This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Pinellas Work Group, has been 

reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information has 

been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of 

the Pinellas Plant Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript 

is for information only and is subject to change.

1 

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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 

+ + + + +

PINELLAS PLANT WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

THURSDAY

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened telephonically 

at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, John W. Poston, Sr., 

Acting Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Acting Chairman

BRAD P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor

BOB BARTON, SC&A

PETE DARNELL, DCAS

BRIAN GLECKLER, ORAU Team

DONNA HAND

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A

JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

JIM NETON, DCAS

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team

MATT SMITH, ORAU Team

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

KATHY LUDWIG TALBOT

JOE ZLOTNICKI, SC&A
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Contents

No table of contents entries found.
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 (1:00 p.m.)

3 Welcome, Roll Call, Introductions

4 MR. KATZ: Alright. Well, it's about 

5 time. So, welcome, everyone, to the Advisory 

6 Board on Radiation and Worker Health. It is the 

7 Pinellas Work Group. 

8 And someone has their speakerphone on 

9 because it's echoing. 

10 And so, some preliminaries. Let me, 

11 for everyone on the phone who may be joining us from 

12 the public, for example, all the materials being 

13 discussed today, the agenda and related White 

14 Papers and so on, should be found on the NIOSH 

15 website, under scheduled meetings, today's date, 

16 so you can follow along with the articles as they're 

17 discussed.

18 And so everyone who is actually in the 

19 Work Group, the staff, you should have all those 

20 documents in the non-PA cleared form.

21 We should have joining us today Bill 
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1 Field, too. Is that correct? Bill, are you on? 

2 Oh, actually, he said he was going to be about ten 

3 minutes late. But he should be joining us.

4 And Phil Schofield, who normally chairs 

5 this Work Group, is having an operation today. So 

6 he's out today. He can't join us. But Dr. Poston, 

7 John, has basically volunteered to chair in this 

8 place, and we thank you, John, for that.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Now that 

10 you've told me that, I think, gee whiz, he'd rather 

11 have surgery than chair this meeting. What's 

12 wrong here?

13 (Laughter.)

14 MR. KATZ: I think he would rather 

15 chair this meeting, but he's doing what he needs 

16 to do.

17 So, let's just go through, to begin 

18 with, roll call.

19 (Roll call.)

20 MR. KATZ: Okay, then, let me just 

21 remind, in case you came on late, members of the 
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1 public and others, staff as well, except for when 

2 you are addressing the meeting, please mute your 

3 phone. If you don't have a mute button, press *6. 

4 That will mute your phone. And also, do not put 

5 this call on hold at any point. Hang up and dial 

6 back in if you need to leave for a piece because 

7 putting it on hold will cause problems for everyone 

8 else on the line.

9 And it is your meeting, Dr. Poston.

10 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. Well, 

11 we will go to the agenda and start with the recap. 

12 And I thought I saw, is this Pete, are you going 

13 to do this?

14 MR. DARNELL: Yes, I am going to do 

15 this.

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay, it's 

17 all yours.

18 Summary of Changes Made to Pinellas Site Profile

19 MR. DARNELL: I'll be speaking mainly 

20 from the summary changes made to the Pinellas Point 

21 Site Profile in 2011, sent to the Work Group a while 
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1 back. It's on the website.

2 The Technical Basis Documents making up 

3 the Pinellas Plant Site Profile were revised in 

4 2011. I'm not going to read the documents 

5 word-for-word, but since the TBDs were originally 

6 written it was discovered that a number of the key 

7 references were actually from the General Electric 

8 X-Ray Division, the GEXM site. Pinellas and the 

9 GEXM have a lot of items in common and it was 

10 described in the revised site description of the 

11 TBD.

12 I want to apologize in advance here, 

13 guys. I am short of breath today.

14 Reference to the GEXM documents have 

15 either been removed or replaced with the 

16 appropriate Pinellas Plant document references. 

17 I just wanted to make sure that was up-front.

18 In the introduction, Technical Basis 

19 Document Issue 1 Resolution was addressed in 

20 "Summary of Data Capture Searches for the Pinellas 

21 Plant." This is a rather brief part of the TBD. 
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1 It was completely rewritten to update and correct 

2 some of the information from the GEXM site and 

3 select information in the other revised TBDs.

4 The site description, TBD Issue 6 

5 Resolution --

6 MR. KATZ: Pete?

7 MR. DARNELL: Yes?

8 MR. KATZ: Pete, I'm sorry to 

9 interrupt, but could I just ask, not just for you, 

10 but really for everyone when they are discussing 

11 matters, instead of referencing issue numbers, 

12 which aren't going to mean something for people who 

13 don't work with the issue matrix on a day-to-day 

14 basis or what have you extensively, could you 

15 please just, at the outset of mentioning an issue, 

16 give it a sort of English title, instead of an issue 

17 matrix number? Thanks.

18 MR. DARNELL: Okay. I've got to get 

19 out another set of notes. I didn't write it up that 

20 way. So, I -- alright.

21 So, we are into the Site Description 
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1 Technical Basis Document Issue 6, which was the 

2 decontamination and decommissioning era of 

3 Pinellas operations not specifically addressed.

4 The resolution that was added was added 

5 in 2011 as Section 2.3.4 of the TBD. I do want to 

6 note that since the TBD has been revised there were 

7 two D&D periods that were added in 1999 and 2008 

8 through 2009.

9 The secondary issue, which was Issue 2. 

10 Give me a second so I can get to that one. 

11 Inadequate descriptions of certain plant 

12 operations was added to the Site Description 

13 Technical Basis Document in section 2.4.1, which 

14 was entitled "Radioactive Materials." But please 

15 note that some of information was added throughout 

16 the TBD.

17 A number of significant changes were 

18 made to the Site Description TBD. A lot of 

19 information was incorporated on the process and 

20 facility information and some of the redundant 

21 information was eliminated from the TBD.
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1 Occupational Medical Dose TBD, Issue 10 

2 -- Issue 9, 10, and 11, actually, were all addressed 

3 in the TBD.

4 Issue 9 of the Technical Basis Document 

5 fails to adequately define and assess occupational 

6 medical exposures. Issue 10, the technique and 

7 protocols increase uncertainty in DCFs in the TBD. 

8 In number 11, the frequency in type of X-ray 

9 exposure is uncertain.

10 The Technical Basis document was 

11 updated. The equipment and techniques section 

12 being updated in Table 3-1 has all the new 

13 information that was found. Pre-1972 X-ray doses 

14 are still based on OTIB-6. Photofluorographic 

15 X-ray dose values were changed in a revision of 

16 OTIB-6.

17 Issues 9 and 11 resolutions, exam 

18 frequencies are now included in the TBD as well as 

19 indicating lumbar spine and abdomen and 

20 kidney/ureter/bladder X-rays are considered part 

21 of the occupational screening done at Pinellas.
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1 A stipulation was also added that not 

2 to assess X-ray doses for X-rays from employee 

3 records that were clearly indicated for diagnostic 

4 reasons or for other work-related injuries.

5 In addition, the section now indicates 

6 to assign occupational medical doses based on the 

7 X-ray records when provided. In Pinellas, they 

8 typically were. And we assign medical doses based 

9 on OTIB-6 when no records were provided.

10 Secondary Issue 1 resolution, which was 

11 additional factors contribute to uncertainties 

12 related to occupational medical exposures is 

13 addressed in an update to the TBD.

14 An error in the applicable period for 

15 photofluorographic X-rays was corrected to reflect 

16 the recommendations of OCAS-PER-004, and it's now 

17 1957-1959 versus 1957-1960.

18 A little bit more that was updated in 

19 the occupational medical section you can read. 

20 None of it is specifically addressing the primary 

21 and secondary issues.
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1 Moving on to the Environmental Dose 

2 TBD, Secondary Issue 3, which was perimeter tritium 

3 air monitoring stations. They are now provided in 

4 Section 4.3.5 of the Environmental Dose TBD and a 

5 comparison of the air concentrations based on 

6 atmospheric dispersion calculations, and actual 

7 air monitoring is now provided.

8 Section 4.4.2 of the TBD recommends 

9 more claimant-favorable unmonitored external dose 

10 assignment from the Occupational TBD to be used in 

11 lieu of the estimated doses, mainly because it's 

12 more claimant-favorable, provides a higher dose.

13 Bounding of the on-site environmental 

14 doses were assessed in Section 4.4.1, which were 

15 determined to be negligible, under 1 milligram for 

16 all internal organs. As a result, it was 

17 determined that the environmental doses will never 

18 need to be included in the IREP input sheet.

19 A number of other changes were done to 

20 better organize the information being presented, 

21 incorporate all the new information, and correct 
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1 some inaccuracies.

2 The occupational internal dose TBD 

3 Issue 2 resolution was covered until Section 

4 5.7.1.2, which would be the dose reconstruction 

5 that Mutty Sharfi will be talking about later. 

6 This issue has to do with insoluble forms of metal 

7 tritides.

8 Issue 3, which was the MDC and 

9 uncertainty information. Let me get to that one 

10 and read it directly. The MDCs and uncertainties 

11 for zirconium and bioassay measurements are 

12 inadequately addressed in the ORAU and in this 

13 portion of the TBD.

14 This one has had some rather 

15 interesting work done on it. In the past, we were 

16 looking at plutonium internal doses and coming up 

17 with methods to calculate, but based on the 

18 plutonium paper that you have seen in the past and 

19 what came out as a reminder for this meeting, there 

20 really were no plutonium intakes. 

21 The new plutonium information was 
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1 supposed to go in Section 5.7.3, and it actually 

2 was printed into the Technical Basis Document and 

3 then later removed, as was required during the 

4 October 2011 Working Group meeting. If you need 

5 to look that up, it is on page 84 of the transcript.

6 Issue 7 Resolution, Issue 7 was missed 

7 internal dose estimation methods for unmonitored 

8 workers, for example, main entry support personnel 

9 were not provided.

10 Section 5.7.2 of the TBD has been 

11 updated to address the unmonitored exposures to 

12 tritium. And Sections 5.2.4 and 5.2.5 address 

13 potential unmonitored exposures to nickel-63 and 

14 carbon-14.

15 Secondary Issue 5, which was -- I 

16 apologize for the delay in answering these because 

17 I'm flipping back between two documents. The 

18 rejection of plutonium bioassay results based on 

19 plutonium-238 to -239 ratios, and non-detectible 

20 plutonium-239. Again, kind of coming back a 

21 little bit earlier. A lot of work went into 
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1 looking at potential plutonium doses went into 

2 Section 5.73 and then was later removed.

3 The Secondary Issue 6 resolution, 

4 Secondary Issue 6 was plutonium solubility. 

5 Again, a lot of work went into it. Section 5.7.3 

6 was updated then removed. Internal dose 

7 reconstruction for OTIB-60 requires a dose 

8 reconstructors to use the most claimant-favorable 

9 lung absorption types, so if we ever have to do a 

10 plutonium intake, and so far we haven't after quite 

11 a few Pinellas dose reconstructions, we would use 

12 whatever is the most claimant-favorable.

13 A number of other changes were done in 

14 the Occupational Internal TBD in February 2012. 

15 This was discussed in the October 2011 Working 

16 Group meeting. Because external exposures to 

17 plutonium were likely at the Pinellas Plant, all 

18 of the discussions at Section 5.2.2 would 

19 determine, again, necessarily, a potential source 

20 of confusion. So, they were removed. If you want 

21 to look that up, it is on pages 80 to 82 of the 
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1 Working Group meeting.

2 External Dose Technical Basis Document 

3 Issue 4 resolution. Issue 4 was assessing the 

4 personnel badging policy during early years needs 

5 further review. Information was added to Section 

6 6.1.5 to address Issue 4.

7 Issue 5 resolution, dosimetry 

8 technology and missed dose sections. That is 

9 actually part of the agenda for later today. So, 

10 we will address that then. Information was added 

11 to the TBD and there has been a couple of memos by 

12 SC&A and NIOSH discussing this topic. NIOSH has 

13 more information that will be presented today. 

14 Due to lack of time, it wasn't able to be written 

15 up and sent out as a formal document.

16 Secondary Issue 7, which was 

17 assumptions for unmonitored workers, Attachment B 

18 was added to the external section of the Technical 

19 Basis Document. It provided a comparison of the 

20 unmonitored doses to the assignment of the maximum 

21 likelihood doses for unmonitored workers.
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1 Secondary Issue 8, which was 

2 assumptions relative to the minimum detectible 

3 level adjustments to dosimetry for missed dose. 

4 And again, the missed dose section was revised.

5 Neutron doses is replaced with an 

6 approach that is consistent with approaches used 

7 for other sites for neutron generator areas. The 

8 new approach that was added for the years 1957 to 

9 1969 added higher yield neutron doses and lower 

10 doses for the years 1969 to 1997.

11 RTG areas, measured photon doses for 

12 the years '79 to '81 are now higher because of a 

13 new dosimeter correction factor. Missed photon 

14 doses for the years '79-'87 will also be higher 

15 because of a correction factor and a higher LOD.

16 RTG areas now have a more 

17 claimant-favorable neutron energy distribution.

18 Basically, a number of other 

19 significant changes have been done to the TBD to 

20 better organize information and incorporate new 

21 information.
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1 The only issue I didn't talk about was 

2 Issue 6, which, again, is part of the agenda for 

3 today and that deals with collection of data mainly 

4 from Albuquerque on the D&D era.

5 Any questions on that?

6 MR. KATZ: Let me note for the record, 

7 too, that Dr. Bill Field has joined us or joined 

8 us a little while ago.

9 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, I'm on the call. 

10 Thanks.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any questions 

12 on what we've heard? Well, thank you, sir.

13 MR. DARNELL: Alright.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: And the next 

15 is John Stiver. Do you want to do the closed issues 

16 update?

17 Closed Issues in SC&A Issues Matrix

18 MR. STIVER: Yes, I will. Pete has 

19 actually covered a lot of this. So, instead of 

20 replicating what he's done, I'm going to try to 

21 touch on some of the aspects that were more 
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1 important to SC&A and maybe get some of the 

2 background on how we got here, considering it has 

3 been a very long time and there were quite a few 

4 Work Group meetings.

5 What I am showing right now on Live 

6 Meeting is an annotated version of the issues 

7 matrix. I just put in some notes to myself here 

8 to make it a little bit more straightforward.

9 To kind of set the stage, we need to 

10 remember that we did the Site Profile review almost 

11 ten years ago. I think it was delivered in 

12 September of 2006. The first Work Group meeting 

13 was in June of 2008, when a lot of these issues were 

14 initially presented. And the following year, in 

15 June of 2009, a lot of the issues were -- I guess 

16 a way to put it would be to kind of put it in 

17 abeyance, in a way. NIOSH had agreed with us, 

18 basically, and agreed to rewrite the TBDs that 

19 hadn't been actually accomplished at that point.

20 They went ahead, as you know, most of 

21 the revisions that Pete described were in 2011. 
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1 There was an additional revision to the TBD 5, the 

2 internal dose TBD, in early 2012 that basically 

3 stripped out the discussion of plutonium, as Pete 

4 mentioned.

5 And then we had two other Work Group 

6 meetings, one in October of 2011, where NIOSH 

7 presented the changes to the TBD. And then SC&A 

8 had some follow-on items that we felt were 

9 important. 

10 And then the last meeting was in 2012, 

11 November of 2012. And so, it has been kind of a 

12 long history. A lot happened. We have a lot of 

13 changes. The program has matured. A lot of 

14 things that were kind of a concern back in the 

15 initial review have been resolved in this as well 

16 as in other Work Groups. So, to just kind of get 

17 the big picture there, I wanted to say that.

18 And we can just kind of run through the 

19 issues. This first, Issue 1, the reconstruction 

20 of doses in the absence of early health physics, 

21 industrial hygiene, and environmental records. 
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1 What we were kind of concerned with here was that 

2 there were a lot of data from 1980 and beyond and 

3 we thought we might be dealing with a classic 

4 back-extrapolation issue, where later time periods 

5 and data for those periods might not be indicative 

6 of exposures that were placed early on.

7 And this was discussed in the 2011 

8 revision of the TBDs. I believe it's TBD-6, Table 

9 B.1, lists all the external dose data by year from 

10 1957 all the way through D&D. And we were 

11 convinced that there is enough information out 

12 there and enough good data that this really was put 

13 to rest. And you can see it was closed during the 

14 November 2012 Work Group meeting.

15 Issue 2 is the metal tritides which will 

16 be discussed today.

17 Issue 3 was this whole aspect of the 

18 sparse plutonium bioassay datasets. And there was 

19 a lot of discussion a year early on about the 

20 appropriate MDCs, whether there was any indication 

21 of exposures, what MDC was really more 
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1 claimant-favorable and applicable. And in 

2 response to those discussions, I think were in 

3 2009, NIOSH went and added a lot of information in 

4 the revisions.

5 And based on our discussions in October 

6 of 2011, it was determined that there really isn't 

7 any indication that it was ever a true exposure 

8 potential. I mean, the only scenario we could 

9 derive would be the swiping and checking of 

10 triple-encapsulated RTGs when they came to the 

11 site, and the rejection criteria was 200 dpm. And 

12 none were ever rejected and this was all done in 

13 a hood. They were checked in the hood. And so 

14 that would be the only credible inhalation scenario 

15 in our internal plutonium exposure scenario, 

16 because there were never any breaches or any kind 

17 of destructive testing of the RTGs with the sources 

18 intact.

19 So, rather than -- NIOSH had presented 

20 all this information, all the evidence against an 

21 exposure, and then they went ahead and said, well, 
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1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 but if we get a positive bioassay, we'll go ahead 

2 and do it on a case-by-case basis. And we said, 

3 well, wait a second. You don't have any exposure 

4 potential. The weight of evidence would certainly 

5 indicate that. So there was no reason to put this 

6 in. I mean, if you come up with some data later 

7 on to indicate there was a plutonium exposure, 

8 you're going to have to develop a dose 

9 reconstruction methodology. So, that's basically 

10 what was the backdrop to that issue. And that was 

11 closed out, again, at the November 2012 meeting.

12 Number 4, this whole idea of a badging 

13 policy which took place, we were concerned 

14 initially that maybe, because there was incomplete 

15 badging, that there might have been a cohort 

16 badging policy as opposed to selecting those 

17 individuals who had the highest exposure 

18 potential. 

19 Based on lots of discussions and the 

20 revisions to the TBD, and discussions after the 

21 revisions, it became pretty clear that the health 
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1 physics policy was to badge those with the highest 

2 exposure potential. So, we closed out, actually 

3 this was the 2009 Work Group meeting.

4 Issue 5 is this sub-issue about the 

5 limit of detection appropriate for the post-1974 

6 film badges. We're going to talk about that later.

7 Issue 6, again, we will discuss this a 

8 little later, it's about D&D and whether there was 

9 adequate monitoring during the D&D period.

10 Issue 7, missing internal dose 

11 estimation methods for unmonitored workers. This 

12 was the whole idea about how are you going to --

13 if somebody doesn't have bioassay, how are you 

14 going to assess their doses? And NIOSH has come 

15 up with a very claimant-favorable coworker model 

16 that uses the 95th percentile of the whole body 

17 dose, which is really a mixture of external gamma, 

18 neutron, and tritium at the 95th percentile, 

19 assuming a chronic exposure at the 95th percentile. 

20 And that, in combination with putting 

21 to rest the idea of the nickel-63 and carbon-14, 
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1 and also the fact that there really is no plutonium 

2 exposure to be addressed, really puts this one to 

3 rest. I put a note in there about the tritide model 

4 being applicable, because that really is not for 

5 a coworker model application for those who actually 

6 had tritium bioassays. So, I probably shouldn't 

7 have put that in there.

8 Issue 8, missed dose from depleted 

9 uranium. Initially, it wasn't clear whether the 

10 DU tritium and tritide beds were being cut in --

11 the cutting took place at Pinellas and we thought 

12 that there might be an exposure potential there 

13 that needed to be addressed.

14 Research showed that it was actually 

15 done in Milwaukee in a sister plant. And so, this 

16 never took place at Pinellas. So, that was closed 

17 out in 2010.

18 Pete mentioned 9, 10, 11, and sub-issue 

19 1 related to TBD-3, medical exposures, 

20 occupational medical. He discussed that pretty 

21 well. I don't think we need to replicate that 
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1 here. Suffice to say that those are all closed, 

2 along with Secondary Issue 1.

3 Secondary Issue 2, okay, this is we felt 

4 that the descriptions of the plant operations were 

5 inadequate in the first Rev. 0 in the 2005 version. 

6 That was taken care of. We concur. This was 

7 actually, yes, in 2009, we had agreed that if the 

8 new information was added to TBD, this would be 

9 resolved. It was, in fact, incorporated in Rev. 

10 1.

11 This is Secondary Issue 3, perimeter 

12 tritium monitoring. This was addressed in the new 

13 Rev. 1 TBD-4.

14 Secondary Issue 4, the uncertainty. 

15 Once again, this was addressed in TBD-4, Rev. 1.

16 Secondary Issue 5 goes away because of 

17 the lack of plutonium exposure potential, as does 

18 Number 6.

19 Secondary Issue 7, we concur. Pete 

20 described this one as well. There is no need to 

21 go through that again.
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1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 And then Secondary Issue 8, the MDL for 

2 dosimetry for missed dose, again, the language 

3 clarified in Section 6.4 of TBD-6, Rev. 1.

4 So, that was kind of a cameo view of nine 

5 and a half years of true resolution. Are there any 

6 questions?

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any questions 

8 for John?

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yeah, we are going to 

10 discuss this tritium a little bit more in-depth, 

11 correct, here coming up?

12 MR. STIVER: Yes, that is going to be 

13 the next topic. That is really the long pole in 

14 the tent now.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right, because I have 

16 been trying to keep up on all those emails back and 

17 forth.

18 The one question I had about the 

19 plutonium samples, we have not seen any positive 

20 bioassays for plutonium so far, have we?

21 I know that you changed that and had it 
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1 put in. We discussed that a little bit but we 

2 probably got some more information that has come 

3 in. At this time, we haven't seen anything yet, 

4 have we?

5 MR. STIVER: That would probably be a 

6 good question for Pete or Brian, but my 

7 understanding is that, no, they haven't.

8 MR. GLECKLER: This is Brian from the 

9 ORAU Team. There are positive bioassay results, 

10 but there's significant issues with those results.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, what's the 

12 issues with those, Brian?

13 MR. GLECKLER: It's part of what was in 

14 that paper that is posted on the website right now. 

15 Like, one of the key ones is the source terms that 

16 were used were dominated by Pu-238. And a number 

17 of the bioassays that are positive are baseline 

18 bioassays before they went into those areas, or was 

19 positive for Pu-239 and negative for -238, which 

20 they should have had a much higher positive Pu-238 

21 number in their bioassay result.
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1 And let me see, some of the other ones, 

2 the ratio is way off on one instance, enough to 

3 where it couldn't be the Pinellas Plant material. 

4 And a lot of it, like, results, re-analysis 

5 results, were less than the MDC at that point, where 

6 they did reevaluate the result or re-analyze it.

7 And in several instances, the lower 

8 bound, there is an uncertainty associated with each 

9 sample result. The lower bound to that was 

10 actually below the MDC also, but I don't think we 

11 discounted any of them solely based on that 

12 criteria.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yeah, I was just 

14 trying to follow this information. I read the 

15 report on this and just did we ever figure out if 

16 these people were coming from another site that had 

17 brought this? It is just kind of stressed me a 

18 little bit that we're are not doing any Pu samples 

19 but we have had some that had come but they were 

20 pre-employment samples for the pre-employment 

21 sample or for others were part of this group. And 
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1 I'm just wondering if we ever pulled that string 

2 just to justify why we are not doing this, that 

3 these were previous samples and this is where they 

4 came from. I was just trying to follow where that 

5 went, if we had done anything.

6 MR. GLECKLER: Those have to do with 

7 more of an error, an issue with the analytical 

8 process for how they analyze the samples. And 

9 possibly it might have been because they used a 

10 Pu-242 tracer, if their yield results or percent 

11 recovery is the way they report it for their 

12 analysis. And there is impurities for the other 

13 Pu isotopes in those. You know, a number of those 

14 samples, based on the amount of tracer that they 

15 are spiking the sample with, typically, it that 

16 could account for the Pu-239 result in some of those 

17 instances. So, it's things like that, because 

18 they are not subtracting that out, that 

19 contribution from the tracer.

20 And if they were from an exposure 

21 received at another site, we haven't been able to 
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1 connect that dot yet with any known claims. But 

2 if, say, someone transferred from another site 

3 where a Pu exposure could have occurred and their 

4 Pinellas Plant baseline is indicative of a 

5 potential intake, or an indication of a potential 

6 intake from that prior employment, we can use that 

7 for that prior employment. But we would need --

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, it just kind of 

9 struck me interesting because these bioassays were 

10 in the '88 to the '90 timeframe and you would kind 

11 of think that they would have had this down pretty 

12 good by that timeframe.

13 That is why I just would be interested 

14 in what we have done, and reading through this, I 

15 was just trying to follow it and I just wanted to 

16 make sure that what we have, you know, John kind 

17 of clarified it, but if we do have some come up 

18 positive for this, then we're going to take other 

19 actions that way. But I was just trying to get a 

20 better idea of this other one.

21 So, I appreciate that.
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1 MR. GLECKLER: For the 1988 timeframe 

2 ones, they were transitioning to a completely 

3 different set of instruments for doing their 

4 analyses and they were modifying their procedures, 

5 and that's part of the problem, why you see so many 

6 in 1988.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, thanks.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any other 

9 questions?

10 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I have 

11 a question for Pete and John Stiver that's more 

12 process oriented. 

13 In listening to the very nice overview 

14 provided on the 11 issues and sub-issues, it 

15 appears that certainly previously many of the 

16 issues were officially closed at earlier meetings. 

17 But it's not apparent that, in light of the new 

18 material that has been provided, we do know that 

19 there are certain issues that are open that we will 

20 be discussing real soon, tritium, other matters 

21 like that. 
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1 But are there any issues here that, as 

2 a result of the review we just went through, where 

3 we have a situation where SC&A concurs with what 

4 changes were made to the TBD and that we recommend 

5 closing the issue? And are we in a place where 

6 perhaps some of these items that we just discussed, 

7 the Work Group should officially say closed? I 

8 just want to make sure that we are not moving on 

9 without closing things up that perhaps need to be 

10 closed at this time.

11 MR. STIVER: John, this is Stiver. I 

12 can answer that.

13 The ones that are listed as closed in 

14 the matrix are officially closed. They have been 

15 closed in the meetings, in previous meetings.

16 DR. MAURO: Got it. Now, are there any 

17 here that we --

18 MR. STIVER: It was just kind of 

19 recapped because it had been so long since any of 

20 this information was talked about and discussed 

21 that it was really more to refresh everyone's 
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1 memory as to where we are now and how we got there.

2 DR. MAURO: No, and I think that was 

3 clear and I understood that, but it wasn't apparent 

4 to me whether there were some other issues that, 

5 in light of what has transpired, that we are 

6 recommending closing now and there does need to be 

7 some type of a vote.

8 MR. STIVER: Basically, that's going 

9 to be Issue 5 and 6 and the tritium.

10 DR. MAURO: Oh, which we're about to 

11 discuss.

12 MR. STIVER: Which we're going to 

13 discuss today.

14 DR. MAURO: Okay, thank you. I just 

15 wanted clarification on that.

16 MR. STIVER: Okay.

17 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any other 

18 questions?

19 Okay, I guess we will move on to Number 

20 3. Jim, are you going to do that, Jim Neton?

21 Updated NIOSH Internal Dose Model for Stable Metal 
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1 Tritides

2 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I can get it 

3 going, and I think I'm going to pass the baton to 

4 Mutty to have him flesh out what we've done in this 

5 area.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.

7 DR. NETON: Back in the November 2012 

8 Work Group meeting, NIOSH suggested that we need 

9 to take a step back and look at the tritides, 

10 insoluble tritide model that we're using at 

11 Pinellas. It was based, if you all remember, on 

12 what we did at Mound, the resuspension model, but 

13 there were some notable differences, particularly 

14 in how the tritide samples were processed.

15 So, we identified five areas to take a 

16 second look at. And Mutty put together a nice 

17 little White Paper, and I'm going to leave it to 

18 him to summarize those issues and where we 

19 currently stand.

20 So, Mutty, are you there?

21 MR. SHARFI: Sure. Yes, I'm here.
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1 DR. NETON: Okay, great.

2 MR. SHARFI: So, we've got, as Jim 

3 said, five issues that asked us to maybe expand on, 

4 and I'll just go through one-by-one on these 

5 issues.

6 Issue 1 is about the appropriateness of 

7 a resuspension factor, E to the minus 6, 10E to the 

8 minus 6. The reference to the Mound currently uses 

9 a resuspension factor of 5E to the minus 5.

10 So, generally, Pinellas was aware of 

11 the impact that of the contaminated areas and tried 

12 to maintain a clean work environment. Since the 

13 type of work that's done at Pinellas and Mound is 

14 similar and the resuspension factor amount is 

15 considered obviously more claimant-favorable, we 

16 decided that we should just go ahead and agree to 

17 change the resuspension factor that's in the TBD 

18 from 1E to the minus 6 to 5E to the minus 5.

19 Mound does their surface 

20 contamination, they use the 95th percentile. So 

21 they have a much lower contamination level. So, 
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1 in the end, the combined effort of the resuspension 

2 factor and the surface contamination probably 

3 leaves this to be a very bounding and 

4 claimant-favorable estimate.

5 Issue 2 is the question of the highest 

6 contamination survey reported and the basis for 

7 that. SC&A, in their response, found some 

8 additional samples, but at the time that we had gone 

9 through for the surveys that we had available to 

10 us, we looked at the health physics summary reports 

11 and found that at the time the highest reported 

12 surface contamination level was about 4 million dpm 

13 or 100 centimeter squared. So, it's about 10,000 

14 times their control limits.

15 I note they were generally short-term, 

16 incident-related and they cleaned up immediately 

17 after identifying these areas. So, we felt that 

18 a value of that high assumed to be constant 

19 throughout all time is considered very bounding and 

20 unlikely to occur, as compared to the Mound TBD 

21 where they looked at the 95th percentile based on 
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1 a bunch of contamination surveys that they had. 

2 They had about 60,000 contamination air sample 

3 results that they went through. And so they went 

4 through annually and looked at the 95th percentile 

5 annually. And so their contamination level 

6 changes per year, where ours does not.

7 So, in comparison, if you look at what 

8 their numbers are, ours, the Pinellas, even though 

9 the work is similar, we're looking at maintaining 

10 a contamination level at least an order of 

11 magnitude higher than any given year that Mound 

12 uses. So we feel that is certainly bounding and 

13 claimant-favorable.

14 As I mentioned, in SC&A's reply to this, 

15 and I think we'll get to this a little bit later, 

16 but they found some additional surveys that had a 

17 few that were reported slightly above the 4 million 

18 dpm. We still think the 4 million dpm, as a 

19 long-term, is still very bounding and unrealistic 

20 to occur on a very constant level.

21 Issue 3 is about the method for the 
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1 paper filters to actually detect the particulate, 

2 the metal tritide and metal particulate. This one 

3 more focuses on there is a report that we found 

4 that, when they would take their smears, that they 

5 would rinse these cotton balls, run the rinsate 

6 through a Whatman #1 filter paper and then they 

7 would count the rinsate. And so the question was 

8 around whether or not the rinsate would be -- or 

9 whether or not the filter paper that they used to 

10 filter the rinsate would remove some of the metal 

11 tritides from the rinsate, and, therefore, not be 

12 counted. Would the underlying contamination level 

13 reported actually being an underestimate of the 

14 metal tritide concentration?

15 Generally, the purpose, I would 

16 imagine, of the Whatman #1 filter would be able to 

17 reduce quenching of the sample and you would try 

18 to get rid of all the big dirt. You would cotton 

19 ball the wiping area, if you have a dirty sample,

20 that would, I imagine, be the main purpose of 

21 filtering the rinsate.
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1 We talked to a number of health 

2 physicists that worked there. They don't ever 

3 remember actually doing, filtering any of the 

4 rinsate. That was something they don't remember 

5 doing, but it was actually in a procedure. So, we 

6 felt it was worth investigating whether or not 

7 there was an impact to the contamination level if 

8 they did use filter paper.

9 A Whatman #1 filter paper has a particle 

10 size where the holes for the Whatman filter filter 

11 out particles above about 12 microns. This is much 

12 larger than the actual metal tritide particle size, 

13 especially even respirable. So, even if there was 

14 any kind of filtration, you would either be 

15 filtering out non-respirable metal tritides, or 

16 more realistically, you're just going to get all 

17 the metal tritides that are just going to go 

18 straight through the filter paper and they'll be 

19 captured.

20 In the case that if there was some, we 

21 looked at a report, Pinellas did research on -- they 
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1 took some -- they looked at the deposition of the 

2 vapor on a ceramic or metal substrate and they 

3 wanted to see how stable the metal tritide was on 

4 those substrates. So, their concern was that 

5 there was a metal flaking from the vacuum tubes in 

6 places, so that is basically an accident, which is 

7 what, you know, obviously, in exposure to an area 

8 for a worker, you are concerned with.

9 So, based on their review of this, a 

10 paper titled, "A Study of Particulate in Gaseous 

11 Emissions of Tritium from Neutron Generator 

12 Targets." And that is in SRDB-12275.

13 So, when they looked at the emission 

14 rates for that particulate and then there is the 

15 HTO emission rate was actually much higher than the 

16 particulate tritium rate. So, anytime you have 

17 any release of the particulate, you are going to 

18 get a large, usually a 1.5 to about 2.0 factor of 

19 tritium HTO more than you're going to get of the 

20 actual particulate.

21 So, even if you had some loss of the 
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1 particulate in these filters, either in the cotton 

2 ball or in the Whatman #1 filter, you are still 

3 going to get a much larger portion of the HTO that's 

4 going to pass right through and be counted in the 

5 swipes.

6 So, by treating the entire swipe as all 

7 particulate and not partitioning out any of the 

8 HTO, we feel that the use of the contamination 

9 surveys, as is, and assuming 100 percent 

10 particulate, will bound any possible losses that 

11 would be captured, either from the filter paper or 

12 from the cotton ball itself.

13 Let me know if you have questions as I 

14 am going through these issues and let me know if 

15 I am going a little too fast. I am trying to 

16 summarize various sections.

17 Issue 4 --

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: They will 

19 certainly ask you questions if they have them.

20 MR. SHARFI: Certainly. Does someone 

21 have question?
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: No, I said 

2 they will ask you questions if they have them, I 

3 know.

4 MR. SHARFI: Oh, okay. Yes.

5 Issue 4 is the magnitude and the extent 

6 of the potential for metal tritides at Pinellas. 

7 We did a review of all the monthly health physics 

8 reports. As I said before, the main exposure to 

9 tritium would likely be more associated with the 

10 HT gas, the HTO, and any organically-bound tritium 

11 that would be associated, like the pump oil and 

12 stuff like that, working with the glove boxes.

13 Generally, the metal tritide was 

14 contained within the tritium charging system. And 

15 so, when they did have a breakage or they did have 

16 a spill, the health physicist reports did indicate 

17 that the affected areas were cleaned up 

18 immediately. They surveyed in the morning every 

19 day to see if there was contamination control 

20 issues, and they surveyed after any incident to 

21 make sure that any cleanup was complete.
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1 And so you generally didn't see 

2 long-term contamination issues throughout the 

3 facility. They did note in some of these reports 

4 a couple of the breakages. So, we do know they did 

5 happen, but they were infrequent. 

6 The type of materials, generally, the 

7 glass tritium beds were eventually switched out 

8 from the glass beds to the stainless steel beds, 

9 I think in the late, I want to say early '70s or 

10 late '60s, I believe. And that helped reduce the 

11 breakage. Early in the '50s and '60s, they would 

12 have to treat the glass to -- because obviously 

13 glass is brittle when you're handling it, to 

14 minimize breakage. So they went in later with 

15 these tritium beds to a stainless steel tritium bed 

16 to help reduce the number of breakages.

17 I will note that, in our response to 

18 Issue 4, which is identified in SC&A's response, 

19 there is an error in our text. I indicate that we 

20 assumed that there is a 2,000 hour per year exposure 

21 assumed. That actually should be 2,600. In the 
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1 example DRs that we did for the metal tritide stuff, 

2 we did use a 2,600 and that's actually what was used 

3 in the TBD.

4 So, I just wanted to note, in our White 

5 Paper, on the survey, that there is an error that 

6 the 2,000 is actually supposed to be 2,600 for Issue 

7 4.

8 Issue 5 is about the solubility of the 

9 various metal tritides. Pinellas used a variety 

10 of number of types of metal tritides and these are 

11 also some of the ones that are common at Mound. 

12 They used erbium, scandium, titanium tritides. 

13 Eventually, the tritium beds were converted to 

14 uranium tritide beds.

15 The solubilities for the metal tritides 

16 ranged from Type F all the way up to Type S. So, 

17 all various solubilities for metal tritides are 

18 possible. Most of the tritium was titanium 

19 tritide, which is generally more a Type M material, 

20 but they did work with some of the scandiums and 

21 stuff like that that are Type S.
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1 And so, in general, we have agreed that 

2 we will modify the TBD to increase the resuspension 

3 factor from 1E to the minus 6 to 5E to the minus 

4 5. That will increase the intake rate. But we do 

5 believe that the 4 million dpm -- which is about 

6 400 times what it now would be at HCA, high 

7 contamination area, level -- we do feel is very 

8 bounding and very claimant-favorable and it's 

9 unlikely to have the workers in an environment at 

10 that level at 2,600 hours per year.

11 And that's basically the White Paper. 

12 I don't know if there's questions or if you want 

13 me to go through the example DRs, too.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mutty, I had a 

15 question. And maybe this is a little out of the 

16 realm of it right now, but who is going to be getting 

17 this tritide dose? Do we have a certain group that 

18 is going to be getting it or is this everyone?

19 MR. SHARFI: Anyone that was on the 

20 tritium urinalysis bioassay program would also get 

21 the metal tritide exposure.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, now, is that 

2 going to be capturing any of the maintenance people 

3 and stuff like that, too, or just kind of --

4 MR. SHARFI: The tritium bioassays, 

5 the urinalysis program was very widespread 

6 throughout the plant. So, if you were in any kind 

7 of tritium area for any reason, they bioassayed you 

8 for urinalysis for HTO, for the solubles.

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Now, this 

10 system, the one at Pinellas is a little bit 

11 different set-up than the one at Mound, wasn't it, 

12 if I remember right? It was opened up more to the 

13 area and that's why we have kind of taken this route 

14 of a little bit higher?

15 MR. SHARFI: Well, you mean, why we 

16 didn't have higher contamination levels on Mound?

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yeah, I was wondering 

18 what --

19 MR. SHARFI: One of the main reasons 

20 is, at Mound they had all the individual survey 

21 results for the R108 and SW8 rooms where the tritium 
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1 beds were contained. In this case, we more had the 

2 monthly summary reports. So, we don't have the 

3 individual surveys. So, we are looking at this at 

4 a higher level, where the monthly reports just gave 

5 us the highest survey results. And so Mound was 

6 able to do a more statistical analysis of the 

7 conditions, where we're having to look at a more 

8 outside view of what the more worst case scenario 

9 was.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. You were 

11 mentioning in there that we did have some broken 

12 glass and so forth like that. What kind of 

13 readings were they getting when they had these 

14 kinds of upsets?

15 MR. SHARFI: I will tell you, in the 

16 monthly surveys, that the one we used for the 4 

17 million dpm per 100 centimeter squared wasn't even 

18 a metal tritide incident. It was actually a 

19 maintenance activity.

20 Generally, the ones that were 

21 identified associated with the metal tritide 
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1 particulate work were an order of magnitude or more 

2 less than 4 million. So, they weren't even seeing 

3 this high of a level of the particulate.

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Well, thank 

5 you.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any other 

7 questions?

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yeah, may I? It 

9 doesn't happen exactly with tritide, what you just 

10 said, that the workers were exposed to OBT also. 

11 And also in TBD-5 it says that the workers were 

12 exposed to OBT. But there is no mention on what 

13 do you do and how you calculated those for the OBT. 

14 Because it just mentioned the HTO water and not the 

15 OBT, and the dose per unit intake of OBT is twice 

16 the dose of the tritiated water.

17 MR. SHARFI: OBT is covered in OTIB-66, 

18 I believe, is the tritium OTIB. And so that TIB 

19 would cover any assessments of OBT and HTO. The 

20 White Paper I'm generally discussing was really 

21 just trying to discuss the metal tritide issue.
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1 But you're correct, if a worker had a 

2 potential for OTB, OTIB-66 would then be the OTIB 

3 that would cover taking the urinalysis bioassay and 

4 doing an organically-bound tritium assessment.

5 MR. GLECKLER: Hey, Mutty, this is 

6 Brian Gleckler. We actually used the same 

7 approach for the OTB and the TBDs in the internal 

8 TBD for Pinellas right now, rather than the OTIB-66 

9 approach. That's why in the TBD we used the terms 

10 soluble and insoluble tritium, to where the 

11 insoluble tritium, and that addresses Type M and 

12 Type S, regardless of whether it is a metal tritide 

13 or organically-bound tritide.

14 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh. So, the 

15 organically-bound tritide would be treated like a 

16 tritide, like an insoluble biological?

17 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, be it a liquid or 

18 a solid.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Why?

20 MR. GLECKLER: What's that now?

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Why? Why didn't you 
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1 use the ICRP model?

2 MR. SHARFI: Well, for an insoluble, 

3 like an oil mist, an oil mist intake, the 

4 organically bound tritium actually is more like a 

5 particulate in the sense that it's an insoluble, 

6 organically-bound tritium and it actually acts a 

7 lot like a metal tritide. This is also covered in 

8 the DOE handbook on tritium for metal tritides.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. Okay, so are 

10 you going to add this to the paper or on the tritium 

11 example or on the paper on tritides or on the TBDs? 

12 Because there is no mention of OBTs.

13 MR. SHARFI: When we update the TBD, 

14 I'm sure we can add some more text to clarify 

15 organically bound tritium.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, thank you.

17 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I want 

18 to take this a little step further so I understand. 

19 I'm visualizing a man that is working in an area 

20 where he is on the tritium bioassay program. And 

21 his dose needs to be reconstructed. From what I'm 
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1 hearing, three different types of possible tritium 

2 exposures. One would be metal tritides, one would 

3 be organically-bound tritium, and the third would 

4 be tritiated water.

5 And the information you have available 

6 to you to reconstruct his doses from those three 

7 different types of tritium are either swipe 

8 samples, and we understand what you are doing 

9 there, and those swipe samples from the metal 

10 approach would be you take your swipe, you do your 

11 measurement, and you assume that the swipe activity

12 is tritides, and that the way you will calculate 

13 his internal dose is use the resuspension factor 

14 approach. 

15 That is, assuming that all of the 

16 activity that's on the swipe that you pick up --

17 and I understand the surrogate nature of that --

18 in the water and so forth, but you basically are 

19 saying, okay, this is how we are going to 

20 reconstruct his doses from resuspended tritides. 

21 And you can use the air concentration and so forth.
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1 Then, you also have tritium in his 

2 urine. You don't assume that the tritium in his 

3 urine is entirely due to the inhalation of 

4 tritiated water, and so you add that. So, okay, 

5 we just picked up his dose in tritides from the 

6 swipe data. We are going to pick up his dose now 

7 from tritiated water based on his bioassay data. 

8 And I think where you've just left me 

9 now, and this has struck my questions, is now you 

10 have the organically-bound tritium. Now, what I 

11 just heard you say is that you are going to assume 

12 that any organically-bound tritium -- which of the 

13 two approaches, where does the organically-bound 

14 tritium come in? Does it come in assuming that it 

15 doesn't come in? That you are assuming that all 

16 of the swipe that you pick up and the way in which 

17 you measure it, it will also accommodate the 

18 organically-bound tritium somehow? You lost me 

19 there. Or somehow is it the bioassay sample of the 

20 urine? You see?

21 MR. SHARFI: It's a combination of 
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1 both, John. I mean, the soluble forms of tritium 

2 would be accounted for in the bioassay. On top of 

3 that, we would assign the insoluble forms, the 

4 swipe data, the intake based on the swipe data.

5 DR. MAURO: Okay, and where does the --

6 I understand the tritide. I understand the 

7 tritiated water. You're saying somehow the 

8 organically-bound tritium is going to be captured 

9 in this also and accommodated, because it is two 

10 times higher than if you were basing it on the 

11 bioassay sample. But you're saying you are not 

12 going to base -- somehow the organically-bound 

13 tritium dose contribution is somehow going to be 

14 captured by the way you are dealing with the metal 

15 tritides.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And the second 

17 question, to complement John's: are you going to 

18 show that what you are measuring in the urine is 

19 not the OTB because it has something different from 

20 what I see up here recommends?

21 MR. SHARFI: I mean, obviously, if you 
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1 had a huge -- I mean, if we're trying to do a fitted, 

2 huge result, and we can look at the tail to fit it. 

3 Otherwise, the approach to assessing tritium 

4 urinalysis is covered in OTIB-11 and -66, which, 

5 at that point, 11 covers the area of the curve 

6 assessment assessing tritium bioassay, 

7 proportional area in the curve. And in 66, it 

8 provides, I think, adjustments. If you have a 

9 potential for OBT, and if there is a difference in 

10 the biokinetic models, that you can make 

11 adjustments for soluble OTBs. Then any insoluble 

12 OTB would be wrapped up -- you would basically be 

13 assuming that very little gets to the bioassay in 

14 any insoluble form and that that would be captured 

15 within the assessment of the -- you want to call 

16 it the particulate side or the metal tritide and 

17 insoluble, the T side.

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And you would think to 

19 update the TBD-5 for that? Because there is no 

20 mention of this here.

21 MR. SHARFI: No, the tritium section of 
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1 the TBD will have to be updated for all of this. 

2 And then even the intakes are going to be updated 

3 anyways because we are going to adjust the 

4 resuspension factors. So, the intakes are going 

5 to change.

6 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. And because 

7 also, even tritiated water, there is no explanation 

8 on how you calculate intakes from composite 

9 samples. Because apparently they took one week of 

10 samples, 1 millimeters of each day, and combine and 

11 then measure it. So, there is no explanation also 

12 of how you calculate intakes for such composite 

13 samples of tritiated water. Or OBT, I don't know 

14 if there is OBT there.

15 MR. SHARFI: I mean, the assessment of 

16 soluble forms of tritium are well-covered in 11 and 

17 66.

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, yes. It is just 

19 that this is a particular situation where instead 

20 of having one sample, they combine seven days'

21 samples and measure it. So, the measurement is for 
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1 the seven days composite sample, until 1970.

2 MR. GLECKLER: This is Brian Gleckler 

3 again. I remember this being brought up a long 

4 time ago and it's still kind of foggy. And we 

5 explained it, I'm pretty sure, at one point in time, 

6 but I'm just trying to -- I don't know if anyone 

7 else remembers. It goes back to one of the much 

8 earlier conference calls, I think, or Working Group 

9 meetings.

10 DR. NETON: Yeah, this is Jim. I don't 

11 recall exactly what you discussed, but I think we 

12 had put this issue to bed. I think the best thing 

13 to do is to focus on this tritide issue and close 

14 this issue now and not start treading over old 

15 ground.

16 And we will acknowledge that the TBD 

17 needs to be revised to better discuss the

18 individual assignment of dose from 

19 organically-bound tritiated water and then the 

20 tritides. I mean, we can do that.

21 But right now, I think that the main 
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1 issue of discussion is, can we do these tritide 

2 exposures? And I think it would be better if we 

3 focused on that right now.

4 DR. MAURO: This is John. I 

5 understand what you're saying, Jim, and I think 

6 that is a reasonable approach. This way, we could 

7 segregate and take care of the metal tritides in 

8 a clean way and we'll worry about the 

9 organically-bound and how that complicates the ---

10 DR. NETON: I think we all agree we can 

11 reconstruct doses for organically-bound tritium 

12 and tritiated water. It is whether or not -- how 

13 much detail we put in TBDs, is an issue. But right 

14 now, the issue is can we do these tritides? So, 

15 let's see if we can get that solved first.

16 MR. STIVER: This is Stiver. I'd 

17 prefer to do that, too. We haven't even talked 

18 about our review yet of the tritide model.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: So, is 

20 everybody agreed on how we're going to proceed 

21 here, before we leave this issue?
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1 MR. STIVER: Well, we still haven't 

2 even discussed SC&A's review of the paper yet.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. 

4 Alright.

5 MR. STIVER: That would be the next 

6 item.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: That's the 

8 next item?

9 MR. STIVER: Yeah.

10 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Is everybody 

11 willing to go ahead and do that, go to the next item? 

12 Yes, no, maybe?

13 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, this is Bill. I 

14 think John's questions have really helped to 

15 clarify some things for me. I think that was very 

16 helpful.

17 MR. DARNELL: This is Pete. I agree, 

18 we should go ahead and move on to SC&A's review. 

19 I just want to make sure I captured this correctly. 

20 SC&A wants a TBD update to address how tritides, 

21 organically-bound tritium, and tritiated water are 
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1 captured individually. Correct? Is that correct 

2 or not? Hello?

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yeah, I think so.

4 MR. DARNELL: Okay.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: John, this is Brad. 

6 I'm fine with continuing on and listening to SC&A's 

7 response.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. 

9 Hearing no objections, let's go ahead with the 

10 presentation of SC&A's review. Who's going to do 

11 that?

12 MR. STIVER: That will be Bob Barton.

13 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Bob Barton?

14 MR. BARTON: Okay, I guess I'm on.

15 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: You're up, 

16 Bob.

17 MR. BARTON: Alright. I don't have a 

18 typical formal presentation, but I do think it 

19 would be helpful to be able to look at some of the 

20 tables and figures from our review as I sort of go 

21 through what we found here. 
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1 And for those of you, members of the 

2 public on the phone, I'm going to be working 

3 straight off the document that was posted on the 

4 website. So, when I say something like Table 1 or 

5 Figure 1, you can open that document and follow 

6 right along.

7 MR. STIVER: Bob, this is John. Do you 

8 want me to bring it up on Live Meeting for you?

9 MR. BARTON: I think I can -- if I run 

10 into trouble, I will lean on you, but I think --

11 MR. STIVER: Okay.

12 MR. DARNELL: Yes, please bring it up 

13 on Live Meeting.

14 MR. BARTON: Okay. For those of you 

15 who see Live Meeting, you should all see Table 1. 

16 Can everybody see that?

17 MR. STIVER: That's coming through 

18 fine.

19 MR. DARNELL: Yes.

20 MR. BARTON: Okay, great. Based on 

21 our review, we had seven observations and a single 
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1 finding. Basically what we did, the first thing 

2 we did was to go and inspect the underlying 

3 reference, which is the collection of health 

4 physics reports from 1957 to 1973. That's 

5 referenced in the NIOSH White Paper as GE 1957 to 

6 1973. 

7 And as I said, it's collection of 

8 monthly health physics reports that in some cases 

9 would report the highest swipe sample and give you 

10 numerical results for the given month. In other 

11 cases, it would simply state that the contamination 

12 control measures were effective for that period of 

13 time.

14 So, right now, we're taking a look at 

15 Table 1, which sort of provides a general summary 

16 of that reference. In the left column there, we 

17 see the total number of reports on a monthly basis 

18 for each of these years. So, for example, for 

19 1957, we have five monthly reports for that year. 

20 The next column over, it may be a little 

21 bit cryptic. It says, "complete reports." And 
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1 basically what we were seeing in this reference was 

2 you would have a health physics report that would 

3 give you, for instance, page 1 of 7, page 2 of 7, 

4 but you might be missing certain pages in there 

5 based on this reference.

6 The next column over shows the number 

7 of smear samples that were indicated to be taken 

8 based on what we have in this reference. As you 

9 can see, they go up to almost about 10,000 in 1962 

10 and then they kind of decrease a little bit. 

11 And on the far right, we see the actual 

12 number of numerical results we had for that year. 

13 So, these would have been the actual swipe sample 

14 numbers that sort of form the basis for the original 

15 methodology that we had there. And there was 

16 something, there was only about 40 individual 

17 numerical samples that we were able to pull from 

18 this particular reference.

19 So, that was sort of the first basis and 

20 the first step, was just to review that reference.

21 The next thing we did was to go and start 
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1 digging into the SRDB. And for those of you on the 

2 phone, members of the public, the SRDB is the Site 

3 Research Database. Essentially, it contains all 

4 of the documents and data that have been captured 

5 for Pinellas to-date. So, this is pretty much the 

6 extent of what we have to-date.

7 And the reason we really did this is, 

8 subsequent to the last discussions, which were all 

9 the way back in November of 2012, there had been 

10 a number of reports. I think the number was 

11 somewhere around 350 additional references that 

12 had been uploaded. Not all of them had to do with 

13 tritium swipe data, to be sure, but a number of them 

14 did have some additional data. 

15 So, we examined these documents, which 

16 were certainly new to us, and really with four 

17 things in mind. The first one was we wanted to try 

18 to fill in some of the temporal gaps. And let me 

19 just scroll down here to kind of give you a visual. 

20 So, this was the original reference. 

21 And we can see that this visually shows the number 
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1 of monthly reports we had for each of these years. 

2 As you can see, starting in 1957, we have about five 

3 of the months covered. Some of them are down 

4 around three. Some of them have all 12 months 

5 covered within that reference. For '68 and '71, 

6 we didn't find any actual monthly reports than 

7 that. So, that is sort of the reason we went 

8 looking, to see if any of those additional 

9 documents that had been uploaded could fill in some 

10 of the gaps on Figure 1 that we are looking at right 

11 here.

12 Now, the second thing we were looking 

13 for is to see, well, this sort of ends in 1973. 

14 What can we find after that? So, either additional 

15 HP reports or other additional survey data that we 

16 can find.

17 The third sort of facet of this was to 

18 really give value weight whether that 4 million dpm 

19 per 100 square centimeters was the bounding or the 

20 highest observed contamination value at the site.

21 And the last thing we wanted to do was 
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1 really try to get a grasp on the characterization 

2 of the HP program: what kind of decontamination 

3 efforts were there, contamination control, et 

4 cetera. And this is obviously important because 

5 it provides a significant perspective and sort of 

6 a weight-of-evidence that workers may or may not 

7 have been chronically exposed to the levels that 

8 are currently assumed in the model.

9 So, for that first facet, which were the 

10 gaps we observed in the original reference -- and 

11 I am going to scroll on to -- oh, one more thing 

12 before I head along.

13 In this original reference, which was 

14 GE 1957 to 1973, these show those 40 swipe sample 

15 results, where we actually had numerical values, 

16 and I have them plotted here by date. As you can 

17 see, there is sort of a cluster around 1959 to sort 

18 of the end of 1960. There's a pretty good gap 

19 there. And then there is a smattering of numerical 

20 results that we had for '67 on to about '73. And 

21 I point out where the NIOSH proposed value falls 
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1 in those numerical results from the original 

2 reference.

3 I'm going to move on to Figure 3. And 

4 please, obviously, stop me if you have questions 

5 as I'm going along.

6 So, with the additional reports we 

7 found in the SRDB, we can see that the gaps 

8 significantly improved with many more years having 

9 all 12 of the health physics reports. Some of them 

10 stayed the same in the early '50s -- or late '50s, 

11 rather. We didn't really find any more health 

12 physics reports and we still could not find any for 

13 1968 and 1971. 

14 And so that sort of leads us to what our 

15 first observation was, and I'll read this into the 

16 record. 

17 Observation 1: SC&A identified 

18 several supplemental periodic health physics 

19 reports that had recently been uploaded to the SRDB 

20 and that account for some of the observed gaps in 

21 the primary reference, which was forming the basis 
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1 for characterizing the tritium contamination at 

2 Pinellas.

3 So, that's the first thing, was to try 

4 to fill in some of the gaps we observed in the 

5 primary reference. The second thing was that we 

6 were going to try to look for some data or some 

7 additional health physics reports beyond 1973. 

8 Unfortunately, we did not find any health physics 

9 reports, or not at least in the form that we 

10 observed up until about 1973. But we did find some 

11 sparse examples of survey logbooks and smear 

12 surveys that had been taken at Pinellas. 

13 Specifically, we found some additional data for 

14 1976, 1980 to 1981, '86 to '88 and 1991 to 1994.

15 So, the second observation here is that 

16 SC&A concurs with NIOSH that individual 

17 contamination survey results are pretty limited 

18 until you get really into the last 1980s as far as 

19 having actual numerical results of these surveys. 

20 And we could not find any monthly or quarterly 

21 health physics reports for anything past the third 
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1 quarter of 1973. So, that was our Observation No. 

2 2.

3 The third facet that I had discussed was 

4 sort of characterizing the bounding nature of the 

5 value currently chosen for the method, which is the 

6 4.4 million dpm per 100 square centimeters.

7 Based on what we would find in the SRDB, 

8 we essentially went through and just tried to 

9 tabulate the highest contamination value we could 

10 find, by year, all the way up through 1994. Now, 

11 as I said, we found some sparse contamination data 

12 for a number of years past 1973, but there are 

13 certainly a few gaps there.

14 And I'm going to move along to Figure 

15 4 here. This kind of shows what we found. And, 

16 again, these are the highest observed values that 

17 we could find in pretty much all the available 

18 documentation on the SRDB to-date. And as you can 

19 see here, we have, in green, the proposed 

20 contamination value. And as Mutty had indicated, 

21 we found a couple of situations in the late '80s 
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1 and '90s where we found contamination survey data 

2 that actually exceeded this value of 4.4 million 

3 dpm.

4 Just to give you a little back story on 

5 what these three values represent, because it's 

6 very relevant on how you do dose reconstructions 

7 and the whole issue of exposure potential. The 

8 first red value there is in 198,8 and that was 

9 associated with the removal of a hood or a glove 

10 box, which you can imagine that could certainly 

11 result in some elevated levels of contamination but 

12 would likely be of somewhat limited timeframe, 

13 certainly not a full year exposure or a full 

14 employment exposure.

15 The second one there was from 1992. 

16 This one actually had consecutive days where they 

17 were measuring more on the order of 10 million dpm 

18 per 100 square centimeters. And this was for a 

19 flow bench and there was a handwritten note on this 

20 record next to it that the smear actually came from 

21 the rad exhaust hood.
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1 So, again, it raises the question of 

2 whether exposure potential really existed in that 

3 situation where you would assume there would be 

4 some negative air flow. But, again, that value is 

5 a little bit higher.

6 And then the final one here, 1994, that 

7 was associated with what was listed as a pipe but 

8 based on what we were able to glean from that survey 

9 data, it was actually part of some interior tubing 

10 that was used in the accelerator that they were 

11 removing. So, again, it's sort of almost a D&D 

12 activity or a maintenance activity that you 

13 wouldn't expect to be a consistent type of exposure 

14 scenario.

15 So, that leads us to Observation 3: 

16 SC&A agrees with NIOSH's assertion that 

17 contamination values in the millions of dpm per 100 

18 centimeters would have been unusual and likely of 

19 short duration. But nonetheless, if the intention 

20 was to use the maximum value that you see at the 

21 site, we did identify these three years that had 
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1 slightly higher values. And that is really just, 

2 I guess, for informational purposes. We still 

3 certainly agree that the chosen values very likely 

4 are going to bound exposures, especially when 

5 considered on an annual basis. But again, we 

6 wanted to make that information known in case NIOSH 

7 wished to use it.

8 And the fourth facet of our SRDB search 

9 had to do with the characterization of the Health 

10 and Safety Department. Basically, let's look at 

11 how the Health and Safety Department reacted to 

12 spills or just contamination found on a routine 

13 survey. And we have it in Figure 5. Okay, here's 

14 Figure 5. We'll get that out of the way.

15 Here's one example that we pulled. And 

16 as you can see here, it talks about one localized 

17 incident of contamination when solution was 

18 spilled on the floor in one of the laboratory areas. 

19 And I've underlined it here: decontamination was 

20 immediately effected. 

21 So, again, this is one example. And 
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1 actually, for those of you who are interested, 

2 Appendix C contains a number of other examples, 

3 where the same thing was identified and they state 

4 that it was decontaminated immediately or 

5 efficiently or within a few days. You can see the 

6 direct quotes from, again, Appendix C has those.

7 So, that was the basis for our 

8 Observation 4, which is that available monthly 

9 health physics reports indicate that when 

10 contamination was discovered, through either 

11 routine surveys or incidents, the area was 

12 immediately decontaminated.

13 We also have some further evidence on 

14 that subject: survey logs from the late 1980s and 

15 1990s had also showed evidence of this. And this 

16 is going to be sort of a roaming example of Figures 

17 6 through 9. So, I'm going to head there right now.

18 Okay, here's Figure 6. This is one 

19 example of the daily survey reports that we started 

20 to see beginning in the late 1980s. And as you can 

21 see, they had a value that was significantly less 
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1 than what's being proposed by NIOSH, but, 

2 nonetheless, above the control value that was for 

3 Pinellas. And you can see it was noted and they 

4 wanted to recount the sample. And you can note the 

5 date, that it was June 1st, 1992 at about it looks 

6 like almost 9:00. 

7 So, this one was earmarked to be 

8 recounted. So, here's the recount. Again, it's 

9 still June 1st. It's about an hour later. They 

10 still had about the same contamination level. 

11 Actually, it's a little bit higher. So, again, 

12 they said, well, let's recount it again. And, 

13 again, this time it came in a little bit lower, but 

14 still above their control limit. And again, this 

15 is still the same day, just a little bit afterwards.

16 And in Figure 9 here, a couple of things 

17 to note here. One, that same area that had been 

18 showing contamination in the 3,000 dpm per 100 

19 square centimeter department is now down to 40, 

20 which is ten percent of the control level at 

21 Pinellas.
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1 And this also indicates, and I have 

2 circled here, that they resurveyed after they 

3 mopped up the incident or mopped up the spill, 

4 whatever it was that was giving that higher result. 

5 They mopped it up, resurveyed it, and it came in 

6 below the control level. And again, this is still 

7 the same day a few hours later.

8 So, this is one of those pieces of 

9 evidence where they detected contamination, and 

10 just to be sure, they counted the sample a couple 

11 of times, determined that the contamination was 

12 real, went back, cleaned it up, resurveyed until 

13 it came back to under the control limit.

14 So, that kind of leads us to Observation 

15 5, which is: SC&A observed evidence in survey 

16 logbooks from the '80s and '90s that indicated 

17 situations where contamination above the control 

18 limit -- which I believe is 440 dpm per 100 

19 centimeters -- was often recounted and then the 

20 area was decontaminated and resurveyed.

21 One more thing along these lines. The 
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1 Health and Safety Department, in the reports, 

2 actually indicate that they would sort of predict 

3 situations, whether it be maintenance activities 

4 or what have you, where they said this type of 

5 activity is probably going to bring us to 

6 contamination levels above the control limit. And 

7 so they would take sort of extra actions or send 

8 the Health and Safety personnel out there to sort 

9 of monitor it. 

10 One such example we have in our report 

11 was from December of 1969. And they actually talk 

12 about anticipating contamination in several areas. 

13 And the highest observed value they had was 

14 disassembly of a vac-ion pump. The report notes 

15 that for this activity continuous air monitoring 

16 was provided by Health and Safety. 

17 I guess the key is that they anticipated 

18 it and were taking measures to contain it and 

19 monitor the operation in real-time as it was 

20 happening. This, to me, suggests evidence that 

21 any sort of long-term contamination is rather 
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1 unlikely and that they are aware of the activities 

2 that would likely cause the highest contamination 

3 and took corrective actions, or at least were right 

4 there to make sure it wasn't a long-lasting source 

5 of exposure potential to the workers.

6 Interestingly, the value that was 

7 chosen by NIOSH, the 4.4 million dpm per 100 

8 centimeters squared, that was part of a maintenance 

9 activity on a glove box, and that Health and Safety 

10 monthly reported indicated that they had put extra 

11 controls in place and that those controls had 

12 effectively limited that contamination to the room 

13 where the activity was happening, though they 

14 actually admit that the levels were significantly 

15 higher than they anticipated.

16 Finally, there was also a 1982 report 

17 or procedure that the activities that were expected 

18 to produce contamination above the control limit 

19 should use paper, essentially, along the floors and 

20 work surfaces. And I'm going to scroll to that so 

21 you can see the example.
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1 Here we go. So, as you can see, there 

2 were sort of three steps that were outlined in this 

3 procedure. You want to tape the work surfaces and 

4 floor areas that were in the vicinity, tape them 

5 off so they wouldn't come back up. Once the work 

6 was done, they would remove the paper and fold it 

7 in a specific way, put it in a bag and dispose of 

8 it. And then after that was done, they would have 

9 Health and Safety come in and do a contamination 

10 survey. So, again, this is another piece of 

11 evidence that sort of leads us to believe that any 

12 sort of high level contamination was likely not 

13 there for very long.

14 So, that leads us to Observation 6: 

15 Based on the review of available health physics 

16 reports, it appears that Health and Safety staff 

17 recognized the situations that posed an elevated 

18 threat to tritium contamination above the control 

19 limit and they took precautions to minimize the 

20 potential exposures.

21 So, those were sort of the four facets 
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1 that we really focused on going into this, is 

2 basically what data do we have to characterize the 

3 contamination and what indications do we have about 

4 the operation of the Health and Safety Department 

5 as far as how quickly these things might have been 

6 detected and cleaned up.

7 But we did also look at some of the other 

8 facets of the approach that Mutty talked about. 

9 These are choice of a resuspension factor, the 5E 

10 to the minus 5. The measurement system that was 

11 used to be able to detect the tritium contamination 

12 from these smears. The solubility type of the 

13 actual contaminant being assumed. The breathing 

14 rate of the worker. And the actual annual exposure 

15 time for the worker.

16 So, just to quickly go through these, 

17 I think we can probably start with the easy ones. 

18 The resuspension factor, again, this is a factor 

19 that was chosen to be consistent with Mound. 

20 And John Mauro, if you are still on the 

21 line, I know you did a lot of research related to 
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1 the selection of resuspension factors at Mound, and 

2 certainly in other places. I don't know if you 

3 want to add a few comments on that particular 

4 assumption.

5 DR. MAURO: A little bit. The very 

6 fact that this accommodation was made to increase 

7 it is favorable. Under the circumstances you just 

8 described, you could visualize that 10 the minus 

9 6 per meter resuspension factor would be used after 

10 the area is cleaned up. Before the area is cleaned 

11 up, the resuspension factor may very well be close 

12 to 10 to the minus 5.

13 So, the story we just heard is that, 

14 yes, for some short period of time, freshly 

15 deposited tritides -- that is what we are talking 

16 about, of course -- and probably it's mostly not 

17 tritides -- it's probably mostly tritiated water. 

18 But assuming it is tritides, if it did have a higher 

19 E suspension factor because it was freshly 

20 deposited, it would move toward a 10 to the minus 

21 5.
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1 Of course, once it's decontaminated, 

2 you will have reduced the likelihood of its being 

3 able to be resuspended, and the 10 to the minus 6 

4 would be more favorable.

5 So, my takeaway from this is that since 

6 you're using the 4 times 10 to the 6th dpm per 100 

7 centimeters squared coupled with 5 times 10 to the 

8 minus 5, it is quite claimant-favorable from many 

9 perspectives.

10 And the one last thing I think I might 

11 want to add to this is something I looked into a 

12 bit, is all of our resuspension factor information 

13 that we have in the literature really deals with 

14 airborne-deposited activity, like uranium and 

15 plutonium and other metals and metal oxides. And 

16 what we are dealing with here is something a little 

17 bit unusual, you know, a metal tritide. I don't 

18 think it's happening, but you mentioned that it 

19 might have been some other types of metal tritides.

20 And one of the things I was thinking 

21 about was, is it reasonable to assume that the 
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1 experience in resuspension factors that we have 

2 collected, and there is a vast amount of experience 

3 on internal resuspension factors, which heavily 

4 deals with things other than metal tritides, would 

5 apply to a metal tritide.

6 And what I did is I made a phone call, 

7 and the fellow I spoke to agreed that I could 

8 mention his name: [identifying information 

9 redacted], [identifying information redacted]son, 

10 he's a recognized expert in aerosol physics. And 

11 he was at Los Alamos and he said it's okay if you 

12 need to mention his name during this meeting.

13 And I talked to him a little bit about 

14 this question, is there anything about a tritide, 

15 something he's familiar with because he did work 

16 on Mound during the decontamination operations. 

17 And his sense is that he believes that the metal 

18 tritides, as a particulate, would behave very much

19 like any other particulate, as long as the particle 

20 size distributions are more or less the same, from 

21 the experience in other metals. 
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1 So, I guess my takeaway, and this might 

2 help a little bit, is a great excess of assurance 

3 that the overall strategy adopted by NIOSH -- and, 

4 of course, we will be talking about this some more, 

5 though, with respect at least the resuspension 

6 factor -- rings true and is claimant-favorable. I 

7 hope that helps a little bit.

8 MR. BARTON: Thanks, John. Okay, so 

9 that was the resuspension factor.

10 Another one to consider is the 

11 solubility type. Now, the NIOSH White Paper had 

12 concluded that, to be claimant-favorable they 

13 would always consider the tritide exposures to be 

14 Type S or a very insoluble type compound. And we 

15 feel that is likely to be claimant-favorable in 

16 most situations, especially when you are talking 

17 about doses to the lung and such.

18 But I did have a question. When we 

19 looked at the example DR because in that, it appears 

20 that both Type S and Type M were evaluated and it 

21 looked like Type M was bounding for some of the 
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1 hypothetical organs. So, it seems like the 

2 solubility type changed based on what organ was 

3 evaluated. And I guess my question is, would that 

4 be standard practice that both Type M and S would 

5 be evaluated and each organ would be selected 

6 separately or would it be the cumulative effect of 

7 one solubility type or the other, or, is it as the 

8 White Paper says that it should just be assessed 

9 as Type S solubility in all cases? So, that was 

10 one question because it seemed to be a little bit 

11 confusing between the White Paper and what we were 

12 seeing in the actual dose reconstruction example.

13 So, I don't know if that is a question 

14 for Mutty or for Jim.

15 MR. SHARFI: Yes, I mean you should 

16 assess which would be more claimant-favorable for 

17 the specific radionuclide. I mean I think, and 

18 this is probably just a natural -- I think we 

19 generally, when we talk about the metal tritide, 

20 we considered the Type S because it is the most 

21 hardest. It is in the urine. Dosimetrically, it 
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1 makes the biggest difference from the lung -- I mean 

2 the drop difference in the lung is huge between the 

3 M and the S where inside the systemic organs, there 

4 is not as big of a dosimetric difference.

5 So, I think that is probably just my 

6 fault in terms of the response paper just naturally 

7 gravitating toward the Type S. But no, you would 

8 look at what is most claimant-favorable from a 

9 solubility perspective between M and S.

10 Now, F you would not consider because 

11 F would quickly move into the urine and be treated 

12 no different than HTO or HT.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay. And just a 

14 follow-on to that. Would you, say, for an 

15 individual, would you be restricted to selecting 

16 the one I guess solubility type that gives your 

17 highest cumulative Probability of Causation or 

18 does NIOSH actually, for each organ evaluated, 

19 could select, feasibly select a different 

20 solubility type and add those together?

21 MR. SHARFI: Well, your exposures to 
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1 one material are no different than uranium and you 

2 had multiple cancers. If you had a lung cancer and 

3 a bone cancer, you wouldn't give the lung cancer 

4 Type S and the bone cancer Type F just because the 

5 material is either one or the other when you inhale 

6 it. So, you can't inhale both mixtures and double 

7 compound. That would be double dipping on the 

8 solubility.

9 So, you have to determine overall, is 

10 Type S overall more claimant-favorable to the claim 

11 or is overall all Type M more claimant-favorable 

12 to the claim.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay, thanks for that 

14 clarification.

15 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Can I come in just one 

16 second? The only thing that matters is lung. The 

17 other organs, it doesn't matter. The dose is so 

18 small.

19 So, I think the important thing is to 

20 consider Type S for the lung. Otherwise, the dose 

21 is very, very small. You can see from the example, 
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1 the dose is very small, and if you did with Type 

2 M or Type F, the dose to the other organs would be 

3 very, very small. The only amount that counts is 

4 lung.

5 MR. SHARFI: I agree dosimetrically 

6 the respiratory tract is where the more dosimetric 

7 concern is.

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, otherwise, it 

9 doesn't make a difference. The dose is too small.

10 MR. SHARFI: Yes, I believe there was 

11 a difference in M and S if you look at like the 

12 liver, I think it was like 9 versus 7 millirems. 

13 And dosimetrically, it is very -- there is a much 

14 smaller difference in the systemic organs than, 

15 obviously, the respiratory tract.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. Yes, the only 

17 thing that would really give a dose is lung. So, 

18 Type S is the most claimant-favorable.

19 MR. BARTON: Yes, I agree with that, 

20 Joyce. I think what we were mainly talking about 

21 was, for example, if you had a worker that didn't 
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1 have necessarily a lung cancer but did have a liver 

2 cancer, you would still have the option to use Type 

3 M. Even though it is a small dose and a slight 

4 difference, you would still be able to have the 

5 option to use Type M, if that, indeed, was most 

6 favorable to the claimant. And that was confusing 

7 between the DR report but I certainly see where 

8 Mutty was coming from. And sort of the knee-jerk 

9 reaction is to think lung, just like you said, 

10 because that is really where the dosimetric 

11 significance is.

12 So, that did clear it up for me. Thank 

13 you.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Bob, this is Clawson. 

15 I have just got a question for Mutty.

16 And I understand why you have done, and 

17 I agree with how you have done this, but looking 

18 at it from the dose reconstruction, is there 

19 something in the tools that is going to allow the 

20 dose reconstructor to be able to understand that 

21 he can do this?
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1 MR. SHARFI: I mean this is, like I 

2 said, no different than if you had a thorium or a 

3 plutonium intake. In all cases, if you have the 

4 possibility of two solubility types, you always 

5 consider both and you assign the more 

6 claimant-favorable to the claim.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, I was just 

8 wondering because we just, from my other one 

9 yesterday, the dose reconstruction, we were just 

10 getting into some of the tools.

11 MR. SHARFI: Yes, this isn't tools as 

12 much as it is just -- I mean you would run M and 

13 then you would run Type S, I mean if you had a lung 

14 cancer.

15 I mean generally, I would say this is 

16 probably a little more intuitively obvious that any 

17 respiratory tract is likely to go Type S and any 

18 systemic organs likely are going to be Type M. But 

19 I believe the question is more of what if you had 

20 both. What if you had a liver and a lung cancer, 

21 then can you mix them? And I would say per the 
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1 OTIB-60 in the sense of how we do it in terms of 

2 dosimetry, you have an intake of one or the other. 

3 You can't have an intake of both. More likely 

4 because you have the lung cancer and it is more 

5 dosimetrically significant to the lung cancer, you 

6 would likely assess them both as Type S because the 

7 difference in the liver is very small. So, the 

8 difference in the lung is very huge. So, it would 

9 be more claimant-favorable to assume a Type S 

10 intake and assess all organs Type S than it would 

11 be to assess them all with Type M.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, thank you very 

13 much. I appreciate it.

14 MR. SHARFI: Sure.

15 MR. BARTON: Okay, if there are no 

16 questions on the solubility type, the next sort of 

17 factor, this was the breathing rate and exposure 

18 duration.

19 The breathing rate was chosen as 1.2 

20 cubic meters per hour, which is pretty standard. 

21 I think the ICRP classifies that as sort of a light 
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1 labor category, which would certainly be 

2 indicative of sort of laboratory type work.

3 The exposure duration, which Mutty 

4 already pretty much cleared up for us and was the 

5 source of our sole finding on this was whether you 

6 assess it over a 2,000-hour work year or the 

7 2600-hour work year and the TBD and the dose 

8 reconstruction example that you provided had the 

9 2600. But we had saw the 2,000 in the White Paper 

10 so it kind of got us confused but it sounds like 

11 that was probably just a typo and it will be 

12 assessed as 2,600 hours. Is that correct?

13 MR. SHARFI: Yes, that was done in the 

14 example DR and 2600 hours will be used.

15 MR. BARTON: Okay, great. As I said, 

16 that was our sole finding because there seemed to 

17 be a little bit of a disconnect between the White 

18 Paper and the TBD. But NIOSH is electing to go with 

19 the longer work year, which is 50 hours per week.

20 MR. SHARFI: Yes, and I will correct 

21 it. The TBD does use 2600 hours. I just, for some 
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1 reason, put 2,000 in the response paper.

2 MR. BARTON: Understood. Alright, 

3 well, that definitely clears it up.

4 The last thing here is the ability of 

5 the system, the measurement system to be able to 

6 actually detect tritides. And this was touched on 

7 certainly during Mutty's presentation.

8 The White Paper, itself, mainly 

9 concentrates on the filtering step, which is the 

10 Whatman #1 filter, and NIOSH demonstrated that the 

11 actual pore size for that would really only 

12 restrict particles that were 10 to 12 microns, 

13 which is really out of your respirable particle 

14 range. So, we didn't really see that as a problem.

15 The second part was this issue of 

16 whether, if you are swabbing up stable metal 

17 tritide particles with a cotton swab and then 

18 rinsing the swab, we were concerned about whether 

19 the tritides would get sort of trapped within the 

20 cotton swab and never really make it to the counting 

21 liquid to be registered in the contamination 
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1 survey.

2 John Stiver, I know that you had brought 

3 this issue up. I don't know if you want to add a 

4 little bit to that characterization.

5 We also queried NIOSH when this came up 

6 to see what was there and NIOSH provided a response. 

7 So, John, I don't know if you want to add to it or 

8 if we should --

9 MR. STIVER: Yes, sure, I can add a 

10 little bit to it.

11 This came up I know when we looked at 

12 Mound back in the 2012 time frame, the final 

13 version, there was an extensive back and forth on 

14 that. And there are a couple of material 

15 differences, one, obviously being the amount of 

16 data that was available for swipe samples at Mound 

17 versus the summary reports that are available for 

18 Pinellas. We understand obviously why NIOSH would 

19 go with the higher value for Pinellas in order to 

20 make sure those uncertainties are captured and 

21 bounding.
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1 The other thing was, at Mound, they used 

2 the PC5 proportional counter and they would take 

3 a swipe and they count the sample directly. So 

4 while you are probably obviously going to have 

5 predominately HTO, tritiated water that is being 

6 counted. If there was some component of tritide 

7 in there, that would also be counted.

8 So, we can say, alright, you know we are 

9 going to have to assume it is all 100 percent 

10 tritide because you are actually directly counting 

11 some of that if it is there. We felt that was 

12 probably a claimant-favorable decision and a 

13 reasonable decision to use, especially considering 

14 that we were taking the 95th percentile of a chronic 

15 exposure.

16 And you know at Pinellas we are throwing 

17 in one more layer of uncertainty here. You are 

18 taking this cotton ball, you are swiping, you are 

19 rinsing it out into a paper cup and then counting 

20 the rinsate through a liquid scintillation 

21 apparatus. And we were starting to think well, you 
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1 know what happens if you have all this tritide 

2 captured in the swab and it never makes it out? And 

3 you know, looking at the health physics paper and 

4 Mutty's description, we found, you know if you are 

5 dealing with fresh tritides, freshly produced, 

6 which is what we have at Pinellas, obviously, you 

7 are basically depositing the vapor, the scandium 

8 or hafnium or what have you on the ceramic or a metal 

9 substrate and you are loading tritium onto it, that 

10 is about as fresh as you can get. 

11 The question would be well how long were 

12 these tubes kept around on-site. Ones that did 

13 implode and caused a spill or caused contamination, 

14 how old were they? Were the contaminations 

15 cleaned up quickly? And our sense is that it is 

16 probably reasonable to assume that they are fresh.

17 Bob had described in detail how the 

18 health physics program is very responsive and aware 

19 of, A) what procedures were likely to result in the 

20 contamination events and the responses when those 

21 did occur in cleaning them up quickly.
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1 So, I don't think you have a situation 

2 where you are going to have tritides sitting around 

3 on a workbench for days, months, years, and never 

4 cleaned up.

5 So you know you have a situation where 

6 with a fresh tritide more of the tritium is going 

7 to off-gas. I think the paper showed that it was 

8 about a factor of two to three more than what was 

9 present in particulates, based on the way they did 

10 their counting in the sample.

11 And so even though you were using a 

12 surrogate, in a way, by counting what we are almost, 

13 it would probably be tritium or gaseous which would 

14 then convert to a tritiated water. It does provide 

15 a bounding surrogate count and this is based on what 

16 came off of the source term itself. So, it is kind 

17 of a secondary step. It adds more uncertainty. 

18 But given the weight of evidence by the quality of 

19 the health physics program, the incident reports 

20 that show things were cleaned up quickly, the fact 

21 that things are being produced for distribution 
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1 throughout the complex, we felt that NIOSH was 

2 probably on pretty solid ground with this as well.

3 So, that is all I have to say about that.

4 DR. NETON: John, this is Jim. I have 

5 got a little bit of a clarification on that new 

6 versus old tritiated substrates.

7 The paper actually made a 

8 differentiation, not between new and old, but new 

9 and used as in the tube had been run.

10 MR. STIVER: So, it actually had been 

11 discharged a few times.

12 DR. NETON: Yes, I mean the column is 

13 milliamp-minutes and they would run for like a 

14 couple hours or an hour or so. And I forget the 

15 ratios over time but it certainly seemed to be 

16 correlated with how long the tube was actually run, 

17 not how old or how --

18 MR. STIVER: Okay. I was under the 

19 impression it was more a reflection of age.

20 DR. NETON: No, no, it was whether they 

21 were used or not. So, I think you know they didn't 
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1 obviously analyze new versus sitting on the shelf,

2 old. But at least their paper differentiation was 

3 based on tube usage. Just as a clarification.

4 MR. STIVER: Okay, thank you.

5 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry to interrupt. 

6 Jim, this is John. My understanding also has to 

7 do with age, when I looked at that Health Physics 

8 paper. So, we are not dealing with tritides that 

9 -- where the tubes were run. This is something I 

10 am not familiar with. We are dealing with tritides 

11 where the tubes -- where if there was a spill, it 

12 wouldn't be a spill from whatever a tube is, was 

13 not run.

14 DR. NETON: Right. This is where they 

15 are being manufactured. I mean they are actually 

16 making, they are installing the tritium onto these 

17 metals.

18 DR. MAURO: Got you. Okay, so that 

19 makes for an even stronger case.

20 DR. NETON: Yes, and in many of the 

21 years, I forget the break point but the tubes were 
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1 actually, the metal material, the substrate was 

2 actually charged with it in the tube and, in some 

3 years, it was not. But yes, it really is, these 

4 are being made at the plant, not somewhere else.

5 DR. MAURO: I understand and that is 

6 even more assurance that the surrogate approach 

7 will work. That is my takeaway from what you just 

8 said.

9 DR. NETON: I prefer not to call it a 

10 surrogate approach. That has sort of a specific 

11 meaning in this program.

12 DR. MAURO: And I agree with you 

13 completely.

14 DR. NETON: I would call it an 

15 indicator applied or something to that effect.

16 DR. MAURO: I understand completely. 

17 An indicator of tritide metal. Yes, thank you.

18 MR. BARTON: Okay, well that topic was 

19 really the subject of our last observation, 

20 Observation 7. And as I said, when it came up, we 

21 really weren't sure if it had been considered. And 
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1 so we queried NIOSH and they responded and we at 

2 SC&A had a pretty lengthy discussion of that issue 

3 leading up to this meeting and we were certainly 

4 satisfied with NIOSH's response. I don't know if 

5 any of the Work Group Members would like to ask 

6 questions on that particular topic or on our review 

7 as a whole.

8 Just to summarize, we had seven 

9 observations. So, basically it boils down to the 

10 contamination value chosen may not be the absolute 

11 highest. There are at least a few, a handful of 

12 samples that we have done that were slightly higher 

13 than that but they were also in situations where 

14 it is really quite infeasible there would be a 

15 long-term exposure to that level of contamination. 

16 We feel that any of the other parameters chosen are 

17 certainly claimant-favorable. And our assessment 

18 of what we can tell about the health physics program 

19 is that any sort of spill or contamination, whether 

20 it be regular or incident-based, would have been 

21 picked up pretty quickly and decontaminated.
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1 So, pretty much on that basis, we only 

2 had that one finding concerning how many hours per 

3 year was going to be assessed and Mutty cleared that 

4 up. The higher exposure time was 2600 hours per 

5 year.

6 So, that really concludes our review. 

7 I would be happy to answer any questions that the 

8 Work Group might have.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any 

10 questions? Any questions for Bob?

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is Brad. I have 

12 just got one question for John Mauro. 

13 I received an article about the study 

14 of particulate gas. Was this covering what you 

15 talked about with the gentleman? Was this part of 

16 that information?

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, well, I'm not sure the 

18 article you are referring to. But my concern was 

19 this broad, sweeping generalization regarding 

20 resuspension factors, you know this 10 to the minus 

21 5 versus 10 to the minus 6, which we have all 
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1 resolved. We know when to use 10 to the minus 6 

2 and when to use 10 to the minus 5. And within that 

3 context that is exactly, it was handled 

4 appropriately here.

5 But I was asking, I guess, a little 

6 deeper question. And that is the whole idea of 

7 using a resuspension factor from the literature, 

8 two metal tritides, something that we haven't 

9 encountered before and certainly I have not seen 

10 nor heard of any literature that specifically 

11 looked at that question and is there anything about 

12 a metal tritide, which is simply a metal particle 

13 with I guess a hydrogen attached to it.

14 And I mean this is only my thinking 

15 about it. I said, gee, I wonder if there is any 

16 reason to believe that those types of particles 

17 would behave differently than the particles that 

18 are the basis for all of the resuspension factor 

19 issues data that we currently use.

20 So, as I mentioned, you folks may not 

21 know [identifying information redacted}. He is 
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1 the son of [identifying information redacted], 

2 whom everybody knows. But he turns out to be, he 

3 was recommended --

4 MR. STIVER: He, John, can I jump in for 

5 a second? We probably shouldn't be using those 

6 individual names in --

7 DR. MAURO: Oh, he said it was okay for 

8 me to use it during the meeting.

9 MR. STIVER: Yes, but I think it is more 

10 of a procedural aspect of the program.

11 DR. MAURO: Okay. He is just a 

12 knowledgeable person. I just wanted to let you 

13 know I called someone very knowledgeable on this 

14 subject and that happened by my making some 

15 inquiries about who was the world's expert on the 

16 subject.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, well, I was just 

18 wondering, John, because actually John Stiver sent 

19 this article out and it was interesting reading. 

20 We just kind of covered what we were there on the 

21 fact.
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1 But I would like to take the opportunity 

2 to tell Bob Barton and also Mutty that they did a 

3 very good job on this process here. It was very 

4 clear and to the point and I appreciated it.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any other 

6 questions?

7 MR. DARNELL: This is Pete. I would 

8 just like to summarize. I guess what I am hearing 

9 is that SC&A agrees with the example DRs as they 

10 are written, with the exception of the TBD update 

11 that we talked about earlier. Is that correct?

12 MR. STIVER: Yes, it would just be a 

13 treatment of the OVTs, some kind of an explanation 

14 of it.

15 MR. DARNELL: Okay.

16 MR. BARTON: Well, this is Bob. I did 

17 have one question that is sort of -- well, it is 

18 related and it really comes down, so I guess it sort 

19 of an implementation question because these 

20 tritide doses are going to be applied to workers 

21 who were in the bioassay program.
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1 And I guess I am curious because I don't 

2 think, at least I haven't looked in-depth at the 

3 Pinellas bioassay program but what threshold or 

4 example threshold would it take to determine that 

5 the worker, I guess, qualifies for tritide? And 

6 let me just give an example, say you had a worker 

7 who was monitored, I don't know, maybe on a weekly 

8 basis and then maybe there is a couple of months 

9 without any bioassay samples. I mean, is the 

10 tritide exposure directly tied to when the 

11 bioassays were taken or how would that work, I 

12 guess, in practice?

13 MR. SHARFI: If he is being assessed or 

14 if he or she is being assessed for any soluble 

15 intake via bioassay, then they are given the 

16 corresponding intake of metal tritides.

17 MR. BARTON: Okay, I guess my main 

18 question was when you, I guess, observed a gap, say, 

19 in the bioassay results you have, whether that is 

20 a couple of weeks, a couple of months, how that 

21 situation would be dealt with. That might be too 
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1 specific for this forum but I am curious about 

2 implementation.

3 MR. SHARFI: I think that I would have 

4 to see the particular claim to know all the 

5 extenuating circumstances. Like for instance, 

6 they could have in their record they are on leave 

7 for two months and that is why there is no bioassay. 

8 So, without knowing the specifics, it is hard to 

9 answer a question like that.

10 MR. GLECKLER: It might be an easier 

11 one for me to address. This is Brian Gleckler 

12 again.

13 In the claims typically what we will do 

14 is metal tritide exposures will get assessed for 

15 the periods that they have bioassay monitoring and 

16 we will go back to the -- I can't find it but we 

17 will go back a month prior to that bioassay sample.

18 And so, like, if there is a gap, we can 

19 have gaps in their tritide assessment.

20 MR. STIVER: So, it wouldn't be, 

21 obviously, on an annual basis. If you had a gap 
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1 for a year, then you wouldn't include it. It would 

2 be any gap in that routine program, then?

3 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. One thing 

4 that is indicative of the Pinellas Plant claims, 

5 because a lot of the workers spent like 20 to 40 

6 years at the plant and they moved around from job 

7 to job, and as they changed their job, it is like 

8 their monitoring was modified and sometimes they 

9 were monitored for just external, sometimes 

10 external and internal or just internal or not at 

11 all. Because a lot of -- a good chunk of the plant 

12 was non-rad type work also.

13 And so they were constantly changing 

14 their monitoring as the years go on. So yes, we 

15 will have like a year where there is no bioassay. 

16 They won't get an insoluble tritium or tritide dose 

17 assigned for that period. It is only when they 

18 have bioassay data for those periods. Does that 

19 make sense?

20 MR. BARTON: And you said the grace 

21 period is essentially like a month prior.
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1 MR. GLECKLER: Yes, I'm trying to find 

2 that. I'm pretty sure that's --

3 MR. BARTON: Okay, thank you. I was 

4 just curious how this particular model was going 

5 to be implemented based on that criteria. Thank 

6 you.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Any other 

8 questions? We have been going almost exactly two 

9 hours. I'm suggesting we take a 10- or a 15-minute 

10 comfort break.

11 MR. STIVER: Sounds good to me.

12 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: No 

13 objections?

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: No objections, John.

15 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. Well, 

16 let's just call it -- I am in Central Time. I have 

17 2:00. Let's be back at 2:15.

18 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

19 went off the record at 2:59 p.m. and resumed at 3:16 

20 p.m.)

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Now, we are 
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1 down to number five on the agenda.

2 MR. DARNELL: John, if you would, I 

3 have a question before we move ahead.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, I like 

5 Jack Daniels.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MR. DARNELL: I'll send you a bottle.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Just kidding. 

9 Go ahead.

10 MR. DARNELL: Do we have enough Board 

11 Members to vote on whether or not we are going to 

12 close the issue for metal tritides or are we going 

13 to wait until the TBD is updated?

14 The reason I ask is the Board meeting 

15 is in Tampa and it would be nice to get there and 

16 say yes, we are done. I don't know how we want to 

17 proceed.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Well, you 

19 will have to ask the Designated Federal Official.

20 MR. KATZ: No, it's fine. That is why 

21 Bill Field is sitting in for -- first of all, it 
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1 is a Work Group so it is not the same as a 

2 subcommittee. But that is why Bill Field is 

3 sitting in in Phil's place, in effect, although not 

4 chairing.

5 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, trying to fill in 

6 for Phil is tough.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes.

8 MR. STIVER: Ted, this is Stiver. I 

9 have got a question for you. Say if the Board votes 

10 -- or the Work Group recommends to accept this, 

11 doesn't it still have to go to the full Board at 

12 the Tampa meeting?

13 MR. KATZ: Yes, just to get ahead of 

14 ourselves, I mean once we have wrapped up all the 

15 issues, the Work Group will then make a 

16 presentation to the Board at the meeting in Tampa 

17 in March.

18 MR. STIVER: Right, that is what I 

19 thought.

20 MR. KATZ: Right, and just as a 

21 preview, John, we will probably ask you to do a lot 
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1 of presenting for John, who is sort of interim Chair 

2 here.

3 MR. STIVER: Okay, that's fine with me.

4 MR. KATZ: Yes.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: So, anyway, to answer whose 

7 question --

8 MR. DARNELL: Pete.

9 MR. KATZ: -- Pete's question, yes, I 

10 mean the Work Group should be getting concurrence 

11 on the few issues that are still open. The hope 

12 was to be able to close the issues and present to 

13 the Board in March.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: You know what 

15 they call Tampa? Tampa is the home of the newly 

16 wed and nearly dead. And the main population, they 

17 have a huge population of old people and they tend 

18 to get married the third or fourth time.

19 (Laughter.)

20 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: That and 25 

21 cents will buy you nothing.
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1 (Laughter.)

2 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I guess one 

3 other point of clarification, if these issues are 

4 voted to be closed, I still think that they will 

5 probably end up still being in abeyance, is that 

6 not correct, until --

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, that is correct. 

8 Right but that is nothing getting in the way of 

9 being able to present and report out.

10 DR. NETON: Yes, I just wanted to make 

11 sure people understood that we are not saying that 

12 this is -- you know that we are completely done with 

13 all this. It is just that we agree -- they are 

14 going to vote to see if we agree on these. A path 

15 forward, I guess, is what we are saying.

16 MR. KATZ: Right. I mean in cases 

17 where you actually put it in abeyance because you 

18 agree on exactly what is being put forth, I mean 

19 it is as good as closed in terms of reporting out 

20 to the Board.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Are we ready? 
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1 Are we ready to go ahead?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay? Let me 

4 look at who is next. 

5 MR. KATZ: So, John, I think --

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Brian.

7 MR. KATZ: John?

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes?

9 MR. KATZ: I think Pete was asking --

10 I mean you guys have just completed the discussion 

11 with the one finding related to tritides. And I 

12 think Pete was asking for the Work Group's 

13 consensus decision on it.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Well, I 

15 understand but normally, it is not up to the 

16 Chairman to make a motion.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Then how about if I 

18 do, John?

19 MEMBER FIELD: And how about if I 

20 second it?

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: I move that we accept 

2 NIOSH's process in what is covering the tritides.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay, Bill, 

4 is that what you are seconding?

5 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Is there any 

7 discussion? It seems like we have already had 

8 that, haven't we?

9 All in favor, say aye.

10 (Chorus of aye.)

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Anybody 

12 opposed?

13 (No response.)

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay, so the 

15 motion carries and I assume it will be in the 

16 record.

17 Okay, anything else before we move on?

18 (No response.)

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Nothing? No 

20 other issues?

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, I think we just 
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1 move on on the agenda here, John.

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. So, 

3 next we are going to talk about problems with 

4 personnel monitoring. And how is going to do that, 

5 Zlotnicki?

6 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

7 Joe, are you on the line?

8 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Yes, I am here.

9 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is Joe 

10 Zlotnicki. He is an associate at SC&A and a former 

11 vice president of the Landauer Corporation and he 

12 is going to talk a little bit about the appropriate 

13 limit of detection for film badge dosimeters used 

14 in the post-'74 period. This is that sub-issue of 

15 Issue 5.

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, okay, 

17 the floor is yours.

18 Open Issues Matrix Item 5

19 MR. ZLOTNICKI: So, let me just give a 

20 little bit of background. This issue of what the 

21 minimum detectable for film dosimetry is and was 
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1 has come up at a number of sites. And the nature 

2 of film dosimetry, as I am sure all of you are aware, 

3 is that it involves a chemical process and it is 

4 almost like a natural product in the sense that it 

5 aged over time and fogged as the emulsion or the 

6 badge was stored, often for a period of up to around 

7 six months. And so one of the challenges is, when 

8 we talk about the limit of detection, are we talking 

9 about when the processing and the material and 

10 everything is pristine or when something has aged 

11 a little bit and everything may not be perfect?

12 And one of the factors is that the back 

13 of the report that Landauer put out always claimed 

14 10 millirem minimum detectable regardless of 

15 photon energy. This is for photon only but for 

16 photon, 10 millirem regardless of photon energy.

17 But it turns out if you are at 

18 americium-241 60 keV, you are going to have no 

19 problem seeing that, even with fairly old film. 

20 But with high-energy gammas up around cobalt-60, 

21 for example, at 1 MeV or a little more, that is a 
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1 rather hard thing to see because the responsiveness 

2 of the film emulsion is down by a factor of 20 or 

3 30 from the optimum in the sort of 50 keV region.

4 So, Landauer claimed a 10-millirem 

5 minimum detectible or limit of detection. They 

6 don't mean quite the same thing but for this 

7 discussion, they can. The issue is, is that true 

8 for high-energy photon fields? And I think the 

9 answer is no, although it could have been on a good 

10 day. And one of the issues is that the way that 

11 the film densitometers worked and the response of 

12 the film to photons, a single step on the 

13 densitometer was something like 6 or 8 millirem of 

14 high-energy gamma. And given all the noise and 

15 uncertainty with the background fog on the film 

16 that was subtracted as part of the normal sort of 

17 laboratory process, it is rather difficult to claim 

18 that for high-energy gamma, one could see 10 

19 millirem. I think 20 is more realistic and has 

20 been used or suggested at least at some of the other 

21 sites.
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1 I think that, certainly for the lower 

2 energy the 10 is fine, which is most of the Pinellas 

3 site but for those that were operating with what 

4 were colloquially known as the SNAP generators, the 

5 plutonium-238 thermal generators, that was a very 

6 hard gamma field, primarily, think of it as a 1 MeV 

7 photon field and I think that the dosimetry in 

8 general would have had a hard time being 10 

9 millirem. It wouldn't have been trivial to see 20, 

10 by the way, but I think 20 would be reasonable.

11 So, I wrote that up in a report everyone 

12 should have seen because we were fortunate enough 

13 to get an old NASA report that looked into the 

14 spectrum emitted from these generators with a view 

15 to the impact to the -- the instruments on the 

16 satellite payload because they had a number of ion 

17 or radiation sensors so they were very interested 

18 in that aspect. Not a radiation damage to purely 

19 -- when you are trying to detect low levels of

20 radiation, they had a similar problem to personnel 

21 dosimetry.
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1 So, we got a lot of good data but the 

2 spectrum was hard and for those workers who were 

3 primarily exposed to these radioisotopic 

4 generators, their limit of detection should be 20 

5 millirem, notwithstanding that the back of the 

6 Landauer report does say 10 millirem.

7 I don't have anything more specific to 

8 say but I am happy to answer questions.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Well, I 

10 think, based on my experience at Oak Ridge, in fact 

11 we used 25 generally without really worrying about 

12 the different spectral, the different energies. 

13 It was just typical to use 25 as the lower limit 

14 of detection with the film. You guys did a better 

15 job than we did, I guess.

16 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, let me just jump 

17 in and say one of the issues is how fresh your film 

18 is and how willing you are to throw away the film 

19 and start with a new batch, rather than run with 

20 the emulsion until it is all used up. So, part of 

21 it is just a cost question of not trying to hang 
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1 on to it for nine months, for example.

2 Also, storage conditions. Oak Ridge, 

3 they presumably were using refrigerators but 

4 certainly once the badges are out in the field, they 

5 are not refrigerated.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: No, they are 

7 not and a lot of times they are stuck over the visor 

8 in the car and all kinds of different environmental 

9 situations. But we are talking 7,000 badges, 

10 though. And so I don't know what the schedule was 

11 on buying film but that was what we used. So, I 

12 would say 20 seems to me to be reasonable.

13 Anybody else have comments?

14 MEMBER FIELD: This is Bill. I think 

15 that makes a lot of sense, given what we just heard.

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. Brad, 

17 anything?

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Sorry, I was trying to 

19 get off mute. No, that sounds fairly reasonable 

20 to me.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, we need 
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1 to invent a phone that tells you when it is muted 

2 or something, have a little light on it. I have 

3 the same problem.

4 MR. DARNELL: John, this is Pete 

5 Darnell.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, sure.

7 MR. DARNELL: We actually have a 

8 response and Matt Smith is going to lead that. 

9 Matt, are you on the phone?

10 MR. SMITH: Yes, I was just kind of 

11 waiting for the cue. 

12 MR. DARNELL: I think now is the time.

13 MR. SMITH: We took a look at that NASA 

14 report as well and we certainly noted that the age 

15 of the RTG really does affect the spectrum that you 

16 would expect to see. And I know that report is not 

17 up on the website. But for folks who might happen

18 to have it in front of them in electronic form, it 

19 is page 54 of 191.

20 That section that is speaking about the 

21 cases of films and then refers to a Table 4-9 for 
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1 spectral information, and Table 4-9 is on PDF page 

2 57 of that report. And certainly for fresh or 

3 one-year-old fuel, the gamma energies are well 

4 below 250 keV. They are down in that lower energy 

5 range or mid-energy range, as we call it on this 

6 program.

7 Brian Gleckler was able to dig through 

8 the SRDB. That, again, is our collection of 

9 documents relating to the site. And the SRDB 

10 number that proves very helpful in this situation 

11 is number 12185. And on page 5 of that document, 

12 there is a nice inventory statement and basically 

13 at that stage, there was a 1988 inventory. They 

14 had 210 RTGs in the production inventory and 200 

15 of them were one year or less in age. The other 

16 ten were two years old.

17 So, with 95 percent of the production 

18 inventory at age one or less, we see the spectrum 

19 in this case as not being hard. It was a production 

20 facility. Things are not encapsulated ready to go 

21 on Pioneer 10 and, in addition to that, the fuel 
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1 itself is in a very young condition.

2 So, from that standpoint, the 10 

3 millirem would still seem valid to us.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: I was looking 

5 at this letter from SC&A and on the back, there is 

6 a graph that shows the photon energy.

7 MR. SMITH: And I believe that is for 

8 conditions where things have been encapsulated. 

9 In other words, that is the RTG unit in whole ready 

10 to go.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. 

12 Alright.

13 MR. SMITH: And then of course, from 

14 the standpoint of the NASA, especially the 

15 researchers who didn't want the interference from 

16 all those different types of radiation being 

17 emitted, they were looking at what things you know 

18 five, ten years down the road, in terms of timing 

19 as well.

20 We did focus on Table 4-9, which is 

21 giving the gamma emission for different RTG fuel 
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1 age.

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, the 

3 letter actually -- maybe I didn't get it all. The 

4 letter indicates there was a table but it is not 

5 in the --

6 MR. SMITH: I don't believe that table 

7 is in the memo from SC&A.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, it 

9 mentions a table but I don't see it.

10 MR. ZLOTNICKI: This is Joe again. I 

11 put Table 4-16 in the letter, not Table 4-9. One 

12 of the issues is how much -- obviously, if you look 

13 at the raw emissions, there is a lot of low-energy 

14 emission. The question is what gets out once it 

15 is in the form of a lump of fuel, if you will, that 

16 is shielded for heat shielding and for radiation 

17 shielding and then it is a very hard spectrum. 

18 Clearly, when you have the raw material spread out 

19 on a surface and the low-energy photons are able 

20 to escape, then of course, there is a lot more 

21 low-energy photon production than high-energy.
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1 So, the question becomes, in the 

2 handling and manufacture, were those low-energy 

3 photons shielded by the construction of the glove 

4 box or the remote handling facility, however it was 

5 done. Were those low-energy photons removed from 

6 the spectrum anyway by a spill box or what have you? 

7 I don't know the specifics on that.

8 But once the fuel is sort of assembled, 

9 if you will, it is a very hard spectrum.

10 MR. DARNELL: This is Pete. We've 

11 actually had discussions on this, on how the fuel 

12 was handled and what was going on with it that Gil 

13 explained to us years back. I forget which meeting 

14 it was actually at. But the workers who wore 

15 thermal gloves handled the material. They were in 

16 direct contact with it. There was nothing between 

17 them and the sources.

18 MR. ZLOTNICKI: So, I think one of the 

19 problems with Table 4-9 is that that is the 

20 theoretical emission from the fuel but it is the 

21 emission in the fuel. It is not the emission from 
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1 the surface of the fuel.

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: I just don't 

3 have the table at all.

4 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Oh, sorry. Well, I'm 

5 looking online at Table 4-9 that was just 

6 mentioned. It is not in the document that SC&A 

7 sent out.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.

9 MR. ZLOTNICKI: The point is, if you 

10 take the plutonium and all the daughters and any 

11 spontaneous fission products and so on, you can 

12 calculate exactly how many photons are emitted for 

13 various ages. And I think that is what Table 4-9 

14 does. But that doesn't say once you have lumped 

15 it together as something that is hot, hot enough 

16 that you need thermal gloves, that is a large lump, 

17 if you will, a large object. And way more than 99.9 

18 percent of those low-energy photons never make it 

19 out of the object.

20 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: I understand. 

21 Well, I'm not sure where to go on this, since we 
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1 have beta --

2 MR. STIVER: Look at Figure 4-8, I 

3 believe on page 2 of Joe's report. It gives you 

4 an idea of the number gammas emitted from the RTG 

5 ratio, the number emitted to number produced. You 

6 can see that below about 500 keV, there is only 

7 about ten percent.

8 This is a situation where, yes, sure, 

9 there is a lot of low-energy gammas being emitted 

10 in the unshielded fuel but once you have it triple 

11 encapsulated and also into the RTG body, you are 

12 hardening the spectrum. I mean a lot of those 

13 low-energy emissions are never going to make it 

14 out. That is really the point that I think Joe is 

15 trying to make here.

16 Sure, there is going to be a higher 

17 number of or a higher proportion of the spectrum 

18 will be higher energy over time. But even in early 

19 times, when there was a preponderance of low-energy 

20 emissions, most of those low-energy emissions will 

21 never make it out of the RTG but you still have a
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1 hardened spectrum in terms of the dosimeter 

2 response.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, and you 

4 can argue that all you want. That is not the 

5 question. The question is what is the lower limit

6 of detection. Is it 10 or is it 20?

7 MR. STIVER: Yes, I mean that 

8 sensitivity of the films will depend on the energy 

9 of the emission.

10 DR. NETON: This is Jim. That is a 

11 question I had. Aside from the fact of what is the 

12 spectrum, what did Landauer calibrate those badges 

13 with? I thought they used something like 

14 cobalt-60 to calibrate the badges.

15 MR. ZLOTNICKI: If you go back far 

16 enough, it could have been radium or cobalt-60.

17 DR. NETON: That's right. 

18 Nonetheless, it was a higher energy spectrum and 

19 then MDC was calculated based on that high-energy 

20 of radiation. So, I'm having trouble figuring out 

21 why their calculated value of 10 millirem is wrong. 
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1 It's not like they calibrated with americium.

2 I'm missing the point, I guess.

3 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, I think the 

4 answer is the calibration was not done at 10 

5 millirem. The calibration will have been done at 

6 hundreds of millirem or several rem.

7 DR. NETON: Yes, of course. That's 

8 how you do a calibration. But my point is they did 

9 some fundamental calculation based on the 

10 background of the film and the sensitivity of the 

11 film to high-energy photons, not low-energy 

12 photons. So, I don't know why that number is not 

13 valid, unless they did a calculational error.

14 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, no. What you 

15 said is not true. You have to do the calculation 

16 of the limit of detection for each different energy 

17 that you are interested in.

18 DR. NETON: Exactly. But the 

19 calculation is done at a high-energy photon.

20 MR. ZLOTNICKI: No.

21 DR. NETON: Yes, you just told me it was 
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1 cobalt-60 or radium.

2 MR. ZLOTNICKI: That's not how the 

3 limit of detection was calculated.

4 DR. NETON: What did they do, rate it 

5 with americium?

6 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, certainly, 

7 multiple sources of different energies, yes. Yes. 

8 And so I think the challenge is that yes, the 

9 calibration, in terms of how much density per 

10 millirem was done with let's say with cesium 660 

11 keV, but that doesn't mean the limit of detection 

12 was done with cesium for the 10 millirem that was 

13 claimed. 

14 And also, as I mentioned earlier, if it 

15 was done with very fresh film with zero base fog 

16 and all the calibrates and blanks were also fresh, 

17 you have a situation where, under those laboratory 

18 pristine conditions, if you will, 10 was viable.

19 So, I'm not disagreeing with you that 

20 a calculation could have been done that would 

21 demonstrate it is viable, but once you add in three 
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1 or six months of age to the film, statistically, 

2 you can no longer see the 10 millirem for the 

3 high-energy photons.

4 DR. NETON: Sorry, I dropped off by 

5 accident there, Joe, so I missed a lot of what you 

6 just said.

7 But you were saying that the 10 millirem 

8 quoted detection limit is based on a calibration 

9 with americium. I'm not sure that is true.

10 MR. ZLOTNICKI: No, it is not based on 

11 a calibration with americium. But the response of 

12 the film to different energies, obviously, you have 

13 to pick your energy to know what your limit of 

14 detection is. If the limit of detection with 

15 cobalt-60 is 10 millirem, then it would be about 

16 .03 millirem or .04 millirem with the americium --

17 DR. NETON: Well, I would agree with 

18 that but it wasn't.

19 MR. ZLOTNICKI: -- which it wasn't.

20 MR. SMITH: This is Matt Smith again. 

21 In this case, we are talking, and Brian can correct 
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1 me if I am wrong, we are talking monthly exchange 

2 on this film. And again, when the TBD revision was 

3 prepared, we were working from paperwork that 

4 provided a dose of record. So, in other words, 

5 when it is printed on the back that we are getting 

6 monthly exchange results and the stated limit of 

7 detection is 10 millirem from the vendor, that is 

8 the weight in our mind. To go away from that value, 

9 why and where -- all the technical reasons being 

10 brought up here, we certainly are all aware of them. 

11 Given the frequency of exchange, the 10 millirem 

12 seems to be a valid number.

13 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, I don't think the 

14 frequency of exchange is the primary issue. The 

15 primary issue is you are dealing with the fact that 

16 the amount of density produced by a high-energy 

17 photon is right on the limit of resolution 

18 densitometer. And you have got the age of the 

19 batch of film, not just on a monthly exchange. 

20 When Landauer bought film, they didn't 

21 buy it once a month and have it freshly made every 
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1 month by Kodak. So, they would buy a batch of film 

2 that would last, say, four to six months and when 

3 they first sort of QC'd that batch, they would pull 

4 out of the batch enough film to run all of the 

5 laboratory processes they need, such as making 

6 blanks and calibrates and quality controls, spikes 

7 if you will, that pull all those aside. And so, 

8 as far as possible, the badges that we used to 

9 calibrate a given batch of film when it was 

10 processed were matched in age and every aspect to 

11 the film that went out to the site. Nonetheless, 

12 over time, the fog level is naturally rising on both 

13 the film that left the facility and the film that 

14 stayed behind to be the controls.

15 So, I think that is one of the issues. 

16 The monthly wear period is not really relevant one 

17 way or the other.

18 DR. NETON: I'm still having trouble, 

19 Joe, reconciling what you are saying. They 

20 calibrated badges with cobalt-60, some high-energy 

21 gamma, and then they calculated a detection limit 
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1 using that high-energy gamma and that is what they 

2 quoted on their reports.

3 MR. ZLOTNICKI: No.

4 DR. NETON: And you are saying that 

5 number is incorrect.

6 MR. ZLOTNICKI: That number is 

7 incorrect for high energy. They quoted a number 

8 that was more typical for most of the customers who 

9 were working with X-ray or lower energies, 

10 iridium-192, americium, X-ray, hospital X-ray. 

11 Of all the different things that were handled, only 

12 a small proportion of handling were in a 

13 high-energy environment and that 10 millirem was 

14 quoted as sort of an -- for want of a better word, 

15 an average of what could be seen.

16 DR. NETON: Well, I think --

17 MR. DARNELL: If I can jump in here for 

18 a second. The paper that you sent is not really 

19 saying the things that you are talking about right 

20 now. Do you have references for us that we can go 

21 back and look at that back up what you are telling 
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1 us?

2 MR. ZLOTNICKI: I have my 

3 conversations. I don't know how many of you know 

4 Dr. Yoder, Craig Yoder, who was responsible for the 

5 technical program at Landauer for probably 30-odd 

6 years and who set up the DOELAP standard at Battelle 

7 prior to his work at Landauer. And this is based 

8 on many conversations I have had with Craig 

9 regarding this. I have put some of them in 

10 writing. And I think that the problem is Landauer 

11 were claiming something that was a bit of a stretch. 

12 That is not to put too fine a point on it.

13 MR. DARNELL: Well, I understand that 

14 and I understand what you are saying. And I 

15 appreciate your opinion but that is what we have 

16 is an opinion.

17 MR. ZLOTNICKI: And I think that is 

18 exactly --

19 MR. DARNELL: NIOSH cannot provide 

20 just an opinion and say that is the way it is. You 

21 have to provide documentation, too. And what I am 
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1 asking you for is where is this documented so we 

2 can go back and look at it.

3 And personally, I have no problem at all 

4 changing the LOD if we need to change the LOD. But 

5 right now, what I see in references is that the LOD 

6 should remain at 10. I'm just not seeing where you 

7 are coming from in a document, in a record, in 

8 something.

9 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, you are asking 

10 for someone to document something that won't have 

11 been documented because they were claiming a limit 

12 of detection that was too good. So, they are not 

13 going to document it the other way. So, you are 

14 asking for something that has to be opinion, not 

15 necessarily mine, but it has to be opinion. 

16 Because you are asking for someone to have 

17 documented something and then found something 

18 different. They are not going to have done that.

19 But I can tell you I have discussed this 

20 with Craig Yoder at length and I think some of you 

21 know Craig Yoder well. And I am not saying 
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1 anything out of school that he wouldn't agree with. 

2 But trying to craft something in writing about 

3 this, I mean we will have to talk about it. It's 

4 pretty tricky.

5 DR. NETON: Well, yes, I understand 

6 what you are saying. Joe, there is a lot of 

7 technology involved here with some filtration and 

8 such and the customers' needs. I understand what 

9 you are saying and how it over-responds. 

10 Unfiltered film will definitely respond due to 

11 low-energy photons because of the predominance of 

12 the photoelectric effect. I understand that.

13 But I believe we discussed this a while 

14 ago with Craig Yoder and I think we have an SRDB 

15 document where he suggested that the sensitivity 

16 of these TLDs was about 3 millirem to X-rays.

17 MR. ZLOTNICKI: TLDs?

18 DR. NETON: Kind of the opposite from 

19 what you are saying.

20 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Are we 

21 talking about the film or TLDs?
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1 DR. NETON: Film. I'm sorry.

2 MR. ZLOTNICKI: For X-rays, that is 

3 exactly right.

4 DR. NETON: Well, that's not what you 

5 are saying. You said it would be 10 millirem for 

6 X-rays and --

7 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Oh, it's an average.

8 DR. NETON: Well, is it 3 or 10 for 

9 X-rays?

10 MR. ZLOTNICKI: I tried to pick one 

11 number. It was more sensitive for the X-rays, less 

12 sensitive for the high-energy. Often, people are 

13 exposed to multiple spectra, not just one. And it 

14 is a real world and a commercial business and a 

15 number was picked.

16 DR. NETON: But if it is 3 millirem for 

17 X-rays, then it is probably okay to say it is 10 

18 millirems for photons or both, but higher in 

19 photons.

20 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, what is your 

21 evidence for that?
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1 DR. NETON: We have an email here from 

2 Craig Yoder in 2005 that says that.

3 MR. ZLOTNICKI: That said what?

4 DR. NETON: I'm quoting his email. 

5 For X-rays, the LOD was typically about 3 

6 milliroentgen or millirem as film is very sensitive 

7 to X-rays.

8 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Yes, that is true but 

9 it is more than three times more sensitive to X-rays 

10 than high-energy gamma.

11 DR. NETON: But you just said about 

12 five minutes ago that it was 10 millirem for X-rays 

13 is what they quoted on their report.

14 MR. ZLOTNICKI: They quoted it for 

15 everything. It just said 10 millirem.

16 DR. NETON: And you said that was for 

17 X-rays.

18 MR. ZLOTNICKI: And gammas. The whole 

19 point is it wasn't segregated. It was for beta, 

20 it was for neutron. It was for other things.

21 DR. NETON: I'm having trouble 
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1 following the logic of your argument, Joe, 

2 honestly. It is like I understand that it is less 

3 sensitive at higher energy but if they calibrate 

4 it to a high-energy --

5 MR. ZLOTNICKI: No, don't confuse the 

6 calibration with the limit of detection. They are 

7 two different things.

8 If I calibrate at one rem, the limit of 

9 detection never comes into the picture.

10 DR. NETON: What?

11 MR. ZLOTNICKI: If I only calibrate it 

12 at high doses, the limit of detection is a separate 

13 issue.

14 DR. NETON: No, no, no, no. When you 

15 calculate a detection limit, it is your efficiency 

16 of the device that is measuring it and you include 

17 your background in there.

18 The variability of the background, 

19 folded in with the efficiency of detection, and 

20 that can be done at a very high level, that is very 

21 standard in calibrating an instrument. You don't 
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1 calculate your limit of detection by reducing your 

2 exposure until you can't see it anymore. That is 

3 just not the way it is done.

4 You don't expose something to 10 

5 milliroentgen and say, oh, there is my signal, and 

6 you go 5. It is a calculation. It is an 

7 empirically derived calculation. That is how it 

8 is normally -- that is how it is done.

9 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well yes, you are right 

10 that it is a calculation and that you don't go and 

11 go to a lower and lower dose until you can't see 

12 it. However, as you know, it is a system. There 

13 is a densitometer involved. There is a film 

14 involved. There is subtraction of one number from 

15 another number. It is a lot more complex than you 

16 are portraying it.

17 And the bottom line was that there was 

18 one number for 30 or 40 years, 10 millirem as the 

19 limit of detection. As you know, it will have 

20 changed with every batch of film and every time it 

21 was processed. But they didn't report a different 
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1 limit of detection every time. That was a 

2 commercial number that was put out there and that 

3 is, I guess, what I am trying to tell you.

4 DR. NETON: I guess I kind of follow 

5 Pete here. I'm not following the logic of your 

6 discussion in your memo, then, that because it was 

7 higher energy it can't be 10 millirem. 

8 We established that the film is much 

9 more sensitive to X-rays and it could be around 

10 three and it is going to be maybe three times 

11 higher, ten for high-energy photons.

12 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Where did you get a 

13 factor of three from? You just threw out a factor 

14 of three.

15 DR. NETON: I'm just saying that is 

16 what Landauer said that their detection limit is 

17 for their device. It doesn't qualify it and say 

18 this is only valid for low-energy X-rays.

19 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, you should 

20 quibble with Landauer about that.

21 DR. NETON: What are you saying, the 
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1 detection limit Landauer reported for decades is 

2 wrong?

3 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Yes, I am saying that.

4 DR. NETON: Okay.

5 MR. ZLOTNICKI: It is not wrong. It is 

6 a summary. It doesn't go into the details.

7 MEMBER FIELD: Jim, this is Bill. It 

8 seems like this isn't going to be resolved easily. 

9 Is there any way to have a conference call with 

10 Craig and try to get some more information or some 

11 sort of technical basis?

12 DR. NETON: Well, like I said, we have 

13 already discussed this with Craig Yoder in 2005. 

14 And he went through the whole process in the limits 

15 of detection. I haven't read it in a long time but

16 I do recall this low-energy X-ray response of 3 

17 millirem.

18 MEMBER FIELD: Well, it seems like it 

19 doesn't just affect this site but obviously --

20 DR. NETON: Yes, that is one of my 

21 problems is that everything that is reported on 
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1 Landauer badges is now being questioned and I'm not 

2 sure --

3 MR. ZLOTNICKI: No, no one is saying 

4 everything.

5 DR. NETON: Well, every badge that --

6 MR. ZLOTNICKI: There was something on 

7 the back of the report that was generic for all 

8 situations, okay, and that was 10 millirem. And 

9 again, remember who was mostly using these badges. 

10 Okay? It is someone in a hospital, or a dental 

11 office, or a facility that knows nothing about 

12 radiation. They don't have a Radiation Safety 

13 Officer, in many cases. They don't have a health 

14 physicist and they need a simple number. It was 

15 commercial service.

16 So, I wouldn't say everything was 

17 incorrect. Far from it. I think everything was 

18 excellent. This was a touchy subject where for a 

19 pure high-energy spectrum, it was pushing it to say 

20 you can see 10 millirem.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Well, I agree 
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1 with Bill. We need to perhaps step back from this 

2 and solve it some way so we can move on with this 

3 particular meeting. It doesn't sound like we are 

4 going to solve it.

5 DR. MAURO: John, this is John Mauro. 

6 In listening to the conversation, there are really 

7 two aspects to this. And it sounded like there was 

8 a little uncertainty on what the spectrum was. 

9 I heard some of the discussion that the 

10 fuel, naked fuel itself, may have an energy 

11 spectrum that includes fairly low, abundant 

12 low-energy photons. And of course, as the device 

13 that is being manufactured is assembled and there 

14 is shielding involved, which would harden the 

15 spectrum. And I guess I did not hear a clear 

16 picture of the workers that worked at Pinellas 

17 involved in the manufacture, I guess, of these 

18 generators what they were exposed to. Were they 

19 exposed, in some stages, to the naked fuel and other 

20 stages to the assembled --

21 MR. STIVER: John, if you look at 
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1 Figure 4-8 from the NASA report, it shows you what 

2 the emission rate was at the surface or some 

3 distance from the RTG compared to what was emitted 

4 in the fuel. And about 90 percent or more is above 

5 500 keV. So, that gives you an idea of what the 

6 filtration was or the amount of transmission.

7 DR. MAURO: From the assembled device.

8 MR. STIVER: From the assembled 

9 device.

10 DR. MAURO: But while you are making 

11 it, the workers might be exposed --

12 MR. STIVER: They aren't making it.

13 DR. MAURO: Oh, they are not making it. 

14 Okay, that was what I did not understand.

15 MR. STIVER: The fuel elements arrived 

16 triple-encapsulated.

17 DR. MAURO: Oh.

18 MR. STIVER: And they were already 

19 heavily shielded when they were installed in the 

20 RTGs.

21 DR. MAURO: Thank you. I will set 
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1 aside this point. I didn't know that.

2 MR. STIVER: Yes, thank you. I am kind 

3 of of the same opinion as Bill. I think for this 

4 to be resolved maybe we need to get Craig Yoder and 

5 Joe and Jim and the players on a teleconference, 

6 a technical call and kind of hash this out and try 

7 to come to some resolution because we are not going 

8 to do it today, obviously.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: So we table 

10 this. Can you guys work out a situation where you 

11 can have this meeting of the minds?

12 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Sure.

13 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.

14 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Well, I can't speak for 

15 Craig's availability but I will certainly try to 

16 get a hold of him.

17 MR. STIVER: Okay, see what you can do, 

18 Joe, and then we can notify NIOSH and Ted to go ahead 

19 and set up the call and we can, hopefully, resolve 

20 this.

21 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Okay.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay, so we 

2 are down to the last item, then. And this is the 

3 decontamination/decommissioning at Pinellas.

4 MR. STIVER: Yes, this one, I think, is 

5 going to go a lot less contentious than the 

6 previous.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Are you going 

8 to do this one, John?

9 Open Issues Matrix Item 6

10 MR. STIVER: Yes, I can just give you 

11 where we are on this and then maybe Pete can -- he 

12 provided a response and wanted to talk to it.

13 But at the November 2012 Work Group 

14 meeting, we talked about some of the interviewees 

15 that we had spoken with previous in the year, I 

16 think we did those back in January 2012, and a very 

17 knowledgeable subject matter expert who was 

18 employed there during the D&D phase.

19 Yes, all the contract workers as well 

20 as the Pinellas workers were monitored before, 

21 during and after D&D. And then the question 
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1 arises, well do you have that data. Has it already 

2 been captured? And Pete indicated, at the time, 

3 that we had had a request to the Albuquerque office 

4 to retrieve those data. And he wasn't, correct me 

5 if I am wrong, Pete, at the time he wasn't sure 

6 whether it had been updated in the site DB. And 

7 his response indicates that they had done a very 

8 thorough review and had captured just about 

9 everything they possibly can. Maybe there were a 

10 couple of finding requests to DOE Legacy.

11 Pete, maybe you want to jump in.

12 MR. DARNELL: Yes, the only thing I 

13 would have to add to that is NIOSH feels we have 

14 done the records search. So, I don't think we are 

15 going to go out again unless we hear back from 

16 Sandia National Laboratories, who has the records, 

17 that we didn't capture something. Right now they 

18 are working on a finding aid for us so that we make 

19 sure we did capture.

20 I received an update yesterday 

21 regarding the release of that finding aid and it 
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1 is still under review by Sandia's export control 

2 and it is not going to be for another two weeks or 

3 so, the way they put it. We are still waiting on 

4 that finding aid but, in the meantime, in our 

5 response I provided what we did have, what we have 

6 looked at, all the SRDB references that we have 

7 regarding it. And that is just kind of where it 

8 sits.

9 MR. STIVER: Okay. I am kind of the 

10 mind that there is really not much more to be done 

11 on this. It looks like everything has been 

12 captured. I would maybe recommend keeping it in 

13 abeyance until you get those finding aids and have 

14 a chance to look at them.

15 MR. DARNELL: Certainly, I would agree 

16 with that. I think the issue itself is probably 

17 closed. We are just, as with anything, if we find 

18 anything else new, we would put it into the 

19 documentation that need it.

20 MR. STIVER: Yes, I am basically in 

21 agreement with that.
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1 So, moving forward then, do we need a 

2 motion to put this into abeyance pending the 

3 retrieval of those finding aids?

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: So, John, this is 

5 Brad. You are telling us, I guess, from what I have 

6 gathered from you that you have done everything you 

7 can until you can go check out those leads?

8 MR. STIVER: Yes, that is the only 

9 outstanding -- I don't know if it's really 

10 outstanding, basically the only end that hasn't 

11 been tied up, yes, is just to check those finding 

12 aids. If there is anything, then they can retrieve 

13 that. If not, I think that is as far as it can go 

14 with it.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: So, I don't see there 

16 is anything more than we can do. Just put it in 

17 abeyance until we get that taken care of and then 

18 we can close it.

19 MR. STIVER: That's fine with me.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Anything else? John 

21 Poston, I guess, does that sound right? Mute.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, I'm with 

2 that. I was just trying to -- sorry, Brad, I got 

3 your disease.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: That's why I threw out 

6 mute.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, I'm 

8 happy with that. Bill, how do you feel about it?

9 MEMBER FIELD: I would totally agree.

10 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Alright. I 

11 did have one question. We are supposed to think 

12 about the path forward. Before we do that, I would 

13 like to go back to number 5 and satisfy my 

14 curiosity. Exactly what kind of film was this? I 

15 know it is X-ray film but who made it? Is it 

16 Eastman Kodak, DuPont, who?

17 MR. ZLOTNICKI: This was Kodak film.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Kodak?

19 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Yes, this was Kodak 

20 film. It is manufactured specifically for 

21 personnel dosimetry. So, it is similar to the 
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1 normal film used for medical X-rays. They 

2 actually had a separate production run. I think 

3 it had even more silver in it of this material.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.

5 MR. ZLOTNICKI: And you know for a long 

6 time, there was a close relationship between 

7 Landauer and Kodak, going back a long time. And 

8 I think prior to that, there was a period when it 

9 was, I'm not certain of this, but I think it may 

10 have been DuPont in the very early days. But it 

11 was Kodak film.

12 Other people used the same film but 

13 Landauer bought it unpackaged and then would cut 

14 it up and package it in their own packaging. Kodak 

15 would also sort of package it in an identical 

16 packet, for example, that you are probably familiar 

17 with that many people wore in a personnel 

18 dosimeter. 

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: So, it is a 

20 standard packet?

21 MR. ZLOTNICKI: It was -- no, what 
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1 Landauer used was not in the standard packet. 

2 Well, if you go back early enough in Landauer's 

3 days, it was, but for a very long period of time, 

4 Landauer did their own packaging, which allowed 

5 some benefits in doing it like that.

6 It turned out when the film was left on 

7 the roll, unpackaged and in cold storage, it tended 

8 to fog more slowly. So, there was some advantage 

9 to working with it in bulk, in terms of the lifetime 

10 of the film.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Sure. What 

12 kind of filters did you use, any?

13 MR. ZLOTNICKI: Oh, yes, for sure there 

14 were filters. There was an aluminum and a lead and 

15 the plastic and the open window of course.

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay.

17 MR. ZLOTNICKI: I would say all of that 

18 was fairly normal, perhaps with the exception that 

19 there was one or two of those filters were U-shaped, 

20 so it is radiation coming from one of the edges, 

21 which is always a problem in a low-energy 
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1 environment, that the X-rays bypass the filter.

2 Path Forward

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes. Okay, 

4 thank you. I just wanted to understand a little 

5 bit better what is going on.

6 So, basically, we have completed the 

7 agenda. We are going to have more discussion on 

8 Item 5, probably involving Craig Yoder and others. 

9 And then we are going to put 6 in 

10 abeyance. Do we have -- is there a timeline or a 

11 date that we can reconsider or we will have more 

12 to discuss? What would you say there, Pete or 

13 John, or whomever?

14 MR. DARNELL: I think with today's 

15 meeting, we are finished with the tritium, finished 

16 with Issue 6, just waiting that finding aid. We 

17 need to do the tech call on dosimetry.

18 But just in preparation for that, I 

19 found the Site Research Database reference for the 

20 email that Jim was talking about with the Craig 

21 Yoder dosimetry LOD and his discussion of it. It 
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156

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1 is SRDB reference 19707. And it talks about 3 

2 millirem and 10 millirem. I would just like you 

3 guys to take a look at it before we decide to do 

4 a tech call.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay. Is 

6 there anything else we need to talk about in this 

7 call?

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, this is Ted. So, I 

9 just think it would probably be helpful 

10 provisionally to try to calendar, since you are all 

11 on the call right now, rather than having to send 

12 out and get agreement about scheduling down the 

13 road, which takes a lot more trouble. 

14 Let's just go ahead and book. It will 

15 be a very brief teleconference. So, it should be 

16 easy to book. But let's just book it for 

17 relatively close to the Board meeting, which will 

18 allow time for technical calls, who needs to be on, 

19 or what have you for parties to be ready.

20 I was going to suggest we push it out 

21 pretty close to the Board meeting, that way we are 
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157

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1 most likely to be able to accomplish whatever we 

2 are going to accomplish on this issue.

3 So for example, the week of March 7th 

4 might be -- if there is a date during that week that 

5 works for all three of you Board Members and of 

6 course the staff, too. The 7th is Monday. So, 

7 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th.

8 MEMBER FIELD: Monday and Tuesday are 

9 booked for me but, otherwise, pretty open.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay, so how about March 

11 9th?

12 MEMBER FIELD: That works for me.

13 MR. ZLOTNICKI: This is Joe. I'm tied 

14 up in the morning. I can make the afternoon or in 

15 fact that March 9th morning is the only time I can't 

16 make it that week.

17 MR. KATZ: That's fine. So, how about 

18 a 1:00 p.m. on March 9th?

19 DR. NETON: Ted, I'm out of the office 

20 on March 9th.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay, how about the 10th?
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1 DR. NETON: The 10th, I'm here.

2 MR. KATZ: So how about March 10th in 

3 the morning or afternoon? Does anybody care?

4 DR. NETON: Either one for me.

5 MEMBER FIELD: Either.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, March 

7 10th works for me. I have got an 8:00 class but 

8 I am through at 9:15. So, the rest of the day is 

9 free.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay, so 9:15 yours is 10:15 

11 our time.

12 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Right.

13 MR. KATZ: What about we say -- it is 

14 not going to be a lot of time. Whatever you guys 

15 learn, I'm sure. So how about 11:00 a.m. Eastern 

16 Time? That gives you time, John, to get back to 

17 your office or whatever.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Yes, that 

19 will be fine. I'll put that in my calendar right 

20 now.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay, 11:00 a.m. on March 
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1 10th teleconference.

2 MR. DARNELL: Are you going to send out 

3 a meeting notice and call-in number?

4 MR. KATZ: I will absolutely send out 

5 a notice.

6 MR. DARNELL: Okay.

7 MR. KATZ: As long as that works for 

8 everybody, that's good.

9 Okay, then. And I think regardless of 

10 how this works out, I think the Work Group can still 

11 report to the Board. Whether they have an item 

12 hanging out there or not, they can report about it 

13 either way.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Okay, that 

15 works for me.

16 MEMBER FIELD: Sounds good.

17 MR. KATZ: Well, thank you, everybody.

18 We're adjourned, right?

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN POSTON: Anything 

20 else?

21 (No response.)
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1 Alright, guys, thank you so much and 

2 have a good rest of the day and rest of the week.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

4 was concluded at 4:11 p.m.)