2 billion for DOE's energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs, which was $69 million short of the administration's request, but $321 million more than the department is spending on such activities in fiscal 2009, according to House Appropriations Committee data.

President Barack Obama's proposed slashing of the Yucca Mountain budget has had a perhaps unexpected fallout: It also likely cut the money the state of Nevada relies on to fight the project. For the past several years the state Agency for Nuclear Projects has received $5 million from the U.S. Energy Department for its legal battle against the waste project. But Obama's proposed fiscal 2010 budget provides the agency with just $3.2 million for the year.