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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON SEC ISSUES

+ + + + +

FRIDAY

JULY 30, 2010

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight 

Time, James Malcolm Melius, Chairman, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES MALCOLM MELIUS, Chairman

JOSIE BEACH, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ISAF AL-NABULSI, DOE

HANS BEHLING, SC&A

SAM GLOVER, DCAS

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

EMILY HOWELL, HHS

JENNY LIN, HHS

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

DAN McKEEL, Petitioner for Dow

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS

LaVON RUTHERFORD, DCAS
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 (1:03 p.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. So this is the 

4 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

5 the SEC Work Group. And let's begin with roll 

6 call.

7 We are discussing sites today: 

8 NTS, Electro Met and Ames. So, please, when 

9 you -- when we go through roll call, please 

10 address conflict of interest, as well.

11 Someone has a line open that has 

12 feedback. They either have their speaker 

13 phone and -- I'm not sure what, but I'm 

14 hearing myself every time I speak.

15 So, everyone who is not speaking, 

16 mute your phone. If you don't have mute, use 

17 *6. Thank you.

18 Okay. Roll call, then, beginning 

19 with Board Members, with the Chair.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Jim 

21 Melius, and I have no conflicts.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach. I 
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1 have no conflicts with Ames, Met Lab or Nevada 

2 Test Site.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, no 

4 conflicts with either of those labs.

5 MEMBER ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, no 

6 conflicts with anything, I don't think.

7 MR. KATZ: All right. NIOSH ORAU 

8 team?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

10 Hinnefeld. I don't have any conflicts from 

11 those sites.

12 DR. GLOVER: Sam Glover, no 

13 conflicts with those sites.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: LaVon Rutherford, 

15 no conflicts with those sites.

16 MR. KATZ: SC&A team.

17 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 

18 conflicts.

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makhijani, 

20 SC&A, no conflicts with those sites.

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

22 no conflicts.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay. That was Hans 

2 Behling, I think?

3 DR. BEHLING: Yes, it is.

4 MR. KATZ: Thanks. Okay. How 

5 about federal officials for HHS or the other 

6 departments, including contractors.

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

8 DOE, no conflicts.

9 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS.

10 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

11 MR. RAFKY: Michael Rafky, HHS

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. And I should 

13 note I'm Ted Katz. I'm the Designated Federal 

14 Official for the Advisory Board. I have no 

15 conflicts.

16 And then, any members of the 

17 public on the line who want to identify 

18 themselves?

19 DR. McKEEL: This is Dan McKeel. 

20 I'm the Petitioner for Dow.

21 MR. KATZ: Dan. Very good. That 

22 does it with roll call and it's your agenda, 
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1 Jim.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks, I 

3 believe all the (Telephone interference.) of 

4 that draft document which is entitled, 

5 guidelines for inclusion, the SEC, for workers 

6 with less than 250 days of qualified 

7 employment.

8 So, you should have received that 

9 draft document, the redraft earlier this week.

10 COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, 

11 Chairman Melius. This is the Court Reporter. 

12 I was temporarily disconnected. If you 

13 wouldn't mind restarting your statement, I 

14 apologize.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's okay, I 

16 was temporarily disconnected a few minutes ago 

17 also.

18 Everyone should have received two 

19 documents that we are going to discuss that 

20 talk about Work Group members. One was a 

21 redraft that I did of the guidelines for the 

22 inclusion in the SEC for workers with less 
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1 than 250 days of qualified employment.

2 I sent out an earlier draft to 

3 receive comments from the Work Group Members 

4 and from NIOSH on that and then incorporate 

5 those comments into the new draft which I sent 

6 out on Monday to everybody.

7 And then the second document is a 

8 document that SC&A did which reviewed the 

9 three sites, and sort of summarized some of 

10 the previous documents on -- that SC&A had 

11 developed on that.

12 And the title of that document, 

13 which is dated July 2010, is review of three 

14 case studies examined for addressing 

15 guidelines for possible addition, blah, blah, 

16 blah. And do that -- and, Gen, did you get a 

17 copy of that?

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: I did, thanks to 

19 Ted. He sent it.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I was 

21 emailing this morning. I was tied up in a 

22 meeting, couldn't access the documents so I 
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1 asked Ted to, so --

2 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. I 

3 appreciate that. I don't know why I never got 

4 it. It was not in my files anywhere.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I couldn't 

6 even look back into the distribution of it to 

7 see how it went out and so forth. And that, I 

8 think, serves as sort of a background document 

9 to the revisions that I did to the guidelines.

10 So the document -- let me talk a 

11 little bit about those revisions to that 

12 because they are -- because they were 

13 significant revisions. I'd appreciate the 

14 comments from Work Group members and from 

15 NIOSH.

16 The first draft they did was 

17 actually based on the transcript of our 

18 previous meeting and I so tried doing that to 

19 make sure the discussion there and then based 

20 on the documents to try to then reorganize 

21 that better and focus it better on the issue 

22 of less than 250 days of exposure and some of 
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1 the considerations that, you know, we had 

2 talked about them were important there, but at 

3 the same time, you know, they needed --

4 several of those concepts that were summarized 

5 in the first draft really needed the 

6 clarification and I think I tried to achieve 

7 that.

8 One is by, you know, focusing a 

9 little more clearly on what's in the 

10 regulations and focusing on, you know, 

11 discrete incidents as the basis for this 

12 potential determination.

13 Secondly, in terms of looking at 

14 sort of the health endangerment issue and how 

15 we would judge that, I added some examples 

16 from -- some of which we had discussed before 

17 and some of which I took from the longer 

18 background of documents that SC&A had prepared 

19 we just -- I just mentioned to that.

20 And there are a few other changes 

21 there, so I think it's -- hopefully, it's a 

22 better document, more focused and better --
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1 more understandable to people and more useful.

2 So, I guess at this point I would 

3 welcome any comments from the Work Group 

4 members on that and on the new -- the revised 

5 documents, if you have any.

6 Does anybody have any comments on 

7 that document, the guidelines document?

8 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, this is Josie. 

9 I thought the overall document was good. 

10 There were just a couple of little wording 

11 errors, but -- that I noticed.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I guess 

13 this might be easier if you sent those by 

14 email. I caught a couple so I made some --

15 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- already, but 

17 if there are any general comments it would be 

18 probably more helpful for the purposes of this 

19 call.

20 MEMBER BEACH: Well, in the second 

21 page I was just wondering, under the first 

22 paragraph where it -- you were talking about 
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1 incidents, exposures resulting in these 

2 incidents, and then you say SC&A working 

3 paper.

4 And then I was wondering, November 

5 17th, 2006, was that just an incident? I was 

6 trying to go back through the document to see. 

7 It just kind of left me wondering.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. The -- I'm 

9 sorry. I may not have had that or -- there 

10 was an SC&A working paper from November 2006 

11 called Parsing Health Endangerment Criteria.

12 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It was -- came 

14 from when we were first -- the Work Group was 

15 first discussing this 250-day issue, and we 

16 went through it and analyzed, and in 

17 particular what I was referencing that for was 

18 we had reviewed -- summarized some of the 

19 information on criticality incidents.

20 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And realizing 

22 that's when this part of the discussion of 
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1 that and the follow-up to that was sort of we, 

2 you know, realized that criticality incidents 

3 involved a -- potentially a wide range of 

4 exposures.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Thank you.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

7 think probably if Josie doesn't have that, we 

8 probably should make -- have SC&A send her a 

9 copy.

10 It's good background information. 

11 I think there was a list of, for example, of 

12 all of the -- I think the test of the -- the 

13 specific tests as well as incidents such as 

14 Ames or events such as those at Ames and 

15 others.

16 So, it was a pretty extensive 

17 compilation of a number of situations where 

18 there might have been high individual 

19 exposures, just to give us some fodder for 

20 thought, I think.

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun.

22 Dr. Ziemer, there were actually 
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1 three or four different reports. One was the 

2 one that --

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's right. 

4 There were.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- Dr. Melius was 

6 referring to, which was the survey of 

7 criticality incidents. Then the one you were 

8 referring to, I think, was a specific report 

9 to NTS, and then there were two reports on 

10 Ames.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, yes.

12 DR. MAKHIJANI: And I'd be happy 

13 to collect them and send them --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Probably it would 

15 be good if Josie had all of the materials --

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: I will collect 

17 them right now and email them to her.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Thanks. And I 

20 honestly think I probably have most of them. 

21 It just -- it wasn't clear to me what that 

22 was. So, thank you for the explanation.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. And that 

2 has -- one that's referenced in the guidelines 

3 as a listing. It's based on tables with a 

4 listing of a number of criticality incidents, 

5 both in the United States and in other 

6 countries that have been documented.

7 It gives some idea of what was the 

8 potential level of exposure, something about 

9 the incident, criticality incident itself, and 

10 how many people exposed and things like that.

11 And I think it was just sort of 

12 useful to get a better understanding on the 

13 range of exposures that might be associated 

14 with such an incident.

15 MEMBER ROESSLER: Jim, this is 

16 Gen. I have a -- sort of a general comment. 

17 I did -- I looked at your first -- well, one 

18 version, earlier version of the guidelines, 

19 and then this recent one, and it's 

20 substantially improved.

21 I particularly like the four 

22 examples, because they do give real situations 
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1 where I think this can apply, the biological 

2 dosimeters, the early exposure estimates and 

3 so on.

4 But what I'm having a hard time 

5 trying to figure out what's going to happen 

6 from here on if we adopt this. It seems to me 

7 that this is going to be an individual 

8 decision, certainly good examples and good 

9 guidelines, but it still is going to be a 

10 really difficult thing to put into, you know, 

11 really make work.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I agree. And 

13 we've struggled with this for quite a while, 

14 and I think we hope to have something, I would 

15 say more -- a little bit more straightforward, 

16 and I think, you know, discussions in the Work 

17 Group at the last meeting, we had a -- I think 

18 we came to the realization that there was no 

19 easy way of doing this, and that it was going 

20 to be looking at individual situations and 

21 evaluating them in the context of some overall 

22 guidelines.
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1 But those overall guidelines would 

2 not -- hopefully they'll be helpful, but they 

3 want -- it will still take a close examination 

4 of the particular situations in order to be 

5 able to reach a conclusion, and to make a 

6 decision on it.

7 Hopefully, it can be done in a way 

8 that looks at the overall site, that it 

9 wouldn't have to be, you know, sites where 

10 there's multiple incidents we'd be able to 

11 sort of sort through it in some way, but I'm 

12 not really even sure of that because the so13 called discrete incidents at a particular site 

14 can vary quite a lot.

15 And even deciding what's a 

16 discrete incident may be difficult, 

17 particularly in some of the early sites where 

18 the -- you know, the records aren't very 

19 descriptive of what -- where -- situations 

20 where people are being exposed. I think in 

21 particular the Metallurgical Lab situation.

22 So, you're correct. I mean, Gen, 
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1 it's going to be a case-by-case, and hopefully 

2 we can come up with at least a framework for 

3 making that judgment. It would be -- mean 

4 that we could at least be consistent about how 

5 we do it compared to the claimants that are 

6 involved in those incidents.

7 So we're at least reaching that 

8 and maybe after we go through some examples or 

9 situations and by that it will come easier, 

10 but it is not a simple straightforward 

11 situation.

12 MEMBER ROESSLER: Well, then let 

13 me ask a follow-up question. When a decision 

14 needs to be made, will it be our Work Group 

15 making the decision? Will it be -- or making 

16 a preliminary decision, then presenting it to 

17 the Board, or just what will the procedure be?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think it may 

19 be that or the situations for the sites that 

20 have already been referred to the Work Group, 

21 which are the, I think, the three that are 

22 listed there, Ames, Metallurgical Labs and 
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1 Nevada Test Site.

2 It also may be that some of these 

3 may be situations where NIOSH will now go back 

4 and look at some of these sites themselves and 

5 then say, well, maybe, you know, this is --

6 and I think we have to decide how that process 

7 will work.

8 But I think that would be in the 

9 future. Now, again, I think I'd like -- I 

10 think it would be good if we -- the Guidelines 

11 were helpful enough that another -- other work 

12 groups, for example, were looking at sites 

13 would -- where there are -- there have been 

14 incidents, it might fit into this situation or 

15 these guidelines -- we'd also make a judgment. 

16 They do or they do not. Or, they, you know, 

17 do or do not warrant further examination, and 

18 then I think we need to make a judgment as to, 

19 you know, whether -- what's the best place for 

20 the Board to -- the most efficient way and the 

21 best case for the Board to be able to do that.

22 I mean, one example even came up 
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1 in the review paper that Arjun did, SC&A did, 

2 on Nevada Test Site was that where the above3 ground testing we had started to look at some 

4 of the incidents there that might fit under 

5 these criteria, but for below-ground, 

6 underground testing, we had not, and there may 

7 be -- very well be incidents there that might 

8 -- and we may want to at some point charge 

9 SC&A with reviewing those, those incidents in 

10 more detail.

11 But I know it's not a yes or no 

12 answer, and I think we need to decide and --

13 something we need to, you know, possibly make 

14 a recommendation to the entire Board in terms 

15 of how we think these should be handled.

16 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, that helps, 

17 Jim.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I don't 

19 think that's going to be -- we need to try to 

20 work -- at least my feeling would be we --

21 this Work Group, to try to at least work 

22 through the one -- the situations that have 
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1 been referred to us already, which are Ames, 

2 Met Lab and Nevada Test Site.

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Melius, may I 

4 ask a question on the last paragraph of your 

5 guidelines, the last definition issues 

6 paragraph --

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- if it's 

9 appropriate for me to do so?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, Arjun. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. Were you 

12 thinking of two different kinds of approaches 

13 here, one where, you know, workers were 

14 employed at the site or involved in, you know, 

15 substantive activities there relating to the 

16 production or testing or whatever, would be 

17 covered if they were less than 250 days 

18 because there's evidence of incidents and a 

19 separate category of SEC possibilities that we 

20 know there was X incident where a radium 

21 source was not handled according to the rules 

22 and the doses were exceeded and there were 
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1 white blood cell changes, so anybody who was 

2 involved in that incident can file an SEC 

3 petition?

4 Were you thinking of two separate 

5 categories or just around specific incidents 

6 and you have to file a specific petition or --

7 I'm wasn't quite clear about that.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, it may not 

9 be clear. What I was trying to address there 

10 was, I think that the way the -- the way I 

11 understand the regulations are that the 

12 regulations apply to a single discrete 

13 incident.

14 And yet we had situations where 

15 there may -- in our Work Group, this past Work 

16 Group meeting in discussions we talked about 

17 situations where there are multiple discrete 

18 incidents.

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ames was one 

21 example.

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I think I 

2 was -- what I was trying to clarify there was 

3 that that -- the first draft I had that mixed 

4 in with the guidelines to, you know, the 

5 judgment of a discrete incident and that, I 

6 think, was confusing and probably wasn't 

7 appropriate, was that, trying to at least put 

8 a place-holder in there that at some point we 

9 would have to also take into account the fact 

10 there may be multiple incidents that we --

11 there would be different amounts of 

12 information available about what extent people 

13 would be present at those incidents.

14 There would also be questions 

15 about how many incidents was a person exposed 

16 to and so forth.

17 So the health endangerment 

18 criteria really just would apply to a discrete 

19 incident, but it might be that when we then --

20 say, we had a finding that there was a 

21 discrete incident with high exposures that 

22 there -- that in terms of developing the Class 
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1 Definition, of how that -- how to make that 

2 operational, one would then at that point be 

3 taking into account the fact that there were 

4 multiple incidents.

5 So, you are correct, Arjun, that 

6 there are, I think, a few situations that we 

7 would have to wrestle with. One is -- I guess 

8 I'm thinking of Ames where there were like 

9 multiple incidents and it was sort of how do 

10 we -- or how to deal with that.

11 And then the second one, second 

12 Class Definition issue is maybe that we would 

13 have a single discrete incident, but we would 

14 also -- or maybe more than one, but -- at a 

15 site, but we would -- there would also be 

16 uncertainty about who was present at that 

17 incident.

18 To know that there was, you know, 

19 a certain work force that was there during a, 

20 obviously a certain time period, but exactly 

21 who was included in that work force was 

22 unclear.
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1 And that came out of looking at 

2 some summary that you did on Met Lab and on 

3 Nevada Test Site where it appeared that at 

4 least on some of the incidents there was 

5 uncertainty as to about who was present and 

6 how we would then -- you know, if we had made 

7 a determination that that would involve that 

8 incident which involved health endangerment, 

9 we then would have to figure out how do we 

10 make a -- we determine who was there and focus 

11 that Class in an appropriate way.

12 It obviously wouldn't be 

13 absolutely everybody who had ever worked or 

14 whatever, but it would be during a time period 

15 and some way of trying to focus that more.

16 Again, it would depend on the 

17 amount -- the records that were available on 

18 that incident.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, can I 

20 comment also? This Ziemer.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, please.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think one of the 
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1 items we need to keep in mind that, Arjun, is, 

2 I believe under the law we can't sort of add 

3 up smaller incidents and say that these 

4 constitute a bigger one or something like 

5 that, partially because we don't know the 

6 magnitude of these to start with.

7 But if there are -- in my mind, if 

8 there are multiple incidents you could perhaps 

9 talk in terms of the increased probability of 

10 someone being subject to an incident during 

11 the period under 250 days.

12 So, it might -- and I suppose we'd 

13 have to hear from counsel on this as to 

14 whether legally you can approach it this way, 

15 but if you had a site with a single incident, 

16 you'd have to be able to place someone there 

17 at that incident in terms of time and 

18 location.

19 But if you had a site like Ames 

20 where you had multiple incidents and you 

21 weren't quite sure how -- who was there, when 

22 and so on, it seems to me at least 
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1 conceptually, if there were multiple incidents 

2 you could talk about the probability that 

3 someone might have been exposed to an incident 

4 during their working periods.

5 If, perhaps -- perhaps it might be 

6 approached that way. I'm not sure from the 

7 legal point of view if we have to actually 

8 confirm that a person has been at an incident 

9 or whether we can talk in terms of the 

10 likelihood that they were there if an incident 

11 or multiple incidents occurred during the year 

12 of their work.

13 MS. HOWELL: Dr. Ziemer, this is 

14 Emily.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

16 MS. HOWELL: And I kind of offer a 

17 partial response to what you suggested.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

19 MS. HOWELL: I want to clarify, 

20 you're correct. You cannot, under the current 

21 regulation as written, add up multiple 

22 discrete incidents. They are a discrete 
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1 incident and if the person was present during 

2 that, then you're establishing that there was 

3 a high enough exposure to meet the regulatory 

4 standards and they would be added that way.

5 So, you can't add the multiple 

6 ones. Now, what you're -- what I think you're 

7 discussing alternatively is kind of 

8 considering discrete incidences that maybe 

9 were high, but not exceptionally high --

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I'm not 

11 thinking of that so much as simply the 

12 likelihood that they were there during one of 

13 the discrete incidents.

14 And of course, if there are 

15 multiple incidents during the year and you 

16 don't know specifically either when the 

17 incidents occurred, only that they did, it 

18 seems to me that if there are multiple 

19 incidents, the likelihood that a person was 

20 there for one of them becomes greater.

21 MS. HOWELL: Well --

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't know if 
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1 one could think of it that way. I mean --

2 MS. HOWELL: I think -- I think, 

3 you know, the Board can consider that when 

4 reaching a health endangerment determination 

5 in 250 days, but it shouldn't be the sole 

6 criteria.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, no. No, I 

8 just --

9 MS. HOWELL: And the other thing, 

10 I guess, is that I would say you have to 

11 separate a discrete incident from an 

12 exceptionally high exposure.

13 I mean, for the present criteria 

14 to be met, you have to meet both of those 

15 requirements. But I can envision a situation 

16 where you may have a series of what you would 

17 consider discrete incidents, and that it was 

18 not a chronic, day-to-day exposure, but they 

19 did not meet the exceptionally high exposure 

20 threshold.

21 And there may be some wish to kind 

22 of aggregate those exposures, but 
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1 unfortunately, under the current regulatory 

2 language, we're left with either being able to 

3 get there through the 250 days and, you know, 

4 when you're looking at that for an SEC Class 

5 under 250 days, then a series of the three 

6 incidents is like one of many factors you may 

7 consider, and then there's presence for a 

8 single discrete incident with exceptionally 

9 high exposures.

10 So, I don't know if I'm really 

11 answering your question or not. Some of this 

12 we're going to have to kind of look at more as 

13 we hear more from all of you.

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Ziemer. This 

15 is Arjun. Because the thing I was thinking 

16 of; at Ames, there were many blowouts. I 

17 guess you have to judge whether a single 

18 blowout qualified, but there are no records of 

19 who was present, but we know that generally 

20 the work force who worked there was liable to 

21 be present at some time or other.

22 But in the Met Lab there was a 
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1 cyclotron exposure with blood changes and as a 

2 result, I believe there was a discrete set of 

3 people who were there at that incident, and 

4 not everybody who worked at Met Lab, so I 

5 guess then you have to find out who they were.

6 They have to be something --

7 presumably something like two kinds of 

8 situations that could be characterized by 

9 these extremes where we don't know -- we can't 

10 place the individual which had incidents, many 

11 of them, each of which was big and then the 

12 second where you might have had only one 

13 incident with a discrete population present, 

14 maybe only one worker.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This is Jim 

17 Melius. I would go back to Emily's comments 

18 and Dr. Ziemer's comments.

19 I guess what I was thinking, and I 

20 wasn't -- I didn't state it properly in that 

21 last paragraph, but was that there would be a 

22 situation where there might be multiple 
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1 discrete incidents with exceptionally high 

2 exposures at a site.

3 Now, exactly how we would handle 

4 that, I think we would need to work out, but 

5 that would be -- it would seem to me that 

6 there might be some way of not accumulating 

7 those, but including them in one 

8 recommendation, that those people would really 

9 be all captured under a single -- might be 

10 captured under a single Class Definition, and 

11 that might involve what you were referring to, 

12 Dr. Ziemer, sort of the probability that they 

13 were exposed, but it wouldn't be the issue 

14 where we would have multiple discrete 

15 incidents and we were, you know, adding those 

16 up.

17 It would be rather where there 

18 would be multiple discrete incidents that 

19 would -- that would fit our criteria for 

20 having exceptionally high exposure.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. I was 

22 thinking along the same lines and postulate 
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1 that they are all high enough to be 

2 exceptional, and then talk about -- if you 

3 don't -- if you can't specifically place 

4 people there, but you're able to say it's 

5 likely that they wouldn't have been exposed to 

6 one of those -- because that's all it takes, 

7 is one.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: During the course 

10 of their work of less than 250 days.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's the way I 

13 was thinking about it, particularly if there

14 were multiple ones, then the likelihood, in 

15 principle, goes up.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And sort of 

17 operationalize that at these sites where 

18 there's not good records, you would have some 

19 sort of a Class Definition that would try to 

20 capture those with the -- yes, those people 

21 that had a significant probability of having 

22 worked during the time and having been exposed 
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1 to multiple -- you know, at least one and 

2 maybe more of these incidents.

3 It would meet with the -- the 

4 first step, I tried to -- one of the major

5 significant changes I made in the guidelines 

6 was to separate that out. 

7 In the first draft I had the two 

8 concepts mixed, and I thought it was confusing 

9 and wasn't appropriate. Really the first 

10 threshold, you know, it was a discrete 

11 incident with exceptionally high exposure.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, in that last 

13 paragraph, Jim -- this is Ziemer again.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- the third 

16 sentence that says this would depend on the 

17 level of documentation available for 

18 determining whether a worker was present at 

19 each discrete incident.

20 It seems to me we don't want to be 

21 left with showing that they are present at 

22 each one if there are multiple ones.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: You only have to 

3 show one, I guess.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Or high 

6 probability of one, maybe.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm just wondering 

9 if we would say each are at a discrete 

10 incident.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we --

12 the notes I just made were, present at one 

13 discrete incident with exceptionally high 

14 exposure. That paragraph needs to be 

15 rewritten. I made a few other changes as we 

16 were just talking.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But what I was 

19 trying to do was to move that issue to --

20 really comes up under -- I think more likely 

21 to come up under a Class Definition. Or, 

22 frankly, I think it might come up under the 
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1 issue of when NIOSH, the Board or whatever --

2 we're trying -- we're looking at the -- once 

3 we can reconstruct the dose to begin with, it 

4 complicates that also.

5 Other comments from the Work Group 

6 members or -- Stu, you were saying how -- I 

7 actually missed some of the sign-ins. I'm not 

8 even quite sure who's on the phone.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. This is -- I 

10 am here and Sam is on as well. I had to 

11 unmute there for a minute.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think there 

14 are -- yes, I guess, there -- it would seem to 

15 me that there would need to be some discussion 

16 about those -- the kinds of questions that are 

17 being talked about here, and I guess from our 

18 standpoint we would feel like there should be 

19 some differentiating factors from a situation 

20 where there were, you know, incidents of --

21 You know, one of the 

22 differentiating factors among sites where 
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1 there's going to be potential harm from 

2 presence versus other sites there there's not. 

3 You know, that's kind of our interest here, 

4 is to be able to apply this because I agree 

5 with you, Dr. Melius, is that with a set of 

6 criteria in hand, it would be something that 

7 we would expect to incorporate into our work, 

8 I think, if we, in fact, adopt a set of 

9 criteria, or either the same or similar.

10 If we adopt those, then that would 

11 be something we intend to incorporate into our 

12 work, and it would seem like the key element 

13 in here is what distinguishes one category 

14 from the other, one category meaning potential 

15 for harm as defined by 250 days and the other 

16 category where potential for harm is presence.

17 So, you know, we struggled with 

18 what we can do with this, with this decision, 

19 given the current language of the regulation. 

20 You know, it just doesn't -- it's not very 

21 helpful trying to sort out the kind of 

22 situations we're trying to sort out. 
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1 So, I guess the only other thing I 

2 would comment is I know that Jim Neton 

3 participated in a number of these discussions 

4 before this new conflict policy came out, and 

5 we've determined it would be conflicted on the 

6 250-day decision, on that decision, 250-day 

7 criteria.

8 Now, if we can arrive at some 250-

9 day criteria, Jim is not conflicted at any of 

10 these three sites, and I think his 

11 contribution to that discussion would be 

12 pretty valuable when we get these sites to --

13 site-specific or any site-specific discussion 

14 where he's not conflicted.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, you -- I 

16 don't mean to put you on the spot too much, 

17 but it's actually a more general question for 

18 everybody.

19 Do those examples, four examples 

20 there, capture -- I don't think we can reach 

21 a, you know -- you obviously -- I don't think 

22 you have a quantitative threshold.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Right.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But do those 

3 examples adequately capture everybody's sort 

4 of sense of what an exceptionally high 

5 exposure would be?

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yes, number 

7 one, which talks about a decreased blood cell 

8 count is -- I think that's even an example 

9 that's cited in the existing regulation.

10 The part about the administration 

11 of chelation therapy gives me a little pause 

12 because I believe there were a variety of 

13 thresholds for chelation therapy that were 

14 adopted at various times and where some sites 

15 were very cautious to introduce a medical 

16 intervention, and would only do that if they 

17 had evidence to believe there was a pretty 

18 significant exposure.

19 Other sites were apparently very 

20 liberal with chelation intervention, and you 

21 know, just maybe a potential indication of 

22 exposures to a transuranic with introduced 
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1 chelation.

2 And so, to me, that one -- the 

3 part about the administration of chelation 

4 therapy being evidence of an exceptionally 

5 high exposure concerns me a little bit.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I don't 

7 disagree. I was tentative about that and I 

8 tried different wording and it's hard without 

9 a specific example, so --

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. The -- I 

11 think there's been some discussion about the 

12 Ames Laboratory exposure of scenarios from a 

13 blowout. I haven't participated in that and 

14 am not completely up to speed on that.

15 I think we would not argue that a 

16 blowout, a thorium blowout would probably 

17 represent the potential for, you know, 

18 exposure, a significant exposure, and then it 

19 comes sort of down to a definition of what an 

20 exceptionally large exposure, which is sort of 

21 a subjective -- I think I heard it described 

22 as a subjective scientific judgment.
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1 So, I don't have a strong opinion, 

2 I guess, either side of that. Again the 

3 Metallurgical Laboratory talks about events 

4 that led to peripheral blood changes and I 

5 think that's probably one in line with the 

6 existing language.

7 The Nevada Test Site, without 

8 knowing more about it -- I apologize, I don't 

9 know more about the specifics. An exposure 

10 rate, in and of itself, to me, doesn't speak 

11 to an extremely large exposure.

12 And so, I would need to know more 

13 about the incidents and the duration. And 

14 also, these apparently were documented 

15 incidents and were the names documented and 

16 are we just talking about a few people on this 

17 event and a few people on that event, and they 

18 spent quite a, you know, a significant amount 

19 of time in there, and the radiation monitor 

20 showed up and said, gee, you guys shouldn't be 

21 here.

22 Or, this, you know, is just a --
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1 because I know there were certain documented 

2 events that seem like maybe we could get into 

3 this if the exposure time was sufficient.

4 But I don't know how that becomes 

5 -- it's important information for the people 

6 that we -- that we can identify them or, if we 

7 can't, the people who are on-site that day, 

8 but it's hard -- seems to be a real broad or 

9 far-reaching question. So, like that's -- I'm 

10 ambivalent on that one for a couple of 

11 reasons.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And that's 

13 helpful too, I'm trying to excerpt from the 

14 SC&A report to have specific situations, and 

15 it may be that we, you know, need to work 

16 through the -- once we've worked through the 

17 individual sites and made a determination, you 

18 know, reach some agreement on that, then we'll 

19 have a -- be better able to state the 

20 criteria, so to speak --

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. One would 

22 hope. And it is -- this whole question is the 
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1 chicken and egg. You know, what do you --

2 what gets set first.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Melius, may I 

5 make a procedural suggestion? It might be 

6 that NIOSH or Stu and his crew would go 

7 through these tables one through four that we 

8 have in our report, because there are specific 

9 incidents mentioned there.

10 Maybe bin them in three bins, you 

11 know, one where you know it's exceptionally 

12 high exposures in an incident, then you can't 

13 identify the people, but a large number of 

14 people were there and you really can't 

15 identify the people.

16 The other is where, with a 

17 discrete incident like this cyclotron 

18 incident, where you know that a discrete 

19 population would have been present, but maybe 

20 you know them -- who they are -- maybe not.

21 And then there may be cases where 

22 there may not be incidents, where there may 
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1 not be exceptionally high exposures, and we 

2 could get a view -- and there are some 

3 opinions expressed here in the comments column 

4 in terms of our interpretation based on the 

5 past.

6 I went through the past 

7 transcripts of the discussions, including the 

8 last Working Group discussion, and tried to 

9 come up with things that are in the comments 

10 column and exposure levels and the relative, 

11 whether they were exceptionally high or not.

12 So you have the views that we've 

13 been able to extract from the past discussions 

14 so that might kind of move the specific 

15 discussion from these sites forward.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think that 

17 would be useful for the discussion, to be 

18 honest, for us to take that on, and also it 

19 would give maybe the opportunity to rely on 

20 people like Sam with a little bit more 

21 background and maybe a couple of the other 

22 guys with some more expertise in this, and try 
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1 to reach some -- you know, maybe our thought 

2 process will be illustrative as we go through 

3 those and this binning process, the thing that 

4 we have to think about to do that may be 

5 illustrative to us in sort of differentiation 

6 criteria.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think, you 

8 know, our past troubles with this issue have 

9 been Work Group meetings, and we engage -- we 

10 either try to engage in coming up with some 

11 straightforward criteria, and fail on that, 

12 then we try to engage the specific site 

13 situation.

14 And then we sort of feel 

15 uncomfortable because we don't know what the 

16 criteria, you know, are --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and I think 

19 we need to sort of approach them both together 

20 and I think we're trying to do now, and I 

21 think that would be a way of doing that.

22 Paul, Gen, or anybody else have 
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1 comments on those examples or --

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

3 had a comment similar to Stu's on number four 

4 in terms of expressing things in terms of dose 

5 rates rather than total doses.

6 Actually, tens of r per hour, it's 

7 not uncommon for normal operations to occur at 

8 those levels and, of course, the worker doses 

9 are restricted by time so that you can 

10 maintain levels below some specified total 

11 dose.

12 Obviously, if you're up in the 

13 hundreds of r per hour, that's a different 

14 situation. But, I guess probably expressing 

15 entry into an area in terms of dose rates 

16 certainly can be a little misleading if we 

17 take that out of the context of, you know, in 

18 some stay time.

19 So, I wonder if there would be a 

20 better way of expressing that on that 

21 particular one, you know.

22 DR. GLOVER: Dr. Melius, this is 
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1 Sam Glover. Would it be okay to offer a 

2 comment?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Sure would.

4 DR. GLOVER: Okay. For the -- one 

5 of the things that -- just a suggestion. You 

6 know, we had a list of a series of examples 

7 that are sort of being offered as evidence and 

8 if they were to go back to the Work Group -- I 

9 know there's a lot of specifics like back and 

10 forth between NIOSH, Jim Neton and them, what 

11 were the realistic exposures.

12 And SC&A's reports, we haven't 

13 commented on the realistic -- on the realism 

14 of any of these. You know, they've sort of 

15 been offered in a hypothetical, you know, if 

16 this was like this, and we all agreed that 

17 this is what happened, then would you all 

18 agree to it.

19 We really haven't tried to respond 

20 to their specific examples, and almost the --

21 could you take the -- you know, other than 

22 number one, they're not hypothetical. They 
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1 are offered into evidence. The Ames Lab, Met 

2 Lab, NTS.

3 So, rather than having the 

4 specific examples, could we take your criteria 

5 and then go back to the Working Group and then 

6 make it, after they get fleshed out or worked 

7 out against the criteria here, they could 

8 potentially become examples for your -- you 

9 know, they could be then modified to include 

10 after they've been fully worked out.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes -- no, I 

12 think that was one of the things we wanted to 

13 be able to do. At the same time, I think, in 

14 the guidelines themselves that we needed to 

15 maybe -- we can't describe the whole 

16 situation, you know, then the guidelines would 

17 go on for pages and pages and then be less 

18 useful.

19 So, it was sort of excerpting 

20 that. I mean, for example, in Ames, I mean, 

21 when I tried to say there was the estimates of 

22 the intake, that was the SC&A estimates. I 
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1 wasn't saying that was the only estimate.

2 And, you know, these are 

3 situations where we can't reconstruct dose, so 

4 there's going to be multiple estimates. But I 

5 think eventually we should, you know, reach 

6 agreement on is that a fair, you know, 

7 description of how we would reach, you know, a 

8 conclusion on a particular incident. 

9 So those will change over time and 

10 we should go back and forth on. I just wanted 

11 to get some place to get a starting point for 

12 each of the sites and so forth.

13 DR. MAURO: Dr. Melius, this is 

14 John Mauro. If I may add an observation also.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You sure may.

16 DR. MAURO: When I read the 

17 section where you have the four examples, when 

18 you come to two, three and four, when I read 

19 it, I wasn't really sure whether you were 

20 using those examples as places where we know 

21 discrete incidents occurred, where the 

22 potential for substantially high or 
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1 exceptionally high exposures might have 

2 occurred.

3 But we're not necessarily saying 

4 they did occur, and therefore, use these as 

5 examples of when it's clear and unambiguous 

6 that we have situations where you would say, 

7 yes, this meets the criteria as opposed to 

8 just examples of incidents.

9 I guess that was one of the things 

10 I wasn't quite sure, you know, how those 

11 examples were intended to be used.

12 The second related item is -- and 

13 this is based more on the -- my recollection 

14 of the discussions regarding Ames and Met Lab

15 and Nevada.

16 I believe, and certainly not 

17 everyone may see it this way, but I believe 

18 there was a general consensus that the 

19 individual exposures at Ames would seem to 

20 lean toward something that one would consider 

21 yes, this is -- meets these exceptionally high 

22 exposures under the conditions that are 
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1 defined by the rule.

2 The same thing goes at Met Lab. I 

3 think the tendency during our conversation was 

4 yes, because basically of the blood, the blood 

5 count.

6 However, I would say that we're a 

7 little bit more in an ambiguous area when it 

8 comes to the report that we submitted 

9 regarding the Nevada Test Site. I don't -- I 

10 think there was mixed sentiment on which of 

11 those various incidents that were discussed in 

12 our reports tended towards being more like 

13 250-day or not.

14 So -- and I just wanted to offer 

15 that up as an observation.

16 DR. GLOVER: See, one of the 

17 things is the reality as we dig into these and 

18 we sort of talk about these examples, like for 

19 Ames, I believe the blowouts for uranium, we 

20 have bioassay for. 

21 So then we get into, you know, 

22 which specifics and I'm just hesitant -- it 
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1 would be almost nice if we -- if the examples 

2 -- and again, this is just my comment, if they 

3 were more less Ames-related and maybe, okay, 

4 take from Ames if you were to see this, if 

5 this is really where it comes down, then this 

6 would be, you know, versus saying this is what 

7 we saw at Ames. So, that's just my 

8 suggestion.

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: This is Gen. I 

10 have a comment, too, as long as you're talking 

11 about Ames.

12 First of all, I like examples, and 

13 I think it gives us the guidelines sort of 

14 thing we have, indicators that they were high 

15 doses, high exposures and here's some samples 

16 of it.

17 But on the Ames one, I have kind 

18 of a problem with that. If you're going to 

19 work on it some, in the last sentence there 

20 where it says blowouts. The intakes were on 

21 the orders of tens of nanocuries, and that's 

22 one criteria in itself, I think.
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1 That one, I think, you'd have to 

2 specify what radionuclide it is. I have a 

3 hard time, just looking, tens of nanocuries 

4 and saying, oh, oops, that's really high, 

5 unless you're more specific.

6 Then, in the second part of that 

7 sentence, it doesn't seem to read well to me 

8 or something. On the order of tens of 

9 hundreds or shouldn't that be --

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It should be or, 

11 I think.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Or tens to 

13 hundreds.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, it's order 

15 of tens or hundreds of.

16 MEMBER ROESSLER: Or hundreds of. 

17 Okay.

18 I offer that, if you're going to 

19 be, you know, looking at that one in more 

20 detail.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's -- I 

22 excerpted these from Arjun's SC&A tables and 
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1 was -- tried to condense a, you know, a fairly 

2 -- a lot of information from a table into a 

3 sentence or two, and probably failed.

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: The radionuclide 

5 involved is thorium.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thorium, yes.

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: And its decay 

8 process.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so that was 

10 the previous, I think the column in the table, 

11 and so I didn't include the column, I included 

12 a sentence from the comment and so forth. But 

13 those are all kind of helpful suggestions.

14 Yes, you know, what Sam was 

15 saying, if -- we may get to a point where we 

16 would have some nonspecific examples. I'm 

17 just a little reluctant, because I want to --

18 I think we need to stay focused -- at this 

19 point we need to also stay focused on the 

20 actual incidents that we're going to have to, 

21 you know, evaluate.

22 And I don't -- I hate to put up a 
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1 hypothetical that's, you know, everyone agrees 

2 it's a, you know, horrendous dose and, you 

3 know, it would qualify, but if it's not 

4 something we're really going to deal with, 

5 then I think the -- I don't think it's that 

6 helpful.

7 I think the thing, we can come up 

8 with hypotheticals about what's an 

9 exceptionally high exposure, but it's more 

10 specific situations that -- that we could 

11 have, but there's probably some balance there 

12 that we need to reach between sort of reality13 based and hypotheticals.

14 So, the more general criteria help 

15 us in dealing with new situations. It does 

16 not -- I think one thing we're seeing is that 

17 the situations are -- are reversed, which is 

18 what makes them harder to, more difficult to 

19 deal with.

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Melius, this 

21 is Arjun -- I don't know if people have had 

22 time to go through the report that we 
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1 submitted, but there's a lot more in it than 

2 Ames. And there are, for instance, Nevada 

3 Test Site, a shot 4 incident where the highest 

4 exposure was 39 rads in one incident, and the 

5 next was 28 r.

6 And then there was an incident 

7 during the underground testing period that 

8 didn't involve testing actually, it involved a 

9 cobalt-60 source, and there was a hand dose of 

10 1200 rem and a pelvic dose of 42.5 rem, 

11 although the badge, overall badge dose was 

12 less than ten rem.

13 And so, there are a number of very 

14 specific things that I think it would be 

15 useful to know whether they are exceptionally 

16 high exposures or not, and then there are 

17 actual documentation of where, in some cases, 

18 of what the red blood cell changes or using 

19 current NCRP guidelines whether chelation 

20 therapy might be administered.

21 And I had Joyce actually do those 

22 specific research on when it is administered 
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1 and some of those references are provided, and 

2 so it might help focus things.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 

4 One comment. I think we are going to have to 

5 be very cautious in making sure that we avoid 

6 cases where you're actually able to bound the 

7 dose and put numbers on it, because that kind 

8 of defeats the whole purpose of the thing.

9 In fact, if we start -- if we end 

10 up doing that, then we have put a number on 

11 the issue of -- of health endangerment which 

12 currently does not have a real number attached 

13 to it, which is also bothersome, of course, 

14 from a scientific point of view.

15 But, if these incidents can be 

16 bounded, then that -- you don't need an SEC. 

17 All you need is a person to show his presence, 

18 anyway. But -- or actually you can find 

19 doses.

20 But, somehow -- and it's fine on 

21 examples, but I think we're going to have to 

22 be careful so that we don't end up saying, 
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1 okay, once you pass some number, it's -- you 

2 have either health endangerment or you're at -

3 - you're at an incident.

4 I don't know how we avoid that, 

5 but I think that's a problem from a legal 

6 point of view.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, yes. No, I 

8 think your -- that's a very good point, Dr. 

9 Ziemer. This is -- we're not even --

10 shouldn't even be talking about this situation 

11 unless we were unable to reconstruct the dose, 

12 and that's sort of the threshold to even get 

13 into this discussion, and so -- correct. 

14 And so, it's not -- it's always 

15 going to -- it should always be a situation 

16 where we, you know, have to, you know, we 

17 don't have a good accurate estimate of the 

18 dose, can't reach it, so --

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so, if it 

21 weren't, it would be, I mean, somewhat easier, 

22 though, putting a number on endangerment has 
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1 its own difficulty. But, again, we just 

2 wouldn't be there.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, but, for 

4 example, at Ames, if we say the estimate is 

5 tens of nanocuries or tens to hundreds of rem, 

6 we put some boundaries on things here, and 

7 that's -- that's what I'm concerned about, 

8 that it looks -- on the blowouts, we have 

9 numbers of orders of tens of nanocuries of 

10 thorium. 

11 I don't know how you avoid that, 

12 but --

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I tried to use 

14 examples where there was -- one is to always 

15 include a range so it doesn't imply that we 

16 know it is, you know, 500 or more or something 

17 like that.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. No, I 

19 understand that. I'm just struggling with how 

20 to end up with a document that sort of meets 

21 the legal need and satisfies it 

22 scientifically, that -- because what we mean 
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1 by high dose, number one, becomes somewhat 

2 subjective, but it's sort of like I don't want 

3 to define it, but I know it when I see it.

4 We all have kind of an intuitive 

5 feel for what that is, but it may be different 

6 from everyone. But I think we -- we certainly 

7 want to avoid having a sharp number in here.

8 DR. BEHLING: This is Hans 

9 Behling. Can I make a comment on those few 

10 statements by Drs. Ziemer and Melius regarding 

11 Ames?

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Sure.

13 DR. BEHLING: The numbers that you 

14 see quoted in that point that Arjun made is 

15 really a number that has a basis of empirical 

16 values and applied to all site-specific hidden 

17 parameters, and let me explain.

18 In the original report that I 

19 wrote that defines those numbers, what I took 

20 was a blowout that was documented at Fernald, 

21 and there are empirical data regarding that 

22 blowout in terms of which fraction of the 
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1 material actually became airborne and was not 

2 recovered.

3 And then I tailored that fraction 

4 to actual quantities that are being used at 

5 Ames for both thorium processing and uranium 

6 in their blowout and took empirical data 

7 involving the facility at Ames that would 

8 perhaps then define an air concentration if 

9 there was X number of kilograms of material 

10 blowout, a portion of that went airborne and 

11 then I looked at the actual physical 

12 dimensions of the lab report at Ames where 

13 that material would have become airborne and 

14 then used a reasonable approach to quantifying 

15 what an inhalation intake would have been 

16 resulting from that blowout.

17 And I did -- I believe I used 15 

18 minutes as an exposure because not only were 

19 these people there as scientists, but because 

20 it was also a facility that was covered by 

21 secrecy, they, the scientists, themselves had 

22 to actually act as their own personal fire 
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1 department so they were not in a position just 

2 to run out and vacate the premises.

3 And so, that's the basis for those 

4 numbers. So, reasonable assumptions that 

5 derive through those numbers.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, this is 

7 Ziemer, and I agree with that, Hans. I'm 

8 saying what you've done -- basically done a 

9 good job of reconstructing the dose, and 

10 we're, in a sense, concerned about events 

11 where you can't do that.

12 DR. BEHLING: Yes.

13 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover. 

14 One of the things that, you know, I think we 

15 were concerned about is what is in from that 

16 one. How that -- you know, as you said you --

17 we just didn't know how many occurred, and so 

18 therefore that's one of the reasons why I 

19 believe it was added as an SEC.

20 So, here we're stringing together 

21 potentially a series of these potentially 

22 notable events and, you know, one of the 
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1 things that we've -- that we've brought up a 

2 few times is that there are limitations to the 

3 existing regulations, and some of these things 

4 may be that the Board, you know, your input on 

5 revisiting the regulations on how internal 

6 dosimetry is handled for these incidents or, 

7 you know, the regulation may not be adequate 

8 to handle some of these things.

9 DR. BEHLING: But -- this is Hans 

10 Behling again. Again, what I tried to do was 

11 both a ratio and time frame regarding incident 

12 because, in my calculations I actually 

13 differentiated exposure, internal exposure, 

14 again, time-integrated exposure over a one 

15 year, five to ten years from an incident that 

16 in a short duration of 15 minutes, I believe 

17 it would be integrated doses for one year, 

18 five years, ten years for an inhalation period 

19 of 15 minutes, and then also added to that 

20 perhaps the time interval between frequent 

21 blowouts measured at 30 days.

22 So, there were two discrete dose 
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1 estimates, inhalation estimates with regard to 

2 the first 15 minutes, and then a subsequent 

3 integration dose with the next period of 30 

4 days, and from the table you will come to the 

5 realization that the dominant dose comes from 

6 the first 15 minutes of exposure following a 

7 blowout.

8 And that certainly would qualify 

9 for a discrete incident. 

10 So, we can reasonably conclude 

11 that these blowouts were routine and that they 

12 occurred over periods from the early 40s to 

13 the 50s during the time that they were 

14 processing uranium and thorium, and so that 

15 any person who may have worked there for even 

16 as little as one or two months will probably -

17 - or it is a high probability that they may be 

18 exposed to at least a single event, and that 

19 single event would have resulted in 

20 significant internal exposures.

21 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover 

22 one more time. I just -- you just said one or 
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1 two months, and so that's different than 

2 presence.

3 And so this is, again, one -- a 

4 potential discussion of presence versus the 

5 250 days, and where we may have some 

6 limitations on some of our language, you know, 

7 the current criteria.

8 And also, again, the level of 

9 detail that we're getting into is just another 

10 area where I think it, you know, it would be 

11 very helpful to go back to the Working Group 

12 and get all the people who really -- because 

13 this is very detailed, and we're offering into 

14 evidence a lot of different calculations, and 

15 we've had discussions back and forth on some 

16 of these things.

17 I think, you know, getting someone 

18 like -- if we had a set of criteria without 

19 these specifics and said, okay, let's try to 

20 use this and somebody like Jim Neton, then, 

21 could -- you know, because he's participated 

22 in hundreds of hours of this stuff, and I 
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1 don't have the benefit of that all the time.

2 And not including him and the 

3 agency, I think, at least from my personal 

4 view is, that limits some of our -- our 

5 feedback, and I think that's -- that would be 

6 a shame.

7 MS. HOWELL: And this is Emily. I 

8 have to -- I was -- Hans was going in and out 

9 through a lot of what he was saying, so I'm 

10 not sure if I heard correctly, but I have to 

11 pick up on what Sam's already mentioned about 

12 some of these measurements being -- while I 

13 gather that Hans is saying that the majority 

14 of the doses he's estimating was from a 15-

15 minute incident, there were still some that 

16 were calculated over a 30-day period or one17 or a two-month period for internal dosing.

18 We get into this very difficult 

19 area with the regulation as it's currently 

20 written when we start estimating those kinds 

21 of numbers in order to justify a discrete 

22 incident because I'm not sure -- and I'm not 
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1 giving a definite opinion on this right now, 

2 but I'm concerned about whether or not you 

3 could do a calculation that's taking into 

4 consideration some period of time that is 

5 beyond the actual discrete incident and how we 

6 have to define that term, to establish that 

7 something was a discrete incident.

8 DR. BEHLING: Well, I guess I had 

9 mentioned, the dose from a single blowout 

10 does, in fact, involve the first 15 minutes so 

11 -- if you want to drop off the balance of the 

12 30 days that I used as an arbitrary value 

13 between subsequent blowouts, that would be 

14 fine, because it really wouldn't matter much.

15 The dominant dose from a single 

16 blowout is the dose that a person would 

17 receive in the first 15 minutes.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

19 Just a little bit of history here, because 

20 there has been a lot of water over this dam. 

21 Not only SC&A did do reports, but 

22 NIOSH has done one report also in which they 
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1 had somewhat different numbers than Hans', but 

2 generally concurred with the idea and pointed 

3 out there were differences between Fernald and 

4 Ames.

5 But the most important thing I 

6 want to point out here is that NIOSH also did 

7 another calculation based on some limited 

8 thorium bioassay data from the 50s, assuming 

9 that it arose from an incident and calculated 

10 some doses, although we didn't know whether it 

11 arose from an incident.

12 And those doses were in the tens 

13 of thousands or thousands of rem and were 

14 considered implausibly high. So, it's 

15 actually not the case that the examples and 

16 the approach that was used to illustrate the 

17 doses were likely to be high, at least so far 

18 as the existing work is concerned.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: One of the 

20 problems that we have, we do have a lot of 

21 history and a lot of discussion. I have a 

22 couple of comments because I think we also 
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1 need to sort of define a way to work with 

2 this.

3 And I'm not sure at this point 

4 whether trying to go back and rehash 

5 everything is the most efficient way of 

6 approaching this. And I don't -- the agency -

7 - the government's got to make up its own mind 

8 when Jim Neton is conflicted or not 

9 conflicted.

10 I don't think -- I don't want to 

11 have us in a position of having to, you know, 

12 do something on that basis. That's something 

13 for the government to decide, you know, your 

14 rules on conflict and bias and just do that. 

15 I mean, we just proceed and then you can 

16 handle that accordingly.

17 I think we do have time set aside 

18 on the agenda for Idaho coming up to this. 

19 We've had other sites fall by the wayside that 

20 we thought were going to take up a fair amount 

21 of time at this meeting, so at least 

22 theoretically we have more time than we even 
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1 originally set aside for this.

2 So, I think we should try to use 

3 this time, you know, as best we can, because 

4 it's -- our agenda is -- I have a feeling that 

5 because we're -- our agenda may be a little 

6 lighter than expected for Idaho. It means 

7 it's going to be heavier than expected in our 

8 next meeting, I believe, in New Mexico.

9 So, I think we should try to make 

10 progress in this, and what I was thinking of, 

11 and I would be interested in feedback from the 

12 Work Group Members and so forth, is -- is that 

13 we, one, have a discussion with the Full Board 

14 on at least the guidelines, the general 

15 outline of the guidelines. Maybe not the 

16 specific wording yet, of every part of it, but 

17 at least the general outline of that, of where 

18 we think we're going.

19 And I have one question related to 

20 that, but I'll get back to that in a second.

21 Then, that would be followed by --

22 and I'd ask the SC&A to do a presentation that 
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1 would review the three sites, at least to the 

2 extent that they've been, you know, worked up 

3 so far and there's information.

4 So, you know, we present the 

5 information we have on these sites and how it 

6 might, you know, why we're concerned and what 

7 information there is on discrete incidents at 

8 those sites.

9 I understand there's a question 

10 earlier that, at least on the Nevada Test 

11 Site, I don't think there's been as much of a 

12 focus on this so far, so we may be based on

13 the underground testing, so it may not be as 

14 complete.

15 But I think it would be worth 

16 spending some time -- remember we have four 

17 new Board Members that have had no involvement 

18 with this or at least very little. I'm not 

19 sure -- remember when Henry Anderson left the 

20 Board, how much we discussed while he was 

21 still on the Board the first time.

22 But I think it would be worth 
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1 bringing -- talking about these examples and 

2 summarizing information so at least all the 

3 Board Members are on the same level of 

4 information about these and understand the 

5 situation better so that we will be able to 

6 move forward more efficiently in the following 

7 meetings.

8 Does that make sense to Dr. Ziemer 

9 and others?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: That sounds fine 

11 to me, Jim. I also wondered -- I thought that 

12 maybe Stu was suggesting that perhaps the 

13 NIOSH group also wanted a chance to review in 

14 more detail the July 13th document of SC&A.

15 Did I understand that correctly, 

16 and maybe have some response to that as well?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. Well, you 

19 know, what I said -- I'm sorry. Did you want 

20 me to say something?

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I did. I 

22 was going to say -- what I was going to, you 
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1 know, introduce you, introduce that and it is 

2 -- I mean, I don't think we're expecting 

3 necessarily a written response and time is 

4 relatively short, so I don't want to put too 

5 much of a burden on you.

6 But if there at least could be 

7 some general response to that and -- 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I think -- I think 

9 we can have some, you know, spoken response to 

10 the -- to the example that the stand will be -

11 - I think it will be similar to what I said on 

12 the phone earlier, and I think we can fill it 

13 out, you know, a little bit more.

14 And then, if -- you know, if 

15 that's how you want us to present it. I think 

16 our position going in here is that, you know, 

17 we're not telling them to stay hard and stand 

18 hard and fast, and Ames has to be the rule 

19 because that's not what we're saying.

20 We're trying to come up with a 

21 position that seems kind of logical and is 

22 compliant with the law, and we're having a lot 
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1 of trouble doing that.

2 So, yes, but we don't have -- and 

3 in particular with some of the specific 

4 examples and any kind of reservations that we 

5 might have about the specific examples or sort 

6 of endorsement that we might have of those 

7 specific examples, I would think that we would 

8 do.

9 Now, we discussed earlier about 

10 the possibility of us binning all the events 

11 described in the Table One of the SC&A 

12 documents from the three sites and some of 

13 those situations they've described were not 

14 carried forward into the examples.

15 So, shall we, for the meantime, 

16 between now and the Board meeting, we'll just 

17 worry about the examples that were written in 

18 the 250-day criteria documents.

19 But would you like us to proceed 

20 with some sort of binning after that or do you 

21 feel like that's been sufficiently binned and 

22 discussed?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I'd 

2 actually reverse that, I think, for the 

3 purposes of the meeting, the Board meeting. I 

4 think if you could focus on the SC&A 

5 documents, and that, I think, would be the 

6 basis for the SC&A presentation at the 

7 meeting, at the Board meeting.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That describes 

10 the site and so it's more being able to --

11 we're not proposing anything, I mean, so it's 

12 not, you know, does this fit or not fit or 

13 whatever, but it's more, you know, are we 

14 capturing what's important about those --

15 those sites and, you know, the information 

16 that if it's available, it's relevant, a 

17 judgment on 250 days.

18 And the guideline itself, you 

19 know, I've been looking for both the NIOSH, 

20 SC&A and this Work Group to, you know, let's 

21 see if we can, you know, come up with better -

22 - how do we improve those examples and come up 
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1 with better -- better illustrated examples 

2 that would go on to the guidelines.

3 DR. MAURO: Dr. Melius, this is 

4 John. I'd like to make an affirmative 

5 statement regarding the examples and how they 

6 are used here, because I think as long as the 

7 examples that are mentioned in the criteria, 

8 the draft criteria document, go toward just 

9 examples of circumstances which create 

10 candidates for consideration for the 250-day.

11 Not that they are examples of when 

12 250 should be granted, but circumstances, 

13 different kinds of circumstances that have 

14 arisen in the past where consideration needs 

15 to be given as opposed to a determination has 

16 been made.

17 And I think these are very good 

18 examples. And, unfortunately, I think during 

19 the course of this conversation we -- we went 

20 into a level of granularity regarding each 

21 example that started to drive us in the 

22 direction that implied we were concluding 
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1 that, yes, we should grant the 250-day for 

2 this -- under these circumstances.

3 I'd sooner think that the examples 

4 will serve us well as situations under which 

5 it would be appropriate to consider that these 

6 kinds of circumstances, and -- but of course, 

7 on a case-by-case basis, the collective 

8 judgment would have to be made whether that 

9 meets a threshold.

10 Now, the kinds of thresholds that 

11 you attempted to include, I think, you know, 

12 regarding blood count, but avoiding dosimetric 

13 circumstances -- I guess what I'm getting at 

14 is, if we use the examples more as situations 

15 where this -- where these issues become of 

16 concern as opposed -- that's where the value 

17 lies and where I think they have a home in the 

18 criteria document.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, then, 

20 John, you're proposing that the examples in 

21 Table One of your report, then, are examples 

22 that you would --
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1 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry. No. I'm 

2 talking not so much about our work, but the 

3 draft --

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So you're 

5 talking about examples in the 250-day criteria 

6 document?

7 DR. MAURO: Yes. Yes. Right. In 

8 other words, citing these examples in the 250-

9 day criteria document, the one we have in 

10 front of us right now, these three examples, 

11 as circumstances where -- which -- which 

12 trigger the concern that requires 

13 investigation is how I read this, but it's 

14 clear from, you know -- but as you read it and 

15 our conversation as it progressed, it wasn't 

16 clear that that was the intent.

17 I think -- I think it's right now 

18 there's probably very little disagreement 

19 amongst everyone on the phone that these three 

20 examples, Ames, Nevada Test Site and the 

21 Metallurgical Lab are circumstance --

22 situations existed there where certainly this 
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1 is something that requires consideration.

2 How that's resolved, now, you 

3 know, is really -- the degree to which the 

4 criteria document could lay out 

5 nonquantitative criteria for helping the 

6 decision-makers when they -- on a case-by-case 

7 basis.

8 You know, that -- you know, and 

9 that -- I think that's what was trying to be 

10 done here. So, I think this draft is not that 

11 far away from serving the purposes of a 

12 guideline, but I -- but the work that it 

13 sounds like that you were about to engage in 

14 or will be engaging in, Stu, goes more toward 

15 your folks making a judgment whether you think 

16 this particular incident that occurred at this 

17 particular location, you would feel 

18 constitutes something that warrants, you know, 

19 designation that's meeting the 250-day 

20 criteria.

21 So, I mean, I think that's a 

22 different subject. I don't know if everyone's 
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1 following this distinction I'm making here.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can I maybe 

3 clarify what my -- my view of this would be, 

4 is that the SC&A documents, Table One, sort 

5 of, those would be what I would call a good 

6 candidate, where this should be considered, 

7 and what we want in the guidelines are, at 

8 least at this point we should be trying to 

9 achieve our very good candidate -- I mean, a 

10 level above that.

11 It should be selected out of there 

12 where -- where the, you know, at least in our 

13 judgment now we really sort of focus 

14 specifically on these that these would be very 

15 good candidates, really, highly -- seems 

16 people would highly consider that they would, 

17 you know, have met this criteria.

18 And when we've then gone to work 

19 and eventually looked at the three sites in 

20 greater detail, some of these may fall out 

21 because, you know, maybe the dose could be 

22 reconstructed or, yes, maybe the -- you know, 
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1 people are, you know, that at the site, they 

2 really worked -- you know, the exposure was 

3 only a very short time or something -- there's 

4 other reasons, so these don't capture all of 

5 the information.

6 We never will, but maybe we'll 

7 have better ones or whatever. But they should 

8 be sort of a higher-level candidate. And I'd 

9 like to make them better, you know, more 

10 helpful examples, but it really won't be until 

11 we've sort of gone through the effort on all 

12 the sites.

13 What I'm, you know, more 

14 interested in is, sort of, NIOSH being able to 

15 raise the issues on the SC&A White Paper 

16 things that ought to be thought about at these 

17 sites. Again, not that it's, you know, 

18 point/counterpoint or whatever, but -- but 

19 these situations, and that we're all sort of 

20 agreeing on the -- at least the general 

21 outline of facts for those sites and how we 

22 should approach this -- this, without having 
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1 done, you know, what we will need to do on the 

2 individual sites.

3 Is that helpful or clarifying?

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, this is 

5 Ziemer. I think it is, and I think John's 

6 point is also well made. And what you would 

7 do, then, in the document with the examples is 

8 move away from some of the specific numbers 

9 and describe them more qualitatively as the 

10 types of events that could lead to, quote, 

11 high exposures. I think John's point is also 

12 well made.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: But a discussion 

15 of the document would be helpful because, in a 

16 sense, we have to get a feel for -- from the 

17 real world about what that really means, I 

18 guess.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And what I think 

20 we would do would be to have at least a -- you 

21 know, I'll revise this draft document and 

22 circulate it to the other Board Members. 
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1 Everyone has it, but the presentation would be 

2 a little bit more general.

3 And I guess my other question -- I 

4 don't mean to put Emily on the spot, but I 

5 will -- at this point, I mean, Emily, are you 

6 comfortable with the general outline of this 

7 approach, not the -- not even the wording or 

8 anything like that, but is this something that 

9 at least you feel comfortable that the Board 

10 should be discussing and not getting us 

11 totally astray?

12 MS. HOWELL: Well, I mean, I 

13 think, you know, we've all said that this has 

14 been something that has been difficult for the 

15 agency to apply, and so I think that these 

16 conversations are good.

17 I have a few concerns about some 

18 of the specifics of the guideline document. I 

19 mean, I -- I guess what I would say is, you 

20 have -- we can't really -- I can't give you an 

21 opinion in a hypothetical situation.

22 I can say that the conversation 
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1 you're having is fine and you need to have it. 

2 It's kind of like when we get to a final 

3 document and consideration of actual classes 

4 or incidents, it will be easier for us to 

5 speak to those specific situations.

6 You know, and I feel like there's 

7 two different things going on. There's the 

8 guidelines document that you've revised, and I 

9 think it's much better in its revised form 

10 but, like I said, I do still have a couple of 

11 concerns.

12 And then there's a factual 

13 application document that SC&A has produced. 

14 So, I -- you know, like I don't know that I 

15 can give you a much more thorough response 

16 than that right now.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's fine. 

18 That's just -- I don't think we can expect 

19 more. In time. There is -- I mean, I just 

20 want to mention this, I think there's also --

21 there is a sort of timeliness issue we've been 

22 wrestling with this a long time and, we know 
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1 it's difficult but it's not something we 

2 should be very leisurely about, I think.

3 You know, I think we need to try 

4 to resolve it to the extent that we can, to 

5 the extent that we can do that within the, you 

6 know, the current regulations is sort of the 

7 quickest way of doing that because -- and we 

8 can -- we can, on some of these sites we go --

9 we may reach a different, you know, situation 

10 where they really ought to -- you know, 250 

11 days may not be appropriate for a site but, 

12 that's going to -- it needs to be dealt with. 

13 It has to be dealt with through a regulation 

14 change at the designated time.

15 Then, what I would propose and, 

16 again, a suggestion, would be a presentation 

17 on the guidelines, what the Work Group has 

18 been doing to the Full Board, and then a 

19 presentation by SC&A on the -- a summary on 

20 the three -- three sites so that we all have a 

21 common ground or at least the general facts 

22 about -- about these sites, and how the 250-
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1 day issue arises there and so forth.

2 And then, you know, it -- whatever 

3 response, contribution NIOSH, you know, you 

4 feel comfortable to make by that time --

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I 

6 apologize. My phone dropped the call there 

7 for a little -- a few minutes ago, and so --

8 well, this is -- when you say on the three 

9 sites, so is this all of the Table One event 

10 that -- in SC&A's report where they have these 

11 three sites and then they -- from each site 

12 they have a number of situations as sort of 

13 candidates and sort of our reaction to those?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. But the 

15 Table Three --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: I think it's Table 

17 One.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. There are 

19 several. There are four tables.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Four tables.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Table One is just 

22 Ames.
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1 DR. MAKHIJANI: Two for NTS and 

2 one for Ames.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, okay.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And there's two 

5 --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Okay. Got 

7 you. Got you. Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm not sure 

9 that Arjun correctly -- Table Four, I mean, I 

10 think, which is the underground testing, it 

11 could be mentioned. That really isn't 

12 something that's been developed in as much 

13 detail as the others. Correct?

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. You're 

15 absolutely right. There's actually one 

16 incident involving an external dose that's in 

17 underground testing period and I mentioned it 

18 a little bit earlier.

19 The internal dose which would 

20 involve much of the discussion, I think we 

21 have not explored for incidents. We -- I just 

22 have given a couple of examples where the 
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1 doses could be inferred to be substantial, but 

2 we don't actually know whether they were 

3 associated with incidents, because we haven't 

4 looked into it.

5 DR. MAURO: Stu, this is John. I 

6 think that we would all be interested in 

7 NIOSH's perspective if those example incidents 

8 that we characterize, or circumstances, 

9 because I would call the Met Lab more of a 

10 circumstance than an incident for reasons that 

11 are apparent when you read the report.

12 Whether or not those 

13 circumstances/incidents as we described them 

14 in those tables, that you would agree that 

15 they are candidates, you know, and warrant and 

16 merit discussion within the context of 250 

17 days, or do you feel that there may be some of 

18 them that you say yes, certainly do, but 

19 others you do not feel that way and why, and 

20 that will help drive us toward a consensus on 

21 at least calling out how we're looking at this 

22 and try to achieve a place that would have 
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1 some conciliation where we can agree.

2 You know, where is the glass half 

3 full? Of course, from then on, whether or not 

4 -- once they're a candidate and we agree 

5 they're a candidate, then of course it becomes 

6 -- we start the difficult task of, you know, 

7 whether or not, yes or no.

8 And perhaps, as you do that, as 

9 the Work Group or the Board does that, it will

10 help move us in the direction of developing 

11 general criteria that can be a little bit more 

12 explicit.

13 Sort of like, almost an iterative 

14 process of driving us toward not only the 

15 resolution of which candidates should be 

16 granted SEC status of less than 250 days, but 

17 it will simultaneously drive the process of 

18 setting those criteria that could be expressed 

19 in general terms.

20 Allow the chicken and the egg to 

21 move forward together. I mean, it's -- let it 

22 emerge from the process. Unfortunately, we're 
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1 trying to do this in a linear way. Let's pick 

2 the criteria and then apply the criteria and 

3 make a judgment, and that's a problem.

4 And -- or -- it's really 

5 inappropriate for us to go ahead and 

6 collectively make a judgment without the 

7 criteria. 

8 So, either way, we're -- we have a 

9 problem. But if somehow we can allow the 

10 process to unfold and starting with an 

11 agreement amongst all concerned, what 

12 represents examples that, yes, you and the 

13 Board and everyone involved feel, certainly, 

14 are situations/criteria that warrant 

15 consideration.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. We'll 

17 proceed along that path, then, and see what we 

18 can do by the Board meeting. We'll -- yes, 

19 you're right. I understand --

20 (Telephone connection with Mr. 

21 Hinnefeld was lost.)

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did we lose --
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Is everybody 

2 gone?

3 DR. GLOVER: I'm still here.

4 DR. MAURO: Yes. I'm still here. 

5 I think --

6 MEMBER BEACH: I'm still here.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think Stu --

8 MEMBER ROESSLER: Stu dropped out.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 DR. MAURO: Did we lose Stu? Stu, 

11 are you there?

12 DR. GLOVER: I think we lost Stu.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it was Stu.

14 MEMBER ROESSLER: While he's gone, 

15 this is Gen, I'll make a comment. Since we 

16 are going in the direction of this coming up 

17 at the Board meeting, which I think is really 

18 good to get insight from the new Board 

19 Members, and let others look at it again.

20 I'd recommend to Ted, when he 

21 sends out a new agenda, that he include the 

22 files, particularly that White Paper from 
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1 SC&A, the July paper we've been talking about.

2 And also included are -- make sure 

3 that people who don't use their CDC addresses 

4 or email addresses for one reason or another 

5 have that document.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, Gen. I'm here. 

7 There's no question that these documents have 

8 to go to all the Board Members.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

10 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. And sort 

11 of recommend somehow or another that they --

12 that they look at some of them before the 

13 meeting. It will be much more productive if 

14 they've looked at them.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this is Stu.

16 MR. KATZ: Again, I'm --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I'll send Verizon 

18 a nasty note.

19 MR. KATZ: Gen, I'm happy to send 

20 an encouraging note with the documents. 

21 Anyway, so I'll take care of that.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Certainly.
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1 DR. GLOVER: And would it -- this 

2 is Sam Glover. I had one on regards to our 

3 presentation. Do you want us to really focus 

4 on how well those -- we believe the sort of 

5 merit versus getting into the details, because 

6 there have been disagreements over, you know, 

7 how we come to these different numbers.

8 It gets into the details, you 

9 know, so that a lot of facts put into evidence 

10 here, where we would get into in a Work Group 

11 meeting and actually, okay, what do we know or 

12 don't know about a thing, about a particular 

13 circumstance.

14 So, I just want to make sure how -

15 - how -- where you want us to go in our 

16 discussions. It's really with regard to 

17 helping your criteria statement or is this 

18 really towards reviewing that particular site 

19 when we may bring other arguments to bear?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It's the former. 

21 It's dealing with the guidelines, so it's not 

22 all the details of the -- each incident.
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1 DR. GLOVER: Okay.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: And this is 

3 Ziemer. I might add, Sam, I think part of 

4 this is to inform the Board Members of the --

5 both the nature of the issue and where we are 

6 on it and maybe some additional insights, but 

7 they don't necessarily need all the -- all of 

8 the detail at this point --

9 MR. KATZ: Right, Jim.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- on the 

11 calculations.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so what I 

13 would add, I can't remember if it's on the 

14 agenda, but we would not be trying to make a 

15 recommendation on any of these sites at the 

16 Idaho Board Meeting.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. Right. Jim, 

18 this is Ted. I was planning, based on this 

19 discussion, to revise the agenda so that it's 

20 very clear that this is a general discussion 

21 of the guidelines with specific examples in 

22 that discussion, but I wouldn't lay it out as 
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1 I have it now where I have Met Lab and Ames' 

2 SEC petition laid out with the opportunity for 

3 petitioner to comment, because it's really not 

4 -- not that kind of session.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. Correct. 

6 And I would just add to that, at least my 

7 prioritization on the three sites sort of 

8 going forward from here, is I think we should, 

9 you know, then we need to move on Ames.

10 I think that's the -- at least the 

11 most straightforward in terms of there's 

12 really one type of incident to deal with. Met 

13 Lab has some different situations, incidents, 

14 whatever you want to call them, that sort of 

15 would be next, because I think at least 

16 they're -- we know what we know there. But I 

17 think it takes a little different approach.

18 And then Nevada Test Site, I think 

19 we have some more -- have some more work to do 

20 so that will take a little bit of more work 

21 before we can get there. But I think that 

22 would be the general order of how we would try 
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1 to resolve this.

2 Now, you know, it may not work, 

3 but let's see how it does going forward.

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Melius, just a 

5 minor suggestion on that last part. On NTS, 

6 as you've said several times, we really 

7 haven't done work on the underground testing 

8 period for this, but there is some -- we did 

9 an explicit report on the atmospheric testing 

10 period that can be drawn on, for less than 250 

11 days.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, and I think 

13 it would be worthwhile going forward -- on the 

14 underground in terms of a report. I'm just 

15 trying to think what's the best timing on 

16 that.

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It certainly 

19 would be best not to start it before we at 

20 least have the benefit of some Board 

21 discussion at the next meeting.

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no, no. I 
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1 agree with that because, you know, we've done 

2 a lot of reports that we're still discussing. 

3 I just -- I just was pointing out that.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: In the context of 

6 your discussion we have some numbers from the 

7 atmospheric testing.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Since the 

9 Board Meeting is coming up, let's -- we'll 

10 sort of make a note and let's -- possibly make 

11 that assignment at the Board meeting and see 

12 where we are at that point.

13 Does that make sense, Ted?

14 MR. KATZ: Yes, that makes perfect 

15 sense to me.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

17 comments or questions?

18 (No response.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I thank 

20 everybody for their attention on a Friday 

21 afternoon.

22 If there are no more comments or 
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1 questions, we will see everybody in Idaho in a 

2 couple weeks.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

4 matter went off the record at 2:42 p.m.)

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