Across the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management complex, there are currently 141 active cases of COVID-19, a spokesperson for the office said Thursday.
That is 32 more than the active case count for the Environmental Management (EM) office last week, and more than double the 61 acknowledged a month ago.
The EM office provides weekly active case numbers for DOE nuclear cleanup sites, but not the cumulative number of total cases since the coronavirus pandemic took root in the United States early this year.
“The health and safety of our employees remains the Department’s number one priority, as we continue to monitor the COVID-19 cases across the DOE EM enterprise,” the EM spokesperson said. “As we have seen in many areas of the country, cases are on the rise and EM is constantly evaluating best practices and safety protocols to protect our employees.”
For about two months this spring, from late March to late-May, the DOE scaled back to skelton crews at its 16 cleanup sites. In June it started a program of gradual remobilization to incrementally recall most workers back inside the fence, although large numbers are still telecommuting. For people on-site, face coverings are routine, frequent temperature checks are carried out, and physical distance between employees has been increased.
Nationally, more than 9.7 million people in the United States have contracted COVID-19 and 235,000 have died as of Friday morning, according to an online dashboard overseen by The New York Times and Google.
The New York Times on Thursday identified the Savannah River Site in South Carolina as the location of a “significant cluster” of the disease, with 619 cases as of last week. The weekly update figure for Friday morning increased to 639 cases of COVID-19 among its workforce with 603 of those employees having recovered and been cleared to return to work.
Other significant clusters were identified as the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy ship which experienced 969 cases earlier this year, and Newport News Shipbuilding, which is now up to 921 cases on Thursday according to a website run by its Huntington Ingalls Industries parent company. Huntington Ingalls is also a significant EM and National Nuclear Security Administration contractor.
The EM spokesperson declined comment on the Times article.
Elsewhere, management of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico learned of four new cases of COVID-19 between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, according to a Thursday Twitter post by the operation’s prime contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership. That brings the total number of virus infections at the transuranic waste site to 84, and 41 of those have recovered.
The previous week’s total for the disposal site was 17.
Meanwhile, managers at the Hanford Site in Washington state learned Tuesday that three more workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a post on the property’s emergency operations website.
That brings the unofficial total of COVID-19 cases at Hanford to 195. That is based on a public update provided to the Hanford Advisory Board last month by the DOE site’s manager, Brian Vance, combined with daily updates on the website.
The website, operated by landlord services contractor Mission Support Alliance, provides daily bulletins on COVID-19 testing, new infections, and buildings being disinfected at the former plutonium production complex.
Hanford has roughly 11,000 contract workers and federal employees, roughly the same as the Savannah River Site. While Hanford is an EM-only site, Savannah River features large operations for both the nuclear cleanup office and the DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
