Preliminary figures show the liquid waste cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has roughly two-thirds of its workforce vaccinated against COVID-19, a spokesman said Friday.
The numbers are not final because DOE certification of vaccination forms were not due until Friday, a spokesman for Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRS) said by email.
But preliminary information shows more than 65% of the SRR workforce has been vaccinated. “This compares to approximately 45% for the surrounding states,” the spokesman said, referring to South Carolina and Georgia. The federal complex bumps up against the Georgia state line.
The SRR spokesman was responding to a press inquiry earlier in the week from Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, before President Joe Biden announced plans, details expected later this month, to mandate the vaccine for both federal employees and government contractors.
While SRR has not issued a vaccination mandate it will be “implementing the vaccine requirements recently announced by President Biden,” and the plan will include clauses for medical and religious exemptions, the spokesman said.
Savannah River Remediation has owned the current liquid waste contract at the site since July 2009, under a deal now worth about $7.5-billion. As for Amentum, it issued a statement late Friday saying it has encouraged employee vaccinations and is reviewing Biden’s executive order with plans to “comply with the forthcoming guidance.”
Other members of the Savannah River cleanup team are Bechtel, Jacobs, and BWXT.
Before Biden’s Thursday announcement of the mandate, Bechtel ordered for non-union employees at its corporate offices to either take the shot or undergo mandatory regular testing. A BWXT spokesman said the company plans to fully comply with the order and a Jacobs spokeswoman declined comment until the company learns more details about the mandate policy.
Meanwhile, Brian Vance, the DOE manager at the Hanford Site in Washington state, said in a Friday memo that “[w]e will work closely with our Environmental Management headquarters teammates to determine our next steps as guidance is developed.”
A trio of joint ventures at DOE nuclear sites previously announced vaccine mandates —Battelle-led Triad National Security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, UCOR, an Amentum-Jacobs team handling cleanup at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the Fluor-led site-management contractor for the Savannah River Site.
