Fed workers in Tri-Cities lose jobs in 1st round of federal layoffs. Nuclear site impacted

The Trump administration ax fell in Richland Thursday as some employees of the Department of Energy lost their jobs as part of the federal staff reductions led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Yesterday, the Trump administration began indiscriminately laying off Hanford workers in Washington state,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in a prepared statement Friday.

Workers assigned to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, also lost their jobs, as well as employees of Bonneville Power Administration, she said. She suspects there have been hundreds of layoffs at BPA, which supplies much of the electricity for the Tri-Cities area.

Murray said that more than a dozen DOE workers were laid off at DOE’s Hanford office in Richland, including safety engineers and environmental scientists. They apparently were people who had been hired within the last one to two years and were still in a probationary period of their jobs with the federal government.

“These reckless firings will slow down critical cleanup work and make workers less safe,” Murray said. “Trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts.”

The Office of Personnel Management had already required federal agencies to provide a list of probationary workers, who it said can be fired without triggering Merit Systems Protection Board appeal rights.

The New York Times estimated that the federal government had about 200,000 workers nationwide still in a probationary period before firings Thursday and Friday.

Hanford voluntary layoffs

The layoffs Thursday at the Hanford nuclear site do not include DOE Hanford workers who volunteered for the deferred resignation.

At least 35 DOE workers at Hanford may have signed up for that program.

That would put the job cuts at Hanford at about 15% of the federal staff of about 300 overseeing environmental cleanup efforts at the 580-square-mile site at a cost of more than $3 billion annually. Most work is done by contractors hired by DOE, plus their subcontractors.

The Hanford site adjacent to Richland in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons work, leaving the site heavily contaminated.

It has been called the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.

Hanford DOE workers are responsible for negotiating with regulators to agree on the environmental cleanup work that must be done, the standards that must be met and the schedule for completing work.

They oversee contractor work to ensure it is done correctly and meets state and federal regulator standards.

They also monitor and respond to urgent safety issues and make sure the rights of workers at the site are protected, Murray said.

“The Hanford office is already understaffed,” she said before Thursday’s cuts.

DOE leader ‘can’t speculate’

Under the deferred resignation program, federal workers could volunteer for a buyout with a promise of pay and benefits through September.

However, Murray warned that there is no guarantee workers signing up for that program will be paid through September. The federal government is now operating under a stopgap funding bill through March 16 and funding after that is uncertain.

A federal judge on Feb. 6 temporarily suspended the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, as it was called in a memo sent to federal workers.

On Wednesday, the judge allowed the program to go forward, clearing the way for some federal workers with probationary status in Richland to be dismissed on Thursday.

Brian Vance, the DOE manager at Hanford, was questioned on Wednesday about how many layoffs could be expected at Hanford among federal staff, contractor staff and subcontractor staff.

“I can’t speculate at this time,” he said.

He called it a “dynamic situation,” but also said he expects to get the federal dollars needed to progress environmental cleanup at the site.

Pressed by a Hanford board member to say more about contractor workers paid with federal money, he said “I can’t answer the question because I don’t have the information to know.”

Jobs related to PNNL, Richland

Murray said in a news release that “adding insult to injury, the Trump administration has also needlessly laid off a handful of employees at PNNL — workers who power cutting-edge research and groundbreaking innovations on everything from energy storage to nuclear security.”

The DOE national laboratory in Richland employs about 6,400 people and has an annual budget of nearly $1.7 billion, much of it from the federal government.

The layoffs related to PNNL that Murray was referring to were apparently at the DOE Pacific Northwest Site Office, which employs 36 people to oversee work at PNNL.

The Tri-City Herald received no response to calls or emails to that office and DOE on Friday.

DOE plans for BPA workers

Murray said that the Bonneville Power Administration apparently laid off more than 600 people across the Northwest, including electricians, engineers, biologists, lineworkers and cybersecurity experts.

“These are literally the people who help keep the lights on — and now they’re being fired on a whim because Trump and Elon Musk don’t have a clue about what they do and why it’s important, and don’t care to learn,” Murray said.

“They don’t seem to even understand that these are positions funded by ratepayers — by all of us in the Northwest — and not from federal funding,” she said.

BPA is a nonprofit federal power marketing administration within DOE, which provides and delivers on the grid much of the low-cost electricity used in the Tri-Cities area. Among sources of the electricity are Columbia and Snake river hydroelectric dams and the Columbia Generating Station near Richland, which is the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant.

“The callousness of this administration is breathtaking,” Murray said. “These mass layoffs pose a serious threat to our energy security and the health and safety of people across our state, not to mention the livelihoods of so many hardworking families who have done nothing wrong and whose work is sorely needed.”

The 600 people laid off do not include those who signed up for the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, she said.

The BPA firings will raise electric rates and jeopardize the reliability of the Northwest electric grid, she predicted.

DOE layoffs nationwide

Nationwide DOE has laid off 1,800 employees out of 15,850, which is roughly 11% of its workforce, not including volunteers for the deferred resignation program, according to information from Murray’s office on Friday.

DOE offices that were particularly hard hit include the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and the Manufacturing and Grid Deployment offices, according to Murray’s staff.

The offices include staff who ensure that funding to lower households’ energy costs is available and work to support American innovation, according to Murray’s staff.

This story was originally published February 15, 2025 at 1:54 PM.