The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) tracked three new confirmed cases of COVID-19 this week throughout its complex, as a surging outbreak in Texas forced the Pantex Plant to delay the start of its planned ramp-up to normal operations.
There were 23 active cases in the nuclear weapons complex this week, a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency wrote Friday in an email. That is up from 20 at this time last week, and makes for a cumulative total of 80 cases since the first confirmed U.S. case of the disease in January.
The NNSA says it does not specify which sites have which cases due to privacy and operational security concerns. At deadline, 57 people had recovered from COVID-19 across the NNSA complex, and no one had died.
Recovery was the word of the week, with the broader Department of Energy at last publishing its four-phase framework for eventually reopening agency headquarters in Washington. However, the novel coronavirus that broke out last year in Wuhan, China, is still raging throughout the country.
No host community has had it worse than the counties surrounding the NNSA’s weapons assembly and disassembly hub, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo. Potter and Randall counties in the Texas chimney spiked again this week, led by an outbreak in Potter north of Amarillo. Potter has one meat processing plant within county lines, and another just outside. Meat processing plants have generally continued to operate throughout the pandemic as an essential industry, but have been hubs for outbreaks as well.
Pantex, managed by Consolidated National Security, had planned to start bringing more workers back on-site starting Monday, but the rising case numbers made the contractor think the better of that. Roughly 900 new cases in Potter County alone this week brought that jurisdiction’s cumulative total to more than 2,000.
“The new target date for initiating return-to-work actions for those currently offsite is June 8,” according to a recorded message on the plant’s telephone switchboard on Friday.
At that rate, the ramp-up back to normal operations would be completed around June 15. However, the message cautioned, the dates could move left or right, “based on the rate and intensity of the pandemic spread.” Meanwhile, “[e]mployees are to remain prepared to be recalled during this period as needed to support any emergent NNSA mission requirements,” according to the recording.
Pantex has since early April limited its operations to mission critical projects. That means only the people needed for hands-on nuclear-weapons work, and a small number of support staff, are allowed on site. Pantex will not say how many people are at work over three typical shifts. About 3,500 people work at the plant, normally.
What effect the pandemic will have on the NNSA’s long-term plans to modernize neglected nuclear weapons production infrastructure — or, in the case of the twin plutonium pit plants at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., to build it — remains to be seen. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the retiring ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district includes Pantex, has said some delays are inevitable.
However, the agency has managed to make “all the major milestones and all of the requirements that we’ve had operating through the pandemic,” NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said Thursday during a virtual meeting of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.
Asked for a sample of milestones completed during the pandemic — the World Health Organization recognized COVID-19 was one on March 11, with a presidential U.S. disaster declaration following March 13 — NNSA headquarters in Washington provided these through a spokesperson:
- Pantex in April assembling a non-nuclear-explosive prototype of the W88 Alt-370 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead. The First Production Capability Unit “allows Pantex staff to exercise processes to ensure readiness for rate production for the W88 Alt 370.” The 370 major alteration will replace the weapon’s conventional high explosives, which trigger its nuclear detonation, and refresh other components of its detonation system.
- Delivering the Cycle 24 Report on Stockpile Assessment (ROSA) package to the president and Congress in March. In this grueling annual exercise, which requires signoff from all the lab directors, the NNSA’s senior management generates a classified report on the state of every type of U.S. nuclear weapon: a comprehensive look at what federal law calls the “safety, reliability, performance, or military effectiveness” of weapons whose designs cannot be fully tested. “Cycle 25 is currently underway,” NNSA headquarters said Friday.
- Without specifying further, the spokesperson said the agency “has remained on track for required weapons system sustainment efforts, including limited-life components exchange, Joint Test Assemblies, and minor alterations activities.”
- Finally, the spokesperson said the NNSA’s Office of Secure Transport met all required shipments on time during this period. The paramilitary-like organization transports special nuclear materials to and from NNSA sites, and weapons to and from NNSA and military installations.
The NNSA also said it has kept certain mission-critical employees in “isolation” since the pandemic started, including “craftsmen essential to NNSA’s mission critical functions,” and some members of the agency’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team. The latter group is the NNSA’s first-response unit for accidents or mishaps during planned operations involving nuclear materials, or a terrorist threat involving nuclear or radiological materials (which has not happened yet).
COVID-19 Cases in NNSA Host Regions
Following is Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s weekly digest of confirmed COVID-19 cases, including fatal cases, in the host cities and counties of NNSA nuclear weapons sites.
The figures below are the cumulative cases recorded since the first confirmed U.S. instance of COVID-19 in January.
Data come from a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and from select states, counties, and cities, where noted. The Monitor tracks weekly changes, using the latest data available at deadline, which is sometimes current as of the Thursday before publication.
Testing figures report the number of aggregate tests, not the number of people tested.
Kansas City, Mo. – Kansas City National Security Campus
The city so far has a total of 962 total confirmed cases and 22 deaths, up from 843 confirmed cases and 18 deaths last week.
Statewide, the instances of new cases increased sharply this week compared with last, with Missouri registering more than 12,200 confirmed cases and 595 total deaths, up from 10,500 confirmed cases and 480 deaths a week ago. There had been more than 172,946 tests performed in Missouri as of Friday, up from about 154,000 a week ago and 80,700 a week before that, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
Missouri was among the first states to reopen businesses that shuttered for months to slow the spread of COVID-19. The state now allows all businesses to serve customers, provided employees and patrons continue to practice social distancing with the federally recommended 6 feet between people.
New Mexico – NNSA Albuquerque, Albuquerque; Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
New Mexico had nearly 6,500 confirmed total cases and 294 deaths at deadline, up sharply from 5,500 cases and 242 total deaths a week ago.
Bernalillo County, near Albuquerque and Sandia, had about 1,300 confirmed positive cases and 63 deaths at deadline, up from about 1,150 cases and 54 deaths last week. More than 147,000 tests had been performed in New Mexico, rising from about 115,011 a week ago, and 85,600 the week before that, according to the state and the Hopkins tracker.
Los Alamos County held steady week over week at six total confirmed cases and no deaths, maintaining that level of confirmed infections for the fifth consecutive week.
Cases in the counties surrounding Los Alamos rose again this week, with a rate of increase a little greater than the one recorded last week. Sandoval County had 528 confirmed cases and 24 deaths at deadline, up from 479 confirmed cases and 22 deaths a week ago. Sandoval has a worse outbreak than any other county near Los Alamos.
Taos County had 22 confirmed cases and no deaths this week, up from 20 cases and no deaths last week. Rio Arriba had 36 cases and no deaths, up from 30 cases and no deaths last week. Santa Fe, N.M., south of Los Alamos, had 127 confirmed total cases, up from 113 confirmed a week ago. Santa Fe’s fatal cases held steady at three this week. The county recorded its first COVID-19 fatalities last week.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., Anderson County – Y-12 National Security Complex
There were at deadline 35 confirmed cases and one death in Anderson County, Tenn., which includes the Y-12 National Security Complex. That is up from 35 confirmed cases a week ago, with no new deaths.
COVID-19 infections in Tennessee rose sharply for a third week in a row to nearly 19,000 confirmed total cases and 313 total deaths, up from 16,700 cases and 287 deaths a week ago. There had been about 360,500 tests performed in Tennessee at deadline, up from 302,000 last week and 236,000 the week before, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Livermore, Calif., Alameda County – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (including Sandia, Calif.)
In Alameda County, near the Livermore lab, there were as of this week more than 2,600 confirmed cases and 90 total deaths at deadline, up from 2,200 confirmed cases and 79 deaths a week ago.
For the second straight week, the county has more confirmed cases and deaths than nearby San Francisco, which had about 2,200 confirmed cases and 37 total deaths, up from 2,000 confirmed cases and 35 deaths a week ago.
The death toll in Santa Clara, Calif., some 30 miles south by road from Livermore, was 138 as of Friday, up from 134 deaths a week ago. Santa Clara was hit hard early on by COVID-19 and, until last month, had more fatalities than any other part of California. Los Angeles now has by far the most COVID-19 deaths in the state: more than 2,000 at deadline, up from about 1,700 last week.
California, the largest and most populous state in the union, had nearly 88,500 confirmed cases and more than 3,604 total deaths at deadline, compared with 75,000 confirmed cases and 2,500 total deaths a week ago. There had been more than 1.4 million total tests performed in California, at deadline, up from about 1.1 million last week and 840,000 the week before.
Aiken, S.C., Aiken County – Savannah River Site
Aiken had about 161 confirmed cases at deadline Friday, with seven deaths. That’s up from about 135 cases a week ago, with no new deaths.
The Savannah River Site itself had confirmed 15 total cases of COVID-19 at deadline Friday. Only two of those are active cases; 13 people at the site who previously tested positive recovered last week.
South Carolina overall had more than 9,300 confirmed cases and 416 total confirmed deaths this week, up from about 8,200 confirmed cases and 371 deaths last week. There had been about 138,000 tests performed in South Carolina as of deadline, up from about 102,000a week ago and 75,670 tests the week before that.
Amarillo, Texas, including Potter and Randall counties – Pantex Plant
Combined cases in Potter and Randall counties near Amarillo continued to surge this month, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began more widespread tests in the area. Potter has by far the worse outbreak.
Potter County alone tracked 892 new cases compared with last week, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department. That is more than double the number of cases the county recorded last week.
The two Amarillo-area counties had a combined total of 2,831 cases and 31 deaths at deadline: 2,202 cases and 25 deaths in Potter; 477 cases and six deaths in Randall, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department.
Last week at this time, the counties had a combined 1,939 cases: 1,462 cases and 23 deaths for Potter, and 477 cases and four deaths in Randall.
In the two counties, there have been a combined 13,239 tests performed, up from 11,342 last week, and up from 6,139 the week before that, according to the Amarillo health department.
Texas continued its reopening this week, when Gov. Greg Abbott (R) did away with quarantines for air travelers entering Texas from certain states, and allowed some state offices issuing drivers licenses to open at reduced capacity.
Earlier this month, Texas started reopening retail businesses and other places where people congregate. Last week, Texas reopened offices, manufacturing facilities, and gyms, but required them to keep occupancy at the 25% mark. The week before, Abbott allowed salons, barber shops, and other cosmetology businesses to reopen, providing they regularly sanitize work stations and practice social distancing.
Statewide, the Lone Star State had more than 53,000 total confirmed cases and 1,460 total deaths, up from 44,500 cases and 1,235 total deaths this week. There had been more than 770,000 tests done in Texas as of Friday, up from 623,000 last week, and 455,000 the week before that, according to the state and the Hopkins tracker.
Nevada – Nevada National Security Site
There were 59 confirmed cases in Nye County, Nev., near the northwestern perimeter of the former Nevada Test Site, up 10 from 49 a week ago. This week, Nye County confirmed its first fatal case of COVID-19.
In Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, which have most of the state’s cases and deaths, there were more than 5,700 cases and 320 deaths, up from 5,000 cases and 275 total deaths last week.
Statewide, Nevada had around 7,400 cases and 383 deaths, up from 6,700 cases and 346 total deaths a week ago. The weekly increase in confirmed infections and fatal cases was lower this week than the week before. There had been almost 69,500 tests performed in Nevada, as of deadline, up from about 51,357 a week ago and 43,500 tests a week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
The U.S. had the most COVID-19 cases and deaths of any other nation on Earth at deadline, with nearly 95,000 confirmed deaths: up about 10,000 from roughly 85,000 last week. The increase in fatal cases this week was about the same as the increase tracked the week before.
Since confirmation that the outbreak hit the U.S., nearly people 300,000 domestically had recovered from their bouts with COVID-19, up from 245,000 recoveries last week. There had been some 13 million tests performed in the U.S., at deadline, up from 10.3 million the week before.
