DOGE firings: nuclear weapon specialists to be hired back
Ari Natter, Bloomberg
The Energy Department is seeking to bring back nuclear energy
specialists after abruptly telling hundreds of workers that their jobs
were eliminated, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The employees, responsible for designing and maintaining the nation’s
cache of nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Safety Administration,
were part of a larger wave of workers dismissed from the Energy
Department, drawing alarm from national security experts.
Between 300 and 400 NNSA workers were terminated, according to a person
familiar with the matter.
The agency’s quick reversal was announced Friday in an all-staff
meeting. The NNSA is seeking to recall the workers because they deal
with sensitive national security secrets, according to the people, who
weren’t authorized to talk about the matter, which is
not public.
Those cuts are especially concerning because the positions typically
require high-level security clearances and training that can take 18
months or longer, said Jill Hruby, who served as the NNSA administrator
during the Biden administration.
“These people are likely never going to come back and work for the
government,” Hruby said in a phone interview. “We’ve had a very active
program requiring an increase to our staff so the indiscriminate layoffs
of people will be really difficult for the coming
years.”
The firings — part of a wave of
terminations across the federal government this week spurred by Elon
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — underscore the chaos as the
world’s richest man seeks to quickly overhaul the
federal bureaucracy in Trump’s image. At the Small Business
Administration earlier this week, some workers who were told they were
being fired, received a second message telling them that they weren’t
being terminated and that their jobs were safe — only to
receive a third
message telling them they were, in fact, out of a job.
The NNSA firings were part of a wider
swath of dismissals across the Energy Department, which included
employees at the Loan Programs Office, a recently formed
unit to
fund clean energy projects, the group responsible for preventing
cyberattacks against the power grid, and the department’s general
counsel office.
The Energy Department and the NNSA did not respond to requests for comment.
Nuclear Programs
The NNSA is a semi-autonomous arm of the Energy Department responsible
for producing and dismantling nuclear weapons, providing the Navy with
nuclear reactors for submarines and responding to radiological
emergencies, among other duties.
The agency also plays a key role in counter-terrorism,
transporting nuclear weapons around the country and responding to
nuclear incidents around the world. Recent focuses have included
examining how AI can be used to make it potentially easer for people
to make nuclear bombs, Hruby said.
“These are areas where we’ve been concerned and staffed up to respond to
that,” Hruby said. “These are working with high skill-levels that are
willing to work around-the-clock if needed.”
Among the deepest cuts was to the Energy
Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, where roughly 25% of
its staff was eliminated, according to a breakdown of the cuts seen by
Bloomberg News. That office received
some $27 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, as well
as bipartisan infrastructure law, to finance carbon capture, hydrogen
and advanced nuclear projects. Among its priorities is managing an $8
billion plan to establish a
network
of hydrogen hubs throughout the US.
“This program helps bring competitive manufacturing back to American
shores, so weakening it is only going to help foreign competitors,” said
Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit group that advocated
for the funding.
From GE
Healthcare
Other cuts included roughly 50 people
from the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, according to a person
familiar with the matter. The green bank swelled to $400 billion in
lending authority under President Joe Biden
and has funded loans to companies including Rivian Automotive Inc. and
California utility PG&E Corp. for a host of clean-energy projects.
The program, which was among those
frozen
amid an ongoing review of
Energy Department funding by the Trump administration, has nearly $47
billion in conditional commitments to companies it has yet to finalize.
In addition, according to the breakdown,
cuts included roughly a dozen people from Energy Department’s General
Council’s office and approximately 20 individuals in its
Grid
Deployment Office, overseeing some $22 billion in federal funding for power grid projects. In addition, about 15 people in the
Office
of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains and about half a dozen from the
Office
of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, which guards against threats to the power grid and other energy infrastructure, were dismissed.
In addition roughly 10% of the Energy Department’s information
technology team was eliminated as well, according to a person familiar
with the matter.