Hundreds of Nuclear Maintainers Fired: Slow-Motion Disaster Unfolds

This week, the Executive Branch abruptly terminated approximately 350 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees responsible for maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. These terminations come at a time where our aging stockpile is already facing serious maintenance challenges.

Most of our plutonium and tritium was produced in the 1970s and 80s. Ever since 1989 when the Rocky Flats Plant closed, we haven’t had enough production capacity to properly maintain the stockpile.

Plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear weapons, can last up to 100 years, but their reliability degrades over time. Since the U.S. lacks sufficient new pit production, it relies on a rigorous maintenance schedule to keep aging warheads functional. The other components around the pit need maintenance too so it’s a busy job.

As you can probably guess the demand for nuclear maintainers has grown dramatically as our arsenal ages and the government fails to address the shortfall in pit production. At the same time as demand increased, the NNSA was already facing crippling staff shortages.

A Government Accountability Office report from 2024 found the NNSA would require 1,928 full time employees to properly maintain the nuclear arsenal, of which they only had 1,608. Assuming similar staffing levels between May of last year and today - which is optimistic considering their aging workforce was also facing a retirement crisis - the recent departures leave them with only 1258 full time employees.

NBC reports the Administration is desperately trying to rehire the employees but can’t figure out how to contact them. As much as that fails to inspire confidence, I’m sure the problem will eventually be resolved. The harsh reality though is you’ll never get all of them back. Not only that, but weeks of delays will only run up the backlog of warheads in need of refurbishment. The result is a slowly unfolding disaster in an already strained agency.

Even more people will need to be hired to clear the expanding backlog and replace workers who choose not to return, but it’s not clear if the NNSA is actually capable of hiring replacements. The level of security clearance and technical skill required means that practically nobody can do this job, and of those who can many don’t want to.

How many physicists do you know without too many foreign entanglements who are also normal enough not to spook a background investigator and like the United States government enough to want to maintain its nuclear stockpile? How many of them would be willing to move to do it? You can start to see why the agency is struggling to meet its hiring goals.

Congress appropriated funding for the NNSA in the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill as part of the Department of Energy’s budget. The Executive is Constitutionally required to use funds appropriated by Congress for their intended purpose and should not be randomly terminating hundreds of nuclear maintainers. The Constitutionally required deliberation process exists to spot mistakes like this before they happen.

If the Administration is intent on lopping off bits and pieces of different agencies to save money they should do it legally. This isn’t a big ask considering the party that controls the Executive also has an advantage in Congress and the Supreme Court.

Every part of the Constitution matters and should be followed to the letter. Yes, even those pesky controversial amendments like the first and second. Just as you’ll never find me supporting book bans or disarmament, I take the Appropriations Clause seriously too.

A superpower cannot afford to be governed by executive whim, especially when the fate of its nuclear deterrent is at stake.

For any of you who are thinking “good, what do we even need nuclear weapons for anyways?” and happen to still be reading, I want to talk to you specifically.

The world would be safer without nuclear weapons, that much is true. If one country were to unilaterally disarm, however, the risk of nuclear war would increase.

Without a deterrent, do you really believe nobody out there would take advantage of the situation?

The United States took advantage of that disparity of force in 1945 when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If our arsenal got a reputation for not working, what guarantees other countries won’t do the same to us?

The interests of peace are not served by the jittery and unstable disarmament of a single party by accident and decay.