Many employees of the facilities overseen by the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office (PPPO) are receiving notices this week to report back to their worksites after months away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first wave of homebound federal and contract personnel on June 15 will begin reporting back to the three locations overseen by the office, according to a Thursday memo from Energy Department PPPO Manager Robert Edwards. The facilities are: the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the Paducah Site in Kentucky, and and the Lexington, Ky., PPPO headquarters office.
This week officially marks the start of Phase 1 of remobilization, with notices going out, followed by reporting to the jobsite next week, Edwards said. “The pace of employees returning and the start of specific operations will be based on several factors, including available health data, remaining state and local restrictions, and facility preparedness.”
Most workers either worked remotely or collected paid leave since late March, when DOE’s Office of Environmental Management shifted most of its sites to minimum operations.
More than half of the 16 nuclear cleanup locations have now moved from Phase 0, which is basically planning and analyzing local coronavirus infection trends, to Phase 1, recalling a limited number of employees to do work on-site that is either high-priority or low-risk. The DOE nuclear cleanup office issued its four-stage remobilization plan last week, following the framework set for restaffing Energy Department headquarters offices.
If the health trends remain encouraging, the sites can advance to Phase 2 – which involves recalling more employees to on-site work. In Phase 2, bans on nonessential travel are also lifted. The process ends with Phase 3, or a return to nearly pre-COVID on-site employment numbers.
A count of personnel at three PPPO locations was not immediately available. The largest contractor at Portsmouth, cleanup provider Fluor-BWXT, probably employs about 750 hourly employees. Perhaps 150 of those were on-site during the past couple months, estimated John Knauff, president of United Steelworkers Local 1-689 at Portsmouth.
