Proposed FY 2027 Department of Energy Budget Estimates and Justification

oh we're we're here to go over president trump's budget um i'm gonna be very brief at first i would like you to introduce if you would the big brains behind you

oh thank you ed they deserve a lot of credit

turn your mike on for me mister secretary Thank you.

Well, I I got a lot of the team here, starting with general counsel on the right there, John Brightbill. The CFO team, led by Tina, right here on the end, um, who was in the Department of War before, uh, coming over to to join our team.

Thank you for your service.

Chief of Staff, Congressional Affairs, Carl Cohen.

Thank you, Mike.

ok um for what it's worth here's what i think um mister secretary i think you've got a big brain too i'm reading your book i'm not finished i gave ten pages here and five pages there as best i can tell and this impresses me you believe in all forms of energy so long as those forms are are reasonably priced accessible to the American people and they work and and I happen to agree with you um here's my plan for the budget for what it works for what it's worth as you know we have a thirty trillion dollar deficit everyone of my colleagues up here is well aware of that And and we want to try to reduce. I was very proud of what our our our uh work demonstrated last time in the current budget. We were able to reduce spending and accommodate just about everybody's um uh interest vis-a-vis the last budget. We were able to reduce spending adjusted for inflation two point seven percent. That's gonna be very hard this time. not impossible and i wanna aim for it and i think everybody all of my colleagues up here on both sides of the aisle wanna aim for it but we're gonna spend more money on defense and some of that money not all of that money is gonna come out of non defense spending ok uh my goal is to craft an energy and water budget that looks like somebody designed it on purpose.

Hmm.

Everybody's opinion counts. And that's in in in includes uh, but is not limited to my democratic colleagues. I wanna try to work it out. It's gonna require a little compromise on the part of all of us. I wanna get started. i talked to uh senator collins yesterday and now i'm talking to the vice chair who's here listening to me um i wanna get started now um on a personal note doesn't require your comment two things i don't know when the price of gas gonna come down either if i did i'd go play that thing called the polymarket ok um i happen to believe that that uh the conflict with iran was necessary uh the people we're dealing with we're dealing with charles manson and you can't give them a nuclear weapon and that's why we had to go catwoman on iran but i think we're pretty close to being done i don't think the president is gonna send in troops when when the conflict ends the price of gas will come down i don't know how fast uh you i don't know why it is probably has something to do with the the traders you you you folks who know that better than i do but but the price goes up quicker than it comes down but the american people are not stupid they get it they understand when we have conflicts in the middle east middle east affects the uh price of uh of of um of energy number two or whatever the hell it is i have great um respect for senator schumer um I like iris's wife better, but I like chuck. Uh, he is a shrewd negotiator. He did the right thing for america last march when we were in the shutdown and helped us get out of a shutdown. Um, he got beaten bloody by a big portion of his uh is of his party. In fact, they cut him up so bad, all they have to le- left to work on is scar tissue. I'm really worried that uh that that that Chuck's gonna shut down government again right before the midterms. Uh, I hope I'm wrong. I hope my colleagues will talk to him uh and try to convince him that would be a bad thing to do. But I wanna get ready for it. I don't wanna stop our work on our budget. go full speed ahead but um uh i deal with the world as it is not as i want it to be none of that requires commun ok uh in fact my advice to you is to stay away with this business of how fast the price of gas gonna come down ok i don't wanna get off on that tangent uh the safest thing to say is soon i'm gonna save all my questions and let my colleagues talk I'm gonna turn to the esteemed Vice Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, um, and turn it over to her.

Thank you very much, Mister Chairman, and welcome Mister Secretary. You're right, last year working together, we were able to write and pass a bipartisan funding bill that actually looked nothing like the budget President Trump requested. I didn't love it, but it was a compromise. We worked well together and we delivered investments to lower energy costs and advance American innovation. We rejected some really extreme cuts and we protected crucial investments that matter immensely to my state like the Hanford cleanup and Pacific Northwest National Lab and Howard Hanson dam and I know, Mr. Chairman, you delivered for people back home in Louisiana as well. That that is really how this process works best. We talk to folks back home, we talk to our colleagues, we talk to each other and we negotiate a bill, the strongest bill we can for America. We did that last year, Mr. Chairman, and I'm Honored to work with you and look forward to doing that again this year. Um, but looking at this President's budget, Mister Secretary, I have to say it's pretty clear we have a work cut out for us, because we're gonna have to start from scratch here. Uh, this budget really is a war bloated disaster. We're talking one and a half trillion dollars on war. And that is an increase of half a trillion dollars. And this budget takes a hatchet to programs that lower our family's energy bills, research that keeps us ahead of China, crucial water projects that our communities rely on, and gas prices, uh, prices are sky-high, and energy bills are ticking up month after month, uh, so that Trump can help his, the defense contractors make a killing. And I will tell you at home, that's not what our families want. You know what they are worried about? They are worried about energy costs. But worse than failing on high energy costs, this administration is actually driving them higher. cancelling energy projects that would bring down those costs, waging Trump's absurd trade wars, and now starting this actual war in Iran. And this budget doubles down on driving those costs up. The weatherization assistance program, really critical, it helps our families afford energy-efficient home improvements. It actually saves families three hundred and seventy-two dollars a year. It directly brings down families' costs. But instead of saving families, Trump's budget would save them nothing. with this program. He wants to zero it out entirely. Meanwhile, for well over a year now, this administration has been sitting on billions of dollars in funding that Democrats provided for energy rebates. This is funding that should be going directly into families' pockets to help them cover the cost of energy efficiency upgrades, saves them money. The department should be providing households up to fourteen thousand dollars and it should be helping families across the country save over one billion dollars each year on their energy bills. It should be supporting over fifty thousand jobs in installing heat pumps and solar panels and more. Instead, you are denying families this funding while they are paying five six seven dollars a gallon at the pump. And let's talk about research and innovation, because I have to imagine this budget would make officials in Beijing smile. Trump's seventeen billion dollar cut to science and energy here all but forfeits the clean energy competition. It torpedoes our research and innovation and sabotages American manufacturing. Trump wants to cut the office of science by fifteen percent. He wants to hobble the Pacific Northwest National Lab in Washington State. I visit there frequently and I see firsthand how they are a leading edge on everything from AI, battery technologies, material science, not to mention nuclear non-proliferation. Something else this budget actually takes a hatch at too. So for someone who brags all the time about his, how his uncle was a MIT professor, Trump doesn't seem to get this. Maybe he got confused between cutting edge research and cutting research, I don't know. But I do know everyone here gets it. And we're not gonna give up on America's scientific leadership. Trump wants to cut the office of energy efficiency and renewable energy by two thirds. This budget proposes rescinding over billion dollars in funding that's already approved in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. We are talking about cancelling major invest investments that will bring more energy online. These are projects that lower costs for our families. These are investments that strengthen our energy independence. They reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Tr- Trump's budget tosses them in the trash. But I hope this committee does not do that. And it won't if I have anything to say about it. Instead, we should toss this budget in the trash and start by working on an energy budget that works for all of us. Trump is also trying to shortchange Hanford now. This budget would slash the Hanford cleanup by four hundred million dollars. We are at a very crucial moment when we are preparing to build the high-level waste facility and Trump wants to cut the legs out from under us by ripping away, hundreds of millions of dollars. and it will not save money. If we skimp on that clean-up right now, it will take longer and it will cost more. So I will again be fighting tooth and nail for Hanford, like I do every year, because we have a moral and we have a legal obligation to get this right. Now, while Trump proposes slashing investments to lower costs, there is one item he wants to boost, and it is an eye-popping amount, our nuclear weapons program. Now, Trump has said, and I quote him, We have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world a hundred and fifty times. Apparently that's not enough because this budget would increase funding for our nuclear weapons program by over seven billion dollars to build new facilities. And that is on top of nearly four billion dollar boost from the Republicans' bill a year ago. Because everyone knows that's what families are begging for. Cutting Alzheimer's research and affordable housing. so we can blow up the world one hundred and fifty one times we gotta be real facilities for a larger nuclear weapons arsenal will not help feed our starving kids exploding the budget for defense contractors will not help parents struggling with rent this budget is a microcosm of the moral bankruptcy that runs through the entire budget more money for war more money for war and less money for families and this backwards budget would only compound the major problems we've seen at the department over the last year. Cuz over the last year, DOE has seen massive staff reductions, our national labs have lost thousands of staff, departmental policies threatened billions in research funding for our universities until Congress stepped in, and of course the department is openly breaking the law and illegally blocking and cancelling funding. I mentioned how you're blocking funding to help families save money, but we should acknowledge that nine months ago, after GAO affirmed you are impounding funds for school energy improvements, you still have not moved a single penny. That is funding for our kids and it's funding for our schools. And meanwhile, hugely important energy projects that we're we that we're actually years in the making, that were creating good jobs and were saving families real money, have been canceled for blatantly political reasons. And that includes the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub in my home state of Washington. Your department acknowledged in court, which ruled against you by the way, that when Russ Vogt told DOE during the shutdown to cancel projects, you did so considering, and I quote, whether the grantee was located in a blue state. That is really outrageous and impossible to overstate the meltdown there be if the shoe were on the other foot and a democratic president did that to red states. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will acknowledge what's happening here and work with us to fix it. Now the good news is that while this budget's a mess, it's not exactly new. Trump tried a lot of this last year. So respectfully, Mister Secretary, I'm gonna work to tear this budget up. I will work with my colleagues to write a budget that is responsible. And I look forward to working with you, Chair Kennedy, to do that.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Mister Secretary, the floor is yours, sir.

Thank you, Chairman Kennedy, Ranking Member Murray, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the President's fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget for the Department of Energy. Under President Trump's leadership, we have put the department back on mission, delivering affordable, reliable and secure energy for the American people. Let me highlight what that looks like. We have taken decisive steps to restore grid stability, using emergency authorities under section two O two C of the federal power act, We kept critical base load generation online after DOE analysis warned outage risks risks could increase up to one hundred fold by twenty thirty due to supply shortfalls. This action and the market response to our action preserved seventeen gigawatts of critical dispatchable generation for the American people. Hundreds of American lives were saved by these actions. during winter storm fern. Historic coal drove record heating and electricity demand. Dispatchable energy, natural gas, coal, hydro and nuclear were the MVPs of the grid. In New England, at peak demand, hydrocarbons, hydro and nuclear provided ninety-five percent of power. Wind, solar and batteries combined provided two percent, less than burning wood and trash. The lesson? When reliability is on the line, dispatchable energy shows up. We have worked to establish American energy leadership globally. Since President Trump ended the previous administration's reckless LNG export approval ban, the department has approved more than nineteen billion cubic feet a day of new export authorizations, which is more than America's entire capacity on inauguration day last January. The United States is the global leader in LNG exports and will become even more dominant under President Trump's leadership. This is a win for America, a win for our allies, a win for global security, and a blow to our adversaries. We are advancing national security at home and abroad. From day one, President Trump has focused on delivering prosperity at home and peace abroad. Occasionally, power must be projected. to create long-term peace. American national security is anchored by our nuclear deterrent. DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration is honored by this mission to ensure a safe, secure, and effective deterrent against new and evolving threats. Today, NNSA is delivering more new weapons, seven warhead modernization programs, and plutonium pits than at any time since the Cold War. We are driving a nuclear power renaissance. Our efforts span next generation reactor pilot programs, re-establishing Americ- American nuclear enrichment capacity, and domestic nuclear fuel fabrication, reprocessing, and pathway to spent fuel permanent management. I am proud to share that we will have multiple advanced reactor prototypes critical by America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. We are driving hard to meet President Trump's goal of quadrupling quadrupling nuclear capacity to four hundred gigawatts by twenty-fifty. This ensures nuclear energy will play a central role in powering America's re-industrialization and leadership in AI. Our budget request reaffirms our commitment to cleaning up nuclear waste in communities that carried the weight of America's earliest nuclear programs. We are bringing professional management and innovation to enhance clean-up efforts while seeking to redevelop cleaned-up sites like Portsmouth, Paducah, Hanford, and others. We launched the Genesis mission to bring AI's immense promise to scientific and technical innovation. In our nation's history, there have been two great scientific mobilizations, the W- World War Two Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program. The Genesis mission is the third. Genesis's mission is focused on the most difficult scientific challenges of our time, quantum computing, fusion energy, advanced materials development, and human health. We are partnering where industry alone cannot go, tackling long-term challenges that require national commitment, bringing together our national laboratories, universities, and private industry to accelerate scientific discovery. We are winning the AI race and lowering energy costs. By leveraging department-owned land and assets, we are enabling rapid deployment of large-scale compute capacity through public-private partnerships. We are working closely with industry and communities to ensure these projects adhere to the President's important ratepayer protection pledge to rapidly expand our nation's electricity grid and to ensure that the energy consumption and end the Biden administration's ruinous rise in electricity prices. We are securing critical minerals. We have strategically reorganized the department, consolidating five offices into a single office of critical minerals and energy innovation. This creates one hub across DOE, the national labs and external partners to manage the full supply chain, from mining and processing to magnets and batteries. We have committed one billion in existing funding to strengthen domestic supply chains, reduce reliance on foreign adversaries, and re-shore American manufacturing. We are restoring fiscal discipline. We inherited a department that prioritized political objectives over energy security. The restructured office of energy dominance financing is correcting that. We have reviewed every loan commitment of taxpayer dollars, restructuring or eliminating over eighty billion in loans, more than eighty percent of the Biden era loan portfolio, and redirecting that capital toward projects that strengthen reliability and American energy production, including an historic twenty-six billion dollar loan to the Southern company that will lower costs and expand grid capacity in multiple states. Finally, we are preparing for the future. America is open for business again. and trillions of dollars are being invested in American infrastructure for manufacturing and data centers. Meeting this moment requires abundant, reliable, and secure energy, and that is exactly what this budget delivers. As Secretary of Energy, I'm honored to lead this effort for President Trump and to work with this committee to strengthen America's energy future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Senator Britt.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here and for the work that you're doing. Uh, you mentioned a number of things in your opening that I wanna touch on. Let's start with data centers. So, we obviously, as you just said, have the edge over our adversaries right now. Um, we have to keep that, um, compute power advantage. That is critically important. We know that we can't maintain that advantage without data centers. Um, but in the larger conversation, as we have talked about, We wanna make sure that um that advantage and the cost of that doesn't actually fall on families' power bills. Between two thousand and one and two thousand and five, we saw residential power bills go up in this nation over forty percent. Uh, it's totally unacceptable. We look at where we are right now and try to figure out what is the pathway forward. Um, when you're looking at data center heavy regions, the wholesale electricity, prices surged over two hundred and fifty percent during that same time period. So obviously vast majority of that in the previous administration. But here we are. Um, what do we do now? You mentioned a couple of things and I've seen you do this in in the last several months and I appreciate President Trump's leadership on this, and yours as well, the rate payer protection pledge, um, that you had a number of, uh, private sector entities step up and say, " Hey, let's do this." I think that is, that was an excellent excellent move also uh your energy dominance financing announcement as well i think the combination of those two things ultimately froze rates in both alabama and georgia so we are very grateful for that that was a huge win but ultimately when we're looking at the price right now we've got to figure out how do we drill down and how do we actually lower rates not just freeze them so my question to you is how do those two things possibly lead to not just freezing but lowering rates i wanna see lower and Alabama. Um, and if not those two things, then what do you have in mind that will ultimately help people have a more affordable energy bill?

Great, great question, Senator Britt. I love your passion and I share it. And, and my one word answer is common sense.

Thank you. K.

Common sense. Why did energy prices skyrocket, you mentioned, during the Biden administration years and the first year of this administration? Cuz everything that went under the grid came from the Biden administration. Right, the electricity grid is slow moving, and their policy had two pieces to it. One was we're going to subsidize the building of electricity sources that produce electricity some of the time, but not all of the time, and you don't know when they're gonna produce. Like I mentioned in that that winter storm fern,

Mm-hmm.

which took our electricity grids to their limit, to their peak output. That's what matters. You can supply electricity at peak demand time, you can put a new factory on-line. you can put new demand capacity to share the cost of all the infrastructure that are there. But if you're not there at peak demand time, wind, solar and vacation just disappeared at peak demand time, which means all the other times they add electricity to our grid, all they're doing is having some other plant turned down.

Mm-hmm.

They're not adding any capacity to the grid.

So what have you done? So talk to me about that. What are we doing to make sure that we are driving down the price of energy?

Well, we worked with you and the Senate in the House to finally end thirty four years of wind subsidies and solar subsidies so that if they can compete in a marketplace and and with batteries or storage of some kind deliver effective reliable electricity fine but we subsidize on them killing the economics for existing infrastructure that was on the grid so we're ending that nonsense we're focusing on in the short term how can we get more out of our existing grid we're uprating hydro facilities we're uprating natural gas facilities We've re- we've restarted uh a nuclear power plant, which will have a ribbon cutting on very soon, first time that's ever been done in the world. We have a second restart underway and there's more that are coming.

Excellent.

So we're

I have, I just have one more minute left, so I may get you to follow up with me on this because I wanna make sure that we are saying,

Sorry. We have to drive down prices.

I am grateful for the work that's been done, I just wanna see more work done, I wanna see even even greater results. So, uh, I look forward to working with you and I know that you are the man to, to make that happen. You mentioned the grid though, I, I was the biden administration never had a strategic plan about how do we secure our grid i appreciate the trump administration coming forth and saying ok here we go we're gonna have a national cyber security um the the actual strategic plan that you all put out with regards to this and uh i wanted to kinda sort of look at that i know there are number of things we look at we do some work on this for the workforce sector at auburn university at their um three, but wanted to just see if you will use some of the money in your budget to make sure that we have grid security and the workforce to go along with it.

Absolutely, two key issues. And we have at some of our national labs and at DOE headquarters, we have places where we bring together operators of the utilities

Mr. Secretary, give us about thirty seconds worth.

to monitor those things. But yeah, cyber s- the threats of cyber security keep rising. We need to rise our defense against them. That's technology, that's coordination between government and industry. And that's more skilled people. We need far more skilled people with those skills.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Murray.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, last year, uh, nuclear waste was turned into glass at scale for the first time at Hanford's DF law facility. Your budget would actually bring that novel work to a screeching halt and fail to meet the holistic agreement that is legally has legally binding milestones. I have fought with every administration since I got here, and uh over Hanford and anything done in the cover of the night, without support from the state, always, always ends up back in the courtroom, costing taxpayers more and delaying progress at the site.

That's right.

When you and I met for the first time, I asked if you would commit to the holistic agreement and working with not against Washington State on the cleanup. And you said you wanted time to review carefully and have a n- an EM manager in place. That was fifteen months ago. You now have one in place. So I wanna ask you, do you commit now to meeting the terms and milestones in the holistic agreement?

We we are hugely committed to driving the cleanup process forward. We're doing nothing to slow down or hurt DF law, as implied in your question. In fact, we're gonna use some AI technology to figure out how we can optimize the operation of that plant. The Hanford cleanup is our is our number one responsibility of our environmental management.

I have not.

And we've,

I've not seen any plan to use AI to

we have lost

on the DF law facility. Is that some pa- plan on a futuristic point someplace? Cuz that clean up has to happen now.

It's it's it's in our budget.

Well

Um it's but but but of course we are we are working on the clean up of of this every day.

My my question OK.

Of course we're committed to clean up Hanford.

My question was, will you will you will you meet the legal and moral obligations uh to support the Hanford clean up?

Of course we're committed to clean up Hanford. Yes.

OK. Um, Mr. Secretary, people are getting hammered by skyrocketing energy costs because of this administration's policy. The average price of gasoline right now is four dollars and four cents. It's higher than that where I live. That is the highest it's been in four years. Electricity costs are up six point nine percent over the last year. That is more than double the inflation rate. And your budget seeks to straight up eliminate programs that really help people save money. I mentioned it before, the weatherization assistance, state energy programs. Meanwhile, you're asking to spend seven point four billion on nuclear weapons. You recently said that gas prices may not go below three dollars a gallon until sometime next year. President Trump said you're totally wrong. Do you stand by your comment that prices may not go down until next year?

Look, prices have moved down over the last nine or ten days. We do everything we can every day to drive down

OK.

Do we wanna see it go lower? Absolutely. Do we work every day to get it lower?

Well, we're we're now in the

Absolutely.

We're a year and a half into the Trump administration. So let me just ask you, will you guarantee that gas will go back to three dollars again before the end of the year?

No one can offer guarantees about the future, but of course everything we're doing to grow the supply of energy and end the Biden administration's war on hydrocarbons, the Biden administration massively drove up energy prices. And you're right, it's taken us some effort to bring them back down, but they're going down.

So now we depend on oil and here we are. Uh, Mister Secretary, last fall when the president was explicitly threatening retribution against Democrats his budget director announced he was cancelling. eight billion dollars in energy projects. And he then proceeded to list out sixteen democratic states that were affected. Each of those states voted for Kamala Harris, and they each had two democratic senators. Um, so afterward your department announced the cancellation of three hundred and twenty-one projects. You killed two massive new hydrogen hubs in the Pacific Northwest in California, but you didn't cancel one in Texas, and seems kind of weird to me, but let me just say in court Your lawyers admitted that quote " a primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions was whether the grantee was located in a quote, blue state." "It is plain a state that is a political decision." Your own lawyers admitted that in court. And a district court recently ruled that your cancellations were discriminatory and violated the fifth amendment. So, moving forward, I wanna ask you, w- w- will you guarantee that it's a vo- a state's voting history or partisan lean will not be considered when making decisions about grants and awards.

We evaluated twenty two hundred and seventy one projects, and politics and voting history played no role in any of the two thousand,

That, well, that

two hundred and seventy one decisions we made.

That's not what your, uh, that that's not what your own lawyers admitted in court.

That that that that's simply not true. You gotta read your own thing you're quoting from. It was the timing of the announcements, not the decisions we made the decisions we made were blind on politics and number two the state where

blind on politics when they're all blue states I don't understand what you're talking about

that were announced at that time not the decisions made

what did announcing have to do with red or blue

that's what it says in the statement that you're reading

no no ok well mister

not no politics were involved in any of our decisions in evaluating it

I find that very hard to believe and so did the court thank you mister chairman

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair, Senator Hagerty.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, Secretary Wright, it's good to see you here today. Um, we've discussed this on several occasions. The nation, I believe, and I think you do too, is at a pivotal moment in energy production. What we accomplish in the next few years is gonna be defining for our nation and for the world for the twenty-first century. I'd like to acknowledge an important fact that Tennessee, my home state, is at the forefront of many of the priorities that you've highlighted in your testimony today. And that's why I encouraged you to make our state one of the first stops that you made as Secretary of Energy and I'm delighted that you were able to do that to visit us in Oak Ridge, um, just days, uh, frankly, after being sworn in. I'd like to talk about the Genesis mission that, the Genesis mission that you so kindly articulated just a moment ago. Um, you, you've described it as the third scientific mobilization since the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program. It's an ambitious effort. Uh, it's one that will advance scientific discoveries, advance our national security, and it will accelerate new energy technologies through the use of high-performance computing. It'll bring together the Department of Energy's national labs, industry partners, and American universities. And while the Genesis mission is a multi-lab effort, much of the computing capacity is gonna be housed, guess where? At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in East Tennessee. Through the deployment of LUX, expected to be operational later this calendar year, and discovery, which will be delivered in two thousand twenty eight, Oak Ridge National Lab will serve as one of the primary operational hubs for next generation artificial intelligence and quantum high performance computing. Secretary Wright, as your department advances the Genesis mission, how will the deployment of next generation computing translate into real world advances in energy, national security and economic growth and and additionally if you could just add, ask one more question, how does the Genesmi- Genesis mission position United States as a global leader in this next generation capability compared to how our adversaries will perform in the invest in their investments in similar technologies.

Thank thank you for the question, Senator. Thank you for the great state of Tennessee that, as you mentioned, Oak Ridge was critical for winning World War Two. The nuclear age began there. The nuclear renaissance is in in full throttle in the state of Tennessee. And you're right, LUX will be the very first compute expansion for our whole Genesis mission, AI. So The the private companies, as you, as we all know, are spending six hundred billion dollars this year in building compute, compute for business applications, for personal services, for their business. What Genesis' mission is about, we wanna harness that computing power, some of their computing power, some of our own computing power, to advance the scientific mission, to advance scientific discovery, to advance things that can en- enhance our national defense, both on the defensive side and on the offensive side, um, and on energy production. So to give a couple quick examples, I went to college to work on fusion energy over forty years ago. AI and high-performance computing is gonna make something we've slowly approached cross that threshold that we're gonna be able to harness more energy out of fusion than we could before and it it's by a more technical reason about how we can reduce simulations into these replicators, but AI is gonna change the game there. It's gonna make the design of nuclear reactors much cheaper and the operations of them may be cut in half in expense. This this research with protein folding and specific isotopes for cancer treatment pioneered again at in Oak Ridge is gonna cha- transform the future prospects of healthcare diseases that were death sentences are gonna become manageable conditions so harnessing the data sets in our lab the scientists in our national lab combined with this computing power I think we will see just in incredible age of scientific discovery and engineering progress that'll benefit our whole country.

Secretary Wright, could you contrast that then to the investments that our adversaries are making in a similar arena, when you think about the the the the Genesis mission and what our adversaries may be trying to attempt?

Yeah, so, China is investing massively in AI as well. Their focus is dominantly defense and weapons research, and it's something we must respond to. We cannot have China get ahead of us. in ai in the area of defense and national security it's critical we cannot be second in ai like

so speech critical

the manhattan project in world war two that's a competition you can't be second in we've had a great world for eighty years with the united states as the dominant economic and military power we need to assure that age continues um but our adversaries are obviously they have a different agenda and if they move fast and they lean in and invest they build tons

You know, the sense of urgency, and as you describe it, is palpable. I'm particularly concerned about quantum computing and where we might land if we're not leading in that race could you comment a little more about that?

Quantum computing has some cool applications, scientific and technically, I you're probably alluding to It's it's thing for code uh and passwords and data security protection.

Yes.

If we are not leading in quantum and China develops quantum decryption, they'll be able to read into all of our systems and understand everything we're doing. We think we got secure uh systems right now, not if you have a quantum enabled adversary. We need to be first to quantum. We need to have quantum enabled uh safety on our encryption systems. quantum is another one of those game-breaking technologies that we must lead on.

Thank you for making the imperative so clear. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Coons.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you, uh, Mr. Chairman and, um, Senator Hagerty and, uh, uh, Secretary. Um, I look forward to talking with you about the relevance of AI, quantum, and defense. I'm the senior democrat on defense and intelligence appropriations, and, uh, uh, the development of a cryptologically relevant, uh, quantum computer is an absolutely critical issue. And the announcement of the mythos, a large language model, um, just in the last week and what it's capable of doing at both penetrating our classified systems and our adversaries is also a watershed moment. We should be talking about this across DOE and uh DOD.

I'll look forward to that, Senator, thank you.

Look forward to hearing more about about Oak Ridge. Um, Mr. Secretary, um, y- you know, there is so much we can and should be working on together. Now, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of career advice. In your first five minutes, you criticized and attacked the Biden administration five times. And then in the next two answers, four more times. You're fourteen, fifteen months into an administration, let's look forward, OK? The idea that they were not unsticking any major problems when they had to, what, recover from a global pandemic and an economic collapse? Like, I could waste all my time just bickering with you about it, but I don't wanna do that. I'd like to find ways to work together to move forward. I agree with you that we are at the edge of a nuclear renaissance. I am excited about the new models being developed. I'm excited about what the nuclear lab in Idaho is making possible. I'm puzzled by a cut of two hundred and fifty million to nuclear energy in your budget. Help me understand that proposal in your budget.

Yeah, it it it's it's it's not actually a cut, it's just broken up into two categories. There's a separate category of funding that says base load power, and there's a few hundred million for nuclear in that the nuclear budget we propose is pretty much flat or up a hair year over year. Same thing with the science budget. I know people think we cut significantly in the science budget, but it's not.

One point two billion is what this says.

And and an offset by a little more than one point two billion in AI and quantum, which is basically part of the science budget, just categorized. That's across all the labs and all the programs. So, yes, I know And we probably should have had more clarification material. Looks like we made big cuts to those two things. We just classifies things a little differently. Thank you for raising those.

I'd love to be effectively persuaded of that. RPE, uh, something I've been actively engaged in the whole time I've been on this committee. You were just at the annual RPE summit. At least the agenda of the most recent RPE summit says they're helping with data center energy and with the application of AI in grid stabilization and security. At least the version I've got here, you're giving it a forty percent cut. Hundred and fifty million. Why?

Let me clarify that as well. So the the budget we're proposing is b- is basically slightly up from the budget we proposed last year. You here in the House and Senate plussed up the ARPA-E budget, and and we'd be very happy to work with you again on that.

Good, cuz I think it's been a functional, creative, innovative uh resource uh not just for the department but for the country. Um, let me read you a sentence. The weatherization assistance program is a proven, cost-effective way to permanently decrease energy usage while reducing Americans' home energy bills. Who do you think said that? Senator Collins, my cosponsor of a bill to reauthorize the weatherization assistance program. Um, y- y- y- you, uh, cut to zero a roughly four hundred million dollar program, um, one that I've seen year over year help thousands of Delawareans cut their home heating bills thirty to fifty percent. I worked with Catholic Charities on implementing it when I was a county executive. Um, there was a study by Oak Ridge, I'm sorry, Senator Hagerty left, that concluded that for every dollar invested in the work the weatherization assistance program federally, there was four dollars and fifteen cents in benefits, uh, both energy savings and health savings. Why would you zero this program out?

So there's a lot of ways to help. low income people with energy costs. It has been a lifelong passion of mine, so I'm fully aligned with that. I know last year we we restructured that program a little bit. It had social, cost of carbon and climate impact stuff in a program that's really supposed to help low income people. We cleaned it up last year, we got those funds out. Last year we will get those funds out again this summer.

Your budget zeroes it out. Help me understand why your budget zeroes it out.

John.

It it's just a matter of priorities and is it the cleanest, most effective way? I would love to have a off-line dialogue with you about that and look at that.

Yes. Yes. Me too.

We, we, I, I, I share the mission that you have there.

I suspect that Senator Collins and I, as we continue to pursue our bipartisan bicameral reauthorization bill, would also, well, I don't mean to speak for her, but I am quoting her. Uh, we'll find a way to make our way to your office to talk about why, at least I believe, it's a highly efficient program. A year ago gas was three dollars a gallon, today it's three ninety. I look forward to finding out whether your prediction is correct, that that won't go down until next year, or the president's prediction that it'll come down faster. I think we need to find ways to reduce the price of the pump for a majority of Americans. And I note the chairman has cleared his throat at me.

All right.

Uh, I, I, I, sorry, I have to correct one thing, uh, I never said gas prices wouldn't go down until next year. N- n- never, never said such a thing. There was a, A thing on the news that I said they might not be below three dollars a gallon, I didn't know when and, you know, but you don't, I I left some uncertainty in there.

Well, you did.

But I sh- also share your desire for lower gasoline prices. I'm with you.

About ten percent of the oil and gas production uh capability of the Gulf's been destroyed in the current war in Iran. It's also impacting fertilizer. Farmers are planting where I'm from. It's also impacting helium, which is critical for health care and for semiconductors. Um, we're gonna see long-term impacts from this war in Iran. Um, impacts at the pump, impacts in manufacturing, impacts in farming and the cost of food. Um, I think we ought to wrap it up as soon as we possibly reasonably can. But I think we're gonna be paying for the costs and so will the average American, for at least another year to go. Thank you, Mister Secretary.

Thank you, Senator.

Senator Rounds.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Um, Mister Secretary, first of all, thanks for what you're doing and, um, i i i wanna take this opportunity to invite you to um the sanford underground research facility near lead south dakota uh as you know it's it's a facility that has been sponsored by the department of energy and we're working with fermi laboratory right now with regard to the discovery of just exactly how neutrinos work along with that uh further discussion with regard to dark matter and uh the next step will be the the atmosphere of quantum physics uh as a as a part of that so i most certainly would would love to have you come in and look at this deep underground laboratory which starts at about forty eight hundred and fifty feet down and um has become uh a real model for laboratories that study items that you simply can't do at the surface with all of the the background and so forth so i would invite you there the question that i guess i would have is is with these types of laboratories and so forth in a tight budget constraint i still think it's important that we do at this type of basic physics. Can you talk a little bit about the critical need for that continuation for the study of the very basic research that we're doing at the HomeStake lab, um, and and and the support by the Department of Energy in that area?

Yes, Senator, I I I think as you know, I I'm very passionate about that topic. You know, when I arrived newly in in politics, uh, fifteen months ago, I look at our government, and we dollar a taxes and we spend a dollar thirty or a dollar forty that that is that is not good for our economy for our kids for our future so i have i have wanted to shrink a lot of the things we do but one of the things i do not wanna shrink shrink in fact i fought to grow is the investments in basic science because only governments do that only governments can invest in these very long-term projects it's a relatively small percent of our spending But if you look at a generation, the impacts are just gigantic. The neutrino in fundamental understanding of matter and nature and space is huge, In theory. but already, already we have actually a pretty important practical application of the understanding we've started to develop about neutrinos. Even if we didn't have that today, I still would pound the table of how important it is to drive forward our national labs in basic science and that detector in your in your state is one of the most important big science projects on the planet today

well these are three caverns right now that are basically the size of a football field and sixty feet high high

yeah

yes

almost a mile underground and they're filled with scientific experiments right now

yeah

that's great

good job they're ugly

um may i uh also i wanna talk a bit about your your your your nuclear budget and and um they they've indicated that

big old rat

with regard to the the nuclear budget um they're saying that you're increasing it and yet and they're doing it because of of our defensive needs but don't we really we're taking what is already there and we're modernizing our nuclear defenses and i think that's missing in this discussion the need to modernize it it's not like we're building additional weapons as much as we are taking what is already there and maintaining it safely can you talk a little bit about

Yes, thank you for that clarification, Senator Rounds, cuz we did hear from an earlier senator from a Northwestern state that we were adding and expanding our nuclear arsenal where we're not doing that at all. And as you just said, lot of the weapons we designed are first generation, right after World War Two. It's amazing that the United States stood up a tremendous nuclear arsenal, which since then, the the risk of dying a violent death in war has dropped dramatically because of the presence of these weapons in the hands of the United States. And so the efforts we are doing that I do believe are urgent are modernization programs of existing weapons. You know, that you, those weapons don't last hundreds of years. We're just replacing existing warheads with modernized warheads that'll, that'll last another sixty, seventy, eighty years,

Products that

but it's time to modernize our, our arsenal.

Products that are forty, fifty and sixty years old, that we're bringing up to speed, keeping them safe.

Exactly.

OK. One other item and then I'll I'll go before the Chairman pounds the the gavel here on me. Um, we have about thirteen to fourteen hundred gigawatts total nameplate capacity in the United States for energy production. We need another hundred in a very short period of time. How are we gonna get there between now and twenty thirty?

It's it's tricky because we had an environment, uh, Senator Coons will be disappointed, but I have to point out again that we made it almost impossible permit and build new reliable dispatchable generation plants. We've changed that now. We have to get a lot more out of our existing assets, and we have to stop closing coal plants. There was a plan in place when I arrived to close a hundred gigawatts of coal plants over the next five years.

Mr.

We have to start by not digging the hole, and then we gotta start adding.

Uh, I'm gonna honor the chairman's been very good with my time in allowing us to go before he has, but I just think, if I could ask, perhaps just laying out a plan or laying it out so that people can see how we're going to address this energy shortage. Between now and twenty thirty, twenty thirty one would be very helpful for us in planning and laying out the path forward. Whether you're talking natural gas, whether you're talking coal-fired, or whether you're talking nuclear, or perhaps even space-based solar. But we need to be talking about it.

All all all of the above, and geothermal is another dispatchable source.

Amen.

And you're exactly right that we talk about it all the time. We need to put together.

Put together the plan.

We'll do that in our a little plan that lays out this in big picture terms.

That that would be very helpful. Thank you.

Great suggestion. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman.

You bet. Senator Peters, who we're going to miss.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that and thank you for recognizing me. Secretary Wright, uh, good to have you here, uh, today. Secretary Wright, um, I would just want to address, uh, your department's, uh, use of, uh, section, uh, two O two C emergency authority to, uh, to keep the J H Campbell coal plant in uh West Olive uh Michigan operating as you know it's past uh its retirement date you're you're very familiar with this plan uh an order though that excuse me that you've now extended uh four times over the last year um keeping this plan open between May and December according to figures we have last year cost more than a hundred and thirty five uh million dollars and with each extension of this order uh obviously that price tag will continue to to go up So as you can imagine, uh, the question of who's actually footing this bill, uh, is of serious concern to my constituents, uh, in Michigan and Michigan families are already stretched when it comes to paying for electric, uh, bills. So I'm of the mind that, uh, Michigan families should not be forced, uh, to bear the full exp uh expense of a federal emergency order that's issued to basically to serve multi-state grid. Uh, and that's why I've led a bipartisan letter to FERC along with other members of the michigan delegation urging for it to approve a cost recovery framework that spreads the cost across the region cause apparently the region is benefiting from it there's no reason that michigan tax or uh rate payers have to pay all of that so it spreads that across uh uh uh accross the region so my my question for you secretary does does doe support the timely approval of a cost refi recovery framework that would distribute campbell's operating cost across the MISO zone so that Michiganders are not the only ones saddled with the cost of a multi-region plan.

So it does not sound like an unreasonable idea, but electricity regulation and cost allocations are highly complex. So that is something we will dive into, we will look at with you and your team in DOE and in FERC. But the the the cost we can't afford is the cost of blackouts. We have about eighty-five billion dollars as the estimated cost of blackouts in our country, and they're gonna massively rise if we don't keep plants like that open.

Well, I'm, I'm, this is not an argument about that.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know.

So, it'd be clear. This is not an argument about that. There are others that can argue that. And I might wanna have an argument like that someday as well, but that's not what we're having right now, is that this is an emergency order for the region, and yet, Michiganders are the ones left holding the bag, uh, and they're saying, " We'll pay our fair share." Now, if, if this is gonna be helpful, then obviously avoid blackouts. I would just need your commitment to say, " Yeah, I know it's complex, but the ratepayers and Michigan shouldn't be forced to pay for that complexity."

Absolutely look into that and get back to you. Understanding your question, I think it's very reasonable question.

Great, great. So, relatedly, uh, will DOE factor FERC decision on cost recovery into future, uh, decisions related to extending the emergency order for Campbell?

Um, yeah, look, we're gonna look into this issue and find the right way forward on that.

I appreciate it. So, and so I would just ask this more generally then. How do mounting costs, like we're seeing uh in this plant, um and the determination of who bears those costs, which we're gonna discuss further, how does that impact DOE's decision making related to two O two C, just generally?

Yeah, so with two O two C's our our our struggle is when we came in, the NERC, the North American Electric Reliability Council described the state of the grid as a five alarm fire. Your northern MISO region is among the highest risk among a grid that's at the highest risk in my lifetime. So we want to reverse this trend of destabilizing our grids and driving up electricity prices and the first thing to do is to stop shutting down ag- reliable dispatchable assets at scale that continue to run. This is a way to stop price rises and people wanna build new manufacturing centers, they wanna build data centers, people want to exp- expand in your region, and we need progress to grow capacity on that, that's been that's been way slower than it should be, and I b- I blame federal regulations and previous FERC orders on that. Um, but the thing we can do immediately is if we had not stopped the closure of coal plants, that trop- that winter storm fern that came, hundreds of Americans would have died.

OK.

I need to prevent that from happening. Our our team needs to keep the lights on. We need to keep people alive.

Mr. Chairman, if I could just go a little bit over my time with one question, uh, here that's important, uh, in Michigan right now. Secretary Wright, uh, we had record, uh, snow melt and flooding, uh, in northern Michigan that have, uh, pushed, uh, multiple dams to the state of Brink. Uh, it's extensive flooding. It's continuing right now. They're starting to see some receding waters, but it's a it's a real problem. On April tenth, Governor Whitmer declared a state of emergency as water levels at the, uh, Sheboygan Lock and dam complex uh, row sharply. Uh, utility crews and first responders basically worked around the clock to help the dam operator basically restart uh, the uh, the hydro facility to try to keep the water from toppling over and cause even more serious damage and risk human lives. Uh, so f- so for me this raises the question, you know, why - why are we relying on emergency orders and improvisation when we have federal programs that are actually designed to prevent these kinds of situations? So DOE's Maintaining and Enhancing Hydro-Electricity Insanities program basically provides fund- funding as you know for dam safety, resiliency, and uh environmental uh upgrades. In two thousand twenty-four DOE announced three hundred, or excuse me, four hundred and thirty million in funding for two hundred and ninety-three projects across the country including projects in my home state of Michigan uh through this program as part of the the bipartisan infrastructure law. However, it's my understanding that uh, until recently, this funding has basically been frozen, uh, by the administration, and that even now not all that funding, uh, has been released. Uh, and I can tell you my s- my state desperately needs these investments. So this is old aging infrastructure that needs to be improved to prevent the kinds of things we're seeing in northern Michigan now. You know, aging dams, um, and increasingly frequent storms, uh, and more severe storms are - they're basically all converging to create a - a real public safety, uh, challenge. So time, uh, we have no time to waste, um, and I would just ask, uh, that you release all awarded program funding as soon as possible. Further, I would ask that you would, uh, quickly award unallocated program dollars and I can assure you the need is there, and certainly would love to have your comments about how we can get these projects going that are desperately needed.

Ca- can you give us a brief answer, Mr. Bustamante?

Yeah, well, well, get get right on that, Senator. I I I agree with y- your comments, we need to get the hydro funder funding flowing, we will. And uh, and our people will be in touch with all the project awardees there in Michigan. And uh, yeah, they're critical asset for our country and we want to improve and extend their lives.

Next is

Thank you for raising that.

I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Ne- next is Senator Murkowski, who if I could add, represents a a wonderful energy state. And um, um, Alaska's some of the coolest people you'll ever meet. When you go to a function in Alaska, uh they not only sing the national anthem and know the words, they sing the state anthem. And they know all the words. And I just found that so impressive.

Well, Mister Chairman, I could start off by singing it, but uh I have a lousy voice.

I know you could.

I'm gonna scare as fuck you off.

So could so could Sullivan. It's it's everybody knows the words.

Yeah.

Eight stars of gold on a field of blue, Alaska's flag ma- mean to you. So, there we go.

All right.

There we go. Uh, save you from the singing.

You can.

Um, thank you, Mister Chairman, and I'm delighted that you have such affection for my state. We do come from strong energy-producing states and we're proud of it. How do you do? Uh, we're standing ready to do more. So, um, lots to talk about in this space. Um, but I just wanna make a comment following Senator Coon's, um, observation about, uh, the weatherization accounts. Um, Uh, I wanna thank you for your commitment to release the home energy rebate funds. Um, uh, we've got fifty-four million dollars that is slated for Alaska Native communities. And this is gonna help the tribes and our housing authorities with some rehabilitation, some weatherizations, um, it's gonna help them save some some money on fuel. But I just came from a a help hearing where I shared with Secretary Kennedy. Um, in the interior where I went to high school we had fif- a hundred and fifty two day a hundred and fifty two consecutive days of temperatures below zero not below thirty two not below freezing but below zero so it's been cold

dang

and what has happened is when it's cold you need to you need to have your heat on and it is expensive and so it's always expensive it's been more expensive this year and now you overlay the fact that everyone is paying more for their home heating fuel um, for their diesel, you know, uh, eighty-three percent of the communities are off the roaded system. Many of them are on diesel power. They're going to see their fuel prices this spring when this, when the fuel barge is delivered in, you know, comes in June or so. They're gonna be locked in at these super high prices. And so this is gonna be one little, one little way to offset perhaps. I also raised with Secretary Burgum this morning at our h- h- hearing in Interior, I may be needing to come to him for some help through f- through BIA to - to look at how we can help some of these whole communities that will not have the ability to - to turn on a generator for power um this summer going into the fall. So um I'm hoping I can get your specific commitment that these um

That's great.

home energy rebates are gonna be available to states and tribes by the end of May. That's what we're hearing is the time-line, and if that's right that's gonna help a lot.

Team behind me, we are working hard to get that done.

Super good, thank you. Um, I really appreciate the conversation we had yesterday in energy uh about hydropower and uh to hear you just reiterate the importance of hydropower as as reliable base load resource. You mentioned yesterday that hydropower development could benefit from the three and a half billion dollars in funding that was repurposed from from IJA for the base load power initiatives. So we looked into that and apparently the budget request indicates that this funding will only be used for to uprate federal-owned hydropower projects. So I I need to ask you about this, cuz at the same time um DOE has still unobligated funding from the uh Energy Reliability Assurance the ERA program and from prior Office of Clean Energy demonstration the OSED account so I'm not sure how these funds are being reallocated. So two questions is whether you can clarify whether DOE currently has unobstructed uh, era or OSED funds that remain available and whether they're being directed to the baseload power initiative. We got good headlines.

Yes, is the answer I got from the smart folks behind me.

You gotta love the smart folks behind you. So then, if they're ad- uh, admitting to this, Can you commit to prioritize them for rural and remote energy projects, particularly some of these hydropower projects that were stripped of their OSED awards? I've mentioned some of the small ones that we've been working on. We can get particulars to you if that helps.

Yes, yeah, please do. But look, getting energy to people that don't have access to it or at least can can least afford it is the number one priority, the number one priority.

Well, thank you. And and we've we've got a lot of those. Um, Uh, so we'll work with you on that. Uh, another one that I just wanted to raise to the top of your your list here. The department issued a stop work order last October on a on a project, um, led by G E Vernova. This is in Tok, Alaska. Small community. You wanna talk about

I've been to Tok.

Cold temperatures, right? I've been to Tok. Super cold. Well, um, they were already underway with that project. They're integrating solar battery storage and existing biomass, um, uh, CHP system into this this microgrid for the school district. Um, really big and important to this school where the energy costs are so high, reliability is critical. Um, so I don't know whether the department is planning to reconsider or provide an altern- alternative path forward for - for i- whether it's TOC or some of the other communities that are relying on these small integrated energy systems.

Yeah, send those specifics and we'll - and we'll ge- and we'll get right on it.

OK.

But yeah, all projects are up for reconsideration and we have changed decisions on a number of them. The data is.

Good. We'll we'll get back to you and your team on this. Really appreciate uh working with you and again um as great as we are with oil and gas, we also got water, Mister Chairman of the Energy and Water Committee.

I know you do. I know you do.

Thank you.

Uh, my friend Senator Graham, a master of stage, screen and television.

and a legend in his own mind

and a legend in his own mind

that's right

not unlike the and time not unlike the it's not bragging if you can do it

not bragging if it's true

not unlike the chairman

not unlike the chairman second only to the chairman thank you mister chairman

uh-huh don't you don't have to suck up to make it i got no problem

miss secretary uh reconciliation passed and we had a hundred and forty nine million dollars um for the savannah riverside um processing facility that's been reprogrammed to Los Alamos pit production program. Are you aware of that?

Yes, I am. Yes, I am.

How do you feel about that?

Well, the

I don't feel good about it. We got two hundred twenty seven million that was uh that's been reprogrammed to Savannah Riverside for the Tritium uh finishing facility. Uh rather than go through the list, we got a bunch of money being reprogrammed that wasn't the intent and i'll talk to you on the phone about it

oh sure

and then if you wanna say anything

and um i just wanna let you know i know and i think you're doing a great job but i'd like

about the

to see if we can fix this when we do things up here uh in terms of appropriating we've appreciate people follow it right all of us so uh let's talk a little bit about what's going on and we'll follow up on the reprogram here savannah riverside Uh, do you believe if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would use it?

Yes, they, they, they have stated as much.

OK. Uh, is there any commercial purpose for sixty percent highly enriched uranium?

None whatsoever.

None. So there's no commercial purpose for sixty percent highly enriched uranium. Do you know how, uh, the Islamic Republic was able to produce almost over nine hundred pounds at sixty percent?

deeply buried underground fielder's

well how were they able to produce it

they they ran centrifuges

they cheated

they cheated from the agreements they had

under the j c p o a they were disallowed from producing weapons uh anything over what twenty percent i think

and even twenty percent was the wrong limit but but yes

yeah i think three point six whatever there is no commercial purpose for sixty percent whatever deal they had in place limiting enrichment did not work. Are you aware that they fired missiles that tried to hit Diego Garcia, our military base?

Yes, I am aware.

Are you aware that they're not supposed to have missiles that can go that far?

Yeah, it's al- almost twice the capability they were s- restricted at.

So every regime to restrict enrichment in their missile delivery system has failed. Do you agree with that?

Yes.

Uh, Midnight Hammer. Midnight Hammer was an operation to destroy Iran's um enrichment facilities. Are you aware of that?

Yes, I am.

How long does it take to go from sixty percent enrichment to ninety percent, which is weapons grade?

About a week.

OK, so about a week. Uh, during the peace negotiations, um, uh, Iran boasted about having this nine hundred plus pounds, and you're telling me that technically they could have gone from sixty to ninety in weeks, not months. Right?

Correct. That's almost all the way there.

Yeah. Yeah, so I'm so glad that Trump

Problem.

stop that cause that's why midnight hammer uh are you aware that after midnight hammer they started trying to start up a new enrichment facility the iranians

yes

so that's why we do epic fury do you agree with the idea that iran could never have a nuclear weapon cause they would use it

yes i do agree

do you believe they would use it against the state of israel

i do believe they would

do you believe they would use it against us if they could

They've certainly indicated they'd like to.

Yeah, that's not a risk worth taking, is it?

I I agree.

If you, if if Iran had eight or ten nukes, could they hold the world hostage?

They could. They could, and they could hold they could hold the Middle East, the flows of energy, and the global economy, all of them hostage. A a Western-enabled nuclear arsenal in Iran is a threat we cannot live with.

What would that Right. That would create instability in energy markets in perpetuity, right?

Yes.

no worse nightmare for stability in my view than a radical religious nazi regime regime like iran having eight to ten nuclear weapons that's just my view so um gas prices oil prices uh when we neutralize the iranian nuclear threat through diplomacy or otherwise do you see gas pricing is coming down

yes

Do you agree that if we allowed them to have a nuclear breakout, obtain nuclear weapon material, or actually make a bomb, the instability in energy markets would be perpetual?

Exactly. That was the central energy fear. Besides the human lives and all that, they could threaten the flow of energy supplies and there's nothing we could do about it.

Do you think the Gulf shares that view, the Gulf Arab States?

I, I can say with certainty they do.

OK. Well thank you and your team for uh coming before the committee. Uh to those who wonder what we're doing, we're trying to stop one of the most radical regimes in the history world from acquiring a nuclear capability. I think they would use it. Nobody thought Hitler meant to kill all the Jews. He wrote a book. He actually did. These people are telling you what they would do with a nuclear capability. So I am glad we've taken that off the table, at least for the time being, and get the job done, because if you want lower gas prices over time, you gotta neutralize Iran's ability to interfere with the region. Do you agree with that?

I agree with what you said, Senator. I've made the same argument myself, not not as succinctly as you did. Well done.

Thank you. Thanks. Bye.

Lindsay's been called a lot of things. Succinct is never one of them. Uh, Senator Hoeven, who is also what cool looks like and has to carry the Republican conference on his back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Mr. Secretary, good to see you again. Haven't seen you since. on the uh energy and water authorizing. This is on the APPROP side. Obviously uh very involved with energy and appreciate very much what you do. Um and in addition to all the things that uh Senator Graham laid out very well, I think, and I uh don't you think,

Mm-hmm.

Mister Chair? Uh and we strongly agree with him on and uh appreciate your responses. The other thing is producing more energy here at home. And as you and I conversed yesterday, uh cracked the code two point O. to produce uh to use enhanced oil recovery is gonna help us double what we get out in terms of oil and gas out of the shale play in my state of North Dakota and in Texas and New Mexico and the gas plays in Pennsylvania and uh and Ohio and and other places across the country. We've driven our oil production since we started with the shale plays from five million barrels a day to almost fourteen million barrels a day. So this is a huge initiative we talked about yesterday, we're gonna talk about a little bit more today. Uh, among the very distinguished and esteemed members of the audience, you have uh, Charles Gurecki and John Harju from the Energy and Environmental Research Center at, uh, the University of North Dakota in Grand Fork. So I, I hope everything you've said is factually accurate, cuz these guys are brilliant, as you know, and I'm sure they're fact-checking it all. What I wanna bring up are the regional carbon sequestration partnerships, PCOR, not just in North Dakota but uh our chairman mentioned Alaska and uh our whip, uh Barrasso uh Senator Barrasso of course, Wyoming is our other partner there. So we have some very energy uh intensive states that are working on these regional sequestration part- partnerships to make sure that we can put CO two downhole at scale for enhanced oil recovery. There's funding there to do that. about seventy five million dollars so i'm asking for your help in making sure that we advance that funding for these regional partnerships including the one led by the e. e. r. c. which includes wyoming and you know wyoming at the dry forks that coal plant they're taking co two off it and it's working very well for enhanced oil recovery uh alaska's worth it working with us as well i want uh i'm asking for your commitment as another piece of this crack the code two point O puzzle to uh advance that funding to get those partnerships uh doing just exactly that CO two for EOR

Yeah absolutely we'll look into those projects it always comes down to the math and the numbers but the concept is strong and and I agree with your arguments for it.

You're familiar with the projects though and and the concept of what they're trying to do and you're supportive of it recognize the need for it

Yeah I think it's a good long-term energy strategy again just that devil's always in the details but that's what we gotta look into.

Right, OK. Um, the uh nuclear warheads uh program at the national labs, uh can you provide us with a a quick update on those programs and are they advancing in sync with the rest of the update for the sentinel program?

I I I think they are, I know they've they've had years of of not progressing as fast as as we all would like to see them go I didn't get my administrator for NNSA in till last fall. We've built a team around that. We've done everything we can to align incentives from outside contractors and inside workers to drive as efficient progress as we can. We asked for an increased budget expenditure for fiscal year twenty twenty seven cuz these programs are critical but I I think things are, I think things are going well. I'm proud of what the team's done and uh the W eighty is gonna be on schedule and on time and I hope W eighty seven uh is well.

I was gonna come back with a question on geothermal, but I think instead, unless you got a really short answer, is there anything else in your opinion that we can or should be doing to link our coal plants and the oil fields and double the life of our coal plants, so we get more electricity and double the production that we get out of our oil and gas fields, uh, to, again, make us not just energy secure but energy dominant in this country? anything else we should be focused on and doing in your opinion.

Well, a critical thing to do everything you just said is to have our coal plants. We've had a massive effort over the last fifteen years to close as many coal plants as possible. We would have had hundreds of dead Americans in in the winter storm fern if we had closed the coal plants that were all on the list to be closed. So number one is we need to keep the coal plants we have open. We need to modernize and upgrade a number of them. Um And we need to obviously keep the coal mines open that supply them and keep them running. But yes, so those we n- we need those enabling conditions for these plants to carry out your vision of uh shale two point O.

Thanks for your commitment to get this done. You're a key player. You're the right guy. You've got the great history. You know what you're doing and we appreciate it very much.

Thank you, Senator.

Do you wanna say something else?

Yep, I have more time for comment. I really wanna finish my session.

Okay. Um. Mister Chairman, I I or Mister Secretary, I think you're one of President Trump's best appointments. And, um, I'm very impressed with the team that you've put together. And I hope you're all willing to serve a long, long, long time.

Nothing.

Um, I agree with my s- uh, friend, Senator Coons, I think we need to look ahead. But I would be remiss if I didn't say this. As uh I might have mentioned before, uh I I used to have a beagle named Roger, loved him to death. Uh he passed after fifteen, got a lot of years with him. But Roger, like all beagles, would run off. He was incorrigible. And sometimes he'd come back a roadkill. And he'd hide it under my back porch. And what I saw in the last thirty days at the Department of Energy under the past administration looked like something Roger kept under my back back porch. Seventy eight billion dollars, not million, billion dollars as best I can remember, we shoveled out the door. And y'all had to clean it up. I'm not saying they were all bad grants and loans. But I'm saying a bunch of them were. And I I just couldn't let that go without saying it. Now, uh, I thought thought I heard you say, correct me if I'm wrong, that you you see uh in our near future small modular nuclear reactors. Can you elaborate on that or did I misunderstand you?

No, you you you are correct, Senator. uh, under one of President Trump's, uh, executive orders last year was to see if we could get small modular reactors, next generation reactor designs critical, meaning running the full nuclear system by July four of this year, our nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. And, and I sit here today, we still got, we still have, uh, two and a half months for that date, but I believe we will have multiple small modular reactors critical, meaning running their full nuclear system, uh, before July four this year. I could not be more excited about that. This is a next generation of nuclear energy, where when you can build things small, meaning build as much as possible inside factories, you can drive down costs, you can drive up efficiencies. Um, I think we truly are going to launch a nuclear renaissance during this administration. I think it's gonna have enormous benefits around our country. Uh, I couldn't be more excited about it, and I could go on for forever, so I'll stop.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Look, this is not a newsflash. To some extent our grid is a mess. Um, we we've made some strides in clean energy, uh, wind, uh, solar. We can't get them hooked up. Um, uh, you didn't father that child, but you gotta raise it. Um, what what are we doing? What are, what can Congress do to help?

i think we definitely there's challenges at

do we need more transformers what's the problem

we need more transformers we need more switch gear um we need more electrical equipment and electrical steel built in the united states which is part of our supply chain efforts to build more of these equipments here we need to apply artificial intelligence to these grid studies that you have to do when you put a new source on, they take years That's crazy. But with artificial intelligence and I think some more common sense regulation, we're gonna speed up these grid studies dramatically and prioritize of all the things that have their hand in the air to connect to the grid, uh, which ones are gonna be effective and reliable and improve the the the the operation of the grid and help drive down the prices and how can we get them, uh, approved and connect, actual connection as quickly as possible.

My last question is about AI and quantum computing. Um, look, I'm very proud what American companies have done in artificial intelligence. I do think we're ahead of uh China and i- what people don't like to talk about in China is AI is supposed to tell you the truth. Uh, in China, AI can tell you the truth, except they can't criticize the Chinese government. In the in the long run that's gonna bite 'em on the elbow. Um. I support AI. I think it's gonna make our lives better if it doesn't kill us first. I don't know what to believe about AI. A lot of the the smart people talking about AI also are trying to sell an IPO. And I'm not saying they're not telling the truth, but I think they're trying to sell an IPO. I would strongly encourage you and your team to to the American people are plenty smart, but they're busy earning a living to try to explain to them in basic terms and and frankly to Congress um how AI can be applied to to energy pro- production to make it more affordable and more efficient. Most Americans understand artificial intelligence, at least the general concept. They just don't know what the hell to do with it. And you don't need to comment on that, but you and and and and and the big brain sitting behind you, if you could do that, uh, t- for the American people, just centered on energy, and frankly do that for the members of Congress, uh, you you all deserve a pay raise.

Great advice, Senator. That's two two takeaways I have from today that we will indeed carry out and we will deliver on at the Department of Education.

OK. Anything else, uh, Chair?

Uh, Miss, thank you, Chair Kennedy. I think this is a really good discussion on behalf of everybody. I think we have a real challenge in front of us to to put our appropriations built together.

Mm-hmm.

For me, the ex extreme cuts and extreme war spending are unacceptable and the last thing we need to do is have a budget that slashes programs that bring down energy costs for families today that's what they want us to do so I hope we can work together in a bipartisan way and reject the blueprint in front of us and work together to listen to our colleagues and come together with a bipartisan bill

Well uh let me say this uh I appreciate that sort of and and I'm gonna say something that you folks can't uh and this is not a comment about uh president trump uh there's a comment about all presidents we never follow the president's budget uh it's i mean i really appreciate the hard work that goes into it i learn a lot from going through it we adopt some of the ideas but we end up doing our own budget and that's the way it should be and i hope we can work together and put something together that looks like somebody designed the thing on purpose We did it last time, and I think we can do it this time, and I'm optimistic, and Melissa says I've gotta read this into the record. Thank you. That will end our hearing today. I want to thank Secretary Wright and all my colleagues for participating in today's hearing. I look forward to working together on this year's appropriations bill, to ensure the Department of Energy as the resources they need. I will keep the hearing record open for one week. If you need a little more time, just let us know. Committee members who would like to submit written questions for the record should do so by five o'clock p m Wednesday, April twenty ninth. If you need more time, just let me know. We appreciate the Department of Energy responding to them in a reasonable amount of time. Thank you very much to our witness today. You should all take the rest of the day off, and we stand adjourned.

Thank you, Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Senator Murray.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm? Hold on. You can maybe go have a cocktail and then go back to the office. Thank you. Thank you all.

Thank you.