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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON PANTEX

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

MAY 4, 2010

+ + + + +

 

 The Work Group convened in the 

Frankfurt Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:30 a.m., Bradley Clawson, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

JOSIE BEACH, Member

MARK GRIFFON, Member

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH contractor*

ISAF AL-NABULSI, DOE*

HANS BEHLING, SC&A*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

MEL CHEW, ORAU Team

LARS FUORTES, University of Iowa*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

EMILY HOWELL, HHS

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

JIM NETON, DCAS

SARAH RAY, Pantex Petitioner*

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

*Participating via telephone
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 (9:33 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning, 

4 everybody, and welcome, everybody in the room 

5 and on the line.

6 This is the Advisory Board on 

7 Radiation and Worker Health, Pantex Working 

8 Group. My name is Ted Katz. I am the 

9 Designated Federal Official for the Advisory 

10 Board.

11 We are getting started here, 

12 beginning with roll call. Beginning with roll 

13 call in the room, please, everyone, state 

14 whether you have a conflict of interest issue 

15 as well as self-identifying. So, Board 

16 Members, beginning with the Chair in the room?

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm Brad 

18 Clawson. I'm the Work Group Chair for Pantex. 

19 I have no conflict.

20 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, Work 

21 Group Member. No conflict with Pantex.

22 MEMBER PRESLEY: Robert Presley, 
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1 Work Group Member. No conflicts with Pantex.

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, 

3 Work Group Member. No conflicts with Pantex.

4 MR. KATZ: Just checking on the 

5 line, any Board Members on the line?

6 (No response.)

7 Okay. We are expecting Mark 

8 Griffon. He is also a Member of this Work 

9 Group, but his plane was delayed this morning.

10 Then, going to NIOSH ORAU team in 

11 the room.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Stu Hinnefeld, 

13 Interim Director of the Division of 

14 Compensation Analysis and Support. I don't 

15 have a conflict with Pantex.

16 MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes, Health 

17 Physicist from the Division of Compensation 

18 Analysis and Support.

19 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, Division of 

20 Compensation Analysis and Support. No 

21 conflict.

22 DR. CHEW: Mel Chew, ORAU support 
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1 of the Office of Compensation. No conflict.

2 MR. KATZ: And on the line, NIOSH 

3 ORAU team? Any members of the NIOSH ORAU? 

4 Are you expecting anyone on the line?

5 MR. ROLFES: There might be a 

6 couple of people.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay. Not at this 

8 time.

9 SC&A, in the room?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, 

11 SC&A. No conflict with Pantex.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, SC&A. 

13 No conflict.

14 MR. KATZ: And on the line, SC&A?

15 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A. No 

16 conflict.

17 DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A. 

18 No conflict.

19 MR. KATZ: Welcome to both of you.

20 Okay, then, HHS, other government 

21 officials, or contractors to the government in 

22 the room?
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1 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS.

2 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

3 MR. KATZ: And on the line?

4 DR. AL-NABULSI: Isaf Al-Nabulsi, 

5 DOE. No conflict.

6 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Isaf.

7 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH 

8 contractor.

9 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Nancy.

10 Okay, there are no members of the 

11 public in the room. Any members of the 

12 public, petitioners or other, who want to 

13 identify themselves on the line?

14 MS. RAY: Sarah D. Ray in 

15 Amarillo, SEC petitioner.

16 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Sarah.

17 MS. RAY: Thank you.

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, that sounds like 

19 it for the moment.

20 Now let me just remind folks on 

21 the phone, please mute your phones except when 

22 you are addressing the group here. If you 
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1 don't have a mute button, use *6 and then hit 

2 *6 again to take it off of mute and please 

3 don't put your phone on hold at any point. 

4 Just hang up and dial back in because hold 

5 will disrupt the call for everyone else.

6 Thank you.

7 And, Brad, it's yours.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I would like to 

9 welcome everybody here to the first Pantex 

10 Work Group meeting we have had.

11 I wanted to lay a little bit of 

12 groundwork. I was asking earlier. The 

13 petitioners filed on December 6th, 2006. It 

14 was qualified in November 20th, 2007. This is 

15 the first time that the Pantex Work Group has 

16 been able to meet.

17 We have had an evaluation that has 

18 been out, basically, over a year. We've got 

19 the response to that and this is what we are 

20 discussing today.

21 For the petitioners, and so forth,

22 on the phone, I wanted to make sure that they 
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1 have a copy of the matrix that was sent to 

2 them.

3 Sarah, do you have a copy of what 

4 we are going over?

5 MS. RAY: Yes, I do, and I have it 

6 printed and with me.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Thank 

8 you very much. 

9 One of the things that I want to 

10 bring up is, due to dealing with Pantex, we 

11 have many different issues that we have to 

12 deal with, but one of the big ones that we 

13 have to always keep in the back of our mind is 

14 classification of things. We deal with a lot 

15 of different objects, and so forth like that. 

16 We always need to make sure that is in the 

17 back of our mind and keep our national 

18 security forefront with all of this on this.

19 I guess what I would ask right now 

20 from Joe is, to kind of give us an overview of 

21 where we are at on these issues, kind of over 

22 the treetop, or what, just kind of a basic way 
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1 of where we are at, 40,000 feet, we're good.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Good morning. 

3 This is Joe Fitzgerald.

4 This being the first Work Group 

5 meeting, I thought it would be helpful before 

6 we get into the trees, you know, these reviews 

7 start going into the specific issues and you 

8 quickly sort of lose the broad overview, sort 

9 of the gestalt of what we are looking at.

10 I wanted to just outline in 

11 general where our review -- you know, SC&A 

12 conducted the Site Profile review about three 

13 years ago now on Pantex. We haven't done any 

14 other additional review. We have been waiting 

15 for a NIOSH response to the SEC issues matrix 

16 and, also, for this Work Group, obviously, to 

17 provide some direction.

18 But back in 2007, when we looked 

19 at these issues, I think we came up with some 

20 specific areas of concern, areas that we would 

21 want to do additional work with and we would 

22 want to hear a NIOSH response.
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1 Broadly speaking, we have issues 

2 on the external side, external dosimetry, but 

3 it is pretty clear most of our issues focus on 

4 the internal side. There we have, I think, a 

5 fundamental difference in how one looks at the 

6 operational history and the dosimetry and 

7 practices of Pantex. I say, fundamental 

8 because I think we are just on two different 

9 pages, which challenges, I think, this Work 

10 Group, and it is going to require, I think, a 

11 lot of spade work, in essence, because I do 

12 find ourselves quite far apart, probably more 

13 far apart than some other reviews.

14 I am going to read some quotes 

15 from the Evaluation Report, but I just want to 

16 amplify why I think we have these concerns. 

17 We find that the ER and the most recent 

18 response to SC&A's matrix, the comments are 

19 grounded in the acceptance of a premise, and 

20 one that is shared by DOE, DOE management. 

21 And I once was part of DOE management, so I am 

22 saying that very objectively.
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1 The weapon operations at Pantex 

2 were, and I am going to use this quote, 

3 technically contamination-free and provided 

4 the confidence that any uncontained 

5 contamination would have been detected and 

6 dealt with immediately, unquote. That is a 

7 pretty tall order for any DOE site.

8 I want to point out that that 

9 overriding assertion or assumption is for the 

10 operating history of the plant. This is a 

11 plant that opened in the 50s, up through the 

12 present, and over 50 years of operating 

13 history, if not close to 60. That is a pretty 

14 tall order as a going-in proposition.

15 NIOSH also accepts the premise 

16 that, quote, there is absolute assurance that 

17 incident-based bioassay sampling was 

18 appropriate and adequate.

19 Okay, again, we are talking about 

20 a 50-plus operating history where we are 

21 claiming absolute assurance that the incident22 base -- this is events-driven bioassay -- was 
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1 appropriately managed and administered. I'm 

2 not talking about the 90s and 2000s. I am 

3 talking about the operating history of the 

4 plant.

5 Again, I think in the Site Profile 

6 review and subsequent reviews, given sort of I 

7 would call it the absolute nature of those 

8 overriding assumptions, we wanted to sort of 

9 query the basis for those statements because, 

10 again, I think there is hardly any room for 

11 equivocation or debate, given sort of those 

12 assertions.

13 We understand that a lot of these 

14 conclusions come from interviews with the 

15 health physicists at the plant, come from 

16 reviews of the requirements and procedures at 

17 the plant. Then, there is a lot of 

18 testimonies that I think that are alluded to 

19 about the virtually pristine nature of the 

20 handling of weapon components at the plant 

21 during its operating history.

22 So, yes, you reach the 
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1 conclusion -- and again, this is summarizing 

2 the ER, but just in the areas of concern --

3 that routine bioassay would not have been 

4 necessary under those circumstances, that you 

5 could have relied upon this very strong rad 

6 control program and could have relied upon the 

7 events-driven bioassay in cases to basically 

8 give you the radiation dose that you needed to 

9 record, and that this program needs to dose 

10 reconstruct.

11 So, again, the preamble to the 

12 NIOSH response that we just received about a 

13 month ago sort of starts with that argument 

14 that most of the concerns that we have raised 

15 in the Site Profile Review -- and again, this 

16 is all we have put on the table; the Site 

17 Profile Review and the issue matrix came from 

18 that -- are groundless because, if one assumes 

19 all those assumptions, then all these other 

20 issues, such as what about the possibility 

21 that maybe operations back in the 50s, 60s, 

22 70s, and 80s were not necessarily 
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1 representative of operations in the 90s and 

2 2000s, then it kind of gets swept away. We 

3 have no basis for making that.

4 I would turn that around. I would 

5 say that, given the wholesale change that 

6 occurred at Pantex in the early 90s -- you 

7 have to understand here's a plant that, given 

8 its level of secrecy and classification, 

9 pretty much operated without a whole lot of 

10 DOE supervision. I am going to say that 

11 because I think that is pretty much a matter 

12 of record, that there wasn't a whole lot of 

13 DOE overview or oversight of facilities, 

14 particularly weapon facilities, in the earlier 

15 days.

16 That was the genesis of the Tiger 

17 Team reviews in the late 80s and early 90s, 

18 was to get DOE to independently evaluate its 

19 own contractors because there was a sense that 

20 there wasn't a 20/20 perspective of what the 

21 operational program, safety and health 

22 programs, were.
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1 That led to some very fundamental 

2 changes in the Radiation Protection Program of 

3 Pantex in the early 90s. That led to 

4 additional audits and reviews. That led to 

5 bringing in Battelle and this is kind of 

6 unprecedented, bringing in Battelle to 

7 basically manage the health physics program.

8 I know Jerry Martin. I have 

9 talked to Jerry many times about that. That 

10 was sort of during my time frame at the 

11 Department.

12 When you basically bring in 

13 another contract unit and HPs from the outside 

14 to run the program, that is an admission that 

15 you really don't have a foundation program in 

16 place and Pantex, essentially, did not. It 

17 had a small number of HPs, and certainly the 

18 kinds of audits and reviews that came out of 

19 investigations before that time -- and the 

20 Defense Board was really on to Pantex in the 

21 early 90s as well.

22 All this attention was for two 
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1 reasons. One, following the Cold War, the 

2 Department was going through a major nuclear 

3 weapons dismantle program. There was a real 

4 concern that the rad protection program; 

5 Pantex would not be up to the job of having to 

6 process and store and do the kind of level of 

7 dismantlement that would be required. So, 

8 there was a real concern that you had to beef 

9 up that program.

10 What I am leading to is, if we are 

11 talking about the need to normalize post-1990 

12 or 1990-and-after data to, in fact, apply it 

13 retroactively -- and this is what a lot of the 

14 Evaluation Report is recommending, that we 

15 take the data that we have beginning in the 

16 late 80s, the early 90s, and forward, and 

17 back-extrapolate, use it for the previous 40 

18 years of operations.

19 I think it is incumbent upon NIOSH 

20 to demonstrate that not only can you normalize 

21 the operational representativeness of the 

22 operations in the 90s and 2000s to those 
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1 earlier years, and I would suggest that the 

2 argument that you had this major post-Cold War 

3 dismantlement belies the fact that you had a 

4 number of weapon systems throughout the 

5 history of Pantex -- I mean I am talking the 

6 post-World War II and, you know, Manhattan. 

7 You had weapon systems that were being taken 

8 out of commission all the time. You know, 

9 there was modernization going on through the 

10 50s, 60s, 70s, and all those systems had to be 

11 dismantled and the material reprocessed, and a 

12 lot of it was down at Pantex.

13 So, this notion that the 90s 

14 represented a period that at least was more, 

15 quote, radiologically dirty than the earlier 

16 time frames, and therefore, you could use that 

17 as an upper bound for the previous years, I 

18 think is flawed. I think one has to look at 

19 the operations and decide, did you, in fact, 

20 have operations in the 50s and 60s that could 

21 be bounded by operations in the 1990s and 

22 2000s? I don't think the case has been made, 
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1 quite frankly, and that is a very important 

2 issue if you are talking about back3 extrapolating over that length of time.

4 I have not seen that level of 

5 back-extrapolation in any other SEC, to 

6 actually take a relatively small amount of 

7 data. I am not talking about a lot of data, 

8 but they started collecting data in the throes 

9 of this revamping of the health physics 

10 program after the Tiger Team, and whatnot, in 

11 the early 90s, in Defense Board pressure, and 

12 applying that retroactively.

13 Now, beyond that, I think there's 

14 some issues that we raised, which I think have 

15 been discounted in the response, but I think 

16 are still very, very important, that you are 

17 also having to demonstrate, I think, and it is 

18 incumbent upon NIOSH to demonstrate, that the 

19 monitoring, whether it is air sampling, 

20 swiping, you name it, that would be the basis 

21 for your 40 DAC-hours or anything else is also 

22 representative. You can go backwards and take 
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1 some of the procedural requirements of 

2 applying these kinds of dose data, based on 

3 monitoring, and assume that the monitoring 

4 practices and technologies were similar enough 

5 that it would make it justifiable to do so.

6 Again, I don't think that is the 

7 case here, either. When we get into 

8 specifics, and we have this exchange on these 

9 specific issues, whether it is thorium or 

10 plutonium, I just want to make the case that 

11 each one is going to still have that same 

12 theme: can you take the modern-era 

13 operational data, operations, the monitoring 

14 information and data, and your rad protection, 

15 rad controls -- now the presumption that the 

16 rad program would have done the right thing 

17 because it was required or would have swiped 

18 or would have monitored and then done an 

19 event-drive bioassay, can you make that 

20 assumption based on the modern era and apply 

21 it backwards? Okay?

22 Based on the interviews that we 
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1 have done, and we are not done yet, and based 

2 on documentation that we have reviewed, we 

3 don't think that is necessarily the case. I 

4 think a lot of this ER and lot of this review 

5 comes down to establishing whether those 

6 premises, those assumptions, and going-in 

7 propositions hold.

8 I am just saying that, in a 

9 broader sense, that is where this review 

10 stands. It stands at this question of whether 

11 you can take the modern data and apply it 

12 backwards and show that the operations, the 

13 monitoring, the rad control program, the 

14 exposure potentials were such that you can do 

15 that with an adequate basis. I think that we 

16 can get into specifics, but in a broader sense 

17 that is where we have the biggest problem.

18 Based on the petition and the 

19 petitioner's comments, I think they share that 

20 concern as well, having lived it and having 

21 seen some of the contamination issues, and 

22 what have you, upfront.
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1 So, I just wanted to again preface 

2 again we get quickly into the weeds, and we 

3 will quickly get into the specific issues. 

4 But that is where I think we have the most 

5 fundamental problem with how the Evaluation 

6 Report reads right now.

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Thank you, 

8 Joe.

9 This is Mark Rolfes.

10 Just to address a couple of things 

11 you had expressed concern about in a generic 

12 overview-type sense, from the very beginning 

13 of plant operations, there wasn't necessarily 

14 a Radiation Safety Department. However, there 

15 was a Safety Department and the individuals 

16 that were involved in general plant safety 

17 were primarily concerned about high 

18 explosives.

19 In the very early time period, 

20 there really weren't many radioactive 

21 materials onsite besides uranium. The people 

22 from the very beginning that were involved in 
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1 the safety of the entire plant, when they had 

2 concerns about handling a particular component 

3 or monitoring people, they usually would 

4 correspond in the early days with Los Alamos 

5 National Laboratory. They would speak with 

6 health physicists and safety professionals at 

7 the labs to determine what the monitoring 

8 requirements for this program or for this 

9 operation were.

10 As far as our statement about 

11 operations involving contamination-free 

12 components, that is generally true with an 

13 assembly and materials that are brought onto 

14 the site that ship from Rocky Flats, from Y-12 

15 generally are free of contamination. With 

16 depleted uranium, there's always going to be 

17 some removable contamination on the uranium 

18 part.

19 But there were requirements to 

20 handle things with gloves, vinyl gloves or 

21 cotton gloves in the early days, in the very 

22 beginning as well.
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1 Now when you are involved in doing 

2 a disassembly, there is a potential for 

3 contamination to be released, and that is 

4 typically just uranium contamination as well. 

5 Plutonium components are always encapsulated 

6 at the site.

7 When I am speaking of 

8 contamination, I am speaking about 

9 radiological contamination and not chemical 

10 contaminants or other materials.

11 Let's see, even though in the very 

12 beginning individuals didn't participate in 

13 the routine bioassay program, the level of 

14 contamination encountered, if there were 

15 contamination, was typically pretty low. An 

16 individual would be given a bioassay if there 

17 was an event that occurred to breach the 

18 encapsulation and cause contamination.

19 Also, during operations involving 

20 radioactive materials in the cells and bays, 

21 those had routine continuous air monitors and 

22 we don't have all the results. However, we do 
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1 have a good sampling of the air monitoring 

2 data from the locations where operations are 

3 done.

4 In the more recent time, we have 

5 much more swipe data, much more information, 

6 including bioassay data, that gives us a good 

7 idea of what the true contamination and 

8 exposure potentials were.

9 As far as disassembly work, yes, 

10 that is true that there were some 

11 disassemblies and inspection operations done 

12 in the early days. However, you also have to 

13 keep in mind that Pantex was not the only site 

14 that was involved in doing either assembly or 

15 disassembly work. The Iowa Ordnance Plant was 

16 also operating up until 1974. So, they were 

17 sharing the workload with Pantex.

18 Now some of this other disassembly 

19 and inspection and weapons stockpile 

20 maintenance work were done at other sites, 

21 such as Clarksville and Medina. So, Pantex 

22 was one of four sites at that time that was 
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1 involved in doing some of the disassembly and 

2 retirements of earlier nuclear weapons in our 

3 national stockpile.

4 It was after 1975 that Pantex 

5 received work from the Iowa Ordnance Plant, 

6 and Clarksville and Medina had shut down in 

7 the 60s as well. So, Pantex became the single 

8 spot that was involved in our nation's nuclear 

9 weapons, assembly, disassembly, and 

10 maintenance.

11 So, really, the amount of work 

12 that Pantex had for 1975 forward, they would 

13 have been involved in more aspects of our 

14 nation's nuclear weapons programs. That is 

15 also about the time that the number of 

16 disassemblies began to increase, and with the 

17 increase in disassemblies, there was also an 

18 increase in exposure potential for 

19 contamination, for tritium exposures, for 

20 uranium exposures.

21 You had mentioned thorium 

22 contamination and that also jumped into my 
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1 head. I recall seeing a report in the 60s 

2 where a continuous air monitor had detected, I 

3 believe it was, thorium progenies and thoron.

4 They had done an investigation 

5 because of the concern about contamination. 

6 Upon looking and counting the air filters, 

7 they determined that it was actually radon and 

8 thoron contributions. So, it wasn't really 

9 thorium contamination.

10 I guess that is my brief overview, 

11 too. I would be happy to answer questions or 

12 go through specific topics, if you would like 

13 to do that now.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No, I think you 

15 both have given kind of an overview. I think 

16 the best thing that we can do now is to start 

17 going into the matrix and be able to discuss 

18 these issues.

19 SC&A has given a review. NIOSH 

20 has put their position. SC&A has issued a 

21 view. So, I guess we will just start off with 

22 the first items.
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1 One thing I would like to make a 

2 comment on is, when this originally started 

3 out, some of these will become Site Profiles, 

4 but we have singled out what are the SECs 

5 because we really have not been able to go 

6 over this matrix and correct some of the Site 

7 Profile issues that also have come up in that. 

8 I just wanted to make that upfront. This has 

9 been a review of the SEC, and that is what we 

10 are trying to maintain, too, but we will have 

11 some of them that will come in will be Site 

12 Profile issues.

13 So, I will turn it over to Joe.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm not 

15 sure I am going to paraphrase the response we 

16 just got. I mean, I think -- just a little 

17 bit on the chronology. We derived from the 

18 Site Profile Review a list of potential SEC 

19 issues. We didn't take everything, but we 

20 kind of highlighted those that seemed to have 

21 SEC consequence or for which there was some 

22 clarification that would be useful to get as 
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1 part of the process.

2 NIOSH has just provided about a 

3 month ago a response to that matrix. We 

4 haven't had a chance to do the necessary spade 

5 work, not to mention get it cleared and 

6 everything for this meeting. So, what I would 

7 suggest is maybe, rather than my paraphrasing 

8 what I read and your response, just to have 

9 you outline just pretty much in the sequence 

10 that is in the response. I have the response 

11 here. We can just go through that.

12 I would offer that we can provide 

13 maybe a reaction at this point, understanding 

14 that we have read it and everything, but we 

15 haven't had a chance to do some additional 

16 validation and additional work specific to the 

17 response. But I think, as I was saying 

18 earlier, some of these issues are not so 

19 technical we can't, frankly, at least tell you 

20 where we stand at this point and what we would 

21 intend to do.

22 That puts the Work Group in a 
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1 position, I think, to decide if there is 

2 anything specific the Work Group would like to 

3 request of us from here on out, this being the 

4 first opportunity.

5 Do you want to do that?

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That would be 

7 fine.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: I think adequacy 

9 of internal dose records, which I think tracks 

10 pretty well with the matrix and your response, 

11 I think that was the first one.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That was the 

13 first, yes.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Is SC&A 

15 issue number 1 accuracy of internal dose 

16 records?

17 MR. ROLFES: Did you want me to 

18 respond, Joe? I'm sorry.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, no. I'm just 

20 saying I could paraphrase your response, but I 

21 feel like maybe it would be better if you --

22 MR. ROLFES: Oh, okay. I didn't 
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1 know.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, I have 

3 kind of jotted down some notes on your 

4 response, but it might be better for you to 

5 summarize your response, and I can then react 

6 to it.

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I didn't know 

8 if you wanted to present your review first and 

9 then our response to that.

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No, actually, 

11 we are responding to yours. We just want to 

12 make sure that you have clarified correctly to 

13 us.

14 MR. KATZ: At least for Sarah's 

15 sake, I mean it seems like there ought to be 

16 some paraphrasing of the initial finding that 

17 he is responding to, so that there is sort of 

18 a whole story for each of these issues.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

20 MR. KATZ: Otherwise, he is 

21 speaking out of the blue.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Thank you, 
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1 Ted. That is a good point.

2 I am going to just outline from 

3 our issues matrix. One concern we had was the 

4 accuracy of internal dose records. Again, 

5 this is outlining what we found. During 

6 essentially all years under evaluation there 

7 was no Pantex bioassay program. I am talking 

8 about a routine bioassay program for uranium, 

9 thorium, and plutonium. Instead, it was a 

10 bioassay was performed on an event-driven 

11 basis. In other words, if there was an 

12 incident or suspected exposure, they would 

13 follow through and conduct bioassay.

14 There were procedures that 

15 required some additional monitoring in terms 

16 of air monitoring and in terms of bioassay. 

17 But, again, the question that we had is as to 

18 what extent that was rigorously applied and 

19 implemented. Based on interviews, it was 

20 determined that that was not uniformly 

21 implemented.

22 So, again, I think the question in 
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1 this regard is, did the practice historically 

2 -- and this is going back in time -- match the 

3 procedures and expectations? If, in fact, it 

4 was a rigorous, event-driven bioassay program, 

5 was that, in fact, followed in all cases, such 

6 that the internal dose records could be 

7 considered complete enough or adequate enough 

8 for use in dose reconstruction? So, that 

9 certainly is the essence of it.

10 And the routine bioassay program 

11 for nuclides other tritium occurred mostly 

12 beginning in 1990-91, that time frame. That 

13 was, again, as I said earlier, in response to 

14 a lot of outside pressure to institute a 

15 program, a routine program.

16 We did not see a historic record 

17 that there were triggers in place, in other 

18 words, objective triggers, from air sampling 

19 or whatever, that would have been used, in 

20 fact, to do event-driven bioassays. So, 

21 certainly in the modern era you have criteria 

22 that, once you achieve those criteria, you 
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1 would, in fact, do bioassay. It is clear that 

2 those criteria were used in the earlier days.

3 Except for a single measurement 

4 made for plutonium 239 and americium 241 at 

5 Los Alamos in 1978, we couldn't find any 

6 records in in-vivo measurements in the period 

7 from 1951 through 1991. We raised this a 

8 little later in a separate issue, but the in9 vivo whole body counter capability certainly 

10 gives you the ability to know if there is any 

11 uptake of your longer-lived nuclides, whether 

12 it is plutonium or uranium, or whatever.

13 And, yes, you have bioassay, but 

14 the in-vivo gives you the capability of 

15 knowing if there's that uptake that has taken

16 place. There's individuals, as we will get 

17 into later, that were sent offsite, in fact, 

18 to be whole body counted because the 

19 capability didn't exist, and there was a need 

20 to know that.

21 Again, the quantity of internal 

22 dose data at Pantex, compared with almost all 
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1 other sites, is relatively low. That, of 

2 course, is understandable because it wasn't 

3 collected.

4 So, I think the perspective we 

5 have here is we have a situation where there 

6 is a paucity, a lack of internal dose data, 

7 very little internal dose data, particularly 

8 before 1990-91. I don't think that is 

9 contested. The question is, given that lack 

10 of data, can adequacy be addressed by doing a 

11 back-extrapolation of the data that you do 

12 have in the 90s and beyond? We question 

13 whether that is feasible.

14 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Joe.

15 Yes, I certainly agree that there 

16 are a low number of bioassays at Pantex, but 

17 from everything that I see, that is 

18 commensurate with the level of exposure 

19 potential on the site. I mean, this really 

20 makes sense to me, just because everything was 

21 encapsulated with the exception of uranium. 

22 Then, in the more recent time period, 
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1 beginning right around the late 60s/70s, that 

2 is really when the routine tritium bioassay 

3 program got into effect.

4 They were monitoring, I believe, 

5 starting in 1972, they had a routine tritium 

6 bioassay program. On their bioassay sheets, 

7 they had noted that they should sample 10 

8 people with the highest potential for exposure 

9 in 1972.

10 Prior to that time period, they 

11 had actually done some tritium urinalyses, but 

12 the method that they used had a pretty low 

13 detection -- or excuse me -- a pretty high 

14 MDA. It was a pretty insensitive method, but 

15 it does show that they were looking in to see 

16 if people did have tritium exposures.

17 Looking back at the records, I 

18 recall seeing some of the first uranium 

19 bioassay results in 1959. There were also 

20 plutonium bioassays that were taken in 1961 as 

21 a result of a breach in confinement of 

22 plutonium. They had been working and breached 
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1 the integrity of the pit, and had immediately 

2 realized that an incident had occurred. The 

3 individuals that were involved in that 

4 operation were requested to provide urine 

5 samples. Then, subsequently, because there 

6 was contamination involved, they had developed 

7 a procedure to decontaminate the area.

8 So, if you take a look, there were 

9 health physics precautions that required 

10 monitoring in 1961 for the individuals that 

11 had gone back into the area to decontaminate. 

12 They had basically explained how they had 

13 gone in and put paper on the floor. They 

14 described the monitoring requirements 

15 throughout the contamination, how the 

16 materials were decontaminated.

17 Then, those individuals that were 

18 involved in that decontamination event had 

19 also participated in a plutonium bioassay 

20 program. From what I recall, the bioassay 

21 samples were analyzed by Los Alamos National 

22 Laboratory.
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1 So, from what I see, the routine 

2 operations in the early time periods didn't 

3 typically have the potential for significant 

4 intake of materials of uranium, certainly not 

5 plutonium. The most likely would have been 

6 tritium. That is one of the radionuclides for 

7 which we have the majority of the bioassay 

8 results.

9 Let's see, you had mentioned about 

10 some individuals being counted in an in-vivo 

11 counter offsite. I do recall seeing, with the 

12 1989 contamination events, there were some 

13 uranium contamination events that occurred in 

14 1989. The individuals that were involved in 

15 that, they had actually gone back and 

16 reconstructed all individuals who had worked 

17 in this area on this program and developed a 

18 list of individuals who should be counted by 

19 the Hogason in-vivo counter.

20 Those individuals were also 

21 subsequently, a few months down the road, 

22 their urine was sampled for uranium, and that 
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1 was analyzed by Y-12.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Mark, can I jump in 

3 and ask a question?

4 This is Josie Beach.

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Josie.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Is there a list of 

7 incidents on the O: drive anywhere between 

8 1951 and 1991 that occurred?

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes, we actually have 

10 all the incident reports that were available 

11 to us from Pantex. They are all in our Site 

12 Research Database, and usually their title is 

13 like Radiation Incident Report or --

14 MEMBER BEACH: So, there's not 

15 one, 2,000, all of them, I would have to go 

16 look --

17 MR. ROLFES: There should be a 

18 listing of various incident reports. However, 

19 some of the incident reports might not have 

20 been related to a radiological contamination 

21 incident. There were many incidents involving 

22 high explosives. There were also incidents 
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1 involving chemical exposures as well. So, 

2 that type information, if it had some bearing 

3 on the dose reconstruction process, we would 

4 have requested that. That should be in our 

5 Site Research Database.

6 I believe there are a couple of 

7 listings that are available in the Site

8 Research Database, but I would have to confirm 

9 that and get back to you to provide 

10 confirmation.

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Mark, I need to 

12 make a comment.

13 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Phil.

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: It relates to 

15 what you said. If you work with enough 

16 radioactive materials, you are going to have 

17 incidents, not necessarily detected at that 

18 time. The use of cotton gloves, that won't 

19 stop a smearable contamination from getting to 

20 you. It will go through cotton gloves.

21 Furthermore, if you are not doing 

22 a routine bioassay, unless they are aware they 
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1 have had this problem happen, they don't know. 

2 Also, it may show up as contamination. It 

3 shows up on a piece of equipment they are 

4 using. They go one day, two days, six months. 

5 Without this routine bioassay, you don't know 

6 when they have ingested that contamination. 

7 Hand-mouth thing. Very simple. It happens at 

8 every nuclear facility in the nation and the 

9 world. It is going to happen and it does 

10 happen.

11 MR. ROLFES: What radionuclide are 

12 you referring to when you are talking --

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: It doesn't 

14 matter which one. It doesn't matter which 

15 one. Uranium, plutonium, it doesn't matter.

16 MR. ROLFES: Well, it does, but --

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, it doesn't 

18 because you have that potential of uptake if 

19 it is a smearable contamination. The 

20 smearable doesn't mean it gets airborne. So, 

21 your air monitors may not pick it up. I would 

22 testify to that to a court of law from 
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1 experience. It does and can happen.

2 MR. ROLFES: Let me explain, then, 

3 for tritium operations, that is certainly more 

4 likely, if you are wearing cotton gloves, you 

5 are certainly going to have a much more likely 

6 potential for tritium to migrate through those 

7 cotton gloves than if you were wearing vinyl 

8 gloves or something. But, even then, if you 

9 only wear one set of vinyl gloves, tritium 

10 will still migrate through those, and you can 

11 have tritium absorption occur through your 

12 skin.

13 With uranium, yes, that is 

14 possible. From the very early time period, I 

15 cannot say that there was never an incident, 

16 but we actually did interview the people that 

17 received components onsite. One of the very 

18 first things for a pit that was sent from 

19 Rocky Flats -- Rocky Flats would monitor the 

20 pit before it was sent out to the site. Then, 

21 upon receipt, it was also monitored to look 

22 for contamination.
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1 We had spoken with a Lawrence 

2 Livermore National Laboratory health physicist 

3 to determine what types of contamination would 

4 be encountered on a pit. We were told that 

5 they rarely, if ever, would detect any

6 materials on the surface of the pit.

7 We had gone back and looked at all 

8 the records, and there were some occurrences 

9 which breached the integrity of the pit. As I 

10 just mentioned, for plutonium contamination 

11 the individuals, when such an incident like 

12 that occurred, it was a big deal because you 

13 were dealing with special nuclear materials. 

14 They were protected. Access was controlled to 

15 those materials, and it was an incident. It 

16 was a major deal. It wasn't something that 

17 could easily be disguised or covered. It 

18 certainly attracted people's attention to the 

19 event.

20 DR. NETON: Mark, how was that 

21 contamination detected, though?

22 MR. ROLFES: The contamination, 
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1 the 1961 plutonium incident was a result of 

2 the continuous air monitor detecting something 

3 above 4.5 MeV alpha particles, I believe is 

4 what the trigger point was still.

5 The individuals had actually 

6 realized that they had a problem prior to that 

7 CAM alarming though. They had actually gone 

8 out of the cell and contacted Radiation 

9 Safety.

10 There were workplace controls in 

11 place in that specific area which detected the 

12 contamination release.

13 DR. FUORTES: Excuse me, Ted.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Hello.

15 MR. KATZ: Hello.

16 DR. FUORTES: Hello. Could 

17 somebody introduce a procedural issue. One, 

18 when petitioners be allowed to respond to 

19 these impressions?

20 MR. KATZ: So, Lars, I sent out --

21 this is Lars, right, Fuortes?

22 DR. FUORTES: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Hi. It's Ted Katz.

2 I sent out an agenda, and that is 

3 one of the reasons I laid out some bullets

4 under that agenda. I don't know if you 

5 received it or not, but right now we are going 

6 issue by issue through matters. So, since I 

7 think it is better to address questions 

8 germane to a particular issue while it is on 

9 the table, after Mark has finished responding 

10 to -- Joe's laying out each issue. Mark is 

11 responding to those, and they are having back 

12 and forth. At the end of that, I think it 

13 would be good to ask the petitioners if they 

14 want clarification or if they have something 

15 to provide to the conversation, to add, right? 

16 DR. FUORTES: Thank you.

17 MR. KATZ: Is that okay?

18 DR. FUORTES: Perfect.

19 MR. KATZ: Is that okay, Brad?

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I was 

21 just wondering if Mark was done with that, 

22 with his response.
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1 Mark, I had one question. In the 

2 earlier years, you were talking about rad 

3 safety personnel and stuff like that. How 

4 many did Pantex have?

5 MR. ROLFES: Rad safety personnel?

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, RadCon.

7 MR. ROLFES: Well, the very first 

8 couple of individuals that were in charge of 

9 radiation safety came from the Safety 

10 Department. And, really, in the 1952 through 

11 1957/58 time period, there really wasn't any 

12 real concern over radioactive materials in 

13 process at the site. The exceptions were the 

14 radiography sources, the cesium and cobalt 

15 sources that they had onsite.

16 The individuals in the Safety 

17 Department were primarily concerned about high 

18 explosive safety, but they were also the same 

19 individuals that would correspond with the 

20 laboratories. In that time period, it was Los 

21 Alamos National Laboratory. They were the 

22 ones that would contact Los Alamos National 
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1 Laboratory to determine what radiological 

2 monitoring requirements were needed, and who 

3 should be monitored.

4 Really, when fissile materials 

5 began coming onsite in the late 50s/early 

6 1960s, that is when we see more people 

7 involved in the safety program. Radiation 

8 monitoring requirements increased, the number 

9 of workers who were monitored increased.

10 I don't know if you would call 

11 someone a health physicist in those early 

12 days. They probably wore many hats, as I 

13 said, as safety professionals. But, really, 

14 that early time period, because 99 percent of 

15 their work at Pantex involved high-explosive 

16 production, assembly and subassembly, that was 

17 really what they were concerned about, is 

18 explosive safety.

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is Brad 

20 Clawson speaking again.

21 If this is the two that we have 

22 talked to, until 1989, there was two of them 
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1 that monitored, and it was covering the RadCon 

2 issues on it.

3 One of the things that you brought 

4 up was the sampling, the air sampling data, 

5 and so forth like that. And yet, in the 

6 early years, according to the way the 

7 buildings were designed, they were more 

8 worried about what was going to get out of the 

9 building than actually what the workers were 

10 set up, if you look at where the air sampling 

11 data was set up on that.

12 That is something that we are 

13 trying to take a look at as a Work Group, and 

14 so forth like this, but this was brought forth 

15 to us because, in speaking with the rad 

16 personnel that were there -- and this comes 

17 back to what Joe said -- they were calling 

18 other sites to be able to figure out what they 

19 needed to be able to do with the issues, and 

20 so forth.

21 One thing I wanted to bring up is, 

22 when they started coming back on, any weapon 
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1 that came back in, and in the early years it 

2 was more prevalent than anything, when you 

3 retrofitted something with a modification, 

4 they were torn down and put back together. 

5 There were some issues in that.

6 So, it is not just dismantling, or

7 whatever. There was a lot of retrofitting to 

8 be able to make them function better. I think 

9 we need to remember, in the early years, there 

10 was quite a bit of that that went on with the 

11 earlier ones before they were taken out of 

12 service.

13 MR. ROLFES: That's true; there 

14 are retrofits that were done historically. 

15 Just because there was a retrofit doesn't 

16 necessarily mean that a radioactive material 

17 was involved. Sometimes they might have put a 

18 parachute onto a bomb or changed the type of 

19 parachute that was used. Sometimes it was 

20 related to batteries, for example, being 

21 replaced.

22 Those types of things don't 
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1 generally get you into a situation where there 

2 would be contamination present, not the same 

3 as a full disassembly.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I 

5 understand that and the parachute part is 

6 nice, too, but also, as Nevada Test Site and 

7 these other sites learned more about it, they 

8 were going into the heart of it, and mainly 

9 the instrument part of this item and 

10 retrofitting them. That can get into little 

11 things.

12 DR. CHEW: Joe, I want to go back, 

13 in full respect to you, though, and Phil. 

14 Joe, let's talk about the DOE oversight. At 

15 Pantex, why Pantex is different from many of 

16 the sites that we all have been working on, 

17 what you call production and materials 

18 productions site, there are really three 

19 customers, as you all know. Pantex, 

20 basically, the customer was DOE. DOE had to 

21 accept the finished product, what they call a 

22 diamond standard, to accept it as the 
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1 deliverable from the customer.

2 But the other two customers were 

3 the national labs. The national labs were 

4 always very concerned that materials 

5 compatibility was a major issue. I think all 

6 of us know all these weapons stay in stockpile 

7 under a variety of different situations and 

8 conditions, moistures, altitude, temperatures, 

9 and they had to have survivability. I think 

10 you know where I am going with that, Joe, I 

11 think we've talked about this before.

12 So, any time that there was a low 

13 level of number of internal bioassays that are 

14 taken -- let's go back to what the real 

15 exposures were and how much quantity was 

16 exposure to give you a necessity to do the 

17 bioassay here.

18 So, therefore, let's talk about --

19 I'm not going to break down compounds, but I 

20 think you know, but there's uranium and then 

21 there's the fissile part of the uranium 

22 component and plutonium, and I think that is 
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1 all I want to really address.

2 So, when those materials 

3 compatibility issues show up as potential 

4 contamination, it was a major concern to the 

5 weapons design laboratory and eventually DOE, 

6 which is the customer. So, that is why you 

7 hear quite often we would go back to the labs 

8 and ask what would be necessary to do.

9 I know from personal experience, 

10 and I think Bob would attest to that, too, the 

11 customer who produced the components, whether 

12 it is going to be Rocky Flats -- and you know 

13 what part that would be, Y-12 and their 

14 components, and the labs all got together.

15 Not only there was what they 

16 called the safety program, but there was the 

17 nuclear explosive system safety requirements 

18 that had to be on top of, whether we consider 

19 the lab protection, the safety analysis 

20 portions. So, I think what I am just trying 

21 to say to you is that the minimal amount of 

22 bioassay really is testimony to the very fact 
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1 that the components were built to the certain 

2 specification, and survivability is one point.

3 Any time, again, they saw anything 

4 that was unusual, the laboratories, the 

5 customers themselves, would have to be -- have 

6 to be -- a requirement to be called and answer 

7 to address that issue because, again, of the 

8 transcompatibility and long life of the 

9 stockpile. I just wanted to set that tone, of 

10 why Pantex is really different.

11 But you, DOE, Joe, I want to say 

12 you, DOE, was a big customer.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, now I 

14 understand that premise that this program was 

15 born squeaky clean. I think, though, that the 

16 reason we have this Act and the reason this 

17 Board is in place is to exercise a healthy 

18 skepticism that is born of experience. I, 

19 firsthand, have had the experience of auditing 

20 practically every DOE operation, including 

21 Livermore, your own operation.

22 And I found that the actual 
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1 practice, the reality of what was happening in 

2 the workplace didn't match with the 

3 procedures, didn't match with what management 

4 was claiming and workers were being exposed, 

5 and dosimetry programs -- I set up DOELAP in 

6 DOE 15 years ago. When we set that up, there 

7 was no uniform requirement that said, here are 

8 the bases you would have to touch in order to 

9 have an adequate dosimetry program. And that 

10 is when programs like Pantex got swept in 

11 because, essentially, you could get by.

12 If you have a prevailing 

13 assumption that is bought in by everybody, I 

14 mean one thing that I remember, you know, we 

15 are talking about 40-50 years ago. So, the 

16 people we interview are not people that are 

17 speaking necessarily firsthand. Okay? We are 

18 looking for records, but a lot of records have 

19 been destroyed at Pantex. A lot of the air 

20 sampling information, other information that 

21 we would like to look at, a lot of it is 

22 discarded. That happens at a number of sites.
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1 But I am just saying that, you 

2 know, I think it is incumbent upon us to have 

3 a healthy skepticism about the fact that the 

4 reason there is event-driven bioassay is 

5 because, obviously, there was nothing to 

6 bioassay most times. I think that is a 

7 dangerous assumption to lead into an SEC 

8 evaluation.

9 I think, again, and I will make 

10 the point, I, frankly, want to validate 

11 whether the program that was in place, that 

12 was being documented as being in place, and 

13 the procedures that we are pointing to as 

14 having been used in the 60s, in fact, were 

15 practiced. I know it is a challenge because 

16 there's not a lot of people alive that can 

17 testify to that, but I think it is incumbent 

18 upon us to do that.

19 I think it is also incumbent upon 

20 us to recognize -- and I have a chart here I 

21 am going to hand around. This is -- Sarah, 

22 for your sake, this is in Rhetoric to Reality, 
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1 which is the report that Pantex did. This is 

2 unclassified.

3 But it has a great chart of all 

4 the weapons, nuclear weapons, warheads, 

5 systems that were handled at Pantex over the 

6 years. And you will find, very interestingly, 

7 the number of weapons systems in the 50s and 

8 60s -- and, you know, this was the Cold War, 

9 obviously, the height of the Cold War, so you 

10 are coming up with all kinds of different 

11 applications out of howitzers and now 

12 landmines. Who knows? They were using nukes 

13 for just about everything.

14 And the point is, though, that, 

15 yes, there were a number of different 

16 facilities, but there was a heck of a lot of 

17 activity, a lot of assembly/disassembly, just 

18 a heck of a lot of activity, a lot of pressure 

19 on this plant to push the units out the door, 

20 just like with Rocky Flats, a lot of pressure.

21 This is a much different era than 

22 we are looking at now. So, it is hard to 
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1 imagine the kind of pressures that were 

2 involved.

3 But I think, given the feedback we 

4 have from some of the hands-on workers that 

5 actually worked in those earlier days, and 

6 there's a few around still from the 60s and 

7 70s, I think we have to take that seriously, 

8 that there is some feedback that what was on 

9 paper isn't necessarily what was going on in 

10 those cells when you were assembling and 

11 disassembling in terms of contamination.

12 I mean, there's a number of 

13 questions that we have raised in the Site 

14 Profile report. This notion that all the 

15 radiological units, the pits were completely 

16 encased, and there just wasn't this kind of 

17 exposure source, I think we question that.

18 I think in the earlier design 

19 days, talking about, you know, you can ask 

20 Livermore, what's going on with Pantex, and 

21 the answer you are going to get is going to be 

22 on this side of the chart, the 80s, 90s, and 
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1 2000s. That is the historic time frame for 

2 anyone that is in the DOE or in the labs right 

3 now.

4 I mean they don't have any 

5 particularly more wisdom about the 50s than 

6 any of us do. That is where it becomes a 

7 challenge to find some reality checks through 

8 workers and documentation.

9 Now the documentation is not easy 

10 to come by. A lot of it is classified, and 

11 some of it has been destroyed. I mean, error 

12 monitoring data from the 50s and 60s isn't 

13 necessarily going to be on somebody's shelf or 

14 in somebody's safe. Some of that is no longer 

15 available.

16 So, I guess, again, my response, 

17 and my response to you, Mel, is that, no, I 

18 don't think this acceptance of this assumption 

19 should go without some scrutiny. We have to 

20 look at operations. Were, in fact, these 

21 components all sealed? There's some evidence 

22 that not all of them were sealed. There are 
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1 exposure pathways. There was oxidation.

2 Tritium, top 10 people, top 10 

3 people when, 1990? -- I would say the top ten 

4 people in 1960 would be a much different top 

5 ten because the distribution would have been 

6 entirely different. Back in the earlier days, 

7 the reservoirs containing the tritium were 

8 engineered in such a way that the possibility 

9 of leakage and what not was higher.

10 I mean, you know, it makes sense. 

11 Technology and engineering advances, you 

12 learn from your experience, and the 

13 department, AEC and the labs learn from their 

14 experience and ruggedized the components so 

15 that there would not be releases, as many 

16 releases as you might have had in the earlier 

17 days.

18 So, are we going to take the 

19 distribution of tritium monitoring from 1990 

20 and apply it to 1960, even though we know that 

21 the components were engineered differently and 

22 that the frequency of releases were different? 
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1 I don't see it. I just don't see it yet. 

2 That is an issue.

3 The notion of saying that the 

4 requirements that you would have followed in 

5 the 1960 incident or incidents thereafter are 

6 ones that we could take stock in, I am not 

7 ready to do that because, frankly, I have seen 

8 procedures and requirements in 1998 that were 

9 ignored by operational managers at DOE sites. 

10 It just happens. It is the reality.

11 I think people on this Work Group 

12 will attest to that, that what is in writing, 

13 what is required, what's the procedures -- you 

14 know, the reason we have Price-Anderson Act 

15 enforcement in the Department is because it 

16 literally had to go to an enforcement 

17 mechanism because it wasn't enough to have the 

18 Secretary of Energy insist on something. You 

19 had to have some means of providing 

20 enforcement capability.

21 So, a lot of this gets around to 

22 the fact that you can't take at face value 
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1 what is on paper, necessarily, and you can't 

2 accept the fact that we have a weapons program 

3 that was born pristine. The tolerance levels 

4 changed. What was tolerated by labs, I 

5 suspect, in 1960 was a lot different than what 

6 the labs would tolerate now. And why? 

7 Because we learn and we also tighten up 

8 requirements.

9 So, again, I am not providing the 

10 kind of evidence that I hope that we can 

11 gather that will bolster this perspective, but 

12 I think it is too much of a rush to judgment 

13 to suggest that this program is so clean that 

14 you never needed bioassay except in a rare 

15 instance where you happen to have a release.

16 I can only tell you that there was 

17 a great deal of concern in 90, 91, 92 over 

18 Pantex and the Radiation Control Program 

19 there. Everywhere from the Defense Board to 

20 the Department to the contractor, they focused 

21 on revamping that program.

22 So, calibrating practices in 
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1 dosimetry after that happened to practices in 

2 dosimetry before that period, I think, is a 

3 non-starter.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is Brad 

5 again.

6 You know, on every site and every 

7 Work Group that I have been into, we get into 

8 the 1985-to-1990 era and we see a drastic 

9 change with every site we deal with. That is 

10 mainly because of the DOELAP and basically 

11 getting down to we have one RadCon Program; we 

12 are all going to do it.

13 And this is historically, if you 

14 notice, Pantex was one of the last holdouts 

15 because of the difficulties, and the same 

16 difficulties that we are having today of 

17 getting information and also getting onto a 

18 site. Under national security, you know, I 

19 can understand that. But even from the RadCon 

20 techs, if you want to call them, or if they 

21 are official health physicists, or whatever 

22 that actually, in 1989, they had to shut their 
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1 whole program down because they didn't have 

2 enough people to cover it, period.

3 They went from two now to almost 

4 90 in, I believe it was, well, when Battelle 

5 came in, it was like in a two-year time period 

6 to be able to start covering these issues, and 

7 so forth.

8 I think in the earlier years, 

9 remember, the aspect of this, it seems like 

10 everything -- and this is just my personal 

11 opinion -- that they were more worried about 

12 the high explosives that they were dealing 

13 with, and that they were doing these things 

14 with, than they were the actual components, 

15 and so forth, that came in.

16 But, you know, we could discuss 

17 this for hours on end, but I think it is also 

18 important for us to allow people like Sarah 

19 and Lar to be able to weigh-in on this, too. 

20 And Lar has already expressed a concern that 

21 he would like to be able to do it. 

22 If you don't have any more, Mark 
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1 or Joe, I guess I would like to hear from the 

2 petitioner.

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that would be 

4 fine with me. Thanks, Brad.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

6 MR. KATZ: Lar?

7 DR. FUORTES: Hi.

8 MS. RAY: If I could say something 

9 after Lar finishes?

10 DR. FUORTES: Sure.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That would be 

12 fine, Sarah.

13 DR. FUORTES: Sorry. Did you say 

14 for me to go first?

15 MR. KATZ: Yes, go ahead, Lar.

16 DR. FUORTES: Okay. Well, thank 

17 you guys very much. I'm sorry to confuse the 

18 process.

19 But I think that several people 

20 from the Board and SC&A have iterated some of 

21 our concerns. I have to brush something, 

22 however.
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1 Second to Sarah -- I and Sarah 

2 have spoken to many more elderly former 

3 workers from this facility than NIOSH has. 

4 And the impressions that we have gotten are, 

5 as the gentleman from the Board has indicated, 

6 they are truly different than those that I 

7 would get from reading NIOSH's documents.

8 In seeing NIOSH in practice, both 

9 at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and at this 

10 facility, the assumption of this being a clean 

11 facility with no risk is quite clear. I mean, 

12 they have actually stated that in public 

13 settings.

14 Coming with a priori bias, I 

15 think, is a very dangerous thing to do in a 

16 scientific situation. One should try always 

17 to assume ignorance and recognize that a state 

18 of ignorance is the best place to start from 

19 if you are trying to learn the truth.

20 That was not the case with NIOSH. 

21 To the extent that I really want the Board to 

22 recognize how NIOSH's process was affected not 
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1 just by this a priori bias that everything was 

2 done the way it should have been done, the 

3 reason there are no assays is because there 

4 was no exposure. Had there been exposure, 

5 there would have been assays. That assumption 

6 is certainly a possibility, but it doesn't 

7 strike me as true, given the history of 

8 occupational health and safety.

9 It also doesn't strike me as true, 

10 given the tone of the Tiger Team report. The 

11 tone of the Tiger Team report was that this 

12 facility was replete with shortcomings in how 

13 they handled worker health and safety and the 

14 environmental route of disposal. Monitoring, 

15 it was cited repeatedly, to the extent that, 

16 after the Tiger Team, their health and safety 

17 and radiation health teams increased by orders 

18 of magnitude.

19 NIOSH refused to entertain even 

20 reviewing this SEC petition repeatedly. I 

21 want the Board to be aware of this, that this 

22 SEC petition had to go to administrative 
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1 review because NIOSH's assumption was, there 

2 is nothing in the Tiger Team report or the 

3 worker histories that could change our mind 

4 that this was a clean facility.

5 So, they said that they were not 

6 going to allow the Board to see this, had this 

7 not gone to administrative review. I think 

8 that that is something that NIOSH will have to 

9 answer for, and it certainly decreases the 

10 credibility of -- both that and that a priori 

11 bias really decreases the credibility of 

12 NIOSH, unfortunately, in this situation.

13 As regards the workers' histories, 

14 I would like to just point out a couple of 

15 things. We heard from several Iowa Army 

16 Ammunition technicians who traveled back and 

17 forth from Burlington to Pantex that there 

18 were health and safety issues at both 

19 facilities.

20 For example, Jack Polson, the 

21 chief scientist at Burlington, told us and 

22 told NIOSH, I'm sorry, but there were 
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1 situations when pits were breached. And he 

2 would go no further. He would say, I will go 

3 on record, there were situations when pits 

4 were breached.

5 Ed Web, one of the older gentlemen 

6 who was interviewed at length from Burlington, 

7 described at length the maintenance of the 

8 Mark 6 weapon and the in-flight insertion 

9 weapons, where some metallic oxide was removed 

10 with some regularity with cotton swabs with no 

11 respirators, no monitoring. So, this appears 

12 to be uranium oxide, and, I would imagine, 

13 enriched uranium.

14 So, I would say that the 

15 assumption of zero exposure that NIOSH is 

16 building on is invalid. Then, again, as you 

17 have pointed out, the assumption that exposure 

18 information after the Tiger Team report, after 

19 the health and safety program was beefed up in 

20 the 1990s, that that information was relevant 

21 for making assumptions about exposure 

22 previously is certainly suspect.
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1 The second worker history I would 

2 like to share with you from the Pantex workers 

3 that I think speaks to that is their 

4 description of beer holidays for tritium 

5 spills. They described this to us, 

6 independently, independent groups of workers. 

7 The first time you hear such a story, you 

8 assume that it is apocryphal and it is just a 

9 funny story. But after hearing it in 

10 different groups of workers, that they report 

11 tritium spills having been documented and 

12 those individuals being sent to the medical 

13 office and being sent home with a prescription 

14 to drink a case of beer and then come back to 

15 work, to dilute out a tritium spill without 

16 any monitoring, I think that that really 

17 speaks to there being some problems with 

18 recordkeeping in the facility. Either that or 

19 you just discount worker histories, and I am 

20 unable to do that, given the consistency of 

21 these histories.

22 That is all I have to say. Thank 
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1 you.

2 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Lar.

3 Sarah?

4 MS. RAY: I'm not a scientist at 

5 all, Joe.

6 First, I would like to review. He 

7 covered our issues in-depth. Again, like him, 

8 I have real problems applying today's 

9 operations through our time frame of 1951 to 

10 1991 on our SEC petition. I would like to 

11 ask, if there was no radiation contamination, 

12 then why did we have a dosimetry program? Why 

13 was there worry about getting lead aprons, 

14 which we know were not generally used in the 

15 early years? Here you are talking about the 

16 fact that at a period of time there were 

17 multiple facilities that did assembly and 

18 disassembly.

19 In 1974, I was out there at 

20 Pantex. I'm familiar with the red phone, I'm 

21 familiar with the manufacturing, calendars, 

22 the daily change report that went daily to 
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1 Washington. I have seen many of the older 

2 weapons items that were coming in and going 

3 out. And yet, program numbers that I haven't 

4 seen listed in any of the information that 

5 NIOSH has presented that I know were coming in 

6 and going out.

7 I have always felt like NIOSH 

8 really has not really done a good review of 

9 documents at the plant, in part because they 

10 are not listening to workers.

11 Mark today is talking about 

12 continuing air monitoring. [identifying 

13 information redacted] is the person that is 

14 the RAM system for Pantex. If you ask him, he 

15 will tell you that the first continuous air 

16 monitors furnished in the 70s, it was more of 

17 a check. It wasn't something that was 

18 required. They were installed in 1226, and it 

19 was alpha monitors and they were sniffed in at 

20 approximately eye level. So, we know that 

21 that did a lot of good.

22 I don't think the three 
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1 individuals have even looked at 1226. They 

2 toured the training base up in 1215, and we 

3 are told that that is exactly what the line 

4 looks like. The diagrams, in the Rhetoric to 

5 Reality, there are diagrams of facilities that 

6 are in use today. The 1244 cells are nothing 

7 like the current cells. 1226, where most of 

8 the weapons work was done, is nothing like the 

9 bays that are pictured in the Rhetoric to 

10 Reality.

11 Another thing, ATKT limits are 

12 quite different today than they were in past 

13 years. It was not uncommon for workers to be 

14 surrounded by weapons just waiting to do 

15 whatever they were doing with them, 10 or 12 

16 weapons at a time, full-up weapons. All of 

17 their weapons were much hotter. You know, you 

18 have to take that into consideration.

19 Individuals, many individuals, had 

20 custody of these weapons, and they were with 

21 them for hours at a time. I have heard many 

22 workers talk to me about -- they had custody, 
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1 it was time for lunch, and so they sat down on 

2 their tin cans and they ate their lunch.

3 These are not practices that you 

4 are going to see documented in procedures. 

5 These are things that come from workers. I 

6 think when you are not listening to workers, 

7 you are not getting the true story.

8 And I have a real issue with the 

9 fact that there was no rad safety. Basically, 

10 we have two people, and they are covering 

11 24/7, 365 days a year. How can you tell me 

12 that someone can be there monitoring rad 

13 safety issues every day 365 days a year, 24 

14 hours a day? That is humanly impossible.

15 And now they are up to 90. Why 

16 did this happen? It happened because of the 

17 Tiger Team report. Many things came about. 

18 The standardization of RadCon practices with 

19 the RadCon Manual, 1992-93, that was the first 

20 time there was anything standardized.

21 I have talked to workers who were 

22 lost in the bays through a tritium release. 
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1 Somebody accidentally found them. And several 

2 days later, someone decided to get a urine 

3 sample from them. Again, as Lar reported, 

4 they were told to drink a lot of beer. You 

5 know, these things are real.

6 At least one of these was in the 

7 Tiger Team report, being what I consider 

8 probably the classified version of the Tiger 

9 Team report. I don't have that. Mine is one 

10 that has been redacted.

11 So, even this particular issue, 

12 where people were lost in the bays after a 

13 tritium release is missing from the Tiger Team 

14 report. But the Tiger Team report is a very 

15 important document. It brought about many, 

16 many changes.

17 I guess that is all I have to say. 

18 I can think of many things, but I would like 

19 to make those comments.

20 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Sarah.

21 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

22 I just wanted to respond to both Lar and 
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1 Sarah.

2 Lar, I wanted to state that I did 

3 go to Pantex with an open mind to learn and 

4 with the intent to help workers at the site. 

5 I wanted to make sure that the technical basis 

6 that we are using for dose reconstructions 

7 were as complete as possible.

8 If you take a look on our website, 

9 we have NIOSH outreach activities for the 

10 Pantex plant. And we had our very first 

11 meeting down onsite with the Metal Trades 

12 Council back in June of 2004. And then, 

13 subsequently, we met with the Pantex plant 

14 guards union and Metal Trades Council, July 

15 31st, 2007. Let's see, during the SEC 

16 evaluation time period, we had two meetings on 

17 January 29th, 2008.

18 Also, during that time period, I 

19 had made a couple of different trips to speak 

20 with workers onsite and offsite in various 

21 capacities as well. If you take a look at our 

22 history of Technical Basis Document changes, 
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1 we actually did go back and change our 

2 Technical Basis Documents based on worker 

3 input that we had received during those 

4 meetings.

5 So, I want to make sure that we do 

6 point out that we are listening. We are 

7 listening today also.

8 So, that is all. Thank you.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I appreciate 

10 all your input.

11 Lar, I would like to make one 

12 comment to yours, though. I kind of found 

13 that interesting about drinking beer because 

14 we just returned from a Mound meeting and 

15 talking to the tritium specialists, and they 

16 said their key was to drink an awful lot of 

17 water all day long. So that I guess the term 

18 dilution is the solution kind of plays into 

19 part there.

20 We have discussed adequacy of 

21 internal records, but I guess what I need to 

22 know is where we need to proceed forward with 
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1 this. I believe in my view it is in NIOSH's 

2 court, actually.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, let me 

4 offer this. I think it was a very well 

5 written preamble to report particularly folks 

6 that were internal. So, that is what I think 

7 we have been more or less discussing, the 

8 general prospect on internal.

9 I think it will be helpful for the 

10 worker to maybe walk down, not spend a lot of 

11 time, but some of the specific subparts of 

12 that, because there is such a large scope 

13 involved there on that one. I think we have 

14 just kind of looked at the generalized comment 

15 first, which is good. I think that is 

16 appropriate.

17 So, do you want to go specific?

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, let's go 

19 specific then, and we will just work our way 

20 down.

21 Now, Sarah and Lar, we are 

22 starting out on item number 1 in the matrix, 
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1 just so you know where we are at.

2 MEMBER PRESLEY: Hey, Mark.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes?

4 MEMBER PRESLEY: Before we start, 

5 can we take a break?

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, that would 

7 be fine. Mark just got here, so, it is time 

8 to go on a break.

9 MR. KATZ: Yes. For the record, 

10 Mark Griffon has just joined us, from the Work 

11 Group.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Would a 15-

13 minute break be okay, then? Would that be 

14 long enough?

15 We will break for 15 minutes. We 

16 will return at 11:05.

17 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

18 matter went off the record at 10:51 a.m. and 

19 resumed at 11:04 a.m.)

20 MR. KATZ: We are reconvening 

21 after a short break. This is the Pantex Work 

22 Group of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 
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1 Worker Health.

2 We have just gone through a 

3 discussion of -- at least a general discussion 

4 of issue 1, I believe.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it is the 

6 general part of issue 1.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, I guess we 

8 have not completed issue 1 yet. At this time, 

9 I guess I will turn it over to you, Joe.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I am just 

11 going to highlight. We talked the general 

12 issues. So, I am just going to be very 

13 specific about it because, again, the internal 

14 dose issue is a very important, critical one, 

15 and it does have some subparts.

16 One subpart is for tritium. And 

17 that is also addressed a little later from a 

18 different standpoint, tritides. But for 

19 tritium, NIOSH claims that, while tritium 

20 leaks occurred, these were small and 

21 immediately identifiable, and that air 

22 monitors were used to minimize uptakes.
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1 However, NIOSH also acknowledges, 

2 and we agree, that routine tritium bioassay 

3 monitoring did not begin until 1972. The 

4 basis for the backward extrapolation that is 

5 being proposed in the Evaluation Report from 

6 later tritium data to this earlier period is 

7 that the availability of, quote, more 

8 measurable intake potential would be claimant9 favorable compared to the earlier period when 

10 few samples were available.

11 Now, undeniably, there is more 

12 data. It is useful to use more data if you 

13 are going to do extrapolation, but the 

14 concern, again, is, how representative is that 

15 newer data to be applied retroactively that 

16 far back? It is quite apart from how much 

17 more data you have. The real question is, 

18 should you do it? Is it something that sort 

19 of like begins a surrogate data question? 

20 This is substitute data. Can you, basically, 

21 use data from this later period and substitute 

22 it for data that you lack in that earlier 
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1 period?

2 From what we have said earlier, we 

3 don't believe that is the case. It is not 

4 necessarily that more data represents better 

5 data. I think the operations were different. 

6 I think the exposure pathways were likely 

7 different.

8 A lot of what we are going to 

9 pursue, I think, in our review, and we would 

10 invite that on NIOSH's part, too, is to 

11 basically look at the basis for that 

12 comparison. Can you apply that data 

13 irregardless of how much more you have of it, 

14 to this earlier period where you lack as much?

15 That is kind of our response on 

16 the tritium, without having actually gone and 

17 tried to interrogate what information we have 

18 there.

19 MR. ROLFES: Right now, Joe --

20 this is Mark Rolfes -- we certainly 

21 acknowledge that not all workers participated 

22 in a bioassay program, but we do have a strong 
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1 indication that, when there was an event which 

2 released radioactive materials, that the 

3 worker was bioassayed.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: You have a strong 

5 indication?

6 MR. ROLFES: We have a strong 

7 indication because, if you lose your 

8 materials, it becomes an incident. It is 

9 something that is important to the weapon.

10 If there was an exposure, as there 

11 was in 1989 when there was a tritium release, 

12 it prompted quite a bit of investigation. It 

13 was a very big deal.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, take it 

15 back prior to 72.

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: What would be 

18 your indication that that would have been 

19 done, in the 1970s, say?

20 MR. ROLFES: Well, when new 

21 reservoirs were received, the containers that 

22 they were contained in were placed into a 
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1 hood, and the atmosphere inside of the 

2 container was expressed into the hood. They 

3 had basically surveyed the air inside of that 

4 container.

5 It wasn't really until the mid6 1970s, and these are for assemblies, the 

7 earlier time period that I am referring to in 

8 the 60s and 70s, when they are primarily 

9 focused on assembling, there's really not a 

10 significant potential for tritium exposure 

11 handling a reservoir that is just shipped from 

12 the Savannah River site, for example.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: What's that based 

14 on, though? I am just trying to figure out, 

15 and I am not saying this in a pejorative 

16 sense. You have a lot of confidence in the 

17 integrity of the reservoirs as well as the 

18 handling operations back in pre-1972, such 

19 that you are willing to extrapolate back to 

20 that period and assign current values, 1990s 

21 values. So, you have a lot of confidence.

22 I just want to understand where 
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1 that confidence comes from, what it is based 

2 on. Is it documentation, interviews with 

3 people that were contemporary to that period? 

4 I just want to get a handle on why so much 

5 confidence.

6 MR. ROLFES: I guess it just comes 

7 with speaking with workers for the past -- I 

8 have been involved with Pantex for the past 

9 five years and have been traveling and 

10 speaking with people in the Radiation Safety 

11 Department, people that are production 

12 technicians involved in assembly and 

13 disassembly, people at Lawrence Livermore 

14 National Laboratory, for example, and Sandia 

15 as well.

16 You really don't have a 

17 significant potential for exposure to a brand18 new reservoir that is sent to be assembled 

19 into a weapon. You are really not concerned 

20 about any contamination of significance until 

21 you disassemble that weapon. That is when, 

22 you know, if the reservoir has been in the 
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1 field for a while, the tritium can begin to 

2 migrate through welds on the reservoir and 

3 things, and you can begin to detect 

4 contamination on that reservoir.

5 It is really not until many of the 

6 weapons were disassembled in the mid-70s 

7 forward when there was a true exposure 

8 potential for tritium.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: But this is 

10 important because I think in terms of guiding 

11 our inquiry and yours, were these individuals 

12 that were operators from that time period that 

13 actually were hands-on? Or were these health 

14 physicists and managers that were sharing 

15 recollections?

16 Because, again, as I pointed out 

17 earlier, we are talking 40 years ago. And the 

18 recollections and the type of perspectives 

19 that we are looking for are ones that are 

20 firsthand. That gets harder and harder to 

21 get.

22 MR. ROLFES: Right.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I am just 

2 wondering, what is the basis for saying this 

3 is so?

4 MR. ROLFES: Some of the first 

5 couple of people that we spoke with on the 

6 site had begun employment in 1952 and 1953, 

7 respectively. We have spoken with people that 

8 have been there since the late 1950s all the 

9 way up through, you know, just being hired and 

10 at the site. So, we have tried to capture as 

11 broad a range as possible and speak with 

12 anyone and everyone we could imagine might 

13 have some connection to the Radiation Safety 

14 Program.

15 So, we didn't focus on solely 

16 managers or solely production technicians. We 

17 tried to get as broad, as diverse as possible 

18 of a group of people that were involved, from 

19 day-to-day operations in the cells to people 

20 at the firing sites to office workers. I 

21 mean, guards.

22 We have heard many different 
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1 stories and many different situations. We 

2 have tried to do our best. We have tried to 

3 do our homework.

4 I can say that I have been down 

5 there probably 10 times, and I know our 

6 contractors have gone down to the site as well 

7 to investigate several different issues. If 

8 someone says, well, there was a uranium 

9 exposure that occurred here, we take a look. 

10 And if we don't have records that cover that, 

11 we go back to the site and ask.

12 There's occasions where we have 

13 made several calls just to say, hey, are you 

14 aware of this situation that occurred back in 

15 1978 or something.

16 I think we have done our homework. 

17 This process, as we all know, is a learning 

18 process. We still don't know everything. So, 

19 we want the answers. We want the truth, too. 

20 We want to make sure that we are doing the 

21 right thing for the workers and trying to make 

22 sure that we are truly being claimant-
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1 favorable and giving the benefit of the doubt 

2 to the workers.

3 So, I think that what we have in 

4 our Technical Basis Document here, the tritium 

5 exposures that you are referring to -- in 

6 table 5.6 of our Site Profile, we have -- let 

7 me pull it up here, if I can. It might take 

8 me a minute. But we do have tritium exposures 

9 by year in the Technical Basis Document that 

10 we use.

11 So, if an individual indicates 

12 that he was exposed --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: That is post-72 

14 though? Because there were no measurements 

15 before 72, as far as I know.

16 MR. ROLFES: Right, right. There 

17 were no routine measurements.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

19 MR. ROLFES: There were some 

20 measurements, but, as I had mentioned, there 

21 could be high detection sensitivities.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: While you are 
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1 looking at that, though, it is fair to say, 

2 then, that the hard place we stand upon right 

3 now is that there is no data other than maybe 

4 some event-driven tritium measurements pre-72, 

5 and that applying the data -- I think it is 

6 what, 1990, am I right? It is the early 90s 

7 tritium information. Applying that 

8 distribution to pre-72 is based on your sense, 

9 collective sense, of having talked to various 

10 workers, a cross-section of workers, that 

11 things were equally tight in that time period 

12 as after that time period? I mean, is that 

13 fair to say?

14 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that certainly 

15 is. I also wanted to add another caveat, I 

16 guess, that the people that received 

17 components onsite and were involved in 

18 handling reservoirs, it was only a couple of 

19 people that actually did that work.

20 For example, if you have x number 

21 being sent in, x number were received by one 

22 or two individuals, and the atmospheres inside 
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1 of the containers were checked to make sure 

2 that it wasn't leaking or it wasn't leaking in 

3 excess of what was established at the time.

4 And that individual that was doing 

5 that work would have been the one with the 

6 likely highest potential for exposure, just 

7 because he was the only one that was handling 

8 that quantity of material. The other 

9 individuals, the other production technicians 

10 that were handling those components, it would 

11 have been divided. You know, not one PT would 

12 have handled all the reservoirs that came onto 

13 his site. It would have been divided up by 

14 several individuals working, and not all at 

15 once as well.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: But the 

17 reasoning -- and I think this is helpful for 

18 clarification for the Work Group -- the 

19 reasoning for applying the data-rich time 

20 period for tritium, which was the later time 

21 period, versus the distribution of the tritium 

22 data, starting in 72 was just, again, because 
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1 there was just more of it?

2 MR. ROLFES: Well, from 1972 

3 forward, there is certainly more. That also 

4 corresponds with the number of disassemblies 

5 and exposure potential, so --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: But I am just 

7 saying, you are not applying the entire 

8 distribution? You are applying where the data 

9 is most plentiful, which I think, as I recall, 

10 was, there is a period of time in the 1990s or 

11 1990?

12 MR. ROLFES: Well, what we have, 

13 then, in our Site Profile, in table 5.6, it is 

14 tritium uptakes for unmonitored workers. And 

15 it lists years on the left-hand side from 1956 

16 through 1971. It lumps those all together, 

17 and it says to default to assign 24 millirem 

18 of tritium dose to the workers. Then, from 

19 1972 through 2003, it breaks down individual 

20 years. And for the entire table, we also have 

21 maximum uptakes, average worker tritium dose, 

22 and average uptake. And there are some 
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1 attributions in here and some footnotes that 

2 explain the bases.

3 And let's see, if you take a look, 

4 for the years of 1956 through 1971, the 

5 maximum recorded individual tritium dose in 

6 millirem is from table 5.3, and the 24 

7 millirem -- excuse me -- was an assumed value 

8 based on twice the highest values in the

9 1970s. And there's also an attribution to 

10 discuss the basis for that at the end of the 

11 Technical Basis Document.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Again, the basis, 

13 as you are saying, is feedback from workers 

14 that were contemporaneous with this time 

15 period?

16 MR. ROLFES: Let's see, the basis 

17 here, let's see --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Because, really, 

19 I'm just driving it, without putting too fine 

20 a point on it, again, this is sort of a sense 

21 of back-extrapolating where you have more data 

22 to where you don't have as much data. And I 
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1 just want to understand better why that is 

2 okay.

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: I think what you 

5 are saying is you have a level of confidence 

6 based on feedback from a cross-section of 

7 people, some of whom actually were in that 

8 time frame?

9 MR. ROLFES: Right. I will read 

10 the basis for it. It says -- it is 

11 attribution number 33 -- and from May of 2004, 

12 it says, the factor of two was a professional 

13 judgment made to be favorable to claimants. 

14 As explained in the text, the risk of tritium 

15 intake was less during assembly than 

16 disassembly, and fewer disassemblies took 

17 place from 1956 to 1972 than afterward.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, but I would 

19 raise the question which I raised earlier. It 

20 is not just simply numbers of disassemblies; 

21 it is what you are disassembling. Certainly, 

22 weapons designs changed over time. So, I 
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1 would put a big asterisk on that that says 

2 before -- you would have to normalize that in 

3 terms of exposure potential, given the 

4 particular constituency in the weapon and the 

5 exposure pathways involved.

6 I still believe, and I think we 

7 need to demonstrate for the Work Group, that 

8 your earlier designs -- you know, I go back to 

9 this chart. That is a lot of designs in the 

10 50s and 60s into the 70s, a lot more than 

11 later. We learn from experience, obviously, 

12 and the complex did. It got tighter. It got 

13 better-engineered.

14 You didn't have perhaps as many 

15 scurrilous exposures, and that's good, but I 

16 think it is fraught with peril to just compare 

17 based on numbers of disassemblies and assume 

18 that that is enough. I think you have to look 

19 at exposure potential, given what you are 

20 disassembling and, also, the practices that 

21 were in place.

22 Again, I think, in response to 
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1 Mel's comment, the tolerance levels back in 

2 the early days, in the throes of the Cold War 

3 when you are pushing production, were a lot 

4 different, I would contend, than after you had 

5 been hit all over the head by the Defense 

6 Board and you are post-Cold War in the 90s, a 

7 much different environment.

8 The fact you had one or two health 

9 physicists as opposed to 90, I would claim, 

10 also had an effect on implementation of the 

11 requirement. So, you know, I --

12 DR. CHEW: Let me make a comment 

13 about the chart here. Okay?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

15 DR. CHEW: Just to say for the 

16 record, I know you show very good charts that 

17 show the number of units that were put 

18 together and the types of systems in the early 

19 days at Pantex. Yes, you are absolutely 

20 correct, the design did change, and the 

21 different components changed.

22 When you really look carefully, if 
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1 you look at the table and that chart, the 

2 sizes of the components also changed, too, 

3 because of the requirements of the military. 

4 Therefore, the reservoir designs changed.

5 I think we would need to be in a 

6 different environment other than this 

7 environment to discuss that detail.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, but I'm 

9 just making the point that --

10 DR. CHEW: So, the exposure 

11 potential actually changed from our 

12 perspective.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. But I 

14 would say that what plagues me the most about 

15 the approach that we are dealing with is that 

16 there's this going-in presumption that there 

17 is enough of a steady state that you can back18 extrapolate a lot of the data from later time 

19 periods to earlier time periods to make up for 

20 the lack of data in those earlier time 

21 periods.

22 I am just, as a cautionary note, 
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1 saying, no, I think there was a lot of 

2 variables involved. I don't think it was 

3 steady state. And, yes, a lot of this 

4 discussion would have to go behind closed 

5 doors, but I think that is the cautionary note 

6 about with one fell swoop making that 

7 fundamental assumption.

8 A lot of the specifics we can get 

9 into really come back to that, that, yes, 

10 there wasn't much in the way of data and you 

11 have to accept a going-in bias or presumption 

12 that you had a very, very tight operation, it 

13 worked like clockwork in terms of event-driven 

14 bioassays, and that you can use the latter day 

15 data and back-extrapolate it because they did 

16 what they said they would do back in the 60s 

17 and 70s, and you can get away with that.

18 I think all those hypotheses have 

19 not been demonstrated. I think it is helpful 

20 to talk to people and get input, but I would 

21 qualify that by saying it depends on who you 

22 are talking to because I -- a lot of mythology 
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1 exists, I think, in the department weapons 

2 complex. Things are accepted and carried 

3 forward in time.

4 I would want to really validate 

5 some of these claims and understand why 

6 someone is saying what they are saying. Did 

7 they have firsthand knowledge? Were they on 

8 the ground in the operations? Or were they an 

9 HP that was sitting in an office who had 

10 requirements but didn't get into the work 

11 floor very much? And we have countervailing 

12 comments by the workers who actually did that 

13 who said, you know, it's not so.

14 I think that is the part where a 

15 healthy skepticism going into this -- and 

16 we're kind of at Day One on this SEC. I mean 

17 we have had the Site Profile review, the 

18 matrix, but we haven't dug into this. I am 

19 just saying that, for both NIOSH, ORAU, and 

20 SC&A, and the Work Group, I think we have to 

21 go in and figure out if, in fact, this steady 

22 state, this presumption of controls and 
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1 whatnot holds up with whatever evidence can be 

2 found.

3 I don't want to sort of go in as a 

4 precondition of accepting those premises. I 

5 think there's frustration on the petitioner's 

6 standpoint as well, that I think we need to go 

7 in with a blank slate and say, let the chips 

8 fall where they may and the operational staff 

9 may say one thing, but they weren't there 30 

10 to 40 years ago. Even though they have a 

11 clean operation now, it could have been much 

12 different 40 years ago.

13 That is kind of my point on this 

14 thing here, that the top ten on tritium I 

15 would conjecture would probably be different 

16 than the top ten back in 1968. But I would 

17 want to get some more data on that, but I 

18 would be surprised if it were exactly the 

19 same.

20 DR. CHEW: We should pick up that 

21 discussion.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, okay.
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1 DR. CHEW: So, that is a fair 

2 comment.

3 MR. ROLFES: Sure. Sure, it is.

4 Just to sort of give you an

5 understanding about how dose reconstructions 

6 are completed, if an individual during that 

7 time period indicates that they did not ever 

8 have a tritium bioassay but were exposed to 

9 tritium, we do feel that assigning that 

10 tritium dose to them every year, which is 

11 currently in our Technical Basis Document, we 

12 feel that that is a claimant-favorable end 

13 result. We haven't seen any basis to indicate 

14 that it isn't.

15 So, if you are aware of something, 

16 we would certainly be interested in that.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I would only say 

18 I don't know if a factor of two does it or a 

19 factor of four. I don't think you really 

20 know, either. I think what we are saying is 

21 that, since there is no real good sense of the 

22 uncertainty involved because we don't have 
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1 much data to go with, pick any factor. I mean 

2 that is what I am saying. It doesn't give me 

3 any comfort to say that we think a factor of 

4 two would be conservative because we assume 

5 the operations were buttoned-down back then 

6 and that there weren't that many leaks. I 

7 think the issue deserves more than that.

8 I think we need to find out, you 

9 know, is that an upper bound or, as it turns 

10 out, maybe that is a lower bound. Who knows? 

11 I mean maybe it is a factor of five or a 

12 factor of ten.

13 This is the same issue I had with 

14 the air sampling assumptions. There's a 

15 factor of ten that is being offered up as 

16 certainly a conservative approach, but I don't 

17 know. Based on the interviews and looking at 

18 the investigation reports of Pantex and the 

19 location of the CAMs, the CAMs weren't often 

20 located -- and this is not unusual in some 

21 places -- the CAMs weren't necessarily located 

22 close to the breathing zone of the workers. I 
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1 think it is arguable whether or not even a 

2 factor of ten would be sufficient to bound 

3 what they may have been exposed to.

4 So, I think these judgments as to 

5 what the adjustment factors ought to be, two, 

6 ten, five, I think those that have to be 

7 rooted in something more than just plucking it 

8 out as this is so conservative no one would 

9 disagree. I think it has to be rooted in an 

10 examination of the operations and some 

11 grounding in facts. I just don't see that. I 

12 just see a lot of -- we assume upfront that 

13 things were clean. Therefore, a factor of two 

14 or a factor of ten makes sense. Well, I don't 

15 buy the assumption, so the factors don't 

16 really resonate with me right now.

17 I think I need to know more. I 

18 always say that, again, because I think this 

19 group has the responsibility to go in and 

20 actually examine what the objective basis for 

21 this thing is, that everyone says it was 

22 pristine and clean. Let's establish that that 
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1 is the case going back in time. Maybe it was 

2 pristine and clean back to 1990, but before 

3 that it wasn't. How do you actually do that 

4 objectively and come up with an approach where 

5 people are getting credit for programs that 

6 weren't implemented as effectively as they 

7 needed to be?

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, just to 

9 that end -- Mark Griffon -- to that end, where 

10 we take this from here is a question. I am 

11 curious, I mean you said you had a lot of 

12 interviews with HPs, operators, and all types 

13 of folks --

14 MR. ROLFES: Right.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- regarding the 

16 weight of the evidence for that early period, 

17 that it was clean and buttoned up, as Joe 

18 suggests.

19 Are those on the O: drive? Are 

20 those something that SC&A then can possibly 

21 follow up with some of those individuals?

22 MR. ROLFES: Yes. All of our 
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1 worker interview notes will be interview notes 

2 that are on our website. I think right before 

3 you had walked into the room, I had mentioned 

4 four worker outreach meetings that we had 

5 offsite with Pantex workers. I think the 

6 Pantex guards' union and the Metal Trades 

7 Council were present. We had actually worked 

8 with the Metal Trades Council individuals and 

9 people from Human Resources at Pantex to 

10 identify workers who actually were involved in 

11 the hands-on operations. We had also spoken 

12 with people in the Radiation Safety Department 

13 and asked who would be knowledgeable of some 

14 of the early radiation protection practices.

15 So, we have gone to many different 

16 sources and also have flagged claimants. For 

17 example, we have seen claimants that have 

18 identified this individual knows a little bit 

19 more about this incident. So, we have spoken 

20 to other people in those cases.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Are those 

22 individual interviews captured?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: You said the 

3 worker outreach.

4 MR. ROLFES: Well, for every 

5 claim, for example, we receive from the 

6 Department of Labor, we interview that 

7 individual in a Computer-Assisted Telephone 

8 Interview. In addition to that --

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, but I don't 

10 think you ask anything about the program in 

11 the early years in the CATI.

12 MR. ROLFES: No, we might not have 

13 something that specific in there.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, maybe it 

15 would be helpful, because I mean I know you 

16 have done worker outreach meetings and I know 

17 you have the CATIs.

18 MR. ROLFES: Well, Mark --

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: But it seems to 

20 me you are asking about interviews. 

21 Oftentimes, you have provided minutes of these 

22 interviews, like, for example, I mean Roger 
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1 Falk, others, that were experts for certain 

2 sites. Those are usually on the O: drive. I 

3 can't find right now the --

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, that is 

5 the point that I was going to bring up, and we 

6 were going to discuss this a little bit later. 

7 I have been throughout everything I can find 

8 on Pantex and I still cannot find the workers' 

9 notes in here. So, that may be something 

10 that -- you know, I haven't been able to find 

11 those.

12 MR. ROLFES: I can consolidate 

13 those for you, if that would be helpful to you 

14 or point out the Site Research Database 

15 document number.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That would help 

17 an awful lot because this is --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I was going to 

19 suggest one other thing. Because there is 

20 such a wealth of -- you know, Mark is correct, 

21 he has been interviewing since 2004, at least 

22 through the outreach meetings. It might be 
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1 useful just to consolidate on some of these 

2 issues.

3 Again, if the basis for the 

4 assumptions on the internal dose, whether it 

5 is tritium control practices or whatever, if 

6 it can be highlighted, this body of interviews 

7 is the basis for the confidence level on how 

8 that was handled. That would kind of winnow 

9 it down a little bit. Because, otherwise, I 

10 think you are going to be plowing through a 

11 heck of a lot of documentation. If you can 

12 highlight what, in particular, is relevant to 

13 the basis for this thing, then that would be 

14 helpful.

15 MR. ROLFES: There's a lot of 

16 information that is relevant.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, with the 

18 interviews anyway.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Shouldn't those be 

20 in the Worker Outreach Tracking Database also? 

21 Jim might know that.

22 MR. ROLFES: Well, these 
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1 interviews were largely conducted prior to the 

2 worker interview database that you are 

3 referring to. I think that was just 

4 established within the past year.

5 MEMBER BEACH: So, they haven't 

6 gone back --

7 DR. NETON: But my sense is that 

8 Worker Outreach Database is really more group 

9 discussions and such.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

11 Hinnefeld.

12 I don't think there are any 

13 individual interviews in that database. I 

14 think that's notes from the group discussion.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Well, he just 

16 mentioned worker outreach meetings, and I 

17 assumed that they would be --

18 DR. NETON: Well, worker outreach 

19 meetings should, those interviews preceded 

20 this database.

21 MR. ROLFES: Right and also the 

22 worker outreach meetings that have been held 
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1 with Pantex offsite for this project are on 

2 our website right now. There's four 

3 transcripts which are there. I think I 

4 mentioned the earliest one was in May of 2004, 

5 and there was one in 2007, and then a couple 

6 in 2008.

7 MEMBER BEACH: So, you will you 

8 send us a link to them?

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes, sure. Sure.

10 MEMBER BEACH: Or at least the FRB 

11 numbers, so we can find them easily?

12 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I certainly can.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. That would 

14 be great. Thank you.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron from 

16 SC&A.

17 Mark, would you summarize, then, 

18 saying that your personal interviews with the 

19 workers that actually worked on the floor, 

20 dating back to, say, the 60s, that they said 

21 that the conditions were very clean, and that 

22 there wasn't contamination or problems in the 
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1 personal interviews you did with the workers?

2 MR. ROLFES: I would have to take 

3 a look back at the interviews notes to 

4 determine whether or not, because there were 

5 some exceptions. One of the big incidents 

6 that I had mentioned earlier was in 1961, and 

7 that was one of the big exceptions where there 

8 was a plutonium release in one of the cells. 

9 That was certainly something completely 

10 different from routine operations, and it 

11 warranted an investigation and 

12 decontamination. Individuals were bioassayed.

13 That was certainly a focus of many 

14 workers' attention from that time period. 

15 They were certainly concerned about that 

16 event. So, yes, they did express concerns 

17 about contamination that were out of the 

18 ordinary.

19 Another example that had occurred 

20 was in one of the igloos where they had 

21 basically some nuclear weapons accident 

22 residues that were pulled out of a CONEX 
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1 underground storage cylinder. Basically, they 

2 had opened up this container and basically had 

3 some barrels of waste, but it had rained the 

4 previous night, got the barrels wet. They had 

5 surveyed the barrels down near the technical 

6 contamination and transferred them to an area 

7 for staging and repackaging to ship offsite, I 

8 believe.

9 And when they had returned to the 

10 area where the materials were stored into the 

11 igloo, they found contamination. So, at that 

12 point, it became an incident. They hadn't 

13 detected any output contamination when they 

14 initially pulled them out of the ground 

15 because it was wet. The barrels were wet.

16 So, anyway, I think that was when 

17 Joe was referring to an individual being lung18 counted because there was an individual who 

19 had entered the igloo and didn't realize that 

20 there was any loose contamination. He had 

21 actually seen something on the floor and went 

22 in and apparently tried to clean it up. He 
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1 was subsequently identified when they 

2 determined it was radiological contamination. 

3 So, that individual was sent to Los Alamos 

4 National Laboratory to determine if he had any 

5 plutonium or americium in his lungs.

6 Once again, they developed a 

7 decontamination plan for that incident and 

8 actually issued -- the individuals were 

9 participants in a bioassay program at that 

10 time. They had actually issued like a 

11 certificate to the workers who had gone in and 

12 had been involved in the decontamination of 

13 the cell.

14 So, I have heard about many, many 

15 incidents and things like that. I believe 

16 that we've got a good handle on all the 

17 incidents, the major incidents, that 

18 contributed to potential worker intakes.

19 I hear good things and bad things, 

20 and I treat them -- you know, I want to make 

21 sure that we are accounting for the 

22 radioactive materials to which a worker is 
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1 exposed and make sure that, if there isn't 

2 data available for that specific individual, I 

3 try to find out why and if there should be. 

4 That is when coworker intakes or coworker 

5 doses come along.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, but did the 

7 workers actually state, other than the events, 

8 did the workers actually state that, yes, 

9 generally, it was clean; we weren't aware of 

10 any contamination problems other than the 

11 events? Did any of them testify to that 

12 concept?

13 MR. ROLFES: I would have to take 

14 a look back. There's been so many interviews 

15 that we have conducted. You know, it depends. 

16 Some of the workers have expressed concern 

17 about non-radiological contaminants, such as 

18 beryllium, about high explosives. So, there's 

19 many different things. There's not just 

20 radiological contamination that they were 

21 concerned about.

22 There were various other materials 
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1 that were of concern from the laboratory 

2 onsite could have been concerned about some 

3 organic compound. They were concerned about 

4 phosphates, organic compounds in fertilizers, 

5 in pesticides. So, I have heard a very wide 

6 range of concerns. We have to make sure that 

7 we are asking about the same types of 

8 contaminants and the same types of concerns. 

9 We need to make sure that it pertains to 

10 radiation exposures or contamination from 

11 radiological components.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I want to make 

13 a point, too, especially with my Work Group 

14 meeting, I would like each side, because what 

15 I type up as their action items does not 

16 usually end up what they remember it as. So, 

17 I would like SC&A to be able, if they have an 

18 action item that they need to be able to do, 

19 if I could have you keep a list of anything 

20 that you have done for that.

21 Mel, or whatever, just so that 

22 when we get to the end of this day that we can 
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1 kind of read back on those to make sure that 

2 we have the right action items for each one of 

3 our groups to be able to do.

4 One of them right upfront with 

5 NIOSH is we would like to be able to see where 

6 the worker interview data is because I'll be 

7 right honest with you, I have scoured through 

8 that and I still cannot find them. Either I 

9 need the SRD, the database number, or so 

10 forth, so that we can be able to review these 

11 workers' interviews and if they are all in 

12 just that one database.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Maybe if they can 

14 be posted in a subdirectory in the document 

15 review --

16 MR. ROLFES: Right, right.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: And it's 

18 interviews. Don't just lump them in with all 

19 the other research documents because, then, it 

20 will be easier for us to find.

21 MR. ROLFES: Yes, we can quickly 

22 overwhelm you, I'm sure.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know, yes, 

2 right.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, we 

4 have discussed tritium. One thing I would 

5 like to say about tritium is in our interviews 

6 we had at the training bays I questioned, 

7 because of my background with Savannah River, 

8 talking about reservoirs, what they did. The 

9 majority of the workforce told me, we call the 

10 experts. We don't deal with that. We deal 

11 with these things. We call Savannah River or 

12 these other places if we have an issue arise 

13 with these. 

14 And if I remember right, in the 

15 70s is when Savannah River found some problems 

16 with the reservoirs. The wells, and so forth, 

17 is what you were talking about, the problems 

18 that they had in there.

19 That is where I believe it raised 

20 its head was down to Pantex. I am trying to 

21 figure out how much I can actually say about 

22 that. That is one of the things while that 
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1 era there was kind of interesting to me about 

2 the tritium, and so forth, because most of the 

3 workforce down there really didn't -- if we 

4 have an issue about it or we have a question 

5 about it, we call the experts. We don't mess 

6 with it.

7 I come to find out that they 

8 really didn't have a good understanding of 

9 what they really had. I am just being 

10 brutally honest here. They were told this, 

11 but they did not know it, or anything else 

12 like that. I have asked them point blank, 

13 what do you do if you have an issue like that? 

14 And they say, well, we call Savannah River 

15 and they send somebody down to take care of 

16 us.

17 MR. ROLFES: Brad, is what you are

18 referring to maybe the 1989 incident where 

19 they had the big tritium release?

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Actually, what 

21 it was was that they come to find out that the 

22 tritium was penetrating through the 
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1 reservoirs.

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Okay.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And it showed 

4 itself at Pantex. It had never occurred with 

5 that, and that is when Savannah River started 

6 doing the research. That is what they came up 

7 with. What they started to find out was how 

8 far the tritium was penetrating through the 

9 different materials, and the different 

10 materials that they had had for tritium 

11 reservoirs, and so forth like that. That is 

12 what raised, was at Pantex.

13 But Savannah River, being the 

14 experts with it, are the ones that went 

15 through it and so forth. One of the things 

16 that I find is that Pantex had a certain job 

17 to do. They were to do these things. On 

18 numerous occasions, and we have heard it from 

19 numerous interviews and so forth, all they 

20 knew is that this part went here, this, and 

21 this, and this. They really did not have a 

22 good understanding, not due to -- a lot of it 
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1 was classification stuff, but they didn't know 

2 what they were dealing with. They knew the 

3 component and so forth like that, and they 

4 went from there. As far as the tritium, and 

5 so forth, that is all they knew about it.

6 DR. CHEW: What is the fundamental 

7 question, though? I understand what you said.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: In the 70s is 

9 when this started to raise itself. We are 

10 talking 1972, now we have data here with this. 

11 It was in the earlier years that they started 

12 seeing problems with some of the tritium in 

13 the late 60s or something like that.

14 So, that was my understanding. 

15 So, my statement is that I think we need to 

16 have a better understanding of what we 

17 actually had there with it, and I don't think 

18 just doubling it and going back -- I guess I 

19 would be looking more for a stance of what you 

20 are standing on.

21 DR. CHEW: Brad, I will just make 

22 a short comment. I guess we could possibly 
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1 separate -- what you are talking about is the 

2 design issue here, and we've got to lead it to 

3 whether it was an exposure issue here, so from 

4 that particular issue. So, we have got to 

5 link that, too. We can talk all about the 

6 design, but that is the exposure --

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right, but the 

8 design change came from a release, a problem 

9 that they saw. That's where I was getting to 

10 with it.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And certainly one 

12 line of inquiry beyond the design issue is 

13 just simply there was an SOP where, if you had 

14 a CAM alarm for tritium, workers would 

15 evacuate the cell. A basic question with 

16 these four groups, then, in fact, bioassay or 

17 not, I mean that part of it I am not clear.

18 Certainly the exposure potential 

19 existed with the CAM alarm going off in a 

20 cell, but the question is, then, were all 

21 workers present bioassayed or not? I don't 

22 know if that is answerable with the data that 
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1 is still available, but that would be 

2 something that would help validate, I think, 

3 the things that we are talking about that the 

4 program was operating pretty rigorously.

5 MR. ROLFES: I can say that not 

6 all workers were bioassayed when a CAM alarm 

7 went off because one of the first things that 

8 would occur would be like a program engineer 

9 or a safety representative would response to 

10 the cell when the CAM alarm alarms.

11 Usually, what was done, they would 

12 investigate the work area to see if there was 

13 an actual release, et cetera. Sometimes it 

14 was just a faulty alarm. They were set to be 

15 sensitive and sort of err on the side of being 

16 conservative to detect any release.

17 But there were certainly 

18 situations where a worker would not have been 

19 bioassayed following a CAM alarm, just because 

20 a lot of the times they are false-positive 

21 results or potentially a result of an elevated 

22 rate on concentration in a cell.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Do we know what 

2 the set points were on those CAMs?

3 MR. ROLFES: Off the top of my 

4 head, I know we have it, but off the top of my 

5 head, I don't recall what. Do you happen to 

6 know, Mel?

7 DR. CHEW: There were several 

8 instruments being used. I don't want to say 

9 the number. I think we talked about this 

10 before. In the T-290, there was more of a 

11 local unit, and then there were boxes that 

12 were developed for putting a stationary unit. 

13 Then, they converted over to the T-446. But 

14 they were usually set to see, you know, 1 

15 times 10 at the working level for tritium. 

16 You assume there's water at about 5 to 10 

17 microcuries per cubic meter.

18 So, to answer your question, the 

19 T-290s were set different than the --

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I just 

21 wondered if they had set points because, in 

22 talking with some of the former workers and so 
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1 forth like that, they did say that they had 

2 radon issues and so forth like that. So, that 

3 a lot of times if they kept alarming and stuff 

4 like that, that they just bumped them up.

5 And I was wondering if they had a 

6 strict procedure of how they would bump that 

7 up or what they would actually set that to 

8 because in the earlier years the radon was 

9 affected more, is my understanding. I wasn't 

10 there, but just from what they have told us, 

11 that it was more affected.

12 DR. CHEW: To answer your question 

13 specifically, the set points are different for 

14 the different instruments they were using and 

15 for a different purpose. So, I could not give 

16 you one answer.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I wonder 

18 if we have looked into that because I know 

19 that, like we are saying though, we are 

20 talking today that they have a certain set 

21 point for these that they ran at, and maybe we 

22 need to be able to look into that and make 
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1 sure that they didn't have a set procedure for 

2 that.

3 MR. ROLFES: There is a procedure 

4 that I recall for the RAMs unit, and I believe 

5 we have it here somewhere in the Site Research 

6 Database. I can identify that also.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's for the 

8 RAMs?

9 MR. FITZGERALD: But I think what 

10 you are saying is that you would need to 

11 adjust for the technology and the set point 

12 and some of these other variables if you are 

13 going to apply data for that period.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, we have 

15 trouble with different times of the year. 

16 They have to change our set points to be able 

17 to address that.

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Now, in 

19 addition, also, after a CAM had run, it would 

20 monitor the concentration of alpha emitters in 

21 air. Now it would also be pulled, that filter 

22 would be pulled out of the unit. I can't
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1 recall if it was on a monthly basis. They 

2 would actually analyze it, again, in a low3 level counter to see if there was any 

4 contaminants that were not detected in the 

5 routine air sampling program.

6 I don't recall if it was like a 

7 proportional counter that they had used 

8 separately to do like a low background count 

9 on the filters after they had also been run 

10 for a month.

11 So, it was monitoring real-time, 

12 and then, also, monthly when they pulled the 

13 filter or changed the filter.

14 DR. CHEW: Not to be confused, so 

15 we understand this, there were the tritium 

16 monitors, and then there were the ones that 

17 Mark is talking about that were basically 

18 looking for output. So, there's different 

19 kind of instrumentation.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, they 

21 weren't using the same one for the same 

22 monitoring then? Were they using the CAMs or 
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1 there's two different --

2 DR. CHEW: There's two different 

3 type of systems. One is they are looking for 

4 the gas from the tritium, and the other one is 

5 looking for particulates.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

7 DR. CHEW: Entirely different.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Just a followup, 

9 because I think this notion of using the air 

10 monitoring data, and there was a statistical 

11 analysis for cell 4. I think that was 

12 presented at one of the -- I guess I am still 

13 troubled by whether the monitoring technology, 

14 the set points, you know, some of the issues 

15 relative to what was responded to, what was 

16 the monitoring done in the early days, is such 

17 that, you know, the statistical analysis sort 

18 of looks at whether the numbers are 

19 statistically valid, but I am looking at 

20 whether the technology that produced the 

21 numbers is, in fact, adjusted for when you are 

22 using this data today.
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1 And I didn't see that. I don't 

2 know to what extent that was looked at, but, 

3 certainly, it broaches a number of questions. 

4 Were the CAMs, in fact, sensitive enough to 

5 have seen a level of exposure that would be 

6 pertinent to dose reconstruction? Is that 

7 going to be consistent with whatever coworker 

8 model is used? In terms of applying data 

9 backwards, we are going to get into that with 

10 uranium, but if you are going to rely on air 

11 sampling data, then have you actually 

12 normalized against the technology that was 

13 used? And does that affect the results that 

14 we have or not?

15 I didn't see that in the ER, and 

16 maybe it wasn't the right place for it, but 

17 that certainly would be something that you are 

18 raising and is relevant. Is the monitoring, 

19 air sample monitoring, and what have you, 

20 different? I think all of us would agree that 

21 the technology was different back then, but 

22 what's the implications for doing what is 
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1 being proposed in the ER, you know, that you 

2 can actually take the data that came from that 

3 monitoring and use it in some fashion? Even 

4 applying a statistical test to it, I would 

5 still say, what is the effect of the older 

6 monitoring that was done, the technology being 

7 1960s technology for looking at tritium, and 

8 1960s alpha monitoring capability, and what's 

9 the difference? Does it matter what's the 

10 uncertainties involved in the equipment? Does 

11 it have any implications?

12 That's not addressed, and I think 

13 where you are looking at air sampling 

14 information, I think that is one of the 

15 questions that has to be asked. Does it have 

16 an implication for what you are proposing?

17 MR. ROLFES: Just to clarify a 

18 little bit, we didn't use those air sampling 

19 results from the cells as the basis for our 

20 dose reconstruction method. We actually have 

21 something -- we assign intakes which exceed by 

22 an order of magnitude or more the intakes 
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1 which would be based on air sampling.

2 We've got a different method in 

3 our TBD. If you look at table 5-19, it has 

4 summary default intakes. These were also 

5 based upon worker interviews that were 

6 conducted on the site.

7 For example, for a production 

8 technician or a radiation safety technologist 

9 or an assembler/disassembler individual from 

10 the period of 1961 through 1993, we would 

11 assume a chronic exposure to tritium, depleted 

12 uranium. Let's see, both via inhalation and 

13 ingestion and assume the most claimant14 favorable solubility of the materials which 

15 they --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: But I'm really 

17 speaking to the default values for whether it 

18 is depleted uranium or something else, where 

19 your default values are based on a comparison 

20 of the early period, say the 70s, with the 

21 later period, the 80s, in order to come up 

22 with, and you have done a statistical 
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1 analysis. You have based it on cell 4, one 

2 set of data.

3 The only question I am raising is 

4 that I understand where you are going. You 

5 are going to the air sampling information as a

6 default when you don't have the bioassay, but 

7 it raises questions about whether the 

8 monitoring is comparable one for one. I don't 

9 see that addressed as far as whether you can 

10 actually do that.

11 And let me give you the specific 

12 cite because I am looking at this thing. 

13 NIOSH further analyzed alpha air concentration 

14 data collected for certain time periods and 

15 concluded that the concentrations in the 1970s 

16 were statistically lower than those measured 

17 in the 1980s, particularly for cell 4, which 

18 supports the choice of a default chronic 

19 intake value for depleted uranium. That is 

20 taken from the ER and also from the response.

21 Again, I think I understand why 

22 the analysis was done, but I don't quite see 
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1 how that comparison can be done without 

2 putting that to bed, that the technology is 

3 normalized, that you had the same thresholds 

4 and what have you.

5 It is just a question. I mean it 

6 is sort of, whenever we get to the air 

7 sampling information, I think you really are 

8 perhaps on shakier ground using the early air 

9 sampling data without wrestling with the 

10 questions about what were the thresholds of 

11 detectability, what were the set points, and 

12 the rest of it?

13 MEMBER BEACH: Well, and 

14 placement, also.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And placement, 

16 which is something we mentioned earlier. I 

17 mean, if it is out in the hallway and you are 

18 talking about a release within the cell, the 

19 question would be, what is that monitor seeing 

20 versus what was present in the breathing zone 

21 of the worker in the cell, those kinds of 

22 obvious questions.
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1 Certainly, that was a major 

2 feedback from the workers we interviewed, that 

3 when we mentioned some of these air monitors, 

4 they said, well, you know, we're not pretty 

5 confident because we knew where the air 

6 monitors were. They were way over here, and 

7 before the air monitor would have seen 

8 anything, we would have been exposed. So, it 

9 was a big difference.

10 And we had them diagram in the 

11 interviews where was the placement. So, you 

12 have some obvious questions about whether that 

13 was, in fact, representative or not.

14 MR. ROLFES: Right. And 

15 typically, when there was a CAM alarm it was 

16 investigated, I certainly acknowledge that it 

17 would take more time. You know, a worker 

18 could be working right here, and the CAM alarm 

19 might not alarm, you know, 10 feet away on the 

20 wall. That is certainly very possible.

21 But if there is enough 

22 contamination, it will eventually alarm since 
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1 it is a ventilated area. And in those cases 

2 where the CAM alarm did alarm, it required a 

3 response from someone from the Safety 

4 Department to come and investigate. Sometimes 

5 there were nasal swipes taken, other times 

6 there were not. Sometimes the individual 

7 provided a urine sample, and sometimes they 

8 did not.

9 We have looked at the occurrences. 

10 Also, we have also seen situations where they 

11 would take surveys of the cells to determine 

12 how much contamination was released or where 

13 it was, what it was. We have seen 

14 documentation of contaminants being released 

15 and surveys of like tooling, various items in 

16 a cell, and personnel as well.

17 Even if we don't have a bioassay 

18 from those individuals, we can still use --

19 you know, if there is a clothing contamination 

20 -- amount of contamination on an individual's 

21 face or something perhaps, we can still use 

22 that information to generate an intake and 
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1 also flag that individual as having a 

2 potential for exposure, and truly having an 

3 exposure.

4 But I'm unaware of any situation, 

5 other than documented significant incidents 

6 where we have some large contamination event, 

7 that we haven't accounted for in our Site 

8 Profile or aren't aware of in our Evaluation 

9 Report or the records that we have.

10 So, we have quite a large 

11 database. Like I said, we have made several 

12 trips to work with the workers down at Pantex, 

13 to go to various record centers on multiple 

14 occasions to review records.

15 You know, we still don't know it 

16 all. We never will. But I think we have a 

17 demonstrable case that we are assigning 

18 bounding, claimant-favorable intakes and 

19 radiation exposures to workers historically.

20 Now we will whatever we can to 

21 show the data that we have to formulate these 

22 bases. We will do everything that we can to 
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1 explain our basis and justify. And if it 

2 turns out that we don't have a sound basis, 

3 that is fine.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think, 

5 just picking something, let's just pick 

6 depleted uranium as an example, since we are 

7 in this in the realm of internal. Depleted 

8 uranium was used fairly routinely through the 

9 operating history.

10 MR. ROLFES: Right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean it is 

12 certainly not like -- you know, it was used. 

13 And depleted uranium, of course, oxidizes, so 

14 you have some exposure involved there.

15 And correct me if I'm wrong 

16 because I am trying to provide an overview, 

17 but the approach for depleted uranium would be 

18 to take the urinalysis data for 1990, or

19 certainly that time frame, and back20 extrapolate and use that for the earlier 

21 period. And the basis that we read in the 

22 Evaluation Report was that was, relatively 
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1 speaking, a bounding operational period 

2 because of the disassembly that was going on, 

3 and certainly much more so than in earlier 

4 time periods.

5 I am not going to reiterate my 

6 preamble from before, but the question on 

7 depleted uranium would be an obvious one. 

8 Were the operations in 1990 that you are 

9 banking on in terms of your analyses bounding 

10 for the depleted uranium handling that existed 

11 in the 30 or 40 years previously? And why 

12 should we have confidence that, in fact, that 

13 is so? That you, in fact, by virtue of, I 

14 think a comment that was in there, you know it 

15 was just a big disassembly time frame, but 

16 without going down to the basics, how many 

17 disassemblies, of what kinds of units, and 

18 what is the characteristic of the DU in those 

19 units or the exposure pathways that were 

20 potentially involved? I think that is a first 

21 question, a going-in question, as far as back22 extrapolating that data in 1990 to all years 
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1 previously.

2 Now the default to not having data 

3 for an individual would be to go to the air 

4 sampling, which we just talked about. There 

5 again, my concern over that is how 

6 representative was the technology, how 

7 comparable was the technology? How 

8 representative was the sampling itself that 

9 was done? Could you rely on it that way?

10 Typically troublesome is a number 

11 of workers and health physicists have told us 

12 that a body of air sampling records were 

13 discarded, destroyed, not available. I don't 

14 know what that would imply then for using some 

15 of that information.

16 It sort of reminds me of 

17 situations that we have confronted elsewhere 

18 where I'm trying to chase down documentation. 

19 Of course, we stopped our review because this 

20 Work Group needed to meet and everything. But 

21 that is one of the questions I have. How many 

22 records were destroyed and certainly air 
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1 sampling was fingered as a set of records that 

2 were destroyed, but there isn't a whole lot of 

3 data. I think we admit that, when you go back 

4 in time, the data seems to be lacking. But 

5 how much of that data is lacking because it 

6 was discarded? That would be a question I 

7 would want to really look to because that 

8 would certainly get into the integrity of the 

9 database.

10 You know, are we dealing with the 

11 whole set or are we dealing with a partial 

12 set, and we just don't even realize it? And 

13 there's data missing on air sampling, maybe 

14 event-driven bioassays. I don't know.

15 So, in terms of stepping back from 

16 it, I think those are the kinds of questions 

17 we have to answer when we get into some of 

18 this data review. It goes to the integrity 

19 and completeness of the database, and also the 

20 comparability and the back-extrapolation 

21 method.

22 I think any time you back-
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1 extrapolate, I think the hurdle is higher to 

2 show that that's okay, that you can do that 

3 using modern data and applying it back. In 

4 fact, I think it becomes quite a challenge. 

5 Again, I don't think we are quite there yet.

6 MR. ROLFES: You know, if the 

7 potential for internal exposures in the 

8 earlier years would have been the same as it 

9 was in a more recent time period with this 

10 assembly, then I would be more concerned. But 

11 everything that I have seen, everything that I 

12 have heard based on interviews, research, 

13 documentation, show that new metal parts being 

14 sent to the site didn't present a 

15 contamination potential when they were being 

16 assembled versus when they were being 

17 disassembled.

18 To clarify, we don't necessarily 

19 rely upon 1990s data for reconstructing 

20 uranium intakes, for example. We do have 

21 bioassay results back in 1959 for uranium 

22 exposures. That would be the most important 
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1 information to use for a dose reconstruction 

2 for that individual.

3 So, I do want to say, although we 

4 don't have a huge database of bioassay 

5 results, we do have bits and pieces of 

6 information. Whether it is complete or not, I 

7 don't know, and I doubt if I will ever know.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm a 

9 little confused then. Because I think from 

10 the Evaluation Report, and maybe I misread 

11 this, NIOSH also sets intakes for 1961 to 1979 

12 to be equal to intakes for 1980 to 1993, 

13 keying on 1990, because they are significantly 

14 favorable to the claimant, and again, because 

15 of the dismantlement activities and other 

16 activities.

17 So, it would seem that there is 

18 that judgment being applied that this would be 

19 bounding, that a later period would be 

20 bounding.

21 MR. ROLFES: Well, I guess I 

22 should clarify because this is for an 
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1 individual who isn't monitored. If they don't 

2 have monitoring data in their file --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

4 MR. ROLFES: -- then we would 

5 default to the information in the TBD.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Right. 

7 Right, and this is a coworker approach. But, 

8 again, I would hesitate to support that 

9 without understanding how these variables play 

10 out.

11 I think the number of 

12 dismantlements is not alone sufficient to make 

13 that judgment. I think it gets to the 

14 exposure pathways that might have been 

15 associated with the dismantlements more than 

16 anything else. 

17 MEMBER BEACH: Mark, how much 

18 bioassay data do you have from 1959?

19 MR. ROLFES: I don't know if I 

20 could answer right now. Since it was largely 

21 an event-driven program, there's a couple of 

22 handfuls, I would say. For example, in 1959, 
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1 I want to say I have seen a couple of sheets 

2 that have results from that. I can probably 

3 take a look in our Site Research Database over 

4 our lunch break and get back to you.

5 But I would say it is probably 

6 about a handful of 10 people that would have 

7 received components and cleaned them, for 

8 example, and may have had an incident where, 

9 you know --

10 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So, you are 

11 talking about just a limited number of people?

12 MR. ROLFES: Yes, it was a limited 

13 number of people.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: And before we 

15 break, it seems like it's getting to that 

16 lunchtime hour, but --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: The manager did 

18 warn us that there is a large group going at 

19 noon.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Oh, okay.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: So, I think it 

22 would be better to wait probably a little 
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1 closer to a little later.

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I was just 

3 going to ask if there's any clear actions or 

4 path forward on these issues coming out of 

5 this meeting. I mean I'm going of struggling 

6 with one thing I think, and just skimming your 

7 document on this subject, but it seems to me 

8 it might be good for NIOSH to add to their 

9 basis for this approach.

10 In other words, specifically 

11 referencing some of those interviews, I know I 

12 have looked through and I have found some of 

13 the stuff on the Site Research Database. 

14 Giving that there's only interviews, it seems 

15 like there's a lot, and to Joe's point a 

16 little bit, there's a lot of people with a lot 

17 of experience in the later years. It looks 

18 like it might be a little thinner on the 

19 earlier years. But this is just me, you know, 

20 looking at it for 10 minutes.

21 So, if you can help us out with 

22 here's the key people that we interviewed 
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1 related to the earlier operations period, and 

2 this is part and parcel to our basis for using 

3 this approach, I think that would help. That

4 would strength the -- I guess my feeling is 

5 maybe we need some, either, interview or 

6 direct data support for that approach that you 

7 are --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Talking about the 

9 objective analysis, yes.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and the 

11 other thing I saw, again, going through the 

12 documents, was one of the interviewees 

13 mentioned swipe data. I haven't heard that 

14 come up, and maybe, again, that may support 

15 your position that, if there is swipe data out 

16 there from the early period, it may show how 

17 little contamination there was, and it may 

18 support the argument for, you know -- but I 

19 don't know. I think it needs to be a little 

20 more objective basis, in my opinion anyway.

21 MR. ROLFES: The majority of the 

22 swipe data that I have reviewed is probably 
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1 from the 1980s and associated with some 

2 particular incidents that had occurred right 

3 before the Tiger Team assessment.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: This person wrote 

5 down, Component swipe data, 48, 55 through 56.

6 MR. ROLFES: That sounds like from 

7 my notes, then.

8 (Laughter.)

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: It was from your 

10 interview, yes. Yes.

11 DR. CHEW: Those are not dates. 

12 Those are for specific units.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. I 

14 thought they were years. That would make 

15 sense, yes.

16 DR. CHEW: It is W48.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, okay, so it 

18 was the units. All right. So, it may be in 

19 the later years.

20 You get the idea. If there is 

21 some sort of --

22 MR. ROLFES: Right, it is still 
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1 the same weapon. The component is still the 

2 same when it is built into a weapon versus 

3 when it is pulled out of the stockpile and 

4 dismantled, and much of the data that was 

5 collected was during dismantlement.

6 So, if you only have 10 dpm of 

7 uranium, for example, in a disassembly in the 

8 90s, you know, it is very unlikely the 

9 contamination was at a higher level for 

10 uranium in the early days when it was 

11 assembled. So, something like that, that 

12 would be an example of a piece of information 

13 from the 1990s which would be applicable back 

14 to 1960, when an assembly was conducted.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think for 

16 a number of these hypotheses -- and they are 

17 hypotheses -- whether it is uranium, tritium, 

18 I think what we are saying is, in terms of 

19 focusing on the subjective basis, which is to 

20 at least point to the interviews which are 

21 particularly relevant, and then on the 

22 objective side, beyond the interviews, what 
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1 objective basis is there for making the 

2 claims? Without beating this to death, beyond 

3 the number of dismantlements, what, in terms 

4 of exposure pathway, focusing on that, would 

5 lead you to feel that the 1990 data would be 

6 bounding?

7 I think you have a number of 

8 parameters. You have the monitoring that was 

9 done now versus then. You have the operations 

10 now versus then. You have the rad control 

11 requirements, procedures, and programs now 

12 versus then. I think those are the variables 

13 that have to be normalized to make the claim 

14 that you can feel confident this would bound 

15 it.

16 It is almost the same with the 

17 interviews. What we are all suggesting is 

18 that the way to normalize those is, how many 

19 of these interviews actually date to the 

20 period where you would have firsthand 

21 knowledge versus secondary or third hand

22 knowledge? Because I think that has a bearing 
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1 as well.

2 So, in general, the theme is the 

3 same. We are really saying, how much basis 

4 can one get to for doing a very fundamental 

5 thing, which is saying -- you know, and this 

6 is right to heart of an SEC -- we don't have 

7 the data, and the way we are going to address 

8 that is by applying the latter day data back 

9 in time 20-30 years. I think that is a pretty 

10 big leap. I think that is a leap that you 

11 can't take unless you provide a pretty good 

12 basis, something that makes sense.

13 That is kind of where it comes to.

14 MR. ROLFES: We can work to better 

15 explain our basis and document that for you.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: And the other 

17 thing that I think would be helpful, I did see 

18 -- SC&A has done some of these as well, right? 

19 I mean I saw some notes --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, as part of 

21 Site Profile.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- some notes 
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1 from SC&A. Okay. I mean, if these things are 

2 on the O: drive at least, I know we can't put 

3 names in that, but I think that would be 

4 useful, too, to have the names, so that SC&A, 

5 if they have interviewed them, they can 

6 compare notes or they may want to go back to 

7 clarify things. Okay.

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I believe our 

9 interview notes --

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know there's 

11 some overlap. I saw some from SC&A.

12 MR. ROLFES: Right. Everything 

13 that we put into the Site Research Database 

14 includes the Privacy Act information.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: I have one comment. 

16 Even back in the 60s and 70s, they did 

17 swipes, just to make sure there wasn't any 

18 contamination. So, even if they didn't have a 

19 full-fledged health physics program and they 

20 expected it to be low, is there any -- and, 

21 surely, there should be -- some records of 

22 yearly or occasional flags --
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, to verify, 

2 right?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: To verify that they 

4 were clean. And they did that even back 

5 before they had all the regulations and 

6 instrumentation they have today. In the 60s 

7 and 70s, they did that. So, if we had some 

8 periodic records of swipes showing that these 

9 things were less than detectable or around 

10 background for these different cells and 

11 facilities, that would kind of support the 

12 fact that it was clean. Without that, we 

13 don't really have any proof that it was.

14 But that would be one thing 

15 showing that your assumption that it was clean 

16 was clean, even if it was once a year or 

17 something. And usually, we always did them 

18 periodically, even if we didn't have a routine 

19 requirement of it.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I have one 

21 more.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: No, go ahead.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, one more 

2 item on uranium. I am just taking sort of the 

3 flow from not only our matrix, but on your 

4 response.

5 But, Sarah, we are walking down 

6 the issue number 1, and now we have gone to 

7 issue number 2, on uranium, but these all have 

8 to do with internal uptake, internal dosimetry 

9 and different facets of it. And we are 

10 talking about how depleted uranium was 

11 handled. We did mention tritium before that, 

12 and then, in a broader sense, how internal was 

13 being handled as a whole. So, that is kind of 

14 the flow of this thing. So, we are finishing 

15 up on depleted uranium.

16 One issue --

17 MS. RAY: Can I make a comment 

18 about the depleted uranium?

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, sure.

20 MR. KATZ: Go ahead, Sarah.

21 MS. RAY: I have to admit that I 

22 have had something going on for a minute, so I 
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1 haven't been able to listen to everything. 

2 So, I may be repeating something.

3 But one of the things that I 

4 always thought was important was the burning 

5 that was done as part of the training for the 

6 fire department, and some of the materials 

7 that were included were beryllium and depleted 

8 uranium. It was like diesel fuel or whatever 

9 fuel ignited in underlying pits and then 

10 burned into the open air. The fire department 

11 individuals only had splash shields. I have 

12 pictures of it. It is clear that there was no 

13 special PPE for this.

14 But I would like to make the 

15 comment that that is one thing that was done 

16 with depleted uranium. I have also heard many 

17 stories from workers about being underneath 

18 the weapon when they are disassembling and 

19 having the black dust all over them. I'm sure 

20 other people who have actually talked to the 

21 older workers have heard the same story.

22 Thanks for letting me add that 
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1 input.

2 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Sarah.

3 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Sarah.

4 NIOSH does have information in the 

5 Site Profile about the depleted uranium 

6 contamination encountered at the burning areas 

7 as well the firing sites. So, if you have 

8 information that might be helpful to us, I 

9 would certainly encourage you to provide that 

10 to us as well, please.

11 MS. RAY: Certainly. And I have 

12 one more comment.

13 At most facilities, I understand 

14 it was common practice for the workers to be 

15 swiped and showered before they left. 

16 Generally, the contaminated coveralls, et 

17 cetera, were left in the area where the work 

18 was done. That was not the practice at 

19 Pantex.

20 So, depleted uranium and other 

21 types of powders like that, beryllium, et

22 cetera, were taken throughout the plant on 
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1 individual's coveralls, and they were also in 

2 the documents, the weapons procedures, and the 

3 meeting cards that were taken to the data 

4 center, and then later these same documents 

5 had to be shredded. So, there were 

6 individuals who were exposed to documents that 

7 were coated with many of these materials, 

8 including the depleted uranium.

9 So, thanks again for listening.

10 MR. ROLFES: Thank you.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I just had 

12 one last issue on the uranium discussion or 

13 the topic. One issue we raised was the table, 

14 I guess in the original ER, which dealt with 

15 sensitivity levels in terms of urinalysis 

16 data. We expressed a concern over unexplained 

17 and implausibly extreme changes in those 

18 values.

19 When we looked through the data, 

20 the values were all over the place, and we 

21 couldn't understand why that would be. I 

22 think in your most recent response that is 
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1 explained by indicating that Pantex outsourced 

2 to different analytic laboratories and that 

3 would give you these different values. But 

4 that still leaves us with some pause because, 

5 why did you have the widely-divergent 

6 sensitivity values from the labs that were 

7 providing support to Pantex, and what are the 

8 implications of that?

9 So, I don't have an answer. I am 

10 just sort of responding to the response that 

11 we are concerned about these divergent values. 

12 We understand what you are saying, that it is 

13 because you had different labs supporting the 

14 analysis, but then it sort of begs the 

15 question, what does it mean to have these labs 

16 coming in with such different sensitivity 

17 values for uranium? Can that be adjusted for? 

18 I assume it might be adjustable. But that 

19 was something that, for clarification sake, we 

20 included, but I guess we still need some 

21 clarification on that.

22 MR. ROLFES: We pointed out here 
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1 on page 13 of our response here, beginning in 

2 1959, Los Alamos National Laboratory was 

3 conducting bioassays and reported a detection 

4 sensitivity for depleted uranium of .5 

5 micrograms per liter. Then, it goes on and 

6 records the various other laboratories, tracer 

7 lab controls for radiation, Camp Dresser & 

8 McKee, isotopes.

9 Anyway, the approach, if we have a 

10 bioassay sample that is, for example, 10 

11 micrograms per liter, and that is the reported 

12 detection sensitivity, then the dose 

13 reconstruction approach that we would do for 

14 an individual who submitted that bioassay 

15 sample, we would use that analysis, and we 

16 would basically look to determine whether that 

17 was a positive value or a less than detectable 

18 value. We would still use that, no matter how 

19 it is reported to us, in some manner to 

20 reconstruct that individual's intake.

21 So, for example, if an individual 

22 had a 15-microgram-per-liter sample, we would 
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1 use that to reconstruct a positive uranium 

2 result. If the lab, for example, Tracer lab, 

3 in 1960 reported that the result was less than 

4 10 micrograms, we know 10 micrograms was the 

5 limit of detection. So, we would actually 

6 assign a missed intake to that worker. So, we 

7 still would assign an intake, irregardless of 

8 the lab that conducted the bioassay. It would 

9 still be used, no matter how it is reported, I 

10 guess I should say.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And it would be, 

12 you're saying, an adjustment that would be 

13 done, adjustment factor?

14 MR. ROLFES: Well, we would have 

15 to make some analysis as to whether it was, in 

16 fact, a positive result or a less-than17 detectable result or at the detection 

18 sensitivity. It is just a matter of 

19 interpreting that data.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Thank you.

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I've got a 

22 question for you, Mark. We had AEC and then 
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1 we have DOE now. As the years went by, the 

2 levels where things are triggered, uptake, 

3 airborne uptake and falling down, do we have 

4 that data saying, you know, anything below 

5 this point was basically ignored? Or what 

6 point did they actually look into getting a 

7 urine sample?

8 MR. ROLFES: Well, Pantex, we have 

9 been dealing with a lot of production 

10 facilities, and Pantex is a production 

11 facility, but it is a different kind of 

12 production facility. It is not a place like 

13 Fernald or Rocky Flats or a reactor site like 

14 Savannah River Site or Hanford, or a 

15 plutonium fabrication facility such as Los 

16 Alamos.

17 You know, the materials that are 

18 being handled exist in encapsulated 

19 components. With the exception of depleted 

20 uranium and tritium, as we have discussed, the 

21 fissile materials were generally encapsulated. 

22 If they lost the containment barrier 
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1 integrity, they would prompt an individual for 

2 a bioassay sample.

3 So, to answer your question, I 

4 have seen historical documents from Pantex 

5 which provided specific radiation guidance and 

6 specific radiation guidelines for different 

7 types of workers. For example, a guard in the 

8 very early days wouldn't have been monitored 

9 because they wouldn't have been doing the 

10 hands-on work that a production technician 

11 would be.

12 You know, over history, in the 

13 1990s all of the guards began being monitored 

14 because of some concern that there could have 

15 been a potential for exposure, however small 

16 it might be. Well, actually, when Pantex 

17 badged the guards, and looking at the actual 

18 reported radiation doses from those 

19 individuals, they found that they were very 

20 low. I think maybe out of the several 

21 thousand results that they had, they only had 

22 like one or two results above the detection 
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1 sensitivity.

2 So, you know, in the earlier time 

3 period, they focused more heavily on looking 

4 at who was going to be involved in handling 

5 components, who was going to be entering area 

6 C, the cell area. Those were the individuals 

7 and also the radiographers, those were the 

8 individuals that they had focused on 

9 monitoring rather than assigning anyone and 

10 everyone that walked onsite a badge.

11 You know, practices have certainly 

12 changed over time. That is certainly 

13 something that needs to be considered, and 

14 that we describe how this interpret historical 

15 records versus more recent records in our Site 

16 Profile.

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Now let me give 

18 you an example. At one point, you say you had 

19 50 dpm or less nasal smear, urine sample, as 

20 was called for. Later on, that number changed 

21 to 45 dpm. That is the cell CAM I'm thinking 

22 of right offhand.
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1 So, I would assume they had a 

2 standard in place in Pantex that, okay, if you 

3 are under Y over X amount of dpm per nasal 

4 smear, we did not bother to send in for a 

5 urinalysis, but they could have still have 

6 been positive nasal smear there.

7 Do you know what those cutoff 

8 points are?

9 MR. ROLFES: Well, let me explain, 

10 I guess. In the 1961 incident, when there was 

11 a release of plutonium, I don't know the 

12 specific numbers right off the top of my head 

13 which would have triggered a particular 

14 bioassay or something, but if there was a 

15 containment breach, if there was an incident 

16 like that, if they broke a pit or cracked a 

17 pit, for example, that was a significant 

18 incident, and it had to be reported, you know, 

19 for many reasons.

20 You know, one of the first thing 

21 that would be done, if something like that 

22 would happen, any abnormal environment 
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1 encountered during a weapon assembly or 

2 disassembly requires that the production 

3 technicians immediately stop work and leave 

4 the area and get in touch with their 

5 supervisor or radiation safety.

6 So, it's really an incident that 

7 occurs rather than a specific level of 

8 contamination because the workers in assembly 

9 are truly handling clean components to 

10 assemble, rather than they are not going to 

11 handle rusty components and build that into a 

12 final product and ask DOE to approve that. It 

13 requires additional information, not just in a 

14 trigger level for contamination.

15 Does that help?

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Let me make 

17 sure I am understanding you. If they had a 

18 known incident --

19 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: -- everyone 

21 received -- everyone gave a bioassay?

22 MR. ROLFES: Right. Right. Well, 
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1 I take that back. Now, historically, no, not 

2 always, because sometimes they would have an 

3 elevated air monitoring result. So, they 

4 would investigate it. In some of those cases, 

5 we have data written in log books and in 

6 notebooks and things that indicate that we 

7 have got some swipes here that indicate 

8 there's 100 dpm on the floor.

9 For example, we had talked earlier 

10 about the thorium contamination incident. 

11 They thought the materials being released were 

12 thorium, but it was actually radon. Well, 

13 some of the workers' clothing was also 

14 contaminated with radon progeny, and they had 

15 swiped some of the workers' shoes and clothes 

16 around their knees where there's friction and 

17 it attracts some of the positively-charged 

18 progeny.

19 So, they had found some 

20 contamination on workers of like 100 dpm. 

21 But, upon investigation, it was a result of 

22 radon exposure. There are things like that.
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1 Now if there was a significant 

2 incident with a cracked pit, for example, that 

3 would have prompted a bioassay. Sometimes 

4 there was uranium contamination in an earlier 

5 time period. Sometimes that information is 

6 recorded in log books.

7 There's specific circumstances 

8 that, I guess, you know, if there is a 

9 specific incident, I can answer a little bit 

10 more specifically to you about what the 

11 procedures were and such. But I am trying to 

12 give like a general response. So, if you have 

13 another question, I would be happy to answer 

14 that.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You know, that 

16 really brings up the whole thing as to whether 

17 they considered the length that --

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: In fact, what 

19 are these levels? If they don't know, I mean, 

20 you know --

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What's going to 

22 push us into an incident? That one is a 
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1 pretty loaded question.

2 Myself, you know, I still need to 

3 get a clarification or excuse that on issue 1 

4 I guess I need to figure out, in my eyes, what 

5 we are going to do on issue 1 for the adequacy 

6 of the data, and so forth like that. What I 

7 got from you, Mark, was that NIOSH is 

8 basically going to go back and justify as to 

9 why they --

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Further 

11 justification for their approach. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Further 

13 justification, yes. I want to make sure that 

14 we did not miss that, Mel, because, to tell 

15 you the truth, I am really having a hard time 

16 understanding how we can take it from here and 

17 extrapolate clear back 30 years, and we don't 

18 even know the parameters and stuff that were 

19 going on. So, further clarify that.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

21 Hinnefeld.

22 I want to make sure we capture 
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1 what we are supposed to do. That one I think 

2 is pretty clear, and we will go ahead and do 

3 that.

4 And I believe we also promised to 

5 put interviews in a particular place on the O: 

6 drive, where they would be readily available. 

7 That's what I remember hearing as to what we 

8 said we would do.

9 Now the point in our normal 

10 process when we came in here was that SC&A 

11 delivered their report some time ago, and 

12 then, fairly recently, we delivered, 

13 essentially, a response.

14 Now it could be that SC&A has made 

15 all the points they want to make on number 1 

16 and don't feel they need to write anything in 

17 addition on that, and we can go do what we 

18 want. But I think it still is, by normal 

19 form, it would be SC&A would now be able to 

20 say, well, your response to our earlier 

21 document isn't convincing on finding one in 

22 these areas.
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1 So, I think that might be 

2 available to them, although if it has all been 

3 covered here, and it will all be addressed by 

4 our providing additional basis for this, I 

5 guess, approach. Then I am just going to 

6 leave that to you guys about whether you feel 

7 there is more to write, there's something to 

8 write or not.

9 So, I mean that is typically what 

10 is done. We sort of exchanged these products, 

11 so the discussion is essentially down on paper 

12 in writing, rather than just in the 

13 transcript.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me comment. 

15 I think that is correct. But if we have 

16 issues of the kinds we have just talked about, 

17 where we have raised concerns -- and we raised 

18 the same concerns in the Site Profile reviewed 

19 back three years that we are raising now with 

20 the ER, and the response is pretty much the 

21 same, that we have confidence in the tightness 

22 of the program back in time, and that we 
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1 believe that we can extrapolate, based on the 

2 feedback we've gotten from workers, and what 

3 have you.

4 There's not much more. So, we 

5 have beat this thing. So, what I am saying is 

6 that, okay, I understand what you are saying, 

7 but I can't get there until you go that next 

8 level down and give me further justification 

9 for this position because it seems very 

10 subjective at this point.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, your 

12 conclusion, then, is that you have provided 

13 what you wanted to provide? In earlier 

14 writings and in discussion today, it is all in 

15 there.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. All right. 

18 That was all I was asking.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, yes.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's a very 

21 good point. This thing is a little bit 

22 difficult because it has been such a long 
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1 time.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it's 

3 difficult because I think everybody agrees 

4 that the data is lacking or marginal in the 

5 timeframes. And we usually don't talk about 

6 things being marginal before 1990. We were in 

7 better shape than most sites by the 70s and 

8 80s. But, in this case, it is different, for 

9 the reasons we have discussed.

10 So, we are just saying that, in 

11 terms of back-extrapolating, I think that 

12 further justification is warranted, and that 

13 to save some time, I mean, you know, it is the 

14 same issue going through -- I was just kind of 

15 looking at this and saying, well, plutonium, 

16 uranium, enriched uranium, tritium and 

17 thorium, I mean in all cases it is very 

18 similar, that we don't have the data, and 

19 what's being proposed, whether it is 40 

20 DAC-hours for plutonium, for example, as an 

21 index, taking something from the 850 reg --

22 835 reg, which is the 40 DAC-hour, 100 
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1 millirems, and using it as an index going back 

2 in time, because the assumption is that would 

3 be bounding. I think the issues are very much 

4 the same. So, different nuclides but the same 

5 issue.

6 So, without banging this thing 

7 continuously, I think for all of the 

8 constituents that are important to Pantex, the 

9 data is lacking in the early years and the 

10 approach being proposed doesn't have enough 

11 edges on it for us to feel comfortable, I 

12 think is the best way to put it.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: And the 

14 justification may, in fact, need to be 

15 nuclide-specific because there would be 

16 differences in source terms.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: All right.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I would 

20 propose, you know, I was just looking ahead. 

21 We have carved this out by nuclide, but the 

22 issue is the same and you have read it. I 
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1 think the issue is the same, that we can 

2 understand this better if we can get further 

3 justification and know what you are hanging 

4 your hat on.

5 We discussed the variables 

6 involved, and some of this may have to be in 

7 secure locations. But I think as soon as we 

8 get a lock on the representativeness and the 

9 ability to feel confident about back10 extrapolating, I think a lot of this issue 

11 will be resolved, or not.

12 MEMBER BEACH: Brad, I have -- oh, 

13 I'm sorry.

14 MR. KATZ: Go ahead first.

15 MEMBER BEACH: This is a real 

16 minor point, but the draft response to SC&A's 

17 issues on the Pantex Site Profile, did you 

18 send out one that was not a draft or was 

19 the --

20 MR. ROLFES: I don't think SC&A 

21 has ever finalized their report. So, all of 

22 them are draft.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Could you 

2 date these when you send them out?

3 MR. ROLFES: Which?

4 MEMBER BEACH: This is actually 

5 NIOSH's report --

6 MR. ROLFES: Oh, okay. Okay.

7 MEMBER BEACH: Just I was curious 

8 as to when this one was --

9 DR. NETON: I had the same comment 

10 myself. It was February 25th, 2010.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Because I did 

12 not -- February what?

13 DR. NETON: February 25th, 2010. 

14 That's the date that the email was distributed 

15 before.

16 MEMBER BEACH: And that's this 

17 report, right? Okay.

18 So, like in the future, it would 

19 be helpful --

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: 2010?

21 MEMBER BEACH: Mel's appendix was 

22 dated, but I wasn't sure if it was the same.
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1 DR. NETON: I apologize.

2 MEMBER BEACH: No, I appreciate 

3 that. Thank you.

4 MR. KATZ: So, the only thing, it 

5 sounds like we have these DCAS action items, 

6 generally to shore up the basis, explain the 

7 basis.

8 The only thing I see here that, 

9 SC&A, you raised, Joe, you raised the issue of 

10 wanting to follow up on the question of the 

11 extent and nature of records that were 

12 discarded at the site. Is that something 

13 that --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, in looking 

15 at data adequacy, we typically follow up on 

16 that. We received that input during the Site 

17 Profile review and haven't done anything with 

18 it because, again, I think that speaks to the 

19 SEC information. So, that would be something 

20 for the Work Group, but this is the question 

21 of completeness of records with the worker 

22 interview input, that maybe some of these 
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1 records were discarded or destroyed, and what 

2 are the implications of that? I mean so it is 

3 similar to what we have addressed elsewhere, 

4 but we have not looked at it yet.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, we are 

6 still trying to get in down there, though, 

7 too.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that is a 

9 logistical issue --

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: -- but I think 

12 that is a question that the Work Group would 

13 probably need to at least address as far as 

14 whether that has implications. It was a 

15 worker input, but I think it deserves running 

16 it to ground. I mean, does anyone have any 

17 records of what records were destroyed and 

18 which ones were they? And does that bear on 

19 what we are talking about here?

20 I mean it would have a big impact 

21 if it turns out that a lot of bioassay or air 

22 sample records were discarded, and it sort of 
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1 leaves you with some question about what you 

2 are looking at, how complete it is.

3 MR. KATZ: Is there something the 

4 Work Group wants SC&A to pursue?

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, it is one 

6 we are going to bring up in every site, that 

7 we are going to have to look at that.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I think that 

9 is an SC&A action probably.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: That's fine.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm a little 

12 concerned that we don't have more handle on 

13 it. I mean, do they know time frame? I 

14 guess it is what you've got to find out, 

15 right?

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, as 

17 compartmentalized as Pantex is, I mean it is 

18 a challenge to walk down something like that 

19 and to figure out who might actually have 

20 that information.

21 DR. CHEW: Did you get that 

22 information from the worker interview?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: We talked, yes, 

2 we talked to -- I can pin it down, but we 

3 have the interview where that was mentioned. 

4 It was in our sampling data. I can give you 

5 more information, but it is one of these 

6 things you file away, and you want to go back 

7 to, but, frankly, given the context of the 

8 Site Profile, you are not going to spend a 

9 lot of resources chasing every lead down. 

10 So, I wanted to at least mention that because 

11 I think it is now relevant to this review. 

12 We certainly would do that now.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I'm 

14 looking at it a DNFSB report sitting right 

15 here, and it says radiation safety personnel 

16 must document their technical evaluations, 

17 basically, their wipes and everything else 

18 like that. That was found as a finding from 

19 even them.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: You have two HPs. 

21 You are not going to have a formal program 

22 as much as you would like, I'm sure.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, I 

2 understand that.

3 Well, my suggestion is that we 

4 break for lunch. We've got, actually, one 

5 item done pretty well.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, no, 

7 actually, it is four issues, but they are all 

8 internal, which I think is the toughest nut. 

9 With some optimism, that was the tougher 

10 issue. So, it is not as bleak as it looks 

11 schedule-wise.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And we've got 

13 SC&A as cast to look into the records that 

14 were taken care of, and NIOSH is going to 

15 just reaffirm their stance. I don't know how 

16 you put that.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: Or strengthen 

18 their argument, yes, and to post the 

19 interviews.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And now what I 

21 would suggest is it's 12:30 now, well, 

22 actually, almost 12:40. Why don't we break 
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1 for lunch? And we will return at 1:40.

2 MR. KATZ: For folks on the phone, 

3 1:40 we will reconvene.

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 12:38 p.m. and 

6 resumed at 1:45 p.m.)

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 
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1 

2 

3 
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

2 (1:45 p.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good afternoon. This 

4 is Ted Katz, the Advisory Board on Radiation 

5 and Worker Health, Pantex Work Group, and 

6 we're reconvening following a lunch break. 

7 Let me just check on the line. Do we have 

8 any of the petitioners back with us?

9 MS. RAY: This is Sarah and I'm 

10 back.

11 MR. KATZ: Hi, Sarah. Very good. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Anybody 

13 else we need to check with?

14 MR. KATZ: No, I think not, 

15 actually.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I guess 

17 I will turn it back to Joe. We got through 

18 the first initial ones.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think we 

20 went through issues 1 through 4, and the 2 

21 through 4 were just specific topics that were 

22 internal topics. Issue 5, the metal 
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1 tritides, I'm not going to spend a lot of 

2 time on that because I think we're familiar 

3 with the question. The issue for Pantex, or 

4 what's relevant for Pantex is what was 

5 handled, the presence of an exposure pathway. 

6 I think we prevented -- in the Site Profile 

7 Review, we identified a couple of possible 

8 pathways that need to be addressed and I 

9 think the assumption that it represented such 

10 a small contribution, I think we just need to 

11 validate that. And that's something that, 

12 certainly as an action, SC&A spent a little 

13 bit of time. We didn't do that in the Site 

14 Profile, but I think there's been a lot of 

15 discussion on the topic over the last two or 

16 three years, so I think we're better equipped 

17 to put that one to bed, if that's the notion.

18 And Sarah and Lars, this is the 

19 question of particulate -- the particulate 

20 form of tritium and the extent that it's 

21 insoluble presents a more significant 

22 potential dose if it's present to the worker 
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1 for which bioassay and more routine means of 

2 monitoring is not going to pick it up as 

3 easily because of its insolubility. 

4 We've addressed it at other sites, 

5 and what we're saying is that's something 

6 that as a component of the tritium inventory, 

7 the tritium that was being used at Pantex, we 

8 would similarly want to establish to what 

9 extent it contributed or not contributed, and 

10 that's what we're talking about here. 

11 MS. RAY: Can I make a small 

12 comment related to that?

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, Sarah.

14 MS. RAY: My husband, Mike Dvorak, 

15 who is now deceased, always warned me about 

16 tritiated water being present outside the 64 

17 bays because they were immediately adjacent 

18 to the 44 cells where the large release 

19 occurred. And I wonder if something like 

20 this had been considered, if anyone had ever 

21 looked into it, because there's many ongoing 

22 problems with leaking roofs at the plant that 
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1 I don't even know if it fixed this stuff. 

2 And I know I'm very sensitive to mold, and I 

3 can always smell wet when I pass that area. 

4 But, to me, I think that is a form of soluble 

5 tritium. I'm not a scientist, but tritiated 

6 water is not a good thing, is it?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Well, 

8 that's a slightly different issue. What 

9 we're talking about, actually, is the sort of 

10 opposite form, the insoluble -- more 

11 insoluble tritium, the particulate form of 

12 tritium which does exist.

13 MS. RAY: Okay. I'm sorry for my 

14 misunderstanding. Thank you.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: But it's a very, 

16 very specific topic, something that's related 

17 to weapons components and something that we 

18 would want to address for Pantex and we did 

19 identify some possibilities in the Site 

20 Profile Review, but what I was saying is that 

21 there's been, I think, a fairly rich 

22 discussion on the topic for other sites, 
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1 including Mound and Los Alamos, and I think 

2 we're in a better position to complete a 

3 review of that and decide if it's an issue or 

4 not. 

5 In the NIOSH response, I think the 

6 point that was made is that if it does exist, 

7 it would be a small contribution, but we have 

8 some questions regarding the compound 

9 identified in the exposure pathways, and 

10 we'll have to address that later. But I just 

11 want to go ahead and highlight that it is a 

12 question that we have, and I think we're in a 

13 pretty good place now to look at it. And I 

14 think there's some agreement on what the 

15 issues are, as far as exposure pathways and 

16 insolubility, so it's -- we're in a much 

17 better position than we were two or three 

18 years ago to take that to ground.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Is that an action 

20 item for SC&A?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

22 saying yes, we can certainly evaluate the 
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1 presence of the implications. Obviously, 

2 NIOSH would want to see that evaluation.

3 MR. ROLFES: I guess I'll sort of 

4 answer Joe and the petitioner, and also the 

5 petitioner was asking about the concern about 

6 tritiated water at the site, and that was 

7 following the event in 1989 where they had 

8 the tritium release. They had contaminated 

9 one of the cells with tritium, and basically 

10 shut it down, and made it inoperational 

11 because of the tritium contamination inside. 

12 And they were actually doing some 

13 solubility studies; they monitored the 

14 tritium concentrations in the cell, and they 

15 basically found that the tritium that was 

16 migrating out of the cell walls and floor was 

17 actually still elemental. It hadn't 

18 oxidized. But, yes, that was sort of a 

19 separate issue, as Joe explained, for the 

20 petitioner, Ms. Ray.

21 The other concern -- we've 

22 identified a couple of concerns with 
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1 potential exposure to tritides at the site, 

2 and we explained that elemental tritium can 

3 migrate through welds on reservoirs and 

4 potentially form an insoluble compound, but 

5 it's really not very likely, it's not very 

6 high-potential for that to occur because of 

7 the material's compatibility that Mel had 

8 previously described and the specific 

9 construction of those reservoirs and things.

10 The other piece of information 

11 that we have looked into is the tritium in 

12 neutron generators and we looked at the 

13 destructive testing operations that were done 

14 on site at Pantex inside of the confinement 

15 chamber. And we, basically, looked at the 

16 numbers of tests that were done and the 

17 amount of material present. And, really, a 

18 hypothetical individual, if he was routinely 

19 exposed -- we have this in our Evaluation 

20 Report, but I did want to remind everyone of 

21 it. And I think there's also an interview 

22 documenting our assumptions for determining 
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1 whether an individual could have received 

2 some measurable intake of tritium from these 

3 operations. And we found, like, I think the 

4 highest potentially exposed individual 

5 wouldn't have received more than a millirem 

6 lung dose in any given year from basically 

7 doing this destructive testing operation and 

8 the subsequent cleanup. That was based upon 

9 some worker interviews, and historical 

10 recollection of the contamination levels

11 encountered.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I would propose 

13 that we would look at the specific interviews 

14 and any additional information. And some of 

15 this would be classified, but any additional 

16 information that would focus on potential 

17 exposure pathways, identity of compounds. 

18 And if there was any monitoring, how the 

19 monitoring was done. Basically, that would 

20 be it. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, that's SC&A's 
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1 action, just so we keep track.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Bob, on 

4 sources and pathways, really -- 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Sources and 

6 pathways, I mean, I think we've established a 

7 pretty good regime as far as how it looked 

8 and I would propose, if we do find something 

9 that perhaps stands out, we'll bring it back 

10 to the Work Group. If not, then we'll close 

11 it out. It's one or the other.

12 The next issue is interpretation 

13 of external dose data. Hans, are you still 

14 on the phone? We might have lost Hans. 

15 DR. BEHLING: No, you have me.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I was going to 

17 defer to you since this is an issue that sort 

18 of flowed down from the Site Profile. Do you 

19 want to just provide an update on that and 

20 any implications from the SEC standpoint?

21 DR. BEHLING: Yes, when I 

22 initially looked at it, and I'm going back to 
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1 some of the documents that are several years 

2 old and do not, necessarily, track some of 

3 the more recent documents that have only 

4 provided a summary. But in my original 

5 response to the review of TBD-6000 on 

6 external dosimetry, I did look at some of the 

7 things that -- and I don't want to over8 dramatize the importance but it did bring out 

9 the question that in Pantex, the dominant 

10 photon energy was 60 keV photons. For 

11 instance, in Section 6.5.3.1 of the TBD, you 

12 will read, and I'll quote directly, Pantex 

13 claimed film badges and TLDs were originally 

14 calibrated with radium 226 and cesium 137 

15 sources with the exposure measured with 

16 victorine ion chambers, et cetera, et cetera. 

17 And, of course, when you do look at film 

18 dosimeters, you realize, and I know, and I 

19 fully understand and recognize the 

20 limitations associated with film badges, the 

21 sensitive portion of film badges is really 

22 filled with bromide, which is a high-Z 
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1 material, and as everyone who understands 

2 basic health physics knows, the interaction 

3 of radiation with matter, including, 

4 obviously, dosimeters at low energy is driven 

5 by the photoelectric effect, which is highly 

6 Z-dependent. And, of course, what that means 

7 is that for the open-window portion of the 

8 two film dosimeter types, you would have an 

9 open window that grossly, grossly over10 responds to the high-Z material in film. But 

11 you may have the converse issue associated 

12 with the Hp(10) dose, or the deep dose for 

13 the early dosimeters, and probably still 

14 today, using a filter of material of lead is 

15 used, which is a high Z material. And what 

16 it really amounts to is that when you have a 

17 filter of 1,000 milligrams per centimeter 

18 squared, it's not so much the actual material 

19 thickness in milligrams per centimeter 

20 squared, as it is the material in question. 

21 So, if you had 1,000 milligrams per 

22 centimeter squared of tissue-equivalent 
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1 material as a filter versus lead, you will 

2 see very different responses; meaning that 

3 the lead for low energy photons is going to 

4 attenuate to be much, much, much more 

5 effectively than a tissue material of equal 

6 milligrams per centimeter squared value. In 

7 looking at that, I just came up with the 

8 notion that perhaps if you're dealing with 

9 the most highly exposed individuals, and 

10 those are the people who would be assemblers, 

11 or dissassemblers, who would be, potentially, 

12 exposed to bare pits, and not only to the 

13 primary beam of 60 keV, but, perhaps, 

14 modestly attenuated photons of 60 keV, you 

15 would, perhaps, grossly underestimate the 

16 deep dose. And that was one of the concerns.

17 MR. ROLFES: Hans, this is Mark 

18 Rolfes. We did take a look at this and had 

19 prepared a response, which I don't want to go 

20 through in detail here. Let's see. We did 

21 look at this, and, basically, our end result, 

22 the film badges under-responded to lower 
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1 energy photons, but it was a relative 

2 response to the two-element film badge to 60 

3 keV photons from americium was approximately 

4 one. It was nearly unity. Multi-element 

5 film badge typically over-responded to 60 keV 

6 photons by a factor of 1-1/2 to 2, and its 

7 response at 60 keV exceeds the Hp(10) value 

8 by a factor of 1.5. Measured doses to 60 keV 

9 photons from americium-241 could be as much 

10 50 percent higher than the actual dose 

11 received by the employee. Thus, the reported 

12 photon doses should not be underestimated and 

13 will be claimant-favorable. 

14 DR. BEHLING: Well, again, I know 

15 that much of that work involves other people 

16 who tested dosimeters and came away with 

17 those conclusions. But as was earlier stated 

18 by a number of people, including Joe and 

19 other Members of the Work Group, what you see 

20 is not always what you get and in my original 

21 report, if I recall, one of the things that 

22 bothered me was, in 1980, an investigation 
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1 report that was submitted by the Department 

2 of Energy, who responded to a given incident 

3 in which a very, very high dosimeter reading 

4 occurred. And I think I want to just point 

5 out, and you probably don't have access to 

6 the particular write-up that I had that 

7 talked about -- and I quote verbatim from the 

8 1980 DOE's investigative report. And what 

9 they came to conclude was, the people who 

10 were, at that time, and this is in 1980, 

11 which is, obviously, far further advanced, 

12 and you would expect a higher degree of 

13 competency. And I think this was discussed 

14 earlier about the quality of people who, at 

15 that point in time, should have been regarded 

16 as health physicists at the post, and safety 

17 technicians, or anything else. And what they 

18 concluded there was, obviously, the potential 

19 deficiencies in the qualifications of people 

20 responsible for the dosimetry program in that 

21 report, those who have my initial report that 

22 I think was part of the initial TBD review, I 
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1 took direct quotations from that 

2 investigative report, in that they identified 

3 the two technicians responsible for the 

4 dosimetry program. This is as late as 1980, 

5 who had little or no training at all. And 

6 they also identified serious flaws among the 

7 assemblers who should have been the primary 

8 concern. And under guidance that -- with 

9 limited guidance, they should have been given 

10 monthly dosimeters; they were given quarterly 

11 dosimeters. And a deficiency in that is that 

12 supporting dosimeters was not able to measure 

13 neutrons. There was no -- these were TLDs in 

14 those days, and reporting dosimeters did not 

15 have the capacity to measure neutrons 

16 exposure. And these are the people who would 

17 have been exposed to both photons and 

18 neutrons. And, of course, that -- 12 out of 

19 16 people were given quarterly badges instead 

20 of monthly badges. And that kind of 

21 deficiency is sort of symptomatic, people who 

22 may not, necessarily, always play by the 
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1 rules or know what the rules even are. 

2 And all I'm at this point, I'm 

3 pointing out here, is that you may have on 

4 the surface a competent dosimetry program, or 

5 what appears to be, but in reality, and I 

6 think Mr. Schofield pointed that out, when 

7 you look a little deeper and you actually see 

8 what happens in the field or in practice, the 

9 two are not, necessarily, always consistent 

10 with what guidance documents, or what your 

11 expectations are versus what in truth really 

12 happens.

13 MR. ROLFES: So, Hans, you're 

14 saying that this is a separate issue, I 

15 believe, than the calibration of the early 

16 film badges. I think you jumped from one to 

17 the other.

18 DR. BEHLING: Well, it is both, in 

19 fact. It's part of the investigative report 

20 that the DOE issued in 1980. They found 

21 that, for instance, the calibration curves 

22 and other things that are normal standard 
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1 procedures for operating a dosimetry program 

2 was simply not in place. And all I am saying 

3 at this point is, regurgitating some of the 

4 comments that were made earlier, is that, 

5 perhaps, the emphasis at Pantex was not 

6 necessarily always towards the safety 

7 regarding radiological safety, but perhaps 

8 safety regarding explosives and other issues 

9 and the competency of people who were in 

10 charge of the RadCon program was perhaps not 

11 what it should have been.

12 MR. ROLFES: Hans, it's Mark 

13 again. Could you provide like a Site 

14 Research Database reference ID for this 

15 report that you're referring to, so that we 

16 can take a look at it?

17 DR. BEHLING: Yes. In fact, for 

18 those who may have the original write-up, I 

19 included the excerpts of the DOE report as 

20 Exhibit 3. It was written by Herman Roser, 

21 Manager of ALO, and it has -- let's see here. 

22 I provided that as an exhibit in my write-
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1 up.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

3 that's under the Site Profile report -- 

4 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: -- from 2007, so 

6 that might be the easy way to do that.

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Thank you. 

8 DR. BEHLING: But, anyway, that's 

9 pretty much what I had to say. As I said, I 

10 believe you may have a better handle on 

11 deficiencies regarding the ability to measure 

12 the Hp(10) dose for a low-energy photon. 

13 And, as I said, I don't want to overstate the 

14 issue. I think it may be a modest issue. 

15 Perhaps the other issue, and I think Joe will 

16 discuss that and I think you addressed it, is 

17 the issue of the neutron/photon ratio. And 

18 that was also discussed in the regional 

19 review of the -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, to 

21 summarize, I think this is a clarification 

22 issue, but our sense is it may not be an SEC 
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1 issue with that clarification, so not to --

2 certainly, not on the level of some of these 

3 other questions we've raised. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: The only outcome 

6 or action would be if we can get those 

7 clarifications, my sense is that that would 

8 resolve the question or issue.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Would that fall 

10 under NIOSH's -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: Is that enough 

12 clarification on whether the film badges were 

13 able to detect 60 keV photons? Yes, we can 

14 put all the -- 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the 

16 completeness of the response is that 

17 everything was written in the Site Profile 

18 Review about this issue. Hans was talking 

19 about this investigation report that cited 

20 qualifications of people, calibration curves, 

21 in addition, the keV. I mean, there's a body 

22 of work out there, and we just need to make 
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1 sure that our response carefully addresses 

2 those findings in the report.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we went to 

4 the Site Profile for the matrix and there is 

5 clearly issues that we sense there was a 

6 couple of pieces missing, but with those 

7 pieces provided, it didn't look like it would 

8 rise to a question of dose 

9 reconstructability, that there would be 

10 enough information there, but we're not quite 

11 there, as far as the body of information. I 

12 think that's what we're saying in this one. 

13 We sense that maybe with these pieces of 

14 information it would be tractable.

15 Anyway, that's what I would say at 

16 this point.

17 MR. ROLFES: Americium in growth

18 in the 60 keV photon really wouldn't be too 

19 significant in the early time period, just 

20 because they're receiving new materials. 

21 And, really, it wouldn't have been until 

22 years down the road when americium ingrowth 
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1 becomes a major contributor to the dose rate 

2 from a plutonium pit. And I think that was 

3 probably during the time period when there 

4 were TLDs on site, so it really shouldn't 

5 apply to individuals issued film badges. It 

6 sort of seems like the highest ingrowth for 

7 americium would have been, you know, in the 

8 70s forward, and continuing on. And it 

9 really doesn't appear to be a significant 

10 issue to me for Pantex, because of the time 

11 period that plutonium came on the site and 

12 other factors.

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Do we have 

14 records showing what the level of the specs 

15 were for level of purity, and others like 

16 americium in the 40s, 50s, 60s?

17 MR. ROLFES: Well, it certainly 

18 could have changed over time.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And the level 

20 of enrichment makes a difference.

21 MR. ROLFES: Well, those -- yes, 

22 there's a couple of different things. We're 
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1 talking about photon dose rates. The level 

2 of enrichment wouldn't have too much of a 

3 difference on the photon energies, but 

4 plutonium is a different material, because 

5 enriched uranium is primarily U-234, -235 

6 material. And when you get into plutonium, 

7 you have other isotopes in there. You have 

8 plutonium-240, -241, -239, -238, so it's 

9 really the -- 

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Do we have the 

11 specs, is what I want to know?

12 MR. ROLFES: Well, we don't go 

13 back to that level of detail, because we 

14 don't really need to. If we have a -- and 

15 also, the americium ingrowth comes from the 

16 decay of Pu-241, and we don't need to sample 

17 that material or know the exact isotopic 

18 composition of the plutonium being handled, 

19 because for this instance the dosimeters that 

20 were used in the 1970s forward would have 

21 been capable of detecting americium photons 

22 60 keV and higher. We have no indication 
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1 that the film badges in the earlier time 

2 period did not detect those, so I think what 

3 we're going to do is go back and restate our 

4 response here to show why we believe that.

5 DR. CHEW: To answer your 

6 question, Phil, we can tell you what the 

7 Americium specification codifies, because 

8 that's well documented. However, you need to 

9 look at what Mark is saying, and when does it 

10 really apply to the dosimetry method that 

11 they were receiving. So, by the time the 

12 issue came to Pantex, the TLDs were closer, 

13 the americium growing became a significant 

14 contribution with dose.

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Right.

16 DR. CHEW: And I think you know 

17 what the parts per million is.

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. But I was 

19 just wondering, particularly like the 50s and 

20 60s, because starting in the 70s I know what 

21 the standard was.

22 DR. CHEW: Right.
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Better than 

2 those earlier days, and it does make a 

3 difference which material was -- for which 

4 complex or which device it was being designed 

5 for. There is a difference in the specs.

6 DR. CHEW: It was even better. 

7 Okay. Because that was a big concern. 

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, just 

9 because in some cases that would make a 

10 difference.

11 DR. CHEW: We don't want to get 

12 into the neutronics -- you know, you - 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, 

14 NIOSH is going to just kind of shore up their 

15 position on that. Is that my understanding?

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think, 

17 again, it's just the clarification that there 

18 was a few loose ends from the Site Profile 

19 Review. We recognize that some of these 

20 issues are carried forward and we think with 

21 that clarification, I don't see this being an 

22 SEC issue but it would be useful to have that 
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1 closed out that way. And I think some of 

2 what Mark is alluding to may help, so I think 

3 that's where we stand. I mean, that's my 

4 sense from what work Hans has done, as well.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. The next 

6 one.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: You mentioned the 

8 neutron to photon ratios. Let me preface my 

9 comments by saying, and I'm not going to 

10 dwell a lot on where we came from because I 

11 know NIOSH has changed its approach pretty 

12 much entirely on neutrons. So, to some 

13 extent you take --

14 DR. CHEW: I'm glad you recognized 

15 that.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: You've taken that 

17 issue off the table, at least on some of 

18 these issues. But the original question was 

19 back-extrapolating a neutron/photon ratio, a 

20 median and an upper bound using data from 93 

21 forward, going backwards in time. And I 

22 won't dwell on some of the heartburn that we 
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1 had on that, because I think some of it is 

2 obvious in terms of the things we've talked 

3 about, as well as the representativeness of 

4 the values and whether or not you had good 

5 measurements. But the -- and I'll let Ron 

6 get into details. The proposal is to 

7 actually use the data that's available and to 

8 as a default apply MCNP to provide additional 

9 data, which is not a strategy that's too 

10 different than what we've been talking about 

11 Mound. So, to some extent this resonates. 

12 But let me let Ron walk through not so much 

13 our comments on the original proposal, but we 

14 had a number of issues with back15 extrapolating a neutron/photon ratio, but to 

16 respond to what we understand is your new 

17 proposal, which is in the latest response. 

18 To answer an earlier question -- I 

19 think Stu mentioned it -- we haven't had a 

20 chance to provide a written response on this 

21 new proposal, so we may reserve the right to 

22 do that since this is a completely different 
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1 approach on the neutron issue. Actually, 

2 it's a very positive movement, I might add, 

3 so maybe our comments are less critical. 

4 But, Ron -- 

5 MR. ROLFES: Can I -- before he 

6 explains, can I explain what we did?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, I'm sorry. 

8 Go ahead.

9 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Like you said, 

10 what we did previously, we had based our 

11 neutron to photon ratios for workers in the 

12 early time periods of operation at Pantex, we 

13 used data from the 1990s when the TLD DOELAP 

14 accreditation was in place and such. And we 

15 certainly acknowledge there was some 

16 uncertainty. However, we felt it was 

17 claimant-favorable. And you also had some 

18 concerns about it, as well. And in the 

19 process of going back, we realized we had all 

20 of the previous data for neutron exposures 

21 that we just didn't use at the time in order 

22 to make a claimant-favorable decision, and a 
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1 timely one for workers, as well. So, what we 

2 did -- what we've done now, we've gone back, 

3 instead of using neutron to photon ratios, we 

4 propose to use a neutron coworker model, 

5 essentially. And we put together in our 

6 response here a summarization table of the 

7 median neutron doses in millirem per month 

8 for various time periods and we go back all 

9 the way to 1952: probably not realistic. 

10 It's probably a better -- a better begin date 

11 is probably around 1958 for assigning neutron 

12 doses, because fissile materials were not on 

13 site until the late 50s. 

14 Anyway, there were a couple of 

15 errors that I also wanted to point out. The 

16 error bar in the first column there says 91.4 

17 millirem per month. This is for median 

18 neutron doses per month, and it's figure 7-1. 

19 That error bar is too short. It should --

20 excuse me, not the error bar, but the column 

21 height. If you take a look, it says 91.4, 

22 and it's shorter than the one that says 86 
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1 next to it. 

2 DR. CHEW: Mine is correct.

3 MR. ROLFES: Mel's is correct, but 

4 mine is not, so I think -- 

5 DR. CHEW: Nobody else has a 

6 problem, but that's okay.

7 MR. ROLFES: Anyway, this goes 

8 through in error-specific, then gives the 

9 median neutron dose --

10 DR. CHEW: Joe, we all see the 

11 corrected one.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I already --

13 DR. CHEW: Okay. Got it.

14 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Anyway, this 

15 gives you an understanding of historical 

16 neutron doses based on earlier monitoring. 

17 And we've got TLD data back in the 70s, but 

18 prior to 1978, we were relying on NTA data, 

19 Neutron Track Emulsion Film. And what we've 

20 done in the attachment of this response here 

21 is explain some of the correction factors 

22 that went into correcting personnel neutron 
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1 doses using NTA film as the basis. So, 

2 anyway, that's all. I just wanted to give you 

3 an update as to what we've done since your 

4 review, since SC&A and the Board --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again, I 

6 think this is pretty significant. Ron, why 

7 don't you --

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, we've 

9 heard a little discussion on neutrons. And 

10 this is a little different than all the other 

11 issues during this meeting, because before we 

12 -- they had our Site Profile Review, they 

13 responded, we responded, they responded, and 

14 then -- but this is a different approach, so 

15 I want to take a few minutes and bring 

16 everybody up, especially on the phone, where 

17 we're at on the neutron issues at Pantex.

18 Okay. So, Mark has said some of 

19 it, Joe said some of it, and I'll go down to 

20 a brief outline, and then go to the 

21 questions. Mainly, this is a fact-finding 

22 clarification on my part to find out some of 
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1 the -- how they're going to apply the new 

2 method, and then we can determine whether we 

3 agree or not with that maybe in the future. 

4 So, on pages 24 to 30 of NIOSH's 

5 response, this is issue 7. And originally, 

6 way back in the Site Profile, SC&A had 

7 brought up concerns about using N/P values, 

8 that is, assigning neutron dose depending on 

9 the photon rester dose of the worker. And 

10 some issues we had was the back-extrapolating 

11 for 42 years, 1.7 being a bounding value and 

12 reliability of some of those concepts. So, 

13 that was issue 7, item A through D. So, 

14 NIOSH, apparently, then said okay, we've got 

15 the data. We'll just use the data rather 

16 than using the N/P values to assign neutron 

17 dose.

18 So, what we did recently was try 

19 to evaluate that, and the questions I had on 

20 it, because that gets rid of a lot of 

21 problems we had in the past, but it also 

22 brings up new areas of concern, and these are 
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1 very similar to Mound, because Mound is, 

2 apparently, what -- this was a takeoff of 

3 Mound's neutron issues. So, some of the 

4 solutions were applied to Pantex here, which 

5 is okay if they're correct. 

6 I did have a question on page, I 

7 think it's 24, where you say, thus, the N/P 

8 ratio approach will not be used directly in 

9 favor of establishing unmonitored personnel 

10 neutron dose based on actual records. What 

11 is the word directly; why is that in there? 

12 Are you going to use N/P otherwise? Why did 

13 you use the word directly -- will not be used 

14 directly? Am I reading something in?

15 MR. ROLFES: I don't think you 

16 are. This is a draft method that was put 

17 together to be responsive to SC&A's review, 

18 so I guess, ultimately, it will be, as far as 

19 what directly means, I don't know, but -- 

20 DR. BUCHANAN: You're not using 

21 N/P.

22 MR. ROLFES: No.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

2 MR. ROLFES: We propose using this 

3 updated method, since it was responsive to 

4 SC&A and the Advisory Board's review. 

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Okay. I just 

6 want to make sure that -- well, some of it 

7 we're going to use, and some of it we're not. 

8 That's what I was trying to clarify. Okay.

9 Now, the reason that initially N/P 

10 ratios were being used is because NTA film 

11 does not sense neutrons below about 500 keV.

12 So, this is where the SEC issue comes up is, 

13 can you reconstruct dose, because NTA film 

14 doesn't sense neutrons below 500 keV. So, 

15 now we're back to using the NTA film results. 

16 Then we have to say, well, how can we 

17 reconstruct this dose if it's below 500 keV? 

18 DR. CHEW: Ron, I just want to 

19 clarify what you just said. Okay?

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

21 DR. CHEW: The original N/P ratio 

22 was based on some measured data by measuring 
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1 the units themselves. Okay? So, they didn't 

2 represent what people were -- it did not 

3 represent a personal dosimetry, but measured 

4 data. And there are several measured data 

5 because of the NRAD studies, and I think 

6 you're familiar what that is for the -- to 

7 deliver the radiation exposures to the 

8 military, giving them information. They show 

9 neutron to photon ratio is much higher than 

10 1.7. That was what the original was. Okay? 

11 And then, because those are measured 

12 information on the unit themselves, not 

13 necessarily a person being measured. Now 

14 that we're using personal dosimetry

15 information, it has been clarified that the 

16 basis is 1.7 radiation.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, when we 

18 use the original recorded individual worker's 

19 dose either to assign dose to that worker or 

20 we create a coworker database for unmonitored 

21 workers that did not have neutron monitoring, 

22 we have to address mainly three issues, and 
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1 how are we going to treat the neutron dose 

2 that fell below 500 keV? How we're going to 

3 treat fading, because when the film is -- NTA 

4 film is exposed to neutrons, it will start to 

5 fade until it is developed, and then read 

6 after that and recorded. And thirdly is 

7 about the angular dependency of NTA film. If 

8 you -- it's calibrated usually normal to the 

9 plain of the film. If the exposure is to the 

10 side, then it has less sensitivity to it, so 

11 we have to compensate for that. 

12 So, those are the three issues and 

13 NIOSH addressed this in their response on 

14 page 26. So, they say that the correction 

15 factor is the threshold factor, the angular 

16 factor, and the fading factor. So, what I'd 

17 like to do is discuss these issues somewhat.

18 Now, we haven't had a time to look 

19 at this data in detail, such as Figure 7-1 of 

20 the report Mark just spoke on, break it up 

21 into intervals. I guess this is major 

22 campaigns or major weapon types that you're 
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1 dividing it up into here, which is -- this is 

2 per month. So, if you're assigning a dose 

3 for a year, you'd take this times 12. And, 

4 for example, if you needed to assign dose in 

5 1978, you'd take 86 millirem per month times 

6 12, times the correction factor of 2.9. Is 

7 that -- am I understanding that correctly?

8 DR. CHEW: Yes.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Now, the 

10 questions I came up with was, the way I read 

11 the ER was, or the response to it was that 

12 this was for coworker dose. Now, do you plan 

13 on doing this for the monitored worker, too? 

14 If he has NTA film results in his file, this 

15 correction factor of 2.9 would apply to that 

16 worker also?

17 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Correction 

18 factor for NTA film would certainly be 

19 applied to the worker's recorded neutron dose 

20 in their file.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: And then you would 

22 use this also for unmonitored workers that 
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1 might have been exposed. You would use this 

2 7-1, just like I said, you'd take the time 

3 period, time-correction factor to assign 

4 dose.

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes. That's correct.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Because the 

7 way it's worded, it is slanted only towards 

8 coworker dose. Okay? Unmonitored -- uses a 

9 term unmonitored and coworker. It is not --

10 I did not read that it said that you would 

11 apply it to the already recorded dose. I 

12 assumed you would, but it's not written that 

13 way. Okay? I wanted to clarify that.

14 Okay. Now, originally, we were 

15 going to use the N/P method all the way up 

16 through 93, because 94 is when the better17 quality TLD system came into existence, so we 

18 had good neutron data after that. But the 

19 NTA film, the early NTA film, and then the 

20 earlier TLDs from 78 to 93, according to TBD21 6000, had large uncertainty and were too low 

22 a reading and had large uncertainties, so we 
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1 were going to apply the N/P value everything

2 prior to 94 is the way TBD-6000 reads, how I 

3 read it, anyway.

4 Okay. Now, what are we going to 

5 do with the TLD readings from 78 to 93, if 

6 we're going to go back and use original 

7 readings? Because the NTA film correction 

8 factor wouldn't apply to them. 

9 MR. ROLFES: Correct. The TLD 

10 from the 1970s forward, we can double-check 

11 to make sure, but it appears that the thermo 

12 luminescent dosimeter that they had in place 

13 in the 70s actually over-responded to some of 

14 the lower-energy neutrons incident at the 

15 site. I think it was about a factor of 5, so 

16 the individual worker's TLD neutron dose was 

17 actually a factor of 5 higher than what they 

18 truly were exposed to. So, to the best of my 

19 knowledge, and it should be -- I thought we 

20 had included an analysis of the responses of 

21 the types of badges to -- maybe it's in our 

22 Site Profile, but we think that they should 
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1 be okay. There may be some -- did you see 

2 something that concerned you?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, according to 

4 TBD-6000, it said Pantex recommend -- TBD5 6000 recommends the use of N/P values prior 

6 to 1994 because recorded neutron doses were 

7 too low and had large uncertainties using 

8 either NTA or TLD dosimetry prior to 1994. 

9 This is page 43 and 63 of TBD-6000. So, my 

10 question was, okay, we -- you made a 

11 recommendation for NTA film correction. 

12 Now, we still have the TLDs from 

13 78 to 93, which we weren't going to use 

14 originally because we didn't feel them 

15 reliable. What are we going to do about 

16 that? And if it is reliable, we need to know 

17 justification considering that TBD-6000 said 

18 it was unreliable. 

19 MR. ROLFES: What we're proposing 

20 here is to use the data from the TLD time 

21 period from 78 through 2008, as we've broken 

22 down in this table. You know, for example, 
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1 we would assign coworker doses in the same 

2 time period. If there's an individual like a 

3 production technician or someone who's 

4 handling fissile materials, if they were not 

5 monitored for neutron doses and indicated 

6 that they were exposed to -- that they were a 

7 production technician or working in a vault 

8 or something, we would go ahead and assign a 

9 neutron coworker dose to them based on 

10 information that we proposed in this table 

11 here. 

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. But Figure 

13 7-1, you would be applying the 2.9 correction 

14 factor only to the first block.

15 MR. ROLFES: That is correct.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: The 91.4.

17 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Everything forward 

19 would be based for monitored or unmonitored, 

20 TLDs from 78 through 08, you would be 

21 applying the TLD reading in the worker's file 

22 or this number if he wasn't monitored, as is. 
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1 There would be no correction factor applied 

2 after 07.

3 MR. ROLFES: From dose 

4 reconstruction, I do want to clarify, because 

5 we do make corrections for quality factors 

6 based on neutron energies. During dose 

7 reconstruction, there would be applied --

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, right. I 

9 understand. 

10 MR. ROLFES: -- ICRP-60 correction 

11 factors and such.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Right. But I'm 

13 talking about a neutron dosimetry correction 

14 factor would only apply to the first period 

15 on that chart.

16 MR. ROLFES: Correct. Because TLD 

17 neutron doses don't fade, the angular 

18 response is lower and things like that.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. I think that 

20 SC&A needs to look at that. We have -- like 

21 I say, we don't have the date that we need to 

22 look at. Rather, we agree that the TLD data 
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1 from 1978 forward is -- does not need any 

2 adjustment factor or is reasonably reliable.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I disagree. 

4 This is sort of a new approach that we 

5 haven't had a chance to review yet. We'll 

6 look at it and if it resonates with what 

7 we've looked out and found, but I think we do 

8 need to validate it. For this piece, I think 

9 we should have an action to provide NIOSH 

10 with what we know, a written response as to 

11 what we established and found. And we're 

12 doing the same thing for Mound as we speak, 

13 so I think this deserves the same treatment, 

14 probably not as extensive, but certainly a 

15 response. So, we'll take the action to do a 

16 written response to this new proposal. It's 

17 a draft proposal that's contained in the 

18 NIOSH response. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Has anyone --

21 have you looked to -- have you compared at 

22 all the theoretical doses that you would get 
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1 from the coworker model in like 76-77, versus 

2 78-79, when you have -- just given the Iowa 

3 warning. I think Jim will remember what I'm 

4 talking about. If you all of a sudden have --

5 you're making corrections and getting huge 

6 doses and then there's a big drop-off, you 

7 might want to consider that.

8 MR. ROLFES: That was slightly 

9 different because the early time period was 

10 based on source term versus actual dosimetry 

11 results, and that was like -- I think it was 

12 a cutoff of 1961 or somewhere around there, 

13 maybe. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: That's a good 

15 point.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: It was different.

17 DR. NETON: Make sure we don't 

18 have this --

19 MR. FITZGERALD: We had similar 

20 issues with the back-extrapolating, but this 

21 approach uses the beta, so it's a different -

22 - we have other issues -- the changes are --
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I'm just 

2 looking at this for the first time.

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes. This is based 

4 upon actual film badge data from workers, 

5 rather than like a source term estimate 

6 model.

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: And the 

8 correction factors that you apply in that 

9 first period, 52 to 77 for the NTA film, it's 

10 different correction factors depending on 

11 weapon system worked on, or is it --

12 MR. ROLFES: No, no, no. It's 

13 independent of that. What we're doing here 

14 is, basically, making correction factors for 

15 the time in between the badge exposure and 

16 the film badge being read to determine 

17 whether there's any fading of the neutron 

18 tracks. I guess, it's --

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. I guess, 

20 the one thing I was thinking of was the 

21 spectra. Is the spectrum consistent across 

22 all weapons? I'm not that --
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1 MR. ROLFES: You know, there are 

2 certainly going to be factors that affect it, 

3 the distance from a source.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, you're 

5 making a claim here that --

6 MR. ROLFES: The types of 

7 materials.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- the spectrum 

9 is uniform; it's the same.

10 MR. ROLFES: No, no, no, no. I'm 

11 not saying that at all. So, based --

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: What are you 

13 saying? I'm sorry. I'm trying to 

14 understand.

15 MR. ROLFES: What we've done is 

16 made correction factors for fading, for the 

17 threshold energy.

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

19 MR. ROLFES: Basically, we have an 

20 attachment of our analysis for the 

21 corrections to NTA film and it's --

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. I'll 
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1 have to look at the Appendix, too. I 

2 apologize.

3 MR. ROLFES: It's at the end of 

4 this response here. It's attachment -- or 

5 Appendix A, excuse me, and it's titled, NTA 

6 Film Response To Weapons-Grade Plutonium 

7 Metal.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay.

9 MR. ROLFES: So, we have our bases 

10 in there and such. 

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: I won't bog us 

12 down. I'll look at the -- 

13 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

14 DR. CHEW: I can answer your 

15 question. The spectrum coming out in this is 

16 pretty much the same, but then as you put 

17 things around it, which is -- does that make 

18 sense to you?

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. But the 

20 portion -- 

21 DR. CHEW: If you start to 

22 assemble -- 
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

2 DR. CHEW: And the distance the 

3 person -- that's -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: But doesn't that 

5 affect the badge, and what you're reading? I 

6 mean, that's what we're concerned about, is 

7 the NTA film badge on the person who's going 

8 to be working with these other things in the 

9 environment.

10 DR. CHEW: If you look at the --

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

12 DR. CHEW: -- response, it 

13 explains -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: It's not like a --

15 it's a distribution of spectra that are 

16 present. It's not all, you know, one that 

17 may be neutrons, for example. 

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. I'll 

19 look at it. Thank you.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: I did a couple of 

21 other clarification points I'd like to bring 

22 up while we're on this subject, and that is 
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1 the angular response of the NTA film. And 

2 this is taking the adjustment factor same as 

3 taken from Mound, the fading adjustment 

4 factor, and the ratio, the lost dose ratio 

5 all from Mound, same as applied to Mound, 

6 which is still in debate. And here we have a 

7 study that was done in 1965 by Katherine on 

8 the angular response NTA film, and this is a 

9 frontal exposure, this factor 1.33. Have you 

10 looked at Pantex, and I'm not that familiar 

11 with the actual physical layout of the 

12 workers, and the weapons, and stuff, but if 

13 you had, that's an AP exposure, frontal AP 

14 exposure. But if you had PA exposure from 

15 the rear, this would not apply. In fact, it 

16 could be lost dose if it was from the rear. 

17 So, has there been any look at, or can you 

18 say with early certainty that there wasn't 

19 rear exposure to neutrons at Pantex? Was the 

20 layout such that it wouldn't occur, or is it 

21 possibility that there would be significant 

22 amount, not a negligible amount of rear 
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1 exposure from neutrons at Pantex?

2 MR. ROLFES: The only situation 

3 where that might apply would be in vaults 

4 where large amounts of materials are stored. 

5 But typical operation, and that would be an 

6 area of higher dose rate, also, which an 

7 individual wouldn't spend more than a given 

8 number of hours per week, or per month, and 

9 because of the dose rate in the area. As far 

10 as operations in the cells, most of the work 

11 is done at waist level in front of the 

12 individual. There could be other components 

13 stationed around the room, or in storage 

14 around the room where it's possible that some 

15 level of neutron dose could be received from 

16 those. However, the distance separating the 

17 workers is typically going to minimize any 

18 potential exposure. But the most significant 

19 source of exposure would be the operation 

20 being conducted right in front of them at 

21 that time. 

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Now, this morning 
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1 someone did mention, and I forget who it was 

2 on what subject, that the worker could be 

3 surrounded with 10, or 12, or 15 units. And 

4 I assume this would be more than just in 

5 front of them. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Sarah.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sarah, and it 

8 was also in some of the interviews that the 

9 theory of having one out a time -- so you're 

10 back saying you could have them to your back 

11 really. It just depends on where they're at.

12 DR. CHEW: I don't want to get 

13 into that discussion. There are -- what 

14 Sarah was talking about, there are bays and 

15 cells. Okay? The cells is where the actual 

16 units are being assembled. And the numbers 

17 of the bays and cells are significantly 

18 different. How can I say this? So, if you 

19 really look at how we responded to the 

20 angular response of the NTA, we did look at 

21 the Katherine data, which is -- and took what 

22 I would consider a multiplicative correction 
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1 to the track here, and 0.75 would compensate 

2 for the response. Your issue is that 

3 anything bouncing off the wall there -- 

4 DR. BUCHANAN: No, my issue is 

5 mainly if there's weapons behind, and if it's 

6 -- if a person is in a room with multiple 

7 weapons around, then the angular response 

8 function wouldn't be correct, if 99 percent 

9 of the time he's working with them in front 

10 of him, or on an assembly line, or something, 

11 then I'd say this is reasonable. And I don't 

12 want to get down to the Site Profile 

13 technical issues, I just say one of the major 

14 cutoffs would be where you'd have a dose that 

15 you wouldn't be seeing at all, or very little 

16 of, and this wouldn't correct for it, would 

17 be if you had significant exposure from the 

18 rear. This is just an issue I want to bring 

19 up that had not been -- 

20 DR. CHEW: During assembly while 

21 they're in the cell, as you said, the person 

22 is working with them in the front, there is a 
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1 standoff distance between where the nearest 

2 unit can be from him or her. And I just 

3 don't know that off the top of my head, so I 

4 would say the contribution for that 

5 particular unit is going to be low. I can't 

6 quantify what it is, but it is not like it's 

7 directly behind them, because that's not 

8 allowed.

9 MS. RAY: And I know that things 

10 were quite different, I'm sorry to interrupt, 

11 but things were quite different in early 

12 years, and you would have one or two people 

13 working on weapons, on a weapon in the 

14 center. They were going to be doing the same 

15 thing to 10 or 12 other weapons. So, for 

16 example, in a cell, in a round room there 

17 could have been 10 or 12 other weapons, and 

18 you could, even at that time, as I understand 

19 it -- you could even have mixed programs, 

20 which I know is something that has not been 

21 considered, because that is not today's 

22 activity. And that seems to be the primary 
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1 emphasis that NIOSH has looked at, is the way 

2 things are today. But the ACKC dosimeters 

3 were quite different back then, so I think 

4 what this gentleman is saying, and, again, 

5 I'm not a scientist, I'm not a mathematician, 

6 but I think this something very important. 

7 They did not have any kind of dosimetry 

8 looking at any exposures they were receiving 

9 from the back. And there were no criteria 

10 then that I am aware of from talking to many, 

11 many production individuals that said how 

12 close they could be to a weapon.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: And what time 

14 period would you say this applies to?

15 MS. RAY: I think it would have 

16 continued well into the `80s. So, it would 

17 have been all the way as far back as you 

18 could go, and it stopped some point in the 

19 `80s, probably the late `80s. And I'm going 

20 to add, my husband, Don Ray, is with me, and 

21 he was a production technician during this 

22 time frame, so I am confirming this time 
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1 frame with him.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Thank you.

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay. This is a

4 concern we also heard about down at Pantex 

5 when we had interviewed workers, as well. 

6 And that was one of the things that came out 

7 of the meetings that we had with the workers. 

8 And, in addition to that, there were some 

9 other concerns about lead apron usage, as 

10 well, for people that were working on 

11 assembly/disassembly operations, vault work, 

12 et cetera. And we had actually gone back and 

13 made corrections to our Site Profile based on 

14 some of the input we had received from the 

15 workers at that time. 

16 The one that comes to mind, 

17 specifically, is the application of a 

18 correction factor for accounting for lead 

19 apron usage, and I don't think we specific --

20 we did discuss the issue about having 

21 multiple units in a room, and work being 

22 done, components being stored in areas that 
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1 could have contributed to higher dose rates 

2 and things. If we had a concern about the 

3 neutron doses, we would typically see 

4 elevated photon doses associated with any 

5 work like that, as well. But I think we can 

6 go back and maybe look at some of our 

7 technical assumptions to see if any change 

8 would be required, and maybe provide an 

9 example of -- that you know a generic dose 

10 rate for somebody working on something 

11 directly in front of them versus material 

12 stored 20 feet away from them.

13 MS. RAY: If I can insert again, 

14 it would be very important to be sure that 

15 you are looking at the right age of weapons. 

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Now, two 

17 other points I'd like to bring up was that 

18 the fading, and the threshold effect are 

19 taken, like I say -- we have this ongoing 

20 discussion with Mound, using -- what fading 

21 factor to use. NIOSH proposes a 9 percent 

22 per week from a value taken from Mound's 
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1 data. Mound also has in there a 33 percent 

2 per week, and a 56 percent for two weeks in a 

3 published document. So, we believe that 

4 choosing the 9, just -- it's the same issue 

5 we had at 9 on fading, which value do you use 

6 for NTA film fading? The other issue that's 

7 parallel to Mound is the amount of neutron 

8 dose below the .5 MeV threshold. And, in 

9 this case, NIOSH has proposed to use the 

10 MCNP, the neutron modeling method, to 

11 determine the amount of neutron dose that 

12 would be missed, and assign that accordingly. 

13 And that's in Table 1 of their response.

14 And this is somewhat compatible, 

15 just using a different type of shielding, 

16 same situation, same neutron modeling 

17 program, and stuff, that is at Mound. So, 

18 I'd like the Board to be aware that what 

19 happens at Mound, probably what we decide at 

20 Mound, whether we accept that model or not, 

21 and SC&A is presently working on that, to 

22 have a White Paper out on that, probably will 
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1 affect a number of other sites. So, they're 

2 using the same concept here, where it 

3 determines the amount of missed dose compared 

4 to the thickness, and position, and that sort 

5 of thing. Only thing at Mound is that you 

6 don't have quite as many -- you have a more 

7 controlled environment. You have less energy 

8 spread, and situations geometry than you 

9 might have at Mound, so it's kind of a 

10 narrowed down concept for Pantex compared to 

11 Mound. So, I just wanted to make the Board 

12 aware that this is a carryover from Mound, 

13 and probably what we decide at Mound will 

14 apply to this, too.

15 MR. ROLFES: Mound is slightly 

16 different, though.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Slightly different, 

18 but the concept is the same.

19 MR. ROLFES: You've got different 

20 compounds, plutonium, tetra fluoride, and 

21 things with a different neutron energy 

22 spectrum versus weapons grade plutonium 
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1 metal. I mean, it's a little bit different.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, like I say, 

3 Mound has a wide variety, Pantex panels it 

4 down and has a narrow application of the same 

5 process.

6 DR. CHEW: Ron, you looked at the 

7 fading we actually used, and our correction 

8 factor was 36 percent, and not the 9 -- 

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, yes, it's 

10 based on 9 percent fading per week, though.

11 DR. CHEW: But to develop the 

12 correction factor, though, we used the 

13 monthly change.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Use a monthly 

15 exchange, 9 percent per week. Okay. And 

16 what I'm saying is, if we use the 33 percent 

17 per week, and a monthly exchange, it would be 

18 a lot larger correction factor.

19 DR. CHEW: Okay. But what's the 

20 basis of 36 percent per week, or 33 percent 

21 per week?

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, that -- it's 
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1 two published Mound documents at the Mound 

2 Site that they did. And the 9 percent comes 

3 from an unpublished Mound document, around 

4 the same period, 1966 or that area. So, 9 

5 percent comes from Mound, and the 33 percent 

6 comes from Mound, 56 percent comes from 

7 Mound. And Mound's health supervisor there 

8 had theirs adjusted using the 33 percent per 

9 week until they synchronized their exposure 

10 to calibration cycle. So, I say, if we're 

11 taking data from Mound and applying it to 

12 Pantex, why are we using 9 percent, instead 

13 of 33 percent?

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And this issue, 

15 anything -- SC&A is going to produce a White 

16 Paper on this?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: On this.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Brad, can I make a 

20 comment here, or raise a question?

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure, Hans.

22 DR. BEHLING: One of the things 
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1 that has intrigued me is Table 6-1 in the 

2 original TBD that cites by year collective 

3 neutron dose and collective gamma dose. And 

4 something strikes me for the year 1960 and 

5 even 1961. If you look at the collective 

6 neutron dose, and the collective gamma dose 

7 for those two years, for the first year, 

8 1960, you have a total of 9.2 person rem of 

9 neutron dose, and you only have 1.15 person 

10 rem for collective gamma dose. That 

11 translates to a neutron-gamma ratio of 8. 

12 For the next year, `61, the collective 

13 neutron dose is 6.23, and the collective 

14 gamma dose is 2.51 person rem, and that is 

15 somewhat reduced to 2.5 as the neutron/photon 

16 ratio. And then, thereafter, for all the 

17 years thereafter, it drops off precipitously. 

18 And, of course, those years we were using 

19 NTA film, which certainly under-estimates the 

20 true neutron dose. So, when you have a 

21 neutron/photon ratio for 1960 of 8, my 

22 question is, was there something unique 
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1 during that has to, or should be looked at? 

2 Was the work involved different from 

3 subsequent years? Were there different types 

4 of materials handled that should generate 

5 such a high neutron/photon ratio? As I said, 

6 since this was an area or time frame when NTA 

7 film was used, chances are the true 

8 neutron/photon ratio might have been much 

9 higher. So, it's just a question that I 

10 have, that has intrigued me. I've had a note 

11 written on the side of Table 6-1 for a long 

12 time, and I don't think I ever raised it.

13 MR. ROLFES: Thanks, Hans. So, do 

14 you want us to return to using neutron/photon 

15 ratios now, or do you -- 

16 DR. BEHLING: No, no, no, no, no. 

17 I'm just saying that something, perhaps, 

18 unique happened during those two years that 

19 would justify the unusual high neutron/photo 

20 ratio. As I said, in Table 6-1, it's not 

21 given as a neutron/photon -- it just gives 

22 collective doses of neutron, and collective 
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1 doses of photon, and from that you can, 

2 obviously, go a simple -- derive a simple 

3 ratio between neutron/photon ratio, and it's 

4 very, very different for those two years. 

5 And I'm just questioning if there was 

6 something unique that happened during those 

7 two years that was different from all 

8 previous, and all subsequent years that may 

9 require special attention.

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We could have a 

11 special weapon, or something that came in 

12 during that time period.

13 MR. ROLFES: That's very possible. 

14 Anything is possible, and the dosimetry that 

15 we have is -- we have that dosimetry 

16 information, so that information is actually 

17 used for worker dose reconstruction. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, SC&A's got 

19 their task for this one. We're going to just 

20 proceed on, Joe.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. Issue 

22 8, which is a completeness interpretation. 
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1 Now, this goes back to what we discussed 

2 pretty much earlier today. I really don't 

3 want to spend a lot of time on it, because it 

4 covers familiar ground. Again, what that one 

5 basically says is that the specific 

6 contributions of individual weapon systems 

7 were such that maybe the source terms that 

8 we're concerned about being enveloped or 

9 bounded by this back-extrapolation, but I 

10 think since we've already agreed to earlier 

11 that NIOSH would provide more details and 

12 whatnot to justify the back-extrapolation, I 

13 would assume part of that would be to show 

14 how that's going to envelope or bound all the 

15 different types of sources that you're 

16 dealing with historically. And that's what 

17 we said earlier, you have a long history, 

18 many different systems presenting, perhaps, 

19 different types of source terms and whatnot, 

20 both external and internal, and the notion is 

21 that whatever is being proposed is going to 

22 envelope that history, regardless of the 
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1 different sources. And, again, certain 

2 systems have certain histories, which I can't 

3 get into, but certain presented an exposure 

4 potential that would vary. And that's not to 

5 change the need to go look at plutonium, 

6 thorium, and show how one is going to apply 

7 this extrapolation, but it's just sort of 

8 another cautionary note that we need to be 

9 aware of these differences, and make sure 

10 that we understand what the different 

11 systems may have provided. And as part of 

12 what we would do, I think, would be to -- and 

13 we did not want to, nor was it right to do it 

14 as part of the Site Profile Review, but 

15 certainly wanted to take a look at some of 

16 the systems that were, perhaps, more of 

17 concern from an exposure standpoint for 

18 whatever reason, and just as a validation 

19 step, just make sure that's going to be 

20 enveloped, or covered by the approach that 

21 NIOSH is proposing, so a bit of a validation 

22 from that standpoint.
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1 MR. KATZ: So, is that something 

2 SC&A -- is this going to take a group meeting 

3 in Germantown, or is that something that SC&A 

4 wants to address independently?

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think we 

6 have to do the spade work necessary to make a 

7 case to ourselves that it looks like there's 

8 an issue, or not. I mean, it's sort of one 

9 of these things that understanding the 

10 difficulties of getting that kind of 

11 information, and probing that information, 

12 it's not something you would do lightly, not, 

13 certainly, as part of a Site Profile, but in 

14 concert with what I think was proposed this 

15 morning. We would, maybe, take a look at a 

16 couple of the systems that give us most 

17 concern, and try to at least get enough 

18 information where when we have this 

19 discussion later, maybe a secure discussion, 

20 who knows, but we'll be able to talk 

21 intelligently about well, we understand where 

22 you're coming from, but this was 1960's 
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1 program, and we can show you why we may have 

2 some concerns about using this data back, and 

3 covering this, because this particular system 

4 may have presented a hazard, an exposure 

5 potential that would be arguable that it 

6 wouldn't be applicable. So, that's the only 

7 thing I would propose.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes. And my only 

9 question about that is for efficiency sake, 

10 given the difficulty you just raised of going 

11 in and digging into that information, whether 

12 it makes sense to do that all at once, and 

13 have that conversation. If you do it step14 wise, I'm just concerned about how much time 

15 it -- 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: No. I have no 

17 problem doing it in concert. We did that at 

18 Los Alamos not long ago, and I understand how 

19 hard it is to get to the information. If 

20 it's possible to do it jointly, I'll propose 

21 to do it jointly. 

22 MR. KATZ: In that case it might 
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1 make sense, too, to have at least a couple of 

2 Board Members participate in that, as well.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think any 

4 time we can time this so that it's one trip, 

5 one access point, it's going to be much 

6 better. And I doubt they would host us much 

7 more than that, anyway. So, yes, I think 

8 that would be useful. I think that maybe the 

9 timing would be such that there would be more 

10 than just one reason to be there to look and 

11 stuff, maybe two or three different reasons, 

12 that would be one committee.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And we've got 

14 some business coming up that I'm hoping for 

15 one of our visits, the tour that's supposed 

16 to be coming up that maybe we could make that 

17 -- 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess this is 

19 subsumed by a lot of what we talked about. I 

20 just don't want to spend a lot of time 

21 talking about these validation points, and 

22 whether the source terms are all covered. I 
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1 think that's sort of part and parcel to this 

2 look into whether you can apply contemporary 

3 information retroactively. And I think 

4 that's one of the issue, can you, in fact, 

5 envelope these systems if they have exposure 

6 potentials that may be of particular concern, 

7 and maybe you can't. 

8 If I can move on to issue 9. This 

9 one I think we just need to spend some time 

10 with your database of 100 plus incidents, as 

11 well as reflect on whether or not the 

12 historic incident system was one where we 

13 feel pretty confident that this collection 

14 that's on the O: drive represents a pretty 

15 good representation of what happened. 

16 I said earlier, one of our 

17 concerns is whether people, in fact, recorded 

18 what was going on, what was a incident 

19 quotation, close rotation back in the `60s 

20 versus now. I mean, one thing that struck us 

21 right after the Tiger Team, the number of 

22 reported instances at Pantex just went up, 
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1 skyrocketed, you know. They were reporting 

2 hundreds per year versus a handful before 

3 that, so you sort of ask yourself well, okay, 

4 clearly, people were -- this wasn't just 

5 Pantex. 

6 DR. CHEW: It happened across the 

7 complex.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: It happened 

9 across the complex, right. 

10 DR. CHEW: Everybody overreacted.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Everybody 

12 overreacted, and it sort of begs the 

13 question. Not a pleasant memory. Right. We 

14 all lived through it. 

15 DR. CHEW: We were trying to outdo 

16 each other how many numbers we -- 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: But that just 

18 sort of raises the question about do we have 

19 a pretty good picture of what these events 

20 were, these incidents were, because we put a 

21 lot on them. I mean, I think we're claiming 

22 it's a venture into bioassay programs, so the 
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1 issue is as long as there was a good-faith 

2 program to bioassay workers, if there was a 

3 release, or a potential, then maybe this 

4 issue gets better, but I think we want to 

5 start with the events, how were they handled, 

6 and can we correlate that, to some extent, 

7 with bioassays, and some kind of response, 

8 even if the response is it wasn't a real 

9 release, and, therefore, there was no 

10 bioassay, just finding some accountability 

11 just to track that down that would give a 

12 little bit more confidence in the early days. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, in the 

14 early days, actually, what triggered an event 

15 was that the classification of something 

16 going outside of the containment, the 

17 facility, what were they considering it to 

18 be? That's still questionable, because I 

19 found it very interesting that we have three 

20 or four incidents, and as Paula said, went to 

21 100.

22 MR. KATZ: I thought this was part 
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1 of what Mark said, that they were going to 

2 substantiate when they beef up their bases. 

3 Is that correct, is that what you're saying, 

4 Joe?

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, that's what 

6 I'm saying.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: A lot of what we 

9 talked about this morning really does subsume 

10 some of these issues, because I think it's 

11 event-driven, certainly one of the responses 

12 would be to -- and you cite in your response 

13 over 100 incident reports. And, recognize, 

14 two years ago when we finished the Site 

15 Profile, we didn't have access to all of 

16 those incident reports, so there's a lot more 

17 now. So, I think there are significant 

18 chunks now, so I think it would be best to --

19 for us, as an action, to revisit what's on 

20 file, and whatever could be identified as 

21 additional records. Maybe there aren't any 

22 additional records. And then, certainly, 
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1 from the standpoint of what this tasking was 

2 this morning, that you would, certainly, look 

3 to completeness of the incident database as 

4 an argument that you were confident that you 

5 have all the incidents and bioassays were 

6 appropriate, and use that event-driven 

7 program as a pretty solid way of responding.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Well, don't we need 

9 to go with some type of a tasking for an SEC 

10 Evaluation Report, also?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

12 there's a broader thing that Mark's very 

13 familiar with. As part of every SEC review, 

14 we look at the -- and the Board, and the Work 

15 Group looks at the adequacy, completeness, 

16 and integrity of the data itself. We don't 

17 do that on Site Profile, but as part of an 

18 SEC, we, as a baseline, do that. We have not 

19 done that. One thing, there isn't a whole 

20 lot of data for Pantex. It doesn't really 

21 begin until latter years. But this -- the 

22 information is available on incidents. The 
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1 bioassay records we do have, the latter 

2 years, and the external dosimetry, even 

3 though we've talked about different methods 

4 of enveloping or upper bounding these things, 

5 we still have the responsibility that we do 

6 on every SEC, which is to look at the 

7 database, and get back to the Work Group on 

8 its completeness, adequacy, and integrity. 

9 And the integrity speaks to the issue we 

10 discussed earlier, which was, was there 

11 destruction of records? What's the 

12 implication? Do we have any corroboration 

13 about that? What records were affected? I 

14 mean, I think all of that is a routine 

15 tasking that SC&A takes to the Work Group, 

16 which is to come back and report on that. 

17 And that's something that, certainly --we 

18 haven't discussed it, because we've dived in 

19 on the specifics, but that's a broader thing 

20 that the Work Group may want to consider.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I think that 

22 we're going to have to -- and I was going to 
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1 get with Ted before we end this to make sure 

2 that we've tasked you right, because when 

3 Pantex originally started out, it was a Site 

4 Profile issue that we got into, and we 

5 actually have turned into an SEC now. And we 

6 really have not done the SEC issues yet, so 

7 this is something we're going to have to, 

8 before we end our meeting and stuff, make 

9 sure that we've got SC&A tasked correctly to 

10 be able to proceed on with that, make sure 

11 that we're in the right position.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And just to 

13 clarify, I think Mark and his team would be 

14 looking at how this could be bolstered for 

15 its methods process. We would be looking at 

16 the completeness and accuracy of the records, 

17 including incident reports, which is a 

18 slightly different angle. But, nonetheless, 

19 they do dovetail and contribute to each 

20 other.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: So, with that 
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1 broader tasking, I think it covers most of 

2 the rest of them. So, the only thing I would 

3 want to address is number 10. This was 

4 mentioned by Sarah earlier. It certainly is 

5 a facet of Pantex operations, that we were 

6 concerned about, and, certainly, NIOSH has 

7 spent some time thinking about, which is the 

8 firing sites and the burning of the depleted 

9 uranium. And this whole process of hydro 

10 shots done at other sites, but to do some 

11 testing on the high explosives, and to get 

12 some information analysis on the materials. 

13 It's materials research in a lot of respects. 

14 And I'm going to let you summarize your 

15 position, because, again, I think you got 

16 into it earlier, and just for the benefit of 

17 Sarah, and Lars, and everybody.

18 MR. ROLFES: Sure. I don't know 

19 exactly what we have in here. I didn't look 

20 back at our responses, but off the top of my 

21 head, what I can tell you, there were 

22 historical efforts made to determine how much 
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1 uranium was vaporized, and basically blown 

2 off site versus how much was collected and 

3 disposed of as radiologic waste. But we do 

4 have some air sampling results and analyses, 

5 as well as some bioassay data for the workers 

6 that were at that area. You know, it's 

7 certainly not as much data as we'd like to 

8 have, but we do have other information that 

9 will allow us to estimate worker intakes, 

10 such as contamination levels in the dirt, and 

11 air sampling data. 

12 Now, there's also -- there's a few 

13 different firing sites, and, basically, they 

14 were doing open air testing in the earlier 

15 time period, and then went over to a 

16 contained test area. And, really, they had 

17 the same type of operation going on in the 

18 contained area, so they were, basically, 

19 maintaining all their materials inside of 

20 this containment vessel. And, really, it's 

21 those workers who were involved in the 

22 containment vessel area. Those are the 
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1 workers that actually have more of the 

2 bioassay data, and also have a higher 

3 potential for exposure. So, when we're 

4 generating uranium dust, this could cover a 

5 larger area. The potential for exposures are 

6 much lower, and, basically, they're going up 

7 into the air and blowing. If you've been to 

8 Amarillo, you know how hard and fast the wind 

9 blows down there. But the people at the 

10 firing sites could have gotten uranium 

11 contamination on their hands. They sometimes 

12 used gloves, sometimes didn't, if they were 

13 looking for pieces in the dirt, and things. 

14 But what we have used, basically, is the air 

15 sampling data, and developed an inhalation 

16 dose model for individuals that went into the 

17 site, and would have been involved in re18 entry, and picking up pieces, and things like 

19 that. 

20 Let's see. There's also some 

21 other. I've mentioned previously, they had 

22 hired a drone, a person to come in and fly a 
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1 plane through the cloud to sample the cloud, 

2 to see how much uranium was in the air, et 

3 cetera. That's what we have. I believe what 

4 we've done to generate our intakes was to --

5 let' see. I want to make sure before I say 

it, but I believe -- yes, we've taken the 95th 6 

7 percentile of the measured air concentration 

8 of 24 picocuries per cubic meter. Let's see.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: 1961 on.

10 MR. ROLFES: Yes, it was the 1960s 

11 outside air concentrations, because I think 

12 those were the highest air concentrations 

13 that we observed. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. This may be 

15 more of a clarification issue. As part of 

16 the Site Profile, we did a sampling and 

17 review of the data, and I think we had a 

18 discrepancy with the `59-61 data being 

19 different or higher than the `60s data. And 

20 I think we can provide that data, if you 

21 don't have it. But I just want to make sure 

22 that the distribution, we're talking about 
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1 the same distribution, different time periods 

2 of the firing. So, this is firing site 4.

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I didn't think 

4 that it was operational until `61. That's 

5 why the -- 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

7 wondering, we have data that shows a 

8 difference.

9 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm not sure why 

11 there's a difference.

12 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I'd be 

13 interested in taking a look at that.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I think, 

15 again, that's a clarification issue that we 

16 have on some of those things.

17 MR. ROLFES: Okay. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Not probably an 

19 SEC issue, but a question that came from the 

20 profile. I think we can resolve that, so 

21 we'll take the action to clarify that to 

22 NIOSH, with specific information, and bring 
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1 that back to the Work Group as a resolved 

2 issue. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Because I don't 

5 see it as much of a dose reconstruction 

6 issue, as one of just making sure that the 

7 analysis is a bounding analysis, with the 

8 data that's available. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, you're 

10 going to -- this is an SC&A -- 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think 

12 there are some specific questions, but I 

13 would characterize them as clarification 

14 questions. I don't want to -- I don't think 

15 this is a fundamental SEC issue, but just 

16 ones that we can clarify, and we can take off 

17 the table. And I'll take the task to define 

18 that and send it over, maybe as a memo, or 

19 something.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, SC&A 

21 is on that issue.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, beyond the -

3 - these are the issues that we came forward 

4 with on the original profile three years ago. 

5 The other issues are ones where we have gone 

6 through, as we usually do, and have addressed 

7 each and every one of the petitioner issues, 

8 just to see if we could find a corresponding 

9 response in the Evaluation Report. And if we 

10 can't find something that's specifically 

11 responsive to the issue, we put it in, just 

12 to make sure that there's an opportunity to 

13 bring that information back to the table. 

14 So, here on out, the sort of -- we didn't 

15 originate these issues. These issues are 

16 right from the petition. And I guess my 

17 question is, do you want to take a break 

18 before we do that?

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Let's take a 

20 15-minute break.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Some of these are 

22 repeats what we've already covered.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, let's take 

2 a recess.

3 MR. KATZ: So, 20 after?

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That'll be 

5 fine.

6 MR. KATZ: So, 20 after 3, we'll 

7 reconvene.

8 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

9 matter went off the record at 3:08 p.m., and 

10 resumed at 3:20 p.m.)

11 MR. KATZ: This is the Pantex 

12 Working Group. We're just reconvening after 

13 a short break.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: This is Joe. As 

15 I said right before the break, that finishes 

16 our Site Profile based SEC relevant issue, 

17 and what we wanted to outline is what we 

18 usually do, which is to identify the 

19 petitioner issues, issues that were derived 

20 from the petition, itself, that we want to 

21 see a corresponding response in the 

22 Evaluation Report. And where we didn't, we 
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1 provided some analysis in our matrix on those 

2 issues. 

3 Issue 11 on our list was the 

4 question of most highly exposed worker 

5 monitor, and we conveyed the petitioner's 

6 issue that no evidence was presented in the 

7 ER that early workers were, in fact, badged 

8 the same as later ones. And the assumption 

9 was that the most highly exposed were badged, 

10 in our view, doesn't provide enough basis for 

11 the coworker model used. And we can go into 

12 more details. Again, a study by Strom in 

13 2004, a coworker study, using 1994-2000 data 

14 is cited. But, again, I think we get at the 

15 same issues we did before about whether you 

16 can use this modern, I won't say modern, but 

17 more contemporary data, and use it as a back18 extrapolation. But in a larger sense, I 

19 think the broader tasking to look at data 

20 adequacy, accuracy, and integrity, that 

21 broader baseline review that we do would 

22 address this issue, and some of the other 
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1 issues that we're going to get into. So, I 

2 just want to sort of make it clear to the 

3 Work Group and the petitioners that yes, we 

4 do this for every SEC. And, in this case, we 

5 would look at the database, would examine 

6 questions about who was monitored, and how 

7 that represented from the coworker standpoint 

8 the most highly exposed. 

9 Issue 12 is accuracy of data. And 

10 there, this is a question of acceptance of 

11 early film dosimetry as being reliable, is a 

12 question that figured in the petitioner's 

13 comments. And we feel that's a legitimate 

14 issue to look at, as we examine the adequacy 

15 and completeness of the database. So, that, 

16 again, would be a subset of what we look at.

17 One question I do have is on the 

18 Plato study, which I've seen a couple of 

19 times now. This was done in `78-79 data. Is 

20 that on the O: drive? I think we've been 

21 looking for that, and I don't know if we 

22 found it yet.
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1 MR. ROLFES: I see that we've 

2 referenced it, and mentioned the dosimeter 

3 testing that was done at the University of 

4 Michigan. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

6 MR. ROLFES: I'll have to take a 

7 look at and see if we've got that, a 

8 reference to Plato 1979.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, if you find 

10 the reference, we thought maybe it was on the 

11 O: drive, maybe we were looking in the wrong

12 place, but that would be one thing on that 

13 one item that if we're going to look at this 

14 completeness question, that would be a useful 

15 study to look at.

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: The other issue, 

18 wearing of badges, again, whether one has an 

19 issue with assigning LOD/2 to workers not 

20 wearing badges. The reason we kind of raised 

21 this question, this came up at NTS, is that 

22 we want to be very careful about the issue of 
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1 whether workers were wearing badges, and how 

2 we treat that issue, and whether it's big 

3 issue, or an isolated issue. Again, we would 

4 look at that in the context -- this is no 

5 different than we've looked at any other 

6 site, look at that in the context of Pantex.

7 MR. ROLFES: Yes, there's -- we'll 

8 write that down as an action item, I guess, 

9 to get the reference, the Plato reference on 

10 - 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. It's up on 

12 the O: drive, maybe SRDB -- 

13 MR. ROLFES: Regarding badging, I 

14 do recall seeing a couple of references that 

15 we have on our Site Research Database 

16 regarding audits that were actually done on 

17 the site to determine whether individuals 

18 were wearing their badges, and such.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

20 MR. ROLFES: And there were a good 

21 number of people that were not wearing them 

22 in this particular time period, 1969.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

2 MR. ROLFES: And they have made 

3 some corrections, and reinformed employees 

4 that they needed to be worn, and such. So, 

5 those would be helpful to you, I think -- 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. We looked 

7 at the `69 study, and that gives us some 

8 concern that with a relatively larger group 

9 that was not. But if it was corrected, it 

10 might have been an isolated one or two-year 

11 thing, in which case, it's less an issue, and 

12 can be done with missing dose, LOD/2, but we 

13 don't want be too rash in our judgment, if 

14 we've had the same issue at other sites. And 

15 once we look into it, it turns out a little 

16 differently.

17 MS. RAY: Can I offer some 

18 comments on that? The timing on the wearing 

19 of the dosimeters was one of the issues 

20 brought out by the Tiger Team report, and 

21 also something that has come to my attention, 

22 as I've talked with other workers. And I 
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1 know for a fact that only one department, I 

2 can't tell you which one it was, there was 

3 Departments X, Y, and Z on the line, and only 

4 one of those departments which included what 

5 was then assembly operators, and inspectors, 

6 those were the only people that had 

7 dosimeters. So, even in looking at some of 

8 the numbers, I find it kind of odd, because I 

9 know material handlers, transportation folks, 

10 quality control, not quality control 

11 technicians, but warehouse and protection 

12 workers, there was a long period of time when 

13 they did not have any type of monitoring, so 

14 I just wanted to point that out, as far as 

15 dosimetry. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, thank you, 

17 Sarah. That's the reason why we want to do a 

18 broader review, and hit the specific points 

19 raised in the petition, as well as other 

20 issues that we're going to look at, which is 

21 the integrity of the information collected, 

22 and whether, in fact -- which workers were
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1 monitored when. Some of this -- a lot of 

2 this is in the TBD, but there's still 

3 questions that we've raised, and you've 

4 raised some questions, too. So, we want to 

5 certainly provide that back to the Work Group 

6 in a complete piece. 

7 MS. RAY: Yes, and looking at red 

8 aprons, and I know it's probably not been an 

9 issue, but I see it noted under item 12. And 

10 that was not a standard practice. It was 

11 something that had to be requested. There 

12 was no training on it. The lead aprons only 

13 covered the front, many of the people, 

14 production source and warehouse people who 

15 had to do the inventories in the pit vaults 

16 had to climb around on them, and they were 

17 exposed on the back. They were in there for 

18 many hours. You know, I think all of that 

19 needs to be included. But, again, the 

20 wearing of the dosimeter was the dosimeter, 

21 under the lead apron, were the lead aprons 

22 even used? You know, I think it possibly may 
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1 be a broader scope than it appears on the 

2 papers.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we did look 

4 at lead aprons. But, again, we haven't had a 

5 chance to dive into the database more than we 

6 have. So, we certainly want to look at that, 

7 as well. 

8 MR. ROLFES: Sarah, this is Mark 

9 Rolfes, and that was one of the key issues I 

10 felt that came out of the Worker Outreach 

11 program that NIOSH has. We, subsequently, 

12 after we had a couple of meetings down 

13 offsite with some of the production 

14 technicians of the Metal Trades Council, we 

15 had actually discussed about lead apron 

16 usage, and that was one of their concerns, as 

17 well. And we actually had updated our Site 

18 Profile to come up with an approach to assign 

19 a claim in favorable correction factor for 

20 whether an individual did or did not wear the 

21 lead apron. And it's based upon the type of 

22 cancer diagnosis. It, basically, goes 
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1 through a flowchart in our Site Profile to 

2 insure that we're assigning the more claim in 

3 favorable of two doses to the individual 

4 based upon the facts of their case, and 

5 whether or not they could have worn an apron. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: And that gets 

7 into badge placement relative to the apron, 

8 as well.

9 MS. RAY: I have a layman's 

10 comment. You have to have a good number to 

11 start from before you can correct that 

12 number. And I think one of our premises at 

13 this point is that we don't feel like it's 

14 possible to start -- have that good starting 

15 point, or that good starting number based on 

16 the information being used.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And, certainly, 

18 another issue under issue 13, which sort of 

19 echoes what Sarah just said. We're looking 

20 at the numbers of workers that were actually 

21 monitored in certain time periods, and I 

22 think it's acknowledged that `52-57 few 
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1 workers were monitored, and that was mostly 

2 radiographers. And then certainly the 

3 numbers got higher, but the question of 

4 exactly how many workers were being

5 monitored, who was being monitored, and 

6 whether the data, itself, is adequate is part 

7 and parcel of what we're looking at in this 

8 overall review of data accuracy. 

9 So, really, the last grouping of 

10 issues, I think all fall into the data, its 

11 completeness, the adequacy of the information 

12 collected, the integrity of the data. So, I 

13 think, again, SC&A will take the broader and 

14 more typical as our charter from the Work 

15 Group to examine that, and report back in a 

16 documented way. That would also include 

17 incidents, so there's a -- the usual things 

18 that we look at, have looked at in the past. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: That would 

21 complete -- the program is the health physics 

22 program that you've already discussed, 
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1 looking back in time. How rigorous and 

2 supportable was the rad protection program 

3 over the history of the plant? I think 

4 you've talked about some concerns. 

5 Like I said, there was three or 

6 four variables that I was most concerned 

7 about in terms of back-extrapolating. And 

8 one of them was the rigor of the rad control 

9 program, the numbers of health physicists, we 

10 talked about that. The procedures and 

11 requirements, to what extent they were 

12 implemented. So, that last item on the page 

13 speaks that one variable. And, of course, 

14 the other ones are operations and dosimetry. 

15 There's just -- I think we've already talked 

16 about this morning, but these are the 

17 questions that I think need to be addressed, 

18 if you've going to back-extrapolate, I think 

19 it's a challenge, and that's one of them,

20 which is the efficacy of the health physics 

21 program. 

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. The one 
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1 that I see here, 14, subcontractor, temp 

2 records, and so forth like that.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Same 

4 difference.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: The same thing 

6 we get into -- 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: We look at the 

8 completeness of the records that includes 

9 whether or not records were maintained for 

10 subcontractors. There's an issue about Mound 

11 workers participating at the Nevada Test 

12 Site, at maybe a couple of Broken Arrow 

13 situations. Those are situations where we 

14 just want to make sure that the record is 

15 complete, and that dose information or 

16 monitoring information came back with the 

17 worker, and was reported in the file. So, I 

18 mean it all sort of -- without getting into 

19 all the nooks and crannies, it all gets down 

20 to whether the body of records maintained are 

21 complete, adequate, and have integrity, 

22 meaning that they're not altered, or there's 
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1 a large group of them missing. I think 

2 that's the baseline that the Work Groups 

3 would operate from, because then the methods 

4 don't -- if the records are not accurate, or 

5 not complete. So, I think that's what Sarah 

6 was saying earlier. This is to make sure 

7 that's the case before you talk about using 

8 that data as methods -- 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I 

10 understand that. We've got into that. 

11 MR. ROLFES: I wanted to point out 

12 a couple of clarifications. You know, for 

13 example, with Project Crested Ice, there were 

14 individuals from Pantex that had gone to 

15 Thule, Greenland to basically assist with 

16 cleanup operations. That was a military 

17 operation with DOE participation, as well. 

18 And we did have a couple of individuals that 

19 have participated from Pantex in those 

20 operations, and had subsequently provided 

21 bioassay results. So, that information is 

22 present in -- there's an incident report, 
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1 obviously, for that occurrence. And then we 

2 also have bioassay data for the individuals.

3 The NTS exposures, I couldn't say 

4 that all NTS exposures for individuals that 

5 left Amarillo from Pantex Plant that 

6 traveled, you know, some workers had gone, 

7 and were individuals that participated in the 

8 test program at NTS. That's something that 

9 we would have to request separately from NTS, 

10 because it's a separate covered facility. 

11 And during the time period of April of 1957 

12 forward, anybody that entered the Nevada Test 

13 Site would have been an issued a Nevada Test 

14 Site dosimeter, or a film badge at that time. 

15 So, there's -- I, actually, just was 

16 speaking with a worker about this, that he 

17 had indicated he had gone to NTS, and so we 

18 wanted to make sure that he had gotten his 

19 dosimetry records, or we had gotten his 

20 dosimetry records from Nevada Test Site work.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we may just 

22 be crossing the T with you, because, again, I 
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1 think as part of due diligence on looking at 

2 this, we, typically, walk that down, as you 

3 have. And if you have already done so, then 

4 I think the issue goes away. But there's a 

5 number of just questions like that, that we 

6 just go through and ask the questions, and 

7 make sure the answers are all there. 

8 MR. KATZ: Given the overlap, 

9 though, it may make sense at some point in 

10 your process to contact Mark, and see that 

11 you don't do double work here.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: The process I 

13 envision would be to start with -- again, 

14 I'll re-emphasize, we have only done the 

15 digging to support the Site Profile Review, 

16 which was three years ago. We have not --

17 we've looked at some of the information 

18 that's on file from the SEC work that Mark 

19 and his team have done over the last couple 

20 of years, but we really haven't dug into it, 

21 so with this Work Group meeting, I think 

22 we're going to start digging into it, but we 
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1 will certainly start with what's on file and 

2 what Mark has done, your team has done 

3 already as a baseline, and then see what else 

4 we might want to do. So, yes, by all means.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes. No, all I was 

6 saying is that it sounds like Mark is going 

7 to be doing some of this T crossing now, if 

8 you don't have it in front of you yet, but --

9 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

11 part of the purpose of the meeting is just to 

12 tell you, this is where we're going, and 

13 you're telling me where you've been, which is 

14 great, because that's where I want to start. 

15 And anything you can do to limit what I have 

16 to do, that's great, because if you've 

17 already run down the NTS issue, the Greenland 

18 issue, those are things I can cross off my 

19 list and just say okay, that's all done.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

21 basically, we've gone through the matrix and 

22 everything else like that. We made job 
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1 assignments. I think we're going to wait 

2 until the tasking to make sure -- I just want 

3 to make sure, Ted, that I've got the tasking 

4 right, because when we first started into 

5 this, they did a Site Profile, then we kind 

6 of did a while you're doing your Site 

7 Profile, why don't you separate out what the 

8 SEC issues are. Now we're into the SEC, and 

9 I want to make sure that we've tasked them 

10 right. And I expect that we'll be able to --

11 we can do that at the end of this, but what 

12 I would like to do is give Lars, and Sarah an 

13 opportunity, if they'd like to speak, and 

14 address any concerns that they might have. 

15 MS. RYAN: Lars had another 

16 meeting, so I'm the only one that's left on 

17 the phone, I believe.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, Sarah. I 

19 just wanted to give you some time to be able 

20 to -- so that we can adequately address the 

21 concerns that you have with this Site 

22 Profile, and so forth. I know that you've 
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1 weighed in, but I just want to make sure you 

2 have the opportunity to be able to speak your 

3 piece.

4 MR. KATZ: Sarah, you've submitted 

5 a letter following Shel's letter to the Work 

6 Group. So, I guess one of the things Brad is 

7 asking is to be sure that if there are 

8 matters that the Work Group hasn't addressed 

9 in that letter you submitted, is that clear 

10 to you? Do you think that's been pretty well 

11 covered in this meeting so far?

12 MS. RAY: I think I -- you know, I 

13 point out some of the things that Joe very 

14 nicely described in his introduction today. 

15 He brought out the issues that we've had with 

16 taking today's information and trying to 

17 backfit it to yesterday. That's been an 

18 ongoing problem, as far as I was concerned, 

19 because things are so different now. But 

20 some of the things that I've had problems 

21 with were the basic, what appeared to me to 

22 be just ignoring the Tiger Team report, so a 
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1 lot of the information in my response had to 

2 do with the Tiger Team reports. I'll just 

3 read some, it says Safety and Health 

4 Assessment Team identified 13 compliance 

5 findings. One of these findings were 

6 reported by several others, is considered 

7 key. The contractor was evaluated as having 

8 a serious lack of experienced technical 

9 capability in the area of health physics and 

10 radiation technician support for routine 

11 operations, and particularly for potential 

12 radiation contamination incidents. The 

13 remaining findings dealt with deficiencies 

14 and inconsistencies in safety documentation 

15 and procedures.

16 I think we've ridden that horse to 

17 death today, but I think that it's very 

18 important that if one of our key issues is 

19 the lack of support in that area. I'm not 

20 going to try and read everything, but I hope 

21 that everyone in the Working Group has had a 

22 chance to look at the information that I 
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1 provided, and also what Shel did. 

2 We think that -- to me, the Site 

3 Profile is still -- it's a snapshot in time 

4 today. The bays that were used at the time 

5 during our Site Profile were in 1226, 1264 

6 was the first new building that came up, and 

7 it was barely in use at the time, at the 

8 ending point of `91 on our SEC petition. You 

9 have to look at the areas that were in use 

10 during the time frame of the petition. You 

11 have to look at those. You have to look at 

12 the 44 cells because they're quite different 

13 from the newer cells, because these were the 

14 locations where the work was done. And I'm 

15 fairly knowledgeable on the building safety 

16 features, because it was one of the 

17 responsibilities that I had in my job at the 

18 plant. 

19 I'm also -- I was also a member of 

20 the RAMs Assessment Committee, and on the tag 

21 is -- that is on all radiation alarm 

22 monitoring devices, the CAMs at the plant, 
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1 still say Sarah Ray. I'm the one that 

2 designed it and hung it. I don't know all of 

3 the scientific information about how the 

4 monitors operate, but I know many of the 

5 problems that were related. I know when the 

6 CAMs were initially installed. I've done a 

7 lot of work in that area, and I basically 

8 took the same training as the electronic 

9 technicians, who are the ones that have to 

10 maintain those devices. I didn't calibrate 

11 them, but I have some knowledge, and some 

12 background. 

13 At one point, I was also trained 

14 to build weapons. You know, when you're 

15 safety wiring, and you're twisting that 

16 little tiny wire around and around, you 

17 aren't 10 feet away. You are immediately on 

18 top of those devices. And all of these 

19 things are so important, and I think they all 

20 address the geometry, the location, the 

21 number of items, the fact that we're talking 

22 about a 28, a 31, a 33, a 41, a 43, a 48, a 
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1 51, a 53, all those old programs. Those are 

2 quite different than the ones we have today. 

3 So, you have to got to listen to workers, 

4 and you have got to look at past practices, 

5 not just look at today. I know it's easier, 

6 but I think -- and I'm not saying that people 

7 have not worked, but I think it's going to 

8 take a lot more work. 

9 I've been dealing with parts and 

10 pieces of this since I lost my husband, Mike 

11 Dvorak, in 1998. And so, this has been a 

12 very long road for me. This is not about me, 

13 though. This is about the other workers 

14 there in Amarillo, and that's who I'm 

15 fighting for. And I will continue to do 

16 whatever I can. And I hope I'm helping the 

17 process and not hindering it, so that's 

18 really, I guess, all I have to say. I don't 

19 want to belabor anything, so thanks for 

20 listening.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, 

22 Sarah. We appreciate everything you do do, 
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1 and we want you to realize that we are 

2 addressing these issues. As I've said 

3 earlier, we're still trying to get our tour 

4 down to Pantex. I have got word over the 

5 last few weeks that they are proceeding on 

6 with it. I'll let you know more about it. I 

7 know that one of my requests was that we 

8 wanted some of the former workers to be able 

9 to participate in that, and be able to 

10 explain it to us, and so forth. And I want 

11 you to know that we're continuing on with 

12 that, and we are trying to address each one 

13 of your issues that you have brought forth.

14 MS. RYAN: Thank you.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We've basically 

16 gone through this, through the Site Profile 

17 stuff, and basically laid out the issue, but 

18 I'm going to bring up another issue that is 

19 still eating at me, and this is data capture. 

20 Now, I've sent stuff to Mark numerous times, 

21 and I get back that what we've got is on our 

22 SRDB or on the Site Profile Database. And I 
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1 don't think that I want to have to task SC&A 

2 to figure out what you guys actually have, 

3 because right now, I'll be right brutally 

4 honest, I don't know what in the heck we've 

5 really got. To be able to go through this 

6 SRDB, I have to open up every one of these to 

7 be able to figure out what we have got, and 

8 where we've got where. We're dealing with 

9 classification issues here to which I 

10 understand that at some point, Mark, we --

11 when we got into OTIB-0010, I believe it 

12 was, it was put forth to us by NIOSH, Site 

13 Profile point of contact was going to set up 

14 the site visits and the data retrieval and so 

15 forth like that so that we weren't having to 

16 go double and request the same information. 

17 And, at this point right now, Mark, I don't 

18 know what has really been pulled, so what I 

19 do want to get from NIOSH is, I need a list, 

20 or if you can't give me the item, tell me 

21 it's at Pantex, or whatever. And we've 

22 already talked with Pantex, because some of 
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1 the issues that SC&A is pulling out, some of 

2 those aren't classified, and we've talked to 

3 Pantex about keeping a file box down there 

4 that if this is where we have to be able to 

5 review these documents, this is where we'll 

6 get it out. But we want to give you the same 

7 opportunity that SC&A has of knowing where 

8 these items are at. 

9 I've got to know where what we've 

10 pulled, I need to have some kind of data 

11 retrieval of what we've already pulled, what 

12 we've already looked at, and where it is at. 

13 You told us you're going to get us the 

14 interview notes. I spent six, seven hours 

15 the other day trying to find them. And, to 

16 tell you the truth, I really -- maybe I'm not 

17 looking right, or whatever, but when we do 

18 these Site Profiles, we need to make sure 

19 that both groups know what has been pulled, 

20 so that we're not tasking DOE, especially 

21 with Pantex, more than we already have to. 

22 Right now, we're -- we don't have 
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1 a list of what's been pulled, and what's been 

2 done. 

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I ask a 

4 question on this?

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was talking to 

7 the IT person back when we were just getting 

8 these laptops, and they told me that the Site 

9 Research Database, basically, was in the 

10 middle of being converted over so that 

11 instead of just having numbers, you had 

12 titles. And he said it was just an internal 

13 review, and it was just a matter of time 

14 until it was going to go live, so to speak. 

15 Is that still -- 

16 DR. NETON: That's correct. It's 

17 in the works. I don't think it's live yet.

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. It's not, 

19 I mean, obviously, yet. That would make 

20 things a lot easier. 

21 DR. NETON: I'd have to check and 

22 see exactly when they were projected to be 
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1 available externally. 

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: You can still 

3 search, but to have the --

4 MR. KATZ: I asked about this just 

5 a week and a half ago, and he said this was 

6 just about -- it should be out, if it's not 

7 out now --

8 DR. NETON: There's no result. 

9 You can still query --

10 MR. KATZ: They've done the work, 

11 apparently, to do that. 

12 DR. NETON: I think it will give 

13 you the title, the first 64 characters of the 

14 title are going to be in the title block.

15 MR. KATZ: Right.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I know 

17 that the Pantex, and it'll still have SRDB 

18 numbers.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, there's 

20 numbers. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Jim, do you know, do 

22 they not have access to our site query 
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1 interface?

2 DR. NETON: Right, but they're 

3 SRDB numbers. They really don't tell you 

4 anything. 

5 MR. ROLFES: The only way -- I 

6 mean, I did a query this morning -- 

7 DR. NETON: You could go out there 

8 and query Pantex, and it'll pull up a bunch 

9 of documents, but they're a bunch of numbers.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: I queried 

11 interview this morning, and I found about 10 

12 documents with interviews on them. 

13 MR. ROLFES: What I've done here, 

14 I've just got onto our intranet here and have 

15 pulled up the site research query interface, 

16 selected the Pantex site, and I'm going to 

17 type in interview as a keyword to search for. 

18 And I've got seven references that came up 

19 with interviews, and individual names. 

20 There's telephone interviews, face-to-face 

21 interviews.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: SC&A's interviews 
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1 are on there.

2 MR. ROLFES: SC&A's interviews. 

3 So, for the conversation, you can type in 

4 other keywords like that to get an 

5 understanding of what types of information 

6 are available. So, all interviews might not 

7 be titled interviews, they might be 

8 conversation with, or report of discussion, 

9 so there's many different keywords that 

10 identify the same thing. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's 

12 understandable, but we still should be able 

13 to -- and the reason that we went into 10 and 

14 11 was for the security issue of these 

15 papers, but also, too, so that we weren't 

16 double tasking the sites, so that we weren't 

17 requesting the same documents that had 

18 already been pulled by NIOSH. There's got to 

19 be some way that SC&A knows what documents 

20 have been pulled, and where they're at. And, 

21 especially with this site, because we may get 

22 in the situation that there are documents 
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1 that are pulled, but they are going to remain 

2 at Pantex. We need to be able to know where 

3 they're at. And my understanding when we got 

4 into this, and the Security Work Group that 

5 we brought up was that we were going to have 

6 a data capture plan, and it was going to lay 

7 out everything that has been pulled, what has 

8 been used, and where it's at. And if it's on 

9 the SRDB base, at least give us a number, or 

10 something like that. We've got -- I've got 

11 to know what's been --

12 MR. ROLFES: There is a 

13 spreadsheet of approximately 400 records that 

14 we requested, which is in the Site Research 

15 Database. I don't know what the number is 

16 off the top of my head. I don't know if I 

17 copied it and put it into the K: drive 

18 Advisory Board Review folder. I can check to 

19 see if it's there while we're discussing, but 

20 -- 

21 DR. NETON: Well, how many 

22 documents do you think we've captured from 
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1 Pantex? There's probably thousands.

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes, there's 

3 thousands of documents. 

4 DR. NETON: See, that's the 

5 problem, Brad. I don't know, no matter how 

6 we package it, we give you titles or SRDB 

7 numbers, you still have to go through them. I 

8 mean, there's thousands, literally, of 

9 documents, so I don't know how we could give 

10 you assurance -- 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, let me 

12 ask you it this way, then. So, should SC&A 

13 just go in and pull all their documents that 

14 they want and then have NIOSH come back in 

15 and try to figure out what they've pulled, or 

16 would you rather have SC&A lay out all the 

17 documents that they've pulled out, where 

18 they're at? I know that we're going through 

19 things right now, and all I'm trying to do is 

20 make sure that we both know what's been 

21 pulled, and where it's at.

22 DR. NETON: Right, and I agree 
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1 with that. I mean, I'm on board with you on 

2 this, but I'm just trying to figure out how 

3 to resolve this issue, because if there's 

4 already thousands in the database, there's 

5 nothing short of actually looking through 

6 those files to see if we have -- if SC&A has 

7 access to them. I don't know what else we 

8 can do. 

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: I agree with you 

10 to a certain extent. I think the titles help 

11 a little. 

12 DR. NETON: Well, we're going to 

13 get --

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: It says Health 

15 and Safety Reports, you know, you can kind of 

16 --

17 DR. NETON: And that's coming, so 

18 you'll be able to search by -- or least have 

19 an index by type.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'll give you 

22 an example. When we went to Pantex with a 
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1 list, and I was with Joe when this happened, 

2 and said these are what we need to pull, and 

3 they didn't pull them for us, because they 

4 had already been pulled by NIOSH months 

5 earlier. 

6 DR. NETON: And they weren't in 

7 the SRDB by then?

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, we have 

9 queries for it, but we have no idea what had 

10 been taken out of it, or what had actually --

11 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: What keywords to 

13 query on.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What keywords 

15 had gone, where it was at, so Joe then said 

16 well, we still need to have these pulled. 

17 And to be right honest, we have some document 

18 control people that were very upset that we 

19 can't get our stuff together. We just pulled 

20 these. They pulled everything else for us, 

21 except what had already been pulled by NIOSH.

22 Now, I know that you didn't 
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1 probably copy all those. You probably picked 

2 and chose out of those what you needed, and 

3 so forth. There's got to be a way that we 

4 can communicate. And the reason I express 

5 this is especially with this site, it is so 

6 difficult to be able to do these things. I 

7 just want to know how we can do it. And I 

8 watched at Hanford and stuff like that. 

9 We've got a very good layout on 

10 that of exactly what's been pulled, where 

11 it's at, what it is under, and we need this 

12 especially with this one. Especially where 

13 we're going to be dealing with classified 

14 issues because we've already talked with 

15 Pantex about having to have a box for NIOSH 

16 or SC&A, to be able to cover -- because 

17 there's a lot of them that are only going to 

18 be able to be there, that were transferred to 

19 Germantown, or so forth. 

20 MS. RAY: It looks like it might 

21 be appropriate to ask Pantex to set up a 

22 reading room area for you all in the 
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1 classified records section.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sarah, that's 

3 what we use when we go down there, but I'm 

4 just trying to figure out, I'm wanting to 

5 make sure that we know what has already been 

6 pulled from Pantex by NIOSH, so that we're 

7 not duplicating the requests, and so forth.

8 MS. RAY: I know that you have to 

9 sign to view those records, and I wonder if 

10 there's any way to get them, and it would be 

11 particular people, it would be Mark, it would 

12 be Kathy, it would be so-and-so and so-and13 so. But could they go back and look at that 

14 or could they start from this point forward 

15 with your help and go back and maybe fill out 

16 some of those records and then start to do a 

17 library, if you will, your own little reading 

18 section. They're pretty good, and very 

19 helpful. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. The main 

21 ones that we're worried about at Pantex are 

22 the classified ones, but I want to make sure 
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1 that we know what each other has pulled, and 

2 that we're all dealing with the same 

3 information.

4 MS. RAY: Yes. 

5 DR. NETON: I guess I'm at a loss. 

6 I mean, probably most of our documents came 

7 from Pantex, probably not all of them. So, 

8 there is a compendium on the SRDB of all the 

9 documents that have been pulled, because 

10 that's what we have. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

12 DR. NETON: So that is the list. 

13 And I don't know what other list we could 

14 generate that would help the situation 

15 better.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: Does that include 

17 classified, it might not include classified.

18 DR. NETON: Well, we don't have 

19 classified -- we don't maintain classified --

20 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's the only 

22 thing it wouldn't include. Right. 
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1 DR. NETON: Right. And maybe we'd 

2 pull classified records, and looked at them. 

3 We could -- I don't know how you would 

4 handle that. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Let me answer a 

6 couple of questions here. You know, we might 

7 have gone to another site, like National 

8 Archives and found some Pantex documents and 

9 pulled those and scanned them into our Site 

10 Research Database. We might have also gotten 

11 records from Pantex and collected those, as 

12 well, you know, from different sources. 

13 We're not just going to Pantex. As you 

14 aware, we went out to the Albuquerque Service 

15 Center, NNSA Service Center, to review 

16 records out there. We requested some records 

17 there and because SC&A was going out this 

18 week to review those, we didn't have those 

19 sent off-site. So, the records that we 

20 reviewed at Pantex historically, 

21 specifically, classified records, those 

22 records are still down at Pantex. And if 
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1 they said that they pulled them -- they 

2 wouldn't pull them for you, I wouldn't 

3 understand why that was done, because we 

4 pulled those documents, reviewed them, and 

5 left them there. So, we -- also, any 

6 unclassified records, we've put into the Site 

7 Research Database. There were a couple of 

8 UCNI records that we had received, some 

9 unclassified control nuclear information, our 

10 contractor, ORAU, can keep those separately 

11 as hard copy documents. I believe SC&A has 

12 already received copies of those, as well. 

13 So, as far as the number of Pantex records 

14 that we have in our Site Research Database, 

15 there are 1,141 records right now, and these 

16 don't include individual's personnel 

17 dosimetry files or telephone interviews or 

18 anything else that's conducted separately 

19 under the dose reconstruction aspect of this. 

20 So, we've generated lists of documents.

21 Now, when you do a data capture, 

22 if you take a look at the types of 
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1 information that are reported, we'll 

2 typically get like an accession number for a 

3 box, and it'll have a descriptor, and 

4 sometimes it's as vague as correspondence, 

5 other times it'll say radiation exposure 

6 information, sometimes it'll say accidents 

7 and incidents, so sometimes there's large 

8 volumes. You know, without actually going 

9 through the records, it's probably important 

10 for you guys to go through the records, as 

11 well, because a lot of the records could have 

12 been incident records, but had absolutely 

13 nothing to do with radioactive material. So, 

14 when we do a data capture, we typically try 

15 to take notes to describe what types of 

16 information are in the boxes, and whether or 

17 not we choose to capture that in case 

18 somebody raises a question in the future 

19 about, well, why didn't you get that 

20 information. And then we have some notes 

21 that say well, we didn't get this information 

22 because it was related to chemical exposures 
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1 or not something that would help us in dose 

2 reconstruction. 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Now, I want to 

4 make sure I'm clear on one thing. When we do 

5 the dose -- when we're doing the -- we 

6 haven't done any data capturing down there 

7 for a while.

8 MR. ROLFES: Down at Pantex, the 

9 last one that NIOSH participated in was in 

10 May of 2008.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. But, at 

12 this point, there should all be on having the 

13 practice of, if we're going on to data 

14 capture, we notify the SC&A counterpart and 

15 notify the Board. This is the data capture, 

16 or even if we're making a keyword query, we 

17 assemble a keyword query, say here are the 

18 keywords we want to query to send to such and 

19 such a site. Add on what you want, and we'll 

20 send one keyword query -- we should be 

21 coordinating those efforts at this point. 

22 So, if that's not going on, then it should 
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1 be. And if it's not going on on my side, 

2 we'll deal with it.

3 Now, with respect to what we have, 

4 Brad, I don't know we can improve the listing 

5 of it. I mean, there's this application that 

6 will show you all 1,141 references, and will 

7 give you the first so many characters of the 

8 title that's running now. I just pulled it 

9 up.

10 DR. NETON: Internal, I don't know 

11 if it's available externally.

12 MR. ROLFES: It's not running for 

13 us.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, it doesn't. I 

15 just tried -- 

16 DR. BUCHANAN: I get that on mine.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: You come into Our 

18 Staff Tools, and you don't see that?

19 MR. ROLFES: Maybe they don't know 

20 how to come in. 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: I do it through 

22 the Staff Tools. 
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: So, it shows -- I 

2 mean, I don't know how we can -- what we can 

3 do to go beyond this. And it also has 

4 keyword search up there to bring these up, 

5 but I don't know how we can go beyond that at 

6 this point, for what is --

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: You know what 

8 would be helpful, is when you -- when things 

9 are put into the document review section, I 

10 notice that the file name is still this 

11 number.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

13 DR. NETON: That'll change based 

14 on using the new application. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Like, for example, 

16 the evaluation -- 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Because everything 

18 in there right now is -- 

19 DR. NETON: The only thing we had

20 access to was --

21 MR. ROLFES: All the references 

22 from the Evaluation Report just have the 
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1 reference ID number, and don't have the 

2 title.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You know, maybe 

4 this --

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think that's 

6 what people go to a lot, too, because we set 

7 up that for the Board to go to.

8 MR. ROLFES: I mean, keep in mind 

9 that that compilation was maybe 50 documents, 

10 and we've got 1,100.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I know. 

12 That's why we wanted it, because we wanted to 

13 narrow it down, so we didn't have -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: You can also search, 

15 if you like have -- you know, you've got 

16 those 50 numbers. You can plug those in as 

17 keywords, and get the title, and such. 

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Do you have to do -

19 - can you do any -- you said you have 50 

20 numbers.

21 MR. ROLFES: You can use some 

22 basic Boolean operators in there, but -- 
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Do you separate 

2 them by commas and it will bring them up 

3 all? 

4 MR. ROLFES: If you type in, you 

5 know, say five words, you can leave the 

6 parentheses, excuse me, the quotation marks 

7 off those five words, and any document that 

8 has those five words in it will come up.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Any document that 

10 has any one of those five words will come up.

11 MR. ROLFES: Right. Right.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Like I typed in 

13 personal communication, I got a whole bunch 

14 of stuff, some of them were personal 

15 communication, some of them were file types 

16 that had personal, some of them were -- 

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Can you do capital 

18 A and B, and make it -- 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, let me find 

20 out. 

21 DR. BUCHANAN: And if you've got 

22 say five document numbers, can you put those 
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1 in and get them all five to come up?

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes, all five will 

3 come up, but --

4 DR. BUCHANAN: And how do you -- 

5 MR. ROLFES: -- when you start 

6 putting quotations in -- if you start putting 

7 quotations in, then -- I just use a space.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: You just put five 

9 numbers in with one space between them.

10 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: And it'll bring up 

12 all five documents.

13 MR. ROLFES: Yes, let me verify 

14 that.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Go ahead.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: We can do this 

17 offline.

18 MS. RAY: Also, you can use the 

19 wildcard character. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Is that an Ace 

21 of Spades, or Jack of Diamonds?

22 MS. RAY: An asterisk.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

2 MR. ROLFES: That does not work 

3 for us. 

4 MS. RAY: It does not work for you 

5 all?

6 MR. ROLFES: No, it does not.

7 MS. RAY: That's kind of an 

8 important thing to leave out of a database. 

9 I've taught a lot of that, myself. Good old 

10 Boolean operators. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Maybe part of 

12 the issue is that these documents were pulled 

13 before these procedures and so forth.

14 MS. RAY: It seemed like that one 

15 thing that might work in the future is if 

16 either agency requests anything, that the 

17 document automatically goes to the other.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: That should be in 

19 place.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And maybe 

21 that's -- maybe what I'm seeing is from the 

22 past trying to go forward here. And we'll 
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1 just proceed on further, but I know that 

2 there's been a lot of question of finding it 

3 around in this SRD database of what actually 

4 is out there, and so forth. So, we'll 

5 address that as it comes down the road. But 

6 for Ted, one of the things that I want to 

7 make sure is so that I don't mess up on the 

8 tasking of this, we're basically going into 

9 an SEC Site Profile Review for SC&A. And I 

10 want to make sure that we've tasked -- that 

11 I've done it right. Actually, you wrote me 

12 something here, and he says SC&A tasked to 

13 conduct its usual SEC-related sample review 

14 of data adequacy, and context of issues 

15 identified in today's item. And I just want 

16 to make sure that - 

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, I could see 

18 completeness -- 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Everything that 

20 we normally do under that. And the reason 

21 why this is kind of so convoluted is, like 

22 I've said earlier, this started out as a Site 
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1 Profile issue. It's rolled into an SEC, and 

2 now we're proceeding into the full SEC issue. 

3 And I just want to make that SC&A is -- 

4 MR. KATZ: Well, that's all 

5 straight. I think what you'll get back from 

6 SC&A won't be -- it won't be exactly the same 

7 as if SC&A had, in a normal situation, where 

8 they hadn't done the Site Profile, and hadn't 

9 raised all these issues already out of their 

10 Site Profile Review.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.

12 MR. KATZ: You're not going to get 

13 a de novo whole package, you're going to get 

14 -- it's more like the process is already 

15 ongoing, so you're going to get sort of a 

16 report that hits the areas that Joe just 

17 summarized and you just summarized. But it 

18 won't be the normal full-blown SEC 

19 evaluation.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Not going to redo 

21 what they've already done.

22 MR. KATZ: Right, because they've 
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1 already raised all these issues.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. And 

3 this has been kind of an interesting one to 

4 try to get your hands around, and I've been 

5 trying to do that all day long here. So, 

6 that, basically, completes everything that 

7 we've got on the agenda here today. If there 

8 is anything else that needs to come before 

9 this Work Group?

10 MS. RAY: Wasn't there something 

11 about scheduling future meetings?

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, there is, 

13 Sarah, but one of the things that I've got to 

14 be able to do is, I'm going to have to find 

15 out from SC&A what kind of time frame we're 

16 looking for their review. They officially 

17 cannot go into these until they've been 

18 tasked and so forth like that, so what I'm 

19 going to get back from both sides is a list 

20 of issues that we brought forth today. And 

21 they're going to give me a rough time frame. 

22 And once we get these issues back, then 
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1 we're going to set up another Work Group 

2 meeting, which you'll be courtesy copied on. 

3 

4 MS. RAY: Okay. Thank you. I 

5 just remembered seeing one last item on the 

6 agenda. 

7 MR. KATZ: You're absolutely 

8 right, Sarah. So, we'll get from DCAS and 

9 from SC&A sort of an action item list 

10 following up on this meeting.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.

12 MR. KATZ: So just so that 

13 everybody is perfectly clear. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, we're clear 

15 on both, and when we send it to both sides to 

16 clarify what we were actually looking for.

17 MR. KATZ: Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Because we've 

19 come at this before, that no, that really 

20 wasn't what I was looking for. And that's 

21 kind of why we've done this this way.

22 MR. KATZ: Right.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, we're clear 

2 on what's going on there. And Joe is already 

3 aware of the issues of proceeding on, after 

4 they get the tasking. 

5 MR. KATZ: So, with that -- 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: With that, 

7 we'll end this Work Group meeting. 

8 MR. KATZ: We're adjourned. Thank 

9 you, Sarah, for hanging with us.

10 MS. RAY: Thank you very much.

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

12 matter went off the record at 4:05 p.m.)

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 
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1