The level of coronavirus infections in South Carolina is still high enough to keep the Department of Energy from moving any closer to pre-COVID-19 operations at the Savannah River Site, a senior site official said Monday.
The DOE complex next to the Georgia line will probably stay in Phase 1 of the agency’s COVID-19 remobilization for a while longer, Michael Budney, Savannah River Site (SRS) operations manager for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, told the site’s government-chartered Citizens Advisory Board.
Despite being well below full staffing, however, SRS and Parsons, prime for the Salt Waste Processing Facility, are poised to open the new treatment plant. Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of energy for science, will be at the site Thursday for a ribbon-cutting. “Hot commissioning” will start early next month for the plant designed to treat 31 million gallons of tank waste, Budney said.
As for operations in the ongoing pandemic, “[w]e are sticking here [in Phase 1] for a while,” Budney told the advisory board during the online meeting. Confirmed COVID-19 infections in and around Aiken have fallen since a midsummer peak, though the region and the state at large saw a spike after the Labor Day holiday. Budney said local mask-wearing requirements at the site and in the Aiken area have helped.
Still, Budney said the transmission rate is still too high for DOE to yet allow the 310-square mile complex, with its 11,000 federal and contract workers, to advance to Phase 2.Since early June, Savannah River Site has been in Phase 1, in which most people still telecommute but key staff and personnel whose jobs require little protective equipment can return inside the fence.
Phase 2 allows more people to return on-site, including workers whose job requires them to use at least moderate amounts of personal protective equipment.
The Savannah River Site has confirmed 512 COVID-19 cases so far. That includes one fatal case. Another 471 have recovered and been cleared to work. Most people become infected outside work, Budney said.
The three counties where Savannah River is located, Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell, together have confirmed more than 9,000 cases and about 90 deaths due to the pandemic. That is according to statistics on the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control’s website.
From mid-March until late-May, Savannah River like most other DOE nuclear cleanup sites scaled back to skeleton crews to slow the spread of COVID-19. In late May, the Office of Environmental Management implemented a four-part pandemic remobilization program. It starts with Phase 0 (preplanning) and eventually culminates with Phase 3, or a return to near pre-pandemic on-site staffing. The agency says the phases have no schedules or timelines but are based on local virus risk, government orders, and availability of protective equipment.
