One of the 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was at its Plutonium Facility (PF-4), which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is relying on to produce war-ready plutonium pits starting in 2024.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) mentioned the case at PF-4 in a report published late last week. The infected individual, who tested positive in mid-May, “recently performed duties at the Plutonium Facility,” the independent federal agency reported.
On Monday, a Los Alamos spokesperson said “[t]here have been no adverse effects on plutonium facility operations.” The National Nuclear Security Administration is expanding PF-4 so that it can manufacture 10 pits in 2024, 20 in 2025, and at least 30 annually in 2026 and beyond.
Pits are the cores of the primary stages for nuclear weapons. The NNSA wants to make 80 per year by 2030 at Los Alamos and a planned plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
Since the DNFSB’s most recently released report on Los Alamos, covering operations from May 11 to 15, the lab’s COVID-19 case count has held steady at 11. By Monday, all those people had “fully recovered,” the lab spokesperson said.
In normal circumstances, Los Alamos employs about 12,000 people. Most work for management and operations contractor Triad National Security, but the count also includes students and construction and support services subcontractors. Last month, a lab spokesperson said there were fewer than 2,500 people reporting for work on-site during the pandemic to continue mission-critical activities, such as the pit mission, PF-4 expansion, and research, development, and manufacturing of detonators at Technical Area 22.
Los Alamos, like other NNSA sites, plans to slowly bring more people back to work on-site. An informed source said the nation’s first nuclear weapons lab might try to increase up to 50% occupancy some time this month, and hold at that level to evaluate the impact on missions and COVID-19 transmission.
