The Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hold a
legislative hearing on: H.R. 1607 (Rep. Schweikert), To clarify
jurisdiction with respect to certain Bureau of Reclamation pumped
storage development, and for other purposes; H.R. 3027 (Rep. Porter),
“Reclamation Climate Change and Water Program Reauthorization Act of
2023”; and H.R. 3675 (Rep. Boebert), To amend the Water Infrastructure
Improvements for the Nation Act to extend certain contract prepayment
authority, on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at 2:00 p.m.
EDT in 1324 Longworth House Office Building.
On Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at 10:00 AM ET,
U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and
Public Works (EPW) Committee, will hold a full committee
hearing
to examine the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and
Inflation Reduction Act by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
The hearing will follow a business meeting to consider the nomination of
Jeffery Martin Baran to serve a third term on the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
Witness:
Shailen Bhatt, Adminstrator, Federal Highway Administration
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer
(R-Ky.) will hold a full committee
hearing
titled “Death by a Thousand Regulations: The Biden Administration’s
Campaign to Bury America in Red Tape.” This hearing will examine the
Biden Administration’s historic level of regulatory overreach and
President Biden’s decision to rescind nearly all the Trump
Administration’s successful regulatory reforms.
Witnesses:
Anthony P. Campau, Principal, Clark Hill Public Strategies
Casey Mulligan, Professor in Economics, University of Chicago
Adam J. White, Co-Executive Director, The C. Boyden Gray Center for
the Study of the Administrative State, George Mason University Antonin
Scalia Law School
Sally Katzen, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in
Residence, New York University School of Law (Democratic witness)
On Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn House Office
Building, the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security will
hold a
hearing
entitled “Oversight of the NRC: Ensuring
Efficient and Predictable Nuclear Safety Regulation for a Prosperous
America.” The hearing will examine the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s
(NRC) role in regulating and licensing commercial power plants, advanced
nuclear technologies, and other uses of nuclear materials.
The NRC operates as an independent safety
regulator and oversees the commercial nuclear industry pursuant to the
Atomic Energy Act, as amended. In keeping with the established policy,
the NRC, per its mission statement, “licenses
and regulates the Nation’s civilian use of radioactive materials to
provide reasonable assurances of adequate protection of public health
and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect
the environment.”
Today, the NRC’s regulatory mission covers
three main areas: Reactors, Materials, and Waste. The
NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants;
research, test, and training reactors; nuclear fuel cycle facilities;
and nuclear materials used in medicine, academia, and industry. The
Commission is also responsible for regulating the transport, storage,
disposal of nuclear materials and waste, and facility decommissioning,
in addition to the import and export of radioactive materials. The
current United States’ nuclear fleet consists of 93 reactors, at 53
plants, in 28 states. The NRC is responsible
for the regulation, licensing, and safety of the current fleet.
The NRC is headed by a five-member Commission.
The five Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by
the Senate for five-year terms. The President designates one of the
Commissioners to be the Chair and official spokesperson of the
Committee. The NRC is presently operating with
all five Commissioners, including the current Chair, Christopher Hanson.
The NRC’s fiscal year 2024 budget request,
including for the Office of the Inspector General, is $1 billion to
support 2,949 full-time employees. This request is an increase of $63.2
million or approximately 6.7 percent compared to the
FY 2023 enacted budget.6 Of the $979 million
in budget authority, NRC expects to recover
823.2 million in fees assessed to applicants and licensees, resulting in
a net appropriation request of $156 million, an increase $19 million
over 2023 enacted budget.
The NRC major program budget requests are
organized under four activities: $530.8 million for Nuclear Reactor
Safety, including licensing, regulating, and overseeing civilian nuclear
power, research and test reactors, and medical isotope facilities;
$152.9 million for Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety, including spent
fuel storage and transportation, nuclear materials users,
decommissioning and low-level waste, high level waste, and fuel
facilities; $304 million for Corporate support, including IT, policy
support, human resource management, administrative services; and $0
funding requested for University Nuclear Leadership Program, which
includes grants for nuclear engineering education.
Subcommittee
hearing
on the Fiscal Year 2024 budget request for Near Eastern Affairs.
Witnesses:
Barbara A.
Leaf,
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department
of State
Jeanne
Pryor,
Deputy Assistant, Administrator, Middle East Bureau, United States
Agency for International Development
To advance the President’s regional agenda, the FY
2024 President’s Budget Request includes $7.57 billion in foreign
assistance for the Middle East and Near Africa with the goal of
continuing the work to build a more stable, integrated, and prosperous
region.
The FY 2024 President’s Budget Request for the
region includes $5.3 billion in Foreign Military Funding, maintaining
our enduring commitments to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and advancing
U.S. priorities in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia.
We supported Israel, Jordan, and the UAE to
launch Project Prosperity, opening the door to regional cooperation on
clean energy and water security. We are working with Saudi Arabia to
develop the next generation of 5G, 6G, and OpenRAN technology. We are
helping Egypt to build 10 gigawatts of renewable power.
Shortages in wheat supplies caused by Putin’s continued war on Ukraine
worsened already tenuous food security across the region, which also saw
poor domestic harvests due to severe droughts and water shortages.
In Libya, USAID’s work to strengthen the
energy sector dramatically decreased power outages from 158 hours in the
first quarter of 2022 to only 3 hours in the first quarter of 2023,
providing a significant increase in reliable power for Libyans and their
economy.
In Egypt, the world’s largest grain importer,
USAID helped agricultural collection centers
improve their storage capacity to decrease grain losses due to spoiling.
USAID accomplished this through the
introduction of 30 low or no cost solutions for irrigation, cooling,
drying, and harvesting that cut post-harvest losses by a third.
USAID programs also helped farmers get more
from their seeds, reducing planting costs by 60 percent.
In Lebanon, U.S. assistance helped sustain local vegetable, legume, and
dairy production by providing everything from seeds and compost to
technical assistance and training. In Yemen,
USAID scaled up our agriculture work to train
an additional 1,200 farmers on modern approaches like greenhouses,
tunnel farming, drip irrigation, and solar-water pumping.
COP 27, the United Nations Conference of
Parties on Climate Change, hosted last year by Egypt, was particularly
timely given record-breaking heat waves across the region in 2022.
According to experts, the Middle East is currently warming at nearly
double the rate of the rest of the world. In the future, if average
global temperatures rise by two degrees, rainfall is projected to
decline by 20-40 percent. As 70 percent of agriculture is rain-fed, this
could significantly reduce food security and trigger climate-induced
migration and greater political instability in the region. Approximately
52 million people in the MENA region are
chronically undernourished and increasing droughts will push more people
in that direction.
The Fiscal Year 2023 Request significantly increased funding for climate
change adaptation, and does so again in the Fiscal Year 2024 Request to
continue this vital work. Sustainable domestic agriculture production in
the world’s most water-scarce region requires consideration of climate
change impacts in all our work. For example, in Jordan, groundwater is
depleted twice as fast as it can be replenished, and leaks, theft, or
broken meters lead to water and revenue losses.
USAID is working with the Government of
Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation to strengthen infrastructure
and oversight and incentivize water conservation.
With Fiscal Year 2024 resources, USAID will
continue valuable partnerships, such as our work with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to develop energy and water saving irrigation
systems. This partnership yielded low-drip technology that cuts energy
requirements in half and costs 40 percent less than existing systems,
which the irrigation company Toro is now commercializing.
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia Subcommittee
Nisha Desai Biswal, of Virginia, to be Deputy Chief Executive Officer
of the United States International Development Finance Corporation
Edgard D. Kagan, of Virginia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign
Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Malaysia
Mark W. Libby, of Massachusetts, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign
Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of
Azerbaijan *Joel Ehrendreich, of New York, a Career Member of the
Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, to be Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to
the Republic of Palau
Cynthia Kierscht, of Minnesota, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign
Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of
Djibouti
The purpose of this hearing is to explore the current status of fusion
energy research and development in the United States, with a focus on
private sector innovation, Department of Energy (DOE) programs and
facilities, and international research partnerships. This hearing will
also provide an opportunity to review DOE’s
progress in carrying out fusion energy program direction recently
enacted in the CHIPS and Science Act and the
Energy Act of 2020.
Dr. Kathryn McCarthy, Director, U.S. ITER
Project Office
Dr. David Kirtley, CEO, Helion Energy
Dr. Wayne Solomon, Vice President, Magnetic Fusion Energy, General
Atomics
Andrew Holland, CEO, Fusion Industry
Association
Dr. Scott Hsu, Senior Advisor and Lead Fusion Coordinator, U.S.
Department of Energy
Department of Energy (DOE) supports fusion energy science research
primarily through the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program within its
Office of Science. The mission of FES is “to
expand the fundamental understanding of matter at very high temperatures
and densities and to build the scientific foundation for fusion energy.”
In addition, the FES mission includes the
development of a competitive fusion power industry in the U.S.
DOE stewards three main fusion facilities: the
NIF at LLNL, the
National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) at Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), and DIII-D
at General Atomics. DOE also partners with the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a leading
international fusion construction project.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPAE), has supported
fusion projects over the last few years through two programs:
Breakthroughs Enabling Thermonuclear-fusion Energy (BETHE) and
Galvanizing Advances in Market-Aligned Fusion for an Overabundance of
Watts (GAMOW). BETHE seeks to provide funding
to high maturity, but low-cost fusion options while
GAMOW prioritizes projects of enabling
technologies and advanced materials, which are necessary for commercial
fusion systems.
Recently, Congress reauthorized FES in the
Energy Act of 2020 and the CHIPS and Science
Act of 2022. Through the Energy Act of 2020, Congress authorized two
public-private partnership programs, the Innovation Network for Fusion
Energy (INFUSE) and the Milestone Based Development Fusion program.
Launched in FY2019, the
INFUSE program provides industry access to the
national laboratories and universities who have expertise and world
leading facilities in fusion energy sciences. This relationship will
support the advancement of novel approaches to fusion through material
sciences, modeling and simulation, advanced computing, and diagnostics.
The DOE closed its
INFUSE Request for Assistance (RFA) for
FY2023 in March 2023. To date, the program has
72 awards totaling $14.7 million.
Similarly, the Fusion Milestone Development is a milestone program that
will award companies that meet technical and commercialization targets,
which will accelerate the development of a fusion power plant. The
Department of Energy closed its up-to-$50 million Funding Opportunity
Announcement (FOA) in December of 2022. On May 31, the
DOE announced that it will award $46 million
to eight companies including: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Focused
Energy Inc., Princeton Stellarators Inc., Realta Fusion Inc., Tokamak
Energy Inc., Type One Energy Group, Xcimer Energy Inc, and Zap Energy
Inc.
Over the last few years, FES has seen a steady
increase in funding. The President’s fiscal year (FY) 2024 Budget
Request includes $1.01 billion for FES
activities, a topline consistent with CHIPS
and Science funding levels, and a 32.4% increase from
FY 2023. The President’s FY
2024 Budget Request also includes funding for new
FES activities such as dedicated fusion R&D
centers focused on blanket/fuel cycle, advanced simulations,
structural/plasma facing materials, as well as enabling technologies to
support public-private fusion power plant efforts.