Nuclear Fuel Services has not tracked any new cases of COVID-19 among its workforce since an outbreak in mid-April sickened multiple employees at its Erwin, Tenn., uranium-processing plant, a spokesperson said Thursday morning.
The BWX Technologies subsidiary “has had no new cases of COVID-19 among our employees,” the spokesperson said by email. “Those affected are recovering [and] we are on track to meet all contractual deliverables.”
Nuclear Fuel Services is the main supplier of nuclear fuel for U.S. naval warships and submarines. The company also provides uranium processing services for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). During the week of April 13, Nuclear Fuel Services confirmed that multiple employees at Erwin tested positive for the respiratory disease.
Local television stations first reported the news. Nuclear Fuel Services did not say how many of its employees caught COVID-19.
Nuclear Fuel Services employs about 1,000 people at its 70-acre site.
“We continue to adhere to our coronavirus response protocols including enhanced cleaning across the site, social distancing, hand washing, hand sanitizing and use of face masks,” the company spokesperson said. “We are also conducting temperature checks on everyone who enters [Nuclear Fuel Services].”
Under a roughly seven-year, $500 million contract issued in 2018, Nuclear Fuel Services is downblending some 20 tons of NNSA highly enriched uranium to make low-enriched uranium that can be burned in commercial nuclear reactors to produce tritium for nuclear weapons.
The NNSA also wants to give Nuclear Fuel Services a contract to start purifying highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons programs at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The company would have to be ready to provide the purified uranium metal around 2023, after the NNSA takes existing purification equipment at Y-12’s aging building 9212 off-line.
The agency’s next-generation purification technology will be housed in the still-under-construction Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12, which the NNSA wants to finish building by 2025.
