With two major Department of Energy nuclear site contractors having already announced plans to mandate worker vaccination against COVID-19, don’t be surprised to see others follow in coming days, sources told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
One industry source said Friday there is a good chance at least one more major limited liability corporation at a DOE weapons complex site could announce vaccination orders for employees this week. “Possibly/likely” that big contractors at DOE cleanup sites will follow suit this week, a second source said this morning.
Triad National Security was the first to take this step, announcing a couple of weeks ago it will require its employees at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to get vaccinated against the virus, which has already killed more than 648,000 people. Then last week Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, operations manager at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina said it is also taking this step.
Triad has given its workers until Oct. 15 to get fully vaccinated. As of this morning, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions had yet to announce a timeline for unvaccinated workers to get their shots, or say how the contractor will handle potential exemptions to the order.
Meanwhile, this is the week that contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are expected to start a program to have workers verify their vaccination status.
According to an Aug. 30 memo to Hanford employees from site manager Brian Vance, an electronic Hanford Attestation Application is supposed to launch today for workers there to say if they are fully vaccinated – and then subsequently follow up with needed documentation. Those who are unvaccinated, or refuse to say, will be required to undergo COVID-19 testing at least weekly.
Some contractors might find it is less costly to make vaccines mandatory than to provide weekly COVID-19 testing for perhaps thousands of employees, sources also said.
Editor’s Note, 09/08/2021, 4:09 p.m. Eastern time. The story was corrected to show the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S.
