The Department of Energy’s manager for the Hanford Site declined Wednesday to say how many employees have tested positive for the coronavirus so far this year at the former plutonium production complex in Washington state.
“I report those numbers through headquarters now, and there is a more formal reporting process at the headquarters level,” in Washington, D.C., Brian Vance said during an online meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
In October, Vance said there were a total of 175 cases of COVID-19 at the site, and since then the number appears to have grown beyond 250, based on updates posted to a DOE emergency operations website for the federal complex.
This time around, the Hanford boss said he could not go into that level of detail. Another DOE nuclear cleanup property, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has stopped posting regular updates on the number of total cases reported there and instead reports the number of active cases.
Vance was asked about the latest COVID-19 infections at his site by advisory board member Becky Holland of Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, an umbrella group of labor unions at the site. Holland expressed interest in the number of people being tested, turning up positive and being quarantined.
The top Hanford manager acknowledged numbers have risen at the site, like the surrounding community. A spokesperson for the DOE Office of Environmental Management did not immediately respond to a COVID-19 inquiry Wednesday.
There are currently about 6,000 people physically working onsite at Hanford with 4,000 others currently teleworking, Vance said. After reverting to skeleton crews onsite for about two months this spring, since then Hanford’s on-site headcount reached a pandemic peak in the 6,100 to 6,500 range during early October. But the site started shifting more people to remote work due to rising concerns about infections, Vance said.
Also, the transition to two new Hanford contractors, Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co., and Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, should be completed in late January, Vance said. The DOE has previously said both will conclude Jan. 24.
Meanwhile, in early January the transition will begin for the 222-S Laboratory contractor, Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration, Vance said. The DOE has yet to identify a specific date, a Hanford spokesperson said via email.
