“Nuclear weapons woes: Understaffed nuke agency hit by DOGE and safety worries…For decades, the NNSA has struggled with federal staffing shortages that have contributed to safety issues as well as delays and cost overruns on major projects.”
Was the 2014 WIPP radiological accident attributed to “staffing shortages” when LANS took a 90% award fee cut for mismanagement when that accident was deemed preventable? Nope.
Were ~4x cost overruns and the ~5 year behind schedule at the NIF attributable to “staffing shortages”? Nope. How about failure to achieve ignition by 2012 as marketed to Congress? “Staffing Shortages”? Nope.
Was the 2023 radioactive iodine-125 contamination in Livermore due to “staffing shortages? Nope.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/18/nuclear-weapons-woes-nuke-agency-hit-by-doge-and-safety-worries/83621978007/
Comments
How on earth does this work? NNSA may have a lot problems but cost overruns due to staffing shortages in not one o them. This whole article is pure nonsense.
I keep seeing stories like the above which will just bad mouth anything Trump/Musk do no matter how absurd the premise. NNSA is is not overstaffed and a good argument could be made for getting rid of it since the DOE seemed to run the labs just fine for the duration of the cold war. In fact safety and costs would probably improve.
You can still argue that DODGE is bad in its implementation, what they are cutting and so on, but do in an honest way without making nonsense statements that just hurt your cause. You say stuff like " you would reduce costs overruns by hiring way more staff to bureaucratic positions" is not going to convince anyone of your point.