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1

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON ROCKY FLATS PLANT

+ + + + +

MONDAY

JULY 8, 2013

+ + + + +

The Work Group met telephonically 

at 10:30 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, Mark 

Griffon, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MARK GRIFFON, Chairman

DAVID KOTELCHUCK

WANDA I. MUNN

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD
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2

ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

TERRIE BARRIE

SCOTT BISON

JIM BOGARD, NIOSH ORAU

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

LARA HUGHES, NIOSH ORAU

JOSH KINMAN, NIOSH ORAU

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

DAN McKEEL

JIM NETON, NIOSH ORAU

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS

LaVON RUTHERFORD, NIOSH ORAU

MUTTY SHARFI, NIOSH ORAU

DAN STANESCU, NIOSH ORAU

JOHN STIVER, SC&A
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3

C O N T E N T S

PAGE

Welcome, Roll Call, and Introduction 4

NIOSH Follow-up Efforts on SEC-00192 RFP 

Tritium Issues 5

NIOSH Evaluation of Petitioner Concerns

about Data Falsification and/or Data

Invalidation in RFP Building 123 Based on

Worker Allegations 47

July ABRWH Meeting; NIOSH and

Work Group Plans 64
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4 1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 10:31 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: All right. This is the 

4 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

5 Rocky Flats Work Group. Let's get started 

6 with roll call before we formally begin the 

7 meeting.

8 We're speaking about specific work 

9 sites. So please all agency-related people 

10 speak to conflict of interest as well when you 

11 report in. So let's begin with Board Members 

12 with the Chair.

13 (Roll call.)

14 MR. KATZ: Okay. So welcome, 

15 everybody. There is an agenda, but it was not 

16 posted on time. For the meeting, I've 

17 distributed it. It's very simple anyway, and 

18 the Chair can go over it.

19 Let me just remind everyone before 

20 the Chair takes over to please mute your 

21 phones, except when you're addressing the 
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5 1 group. If you don't have a mute button, *6 

2 will mute your phone, and then to come off of 

3 mute you do the same again, *6. So please do 

4 that at this point, everyone.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: Hello, Ted. This 

6 is Arjun, SC&A. No conflict.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you, 

8 Arjun.

9 Also, please don't put the call on 

10 hold at any point, but hang up and dial back 

11 in if you need to go on hold.

12 So thank you, and, Mark, it's your 

13 meeting.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you, Ted.

15 Yes, I wanted to do a quick little 

16 apology for -- the agenda out and also, you 

17 know, we did intend to have this as a face-to18 face meeting, but since there was little time 

19 between NIOSH's White Papers being available 

20 to the public and a chance for the Work Group 

21 or SC&A to review them, we thought best to 
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6 1 have just a phone meeting now and then 

2 schedule a face-to-face in the near future, 

3 you know, hopefully soon after the Board 

4 meeting in Idaho.

5 So this is going to be more of an 

6 update, I think, from NIOSH since I doubt SC&A 

7 has had a lot of opportunity to look through 

8 this and review it. But the main focus of the 

9 agenda is the recent White Papers. One is on 

10 the evaluation of petitioner concerns about 

11 data falsification, specifically related to 

12 Building 123, and the other is on the tritium 

13 issues.

14 And then, I guess, LaVon will also 

15 give an update on the status of the other 

16 items, the thorium issues, neptunium issues. 

17 So at this point I think I'll turn 

18 it over to NIOSH, I think LaVon, but to NIOSH 

19 to go over, I think, either White Paper, 

20 whichever you prefer to start with.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, okay. 
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7 1 Mark, this is LaVon Rutherford.

2 I did actually upload a 

3 presentation into that Live Meeting, and so 

4 basically all the presentation is is a summary 

5 of the two White Papers, and if needed 

6 ultimately at the Board meeting, it would be 

7 used there as well.

8 So if the Board Members go to the 

9 Live Meeting, you can actually see this 

10 presentation as I go through it. But, again, 

11 it's basically just a summary of the White 

12 Papers and where we are with the other White 

13 Papers.

14 So with that, basically there are 

15 five White Papers. We've actually completed 

16 two of those White Papers and there's five 

17 total. The first White Paper is a follow-up 

18 effort on the tritium issues. We did complete 

19 that and get that out in late June.

20 I know that the petitioner did not 

21 get that document until at the earliest would 
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8 1 have been Wednesday. It was released from ADC 

2 review, and so I know the petitioners had very 

3 little time to review that document.

4 The other document is the 

5 Evaluation of Petitioner Concerns about Data 

6 Falsification and Data Invalidation in Rocky 

7 Flats Plant Building 123. Again, we got that 

8 document out in late June, and petitioner just 

9 received that document, again, on Wednesday at 

10 the earliest. I'm assuming that they received 

11 it on Wednesday. It was released Wednesday, 

12 and we were trying to get it to them on 

13 Wednesday.

14 Three other White Papers we're 

15 working on, the thorium strike White Paper, 

16 uranium-233. This is basically an update from 

17 the initial evaluation. We went back and did 

18 some additional research on that, and I'll 

19 give a little update on that one later.

20 Another one is neptunium, on the 

21 neptunium operation, and then there are other 
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9 1 thorium activities. Other thorium activities 

2 was actually during our data captures and 

3 interviews and some of our secured data 

4 captures identified a potential concern here 

5 that we felt like an additional White Paper 

6 should be developed, and I'll give an update 

7 on that as well as we go.

8 So the first White Paper I want to 

9 talk about is the tritium White Paper. Our 

10 follow-up efforts that we did on this one were 

11 we did additional data captures, both 

12 classified and unclassified. We went to LANL. 

13 Because of the interactions between LANL, and 

14 knowing that a number of the Rocky Flats 

15 classified documents were shipped to LANL, we 

16 went to LANL in November of last year.

17 We went to OSTI and CBC in Denver, 

18 and DOE Legacy Management. All of those we 

19 went back and we did some additional data 

20 captures based on some keyword searches that 

21 were identified from our interviews that were 
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10 1 conducted back in November of last year.

2 We also had some secure 

3 discussions with some technical people. We 

4 had secure interviews and other interviews, 

5 approximately 19 of those, and then as part of 

6 our follow-on efforts, as you remember, we had 

7 come up with basically a dose reconstruction 

8 approach for tritium that identified roughly 

9 700 millirem per year for all years.

10 We wanted to go back and look and 

11 see if, one, based on the additional data 

12 captures and information, the classified 

13 interviews, was that still a bounding exposure 

14 scenario. As well, we wanted to look at was 

15 there enough additional information that we 

16 could come up with a little better modeling.

17 So our additional data captures 

18 and interviews did identify and confirm a 

19 potential for tritium exposure from 

20 contaminated shipping containers. I think we

21 all knew that there was already identified 
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11 1 potential exposure from the units, processing 

2 the units and such that the 1973 accident 

3 cause and that those situations may exist.

4 However, when we had our 

5 classified interviews, the additional 

6 discussion identified a scenario where tritium 

7 could be released from opening a shipping 

8 container containing units or a unit. So 

9 that additional scenario was identified.

10 Also, our data capture and our 

11 interviews supported our previous finding that 

12 all known incidents of tritium release are 

13 below the release levels from the 1973 

14 incident. And, in addition, we did not 

15 identify any other sources of tritium exposure 

16 beyond that previously evaluated, other than 

17 the shipping container contamination release 

18 scenario.

19 So our White Paper basically would 

20 break down the tritium exposure in the three 

21 periods. It's broken down into three periods 
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12 1 not because of changes in activities or during 

2 those periods; it's broken down based on the 

3 1959 to '72 period when there was little to no 

4 tritium monitoring at all, and in 1973 the 

5 incident that occurred, and then the post 

6 1973, so we broke it down into three separate 

7 exposure periods based on that.

8 So I'm going to start first with 

9 prior to the 1973 incident, the early years, 

10 and our approach to that and what we've 

11 learned since the Evaluation Report was 

12 presented. 

13 Based on our interviews and 

14 document reviews, we feel the most likely 

15 chronic exposure area was from opening and 

16 working with shipping containers that contain 

17 units from other sites, those units being 

18 returned from the sites and having a release 

19 from those.

20 We actually have an exposure 

21 scenario that was developed from an incident 
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13 1 that occurred in August 30th, 1974, where 1.5 

2 curies of tritium was released from a shipping 

3 container. Basically they opened a shipping 

4 container containing tritium and this release 

5 occurred.

6 Our basis for using a 1974 

7 incident, recognizing that this is after the 

8 1973 incident, the questions automatically 

9 come up of, well, why would you use an 

10 incident that occurred after the '73 incident 

11 and would it be representative of what 

12 occurred prior to that '73 incident.

13 Well, our basis for that is the 

14 background levels prior to the incident were 

15 being measured and were basically at 

16 background levels. So we had monitoring that 

17 was occurring over a period of time with no 

18 releases, and then you have a release event of 

19 an open container.

20 The quantity release was probably 

21 more typical of release from a shipping 
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14 1 container and more realistic of a chronic 

2 exposure, a daily exposure that instead of the 

3 incident-based sample or incident like the 

4 1973 incident where you have an acute incident 

5 occurring and so this is more of a chronic 

6 exposure scenario for those early years that 

7 we felt like would be more typical of what 

8 would be seen.

9 Tritium was released to the 

10 workplace environment and not in the glovebox. 

11 So that we felt like was another good point. 

12 The release involved elemental tritium and 

13 tritium oxide like the event that occurred in 

14 1973.

15 The shipping container wasn't used 

16 prior to 1973. I mean, you could argue back 

17 and forth of whether that really has much 

18 support, but it was in use, and so, you know, 

19 we do feel like it has a little basis for it.

20 The incident occurred close enough 

21 to the 1973 incident that workplace controls 
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15 1 were likely similar to prior to 1973. If you 

2 actually look at it, this shipping container 

3 event or the 1973 incident was completely 

4 different than this event. So the actual 

5 putting in workplace controls for containers 

6 coming back to the site had not really been 

7 identified as something that needed to be 

8 corrected.

9 If you look at the paper, we 

10 identify a document where they actually went 

11 back in early 1974 and started monitoring 

12 shipping containers and looking at these 

13 shipping containers to see if this was an 

14 exposure concern of opening them and 

15 ultimately later in 1974 is when that event 

16 occurred. 

17 And then workplace controls were 

18 put in place after that. So we do feel that 

19 this is a good basis for using this event.

20 So the monitoring data from the 

21 1974 incident, we had air samples that were 
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16 1 taken from June through September of 1974. 

2 The average concentrations were around 5,343 

3 picocuries per meter cubed, and the 

4 concentrations on August 30th were 

5 significantly higher, and that's when the 

6 release occurred of 37,676,609 picocuries per 

7 meter cubed.

8 Bioassay samples were taken. They 

9 indicated a high result of 32,320 picocuries 

10 per liter. There were work area smears taken, 

11 over 300 of those.

12 So based on the information and 

13 monitoring data we had available, we did a 

14 dose assessment for that 1974 incident. We 

15 IMBA. We took the largest urine sample of the 

16 32,320 picocuries per liter. We used a start 

17 date of August 30th, 1974, and inserted this 

18 in.

19 We come out with a resulting dose 

20 that was less that one millirem. It is 

21 actually .15 millirem. So if we assume that 
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17 1 incident, you know, the next question is: 

2 okay. How often do you assume or how often 

3 would you assume that an incident would occur?

4 And not having a good indication 

5 of how often this did occur, we assumed one 

6 incident per day for 250 days. Basically this 

7 event occurred every day and results in 37 and 

8 a half millirem per year. We think that this 

9 is a reasonable estimate of the exposure that 

10 the individuals would receive in those years 

11 prior to the 1973 incident. So, therefore, 

12 for all unmonitored workers for tritium we 

13 will assume 37.5 millirem for all years prior 

14 to 1973.

15 The tritium exposure in 1973, the 

16 annual dose assigned based on the 1973 

17 incident, the incident occurred from April 9th 

18 through April 25th in 1973 when a shipment of 

19 scrap plutonium from Lawrence Livermore was 

20 processed at Rocky Flats Plant in Building 

21 779A.
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18 1 Again, those will remember that 

2 the incident was not immediately recognized, 

3 and so individuals were not monitored until 

4 September of that year. So you're looking at 

5 roughly a little over five months later or 

6 around five months later that individuals were 

7 monitored.

8 Approximately 250 people were 

9 bioassayed for tritium. They had basically an 

10 action level of 10,000 picocuries per liter. 

11 They initially used undistilled samples to 

12 identify people. They identified roughly 19 

13 people with elevated tritium. When they 

14 distilled samples and rechecked, there were 

15 five individuals above the action level.

16 So the five cases exceeding 10,000 

17 picocuries per liter were reviewed from the 

18 final incident report, and then all cases were 

19 modeled to determine the best fit for the 

20 urine data, which then would give the most 

21 likely dose.
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19 1 If you remember, we originally in 

2 our Evaluation Report, I think, came up with 

3 around 700 millirem. That was a worst case 

4 scenario taking the concentration, a urine 

5 concentration from the highest individual, 

6 backdating it or assuming an acute exposure 

7 back on the release date, which gave us a 

8 bounding dose scenario.

9 That really did not fit the data 

10 real well. So we went back. We looked at the 

11 data again to see what would actually come up 

12 with the best fit data. Based on that, we 

13 went through each case, and then Case H best 

14 fit exposure scenario resulted in the highest 

15 dose of 84 millirem. 

16 Again, this 84 millirem was based 

17 on limited information. We had very few 

18 samples from this individual, and based on 

19 their work history, we could only assume the 

20 intake occurred on the first day of the event. 

21 So that came up with the high exposure of 84 
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20 1 millirem.

2 The tritium doses for the 1973 

3 period would be assigned to all unmonitored 

4 workers at 84 millirem.

5 For the post 1973 period, we did a 

6 coworker analysis, the coworker analysis 

7 performed using the 1974-1975 tritium bioassay 

8 data. We had 38 individuals with tritium data 

9 in 1974 and 37 individuals with tritium data 

10 in 1975. Because tritium was only present as 

11 a contaminant, there were not large groups of 

12 individuals placed on routine bioassay for 

13 tritium.

14 What they did was one-tenth of the 

15 urine samples collected for plutonium were 

16 analyzed for tritium. Also, there were 

17 samples that were taken or bioassay samples 

18 taken when they felt there was an additional 

19 concern for tritium exposure.

20 The dose assessment, again, for 

21 1974 and '75, it was assumed that each worker 
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21 1 had a potential for exposure throughout the 

2 year. The 95th percentile was used because 

3 only one-tenth of the population was sampled. 

4 So we took the 37/38 data points for each 

5 year. We assumed that the workers had a 

6 potential for exposure throughout the year to 

7 come up with their intakes, and then we also 

8 assume the 95th percentile was used because 

9 only one-tenth of the population was sampled.

10 That coworker study for the '74-

11 '75 period yielded doses of zero millirem for 

12 everyone. So for the '74-'75 period, it would 

13 be zero millirem.

14 Also for poat-1974, the same dose 

15 would be assigned for unmonitored workers. 

16 Based on the limited bioassay data we do have, 

17 it is consistent with the 1974-1975 data, and 

18 we do know that there were a number of 

19 workplace controls that were put in place at 

20 that period.

21 So in summary, the period prior to 
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22 1 1973, we used the exposure scenario of opening 

2 the shipping container and a chronic release 

3 of tritium from a shipping container, 1.5 

4 curies, resulting in 37.5 millirem. The 

5 period of 1973, we used the 1973 incident as 

6 our bounding exposure. Using the best fit 

7 data, we come up with 84 millirem per that 

8 year, and then post 1973, based on our 

9 coworker analysis, we would not assign any 

10 exposure for the tritium during that period.

11 That pretty much summarizes the 

12 tritium White Paper, and I can answer any 

13 questions before we go on to the next White 

14 Paper or if you want to wait, whatever you 

15 want to do.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

17 maybe take a second and just see if anyone has 

18 any questions.

19 I mean, I haven't had a lot of 

20 time to look at this, and I don't know if SC&A 

21 has reviewed this. So certainly when we do 
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23 1 the face-to-face, I expect SC&A will have had 

2 time, more time to go through it and, you 

3 know, have a more formal response.

4 But, I mean, one question I would 

5 have right away is it seems like you have 

6 selected -- you said that the one incident was 

7 more representative of chronic exposures and, 

8 therefore, you end up applying it or assigning 

9 it for the 250 days. I mean, is that backed 

10 up by operational data or is that simply 

11 because it was a much lower number than the 

12 other 1973 incident?

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, no. It's not 

14 because it's a lower number. I think it's 

15 because, you know, when we interviewed 

16 individuals, that issue was brought up. 

17 We knew that the four incidents 

18 that occurred that had been defined, '68, 

19 1973; there were a couple of other incidents. 

20 All of the incidents, other than the '73 

21 incident, were well below the 1973 incident 
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24 1 and did not involve tritium oxide.

2 So the exposure from that '73 

3 incident was definitely the higher one of the 

4 incidents, but what we looked at based on that 

5 interview was, okay, you know, do we have a 

6 scenario where, you know, there could be a 

7 chronic exposure from these unit shipping 

8 containers being returned to the site and 

9 being opened up and a release occurring, 

10 unknown. 

11 You know, we did have indication

12 from our interviews that there were bubblers 

13 in place and that at times they were told that 

14 they needed to drink a lot of fluids to remove 

15 the tritium from their body. So we knew that 

16 scenario.

17 And so what we went back to do is 

18 to try to actually come up with what would be 

19 a good source number for that scenario, and 

20 then try to develop a model based on that and 

21 see how that compared to the 1973 incident, 
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25 1 and so, you know, that's what we did.

2 Now, I think that --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then you're 

4 also saying or, I mean, the evidence was that 

5 the incident, the '73 incident which resulted 

6 in the higher exposures, was a more unique 

7 circumstance?

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, correct.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And I 

10 don't know if others from the Work Group had 

11 any questions or not. 

12 I mean, again, I think when we 

13 come face to face, we might have more on this, 

14 but if Work Group Members have questions or 

15 SC&A can weigh in, that would be great.

16 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Mark, this 

17 is Joe.

18 LaVon, I guess one question I 

19 have, and I think you touched upon it earlier, 

20 is, you know, sort of a conundrum of choosing 

21 1974, which is roughly a year after the '73 
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26 1 incident, you know, and the issue of the 

2 returns, as we heard, really gets down to how 

3 careful Pantex was.

4 And of course, '73 was Livermore, 

5 but in general most of the units came back 

6 from Pantex, and the issue was, you know, 

7 Pantex was supposed to pump down the pits, 

8 supposed to make sure that, you know, there 

9 was no substantial tritium contamination on 

10 those as they came back, and of course, that 

11 wasn't done very well obviously.

12 There was anywhere from small 

13 residual to a lot more contamination in some 

14 batches, and so my question would be, given 

15 the flap that happened in '73 -- and this was 

16 a major flap, having the State of Colorado 

17 actually discover tritium coming out of Rocky 

18 that Rocky wasn't aware of; so you can only 

19 imagine that was a very major issue for the 

20 complex as a whole -- how confident are we 

21 that the '74 scenario in terms of the event 
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27 1 and the measurements would, in fact, be 

2 representative of pre-'73, given the fact that 

3 it's likely between Rocky and Pantex there was 

4 a major discussion about the fact that Pantex 

5 wasn't decontaminating their pits before 

6 returning them to Rocky?

7 And I would suspect after '73 

8 there was quite a bit of effort to make sure 

9 those pits were very, very clean of tritium, 

10 you know, from there on out. I just don't 

11 know.

12 But it would seem to me that that 

13 would be a question as to how -- and this gets 

14 back to Mark's question -- how normalized are 

15 the activities. How clear is it that the 

16 conditions are the same that you could use 

17 this event going back in time when, in fact, 

18 during '73 it had to have been a major review 

19 of operations and a major upgrade of how 

20 Pantex was doing business with the pits before 

21 they were returned to Rocky Flats?
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28 1 MR. RUTHERFORD: And, Joe, I 

2 think, I mean, that is definitely the issue 

3 that we all had here and went back and forth 

4 on. I think the biggest reason that we felt 

5 that this was the right one or that the 

6 controls had not changed was based on that 

7 letter that is referenced in the site research 

8 or it is referenced in our paper.

9 Basically what they did was the 

10 Rocky Flats Plant -- first of all, remember 

11 that the incident that occurred in 1973 was 

12 not opening a shipping container and having 

13 this release scenario. This was actually 

14 processing, doing some process work that 

15 caused this major release.

16 So it wasn't necessarily known or 

17 it wasn't clear that this release mechanism of 

18 a shipping container wasn't a potential major 

19 problem I don't think if you read the letter 

20 that is referenced. It is an October 21st, 

21 1974 letter, and it basically says that, you 
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29 1 know, during the past six-month period, yeah, 

2 there's been sampling the atmosphere of and 

3 where possible smearing the material in each 

4 container that is received in a non-routine 

5 category at Rocky Flats.

6 And I'm reading this letter.

7 "The results of these tests have 

8 shown that a significant number of containers 

9 do have varying low levels of tritium 

10 contamination. Since Rocky Flats doesn't 

11 presently have a facility where these 

12 containers can be opened, the material cannot 

13 be processed. Therefore, effective upon 

14 receipt of this letter, Dow is establishing an 

15 additional requirement that must be met before 

16 non-routine SS or non-SS material will be 

17 received at Rocky Flats. The shipper must not 

18 only verify the tritium levels of the material 

19 to be sent, but must also check the tritium 

20 level of the shipping container. A statement 

21 specifying results of the verification must 
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30 1 appear on forms," dah, dah, dah.

2 So then it talks about the 

3 facilities in the process of being built at 

4 Rocky Flats that will allow containers 

5 contaminated with tritium opened, the material 

6 checked utilizing a smear sampling technique.

7 So it looks to me from the letter 

8 and based on this 1974 incident, they had 

9 started a program to check the containers as 

10 they came in. 

11 They recognized that this is a 

12 potential concern, and then they had the 

13 release in September, and then ultimately in 

14 October this letter is sent out to the various 

15 sites that they would receive units.

16 So based on that, now, can I say 

17 definitively that the controls hadn't changed? 

18 No, I can't, but I'm saying based on this 

19 letter that we felt like, okay, that early in 

20 1974, probably after the '73 incident, review 

21 of the '73 incident, they said, "Okay. Here's 
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31 1 another potential scenario of the shipping 

2 containers."

3 They started a monitoring program 

4 of the shipping containers and as they were 

5 opened. They went through that period. They 

6 had the release in September of '74. 

7 Ultimately this letter comes out in October of 

8 '74.

9 So, I mean, that was the reason 

10 why we came up with and we said, you know, 

11 okay, this does seem like an event that's 

12 similar to what would have occurred prior to 

13 the 1973 incident.

14 Now, again, I know everybody 

15 hasn't had time to review this and actually 

16 review some of these letters and stuff. So, 

17 you know, that's basically how we came up with 

18 that though.

19 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think we 

20 do need to look back at that, but I think that 

21 would be a line of inquiry just to firm up the 
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32 1 representatives of operations and whether 

2 there was a dramatic change in practice 

3 between Pantex and Rocky, and there might be 

4 certainly some correspondence.

5 They did a site-wide tritium 

6 evaluation, as you know. So it would seem 

7 that those sources would have been identified 

8 and there would have been some communications 

9 with Pantex. So that would be something I 

10 think we would look at.

11 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro.

12 I did read the report this 

13 morning, and it's a very thorough treatment of 

14 the 1974 and the basis for the data you have 

15 and how you would reconstruct '74.

16 The idea though of using the '74 

17 data as somehow surrogate -- I'm using the 

18 term loosely -- for pre-'73, we've been in 

19 this situation before, and I know we're 

20 talking about relatively small doses, but we 

21 have been in this situation before where you 
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33 1 have later data that you think somehow you can 

2 apply to earlier data.

3 And you just discussed one reason 

4 why maybe you could do that, but what we 

5 usually look for -- this is sort of just a 

6 think piece between now and when we go discuss 

7 this again -- you usually look for a hook that 

8 allows you to make a statement where you have 

9 some weight of evidence that says, "We think 

10 we could use the '74 data to apply to pre-'73, 

11 even though we lack" -- it sounds like you 

12 lack. 

13 Everything I can tell, there is 

14 very little information on tritium 

15 measurements in plant for people who, I guess, 

16 disassembled or opened or handled these units. 

17 We'll call them "units."

18 But you do make quite a bit of 

19 mention in your draft -- not your draft --

20 your report regarding bubblers, and let me 

21 just speak for a second about that possibly 
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34 1 being a hook. I'm almost offering a line of 

2 investigation that might help beef up the fact 

3 that you're using '74 for pre-'73.

4 If there's bubbler data, if by 

5 "bubbler" I believe you mean you're passing 

6 the air through a column of water which if 

7 there's any tritiated water in the air, as it 

8 passes through this bubbler the bubbler will 

9 capture and hold the tritiated water, and then 

10 you measure the bubbler and you can see the 

11 concentrations of tritium or tritiated water.

12 The bubbler I do not believe will 

13 capture -- I'm not sure of this -- hydrogen, 

14 you know, the non-tritiated, the tritium, the 

15 hydrogen, but it would be a measure of the 

16 tritiated water that might be in the air, and 

17 you have that data.

18 Now, the hook that I'm thinking 

19 of, if it exists, and this is a question, is 

20 if there was ongoing bubbler sampling going 

21 on, you know, throughout, and I believe these 
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35 1 bubblers are continuous type of units, 

2 something like collecting an air particulate 

3 sample. You let the air just chronically pass 

4 through and you accumulate.

5 If you have bubbler data during 

6 the '74 time period, but you also have bubbler 

7 data pre-'73 which might have been located, as 

8 I understand, in the hoods; in other words, 

9 they were not necessarily bubbler data. They 

10 were there mainly -- and correct me if I'm 

11 wrong. I'm just trying to open up a line of 

12 inquiry.

13 I'm picturing that you've got a 

14 hood where when you receive your unit, that's 

15 where you would receive it and you have 

16 bubbler data there, but if that bubbler data 

17 is running all the time, and then, of course, 

18 the unit is then taken and the people do what 

19 they have to do with the unit; but if that 

20 bubbler data is still running so it's almost 

21 like a continuous tracking of what might be 
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36 1 going up the stack through the hood and up a 

2 stack as being a measure of how much -- an 

3 index.

4 We recognize that it's not a good 

5 quantitative, but it's a good qualitative 

6 indicator of do we have anything unusual going 

7 on in this bubbler data.

8 If you have bubbler data in '74 

9 and you also have some bubbler data pre-'73 

10 that you could say is a hook between the two 

11 time periods, it would be a way to make a 

12 statement of the type you just made that 

13 there's good reason to believe that whatever 

14 was going on pre-'73 by way of handling the 

15 amounts of tritium that might have become 

16 airborne, tritium gas or tritiated water, if 

17 you have some data there and you have some 

18 data in '74, you have the hook you're looking 

19 for.

20 And I did not get a sense -- I did 

21 get the sense that there was quite a bit of 
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37 1 bubbler data, but I did not get the sense that 

2 there was any way to compare bubbler data from 

3 '74 to pre-73. If that's at all possible, it 

4 gives you the hook you're looking for.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, okay.

6 DR. MAURO: Did that make sense?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, John, that 

8 does make sense. It does. I'm not sure that 

9 we have it, but I will definitely take that 

10 action to take a look at that and see if we 

11 can come up with that.

12 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I guess, 

13 LaVon, the other comment, somewhere in the 

14 White Paper there's a comment that there's no 

15 smear data predating the '73 event, and that's 

16 probably true.

17 I did find though they did a 

18 baseline survey in '73 which included the 

19 containers, and they do have smear data in the 

20 baseline survey dated October 12th, '73, and 

21 they did, you know, anywhere where there was a 
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38 1 source of tritium, potential source of 

2 tritium, they did a baseline survey of that 

3 area, smear samples, air samples.

4 I thought that data was maybe also 

5 helpful in terms of calibrating some of the 

6 levels that they observed in '73 that might be 

7 more typical of routine operations, and that 

8 was an overall package dated March 12th, '75, 

9 but it included the baseline surveys taken in 

10 October of '73.

11 And I think the SRDB on that is 

12 68351.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Hi. This is 

15 Arjun.

16 Could I ask a couple of questions?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, go 

18 ahead, Arjun.

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Now, the release 

20 in 1973 was for oxidized tritium and the 

21 others were tritium gas, right?
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39 1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: So what was the 

3 cause of the oxidation of the tritium? Did it 

4 come that way from Livermore or was it 

5 oxidized by some process at Rocky Flats?

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: It was a process 

7 at Rocky Flats.

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. So I mean, 

9 given that this was different and it wasn't 

10 recognized by Rocky Flats, I mean, how can we 

11 establish or how has NIOSH established that 

12 these kinds of shipments were not occurring 

13 from Livermore or, for that matter, from Los 

14 Alamos that were undetected before 1973?

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, the --

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: Not the tritium 

17 containers or bottles, but these cracked 

18 plutonium shipments that might have had 

19 tritium that was undetected because they 

20 weren't aware of it.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: They actually 
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40 1 went back, and part of the incident report 

2 from the 1973 incident, they went back and 

3 they looked at previous shipments that could 

4 have actually contained tritium in 

5 concentrations and made potentially in that 

6 form. 

7 They identified, I believe, three 

8 other shipments. All three of those shipments

9 were significantly lower concentrations. 

10 We also went back. We did do some 

11 classified data searches to see if we could 

12 find any additional information that would 

13 identify potential concern prior to the 1973 

14 incident, and from our reviews we could not 

15 find anything.

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. My other 

17 questions was about the ChemRisk report. You 

18 know, it was a very, to some extent, a kind of 

19 the "back of the envelope" exercise that was 

20 done in the aftermath of the FBI raid and, you 

21 know, it's a necessity to put some numbers out 
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41 1 there, inform the public, and so on.

2 Were there reviews? As I recall 

3 there were reviews of the ChemRisk report 

4 afterwards, right? 

5 Has there been some validation 

6 work in the ChemRisk report by NIOSH or that 

7 happened after 1994 when it was published?

8 I don't remember now. It is so 

9 long ago, and I haven't reviewed the matter, 

10 you know, recently.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, I don't 

12 know. I mean, that is something we would have 

13 to look at unless someone up on our team has 

14 more knowledge than I do. I don't know if 

15 validation was ever done of that ChemRisk 

16 report or not. We can look into it though.

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Because obviously 

19 no one else is jumping in.

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: It must have been 

21 done for the State of Colorado. So I imagine 
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42 1 that there was some kind of internal review or 

2 maybe the state just accepted it. I'm not 

3 sure exactly what went on there. So it might 

4 be worthwhile looking at the state's records 

5 at least and maybe some other reviews.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: And my last 

8 question about that: the ChemRisk report was 

9 looking for off-site impact. Am I right about 

10 that?

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think mainly it 

12 was, yes.

13 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, and in my 

14 experience, the stack releases and workplace 

15 concentrations aren't necessarily correlated. 

16 I mean, in fact, you could argue that in some 

17 circumstances they'd be anti-correlated, 

18 right?

19 Because if you're sending stuff up 

20 the stack, then it's not in the workplace, and 

21 vice versa. So if you have material that was 
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43 1 susceptible to dispersal and there's a lot up 

2 the stack, it could be dispersed in the 

3 workplace.

4 So I'm not sure that the stack 

5 releases are in any way an indication of what 

6 you might have found in the workplace. I 

7 mean, I don't find that argument very 

8 persuasive.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I don't 

10 think we used that argument. In fact, I think 

11 on other occasions we say we don't use that 

12 argument that stack --

13 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, okay.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- is indicative 

15 of exposure.

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: I started reading 

17 your paper, but I haven't finished. So some 

18 of these questions may be a little bit off 

19 base.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Let me suggest 

21 this, just the path forward. LaVon, I'm 
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44 1 assuming you're keeping track of those few 

2 items that John and Joe and Arjun asked. 

3 Maybe you can follow up on those and then for 

4 our next Work Group meeting, SC&A can come 

5 prepared with a more formal review of, you 

6 know, this White Paper, actually probably 

7 both, but you know.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Definitely. I 

9 actually wrote down looking at the bubbler 

10 data that we have pre and post 1973, how they 

11 compare. 

12 I wrote down looking at the survey 

13 data that Joe had mentioned, the 1973 baseline 

14 data to see if that provides any information 

15 and support or non-support of what we've done, 

16 and then see if there's any validation of the 

17 ChemRisk report.

18 I also wrote down just to ensure 

19 that we, as I had said, that we're not using 

20 the stack sample data in any manner from a 

21 dose reconstruction standpoint.
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45 1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Very good, and 

2 we can figure out the timing at the end of the 

3 call because if your other White Paper is 

4 almost ready, it would be great to, you know, 

5 have SC&A review all, everything, come to our 

6 face-to-face Work Group meeting and be 

7 prepared to talk about all. I guess there's 

8 five items or so here.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Six.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But we can talk 

11 about the timing at the end.

12 So unless there's other questions 

13 --

14 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Mark. Just 

15 one last parting question since LaVon is 

16 making such a good list.

17 LaVon, we did have one interview, 

18 and it's SRDB 122550. That's 122550, and this 

19 individual was one of the few that were 

20 knowledgeable about the bubblers, and the 

21 reason I'm going to raise this one was he made 
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46 1 a point -- you may remember this -- that in 

2 terms of the containers, the bubblers only 

3 figured in the outer container, but not during 

4 the opening of the inner, and the inner 

5 container was where the bulk of the tritium 

6 contamination would have been implicated.

7 And I think that's an important 

8 qualifier on the use of the bubbler data.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's a very 

10 good point. I remember that, Joe, and you're 

11 absolutely right. That is exactly what he 

12 said, and that would definitely bring into 

13 question comparing bubbler data.

14 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: So we will take 

16 that into consideration.

17 DR. FITZGERALD: All right. 

18 That's it, Mark.

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: I had one more 

20 question, Mark. Is there any indication of 

21 metal tritides from container handling and 
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47 1 processing?

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: I can answer 

3 that. We have found no indication of metal 

4 tritides.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Is there 

7 any other questions from any of the Work Group 

8 Members?

9 MEMBER MUNN: No. This is Wanda.

10 I don't have a question. I do 

11 have a couple of comments.

12 Thank you for the very good 

13 reports, all of the NIOSH team.

14 And one other comment with respect 

15 to the question that was raised relative to 

16 stack emissions. I thought that one of the 

17 points that was made in papers that we had was 

18 the fact that no one had ever inferred that 

19 external measurements that were made in any 

20 way suggested that there was any kind of 

21 secondary concerns with respect to personnel 
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48 1 monitoring, that the two were completely 

2 separate and there was never any question 

3 about the process that was made in surveying 

4 employees as being related in any way to 

5 external amounts that were evaluated in the 

6 atmosphere. At least that was my inference 

7 from what I read.

8 I think that was addressed 

9 beforehand, but again, thank you for the good 

10 reports, and thank you especially for 

11 identifying the difference between oxides and 

12 the elemental tritium. That was helpful to 

13 this reader.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks, Wanda.

15 Any other comments or questions? 

16 Then I'll have LaVon move on to the next Work 

17 Paper.

18 Again, this is just more of we're 

19 getting a presentation, and we're going to 

20 bring these back to a face-to-face Work Group 

21 meeting to more thoroughly discuss. So we'll 
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49 1 certainly have other opportunities.

2 Hearing no more questions from the 

3 Work Group or SC&A, I'll move on to the next 

4 item. LaVon, if you want to do the next White 

5 Paper.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure. The next 

7 White Paper is on data falsification and 

8 potential data invalidation. The White Paper, 

9 Evaluation of Petitioner Concerns about Data 

10 Falsification and/or Data Invalidation in 

11 Rocky Flats Plant Building 123 Based on Worker 

12 Allegations.

13 This issue was brought up by one 

14 of the co-petitioners and was based on her 

15 review of a document, of an interview that was 

16 conducted, and it identifies potential or what 

17 could be potential issues associated with the 

18 sample analysis in Building 123.

19 The document is an interview 

20 conducted by the U.S. EPA and the FBI of a 

21 former Rocky Flats worker who alleged safety 
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50 1 violations and manipulation of lab samples at 

2 Rocky Flats.

3 You can see the concern would be 

4 that if they were manipulating samples, 

5 potentially bioassay samples, personal 

6 monitoring data, it ultimately is going to 

7 affect our ability to reconstruct dose. So 

8 this is a concern we took seriously and looked 

9 at, looked at pretty closely.

10 So the allegations relevant to 

11 data falsification and data invalidation, 

12 Building 123, the interviewee -- and these are 

13 basically what I'm doing, is going to cite the 

14 allegations that this interviewee identified 

15 and then respond to how we feel that could 

16 potentially affect our ability to reconstruct 

17 dose.

18 The interviewee identified a 

19 concern with the fume hoods, that they were 

20 inadequate. He based this on he had a pH 

21 paper taped to the outside of the fume hood. 
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51 1 The pH paper turned bright red and which he 

2 felt was indication that the fume hoods were 

3 inadequate.

4 Your know, our response to that is 

5 that there could have been a chemical exposure 

6 concern. There potentially could have been 

7 some minor releases of contaminants if the 

8 fume hood was bad. But from a bioassay 

9 analysis standpoint there would be no effect 

10 to the bioassay analysis from this situation.

11 Another issue was that samples 

12 were left on the shelf too long and not 

13 refrigerated or preserved. Again, we looked 

14 at this. Recognize its target radionuclides 

15 of concern for the most part have long half16 lives, the plutonium and such. Therefore, the 

17 shelf life would have no impact on the 

18 analysis for this.

19 The third concern was that fecal 

20 coliform samples were diluted to get count 

21 rate down for sampling and the dilution amount 
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52 1 was guesswork. Again, this has no relevance 

2 on bioassay analysis. The bioassay analysis 

3 and the bioassay program, personal bioassay 

4 program was separate from the environmental 

5 monitoring program.

6 Stack samples, filters were 

7 divided. If the first count was high, they 

8 would count the second half. Again, response 

9 stack sample results are not used to 

10 reconstruct dose for Rocky Flats Plant. So 

11 that has no effect.

12 And the last allegation made was 

13 that the improper collection of environmental 

14 water samples. Again, the environmental water 

15 samples are not used in our dose 

16 reconstruction so it has no effect on our 

17 personal monitoring results that we would have 

18 on site. Those were the allegations from the 

19 worker that we reviewed.

20 We also did some additional 

21 follow-up to get some outsiders' views, other 
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53 1 individuals' views of this. We interviewed 

2 three individuals who potentially had related 

3 knowledge or information, you know, on health 

4 physics programs, programs near that area, and 

5 to look at the issues and get their judgment 

6 on those.

7 We also reviewed additional 

8 documents, including another document that was 

9 provided by the petitioner, all of those for 

10 the data falsification issue, and our 

11 conclusion in the White Paper is basically 

12 that we had no indication of falsification or 

13 invalidation of the data used for dose 

14 reconstruction. And so there appears to be no 

15 effects to our ability to reconstruct the 

16 dose.

17 That's pretty much it on that 

18 White Paper. I'll take any questions on that.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, LaVon, I 

20 will start off just with the one, just a 

21 question from me. In the Item No. 2, you seem 
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54 1 to address the shelf life, but the other part 

2 of it seems to be the handling, the 

3 appropriateness of the handling.

4 I mean, I've certainly run across 

5 this issue in the past, the question of a 

6 sample being stirred in the appropriate 

7 container. You know, different things can 

8 happen in a plastic or a glass container, you 

9 know, regarding the sample, depending on what 

10 the liquid that that bioassay sample might be 

11 mixed in with. You know, different reactions 

12 can take place over time.

13 So I think wasn't part of the 

14 allegation the question of the 

15 appropriateness, whether it should have been 

16 stored at room temperature or refrigerated or 

17 preserved appropriately, et cetera?

18 And how did you look into that or 

19 did you look into that?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I know we 

21 looked into that. I don't remember exactly. 
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55 1 I think that I might have to ask Dan to 

2 provide some update on that or Mutty Sharfi. 

3 Actually Mutty was the one who actually did a 

4 lot of the review on that.

5 MR. SHARFI: Hi. This is Mutty.

6 Some of the things, we also talked 

7 to other labs, but people who worked bioassay 

8 labs in similar times, and from what we can 

9 tell, protocols are no different at Rocky 

10 Flats than they were at other facilities. For 

11 the most part unless you're worried about 

12 precipitation on the sides of the containers, 

13 which usually pre -- pre and analyze, you do 

14 an acid wash of the containers to make sure 

15 you capture everything.

16 For the type of radionuclides that 

17 Rocky was dealing with, there's really not 

18 much of a worry that the fact whether you have 

19 them at room temperature or refrigerated is 

20 really going to affect your results. Most 

21 labs if they refrigerate it, it was more for, 
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56 1 you know, like controls, just the urine 

2 becoming unbearable as it gets warm, you know, 

3 more than it is from an ability to process the 

4 sample itself.

5 So there is nothing indicating 

6 that the fact that they refrigerated it or 

7 they, you know, kept it on shelves really 

8 impacted anything.

9 MR. STANESCU: And this is Dan.

10 I will add that we tried to 

11 identify or collect, first identify and then 

12 see if we could collect, sampling procedures 

13 for Rocky Flats, but we were not successful in 

14 finding anything in the time that we had 

15 pulling this paper together or specific to 

16 bioassay procedures at Rocky. So the 

17 interview is what we have at this point to 

18 back up our information.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Dan, you 

20 were reading my mind. That was my follow-up 

21 question, was do you have any procedures from 
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57 1 that time frame.

2 Did you happen to -- I mean, I 

3 don't know over the course of doing Rocky 

4 Flats if we've had any interviews with labs, 

5 you know, people you can contact otherwise to 

6 verify this. I tend to think that, you know, 

7 what Mutty said seems to be reasonable, but I 

8 just wonder if you had any other corroboration 

9 of it.

10 MR. STANESCU: We haven't done any 

11 other interviews on this particular part. 

12 This particular investigation was associated 

13 with environmental. We haven't found any 

14 investigations that invalidate the bioassay 

15 procedure portion at Rocky Flats.

16 As a matter of fact, we have 

17 indication that they had a pretty good 

18 bioassay program at Rocky, but nothing to this 

19 level that says their bioassay program was 

20 failing from the perspective of operating by 

21 the procedures or anything.
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58 1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I'll 

2 turn to see if there are any other questions 

3 from SC&A or the Work Group.

4 MEMBER MUNN: This is Wanda.

5 Just another comment. Perhaps I'm 

6 missing something, but I don't understand why 

7 the handling, the storage of a sample would 

8 have anything to do with the radiological 

9 assay of that sample. I can see how it would 

10 have something to do with the biological or 

11 coliform aspects of testing samples, but why 

12 would anything other than the known half-life 

13 of radiological samples be affected in any way 

14 by storage?

15 Is there some indicator there of 

16 which I'm unaware? It just --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think Mutty 

18 sort of addressed that. I mean, if it did, if 

19 the sample did, you know, react with the 

20 container itself, if they did the wash 

21 afterwards, after wash to get everything off 
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59 1 of the container, you know, there's perhaps 

2 ways to handle it, but having no procedures, 

3 we're not sure either.

4 So I wasn't even clear on what 

5 radionuclides were necessary. I can guess 

6 what radionuclides we're analyzing, but you 

7 know, I was just questioning whether there 

8 were reasons beyond the concerns over odor, et 

9 cetera, that there were specific handling 

10 procedures in place and why they weren't 

11 followed.

12 So just questioning, Wanda. I 

13 think perhaps Mutty's answer is probably 

14 reasonable, but I just wanted to --

15 MR. SHARFI: Mark, this is Mutty.

16 I can add that we did interview 

17 some people we could get a hold of from other 

18 labs, and they said even at that time those 

19 kind of practices were standard policies for 

20 most labs throughout the DOE complex. So 

21 there's no reason to believe that they 
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60 1 wouldn't have been anything different at Rocky 

2 than they are at other labs.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Thanks.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, thanks, 

5 thanks.

6 Any other questions? Again, you 

7 know, this is our first sort of cut at this. 

8 Anybody have any comments?

9 DR. FITZGERALD: Well, Mark, I 

10 just have a comment. This is Joe.

11 I think this was a pretty good 

12 work-up on the FBI interview in terms of 

13 critiquing it for its implications on the 

14 occupational side, but I think what was 

15 touched upon was what the crossover 

16 implications are for the bioassay, and I don't 

17 know if you can answer that just by the FBI 

18 interview by itself.

19 So you know, you would need a 

20 little bit more information I would think on

21 the occupational side to, you know, make sure 
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61 1 that there's no crossover implications.

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun.

3 I have a comment or a question 

4 rather. In the aftermath of the FBI raid, 

5 were there issues related to workplace safety 

6 practices and so on that, you know, were part 

7 of the proceedings or was that restricted to 

8 environmental issues only?

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I can only 

10 answer from what I've, you know, generally 

11 read. I mean, I could do some additional 

12 research, but generally what I read is most of 

13 the issues that were identified were based 

14 mainly on environmental issues. And so the 

15 findings from that would have been mainly 

16 environmental.

17 I'm sure there were other health 

18 and safety issues that were identified from 

19 the raid that were, you know, identified, but 

20 I don't recall.

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: Because they did a 
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62 1 pretty open-ended search of the classified 

2 records at Rocky Flats during the raid, and 

3 I'm wondering in the work-up of those 

4 documents, you know, whether you've reviewed 

5 the work-up of those documents to see if there 

6 were workplace safety issues and, you know, 

7 issues of data integrity and so on that came 

8 up, not in terms of why they raided the client 

9 but what happened after.

10 MR. STANESCU: LaVon, this is Dan.

11 If I'm remembering correctly, 

12 there's a lot of documents that are locked 

13 down in a litigation package or --

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I was going 

15 to bring that up.

16 MR. STANESCU: Right.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: There were a 

18 number of documents that were sealed that we 

19 have not been able to get.

20 MR. STANESCU: Oh, okay.

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: That litigation is 
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63 1 not over yet?

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, it's over, 

3 but the documents have been sealed.

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, I see. Okay.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Joe, I think 

6 you raised a good point. The crux of the 

7 implications is the key, and if you can think 

8 about that further, you know, when we actually 

9 convene a face-to-face, I think that would be 

10 a relevant discussion, if you have any --

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think one thing 

12 we can do, too, before is actually we can go 

13 back in preparation for convening and do some 

14 additional research and see if we can identify 

15 any changes in practices maybe through 

16 interviews or whatever in the program prior to 

17 and after and see if we come up with anything.

18 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

19 there's certainly people that could be 

20 interviewed that would be very familiar with 

21 practices at that time, and I think that would 
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64 1 make it a little bit more confident that even 

2 though the environmental program had these 

3 flaws, they weren't necessarily characteristic 

4 of the bioassay program. I think that's what 

5 needs to be done.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

7 MEMBER MUNN: I thought that --

8 well, --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I believe that 

10 would be very --

11 MEMBER MUNN: -- degree. It's 

12 called out pretty well, I think, in the paper 

13 as it exists, but it sounds as though this DNA 

14 was like more reassurance of what's been 

15 stated already.

16 DR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

17 everybody agrees that what's there has a 

18 strong environmental context because of the 

19 raid and the history of the raid. So this 

20 would be a little bit more assurance that 

21 there's no crossover issues.
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65 1 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I don't know 

2 what one can say other than the fact that 

3 there's no connection between the two, and 

4 that even the statements that were made in 

5 legal proceedings indicated that there wasn't 

6 a connection between environmental monitoring 

7 outside the plant and worker protection, which 

8 was not called into question.

9 But all right. That's a question 

10 that has been made.

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark and LaVon, I 

12 had a question. Is there any merit to 

13 pursuing whether some of the documents under 

14 lockdown can be accessed just to have an idea 

15 of what's in them and whether they might be 

16 relevant or is it not worth the effort?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm trying to 

18 think of a good answer. Yes, I will speak to 

19 our General Counsel and see, you know, what 

20 they can find out. That's all I can do.

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. Yes, 
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66 1 obviously it's a sensitive issue since they're 

2 still under lockdown, but it might be 

3 worthwhile to at least, you know, have some 

4 idea of whether they can be accessed and if so 

5 whether they should be accessed.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Historically that 

7 hasn't been an easy thing to do, Arjun.

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, I know. I 

9 understand that, and presumably that's why 

10 they're under lockdown still.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So I 

12 think a couple of follow-up items, LaVon, that 

13 you have on that.

14 Any other questions on that Work 

15 Paper for now? I think we've got a path 

16 forward on that to do a little more 

17 investigation.

18 And, Joe or Arjun, any more on 

19 that?

20 DR. FITZGERALD: No. I think, you 

21 know, everybody agrees. Actually, on Wanda's 
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67 1 point, they did -- you know, I think the FBI 

2 did say it was not as much an occupational 

3 issue, but I think a little additional 

4 information will help on that.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, agreed, 

6 agreed.

7 Okay. The last item is the update 

8 on the other three remaining items. So I'll 

9 turn it over to LaVon to give us an update, 

10 and then we can talk schedule, too, for our 

11 next, and the next one I do want to be a face12 to-face meeting.

13 So go ahead, LaVon.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. I think we 

15 all had hoped that these documents would be 

16 out sooner, but we've been back and forth on 

17 some issues and also with the sequestration, 

18 it has kind of put a damper on some things, 

19 but there are three additional papers that 

20 have issues that we're working to resolve.

21 Thorium strikes, thorium strikes 
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68 1 was identified as a concern in the previous 

2 evaluation, the first one. We went back. We 

3 did some additional research on that. We've 

4 been working this paper, and not only the 

5 thorium issue; the other radionuclides 

6 involved in this process, and this paper is 

7 close to completion. We've been back and 

8 forth with ORAU on a couple of issues.

9 We do expect to have this paper 

10 complete later this month and to support a 

11 Work Group meeting soon for that one. 

12 That, as I mentioned, there's only 

13 a couple issues remaining. We're working 

14 those issues, and we do expect that to be 

15 completed later this month.

16 Neptunium, this paper is, again, 

17 close to completion as well. This is 

18 basically neptunium operations that occurred 

19 at the Rocky site. It was an issue that was 

20 identified during our reviews. 

21 It wasn't really thoroughly 
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69 1 addressed in the previous evaluation. We 

2 recognized that. Also our interviews and our 

3 data capture, we recognized that this needed a 

4 little more review, and so we have been 

5 working that paper.

6 The schedule on this is kind of up 

7 in the air because there's a couple of issues 

8 out. We do hope to have this report. This 

9 report will be done no later than August, but 

10 it may be sooner depending on we're going to 

11 schedule a couple of conference calls to 

12 discuss a path forward on a couple of issues, 

13 and that may actually move that schedule up. 

14 But right now we'll say that this won't be 

15 complete in August.

16 The other issue is other thorium 

17 issues, and this came about in our review of 

18 classified documents and some of the 

19 interviews. We actually recognized that there 

20 were some activities that we do not believe 

21 were previously evaluated or looked at, and we 
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70 1 felt that we needed to do some additional 

2 research on that one.

3 That one is kind of the long pole 

4 in the tent. That one has had the least 

5 amount of work and would not be ready until 

6 probably September of this year.

7 I know that the idea is to get 

8 everything completed in time for our Board 

9 meeting in Denver in October. So we will do 

10 everything we can to pull that one or get that 

11 one completed as soon as possible.

12 I think the idea of a Work Group 

13 meeting or we hope to be able to support a 

14 good Work Group meeting in August, and if not, 

15 for having the other thorium issues completed 

16 September.

17 That's about --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That was 

19 sort of my last question. Maybe we can make 

20 the dates toward the end of August for a Work 

21 Group meeting face to face.
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71 1 It doesn't seem like you're --

2 well, it seems like most of it should be done 

3 by then anyway.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct. 

5 That's correct. Most of it will be done.

6 The other thorium issue is the 

7 only one I feel that could be stuck out there.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

9 DR. FITZGERALD: LaVon, this is 

10 Joe again. 

11 Can you say anything more about 

12 the other thorium issues or is that --

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, nothing, 

14 you know, nothing major that we've seen. If 

15 you remember, there were foils that were made.

16 DR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Okay. So 

17 this is kind of --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I don't --

19 DR. FITZGERALD: -- to the other 

20 issues.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, yes, yes. 
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72 1 And it's more along those lines. It seemed 

2 like from what we looked it, it looked like 

3 small process operations, but we needed to 

4 look at them a little further to ensure that 

5 there wasn't an exposure scenario that we 

6 hadn't previously looked at.

7 I can probably get into a little 

8 more detail with you next week at the Board 

9 meeting.

10 DR. FITZGERALD: All right.

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun.

12 Are you finishing at the end of 

13 August, LaVon, or the beginning of August? 

14 Because we would need some time to look at 

15 these materials.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure. Well, 

17 again, I can give you a better update. We're 

18 going to have some conference calls with our 

19 contractor to discuss neptunium, but I would 

20 anticipate we could have that one done in 

21 early August.
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73 1 So the first two, the thorium 

2 strikes and the neptunium in early August.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, Arjun. 

4 That's what I heard, was July for thorium 

5 strikes, and then around August for neptunium, 

6 and if that was the case, I was thinking late 

7 August would give time for the papers to be 

8 cleared and also for you guys to be able to 

9 review them.

10 But we can email and set these 

11 dates in the next couple of weeks.

12 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But, you know, 

14 I think we should try to shoot for something 

15 toward the end of August or early September.

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, it seemed to 

17 me like, you know, given the time clearance 

18 and, you know, all of the sequestration issues 

19 and so on it might give SC&A a little bit more 

20 elbow room to schedule it in September.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.
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74 1 DR. MAKHIJANI: I mean, it's Joe's 

2 call, but --

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: This is Dave. 

4 Is the last week in August 

5 potentially available? I mean, this is the 

6 time when many folks take vacation before 

7 Labor Day. I happen to be free during that 

8 last week, but many folks may not be. Did you 

9 want to check on that?

10 MR. KATZ: This is Ted.

11 I mean, it's sounding like from 

12 what I'm hearing here and the uncertainty 

13 about delivery, especially given clearance 

14 uncertainties, like we really should be 

15 looking early September rather than late 

16 August.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

18 Yes.

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm trying to 

21 nail down an exact date, but maybe after Labor 
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75 1 Day would be more appropriate, and early to 

2 mid-September.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I think that 

4 makes sense.

5 MR. KATZ: All right. But if you 

6 want, I mean, I don't know if you have your 

7 calendars and all, but we can pencil in a date 

8 now if you guys are ready. I mean, if we're 

9 aiming for like the first or second week in 

10 September, we could do that right now.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, Ted, when 

13 is the October meeting, anyway?

14 MR. KATZ: The October meeting is 

15 the middle of October. So it's October --

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Seventeenth?

17 MR. KATZ: -- the 17th.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: October 17th.

19 MEMBER MUNN: If we met the week 

20 of September 9th, that would be more than a 

21 month before. So that is plenty of time.
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76 1 MR. KATZ: Yes, the week of 

2 September 9th, that's wide open for me. Do 

3 you want to try to pick a date now?

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Why not? That 

5 week, there's for Jewish folks Yom Kippur. I 

6 don't have the exact date on that.

7 MEMBER MUNN: My calendar says 

8 13th.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Thirteenth? 

10 Thank you.

11 MEMBER MUNN: That's a Friday.

12 MR. KATZ: That's a Friday.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Good.

14 MR. KATZ: So, Mark, do you have a 

15 calendar that you want to try to pencil 

16 something in now?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

18 yes, a little difficult, but the week of the 

19 9th, the only day that I really have is the 

20 12th, if that works for others.

21 MR. KATZ: And that's fine here.
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77 1 MEMBER MUNN: It's okay for me.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: The 12th?

3 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: September 12th, 

5 yes.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, 

7 it's marginal for me, but I can do it. 

8 There's a Northeast Diesel conference that I 

9 was going to in Groton for a couple of days, 

10 but I could cancel that. If there were 

11 another day --

12 MR. KATZ: Well, I mean, how about 

13 the week of the 16th?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That may not be 

15 good for me that week and the next week 

16 either.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, then it 

18 sounds like --

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It sounds like 

20 Thursday.

21 MR. KATZ: -- the better date.
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78 1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, okay. 

2 I'll make it Thursday. It's not an urgent 

3 thing. It's just I would have liked to go.

4 MR. KATZ: Right. And I'm just 

5 worried that if we don't leave as much time as 

6 possible for SC&A to be able to review what 

7 gets delivered, too, we'll find ourselves in a 

8 pinch that way.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right, right. 

10 Okay. Well, that's fine.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It will work 

12 for me.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And the Yom 

14 Kippur begins --

15 MEMBER MUNN: I have that down on 

16 the 13th.

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Does it begin 

18 the evening of the 12th?

19 MEMBER MUNN: It says begins at 

20 sundown on the 13th.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Wonderful. 
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79 1 Okay. Thank you. That's fine.

2 MEMBER MUNN: I can't speak to it 

3 personally.

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, no, that's 

5 fine. That's exactly the question.

6 MEMBER MUNN: -- rely on the 

7 calendar, David.

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, yes. 

9 Okay. Thursday, the 12th, will be fine.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay, and just to be 

11 clear that would be a meeting in Cincinnati.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Okay.

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Done.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That sounds 

17 good then, and that should -- all right. It 

18 sounds like that will give us time, you know, 

19 for a Board meeting, but also time for NIOSH's 

20 products to get out and be available for SC&A 

21 to review.
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80 1 MR. KATZ: Right, right. And I 

2 think it's nice to have a hard deadline to 

3 help push the system to the clearance --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

5 MR. KATZ: Very good.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. The last 

7 thing I would ask is are there any comments 

8 from, I think, Terrie, Don and Dan, and there 

9 may have been a few others from the public.

10 Any comments from the petitioner 

11 at this point? Certainly you'll have a better 

12 opportunity in the face-to-face meeting, and 

13 you will have had more time to look at these 

14 White Papers at that point, too. But --

15 MS. BARRIER: Right, Mark. But I 

16 will be attending the Idaho meeting next week, 

17 and Charles and I are still finalizing our 

18 comments, but we should have them ready for 

19 next week's meeting if that's okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, very good. 

21 That's great, yes.
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81 1 MS. BARRIE: Thank you.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. And 

3 Dan, did you have anything you wanted to add 

4 at this point?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Maybe he 

7 dropped off the call. I'm not sure.

8 All right. I think that's it. 

9 This is really just an update, and we'll have 

10 more time for discussion of all these items in 

11 the face-to-face meeting in September.

12 DR. McKEEL: Hello?

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, hi, Dan 

14 McKeel?

15 DR. McKEEL: Yes. This is Dan.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Hi. Sorry. I 

17 thought we had lost you.

18 DR. McKEEL: Yes, I had a phone --

19 I don't have any particular comments to make. 

20 I was interested in the papers, the other 

21 papers on thorium, and I just wanted to 
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82 1 mention that I believe that Terrie Barrie has 

2 brought to your attention the serious activity 

3 once more prompted by a tip from an anonymous 

4 Rocky Flats worker that might shed some light 

5 on the shipments.

6 If you remember in SEC 79 on Dow 

7 Madison, there were supposed to be major 

8 shipments of thorium magnesium alloy plates to 

9 Rocky Flats. Brant Ulsh could never find any 

10 evidence of that, but apparently a worker has 

11 come forward, through Terrie, who has some 

12 documents that might be related to that.

13 So we're following up on that 

14 issue, and we're doing that specifically 

15 through FOIA requests to NMSA and to 

16 Department of Energy, who promise to actually 

17 do some hand searches through the classified 

18 records, which I don't believe has been done 

19 before.

20 So there may be some new news, 

21 breaking news on that thorium issue at Rocky 
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83 1 Flats, and I just was interested whether that 

2 paper number five, in particular, about other 

3 thorium issues might relate to that.

4 So, anyway, I appreciate your time 

5 for letting me just say a word, and that's all 

6 I have to say.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you. 

8 Thank you, Dan.

9 LaVon, I think you got the emails 

10 I received on that, and on your other thorium 

11 issues. I think you should add that in, and 

12 we should follow up to the extent we have any 

13 more information on that.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Another thing, 

15 Mark. I'm on the agenda next week for the 

16 Board meeting to discuss Rocky Flats. 

17 Anything in particular from the Work Group 

18 meeting that you want me to add to my 

19 presentation or --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I can talk 

21 to you off line on that, but I think, you 
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84 1 know, what you've covered today in a more 

2 concise fashion would be appropriate, I think.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But you do have 

5 that up there on the magnesium issue on your 

6 other thorium issues?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: If it wasn't on 

8 there before, it is there now.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. All 

10 right. I just want to make sure of that.

11 Anything else before we close out 

12 from any of the Work Group Members?

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I don't have 

14 any.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. I 

16 appreciate everyone's time and --

17 MR. BISON: This is Scott Bison, 

18 and I have one comment to make.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, sure, sure.

20 MR. BISON: The view that there 

21 are documents that have been sealed and that 
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85 1 are not being accessed in order to do the dose 

2 reconstruction, I think that's very 

3 concerning, and I think every effort needs to 

4 be made to get those documents available in 

5 order to make sure that the conclusions that 

6 are being drawn in the dose reconstruction 

7 are, in fact, accurate. 

8 They may not be related, but that 

9 should be confirmed in my opinion

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, thanks for 

11 your comments, Scott. 

12 I think NIOSH did indicate they 

13 were going to talk to General Counsel and see 

14 what they can do maybe at least to find out 

15 the nature of the documents, what is sealed, 

16 and it may be that there is no recourse, but 

17 at least they're going to follow up on that. 

18 So thanks for the comment.

19 MR. BISON: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

21 With that I think we can close out this Work 
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86 1 Group call, and we'll talk next week, I guess.

2 (Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the 

3 Work Group meeting was adjourned.)

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