US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

The US is busy making the biggest own-goal one could imagine.<p>From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back.<p>Lots of other countries are standing by watching while the USA has seemingly found enough rope to hang itself.

If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on.<p>I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acting wantonly.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;14&#x2F;nx-s1-5298190&#x2F;nuclear-agency-trump-firings-nnsa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;14&#x2F;nx-s1-5298190&#x2F;nuclear-agency-...</a><p>If even half of NPR&#x27;s report is true, the way in which it was conducted was grossly cruel and with complete ignorance.<p>DOGE and it&#x27;s supporters are quiet literally playing like a child with the levers that decide if <i>you</i> wake up tomorrow.

Even if they could rehire everyone instantly, these people are now ripe for being turned by a foreign adversary like Russia or China. And I bet the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have increased their espionage efforts exponentially over the past few weeks.<p>And that’s even before we consider that the current administration has shown a tremendous affinity for enemies and dictators while putting the hammer down on allies and friends.<p>And I nearly forgot the appointment of individuals to the highest positions in charge of state secrets and intelligence, who are either already compromised or highly sympathetic to those enemy regimes.

To those of you who have pushed back on the arguments that the US is heading towards authoritarianism, I hereby present Exhibit A:[0]<p>&gt; “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.<p>&gt; By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.<p>&gt; The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.<p>The hallmark of authoritarianism is to be above the law. (Which is why the SCOTUS ruling was so damaging and directly contributing to this.). If you’re not familiar with China, the way things work there is “rule by law” rather than “rule of law”. The difference being that “rule by law” means that those in power can do whatever they want since they make up the laws as they go (like a monarch ruling by decree). Trump’s statement is exactly that. And make no mistake this is not a one-off quip like buying Greenland. His actions so far have made it clear he believes that there should be no restraints on the power of the executive branch. In other words , authoritarianism.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;trump-saves-country-quote.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;trump-saves-c...</a><p>Be careful, America, what you wished for.

What&#x27;s the biggest difference between a startup and a country?<p>Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app, who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home.<p>However when you manage something big, any upside from improving is weighed against its risk of degradation.<p>What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it&#x27;s like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s a controversial statement. And I truly believe that&#x27;s what (at least half of) the people voted.<p>My best estimation is that they are conservatives in that they want to conserve power that they hold, and they see the government not as a foundation for their corps, but as an enemy, not state as a literal creator of money, but as its dilluter or robber (through taxes), not the state as the basis for the fiction that is a corporation, but as a taxer of them. And their emnity is mostly due to the redistributive role of their state.<p>And I believe that people vote out of aspirational belonging to a rich class, they think they are rich, or they want to aspire to become rich, or they buy into the establishes morals that entitles the rich to power.<p>So that&#x27;s how I wrap my heads around the conservative right overthrowing and destroying the government, they see it as a threat to their established power, or their chances to rise to power.<p>But I&#x27;m just some idiot on hn who hopefully will come back to delete this later

This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so had to hire them back. Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees

In saner times this headline would be from the Onion, not the BBC.

In the first Trump admin, Rick Perry was picked to head the Department of Energy with the goal of shutting it down. These cockwombles thought the DoE was about pushing green energy and recycling and stuff like that. Once on the job, Perry discovered that he was in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. To his credit, he course corrected and seems to have done a decent job once he found out what it was.<p>It’s the same story again, except with even less competence and knowledge.<p>It’s incredible that half the voters in this country thought this guy was a good choice for our leader.

Nuclear workers go where the work is…they are not going to wait around when there’s plenty of jobs out there needing their skills.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;doge-as-a-national.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;doge-as-a-nat...</a> &gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43035977">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43035977</a>

The last few weeks of government action has shown me one thing. When the democrats take over next there will be no reason they can’t make the health care insurance sector government controlled. I think the vast majority of people would support them.

I find it sad that the US is confused about what a work contract is. If you can tell someone to take unpaid leave whenever you feel like it then they don&#x27;t really need to call you back or explain why they won&#x27;t be in next week.

So, my SO had a fellowship with the NNSA here. As in, the NNSA paid for their grad school.<p>I&#x27;ll speak to my own experiences here though as the spouse.<p>The NNSA is, like, bonkers important. I&#x27;ll just copy-paste wikipedia here:<p>&quot;The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is ... responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;National_Nuclear_Security_Administration" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;National_Nuclear_Security_Admi...</a><p>The reason it took until 2000 to make them is tied up with the silver tsunami and congress. But suffice to say, we really <i>really</i> need them. A lot of their stuff is very classified, but the presentation that I was allowed to attend were quite eye opening. Most of the presentations are on things like blast resistance in microsceonds of a door or some z-pinch magnetic experiment. But there were are lot on the national security picture at the time too. The main concern is that the nukes are aging. Stuffing 1950&#x27;s breadboards next to that much radiation for 50 years wasn&#x27;t the plan, we were thinking of using them a bit more quickly than that. But now we have them and can&#x27;t be sure if they&#x27;ll work. There are a lot of other issues too, big ones, but I&#x27;ll let the interested people here discover more on their own.<p>Here&#x27;s a list of conferences that can get you going on where to find more: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nssc.berkeley.edu&#x2F;events-and-programs&#x2F;nssc-conferences&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nssc.berkeley.edu&#x2F;events-and-programs&#x2F;nssc-conferenc...</a><p>Youtube also has a lot of them online too: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=nnsa+conference" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=nnsa+conference</a><p>The general side I saw was in my spouse trying to be recruited by the NNSA to work for them after graduation. The silver tsunami is a big deal in DoD government. And the issue for us at the time was the very much lowered pay. One of the main sites was the square mile that is Livermore National Labs. But with a PhD in the right fields and the NNSA fellowship, my spouse could easily just go across the Dumbarton bridge for about 4x the pay and mostly just as good benefits (the retirement plans aren&#x27;t quite as stellar, but only a little). So, this is where HN&#x2F;tech and the NNSA merge: employee competition.<p>Now, I&#x27;m not surprised that they&#x27;re reporting that a lot of the fired employees are not coming back. The big thing that they had going for them, personally, was &#x27;the mission&#x27; and the quiet respect and admiration that the government and therefore the people of the US had for them and their sacrifices (classified work has a lot of sacrifice that is not seen, especially in nuclear work, much more so than beyond just pay).<p>That they were fired, likely by some random 20 something from DOGE (read: not a <i>flag</i> rank military officer (Admiral+) or an elected official of national office (Senator+)), without notice, last Thursday. Man, that hurt the ego a lot, and fundamentally altered the bargain that they had with the government and the US people in general (from what very little I knew of those people).<p>It is going to be very hard to get them all back to begin with, let alone for that same payscale and benefits schedule. That gap for &#x27;fired <i>with</i> cause&#x27; is going to mess up the retirement in a way that is currently hard to fix (AFAIK). Many of the NNSA are just going to go get a better job, really.<p>And the US is going to be left behind in the nuclear arms race that is still very much going on.<p>Summary: Pardon my french, but, this is a <i>big</i> fuck up.

Since we are now being governed by the enthusiastic ignorant raised in the wake of Reaganism (or for the unfortunate Brits, Thatcherism), it would be a really good idea for us to rename the Department of Energy to the Department of Scary Nukes We Must Keep Secure. Then maybe GOP presidents would stop nominating oilmen to be Secretary of Energy.

This is the Musk algorithm in action.<p>He cuts, removes and simplifies until it starts to hurt, and then slightly dials it back. He does this with rocket engines and staff.<p>Now he&#x27;s doing it with government services and the US as a whole is doing it with its allies.<p>The problem with the latter is that you can&#x27;t dial it back. Countries don&#x27;t really like it when you threaten to annex them, disrupt their economies on a whim and negotiate about them behinds their backs.<p>Not only is the US no longer an ally of said countries, it&#x27;s a hostile nation. 80 years of cooperation and trillions of dollars were wiped out in a single speech.

Musk will see this as working as intended.<p>There’s a segment in one of his many Starship interviews with Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, where he talks about simplifying the machine. He says you’ve got to cut and cut and cut some more until it’s radically simple. His rule of thumb is that if you’re not adding back 10% of the stuff you got rid of, you didn’t get rid of enough in the first place.<p>This might be fine for greenfield engineering projects, where there are no “Chesterton’s fences”, where there are not yet any other people or things depending on success, but it’s wholly inadequate for people problems or brownfield systems and processes. The fact Musk doesn’t understand this just suggests ignorance, and suggests that it’s not an idea he really understands at its core. To understand an idea truly, means to understand when it applies and when it doesn’t, and why.

[dupe] Earlier: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43055119">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43055119</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43063512">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43063512</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481</a>

&gt; The nuclear security officials who were laid off on Thursday helped oversee the nation&#x27;s stockpile of nuclear weapons. That included staff who are stationed at facilities where the weapons are built, according to CNN.<p>So now, the question is which country will benefit from this the most. Russia or Saudi Arabia? Maybe Iran?

<i>Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you&#x27;re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I&#x27;m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it&#x27;s true! — but when you&#x27;re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that&#x27;s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we&#x27;re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it&#x27;s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what&#x27;s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what&#x27;s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it&#x27;s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it&#x27;s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don&#x27;t, they haven&#x27;t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it&#x27;s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.&quot;</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;fact-check&#x2F;donald-trump-sentence&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;fact-check&#x2F;donald-trump-sentence&#x2F;</a>

Funny. Who would&#x27;ve thought that a shitshow of an administration will bring instability?

They certainly can name their new price due to urgency but struggles is a bit of an overstretch. They certainly know where they live. A knock at the door with flowers and a big bonus check will do.

The earlier post (140 points) got flagged: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481</a>

Musk himself has received billions in social security in the form of subsidies, government contracts and stock market rallies fueled by nepotism.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;business&#x2F;elon-musk-wealth-government-help&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;business&#x2F;elon-musk-wealth...</a><p>Where will the money he purportedly saves in the bureaucracies go? Will houses be built for the Appalachian voters that were oh so important before the election?<p>Will it be use to subsidize another telemedicine scam for all-in podcast members, who are also on Megyn Kelly&#x27;s show now?

You voted for this. Yes, you did. Of course they don&#x27;t headline their campaign with the stuff they&#x27;re _really_ going to do.<p>All democracies need to switch to policy based voting and hide political parties behind them until after election results, humans are too tribal for anything else.

Its hilarious. Americans dont realise they are being played. All this BS from the MAGA people and trump are just shift attention away from the conversation to tax billionaires. You guys had been going in the right direction when it came to having the rich pay their fair share. Now look at what you are all talking about? Your fighting each other. What a shitshow.<p>I really dont think America will recover from this and while the world will suffer as a result, I think in the long term, things will work out. There will be some major suffering but thats the way the world works. WW2 happened, a lot of suffering then peace. We had peace for too long, people forgot about suffering and now look at the world. Thanks America, you played yourself and are now bringing the rest of the world down with you. Rather than focusing on the right things, you are being played to argue with each other.

If I was the one fired I would ask for $10,000,000&#x2F;week salary to come back and then would donate 98% of that

With regard to nuclear security, this is a sourceless article, and the comment pointing this out got flagged into oblivion so the outrage machine could ignore it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43066633">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43066633</a>

Now that they&#x27;ve been fired, the gov&#x27;t has lost the goodwill&#x2F;loyalty from the staff. In other words, the gov&#x27;t is competing with private industry rates. Unfortunately for taxpayers, rehiring is always more expensive.

I have at least one persons information:<p>Homer jay simpson<p>742 Evergreen terrace, Springfield.<p>The only problem is I don’t know the state.

related discussion from yesterday &gt;&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43061481</a>

I&#x27;m sure the market for nuclear safety people is small enough that they will tolerate a few days of turmoil as the government cuts expenses.

The article does not give a clear reason why they can not be rehired. I don’t believe these people can not be reached.

I guess they&#x27;ve not included those working for the agencies responsible for certifying nuclear power stations.<p>That would be rich in irony.<p>But who knows?

Here we go again, let&#x27;s watch HN users bend over backwards to tell everyone how this is a good thing, or clever, or a master stroke of finding inefficiencies.

how the turn tables

&quot;The Trump administration has since tried to reverse their terminations, according to media outlets&quot;<p>Why would they cite anonymous &quot;media outlets&quot; and not at least find some modicum of an official source to reference?

I start thinking that Trump and Elon are Russian assets whose task is to destroy the US from the inside. Both were heavily involved with Russians before, travelled to Russia as private citizens, and they both could be compromised long ago. If Russia and China tried to think about ways to ruin the US, they couldn&#x27;t come up with a better plan than what Trump and Musk do to the US as to both home and foreign policies.

OK, not related to the DoE, but in the same vein:<p>has anyone noticed the irony of firing a large number of agents at the IRS, whose literal job it is to find fraud (by auding tax returns) while claiming that some DOGE engineers need access to all of our tax data in order to &quot;root out fraud&quot;.<p>(Not) coincidentally, Trump has repeatedly criticized the IRS for being too aggressive with its tax audits and is trying to overturn recent efforts to make the IRS more effective ;)

&quot;He who saves his Country does not violate any Law&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;realDonaldTrump&#x2F;status&#x2F;1890831570535055759" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;realDonaldTrump&#x2F;status&#x2F;1890831570535055759</a>

Here&#x27;s another example of the type of thoughtlessness that is going into these firings.<p>600 people were fired at the BPA, which handles power transmission for the Pacific Northwest, and 20% total are expected to lose their jobs.[0]<p>Keeping a grid running 24&#x2F;7 is no small feat, there is no way that you&#x27;re telling me that some DOGE engineers did a deep dive investigation in the past 2 weeks and decided that you can cut 20% of the staff responsible for power transmission &#x2F; power lines without degrading either the service or safety.<p>But here&#x27;s the kicker: the firings __won&#x27;t reduce Federal spending__. Why? Because it&#x27;s paid for by PNW users (in their energy bills).<p>So if no money is saved, why the firings? Are BPA workers siphoning off power or money for their own uses (corruption, fraud)? Maybe they&#x27;re a bunch of &quot;unqualified DEI hires&quot;? Or taken over by &quot;Marxists&quot; who are doing what--making sure the power that comes to my home has a &quot;leftist&quot; frequency?<p>Obviously none of the above. So why? stupidity? Maybe. But I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s stupidity. It&#x27;s a calculated move to make it look like Trump&#x2F;Elon are &quot;doing something&quot;, appealing to their &quot;burn it down&quot; MAGA base, and also their own egos &quot;we cut K employees! Look how great we are!&quot; Elon thinks he&#x27;s some sort of Alexander the Great cutting the Gordion Knot -- except in this case, the knot is actually holding up important stuff.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msn.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;news&#x2F;us&#x2F;mass-layoffs-at-bonneville-power-administration-raise-concerns-about-reliability-of-power-grid&#x2F;ar-AA1z5Abd?ocid=BingNewsSerp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msn.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;news&#x2F;us&#x2F;mass-layoffs-at-bonneville...</a> (more detailed info at oregonlive.com but paywalled)

The simpsons

If only there were something we could have done to prevent this, every day, for the last ten goddamn years.<p>Oh well. Enjoy your extra neutrons.

As today&#x27;s kids say, &quot;whomp whomp.&quot; a.k.a. play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The headline shown here is:<p>“US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago”

Considering that this criminally deranged nutjob was a high-ranking Biden nuclear safety officer, I think they are doing the right thing by looking into whether the remaining staff are qualified: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cbsaustin.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;nation-world&#x2F;non-binary-ex-biden-nuclear-official-who-stole-luggage-was-traveling-on-taxpayer-dime-report-says-department-of-energy-official-sam-brinton" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cbsaustin.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;nation-world&#x2F;non-binary-ex-biden-...</a>

They should just pass a law saying these people are essential workers and cannot say no to not coming back, and will be paid and must accept whatever pay they are told to accept. Done!

&quot;US media reported&quot;<p>That&#x27;s not a source. This is how the media just makes things up.<p>After admitting that 8% of the BBC media action budget came from US taxpayers which has now been cencelled, I wonder if they might have an ax to grid.