In keeping with federal guidance on COVID-19, many Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex sites are again requiring masks indoors.
These include the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the Paducah Site in Kentucky, their joint headquarters office in Lexington, Ky. All three have “high” community rates, according to county-by-country transmission data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The DOE COVID-19 workplace policy is tied to CDC community numbers.
“They are all in red,” a DOE spokesperson said Monday, referring to resumption of indoor mask rules at properties covered by the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. Fayette County (Lexington office) and McCracken County (Paducah Site) both have high community rates as does Pike County, Ohio (Portsmouth Site), according to the CDC website.
The same high rate applies to Los Alamos County, N.M., where DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory is located. Los Alamos too is reimposing masking. The community rate is also high in Grand County, Utah, where the Moab tailings reclamation project is located. Moab, however, is unique in that much of its staff are heavy equipment operators who work solo. A Moab spokesperson could not immediately be reached Monday.
In South Carolina, the prime contractor for the Savannah River Site, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, is reinstating mask rules although community rates for surrounding Aiken and Barnwell Counties only recently clicked up to “medium.” Effective July 11, masks are required at the federal property during indoor meetings or while traveling with vehicles with other people, the prime contractor said in a Thursday memo to employees.
Other counties in the DOE weapons complex with high community levels include Alameda County, Calif. (Livermore National Laboratory); and Ventura County, Calif. (Santa Susana Field Laboratory)
The community rate is low, however, with no masks required in Eddy County, N.M., (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant); Cattaraugus County N.Y. (West Valley Demonstration Project); Bonneville County, Idaho (Idaho National Laboratory); and Benton and Franklin Counties, Wash. (Hanford Site).
Nye County, Nev., where the sprawling Nevada National Security Site is based, is in the medium category; as are Anderson and Rhone Counties in Tennessee (Oak Ridge Site), according to CDC data.
