-
Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday. One of the hardest hit offices was the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, which saw about 30% of the cuts. Those employees work on reassembling warheads, one of the most sensitive jobs across the nuclear weapons enterprise, with the highest levels of clearance.
By late Friday night, the agency’s acting director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings for all but 28 of those hundreds of fired staff members. The NNSA staff who had been reinstated could not all be reached after they were fired, and some were reconsidering whether to return to work, given the uncertainty created by DOGE. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the firings could create a sense of instability over the nuclear program both at home and abroad.
|
