It’s still looking like SRS thinks the COVID-19 virus situation is mostly a hoax. WHEN will SRS start acting responsibly and declare certain jobs “essential,” like high-level waste management and security of plutonium, and tell “non-essential” workers (like those planning for the unjustified Plutonium Bomb Plant and nuclear war) to stay home????
“Letter: Is SRS at high virus risk?”
It’s my understanding that Savannah River Site employees are not able to work from home because it’s not allowed in their contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy. Meanwhile, DOE employees are allowed to work from home.
They are not taking this seriously and acting quickly to make that change so nonessential personnel can work from home. They are doing token stuff such as adding hand sanitizer stations and increasing cleaning crews (who, by the way, do not get sick pay if they don’t come in, so some of them could be sick and spreading the coronavirus around as they “clean”).
There are operators working in close quarters and many engineers in cubicles. The cubicle working environment is similar to being in a large airplane – all the air in the room is shared and sometimes four desks back up to the same cubicle wall. Some of the cubicles have two or three people sharing them, and they can get a maximum of about 3 feet away from one another. So many, many people are in the same room, sharing the same breathing air for nine hours a day, for days on end. It’s like flying in a plane but with the people just a little more spread-out, all breathing the same air.
This is putting the site mission at risk by increasing the odds that many of the personnel will get very sick. This is massively irresponsible. It’s putting our communities at risk by exposing all these people unnecessarily, and if there’s anything we should be learning, it’s that country after country has shown us that the only way to slow the spread is by isolating. And by not doing that we are creating a situation where we will overwhelm our hospitals and increase infection rates and deaths.
A new DOE order will allow some paid work from home, but it only applies to a few people with pre-existing medical conditions. It will do nothing to relieve the crowding in the cubicles.
This is Increasing the risk for everyone in our community and the mission of the site.
Kathy Glenn
Aiken, S.C.
letter posted here: https://www.augustachronicle.com/opinion/20200319/letter-is-srs-at-high-virus-risk