After informing hundreds of employees that they've lost their jobs—a move met with alarm from national security experts—the Energy Department is scrambling to bring back nuclear energy specialists. The reversal on the firings was announced Friday at a staff meeting of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Bloomberg reports. Insiders said department officials didn't seem to realize the agency oversees nuclear weapons, per CNN. An Energy Department spokesperson disputed those accounts, maintaining that it fired fewer than 50 people from the agency and that they were in "primarily administrative and clerical roles."
Those fired include NNSA workers at installations where nuclear arms are built, where they oversee the contractors and inspect the weapons. Headquarters staff members who write requirements for the contractors who build nuclear weapons also were dismissed. Managers had drawn up lists of essential employees, per NPR, and allowed a 200-character explanation. On Thursday, the managers were told that the vast majority of those requested exemptions were denied. Many of the employees were told to clean out their desks immediately.
The agency's responsibilities include servicing nuclear weapons when they're not deployed on missiles and bombers, as well as making safety and security upgrades to the warheads. Some of the fired employees worked to keep terrorists and rogue nations from acquiring weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. Many of them had "Q" clearances, the highest level in the Energy Department. Replacing them isn't quick, experts said, because it can take at least 18 months and training before such clearances can be approved. "These people are likely never going to come back and work for the government," Jill Hruby, who was the administrator of the NNSA during the Biden administration, told CNN. (More National Nuclear Security Administration stories.)
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