With growing federal alarm over the surging numbers of new COVID-19 cases, especially among the unvaccinated, the Department of Energy on Friday confirmed it is imploring government contractors to find ways to get workers to take their shots.
The agency acknowledged the effort, spearheaded by Tarak Shah, chief of staff to Secretary Jennifer Granholm, after multiple industry sources told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Thursday that DOE was reaching out to managers of its federal nuclear site contractors to press for more workers to be vaccinated.
“The safety of DOE’s workforce is our first priority,” a DOE spokesperson wrote in a Friday email. “As such, DOE has been in contact with our contractors about the importance and need for every member of our workforce to get vaccinated, and we support any proactive steps our contractors can take to better protect workers and communities.”
Industry sources said DOE is expressing support for vaccinations and even mandates at contractors. “Those calls have started,” one industry source said by phone this week. “I don’t know that they have reached everyone yet.”
Exactly how closely the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would follow the broader DOE’s efforts was not clear at deadline Friday.
An NNSA spokesperson on Friday declined to comment about whether the semi-autonomous nuclear-weapons steward had started its own effort, separate from the one underway led by Shah and others in Granholm’s office, to push for contractor policies aimed at boosting vaccination rates at nuclear weapon sites.
“While NNSA is prioritizing mission essential operations, we continue to follow guidelines specified by the White House, Office of Management and Budget, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and strongly encourage vaccination among our workforce,” an agency spokesperson said.
In July, when asked whether the NNSA would precisely follow DOE’s plan for returning federal employees to the office, a spokesperson said NNSA would follow the parent agency “[w]hen appropriate,” and “provide supplemental information for NNSA’s workforce to include headquarters, field offices and M&O [management and operations] contractors].”
Industry representatives at NNSA sites this week likewise declined to say if they had, or were expecting to have, conversations with the agency about vaccination incentives or mandates.
Bechtel National does not mandate the vaccine at the corporate level among its employees, although it does encourage it, a company spokesman said by phone Thursday.
When it comes to contractor work, Bechtel-led ventures will typically defer to the on-site policy of its customer, the spokesperson added. “It is their site,” and their project, the spokesman said. Bechtel remains one of the lead partners of Lawrence Livermore National Security, which is managing the California weapons-design lab at least through fiscal year 2025.
Some spokespersons for some NNSA site operations contractors said this week that they would follow any directives from their customer, but none would comment about whether they had had contact with the agency about tightening vaccination policies.
“Our COVID-19 vaccination policies are developed in coordination with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy, and we will implement any new directives when they are provided,” a spokesperson for Consolidated Nuclear Security, the management and operations contract for the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex, wrote Friday in an email.
“The NNSS [Nevada National Security Site] is in regular contact with NNSA headquarters regarding COVID-19 health and safety protocols and workforce vaccinations,” a spokesperson for the test site wrote in an email. “While COVID-19 vaccines are not mandatory at the [site], employees are encouraged to get the vaccine if they are able to.”
At the Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri, vaccinations are “highly encouraged, but up to the individual,” a site spokesperson said Friday.
“This would be best answered by DOE and NNSA,” a spokesperson for Sandia National Laboratories wrote Friday in an email. “To minimize the spread of COVID-19, Sandia requires unvaccinated workers to wear face coverings while on site, and all workers to wear face coverings while inside buildings. This requirement is lifted in certain situations, such as when they are alone in closed rooms. These measures are in accordance with recent guidance from the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
More than 18 months after the coronavirus pandemic started to spread in the United States, DOE and NNSA have yet to order federal employees or contractors to take one of the vaccines approved for emergency use in the United States.
But President Joe Biden adopted a more combative stance two weeks ago, saying federal workers and contractors who fail to attest that they have been vaccinated will have to stay masked on the job, be tested regularly and forgo any federal work travel.
Dan Leone contributed to this report from Washington.
