A COVID-19 outbreak hit the Salt Waste Processing Facility roughly a month before its scheduled opening at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but the outbreak is under control now, the facility’s prime contractor said Wednesday.
More than 40 members of the operations or maintenance staff for Parsons were unavailable during late August due to COVID-19, according to a regular staff report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board dated Sept. 4. That tally counts not only confirmed cases, but absences associated with the disease that could have been caused by exposures outside of work.
For about a day, only one of the eight qualified shift operations managers were available, according to the report. “This individual worked day shift while a control room manager took control of night shift,” as allowed by the company’s technical safety requirements.
Parsons spokesman Bryce McDevitt said by email Wednesday that “all previous COVID issues are under control.” The company has nearly 500 employees at SWPF and is adequately staffed to start full operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is expected to start receiving radioactive material early next week.
Savannah River Site has recorded a total of 528 cases of COVID-19 among its workforce as of Sept 25, and 498 of those employees have gotten better and been cleared to return to work.
Paul Dabbar, the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for science, went to Savannah River Sept. 24 to dedicate the plant designed to treat 31 million gallons of tank waste at the site. The plant will process most of the salt waste inventory by separating highly radioactive constituents and vitrifying it into a glass-like substance.
Signed in 2003, Parsons’ contract to design and build the 140,000-square-foot facility to treat salt waste left over from Cold War era nuclear weapons work is worth about $2.3 billion.
