According to two persons familiar with the situation, the Energy Department is looking to reinstate nuclear energy experts after unexpectedly informing hundreds of employees that their jobs were being cut.
The workers at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, who were in charge of creating and managing the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, were among a greater number of people fired from the Energy Department, which alarmed national security analysts. According to a person acquainted with the situation, between 300 and 400 NNSA employees were let off.
At an all-staff meeting on Friday, the agency announced its swift turnaround. 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.
According to Jill Hruby, the NNSA administrator during the Biden administration, those cuts are particularly troubling because the posts usually involve training and high-level security clearances that can take up to 18 months.
In a phone conversation, Hruby stated that these individuals are probably never going to return to work for the government. In the upcoming years, it will be quite difficult to make indiscriminate layoffs because we have a very busy program that requires an expansion in our team.
Less than 50 workers were let go, according to an Energy Department spokesperson who denied the exact number of workers affected by the layoffs.
According to a statement from the department, these employees were on probation and mainly performed secretarial and administrative duties.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sparked a surge of terminations throughout the federal government this week, which highlights the instability as the richest man in the world tries to swiftly restructure the federal bureaucracy in Trump’s image. Some employees who were told they were going to be fired at the Small Business Administration earlier this week received a second message informing them that their jobs were safe and that they were not being dismissed. However, they then received a third message informing them that they were being laid off.
The NNSA firings were part of a larger wave of layoffs at the Energy Department, including staff at the department’s general counsel office, the Loan Programs Office, the newly established unit to finance clean energy projects, and the team in charge of thwarting cyberattacks against the power grid.
Among its many responsibilities, the NNSA, a somewhat independent division of the Energy Department, is in charge of creating and decommissioning nuclear weapons, supplying the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines, and handling radioactive situations.
By moving nuclear weapons across the nation and responding to nuclear incidents worldwide, the CIA also plays a significant role in counterterrorism. According to Hruby, recent efforts have looked at how AI may be applied to potentially facilitate the production of nuclear weapons.
We have been concerned about these areas and have staffed up to address them, Hruby stated. These are highly skilled individuals who are prepared to work nonstop if necessary.
According to a breakdown of the layoffs seen by Bloomberg News, the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations suffered one of the most severe cuts, with almost 25% of its employees being let go. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided that office with over $27 billion in funds to support advanced nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture projects. Overseeing a $8 billion plan to build a network of hydrogen hubs across the US is one of its top goals.
“Weakening this program will only benefit foreign competitors because it helps bring competitive manufacturing back to American shores,” stated Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit organization that supported the financing.
According to a person familiar with the situation, some 50 employees from the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office were among the other layoffs. Under President Joe Biden, the green bank expanded its lending ability to $400 billion and has provided funding for a variety of sustainable energy initiatives to businesses such as California utility PG&E Corp. and Rivian Automotive Inc. The program has over $47 billion in conditional commitments to corporations that it has not yet finalized, and it was one of those suspended amid a Trump administration review of Energy Department financing.
The breakdown also showed that about 20 employees at the Energy Department’s Grid Deployment Office, which managed about $22 billion in government funding for electricity grid projects, and about 12 employees from the General Council’s office were cut. Additionally, almost half a dozen employees from the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response—which protects against threats to the power grid and other energy infrastructure—as well as 15 employees from the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains were let go.
According to a person familiar with the situation, the Energy Department also laid off about 10% of its information technology staff.
-By Bloomberg News’ Ari Natter
-This report was contributed to by Jamie Tarabay and Jennifer A. Dlouhy.
