More than a dozen Department of Energy workers were fired at a nuclear cleanup site in central Washington this month, with at least 30 federal workers shopping. .
The layoffs at the Hanford Site near Richland include D-Wash in a news release Friday. Senator Patty Murray, of the group, said it included safety engineers, environmental scientists and employees who protect workers’ rights.
“These reckless firings slow down critical cleanup operations and reduce workers’ safety. Trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew could have irreversible consequences It’s a sexual disaster recipe,” Murray said.
The Hanford site was used from World War II to the Cold War, producing two-thirds of the country’s plutonium for nuclear weapons, leading to major pollution. The site’s federal employees are responsible for negotiating with regulators to ensure that the environmental cleanup operations have been completed and meet federal standards.
Murray said Tri-City Herald earlier this month Hanford’s office is already understaffed. A Hanford spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The layoffs came among hundreds of people for federal workers in Washington last week. The Trump administration plans to cut employment for more than 600 workers at the Bonneville Electric Power Agency, the largest power supplier in the Pacific Northwest, according to the Murray office. These imminent reductions include electricians, engineers and biologists.
The fire raises concerns about energy costs and grid reliability, Murray said.
And the Trump administration fired a small number of employees at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, another Department of Energy Conservation, which conducts research into energy storage and nuclear security.
Before Thursday’s layoffs, more than 30 Hanford workers voluntarily resigned as part of the federal government’s “deferred resignation” program. However, Murray told the Herald that workers would not be actually paid because of uncertainty in funds.
Earlier that month, Hanford’s Department of Energy manager Brian Vance told the Herald he couldn’t guess how many layoffs would be. However, he said he expects federal funding to continue his cleanup efforts.
Hanford previously had around 300 federal employees on a site that oversaw cleanup efforts. The remaining workers on the site, about 13,000, are contractors.
Musk has promised a layoff Large scale belts for federal workers As part of his “government efficiency” in the Trump administration, it aims to reduce unnecessary government spending.
As a result, thousands of workers have lost their jobs, and several federal agencies have been ordered to stop jobs, including health and scientific institutions and aid organizations.
In a news release on Saturday, D-Wash Sen. Maria Cantwell said the Trump administration has fired or fired an estimated 200,000 federal workers targeting workers during probationary period. -Therefore, there is no complete civil service protection.
In her statement, Cantwell listed previously reported estimates of federal civil servant layoffs.
- Ministry of Health and Human Services: 5,200
- Housing and Urban Development Bureau: 4,800
- USDA Agricultural Research Service: 800
- USDA Forest Service: 3,400
- Inner section: 2,600
- Ministry of Energy: 2,000
- Environmental Protection Agency: 1,700 (received warning letter)
- Veterans Affairs Bureau: Over 1,000 people
- Small and Medium Business Management: 720
