DOGE and President Musk are realizing that it is not so easy to replace nuclear energy specialists with a bunch of robots and 20 year old incels. I guess there IS something valuable in education and experience. Bloomberg is reporting that the Energy Department is “seeking to bring back nuclear energy specialists after abruptly telling hundreds of workers that their jobs were eliminated.”
These employees are “responsible for designing and maintaining the nation’s cache of nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Safety Administration”, but were deemed expendable by DOGE. About 300-400 were let go, but that hasty decision was quickly reversed on Friday. They are now seeking to rehire the workers because “they deal with sensitive national security secrets.”
To be clear, people who work in these roles usually require the highest level of security clearance, which can take over a year and a half to obtain during a normally staffed and well functioning administration. It is unclear how much of a delay DOGE would cause to any background check process.
It is unclear how many of the fired specialists will even want to come back. The former NNSA administrator, Jill Hruby, told Bloomberg: “These people are likely never going to come back and work for the government. 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.”
