A University of Georgia research associate at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina was “treated and hospitalized for a few days for observation,” after being bitten by a poisonous copperhead snake July 22, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
“The individual is fully recovered and returned to work,” Vicky Sutton-Jackson, a spokesperson for Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, said in an email response to Weapons Complex Monitor. The Ecology Laboratory is a research unit of the University of Georgia based at the Savannah River Site.
The incident happened while researchers were tracking gopher frogs, Sutton-Jackson said. The temporary research associate was evidently clearing away leaves on the ground in hopes of getting a look at the gopher frog with the tracking signal.
But, unbeknownst to the researcher, the gopher frog had been swallowed by a copperhead. The frog-eating snake, unseen due to the leaves, bit the research associate on the hand, according to the spokesperson.
For the second quarter, Atlanta-based Perma-Fix Environmental Services reported a net loss of around $1.4 million, or around $0.11 per share, according to the company’s Aug. 5 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s a drop of about 150% compared with a profit of roughly $3 million, or $0.25 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Earnings at Perma-Fix in the second quarter of 2021 were helped along by a roughly $5.4 million federal Payment Protection Plan (PPP) loan the company received from the U.S. Small Business Administration. PPP loans were part of the U.S. coronavirus bailout bills in 2020.
CEO Mark Duff Duff during an Aug. 5 earnings call said that government agencies such as the Department of Energy have “been quite lethargic in distribution of task orders … due to the impacts of the pandemic.” The chief executive hopes this will change in the third and fourth quarters.
Despite pains in the contracting arena, revenue was up at Perma-Fix during the second quarter. The company reported around $19.5 million in revenue, an increase of around 20% year-over-year from roughly $16.1 million. Perma-Fix credited the revenue hike to recovering business in its waste treatment and services sectors previously hit by the pandemic.
Perma-Fix provides nuclear and mixed-waste management and treatment services for private partners and federal agencies such as DOE and the Department of Defense, and has contracts at cleanup sites including the Richland, Wash., Hanford Site and New York’s West Valley Demonstration Project.
In keeping with a directive by Congress, a National Academies panel holds a fact-finding session next week on nuclear threats and weapons of mass destruction terrorism.
The Nuclear Studies and Radiation Board (NRSB) of the National Academies plans a hybrid meeting for information-sharing between 12:45pm – 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday Aug. 15.
The National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal 2021 calls for the National Academies to “address the adequacy of strategies to prevent, counter, and respond to WMD [weapons of mass destruction] terrorism, and identify technical, policy, and resource gaps,” according to a press release from the board.
The panel will study threats from state-sponsored and non-state actors that seek to acquire or misuse technology, materials, and critical expertise needed to carry out nuclear attacks, according to the announcement. A link to the event, including how to attend via zoom, is available here.
Anyone seeking to attend the meeting in person at the Keck Center in Northwest Washington, D.C., should email Ayanna Lynch at ALynch@nas.edu.
