A building at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico used for performance tests on non-nuclear nuclear-weapon components opened back up for its regular work schedule Monday, following a a COVID-19 deep-cleaning.
Sandia announced last week that one person in Building 720, home of the Ion Beam Laboratory, tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in China last year. The building was closed for cleaning while the lab conducted contact tracing.
Now, “all employees who have confirmed contact with the individual who tested positive have been contacted by the Sandia Medical Clinic,” according to a statement from the Department of Energy facility.
This is the second time, at least, that Building 720 has shut down because of COVID-19. The building reopened on April 6 after a previous closure and deep cleaning.
Since March 15, most Sandia employees have been working from home. A lab spokesperson said Friday that some 60% to 75% of roughly 12,500 employees are still working remotely. As at other nuclear-weapon sites managed by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), some Sandia employees have been working on-site throughout the pandemic.
The NNSA has maintained some minor nuclear-weapon maintenance programs throughout the pandemic, and is preparing for major refurbishments of the W88 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead and the B61 nuclear gravity bomb. Sandia, which designs non-nuclear weapons components, has a role in those programs, along with all the other major refurbishments that are further back in the NNSA’s production pipe.
Sandia can test its own employees for COVID-19 and had processed nearly 2,000 tests as of Friday, the spokesperson said. As of last week, the lab network had confirmed 40 cases of COVID-19 among its workforce: 31 in its main campus at Albuquerque, N.M., and nine in its Livermore, Calif., satellite office, located near the NNSA’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
