The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina on Thursday confirmed two more cases of COVID-19, bringing its total to 13 of the 20 known instances of infection among personnel working at sites overseen by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.
A spokesperson for the DOE office at Savannah River declined to provide any additional details on the latest individuals to test positive there.
To date, nine of the 13 people who have tested positive at the DOE complex near the South Carolina-Georgia border have recovered and returned to work.
The 310-square-mile Savannah River Site includes extensive operations for both DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Nuclear cleanup has been limited to essential mission critical activities since April 3, in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus 2019. Operations are largely restricted to emergency crews and inspections to ensure environmental protection and public safety.
Roughly 2,500 of the site’s normal 11,000-member workforce are still on-site, with others either teleworking or on paid leave.
This is similar to teh status of nearly all 16 EM sites. The sole exception is the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project in Utah, where many of the 140 employees are heavy equipment operators who are already working at significant distances from their co-workers.
However, restart activities and planning are underway at Savannah River for a phased approach to returning all facilities back to normal operations, according to the SRS website. Neither Savannah River nor Office of Environmental Management headquarters have released any public timetable for staffing back up.
An executive for one DOE contractor understands there is “daily dialogue” among top bosses at the Office of Environmental Management on how to resume key work, such as building or demolishing facilities, while minimizing potential risk of spreading the virus.
Plans on resumption of normal operations are being developed and shared with the Energy Department by stakeholders such as the Energy Facilities Contractors Group (EFCOG), said a second industry source.
At whatever point staffing reaches more normal levels across the DOE nuclear complex, the Office of Environmental Management will observe best safety practices outlined by the department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health agencies, a federal representative said in a Thursday email.
Across the DOE Environmental Management complex there are 20 confirmed cases of infection by novel coronavirus 2019, including two at the Hanford Site in Washington state, two at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, one at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, one at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and one at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office on April 24 confirmed the first positive test for COVID-19 at WIPP.
The employee of technical support contractor North Wind Portage tested positive that day after working remotely since March 18, according to a news release from the Carlsbad Field Office.
The worker began experiencing COVID-19 symptoms while at home and has not come into physical contact with any other WIPP employees for 30 days. The unidentified individual, who left New Mexico on March 23, is hospitalized and receiving treatment.
Roughly 1,000 people work at the DOE underground salt mine for disposal of defense-related transuranic waste and less than 300 are currently believed to be on-site.
