NEAL R. GROSS

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Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Metals and Controls Corp. Work Group

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

The meeting convened at 10:30 a.m., Eastern 

Daylight Time, via teleconference, Josie Beach, 

Chair, presiding. 
2 

Present: 

Josie Beach, Chair

Henry Anderson, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Registered and/or Public Comment Participants: 

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Nancy Adams, NIOSH Contractor

Bob Anigstein, SC&A

Bob Barton, SC&A

Zaida Burgos, NIOSH

Grady Calhoun, DCAS

Michael Elliott, Petitioner

Rose Gogliotti, SC&A

John Mauro, SC&A

Pat McCloskey, ORAU Team

Jenny Naylor, HHS OGC

Charles Nelson, DCAS

Lavon Rutherford, DCAS

Mutty Sharfi, ORAU Team

Tim Taulbee, DCAS
3 

Contents

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health Metals and Controls 

Corp. Work Group Wednesday, September 2, 2020 1

Roll Call/Welcome 4

Review of the Issues Resolution Roadmap, 

Work Group Resolutions, Additional Tasks 6

"Response to Metals and Controls Corp 

Working Group Comments," NIOSH Response 

Paper dated July 16, 2020 7

Reply to NIOSH "Metals and Controls Corp. 

Thorium and Welding Exposure Model," SC&A 

Memo dated July 8, 2020 58

Board Correspondence 96

Petitioners’ Comments 96

Path Forward, August Board Meeting 

Presentation, Plans 104

Adjourn 106
4

Proceedings

(10:30 a.m.)

Roll Call/Welcome

Dr. Roberts: Good morning, everyone. And 

welcome. I'm Rashaun Roberts. I'm the Designated 

Federal Official for the Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health.

This is a meeting of the Metals and Controls 

Working Group. We have a six-item meeting agenda 

today if you've seen it. If you haven't seen it yet, 

you can find the agenda on the NIOSH Website 

under Scheduled Meetings for today's date along 

with all of the meeting materials which were 

disseminated to the Working Group in advance.

I'd like to officially welcome all of you again to this 

videoconference. First off, let's go ahead and 

address the issue of conflict of interest.

And I will go ahead and speak to that with respect 

to the Members of the Board who sit on this 

particular Work Group. My understanding is that in 

order for them to serve on the Metals and Controls 

Working Group, they cannot have any conflict of 

interest.

So with that, let me move into roll call for the 

Members of the Board who are on the Group, 

starting with our Chair and then in alphabetical 

order.

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: I just want to cover a few additional 

items. In order to keep things running smoothly as 

was mentioned, let's go ahead and ask you to 

please mute your phone unless, of course, you're 

speaking.

If you don't have that mute button, press *6 to 

mute. If you need to take yourself off mute, press 

*6 again. As I --
5

Mr. Elliott: Excuse me. Excuse me, Dr. Roberts. I 

apologize for interrupting you. Did you ask for 

petitioners to introduce themselves?

Dr. Roberts: Members of the public, yes.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. I'm sorry. So this is Michael Elliott. 

I'm one of the petitioners for SEC Petition 236.

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Thank you so much and 

welcome.

Mr. Elliott: Thank you.

Dr. Roberts: Are there any other petitioners or 

members of the public? And, just let me circle back. 

Has Valerio been able to join?

Ms. Burgos: I see that she's in, but she's having 

trouble.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. All right. It may be enough that 

she's there so why I don't I go ahead and move on 

and hopefully things can get situated for her as we 

move along.

So again as I was saying, please if you're not 

speaking, please make sure that you're on mute so 

that we have as little interference as possible and 

the Court Reporter can follow along accordingly.

So as I mentioned, the agenda for the meeting can 

be found on the website. Other materials can be 

accessed there too.

So let's go ahead and get started and I will go 

ahead and turn the meeting over to the Chair, Josie 

Beach. So it's yours.

Chair Beach: The Chair who just lost the video. 

Hang on. There are so many fun buttons, but. So I 

have a question for everybody. Looking over the 

agenda and realizing that the Roadmap, we can go 

through this Roadmap step by step, but some of the 
6

items that come after the Roadmap, oh, just a 

second.

I have totally gotten myself out of here. Give me 

one second. Oh, my goodness. I don't know where I 

ended up. Can you all still hear me?

Dr. Taulbee: Yes, we can hear you.

Chair Beach: I have totally lost where my -- I 

apologize. This is a new one for me here.

Dr. Taulbee: There you are. Nope. You just left.

Chair Beach: Nope. Yes. So I'm -- don't know how 

to get it back on my actually on my screen.

Dr. Roberts: Let me just verify. Did I just hear 

Loretta say something?

Dr. Taulbee: No, I believe I see Loretta.

Dr. Roberts: Oh, you see it.

Review of the Issues Resolution Roadmap, Work 

Group Resolutions, Additional Tasks

Chair Beach: There we go, okay. So back -- I 

apologize. This technology's a little different. So the 

Roadmap.

Do we want to go through it step by step or does it 

make more sense to go through some of the papers 

that support items in the Roadmap?

Dr. Mauro: I hate to interrupt. This is John Mauro. 

The Roadmap is very long.

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: And, we did go through it at our last 

meeting.

Chair Beach: Correct.

Dr. Mauro: And I believe LaVon Rutherford in effect 

was asked to respond to the Roadmap in his slide 
7

presentation so I'd be more than happy to go 

through any aspect with Rose --

Dr. Roberts: John?

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: You have both your phone and your 

computer on so you're giving us a signal.

Mr. Rutherford: I think John suggests that I go 

ahead and do my presentation since it covers most 

of the points that were identified in the Roadmap 

discussion.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, that way would probably be best.

Chair Beach: Yes, I agree. I agree with that also.

"Response to Metals and Controls Corp Working 

Group Comments," NIOSH Response Paper dated 

July 16, 2020

Mr. Rutherford: Okay, if everybody's in agreement 

with that, I will try to see if I can share my screen 

and everybody sees me so far.

All right. Now let's move on. Okay. I'm LaVon 

Rutherford. I'm going to talk about the, our 

response paper we put together. Those who 

remember back in April we had a Work Group 

meeting.

SC&A presented the Issues Resolution Roadmap and 

provided updates. The Work Group and petitioners 

discussed the issues, expressed some concerns and 

made some comments.

We were identified, we were tasked with going back 

to look at a few things. The response paper that we 

put out and I believe Mr. Elliott got a hard, got a 

copy of that sent to him.

I did notice that the response paper was not on our 

website. At least not in the location of the meeting. 

I know the Board Member, or the Working Group 
8

Members all got copied and I believe SC&A got 

copied as well. So that response paper addressed 

the issues that were identified from that Work 

Group meeting. The first comment that was made 

by the Work Group, was a general concern was 

expressed that maintenance work performed at 

Metals and Controls is unique and therefore 

standard modeling procedures do not apply.

The Work Group requested a summary of bounding 

methods used at the sites with a residual radiation 

period that were added to the SEC compared to 

Metals and Controls.

So we went back and we looked. There were 16 

petitions that covered 15 sites that had evaluated 

periods that were either part or in the entire 

evaluating Class falls within the residual period.

Uranium was present at all the sites and thorium at 

seven of the sites. Simonds Saw and Steel, Norton 

Company, Blockson Chemical, Dow Chemical, Metals 

and Controls, Wah Chang, and United Nuclear.

There were three evaluations that resulted in 

additions to the SEC. Two of those had partial 

additions of the evaluated period, that's Linde 

Ceramics and Norton Chemical Company and the 

third the entire evaluated period of Vitro 

Manufacturing was added.

Linde Ceramics, the operational years, Linde 

Ceramics processed uranium ores for the AEC so 

you were dealing with all uranium progeny and the 

disequilibrium created from processing that year, 

that uranium ore called the operational period at 

Linde Ceramics to be added to the SEC.

The 1954 through and I've got something sticking 

up on my computer. I can't read it. Until July of '06 

I believe. That covered the entire residual period.

During that residual period, the Advisory Board split 

the entire period into two periods. Renovation 

period January 1, 1954 through December 31, 1969 
9

and then the remaining balance of that residual 

period January 1, 1970 to July 31st of 2006.

Linde Ceramics went through a very aggressive 

D&D effort. They vacuumed, sand blasted, 

resurfaced, plain cleaned and dismantled 

equipment. Multiple plants were involved.

Plant B was the worst. The furnace area had smears 

that peaked out over at 100,000 ppm per 100 

centimeters squared alpha prior to the D&D. And 

after D&D, it was about 8,000.

The furnace area pre-D&D average was about 

10,800 ppm per 100 centimeters square. It also had 

air data which was used for the DR methodology. 

This is and I'll discuss that later.

Just as a comparison, this data on the concrete 

from the floor at Metals and Controls was 12.3 ppm 

per hundred centimeters squared.

The Board felt that the renovation period dose could 

be bounded with air monitoring data captured 

during monitoring from earlier renovations but were 

not plausible for site-wide application for non-D&D 

workers. 

This was a 17 year, or 16, 17-year period that the 

actually it was a 15-year period that the Board felt 

that giving everyone the 5,479 millirem per year 

was really not plausible for that entire period.

They could see it for the D&D workers, but not for 

everyone else and so they recommended a Class for 

that period.

Norton Company during its operational years, it 

produced hexagon shapes using a uranium and 

thorium oxides and it was added to the SEC.

The residual period is January 1, 1958 through 

October 31st, 2009. This is one of the first ones 

where we looked at the D&D operations that 

occurred during that period.
10

We had some operational data that we had during 

the operational period obviously. And then we had 

some later data so the typical OTIB-70 approach or, 

you know, TBD-6000, things we would normally 

use.

We looked at this D&D period or this tear-down 

period and it occurred from January 1, 1958 to 

October 1962 and we recognized that cleanup 

significantly for the materials present placed 

employees close to disturbed materials.

During this tear-down, there was a kiln that was 

tore down, there was a furnace -- I'm getting some 

background feedback. Somebody has a phone that's 

not muted. Thank you.

Again, during that period, they tore down kiln and a 

furnace and we felt that both of those would 

significantly alter the material.

A bioassay and air sampling data were identified for 

the periods both before and after this time, but no 

data were identified during teardown and cleanup 

operations.

From October 1962 through October 31st, 2009, we 

determined the available data was sufficient. Vitro 

Manufacturing, again this is another one where they 

were processing uranium ores during the 

operational period and generated waste piles 

containing uranium and progeny no longer in 

equilibrium due to processing.

Between 1960 and 1965, the site performed 

remediation and transfer burial of the residue waste 

piles. There was no personal monitoring data, no 

workplace monitoring or source term data to 

estimate exposures to the residue storage site 

decommissioning and burial operations.

So this was an entire period was added. Our 

conclusion from it, is that it was clear that these 

three residual periods that were added were sites 

with unusual work activities with high dose potential 
11

for which NIOSH was unable to evaluate the source 

term.

This is not the case at Metals and Controls. You 

know, again, we had both Linde and Vitro dealt with 

uranium ores and Norton dealt with uranium and 

thorium oxides.

The distinction between the potential for a high dose 

and for a low dose is important because according 

to former Chair, Board Chair, in circumstances 

where the absolute value of the exposure may be 

much higher, we're much more concerned with how 

accurate these dose estimates may be.

So we also looked at, we thought it would be 

appropriate to look at the other sites that were not 

added to the SEC. So there were eleven AWE sites 

that were not added that residual period was 

evaluated.

Carborundum Company, Baker Brothers, Hooker 

Electrochemical, Chapman Valve and Bliss & 

Laughlin. Chapman Valve, the petitioner requested 

Class included engineers, master mechanics, steam 

transfer foremen, steam fitters, machine repair, 

steam fitting and plumbing, maintenance foremen, 

electricians, janitors, decontamination workers and 

firefighters.

So they had the whole gamut included in that. And, 

it's also interesting with Chapman Valve that we 

estimated, the re-suspended dust during the 

residual period and calculated the worker dose using 

that projected data similar to Metals and Controls.

But the 11 sites also included Bliss & Laughlin Steel, 

Simonds Saw and Steel, Blockson Chemical 

Company, Dow Chemical Corp. and General Steel 

Industries. Blockson also included maintenance 

workers as well, specifically call out -- this petitioner 

specifically called out maintenance workers. 

And then Wah Chang and United Nuclear Corp. Our 

conclusion on this is that Metals and Controls 
12

operations were similar to operations at these other 

sites.

We actually did a search for terms, that similar 

terms, work terms that you would expect through 

these Evaluation Reports. We looked at welding, 

roof and rafter contamination, excavation, pipe, 

burial and sludge.

All of these terms were searched and at least one of 

these terms was included in all of these Evaluation 

Reports. One or more.

The methods proposed for Metals and Controls by 

NIOSH and SC&A are similar and consistent with 

those previously approved by the Board.

The types of radioactive material, the craft 

personnel who work with the material and the tasks 

performed in Metals and Controls are found across 

all of the AWE sites.

Josie, I can go through all of this or I can stop after 

each section, comment and response. Whichever 

you prefer.

Chair Beach: I -- it might be helpful if we just stop 

in between each one --

Mr. Rutherford: Okay.

Chair Beach: -- to hear whatever the Board 

Members think.

Dr. Roberts: And if I may, there's some interference 

that I'm hearing. Is someone on the phone? I think 

the area code is 781. If you could please mute, it 

may make things a little clearer for people.

Mr. Elliott: Josie, this is Mike Elliott. I'm at area 

code 781, but I do have my phone on mute so.

Chair Beach: Okay. Great.

Mr. Elliott: I'll try again.
13

Chair Beach: Yes, if you're on mute, I think you're 

probably okay.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you.

Chair Beach: Yes, this is interesting. Okay. So any 

comments on that first part? I had a couple. The 

first part is and I'm not working from your slide, but 

just that first section where you quoted that review 

of the sufficient accuracy and data back to the tenyear review.

It's kind of interesting because you look at that 

quote in its context we're looking, the low dose, I 

mean I looked through here and I can quote Stu 

and he states that it's just very difficult given the 

variety of situations that you run into.

And in terms of exposure potential and records of 

availability and I go back to Metals and Controls and 

that actually Metals and Controls we're using 

sample data from the mid '80s and '90s.

We don't really know what the doses were in exactly 

in those pipes. And, I guess, LaVon, I have to go 

back to the low dose. There are some pretty high 

doses in Metals and Controls in that, those piping 

lines.

And I'm wondering why we're pushing this as a low 

dose.

Mr. Rutherford: Can you hear me right now?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. Rutherford: I'm making sure I'm not muted.

Chair Beach: No, you're good.

Mr. Rutherford: Well, I think if you, you know, in 

later on in the presentation actually I get into that 

in even much more detail. But the high values were 

only in the drain lines and it was the high value in 

the one sample was roughly 53,000 picocuries per 

gram which is actually, yes, a very high sample.
14

I mean, I would consider that close to operational. 

It's 10 percent of the specific activity of natural 

uranium. But if you look at the models that were 

developed in the amount of time that people were 

exposed to that, the doses that come out of that are 

very low.

And when, in fact, when I get to my later on in the 

presentation, it's coming up next, you know if you 

look at the total amount of uranium exposure of 

roughly 92 millirem, that if you were only 

considering uranium and not thorium, that would 

not meet the monitoring thresholds for regulations 

that we deal with today.

And I think that, what I was trying to point out 

during this first part is these activities are not 

dissimilar to what we've already evaluated.

We've evaluated these at all of the AWE sites from 

various different, I mean magnitudes and we've 

also, you know, we've used the resuspension model 

consistently.

And I think if you hear some of the other quotes 

that come out in here, it's pretty consistent with, 

you know, Dr. Melius is pretty consistent throughout 

it. And the fact that these low exposures, we've got 

to allow for more variability.

Chair Beach: Well, if you go back to Linde, Linde 

was two populations. One was a low dose and one 

was a higher dose and you really didn't know what 

the exposure potential was and I guess that's my 

argument here is there was one pipe in that west 

end that was up to a million that they found.

So with the cleanup that was involved, you don't 

really know how much of the source term was taken 

out of there in that 30, or 15 to 30-year period. So 

I'll leave it at that.

Mr. Rutherford: I think I'll address a little bit more 

of that later on in my presentation.
15

Chair Beach: Right.

Mr. Kotelchuck: If I may, LaVon.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes.

Mr. Kotelchuck: I mean, what you're saying and I 

think proven, is that what you're doing here is just 

what you were doing at all the other sites and that 

this is normal.

This is normally the way things are handled. To me 

that's the problem. The problem is, from day one, 

when we heard the petitioner and then read the 

interview, at least, you know, that it seemed to be a 

fairly, to my mind, unstable, rather chaotic situation 

in which people thought for years there's no 

problem, we don't have radioactivity. That is 

because the place was cleaned up by M&C after the 

operational period.

And, we find no, we're going to check the burial site 

in 1984 to see you know or eventually getting out of 

the way. And they start finding things. And then 

from '84 to '96 they're doing work on the burial pile, 

people are functioning without consideration that 

they're working in a site that has a radioactive 

potential.

And that to me from day one has been the problem 

and that influences my perspective. So but, I don't 

doubt that you're correct. And I agree with you. You 

were doing what you always do. And, that's okay.

Mr. Rutherford: You know, I would like to throw out 

a couple of things. So I recognize that -- and I 

understand exactly what you're saying. You know, 

but if you think about the residual period that we 

have at these sites, and, you know, yes some of 

these sites they should have monitored.

They have monitored through the residual period 

and, you know, and some of them they shouldn't, 

but if you look at the exposure potential and 

whether we can bound the dose of the workers, I 
16

believe we've shown that we can do that and 

SC&A's agreed with us.

Additionally, these doses are extremely low and 

knowing the fact that the doses are low, and in 

these residual periods, you're not going to get the 

monitoring that you have during operational 

periods.

The doses are low and also, recognize that because 

these doses are so low, you can allow for variability 

because it's not going to change the compensation 

decision.

That's what Dr. Melius, in my opinion, meant was 

when these doses are that low, you're allowing a lot 

more variability because it's not going to change the 

compensation decision.

And, you know, I think that as I've mentioned, that 

we've already talked about all of these activities are 

activities that have been covered at other sites.

And the approach that the Board has gone through 

dealing with residual contamination followed that in 

M&C. In fact, I think we've looked at things a little 

closer because of some of the questions that were 

brought up.

And also, and I'll get into that more, but recognize 

we used the 95th percentile of the data that we had 

available. And that data and I know the concern is 

well that data was taken later on.

But looking at that data, look at what the, you 

know, the highest number we've got 53,000 

picocuries per gram in a drain. That's 10 percent of 

the specific activity.

That's numbers you'd see during operations. That's 

not numbers you're going to see so in that same 

area it was 90 percent flawed.

That area hadn't more than likely as SC&A has put 

out and we've put out, was not touched. And then 
17

we consider that value the entire time. And again, 

I'll get into that discussion more, but I just know 

now.

Mr. Kotelchuck: Okay.

Chair Beach: Before you move on, there's a 

background conversation going on. I don't know if 

anybody else can hear it. Just real briefly while 

you're talking you can hear other people talking so I 

just want to remind people to mute their phones or 

computers.

Mr. Rutherford: I appreciate that Josie because I 

could hear, heard it too.

Chair Beach: Yes. Yes. Well and then back on that 

dose, the 53, that is not really the highest dose. It 

actually went up to 59 and then the one that was 

clear up to a million so and you said you're going to 

touch on that a little bit later. I know I'll save my 

other thoughts for that.

Mr. Rutherford: The million value, I may need some 

help with that from Pat McCloskey and Mutty.

Chair Beach: There was one spot and if you look at 

the drain lines, western drain lines, it was near Page 

4, 1 and 4. Anyway, it was one, it was just a real 

brief paragraph at the start of that report that talks 

about that high dose and I just want to touch on 

that because I still think this is an unusual site.

And I know we'll talk about that some more. I don't 

want to dominate. Loretta or Henry, any thoughts 

or comments, questions?

Mr. Anderson: I don't have any, no. I'm good.

Ms. Valerio: Josie, can you hear me now?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Ms. Valerio: It was quite a challenge to get in, but 

I'm in so I didn't hear everything that they had to 

say.
18

Chair Beach: Okay.

Ms. Valerio: It took me, like I said, it took me quite 

some time with Zaida's help to get in, but I --

Chair Beach: Well we're glad you're here. Don't 

touch any buttons to get out.

Ms. Valerio: But as far as the site, yes, it is it's very 

complex, I think that, you know, reading the 

materials, yes. I'm not real sure where we're at.

Chair Beach: We're just under the first comment 

and we're going to move into the second comment 

now, so you didn't really miss much. 

Ms. Valerio: Okay.

Mr. Kotelchuck: Could I -- you said toward the end 

of your what you were saying, you said that, well, 

people didn't go in there very much. I think, from 

what I understood, did I misunderstand you?

Mr. Rutherford: I didn't say it right.

Mr. Kotelchuck: There are a number of cases that 

people had to dig underneath those events that 

they had to clear the pipes, replace the pipes.

So I don't think we can say oh there was only one 

time that's when they did the measurements that 

the pipes.

Mr. Rutherford: No, that was not what I said. There 

was one value. I was saying that there was one 

sample that was significantly high. And I'll get into 

that discussion.

Mr. Kotelchuck: All right. Fine. And also, just to say, 

I do appreciate that we have raised a number of 

questions. And it seems to me you and SC&A have 

tried to respond to them.

And, I respect that. I mean, there's a dialogue here 

and you are trying to make us understand, if you 

will, that this is really to be handled just like any 
19

other site.

And so far, I have doubts and disagreement, but 

we're talking and I also when we disagree, I don't 

feel like, oh, you're not listening to me. You are 

listening to me. You are trying, SC&A is trying and I 

hope we can resolve it. Anyhow, you go on.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay. All right. I'll talk about the 

Work Group Comment 2. A general concern was 

expressed that although none of us use the same 

procedures to bound doses at Metals and Controls 

as were used in other sites.

The Work Group was not convinced that supporting 

data was sufficiently accurate or adequate. Okay so, 

the Board's position and guidance that NIOSH has 

been following that the uncertainty around the work 

performed or for the complete understanding of the 

work performed is not an issue when the bounding 

doses are very low and specifically, during AWE 

residual period such as Metals and Controls.

So these are two quotes from Dr. Melius that, you 

know, I think are pretty good. With the residual 

period, we are going to have lots of situations where 

we don't have very much information on the 

activities, usually very little sampling data. 

We are going to be using OTIB-70 a lot in these 

situations without knowing much about what 

individuals did on the site. He also said, if you look 

back at of our decisions and the absolute value of 

exposure is relatively low, then we're willing to 

accept more variability in the dose.

And if the exposures' absolute values are higher, 

then we're looking for a more accurate dose and 

such. So these are the uranium dose estimates that 

between SC&A and NIOSH, we've put together.

And if you look at these, we have the subsurface we 

assume a two-month period internal and external, 

HVAC one hour, operation, roofing and ceiling one 

month, welding 48 hours and then the remaining 
20

nine months.

So our total 12 months, as I mentioned, our total 

dose here for the uranium is 92 millirem per year. 

Again, if I assumed only uranium, this would not 

meet the monitoring thresholds for today.

Under 10 CFR 835, 10 CFR 20. We believe that it, 

that NIOSH, when they estimated maximum 

radiation dose that it could have been incurred 

under plausible circumstances.

Even under these maximizing conditions, they 

estimated dose of workers was quite small. And 

these are some of the maximizing things that we've 

done.

We used the 95th percentile on the subsurface 

model, HVAC model, roofing and ceiling, and 

welding. We've used ten to the minus third in 

resuspension for welding model.

We've used 200 milligrams per cubic meter for the 

dust load HVAC. And we assume the same person 

doing all of the work so again, everybody that was 

on site is a Claimant today, we're assuming that or 

that was a Claimant during that period, we're 

assuming they did two months of subsurface work.

They did it one hour of maintenance work. They did 

one month of the roofing and ceiling and the 

welding and then you know so we're not just saying 

maintenance worker.

We're saying all workers. We're not just saying in 

certain individuals. Even though we know not the 

same person did all of this work. And then we're 

using the most Claimant favorable solubility time.

Dr. Mauro: LaVon?

Mr. Rutherford: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: Can you hear me?

Mr. Rutherford: Yes. I can, John.
21

Dr. Mauro: I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's one 

more point --

Mr. Rutherford: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- that I thought about recently. In order 

for those levels of exposure to occur, we're 

assuming that the soil beneath the Building 10 

which is one of the dominant pathways, is at about 

1 percent of the concentration of natural uranium.

And now, if you think about the volume of soil 

underneath Building 10, we're talking about tons of 

uranium that were lost in the AW handling.

So in effect, it's a circumstance that I believe is a 

substantial overestimate because no NRC operation 

is going to proceed and allow the loss of thousands 

and thousands of pounds of uranium in the process.

This is almost prima facie evidence that the 

fundamental strategy we're using is extremely 

conservative. Because if that much uranium was 

lost, it would have been, now we're talking during 

the AWE operations which is responsible for the 

subsurface uranium in the AWE period.

So this is something we've never mentioned before. 

And it gives another level of argument of why the 

scenarios we picked are extremely conservative. I 

hope you understand the point I'm making.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes. I do, John. It's a good point.

Mr. Kotelchuck: So okay, so you're saying that 

these losses could not have been occurring during 

the AWE period and at the levels we're concerned 

about so what's going on in the residual period has 

to be less than that. It has to be small? Is that what 

you're saying?

Dr. Mauro: Yes, that's my point. That we've truly 

bounded what might have been in the subsurface 

environment because at that level at that one 

percent of the uranium, that would be quite a loss 
22

of processed uranium that would have occurred and 

would have been noticed by the NRC.

During the process that you have safeguard controls 

so it sort of put the real, it got me to a point to 

realize we're operating under extremely 

conservative assumptions by assuming all of the 

workers that worked in the subsurface environment 

whether they were doing repurposing or 

maintenance or are in a hole under Building 10.

That's where most of the exposures are occurring. 

That for them to be always exposed to soil where 

the concentration of uranium is 1 percent.

If you add up that volume, we're talking about 

thousands of pounds of uranium that in theory was 

lost and that really convinced me that we're 

operating in an extremely conservative bounding 

mode of operation.

And even then, doses we're talking about when you 

combine that with the fact that we're assuming the 

same person is always doing those activities. You 

put those together.

We're in a domain that is extraordinarily 

conservative and still we're seeing doses that are 

extremely small.

Mr. Kotelchuck: Well, certainly they're conservative 

assumptions. And like having everyone, acting as if 

everyone was doing that work and being exposed to 

every single thing.

But I wanted to ask you, do you have a sense, do 

you know the flow through the pipes during the 

operations period? You're saying it had to be, you 

know, there had to be tons of uranium going 

through which would not be noticed.

I mean we do or you do know or LaVon? Somebody 

knows the flow in the pipe? Scratch that. No, that it 

would result in tons of uranium being lost if that 

were the case.
23

Mr. Rutherford: Yes. Dr. Kotelchuck, I think John's 

point was more of the fact that we know what we've

done is conservative because there's no way that 

that amount of material would be underneath there 

and the AEC allow it or the NRC allow it.

In 1 percent of, I mean, that would have been way 

more material. Their material controls and 

accountability would not have allowed that.

It's not whether the piping would have allowed it or 

not, it's more of the discussion of this is a very 

conservative model and it's proven by the fact that 

there's no way that they would have allowed that 

amount of materials to be mixed into the subsurface 

under Building 10 from a materials controls and 

accountability.

Mr. Kotelchuck: Okay.

Chair Beach: This is Josie. It seems to me that the 

materials and control is in question based on some 

of the interview reports that I've read where, I 

mean we found fuel rods outside in the burial 

grounds and inside.

So we have interviews, quotes where people are 

walking around holding uranium metal taking it 

from one area to another without gloves or not even 

realizing what he's carrying so I guess I question 

what would actually happening the in the AWE 

period and how stringent they were?

Remember they released a site a couple of different 

times and then ended up digging the whole site up 

so why --

Mr. Rutherford: I agree. You make a good point 

about that, Josie. Now, --

Chair Beach: I understand what John's saying, but.

Mr. Rutherford: It's just that the magnitude of one 

percent is a lot more than a few fuel rods. All right, 

if there aren't any other questions, I can go on to 
24

Comment 3 now?

Okay. Comment 3 was although the doses are 

small, the workers questioned the adequacy of 

survey data from the '90s to bound doses incurred 

in the '70s and '80s.

We'll make a couple of points here. Surface- and 

mass-based contamination surveys are almost 

never performed by radiological facilities for the sole 

purpose of assessing doses.

However, they are routinely used to assess 

exposure potential. The application of recent 

suspension factors and dust load estimates and 

surface and mask-face contamination surveys are 

very common.

An accepted approach used today to meet the 

requirements in 10 CFR 20 and 10 CFR 835. The 

Board has routinely approved the use of such data 

to down doses when the data selected creates a 

Claimant-favorable and plausible dose estimate.

So again, we had, you know, we have been, put 

together bounding scenarios for 15 of the 16 sites 

using contamination survey data. The one lone site 

that we did not do that is because we needed air 

concentration data at Linde and interpolated that 

data.

We also went back and we looked at okay, you 

know, we used this 95th percentile and which is 1 

percent of the activity in natural uranium as our 

bounding dose or bounding concentration.

And we'll need to go back and look at drain-line 

data from other AWE sites and see if it looks like the 

drain-line data is uniform or if it has a clear 

distribution and that where there's significant 

difference at the ends.

So we looked at these six sites. These data were 

used to determine the likelihood that the 95th 

percentile specific activities for specific activities for 
25

Metals and Controls could be considered bounding.

We reviewed Vitro, Bridgeport, Horizons, Peek 

Street, Mallinckrodt, and DeSoto. In each of the 

cases, the maximum specific activity was at least an 

order of magnitude larger than the majority. This 

indicates that although there could be sporadic hot 

spots, one is unlikely to encounter systemic 

exposures to the drain line sediment at the 95th 

percentile.

Now the M&C data of the 20 sediment results, 16 

are at least an order of magnitude less than the 

95th percentile. The point here is that this 95th 

percentile, by taking that number, we're assuming 

that person hits that number every time they dig, 

every time they're in there, they're in that 95th 

percentile.

And it's clear if you look at the 20 sediment results 

we have, 16 are at least an order of magnitude 

below that so when they're digging in those 16, 

they're in an order of magnitude lower than what 

we've estimated.

And we've also, you know, you can look at this as 

we've proven with the other six sites that we've 

looked at, the maximum specific activity was at 

least an order of magnitude larger than the majority 

of the other standards. So this is consistent.

We're seeing this. You have this big distribution 

cluster where you can have very large numbers and 

the rest of the numbers be much lower. And we've 

used that 95th percentile considering all the 

activities.

Although the worker expects, you know, in addition 

to the discussion we've had about the activity that 

we've assumed is one percent of the specific activity 

of natural uranium, we also wanted to point out that 

that one soil sample, as I mentioned, was in an area 

that was 90 percent clothed.

Okay, and that specific area of sample was 10 
26

percent of the specific activity of natural uranium. 

And, so in addition to that, we also looked at the 

contamination levels surveys that we've done in 

1983 to 1995.

These surveys were done for HFIR, but they were in 

Building 10 area. If we could provide some 

additional assurance that this value is conservative.

During the first 14 years of the residual period, 

1968 to 1981, Metals & Controls performed routine 

alpha contamination surveys in Building 10.

If wide-spread removal alpha contamination existed 

at levels higher than the 95th percentile in the 

areas where maintenance was performed, then 

routine surveys would have eventually identified 

tracking throughout the plant during this 14-year 

period.

If you think about it, no monitoring going on and 

they're doing maintenance activities and they're 

doing this work and they're tearing into it, no 

contamination control, no nothing, and it's at the 

95th percentile.

You continuously do this, you're going to spread 

that contamination throughout the facility and those 

routine contamination surveys would have picked it 

up in that first quarter.

So again, this is another reason why we feel that 

this 95th percentile is a good number. That's it.

Chair Beach: I've got a couple of things on this one 

unless --

Mr. Rutherford: Okay.

Chair Beach: -- somebody else has anything. So 

part and I'm going back to your White Paper. Part of 

your paper talks about the contamination surveys 

during the residual period.

Mr. Rutherford: Right.
27

Chair Beach: So the first one talks about the one 

with SRDB number 16985. It's the Safety Manual. 

The safety program. I noticed you didn't mention it 

in your comments, but it took up a couple of 

paragraphs.

That manual, when I go back through every single 

interview and you asked a question of the workers 

in that time period, not one of them can tell you 

they've seen that manual or had any type of 

radiation training whatsoever.

So I thought that was kind of interesting that you 

put that in there and then it does say on Page 7 of 

that manual that all new employees will be given 

orientation by a health physicist which I don't 

believe they had one on staff at that time.

And then that goes into the next paragraph when 

you're talking about the M&C engineers were 

considered pioneers in low-level alpha counting.

I found that just to be a sales brochure for the M&C 

plant, all the products that are available because 

they were the first private company so I was kind of 

thought that was interesting that you added that in 

this document.

It really doesn't have anything to do with 1968. 

Most everything's quoted in for '57 timeframe. The 

other thing is there, they mentioned on Page 34 of 

that document all the different qualified people that 

work at Metals and Controls and there's not one 

mention of a Health Physicist on staff.

So I thought that was kind of interesting based on 

this whole comment under Worker Comment 3. And 

then the last point I wanted to make is you did in 

your slides talk about the first 14 years of the 

residual period. The '68 '81 timeframe. For you 

have samples.

There's no SRDB noted with that paragraph so I 

wasn't able to go back and find where you're getting 

those doses and that seems to be new information 
28

to me. Can you go back and tell us where those air 

samples are, what document?

Mr. Rutherford: I can definitely, I can, I'm sure that 

ORAU can give me the SRDB numbers, but those 

were alpha determination surveys associated with 

or as HIFR.

Chair Beach: Yes. 

Mr. Rutherford: That HIFR crossed over that activity 

of the other program.

Chair Beach: Right. But there should be a place 

where we can see what those examples are. And I 

mean if you go back to all of the interviews, that 

may been occurred --

Dr. Taulbee: Josie, you've been -- inadvertently 

muted your computer.

Chair Beach: No, it said the host muted me. Can 

you hear me now?

Dr. Taulbee: Yes.

Chair Beach: Yeah. Anyway, I guess I'm talking too 

much. If you go back and you look through those 

interviews again, which I have done a couple of 

times, they were mopping that area, the HFIR area 

and then they were dumping the mop water 

outside.

So the controls you are talking about are kind of 

non-existent, in my opinion, because if it was a 

contaminated area and they were being careful, 

they later found that area where the mop water was 

being dumped to be contaminated.

So it just goes back to the lack of training, the lack 

of knowledge of what they were dealing with. And 

so I don't have a lot of confidence that they were 

tracking what came out of there and what might 

have went through Building 10. 

So those are my comments. Anybody else have any 
29

before LaVon goes on?

Member Anderson: Yeah, this is Andy. I have the 

same sense there that they may have the 

documents and the plan, but it didn't really look to 

me like, at least from the interviews, that they had 

been implemented to any extent.

So they may have gone through the upfront workup. There's what the training and documents ought 

to be, but it hadn't really been fully implemented or 

adequately implemented. That, at least the workers 

didn't remember anything.

And as you say, the demonstration of what they 

actually did would also suggest, even if they had 

been trained, they didn't follow what they had been 

trained to do. So --

Mr. Rutherford: Well, one comment would be that 

we didn't take credit for that. I mean, in our 

models.

Member Anderson: Okay. Well, that's what I --

Mr. Rutherford: There was no credit taken for it, so 

--

Member Anderson: Yeah, okay. And so maybe we 

should have left that out, what you've indicated.

Mr. Rutherford: Now, Worker's Comment Number 4 

Work Group never took exception --

Member Anderson: LaVon?

Mr. Rutherford: Yes?

Member Anderson: Just wondered, I mean, the 

alpha surveys, the 14 years, I was not aware of that 

or, I would say, maybe not conscious of that.

I'm not saying you didn't mention it. It may have 

passed over me. But I know I have said in the 

course of discussion that there was no program. 

There was no radiological safety program during the 
30

entire residual period.

And it struck me that, whoa, wait a second. There 

were alpha surveys going on. That's from HFIR --

Mr. Rutherford: Yes.

Member Anderson: And --

Mr. Rutherford: It's a non-covered activity under 

the program.

Member Anderson: Right. But you're saying -- so 

the argument is that if there were high levels of 

alpha in a HFIR, it would knock itself into the rest of 

the plant? And if so --

Mr. Rutherford: So, vice versa, what I was saying 

was that you had these maintenance activities and 

things that were occurring in Building 10, outside of 

HFIR. 

And HFIR's doing routine contamination surveys 

looking for the spread of contamination. So you had 

these maintenance activities occurring outside that 

area, and they were generating this contamination 

level at the 95th percentile that, we've assumed, it 

would eventually spread into that HFIR area and 

they would've noticed.

Member Anderson: Aha. Okay. I would like to see 

some information, some background, if it hasn't 

been requested on that.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, I've got that.

Member Anderson: Yeah, okay.

Mr. Rutherford: All right, Number 4, Work Group 

took exception to NIOSH's use of surrogate data 

obtained during an outdoor excavation and found 

indoor exposures, even though SC&A's independent 

method came to a similar result.

Yes. Although outdoor work provides more air 

changes and greater volume of air for dilution, 
31

during the Mound study, the high-volume air 

samplers were positioned close to the excavation 

which reduces the impact of the larger outside air 

volume.

So if you take and you think about this, we've got 

the excavation occurring. We're keeping our highvolume air samplers in fairly close proximity to that. 

Therefore, the effects of the winds and the volume 

of air is not as great.

So with the use of the 95th percentile case from 

that study, the smaller air volume available for work 

inside a large industrial facility is offset by the 

limited airborne-generating capacity of snakes and 

shovels.

And we show, you know, one to four pounds 

dropped at one to three feet on wet soil inside 

compared to backhoes used outside of hundreds to 

thousands of pounds dug, pushed and dropped six 

to 14 feet.

So we believe that that generation is going to have 

a greater chance of generating higher dust under 

that soil drop situation that we've identified for now.

In addition, SC&A's value of 200 micrograms per 

cubic meter is very comparable to our 220 

micrograms per cubic meter. You know, in fact, if 

the Work Group feels that SC&A's number is a more 

defensible number, we have no problem using that 

200 micrograms per cubic meter at this point.

We also went back and we looked at this from 

another sense. We looked at TBD-6000, where we 

know we have weighted average air concentrations. 

And we took a general laborer and we converted 

that to a dust load.

Assuming the specific activity of natural uranium, 

we just did this -- the paper doesn't really address 

this because this was done after I seen Dr. 

Kotelchuck's email and I knew that we were going 

to have additional discussion.
32

So for processes such as extrusion, rolling, forging 

slug production and scrap recovery, we calculated 

the dust load for general laborers would range from 

about 65 to 556 micrograms per cubic meter.

And these type of activities are considered more 

aggressive and should result in higher dust loads. 

However, NIOSH's suggested dust load is within this 

range and, therefore, should be considered 

bounding.

That's it with that comment. I know, Dr. Kotelchuck, 

you had a lot of concerns with this point.

Chair Beach: Yeah, I'm going to refer to Dave, other 

than your point of using SC&A's, because I think 

Dave found some issues with that also, so, Dave 

and --

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Chair Beach: Oh, go ahead.

Member Kotelchuck: That's right. Two things: one, 

with the SC&A, the 200 micrograms per cubic 

meter, I read through the materials. I asked long 

ago for background, where did you get those 

numbers.

And reading through it, reading through the Abaqus 

and it did seem to me that the 200 was drawn from 

environmental situations and without any 

relationship to this plant. And so, I did not find that 

a credible number for the plant.

The Mound, on the other hand, I mean, the Mound 

data, was relevant. I mean, relevant in the sense 

that, look, this is a coworker situation.

And there were real measurements made in a real 

plant. And we could ask, then, is this an appropriate 

coworker, is this appropriate for use and in M&C.

So that -- and I will say, I saw Tim Taulbee's 

comments, you know, in the paper. I have read the 

paper. This came to me, these slides, came Monday 
33

night. And I was working on other things on 

Tuesday, particularly with respect to the thorium.

So I didn't -- I haven't -- I would say, I haven't 

been able to think about and absorb the impact of 

what this was. There was a discussion, a technical 

discussion that Josie and I had with Bob Barton and 

Rose.

And at that time, I asked. I said, well, let's take the 

Mound data. We have criteria for coworker --

putting coworkers, and I said, I went over it and 

there were some questions I had about whether it 

fit. And at some point, Rose, you said, well, it 

doesn't really fit the coworker criteria, but it's okay. 

And if you've --

Ms. Gogliotti: I did say the surrogate data criteria.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, right. And I actually, I 

wondered, after that discussion, I wondered what 

was the problem with that. And it may be you 

haven't -- I mean, I don't want to just confront you 

now, you know, in terms of saying. 

But I would appreciate why you thought that that 

was -- wouldn't fit the criteria -- and if it didn't fit 

the criteria, why are we using it? And so I want to 

continue to look at the Mound data.

I feel like the Mound data has a real-life existence, a 

real measurement, set of measurements that may 

be appropriate. And I'm not -- I'd like to think about 

that a little bit more and understand both the 

criteria and how they would apply.

And also, what's -- I've learned now, from Dr. 

Taulbee's comments, about the high-vol air 

sampler. And, you know, if I may, I would just say 

I'd like to take a pass on that and think more about 

it.

Ms. Gogliotti: Dave, if I could add a correction?

Member Kotelchuck: Surely.
34

Ms. Gogliotti: It's not surrogate data in that it 

doesn't meet the criteria to be considered surrogate 

data. NIOSH did do a prospective surrogate data 

criterion review in one of their papers.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, and I was -- I had 

looked over that, over the summer, and was trying 

to see what fit and what didn't. And I would have to 

go back to my own notes to -- I wrote some notes 

up to myself as to which criteria seemed 

questionable.

But let's just -- let's talk more about that.

Chair Beach: Well, and I --

Member Kotelchuck: And I feel like there's new 

information for me that I had not known before, 

that is helpful. Any new information is helpful in 

these situations.

Chair Beach: Well, and this is Josie. I have one 

comment. You mentioned Tim Taulbee's, Dr. 

Taulbee's --

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Chair Beach: -- comment. And you guys also added 

it to your White Paper. Isn't Tim conflicted for 

Mound? And is it appropriate to have his comments, 

being conflicted, in this White Paper? Just a general 

question or comment.

Member Anderson: I would let Grady answer that 

probably, if he's on the phone. I will say that Tim 

was given authority to speak on certain things with 

Mound. And this was a paper that was done in a 

prior -- I think before this program.

And so I think it's -- you're referencing something 

that was done a long time ago. So -- but I'll let 

Grady or Jenny answer any questions on that. I'm 

not for sure, is what I'm saying, Josie.

Chair Beach: I don't think it really weighs on this. I 

was just curious.
35

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Chair Beach: Based on having to disconnect, step 

away. So, anyway, we can be --

Mr. Rutherford: I will check into that and see what 

we are allowed to use and not allowed to use with 

respect to that.

Chair Beach: All right. All right, any other comments 

for -- Comment 4 from the Work Group?

Member Kotelchuck: I have no -- I'm not related to 

the comment about whether it's appropriate for 

him, but I --

Chair Beach: Yeah.

Member Kotelchuck: I did, when the Mound case 

came up, I went back through the papers that came 

from SC&A and NIOSH. And I could not find 

descriptions of the Mound work.

I mean, and whether it was just a straight trench 

from one place to another, outdoors, or whether 

they were doing the kind of digging around pipes 

that was happening at M&C.

So there wasn't really much in the way of published 

data, in fact virtually nothing. I mean, I went 

through it and --

Chair Beach: But there was a one-page document, I 

recall, that -- and that was all that was associated 

with that. Is that correct? And I think you reviewed 

that.

Member Kotelchuck: Right. There was a one-page 

document. And the one-page document had -- it 

was not a discussion of what the Mound project 

was. I mean, it was that I found the -- if I 

remember right, it is, I found the data and we can 

use it -- which is good. 

But what was the project? And if I'm trying to 

compare that project with this one and is it 
36

appropriate to use it for this, then I would like to 

know more, and I really never did.

And I suspect, but I worry that there's not a lot of 

background data there. I even went into the site, 

the Mound site. And, you know, when they said, we 

need an analysis done, there was no detail about it, 

like a plan, right.

What's the plan where --

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. I don't know -- as Bomber 

indicated, we're going to need to get, I guess, a 

ruling since Josie raised the question about whether 

I'm conflicted or not.

So those questions that you're asking, Dr. 

Kotelchuck, those are certainly things that I can 

answer. That's not a problem. And there is 

documentation out there, and it's actually public, 

much of it is public-available. So those are all things 

that I can do. But I think we, first, do need to get 

that ruling from OGC on, I guess, whether I'm 

conflicted --

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Dr. Taulbee: -- with regards to this.

Member Kotelchuck: I'm -- yeah, I'm neutral. But I 

would love that information that you could get. And 

it needs to be checked out. And we'll check it out. 

And if we can, I would like to get that information.

I went -- I spent a fair amount of time on the 

websites looking for it but, of course, I'm an 

outsider. I mean, I don't -- you worked there before 

you came to NIOSH. And you, I'm sure, have access 

to a number of things that I couldn't find.

So I'd appreciate it if you could, if you're able. 

Okay.

Mr. Rutherford: All right. You want me to --

Member Valerio: Well --
37

Mr. Rutherford: -- continue, Josie?

Member Valerio: Actually, Josie, I have a question.

Chair Beach: Yeah, go ahead, Loretta.

Member Valerio: So I'm going to backtrack just a 

little bit, and I believe it was the Work Group 

Comment 3. And I apologize, LaVon, for going back. 

Mr. Rutherford: No problem.

Member Valerio: But I have a question. I went back 

late last night and I actually read the White Paper 

from July which was, I believe, the response, the 

response from NIOSH or to NIOSH.

So I'm just wondering, as recent as 1993, another 

survey was done out at the site and they found 

elevated radiation levels on the southwest side of 

Building 5.

And I know that the majority of our focus is on 

Building 10, but I have, I guess, two questions. One 

is, more than a decade later, and if I remember 

correctly, they were still doing surveys in the mid80s on this site, around Building 10 and around the 

burial site.

But I'm just wondering, what prompted them to do 

another survey, more than a decade later. And in 

that 1993 survey, were there also elevated levels of 

in and out of Building 10 and around the burial site.

Mr. Rutherford: Loretta, I don't remember exactly 

what prompted it. I think I'll let Pat McCloskey jump 

in on this one because I don't remember specifically 

what prompted --

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah, I -- I'm sorry. This is Pat 

McCloskey. I can try to answer that, Loretta.

So the slide you're referring to, say, the first 

surveys that we had were in '83. And there was a --

and they stretch out into the mid-90s. 

And what you've heard Mr. Elliott say in the past is 
38

that they had to chase this -- they thought they had 

a short and easy project to deal with out in the 

burial area. But then it just kept expanding.

And it expanded for like a decade, and they had to 

chase this contamination all around the site. And, 

but what -- when we addressed this in our paper, 

what caused some of this was the changing 

requirements from the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission about what it takes to release a site.

And so, you know, initially you may start with one 

set of criteria where you have to dig into areas, a 

certain amount, and do maybe superficial or surface 

contamination surveys.

And by the mid-90s now, you're digging into 

recesses and cracks and now you're doing more of a 

statistical approach. So that's why those surveys 

extended for a decade or so. Does that answer your 

question?

Member Valerio: It answers -- yeah, it does. It 

does. Thank you, Pat.

Mr. McCloskey: You're welcome.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay, are you ready for me to go 

onto Work Group Comment Number 5?

Chair Beach: I believe so. And I don't hear any 

other comments.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay. All right, a Work Group 

Member commented that explosions and fires are 

not considered in bounding methods, especially the 

HVAC model.

We did do an additional search. We did searches on 

SRDB, looking for records of the fire and did not find 

any references to the fire or explosions at Metals 

and Controls post 1967.

We also inquired with the Director of the State of 

Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Rad 

Control Program and the State's Director of the 
39

Department of Fire Services to find records of the 

event or an incident inspection reports.

And they did not have any records. We know this 

event occurred. We had a very credible interview 

with an individual who described the event and also 

indicated that they were locked out of the facility 

after the fire explosion. 

And -- but in the end, we agree with SC&A's 

assertion that additional dust created by a fire or 

explosion would dilute the specific activity 

concentrated in the HVAC system, thus making 

NIOSH's HVAC model more claimant favorable 

during these rare events.

And that's all I had on that comment.

Chair Beach: Okay. This is Josie. One of the things I 

want to clarify is the hours worked and the different 

hours that you're giving to these different doses. 

That's all considered Site Profile and subject to 

change. Correct?

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes, it is.

Chair Beach: So I went back through the interview 

notes and I did find the reference from Interview 

10. But there was also a reference for Interview 5 

and Interview 7.

One of them was explosions in the manholes. And 

they knew that because they had to go in and clean 

up in the manholes from those fires and explosions.

And then, another reference, there was explosions 

in Building 10 all the time. So, I know your 

comment with 10 leads us to believe that as soon as 

there was the fire and explosion, everybody moved 

out.
40

But I think there was more fires, maybe, in different 

parts of the building, based on the other interviews. 

And it wasn't always the case, they moved 

everybody out. So that's just my comment on that.

Mr. Rutherford: And I agree with -- I understand 

that. I think the one we were specifically pointing 

out was that one interview. But again, it's not -- it's 

going to make our HVAC model more claimant 

favorable. 

That was the one we were concerned with at that, 

during that discussion.

Chair Beach: Any other comments on Comment 5? I 

guess you can move on, LaVon.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay. Work Group Comment 6, a 

former worker has a concern regarding exposures to 

radium-226 glass beads and other exposures during 

maintenance work, including excavation, roof, 

ceiling area and HVAC work.

Radium-226 working room, whenever it was 

commercial work, was limited to a single process in 

Building 1 and was kept separate from the Metals 

Controls AWE facility weapons-related work.

Metals Controls radium-226 work is not considered 

an EEOICPA-covered exposure during the 

subsequent residual radiation period addressed by 

this ER, Evaluation Report.

The other exposure scenarios described by this 

former worker addressed by the models NIOSH and 

SC&A have developed for maintenance work. 

However, this was, when we got into the end of our 

Work Group meeting, this discussion came up from 

one of the workers about the radium-226.

And we felt like we should at least acknowledge that 

discussion. Again, this was not covered work during 

the AEC-covered period. It was covered work during 

operations, which everyone should know that when 

we get into residual work periods, that non-AEC 
41

work is not covered exposure during that period. 

Just wanted to clarify that a bit. I see --

Chair Beach: Yeah, I think --

Mr. Rutherford: Go ahead.

Chair Beach: No, go on.

Mr. Rutherford: Go ahead.

Chair Beach: Okay. I was going to say that, that 

beadwork, I think there was a comment from an 

interviewee that said they used to go in and throw 

those beads at each other, which is -- I understand 

your modeling, and I tend to agree with it.

But I think that's where that issue came up, was --

Mr. Rutherford: Right. 

Chair Beach: Any questions, comments?

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, this is Dave. 

Chair Beach: Okay.

Member Kotelchuck: I feel like, if it's not covered, 

it's not covered. That is, we have to go by the rules 

and the law that was set up.

And this always happens. Whether I agree or 

disagree with it or wish it was this way or that way, 

that's the law. Jenny, listen to me here. 

Now, I know that and so, my feeling is, as far as I'm 

concerned, that resolves it, on Number 6. And that's 

that, for better or worse.

Chair Beach: Okay, anything, Andy or Loretta? I 

think only one question came up about a comment 

about the survey data for the '68 to '81 time period.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Chair Beach: And then the conflict. Is there 
42

anything else? Oh, Dave, did you need anything 

more for the dust loading example for Mound or will 

we just have to wait for Tim to get back to you on 

that?

Dr. Taulbee: Dr. Kotelchuck, you're muted.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, I would love the 

information from Dr. Taulbee. But since the issue 

was raised as to whether there's a conflict of 

interest, I recognize that he can't send me the 

material until that is resolved.

And he'll get resolution, and when he gets the 

resolution and is given permission, then I'm hoping 

to get that material, so --

Ms. Gogliotti: Can we talk about that for a second?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah.

Ms. Gogliotti: I'm somewhat confused on why this is 

a concern only because there's nothing special 

about Mound. They were just using it because it was 

an excavation site where they could get air 

monitoring data from.

That's my understanding. There's -- we just take 

that reading left of materials site as just the amount 

of dust that's generated from digging. Isn't that 

correct? 

Member Kotelchuck: Yes. Yes, that's correct. But 

the information that we got was all from Tim. And 

there wasn't documentation behind it. And Tim 

conducted that study. And there's been several 

things he's clarified as issues were raised about the 

outside versus inside measurements, that I raise.

Then he's tried to clarify it. And as I said, he gave 

that information, and I have no -- I mean, he was 

there. I have no dispute. And it's more information 

and I have to think about it and see what the 

impact is.

Ms. Gogliotti: So if we had industrial hygiene data 
43

from digging that showed the amount was 

comparable to the numbers that both SC&A and 

NIOSH have come up with --

Member Kotelchuck: Anything further we had would 

be good because it's, because of the different 

environmental circumstances of the two. And so, I 

was just trying to understand.

The minute I saw that difference, I started looking 

at Mound, at what I could find on Mound, but I 

couldn't find much except that little bit from Tim. 

But I couldn't get background documents to check 

either both what you were saying or affirm or just 

understand it better than what I was told.

So any information would be useful. And there is 

already more information. I certainly will think 

about it and everything, and it was useful.

Ms. Naylor: Dr. Kotelchuck, this is Jenny Naylor. So 

it seems like you just need some information to be 

sent to you. Correct?

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Ms. Naylor: So any NIOSH staff or SC&A could 

actually make that happen. And also, I want to note 

for the record, Dr. Taulbee is not conflicted in 

Metals and Control.

Member Kotelchuck: Good.

Chair Beach: Oh, well --

Member Kotelchuck: Well, then he'll -- then the 

information will be sent. I'm happy to hear that, and 

that's --

Chair Beach: Or he could actually speak to your 

question right now.

Member Kotelchuck: No, I wanted the background 

information, so I don't -- I think he'll certainly, if 

there's any questions around, I will certainly discuss 

it and raise it in the Work Group.
44

Chair Beach: Well, and --

Member Kotelchuck: I don't think it's a discussion, 

to my mind --

Chair Beach: Okay.

Member Kotelchuck: -- at this point because --

Chair Beach: Well, and correct -- this is Josie. 

Correct me if I'm wrong. This dust loading model is 

being used for all the dust loading modeling at M&C. 

Correct? Or any surface modeling of the dose other 

than the thorium welding? I know that's separately.

Mr. Rutherford: And the HVAC dust is a different 

value.

Chair Beach: But all other is based on this Mound 

model --

Mr. Rutherford: Correct.

Chair Beach: -- for dust loading?

Dr. Mauro: This is John. Dr. Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Yes?

Dr. Mauro: Yes, you had mentioned some problems 

with the 200 micrograms per cubic meter --

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: -- in the literature that we forwarded to 

you.

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Dr. Mauro: That number is sort of widely used 

throughout dose reconstructions and dose 

assessments as almost like a generic good number 

to use for remediation.

But you have some difficulty with the review of that 

data. Could you just give us little more information? 

Because we do rely on that and we want to feel 
45

comfortable that we're working with good numbers.

Member Kotelchuck: I do see and I recognize in the 

readings that that is widely used. And it's a 

standard.

But what I did was ask myself, does this 200 

micrograms per cubic meter, does that apply, how 

does that apply to this particular claim? Does it 

apply to this particular claim?

And I saw nothing, when I was reading Abaqus and 

others, I didn't see anything that told me anything 

about M&C, how that might -- so it's a good general 

-- it is an accepted general use figure and 

absolutely appropriate.

I mean, it's appropriate for you, as you did that first 

study, to say, well, 200's a reasonable number. And 

that, compared to the 220 that was found from the 

Mound data.

But in the beginning, there were two different -- I 

saw it as, if you will, a Board member, I saw it two 

different numbers. And I said, okay, let's take a 

look at each one of them as to -- because each one 

could stand on its own.

And so, I just didn't see its relation to M&C, that it 

was appropriate for M&C. Whereas, with Mound, I 

feel like it might well be appropriate. And then the 

question is, you know, does it satisfy the criteria?

So that was my concern, and it came mostly out of 

environmental studies which did not give me 

confidence.

Member Kotelchuck: Thank you. 

Mr. Rutherford: Okay.

Chair Beach: Okay, so a couple of things for me. 

There's nothing really here that gives us an actual 

concentration activity distribution for maintenance 

and cleaning that was performed. 
46

How do we know -- I mean, back to how do we 

know what was cleaned out of the pipes? And how 

does that -- would it degrade over time? Bob Barton 

brought up an interesting topic, looking at the scale 

and how it degrades over time. Is that something 

that we can explore for M&C? I don't know if Bob's 

on the phone.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, Bob's going to have to explain 

that because I'm not sure exactly where we're going 

with that.

Chair Beach: I thought I heard Bob on the phone. Is 

--

Dr. Mauro: This is John. If Bob is on the line, he 

should respond. But if he's not, we had discussed 

this extensively.

And it's an interesting issue you bring up. And I've 

spoken to building engineers. The issue is, is it 

possible that the continual flooding and draining 

during the residual period ended up with.

My understanding is your concern is that that water 

is now draining, some of which may or may not 

have gone through the pipelines that we used the 

data.

I'm not quite clear. I'm hearing from one 

perspective that they were clogged and not used 

during the AW period. But then I've heard others 

claim that no -- it was still functional. And so some 

of that waste water that drained away during the 

AW period, did, in fact, pass through the pipes that 

represented -- the array of pipes that is the basis 

for all of our work.

For the purpose of this discussion, the issue you 

raised, Josie, is interesting. And when I spoke to my 

building engineer friends, who spend their life 

working on pipelines and residue accumulation of 

the nature that you're bringing up.

And so what I have to say is -- so I did spend a lot 
47

of time working with Bob Barton and also working 

with building engineers that are involved in this, not 

from a radiological perspective, but from a building 

engineering perspective and the nature and extent 

that such incidents do result in the accumulation of 

scale, crud, et cetera, in drainage lines in buildings, 

in general.

And there's a lot of information on that. And your 

concern is that, as I understand it, is that that 

drainage has residue in it that would deposit in the 

pipelines of interest to us, diluting the 

concentrations of the uranium.

So that what we're looking at in 1996 by way of 

distributions of uranium in pipelines may be lower 

than what was actually there in the 1970s because 

of this accumulating residue. So I see your issue.

That's a tractable problem. What I mean by that is, 

after discussing this extensively with these 

engineers -- they deal with this problem all the 

time, but of course that work was not done.

It is at that time when I started to think about two 

questions: one, were those drainage lines in 

operation during the AWE period? And I'm not quite 

sure whether that's the case.

If they were not, then this issue goes away. If they 

were, then it becomes a question, okay, to what 

degree could there have been some dilution.

Now the other side of the question, of course, is 

what I brought up initially. The amount of uranium 

that we're assuming in the subsurface environment, 

not only in the pipelines but throughout the 

subsurface environment, is such a large number 

that I find it difficult to believe it would go unnoticed 

during the AWE period.

So it's almost as if, even if that process was at 

work, we're operating at concentration levels that 

are probably substantively over-estimating what the 

levels of uranium were that the workers were 
48

exposed to during the subsurface activities.

But I'm not dismissing your concern, but I would 

like to hear a little bit more about the degree to 

which those drainage lines were, in fact, in use 

during the AWE period.

Chair Beach: Okay, thanks, John. And I'm assuming 

Bob's not on the line. 

Member Kotelchuck: Bob is on the line. And I see 

him speaking but we cannot hear him --

Chair Beach: Oh.

Member Kotelchuck: -- for some reason.

Mr. Barton: Can anybody hear me now?

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, we can.

Chair Beach: Yes. Hi, Bob.

Mr. Barton: Okay. All right. Well, actually, John did 

a pretty fair job. And I think this is really sort of a 

cross-cutting issue and it just sort of occurred to me 

that, you know, when we're dealing with something 

like pipe scale, you know, that contamination is 

placed, you know, 1968 or whenever AWE 

operations ended.

And then, several decades pass. And if you are still 

using that drain line, then basically what you, or at 

least to me, would logically end up with is a 

combination of the contaminated scale and noncontaminated scale that just builds up over time.

So I guess the simple question is, when we look at 

the 95th percentile in the 90s, is that really 

reflective of what the 95th percentile would be in 

the 80s and the 70s? And I think that's the 

question. And it's really largely, I think, a crosscutting question.

And I was glad to see that, in LaVon's presentation, 

he talks about looking at other sites where scale 
49

measurements have essentially been used.

So I guess my question would be, to NIOSH, has it 

ever been considered that there might be dilutions, 

again, as John mentioned, over time with that 

contamination number so that the specific activity 

that we're assuming might actually decrease in 

much the same way that, when we deal with these 

residual periods a lot of times there's a removal, a 

fraction, for service contamination, sort of the same 

type of mechanism.

So I guess the question is, has that ever been 

looked into, either at M&C or any of these other 

sites where pipe scale contamination found in piping 

was essentially used as a basis for assigning doses.

Dr. Mauro: Bob, this is John. One clarification about 

the comments you made. The 95th percentile values 

that we selected from the data we have available 

during the FUSRAP measurements, that was a way 

to accommodate. We were not looking for the 95th 

percentile during the 70s.

We're using the 95th percentile observed during the 

90s as a way to accommodate all of the activities 

that took place, such as snaking and refurbishing 

where radioactivity may have been removed.

So we're saying that that's plausible. And by using 

the 95th percentile, we cover that. So another 

dimension to this is, does that 95th percentile also 

cover the possibility of this dilution effect from the 

drainage.

And that's how I would pose the question. In other 

words, we're adding another factor besides snaking 

and refurbishment that would change what might be 

there in the 70s as compared to the 90s. And does 

the 95th percentile value that we're using cover all 

ills, so to speak?

I want to just clarify that.

Mr. Barton: No, and I agree with that, John. I think 
50

there's, obviously a lot of the discussion today was 

about all the conservatisms that are built into how 

we get to these doses which are rather small.

But, like I said, it occurred to me, and I think it 

might be cross-cutting to, whenever we consider 

pipe scale, especially if it's a measurement taken 

decades after that contamination was actually 

plated out or placed in the drain.

So I agree wholeheartedly that I think you put it 

correctly, that it's a tractable problem, certainly, 

and perhaps that 95th percentile does cover any 

sort of dilution that may have occurred during that 

period in time.

I'm just very curious to see if that's something that 

has been considered either at this site or other sites 

where, again, we're looking at pipe scale to have a 

number that we can get off of and use this specific 

activity to reconstruct doses. And that was my 

question.

Ms. Gogliotti: I think an important point to point out 

is, we're not trying to capture the highest possible 

concentration that anyone could have encountered.

We're trying to find the concentration that an 

average individual worker definitely did not 

encounter. I'm trying to bound the doses on 

average, not in an individual isolated instance they 

were digging.

Mr. McCloskey: I'd like to -- I'm sorry. I'd like to 

add one thing about the pipe scale phenomenon 

that we're talking about here. The survey data, the 

sample data that we're using -- this is Pat 

McCloskey in case you guys didn't hear that out. 

The sample data that we're using to come up with 

this 95th percentile wasn't pipe scale. There would 

have been some pipe scale in there, sure. I mean, 

when they sent their sampling devices down to pull 

out material, they were going after sediment, is 

what we landed on as a term to use in all of our 
51

papers when we negotiated this with SC&A when we 

went to Work Group meetings.

But we -- they pulled out sediment and it would 

have been sediment that was within the pipes and 

sometimes just outside of the pipes when these iron 

pipes would degrade over time.

That's why they would have to go down there and 

unclog them. So just wanted to point that out, that 

it's not exclusively scale that we're using for 

sampling. 

Mr. Barton: Well, I suppose my question would 

apply in either case. I mean, is the sediment a 

combination of the contaminated material that was 

placed there during operations and what came 

afterwards? Or is it -- was it essentially in stasis?

And, as John pointed out, if they weren't actually 

using those lines for anything after the operational 

period, then one might consider that sediment to be 

in stasis and not changing. The concentration 

doesn't change over time.

Sediment was added to it, essentially diluting what 

the contamination levels were. Well, I'll leave it to 

the Work Group to discuss. 

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Bob, this is LaVon. Yeah, off 

the top of my head, I don't remember looking at 

this specifically during the residual period at other 

sites.

I think this is something that we can take a look at 

just to see what we come up with. And, you know, I 

do feel that, off the top of my head, using the 95th 

percentile, the data that we have, it's still a 

bounding number, as John had pointed out, 

recognizing that one percent of specific activity of 

natural uranium in all cases is a pretty high amount.

But there are some comparisons, I think, we could 

look at. We've already looked at, as you've 

indicated, we've already looked at some of the 
52

sample data at other facilities. And let's see what 

we come up with.

Chair Beach: LaVon, this is Josie. We were dealing 

with enriched uranium also in that sub-flooring, 

weren't we -- not just natural?

Mr. Rutherford: I don't remember specifically 

offhand. I know that it was just a comparison using 

natural uranium. A specific activity of natural 

uranium was used as a comparison mechanism 

more than anything.

Chair Beach: Okay. Any more comments on this 

paper? Does anybody want to take a comfort break 

before we move on to the thorium and welding 

modeling issue?

Hearing none, I guess we'll move forward then. We 

do have a couple of tasking items from this paper. 

And I'm sure LaVon's got those written down. Is 

that correct, LaVon?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, I've got written down that we 

want to try to get whatever information we have on 

the alpha contamination from HFIR, in Building 10. I 

want to get that --

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. Rutherford: -- approved. Where the drain lines 

used during the residual period or not? And then the 

discussion we just had about whether the 

phenomenon of using the drain lines during the 

period would reduce the concentration over time 

such that -- and then, if it does, does the 95th 

percentile still make sense?

Chair Beach: Okay, and then the Mound data, I 

think there was something there that --

Mr. Barton: Right, I'll be providing answers to Dr. 

Kotelchuck's questions.

Chair Beach: And the entire Work Group, I'm 

assuming, right?
53

Mr. Barton: Of course. Of course.

Chair Beach: Of course, yeah, goes without saying. 

Okay, and hearing no one wants a break, let's move 

on to, I believe --

Member Anderson: Well, if you do break --

Chair Beach: No, it's okay. I'm just checking in with 

the group. So if you're raising your hand, we can 

take a break, but --

Member Anderson: I just want to not miss lunch. 

Chair Beach: No, yeah, let's get done before lunch 

then. I mean, it's only 9:13 here, so.

Member Anderson: Oh, you're at --

Chair Beach: Okay, so I'm assuming that SC&A is 

going to present their slides, correct? And then we 

do want to hear from the petitioners and we have 

some Board correspondence. 

I know we've all read that letter, but -- okay. So I'm

sure -- I believe SC&A is queuing up.

Mr. Barton: All right.

Ms. Gogliotti: Bob, can you confirm that you're 

bringing up the slides? If you're speaking you're on 

mute.

Mr. Barton: Yeah, Bob was on earlier, but for some 

reason, we're not hearing him right now. I could try 

giving him a call on my cell to see if his -- so I'm 

going to step away for a second and make a phone 

call.

Member Kotelchuck: Bob, can you hear us? Bob 

Barton? We can't hear you, Bob.

Mr. Barton: Yeah, I think we're looking for Bob 

Anigstein, if you can hear me now.

Chair Beach: Yeah, we are.
54

Mr. Barton: A different Bob.

Chair Beach: Different Bob. How do I get rid of this 

chat on the right-hand side of my screen without 

getting rid of my whole screen? Anybody know?

Member Kotelchuck: You should be able to just click 

in the upper right-hand corner of the chat box.

Chair Beach: So how about if we take a ten-minute 

break while SC&A gets loaded up? What do you 

think?

Member Kotelchuck: Sounds good.

Member Anderson: Works for me. Yes.

Chair Beach: All right, so it's 12:16. Come back at, I 

don't know, ten minutes from now, 12:26 or so. Is 

that enough time? 

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, fine.

Chair Beach: Okay. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 12:16 p.m. and resumed at 12:27 p.m.) 

Dr. Roberts: I'm back on. Yes. I think that's a good 

idea, just to do a quick roll call again. I have 12:27 

so we can go ahead. So Josie, I see that you're 

here. What about Anderson? Andy, have you made 

it back?

Chair Beach: He probably went to grab lunch.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Dave Kotelchuck, are you here?

Member Kotelchuck: I am here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. And Valerio?

Member Valerio: This is Loretta, I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Hi. Okay. Let's see if Andy comes back. 

Okay, and I think we need to make sure, when we 

get started, that everyone is putting their phones 
55

back on mute, please. Josie, did you want to wait 

for Anderson to get back, Andy to make it back?

Chair Beach: No. I think we should give him at least 

a couple minutes.

Dr. Roberts: Yes. I agree. Okay. We'll do that.

Dr. Roberts: There you are, Andy. We were giving 

you a couple of minutes. Okay. So we're going to go 

ahead and get started. Josie?

Chair Beach: That sounds great. Andy, did you get 

lunch? Okay. Never mind. Go ahead, John.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. I'm not going to need the slides. 

I'm going to paint the picture for you and then 

hopefully Bob will connect at some point. I think it's 

the conceptual approach that's more important than 

the numerical values. Let me explain.

The issue has to do with, we don't have information 

on the thorium concentrations in the pipelines under 

Building 10. And Bob came up with an approach, 

well, there was quite a bit of work involved, looking 

at a lot of issues. But in the end, Bob came up with 

what I consider to be a very straightforward and 

simple conceptual approach to solving the problem.

We have a large number of measurements of 

thorium in soil, and of uranium in soil outdoors. We 

have a large number of measurements of uranium 

in the pipeline. Okay? Problem is, we have no 

thorium measurements in the pipelines.

So the approach Bob said is, okay, let's get the 

distribution of the concentration of uranium in the 

soil and the thorium in the soil outdoors, separately 

as independent entities. Here we have distributions, 

and let's get the distribution of the uranium in the 

pipelines and get the full distribution. Okay? So we 

have these three independent distributions.

Then he said, okay, the thorium inside the pipelines 

is equal to the ratio of the thorium in the soil, to the 
56

uranium in the soil. So he got this equation. Each 

one having a distribution. And then he ran 10,000 

Monte Carlo simulations of what the concentration 

in the thorium would be according to that, this very 

simple equation.

Thorium in the pipeline equals the ratio of the 

thorium in the soil, to the uranium in the soil. And 

from that, you get a distribution of the thorium in 

the pipeline. Are you with me? Then he took the 

upper 95th percentile of that distribution and got a 

picocurie-per-gram number that he says is inside 

the pipeline.

Okay. Very simple concept. And that's how he got 

his thorium. That's the end of the story. We could 

certainly get into the details, but that's the strategy 

that was used. So you may have questions 

regarding that, but when I spoke to him about it 

because we worked together on that, and he 

bounced it off of me. I said, you know, I like that 

very simple approach and I believe it does place --

Dr. Anigstein: Hello?

Dr. Mauro: Oh, good. Oh, Bob. You just came on.

Dr. Anigstein: I don't know what happened. I got 

locked out and I'm trying to get this screen going. 

I'm on my phone.

Chair Beach: Bob, you're slides are up. Can you 

present and then have Rose just forward, or 

whoever is presenting?

Dr. Anigstein: Sorry, I --

Chair Beach: So Bob, can you hear me? This is 

Josie.

Dr. Anigstein: One second.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Anigstein: Hello?
57

Chair Beach: Yeah. We can still hear you. Is it 

possible, Bob, for you not to have to log on, but just 

to let somebody else move your slides and you can 

talk through the slides? Will that work for you?

Dr. Anigstein: I've got the slides going, a little 

portion of it. For some reason -- yeah. Yeah, I have 

it out. Rose, can you put the slides on? Would you 

be able to do --

Ms. Gogliotti: The slides are up now.

Dr. Anigstein: Hello?

Ms. Gogliotti: The slides are up. Just let us know 

when you wanted to move forward.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. Can you show the slides?

Chair Beach: Are you having trouble hearing us, 

Bob? The slide show is up and Rose can advance 

them for you.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. Okay, good.

Chair Beach: Can you speak up because I'm having 

-- you're a little faint for me.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. One second. I have another 

phone where I hear -- where I'm louder but I don't 

hear quite as well.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: Should we just start off with the first 

slide?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. Well, that's the title. Let's go to 

the second slide. This is the internal exposure to the 

thorium inhalation. It's one of the two topics. And 

the source of this thorium inhalation is actually 

similar to what we've talked about before, which is 

the aerosol generated from the soil that would be 

disturbed during the subsurface remediation in 
58

Building 10.

Dr. Mauro: Can someone advance the slides, 

please? The slides are not being advanced on the 

screen.

Dr. Anigstein: One second. I'm going to try the 

other phone.

Dr. Mauro: Am I correct, Rose and Josie? Am I 

correct. The slides are not moving.

Chair Beach: Yes. Who is going to move the slides 

forward?

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. So the -- I'll just give us first of 

all, just sort of an overview.

Dr. Mauro: Bob, hold on one second. We're having 

trouble advancing your slides on the Zoom meeting 

screen. We've got to get someone, whoever's the 

host, would be in a position of advancing the slides. 

Once we get that going then you could, of course, 

use your slides and we can work through this.

Who is the host on this meeting?

Ms. Adams: I can try to see what I'm doing with 

those slides.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Whoever is the host could do that.

Dr. Anigstein: One second. I think maybe I'm okay. 

I'm okay. I'm on Slide 2. Can everybody see it?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: Yes. We're good. Thank you.

Dr. Anigstein: Then we're in business. Sorry. I don't 

know what happened but it fixed it itself.

Chair Beach: Okay. Just a second. The Court 

Reporter made a comment. I didn't catch it all. 

Court Reporter, are you okay? Okay. Thank you.

Reply to NIOSH "Metals and Controls Corp. Thorium 
59

and Welding Exposure Model," SC&A Memo dated 

July 8, 2020

Dr. Anigstein: All right. So I'm going to proceed 

then. So I'll start again. So the source of the 

exposure. We know there's thorium on site. This is 

why the issue was raised by the petitioners. And the 

question is how to assess the thorium inhalation.

Now, the main source for the, one of the scenarios 

is the exposure to the aerosol generated from soil 

that was disturbed during the subsurface 

remediation in Building 10. So the activity is in the 

pipe residues. And we have a doc on the 1996 Roy 

F. Weston reports on measurements of uranium in 

the pipe.

They were measuring uranium because they were 

concerned about, there was enriched uranium and 

there was concern that they could be some 

spontaneous fission going on. Anyway, that's why I 

didn't visit uranium in that scenario. So now the 

thorium concentration visualized by NIOSH -- the 

whole, the purpose of my study was not to dispute 

the doses, the final exposures as done by NIOSH. It 

turns out that the result was consistent with what 

we did.

But the concern was at the data they used. Simply, 

we felt not defensible, not sufficiently accurate. So 

NIOSH had cited the inventory of uranium and 

thorium that was prepared in 1962 by M&C 

Corporation, the Metals and Controls Corporation. 

There was concern that their using this material that 

belonged to the government, belonged to the 

Atomic Energy Commission, and they might be, if 

something happened to it, they could be financially 

liable and there were concerns that maybe they 

should take out liability insurance.

So as a result, they had this inventory performed. 

There is no description of this. There's only a 

mention that it exists in the DOE documentation. 

Just the values -- no descriptive text. So under the 

second column, Commission, we assume this is the 
60

Atomic Energy Commission. And whether these 

quantities were in their possession, whether they 

were -- we don't know what it's --

The third column, it says License. I think it probably 

is their radioactive material license and it's very 

different from the Commission. So the autumn, the 

next, so then the total uranium was up. Then 

finally, total thorium, which is also is different from

the license. Then there's the uranium thorium ratio. 

Well, it depends which column.

I'm cutting out? How is this? Okay? Can you hear 

me? Yeah. Okay.

So the uranium thorium ratio, it all depends what 

number you use. You could have as low as 7.5 if 

you stick with the Commission numbers. 138.5 if 

you stick with the license numbers. Or if you 

combine the two, it's 32. So this does not, in my 

estimation, our estimation, give a sound basis for 

determining fractioning of the material. The 

materials are, in fact, thorium.

So I just repeat what I say. However, there were 

measurements of thorium-232 concentrations 

ostensibly in soil samples, which were not -- they 

were studied by NIOSH but they were not utilized in 

estimating the intake. So SC&A constructed a model 

toward determining thorium-232 in the pipe 

residues based on this measurement of thorium-232 

in the soil, and uranium-238 in the soil, as well as in 

the pipes.

So there were 88 measurements of thorium-232, 

which (audio interference) a report by Sowell 

published in 1985 to work with, or under contract to 

NRC. Sowell actually worked with ORAU and there 

were 88 measured concentrations, 88 samples. 

Every one of which had a concentration of 232, 

and/or 80 concentrations of U-238, the same 

sample. The difference being that eight of those 

assays for uranium were below the lower limit of 

detection.
61

And then moving on to the pipes, there were 

uranium-238, as well as U-235, which is not good, 

concentrations measured by Weston in the pipe 

sediments as part of the (audio interference) study. 

They had done -- just to fill in because I just looked 

it up. There was a preliminary pilot study done and 

it was a final remediation of these pipes in order to 

determine what kind of hazard they were 

encountering before they proceeded. Now there was 

concern with the possibility -- because it wasn't, 

they were concerned that there could be criticality 

issues.

So they listed U-238 concentrations in 18 pipes or 

pipe segments under Building 10. In this case, they 

also listed volume of sediment in pipe segments. So 

with that data, we produced the following 

reasonable -- simply assume that the ratio of 

thorium-232 in the pipes to the thorium-232 in the 

soil, is approximately the same as the ratio of U238 to U-238 in the soil. (audio interference) 

thorium being worked on site (audio interference).

Some other process, or a related process, where it 

ended up in the soil in this burial area. And the 

same difference should apply to the uranium. These 

are possibilities but we're dealing with a waste 

product from special processing, or (audio 

interference). So we end up with this very simple 

equation --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: Talking too low? Okay. Okay. One 

second. Let me change to another phone. Okay? I'll 

go ahead.

So we end up with solving for thorium-232 so we 

end up with this simple equation. But the question 

is, what values do we use. Do we -- have the term 

on the left that we need. And we have the term on 

the right, there terms on the right. The question is 

what values do we put into this equation.

So these concentrations for thorium-232 in the soil, 
62

the uranium-238 in the pipes, the uranium-238 in 

the soil. Each of these can be characterized and we 

have between 18 and 88 samples, we can fit a 

distribution, a log-normal distribution to fit this 

data.

I will skip ahead now to show you what it looks like. 

There's a curve where we plotted the 88 thorium232 readings. (Audio interference.) In a perfect lognormal distribution, they would have fallen right on 

this line, straight line. So you see there's some 

deviations. We could've probably gotten a better fit 

it we omitted those two high points. That's not 

scientific (audio interference) just to make it look 

prettier is not a good reason.

So we left it in and we end up with an R-squared, or 

a correlation coefficient, of about 0.76, which is 

reasonable. The guidance from NIOSH and OTIB0019 says that anything above 0.7 could be utilized.

Next, the U-238 activity in the pipes and pipe 

segments are taken from the Weston report. We 

simply rank-ordered the concentrations in the 

segments and calculated -- and listed the volume of 

the residue in each pipe, the pipe sediment, then for 

purposes of curve-fitting, we calculated the 

cumulative volume distribution, take the first one, 

then for the second one you add the sum of one and 

two. But each one of these in the third column is a 

cumulative sum of the ones in the second. And the 

fourth column is the midpoint.

Chair Beach: Bob, this is Josie. Can I interrupt for 

just a sec? Do you have another phone that you can 

try? Because every time you speak, we get static. 

So it makes it really hard to follow what you're 

saying.

Dr. Anigstein: Oh, you're getting static?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: I think I see the problem. I had two 

phones too close together. Is this better?
63

Chair Beach: Go ahead and start speaking.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. So the curve fits for that --

Chair Beach: Bob?

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. I'm going to -- I probably have 

a phone problem here. I'm going to go on another 

phone where my voice is louder. But you'll have to 

hold your comments because I won't be able to 

clearly hear.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. Can everybody hear me now?

Chair Beach: Yes. It's better.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. Good. Okay. Anyway, so here 

is what the U-238 in the pipes looks like and it's a 

reasonable fit, 0.88. 0.9 is very good. 0.88 is quite 

good. And then finally, we have the U-238 in the 

soil, which is based on the 80 samples that are 

measurable. So this, this is something, I won't go 

into the details of this. This is simply called a 

regression or an order statistics, which accounts for 

the eight non-detects. So you can see the 

distribution is not symmetrical. If it was 

symmetrical, zero would be in the center.

So the, going back to the original, so what we did 

was, we took this equation and we solved for 

thorium-232 in the pipes by sampling each of those 

three distributions. These three quantities now are 

not represented by a distribution. We randomly, we 

used Monte Carlo sampling methods to randomly 

sample for each. And we take one from here, one 

from here, if you see my mouse moving, one from 

here, multiply the top two, divide by the third one. 

Just single values taken for this distribution.

We repeat this one million times, which sounds 

staggering. It actually didn't take that long. And 

then, the result is now another distribution. Now we 

have one million values of the thorium-232 in the 
64

pipe, which represent a distribution, and we can 

take -- the aim is to get the 95th percentile value. 

So we take the 950,000th of those one million to 

get a value.

So now I'm going to skip these quickly. And here 

are the results. We have the R-squared for -- skip 

the last column for a second. So we have the Rsquared that we saw before on the charts, 0.76, 

which is marginal but usable, 0.952 and 0.884, 

which are all quite good. And then we have, for 

each one, we have a geometric mean which is taken 

off of that straight line that is fitted through three 

curves, and the geometric standard deviation.

Then the next issue that comes up is, well, we're 

following OTIB-0019, but there was a later guidance 

for the ORAU team report called 95, which states 

that, well, you can use that simple regression order 

statistics if you have a single LOD. In other words, if 

you have a single value and anything below that 

value is not measurable, and everything above that 

value is measured and recorded.

However, the data, the way the data is presented 

for the U-238 in the soil, there was a separate LOD 

value for each of those eight measurements. So 

that method is not strictly correct. So we applied 

another, more sophisticated method, also using 

regression order statistics, which was recommended 

by the ORAU team.

And we got an R-squared, by fitting the data, we 

got an R-squared slightly lower, but still quite good, 

0.936. We got a higher geometric mean for the 

uranium, and a lower standard deviation. The result 

then is, the final result is we calculated, this is what 

NIOSH reported, 2.42 for the airborne activity of 

thorium, ten to the minus 13. And then calculated 

an effective dose of 10.42 millirem per year based 

on one-month exposure.

I believe they have now decided to go with a twomonth exposure, but we're comparing oranges to 

oranges, so we're sticking with the same 
65

assumption.

The first methodology, the simpler methodology, 

gave us a higher airborne concentration, 3.56 ten to 

the minus 13. And an effective dose of 14 millirem 

per year. The dose calculation was slightly different. 

We used the 200 mcg, not the 220 mcg. And we 

used the default dose conversion factors; NIOSH 

used the maximum. So there were small 

differences. That's why I compared the airborne 

activity.

But we can still see we're in the same ballpark. And 

then, when we do the more sophisticated 

methodology for the U-238, we get a lower airborne 

concentration, simply because you remember the U238 for the soil is in the denominator so a higher 

value gives you a lower result and a lower effective 

dose of 4.54.

So the interesting thing is, you look at your 

effective dose, we essentially bracket it, the NIOSH 

value. Using the simple method that was used in the 

past, we get 14. Using the more advanced 

sophisticated statistical method, we get 4.5, where 

NIOSH gets 10 in the middle.

So we're not disagreeing with the NIOSH value. We 

simply would recommend that NIOSH uses 

whichever statistical method they feel is the most 

appropriate. They could come up with a slightly 

different value. But did they use real site data 

instead of just the inventory of thorium metal and 

uranium metal, and saying, well, it can't be one to 

one is conservative. It can't be any worse than that.

So that's basically it. It's a question of methodology, 

not a question of results. Now I'll go on -- this 

actually might be a good time to pause because the 

next topic is separate from this. For me to pause 

and answer questions.

Chair Beach: Any questions, Work Group Members, 

or comments?
66

Dr. Anigstein: I'll switch to my other phone for this. 

Are there going to be -- does anyone have 

questions?

Member Anderson: And this is using the site data? 

The soil and everything?

Participant: Yes.

Member Anderson: Okay.

Chair Beach: And my comment is about the --

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. One second, please.

Chair Beach: Okay. Andy asked about site data.

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah. What about the site data?

Member Anderson: I just want to be sure that 

you're using the site data, not data from not 

elsewhere.

Dr. Anigstein: The data I'm using came from two 

reports. Sowell --

Chair Beach: And Weston.

Participant: Yes. 

Dr. Anigstein: Not everything in there. There was 

something like 450 measurements, if my memory 

serves correct. We only used a subset of 88 because 

the other -- they were from different locations and 

the other locations were basically background. 

Maybe one or two elevated readings, and everything 

else was in natural background. And this Building 12 

burial area was the one that had the distribution 

that seemed to be elevated representative of waste 

from the plant operations.

So we used that for the soil data, and then we used 

the same pipe data that everybody else used. 

Evaluating it slightly differently, but the same raw 

data.

Chair Beach: All right. So this is Josie. Can you hear 
67

me okay?

Member Kotelchuck: Barely.

Dr. Roberts: You're very faint, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay. I don't know, I'm not sure what 

happened with my volume here. Okay. Can you 

hear me good enough for me to make a comment?

Dr. Roberts: Yeah, now.

Chair Beach: Okay. I just wanted to point out that 

the Sowell 1985, and Table 6 is where you got your 

data points, this is a really small set. It's not very 

representative in my opinion of the contamination 

that's onsite. My understanding is that is a depth of 

two, maybe to three inches of walkover sample 

sets. So I have a concern about this not being 

representative of the actual doses that are onsite.

So, I know when they've got into the burial 

grounds, they went down several feet, and the 

highest level of contamination were actually down 

towards gravel level, the bottom level. So I have a 

question on that, or a comment on that. I don't 

know if it's a question, because you don't have any 

other data to use. Right?

Dr. Anigstein: No. I believe it was Table 6A that I 

used.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Anigstein: And the reason I used that data is I 

wasn't trying to characterize the entire site. I was 

trying to find data where you have uranium and 

thorium data that are representative of discharges 

from the plant.

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Anigstein: And, therefore, something similar 

could be found in the pipes, had the thorium been 

measured. And then eyeballing all the rest of the 

data, I looked at each of the tables in the Sowell 
68

report, the vast majority were natural background 

on the order of one picocurie per gram. Where the 

Building 12 burial ground had a significant number 

of elevated readings. So it seemed more fruitful.

Chair Beach: Yeah, and my problem is not with the 

model itself, it's just I don't feel if you have good 

data going into any model, it's going to be a 

problem. 

I think, Dave, I heard you in the background.

Member Kotelchuck: I do. Can you hear me well?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Member Kotelchuck: Can folks hear me adequately?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Member Kotelchuck: Good. I have a different kind of 

problem with the quality of the data in the soil, 

about which we are taking back to tell us about 

trying to take those ratios and tell us something 

about what's going on down in the pipes, where we 

only measured the uranium.

Let's go -- let me read from page 2. Well, I can read 

from it. The bottom line is that if you look at the 

thorium in the soil and you look at the uranium in 

the soil, they are essentially uncorrelated. That is to 

say, they don't have a relationship to each other 

such that is one is high, the other would be this, 

and if one is low the other would be that.

They're uncorrelated. Their R-squared value, it's 

0.0064, so R is 0.08. And you want 0.7 for things to 

have a relationship. So that is why, now I'll read 

from page 2, a pairwise comparison of 232-thorium 

and 238-uranium concentrations in the 80 samples 

with reported low values of both radionuclides 

yielded a square correlation coefficient of R-squared 

0.0064, which indicates that the measured values of 

the two radionuclides are essentially uncorrelated. 

Consequently, using paired values to derive a ratio 
69

of the thorium to the uranium in the soil to calculate 

levels in the Building 10 pipe residues would not be 

statistically valid. 

And that is correct. And you used that information 

to reject using a very simple model of taking the 

ratio of outside, and that's what led you to the more 

sophisticated model that you then propose in the 

paper.

First, I accept and agree with your critique of, if you 

will, the simpleminded model. However, it seems to 

me that you are recreating the problem in the 

original equation of the very high-powered 

statistical calculation you just completed, you've 

just showed.

If you take a look at the equation that you used --

you could go to that slide if you like, Bob, or 

whomever is working that. Could you go back to the 

original equation? Yeah, one slide back where it's 

presented. Could you go one more slide back? 

There. Thank you.

If we transpose the terms, I mean, that is, you're 

saying the ratio of thorium in pipe and soil is the 

same as the ratio of the uranium in pipe and soil.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay.

Member Kotelchuck: I mean, you know, and I'm not 

telling you anything, you who did the calculations, 

but just pointing out to Members of the Working 

Group, if we transpose the 232-thorium in the soil 

and the 238-uranium in the pipe -- which we can 

do; that's just arithmetic -- what we're saying is 

that the thorium to uranium in the pipe is the same 

as the thorium and uranium in the soil.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay.

Member Kotelchuck: So you're essentially saying 

that the soil ratio is the ratio down there, except 

you now have the -- but that ratio is of two -- the 

ratio in the soil is of two uncorrelated, which is to 
70

say independent, things, independent 

measurements. Why they are not dependent, why 

there isn't a relationship between the two, I do not 

understand and I cannot answer for it. But I 

recognize that you are still taking the uraniumthorium ratio in the soil, which is uncorrelated, and 

then, I would argue, force-fitting this whole thing by 

saying, look, I know the distribution in three of the 

areas, therefore I'm going to power it through, do a 

force-fitting, and get a value.

Now, you've gotten a value, my goodness. I mean, 

it is powerful statistical methods that you used, and 

I'm impressed with them. But if the original 

assumption was weak; that is, the uranium to 

thorium ratio in the soil is not a relationship, then 

you're getting a number by saying, I'll create a 

thorium in the pipe. But does it have any 

relationship to reality, to the measurements? Can 

we say with confidence that this really tells us what 

the thorium is in the pipe?

And my feeling is the data you put in said there's no 

relationship, and now you're telling me, oh, well, 

I'm just going to create, you're going to create a 

distribution. That will cause these two ratios to be 

similar. Yeah, but that's not real.

I mean, let's put it this way. I don't see that that 

would reflect a -- that that would reflect reality. And 

so I'm just -- and I think you're using powerful 

statistical methods to create something that is 

mathematically correct but is not real in terms of 

the measurement, that that is not a measurement 

of the exposure of thorium in the pipe.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. My response to that is, we 

thought about that. And as a matter of fact, there is 

an earlier version, which was not valid, where we 

did do a pairwise comparison of the uranium and 

thorium data in the soil, and it had very -- and it 

completely agreed. The correlation is almost 

nonexistent.

However, if you sit back and look at the physics of 
71

it, the physical reality.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Dr. Anigstein: If the thorium and uranium entered 

the soil through the same -- sorry about the noise 

here. If the uranium and the thorium were 

commingled prior, so it was like a big vat of waste 

material in like a cement mixer truck, got all mixed 

up and very thoroughly homogenized and was 

deposited in the soil, then you might expect a 

correlation pairwise because wherever one was, the 

other was.

But the assumption, or my impression, is the 

thorium and uranium were handled onsite at 

different times, at different processes, with very 

little information on the thorium. And, therefore, it 

got buried at different times by a different process. 

In got discharged -- I'm seeing like a production 

facility discharging some of its waste and 

inadvertently the uranium and thorium get 

discharged, but not at the same time. Not 

simultaneously. They were at different times and, 

therefore, a certain fraction of that ended up in the 

burial ground, but not at the same time. So, some 

would be in the higher level of the soil, some would 

be in the lower level of the soil.

But I'm making a leap of faith that the same 

differentiation between the uranium and thorium 

entering would apply to what went into the pipes. 

As a matter of fact, it may be that the pipe residues 

ended up in the soil. We don't know.

We're not making the statement, we're not making 

the assumption, that there is a correlation between 

the two. Just the opposite, they're independent 

values. There's almost zero correlation, you can 

say. And, therefore, it is valid to randomly pick 

values from one distribution and from the other 

distribution and use them to -- and then assuming 

at, let's say, year one of the process, they were 

experimenting with thorium fuel and there was a lot 

of thorium generated. And it went into the pipes 
72

and it went into the soil.

Later they said, no, thorium is not good, we're 

going to stick with uranium. So the uranium came 

later. So it was differently distributed. But I'm just 

making the leap of faith that whatever distinguished 

the uranium from the thorium waste generation, 

whether it was temporal or different processes, and 

also uranium is more soluble than thorium, so it 

moves through the soil, percolates through the soil 

more rapidly, whatever process caused the thorium 

and the uranium in the soil to be differentiated 

could also apply to the pipes.

It's not a perfect argument. But it's the best we've 

got. Still better than (audio interference) 

assumption of one-to-one mass ratio, for which 

there is no scientific basis. Except to guess. We 

know there was more uranium than thorium onsite, 

it can't be worse than one-to-one. That's not the 

way this project has worked in other areas.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Rutherford: I would like to respond to that. I 

would like to respond that using that one-to-one 

ratio, as you indicated, they definitely used, 

processed way more uranium than they did thorium. 

And, clearly, we have taken very conservative 

approaches on this project when the doses come 

out very low, as I'd indicated earlier. And if you look 

at the doses in all three models that were 

presented, we're talking 10, 14, and four millirem.

So, yeah, I mean, trying to sharpen the pencil down 

when you're down at 10, 14, and four millirem 

makes no sense when you can clearly say that there 

was no more thorium than there would be uranium, 

and there assuming a one-to-one mass is good.

Member Kotelchuck: Let's say I'm not sure how 

that, the one-to-one ratio fits in with this, but I'm 

looking at, simply, the derivation of the thorium. 

You might want to argue that it doesn't matter; 

there wasn't much thorium and to hell with it. You 
73

know, or this is the best we can do. Maybe that is 

an argument that can be or will be used. But I just 

find that the logic behind this particular calculation 

of thorium doesn't ring. And I can turn it around 

and make a much simpler argument --

Mr. Rutherford: Dr. Kotelchuck, I agree with you. I 

don't disagree with you.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Mr. Rutherford: I don't disagree with you at all. 

What I'm saying is the NIOSH model used the 

Building 10 uranium data, and then we assumed 

that, clearly, the thorium concentrations would not 

be any higher than the uranium because they 

processed roughly 29 times more uranium than they 

did thorium. So, assuming the mass is equal, it 

would clearly be a bounding approach.

Dr. Anigstein: I'm sorry --

Mr. Rutherford: I'm not saying what --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: LaVon? Hello?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah.

Dr. Anigstein: Sorry to interrupt you but I lost my 

phone. My battery ran out so I had to dial in. So the 

last couple of minutes of what you said I did not 

hear.

Mr. Rutherford: Oh.

Dr. Anigstein: I'm on the screen, but I didn't hear 

you.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay. What I had said was that 

there was a couple of things that I disagreed with. 

One, you know, NIOSH used the uranium data from 

the soil under Building 10, and then we assumed --

we did not use the inventory as our basis for this, 

but we assumed that the uranium and the thorium 
74

masses were equal when we created our thorium 

model. We only said that, using the inventories, we 

looked at the uranium inventory that processed 29 

times more uranium, I think is what we said, than 

they did thorium. That was only to corroborate that 

if we assume equal masses it clearly should be 

bounding.

Dr. Anigstein: That was not the impression I got, 

because when we responded to the first iteration of 

this report we started off using -- SC&A, we started 

off saying, okay, NIOSH is using a pairwise 

comparison, we'll do a pairwise comparison. And 

then we find out there's no -- and the response to 

the first iteration of this, which goes back two years, 

a year now, was -- yeah, it was about a year ago.

The first iteration was, we were told, no, no, you 

don't have a good correlation between the two. And 

I agreed. It was not a good correlation. That's why 

we gave up the pairwise comparison and went to 

this other approach. And the response that I got 

from NIOSH, and I can't document it right this 

moment, was, no, they did look at the soil samples, 

but, at the end, they did not utilize the soil sample 

data. They used the inventory data. That's my 

understanding of what NIOSH had said.

Mr. Rutherford: No. That was incorrect. What we 

used was only the -- we used the Building 10 

subsurface data for uranium, and then we assumed, 

the last model we presented, then we assumed a 

one-to-one ratio, uranium to thorium.

Member Kotelchuck: So you essentially took the 

uranium and just said it's half thorium.

Mr. Rutherford: We'll assume it's an equal amount 

of thorium. This was --

Chair Beach: And then I believe you said you'd use 

the highest between the two in a dose 

reconstruction. Is that correct, LaVon? At the 95th 

percentile?
75

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, I think -- I mean, I know that 

we indicated we would use the 95th percentile. I 

think we are adding those doses to the thorium and 

the uranium. Pat McCloskey, am I correct? I don't 

want to misspeak.

Dr. Mauro: This is John again --

Mr. McCloskey: You have it right. Whichever nuclide 

attributed the highest dose for the --

Mr. Rutherford: You are correct, Josie.

Dr. Mauro: This is John. Could you hear me?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Mauro: I'm a simple guy. All right?

(Laughter.)

Chair Beach: Right.

Dr. Mauro: You tell me the quantities are twenty-toone. All right. So what we have is this operation 

with 20 times more uranium moved through than 

thorium. Okay? And I say to myself, okay, so, when 

you have residue, whether it's in the soil or in the 

pipe, you would expect that there's going to always 

be more uranium than thorium. We realize at 

different times -- and the fact that we're integrating 

over time, we're going to reflect an aggregate 

number.

In other words, we're looking at what we think, as a 

result of these, all the years in which uranium and 

thorium were being handled, maybe at different 

times and different ways, but we do know, in the 

simplest sense, that there's 20-something times 

more uranium, if it's by mass or curies, I don't care. 

We know that. 

So, in the simplest world, one could say, well, then 

in the pipe, you're probably going to see 20 times 

more uranium than thorium.
76

You know, I realize that I'm oversimplifying, but 

then I'm going to now draw upon Dr. Melius' 

philosophy: don't overanalyze something when 

you're dealing with extremely low doses. 

So, I walk into this and say, listen, every one of 

these approaches that we looked at are ways to 

come at a problem, each of which has its 

limitations. If you're looking for fault, you're going 

to find it. And I'm saying, we can find some fault, 

but at the same time, there's a certain amount of 

common sense here that says, at least, if you really 

wanted to make this simple, let's go to your twentyto-one ratio and see what kind of doses we get. And 

they'll be small. Then we can go to your approach, 

the one-to-one ratio, which is extremely 

conservative, conceptually, because it wasn't even. 

It was much more uranium than thorium. So, 

certainly, your approach, fundamentally, is more 

conservative. 

And then we get into the sophisticated approach. 

Okay? And I'm thinking that even though each 

distribution -- the fact that each one has a 

distribution -- and if you think about them, well, 

they're completely independent of each other. 

Right? But the only thing they have in common is 

they all moved through the plant at some time and 

ended up some place in its own way. All right?

And then say, well, what do you with this situation? 

You say, well, we'll go with the 95th percentile of 

that. They're not paired values now, we're treating 

each of these measurements as if they were 

completely independent and the only thing they 

have in common is they all moved through the plant 

over some time period.

And I say that each of these three approaches, if we 

focus in on their limitations, we should be looking at 

the simplicity and the common sense. And they all 

come to the same dose. This is what's staggering 

about this.

And, now, do you reject this because it has many 
77

imperfections? And I say, in this particular case, no. 

The reason is the Melius rule. We don't need a high 

level of resolution and precision when you're dealing 

with extremely low doses that are within the 

uncertainty and variability of the other doses from 

this, from the uranium from subsurface.

And the fact, like Dr. Kotelchuck mentioned, we can 

just ignore it. The 95th percentile that we used for 

the uranium alone could be argued to cover even 

this ill, the fact that we didn't accommodate the 

thorium. Do you see what I'm trying to say? We're 

making it more complicated than it really is.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, I would say the argument 

about using one-to-one, to me, is more sound. The 

equation, the attempt to equate the ratios of the 

soil and the pipe I think is logically not sound. And I 

could make a backwards argument to show that, 

no, no, it's not logical.

However, you want to suggest that there's another 

way and that the one-to-one way is better, that's an 

argument. And I feel like I'll look at that. I was 

looking at this in itself. That is, how do we measure 

thorium? There's only one measurement of thorium 

that we have. 

And I could go into the logical argument but it 

seems to me -- should I? I mean, what I argued 

was that these two things are not correlated. But if I 

just went backwards, John -- yeah, I'm going to do 

it. If I may. If I went backwards and I said, look, I 

have uranium in the pipe sediment, but I don't 

know what the thorium is. So let me go to some 

other place and let's assumption that the processes 

are going on somehow the same, continuously, 

monotonically, whatever.

Then I would say, okay, so you're going to take the 

uranium in the pipe. You're going to go and you're 

going to say, okay, I'm going to take a sample of 

uranium in the soil and a simultaneous 

measurement of the sample of the thorium. And the 

thorium has no relation to that. So they use the 
78

uranium in the pipe to get the uranium -- and then 

take the uranium in the soil to get the thorium in 

the soil. But the thorium in the soil is not related to 

the uranium in the soil.

I mean, there's no -- so, to me, this falls in terms of 

the initial assumptions. And it's entirely different --

and LaVon, I accept that -- it's entirely different. 

And I'll look at that again in that light and now 

trying to think about the thorium. And it appears 

that's conservative.

Anyhow, that's --

Chair Beach: Thanks, Dave. Any other Work Group 

comments or questions? Andy or Loretta?

Member Anderson: I just want to go back to what 

our first question was, is when this came up at 

other sites sometimes we said it could be 

reconstructed and other times we said no. And I 

don't think the ones when we said no, it probably 

didn't -- we didn't say no because the estimates 

were going to be high measurements. So now, well, 

you're going to say, well, it doesn't matter. That 

kind of goes against --

Chair Beach: You faded out. I don't know if we got 

your whole point there.

Member Anderson: Well, the point was, to use this 

to say we can do dose reconstruction, is that 

consistent with those other sites? I mean, this one, 

we don't have any thorium measurements. Others 

we had some, but it wasn't as representative as we 

wanted, and things like that.

Chair Beach: Yeah.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: -- presentation on, I just don't 

know where -- it could be that we're evolving as we 

go through this and we're now getting to the issue 

of, well, it doesn't resolve an a lot dose so nobody's 
79

going to get awarded if we do the dose 

reconstruction. On the other hand, the basic 

principle is you ought to have sufficient data. And, 

again, we don't know what went through the pipes. 

It could be when there was more flow through the 

pipes, when the uranium was there, and it scoured 

out any residual that was there. And then when you 

did the thorium, there was less flow, because of 

volume or something, and they had more sediment 

about. What's actually happening in the pipes that 

then gets into where the workers were digging. 

(Audio interference.) 

I'm not sure how well we're taking care of all -- like 

I said, I would agree that calculated dose is likely to 

be quite low.

Dr. Mauro: This is John again. One more thing I'd 

like to say. We have been in this situation so many 

times where we had, the only information we had 

was the throughput of the thorium and the 

throughput, or the inventory of the uranium at the 

site. And the Health Physics Programs only 

measured uranium. And what we did on many 

occasions, say this is how simple things got. We 

simply said, well, we know there was ten times or 

100 times more uranium that moved through this 

system than thorium.

And we're going to use that ratio in deriving our 

doses. I mean, we have in the past used that level 

of simplification, to deal with the thorium 

contribution, now we're bringing the evaluation to a 

level of sophistication in dealing with thorium that's 

way past anything we've ever done before. We 

actually found it acceptable just to use throughput 

as the basis for getting your ratios.

Member Anderson: When they were working in the 

pits and the trenches like they were doing here, I 

mean were the workers that we're estimating doing 

this kind of soil and pipe removal and working 

underground?

Dr. Mauro: They were in -- I'll tell you what they 
80

had in common, all the other sites --

Member Anderson: How were the workers exposed?

Dr. Mauro: I'll try to answer your question and you 

make a good point. In the other examples, in both 

cases, the uranium and the thorium were moving 

through these processes for the purpose of making 

fuel. Okay? They did it at different times. They, of 

course, used different methodologies. But their 

objective was to make fuel.

And it always was a case where the thorium part of 

the operation to make fuel was almost 

experimental. To say listen, is it possible that we 

could use thorium for making fuel as an alternative 

to working with uranium. So that was the degree to 

which there was a commonality. But when you get 

down to it, the methodologies that were employed 

in the chemistry, and the processing, and the 

handling were different. So they were independent, 

just like Dr. Kotelchuck said, these are independent. 

But the fact that we knew the throughputs and the 

totals was sufficient, at least in the past to simply 

use that ratio of throughput as a way to get a 

handle on the thorium that was not measured.

And I'm seeing here where I feel as if we're bringing 

the level of analysis to a level of -- attempt at a 

precision that goes way beyond what we did in the 

past. So it breaks with precedent and even though 

we are doing that, and even though it's filled with 

certain questions that are all legitimate, we're 

getting doses that are very small.

So I look at it as a collective view looking at the 

totality of the whole program since we've been 

working on it since 2004. And I find it, that here we 

are tending to this one at a level of granularity that 

we never did before. And even in the face of the 

fact that the doses are small.

So you put all that together, I find this to be an 

exceptionally detailed evaluation, as compared to 

what we've done in the past to deal with thorium.
81

Chair Beach: So John, this is Josie. Can I break in? 

You're talking about the doses being small and we 

have awarded SEC's for doses being small. We also 

have that nice sales brochure, the 64 pages that 

said all the different thorium products that Metals 

and Control used. So it really, whether we use 

SC&A's model or whether we use, we go down with 

NIOSH --

Dr. Roberts: Josie. You're echoing.

Chair Beach: Horribly. I don't know what do with my 

-- can you hear me?

Dr. Roberts: With still an echo.

Dr. Taulbee: You might try muting and then 

unmuting, Josie.

Chair Beach: Yes. Sorry. Okay. How's that?

Dr. Taulbee: Good.

Chair Beach: Okay. So if you go back to just the 

basics, for me, is your sample sets are not 

representative of what was used at Metals and 

Control, in my opinion. The Sowell data is a very, 

very small look and a very thin layer of soil. It 

doesn't get into the values that I think were present 

and that the Metals and Controls maintenance 

workers were exposed to.

I mean, bottom line, right there. And then we have 

an added issue of, we have NIOSH's model and we 

have SC&A's model, so it confuses the issue. I 

almost think we need to go back to the basis. Oh, 

I'm echoing again. Why is that?

Back to the basis of what are we actually going to 

use so that the Work Group can get their head 

around exactly what we're planning, and so we can 

vote on each of these issues and move forward. I 

mean, we can argue models forever and I know, 

John, you could probably talk for the next like eight 

hours on models and I appreciate you being able to 
82

do that.

Mr. Rutherford: Josie. Can I make a suggestion?

Chair Beach: Yes, please.

Mr. Rutherford: Why don't we have, since 

apparently Bob wasn't familiar with, totally familiar 

with our final approach that we had presented, why 

don't we go back and have SC&A take a look again 

at that one to one ratio that we did, this very simple 

model, using the Building 10 subsurface real data 

and see, and come back, and I know that, I think 

it's pretty defensible and it's very basic, and it does 

the job.

Chair Beach: Yes. And I think Bob said that wasn't 

real data, but okay. Yes.

Mr. Rutherford: It is real data.

Chair Beach: I just think we need to get our hands 

around exactly what NIOSH is planning on doing, 

and then SC&A. Because we keep coming up with all 

these different models and I don't know about 

anybody else, but it is, it's a lot to throw in, for my 

mind. And you just get back to the basics of what 

samples do you have? Do you have samples of 

thorium in the pipes? No. So you're using models 

from outside that are, in my mind, not a good 

representation of what happened at M&C.

So I don't know. Do we want to finish up with -- and 

I don't want to cut anybody off. Do we want to 

finish up with Bob's presentation?

Dr. Mauro: Before we leave, I want to say one 

thing. Don’t forget we've selected the 95th 

percentile to account for all of this uncertainty. It's 

not that we're using the best estimates. We're 

saying we realize there's all of these complications. 

So we're going to accommodate that by going to the 

95th percentile.

I feel, and I'm going to say something maybe I 
83

shouldn't, I think we're gilding the lily on trying to 

get to a level of precision of the mechanics of 

modeling this, where in the end, we all know the 

doses are small, and are probably already covered 

by the 95th percentile we picked for the uranium 

when we did this calculation.

So, again, please, I apologize for this but we're 

gilding the lily.

Mr. Calhoun: This is Grady. Can I chime in for a 

second.

Chair Beach: Sure.

Mr. Calhoun: This case here, it's like, we got to, I 

agree with Josie, we've got to stay focused on what 

we're, what our threshold here is. And our threshold 

here for this entire petition and evaluation report, is 

can we bound the doses.

SC&A thinks we can. We certainly think we can. And 

in order to come up with something saying we can't 

bound the doses. It's got to be scientifically based. 

It can't just be, oh, I'm really not sure that we can 

based on what we have. We've got a lot of, a fair 

amount of data, we've got a lot of bases based on 

numbers and there has to be an equally robust 

counter-position that we can't bound the doses.

Not that we can't do them in a precise way, but we 

can't bound them. So it needs to be scientifically 

based and defensible as well.

Member Anderson: I would just say that bounding, 

you can always bound. Is it a reasonable bound. 

That's --

Chair Beach: Yes. There you go.

Mr. Calhoun: At the levels that are less --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: Or just assume they're being 

exposed then as they were if it was operational.
84

Mr. Calhoun: That doesn't work because we're 

looking at doses here that are less than 100 

millirem per year, that wouldn't even require 

monitoring under 10 CFR 835. So trying to make 

the argument that these are unreasonably high 

doesn't really make sense.

Now I'd agree with you if we said, well, we can't do 

it. Let's make everybody's legal limit of 5 rem a 

year bounding. Now that doesn't make sense. But 

the approaches here aren't hocus pocus. We 

actually have something that are based on numbers 

and reasonable assumptions by both NIOSH and 

SC&A. So any counter to that that has to go up to 

the Secretary, can't be well, we're not really sure 

we agree.

Chair Beach: Yes, I don't know if we're not sure we 

don't agree, but I understand the scientific point of 

it. You also have to have representative samples, 

which I don't agree that you have them for Metals 

and Control. And somebody else was trying to 

speak.

Ms. Naylor: Hi. Yes. This is Jenny with OGC.

Chair Beach: Yes. Hi.

Ms. Naylor: I just wanted to remind the Advisory 

Board that while we are promulgating 42 CFR part 

83, which is the SEC Procedural Regulations. We 

specifically, and this is with the Advisory Board's 

support, reject the approach of pre-decision. There's 

not a good scientific or logical basis for establishing 

scientific measures and procedures. And so that's 

why it's very consistent with the regulatory 

language of possible circumstances.

And also, going back to the statute where the 

Advisory Board specifically tasked in the statute to 

look at this visibility issue. There's two criteria, as 

you know, for designating a Class to the SEC. One is 

that it is not feasible to estimate with precision 

accuracy the radiation dose that the Class received. 

But then it follows that there is a reasonable 
85

likelihood that such radiation dose.

So the radiation dose that is well concerned in the 

statute for the framework, is the one that is likely to 

cause harm to the member of the Class. So this is 

the dose that will cause cancer.

Dr. Mauro: This is John. I'm sorry to do this but you 

just cited the regulations that I think I heard that 

what we did is okay within the framework of the 

regulations. Or did I miss that? It was you, you 

brought in the legal side of the language on what 

our threshold is for reconstructing doses. And I was 

listening to the legalese and I have to say, what I 

heard you say is we met that standard. Am I 

wrong?

Ms. Naylor: Well, just to start out, as an attorney, I 

don't opine on the scientific evaluation. That is 

entirely up to the Board, NIOSH, and SC&A. And so, 

again, the Advisory Board is charged by the 

President to evaluate, you know, the scientific and 

technical basis for designating a Class to the SEC.

So those are the, sort or, your major missions if you 

look at the science and the technical aspect and, 

you know, make a decision of whether, in your 

recommendation to the Secretary, whether that 

scientific evaluation and conclusion have met, is 

consistent with the regulatory standard, which asks 

you to reject this decision, you know, specific 

measures of completion. But operating under 

plausible circumstances.

And also, keep in mind, the statutory priority here, 

or the dose that the statute is concerned about is 

the dose that would harm the Class member. And 

the harm here, like where we think about Probability 

of Causation, and so harm that caused the cancer in 

Class members.

So that's the dose that cannot be reconstructed, 

and likely cause harm.

Member Kotelchuck: And that's the burden. I mean, 
86

that's the burden of the argument that is being 

made by NIOSH and SC&A that this is just too small 

to cause harm. And therefore, all kinds of 

assumptions that they've made are -- don't get us 

anywhere near what would be harmful.

And I acknowledge that that's something that the 

Working Group will have to address and come up 

with, if you will. I mean, the question is, is the 

uncertainty and chaos, in terms of dealing with 

radiation and the residual period, and the harm that 

may have been caused by unwitting exposure, 

whether that does or could rise to a level of harm.

And until we do that, this would not get approved at 

whatever level.

Court Reporter: This is the Court Reporter. I would 

encourage everyone not speaking to mute 

themselves.

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. If I can just circle back a 

little bit here to what Bomber was saying earlier. I 

mean, when you look at this particular scenario, 

we're taking the measured uranium data that is site 

specific from Metals and Controls. Okay? For these 

different dig projects. And we are using a 

resuspension value, which we're going to, you 

know, adds -- provides some more information 

about to Dr. Kotelchuck. Actually, the full Work 

Group.

But we're using the 95th percentile here. So we're 

taking the highest concentration of soil, or the 95th 

percentile concentration. We're using the 95th 

percentile of resuspension values, and now we're 

assuming a one to one mass ratio of uranium to 

thorium to estimate this thorium dose, when we 

know that the site processed a lot more thorium --

or a lot more uranium than they did thorium.

So it's this basis, this building one upon the other, 

95th percentile, 95th percentile, and then this one 

to one ratio, which is what gives us confidence that 

this dose is bounding. Okay? In light of not having 
87

the measured data that Josie, you were pointing 

out, we don't have the measured thorium data. But 

when you take this into context of all three, we 

believe that this is a bounding scenario.

Dr. Mauro: I agree with you Tim. This is John. I 

agree completely.

Dr. Anigstein: This is Bob. The issue with not 

bounding, or not about bounding, and to answer 

something that LaVon said earlier, I went back 

through the report, to the April 8th White Paper. For 

April 8th, 2019 White Paper, where they did discuss, 

I mean, I'm just going to read from Page 4 it is. 

NIOSH determined the ratio of uranium to thorium232 using data from samples taken from waste and 

materials removed from former AWE facilities and 

placed in the burial area. There were 754 samples 

taken. Outside perimeter of Building 10 and the 

burial area that were analyzed for both uranium and 

thorium.

NIOSH determined a paired activity ratio of uranium 

to thorium-232 for each of these samples, and 

calculated a geometric mean ratio of 9.88 to 1. 

However, there is no statement here about the

correlation, which Dr. Kotelchuck objected to in our 

data. And furthermore, my understanding is that 

they didn't use this information because the next 

paragraph says new NIOSH bounding method, April 

27th, 2019, which is nine days later than the date of 

the report, but anyway, and then the only, where 

they talk about the subsurface Building 10, that 

NIOSH can bound thorium exposures by assuming 

the subsurface sediment contains equivalent 

amount of natural uranium and thorium.

So I think there's a disconnect there. And when I 

pointed out that they used the soil sample that 

we're told, no, no, we did not use the soil sample. 

We looked at it but we didn't use it.

Dr. Mauro: I'm going to -- I have a real problem. If 

you figured out how much thorium was in the 

subsurface environment, using any one of these 
88

methods, it's probably more than the throughput of 

thorium at this facility. That's how far we've gone 

afield. Because remember what Bob just did, keyed 

back to this relationship that, you know, in the end, 

what we're saying, some immense amount of 

uranium and thorium ended up underground as 

opposed to in the product, or that was originally 

made by M&C during the AWE period.

I think we are losing sight of the simplicity of the 

problem. We're creating something that, in physical 

reality, I hate to say this, at a point where it can't 

exist. We're saying we're putting all this thorium 

and uranium in the ground. We're forgetting that, 

no, we're putting this thorium and uranium in 

product that went out the door during the AWE 

period. Because the quantities that are in the 

ground now, from both the uranium and the 

thorium, through these models, are so large that it 

belies the possibility that this could have occurred 

this way. We're actually in the domain where we run 

the risk of being implausible by setting ourselves up 

with models the way we're doing them right now.

So that's where I think we are. I hate to say that.

Member Kotelchuck: John, look, NIOSH and SC&A 

agree that the SEC is not warranted. And you put 

out a lot of arguments, and different ones. At the 

level of agreement, you don't disagree with the 

folks at NIOSH. Some of us on the Working Group, 

at least me, have problems, and the problems stem 

from things that seem, to me, we didn't look at, 

which was people doing things that were 

egregiously bad in terms of radiation exposure.

And I feel like the ball is in our field. That is to say, 

we've got to come up -- if this is real, if the 

disturbance and chaos in the radiation safety 

situation in that period does not contribute enough 

to cause harm, right, that's likely to cause harm, 

then the argument fails. The Board will reject it and 

it will not be sustained.

And I can say, at this point, I don't have evidence 
89

that it will cause harm. You folks are making a lot of 

strong arguments that you're being conservative 

and it's still very low. I feel like I have to think 

about, I mean, for example, just small things like 

ingestion. Your calculation of ingestion of 

radioactive material comes from resuspension and 

breathing in material and some of it gets into the 

mouth and digestive system.

What about people who were working without 

gloves, without taking minimum precautions? And I 

feel like, first, I hadn't raised this issue before. It's 

an issue in my mind, but we hadn't come to it. But, 

ultimately, I feel like we have to come -- we who 

are concerned about what was going on in terms of 

radiation safety in that plant in that period have to 

be able to make a reasonable argument, or make 

some reasonable estimation, about the harm that's 

caused by ingesting unusual amounts of radioactive 

material because of lack of proper radiological 

precautions.

That's, in a way, up to us. And it's been frustrating 

because -- by the way, I'm sure others are 

frustrated with what we're arguing --- but I've been 

frustrated because it appears as if the issues that 

related to the disturbance and chaos in that period 

never got looked at. And when I read, you know, 

what the workers testified when you went down, 

you know, it was disturbing. But does it raise to the 

level of harm? And have we looked at everything 

that might? The things you've looked at certainly --

the things that NIOSH has looked at certainly do not 

raise to the level of harm. I mean, so far, as I can 

see.

So, I think it's up to the Working Group, and those 

of us who want to argue that there's still a problem, 

to be able to account for what he's saying.

Chair Beach: Dave, this is Josie. Thank you. That 

was a good summary. I hesitate to say more 

because I'm echoing really bad for some reason. 

Okay. Where does that move us? And that gives us 
90

a lot to think about, so I appreciate that, Dave. 

Do we want to go ahead and finish up the White 

Paper or SC&A, or is there any other comments, 

Andy or Loretta?

Member Anderson: No. I think we've thrashed on it 

long enough (audio interference). While we can be 

unhappy with the conditions that were there, all of 

those worst case assumptions, that it was, you 

know, bad, but did it raise exposures so bad that 

they'd put them into SEC? I'm just reminded of if 

somebody was working there under the regular time 

and estimated exposure got them to 49.9 percent 

probability and one-tenth of a percent could 

potentially make a difference. But clearly anybody 

who was working there only during the residual 

period would not end up with a compensable level 

of dose.

So does a small amount added make a difference 

for some of the workers? And I think it's clear from 

the interviews that, compared to the other sites 

we've looked at, this one did seem to be what they 

were doing was somewhat different. Exposures may 

well have been different. But is that sufficient, other 

than pointing that out, to say you haven't bounded 

it with any one of these methods? 

And I don't know what more information you could 

get. We're sort of it is what it is, and we've got the 

opinions as they are. And we then have to -- you 

know, there's to hear from the claimants who filed it 

in the first place as to has NIOSH and SC&A 

provided sufficient information that, while things 

were not done properly, what was there wasn't 

sufficient to have resulted in egregious harm.

Chair Beach: Okay. Thanks, Andy.

Member Anderson: We've got to move on, I think.

Chair Beach: Yeah.

Member Valerio: Josie, this is Loretta.
91

Chair Beach: Hi, Loretta. Go ahead.

Dr. Anigstein: Are we ready for the welding yet?

Chair Beach: No. Loretta has a comment.

Member Valerio: Actually, I don't have a question, 

it's just that, I don't know, you stopped echoing. I 

had a hard time hearing Andy. I heard Dave clearly, 

but, I don't know, I heard most of what Andy said, 

but it was broken up in the process.

Chair Beach: Yeah, it seems like we all have a 

problem with the echoing. And I don't know about 

that, at this point. And I'm echoing now, too. So I 

don't know if it's a problem with each individual 

phone, or I think we're just going to have to do the 

best we can.

I do have a question on the welding. What is NIOSH 

doing for welding? Is it different from what you're 

going to show us here, that SC&A is going to show 

us?

Mr. Rutherford: Josie, that's an excellent question. I 

think Bob's going to -- I think there are a couple of 

factors that are a little different, but let's hear that.

Dr. Anigstein: There's only one issue that SC&A has 

with the welding. Is it appropriate to go on with 

that?

Chair Beach: Yes, please, Bob.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. So, we looked into the welding 

scenario. And I believe John Mauro had a colleague 

who had some information on welding. And prior to 

welding seal or pipes, the welder would work -- we 

don't have a meticulously clean surface, so they 

always take any corrosion, any coating on the parts 

to be welded get very aggressively cleaned using a 

power tool, a wire brush or a surface grinder.

And that kind of work generates an awful lot of 

airborne dust. So, anything on the surface 

essentially becomes airborne. And also the worker is 
92

working at arm's length from this. So he's going to 

get a lot of inhalation during that time that he's 

actually cleaning the metal.

So we believe -- or we agree with the surface 

concentration that NIOSH is using that's plant-wide, 

and we agree that they furnished documentation for 

the exposure duration, that this is based on one 

worker's testimony during interviews, I think it's 

about four hours per month would be spent on that.

However, we disagree with the resuspension factor. 

We believe that, because this is a very aggressive 

activity, we should use the highest of the 

resuspension factors listed by OTIB-0070, which 

was in turn taken from the NRC document, 

NUREG/CR-5512, Volume 3, which in turn was 

taken by earlier studies on resuspension factors of a 

man named Sehmel.

So, we recommend that the highest listed in the 

OTIB-0070 is a range from 1.02 to 4.2 times ten to 

the minus-two. And this was done deliberately, it 

was an experiment that looked into it, deliberately 

done to measure resuspension factors. They 

sprinkled some barium sulfate, I believe, on the 

ground and vigorously swept it up.

Well, even so, sweeping the floor and measuring the 

resuspension activity at some distance from the 

floor is probably less aggressive than the cleaning of 

the metal. So I would assume that we should use 

the highest recorded -- the highest measured 

resuspension factor. And 4.2 times ten to the 

minus-two might be a little bit too far because 

probably the entire four hours were probably not 

spent in nonstop activity of cleaning.

So, as customary, we use a power of ten, we don't 

get into the detail, use the power of ten. We believe 

that ten to the minus-two would be a conservative 

and reasonable number. 

Now, NIOSH had responded to that during a Work 

Group meeting in January by observing that, no, the 
93

NUREG 5512 did not, in fact, even though they 

listed it, they did not use it as part of their range of 

resuspension factors on which they used to 

construct an occupation scenario. That was the 

whole purpose of 5512. What are reasonable criteria 

for releasing structures and facilities from licensing 

control? In other words, how much would they have 

to clean up for it to be released? 

And so they took a number of resuspension factors 

and did a distribution of them. I believe they did 

statistical sampling. They did not use this because 

this is not characteristic. Of course it's not. Because 

what they were looking at is eight hour a day, five 

day a week occupancy. This was done for a very 

brief period of time.

But, here, we're not talking about a 40 hour week; 

we're talking about four hours per month. So it is 

entirely reasonable to use a very high value during 

that short period of time to characterize an activity 

which only takes place during a short period of time. 

And that fact that NIOSH's response was, well, this 

is not characteristic of M&C; we never said it was. 

It's just characteristic of this one operation.

So, anyway, that's the only place where we 

disagree.

Dr. Mauro: I'll add to that by saying if there's any 

circumstance where we use the high-end 

resuspension factor, this is it. This type of 

operation. So, even though, under other 

circumstances, the ten to the minus-three, we use 

ten to the minus-four, but, boy, if you're going to 

pick a nasty one where you're really aggressively 

removing material, this is when you use the highend resuspension factor.

Chair Beach: How about -- what would 

jackhammering do to those numbers? Because I 

know they did a lot of jackhammering. So I don't 

think sweeping was the only vigorous activity by the 

workers. They jackhammered out that concrete 

regularly, according to the interviews.
94

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me. Hold it. John? John, let 

me respond.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, Bob. I'm sorry, Bob. Go ahead.

Dr. Anigstein: Let me respond to that. Josie, the

sweeping was not done at M&C. The sweeping was 

done by an experiment designed to measure 

resuspension factors, and they simply used that 

example. But this is the highest in the documented 

literature.

Chair Beach: Okay. And I understand it wasn't --

this is a model and we're using sweeping. But 

jackhammering seems to me like it would be --

Dr. Anigstein: But this is for the welding.

Chair Beach: I understand. And you're using it for 

the cleaning the work area to do the welding, the 

scrubbing of the metal. I believe that's what the 

basis of this is. Correct?

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah. Okay. I misunderstood you.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Anigstein: I don't believe the jackhammering 

was one of the listed measured resuspension factors 

in OTIB-0070.

Dr. Mauro: Jackhammering would be a situation 

that is not amenable to a resuspension factor. It 

would be more amenable to a mass loading. If there 

was jackhammering going on, which we didn't 

model, I would use the 100 milligrams per cubic 

meter as the upper bound. Because if it goes above 

that, you can't breathe. That's what we did when we 

did the dust loading inside the ventilation system.

So, if you were to ask me, John, we've got another 

scenario that we need to look at and it has to do 

with jackhammering, and you wanted me to say 

what kind of dust loading you might encounter, I 
95

would say, well it can't exceed 100 milligrams per 

cubic meter because people won't be able to 

breathe. They'd actually need respiratory protection 

to work in that environment.

So the resuspension factor has no relevance to 

jackhammering.

Chair Beach: Okay. And we just go back to 

modeling and the worker interviews. I go back to 

that because they worked in very, very dusty 

environments and not everybody realizes they're in 

a dusty environment until they get out of it. But 

that's beside the point. Any other questions or 

comments from Work Group Members on the 

welding?

Member Valerio: None here, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay. Thanks. And hearing none, I'm 

going to say that, for me, that brings us to the end 

of -- well, we've got Board correspondence, but for 

this task, I think, for myself, I need to ask NIOSH to 

fine-tune what they're going to use. You have 

several of your own models. You have SC&A's 

models. Where are we at? What is NIOSH going to 

use to reconstruct those for the workers at Metals & 

Controls?

I think the Work Group needs to hear that and the 

Work Group needs to make a decision. And if 

someone else has a comment to that or disagrees, 

please speak up.

Member Anderson: Pick one.

Chair Beach: Well, someone needs to -- yeah, we 

do need to pick something.

Mr. Rutherford: Josie, this is LaVon. I will say, yeah, 

we'll go ahead and pull that specifically together for 

you.

Chair Beach: I'm sorry, I didn't catch all of that, 

LaVon.
96

Mr. Rutherford: You said that you need to show 

specifically what we are going to use in all these 

cases. We'll take care of that.

Chair Beach: Does that make sense to the rest of 

the Work Group? Or am I off-base here?

Member Kotelchuck: No. Yes, it does.

Board Correspondence

Chair Beach: Okay. Thank you. Let's move onto the 

Board correspondence. Does anybody have any 

comments? I mean, you all heard what was read. 

Does anybody want that re-read? I'm sure you all 

have copies of the letter from Congressman 

Kennedy.

Member Anderson: No, I don't need it.

Member Kotelchuck: I don't need it. By the way, I 

think that folks, petitioners listening in, should know 

that we had a Board meeting earlier this week, and 

all of us who are here in the Working Group, and 

many others, attended, and we had the letter read 

to us. So it's not because we haven't listened to the 

letter. We've all heard the letter within the last 

week, verbatim. The whole thing.

Petitioners’ Comments

Chair Beach: Yeah. Thanks, Dave. And we 

appreciate the support that Congressman Kennedy 

has given to Metals & Controls. And they have for 

the past several years. So we do appreciate that. 

I think, if no other questions are arising right now, 

we can hear from the petitioners. 

So, Loretta, do you have anything? I think you just 

said no, but --

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

Chair Beach: Okay. And Henry or Dave?
97

Member Kotelchuck: No, thank you.

Chair Beach: Okay. Mike, are you still with us?

Mr. Elliott: I am. I am.

Chair Beach: Okay. We'd be pleased to hear from 

you at this time.

Mr. Elliott: Thanks very much, Josie. And thank you 

for the opportunity to speak on behalf of my fellow 

petitioners with regard to SEC Petition 00236. 

So, I'd like to open my remarks first by referring 

back to the findings section. Section 7384 of the 

enabling statute for the compensation program. 

Among other things, it states, in Paragraph 6, that 

studies indicate that 98 percent of radiation-induced 

cancers within the nuclear weapons complex have 

occurred at dose levels below existing maximum 

safe thresholds.

So, I only bring that up because I hear us talking so 

much about absolute values being high or low and 

otherwise, and let's not forget that Congress 

recognized that even low levels of dose can be 

dangerous. It's important to keep this finding 

statement in mind when we consider whether 

NIOSH can estimate a bounding, a maximum dose 

to any member of the Class of workers covered by 

this petition under plausible circumstances.

The only fact of which we can be absolutely certain 

is that there is no measurement on monitoring data 

for the Class of workers under evaluation. Dr. Mauro 

of SC&A made that abundantly clear in his 

testimony on May 3rd, 2018. In fact, his exact 

quote was, "it's a stretch" to be able to reconstruct 

dose to M&C maintenance workers.

Despite this absolute reality that no measurement 

and monitoring data exist to estimate a bounding 

dose, the NIOSH/ORAU Team and SC&A have gone 

to great lengths to prove the contrary. They have 

developed what I consider unrealistic and 
98

unsupported assumptions, force-fit models for 

residual period exposure scenarios that are 

inconsistent with exposure to M&C maintenance 

workers, and mixed data sets from completely 

unrelated survey efforts that bear no relevance to 

the Class of workers under evaluation.

The end result of this academic exercise is NIOSH's 

old assertion that the bounding dose can be 

estimated with sufficient accuracy. And, by the way, 

it just so happens that the absolute value was so 

low that we really don't need to be concerned about 

its accuracy. If this isn't an example of circular 

logic, I don't know what is.

I really don't want to give any legitimacy to their 

tenuous assertions by debating the validity of the 

latest technical arguments presented today by 

NIOSH and SC&A. But I will, however, point out a 

couple of limitations that jump out at me. I'm sure 

there are others, so please do not consider these an 

exhaustive list.

Concerning the response paper entitled "Response 

to Metals & Controls Corp. Working Group 

Comments" that was written by NIOSH, dated July 

16th, 2020. In the section entitled "AWE Sites with 

Residual Radiation Period Classes Added to the 

SEC," at the top of page 8, NIOSH concludes, it is 

clear that these three residual periods added to the 

SEC were for sites with unusual work activities that 

had high dose potential for which NIOSH was unable 

to evaluate the source term. NIOSH then quotes a 

former Board Chair on the importance of the 

distinction between the potential for high dose and 

the potential for a lower dose. 

I would argue that the M&C maintenance workers 

meet the standard for unusual work activities. We 

know they performed a wide range of work tasks of 

an unpredictable nature, and at a high frequency, 

i.e., daily.

As for the distinction between the potential for high 

dose versus low dose, since we have no 
99

measurements or monitoring data for this Class of 

workers, and no surrogate measurements that are 

applicable or relevant, I believe it is not possible to 

estimate the maximum radiation dose for every 

type of cancer for which radiation doses are 

reconstructed that could have been incurred in 

plausible circumstances by any member of the 

Class.

And I'm obviously quoting there the procedural 

regulation, 42 CFR 83.13. Therefore, one cannot 

establish whether the maximum radiation dose 

incurred in plausible circumstances is either high or 

low. Certainly, the way NIOSH has built its 

assumptions around exposure scenarios for this 

Class of workers, NIOSH contends that the potential 

dose is low. But as I stated before, this is an 

example of circular logic.

In the section dealing with Work Group Comment 2, 

on page 14, NIOSH is addressing the standard 

procedures it has developed to deal with the 

reconstruction of doses during periods where 

monitoring data are sparse or nonexistent. NIOSH 

argues that it is following the Board's position and 

guidance that concern for the plausibility of 

circumstances used for bounding is not an issue in 

the realm of very low doses, and, specifically, 

during AWE residual periods, such as at M&C.

NIOSH then presents a table summarizing the 

annual uranium dose estimates that it has 

developed for M&C maintenance workers using its 

assumptions of plausible exposure scenarios. 

Essentially, NIOSH has jumped to dose 

reconstruction to estimate the dose from exposure 

scenarios it believes to be plausible. To me, that 

sounds like Site Profile issues, without having first 

satisfied the SEC issue of whether or not it is 

possible to estimate with sufficient accuracy the 

maximum radiation dose for every type of cancer 

for which radiation doses are reconstructed that 

could have been incurred in plausible circumstances 
100

by any member of the Class.

Again, I just recited a quote from the procedural 

regulation. Stated another way, NIOSH has yet to 

demonstrate the existence of sufficiently accurate 

measurement and monitoring data for this Class of 

workers to estimate a bounding dose to any 

member of the Class under plausible circumstances.

In the section entitled "Contamination Surveys 

During the Residual Period," NIOSH highlights 

examples of sophisticated radiological 

measurements and survey techniques developed at 

M&C and used for various applications, most of 

which were for analyzing product quality, and none 

of which were used in any way, shape, or form to 

monitor exposures to the Class of workers under 

evaluation.

The reference to the area surveys conducted in 

Building 10 during the first 14 years of the residual 

period deserves a direct critique. Page 18, first full 

paragraph at the top of the page. NIOSH asserts 

that M&C performed routine alpha contamination 

surveys in Building 10 during the first 14 years of 

the residual period, from 1968 to 1981.

I personally -- mind you, I didn't start until 1983, 

working at M&C -- but I personally have never 

before heard mention of such routine alpha 

contamination surveys. And I've never seen any 

data of these surveys in Building 10. Presumably, if 

they did, in fact, take place, they likely would have 

been limited to the small area where M&C continued 

to conduct fuel manufacturing until 1979 to support 

the high-flux isotope reactor program, or HFIR, not 

the entire building.

I can't stress strongly enough how small the area 

was that the HFIR operation occupied. It was 

confined to the northwest corner of Building 10. You 

can get a sense of the relative size from a couple 

figures that have been submitted in the original 

August 2016 SEC petition. And I would refer you to 

Section E of that petition, page 6 of 6, Figure A3, 
101

entitled "Map of Building Areas Depicting Affected, 

Unaffected, and Previously Decommissioned Areas." 

And there's a line pointing to the HFIR area in the 

northwest corner of Building 10.

Or if you look at Section F1, Exhibit 2, "Remediation 

of Building Interiors." This is the report by Weston 

that was done in October 1996. Figure 4 is the 

Building 10 affected areas, and if you just look at 

Areas 7 and 8, that covers the full extent of the 

former HFIR manufacturing area.

So, inserting this reference seems irrelevant, and 

doesn't change the fact that there was never any 

measurement or monitoring data of the workers 

under evaluation in this petition. Additionally, I 

suspect the routine alpha surveys, if they even 

occurred, were probably not very effective.

I say that because I distinctly remember, during the 

building interior characterization surveys, that we 

found considerable surface contamination on certain 

features in that area, which, it should be noted, had 

previously been decommissioned and released for 

unrestricted use by the U.S. NRC in 1981.

And I personally observed shiny, metallic particulate 

fines with elevated radioactivity filling the circular 

gap between a floor drain plug and the surrounding 

concrete floor. All completely accessible and visible 

to the naked eye. These metallic fines weren't 

buried or hidden. So the fact that they evaded the 

routine alpha monitoring program of the 

manufacturing operation for the entire 14 year 

period is evidence that it was not very effective.

What is more likely is that the routine alpha 

monitoring program was not as robust as NIOSH 

would have us believe. Certainly, that was my 

experience of safety programs when I started at 

M&C in 1983. While there may have been many 

safety policies and procedures in writing, the actual 

work practices rarely lived up to what was described 

on paper.
102

This SC&A memorandum -- now we're switching 

over to the SC&A memorandum, the presentation 

that Dr. Anigstein presented, entitled "Reply to 

NIOSH Metals and Controls Corp. Thorium and 

Welding Exposure Model," prepared by Robert 

Anigstein and Carl Gogolak on July 8th, 2020, 

largely relies on two referenced documents, the 

Sowell document from 1985, "Radiological Surveys 

of Texas Instruments Site," and the Roy F. Weston 

1996 "Building Interior Mediation Drainage System 

Characterization."

I don't have any confidence that these reference 

documents can be relied on to estimate a bounding 

dose to a worker in the Class under consideration 

for this petition, especially with respect to the 

parameter (phonetic) estimates.

Concerning the Sowell 1985 document, Josie 

correctly stated that this study was limited in 

nature. So, in the interest of time, I will not repeat 

everything Josie said on that point. However, I'd 

like to point out, skipping down here, it should be 

noted that the isotopic concentration of radioactive 

contamination in the exterior areas, and especially 

the former burial site, was completely different from 

the isotopic concentration of the radioactive 

contamination in the interior areas, and especially 

the subsurface drains of Building 10.

The exterior areas exhibited uranium isotopes with 

depleted and natural abundancies of U-235, 

whereas the interior areas exhibited enriched 

abundancies of 235. They were not at all the same 

source materials. So I would have no confidence 

that the thorium-to-uranium ratio of the exterior 

areas can be used to estimate the thorium-touranium ratio of the interior areas.

Specifically, with respect to Dr. Anigstein's 

assumption that he articulated today that the ratios 

of materials in the burial site were representative of 

discharges from the site, I disagree. My 

understanding is that the majority of process waste 
103

was drummed and shipped to Oak Ridge for 

disposal. The majority of what ended up in the 

burial site was related to a decontamination effort 

ordered in the 1960s, knows as the Great Smidgen 

Hunt.

In short, I don't believe the composition of isotopic 

concentrations found in the burial site are 

representative of what was routinely discharged 

during the AWE operations, and, by extension, to 

the subsurface drains.

I'm skipping down some more. Skipping over a lot 

of the stuff that I think the Board Members covered 

quite well. 

Referring to the policy sections of the Executive 

Order 13179 that was issued December 7th, 2000, 

it concludes that the Departments of Labor, Health 

and Human Services, and Energy shall be 

responsible for developing and implementing actions 

under the Act to compensate these workers and 

their families in a manner that is compassionate, 

fair, and timely.

So, let me reiterate that last phrase for emphasis. I 

believe this is the standard to which the Advisory 

Board must hold itself: to act in a manner that is 

compassionate, fair, and timely.

I feel that the NIOSH/ORAU Team and SC&A are 

expending enormous intellectual and government 

resources to defend a position that is not suggested 

by the plain facts of the case. Dr. Mauro suggests 

that we're losing site of the simplicity of the 

problem. The simplest description of the situation is 

that we have no measurements and monitoring data 

for this Class of employees. We have no idea how 

much thorium was present in the subsurface drains. 

And the M&C maintenance workers were exposed in 

an unknowable number of scenarios on a frequent 

basis.

NIOSH asserts they can estimate the bounding 

doses in plausible circumstances to any member of 
104

the Class, but the mere fact that they can model the 

dose incurred by exposure to a certain set of 

plausible exposure scenarios, albeit still 

hypothetical, does not mean that NIOSH has 

satisfied the sufficient accuracy standard codified in 

the Compensation Program regulation and enabling 

statute.

Once again, I would like to implore the Advisory 

Board to exercise its statutory authority under the 

enabling statute and the subsequent Executive 

Order at the time of the EEOICPA when it was

established in 2000, and recommend addition of this 

Class of workers as members of the Special 

Exposure Cohort.

Thank you for your careful consideration of my 

testimony. And with that, I conclude my remarks 

today.

Chair Beach: Thank you, Mike. Are there any other 

petitioners on the line that would like to make 

comments? 

Mike, did you expect anybody else?

Mr. Elliott: No, I did not, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay. All right. I just wanted to verify 

in case they were on mute.

Mr. Elliott: Thank you.

Path Forward, August Board Meeting Presentation, 

Plans

Chair Beach: The system can be troubling. Okay. So 

that brings us to Number 6 on our agenda, and that 

is the path forward for not August, that should've 

been removed and December put in its place. I 

don't know, I guess I need to hear back from NIOSH 

on their timing for documents and we need to have 

another Work Group meeting in order to present in 

December. So, NIOSH, can you give us some 

estimate? I think the workload's on you.
105

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, I think most of the workload 

is on us. Let me do this, Josie. Let me get with our 

contractor, get with our people, and we'll go 

through everything, put together a schedule, and 

then I'll send the Work Group a detailed when we 

expect to have these items complete. I don't want 

to commit to anything until I talk to them and try to 

get a good idea.

Chair Beach: Sure. That's understandable. And then 

could you also, I don't know if you took any notes 

during Mike's comments, the petitioner's -- he did 

bring up some good points on the source material 

from the inside versus the outside. And that was 

something I was kind of alluding to.

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Chair Beach: So I am concerned that we're not --

don't have a good handle on the source that was 

inside Building 10. So, if you could kind of address 

that also.

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Chair Beach: I don't know if anybody else has any 

comments. Work Group Members?

Member Kotelchuck: Josie? Dave.

Chair Beach: Yes.

Member Kotelchuck: I assume that Mr. Elliott's 

comments will be in the -- are in the transcript, and 

that sooner or later, we'll get to see that. I would 

like to see his statement. He may have it already 

available.

Chair Beach: Yeah. Mike, I guess we could ask you 

if you could send that to Rashaun, if you haven't 

already, so that she can get your comments to the 

whole Work Group.

Mr. Elliott: Certainly. And that has been my practice 

in the past. I will again. And I have not yet 

submitted my comments to Dr. Roberts, but I will 
106

certainly do so.

Chair Beach: Okay. That's great.

Mr. Elliott: In the next few days.

Chair Beach: Thanks. And thanks for raising that, 

Dave. I forgot to mention it earlier. 

Okay. Any other comments, Work Group? Anything 

else before we move to adjourn? We will hear back 

from NIOSH and get a sense of when we can get 

together for another Work Group call.

Rashaun, anything else that I might have missed?

Dr. Roberts: No, I think that pretty much covers it. I 

will expect an email from Mr. Elliott and I will 

subsequently distribute the comments, as was 

requested. Apologies for all of the technical issues 

today. It just goes to show how unpredictable that 

can be.

But I think that this has been a good discussion and 

I think a lot of good points have been raised. And 

once LaVon, Mr. Rutherford, follows up, we can 

determine when next to convene this Working 

Group.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you.

Adjourn

Chair Beach: And with no further comments, I'll 

move to adjourn this meeting. Thank you everyone.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled meeting went off 

the record at 2:33 p.m.)