The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state seems to be experiencing a surge in coronavirus infections in recent days with five more workers testing positive.
That makes 11 new cases of COVID-19 among Hanford’s 11,000-member workforce since Friday.
The DOE emergency operations website at Hanford posted a notice late Monday saying five employees at the former plutonium production complex reported to management they have tested positive. The contractor-run website that gives daily updates on COVID infections and facility cleanings also noted that 21 other employees were undergoing testing.
News of the latest positive tests comes after a weekend in which six workers reported to site management they are positive for the virus. That brings the unofficial tally to 191 cases of COVID-19 at Hanford. The figure is based on a briefing that Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance delivered to the Hanford Advisory Board early this month combined with the number of new cases cited on the website since then. Vance is scheduled to address an Oregon Department of Energy advisory board Thursday.
About 60% of Hanford’s federal and contract staffers are back working inside the fence these days after the facility, like other DOE nuclear complexes, scaled back to bare bones operations for about two months this spring while management came up with a plan to operate during the pandemic.
Hanford is the DOE’s largest nuclear cleanup site run by the Office of Environmental Management (EM). While the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has roughly the same size workforce and more cases, at 609, it has both extensive operations for both EM and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
As of Tuesday morning, the United States is approaching nearly 8.8 million cases of COVID-19 and roughly 226,000 fatalities, according to an online dashboard curated by the New York Times and Google. Cases have surged nationwide in the early autumn, and instances of new infections at several DOE sites have reflected that.
