SEC-00238: Idaho National 

Laboratory – Chemical 

Processing Plant – Verification 

and Validation of Class Definition 

(1975–1980) 

Presented by: 

Bob Barton, SC&A, Inc.

Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Pittsburgh, PA

April 17, 2019
Introduction and Background SEC Petition-00238 

 As part of the 83.14 process, NIOSH presented SEC00238 to the Advisory Board on July 20, 2017, for the 

Chemical Processing Plant (1975–1980)

 Proposed Class Definition:

“All employees of the Department of Energy, its predecessor agencies, and 

their contractors and subcontractors who worked at the Idaho National 

Laboratory (INL) in Scoville, Idaho, and who were monitored for external 

radiation at the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (CPP) (e.g., at least 

one film badge or TLD dosimeter from CPP) between January 1, 1975 

and December 31, 1980 for a number of work days aggregating at least 250 

work days, occurring solely under this employment, or in combination with 

work days within the parameters established for one or more other classes of 

employees in the Special Exposure Cohort.” [Emphasis added.]

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Introduction and Background SEC Petition-00238 (cont.) 

 Similar to SEC-00219 for CPP (1963–1970), concerns 

remained about the requirement for CPP-specific badging

 SC&A was tasked with reviewing badging practices during the 

83.14 period (1975–1980) and developing a similar verification 

and validation (V&V) approach as the SEC-00219 evaluation 

(delivered February 20, 2018)

 SC&A 2018 Report Findings 1 and 2: Discovered that temporary badges 

captured by NIOSH were incomplete but were likely still in hardcopy form 

at INL.

 September 2018: NIOSH, in conjunction with SC&A, performed an onsite 

data capture at INL records facility and captured the hardcopy temporary 

badges.

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V&V Proposal Development: Completeness of 

Captured Temporary Badges

 Documentation has not been identified that tabulates 

the number of visitor badges issued in a given 

dosimetry cycle.

 Evaluation of completeness was restricted to looking 

for temporal gaps in the captured records.

 Number of captured visitor badges counted based on 

the issue date of the badge.

 Results did not indicate significant temporal gaps, 

though significant fluctuation among months was 

observed.

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V&V Proposal Development: Completeness of Captured 

Temporary Badges (cont.)

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V&V Proposal Development: Claimant Selection 

 Method of selecting claimants closely mirrors SEC-00219 

V&V analysis:

 Diversity of job classification

 Total number of temporary badges available for V&V

 Will require a revised dose reconstruction

 Potential for 250 days of SEC exposure to be missed if 

83.14 temporary badges are not correctly identified 

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V&V Proposal Development: Claimant Selection (cont.) 

 SC&A V&V proposal suggests 30 for updated dosimetry 

records requests (consistent with SEC-00219):

 639 total visitor badges identified among the 30 suggested V&V 

claims.

 Job categories included: engineers, administrative personnel, 

laboratory workers, and various construction trades.

 7 additional claims (representing 105 total visitor badges) were 

evaluated as part of the SEC-00219 V&V analysis (1963–

1970). 

 Additional claims could be used in this study to augment the 30 

suggested claims.

 Would not require further effort from INL/DOE to perform 

dosimetry records searches.

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Summary of V&V Proposal

 Completeness of temporary badges limited to identification of 

temporal gaps rather than a monthly comparison of total 

badges issued and total badges available.

 SC&A has identified 30 claims that are suggested for updated 

dosimetry records requests (639 total temporary badges for 

V&V analysis).

 7 additional claims from the prior SEC-00219 V&V analysis are 

available for evaluation with no additional records requests 

required (105 total temporary badges for V&V analysis).

 In total, proposed V&V evaluation would cover 37 claimants 

and 744 individual temporary badges.

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Work Group Recommendations and/or Path Forward

 INL/ANL-W Work Group met via teleconference on 

March 25, 2019.

 Work Group elected to move forward with the V&V 

evaluation and records requests from INL/DOE to follow 

in increments similar to SEC-00219 process.

 Similar cover letter from SEC-00219 to be used in records 

requests to assure updated searches are performed and 

avoid INL/DOE mistakenly resending past incomplete 

dosimetry searches.

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Questions?

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