(17 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Panhandle, Texas – 2 March 2024
1. Pantex entrance
2. Wide of armored vehicle outside facility
3. Pan of bunkers at Pentex
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Panhandle, Texas – 1 March 2024
4. Close of sign on barbed wire fence reading "Warning: use of deadly force authorized"
5. Big blue "Pantex Plant/United States Department of Energy"
6. Wide of Pantex plant site, with large field in front
7. Various of Pantex plant site at sunset
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Near Richland, Washington – July 11, 2016
8. Wide shot of sign for Hanford Nuclear Reservation
9. Wide view of facility property
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Near Aiken, South Carolina – 20 November 2023
10. STILL of area where workers sand-blast the large stainless steel tanks used in the vitrification process to rid them of contaminants at the Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
STORYLINE:
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that DOGE’s blind cost cutting will put communities at risk.
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, with some losing access to email before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning to find they were locked out. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
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.
The hundreds let go at NNSA were part of a DOGE purge across the Department of Energy that targeted about 2,000 employees.
“The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, referencing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”
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.
“This letter serves as formal notification that the termination decision issued to you on Feb. 13, 2025 has been rescinded, effective immediately,” said the memo, which was obtained by the AP.
The accounts from the three officials contradict an official statement from the Department of Energy, which said fewer than 50 National Nuclear Security Administration staffers were let go, calling them “probationary employees” who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”
But that wasn’t the case. The firings prompted one NNSA senior staffer to post a warning and call to action.
“This is a pivotal moment. We must decide whether we are truly committed to leading on the world stage or if we are content with undermining the very systems that secure our nation’s future,” deputy division director Rob Plonski posted to LinkedIn. “Cutting the federal workforce responsible for these functions may be seen as reckless at best and adversarily opportunistic at worst.”
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News post in February 22, 2025, 6:05 am.
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