The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has laid off about 1,200 to 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy, including employees at a power grid office, the nuclear security administration and the loans office, three sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Democratic lawmakers also said the layoffs include workers at national labs, hydroelectric plants and Cold War legacy nuclear sites that pose safety risks. The DOE has about 14,000 federal employees and 95,000 contractors.
The layoffs of probationary workers come after three people representing billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the agency last week.
Some 325 workers have been let go from the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the U.S. nuclear weapons fleet and works to secure radiological materials around the world, two of the sources said.
But those layoffs at NNSA have been "partly rescinded" to retain essential nuclear security workers, one of the sources said. It was unclear how many of the 325 firings were rescinded.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"It's been chaotic for the staff," one source at NNSA said. "We just want to focus on national security stuff, and this has distracted us from our work."
The losses at the NNSA occur at a time when nuclear power plants have been at risk in Russia's war on Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe.
The NNSA is still working to secure radiological materials in the region, one source said.
'Not … in the public interest'
A copy of a letter seen by Reuters and sent to some DOE employees says: "DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest. For this reason, you are being removed from your position with DOE and the federal civil service effective today."
The department withdrew laid off workers' access to government-issued laptops and phones just after midnight Eastern Standard Time on Friday, which left many with no way to receive the notifications and no knowledge they had been fired, one source said.
Some 45 workers were let go from the Loan Programs Office, which has hundreds of billions of dollars in loan authority for clean energy, nuclear and clean vehicle projects, one source said. Another seven laid off in the Office of General Counsel had been supporting work in clean energy demonstration projects.
In addition, 18 of 148 people were let go at the Grid Deployment Office, which seeks to modernize the power grid, making it resilient to extreme weather and able to transmit power from clean energy and fossil fuel-fired power plants.
In Washington state, at least a dozen workers at the Hanford nuclear site — a 1940s site for plutonium and uranium production for atomic bombs, now decommissioned but highly contaminated — were laid off, including safety engineers who clean up and monitor the site, according to Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington.
"These reckless firings will slow down critical cleanup work and make workers less safe. Trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts," she said. "These layoffs will hurt companies, workers and their families across Eastern Washington."
Murray said there were layoffs at other DOE-run facilities in the Pacific Northwest, including the Bonneville Power Administration hydroelectric facility and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which carries out research on everything from nuclear energy to battery storage.
Murray's office reported layoffs of more than 600 electricians, scientists and cybersecurity experts at BPA.
