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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change. 

US Department of Health and Human Services

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Idaho National Laboratory/Argonne West Work 

Group

Monday, March 25, 2019

The Work Group convened via teleconference at 9:00

a.m. Eastern Time, Phil Schofield, Chair, presiding.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change. 

 2 

Members Present: 

Phillip Schofield, Chair

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Also Present: 

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Bob Barton, SC&A

Ron Buchanan, SC&A

Mitch Findley, NIOSH

Joseph Fitzgerald, SC&A

Rose Gogliotti, SC&A

Megan Lobaugh, NIOSH

Jenny Naylor, HHS

James Neton, NIOSH

Steven Ostrow, SC&A

John Stiver, SC&A

Timothy Taulbee, NIOSH

Tim Vitkus, ORAU Team
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change. 

 3 

Contents

US Department of Health and Human Services 

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne West Work Group Monday, 

March 25, 2019 1

Welcome and Roll Call 4

Verification and Validation of Records to 

Support DCAS proposed SEC class SEC 219 5

Discussion and Recommendations 16

Verification and Validation of Records for 

Existing INL SEC Class SEC 238 28

Discussion and Recommendations 36

DCAS Evaluation of Dose Reconstruction 

Information for Potential Exposures at the 

Burial Grounds 41

Discussion and Recommendations 61

Adjourn 72
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

4

Proceedings

(9:01 a.m.)

Welcome and Roll Call

Mr. Katz: Let me start the roll call.

So, welcome everyone, this is the Advisory Board on 

Radiation Worker Health. It's the INL/Argonne 

National Lab West Work Group. And today's meeting 

deals with INL issues, and we'll get potentially some 

new material on the burial grounds towards the end 

of the meeting.

(Roll call.)

Mr. Katz: Okay, so, I'll turn it over to you. Let me just 

remind everyone to keep their phones muted except 

when they are speaking. It will help with the audio. 

And *6 if you don't have a mute button on your 

phone. And nobody put the phone on hold at any 

point. Hang up and dial back in.

Thanks.

So, Phil, is there anything you want to say? Phil, 

maybe you're on mute.

Chair Schofield: Okay, good morning, everybody. 

The agenda is on the CDC website for those who want 

to follow along with it.

We're going to start off with the SC&A -- I mean, 

SEC-00219. Bob Barton put out a paper on that. I 

assume that's also on the CDC website, I don't know, 

I haven't checked it.

So, I guess we'll turn it over to Bob, then. This is for 

the period of 1963 to 1970.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

5

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Phil. And it is posted. Bob has 

presentations for this and so the next section too, 

that presentation's not posted yet, but it will 

eventually get posted. 

In the meantime, it was sent to the Board Members 

and to staff. And, it will also be up on Skype when we 

get to Skype.

Bob, go ahead.

Verification and Validation of Records to Support 

DCAS proposed SEC class SEC 219

Mr. Barton: Okay, well I guess that's my cue here.

As Ted mentioned, I do have some presentation 

slides. There's no new material, it's all basically 

talking points taken out of those two reports that are 

posted on the website and I will try, I'm just sort of 

going through this to point out where in the report 

we're discussing it.

So, those of you who are on Skype, can you see the 

presentation slide up there?

Member Anderson: Yes, I can see it.

Dr. Taulbee: Yes, Bob.

Mr. Barton: Excellent. Okay. And, as Phil said, we're 

talking about SEC-00219, which is for the Chemical 

Processing Plant and the time period is 1963 into the 

first part of 1970. Actually, that's through the end of 

February 1970.

So, back in July 2015, NIOSH had released Revision 

1 of the Evaluation Report. And what it basically did 

was revise the Class Definition to effectively split it 

into two periods.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

6

So, we have this first period from January 1963 

through February 1970 and the second period from 

March 1970 through the end of 1974.

So, the revised Class Definition reads as follows: all 

employees of the Department of Energy, its 

predecessor agencies, and their contractors and 

subcontractors who worked at the Idaho National 

Laboratory, INL, in Scoville, Idaho and (a) who were 

monitored for external radiation at Idaho Chemical 

Processing Plant, CPP, at least one film badge or TLD 

dosimeter from CPP between January 1963 and 

February 1970 or (b) who were just monitored for 

external radiation at INL, at least one film badge or 

TLD dosimeter associated with the site between 

March 1970 and December of 1974 for a number of 

work days aggregating at least 250 work days 

occurring either solely under this employment or in 

combination with work days within the parameters 

established for one or more classes of employees in 

Special Exposure Cohort.

And I sort of highlight that part A because this is the 

period we're talking about, 1963 into 1970, when to 

qualify as to class, you have to have evidence of that 

external monitoring specific to the Chemical 

Processing Plant.

On March 2016, the Advisory Board recommended 

acceptance of the second part of the Class Definition, 

so that was from March 1970 through 1974 which 

only required evidence of external monitoring at INL, 

not a specific badge at CPP.

However, concerns remained regarding the 

requirement for external monitoring specific to the 

Chemical Processing Plant in the first part of the Class 

Definition, which is what we're talking about today.

There's some preliminary investigations into that 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

7

Class Definition, it was determined that temporary or 

visitor badges were not appropriately attributed to 

the energy employees.

So, when they -- as we go and research the 

dosimetry records for an individual, they might not 

be getting all of those temporary or visitor badges 

which might be specific to CPP, which is always 

problematic in administering the SEC Class 

Definition.

So, in response to this, INL/DOE began very 

significant coding efforts. So, essentially to migrate 

all that information on those temporary visitor 

badges into what's known as the INL Dosimetry 

Index.

This is the system INL uses when a claim request is 

made and it's basically a printout of all the electronic 

locations where the individual records for the energy 

employee are located.

And then, the site will go through and essentially 

copy those records, put them into one package and 

then send them along to the appropriate agency, be 

it NIOSH for dose reconstruction or DOL for 

adjudication.

So, once all those temporary badges have been 

appropriately coded and indexed, they should be 

correctly attributed to each claimant.

So, if that's being appropriately done and all those 

records are complete, then any SEC determination 

based on having to have that specific CPP badge, you 

shouldn't accidently omit a claim that would normally 

qualify.

So, while that coding effort was underway, the INL 

Work Group still had concerns about how effective 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

8

this coding indexing effort would be, the 

implementation of it, and could you still potentially 

miss a claim that should be included in a class but 

might be inadvertently excluded if all of those 

temporary badges or visitor cards associated with 

that claim were not appropriately being attributed to 

them.

One of the main problems is that these temporary 

badges or visitor cards, they really mean the same 

thing, are basically handwritten on a small index card 

that's roughly the area of a matchbook and would 

have the following potential issues.

Just basic legibility issues, like I said, they're 

handwritten on individual cards.

You might have some name misspellings when the 

security guard at the gate or whatever -- whoever 

was filling out the card might have written down the 

name wrong or they might be variations such as the 

use of a nickname or a middle initial in place of the 

first initial.

And then, there's just the standard human error 

during the transfer of all of these visitor cards, and 

there are a bunch of them, into the dosimetry 

indexing system, if there's an error in that process, 

then you might have a mistake down the line.

So, what we're looking at now, and this is actually 

Figure 2 on page 7 of the SC&A report as an example 

of one of these visitor cards. Obviously it's blown up 

a lot so you can see the details.

And, essentially, what you're looking at is on the left 

side of this image is the front of the card, and on the 

right side of the image is the back of the card.

You can see that CPP is stamped right in this section 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

9

noting the area. And while this is completely redacted 

because it's contains personal identifying 

information.

But, you have a name, you have a spot where you 

can put a security number and you have a spot where 

you put the employer. You have an issue and 

expiration date, essentially who authorized the 

issuance of the card and then the signature of that 

person.

And then, on the back of the card, you have the 

results which is that first, it's like a zero with a line 

coming off the top.

You have another date there which we generally 

considered to be the read date or it could be the 

badge issue date, we're not entirely sure on that.

And then, there's another number below that and 

we're not sure what that necessarily signifies either.

But, again, you can see with these handwritten cards, 

how there's a possibility that you might have 

significant legibility issues or things of that nature.

So, the Work Group tasked SC&A with developing 

and executing a V&V study, that's verification and 

validation, to determine the effectiveness of the 

coding effort.

So, we delivered our, essentially, what is a proof of 

principle of what we were going to propose for a V&V 

approach in September of 2016. That got discussed 

at the next Work Group meeting which was in May of 

2017.

At that time, it was decided that the proof of principle 

was fine but the Work Group wanted to expand it so 

that we had more claims to look at, more badges to 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

10

check, that sort of thing.

So, we did that and we presented that to the Work 

Group in August of 2017.

The full proposal included 228 potential candidates 

with nearly 1,800 temporary badges that we were 

able to associate with them. Obviously, that's a huge 

number and not really a feasible thing to undertake.

So, the Work Group elected to start with the first 30 

claims and the 30 claims were categorized by SC&A 

as being really the most beneficial claims to look at 

for the purposes of the study. That's really based on 

how many badges we were able to locate for an 

individual. We wanted some diversity in employers 

and job types as well.

So, NIOSH began submitting records requests to INL 

for that group of 30 claims in the fall of 2017. The 

request contained a cover letter which contained the 

following, and this is reading right from the cover 

letter. And, again, this is contained in our report.

This case is part of a group of 30 cases that are being 

reviewed in order to evaluate a concern raised by the 

Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health.

Although INL previously provided dosimetry 

responses for this energy employee, we are 

requesting that INL perform a new records search 

and provide a full radiological record for this energy 

employee.

In order to completely address the ABRWH concern, 

it would be extremely helpful if the full dosimetry 

radiological record were provided.

Now, based on the first few records that we have 

received back from INL, it was pretty evident that this 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

11

indexing and coding process was not being correctly 

implemented and that we really just weren't seeing 

any of the temporary badges that we had located. 

So, something was going on.

NIOSH notified INL what was going on and tried to 

ascertain really what the problem was.

Can everybody still see the presentation? I had a 

weird time out message. Okay, if you can still see it, 

that's great.

So, NIOSH worked with the same people at INL about 

this issue and a second records request was made in 

the spring of 2018.

In July of 2018, we provided essentially a status 

update. We had received files for 18 of the 30 

claimants that we requested records for. So, in July, 

we gave an interim update of what our results were 

so far for those 18.

It was very evident in two of the 18 cases that the 

indexing coding system was still not functioning 

properly.

One of those cases was missing all of their visitor 

badges that we had identified. And one case only 

contained about 12 percent of the visitor badges that 

we had identified. So, that's -- those are certainly 

troubling numbers.

So, NIOSH resubmitted records requests a third time 

for those two claims along with the remaining 12 of 

30 that we had not yet received dosimetry records 

for.

So, we had updated dosimetry records for all of the 

30 claims by mid-October of 2018.

The overall results, we went in and evaluated those 
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Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

12

files. And so, right now, would be in Section 3 of the 

report for those of you following along on the 

website, and that's on page 8.

So, in total, we had 671 temporary badges that we 

had identified with that group of 30 claims. These did 

not include any potential name variations which we 

will discuss a bit later.

Out of those 671, 634 of them, or about 95 percent, 

were correctly included in the updated dosimetry 

files.

Half of those claims, so 15 of those 30, actually had 

all of the identified visitor badges correctly included 

in the updated dosimetry files.

For those two cases that were resubmitted a third 

time, again, one case had none of the visitor badges 

included, so zero percent were included. With the 

third submission, 97 percent of the badges were 

correctly included.

The other case which had 12 percent the previous 

time around, that improved to 96 percent. So, 12 

percent up to 96 percent.

So, those two cases that were clearly problematic in 

August improved to 97 percent and 96 percent, so 

actually, just over the average for the entire group of 

30.

Now, I talked a little bit about the name variations. 

We found different name variations among 15 of the 

30 claims selected and they were on a total of 51 

total badges.

Now, we went in and tried to see if those name 

variations were included in dosimetry files, we found 

that only 15 of the 51 we had identified were 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

13

included, which is about 29 percent.

We also took a look at those updated dosimetry files 

for name variations that we hadn't identified to see, 

you know, well, they may not have gotten these 

name variations, but maybe they captured some 

different ones. And those would have been not on 

just CPP records but also temporary badges from 

other locations, bioassay requests, whole body 

counts, questionnaires, that kind of thing.

And so, we found additional variations for 22 of the 

30 claims for a total of 66 variations in total. So, 

there were a bunch there that were included in the 

updated files that we hadn't seen, but some could be 

expected because we weren't looking at other 

temporary badges from other locations like TAN, 

places like that.

What we're looking at now is actually some names, 

so I'm going to be very careful here. Fortunately, this 

part is redacted for obvious reasons from the report 

on the web.

So, for those of you who can see the slide up in front 

of me, just want to point to a couple of interesting 

cases, I felt were interesting anyway.

So, Case G and Case J, now these designations have 

nothing to do with the actual claimant, they're just 

arbitrarily assigned when we did the study.

But if you look at, for example, Case J, you can see 

that the two names variations identified are identical 

and one of them was included in the updated file and 

one of them wasn't, even though it's the same 

variation. And that was true for Case G as well.

There are some of the other ones that we're looking 

at. And, again, so this third column is SC&A had 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

14

observed the name variation in the records captured 

and available to us, but we did not see them in the 

updated dosimetry files.

The far right column are ones that we had observed 

in the captured badges and they were included.

So, that's another example of where you have a 

name variation that's identical and one was included 

and one wasn't can be seen in Case O.

And, actually, in that Case O, the name variation is -

- the identical name variation is seen five times, one 

was not included, but four of them were.

And there's some other interesting ones here, Case 

V, obviously that's a very unique name and had some 

pretty significant variations where, you know, if you 

look at it, you can imagine that it could be the same 

person or it might not be, we just don't know.

Case Y also has some significant variations in name. 

Some of them, one of them was included, four of 

them were not.

So, some of the conclusions from this V&V analysis, 

and this would be in the concluding section which is 

Section 6 of the report on page 18, and going into 

page 19.

Ninety-four point five percent, that's 634 of 671 

identified badges were correctly included in the 

updated dosimetry file.

Now, the observed name variations are not included 

in that total. That's only if the name was identical to 

the claim and also we could prove that they were 

working for the same employer. So, there's sort of 

two pieces of information, the name and the 

employer to try to tie the claim to the temporary 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

15

badge.

Now, the average among the 30, so that first figure, 

94.5 percent, that's just every badge grouped 

together. But, if we look at it on a case by case basis, 

the average was 94.3. So, it was essentially the same 

thing, just slightly lower than the overall. 

And, as I said before, about half of the 30 claims we 

looked at had 100 percent of the temporary badges 

that we had identified correctly included in their 

dosimetry records.

The two cases that were identified in July of 2018, 

again, one improved from 12 percent to 96 percent 

and one improved from zero percent to 97 percent.

Separate analysis of name variations identified by 

SC&A showed that just under 30 percent, that's 15 

out of 51 were included in the dosimetry file.

As I said before, we had also identified a number of 

other name variations in the updated dosimetry file 

that we had not seen in the temporary badges that 

we used to develop the study. So, the door sort of 

swings both ways.

Some of the name variations we identified were not 

in there and the updated files had several name 

variations that we hadn't identified.

And then, finally, all 30 of the cases that were 

selected for V&V, we had at least one CPP badge 

during the period of interest, which, again, was

January 1963 through February of 1970.

This is just a placeholder slide to document whatever 

discussions occur today. And, with that, I conclude 

my formal presentation, I'd be happy to answer any 

questions.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

16

Discussion and Recommendations

Chair Schofield: Anybody got any?

Member Beach: Yes, this is Josie. I just -- I 

appreciate the fact that we've gone from 12 percent 

up to 96 and zero to 97. However, I'm concerned 

about the couple that you had to send request 

information three separate times.

What is being done on INL's end to -- so that doesn't 

happen?

Dr. Taulbee: Josie, this is Tim, can I go ahead and 

answer that?

Member Beach: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Josie, what ended up happening 

in that particular time period was that there was a 

staffing change that occurred and one of the longterm people who had been working on this project for 

many years took another job.

And so, in that -- during that transition period, we 

ended up with a response that got effectively 

jumbled, that the person who was responding didn't 

go and pull from the -- basically, they ended up 

copying what they had sent before and hadn't pulled 

from the full system.

So, I don't think that would happen again, but I can't 

say it wouldn't, but that was what effectively 

happened during that particular time which is why it 

was caught or which is why we re-requested it and 

you see this marked improvement.

Member Beach: Right.

Mr. Katz: Other questions from Work Group 

Members?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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

is for information only and is subject to change.

17

Member Roessler: This is Gen. We've talked about 

this for a long time and I'm not sure I've ever gotten 

a good answer.

But, what is really an acceptable percentage or what 

-- or do we have any precedents for this sort of thing 

that we can go on and say this is good enough or it's 

not?

Dr. Taulbee: Again, this is Tim. If I could address 

that, I would appreciate it.

Remember, the initial goal here was to cast a net 

wide to make sure we didn't miss anybody that was 

exposed to the plutonium and the transuranics at CPP 

during this time period which was pretty much 

confined to the laboratories in themselves. So that 

was the goal. And the exposure would be for 250 

days.

So, in order to do that, that's where we cast this net 

wide of any badging at CPP and 250 days of 

employment. 

Now, when we did this, all of the routine people there 

at the sites, those were really easily covered. The 

badging was on an IBM system, you've got printed 

names, there's no variation. Everybody's got S 

numbers, everybody is easily identified.

So, we got this temporary badged group. So, these 

are visitors to the site that did work there. But, you 

know, the 250 day employment is a potential issue 

for many of these workers.

Most of these badges are for less than a week. There 

are a few that extend out to a month and then in 

Bob's report, he had one that was 66 days and then 

there was one that was really long, but I actually 

think it's a typo.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho National 

Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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

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is for information only and is subject to change.

18

But, generally, they were -- if you go through these 

roles as workers, they're all for about a week. There 

are a few, like I said, that are a little longer.

Now, so what we did was we cast a net wide to where 

review we would have to have missed multiple 

badges if you had worked there for 250 days.

Now, you asked about precedent, and if you consider 

the Mound SEC definition, it's actually quite similar 

for the radon and SW19.

In that particular case, the net was also cast wide. 

This would be for a radon exposure in one particular 

room.

And so, anybody who entered that particular building 

was supposed to leave a tritium bioassay. And, if you 

worked there routinely, you would leave two per 

week.

If you worked there intermittently or you came in as 

a visitor, you were supposed to leave it at the end of 

the day.

Does that mean absolutely everybody left a tritium 

bioassay at the end of the day and always followed 

procedure? Well, probably not.

But, would it be possible for somebody who worked 

there for a full year, 250 days, and never leave one? 

That's very unlikely.

And so, this is very similar to that. Is it possible that 

we've missed a badge here or there? Well, Bob has 

demonstrated here that, on average, about 5 percent 

are not being necessarily identified.

So, would we miss a large number that would 

preclude somebody who worked there for 250 days? 

And, again, I would say that's very unlikely from that 
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19

scenario.

So, I think there is precedent with the Mound group 

when you compare it to this particular group.

I hope that answers your question, Gen.

Member Roessler: That does, and I guess I'd want to 

hear from SC&A whether they feel it's consistent 

since we have another situation, to me, it seems that 

we've achieved our purpose and that we can say dose 

reconstruction can be done.

But, I think SC&A has to give us their thoughts on 

that or other Work Group Members.

Mr. Katz: Well, Gen, it's not that dose reconstruction 

can be done, it's we can put people in the class that 

belong in it.

Member Roessler: Well, yes, it's a group for the 

particular people, I know, yes.

Member Beach: Can I ask a quick question, this is 

Josie, before SC&A jumps in?

And you probably said this and I might have missed 

it. Is all the indexing and coding done now, Tim? Is it 

complete at INL for all the temporary badges or is 

that still ongoing?

Mr. Katz: Tim, you might be on mute.

Dr. Taulbee: Sorry, I was.

Yes, Josie, it is our understanding, according to the 

sites, that they have completed the coding for all of 

the temporary badges across the entire site.

Member Beach: Okay. And has anybody done any 

kind of just a random -- well, never mind, that's 
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20

probably not - I was just going to say, has anybody 

looked at it and how that coding was done and 

transferred and -- but I know that's what we've been 

doing in this case.

So, just the human error is what I was thinking about 

and the name variations. But, anyway, I'm good. 

Thank you.

Mr. Katz: So, Bob, I think Gen wanted to know if 

SC&A had any other thoughts, remaining thoughts, 

about this or about the similarity between this and 

Mound and then have you considered that?

Mr. Barton: Yes, well, I guess I'm not as familiar with 

the Mound precedent. I would say I don't think that 

we have the target number or percentage involved 

when we started out. It was really, let's see what the 

study tells us.

And, you know, on the summary slide we have about 

a 95 percent success rate.

The other thing that I would mention to Tim's point 

about, well, you may miss a couple in there, but are 

you going to miss 250 days' worth?

The only thing I'd add to that is, this would be in 

combination with any other SEC employment. And, 

as I pointed out in the beginning of the presentation, 

there's an SEC right after this period for CPP that all 

you need is an INL badge.

So, it could be in combination. It becomes a little bit 

more likely if you -- if the claimant also had 

employment during another SEC period for which 

they qualify for but maybe they don't have 250 days 

in that period, either. So, that's just, I guess, 

something to keep in mind.
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21

Now, back to the question, Tim's question of 

whether, you know, this end result is acceptable or 

not, I'm not sure if that's really in SC&A's purview 

because I feel it's really more of a policy question 

than really a technical one, because as I said when 

we started out, we weren't starting out saying, well, 

if we can hit 95 percent then, you know, we're all 

good to go.

It's really, what is that number and is the Work Group 

comfortable with that number?

Member Roessler: But that means you're potentially 

missing five people?

Mr. Barton: No, it --

Member Roessler: Out of a 100, right?

Mr. Barton: It would be five -- potentially missed five 

badges out of a 100.

Member Roessler: Five badges, yes.

Mr. Barton: Right, yes.

Member Roessler: But, that's just badges, that's just 

--

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Taulbee: Remember, the doses and badges were 

issued for one week. So, missing five, you know, 

that's only part of the year from that standpoint if 

that was, you know, if that was the case. Even if they 

were for a month, all five of them for that one 

particular person, that's still, that's not a full year. 

And you only need one across this six year span to 

be included in the class. Again, we cast the net wide 

to make sure we didn't miss anybody who was at CPP 
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22

for 250 days.

Member Roessler: Unless you changed the --

Mr. Katz: That was Tim Taulbee. That was Tim 

Taulbee.

Dr. Taulbee: Oh, I'm sorry, yes.

Member Roessler: Well, because of those numbers 

and because of the precedents that Tim discussed, I 

have come to the conclusion that I'm comfortable 

with this and I think we can proceed.

Chair Schofield: It seems like the percentage 

possibilities, as Tim just pointed out over a six year 

period, what we're talking about are extremely 

minute fractions, if I understand this correctly.

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. That is correct. So, I would 

say it's highly unlikely.

Member Anderson: I would only -- it only needs to be 

one badge during this six year period to be in the 

class?

Dr. Taulbee: That's correct.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Anderson: And then, after that, you would 

have to determine whether they had 250 days?

Dr. Taulbee: Two hundred and fifty days employment 

anywhere on site.

Member Anderson: Okay. It wouldn't have to be 250 

days with a badge?

Dr. Taulbee: That is correct, no.

Chair Schofield: It seems like to me, the margin of 
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23

error is so small that I personally don't have a 

problem with it. I mean, that -- I don't think you can 

ever actually achieve 100 percent. I mean, you know, 

for sure. I mean, you know, we're talking about an 

extremely small percentage.

And it is theoretically possible we might miss 

someone, but, you know, I don't know how we can 

guarantee 100 percent for that six year time frame.

Mr. Katz: Yes. And so, on the other side of that 

theoretical possibility, you also -- we also know, I 

think, that there are potentially ten of these 

claimants who are -- until we add this class will not 

get compensated.

So, they will be on the sidelines. They have to wait 

on it.

Chair Schofield: Right.

Member Beach: So, what are the likelihood that the 

claimant turns in a claim and they miss it on the first 

go around? Is somebody going to ask for those folks 

at INL to send these records three times so that those 

potential folks won't get missed?

I guess that's the only thing I'm worried about. And 

I realize the percentages, it's a small, small chance. 

But if it's just one person that gets left out because 

they missed that badge but they still have the 250 

days that they -- anyway.

Mr. Katz: Josie, I mean, I think you raise a good point 

and I just would ask Tim just to elaborate on your 

question. The other -- given the history here, the 

experience here, whether we can't sort of -- and I 

don't mean the Agency, NIOSH, just make some sort 

of recommendation to DOL about the degree of due 

care they take in this situation.
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24

Dr. Taulbee: Ted, this is Tim, again.

I mean, we can certainly do that. But here's the --

Josie, here's how I kind of see this process going.

Whenever a new claim is filed, the DOL is going to 

contact DOE. They're going to do a search and 

determine whether this person worked at CPP 

because they really only have to produce one badge 

for that particular person back for demonstration that 

they are part of the class.

If they don't get one of those, then DOL's going to 

forward that claim to us at which time we're going to 

request the full dosimetry records so we can do dose 

reconstruction.

So, effectively, it's going to be checked twice from 

that standpoint, just going through the normal 

process.

If we go through and we start looking and this person 

was a contractor that's working in a lot of different 

facilities, you know, that's something that we can 

look at closely.

We can also look at the CATI where we do reach out 

and talk to people.

So, I guess I would say, DOE is going to at least look 

twice just from the normal flow of process.

And, as far as in this particular case, the only reason 

we went to a third time, it was -- well, we noted there 

was a big discrepancy and we investigated and asked 

them about it and then that's when we found out 

there was a changeover in personnel and a 

misunderstanding as to what we were requesting.

So, I really don't think that that would happen again.
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25

Member Beach: Okay, I appreciate that and that does 

give me a higher level of comfort in looking at it in 

those terms where it is going to be looked at from 

DOL and NIOSH. So, I would agree that we should 

move forward with this.

Chair Schofield: Anybody else have any comments?

Member Roessler: If we do that we --

Member Anderson: And do we have any sense of --

so how many -- I mean, we do a good job of I think 

this shows that if there's a -- I'm just concerned with 

the people who make a claim who say they were 

there. Are they making a claim that they were just 

there at the plant or that they were actually in the 

lab area?

So, I mean, are --

Dr. Taulbee: I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, 

Dr. Anderson.

Member Anderson: What I'm saying is, so, for a claim 

to be made, the individual has to believe or that they 

were in the exposed area that we're looking for. And 

then, we find out whether there was a badge.

So, that would --

Dr. Taulbee: No --

Member Anderson: If they can't find a badge, are we 

then saying that the individual is mistaken and they 

were not in the area? Or --

Dr. Taulbee: When somebody files a claim, they're 

filing the claim of employment there at the Idaho site 

as a whole.

Member Anderson: Okay.
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26

Dr. Taulbee: And there's many facilities there. So --

Member Anderson: Right.

Dr. Taulbee: And then, to verify the employment, 

Department of Labor sends a request to DOE to verify 

that employment.

And then, if they don't have any employment 

records, which may be temporary, a badge may or 

may not have employment records, then they give 

the secondary sources and Department of Labor has 

a whole series of things that they go and look at from 

that standpoint.

You know, once they qualify the claim, then it would 

come to us. But, in that initial request to DOL, what 

they would be checking then is does this person have 

any dosimetry for CPP to be part of the SEC?

Because then they wouldn't send us that claim to do 

dose reconstruction on.

Member Anderson: Okay.

Dr. Taulbee: Does that make sense?

Member Anderson: Yes, I'm just -- yes.

You know, I guess, I'm -- you know, I think this is 

about as good as we can get.

Mr. Katz: Phil, I think we need a motion then.

Chair Schofield: I'm inclined to go ahead and say let's 

accept it and go forward with that for people to get 

into the SEC. I mean, I think it's a reasonable thing 

since we're only looking for one badge over six years.

Member Beach: So, I'll make a motion that we accept 

NIOSH's Class Definition for this period.
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27

Chair Schofield: I'll second that.

Member Roessler: I'm in favor.

Member Anderson: Yes, so am I, yes.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay, so then, we have a 

recommendation from the Work Group which brings 

us to plans, I think we need to speak about then plans 

of how this gets presented.

We don't have, I'll just note, I have it on the agenda, 

but the Petitioner is deceased, so we don't -- we will 

not have Petitioner comments.

But, let's talk about how we present this. I think it 

makes sense to have Bob do a presentation similar 

to what he's done here to the Full Board. But, I think 

it needs to be then elaborated to reflect this Work 

Group meeting and end with the recommendation to 

the Full Board with the repetition of the definition.

Does that sound sensible to all of you on the Work 

Group?

Chair Schofield: It does to me.

Mr. Katz: Right. So then, Bob, if you wouldn't mind 

taking the lead on that on getting the -- if you would 

update the presentation to reflect this meeting and 

the discussion of this meeting and the outcome of 

this meeting.

And then, circulate that to the Work Group so they 

can have a look at it before we go ahead and post 

that. That would be great. Okay, Bob?

Mr. Barton: Okay.

Mr. Katz: Okay. And, yes, and then fine with you to 

have Bob present?
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28

Chair Schofield: No, I mean, I think that's a good 

idea. So --

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Chair Schofield: I think we're unanimous on backing 

it.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So, good work and good work, and 

that's great progress. Thank you.

And, Phil, we're back to the agenda.

Verification and Validation of Records for Existing 

INL SEC Class SEC 238

Chair Schofield: Okay. We're now going to go on to 

SEC-00238 which covers the time frame of 1975 to 

1980.

Mr. Katz: Okay, that's Bob, again.

Mr. Barton: Similar to the previous one, I do have 

some slides with discussion points, but once again, 

they're just reflective of what is already on the web. 

So, I will be going through that.

And this is SEC-00238, as Phil said, which is 1975 

through 1980, that's the full years inclusive. So, 

January 1975 through December 1980.

And this was part of the 83.14 process and NIOSH 

presented the SEC to the Advisory Board in July of 

2017. And, again, that's for the, again, for CPP, 1975 

through 1980.

The proposed Class Definition, all employees of the 

Department of Energy, its predecessor agencies, and 

their contractors and subcontractors who worked at 

the Idaho National Laboratory, INL, in Scoville, Idaho 

and who were monitored for external radiation at the 
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29

Idaho Chemical Processing Plant, CPP, have at least 

one full badge or TLD dosimeter from CPP between 

January 1st, 1975 and December 31st, 1980 for a 

number of work days aggregating at least 250 work 

days including current solely under this employment 

or in combination with work days within the 

parameters established through one or more other 

classes of employees in the Special Exposure Cohort.

And this, obviously, looks very similar to the Class 

Definition we just discussed, at least the first part 

where there is a requirement in there to have a CPPspecific dosimeter.

Similar to the SEC-00219, the concerns remain about 

the requirement for that CPP-specific badging. So, 

SC&A was tasked with reviewing the badging 

practices during that 83.14 period and also 

developing a similar V&V approach as was used for 

SEC-00219.

In February of 2018, SC&A delivered its initial 

evaluation of the badging practices, had several 

findings of mostly related to -- findings and 

observations mostly related to standard and routine 

badging practices.

But there were two findings that were specific to the 

V&V development approach and these were Findings 

1 and 2.

Finding 1, SC&A located temporary badge reports 

during the period of interest; however, it is apparent 

that the currently available records are incomplete.

Additional temporary badge reports are likely 

available at the site but have not been captured due 

to the focus of previous data capture efforts.

And, as a follow on to that, Finding 2, based on our 
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30

review of the limited available temporary badge 

reports from 1975 and 1980, that should be through 

1980, workers who accrued zero measured dose and 

did not have a permanent health physics badge 

indicated in the temporary badge report do not 

appear to be consistently migrated into the official 

area exposure reports for CPP.

And those official area exposure reports which Tim 

referred to earlier, they're printouts. They're from an 

IBM database. So, we're not dealing necessarily with 

these handwritten records on the actual visitor cards.

But, as was the case in the previous period, if you 

were a visitor and did not accrue any dose, they did 

not record you in that system. But they did keep the 

cards, as it turned out.

So, in September of 2018, NIOSH in conjunction with 

SC&A went on site at INL to capture -- well, first to 

assure that the temporary badges are there in 

physical form and can be captured through V&V 

analysis.

Those records were captured and uploaded to the 

Site Research Database in November 2018.

They were contained in 705 PDF files that average 

about 160 pages each. And so, one page would be 

the front of the card, one page would be the back. 

So, that's roughly 80 temporary badges per file.

So, if you do the math, that's quite a large number.

Important characteristics of temporary badges 

during this period and, important to remember, is 

that these badges almost universally contained an 

INL security number, also known as an S number. 

This is essentially your identification number for the 

site.
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31

So, whereas in the previous period, we really only 

had the name and the employer to really go on to 

match a temporary badge with a claimant. Now, we 

have a third piece of information that is specific to 

each claim.

This, obviously, is going to help out any issues 

associated with name variations because even if 

there's a name variation, you'd hope there wouldn't 

be a variation in the S number unless that was 

incorrectly transcribed in the original badge.

So, a couple of things here. One, we have not been 

able to find documentation that will show on, for 

example, a monthly period how many visitor badges 

were issued at CPP.

And that was a piece of information that we did have 

for the earlier period, the SEC-00219 period, which 

allowed us to perform sort of a completeness analysis 

to say, all right, CPP issued, you know, X number of 

badges in May of 1963.

And then we look in May of 1963 and we have that X 

number of badges in hand, we can be reasonably 

assured that the set of records we're looking at is 

complete.

But that's not the case, at least thus far, we were not 

able to find that sort of summary documentation to 

do that sort of completeness analysis.

So, really, what we're restricted to doing was, let's 

just see if we find any temporal gaps in the records 

we have.

In other words, if you had a number of months with 

little to no visitor badges, it'll be pretty suspect and 

you might wonder why those badges are not there. 

And if they are in fact missing or things of that 
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32

nature.

So, we went through and did a rough count by month 

on the captured of temporary badges and we did not 

find any significant temporal gaps, as you'll see in a 

moment, there was some pretty significant 

fluctuations on a month by month basis.

You'll see here on this next slide, there's a chart and 

that chart appears on page -- so, what we're looking 

at right now for those of you who are following along 

online, this is Figure 2 and it's on page 4 of the SC&A 

report.

So, here's a rough count of the number of temporary 

badges for this period. As you can see, there can be 

quite a bit in any given month, you know, over 1,300 

in the middle of 1978.

As you can see, there's some fluctuation, but there's 

no significant period where you're just not seeing any 

badges. So, that's really what we're looking for, you 

know, do we have reasonable number of badges on 

a monthly basis? This was a standard dosimetry 

cycle. Or do we see any gaps?

And, based on what we interpret from -- and show in 

this chart, we don't see any reason to think that there 

are potential temporary badge gaps, at least on a 

temporal basis.

So, for claimant selection, we, again, closely mirrored 

the SEC-00219 V&V approach. We wanted some 

diversity in job classification.

Also, obviously, the total number of badges that we 

can identify with a given individual is helpful. The 

more badges you have, the more -- well, the more 

badges you have to check.
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33

And then, the requirement that I didn't mention 

earlier, but this is also part of the SEC-00219, 

claimant selection, that they'll require a revised dose 

reconstruction, either because they don't meet 250 

days or they have a non-presumptive illness and so 

wouldn't qualify or would have to have a dose 

reconstruction performed for medical benefits.

And this last criteria was actually not part of the SEC00219. I actually went through and tried to find some 

claimants who had covered employment in the 

previous period that -- when I say previous period, I 

mean 1970 to 1974, but didn't have 250 days.

So, they might have a significant employment in one 

of the SECs but not 250 days, but if they were found 

during the 83.14 period, it might bump them up a 

little bit to the top. So, it's sort of a specific case 

study.

So, at the time we did this analysis, there are 1,100 

claims that had some covered employment during 

the 83.14 period. Almost 400 of them would require 

that revised dose reconstruction, again, based on the 

covered illnesses. And about 50 percent of those 400, 

we were able to identify just by name in the captured 

temporary badges.

Now, I mentioned that these temporary badges have 

S numbers, but unfortunately, there's no reasonable 

way to search through the claimant population and 

populate a list of S numbers. We'd have to actually 

physically go into each file and pull those out 

manually.

So, we'll -- our first run through this to try identify 

potential candidates, we're really just looking at the 

name.

So, the proposal suggests 30, again, just like the 
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34

SEC-00219 period for an updated records request. 

Again, that's consistent with the earlier analysis.

Four of those 30 had fit that final criteria that I just 

mentioned, unless they have SEC employment in 

other periods, but not the full 250 days.

And so, there's the potential that if their 83.14 

badges were missed then they would also miss out 

on the SEC designation. So those four of them fit that 

criteria.

The remaining 26 were based primarily on the 

number of visitor badges we could find. But that did 

include a pretty diverse set of job titles including 

engineers, administrative, laboratory, various 

construction trades.

So, among the 30 suggested claims, we have 639 

total visitor badges to check.

Now, in addition to the 30 that we're suggesting for

updated dosimetry, what I did was I went back and I 

looked at our 30 claims from SEC-00219 to see if any 

of them had visitor badges during this later 83.14 

period.

And, as it turns out, seven were found in both 

periods. And those seven had about 105 total visitor 

badges between them.

These could be either used to replace some of the 30 

that we're suggesting for updated dosimetry or to 

augment them.

And one of the benefits of looking at these claims is 

we already have their updated dosimetry files. So, it 

would not require any additional research or work 

done by the site personnel in putting together an 

updated dosimetry because we already have it in 
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35

hand.

So, to summarize the proposals, again, one thing to 

keep in mind is that almost all these badges have 

security numbers. So, again, that's that third piece of 

information we can use to correctly identify that the 

person on the visitor card is the claimant.

We don't have that site documentation to indicate 

how many temporary badges were issued in any 

given period, so we can't really do that full 

completeness analysis like we did for the SEC-00219 

period.

So, again, we did a rough tally of the badges by 

month to see if there are any significant temporal 

gaps which we did not identify in our judgment.

Again, this is just kind of interesting that we have 50 

percent of the claims that fit the criteria for V&V 

selection, so there were 400 in total.

We found almost half of them, at least identified by 

name, so CPP had a lot of visitors during this time.

Again, we're -- we identified 30 claims that we would 

suggest for updated dosimetry requests and those 

cover a total of 639 total temporary badges. And that 

639 can be compared to the 671 that we had for the 

earlier period. So a pretty similar number of badges 

to check.

Again, there's the seven additional claims that had 

already had requests done as part of SEC-00219. 

And, again, those could be used to either augment or 

in place of some of those 30 claims that we are 

suggesting for updated requests.

So, in total, the V&V evaluation could cover 37 total 

claims and 744 individual badges.
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36

And that's the end of this presentation. It was a little 

bit briefer, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Discussion and Recommendations

Member Roessler: Well, Bob, this is Gen. Am I off 

mute?

Mr. Katz: Yes, you are, Gen.

Member Roessler: Okay. So, you've given a lot of 

numbers, a lot of statistics here, but it seems to me 

your bottom line is to say that, after your review, you 

don't see any problem with identifying claimants in 

this particular situation.

Mr. Barton: Well, this is essentially the proposal for 

the V&V evaluation. What we did is we captured the 

records ourselves. So, in the Site Research Database, 

we have all these files with just, you know, lists and 

lists of claimants in them.

And we actually went through and manually matched 

them up by name to the claimant records we have.

Now, the next step would be, similar to the previous 

process is to go ask INL put together the full 

dosimetry records for these people, send it on over 

and then we can look at what we've identified from 

our own hard copy records, is INL correctly grabbing 

those same records and including them in the 

dosimetry files.

Member Roessler: Okay.

Mr. Barton: So, this is sort of the proposal step, not 

the evaluation step.

Member Roessler: Yes, okay, thank you.

Member Anderson: Yes, the next step would be to 
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37

implement this?

Mr. Barton: That's correct.

Member Anderson: Any sense how long that would 

take?

Mr. Barton: Well, really, the, I guess, the deciding 

factor is how quickly INL can turn over these records 

requests. I mean, you have to keep in mind that 

they're doing searches not just for this V&V effort, 

but any claims that are filed and that sort of thing. 

So, it's kind of dependent -- once they get the files

to us, it's a very quick turnaround.

I think once I started looking at the SEC-00219, it 

was about a month and I had the report.

Member Anderson: Okay, so it's not a long time? Yes.

Mr. Barton: Well, it doesn't take a long time but to 

get, you know, the records from the site. And that's 

the deciding factor.

Mr. Katz: Right. The last time around -- oh, go ahead, 

Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: The last time around, the site asked for 

us to send them in batches of ten and they would do 

60. And they would include them in their typical 60 

day response.

So, you are looking at about six months for the site 

to respond to 30, going up to 37 then you're looking 

at another two months. So, about eight months for 

the site to respond in full.

Member Beach: Well, except the seven, they already 

have, correct?

Dr. Taulbee: Oh, you're right, you're right, I'm sorry, 
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38

Josie.

Member Beach: So, it's just the 30.

Dr. Taulbee: Yes, June is six months.

Mr. Katz: This is Ted.

I mean, I wouldn't be too concerned about the six 

months or the time because this is already an SEC in 

play.

Member Anderson: Right, exactly. This is just the 

validation process.

Mr. Katz: Correct.

Member Anderson: I think we ought to move forward 

with this.

Member Beach: I'm going to agree with that also.

Mr. Katz: Just before we do that, though, does Tim -

- do you have any comments you wanted to make 

about this? I don't know, maybe not.

Dr. Taulbee: I don't have any comments. I'm actually 

a little curious as to how it's going to play out. My 

impression is, is it should be about the same as the 

other to where about 95 percent of the badges will 

be correctly identified.

Maybe a few more due to the S number but there's 

also a potential of people transposing those numbers 

incorrectly as well.

Mr. Katz: And you're good with that?

Dr. Taulbee: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Great, great.
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39

Dr. Taulbee: I don't see any problems with it.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Tim.

All right, I mean, that will take you to the vote for 

this, folks, because this is just ongoing work the Work 

Group has. So, it sounds like you're all in favor. I 

think we've heard from everyone.

Chair Schofield: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Okay, so then, Bob --

Mr. Barton: This is Bob. Just one more, I guess, 

question for the Work Group. When we go to make 

the requests for -- updated requests for the 30, do 

we want to include a similar cover letter sort of 

alerting the staff that these are a part of a special 

study by the Advisory Board or do we want to kind of 

send them in blind?

Member Beach: I --

Chair Schofield: I would send them blind.

Member Beach: I would, too.

Dr. Taulbee: The problem with doing that, though, 

without giving them any warning is, they have an 

archive of everything they've sent us before. And so, 

going in blind, they may not.

They might see, oh, we've already responded to that. 

Here, just copy it over and not a search in their 

system.

Member Beach: Yes, good point. I reverse, I think we 

should send a cover letter.

Mr. Katz: Yes, I don't think it's going to change any 

behavior other than --
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40

Member Beach: It shouldn't.

Mr. Katz: Okay, then, good. So, we've got that and a 

path forward for that. Thank you very much.

And, again, Bob, consider yourself with so tasked. 

Bob and SC&A. That's great.

And we're back to the agenda.

Chair Schofield: You know, I think everybody has 

already basically said, you know, recommended that 

we go with that. You know, I think that's the 

reasonable approach, unless there's something 

somebody has an objection to.

Mr. Katz: No, I think we're good with this, Phil. And I 

think -- I mean, we've already covered the Board 

meeting session plans for the other SEC.

And, in this case, for this, I think it would be good, 

though, also Bob, if you would append as probably a 

separate presentation to keep things clear, but if you 

would sort of briefly give the same presentation but 

maybe a little bit more concise to the Board on this, 

much more concise I would say just to let them know 

that this is going forward, that would be great.

Mr. Barton: Okay, great.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, thank you very much.

And this brings us to the last item which is just to 

note for the public, if there is any public on this call, 

this is not a document that's posted yet. Although, I 

think we'll get this presentation cleared. But, this is 

an update on the NIOSH work, DCAS work related to 

the Burial Grounds which is an area of interest to the 

Board and to NIOSH as well.

And, Tim, this is your item.
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41

DCAS Evaluation of Dose Reconstruction 

Information for Potential Exposures at the Burial 

Grounds

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Currently loading up the 

presentation here. Can you all see it?

Member Beach: It's loading.

Mr. Katz: And, Board Members, I forwarded this to 

you this morning. I wasn't here Friday, Saturday, 

whenever it was I received it from Bob. But you 

should have it by email as well.

Member Beach: Yes, I have it.

Mr. Katz: I mean, from Tim, sorry. I don't mean Bob.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, does everybody see it?

Member Roessler: Yes.

Member Beach: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. All right, and so, what I'm going 

to talk about here is the evaluation of the INL Burial 

Grounds or the radioactive waste management 

complex. And this is the post-1970 period. This is 

after SEC-00219.

And, before I get started here, I really want to 

recognize the work of Mitch Findley, he did a 

tremendous job of going through hundreds of 

documents and pulling this all together and 

organizing it.

So, a little bit of an overview, I'll give a little bit of 

background, some of the changes in mission, but I'll 

focus mostly on the next two, the waste retrieval 

projects and the bioassay monitoring and then wrap

up with the conclusion.
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42

So, if you recall from March 2017, when we closed -

- or we finished our evaluation of SEC-00219, this 

was closing out the remaining open periods that we 

did through the addendum.

We indicated that we would continue to evaluate the 

Burial Ground exposures outside of the SEC-00219 

evaluation period.

And the reason why, why are we doing this? Well, we 

knew there were some large-scale drum retrieval 

operations in the latter of 1970 through modern day.

And we indicated at that time, if we knew that we 

would pursue expanding the class under the 83.14 

process.

So, this is kind of our evaluation of, hey, do we need 

to do something about this work going on in this post1970 time period?

And these two photos is what I showed during that 

presentation that had given us some pause.

When we were doing our research, closing out SEC00219 for the Burial Grounds up until 1970, we ran 

into some work here of them retrieving buried waste 

in the 1977 time period.

And seeing people up intimately close with these 

drums, and, you know, potential for contaminated 

soil gave us some pause as to were these workers 

monitored?

So, that was what started this particular evaluation.

So, talking about the Burial Grounds or the 

radioactive waste management complex, this

became its new name in the 1970s. And the reason 

it became this waste management complex was it 

was composed of several different operations.
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43

The first being the sub-surface disposal area, or the 

SDA. This is the old Burial Ground. This is where they 

would dig pits and trenches and dump waste in it and 

cover it up.

And so, it was a really simple -- pretty simple 

operation. Digging through clean dirt, you dumped 

radioactive waste in it and you cover it back up.

But, in 1971, they began to change the operation. 

DOE directed them to no longer bury transuranic 

waste, that they would just store it above ground.

And so, they opened up the transuranic storage area, 

or the TSA, which is different from Transportation 

Security Administration, but you'll hear me say TSA 

throughout this entire presentation.

They also had an additional administration and 

operations area. And, by the way, the TSA off to the 

right, the photo there, this is a pad where they would 

pour asphalt down and they would stack the drums 

coming from Rocky Flats and then, when they were 

done, by the way, there were sheets of plywood over 

top of them, then they would cover them up with dirt. 

But, they were above ground to where they could 

easily be retrieved.

You didn't have the problem of flooding which was 

one of the early issues in the 1960s with the Burial 

Ground.

In the fourth quarter of 1975, RWMC got its own 

dosimetry designation. As we've been talking about 

with CPP, prior to that time period, it was dosimeter 

badges being issued at the individual facilities.

Prior to that time period, all of the badges for the 

Burial Grounds came out of the central facilities area.
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44

But, in the fourth quarter of 1975, they started to get 

their own -- they got their own designation.

The next series of slides here, I've gotten -- trying to 

show how the RWMC changed over the years here.

And this is 1970. This is the close of the SEC period 

and you can see there's not much going on here.

You've got the triangular area in the background 

there. That's the actual sub-surface disposal area, or 

SDA. And then here in the foreground, you've got 

some of the TSA pads just beginning to be filled. 

Okay? So, this is 1970.

Six years later, there's a lot more operations going 

on here. You've got that initial pad is now full and 

covered and they've started another TSA pad there 

in foreground.

And then, the middle of the screen, you've got the 

initial drum retrieval, one of the waste retrieval 

projects I'll talk about and then, in the background, 

you've got the early waste retrieval as another one 

I'm going to talk about.

And, off to the right, you've got the first permanent 

structures being built out there at the site. These 

white domes are actually air support weather shields 

that allowed them to operate during all weather, rain, 

snow, et cetera.

And so, that's -- those are inflatable buildings that 

were movable. But, the ones off to the right were 

permanent buildings.

So, we fast forward to 20 years roughly, you can see 

RWMC is changing dramatically. The TSA area is 

growing significantly and with permanent buildings to 

store these drums coming from Rocky Flats. They're 
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45

even beginning to build a super structure over top of 

one of the TSA areas in order to retrieve drums.

And you've got some construction beginning there in 

the right corner.

Can you all see my mouse moving?

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Mr. Barton: Yes, I can see it.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

This area here would be where Pit 9 would become.

And what you can see back in this area in the center 

is where those early waste retrieval projects were 

being done, they've been covered up. There's nothing 

else being done there.

Going through and looking at looking at RWMC today, 

here you can see that big building is completed. And 

this is all the Pit 9 type of area.

And, again, there's still not much area -- not much 

else going on back in this other area.

So, in the 1970s, you had some projects that were 

started, these waste retrieval projects from 1970 

through 1978. And they were conducted to 

investigate the retrieval of waste in preparation for 

production scale retrieval programs that I've got 

listed here at the bottom like long term storage waste 

retrieval project which was recovering the waste on 

the TSA pads and sending it to WIPP.

And then, buried waste retrieval projects that are still 

active today like the Pit 9 work.

These were all issued after these three retrieval 
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46

projects. I'm going to talk about these individually 

here.

The first one, the solid waste retrieval project 1971, 

then we'll go to the initial drum retrieval which is '74 

to '78 and then the early waste retrieval from '76 to 

'78.

So, the solid waste retrieval in 1971, the AEC 

requested a series of solid waste retrieval tests on 

Rocky Flats waste buried in the sub-surface disposal 

area to gain insight into problems that may arise 

from large scale retrieval operations.

In the first phase, AEC requested retrieval of three 

specific drums that were suspect of containing excess 

amounts of plutonium. They wanted to go in and see 

if they could find these three drums.

The only found one of the three drums that they were 

looking for. But they did move several hundred 

drums looking for these three specific.

They collected soil samples to determine the soil 

contamination concentrations. Most of the soil 

samples were less than ten picocuries per gram.

However, some were as high as six nanocuries per 

gram of plutonium.

And here's a photo from the solid waste retrieval test 

and here, you can see where these drums that they 

were investigating here were neatly stacked. And 

they'd dug out here in the center and moved looking 

for, like I said, those three specific drums.

And then, the second phase was the retrieval of 

multiple waste drums, 16 for transport to the ARA hot 

cell for detailed sorting and sampling studies.

And retrievals were focused on removing drums from 
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47

Pit 2 which was 12-year-old stacked waste, that 

previous picture showing stacked waste, Pit 5 which 

was 7-year-old dumped waste and Pits 10 and 11 

which was only 18-month-old stacked waste.

So, Pits 10 and 11 were relatively newly placed then 

they were stacked. So, these would be new drums. 

There shouldn't be much deterioration on them.

Pit 2 would have more deterioration. And then, Pit 5 

was just dumped waste.

The figure off to the right shows how they were 

taking soil samples around these drums. This would 

be Pit 5 because you can see the drums are clearly 

not stacked. They're just kind of dumped in there.

And the highest in this particular group here is 12 

picocuries per gram of plutonium in the soil with most 

of the interior being less than 10.

And here is a picture of those dumped drums. In fact, 

I actually think this photo might be related to that 

previous figure of soil concentrations just given the 

kind of general configuration.

But you can see what it was that they're investigating 

here in Pit 5. And when they did pull the drums up, 

they just bagged them and send them over to the 

ARA hot cell.

During the solid waste retrieval, anti-C clothing was 

worn, coveralls, shoe covers and cotton gloves. They 

did set up air samplers. They were utilized 

continuously with one sampler placed upwind and 

one sampler placed downwind. Filters were changed 

daily and they were analyzed for gross alpha.

Only one of the excavation sites, Pit 5, had airborne 

concentration of detectible significance. And that was 
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48

6.75 times 10 to the minus 12 microcuries of 

plutonium per CC which comes out to about 3.4 DAC.

And this was over a 3.75 hour work period.

Keep in mind that they didn't do this work 

continuously over this time period. It was a short 

period of time over one year that they investigated 

these three areas.

Respirators were worn by workers and whole body 

counts of principal workers at the site showed no 

detectible plutonium uptakes.

Pit 5 was also the only site where detectible 

contamination was found on peoples' shoe covers. 

So, where that dumped waste was is where there's a 

particular hazard, potential serious hazard.

Health physics monitoring records noted in their 

summary reports that the Eberline instrument PAC1S was inadequate to measure contamination in the 

field.

Smears were counted and a scintillation crystal 

detector were required to detect most of the 

contamination that was encountered.

And this is consistent with the interviews that we 

heard from workers that the PACs just weren't that 

good for finding contamination in the field. The 

smears were much more efficient and they did take 

smears on materials.

They also wore half face respirators. At that the time, 

they considered these to be satisfactory in preventing 

worker inhalation of plutonium.

Whole body counting using special detectors for 

plutonium showed no detectible Pu intake of the main 
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49

workers.

The drums that were sent to the ARA hot cell for 

evaluation, the highest smear on the outside of the 

drum was a 100 counts per minute.

And from this initial solid waste retrieval, they 

concluded that the best approach was to use 

dedicated teams to do this. As people gained 

experience with it, it became more efficient and 

people knew what they were doing.

And that was the solid waste retrieval project that 

took place in 1971.

Starting in 1974, the initial drum retrieval project. 

And the IDR was designed and implemented to 

demonstrate the safe retrieval and packaging, and 

transfer to interim storage of drums containing 

transuranic waste, buried from 1968 to 1970.

On the drums that were retrieved were from Pits 11 

and 12. So, this is those pits that had recently been 

buried, 18-month waste coming -- 18-month buried 

waste coming from Rocky Flats.

And so, the goal was to dig them up from the pits 

that they had been put in and move them over to the 

TSA pads. And here, you've got a photo of the TSA 

pad that they're removing them to.

So, what they were effectively doing in 1970 is when 

DOE instituted they had to bury all the transuranic 

waste above ground, well not bury it, but cover it for 

retrieval to send to WIPP.

So, what this project effectively did was move the 

waste from -- move that early cut off back to 1968 

because they recovered those drums and put them 

on TSA pads.
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50

Initially, they would use an 83-gallon over-pack 

drums and then they changed to use cargo containers 

that held 72 drums. And that's these white containers 

that you see off to the right. Those are full of drums. 

And so, that was their new method of packaging 

these drums.

And this is a big project. Previously, we talked about 

them looking for three drums, but moving a couple 

hundred drums. And then recovering 16 drums to 

send to ARA.

In this particular project, they exhumed and 

retrieved 20,262 drums. So, this is the big operation 

that took place. And that is that photo that I showed 

early on and that was the operation.

This was IDR that was going on. Again, this is inside 

that air support weather shield. And we can see that 

the back there in the background is picking up those 

cargo containers where they put them on the trucks. 

And you can see that a forklift was picking up a 

couple of trucks -- cargo drums, loading those into 

those cargo containers and they would drive them 

out.

There was health physics monitoring during this as 

indicated. The guy on -- the individual on the left 

there is working with an air monitor, a CAM. And 

then, on the right, they're doing surveys of the 

drums. And, again, you see the half face respirator 

there and they're wearing shoe covers and coveralls 

for the operation.

During this particular retrieval monitoring, as I 

indicated, the air support weather shields erected 

over the retrieval areas, anti-C clothing was very 

similar to the previous solid waste retrieval that 

carried half face respirators.
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51

The instrumentation then had survey instruments but 

they also used gas proportional for counting smears.

And all the workers included in the RWMC were on 

bioassay measurements at the end of this particular 

project.

The figure on the right shows the number of intact 

drums. And, again, keep in mind that these drums 

had only been in the ground about 18 months, so 

they hadn't been there very long.

And what I find also interesting is that there were 

some drums with fixed external contamination, but 

not removable contamination based upon the 

smears.

The number of breached drums was actually quite 

small when you consider that, when you consider the 

total there is less than 5 percent.

And then, there were some drums, it looks like about 

600, 700 of them that weren't even TRU drums. They 

didn't contain enough transuranic waste to be 

considered TRU.

So, that's the initial drum retrieval project. Now, I'm 

going to talk about the early waste retrieval project. 

So, this would be that tents, air support weather 

shield in the background of that figure that I showed 

you of 1976.

And the purpose of this particular retrieval project 

was to investigate problems associated with large 

scale removal of TRU waste from primarily Pits 1 and 

2 and develop methods and equipment for safe 

retrieval of the TRU waste, develop repackaging 

methods, and to determine the risks and hazards for 

long term waste exhumation projects.
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52

Pit 2 was chosen because it was open during the 1962 

flood and it was expected to reflect the worst possible 

conditions for retrieval.

And, during this project, only 306 drums were 

retrieved with 205 of those being severely breached. 

So, again, this was the case where I was talking 

about the stacked waste that had only been in the 

ground for a short period of time and they had, you 

know, it was very relatively easy to remove and to 

get and the drums were not breached.

Here, you're looking at a very large number of 

breached drums. And so, this is quite hazardous 

work.

And one of the excepts from health physics was that 

although alpha contamination levels greater than 2 

million counts per minute were frequently 

encountered, available equipment and established 

safety and operating procedures were effective in 

protecting personnel and the environment.

So, this is very high level work. And you're not talking 

about picocuries, you're talking about millions of 

counts per minute.

But how did they do that? Well, inside of this outer 

box here, this is the air support weather shield. And 

then, inside the air support weather shield, they had 

another building and that's this particular square that 

I'm showing here.

And this was called the operating area of 

confinement. It was a modular metal building within 

which the actual waste was retrieved and performed.

They had a three cell change booth to get into this 

particular area. This particular building had HEPA 

filtration on the outside of it. There were 10 CAMs 
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53

being operated continuously, six inside of this OAC, 

two inside the air support weather shield, and two on 

the HEPA filtration line on the outside of that building.

And so, this is a picture of that building inside a 

building. Okay? And here, you can see that change, 

that three stage change area. And this would be for 

vehicles and the backhoe to come in and out of when 

they moved that particular building and so that they 

could be counted in this particular area. Okay?

So, this is inside the building during operation. And 

what you can immediately notice is that the people 

here are wearing bubble suits. So, this is how they 

were able to work in millions of counts per minute 

and not have any significant intakes.

It's because everybody inside there is on supplied air 

and inside a bubble suit.

The large area right here on the back, mostly I want 

to just focus on this little rectangular area. This is the 

air line, think of it as a mobile hood, if you will, of 

pulling air away from the dig site through this 

ventilation system here that went out to the HEPA 

filtration. Okay?

So, this is where they had two CAMs on the outside 

on this line looking for, if they dug into something 

here it would set off those CAMs out there so then 

they would know that they were getting into 

something that was really significant.

Here's another photo. Here you're seeing two 

individuals down in the pit that's been dug. And 

here's that same ventilation system being pulled. And 

here's the health physics technician working with the 

instrumentation.

The other thing I'd like to point out here is that in 
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54

1976, they had a contamination event inside this OAC 

where they lifted up a drum that was leaking and they 

ended up, in setting it on the soil, contaminating 

more soil that hadn't been contaminated before.

As a result of that, they started using a tray that they 

would set the drum in to capture any liquids that 

were coming out of it before they put it into their 

waste container or their overpack.

And then, they started using this tarp as well to try 

and prevent contamination, to prevent spreading 

liquid from the drums that might be leaking out when 

they pulled the drum out.

This is the condition of the drums that they were 

digging in. You can see these things are a mess and, 

you know, obviously, leaking and crushed and just 

general debris.

So, this is a very hazardous type of operation.

When they got done with one particular area, they 

did move this building. And, in this particular case, 

they had so it was cut in half and then they would 

move one half with a crane and move the other half, 

put it back together, hook up the ventilation system 

again. Put down their tarp, move their stuff back in 

and dig in another location.

The operating and confinement building was 

surveyed as the conditions warranted. Like I said, as 

it -- when it was moved, there was an excerpt from 

1977 where they finished the survey to the building 

and items and moved everything out of the OAC.

Operations secured during the move. They surveyed 

the sticky step off PAD and there was no detectible 

beta, gamma or alpha contamination and surveyed 

the crew at the end of the day and everything was 
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55

okay.

Based upon the interviews that we conducted, it 

would take weeks to move this OAC to a new 

excavation area due to the time required to perform 

the contamination surveys of the building and the 

equipment.

So, this wasn't something that they just kind of 

haphazardly did. They took their time and moved 

these things. This is why, over that two year period, 

they only retrieved 300 drums.

Part of this evaluation, we did conduct 12 worker 

interviews. And this is with SC&A out at the site. We 

interviewed two heavy equipment operators, one 

laborer, two health physics technicians, a health 

physicist, three engineers, two managers, and a 

scientist.

And one of the things that was from the interviews 

was there was a consistent response on questions on 

waste retrieval projects.

Everybody pretty much described the waste retrieval 

the same way. They all indicated there's a small 

dedicated work force. The work performed was with 

a focus on safety.

PPE was used during the -- and radiological 

monitoring was modified based upon the anticipated 

hazards. And that's evidenced from the photos there.

If you look at the IDR, those new drums that were 

being buried or that were being recovered, people are 

just wearing coveralls and a half face respirator. 

Around their necks is an escape device.

But then, when you got into the buried waste with 

very high levels of soil contamination, or dumped 
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56

waste I should say, high levels of contamination, they 

switched to bubble suits.

So, they were changing based upon the hazard that 

was being presented.

During the interviews, everyone indicated there was 

continuous health physics coverage of any work 

activities at RWMC.

They also indicated that the health physics guys were 

the first ones in each morning and the last ones out 

checking to make sure everybody was clean coming 

out.

There's high reliance and confidence in the health 

physics staff. And some of the equipment operators 

indicated that, and the laborers, that actually 

preferred to work at the RWMC as opposed to other 

areas.

So, this gets us to the bioassay monitoring for this 

particular operation. 1977 was the first round of 

bioassay screening program which led to a second 

round. And, eventually, led to a routine program 

there at the RWMC.

From the initial evaluation of nine workers and 16 of 

the 59 analysis that were performed were statistically 

positive at the 3 sigma level.

INL concluded that the results do not indicate any 

cause for alarm or a need for further modification of 

the program. But they felt there was insufficient data 

to make meaningful assessments -- assessments of 

dose or a judgment of the effectiveness of the 

contamination controls.

So, what they did was they expanded the program. 

They did a three-month data gathering program and 
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57

recommended based on the initial low-level positive 

results that all 18 RWMC workers and the 12 

EWR/IDR workers were given the top priority but all 

of the workers would be sampled.

So, here's the results from the first round of 

bioassays. And what I want to point out here is that, 

if you look at just the urine results, there's only two 

positive results, one for plutonium-238 and one for 

americium-241.

Most of the positive results, 14 of the 16 were in the 

feces, a feces sampling of the workers. Okay? And 

they got the two -- the highest urine result was .24 

DPM of americium; the highest fecal results from this 

initial 9 was 6.22 DPM of americium.

The highest fecal result with the expanded group in 

April of 1978 was 30 DPM for plutonium.

So, what kind of doses are we looking at? Oh, wait a 

minute, before I get to the doses, we should talk a 

little bit about the assumptions made in the 

calculations.

The highest activity that were detected in the in vitro 

bioassay, both the urine and the fecal, were from the 

americium-241.

The intakes -- so, Mitch calculated the intakes using 

americium-241 as the indicator radionuclide --

pardon me -- using americium-241 as the indicator 

and it would have been 8:1 plutonium to americium 

ratio.

This comes out of Table 5 of the Hanford Technical 

Basis Document.

If you go and you look at the ratio of plutonium-239 

to americium-241, and the highest activity fecal 
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58

sample, for the largest intake, that ratio was actually 

7:1 which substantiates the ratio of using 8:1 which 

are a little more claim favorable.

Assumed a chronic intake of Type S material, 5 

micron particles, from January 1st, 1971 through 

December 31st, 1980, so this is a ten-year period.

Next, I'm going to show you five intakes were 

calculated, but the top two here were clearly larger 

than the rest. And the top two were both HP techs 

during the drum retrieval projects.

And so, here's the particular doses. And what you'll 

notice is the calculations were done based upon 10-

year weapons grade plutonium and 20-year weapons 

grade plutonium.

And the reason we did both here was this would be 

1978 and the waste was buried in prior to 1962 at 

least for the EWR waste retrieval. So, from that 

standpoint, you're in between 10 and 20-year-old 

plutonium, closer to 20-year-old.

But assuming the 10-year-old weapons grade 

plutonium because the americium hasn't grown in it 

enough at that point or hadn't grown anymore at that 

point, I should say.

We actually end up with higher doses based upon the 

10-year assumption.

And, here, you can see that the total effective dose 

over the 10-year period is 300 millirem. In our 

program, we don't use total effective dose, we use 

organ doses. But these -- so, you've got bone 

surfaces and the lung which would be the highest 

organ doses for these particular intakes.

And what you can see is that Worker 1 and 2, they 
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59

had 3.4 rem and 2.7 rem, 2.8 rem, respectively.

After those doses dropped by an order of magnitude 

for the next three highest exposed workers. Okay? 

So, Worker 1 and 2, as indicated before, were HP 

techs that were working in there. And, as we learned 

from the interviews, they were first in, last out. So, 

these are the guys that were present there for the 

longest period of time and had the doses that are 

greater than everyone else's within there.

But, overall, these doses are really quite low. And 

that's from a monitoring standpoint. And that's 

because of the sensitive nature of the bioassay 

analysis that was done.

So, in summary, the solid waste retrieval test, there's 

no bioassays that we have for this particular group. 

Although, we haven't been able to actually identify 

exactly who did that particular work.

But there was air monitoring that indicated a few DAC 

for just the Pit 5 retrieval.

But they did do whole body counting for those 

individual workers. But, again, we are not exactly 

sure who they were. We'd have to go through all the 

whole body counts from that time period to try and 

identify them.

But one of the things I'd like to point out is this was 

done in 1971. Well, currently, we have designated an 

SEC class for CPP for March of 1970 through 

December of 1974 for all externally monitored 

workers.

Because, remember, this is that time period where 

you could wear a single badge across the entire site. 

You didn't have to pick up a temporary badge or 

anything going into CPP or any of the other areas.
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60

So, it is possible that some people working down at 

the Burial Grounds could have gone up and especially 

heavy equipment operators or labors and worked at 

CPP. So, they're already part of the class here.

So, we didn't spend a huge amount of effort trying to 

identify who would have been involved in that in that 

particular operation.

We did focus on the initial drum retrieval and the 

early waste retrieval just to below, again this is a 

small, dedicated work force.

There was bioassay monitoring of the work force. 

We've talked with those workers. These are relatively 

low internal doses.

So, our conclusion is that we don't -- NIOSH does not 

plan to pursue an 83.14 evaluation for the Burial 

Ground Radioactive Waste Management Complex 

post-1970.

This conclusion was drawn after an exhaustive 

document review, bioassay data review, personnel 

interviews, and a review of the photographic images 

which clearly demonstrates that the waste retrieval 

projects were performed with a heightened sense of 

awareness of internal exposure potential due to the 

nature of the work.

And you can see that again with the differences in 

monitoring from the IDR project which was relatively 

clean waste that has been dug up and where people 

were just wearing coveralls and an escape respirator 

versus the full bubble suit for the areas where there 

was millions of counts per minute of alpha 

contamination.

But the bioassay data that's available on this small 

work force, we believe the internal dose 
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61

reconstruction is feasible at this time.

And our plan is to incorporate this information into 

the technical basis document so if there is somebody 

who doesn't have bioassay and indicates that they 

worked on these projects, we believe from the 

interviews that, like I said, this was a small, 

dedicated work force. But if somebody did get 

substituted in or out, we do feel a small coworker 

model based upon this bioassay would be appropriate 

to assign.

So, with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Discussion and Recommendations

Member Beach: Tim, I don't really have -- this is 

Josie. I don't really have any questions, but I thought 

it was interesting on Slide 3, your fourth bullet said, 

if you needed to pursue expanding the class under 

the 83.14 process, you would.

And then, at the last couple of slides, you indicate 

that you will not be.

Why did you add that bullet on Slide 3, for what 

reason would you pursue 83.14?

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Slide 3 is taken directly from a 

March 2017 presentation to the full Board.

And so, that was what we'd indicated then and that 

was the only reason that it's on there for that reason.

Member Beach: Okay.

Dr. Taulbee: Is that -- but that kind of carryover of 

why we did this evaluation.

Member Beach: Okay. I just found that interesting 

and was curious. Thank you.
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62

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Member Roessler: This is Gen. So, what is the next 

step on this?

Dr. Taulbee: Well, our next step for this particular 

time period is to incorporate this into the TBD. But 

we're actually not going to update the full TBD until 

the SEC issues are all closed out.

So, this just goes on the list of us to include in there, 

into the internal TBD. Because, as you know, we do 

have a lot of other open issues that we're addressing 

with regards to SEC-00219 at this time.

We also have a report on the pre-1970 time period 

for the Burial Grounds to response to SC&A's 

comments on the Burial Grounds and that is under 

development and actually on the -- mine and Megan's 

desk to review.

So, that's where we are with this and going forward. 

Does that answer your question, Gen?

Member Roessler: Well, I was just wondering at what 

point SC&A would review your presentation?

Dr. Taulbee: They would review it under the TBD 

once that is released.

Member Roessler: Okay. Okay, yes, that answers my 

question.

Member Beach: So, if we agree that these are all TBD 

issues, is that correct? Has SC&A even looked at this 

time period for post-'70 for the Burial Grounds?

And is there a White Paper out for this period, Tim? 

Or is it just the Evaluation Report?

Dr. Taulbee: The Evaluation Report only goes 
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63

through 1970.

Member Beach: Right.

Dr. Taulbee: And the SEC only goes through 1970. 

So, we don't have any SEC going beyond 1970 for 

the Burial Grounds.

Member Beach: How about a --

Dr. Taulbee: It's just --

Member Beach: Is there a White Paper out for this 

time period other than your slide presentation?

Dr. Taulbee: No, there's not.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yes, Tim, this is Joe. Good morning.

Dr. Taulbee: Good morning.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yes, so, your mention of the pre-'70 

ER work is a good segue to what I wanted to say, 

because I've said this before.

I think the -- there are some issues on the post-'70 

which we've raised in our pre-'70 ER review which, 

you know, obviously, you're going to provide a 

response for.

But my earlier comments on that May 2017 report, 

we saw some questions that overlap into the post-'70 

time period and something that would have 

implications for that period as well, in the early '70s 

at least. And we raised them in that report.

So, for the Work Group's benefit, the kind of issues 

that we would want some answers for that would 

have implications for the period that we just talked 

about, would presumably -- also would be addressed 

in this response that Tim and his staff have prepared 
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64

and are in final review for.

I'm not sure whether the Work Group wants to go 

into those now. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing. 

I mean, I think we would need to see what the NIOSH 

response is to those issues as contained in the pre-

'70 ER review before we would know whether we 

would have an issue with this current presentation 

for post-'70.

And some of these questions go into things like the 

smear counting in the early '70s, alpha monitoring in 

general, the state of the health physics program, 

special monitoring when you're talking about 

breached drums. And these are all issues that we 

cited that go into the late '60s and may have 

implications for the early '70s.

So, I guess my question for the Work Group is, do 

you want to reserve that discussion for that 

response? Because, again, we will prepare a full 

response to whatever NIOSH prepares for that 

period.

And, at the same time, we can also address those 

issues as they apply to the post-'70 presentation.

Now, all we have is the presentation slides. And, 

actually, I have not been able to view those here. But 

assuming we can get those, we can at least include 

that in our response.

Again, these issues, understandably, I think, would 

follow forward into the early '70s as well as the pre1970.

The first thing I would say is that the focus of the INL 

management with the retrieval project clearly was an 

upgrade from the previous Burial Ground 

management. And I have no disagreement that, you 
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65

know, when we're talking about bubble suits and the 

level of monitoring that went on with some of the 

high level waste retrieval, we're talking about a much 

different circumstance. But there were other 

operations in that post-'70 period which I think would 

still fall into the same kind of questions that we had 

in the pre-'70 time period.

So, I'll defer to the Work Group on how you want to 

address that but it might be useful to tackle some of 

these questions on post-'70 in the context of pre-'70, 

even though the post-'70 is being portrayed as a Site 

Profile issue. We would still want to examine that 

from an SEC context as part of the pre-'70 review.

So, it's certainly up to the Work Group.

Member Beach: Joe, thank you. This is Josie, again.

I agree with what you're saying. And I don't -- I 

mean, while I think SC&A should comment on the 

earlier time frame, I think there are questions in this 

post-1970 time frame, especially when you look at 

the bioassay data.

I guess I was surprised how many exposures there 

were even though Tim said they were low, I agree, 

there were still some exposures and I think that the 

work -- that SC&A should be looking at this now 

instead of just waiting for that report from NIOSH.

That would be my opinion is to look at these slides 

and possibly dig into the background information of 

this post-'70 while we're waiting for that report.

Mr. Fitzgerald: I guess, you know, Tim might want to 

respond, but just the back -- the information or data 

that backs up the presentation slides may be such 

that they may not necessarily be readily available in 

a form that he would want or NIOSH would want us 
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66

to review.

So, I guess I'll ask Tim where he sees this.

Dr. Taulbee: Well, I mean, we could provide the data 

to you, that's not a problem from that standpoint. But 

writing a White Paper which, again, we could do if 

that's what the Work Group requests, but it's, you 

know, it's an issue of resources here and focus. 

Member Beach: Tim --

Dr. Taulbee: We're trying to --

Member Beach: Tim, I wasn't suggesting that you 

write a White Paper. I know you're answering the 

question for the '52 to '70. What I was suggesting is 

we didn't wait for you to finish that before SC&A 

looked at the information in this post-1970 slide 

presentation.

I wasn't suggesting you write a White Paper, just to 

be clear.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. All right, I understand.

Well, the bioassay data, again, is something that we 

can certainly provide, that's not a big deal. The slides 

are pretty well referenced as to where we got the 

information from. So, and everything's in the SRDB.

So, there isn't any other areas. So, if you want to just 

have SC&A look at it, that's possible.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay, that would be fine. Just how 

soon, and this is always a loaded question, how soon 

would the pre-'70 response be available do you 

think?

Dr. Taulbee: I would think within the month, not 

March, but by the end of April. We should have that 
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67

reviewed and back over to ORAU or back over to 

Mitch hopefully by the end of this week but I'm not 

sure it's gone through a final ADC, that type of thing.

So, it probably would be about a month.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay.

Josie and the Work Group, I would say, yes, we can 

get started on the -- if the Work Group wishes -- we 

can get started on the post-'70 review with the 

provision of the bioassay data. And, you know, start 

digging into that. And assume that the pre-'70 Burial 

Ground response will be forthcoming, you know, in 

that, you know, little later but certainly in the same 

time frame.

And perhaps it would be helpful for us then to 

respond to the Work Group and NIOSH with, you 

know, with a response that address the Burial Ground 

RWMC as a whole. That way, we're not parsing it, you 

know, on both sides of 1970.

But since there are some common issues that we 

want to raise, and I still think would be a pretty timely 

response assuming we can see the other material 

before, say, May.

So, in real time, we could be starting to do the post-

'70, include pre-'70 and have something hopefully 

prepared and get back to the Work Group by say 60 

to 90 days. Would that be acceptable?

Chair Schofield: Yes, sounds good to me. I mean, I 

agree with Josie's statement that, you know, by 

getting started on this now, I mean, it puts us a little 

more ahead of the curve.

Mr. Katz: Yes, this is Ted.

Let me just check on one thing, though, Joe and Bob, 
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68

since I know there's overlap in terms of your staffing 

for SRS and INL.

And that's -- I don't think we would want this to get 

in the way of all the work that needs to get done with 

the heavy lift I think you have ahead of you to get 

SRS in shape hopefully for August.

So, can you please keep that in mind when you 

schedule this out in terms of, you know, where the 

staff that are doing both SRS and INL work.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yes, I think, clearly, SRS has a longer 

history. So, when that becomes available, we'll have 

to give that first priority, front burner.

I still think, though, we can keep this moving with 

that in mind.

Mr. Katz: Yes. I'm going to -- it is available, though, 

right, Joe? I mean, I'm not sure what you mean 

becomes available. But --

Mr. Fitzgerald: Well, no, there's certainly the models 

are available, but the -- I don't recall an issuance on 

the RWP piece of this unless I missed it lately.

Dr. Taulbee: No, the RWP piece has not come out yet, 

but the coworker models are out.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Right, right. And we're already looking 

at that. So, you know, I'm -- the second piece of that 

--

Mr. Katz: Right.

Mr. Fitzgerald: -- the RWP, when that's forthcoming, 

we'll give that certainly priority. And keep the August 

meeting in mind.

Mr. Katz: Okay, good, thank you.
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69

Chair Schofield: Ted, I've got just one question for 

you.

Mr. Katz: Sure.

Chair Schofield: As I was -- I went back over the last 

matrix for INL, I was wondering if we could task them 

like SC&A look at it and just kind of update it, where 

we stand with that.

I mean, we're starting to almost get this octopus 

approach, you know, one arm's going here, one arm's 

going there.

Mr. Katz: SC&A's already done most of that, I think. 

They've already sent a suggested updated matrix I 

think over to DCAS who are looking at that.

But they already spent about six weeks or four weeks 

of labor on just that.

Chair Schofield: All right. I guess somehow I missed 

that. I don't know where I missed it.

Mr. Katz: I mean, they didn't send out a note to the 

Work Group about this, but it was in their monthly 

report. So, I caught it there so that's why I happen 

to know that they've actually embarked on that work.

And Steve has done a lot of that work and John Mauro 

has been checking his work.

Chair Schofield: Okay, all right. I apologize, but like 

I said, I just thought we're kind of getting spread out 

a little bit here and where are we --

Mr. Katz: No, no apology, Phil. So, again, I wouldn't 

have noticed but for their monthly report.

Chair Schofield: Okay.
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70

Dr. Ostrow: Hi, this is Steve.

Just what Ted was saying, we have done a draft set 

of BRS entries. I think there's like 41 for the TBD and 

we have a bunch for the SECs.

We finished the BRS draft and we sent it like a week 

ago to NIOSH to review just because some of this 

involves them also, their responses.

And as soon as we get a response from NIOSH 

whether it's okay or any corrections, we're going to 

post that on the BRS.

And, hopefully, going forward, it'll be easy for 

everybody to track where all these issues are.

Mr. Katz: Right. So, ahead of the curve, Phil.

Dr. Ostrow: We hope so.

Mr. Katz: Yes, yes, no, and thank you, Steve, for all 

that labor. I know it's a lot of work.

Dr. Ostrow: Okay, thanks.

Dr. Lobaugh: Steve, this is Megan.

Chair Schofield: Okay, and thanks for that update. I 

do appreciate it.

Dr. Ostrow: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Lobaugh: This is Megan.

I just had a question. So, Steve, what you came 

across was only the TBD issues?

Dr. Ostrow: That's right, before we can like to go to 

-- I think we have the TBD and let's see, today is 

Monday. Maybe by the end of this week, we'll send 

something similar for the SEC issues. We're keeping 
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71

the two of them separate.

Dr. Lobaugh: Separate? Okay. I'm assuming -- I 

believe the BRS has some of the SEC issues in there.

Dr. Ostrow: Yes, it just has for the INL SEC-00219. 

And what's actually written in the BRS is, it's very 

skimpy. I mean, it identifies the issue, but it hardly 

says anything, so we expanded on it to make it a little 

more readable.

Dr. Lobaugh: Great.

Dr. Ostrow: Anyway, you should be getting it like in 

another couple of days and, you know, feel free to 

comment on it, add to it, subtract, whatever.

Dr. Lobaugh: Great, thank you.

Dr. Ostrow: You're welcome.

Mr. Katz: And, for everyone, if they didn't catch it, I 

don't think a note went out about this to everybody 

or maybe it did, but Megan is taking over as lead for 

INL and Argonne West as Tim has new duties taking 

for Jim Neton in about a month or so.

So, are there any other questions about this work?

Mr. Fitzgerald: I guess just to clarify with the Work

Group then, is that a path going forward then to get 

the bioassay data and to -- and the presentation 

slides and to begin working on that part?

Member Beach: Yes, I believe so.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay, then, we'll look for that from 

Tim and I guess the, again, the slides will be posted 

or can you send those over, Tim? I'd like to --

Mr. Katz: Joe, I've already sent them. I didn't send 
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Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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72

them to you, but I definitely sent to I guess Bob and 

John Stiver.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yes, I think it's at the -- I can get 

them to send them to me.

Dr. Taulbee: Joe, I actually sent them to you on 

Saturday as well.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Oh, okay.

Dr. Taulbee: You should have them.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Taulbee: And we'll get the bioassay data over to 

you.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Appreciate it, thanks.

Mr. Katz: Okay, then, I think it's -- if there isn't 

anything else, I think we should be ready to adjourn.

Chair Schofield: Anybody got any last questions, 

comments?

Member Roessler: Nothing here.

Member Beach: No, nothing here.

Adjourn

Mr. Katz: So, thank you. Thank you, everyone for the 

both the good work, Tim, Bob, and also for the good 

questions everybody, my Work Group Members.

And then we're ready to adjourn. You're adjourned 

until we have a Santa Susana meeting at 1:00 today.

Chair Schofield: Okay, well, thanks for everybody's 

participation.
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Laboratory/Argonne National Laboratory-West (INL/ANL) Work Group, has been reviewed for 

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

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73

Mr. Katz: Yes, see you in the afternoon.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 10:56 a.m.)