Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Vol. 12 No. 24
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Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor
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March 20, 2020

NNSA Production Sites Yet Undisturbed, as COVID-19 Spreads

By Dan Leone

Despite massive work-pattern shifts at a couple of the nuclear weapons laboratories due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the first recorded case at Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C., production sites under the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) were operating without disruption as of Friday.

Even as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California moved toward minimum safe operations and a third of the New Mexico-based Sandia National Laboratories’ workforce began telecommuting, thousands of workers were reporting for their usual shifts at the NNSA’s weapons production operations: the Kansas City National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo.; the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas; and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Spokespersons for all the sites told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor this week they have yet to record a case of COVID-19, and that work continues essentially as normal amid the outbreak — with added sanitary precautions.

“A few employees” at both Y-12 and Pantex “are currently quarantined or isolated” following some international travel, though none reported any “definitive exposure” to COVID-19, a spokesperson for the sites said. The Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security operates both sites.

NNSA headquarters in Washington was not aware of any confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the three production sites as of noon Eastern time on Friday, a spokesperson wrote in an email. At the site and headquarters level, DOE and NNSA practice has been to address only confirmed cases of the disease.

At latest count today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirned more than 15,000 cases in the United States and 201 deaths. The rapidly spreading respiratory disease has found its way to the vicinity of all three NNSA production plants.

In Kansas City, Mo., home of the NNSA’s assembly hub for non-nuclear nuclear-weapons components, there were seven positive cases as of Thursday, according to the state. That was after Kansas City confirmed its first two cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. There were 47 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Missouri statewide as of Friday.

The Kansas City plant employs about 4,000 people, according to management and operations contractor Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies.

In Amarillo, seat of Potter County and home of the nation’s sole nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly site, the county judge on Wednesday declared a local state of disaster and confirmed that “certain persons in Amarillo, Texas, had been determined by testing to be infected with the CoVID-19 pathogen.” There were 194 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Texas as of Thursday, according to the total posted by the state Friday.

There are more than 3,000 employees at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, which like the Y-12 National Security Complex is run by Consolidated Nuclear Security.

In Anderson County Tenn., which includes Oak Ridge and Y-12, with its mission-critical uranium refining, metalworking, and assembly facilities, one person was confirmed positive, the Oak Ridge Today digital publication reported. There were 154 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Tennessee as of Thursday, according to the state.

There are about 4,500 employees at Y-12, which includes construction workers building the Uranium Processing Facility. Construction continued on the facility this week, a spokesperson for the Bechtel National-led plant manager, Consolidated Nuclear Security, wrote in an email.

Work also continued at the Savannah River Site this week, where the NNSA is preparing to turn the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility into a plutonium pit factory, and where the agency presently harvests tritium to refresh the reservoirs of active nuclear weapons.

“The Savannah River Site is fully operational,” according to a statement distributed from facility management to employees. “Currently, [the site] has no cases of COVID-19.”

South Carolina had logged 81 confirmed cases of the disease at deadline Friday, according to the state department of health, but none yet in Aiken County.

DOE HQ Employee Tests Positive

Demonstrating the lag-time between the display of symptoms and the public confirmation of the disease, someone who went on personal leave from DOE headquarters in Washington early this month has tested positive for COVID-19.

“[A]n employee based at the Forrestal building developed symptoms of COVID-19 after returning home from domestic personal travel and subsequently tested positive for the virus,” a spokesperson for Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette wrote in an email Thursday. “On March 3rd, the employee left on personal leave and has neither been in the Forrestal building nor had any physical contact with DOE employees at the workplace since then.”

Forrestal is the primary workspace for employees at DOE headquarters. Some NNSA employees work in leased space at the nearby Portals complex.

The Energy Department ordered a deep-clean of the employees office, and has alerted employees who worked near the infected individual, the spokesperson said.

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