NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Metals & Controls Corporation Work Group

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

The Work Group convened in the Montreal Room of 

the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, 

Hebron, Kentucky, at 8:30 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding.
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Present: 

Josie Beach, Chair

Henry Anderson, Member*

David Kotelchuck, Member*

Loretta R. Valerio, Member* 

Also Present: 

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Nancy Adams, Niosh Contractor*

Bob Anigstein, SC&A*

Christine Corwin, DCAS

Pete Darnell, DCAS

Michael Elliott*

Rose Gogliotti, SC&A

Jenny Lin Naylor, HHS*

John Mauro, SC&A

Pat Mccloskey, ORAU Team

Jim Neton, DCAS

Mutty Sharfi, ORAU Team

John Stiver, SC&A*

*via Telephone
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Contents

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health Metals & Controls 

Corporation Work Group Tuesday, November 20, 

2018 1

Welcome/Roll Call 4

NIOSH Status Brief 5

SC&A Review of NIOSH Subsurface Exposure 

Model White Paper 6

NIOSH Maintenance Worker Exposure Model 

White Paper 9

Status of Any Remaining SEC Issues 48

Petitioner's Comments & Questions 106

Action Items, Path Forward, Meeting Plans 118

Adjourn 129
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Proceedings

(8:32 a.m.)

Welcome/Roll Call

Mr. Katz: Welcome, everyone, in the room and on the 

line. This is the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health. This is the Metals and Controls Work 

Group and we're ready to get started.

This is site-specific work. So we're going to, please 

everyone but the Board Members we'll need to speak 

to conflict of interest. The Board Members don't have 

conflicts with the site that they serve on the Work 

Group so they don't need to do that.

And we have Josie Beach the Chair here in the room. 

And I've already heard, we have Dr. Kotelchuck and 

Ms. Valerio on the line. Henry, Andy, are you on the 

line too, Anderson?

Member Anderson: Yes, I am.

Mr. Katz: Super. So those are all of our Members all 

present. And let's go on then to the NIOSH ORAU 

group in the room first. You guys.

(Roll call.)

Mr. Katz: Okay, then. Just a few administrative 

things. Please everyone mute your phones who are 

on by phone. Press *6 to mute your phone if you 

don't have a mute button and press *6 to come off 

of mute.

But that will help the audio for yourselves and for 

everyone else. And please don't put the call on hold 

at any point because that makes a mess of things. 

And then --

Member Anderson: Is the Skype on?

Mr. Katz: Excuse me.
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Member Anderson: Is Skype on so we can see slides?

Mr. Katz: I don't think Skype is on, no.

Chair Beach: No.

Member Anderson: Okay. I just wanted to be sure 

because I don't see anything.

Mr. Katz: No, right. You shouldn't be seeing 

anything then.

Member Anderson: Okay, that's good.

Chair Beach: I think there was only one slide and 

that was John's but it pretty much follows his --

Mr. Katz: Yes, I distributed that.

Member Anderson: Okay.

Mr. Katz: And I don't know whether that got to you, 

Mike. But, Mike, did you receive anything in the last 

day?

Mr. Elliott: No, I did not. I'm sorry.

NIOSH Status Brief

Mr. Katz: Okay, okay. Well so, Mike, let me just say 

a couple things. There's, SC&A has done a lot of work 

in a very short time and will be presenting that today.

Their report wasn't completely finished so it's not out. 

So you don't have it. But you will get it shortly after 

this meeting. You can listen on and of course then 

when you get it you can respond to that too.

But you should be getting that pretty shortly after 

this meeting. So just to let you know. And then the 

slides that we're talking about are just text slides that 

summarize that report and you should be able to get 

that even sooner.

I sent that to be sent to you. But I guess that hasn't 

gotten there yet. Okay. And then the agenda and 
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so on are on the NIOSH website under the calendar 

meetings today's date.

Okay, then. So I will turn it over to you, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay, thank you. And first of all I want 

to thank Rose for updating the BRS. We were briefly 

talking about it. It's nice to go in and see that Pete 

has put some stuff in, you've put some, anyway it's 

nice to see that and we can track it.

And I know you'll keep that up after each of our 

meetings. I think the two documents we're really 

focused on today are the October 24th. That kind of 

ties in a lot of the SEC issues that we started 

discussing.

And then SC&A's paper that is not out, as Ted just 

mentioned, but we'll discuss at this meeting and that 

will be out shortly. And I believe, Pat, are you going 

to give the brief, the NIOSH brief before and then 

SC&A is going to take over?

Mr. McCloskey: That's the plan.

Chair Beach: Okay, well we'll let you go ahead and 

get started.

SC&A Review of NIOSH Subsurface Exposure Model 

White Paper

Mr. McCloskey: Okay, good morning, everyone. So 

NIOSH presented the initial ER to the Board last year, 

2017 in August.

At that Board meeting at the conclusion of our 

presentation the Petitioner, Michael Elliott presented 

some of his concerns about how we may have missed 

the boat on a few types of exposures that occurred

at Metals & Controls.

So in response to that we visited the Metals & 

Controls area and interviewed some subject matter 

experts and some former workers there, got some 
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input and went to work adding some more models to 

the ER. And we put those initially into White Papers 

that are on the website at the moment.

So, and at that same meeting the Board gave SC&A 

an opportunity to work on the ER and come up with 

some comments about our work there. And let's see, 

their report, SC&A's report came out in February of 

this year, 2018.

And it discussed the subsurface work that was done 

digging in the soils within Building 10 at Metals & 

Controls and also subsurface work in the outdoor 

areas.

And also they introduced some of the, they discussed 

some of the other types of maintenance work that 

occurred in those controls such as HVAC 

maintenance, penetrations of the roof, work on the 

roof up on the ceiling area.

So after that in April we came out with our first White 

Paper. It's on the website. It's called the Metals & 

Controls Corporation Subsurface Exposure Model.

In that paper we delved into the subsurface model 

specifically. Didn't touch on any of the other 

maintenance type activities, just the subsurface 

model.

That was only released to SC&A and the Work Group 

and the Petitioners and put on the website right 

before our May Work Group meeting. We had a Work 

Group meeting for this site.

And so there wasn't much of an opportunity for many 

to look at that. But the Petitioner again was able to 

present in May that there were still those concerns 

about the HVAC maintenance and the roof 

penetration work, the work up in the overhead.

So went to work right away after the May meeting 

trying to also address those types of maintenance 

exposures. And let's see, those, that additional type 
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of maintenance work is in our latest White Paper 

which is on the website and which I will speak from 

this morning.

It's titled Metals & Controls Corporation Maintenance 

Worker Exposure Model. So I'll just page through 

there.

Chair Beach: That's your October?

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, dated October 24, 2018.

Chair Beach: Can I stop you before you get to that?

Mr. McCloskey: Sure.

Chair Beach: I might have missed it. But there were 

two papers that came out right after the last Board 

meeting. I know Ted asked John to put his thoughts 

down after the public comment period.

And so he sent, put out a paper September 17th and 

then NIOSH answered that on the 18th. Those two 

papers, those are all --

Mr. McCloskey: Memos?

Chair Beach: They're memos. We're not, and 

everything, all the stuff that's in those are covered 

now in that October 24th, is that correct? So those 

two pages are kind of --

Mr. McCloskey: I think so, Josie.

Chair Beach: Because we've never discussed those 

two papers. So I wanted to make sure that they're -

-

Mr. McCloskey: No, I'm pretty sure that they are all 

covered in this October 24th, our latest maintenance 

work disclosure model.

Chair Beach: And then John's November paper. Is 

that correct?
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Mr. McCloskey: That's not to say that there aren't 

some concerns that we're going to hear about from 

SC&A and others.

Chair Beach: Okay. So I just didn't want those two 

to be involved because they just came out and we 

haven't discussed them.

Mr. Darnell: In writing the memo in August or, 

excuse me, in September I went basically back and 

forth to make sure everything that was in their memo 

was covered in our memo and also had covered the 

latest issues matrix that we put out a month before.

Chair Beach: Okay, because those two aren't really 

on the agenda to talk about and they are memos that 

are part of this. So, okay.

Mr. Darnell: Those went out to make sure that you 

guys knew the technical change that was going back 

and forth.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: To add to that, I've been operating on 

the premise that the precursor documents were all 

subsumed within the latest round of documents. 

Although I have to say I didn't go line by then to see 

if anything is missing.

If anyone has noticed that there is some material in 

the precursor documents that we did not address in 

the, what I would say the final of the October 24th 

deliverable and SC&A's November deliverable that 

should be brought to our attention because that 

means there's a hole.

But I don't think that's the case. But we can certainly 

confirm that.

Chair Beach: Just wanted to make sure.

NIOSH Maintenance Worker Exposure Model White 
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Paper

Mr. McCloskey: Glad to do that, Josie. Okay, moving 

on to the, I'm going to page through the Metals & 

Controls Corporation Maintenance Worker Exposure 

Model White Paper dated October 24, 2018.

The first type of maintenance work exposure that we 

modeled in this paper starts on Page 3 and it's the 

Building 10 HVAC maintenance. If you remember I 

just said that SC&A's report came out in February of 

this year.

And in there they delved into this HVAC maintenance 

work first and they took three cracks at it. They had 

three different models presented in their paper.

And by the time you let a team of good health 

physicists like them chose three models they're going 

to have one of the best ones picked. So what we did 

is we just took one of their models and recreated it 

here in our paper and used it pretty much verbatim, 

wouldn't you say.

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes. And so I'll just talk about the 

HVAC work. Workers were required to maintain the 

Building 10 HVAC system. That system handled air 

that potentially contained suspended contaminants 

generated during AWE operations.

So we talked to some of the workers at Metal & 

Controls and there's a pool of maintenance workers 

that would have been drawn upon to do a myriad of 

duties. The same pool would have been selected to 

do some subsurface digging.

They would have been selected to go up into the 

overhead and do some roof penetrations. They 

would, some of them would even be selected to do 

the HVAC maintenance.

So that's who we're calling the maintenance worker. 
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The dust that would be collected in the HVAC units 

was resuspended dust that was partially there from 

former AWE operations.

So the model, what it does is it says that we used the 

survey data from the end of AWE operations and we 

generated a 50th percentile of that survey data and, 

mostly SC&A did this. But and then we resuspend 

that contamination and we allow for the HVAC system 

to collect it on their filters.

And then we say that workers would go into these 

HVAC systems were large, you know, maybe ten foot 

by ten foot would be a picture you could use where 

someone could walk inside of this thing and change 

out a group of filters.

And, you know, they desired to go in there quarterly 

and do that but they didn't often get in there that 

often and sometimes these filters, as you can 

imagine if you've changed the filters on your furnace 

they get pretty dusty.

And we used a very high dust loading factor to allow 

for that saturated filter to even crumble and go 

airborne into the worker's face. So these workers, 

this pool of maintenance workers did not just replace 

the filters in Building 10.

They would also be selected to go to all the buildings 

on site and do this. But Building 10 is the building 

that we're concerned with.

And so let's see, we've got the geometric mean 

survey data. We suspend it. We collect it on the air 

filters and then we use a high dust loading to put that 

in the breathing under the worker.

And we allow an occupancy of one hour per year for 

filter change out. And John Mauro talked about this 

during the May Work Group meeting. You could say 

it took longer to do this filter change out.

You could say it took three hours, if you do that. But 
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then which would mean that you came in and did 

more frequent filter changes, change outs during a 

year so you came in three or four times a year. You 

would have more occupancy time inside of that HVAC 

unit.

But each time we went in the activity level deposited 

in the filter would be less, right, because there was 

less time for it to accumulate on the filter, right. So 

that's where --

Chair Beach: So that was like 1,000 or 1,300 filters 

I know and you said you're not worried, that was 

overall the whole site. That was from worker 

testimony that said that's how many filters there 

were. How many in Building 10?

Mr. McCloskey: I don't have that in front of me.

Chair Beach: And I get what you're saying. You're 

giving it an hour at a higher rate.

But if it took longer, if they changed them more 

frequently, they were supposed to change them 

quarterly that you're still, it's still a model and you're 

still just guesstimating on who did what and when 

and how.

I know some of the workers stated that they did, 

because they didn't go in as frequently the filters 

typically did disintegrate. They cut holes into the 

filters to go up in there to vacuum and sometimes 

they were vacuuming the foil. So anyway --

Dr. Mauro: Let me help out a little bit here because 

there's a trick, a short cut that we came up with that 

greatly simplified the problem and it all goes to the 

heart of the issue.

You know, picturing, you know, the Classic surface 

contamination on the surface, okay. And it 

resuspends, okay. And we know we have lots and 

lots and lots of data on contamination level on the 

ground, the surface of the building during the 
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residual period.

And in fact the original work that was done had that 

resuspended, I believe, at 10 to the minus 5 per 

meter. So you get an airborne concentration of the 

dust in terms of if I know the becquerels per meter 

squared I can get the becquerels per cubic meter.

So now I know the becquerels per cubic meter in the 

air, okay. And we know that it's those becquerels 

that are becoming airborne that are being swept up 

into the HVAC system.

That's where they end up. So now I know the 

becquerels and I assume well I'm going to let that go 

as chronic surface that is continually coming in.

And I could let that go on for a week, a month, six 

months or a year and if it's a long period of time 

you're just accumulating more and more becquerels, 

atoms on the filter, okay. It could be a big filter, 

small filter, this filter.

It doesn't matter because what we did and here's the 

trick. We said listen, but we also have a pretty good 

idea of what the airborne dust loading is in milligrams 

now.

So we have two pieces of information. We have 

becquerels per cubic meter and we have some 

estimate, and this is always discussable, you know,

we can vary it, of really micrograms per cubic meter.

So we've got becquerels per cubic meter in there. 

We've got micrograms per cubic meter. You put 

them together and you get becquerels per 

microgram.

Okay, now we have a very special magic, that's the 

magic number. We have becquerels per microgram 

of finely divided dust in the air, all right.

Well it's those becquerels per microgram that are 

being deposited on the filter. So all of a sudden we're 
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saying, okay, we put these many becquerels on the 

filter and we know the specific activity of those 

becquerels not even including the filter, just the 

becquerels per microgram of dust sitting on the filter.

When we looked at it we first said well listen, this 

stuff when it crumbles is going to become airborne. 

But that's going to dilute it because what you have is 

the becquerels per microgram which really is what's 

going on in the filter.

Now it's on the filter and if the filter crumbles what 

that does is dilutes the becquerels per microgram. It 

lowers the concentration.

So we say we're not going to go that route because 

that's too claimant, that pushes it toward claimant 

favorable. Let's make it different.

Let's assume the filter doesn't crumble which is 

believe it or not a better thing in terms of Matt getting 

a higher dose. We're going to say we know that we 

have a certain number of becquerels per microgram, 

okay, sitting on the filter.

And we pull the filter, okay, we're going to assume 

that you have a lot of that becquerels per microgram 

on the filter become airborne. Not a little bit, a lot.

And we said, there's a lot of history to this number. 

You really can't work in an environment where 

there's more than 100 milligrams per cubic meter.

We have enough publications, independent work that 

shows you get up there you can't really work very 

long in that area, okay. So we're saying, all right, 

let's assume then that whether it's once a quarter or 

once a half a year or once a year there's a guy that's 

going to go in there and he's going to be exposed to 

100 micrograms per cubic meter for an hour every 

time he changes out the filter

We used an hour, okay. And on that basis we said, 

okay, we calculated what would his inhalation rate in 
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terms of becquerels be because we know the 

becquerels per cubic meter now.

You're with me, because we know the becquerels per 

microgram and we know the micrograms per cubic 

meter and we get his inhalation rate. So now what 

we've done is we've bypassed the whole filter 

problem.

We just said we are putting this guy in a situation

where he's going to be inhaling these many 

becquerels in that our every time he changes out that 

filter. If he changes out the filter once a year he's 

going to inhale the becquerels that are per 

microgram, becquerels that have been loaded over 

the course of a year.

It turns out if he does it every half year it's going to 

be half that amount that has accumulated. So it's 

sort of a way that says it really can't be worse than 

that.

And the doses we're getting I think that this is the 

number right here 1.77 millirem per hour. I did not 

expect it to be that low, but that's what we came out.

And now, you know, we say what other assumptions 

could have been used that could increase that? 

Interestingly enough you could get a higher dose if 

you assumed a chronic airborne dust loading in the 

room is less than 200 micrograms per cubic meter.

Right now in this room it's about two micrograms per 

cubic meter, okay. We go in an occupational setting 

it goes up. And we did a lot of work and there's a lot 

of publications of 200 micrograms per cubic meter is 

a pretty good number.

But and I'm saying where's the vulnerability in this 

analysis. Well I could say that well if we lowered the 

mass dust loading from 200 chronic mass to let's say 

100 which would be a good number too, well what 

that would do is it would double that dose.
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So going, getting a lower mass dust loading increases 

the specific activity because you're putting the same 

becquerels on a lower amount of dust. It's sort of a 

brain teaser. I can see you got it. You got it.

And so where I'm headed with this is that I think the 

model mechanistically works then it becomes a 

matter of judgment on two factors. Really we know 

we have some things that we can hang our hat on.

We know the contamination on the surface. We know 

by using ten to the minus five per meter as a 

resuspension factor we're going to get a good high 

number of becquerels per cubic meter as your chronic 

long term dust loading in the air, okay.

And we, and then we say, okay, the other question 

here's where the judgments are made. Well what is 

the mass dust loading chronically in the air?

We picked 200. We could have picked 100. I don't 

think you go down to two because in a working 

environment it does not go to two. That's what it is 

in this room.

So we pick a number. So where I am on this is I 

think that we have the data because we have good 

swipe data. We have a resuspension factor which we 

could all agree on whether it's ten to the minus five 

or ten to the minus six.

You go with the ten to the minus five you're putting 

an upper bound on it, okay. And you have this mass 

dust loading 100, 200 micrograms per cubic meter. 

You pick it but it's in that kind of ballpark.

And once you're there you've got your estimate of 

the internal dose to the guy who is working in the 

HVAC system expressed in units of millirem per hour. 

And I think that it's a scientifically sound strategy.

But which number you pick in terms of resuspension 

factor, which number you pick in terms of airborne 

mass dust loading is a judgment call. So I considered 
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this to be a tractable problem just a matter of coming 

to agreement on what the best default assumptions 

are.

We picked the numbers we picked. And the most 

important thing here is we're talking about very small 

doses.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, you maximize a lot of the 

assumptions there because, for things we didn't 

know about we maximized. Good morning, Mutty.

Mr. Darnell: Yes, one other thing to remember is that 

we're not actually assigning dose per hour to the 

worker. So we don't expect the worker to remember 

I worked for six hours this month and this year on 

filters.

Any worker in that maintenance category, which 

includes many of those different occupational 

categories that we use, are assigned a full month of 

exposure for both HVAC and for the subsurface 

model.

So there's two months a year that every worker in 

the maintenance category gets higher exposure than 

the remainder of the year, the ten months. They get 

the rate that's assigned by the ER, right.

So even taking the, well to be fair two weeks, you've 

worked there for three days we don't care. We're 

going to give them 173 hours, 22 work days based in 

that stuff each year.

Mr. McCloskey: Are we ready to move on to 

subsurface?

Dr. Mauro: Something that you all just pointed out 

to me that I didn't emphasize enough. While the guy 

is changing the filter during the chronic time period 

while this stuff was always there we can go into 200 

micrograms.

But when he's changing the filter it's 100 milligrams. 
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That's because things get really dusty.

And so for that one hour or two hours, whatever time 

you want to pick, we picked an hour, that dust 

loading is way up there because it's important to 

make a distinction between those two numbers.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, that's an airborne level that 

people can't tolerate.

Member Kotelchuck: Dave, question. Where do you 

get the data for the gross alpha activity, the swipe 

samples? Where do you get it from and when?

Chair Beach: There were 82.

Dr. Mauro: No, there was a continuous 

characterization of the swipe data during operation. 

It's, during operations there was swipe data 

collected.

The degree to which it carried over I don't think that 

there was swipe data being collected for radiological 

purposes in the residual period because --

Mr. McCloskey: Not that we can use. It was for a 

different project that's not covered.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, so we, now you're going back in time 

now. But the Classic approach to doing residual 

period is you collect all the data you can at the end 

of the last year of AWE operations which sometimes 

includes air sampling data and sometimes includes 

swipe data.

And we had, I remember had lots and lots of swipe 

data. And the swipe data represents the activity 

that's on surfaces at the end of operation which 

means the beginning of the residual period, okay.

Now what you do is you say, okay, that's at the 

beginning. So that's the stuff that becomes airborne 

during the residual period and when you model the 

amount of that stuff that's on surfaces that becomes 
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airborne you use this thing called a resuspension 

factor.

And depending on the setting you could use a high 

resuspension factor or a low resuspension factor. We 

use the high, one that puts a lot of dust into the air 

so that's where, and there was an abundance of that 

swipe data.

So that's how, that's the rock we're standing on, that 

swipe data.

Member Kotelchuck: And the, and you let that, you 

keep that constant during the period or you --

Dr. Mauro: Yes, I think we did keep it. We did not 

do the .000. We kept on going constant the whole 

time.

Member Kotelchuck: That's what I thought, okay. All 

right, thanks.

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Chair Beach: So any other questions on, thanks, 

David, Loretta or Henry?

Member Anderson: No, I don't.

Member Valerio: No, I don't, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay, thanks. Pardon me, yes, back 

to Pat.

Mr. McCloskey: Okay. So continuing on in that White 

Paper on Page 7, actually, no. Let's go back to, yes, 

Page 5. The subsurface inside of Building 10.

So Building 10 is where the radioactive control work 

happened at Metals & Controls. And as the building 

aged they would have drainage problems.

Usually when it would rain the rain water would 

collect on the roof, go down into the roof drains down 

into pipes through the building and down into the 
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20

flooring to main trunk lines to leave the building. But 

for various reasons those sewer lines would get 

clogged.

Water would start coming up. You would see it on 

the floors inside of Building 10. I'm getting all of this 

from the interviews.

So it was necessary for this same pool of workers and 

maintenance workers to unclog these drains. People 

couldn't just slosh through puddles while they're 

working.

And so they would snake out the drains where they 

could bringing up sludge and occasionally need to 

break the concrete and go in and access the clay pipe 

sometimes, sometimes cast iron and replace them.

But the Petitioner, [identifying information 

redacted], not related to Michael Elliott who is on 

the phone they are both petitioners, is a good 

example of someone in the maintenance pool that 

would be drawn upon to go do a lot of these activities. 

In his affidavit he describes them.

But so we were pointed to this need to model the 

subsurface work and we got a document where the 

residues inside, the worst case, so they prioritized 

the drains inside of Building 10 in accordance with 

the amount of blockage or material that was inside of 

each pipe and the amount of radioactivity that was in 

each pipe.

And then they prioritized them priority one, two or 

three, priority one being the worst case drains. 

Those are pretty well characterized in a document 

known as Texas Instruments Incorporated Attleboro 

Facility Building Interiors Remediation Drainage 

System Characterization.

In the introduction to that document it says that the 

drainage system investigation was performed 

immediately after the Pilot-Scale Interiors 

Remediation Project and prior to the full-scale 
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Interiors Remediation Project.

An aggressive investigation schedule was 

implemented in support of NRC license termination 

and to assess the potential for inadvertent exposures 

to non-rad workers performing routine drainage 

system maintenance.

So that was the intent of this characterization to 

model exposures to maintenance workers is what

they were, what was said in the introduction to it. So 

we and SC&A used, relied upon this document largely 

to characterize the subsurface environment inside of 

Building 10.

And in our initial version of this model we used the 

50th percentile of the volumetric sample data taken 

from this characterization document. Because the 

discussions at the May meeting where Josie and 

others brought up the point about, you know, a lot of 

that sludge during the years was taken out of there.

By the time you go in to characterize it you're not 

maybe seeing the worst case contamination. So 

maybe the 50th percentile could miss some of it.

And John is, SC&A in their review of this model even 

mentioned that we substantially upgraded our model 

and we moved to using the 95th percentile to 

accommodate that. So we take the 95th percentile 

of those samples and, I guess I'm not following along 

with the White Paper.

I'll get to the calculations later. I just talked about 

those areas first. On Page 6 we talk about the 

subsurface areas outside of Building 10.

Chair Beach: Can I ask a question why you're -

Mr. McCloskey: I'll come back to the calculations 

later.

Chair Beach: -- on those priority?
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Mr. McCloskey: Sure.

Chair Beach: Because in Area 7 in your paper that 

you just referenced, is Area 7 a screen print room? 

Was that an area you couldn't use because there was 

one that was 100,000 dpm?

Mr. Darnell: They're two different measurements. 

The two thousand picocuries per gram is volumetric. 

The other room is this sort of an examination room. 

But so they would be used differently in the 

calculations.

Chair Beach: So this was just the reading on the pipe 

not the actual material. Is that what it was? I was 

just trying to understand that.

Mr. Darnell: I don't remember that one specifically. 

But if it was surface contamination level that would 

be used in a resuspension model and treated as dose.

Chair Beach: Okay, it was actually, yes, it removed 

15 feet of that line. So I was curious about that 

reading, okay.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, to model this we would have 

used just soil to model exposures to people that are 

digging in soils, not surface contamination. Okay.

The subsurface areas outside of Building 10, 

following along on Page 6. So primarily the Waste 

Burial Area is an area that the site was allowed to 

bury radioactive waste for a period of time between 

Buildings 12 and 11, I believe.

So, and also the area surrounding Building 10 we 

have volumetric sample data from there. The metals 

recovery area, all of these are referenced.

This a place where they would have burned some 

waste and recovered the precious metals or actually 

maybe the uranium after burning and recovered 

them. The Stockade Area, Outdoor Storage Area, the 

Railroad Spur Area and the Building 12 West and 
.

23

South Lawn Areas all provided us with volumetric 

sample data that we can use in our model.

Now we're talking about the bounding subsurface 

exposure model on Page 7. Let's see, so OTIB-70 

provides a way to do this to create a model with 

volumetric sample data.

It has some assumptions that we felt were not 

bounding for our model. So I'll talk to you about that. 

We have created, we have enhanced the model 

somewhat and went outside of OTIB-70 guidance.

Chair Beach: So you're not actually using OTIB-70 

or just parts of it?

Mr. McCloskey: Just parts of it. The guidance book 

of OTIB-70 but not the default assumptions that are 

in it.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: So the subsurface environment 

inside Building 10 is characterized with 20 sediment 

samples collected from the drainage systems in '95 

prior to remediation. They were analyzed for 

uranium with iso ID. They were compared on the 

spreadsheet where we calculated the geometric 

mean at 185.52 picocuries per gram. The GSD was 

9. And then we go on to say that drain system 

required frequent maintenance that included, during 

the residual period included the years prior to 

characterization.

And since this maintenance could have potentially 

removed sediments with the highest remaining 

concentration and made the GM value underconservative, NIOSH calculated the 95th percentile 

concentration of 6,887 picocuries per gram. So this 

is where we dramatically increased our model from 

our prior release of this using the 95th percentile.

Now let's talk about what we did on outside areas. 

We, the first version of this we used some math 
.

24

where we combined some averages and didn't use 

the raw data.

In this most recent iteration of this outside model we 

went back and pored through a FOIA document that 

had thousands of pages and we found all the raw data 

so that we could do a more mathematically sound 

model. And so --

Chair Beach: Wait, can you go back. What did you 

find, what document?

Mr. McCloskey: It was the raw data in a FOIA 

document that was --

Chair Beach: Okay, and that was, got you.

Mr. McCloskey: It's referenced here, Josie.

Chair Beach: No, I have it. I have it. I'm just trying 

to keep track of what you were using.

Mr. McCloskey: We did a faster approach the first 

time to get this out. But the second time we used a 

team of data entry folks and they spent a significant 

amount of time coming up with this model.

But it's more robust. And so we took -- used those 

samples from all those outside areas and it amounted 

to 2,391 soil samples collected prior to remediation.

Member Anderson: So those were all collected over 

just a couple of days?

Chair Beach: Is that the '82 or '83?

Mr. McCloskey: There were several reports written. 

So they would go and do each one of these areas as 

a separate project, mostly. So, you know, I can't say 

exactly how long it took to collect the samples though 

right now. I could look it up.

Member Anderson: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: So they were analyzed for gross 
.

25

alpha and 762 were analyzed for uranium and 

thorium using iso ID. So we had some of different 

categories.

And what you do is you, the gross alpha you can use 

in both the uranium model and thorium model. They 

can go either way. I'm just saying all the gross 

alphas or even uranium depending on which model 

you're creating, but the iso ID ones they specifically 

were, they belonged in the uranium and thorium 

model.

So you compound in a spreadsheet and for uranium 

we calculated geometric mean of 9.54 picocuries per 

gram, GSD of 4.61. Because again, we enhanced this 

model in the past we used, we would have stayed 

right there with that geometric mean.

But because maintenance over the years could have 

depleted some of the available radioactivity that have 

been sampled to accommodate that we moved to 

using the 95th percentile and came up with 117.86 

picocuries per gram that we used to bound the 

exposures.

So that's for uranium. And for thorium we have, we 

calculated a GM of 4.57, GSD of 6.02. Same scenario 

where we thought the GM might have been underconservative.

Substantially improved our model. Used the 95th 

percentile and came up with 87.55 picocuries per 

gram. So that's the sample data.

And what you do with OTIB-70 is you would combine 

that with a dust loading factor puts it up into the air. 

So you have your contamination. Now you need the 

dust loading to see how much goes airborne.

We felt like the OTIB-70 model was not 

representative of the progressive type of work that 

occurred during this subsurface work. So we looked 

at, elsewhere to see where someone had modeled 

excavation type work to see what kind of dust loading 
.

26

could be created from that work.

And there was a project done at the Mound facility 

that we felt was representative of the same type of 

excavation done at Metals & Controls. We are 

required to use -- what is the OTIB method?

Whenever we use surrogate data we have to use 

OCAS-IG-004 to validate that you can use, you know, 

a surrogate model and that it's viable, it's valid to use 

it at your site.

So the next few pages of this document talk about 

how the dust loading study that they did at Mound is 

similar to our work. I won't go through that unless 

you guys want to.

Chair Beach: That work went on in what spring of 

'97 and we're, is that correct, the Mound work?

Mr. McCloskey: Let's look at it.

Chair Beach: Yes, it was during the spring of '97, 

okay.

Dr. Mauro: It might be helpful to --

Mr. McCloskey: We used the 95th percentile of that 

dust loading and that puts it at 220 micrograms per 

cubic meter which is above or which comes in real 

close.

Dr. Mauro: We were pleasantly surprised that, we 

completely did it differently and we came up with 200 

you came up with 220. Our 200 came from a very, 

very thorough research of the NUREG/CR-5512 

literature on dust loading for mediation projects.

Just what kind of dust load you get when you were 

out there digging around, remediating for dust. And 

the number that we picked was 200.

I have little table that we'll get to later comparing the 

differences of assumptions. And they're remarkably 

similar, okay. And so I'm just trying to point out that 
.

27

I know the use of the Mound data, someone can say 

well that's a surrogate approach.

Okay. And when we saw that said well we didn't do 

that. We didn't look there. We completely did 

something different and, lo and behold, we come in 

at about the same place.

Mr. McCloskey: Independent, yes.

Dr. Mauro: So that's the really good news.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, thanks for reminding me, John. 

I forgot. Okay, so we also do some other things in 

this paper to validate the model.

We talk about some urinalysis results that we have 

from D&D workers who actually worked with some of 

these worst case soils. We have a model that shows 

how much uranium would have been in urine if a 

worker worked in our model what they would have 

produced and looked at what was actually produced 

from some of the workers.

It did some of the D&D work and it compares 

favorably.

Chair Beach: That was during the later years, the 

'90s?

Mr. McCloskey: Yes. That's on the bottom of Page 

10, that discussion. Okay, so therefore the default, 

I'm reading from Page 11 now, therefore the default 

OTIB-70 dust loading value will be increased to the 

95th percentile value that we just talked about, the 

220 micrograms per cubic meter for the Mound 

project studies.

And when multiplied with the 95th percentile, now 

this is our upgraded amount we used in our percentile 

we came up with air concentrations listed there 1.52 

E minus 12 microcuries per milliliter for inside 

uranium. Outside uranium is 2.59 E-14 microcuries 

per milliliter and outside thorium of 1.93 E minus 14 
.

28

microcuries per milliliter.

So those are the air concentration we projected the 

workers would have breathed during that work. Let's 

see, is there anything more to say about that.

We're going to talk about some other things we've 

enhanced with this model which would be the 

occupancy rate which is the amount of time that 

these workers we predict spent doing the work. 

We're going to get to that at the end of this paper.

So now let's move on to the Building 10 roof and 

overhead area. I think Rose refers to it as the roof 

and rafters method. So during the, so this is another 

one of those maintenance type scenarios that was 

brought to our attention both from the petitioner 

and/or the interviews we conducted.

During AWE operations from '52 to '68 major portions 

of Building 10 were engaged in the manufacture of 

nuclear reactor fuel for the Navy and the commercial 

power and AEC research reactors along with various 

components of natural and depleted uranium.

With the exception of HFIR these operations were 

concluded in '68. The building area used for the 

concluded operations were -- okay, HFIR is an 

operation conducted at the Metals & Control facility 

that is not considered covered work but it stands for 

the High Flux Isotope Reactor in Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee.

It's not a weapons related project. Let's see, we're 

contributing with the candidates that were interested 

in bounding exposures for.

M&C AWE operations involved numerous metal 

finishing operations including melting, forging, 

extrusion, rolling, chemical milling, machining, 

welding, and assembly. Several of these operations 

generated fumes and aerosol particulate emissions 

captured by the local exhaust ventilation and 

deposited that material on the roof, on roof-mounted
.

29

equipment.

In addition, some of the contaminants generated 

during AWE ops that may not have been captured by 

ventilation were resuspended and accumulated in the 

overhead area. So that's how we got the dust where 

it became a problem for workers that would go up 

into that overhead area.

Let's see what I want to talk about next here. So the 

next couple paragraphs talk about how the building 

is laid out, the ventilation system that was installed, 

how the NRC came in to help Metals & Controls close 

out their license. They wanted to do that in 1982. 

They did some surveys to validate the work that 

Metals & Controls did.

So this discussion just talks about where our surveys 

came from that we used in this characterization of 

the overhead area. At the bottom of page 13 we talk 

about the construction of the roof.

There's a diagram on the top of page 13 of how the 

building was laid out during some of these surveys. 

The bottom of page 13 we are talking about 

construction of the roof, the makeup, how it was 

built.

And then at the top of page 14 I'd like to read during 

the residual period, while performing maintenance 

work in Building 10 overhead area and on the roof, 

M&C workers were potentially exposed to 

contamination remaining from the AWE operations.

Their work included installing pipe racks, replacing 

lights, welding supports to the trusses to fortify the 

roof, cutting and drilling up through the roof to make 

penetrations for running services to rooftop 

equipment such as air conditioning systems, recirc 

water, chilled water supply and return, steam and 

condensate return, and installing equipment on the 

roof.

This is another one of those types of maintenance 
.

30

activities that someone like [identifying 

information redacted] did a tremendous amount 

of. You can see his discussion on it in his affidavit.

Now we go on to say that we were aware that there 

was some cleaning that occurred up in the overhead 

area. But for the most part the consensus was that 

it was extremely dusty in the overhead area. So we 

didn't take any credit for that cleaning.

Now we talk about the Building 10 roof and overhead 

area bounding exposure model on page 14. What 

Metals & Controls would do is they would grid off the 

areas that they wanted to survey and come up with 

the average and the max contamination levels per 

grid.

And now we're talking about surface contamination, 

units of disintegrations per minute per 100 

centimeters squared. We're done with volumetric 

sample. We're moving on to surface contamination 

for this part.

The surveys were done with direct probe 

measurements. As we're done in the ER we say that 

ten percent is an NRC guidance document that allows 

you to assume that ten percent of fixed 

contamination is removable.

So that's the amount we say would be available to go 

into the air, to be resuspended. That's that part of 

the calculation. And these surveys come from, you 

know, the conduit lines going across the ceiling area, 

the bus ducts.

Bus ducts are square aluminum casings that hold 

electrical lines. You know, I'm sure you guys are 

seen them in your facilities. That also is surveys of 

the wall areas above I think the two meter height in 

the ceiling area.

So it has surveys of all of those areas. And then we 

also, and so all of those are gridded out. We take the 

average of those survey grids.
.

31

There's also surveys on the roof itself, surface 

measurements and they take them in a circular 

pattern out from the exhaust.

Member Kotelchuck: This is Dave. Surface 

measurements made on the roof made in 1982, 

right?

Mr. McCloskey: I think that's true, yes.

Chair Beach: I was going to say are you combining 

surveys in the '82 and in the later years or because I 

thought the '82 was a more smaller area not the 

whole, like you're kind of describing it as the whole 

area.

Mr. McCloskey: This is all the '82 time frame.

Member Kotelchuck: Could I ask, Dave, I mean 

what, you're taking data from the roof in 1982 and 

that's going to characterize '67 through beyond '82, 

into the '90s. I don't, I haven't looked at roof 

surveys, but is there any consideration of weather? I 

mean heavy storms, northeast weather. I mean why 

would 1982 be more than a picture of 1982 and be 

able to be universally applied for decades?

What, how do you know it didn't occur right after a 

storm? The inside I understand storms, that's 

protected area. But the outside data I just don't 

understand how weather folds into it.

Whether that weather, was it looked at, should it be 

looked at?

Mr. McCloskey: Well, that's a great question, I mean 

a fair question. There obviously is going to be some 

reduction because of the environmental factors that 

you just mentioned.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Mr. McCloskey: And I mean it's largely fixed 

contamination, right. It's, even though we take 
.

32

credit for ten percent of it being loose it was there by 

direct probe measurement and we select the 95th 

percentile of it to --

Member Kotelchuck: Right, but that 95th percentile 

is, I mean, if you will, better than the 50th percentile. 

But I don't, I'm not sure that -- I mean you're arguing 

that it's in the grain of the roof and the roof attached 

physically somehow to the roof tiles or tar or it's not 

superficial.

Mr. Darnell: The contamination used, this is Peter 

Darnell, that were used were of fixed contamination. 

We assume an amount of that fixed contamination 

becomes used for worker exposure.

But those surveys were done by direct readings. Put 

the probe on the surface. Come up with the 

contamination level that was there.

Chair Beach: So and I'm reading the '82 area survey 

then it seems pretty limited. It says the surveys were 

limited to 67 of the 214 grid blocks of the HFIR area 

located in Building 10 that tells you the figure two of 

the four grid blocks located in Building 3, nine of the 

31 in Building 4.

So and then around the vault area. So I'm wondering 

was there more than just what their paragraph said 

they, it looked like a pretty small area in 10 and I 

didn't, it didn't mention the roof at all in that '82, '83 

report.

Mr. Darnell: You also have to realize where most of 

the radioactive work was done.

Chair Beach: No, I know. I understand that. I know 

exactly where it was done. But --

Mr. Darnell: These surveys the concentration is in 

that area.

Chair Beach: Sure.
.

33

Mr. Darnell: Then there were other surveys taken 

out. So we used 95th percentile of the worst case 

area and applied it to everything else.

Mr. McCloskey: There is certainly more than what I 

just heard you read there. And Pete --

Chair Beach: That's just one part of it. I quickly 

looked through this last night.

Mr. McCloskey: Pete emailed three spreadsheets to 

all of us.

Chair Beach: Got it.

Mr. McCloskey: Is that what you have open at the 

moment?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. McCloskey: So that's --

Mr. Katz: That's not the spreadsheets.

Chair Beach: No, I have the spreadsheets across the 

top. No, I was looking at the paragraph that he used 

from the spreadsheet. This actual document.

Mr. McCloskey: To find specifically where we got the 

survey points from, the SRDB document you can go 

right through the spreadsheet and it shows you what 

page we took them from and you can find them all.

But certainly more than what we just read there, 

Josie.

Chair Beach: I looked those up too. But I looked up 

the header just to see what their overall was and then 

I didn't have time to go through all of these. I'm sure 

SC&A has, Rose has got them.

But I was just trying to see kind of what their focus 

was and where their focus was and like Dave was 

asking what time period it was done in.
.

34

Mr. Darnell: I have it here and we could go through 

this document and try to explain it.

Chair Beach: There's also some --

Member Anderson: There's also what season and 

what was the date of it?

Chair Beach: I think it was in March, February, March 

time frame, I believe, wasn't it, Pat?

Ms. Gogliotti: There's also only certain areas where 

you would expect to find the contamination because 

there's only certain, where the roof was exhausting. 

You're not going to find it far.

Chair Beach: Sure.

Ms. Gogliotti: So we focused around where the 

exhaust was.

Chair Beach: You can go back to see how many 

squares of roof they took out in '96 because it was 

contaminated. And that stuff spreads.

I mean if it's a rainy day and it's exhausting it can 

spread to different portions more than just below. 

But I mean I understand where the main 

concentration would be. But there's variables.

Dr. Mauro: So I'd like to really sharpen what the 

issue is. In the 1983, '82 time frame the NRC comes 

in, wants to get an idea of the kind of residual 

radioactivity might still be here because you can't 

terminate the license without convincing themselves 

the place is clean.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Mauro: And part of the things they did is go up 

to the roofing locations whether it was indoor or 

outdoor I can't say for sure. Rose just indicated to 

me that included both, indoor/outdoor.

Certainly the issued raised by David well the outdoor 
.

35

data is certainly suspect because who knows. The 

wind could have blown and whatever. The indoor 

data less so.

Member Kotelchuck: That's correct.

Mr. Darnell: That's not actually true. Once you fix 

contamination unless you have a fairly significant 

event like removing the tiles like tarring over or 

something fixed contamination is fixed 

contamination. It's going to stay there.

Chair Beach: Did they go all the way to the layers or 

did they just go to the top of the gravel because I 

know there was gravel and tar? So they went down 

to that tar surface above the roof.

Mr. Darnell: They took the probe.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Darnell: They studied all the direct from all the 

layers.

Chair Beach: But did they put their probe at the 

gravel or did they swoosh the gravel aside and go to 

the tar layer where it would be fixed? So I mean 

there's --

Mr. Darnell: Being an ex-health physics technician I 

can tell you they did not.

Chair Beach: So, anyway --

Dr. Mauro: So the important question is, the 

takeaway from this is a number of 8.99 dpm per 100 

centimeters squared is the block you're standing on 

as being a number that represents that upper 95th 

percentile contamination level that was available to 

be resuspended and inhaled by workers who might 

be involved in working up there near the roof and the 

rafters.

And then what was done with that, which is the upper 

95th percentile the argument being well that's 
.

36

probably conservative. That is the people that 

actually did that work probably experienced and 

here's the argument for better or worse.

Probably worker was lower than that on average 

when they were out there. But we're going to go with 

this upper 95th percentile number. And on top of 

that they did something that we really like and we 

talked about.

They used the highest resuspension factor you folks 

have ever used in 14 years.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: Used ten to the minus four per meter as 

being that because we're saying this is about as nasty 

as you can get. And we put that up and, did you ever 

use a bigger one than that? I don't think so.

Mr. Darnell: We are not trying to set a precedent just 

by doing this.

Dr. Mauro: As an auditor when I saw that the bell 

rang.

Dr. Neton: I think we may have used Linde for some 

D&D.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: So, you know, herein lies where these 

judgments come in. I mean we will, you've got a 

window of time and a few weeks I think or whatever 

days in the 1980s when the NRC comes in and they 

decide we're going to go pick a few places and go 

poke around because this place may still need some 

remediation.

Now I'll operate on the premise that they went to the 

place that they thought would be most indicative of 

where there might be some problem, okay. Now 

whether they missed some is a good question, who 

knows.
.

37

But that's a judgment they made. And they picked it 

and that data is available. There's a lot of numbers. 

The number of measurements made, here we, we've 

got hundreds of alpha beta-gamma surveys where 

they surveyed and we've got 150 plus swipe samples.

There's a body of data that we have. And it was all 

collected, I believe up near the rafters or the roofing 

of Building 10 unless I got it wrong.

Mr. McCloskey: One thing I'll say about the roof, you 

know, surveys of the roof, I had that spreadsheet 

open that Pete sent to all of us. And so there's like 

288 lines on that spreadsheet.

And it's just the final six lines that are the exterior, 

outside samples that were rolled into the larger body 

of samples that we don't have concern about. So 

they are a fact, you know, in that large group is 

somewhat diminished right there.

Dr. Mauro: I think that's a good point that we should 

record otherwise the issue that was raised by David 

is one that we did not explicitly talk about. That is 

there might be a difference in the kinds of levels you 

see in protected areas versus unprotected areas and 

the degree to --

Member Kotelchuck: I mean if there are only a 

limited number outside and that's what I was 

wondering because I recognized that some were 

outside and some were inside --

Mr. McCloskey: Six outside.

Member Kotelchuck: -- drop them.

Mr. McCloskey: We could do that. I mean --

Member Kotelchuck: Drop them and see, you 

probably will get similar results at least you wouldn't 

have to deal, I think, with the issues about the roof.

Mr. McCloskey: We had the data available to us. 
.

38

Petitioner said they drilled through the ceiling up into 

the roof. Material would come down from there.

We had only used samples closest to the exhaust 

which would have been your worst case which is the 

95th case percentile of those. So, you know, we took 

steps to maximize our assumptions. But we could 

look at that if --

Let's see, I think John stole a little of my thunder 

here. We used the survey results --

Dr. Mauro: I couldn't help myself.

Mr. McCloskey: -- came up with a GM.

Chair Beach: And you let him.

Mr. McCloskey: And GSD. The Building 10 overhead 

and roof areas required frequent maintenance. I'm 

reading from Page 14 toward the bottom there.

Required frequent maintenance during the residual 

period including years prior to the surveys used to 

characterize the area. Since this maintenance could 

have potentially removed accumulated dust with the 

highest uranium concentration and made the GM 

value under-conservative we calculated the 95th 

percentile contamination and used it to bound 

exposures.

The workers that went up there performed 

aggressive operations, for example, cutting and 

drilling that would disturb the heavy accumulated 

dust in the overhead area therefore NIOSH will apply 

unprecedented ten to the minus four for this work 

and the resuspension and apply that to the 95th 

percentile.

And the GSD and resuspension factor determined the 

air concentration that the roof and the overhead 

maintenance workers were exposed to of 4.05 E to 

the minus fourteen microcuries per milliliter 

concentration.
.

39

Dr. Mauro: I'd like to add something to that. We 

went one step further. So what kind of doses are you 

talking about? We get a .01 millirem per hour.

Dr. Neton: Well that was going to be my point, you 

know, that those were pretty small even given all the 

very conservative assumptions.

Dr. Mauro: And I think we've got the fact, you know, 

yes, we've got these uncertainties on what's the best 

number, what's the best resuspension factor and 

we're talking about .01 millirem per hour.

How many hours up there? They did, you know, we 

can talk about that too. But this is an overall, I mean, 

the extent to which the Board wants to factor in as a 

weighting, making judgments they've done it before 

where they said, you know, we're getting into some 

of the granularity on what's the best assumptions.

But always keep in mind that, you know, given the 

degrees of freedom you have and the different 

assumptions we're actually talking about a fraction of 

a millirem per hour. So I don't want to lose sight of 

that.

Mr. McCloskey: Good point, John. We move on to 

ingestion rates on the next page, Page 15. We used 

the NUREG guidance that allows for two milligrams of 

ingestion per work day.

We used that for the subsurface work. And then 

when we start talking about surface contamination 

we will use a different factor ten to the minus four 

per square meter per hour will be applied to surface 

contamination levels for the roof and the overhead 

workers. So two different types of ingestion rates 

based on the NUREG.

For external rates we again used the film badge data 

taken at the end of AWE operations. We used all of 

the data from 1967, the last year of AWE ops.

Those film badges were processed quarterly by 
.

40

Landauer. We determined the quarterly GM dose and 

the GSD. And in the next paragraph we're talking 

about occupancy rate.

But since the maintenance work lasted no more than 

two months per year external exposures would be 

assigned at the rate of two-thirds of that quarterly 

dose determined from the beginning of the residual 

period using the GM dose and GSD.

No source-term depletion was applied because of the 

maintenance areas not being reduced by 

environmental reduction factors or cleaning. The 

occupancy rate, this is another place where we 

significantly upgraded our approach since the first 

White Paper we only allowed for one month of 

exposure for maintenance workers.

We went back and we looked at the interviews and 

we determined that, yes, the one month criteria that 

we came up with was mostly associated with the 

subsurface making it out of Building 10 primarily and 

maybe didn't accommodate some of the other 

maintenance activities such as HVAC maintenance 

and work on the overhead and thought it would be 

prudent to double that occupancy up to two months 

per year like Pete alluded to earlier with the 

remaining ten months of the year not left at a zero.

But we give them, we used the ER's method of 

bounding those exposures and that's the 

resuspension of contamination, residual 

contamination.

Dr. Mauro: I'd like to add an item that is important. 

We know that not the same person was always doing 

all this stuff. We're assuming, we listened to the 

workers on October 24th to the 26th last year.

And they made it very clear that different people 

were sent in. In fact, it was one of those things 

where I don't want to go, you go.

Mr. McCloskey: Junior guys.
.

41

Dr. Mauro: Junior guys said we're going to send you 

in a barrel. You're going. So what we did here we 

realized that in any given year whenever any types 

of these kinds of dirty work, especially the subsurface 

work indoor/outdoor was done they sent someone in 

that was available that was, but it usually wasn't 

always the same guy.

So we assumed it was always the same guy.

Mr. Darnell: We assumed everybody in that worker 

Class did it.

Dr. Mauro: Did it, so --

Mr. Darnell: Each one of them did the two months a 

year.

Mr. McCloskey: From '68 to '90.

Dr. Mauro: Right.

Ms. Gogliotti: Why 173?

Mr. McCloskey: Say that again, I'm sorry.

Ms. Gogliotti: Why 173?

Mr. McCloskey: Hours per year.

Ms. Gogliotti: You said 22 days. But that would be 

176, so where's the disconnect?

Mr. McCloskey: So that's 22 work days per month. 

Go ahead, Mutty.

Dr. Neton: Is it a calendar year versus the --

Ms. Gogliotti: Just a couple hours difference. I was 

curious.

Dr. Neton: I think if you normalize it for calendar 

year you end up with --

Mr. Sharfi: I think it's 1/12 of 2,000 versus four 

weeks. Is that right?
.

42

Dr. Mauro: When I originally was listening to the 

story it was clear that we were trying to elicit from 

the 12 folks, the ones we knew of, how much time, 

you know, because, you know, they had to think 

back.

And I remember, you know, we're talking about the 

equivalent of one month a year or two month a year, 

you know, and it was sort of a fuzzy. And so what I 

would, when we did our work, quite frankly I didn't, 

I just said let it go 200 hours per year.

You know, because it sounds like it rings true from 

that. But that doesn't mean that's the best number. 

And then --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: You were fine. You were talking. But 

there's crosstalk here some.

Dr. Mauro: All I'm saying is I hear where you're 

going.

Mr. Darnell: It's normalized for vacation, that's why.

Mr. Sharfi: Actually normalized for no vacation. So 

it was 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year divided by 

12 months it's 173 hours per month.

Chair Beach: Some of those interviews I read said 

they were here seven days a week, lots of overtime. 

So, I mean it depends on what you, which interview 

12 was.

Mr. Sharfi: I mean that's the basis of the 173. You 

could argue whether or not that number could be, 

you know, adjusted.

Chair Beach: It's a guess. And it's a Site Profile 

issue.

Mr. Darnell: You're talking about extremely low, low 

doses. So if you give them --
.

43

Chair Beach: I'm not concerned about that 

extremely low, low dose.

Mr. Sharfi: So what you're saying is they were 

physically doing eight hours a day of trench work for 

40 hours a week or, you know, per --

Chair Beach: Some of them were. So some of them 

were digging trenches from outside in the burial 

ground --

Mr. Sharfi: With no breaks or --

Chair Beach: -- based on interviews. Well you're 

going to have a lunch break.

Mr. Sharfi: We're assuming no breaks, no time off, 

no clean-up, no prep time to --

Dr. Neton: You had it right. So it's a Site Profile 

issue, right.

Chair Beach: This is. So I'm not worried about the 

eight hours or months. Once we get to that point if 

we do then we'll hash out that.

Mr. Sharfi: That would only affect the internal 

because the external is based on dosimeter badges.

Dr. Neton: Dosimeter badges.

Chair Beach: Right. But did you ever get your 

question answered why the 173?

Dr. Mauro: Well, what I'm saying is you've got to 

pick a number. What we're going to pick sounds like, 

you know, it's using an informed judgment whether 

we're talking about 170, 200 or more or 300, 

whatever it is.

It will need to be justified. It is a Site Profile issue. 

It is certainly not an SEC issue. So to me, yes, we've 

got to still work on that.

When you finally put the final product out with your 
.

44

procedures that will all be worked out. But I think 

it's more important to acknowledge whether or not 

that strategy for coming at the problem seems to be 

reasonable and do we have sufficient data upon 

which to build on that strategy.

The particular number we pick is a number that, you 

know, we will settle on eventually.

Chair Beach: All right. Does that conclude where 

you're at?

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Chair Beach: Any questions from Board Members on 

the line? Loretta --

Member Anderson: No, I think we've been covering 

it. It's a lot of, how do I say it certainly those 

decisions made are, you know, upper bounding. The 

question is more the reality of it.

Chair Beach: Right.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, Dave. On external rates 

coming back to it let me understand. The film, I just, 

I want to make sure that my understanding is 

correct.

They took the film badges at the end of the AWE 

operations. Now because maintenance were not 

considered to be exposed the film badges were for 

operational people they did not include any 

maintenance people, right?

Mr. Sharfi: Right.

Member Kotelchuck: And so to take care of the 

maintenance I'm not talking about the occupancy 

rate. But it was decided to say maintenance is twothirds of the operational people, right. But that's --

Mr. Sharfi: No, that's incorrect.

Member Kotelchuck: But there's not a maintenance 
.

45

worker in that group from which you decided to take 

two-thirds.

Mr. Sharfi: That is incorrect. The two-thirds is only 

going to count that the badges were quarterly and so 

that two months of a quarter is two-thirds of the 

quarterly dose.

So we're assuming 100 percent equivalency. We're 

just saying the occupancy is two-thirds of a quarter.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, I see what you're saying. 

All right, that's, so you're assuming maintenance is 

the same as operational at the beginning of the 

period?

Mr. Sharfi: Correct.

Member Kotelchuck: There is no maintenance 

measurement wheel. But it's, they couldn't have, 

you know what I'm saying, you can't have gotten 

more than the operational people, correct?

Mr. Sharfi: Right.

Member Kotelchuck: Who were at their jobs being 

exposed eight hours a day or ten or whatever.

Mr. Sharfi: That is the argument.

Member Kotelchuck: All right, okay.

Dr. Mauro: Dave, this is John Mauro. You just 

brought up the single issue that I have my greatest 

concern with and we will be talking about that.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Dr. Neton: I don't think I have an answer.

Mr. McCloskey: That was a good format where you 

were able to chime in on parts of this that --

Dr. Mauro: Yes, I just try to, you know.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, good.
.

46

Chair Beach: So what do you think before John starts 

does anybody want a break?

Mr. Katz: A couple hands went up. So we'll take a 

ten minute break. Is that enough for everybody? 

Ten minutes. So about ten we'll restart.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 9:51 a.m. and resumed at 10:01 a.m.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. We are back. We have, I'm 

assuming we have Dave back on the line and Andy 

and --

Member Kotelchuck: Here I am.

Mr. Katz: And, Loretta, are you there? Maybe you're 

on mute. Loretta, are you with us? Why don't we 

give her a minute.

Member Anderson: I'm here, Andy.

Mr. Katz: Thanks. We're just waiting on Loretta and 

then we'll get going again.

Member Anderson: Okay, I was on mute.

Member Valerio: It's Loretta. I'm here.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Great. And we're off. We're off. 

John?

Dr. Mauro: Hey.

Chair Beach: Yes. Yes, we're on to --

Mr. Katz: John's up.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. We received the October 24, 2018 

report, I think it was early November, and we got to 

work on it. And the people that did all the hard work, 

Bob Anigstein, who's on the phone, and Rose, who's 

here. And I was the one that sort of dreamt up some 

of the strategies that we would use and, but the 

going, what I call the actual deep dive, going into the 
.

47

data, assembling it and making spreadsheets, that 

sort of thing, the hard part, Rose and Bob did, and 

conceptually, the approach that we took, to a large 

extent, were my ideas to the degree, and the main 

mission that I had was, can I -- do we have enough 

data?

Big, the big thing is, do I have enough data to allow 

us to build models that one could consider, yes, you 

could reconstruct these doses, what the actual dose 

is you will use, and derive what assumptions will be 

performed. I call that a Site Profile issue. The bigger 

ticket item is how do you do it. Do we have enough 

data representing all of the different circumstances 

we might have encountered, that somehow you could 

build these models?

So I mean, and in fact, that's the, what I did was 

after I sent out our report, that I believe everyone 

received, and you can tell that it has not gone 

through our technical editor because there's a --

there's a misspelling in the title, but that's okay. 

What we did here is, normally the process we go 

through is after the document is drafted, which is 

really a combination of Rose, myself, and Bob, then 

goes for independent review, which it did, to the 

extent we could because it was done over the 

weekend, the independent review. And then, it 

usually goes to our technical editor, Anne Brophy, 

who makes sure that it's formatted correctly, syntax 

is correct, spelling's correct, and it meets 508 

compliance. It didn't go through that.

So what you have in front of you is what I call a 

preliminary draft, intended for use for this meeting 

only, and based on the outcome of this meeting and 

what we learn, we probably will reissue the final 

digital version that will go on the record for public 

distribution. Okay? So sort of give my excuses up 

front.

What I did then is I realized that not everyone's going 

to have a chance to read the whole thing, and I have 
.

48

a limited amount of time to tell my story. So before 

I caught my flight, I put together a briefing paper, a 

briefer version. Am I correct that everyone has 

received this other document, which I'm going to use 

right now to flip through and tell my story? Okay? 

It's a slide, but it's not really slides, I just used Word. 

I didn't use PowerPoint. I don't like PowerPoint.

Status of Any Remaining SEC Issues

Dr. Mauro: Okay. The first -- I'm just flipping pages. 

I apologize. I forgot to put page numbers on it, but 

the first page, you'll see the heading says Major 

Perspectives, okay? And that was the point I was 

making earlier, from the big picture standpoint, 

we're sitting here with the Work Group, and the way 

to look at what we're going to talk about is SEC issues 

and Site Profile issues.

Sometimes they blend and they're hard to separate, 

but the more, I think the most important thing we 

can take away from this is, are we at a place where 

we think doses can be reconstructed in a claimant 

favorable way and with sufficient accuracy, or not? 

And that goes toward the SEC issue, a judgment 

that's made by the Board.

In this write up, you will see me use words like 

scientifically sound and claimant favorable. That's 

the implication that we think it's okay, but whether 

or not it means what's called sufficient accuracy, 

which is part of the regulations, that's a judgment call 

made by the Board. You know, notwithstanding what 

we say about scientifically correct or, ultimately, the 

real trigger, is it -- does it meet the criteria for 

sufficient accuracy, which is a judgment call made by 

the Board. I guess that, then, is a recommendation 

made to the director of HHS.

So when we look -- go through this material, it's a 

good idea to think in terms of SEC issues versus Site 

Profile issues, which is what we did a lot of already, 

okay? Right underneath that, you'll see something 
.

49

that says major sections.

I've organized this material in a way that I felt was 

easier to tell my story, and in my mind, our takeaway 

from this is that, as you -- originally, when the first 

SEC Petition Evaluation Report was issued by NIOSH, 

it focused in on what I call a conventional residual 

radioactivity pathways.

A good example of that is at the end of operations, 

AWE operations, what happens is, and what 

happened was, they remove all of the fuel. No more 

fuel onsite because they were -- they -- up through 

'68, they were doing fuel manufacturing. They were 

doing it for the -- I believe the Navy, and they were 

doing it for the weapons complex. The -- the workers 

that were involved with the weapons complex are 

considered to be AWE workers, and they were 

granted an SEC, and the reason they were granted 

the SEC, because of the inability to reconstruct 

internal doses for thorium. So we've got an SEC for 

these workers up to 1968.

Then the next step in the process was -- and the 

report was put out. NIOSH said this is how we're 

going to do it, and it was a fairly conventional 

strategy that was used on many AWE residual period 

analyses.

The, as, you know, as we discussed earlier, the 

claimants rightly pointed out, you guys missed the 

boat. During the AWE period -- I'm sorry. During 

the residual period, there was a lot going on. There 

was all sorts of maintenance work going on, and 

refurbishing work, which means that they tore up the 

concrete, they dug holes, they replaced conduits and 

piping, and people were deep down inside, and they 

were doing all this work, there was a large team of 

people doing all this work from 1969, I guess, right 

into the 1990s, and all of this time, they were doing 

it under the impression there was no radioactivity 

down there.
.

50

Chair Beach: So you meant '68 through --

Dr. Mauro: '68, I think --

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- they distributed that, but whatever the 

date is.

Mr. Darnell: John?

Dr. Mauro: Yes?

Mr. Darnell: They were working under the 

impression that they -- there was -- there was no 

impression. They weren't told there was, they 

weren't told there --

Dr. Mauro: Right. Right.

Mr. Darnell: So you can't -- they were working under 

the impression. There was no --

Dr. Mauro: Fair enough, yes. There was -- when we 

talked to them, the impression they left with me is 

that they did not -- no one told them that there might 

be radioactivity down there. They just did their job. 

Okay. Now, and this was -- there's an interesting 

side to this is that, these folks came in, 12 of them 

came in, each one sat with us for at least an hour or 

two, and they just explained what they did, okay?

And it was up to us to collectively figure out what is 

it that they did that could very well have resulted in 

them experiencing some type of exposure, external 

or internal. And it was up to us to say, okay, we, 

SC&A, and in parallel NIOSH, came up with four 

potentially significant exposure scenarios, the ones 

that are listed here on the page, okay?

So the question we have to ask ourselves, do we have 

sufficient data, and can we reconstruct the doses, 

perhaps assign bounding doses, for people that were 

involved in each of these four different scenarios? 

This is over and above the base scenario that was 
.

51

originally done, where everyone was exposed to 

residual radioactivity that settled on surfaces, that 

became resuspended. That's your baseline.

This is really superimposed on top of that because 

the workers at the site that we interviewed said you 

guys missed these, and they -- and we sorted it out 

this way as being, okay, these are the categories of 

exposure scenarios that we missed, and that now 

we've got to ask ourselves, can we reconstruct them? 

Okay? And the way I've organized this is -- think in 

terms of this.

For each scenario, you're concerned with external 

exposure and internal exposure, and also you'll see 

that we make a distinction between working indoors 

and working outdoors, and that's all going to emerge 

as we discuss this matter.

Oh, one more thing. Also, working aboveground and 

working belowground, okay? So you've got all these 

different boxes that you want to hit. Can we -- can 

you do all of that? The next slide is called Building 

10 HVAC Maintenance. This is where we opened up 

with. Remember I was telling my little story about 

the dust, the specific activity, and the inhalation 

doses? And I think enough was said on that. It was 

described very well by Pat.

I added my two cents in, and we came up with these 

doses associated with changing out the filters, okay, 

and how we did that, and what kind of doses we got, 

and that -- so we don't really need to spend too much 

time on that. I think it's been well-covered.

So we're going to move on to the next category of 

exposure scenario. Okay, now we're talking about 

what I call the building roof scenario. This is where 

people were doing maintenance work up on the roof. 

And again, as was pointed our earlier, in 1982, the 

NRC came in for a short period of time and collected 

-- and we're going to be following these bullets, that 

might be helpful -- and collected data.
.

52

It included survey -- hundreds of alpha beta gamma 

surveys, and according to our work, 154 swipe 

samples. By the way, Bob Anigstein did this work. 

He's on the phone, and, Bob, if I say anything that's 

incorrect, or you would like to add more, please jump 

right in.

So Bob dove into the data that was available to us 

with the understanding that, yes, this captures the 

important data of what the contamination levels 

were. And, okay, so there's the rock we're standing 

on.

Do we have enough data characterizing the levels of 

contamination, recognizing that it was collected by 

the NRC over a short period of time in particular 

locations, I believe in Building 10, and they collected 

that data and determined that there was some 

contamination here that could be a problem. So we 

used that as our starting point for that scenario, that 

is for those workers whose job it was to occasionally 

go up to the roof, go up to the rafters, and do some 

maintenance work.

And in the process of doing that, they could have 

been exposed to the inhalation of resuspended 

activity. It turns out NIOSH's report summarized the 

data, and in the end, they said, well, we're going to 

pick the upper 95th percentile contamination level 

that we observed. So -- understanding that you'd 

use the survey data, not the swipe data, the survey 

data, and said -- and got a DPM per 100 centimeters 

squared, and picked 10 percent of that because 10 

percent of the total activity is resuspendible from Reg 

Guide 1.86, which we agree with. Okay?

You could have theoretically gone with swipe data, 

which was another set of data where you actually 

took a swipe and counted it. Bob Anigstein said, 

okay, let me check to see if that makes sense. He 

went through everything, okay? And his takeaway 

was, well, we got some different numbers. Bob, how 

different were our numbers? Do you remember?
.

53

Dr. Anigstein: About, maybe 20 percent higher.

Dr. Mauro: Okay, so we came in 20 percent higher.

Dr. Anigstein: I'm just -- I'm just looking it up, the 

difference, in the computer right now. Just a second.

Dr. Mauro: Sure. Doesn't have to be precise. I just 

want to give a sense --

Dr. Anigstein: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- that we know. It's not like that we 

came up with 10 times higher, or 10 times lower.

Dr. Anigstein: No.

Dr. Mauro: We came up with something pretty close, 

which in my world, ain't bad, and when we're 

independent --

Ms. Gogliotti: It's how we treated zeros, the 

difference in it.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, yes, that's right. Bob, in fact, it's 

written, by the way, that point is written up nicely in 

the main body of the report. I didn't capture it in my 

slides.

Mr. McCloskey: What we did with those zeros there, 

just so you know, is the spreadsheet, there are 

comments in the spreadsheet that tell you what we 

did about the zeros, and the lowest value that M&C 

or the NRC recorded for these surveys was 1.7 

picocuries -- or no, 1.7 D per M per 100 centimeter 

squared. So we replaced every zero with the 

minimum value that they recorded.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I can't speak to that. Bob, you 

know, all I can really, the best I can do right now is 

say that we did our thing looking at the zeros, and 

doing our own crunching, our own numbers, and our 

own work. And that, when we come out at the back 

end of the process, we're about 20 percent different 

than you are. You know, what can you say about 
.

54

that? So --

Dr. Anigstein: Yes, well, there was the problem --

Dr. Mauro: Go ahead.

Dr. Anigstein: Just go ahead without me for a 

second. I've got to quickly find this.

Dr. Mauro: Okay, I'll keep going. Break in whenever 

you have a -- you want to qualify that a little bit. So 

that's the Building 10 roof and overhead scenario, 

okay? And flip the page. Now we're going to go 

through what I consider to be the single most 

important step.

Dr. Anigstein: So I got this memo that I wrote to 

you.

Dr. Mauro: Go ahead.

Dr. Anigstein: We just could not reproduce that 

NIOSH data, that we looked at the PDF. There was a 

list of PDF references with the document numbers, 

page numbers, and I'll just read from the memo that 

I sent to you on November 12th.

It says NIOSH stated there were, quote, 285 

readings. I counted 339 results, including zeros. 

Including zeros, there were 265, so we could not, we 

could not figure out where they got the 285. And 

then the NIOSH -- then my second comment was that 

NIOSH listed the geometric mean of the readings. So 

you cannot have a geometric mean if you include 

zeros.

Mr. McCloskey: We didn't include --

Dr. Anigstein: -- can't take a logarithm of zero. So 

if they leave out the zeros, again, you don't have 285 

results. And then I did a non-parametric -- it's a very 

simple arithmetic procedure that, it's embedded into 

Excel, where you simply interpolate and -- where 

would be the 95th percentile, looking at these upper 
.

55

range of values, and I ended up with 12.4 instead of 

8.9, so it's more than 20 percent.

Dr. Neton: So it's a difference of fitting the geometric 

-- the log-normal distribution versus interpolating the 

95th percent.

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me?

Dr. Neton: Is this really just the difference between 

fitting the log-normal distribution like we did versus 

your method of interpolating the 95th percentile?

Dr. Anigstein: Well, I did it both ways.

Dr. Neton: Okay.

Dr. Anigstein: I did a, first, I did interpolation. Then 

I simply did a log-normal of the non-zero values.

Dr. Neton: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: Without using the zeros. And with 

that, we got 10.5. However, I did not go to the 

trouble -- there was supposed to be a quicky of doing 

-- orders to say -- which we are equipped to do. But 

that would give you even, if you added -- if you put 

in the zeros and there was a procedure for plotting 

the -- as if it was log-normal --

Dr. Neton: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: -- and then simply -- putting in zeros 

at the bottom pushes the upper values up to a higher 

percentile.

Dr. Neton: You don't put zeros in, you put the --

Dr. Anigstein: So we get more than 10.5. So we still 

have no idea how we -- how to get 8.99 out of that.

Dr. Neton: Well, I think we need to get together on 

this and --

Dr. Mauro: And I'm going to say something about 
.

56

this, okay? I'm going to be a little bit of a wise guy. 

I'm a biologist. Bob is a nuclear physicist. You just 

heard the difference between a biologist and a 

nuclear physicist. The biologist looks at this number 

and says we think about 20 percent. And the doses 

are 0.01 millirem per hour.

As a biologist, I don't care, okay? Eventually, no, I 

apologize, eventually, you do have to put out a 

document that's scientifically sound, completely 

documented, and used scientific techniques that are 

important and consistent, and everyone would agree 

with. But for the -- my goal here and what my job 

is, is to take away from here, are we okay here, or 

do we got a problem? I say we're okay here. We've 

just got to polish the apple a little bit. All right?

Mr. Darnell: One thing that I would like to point out, 

Bob, is that the zeros that you're saying that we 

used, we actually did not. Those were replaced with 

1.7s. Is that right?

Mr. McCloskey: It's in the spreadsheet we sent to 

the entire Work Group.

Mr. Darnell: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: I'm sorry, they were replaced by 

what?

Mr. Darnell: 1.7, which was the lowest found.

Dr. Anigstein: Oh. I --

Mr. Darnell: So each one of the zeros was replaced 

with that.

Dr. Anigstein: I would like to say -- I would just like 

to politely, but -- if I could make it polite, saying that 

is not a valid -- that is simply not a valid procedure.

Mr. Darnell: Based on?

Dr. Anigstein: It's a -- it's a -- it's not statistically, 

scientifically valid.
.

57

Dr. Neton: I think we're arguing something we've 

already -- this --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: -- the site, and we critiqued it.

Dr. Neton: We can get together on this, but I think 

we know what we're doing. We've got documented 

procedures of how to handle these log-normal 

distributions. We've done this for years. If you take 

the lowest, the first positive value, and you develop 

a cumulative probability distribution from the first 

positive value, so in other words, if your first positive 

value is the 48t percentile of the distribution, you 

generate the cumulative frequency distribution, fit a 

curve to that, and then you estimate what your 

geometric mean and GSD are. I mean, we've done 

this for --

Dr. Anigstein: Yes, but there is a -- but there is a 

NIOSH procedure. I forget, it was in one of the OTIBs 

--

Dr. Neton: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: -- which specifically allowed -- the 

regression of order statistics allows you to take, to 

consider the zeros, and is an -- it is a statistically 

acceptable method. And it gives you -- it's simply 

different.

Dr. Neton: Okay, well, we --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: We can -- we can deal with this. I mean, 

this is a matter of --

Mr. McCloskey: Yes.

Mr. Katz: It's a Site Profile matter that we'll work out 

and don't need to beat to death today.

Dr. Anigstein: I agree. I agree with that.
.

58

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: Certainly not today.

Dr. Mauro: It's on the table. You got it.

Dr. Anigstein: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: We'll move on now, okay? All right. Now 

we're going to move on. Okay. So the next slide is 

called Subsurface Building 10. In my mind, the single 

most important subject we have to talk about. And 

originally, you folks had your way of doing it where 

you work with median values, and from the very 

beginning, we felt that we had our own approach, 

which has its strengths and limitations. Okay?

But just for the purpose of a slide, I said, okay, let's 

compare fundamental assumptions and outcomes 

between what you did and what we did, okay? The 

most important number of all is the contamination 

level that is the picocuries per gram that's in this soil 

to which people working in the subsurface 

environment might have been exposed to, up close 

and personal. Okay?

We came up with 5,800 picocuries per gram. You 

came up with 6,800 picocuries per gram. As far as 

I'm concerned, they're the same number. I'm being 

-- I'm being a little -- you understand. All right.

So now, but we're going to talk about that a lot more 

in a minute, because that's the rock we're standing 

on, and it's the thing that I believe is most of great 

interest to the Work Group because that's the rock 

we're standing on. Where did we get that number, 

and can we trust that number as being a good 

surrogate or replacement number? Because that 

number was gathered, as I understand it, mostly 

during the 1990s.

In other words, during the 1990s, work was done in 

the subsurface environment to characterize Building 

10 and every place else, because they were getting 
.

59

ready for a cleanup. So what we're talking about is 

a number that is collected in 1992, but we're going 

to use it now to --

Chair Beach: Was it '92 or '94 or -- '94 or 5?

Dr. Mauro: '94 or 5. But the point being, we're going 

to use that, do exposure to subsurface workers, M&C 

workers, that were doing subsurface work in Building 

10 in the 1970s and '80s. Therein lies what I can --

consider to be the single most important SEC issue 

that we have to deal with. Can you do that? All right? 

To finish the list up though, of course, as -- once 

you've got your concentration in the -- in the soil, the 

subsurface soil, you need to get a dust loading. We 

independently did our review. Actually, there's an 

appendix to our original report, which is fairly thick, 

our original review of the original ER, which 

summarizes what we consider to be comprehensive 

review of dust loading data that's out there in the 

literature.

There may be more, and we -- our takeaway from 

this was a good number that -- what I consider to be 

upper bound is 200 micrograms per cubic meter. So 

if you know the picocuries per gram in the soil, you 

assume that that's the stuff that's being 

resuspended.

You assume it's the airborne chronic concentration to 

which the worker's exposed while he's up there 

digging in the hole is 200 micrograms per cubic 

meter. You -- now you know what his, you know, 

airborne dust loading is while he's doing his work, 

okay?

And by the way, I consider this to be a conservative 

value because the discussion with the 12 workers, a 

lot of them said that soil was moist. It was a pretty 

wet environment. You don't get too much 

resuspension when something's wet. So as far as I'm 

concerned, that's a pretty good number. It's up 

there. It's probably lower than that.
.

60

Mr. McCloskey: It wasn't always wet, but it was 

usually wet.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, good.

Member Anderson: But the other question is where 

the samples were taken, how -- what was the 

saturation of water in the soil?

Dr. Mauro: I don't know. Yes. All we have is 

picocurie per gram numbers, which are usually dry 

weight. That's your --

Member Anderson: Right.

Dr. Mauro: -- picocuries per gram. That's how you 

do this analysis. You know, you grab a sample, you 

dry it, you count it. And so given that, and then 

saying, okay, we're going to assume that that's the 

activity in the soil, which was probably moist, and the 

real activity, in terms of picocuries per centimeter 

cubed was probably lower because it was moist, and 

the actual activity is the dry weight activity. But in 

any event, we went ahead and said, well, that's the 

activity.

That's being resuspended, and here's our dust

loading, and we think that that's pretty good based 

on the arguments we make in our report. NIOSH 

independently did it a completely different way. They 

went with -- I believe it was -- was it Mound, where 

there was some work going on that was, in many 

respects, excavation and remediation work going on 

at a site that had a nice curve with a distribution of 

concentrations. I believe they picked off an upper 

end value, and their number is 220 micrograms per 

cubic meter. So the dust loading is what I consider 

to be pretty close, very, and independent.

Mr. McCloskey: As a 95th percentile?

Dr. Mauro: As a -- and you picked a 95th percentile 

too. Okay. We -- I just used my judgment.
.

61

Mr. McCloskey: Sure.

Dr. Mauro: I didn't pick a 95th percentile. I said I'm 

going to go with this number because it makes sense 

to me. You went with a more refined approach where 

you picked off a 95th percentile.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, they actually had hundreds of 

air samples where they collected dust. They weighed 

the samples after an amount of volume had gone 

through, and they saw how much dust loading 

actually occurred on their samples, and of that data, 

in terms of 95th percentile.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. So, but I mean, what we're 

coming to in those first two lines, we're on the same 

page. All right? We're going to get back to the 

question of whether or not you've got a problem with 

surrogate data or not here, and that's going to be 

really important. That's going to be the next slide.

But let's go, keep -- finish this slide up. Breathing 

rate, because once you've got the airborne 

concentration, you've got to get a breathing rate, and 

Rose and I had a lot of discussion about this, and 

Rose convinced me that, you know, what have we got 

here?

We've got a guy in a hole, all right? And he's got a 

shovel, and he's shoveling away, all right? He's 

getting down to the pipe, and he's shoveling away, 

and he's cutting the pipe, and he's replacing the pipes 

in a hole. He's working pretty hard, all right? 

Normally, we'd use your number, 1.2 cubic meters 

per hour, because that's your Classic number.

Mr. McCloskey: Reference manual.

Dr. Mauro: Your reference. And, but there's also --

Mr. McCloskey: Perfect worker.

Dr. Mauro: -- in the same, and there's -- in the same 

documents, the Exposure Factors Handbook, EPA 
.

62

puts out an Exposure Factors Handbook, and they 

actually have a range of numbers for people that are 

under a more stressful working condition, where 

they're working harder.

Mr. Darnell: Wouldn't this be a Site Profile?

Dr. Mauro: It's absolutely a Site Profile issue. Oh, 

don't get me wrong. The only SEC issue is the first 

line, and we're going to talk about that in a minute a 

lot, but I wanted to get through this to show we're 

on the same page. So there is a difference, a factor 

of 2, on this breathing rate. You're not going to get 

an argument from me.

We went with that higher number, judgment call, and 

for reasons we just -- I just gave you, for better or 

worse. Exposure duration, we came up with --

remember this one month business we talked about, 

and there was some chatter about how do you get 

hours out of that?

Me, I've got to say, Rose and I were discussing that, 

so let's just go with 200. You know, just use 200. 

You know, because this, I don't -- sometimes I don't 

like to put such a fine point on a number that we 

know we don't really have a fine point for. So I 

would've just picked 200, so we went with that, 

okay? And anyway, bottom line is we went ahead 

and we took it a step further.

We figured, well, how many becquerels per year of 

U-234 would that be? And the outcome of that would 

be an -- you know, for that exposure duration, there's 

your becquerels per year. 15.6 millirem per year 

effective dose commitment. We're -- again, that's 

your dose that we came up with.

Of course it will change somewhat, depending on 

what, for example, if we went with the 1.2 meters 

cubed per hour instead, which I, you're not going to 

get a big argument from me, it would be half that 

value. But we're talking about low millirem per year 
.

63

numbers. Do with that what you may, okay?

Mr. McCloskey: Some factors, we were higher; 

some, you were higher.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, right. Let's move on. All right. Now 

we're going to get to what I consider to be the single 

most important issue we're here for, why we're here 

today. Surrogate data. I call it surrogate data.

We all know that the surrogate data has a very formal 

definition. It actually pertains to using data from one 

site as applied to another site. We're actually not 

doing that here. We're using data collected, in many 

cases, in the 1990s, and we're applying it -- and not 

in all cases, sometimes it's 1980s, and we're applying 

it to the 1970s and '80s.

So the question is, as brought up earlier, well, what 

things could've happened in the 1970s and '80s that 

changed the subsurface situation so that what they 

saw in the 1990s is lower, possibly. Probably not 

higher, but lower, because they may have 

inadvertently removed some material, not realizing 

it, but they were doing their job, and they were 

moving stuff out, okay? But it turns out, I have a 

code here that's in the report, and I put it in bold on 

this slide that you're looking at.

There's a slide, the heading of which says, Substitute 

(Surrogate Data Issues), and I want you to read it 

because it's an important statement. The NRC 

concluded that fixed and removable contamination 

inside the AWE areas measured during their 

inspection, which I believe was during the 1980s, 

were comparable to those in the M&C closeout 

survey, which was in the 1990s, okay?

So all this does, it's part of the weight of evidence 

that says, well, it looks like at least between the '80s 

and the '90s, the two sets of numbers seem to be 

ringing true. That is, there really is no big change. 

So if there was a lot of stuff that was removed in the 
.

64

'80s, the numbers you would have seen in the '90s 

would have been different, but lower.

But this is just one piece, one piece of information 

amongst a number of items, which are on the next 

page that argue, to me, that you can use the data 

from the 1990s, the 1980s, as a substitute or 

surrogate for what was going on during the residual 

period.

Chair Beach: Okay, so let's hold for, I think --

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Chair Beach: -- Rose had something, and then --

Dr. Mauro: Please.

Ms. Gogliotti: Oh, I just wanted to point out that 

what you're quoting from is -- was published in the 

'80s, so I believe they're talking about the '60s data 

--

Dr. Mauro: Oh.

Ms. Gogliotti: -- that confirms it.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Dr. Neton: Even stronger.

Dr. Mauro: Even better. I -- then I got it wrong. 

Thank you.

Mr. Katz: You might want to just clarify that for 

people on the phone.

Chair Beach: Yes, please.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Yes. What I just read to you, I 

thought represented an NRC statement made in the 

'80s.

Ms. Gogliotti: You thought it was from the '90s.

Dr. Mauro: From the '90s. Now, this, so the -- help 
.

65

me out here. Go ahead, please.

Ms. Gogliotti: The statement came from a document 

published in the '80s, so they were actually referring 

to the closeout that happened in the late '60s.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. So the -- this changes the story a 

little bit, which is important. So they're making the 

statement about the '60s, and what they saw, as 

compared to --

Ms. Gogliotti: The '80s.

Dr. Mauro: -- the '80s. Okay. So it's not between 

the '80s and the '90s, it's between the '60s and the 

'80s. Okay. I think the point being that it's still a 

valid piece of weight of evidence.

Mr. McCloskey: It's relatively unchanged --

Dr. Mauro: It's relatively, it's --

Mr. McCloskey: -- regardless of the work that's being 

done --

Dr. Mauro: Right. Okay. I --

Mr. McCloskey: -- during the residual period.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, I misrepresented what I read, but 

thank you for clearing that up.

Chair Beach: Okay. And so the surveys in the '80s, 

the early '80s, that was the ceilings, the roof, the 

surface. They didn't get down into the subsurface 

until the mid-'90s.

Dr. Mauro: The subsurface is different, yes. This is 

-- that's a different issue. But --

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: -- no -- I only point that out as one of a 

number of things that lead me to where, and now 

let's go to the next --
.

66

Chair Beach: Okay. Before we do that, any 

questions from Board Members on the phone? Please 

jump in if you have a question, but we'll try to stop.

Member Anderson: Yes. My only question is, we're 

talking about roof measurements that are external, 

where you have more chance for, you know, rain and 

wind and whatever, versus the sampling that's done 

on the rafters and the ceiling on the inside of the 

building. If it wasn't a cleanup, you'd expect the 

inside not to change much. So what do we see if you 

just use the roofing material wipe sample?

Ms. Gogliotti: Well, I think right now we're just 

talking about --

Member Anderson: -- if we, if we include everything 

together, if the roof samples are lower than the 

interior samples, then you're going to have a 

distribution that's somewhat lower.

Ms. Gogliotti: I think we're going to get to that.

Member Anderson: Because the --

Ms. Gogliotti: However, right now, we're just talking 

about the subsurface inside of Building 10, which is -

-

Member Anderson: Okay.

Ms. Gogliotti: -- what was going on below the 

concrete.

Mr. Darnell: One thing to keep in mind for the 

surface is we took no credit for any cleanup that went 

on. So if you take the 1967 data that we moved 

forward to derive our exposures to the workforce, we 

never said anything got cleaned up. There's no 

depletion of the source term, so whatever was there 

at the beginning was there at the end, as far as 

NIOSH's dose calculations go.

Chair Beach: It all got washed down below anyway, 
.

67

mostly.

Mr. Darnell: We didn't take credit for that.

Chair Beach: Right.

Mr. Darnell: We treated it as if it was still there.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Mauro: The next page, titled, Substitutes, 

Surrogate Data Issues, Continued, I consider this to 

be an important information, okay, for Josie, and the 

rest of the Board.

Chair Beach: Thanks, John, I appreciate that.

Dr. Mauro: I was thinking about you when I put this 

together.

Chair Beach: Yes, we talked about this before we 

came in.

Dr. Mauro: Because I understand the challenge that 

the Work Group and the Board has in using limited 

data -- I mean, think about what we've got. We've 

got -- we're trying to reconstruct doses to people that 

worked in the '70s and '80s, using data that was 

collected in the '90s, and using some data that was 

collected in the '80s.

And we're saying somehow we could use that data 

and reconstruct doses to people doing all these 

different things in the '70s and '80s, okay? That goes 

to the heart of the SEC, and is there enough data 

that's representative that we have -- that one could 

say, yes, that is representative of the state of affairs 

that existed at the site in the '70s and '80s while 

these workers were doing their repurposing and 

maintenance activities? That's the heart of the 

question. All right?

So I've made a list of bullets of what convinced me 

that we're probably okay, but that doesn't mean 

everyone would agree, okay? Okay. Number one, 
.

68

NIOSH is using the high end of the 1990 data, 95th 

percentile, 95th, which comports with surrogate 

criteria two.

I -- one of the things I did here is I attached to the 

back of our main report the surrogate data criteria. I 

said, because, in a way, that's what is used, as well, 

why don't we okay when we use surrogate data?

Now, granted, this is not really surrogate data, but 

it's -- you got the idea. So in effect, this, because 

we're going with this high end number, we're 

accommodating, the reality is we're going with 

surrogate data. That is, we're going with data that 

really doesn't nail it, but it's -- it's a different time, 

unlike the surrogate data which is a different place. 

That's what it was written for, but now we're, now 

we're saying, well, we're actually working with a 

different time, all right? But --

Chair Beach: So are you, let me just be clear.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, sure.

Chair Beach: Are you talking about the data that 

they're using from onsite, or the Mound data --

Dr. Mauro: No. No, I'm sorry, I have to make myself 

clear.

Chair Beach: Okay, because it's kind of --

Dr. Mauro: And so --

Chair Beach: -- it's kind of mixed in here.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Yes.

Chair Beach: So I want to be clear.

Dr. Mauro: Let me clarify. I am saying that what we 

have is, right now, I'm talking only about the 

subsurface work in Building 10. That's what I'm 

talking about.
.

69

Chair Beach: Okay. But, and I was under the 

impression that NIOSH's 220, no -- yes, their 220 

came from the Mound data. Is that not clear?

Dr. Mauro: I -- I'm not --

Chair Beach: And so it's -- but you have it as, in your 

points.

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Chair Beach: So that's why I'm getting --

Dr. Mauro: No. The --

Chair Beach: -- confused.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Let me see how I can unconfuse 

that. I'm --

Mr. McCloskey: He rushed to do this.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: And I -- and I appreciate that. I just 

want to make sure --

Dr. Mauro: No. I think it's -- I think it's clear, okay? 

I think it's clear, but maybe obviously not.

Chair Beach: Go ahead.

Dr. Mauro: All right. Yes. The point I'm making here 

is when we're talking about the subsurface 

environment in Building 10, where the people were 

working, and we have data that was collected in, you 

know, in the 1990s, and there's a lot of data 

characterizing the concentrations, and we have those 

distributions and all those numbers they range from 

up to 50,000 picocuries per gram, all the way down, 

and we picked the upper 95th percentile number, 

which was not that, remember our table earlier, 

which was not that far. Yours was 6,000; ours was 

5,000 picocuries per gram.
.

70

Now I'm saying to myself, all right, now, but we all 

know that that is almost a form of surrogate data, 

because that data was collected in the '90s. This is 

Building 10 subsurface environment, okay? That's 

where we are right now, which is what I consider to 

be a very important scenario.

The fact that the 95th percentile value was selected 

is a way in which you account for the fact that you're 

using surrogate data, and it comports with what's 

called the exclusivity requirements that are 

associated with when you decide to use surrogate 

data, one of the things that we're going to look at is 

what's called exclusivity requirements.

It's, what are you doing to sort of accommodate the 

fact that you're actually not working with data that is 

right on target? You're working with data that is 

either from a different place or, in this case, a 

different time.

Chair Beach: Or a different purpose? Does that 

come into play?

Dr. Mauro: Well, the purpose, I'll tell you why 

purpose doesn't have a play here. In the 1990s, they 

were trying to characterize the subsurface 

environment as best they can, including what's in the 

pipes and everything else, for the purpose of cleanup.

Now, in my mind, that characterization, if in fact you 

were going to do a characterization in the 1970s, 

that's exactly what you would have done. So in other 

words, what you do when you want to characterize 

the nature and extent of the radiological 

contamination is what you did in -- is what the CPS 

and Weston did in the 1990s. And if in fact they were 

brought in in the 1970s to go in and characterize the 

place, that's exactly what they would have done. The 

same thing.

So as far as I'm concerned, though the -- so though 

the purpose in the 1990s was for cleanup, they did 
.

71

exactly what you would do, and it's to characterize, 

before you go in and clean-up, you want to say, what 

am I dealing with?

Well, if you were going to go in in the 1970s, let's say 

we pose a different question. Let's say we're in the 

residual period. We want to go in and characterize 

the subsurface environment because we're going to 

have people working down there, okay? You would 

have done exactly the same thing, okay?

So as far as I'm concerned, the -- and if in fact you 

did -- stay with me now a minute -- let's say they 

actually did go into the subsurface environment and 

characterize it completely, then you would be using 

different judgments on what concentrations you 

would use. You would say, well, we know they went 

down and they did this over here, and they did this 

over here, and they did this over here, all right, then 

what would you do? You would say, oh, now we 

really know what the real concentrations were.

Mr. McCloskey: You might not select the 95th 

percentile.

Dr. Mauro: And you may not pick the 95th percentile. 

You got it. Second one, we used what I call, well, 

NIOSH used 220 -- in other words, here's the guy in 

the hole, all right? He's sitting in a hole with a 

concentration of uranium in the soil. Is that 6,000 

DPM -- sorry, picocuries per gram, and he's digging, 

and he's kicking up dust.

Now, we're talking the inhalation exposure now. All 

right. We said, well, the dust loading that he would 

be chronically, for that hour or two while he's in the 

hole, is that 200, you said it's at 220 micrograms per 

cubic meter, we used 200, okay? Now, I'm 

comfortable with that because I looked at the 

literature of what are the dust loadings. You're 

comfortable with it because you looked at it from a 

different perspective. You had other data. You had 

--
.

72

Mr. McCloskey: We canvassed the entire project 

from our side, and said --

Dr. Mauro: Right.

Mr. McCloskey: -- surely someone's done excavation 

in the past. Has anyone modeled it? We found 

someone that did, and we --

Dr. Mauro: So two different approaches, and now 

what --

Mr. Darnell: One thing I'd like to point out about that 

model though is, you had Mound work was being 

done in this large area, using large equipment and 

large surveys, and everything was a lot bigger than 

what you had inside of Building 10 with one little 

Bobcat going.

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Mr. Darnell: So there's conservative ---

Dr. Mauro: Well, it's a whole different, you're right. 

(Simultaneous speaking)

Dr. Mauro: There are differences. This guy was 

actually down there with a shovel. I mean, they 

explained it, no, they had somebody come in first, 

crack it open, but then the guys that went into the 

hole, they had, they had to go find the pipe, or 

whatever the problem was, and they did that with a 

shovel.

Chair Beach: Well, they did both though, they did, 

they had a --

Dr. Mauro: That's, again, that was the originally --

Chair Beach: -- Bobcat, yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- to crack it. You know, they actually 

had a contractor come in, as it was explained to us. 

Brought him in, specialty guy, bring in the backhoe, 
.

73

crack through the concrete, get the first few layers of 

dirt out.

And now, when you started to approach the area 

where the maintenance was needed to be done, you 

send the guy in the hole with a shovel, and he goes 

and finds the place that has to be repaired. Okay? 

So that's the picture. So there, we got dust loading.

And again, I am comfortable because I believe that 

that's a pretty good number for soil that is generally 

moist, and perhaps not always. You want to pick a 

different number, I mean, that's, you know, that's 

what I picked.

Here's a big one. NIOSH and us are assuming that 

the same person is always the person going in that 

hole. Time, every time somebody had to go in the 

hole and do a repair or maintenance, it's the same 

guy, okay? That's not what happened. We know 

that's not what happened, but I'm -- so again, it's a 

tendency to bound it, okay?

And it accommodates this issue that is, we're going 

out of our way to make sure that we're not 

underestimating the dose, because we do realize 

we're working with 1990 data, and we're applying it 

to 1970s and '80s. So you say that sort of helps to 

give a little more assurance that we're not 

underestimating the dose, okay?

Now, this next item here is the data collected in 1993 

compares well with 1990s. That is not a correct 

statement any longer, I believe, and I'm looking at 

Rose.

Mr. Darnell: Well, actually, that statement is true.

Dr. Mauro: It is true, because I may have misread 

what I --

Mr. Darnell: Yes, I think what you mean to say here 

is it compares well with the 1970s --- '60s.
.

74

Dr. Mauro: '60s.

Mr. Darnell: '60s.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, that, so I have to fix that, all right?

Mr. Darnell: But --

Dr. Mauro: The idea is, the idea still is valid, the 

concept. Next bullet, notwithstanding all these 

bounding assumptions we're still talking about very 

low doses. And finally, which is, I know that originally 

you folks hung your hat on the bioassay data that 

was collected during remediation in the '90s, and you 

showed that, what the doses were.

So you were saying that, well, these guys were down 

there digging away, cleaning up the dirt, the hot 

spots, the piping, and everything, and therefore, 

what they were doing, physically, this goes both 

indoors and outdoors now. Right now, I'm talking 

Building 10, but this also applies to outdoors. What 

they were doing is sort of the same kinds of things 

that the repurposing and maintenance people were 

doing. They were poking around underneath the 

ground.

Now, interesting situation. The petitioners say, well, 

wait a minute, hold the presses, and there's validity 

to this position, listen. The people that were doing 

the work in the 1990s, they were under a health 

physics control program. They had people who were 

watching with survey meters, air samplers, et cetera, 

et cetera, but the people that were --- you may want 

to, if there's something here you got that you want 

to interject --

Mr. McCloskey: At some point you, well, that's a 

picture of the controls that were in place for the 

workers, taking out the worst case priority-1 drain 

lines under --

Dr. Mauro: This was in the '90s.
.

75

Mr. McCloskey: Yes. 

Dr. Mauro: Oh, okay.

Mr. McCloskey: So you're making that link, so it's 

good to --

Dr. Mauro: Okay, yes. You've got a picture of it. 

Good.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: And the priority-1 drain line that's 

bagged up and they bagged it, pulled it out, correct? 

Yes, and it tells us that.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Now, so I respect that position 

that is, in one case, the work was being done under 

a health physics control program, and the other case, 

it isn't, and they're doing more or less the same kinds 

of things, digging around underneath the ground and 

playing with pipes.

The fact that you're under a health physics control 

program puts you in the position where you're going 

to make sure no one is exposed unnecessarily, and 

you keep exposures as low as reasonably achievable. 

That's in the '90s. In the '80s, you're not doing that, 

okay?

On the other side, some go, well, hold the presses. 

The guys that are doing the clean-up are deliberately 

sticking their head and their bodies and their 

backhoes and their shovels and whatever they're 

doing, where the radioactivity is, because that's what 

they're doing. They're cleaning it up. So therefore, 

they are making a point to be engaged with the 

contaminated material. In the case of the 1960s, 

'70s, and '80s, it's an inadvertent thing. That is, 

they're going down there to do their maintenance 

work as best they can to get the job done so that 

they can keep operating.

The degree to which they may or may not have 
.

76

encountered radioactive material is unknown, okay? 

So you have offsetting factors here that the one point 

could argue. But we did not, our decision was not to 

use any of the bioassay data for the purpose of 

estimating both internal or external exposures.

Mr. McCloskey: We didn't use it to estimate 

exposures either, just as a --

Dr. Mauro: A point.

Mr. Darnell: A foundation.

Dr. Mauro: Good.

Mr. Darnell: A perspective.

Dr. Mauro: So we're in the same place on that.

Mr. Darnell: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: But, so these bullets, Josie and the other 

Board Members on the phone, these bullets are the 

ones that argue to me that it's okay to use 1990s and 

some 1980 data to -- as a surrogate for the 

exposures that workers during the, M&C workers, 

during the 1970s and '80s might have experienced, 

okay? This is a judgment call purely to be made, no 

sufficient accuracy issue. But I -- my takeaway is 

this ain't bad, okay, if I were, somebody asked me to 

do it, I would say this is a good way to place a 

plausible upper bound on the exposures. And this 

would be internal exposures for people who were 

working subsurface in Building 10, okay? So we're 

just focusing on that, but that's an important 

scenario, okay?

Mr. McCloskey: It was substantially, to use your 

word, upgraded from our previous subsurface model 

because of comments made during the May meeting 

where, you know, the 50th percentile we used maybe 

didn't -- missed some of the contamination, and 

comments made by the petitioner. So this 

incorporates that, those concerns.
.

77

Dr. Mauro: And we also argue that, well, listen, the 

guys that, in a funny way, we could say, and this is 

Rose's point, she goes, it was Rose that picked the 

95th percentile. She said, and we had a debate over 

that. I said, well, wait, why are we picking the 95th 

percentile? She says, what? The problems were the 

clogged drains, okay, and the leaking drains. That's 

what had to be fixed, because that's what was 

preventing them from operating.

They couldn't use the drains, and the conduits and 

everything else that was under there, because it was 

a mess. So they had to send maintenance workers 

in to go do that work, okay? So I said, well, it's the 

stuff that's inside the drains, okay? You know, that's 

not the stuff that necessarily was in the soil, all right, 

and that would be resuspended. It's different, right?

Rose said, no, no. You know, we're talking about 

drains that were leaking and cracked, and the stuff 

that was in the drains was coming out of the drains 

and leaking, so that's, so now what's really going on 

is that the guys that are doing the maintenance are 

going there. They're going to that place underground 

where the pipes were leaking and clogged or cracked 

or whatever they were, where the -- not only the stuff 

inside the pipe, but the stuff that leaked out of the 

pipe, is. So we're putting the guy that's doing the 

maintenance work right there. 95th percentile, and 

that's where he's doing his work. I like it, all right.

Chair Beach: Does that cover all the manholes and 

different, those different areas where they were 

working, and --

Dr. Mauro: Well, a lot of it was snaking also.

Chair Beach: Right, right.

Mr. Darnell: Most, a lot of the work didn't actually 

include breaking up the cement, getting down into 

the soil, whatever it was, until they did the final 

remediation when there was health physicists there.
.

78

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. Darnell: Most of the time they go down and clean 

out the drains with snakes, have to replace plugs. 

There were times when they, where they cut the 

cement and went in and --

Chair Beach: Yes, that's a different, than what I just 

asked. Yes.

Mr. Darnell: Using the 95th percentile covers 

everything as if they cut the cement and went into 

the hole every time.

Chair Beach: Yes. I was just reading some of the 

worker comments, and on one of them, the talked 

about the manholes. They spent a lot of time in 

manholes. Did anybody know if there's manholes --

Dr. Mauro: No, I didn't --

Chair Beach: -- inside 10 or outside?

Dr. Mauro: I did not look at that.

Chair Beach: There was a lot of work that went on 

through --

Mr. McCloskey: That was a discussion by the one 

maintenance supervisor who did a lot of electrical 

work, and did go into a lot of manholes outside.

Chair Beach: It wasn't really clear. That's why I was 

asking.

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, that's why the inside --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: Well, I mean, to get to that issue, is there 

a reason to believe that the guy that went into the 

manhole to do whatever he had to do, whether it was 

indoors or outdoors, would be worse than this?

Ms. Gogliotti: No.
.

79

Mr. Darnell: There's no survey, no data to support 

that at all.

Dr. Mauro: Okay, let me go on.

Chair Beach: All right. So before you move on to the 

next subject, any questions of Board Members on the 

phone?

Member Anderson: No.

Member Kotelchuck: No. Dave.

Member Valerio: Loretta. No questions, but when 

they speak, if they could speak just a little bit louder. 

I'm having trouble hearing Pete's responses.

Chair Beach: Okay. Thank you for that comment, 

Loretta.

Dr. Mauro: Loretta, are you okay with me? I usually 

speak pretty loudly.

Chair Beach: You're fine.

Dr. Mauro: I'm okay? All right.

Member Valerio: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Now we're going to move on, 

remember, what we just did is talk about internal 

doses from the guys in the hole in Building 10. Now 

we're going to talk about external exposures to the 

guys in the hole in Building 10, okay?

Now, here's where we have a problem, okay? Now, 

and there's been a lot of internal discussion at SC&A 

about this, and I've been holding the line. I'm the 

one who's been the hard head on this one. NIOSH 

elected to use film badge data collected in the 1968 

time period, with certain adjustments to it --

Chair Beach: I thought it was '67.

Dr. Mauro: '67? '67.
.

80

Chair Beach: Last year of operations.

Dr. Mauro: The last year of AWE operations.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Mauro: That's the point, whatever that date is, 

and took a portion of that year, and said, somehow, 

that film badge data could be used as a surrogate for 

exposures that were experienced by workers during 

the residual period, and place a plausible upper 

bound on external exposure. I can't buy that. And 

the reason I can't buy that is, now -- and this is how 

I see it.

Now, I may not see it right, but this is what I see. At 

that time period, when those film badges were 

collected, the exposures that workers were 

experienced, one, were the workers who were doing 

radiological work, and their radiological work at that 

time included the handling of fuel, the assembling of 

fuel assemblies, and maybe some of them were also 

doing maintenance work, including, and maybe even 

some repurposing work. So it represents a saying 

that the important part is, the reason they were 

wearing the badge, it was still an AWE operation. 

There was still fuel onsite, and therefore, once you've 

left that, and all of the fuel was taken away, and it 

was actually, as I understand it, a degree of clean-up 

and removal of equipment once the AWE activities 

stopped, you've just left that domain of the, what I 

call the AWE domain, and now you're moving into the 

residual period domain. And in my mind, the film 

badge data collected during the AWE period in no way 

can be used as a surrogate for exposures experienced 

by M&C workers involved in repurposing and 

maintenance. Can't do it.

So not that it doesn't bound it. Don't get me wrong. 

I'd be the first to say, well, listen, these guys are 

handling fuel, and in addition to whatever else they 

were doing. That probably is an upper bound, but --

and Bob argued with me that, over and over, no, it's 
.

81

an upper bound. That's all we really care about.

I said, no, just because it's an upper bound doesn't 

mean it's right. And it is unlikely that the guys doing 

the maintenance work would ever be exposed to the 

same levels that the guys that were handling 

uranium. But --

Mr. Darnell: John, I've got no arguments with you 

whatsoever ---

Dr. Mauro: Okay, here's the point.

Mr. Darnell: -- that's a Site Profile issue.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, no, it's not.

Mr. McCloskey: Well, I think I can --

Mr. Darnell: If we can upper bound the SEC, that's 

what we --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: Well, hang on. Hang on, one second. In 

2005, EEOICPA was specifically amended to address 

this issue, and I'll just paraphrase briefly, but there's, 

they amended the paragraph on what's considered 

radiation doses for certain Atomic Weapons 

Employers, and the definition says, in part A of that 

amendment, any dose of ionizing radiation received 

by that employee from, essentially, covered 

exposure. You know -- any weapons related to work 

as covered exposure for an Atomic Weapons 

Employee. But then, part B of that subparagraph 

says, any dose of ionizing radiation received by that 

employee from a source not covered by part A, which 

is covered, that is not distinguishable through reliable 

documentation from a dose covered under part A. In 

other words, if you can't tell the difference, you've 

got to include it all, whether it's covered exposure or 

not covered exposure. It was specifically added in 

2005.
.

82

Dr. Mauro: I heard what you said, and I don't quite 

get it, but I heard what you said. But to me, I go, 

my thinking about this is very simple. You know, 

they were, there was no fuel there, so --

Dr. Neton: Well, there's still radiation exposure 

there, right?

Dr. Mauro: Yes, but --

Dr. Neton: So you've got two sources of radiation 

exposure. You've got covered exposure and not 

covered exposure.

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Dr. Neton: The film badge cannot distinguish 

between either of those.

Dr. Mauro: That's correct.

Dr. Neton: And that's exactly what this 

subparagraph B covers. Any dose received by the 

employee from a source not covered, not covered by 

a covered exposure, that is not distinguishable 

through reliable documentation, e.g. film badges, 

from a dose covered by subparagraph A. Meaning, if 

you can't tell the difference between covered and 

non-covered exposure, you've got a film badge 

where you'll just use it all, and we've done this before 

at fuel facilities where, you know, there's 

commingled exposure. It's typically applied in 

situations where you have mixed contamination.

Dr. Mauro: At the same time.

Dr. Neton: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: Yes, but this isn't the same time.

Dr. Neton: Yes, it is.

Dr. Mauro: No, one is during a, what is --

Dr. Neton: No, this exposure, it doesn't matter 
.

83

whether it's a residual contamination period or 

covered period. Exposure during residual 

contamination period, you can't tell the difference 

between commercial activities and noncommercial 

activities. It doesn't matter. You use it all.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Stay with me for a minute. I'm 

going to, I'm going to explain what I would consider 

to be a common sense argument, all right? I hear 

what you just said.

Dr. Neton: Well this is a law ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: --- doesn't mean it has to make sense, 

right.

Dr. Mauro: No, no, no. Okay. You see, think of it 

like this. They're two different worlds. We've got a 

world called the AWE operations, okay? It just so 

happens to be the same Building 10, all right? Then 

we have a whole different world where that's not 

being done anymore.

Now, they're moving into commercial operations, 

doing something completely different, okay? Bears 

no resemblance to what took place before, all right? 

We have a different, whole -- and there are scenarios 

now that took place in the residual period that may 

not have even taken place during the AWE.

We don't know that they were repurposing, because 

I suspect, I mean, right or wrong, repurposing was 

done because they were repurposing. They weren't 

going to do AWE anymore. We're going to do this. 

We're doing something else. We've got a new 

contract that's going to come in to do this and this, 

and therefore, we have to install new pieces of 

equipment, and we have to rebuild.

So therefore, the kinds of things that were going on 

during the residual period, in my mind, may not bear 

any resemblance to what took place during the AWE 
.

84

period. So notwithstanding the language you read to 

me, it doesn't make sense.

Mr. Darnell: So now, to try and make sure I'm 

understanding, your thoughts then is that, because 

they dug in a hole during the residual period --

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Mr. Darnell: -- say they dug right at the 53,000 

picocurie max value, that the exposure, external 

exposure to that 53,000 picocuries from the time that 

that worker was in the hole overrides the dose from 

a full year of operations?

Dr. Mauro: No, I'm saying that you've got to model 

the doses that took place through the scenarios that 

occurred during the residual period. And there's no 

reason to believe that the activities that took place 

during the residual period bear any resemblance 

toward the activities that took place during the AWE 

period.

Mr. Darnell: Well, what I'm trying to understand is 

how much dose, and you're coming up with this 

question, how much external dose was that worker 

getting?

Mr. Sharfi: He's agreeing it's bounding, he's just 

saying --

Dr. Neton: Well --

Mr. Sharfi: -- it's not an adequate ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: -- I don't know how more clearly this can 

read, myself.

Dr. Mauro: I know, but --

Dr. Neton: You have to go back and look at the --

Dr. Mauro: No, I hear what you're saying. And 
.

85

listen, if that, if you, if you folks are all comfortable 

with that --

Chair Beach: Can you write up a memo to that so 

that John has it in writing, and --

Dr. Neton: Yes, we can put that in writing.

Chair Beach: -- because it is a, it is a question, it 

was not addressed very well.

Dr. Neton: Yes ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: --- came up in the last meeting.

Dr. Neton: -- I just chimed in with this now. I agree.

Chair Beach: Sure.

Dr. Neton: I'm springing this on you today, but --

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: No, and I ---

Dr. Neton: -- but it's true. I mean, we've done this 

in places that say, processed commercial uranium, 

and then they also did a small project for the AEC, 

for a weapons-related activity. And that ongoing 

commercial process continued. We conclude that 

ongoing commercial uranium activity in the dose 

reconstruction if we can't tell the difference.

Dr. Mauro: All right. You show --

Dr. Neton: Surface contamination --

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I'll tell you the compromise where 

I could accept it conceptually. If we knew there was 

repurposing activities going on throughout the AWE 

period, very similar to the repurposing activities that 

took place during the residual period, I'd buy the 

argument.
.

86

Dr. Neton: What do you mean repurposing activities?

Dr. Mauro: That means we're going underneath the 

ground, digging everything up, taking out old dirt, 

and putting in new, all new equipment, because we -

-

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: No, I agree that there's ongoing 

maintenance, but the big deal was the, see, when 

they described their repurposing activities ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: There are exposures to uranium in that 

facility. There are external exposures, admittedly 

small, but if you can't tease those apart, between 

what's measured in the HFIR versus a maintenance 

guide, going around, you know, working on 

equipment and what not ---

Participant: Apparently in the '60s, that --

Dr. Mauro: You see --

Participant: -- piping still was getting clogged --

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Participant: -- and they still had to do maintenance 

and go and dig them out and --

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Participant: -- re-fix them, and --

Dr. Mauro: As a health physicist saying, all right, 

wait a minute, okay, I heard your argument. Then, 

I said, but wait a minute, do we, do we have any idea 

of what the exposures were, external exposures were 

to the people doing the repurposing activities and the 

maintenance activities during the AWE period?

And you're saying, well, we could use numbers that 
.

87

were, the film badge data that was collected, for the 

reasons you just argued. And I say, but as far as 

we're concerned, no one has ever, for example, 

modeled or evaluated what kind of external 

exposures took place during those repurposing 

activities.

All we have is some film badge data. The degree to 

which it represents repurpose activities is unknown. 

So why not do, and that's what I said, and I was very 

careful with the words I used in my report, 

supplement your evaluation. Use your numbers --

Dr. Neton: What you're arguing is you can 

differentiate between the two somehow --

Dr. Mauro: Let's just take a look how --

Dr. Neton: -- and model --

Dr. Mauro: Let's make sure, okay? I've got, in other 

words, in my mind, okay, good. But you know what? 

I think we have an obligation to take a look at, well, 

let's see if we could figure what those, what might've 

-- because we have a lot of information these guys 

gave us on repurposing that may or may not, you 

know, it's just, I think, --- I think we, I think we have 

an obligation to say, can we reconstruct those doses, 

external doses, associated with repurposing?

And the answer is yes, I think we can. And not only 

that, I think we have an obligation to do that, and we 

can't just walk away from this and say, oh, we could 

use the data, even though you read that, legal words 

you gave me, and --

Dr. Neton: Well, the operative word is, is it 

indistinguishable? Can we not distinguish between 

the dose received from, what you call repurposing 

activities, and the dose received from general 

exposures in the plant, including the HFIR area, 

which is where you have your biggest measurements.

Dr. Mauro: And I'm going to -- I'm going to give you 
.

88

the reason why we can't do that. What happens if 

they were working with tons of cobalt-60 during the, 

during the AWE period?

Dr. Neton: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: All right, and then I got rid of it later. All 

right. Would you be okay with that?

Dr. Neton: Well, no, but wait, wait, wait, wait --

Dr. Mauro: Please, we can't do that.

Dr. Neton: What do you mean tons, during the --

Dr. Mauro: During the AWE period --

Dr. Neton: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- let's say they had cobalt-60 onsite 

because they were doing some radiography, and they 

were, who knows what was onsite.

Dr. Neton: But wait, but these badges from, we're 

using, are not from the AWE period, is that right?

Dr. Mauro: Yes, they are.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: These are last year. They're last year.

Dr. Neton: From the last quarter, okay.

Mr. McCloskey: For most of these sites, the 

activities, the work activities dramatically change

from, at the end of the AWE operations --

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Mr. McCloskey: -- and we always take whatever 

information or data we have from the very end of 

AWE operations, and model a work activity that's 

dramatically different than the AWE ops.

(Simultaneous speaking.)
.

89

Mr. Darnell: Well, I guess, I guess we have a 

difference of opinion, and what NIOSH would like is 

for you to show us somewhere, some reason, some 

numbers, as to --

Dr. Mauro: I did.

Mr. Darnell: No, you told us your thought 

experiment.

Dr. Mauro: But no, no, I just, I just --

Mr. Darnell: Have you done a dose assessment --

Dr. Mauro: We could do it.

Mr. Darnell: -- from one of those things --

Dr. Mauro: We could do it. We didn't do it, but we 

could do it. I mean --

Mr. Darnell: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: -- we know what the upper 95th 

percentile is.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: I'm saying you could do it.

Dr. Neton: What doses are we assigning here? I 

mean what are the levels ---

Mr. McCloskey: External.

Dr. Neton: I mean, what are the levels of, what are 

the levels of the doses to be used?

Mr. McCloskey: They're in the, the best place to find 

them are in the issues matrix.

Chair Beach: So I've got a question why you're doing 

that. So you said you always model using the last 

year or --

Mr. Sharfi: We have.
.

90

Chair Beach: But you didn't model this one in 

particular. You're just using the badges?

Mr. Sharfi: We used it.

Dr. Mauro: For the external. For the external.

Chair Beach: It's not modeled, because Pat said we 

model it --

Mr. Sharfi: Oh, yes.

Chair Beach: -- and it's really not.

Dr. Mauro: Well, for external, only for the residual 

activity deposited on surfaces, which makes total 

sense. But when it comes to external exposure, you 

tell me that during the --

Dr. Neton: Well, let me, let me just find out what 

we're assigning here, and then we can talk. Is it 10 

millirem, 50 millirem, 200?

Ms. Gogliotti: They're small.

Dr. Neton: See, that's my, I don't know if I'm getting 

at it. This is a small dose to begin with, and if we're 

using the, what percentile 50th, 95th percentile?

Mr. Darnell: 50th.

Dr. Neton: 50th percentile.

Mr. McCloskey: Well, for the --

Mr. Darnell: For the external it's 50, because it's, we 

set the --

Mr. McCloskey: Yes, because it's not rebounding, 

right. So --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: Yes, the 95th would be unrealistic --

Dr. Neton: So we're using the 50th percentile, and if 
.

91

I remember correctly, the 50th percentile may be 

close to the missed dose you would assign, based on 

just assigning missed dose on the badges. Because 

probably most of those doses that were reported in 

there are less than detectable to begin with.

Mr. McCloskey: 48.3 millirem.

Dr. Neton: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: We're coming in lower.

Dr. Neton: You can't get much lower than that, 

based on the --

Dr. Mauro: But we're coming in lower, right? We're 

coming in at 15 millirem per year.

Dr. Neton: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: So we were, that's --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: Oh, I'm sorry, I just crossed, I just 

crossed wires on it.

Dr. Neton: But what I'm saying is if the 50th 

percentile is almost totally based on missed dose 

from the badges, and presumably, if maintenance 

workers were wearing them that weren't working in 

HFIR, those are representative of the maintenance 

activities.

Dr. Mauro: I don't see your point.

Dr. Neton: You've got, you've got multiple 

operations --

Dr. Mauro: You're saying that the film badge data 

that was collected during the AWE period --

Dr. Neton: Right.

Dr. Mauro: -- reflects maintenance activities?
.

92

Dr. Neton: I imagine they weren't just HFIR workers 

wearing the badges.

Ms. Gogliotti: Well, then you could throw in a CTW 

correction if you needed to also.

Dr. Neton: Wait, wait. No, what I'm saying is we 

need to look at the distribution, and if the bulk of the 

50th percentile is mostly represented by missed 

dose, meaning there was nothing detected --

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Dr. Neton: -- zeros, all badges were zeros --

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Dr. Neton: -- then that's as good as you're going to 

get. If you have, if you have badge workers -

Dr. Mauro: During AWE operations.

Dr. Neton: -- during the AWE period, but if it's zero 

it's zero, you could have badge data after the AWE 

operations and you still would come up with --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Neton: That's my point.

Mr. Darnell: So what happened is, NIOSH, we took 

a look at the five and a quarter year period of work 

at HFIR, and the average highest dose was 48.3 

millirem per quarter. Per quarter. That's updated 12 

millirem per quarter for workers outside of HFIR.

Dr. Neton: See, these were outside of HFIR.

Dr. Mauro: Well, HFIR was doing the same thing AWE 

workers were doing during the AWE period.

Dr. Neton: Well, if it's outside of HFIR, 12 and a half 

millirem per quarter, is that what we're assigning 

them?

Mr. Darnell: Yes.
.

93

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Dr. Neton: Okay. So --

Dr. Mauro: Oh, I agree.

Mr. Katz: One at a time. Please, speak one at a time, 

just because it helps the court reporter.

Dr. Neton: So what we've done is we've taken the 

workers that were not working on the HFIR project -

-

Dr. Mauro: Right.

Dr. Neton: -- which presumably, are doing things 

like maintenance activities around.

Dr. Mauro: They were handling, they were handling 

fuel, just like the HFIR workers were, only they're, it 

was AWE work.

Dr. Neton: And how much in the last year?

Dr. Mauro: Okay, we can talk about that. Now, I tell 

you what --

Dr. Neton: But you're talking 48 millirem --

Mr. Sharfi: But that was the argument, I think, last 

time was that if you look at the inventory in the last 

year, it dramatically drops which is likely just left of, 

what's the HFIR material left. And so really, I don't 

know if you're really talking about non-HFIR people 

really handling fuel in the last quarter before the 

contract's already done.

Dr. Mauro: And that was the point Rose was making, 

because I'm the one that was the hard, I'm the one 

who's been taking a hard line on this, all right?

The reason I'm taking a hard line is that there's fuel 

onsite during the AWE period, okay? There's no fuel 

onsite during the residual period. And it's so simple. 

You can't use film badge data that reflects exposures 
.

94

to spent, to fuel as being representative of --

Mr. Sharfi: But if it's non-HFIR, then it's not 

necessarily badges associated with fuel handling. If 

they're non-HFIR people.

Dr. Mauro: Well, why do you say that?

Mr. Sharfi: Because it's --

Dr. Mauro: Because we know it, we know that AWE 

activity went on when, if you go back ---

Mr. Darnell: If you look at the response to 

Observation 5 in the issues matrix, and the fuel was 

removed near the end of the AWE operations. Not at 

the end, near the end.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, okay.

Mr. Darnell: M&C was required and performed 

surveys of --

Dr. Mauro: Oh, now you're making a point that I 

could buy, all right? You're saying that the film badge 

data that was collected at the end of the AWE period 

was for workers not involved with fuel.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Darnell: --- not involved with HFIR.

Mr. Sharfi: HFIR fuel. The only fuel left onsite was 

the HFIR fuel, and we're using non-HFIR workers.

Dr. Mauro: Well, I --

Mr. Sharfi: So they were non-fuel handling people.

Dr. Mauro: I want to hear you say that the film badge 

data that you have, I don't care where it comes from, 

is dealing with workers who were not handling fuel 

but were likely involved in other activities such as 

repurposing and maintenance. You tell me that, I 

say, okay.
.

95

But I don't have that -- in fact, we, Rose and I talked 

about this. Rose went back to the, you know, dove 

back into the dumpster to say, listen, do we have any 

evidence that those last few months of when they 

were badged there was no fuel onsite?

Mr. Darnell: SRDB 168-315.

Dr. Mauro: You make that case --

Mr. Darnell: 168-315 --

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Okay.

Mr. Darnell: -- talks about the HFIR remaining onsite 

for that period.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. Darnell: And then SRDB 169-85 talks about the 

surveying that was done outside of the HFIR areas 

for the M&C workers.

Dr. Mauro: But was there AWE fuel onsite at that 

time? AWE. Forget about HFIR --

Mr. Darnell: AWE fuel was removed at the end of 

D&D operations in 1967, so there may have been 

some fuel there.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: There were 694 kilograms of 

uranium present in '66. None of our dosimetry data 

comes from that year. 172 kilograms were present 

in '67. That's when our dosimetry data was used.

Mr. Sharfi: And our belief is that 172 is HFIR, is HFIR 

material.

Mr. McCloskey: It's a four-fold decrease.

Mr. Sharfi: So, therefore, we don't believe that there 

was AWE material onsite during the period that we're 

taking the badges from.
.

96

Dr. Mauro: Good. I think that you're halfway home. 

So, if you're saying that really the exposures that we 

observed on the film badges were really not 

dominated by the fuel that might've been AWE fuel 

onsite, it was dominated by other activities that were 

going on, which may very well have been repurposing 

and maintenance work, such as the work that took 

place. Okay. Now --

Mr. McCloskey: They were also dominated by zeros. 

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Yes. Now --

Mr. McCloskey: 45 percent of them were.

Dr. Mauro: We may be overanalyzing this, but, see, 

I hear the workers tell me that, for 20 years, they're 

doing all these repurposing activities, and they 

describe it in detail, and we have an understanding 

of it, and we have some understanding of what the 

levels of contamination were, so we could go right to 

the issue. 

In other words, rather than using the surrogate data 

for film badges at the end of '68, we say, you know, 

good, but let's say, yeah, good, you've got it. But 

you know what? We've got to convince ourselves 

that there wasn't anything going on in the '70s and 

'80s that might've been different than what took 

place at the end of '68 or '67, whatever it may be. 

Do you see where I'm headed? You've got to address 

the --

(Simultaneous speaking)

Mr. Darnell: -- the situation is, the highest level of 

contamination, the highest level of exposure, would 

have occurred in 1967. And then there would have 

been some drop-off over time --

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Yeah.

Mr. Darnell: -- because that's just physics, the way 

things work. We don't give them credit for any of 
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97

that drop-off. We say it stayed at 1967 forever.

Dr. Mauro: Listen, maybe I'm just a hard-head, but, 

to me, you've got scenarios that were described by 

these workers during the residual period, and we've 

got to try to estimate what they were. And to use 

the film badge data, which we don't even know what 

it represents --

Mr. Katz: Okay, so, one solution to this would be, 

SC&A, go ahead, model it --

Dr. Mauro: I did. 

Mr. Katz: Do you have the numbers?

Dr. Mauro: Yes, we -- oh, the external? No. 

Mr. Katz: That's what I'm saying. 

Dr. Mauro: Oh, no. We could do that.

Mr. Katz: I was going to say, one solution to this 

would, SC&A, go ahead and do that work, estimate 

it, and then you can talk about how that compares to 

the bioassay data being used from the end of the 

'60s.

(Simultaneous speaking)

Mr. Katz: The badge data, sorry.

Dr. Mauro: No, I mean, we have a solution.

Chair Beach: Okay. And so that can be added to this 

paper before you release --

Dr. Mauro: We will add that. And we will do a 

scoping. We will do a -- in other words, we will say, 

listen, what's the kind of external exposure that 

might've been experienced by M&C workers during 

the residual period who were down in the hole, and 

given our understanding of what was down in the 

hole, and we may very well find that --
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98

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me. This is Bob. Bob 

Anigstein.

Dr. Mauro: Go ahead.

Dr. Anigstein: We actually did that. We did the 

limiting -- I did the limiting exposure, taking the 95th 

percentile concentration of radioisotopes of uranium 

--

Dr. Mauro: Good.

Dr. Anigstein: -- in the pipes, and assuming that it 

leaked out into the ground and that same high 

concentration was spread uniformly over a large 

expanse of ground --

Dr. Mauro: Good, that's what we need.

Dr. Anigstein: -- and that a worker was standing on 

that.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Dr. Anigstein: And if I remember correctly, the 

number, the doses actually come out fairly -- this is 

at 2,000 hours a year, and the doses come out --

external doses come out fairly close to the 95th 

percentile of the film badge data.

Ms. Gogliotti: Bob, isn't that the external, the outside 

Building 10 that you're discussing?

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me?

Ms. Gogliotti: You're talking about outside of Building 

10, correct?

Dr. Anigstein: No, no, I'm talking about inside 

Building 10, the pipes.

Ms. Gogliotti: Oh, I haven't seen those calculations.

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah. It's in -- it's buried in the 

original report from earlier in the year.
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99

Dr. Mauro: Good. We've got the numbers. We will 

include that in our final draft.

Dr. Anigstein: And, John, what you did was you said 

that's unrealistic, and you divided by 12 to --

Dr. Mauro: Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember that.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: But I'm saying that --

Dr. Mauro: Right, that's what I did.

Dr. Anigstein: I'm not arguing that my number is the 

correct number. I'm saying I did that to show that 

the film badge data --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: Oh, so you used it to --

Dr. Anigstein: -- but that the film badge data was 

bounding. And it wasn't particularly high, nor was it 

lower. It was in the right ballpark.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. What I suggest we do is take his 

numbers, put them --

Dr. Anigstein: So we have another way of calculating 

the external exposure without using the film badge 

data as a limiting case, and we get doses on the order 

of less than 300 -- or the order of 300 millirem a year 

or less.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: It's not an SEC issue.

Mr. Katz: But it's attractive. Anyway, it could be 

addressed in your report, since you got --

Dr. Mauro: Right. No, because this was an SEC 

issue. Up until this conversation, this was an SEC 

issue, as far as I'm concerned. 
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100

But if we have a tractable way that could place a 

plausible upper bound on external exposures beneath 

Building 10, using the methods that Bob just 

described, and by coincidence it turns out to be pretty 

close to the numbers you came out with, that's fine 

with me. But at least we explicitly addressed it.

Mr. McCloskey: It addresses your fuel issues, so it's 

not SEC.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah.

Mr. Darnell: Well, that's not a problem at all.

Dr. Mauro: I knew this was going to be a tough one. 

All right. Okay. Let's move on.

Chair Beach: Okay. Do you need that memo or 

anything --

Dr. Neton: No, no, I think this is more online with 

where we need to go.

Chair Beach: Okay, I was just making sure.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Chair Beach: Great. You're going to move on to 

external -- any questions from Board Members?

Member Anderson: I agree it's time to move on.

(Laughter.)

Chair Beach: Does anybody want or need another 

comfort break?

Dr. Mauro: I've got 10 minutes and I'm done.

Mr. McCloskey: We're almost there.

Dr. Mauro: Ten minutes and I'm done.

We hit the hard one. That was the hard rock. 

All right. We're going to move outside now. We're 
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going outside now. We're leaving Building 10, we're 

going to go outside, all right?

Chair Beach: Outside Building 10?

Dr. Mauro: Outside Building 10, and we're going to 

be talking about internal exposures first, okay? 

Okay. Now, the bullets will speak for themselves. 

Basically, we've got a lot of data. We both data in 

the surface and subsurface data.

I actually give the numbers of measurements: 2,391 

soil samples. 

For example, you've got soil sample data. We have 

a nice table that Rose put together at the back of our 

report that actually summarizes, which is a great 

addition. Thanks, Rose. If someone happens to have 

my report --

Chair Beach: I do. It's on page 11.

Dr. Mauro: It starts on page 11. You're going to see 

a table that summarizes all of the different outdoor 

areas where there was contamination, and what the 

data say for each of these areas. 

And so, therefore, we have an understanding of the 

range of contamination that was observed outdoors 

for all these different locations, a point that you made 

earlier, that, listen, what about all these other 

locations, not just outside Building 12? Or, I mean, 

not just the burial area. 

We find out that the burial area is limiting. Okay, 

that's what this table shows us, all right? Given that 

the burial area is limiting, we went ahead and said, 

okay, well, then, theoretically, what you could do is, 

for internal exposures -- now, we're talking there's 

internal exposures aboveground, and there is, 

because you're standing on contamination soil 

outdoors, you can get some resuspension. We know 

what to do with that.
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102

If you feel that you've got a pretty good idea of the 

range of exposures for all these different areas, we 

find out that the nasty -- the worst area was likely 

the burial ground area. We've got a range of values, 

and what I would say you use, this is what I'm 

suggesting, you use an average value, because this 

guy is outside now, right? He's walking around. He's 

not just standing at the 95th percentile location. He's 

walking around.

So you pick the average outdoor picocuries per gram. 

You go with a dust loading of 200 micrograms per 

cubic meter. You go with an inhalation rate of 1.2 

cubic meters per hour, and you use 2,000 hours per 

year, and you've got your internal dose to outdoor 

workers at the site. And if you want to go with a 

more conservative approach, rather than -- I picked 

the average because the guy is walking around.

Mr. McCloskey: So, we didn't hear that the workers 

stayed out, the same pool of maintenance workers 

they drew upon, we didn't hear that a maintenance 

worker stayed outside for 2,000 hours a year.

Dr. Mauro: Right.

Mr. McCloskey: So, if we capture it with the two 

hours of maintenance, and then the additional 10 

months they were inside of Building 10, were the 

lion's share of radioactive material work occurred, 

because we never heard that someone stayed 

outside for 2,000 hours.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: We wouldn't have added that part, 

what you did there.

Dr. Mauro: No problem. We did that saying, man, 

maybe there were people out there working, they're 

outdoors. They're outdoors for some reason, and 

they're there for -- they may not have been, but --

Mr. McCloskey: You're assuming a full year of 
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exposure, but you're tacking in 2,000 hours of being 

outside.

Dr. Mauro: Well, that would be for that scenario. 

There may be some workers out there. All I'm saying 

is there may have been some workers that were 

outdoors working a lot of different locations where 

they were being exposed to this residual 

radioactivity. 

Let's go with the spent fuel area -- the burial ground 

area, and let's do that one. And since it's the burial 

ground area, we go with the geometric mean, rather 

than the upper 95th percentile of the burial area, 

because he's not going to stay in one -- the reality is, 

if he's outside for 2,000 hours per year, he's probably 

not only in the burial area. But maybe he is. I don't 

know.

But, you see, what we have is a tractable problem. 

It's just now a matter of judgment, where do you 

want to put the guy for how long? And so, as far as 

I'm concerned, we didn't -- we don't have any 

numbers, but I think that you actually -- my last 

bullet here is that you actually use this fundamental 

strategy. That's what you did. I don't know, you 

know --

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah, we used the 95th percentile.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. McCloskey: The 200 hours is something we 

debated earlier.

Dr. Mauro: Well, now we're going underground. Now 

we're aboveground.

Mr. McCloskey: Oh.

Dr. Mauro: I'm separating aboveground from 

belowground.

Mr. Darnell: Doesn't that method come out on page 
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11, where it's saying that 6.8 millirem?

Dr. Mauro: We have a number. We have some --

yeah, that's external exposures belowground.

Mr. Darnell: That's belowground?

Dr. Mauro: In other words, the first, the page that 

we're -- the third page from the last is outside 

internal exposure. And all that's laid out here is a 

strategy that we think is reasonable.

Mr. Darnell: I'm looking at Section 2.4.2, where it 

says external exposures outdoors.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. In your report?

Ms. Gogliotti: No.

Mr. Darnell: Your report.

Dr. Mauro: Our report? Give me a page number. 

Give me a page number.

Mr. Darnell: I'm on page 11 of 16, Section 2.4.2.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. Darnell: And it's talking about external 

exposures in Building 12 and other outside areas, and 

it gives a 200 hour per year effective dose of 2.08 

millirem. And then if you spent 90 percent of that 

working time there, 6.87 millirem. So how do we 

effectively bound that with the --

Dr. Mauro: It's done. It's done. It's done in our 

report. I didn't -- we did it, okay? When I made my 

little summary, I neglected to put that in there. So, 

it is there. We have the numbers. And they're low, 

okay?

Mr. Darnell: And I just want to make sure I was 

thinking the right way, that this was the right section.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. The next, see, I try to break it up 
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105

into these different categories to make sure that we 

capture indoor, outdoor, aboveground, belowground, 

internal, external. And that's why the way I 

structured this, but you correctly point out that I 

actually left out, in my summary, exactly we did do 

the analysis. It says there.

So, to finish up, we're still outdoors now, but now 

we're talking external exposures aboveground and 

external exposures belowground, which is also --

what you just read addresses those areas. In other 

words, we're fundamentally saying the same thing. 

And to get conceptual again, once you have a handle 

on the activity in the soil, aboveground and 

belowground, and you feel fairly confident regarding 

that you've got enough information, it then becomes 

simply a matter of what's the dust loading, and 

what's the exposure duration? For internal. 

For external, it's simply a matter of what's the, what's 

the exposure duration? 

So it's all tractable. And my conclusion, I'll read it. 

SC&A concludes that the doses to M&C workers 

during the residual period, including the workers 

involved in maintenance and repurposing activities, 

can be reconstructed in a scientifically sound and 

claimant-favorable manner by using upper end 

values of contamination levels measured during the 

1980s and 1990s, along with appropriately 

conservative assumptions regarding airborne dust 

loading exposure durations.

So, this whole long story, my take-away from this is 

that this is a tractable problem. What the exact 

assumptions are, what durations, what dust loadings, 

things of that sort, are to be worked out. 

But as far as I'm concerned, the surrogate data issue 

is the key issue that goes toward the SEC. And 

there's that one slide that I had here, that I listed the 

bullets of why I think it's okay to do that, that we can 
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106

extrapolate from either the '90s information 

supplemented with the '80s information in order to 

do all these calculations. And that's the end of my 

story.

Chair Beach: Okay. So, questions from any Board 

Members?

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. Lots to think about, and 

I would like to read carefully the SC&A response, 

which I haven't had a chance to do in detail.

Chair Beach: Yeah, and you don't have the full 

version. You have the quick version. So that'll be 

updated and sent out. 

I think, so, our next topic is status of any remaining 

SEC items. I think that we won't discuss that until 

we get through and have SC&A's paper. So --

Member Anderson: Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Chair Beach: Any questions or comments or 

anything before we move into the petitioner's 

comments and concerns? And we have a letter to 

read into the record. Ted will. 

Okay. So we're going to move into the petitioner's 

comments, starting with the letter from 

Congressman Kennedy that I got yesterday.

Petitioner's Comments & Questions

Mr. Katz: Okay. So, dated November 20th, to Josie 

from Joseph Kennedy. He's a congressman.

"I represent the 4th Congressional District of 

Massachusetts, which includes the city of Attleboro. 

During the 1950s and '60s, Metal & Controls 

Corporation performed government-sponsored work 

as a nuclear fuel plant. The government contract 

ended in 1967, and the radioactive material was 

removed, and the plant was declared 

decontaminated.
.

107

"Texas Instruments acquired and occupied the 

facility. Further evaluation indicated the area 

affected by radiation was, in fact, not properly 

cleaned before Texas Instruments moved into the 

facility. 

"Due to the high levels of radioactive materials and 

improper cleanup of the factory, many workers from 

both Metal & Controls Corporation and Texas 

Instruments have had, or are still experiencing, 

cancers due to their exposure.

"In 2001, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act, or EEOICPA, was created 

by the federal government to compensate qualified 

workers or workers' families for their exposure to 

radioactive materials and to their related cancers.

"However, the men and women who regularly 

maintain the buildings that were contaminated by 

radiation, but were not assigned exclusively to those 

buildings, were not included in the cohort of qualified 

workers. These workers regularly came in contact 

with potentially hazardous materials in the duct work, 

pipes, and other recesses of the building.

"Since taking office in 2013, I have sought to assist 

the distribution of benefits to former TI employees 

who have fallen ill as a result of working at the site 

in Attleboro. I have met with several of these 

employees and have heard many stories about the 

pain they and their families have experienced as a 

result.

"Furthermore, it is my understanding that the terms 

of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, 22 

U.S.C. Section 2210, Note 212, do not require 

claimants to establish the causation of their disease. 

Rather, the claimants qualify for compensation by 

establishing a diagnosis of a list of compensable 

disease.

"I understand that there is this agreement among 
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108

Members of the Work Group you chair as to how to 

evaluate the extent of the radiation these workers 

were exposed to in order to ascertain their eligibility 

for compensation. It is my hope that the Work Group 

takes a broader view and considers the cases of these 

workers in their final determination.

"Thank you for your work and consideration of this 

request. Please do not hesitate to let me know if I 

can be helpful at all. Sincerely, Joseph B. Kennedy 

III, Member of Congress."

So that's the letter. And now I think we're ready for 

the petitioner's comments.

Mr. Elliott: Yes. This is Mike Elliot. Would you like 

me to comment now?

Mr. Katz: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you 

again for the great work that the Work Group is 

doing. I continue to be impressed with, you know, 

all of the work by certainly Josie, as the leader of the 

Work Group, Dr. Mauro, and all his team at SC&A, 

and the folks at NIOSH. And, you know, it's really --

it's quite an impressive process to witness, and I feel 

very fortunate to have an opportunity to speak.

So, there were a number of things, was it Dr. Pat, is 

it Neton, who was speaking about the White Paper 

that --

Mr. Katz: Pat McCloskey.

Mr. Elliott: Oh, excuse me. Pat McCloskey. Sorry. 

Sorry, Pat. That the White Paper that NIOSH issued 

on October 24, 2018, a number of issues, let me 

jump to one of the ones that I think is perhaps of 

high importance.

On page 11 of that document, Mr. McCloskey was 

describing the volumetric sample data inside Building 

10 and how a bounding subsurface exposure model 
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109

was established. And he referred to the drain 

surveys, which we all agree were pretty extensive. 

And he mentioned that, at the time, you know, one 

of the concerns we had when we did -- let me just 

mention, we were shocked and surprised to find --

when we started looking at the building interiors in 

1994, we assumed that everything in the building 

interiors had been decommissioned in the 1980s. 

It had all been released for unrestricted use, so we 

weren't expecting to find anything. So, you know, 

when we started to find stuff on surfaces in areas 

that, presumably, in the 1980s had been released 

from restricted use, had, you know, received 

confirmation sampling by the NRC, it really raised 

concern just how well that work had been done in the 

1980s.

And then, you know, we did look down some of the 

drains, and we started finding some elevated levels. 

So we were concerned about two things. We were 

concerned about potentially disturbing material 

leading to a criticality event, and we were also 

concerned with determining -- you know, we knew 

that we had maintenance workers who had been 

working in these drains for years. Their offices are 

right on top of the areas where we finding this stuff. 

Or their work stations. They're not really offices, 

they were, you know, work areas where they would 

keep all their maintenance equipment and what not. 

So, it was a major concern.

Now, those surveys, it's very important, they're 

probably the most comprehensive surveys we did 

during the entire decommissioning site 

characterization work, because we were right above 

the criticality issue, triggering a criticality event. But 

you need to understand, we really didn't appreciate 

that thorium -- you know, none of us had been

around during the operational period, so we really 

didn't know what radionuclides were used during the 

atomic weapons, AWE period.
.

110

So we really didn't look for thorium. We only looked 

for isotopes of uranium, and there is absolutely not a 

single piece of isotopic analysis for thorium in the 

drain surveys. 

And when I look at, you know, the net results of all 

of the work that NIOSH did with this data, in the 

middle of page 11, they list three bullets there, which 

are the, I guess, 95th percentile values, specific 

activity of the applicable volumetric sample data 

results in air concentrations of -- they list inside 

uranium, outside uranium, and outside thorium.

There is no inside thorium listed because -- I'm 

guessing here; I don't know for a fact -- but I'm 

guessing that NIOSH cannot estimate what the inside 

thorium airborne concentrations would have been, 

because nobody measured thorium in the drain 

surveys. 

So I think that is a major gap in the data. You know, 

and there's probably others, but that's just one of 

them that jumps out at me, okay?

Mr. McCloskey: That's captured in the issues matrix.

Mr. Elliott: There was quite a bit of discussion about 

the Building 10 roof and overhead areas that 

followed. I highlighted that, you know, I guess a 

couple things. One, that we know that the -- on this 

call, Josie and other Members of the Board brought 

up the fact that the surveys of the overhead roof 

areas at the end of the HFIR operation in the 1980s 

was limited. And, you know, we definitely found, I 

don't remember exactly what the square footage 

was, but we found significant portions of the roof 

decking that was contaminated.

So I don't have any confidence in the 1980 survey 

data. And, you know, when Dr. Mauro was, in other 

portions of the discussion this morning, was saying 

that, you know, NRC found that the 1980s survey 

measurements were comparable to the survey 
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111

measurements at the end of the operational period, 

you know, 1967 timeframe, that doesn't give me any 

confidence at all.

Not to mention the fact that none of the surveys that 

were conducted at the end of the operational period, 

or at the end of the HFIR operations, included any of 

the more remote locations or the subsurface drains. 

And Josie brought this up, so I know that she's right 

on top of it. But, you know, there are some clear 

differences.

I'd also point out another thing about the roof work. 

I heard a lot of emphasis, and I appreciate that folks 

have taken into consideration some of the roof work, 

like cutting into the roofs, and cutting up through the 

roof and dust falling down onto the workers who are 

doing this work. But it wasn't just airborne dust.

I can tell you that, and my colleague and my copetitioner, identifying information redacted], 

has documented that. It wasn't just cutting and 

sawing and drilling through the roof. It was also --

there was a lot of welding going on up there. So, 

even if the fixed residual contamination was indeed 

fixed and not removable, once you start welding, 

you're creating metal fumes, and, you know, it's 

highly respirable at that point. I have not heard any 

talk about welding.

But that, I can assure you, anytime they were 

installing new equipment, and, you know, there were 

some points of attachment that were done with 

welds, there were also times when they were 

repairing equipment on the roof, under the roof, in 

the rafters. They were welding up there quite 

frequently.

I'm not done. I'm sorry, I'm just flipping through my 

pages here.

Chair Beach: Take your time.

Mr. Elliott: You know, on several occasions, I heard 
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112

Dr. Mauro refer to the distinction between the -- what 

do you call it? The SEC questions versus Site Profile 

issues. And often, he would say, you know, we had 

to pick a number, so that's a Site Profile issue.

You know, and then he spent quite a bit of time 

talking about this whole surrogate issue of using 

1990s survey data to try to reconstruct what the 

exposures were to maintenance workers in the '70s 

and the '80s. And I think he's really hit on a really 

key topic there, and I know he's really highlighted 

that. So I applaud him for that, and I completely 

agree with him.

I would, again, remind you that, you know, one of 

the things that Dr. Mauro said in, you know, the 

reasons why he feels we can have a fair amount of 

confidence in this surrogate data that was used, the 

1990s survey data, to reconstruct what was 

happening to maintenance workers in the '70s and 

'80s, is that, you know, he says that the 1993 data 

compares well to what was done in the '60s.

 I don't know where he comes up with that 

statement, because the 1990s data was 

characterization surveys of many remote locations 

and subsurface areas and drains and trenches and 

roofs that just simply wasn't part of any of the 

surveys that were done at the end of the operational 

period. They just didn't put forth the effort. Not 

systematically surveying, certainly. I'm not aware of 

any subsurface sampling at all, or volumetric 

sampling.

You know, apparently there was some work in the 

'80s in the overhead areas of HFIR and around a 

couple of the roof penetrations, but, you know, that 

is not the kind of systematic surveying that we saw 

done, and volumetric subsurface sampling that we 

saw done, in the 1990s. 

So I agree with him. I don't think the surveys from 

1990s can be used to estimate a bounding dose to 
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113

the maintenance workers who were working in these 

same areas in the '70s and '80s. I don't know. I 

guess, you know, I come away from this, I think Dr. 

Mauro has done a really nice job defining for the 

Board what their challenge is, as far as, you know, 

he has come to the conclusion that there is sufficient 

data, in his opinion, to, you know, conduct dose 

assessment with a sufficient level of accuracy and in 

a claimant-favorable manner, but -- I'm trying to 

remember how he put it.

He said the Board has the duty to determine if there 

is, you know, if there's sufficient accuracy, in their 

judgment, to be able to make the recommendation 

to Human Health and Services.

And I would just, you know, repeat what I said in my 

remarks, in my comments, my written comments on 

August 29th that I submitted to the Board. You 

know, when you look at all of the uncertainties and 

the gaps in the information that is used to estimate 

the bounding dose for this Class of workers, there is 

a lack of adequate source term characterization.

I think that can still be said, even after everything I 

heard today. There's incomplete knowledge of the 

nature, frequency, and duration of jobs performed in 

intimate contact with the source term. I don't think 

it's adequate to say, "we just picked a number," "we 

have to pick a number."

And there's complete absence, never forget this, 

there is a complete, absolute absence of any 

measurements or monitoring of the workers who are 

the subject of this petition. To me, that is the big 

elephant in the room that cannot be overlooked. 

So, with that, I will certainly, you know, send some 

hopefully more articulate comments in writing. You 

know, I'm still trying to make sense of everything I've 

heard this morning, but, again, thank you for this 

opportunity.
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114

Mr. Darnell: Mr. Elliot, this is Pete Darnell. Are you 

still there?

Mr. Elliott: Yes, I am. Hi, Pete.

Mr. Darnell: Hi. I think one thing that might help us 

the best with making sure that we are appropriately 

responsive to your comments, if you take a look at 

the issues matrix that's online on the Metals & 

Controls website, you have all your issues listed as 

part of that document so that we can make sure we 

keep track of them and respond to them. 

If you have something new to add to that stuff, if you 

send it in writing, it helps us out so that we're more 

accurate and more timely in our response.

Mr. Elliott: Yes, of course. Thank you. Thank you, 

Pete. I will do that, and actually, I did skim through 

that document. And in my quick skim, I mean, I 

noticed one of the things that I did put in writing in 

my last submittal to the Board was that, you know, 

there is a little bias in the gross alpha sampling, or 

analytical method that we use for identifying the 

waste characterization studies. I did not see that 

addressed, but I saw most of my other comments 

were addressed. I assume you're going to tell me 

that, you know, the fact that you chose the 95th 

upper percentile is going to take care of our low bias 

issue.

Mr. Darnell: I've got to go back and look at it first 

before I answer that question.

Mr. Elliott: Yeah.

Chair Beach: But it is captured now, Michael, and 

they'll add it to workers' comments and concerns.

Mr. Elliott: And I think it's especially important now 

where, you know, we're relying so much -- you know, 

this gets back to Dr. Mauro's surrogate issue -- we're 

relying so much on this 1993 to 1995 site 

characterization data to estimate bounding dose to 
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115

these employees in this cohort. So --

Mr. Katz: So, Mike, you might just, I mean, you 

might want to wait a little bit just to get a hold of the 

SC&A report that we've been talking about before 

you respond, because that might be helpful to you, 

too.

Mr. Elliott: Yes, thank you.

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. Although I do think -- I 

mean, the welding issue, the question is whether 

there is data that's being used that somehow takes 

the welding into account. I haven't heard any 

discussion about the welding.

Certainly, it's true that it raises all sorts of 

contamination, you know, as you weld the metal. I 

don't know quite how -- if Mound would certainly be 

-- they're using Mound data would certainly --

Chair Beach: No, it's totally different, Dave.

Mr. Katz: The Mound is the external excavation, et 

cetera, work.

Chair Beach: I think Mutty's got something where 

they mention the welding, and I think they're looking 

for it right now.

Mr. Sharfi: Pat, when he discussed, he did mention 

the fact that one of the things that they did do in the 

rafters was welding. So, I mean, that was something 

we do mention in our White Paper.

Member Kotelchuck: Oh, okay.

Mr. Sharfi: So that is covered --

Member Kotelchuck: I'll look again at that.

Mr. Sharfi: And that's another reason why we 

bumped that resuspension factor all the way up to 

minus-4, was to account for a much higher fraction 

of possible resuspension due to some of the activities 
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that they were doing.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: We ran into welding as an issue on 

Bethlehem Steel, remember? Where they were 

cutting -- when I say welding, they were actually 

using a torch. That's different than welding, so --

Dr. Neton: That was uranium rods --

Dr. Mauro: Right, yeah. I'm picturing an acetylene 

torch as opposed to a welding --

Dr. Neton: I think there are data on welding on 

contaminated surfaces. I can't come up with a 

reference off the top of my head, but I think we can 

look into that.

Mr. Darnell: Mr. Elliot, I just want to make sure that 

you know --

Member Kotelchuck: You certainly mentioned 

welding in terms of operations that were carried out, 

whether what the impact was, if we have data on it, 

it would be nice to see or reference.

Mr. Darnell: Mr. Elliot, I just wanted to make sure 

you know that NIOSH has also snail-mailed you a 

copy of our latest White Paper.

Member Kotelchuck: Oh, okay.

Mr. Darnell: If you haven't received it yet, you should 

be shortly.

Member Kotelchuck: Oh, actually, I have your White 

Paper.

Mr. Katz: No, that's not to you, Dave. That's to the 

petitioner.

Member Kotelchuck: Oh, yes.

Mr. Darnell: To Mr. Elliot.
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Member Kotelchuck: Yes, of course.

Mr. Katz: We need a plan for the Board meeting.

Chair Beach: Yes, we do. So any other comments, 

petitioner -- or not petitioners, Board Members. 

Loretta? Henry? Before we move to the actions.

Member Valerio: Josie, this is Loretta. I do have a 

question for Pete.

Chair Beach: Okay, go ahead.

Member Valerio: On the spreadsheet that he sent for 

the Building 10 roof and overhead area 

contamination memo, on line item 181 and 184, the 

values are, at least to me, appear to be significantly 

higher. So I guess I just need a clarification. Are 

those numbers on the inside of the roof or on the 

outside of the roof area?

Mr. McCloskey: They are on the pipes. So if you 

scroll up to line 151, Loretta, it says it comes from 

page 76 of that SRDB document.

Member Valerio: Right.

Mr. McCloskey: And it was a survey on the pipes in 

the overhead. So it's inside the building. The only 

surveys on this spreadsheet that were on exterior 

surfaces of the building are found at the very bottom 

of the spreadsheet, beginning with line 283, and it 

goes through line 288. Those are the only exterior 

surveys.

Member Valerio: Okay, I'll go back and look at them. 

I had trouble getting into the SRDB this morning. I 

was getting in last week, but I had trouble getting in 

this morning. So I'll go back and look at those.

Mr. McCloskey: That's a good question. Let me know 

if you need anything else on that.

Member Valerio: Okay, thank you. And the other, 

it's not a question, but it's a statement, more. I still 
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have a lot of concerns about the internal exposures, 

so I think that's something that we -- at least I need 

to go back and look at and review. But there's still a 

lot of confusion, on my part, for the internal 

exposures and how they're going to be bound.

Chair Beach: Okay. And, again, if you have 

questions on any of that, I'm sure you can get a hold 

of NIOSH or SC&A. If you have something written, 

that would help you.

Member Valerio: Okay.

Action Items, Path Forward, Meeting Plans

Chair Beach: Path forward, I think I only have an 

action item for SC&A to update their November White 

Paper and get that out to the Working Group. I've 

already sent the letter to Ted so he can distribute the 

congressman's letter out to the Work Group, and 

move forward. 

As far as the upcoming meeting in December, I am 

assuming that I'll just do an update to the Board. 

And does anybody --

Mr. Katz: But do you want someone to prepare? It's 

a lot of -- I think at this point, given how far we've 

come, it's useful to keep the Board substantively, not 

just process terms and form. So, would you like 

some help with putting that together?

Chair Beach: Yes. That thing was quite a mess last 

time, so I think -- sorry, that's me speaking for 

myself, but --

Dr. Neton: So, if Josie provides a report, NIOSH 

doesn't really need to do anything, other than to 

comment on --

Mr. Katz: So, NIOSH doesn't really need to 

necessarily present.

Dr. Neton: Just address any issues or --
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119

Chair Beach: Or questions.

Mr. Darnell: Just to remind everybody, they should 

now be looking at Christine.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, it doesn't matter. I'm not looking at 

anyone, really. But, anyway, there's two -- there's 

several ways we could do this. We have a lot of time. 

Right now, we have an hour and a half. It's pretty 

clear that this is not ready for action at the Board 

meeting.

Chair Beach: No, I agree. I agree.

Mr. Katz: I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to 

say that, but because the petitioner hasn't even 

received the latest SC&A report, so it would be quite 

unfair, I think, to even move this to action so quickly.

Chair Beach: Well, so, I think you're right. I think 

we need to outline the four SEC items that we've 

discussed in this Work Group meeting, and then get 

some background so the Board is up to date.

Mr. Katz: Yes, so my question is whether we could 

do -- a number of things. One thing we could do is 

we could have NIOSH sort of bring people up to date 

with their work. John or someone in John's stead, do 

a presentation of the SC&A review of that. And you 

don't really have all that on your back, Josie, but you 

could just sort of introduce and then summarize 

where we are and where we're headed in terms of --

Dr. Neton: Yeah. Well, I think it ends up kind of 

being redundant for NIOSH to present their position 

and SC&A restate their position.

Chair Beach: I agree.

Mr. Katz: Fine. So then another version is for John 

to sort of summarize the whole enchilada himself, 

including the review. 

Dr. Mauro: When is that meeting?
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Mr. Katz: It's December 12th and 13th.

Dr. Mauro: It's coming up. But where is it?

Mr. Katz: Three weeks away. It's in California.

Dr. Neton: Near Los Angeles.

Chair Beach: And it doesn't have to be in such fine 

detail --

Mr. Katz: Yeah, it can't be in the same detail that we 

just had today.

Chair Beach: No, it just has to be an overview so the 

Board's aware and understands where the --

Mr. Darnell: So will everybody have input on this?

Dr. Neton: Well, yeah, we'll be able to --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: If SC&A prepares a presentation, they 

would circulate it to DCAS to have a look at to make 

sure it comports with what everyone understood 

here.

Dr. Mauro: So you have two deliverables. The final 

revised report, and the set of slides that --

Mr. Katz: A summary slide of where we are, 

technically, and --

Dr. Mauro: As I understand it.

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Chair Beach: And pretty much just the SEC issues. 

The rest of it is Site Profile that we'll hash out later.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: -- just the SEC.
.

121

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. Katz: And a boiled down version, for sure.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, this wasn't boiled down?

(Laughter.)

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: No, this was good for today, but I mean -

-

Ms. Gogliotti: It'll be a PowerPoint.

Mr. Katz: Rose can help.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: All right, so that's the path forward, then. 

SC&A will prepare the report.

Dr. Neton: Yes, then we'll review it and NIOSH will 

forward it with any -- we're trying to allocate 

resources for attending the meeting.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Dr. Neton: It sounds to me like I should be able to 

handle any questions with the support of Chris and/or 

Pete on the telephone.

Mr. Katz: I think so.

Dr. Mauro: In this overview of SC&A's position, the 

slide, to what extent do I try my best to represent 

places where we differ?

Chair Beach: Not at all.

Mr. Katz: Well, not where it's not useful in the end.

(Simultaneous speaking.)
.

122

Chair Beach: No. But it's not even the status of the 

-- yeah, it's the status of what the Working Group is 

discussing.

Dr. Mauro: The status of the Work Group, and where 

the Work Group is. Okay.

Chair Beach: So the key points are what are the SEC 

topics for Metals & Controls. Pretty simple.

Dr. Mauro: Just the issues, without our position 

regarding them.

Chair Beach: No, no.

Mr. Katz: It needs some substance because, I mean, 

otherwise the Board, you know, when it does come 

up in April --

Chair Beach: Correct. Correct.

Mr. Katz: -- it's not going to be very easy for the 

Board to get on --

Dr. Neton: I honestly think it's not unlike what you 

just presented today, maybe in a PowerPoint format 

that is more bulletized, and not as granular. But it 

seemed to me that could be summarized in 10 slides 

of PowerPoint.

Dr. Mauro: What about, do we engage this film 

badge thing? You know, we still are sort of at --

Dr. Neton: I think it's an open issue that --

Dr. Mauro: I think that we may have come to a place 

while we were talking about it. Will the transcript be 

available?

Mr. Katz: No, not that quickly.

Dr. Mauro: Because there are some nuances that 

came out during that conversation.

Mr. Katz: Bob presented a method. You have 
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another way to do it.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. But then we came together a bit on 

why they both have some value.

Mr. Darnell: Well, I think Jim was going to send out 

--

Dr. Neton: No, I think, in retrospect, looking at the 

information, I think what I was commenting on is 

more appropriately handled by our subsequent 

discussion, which is the maintenance workers and the 

last quarter data, that sort of thing.

I had not completely understood that we were only 

using covered period exposure. I thought that the 

film badge data started in the beginning of the 

residual period, which it did not. So my argument 

was not really as good as I thought it was.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, okay. So --

Dr. Neton: But I think the subsequent discussion was 

good.

Dr. Mauro: Because I thought it did go toward that.

Dr. Neton: It does, but I think this is a stronger 

argument that we went through, this evolution that 

we went through where we're talking about, you 

know, Bob had already done a bounding analysis 

which showed that it's not inconsistent with the film 

badge data --

Dr. Mauro: Yes, exactly.

Dr. Neton: -- that could be applied to. I think that's 

a stronger leg to stand on.

Dr. Mauro: I do, too.

Chair Beach: Well, and this comes without a 

recommendation from the Work Group at this time, 

because --
.

124

Mr. Katz: Right. Right. 

Dr. Neton: I think, though, you do need to point out 

the open issues.

Chair Beach: Yes, exactly.

Dr. Neton: I mean, what are the issues that are 

being --

Dr. Mauro: Should I show my conclusion, or is that 

too presumptuous?

Mr. Katz: I don't think so.

Dr. Mauro: Keep away from my conclusion?

Mr. Katz: No, I don't think you have to keep away 

from your conclusion. It's going to be in your report.

Dr. Mauro: It's going to be in the report.

Dr. Neton: Oh, okay.

Mr. Katz: No, I don't think you have to keep away 

from that, but that's SC&A speaking, not the Work 

Group speaking.

Dr. Mauro: Right.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Dr. Neton: That's true. That's true. 

Mr. Katz: I think you should summarize all the way

up to where we are.

Dr. Mauro: So, in other words, like, I had a slide here 

presenting your assumptions versus ours regarding 

the subsurface Building 10, which was very 

compelling to me. Until I did that, I said, we're 

coming out in the same place. I mean, that's --

Mr. Katz: Right, and you can summarize those 
.

125

things. You just don't need to go into gory detail 

about how NIOSH did it, and how you did it, and --

Dr. Mauro: All right. You know my slide where I 

compared the breathing rates, you know, the 

concentrations? Is that in there, in what I present to 

the Board? In other words, "by the way, here's how 

we differ."

Chair Beach: You can put that in there.

Dr. Mauro: I think that's important, but I don't know 

if you want me to talk about your work.

Chair Beach: Sure.

Mr. Katz: Why don't you go ahead and include what 

you think ought to be in there.

Dr. Mauro: And then you'll let us know.

Mr. Katz: Josie and others can cut what they think is 

superfluous or excessive detail, whatever, to keep it 

at a reasonable length. But, II mean, honestly we 

have an hour and a half, and so, even if the 

presentation takes an hour, that's okay. We've got 

the time.

Dr. Mauro: Let me ask Bob a question. Bob, are you 

still on the line?

Dr. Anigstein: Yes, I am.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. The analysis that you did 

regarding the external exposures that didn't make it 

in, and made it into an earlier version, are you in a 

position to lift that and supply me with that? Because 

it sounds like that's some material that I neglected to 

include that would be of value at this time.

Dr. Anigstein: Now, are you talking about the 

Building 12 outside --

Dr. Mauro: No, inside Building 10. Subsurface, et 

cetera.
.

126

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah, that one. That was in the 

original report from January, February.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. Anyway, just wanted to -- the 

reason I ask is that the 12th is around the corner, 

and I want to make sure we really have everything. 

It's a matter of stitching it together.

Mr. Darnell: I think one of the important things --

Dr. Anigstein: I mean, you want me to talk with you 

-- I mean, are you asking me about the numbers?

Dr. Mauro: No, no, no. I'm just asking you whether 

you have that and you could just provide it to me, or 

is there more work you think needs to be done?

Dr. Anigstein: No, no, no. I mean, it was something 

I sent to you earlier in the year.

Dr. Mauro: Good. Okay.

Dr. Anigstein: And it is summarized in the January 

or February report, whatever the date was.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. We have everything.

Mr. Darnell: One of the important things that we also 

need to include in the SEC issues is where we are 

with the petitioner issues. You know, at least a 

summary of where we are with petitioner issues.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. Yeah. I made a list of four 

important issues that the petitioners raised just now. 

I'll tell you what they are.

Mr. Katz: Let's not. Can we do this --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Mauro: That goes in my report.

Mr. Katz: Go ahead and give it a shot, and I mean, 

you have the matrix, too, to look at for reference. 

You have the whole matrix to look at.
.

127

Mr. Darnell: Mr. Elliot said he was going to take a 

look at it and send any additional ones.

Dr. Mauro: Any additional ones, okay.

Mr. Darnell: You know, to show that we're being 

responsive.

Dr. Mauro: Welding. Does welding make it into the 

story?

Mr. Katz: It didn't get a lot of discussion here. I 

think you're getting into fine details again.

Dr. Neton: I think you can only summarize up to 

what, you know, we ended --

Dr. Mauro: We'll just say we talked about it.

Mr. Darnell: It's in the White Paper.

Dr. Mauro: Welding?

Dr. Neton: It's not really. It's mentioned, but I don't 

get the sense that it was addressed quantitatively at 

all. I thought we may have to go back and look at it

a little closer. But I would think I would summarize 

pretty much what --

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I asked the question because 

there were certain questions raised here by the 

petitioners which I consider to be extremely 

fundamental. One is welding, and the other is 

thorium.

Dr. Neton: Well, I think those are sort of new issues 

that were added to the table. You can probably 

mention it at the end.

Dr. Mauro: Say they were raised, and that's the and 

not try to answer them.

Dr. Neton: They've not been discussed yet.

Dr. Mauro: Okay, good. 
.

128

Mr. McCloskey: When in doubt, include it, and we'll 

delete it if we -- we'll vote on it, and --

Dr. Neton: Well, we don't vote.

(Simultaneous speaking)

(Laughter.)

Dr. Mauro: Because the reason I asked is that you're 

looking to SC&A to address that issue quantitatively. 

There's work there.

Dr. Neton: With the welding issue?

Dr. Mauro: And the 12th is right around the corner

Mr. Katz: Oh, no.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: It's not addressing any new issues 

quantitatively, or any other way, because NIOSH 

would have to address it anyway, not you.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Got it.

Mr. Katz: Again, we're not expecting -- we're not 

putting anything forward for action at this meeting. 

This is just to update the Board and keep their heads 

in the game in terms of the nature of this material.

Chair Beach: And I'm assuming after the December 

meeting we'll get back together as a Work Group via 

phone, or whatever.

Mr. Katz: We can do that in a conference, I'm sure.

Chair Beach: Yeah.

(Simultaneous speaking)

Mr. Katz: Yes, you don't need to now.

Dr. Mauro: No, we're okay, Bob. I just wanted to 

make sure you were available. No, no, you're tied up 
.

129

with some other work, and I wanted to make sure we 

weren't loading you up to a point where we can't do 

this between now and just a week before the 12th. 

That's where we'll be. I guess that would be the 

target, getting it everybody's hands the week before 

the 12th?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, because we have to get it posted 

before the Board meeting, and we have to get it 

posted and available to the public. Correct.

Chair Beach: Probably maybe want it closer than a 

week before, or is that enough?

Dr. Mauro: Is that good?

Mr. Katz: Well, everyone else will have to turn it 

around very quickly, because it pretty much has to 

go for posting almost a week before the Board 

meeting.

Dr. Mauro: Twenty days. We have 20 days.

Mr. Katz: It should be okay.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Adjourn

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay, I think that takes care of 

things, and we're adjourned. Thank you everyone for 

hanging in on the phone.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 12:13 p.m.)