NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Metals & Controls Corporation Work Group

Thursday, January 9, 2020

The Work Group convened telephonically at 10:30 

a.m. Eastern Time, Josie Beach, Chair, presiding.
 

2 

Present: 

Josie Beach, Chair

Henry Anderson, Member*

David Kotelchuck, Member*

Loretta R. Valerio, Member* 

Also Present: 

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Nancy Adams, Niosh Contractor*

Bob Anigstein, SC&A*

Bob Barton, SC&A 

Nancy Chalmers, DCAS

Christine Corwin, DCAS

Michael Elliott

Rose Gogliotti, SC&A

William "Rusty" Lorenzen

John Mauro, SC&A

Pat Mccloskey, ORAU Team

Jenny Naylor, HHS

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 & Controls 

Corporation Work Group Thursday, January 9, 2020

1

Welcome/Roll Call 4

Thorium and Welding 12

Petitioner’s Comments 103

Path Forward/April Board Meeting 118

Adjourn 127
 

4 

Proceedings

(10:34 a.m.) 

Welcome/Roll Call

Mr. Katz: I'll start with just saying welcome to 

everybody. This is the Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health. It's the Metals and Controls Work 

Group. 

And it's the first time in quite a while that the Work 

Group has been together, but there has been a lot of 

work done on behalf of the Work Group by the two 

staffs, both dealing with the thorium, welding, et 

cetera, business, and with petitioner concerns that 

were submitted to the Board, which they've both 

responded to, so you get more of that.

And let me just note, too, the background documents 

for this meeting are posted on the NIOSH website, 

there's scheduled meetings, today's date. So you can 

go there and see those background documents.

Now, there are presentations that are completely 

derivative of the background documents, for the 

most part I think. Those have not been clear

ed to be posted. They will get posted. So I'm sorry 

that they're not posted in advance of the meeting, 

but that's just the problem with getting things cleared 

in time particularly with the holiday coming just 

before this, and we have to go through all of those 

machinations.

So they will get posted. But, again, they are 

derivative, and so it's the best we can do. But, of 

course, everything, you know, will be said, so you'll 

hear what's being discussed as well as you have the 

background documents.

On -- oh, going on from there, let me just remind 
5

everyone as I go through roll call, since we're 

speaking about a specific site, please speak to conflict 

of interest. You don't need to do this with the Board 

Members because, by definition, they don't have 

conflicts with the site or they wouldn't be on the Work 

Group.

So, and then for roll call for the Board, Josie Beach is 

the Chair. She is here. And we have as Members 

already on the phone Dr. Henry Anderson, and we 

have Dr. David Kotelchuck, and we should have 

Loretta Valerio shortly.

(Roll call.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Then just last note, for those of you 

not familiar, please mute your phones. There will be 

opportunity for the petitioner to comment later on 

the agenda, as you'll see, and the agenda is posted 

on the website with those background documents.

But there's a proceedings -- and same for the staff, I 

can hear a lot of background breathing, for example. 

Please, all of you, mute your phones. The only person 

that should not be muted is whoever is speaking at 

the given -- at a given time. And if you don't have a 

mute button, press *6. That will mute your phones. 

And then press *6 again to come off of mute.

And, please, no one put this on hold at any point but 

hang up and dial back in if you need to leave for a 

piece, because putting it on hold will cause a 

disturbance for everyone else, the background music 

or whatever comes with your hold -- the hold function 

on your phone.

So, and then with that, let me just go first to Josie -

- or let me check on -- if we have Loretta first, 

Valerio.

Member Valerio: Ted, I'm here. I had problems with 

the password. It wouldn't take for some reason, but 

I'm here.
6

Mr. Katz: Okay. Great. Glad you're here. 

Okay. So we have our full roster of Work Group 

Members, and let me go to Josie first, and then I 

think we have staff ready to present these various 

background documents that are new to the Work 

Group.

Go ahead. Josie?

Chair Beach: Yeah. Good morning, everyone. I was 

just going to check who is going to be presenting. I 

don't see anything up yet, at least on my laptop. 

Does anybody have a presentation up yet?

Ms. Corwin: This is Christine. I don't see anything in 

Skype that allows me to put my presentation up.

Chair Beach: I think you have to take control to be 

the presenter. Isn't that correct, Ted?

Mr. Katz: Right.

Dr. Taulbee: Chris, I'm not seeing you in the list of 

participants here. I'm seeing everybody else. Did you 

come in through the CDC cardholders' part on the 

link?

Ms. Corwin: Maybe I did not. I didn't -- maybe --

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Well, if you come in through there 

--

Ms. Corwin: Let me go get help real quick. Okay. Just 

a second.

Mr. Katz: It's okay. It's pretty quick.

Chair Beach: Ted, I know on the agenda -- I'll just go 

through this really briefly.

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Chair Beach: The petitioners do have a document 

they want to present, so it was down here as an 
7

option, optional to the petitioner. And I think -- Mike, 

you're on the phone, did -- you sent your written 

statement in; is that correct?

Mr. Elliott: I have not sent in my written statement 

yet. I was going to do that after the meeting, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay. Great. That's fine. I just wanted 

to let it be known that you were going to present. I 

think he's got about a 15-minute presentation.

Mr. Katz: That's fine. We don't -- we don't have a 

back end on this meeting, so that's fine.

Chair Beach: Yeah. That was my next 

Mr. Katz: Fifteen minutes, whatever.

Someone else is trying to speak.

Mr. Elliott: Mr. Katz? I'm sorry. Mr. Katz, may I just 

mention one thing? So --

Mr. Katz: Yeah, of course.

Mr. Elliott: We do not have access to any Skype or 

slide presentation. We only have audio access.

Mr. Katz: That's correct. That's correct. So, Mike, you 

can't have access because the Skype is intended to 

be able to show stuff that's Privacy Act protected, and 

so on.

Mr. Elliott: Got it. Okay.

Mr. Katz: That's why. That's why. And as I said in my 

-- maybe you didn't hear it -- my initial remarks, you 

know, we try to get presentations cleared in advance 

of the meeting, but there's a lot of things to get done.

And with the holidays and all, we couldn't get them 

cleared in time. So they're not posted, but they will 

be posted just as soon as possible, so you'll be able 

to review them after the meeting. 

And I apologize for that. It's just -- there's nothing 
8

that can be done when they're not cleared in time.

Mr. Elliott: Understood. Thank you very much.

Chair Beach: Christina is in the lobby as a guest. I 

don't know, Ted --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I'll go and admit her. She shouldn't 

be as a guest, but I'll --

Chair Beach: Yeah. Oh, I know, but I just saw her 

there.

Mr. Katz: I don't know what's going on there, 

because she -- she got a direct invite. I didn't -- but 

anyway, I've admitted her on --

Member Kotelchuck: Hello, Ted?

Mr. Katz: Yes, Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: For the fellow who just spoke, 

but they can go onto the DCAS website and see all of 

the papers, not the --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Well, I know, and I addressed that.

Member Kotelchuck: -- papers and follow it on --

Mr. Katz: Right. I just --

Member Kotelchuck: -- the PowerPoint.

Mr. Katz: What I said earlier was that the 

presentations are all derivative of the papers.

Member Kotelchuck: Exactly.

Mr. Katz: So there's not any original material in the 

presentations. But just the same, you know, we 

prefer that the presentations be available to 

everyone.

Someone else is trying to speak to me in the middle 

of this. Is there someone else that needed to say 

something? Okay. No.
9

So we're still waiting I think for Christine to get on, 

but --

Ms. Corwin: I need someone to -- someone to make 

me a presenter. For some reason, it's not -- it's just 

keeping me as a guest and it's asking 

Mr. Katz: Why don't I suggest this? Why don't I 

suggest this? Why doesn't someone else -- I'm 

admitting someone again. But why don't -- why 

doesn't someone else just do the -- work the slides 

for you?

Chair Beach: Otherwise, I think she'd have to go all 

the way out, Christine, and come back in as a main -

- wouldn't she?

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I don't know why I'm admitting her 

through the lobby, because she shouldn't be --

Chair Beach: No.

Mr. Katz: -- ending up in the lobby in the first place. 

I don't know what's going on.

But, anyway, so someone else from DCAS perhaps 

can do her slides for her.

Dr. Taulbee: Chris, if you can send me your slides, 

I'll go ahead and try and do that from my workstation 

here.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. I'll send them to you right now.

Chair Beach: So while that's happening, so, Christine, 

you're going to present. Are you presenting the 

thorium and welding and --

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Chair Beach: Let's see, and then is SC&A going to go 

ahead and present the petitioner's concerns paper, 

or are you doing that also? I know you made the 

slide.
10

Mr. Katz: So, yeah, this is Ted. So, anyway, she does 

have a presentation for that. And as far as I know, 

Bob doesn't. So --

Chair Beach: I knew the section was out there, and I 

didn't -- I didn't know --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I think -- I think the format is that 

Christine will present, and then Bob and John Mauro 

will have a chance to respond. And then the Work 

Group will have their interrogatives with them, and 

then we move to the next presentation. Does that 

make sense? I think that will work.

Chair Beach: Okay.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. And I just wanted to say, while we're 

waiting still for this, Mike Elliott, if you would -- it 

could be after the meeting is fine, but if you would go 

ahead and send your remarks to me, or if you have 

the DCAS email address and send it to them, they'll 

forward it to me. Either way that would be good, 

because I'll make sure that your remarks are 

distributed to the Board Members and also that I can 

share that with the people that do the transcripts of 

the meeting, so that they can make sure the 

transcript is accurate. I know you may not say 

exactly what you write, but it should help some.

Mr. Elliott: Yes, yes. I will definitely do that. And, in 

fact, the reason why I held off until after the meeting 

is because I figured I -- you know, it's very possible 

that I will do some, you know --

Mr. Katz: Of course.

Mr. Elliott: -- changes, you know, in the course of 

speaking. So --

Mr. Katz: Of course. Of course.

Mr. Elliott: -- we'll send them out. I also plan to 

attach a document that I had intended to include with 

the original SEC petition, and I was going to send that 
11

by -- as an email attachment. Is that okay? I was 

going to send that to --

Mr. Katz: That's perfect.

Mr. Elliott: Yeah. All right. I have --

Mr. Katz: And don't send it to Josie, though, because 

I couldn't distribute everything to all of the Board 

Members, whereas you're just sending it to one 

Board Member, which is really not the most functional 

way to go about this.

Mr. Elliott: When I submit things officially, I typically 

send them to Josh -- I'm blanking on his last name.

Mr. Katz: That works, too. Josh Kinman. That works, 

too.

Mr. Elliott: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. That works, too. And he can -- he 

can just include in your note, please to forward it to 

me, and then I'll make sure that the Board Members 

get everything.

Mr. Elliott: Got it. Okay.

Mr. Katz: And same with the staff for the Board, the 

contractor SC&A. So that's very helpful. Thank you, 

Mike.

Mr. Elliott: All right.

Mr. Katz: Okay. How are we doing?

Chair Beach: Still blank.

Ms. Corwin: I've sent the -- I've sent the presentation 

to --

Dr. Taulbee: Almost there.

Ms. Corwin: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay. Thanks, Tim. No, I know, I 
12

know. I'm sorry. It's all right. It's all right. This is 

another hiccup. There we go.

Ms. Corwin: I'm just not sure what happened.

Mr. Katz: It's all right. It's all right. Let's see, take 

over as presenter. Actually, somebody can now do -

- yeah. And, actually, it has that function. And I don't 

know if everybody sees that, but there's a button at 

the top, take over as presenter. I don't know if --

Chair Beach: Yeah. I bet Christina can do that.

Mr. Katz: If she has that button at the top, unless she 

is being discriminated against here.

Chair Beach: I don't -- I don't see --

Dr. Taulbee: Anytime you are ready, Chris.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. 

Dr. Taulbee: Just tell me when to turn the slide.

Thorium and Welding

Ms. Corwin: It just popped -- it just popped up.

Okay. I'll begin then with, obviously, the first slide. 

So good morning. My name is Christine Corwin. I am 

a health physicist with NIOSH, and I'm presenting 

information about the Metals and Controls Thorium 

and Welding Exposure Model for SEC-00236.

I would like to begin with some background 

information on why and how the Thorium and 

Welding Exposure Model was developed. 

On to Slide 2. NIOSH presented the Evaluation 

Report for SEC-00236 for the Metals and Controls 

Corporation to the Advisory Board on August 24, 

2017.

Go on to -- oh, wait a minute. No, this is the wrong -

- Tim, that's the wrong presentation.
13

Dr. Taulbee: Sorry. Wrong presentation?

Ms. Corwin: Update. Yeah. The very first one that 

came across the email.

Dr. Taulbee: Oh, okay. I apologize. Sorry.

Ms. Corwin: Right. 

Dr. Taulbee: The White Paper one. Sorry.

Ms. Corwin: Yeah. That's all right. Well, you shouldn't 

have to do this at all. I apologize.

Dr. Taulbee: It's all right. That one, let's try again 

here. Okay. 

Ms. Corwin: There we go.

Dr. Taulbee: There we go.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. So NIOSH presented the 

Evaluation Report for SEC-00236 for the Metals and 

Controls Corporation to the Advisory Board on August 

24, 2017. At the conclusion of that presentation, a 

petitioner raised a concern about the adequacy of the 

Evaluation Report in addressing maintenance-type 

work.

The petitioner stated that he took great care to define 

the Class of Work Group under evaluation of the 

petition as precisely and as narrowly as possible to 

coincide with workers for whom there was a high 

degree of confidence that they received elevated 

exposures to residual radioactive contamination.

In response to this concern, on September 5, 2017, 

NIOSH initiated strategies to continue research and 

further develop the SEC. These strategies included 

plans to review monitoring records in the Site 

Research Database and plans to search for former 

M&C workers so that NIOSH could conduct interviews 

with them.

Next slide.
14

From October 24, 2017, through October 26, 2017, 

NIOSH, ORAU, and SC&A personnel interviewed 12 

former M&C workers and individuals knowledgeable 

about maintenance work. Interviewers asked 

questions regarding the frequency and duration of 

work, including HVAC, utility and drain line 

maintenance, and equipment installations.

In addition to the interviews, other actions were 

occurring. On November 8, 2017, the Working Group, 

SC&A, NIOSH, and ORAU held a teleconference to 

discuss technical issues associated with developing 

exposure models for maintenance work.

On February 6, 2018, NIOSH obtained additional 

monitoring data regarding remediation work 

performed by Creative Pollution Solutions, or CPS, in 

1992 and 1994.

On February 13, 2018, NIOSH received SC&A's 

review of the M&C SEC Petition Evaluation Report.

On April 23, 2018, NIOSH issued the Metals and 

Controls Corporation's subsurface exposure model 

White Paper. And on May 3, 2018, SC&A presented 

their findings and observations associated with the 

SEC Evaluation Report. 

The petitioner also made a statement and provided a 

letter with their concerns. After the meeting, an 

issues matrix was created. 

On August 22, 2018, the Working Group presented 

their findings and observations on the SEC-00236 

Evaluation Report during a full Advisory Board 

meeting, and NIOSH provided an update on the 

progress of the SEC work. The petitioners also made 

a statement and provided a letter with their concerns.

On November 20, 2018, during a Working Group 

meeting, NIOSH presented the Metals and Controls 

Corporation maintenance exposure model White 

Paper that included HVAC maintenance and Building 

10 overhead exposure models. And SC&A presented 
15

their observations associated with the Metals and 

Controls subsurface exposure model, and the Metals 

and Controls maintenance exposure model White 

Papers.

On December 13, 2018, during a full Advisory Board 

meeting, the Working Group presented an update, 

and the petitioners also made a statement and 

provided a letter with their concerns.

On April 8, 2019, NIOSH issued the Metals and 

Controls Corporation Thorium and Welding Exposure 

Model White Paper and made it available to SC&A and 

the Working Group. 

And, finally, on July 26, 2019, SC&A issued an eightpage memo that was a review of NIOSH's Metals and 

Controls Corporation Thorium and Welding Exposure 

Model.

The Metals and Controls Corporation Thorium and 

Welding Exposure Model White Paper addressed two 

concerns that were raised by the petitioner which 

were exposures to thorium that occurred while 

working inside Building 10, and exposures that 

occurred during welding activities.

The Metals and Controls Corporation Thorium and 

Welding Exposure Model White Paper addressed 

these two concerns by providing a method for 

bounding thorium exposures while working inside 

Building 10 and providing an exposure model for 

exposures that occur during welding activities.

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Is this the correct slide, or did I skip 

one?

Ms. Corwin: Let me see. No, you're one behind. 

Dr. Taulbee: How about now?

Ms. Corwin: No. Go to slide 9. Yes, that's it. Okay.
16

Petitioner expressed a concern that the grab samples 

that were collected in the drainage system pipe and 

surrounding soils were only analyzed for uranium. 

And that since we know some thorium work occurred, 

we have no way of knowing how much thorium was 

present in the residual radioactivity and to which the 

maintenance workers were exposed.

Next slide.

During AWE operations, thorium-bearing component 

fabrication occurred, which included reactor fuel, 

metallic alloys, and metallic foils. The only definitive 

information regarding the amount of thorium at M&C 

is from a 1962 nuclear safety analysis that listed the 

total quantity of thorium as 244 kilograms.

The uranium to thorium-232 ratio in the 1962 

inventory data was dominated by uranium. There 

was approximately 32 times as much uranium as 

there was thorium-232, and the activity ratio was 

even more dominated by uranium, where there was 

188 times more uranium when assuming natural 

uranium and thorium-232.

Next slide.

As M&C cleaned the areas used for AWE operations 

prior to 1968, they buried waste and materials in the 

area between Buildings 11 and 12. M&C personnel 

made the NRC aware of this burial area in 1982 as 

part of their D&D effort.

The NRC performed a verification sampling of the 

burial area in 1984, and notified M&C personnel of 

the presence of contamination above release limits, 

including the presence of thorium. The M&C 

contractor, CPS, performed additional sampling of 

the burial area in 1992 and corroborated the 

presence of thorium in their report to M&C.

So this brings us to the new NIOSH method for 

bounding thorium exposures. Although M&C only 

analyzed Building 10 subsurface samples for uranium 
17

in 1995, NIOSH can bound thorium exposures during 

maintenance work by assuming that the subsurface 

sediments contained equivalent amounts of natural 

uranium and thorium-232.

Using the previously determined 90 percentile 

measured uranium activity in the sediment -- what's 

documented in the Metals and Controls Corporation 

maintenance exposure model White Paper -- NIOSH 

determined that the sediment NIOSH determined the 

sediment to be about one percent by weight of 

natural uranium.

Next slide.

So if we assume that the subsurface was 

contaminated with equal amounts of thorium and 

uranium, the one percent available sludge and a 

subsequent dust loading created from maintenance 

work would have resulted in a thorium air 

concentration of 2.2 micrograms per meter cubed.

Using the thorium-232-specific activity of 0.11 

microcuries per gram, the air concentration would 

have been 2.42 times 10 to the negative 13 

microcuries per millimeter during one month of 

subsurface maintenance each year.

So to provide some perspective, this concentration 

would amount to an inhalation --

Chair Beach: Christine, can I stop you for a sec? 

Ted, could you ask someone to --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I mean, they can hear you, but --

yeah, someone is coughing, and whoever is coughing 

is not on mute. So if you could just please put your 

phone on mute. And if you don't have a mute button, 

press *6. That would help everyone else. Thanks.

Go ahead again, Christine.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. So to provide some perspective on 
18

all those numbers, this concentration would amount 

to an inhalation committed effective dose of 10.42 

millirem a year. And then if we add ingestion into the 

estimate, then the dose becomes 14.78 millirem per 

year.

So, to summarize, NIOSH believes they can use the 

calculated error concentration to bound internal 

thorium exposures that occurred while performing 

subsurface maintenance within Building 10. NIOSH 

will continue to estimate worker doses using the most 

claimant-favorable isotope of thorium or uranium.

For the burial area and Building 10 outside perimeter,

NIOSH can use isotopic thorium-232 results to model 

air concentrations breathed by maintenance workers 

as previously described in the Metals and Controls 

Corporation maintenance exposure model White 

Paper.

Now we're on to the second issue that was raised by 

the petitioner and was that of welding of structural 

framework that was sometimes necessary for roof 

penetration work that occurred.

Next slide?

During the residual period, while performing 

maintenance work in the Building 10 overhead area, 

maintenance -- M&C workers were potentially 

exposure to contamination remaining from AWE 

operations. This work included installing pipe racks, 

welding supports to the trusses to fortify the roof, 

and cutting and drilling up through the roof to make 

penetrations for running services to rooftop 

equipment, such as air conditioning systems, 

recirculating water, chilled water supply and returns, 

and steam and condensate returns, as well as 

installing equipment on the roof.

A June 1981 NRC inspection report stated that Texas

Instruments used a cutting and welding permit 

program. The permit system used a card on which 
19

the necessary precautions required to be taken were 

listed. 

In 1964, a Metals and Controls safety manual 

specified welding and flame-cutting precautions for 

fire safety, including pre-work cleaning of 

combustible debris, removal of deposits inside of 

ductwork, use of curtains and shields to protect 

personnel from glare and sparks, and the use of 

permit-required areas for sewers, fits, drains, 

ventilators, and ducts. The manual also stated that 

barricades were required for overhead work.

Interviews of M&C maintenance personnel indicated 

that welding is the -- welding in the dusty overhead 

area of Building 10 was only one of our many duties, 

but also included subsurface and HVAC work, and 

occupied approximately four hours per month or 48 

hours per year.

NIOSH previously characterized the overhead work 

environment in Building 10 using the total surface 

activity and assumed 10 percent of that activity was 

removable and available to generate airborne 

activity.

NIOSH will continue to assign doses using this 

method for other work in the overhead area. 

However, for welding, NIOSH will assume 100 

percent of the activity is resuspended.

NIOSH previously modeled exposures for the entire 

overhead area uniformly, using the 95th percentile 

contamination level and a one times 10 to the 

negative fourth resuspension factor. We are aware 

that good work practices require clean bare metal 

prior to welding, which can include wire brushing and 

grinding as described in worker interviews.

NIOSH believes this weld preparation work to be the 

portion of the welding task capable of generating the 

highest airborne concentration. In addition, NUREG1400, Section 1.2.3, indicates that a dispersability 
20

factor of 10 should be used when modeling intakes 

that involve grinding operations.

Therefore, NIOSH will increase the resuspension 

factor and apply a value of one times 10 to the 

negative third to the 95th percentile contamination 

level. These factors result in a calculated air 

concentration of 4.05 times 10 to the negative 12th 

microcuries per millimeter -- sorry, milliliter.

This air concentration would be assumed to be 

inhaled for the 48 hours of welding that occurred per 

year for M&C personnel that performed welding in the 

Building 10 overhead area, and will be added in 

addition to other assigned exposures.

To provide some perspective, again, this equates to 

a committed effective dose of 16.75 millirem per 

year. Adding in dose from ingestion gives us an 

estimated dose of 16.77 millirem per year.

So, to summarize the White Paper in this 

presentation, NIOSH bounding method for internal 

exposures from welding, NIOSH will assume 100 

percent of the total surface activity is removable and 

available for resuspension. NIOSH will increase the 

resuspension factor and apply a value of one times 

10 to the negative third to the 95th percentile 

contamination level.

So this air concentration will be assumed to be 

inhaled for the 48 hours of welding that occurred per

year for M&C personnel that performed welding in the 

Building 10 overhead area, and will be assigned in 

addition to the other assigned exposures.

And that's the end of my presentation. The 

references are attached.

Chair Beach: Thanks, Christina. Does anybody have 

any questions, Work Group Members, clarifications 

that are needed?

Member Valerio: I don't have any, Josie. This is 
21

Loretta.

Chair Beach: Okay. Dave, any for you?

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, I do. On slide 18, on the 

many duties that they were -- we were estimated 

that there were -- welding was four hours per month. 

When I would see this paper, which gave the sources, 

on page 6 of the White Paper, the number four hours 

per month, 48 per year, were given in R-OP 2017-B. 

I believe that is the interview of one person. Is that 

not correct, that that number, four hours, comes 

from -- there were 12 interviews, but they were 

lettered A, B through whatever, through --

Chair Beach: F, G, yeah.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. So 2017-B, the four hours 

per month, would appear there to come from one 

individual among the 12. Is that correct? 

And maybe somebody who is -- yourself, Ms. Corwin, 

or the -- or the other people who contributed to the 

White Paper. That's, to me, a question, whether 

that's information from one person or whether --

which is what I believe it is. But I would like to 

confirm that.

Mr. McCloskey: This is Pat McCloskey. I can answer 

that one for you.

Member Kotelchuck: Good.

Mr. McCloskey: So those 12 people, we looked at all 

of those interviews and looked for folks that had 

experience with welding, who listed it in their 

interviews. And we reached out to I'm going to say 

two or three of those folks and only got a response 

from one. But we felt like he was in a position where 

he was pretty knowledgeable as a maintenance 

supervisor. I can't remember the exact name of the 

person right now, but --

Member Kotelchuck: No. And, actually, we can't 
22

discuss it on --

Mr. McCloskey: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Member Kotelchuck: -- in a public meeting anyway.

Mr. McCloskey: Appreciate that. Thanks for keeping 

me straight there.

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah. We felt like he was qualified to 

give a value and we went with that one person.

Member Kotelchuck: Right. And that was a 2017 

interview about the work that had been done through 

-- from '68 through -- that's thin, frankly. However, 

it is what it is. It's one person -- I'm trying to 

remember back -- you know, making their best 

estimate. It's -- but the four hours is a very important 

number in terms of getting the extent of exposure.

It would be nice and would have been nicer if one 

could have had several folks or questions -- but, 

okay, that's my question. You answered it. Thank 

you.

Chair Beach: Well, and on that same line, that same 

worker -- Pat, I'm going to ask you, since you 

answered Dave. Was he -- did he actually do work as 

well, or was he just a supervisor? Because when you 

read his statement, it sounds like he was actually 

doing the work.

Mr. McCloskey: I believe, you know, most of the folks 

there at M&C worked their way up. The supervisors 

were taken from men that worked in the field for a 

while, and he started out as a worker and I believe 

at the end he was a supervisor who oversaw a lot of 

work. So --

Member Kotelchuck: Right. That was -- that was due 

of many of the people, many of the 12. I was looking 

over my notes about their interviews. But those were 
23

people who had field experience, and I guess that is 

an issue. 

It seems to me that that one should -- put it this way. 

I did not look up the interview of 2017-B in the last 

couple of days. These are notes that I took originally 

when I was reading it, but it is important to check 

that it was a field person, a person with field 

experience, no matter how they moved up the 

ladder.

If it was -- that's a single person, but at least a good 

-- an experienced single person. Still, that's thin.

Dr. Mauro: Dr. Kotelchuck, this is John Mauro. There 

is a point to this. I'd like to add another dimension 

that might be helpful. 

Member Kotelchuck: Sure.

Dr. Mauro: One of the philosophies that we all 

adopted is that when we do these dose scenarios, we 

assume it's always the same person. So it's sort of 

like if you're going to reconstruct a person's dose, we 

know that different people worked at different times 

on these projects. 

So it wasn't always the same person that did any 

particular job. In order to bound the exposure, we 

used what I would consider to be a truly bounding 

assumption that one person whether he was working 

in a subsurface environment, or he was working in 

the rafters, or he was replacing filters, and all of 

these various scenarios, we assumed it was always 

the same person. You know, whether it was once 

every quarter or once every year, or whatever the 

periodicity, or once a month, we always assumed that 

it was the same person, and his dose is -- and the 

reality is that wasn't the case. 

We know from the interviews of all the workers that 

different people were drawn upon from the 

maintenance and repurposing activities. So that's an 

added conservatism built into this, which we should 
24

keep in mind as we work our way through all of these 

different scenarios.

Member Kotelchuck: Please do clarify for me, though, 

I didn't quite -- if the person has a work record, and 

what -- is it correct to say that anybody, where there 

was welding, are you -- are you assigning four hours 

to every single one of the maintenance persons 

conservatively? 

Or only for four -- four hours only for those with 

whom their -- whatever work records there are, like 

worked with welding? That is not clear. Who was 

actually assigned the welding -- these welding hours?

Chair Beach: Can I ask another question that's 

pertinent to Dave's before you answer Dave? This is 

Josie. Was the building, the rafters, the roof, that was 

open to all areas of Building 10 except for the one 

area I think in Area 7; is that correct?

Ms. Corwin: Correct.

Chair Beach: Okay. Because -- so if somebody was 

up there grinding, dusting, brushing, then that 

respirable air would cover I mean, it would go 

everywhere in the building when they used air to 

brush off that. So I wanted to make that point, that 

it was -- and find out, because the guy said it made 

a heck of a mess. And so go ahead, John. I just 

wanted to know that. That was throughout the entire 

building. It wasn't just in one space.

Dr. Mauro: I'll take a shot, and certainly Pat, Ed, or -

- revise any -- my perception of the scenario.

When we did the doses. When the doses are done, 

you're saying -- you know, you have the activity on 

the surface that's being worked on, brushed, and, 

yes, you have an open area where that brushing of 

course is going to disperse the surface activity. And 

the closer you are to the -- where the brushing is 

going on, the higher the concentration is.
25

So it's the guy that's actually doing the brushing 

that's going to get the resuspension factor of 10 to 

the minus 3. And in my experience, 10 to the minus 

3 is about as high as it can go. I think I saw one paper 

where someone had 10 to the minus 2.

So to answer your question, yes, of course, any dust 

that has been resuspended during the brushing and 

cleansing operation prior to the welding will be 

dispersed. But the people that are greater distances 

from -- where the activity is taking place, they're 

going to experience dust loadings that are orders of 

magnitude lower, because -- you know, because 

they're further away.

So this resuspension factor really is for the guy that 

is actually doing it, and I would say that in any given 

welding operation that took place it's likely that there 

was a crew of people. And it wasn't always the same 

person.

Now, the number of people in that crew who were 

qualified as welders to do that work, I don't have the 

answer to that. But I do know from speaking that 

there were groups of people that were assigned to 

what I would refer to as maintenance and 

repurposing activities. And there were a number of 

them, and they all circulated, if so qualified.

And I would -- to help, as best I can, likely there was 

a limited number of qualified welders. There may 

have been only one. I mean, I'll be the first to say it's 

possible that they only had one qualified welder, and 

he was the one who always did the work.

So, but -- and that was the assumption that was 

used, that whenever any of that work was done, and 

they got a snootful for that time period, whether it's 

four hours or some other number of hours, it was for 

that one. We gave it to that person. So you really 

can't, in my mind, place -- I mean, that's really a 

higher end, possibly plausible, but certainly a high 

end way of approaching the problem.
26

I hope that helps.

Member Kotelchuck: It does. So that says to me that 

the four hours -- let me get back to my question. So 

the four hours were given to those people -- would 

be given to those people in maintenance who were -

- had qualifications as a welder or had something 

with regard to the welding responsibilities in their 

work record.

Mr. Katz: Well, let's -- this is Ted. Dave, before we -

- let's get that from the DCAS folks, as to whether 

that's the case or whether all maintenance workers -

-

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: We don't know, so let's hear from DCAS 

about that.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Ms. Corwin: That would -- it would apply to personnel 

that were involved in the welding and in support of 

the welding, you know, whoever the group was that 

performed the necessary tasks associated with the 

welding.

Member Kotelchuck: That's a little bit -- that's 

concerning to me.

Mr. Rutherford: This is LaVon Rutherford. Chris and 

Jack, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe we have 

the information to know exactly who was involved in 

the welding. So it would include all maintenance 

personnel; am I correct?

Mr. McCloskey: This is Pat. So what happened at 

Metals and Controls -- and we heard this a lot doing 

the interviews -- is you couldn't say, "Hey, I'm an 

electrician, I don't do plumbing." You couldn't do 

that. 

Ideally, we -- you know, we've already said here in 
27

Chris' slide that they had an established program 

where they roped off the area and kept people back, 

and there were permits required. 

And we're thinking that records would show someone 

was a welder, but I think we would allow -- what we 

would commonly do is if someone doing an interview 

said that they did some welding, we certainly would 

have -- would recognize that and give them --

Ms. Corwin: Correct. We don't -- we don't have to 

have like proof of -- in their employment records. 

Typically, we get the information from CATIs.

Mr. Katz: Chris, this is Ted. I'm sorry, but you have 

also survivors. In this case, you don't necessarily 

have CATI information on what they did, in which 

case, what do you do? That's why I'm -- I'm thinking 

like LaVon is. In a case where you have a CATI, you 

don't know -- you knew -- you may not even know 

they were actually a maintenance worker.

And I think the only way -- thing you can do is 

assume they might have been a maintenance worker 

and assume they might have done welding as a

maintenance worker, right? I mean, it's -- I'm not 

sure what you're doing, but --

Member Kotelchuck: Right. Which is to say, one --

and that was the concern, is that simply being 

assigned to everybody, or are there ways of finding 

out who were welders? And I admit, in the -- in the 

interviews, there were very clear statements about, 

you know, when the -- if the plumber, if the -- if the 

plumbers are busy and the electricians are not, the 

electricians become plumbers. That's what one of the 

interviewees said.

And that sounded -- and that seems to be confirmed 

by other things that people rotated. So I don't know 

-- I just want to know, the four hours it sounds like 

should be assigned to everybody. 

Dr. Mauro: Dr. Kotelchuck, I would agree with you. I 
28

would agree with you. I'll tell you -- I'll tell you why. 

Remember, the process was, let's say, a two-step 

process. There was prep work where you scrubbed 

and cleaned, because you don't just weld. You scrub 

and clean.

Member Kotelchuck: Sure.

Dr. Mauro: And that could be by any maintenance 

worker. He's given instructions, "I want you to scrub 

and clean, so that the bare metal is there." So the 

welder then could come, the qualified welder, could 

come in and do his job. 

So, in my -- and, you know, I'm just winging this a 

bit because I didn't write any of this, and any of the 

work I wrote, we didn't get down to this granularity, 

which is good, not getting down to a level of 

granularity we haven't done before.

It seems to me reasonable that, since we don't know 

-- since there is this pool of workers, I would say that 

that particular exposure, the scrubbing and brushing, 

and the 10 to the minus 3, and all of that, I would 

give that to everybody. That would -- that could 

possibly have been involved in repurposing the 

maintenance for a number of reasons.

We don't know who did the work -- welding -- but 

that's almost not that relevant. What is really 

relevant is who may have been a support person out 

to the welder who did the prep work. 

So I think a reasonable strategy, which I personally 

believe could be a Site Profile-type issue, is do we 

assume only a limited number of people, or do we 

assume anyone from the pool could possibly have 

done that work? I think it should be given to 

everybody.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. It sounds to -- the 

argument, I think, sounds that it probably should be 

given to everybody. I still have, myself, the concern 

that -- this is one person who said it. We're assigning 
29

it to everybody. But at least it -- let's take that one 

person's information and say, "Look, it's good 

information. There's reason to believe it's good 

information." It's one person, but those four hours 

should be given to everybody, or will have to be given 

to everybody.

Dr. Anigstein: This is Bob Anigstein. Even though we 

shouldn't be dictating NIOSH's procedures, which 

hasn't been written yet, but based on other sites that 

I've been involved with -- for instance, General Steel 

Industries, called GSI, in Illinois -- they would take -

- the agreement was find the highest doses that 

anyone could plausibly get. In those cases, there was 

exposure to industrial radiography that was using 

radium sources.

And unless someone can be proven not to have 

worked in the plant, it was automatically giving the 

highest doses to the plant workers. So it was a 

negative thing. You were guilty until proven innocent.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. And this is claimantfavorable, of course.

Dr. Anigstein: Very claimant-favorable. And this 

eliminates the need to identify this particular 

worker's job, because maybe he had more than one 

job and the petitioner was a deceased worker and 

maybe his survivors aren't very clear what work he 

did. So this seems to be a common NIOSH practice. 

And NIOSH can correct me if --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. Makes sense. This is a 

complicated case because this was a maintenance 

crew and people did many different kinds of jobs. And 

we're going to have to characterize each one of them. 

But we're doing welding, and my question is 

answered. My questions are answered.

Chair Beach: This is Josie. I have another follow-on 

question. I think, Pat, you spoke, you said that the 
30

procedure -- and I don't know what page it is on your 

slides, Christina -- but you said the procedure that 

you found in the mid-'60s said that they would rope 

off the area, put up screens, that type of thing.

Did you hear that from any interviews that you 

conducted, Pat, that agreed with that statement, that 

they actually followed that procedure that you found?

Mr. McCloskey: Josie, hi. Top of my head, I'm trying 

to remember in the interviews if they said -- I mean, 

as the site matured, their controls got better. I 

remember that. But I don't remember hearing 

anything specific about welding and barricades that I 

can remember.

Chair Beach: In the controls. Yeah. I mean, it's easy 

to cite what you find in procedures, but most of us 

that work in those areas know that they're not always 

followed. So, that's why I just thought it -- because I 

was looking for that specifically from the workers' 

interviews and didn't see it. So.

Mr. McCloskey: They had a pretty good program late, 

and I don't -- I can't see raining sparks down on 

people below you, even without rules, but, you know 

--

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: Yeah, you know, I wasn't concerned 

about the welding so much as the cleaning and 

grinding, because the one worker that you guys did 

cite talked about what a mess -- a heck of a mess, 

and he used the compressed air tank to blow it all off. 

And so, anyway, that's fine. I was just curious about 

that, if you knew.

Mr. Rutherford: Josie, this is LaVon. I wanted to point 

out that, Dave, if we do go with applying this to 

everyone, that issue won't matter. 

Chair Beach: Correct.
31

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, that's right.

Chair Beach: If we do. Henry, do you have any 

questions or comments?

Member Anderson: No. I was just -- you have already 

covered it. I think it needs to be added in to 

everybody. I don't think there is enough information 

in most of the records to try to segregate the group 

into those who did this kind of work and those who 

didn't.

So, it certainly is an activity that would go on, and I 

think breaking it out into -- it was a welding job that 

needed to be done, but the prep work really could be 

done by anybody who is available. And I think that is 

really where the major exposures would occur with 

that individual. The question is: how broad is that 

exposure from that cleaning activity down below 

them?

Chair Beach: Well, and one of the other --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: The descriptions are it could be 

pretty messy, and especially using a grinder, it goes 

all over.

Chair Beach: Yeah. The other part of this -- and I'll 

let it out -- that I know the roof surveys were based 

on historical histories. They used to exhaust the 

uranium processing through the roof penetrations. 

And so if somebody was getting into not just welding 

on the surface, but if you were actually having to put 

pipes in through the roof, there's source material that 

you could come in contact with that we haven't even 

really touched on in this comment. So.

Dr. Mauro: This is John Mauro again. I'm sorry to 

interrupt, but there's another perspective here that I 

think is important to keep in mind. The reality is, let's 

say there is a pool of people that we draw upon that 

might have been up close and personal doing the 
32

actual prep work and getting this relatively elevated 

exposure. And we're going, therefore, everyone gets 

that dose.

But think about this for a minute. We're assuming it's 

always -- it's everyone, and it's always the same 

person. Stay with me a minute. It's as if the same 

person is always the one who's doing the prep work 

and getting the high exposure year after year, and 

we're going to give that to everybody.

Now, we know now -- you know, think about it. So, 

therefore, that covers every scenario that you might 

conceive of. That is, yes, there are going to be people 

that are farther away, right, when this work is going 

on, and may be exposed to some of the stuff that 

falls out, or whatever.

But, no, we're going to give everybody as if every 

single person did that job every single time. Did you 

follow that? 

Member Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Mauro: Which is extremely conservative, because 

we know that -- so that almost, like, puts to bed all 

of these other secondary issues. Well, what about a 

little further away? No, we're going to give this to 

everybody as if he was the person that did it every 

single time. Got it?

Member Anderson: Right.

Dr. Mauro: I really believe you can't do much more 

than that.

Member Anderson: Right.

Chair Beach: If we can agree that the dose that is 

being given is a correct dose for --

Dr. Mauro: Absolutely. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but 

keep in mind, what we're saying, the 90th percentile, 

the measured level on the surface of the metal, 10 to 
33

the minus-three resuspension factor, so -- yes.

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me for interrupting, John, but 

we have some comments about the doses, so maybe 

we should wait until the next --

Dr. Mauro: Oh, okay. So there may be some other 

things to discuss about whether --

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah, I mean, there's agreement that 

everyone should get -- that there's four hours a 

month of exposure to the welding prep, and that 

should be given to everyone. But what the actual 

exposure is is another matter, which is the subject of 

an SC&A report.

Dr. Mauro: A refinement on what a better number 

might be. I agree, but, you see, right now I am trying 

to--

Dr. Anigstein: You're jumping a little ahead.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. Well, no, no, I think I'm trying to 

set a perspective that assumptions were made that 

really pushed it to its limit. 

Now, whether you have a better resuspension factor, 

whether your upper 90th percentile activity on the 

surface that's going to be, you know, prepped, and 

some discussion is needed on that, that's fine, you 

know, and we certainly could get there.

But I think the bigger issue is really, you know, how 

do you cut out this problem? And that's why I bring 

this up. I think it puts to bed a number of questions 

regarding, well, what about people that may be 

further away? Well, that question goes away if you're 

giving the high-end dose to everybody as if he was 

the only one that ever did it.

Mr. Katz: I think that's understood, John. I think 

that's a nice clarification.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
34

Mr. Katz: Yeah. 

Member Anderson: This is Andy again. I mean, taking 

that further, rather than each individual who is 

working might have up to four hours a month, it 

really comes down to, well, how many potential 

people are there? And then, if you said it's the same

person, it could become a full-time job. So then you 

assign, instead of four hours a month, the whole work 

month.

Dr. Mauro: I agree. I think that -- yep.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: If there's only five potential 

people that would be eligible to do that, then it would 

be 20 hours a month. So I think that really goes way 

beyond.

Mr. Katz: I don't understand that, Andy. I don't 

understand what you're trying to say there.

Member Anderson: What I'm trying to say is, John 

was saying that, if it was the same person all the 

time, as I read this, it's an individual maintenance 

worker they said averaged about, you know, four 

hours a month, but it isn't the same person four 

hours a month. It's all of the workers four hours a 

month. And if now you say, "Well, it was the same 

worker," then that one worker would be taking all of 

the hours from other individuals.

Mr. Katz: No, no. The practical -- no, the practical 

way this works is just every worker who comes in 

with a claim who was in the place, if this goes through 

this way and NIOSH adopts this, every worker who's 

under that roof basically would get four hours of this 

dose. So it's not additive, you don't end up having, 

you know, 40 hours or more. You get four hours, 

each worker who claims.

Member Anderson: No, I understand that. But I 

thought John was saying it could be the same person 
35

did it all. There's only one person doing --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: Then it depends how many jobs 

were there, and then that is a one -- you're not 

saying every month only one person did four hours.

Mr. Rutherford: Actually, let me add a little 

clarification, help you out here. This is LaVon again. 

There was, on average, four hours of welding work 

total in the overhead.

Member Anderson: That's good. That helps. That's 

really what I was getting at.

Mr. Rutherford: All right. Thank you.

Member Anderson: So, it's not 16 hours. It would be 

divided amongst four people, that's --

Mr. Katz: No.

Chair Beach: Okay. And so this is Josie. That is if we 

decide that this is a Site Profile issue and not an SEC 

issue. Then those numbers and that time is 

negotiable and something to be worked out at the 

time we're discussing that as a Site Profile, correct?

Member Anderson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Well, I mean, yeah, it doesn't matter what 

label you put on it. I mean, you have to --

Chair Beach: Right. Okay. Any other discussion on 

the internal welding?

Member Valerio: So, Josie, this is Loretta. I have a 

question. 

Chair Beach: Okay. Go ahead.

Member Valerio: Just to clarify, this four-hour 

exposure limit will be applied to support -- meaning 

laborers, custodians, anyone who may have been in 
36

the building -- will receive this four-hour dose, is that 

correct?

Mr. Katz: That's what you're hearing from the Work 

Group as a recommendation, in effect.

Member Valerio: That's the recommendation. So, to 

expand on my question, are we -- and it really 

doesn't matter, I guess -- is this just welding that 

was done up in the rafters? Or was it welding that 

was done down, you know, on the ground level 

during this timeframe as well? Because I believe that 

there was, when they were cutting into the drains 

and into the pipes. So, basically, going back to the 

original question, this four hours would apply to 

anyone whose work record places them in this 

building, correct?

Mr. Katz: Correct. 

Member Valerio: Okay.

Mr. Katz: Again, this is the discussion that's going on 

in the Work Group. And NIOSH hasn't put out a 

method yet or adopted this, but they've discussed it 

amicably. So that's where we are right now.

Dr. Mauro: I think there is one last question that 

needs to be asked. This four hour number, is that 

four hours a year that that kind of work was being 

done year after year? Or is that four hours total for 

the entire residual period?

Mr. McCloskey: This is, on average, four hours per 

month, or 48 hours per year.

Dr. Mauro: Right. So we're getting -- so everyone --

now, just to make sure, because I didn't want to 

mislead anyone as we were talking through. So, we 

have -- every individual that theoretically could have 

been involved in the prep work is going to be given 

the totality of that exposure, not just one time, not 

just a one-time exposure, but --
37

Dr. Anigstein: That's the practice run. That's the 

practice. P putting perhaps a different slant on this, 

it's not as if you have -- I'm just making up a number 

-- 300 workers, and there just isn't enough welding 

work for everybody to be doing that. I'm just posing 

it as a strawman. That's not the relevant question. 

The relevant question is, since we don't know for 

certainty who did the work and who didn't, you just 

assume that every claimant, until proven otherwise -

-

Dr. Mauro: Yes. Gets it all.

Dr. Anigstein: -- did that four hours, every month, 

for every month that he worked at M&C.

Dr. Mauro: Good. That's what I just wanted to 

confirm, nail that down, because, you know, and it 

turns out that it's -- I didn't remember the number 

of -- the four hours and how often that was.

Dr. Anigstein: Once a month.

Dr. Mauro: Once a month.

Dr. Anigstein: Four hours a month, every month.

Dr. Mauro: And that's year after year.

Dr. Anigstein: Right.

Dr. Mauro: And it's always the same guy. And that's 

everybody.

Dr. Anigstein: Well, it's not that it's always --

Dr. Mauro: I know it's not.

Dr. Anigstein: to put it slightly different, or to make 

it more plausible, it's not always the same guy. But 

until -- we don't know who the guy is --

Dr. Mauro: We assume.

Dr. Anigstein: -- you assume -- every claim is 
38

considered individually, and for each claim you 

assume that he did that work until proven otherwise.

Dr. Mauro: Beautiful. Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Please. We're retreading now, so I think we 

should move on.

Member Kotelchuck: Right. Before we -- I had one 

last comment about that slide. I'm having trouble 

with my computer. Everything is going off on both of 

my computers, my CDC and home. But I had a note 

for myself, and I would like to ask questions about 

slide 17, in reference to the 1964 safety and health 

manual. It is clear that the manual, I mean, had 

information that welding had to be approved, there 

was a sign card from someone in the plant that they 

were obeying those rules. But I am concerned that 

the 1964 safety and health manual, when you did the 

12 interviews, a number of people, including people 

with environmental responsibilities, said they hadn't 

heard about the manual. 

And so, I mean, to my mind, there is question in the 

record about whether people actually paid attention 

to that and did what they said they did. A sign card 

is certainly evidence that somebody knew somebody 

signed off on it. On the other hand, did people really 

follow those rules? I just feel like that 1964 manual, 

to my mind, reference to it, to my mind, was -- I 

don't know how seriously to take it. And yet it was 

part of what was assumed to be the case in trying to 

develop the exposure scenario.

Now, I don't have 17 up, but you folks have it. I'll get 

back on. Is there any comment about how -- or, from 

Ms. Corwin -- about how much was the safety and 

health manual -- or, how was the safety and health 

manual used in determining the exposure in the 

welding, excuse me, and the thorium?

Ms. Corwin: We didn't necessarily use it to drive any 

of the exposure scenario necessarily. It was more of 
39

an instructive thing, to show that they did have a

program, and we can only assume that the program 

became more mature and not less mature as time 

went on.

And that they didn't -- so if they had a program, then 

we can assume that some type of safety measures 

were in place. We don't take credit for any of those 

in our exposure scenario.

Member Kotelchuck: Alright. Okay. And I will say it is 

dubious to me that the 1964 manual was put out 

during the operational period. The reports about what 

happened at the end of the operational period, which 

is I believe '67, '68, after that there was no health 

and safety office for radiation. There was no health 

and safety program for radiation.

I don't at all trust, from evidence on the record, that 

things got -- not only didn't things get better, I think 

the whole radiation program disappeared from what 

it appears and -- which is concerning, so I don't --

Ms. Corwin: But we don't assume that the safety 

program and the welding program disappeared, 

because, you know, safety was still present at the --

Member Kotelchuck: You know, you're right about 

that. You are right about that. And that's an 

absolutely proper response. If we're talking about 

welding, then we're talking about the safety program, 

and generally people had very good experience with 

the safety program, and that was true of many of the 

witnesses.

They didn't have a radiation component, but we're 

not talking about -- we're talking about the welding.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I think a key piece here is that they 

didn't rely on any assumptions based on those 

programs anyway.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. Fine. All right. Thank you.
40

Ms. Corwin: Also, I just wanted to let everyone know 

that my phone keeps disconnecting. So if you don't 

hear me, it's because I'm trying to dial back in.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. I'm going to --

Dr. Taulbee: I've had the same thing. Apparently, our 

building went down, and all the phones reset in the 

middle of this.

Member Kotelchuck: Ah, okay.

Member Anderson: Happy New Year.

(Laughter.)

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Nothing but technical difficulties all 

around.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. All right. Mine seems to 

be coming back.

Mr. Katz: So we've had a round of questions. We 

didn't really have an opportunity yet for SC&A -- I 

mean, SC&A has piped up, of course, but they 

haven't had a chance to respond yet to NIOSH's 

presentation. Is there more at this point than makes 

sense for SC&A to response, or where are we?

Dr. Mauro: This is John. I have a suggestion. I think 

we have explored what I would consider to be the 

overarching SEC-type problems. Can you get your 

arms wrapped around the problem? You know, do we 

have the wherewithal to do that?

Then I think it is time. Now, let's get down to, all 

right, do we agree on resuspension factors, 

contamination levels, things like that. What 

parameters are you going to use? 

So, in my mind, what we did is a very we've 

accomplished something very important here. We've 

explored thoroughly, conceptually, whether you can 

wrap your arms around this problem and whether or 

not it represents an SEC issue or not, which of course 
41

is a judgment that the Board makes. 

But I think we've explored the issues that are 

pertinent to an SEC very thoroughly just now.

Mr. Katz: So if you're going to bore down into the 

actual dosimetric values issues, is there -- Christine, 

is there a portion of your presentation that gets to 

that first, before SC&A addresses whatever their 

concerns might be with your approach?

Ms. Corwin: You know, I have a presentation on just 

the status of the concerns raised by SC&A in their 

review of our paper that I can go through. It depends 

on what you and SC&A would like. If you would like 

me to go through that?

Mr. Katz: Well, if that served that up -- if that served 

the issues up well, and if that's fine with Josie, it 

seems like that's the next step. 

Ms. Corwin: It summarizes --

Dr. Anigstein: Well, I mean, we did --

Ms. Corwin: -- the findings and the three 

observations.

Dr. Anigstein: We did --

Mr. Katz: Bob, go ahead. What are you trying to say?

Dr. Anigstein: Yeah. Well, you know, we did a 

response to the discussion that Christine -- is that --

did I get it right? -- just presented. So I don't have a 

screen presentation, but I can go through briefly our 

observations and conclusions about the NIOSH 

approach to thorium and to welding.

Mr. Katz: But, Bob, do you need Christine to do her 

presentation first? Is that sort of --

Dr. Anigstein: Well, I think her presentation -- I 

assume that that is based on the November 27th 

paper. Is that correct?
42

Ms. Corwin: That's correct.

Dr. Anigstein: Right. So I think it would make -- I 

think it would be more logical if I presented the SC&A 

position first, and I could -- if that's -- it might be 

efficient if that's -- you know, if that is acceptable to 

everyone else, I could -- instead of going back and 

forth --

Mr. Katz: I would just -- yeah. So I would just say 

whatever makes it -- because we want this discussion 

to be clear as possible to the Board Members and to 

the petitioner and his company. I don't mean 

company. I meant the person attending with him.

So whatever makes that discussion as clear and full 

as possible is I think the way to go. It's for you two 

to judge, Christine and Bob, I think.

Ms. Corwin: I'm fine with that.

Dr. Anigstein: Okay. So we have concerns -- the 

memo that was transmitted on July 26, 2019, was a 

response to the NIOSH White Paper of April 8, 2019. 

And I preface this by saying this is what -- the 

concern that we came up with was we're not 

disputing the SEC issues. 

We are simply disputing the details, and perhaps this 

should have been reserved for the TBD stage, 

because these are really TBD issues that I'm raising. 

But having said that, I'd just like to briefly go through 

them because otherwise they will be swept under the 

rug.

And we have some concerns that maybe the NIOSH 

approach is not the most effective way of solving that 

issue. The concern I have -- one sec. The first 

concern we have is about how much thorium there is 

onsite.

Now, NIOSH did, actually, an analysis in the paper. 

We sent that. In their paper, they did -- they did an 

analysis of soil samples that were taken. There was 
43

a study conducted by ORAU, not to be confused with 

the ORAU Team on the present contract, and in 1984 

they were contracted by NRC, I believe, and they did 

samplings of both surface soils and boreholes 

throughout the site.

And the first part, even though Christine didn't 

mention that, NIOSH had analyzed the -- there were 

751, if my memory serves me correctly, individual 

samples, and they gave concentrations and 

picocuries per gram of uranium-235, uranium-238, 

thorium-232, and I believe also radium, which is not 

at issue here.

And NIOSH went and did a pairwise comparison in 

every one of these samples of the ratio between total 

uranium, which was incidentally a little difficult to get 

because that 234 was not -- which would have been 

present was not analyzed, and a total uranium and a 

total thorium, or the thorium-232 rather, which is 

essentially all of natural thorium.

And then they came up with a ratio of -- activity ratio 

of 9.88 to 1 uranium to thorium. But then it was a 

little confusing -- and I must have jumped to the 

wrong conclusion I see now in retrospect, that they 

utilized that data. They did that analysis but did not 

utilize the data.

I, nevertheless, examined it thinking that it was of 

value, since they had done quite a bit of work on that. 

And I reviewed that entire report. The author was 

Sowell, S-O-W-E-L-L. He's the chief author of the 

NRC study that was done in 1984, published in 1985.

And I found that our individual data sets, or about 

half a dozen tables, for different areas of the site --

and in all but two of them, the vast majority of the 

samples, if you scan, just eyeballing through the data 

and looking at the thorium-232 concentrations, and 

comparing them to about five locations offsite in the 

vicinity -- so they would have the same -- presume 

to have the same natural background but not have 
44

been subject to contamination from the M&C 

operational period.

And we found that the vast majority of the cases --

not -- you know, and this is a sample of the data sets 

-- well within natural background. 

If you look at the five cases, five samples, and you 

say, okay, this is the mean thorium concentration, 

this is the standard deviation, and it's a little farfetched. It's a little weak to use five samples to get a 

distribution, it was the best we had. And you look at 

the data sets and you say, "Yeah. Okay. Here is one 

that's high level, to the high level." 

Well, within log-normal distribution, you would 

expect to have a few at the upper end. And by doing 

the statistics, one out of 100, one out of 200, yeah, 

you would expect that. But these were all within 

normal background, except for two smaller sets.

And we identified one subset that using the NIOSH 

methodology, even though it's not the methodology 

that was ultimately used by NIOSH, but we used the 

NIOSH methodology of comparing, pairwise 

comparison, side by side, and doing a ratio and doing 

a geometric mean.

And we found there was one set that had, I believe, 

88 samples, which had definitely elevated readings 

of thorium. So there was some thorium 

contamination in that one area with the burial 

ground, I believe, around Building 12.

And so we utilized that. And the reason we're 

somewhat uncomfortable, dubious, about the NIOSH 

assumption is there was -- not to be quibbling, but 

the data that was cited about the total thorium harm 

was not a safety study. It was actually a concern 

about liability. They were -- M&C was concerned, 

gee, we have this valuable material onsite, and it 

belongs to -- we're the custodians of it, but it belongs 

to the NRC. And what happens if something goes 
45

wrong? Is the company going to be liable for the cost 

for any losses of this? And should we take out an 

insurance policy?

And so they did an inventory, and there was really 

very little explanation of what went into that 

inventory. That table was just like two sheets, two 

pages within a large PDF file. And the inventory listed 

different enrichments of uranium all the way from 93 

-- at the high end of 93 percent down to a low end of 

1.8 percent in normal uranium. And then it had one 

column of numbers simply called Commission. 

Presumably, that means the Atomic Energy 

Commission, the predecessor to the NRC at the time.

And then it has another column, License. And in some 

cases, the Commission amounts exceed the License 

amount. Other cases, the License amount exceeds 

the Commission amount. There is no explanation.

So the total, if you add up the total, you end up 

seeing that there was a total of 244 kilograms of 

thorium and 700-and -- I'll just round it off -- a little 

less than 8,000 kilograms of uranium, if you add both 

the Commission and License amounts.

So there is no question there was more uranium at 

that particular time, January 1, 1962, which was six 

years before the end of the operational period, that 

there was more uranium onsite than thorium. And 

this is logical because the description of the 

operations basically were a fabrication of uranium 

fuel elements.

However, we see really no firm justification for the 

assumption. Well, let's just assume that there was 

one kilogram of thorium for every kilogram of 

uranium onsite. Is it likely to have been worse? Well, 

we don't know for the particular operation. But is that 

a number that is derived on the basis of data? SC&A 

has a problem with that. 

We don't have a problem -- we believe that the 
46

thorium can be bounded. We believe thorium 

exposures are tractable. But we just weren't quite 

sure we were in agreement with the -- that the 

methodology that was proposed would necessarily 

meet the qualifications of sufficient accuracy.

So, consequently, we looked at the thorium to 

uranium levels. In that one data set it was Table 6A 

of the Sowell report, the 1985 Sowell report. Calling 

it Sowell -- should maybe call it the ORAU report.

And we found that you could derive a ratio, you could 

-- because there was U-238, U-235, and thorium 

listed. And so we followed -- I know there is more 

than one, and Christine might get to that, more than 

one way of treating the statistics. 

But I thought the simple -- I thought to treat the 

statistics consistent with the way that NIOSH had 

treated the statistics, even though they ended up not 

utilizing that in the final analysis, but they did sample 

by sample and a pairwise comparison between 

thorium and uranium.

So we came up with a different, somewhat higher 

value, for the thorium concentration. And I will skip 

ahead, if that's okay, and answer. That would then -

- I also have to cite some recent history of the 

project, and that is we got word -- somehow there 

was a -- that NIOSH had prepared a response to the 

SC&A response, SC&A memo that I'm just talking 

about.

However, that was not -- we would not know that was 

released, because in previous experience we noted 

that the NIOSH Team or the ORAU Team, working 

under contract of NIOSH, will prepare a report, and 

then understandably it would undergo review then by 

the senior NIOSH technical staff. So there was 

typically a several-week lapse. 

We're going by other sites now -- Carborundum most 

recent that I worked with -- where there would be a 
47

lapse of time from the date on the cover date of the 

report and the date where it was actually made 

available to us.

So the fact that it was a November date, I said, "Well, 

we'll be getting this soon. We'll seeing it eventually." 

And then we never received, unlike we usually get an 

email with an advance copy of it, but we never 

received that report.

And the first I heard of it, or that I know -- was when 

Ted Katz issued the agenda on Monday, and it listed 

-- Monday afternoon I got the agenda, which listed 

the papers to be discussed. And lo and behold, there 

was this November 27th NIOSH critique of the SC&A 

review of the thorium and welding exposure model.

And so by the time -- it was 3:00 on Monday by the 

time I was able to obtain that. And I have to add, I 

was looking for that report, and I looked on the DCAS 

website, because usually, if you look at the meeting 

announcement, after the meeting announcement, 

the papers for discussion will be listed. 

So I looked several times. It wasn't there, and I 

assumed they haven't come out yet.

So we got it at 3:00 Monday afternoon. So we did not 

have time to review it, and particularly the text itself 

was fairly straightforward, but there was attached to 

it another report by -- authored by Tom LaBone of 

ORAU -- of the ORAU Team, which involved a very 

detailed statistical analysis. And during this two days 

available, we were simply not able to recruit a 

statistician. 

The statistician -- we had a long-time senior 

statistician who worked for SC&A for at least 25 

years, Dr. Chmelynski, who had just retired, and we 

could not recruit a statistician to examine this and 

examine the data until we agree with it. So I read --

I read the text, but I can't really answer the statistics. 

All I can say is they -- it was critical of the statistical 
48

methods that I utilized, and my -- my statistical 

method was based on -- there was something called 

-- perhaps I'm going too far afield. I'll try to keep this 

brief. Something called regression order statistics, 

which we have utilized. We have utilized those most 

recently with the Carborundum site.

But since NIOSH had not utilized that for their soil 

samples, I simply followed the example of the NIOSH 

analysis of the complete data set in the -- I call it the 

Sowell report. 

So I just want to say that that was the justification 

for doing it that way. There were critical -- and I 

admitted in my report that the statistics were shaky. 

There was a weak -- we did two things. We were 

criticized for two things. 

One of them was some turned out to be a substantial 

fraction of the U-235 data, was listed in the Sowell 

report as less than, meaning they were less than the 

lowest detectable level, the LDL, and what is 

traditional -- we certainly used it for bioassay 

samples, if it's not detectable, you can't say it's zero, 

but it could be anywhere between zero and the 

detectable level.

So as a statistically valid approximation -- let's just 

say it's one-half the detectable level, because on 

average that's what it will be. If you have a bunch of 

samples like that, there will be a distribution, but 

their average would be one-half the detectable level.

And detectable level for these samples was not a 

single level always. It was depending on the counting 

statistics, so there was -- it was for each individual 

sample. They'd say, "This is how long we counted, 

and this is what it would have taken to be -- to detect, 

and we didn't detect to that level."

So, and using that statistic, we got a result that 

typically, when you want to do a correlation, you 

typically want at least 95 percent certainty, in other 
49

words, there is not more than a five percent chance 

that this is due to randomness, that it really is a real 

correlation.

Well, in this case, the chance of being random was 

12 percent. There is a technique for evaluating it, 

which I did not present, but there's actually 

calculators that you can download from academic 

websites. And this was confirmed by my colleague, 

Dr. Chmelynski, last summer.

So it's a weak correlation, in most scientific work --

you couldn't publish a scientific paper in a scientific 

journal, giving those results with -- but I thought it 

was better than just an assumption of one-to-one. 

As it turned out, the doses that calculated through 

this method were somewhat higher than the doses 

calculated by NIOSH using their one-gram-per-onegram method. And, again, this is probably 

premature, this is really a Site Profile issue. It 

probably should not have been -- maybe, in 

retrospect, was too strong a statement.

And particularly on examining the data, which I 

managed to do in the past few days, there are other 

approaches which might have resulted in lower 

doses. So, in the end, we're not in serious 

disagreement with the thorium doses that NIOSH had 

calculated, because ours are somewhat higher, but

they're still small doses. It's still in the millirem per 

year range.

So the doses for thorium -- and we believe that the 

thorium issue is tractable, it just might be better from 

an administrative -- from an acceptability standpoint, 

if there could be some firmer evidence based on 

actual measurements to make it a little firmer. 

But the number is not that far, we're not in serious 

dispute with the number because at this time, we're 

concerned with SEC issues, and there is no question 

that thorium can be, at some plausible, claimant-
50

favorable assumption, conclusions could be reached 

regarding how to assign thorium exposures so that 

does not become -- we do not believe that that is an 

intractable issue.

Then, going on to welding, the major problem with 

welding is -- our take on the welding is here you have 

a worker -- we just discussed how many workers --

but here you have a worker vigorously brushing, 

using a wire brush, using a grinder, using either a 

grinding wheel or a motorized wire brush.

On these types, there's a tremendous amount of dust 

that will be generated, albeit for a short period of 

time. And looking at the various resuspension factors 

in OTIB-70, summarized in OTIB-70 then I went back 

to the source documents and they were correctly 

cited, you can get measured resuspension factors as 

high as four times ten to the minus two. And that was 

not done by mechanical, you know, power-driven 

tools. That was done by simply two workers 

vigorously sweeping the floor.

So if brooms can raise that kind of dust, a grinder 

could easily, in our mind, do the same. So our 

objection is, well, in round numbers, it should be ten 

to the minus two instead of ten to the minus three, 

just for that brief operation, just for those four hours 

per month that the worker would have done. We 

think it should be higher.

And that's the only objection we have to the welding 

scenario. Had a question about which worker it was. 

I could not find it, but that was clarified in the 

response paper, NIOSH's response paper identifying 

the page of the interview notes.

So, again, we have no objection to the general 

philosophy of the NIOSH report. The answer in 

NIOSH's response paper was, well, the ten to the 

minus three was an average. Well, we're not talking 

about an average 20 -- you know, for the whole work 

day. We're just talking about that dose one hour per 
51

week, that it should be higher. 

And, again, the doses are still modest, and it does 

not make it -- and it's certainly not an SEC issue. 

So that's the end of the SC&A work on the welding 

and thorium model.

Dr. Mauro: This is John Mauro, just real quick. I 

understand that the main issue we're talking about 

now is the resuspension factor. 

But when it gets to the thorium and uranium on the 

metal that was going to be welded, Bob gave the 

overarching story on, you know, and mainly it's 

useful when we're going to get to the discussion of 

the activity that in the subsurface environment. We'll 

get there later, I guess in part two.

But when it comes to the welding operation -- and I 

have a question -- some assumption was made 

regarding the upper 95th percentile contamination 

level that was on the surface of the metal that was 

going to be prepped for welding. 

Dr. Anigstein: We don't -- we're not questioning that.

Dr. Mauro: No, no, no. I just want to know for my 

own benefit. What assumptions were made regarding 

the amount of uranium and thorium? In other words, 

did you assume -- I believe they took swipe samples 

or handheld survey measurements. I need a little 

help here.

And, if so, did you assume that it was all the worst 

case. That is, well, depending on the cancer, we 

assumed it was all -- all the activity that was 

resuspended was thorium, or all the activity that was 

resuspended was --

Dr. Anigstein: The procedure that was recommended 

and was accepted by NIOSH --

Dr. Mauro: Yes.
52

Dr. Anigstein: -- and their response to my response 

was, whichever gives you the highest PoC.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. So that's important because if the 

one-to-one issue that you just brought up is really 

applicable to the subsurface. It's really not applicable 

to this issue that we're talking about now, which is 

the welding work.

Dr. Anigstein: We are assuming that all of the --

assuming that wherever there is uranium there would 

also be thorium, and we just -- and the only dispute 

is about what is the exact ratio?

Dr. Mauro: No. But I'm talking about the -- I hope 

everybody is following.

Dr. Anigstein: Even for the welding model --

Dr. Mauro: Oh, okay. I misunderstood.

Dr. Anigstein: -- we're assuming that it's either --

since the swipe samples were based on gross alpha, 

the gross alpha can be either thorium or uranium, or 

both, or a mixture of both. And then we'll assume 

that whichever is the most claimant favorable, that 

was the --

Dr. Mauro: So the one-to-one --

Dr. Anigstein: -- NIOSH response.

Dr. Mauro: The one-to-one thing wasn't used. What 

was used is, as is --

Dr. Anigstein: That's right. That is correct.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I just wanted to --

Dr. Anigstein: That is correct.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah. I jump in on that only because I --

the method that was used for the welding was very 

conventional. Let's use the worst -- here is a gross 

alpha. We don't know. It could -- we know it's 
53

probably some kind of mixture of uranium and 

thorium, probably mostly uranium, but you know 

what we're going to do? We're going to assume the 

worst. That is 

Dr. Anigstein: That was the -- my response to the 

first NIOSH paper was the recommendation that they 

assume thorium or uranium, which is the worst, and

the NIOSH response agreed with that.

Dr. Mauro: And that's the only reason I brought it up, 

because I wanted to make sure everybody 

understood that we're on the same page when it 

comes to that part of the analysis, and that is with 

regard to the contamination that was on the welding 

activity. It seemed that -- you know, because that's 

what we were talking about, right? 

And then when we went onto the Site Profile issues, 

you know, I wanted to make sure everybody 

understood that what you were describing really 

didn't apply to the welding question. You know, you 

were describing -- and not so much the resuspension. 

We agree we still have an issue here on 

resuspension. But I wanted to make sure we put to 

bed the Site Profile issue, if there was any, regarding 

the activity approach.

Dr. Anigstein: There is no disagreement there.

Dr. Mauro: Right, right. Good. And that needed to be 

said. Okay? And that's the only reason I jumped in.

Chair Beach: Okay. Thank you. Is there any Work 

Group Member questions for SC&A at this time?

Member Anderson: No, not from me.

Member Kotelchuck: I don't have any questions.

Member Valerio: Not from me, Josie.

Chair Beach: Okay. I think we can move on with 

Christina's next presentation.
54

Mr. Katz: Whoa, one second. Josie, I just want to ask 

everyone, we've been on for about an hour and 45 

minutes. Does anyone need a comfort break? Or to 

go grab a lunch or what have you? I just want to 

check. I'm fine personally, but --

Chair Beach: I'm fine, but would be willing to take a 

break if anybody needs one.

Mr. Katz: Speak up if someone needs a break.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, wouldn't mind.

Mr. Katz: Okay. How much time do you need? So 15 

minutes? 10 minutes? 

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, that would be fine.

Mr. Katz: What do you need?

Member Kotelchuck: Fifteen minutes would be fine.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So let's go on a 15 minute break. 

That would put us back on the line at 12:30.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 12:15 p.m. and resumed at 12:35 p.m.)

Chair Beach: Okay. We are back online, and, 

Christine, you can go ahead and start.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. Good afternoon. This is Christine 

Corwin again, health physicist with NIOSH. And in 

this presentation I'll be giving an update on the 

Metals and Controls thorium and welding exposure 

model that kind of describes what the issues 

outstanding are.

Slide 2. Tim is still having to do this for me, so I 

apologize.

It's a summary of current NIOSH responses to 

SC&A's review of the NIOSH Metals and Controls 

Corporation Thorium and Welding Exposure Model 

White Paper. 
55

So to summarize the issues, after SC&A's review, 

there are two findings presented by SC&A. They are 

both in progress, as we have discussed, and they are 

both TBD issues that can be worked out as part of 

that process. There are three observations.

Go ahead.

Mr. Katz: Well, hello, everybody. I'm not sure what 

I'm missing here, but I'm just rejoining. This is Ted. 

So, anyway, sorry about that. I needed that sideline 

chat. But let me just make sure I have all four Board 

Members on. So Josie is back, I'm sure, but do I have 

Andy and Loretta and Dave?

Member Kotelchuck: Dave is here.

Member Anderson: Yeah, I'm here.

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

Mr. Katz: Okay. Good. And, presumably, then 

everyone else is on the line, and so we can get 

started again. 

I don't know. Chris, did you already start or --

Chair Beach: Ted, this is Josie. That was my fault. I 

jumped the gun and told her to start, so I apologize 

for that.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Well, you don't need to retread. Just 

go on. But let me just remind everyone else to please 

mute your phones, so we don't have issues. Thanks. 

And *6 if you don't have a mute button. Thanks.

Ms. Corwin: Okay. So we're on the third slide. 

As I said, there are two findings that SC&A found --

presented, and there are TBD issues that we feel 

resolution can come to in that manner for the --

during the TBD discussion.

There are three observations that have been 
56

resolved. That is the summary.

So moving on to the next slide.

So Finding 1, which is for the thorium and internal 

exposure model. And we have kind of hashed this 

over already, but SC&A asserts, in Finding 1, that 

NIOSH underestimated the thorium-232 

concentration in the sediments and residues in the 

pipes under Building 10, leading to an underestimate 

of thorium-232 intakes by workers performing 

subsurface activities.

So there are kind of two issues associated with this 

finding. The first issue is the uranium-to-thorium 

ratio that we have already discussed. SC&A 

concluded that all of the thorium-232 data in Sowell 

-- the report we have been talking about we are 

referring to -- with the possible exception of the two 

samples listed in Table 11, are consistent with 

naturally occurring thorium-232 in soils in the area 

and cannot be used to estimate the intakes of 

thorium-232 originating from AWE activities.

The only data that include a substantial number of 

samples with the thorium-232 level significantly 

elevated above background are those presented in 

Sowell in Tables 5A and 5B. So that is what SC&A is 

-- that was their conclusion.

So as part of our response, NIOSH response is that 

the ratio provided was intended to be supplemental 

information to support the conservativism of the 

model where NIOSH assumes subsurface sediments 

contained equivalent mass concentrations of natural 

uranium and thorium-232, though we assume that 

there is equal masses.

A second issue associated with this finding is that the 

new NIOSH bounding method to estimate thorium 

intakes, SC&A found that it was not valid to assume 

that the specific activity of the uranium 

contamination in the pipe sediments was that of 
57

natural uranium.

Uranium isotopic ratios in the pipes indicated that 

most of the pipe sediments were contaminated with 

uranium of varying enrichments. NIOSH responded 

by stating that NIOSH determined the total uranium 

values and could have calculated an effective specific 

activity for these samples. But, however, an 

adjustment, though, would have resulted in a higher 

specific activity or a higher enrichment for uranium, 

would be less favorable to the claimant. And this is 

because an increase in uranium enrichment means, 

for a given uranium activity, a corresponding smaller 

uranium mass is present.

And since NIOSH assumes the mass of thorium and 

uranium in the subsurface are equivalent or equal, 

any assumption that an increase -- any assumptions 

that increase the uranium activity will result in a 

reduction of the assumed equivalent mass of 

thorium.

Therefore, NIOSH believes that the assumption of 

natural uranium is the most claimant favorable in 

bounding enrichment.

Slide 6.

So SC&A provided an alternate method to estimate 

intakes of thorium, which we just discussed also. 

SC&A used a paired sample method to determine the 

uranium-to-thorium ratio, which resulted in a slightly 

higher dose than the NIOSH model.

NIOSH believes that SC&A's calculation of the paired 

sample method appears to be inconsistent with 

standard practice. In addition, NIOSH did a statistical 

analysis of SC&A's method and determined that 

based on the correlation coefficients between U-235 

and thorium-232, there is no statistical relationship 

that can be drawn between the two data sets.

Therefore, NIOSH believes that equal mass is the 

most claimant favorable and defensive approach.
58

Also, SC&A recommended using OCAS-TIB-009 to 

determine the daily ingestion rates, which, as I 

stated, these are all TBD issues.

NIOSH believes that the use of NUREG/CR-5512 to 

determine ingestion intakes when exposures are 

characterized by mass-based samples is more 

appropriate than using OCAS-OTIB-9.

OCAS-TIB-9 is based on the concept that ingestion is 

proportional to contamination, and contamination is 

proportional to airborne. But this issue was 

addressed in a review by the Procedures 

Subcommittee, and the discussion of this issue is 

documented in the Board Review System, the BRS, 

under overarching issue number 2.

So, as I stated, that can be considered a TBD issue 

as well.

Okay. So moving on to the next slide, we'll move on 

to Finding 2, as documented in SC&A's review of the 

White Paper.

SC&A asserts that NIOSH understated the 

resuspension factor related to welding activities. We, 

as well, just discussed this issue. SC&A believes that 

the highly disruptive or dispersive nature of the 

activities accompanying welding, such as grinding 

and wire brushing, should be modeled using the 

highest reported resuspension factor in an indoor 

environment.

The decision to use a resuspension factor of one 

times ten to the negative second as opposed to one 

times ten to the negative third is considered a TBD 

issue. However, the ones times ten to the negative 

second resuspension value referenced by SC&A and 

the reference from OTIB-70 is listed in Table 11 of 

the reference. And it is also footnoted that the values 

are not used due to unrepresentative conditions.

Therefore, NIOSH believes that the assumption of a 

resuspension factor of ones times ten to the negative 
59

third is representative and bounding of the work 

activities and conditions at M&C. That's a reference 

to the table where they did the sweeping that was 

talked about.

Okay. Next slide.

Now we are going to move on to the three 

observations documented in SC&A's review of the 

thorium and welding exposure model White Paper.

The first observation states that the uranium 

inventory cited by NIOSH is inconsistent with that in 

the source document. NIOSH acknowledges that this 

was a data entry error, which will be corrected in the 

TBD. The inventory is not used in the proposed dose 

methodology. We are in agreement on that.

SC&A's second observation states that NIOSH should 

clarify the source of the four hour per month time 

estimate for welding activities. This, again, is talking 

about the source for the four month per hour, not the 

actual four hour issue.

NIOSH acknowledges that an incorrect reference was 

used, and the correct reference was subsequently 

provided, and the reference will be corrected in the 

Evaluation Report.

Okay. So on to observation 3, which is the last 

observation made by SC&A, and that was in 

estimating doses from the welding scenario. That 

NIOSH should assign doses using the most claimantfavorable isotopes known to have been used at M&C, 

and we have also discussed this, and NIOSH agrees 

with this observation and intends to apply it to the 

exposure model.

NIOSH will ensure that the revised Evaluation 

Report's exposure model reflects this observation.

So, in summary, to summarize our path forward, 

resolutions, which we are kind of all agreeing are TBD 

issues for Findings 1 and 2, that is where we need to 
60

find some resolution. 

Finding 1 concerns the underestimating of intakes by 

workers performing subsurface activities, which 

includes the uranium-to-thorium ratio issue, and the 

new NIOSH bounding method to estimate intakes and 

the SC&A alternative method.

Finding 2 concerns the resuspension factor used for 

activities accompanying welding, which is a TBD 

issue also.

Next slide?

All SC&A observations are agreed to by NIOSH and 

will be corrected in either the TBD or the revised ER.

That's the end of my presentation.

Chair Beach: Thanks, Christina. That was a good 

summary.

Any questions, Work Group Members? Dave?

Member Kotelchuck: Going back to slide 9, the 

NIOSH -- since we discussed the issue, the source of 

the four hour per month time estimate, it said an 

incorrect reference was used. Did we not discuss that 

earlier and noted that the data came from one 

person? Wasn't that -- do I have some -- am I 

misinterpreting that? A correct reference was 

subsequently provided, and I don't know where that 

is.

Ms. Corwin: The issue is that there is just an incorrect 

source in the paper itself. It was referenced 

incorrectly.

Member Kotelchuck: That is the reference to the 

2017-B? That's the one -- is that the reference that 

was the reference --

Ms. Corwin: Correct.

Member Kotelchuck: -- to the four hours?
61

Ms. Corwin: Correct.

Member Kotelchuck: And what was the correct 

reference? Because I did go back to the original White 

Paper.

Dr. Taulbee: Pat, can you clarify here, please?

Ms. Corwin: Clarify that, sorry.

Mr. McCloskey: Sure, yeah, if you look in our, sure, 

if you look in our November 27 paper on page six of 

eight, in the body of the text we say it's SC&A 2019 

PDF page seven. And I'll go back to the reference 

section and tell you the SRDB number. So it should 

be, let's see.

Ms. Corwin: The 174357 is it?

Mr. McCloskey: Here it is, okay, documented 

communication with redacted person. SRDB ref ID 

169916 is where you should go to get the statement 

from the person.

Member Kotelchuck: That's E. I think that would have 

been --

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah, but you can't just go read his 

original interview. There was a follow-up 

communication with this supervisor. And when you 

open up this new SRDB reference ID, what you're 

going to find is an email communication with the 

gentleman, and so.

Member Kotelchuck: I see, a follow-up. Okay, I did 

not, okay. So there was a follow-up, and I'll check 

that out.

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, I'll look it up. Thank you.

Mr. McCloskey: Sure.

Chair Beach: Okay, any other questions regarding 
62

this slide presentation? It's basically a summary. 

We've talked about some of these items. Anything 

else just specific to this?

Dr. Mauro: Josie, this is John Mauro. My question 

goes to those are all Site Profile issues. But you know, 

one of the greatest concerns that were raised by the 

Petitioners and have been responded to by both 

NIOSH and SC&A has to do with reconstructing the 

doses to workers in a subsurface environment, and 

whether the characterization of that subsurface 

environment radionuclide concentrations in the 

pipelines and in the soil can be used.

Because most of that data was collected from 

measurements made in the 1980s and 90s. And 

we're using those concentrations as surrogates, for 

want of a better term, for the exposures that the 

workers might have experienced during the residual 

period in the 1970s and early 80s. Now, were you 

planning on talking about that separately?

Dr. Anigstein: John, excuse me, this is Bob.

Dr. Mauro: Sure.

Dr. Anigstein: This is the next, this'll be talked about 

under the petitioner concerns, the next agenda item.

Dr. Mauro: My apologies, I jumped the gun as usual. 

I'm sorry, I'll just back off and let you guys continue.

Chair Beach: Let's get to the next activity. I do have 

an action item. I know SC&A, and this can come later, 

hasn't responded to the last, the November paper. 

So I put that down as an action for SC&A. Is that 

correct?

Mr. Katz: That would be one, yeah. That should be 

one, yeah.

Chair Beach: Okay, are we ready to move onto 

Petitioner's concern's, if there's no other Work Group 

Member questions or discussion?
63

Mr. Katz: Let me just add something now to that 

action item. So Bob, if you can, and I think you 

probably can given the nature of it, Bob and Bob 

which ever, if you need statistical help, you may not 

even need it, given the nature of the discussions you 

already had.

But if you can get this done in a timely fashion, 

considering that we have, we might have another 

Work Group meeting and we have an April Board 

meeting, that would be great. The April Board 

meeting is April 21-22. 

So if you can do that within that timeframe that, well 

in advance of that April 21-22, that would be great 

for this tasking and whatever other taskings might 

come out of this Work Group meeting. Thanks.

Petitioner's Concerns

Chair Beach: Okay, then I think we're ready to hear 

the Petitioner's concerns that you have put together. 

Christina?

Ms. Corwin: And Tim, if you could get the third 

presentation I sent to you.

Dr. Taulbee: Yeah, give me just a second please.

Ms. Corwin: Sure. 

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, can everybody see it now? Okay, 

go ahead --

Ms. Corwin: I cannot yet --

Dr. Taulbee: Chris -- yeah, oh.

Ms. Corwin: Just one second.

Dr. Taulbee: Is it up?

Chair Beach: I see it.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.
64

Ms. Corwin: Yeah, I got it, okay. I seem to be running 

a little slower on my computer for some reason.

Okay, so I'm presenting some information about the 

Metals and Controls Thorium and Welding -- oh, no, 

it's not Thorium and Welding, we're on to -- sorry, I 

picked up the wrong paper.

Mr. Katz: Petitioner's concerns.

Ms. Corwin: Yeah, Petitioner concerns, I picked up 

the, my wrong paper. Okay, so this is a presentation 

to summarize the Petitioner's concerns that were 

submitted after meetings that were held and 

presentations that were given. Okay. Sorry about 

that.

Okay, so for some background, the NIOSH presented 

the Evaluation Report for SEC-236, Metals and 

Controls, to the Advisory Board on August 24, 2017. 

A petitioner raised a concern about the adequacy of 

the Evaluation Report in addressing maintenancetype work. 

In response to this concern, on September 5, 2017, 

NIOSH initiated strategies to continue the Metals and 

Controls research and to further develop the 

Evaluation Report.

To develop the Evaluation Report and initiate new 

strategies, a couple of things were done. We 

reviewed monitoring records in the Site Research 

Database, as well as conduct interviews with M&C 

workers. From October 24, 2017 through October 26, 

2017, NIOSH, Oak Ridge, Associated Universities, 

ORAU, and SC&A personnel interviewed 12 former 

M&C workers and individuals knowledgeable about 

maintenance work.

Interviewers asked questions regarding the 

frequency and duration of work, including heating 

ventilation and air conditioning, utility and drain line 

maintenance, and new equipment installation.
65

On December 13, 2018 during a full Advisory Board 

meeting, the M&C Working Group presented an 

update. The Petitioners also made a statement of 

their concerns.

Petitioner concern number one. The concerns are 

summarized and not word for word, just so everyone 

knows. NIOSH has failed to satisfy fundamental 

regulatory requirements for estimating maximum 

radiation doses and identifying radionuclides in 

maximum quantities, such as, the things that the 

Petitioner feels that were, we were failing at were 

source term characterization that is incomplete; 

incomplete knowledge of the nature, frequency, and 

duration of jobs performed; and intimate contact with 

the source term.

And a complete absence of any measurements or 

monitoring of the workers who are covered by this 

petition, and there is no comparable population with 

measurements or monitoring data that can be relied 

on as a surrogate for the claims in question.

For the next slide, the regulations cited by the 

Petitioner are contained in 42 CFR 83, Section 83.13, 

Subpart C, and state that radiation doses are 

considered to be estimated with sufficient accuracy if 

NIOSH has access to sufficient information to 

estimate the maximum radiation dose that could 

have been incurred in plausible circumstances by any 

member of the Class.

NIOSH believes that there is adequate information in 

the residual contamination period at M&C to meet 

that requirement. To bound doses to the majority of 

M&C workers, those that perform production and 

support tasks, NIOSH used pre-D&D contamination 

survey data from the end of the AWE operational 

period in 1967 in conjunction with the data from 

closer to the end of the residual period in 1982. Next 

slide.

To bound doses to maintenance workers, NIOSH 
66

used data that was taken before D&D to characterize 

the subsurface environments and from the roof and 

overhead areas.

Using our knowledge of the source term of 

radioactivity that was present in the work activities 

involved with the source term and the use of 

surrogate dust-loading data qualified in accordance 

with OCAS-IG-004, NIOSH believes it has estimated 

the maximum radiation dose that could have been 

incurred under plausible circumstances.

In addition, maximizing conditions, such as the use 

of the 95th percentile in most claimant-favorable 

solubility types, are applied.

During the period of residual contamination, it was 

known that NIOSH would typically have access to 

sparse workplace monitoring data and often no 

worker monitoring data. NIOSH developed standard 

approaches that are described in ORAU-OTIB-70, 

which is the dose reconstruction during residual 

radioactivity period at Atomic Weapons Employer 

facilities.

This document, which was specifically written to deal 

with the reconstruction of doses during periods where 

monitoring data are sparse or non-existent, 

incorporates methods that were developed in two 

other NIOSH documents, which were OCAS-TIB-9, 

the estimation of ingestion intakes, and Battelle TBD6000, the Site Profiles for atomic weapons employers 

that worked with uranium metals.

In the absence of little or no monitoring data, these 

documents rely on surrogate data and models to 

estimate internal and external exposure. Through its 

contractor, the Board has reviewed each of these 

documents for scientific validity. 

Although a number of issues and findings were raised 

during the review process, the Board's Subcommittee 

on Procedures Review and the Battelle TBD-6000 
67

Working Groups reviewed each finding. All findings 

and issues raised during the review process of the 

documents were resolved and the documents were 

revised accordingly.

The second concern brought forth by the Petitioner in 

his letter concerns incomplete source term 

characterization. The Petitioner noted that the 1996 

drain characterization survey in the interiors of

Building 10 and Building 4 only analyzed the 

sediment and soil samples for isotopic uranium. 

Therefore, we can never know for sure what the 

thorium concentrations might have been.

The Petitioner's concern about the lack of thorium 

analysis of sediment and soil samples is addressed in 

the Metals and Controls Corporation Thorium and 

Welding Exposure Model White Paper, which we just 

discussed. NIOSH can use the calculated air 

concentration to bound internal thorium exposures 

that occurred while performing subsurface 

maintenance within Building 10.

NIOSH will continue to estimate worker doses using 

the most claimant-favorable isotope of thorium or 

uranium.

For the burial area in Building 10 outside the 

perimeter, NIOSH can use isotopic thorium-232 

results to model air concentrations breathed by 

maintenance workers, as previously described in the 

Metals and Controls Corporation Maintenance 

Exposure Model White Paper.

In the third concern brought forth by the Petitioner, 

it was stated that by the time the drain survey was 

conducted in 1995, there had been close to 30 years 

of disturbances of the drain lines during the residual 

period. They were snaked numerous times and some 

of the most plugged sections had been removed 

entirely.

Therefore, there is no guarantee that the levels we 
68

documented in the drain survey represent the 

maximum levels ever present into which the M&C 

maintenance workers would have been exposed.

NIOSH has addressed the Petitioner's concern 

regarding the effect of 30 years of disturbance and 

removal on the representativeness of sediment 

analysis in the Metals and Controls Maintenance 

Exposure Model White Paper. In that paper, NIOSH 

stated that the drainage system under Building 10 

required frequent maintenance during the residual 

period, including the years prior to the 

characterization.

Since this maintenance would have potentially 

removed sediments with the highest uranium 

concentration and made the geometric mean of the 

survey data under-conservative, NIOSH calculated 

the 95th percentile concentration and will use it to 

bound exposures.

The fourth concern documented by the Petitioner 

states that the gross alpha screening analysis 

methodology that we used for the 1994/1995 

comprehensive characterization surveys for the 

majority of subsurface soils, other than the drain 

survey area, was biased low at concentrations above 

the 30 picocuries per gram standard, or cleanup 

standard.

The subsurface exposure model developed by NIOSH 

used data from outside areas, including the area 

surrounding Building 10, the former burial area, the 

metals recovery area, the Building 11 stockade area, 

the Building 11 rail spur, railroad spur area, and the 

Building 12 west and south lawn areas.

These areas were characterized with 2,391 soil 

samples collected prior to remediation of each area 

from 1985 to 1995. The data was presented in four 

site documents containing survey data, group 

sampling methodology, and sample screening 

methodology. NIOSH reviewed the screening 
69

methodology M&C developed to ascertain whether 

any bias was inherent in their analytical process.

The M&C gross alpha screening method was 

developed during the pilot study excavation of the 

former burial area where M&C split samples. And 

they analyzed half of the samples with their field 

method, and they sent the other half to Lockheed 

Analytical Lab for independent verification.

M&C determined that their screening method results 

correlated very well with the isotopic uranium 

analysis performed by Lockheed Analytical Lab. 

NIOSH has not identified a bias that would affect the 

conservativeness of our exposure model.

For the fifth concern brought forth by the Petitioner, 

the Petitioner cited remarks made by the Chair of the 

M&C Work Group at the 126th meeting of the 

Advisory Board on December 13, 2018 referring to 

contaminated soil and other debris removed by rail 

cars during the 1992-1996 decommissioning 

activities from a site that had ostensibly been 

released for unrestricted use.

The Petitioner stated that this residual contamination 

exposed M&C maintenance workers to unknown and 

unknowable levels of exposure. The rail cars of 

contaminated material generated after the U.S. 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission initially released 

Building 10 are related to the changing release 

criteria and the subsequent use of more 

comprehensive investigative methods.

The additional contamination identified using 

updated methods, including sections of the concrete 

floor and subsurface material, was previously 

inaccessible, and as such did not present a significant 

exposure hazard to M&C maintenance workers.

It is important to note that although M&C, using 

updated techniques, was able to find contamination 

throughout the site after the NRC initially released 
70

Building 10, NIOSH incorporated these additional 

contamination data into its exposure models.

Petitioner concern number six states that concerning 

the incomplete knowledge of the nature, frequency, 

and duration of jobs performed, the degree of 

confidence that the NIOSH and SC&A technical 

experts placed in the one-month duration for all 

intrusive activities, both subsurface and in overhead 

areas, seems overly confident.

Initially, NIOSH allowed one month of additional 

exposure for subsurface work. However, NIOSH has 

evaluated additional exposure scenarios for 

maintenance workers, such as roof work, overhead 

area work, HVAC maintenance and welding, and now 

provides for two months per year of these enhanced 

exposures.

And additionally, additional exposure is also provided 

for welding activities.

It's also important to understand that for these 

exposure models, NIOSH assumes that the same 

person does all of the work associated with the 

highest concentrations of airborne contaminants. 

Furthermore, according to interviews, NIOSH 

understands that workers visited buildings 

throughout the site. Some spent time in the High Flux 

Isotope Reactor area, which is not a covered area. 

Slide.

Interviewers also indicated that workers were 

promoted or changed job titles during the evaluated 

period, which also affected their exposure potential. 

But regardless, we assume that the same person 

does all the work associated with the highest 

concentrations of airborne contaminants.

I'm on slide 23. Yes, for Petitioner concern seven, the 

Petitioner asserts that there is a complete absence of 

any measurements or monitoring of the workers who 

are the subject of the petition. NIOSH has relied on 
71

measurement and monitoring data for several 

surrogate populations that are not comparable to the 

typical M&C maintenance worker in the Class covered 

by the petition.

The surrogate classes proposed by NIOSH do not 

adequately characterize the maximum radiation dose 

to any member of the Class covered by the petition.

NIOSH analyzed M&C maintenance work, including 

use of personal protection equipment, PPE, and 

safety and health protocols. And we modeled 

associated exposures using plausible circumstances 

and without taking credit for any PPE or exposurelimiting procedures. 

NIOSH created additional exposure models, such as 

the subsurface exposure model, to address worker 

contact with sediments and to allow for longer 

exposure occupancy durations. NIOSH used 

maximum assumptions, such as resuspension 

factors, to address work scenarios that involved work 

with accumulated dust, such as in the overhead area 

and during welding activities.

NIOSH recognizes that there is some uncertainty 

when trying to bound doses to a Class of workers that 

perform multiple and diverse tasks during an 

extended period. For this reason, NIOSH applied the 

use of the 95th percentile radioactivity levels in its 

model to accommodate any uncertainty associated 

with the work process assumptions.

As stated previously, NIOSH assumes the same 

person does all of the work associated with the 

highest concentration of airborne contaminants, 

which provides additional conservatism to the 

exposure models.

The Petitioner's eighth concern asserted that NIOSH 

has failed to take a broader and more accurate view 

of the typical M&C maintenance worker. The 

measurement and monitoring data from the 1960s, 
72

80s, and the 1990s for radiation workers and D&D 

workers, on which NIOSH has relied for their dose 

reconstruction modeling, are not suitable to estimate 

the bounding dose for the Class of M&C maintenance 

workers.

NIOSH presented the SEC-00236 Evaluation Report 

to the Advisory Board on October 24, 2017. The 

Petitioner subsequently raised a concern about the 

adequacy of the Evaluation Report in addressing 

maintenance work. In response to this concern, 

NIOSH obtained additional information and 

developed models in subsequent White Papers that 

bound doses to workers that performed more 

invasive tasks, as identified by the Petitioner.

The method for the reconstruction of doses during 

periods of residual contamination have been 

established, documented, and accepted for use at 

numerous AWE sites with operations similar to those 

at M&C.

For maintenance activities that were unique at M&C, 

NIOSH used monitoring data from measurements 

obtained before D&D, along with maximizing 

assumptions, to create bounding exposure models. 

For Petitioner concern nine, the Petitioner conveyed 

concerns from an M&C health physicist that NIOSH 

was using measurements and monitoring data 

collected for D&D workers during the 1990s 

decommissioning project as a surrogate for the types 

of exposures received by M&C maintenance workers 

during the residual period for estimating a bounding 

dose.

According to the Petitioner, the M&C health physicist 

also claimed that Members of the Advisory Board 

stated that it is virtually impossible to identify every 

conceivable exposure scenario that the M&C 

maintenance workers were exposed to.

NIOSH used, NIOSH only used the D&D exposure 
73

data for its comparative value and not for dose 

reconstruction modeling. NIOSH used monitoring 

data from measurements obtained before D&D, along 

with maximizing assumptions to accommodate any 

extreme conditions encountered by M&C 

maintenance personnel to create bounding exposure 

models.

NIOSH researched M&C maintenance work and 

interviewed workers to model exposures associated 

with their worst-case tasks. Whenever new exposure 

scenarios were identified, NIOSH evaluated them and 

created the additional exposure models as necessary. 

NIOSH will continue to exercise due diligence in our 

research to further understand M&C maintenance 

work and ensure that all significant exposure 

scenarios are addressed.

And that is the end of my presentation.

Chair Beach: Thanks, Christine. I have a question on 

slide, I think it's around 10, the surrogate data being 

used. That was, that one and 8, can you just give a 

little bit more background data of the surrogate data?

Ms. Corwin: Pat, if you could jump in here.

Mr. McCloskey: Sure, Chris. I'm just waiting to see 

which slide we're on here for which surrogate do you 

want me to see. Which slide did you want, Josie, slide 

8 or slide 10?

Chair Beach: I think it was slide 10. When I wrote it 

down, we had already moved past it, so. There's two 

places that surrogate data is mentioned, concern 

number one and concern seven. So.

Mr. McCloskey: Okay, let me go back to concern 

number one.

Dr. Anigstein: Excuse me, slide 9 mentions surrogate 

data.

Mr. McCloskey: Thank you. There you go.
74

Chair Beach: Specifically I think OTIB-70.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: Go ahead, sorry.

Mr. McCloskey: So this is a more general statement 

that talks about, that's beginning here is provided by 

Dr. Neton in the paper initially. But in the beginning 

of this EEOICPA program, we recognized that we 

wouldn't always have data for a lot of these sites 

where we were trying to bound doses. 

And we knew that we would create procedures such 

as, that are referenced here that could be used in 

cases where we have little or no data. And we have 

ways of qualifying surrogate data to make sure it's 

applicable.

Chair Beach: Well, I know NIOSH has criteria for 

surrogate data, and so does the Board. Did anybody 

go through and make sure that we hit all the points 

on the surrogate data? I guess that's an SC&A 

question, using the Board's data criteria?

Dr. Mauro: This is John, I'll take a shot at that. The 

way in which this unfolded in terms of the surrogate 

data idea, keep in the mind the surrogate data 

philosophy always referred to a different facility 

where you have similar operations and activities and 

similar time periods, and whether or not the data and 

information that's from the other facility applies to 

the facility of concern.

So that, I have to say, now I'm doing the best of my 

recollection being involved with meetings and all this 

work, is that we didn't actually go there. 

What we went to is say listen, we have data, we have 

lots of data, and the data primarily exist toward the 

end of the AWE operations, and then lots of data 

starts to come in in '82, '85, and in the nineties, '92 

and later. All of which was related to trying to 

characterize whether or not the site was, still had 
75

some residual activity that needed to be cleaned up.

So we didn't, we looked at it from the point of view, 

and I'm hoping this helps, the point of view can we 

use that data, which is quite abundant, as a way to 

say well, what might have been the exposures that 

were experienced by M&C maintenance and 

repurposing people who worked in the 70s and early 

80s.

So we got this window of time, so we didn't ask the 

question the way you just posed it, as surrogate data, 

although it's reasonable term to use. We really asked 

the question is we have this, we have all this data, 

but it starts in the 80s. And we know that in the 70s 

and early 80s that lots of things were going on in the 

subsurface environment, both indoors and outdoors.

And, but we don't -- and at the time that was done, 

the workers had, in my understanding, no idea or 

appreciation that wow, there was some radioactivity 

there. And they were just going about doing what we 

would call their non-AWE or commercial activities,

which involved lots of subsurface work, and it's all 

characterized and discussed.

So what we really did, and I hope this answers, is we 

simply asked ourselves is there a way in which we 

could use the available data, which is quite 

comprehensive, but about a decade or more later 

than when this activity took place, and say okay, 

things really didn't change that much from going 

from 1970s into the 1980s that we can't use or can 

we use, or can we use, or --

(Buzzing sound.)

Dr. Mauro: Well, got that buzz again. I guess 

everybody else has it?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, I think everybody else has it.

Dr. Mauro: Should we hang up and call back?
76

Mr. Katz: Well, it's one person's line, I don't know 

who, it just went away.

Dr. Mauro: I've still got it. I'm going to hang up and 

call back.

Mr. Katz: Do you still have it right now? 

Dr. Mauro: Okay, it just cleared up, okay. So I would 

pose the question along the lines not so much as a 

classic surrogate data which has those five criteria, 

and simply say that what we spent a lot of time 

thinking about, both NIOSH and SC&A, is the degree 

to which the data that we do have for the site, for the 

same locations, the subsurface environment indoors 

and outdoors and the above-surface environment 

indoors, where we have all this data and we have it 

for starting in the 80s, can we use that to reconstruct 

doses to workers that were involved in various 

maintenance repurposing in the 70s. That's probably 

the simplest way to go.

And so to answer your question, I think effectively 

we did, we could refer to that question as a surrogate 

data question, but because it just says reasonable 

and are there any impediments to preventing us from 

doing that. 

Is it, in other words, is it possible that the activity 

that we characterized, that was characterized by the 

various contractors and the NRC in the 80s, mid-80s 

and 90s for the site, and for the very locations we're 

interested in, can that somehow be used to 

reconstruct doses to M&C maintenance people during 

the 70s? That's probably like the simplest way to 

think about it, and I hope that answers your question.

Chair Beach: Well, we didn't use criteria that was 

established for the Board, so you have answered 

that. 

The other point on that surrogate data is one of the 

documents stated that the interior of Building 10 was 

washed prior to doing surveys in the '81/'82 
77

timeframe, and so I guess that's where my concern 

lies as how representative some of those samples 

we're using for surrogate data.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, I mean ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Beach: Yeah, I'm going to open it up for, and 

then I'll ask my other questions. Go ahead, Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: John, how confident -- what 

you're saying is can we use the data, and I'm asking 

you how confident are you that that can pin down 

reasonably or maximize the exposure for each of the 

individuals, the dozens of individuals who are part of 

maintenance, who are part of the petition, the group 

that's being petitioned? 

I mean, you're, it's not just can I do something, it is 

how confident are you that you really got it pinned 

down. 

If we approve it, if we get rid of the, if we do not 

approve the SEC, then we're going to do each person 

individually. And you're telling me that you're 

confident that you kind of can pin this, can pin these 

exposures down per person.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, the answer to your question is I am 

confident that we could place a plausible upper 

bound, in fact a quite high upper bound, on both the 

external and internal exposure that every worker that 

worked at the facility in repurposing and

maintenance in the time period of interest because of 

the data we have and the strategy that was adopted 

to deal with that and other information.

So, and I'm in a position where I could -- well, it's 

already been written off, more information. The 

answer is I am confident, but that doesn't mean that 

you will agree.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, no, in fact I'm honestly, I 
78

am not confident. And particularly look at the some 

of the maximizing procedures or the maximizing 

assumptions, and we will talk about them. And I will, 

I have a question later, though, on another slide that 

exactly addresses that issue for the subsurface 

workers.

But I mean, it's, the maximizing assumptions are 

absolutely critical to setting up the maximum 

exposure for each individual. And I don't feel 

confident that they're based on the sound of science, 

despite the fact that a lot of hard work has been put 

into it, and I hate to be not, I hate to be skeptical, 

but I am.

Anyway --

Dr. Taulbee: Dr. Kotelchuck, if I could come in here. 

This is Tim Taulbee. One thing I would like to point 

out is that some of the data that is being used here 

in the 1980s and 1990s, this is during the residual 

period. So from a surrogate data standpoint, this 

really isn't surrogate data. This is during that 

particular residual time period as different activities 

were taking place.

The actual surrogate data is where we're using things 

like a resuspension factor. And so it's kind of Type 

2,or believe that's the correct term, secondary type 

of data. But the raw, fundamental data that we're 

using is from this facility during this time period. And 

yes, it's sparse. Not for individuals, no. But from the 

contamination survey, contamination and airborne 

data, that is, so.

Member Kotelchuck: That's true, there's a window, 

as John said. The window being from '68 through 

middle 80s.

Chair Beach: Eighty-seven.

Member Kotelchuck: It's a long time, right, quarter 

of a century.
79

Chair Beach: And Tim, can I ask, you did say airborne 

in your comment. And what airborne samples are you 

referring to?

Dr. Taulbee: I may have misspoke there, I'm not sure 

that there is any airborne. Surface contamination, 

sorry. Go ahead, Pat.

Mr. McCloskey: Yeah, when you first pulled up slide 

1 and talked about the Petitioner's concern for 

surrogate data, that was a more general explanation 

I gave at the beginning of our paper. 

But the only time we've ever used anything akin to 

surrogate data for this entire Metals and Controls SEC 

was sort of like Tim was mentioning a minute ago, 

the dust-loading factor that we applied to the actual 

survey data from Metals and Controls. 

The surrogate data was taken from the Mound 

facility, where we were struggling to come up with 

how much airborne would be created or dust would 

happen from an excavation that it would have 

occurred in the basement of Building 10. And so, and 

we did go through the process, if you look in our 

maintenance worker exposure model, we went 

through the process of qualifying that data with our 

IG-004. 

And then I believe SC&A went through a process of

looking at that, and with a separate method. I don't 

know that they used the Board's criteria, but Dr. 

Mauro came up with a very similar dust-loading 

value, a separate method, so. That's the only time I 

did any kind of certain --

Mr. Katz: Just to clarify, Pat, when you said IG-004, 

I think that is, those are the guidelines for surrogate 

data, right?

Mr. McCloskey: That's our methodology.

Mr. Katz: Right, right, right. Well, they're very 

similar, the Board's and NIOSH ones, they're very 
80

similar.

Chair Beach: So you're using Mound data outside, 

outside data for inside work.

Mr. Katz: For the dust-loading.

Chair Beach: For the dust load, yeah, I got that.

Member Kotelchuck: For the dust-loading, right. But 

does that make sense?

Mr. McCloskey: And we used that outside, that was 

an outside excavation at Mound but there is some 

subsurface work that occurs outside of Metals and 

Controls that we were trying to bound. So yeah, we 

did use it for inside subsurface work and outside 

subsurface work.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, but it's the inside that's 

the problem in most, much of the work that we're 

dealing with is inside. And to me, comparing dustloading outside and inside are really -- and yet you 

set the outside as the maximizing exposure for 

everybody, both the other outside workers, which at 

that --

Mr. Katz: Dave, I think you have it in reverse. So 

you're using the more conservative. He's using, I 

think, the inside dust-loading for inside and outside.

Member Kotelchuck: No, the Mound is outside.

Mr. McCloskey: That was taken just downwind from 

where the digging was occurring. So it would be more 

in the plume.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, so it's outside completely, 

and the other one is outside and inside, and much of 

the exposure of workers that we're dealing with are 

inside at M&C. 

And I did, that was one of the maximize -- I was 

going to raise it later, but it's one of the maximizing 

assumptions that I think I don't feel is a proper one. 
81

And if you'd let me be blunt, it's not proper. We 

should have outside people compared to outside. It's 

basic IH, it's basic health and safety in terms of dustloading.

Dr. Mauro: SC&A was in a similar situation, but we 

didn't use the Mound data, we went into the EPA 

literature for the mediation. And we came up with a 

number to 200 micrograms per cubic meter as being 

the measured recommended value for reconstructing 

doses from inhalation during the mediation cleanup 

activities. Yeah, so we felt that was a good number.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, let me go look at that. But 

the one that was in the original White Paper I did feel 

that when I came to realize that by comparing 

outside and inside and using the outside for 

maximization, that I, in terms of the dust that we --

I felt it was inappropriate.

Chair Beach: Well, I'm just realizing --

Member Kotelchuck: But maybe your model, maybe 

the SC&A model works better.

Chair Beach: Well, is NIOSH adopting SC&A's model, 

do we know that at this time?

Member Kotelchuck: I don't know.

Dr. Mauro: Well, your numbers are 220 micrograms 

per cubic meter, ours are 200. So coincidentally, 

they're awful close. And we use the EPA 

recommended values, while your numbers from the 

Mound plant was, I believe, 220. 

So it was quite startling that, completely 

independent, came to the same place for the purpose 

of estimating dust-loadings for people involved in 

remediation activities.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, okay, I mean, I will 

certainly look at that. I was really going off of the 

White Paper. We had a lot of papers over these many 
82

months, and so I used the basic White Paper, from 

NIOSH, of course. Okay, good.

Chair Beach: All right, any other comments on 

Petitioner's concerns, and not just related to 

Petitioner concern number one, all of them? I know I 

have a comment on Petitioner concern five. Anyone 

else?

Member Kotelchuck: I have one on six. But why don't 

you go ahead, I've talked a lot already.

Chair Beach: Okay, can you move to, yeah, there you 

go, thanks. Not that I don't have concerns on the 

other ones, but just a quick note on the Petitioner 

concern number five talked about residual 

contamination was, I believe it said that you, was not 

accessible, was that correct on this one?

Ms. Corwin: Correct. And there's a couple different 

things. First of all, as surveys were being performed 

over the years, there were different release criteria 

that were in place. And then the second thing is that 

D&D and other things were happening, inaccessible 

areas were being made accessible. So was that –

Chair Beach: oh, sorry, Christine.

Ms. Corwin: That's all right.

Chair Beach: Go ahead, I thought you were done. 

Okay.

Based upon the 1995 survey, the characterization of 

(telephonic interference) five and ten, I think that 

was a Weston report. It talked about floor space. We 

find that surface contamination on concrete floors 

and utility trenches, rims exceeding the unrestricted 

release criteria. 

So it basically said that there was contamination. It 

was above the release criteria, and I took that to 

mean it was in accessible areas. So that was just one 

of my comments on Petitioner's concern number five.
83

Ms. Corwin: Well, some of it may be have been in 

accessible areas, but it was under a different release 

criteria, the release criteria for that time, instead of 

what the previous criteria was.

Chair Beach: Okay, and then just note that 

maintenance workers were all over those facilities 

during that earlier time period, and they were in all 

kinds of places we would have thought was 

inaccessible. So anyway, I just wasn't sure if that was 

answered completely.

Ms. Corwin: Well, we had the subsurface work 

exposure that we provide two months per year of that 

additional exposure.

Chair Beach: Yeah, yeah, I understand.

Ms. Corwin: For the subsurface areas.

Chair Beach: Correct.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, could I -- couldn't help, 

that was my question on slide 21. NIOSH allowed a 

month for additional exposure for subsurface, and 

then extended it to two months. What was, why was 

it, why two? Why not four or five? What was the basis 

for making the choice from one to two months, and 

not to --

Ms. Corwin: Well, I can, I wasn't here at the time. 

Pat, you might be able to jump in. But we felt that 

one month was probably sufficient based on 

interviews and what we know of the work. But we, to 

be overly conservative, went with two months. But 

Pat, you can jump in.

Mr. McCloskey: Sure. Initially, we did the interviews 

after the initial Evaluation Report was presented to 

the Board. And we did those interviews, and we went 

off and modeled a subsurface exposure model, we 

made a subsurface exposure model. And that work 

alone we felt was sufficient for one-month 

occupancy.
84

And then we presented it to the Work Group and we 

heard some additional concerns regarding HVAC 

maintenance, we heard concerns about work in the 

overhead. And we went off and added to our 

subsurface model a maintenance model, which added 

those additional scenarios. 

And with that, we were asked to look at the 

occupancy rate initially, and we decided that another 

month of maintenance work was prudent there to be 

added with those additional exposure scenarios 

added to the maintenance workers.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, but prudence is not a 

sound basis, in my mind. I mean, there's, we're 

trying to decide on compensation for people who had 

cancer.

Mr. McCloskey: It's probably a bad word.

Member Kotelchuck: And I mean, I just feel like it 

sounds, if I didn't use the word prudence, I would say 

it sounds like, well, people said it was worse. Okay, 

let's make it two. Let's, why not make it three. Put it 

this way, it is, it's spiritually a good thing that one 

looks at the, one makes the calculation and then 

people say, well, there are other problems you didn't 

address, and you try to address them. 

And by the way, there has been a lot of addressing 

of many of the issues that were raised. But there's 

got to be a basis for it that is more than -- I mean,

for example, when we went from 10 to the minus four 

to 10 to minus three, there's a basis in lots of other 

situations that the use of 10 to the minus three is 

appropriate. 

And then the discussion came, well, what about 10 to 

the minus two. No, that's, John said, you know, I've 

never seen that number, maybe I've only seen it once 

or twice. That's a scientific argument. 

The providing of an extra month, it's not just that I 

don't know why it's two and not any other number. 
85

But it undermines my confidence that we really know 

what these, we're trying to get the maximum 

exposure for every individual. 

It's, I'm uncomfortable with the choice of two, 

although it's a good idea that people are trying to 

think about what are some of the issues raised and 

trying to respond to those issues. But I don't feel 

comfortable with the choice two --

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, this is John. I, let me step back a 

bit and let -- because I think that we're getting down 

a little too close, and I want to step back for a second. 

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: One of the things that happened during 

our interviews is we were basically probing all of the 

different kinds of things that took place by the 

repurposing and maintenance activities. And we 

came up with a list that said all of it, look what was 

going on. There were the subsurface activities going 

on inside Building 10, where people were 

underground, all right.

Oh, wait a minute, there was also people doing 

maintenance, and that was -- and by the way, during 

that time we asked them, you know, well, you know, 

how often did this happen. And of course there was 

some uncertainty, but the number that emerged from 

that discussion, from talking to these folks, was 

maybe about a month every year.

And but, you know, of course there's uncertainty

there. And so we had that. And then we said but there 

were other things that were going on, right. People 

were, maintenance workers were also involved in this 

welding operation and other activities up in the 

rafters. 

And then, okay, that's another scenario that the 

same crew, maintenance crew, then we said, hold the 

presses. They had to clean out and replace filters 

inside the HVAC system, which were very dusty 
86

operations.

And we said, well, you know, how often did you do 

that, and we got some information on that. And then 

we, you know, so we kept on going. Then we went 

outdoors, where people were involved in activities. 

Even there were some water treatment facilities. 

So we in effect tried to extrapolate all of the different 

types of activities that maintenance and repurposing 

people might have been doing in the 1970s -- I'm 

going to call it the 19070s because that's really the 

window when all this is going on and no one had any 

idea that what they were doing, there was 

radioactivity in the soil, in the pipes, in the rafters, 

on the filters, and so forth and so on.

So we said okay, we are going to model every one of 

these pathways as best we can and place a plausible 

upper bound. So each one are separate calculations 

showing that what we believe to be the upper bound, 

and we give our rationale. 

And then superimposed on that -- now of course, that 

comes to, you know, and we're saying now, are we 

going to assume the same person is doing all of these 

things, and, or are we going to say well, no, there's 

some people who dealt with the subsurface people, 

and we'll give them that one month a year. Now 

that's been upped to two months per year, which I 

think accommodates the sensibility that there was 

uncertainty in that one month per year statement.

So I wouldn't call it arbitrary, I would say that it was 

almost a way to say listen, we're not, you know, 

though they said one month a year, we have to 

acknowledge that it could have been longer and it 

was stretched out to two.

Now, the folks on the phone that are, the ones who 

did this work and they're listening in right now, you 

know, Mr. Elliott, you know, and I'm sure he has 

something to say whether the subsurface work that 
87

was involved, and there were really two kinds of 

things that were going on. I'm sorry to go on but we 

have to sometimes --

Member Kotelchuck: I appreciate that.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, all right, so what we end up saying 

is well, listen, we got ourselves, let's just talk about 

for a minute that scenario. We had about six that we 

looked at, but let us go look at them and see if we 

could model each one. And we originally used one 

hour. And now, you know, I think it moved to two, 

and I can understand the rationale for that. 

And I certainly would be interested in knowing from 

Mr. Elliott whether or not he felt that, yeah, two 

probably, having the same person, stay with me now, 

that this work was being done over some number of 

times per year, or I think it was the number of hours 

per year, and that it was done, you know, 

cumulatively. And it was over the course of a year, 

effectively 200 hours or about one month's worth of 

activity, of this kind of activity took place.

But that could be individual periods, well, we did it 

this week, or you know, skipped some time and did 

it a few days. So but what we said is okay, we're 

going to go with, you know, two hours of exposure, I 

believe -- I'm sorry. The number of hours was 

effectively one month per year, then moved up to two 

months per year.

And we're going to -- but also know at the same time 

that for that particular scenario, and that went on 

year after year. So we're saying in effect that the 

same person is always the one who's doing that work 

every time it's being done. 

And every time it's being done, you know, it, we're 

going with this two months per year for ten years, 

twelve years, whatever the number of years are that 

the guy happened to be a worker. 

So worker number one, okay, when was he there, 
88

from here to here. And he was a member of the 

maintenance crew, yeah. Well, we're going to give 

him two, you know, two months per year every year 

that he worked at the facility. So now, I think it's fair 

to think of it from that perspective.

Now, you raised a point, well, is three hours per year 

better? But, and certainly I'd be the first to say if Mr. 

Elliott and the folks on the phone feel that the original 

one was maybe a little weak, and now we're going 

with two. Is two still weak? Keeping in mind it's 

always the same person. And we all know that that's 

not true, that different people -- I remember there

was some laughter about this during the meeting.

You know, one of the jobs with the -- these are pretty 

dirty jobs. And you know, once you reach a certain 

level of seniority, you know, you don't, that guy don't 

go in the hole. Going in the hole with the new guys 

that were, you know, properly trained of course and 

everything. But you know, this was not a job that, 

you know, a guy would always do. 

And please correct me, I know Mr. Elliott and the 

folks there, they're there, and I don't want to 

misrepresent it, but you, we were there together, all 

of us, and we really worked hard together to try to 

understand what's going on. And this is the outcome. 

The outcome now is that we're going to go, we are 

recommending well, when that maintenance work in 

the subsurface environment was being done, we're 

assuming that it was done the equivalent of two 

months' worth of work every year. 

And now, but more importantly, it's always the same 

person. And see that person, every single person is 

going to get that dose, every single person for every 

year that he worked there. Now, if you feel that that 

underestimates the duration of exposure, well, we're 

here to listen. But it seems to me that that captures 

it.
89

Mr. Katz: Thanks, John. John, this is Ted. I just want 

to add something else for Dave's and the Board 

Members' benefit really, and this is just from a policy 

perspective this issue, because Dave was talking 

about how scientifically based it is adding an hour, 

doubling the time, whatever.

But you know, the statute asked for reasonable 

estimates of dose; it doesn't ask that every element 

of this be shored up by sort of scientifically accurate 

or precise estimates. It asks for reasonable estimates 

and understanding that a lot of this requires 

overestimates and assumptions and so on. 

And in addressing specifically, when we regulate, 

when we produced the rules for this, talking about 

reasonable estimates, we talked about that there 

needs to be a factual basis, you know, by which we 

derive estimates. But that doesn't mean you can't 

build on those reasonable estimates conservatism 

and so on. So I just wanted to say that.

Member Kotelchuck: I, yeah, okay, and I agree, and 

I understand. But it has to add up to our having 

confidence that they're reasonable, or I believe that 

the max -- since we don't have much data, that the 

maximum, the maximum estimates are very 

important and a reasonable maximum.

Mr. Katz: Right, it has to be, you have to be 

reasonably confident that they are capturing, capping 

the doses, right.

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Mr. Katz: Thanks.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, thanks.

Chair Beach: Okay, any other questions from Board 

Members?

Member Valerio: This is Loretta, I have a question.
90

Chair Beach: Okay, go ahead, Loretta.

Member Valerio: So on slide 18 where the Petitioner's 

concern on the contaminated soil and other debris 

moved by the rail cars, so going back to the response 

to concern number four, where they stated that the 

areas were characterized with 23, almost 2400 soil 

samples, does that include soil samples from the 

contaminated soil that was removed by the rail cars?

Ms. Corwin: Can you repeat that again? I'm not sure 

I understood that.

Member Valerio: So on the response of Petitioner for 

concern number four, it talks about almost 2400 soil 

samples that were collected prior to remediation, 

okay. Then the concern number five had to do with 

the contaminated soil and other debris that was 

removed by rail cars during the 1992 through 1996 

decommissioning activity.

So my question is there's contaminated soil and the 

debris that was removed by rail car between 1992 

and 1996, was that part of the samples that were 

taken during, prior to the remediation area or the 

remediation from 1985-1995?

Dr. Anigstein: This is Bob Anigstein, I'd like to 

volunteer an answer to that. The 19 -- what I call the 

Sowell report, based on the 1984 survey that was 

performed by ORAU on the contract with NRC did look 

at the burial ground and did sample extensively, 750 

samples. 

And that did include, to my understanding, some of 

the waste, because that was -- first they thought that 

remediation was adequate and the NRC, based on 

new measurements and new regulations, no, the site 

cannot be released because it's so contaminated. 

And the most contaminated soil was loaded into the 

rail cars. So that soil had -- so this was done in '92. 

The soil certainly had been present in 1984, when the 

initial surveys were done. So the answer, the short 
91

answer to your questions is yes.

Member Valerio: Okay. All right, thank you.

Chair Beach: One of my questions was based on that 

also. I don't know if it's a question or a statement 

mostly. I think there was 350 rail cars, and it was 

determined that each of the rail cars couldn't exceed 

a certain amount of grams.

And so there was quite a bit of mixing highly 

contaminated with not-so-contaminated to make 

sure that each of the cars met the criteria. So there's 

a lot more to that waste going out.

And correct me if I'm not wrong, but they sent out 

burial waste in '92, and then again '95, '96, correct? 

From different sites? Because there was quite a bit of 

work done in '92, and then again later on in '95/'96 

time period.

Ms. Corwin: Correct.

Dr. Mauro: This is John. Again, I'm sorry to interrupt, 

but there's a perspective question here again. What 

we're talking about is at that time, which was the 

FUSRAP remediation issues resolution to close out 

survey type measurements and then activity. Now, I 

want to make sure I understand what we're 

discussing.

There were M&C workers on site in the vicinity of 

where those shipments were being made by 

contractors who came in specially to get rid of the 

bulk. 

Where, our interest, the scenario that we're talking 

about, on just clarification is, the people that might 

have been nearby, you know, where that, that the 

contractor activity was going on, they may have 

experienced some exposure to, let's say airborne 

loadings that may have come off the trucks, and 

ultimately I guess the rails car.
92

So the questions that are, the issue that we're 

discussing, that scenario, M&C workers that were in 

the vicinity of where these contractors were doing 

their work, contractors who of course we all know 

were under a very thorough health and safety 

program, CTS and I guess Roy F. Weston was 

involved. I don't know about the people who did the 

shipping. But that was all under regulatory control 

by, either the state agencies or the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission.

So the questions that we're talking about now are our 

ability to reconstruct the, let's say the combination of 

inhalation and external exposure that M&C folks who 

might be nearby during that time period could have 

experienced. 

And if that is in fact what we're talking about, what I 

will say is that the big driver, the thing that we have 

been sort of dancing around for a while, no, that's 

not where the action is, that's not where the 

exposures were of great substance.

Where the exposures were of limiting concern, and 

they still turned out not to be that large, are the guys 

who were working in the subsurface environment in 

Building 10 to, as part of the repurposing activities 

underground, who were up close and personal to the 

pipes and the contaminated soil. 

So in a way I have to say I'm a little frustrated, 

because that's where the action is. That's where the 

highest doses occur, inhalation and external. There 

are all these other scenarios that we've been talking 

about, welding. The one we just talked about, which 

I believe we were talking about, workers that might 

have been nearby when the trucks were going by to 

get rid of the stuff in the 1990s.

There's these ventilation -- these are all different 

scenarios. And the one by far that drives this thing 

is, you know, you can look at every one of them, 

these are sort of like episodic things that are taking 
93

place by people, sometimes the same people, 

sometimes different people. 

And superimposed on all this throughout the entire 

time period was there was residual radioactivity in 

Building 10 on the floor, which goes back to the 

original, original evaluations done by NIOSH, where 

they went with the classic OTIB-70 approach, where 

there's residual activity that we know from swipe 

samples collected in the late 60s, lots and lots of 

data, and that this activity's on the surface and the 

workers in the, once we got into the residual period 

were exposed to the resuspension and the external 

radiation associated with that.

So in the grand scheme of what we're trying to get 

our arms around here is that the starting point is in 

the space where you have everybody that works in 

Building 10 is being exposed to this surface residual 

contamination, which was very well characterized at 

the end of the AWE period.

All right, now what the issue is, is we that neglected 

to, and this is when we've learned a lot, when we had 

our meetings with the folks that are on the phone 

right now and other, there were a total of 12 people, 

we found out is, holy mackerel, there was this 

radioactivity that was in all these different places, 

okay, which we've been talking about: the 

subsurface, the pipes, the rafters, the HVAC system, 

outdoor low-level waste disposal. 

All of that was out there, and the original SEC 

Evaluation Report didn't characterize this. This was a 

major limitation of the original report.

Everything we're talking about now is we're going 

one by one through each of these scenarios of 

unusual activities that took place in the 1970s and 

80s. And we have to be able to say with confidence 

that every one of those scenarios, we can place a 

plausible upper bound on those scenarios. 
94

And we talked a lot about welding just now, and now 

we're about to talk about the subsurface activity. And 

now we left that, for some reason, and we moved 

outdoors to this other one.

In my opinion, and seeing this from what I would say 

the upper level, I'd like to get down into the weeds 

and say, and go to where I believe is the big ticket 

SEC issue. I'm sorry to do this but I have to say that, 

because I'm very close to this. And I feel as if it's, I 

have this picture, it's almost like a portfolio in front 

of me, of everything that went on.

I read -- by the way, between, once I knew we were 

going to have this meeting, I read everything, and it 

all came back to me. And where we really should be, 

I'm sorry to do this and you can shut me off anytime 

you want, but I feel as if the big ticket item is the 

point that Josie and I discussed. 

And that is, look, during the 70s, they were doing 

their refurbishing activities, which involved going in, 

they're digging down into the ground, removing dirt, 

and installing new foundations for new equipment. 

They were repairing pipelines, they were coring 

pipelines. And radioactivity was being removed, 

right. I mean, they didn't know they were removing 

radioactivity. They were removing dirt, junk, and 

equipment and doing whatever they had to do to 

repurpose and maintain the facility to do its new 

commercial work that began in '69.

But at no time did they know that they were dealing 

with radioactivity, so they had no provisions for 

monitoring it, for seeing where it was or what was 

going on. 

And inadvertently we could all agree, and this 

became the big-ticket item and I think it is to this 

moment, the big-ticket item is that these people were 

in the hole, okay, I call them in the hole doing, work 

up close and personal to these pipes, some of which 
95

were leaking, which resulted in contamination, 

contaminated soil. 

There was also contamination of the subsoil, 

subsurface soil, inside Building 10, because the water 

seeped in and leaked out. So you have pipelines that 

leaked, you have pipelines that were plugged, you 

have dirt that was contaminated because the pipeline 

leaked, you had dirt that was contaminated because 

there was a high water table that was going up and 

down and water would seep in.

So, and these people were down there in that hole, 

and we, and that was the big, you know, when all is 

said and done, that's where the action is. And we 

have to be able to say, place a plausible upper bound 

on every single worker that might have been exposed 

in that scenario, which we were assuming to be every 

single worker.

And then we said, okay, well, how do you bound that? 

Can you bound that? And then the, and an issue that 

I have to say I was the one that, I hate to steal 

anybody's thunder, but I said wait a minute, hold the 

presses. You know, there was this coring activity and 

refurbishing which was removing dirt. And we don't 

know how much of the radioactivity was removed.

We know that some may have been removed, maybe 

very little, or maybe a substantial amount; we don't 

know. So therefore, therefore all of this terrific 

characterization work that took place in Building 10 

in the subsurface environment, which is where I 

believe is all the action is, you know, we have a 

problem. 

The measurements that were made in the 1980s and 

90s of the activity everywhere, including the 

subsurface activity in Building 10, can be, has its 

limitations. The limitations being maybe the 

measurements that were made in the 90s in the 

subsurface environment in Building 10 doesn't 

accurately represent what was present in the 
96

subsurface environment in the 1970s. Because some 

of it might have been inadvertently, not on purpose, 

removed.

So it might have -- so what we're using as our 

starting point for what we believe to be the 

concentration of the radioactivity in the subsurface 

environment might in fact be an underestimate, 

because some of it might have been there in the 70s 

but was removed inadvertently while they were doing 

their repurposing activities.

And I think this is where, this is what we should be 

talking about, because that's the big SEC issue. And 

the solution to that that we came up with, and that -

- yes, I'm going on because I feel as if we've been 

talking around the big issue, and I wanted to get 

here.

Chair Beach: And I appreciate that. I just don't want 

you to solve it right here at this moment.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Chair Beach: Because I think you made a good point 

and I really appreciate that. I think we're going 

around because we've had two meetings, but we've 

never actually gotten into the nuts and bolts of 

questions the Work Group Members actually have. 

And so, I think that's why. So, if I can hold you right 

there, unless somebody --

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Again, I apologize because I do get 

emotionally engaged when I'm involved in these 

calls. So, I'm sorry for jumping in that way.

Chair Beach: I am appreciative of everything you 

said, and thank you. That was excellent 

summarization.

On the petitioners' concerns, any other questions or 

comments?

(No response.)
97

Chair Beach: Hearing none, I just have one small 

comment that I want to make on petitioner concern 

number eight. And, John, it goes back to what we're 

talking about. The concern was answered by NIOSH 

that this is an AWE site and it's we're using different 

established procedures to get at the dose.

The one thing that I said at the beginning, and I'm 

saying now, is this is not a typical AWE site. Between 

'92 and '96, there was 583,000 tons of waste, 

contaminated waste, removed from this site. This is 

highly unusual. And so, I think a lot of the questions 

I personally have are because there's a lot to this site 

that we haven't gone over and talked about.

And so, with that, I'm going to just move on. If 

nobody has any more questions on petitioners' 

concerns or questions for NIOSH, SC&A, I think it's 

time to hear from the petitioner, unless, Ted, you 

have anything else that we're missing.

Mr. Katz: But before we get to petitioners, if there's 

more substance that John didn't get to related to --

unless he's rehashing stuff that we've already 

addressed, don't you want John to finish?

Chair Beach: Yes, I was just afraid we were going to 

get into the Site Profile fixes that we haven't agreed. 

It's not an SEC. So, I guess --

Mr. Katz: No, but he's saying that this is the more 

substantive issue, if there is an SEC issue to address.

Chair Beach: Right.

Mr. Katz: I think we probably should hear that out.

Chair Beach: Okay. Because I know we've never 

really gone through what John's topic was. So, you 

are absolutely correct. Our first couple of meetings 

we had White Papers that were addressed and 

concerns came out of it, but we never actually put 

the subsurface modeling to bed, so to speak.
98

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Chair Beach: So, I'm, if everybody's --

Mr. Katz: If you're okay --

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Yes, if you're okay, let's hear John out, and 

then, maybe if we need, we get a response from 

NIOSH to where John's going, if that's needed. And 

then, absolutely, we go to the petitioner, and then, 

we'd talk about where we go from here after we know 

what petitioner has to add to all of this.

Chair Beach: Okay. That sounds fair enough. Thanks.

Mr. Katz: So, John, back on your horse.

Dr. Mauro: Thank you. I appreciate it because I feel 

as if we need to hit that because that's important.

Now, just to let everyone know, by the way, Josie, 

one of the scenarios that you were just talking about 

there was shipping these enormous volumes of 

material. We did look at that. We said, listen, there 

were people outside and they were nearby, and they 

could have been exposed to dust associated with this 

vast bulk of volume that was being moved. And 

there's dust that could be coming off and people 

could be breathing that.

Now we looked at that. We modeled that. It's in one 

of our reports. And we found that not to be that 

important. We said that, nope, nope, and we looked 

at all these others and we said, where's the big one? 

Well, the big one is the subsurface guy. He's in a hole 

and he's down there with the bad stuff.

And so now, I'm going to pick up from there. So, let's 

go to the scenario that I believe to be the one that's 

limiting where people could have experienced the 

highest exposures and where there's the most 

uncertainty. Can we really reconstruct those doses 
99

and place a plausible upper bound?

And the thing that makes that an important issue --

and, Josie, you and I actually ran into each other at 

the airport and we talked about this a little bit. I said, 

you know, this is where we have to engage the 

problem. When the refurbishment and maintenance 

activities took place, we have to come to grips with 

the reality that, inadvertently, some of that material 

was probably removed; some of the radioactivity was 

probably removed.

So, therefore, the characterization of the subsurface 

and the pipeline and the other conduits, the 

characterization that took place in the eighties and 

nineties may underestimate what was actually there 

in the seventies. Okay? And therefore, because of 

them might have been removed -- we don't know 

how much. It may have been very little or it could 

have been substantial. So, we have to deal with that.

And the way in which we dealt with that -- and this 

is where I believe the Board has to make one of these 

judgments -- the way we dealt with that is to say, 

listen, we have great amount of data on the uranium 

concentration that was inside these pipelines, okay, 

lots of data. And we accumulated all that data and 

put it all together.

And one could argue that, well, if it wasn't for the 

coring activity, and so forth, I would use the median, 

the distribution, the full distribution of the uranium 

as being this is the concentration of the uranium in 

the soil. And, of course, we've got the thorium issue. 

You go with the one-to-one, or whatever ratio you 

want to use. You come up with a picocurie per gram 

distribution of uranium in the sludge and other coring 

material that was inside the pipe and inside the dirt 

that was in the vicinity of the pipe, where the workers 

are probably working.

And when they're down there in that hole, okay, 

down there in a hole, they're being externally 
100

exposed. And this would be this, was it one month or 

was it two months a year? What we said is now we're 

up to two months. And I'd love to hear whether or 

not -- well, I think that's probably pretty good. And 

we're assuming it's always the same person, 

remember. So, every year, I mean for the entire two 

months every year, which was like just in a twomonth segment, and the same guy goes in and does 

all the work.

No, we know that it was different people that went in 

over that two-month period and year after year. 

We're saying, no, it's the same guy all the time every 

two months for ten years, or whatever, how long he 

worked there. We're going to give him this dose and 

say, okay, now how do we know that's an upper 

bound, when we all agree that, you know, some of 

that radioactivity might have been removed? The 

radioactivity that we characterized in the eighties and 

nineties may be a little bit of an underestimate, 

because some of that activity might have been 

removed inadvertently when the refurbishment 

activities were taking place in the seventies. Okay?

So, what did we do? And both NIOSH and SC&A 

looked at this problem and did it on their own 

independently. And I said, you know what? And this 

was me. I said, you know what we do? We've got a 

problem. What do we do that we feel, as health

physicists, is claimant favorable and plausible and 

bounding?

I said, let's assume that the activity to which these 

workers, this worker -- because, remember, we're 

going to give this to every worker. That two months 

every year, two months out of every year, there's a 

worker who's being exposed to the upper 95th 

percentile concentration of uranium and thorium 

that's in the dirt in the subsurface environment.

Why the 95th percentile? Because we're saying, well, 

listen, some of the activity could have been removed 

inadvertently during the refurbishment. And the data 
101

we're using is the 1980-1990 data and, therefore, it 

might be an underestimate.

So now, this is a judgment call. I'll be the first to say, 

listen, you pick a number. So, I went ahead and said, 

listen, I can't even imagine this, but maybe is it 

possible that so much was inadvertently removed 

that what was left was all at the 95th percentile level? 

That's what we're basically doing. We're saying, what 

was left inadvertently -- you know, the stuff that was 

inadvertently removed, but, then, this stuff that's left 

in the pipelines and in the dirt, on the ground, we're 

going to say that it's all, 100 percent of it is at the 

95th percentile concentration.

And we're going to assume, now we know it's moist 

because there is good data that says this is sort of 

like the subsurface kind of moist, but we're going to 

assume that that guy is there for two months every 

year, year after year after year, up close and 

personal to the upper 95th percentile concentration 

of uranium and thorium in that dirt, and the dust 

loading that he's breathing is 200 micrograms per 

cubic meter, a number which is a number that's 

recommended by the EPA for this kind of thing.

And I'm saying to myself, John, do you feel 

comfortable that that puts an upper bound? And I say 

there's several reasons why I think that's true. And 

remember, you asked me the question, David, I 

believe, "Do you feel confident?" And the answer is, 

yes, I do feel very confident.

The idea that, inadvertently, most -- what we're 

really saying is most of the radioactivity was 

inadvertently removed. And for that to happen, for 

that to happen, what I just described, for that to 

happen, most of the radioactivity would have to have 

been inadvertently removed. They didn't search for it 

and pull it out, no. It just happened to be removed.

So, to assume that it's all at the upper 95th 

percentile, in my mind, you know, is way up there, 
102

to the point where -- I hate to even say this -- it may 

not even be plausible. But, you know, maybe.

So, here we are, we're in this area where here's 

where judgment comes and you say to yourself --

Mr. Katz: Okay. John? John? Sorry.

Dr. Mauro: I'm trying my best.

Mr. Katz: No, it's just that Josie has got to be 

somewhere at a certain time. So, you've got a couple 

more minutes, and then, we've got to move on.

Dr. Mauro: I'm done.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Dr. Mauro: So, as far as I'm concerned -- as far as 

I'm concerned -- that is your limiting pathway and we 

use an approach, 95th percentile concentration 

everywhere in the subsurface environment. And the 

same guy, two months out of every year, year after 

year, is up close and personal working with that stuff 

and breathing it in with the dust loading of 200 

microcuries per cubic meter.

In my mind, we are way up there and I feel confident. 

If I was a betting man, and God comes down and 

gives me the right answer, I think I win that bet -- all 

right? -- that no one got a dose higher than that. All 

right?

Mr. Katz: Thank you, John.

Dr. Mauro: And that's the end of my story.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, John.

If anyone has any quick questions for John on this 

point? Otherwise, we will need to give the petitioner 

an opportunity to speak, because we also need to talk 

about what's next. And we need to be able to get 

Josie off because she's got to be somewhere else. So, 

if you have any questions for John?
103

And John, that's very helpful. So, thank you for that 

bit.

Board Members?

Dr. Mauro: You're more than welcome. I've been 

waiting for a long time to tell that story.

(Laughter.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. You're one of the greats in terms of 

storytelling. That's for sure.

(Laughter.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. I'm not hearing any questions from 

the Board Members.

I think you were very clear and it's a pretty simple 

thing you are trying to convey.

Okay. So, Josie, back to you, or to turn it over to --

Michael Elliott, I think it's time for you now.

Petitioner’s Comments

Mr. Elliott: Yes.

Mr. Katz: So, why don't you take it away?

Mr. Elliott: Okay. Well, good morning or good 

afternoon, depending on what time zone you're in.

I want to certainly thank Josie Beach; the other 

distinguished Advisory Board Members who serve on 

the M&C Work Group; the technical experts at NIOSH 

and SC&A who are assisting the Board in evaluating 

the petition, and any members of the public who may 

be on this call.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of 

my fellow petitioners with regard to SEC Petition 

00236.

This petition, as you know, pertains to a Class of 

workers at M&C during the residual period comprised 
104

of facility construction and maintenance service 

workers; production equipment R&M workers, and 

production machine operators/helpers who worked in 

certain affected areas of the facility. For simplicity, I 

will follow the same convention that we have in the 

past and refer to the entire Class of workers covered 

in this petition simply as "M&C maintenance 

workers".

In the two months recent White Papers that NIOSH 

has published during 2019, the thorium and welding 

exposure model from April 8th, 2019 and the 

Petitioner Concerns Response Paper from June 18th, 

2019, NIOSH concludes both White Papers with the 

following statement, and, you know, we pretty much 

heard this again today: "NIOSH believes that all the 

exposure models developed to date adequately 

bound maintenance exposures experienced by M&C 

workers during the residual radiation period."

I disagree and I contend that NIOSH has failed to 

satisfy the regulatory requirements codified in 42 

CFR 83.13 for evaluating a petition for designating a 

Class of employees as members of the Special 

Exposure Cohort, or SEC.

In that section of the regulation, paragraph (c)(1)(i) 

states, "Radiation doses can be estimated with 

sufficient accuracy if NIOSH has established that it 

has access to sufficient information 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 further down in paragraph (c)(1)(ii) it states 

that, "To establish a positive finding under the 

previous paragraphs of this section would require, at 

a minimum, that NIOSH have access to reliable 

information on the identity or set of possible 

identities and maximum quantity of each radionuclide 

to which members of the Class were potentially 

exposed without adequate protection."
105

As I previously articulated at the last December 13th, 

2018 Board meeting, Advisory Board meeting, I 

contend that NIOSH has failed to satisfy these 

fundamental regulatory requirements. NIOSH has 

failed to demonstrate that it has access to sufficient 

information to estimate the maximum dose that 

could have been incurred in plausible circumstances 

by any member of the Class because it has failed to 

satisfy the minimum requirement of having access to 

reliable information on the identity or set of possible 

identities and maximum quantities of each 

radionuclide to which members of the Class were 

potentially exposed without adequate protection.

Among the types of information that are lacking, they 

can be divided into four broad categories that I 

previously articulated back in December: incomplete 

source term characterization; incomplete knowledge 

of the nature, frequency, and duration of exposure; 

a complete absence of any measurements or 

monitoring of the workers who are covered by this 

petition, and no comparable population with 

measurements and monitoring data that can be 

relied on as a surrogate for the Class in question. And 

I will highlight just a few examples in each category 

in my remarks today.

So, for the first type of information that is lacking, 

the incomplete source term characterization: 

notwithstanding NIOSH's use of the 95th percentile 

concentration to bound exposures, due to gaps in the 

site characterization data, which we just discussed, 

we cannot be certain that the 95th percentile 

concentration represents the maximum 

concentration to which members of the Class were 

exposed without adequate protection.

Such data gaps are particularly concerning in the 

1995 drain survey. And I've got to interject here that 

the 1995 drain survey was the first time we 

characterized the drains. So, from '67 to '95, all kinds 

of activity took place in those subsurface drains in 

Building 10. Contrary to what Dr. Mauro just said, 
106

they were never characterized in the eighties. The 

subsurface drains inside Building 10 were not 

characterized until 1995. Let me be absolutely clear 

on that point.

By the time the drain survey was conducted in 1995, 

there had been close to 30 years of disturbances of 

the drain lines through the residual period. The drains 

were snaked numerous times and some of the most 

plugged sections had been removed entirely. So, 

there is no guarantee that the levels we documented 

in the drain survey represent the maximum levels 

ever present and to which M&C maintenance workers 

would have been exposed without adequate 

protection.

It is also well-known that the 1995 drain survey was 

limited to isotopic analysis for uranium. For reasons 

previously reported, isotopic analysis for thorium was 

not performed. So, we have no direct measurements 

of thorium concentrations that may have been 

present in the drains and surrounding soils.

NIOSH has suggested a workaround in their modeling 

by assuming equal amounts of uranium and thorium 

in the drains. However, this does not overcome the 

limitations of the 95th percentile concentration data, 

as articulated above, for uranium. We simply cannot 

say with any certainty that the 95th percentile 

concentration of uranium or, by extension, an 

equivalent amount of thorium is representative of the 

maximum concentrations that were ever present.

The source term estimates for the exterior affected 

areas relied in large part on the gross alpha screening 

method analytical data that was collected during 

1994 to 1995, comprehensive site characterization 

surveys, as part of our decommissioning project.

As I have said before, my recollection is that the 

gross alpha screening method was biased low at 

concentrations above 30 picocuries per gram. I say 

this for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that
107

I recall the principal health physicist and founder of 

CPS Environmental, Mark Griffon, who pioneered the 

relatively novel application of gross alpha screening 

method for surveying in the field, conveyed that 

information to me at the time.

Mark, as you probably are aware, later served on the 

Advisory Board for Radiation and Worker Health. His 

tenure lasted from 2002 to 2015. So, you probably 

have his contact information, if you want to confirm 

what I am saying.

I would also refer you to Exhibit 5 of the original 

August 26th, 2016 SEC Petition Request, which is 

entitled, "Remediation of the Former Radioactive 

Waste Burial Site". That was put together by CPS in 

September 1993. Appendix C of that report is 

entitled, "Radiological Field Screening Through 

Uranium in Soil". And among other information, it 

contains correlation curves comparing the gross 

alpha screening analytical results to split samples 

sent out to commercial laboratories for gamma 

spectroscopy and alpha spectroscopy analysis.

Note, I hope I included that appendix in the exhibits 

that I submitted with the original SEC Petition 

Request, but in the event that I inadvertently left it 

out, I am attaching that section of the report to the 

email that will follow this testimony, in which I 

convey this oral testimony for the record.

Figure C-4 in that report, which summarizes the 

comparison of the gross alpha screening results to 

gamma spectroscopy and alpha spectroscopy 

analytical results at LAL Labs for five samples ranging 

from activity concentrations of less than 10 

picocuries per gram to somewhere around 150 to 200 

picocuries per gram, demonstrates the relationship 

that I have described; namely, the gross alpha 

screening method is biased low compared to both 

alpha and gamma spectroscopy at concentrations 

above 30 picocuries per gram.
108

Figure C-5, which summarizes the comparison of the 

gross alpha screening results to only gamma 

spectroscopy results run at four outside commercial 

laboratories for 10 samples over a narrower range of 

activity concentrations, somewhat lower, does not 

exhibit the same relationship. It appears to show no 

clear bias above 30 picocuries per gram.

But the fact remains that the question about bias is 

not without cause for concern. In the words of my 

colleague, William Lorenzen, who's in the room with 

me today -- he's an operational health physicist who 

worked with us on the decommissioning project and 

one of the authors of Appendix C that I just referred 

to -- he describes the techniques and scientific 

justification for the use of gross alpha screening was 

only to determine levels of uranium that would 

require remediation. In other words, those around 

the 30-picocurie-per-gram level. The technique has 

no validity at greater levels of contamination or in 

mixed isotopic samples. So, while the gross alpha 

screening technique may be perfectly suitable for 

making field decisions and establishing excavation 

boundaries for remediation, it is scientifically 

unsound for estimating dose to workers.

The second type of information that is lacking is the 

incomplete knowledge of the nature, frequency, and 

duration of exposure. NIOSH has largely based its 

estimates of the nature, frequency, and duration of 

exposure on worker interviews that were conducted 

in October 2017. I would argue that relying on such 

information raises some serious questions.

Statistically speaking, this is a very small sample 

population. NIOSH interviewed only 12 workers, not 

all of whom were representative of the Class of 

workers covered under this petition; me, for 

example. So, that means we might be relying on 

approximately ten or so workers to define the nature, 

frequency, and duration of exposures to what could 

have been at least dozens of workers who worked in 

this capacity during the residual period and, 
109

unwittingly, came in direct contact with the AWE 

program source materials over the course of carrying 

out their job duties.

At the time of the work interviews, the start and 

finish of the residual period was already 20 to 40 

years in the past. And let me reiterate that the 

residual period began in 1968, January 1st, 1968, 

and extended through March 31st, 1997. So, 

basically, a quarter of a century that I believe Mr. 

Kotelchuck referred to.

And so, it was not just the 1970s, as Dr. Mauro has 

said time and again on the call this morning. It was 

really the seventies, eighties, and early nineties that 

our maintenance workers were being exposed 

without adequate protection.

It seems somewhat unrealistic to believe that 

workers' memories -- you know, when we did these 

interviews in 2017, now 20 to 40 years hence --

would be able to recall specific details with a high 

degree of accuracy about the nature of the multitude 

of tasks that they might have performed in their job 

duties and how long they were performing each one 

of those tasks. In fact, I have no recollection. I have 

pretty close contact with at least two of the people 

who were interviewed, and they really have no sense 

of exactly how much time was spent doing these 

activities. So, I do not agree with Dr. Mauro that one 

month is sufficient or even two months. All I can say 

is that we don't know.

As one of the Board Members remarked back on 

December 13th at the December 13th Board 

meeting, the work performed by the Class of workers 

covered under this petition most closely resembles 

that of emergency response personnel who on any 

given day could be asked to do any of a number of 

tasks of an unanticipated and unpredictable nature.

Given that reality, it is nearly impossible to account 

for the nature, frequency, and duration of the myriad 
110

of tasks that they might have performed. And by 

logical extension -- sorry, Dr. Mauro -- it is equally 

challenging to estimate the maximum radiation dose 

for every type of cancer for which radiation doses are 

reconstructed that could have occurred in plausible 

circumstances by any member of the Class.

As another example of how the NIOSH maintenance 

exposure model is likely inadequate and incomplete, 

we know that the NIOSH maintenance worker 

exposure model attempted to address Building 10's 

HVAC system maintenance and resulting in an 

estimated duration of one hour per year, which 

seems completely unrealistically low in its own right.

But putting that criticism aside for the moment, the 

nature of the filter change-out model that NIOSH 

assumed does not take into account filter disposal. 

Besides changing the filters, the maintenance 

workers also would have had to have disposed of the 

filters. In many cases, this may well have included 

the use of compactors to crush the filters; thus, 

creating another opportunity for unmeasured 

exposure to source term.

Furthermore, I would argue that the duration of the 

work task on the job is not representative of the total 

duration of exposure these workers experienced. As 

I have previously testified, these workers had no 

awareness or training of the radiological hazards to 

which they were exposed. They would have gone 

about their maintenance tasks without any thought 

of taking special precautions to limit exposure.

After completing dirty, dusty work tasks, we've heard 

from one petitioner that they would often blow off 

any gross contamination with a compressed air gun 

back in the maintenance shop, creating clouds of 

respirable dust, I might add. And there is no 

guarantee they would necessarily wash their hands 

before eating, drinking, or smoking. And to make 

matters worse, they would wear their contaminated 

work clothes home, launder them at home, shower 
111

at home; thus, extending the duration of exposures 

well beyond their work tasks on the job, and even 

more alarming, potentially exposing family members 

at home as well.

For all the reasons above, I have no confidence in 

NIOSH's ability to account for the nature, frequency, 

and duration of the multitude of work tasks that M&C 

maintenance workers performed. In its maintenance 

worker exposure model and its thorium and welding 

exposure model, NIOSH has estimated two months 

per year for subsurface and overhead intrusive 

activities and 48 hours per year for welding activities.

But I reject that any numerical estimate is valid. In 

my opinion, the only honest statement one can make 

is that we cannot accurately estimate the nature, 

frequency, or duration of exposures that would 

account for the maximum radiation dose that could 

have been incurred in plausible circumstances by any 

member of the Class.

When I hear today Dr. Mauro and his colleagues at 

SC&A say so confidently that we've addressed the 

SEC issue, we've explored it thoroughly, and we can 

get our arms around the problem -- in other words, 

they are confident in a bounding dose, that a 

bounding dose can be estimated for plausible 

circumstances in a clean and favorable manner -- all 

I can say is that I am amazed and incredulous at such 

confidence in light of such tenuous data, 

assumptions, and uncertainties.

The third type of information that's lacking, a 

complete --

Mr. Katz: Michael? Michael, just one second. I just 

want to let you know, because we're running up 

against -- so, I think if you have a couple more 

minutes, and then, we've got to do some planning 

before Josie goes, since she's Chair. So, if you can 

wrap up what you have to say --
112

Mr. Elliott: You know what? Sorry, Mr. Katz, but you 

know what? I have a three o'clock meeting today, 

which is in 20 minutes, that I am missing. Okay? This 

is being done on my -- I have to take vacation to be 

on this call. Alright?

Mr. Katz: Well, that's great. That's great, Michael. I 

can't help that. I can't help that.

Mr. Elliott: No, no, you're going to hear me out. 

You're going to listen to me.

Mr. Katz: No, Michael, actually, if I have to close the 

meeting, I'm closing the meeting. I can't do it without 

my Chair. So, if you don't mind --

Chair Beach: And I still have an hour. I still have an 

hour, Ted.

Mr. Katz: Okay. I thought you said you had to go at 

25 --

Chair Beach: It was my time, 12:45.

Mr. Katz: Okay, and I thought you were two hours 

different from me. Okay.

Chair Beach: No, I'm three. I'm sorry.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay, great.

So, Michael, carry on. Carry on. That's my mistake.

Chair Beach: Sorry. Sorry about that.

Mr. Katz: All right. Go ahead, Michael.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. Thank you.

The third type of information that was lacking is a 

complete absence of any measurements and 

monitoring of the workers who are covered by this 

petition. This is the one fact in which there is no 

dispute. Notwithstanding all their exposure modeling 

and use of surrogate data, NIOSH has never stated 
113

anything to contradict the fact that there is no 

measurement or monitoring data of the workers who 

are covered under this petition.

At the May 3rd, 2018, M&C Work Group meeting, Dr. 

Mauro of SC&A, the independent consultant retained 

by the Advisory Board to provide technical review of 

NIOSH's work, even testified that -- and I quote --

"It's a stretch to be able to reconstruct dose to M&C 

maintenance workers."

One of the reasons that Dr. Mauro cited as the basis 

of this uncertainty was that there are no personnel or 

area measurements of radiological exposures to M&C 

workers. Since this fact is not in dispute, I will not 

belabor the point.

The fourth type of information that's lacking is no 

comparable population with measurements or 

monitoring data that can be relied on as a surrogate 

for the Class in question. In the Petitioner Concerns 

Response Paper, NIOSH, June 18th, 2019, I can only 

assume that NIOSH refers to OTIB-0070 and two 

other NIOSH documents as precedent to justify the 

type of modeling they have applied to the M&C 

worker exposure models.

NIOSH contends that, quote, "In the absence of little 

or no monitoring data, these documents rely on 

surrogate data and models to estimate internal and 

external exposure." End quote. NIOSH goes on to 

state that the Advisory Board, through its consultant, 

has reviewed these documents for scientific validity 

and, with some minor technical clarifications, all 

issues have been resolved.

The implication seems to be that NIOSH now believes 

that, given the precedent of these documents, it has 

permission to rely on surrogate data and models to 

estimate bounding dose to workers at any residual 

period AWE facility, including in this case for the M&C 

maintenance workers. If that is what NIOSH 

intended, then I strongly disagree.
114

First of all, while NIOSH states that all technical 

clarifications were resolved, it does not go so far as 

to state that the Board has endorsed the approaches 

for estimating exposure to workers articulated in 

OTIB-70 and the other cited documents for 

application at all AWE facilities with residual period 

SEC petitions.

Secondly, I would argue that every AWE facility with 

residual period SEC petition needs to be evaluated on 

the merits of its particular circumstances. As an 

example of the need for site-specific evaluation of the 

facts, I would refer to the attachment to the 

Petitioner Concerns Response Paper prepared by Dr. 

James Neton.

In the background section, Dr. Neton summarizes the 

underlying assumptions of how residual 

contamination has come to be located in an AWE 

facility during the residual period, and I quote: "A 

number of AWE facilities that have produced and/or 

processed materials for the AEC became 

contaminated from the generation and settling of 

airborne radioactive particulate on plant equipment 

and surfaces. If this material was not cleaned up 

during or after the AEC contract period, any 

remaining contamination could serve as a source of 

internal and external radiation exposure to workers."

And then they go on to explain how those exposures 

are calculated using various methods, standard 

methods, that are contained in the OTIB-70 

document and in OCAS-TIB-009 and Battelle-TBD600.

"The documents referenced above include methods 

to calculate the levels of surface contamination 

during residual contamination periods using 

measured surrogate levels of air concentration, 

estimate of the amount of ingestion, and determine 

the depletion of surface contamination over time." 

And I'll stop quoting Dr. Neton at this point.
115

As has been well established in the case for the M&C 

maintenance workers covered under this petition, the 

settlement of airborne particulate matter on plant 

equipment and surfaces is just one of several 

exposure pathways to which the covered workers 

were subjected, and it is not the most significant. At 

least we agree with that, with Dr. Mauro on that 

point.

As I have stated on numerous occasions in the past, 

the M&C maintenance workers were exposed to AWE 

program period source materials that were released 

in an uncontrolled manner into subsurface drains, 

subsurface soils, utility trenches, and overhead 

areas, where they routinely worked without any 

awareness, training, or control to limit exposure to

the radiological hazards present, either during their 

intrusive maintenance activities or disposal practices.

There is absolutely no comparison to the conceptual 

site model that forms the basis of OTIB-70. The 

exposures experienced by M&C maintenance workers 

were far worse than anything envisioned by OTIB-70. 

It must be acknowledged that the standard 

approaches for estimating worker exposures in OTIB70 are completely inadequate for the M&C 

maintenance workers.

As the M&C Work Group considers its next steps and 

its recommendation to the full Advisory Board, I 

would ask you to reflect on some of the founding 

principles established in the enabling statute and the 

subsequent Executive Order to the affected agencies 

charged with carrying out the compensation program 

in October and December of the year 2000, 

respectively.

Under the EEOICPA Act of 2000, I'd like to highlight 

just a couple of citations. Section 7384(a), Findings, 

says, in paragraph 6, "Studies indicate that 98 

percent of radiation-induced cancers within the 

nuclear weapons complex have occurred at dose 

levels below existing maximum safe thresholds."
116

And paragraph eight says, "To ensure fairness and 

equity, the civilian men and women who over the 

past 50 years have performed duties uniquely related 

to the nuclear weapons production and testing 

programs of the DOE and its predecessor agencies 

should have efficient, uniform, and adequate 

compensation for radiation-related health 

conditions."

Section 7384(d) is the establishment of the Energy 

Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 

Program. Paragraph (b) lists the purpose of the 

program. "The purpose of the compensation program 

is to provide for timely, uniform, and adequate 

compensation for covered employees."

And Section 7384(q) specifically covers designation 

of additional members of Special Exposure Cohorts. 

Paragraph (a), "Advice on Additional Members," Part 

1 says, "The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health, under Section 7384(o) of this title, shall 

advise the President whether there is a Class of 

employees at any DOE facility who likely were 

exposed to radiation at the facility, but for whom it is 

not feasible to estimate with sufficient accuracy the 

radiation dose they received."

Then under Executive Order 13179, dated December 

7th, 2000, I call your attention to the following 

citation in Section 1, "Policy," the third paragraph: "It 

has been the policy of this Administration to support 

fair and timely compensation for the workers and 

their survivors. The federal government should 

ensure that this program minimizes the 

administrative burden on workers and their survivors 

and respects their dignity and privacy. This Order 

sets out agency responsibilities to accomplish these 

goals, building on the Administration's articulated 

principles and the framework set forth in the 

EEOICPA of 2000. 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 
117

in a manner that is compassionate, fair, and timely." 

Emphasis added on those last three. This I believe is 

the test of the Advisory Board: to act in a manner 

that is compassionate, fair, and timely.

More recently, in a letter to Ms. Josie Beach, dated 

November 20th, 2018, Congressman Joseph 

Kennedy, who represents the 4th Congressional 

District in Massachusetts, which includes the city of 

Attleboro, acknowledged the uncertainty among 

Members of the Work Group as to how to evaluate 

the extent of the radiation these workers were 

exposed to in order to ascertain their eligibility for 

compensation. But Congressman Kennedy goes 

further by stating, quote, "It is my hope that the 

Work Group will take a broader view and consider the 

cases of these workers in their final determination."

When the Congressman challenges us to take a 

broader view, I think he is asking us to be true to the 

original founding principles of the compensation 

program. I fear that NIOSH, in its attempt to 

standardize the approaches to develop worker 

exposure models, especially as it pertains to the 

residual period exposure models, has lost sight of the 

founding principles of the compensation program.

Just because NIOSH believes it can develop a worker 

exposure model on some very tenuous and 

unverifiable assumptions doesn't mean they have 

satisfied the requirements of the regulation or the 

enabling statute.

Referring back to the regulatory requirement of how 

NIOSH is to evaluate a petition for adding a Class of 

employees to be recognized under the SEC, 

paragraph 83.13(C)(3) states, "If it is not feasible to 

estimate with sufficient accuracy radiation doses for 

members of the Class, as provided under paragraph 

(C)(1) of this section, then NIOSH must determine, 

as required by statute, that there is a reasonable 

likelihood that such radiation dose may have 

endangered the health of the members of the Class."
118

When I read this regulatory citation, and I reflect on 

all the uncertainties and gaps in the information used 

to estimate the bounding dose for the M&C 

maintenance workers covered under this petition, it 

seems clear to me that this is a scenario in which 

NIOSH must determine, as required by statute, that 

this Class of employees should be added as members 

of a Special Exposure Cohort. If NIOSH is unwilling to 

concede that it is not feasible to estimate with 

sufficient accuracy radiation doses for members of 

the Class covered under this petition, then I believe 

the Advisory Board needs to exercise its statutory 

authority to so, per 42 USC Section 7384(q), and 

recommend addition of this Class of workers as 

members of the Special Exposure Cohort.

In the spirit of the enabling statute and the 

subsequent Executive Order at the time that the 

EEOICPA was established in the year 2000, I 

sincerely hope that the M&C Work Group will pass 

along a recommendation to the full Advisory Board to 

act favorably on SEC Petition 00236.

Thank you for your careful consideration of my 

testimony. And with that, I conclude my remarks 

today.

Chair Beach: Thanks, Michael, and I apologize for the 

confusion on my schedule. When you're working from 

East Coast to Pacific, it does get confusing.

Any questions for the petitioners?

(No response.)

Chair Beach: Michael, was anybody else going to 

have comments?

Mr. Elliott: No. No, we're all done.

Path Forward/April Board Meeting

Chair Beach: Okay. Thank you.
119

No questions. So, you're going to go ahead and 

submit that.

And, Ted, I guess we need to talk about path forward, 

the April Board meeting process.

Mr. Katz: Right. Right. So, I think we need to get the 

petitioners' commentary in writing, and we'll also 

need to get the transcript, although it sounds like he 

abided by his written comments pretty closely for the 

most part. So, we should get that sooner than we'll 

get the transcript.

First of all, we need for the staff to look at those 

comments and address items that haven't already 

previously been addressed that need to be 

addressed. And some of that policy and regulatory 

commentary doesn't really need to be addressed, but 

the technical matters do for sure.

Then whatever follow-up items we have we should 

touch on with respect to the discussions today. Josie, 

do you have notes on that?

Chair Beach: I just have the action item for NIOSH to 

-- or excuse me -- SC&A to look at NIOSH's thorium 

and welding paperwork.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Chair Beach: Yes, going back to some of John's 

comments, we do have some White Papers that we 

discussed in our previous meeting. The Work Group 

has never actually closed out on any of these topics.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Chair Beach: So, I'm not quite sure how to proceed.

Mr. Katz: Right. Well, I'm going to get to that next.

Chair Beach: Okay, okay. That was the only action 

item I had. Did anybody else jot anything down? 

SC&A or NIOSH?
120

Member Kotelchuck: No. If I may say -- this is Dave; 

can you hear me?

Mr. Katz: Yes. Yes, we hear you good.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, okay, fine. It's not that I 

don't have questions about the presentation by the 

petitioners, but there's plenty to think about and 

discuss, and I'm looking forward to doing that.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Member Kotelchuck: And it's a little hard to ask 

questions without spending more time thinking about 

it, anyhow.

Mr. Katz: Yes, yes.

Member Kotelchuck: So, I don't want the absence of 

questions to suggest that, oh, well, done.

Mr. Katz: No. Of course. Of course.

Member Kotelchuck: Not at all.

Mr. Katz: So, here is what I was going to suggest, 

which relates to what you just said, Dave, and 

everybody also. Because we had all these 

presentations and discussions by staff especially and 

questions from Board Members, but we didn't act on 

anything in terms of closing any findings or making 

decisions as to whether things are SEC or Site Profile. 

And I would note, also, that the major Site Profile 

matters, some of those still need to be sort of 

resolved in principle for the Board to be willing to sign 

off on them with an SEC, because that has been the 

more common tradition of late. The Board would 

want to see in principle at least how that's resolved.

So, one approach here going forward would be to, 

once we have the petitioners' comments -- and he 

has an attachment, too, and I'm not sure how that 

relates but we will see when we get it -- and the staff 

has had time to address that material, to have 
121

another Work Group meeting where we would do 

this: we would both address those additional 

materials, but also go to, now that you've had the 

discussion, and then, you will have had time to think 

about the discussions that we had today, and we will 

have the transcript by then, too, from today. Since it 

will be closer to the April Board meeting, you could 

have a Work Group meeting where you could go 

through and see if there are items that you are ready 

to close or shift to TBD, or decide that you're not 

ready to shift them to TBD, of the SEC issues. You 

could go through that process, say, late March.

And then, at the April Board meeting, what we could 

do is have this as an update to the Board. Because, 

as I've said on the side to Josie earlier, the Board is 

not going to want to digest all this new material and 

actions in the same go anyway. So, we could have, 

at the April meeting, we could update the Board in a 

very full way about all of this. And, of course, the 

petitioner would have, again, an opportunity to 

comment, and based on where we are at that point, 

the petitioner can be updated there.

So, you could update the Board, wherever this all 

stands, whether you've closed some SEC issues from 

the Board's standpoint or not, whether you have a 

recommendation or not. It wouldn't be an action item 

for that Board meeting, but, then, it would be an 

opportunity to get the perspectives of the rest of the 

Board for you to, then, finish the work of the Work 

Group after the April Board meeting. And then, that 

would mean August would be the action item. It 

would be an action item for August.

I guess that's my, from what's happened today, 

that's sort of my preferred approach, but I can give 

you other approaches, if you have concerns or other 

thoughts about this.

So, let me just hear what you think about this as a 

template.
122

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. I actually have a question.

Chair Beach: Oh, go ahead.

Dr. Taulbee: Josie and Ted, I have a question here. 

If I'm understanding this right, because this I was not 

aware of, there are still open issues with regards to 

previous White Papers, and so forth, associated with 

this site? Is that correct?

Chair Beach: Tim, I don't think -- open issues, yes, 

because the Work Group addressed the initial papers, 

the Metals and Controls Maintenance Workers 

Exposure Model, the subsurface, but the Work Group 

never actually weighed-in on whether they agreed 

with any of those approaches or not. And if somebody 

knows or understands that better than I do -- that's 

my take on it.

Dr. Taulbee: Josie, that's what Ted is talking about, 

then, with regards to TBD versus SEC issues, is going 

through all of the previous White Papers and sorting 

all of that out of where we're at?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Is that correct?

Chair Beach: Yes.

Mr. Katz: So, Tim, just to be sure --

Dr. Taulbee: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: -- there are two things here. And I think 

you may be concerned about one or the other.

One is the Work Group settling out on whether they 

think something is not an SEC issue or is, to the 

extent that they're ready to do that. And they may 

not on some items, and that's fine, but setting that 

up to the extent they can for what they report to the 

Board.

But the other part of it is some of these items we 
123

discussed in principle how it might be addressed as a 

TBD issue, but, really, there isn't NIOSH agreement 

yet that this is, in fact, how we are going to handle, 

how you propose handling it. So, we would need that, 

too. I mean not for this April meeting, but the Board 

is not going to sign off on resolving an SEC one way 

or the other without actually knowing those, in 

principle, how are those TBD issues going to be 

settled out. That's what I was saying.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Right. I understand.

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. McCloskey: Rose Gogliotti has got a good start 

for us in the BRS right now.

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Mr. McCloskey: And so, a lot of this is described 

there. We could go update that with where we think 

we are now and disposition this a little more 

efficiently.

Mr. Katz: Yes, but, I mean, that's just recordkeeping. 

What we're talking about here, Pat, is, first of all, the 

Work Group taking a stand, which it hasn't done. And 

secondly, NIOSH taking a stand on what it will 

propose to do, which hasn't been done; it's just been 

discussed.

Mr. McCloskey: Okay.

Mr. Katz: That's what I'm saying. So, the BRS is just 

a recordkeeping system.

Chair Beach: Yes, and we do have an issues matrix 

that does spell out which ones are SEC issues. I guess 

they're all listed as SEC issues. So, it would probably 

be good to update that as well with where we're at 

with each item.

Mr. Katz: Yes. Yes, but, I mean, again, they're all SEC 
124

issues until the Work Group says they're not.

Chair Beach: Yes. It would be a template for the Work 

Group Members to have it.

Mr. Katz: Yes, oh, yes. No, that would be very handy, 

to set that up. And again, it could be recommended -

- clearly, SC&A and NIOSH have recommended 

things be shifted from an SEC issue, and that could 

be reflected in the matrix. And that would be really 

helpful, yes, I agree totally. And maybe that's what 

Pat is talking about.

Anyway, let me hear from the rest of the Work Group 

Members. Does this path forward sound like the right 

one or do you have concerns? Because there are 

other approaches to this.

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. I'm comfortable with 

going ahead and trying to get the meeting in March. 

That sounds good to me. And I agree with you that, 

if there's real contention, the Board is not going to 

want to be briefed on an issue and, then, decide right 

on the spot, and I think there may be. So, I'm open 

to that possibility.

Mr. Katz: Yes. I mean, there's no question the Board 

really doesn't like to act in one go.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, right.

Mr. Katz: Anything that has a lot of options to it.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes. Yes, I've seen that, and 

that has happened in many other of the cases, where 

we will brief the Board about what the issues are from 

the Work Group and, then, get together at a later 

time. Have them digest it, as we've tried --

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Member Kotelchuck: -- to digest the earlier reports 

to the Working Group.

Mr. Katz: Right.
125

Member Kotelchuck: So, I'm comfortable with that. I 

think that's a good way forward.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay.

Member Anderson: Yes, and I'm comfortable with it. 

I just think we do need to kind of get a stepwise way 

forward, or we keep going over and over various 

issues. And so, I mean, a key is the determination is 

it SEC, which is really the more pressing, I think, 

decision to make versus the TBD.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Member Anderson: And if we could put some of those 

across that, I think for the SEC it's can you do the 

dose reconstruction or not. And if the method that's 

being proposed by NIOSH would do that, but we're 

just unhappy or uncomfortable with some of the 

decisions in that process, in that methodology, but it 

could be corrected, then I think putting it as a TBD 

area is probably a good thing, if we can make that 

decision.

Mr. Katz: Right. Right.

Member Anderson: It's just fine. I think we can do it. 

But I do want it to keep moving because we have so 

many other things. Then, with your circumstances 

and a new person coming in, we lose some of the 

historic memory. I know each of us on the Committee 

kind of do our best to keep notes and lists going, but 

you're kind of the real repository.

Mr. Katz: Yes. Well, the Board is definitely going to 

rely on all of you as well as John and everybody at 

SC&A and Tim and everybody, because you guys all 

have memories, too. And frankly, it's kind of ironic 

for anyone to rely on my memory because I'm 

famously not an elephant.

Member Anderson: Well, you have a lot of the 

documents that are in-hand, I think.
126

Mr. Katz: Yes. Yes, I know. I know.

Anyway, that sounds good. And I think, no matter 

what, whether you can only put some of the SEC 

issues into TBD-land, if you want to call it that, and 

some of them you're just not ready to do yet, I think 

what will be more important is that all your 

uncertainties and concerns get laid out in that 

presentation to the Board, so that those other Board 

Members really can weigh in on the issues that feel 

like you need the most input on. That's going to be 

most important at that April Board meeting, as well 

as what the petitioner brings to the April Board 

meeting.

Okay. So, I think we have a path forward. I will be, 

then, sending out a scheduling notice. So, keep an 

eye out for it.

And I'll try to put it far enough into March, so that we 

have time both to digest what the petitioner has -- I 

mean, he has given us a great heads-up because he's 

gone through it orally, but to digest what the 

petitioner sends in, but also to think about what 

we've discussed and talked about here today.

And again, I'll get the transcripts to you just as soon 

as we can those transcripts to you, so you can go 

over what was discussed today before they're even 

cleared, and so on.

Yes, and then, we'll move forward likewise. And when 

I do the agenda for the Board meeting, I'll have this 

on there with plenty of time to interact with the rest 

of the Board Members.

So, I want to thank everyone.

Mike, I want to apologize for the little sort of difficulty 

we just had. I didn't mean it to come out so difficult, 

but I thought I was losing Josie and I have certain 

limits to what I can do. So, I'm sorry about that little 

tiff.
127

Mr. Elliott: Sure, I understand. Apology taken and I 

don't take it personally.

Adjourn

Mr. Katz: Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. I really 

didn't mean to be sounding harsh at all.

Okay. So, then, everybody, thank you so much for all 

the hard work that's gone into today.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 3:05 p.m.)