The National Nuclear Security Administration will move into “emergency shutdown procedures” this week if the government does not reopen, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said last week on Fox News.
“We have about eight more days of funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA],” Wright said in an Oct. 2 interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “Eight more days and then we have to go into some emergency shutdown procedures, putting our country at risk.”
On Friday, Oct. 3, the Senate yet again voted down a continuing resolution to start the government back up and fund the government until Nov. 21. The government remains in shutdown with no end in sight.
According to government spending tracker USASpending, as of August 30 $26.06 billion of NNSA’s $41.59 billion in total available budgetary resources had been paid out, leaving $15.53 billion leftover at the beginning of September. NNSA did not immediately respond to a query on how much money is left today.
DOE’s shutdown contingency plan released last week said if the government’s lapse in appropriations lasts five days or less, “there would be no disruption” to department operations. “DOE has historically had sufficient previously appropriated funds that remain available to support operations during a short term lapse,” the plan said.
However, as soon as leftover money is drawn, DOE will start an “orderly shutdown” of work it can live without for the short term, according to the document.
“DOE would be able to shut down all non-excepted federal functions within a half day of exhaustion of available balances, with some exceptions involving the movement of nuclear materials,” DOE said, referring to NNSA’s Office of Secure Transportation.
President Donald Trump has said that many federal employees could be subject to layoffs if the government shuts down. The DOE contingency plan said a “prolonged lapse in appropriations may require subsequent employee furloughs,” with a “limited number of employees” potentially recalled in the event of a threat.
Wright said in a separate interview with CNN that same day that staffing would need to be reduced at the DOE’s semiautonomous agency in charge of maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. “We have to go into an emergency shutdown program to keep a limited number of people to make sure our weapons are safe, but it’s highly disruptive to our operations that we’d have to reassemble again,” he said.