Feb. 4, 4:50 p.m. — The administration is proposing $123 million more than Congress enacted in FY2008 for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership/Advanced Fuel Cycle Research .   Last year’s FY08 Omnibus Appropriations bill included $179 million for the program and the administration’s proposed budget for FY09 requests $302 million for the program.

This year’s request represents a decrease from the $405 million requested in the administration’s FY08 proposed budget. However, it still clearly demonstrates the administration’s commitment to a program about which many in Congress have significant reservations. 

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is a large-scale program to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in the United States and increase the use of nuclear power worldwide. Past efforts to reprocess nuclear waste have failed and many question the technological capability for reprocessing to succeed today. Furthermore, the cost estimates for reprocessing waste from existing reactors in the United States have been as high as $100 billion.