Bare-bones staffing for nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico won’t be lifted before May 31, a Department of Energy official said last week.
The stay-at-home order from New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) remains in effect until that date, Thomas Johnson Jr., the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s acting manager for Los Alamos, told the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board during a May 20 online meeting.
Legacy cleanup at the site is managed by Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) under a 10-year, $1.38 billion contract. The joint venture employs about 700 people, but most are either working remotely or collecting paid leave.
“We typically only have 10 to 20 N3B personnel on site” during this minimum operations period, which started March 24, Johnson said.
In addition, one or two federal employees remain on-site to monitor N3B these days.
“Things are starting to open up across the country,” but Los Alamos officials are not ready to publicly discuss potential return-to-work timelines, Johnson said. Like most other EM sites, Los Alamos is doing preplanning that focuses on COVID-19 risk analysis and health data, he added.
Despite the reduced staff on-site, N3B and Los Alamos have not slipped behind on key remediation milestones, although the contractor could need more time to file certain reports with the state that would otherwise be due Sept. 30, Johnson said. He did not specify precisely what type of report.
Crews at Los Alamos are still able to respond to any emergency situations, perform radiological surveys at Technical Area 54’s Area G, where transuranic waste is stored, and monitor waste storage facilities to ensure compliance with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Johnson said.
