DOGE boys cut “Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers & Safety Experts.” “In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,“Bad things happen.”

IRAN IS WATCHING

"Engaged in top-secret work, tucked away in the Energy Department, the agency typically stays below the public radar. But it has emerged as a headline example of how the Trump administration’s cuts, touted as a cure-all for supposed government extravagance and corruption, are threatening the muscle and bone of operations that involve national security or other missions at the very heart of the federal government’s responsibilities.”

"Officials were so worried about the loss of employees who transport nuclear materials that they denied the buyout to more than half of workers who signed up for it, according to agency documents.

'We were already understaffed there,' said Ms. Hinderstein, the agency’s former deputy. 'Because how do you get people with extremely advanced security skills to be able to defend a nuclear weapon on the road and are willing to be long-haul truckers?”

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The New York Times

DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts

Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.

By Sharon LaFraniere Minho Kim and Julie Tate

March 17, 2025 Updated 8:49 a.m. ET

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IRAN IS WATCHING

“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport, Bad things happen.”

On July 25, 1991, drivers traveling south along Highway 83 past Bismark, North Dakota came across an odd sight, a seemingly innocuous tractor trailer truck stopped along the road, guarded by police and heavily armed federal agents and leaking smoking goop. What local residents didn’t necessarily know – and the Department of Energy wouldn’t tell them at the time – was that they had seen a specialized truck for discreetly carrying nuclear weapons and other radioactive cargoes. These tractor trailers are booby trapped with countermeasures such as immobilizing foam and self-destruct systems, which all sound right out of a Hollywood blockbuster. They belong to the Office of Secure Transportation (OST), which has a checkered record of safety and disciplinary issues.

OST traces its history specifically to 1975, when the Energy Research and Development Administration created the Transportation Safeguards Division. This eventually became OST, now part of the larger National Nuclear Security Administration, who continues to be in charge of moving America’s most dangerous weapons and other hazardous nuclear material “of strategic amounts” safely around the country. Before that, there were a variety of different organizations that handled disparate nuclear transportation operations.”

Unfortunately, the problems with the SSTs seem to underscore serious and persistent issues within OST itself and may be coming up again with the newer SGTs. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than half of the 42 trailers OST has in operation are more than 15 years old and all of them have exceeded the Department of Energy’s own life expectancy estimates for the system.

The department is running a $670 million project to develop a replacement trailer, called the Mobile Guardian, but doesn’t expect it to be in operation until 2023. Beyond old equipment and poor oversight in its upkeep, the Los Angeles Times piece delves deeper into issues of neglected budgets, low morale, toxic leadership, and high turnover and it’s worth reading in full. 

The expose painted a dismal picture of an overworked and underpaid organization where over a third of the personnel would put in more than 900 hours of overtime each year, equal to more than 35 extra days on the job. Couriers and agents spend most of that time on the road on long, boring drives unable to stop for protracted periods or even leave their vehicles in many circumstances. If they get pulled over by local law enforcement for some reason, the truck drivers aren’t even allowed to speak to the police without the security force commander being present during the conversation.

Underscoring these issues, in 2010, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General cataloged 16 alcohol-related incidents within OST in the preceding three years, including an incident of public intoxication where a courier was arrested and another where two employees ended up in police custody after getting into a drunken bar brawl. The report uncovered New Mexico court records showing the office’s top executive had gotten a DUI after police came across him parked on a sidewalk apparently drinking in the car with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent.

A sleep deprived, irritable, heavy drinking workforce is not a good thing in most circumstances, but it seems especially worrisome when it comes to OST’s mission. According to an earlier report by Mother Jones in 2012, the office had also uncovered the widespread use of “unauthorized firearms,” possibly privately owned personal guns, and at least one instance where an agent had bought weapons and other gear on behalf of the organization only to illegally resell the items.

OST has generally rejected these criticisms, pointing out that its personnel have never lost a cargo for any reason. The organization has only suffered one severe accident, in 1996, when a truck towing an SGT skidded off any icy road in Nebraska and flipped over. There are, of course, the incidents in the 1990s and another in 2004, where a truck spilled less than a pint of uranyl nitrate, also known as liquified yellow cake uranium, along Interstate 26 in North Carolina.

Still, it is the very idea of moving nuclear weapons around on the ground in the first place that seems as if it may ultimately warrant a review. Underneath all the safeguards and other custom features of its high-tech trailers, OST is still relying on a truck.

“Transportation is the Achilles’ heel of nuclear security and everyone knows that,” Bruce Blair, founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group advocating for complete nuclear disarmament and a former U.S. Air Force missileer, told the Los Angeles Times for their investigation. “The danger is not a traffic accident – even a fiery crash is not supposed to explode a warhead – but a heist.”

“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,” he continued. “Bad things happen.”

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TWZ The War Zone

The US Moves Nukes in Booby Trapped Tractor Trailers Straight Out Of An Action Movie

The special trailers, with defenses such as sticky goo and electrified handles, unfortunately belong to a troubled agency.

Joseph Trevithick 

Updated on Oct 20, 2020