Congressional Budget Justification: Fiscal Year 2020 (NUREG-1100, Volume 35)
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Publication Information
Date Published: March 2019
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
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Overview
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Congressional Budget Justification provides the necessary resources for the Nuclear Reactor Safety and Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety Programs to carry out the agency's mission while providing an enhanced regulatory infrastructure to meet future challenges and enable innovation in the nuclear sector. The NRC's proposed FY 2020 budget is $921.1 million, including 3,062 full-time equivalents (FTE). The budget request reflects an increase of $10.1 million, approximately 1.1 percent, when compared with the FY 2019 Enacted Budget. The increase is due to the inclusion of $38.5 million for the High-Level Waste program. In addition, the budget includes $15.5 million for continued development of a regulatory infrastructure for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. As shown in the figure below, since FY 2014, the agency budget has decreased by 15 percent, excluding resources for Yucca Mountain and the Integrated University Program. The agency has also reduced FTE by 21 percent during this period.
The Office of the Inspector General's (OIG's) component of the FY 2020 proposed budget is $13.3 million, of which $12.1 million is for auditing and investigation activities for NRC programs and approximately $1.2 million is for the auditing and investigation activities of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). These resources will allow the OIG to carry out the Inspector General's mission to independently and objectively conduct audits and investigations to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, and promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in NRC programs and operations.
In accordance with the provisions of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA-90), as amended, the NRC's FY 2020 budget request provides for approximately 90-percent fee recovery, less amounts appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund, and amounts appropriated for generic homeland security activities, and for Waste Incidental to Reprocessing activities under Section 3116 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005. The proposed FY 2020 appropriations language will also exclude from OBRA-90's fee recovery requirement the amounts appropriated for advanced reactor regulatory infrastructure activities and OIG services for DNFSB, and some of the amounts appropriated for international activities.
The NRC will recover $759.6 million of the FY 2020 budget from fees assessed to NRC licensees. This will result in a net appropriation of $161.5 million, which is an increase of $31.4 million when compared with the FY 2019 Enacted Budget. In accordance with the requirements defined in Section 51.2 of OMB Circular A-11, "Requirements for Program Justification," Appendix A, "Full Cost of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Programs," provides the full cost of NRC programs.