The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is starting a “safe and deliberate process to resume operations” scaled back two months ago to curb the spread of COVID-19 among its workforce.
In the same news release, the department said a 19th case of COVID-19 had been confirmed at the complex adjacent to the Georgia border.
That gives Savannah River more than half of the total infections across the 16 nuclear cleanup sites overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Complex-wide, the figure is believed to be in the low 30s. Thirteen of the 19 individuals at SRS have recovered and returned to work.
About 11,000 federal and contract workers are employed at the Savannah River Site. Officials have said probably only a quarter of that total have worked on-site since the complex downshifted to essential mission-critical operations in late March.
The Energy Department on May 18 published a framework for gradually returning operations to full staffing.
The four-part approach starts with Phase 0, or sanitizing worksites and preplanning. Phase 1 entails the return of key employees who don’t require much personal protective equipment. Phase 2 sees more people coming back, including senior management; finally, in Phase 3, virtually everyone will resume pre-COVID-19 work schedules.
All of this is premised upon what DOE refers to as “gating” criteria, or local coronavirus-related health data, along with guidance from local, state, and federal governments.
The Savannah River Site has started Phase 1 callbacks, under which about 2,000 people will gradually return to the site, a spokeswoman said by email. The DOE guidance does not provide any timelines and stresses planning is subject to change depending on health trends.
During Phase 1 Parsons will resume some on-site startup work on the Salt Waste Processing Facility, according to DOE.
Last week, DOE confirmed the Idaho National Laboratory, the Hanford Site in Washington state, and the Oak Ridge in Tennessee had all entered Phase 1.
The Energy Department is “is continuing to analyze the potential impacts of the pandemic on project and regulatory milestones,” according to the Savannah River release.
