Two members of the security detail for Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday, a spokeswoman for the agency chief said.
“Although Secretary Brouillette tested negative and is not exhibiting symptoms, out of an abundance of caution, the Secretary and traveling staff will be returning by vehicle to Washing and following” guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Shaylyn Hines, a Department of Energy (DOE) spokeswoman said in a Thursday night Twitter post.
The Centers for Disease Control website (cdc.gov) says “Anyone who has had close contact with someone with COVID-19 should stay home for 14 days after their last exposure to that person.” The department did not immediately say if the secretary would be doing this.
Likewise, DOE did not immediately say if these security detail members also accompanied Brouillette during a Tuesday visit to the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, to speak during a celebration of remediation of the gaseous diffusion plant property there.
At the East Tennessee Technology Park celebration, Brouillette shared a stage with the dignitaries including a trio of high-ranking Republican officeholders, Gov. Bill Lee, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and Sen. Lamar Alexander, who is 80-years-old.
The Oak Ridge ceremony, which was webcast, was held outdoors and all participants were encouraged at the outset to wear a mask. Speakers at the event wore masks on-stage except when they stood and delivered their remarks.
Paul Dabbar, DOE’s undersecretary for science, as well as William “Ike” White, special adviser to Dabbar for the Office of Environmental Management (EM), were also at the Oak Ridge ceremony but did not appear to be on the stage.
The announcement of the infection about the energy secretary’s detail shows that COVID-19 continues to be a major concern for DOE and its nuclear cleanup office.
There are currently 80 active COVID cases in the EM complex this week, a spokesperson for the cleanup office said Thursday. That’s a big jump from the 61 active infections reported the prior week. The EM complex does not report the total number of cumulative cases to date.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which employs some 11,000 employees for missions run by both EM and the DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, has now recorded a total of 591 cases, according to a Friday website posting. That is up 22 from the prior week’s total of 569. Of the 591, 550 have recovered and returned to work.
The Hanford Site in Washington state recorded three more cases this week, according to regular notices on the former plutonium complex’s emergency operations website. The latest infections bring the Hanford total to about 178, based on recent statements from Site Manager Brian Vance, and periodic updates to Hanford’s website.
As of Oct. 9, the department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has reported a total of 45 positive cases so far in the pandemic. That is according to the last social media post on the subject by site prime Nuclear Waste Partnership.
The Portsmouth Site in Ohio, as of this week, has logged 29 positive cases during 2020, according to documents obtained by Weapons Complex Monitor.
Pandemic Ushers in Wide-Scale Telework, Could Have Lasting Impact
COVID-19 has made remote work much more common for the Office of Environmental Management, and could alter work practices even after the pandemic recedes, the office’s top career official said this week.
Even with some people return to cleanup sites across the country, at EM headquarters in Washington, D.C., there is still only “a handful of people in on a given day,” Todd Shrader, DOE’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental manager, told the audience at an online conference Tuesday sponsored by the Tennessee-based Energy Technology & Environmental Business Association.
“We communicate like this,” using various video platforms, Shrader said.
Shrader said, going forward, the agency will re-examine the need for large office buildings and having large clusters of employees live within the same city.
Aside from office work, EM is continuing to bring back on-site staff at the 16 Cold War remediation sites, Shrader said. The agency is “bringing them back as conditions allow,” he said.
EM resorted to bare bones staffing between mid-March and late May while considering how it would continue to get work done during a pandemic.
Most EM offices are in Phase 2 of the DOE start program designed to return work to pre-COVID-19 levels. Phase 2 is generally when employees are brought back in larger numbers to do jobs that require more personal protective equipment.
No sites have yet reached Phase 3, which would mark a return to essentially pre-coronavirus operational levels.
A key metric considered by the Office of Environmental Management is the number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population over a two-week period. This helps account the number of virus infections in large and small counties, Shrader said. An infection rate over more than 200 per 100,000 people over two weeks is considered troublesome, he said.
However, that is only one data point considered, Shrader said. EM also considers the ratio of positive COVID-19 tests in a community. Ideally, only 2% to 5% of people being tested in a community would turn up positive, he added.
The rate of spread “on the site” is also very important to EM, Shrader said. So far it appears most weapons complex employees who contract the virus do so away from the job. In cases where there have been on-the-job spread it usually involves ventilation problems inside a building, Shrader said.
