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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON PANTEX PLANT

+ + + + + 

TUESDAY

MAY 3, 2011

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Frankfurt Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Bradley P. Clawson, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

JOSIE BEACH, Member

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ROBERT BISTLINE, SC&A*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A*

MEL CHEW, ORAU Team*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

JENNY LIN, HHS

SARAH RAY*

BRYCE RICH, ORAU Team*

KATHY ROBERTSON-DEMERS, SC&A*

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

*Participating via telephone
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 (9:00 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning, 

4 everybody. This is the Advisory Board on 

5 Radiation and Worker Health, Pantex Work 

6 Group, and we're just getting started. We'll 

7 begin with roll call. If you're talking about 

8 a specific site, please speak to conflict of 

9 interest, and we'll begin with Board Members 

10 in the room.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm Brad 

12 Clawson, Work Group Chair. No conflict on 

13 Pantex.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, Work 

15 Group Member, no conflicts with Pantex.

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, 

17 Work Group Member, no conflict, Pantex.

18 MEMBER PRESLEY: Robert Presley, 

19 Work Group Member, no conflict with Pantex.

20 MR. KATZ: And do we have any 

21 Board Members on the line?

22 (No response.)
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay. NIOSH ORAU team 

2 in the room.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

4 Hinnefeld with NIOSH. I don't have a conflict 

5 with Pantex.

6 MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes, NIOSH 

7 health physicist, no conflicts of interest.

8 MR. KATZ: NIOSH ORAU team on the 

9 line?

10 DR. CHEW: Mel Chew, no conflict 

11 with Pantex.

12 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Mel.

13 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, ORAU team, 

14 no conflict.

15 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Bryce. Okay. 

16 SC&A team in the room?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, 

18 no conflict.

19 MR. KATZ: SC&A team on the line?

20 DR. BISTLINE: Bob Bistline, no 

21 conflict with Pantex.

22 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Bob.
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1 DR. BISTLINE: Thank you.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think Kathy 

3 will join --

4 MR. KATZ: Join us in a little 

5 bit? Okay.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Shortly, yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Federal officials or 

8 contractors to the feds in the room?

9 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

10 MR. KATZ: And this is Ted Katz. 

11 I'm the Designated Federal Official for the 

12 Advisory Board. And on the line? Any federal 

13 officials, contractors to the feds?

14 (No response.)

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. We have no 

16 members of the public in the room. Do we have 

17 any members of the public who want to identify 

18 themselves on the line?

19 (No response.)

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. All's quiet 

21 right now. Then we're all set to go. I think 

22 everyone on the line knows the rules about 
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1 muting your phone, so nothing more to be said 

2 there. Brad, it's your agenda.

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Ted? This 

4 is Kathy DeMers, and I'm not conflicted.

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you, Kathy. 

6 Welcome.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, the 

8 agenda, I guess we're going to start off with 

9 the overview of the issues for the internal 

10 dose, and, is this in your hands, Joe, or 

11 Mark's?

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I, you know, 

13 I would leave it up to Mark and Bryce, if they 

14 want to capsule their piece. I mean, first of 

15 all, I thought it was a very thoughtful piece. 

16 It laid out things in a very deliberate way, 

17 and I don't know if you want to outline this

18 point or just, you know. 

19 I went ahead and wrote down 

20 something sort of akin to what you've done, 

21 because I think we're at the stage where 

22 there's some both philosophical as well as 
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1 assessment policy issues or call it what you 

2 may call it, for Pantex, and we can do that if 

3 you want. I mean it's up to you, because I 

4 think your March 10th paper was the last piece 

5 on Pantex.

6 So it's up to you, if you want to 

7 outline that first.

8 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. Yes, 

9 our latest response, as you indicated, was 

10 from March 10th, 2011, and basically, at our 

11 last Work Group meeting, you had identified, 

12 Joe Fitzgerald had identified, I guess, five 

13 or six key SEC issues that we tried to focus 

14 in on and respond to.

 So this March 10th 15 of 2011 response 

16 tries to address -- we've given, I guess, 

17 probably five introductory pages, and then 

18 tried to go into each specific question we 

19 have received and address each question. 

20 However, a lot of it ties together in the 

21 introductory portion.

22 We basically just went through an 
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1 introduction of the Pantex facilities 

2 operations, discussed you know, the time 

3 period that Pantex operations began. The 

4 early time period at Pantex, work was 

5 primarily involved in the casting, melting and 

6 machining of high explosives, which were then 

7 sent off-site to the Sandia National 

8 Laboratory for assembly.

9 Pantex wasn't really handling 

10 radioactive materials in those earlier days of 

11 operations, and that also corresponds with the 

12 number of people who were monitored for 

13 exposure to radiation as well. Then with the 

14 receipt of plutonium in late 1957-1958 time 

15 period, they constructed Gravel Gerties and 

16 also you can take a look at the number of 

17 individuals monitored at the site, and you see 

18 a drastic increase in the number of 

19 individuals who are being monitored for 

20 external dose, because the exposure potential 

21 increased during that time period.

22 You know, Pantex is a slightly 
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1 unique facility. It's a little bit different 

2 than all the other facilities that we have 

3 been talking about in the past. Pantex really 

4 didn't produce a radioactive material. They 

5 didn't have a foundry that produced uranium 

6 metal, for example.

7 They typically handled finished 

8 parts, and would assemble those parts into a 

9 final nuclear weapon that was sent to the 

10 military to be stockpiled. You know, during 

11 that time period as well, they would get some 

12 of those weapons back and do quality assurance 

13 testing and inspections of those weapons each 

14 year, to make sure that, you know, various 

15 parts functioned as appropriate, when needed, 

16 et cetera.

17 They would also take a look for 

18 surveillance concerns. They wanted to make 

19 sure that that weapon wasn't deteriorating, so 

20 that it would in fact, if needed, would be 

21 usable at the appropriate time.

22 I think I've given a brief 
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1 overview of Pantex operations from the 

2 beginning, and if you'd like to discuss 

3 specific, you know, specific concerns or 

4 approaches that we use for dose 

5 reconstruction, I'd be happy to go through 

6 those.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. You know, 

8 we're sort of in the tail end of the review, 

9 and what we're trying to do at this point is 

10 complete, I would say, document review in 

11 Germantown, and that was helpful. I guess the 

12 Work Group is scheduled in June. 

13 We're trying to schedule one last 

14 trip to Pantex, which you know, obviously you 

15 all are invited from NIOSH, to frankly address 

16 a few loose ends that we have identified in 

17 the late stages of this assessment, and that 

18 we're trying to get that to happen. 

19 Hopefully, the next couple of months, we can 

20 get down there for one last review. 

21 We're in the process of drafting a 

22 written set of findings or conclusions for the 
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1 Work Group, now that we have access to all the 

2 classified information, as well as maybe some 

3 other additional information. So that's all 

4 coming to full. 

5 What I'm going to do is I put some 

6 points down. These are points that, I think, 

7 will find their way into a preamble. I think 

8 you've used preambles in your assessment. I 

9 think it is helpful. So there's overarching 

10 comments. I want to start with the same kind 

11 of overview that you have, you and Bryce put 

12 down. 

13 I think there is a philosophical 

14 difference. I mean let's just, you know, I 

15 think that's agreed to in your paper. I think 

16 we tend to agree with that. There is a 

17 definite philosophical difference.

18 So I want to lay that out for the 

19 Work Group, because we've had a number of 

20 exchanges. But sometimes, I think, you know, 

21 it may get lost in all the give and take. I 

22 want to spend some time on it.
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1 Now I wrote it down, primarily 

2 because after going through your paper, I 

3 realize this is pretty nuanced. Even the 

4 nomenclature has different meanings, and I 

5 just want to make sure that -- we have this 

6 opportunity today. I just want to make sure 

7 that we have given you as thoughtful a 

8 rendition of where we're coming from as you 

9 have given us.

10 I think with that preamble, we're 

11 going to kick the tires for specific technical 

12 issues. But quite frankly, I guess I'll be 

13 surprised if we identify, after four or five 

14 years, you know, actual monitoring data or 

15 technical data that's a game-changer.

16 I mean I think that would be 

17 surprising, although there are some issues 

18 that we need to close out. So this may very 

19 well come down to some of these more policy20 oriented disagreements that the Work Group and 

21 then the full board will have to wrestle with, 

22 and make some judgments. 
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1 Okay. So bear with me, indulge me 

2 on this, because again, I jotted down some 

3 things, and I wanted to do some reading, which 

4 I hate to do, but I think just to make sure 

5 this as clear as possible. In the 

6 introduction, your response, I think, was 

7 pretty much correct.

8 However, I think we would disagree 

9 with parts of it. This is the -- this is what 

10 you and Bryce kind of described as the primary 

11 point of disagreement in your introduction. I 

12 think yes, we would recognize the lack of 

13 routine bioassay, or very much real data of 

14 any kind.

15 I think we agree that there is no 

16 routine bioassay data, and very little usable 

17 or representative field data. I mean there is 

18 field data, but I think it's very arguable 

19 whether it's either representative or usable 

20 for our purposes.

21 I don't think we'd be debating, as 

22 long as we have had, if there was good field 
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1 data. I'm talking air sampling or what-not to 

2 back up what's missing in the way of bioassay 

3 data.

4 But that's not particularly 

5 helpful so therefore, you know, what we have 

6 is what we have. It's the latter day bioassay 

7 data is what we have. 

8 We agree that Pantex is much 

9 different in the production and fabrication 

10 facilities that make up the rest of the 

11 weapons complex. Very familiar with the 

12 weapons complex, having lived with it for 20 

13 years. I agree fully that Pantex is a 

14 different bird, okay. 

15 When I had the health physics 

16 program with the Department, we didn't spend 

17 our time worrying about Pantex, okay. I'll be 

18 quite frank with you. We were worrying about 

19 Rocky Flats, Fernald and some of the labs, 

20 okay, and for the primary reasons you've 

21 mentioned, assembly-disassembly. It's not a 

22 whole lot of material roaming around for 
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1 exposure. So we were pretty aware of that. 

2 Now when we say routine bioassay, 

3 I think the challenge there, excuse me, is 

4 that yes. I mean you're running an assembly5 disassembly with sealed components, you know. 

6 I think you make a good point that yes, 

7 today's HPs would likewise probably design it 

8 with routine bioassay either.

9 However, it depends on how you 

10 describe routine. In this case, because you 

11 have an operation that involves, I'm going to 

12 use the word campaigns. Maybe that's not the 

13 right word, but you're cycling weapons systems 

14 through for assembly, and you're cycling them 

15 back at the end of their operational lives for 

16 disassembly.

17 So there's these sort of drawn out 

18 campaigns, and it may not be months. It may 

19 be years, because things in the stockpile take 

20 that long to get out, and then they take that 

21 long to come back out.

22 So if you have a particular system 
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1 that presents an exposure potential of some 

2 kind, and I think we've been dwelling on 

3 depleted uranium, yes, there's no routine 

4 bioassay program. But no, we do have

5 something approaching a chronic exposure 

6 potential to that particular disassembly 

7 process involving that particular system, 

8 okay.

9 I don't think there's any debate 

10 really in my mind that assembly was pretty 

11 clean. I don't think that's an issue. I 

12 think we're really more focused on 

13 disassembly. I want to make sure that's 

14 clear, because you know, sometimes we throw 

15 assembly-disassembly around.

16 I don't think there's any question 

17 that the components that were assembled, and 

18 there's a little asterisk there, and you know 

19 the exceptions I'm talking about, were 

20 relatively clean, and were really more focused 

21 on the disassembly side. 

22 So I guess from that standpoint, 
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1 there's some very real exposure potentials 

2 that deserve to be addressed in the same 

3 manner as they have been addressed in previous 

4 SEC evaluations. We've been through 

5 evaluations and have gone through the same 

6 intellectual regime of, you know, if there's 

7 an exposure potential, how does one go about 

8 addressing that exposure potential.

9 It's through the examination and 

10 evaluation of the data, the records and the 

11 facts, and I have had some pause, I have to 

12 admit, on this SEC, about the reliance on --

13 and I'm using your words in your piece, you 

14 know, descriptive memos, the presumed 

15 comprehensive radiation protection program, 

16 and the implementation of strict requirements 

17 about the nuclear weapons production program.

18 I lived with the production and 

19 fabrication and processing program for a long 

20 time at DOE, okay. It does have an obvious 

21 rigor, because of its mission. But, having 

22 lived with the radiological issues from 1980 
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1 to 2001, I'll be the first to tell you that it 

2 wasn't pristine, there were issues and 

3 programmatic deficiencies. 

4 It took a heck of a lot of effort 

5 by everybody in the field and the labs and in 

6 headquarters to straighten out. So I have a 

7 concern, when we diverge from objective facts 

8 in the record, to starting to look at the 

9 presumed rad program going back in time, and 

10 procedures that, you know, if implemented 

11 rigorously, would have been effective.

12 I mean those presumptions, when 

13 you take them back in time, I think, are --put 

14 you in jeopardy. I think the Work Group and 

15 the Board has to be careful, and I had this 

16 dialogue with Jim Neton in Santa Fe last year 

17 on the same subject. We have to be very 

18 careful about how much reliance one puts on 

19 programmatic documentation and programmatic 

20 assurances of rigor, quality assurance and the 

21 whole thing.

22 And you know I understand where 
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1 that comes from and the weapons program has 

2 been successful because of that rigor. But on 

3 the radiation protection side, there were 

4 issues, and they were addressed and they've 

5 been corrected. But nonetheless, there were 

6 issues, and a lot of these issues got down to 

7 procedures that should have been implemented 

8 more comprehensively and with better quality, 

9 and you know, rad protection evaluations that 

10 should have been done, perhaps, with more 

11 accountability than they were. So I just want 

12 to make sure that's square.

13 MR. ROLFES: Can I respond here? 

14 I agree with you. I agree, because right now 

15 basically, what we're doing is looking at, you 

16 know, our interpretation of historical 

17 records. So we certainly acknowledge that 

18 there were some historical concerns. So 

19 that's essentially why we're doing dose 

20 reconstructions.

21 Our responses here basically 

22 aren't necessarily how we're doing dose 
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1 reconstructions, because if we did rely upon 

2 this information, our intakes would be zero 

3 essentially. We wouldn't be assigning any 

4 radiation doses.

5 But the way we approach dose 

6 reconstructions for the Pantex site, we've 

7 looked at historical exposure potential based 

8 upon the documentation that we have been able 

9 to collect, and used claimant-favorable 

10 assumptions to assign those intakes.

11 So were not saying there was never 

12 any potential for intake, and this is -- I 

13 mean this is the debate, you know, of 

14 essentially, you know, are intakes that we're 

15 assigning appropriate. So I'd like to 

16 continue with that.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Well, like 

18 I said, again, I thought your March 10th 

19 piece, again, was I think a lot of thought 

20 went into it. I think I'm reacting to the 

21 position. It says here the NIOSH position is 

22 that there is compelling evidence sufficient 
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1 to justify the conclusion, based upon 

2 descriptive memos and an understanding of the 

3 basics of both the comprehensive radiological 

4 protection program and the strict requirement 

5 of the nuclear weapons production fabrication 

6 controls.

7 That's a strong statement. I mean 

8 that basically says, when I got to that 

9 statement, it basically said that that's where 

10 the source or basis of NIOSH's position on 

11 Pantex stems from, and you know, before that, 

12 you say there is a lack of field survey data 

13 to support a conclusion that exposure 

14 potential during the early periods at Pantex 

15 were essentially nil, or can be adequately 

16 bounded.

17 So you acknowledge that there's a 

18 lack of data to support a conclusion. 

19 However, and this is sort of the however part; 

20 this is where you say but there is compelling 

21 evidence.

22 So I'm just saying that, you know,
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1 that's almost the strongest way one can phrase 

2 that, and I guess I take exception to the 

3 agency putting such stock in those kinds of 

4 descriptions, because I think in the past, 

5 certainly from the DOE experience and history, 

6 they have been found wanting.

7 I think the way EEOICPA was set up 

8 originally, was to challenge the paradigm 

9 that, you know, if you have a good program, 

10 you're going to be fine in the way of 

11 exposures, doses and records. I think this 

12 program puts that on its head and says let the 

13 data and the information speak, you know, not 

14 presume that things were fine by virtue of 

15 procedures or programmatic descriptions or 

16 what have you, that you have to go back to the 

17 source information, and see what objectively 

18 that tells this agency as an independent 

19 agency, and not take assurances from DOE or 

20 rely on DOE.

21 And listen, I lived at DOE. I'm 

22 just telling you that this is the reason it's 
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1 an independent evaluation from the outside, 

2 and a fact-based, data-based inquiry to avoid 

3 those kinds of assumptions.

4 So I just want to, just you know 

5 again, I know we've had a lot of exchanges, 

6 and you know, these are good-faith exchanges. 

7 I think there's ways to interpret things. 

8 But from the standpoint of how we're looking 

9 at it, that's a bit of a game-stopper for us, 

10 that the compelling evidence ought not be the 

11 paper. 

12 It shouldn't be the program 

13 descriptions or whether one thinks there was a 

14 comprehensive rad program 30 years ago or not, 

15 or whether, you know, the strict regime of the 

16 weapons program kept us out of trouble. 

17 It probably did in some cases, but you 

18 know, to say a blanket, you know, that kind of 

19 assurance, the diamond-stamp program, you 

20 know, kept us out of trouble with respect to 

21 dosimetry and records, I think, is too far a 

22 reach.
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1 So that's kind of -- that's where 

2 we're coming from on that issue. I think the 

3 compelling evidence can't be just the 

4 procedures, the programs and all that.

5 MR. ROLFES: Sure, sure. I agree, 

6 I agree. With this response here, basically 

7 we're saying that not DOE's documentation is 

8 the bounding scenario; it's our interpretation 

9 of the data. We're not just strictly looking 

10 at procedures and policies for issuing badges, 

11 because if we were doing that, essentially 

12 we'd -- you know, DOE would be able to do that 

13 better than us.

14 So DOE would be doing the dose 

15 reconstructions, and basically what we're 

16 doing, we're looking at, you know, procedures, 

17 policies, the actual data from the 

18 individuals, and then we make some assumptions 

19 about that data.

20 We look at, you know, 

21 uncertainties associated with that data, 

22 whether the data are complete, and we make 
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1 judgments in our Site Profiles to assign 

2 intakes that, if you compare the results of 

3 our dose reconstruction reports to an 

4 individual's actual DOE-recorded dose over 

5 their lifetime, the doses almost in every case 

6 are sometimes an order of magnitude or two or 

7 three times higher than the actual DOE dose of 

8 record. And when you compile all these 

9 uncertainties for someone who's worked at the 

10 site for, you know, 30 or 40 years, the doses 

11 that we assign can be unreasonably large 

12 sometimes, but yet they're claimant-favorable. 

13 So this response here is basically saying 

14 that our approach and our Technical Basis 

15 Document in our Site Profile is bounding.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I guess I

17 have two points on this. One, we're in the 

18 SEC evaluation context, and I recognize that 

19 from a dose reconstruction standpoint, NIOSH 

20 is going to apply appropriate conservatism and 

21 has always done that. I don't think that's 

22 even in debate on this thing. 
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1 But in the context of the SEC, 

2 we're trying to establish whether the 

3 information, the records, what have you, are 

4 adequate and sufficient to enable you to get 

5 to the point of applying a conservatism in the 

6 dose reconstruction. 

7 I'll agree with you. You know, 

8 Pantex is a tough one. Pantex, like a lot of 

9 us, looked at the operations and said, you 

10 know, it's a component factory. You put them 

11 together and you take them apart, and you 

12 don't really need a comprehensive radiation 

13 protection program. 

14 You just have to be mindful of 

15 tritium and, you know, make sure there's no 

16 cracks that would enable sealed material to 

17 get out. I mean, you know, as long as you 

18 have good QA, diamond stamp, you were in good 

19 shape.

20 But, you know, in its operational 

21 history, it wasn't pristine. It wasn't that 

22 way 100 percent. There were some potential 
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1 exposure pathways that, you know, we talked to 

2 the workers; you have, too.

3 They were exposed, and the issue 

4 is, can we find a way to estimate that dose. 

5 We can get into specifics. I think you've 

6 got specifics coming. I'm just sort of giving 

7 the overview, but -- and that feasibility is 

8 kind of where we're at. It's not so much 

9 whether you can apply conservatism and get 

10 down to dose reconstruction.

11 I'm just saying do you have a 

12 starting point, in terms of sufficient 

13 information, to guide the dose reconstructor 

14 or not, which is the essence of the SEC. I 

15 think for Pantex, the dilemma is because of 

16 the, you know, the mindset, and this was a 

17 shared mindset. I mean it was at headquarters 

18 too, I'll tell you, that because it was a 

19 component assembly-disassembly, you didn't 

20 need to have an ongoing routine bioassay 

21 program.

22 Unfortunately, in those instances 
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1 where you happen to have an exposure pathway, 

2 you weren't covered. It was only belatedly 

3 that they did the kind of sampling and 

4 monitoring that would give you the data. So I 

5 know we've wrestled with this issue, but I'm 

6 going to get down to talking about later, you 

7 know, this back-extrapolation issue.

8 But before we get there, I just 

9 wanted to finish. Again, I think these are 

10 some interesting philosophical points, but I 

11 think these are more than philosophical 

12 points. They are really what's driving some 

13 of the disagreement that we've been debating 

14 now for over a couple of years. I just want 

15 to spend some time on that, if I can continue.

16 So anyway, you know, in Santa Fe, 

17 we had the opportunity to schedule an 

18 exchange, that was Jim Neton and myself, on 

19 exposure potential. That was last year, last 

20 November. And you know, it was really -- it 

21 really originated with some issues we had at 

22 Mound, but you know, similar issues we've had 
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1 with Pantex and some other places.

2 I think another problem that 

3 happened here is with this notion of how one 

4 deals with exposure potential. I'm speaking 

5 specifically about the uranium.

6 This is the depleted uranium in 

7 the systems, and I'll keep coming back to 

8 this, because I think this is, in my way of 

9 thinking and my colleagues may want to chime 

10 in with other options, but I think the 

11 depleted uranium is probably the central issue 

12 on the SEC. There are some other issues that 

13 need to be resolved, but to me, the depleted 

14 uranium is the central one. 

15 The dose estimation approaches, I 

16 think for DU at Pantex, what you're proposing 

17 is unprecedented. I again have not seen that 

18 anywhere. It's not based on any, you know, 

19 demonstrable bioassay data back when these 

20 exposures occurred. You're taking 1989 data. 

21 If we had representative field data, if we 

22 had air sample data that could be used, I 
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1 think we'd be using it. 

2 But you know, there are some 

3 issues with that. In a lot of cases, it was 

4 collected for alarming purposes, not so much 

5 for dosimetry purposes. It wasn't necessarily 

6 representative by virtue of where the 

7 monitoring was done, the collection was done. 

8 As I think Jim Neton outlined in 

9 his presentation, as you go down through this 

10 hierarchy, you're talking source 

11 characterization as well. It's difficult to 

12 characterize the source in terms of the degree 

13 of exposure, and how much people may have been 

14 exposed to it at the time as well.

15 So you know, my concern is Jim's 

16 bottom line, as far as 42 CFR 82.17, which is 

17 the regulation that he outlined and briefed, 

18 was is it's incumbent on NIOSH, these are his 

19 words, to quantitatively evaluate exposures 

20 associated with known source-terms. Depleted 

21 uranium with at least four systems at Pantex, 

22 maybe more, involved depleted uranium that may 
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1 have been available for exposure.

2 And as I say, it's incumbent on 

3 NIOSH to quantitatively evaluate those 

4 exposures. What does that mean? We went 

5 through that, and it means the degree to which 

6 the quantitative evaluation considers 

7 available data and would include what 

8 constitutes a representative sampling of 

9 available contamination surveys, nasal smears 

10 -- these are right off the slides -- radiation 

11 work permits, et cetera.

12 Monitoring data from coworkers, 

13 perhaps even a quantitative characterization 

14 of radiation environment based on historic 

15 workplace information, and this is anywhere 

16 from area dosimetry reading, general area 

17 radiation survey results, air sampling data, 

18 any of the above. Perhaps a quantitative 

19 characterization of the radiation environment. 

20 You know, if you can't get the 

21 actual field data, perhaps you can 

22 characterize the radiation environment based 
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1 on analysis of the processes. These would 

2 include radioactive materials, characterizing 

3 source materials, job tasks, locations, what 

4 have you.

5 So you know, I think what was 

6 presented was pretty coherent, because we had 

7 some confusion on this with Mound. Pretty 

8 coherent, yes. When you're talking about 

9 looking at, you know, evaluating exposure 

10 potential in the context of an SEC, you have a 

11 number of options to march down if in fact you 

12 don't have bioassay data, and you can go 

13 through a very deliberate process.

14 I would be the first to admit, you 

15 know. I think we even pointed this out to 

16 Jim, and he kind of like, you know, said one 

17 of the items on the long list of things that 

18 you could apply was radiation safety 

19 practices, and we kind of jumped on it, 

20 because that didn't seem to be as 

21 quantitative.

22 But he said it was a bit sticky to 
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1 apply radiation protection practices in the 

2 SEC context, because obviously it moves away 

3 from data information to interpretation of how 

4 programs are implemented, and it has to be 

5 done carefully.

6 But again, what you described, 

7 Mark, a little earlier is a little different 

8 than what I read in here, and that's one thing 

9 I want to clarify, that when we get to your 

10 subsections on the basic characteristics of 

11 the Pantex mission and operations, national 

12 security assurance requirements and the 

13 comprehensive radiation safety program, it's 

14 less of what you described and more of a 

15 general, you know, we take comfort.

16 We find it compelling that these 

17 programs provide the rigor that they have had 

18 historically. So I don't take exception to 

19 how you're walking down, trying to figure out 

20 how to apply conservatism, taking a radiation 

21 safety practice and going down through a dose 

22 reconstruction basis. 
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1 I think our concern is a priori 

2 accepting the rigor as a compelling part of 

3 the position that one can dose reconstruct. 

4 Okay.

5 MR. ROLFES: Thanks, Joe. This 

6 most recent response that was dated March 

7 10th, 2011, some of the topics that were 

8 identified to us were more subjective than 

9 objective topics. So we prepared a subjective 

10 response, in order to keep us both on the same 

11 page, I guess. 

12 Our previous response from March 

13 27th, 2009, I'm sorry. That's, the date 

14 should be 10/30/2009, and it was probably sent 

15 to the Work Group in December of 2009. This 

16 one was 38 pages long. To discuss the 

17 specific types of information that we have 

18 that would allow us to quantify exposure 

19 potential, on page nine of that previous 

20 response, I just wanted to point we do have 

21 bioassay data.

22 The first bioassay data that was 
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1 collected for depleted uranium --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Can I ask your 

3 indulgence, though? Can we get to the 

4 specifics on the -- I know we have these dose 

5 reconstruction issues, which I think you're 

6 talking about the DU and the backstrap.

7 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Can we look at 

9 that as a specific issue, because I think, you 

10 know, the document that you're alluding to 

11 also has a lengthy preamble. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Right.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: I just want to 

14 deal with the preamble first, because the 

15 specific points that come later refer back to 

16 the preamble quite a bit. I think that 

17 preamble is the context or the basis for what 

18 drives later in both papers. I just want to 

19 make sure that we spend some time on that, 

20 because we have debated some of those other 

21 issues.

22 But I want to make sure that 
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1 before we go to specific technical points, 

2 that we spend some time on the preamble, okay. 

3 I think you raised some other issues I want 

4 to just address before we get there, and we 

5 will get there. 

6 MR. ROLFES: But let me respond to 

7 what you've said, and then I'll answer 

8 specific questions from you about the 

9 preamble, if that's okay.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

11 MR. ROLFES: To quantify 

12 historical exposures, we've got, you know, a 

13 number of different types of data. We 

14 basically developed intakes for our TBD based 

15 upon a large collection of bioassay data 

16 collected in the 1989-1990 time period 

17 associated with some disassembly work.

18 However, prior to that, we do have 

19 bioassay data for depleted uranium, and the 

20 first year that we have depleted uranium 

21 bioassays was 1959 at Pantex. We've got 

22 bioassay data in 1960, `63, `65, `67, `68. 
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1 There's a little gap there; not until '78 

2 again, 1983, and then quite a bit more in 

3 1990, `94 and 2001. There's more of a routine 

4 program now in place.

5 It's largely based upon historical 

6 policies. Judgment was made about exposure 

7 potential, and there were higher limits for 

8 exposure potential historically than there are 

9 today. In addition to the bioassay data that 

10 we have, we also have air monitoring data. We 

11 do have source-term information. We have 

12 program policy information and we have some 

13 swipe data as well.

14 If we take one piece by itself, 

15 there's a lot of uncertainty. We might not 

16 know the full extent of how long an exposure 

17 occurred. We might not know everything about 

18 that exposure, so we make some assumptions, 

19 and we make claimant-favorable assumptions. 

20 We use those uncertainties to the benefit of 

21 the claimant. 

22 However, when we get down into 
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1 additional data, when we have air monitoring 

2 data and swipe data to show, you know, that 

3 there is or is not an exposure potential 

4 that's different from what we've assumed, we 

5 can use that and focus in on a more precise 

6 estimate.

7 So normally, when we have smaller 

8 amounts of information, our dose estimates are 

9 larger because of the associated 

10 uncertainties. But that's just my brief 

11 response about the quantitative assessment of 

12 the data that we have.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I'm talking 

14 in a different context. You're, again, going 

15 back to dose reconstruction, which I 

16 understand that we need to apply that degree 

17 of conservatism, and I agree you go back to 

18 whatever data you have, to make sure that 

19 that's there.

20 But in the context of SEC 

21 evaluations, the quantitative assessment that 

22 Jim Neton talked about in his presentation 
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1 last year is again, what is this hierarchy of 

2 information that ought to be applied in 

3 judging whether or not dose reconstructibility 

4 with sufficient accuracy is feasible or not.

5 And, you know, again, we wanted to 

6 clarify that question, because we've been in 

7 this debate on a couple of sites, where you 

8 have -- and usually it's not primary nuclides, 

9 because usually you have enough data for 

10 primaries. It's usually the secondaries, 

11 where you have incomplete data. You know you 

12 have an exposure potential, but maybe you lack 

13 the actual monitoring information.

14 So how do you actually 

15 deliberately walk through this, to come to a 

16 conclusion that yes, we can find a way to 

17 bound this dose, or we can't? You know, 

18 where's the threshold for saying we can or 

19 cannot?

20 We got into an issue, to say we 

21 got into this issue at Mound, where we finally 

22 got to the point where yes, there's no data, 
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1 but you know, the world's best internal 

2 dosimetrist was running this program. That 

3 person would have known better to have done 

4 bioassay, if bioassay would have been 

5 required.

6 We're saying wait a minute. You 

7 know, that's sort of like saying we don't have 

8 any evidence or objective information, but 

9 because so and so ran the program, and because 

10 it looked like a rigorous program, we can 

11 assume he would have bioassayed, if in fact 

12 bioassay would have been entailed, because of 

13 the exposure back then. So how would you 

14 possibly know that?

15 So that's what got us into this 

16 discussion. You know, it's got to be 

17 something more objective than that, and what 

18 is this thought process on the SEC that we 

19 should walk down, so that we're not 

20 miscommunicating or talking past each other 

21 all the time when we get into these questions?

22 For this question, the issue is 
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1 you may have some bioassay data points here 

2 and there in the history of Pantex. I agree. 

3 I've seen some of those data points.

4 But you have felt that those data 

5 points weren't sufficient to base dose 

6 reconstruction on, and that you, in the 

7 context of the SEC now, would rely on the '89 

8 data, because you have more of it, and because 

9 it was, and I think this is a subjective 

10 judgment, but maybe one that's bounded on 

11 talking with operators at Pantex.

12 But this was a pretty dirty 

13 situation, a dirty system, and one could 

14 conclude, as you have in the ER, that that was 

15 a bounding situation, that you couldn't 

16 imagine a worse situation, that you wanted to 

17 use that as a means to apply intake values and 

18 dose reconstruct for all depleted uranium 

19 exposures going back.

20 So I guess, you know, again, there 

21 may be data on this issue at Pantex. But I 

22 think you've already judged that data. 
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1 Whether it's these individual bioassays that 

2 existed back in history, or even some of this 

3 air sampling and smear data, whatever it is. 

4 It's not enough to support its use to do dose 

5 reconstruction for those exposures that may 

6 have occurred back in those systems that were 

7 being disassembled, for example. You want to 

8 go ahead and apply the '89 data.

9 We can get into that, and I guess 

10 we are getting into it. But again, I don't 

11 think that satisfies the quantitative approach 

12 that Jim laid out, in quite some detail, and 

13 I've got the slides with me in detail, which 

14 says that you deliberately, you know, looked 

15 for quantitative information to base these 

16 judgments on in terms of exposure potential. 

17 You do not go to, you know, sort 

18 of the overarching program, you know, 

19 documents and that kind of thing that you --

20 that's something that would not be usable.

21 Okay. I want to just move on to 

22 talk about these subsets, because I think 
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1 these have come up in the past. The first 

2 point is the basic characteristics of the 

3 Pantex mission operations. I guess we agree, 

4 and I said this earlier, that compared with 

5 other historic operations, Pantex is and was 

6 relatively different.

7 It was, I don't want use the word 

8 "cleaner," but because of the nature of the 

9 operation, it just did not involve as much, 

10 you know, contamination or exposure as some of 

11 the other facilities. Most components are and 

12 were sealed, and the operations involved 

13 assembly and disassembly.

14 But as I kind of pointed out 

15 earlier, we disagree, however, that the 

16 operations were pristine from a radiological 

17 standpoint. In fact, disassembly sometimes 

18 involved extended and repeated exposure to 

19 depleted uranium, thorium and tritium. These 

20 were not always incidents, from the standpoint 

21 of unexpected occurrences.

22 For some disassemblies, it in fact 
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1 was absolutely expected, that you would have 

2 those exposures. 

3 MR. ROLFES: It was known.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, it was 

5 known, exactly. So again, yes. I don't think 

6 there's any disagreement of the basic 

7 characteristics of the mission operations, but 

8 again, we don't see how that is relevant to 

9 the specific question of, you know, is there 

10 an exposure potential to uranium, and is there 

11 a way, is there sufficient data and 

12 information to dose reconstruct with 

13 sufficient accuracy or not.

14 It's sort of changing the subject, 

15 which I want to make sure it's clear, that 

16 yes, you know, we don't disagree that the 

17 operations were different. But is it relevant 

18 to that question? I don't think it is.

19 National security assurance 

20 requirements. I think that was the next 

21 thing. This is the diamond stamp issue. We 

22 looked through and while we were in 
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1 Germantown, we looked through a number of 

2 national security documents, and talked to 

3 people on the weapons program about diamond 

4 stamp.

5 Yes, basically, there's no 

6 disagreements. A rigorous Quality Assurance 

7 Program, and you would expect to have a 

8 rigorous Quality Assurance Program on weapons 

9 assembly and disassembly. No surprise there. 

10 Yes, there clearly was swiping of components, 

11 as you point out, before they came into 

12 Pantex.

13 But the diamond stamp 

14 certification, which is a broad QA 

15 certification, doesn't guarantee 

16 contamination-free components from all 

17 sources, okay. I think yes, Livermore might 

18 have been careful and might have had 

19 procedures and blah blah blah. But it doesn't 

20 guarantee it. 

21 I think when we get to Germantown 

22 again, we want to show you some documentation, 
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1 which would show that it's a rigorous program, 

2 but it's not one of the same as a guarantee of 

3 no contamination on the assembly side. 

4 MR. ROLFES: There's always 

5 exceptions, and some of those, you know, that 

6 there's exceptions. And what I'm saying is 

7 that we're aware, to the best of our 

8 knowledge, that there's exceptions, and we've 

9 taken those into account. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: These weren't 

11 exceptions by, you know, lack of rigor. These 

12 were exceptions that, by virtue of the source 

13 where it was coming from, there was some 

14 evidence of residual contamination.

15 So but I want to make it clear, 

16 you know. I'm not going to debate, you know, 

17 did diamond stamp do this or not. I don't 

18 think it's particularly relevant to the real 

19 issue that the Board is focusing on, which is, 

20 you know, does the data and the information, 

21 does it give you a sufficient basis for dose 

22 reconstruction for uranium exposures or not?
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1 I mean you know, quite apart from 

2 what this program does or what that program 

3 does, again I think it changes the subject. 

4 It really focuses -- what we're focusing on 

5 is, you know, the adequacy and completeness of 

6 that data. Does it do it or not? How do we 

7 know? And I think, you know, whether or not,

8 you know, the Department implemented diamond 

9 stamp Quality Assurance Programs. I can show 

10 you Quality Assurance Programs at every DOE 

11 site. 5700.C was the quality assurance order.

12 I mean yes, there was a lot of 

13 quality assurance and it got even bigger as 

14 time went on, with the Defense Board. But 

15 does it make a difference historically on this 

16 question? I don't think it does. I think 

17 it's a useful piece of background information, 

18 but it doesn't really bear on this particular 

19 issue.

20 MR. ROLFES: Sure. I think I 

21 agree with you on that as well. The reason 

22 that's in there, you know, what we start with 
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1 in the health physics hierarchy -- I can't 

2 speak, sorry, hierarchy of data. We start 

3 with personal information, bioassay data and 

4 radiation exposure information for that 

5 individual and for that coworker, for that 

6 individual's coworkers. 

7 In addition to that, we've looked 

8 at air monitoring data. We've looked at 

9 survey and swipe data. We've looked at 

10 source-term information, and the diamond stamp 

11 program information is in there, just because 

12 there's another set of information that might 

13 help us to characterize exposures, and 

14 basically draw our attention to any specific 

15 programs that may have been an issue, where 

16 radiological contamination could have been a 

17 concern.

18 It was just another source of 

19 data, rather than focusing on the use of only 

20 one type of data. We've tried to do as 

21 comprehensive of an analysis, in looking at, 

22 you know, all sources of information that 
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1 might have something of use to us in assigning 

2 intakes.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Mark, expand a 

4 little bit on the diamond. What information 

5 on the diamond stamp are you using?

6 MR. ROLFES: Well, if you take a 

7 look at some of the earlier -- you know, if 

8 you have concerns about the functionality 

9 during a Quality Assurance Program, you want 

10 to make sure that you track those concerns 

11 with a specific weapons system.

12 So there were some occurrences 

13 that would result in some significant finding 

14 incidence and significant finding 

15 notifications. So we have pursued that route, 

16 to see if there might have been any 

17 information in these significant finding 

18 incidents or notifications, that might help us 

19 in dose reconstruction.

20 We looked into this probably about 

21 three years ago. There might have been some 

22 pieces of information that we already had, I 
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1 guess, from other sources of information. So 

2 for example, you know, these data might have 

3 indicated that there was a problem with 

4 uranium corroding or something, for example, 

5 and so in looking back at our records, our air 

6 sampling data, we've got air monitoring data 

7 for that time period or for that program we've 

8 got some swipe data.

9 So it was not necessarily our use. 

10 We're not relying upon that for dose 

11 reconstruction. We're just consulting that 

12 source of information as another source, to 

13 see if there's additional details that might 

14 help to explain exposure potentials or make 

15 sure that we didn't overlook something.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You understand 

17 my background in quality assurance, right? 

18 MR. ROLFES: No. Please explain. 

19 I mean --

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: My background 

21 is quality assurance and the programs. So one 

22 thing I want to make sure that you understand, 
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1 that Quality Assurance Program, the bottom 

2 line was, was to make sure that it goes boom, 

3 and that it meets certain requirements. 

4 Then to me, you're putting this up 

5 as the holy grail of, that this is the most 

6 wonderful thing out there. I've looked at the 

7 program, and it is. It's very staunch. But 

8 also too, you get back to it and you see the 

9 biggest thing that they were looking at is 

10 component reliability and items that were 

11 found, laws to be corrected.

12 They weren't worried about -- the 

13 only reason that corrosion came up was because 

14 the parts that they were dealing with, it 

15 started to degradate them. So that's where 

16 this Quality Assurance Program comes into. 

17 I've just been dumbfounded to understand how 

18 we could use this into a dose reconstruction. 

19 But I understand also, too, that we're 

20 supposed to look at all avenues, and be able 

21 to look at this.

22 I just, I hope you understand that 
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1 this quality program was a parts list that met 

2 this. We have numerous ones throughout there. 

3 We deal with Triple 3P right now. I'm just 

4 wondering, I just really had a hard time 

5 understanding how we were using this in dose 

6 reconstruction. 

7 As throwing out that we've got the 

8 diamond stamp, okay. It's just another style 

9 of Quality Assurance Program. It has nothing 

10 to do with the components. It does have to do 

11 with the wells, it has to do with the size, it 

12 has to do with everything like that. But 

13 nothing with the components side.

14 MR. ROLFES: I'd agree with you, 

15 that there really isn't much that can be used 

16 from dose reconstruction. This was more to 

17 make sure that we investigated all avenues, to 

18 make sure that we were aware of as many 

19 possible exposure potentials as we could.

20 So this source of information was 

21 just another piece, to make sure that we 

22 weren't missing a big part of the puzzle.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So I'm sure 

2 that you've looked at the Tiger Team report?

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You've read 

5 parts of it, because I was just thumbing 

6 through it. There's inadequate information --

7 this is page 88. There's inadequate 

8 information on the hazard-related risks of 

9 various operations in the site. There's 

10 inadequate guidance on how the personnel risk 

11 and plan accordingly.

12 Site studies do not have all 

13 resources available to satisfy requirements 

14 suitable. I can go on. This is just five out 

15 of 40 where they're hammering them on their 

16 procedures, people. The one that I found most 

17 interesting was just down a little ways, and 

18 let's see.

19 Basically, what they're saying is 

20 -- here it is. "The work environment is 

21 reactive, rather than proactive." As you've 

22 said, you know, bioassay was event-driven, and 
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1 that this is just another statement to it. I 

2 hope that when we're looking at all the 

3 information, we just don't take out the 

4 information that we like, to be able to see 

5 it. 

6 MR. ROLFES: True, true.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Because in 

8 anything like this, we need to make sure --

9 our bottom line is, is to make sure that the 

10 claimants are being treated friendly, and also 

11 that we're reviewing all the avenues we can.

12 MR. ROLFES: I completely agree 

13 with you on that. Certainly, you know, if we 

14 were excluding, you know, information that we 

15 didn't like, we wouldn't have incident-based 

16 intakes, and you know, our claimant-favorable 

17 analyses regarding exposure duration, exposure 

18 potential, that essentially in some cases may 

19 not have existed. 

20 We've made some pretty claimant21 favorable assumptions regarding exposures that 

22 may have occurred, but were of such low 
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1 probability that they likely did not occur. 

2 Regarding the Tiger Team report though, I 

3 looked at it a while back, and it's been a few 

4 years, because I know that the petitioners had 

5 identified it to us. It's more than a 

6 thousand, or it's right around a thousand 

7 pages in length.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: 850 to be 

9 exact.

10 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I'll have to 

11 take a look back at page 88, but from what I 

12 recall, there was only a couple of pages that 

13 were specific to the radiological protection 

14 practices and concerns about health physics 

15 staffing levels.

16 Most everything else wasn't very 

17 clear as to whether it was in fact dealing 

18 with radiation exposures, or if it was more 

19 towards, you know, explosive operations. 

20 Because, you know, that was one of the primary 

21 concerns, was the concern about detonating 

22 high explosives.
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1 I can take a look back to see what 

2 it says on page 88 there, with those -- you 

3 said there were 40 issues.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It's part of 

5 the safety and health evaluation which they 

6 were doing.

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What -- the 

9 point that I'm trying to get to is that I hope 

10 that we're looking at all avenues of this, 

11 because one of my big things is on the part of 

12 event-driven bioassay. What classified as an 

13 event? Do you remember what the health 

14 physicist told us down there, Scott? 

15 MR. ROLFES: What's that.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: "We're going to 

17 clean it up before the end of the shift." 

18 Now, after 1989, that is if they had great, 

19 strict regulations. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Things are certainly 

21 different now than they used to be, and I 

22 fully understand that and acknowledge that. 
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1 There was a large policy change with, you 

2 know, different approaches on controlling the 

3 radiation exposure.

4 You know, historically, people 

5 were allowed to receive a lot more exposure 

6 than they are nowadays. There's a lot lower 

7 administrative control guidelines and 

8 radiation exposure limits. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And to get back 

10 to what Joe was saying, to be able to take 

11 this on a procedure level, that everything was 

12 done correctly, I think that's kind of where 

13 our heartache comes into, especially anybody 

14 that's really worked in the industry. We know 

15 how the procedures go. I just -- I want to 

16 make sure that we're looking at all things on 

17 that. Sorry to interrupt, Joe.

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Can I break 

19 in and ask a question of Mark?

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Have you 

22 located the significant finding notifications 
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1 and significant finding incidents, and if you 

2 have, where did you locate them and under what 

3 titles?

4 MR. ROLFES: They'd be with the 

5 design laboratories.

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. So 

7 you located them at LANL, Sandia and 

8 Livermore?

9 MR. ROLFES: We spoke with people 

10 from the design laboratories regarding the 

11 significant notifications. Not a 

12 comprehensive analysis of those, but I spoke 

13 with some specific engineers regarding those 

14 data. 

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Did you 

16 actually get your hands on these?

17 MR. ROLFES: I have to take a look 

18 back at my trip notes.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. Can 

20 you let me know, because that's one of the 

21 things we're trying to track down.

22 MR. ROLFES: Okay.
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Thanks.

2 MEMBER BEACH: So are we taking 

3 that as an action from this meeting?

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

5 MR. ROLFES: Those, I was going to 

6 say those notes are in the SRDB as well. I 

7 can send out my notes that are draft notes, so 

8 --

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Mark, you'll 

10 take that as an action, to make sure --

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Maybe you 

12 can just provide me with the SRDB number.

13 MR. ROLFES: I can do that.

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sorry, Joe.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Again, 

17 walking through what I would call the 

18 preamble, and it's the preamble to, I think, 

19 the previous paper as well as the March 10th 

20 paper, which sets the stage for, I think, the 

21 NIOSH position. Again, it's the compelling 

22 evidence that the conclusion of dose 
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1 reconstructibility is the right one.

2 I want make sure we outline, point 

3 by point, where we have differences on this. 

4 So on the comprehensive rad safety program, 

5 we'll leave the national security assurance 

6 requirement behind. I've heard you say there, 

7 and you've qualified your remarks, saying that 

8 it was a piece of something that contributed.

9 But again, I have to go back to 

10 where you make it very clear up front that 

11 this was the compelling evidence that 

12 justifies your conclusions. So I just want to 

13 make it clear that I think I'm hearing you say 

14 a little something different than what's in 

15 this paper.

16 But going to the comprehensive 

17 radiation safety program, and we've had 

18 discussions on this in the past, that you 

19 know, one can look to the rigor of that 

20 program, as a means to provide assurance that 

21 those who should have been monitored were 

22 monitored; that internal dosimetry procedures 
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1 were implemented, in terms of the bioassay 

2 samples that would have been event-driven; 

3 that contamination would have been cleaned up 

4 quickly; and that swipe results were taken, so 

5 forth and so on.

6 I think you provide a number of 

7 quotes about, you know, the program responding 

8 to contamination and instances of air 

9 releases, as well as the 1961 Cell 6 and so 

10 forth and so on. What I'm going to give you 

11 is a slightly different picture, because I 

12 think we don't agree that in fact Pantex 

13 historically had a comprehensive radiation 

14 protection program, in the same vein as you 

15 have described it.

16 So I want to just go through this. 

17 Almost every independent audit that we can 

18 find, and we're still looking for more, of the 

19 historic radiation protection program at 

20 Pantex, fading from 1980 has found serious and 

21 fundamental flaws in its comprehensiveness, 

22 design, staffing, policies, procedures, self-
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1 assessment, dosimetry and scope, almost A to 

2 Z.

3 I'm going to give you, and we'll 

4 put this in writing. I mean I just want to 

5 give you an outline of some of the -- and 

6 these are independent reviews, not sort of in7 house Pantex reviews, but independent reviews 

8 from the outside. 1980, this is a DOE 

9 Albuquerque Operations Office. DOE 

10 Albuquerque was responsible for Pantex, and 

11 they were investigating a radiation exposure 

12 incident at Pantex, and I believe this is in 

13 the SRDB.

14 "Found the overall quality of the 

15 Pantex dosimetry program to be deficient. 

16 Dosimetry laboratory technicians never 

17 received formal training for their 

18 responsibilities, no approved internal 

19 operating procedures for the dosimetry 

20 program. Neutron dosimetry calibration not 

21 performed adequately. TLD response not 

22 understood for specific applications, and 
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1 operators at Pantex mis-assigned dosimeters, 

2 leading to a lack of or potential lack of 

3 neutron dose assessment."

4 That's where the quarterly versus 

5 the, I guess with monthly dosimeters. Some 

6 had neutron dosimetry, some did not, you know, 

7 that whole issue. So that was the big flap. 

8 MR. ROLFES: There was a concern 

9 in that time period, because of the dosimeter 

10 that was used. They were unable to report 

11 neutron doses correctly in a high gamma flux 

12 field. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: So yes, I guess 

14 my point is that Albuquerque rightfully was 

15 really concerned about it, and went in and 

16 found all these program deficiencies to boot. 

17 So the incident sort of led them to a more 

18 broader investigation and a number of 

19 findings, which all focus on dosimetry, and 

20 all sort of give you pause as to how 

21 comprehensive the Pantex program could be, if 

22 you could have such a suite of deficiencies.
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1 Okay. Brad mentioned the Tiger 

2 Team, and since we were trying to figure out 

3 what the heck it said, I outlined it. I 

4 didn't want to interject at the time. The DOE 

5 Tiger Team found program deficiencies in 

6 health physics support staffing levels and 

7 training, as you were pointing out.

8 But this is the staffing and 

9 training that was necessary, in the Tiger 

10 Team's view, to support and sustain adequate 

11 air sampling and swiping. So the implications 

12 for that is they were concerned about the 

13 staffing levels, rad techs and whatever, 

14 because you couldn't possibly cover the plant 

15 comprehensively if you were going to do the 

16 necessary swiping and air sampling that a 

17 plant that size would require.

18 So there's, you know, the staffing 

19 just wasn't sufficient. The quality assurance 

20 for rad monitoring data, control of rad

21 sources, maintenance of employee exposure 

22 records, contamination of reports, pre-
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1 employment and new employee baseline bioassay 

2 monitoring were some of the finding areas in 

3 that Tiger Team.

4 MR. ROLFES: Joe, before you go 

5 on, I see you're reading off of a piece of 

6 paper there. Is that something you might be 

7 able to share with us?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure. I mean I 

9 kind of relied on DOE to clear a bunch of 

10 stuff, including this tome that Kathy wrote, 

11 and they just -- in fact, I was hoping they'd 

12 have a number of things that would be clear 

13 for this meeting, and they just couldn't make 

14 it. 

15 So unfortunately, we could get the 

16 data accuracy out. We couldn't get all of 

17 sort of the stuff that would be presented in 

18 the meeting. So yes. I mean I'd be glad to 

19 give this to you, but I can't distribute it 

20 formally.

21 1990. This was in the same time 

22 frame. It actually followed the Tiger Team, 
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1 because most of the sites, once they got a 

2 Tiger Team, you know, the field office, after 

3 the Tiger Team left, sort of went in to try to 

4 figure out, you know, exactly what the Tiger 

5 Team was talking about.

6 So if you could imagine 

7 Albuquerque went in after the Tiger Team left 

8 at Pantex, and wanted to find out, you know, 

9 okay. You found these deficiencies I just 

10 talked about. You know, what else is going 

11 on, and is the rad protection program 

12 comprehensive or not. What that report found 

13 in 1990, right after the Tiger Team left, they 

14 found deficiencies in the internal and 

15 external dosimetry programs, and a lack of 

16 radiation safety procedures and guidelines 

17 from the rad techs, performing duties such as 

18 types, frequency and location of swipes. 

19 So they kind of added to what the 

20 Tiger Team found, and found some more 

21 programmatic deficiencies related to dosimetry 

22 and what the rad techs were doing as far as 
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1 comprehensive swiping and contamination 

2 control. That report, I'm trying to remember. 

3 I think that was in Germantown. So I think 

4 at the very least, if it's not in the SRDB 

5 they'd be available there.

6 The 1991, this is a year later. 

7 This is a GAO report, and actually you can get 

8 this online, so I'll give you the citation. 

9 RCED-91-103. It's 91-103. It's a GAO report 

10 from '91. This was, as follow up to the Cell 

11 1 accident.

12 MR. ROLFES: Would you provide 

13 that to us please? It would make it easier. 

14 You could send us a link or something.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, that's 

16 the same thing we go through with you on our 

17 SRD numbers.

18 MR. ROLFES: Sure, sure, I 

19 understand. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, I'll Google 

21 it. I think it's there. GAO reports tend to 

22 be right up online. But here's a quote from 
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1 that report. "The radiation protection staff 

2 at Pantex was ill-prepared to handle the 

3 release of radioactive gas like tritium.

4 The staff had little or no 

5 knowledge of the general -- this is the health 

6 physics staff -- of the general 

7 characteristics of tritium, and the biological 

8 hazards that such a hazard posed.

9 "They took few to no precautionary 

10 measures to protect workers from being exposed 

11 to the gas." This is sort of a critique on 

12 the Cell 1 accident.

13 MR. ROLFES: Sure, sure.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: It speaks to, you 

15 know, again speaks to the rad protection 

16 program, how comprehensive and rigorous it 

17 might have been historically. Even going up 

18 to '93, when the Defense Board came on the 

19 scene, the Defense Board was concerned about 

20 continuing deficiencies in the external 

21 dosimetry program.

22 They actually came up with a 
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1 finding specific to Pantex and external 

2 dosimetry. What they were focusing on was 

3 their concern over discrepancies in neutron 

4 dosimetry, because of the energy, depends that 

5 issue.

6 MR. ROLFES: Right.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: But you know, the 

8 problem was that they weren't correcting it in 

9 a timely way. So you know, when we go to --

10 if and when we go Pantex, there's a number of 

11 other investigation reports. But you know, I 

12 just want to belie the sense that's provided 

13 in the March 10th report, and in the prior 

14 report, that somehow you have this, you know, 

15 this facility that had this rigorous program 

16 that locked down a lot of these issues.

17 And I went through all these 

18 programmatic descriptions, and you know, I 

19 guess from my experience of going through and 

20 doing audits at all the DOE facilities, you 

21 know, I can look at the program descriptions 

22 and find the same descriptions at every single 
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1 site.

2 In fact even today, when we did 

3 operational audits, because you know, the 

4 formal program was pretty established. 

5 Everybody sort of knew how to write against 

6 the -- whether it was 54-811 or 835, everybody 

7 knew how to write against the requirements.

8 So we didn't expect to find the 

9 written program, you know, out of sync with 

10 the regulations or the DOE orders. But the 

11 implementation though, the actual execution 

12 against those requirements, particularly if 

13 you go back in time, because there's nobody 

14 here, I don't think, that remembers Chapter 

15 11, except for Bryce, Rich and Mel Chew.

16 Stu Hinnefeld remembers Chapter 

17 11, but you know, it was like three pages 

18 long. So you know, in the old days, it was 

19 all performance-based. They'll often do well, 

20 have an ALARA program, but there was nothing 

21 that said, you know, what it had to contain 

22 and how it was to be implemented in any 
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1 detail.

2 So it was all performance-based, 

3 and each site kind of, you know, interpreted 

4 it differently, and the level of rigor and 

5 what they did was different. So again, I 

6 think I would not want to see comprehensive 

7 rad protection program historically listed as 

8 compelling evidence for Pantex. I guess that 

9 would be the short form answer to what I would 

10 object, in terms of the position that NIOSH 

11 has taken relative to Pantex.

12 MR. ROLFES: Comprehensive back in 

13 those days wasn't the same comprehensive as 

14 nowadays. I mean that's --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't think 

16 Albuquerque Operations Office felt in 1980 

17 that they had a comprehensive program, and 

18 that was back well before we changed Chapter 

19 11 to 54-11, well before 835 and enforcement 

20 came along.

21 MR. ROLFES: One could make that 

22 same statement today. I mean --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

2 saying, though, that yes, the question is did 

3 Pantex have a comprehensive program at any 

4 point in time, and I would say that given 

5 contemporaneous audits done by outside 

6 reviewers, the answer is no.

7 And again, I don't think the 

8 historic facts back up that assertion, and I 

9 don't think that should be used as compelling 

10 evidence for the NIOSH conclusion for Pantex.

11 MR. ROLFES: One could say that 

12 current operating sites, you know, both in 

13 government industry and private commercial 

14 industries, one could make the same statement, 

15 that there isn't a comprehensive program, 

16 because not every single thing is monitored.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

18 you're changing the subject. I think what 

19 we're saying is that putting forward or 

20 advancing the assertion, that there's 

21 compelling evidence sufficient to justify this 

22 overall conclusion, this basic conclusion, 
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1 based on these descriptive memos, and an 

2 understanding of the basics of both a 

3 comprehensive radiation protection program and 

4 strict requirements of nuclear weapons, so 

5 forth and so on.

6 I think the burden's on NIOSH to 

7 back up that statement, that in fact the rigor 

8 of the program at any particular time during 

9 its history could be termed comprehensive 

10 enough to be relied upon in that degree of 

11 rigor, particularly --

12 You know, this is not -- Mark, 

13 this is not the sealed source program wasn't 

14 followed, or you know, maybe your ALARA 

15 program wasn't written up well. These are 

16 findings straight to the dosimetry program and 

17 recordkeeping program, and staffing to do 

18 swipes and staffing to do contamination 

19 control, air sampling.

20 I mean this goes right to the 

21 heart of what is pertinent to the SEC, which 

22 is, you know, if you're going to look at the 
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1 backdrop of the rad protection program, you'd 

2 want to be assured that those elements of the

3 rad protection program were in fact operating 

4 and running.

5 These findings are pretty damning, 

6 quite frankly, and you know, not to have, you 

7 know, to have one or two rad techs for 

8 contamination control, which is what the Tiger 

9 Team was concerned about, you know, was a real 

10 problem. You couldn't do it with that few 

11 people, and they weren't even trained to do 

12 it.

13 MR. ROLFES: I disagree with you a 

14 little bit there because, as you were talking 

15 about the GAO report from 1990, and I may have 

16 seen this report. I know there's quite a bit 

17 of documentation regarding the tritium 

18 incident in 1989.

19 But you know, the failure of the 

20 staff to prevent a release of tritium is, you 

21 know, it's a concern obviously for operations. 

22 But it's not necessarily a concern for us in 
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1 the dose reconstruction process.

2 The reason is we have a pretty 

3 large set of bioassay data from the people 

4 involved --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Exactly, exactly. 

6 You're making my point. You don't need to 

7 rely on the rad protection program. You don't 

8 need to rely on diamond stamp. You don't need 

9 to rely on assumptions about what 

10 operationally was done. You need to rely on 

11 the data. That's exactly what I'm saying.

12 I'm walking through this and 

13 saying that it's equivocal, meaning that yes, 

14 you are putting those on the table, and I'm 

15 trying to take them off because frankly one, 

16 it changes the subject, and I've said that a 

17 number of times, because the real subject is 

18 the data and the information, the bioassay 

19 information that guides this.

20 The second issue is I think on all 

21 these points, I can make a counterpoint that 

22 says even if you want to rely on those, I 
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1 don't think that's well-founded. But I would 

2 first argue I don't think you should rely on 

3 that. I think those are subjective, 

4 interpretive, non-evaluative pieces of 

5 information that don't necessarily get to the 

6 heart of the matter on the SEC.

7 MR. ROLFES: Since you had 

8 interjected after I said bioassay data, 

9 there's you know, there's quite a number of 

10 reports as I said. Just about everyone we 

11 speak with during the telephone interviews 

12 who's a claimant mentioned the 1989 incident, 

13 whether or not they were directly involved.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, why not? 

15 They won't mention the 1963, because not too 

16 many people were left that would have been 

17 working in '63. Yes, I'm just saying that 

18 yes, that people are going to mention '89, 

19 because the workers that you're talking to, 

20 that would have been something they would have 

21 been involved with or been at the plant at the 

22 time.
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1 People remember the nearest, most 

2 recent event, which would have been the '89 

3 event. You're going to find very few people 

4 that can account for the '66 or '63, whatever 

5 it was --

6 MR. ROLFES: '61.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: '61, because 

8 they're gone or they won't be available to 

9 talk. That very well, they might have had a 

10 story that was much more lurid then the people 

11 who are telling you about the '89, but we'll 

12 never know, because they're not around 

13 anymore.

14 So I just want to be careful with 

15 being, you know, I know this is a good faith 

16 effort, to try to figure out where do we have 

17 the data. But I think we've got to step back 

18 some time and say well, people are talking 

19 about the '89 incident, and we have all this 

20 information and all these samples and 

21 everything, and geez it looks bad, and 

22 everyone says it looks bad and they changed a 
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1 lot of things right after that because it was 

2 so bad.

3 But it was the most recent 

4 incident of this kind. So therefore, it's 

5 data rich and it's easy to say let's just use 

6 that, because it just looked -- it just 

7 appears to be bad, and we can't find anything 

8 else to suggest it wasn't the worst.

9 When we get down to this issue, 

10 and it's sort of like looking for a needle in 

11 a haystack when we were in Germantown, because 

12 you know, I think most of the stuff we had 

13 seen and most of the stuff you had seen too. 

14 But we found something that was kind of, you 

15 know, was interesting to me.

16 It was an average depleted uranium 

17 air sample, that was an averaging of depleted 

18 uranium air samples for the 28th in '89, and I 

19 also -- well, that was one document. But I 

20 also found an average uranium air sample for a 

21 weapons systems disassembly, and the average 

22 for the one in the 60s was actually higher by 
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1 a factor of two, I think. I was trying to get 

2 that cleared for this meeting. I couldn't get 

3 it cleared. 

4 But it was higher by a relatively 

5 significant factor. I can't remember if it 

6 was 50 percent or double the B28. And you 

7 know, there isn't a whole lot of data that one 

8 can hang their hat on at Pantex. I think both 

9 you and we have searched high and low for 

10 something like that.

11 But even if I could not put my 

12 finger on this, and it's just a piece of data. 

13 Who knows, and we may have arguments on that. 

14 But it's indicative of this situation, where 

15 you have settled on the '89 set of bioassay 

16 data. Yes, there's a lot of data. It's a lot 

17 of data. It's more recent. You have a lot of 

18 interview information, because workers were 

19 familiar with that particular incident.

20 But how can one assume, without 

21 something more corroborating, from the 

22 standpoint of actual data, that these prior 
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1 systems, you know, I'm not going to mention 

2 the system from the early days, because I'm 

3 not quite sure yet whether that's extensive or 

4 not. But whether it is a system that rivals 

5 if not exceeds the B28 that you're using, that 

6 disassembly process, and in the previous 30 

7 years.

8 If so, then you're not bounding 

9 the exposures necessarily at all. That's the 

10 concern I have there for that one. But 

11 getting back on how we got there, getting back 

12 to the preamble, I'll leave that little kernel 

13 for later. Getting back to the preamble, 

14 again I think the rad protection program, we 

15 had and do have some of the best health 

16 physicists in the world in the DOE complex.

17 I guess I can say "we," I'm 

18 retired from DOE. But yet we also have some 

19 of the most challenging and frustrating health 

20 physics exposure situations as well, and a lot 

21 of people had trouble squaring that issue. 

22 But that's all I would leave you 
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1 with, that you know, it's not a question of 

2 whether or not the expertise, the good 

3 intentions and design was there, or whether 

4 even the regulations and procedures were 

5 there.

6 It just sometimes didn't happen, 

7 because you had management decisions, you had 

8 staffing deficiencies. You had some paradigm 

9 problems, where people just didn't think there 

10 was a contamination issue, because they dealt 

11 with sealed sources all the time, sealed 

12 components, and so there wasn't that real 

13 drive.

14 Sometimes it just was that you 

15 didn't have a strong health physicist, who was 

16 exerting leadership and being supported by his 

17 management, his or her management. So there 

18 was a number of reasons. I'm just saying that 

19 you've got to be very careful on the rad 

20 protection. Moving on to data gap summary --

21 MR. ROLFES: To get back to, 

22 before we move on --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

2 MR. ROLFES: You had identified 

3 some of the independent reviews of the Pantex 

4 plant, and we've also pointed some out as 

5 well.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure.

7 MR. ROLFES: And I've got a couple 

8 of statements here regarding, you know, some 

9 independent audits that were done. I think 

10 one of the earlier ones was done by the Office 

11 of Military Application. These are in the --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: What year?

13 MR. ROLFES: 1967, I believe it 

14 was.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Now you have to 

16 clarify. Military Application was the owner 

17 of the Pantex operation. They were out of the 

18 Defense Programs portion. So you know, 

19 everything's not quite as independent as --

20 MR. ROLFES: As independent. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: It may or it may 

22 not be. This is an owner audit, and 
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1 Albuquerque may in fact be, it may be the 

2 Health and Safety Branch of Albuquerque, which 

3 may in fact not be in the same organization. 

4 You don't know that it was independent. It 

5 may not be as independent.

6 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: But I'll grant 

8 you. The definition I used was outside the 

9 Pantex plant. So that, I guess from that 

10 standpoint, it's more independent than an 

11 internal audit. But go ahead.

12 MR. ROLFES: I just wanted to read 

13 some of the statements regarding, you know, 

14 shipments of materials coming from Rocky 

15 Flats. This is one of the things that we 

16 focused on. We were focusing on some site 

17 expert interviews as well, to make sure that 

18 we looked into any exposure potential for 

19 materials coming from other sites.

20 We basically heard from 

21 individuals that materials were flagged upon 

22 receipt to determine if there was any 
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1 contamination, and if contamination was 

2 present, it would need to be removed before 

3 the materials would be send back to the 

4 shipper. 

5 Some of the statements from, this 

6 is SRDB 14207. It's in my report here on page 

7 three. It says "Our history in performing 

8 these tests regarding swipes over the past 16 

9 years, and this was written in December of 

10 1985, has not indicated any occasional or 

11 contamination was discovered, which might have 

12 been a personnel hazard.

13 From the health protection survey 

14 report of the Pantex plant in December of 

15 1967, there are some statements. I've just 

16 pulled out a couple of statements here, but 

17 this says "Personnel exposure control and 

18 radioactive contamination control are 

19 excellent. Nuclear components are surveyed 

20 for loose contamination upon arrival at the 

21 Pantex plant, and rechecked as they are 

22 assembled into weapons.
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1 "During disassembly operations, 

2 contamination checks are made at each step, 

3 where there is a potential for loose 

4 radioactive material. Routine area surveys 

5 are also made in locations where radioactive 

6 material is handled or stored. Records 

7 indicate that very little, if any, 

8 contamination is detected, and weapon 

9 components do not normally present 

10 contamination hazard.

11 "If the unit should be involved in 

12 any type of unusual incident, a special survey 

13 would be made and extra precautions would be 

14 taken, as appropriate." My last bullet here 

15 is "The bare samples or contamination survey 

16 should indicate the potential for internal 

17 personnel exposure. Special bioassays would 

18 be made.

19 "A review of air monitoring 

20 results for the past year indicated excellent 

21 contamination control in all areas." That was 

22 from 1967 as well. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Now all three 

2 of these that you just stated were in-house; 

3 correct?

4 MR. ROLFES: These were health 

5 protection survey reports of the Pantex plant, 

6 and I'll have to take a look back at the 

7 source to make sure that I have the correct --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: '67 was the Office 

9 of Military Applications. I don't think we 

10 should consider that in-house.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I just 

12 see down at the bottom "Health Protection 

13 Survey Report." 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Correct. That's 

15 the title of the report. But we don't know 

16 right now where it's from.

17 MR. ROLFES: I can check on that 

18 if you'd like.

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. I can --

20 so as soon as those objects got into Pantex, 

21 they were surveyed, is what you're saying? 

22 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: This is 

2 Kathy DeMers. I wanted to point something 

3 out, and just for your reference, these 

4 sheets, these shipment sheets, which came from 

5 Y-12, are available on the O: drive, under 

6 SC&A Retrieved Records, Y-12. But we have 

7 shipment records where we had detectable 

8 contamination removables leaving Y-12, going 

9 to Pantex. 

10 I think you should consider these, 

11 because some of this removable contamination 

12 can get up to about 1,000 dpm per 100 

13 centimeters squared. So things coming in were 

14 not always pristine, or at least at the point 

15 where they left Y-12, they were not pristine.

16 MR. ROLFES: I've seen 

17 documentation of the same, Kathy, and also 

18 I've seen some documentation of the safe, 

19 secure trailers having contamination in them 

20 as well. So I am aware of that. So thank 

21 you.

22 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 
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1 You're aware of those documents, that you can 

2 go and look at them?

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 

5 MR. ROLFES: For the health 

6 physics survey report of the Pantex plant, I 

7 have the individual's name, but I don't have 

8 the organization. So it's probably out of the 

9 Albuquerque Operations Office. I can clarify 

10 that. Let me see if I can pull up the other 

11 reference here. Bryce, are you out there on 

12 the phone still?

13 MR. RICH: Yes, I am.

14 MR. ROLFES: Do you recall, I have 

15 the individual's name on the report from SRDB 

16 13310. I don't want to say the individual's 

17 name, but do you happen to recall where that 

18 health physics, health protection survey 

19 report of the Pantex plant is?

20 I want to say that the individual 

21 was out of Albuquerque Operations office. I'm 

22 not sure. I know he also had done some 
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1 analyses, and health protection survey reports 

2 of the Iowa Ordnance plant.

3 MR. KATZ: Jenny, we're talking 

4 about an author of a governmental report. Is 

5 there a Privacy Act concern?

6 MS. LIN: There shouldn't be --

7 it's the author.

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay, fine. Yes, the 

9 individual report was offered by Claude Davis. 

10 So I know I've seen his name on several 

11 reports for various sites. So I don't think 

12 he was limited to the Pantex plant, because he 

13 was auditing other sites. I'd have to --

14 MR. RICH: No, no, he was not, and 

15 I don't remember either, and my computer's in 

16 the shop right now. So my database is not 

17 available to me.

18 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Maybe the 

19 Office of Military Application -- Bryce, do 

20 you recall the Office of Military Application 

21 reference that I'm referring to? That might 

22 have been maybe later, in 1980 perhaps?
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1 MR. RICH: I think so.

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Mark, there 

3 was an audit from OMA.

4 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: That 

6 occurred in 1981.

7 MR. ROLFES: '81. Okay, thank 

8 you. I don't know if we've mentioned that one 

9 in here or not, but it was in my head. 

10 Anyway, I guess that's sort of besides the 

11 fact. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Chairman.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I just wonder 

14 when we quote things like this, it would be a 

15 very good to know where they're from, and I 

16 think you ought to quote some of the negative 

17 ones in there too. But I know when you're 

18 trying to make a point there.

19 MR. ROLFES: Sure. Well, we 

20 basically -- SC&A has focused on the 

21 negatives. We've focused on all of them, I 

22 think. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I wouldn't say 

2 that one. I think --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, let me 

4 clarify. The reason we cited the negative 

5 findings is because you're taking credit for 

6 the comprehensiveness of the radiation 

7 protection program historically at Pantex. I 

8 think what we wanted to provide some 

9 perspective on is that others have found that 

10 the programs apparently weren't as 

11 comprehensive as is labeled here.

12 So but again, I mean I think we 

13 can go down this tangent. I don't want to go 

14 down a tangent. I just want to point out that 

15 one, I don't see how any of this bears on the 

16 central question of the SEC at Pantex. And 

17 two, I think we have spent about a hour and a 

18 half raising some honest disagreements and 

19 factual problems with the compelling evidence, 

20 as you term it, in the paper that supports the 

21 conclusion, using these sources or this 

22 backdrop. So but let me continue.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. How 

2 about if we take a 10 or 15 minute break. 

3 It's about 10:30.

4 MR. KATZ: How about we keep it to 

5 ten. I'm just thinking Mark has to leave at 

6 2:00, and we need to make the most use of his 

7 presence. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

9 MR. KATZ: Sounds good.

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Let's take a 

11 ten minute break.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. The phone's on 

13 mute, but I'm not cutting it off.

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

15 matter went off the record at 10:33 a.m. and 

16 resumed at 10:44 a.m.)

17 MR. KATZ: All right. This is 

18 Pantex Work Group. We're just reconvening 

19 after a short break.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I just 

21 want to wrap up the comments on the preamble 

22 piece of this, and the data gap summary, I 
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1 think basically Mark, what you basically 

2 conclude there is that, you know, given the 

3 weapons assurance program, the radiation 

4 protection design, et cetera, that any gaps 

5 would be more in the field data and not in the 

6 event-driven bioassay data.

7 That's why I spent some length to 

8 dispute the validity of that backdrop of 

9 programs, because you very clearly say that 

10 you can rely that either event-driven bioassay 

11 was or wasn't done, because you have faith in 

12 those programs. I'm saying I don't think that 

13 faith is well-placed because one, programs may 

14 not be implemented, but well-intentioned 

15 people think they are.

16 And the other thing is I think 

17 we've disputed, at least in a good faith 

18 effort, that it's equivocal, that you can rely 

19 on the rad protection program 

20 comprehensiveness, and the fact that 

21 procedures were implemented as stated, back in 

22 the day.
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1 So you know, it's not spending a 

2 lot of time being spiritual or philosophical 

3 here. You really base your conclusion in 

4 this, that you can rely on event-driven 

5 bioassays being performed or not performed, 

6 because you have faith in those programs and 

7 how they ran them. 

8 This sounds a lot like what led me 

9 to suggest to Jim Neton that we have this 

10 discussion in Santa Fe, that you know, that

11 struck me at Mound as not appropriate, and we 

12 had the discussion.

13 He agreed that yes, you know, 

14 under the EEOICPA program, NIOSH had to hew to 

15 a quantitative approach, and not in fact rely 

16 on a program on, and in that particular 

17 instance, and I think we we're back in that 

18 same place in this degree.

19 So in terms of data gap summary, 

20 obviously we don't agree with that conclusion, 

21 based on weapons assurance information and the 

22 so-called comprehensive rad protection program 
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1 design. So I just wanted to make sure that's 

2 clear, that you know, when we get to this 

3 bottom line, that's why we have problems. Now 

4 before --

5 MR. ROLFES: Before you move on, 

6 can I respond?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

8 MR. ROLFES: We can't rely solely 

9 on the procedures and programs. We don't do 

10 that. We look at the data that we have 

11 available to us. We pay attention to what the 

12 worker says in their claim forms and in their 

13 telephone interviews.

14 We've held multiple outreaches for 

15 several years at Pantex, to make sure that we 

16 have heard everything that we can possibly get 

17 from the workers, in the preparation of our 

18 Technical Basis Documents used for dose 

19 reconstruction.

20 You know, we have indications that 

21 bioassays were collected in the early 60's, 

22 late 50's. They were collected for a reason. 
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1 We might not know what the reason is, but we 

2 have that data available as well. The sets of 

3 bioassay data aren't as large as some of the 

4 more recent sets, but that doesn't prevent 

5 them being used for dose reconstruction.

6 We're not saying that, you know, 

7 policies and procedures have to plant work 

8 perfect. That's why we're doing dose 

9 reconstructions today. We have indications 

10 that things worked though. We have 

11 indications that, you know, significant events 

12 were appropriately observed. 

13 Data was collected, and the 

14 information that we have available to us we 

15 feel is comprehensive in the ability for us to 

16 use it for dose reconstruction. In the 

17 example for the 1961 cell incident, where 

18 there was a plutonium release, that was a big 

19 incident obviously, a very big concern.

20 There's actually a radiation 

21 safety and decontamination plan, as well as 

22 bioassay data for the three individuals who 
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1 were directly involved, in that the subsequent 

2 radiological assistance team members that were 

3 involved in basically characterizing the cell 

4 area and involved in the decontamination of 

5 the cell.

6 There's, you know, we can't take 

7 one piece by itself, and that's the bottom 

8 line. We have to use multiple sources and 

9 consider all sources of input and data, to 

10 come up with our approach, and to come up with 

11 the most complete picture.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well Mark, let me 

13 respond, because I think you've said this 

14 several times now.

15 MR. ROLFES: Sure.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I have no 

17 problems with a comprehensive approach of 

18 doing dose reconstruction. The central 

19 question before the Work Group, however, is do 

20 we in fact have sufficient information that 

21 would support dose reconstruction, in the 

22 history of the Pantex plant? So yes, you 
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1 know, I understand where you're coming from on 

2 dose reconstruction. 

3 But the SEC question is a little 

4 different, and I'm concerned that because of 

5 the lack of data, you're pointing to and 

6 relying upon program assurance, in a way which 

7 I think isn't well-founded. That's my message 

8 to the Work Group, is I don't think that's 

9 going to satisfy the Board's needs, to see if 

10 a good argument for dose reconstructability.

11 So I'm going to leave it at that, 

12 because we've been back and forth on this. I 

13 think, you know, I'm just concerned that, as

14 you say here, "The previous discussion above, 

15 related to the demands of the weapons 

16 assurance and comprehensive rad protection 

17 design, is intended to clearly indicate that 

18 any gaps are in the field data, and not in the 

19 recorded," and this is the event bioassay 

20 data.

21 That's an unequivocal statement, 

22 saying that because of the rad protection 
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1 program and because of weapons assurance, we 

2 can state that any gaps would have to be in 

3 the field data, and certainly not because they 

4 did or did not take bioassay data.

5 So I'm just concerned about these 

6 categorical statements, because I think it 

7 suggests a position different. When you 

8 explain it, it comes out more equivocal, 

9 qualified. But these statements don't leave 

10 any room for that. 

11 Let me finish, though, because I 

12 think we're going to be short on time. I 

13 didn't realize you were leaving so early. So 

14 let me get down to the end. You did spend a 

15 good amount of time writing this out, so I 

16 want to make sure that we don't miss anything.

17 You know, in the end, there's sort 

18 of a philosophical discussion. What you cite 

19 here is a legitimate question. I'm just 

20 quoting from the March 10th position paper. 

21 "A legitimate question can be asked. Now that 

22 the experience of the EEOICPA program is 
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1 somewhat mature, how would a responsible, 

2 professional design of radiation safety 

3 programs today for facilities starting 

4 operations similar to that of Pantex?

5 "Would a routine bioassay program 

6 be required of all 3,000 people throughout the 

7 plant site and on what frequency? Would the 

8 program be different on the basis of 

9 protection of personnel, as opposed to 

10 providing enough data to satisfy all parties 

11 from some future compensation program?"

12 It goes on to say "I would like to 

13 believe" -- I guess this you and Bryce --

14 "that personnel protection would be served 

15 without bioassay, providing you with no 

16 evidence of uncontained contaminants in the 

17 workplace," and so forth and so on.

18 I guess I would turn those 

19 questions around, because I thought about 

20 that. It was an interesting thing. I haven't 

21 seen this in a SEC discussion before. I would 

22 turn those questions around and ask is it not 
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1 the purpose of the SEC process, however, to 

2 acknowledge historic circumstances where the 

3 design or records of the dosimetry program in 

4 fact fall short of supporting dose 

5 reconstruction with sufficient accuracy?

6 I mean isn't that what we're 

7 really talking about? Not so much, you know, 

8 whether we would design it today and, you 

9 know, is it not understandable that, you know, 

10 they didn't design programs 20, 30 years ago, 

11 just to make sure we, in EEOICPA, got the 

12 right data. 

13 So what? That's why EEOICPA was 

14 set up to legislate the way it was, was the 

15 understanding that in fact these programs 

16 would fall short. You'd find instances where 

17 the recordkeeping would be inadequate, the 

18 dosimetry program for that. That was the way 

19 the program was assigned.

20 The SEC process, I would have to 

21 believe, is set up to capture those 

22 exceptions, where for whatever reason, the 
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1 data doesn't come forward, you know. The 

2 design of the program wasn't there, you know. 

3 So yes, they certainly did not design it to be 

4 captured, and that's why we're here today, 

5 trying to debate because it's not there, how 

6 do we actually address it. So I guess I don't 

7 understand that.

8 And should a -- I guess the last 

9 question I have is should a facility's program 

10 get a pass, simply because the health 

11 physicists sort of get together and agree that 

12 while documentation and data is lacking, we 

13 all sort of believe that it was a relatively 

14 tight program, and you know, deserving of that 

15 recognition.

16 I have a concern over that too. I 

17 mean it's sort of -- these comments at the end 

18 sort of suggest all the HPs got together and 

19 looked at Pantex. Yes, it was a tight program 

20 sealed components, sealed components, diamond21 stamped, and you know, why not let that one 

22 go? 
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1 I guess my concern is that no, 

2 this is not a gestalt with the HP community, 

3 on a sort of professional judgment basis. 

4 This is a statutory-based, regulatory based 

5 program that looks at the data and allows the 

6 data to define whether or not the sufficiency 

7 and accuracy is sufficient. 

8 That's kind of what we have to 

9 judge. So, you know, we can ask these 

10 questions and they're useful questions, I 

11 think, on the side.

12 But again, like everything else 

13 we've talked about this morning, I don't see 

14 the relevancy to NIOSH and the Board, to 

15 settling the question of, you know, can you 

16 estimate doses to depleted uranium over the 

17 years in various campaigns, with a sufficient 

18 accuracy that would give you an expectation 

19 that you can dose reconstruct or not.

20 I just don't see how any of that 

21 adds up to that. So I will leave it at that 

22 and, you know, I think this could be a forum 
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1 all by itself, talking about the philosophy 

2 of, you know, how one should look at programs 

3 and weapons assurance and all that. But we 

4 need to, I guess, move on to more specifics.

5 MR. ROLFES: Before we move, I 

6 agree with what you said, but we were asked 

7 some subjective questions. So we prepared 

8 subjective responses. The details of how we 

9 have evaluated the Special Exposure Cohort 

10 that was proposed to us is in our Evaluation 

11 Report, and the information on how we use 

12 information from claimants' files, air 

13 monitoring data, our bases for intakes, are 

14 all documented in our Site Profile.

15 You know, we can disagree on, you 

16 know, interpretation of audits, records. 

17 We've got to keep focus, though, on you know, 

18 interpreting the data. Are there shortcomings 

19 in the specific data that would prohibit us or 

20 prevent us from being able to bound doses 

21 under the Special Exposure Cohort.

22 That's really the focus of, you 
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1 know, what we should be discussing, rather 

2 than, you know, our interpretation of these 

3 records versus, you know, your interpretation.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we can 

5 declare victory. I'm glad you said that. 

6 That's kind of what I was driving at, and so 

7 you know, yes, we should be focusing on the 

8 data and not trying to interpret these program 

9 documents, okay. For the record, I think we 

10 have agreement on that point.

11 So therefore, these assertions 

12 that find their way into all the preceding 

13 documents, I would question, for the Board's 

14 sake, that I don't think that they should be 

15 given much weight.

16 Now just moving on though, in 

17 terms of the exposure potential issue for 

18 internal emitters, I do want to make sure, 

19 with your leaving early, that we at least walk 

20 down the data adequacy and completeness. It 

21 took a legendary amount of effort, three 

22 months. It was finished in January. So I 
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1 apologize that you got it last week. But that 

2 was not by want of effort.

3 So you know, what we want to do in 

4 a little bit is, I think, Kathy and maybe Ron 

5 Buchanan. I think he did the external, just 

6 outline where we came from in that document, 

7 knowing that you're not going to have much to 

8 say at this point. But just making sure that 

9 if you have any questions or clarifications, 

10 you have that opportunity before you leave.

11 But in terms of the internal 

12 emitters, we had this on the agenda, you know, 

13 these tactical issues are pretty well laid 

14 out. But for uranium, yes. I think this is 

15 the central issue. Uranium and possibly 

16 thorium are the central issues from our 

17 standpoint. They're certainly questions that 

18 could be clarified by the others, but I think 

19 this is the big stopping point.

20 I think it's clear, and I don't 

21 think you disagree, that the depleted uranium 

22 figures in a number of systems over the years 
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1 from the early days, 60's on forward, you have 

2 proposed the use of the '89 incident in 

3 bioassays. I understand where that came from, 

4 but I would question whether you have 

5 sufficiently corroborated that it's bounding, 

6 and I think this last swing in Germantown, as 

7 I alluded to, I didn't get that clear.

8 But there's some data that would 

9 suggest -- and I haven't had a chance to go 

10 any further than that, but we're going to go 

11 down to Pantex -- that would suggest that 

12 previous systems may in fact have been 

13 dirtier.

14 I think that would be a useful 

15 inquiry to pursue between us, because I think 

16 again, that backs up our concern and questions 

17 about whether the '89 set of your bioassays is 

18 going to be bounding.

19 You know, we had the concern 

20 before we found this little bit of data, 

21 because again, I don't think we've seen 

22 anything hard that -- whether it's air 
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1 sampling or whatever, that just would be the 

2 worse, and I'll leave it at that, because I 

3 think we've had that discussion.

4 Thorium, I think, there's enough 

5 sensitivities that I would not want to have 

6 that discussion here. But I think in 

7 Germantown, we ought to have a discussion of 

8 thorium. And perhaps Kathy, since she's got 

9 this clear data complete and she'll be more 

10 secure about talking about some of this than I 

11 would be, because I don't have that in front 

12 of me. I haven't had a chance to go through 

13 every detail.

14 Plutonium, I would like to suggest

15 to the Work Group that be taken off the table, 

16 because I think, as far as an exposure 

17 pathway, I think those components, I think, a 

18 couple of incidents as the exception were 

19 sealed and not subject to exposure, and it was 

20 monitoring.

21 As far as STCs, I would suggest 

22 the same, that even though we have some 
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1 concerns over the fusion issues, I think in 

2 terms of sealed components. I think likewise, 

3 we have no evidence that they were present in 

4 anything but sealed components, as far as 

5 handling at Pantex.

6 So as far as the listing here, I 

7 would say our focus and concern right now is 

8 primarily depleted uranium throughout the 

9 history, different campaigns, and whether or 

10 not the '89 event, as we have said earlier, is 

11 bounding. We have issues of thorium, and 

12 Kathy may address some of that. 

13 But again, I'm a little bit unsure 

14 about how far I can go on this. So I'm not 

15 going to go into any more detail. But I 

16 wanted to scope that out clearly. That's 

17 where we're at. Any questions on that? I 

18 know I kind of went through that quickly, but 

19 I think we kind of beat uranium around already 

20 this morning.

21 MR. ROLFES: As far as exposure 

22 potentials, I'd agree with you, and I think 
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1 that's consistent with our Evaluation Report 

2 and our Site Profile, you know. We have no 

3 indications of any kind of routine plutonium 

4 exposure potential. However, just because of 

5 claimant-favorability, we have put in 

6 plutonium intakes for essentially all 

7 operating time periods when plutonium was 

8 handled.

9 You know, this is a very claimant 

10 favorable thing, which we don't necessary have 

11 information to back up, that you know, these 

12 intakes occurred. Yet we assign them, just 

13 because --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and we 

15 looked at that, and you know, we couldn't find 

16 and we looked. You're familiar with the same 

17 incidents, cracks, pits, et cetera, that we 

18 are. But beyond that, we couldn't find any 

19 evidence of a routine exposure pathway for 

20 plutonium or stable tritium compounds.

21 Although as an asterisk, you know, 

22 there's always been a diffusion question, but 
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1 I don't think it's a significant amount that I 

2 would raise in this context. Again on 

3 uranium, I think it's the bounding issue and 

4 the back extrapolation. I wouldn't want to 

5 spend a lot more time on that here, because I 

6 think we have spent a lot of time on that. 

7 But we are looking for something 

8 that would corroborate that '89 is bounding, 

9 and what has been provided, I think, falls 

10 short of that, and what we have found, it may 

11 not be much, but it's sort of indicative that 

12 '89 may not be bounding, and like I said, as 

13 soon as that gets cleared by Germantown, I 

14 will send it to you, and the reference that 

15 goes along with it.

16 MR. ROLFES: Great, okay.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Of course that's 

18 assuming you get it there.

19 MR. KATZ: Can I just ask a 

20 question about the '89 event? 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: You haven't seen 
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1 evidence that would be bounding, and you have 

2 found this evidence that you're concerned 

3 about --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, well -- 

5 MR. KATZ: But what, have you laid 

6 out somewhere what evidence you would consider 

7 corroborative?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and it 

9 wasn't clear about Germantown.

10 MR. KATZ: No, on the other side.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, on the other 

12 side. You're saying you haven't seen anything 

13 that would be corroborative.

14 (Simultaneous speaking.)

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I think 

16 we've articulated this before. What we would 

17 look for is exactly what Jim laid out in his 

18 presentation on exposure potential, you know. 

19 Can you in fact point to field data, and of 

20 course I think the answer is no.

21 It's either the air data. There's 

22 air sample data, but I think whether it's not 
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1 sufficiently representative data or may have, 

2 and this is something we have found, that a 

3 majority of those air samples, burnt dosimetry 

4 air samples, there were alarming samples, 

5 which is not particularly usable for our 

6 purposes of estimating how much was in the 

7 air.

8 But you know, Mark, if there's any 

9 way -- you know, we agree there's an exposure 

10 potential. I would disagree that it's 

11 intermittent or incidental. I think it was 

12 actually chronic, associated with those 

13 particular systems when they were being 

14 disassembled.

15 And you know, you can put 

16 different terminology, but that's, you know, 

17 that's fairly chronic while the workers are 

18 disassembling that system as they go through. 

19 So you know, you can pick your word, but I 

20 think that's pretty chronic. 

21 If we agree that far, then the 

22 question is, you know, if there's no bioassay 
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1 data that's usable, and you've mentioned a few 

2 data points, and you know, I think there are 

3 some data points. But if there's not enough 

4 usable data that's reliable, then you go to 

5 the secondary source and say what's usable 

6 from the air sampling standpoint.

7 Then you go to is there anything 

8 that would be indicative from the smears. 

9 That's a little tougher. Then the source 

10 characterization, as I recall, is another 

11 source of information in terms of trying to 

12 characterize this thing.

13 If you go through all that, then I 

14 think it becomes more debatable, whether we 

15 have a situation where there isn't a good, 

16 strong basis for dose reconstruction. We get 

17 into that stage where you hear a lot about 

18 modeling and, you know, there may be a way to 

19 get there, but it's not from the traditional 

20 source of the data.

21 So I would like to think there's a 

22 way that there's some information beyond the 
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1 '89, that would allow the -- and we're getting 

2 down to specific issues now. If you could 

3 find an approach that would quantitatively 

4 bound your depleted uranium pathways. We 

5 agree they're there. We know when they 

6 happened. They have the dates of the 

7 disassemblies.

8 Then I think you've got a starting 

9 point, thinking now okay, what are your 

10 secondary sources of data? Is there anything 

11 that's reliable and that would be usable, 

12 something that would either corroborate, that 

13 no matter what we apply, '89 comes out the 

14 highest, or suggest that there's another data 

15 point, and I would propose this one I found 

16 for the 60's, actually appears to be higher. 

17 But I don't know. I haven't gone any further 

18 with it.

19 Or that there's just no way to 

20 tell, in which case I would say we may be in 

21 SEC space for the Work Group and the Board, in 

22 which case we probably need to focus on that 
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1 question the next time around. I think 

2 there's a lot of data gathering and thinking, 

3 but that's where I would think this would 

4 arrive, you know.

5 We looked at those options, we 

6 looked at those approaches, and you know, it's 

7 Door No. 1, Door No. 2 or Door No. 3. I'd 

8 like to think we can move this discussion 

9 forward, rather than being at loggerheads. 

10 Because I think we agree, there's an exposure 

11 potential. We agree that it's relatively 

12 chronic for certain systems. 

13 The only question is we don't have 

14 bioassays for anything, reliable bioassays for 

15 anything but the '89 period, and that's why 

16 we're using what we have, and we have enough 

17 corroboration that that's bounding. So it 

18 seems like we're close but not there, and I 

19 just think that we can move it.

20 MR. ROLFES: I wanted to clarify 

21 reliable bioassays. We do have reliable 

22 bioassays prior to 1989, beginning in 1959. 
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1 The data set that we have is limited to about 

2 10, 12 people at the time, though. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, does that 

4 make it less reliable for dose reconstruction 

5 or SEC purposes?

6 MR. ROLFES: Not at all. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So how come we're 

8 not using it as a part of the proposal?

9 MR. ROLFES: We can. We certainly 

10 can. However, the intakes that we currently 

11 have are, I believe, more claimant-favorable. 

12 Now there might be one time period, because 

13 at the laboratory that had completed the 

14 analysis, that had a higher level of detection 

15 or limit of detection.

16 So if we would use their limit of 

17 detection, it would result in higher intakes, 

18 I think, than our default. But it wasn't 

19 really much that would make a big difference 

20 of, you know, significance. We can certainly 

21 do that. We can certainly look back into 

22 comparing, you know, intakes. 
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1 I thought we had previously done 

2 that, looked at our intakes from the 1999 data 

3 set, in comparison to the earlier intakes, 

4 based upon the data. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I guess I 

6 would say on this last phase, as we're sort of 

7 getting down to remaining issues, this one 

8 seems like the big one to settle.

9 I think what I would offer is what 

10 we have identified in Germantown, and maybe we 

11 should take another look at some of these 

12 secondary pieces of data, and look at some of 

13 the sampling from the earlier years, and just 

14 see if there's any way to square this thing, 

15 you know, for the Work Group the next couple 

16 of months.

17 I mean it looks like Pantex, the 

18 site trip might be a little while. So there's 

19 certainly time to wrestle this thing, and see 

20 what we find down there.

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: This is 

22 Kathy. Can I make a clarification on 
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1 something?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. Go ahead, Kathy. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: You all are 

4 talking about 1989 bioassay data. The 

5 situation is that the incident occurred in 

6 1989. The bioassay data was actually 

7 collected 1990.

8 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. 

9 Okay. The other sources of information that 

10 we've looked into, we have looked at the alpha 

11 air concentrations in the cells and we've 

12 provided a brief, three-page summary of the 

13 median alpha air concentrations from 1974 

14 through 1987. That would be breathing zone 

15 samples, they're general area air monitoring 

16 results, and there's some uncertainty about 

17 worker location versus sampling location.

18 So we have looked at these. 

19 There's 4,500 air sample results. We've 

20 compared those to the intakes in our TBD. In 

21 addition to that --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me stop you 
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1 there though, because this is a great lead-in, 

2 and I'm really conscious of your time. So I'm 

3 watching the clock.

4 MR. ROLFES: Thank you.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, 

6 two o'clock. We've got lunch in there too. 

7 Kathy is addressing this data accuracy and 

8 completeness, including air sample data. I'd 

9 like to just jump in there.

10 You've provided the lead-in to 

11 talking about what data do we have, how 

12 adequate is it, you know, this representative 

13 question that you just mentioned. I'd like to 

14 -- can we just jump into that, Kathy?

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Because I really 

17 think that that's where we're at, and excuse 

18 me for shouting a little bit, but I really 

19 want to make sure we have this discussion. I 

20 didn't realize this thing was going to end, or 

21 not end, but you know, sort of we're going to 

22 lose -- Bob, you're leaving at what time?
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1 MEMBER PRESLEY: Two.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Two 

3 o'clock becomes a milestone.

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: And Mark 

5 and Bryce, there's some natural breaking 

6 points that I'll allow you to ask questions in 

7 here, but if you just kind of let me go 

8 through this, I'd appreciate it. Okay. We 

9 issued a paper on data adequacy and 

10 completeness. 

11 This was tasked to SC&A during the 

12 May 4th, 2010 meeting. The report addresses 

13 both internal monitoring and external 

14 monitoring. So we usually do separate. 

15 However, this time we put it together. 

16 In addition to our traditional 

17 reviews of looking at the data, we were asked 

18 to look at the completeness of the incident 

19 database, and whether the incident-driven 

20 bioassay program was comprehensive. 

21 What we did on the internal side 

22 was we selected 42 Pantex claimants for 
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1 evaluation. We developed some selection 

2 criteria and I will refer you back to a table 

3 in the internal dosimetry TBD, Table 5-2, 

4 which lists job titles and descriptions of 

5 work for possible occupational intake.

6 What NIOSH has done in that table 

7 is they have broken up the Pantex population 

8 into three categories. There's Category 1, 

9 which they determined had the highest 

10 potential for intake. Category 2, which was 

11 intermediate, and then there was everybody 

12 else who was typically assigned environmental 

13 dose only. 

14 In our selection of these 42 

15 people, we decided that they had to work at 

16 some period of time during their Pantex 

17 employment in either Category 1 or Category 2. 

18 But we also wanted the individual to work at 

19 least five years during the SEC period. 

20 We required that the people that 

21 we selected had a DOE response file from 

22 Pantex. What we did was since some assembly 
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1 workers worked exclusively, say, on the high 

2 explosive portion of assembly, we went to 

3 their CATI interviews and looked for some 

4 determination that they had actually worked 

5 with radioactive material.

6 We did end up losing a couple of 

7 our original people, to the fact that we 

8 believe they just worked with high explosives. 

9 The population was employed basically from 

10 1951 through the end of the SEC period. When 

11 you go and you look at NOCTS, Pantex is kind 

12 of unique from other sites, in that they have 

13 a DOE response for the claimant, but they also 

14 have supplemental documents.

15 These supplemental documents that 

16 were pulled were pieces of documentation, 

17 pulled from the SRDB, which include monitoring 

18 data for that individual. This was something 

19 that apparently ORAU did. So if they had, for 

20 example, a log of uranium bioassay data with 

21 multiple names on a page in the SRDB, they 

22 would go. They would pull that page for that 
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1 individual and attach it to the associated 

2 claimant, okay. 

3 Each of the supplemental 

4 documents, in addition to the DOE response 

5 file, was evaluated for internal monitoring 

6 data. The focus of the review was to look at 

7 the available in vitro and in vivo monitoring 

8 data. This, opposed to the assigned dose data 

9 for internal dose. 

10 When we looked at our 42 

11 individuals, we found that 39 out of the 42 

12 had no in vitro data in their daily response 

13 file, and for the remaining three, we found 

14 that the bioassay data was incomplete in their 

15 DOE response file. We know that because we 

16 identified bioassay data from these 

17 supplemental files attached to the claimant.

18 Just to kind of give you a feeling 

19 for what this effort took, some people had up 

20 to 33 files for us to go through, to locate 

21 all of the in vivo and in vitro data.

22 MR. ROLFES: So Kathy, thanks. So 
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1 you can understand what we go through in the 

2 dose reconstruction process, then. Basically, 

3 what we've done, we noticed that DOE was not 

4 providing all information to us in their DOE 

5 response files. This is primarily related to 

6 pre-1989 bioassay data. The way it was 

7 stored, it wasn't necessarily stored with the 

8 individual's medical file, for example.

9 So what we did, we captured all of 

10 the available bioassay data, brought that 

11 back, put it in our Site Research Database, 

12 and then had ORAU go through in speedy-like 

13 link each individual claimant's exposure data, 

14 bioassay data, into their claim file in NOCTS, 

15 so that it was available for dose coworkers. 

16 So yes. We noticed that there was 

17 information that was missing from the DOE 

18 response files, and took appropriate actions 

19 to ensure that we received that information, 

20 so that it wasn't excluded from the dose 

21 reconstruction process.

22 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: So that 
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1 kind of gives you kind of a background. Now 

2 most -- like I said, most of the in vitro 

3 bioassay data came from this supplemental 

4 documentation that I'm talking about. With 

5 respect to in vivo data, those that were 

6 counted, that were involved in the in vivo 

7 program, we usually found some evidence of an 

8 in vivo count in their DOE response file.

9 Now we looked at, you know, 

10 between the 42 claimants, we looked at quite 

11 a number of files which I have listed in the 

12 back of the report. In some of these, some of 

13 the bioassay data, we had a difficult time 

14 interpreting the data, and this was as a 

15 result of limited or inaccurate personal 

16 identifiers.

17 For example, we'd have the right 

18 name, but the badge number would be off. 

19 Absence of bioassay sampling dates in some 

20 cases, and when NIOSH took the individual page 

21 out of some of these really long bioassay 

22 logs, they failed to bring over the column 
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1 headers.

2 So we had some difficulty in 

3 interpreting some of the supplemental 

4 documents from larger files. Those column 

5 headers are on the first page of the document; 

6 however, they're not carried through on every 

7 page.

8 MR. ROLFES: Right, right. You'd 

9 have to go back and look at the source 

10 document in the Site Research Database, to 

11 know what units you're referring to. 

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Right. 

13 MR. ROLFES: So Kathy, I have a 

14 quick question. You said something about the 

15 claimants were listed at the end of the 

16 report?

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: No, the 

18 documents.

19 MR. ROLFES: The documents, okay.

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: The 

21 documents that we looked at.

22 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thanks. Did 
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1 you provide a list of the claimants who you 

2 spoke with, or the files that you analyzed, so 

3 that we can take a look at the same pieces of 

4 information?

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes. Brad 

6 put that down as an action item. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So 

8 you're going to provide a list of the --

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Of the 42 

10 individuals.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Thanks.

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Another 

14 difficulty we had was when we went into the 

15 DOE file, it appeared that the recording 

16 practice, and this is true for both internal 

17 and external, and I think Ron will talk some 

18 more about this later, for some years, we 

19 found that they were recording zero millirem, 

20 say for uranium and tritium, when individuals 

21 had no supporting bioassay data.

22 So we didn't really feel like we 
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1 could trust zeros for some years. Okay, and 

2 I'm going to refer you, if you all have the 

3 report in front of you -- it's going to be a 

4 little easier for you to follow the discussion 

5 if you go to Table 2, starting on page 28.

6 And what you have here is you have 

7 a listing of the radionuclides. We've given 

8 you the years during which those radionuclides 

9 were present at Pantex. We derived these 

10 dates from the Pantex Site Profile.

11 Then you have a column where you 

12 have years without, okay, addressing without 

13 bioassay data for our selected population, 

14 which is the 42. We went a little bit further 

15 and since we had pulled all of this data, we 

16 also included a column years without bioassay 

17 data for the Pantex population.

18 Now that's based upon the data 

19 that's available on the SRD that we identified 

20 as containing bioassay data. Then just as a 

21 reminder, we put the method that NIOSH uses to 

22 assign unmonitored or missed dose for the 
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1 various radionuclides. This is pulled from 

2 the internal TBD. So that might help you, as 

3 I go through this.

4 Okay. What I want to do is I want 

5 to talk about tritium first. For our selected 

6 population, both Category 1 and 2, we had no 

7 tritium bioassay for '56 through '71, '73 

8 through '82, and '84 through '87. For four of 

9 our Category 1 workers, and this gets down to 

10 -- the reason I'm telling you this is this 

11 gets down to the dose reconstruction approach, 

12 which is heavily based upon these categories. 

13 But for four of our Category 1 

14 workers, in other words, they were Category 1 

15 at some time during their employment, they had 

16 absolutely no tritium monitoring during their 

17 employment at Pantex.

18 MEMBER PRESLEY: Hey Kathy, this 

19 is Bob Presley. What year were they employed?

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I don't 

21 have it written for every worker, but the 

22 range was '51 through '91. Each individual 
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1 had to work at least five years.

2 MR. ROLFES: And keep in mind, for 

3 clarification, this is only out of the 

4 population that you selected of 42 workers. 

5 This isn't to say that there are no bioassay 

6 data during those years, because I know there 

7 are bioassay data pretty routinely in the 70's 

8 for tritium.

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, and 

10 let me walk through this, and then I've got a 

11 question for you on that. Okay. It's our 

12 understanding that Category 2 workers are 

13 assigned environmental dose for the period '56 

14 through '91.

15 But what we found in our 

16 population was that Pantex felt that 88 

17 percent of our selected populations who held a 

18 Category 2 job, they felt like they needed 

19 bioassays. So they gave the bioassays.

20 So in essence, assigning an 

21 environmental dose for Category 2 workers may 

22 not be adequate, because at least Pantex felt 
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1 that they were being exposed to tritium. Now 

2 the bioassay results were '62 through '72, 

3 '83 and '88, were limited to one sample per 

4 individual, with a few exceptions to that. 

5 Some people had two samples in a 

6 year. So they were on an annual frequency, 

7 and the routine monthly sampling for tritium 

8 was not noted in our population until 1991. I 

9 would raise an audit finding by the Amarillo 

10 Operations Office for Amarillo Area Office in 

11 1982, where they questioned the usefulness of 

12 annual tritium bioassays.

13 One of the problems we had with 

14 the early tritium data, I'm talking in the 

15 60's, was that we noted, when we looked at the 

16 bioassay data, that we ran across a situation 

17 where the sample result was equal to the 

18 background result, which was tap water. Or in 

19 some cases, every sample that was analyzed for 

20 a given day had the exact same bounding. This 

21 struck us as odd. 

22 MR. ROLFES: Kathy, while there's 
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1 a break in your --

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I've got 

3 one more bullet.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Just let her talk.

5 MR. ROLFES: Sure.

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. We 

7 also struggled with the MDC, which I am 

8 assuming was used to develop the triangular 

9 distribution for the pre-'83 data, because 

10 what we did see in the background sample data 

11 was a result of up to 17.5 microcuries per 

12 liter. So we definitely had some questions 

13 about the adequacy of some of this data, and I 

14 have a question for you, Mark, before you get 

15 into this.

16 Okay. You say that you have data 

17 for the 70's, I'm assuming '73 through '82, 

18 because we found some data in '72. However, I 

19 have been unable to locate it, and if you have 

20 it, you know, we would be happy to look at it. 

21 

22 You know, I know that there is a 
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1 file out there that states, I think it's 

2 called bioassay data from '72 to '82. 

3 However, when you look at the data, that 

4 bioassay data only covers two years.

5 So I'm not sure where this, where 

6 the data in this time period is coming from, 

7 although we did find a couple of people who 

8 had positive tritium doses in that time 

9 period.

10 So some sort of bioassay must 

11 exist, and I'm assuming it's a matter of we 

12 didn't find it. I'm going to open the floor 

13 to you for questions.

14 MR. ROLFES: Okay. To get back to 

15 what I wanted to clarify earlier on, you had 

16 mentioned the Category 2 workers were not 

17 assigned any intakes. They were just assigned 

18 environmental doses; is that correct?

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: That's what 

20 we had pulled out of the TBD.

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I wanted to 

22 pull up the TBD. If you go to page or Table 
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1 5-19; it's page 48 of 72 of the internal dose 

2 TBD for Pantex, it has, you know, Category 1 

3 workers, such as production technicians, 

4 quality assurance technicians, radiation 

5 safety technicians and 

6 assemblers/disassemblers.

7 We've got various time periods and 

8 intakes of various radioactive materials, 

9 including tritium, uranium, thorium, plutonium

10 and radon. Now for the Category 2 worker s, 

11 we have information from the same time 

12 periods, but are only assigning ten percent of 

13 the values of the highest exposed individuals. 

14 So we're not assigning environmental levels. 

15 It is lower than the Category 1 workers.

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. If 

17 you go back, I don't know if you have the TBD 

18 in front of you.

19 MR. ROLFES: I do.

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Look at 

21 Table 5-19.

22 MR. ROLFES: That's where I'm at.
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay, and 

2 there is only an intake assigned for 

3 production techs, QAs, RSTs and 

4 assemblers/disassemblers, and no other tritium 

5 is listed. So you know, it could be, you 

6 know, that we made the wrong assumptions. 

7 However, it's definitely not listed in that 

8 table. 

9 MR. ROLFES: But if you go down, 

10 this table was numbered. If you go down to 

11 line 10, it says Category 2 in Table 5-2 were 

12 at some risk of exposure, from 1961 through 

13 1993. We are assigning ten percent of the 

14 values in Row 2. So --

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 

16 That's a DU or U?

17 MR. ROLFES: For DU, for depleted 

18 uranium or uranium.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes, and 

20 I'm talking tritium.

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay. For tritium, 

22 if you go back, we've got the highest recorded 
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1 annual doses for any year in a previous table 

2 for tritium. Let me see if I can find that 

3 table for you.

4 What we do in the dose 

5 reconstruction process, if the individual 

6 doesn't have tritium bioassay data, typically, 

7 we have been using the highest recorded 

8 tritium dose for any year when we have data, 

9 with the exception of the 1989 incident.

10 The 1989 incident with the tritium 

11 release was a different exposure potential 

12 altogether. In the dose reconstruction 

13 process, we'll either use the individual's own 

14 data, or if they don't have data, we have in 

15 the past for overestimating dose 

16 reconstructions, assigned 123 millirem per 

17 year, because that was the highest recorded 

18 tritium dose for any year that was monitored.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 

20 Well, your table in the back is not clear on 

21 that. 

22 MR. ROLFES: But yes, I 
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1 understand. We are using a slightly more 

2 claimant-favorable approach than what's in our 

3 TBD. So we can fix that if you'd like. 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, I 

5 would assume if I were a dose reconstructor 

6 that my primary reference would be this table 

7 as well.

8 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Now are 

10 there any other questions?

11 MR. ROLFES: I don't think I have 

12 any questions. I really haven't gotten the 

13 opportunity to review your report, and 

14 certainly after we've had the opportunity to 

15 review the report and look at the data for the 

16 42 listed individuals, we'll work to prepare a 

17 response. If we have questions at that point, 

18 then we'll probably ask them.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Does anyone 

20 else have any questions on tritium?

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Not at this 

22 time.
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. I'm 

2 going to move on to uranium. For our selected 

3 populations, we had no bioassay data for 1951 

4 through '64, 1966 through '67, 1969 through 

5 '75, 1977 through '80, and 1982 through '89.

6 For our population, the peak year 

7 of monitoring or the peak years of monitoring 

8 were 1990 and '91. That's within the SEC 

9 period. We did not look beyond the SEC 

10 period.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Kathy, Mark 

12 didn't you mention a '59 data point?

13 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I think he talked 

15 about it earlier today, some bioassay samples 

16 from '59?

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes, but 

18 not within our population. If you look at the 

19 total Pantex population in my table, you'll 

20 see that '59 is not there.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So that 

22 just means you didn't use it in the --
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: That means 

2 we didn't find it in our population.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: In your 

4 population, okay.

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes. The 40 

6 employees didn't, weren't represented among 

7 the people that were sampled in the '59 data.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. Just 

9 to let you know, of the four samples that were 

10 collected in '65, '68, '76 and '81, three of 

11 those samples were collected from Category 2 

12 workers, not Category 1.

13 The other thing that we observed 

14 was most of the uranium bioassay data 

15 collected from '83 through '87 was collected 

16 from Firing Site 23 cleanup workers, and not 

17 assembly/disassembly workers.

18 MR. ROLFES: Right. There was a 

19 much greater potential for exposure at the 

20 firing site. That was the contained firing 

21 site, and the reason for that, the hydroshots, 

22 which were previously done open air, those 
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1 types of operations were done within a 

2 containment area, and basically the same 

3 source-term existed. However, it was all 

4 enclosed within a confined area.

5 So that would have increased the 

6 exposure potential, because it basically would 

7 have distributed uranium on a much smaller 

8 area or within a much smaller area, and you 

9 can see that in the bioassay results, because 

10 those bioassay results are some of the more 

11 elevated results.

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 

13 Continuing, of the 32 workers that held a 

14 Category 1 position during their period of 

15 employment, 18 of these workers had no uranium 

16 bioassays at all, meaning throughout their 

17 employment. 

18 Then the last thing I wanted to 

19 bring up is -- it's kind of something that's a 

20 little confusing to us. As you know, the back 

21 extrapolation technique that's going to be 

22 applied for depleted uranium is based upon 
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1 some 300 plus samples that were collected as a 

2 result of the B28 incident when these samples 

3 were collected in 1990.

4 We looked at the results as they 

5 were provided from the Y-12 plant, and those 

6 results were recorded in dpm. Then we looked 

7 at the results as they were reported by 

8 Pantex, and this is in SRDB 82838, and we 

9 noted that the same result number was used. 

10 So if the individual had .02 dpm 

11 for the Y-12 results, .02 was recorded in the 

12 log. However, the units were now dpm per 

13 milliliter. This was somewhat confusing to 

14 us, because in order for them to be identical, 

15 that would mean that Y-12 only analyzes one 

16 milliliter of the sample.

17 Before this data gets used for 

18 back extrapolation, this discrepancy in units 

19 has to be addressed, and Mark, I'll let you 

20 ask any questions at this point.

21 MR. ROLFES: I have no questions. 

22 We'll take a look at the report and prepare a 
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1 response. Without having the data right here 

2 in front of me, I haven't had the opportunity 

3 to look into the raw results, to go back in 

4 response to your report. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I would 

6 also refer you to SRDB 14196. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Kathy, this is Stu 

8 Hinnefeld. You gave a different SRDB number 

9 earlier, didn't you?

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes. These 

11 are the two documents. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: So one of 

14 them is the Pantex results, and one of them is 

15 a letter from Y-12.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: And the first 

17 number you gave?

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: 82838.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and then 

20 14196.

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Right. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, and the 
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1 units -- I'm sorry. I missed the units from 

2 the Y-12 report.

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Y-12 

4 reported their units in dpm.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Just dpm?

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Right.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, and so, all 

8 right. Let's move on to plutonium. For our 

9 selected population, the data was available 

10 for 1961, 1968, 1981 and 1982. We had one 

11 sample for each of those years. So a total of 

12 four plutonium samples for the population. 

13 Two of these individuals fell into Category 1, 

14 and two fell into Category 2. 

15 Okay, 30 of my 32 Category 1 

16 workers had no plutonium bioassays. So in 

17 other words, those four samples were 

18 essentially two workers, or actually I take 

19 that back. Another interesting thing that we 

20 noted was that the plutonium data from '61, 

21 '68 and '78, was not a 24 hour sample, but a 

22 spot sample.
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1 This would influence your 

2 detection capability for plutonium. Really, 

3 that's all we have to say about the 

4 plutonium, unless somebody has questions. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No.

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: No? 

7 Thorium is short and sweet. We had no thorium 

8 bioassay data for our selected populations. I 

9 believe we did find one thorium bioassay 

10 sample for the entire Pantex population in 

11 1983. One of the things that, I guess when 

12 the Delphi Group came in and updated the 

13 Pantex dosimetry records, they -- are you 

14 still there?

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. They 

17 provided some individuals with like a 

18 questionnaire. One of our concerns was well, 

19 maybe nobody worked with thorium. So we went 

20 back and we looked at those questionnaires 

21 where they were available, and sure enough, 

22 there were individuals in the population which 
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1 mentioned thorium and working with it. That's 

2 basically what we found with thorium. Any 

3 questions?

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I don't think 

5 so at this time, Kathy. 

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. Now 

7 as I previously said, it's not a routine part 

8 of our data accuracy and completeness review, 

9 but we were asked to look into incident 

10 reports, and whether there was bioassays 

11 supporting those incidents.

12 There is a list of incidents in 

13 the back of the report that we looked at. It 

14 gives you the dates, the description, the 

15 incident, where we got the reference to the 

16 incident, the type of exposures, some 

17 comments, and then the SRDB number, which we 

18 referenced for that incident.

19 With Pantex, what we had was a 

20 couple of different sources, okay. We had a 

21 couple of different lists of incidents. We 

22 had what's called the radiation safety 
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1 incident reports, and that was derived from 

2 the Radiation Safety Department at Pantex.

3 Evidently, NIOSH also compiled a 

4 list of incidents, or at least they tagged or 

5 included an SRBD number associated with 

6 various incidents. We also had a list of some 

7 incidents in the back of the safety 

8 information document. Then finally, there 

9 were incidents that were not necessarily 

10 listed on any list, but were available in the 

11 SRDB. 

12 So we went through those 

13 incidents, and we looked at them. We 

14 identified 62 incidents, SC&A identified, from 

15 all sources. We found that 23 of these 

16 incidents were really from potential external 

17 exposures. 33 were from internal exposures, 

18 and one was related to an environmental 

19 exposure. We kind of threw, I believe, the 

20 environmental exposure in with the internal 

21 exposures.

22 If you have the report in front of 
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1 you, I would refer you to Table 1 on page 24, 

2 and what we did was we tried to list the 

3 number of incidents in five year blocks. You 

4 have the number of incidents from the 

5 Radiation Safety Incident reports, which is a 

6 NIOSH document. 

7 Then you have the number of 

8 incidents from the SC&A list, and that is 

9 pulling from as many incident sources as we 

10 can. One thing I would like to point out to 

11 you is for the 1991, and actually it should be 

12 through '95 time period, you'll see that there 

13 were 64 incidents under NIOSH.

14 But we stopped our evaluation at 

15 the end of 1991. So the number listed for 

16 SC&A is only for 1991. But generally, you 

17 will see an increase in incidents over time. 

18 There was a peak in 1996 through 2000. A lot 

19 of that was due to the fact that they started 

20 including wound incidents into their incident 

21 reports.

22 So you know, what this says is, 
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1 you know, we probably are in a situation where 

2 the definition of incidents has definitely 

3 changed over time at Pantex. Let me give you 

4 an example of how the definition of an 

5 incident has changed. Now we've been talking 

6 about the 1989 incident, depleted uranium, and 

7 how that 1999, or '89 sorry, '89 incident, 

8 resulted in a shutdown of work. 

9 It resulted in follow-up in vivo 

10 counts. It resulted in these 1990 bioassay 

11 data. However, what we haven't talked about 

12 was the disassembly of this unit had been 

13 going on for a number of years, and the same 

14 situation existed before 1989.

15 So the situation went from routine 

16 to an incident, even though the conditions 

17 were the same. Now I'm just going to try to 

18 get down to the bottom line here. We have 15 

19 incidents that were identified by SC&A, that 

20 were not mentioned on the incident list. 

21 While incident-based bioassay data 

22 existed, the definition of an incident changed 
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1 over the period of operations. Operational 

2 occurrences, defined as routine in the early 

3 years, rose to a level of incident in the late 

4 80's and 90's. This resulted in an 

5 inconsistent collection of bioassay data for 

6 incidents.

7 A review of the bioassay data that 

8 was available against the incidents and, you 

9 know, there was -- we gave it some level of 

10 plus or minus date from the incident. What we 

11 found was there were 13 incidents from the 

12 period of '60 through '88 that had no 

13 corresponding bioassay data. 

14 So it is evident that internal 

15 dose records may be missing, and that there 

16 are gaps in the data, even though they had an 

17 incident-based program. So these are true 

18 gaps; these are not baseless gaps, as 

19 indicated in the NIOSH response. 

20 This definitely led us to 

21 questioning how effective their incident-based 

22 bioassay program was. As far as trigger 
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1 levels for incidents, we have some definitions 

2 of an incident in 1991, but we were unable to 

3 come up with a definition of an incident in 

4 other periods of time. Does anyone have any 

5 questions?

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It doesn't look 

7 like it, Kathy.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. Now 

9 I'm going to go backwards here, and there is a 

10 table in the Evaluation Report, Table 6-1, 

11 which lists the availability of monitoring 

12 data for '72 through 2004.

13 As we put together this report, we 

14 noticed that that table didn't always marry up 

15 with the available bioassay data, and what 

16 happened was we found, say, uranium bioassay 

17 data for '72, '76 through '78, '83 through 

18 '85, '87 and '89, for the total population, we 

19 found plutonium data for '74, '78, '81 and 

20 '82, and we found a thorium sample for '83, 

21 which was not reflected in this table. 

22 This raised some concerns, because 
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1 this table is based upon the HERS, the DoRMS 

2 and the OPTIX information from Pantex. So it 

3 indicated that it was incomplete. In 

4 addition, we really had some concerns on the 

5 way the tritium monitoring was reported in 

6 this table. 

7 We were absolutely astounded that 

8 from '76 through '79, that the number of 

9 workers reported as being monitored for 

10 tritium really approached the number that were 

11 monitored for external dose, nearly 

12 equivalent. What we wondered was okay, are 

13 these zero doses being used to assume that 

14 there's tritium monitoring, and I think I 

15 brought this up before. 

16 We found zero doses for tritium 

17 that did not have bioassay -- there was no 

18 bioassay record to indicate to us that the 

19 person was even monitored. So there's some 

20 concern over that. 

21 The biggest problem here is that 

22 we're really questioning if this data from 
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1 Table 6-1 comes from HERS and DoRMS, which are 

2 the primary databases at Pantex, and I don't 

3 think Pantex has actually provided either 

4 NIOSH or us with the actual database. They've 

5 provided printouts from it.

6 MR. ROLFES: Kathy, what we do 

7 have, I've provided to the Work Group Members. 

8 It's basically a copy of DoRMS, with 

9 approximately half a million external 

10 dosimetry results, and I'll have to take a 

11 look back to see if the tritium doses were 

12 reported in there. I think they were, just 

13 because they were reporting whole body doses. 

14 But they have the ability to sort 

15 the data however you like, and at that time 

16 when we requested this information, we had 

17 only requested the external dosimetry data, I 

18 think.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, one 

20 of the -- so in other words, looking at that 

21 table, looking at the available bioassay data 

22 and it just appears that HERS and DoRMS are 
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1 incomplete or the data is being recorded as 

2 zero when people are not monitored, and Table 

3 6-1 gives you kind of a sense of confidence, 

4 where there may not be.

5 MS. RAY: Can I make a comment? 

6 This is Sarah Ray, and I called in late. But 

7 all doses were reestimated in 1990. I don't 

8 know whether this has any bearing. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sarah, this is 

10 Brad. When you say "reestimated," they made -

11 - what do you mean by that, I guess?

12 MS. RAY: I don't have their 

13 definition. All I know is it was printed on 

14 my dosimetry records, and those are my 

15 deceased husband, Michael Duarte. I cannot 

16 tell you their definition of what that was. 

17 But it does make me question, that the 

18 millions of records that have been looked at 

19 are not the original records, I would assume. 

20 Again, there are a lot of 

21 assumptions by everyone. But I have a problem 

22 with that, since I do not know what was done. 
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1 I don't have access to that. But I think 

2 that is of importance. Are they looking at 

3 the original or are they looking at something 

4 that has been adjusted, if you will? 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I really 

6 think that you need to at least, especially 

7 from an internal standpoint, you know, take a 

8 zero millirem results as with a grain of salt. 

9 Now in some of the years, they would actually 

10 say for the radionuclide "NM," which means 

11 "not monitored." But in the earlier years, it 

12 appears that they would just record zero.

13 MR. ROLFES: Okay. It's not 

14 really something that's directly relevant in 

15 the dose reconstruction process. I alluded to 

16 our dose reconstruction process earlier. For 

17 an over-estimating type case, we would assign 

18 the highest recorded tritium dose for any 

19 year, which was 122 millirem, with the 

20 exception of the 1989 incident.

21 So we wouldn't be using a zero 

22 tritium dose to show that worker was not 
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1 exposed. We would assume the opposite, that 

2 the worker was exposed, if we had no 

3 information.

4 MS. RAY: If you had no 

5 information, then how can you be sure on any 

6 of this, because you're looking at, I would 

7 assume, an average. So there is a low, I 

8 would maybe guess of zero, and a high of 

9 whatever, you know. There's a lot of 

10 difference when you take averages. I don't 

11 know what statistical method you're using, 

12 because none of this has been described in any 

13 of your documents.

14 I must admit, I just got back from 

15 being out of town for two weeks, and have not 

16 had a chance to read everything. But you 

17 know, averaging is a totally different thing. 

18 So what statistical process are you using?

19 MR. ROLFES: We're actually not 

20 using any sort of statistical process for 

21 tritium exposures in an over-estimating type 

22 dose reconstruction. We're using the absolute 
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1 highest recorded doses for any year of 

2 operational history at a Pantex plant, with 

3 the exception of the 1989 incident.

4 So if an individual was not 

5 monitored for tritium, but is a Category 1 

6 type worker, we would be assigning 122 

7 millirem of exposure for each year, unless 

8 there's some kind of information that 

9 indicates that they weren't exposed at that 

10 level.

11 MS. RAY: When did you -- when was 

12 the highest dose recorded? I would think that 

13 would be important, because exposures in 

14 earlier years, because of the differences in 

15 practices and technology, and also the 

16 differences in the weapons, would have been 

17 much higher than anything today. I think 

18 everyone would have to agree with me on that. 

19 Things are just better today, but in 

20 recordkeeping.

21 So if that came from today, or any 

22 time after 1991, then it would not be 
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1 representative of early years. 

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay. If you could 

3 just give me a second, and I'll pull that up 

4 out of our Site Profile. The highest maximum 

5 recorded individual tritium dose is on page 15 

6 of 72 out of our Site Profile for Pantex. 

7 That value was recorded in 1981.

8 MS. RAY: And I would still stay 

9 that there could be and probably are, you 

10 know. That would be 30 years of -- 30 years 

11 prior to that it was started. You know, 

12 technology had advanced a great deal by 1991 

13 or '81, because the QC was developed in '81, 

14 and we had the minicomputers and we had many 

15 things that were happening at that time.

16 So technology had advanced at that 

17 point. So recordkeeping probably had 

18 advanced. We've gone from having handwritten 

19 records, to being able to capture information 

20 on computers. Anyway, that's just the point 

21 I want to make, is technology and 

22 technological changes greatly affected all of 
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1 this.

2 MR. ROLFES: Sure. I understand 

3 your point, and that's something, you know, 

4 without -- you know, we understand there may 

5 be some shortcomings and differences in 

6 technology in the earlier years. You've got 

7 to keep in mind also that in the earlier 

8 years, there wasn't a lot of tritium on site.

9 Tritium didn't come on site until 

10 right around the time that sealed pits were 

11 coming into site. You wouldn't really be too 

12 concerned about a large tritium exposure in 

13 the earlier years, barring some incident. You 

14 know, most of the concern for tritium 

15 exposures would be during the disassembly time 

16 period, which really ramped up in the 70's, 

17 80's and 90's.

18 That you can also see, you know, 

19 the tie to the increased monitoring and 

20 tritium exposures as well. You know, most 

21 exposure potential was from --

22 MS. RAY: There was no bioassay 
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1 recording or processing in the 70's and the 

2 80's. It was ill-monitored; it was pee in the 

3 tub and put it in the cafeteria. It was done 

4 spasmodically at best. So it seems to me that 

5 what you're saying, you're contradicting 

6 yourself. But anyway, let's get on with 

7 something else. Don't let me keep 

8 interrupting.

9 MR. ROLFES: Well, thanks for your 

10 input, but we do have documentation that shows 

11 that the individuals with the highest 

12 potential for exposure were monitored, and 

13 starting back even in the early 1960's, 

14 although the monitoring method had a lower 

15 detection sensitivity, or excuse me, a higher 

16 detection -- a lower detection sensitivity. 

17 The limit of detection for the monitoring 

18 method back in the 1960's was a little bit 

19 higher than the current technologies that we 

20 have.

21 We do have indication, however, 

22 that the individuals with the highest 
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1 potential for exposure were being monitored. 

2 So we have --

3 MS. RAY: In most of the worker 

4 records that I have seen, and the workers I 

5 have helped, it was all of their information 

6 came back that, because I've helped them on 

7 their claims, it said "no exposure." So there 

8 is no bioassay record for you. 

9 This was people who had direct 

10 hands-on experiences, and even at least one 

11 person who was involved in the tritium 

12 incident. It still comes back and says that 

13 in their dose reconstruction, that you know, 

14 there was no exposure, because this person did 

15 not, was not in a position to have that 

16 exposure.

17 So I think you have to take all of 

18 this with a grain of salt, because you weren't 

19 there. I was not there. We did not collect 

20 the information, and I think that we are 

21 imposing today's standards and our own 

22 experiences on something that someone else 
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1 did. I think that is a dangerous thing to be 

2 doing at this point. Anyway, but get on.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well 

4 actually, it's getting close to lunch time for 

5 us here. So --

6 MR. KATZ: Let me just propose the 

7 possibility, which you can knock out of the 

8 park if you don't like it. But since Bob's 

9 leaving at two and Mark's leaving at two, one 

10 possibility is we could just work through, 

11 instead of breaking for lunch at this point, 

12 and eat a late lunch.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Maybe we could take 

14 a short break.

15 MR. KATZ: We'll take a short 

16 break. I'll do whatever the group wants to 

17 do.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Actually, I 

19 think it would be better. I didn't understand 

20 that we were losing these people this soon. 

21 Let's take a ten minute comfort break, and 

22 then let's, we'll just work through. 
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1 MR. KATZ: Is ten minutes fine? 

2 Is that okay with everyone? Anyone who would 

3 have health problems with missing lunch? 

4 Okay. So a ten minute break everyone on the 

5 phone. Thanks.

6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

7 matter went off the record at 12:09 p.m. and 

8 resumed at 12:21 p.m.)

9 MR. KATZ: This is the Pantex Work 

10 Group. We're just reconvening after a short 

11 break. Let me just check. Do we have any 

12 folks on the line still? Do we have Kathy? 

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Great. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

16 MR. KATZ: Where are we?

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Did you want 

18 Kathy to complete here, Joe, or --

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think we 

20 should at least finish up the outline of the 

21 document. Obviously, NIOSH is going to take 

22 some time and get comments back, but just to 
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1 outline it.

2 MR. KATZ: Go Kathy.

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I'm going 

4 to move on to air sampling data and I believe 

5 NIOSH mentioned that they had 40, roughly 

6 4,300 pieces of air sampling data. What I did 

7 was I took a quick look at some of this air 

8 sampling data, and just to kind of give you a 

9 little bit of a heads up, some of the smear 

10 data is also intertwined in with this air 

11 sampling data. 

12 Based upon the information, we 

13 have some sort of air monitoring data for 1959 

14 through 1991, with the exception of 1963, 1988 

15 and 1990. If you take a closer look at the 

16 data, the available air sampling is limited 

17 primarily to Building 1244.

18 So 1 through 6 and 8, to 1242 

19 Vault, to the 1226 Vault, to the WR room, 

20 which I believe is the Weight Room, to RS, 

21 which I believe is Receiving and Shipping, and 

22 to the Mechanical Room.
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1 Data for some of these years are 

2 available for Firing Site 5, for Building 

3 1264, 1260, 1285, 1296, 15-2, 15-6, Area D, 

4 Zone 4, the water treatment area and the 

5 burning ground, although the coverage is not 

6 complete for those areas.

7 The data includes both alpha and 

8 beta results. A majority of this data that is 

9 referenced by NIOSH, the 4,300 samples, is 

10 designated as what NIOSH calls an ER cell 

11 error, okay. What that usually is associated 

12 with is the RAMS program, or general area air 

13 sampling within cells.

14 Some of this data is -- some of 

15 the air sampling are -- stations are actually 

16 not within the cells or bays, but are down the 

17 hall from the cells and bays. Our biggest 

18 concern with respect to representativeness of 

19 these samples is actually these cell air 

20 samples.

21 They are by no means within the 

22 breathing zone of the individual. They are 
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1 also not between the individual and the 

2 source-term. During our tour, we saw some of 

3 the units, and they are on the wall of the 

4 cell. The individual may be as far away as 20 

5 feet. One thing that I should note is that in 

6 the newer facilities, the RadCon organization 

7 indicated that after the '89 incident, they 

8 implemented what was called "test exhaust," 

9 which would pull dust and tritium that was 

10 released from the worker, okay.

11 A very small amount of these 4,300 

12 samples are lapel air samples, or even job13 specific samples. I just kind of wanted to 

14 read to you a couple of audit findings in 

15 relation to the air sampling at Pantex. The 

16 Albuquerque Operations Office said in 1982, 

17 "The air circulation and ventilation in the 

18 cells is very poor, thereby decreasing the 

19 uniformity of contaminants in the air.

20 "The sensitivity of both the 

21 tritium and the alpha monitors would be 

22 greatly enhanced if additional sampling points 
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1 were located in the cell." Now Pantex's 

2 response to that finding was "Give us the 

3 money and we'll do it, but we don't have the 

4 money to add additional sampling points," at 

5 least at the time.

6 In the 1989 assessment by the 

7 Albuquerque Operations Office, they said that 

8 "The system of tritium and plutonium

9 continuous air monitors, the RAMS, described 

10 elsewhere in this review, was designed to 

11 detect accidental releases of these nuclides, 

12 but does not monitor the breathing zone air, 

13 nor are filters counted after removal. As a 

14 result of this review, air filters are being 

15 routinely counted." So routine counting was 

16 the result of a 1989 audit. 

17 In response to the relative 

18 representativeness of air sampling, NIOSH 

19 proposed an adjustment factor to the air 

20 sampling results, of ten. However, we're not 

21 sure what the justification for this 

22 particular factor is. 
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1 Now I need to back up a minute 

2 here. Although NIOSH proposes to use air 

3 sampling in only a couple of situations at 

4 Pantex, air sampling is being used to validate 

5 data that was collected in 1990, and therefore 

6 should be held to the same criteria as air 

7 sampling that is used to assign both.

8 In addition, we are trying to do a 

9 little bit of work, of additional work on this 

10 with the burning ground and the firing sites, 

11 or let me talk specifically about the burning 

12 grounds, which we visited during the tour. 

13 The individual giving the tour indicated to us 

14 that the air sampling was at the site 

15 boundary, probably some hundred yards away.

16 So representativeness of this air 

17 sampling data is actually a big issue, and 

18 when NIOSH talks about the 4,300 pieces of air 

19 sampling data, we're primarily talking about 

20 data that where we questioned the 

21 representativeness of the sample. We are not 

22 questioning the cell air sampling data. But 
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1 we are questioning the cell air data, because 

2 of the positioning of the air samples. 

3 In addition, the data does not 

4 cover all areas in all buildings. So that's 

5 kind of where we stand on air sampling. I 

6 don't know if you have any questions or 

7 comments. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Kathy, I had a 

9 question. This is Brad. I was just need a 

10 marker. How many of these are -- can you 

11 discern between breathing zone and just 

12 regular air samples?

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I would 

14 defer that question to Mark, but indication is 

15 that I would say over 90 percent of them are 

16 cell air. 

17 MR. ROLFES: I'd agree with that, 

18 Kathy. The majority of what we have put 

19 together here was analyses of the cell areas 

20 primarily, and operational areas indoors, to 

21 basically use that information to give us, you 

22 know, a quick check, to make sure that -- what 
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1 we didn't want to find would be a situation 

2 where the bioassay data resulted in lower 

3 intakes than what the air monitoring data 

4 indicated.

5 So what we've done is basically 

6 compared intakes based upon the air monitoring 

7 data to the dose reconstruction approach that 

8 we used in our Site Profile. It turns out --

9 MS. RAY: Can I ask something? 

10 What cells were considered, because during 

11 the period of our SEC, '51 to '91, the 1244 

12 cells were the only ones that were in 

13 operation, and that was where the nuclear was 

14 mated with the HE. Mechanical was done 

15 primarily in 1226 until 1264 was built.

16 But the '44 cells are built so 

17 differently. No test exhaust. The air 

18 handling unit does everything. The corridors 

19 where the radiation monitoring systems were 

20 located and they were in, you know, at eye 

21 level, which I'm sure all of you all saw when 

22 you did the tours.
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1 But the other cells are quite 

2 different in design, as compared to the 1244 

3 cell. So if information from later-built 

4 cells or new technology, again I say, that was 

5 involved in the creation and building of the 

6 newer cells, would be quite different than 

7 what you would get from 44.

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Thanks, Ms. 

9 Ray. This is Mark Rolfes. What we have 

10 looked at was 1244, Cells 1 through 6, and 

11 Cell 8. Our analysis just to look at the 

12 data, we looked at 4,500 data points roughly, 

13 and the data that we looked at was from 1974 

14 through 1987 at the time.

15 It turns out there's some 

16 additional data that we didn't have at the 

17 time we completed this analysis back in 2008. 

18 So we've got contemporary data, data from the 

19 time period when the actual operations were 

20 taking place in 1244.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So you'd say 

22 probably ten percent of them were breathing 
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1 zones?

2 MR. ROLFES: In fact, I would 

3 probably guess that less of them were 

4 breathing zones. The majority of these are 

5 gross alpha area air concentrations that we 

6 developed. You really didn't see a lot of 

7 breathing zone monitoring at Pantex, just 

8 because there typically wasn't a lot of 

9 respirable material in the air. If you take a 

10 look at, you know, some of the more recent 

11 breathing zone sampling, lapel sampling data 

12 that we've got in claim files, you'll see 

13 still -- 

14 I mean I certainly agree. Things 

15 are different today than they used to be, but 

16 still I'm not seeing anything. Their most 

17 significant concerns really are background 

18 radon concentrations within the work areas. 

19 That's really what they're routinely 

20 detecting, and not detecting too much of 

21 occupational-related radioactivity in the air.

22 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Brad, I 
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1 would refer you to a table in the ER that 

2 lists the SRDB numbers for air sampling, by 

3 year, and also surveillance data, and I would 

4 say you have maybe a handful of lapel air 

5 samples.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, thank 

7 you, Kathy. Go ahead and continue.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. One 

9 of the things that, you know, I tried to get 

10 my arms around was the exposure pathway, and I 

11 think earlier, I referred you to Table 2, 

12 where there bioassay gaps in the population.

13 I would encourage you to take a 

14 look at the years that a radionuclide was 

15 present and handled at the facility, versus 

16 the years where there was no bioassay data, 

17 and you will see that there are gaps in the 

18 bioassay data. 

19 Just real quick in this area, 

20 obviously there was an improvement in the 

21 radiological control program through time. 

22 The 1989 depleted uranium incident and the 
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1 tritium incident raised the level of concern 

2 regarding the internal dosimetry program.

3 One thing I want to bring up to 

4 you is that during our tour, Scott Wilson, 

5 who is a part of the Radiation Safety 

6 Department, handed out a table, and this table 

7 listed the various programs and the 

8 radiological concerns associated with those 

9 programs.

10 So we've been talking a lot about 

11 the incident in 1989, which resulted in the 

12 samples in 1990. However, that was not the 

13 only program with issues. With respect to 

14 uranium oxidation, they had identified eight 

15 programs. They also identified programs where 

16 there were issues associated with tritium and 

17 thorium.

18 We're going to detail, just a 

19 little bit more in a future report, after it 

20 goes through classification review. Another 

21 thing that you're going to see in our future 

22 report is we had originally raised an issue 
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1 with incidents related to -- well, I think I 

2 can say this, to Broken Arrows, and we will 

3 have a further discussion on that and the 

4 potential for exposure in those situations.

5 We've heard a lot about the 

6 increase in disassembly towards the latter 

7 part of the SEC period, and I'm going to make 

8 a supposition here, and it is if you can refer 

9 back to page 14 and 15 of our report, you'll 

10 see some figures. If you look at Figure 1 and 

11 even Figure 2, which is Category 1 workers, 

12 and Figure 3, you'll notice that there was an 

13 increase in monitoring right around the mid14 60's.

15 My supposition is that there was 

16 increased disassembly operations going on 

17 during that period of time. In addition to 

18 that, there is -- there were both destructive 

19 and non-destructive testing of units within 

20 the stockpile, or surveillance units.

21 There were modifications to units. 

22 There were retrofits, and there were also 
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1 joint test assembly testing, post-mortem 

2 evaluation of JTA, and you have to kind of 

3 take that also into consideration.

4 Also, another way to think about 

5 this is while the number of disassemblies may 

6 be very high now, compared to back then, there 

7 are new rules that have been implemented that 

8 restrict, within a particular cell, how much 

9 activity can go on in that cell. 

10 Historically, that was not the case. 

11 So within a given cell or bay, if 

12 you compare that through time, historically 

13 the source-term would be greater. So I would 

14 kind of offer that up as food for thought. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Maybe you could 

16 detail a little bit more on what source-term 

17 you're referring to. Are you referring to 

18 uranium, tritium, you know, everything in 

19 general? Plutonium?

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I would be 

21 referring to any source-term which causes 

22 either internal or external exposure.
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1 MR. ROLFES: So across the board, 

2 the source-term was larger during the earlier 

3 years?

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Within a 

5 given cell or bay. Understand that.

6 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I got you.

7 MS. RAY: And this was because the 

8 limits were changed drastically in the 90's. 

9 Prior to say like 1991 or even 1990, multiple 

10 units and even different programs could be in 

11 a bay or cell, waiting to be worked on, 

12 whatever the process was. There could be 

13 eight, nine, ten full-up weapons in an area, 

14 waiting to be disassembled. That is not the 

15 case now. The limits are quite different. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Thank you.

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I don't 

18 think I will browbeat the comprehensiveness of 

19 the radiation safety program. But I would 

20 like to bring up one item, and that is you do 

21 have -- you've taken a position as NIOSH, and 

22 you do have conflicting audits.
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1 But in addition to those 

2 conflicting audits, you have worker input 

3 that's telling you "I walked out of the bay 

4 blowing black powder out of my nose. I wasn't 

5 doing egress monitoring," et cetera.

6 And by the way, our interviews are 

7 in review, and will be released to the Working 

8 Group as soon as we can, so you can see the 

9 full extent of the comments. But I think that 

10 there needs to be some resolution of all these 

11 discrepant comments coming in, your position 

12 versus all the audit findings, versus what the 

13 workers are telling you with respect to 

14 contamination control, air sampling and 

15 implementation of the radiation safety 

16 program.

17 You can't have one technician even 

18 for a short period of time, I think he 

19 indicated a couple of years where he was the 

20 only technician in the field. He is not 

21 physically able to control everything that is 

22 going on in the field, to do his routines, to 
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1 check his instruments, to cover jobs, to count 

2 air samples and smears, et cetera.

3 And even with 3, which was stated 

4 also by this RadCon person, it's still a 

5 challenge. Pantex is a huge plant, and 

6 there's a lot of operations to cover. So I 

7 think there needs to be some resolution 

8 between all of these different aspects. 

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes. The concern 

10 about, you know, black powder encountered 

11 during disassemblies, we actually did look 

12 into this, and I have a quick question for 

13 you. Is all black powder radioactive?

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: You know, 

15 that was my question. I have my suspicion 

16 there is another possibility, which I can't 

17 discuss on the phone.

18 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Well, in turns 

19 out there's some analyses from the 1989 

20 incident and other incidents, that showed that 

21 a lot of the contaminants, there's other 

22 materials and other metals that oxidize, that 
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1 aren't radioactive. These are some of the 

2 responses.

3 You know, in some of these 

4 instances, there have been occurrences where 

5 there's grease, uranium, other heavy metals 

6 that have oxidized. So yes, the workers do 

7 have an accurate depiction of what occurred. 

8 However, not all of the materials to which 

9 they were exposed necessarily were 

10 radioactive. So there's, you know, you've got 

11 to make sure that you look at, you know, 

12 things in context and look at the analyses 

13 that are done.

14 I'm not saying that analyses are 

15 always done, but you know, we've got to make 

16 sure that we look at all sources of 

17 information, including worker input, as well 

18 as the scientific information and analyses of 

19 the materials to which the worker could have 

20 been exposed.

21 Now we only limit, under this 

22 program, our analyses to the radioisotopes to 
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1 which the workers were exposed, not 

2 necessarily other chemical agents.

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, I 

4 have two follow-up comments. First, it would 

5 be very helpful if you would give us the SRDB 

6 number for that analysis.

7 MR. ROLFES: Sure.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: And second, 

9 you know, with respect to worker comments, 

10 it's not me you need to be communicating with, 

11 but to the workers.

12 MR. ROLFES: Right. This is 

13 actually something that we've heard several 

14 times. I've been going down to the site for 

15 probably about five or six years, and I know 

16 that we've spoken with the Metal Trades 

17 Council employees on a number of events about 

18 this.

19 They're actually, you know, they 

20 were the reason we had revised the Site 

21 Profile back in 2007, I believe or 2008. I 

22 have to take a look back at the date. But it 
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1 was actually their input that led to some 

2 changes in our Site Profile. So their input 

3 wasn't ignored, and was actually used to 

4 update our Site Profile.

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I have one 

6 more thing that we were asked to look into. I 

7 don't have very much information on it. When 

8 we conducted our original Site Profile 

9 interviews, there was mention that a previous 

10 RadCon manager had destroyed field records.

11 And unfortunately, this 

12 interviewee did not review his interview. So 

13 you'll have to take that with a grain of salt. 

14 He did mean the former RadCon manager, and 

15 unfortunately this RadCon manager is deceased. 

16 So we could not go to him and ask him 

17 directly what was going on.

18 There was another indication that 

19 an individual, I guess this was from the 

20 Worker Outreach meeting of January 29th, an 

21 individual indicated a former Pantex worker 

22 stood and watched as the Safety Division 
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1 manager destroyed accident reports.

2 I think the bottom line here is 

3 that we need to investigate this further. 

4 I've pretty much given you what we, the 

5 information that we have to this point.

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes. I've heard many 

7 of these same things as well, and 

8 unfortunately, I've looked into this, but 

9 haven't found any way to determine whether or 

10 not, you know, this could be corroborated. 

11 You know, I'm not saying that records weren't 

12 destroyed, because we know many were. You 

13 know, and we may not have found all of the 

14 records that were created in the first place.

15 So yes, without additional 

16 details, the individuals that had provided 

17 details to us previously didn't really provide 

18 us enough information that would allow us to 

19 tie it to a specific report or, you know, we'd 

20 be looking for a needle in a haystack without 

21 any kind of details as to what was destroyed, 

22 and whether it was something that was needed 
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1 for dose reconstruction.

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. Just 

3 one more thing, and then I'm going to turn it 

4 over to Ron. There are several attachments to 

5 this report. Attachment 1 gives you the 

6 documents referenced for bioassay data. I 

7 talked about the figures up front. Attachment 

8 2 provides the data which went into those 

9 figures.

10 Attachment 3, as I previously 

11 mentioned, are the radiological incidents 

12 which we compiled from various sources, and I 

13 just wanted to let you know that, and I will 

14 let Ron have the floor.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, I'm here. 

16 This is Ron Buchanan with SC&A, and I believe 

17 that I'm going to cover the external dosimetry 

18 data, accuracy and completeness, and I assume, 

19 since Kathy's been referring to the report, 

20 that you have our report that was recently 

21 issued.

22 The external is not quite as 
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1 involved as Kathy's internal, and so I'll 

2 cover that here on page 36 of the report you 

3 received. First of all, I'd like to rephrase 

4 or inform everybody of how the records, I 

5 found the records were kept, and then I'll 

6 talk a little bit about whether I found 

7 accuracy problems or adequacy problems. 

8 So on page 36, you see there we 

9 have, refer to four forms. At Pantex, 

10 fortunately the external dose has been kept 

11 pretty simple on the record side. In Exhibit 

12 A there, I'll just cover the form and go into 

13 a little more detail. In 1960 to 1976, about 

14 mid of 1976, they used a handwritten form or a 

15 stamped form. In '76 through '89, they used 

16 the first computer-generated record. Then 

17 another type in '98, and then a fourth type in 

18 1999 to present.

19 So they had, the first one was 

20 handwritten and the other three were computer 

21 forms. Now I cannot, I don't believe that 

22 they ever propagated the data forward. In 
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1 other words, the records that the dose 

2 reconstructor used are either handwritten, as 

3 shown in A, B as computer-generated in B, C 

4 and D, and these are independent forms.

5 Except that the B, 1976 to 1989, 

6 went back and brought all of the handwritten 

7 form information data forward to those forms. 

8 So B actually contains A and B information, 

9 and of course, that was the only one I could 

10 really check for whether it was accurate or 

11 not, because the others were stand-alone 

12 computer forms, and there was no consolidated 

13 computer system that put all four of those 

14 forms in together.

15 We see that in Exhibit A there, it 

16 shows that handwritten with dashes, positive 

17 numbers or zeros. B was computer-generated 

18 with dashes, zeros and positive numbers and 

19 the same way with C and D. So of course, 

20 looking into the accuracy of data is somewhat 

21 of a long process, because to verify every one 

22 of them would be prohibitive.
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1 So what I wanted to do was go and 

2 look at some cases, and just see if there 

3 appeared to be a problem. So on the next page 

4 there, I outlined the fact that I took, had 24 

5 cases, which we'll talk about in more detail 

6 later.

7 But I took three of those cases 

8 that contained a number of years of 

9 handwritten data, from 1960 to 1976. I looked 

10 up four, and the fourth one didn't contain a 

11 lot of data, so I concentrated on the three 

12 that did. Of those three cases, I compared 

13 about 2,000 positive dose values, blanks, 

14 dashes and zeroes, to see if those carried 

15 forward correctly into the computerized system 

16 as shown in B there, the 1976 to 1989, or how 

17 accurate the handwritten one or readable they 

18 were.

19 In this case, the dose 

20 reconstructor receives, I went back and looked 

21 at some of the claims, the dose reconstructor 

22 receives all of these forms, if they're 
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1 applicable to that employee. So anything that 

2 is, that's on the handwritten form and carried 

3 to the computer, first computer form, is 

4 available in front of him there to look at and 

5 compare them.

6 But I went and compared. The 

7 positive entries I compared for these three 

8 claims had quite a few entries in them, and I 

9 did not find any errors in carrying them 

10 forward. In fact, when they transposed it 

11 from the handwritten form to the computer 

12 form, they actually caught a couple of 

13 mistakes in math and numbers, and corrected 

14 those when they put them in the computer, 

15 first computer database.

16 In addition to this, the vendor 

17 came back and did a few corrections, and those 

18 were correctly entered and carried forward 

19 into the computer database. So I did not find 

20 any problems with this very limited sampling 

21 of positive dose entries from these two 

22 databases, and like I say, C and D, I couldn't 
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1 verify the accuracy because these were the 

2 initial database entries, and so there was no 

3 handwritten records to compare them with.

4 Now the other aspects is blanks, 

5 dashes and zeroes, and you might say well, why 

6 is that important? Well, it is when you start 

7 figuring missed dose and/or decide whether to 

8 assign coworker dose, because if you have a 

9 form and it has blanks in it, that means a 

10 different thing to a dose reconstructor than 

11 if you have a form that has zeroes or dashes 

12 in it.

13 So I wanted to compare the dose 

14 entries as well, and on page 30, I guess it 

15 would probably be about 38 years, it talks 

16 about the blank entries. We find that 

17 generally, they were accurately transposed 

18 from the handwritten to the computer base. We 

19 did find that occasionally a zero would be 

20 entered when there was a blank or a dash in 

21 the original database.

22 We found that sometimes, the 
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1 quarterly and monthly would have a zero 

2 instead of a blank, and we found that the 

3 internal risk and extremity entries, which 

4 sometimes have zeroes or most of the time 

5 would have zeroes in the computer base, 

6 whereas the original handwritten would not 

7 have zeroes in them; maybe either a blank or 

8 maybe a dash.

9 And I found that in some of the 

10 originals, the techs there -- and I should 

11 make a clarification, is that some of the 

12 original did not always have the extremity 

13 column in them. They didn't always have the 

14 heading with extremities labeled on them. And 

15 yet in the computer database, they would list 

16 it as zero or a dash under extremities. So 

17 that's a minor thing, but it did occur.

18 So you can compare them by looking 

19 at the different columns, as I've outlined 

20 there. But in general, we found that the 

21 positive values that been entered correctly; 

22 however, the zeroes sometimes were entered 
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1 when there was only blanks or dashes in the 

2 original, and that's important, because what 

3 it essentially would lead to would be an over4 assigning of missed dose, in a regular dose 

5 reconstruction situation.

6 But it also could lead, if the 

7 person wasn't monitored and should have been 

8 assigned coworker dose, they could have been -

9 - the dose reconstructor could look at it and 

10 think that the was monitored and got zero and 

11 assigned missed instead of coworker.

12 However, the original data sheets 

13 supplied, the handwritten ones, so the dose 

14 reconstructor can go back and see that if a 

15 person was monitored or wasn't monitored 

16 during a certain period. However, and so 

17 because there is no data it is there.

18 Now the exception to the accuracy, 

19 there wasn't a problem going from the 

20 handwritten to the database or any of the 

21 databases that I can see. I looked over all 

22 24 cases. I couldn't do every entry in every 
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1 case, especially when I found that there was a 

2 fairly accurate, but it did look consistent.

3 So I did find, though, that in 

4 Exhibit E there, it shows that in September of 

5 '74, and tracking this to ground, the best I 

6 can find is that for some reason, Pantex had a 

7 special neutron monitoring program in 

8 September of 1974, and they sent the badges to 

9 Rocky Flats plant for development and reading.

10 Then they got them back, and they 

11 had a sheet, a data sheet in the research 

12 database that I pulled out there, which I give 

13 reference to in this paper, and it appears 

14 that 46 workers were specially monitored for 

15 neutrons this one period. Rocky Flats sent 

16 the information back.

17 So I tried to find if this was 

18 entered into the worker's files, and I found 

19 that in one employee, I looked at the ones we 

20 had the claims on, of course. That's the only 

21 one I could review, and I looked at the 

22 information, to see if it was in the 
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1 employee's database and available for dose 

2 reconstruction.

3 I found one that there was, the 50 

4 millirem was recorded and used in dose 

5 reconstruction. One had 40 entered instead of 

6 the 20 as reported by Rocky Flats. I don't 

7 know if they had another 20 from their reading 

8 or what, but the total was 40. And I found 

9 that five employees that had filed claims that 

10 had zero, 10, 20, 30 and 80 millirems of 

11 neutron dose, it did not reflect in their file 

12 sheets, in their files.

13 So that dose would not be 

14 assigned. Of course, the zero wasn't 

15 important. The 10 and 20 wouldn't be, because 

16 that would be around half the limits of 

17 detection, and they'd be assigned missed dose, 

18 which would be the same. Now the 80 would be 

19 the only one that would be assigned slightly 

20 lower dose, using one-half the lower limits of 

21 detection.

22 So I looked elsewhere for this, 
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1 any information on this, and if there's any 

2 other instance of this, and did not locate it. 

3 This seemed to be an isolated use of it. So 

4 that brought us to the fact that the accuracy 

5 looked, other than this special neutron 

6 monitoring, the accuracy looked reasonable on 

7 this database.

8 But then that brings us to 

9 complete this, was there adequate data? Was 

10 it all there? Well, of course, there's no way 

11 we can really know whether it's all there or 

12 not, unless they was monitored 100 percent of 

13 the time every year. So, and we know that's 

14 not true at most sites.

15 So what I did was look at to see 

16 if the ones that we expected to be monitored; 

17 in other words, people that would have jobs 

18 with a potential irradiation, external doses, 

19 were they monitored, what percent of the time 

20 and in what years?

21 So I took 24 cases and looked at 

22 them, and they had titles which included 
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1 things such as operators, inspectors, 

2 assemblers and stuff, and expect they probably 

3 should have been monitored. Now if they --

4 some of them worked different periods, and 

5 some of them would work like a clerk or auto 

6 garage. I would remove that period, because I 

7 wouldn't expect them to be monitored during 

8 that period.

9 So I looked at the time that they 

10 had job titles, that indicate they should have 

11 been monitored for external radiation. I did 

12 it two ways. I looked at the individual cases 

13 and what percent each worker was monitored, as

14 shown in Figure 4 there, in the individual 

15 case results of the 24 workers, and we see we 

16 go from A to X there, 24 workers. 

17 As you can see, the percent of 

18 monitoring increased as you go to the right 

19 somewhat. So that means in later years, that 

20 was their hire years, in the order that they 

21 was hired, from '52 to '79.

22 We see that the D and E there, 
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1 case were production operators. You know, 

2 they worked a very short time, but there was 

3 no dosimetry records and I can't explain why. 

4 They just didn't have any. That was probably 

5 the two, that there was a question on 

6 completeness there.

7 Now to really get a better handle 

8 on that, I wanted look at eclectic monitoring. 

9 So I looked at how many years worked in each 

10 year, from '52 to '04, and how many were 

11 monitored during those years. So more on 

12 eclectic basis, and that's shown in Figure 5. 

13 This really tells us the most 

14 information. If you go to the left there, you 

15 see the red bars indicate that number of years 

16 worked, and the blue bars, the number of years 

17 monitored collectively for that year. You can 

18 see, and this goes, again in the hire date was 

19 '52 to '79. So we had a pretty good span, 

20 especially in the early years, to determine 

21 the monitoring frequency.

22 You can see there that the 
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1 monitoring, there was no data up to about 

2 1960, although there was years worked, and 

3 then you see '60 to about '79, there was an 

4 increase in monitoring, and it really wasn't 

5 until '79 or '80 that we got fairly good 

6 monitoring going. In other words, the blue 

7 bars about cover up the red bars, and so that 

8 would indicate a large percent of monitoring.

9 So that's essentially what we did 

10 for the completeness of this database. Now 

11 there was three. Whenever I do these, I'd 

12 like to look at some that I wouldn't expect 

13 that declined to be monitored, just to show 

14 that we did cover both bases.

15 So we looked, I looked at three 

16 security guards, and I'm not saying they 

17 shouldn't have been monitored. I'm saying 

18 generally, they weren't back in those periods, 

19 and sure enough, the three security guards 

20 that were hired during the earlier years did 

21 not have any external data in their records. 

22 This shows that they weren't monitored.
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1 Now if you look at the dose 

2 reconstruction on the guards, you'll see that 

3 they were assigned environmental doses, and 

4 that's generally for people that weren't 

5 monitored. 

6 MR. KATZ: Ron, are you still 

7 there? Kathy, are you still there? 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes, I'm 

9 here.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. I think Ron 

11 probably doesn't know he cut himself off. Do 

12 you have a number for him, Kathy?

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Thanks. I've gone on 

15 at length sometimes, not knowing I was cut 

16 off.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I think we all 

18 have.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: He'll be 

20 back momentarily.

21 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Kathy.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. I think I 
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1 lost connection. Am I back on?

2 MR. KATZ: You're back on. 

3 Thanks, Ron. 

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Kathy says I 

5 dropped out on the security guards. Okay, so 

6 I'll start there.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, thanks.

8 MR. ROLFES: Ron? This is Mark 

9 Rolfes. Before you carry on, I wanted to ask 

10 a quick clarification about the cases D and E.

11 You had mentioned production 

12 operator as the job titles for those two 

13 cases, and it looks like they were, they 

14 started working in the earlier time period.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes.

16 MR. ROLFES: Did you see any 

17 details, whether or not they might have been 

18 involved in production of high explosive 

19 components rather than weapon components? I 

20 mean a lot of the early work in the early 50's 

21 was related to high explosive materials 

22 production.
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1 MS. RAY: Those job titles were 

2 engineering technicians. That was generally 

3 their job titles to ones that worked with the 

4 HE. So they were never called assembler 

5 operators.

6 MR. ROLFES: Right. That's what 

7 I'm asking. So would a production operator 

8 from the 1950's be someone who worked with, 

9 you know, full weapon builds assembly, or 

10 would they be related to high explosives 

11 production?

12 MS. RAY: High explosive 

13 production operators would have been 

14 engineering technicians.

15 MR. ROLFES: Okay, okay.

16 MS. RAY: They would never have 

17 been called assembler operators.

18 MR. ROLFES: No. This is 

19 production operator.

20 MS. RAY: And I think that that is 

21 a combination of the current term "production 

22 technician," plus operator and assemblers. I 
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1 have copies of all of the job descriptions, 

2 and they have always -- the people who 

3 directly handled the HE, the high explosives, 

4 were always called engineering technicians.

5 MR. ROLFES: Okay. All right, 

6 thank you. Ron, does that -- was there any 

7 other indications that the individuals had 

8 worked with radioactive material, or were 

9 there statements that they didn't in their 

10 interviews, for example?

11 DR. BUCHANAN: I don't know. I'd 

12 have to go back. It's been quite a while 

13 since I did that. So I'd have to go back.

14 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: I can send you 

16 those two case numbers.

17 MR. ROLFES: I was going to say 

18 maybe, since we're talking about 24 cases, 

19 maybe if you could identify all 24 for us as 

20 well.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, yes. No 

22 problem. I can send that to you, and I'd have 
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1 to go back and look at D and E, to see -- I 

2 remember the job titles "production operator." 

3 But I didn't go into any details further on 

4 what they might have been doing at that time.

5 MS. RAY: Can I ask one other 

6 question? My observation, after reviewing two 

7 or three handwritten dose records, was that 

8 often, names were missing, as were badge 

9 numbers. Did the 24 cases that you looked at 

10 on the handwritten documentation, did they all 

11 contain the person's name and badge number?

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Let's see. They 

13 all contained --

14 MS. RAY: It's probably a small 

15 thing.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. I did see in 

17 the scripts the names. I'd have to check the 

18 badge numbers. But they all had names on the

19 handwritten ones that I looked at.

20 MS. RAY: Okay, because I have 

21 seen them where they basically have nothing.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I didn't run -
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1 - in the sampling I did, I didn't run into 

2 any that did not have names on them. Like I 

3 said, I didn't particularly look for badge 

4 numbers, but they always had names.

5 MS. RAY: Okay.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So that 

7 brings us to the security guards, and like I 

8 said, I guess that's where it dropped out, was 

9 that I'd like to look and see for some 

10 categories that I wouldn't have expected at 

11 the time to perhaps been badged. However, I'm 

12 not saying they shouldn't have been badged by 

13 our present standard. I'm saying that 

14 sometimes they weren't in the past, and look 

15 and see if that is true.

16 So I looked at three files claims 

17 for security guards, and did not find any 

18 external monitoring data for the three 

19 security guards that I looked at. They were 

20 assigned environmental dose, and this perhaps 

21 would not be appropriate if they stationed 

22 inside with the workers, as opposed to being 
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1 outside at a guard gate or something.

2 So that was consistent with the 

3 fact that they weren't monitored back in those 

4 periods, and some of these started in the 

5 early 50's. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Ron, this is Mark 

7 again. In your report here, it says "NIOSH 

8 assigned environmental for coworker doses to 

9 these security guards in the dose 

10 reconstruction final report." So I wanted to 

11 clarify that, you know, if we have indication 

12 that an individual was around radioactive 

13 materials routinely, then we would probably 

14 assign the coworker doses, if there was some 

15 uncertainty. 

16 MS. RAY: Do you have any way of 

17 knowing whether these three security guards 

18 accompanied, or some of the ones who 

19 accompanied the shipments, the receipts? I 

20 heard many of the older guards talking about 

21 back in the time when materials were flown, 

22 standing around an air shipment at the air 
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1 base in early years? 

2 Obviously, they would have to 

3 accompany anything that was received or sent 

4 out from the plant.

5 MR. ROLFES: Mrs. Ray, this is 

6 Mark Rolfes. Regarding those exposure 

7 incidents and concerns, those are actually 

8 offsite of the Pantex plant. So 

9 unfortunately, those are not included in our 

10 dose reconstructions.

11 MS. RAY: What about, you know, 

12 the guards when they -- obviously, you know, 

13 there were time receipts. Guards are always 

14 present when something is coming in or going 

15 out. So was there -- did you consider that 

16 fact, the ones who would have been stationed 

17 with the items that were going out or being 

18 received at a loading dock?

19 MR. ROLFES: Yes, and that's 

20 something we've heard as well, and that is 

21 something that we do consider during the dose 

22 reconstruction process.
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1 MS. RAY: And what consideration 

2 would you give the ones, since it is an 

3 offsite type of situation? Do you assign 

4 anything on that, because even though it was 

5 offsite, they still could have the potential 

6 of being exposed to radioactive materials. 

7 Shouldn't that have been considered?

8 MR. ROLFES: I understand.

9 MS. RAY: It was part of their job 

10 duties as security guards at Pantex.

11 MR. ROLFES: I understand. 

12 However, our legal department has basically 

13 advised us that since that is not a covered 

14 facility, that that dose cannot be included, 

15 even though it was related to their duties. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

17 Hinnefeld. I'm the director of the office, 

18 and that is the -- it's an artifact of the 

19 construction of law. The law says we are to 

20 reconstruct the doses received at the sites, 

21 the covered facilities.

22 MS. RAY: Okay, thank you.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But Sarah on 

2 your comment, and this came out in our tour, 

3 whenever an safe, secure transport came in, 

4 the guards were responsible to get up and 

5 check the seals on each one of these 

6 containers. This was one of the questions 

7 that they had brought up. So it's something 

8 that we have been looking into.

9 MS. RAY: Okay, thank you, because 

10 I think it is important.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, Ron.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: So just in summary, 

15 we've seen that the limited sampling here 

16 showed that the -- there was no external 

17 monitoring data available in '52 to '59. '60 

18 to '62, there's insufficient external 

19 monitoring.

20 Only 16 percent of the year's work 

21 was monitored. '63 to '78, there was 

22 increased monitoring, with an average of 72 
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1 percent of the year's work monitored, and '79 

2 to 2004, a substantial increase, consistent 

3 monitoring of around 90 percent of the year's 

4 work were monitored.

5 This was what we found for 

6 external, in the external dose records. Any 

7 questions?

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It doesn't look 

9 like it, this time Ron.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, can you 

12 stick in for a little bit longer?

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, yes.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: We might get into 

15 the neutron topic, and I know you were 

16 involved in that. So that would be helpful.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Again, 

19 given the clearance issues, we didn't get that 

20 until just lately. So we recognize that that 

21 will be something you'll respond to later on. 

22 But it probably be useful just to outline 
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1 what's in there. Going back to the agenda.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Where are we 

3 at?

4 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we're on 

5 number three, actually going back to, and 

6 we're actually making pretty good headway. I 

7 think I skipped ones to move things along. 

8 But you know, we're on the neutron 

9 dose issue, and Ron was involved with the 

10 piece we sent you on December 27th, which kind 

11 of responded to the issue of supplanting the 

12 neutron/proton ratio approach that we had some 

13 issues with. I think you actually some issues 

14 with too, and you proposed the MCNP-based 

15 coworker approach, which is something that was 

16 first proposed at Mound. 

17 So a lot of what Ron's piece was 

18 in December was simply to comment on where we 

19 stood basically, now with this new proposal on 

20 the table essentially. You know, I have to 

21 confess. I don't think we've seen a response 

22 on that, but I may be wrong.
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1 MR. ROLFES: Correct. Actually, 

2 if you recall, we had the Germantown trip 

3 visit scheduled, and that was when the looming 

4 government shutdown basically forced us to 

5 cancel our flights at the time.

6 So we weren't be to get our 

7 project external dosimetry technical lead up 

8 to D.C. to review some of the records that we 

9 felt might be responsive to some of the issues 

10 SC&A had identified.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

12 MR. ROLFES: We have had the 

13 opportunity to get his eyes on some of the 

14 records. However, not a complete set of 

15 records yet. So --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I just got an 

17 email from him, by the way, saying that my 

18 notes for the day had just been cleared. So 

19 that helps a lot, but he also had a long queue 

20 with everything else that we're looking at. 

21 So apparently there's a lot there right now. 

22 MR. ROLFES: Okay, from --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: From ORAU, NIOSH 

2 and from SC&A.

3 MR. ROLFES: Oh, you got a note.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. He just 

5 emailed me back, because I was pressing him 

6 for notes for this meeting, and he just 

7 cleared them today, almost.

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Almost. Okay. 

9 But yes anyway, we wanted to make sure before 

10 we issued our response, that you know, he's 

11 had the opportunity to see, you know, some of 

12 the earlier reports that he hadn't previously 

13 seen back in, you know, early on in the time 

14 period when the TBD was developed.

15 But let's see. I believe we had 

16 hoped to get something completed by right 

17 around this time period.

18 We're working on finalizing a 

19 response, and I think we're probably going to 

20 use the next trip to Germantown as another 

21 opportunity to review some of the remaining 

22 documents that we didn't get through, and 
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1 hopefully issue a more final response to you 

2 on, you know, to address the concerns 

3 identified by SC&A.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: And these, as I 

5 recall, and Ron can correct me, these were 

6 almost the same kinds of issues that we raised 

7 at Mound, when the MCNP-based coworker model 

8 was raised, and we just wanted to understand 

9 how those were being addressed in the Pantex 

10 context.

11 MR. ROLFES: Sure.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: The other issue, 

13 and I don't think we can get into it here, but 

14 it's certainly a good Germantown issue.

15 MR. KATZ: Well, before we do 

16 this, can I just get a sense of -- so if that 

17 meeting is in June that we're going -- one 

18 thing at a time. That meeting is in June that 

19 we're going to, sort of data capture type 

20 discussion meeting. 

21 But so then so then do you just 

22 have a sense as to how much following the 
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1 meeting to actually prepare a response and 

2 then get DOE to clear it? What framework are 

3 we talking about? Is that a couple of months?

4 MR. ROLFES: A month, six weeks 

5 maybe, is what I guess.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Mid-August.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes. It sounds like 

8 we're talking about the August time frame. 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Ted? I've 

10 had my interviews in for eight weeks, and 

11 they're still not cleared.

12 MR. KATZ: Right, yes. I imagine, 

13 but maybe it's not true, different kinds of 

14 documents have sort of different time frames 

15 with them for review by DOE, but maybe not. 

16 Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: To be fair, we're 

18 pushing certain things faster, and I'm sure 

19 things are lagging.

20 MR. KATZ: Yes.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: So we may be 

22 partly responsible for that. No. I was going 
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1 to say one thing that it would be helpful for 

2 you to address, and it's something that we 

3 kind of identified in Germantown, would be to 

4 look at the MCNP, and I'll say this carefully, 

5 and see where the MCNP model would be bounding 

6 for the various systems that historically were 

7 handled at Pantex.

8 That was the other question, and 

9 Kathy, maybe you can more artfully phrase it, 

10 because I think that's kind of what we felt 

11 would have been the add-on, based on 

12 additional thinking on the neutron. Is that 

13 about the way you can capture that?

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, in 

15 the adjustment factor, there are three 

16 elements, one of which is a correction factor 

17 derived with the MCNP model, that tries to 

18 characterize the percentage of the source-term 

19 that's less than 500 keV, and the other two, 

20 and Ron speak up if I've got this wrong, one 

21 is fading and one is angular-dependent.

22 MR. ROLFES: That's correct,
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1 Kathy.

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: The one we 

3 have the most concern with and the one that's 

4 the most sensitive is the correction factor 

5 for MCNP, and I don't know that we can say too 

6 much about that. That the particular factor 

7 that gets into some sensitive documentation.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. This is Ron 

9 Buchanan. That's correct, Kathy. The fading 

10 and the angular dependency is probably not a 

11 classified issue. It's an issue, but not 

12 classified, and it's very similar to Mound, 

13 except that here, we have a question of PA and 

14 radiation.

15 But however, the energy spectrum 

16 is for the neutrons below half MeV. So that 

17 might be where we run into classified 

18 information that would affect the correction 

19 factor. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Now one 

21 item on angular dependence that, you know, we 

22 would like to see some input on is the fact 
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1 that like Sarah said, there can be multiple 

2 units in a cell or bay at one point, and how 

3 are you going to deal with that.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: And what I would 

5 propose, because again, we go into these six6 month cycles, I did get some of issue-specific 

7 papers cleared, according to the email, and 

8 what we'll probably do is share those with you 

9 by memo to the Work Group, and just hit some 

10 of these specific points. 

11 So if you're in the midst of

12 thinking about neutrons, you'll get the 

13 benefit of some of this additional 

14 perspective, as long as it's clear, of course, 

15 that maybe you can incorporate. If not, if 

16 too much of it is redacted, then we'll save it 

17 for Germantown and have that discussion then.

18 But I'd rather deal with that in 

19 real time, if we can get that information to 

20 you on this neutron business, and the other 

21 issues as well. Well, that's -- I guess 

22 that's about it on that one. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: I have a question 

2 on the data adequacy and completeness. Mark, 

3 when do you think you'll have that paper 

4 ready? I know you just got this, so --

5 MR. ROLFES: Well, that's --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: That's a little 

7 complex for us to say. It will involve work 

8 by our contractor, who also works on 

9 everything else, you know, that the Board's 

10 working on.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Oh right, that 

12 priority thing.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: So it's going to 

14 be a matter of prioritizing what's in front of 

15 us, recognizing that Pantex has been going on 

16 a long time, and it's high on the list. But 

17 it's just too complex to say here, and to give 

18 an estimate today.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Do we know 

21 which Kivas had M-1 within Kiva itself or out 

22 in the hallway?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Talking about reactor 

2 containment buildings. That's a Kiva? 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Oh, no, no. 

4 I'm sorry. I'm getting the wrong state, you 

5 know, the cells.

6 MR. ROLFES: In the cells, 

7 Building 1244, Cells 1 through 6 and 8 had air 

8 monitors in them.

9 MS. RAY: They had air monitors in 

10 the corridor, not directly in the round room.

11 MR. ROLFES: They had sampler 

12 heads within the cell. They had --

13 MS. RAY: They were sniffed in at 

14 eye level.

15 MR. ROLFES: Correct, so that 

16 would be a sampling head. They also had one 

17 in cubicle A, B --

18 MS. RAY: On the walls, and the 

19 work was primarily done in the middle because 

20 of the positioning --

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct.

22 MS. RAY: Of other things that 
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1 were used to process air, to process vacuum, 

2 hoisting and rigging, that type of thing.

3 MR. ROLFES: Right, right, and 

4 then also in the equipment room. So there 

5 were basically in each cell the cubicles and 

6 the equipment rooms. 

7 MS. RAY: The staging area.

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Anything more on 

10 neutron? I mean I think that pretty much lays 

11 it out where it is right now. That's been, I 

12 think, documented pretty well. Ron, thank you 

13 for helping out on that.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, okay.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: The next thing on 

16 the list is the external dosimetry issues, and 

17 that's been a source of confusion, but to sort 

18 of try to go back, and originally, it must 

19 have been two Work Group meetings ago, maybe 

20 it's one Work Group meeting ago. 

21 But anyway, what we had was 

22 discussions on a number of the external 
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1 dosimetry issues, and these were a number of 

2 questions about adjustment factors, if you 

3 recall, and a number of things like that. We 

4 had Hans Behling come on the speaker box, if 

5 you recall that conversation. This is going 

6 back a ways.

7 But at the end of that 

8 conversation, I think the Work Group was 

9 leaning towards making that a Site Profile 

10 issue. I mean all, there's like three or four 

11 external dosimetry issues. Hans agreed that, 

12 you know, this was more on the realm of 

13 picking the right adjustment factors, but not 

14 certainly negating the ability to dose 

15 reconstruct, if you can call it that. 

16 Where the, and I had to -- just 

17 went back to the transcripts from the last 

18 Work Group meeting, because it's been a while, 

19 but where the Work Group was coming out on 

20 that was there were some pretty important, 

21 legitimate adjustment factor issues and other 

22 questions that dealt with the external 
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1 dosimetry.

2 But clearly, I think, the 

3 consensus was it was tilting towards a Site 

4 Profile discussion. Rather than take up room 

5 and, you know, in this case, to have NIOSH go 

6 back and look at the findings that were 

7 identified, and see if -- 

8 And this gets back to some of the 

9 things we've been doing with GDPs on Site 

10 Profile, to see what would make sense to put 

11 into the queue for changes in the Site Profile 

12 for the external dosimetry TBD.

13 Not to put too much into this, but 

14 that's kind of where that came from. I just 

15 keep seeing references saying, you know, not 

16 sort of recognizing that was where this thing 

17 was left. So this is actually something the 

18 Work Group, based on the last Work Group 

19 discussion deliberation, felt was more of a 

20 Site Profile issue, but still, you know, 

21 didn't want to lose it.

22 It was important enough that the 
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1 request was for NIOSH to go back and consider 

2 what changes could be put in the pipeline. 

3 Certainly not in the same context of SEC time 

4 lines, but just make sure these were captured. 

5 That was kind of where it was left. 

6 I know it's on our, it's on the 

7 list. I know it keeps showing up and I know 

8 you responded to it, but that's kind of the 

9 essence of it, and I'd invite you to go back 

10 and look at the transcript. I mean that's 

11 kind of where it came out.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: What's the issue 

13 again, sorry?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: External 

15 dosimetry issues. There's three or four 

16 findings that revolve, and I can tell you the 

17 numbers. These are Findings 6, 11, 12 and 13, 

18 and we did have a good discussion on those. 

19 But after the give and take was done, and Hans 

20 is a pretty, you know, he doesn't give very 

21 often. 

22 When he said that, you know, he 
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1 was pretty satisfied this was more of a, you 

2 know, picking the right adjustment factor or 

3 coming up with the right variance, that he 

4 thought it was more of a Site Profile 

5 question.

6 That's when the Work Group came 

7 back and said well why don't, you know, these 

8 are still pretty important. We don't want 

9 incorrect adjustment factors and dose 

10 reconstructions going on. Can you go back and 

11 at least see what could be done readily?

12 For the ones that take awhile, 

13 like with all Site Profiles, they get put in 

14 the queue and when the Site Profiles obviously 

15 revise the -- you know, a patch up of those. 

16 But for some of these actual numerical 

17 factors, you could -- and there was an 

18 acknowledgment at the table, yes, these were 

19 not right or incorrect. I think that was the 

20 only follow-up, and I notice that we keep 

21 going back to it. That was it.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, and that was 
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1 the transcript of the last meeting of this 

2 Work Group or do you remember when it was?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. It was the 

4 last transcript, but that's a year ago.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

6 MR. ROLFES: I was going to say, I 

7 recall having a discussion about external 

8 dosimetry, and I remember one of the not 

9 findings, but one of our responsibilities 

10 following that meeting was to provide a 

11 reference. We had quoted a reference for an 

12 uncertainty in the measured gamma doses, and 

13 we provided that reference since --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it was more 

15 than that. Actually, like I said, I don't 

16 want to take too much time up here. But it's 

17 helpful to go back and look at the transcript, 

18 where we're having this exchange with Hans. 

19 Then the Work Group weighs in and I think 

20 there's this agreement, which is hard to 

21 reach.

22 But this was certainly looking 
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1 more like a Site Profile question, and maybe 

2 the way to dispatch it was to do that. That's 

3 kind of where I'm carrying it here. So it 

4 might be helpful just to pin that down and 

5 take it from there. 

6 I mean I think it could also go 

7 into the matrix and update the matrix, but I 

8 wanted to at least nail that down, so I looked 

9 at the transcripts, and that's pretty much 

10 where it came out.

11 MR. KATZ: So I --

12 MR. ROLFES: I guess I was going 

13 to say those are things that we can keep in 

14 mind. I don't know if there's outstanding 

15 issues that we haven't responded to.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the first 

17 thing we do is we go look at the transcripts, 

18 and see what the discussion was, and see what 

19 a response would be or something to say about 

20 it. I think that's what we do.

21 I don't think we want to let that 

22 debate interfere with an SEC decision. you're 
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1 right, and you're exactly right. What happens 

2 on these sometimes is an SEC decision is made, 

3 and everything sort of stops. 

4 Everybody's attention is diverted 

5 elsewhere, and so you still have these 

6 lingering Site Profile changes, whether you're 

7 doing it for all the claims or just the non8 presumptive claims --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think for 

10 a couple of them --

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 MR. HINNEFELD: That's sort of on 

13 the to-do list.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: For a couple of 

15 them, there seemed to be agreement that these 

16 numbers weren't quite right. But you know, 

17 when you skip that point, you know it's not an 

18 SEC issue anymore. 

19 MR. KATZ: So I just -- I have 

20 this down as an action item then, that DCAS 

21 will review the transcript and report back to 

22 the Work Group.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. They might 

2 actually get a lot of this done quickly. The 

3 other matrix issues, I think, is just what we 

4 almost just did with neutron and with the 

5 external dosimetry, which is just sort of a --

6 you know, we've got a number of findings on 

7 the table.

8 But I sort of want to defend those 

9 for the sake of the Work Group, more than 

10 anything else, because I think it's easy to 

11 sort of get lost in the shuffle, when we have 

12 a total of something like 16 or 17 original 

13 matrix findings.

14 I think what we owe the Work Group 

15 and NIOSH is an update, and maybe what we can 

16 do is exchange that and get the matrix through 

17 the Work Group at least current, so we have 

18 that to work with.

19 But just as a thumbnail sketch for 

20 this meeting, what we're seeing is sort of 

21 SEC-significant issues. Not necessarily what 

22 the Work Group would recommend, but certainly 
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1 ones that still have that flavor would be this 

2 question on neutron, more the MCNP aspect of 

3 it, as to whether it's bounding for all 

4 systems that were handled and selectively 

5 discussed.

6 We're going to get into maybe some 

7 secure information, but that's something that 

8 ought to be addressed, put that to bed. The 

9 fading issues and some of the adjustment 

10 factors, I don't think those are as much an 

11 SEC question. I think those are definitely 

12 manageable. 

13 As we discussed earlier, this 

14 question of back extrapolation of uranium and 

15 possibly thorium. I think we feel there's 

16 some real question marks on thorium. It's 

17 uranium and thorium, that question that we've 

18 spent some time on. 

19 The adequacy and completeness, 

20 obviously that bares your analysis, and I 

21 won't say anything more about it. That was --

22 let me step back. The MCNP issue is the 
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1 neutron finding number 7 on the matrix. 

2 That's number 7.

3 The back extrapolation of uranium 

4 thorium, that's Issues No. 2 and 4, 

5 respectively on the matrix. The adequacy and 

6 completeness of internal and external are 

7 matrix Items 1 and 8, respectively. 

8 MR. KATZ: Are saying -- I mean 

9 are you throwing those in the same bin, that 

10 are SEC Issues 1 and 8?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh no. I'm just 

12 saying that they're not off the table, as far 

13 as being clearly not SEC-significant. It may 

14 turn out, from a completeness and accuracy 

15 standpoint, that with the NIOSH response it 

16 doesn't, you know, doesn't rise to an issue. 

17 But it's still current.

18 And we still have some more 

19 research on tritium dose estimation, in terms 

20 of the -- and this gets, this ties into the 

21 adequacy and completeness. There's some

22 lingering questions we have to answer, and 
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1 that's Item 15. I think there's a wealth of 

2 data for tritium. So you know, I think that's 

3 not necessarily going to be an SEC-significant 

4 question. 

5 But I think we need to answer some 

6 additional issues before we can feel 

7 comfortable and get it off the table. Sort of 

8 in -- that's sort of the SEC-significant bin. 

9 The bin where, I think, more information is 

10 needed, and I think the site visit's going to 

11 help is the firing and burial site issues. 

12 That was Finding No. 10 or Item No. 10 from 

13 the matrix.

14 We want to get additional 

15 information on Item 14, which had to deal with 

16 subcontractors and temporary workers, but I 

17 think quite frankly, that's leaning toward 

18 being a Site Profile question at best, or not 

19 an issue at all. So we're doing additional 

20 research on that.

21 I think as Kathy mentioned, we've 

22 done some initial look-see on incidents. But 
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1 when we go down to the site, we want to make 

2 sure that we have captured everything we need 

3 to on that. But I think you got the essence 

4 of where the concerns are, with how the 

5 incidents are informing this question of the 

6 event bioassays. I think that remains the 

7 same.

8 We originally had tritides or STCs 

9 on the need more information, but after the 

10 Germantown visit, I would definitely say, as I 

11 said earlier, that I think that's off the 

12 table. That's an SEC question for Pantex. I 

13 think it's more of -- we'll look for 

14 additional information. But right now, I 

15 don't think that's going to rise to that 

16 significance.

17 MEMBER BEACH: That's Issue 5?

18 MR. FITZGERALD: That's Issue No. 

19 5. Likewise, for plutonium, which is Item No. 

20 3. We would see that not being likely, and we 

21 would recommend to the Work Group that it 

22 would not likely be an SEC issue. All of 
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1 these, obviously, are subject to change, 

2 depending on if the Work Group has objections 

3 or questions.

4 There are an Item 17, HP/IH 

5 programs, which we don't think that's an SEC 

6 question. But with all the matrix, it 

7 certainly came from the Site Profile 

8 originally. Ditto with badge placement. I 

9 think the NIOSH explanation is certainly 

10 sufficient. That was Item No. 16. It was a 

11 petitioner issue originally, I think.

12 And then, of course, going back to 

13 the external dose issues we just mentioned. 

14 There's four findings that relate to that, 

15 that we dealt with at the last Work Group 

16 meeting, that in toto, I think there was an 

17 agreement that they look like, more like Site 

18 Profile issues. That's Item 6, 11, 12 and 13.

19 So I'll send something through 

20 Brad and Ted that would be sort of an update, 

21 based on that sort of binning, and clarify 

22 sort of what we can best describe as how we 
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1 got there in this forum. Then, you know, Mark 

2 or whomever, I think you would just need to, 

3 you know, agree or disagree or change or 

4 modify, whatever.

5 That would give us at least a 

6 baseline for the rest of the review, which 

7 would be helpful at this point. I think this 

8 original one, which is pretty lengthy, has 

9 gotten out of date. I think a lot of things 

10 have been addressed in different places.

11 MR. ROLFES: I think as a result 

12 of our last Work Group meeting, we tried to 

13 narrow it down to the few handful of issues 

14 that were the SEC issues, and that's where we 

15 brought our focus to.

16 MS. RAY: As an SEC petitioner, 

17 I'm interested in seeing a time line. 

18 Obviously, we're wondering how close we are to 

19 an SEC decision being made. This has been 

20 going on since 2006, and it does seem to me 

21 that we should be reaching a conclusion at 

22 some point, things like that all records 
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1 probably should already have been reviewed, 

2 but apparently they have not.

3 But if I could -- and my co4 petitioners, if we could see a time line, we'd 

5 like to know how long all of this is going to 

6 take. I know Mark is saying that he has 

7 several things, and I was hearing an August 

8 time frame on something and a June on 

9 something else.

10 You know, that just keeps pushing 

11 all of this forward, and I think it's fair to 

12 ask for a reasonable time line.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Ms. Ray, this is 

14 Stu Hinnefeld, the Director of the DCAS 

15 office, and I've got to say the Institute 

16 kind of shares your opinion, that we've been 

17 at this a long time.

18 MS. RAY: Yes.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think, but I'm 

20 afraid I'm not in a position to offer a time 

21 line today. This is a fairly complex thing 

22 that we have to deal with, and I'd just say --
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1 I would just want to reassure you that your 

2 voice is not unheard by me or by my bosses in 

3 Washington.

4 MR. KATZ: Let me just add, this 

5 is Ted, Sarah, that I mean we're looking at, I 

6 mean from what's been discussed here, we're 

7 looking at another Work Group meeting as soon 

8 as -- in August. So and the Work Group has to 

9 prepare its conclusions to report out to the 

10 full Board. 

11 MEMBER BEACH: Well, and that 

12 might be pushed out, because of the --

13 MR. KATZ: Well, at the soonest in 

14 August.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: I'm not -- I can't 

17 sign, seal and deliver that. But at soonest 

18 in August, and then as I said, the Work Group 

19 after it meets, if it has, can finish its 

20 business in the next meeting, which is not 

21 crystal clear at this point. 

22 But if it can, and then it would 
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1 report out to the Board at the subsequent 

2 Board meeting, which after August is in the 

3 very beginning of December.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: It's early 

5 December, yes.

6 MR. KATZ: So there's actually 

7 room for more than one meeting for the Work 

8 Group to conclude its business, late summer 

9 and early fall, if that works out. Anyway, 

10 I'll just -- Sarah, I'm just trying to give 

11 you as much of a picture as I can. 

12 MS. RAY: I appreciate that 

13 information.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Have you -- 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: That's down to 

16 action item summary.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And we're about 

18 out of time, so that would probably be the 

19 best thing to do, is to be able to go through 

20 what each side's responsible for, and I 

21 realize that you can' give a time frame. But 

22 you know, at least maybe an estimate, and so 
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1 forth, of what we've got. We've got the data 

2 adequacy that has been delivered; correct?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You've got the 

5 -- so maybe I could just have Ted, if you've 

6 got the list.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes. Let me see if I 

8 can go through my notes and sort this out, 

9 what I have for action items. Let me just 

10 think how I've indicated them in my notes 

11 here. 

12 Okay. So the first one I have is, 

13 and Mark, I'm sure, has everything I have too, 

14 but Mark committed to providing notes from the 

15 Site Research Database, on --

16 MR. ROLFES: Chemical analyses.

17 MR. KATZ: From the design 

18 laboratories.

19 MR. ROLFES: From some of the 

20 residue collected at the Pantex plant.

21 MR. KATZ: Right. That's the 

22 first item. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Is that the one 

2 that Kathy requested?

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, yes. Kathy 

4 requested that. Okay. NIOSH is to provide an 

5 analysis to SC&A. This is -- Mark mentioned 

6 recently about the issue of having followed up 

7 on some of the workers' reports about their 

8 exposures, and the example given was dark 

9 powder. But we'd ask that NIOSH provide those 

10 analyses. They're on the Site Research 

11 Database or they will be. SC&A is going to 

12 identify the 24 cases that Ron reviewed. 

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Ted, this 

14 is Kathy.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes.

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: They were 

17 supposed to also identify the 42 workers -- 

18 MR. KATZ: Exactly, right. I was 

19 going to go back up there, because I recall 

20 that you've had a group of cases to report on, 

21 to identify. DCAS is going to prepare a 

22 response to the data adequacy report.
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1 DCAS is going to review the 

2 transcript and report back on the external 

3 dosimetry issues that we just discussed, and 

4 to report back is to report back a plan for 

5 how that's going to be handled going forward, 

6 with respect to the possibility of changing 

7 the Site Profile, or at least evaluating the 

8 issues further.

9 MR. ROLFES: SC&A has a worker 

10 interview report that you've written or worked 

11 on.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: It's in DOE 

13 clearance.

14 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: It's been there 

16 for a while, so --

17 MR. ROLFES: And then SC&A --

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I have a 

19 kind of an update on that. I asked Mike for a 

20 status report on that. There are going to be 

21 two versions to that interview summary. So 

22 you need to review the full version when 
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1 you're in Germantown. What we're going to 

2 release is one eligible for public release. 

3 Are you following me?

4 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. 

6 MR. KATZ: Okay. That's good to 

7 know. 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: And Mike 

9 didn't know that, because I asked him 

10 yesterday. So he's still checking on it.

11 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Kathy. Then 

12 SC&A is going to provide this matrix update, 

13 and DCAS will respond to it as needed, 

14 elaboration, corrections, whatever. Those are 

15 all the items I have in my notes. I don't 

16 know if I've missed some. I could have 

17 easily.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: One item. This 

19 is -- we didn't really put a punctuation point 

20 on this. I was saying earlier the central 

21 issue of depleted uranium, you know, back 

22 extrapolation or however you want to term that 
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1 from the '89 incident, the '90 bioassay data.

2 I'd rather not leave that sort of 

3 -- because that is a central question, and I'm 

4 going to try to get some notes and then clear, 

5 try to get something to you. But I'd like to 

6 put that on a fast track, to sort of a fish or 

7 cut bait question on, you know, is there 

8 anything that collectively one can do to 

9 establish this bounding conclusion for the 

10 depleted uranium, the eight -- I guess it's 

11 eight. I thought it was four, the eight 

12 systems that actually involved the uranium, 

13 and just get past this point of, you know, 

14 it's the W28, it's not the W28. How do you 

15 know?

16 I mean it seems like we've kind of 

17 beat that one. But I really would like to, 

18 you know, do that in real time, to just 

19 establish one way or the other is this current 

20 approach sufficient to bound this, without 

21 getting into program reliability. But you 

22 know, do we have the goods, in terms of data 
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1 or not, and just bring that back to the Work 

2 Group, and closer to real time.

3 If we need Germantown, we have 

4 Germantown coming. So that's kind of a nice 

5 advantage. But I will go back and try to get 

6 that piece, now that it's been cleared, that 

7 has that new data point in it. I hope it's 

8 provided. I haven't seen it yet.

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: This is 

10 Kathy, and to do add to that --

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: We really 

13 need to resolve this issue with the units 

14 associated with the bioassays that you're 

15 using to back extrapolate. 

16 MR. ROLFES: You mean the dpm per 

17 milliliter or something?

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Dpm per 

19 milliliter.

20 MR. ROLFES: We'll look at that 

21 also.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. But that 
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1 was the approach to the Work Group, is just, 

2 you know, I still see this as the critical 

3 path for resolution by the Work Group on 

4 Pantex SEC. I mean that's another issue that 

5 they're beginning to trend toward resolution.

6 This issue is not as much, and I 

7 think this -- I think this would help respond 

8 to the timeliness issue, that we really have 

9 to just settle this out, and I'd like to think 

10 we can do that.

11 We have enough of the classified 

12 reviews and with the onsite visit, I think 

13 we're in a good position to know if we have 

14 everything we need to settle that issue, and 

15 bring it back and get it, you know, in a forum 

16 that lays it out.

17 If we don't have the goods, then 

18 report that back, so that the Work Group has 

19 enough to make a decision on it. I think 

20 that's the central SEC question. The thorium 

21 is a little different. I think that one we 

22 will have to talk about in Germantown.
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1 So I think those -- if we can get 

2 those issues done, I think the rest of it will 

3 fall into place, and we'd be able to talk 

4 closure in the fall.

5 MR. KATZ: So for the DU, the 

6 substantiating sort of evaluation that you're 

7 looking for has to do with then, what Mark 

8 discussed. I think that there are these other 

9 urinalysis results, and there are these other 

10 air monitors that are not being used for dose 

11 reconstruction, because of their preference. 

12 But that needed to be examined, as to whether 

13 those suffice to shore up the argument or not.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Was that the 1956 

15 data you were talking about?

16 MR. KATZ: 1959 prior 

17 investigated, and forward, whatever.

18 MEMBER BEACH: '59, okay.

19 (Simultaneous speaking.)

20 MR. KATZ: Is that what you're 

21 talking about putting on the table and getting 

22 cleared up?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: We had the data 

2 accuracy and completeness, which I think is 

3 our best treatment of what we see as the data 

4 that's available. We have additional data 

5 that may or may not have found its way into 

6 that analysis. But if we all have a grasp of 

7 what information is out there, and the 

8 reliability or use of that, you know, 

9 usability of that information.

10 You know, I think there's been 

11 some confusion on air sampling, for example, 

12 and taking that back and forth, and whether or 

13 not that either substantiates or not the 

14 bioassay. Well, I think you have the analysis 

15 that Kathy was talking about, and that's our 

16 best cut, how we view that. 

17 There seems to be some agreement 

18 on that. But if we can sort of align all this 

19 data and say okay, you know, where's that 

20 leave us, and you know, what I was saying 

21 earlier. You have several options, I think, 

22 and you know, I don't think the W28, the '89 
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1 event is necessarily the only option.

2 It may have been the option four 

3 years ago, when ER or three years ago, 

4 whenever it was when the ER was settled. But 

5 you know, now that we've gone through all this 

6 and have seen maybe additional data by this 

7 point in time, and we've done more analysis, 

8 maybe another option will present itself, or 

9 not. I don't know. But I'm just saying I 

10 think we're kind of stuck on that one 

11 position.

12 I just want to reexamine that, and 

13 I think we've said everything we need to say 

14 about where we are on that, and I'd like to 

15 think in real time we can settle that out, and 

16 at least bring that back to the Work Group, so 

17 that -- from a time limit standpoint.

18 These other things can go ahead 

19 and go to resolution. But that one to me is 

20 the tough one, that has to be settled above 

21 and beyond everything else if we're going to 

22 get this done. So that would be very helpful. 
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1 So I would just recommend that if the Work 

2 Group wanted to phrase it in a certain way.

3 I mean there's not a deliberate A, 

4 B or C, but that we acknowledge that as an 

5 ongoing action from this meeting, that SC&A 

6 and NIOSH will, you know, work in real time to 

7 address that issue.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's the key 

9 to this whole issue that we've been dealing 

10 with it a long time. So that's one of the 

11 things that we need to push forward on, to try 

12 to come to some kind of resolution on.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, for that.

14 MEMBER BEACH: So that's an action 

15 item for NIOSH then, to supply that data.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: No, it works both 

17 ways. It works both ways.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Well, no. They 

19 give it to you, and then you review it and --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Well, what 

21 I'm going to do when I get back is try to send 

22 to Mark, as a memo, what DOE cleared, as far 
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1 as some of the information that we've 

2 identified. Then I'll try to frame it in the 

3 memo, kind of what this is all about, and 

4 Mark, you know, basically hopefully can 

5 respond in real time, and just not use 

6 meetings.

7 But just use the technical 

8 conference calls or memos, and just get this 

9 thing going. So by some time in the summer, 

10 we know where we stand, so that the meeting 

11 may just be a chance for the two parties to 

12 brief the Work Group.

13 Okay, you know, you've seen the 

14 paper, but this is what it means, put you in a 

15 position to decide what you want to do.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But you'll keep 

17 the Work Group --

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, I mean 

20 everything, you know, everything will go 

21 through the Work Group and Ted. You know, 

22 you'll be the traffic cop. It will go back 
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1 and forth.

2 MR. KATZ: Is that clear?

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that works for -

4 - 

5 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: On the issue of 

6 the neutrons, we don't really have -- we're 

7 not really that far apart.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: No.

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: No. It's just 

11 that, you know, it was neutron/proton ratios. 

12 We had a number of issues, and then based on 

13 the Mound experience, I think NIOSH proposed a 

14 better way to go about this, using MCNP.

15 We examined it in detail at Mound. 

16 So when it came up to Pantex, you know, we 

17 said well, you know, philosophically we're 

18 there, but there are some issues that we want 

19 to ask or questions we want to ask.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: So my only 

21 thinking there was that, depending on the 

22 material types --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's why 

2 we were hedging our discussion a little bit, 

3 because you know, the material type we're 

4 talking about is nuclear weapon systems.

5 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Right.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: So you can't 

7 really get into --

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And I have 

9 actually done hands on with the different 

10 ones.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no. So what 

12 we're saying is yes, well the MCNP has to have 

13 parameters that envelope all those variables.

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. That's 

15 where I was trying to get, without saying too 

16 much.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. That's 

18 exactly it. So it's not as clean as the MCNP 

19 at Mound, where a lot of it was 

20 straightforward. Here, it has to reflect the 

21 parameters that come out of the different 

22 systems. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, and a lot 

2 -- it would be nice if we'd be able to have 

3 some kind of a response, to be able to look at 

4 it and --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: The only other 

6 option then would be a generic pit, but you 

7 know.

8 MR. KATZ: Thank you very much, 

9 Joe. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But just 

12 talking about the Germantown meeting, you 

13 know, a lot of this could possibly be 

14 discussed if we had something to be able to 

15 discuss then.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, we'll have 

17 something, you know. I just think it depends, 

18 and that's one of the reasons I'm raising it. 

19 It's a month and a half, so maybe.

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, and this is a busy 

21 month.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it is.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Is there 

2 anything else that needs to be brought up 

3 before the Work Group?

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Brad, this 

5 is Kathy.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay. I 

8 wanted to give you an update, because I know I 

9 told Mark and you and Joe. We were 

10 tentatively scheduling a site visit to Pantex 

11 the week of May 16th. Pantex has raised 

12 issues with funding, and where it stands right 

13 now is that Pantex and DOE Headquarters are 

14 going back and forth, to determine whether 

15 they have the funding to facilitate a visit.

16 I need to know who wants to go, 

17 because that was one of the questions I got 

18 asked by Robin McLuren, because apparently the 

19 more of us that go, the more expensive it is. 

20 So think about that and shoot me an email. 

21 This is primarily a trip to review records, 

22 probably many records that NIOSH has already 
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1 seen.

2 The data capture plan will feed 

3 out shortly. What I will do is I will post it 

4 on the O: drive, under our SC&A Data Capture 

5 Plan, so people can look at it. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: As soon as 

8 I get a concrete answer from Pantex and DOE 

9 Headquarters, I'll let everybody know. But 

10 there's a possibility it might have to be 

11 rescheduled.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, wait a 

13 minute. How strong a possibility? It's May 

14 3rd.

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Well, no. 

16 It's May 16th. It's the week of May 16th.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I know it's 

18 May 16th --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You've got to 

20 be able to travel.

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: They said 

22 I'll know today or tomorrow.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's fine. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Kathy, I think 

3 that's what you told me last week.

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I know. 

5 That's what I keep getting told.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand. 

7 We'll take a look at it and we'll go from 

8 there.

9 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So okay. I 

11 appreciate the update on that. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Some of the data, I 

13 think -- now Kathy, correct me if I'm wrong. 

14 I think some of the focus of this trip wasn't 

15 necessarily on Pantex, but was related to like 

16 Clarksville and Medina.

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: There's a 

18 mixture of records. We are pulling some data 

19 related to Medina and Clarksville.

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay. Are we 

22 adjourned?
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Is there 

2 anything else? Does anybody have any 

3 questions or are what the action items are 

4 clear? 

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: If not, we're 

7 adjourned.

8 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mr. 

9 Chairman. Thank you, everyone. Have a good 

10 day.

11 (Whereupon, at 2:01 p.m., the 

12 meeting was adjourned.)

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