> The Department of Energy spent this week trying to contain the fallout from its DOGE-directed firing and rehiring of a brace of nuclear safety officials by painting them as non-critical staff who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”<p>> But this wasn’t close to true, current and recently retired NNSA employees tell The Bulwark. In fact, one of the officials who was locked out of his work accounts was Acting Chief of Defense Nuclear Safety James Todd, a senior executive official and the top authority for all nuclear-safety matters in the agency.<p>> Todd did not respond to a request for comment. But he wasn’t the only mission-critical employee swept up in the purge.<p>> At the agency’s Los Alamos field office alone, there was the site’s emergency preparedness manager, who is responsible for maintaining plans to minimize the effects of a nuclear accident on site and in surrounding areas. There was the radiation protection manager, responsible for minimizing radiation exposure to on-site workers. There was the security manager, the fire protection engineer, and two facility representatives, who are the office’s day-to-day eyes and ears on site manufacturing facilities.<p>> Media reports have treated the firings as a deeply unwise DOGE hatchet job that was, thankfully, quickly reversed. And it’s true that earlier this week, nearly all the affected employees were notified that they were welcome back at their jobs. But at the Los Alamos nuclear facility and across NNSA, shell-shocked employees remain unsure whether or how soon the axe might fall again. Many, sources say, are now eyeing early retirement or thinking about finding other work.<p>....<p>> Every current and former NNSA employee who spoke to The Bulwark was alarmed about the possibilities of this sort of brain drain, fretting that Musk and his tech-bro buds simply didn’t realize how unsuited the “turn everything off and see what breaks” model was to their line of work. It might work with Twitter. But the stakes are a bit different, and the challenges more complex, when you are talking about the <i>safe handling and proper maintenance of America’s nuclear arsenal</i>.<p>> “The skill set is so narrowly specific that there might be five guys in the entire U.S. who can do it,” said one employee. “And you might have just fired one, two or three are retired, and the other is based somewhere else in the U.S. and doesn’t want to move. So you’re hosed.”