Trump's budget request a mixed bag for Oak Ridge National Lab, Y-12

President Donald Trump's Department of Energy budget request is not much better than last year's, at least not for Oak Ridge.

The 160-page document, bound like a book and titled "An American Budget," has just three and a half pages dedicated to Department of Energy funding. 

Congress, for its part, has reacted about the same as last year, when legislators were not shy about calling Trump's proposal "unrealistic" at best, or more dramatically,"dead on arrival."

In a statement, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., reminded constituents Monday morning that the President's request is just a request. 

“The President may suggest a budget, but, under the Constitution, Congress sets spending priorities and passes appropriations bills," Alexander said.

More:ORNL budget has more at stake this year as GOP sets priorities

Siding with the House

The President appears to have taken hints from last year's House budget proposal over the Senate's in drafting his request.

The President requested $70 million more this year than last toward the national goal of building the world's first exascale computer at ORNL by 2021. 

He would fund the project at $578 million, about $54 million more than the House and $185 million less than the Senate requested for 2018.

All three bodies of government have called supercomputing a national priority, though the legislative bodies still have not come to an agreement on the Fiscal Year 2018 budget. 

Their proposed appropriations bills hinted at House and Senate disagreement over where funds would be cut to increase spending for priority programs like supercomputing. 

The President and the House wanted to cut the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a high-risk, high-reward energy science loan program. 

Trump even went several steps further than the House, first asking that the program's remaining funds be frozen and used to close down the program.

More:Sen. Alexander on Trump's DOE cuts: National labs are country's 'secret weapon'

More:Senate subcommittee advances proposed DOE budget; proposal good for Oak Ridge

More:How does Oak Ridge National Lab determine who gets laid off?

Then, in December, a Government Accountability Office investigation found the Trump Administration instructed the illegal withholding of $91 million in apportioned research funds from the program. 

The loan program told the Government Accountability Office that it withheld the funds per the Administration's instructions, "in anticipation of congressional enactment of the legislative proposals in the (President's) budget request."

More:Trump administration instructed illegal withholding of national lab research funds, GAO finds

This year, the Trump Administration has again requested legislators terminate the program's funding. 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory participates in 11 ARPA-E projects studying vehicle technology, the electricity grid, and building and manufacturing efficiency. The lab leads five of those projects. 

SALE:Unlimited digital news for just $10 a year!

Last year, Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., defended the House's proposal to terminate it, saying the country needed to invest in other priorities, while Alexander voiced vehement support for the program.

Fleischmann said the House 2018 budget request reflects "difficult decisions" made with limited allocations. 

"I am optimistic that we will see funding levels increase for many programs, but the situation remains fluid and the House and Senate will ultimately have to work together to reach a final spending agreement," he said.

Between the two, the Senate would rather cut the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or U.S. ITER, which is headquartered in Oak Ridge. 

ITER is an international endeavor to build a reactor that produces much more energy than it uses. The United States pays into it with six other countries and the European Union.

The Senate has repeatedly proposed axing the program, but the House, and apparently President Trump, still favor involvement.

For 2019, Trump has requested $75 million for the program. While it's less than its $100 million 2017 allocation, it is still an increase in some sense because the program only received about half that allocation last fiscal year, costing it 58 Oak Ridge employees.

Cuts to clean energy

Last year's Senate appropriations bills have favored Office of Science spending more than their House counterparts or the Trump Administration.

The Senate suggested a record $5.5 billion for the Office of Science, though the President asked to trim the budget by $900 million. The House wanted to keep it the same as 2017's enacted budget. The president echoed the House proposal in his request this year. 

Though the overall funding would remain flat under Trump's request, costly reallocations within the Office of Science suggest the president has hardly come around on perceptually partisan research programs like clean energy research.

So, Oak Ridge National Laboratory would once again receive a mixed bag.

Fossil energy would receive an $81 million boost, while The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)  would receive a $1.3 billion cut, or about 67 percent.

Last year Trump suggested a 70 percent cut and the House suggested about 50 percent. The Senate only proposed trimming the renewables program by about 7 percent. 

If enacted, Trump's cut could impact ORNL's research in vehicle and building technologies, advanced manufacturing, weatherization and biomass fuel research.

Nuclear energy research would be cut by $259 million, 

This year, Trump also proposed splitting the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability into two separate programs, one focused on grid reliability, and the other on cybersecurity. The programs would share $157 million at about a 40-60 percent split, respectively. 

Added together it's still a 37 percent cut from 2017 levels,though more generous than his proposal to halve the budget last year. 

Defense-heavy, Y-12 would benefit

Trump has made no secret of his desire to increase defense-related spending, which would set up Y-12 National Security Complex quite nicely.

The president's request allots approximately $11 billion toward nuclear weapons activities, an 18 percent increase from 2017. That includes stockpile stewardship activities, like Y-12's production of replacement parts for a 30-year-old nuclear warhead deployed on Ohio class submarines. 

More:Y-12 to begin producing replacement parts for 30-year-old nuclear warhead early

Funds for defense nuclear nonproliferation, aimed at monitoring arms control treaties and preventing worldwide spread of nuclear weapons materials, would be cut by $17 million

Cuts to Oak Ridge cleanup

While the president's request authorizes $182 million more for environmental cleanup, Oak Ridge cleanup will receive a $90 million cut. 

A Department of Energy spokesman said Oak Ridge Environmental Management would be able to continue making progress on Oak Ridge cleanup despite the cuts because the office plans its work to requested levels.

Cleanup work at the East Tennessee Technology Park is wrapping up, and Oak Ridge Environmental Management contractor UCOR expects to finish turning over the site of the old Gaseous Diffusion Plant within the next two years. 

Uranium disposition work continues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Environmental Management is preparing to clean up Y-12 National Security Complex's excess contaminated buildings with the construction of the Mercury Treatment Facility.

A Department of Energy spokesman said Oak Ridge Environmental Management plans to transition its resources from the East Tennessee Technology Park to Y-12.

The three cleanup operations are each funded from different accounts. It is unclear at this time how the $90 million cut will be distributed among the accounts.

Outlook uncertain 

If the fiscal year 2018 budget looks more like the House's than the Senate's, it might give some indication of how seriously Congress will take the president's request since it so closely resembles the House bill. 

Without an official budget though, it's hard to tell what's in store.

Last year, Alexander and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who co-chair the Senate Energy and Water subcommittee, called out the President's request. 

Alexander praised the country's national laboratories, which he called "secret weapons," and asserted that the nation's federal debt is not the result of Congress overspending on science and energy research each year.

Feinstein warned of massive laboratory layoffs if it were taken seriously. 

Alexander said Monday he intends to "carefully consider" the President's recommendations. 

"But my priorities will continue to be making sure our national defense, national laboratories, the National Institutes of Health and national parks have the resources they need," he said. 

“The Administration’s budget request is an important first step in the appropriations process," Fleischmann said Thursday. "The critical work done at Y-12 and ORNL have been, and will remain, one of my top priorities in Congress."