THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

HANFORD

 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 26, 

2007. 
2

C O N T E N T S

March 26, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

PURPOSE OF MEETING 11 

DR. JIM MELIUS, CHAIR 

OVERVIEW 14 

DR. HANS BEHLING, SC&A 

TBD 21 

EIGHT SINGLE-PASS PRODUCTION REACTORS 23 

N REACTOR 79 

HANFORD 200 AND 300 AREAS 106 

SODIUM 24 130 

WRAP-UP 139 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 144 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS

CHAIR

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

1 CLAWSON, Bradley 

2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

4 MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D. 

5 Director 

6 New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 

7 Albany, New York 

POSTON, John W., Sr., B.S., M.S., Ph.D. 

Professor, Texas A&M University 

College Station, Texas 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

ALVAREZ, BOB, SC&A 

ANIGSTEIN, BOB, SC&A 

BEACH, JOSIE, USW 

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A 

BRIGGS, NICHOLE, SC&A 

CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

FIX, JACK, ORAU 

GLOVER, SAM, NIOSH 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

LABONE, TOM, ORAU 

MACIEVIC, GREG, OCAS 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

NELSON, CHARLES, OCAS 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

SCALSKY, EDWARD D., DMA CHP 

SCHMIDT, KELLY, USW 

SHIELDS, LASHAWN, NIOSH 

THOMAS, ELYSE, ORAU 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

1 (10:00 a.m.) 

2 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO

3 DR. WADE: Welcome, this is Lew Wade. This 

4 is the meeting of the Hanford work group, the 

5 work group on the Hanford site profile, of the 

6 Advisory Board. What I’d like to do is first 

7 begin to identify Board members on the line. 

8 Then we’ll go through some introductions. 

9 When we do the introductions, I’ll have the 

10 NIOSH/ORAU team introduce themselves. When 

11 you do, please identify any conflicts you have 

12 relative to Hanford. 

13 We’ll then have the SC&A team identify 

14 themselves. We’ll ask for other federal 

15 employees who are on the line by virtue of 

16 their employment. We’ll ask about members of 

17 Congress, their representatives, their staff 

18 or workers’ representatives who are, or 

19 workers who are with us, and then we’ll begin 

20 the deliberations. 

21 First, to deal with Board quorum 
7

1 issues, are there any Board members on the 

2 call? Any Board members on the call connected 

3 by telephone? 

4 (no response) 

5 DR. WADE: This work group is chaired by Dr. 

6 Melius. Members Clawson, Ziemer, Poston and 

7 Schofield, Phillip is a new addition, Josie is 

8 also with us, Josie Beach. Josie is 

9 conflicted at Hanford, but you know the 

10 Board’s rules allow conflicted Board members 

11 to have comment if those comments would help 

12 the deliberations. So at the Chair’s request 

13 or with his permission, Josie can contribute 

14 as she sees fit. Obviously, she wouldn’t be 

15 voting or make any motions as it related to 

16 Hanford. 

17 Let’s go around the table and identify 

18 here. Again, for those NIOSH or ORAU members 

19 or SC&A members please identify your 

20 conflicts. 

21 This is Lew Wade. I work for NIOSH 

22 and serve the Advisory Board. 

23 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. I work for 

24 NIOSH, and I’m non-conflicted at Hanford. 

25 MS. HOWELL: This is Emily Howell with HHS, 
8

1 no conflicts. 

2 MS. BEACH: Josie Beach, and I am conflicted 

3 at Hanford. 

4 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, I’m with SC&A. I am 

5 not conflicted. 

6 DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A, no 

7 conflicts. 

8 DR. MELIUS: Jim Melius from the Board, no 

9 conflicts. 

10 MR. SCHOFIELD: Phillip Schofield from the 

11 Board, no conflicts. 

12 MR. SCALSKY: Ed Scalsky, ORAU, no 

13 conflicts. 

14 MR. MACIEVIC: Greg Macievic, OCAS, no 

15 conflicts. 

16 MR. NELSON: Chuck Nelson, OCAS, no 

17 conflicts. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, Board, no 

19 conflicts. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, Board, no 

21 conflicts. 

22 DR. WADE: Let’s go out to on the telephone, 

23 and we’ll start with members of the NIOSH/ORAU 

24 team. 

25 MS. THOMAS (by Telephone): This is Elyse 
9

1 Thomas, and I’m with the O-R-A-U team, and I 

2 have no conflicts with Hanford. 

3 DR. WADE: NIOSH/ORAU team on the telephone? 

4 MR. FIX (by Telephone): This is Jack Fix. 

5 I’m considered to have a conflict of interest 

6 with Hanford. 

7 DR. WADE: Other members of the NIOSH/ORAU 

8 team? 

9 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): This is Tom 

10 LaBone. I have no conflicts with Hanford. 

11 DR. WADE: Other NIOSH/ORAU team members? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: This is Larry Elliott. I have 

13 no conflicts with Hanford. 

14 DR. WADE: We’re going to move on to SC&A. 

15 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): This is Bob 

16 Alvarez. I have no conflicts with Hanford. 

17 MS. BEHLING (by Telephone): This is Kathy 

18 Behling. I have no conflict with Hanford. 

19 MR. ANIGSTEIN (by Telephone): This is Bob 

20 Anigstein. I have no conflicts at Hanford. 

21 DR. WADE: Other SC&A members? 

22 MS. BRIGGS (by Telephone): This is Nichole 

23 Briggs. I have no conflicts. 

24 DR. WADE: We’re having trouble hearing you, 

25 Nichole, if you could make an adjustment. 
10

1 MS. BRIGGS (by Telephone): This is Nichole 

2 Briggs. I have no conflicts. 

3 DR. WADE: Thank you. Other SC&A team 

4 members? 

5 (no response) 

6 DR. WADE: Other federal employees who are 

7 on the call by virtue of their employment? 

8 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): This is 

9 Liz Homoki-Titus of Health and Human Services, 

10 and I have no conflicts. 

11 MS. CHANG (by Telephone): This is Chia-Chia 

12 Chang with NIOSH. I have no conflicts. 

13 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch, 

14 Department of Labor. 

15 DR. WADE: Welcome, Jeff. 

16 MS. SHIELDS (by Telephone): LaShawn 

17 Shields, NIOSH. 

18 DR. WADE: Good morning, LaShawn. 

19 Other federal employees? 

20 (no response) 

21 DR. WADE: Members of Congress, their staff, 

22 workers, worker representatives, any of those 

23 friends with us? 

24 MR. SCHMIDT (by Telephone): This is Kelly 

25 Schmidt with the United Steel Workers. 
11

1 DR. WADE: Good morning. 

2 Anyone else who wants to be identified 

3 on the record as being on the call? 

4 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): Lew, this is 

5 John Poston. I’m a little bit late. 

6 DR. WADE: Welcome, John. 

7 John is a member of the working group. 

8 The working group is now complete. Anyone 

9 else who wants to be identified? 

10 (no response) 

11 DR. WADE: Again, relative to telephone 

12 etiquette, please if you’re not speaking, mute 

13 your phone. If you are speaking, speak into 

14 the handset as opposed to a speaker phone. Be 

15 mindful of any background noises, flushing 

16 toilets or things like that that might take 

17 place and don’t go to sleep. We had one 

18 snorer. We can’t have any of that. 

19 I think, Dr. Melius, it’s all yours. 

20 DR. MELIUS: Thank you. 

21 PURPOSE OF MEETING

22 The main focus of this meeting is to 

23 talk about the neutron issue at Hanford, and 

24 we have a -- Hans, after -- if I can get this 

25 right -- Hans, after our last work group 
12

1 meeting, prepared sort of a summary of, a 

2 slight update of the original SC&A comments 

3 pertaining to the neutron issue. And we now 

4 more recently received a response from 

5 NIOSH/ORAU. So that will be the main focus. 

6 If we have time at the end we may sort 

7 of do sort of a quick factual or update, 

8 logistical update of where we stand with some 

9 of the other issues because some were pending 

10 further work in updates. But most of the time 

11 should be spent on the neutron issue. 

12 We will decide as we go along how 

13 we’re doing in terms of time and decide 

14 whether it’s worth it to take a lunch break or 

15 not in terms of timing and so forth. However, 

16 we will let our transcriber, Ray, make sure 

17 that his fellow staff person showed up at the 

18 other meeting at one o’clock. 

19 Hans and I were talking a little bit 

20 just beforehand and what we thought we’d do is 

21 let him sort of just briefly give an overview 

22 on the issues that were raised in the SC&A 

23 review. And then we thought for the more 

24 detailed discussion it would be better to go 

25 into that sort of split into three different 
13

1 areas and spend time on that and so do it that 

2 way. They are separate, and I think that 

3 might be the most efficient way of dealing 

4 with these technical issues. 

5 So with that I’ll turn it over to Hans 

6 unless somebody else has, somebody has 

7 questions. Yes. 

8 MR. NELSON: Yes, John Nelson. I have 

9 copies of the NIOSH responses if anybody needs 

10 a copy. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Are they on the web, too, 

12 Chuck? 

13 MR. NELSON: I don’t believe they went up. 

14 They went on e-mails to all the working group 

15 members, so I don’t know if they’re on the 

16 web. 

17 DR. MELIUS: They also went out on the web 

18 in the Hanford area I have on an e-mail list. 

19 DR. BEHLING: In conjunction with that 

20 offer, I did bring with me four copies of the 

21 report that I issued a few weeks ago and which 

22 will be the focus of this discussion. If 

23 anyone would like to have a hard copy, I have 

24 four copies available for anyone who would 

25 like to have a copy. 
14

1 MR. NELSON: It’s also in that packet I just 

2 gave -- 

3 DR. BEHLING: To some extent, it’s not in 

4 its entirety, and it doesn’t track the way I 

5 would like to perhaps approach this. 

6 OVERVIEW

7 As Dr. Melius has mentioned what I’d 

8 like to do is just give a very brief overview, 

9 a few minutes, and then because of the fact 

10 that the neutron/photon dose ratio was 

11 fragmenting into three areas, that is the 

12 eight single-pass production reactor, the 

13 closed tube N reactor and, of course, the 2, 

14 300 Areas have all three different independent 

15 neutron/photon ratios that were derived by 

16 NIOSH/ORAU. And so we will probably want to 

17 discuss each of them separately. 

18 What I’d like to do is address the 

19 issues that I raised on behalf of those three 

20 neutron/photon ratios, and then offer the 

21 people here from ORAU to present their point 

22 of view before we go on to the next one 

23 because all of these things are quite 

24 technical issues. And if we were to go 

25 through the whole thing first on my part and 
15

1 then follow that by your response, we might 

2 forget what the major issues were. So for the 

3 sake of simplicity and practicality we’ll do 

4 it in three independent stages. 

5 Now also I did want to mention the 

6 fact that Bob Alvarez had also submitted some 

7 comments, and there were some issues 

8 responding to his comments. And I don’t know 

9 how we’re going to integrate that into the 

10 discussion, but let’s try to do my work up 

11 front and then hopefully there’ll be time for 

12 Bob Alvarez on this. 

13 Bob, are you on the phone? 

14 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Yes, I am. 

15 DR. BEHLING: Are you available for 

16 discussing this some time later on in the 

17 morning or early afternoon? 

18 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Yes, I am. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Okay, so we’ll try to do it 

20 that way. 

21 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Okay. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Let me start out by saying 

23 that the Hanford site is a very, very complex 

24 site. And since 1950 and up into the end of 

25 1971 a neutron dosimeter was used. That is 
16

1 the NTA film dosimeter. And it was concluded 

2 in 1972 based on AC studies that the NTA film 

3 dosimeter for neutron detection was 

4 questionable because it had certain 

5 deficiency. 

6 And I’ll just briefly identify what 

7 those deficiencies are. The NTA film actually 

8 measures neutrons by allowing a neutron to 

9 collide with the component of the film that 

10 contains hydrogenous material, namely 

11 hydrogen. And in order for a neutron to 

12 essentially manifest its impact on that 

13 dosimeter it has to impart a certain amount of 

14 kinetic energy that will in turn be handed 

15 over to a proton. 

16 In other words a hydrogen atom and, of 

17 course, it is the hydrogen atom because of its 

18 charge, it has a single positive charge, will 

19 then produce a certain impact on the film that 

20 is measured optically under a microscope. And 

21 these tracks are then counted, and there’s a 

22 correlation between the number of tracks and 

23 the exposure. 

24 One of the problems that were, there 

25 were several problems identified, but the key 
17

1 problem is that for this dosimeter to really 

2 function properly one has to really understand 

3 the neutron spectrum that is being monitored. 

4 And we know the neutron spectrum is quite 

5 complex. 

6 Even for a single reactor we know that 

7 the neutron spectrum changes as a function of 

8 power level as well as a function of location. 

9 And so you can go into a given, a single 

10 reactor, and measure a different location 

11 under different power levels and even over 

12 time, and realize that the neutron spectrum 

13 will change due to moderation effects. 

14 One of the things that is recognized 

15 is that for a single track to be essentially 

16 observed on this photographic film, it has to 

17 at least have 300 kilo-electron volts of 

18 kinetic energy on the part of the energized 

19 proton in order for that track to be 

20 visualized under microscope. And we often 

21 talk about the issue of a threshold value. 

22 And I want to caution you what the 

23 threshold value is. It’s not a single moment 

24 in space where once you exceed 300 keV of 

25 proton energy, the neutron will always be 
18

1 registered. It’s a probabilistic event, and 

2 the way to describe it is to simply give you 

3 an analogy. 

4 If you think of a neutron as a cue 

5 ball on a billiard table, and it has a certain 

6 amount of energy, depending on which angle it 

7 strikes the other ball will determine how much 

8 kinetic energy you’ll impart. And so if you 

9 have a neutron that’s exactly 300 keV, and it 

10 hits the other ball dead on where it is able 

11 to transfer 100 percent of its kinetic energy 

12 to the hydrogen atom, then you will have the 

13 threshold effect of producing a track. 

14 On the other hand you could have a one 

15 meV neutron, and if it only glances off the 

16 proton, it will only give up part of its 

17 kinetic energy. So the threshold is really 

18 not a key energy value that above which 100 

19 percent it is obviously a probabilistic event. 

20 And so when we talk about a threshold, you’ll 

21 see throughout the TBDs that have been issued 

22 by ORAU and NIOSH, you will see values that 

23 identified a threshold value, 500, 700. 

24 And it’s really a question of what you 

25 consider a threshold value because it is not 
19

1 an issue of an all or nothing issue. 

2 Obviously, when you get to a one MeV according 

3 to Hine and Brownell who says that 

4 approximately 75 to 80 percent of the 

5 interactions will deliver enough of an energy 

6 (telephonic interference) so as to give you a 

7 track that can be countable. But even at one 

8 MeV, it is not 100 percent certain that you 

9 will actually get an interaction that results 

10 in a visible charge. 

11 (Whereupon, the telephonic connection failed 

12 and was then reconnected.) 

13 DR. WADE: Hello, this is the working group. 

14 We had a brief technical difficulty. Dr. 

15 Poston, are you still with us? 

16 MR. POSTON (by Telephone): Yes, I am. 

17 DR. WADE: Hans, please continue. 

18 DR. BEHLING: So in addition to the 

19 limitation that reflects the energy, needed 

20 energy to impart a track, there are other 

21 issues such as angular dependence. If we look 

22 at certain studies, we realize that if the 

23 neutron that is being detected by the film 

24 comes on an angle that is other than normal, 

25 there is reduced response on the part of the 
20

1 NTA film, and there are other issues that 

2 cause everyone to recognize the fact that NTA 

3 film was perhaps not the way to go in 

4 reconstructing doses. 

5 On the other hand we will say that the 

6 TLD, the Hanford multipurpose TLD that was 

7 introduced in January of 1972 is probably as 

8 best as you’re going to get. But I would also 

9 caution you that neutron dosimetry is 

10 something that is very, very complex, very 

11 difficult and from my own personal experience 

12 it’s probably every dosimetrist’s nightmare to 

13 have to monitor for neutrons. 

14 It is not an easy task to do. Even 

15 the state of the art TLD badge has certain 

16 limitations, but it is, in fact, the best we 

17 can do; and therefore, we will accept the fact 

18 that the Hanford TLD was probably the neutron 

19 dosimeter that we will put some faith into. 

20 Anyway, let’s go back and just briefly 

21 review some of the issues here that we’re 

22 going to discuss this morning. In the process 

23 of trying to reconstruct doses, neutron doses, 

24 prior to 1972, NIOSH in their TBD elected to 

25 segregate the areas where neutron exposures 
21

1 were possible into three discrete areas. The 

2 eight single-pass reactors, the N Reactor, 

3 which is a closed loop, also production but 

4 also generate electricity, and the two and 300 

5 Area that involved plutonium production and in 

6 finishing. 

7 And potential exposures there resulted 

8 from, principally from the Alpha N reaction or 

9 the N Alpha reaction that you get when you 

10 have an Alpha interacting with a low Z 

11 material such as fluorine or any other 

12 materials, and that produces obviously a 

13 neutron. And for all three different areas 

14 you do have different neutron spectra, energy 

15 spectra that has to be looked at in terms of 

16 how does the NTA film respond to that and what 

17 are the potential deficiencies associated with 

18 these different spectra. 

19 TBD

20 So with that I would like to perhaps 

21 then start by briefly going over the technical 

22 basis document that was issued, and I don’t 

23 have the dates in front of me. But I’m 

24 working on the, or this report that I’ve 

25 written reflects the technical basis document 
22

1 that was issued in 2004. And I fully 

2 understand that ORAU has issued a revised 

3 version of the TBD back in November, I 

4 believe, of this year. 

5 But the report that I had written 

6 really reflects the original report. So if 

7 there are changes, I will have to accept the 

8 fact that some of the changes may have 

9 accommodated some of the issues that were 

10 raised here. But this discussion reflects the 

11 TBD as it was written as rev. one back in 

12 2004. 

13 For those who have my handout, I would 

14 like to essentially start with page four 

15 because I think the first three pages are 

16 nothing more than an overview. 

17 MR. NELSON: May I make a suggestion? 

18 DR. BEHLING: Yes, please. 

19 MR. NELSON: You know we’re talking about 

20 three different areas, the two and 300 Area, 

21 the N Reactor and the eight single-pass 

22 reactors. The 200 Area and the N Reactor are 

23 current as you’ll see in the response. The 

24 basis for determining neutron/photon ratios 

25 are based on NTA, not NTA film, but 
23

1 multipurpose TLD badges. So I think in the 

2 interest of resolving the issues and getting 

3 through the most items, I think if we go in 

4 reverse order there where we feel we’re 

5 stronger, then perhaps we can resolve those 

6 issues sooner in the meeting and get through 

7 more of the discussion if anybody’s amenable 

8 to that. 

9 DR. BEHLING: Well, as I said, my response 

10 to this was really based on the 2004 TBD, and 

11 I do have some concerns about the issues that 

12 you brought up in the response here which 

13 tends to ignore what was stated earlier. So I 

14 would like to at least follow the protocol as 

15 I identified it earlier. 

16 MR. NELSON: That’s fine. I was just 

17 interested in getting through more issues, and 

18 that’s fine. 

19 DR. BEHLING: I think we can easily get 

20 through here. 

21 EIGHT SINGLE-PASS PRODUCTION REACTORS

22 On page four you have the first group, 

23 and that is an assessment of the 

24 neutron/photon ratio for the eight single-pass 

25 production reactors. And one of the things 
24

1 that was done here was to use NTA film and 

2 say, okay, we will use NTA film and compare 

3 the response of NTA film to the photon 

4 exposures associated with people who may have 

5 been exposed to both neutrons and photons at 

6 the production reactors. 

7 And one of the things that caught my 

8 attention was the fact that we’re really 

9 dealing here with seven workers who were 

10 monitored between 1950 and ’61. And these 

11 workers were described, and I have very little 

12 additional information, as workers who were, 

13 quote, primarily assigned to Hanford reactors. 

14 And there’s an issue here because if they were 

15 assigned to in addition to Hanford reactors, 

16 they may have been assigned to areas where 

17 there was essentially no neutron exposure 

18 which would potentially obviously add photon 

19 exposure but no neutron exposure. 

20 So the issue is one of having a set of 

21 data involving seven workers who had been 

22 primarily assigned to the Hanford reactors and 

23 using that data. And these seven workers were 

24 assessed, as you see in Table 1 here, by five 

25 different methods. They are defined as method 
25

1 one through five. 

2 And just to again to abbreviate the 

3 discussion as it needs to be, method one was 

4 the response on the part of neutron/photon 

5 ratios where the photon exposure was compared 

6 to the neutrons as registered on the NTA film 

7 with no background subtraction. In other 

8 words these seven workers had exposures by the 

9 neutrons and photons, and there was no 

10 subtraction from a control badge that involves 

11 the neutron exposure. 

12 And what you have, as you see at the 

13 bottom, an average value, average neutron to 

14 photon ratio for method one as 0.43. Or in 

15 other words if the person on average had a 

16 photon dose of 100 millirem, his neutron dose 

17 would have been 43 based on that protocol. 

18 And there were several other methods that are 

19 very well described in your handout, in your 

20 recent handout, and I won’t go through it. 

21 But the method five is the method that 

22 is considered by ORAU to be the most accurate. 

23 And what that does is to subtract the tracks 

24 on the control neutron badge. So again, if a 

25 person had a photon dose of about 100 
26

1 millirem, under method five those seven 

2 individuals that were assessed would have a 

3 neutron/photon ratio of 0.09. Or in other 

4 words there would be nine millirem assigned to 

5 the neutron dose. 

6 And as you see down here on the page I 

7 just simply summarized that, and ORAU 

8 concluded that since we don’t really know 

9 which method is perhaps most accurate, why 

10 don’t we just look at all of the five methods 

11 and then see what we can come off, what comes 

12 out of it. And they concluded that it fits in 

13 lognormal distribution. And based on all five 

14 methods they concluded that the geometric mean 

15 that should be used is 0.1. In other words 

16 100 millirem photon dose buys you 11 millirem 

17 NTA dose. And of course, they have a 

geometric standard deviation in the 95th 18 

19 percentile. 

20 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): Hans? Hans? 

21 Hans? John Poston here. I guess I’m having 

22 trouble figuring out what’s wrong with what 

23 you just said. I would expect mostly thermal 

24 neutrons being present for around these 

25 reactors I would expect a whole lot more of 
27

1 photons than neutrons. And I know that it 

2 takes about a factor of 100 more thermal 

3 neutrons to produce one rad of absorbed dose 

4 than it does fast neutrons. So everything 

5 that you said makes sense to me. I’m trying 

6 to see what’s wrong with what my intuition 

7 tells me. 

8 DR. BEHLING: Well, I haven’t said what’s 

9 wrong yet. I’m only verbalizing what NIOSH 

10 did. So I haven’t gotten to that part yet, 

11 Dr. Poston. 

12 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): Okay. 

13 MR. NELSON: This is Chuck Nelson. Not to 

14 be rude here, but cut to the chase. I mean, 

15 we’re gonna sit here and talk about all the 

16 technical limitations and problems with NTA 

17 film, and our response right away is that we 

18 realize there’s a lot of limitations and 

19 problems with NTA film so that’s one of the 

20 reasons I thought perhaps we could pass over 

21 some of that discussion so that we can get 

22 down to what the actual response was because 

23 our response didn’t really deal with, we 

24 basically acknowledge that that’s an issue, 

25 and we wanted to summarize why we felt that 
28

1 the numbers that we have are claimant 

2 favorable, some of which were just now brought 

3 up. 

4 DR. BEHLING: Well, I think we can still get 

5 through it, but let me go through and explain 

6 to the people what was done here. 

7 So we’re, at this point, at this 

8 juncture, we recognize that the relationship 

9 between NTA film and photon dosimeters was one 

10 in which the geometric mean was 0.11 as a 

11 ratio. In recognition of the energy 

12 deficiencies that defined the NTA film, NIOSH 

13 did the following: They looked at a 

14 comparison between an NTA film and a tissue 

15 equivalent proportional counter for the 100 KE 

16 reactor and came to the conclusion that the 

17 ratio between the observed response on the 

18 part of an NTA film and the photon was 28 

19 percent. 

20 And that was based on a single 

21 measurement of a single reactor, and it was 

22 done on top of the reactor. That’s on page 

23 five. So what they then did, they said, okay, 

24 the neutron/photon ratio that was based on the 

25 seven individuals, that we just discussed, of 
29

1 0.11 should be modified in order to reflect a 

2 deficiency on the part of the NTA film. 

3 And this deficiency is reflected by a 

4 single comparison between a tissue equivalent 

5 proportional counter and NTA film on top of 

6 the 100 KE reactor which yielded a ratio of 

7 0.28 or 28 percent efficiency. So in other 

8 words the 11 percent ratio was then divided by 

9 0.28 to come up with the 0.141 ratio. And 

10 that is the method by which this ratio was 

11 then delivered. 

12 So having said that, this is what they 

13 did, and let’s go quickly through the 

14 findings, one through five, and it won’t take 

15 long. The first finding that I have on page 

16 five states the paradoxical use of NTA film. 

17 We all came to the conclusion that NTA film 

18 was not very good. It can’t be used for 

19 reconstructing individual doses for any given 

20 claimant. But somehow or other the paradox 

21 here that I wanted to identify is the fact 

22 that we saw fit to use NTA film to develop a 

23 ratio method. So that’s finding number one. 

24 Finding number two is the questionable 

25 accuracy of recorded NTA data, and again, 
30

1 we’re talking about the seven individual 

2 workers who were primarily assigned to 

3 reactors. We don’t have a full understanding 

4 of their assignments throughout this period of 

5 time for which these data were collected. And 

6 of course, the potential exists that they may 

7 have been assigned to areas where there were 

8 no neutrons which tends to inflate the photon 

9 component; and therefore, in the process 

10 reduces the end gamma ratio. 

11 We also -- and I won’t go through this 

12 as Chuck had already mentioned -- where there 

13 are issues involving interdependency and all 

14 these other things. And I have a discussion 

15 here about Hine and Brownell which we won’t go 

16 into. 

17 Finding number three, the assumption 

18 that method five was technically most correct, 

19 and this is an issue that I can’t quite 

20 understand. When you look at the first table 

21 there, and you see method one through five, 

22 and you go from a ratio -- this is 

23 unadulterated, that is raw neutron/photon 

24 ratio -- you go from method one where the 

25 ratio is 0.43 to method five which is 0.09, 
31

1 and you realize that the difference is one of 

2 subtracting the response on the part of 

3 control badges. 

4 What that really suggests that, in 

5 essence, let’s go back and just use simple 

6 numbers. If I had a photon dose of 100 

7 millirem, under method five I would only get 

8 nine millirem assigned to me for a neutron 

9 dose. Under method one I would get 43 

10 millirem. So the difference between method 

11 one and five were just nothing more than 

12 subtracting the control badge value, would be 

13 essentially an 80 percent dose, or neutron 

14 dose, was measured by control badges. And 

15 that’s hard for me to accept. 

16 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): That’s totally 

17 within the realm of the anticipated error 

18 which is on the order of plus or minus 100 

19 percent, at that level. 

20 DR. BEHLING: Well, we have here a geometric 

21 standard deviation which I assume accounts for 

22 that. I believe these are all raw numbers 

23 that do not necessarily reflect the 

24 uncertainty associated with it. 

25 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): I don’t know. I 
32

1 just know that when you’re measuring at very, 

2 very low doses, plus or minus 100 percent is 

3 the typical acceptable -- 

4 DR. BEHLING: I agree with that, but I don’t 

5 believe that error is the reason for using 

6 method five as the most likely or most 

7 accurate measurement. I think the uncertainty 

8 has been addressed in the standard, geometric 

9 standard deviation. 

10 DR. POSTON (by Telephone): Well, I’m not 

11 arguing that point. What I’m arguing is that 

12 those could be the same number as far as we’re 

13 concerned. That difference is not 

14 unanticipated. 

15 DR. BEHLING: Finding four, we’ve already 

16 discussed the issue of the seven workers that 

17 were, as I said, primarily worked at Hanford, 

18 but the more important thing was the issue of 

19 the 28 percent. But here we again, as I 

20 mentioned in my opening statement, if you go 

21 into a single, a given reactor and measure the 

22 neutron/photon ratio, you will see it change 

23 drastically as a function of location over 

24 time, over power levels that may be operating. 

25 Here we’re trying to address a 
33

1 neutron/photon ratio for eight reactors over 

2 many years at many locations, and to adjust 

3 the relationship from neutron to photon ratio 

4 using NTA. We take the single value of 28 

5 percent, a single moment in time, a single 

6 location, and we give credence to that as the 

7 way in which we’re now going to address all 

8 neutron/photon ratios. And of course, finding 

9 one is the (unintelligible) neutron spectra 

10 and the issue of the photon energy 

11 deficiencies that define the NTA film. 

12 One of the things that I wanted to 

13 point out was, and I include it in my write 

14 up, was the 28 percent. If you look at Table 

15 2 in my handout, you see, and it’s written in 

16 bold, that that 28 percent was based on a 

17 single measurement. As I’ve said that 

18 compares the tissue equivalent proportional 

19 counter to the NTA film, but it was measured 

20 on top of the 105 KE reactor. And you see the 

21 28 percent corresponds to the relationship 

22 between 470 over 1700 millirem which then 

23 gives you the 28 percent. 

24 On the other hand if you look at the 

25 front face or if you look at the X-1, and I’m 
34

1 not sure I even know what that location is, 

2 you find that the NTA film reads zero. So 

3 again, here is a situation where a data point 

4 was selected that is possibly correct, but 

5 what is the relationship between a 

6 neutron/photon dose response on top of the 

7 reactor where it’s not likely that the 

8 majority of work exposure may have taken 

9 place. And of course, if you take it in front 

10 of the reactor, you have essentially a 

11 relationship that can’t be even measured 

12 because the NTA film registers nothing. 

13 So that is basically the summary of my 

14 concerns. It’s the limited data involving the 

15 comparison of the seven workers, the method by 

16 which that data was accessed using five 

17 different methods and using the geometric mean 

18 among the five instead of perhaps using method 

19 one, which when in doubt might be more 

20 claimant favorable, and the issue of the 

21 relationship for adjusting NTA inefficiency 

22 that is the 28 percent which was based on a 

23 single comparison in a single moment in time 

24 for the 105 KE reactor that then applies to 

25 all reactors including, as we’ll see shortly, 
35

1 the N Reactor. 

2 And with that I’ll turn the discussion 

3 over to -- 

4 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. Could I 

5 just make one point also? Because in 

6 following all this with Hans a thought came to 

7 my mind, and that is to step back and ask 

8 myself the question, given the data, given the 

9 assumptions and the concerns that were raised, 

10 there’s another layer. And that has to do 

11 with do you feel that this .28 and the 

12 conversion factors for adjusting for the NTA 

13 film captures all workers? You see? 

14 Remember, I think one of the things 

15 that we lose sight of very easily is that you 

16 may have 1,000 workers, and you may have come 

17 up with a technique that would be okay for 

18 some workers, maybe even 50 percent of the 

19 workers, but is it a bounding analysis for all 

20 workers who may have not been monitored 

21 properly or monitored for neutron? So 

22 confounding, superimposed on this, which 

23 really the points that Hans made really 

24 challenges whether or not the data are 

25 adequate and appropriate to come up with this 
36

1 neutron/photon ratio. 

2 I ask another question. Even if they 

3 are do they capture and place an upper bound 

4 on all workers? Maybe they’re okay with some 

5 workers. And remember, our mandate is we have 

6 to make sure that we give the benefit of the 

7 doubt to all the workers that are working, or 

8 as the theme’s been going, 95 percent. So I 

9 think that’s part of the story, too. And I 

10 guess with that I’d like to stop and leave it 

11 to you folks. 

12 MR. NELSON: This is Chuck Nelson. I just 

13 wanted to say that Hans actually did a very 

14 nice job in laying all that out in the 

15 document in the findings. And he definitely 

16 has some good points that he’s making about 

17 the limitations and problems with NTA film. 

18 They’re well recognized. They were recognized 

19 by Hanford as well. 

20 And what we did in the TBD or what was 

21 done in the TBD was to use the available data 

22 to come up with what was felt to be a claimant 

23 favorable neutron/photon ratio. Given that we 

24 realize there are limitations to it, and that 

25 the 28 percent that was applied was very 
37

1 limited and was based on a single set of pair 

2 measurements, and there just wasn’t much data 

3 available. So that number was used, and it 

4 was felt that it was claimant favorable. 

5 So in our response we basically say we 

6 don’t have any conceptual difference of 

7 opinion in all these particular areas with 

8 angular response issues with limitations on 

9 the NTA film. So what we did is we started to 

10 dig into some records closer because there’s a 

11 lot of opinions that in data and reports 

12 around the reactors that neutron levels around 

13 the reactors were controlled such that there 

14 wasn’t high neutron levels, where there wasn’t 

15 significant gamma levels. 

16 So what I’d like to do is turn it over 

17 to Ed Scalsky. He’s got some good points he’d 

18 like to make about the single-pass reactor 

19 facilities and tell you what we’re doing right 

20 now to look at some of the data to help 

21 support that these numbers are in fact 

22 claimant favorable. 

23 MR. SCALSKY: This is Ed Scalsky. I think 

24 one of the things that we have to be aware of 

25 is that the people at that time were aware of 
38

1 all these problems. They made extensive 

2 surveys around the reactor. They started with 

3 the 305 reactor, and they went into the 105-B 

4 reactor when it went critical. They did 

5 complete surveys along the front face of the 

6 reactor. They timed people when they went in 

7 there to do work, they made measurements. 

8 And, in fact, from 1950 to ’57, I guess, one 

9 of the things they did is that they made the 

10 survey. When people went into work, they 

11 started a stop watch, and they based their 

12 time on the highest dose rates that they could 

13 find in there. 

14 DR. MAURO: And so they’re neutron 

15 measurements? 

16 MR. SCALSKY: Neutron measurements. 

17 DR. MAURO: With NTA film? 

18 MR. SCALSKY: No, with instruments. 

19 DR. MAURO: Okay, this was instrumentation. 

20 MR. SCALSKY: Instrumentation also. 

21 DR. MAURO: (Unintelligible). 

22 MR. SCALSKY: Well, I don’t know about 

23 (unintelligible). They had a (unintelligible) 

24 type instrument, BF-3 with cadmium covered and 

25 non-cadmium covered. 
39

1 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): And this is Bob 

2 Alvarez. Are these data recorded somewhere? 

3 MR. SCALSKY: Yes, they are recorded. 

4 There’s a couple of, we’re in the process of 

5 getting additional data, logbooks. We have a 

6 couple of logbooks right now. The HEW 199L 

7 goes from 11/21/44 to 12/29/44. And the HEW 

8 507L goes from 9/10/45 through 5/3/46. And 

9 these logbooks give the details of all the 

10 surveys that were made at that time. 

11 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Now subsequent 

12 to that, you know, when they started to 

13 significantly raise the power levels to these 

14 reactors and the shielding, bioshielding, 

15 began to degrade and the engineering studies 

16 subsequently pointed out an increased leakage 

17 of photon and neutrons. Are there data with 

18 respect to that time period? 

19 MR. SCALSKY: I believe there are data. The 

20 HW-33533, I’m not sure. Whose was that, 

21 Chuck? Do you recall? 

22 MR. NELSON: That was a report. It was 

23 called “Achievement and HAPO Monitoring”. It 

24 covered 1944 to 1954, and it was basically a 

25 summary of all the controls that were in place 
40

1 from the beginning of the time they started 

2 the reactors. It actually included a lot of 

3 different work areas, but it had a specific 

4 section on monitoring at the reactors. 

5 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I guess perhaps 

6 I’m not being clear. I’ll restate my 

7 question. Subsequent to 1954, around 

8 beginning in the, let’s say ’56, ’57 timeframe 

9 when the power levels were increased 

10 dramatically in these reactors and they began 

11 to observe deterioration of the bioshields and 

12 things like warping and other phenomena 

13 affecting the physical state of the reactor, 

14 et cetera, there was concern expressed, at 

15 least by the engineering people, about the 

16 potential for an increased leakage of photons 

17 and neutrons. And my question is after 1955, 

18 ’56 were there any sort of specific studies 

19 performed to look at doses that might have 

20 been received from the deterioration of the 

21 bioshield and other problems associated with 

22 increasing power levels? 

23 MR. SCALSKY: I would expect that based on 

24 the logbooks that they’ve had, that they’ve 

25 made surveys on a continuing basis and I see 
41

1 no reason why it should have stopped, you 

2 know, at 1950 or ’55 or any other time. 

3 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I see. Because 

4 I just heard reference to one report it 

5 stopped in 1955. I was curious what went on 

6 beyond that especially during this period 

7 when, as I said, when they were experiencing 

8 these problems of deterioration of the 

9 bioshields. 

10 MR. SCALSKY: No, we’ve only had, we’re just 

11 now getting a lot of this data in. We have 

12 made requests to get this data, and we are 

13 getting it in. So it’s taking a little longer 

14 time than we had anticipated. 

15 MR. NELSON: It’s going to take a lot of 

16 time and resources to go through all these 

17 documents and pick all this information out. 

18 So it’s not going to be a little uptaking to 

19 go through and try to re-create every 

20 situation throughout all those years prior to 

21 the implementation of the TLDs. 

22 DR. MAURO: This is very important, and as 

23 what you’re saying is there’s a body of data 

24 out there that measured neutron, I guess 

25 fluxes, was it just energy distribution or was 
42

1 it just dose? 

2 MR. NELSON: It’s dose ranges. 

3 DR. MAURO: Okay, the dose that does capture 

4 the full range of the energy distribution. 

5 MR. NELSON: That’s what we’re not sure 

6 about. I don’t think at this point we can say 

7 that we know the neutron energy spectrum at 

8 the reactors because it changed wildly. 

9 DR. MAURO: But this instrument that was 

10 used -- I’m not familiar with the instrument 

11 you’re referring to -- captures the full 

12 range. In other words it says dose -- 

13 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Was it a gold 

14 foil instrument? 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Let me insert here. Neutron 

16 instruments historically have had somewhat the 

17 same problems as the film badges. But people 

18 knew from the front end that there was 

19 spectral dependence in terms of dose, and you 

20 want to relate what you saw on the NTA film 

21 was dose, and so you needed to know the 

22 spectrum. So there are a lot of things you 

23 could do, and some of them were crude. You 

24 could do threshold foils, and those were done 

25 in the early days. The Chang and Eng was 
43

1 maybe had boron and cadmium or -- 

2 MR. SCALSKY: Well, it had two chambers 

3 actually. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: But that was really rough 

5 spectral analysis in a sense, probably fast 

6 and maybe epithermal and thermal or something 

7 like that. So there were a lot of different 

8 detectors and all of them had limitations. It 

9 really wasn’t until you got to the Bonner 

10 spheres and you’re up toward the end of the 

11 ‘50s and into the ‘60s before those started to 

12 get -- I don’t remember the dates, maybe 

13 Poston would -- but there was a lot of 

14 attention given. 

15 And let me get a little soap-boxy 

16 here, but I always remember [Name Redacted] 

17 who’s kind of the father of TLD. He used to 

18 say anything worth doing is worth doing 

19 poorly. And what he meant by that was even if 

20 you couldn’t measure whatever it was, say 

21 neutrons, very well, you ought to try to 

22 measure them as best you can and then -- and I 

23 think Mr. Nelson mentioned -- these issues 

24 were known very early on. 

25 The limitations were known very early 
44

1 on, and great amount of effort to try to 

2 define those spectra under different power. 

3 This is throughout the system under different 

4 power levels, under different leakage levels 

5 and so on. I know it was going on at Oak 

6 Ridge. Based on what I know about Hanford it 

7 was going on there. 

8 And keep in mind what they were doing 

9 in terms of trying to limit worker exposure 

10 and getting these ratios. So if you knew 

11 something about the gamma, you at least knew 

12 roughly where you were overall, a very 

13 different purpose. Now, we’re trying to say 

14 how can I use that information and make a 

15 correct decision on compensation. 

16 And that’s the struggle here I think. 

17 And to do it with a few numbers doesn’t give 

18 us a lot of confidence. But if we can find 

19 these early spectral depictions, even though 

20 those early ones are going to be crude, but at 

21 least you’ll have some idea. Actually, the 

22 higher energies are kind of easier to do, and 

23 those are the ones that delivered the most 

24 dose anyway. 

25 So I think if you can get a hold of 
45

1 those, those will be very helpful. I don’t 

2 think -- and Bob Alvarez asked the question -- 

3 I don’t think we know completely what’s 

4 available, do we? 

5 MR. SCALSKY: Not yet. We are constantly 

6 seeking new information. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: But our confidence on bounding 

8 these for purposes of compensation will be 

9 very much enhanced if we can get some of that 

10 information with the early measurements. They 

11 certainly were trying to do what you’re 

12 talking about. 

13 MR. SCALSKY: Yeah, and some of these early 

14 measurements they used the long* counter which 

15 you know is useful for (unintelligible) case 

16 estimate. So there is some data on that we’ll 

17 continue to get. 

18 DR. MAURO: Am I correct in understanding 

19 then this number .28 is really what we’re 

20 talking about, is that .28 a good number? And 

21 will this new information help us to support 

22 that number as being a good bounding value or 

23 is some other value more appropriate? Is that 

24 really what we’re zeroing in on? 

25 MR. SCALSKY: I can’t say that the .28 is a 
46

1 good number. 

2 DR. MAURO: No, no, I’m not saying it is or 

3 isn’t. I’m saying that, in other words the 

4 research -- 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s the issue. 

6 DR. MAURO: -- or is there more to it than 

7 that? 

8 DR. BEHLING: Well, I think there is more 

9 because you can look at the Table 2 that I 

10 have, and obviously the difference between Top 

11 23 when you have the 1700 versus the 470 that 

12 gave rise to the 28 percent was not obviously 

13 matched by the front phase or the X-1 location 

14 meaning that the ratio will shift as a 

15 function of neutron spectrum. 

16 As you degrade the spectrum, you 

17 approach raising zero response for the NTA 

18 film with obviously, I mean, if you get much 

19 below the neutron energies of 300 keV, your 

20 NTA film has no chance of registering, and yet 

21 your photon badge will register whatever down 

22 to a few tens of keV. 

23 So we realize that no single number 

24 will ever do justice. What you hope for is to 

25 perhaps take a claimant favorable number and 
47

1 say that on average if a person spends time in 

2 the containment, and he wanders from one 

3 location to the other over time or different 

4 reactors, that a single number will perhaps 

5 provide a bounding relationship. But not, 

6 there will be no single number that will 

7 capture the truth. 

8 DR. NETON: I think this is the crux of the 

9 issue. You kind of avoided it in your 

10 discussion. We didn’t assign a single number. 

11 We assigned a distribution, and in fact, the 

upper 95th 12 percentile of that distribution was 

13 .62. And that was assigned to workers, not a 

14 single value. And then the question becomes -

15 - and we’ve been down this path many times in 

16 many working groups -- is it appropriate for 

17 NIOSH to assign a distribution with their best 

18 estimate, which this was. 

19 We looked at all the data and said 

20 this was our best estimate of what it could be 

21 but given the uncertainties it could go as 

high as .6 something at the 95th 22 percentile. 

23 Or is it SC&A’s opinion as it has been in the 

past that we need to assign a 95th 24 percentile 

25 to everyone? And that’s what it comes down 
48

1 to. 

2 DR. MAURO: I think there’s some very 

3 productive discussions on this when this came 

4 up on other sites, and there’s almost like a 

5 procedure that’s inherent. And that is if you 

6 have a site of highly variable, let’s say 

7 neutron to photon ratio was extremely variable 

8 which it sounds like it is, then the question 

9 becomes do we have people that may have worked 

10 -– is there a location that may represent a 

11 neutron to photon ratio of five, because I 

12 think I’ve run across some of those. 

13 And is it possible, is it plausible, 

14 here’s where the judgments come in, that that 

15 five was predominant at that location because 

16 of the nature of the activities that took 

17 place there and that there were workers that 

18 may have worked there for extended periods of 

19 time where they experienced the neutron to 

20 photon ratio of five? 

21 See, the way I look at it is, and if 

22 we don’t really know -- we ran into this 

23 problem at Bethlehem Steel -- it’s almost like 

24 a policy issue. If we have a situation where 

25 you have this variability, you have workers, 
49

1 you’re not quite sure where the workers 

2 worked, but there are some locations where 

3 consistently the ratios were above one. I 

4 won’t even use five because that’s pretty 

5 high. But let’s say consistently above one. 

6 And we have workers, and we’re not 

7 quite sure where they worked. What do you do? 

8 Do you assign the full distribution? And I 

9 think where we came out on this -- and Jim, 

10 you correct me if I’m wrong -- is that when 

11 you’re in the difficult situation, you have no 

12 choice but to give the guy the upper end. I 

13 think that you go with the full distribution 

14 when there was good reason to believe that, 

15 no, it’s unlikely this guy, the nature of his 

16 job was such that perhaps there’s no reason to 

17 monitor him or that we had good reason to 

18 believe that he spent time in lots of 

19 different places. 

20 But I guess we’ve developed a 

21 practice, and I think we agree -- 

22 DR. NETON: I think what you’re saying here 

23 is the evolution of our process. 

24 DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

25 DR. NETON: This Hanford document was 
50

1 written, one of the first ones that you 

2 reviewed, and a lot of water’s gone under the 

3 bridge since then. And we’ve evolved our 

4 position particularly in the area of photons. 

5 I mean, I think there is a TIB out there now 

6 that you’ll read about later that’s in our 

7 response, TIB-20 I think, that essentially 

8 takes that position. If you don’t know any 

9 better and the person should have been 

10 monitored, in our judgment they were more 

11 exposed and should have been monitored, then 

the 95th 12 percentile is probably the appropriate 

13 measurement. 

14 Now, we don’t have a position on that 

15 for neutrons yet, but I think we need to go 

16 back and look at this. I think what Ed 

17 suggested with these logbooks and everything 

18 is fine and good, but we’ve got to look at it 

19 and see is a single value with a distribution 

20 appropriate or not. And I would suggest that 

21 in some cases it may be. For instance, if 

22 we’ve not been successful with you guys at 

23 least in making the case that some, the 

24 workers that were more highly exposed were 

25 monitored, and if we can demonstrate that, I 
51

1 think you would agree that unmonitored workers 

2 then may -- 

3 DR. MAURO: Full distribution would be 

4 better. 

5 DR. NETON: -- the full distribution would 

6 be more appropriate. 

7 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): There also 

8 appeared, at least in sort of a general 

9 process history perspective, an increased 

10 number of people who were brought to bear to 

11 do maintenance and repair on these reactors 

12 especially beginning in the mid- to late-‘50s 

13 through the period in fact when they were 

14 ultimately closed. And there’s some data that 

15 indicates how many people were doing what 

16 when. 

17 But it just appears to me that there 

18 were people working on all different aspects 

19 of these machines especially in the, what 

20 would be a concern, of course, was during that 

21 period of peak production when there was a lot 

22 of pressure to keep these reactors operating 

23 to their fullest capacities. And the 

24 pressures to do that while at the same time, 

25 you know, because maintenance repair required 
52

1 mostly reactors that were closed for that 

2 purpose. 

3 DR. GLOVER: Hey Chuck, this is Sam Glover. 

4 The numbers escape me a little bit, but based 

5 on obviously Hanford’s and SC&A’s evaluation, 

6 we’re looking at that. When you look at the 

7 cases, only 62 cases have used a best 

8 estimate. I think 62, something like that, 

and over 2,000 have used the 95th 9 percentile. 

10 So it was at about 2.62 -- 

11 DR. MAURO: Was it neutron? 

12 DR. GLOVER: Yes, the NP ratio, I think it 

13 was 2.62. Very few have used the actual 

14 geometric mean and distribution. And I think 

15 Chuck, we’ve captured this in our discussions. 

16 MR. MACIEVIC: This is Greg Macievic. One 

17 of the things you offered, that NP ratio of 

18 five. You also have to look at the film 

19 itself and when you’re developing this ratio. 

20 That number came about due to going to the 

21 detection limit of the film at 20 millirem. 

22 So now your variability goes way up. Your NP 

23 was five, but you were not how solid is that 

24 five. 

25 DR. NETON: That’s another issue. When you 
53

1 start getting into the neutron/photon ratio 

2 business, when you’ve got non-detectable 

3 badges at the detection limit, you can’t take 

the 95th percentile, the badge and the 95th 4 

5 percentile in my mind of the neutron/photon 

6 ratio and come up with what I would consider a 

7 reasonable estimate. 

8 DR. BEHLING: On the other hand I did fail 

9 to mention something that did catch my eye, 

10 and it’s on page two, and I’ll quote because 

11 it’s taken directly from the TBD. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: That’s from your report? 

13 DR. BEHLING: Yes, and I’ll read it for 

14 those that don’t have the report in front of 

15 them. And in the TBD it states the following: 

16 “Hanford NTA film was processed 

17 independently from the beta/photon film even 

18 though the NTA film was typically exchanged 

19 along with the beta/photon film. Prior to 

20 1957, NTA film was housed in the two-element 

21 beta/photon dosimeter holder along with the 

22 beta/photon film.” 

23 And I’m going to come back to this 

24 issue when we talk about the 200 and 300 Areas 

25 because that’s a very critical statement here. 
54

1 But the thing that I wanted to point out here 

2 is the following statement a little further 

3 down. “The Hanford policy to process NTA film 

4 varied historically but basically involved the 

5 practice to read all NTA film for the 200 West 

6 plutonium facilities and, for other Hanford 

7 facilities, to process the NTA only if the 

8 photon dose was at least 100 millirem.” 

9 Now, there’s a certain bias associated 

10 with it especially for those individuals for 

11 whom perhaps the neutron/photon ratio was 

12 greater than one. Which meant that if his 

13 photon dose was less than 100 millirem, his 

14 neutron badge wasn’t even read according to 

15 that policy. 

16 MR. MACIEVIC: But in what we used, we used 

17 all the values that we had for 

18 (unintelligible) on the 200, 300 level, but 

19 all the values that were used were actual 

20 readings from the badge and not, if there was 

21 a number there, we used it. I may be 

22 misinterpreting what you’re saying, but we did 

23 not have a cutoff of a certain value except to 

24 say we used the minimum detectable on the 

25 badge. 
55

1 If there was a reading on the 

2 beta/gamma, we used that reading and then we 

3 used whatever the neutron reading was to come 

4 up with that lognormal distribution. We 

5 didn’t, we cut off at 20 and also at 50 to 

6 take a look at how distributions were and how 

7 you can cut out some of the variability by 

8 going up to 50 millirem with a badge. 

9 DR. BEHLING: I think you’re referring now 

10 to the 200, 300 Area which is an issue in the 

11 third component. 

12 MR. MACIEVIC: That’s right. 

13 DR. BEHLING: I’m going back to the 

14 production reactors. And according to the 

15 policy statement here is that we always 

16 associate a neutron component along with a 

17 photon component. The two are not 

18 divorceable. Therefore, if we see a photon 

19 response that’s less than 100 millirem, we may 

20 not even bother with the NTA processing, the 

21 processing of the NTA film. 

22 Meaning that for those individuals who 

23 where the potential ratio was one or higher, 

24 you may have not even processed the NTA film 

25 based on the failure of the photon dose to 
56

1 have been less than 100 millirem, which means 

2 there’s the potential of a lot of data missing 

3 that on the basis of this policy was simply 

4 not bothered to be read. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Were there actual cases in your 

6 charts where you show that ratio being greater 

7 than one? I don’t recall it. 

8 DR. BEHLING: There are, there are evidence, 

9 and in fact, the TBD has for certain areas the 

10 ratio was as high as five-to-one in select, 

11 rare instances, yes. 

12 MR. NELSON: Yeah, I think it’s plutonium 

13 facilities. 

14 MR. ANIGSTEIN (by Telephone): This is Bob 

15 Anigstein. I’d like to interject a comment on 

16 this. Hans said that there was data missing. 

17 I’d like to put it more strongly and say that 

18 that indicates there’s a potential bias in the 

19 data because if low photon readings meant that 

20 the NTA film wasn’t read, you could 

21 conceivably have situations where you have 

22 photon readings below 100 millirem, and yet 

23 you have high neutron readings, and those 

24 would be automatically discarded. And these 

25 would give you a very high neutron/photon 
57

1 ratio. 

2 MR. SCALSKY: That was a study by Watson 

3 that came up with that particular value. They 

4 did a study of 66,000 NTA film, and what they 

5 were trying to do was economize. And they 

6 found that you would not, if you had a high 

7 gamma, you would have, or if you had a high 

8 neutron, you would have a high gamma. And 

9 they concluded that it’d be one in 10,000 

10 where you would get a high neutron without a 

11 high gamma. And that’s why they came up with 

12 that. 

13 DR. MAURO: There was a certain amount of 

14 wisdom in that decision at that time whereby 

15 you would not miss a significant neutron 

16 component. That’s important if the data are 

17 out there that demonstrate that, great. But 

18 right now I guess on face value the argument 

19 that Bob just made, you know, sort of is self20 evident. That is, if it turns out the actual 

21 data on which that judgment was made was 

22 sound, I think that’s very important. 

23 MR. NELSON: That threshold value was 

24 established for reactor facilities not for 

25 plutonium facilities because they felt that 
58

1 neutrons weren’t as significant in the reactor 

2 facilities. So instead of counting all these 

3 badges, they set a threshold at which now 

4 those are the ones we’re going to target, and 

5 we’ll look at those and see if we can 

6 specifically see neutrons on those. 

7 DR. MAURO: So let me see if I understand. 

8 The wisdom behind the decision was, okay, if a 

9 person has a gamma of less than 100, there 

10 really is no need to read the neutron 

11 component because it’s likely for reactors 

12 that the neutron to photon ratios is 

13 relatively low. That’s under point one or on 

14 that order. And on that basis they really 

15 weren’t that concerned about that ten millirem 

16 and really changed things too much as opposed 

17 to the fact that possibly it was five to one 

18 in that case. 

19 Well, you’re saying in that particular 

20 circumstance as for the reactors having a five 

21 to one ratio associated with the 100 millirem 

22 photon dose is probably very unlikely. That’s 

23 what I’m hearing. I think that’s an important 

24 point, and I think that if that’s true -- 

25 DR. BEHLING: I think if you have faith in 
59

1 it, John -- 

2 DR. MAURO: No, no, I’m just posing the 

3 question. I understand the argument you’re 

4 making, and if the data support it, that’s 

5 right. But of course, we haven’t seen that 

6 data. 

7 MR. SCHOFIELD: How good is the 

8 documentation that these people spent their 

9 time at the reactor and didn’t go over to the 

10 200, 300 Area to work with the plutonium? I 

11 mean, shielded gamma is pretty easy so I mean, 

12 you know, you have guys who almost any –- 

13 they’re gonna be floaters. They’re going to 

14 spend a lot of time here, but they’re going to 

15 spend a heck of a lot of time here 

16 particularly times when they’re short they 

17 need to generate a lot of this overtime. They 

18 will pull people from here to fill in over 

19 here. Unless that’s well documented, there 

20 are people who have potential for a large 

21 neutron dose being missed in their records. 

22 DR. NETON: I assume there’ll be logbooks 

23 not only recording the neutron but the photons 

24 simultaneously so you’re going to have an 

25 instantaneous ratio here that documents the 
60

1 neutron/photon ratio independent of the badges 

2 themselves, I would think. 

3 MR. SCALSKY: Well, you have to watch where 

4 these measurements were made. 

5 DR. NETON: Right. But what I’m saying is 

6 it would be unusual to me if someone would go 

7 and measure neutrons without measuring photons 

8 at the same time. And if you have that type 

9 of data, then you don’t have to rely on these 

10 badges anymore. 

11 MR. MACIEVIC: That last argument though if 

12 you were now saying that you don’t know where 

13 the person is, then this discussion about the 

14 individual areas doesn’t really help you 

15 because now you’re going to have to say is 

16 there a site NP ratio. And are you going to 

17 now make some upper percentile for everybody 

18 at the site and assign neutron doses to 

19 secretaries and everything else? Because that 

20 gets into some very fuzzy areas which I think 

21 with these records and that we’ll be able to 

22 identify more what the worker did. 

23 MR. NELSON: Well, Jim, if you look at the 

24 records associated with the claims, they’re 

25 actually very good in that they’ll have the 
61

1 dosimeter records, and they’ll show the area 

2 where the guy works. I’m not saying they’re 

3 100 percent complete regarding showing every 

4 movement, but it does, for many of the years 

5 it shows, okay, the guy left 100 Area and 

6 moved over to the 200 Area. 

7 And there’s an actual entry into their 

8 dosimetry file that says that. And there’s 

9 also x-ray records. On x-ray records it has 

10 work area. So when the dose reconstructor is 

11 looking at this, he’s picking through all this 

12 data and noting the fine details on the work 

13 location, and that’s the information that we 

14 have. And for the Hanford site it’s pretty 

15 good. It’s very impressive. 

16 DR. MAURO: Bob Alvarez did make a point 

17 though that struck me, and I don’t know the 

18 history of the Hanford facility. It sounds 

19 like in 1956 something special happened. That 

20 is, they kicked up the power level of the 

21 reactors, and apparently from reading the site 

22 profile there was a lot of problems with 

23 regard to, I guess, the tubes. There was 

24 warping and in other words what we’re dealing 

25 with is a very variable, time and space 
62

1 variable. 

2 So I think that the, what I heard was, 

3 well, if you know you’re in the reactor area, 

4 you’re pretty confident that the neutron to 

5 photon ratios were below one. I mean, I guess 

6 that’s what this says. But then at the same 

7 time I hear, well, wait a minute. I don’t 

8 know if we can jump to that given the 

9 experience, that is, we have a highly variable 

10 nature in time and space amongst these seven 

11 or eight reactors. Was it the 

12 (unintelligible) reactors? 

13 So all I’m cautioning is that these 

14 occurrences where the reactors weren’t 

15 performing as well as you’d like may play on 

16 all this and have some influence on what 

17 you’re going to pick. Because remember, I’ll 

18 go back to what I said in the beginning, that 

19 is, remember, we have an obligation to make 

20 sure that all the workers that moved through 

21 the system we’re going to give the benefit of 

22 the doubt. So we’re not looking for a 

23 collective dose or the average dose, we’re 

24 looking for the right thing to do for just 

25 about everyone. 
63

1 DR. BEHLING: And let me add something here 

2 because of comments made earlier by someone on 

3 the other end of the table. And that is to 

date we have used, obviously, the 95th 4 

5 percentile for dose reconstruction. But I 

6 want to caution everyone. When you have most 

7 of the dose reconstructions probably involve 

8 claims where you tend to maximize doses, and 

9 sure, you can be generous then because you can 

give them the 99th 10 percentile as long as you 

11 know the bottom line is we don’t pay up and 

12 the POC’s less than 50 percent. 

13 The concern that I have in applying 

14 neutron/photon ratios applies to best 

15 estimates, and that’s the bottom line. 

16 Anything else doesn’t really matter because we 

17 know when you start out with the assumption 

18 that we’ll maximize everything, oh, you can 

generously give them the 99th 19 percentile value 

20 because it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is 

21 we don’t pay. So I wanted to look at only 

22 those cases where best estimates were used and 

23 then determine which is the appropriate 

24 neutron/photon ratio because that’s the only 

25 place where it matters. 
64

1 DR. NETON: I think we agree with that. 

2 DR. MAURO: And could I ask a question then? 

3 I know we’ve done a lot of Hanford studies, 

4 cases. Have we run across many realistic 

5 cases? 

6 DR. BEHLING: I’d have to ask Kathy, but she 

7 would have to -- 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that’s why Sam framed 

9 his comment earlier that there’s only been 65 

10 claims done under best estimate. 

11 DR. GLOVER: At 2,000 and something. 

12 MR. NELSON: I think the number was 72. 

13 This is a very cursory review, but it takes 

14 awhile to get that detail. I think the number 

15 was 72 in over 3,000 Hanford claims. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: We don’t disagree with you, 

17 Hans. That’s where we need to focus our 

18 attention. It affects a small number of the 

19 population. 

20 DR. BEHLING: No doubt, and that’s the only 

21 population that I want to address here. 

22 DR. NETON: And we agree. We need to go 

23 back and look and see if we can, if full 

24 distribution is applicable or whether 

something like the 95th 25 percentile is more 
65

1 appropriate. I think we’re all in agreement. 

2 MR. MACIEVIC: We have to remember that when 

3 you’re doing dose reconstruction, the person 

4 has, if you know he was in a reactor area, has 

5 no neutron and now very low, and he’s got low 

6 photon or none, you’re going to get all the 

7 missed dose and all that added into the photon 

8 dose which is now then going to be multiplied 

9 by that NP ratio which is going to be a much 

10 higher dose than just using the values that 

11 are right there off of the original data. 

12 MR. NELSON: I think Ed was eventually going 

13 to get to that, but yet missed dose is very 

14 significant in the early years. If they’re on 

15 a weekly change out schedule and you have high 

16 detection limits when you multiply that all 

17 through, you’re assigning very significant 

18 doses, photon and neutron missed dose. 

19 DR. BEHLING: And, in fact, that’s a good 

20 point because among the things that I brought 

21 up in my write up on page three was the actual 

22 changed frequency from January 1950 through 

23 December 1950. So it’s for the full year of 

24 1950 the frequency for badge exchange was 

25 weekly. So if you apply that it didn’t match, 
66

1 it didn’t meet 100 millirem for that year, you 

2 could be missing an awful lot of photons and 

3 neutrons. 

4 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover again. 

5 There was a brief comment made about that they 

6 aren’t divorced. Actually, the NP ratio, 

7 there is a divorcing. Most of the time, 

8 there’s only neutrons when the reactor’s on. 

9 I think that needs to be made very clear that 

10 when the reactor’s off, and there’s still a 

11 lot of photons, you know, you’re activating 

12 stuff, still a lot of photon generating 

13 circumstances around. These guys are getting 

14 photon dose, and we’re still going to apply 

15 this NP ratio. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: As if it was in operation. 

17 DR. GLOVER: Exactly. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Could I ask? Maybe, Greg, you 

19 could answer this. In the case where that 

20 policy was enacted for the reactors where if 

21 it was below 100 millirem, they were assigned 

22 a zero neutron. Is that correct? For the 

23 reactor areas? At least in a certain time 

24 period. Can you spot that readily in the 

25 record? 
67

1 MR. NELSON: What it was is they, if it was 

2 below 100 millirem, they didn’t read the NTA 

3 badge. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but what did they enter? 

5 Did they enter a zero I think you said? Is 

6 that easy for you to -- well, let me just ask 

7 it this way. So a zero shows up in the 

8 neutron column. You’re still putting in a 

9 half of the minimum detectable or something, 

10 right, for that number currently? Is that 

11 what we’re doing? 

12 MR. NELSON: Yes. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

14 DR. MAURO: Let me see now. You measure 

15 photon. He has his NTA film, and he has his -

16 - 

17 DR. ZIEMER: No, if he’s only got a 50 

18 millirem photon, then they would, zero would 

19 have been entered. 

20 DR. MAURO: Now the problem becomes, what 

21 I’m hearing is now in theory zeros entered. 

22 You could in theory fill in that blank by 

23 going one-half of the MDAs for neutron if -- 

24 DR. BEHLING: No, they -- 

25 DR. MAURO: No, they’re not doing that. 
68

1 They didn’t measure it. I just wanted to 

2 understand, okay. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: So you are doing it for 

4 neutrons though, right? 

5 MR. NELSON: Right. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: You’re putting in a neutron 

7 value which is half the detectable limit which 

8 will be what? 

9 MR. NELSON: About roughly 25 I believe. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, so actually, actually, 

11 you’re almost giving a bigger ratio anyway 

12 because you’re below 100 on the gammas, and 

13 you’re going to be assigning 25. So you’re 

14 already up in that same ratio or above where 

15 you would -- 

16 DR. BEHLING: Well, not quite because for 

17 the eight single-pass reactors the N/gamma 

18 ratio is .41. So if you measured 100 

19 millirem, what you would get if you apply the 

20 ratio would be 41 millirem. 

21 DR. GLOVER: I think it made -- This is Sam 

22 Glover again. We use an NP ratio. The 

23 neutron measurement is recorded, and we look 

24 at that. It’s there on the sheet, but an NP 

25 ratio actually assigns the dose to a worker. 
69

1 So we actually don’t use that recorded 

2 neutron, the NTA film. I think that needs to 

3 be made clear. 

4 MR. NELSON: Prior to 1972 when NTA badges 

5 were used and TLDs did not exist, we only look 

6 at the photon dose. If they worked in one of 

7 the neutron areas, we apply the neutron to 

8 photon ratio to that photon dose and to the 

9 photon missed dose. And you assign a neutron 

10 dose to that worker for all the years that he 

11 or she may have worked in those areas. 

12 DR. BEHLING: Are we through with the first 

13 eight single-pass reactors? 

14 MR. NELSON: I think so. I mean, we had 

15 some, we talked about a lot of these points, 

16 but I think there’s some bullets in here that 

17 identify why we felt that neutrons weren’t as 

18 significant as one might think in those areas. 

19 And they were brought out by various people in 

20 the room talking about when you work around 

21 these reactors and refueling the reactors, the 

22 reactors were shut down. You weren’t working 

23 in a neutron field. 

24 Do you want to cover the rest of the 

25 bullets? Give you a fair chance to hit each 
70

1 of those? 

2 MR. SCALSKY: Okay, we mentioned the fact 

3 that all Hanford reactor exposures scenarios 

4 involving neutron exposures also involved 

5 significant photon exposures. The higher 

6 energy neutrons associated reports and beams 

7 where shielding may have been inadequate would 

8 be detected by the NTA. There was a judgment 

9 made by [Name Redacted] who worked there in 

10 early 1947. And in his report his judgment 

11 was that less than five percent neutron 

12 radiation component of the recorded whole body 

13 dose in the Hanford reactor facilities had, 

14 well, that the exposure to neutrons would only 

15 be less than five percent at the reactor 

16 facilities in all of the (unintelligible) 

17 dose. 

18 DR. MAURO: That’s an aggregate parameter. 

19 In other words in the aggregate when you’re 

20 looking at all workers and all exposures, the 

21 contribution to the collective dose -- 

22 MR. SCALSKY: Would be less than five 

23 percent. 

24 DR. MAURO: Yeah, I always like to caution. 

25 MR. NELSON: I don’t think he’s saying that 
71

1 it would represent a neutron to photon ratio. 

2 He’s not saying that. 

3 DR. BEHLING: We have to be very careful 

4 here. And I’m going to bring this up when we 

5 get to the third portion because as I pointed 

6 out when I read that statement earlier, the 

7 NTA film was handed out to people separately 

8 from their film dosimeter. Meaning that if 

9 the reactor was down, and you knew it was 

10 going to be down for the next six months, you 

11 wouldn’t have any NTA film assigned because 

12 there would be no reason to. 

13 And so what you have to be very 

14 careful about is comparing the NTA film error 

15 where this dosimeter was issued totally 

16 independently of the film dosimeter that 

17 measures photons. As you pointed out, when 

18 the reactor shuts down, you’re going to have 

19 residual fission products that continue to 

20 obviously expose people. But my gut feeling 

21 is, without knowing for sure, that you would 

22 stop issuing NTA film so that the person would 

23 have no reason to have a zero under his 

24 neutron dosimetry because what would be the 

25 point? 
72

1 Now that changed, and I’ll bring that 

2 up later when we talk about the post-’72 

3 timeframe when we have the Hanford 

4 multipurpose dosimeter. That dosimeter was an 

5 integrated dosimeter, and it didn’t matter 

6 whether you were exposed to neutrons or 

7 photons or both. You were given that 

8 dosimeter. 

9 And you have to be very careful 

10 because I’m going to bring that issue up when 

11 we talk about the data that involves the two 

12 and 300 Area. I just want to clarify this. 

13 So we’re not mixing things up here. For the 

14 early periods when NTA film was used, NTA was 

15 only issued when there was reason to issue it 

16 because they were two independent separate 

17 dosimeters. 

18 MR. SCALSKY: And as Chuck said, the dose 

19 reconstruction process involves several dose 

20 components, you know, the missed photon and 

21 neutron doses, and it took into consideration 

22 frequency of changes when they applied all of 

23 these. And they used the MDL over two times 

24 the number of zeros or the less than MDL over 

25 two. So we do feel that all the evaluations 
73

1 are favorable to the claimants when we take 

2 all these things into consideration. 

3 They did make dose rate measurements. 

4 There was a study by Peterson and Smalley, you 

5 know, they did make dose rate measurements at 

6 the elevator of the B-Reactor. And there they 

7 found 30 millirem per hour neutrons, 25 

8 millirem per hour gamma. And they used this 

9 to determine additional shielding that was 

10 needed. 

11 But they’ve had an extensive radiation 

12 protection program, both up on top of the 

13 reactor, on the front face of the reactor, and 

14 it was a continuing process along with 

15 extensive training. So everybody understood 

16 what was going on, not only the workers, but 

17 the health instrument people in understanding 

18 the instruments that they were using, the 

19 reactors. And they were looking for voids. 

20 They were looking for ways to constantly 

21 improve the shielding on it. 

22 And I think that’s all. Are there any 

23 other... Chuck, do you -- 

24 MR. NELSON: You talked about that Peterson 

25 and Smalley report. That was in 1960, so they 
74

1 had some dose reads that would support a one2 to-one NP ratio. Of course, that’s what the 

3 reactor operated. So as Ed mentioned, you 

4 know, there’s a lot of times when people are 

5 receiving photon dose and receiving no neutron 

6 dose. And we’re taking that photon dose and 

7 applying those NP ratios. So I feel like that 

8 in effect most of the photon doses were 

9 relative to when there wasn’t much of any 

10 neutron dose. So I think that by itself is 

11 claimant favorable. 

12 There was the B hole test reactor 

13 measurement, Whipple, 1949. Do you have any 

14 notes on that, Ed? But what I have here is 

15 that there was a test hole they put on the 

16 reactor, and they said, so we’re talking about 

17 a hole that was made in the reactor, and 

18 there’s a beam coming out of the reactor. And 

19 they said a significant amount of flux was 1.3 

20 MeV neutrons. 

21 So if we’re talking about a 

22 significant degradation of shielding, then you 

23 should be seeing these higher energy neutrons 

24 which would have been seen by NTA film. He 

25 made a general conclusion about that. He said 
75

1 that NP ratios of about one with minimal 

2 shielding. So there’s a hole, a beam coming 

3 out of the reactor, and you’re seeing NP 

4 ratios of about one. 

5 DR. MAURO: This is concrete shielding? 

6 MR. NELSON: We’re talking about the B 

7 Reactor so it’s all the shielding that makes 

8 up the B Reactor. 

9 DR. MAURO: I just, I’m thinking in terms of 

10 as the shielding increases the standard 

11 depending, of course, on the material, but I 

12 would assume it’s concrete, you’re going to 

13 sharply reduce your gamma but not necessarily 

14 your neutron. So what you just said seemed to 

15 sound like the opposite. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Well, this is a beam though, 

17 wasn’t it? 

18 DR. MAURO: Yeah, I mean, help me out so I 

19 don’t misunderstand you. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: This is an unshielded beam, 

21 from the report, it sounds like. 

22 DR. MAURO: I thought I heard something 

23 about shielding was increased incremental -- 

24 MR. NELSON: No, that was another reactor. 

25 I didn’t bring that one up. You’re probably 
76

1 thinking of another report that they talk 

2 about, an ORNL 2195 which was -- 

3 DR. MAURO: Yeah, ‘cause I remember reading 

4 that one. Okay, that threw me a little bit. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Didn’t these reactors have an 

6 outer skin on the outside of the concrete to 

7 be able to, I don’t think you could actually 

8 drill right into the, and get a complete beam. 

9 You’re going to have some rebounding. You’ve 

10 got an outer shielding on it. 

11 MR. NELSON: That’s one of the things that 

12 in the response was that these reactors 

13 actually had very significant shielding. And 

14 there’s a discussion there, and it talks about 

15 all the shielding that made up the B Reactors. 

16 I don’t know if we need to cover that or not. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Here’s the question. All this 

18 different shielding, and they’ve got quite 

19 complex into it, what pushed them into that 

20 situation to be able to do, they must have had 

21 an issue there, and they must have had a 

22 problem. So they were trying to correct a 

23 problem by putting more shielding on and so 

24 forth. 

25 The degradation, my understanding is, 
77

1 is of the heat of it. They weren’t able to 

2 cool it the way that they wanted to, and there 

3 started to become degradation. Also 

4 understand into it that they also had ports on 

5 this outer shielding that they could actually 

6 pull out to be able to get to some of the 

7 piping and so forth like that to be able to 

8 work it, which a lot of that was done while it 

9 was operating and under full power. 

10 You know, looking at it from a 

11 worker’s standpoint, and no disrespect to 

12 anybody, but the thing is, is you’ve got to 

13 look at this as an individual that has worked 

14 in this situation. He’s been hands on out 

15 there. He knows actually what went on. And 

16 for us to be able to give a limit here and 

17 take this, it’s very confusing for them to be 

18 able to say how are you able to do my dose 

19 like this. So the thing that I always want to 

20 look at is what put us into these situations 

21 with the shielding and so forth, and can we 

22 really accurately do this. 

23 We’ve got to give the best. And Sam 

24 brought up a very good point. There’s 

25 probably only 75 that we’re going to have to 
78

1 do the best estimate and stuff like that. But 

2 when we walk away from this we want to be able 

3 to know that we’ve done it the best that we 

4 can. And there’s a consensus of the problem. 

5 Both sides we are and we’re not, but we need 

6 to really look at what we’re putting on for 

7 them. 

8 One thing I wanted to ask is this 100 

9 MR that they would take, and then they’d read 

10 the film badges and so forth, was that on a 

11 weekly basis they had to get 100 -- 

12 DR. BEHLING: At various times, yes. In 

13 1950, it was weekly. Thereafter it was 

14 bimonthly, and after that monthly. So it 

15 changed, the exchange frequency varied over 

16 time. 

17 MR. NELSON: I don’t think that decision was 

18 made to eliminate those ones at a threshold of 

19 100 millirem until, it’s in that report when 

20 they started doing it. So initially they were 

21 reading all of them. So the report will tell 

22 you when they decided that, and I don’t 

23 remember the date offhand. So initially they 

24 read them all. 

25 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover again. One 
79

1 thing that doesn’t come out is that they 

2 actually spoke to people who were monitoring. 

3 They actually, when they entered these areas, 

4 they had people with them. And we’re going to 

5 actually talk, our hope is to talk to [Name 

6 Redacted], 1947. He’s still around, and also 

7 to talk to additional folks. 

8 And so Ed’s going to go out with us 

9 next week. And I think they’re going to talk 

10 about some additional interviews. Again, 

11 these were based on interviews of the actual 

12 reactor people. They felt that for anybody 

13 this was a very claimant favorable number. 

14 And what Chuck and everybody are trying to do 

15 is, okay, let’s go back and get additional 

16 numbers, do some additional interviews to 

17 verify and validate for everybody here that 

18 that it truly is a claimant favorable number. 

19 N REACTOR

20 DR. BEHLING: Are we ready to go to the N 

21 Reactor? 

22 Okay, the N Reactor, obviously it was 

23 somewhat different. It was a closed loop. It 

24 was used not only to produce plutonium but 

25 also generate electricity for the on site and 
80

1 also tritium production. The N Reactor began 

2 operation only in December 1963 so it was the 

3 last one to come online. 

4 And what NIOSH did was basically say, 

5 well, there’s enough similarity for the N 

6 Reactor, and we can compare it to the other 

7 eight single-pass reactors so why don’t we use 

8 that as a starting point. So let’s go back 

9 and say what did we decide for the eight 

10 single-pass reactors. And we can apply that 

11 and then modify certain changes because there 

12 are differences. 

13 So as a starting point toward the N 

14 Reactor they went back and said let’s go and 

15 use the 0.41 neutron/photon ratio as the 

16 geometric median value for an N-gamma ratio 

17 for the eight single-pass reactors, and that’s 

18 our starting point. And they say, well, you 

19 know, this reactor didn’t come online in 1963 

20 and post-dates studies done by Peterson and 

21 Smalley that we already talked briefly about 

22 in 1960. 

23 Apparently in 1960 Peterson and 

24 Smalley studied the other reactors and 

25 realized that there were problems associated 
81

1 with neutron doses. And if you look on page 

2 9, Table 3, you will see the neutron/photon 

3 ratios for the reactors. As you see, and 

4 already mentioned, I think Chuck just 

5 mentioned it briefly, that for the B reactor 

6 the neutron dose rate of 25 millirem per hour 

7 was matched by photon dose rates of 25. So 

8 you have as a matter or empirical evidence a 

9 ratio of one. And I assume these reflect 

10 instruments rather than NTA film. Is that 

11 correct? 

12 MR. NELSON: I believe so. I’m not 100 

13 percent sure about that. 

14 DR. BEHLING: I don’t either, but given the 

15 doubt that these are absolute values, if, in 

16 fact, these were based on NTA film, then the 

17 real ratio would obviously be considerably 

18 higher yet. I would say, give you the benefit 

19 of the doubt and assume these were instrument 

20 measured. But you have clearly here evidence 

21 of a ratio that is not .41 as is the median 

22 value proposed by NIOSH, but here you have 

23 values for the B reactor of 1.0. And you go 

24 for the C reactor; it’s 1.2 and so forth. So 

25 we do have higher values. Now -- 
82

1 MR. NELSON: Just for clarity of the range 

2 of that I believe is it .2 to 1.2 so there was 

3 a wide range from... 

4 DR. BEHLING: So it does point out another 

5 fact that, for instance, among the different 

6 reactors, you have different values, as we 

7 mentioned, over time and space. And in 

8 different facilities a single value may or may 

9 not be appropriate unless it’s a bounding 

10 value for all reactors. 

11 But then what they did, they said, 

12 okay, we have a problem here so let’s decide 

13 on how to fix it, and let’s put some shielding 

14 on there. And it was based on calculational 

15 methods that you see the right-hand side of 

16 Table 3 give you neutron to photon ratios that 

17 are much reduced. And on that basis, and it’s 

18 strictly based on a theoretical calculation 

19 because if you read my quotation, no one 

20 really ever followed up. Some of those 

21 shielding modifications were never made. 

22 But based on the fact that these 

23 calculations were made in 1960 and the N 

24 Reactor went operational in 1963, ORAU took a 

25 leap of faith and made an assumption that, 
83

1 well, they would have clearly made those 

2 modifications in a production reactor that has 

3 yet to operate. So on that premise, and it’s 

4 a leap of faith, they decided to reduce the 

5 0.41 neutron/photon ratio by a factor of seven 

6 and ended up with the neutron/photon dose rate 

7 ratio of 0.06. So that is the basic premise 

8 for assigning a neutron to photon ratio that 

9 is seven-fold lower than those for the single10 pass other eight reactors. 

11 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I think it’s 

12 important, too, to note that there was no 

13 additional shielding added to these original 

14 five reactors. What they did to reduce the 

15 heat load on the bioshield was to put thorium 

16 in the fringes so it would absorb more heat to 

17 reduce the deterioration. 

18 But, you know, by the late ‘50s there 

19 was evidence, at least in one report, where 

20 the bioshield was actually smoldering. So 

21 they were not, and the K Reactors and N 

22 Reactor, of course, did not use bioshields 

23 made of a composite of cast iron and Masonite. 

24 Masonite was the big problem. They went to 

25 concrete, and thus, had improved shielding 
84

1 characteristics than the first five reactors. 

2 DR. BEHLING: Well, anyway, that pretty much 

3 sums up all of the concerns that were raised 

4 on behalf of the eight single-pass reactors 

5 have been passed on the pipeline because that 

6 became the starting point for the N Reactor 

7 which was then subsequently modified by way of 

8 reducing the .41 ratio that NIOSH had arrived 

9 at by a factor of nearly sevenfold to go from 

10 .41 to 0.06. And that was strictly based on a 

11 calculational method that we may not even 

12 realize ever took place. 

13 And so that’s my criticism, and those 

14 are the issues. So I guess I’ll pass the 

15 baton on to Chuck. 

16 MR. NELSON: Okay, thanks, Hans. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Could I ask for clarity on a 

18 point? I was trying to correlate what Bob 

19 Alvarez stated versus the table you were 

20 citing. 

21 Bob, this is Ziemer, were you saying 

22 there was no neutron shielding added on those 

23 -- 

24 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): No, to the best 

25 of my knowledge what they were doing to 
85

1 prevent further degradation of the bioshield 

2 was to add thorium on the fringes of the 

3 reactor to reduce the heat loads. It was the 

4 thermal, the thermal heat that was actually 

5 causing the degradation of the Masonite 

6 basically. And there was evidence that it was 

7 combusting. This is how hot they were 

8 running, you know, and how hard they were 

9 running these reactors. 

10 So their sort of work around, if you 

11 want to call it that, was to put thorium in 

12 the fringes which would absorb more of the 

13 heat load coming off the reactor. And to the 

14 N Reactor, I just scratched my head when you 

15 are using the shielding values of the N 

16 Reactor. It just doesn’t make any sense 

17 because the shielding of these reactors, these 

18 first five reactors, were totally different 

19 and had these unique and difficult-to-solve 

20 problems. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: But if you look at the table, 

22 it appears that the photon dose is influenced 

23 very little. Whereas, the neutron dose drops 

24 by an order of magnitude that suggests that 

25 they put low Z material in the beam. Or they 
86

1 thermalized -- 

2 DR. BEHLING: Well, I want to caution you. 

3 These were theoretical calculations -- 

4 DR. ZIEMER: These aren’t measured values. 

5 DR. BEHLING: These are not measured 

6 empirical values. These were only theoretical 

7 calculated values by Peterson and Smalley. 

8 And if you go to the next page, Paul, on -- 

9 DR. ZIEMER: But even there, if it was 

10 thorium that you were using in the 

11 calculations, I don’t see how you would get 

12 this kind of a change in, I mean, thorium’s a 

13 pretty dense material. It’d have very little 

14 effect on fast neutrons, and it would have a 

15 lot of effect on photons. So even 

16 theoretically they’re talking about something 

17 different than I here Bob talking about. So 

18 I’m a little confused about how that relates 

19 here. 

20 DR. BEHLING: But the thing I want to 

21 caution you is that those numbers on the 

22 right-hand side are theoretical. They’re not 

23 real. And if you go to the next page, I took 

24 a quote again from the TBD, and I quote: 

25 Since the report was issued in 1960, and the 
87

1 first of the Hanford reactors were shut down 

2 starting in ’64 with the last single-pass 

3 reactor being shut down in ’71 -- and I 

4 highlighted -- it is possible that the 

5 additional shielding was only installed in 

6 some reactors (later running reactors) and not 

7 installed in others. 

8 So NIOSH admits that there’s 

9 uncertainty about whether the recommendations 

10 by the Peterson Smalley were ever implemented. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: I got you. 

12 MR. NELSON: That’s correct. 

13 What we did is, I agree with a lot of 

14 what Hans has said there. NTA film is very 

15 uncertain. There’s issues with it. So what 

16 we did is we looked at some data that we do 

17 have. And we went to Nichols, 1972. The 

18 title of that document is “Hanford 

19 Multipurpose TLD Field Test and Evaluation”. 

20 And this was done on Douglas United Nuclear 

21 Workers. We call them DUN workers. They were 

22 the operators of the N Reactor. 

23 And what they did in this test, it was 

24 in November and December of 1970 and January 

25 of 1971. And they were testing these TLDs so 
88

1 they assigned them to workers working in the N 

2 Reactor area. And the results you’ll see on 

3 page, of the report, the responses, I believe 

4 it’s on page three. There’s a table there at 

5 the bottom. It has different badge readings -

6 - because I’m using some of my notes here. I 

7 don’t want to confuse everybody. 

8 But what you see is if you look at 

9 each of those individuals, those are the only 

10 readings that had any recordable neutron dose 

11 that was a slow neutron dose of three 

12 millirem. And if you look at, these were 

13 monthly reads on these individuals. There 

14 were a total of 38 monthly reads. And out of 

15 the 38 these are the only ones that showed any 

16 positive neutron dose. So we agreed, you 

17 know, it’s not a whole lot of data. It’s 38 

18 readings and we have little-to-no neutron 

19 dose. 

20 So if you do look at the neutron to 

21 photon ratio from that table, you’ll see 

22 they’re well below the recommended values 

23 assigned in the TBD. So we said, well, that’s 

24 not a whole lot of data. It’s pretty 

25 uncertain, three millirems, pretty slow, 
89

1 although we know NTA film does like slow 

2 neutrons. 

3 So what we did recently over the last 

4 month or so, contacted DOE, and they provided 

5 us all the data that they had for the Douglas 

6 United Nuclear workers. So this data focuses 

7 from 1972, when TLDs were implemented, until 

8 1986 towards the end of the operation of the N 

9 Reactor. And you’ll see that table on page 

10 four. 

11 There are a couple typos on this table 

12 I would like to clarify. Where it says number 

13 of workers, so the first column where it says 

14 number of workers, it should say worker 

15 records. So there wasn’t, if you look at the 

16 bottom, there wasn’t 30,189 workers. That was 

17 worker records. So that was the results of 

18 TLDs, whether they be quarterly or monthly. 

19 The second column and the third column 

20 are, let’s make that the third and fourth 

21 column where it says Deep and Neutrons, that 

22 is dose. And as Han graciously pointed out, 

23 that is millirem, millirem. Thank you. 

24 And the last column would represent 

25 what the neutron to photon ratio would be. 
90

1 Just grossly looking at this data from all 

2 these records and say would that be picked as 

3 a neutron to photon ratio? And if you follow 

4 that down -– we’re looking at .003. The TBD 

5 recommends .06 as the geometric mean. So that 

6 number certainly is quite lower than the TBD. 

7 So we wanted to look at it further. 

8 That’s all workers at the N Reactor. So our 

9 next column, columns depict, let’s look at 

10 these workers, and let’s establish a criterion 

11 by which we can determine how much neutron 

12 dose and determine a ratio from these people 

13 and let’s set a threshold. So we set the 

14 threshold at, it’s 50 millirem neutron and 50 

15 millirem photons. 

16 And there again -- we found this out 

17 last week -- when they ran this, they ran this 

18 two different ways. One of them was 50 

19 millirem photons and zero millirem neutrons. 

20 And that’s actually what this table depicts. 

21 It is this misleading, and I’m going to cover 

22 when we run it for 50 millirems photon and 50 

23 millirems neutron what the actual results are. 

24 So if you look at the results of this 

25 table, I want to clarify that it is 50 
91

1 millirem photon and zero millirem neutron. If 

2 they had anything that exceeded those 

3 thresholds, that’s what this data depicts. 

4 And if you look at what the geometric mean out 

5 of 245 workers, then you’ll see that the 

geometric mean was .03, GSD of 4.14 and 95th 6 

7 percentile of .34. All those numbers are less 

8 than what the TBD recommends. 

9 So when I’m asking more questions 

10 about the data, I did find out that the 

11 preferred analysis was greater than 50 

12 millirems photon and greater than 50 millirems 

13 neutron. And you won’t find this on this 

14 table, but I did want to put out the analysis 

15 was done and the results are .06 as a 

16 geometric mean which is exactly the same as 

17 the TBD. A GSD of 2.88, the TBD recommends 

3.0. And finally, the 95th 18 percentile came out 

19 at .35 which is very close to the .37 as 

20 recommended in the TLD, I mean in the TBD. 

21 So the data that we do have is real 

22 data. It’s using TLD data, and I think the 

23 basis by which the TBD assigned or came up 

24 with the neutron to photon ratio is again like 

25 the single-pass reactors uncertain. And we 
92

1 think this data would more represent what an 

2 appropriate neutron to photon ratio would be. 

3 And that’s using actual data. 

4 DR. BEHLING: May I ask a question about 

5 that? As I’d already mentioned earlier when 

6 we talked about NTA film, it was only, I 

7 assumed it was only issued when there was a 

8 justification for considering that there was a 

9 need for monitoring a person for neutrons. 

10 Now that we go into the post-’72 era where we 

11 have the Hanford multipurpose TLD, it’s a 

12 dosimeter that was assigned to everybody 

13 whether you have a chance to be exposed to 

14 neutrons or not. 

15 So now let’s take a look and assume 

16 that the Douglas United Nuclear workers were 

17 assigned to the N Reactor, but as you 

18 mentioned, the reactor needs to occasionally 

19 be shut down for maintenance, for refueling, 

20 for all the things that are required. Now the 

21 neutrons obviously cease to exist at that 

22 moment in time. The photons continue. 

23 Now, and you don’t have the ability to 

24 separate and say, well, let’s assume a person 

25 worked there for a period of during a 
93

1 refueling outage or extensive maintenance 

2 outage. At what point do you segregate the 

3 neutron from the photon exposure when, in 

4 fact, there was no chance for a neutron 

5 exposure? 

6 In other words I would assume that 

7 many of these workers were assigned to work 

8 involving fixing valves and all these other 

9 things when the reactor was shut down, and you 

10 have essentially compromised the true neutron 

11 to photon ratio by introducing into the 

12 denominator a high photon dose that is not 

13 associated with any neutron exposure. And to 

14 what extent do these data reflect that? 

15 MR. NELSON: I actually don’t have a great 

16 answer for that one. I do want to clarify 

17 though. Prior to 1972 that’s when we would 

18 apply those neutron to photon ratios. After 

19 1972 we’re going to use the actual neutron 

20 records. So what you’re questioning then 

21 would be prior to 1972, just to clarify it. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Right, and I agree that for 

23 these workers where you have TLD data you 

24 wouldn’t go to neutron/photon ratio anyway. 

25 You’d use the original empirical data. But 
94

1 you’re basically stating that the 0.6 as 

2 geometric mean is therefore representative of 

3 a pre-1972 timeframe when NTA film was used; 

4 and therefore, justifies your assumption of 

5 0.06 as the best and reasonable assessment for 

6 neutron/photon ratio. 

7 And as I said, when I looked at the 

8 data, and I realized what the differences 

9 between TLD neutron dosimetry and the NTA is 

10 the selective assignment of NTA film which is 

11 lost once you cross over into 1972. 

12 DR. NETON: Wouldn’t you agree though that 

13 this represents a collective neutron/photon 

14 ratio of -- 

15 DR. BEHLING: Sure, yes, I agree. I agree. 

DR. NETON: And if you take the 95th 16 

17 percentile, you’re going to be selecting those 

18 workers who were -- 

19 DR. MAURO: Yeah, but how did get that, that 

95th 20 , in other words, let’s say -- let me see 

21 if I get this right because I always have a 

22 problem when you use collective dose and 

23 parameters in retrospect. You merge from 

24 collective dose and then say, okay, now I’m 

25 going to use that value and apply it to a real 
95

1 person. Because in other words what you’re 

2 saying, because whenever you work with a 

3 collective dose, you’re really having a 

4 measure of the average, and we’re not 

5 concerned about the average. We’re concerned 

6 about the guy who might be at the high end. 

7 Now to get now the ratio, in other 

8 words I see, how did you get, for example, the 

1.04, the 95th 9 percentile of ratio of 1.04, did 

10 you take like individuals, let’s say we have 

11 like, did you take 246 real people? 

12 DR. BEHLING: Here these are. There’s this 

13 20 workers, ten workers and 14 workers, and 

14 they have dosimetry records that fall into 

15 these categories and you simply pair them. 

16 DR. MAURO: Okay, so this isn’t, this 

geometric standard, this 95th 17 percentile 

18 represents of all of the workers, the hundreds 

19 of workers that comprise, 95 percent of them 

20 had a neutron to photon, of those workers, had 

21 a neutron to photon ratio less than 1.04. Am 

22 I reading that correctly? Or is this a 

23 parameter on the collective dose? 

24 DR. BEHLING: No, it’s the distribution for 

25 these workers right here. You have in this 
96

1 timeframe, ten, 20 workers, ten workers, 34. 

2 DR. MAURO: Oh, these are the number of 

3 records then? Okay, I must have missed that. 

4 So the first column is records. And then the 

5 column that’s called number -- 

6 DR. BEHLING: Number of workers. 

7 DR. MAURO: So what I’m seeing -- 

8 MR. SCALSKY: Excuse me. It’s really 172 

9 workers there, and it’s 245 results. There 

10 are some duplicate, you know, one person from 

11 one year, and then you’ve got another one the 

12 next year. 

13 DR. MAURO: Okay, so over all these years 

14 you have 245 workers? 

15 MR. SCALSKY: A hundred and seventy-two. 

16 DR. MAURO: Okay, 172 workers, then so what 

17 you’re saying is you’ve got data for these 

18 workers, real workers. And you’re saying that 

you make a plot, and the upper 95th 19 percentile 

20 of the -- so therefore, you’ve got 172 

21 measurements of neutron to photon ratio. 

 And you’re saying the upper 95th 22 

23 percentile was .34. Is that a correct way to 

24 read this? In other words, as close to the 

25 highest? Because I was afraid I was looking 
97

1 at a parameter that was an expression of the 

2 uncertainty in the collective neutron to 

3 photon ratio as opposed to the real individual 

4 variability between or among workers. 

5 MR. NELSON: I don’t know if I followed all 

6 that, but does represent, Jim? 

7 DR. NETON: (Unintelligible). 

8 DR. MAURO: What I’m getting at is that if 

9 you really have -- I’m in complete support of 

10 what your argument for this data set, in other 

11 words, if you have 170 workers, and for every 

12 one of those workers you’ve got a real 

13 measurement of neutron and photon dose. And 

14 then you make a plot of the neutron to photon 

15 ratio for every worker, and you say the upper 

95th 16 percentile, the highest dose or the 

highest value because the 95th 17 percentile would 

18 be close to the highest value, of the neutron 

19 to photon ratio for all those workers is .34, 

20 then I think you’ve got a rock solid argument. 

21 DR. BEHLING: No, you don’t. You’re missing 

22 my point again. 

23 DR. MAURO: Okay, help me out. Help me out. 

24 DR. BEHLING: You may have a person who 

25 worked there for three months, and it’s only 
98

1 in the last, the first week or the last week 

2 that he had reasons to be exposed to neutrons. 

3 So the balance of time was done when the 

4 reactor was shut down, and he’s part of that 

5 aggregate. 

6 So for a large part of his -- for 

7 instance, had he been give NTA film they would 

8 have said, well, the reactor’s shut down. 

9 We’re not going to incorporate this 

10 measurement as a time period during which 

11 neutron exposure could have happened. 

12 Therefore, in that column neutron exposure is 

13 blank as opposed to some value or zero if it 

14 was below detection level. Here, I’m not sure 

15 you can make that distinction. 

16 DR. NETON: Don’t you think the upper end of 

17 that distribution is driven by people who were 

18 neutron exposed? 

19 DR. BEHLING: Well, it’s a question of, you 

20 know, for instance, when you have a power 

21 reactor, the number of people going to 

22 containments during the time when the reactor 

23 is up and running is very few. It’s a handful 

24 of people. When the reactor shuts down, you 

25 bring in the contractors by the dozens, and 
99

1 that’s when you get the big gamma exposures 

2 but no neutron. And I don’t know to what 

3 extent these numbers here are tainted by an 

4 exposure that was exclusively, or at least a 

5 part of it, exclusively photon where there was 

6 no need for monitoring for neutron because the 

7 reactor was shut down. And this is the 

8 difference between NTA data and this data. 

9 And that’s why -- 

10 DR. NETON: The higher end of the 

11 distribution with a high neutron/photon ratio 

12 has to be driven by people who were neutron 

13 exposed. 

14 DR. BEHLING: But still it could have -- 

15 DR. NETON: Let’s assume there, Hans -- 

16 DR. BEHLING: Let’s assume we’re talking 

17 about a quarterly dosimeter. I don’t know, 

18 maybe monthly. But a large part where 

19 everybody with data, an exposure that was 

20 received during the time the reactor was shut 

21 down which means that you’re tainting the 

22 whole spectrum for the entire population 

23 because these DUN workers were there really to 

24 support an outage or to do maintenance work as 

25 opposed to going into -- for NTA film you have 
100

1 that. 

2 You know when there was reason to say, 

3 oh, for this period, this monitoring period, 

4 for this week, month or whatever timeframe, 

5 there is a zero or some positive value. And 

6 you know very well what that period was. You 

7 lose that sensitivity when you go to the 

8 multipurpose dosimeter. And that’s why -- 

9 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): May I ask a 

10 question? Are we talking about default values 

11 that are going to be applied relative to 

12 neutron/photon ratios for workers who were 

13 working at the five original production 

14 reactors? 

15 MR. NELSON: We’re talking about the N16 Reactor right now. 

17 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Just the N 

18 Reactor, but these values are not going to be 

19 applicable for workers who worked at the other 

20 reactors. Is that correct? 

21 MR. NELSON: At this point we haven’t tried 

22 to apply that, no. 

23 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): You haven’t. 

24 Okay, thank you. 

25 DR. MAURO: I wanted to just make sure I 
101

1 understand the dispute that we have on the 

2 table because I want to make it clear in my 

3 head. It sounds to me that, Jim, you’re 

4 saying that okay, we have 170 workers that 

5 worked on the N Reactor. We have some real 

data for them. In the upper 95th 6 percentile, 

7 the neutron to photon ratio for those workers 

8 was .34. Hans is concerned, well, this may 

9 not be a representative distribution. 

10 MR. NELSON: One clarification -- I don’t 

11 want to interrupt you, but the 172 are those 

12 workers that had recordable neutron dose, 

13 right, Ed? Remember that you -- 

14 MR. SCALSKY: Yeah, there’s a lot more 

15 workers than that. They’re not included in 

16 that part of the analysis. 

17 DR. MAURO: So these are the workers that 

18 had 50 millirem. So you had 50 millirem is 

19 your threshold. You get those workers, and 

20 now I guess the dispute I’m hearing is that 

21 perhaps these workers were really outage 

22 workers. 

23 DR. BEHLING: Well, this is a yearly 

24 aggregate. You know, you see 1973. If we 

25 broke it down by wear period where it’s a 
102

1 monthly, then I would potentially say that’s, 

2 you’re starting to get closer and eliminating 

3 -- let’s assume for 1973 a worker was 

4 subjected to photon field during the outage of 

5 maybe several months. And you discard that 

6 and say, well, when did he receive his neutron 

7 dose. 

8 Well, it may have been only for one 

9 month out of 12. And that’s the critical 

10 thing that may be missing here when we 

11 aggregate data by the year as opposed to by 

12 work period. And so I don’t have much faith 

13 in the 0.03 because it is a yearly aggregate. 

14 MR. SCHOFIELD: I’ve got a question. How, 

15 on the claimant’s record system, does it 

16 really break down which reactor they were at 

17 and how much time like maybe they spent on one 

18 reactor or maybe one of the other ones? 

19 MR. NELSON: No, what you’ll see is, 

20 especially for the early years when the guy 

21 went into an Area, you’ll see, it’s a log 

22 book, and you’ll see where he went in with a 

23 pencil dosimeter and what his recording was in 

24 and out. And it’ll have a column for each. 

25 It’ll say K Reactor, keV, you know, depending 
103

1 on what reactor he worked in. So it will 

2 assign him directly to that particular 

3 reactor. 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: Oh, okay. 

5 DR. MELIUS: It seems to me that we can get 

6 this, we have this data, right? So it can be 

7 looked at and -- 

8 MR. NELSON: Yeah, we can -- 

9 DR. MELIUS: -- we can get more on the work 

10 histories and whatever and what these work -- 

11 MR. NELSON: I honestly didn’t do a very 

12 good job in representing that because there is 

13 an error in there and there’s a few things. 

14 So we can work that to make it more easily, we 

15 can analyze it further if necessary. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Now on the best estimate people 

17 you’re still using their actual values for the 

18 years when we have both? 

19 DR. BEHLING: No, no, again, Paul, these 

20 data are here for ’72 on forward because of 

21 the use of the Hanford multipurpose dosimeter. 

22 But the intent for us to do here is to look 

23 for the N Reactor exposures prior to ’72. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that’s what I’m getting 

25 to. 
104

1 DR. BEHLING: And so we’re using this data -

2 - 

3 DR. ZIEMER: For the best estimates you’re 

4 just using the actual values. And the 

5 question is arising can you use these ratios 

6 for the other groups at either lower or upper 

7 estimates. 

8 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, what this -- 

9 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Well, I mean, I 

10 would urge caution about that because, for 

11 example, the original five production reactors 

12 which, you know, during the 1960s, from let’s 

13 say from the mid-‘60s on, were primarily 

14 involved in producing thorium. And a great 

15 deal of thorium was produced from these 

16 reactors, which meant that they had to have a 

17 higher neutron flux, more driver rods, to be 

18 able to do that in a reactor like that. 

19 So the neutron activities of these 

20 reactors need to be matched up with what they 

21 were making based on their relative neutron 

22 activities. And I contend that I just don’t 

23 believe you can extrapolate the neutron to 

24 photon ratios from the N Reactor with those of 

25 these original ones because of their, mainly 
105

1 because the shielding is so totally different, 

2 and you had constantly degraded shielding 

3 problems going on. 

4 DR. BEHLING: But, Bob, this is Hans. This 

5 table here that Chuck had supplied us with has 

6 a singular purpose, and that’s to apply some 

7 credibility to the neutron/photon ratio of 

8 0.06 that was originally derived by the Peter 

9 Smalley methodology. And this table right 

10 here provides data post-1972 using the TLD 

11 data that suggests 0.03, which is a factor of 

12 get too smaller. And therefore, the attempt 

13 here is to give credibility to the pre-1972 

14 neutron/photon ratio for the N Reactor only. 

15 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Okay, I’m sorry 

16 to have wasted your time. 

17 DR. BEHLING: And I’m raising the question 

18 that I’m not yet convinced that this value 

19 has, is a sound technical value that we can 

20 apply here because of the issue that I just 

21 mentioned. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Further exploration is 

23 necessary. 

24 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, it should be resolvable 

25 to the extent possible by looking at the data. 
106

1 And I’m sensing we should take a break. Give 

2 Ray a chance to get caught up with all that 

3 he’s missed this morning. Why don’t we take a 

4 ten-minute break which means 15 minutes. 

5 DR. WADE: We’re going to break for ten 

6 minutes. We’ll maintain contact but go on 

7 mute. 

8 (Whereupon a break was taken from 11:57 a.m. 

9 until 12:13 p.m.) 

10 DR. WADE: We’re back. 

11 DR. MELIUS: I’m not sure whether this is a 

12 plan or a proposal, but I plan to work through 

13 lunch. I think we can finish up about 1:00 or 

14 1:30, something like that so I think that’s 

15 easier than breaking and then coming back so 

16 unless there’s strong objections. We will 

17 take a break around, right at one o’clock so 

18 Ray can run next door and make sure there’s 

19 somebody covering that meeting, at least the 

20 beginning of it. 

21 HANFORD 200 AND 300 AREAS

22 I think we’re on to the third one, 

23 yeah. 

24 DR. BEHLING: For those who have my handout, 

25 I’ll skip to page ten and simply make a few 
107

1 opening statements that starting in 1945 

2 Hanford began production of plutonium nitrate 

3 at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, that’s in 

4 the 200 Area and also lots of work was done in 

5 the 300 Area that involved potential neutron 

6 exposures. 

7 And NIOSH provided us with some 

8 neutron/photon dose ratios that are defined in 

9 Figure 1 of my handout which comes directly 

10 from the TBD. And you will see, in fact, the 

11 majority of the neutron/photon dose ratios for 

12 the two and 300 Areas center around the value 

13 of between zero and one, but you will see 

14 outliers where neutron/photon ratios were, in 

15 fact, measured that had a value of five. 

16 To come up with their neutron/photon 

17 dose ratios for the two and 300 Areas, again, 

18 we’re talking about pre-1972. Post-1972 you 

19 had your TLD, and therefore, empirical data 

20 will be used to assign neutron doses for those 

21 workers who were part of the two and 300 

22 production areas. To do so what NIOSH has 

23 done is said let’s take a look at the 1972, 

24 post-1972 data, and determine what 

25 neutron/photon ratios might come from that 
108

1 dataset and then extrapolate it backwards in 

2 time and assume that we can apply these 

3 neutron to photon ratios to all periods all 

4 the way back to the 1940s. 

5 And so what they did was to take a 

6 look at 15 long-term workers -- and I’m on 

7 page 11 here, and I always like to highlight 

8 the key words here that define the issues. 

9 They used 15 long-term workers who were 

10 monitored by the HMPD post-1972 all the way to 

11 1991. And they were able to select 186 

12 matched dosimeter readings where both the 

13 recorded photon dose and the neutron dose at 

14 least registered a dose of 20 millirem. 

15 And on that basis they assessed that 

16 data and said let’s take a look at that 186 

17 paired measurements, neutron/photon 

18 measurements, in behalf of 15 long-term 

19 workers and then come up with a value. On 

20 that basis they came up with a neutron to 

21 photon ratio that you see at the bottom of 

22 page 11, which I boxed out, and the geometric 

23 mean for those 186 paired measurements is 0.73 

24 as the geometric mean, and of course, we have 

25 your geometric standard deviation of 2.1 and a 
109

95th 1 percentile value of 2.47. 

2 So those are the numbers that they 

3 propose to use for assigning neutron doses to 

4 the 200 and 300 Area production workers prior 

5 to 1972 when NTA film was used. And 

6 obviously, we have concluded that that’s not a 

7 functional or viable dosimeter. So the 

8 question then is this a reasonable approach. 

9 And I think I described that as probably the 

10 most credible of the neutron/photon ratios. 

11 But nevertheless I did find a couple things 

12 that I found questionable. 

13 And so finding number one is the data 

14 selection. And the data selection of using 

15 period photon/neutron dosimeter readings that 

16 were at least 20 millirem each has a certain 

17 level of credibility problems because the MDL 

18 value for neutron dosimeter is 50. 

19 So the question is to what extent are 

20 we biasing the selection of 186 paired neutron 

21 and photon dosimeter readings by selecting, I 

22 accept that the TLD very nicely can measure 20 

23 millirem photon dose. The question is how 

24 reasonably accurate is the dose as low as 20 

25 millirem for neutron since we, I think, 
110

1 identified 50 millirem as the MDL value. So 

2 that’s one of the issues. And I think in 

3 their response they did look at the revised 

4 matched dosimeter readings that looks at 50 

5 millirem neutrons as a revised number. So 

6 I’ll let them talk about what they found. 

7 But the more important finding in 

8 behalf of the two and 300 Area neutron 

9 exposures are based on the fact that since 

10 1944, these facilities have been in operation, 

11 and of course, I would concur with their 

12 assessment under one condition, and one 

13 condition only, that the facilities as they 

14 exist post-1972 were, in fact, identical for 

15 all previous timeframes which we know they 

16 were not. 

17 And in my write up I provided a number 

18 of statements that come directly out of the 

19 TBD that talked about the revisions to these 

20 facilities. Many of these things early on, 

21 especially in the early ‘40s and ‘50s were 

22 very, very manually driven processes including 

23 the area where we had a lot of these -- what 

24 is it called? The 500 foot line involving 

25 glove boxes where people were basically 
111

1 standing there and pushing this material from 

2 one glove box to the next and in essence there 

3 was very little mechanization or remote 

4 methods by which these processes were 

5 performed. 

6 And when I looked at the number of 

7 changes, it struck me that the post-1972 

8 neutron/photon dose rate ratios may not 

9 necessarily apply depending on what changes 

10 had occurred from a very manually driven 

11 operation to a remote controlled operation. 

12 That also obviously had to include significant 

13 changes to things such as shielding, 

14 engineering controls and other things that 

15 would have potentially mitigated perhaps both 

16 neutrons and photons. And the question is to 

17 what extent can we rely on the post-1972 data 

18 and apply it to the very early years, 

19 especially the 1940s and early ‘50s. 

20 And quite honestly when I look at some 

21 of the data including that which was provided 

22 by Corley in 1972, and I included his 

23 assessment. If you look at his tables which 

24 are included as, I believe, on the last page, 

25 17, you end up with neutron/photon ratios that 
112

1 were in most instances significantly above 

2 one. 

3 So even though for the proposed 

4 neutron/photon ratio that NIOSH has derived of 

5 0.73, I believe perhaps a more central value 

6 would be a value greater than unity based on 

7 Corley data. And of course, that may or may 

8 not even include some of the earlier ratios 

9 that might have been defined for which we have 

10 no data that go back into the ‘40s and ‘50s 

11 based on the fact that so many changes had 

12 been made to these facilities that would have 

13 affected both neutrons and photons. 

14 And so I will turn this over and allow 

15 you to provide us with some insight as to how 

16 you think these changes might have modified 

17 the neutron to photon ratio. 

18 MR. NELSON: Greg Macievic of NIOSH is going 

19 to actually respond to this particular 

20 concern. 

21 MR. MACIEVIC: We looked, the 186 paired 

22 dosimeter readings that the numbers were 

23 based, obviously based on genuine numbers. 

24 There was another that came up with the 

25 original ratio of the .73. We also looked at 
113

1 later, in 2000, at a little larger group of 

2 247 paired readings and came up with a 

3 standard deviation, a geometric mean, .7, and 

a 95th 4 percentile of 2.1, which is very close 

5 to what’s the numbers that we came up with. 

6 But the key that what we did that I 

7 feel, we feel, that is a claimant favorable 

8 number is that if you look, we took the 

geometric mean and the 95th 9 percentile and 

10 applied it to claimant values that where the 

11 numbers were, compared the measured dose with 

12 the dose that was based on what you come up 

13 with if you apply these statistical 

14 parameters. 

15 And what you get is on all the, at the 

95th 16 percentile, all of the neutron calculated 

17 neutron doses are higher than the measured 

18 field measurements. So they’re all higher. 

19 And there’s only two claimants where, if you 

20 use the geometric mean, where the measured 

21 neutron dose is greater than the calculated 

22 neutron dose. 

23 DR. BEHLING: Can you explain, these 

24 measurements, were they pre-’72 measurements 

25 where we talked about -- 
114

1 MR. MACIEVIC: These are going back on the, 

2 to show on the 186 paired readings to go back 

3 and say, okay, now that we’ve come up with 

4 this ratio, let’s go and use the actual values 

5 and apply these numbers to them. And you see 

that in all cases for the 95th 6 percentile, the 

7 neutron dose is bigger than the dose that was 

8 actually measured. And in several cases 

9 you’ve got, we could get up to a factor of two 

10 on some. 

11 DR. MAURO: That’s post-1972? 

12 MR. MACIEVIC: Right, post-1972. 

13 Now in going to pre-, when the U.S. 

14 Atomic Energy Commission did their study and 

15 looked at ARCO doing their study, when they 

16 determined that they had a problem with the 

17 neutron doses in several of the Areas in 

18 there, they had a potential problem, they went 

19 back and did an analysis for several time 

20 periods and looked also at the neutron/gamma 

21 ratio that was involved in these during these 

22 periods with the variation of shielding and 

23 come up with a maximum neutron to gamma ratio 

24 of 2.3. 

25 So ours, the study they did was a 
115

1 bounding value study. They knew the fact that 

2 they didn’t know the actual workers’ location 

3 all the time. They didn’t know all the 

4 shielding modifications and all the other 

5 things that we discussed were a problem with 

6 using NP ratio, they said, okay, let’s do a 

7 study and do a bounding value on this. And 

8 they came up with, from ’48 to ’56, an NP 

9 ratio of 1.4; ’56 to ’60, 1.56; and 1960 to 

10 the present, 2.3. And we have that number 

11 higher than the value that’s already there. 

12 DR. BEHLING: How were those values 

13 determined? 

14 MR. MACIEVIC: From the study there is a 

15 report -- 

16 DR. BEHLING: Especially in the ‘40s and 

17 ‘50s that you just cited. 

18 MR. MACIEVIC: Yeah, the report is U.S. 

19 Atomic Energy Commission. It’s a letter, 

Attention: Mr. O.J. Elgert, October 20th 20 , 

21 1972, and it is a discussion of what they did. 

22 And this one doesn’t, unfortunately, have a 

23 title to it. But what they used in the study 

24 was the neutron doses were looked at for 26 

25 long-time plutonium workers were reviewed and 
116

1 the methodology that they used to determine 

2 what the neutron dose was during that period, 

3 so -- 

4 DR. BEHLING: You don’t know whether it was 

5 NTA film, instruments -- 

6 MR. MACIEVIC: They did look, no, 

7 unfortunately, it does not say that. They 

8 were looking to see whether or not under the 

9 conditions they had that, whether or not they 

10 would have exceeded their three Roentgen per 

11 year administrative level from, if these 

12 conditions by doing the variations for these 

13 conditions then those NP ratios that they 

14 would violate this. And they found that they 

15 didn’t in those cases. And I can get you the 

16 exact -- 

17 DR. BEHLING: But it would be most important 

18 to determine how those numbers were derived 

19 because that’s really the crux of the problem 

20 is that you don’t have much faith in the 

21 earlier measurements. 

22 MR. NELSON: What years? 

23 MR. MACIEVIC: This is 1972. 

24 DR. MAURO: That’s the date of the report. 

25 MR. MACIEVIC: The date of the report for, 
117

1 what the report summarizes is that for the 

2 previous years they felt like -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Wouldn’t that have been a three 

4 Roentgens per quarter maybe. 

5 MR. MACIEVIC: I’m sorry? 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Were they even using Roentgens 

7 in ’72? 

8 MR. MACIEVIC: No, that was the value that 

9 they were using in the early years to, knowing 

10 that they didn’t have the NP ratio down, that 

11 they limited the Areas to three Roentgens to 

12 make sure that they weren’t exceeding any 

13 neutron dose for the photon by using that as 

14 the photon limit. And they did a study in ’72 

15 to make sure that that actually was the case, 

16 that nobody from those previous years went 

17 over that value based on the study they did, 

18 and I will get you the report. 

19 MR. NELSON: Basically what they did is they 

20 looked back, and they said based on the type 

21 of shielding that was used and the type of 

22 activities that were performed in the earlier 

23 years, they actually applied different 

24 reduction factors. And let me read what they 

25 are. It says, from 1960, approximately one-
118

1 third reduction in the neutron to photon ratio 

2 is assumed for the period of ’50 to ’60 when 

3 only lighter shielding was used. Lighter 

4 shielding did not attenuate x-ray radiation, 

5 in particular, or gamma radiation as compared 

6 to the shielding in place after 1960. 

7 Then they assumed another ten percent 

8 reduction in the neutron to photon ratio from 

9 1948 through 1955 when there was essentially 

10 no other shielding like Hans mentioned in 

11 those glove boxes when they were passing 

12 material through when there was only plastic 

13 windows, for instance. So the results of the 

14 1972 study said these numbers are bounding, 

15 and they provided, as Greg mentioned, some 

16 upper boundary values of NP ratios based on 

17 those reductions based on information they had 

18 in that study. And all the numbers that they 

19 use are actually lower than the ratios that we 

20 present in the TBD. 

21 DR. BEHLING: Let me ask you a question 

22 regarding the issue of shielding. Obviously, 

23 I would assume that the dominant gamma 

24 component would be the 60 keV americium-241 

25 component. Is that correct? Which is not a 
119

1 very penetrating photon either. So I would 

2 have to look at, for instance, the material in 

3 question and see what the impact is for 

4 reducing the neutron component but which 

5 significantly also impacts the 60 keV photon 

6 because that has a very, very limited 

7 penetrating power, too. 

8 DR. NETON: I think that some significant 

9 shielding though at 60 keV is not the dominant 

10 emission at that point. Some of the lesser 

11 plutonium energies come through. You know, 

12 plutonium does have higher energy than photons 

13 -- 

14 DR. BEHLING: They’re very, very small. 

15 DR. NETON: -- even though they’re small 

16 fractions, but if you look at the ratio of 

17 attenuation of the 60 versus the higher energy 

18 ones, they become the dominant ones. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: They may be the only ones 

20 getting through even though they’re a small 

21 percentage. 

22 DR. NETON: I know that for a fact with 

23 whole body counting, for example, you could 

24 start to see the plutonium photons while over 

25 the -- 
120

1 DR. BEHLING: But the yields, I looked at 

2 the yields for some of the higher energy 

3 photons. They’re so, so small. 

4 DR. NETON: I know, but then you look at the 

5 differential ratio absorption between 60 keV 

6 and, say, 200, three, 400 keV. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: The records that you were 

8 using, what was that, what were they designed 

9 for? Why did they, what did they bring this 

10 up for? Was this just to check what they’d 

11 already done? 

12 MR. MACIEVIC: Well, they had determined 

13 that there was a higher neutron exposure than 

14 anticipated, and they were going back to find 

15 out whether or not they needed to modify the 

16 previous doses that they had based on their 

17 current finding. And this was what triggered 

18 this study to be done, and it was 1972. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Is it reasonable to assume 

20 that that study prompted more neutron 

21 shielding which means that post-1972 data 

22 would actually then suppress the neutron 

23 component? I mean, to me it would make sense 

24 that the 1972 AC or DOE study was prompted by 

25 the need to look at the neutron component. 
121

1 And, of course, if that was truly the 

2 motivation, you would then introduce more 

3 neutron shielding which means that post-1972 

4 you’ve suppressed the neutron component 

5 meaning that your neutron/photon ratio is 

6 probably lower than in all previous times 

7 prior to this study and its recommendations. 

8 Is that a reasonable conclusion? 

9 MR. MACIEVIC: Well, there had to be, if 

10 here in the conclusion that the study was 

11 deliberately designed to maximize dose 

12 estimates. In general, the study provides 

13 reasonable assurance that the Hanford 

14 administrative practice of controlling gamma 

15 exposures to three Roentgen per year was 

16 indeed effective in preventing personnel from 

17 receiving exposure in excess of established 

18 limits. The total penetrating dose as 

19 maximized by the study appears to be less than 

20 twice the penetrating dose as measured using 

21 the best available state-of-the-art 

22 procedures. 

23 So they did this and their conclusion 

24 is that they weren’t, they did not modify 

25 their conclusions and the report was not to 
122

1 modify any of the years for the exposure, on 

2 the exposure record. And in 1972 only to 

3 modify those where they had the specific 

4 information about the jobs that would require 

5 them to change any doses. So, and that’s all 

6 in several of these, I’d have to give you the 

7 official title of the report, but it’s Atomic 

8 Energy Commission report that was issued, I’ll 

9 have to find that. 

10 DR. BEHLING: I would very much like to look 

11 at that because like I said, even in the early 

12 times when they were relying heavily on film 

13 dosimeters, their ability to assess exposures 

14 to photons was at least reasonable and 

15 respectable, but what they didn’t know was 

16 what was the neutron components. 

17 And so any kind of modification early 

18 on whether it’s in ’56 or in the ‘60s would 

19 have probably been geared towards the 

20 reduction of the neutron component. Meaning 

21 that the post-’72 data has been tainted by 

22 attempts to mitigate neutron exposures. 

23 MR. NELSON: The results of the AEC studies 

24 suggest, it actually applies neutron to photon 

25 ratios as looking back at them, and the 
123

1 numbers actually, the neutron to photon ratios 

2 are lower in those earlier years based on the 

3 type of shielding. So they actually looked at 

4 the type of shielding and the controls in 

5 place and the type of work that was being 

6 done. 

7 And they came up with the conclusion, 

8 using NP ratios, and they were indeed less for 

9 each of those years, one-third reduction from 

10 ’56 to ’60 and a ten percent reduction from 

11 ’48 to ’55 based on the type of shielding that 

12 was in place at those facilities. 

13 DR. BEHLING: Were these theoretical 

14 calculations or empirically derived? 

15 MR. NELSON: Those are just, I’m just giving 

16 you the results of the study, and I’m not sure 

17 of that. 

18 DR. MAURO: What were the ratios? 

19 MR. NELSON: Greg had their letter. These 

20 are, the one in our response is a little bit 

21 outside of those, but they’re fairly close. 

22 MR. MACIEVIC: They’re fairly close. 

23 MR. NELSON: He’s reading that straight from 

24 the report. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: Are these going to be made 
124

1 available to everybody? 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s what I was just going 

3 to raise a comment here. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Does SC&A have any of this? 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: There’s been a lot, Chuck, 

6 your team has introduced a lot of 

7 documentation here in this discussion, and I 

8 don’t know if we’re starting to create a 

9 folder or already have a folder on the O drive 

10 for Hanford. If you will, point out for the 

11 working group members where these things are 

12 on that O drive. We can send an e-mail around 

13 later, and everyone’s attention to those 

14 particular documents that have been introduced 

15 today. 

16 MR. NELSON: We haven’t compiled them on the 

17 O drive, but we will. 

18 DR. WADE: And I’d point out to all that 

19 sometimes documents are shared within the 

20 working group, Board members, SC&A. We need 

21 to always be cautious of Privacy Act material 

22 in those documents. The documents should be 

23 clearly identified as to whether or not they 

24 could contain such material, but I caution 

25 everyone just be careful, particularly when 
125

1 we’re working very quickly in real time, 

2 mistakes can be made. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: These are DOE or AEC? 

4 MR. MACIEVIC: AEC. The one I have right 

5 here that has the -- 

6 DR. ZIEMER: I assume none of this is 

7 classified. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me just add a caution to 

9 what Lew’s valid comment was a moment ago. 

10 Anything that’s in the Hanford folders on the 

11 O drive should be considered as being Privacy 

12 Act protected. If you pull anything out of 

13 that, whether it’s my folks, ORAU’s folks that 

14 are going to submit in front of the working 

15 group, we need to have it reviewed for Privacy 

16 Act. If it’s SC&A pulling out of that O 

17 drive, they need to work it through their 

18 channels. 

19 But everything in the O drive should 

20 be considered to be part of the system of 

21 records that has, may have Privacy Act 

22 information in it. And we’re not redacting 

23 any of that. We’re holding that in that O 

24 drive so that everybody can see it. So if you 

25 pull out of that well, you need to make sure 
126

1 your Privacy Act controls have been applied. 

2 MR. NELSON: I think one of the things that 

3 Greg talked about that may have not been, I 

4 don’t know how well it was received, but what 

5 was done is that they looked at several other 

6 cases, and they said, okay, using the neutron 

7 to photon ratios that we have, we took those 

8 and applied them directly to the photon 

9 readings starting in 1972 on. Then we compare 

10 them -- so we’re taking that ratio. 

11 We don’t do that in dose 

12 reconstruction. If it’s post-1972, we look at 

13 the neutron results, and we look at the photon 

14 results, and we use those actual numbers. If 

15 we took those photon results that we do have, 

16 and we apply the geometric mean to the cases 

17 that we have, you know, actual data, we’re 

18 seeing that the results of the neutron that we 

19 would apply at a minimum, a factor of two with 

20 the exception of two cases. 

21 They’re very close to a factor of two. 

22 They’re well higher than a factor of two, 

23 higher than the geometric mean. So it’s 

24 showing that if we use that data right there, 

25 it’s an overestimate for those. If we were to 
127

1 take that same data and apply it and try to 

2 determine what neutrons were, using that post3 ’72 data with the old ratio we’re using, it’s 

4 way high. Does that make sense? 

5 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I think it makes sense. 

6 I think it’s still begs the question of what 

7 was going on pre-’72 which is really the time 

8 era we’re interested in. I mean, I think it’s 

9 helpful information. 

10 DR. MAURO: What was interesting is that 

11 that distribution which was created from the 

12 data post-1972, and then when used to test or 

13 validate against real numbers, you’re finding 

14 that this distribution itself is very 

15 conservative. So imbedded in the process they 

16 used to pick those numbers obviously while it 

17 was hot, otherwise you would have gotten a 50 

18 percent split. 

19 MR. MACIEVIC: And, yes, their intention was 

20 is to put an upper bounding number on the 

21 ratios they used. 

22 DR. MAURO: So this would make for a, I 

23 guess just to sort of speculate, a pretty good 

24 coworker model for post-1972. That’s what I’m 

25 hearing, but not necessarily for pre-’72 until 
128

1 we take a look at these other records to see 

2 how well it also bounds pre-’72. 

3 MR. NELSON: The one conclusion that the 

4 report makes though is that there was a 

5 reduction in the neutron to photon ratio, and 

6 they understood all the shielding that was in 

7 place and the controls that were in place for 

8 the years prior to ’72. It’s in that report, 

9 the 1972 AEC report. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think we need to have 

11 that reviewed. 

12 DR. BEHLING: Did you look at the correlated 

13 letter and the associated data that, I think, 

14 on page 23? Because if you look at those, and 

15 again, it’s a question because I don’t really 

16 know when they talk about column number three 

17 that’s identified as Calculated Maximum 

18 Hanford Dose and has the footnote b associated 

19 with it, how that was done. 

20 But if you look, go through those 

21 numbers, you find for that dataset of 20 

22 employees -- in fact, it’s not quite 20 

23 because they’re skipping numbers there, number 

24 two through 20 and so there’s 17 of them -- 

25 but if you look at those, you’ll find 
129

1 consistent neutron/photon ratios in excess of 

2 one. Again, the letter is incomplete because 

3 it doesn’t really give you a full 

4 understanding of how these numbers came to be 

5 and what was the technical basis. But 

6 clearly, there are numbers here that would 

7 suggest a neutron/photon ratio in excess of 

8 one for a good number of the people. 

9 MR. MACIEVIC: I don’t have that letter 

10 available right now. 

11 DR. BEHLING: In other words for those of 

12 you who have it, if you look at employee 

13 number two, if you subtract column two from 

14 column three, so you subtract 110 minus 51 and 

15 then the balance of that, which would be 59 

16 over 51, you end up with a ratio that’s 

17 greater than unity. That’s what I’m getting 

18 at. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: I was trying to understand. It 

20 looks like they’re saying that he got 

21 something like 58 -- 

22 DR. BEHLING: Neutrons. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: -- millirem of neutron, 51 -- 

24 DR. BEHLING: Fifty-one of gamma. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: -- of gamma. Isn’t that what 
130

1 they’re saying? 

2 DR. BEHLING: Yes, I interpret that table to 

3 mean -- 

4 DR. ZIEMER: The footnotes are a little bit 

5 unclear as to what they -- 

6 DR. BEHLING: As I say, I want to caution 

7 everyone because I don’t know how these 

8 numbers came to be. But at least if you take 

9 them at face value, the neutron/photon ratio 

10 would be greater than unity for these 17 

11 people for many, for most of them. 

12 DR. MAURO: So we have to reconcile, I 

13 guess, this information with your information. 

14 MR. NELSON: Right. 

15 DR. BEHLING: I guess I have nothing more to 

16 say. If we want to squeeze in Bob Alvarez’s 

17 portion at this point, and –- 

18 SODIUM 24

19 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I think that would be 

20 appropriate. 

21 Bob, are you still on the line? 

22 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I am. 

23 DR. MELIUS: If you want to sort of just 

24 briefly summarize the concern that you raised, 

25 and then we’ll certainly -- 
131

1 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): As I mentioned 

2 previously, there was I guess information on 

3 the public record regarding the potential 

4 exposures to neutrons to reactor workers, 

5 particularly for the first five production 

6 reactors. And as I mentioned, these reactors 

7 underwent problems particularly of 

8 deterioration of their bioshields and 

9 structural stress on reflectors, graphite 

10 distortion, et cetera, because of the wear and 

11 tear and increased thermal output of these 

12 reactors that caused a series of, I guess, 

13 engineering evaluations to be done about the 

14 bioshield indicating that the leakage rates 

15 were going up, and they were taking various 

16 steps to mitigate this. 

17 And I suggested, based on some 

18 preliminary information relative to the first 

19 whole body counts that the Sodium-24 levels 

20 that were being measured there, at least as I 

21 understood the reports, suggested that these 

22 Sodium-24 levels may not have come from the 

23 ingestion of reactor water but may have been 

24 due to thermal neutrons. So that’s in summary 

25 what I, the issue I raised. 
132

1 MR. NELSON: Yeah, when we read the reports, 

2 our take on the reports are that the Hanford 

3 technical staff did associate it with drinking 

4 water giving, for instance -- if I can read 

5 directly from the report, but let me go ahead 

6 and do that. It said, “Sodium-24 has been 

7 observed only in reactor employees during the 

8 last quarter of 1960. Fifty-nine Area workers 

9 were examined. Sodium-24 was detected in 18 

10 of these employees.” That’s 31 percent. 

11 “Fourteen of the 59 were assigned to 

12 the reactor areas furthest upstream. We take 

13 this to mean the B Reactor. Therefore, were 

14 not regularly exposed to drink the water 

15 supplies which have been used as reactor 

16 coolant.” The next sentence says, “excluding 

17 these subjects.” In other words they excluded 

18 them from the study, and our understanding is 

19 why they excluded them from the study is 

20 because they weren’t exposed to the drinking 

21 water. 

22 And it says Sodium-24 instances then 

23 jumped from 31 to 40 percent when you excluded 

24 those individuals from the study. We actually 

25 talked to some of the people that were 
133

1 involved who were the authors of this 

2 document, and he said that the understanding 

3 was always that it was from the reactor water, 

4 and so that was our take on the report. We 

5 didn’t get the same thoughts when we read that 

6 document that you did. 

7 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Well, I guess 

8 the issue in my view still hinges on the 

9 availability of data relative to neutrons and 

10 neutron flux and exposure data that were 

11 occurring. And while it may be correct that 

12 the whole body data may not be indicative of 

13 exposures to neutrons, I don’t think that that 

14 necessarily rules out the possibility that 

15 neutron exposures were occurring and might 

16 have been significant. 

17 And what I noticed in the response, 

18 which I’m glad to see is that there’s further 

19 work being done to look at this issue, am I 

20 correct? I mean, are you still assuming that 

21 neutron exposures to reactor workers during 

22 the first, at the first five production 

23 reactors were not significant? Or not 

24 significant as measured? Or -- 

25 MR. NELSON: Well, I think you’re going back 
134

1 to the previous issue where we looked at 

2 single-pass reactors. And to try to add more 

3 credibility to the neutron to photon ratios, 

4 we are digging into some of the historical 

5 documents such as radiation surveys and all 

6 that. This particular paper didn’t drive that 

7 to happen though. 

8 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I see. So are 

9 you doing anything to look into the problem of 

10 the deteriorated shielding of these reactors 

11 to ascertain whether or not workers might have 

12 been receiving more neutrons than supposed or 

13 expected? 

14 MR. NELSON: Like I said we are looking at 

15 other documents, and the deterioration of the 

16 shielding is also going to lead to more of a 

17 photon component as well. 

18 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I 

19 didn’t hear what you said. 

20 MR. NELSON: The deterioration of the basic, 

21 of some of the shielding, is also going to 

22 lead to an increase in the photon component as 

23 well. 

24 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): That’s true. 

25 MR. NELSON: So we are looking over all that 
135

1 different chaining. We’re going to look 

2 further and, as cautioned earlier, there’s a, 

3 we didn’t throw the number out but -- 

4 Sam, how many documents are there? 

5 Records are there for Hanford that we can get 

6 our hands on? Was it 3.5 million documents? 

7 DR. GLOVER: Just over 35 million documents. 

8 MR. NELSON: Thirty-five million documents. 

9 So the effort’s going to be quite involved, 

10 and -- 

11 MR. CLAWSON: So you’ll have that out by 

12 next week? 

13 DR. GLOVER: We have actually some very good 

14 assistance at looking at the technical 

15 documents. 

16 DR. NETON: I think the bottom line with 

17 this issue, Bob, is that we don’t see any 

18 credible evidence that Sodium-24 in reactor 

19 operators could be used to reconstruct neutron 

20 doses at Hanford right now. But we certainly 

21 are aware of the significant neutron exposures 

22 that may have occurred, and we’re looking into 

23 them. But the mechanism using activated 

24 Sodium-24 to reconstruct those doses is 

25 probably not a reasonable approach that we 
136

1 would use. 

2 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): That’s fine. 

3 My concern has more to do with the initial TBD 

4 which seems to dismiss the potential risks 

5 from neutrons out of hand for these reactor 

6 workers. And that you’re sort of looking at 

7 this is fine with me, satisfactory to me. 

8 DR. GLOVER: One other is that they do 

9 assign -- Sodium-24 activates very well. 

10 Anybody who’s done neutron activation analysis 

11 stuff, it’s always a problem. And for the 

12 people who didn’t, they were from above and 

13 beyond the levels, and they were assigning 

14 those as inhalation doses. So there are 

15 obviously, Sodium-24 can be derived from other 

16 occupational exposures so that assigning 

17 internal dose from Sodium-24 inhalations. And 

18 that’s discussed in the TBD. 

19 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): As I asked 

20 before in the previous conference call, the 

21 dose reconstructions that were being done for 

22 claimants were based on the assumption of 

23 inhalation and ingestion. And the question I 

24 posed is what was the data that you had to 

25 support that assumption. And are you saying 
137

1 now you have data? Because at the time I 

2 could not get an answer about what data did 

3 exist. And are you saying now you actually 

4 have data that positively affirms that Sodium5 24 levels, especially in let’s say upstream 

6 workers, B Reactor, whatever, were due to 

7 ingestion of river water? 

8 MR. NELSON: What you just said is that 

9 ingestion of water for upstream reactors was 

10 due to river water? 

11 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Well, I mean, 

12 they might have been drinking at home. You 

13 know, there were all these studies done that 

14 looked at both workers at the site and workers 

15 at home. So what I’m trying to find out is 

16 what data are you relying on to provide some 

17 affirmation that these mixed Sodium-24 levels 

18 were from drinking contaminated water. 

19 DR. NETON: I think, Bob, that’s the basis 

20 of this study. I mean, they looked at people 

21 upstream and downstream, and there was a 

22 direct correlation between Sodium-24 levels 

23 and their relationship along the river to the 

24 reactors. 

25 MR. NELSON: There was also a statement made 
138

1 that the B Reactors -- 

2 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): I guess what 

3 I’m trying to ask, and maybe I’m not being 

4 very clear, is were there any studies done 

5 about ingestion of potable water onsite would 

6 contain the activation products? I’m aware of 

7 the environmental studies that were done. In 

8 general terms, I’m -- 

9 DR. NETON: I think there was -- 

10 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): What I’m trying 

11 to find out is were there studies onsite 

12 ascertaining exposures from drinking potable 

13 water onsite? 

14 DR. NETON: I don’t think it’s in this 

15 study, Bob, but I think they refer to it in 

16 here. That it was fairly well understood that 

17 there was Sodium-24 in the potable water, 

18 drinking water, at the reactor sites. 

19 MR. NELSON: And there was specific 

20 discussion that the levels at the B Reactor, 

21 which is upstream of the reactors, was the 

22 same as background levels. 

23 DR. NETON: They did measure the water, and 

24 there was definitely Sodium-24 in the drinking 

25 water at those reactor facilities. 
139

1 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): All right, 

2 well, I mean, I don’t have much more to say 

3 about this other than I’m generally gratified 

4 that you are looking more seriously into this. 

5 WRAP-UP

6 DR. MELIUS: Are there any other technical 

7 issues or updates that we have? 

8 MR. NELSON: When you’re asking for updates, 

9 relative to the other issues? 

10 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, the other issues. 

11 MR. NELSON: I think I can give you some 

12 update on that. I know that we, what we’re 

13 waiting on as far as SC&A analyzing for the 

14 internal comments. We’re waiting on the 

15 procedures to be completed. And this has 

16 taken some time. And we’re making headway, 

17 and the procedures have been updated. They’ve 

18 been back and forth between OCAS and ORAU to 

19 make those changes as represented in the 

20 responses. And the hold up at this point is 

21 providing annotations to all these documents 

22 as requested by the Board. So there is 

23 progress being made. We’ve gone back and 

24 forth, but the latest hold up in getting those 

25 procedures signed by OCAS is having those 
140

1 annotations made. So they’re held up in ORAU 

2 at that point. 

3 DR. MELIUS: And there’s also as I recall, I 

4 don’t remember the specifics, there’s 

5 something about the environmental dose, too? 

6 Is that? 

7 MR. NELSON: I don’t have a specific update 

8 for that to be honest with you. I guess OCAS 

9 is overwhelmed actually with all the neutron 

10 to photon issues, and I’m not prepared for 

11 that. 

12 DR. MELIUS: One other thing I would ask 

13 sort of post-meeting if, Hans, if you have 

14 time and Chuck and everybody could sort of get 

15 together and at least let’s share what 

16 documents are sort of critical that have been 

17 identified here. So we make sure they get up 

18 on the O drive, and we can move forward from 

19 there. And then we’ll keep in touch in terms 

20 of timing issues and so forth in terms of 

21 another meeting. 

22 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): May I suggest 

23 relative to the environmental dose issue is 

24 that the times that I’ve been involved in the 

25 discussions about that, the persons who were 
141

1 knowledgeable about that weren’t present, and 

2 I feel like we’ve deferred discussion on the 

3 environmental dose issue. So I’d like to see 

4 if we can also spend some time to discuss that 

5 at some future date. 

6 DR. MELIUS: As I recall it was a 

7 combination of the person wasn’t available, 

8 but there’s also something going on in terms 

9 of an activity, an updating of a report or 

10 something, that we were waiting on also. But 

11 that’s one reason I wanted to identify some of 

12 these updates and figure out where we were so 

13 we get the right people at the next meeting. 

14 MR. NELSON: Also, I’d like to propose that 

15 we’re actually going to do an update to the 

16 issues and responses, and we’re going to go to 

17 each subject matter expert and try to give you 

18 any updates if they exist and give you a 

19 better -- 

20 DR. MELIUS: Okay, if you could circulate 

21 that, that, too. But if we could just get 

22 together on how many documents. Once we leave 

23 and all go our separate ways, not that you 

24 don’t stay in touch, but it comes up. 

25 Okay, any other comments, questions? 
142

1 (no response) 

2 DR. MELIUS: I’d like to thank everybody -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Do we know, you’re going to 

4 wait until you get the documents before you 

5 set another meeting time and -- 

6 DR. MELIUS: We’re going to see what the 

7 timing of the documents and so forth. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: -- okay. 

9 DR. MELIUS: So we’ll give an update at our, 

10 I’ll check in with Chuck and Hans and Arjun 

11 and everyone before the, our next conference 

12 call which I can’t remember the date on that. 

 DR. WADE: April 5th 13 . 

DR. MELIUS: April 5th 14 . 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that’s coming up pretty 

16 soon, but I’m thinking about prior to our 

17 face-to-face in Denver -- 

18 DR. MELIUS: I suspect we’re not going to 

19 have another meeting before the Denver meeting 

20 of this work group. I think just given the 

21 timing and so forth on that. 

22 DR. WADE: I’m also thinking, I’m thinking 

23 of the meeting after the May meeting, possibly 

24 July maybe to go to Hanford to talk about that 

25 as a Board. 
143

1 MR. ELLIOTT: The SEC evaluation report 

2 should appear and be distributed sometime mid 

3 to late May? 

4 DR. WADE: Well, we can end this call. 

5 Thank you very much. We’re going to break the 

6 contact now. 

7 (Whereupon, the working group meeting 

8 concluded at 1:00 p.m.) 
144

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of March 26, 

2007; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

1st day of July, 2007. 

______________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102