Trump Administration Recalls Nuclear Bomb Specialists Fired by Energy Department

Citing a Bloomberg report, the US Department of Energy is considering bringing in nuclear energy specialists into the force most likely after firing hundreds without notice.

The employees tasked with 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 report of Bloomberg, between 300 to 400 NNSA employees were terminated.

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The announcement was made during a staff meeting on Friday. The agency plans to call them back 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 claim that an inflated number of employees were terminated, saying that less than 50 were dismissed.

“These staff members were probationary employees and held primarily administrative and clerical roles,” the department said in a statement.

President Donald Trump, along with his advisor Elon Musk, would lead a campaign that cut through bureaucracy in the US on February 14. It spread with thousands of its citizens who were in jobs-from the ones that secure nuclear weapons for the nation to those that tend to veteran military personnel.

Approximately 1,200 to 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy were laid-off, including hundreds of employees working for the office that oversees the nuclear stockpile, according to a report by Reuters.

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The NNSA firings were part of a larger wave of lay-offs across the Energy Department that included interests like the Loan Programmes Office, which has just been formed to fund clean energy projects; the group responsible for stopping cyberattacks against the power grid; and the general counsel office of the department.

Nuclear Programmes

The NNSA is also a semi-autonomous body of the Energy Department, which is charged with the responsibilities of manufacturing and dismantling nuclear weapons, provision of nuclear reactors for submarines to the Navy, and responsible for responding to radiological emergencies, among others.

This is also a key area of operation in counter-terrorism activity: transporting nuclear weapons throughout America's vast network and responding to nuclear incidents around the world. Recent highlights have included investigating how AI could potentially make it easier for people to create nuclear bombs for use, Hruby said.

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