ARLINGTON, VA — The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch is about a third smaller than it was a few years ago, although more people could be brought on following a pending regional reorganization.
“You know today we are at about 820 federal employees,” Tim Walsh, the head of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday during the department’s National Cleanup Workshop here. That’s down from 1,250. Environmental Management (EM) had many senior people taking early buyouts in 2025 as part of a White House initiative to slash the size of the federal government.
“It sounds like a big drop,” but Environmental Management is closer to its “fighting weight,” Walsh told Exchange Monitor on the sidelines of the conference. EM is currently approved to have about 970 employees and will be hiring more people in the near future, Walsh said.
This will come amidst a rebranding and regional reorganization at EM and new federal staff will be added where needed, Walsh said.
The good news is many of those leaving took jobs “with our industry partners,” Steve Trischmann, EM’s head of corporate services, said later in the program.
The nuclear cleanup office is also embracing artificial intelligence to help with certain research tasks that are often time and labor intensive.