The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has confirmed a total of 368 cases of COVID-19 infections among its workforce, though about two-thirds of those personnel have recovered and been authorized to return to the job.
The total, posted Friday on the website for the DOE operations office at Savannah River, represents an increase of 66 since the previous update two weeks earlier.
The Savannah River Site has about 11,000 federal and contract workers at operations for the DOE Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. The Savannah River Site does not release additional details, such as which silo or contractor employs the infected individuals.
Over the weekend, two Office of Environmental Management properties – the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico – each disclosed one new coronavirus infection. An additional case of COVID-19 was also confirmed Monday at Hanford, making it two since Thursday.
An employee of WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership, already in quarantine due to possible COVID-19 exposure, was confirmed late Thursday to have tested positive, according to a Friday tweet, which added that the individual still displayed no symptoms of the illness. Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership has recorded 15 cases at the transuranic waste disposal complex since the pandemic began in early 2020. Five smaller vendors at WIPP have also recorded single cases, for a total of 20 at the facility near Carlsbad, N.M.
At least 73 employees among the 11,000-person workforce at the Hanford Site have contracted COVID-19 during 2020, based on anecdotal accounts. Savannah River, Hanford, and WIPP have been among the most transparent nuclear cleanup sites when it comes to publicly disclosing COVID-19 cases.
As of Thursday, there were 129 active COVID cases in the DOE Office of Environmental Management complex, an agency representative said in an email.
