Donald Trump administration recalls nuke bomb specialists fired by Energy Department
About 1,200 to 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy were laid off, including hundreds of employees from the office that oversees the nuclear stockpile
The United States Department of Energy is considering bringing back nuclear energy specialists after abruptly firing hundreds of workers, Bloomberg reported.
The employees responsible for designing and maintaining the country's cache of nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), were part of a larger wave of workers dismissed from the Energy Department.
According to the Bloomberg report, between 300 and 400 NNSA workers were terminated.
The decision was announced at an all-staff meeting on Friday. The agency is seeking to recall the workers because they deal with sensitive national security secrets.
“Those cuts are especially concerning because the positions typically require high-level security clearances and training that can take 18 months or longer,” Jill Hruby, who served as the NNSA administrator during the Biden administration, told Bloomberg.
“These people are likely never going to come back and work for the government. We’ve had a very active programme requiring an increase to our staff so the indiscriminate layoffs of people will be really difficult for the coming years," Hruby said in a telephonic interview.
An Energy Department spokesman disputed the number of employees impacted by the terminations and said less than 50 were dismissed.
“These staff members were probationary employees and held primarily administrative and clerical roles,” the department said in a statement.
On February 14, US president Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk-led DOGE campaign to radically cut back the U.S. bureaucracy spread, with thousands of workers who handle everything from securing the nation's nuclear weapons to caring for military veterans losing their jobs.
About 1,200 to 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy were laid off, including hundreds of employees from the office that oversees the nuclear stockpile, Reuters reported.
The NNSA firings were part of a wider swath of dismissals across the Energy Department, which included employees at the Loan Programmes 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.
Nuclear Programmes
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.