The current federal government shutdown has crossed a dangerous threshold that previous funding lapses never reached: for the first time in its 25-year history, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is furloughing its workforce. The agency, which is semiautonomous but overseen by the Energy Department, was created in 2000.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told USA TODAY that the agency responsible for designing, building, maintaining and securing U.S. nuclear weapons is facing staff furloughs and its contractors will soon experience mass layoffs due to the federal government shutdown.

This isn’t just another bureaucratic inconvenience. The NNSA serves as the guardian of our nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, responsible for ensuring these weapons remain safe, secure, and reliable. The NNSA also plays a central role in the country’s $1.7 trillion push to modernize the nuclear arsenal.

Approximately 1,400 NNSA employees—roughly 80% of the agency’s federal staff—are being sent home without pay, leaving only 375 essential workers to oversee America’s nuclear arsenal.

A spokesperson said nearly 400 workers would remain at the NNSA and work around the world to secure dangerous nuclear materials, “including in Ukraine as the war with Russia continues.” 

NNSA’s federal staff oversees some 60,000 contractors maintaining and testing weapons at national laboratories and other locations across the U.S.

The disruption of NNSA’s chronically understaffed safety workforce is “a recipe for disaster,” said Joyce Connery, former head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

The Energy Department said the NNSA’s Office of Secure Transportation, which moves nuclear weapons and materials, had funding to operate through Oct. 27.

During this government shutdown, essential personnel continue monitoring critical control systems and nuclear materials, but reduced oversight creates vulnerabilities in our nuclear security infrastructure. 

As recent as August of this year a “foreign threat actor infiltrated the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), a key manufacturing site within the NNSA, exploiting unpatched Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities.”

Meanwhile, partisan finger-pointing continues in Congress while our nuclear safety margins shrink. Previous shutdowns avoided touching agencies that literally safeguard weapons capable of catastrophic destruction.

New Mexico’s national laboratories—Los Alamos and Sandia—currently maintain operations using unspent funding, but this cushion won’t last indefinitely. Senator Ben Ray Luján noted that while these facilities remain at full capacity today, prolonged NNSA furloughs will directly compromise both national security and the regional economy that depends on these critical installations.

While NNSA employees as well as contractors are losing paychecks, it is important to note that Americans are losing irreplaceable expertise in nuclear engineering and weapons safety.

This isn’t political theater we can afford. Nuclear weapons demand constant, expert oversight—not skeleton crews operating on emergency procedures. Congress must end this reckless standoff before we discover the true cost of gambling with nuclear safety.