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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 LINDE

 + + + + +

 THURSDAY

 OCTOBER 14, 2010

 + + + + +

 The Working Group convened in the

Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron,

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Genevieve S. Roessler,

Chair, presiding.

PRESENT:

 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Chair

JOSIE BEACH, Member

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Consultant to the WG *

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor*

DAVE ALLEN, DCAS

ROBERT ANIGSTEIN, SC&A

ANTOINETTE BONSIGNORE, Linde Ceramics 

 Petitioner*

CHRIS CRAWFORD, DCAS

MONICA HARRISON-MAPLES, ORAU Team*

STUART HINNEFELD, DCAS*

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

JAMES NETON, DCAS

STEVE OSTROW, SC&A

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS*

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team*

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

2 (9:00 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning everyone in 

4 the room and on the line. This is the 

5 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

6 it is the Linde Working Group. My name is Ted 

7 Katz, I am the Designated Federal Official for 

8 the Advisory Board and we are about to get 

9 going. Before we go on the record we will 

10 begin with roll call. Starting with Board 

11 Members in the room. 

12 CHAIR ROESSLER: I am Gen 

13 Roessler, Member of the Board and Chair of the 

14 Linde Working Group. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, Board 

16 Member, Work Group Member and no conflict. 

17 MR. KATZ: Thank you, please 

18 address conflicts.

19 CHAIR ROESSLER: No conflict from 

20 Gen Roessler.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, Board 

22 Member, Working Group Member, no conflict.
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1 MR. KATZ: And on the line, Board 

2 Members? Mike Gibson are you on the line? 

3 And were you expecting Bill Field?

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. The line 

5 sounds pretty dead to me.

6 MR. KATZ: Bill, are you on the 

7 line? There are at least eight people on the 

8 line. Well let's go through more roll call 

9 and we will return to Board Members. 

10 NIOSH-ORAU Team in the room?

11 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH, no 

12 conflict.

13 MR. CRAWFORD: Chris Crawford, 

14 NIOSH, no conflict.

15 MR. ALLEN: Dave Allen, NIOSH, no 

16 conflict.

17 MR. KATZ: And any NIOSH-ORAU Team 

18 on the line?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Stu Hinnefeld, no 

20 conflict.

21 MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, ORAU 

22 Team no conflict.
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1 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Monica 

2 Harrison- Maples, ORAU Team. No conflict. 

3 MR. KATZ: Very good, thank you. 

4 Welcome all, and SC&A in the room?

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

6 conflict. 

7 DR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow, SC&A, 

8 no conflict. 

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Bob Anigstein, 

10 SC&A, no conflict.

11 MR. KATZ: And any SC&A members on 

12 the line? None expected. Okay. How about HHS 

13 and other federal officials or contractors to 

14 the feds in the room?

15 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

16 MR. KATZ: And on the line? 

17 MR. RAFKY: Michael Rafky, HHS

18 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH 

19 contractor. 

20 MR. KATZ: Any others? Okay, let 

21 me return before I get to public members, 

22 Board Members. Has Mike Gibson joined us on 
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1 the line? Or how about Bill Field on the 

2 line? Nancy, or Zaida, are you on the line?

3 MS. ADAMS: I am here, I can try to 

4 call them.

5 MR. KATZ: Can you try to call 

6 Mike and Bill?

7 MS. ADAMS: Sure.

8 MR. KATZ: Just remind them about 

9 this call.

10 MR. ADAMS: Okay.

11 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Okay, then 

12 let's to on the line. There are no members of 

13 the public in the room, but on the line, 

14 members of the public. 

15 MS. BONSIGNORE: Antoinette 

16 Bonsignore, Linde petitioner. 

17 MR. KATZ: Welcome Antoinette. 

18 MS. BONSIGNORE: Thank you.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay, do we want to 

20 give it a minute for Mike and Bill or do you 

21 want to get started Gen?

22 CHAIR ROESSLER: I would think 
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1 that they would be on.

2 MR. KATZ: Zaida is calling them, 

3 if you pop them an email -- I can do that.

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: I just sent one 

5 to Bill. It would be nice to have Mike on.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes. Let me check my 

7 emails and see if I didn't get a message from 

8 anyone. I have got a message from Mike 8:56 

9 saying, "On the way. Sitting in traffic." So 

10 that is Mike. He is driving here, sometimes 

11 traffic is pretty bad where he is. So Mike is 

12 on the way.

13 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we ought 

14 to wait a little bit and see if he arrives and 

15 then if he doesn't, perhaps we should start 

16 with DCAS's report which he has received. 

17 MR. KATZ: Yes he has received it, 

18 why don't we try to give him another -- let's 

19 give him at least until ten after and then go 

20 from there. 

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: Does anybody have 

22 a really tight schedule today? If not, why 
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1 don't we give him until 15 after? We will 

2 start when he gets here.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. So I will just go 

4 ahead and put the phone on mute and we will go 

5 ahead and pick at quarter after, unless Mike 

6 pops in sooner. 

7 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

8 matter went off the record at 9:08 a.m. and 

9 resumed at 9:13 a.m.) 

10 MR. KATZ: Gen, it is your agenda, 

11 and let me just remind everyone on the line to 

12 just mute your phones, except when you are 

13 speaking to the group, and if you don't have a 

14 mute button use *6 and to unmute your phone 

15 use *6 again. Thank you.

16 CHAIR ROESSLER: Good morning, 

17 everyone. This is the Linde Ceramics Work 

18 Group meeting. Just as a reminder, we are 

19 discussing SEC 107, which is the Linde 

20 renovation and residual period, January 1st, 

21 1954 to July 31st, 2006.

22 We have had Work Group meetings 
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1 since -- well, just over the past year, -- we 

2 started September 2009 -- NIOSH in their first 

3 report to us stated that they found that 

4 available monitoring records, process 

5 descriptions, and source term data were 

6 available in adequately complete dose 

7 reconstruction for this time period.

8 SC&A has reviewed. And we have 

9 gone back and forth with various papers and 

10 discussions between NIOSH and SC&A on the Work 

11 Group. SC&A has accepted NIOSH's proposal for 

12 bounding the doses in the Linde buildings, 

13 including radon.

14 The final issue that we're 

15 discussing has to do with radon doses in the 

16 tunnels. And at our last meeting, NIOSH said 

17 that they could better come up with a bounding 

18 method for doing radon doses in the tunnels by 

19 doing some diffusion calculations. And we had 

20 also talked about some possible measurements.

21 So we got a White Paper from NIOSH 

22 everybody has. And we also have a response 
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1 from SC&A on these diffusion equations.

2 I'll mention, by the way, that I 

3 invited Bill Field. Dr. Field is a Board 

4 Member. He's a radon expert, internationally 

5 and nationally known. And I thought his 

6 participation in the discussion would be 

7 helpful. And he is now on the phone.

8 Unfortunately, Bill, you probably 

9 didn't get SC&A's response to NIOSH's White 

10 Paper until this morning. And that's my fault 

11 because I didn't get it until this morning. I 

12 apparently didn't go on -- no. I didn't go on 

13 my CDC email. And so I didn't see it until 

14 this morning. So I'm sorry about that, Bill, 

15 if you're just now looking at it.

16 MEMBER FIELD: Right. I just 

17 received it as well.

18 CHAIR ROESSLER: Perhaps as I 

19 stammer around here, you can take a quick look 

20 at it. And then we'll be ready to go by the 

21 time they make their presentation.

22 So we'll start then, with DCAS' 
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1 White Paper. And I believe Dave Allen is 

2 going to be the one making a summary of your 

3 paper?

4 MR. ALLEN: Yes. I don't know how 

5 summarized you want this. So I'll start going 

6 through. And if you want less detail or more 

7 detail, just let me know. And I'll provide 

8 it.

9 The White Paper was an attempt to 

10 model the radon in the utility tunnels at 

11 Linde. And there were two primary sources of 

12 radon that we can think of for the tunnels, 

13 one being radium contamination inside the 

14 tunnel on the various surfaces and the second 

15 being radon-diffused -- or radium 

16 contamination in the soils around the tunnels 

17 creating radon gas and that diffusing into the 

18 tunnel.

19 So the paper was broken up into 

20 two parts to discuss each of those mechanisms, 

21 the first one being the simpler one to model, 

22 which is the radium contamination in the 
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1 tunnel surfaces. And the theory behind that 

2 one was simply that radium decays produces a 

3 radon atom. And that decay gives us our 

4 introduction rate.

5 And the removal mechanisms are the 

6 decay of radon itself as long -- also the 

7 ventilation of the air in the tunnel. And 

8 it's a relatively simple equation to put the 

9 three together and determine what the 

10 equilibrium value would be. And that was done 

11 in the first part of this paper.

12 The parameters used are listed in 

13 the first table on page 3. And, with those 

14 parameters, the value came out to be 

15 approximately 18 picocuries per liter from 

16 that mechanism.

17 The second part was a little more 

18 complicated. And that is the diffusion of 

19 radon in the soils leaking into the tunnels. 

20 And that simply started with a standard 

21 diffusion type of theory.

22 Actually, the first couple of 
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1 equations start with the same equations I was 

2 using for the part one, which is the two 

3 removal mechanisms from the tunnel, being the 

4 radon decay and the ventilation, but this 

5 time, instead of the introduction mechanism 

6 being decay of radium that is in the tunnel, 

7 it was simply an introduction rate.

8 And then the paper moves on to 

9 show the introduction rate being the diffusion 

10 equation or fairly standard diffusion theory, 

11 the equations of which are in here and I don't 

12 think you really want me to go through the 

13 equation there or anything. 

14 But once it's set up with the 

15 production mechanism and the two removal 

16 mechanisms, it's not that difficult to solve 

17 this. It turns out to be a second order 

18 differential equation. It's not too difficult 

19 to solve it in a general form. We tried to 

20 simplify the model and solve it in a 

21 one-dimensional form.

22 And a solution to that is equation 
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1 9 on page 5. And the solution to any second 

2 order differential equation is going to 

3 contain two constants, the value of which has 

4 to be determined from boundary conditions. 

5 And that is one of the tougher parts of this 

6 type of situation.

7 So, starting on page 6, I 

8 discussed the boundary conditions. And I 

9 developed three different sets of boundary 

10 conditions. The one that was consistent with 

11 all three was to assume a continuity condition 

12 between the soil and the tunnel, essentially 

13 that the radon at the tunnel-soil interface 

14 was the same in the soil as it was in the 

15 tunnel. And that is, like I said, just a 

16 continuity condition. You can't have a 

17 drastic difference right there.

18 As far as the rest of the 

19 conditions, the three sets of boundaries 

20 conditions that I derived or came up with were 

21 I called large source, small source, and 

22 symmetrical. And the theory behind the large 
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1 source was essentially that the source of 

2 radium contamination in the soil is large 

3 enough, that area is large enough, that the --

4 in the center, the radon reaches a theoretical 

5 maximum that you would reach with no removal 

6 mechanisms other than decay.

7 And the second boundary condition 

8 was small source. That one was essentially 

9 that the source is so small that towards the 

10 opposite end of the boundary, the radon 

11 concentration in the soil would reach zero.

12 And I developed a third one, kind 

13 of similar to that small source, that 

14 basically said, instead of zero, it would be 

15 the same concentration as the tunnel. And 

16 that is the condition I used for all three, 

17 that continuity condition. And, therefore, it 

18 essentially made it a symmetrical gradient for 

19 the radon concentration in the soil.

20 In the attachments I won't go into 

21 here. I went through the math to solve the 

22 constants and the equation based on those 
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1 three boundary conditions. And then starting 

2 on page 8 is where I have analyzed the three 

3 various parameters of various sizes of sources 

4 to try to determine which is most legitimate 

5 or, you know, if there is any one that is 

6 favorable than the others. What we found is 

7 that they all three give very similar results 

8 for the conditions they apply to.

9 Page 9 there is a draft that shows 

10 the various sizes of sources, the estimated 

11 tunnel concentration of radon. And in that 

12 one, you can see where the small source 

13 condition gets extremely high when the source 

14 gets very large.

15 And the problem was essentially 

16 when the source gets to a certain point, the 

17 condition of a small source is violated is 

18 what it amounts to. You simply can't get to 

19 zero at the boundary. There was so much 

20 diffusion when the source is so big that it 

21 will give you a radon concentration beyond the 

22 boundaries of the contaminated soil.
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1 And the same exact graph is on the 

2 next page, on page 10, but it is a closer 

3 view, see what's going on closer into the 

4 tunnel. And from that, you can see, of 

5 course, the right-hand side of the graph that 

6 all three give very similar results until you 

7 get to about 200 centimeters for the 

8 parameters I put in there. Two hundred 

9 centimeters or smaller of the source is where 

10 they depart.

11 There are actually three lines on 

12 there. The small source and the symmetrical 

13 source give you essentially the same numbers 

14 on down to zero, but the large source, the 

15 concentration from that one gets extremely 

16 large as the source gets very small.

17 Again, that ends up being a 

18 violation of the condition itself because the 

19 condition of a large source was that in the 

20 center of the source, the radon reaches a 

21 theoretical maximum as if there is no 

22 diffusion.
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1 Once the source gets so small it 

2 simply can't reach that condition, there will 

3 be some diffusion away from that. So it ends 

4 up, like I said, violating the conditions of 

5 that boundary condition.

6 So we ended up using the 

7 symmetrical source because it gave us the same 

8 results as the other two in the areas where 

9 those other two apply.

10 And, using the parameters, the 

11 parameters are listed, I believe, in 

12 attachment B. And, from all of this put 

13 together, we ended up from those parameters 

14 and the symmetrical condition, we ended up 

15 estimating the concentration of 26 picocuries 

16 per liter from diffusion. And if you refer to 

17 the graph, that's where the size of the source 

18 is at least two or three hundred centimeters 

19 large and on out from there.

20 The reason I included all three in 

21 the paper was that it was kind of an 

22 interesting result. And, based on the theory 
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1 and the boundary conditions we applied to it, 

2 it kind of told us how large large is and how 

3 small small is with those conditions.

4 You could see that they give us 

5 similar results. All three give us similar 

6 results, as I said, starting around two or 

7 three hundred centimeters or larger.

8 The large source condition falls 

9 apart for sources smaller than that. And the 

10 small source condition falls apart for sizes 

11 bigger than about 1,500 centimeters.

12 So I thought that was kind of 

13 interesting itself because the obvious 

14 question on these is how large is large when 

15 you say a large source or how small is small? 

16 And the analysis actually kind of told us 

17 that.

18 And just to make sure we 

19 understand, the sizes, if you're interested, 

20 on the x-axis here, these are the sizes of the 

21 source assuming it's evenly distributed. And 

22 that is the distance from the tunnel wall to 
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1 the center of the source.

2 So when I say 300 centimeters, 

3 it's essentially roughly 9 feet from the 

4 tunnel out to the center of the source. And 

5 so you could say the source is roughly 18 feet 

6 out from the tunnel. And that seems to be 

7 about the limit of where diffusion makes much 

8 of a difference in the tunnel, at least for 

9 the parameters we put into this.

10 If you have high radon 

11 concentrations, you can even say 100 feet away 

12 from the tunnels. It really is not going to 

13 affect the tunnel concentration. And it makes 

14 sense to most people that that is not going to 

15 do a lot for tunnel concentration. It is the 

16 one radium concentration that's in closer to 

17 the tunnel that is going to affect that.

18 And that's all I have unless 

19 somebody wants some more detail.

20 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think it would 

21 be helpful to make the comment that you have 

22 on page 12 in comparing it to measurements. I 
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1 think, for a lot of people, this modeling is 

2 difficult to follow. And I think just are we 

3 in the realm of reality?

4 MR. ALLEN: Yes. And I --

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: Bring up your 

6 number that you have on page 11 and then 

7 compare it to the measurement. I think that 

8 would be helpful.

9 MR. ALLEN: Yes. I'm sorry. I 

10 forgot about including that part. The number 

11 I have on page 11, it was roughly 26 

12 picocuries per liter from the diffusion. I 

13 simply added that to the radon concentration 

14 we derived for the surface contamination 

15 inside the tunnel.

16 We came up with a total of 44.47 

17 picocuries per liter here in this paper. We 

18 did find one radon measurement at Linde, one 

19 radon measurement from quite a while back. It 

20 was not a utility tunnel. It was a conveyor 

21 tunnel that ran underneath building 30.

22 And, Chris, you're going to have 
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1 to correct me if I am wrong on any of this, 

2 but this was a conveyor tunnel where men were 

3 dumping the uranium ore on one end. And it 

4 conveyed it, I think, to actually a bucket 

5 elevator that then brought it up to a ball 

6 mill.

7 The areas where there would be 

8 spillage of ore in the tunnel would 

9 essentially be where they were loading the 

10 tunnel and then where that bucket elevator 

11 took it from the conveyor up, which is 

12 basically the two ends of the tunnel.

13 There were radon concentrations 

14 measured in various places throughout the 

15 tunnel, various links, both ends and a few 

16 places in the middle.

17 This was done November 19th of 

18 1946, which is very near -- or I might have 

19 that wrong. I'm sorry. The report was dated 

20 that. The measurements were taken October 

21 22nd of '46, very near the end of their 

22 operations with ore for the AEC. And this 
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1 radon would likely be caused by buildup of 

2 material from spillage as they were loading up 

3 the conveyor and as the conveyor dumped to the 

4 bucket elevator.

5 The highest concentration was at 

6 the bucket elevator end. It was 44 picocuries 

7 per liter. Near the middle of the tunnel, it 

8 was 13 picocuries per liter. And it was 

9 higher near the end where it was loaded up, 

10 though I don't recall what that number is. 

11 It's not in here.

12 As I said, these are probably 

13 primarily from material in the tunnel, rather 

14 than diffusion into the tunnel or anything 

15 like that, but it is near the time of the ore 

16 operations at Linde.

17 So soil contaminations you would 

18 expect to be near their maximum. So it should 

19 account for diffusion from soil contamination. 

20 And it would account for contamination in the 

21 tunnel, which I suspect in this case is 

22 probably more like a pile of material.
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1 DR. NETON: Do you know what type 

2 of ore this was at that time?

3 MR. CRAWFORD: All of the ore was 

4 gone through there. Some thousands of tons of 

5 that was African ore with full radium content.

6 DR. NETON: That's what I thought.

7 MR. CRAWFORD: All the American 

8 ores have been pre-processed with the radium 

9 --

10 MR. KATZ: Could you just -- I 

11 don't know if people on the phone can hear you 

12 so well Chris, these mikes aren't the 

13 greatest.

14 MR. CRAWFORD: The conveyor tunnel 

15 would have conveyed all of the ore that was 

16 processed at Linde. And that was all done and 

17 finished in '46, probably the Summer of '46.

18 My memory is thousands of tons of 

19 African ore with radium in secular equilibrium 

20 with uranium would have run through that 

21 tunnel, I think approximately 9,000 tons, but 

22 I'm not sure of that figure.
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1 So we're talking about a tunnel 

2 that is really heavily contaminated with 

3 processed material, which is quite a contrast 

4 to utility tunnels, which never had any 

5 processed material brought through them. They 

6 did have leakage from the outside.

7 By the way, the end, the dumping 

8 grill end, just to put a little more local 

9 color into that, the ore came in in burlap 

10 bags that were covered by a paper sleeve. I 

11 even saw documentation that the paper sleeves 

12 cost 27 cents each and they went through 1,800 

13 of them a day. And they needed to economize 

14 on them. So we have a lot of detail on how 

15 this material was handled.

16 At any rate, when the ore bags 

17 were brought in, they were stored in a corner 

18 of building 30. And then the workers would 

19 take the ore bags, cut off the tops, dump them 

20 into the floor through a braiding, where they 

21 fell on a conveyor belt, which then took them 

22 across the building to the vertical conveyor, 
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1 which also weighed the ore as it was conveyed 

2 upwards. And then it was done through a 

3 storage area at the ball mill end. From 

4 there, it was scooped in the ball mill and 

5 crushed before being dissolved in acid and so 

6 forth.

7 So a lot of material went through 

8 that tunnel. It was a smaller tunnel than the 

9 utility tunnel. And it's only used for that 

10 purpose after the war and after the 

11 ore-handling period was over, that tunnel was 

12 essentially abandoned.

13 The grating end, by the way,

14 actually had a lower radon measurement in 1946 

15 when these October of '46 measurements were 

16 made of about 6 picocuries per liter. The 

17 ball mill end, for some reason, was much 

18 higher.

19 DR. OSTROW: I assume there was no 

20 ventilation fan in this tunnel.

21 MR. CRAWFORD: Not that I'm aware 

22 of. Workers did periodically have to go 
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1 through and spill processed material. And I 

2 found memos saying that they had to wear 

3 certain overalls, they had to wear 

4 respirators, and so forth. I can't prove they 

5 did, but nonetheless, they were aware of the 

6 hazards is all I can say. But, as far as I 

7 know, there was no ventilation.

8 CHAIR ROESSLER: One question. 

9 You mentioned, of course, the major 

10 contributor was the contamination from the 

11 material in there. But also that would 

12 include the diffusion from any soil also, 

13 which would be minor, but in case there was 

14 ever a question that it certainly would 

15 include that.

16 MR. ALLEN: If there was any 

17 diffusion from the soils, it would include 

18 that. And the soil should be at about their 

19 maximum concentrations since this is right at 

20 the end of the time frame when they were 

21 handling that ore. I think my speculation was 

22 that it is mostly from the material in there, 
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1 but it is essentially from all the same 

2 sources you would see with a utility tunnel.

3 DR. NETON: It's an underground 

4 tunnel, similar dimensions, I think.

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: The question I 

6 have is, with regard to -- you mentioned in 

7 your measurements. Apparently they had more 

8 than one reading. They had them at different 

9 locations. Did you know what the technology 

10 was for making radon measurements back at that 

11 time?

12 MR. ALLEN: No. I do not. Chris 

13 is trying to look at it, but it was 

14 essentially a one-page memo with results on 

15 it.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. I don't 

17 have a description of the measurement process 

18 itself, only the results and the locations. 

19 And there are only two measurements at each 

20 location, six total measurements.

21 MR. KATZ: For the record, Mike is 

22 joining us. Welcome, Mike.
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1 MR. CRAWFORD: By the way, this 

2 tunnel is relatively short. I believe, just 

3 looking at the description of it in building 

4 30, I would say 60 to 90 feet.

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, are there 

6 any other questions from the Work Group --

7 Mike Gibson has arrived -- or from Bill Field 

8 if you're still with us since you're our radon 

9 expert?

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. Is 

11 the tunnel that short tunnel from 30 to 56 on 

12 the map? Is that --

13 MR. CRAWFORD: No. It's entirely 

14 contained within building 30 itself. It has 

15 no other connection.

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: It's all from 

17 building 30?

18 MR. CRAWFORD: Right.

19 MR. ALLEN: This is not a utility 

20 tunnel. It was a conveyor tunnel under --

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Right. I 

22 understood that, but I just wondered where it 
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1 was on this map. So it's all in building 30?

2 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes.

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay.

4 DR. MAURO: A couple of questions, 

5 John. The concentration of radium in this 

6 rock -- I guess this ore is a rock. It's not 

7 finely divided, I assume.

8 MR. CRAWFORD: It goes to a ball 

9 mill.

10 DR. MAURO: Before it went to the 

11 ball mill. So it's a rock-like material. And 

12 do you know what -- I should know this, but I 

13 don't. What is the concentration, picocuries 

14 per gram, of the radium or the uranium?

15 MR. CRAWFORD: I would have to 

16 look it up. There were various grades of 

17 African ores --

18 DR. MAURO: Oh, I know. It has --

19 MR. CRAWFORD: Various 

20 concentrations. And they actually did record 

21 the number of tons at each richness.

22 DR. MAURO: Yes. The reason I 
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1 ask, I'm trying to put it into context. We 

2 know what the concentration of the radium was 

3 in the soil and the tunnel, tunnels. And they 

4 were on the order of 10, 9, 10, 12 picocuries 

5 per gram. 

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: It depends on how 

7 you look at it.

8 DR. MAURO: Okay but on that 

9 order.

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Thirty.

11 DR. MAURO: Thirty? I assume it 

12 is much, much higher than that. I don't know 

13 the numbers. I was trying to make -- and 

14 also, unlike the finely divided material 

15 that's in the soil around the tunnel that we 

16 are concerned with, this sounds like it's 

17 rock, which, of course, is going to -- the way 

18 in which radon leaves that might be a little 

19 bit different than the way in which radon 

20 would be diffused from the finely divided 

21 soils.

22 I just want to -- so there are 
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1 aspects that are different and aspects that 

2 are similar.

3 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. I don't know 

4 if it's terribly relevant here, but during the 

5 production period when they were dealing with 

6 ores, we have building measurements of radon 

7 that are much higher than even these tunnel 

8 measurements, where they heat ore in hundreds 

9 of tons of work on the stacks. Some of those 

10 measurements were very high, I think, in 

11 excess of 100 feet.

12 DR. MAURO: But that was after 

13 they had been through the ball mill, they 

14 crushed it, and they finely divided it. And 

15 you're about to --

16 MR. CRAWFORD: We know the ball 

17 mill end did have a storage area. Quite a few 

18 tons of ore were kept.

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: The ore from the 

20 African ore being brought in --

21 MR. KATZ: Bob, a lot of people 

22 have a hard time hearing your voice. So if 
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1 you could just speak up?

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Sure.

3 MR. KATZ: I think there's a mike 

4 right there, but if you can, with the green 

5 light -- everybody in the room can hear you 

6 fine, but -- no. I think it's the green. 

7 That's the telephone mike right there. If you 

8 could just pull that towards you? No. Don't 

9 push it. Just pull it towards you.

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: That's what I'm 

11 doing. I was moving. Oh, this one?

12 MR. KATZ: Yes. There you go.

13 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I've got you.

14 MR. KATZ: There you go. Thank 

15 you.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. I was going 

17 to answer John's question because I remember 

18 we looked at the question of the radium in the 

19 burlap bags. And the processes -- I reviewed 

20 the whole thing, the whole burlap bag.

21 And when they came in, when the 

22 burlap bags -- as I say, in the paper sleeves, 
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1 only sometimes the paper sleeves I think were 

2 torn. And when they came in the boxcar, they 

3 actually had to open the doors of the boxcar 

4 and ventilate them for -- I don't know -- 24 

5 hours, whatever --

6 MR. CRAWFORD: That's right.

7 DR. ANIGSTEIN: -- because it was 

8 impossible to enter. The radon levels were so 

9 high because the African ore was processed in 

10 Africa, in the Belgian Congo.

11 The only reason -- I can't resist 

12 making a little historical aside. The only 

13 reason we were able to get the African ores 

14 was that the Belgian government, unlike the 

15 king of Belgium, did not surrender to the 

16 Germans. They evacuated to England. And they 

17 controlled the Belgian Congo. And, therefore, 

18 they traded with the United States. Otherwise 

19 the Germans would have had it.

20 MR. CRAWFORD: They only gave up 

21 title to the radium in the ore in 1983.

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes. Okay. Yes. 
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1 But what they did was -- anyway, that aside, 

2 what they did in the Congo was they processed 

3 the ore, meaning they kind of separated the 

4 ore from the dirt. But they did not 

5 chemically separate it. So it came with all 

6 the radium that was in it normally.

7 Other ores, there was some 

8 pre-processing on location where some radium

9 was removed is my understanding. But this one 

10 was as hot as you get.

11 And Chris is right. The radium 

12 was the valuable commodity as far as they were 

13 concerned. And they wanted to get the radium 

14 back.

15 To make a long story short, there 

16 was a lot of radium in the ores.

17 MR. KATZ: Do you want to check in 

18 on Bill Field?

19 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Any other 

20 questions? Anybody on the phone have any 

21 questions?

22 MS. BONSIGNORE: I actually have a 
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1 question if I might ask it at this time.

2 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think it's 

3 Antoinette, right?

4 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, it is.

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: Go ahead.

6 MS. BONSIGNORE: This is the first 

7 that I'm hearing of anything being referred to 

8 as a conveyor tunnel. And I'm wondering. 

9 Someone made a statement that after the 1940s, 

10 that this conveyor tunnel was essentially 

11 abandoned and that nobody worked in it or went 

12 through it. I'm just wondering how you know 

13 that.

14 MR. CRAWFORD: The purpose of the 

15 tunnel was to convey ore from one part of 

16 building 30 to another. After '46, no more 

17 ore was ever processed. After that, they 

18 brought in uranium oxide, which had already 

19 been highly processed. That came in in 

20 barrels.

21 MS. BONSIGNORE: That's not my 

22 question. My question is: I know that there 
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1 wasn't any ore being conveyed there, but what 

2 I'm asking is since this is under building 30, 

3 how do you know that workers didn't use it for 

4 some other purpose in later years?

5 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, I can't think 

6 of a reason they would. So if that's the --

7 MS. BONSIGNORE: But you don't 

8 know.

9 MR. CRAWFORD: There was no --

10 it's hard to find negative documentation. 

11 Nobody writes a paper saying that there were 

12 no workers not using the tunnels. We have no 

13 worker testimony from anyone who ever said 

14 they were in such a tunnel.

15 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I would 

16 like the opportunity to actually ask the 

17 workers this question because they may have 

18 used a different term to describe this tunnel. 

19 And they may have actually worked in this 

20 tunnel.

21 I think that would be a relevant 

22 question to be asked so the Working Group 
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1 could have a full understanding of whether 

2 workers actually used this tunnel in later 

3 years.

4 MR. CRAWFORD: At any rate, it may 

5 not be as relevant as you think because the 

6 levels that are proposed in the radon model we 

7 now have are above that level that was 

8 measured directly in the tunnel.

9 In other words, if the workers are 

10 already exposed in the utility tunnel and 

11 we're allowing for that.

12 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, does 

13 that --

14 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I don't 

15 understand why you wouldn't want to have as 

16 much information from the workers as possible.

17 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, there's no 

18 reason not to have the information. I quite 

19 agree with you. I'm just saying I'm not sure 

20 it should hold up the Committee's 

21 deliberations unless it is really going to 

22 make a difference.
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1 If we can think of some scenario 

2 under which it would make a difference --

3 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I'm not a 

4 health physicist. So I can't really, you 

5 know, challenge you on something like this. 

6 It's difficult for me to challenge anybody on 

7 these technical documents.

8 What I'm simply suggesting is that 

9 I be given an opportunity to ask the workers 

10 simple questions.

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, I 

12 think as we get on further in the day and wrap 

13 this up, we certainly will be talking about 

14 your comments here.

15 I think that my question at this 

16 point or I would like to have somebody say 

17 what we are looking at is the diffusion model 

18 that was presented and looking at this data to 

19 kind of evaluate that diffusion model. And I 

20 would like for somebody to state how pertinent 

21 this situation in these tunnels would be to, 

22 conveyor tunnels be to the utility tunnel --
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1 with the diffusion from the soil, would all 

2 the parameters be about the same so that this 

3 could be looked at certainly bounding since 

4 there was not only diffusion from the soil but 

5 all this other material?

6 MR. ALLEN: I think the conveyor 

7 tunnel would be a -- it should in theory --

8 you would think it would exhibit more radon 

9 than utility tunnels. You're going to get the 

10 same radon diffusion. I mean, it's subject to 

11 radon diffusion from the soils just as much as 

12 utility tunnels.

13 The radon should never be any 

14 higher than what it was when it was first put 

15 on the ground there, which is that the 

16 material would have been visible material. I 

17 think Chris said that they went in from time 

18 to time to scoop up the material, you know, 

19 basically reclaim that material, and put it on 

20 a conveyor.

21 I don't think anybody has ever 

22 suggested there was enough material in the
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1 utility tunnels to actually recover and scoop 

2 it up or anything like that. So it certainly 

3 sounds like there's considerably more material 

4 in the conveyor tunnel than in the utility 

5 tunnels.

6 As one would expect, there was no 

7 reason to believe the diffusion would be less 

8 in the conveyor tunnel than in the utility 

9 tunnels. And it certainly seems like the 

10 conveyor tunnel would have all the same 

11 mechanisms, just more of those mechanisms.

12 And we intended to be bounding 

13 with the utility tunnel model. It was 

14 simplified some with the one dimension, et 

15 cetera, but I think the utility tunnel or the 

16 conveyor tunnel survey kind of backs up that 

17 we're in the credible range and likely 

18 bounding.

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: John, let me ask 

20 you a question -- Jim Lockey. You had said 

21 that the diffusion for radon will be different 

22 from a rock than something that has been 
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1 ground into a finer particulate. Is that 

2 right?

3 DR. MAURO: Yes.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: Would that be the 

5 reason that at the end of the ball mill -- at 

6 the ball mill, the radiation levels are higher 

7 than at the beginning of the tunnel?

8 DR. MAURO: I don't know.

9 DR. NETON: It's the same product 

10 at both ends. It just got dumped there.

11 DR. OSTROW: Yes. It sounds like 

12 the physical --

13 DR. NETON: It's a different 

14 physical product at that point. I think there 

15 are just more of it.

16 DR. OSTROW: Yes, it's not like 

17 the physical process that you add more ore at 

18 the ball mill side that, you know, landed on 

19 the floor. It sounds like --

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: Well, I was 

21 thinking a ball mill is something that is 

22 going to --
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1 DR. MAURO: Yes. That's later, 

2 though. Is that upstairs?

3 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes.

4 DR. MAURO: This is just that they 

5 conveyed it. The rock is just moving through 

6 here to go to an elevator that went upstairs, 

7 where it was hit by the ball mill, where it 

8 was ground down to I guess a finer so that it 

9 would interact with the sulfuric acid, 

10 whatever was used to digest it.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: What were the 

12 levels at the ball mill, then? Do you 

13 remember?

14 DR. NETON: Forty-four picocuries.

15 MR. ALLEN: That's in the conveyor 

16 at the ball mill end of it or in the tunnel.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: Actually at the 

18 ball mill? Do you know that?

19 DR. NETON: No.

20 MR. ALLEN: I don't. Do you know 

21 that, Chris?

22 MEMBER BEACH: Well, I have a 
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1 question on the model. You said it was 

2 one-dimensional. Does that take into account 

3 all the possibilities of all the radon that 

4 was in that area? Is there another way to 

5 model it so that you can get more --

6 MR. ALLEN: It can get more 

7 sophisticated. You can get very hardcore into 

8 modeling, you know. It is one-dimensional, 

9 meaning just straight out from the tunnel.

10 It could be modeled to the 

11 vertical dimension, but the other, that is 

12 going to make the levels go down because that 

13 is one of the big removal mechanisms from the 

14 soil, is diffusion into the air. And that's 

15 not accounted for in this model.

16 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

17 DR. MAURO: I did have a question. 

18 What you are doing is creating analogous 

19 situations. Here are the tunnels that we are 

20 interested in. Here is the conveyor tunnel.

21 I know you had several hundred 

22 bore holes where soil was collected in the 
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1 soil around the tunnel. Is the conveyor 

2 tunnel also encompassed? That is, is it also 

3 sitting in soil that has the same 

4 concentration or was it located where all 

5 those walls were taken so one could say that, 

6 you know, the contamination of the soil 

7 outside the conveyor tunnel was sort of more 

8 or less the same as it was outside the other 

9 tunnels or is this a different location 

10 altogether?

11 MR. ALLEN: There were holes 

12 drilled through the flooring of building 30, 

13 bore holes drilled through. I don't know how 

14 close they were to where this conveyor tunnel 

15 is. Do you know that one, Chris?

16 MR. CRAWFORD: Building 30 is 

17 rather a special case. In other words, I don't 

18 think it would necessarily be comparable to 

19 the general contamination of the grounds in 

20 between the buildings, which is mainly where 

21 the tunnels ran.

22 Building 30 processed all of the 
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1 ore. Yet, early in the history of building 

2 30, it had dirt floors. Then they poured 

3 concrete. Now there is a foot concrete there 

4 on top of the floor for these measurements. 

5 In '93, for instance, that's what they found.

6 So whether there was contamination 

7 under building 30, I'm not sure that it's 

8 representative. And you could look at how 

9 close it was to the tunnel.

10 I think, actually, John, I think 

11 you mentioned, you or Steve, at the last 

12 meeting that five meters was the effective --

13 DR. MAURO: Yes. That was the 

14 number I pulled from the literature. I went 

15 back to try to find that.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: Right.

17 DR. MAURO: And I didn't.

18 MR. CRAWFORD: I think in this 

19 case, building 30 would have been located more 

20 than five meters from the utility tunnel. So 

21 if that helps anyone out.

22 Bob?
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Well, first of 

2 all, I've got some illustrations I was going 

3 to present. So maybe I'll wait until --

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think it would 

5 be good to jump to that next. I think what 

6 we're trying to do here, at least my objective 

7 in asking the question about these 

8 measurements, was to evaluate the reality of 

9 those measurements.

10 Were the conveyor tunnels, with 

11 their content, with their construction similar 

12 to the utility tunnels?

13 DR. MAURO: Yes. Everything else 

14 being equal -- and the only difference between 

15 the tunnels and the conveyor tunnels is the 

16 fact that the conveyor tunnels contained this 

17 inventory of some quantity of ore that clearly 

18 has relatively high concentration radium. One 

19 could make a fundamental argument. Of course, 

20 it's going to be worse in the conveyor 

21 tunnels.

22 However, the things that might be 
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1 different -- and that's why I posed the 

2 question -- is the level of the concentration 

3 of the radium in the soil around both tunnels. 

4 And the second one, which might be more 

5 important, is a fan.

6 I know that the tunnels we are 

7 concerned with had an exhaust fan, low 

8 turnover, joined negative pressure creating a 

9 vector transport. Did the conveyor tunnel 

10 have a similar situation because if it did, 

11 then we have a situation that the conveyor 

12 tunnel in many respects -- the only difference 

13 is the fact that it had some ore inside it.

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: But isn't that a 

15 huge difference?

16 DR. MAURO: The ore inside should 

17 make a huge difference, make it far worse.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Were those conveyor 

19 tunnels connected to the utility tunnels in 

20 any way?

21 MR. CRAWFORD: No.

22 MS. BONSIGNORE: Are you sure?
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1 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes.

2 CHAIR ROESSLER: So if the rock 

3 makes the huge difference, then these should 

4 be way over estimates. But I just want to 

5 read through the fine point that we're not 

6 missing something and not saying that these 

7 tunnels were different and, therefore, this is 

8 not a real upper bound.

9 MR. ALLEN: And I am just going to 

10 mention one thing as far as that ventilation. 

11 There were I think six places throughout the 

12 tunnel where the radon was measured and you 

13 see some significant differences like 44 at 

14 one end and I don't know what the other 

15 numbers are.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: Six in the middle.

17 MR. ALLEN: Six in the middle.

18 MR. CRAWFORD: Thirteen in the --

19 MR. ALLEN: The middle seemed to 

20 be the lowest concentration, which was maybe 

21 the furthest away from the material you would 

22 expect to spill. And having that variance in 
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1 the 60 to 90-foot-long tunnel, it seemed to me 

2 there couldn't have been a lot of flow or 

3 there would be better mixing than that.

4 It seems to imply there was little 

5 or no ventilation in that tunnel. And it 

6 would have been a conveyor tunnel, where you 

7 would not normally have people working other 

8 than to repair that conveyor. So it makes 

9 sense that there wouldn't be a great deal of 

10 ventilation.

11 DR. MAURO: Interestingly enough, 

12 the ventilation issue, just as a concept, one 

13 would think on first principle that, oh, 

14 ventilation would have helped to improve and 

15 reduce concentrations. But, in fact, the 

16 ventilation very often if there is a 

17 substantial source of radon outside the 

18 tunnel, it actually makes things worse because 

19 you're bringing the radon in.

20 So it is an interesting -- see, 

21 I'm just trying to say, everything else being 

22 equal except you have rock inside the tunnel, 
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1 I would say the story is over. You have made 

2 your case. I mean, I sort of come to the end 

3 pretty quick.

4 But, I mean, if they're both 

5 duplicates of each other except in one case 

6 you've got ore and everything else is equal, 

7 the tunnel, the basic structure of the tunnel, 

8 the concentrations in the soil around the 

9 tunnel, but the only difference is the 

10 conveyor tunnel had the rock, you've just 

11 established the bounding condition for all 

12 intents and purposes. But we don't know that 

13 necessarily would be the case.

14 I guess that's what I'm -- that's 

15 an important piece of information, this actual 

16 measurement. From the very beginning I've 

17 been arguing measurements in the end is what 

18 you got. In fact, quite frankly, I would love 

19 to have seen real measurements made in the 

20 tunnels themselves.

21 DR. NETON: Well, I do have some 

22 information on that. On August 23rd, we sent 
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1 a letter to the site manager asking for 

2 permission to take measurements in the tunnels 

3 -- well, first asking if they had any 

4 measurements; if they did, if they would 

5 provide them to us; and if they didn't, would 

6 they grant us permission to take measurements. 

7 It went from Stu Hinnefeld directly to the 

8 site manager. And we received no response up 

9 until a couple of weeks ago, maybe a week ago. 

10 I forget. But Stu finally --

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: I wonder if 

12 people can hear you, Jim. I think you --

13 DR. NETON: Stu finally got a hold 

14 of the site manager. And she indicated that 

15 it was her opinion that the tunnels are 

16 undergoing active remediation in any respects 

17 and to a large degree under the control of the 

18 Army Corps of Engineers. So she referred us 

19 to the Army Corps of Engineers for permission 

20 to enter the tunnel.

21 I talked to Chris Crawford about 

22 this. And we spoke to the Army Corps of 
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1 Engineers some time ago. And it was their 

2 impression that the tunnels were under the 

3 control of Praxair. We sort of got a little 

4 bit of a runaround here.

5 DR. MAURO: I am sorry, the tunnels 

6 are what?

7 DR. NETON: Under the control of 

8 Praxair, the current operator. Both may be 

9 true. It seems like some portions are 

10 undergoing remediation by the Corps and some 

11 are not. And so maybe there's -- depending on 

12 what is going on, certain people had 

13 jurisdiction.

14 So this all happened fairly 

15 recently. Chris -- I'm speaking for Chris, 

16 but I think what he did was he spoke to our 

17 Army Corps of Engineers contact and basically 

18 relayed our latest feedback from Praxair and 

19 asked him to sort of sort out the details for 

20 it as to what we might be able to do.

21 We do believe it was indicated by 

22 the site manager that some of the tunnels may 
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1 have already been remediated or destroyed, 

2 actually. So we're trying to find out what is 

3 left and what we might be able to measure. So 

4 it's still in the process.

5 That is still a possibility, but 

6 it's been somewhat difficult for us to get to 

7 the bottom line. You think it would be 

8 simple, but as Bob found out dealing with 

9 bureaucracies and agencies and with other

10 issues. Sometimes you get to a bigger 

11 pointing at delay.

12 So, you know, that is actually 

13 still in the works. Of course, that would be 

14 a very interesting measurement to take as 

15 well. Interestingly, this tunnel, conveyor 

16 tunnel, measurement came to us after the 

17 calculations were done. This was not sort of 

18 a reverse engineered system, they developed 

19 this model and then, lo and behold, just about 

20 the time the calculations were done, ORAU 

21 through a data capture located this one day of 

22 measurement for radon -- and that is the only 
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1 piece we have right now -- underground. We 

2 thought it was a fairly interesting piece.

3 We're not suggesting that this 

4 validates the model, but I think it's 

5 certainly a piece of information that adds to 

6 this puzzle. And, you know, 40 picocuries per 

7 liter underground in a tunnel that conveyed 

8 fairly concentrated uranium ore -- you can 

9 makes a pretty good case that it is in that 

10 ballpark. I don't know that we can get things 

11 in 100 picocuries per liter.

12 DR. OSTROW: Jim, getting back to 

13 the dealings with the Army Corps of Engineers 

14 and Praxair, did they mention the fans still 

15 working? Do any of the fans still work?

16 DR. NETON: We haven't gotten to 

17 that level of detail at all.

18 DR. OSTROW: Okay.

19 DR. MAURO: As a part of the 

20 health and safety program, people are 

21 obviously working inside of that tunnel to 

22 remediate it. Are they taking radon 
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1 measurements to make sure that --

2 DR. NETON: Well, we asked that 

3 question. I mean, we're trying to find that 

4 out. And so far we don't know.

5 MR. CRAWFORD: Their concern seems 

6 to be asbestos.

7 DR. NETON: Interestingly enough, 

8 if you look at the Army Corps, the Army Corps 

9 did a characterization of the tunnel complex 

10 in 2002. January 2002, they issued a report. 

11 I don't remember exactly when. It was the 

12 first time people went in and actually did 

13 measurements.

14 And that is the basis of the 

15 surface contamination measurements, which I'll 

16 remind people that the calculation we did that 

17 gives up to 18 picocuries per liter in the 

18 tunnel, assumes that the entire complex is 

19 coated with the highest concentration per 

20 square meter that was measured. So it's a 

21 fairly conservative number.

22 But they did this survey with the 
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1 intent of trying to determine whether it 

2 really needed to be remediated. They only 

3 identified two or three locations where there 

4 was really sufficient in-tunnel contaminations 

5 to warrant remediation.

6 And they also did some 

7 calculations for the dose that would be 

8 associated with certain activities, you know, 

9 remediation activities in the tunnel. Their 

10 doses, frankly, are very low. And they have 

11 included radon in the calculation. They are 

12 like 25-30 millirem per year.

13 Interestingly, though, this does 

14 not include, as far as I can tell or anyone 

15 can tell, the diffusion of radon from the 

16 radium in the soil outside the tunnels. As 

17 far as this calculation goes, it only appears 

18 that they considered the surface contamination 

19 inside the tunnel. So that extra piece is 

20 what was missing from their analysis.

21 They certainly didn't appear to be 

22 concerned about radon in the tunnel, though. 
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1 There's nothing in there about measurement of 

2 radon. They've actually inferred it based on 

3 the radium contamination.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: When was that done 

5 again?

6 DR. NETON: Well, the report was 

7 issued in 2002. I have forgotten when the 

8 measurements were taken. I believe like 2001.

9 DR. MAURO: Yes. It was one year 

10 earlier, 2001.

11 DR. NETON: About a year earlier. 

12 And so it's a fairly detailed square meter by 

13 square meter survey of the entire existing 

14 tunnel complex at the time. So we know very 

15 well what the levels of contamination are 

16 inside the tunnel.

17 The other thing I would point out 

18 is that we have to remember that the radon 

19 associated with natural radium in the soil for 

20 purposes of calculation is not included in the 

21 calculation because it's not covered under the 

22 residual period. Only the AEC-derived radium 
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1 is covered. That's why Dave's model only went 

2 down one meter and didn't consider what would 

3 normally be about a picocurie per gram of 

4 radium in all soils or something to that 

5 effect. That's not included in this 

6 calculation.

7 Now, the measurement of 46, 

8 whatever they measure in the conveyor tunnel, 

9 would include natural radon as well.

10 DR. MAURO: I have a question. I 

11 guess I know we have had other discussions 

12 regarding the contribution of natural. And I 

13 remember some words to the effect that if you 

14 can't make a distinction between what is from 

15 the source and what's been natural, you have 

16 to include --

17 DR. NETON: That's correct.

18 DR. MAURO: So I guess I'm --

19 DR. NETON: For example, if you 

20 have an actual measurement, you cannot 

21 distinguish how much of that measurement was 

22 continued from --
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1 DR. MAURO: With a model --

2 DR. NETON: With a model you can. 

3 The model does not have to consider all --

4 DR. MAURO: I've got it. Very 

5 good.

6 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we're at 

7 the point now of unless somebody else has 

8 questions going to SC&A. And, as I understand 

9 it, SC&A, you have no problems with the 

10 mathematics? That's good?

11 MEMBER FIELD: Gen?

12 CHAIR ROESSLER: Let me finish the 

13 sentence. Then we'll get Bill.

14 -- and that you agree with their 

15 calculations with regard to the contamination, 

16 but it's infiltration you want to talk about.

17 But I hear a voice on the phone.

18 MR. KATZ: Bill?

19 MEMBER FIELD: Gen, can you hear 

20 me okay?

21 MR. KATZ: Yes, very clearly.

22 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. Good. I 
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1 just had a couple of questions. I was just 

2 wondering if in any of the calculations you 

3 considered the contribution of thoron at all. 

4 MR. ALLEN: I caught every other 

5 word there. Can you repeat that, please?

6 MEMBER FIELD: I was wondering in 

7 your assessments of exposures if you thought 

8 about the contribution of thoron at all.

9 MR. ALLEN: No, we haven't.

10 DR. NETON: I don't think they 

11 ever dealt with -- did they do a calculation 

12 at Linde at all?

13 MR. ALLEN: No. I don't have any 

14 information that they dealt with thorium.

15 DR. NETON: Any thoron that would 

16 be present would be from natural sources. And 

17 that would not be covered during the residual 

18 period.

19 MEMBER FIELD: And I had some 

20 other questions about where you came up with 

21 your emanation fraction from the soil.

22 MR. ALLEN: If I remember right, I 
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1 just used one for lack of a better number. 

2 I'm checking to make sure I'm not lying to you 

3 here. That is correct. Okay. Yes. We just 

4 assumed it all emanated from the matrix, none 

5 of it was held up.

6 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. And just a 

7 quick question, how -- I'm just getting into 

8 this late. So I'm trying to catch up with a 

9 lot of information. The soil samples that 

10 were taken, how representative do you think 

11 they are of the area in question?

12 MR. ALLEN: Well, we did not -- I 

13 didn't get a chance to actually do a hard core 

14 type of analysis that I would like to do, 

15 which would have been to simply essentially 

16 separate the site into exactly where the 

17 tunnels are and analyze only the samples that 

18 are within about I'd say 15-30 feet from the 

19 tunnels, instead of the entire site.

20 We had everything in a 

21 spreadsheet. And it was too much to sort 

22 through in a timely manner. It wasn't huge 
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1 differences other than, you know, some of the 

2 high outliers were well away from the tunnels.

3 So we ended up just analyzing that 

4 and coming up with a 95th of essentially all 

5 of the site samples that were zero to three 

6 feet deep.

7 DR. NETON: Didn't you exclude 

8 some of the ones that were obviously dumped 

9 material?

10 MR. ALLEN: No. We excluded some 

11 that were in the original spreadsheet that 

12 were actually another site.

13 DR. NETON: Right.

14 MR. ALLEN: We would obviously 

15 exclude those. It's simply an error in the 

16 spreadsheet. But for everything else that was 

17 at the Linde site, we used all the samples.

18 Like I said, I would have rather 

19 used just those close to the tunnels 

20 themselves, but you have to actually grid out 

21 where each sample was. And there's quite a 

22 few. And I didn't get to that point.
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1 MEMBER FIELD: And I guess, just 

2 like you were mentioning, you could probably 

3 measure this now, which I think would be a 

4 great idea to do, take current measurements, 

5 where perhaps you can control the ventilation, 

6 you'll know what the soil moisture is around 

7 the tunnel. I think that's a great idea.

8 I guess I'm -- what you mentioned 

9 before is that you really don't know about the 

10 conditions of the measurements that were made 

11 previously, how long, what the duration was, 

12 anything regarding what kind of detector was 

13 used. Is that correct?

14 MR. ALLEN: That's for the 

15 conveyor tunnel measurements? That's correct. 

16 We came across the one-page memo essentially. 

17 And it's just the results.

18 DR. NETON: That was not HASL at 

19 that time, was it?

20 MR. CRAWFORD: I didn't see an 

21 author of the measurements.

22 DR. NETON: We should be able to 
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1 determine actually what entity made the 

2 measurements. And, you know, there were 

3 certain standards that didn't exist at the 

4 time. These measurements were in 

5 micromicrocuries per liter, sort of in vogue 

6 at the time, instead of picocuries per liter.

7 I don't know if this was like an 

8 evacuation flask, you know, like a Lucas flask 

9 or --

10 MR. CRAWFORD: Right.

11 DR. NETON: I think that is what 

12 they were using primarily in that era at 

13 Mallinckrodt if I'm not mistaken.

14 MEMBER FIELD: What this sounds 

15 like is some sort of grab sampling.

16 DR. NETON: That is right.

17 MEMBER FIELD: It will be a very 

18 short-term measurement that may or may not 

19 reflect the long-term concentration.

20 DR. NETON: Good point. Yes, this 

21 is always the case now. You look and look for 

22 measurements, but then once you get them, it 
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1 actually raises more questions than it 

2 answers.

3 CHAIR ROESSLER: Anything else, 

4 Bill?

5 MEMBER FIELD: Not now. Thank 

6 you.

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Are we 

8 ready for Bob's presentation?

9 MR. KATZ: Bob, do you need to 

10 hook up your computer to the --

11 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes. Maybe we can 

12 just take a five-minute break?

13 MR. KATZ: Let's take a ten-minute 

14 break because we have to hook up Bob's 

15 computer to the projector here. It's five 

16 after by my watch. So a quarter after?

17 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay.

18 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

19 matter went off the record at 10:07 a.m. and 

20 resumed at 10:21 a.m.)

21 MR. KATZ: We are reconvening 

22 after a short break. And we are just about to 
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1 hear a presentation from Bob Anigstein, who 

2 led the SC&A review, did Allen's paper on the 

3 tunnels.

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: We begin with -- I 

5 would preface this, we only got Dave Allen's 

6 report on October 1st. So this has been 

7 extremely limited in terms of what I will be 

8 able to review.

9 And the first thing we did was to 

10 go over the model, go over the equations. So 

11 the first set of equations, which modeled the 

12 radon emission from the surface, surface 

13 contamination of the radium in the tunnel we 

14 have no problem with.

15 The equation is simple, 

16 straightforward. It is correct. We verified 

17 all the parameters. And they're all either 

18 correct or reasonable. But, you know, either 

19 they were documented or they're reasonable 

20 assumptions. So there is nothing further to 

21 discuss that.

22 The diffusion model is much more 
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1 complicated. As you can tell from Dave's 

2 presentation, the first thing we did, I did, 

3 was go through and actually solve the 

4 differential equation and derive the general 

5 solution.

6 I did come across something 

7 interesting, which is just a side note, that 

8 one of the conditions that comes out when you 

9 evaluate an integral and for this to get this, 

10 this is one possible general solution, one 

11 possible functional form.

12 And this functional form I'll have 

13 to go back and verify before I make it formal. 

14 Before I make a formal write-up, it's not in 

15 my report.

16 But the tentative version I made 

17 was that this is valid only if product, K1 

18 times K2, is a positive number. Either K1 and 

19 K2 both have to be positive or both have to be 

20 negative.

21 So in the case of the symmetrical 

22 boundary condition, that condition is met. 
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1 And I believe that is why you get a 

2 well-behaved function, which makes physical 

3 sense.

4 With the large and the small 

5 source, it's not the case. And I think that's 

6 the reason why, not because there is anything 

7 wrong with the physical assumptions behind, 

8 but this particular function does not apply to 

9 that.

10 It's just an aside because we 

11 concentrated on the symmetrical boundary 

12 conditions. And the mathematics there is 

13 correct.

14 MR. KATZ: One pause. Let me just 

15 check and make sure folks on the phone can 

16 hear Bob well because I hear some feedback. 

17 So, Bill or Antoinette or someone, can you 

18 tell me if you're hearing Bob well?

19 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm fine.

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. Good. Thank 

21 you. Okay.

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. So much for 
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1 the math. In going on to the actual 

2 parameters, the actual input data, the detail, 

3 it's said the devil is in the details.

4 First question, first comment that 

5 we have is the radium concentrations that were 

6 used. And it was already talked about to some 

7 extent.

8 Now, okay. We have this drawing 

9 that came out. It was obtained during the 

10 worker interviews. One of the workers 

11 apparently took a map.

12 And then the red is his markup in 

13 ink and showing the location of the tunnels. 

14 And, of course, they go through the site, but 

15 one particular area is they are around 

16 building 30. Here is one that seems to be 

17 under the edge of building 30, another branch 

18 of it passing near building 30. So that seems 

19 to be.

20 And the reason I am interested in 

21 this is I was trying to identify the various 

22 areas because the document that I used, I 
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1 didn't have the database. I didn't have time 

2 to obtain it. So I looked at one of the site 

3 remediation -- just now identified it at --

4 what was the name of that? SRB-9026 was --

5 let's see if I can find the name of it.

6 MR. CRAWFORD: The entire document 

7 if you want it --

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Wait a second. I 

9 have it here now. Okay. This is the Bechtel 

10 remedial investigation report right here.

11 And that contains several tables 

12 with the radium concentration by area for the 

13 different areas on the site. So the one I 

14 could identify that made sense -- others I 

15 didn't know where they were, quite frankly. 

16 So I picked area 4 because area 4 -- this is 

17 from the Site Profile -- is, in fact, where 

18 building 30 is, the tunnels, or at least a 

19 portion of the tunnels are.

20 Also area 4 -- they had areas 1, 

21 2, 3 and 4, among other things -- the average 

22 concentration of area 4 is significantly 
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1 higher. And the calculation I made was I took 

2 the 46, a much smaller number of measurement. 

3 There were 46 measurements.

4 And to obtain the 95th percentile 

5 -- and this is a mathematical statistical 

6 difference we have that was used by NIOSH --

7 the method that was in Dave Allen's report is 

8 to take the median concentration; in other 

9 words, simply add them all up, take the middle 

10 one, and then calculate the geometric standard 

11 deviation, multiply it by the usual 1.645, and 

12 add that to the middle guy, the median. And 

13 that gives you the 95th percentile.

14 That is fine if you have a true 

15 log-normal distribution, which so far I have 

16 never seen in all of the data in all of the 

17 different sites and studies that we have done 

18 for NIOSH.

19 I'm not the lead on this, but I've 

20 never seen anything that's really, truly 

21 log-normal. They're typically skewed towards 

22 the high end.
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1 Now, the method that seems to me 

2 to be unbiased and makes no assumption is to 

3 simply do the rank order, simply list all the 

4 concentrations, all the measurements in order, 

5 and take the 95th percentile. If you had 100, 

6 it would be easy, it would be the 95th member.

7 And, actually, Excel, I just 

8 discovered, I didn't even realize it -- has a 

9 function that will tell you the -- you simply 

10 tell it the array on your spreadsheet. And 

11 then you can take any percentiles. If you put 

12 in .95, it will read off the 95th percentile.

13 So it is a very easy calculation 

14 to make. And it's also a valid one because it 

15 makes no assumption about what kind of 

16 distribution. Is it normal? Is it 

17 log-normal? Is it standard, whatever?

18 So in this case, on the data that 

19 I was using, using Dave Allen's method, I came 

20 up with 16 picocuries per gram because it was 

21 a higher level than the others.

22 However, using this rank order 
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1 method, it is 28 picocuries per gram. It is 

2 significantly higher. And to my mind, it is a 

3 more appropriate measurement.

4 Okay. Having done that --

5 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry, Bob. So 

6 you come up with 28 as the 95th percentile for 

7 the value for the model as input and the 

8 number that David --

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: 9.5.

10 DR. MAURO: 9.5 versus -- okay. I 

11 just wanted to get that clear. A factor of 

12 three.

13 DR. NETON: Where were these 

14 values, Bob?

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Pardon?

16 DR. NETON: Where were these 

17 values?

18 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Forty-six in area 

19 4.

20 DR. NETON: Where in relation to 

21 --

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Just a 
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1 second. Just a second. It was here. Here we 

2 go.

3 DR. NETON: And didn't you take a 

4 formal --

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: This is area 4. 

6 This is the building 30. I don't have a 

7 single map. I have to go --

8 DR. NETON: Right. But --

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Just one second. 

10 So here we go.

11 DR. NETON: How do you --

12 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Here. I'm 

13 pointing at screen. Here are the tunnels. A 

14 lot of them are around, not all of them but a 

15 lot of the area is around building 30. And 

16 now --

17 DR. NETON: Your maps --

18 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Here is area 4. 

19 So area 4 is around building 30. Now, what 

20 I'm suggesting -- I want to preface this. I 

21 said the same thing about other studies that I 

22 have been involved in, like JSI.
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1 I am not saying that I have the 

2 right answer and this is the model. I am 

3 simply pointing out there are alternate 

4 assumptions, which are reasonable and 

5 plausible, which give you higher values. And 

6 that would -- and the message is to refine the 

7 models, not to accept our numbers.

8 DR. NETON: I'm just trying to get 

9 a sense of where these samples were taken 

10 within area 4.

11 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I have no idea.

12 DR. NETON: I thought at one point 

13 --

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I don't have a --

15 DR. NETON: You had cited a bore 

16 hole value --

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I don't have a 

18 bore hole map.

19 DR. NETON: Under building 30 or 

20 something like that.

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: One was under 

22 building 30.
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1 DR. NETON: Right.

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: They did say there 

3 was one measurement.

4 DR. NETON: That was one of the 

5 higher ones, right?

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes. The --

7 DR. NETON: Again, you know, are 

8 these really representative as well of the 

9 area? I don't know.

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I think that 

11 Dave's point, which he said they didn't do 

12 what he acknowledged, is that it would make 

13 sense to go -- to take the map and take the 

14 locations --

15 DR. NETON: Correct.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Of the bore holes 

17 and create a belt of a few meters around the 

18 edges of the tunnels. And if you would use 

19 those, that would be more reasonable. Again, 

20 I'm just throwing an alternate assumption.

21 DR. NETON: Interestingly, could 

22 you show up your map of the tunnels again? It 
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1 appears to be somewhat different than the 

2 FUSRAP, the map that's in the 2002 FUSRAP.

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, the problem 

4 here, I'll tell you what the problem here is, 

5 orientation. Just one second.

6 DR. NETON: No. It's not where 

7 you take it but the location of the tunnels in 

8 relation to the buildings.

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Here we 

10 are. Here are the same orientations.

11 DR. NETON: For example, you seem 

12 to have a building 30 tunnel going virtually 

13 underneath building 30.

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Well, all I know 

15 is --

16 DR. NETON: In the FUSRAP map, it 

17 actually goes kind of in the middle of the 

18 street between --

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Just a second. 

20 I'm going to the wrong thing here. I was 

21 trying to stand it on its side. There we go. 

22 Okay. This is what we have. This is what 
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1 the worker gave. This is what I worked with.

2 Again, this was a very quick -- I 

3 only had two days on this. So I didn't have 

4 time for a lot of data collection. This is 

5 not a thorough, thorough going -- this is not 

6 a typical SC&A product in which I'm involved, 

7 which is thorough and exhaustive and takes 

8 months. This was done in a week.

9 So here is where this particular 

10 worker showed the tunnels to be in relation to 

11 building 30. I did not have the -- I did not 

12 look at the map.

13 DR. NETON: Yes. The figure 1.1 

14 -- FUSRAP report has a very detailed, well 

15 drawn map of all the tunnels and the 

16 contamination level that was in the tunnels.

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And where is this?

18 DR. NETON: Figure 1.1 of the 

19 January 2002 FUSRAP report.

20 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay.

21 DR. NETON: Well, they look 

22 somewhat a little different than --
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: That's volume one?

2 DR. NETON: No. It's just a 

3 report. It's --

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I mean, I was 

5 using the --

6 DR. NETON: It's in the 2002 

7 report, January 2002.

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, is that the IT 

9 report?

10 DR. NETON: U.S. Army Corps of 

11 Engineers, IT Corporation.

12 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Yes. I'll 

13 refer to that, but I confess I did not look at 

14 it.

15 DR. NETON: There's a fairly nice 

16 detailed map of all of the tunnels and --

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. I will 

18 certainly make note of that. As we continue, 

19 I will certainly make note of that.

20 So, anyway, so I'll go on now that 

21 we've explained that point. The other issue 

22 that I have is with the model itself, not with 
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1 the mathematics but with the -- did I just 

2 skip it? Enlarge it.

3 So here is my understanding of the 

4 model, of Dave Allen's model. We have the 

5 tunnel, which is two by two meters. And 

6 that's --

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: Bob, could we let 

8 the people on the phone know that I think 

9 you're on page 3 of your report?

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, yes. That is 

11 correct.

12 MR. KATZ: Figure 1.

13 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I'm looking at 

14 figure 1. What I am looking at, pointing to 

15 is figure 1 in the report. So we have the two 

16 by two meter tunnel, which is a reasonable 

17 configuration because that is about the --

18 smaller than that, men can't walk through. 

19 And someplace in the IT reported a dimension 

20 that small.

21 The depth is taken to be 100 

22 centimeters. The depth of the bore holes are 
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1 mentioned vary. In one place in the Bechtel 

2 report, the remedial investigation report, it 

3 talks about contamination being down to a 

4 depth of 2.7 meters. So I don't think it can 

5 be said that contamination does not go below 

6 100 centimeters.

7 Also, I believe this must be an 

8 oversight. The area for infiltration is taken 

9 as if the contamination was only on one side 

10 and not both sides of the tunnel because it's 

11 -- and there's no reason why the soil -- even 

12 if it was 100 centimeters depth, it would not 

13 be on both sides.

14 And, furthermore, to be 

15 conservative, I would have the contamination 

16 on all four sides because the tunnel, first of 

17 all, is most likely not flush with the 

18 surface. It's probably somewhat buried. 

19 Otherwise it's not really a tunnel. It's a 

20 covered trench.

21 So we probably have soil on top. 

22 It might very well be contaminated. And if it 
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1 does go down as far as 2.7 meters, there could 

2 be soil underneath that is contaminated and 

3 certainly on both sides.

4 So if we accept the ten percent 

5 crack, which my comment is simply I have no 

6 idea whether it's a good number or a bad 

7 number -- I think it needs to be -- before you 

8 can use that in a model, there needs to be 

9 rationale. There needs to be some 

10 documentation, some literature or some 

11 explanation of why ten percent is a good 

12 number.

13 But since I have no other number, 

14 I have provisionally adopted it, accepted it, 

15 adopted it, even though I don't agree with it, 

16 necessarily agree with it.

17 And, therefore, I come up with an 

18 infiltration area, which would be per linear 

19 centimeter would be 80 square centimeters. 

20 Dave's is ten square centimeters because he 

21 said, "Okay. We take one linear centimeter 

22 along the length of the tunnel. We assume 100 
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1 centimeter depth. So one times 100 is 100. 

2 Then we take ten percent of that. We get 

3 ten." By the same logic, by going eight times 

4 that, I get 80.

5 Also, the higher concentration of 

6 the 28, the next thing -- and let me just go 

7 to the parameters. Okay. The next thing is 

8 emanation coefficient here is a very -- it 

9 should be consistent with the drawing, 

10 however, that seems to be unrealistic, .3 is 

11 a typical emanation coefficient used for 

12 soils.

13 It could be a little higher. 

14 Sometimes it could be much lower. It depends. 

15 Interestingly enough, it depends on soil 

16 moisture. If the soil is moist, the water in 

17 the soil tracks the radon coming out of the 

18 soil particles.

19 And, whereas, if the soil is dry 

20 and there is only air there, one soil particle 

21 is embedded in another soil particle and never 

22 makes it into the air. So you can get as low 
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1 as .1, but, anyway, I took .3 as the number.

2 The actual soil density, particle 

3 density, assuming that the final soil density 

4 is 1.6 -- this is just a little technical 

5 matter because it won't affect the outcome. 

6 The soil porosity of .6 is not a realistic 

7 number, .3 is a common soil porosity. And 

8 you end up with a particle density of 2.29. 

9 The two cancel each other out. So it does not 

10 affect the outcome and, as I said, the radium 

11 concentration of .28.

12 This diffusion coefficient is not 

13 a conservative, climate-favorable number. 

14 This happens to be the value in RESRAD-BUILD 

15 in the original RESRAD for soil. And

16 basically the default parameters in RESRAD are 

17 placeholders.

18 The programmer writes a program. 

19 He can't run the program without having some 

20 numbers in place. So he puts in some 

21 arbitrary numbers. They're based on some 

22 reasonable assumption, but they're not 
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1 guidance. And the same, there is the -- put 

2 out by the same group. Charley Yu is the 

3 senior author.

4 The data collection handbook for 

5 RESRAD discusses the range of measured values 

6 and reported values of radon coefficient. And 

7 the one -- I came on this value because they 

8 had a value listed of 3.5 times 10-6 meters, 

9 meters squared, which comes out to 3.5 times 

10 10-2 in centimeters plus/minus 1.5.

11 So if we take the 1.5 to be a 

12 standard deviation and we take the 95th 

13 percentile, multiply standard deviation by the 

14 magic number of 1.645, I get 5.67 as the 95th 

15 percentile diffusion coefficient.

16 Then, as I said, the area of being 

17 80, the other number, this number is -- I'm 

18 just mentioning it. Actually, it's not in the 

19 calculations. I'll get the 80.

20 And, using these numbers and using 

21 the equation for the median for the 

22 symmetrical situation, which we have confirmed 
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1 to be mathematically correct, I get 293 

2 rounded off versus the 26.

3 The main driver is probably --

4 well, two main drivers ought to be I guess all 

5 of these, but eyeballing it, it seems to be 

6 the area that drives it, the area is 80 times 

7 increased. And the concentration seems to be 

8 more than 8 times or 12 times.

9 Okay. Then the other issue is 

10 going back -- I am sort of taking these in 

11 sequence, but it is important -- is the 

12 assumption is that all the radon comes in from 

13 diffusion except on the walls of the 

14 examination walls. And this is I believe 

15 1988. And this is a posting on the web from 

16 the Nuclear Medicine Society journal, comes 

17 from the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. And 

18 this is sort of their position paper on radon 

19 in homes.

20 They give you the contributions 

21 from various sources of the radon. The 

22 soil-gas diffusion is the smallest on average, 
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1 .1 to .2 becquerel per second coming in, the 

2 soil-gas diffusion. Soil-gas transport, we 

3 call a vector transport. Air flow could be as 

4 low as zero, or as high as six. So it could 

5 be potentially 60 times or even at the high 

6 end 30 times higher than the diffusion. 

7 Building material which doesn't pertain here.

8 So, again, I did a very 

9 simple-minded calculation. I said, well, you 

10 have this one-tenth of an air change per hour. 

11 Now, what if the tunnels were completely 

12 sealed, there were no -- all the entrances 

13 were sealed and weather-stripped and the fan 

14 is pulling and the only place the fan can pull 

15 that air is through the soil so you have 

16 essentially the air in the pores of the soil 

17 being drawn into the tunnel and that's the 

18 only source of air?

19 So eventually you will have the 

20 equilibrium radon concentration in the soil, 

21 the soil pores, will be the concentration in 

22 the tunnel. And if you make this assumption, 
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1 you end up with 45,000 picocuries per liter.

2 Now, I'm not saying that you can 

3 get that number, but I'm saying -- I'm just 

4 pointing out that you cannot neglect the 

5 advective transport because, both by 

6 observation and by this simplistic 

7 calculation, it can account for more --

8 diffusion is an extremely slow process. 

9 Advection is not.

10 An example I ran across a couple 

11 of years ago working, doing a study on the --

12 I think the issue has been long ago settled --

13 the K- 65 silos at Fernald. They were 

14 concrete. They contained a lot of radium.

15 If you look at the diffusion 

16 calculation, the radon never gets out because 

17 it's so slow that it decays. By the time it 

18 reaches the outside air, it's mostly decayed. 

19 And there will be very little radon. And, 

20 yet, the measurements of radon are much 

21 higher.

22 And the reason is you had day and 
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1 night, the temperature, the air gets warm in 

2 the daytime and cool at night, in the silo, 

3 which remains pretty much constant. So you 

4 would have pressure differences.

5 Part of the day there would be 

6 lower pressure inside than outside. Other 

7 times, another 12 hours, there would be higher 

8 pressure. The silo breathed, once a day 

9 respiration. And a lot of radon got out. 

10 Houses in the same way breathe.

11 And there is no reason to believe 

12 that the tunnels would not somehow also have 

13 pressure differences, whether it's diurnal 

14 pressure differences caused by the ventilation 

15 or whatever or the pressure differences that 

16 would draw the soil, some of the pore air, 

17 into the tunnel. And they could be a much 

18 greater effect than the diffusion.

19 Finally, which, again, would be a 

20 smaller effect, is the concept of the 

21 one-dimensional model. If there is -- I 

22 figured there was contamination on both, on 
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1 all sides. It would not go linearly, would 

2 not go just this way, this way, this way. It 

3 would go around the corners. There would be 

4 other areas.

5 Furthermore, if there are cracks, 

6 this is already a macroscopic phenomenon. The 

7 cracks have some separation. And the radon 

8 would not simply stop dead when it comes to 

9 this.

10 Let's say these are the cracks, 

11 cracks right here, and in between, there is 

12 solid concrete. What happens when the 

13 diffusing radon hits the solid concrete? It's 

14 going to diffuse up and down. It's not going 

15 to simply stop dead.

16 So you no longer have a 

17 one-dimensional model. You would have a 

18 two-dimensional up and down. And then there 

19 would be also -- there would be a Y. If this 

20 is the X component, you would also have a Y 

21 and a Z component. If the cracks are in the Z 

22 direction, you would have Y.
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1 And then there would be the 

2 stratification -- Dave actually mentioned that 

3 -- they would have in the Z direction, whether 

4 this would give you higher or lower. Yet, 

5 some of it might diffuse out, but some of it 

6 also might diffuse downward and pass through 

7 this part. Even if you accept 100-centimeter 

8 depth, they might go towards this part of the 

9 tunnel.

10 So the one-dimensional model in my 

11 mind really is not bounding. It would be fine 

12 if you say, well, that is more bounding than a 

13 three-dimensional model. I'm not convinced. 

14 I think that remains to be seen. I recognize 

15 that it would be extremely difficult.

16 You probably could not solve the 

17 differential equation. You would have to do a 

18 numerical solution by mapping the field and 

19 doing computer simulation. And I, for one, 

20 wouldn't know how to do it, but I wouldn't 

21 want that task at this moment. But that is 

22 still another critique.
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1 So I think that's pretty much -- I 

2 think I pretty much summarized this. 

3 Basically in this instance, we don't have the 

4 answers, but we have questions.

5 DR. OSTROW: Bob, could I ask a 

6 question?

7 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes.

8 DR. OSTROW: Crack size. You are 

9 assuming now, NIOSH's model assumes, ten 

10 percent crack fraction.

11 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Right.

12 DR. OSTROW: The result of the 

13 concentration, is that linear with crack 

14 fraction? If you assume there was no concrete 

15 whatsoever, in the extreme, 100 percent crack, 

16 would that multiply it by ten --

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes.

18 DR. OSTROW: The linear function?

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Well, let's see. 

20 According to the one-dimensional model, yes, 

21 it is linear with the crack.

22 Oh, yes, and the one thing I 
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1 forgot to mention is the concrete in between 

2 the cracks is not impermeable. There is a 

3 diffusion coefficient for concrete. It's 

4 about ten times lower than the diffusion 

5 coefficient for soil.

6 But seeing that the concrete 

7 barrier is relatively thin, I mean, we're 

8 talking about drawing in from a soil depth of, 

9 what, three meters. And the concrete would be 

10 a few inches, the most, you know, in the tens 

11 of centimeters. There would be somewhat of 90 

12 percent of the uncracked concrete would still 

13 be conductive. So that's another issue with 

14 the model.

15 Plus, the movement, the movement 

16 around the soil, around the concrete pillars, 

17 let's call them, to get into the cracks would 

18 also be. So yes, I don't and we just don't 

19 feel that this model is a bounding, impact to 

20 bounding model.

21 Any other --

22 CHAIR ROESSLER: Does anyone have 
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1 any questions of Bob before we continue?

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. Bob, I have 

3 a couple of questions. I'm interested in the 

4 silo. The silos at Fernald are underground?

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: No. They're above 

6 ground.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: They're above 

8 ground. All right. So these tunnels are 

9 underground?

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: All right. And 

12 how would you have -- I just need to 

13 understand how you would have temperature 

14 fluctuation to allow the tunnels underground 

15 to breathe.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Just in the soil. 

17 There might be temperature fluctuations in 

18 the soil more than in the tunnels. I don't 

19 really have a mechanism for that.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: I can't imagine 

21 how underground how the temperature 

22 differentiates from the soil/tunnel, may 
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1 differ unless the tunnel is heated for 

2 comfort.

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Well, the air --

4 no. But the fact that there is a fan pulling 

5 air through the tunnel, that means outside air 

6 is coming through, not coming through the 

7 soil. So there would be some possible reason 

8 for temperature difference. And just the 

9 movement of the air itself would cause some 

10 pressure gradient.

11 I'm just throwing these out as 

12 possibilities, not as the hard fact. But yes, 

13 your point is well-taken. There is a 

14 difference.

15 CHAIR ROESSLER: It seems the 

16 bottom line to your report, Bob, is that SC&A 

17 has no problem with the equations nor the 

18 parameters for doing the radon doses from the 

19 surface contamination, right?

20 DR. ANIGSTEIN: That is correct.

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: Your problems all 

22 lie with the diffusion model?
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes.

2 CHAIR ROESSLER: And you have 

3 brought up a number. You said the map is 

4 okay, but you brought up a number of questions 

5 about the parameters there. Some of them seem 

6 rather large, and some of them seem quite 

7 questionable.

8 I guess the question for the Work 

9 Group and the people assembled is, where do we 

10 go from here with regard to those questions? 

11 Obviously SC&A has not accepted NIOSH's 

12 bounding on this. So if anyone has any 

13 suggestions, I would be --

14 MR. KATZ: It seems like DCAS 

15 should respond in a report as a first step.

16 MR. ALLEN: I was just going to 

17 say I would like to point out a couple of 

18 things. You know, one, it seemed like one of 

19 the biggest factors there in the difference 

20 between the numbers Bob was talking about what 

21 we got in the report was that factor of eight 

22 difference in the area, probably the largest 
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1 difference, I would guess, but I'm not 

2 positive on that.

3 That is assuming the same radium 

4 concentration all around the tunnel. The 

5 reason we used the top three feet or one meter 

6 was that was where the bulk of the 

7 contamination was. And we used samples that 

8 were in the top three meters or top one meter.

9 If you were to assume a uniform 

10 distribution, you're going to have to use 

11 samples that include those below that. And 

12 that does lower the concentration that you 

13 would use if you do any kind of statistical 

14 analysis on the samples.

15 I did do that. I ended up with a 

16 lower number. That's why I decided to keep 

17 the top one meter. And that cuts down to, 

18 what, about two, maybe three times, instead of 

19 eight.

20 Also I've mentioned before that 

21 some of the higher soil concentrations come 

22 from areas well away from the tunnels. And 
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1 they really shouldn't be used in a more robust 

2 type of analysis.

3 Neither Bob nor I accounted for 

4 diffusion into the air, which is also going to 

5 lower the soil concentrations considerably --

6 the radon concentrations in the soil.

7 And the thing that neither one of 

8 us accounted for because it is a more 

9 complicated model to do would be the rate of 

10 diffusion into the tunnel is proportional to 

11 the difference in concentrations, the radon 

12 concentration in the soil versus the radon 

13 concentration in the tunnel.

14 There is radon in the tunnel from 

15 surface contamination of radium. And that 

16 slows the diffusion rate down. That is not 

17 accounted for in the models.

18 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Correct.

19 MR. ALLEN: And if you simply 

20 multiply by the area that's around the tunnel, 

21 it is not a simple addition, even though 

22 that's what I did in here. In reality, the 
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1 higher the concentration in the tunnel, the 

2 slower the diffusion rate into it. You reach 

3 a maximum point. It will increase it, but it 

4 won't double it if you double the area.

5 All those things kind of go 

6 together to -- you know, if you get closer to 

7 reality, brings us to the numbers we got and 

8 the numbers Bob got closer to each other. And 

9 I think there's a number of things to indicate 

10 that we are conservative with a number of the 

11 assumptions, including not accounting for the 

12 emanation into the air, not accounting for the 

13 radon that's already in the tunnel.

14 The ten percent crack side, I 

15 agree that there's no basis for it other than 

16 I think we could probably get a structural 

17 engineer to say that's not going to be a --

18 you know, that tunnel is not going to stand 

19 for 20 years, if it has that much of an open 

20 area.

21 I think that's the bulk of what I 

22 wanted to say.
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: What you've done, 

2 if I understand it right, is you have taken 

3 all the things he discussed and kind of rolled 

4 them into one. You talked about his factor A 

5 that he said should be a great deal higher. 

6 Then you talked about a lot of other things. 

7 I think what you're saying is it all sort of 

8 evens out.

9 MR. ALLEN: I believe it would. If 

10 you account for everything in the most robust 

11 way, I think your numbers are going to be 

12 considerably closer. And it's going to be 

13 closer to what we have.

14 It's not a simple times eight the 

15 area. And the concentrations, you can't use 

16 the top three feet of the radium 

17 concentration. You'll assume it goes all the 

18 way down that level.

19 Like I said, we don't account for 

20 the emanation into the air, which is another 

21 big radon sink. And, again, the 

22 concentrations that are the largest are well 
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1 away from the tunnel, at least spot checked in 

2 some of the higher concentrations.

3 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we need 

4 to get to ask SC&A whether they want to go 

5 through this one item at a time or how you 

6 want to handle it.

7 DR. MAURO: I just wanted to put 

8 out something that has been in my head. 

9 Really, from the very beginning -- and the 

10 thing which we didn't do but I have been 

11 thinking about, I wanted to play out the 

12 sophisticated model.

13 In my world, I deal with simpler 

14 models. And whenever I run into radon in 

15 soil, I ask myself a very simple question. I 

16 would like to hear from everyone around the 

17 table, certainly Bill on the phone, a 

18 different way to come at the problem. And it 

19 may not be a good way to do it, but it's how I 

20 think about it, which is a lot different. And 

21 there may be some value to discussing it, 

22 maybe not.
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1 You know, I am just picturing that 

2 you've got the tunnels and you've got the soil 

3 to varying degrees from painting radium-226 

4 around it. And we have a fan that air is 

5 being drawn out.

6 The air that is being drawn out is 

7 sucking out, sucking on, creating a negative 

8 pressure between inside and outside. The air 

9 that is coming out, some of it is going to be 

10 because it's drawing air in through cracks, 

11 openings, diffusion through the concrete or 

12 whatever. And certainly there are probably 

13 other openings to the atmosphere where air is 

14 coming in.

15 So what you have is you have radon 

16 coming in because there's a fan sucking this 

17 thing out. And you have clean air coming in, 

18 too. We don't know how much.

19 But I ask myself the question, 

20 okay. A very simple problem. We know from 

21 the diffusion coefficients -- tell me if I'm 

22 wrong about this -- the diffusion coefficients 
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1 and placing sort of an upper bound, doesn't 

2 that tell you about how far away from the 

3 outside wall of the tunnel, of the tunnel, 

4 where any radon that is produced can possibly 

5 reach the tunnel before it decays? Okay?

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And the base model 

7 actually shows and I confirmed that the center 

8 of the symmetrical contamination is three 

9 meters away.

10 And then you have -- that is the 

11 most you get. If you go beyond three meters, 

12 it levels off.

13 DR. MAURO: Okay. So let's say 

14 this is three meters. Okay? By the way --

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: The center, the 

16 maximum concentration is at three meters.

17 DR. MAURO: Well, I'm asking a 

18 different question. I'm picturing a radon --

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: It's comparable to 

20 what you're asking.

21 DR. MAURO: I want to -- it's the 

22 essence of how I'm thinking about it. Radium 
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1 decays. Pop. A radon atom is produced. And 

2 for the time being, let's just make believe it 

3 finds its way into the pore space. You know, 

4 I would like the one emanation coefficient 

5 just so we can talk about it. And now, boom, 

6 it's produced.

7 And now because of the delta P 

8 created --

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: That's totally 

10 different. That's not this model.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes. Stay with me, 

12 though. Because of the -- well, I mean, 

13 that's the question I'm putting on the table.

14 Now, I had mentioned that I worked 

15 with Vern Rogers and Associates 15 years ago, 

16 where he was looking at this class of problems 

17 for homes. And I remember him reporting to 

18 you all distinctly -- I had to look through my 

19 deep, buried archives to find them.

20 And he was talking about a 

21 distance of about five meters, just bear with 

22 me, from the wall of the basement that -- if 
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1 it is more than 5 meters, that -- even though 

2 you have a delta P in the house, not because 

3 you've got a fan, there's just a natural --

4 especially during the winter, because of the 

5 temperature changes, you've created a delta P 

6 between inside and outside.

7 And his work said, well, any radon 

8 that's in typical soil -- of course, it 

9 varies depending on the kind of soil and a lot 

10 of parameters, but as a rule of thumb, he said 

11 that, you know, if it's beyond five meters, a 

12 radon atom that shows up. And it starts to 

13 migrate because of the delta P, not diffusion, 

14 because of delta P. It's not going to get 

15 there if it's more than five meters away. 

16 It's going to decay, turn into the short --

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: You're basically 

18 saying that the radon moves at about a meter a 

19 day.

20 DR. MAURO: Okay.

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Because its mean 

22 life is around four days.
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1 DR. MAURO: Okay. Well, I'm 

2 giving you a concept right now. So what that 

3 means to me if I was going to come at the 

4 problem, is if I know this is correct, 

5 whatever that distance is, every radon atom or 

6 perhaps 30 percent of the radon atoms, if you 

7 want to go with an emanation coefficient of 30 

8 percent, is going to end up in that array.

9 So I've got picocuries per second 

10 -- okay? -- coming into that box. In other 

11 words, you know, assuming that, great, simple. 

12 It's an easy thing to do.

13 And, now, I also know that the air 

14 turnover rate is some lambda. Okay? That 

15 gives me the number of pure picocuries that 

16 are in equilibrium in the air in that tunnel. 

17 I've got to divide that by the volume of the 

18 tunnel. I get picocuries over here. That's 

19 how I would have done it if it's doable. That 

20 is much easier for me to understand because I

21 --

22 DR. NETON: You are going to end 
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1 up with an extremely large concentration, I 

2 think, for some reason.

3 DR. MAURO: You would get an 

4 extremely large concentration. Is that right?

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Sure.

6 DR. MAURO: And, now, the reason 

7 you get -- you're saying that, in reality, 

8 this little movie I have in my head -- it 

9 doesn't work this way. 

10 Okay? Okay. And the reason it 

11 doesn't work this way is because, what, 

12 there's a barrier preventing all of that 

13 radon? I mean, because in reality, this is 

14 what is happening.

15 You're saying something is 

16 preventing this from happening. Is the reason 

17 that you don't go out that far or is the 

18 reason that there actually is a concrete wall 

19 here, so you're not going to get -- it's going 

20 to prevent it from entering? 

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: We've got that. 

22 Remember, I did this concept on --
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1 DR. MAURO: You did?

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Concentration over 

3 the phone for you.

4 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay.

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And we come out 

6 with taking all of that. Basically what we're 

7 doing is, it's the same as we took all of that 

8 radium, the five --

9 DR. MAURO: Right.

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And put it on the 

11 surface.

12 DR. MAURO: Right, lock it inside 

13 the box.

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: They're saying 

15 every bit of it is going on.

16 DR. MAURO: It's coming in, yes.

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: It's the same 

18 thing as if it was all inside.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes, sure. That's 

20 true.

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And you'll get in 

22 the tens of thousands.
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1 DR. MAURO: Okay. So that just 

2 can't happen.

3 DR. NETON: It's an interesting 

4 exercise that came out to be two picocuries 

5 per liter, or something.

6 DR. MAURO: Then it would be okay.

7 DR. NETON: All of a sudden, it 

8 starts out. In a very broad-brush 

9 approximation, it's okay. You're okay. But 

10 in this case, it's --

11 DR. MAURO: And when you would 

12 argue what belies that is the fact that in 

13 this other tunnel where they did that, you're 

14 not seeing that. You're seeing something 

15 lower.

16 DR. NETON: Part of it. Part of 

17 it, yes.

18 DR. MAURO: Thanks for bearing 

19 with me. I wanted to get it off my chest.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: If the movement is 

21 going to soil, what did you say, one meter a 

22 day?
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I'm just using 

2 John's -- I just did derive that quickly. 

3 John says that everything within five meters 

4 makes it.

5 And the mean life of radon is 

6 around four days. So, therefore, it takes 

7 four days to go five meters. So I just said 

8 meter a day.

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: Does it take four 

10 days to go through five meters of concrete?

11 DR. ANIGSTEIN: No, not concrete. 

12 Five meters of soil.

13 DR. MAURO: Once it hits the 

14 concrete, I don't know. I don't know. See, 

15 what I'm assuming is that there are no cracks 

16 and openings and porosity to the concrete. 

17 And if not, the concrete isn't there because 

18 --

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: Without it, there 

20 is no concrete.

21 DR. MAURO: Yes. And then why I 

22 would think that way is that there is a motive 
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1 force, right, like I was talking about before. 

2 Okay? It's going to start moving. If the 

3 atom comes in, it's going to fall where the 

4 delta P is sucking it in.

5 In other words, even though there 

6 is a wall here, if there are a number of 

7 cracks, it's going to find its way through the 

8 crack because there is a delta P. It's not 

9 that it's diffusing. See, if it was diffusing 

10 in classic diffusion, it would just be doing a 

11 random walk. It would bind into the concrete 

12 and keep walking.

13 But if there's a delta P, maybe it 

14 will be moving. It may -- and when it starts 

15 to approach the crack, it will bend and go 

16 through the crack. It will be sucked in to 

17 where the cracks are.

18 So, for all intents and purposes, 

19 if that's the way you think about the problem, 

20 there is no concrete there. If there is that 

21 delta P, it's going to bring it in.

22 But, then, Jim, correct me if I'm 
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1 wrong, well, Bob just said you came up to 

2 numbers that are off the charts.

3 DR. NETON: Yes.

4 DR. MAURO: And the fact is that 

5 if that were true, you would have seen -- you 

6 know, the numbers you actually did measure 

7 weren't that high. And in homes, the reality 

8 is, typical concentrations in homes are around 

9 one picocurie per gram out here.

10 And what they're seeing -- well, 

11 the highest you see is about, like the Watras 

12 home. Typically in homes, they're 10, maybe 

13 20 picocuries per liter.

14 But this is how I was thinking 

15 about how I originally would have done it 

16 myself, but I bowed to your understanding of 

17 the problem.

18 It just can't be that high. It 

19 just can't be.

20 CHAIR ROESSLER: Chris.

21 MR. CRAWFORD: Gen, I just wanted 

22 to add some historical perspective that is not 
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1 talking about the model directly. I found in 

2 chapter 4 of the 9026 document --

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Right.

4 MR. CRAWFORD: Which is chapter 4 

5 of the larger report --

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Right.

7 MR. CRAWFORD: That the deepest 

8 contamination found inside area 4 was 2.7 

9 meters.

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Right, right.

11 MR. CRAWFORD: However, on a 

12 previous page, I found this, which is for a 

13 very similar bore hole, it's B29, R38, as 

14 opposed to R36.

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Say it again.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: There's another 

17 bore hole nearby.

18 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, right.

19 MR. CRAWFORD: And the notation is 

20 this, "The bore hole gamma log reading showed 

21 that radioactive contamination may extend to a 

22 depth of 2.4 meters, as opposed to 8.7 -- 8 
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1 feet." Why? "The field log indicates that the 

2 radioactive contamination was moved to this 

3 depth during installation of the peak PVC pipe 

4 prior to gamma logging --" 

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I saw that, right. 

6 But the other --

7 MR. CRAWFORD: And other results 

8 confirm that radioactive contamination in the 

9 area of B29, R38 does not extend to depths 

10 greater than 1.2 meters, the depth of the fill 

11 material."

12 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay.

13 MR. CRAWFORD: So is there some 

14 reason to think --

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: That since the 

17 similar techniques were used at the same time, 

18 that, really, the contamination was carried 

19 down there in the process of taking the bore 

20 hole and lining it?

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, I see. Okay. 

22 Okay. I'll accept that.
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1 Again, I have to say I'm not 

2 saying I did a definitive analysis and I have 

3 the answer. I'm simply saying these are 

4 possible examples of where I find problems 

5 with the NIOSH report. But I'm not saying use 

6 2.7 meters. I'm saying that there are --

7 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. I just wanted 

8 to say that there is some perspective on that.

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes. I saw both 

10 those statements. And I just said, well, the 

11 2.4 had an explanation. The 2.7 didn't. So I 

12 said that maybe that is real. But your 

13 observation, your point is well taken.

14 MR. CRAWFORD: Also, I have looked 

15 at some of the tunnel cross-sections. And the 

16 tunnel near building 14 is actually surface, 

17 in other words, the grade is the same as the 

18 top of the tunnel.

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I see.

20 MR. CRAWFORD: In other places, 

21 it's up to three feet below grade.

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay.
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1 MR. CRAWFORD: So depending on 

2 what section of the tunnel --

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Sure. Well, of 

4 course, a thorough analysis -- I'm not saying 

5 we should make one -- would have to be, cut up 

6 the tunnel into pieces, look at the radon 

7 concentrations around each side, look at the 

8 actual model of the tunnel, look at the 

9 surface contamination in that particular 

10 region. And it probably would be like, what, 

11 a couple of man-years.

12 DR. MAURO: I've got something. I 

13 hear what you said about that, but the reality 

14 is there are homes where the concentration of 

15 radon in the basement is hundreds of 

16 picocuries per square liter, thousands. And 

17 so it does happen. And you have to ask 

18 yourself the question, what is going on?

19 You know, they know that the 

20 concentration of the radium in the soil and 

21 the rock and the soil is not high. You know, 

22 it's two to three picocuries per gram.
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1 And all of a sudden, you've got 

2 these concentrations in the basement.

3 Now, I know that there are a lot 

4 of reasons for it. I believe in the Watras

5 house, which I think was in the thousands, 

6 picocuries per liter, it was some type of the 

7 distance over which the radon was being sucked 

8 in was very large. In other words, there were 

9 cracks, fractures.

10 So whatever the radon was 

11 produced, I don't know how far out. It wasn't 

12 that it diffused through clay and somehow made 

13 its way to the basement. It was coming pretty 

14 far away. It was being sucked in, almost like 

15 you have pipelines out there, drawing it into 

16 the house.

17 So the reality is that, in defense

18 of my little model, there are circumstances 

19 and they are not that uncommon where just 

20 normal levels of radium soil about the 

21 basements of homes could result in 

22 concentrations of radon inside homes that are 
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1 not that low. They can get pretty high.

2 So you can't just dismiss what I 

3 said that easily.

4 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, I'm glad you 

5 brought it up because the hydrology -- and we 

6 have good documentation here of hydrological 

7 studies in that area and specifically the 

8 Linde plant -- is that there's about three

9 feet of fill or topsoil, you might say, on top 

10 of the ground. Beneath that is a layer of 

11 dense clay. And there's a lot of perched 

12 water in clay layers where it gets more 

13 impermeable.

14 So we know we're not in the kind 

15 of situation where diffusion is going to be 

16 easy. Clay soils are very, very slow.

17 DR. MAURO: Advective or 

18 diffusive, both. I mean, advective transport 

19 or diffusive transport.

20 MR. ALLEN: I would also like to 

21 point out that you --

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: I mean professional 
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1 courtesy.

2 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry? I can't 

3 hear you.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: I mean professional 

5 courtesy.

6 MR. ALLEN: As a little side note, 

7 from what you said there, I mean, do you know 

8 the name of the guy's house from, I think it 

9 was Pennsylvania?

10 DR. MAURO: Yes, the Watras case.

11 MR. ALLEN: Watras? It kind of 

12 disagrees with what you said about it being 

13 common or not uncommon --

14 DR. MAURO: The reality is there 

15 is an enormous amount of data out there where 

16 the concentrations in people's basements are 

17 pretty high. Now, they're not up there with 

18 the Watras, but they're pretty high. They're 

19 in the tens to hundreds.

20 In other words -- yes, I'll give 

21 you a good example.

22 MR. ALLEN: I don't disagree, but 
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1 tens to hundreds is pretty much where we're 

2 coming out with a model. It's where the 

3 measurements are in conveyor. And those are 

4 unusual compared to most homes. I mean, there 

5 are thousands and thousands and thousands of 

6 homes that have been measured. And those are 

7 the outliers. Those are --

8 DR. MAURO: Yes, granted.

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: The interesting --

10 to me what was interesting looking at the 

11 literature, it states that there was 

12 essentially no correlation between the radium 

13 concentrations in soil and the radon levels in 

14 homes because it is a scatter graph.

15 Obviously, it's logical, but 

16 obviously the radon comes from the radium, but 

17 the other, the lithography, is overwhelmingly 

18 more important.

19 And because I guess the radium 

20 levels in naturally occurring radium can't 

21 vary by more than a factor of ten, whereas, 

22 the values in the homes varied by --
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1 DR. MAURO: Thousands.

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Many orders of 

3 magnitude.

4 MR. ALLEN: Well, I think that one 

5 of the two biggest differences between a home 

6 and a tunnel area is a decent amount of the 

7 radon can come into a home through the water 

8 supply and ends up being, emanating through 

9 the house when you take a shower or et cetera, 

10 that you're not --

11 DR. MAURO: Not important. And 

12 this is very, very unusual that high levels --

13 MR. ALLEN: But no. The 

14 ventilation that you see --

15 DR. NETON: The slab foundation of 

16 the house or the basement is a pretty huge --

17 the radium is coming all -- we don't have that 

18 situation here. We have the top.

19 We can argue what the depth is, 

20 but a certain finite depth -- and that's all 

21 it's going to contribute into this top. I 

22 think that's a very different situation.
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1 Houses sort of create their own 

2 natural suction with furnaces and heaters and 

3 -- I don't know. I don't know how the --

4 DR. MAURO: The numbers -- I'm 

5 exploring. The numbers you came up with, you 

6 have ten picocuries per gram of radium in 

7 soil.

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: 9.5.

9 DR. MAURO: And you have 30. So 

10 there is a very classic number that people use 

11 all of the time. It's picocuries per liter 

12 indoors in a basement per picocuries per gram 

13 of radium-226 in soil. Okay? And there are 

14 tens of thousands of these numbers out there. 

15 And the national average, that ratio was 

16 1.24.

17 So, in other words, if you know 

18 you've got one picocurie per gram of radium in 

19 soil, infinitely around the basement, 

20 infinitely around the basement, your best 

21 estimate if you were going to randomly pick 

22 any house in the country is that the indoor 
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1 radon concentration on that base would be 1.25 

2 picocuries per liter. Okay?

3 Now, there is variability. 

4 Variability is very large. What your number 

5 comes to -- I can easily say it could be 

6 easily 10 or 20, as opposed to 1.25, in some 

7 homes, not all homes, some homes, depending on 

8 the lithography, the delta P created in the 

9 house, and the fracture, the degree of 

10 fracture there is in the basement.

11 Now, what you're basically --

12 these are reality checks for me, weight of 

13 evidence kind of thing. You're using a number 

14 that's three, right? You're coming up with 

15 ten picocuries per gram. And you're coming up 

16 with 30 picocuries per liter.

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Twenty-six.

18 DR. MAURO: What's that?

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Twenty-six.

20 DR. MAURO: Twenty-six. Please. 

21 A factor of three. So your number is three. 

22 The national average for homes -- and I'm not 
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1 saying this is a home, but what I do is I try 

2 to always look at it from lots of different 

3 directions if your numbers ring true.

4 And I have to say, notwithstanding 

5 all the limitations of the model -- and I 

6 think that there are some very serious 

7 limitations of the model, the ones that Bob 

8 pointed out.

9 Nevertheless, the number you come 

10 out with, you know, 30 in relationship to the 

11 ten picocuries per gram at -- you know, the 

12 other measurement that was actually made in 

13 this other place, I have to say it sort of 

14 hangs together pretty nicely, notwithstanding 

15 a lot of the problems with the models, 

16 notwithstanding, you know, this is no robust 

17 analysis, but what this comes to is like a 

18 compilation of information that some places 

19 along the line, you say to yourself does it 

20 seem to ring true and make sense?

21 And I think, unfortunately, that 

22 is where we are with this problem now. We 
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1 have collected a lot of information, thought 

2 about it a lot of different ways. And does 

3 your number come into place where it seems to 

4 be there?

5 And I don't know what more you can 

6 do. I mean, Bob did a parametric analysis to 

7 look at other assumptions. And he's saying 

8 that, no. These can be ten times higher.

9 And you give good reasons. Well, 

10 not really. You know, if you did it, you 

11 know, if you really wanted to start to sharpen 

12 the pencil, maybe it's someplace between Bob's 

13 numbers and your number. And everyone --

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I also used a .2 

15 emanation coefficient.

16 DR. MAURO: Right. So you took --

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Right there, it's 

18 lower by a factor of three.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes.

20 DR. ANIGSTEIN: And then the other 

21 factors overcome it.

22 DR. MAURO: Right.
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: So I think what 

2 Work Groups, what those of us who are on the 

3 Work Group, need to know at this point, we 

4 have had DCAS' presentation.

5 And we have had, John, your 

6 people's interpretation. And I think we're 

7 looking for -- and you had a lot of time to 

8 talk about it. And I think we're looking for 

9 SC&A's kind of conclusion.

10 But we do have a radon expert on 

11 the phone. And I think I would like to, if 

12 Bill is still with us, to have you give us 

13 your interpretation or conclusions from all of 

14 this.

15 MEMBER FIELD: I would be glad to. 

16 And I think a lot of points that were brought 

17 up have been very accurate.

18 One thing I just want to get back 

19 to is just I think it's -- you say you keep 

20 focusing on that this is not a home we're 

21 dealing with, this is a tunnel, and the 

22 behavior of radon entering tunnels or even 
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1 crawlspaces are a lot different than what 

2 you'd see in a home.

3 There are some measurements that 

4 I've performed in tunnels and worked with 

5 different industrial hygienists throughout the 

6 country. And where you see homes that have 

7 one or two picocuries per liter, it's not 

8 unusual to see several hundred picocuries per 

9 liter where the tunnels or wires run or pipes 

10 run. And every tunnel has its own character 

11 and own behavior depending on the air flow, 

12 obviously, and the surrounding soil and makeup 

13 there that goes into the tunnel.

14 The other thing, I agree that I 

15 think it's been 20 years since Nazaroff and 

16 others have shown that advection is very more 

17 important than diffusion. That's something 

18 that I think is that -- and we know that that 

19 is from the point of advection.

20 I think this is one of those rare 

21 cases where we have a source. And this would 

22 be the soil, just looking from the soil 
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1 contribution that's static. And radon changes 

2 over time. And from the perception of a 

3 soil-based source, the concentration of radon 

4 should be able to be reconstructed, I would 

5 think.

6 MR. KATZ: Bill? Bill? Bill? 

7 Can I just -- I'm sorry to interrupt you, but 

8 are you maybe speaking into a speakerphone?

9 MEMBER FIELD: No, I'm not. But 

10 I'll try to change the direction here.

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. Because your 

12 voice sort of comes in waves almost. We can 

13 hear it, but it's hard to follow sometimes.

14 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. I can try --

15 let me -- is this any better?

16 MR. KATZ: Yes, I think so.

17 MEMBER FIELD: I guess I was just 

18 saying, given the uncertainty in the radium 

19 concentrations in the soil near the tunnel and 

20 since we don't have historic information on 

21 radon measurements in the tunnel, I mean, from 

22 my perspective, it seems like the best way to 
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1 move forward, if we could, would be to sample 

2 of the radium in the soil around the tunnel 

3 and perhaps perform radon testing of the air 

4 in the tunnel. I don't think that it would 

5 take that much time to do this.

6 One of the things that is a very 

7 important constituent is the degree of soil 

8 moisture surrounding the soil surrounding the 

9 tunnel. I mean, that's going to, that can 

10 change the emanation in the tunnel by a 

11 significant amount.

12 And the other thing that was 

13 mentioned about the clay, clay can be -- when 

14 you're looking at radon, clay can work 

15 different ways. If you have clay and water 

16 underlying that, that actually impedes radon 

17 movement, but there are many glaciers which 

18 have clay soil that under dry conditions, they 

19 crack. And you could have movement of radon 

20 for tens of meters from the various sources.

21 If you have karst geology where 

22 you have cracks, it would have to be just two 
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1 meters. That could move by ten meters 

2 scooping the radon through soil under those 

3 situations.

4 So clay can work both ways. It 

5 can impede radon. But if you have cracks in 

6 it, it could also be a conduit to pump radon 

7 through. So I'm not sure we know the local 

8 geology around this, but it seems like if you 

9 have a constant source and the sources remain 

10 the same as the tunnels put in, the only 

11 variables are the ventilation rate in the 

12 tunnel and the soil moisture.

13 I would think the testing could be 

14 done and we wouldn't have to make so many of 

15 the assumptions that we're making right now.

16 CHAIR ROESSLER: So I gather, 

17 Bill, you're suggesting that some method to 

18 resolves this, that measurements need to be 

19 made?

20 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I only say 

21 that because it's a static source. It's not 

22 like the source strength has changed over time 
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1 from the perspective of the soil. I mean, the 

2 contamination, it may be much more difficult 

3 to go back now and reconstruct what possible 

4 contamination there may have been over time.

5 But I think based on what was 

6 said, that this is just a tunnel that was 

7 used, not like some of the other tunnels that 

8 may have had higher contamination. Maybe that 

9 is less of a concern.

10 I think now, we can make 

11 measurements now that would be representative 

12 of past concentrations. But, then, you still 

13 get back to, no matter what the concentration 

14 is in the tunnel, it would be good to get some 

15 information on what the occupancy was, to come 

16 up with an actual exposure because right now 

17 we're just talking about concentrations. I 

18 don't think we have a whole lot of information 

19 about how much time was spent down in these 

20 tunnels.

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we've 

22 brought up occupancy before. And I think 
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1 that's pretty questionable.

2 DR. OSTROW: Well, the occupancy 

3 is not really an SEC issue. It's a dose 

4 reconstruction issue. You know, after you 

5 determine the concentration, you can multiply 

6 by any occupancy factor you want to pick.

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: Good point, 

8 Steve.

9 DR. NETON: Up to one.

10 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think what we 

11 need to talk about here is, the final decision 

12 here is, do we delay a decision today and say 

13 that we're going to be doing more evaluations 

14 for more measurements or do we take what we 

15 have and go to the Board when we meet in Santa 

16 Fe?

17 I think some of the questions that 

18 come up or at least one question is, what are 

19 the implications of what we're doing here 

20 today on other time periods at Linde or other 

21 facilities? Is this the sort of thing that we 

22 need to pursue because there are -- because 
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1 other things depend on it?

2 DR. NETON: This is relevant with 

3 the SEC petition for radon for Linde during 

4 the covered period, which is actually being 

5 presented at this upcoming Board meeting.

6 And, of course, the tunnels were 

7 there during the covered period as well. I 

8 think we have incorporated this same model 

9 into that Evaluation Report that is being 

10 presented. As a matter of fact, it affects 

11 that.

12 MR. KATZ: One concern I have is, 

13 it sounded quite uncertain as to whether we 

14 could ever go and do measurements. I didn't 

15 really --

16 DR. NETON: Well --

17 MR. KATZ: What is the take-home 

18 message on that question?

19 DR. NETON: I think we have never 

20 been told no. Right now we have been getting 

21 sort of the run-around on authority to go in, 

22 but no one at this point has said "You can't 
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1 do it."

2 MEMBER BEACH: Well, the other 

3 question that comes to mind is the authority 

4 is one thing. But also, what is left of the 

5 tunnels? I don't think at this point we know 

6 what is left of the tunnels, do we?

7 DR. NETON: No. I think we know 

8 that there are some portions of the tunnels 

9 left. We don't know what are there.

10 MEMBER BEACH: And then we would 

11 have to agree on whether those are 

12 representative of what we're trying --

13 DR. NETON: I think if you could 

14 establish, if you knew what the soil 

15 contamination levels were around the tunnels 

16 that you were measuring, you could come up 

17 with some inferences.

18 I mean, if you know so many 

19 picocuries per gram in the soil around the 

20 tunnels that existed and then you go inside 

21 and you take a measurement, it's --

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: What about 
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1 ventilation?

2 DR. NETON: Well, you would have 

3 to figure out something about the ventilation 

4 of the tunnels.

5 DR. MAURO: I think that, clearly, 

6 especially what Bill just said is that, you 

7 know, modeling this -- and I like models, but 

8 in this application, we know, boy, there are 

9 an awful lot of variables here that are just 

10 not very well-controllable kinds of things you 

11 would just describe -- because I was assuming 

12 even clay would be a nice barrier, but I think 

13 what I just heard was, even clay, if it dries 

14 out, creates fractures. And you could start 

15 to suck in radon from pretty far.

16 So, in other words, the 

17 application of a model to try to predict what 

18 might be inside a basement or a tunnel is a 

19 pretty tough nut to crack and to place a 

20 plausible upper bound. And measurements 

21 certainly would go a long way to bring closure 

22 to this.
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1 But I also would point out that, 

2 you know, even the measurements I think would 

3 be one very important piece in the weight of 

4 the evidence, just as is this other 

5 measurement that we do have for this other 

6 tunnel piece of information that goes --

7 DR. NETON: Right.

8 DR. MAURO: Very strongly toward 

9 weight of evidence, in my mind even stronger 

10 than the model. And if we had some 

11 measurements in the tunnels themselves, 

12 notwithstanding there might be some problems, 

13 you know, how representative is it, are we 

14 catching it at a time, at the right time, do 

15 we take it up -- I mean, there are always 

16 going to be those questions.

17 So, in the end, we would certainly 

18 benefit if we can get some measurements in 

19 those tunnels. But I still think that we're 

20 still going to be having some discussion. 

21 Okay.

22 DR. NETON: Well, I also think 
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1 that it seems like a little more information 

2 about these circumstances of the conveyor 

3 tunnels that were there -- and I don't think 

4 we ever went to try to determine what the soil 

5 contamination levels might have been around 

6 those tunnels --

7 DR. MAURO: And whether they had a 

8 fan.

9 DR. NETON: And if they were 

10 ventilated.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes.

12 DR. NETON: I think we actually 

13 have the testimony of one of the claimants who 

14 claimed he was in the tunnels doing work. If 

15 that person were still available, he might be 

16 able to tell us whether there was ventilation.

17 And then, more importantly, I 

18 think to figure out -- or as importantly, what 

19 were the potential levels of soil 

20 contamination around there? And were the 

21 tunnels actually of the same thickness and 

22 everything? I don't know, but --
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, just let me 

2 ask you, what bearing would that have on the 

3 utility tunnels? Would it only substantiate 

4 the model or -- because the utility tunnels 

5 were not connected to the conveyor belt.

6 DR. NETON: No, but it would give 

7 you an idea of it's sort of a -- geology. Yes. 

8 The local circumstances are still there. 

9 It's buried in the same type of soil. If you 

10 knew the contamination levels and if you know 

11 the tunnel wall thickness were the same -- I 

12 hate to use the word "surrogate," but it would 

13 be a mock-up, essentially, of a potential of 

14 what would be in the tunnels.

15 If you knew the ventilation, is it 

16 existent ventilation, nonexistent ventilation, 

17 I mean, it's an underground passageway in the 

18 same environment as utility tunnels, as close 

19 as we could establish, if we could determine 

20 that.

21 And we know that the maximum 

22 values are 46 picocuries per liter. And you 
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1 could argue: okay, maybe there was no 

2 contamination of tunnels. Then that would 

3 support the fact that it would be higher. The 

4 highest it could possibly have been from 

5 diffusion into the tunnels would be 46 

6 picocuries per liter if there were no internal 

7 contamination, that would put an upper bound 

8 on the diffusion of radon into the tunnel.

9 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette has 

10 suggested that she would like to ask the 

11 workers if they used the tunnels. And there 

12 might be other information.

13 DR. NETON: I know there is at 

14 least one claimant that had indicated that he 

15 had done some work in or about the tunnels. 

16 MS. BONSIGNORE: SC&A interviewed 

17 all the workers at the May Board meeting. 

18 They have all of this information.

19 DR. OSTROW: Antoinette, this is 

20 Steve. I don't remember anybody mentioning 

21 this conveyor tunnel. In fact, this is the 

22 first I've heard --
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1 MS. BONSIGNORE: No, they didn't, 

2 but they may have a different term of 

3 reference for it, though. I have a meeting 

4 with the workers today. I will talk with them 

5 later this afternoon and ask them about this.

6 MEMBER LOCKEY: Let me ask you 

7 about, then would you go back and look at the 

8 core samples that were taken within five 

9 meters of the tunnel? Would that be -- you 

10 took the core samples and you used those core 

11 samples and compare those samples to the 

12 samples outside the conveyor belt tunnel? 

13 That seems to be very logical to me.

14 DR. MAURO: I think also, as Bob 

15 pointed out, the relationship between 

16 picocuries per gram in the soil and the 

17 concentration inside, whether it's a tunnel or 

18 a basement, is not very reliable. In other 

19 words, so it's these other parameters, the 

20 geology, the hydrology, the lithography. So 

21 if the soil -- in other words, if the place 

22 where --
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: They're the same.

2 DR. MAURO: If they're both 

3 sitting in a place where, for all intents and 

4 purposes, they're an awful lot alike, what you 

5 have just done is gotten one big variable out 

6 of the way.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Right.

8 DR. MAURO: Then say, "Okay. 

9 Listen, we're talking about" -- because if you 

10 find out they're very different, let's say you 

11 go in and say, "Oh, my goodness. This is 

12 sitting all in gravel, and it's a different 

13 type of soil, different set of conditions. 

14 It's at some distance to where the tunnel is," 

15 well, all of a sudden, the weight of evidence 

16 goes against this other tunnel as being useful 

17 to you.

18 But if, all of a sudden, you find 

19 out, yes, you know, it looks a lot -- even 

20 though the concentration of radium might be 

21 different, we've got to -- yes, it looks like 

22 it was a little bit higher near this tunnel 
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1 than that tunnel, then you can deal with that. 

2 But if the lithography is 

3 substantially different, I don't know if we 

4 could deal with that.

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: So that's what I 

6 was looking at. But if the soil is the same, 

7 then you --

8 DR. MAURO: See, that's the whole 

9 thing. That's what is the -- if you wanted to 

10 do an -- in fact, I remember reading this --

11 an analysis of variance, what are the things 

12 that caused the variability between these 

13 things -- and the least of which was the 

14 radium concentration. It was these other 

15 parameters that drive the uncertainty in 

16 predicting what might be the concentration of 

17 radon in a location.

18 MEMBER GIBSON: I guess from the 

19 other side of this, I would say how many times 

20 are we going to go back and look for more 

21 information to try to refine the model, to try 

22 to see if SC&A's model and OCAS' model can get 
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1 closer together?

2 When are we just going to say the 

3 exposure data isn't there and make a 

4 recommendation that we disagree with NIOSH's?

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: Mike, that's a 

6 good point. I was going to come to you and 

7 Josie next because, you know, as a Work Group, 

8 we are the ones who are going to make a 

9 recommendation to the Board.

10 And my question to you was going 

11 to be -- and I think you have already brought 

12 it up -- would doing, delaying this, going 

13 forward, and doing more measurements, doing a 

14 better resolution, would this change your 

15 conclusion?

16 MEMBER GIBSON: To me, it's still 

17 just -- both groups are creating a model 

18 because there's a lack of data. They go get 

19 more data or more soil samples and stuff to 

20 try to get their models closer together. That 

21 doesn't tell me that the -- because the 

22 workers' exposure data is not available.
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1 You know, I don't know that I 

2 would agree with an upper bound, even if we do 

3 take more measurements.

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: That's what I 

5 conclude you would probably do. However, I 

6 sort of hesitate to go to the Board myself and 

7 make a presentation and say that we still have 

8 some areas that aren't resolved.

9 I think from the scientific point 

10 of view, particularly since this may impact on 

11 other -- certainly on another Linde time 

12 period. And I don't think I got an answer, 

13 will this type of discussion impact other 

14 facilities?

15 If those things are true, then my 

16 feeling is that we have to continue and try to 

17 resolve them.

18 MS. BONSIGNORE: If I could just 

19 bring the workers' perspective into this for 

20 just a moment? We are very confused as to why 

21 it's appropriate to actually go out and gather 

22 new radiological data.
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1 If you are making an assessment 

2 that the data that you have right now has too 

3 many variables or there is too much 

4 uncertainty or there are too many assumptions 

5 being made, the way to cure that problem is 

6 not to go out and find, to actually collect, 

7 new data. That to me seems completely 

8 contradictory to why the SEC program exists.

9 If you don't have sufficient data, 

10 the answer is not to go out and gather actual 

11 new data samples from the site. The answer is 

12 to recommend the approval of the SEC.

13 I really don't understand what is 

14 going on here. And the workers are, quite 

15 frankly, really distressed as to what is going 

16 on within this Working Group.

17 I think you're working from a 

18 perspective of you have to figure out how to 

19 create a model. That is not what this program 

20 is for.

21 You're not supposed to be favoring 

22 creating models over SEC approval. You're 
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1 supposed to be evaluating this petition on its 

2 merits based upon the data that you actually 

3 have right now.

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, I 

5 have an answer to your question, but I see 

6 John Mauro also would like --

7 DR. MAURO: Well, in the six 

8 years, this is the first time I know of where 

9 going out and making a measurement now might 

10 add some important value.

11 And it's not -- I don't like the 

12 model. Okay? I mean, here's the -- I don't 

13 like the application of models to this class 

14 of problems. I liked it for Blockson. I 

15 don't like it here for the various reasons 

16 that became apparent during this discussion.

17 What I do like is measurements. 

18 And here is the one place, one time, where we 

19 could actually go make some measurements 

20 perhaps. Now, there will be some problems 

21 with the measurements because of -- there are 

22 things going on.
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1 So I guess, Antoinette, and I 

2 usually don't step in at this point, but we're 

3 not -- I don't think we should be depending on 

4 the model. I think we should look at the 

5 measurements made in the one tunnel and 

6 convince ourselves the degree to which there 

7 is parity between the setting in the tunnel 

8 where we do have measurements. And is it 

9 reasonable to assume that those measurements 

10 made in that tunnel seem to be more or less 

11 representative of what we might expect to 

12 occur in the tunnels of interest?

13 But even that, I would say we 

14 could do that. And that goes towards weight 

15 of evidence. But, boy, would I like to see 

16 measurements made in the actual tunnels, now, 

17 notwithstanding the fact there may be some 

18 limitations. And I'd like to have a full 

19 appreciation of what those limitations are.

20 And then we will have information 

21 that will put us in a place where we are not 

22 depending on models, we are depending on 
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1 measurements.

2 And the only question becomes, are 

3 those measurements sufficiently complete that 

4 we could feel comfortable that we could apply 

5 them to the exposure that some of the workers 

6 might have experienced back in 1954? And that 

7 is the question we are going to have to 

8 answer.

9 And we will not be depending on 

10 models. We will be depending on whether we 

11 think those measurements can be trusted.

12 MEMBER BEACH: And at this point, 

13 we don't --

14 MS. BONSIGNORE: With all due 

15 respect, John, I don't feel and the workers 

16 certainly don't feel that the intention here 

17 is to figure out how to recommend the approval 

18 of this SEC.

19 Their feeling is that everything 

20 that is going on here is a policy that favors 

21 the individual dose reconstruction over SEC 

22 approval, that that is the policy, that is how 
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1 you approach these evaluations, and that if 

2 you go to the site next week, next month and 

3 collect data, you are only looking for further 

4 justification to recommend the denial of this 

5 petition.

6 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, as I 

7 look at this, I think in order to recommend an 

8 SEC, we have to be convinced that dose 

9 reconstruction cannot be done. From what we 

10 know, if we know enough about the source term, 

11 if we know enough about description of 

12 activities and various other things, and can 

13 come up with bounding numbers that we all feel 

14 are very conservative, very much in favor of 

15 the claimants, then I think we say that dose 

16 reconstruction can be done. That is the 

17 criteria I am looking for here.

18 What I think I am hearing is that 

19 in order to really resolve this, we need to 

20 explore these measurements. And I think 

21 Josie's question about timing, though, is 

22 really important.
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1 And I think before we even go 

2 there, I think we need to look at when can 

3 some soil measurements be done? What if you 

4 could get into the tunnels?

5 I think, Jim, you mentioned that 

6 if you were to use the electrets -- what is it 

7 they're called? -- dosimeters to make these 

8 measurements, that that might take weeks.

9 I don't think that's true. I 

10 think there are some electrets which you can 

11 use; you can get a result in a couple of days.

12 DR. NETON: Well, I think it 

13 depends on how long you want to integrate the 

14 measurement to get a --

15 CHAIR ROESSLER: But if you're 

16 looking for kind of a --

17 DR. NETON: High point, yes.

18 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes.

19 DR. NETON: You're right. We 

20 could --

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: An upper bound 

22 sort of thing, I think that could be done more 
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1 quickly. I think we're now looking to NIOSH 

2 to give us some advice as to timing. I think 

3 timing is what you were going to bring up.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Well, we had asked 

5 for this three months ago. So, so far it's 

6 been three months, and we still haven't got a 

7 yes, we can go in and do it. So --

8 DR. NETON: I mean, to our credit, 

9 we did send a letter out in August. And we 

10 just got a response back.

11 MEMBER BEACH: I understand that.

12 DR. NETON: So we've established 

13 communication, I guess. So it's started. But 

14 I can't predict how much longer it would take, 

15 if we could get agreement, and if we could,

16 how long it would take.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: Are there really 

18 two avenues here? Is the one avenue looking 

19 at the core samples that are currently 

20 available and putting them on the grid and 

21 comparing the conveyor belt core samples to 

22 the tunnel core samples?
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1 Is that, in itself, enough data or 

2 then is there a second step that you would 

3 say, "Well, we're going to use that data, look 

4 at a model," then that's a good sample, see if 

5 it fits what the model shows based on looking 

6 at the core samples that are already obtained?

7 I'm not saying -- I don't think 

8 it's a good idea to go back and redo core 

9 samples, but looking at the core samples that 

10 are already there, look at the ones that are 

11 five meters from the tunnel. Look at the ones 

12 that are from building 30 and comparing them 

13 to the measurements that are in the conveyor 

14 tunnel versus what in 2002, what the model 

15 shows for using those samples to come up with 

16 what the exposure levels potentially could be 

17 within the tunnels.

18 DR. NETON: I mean, that is doable 

19 without any additional measures.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: It seems to me 

21 that that is doable. And I am going, John, 

22 back, John, to what you said. If the soil 
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1 sample levels outside the conveyor belt areas 

2 are known --

3 DR. MAURO: Known.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: To some degree.

5 DR. MAURO: I don't care that 

6 they're different.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: No, no. Then you 

8 --

9 DR. MAURO: And you also know that 

10 the characteristics of the soil are similar 

11 and this is a judgment call are similar, you 

12 have created -- and the two answers to those 

13 become yes, we have that. What I have done is 

14 I think you have done as many great strides in 

15 building the weight of evidence that you can 

16 trust the measurements made in the conveyor 

17 tunnel.

18 Now, on top of that, though, I 

19 would say still I think that different 

20 individuals have different thresholds. How 

21 much evidence do you need to convince yourself 

22 you have a boundary?
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1 I would say that if you also 

2 pulled some air sample measurements enough 

3 that you could characterize the radon levels 

4 today in the tunnels we are concerned about, 

5 well, now you have built the weight of 

6 evidence that's becoming pretty weighty.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: It's a two-step 

8 process.

9 DR. MAURO: It's two steps.

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: And I am very 

11 supportive of looking -- of course, the core 

12 samples are already done -- putting them out 

13 in a grid, looking at them, and making that 

14 comparison. And while that is being done, 

15 there can be a parallel step to see how easy 

16 it is going to be to get into the facility.

17 But I don't think we should delay 

18 this for umpteen times in the future because I 

19 know the politics of trying to get into a 

20 facility.

21 And people don't want you in. 

22 They'll just give it to the legal counsel. 
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1 And that will go on forever. I think that's a 

2 bad idea.

3 CHAIR ROESSLER: Ted has a 

4 suggestion.

5 MR. KATZ: Well, go ahead. I 

6 mean, go ahead, Josie.

7 MEMBER BEACH: I was just going to 

8 say then you get right back to the model, 

9 NIOSH's model. And SC&A has already clearly 

10 said they don't agree with it. So what do you 

11 do with the model if you're going to put those 

12 measurements in? And the basic model we don't 

13 agree on are --

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: We've taken care 

15 of -- most of the variabilities that are in 

16 the model are going to be taken care of at the 

17 soil samples and the soil consistency is the 

18 same.

19 DR. MAURO: I would throw the 

20 models away. I mean, I don't like the models.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

22 MEMBER BEACH: So that would take 
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1 --

2 DR. MAURO: Yes. So I want data. 

3 I want data that says, listen, I --

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: And so if the 

5 contamination outside the tunnels are 

6 equivalent to what -- we have actual 

7 measurements where there was radium rock being 

8 transported. And those are relatively high 

9 values. So you could say this is the worst 

10 case situation.

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: Ted?

12 MR. KATZ: I have some thoughts 

13 just for you to consider. I am concerned 

14 about the actual feasibility of going in and 

15 taking measurements, as to whether that would 

16 come about given because, as somebody said 

17 here, I know it's true. You can think you're 

18 at the doorstep and it can take six months. 

19 That happens all of the time when they are 

20 doing epi studies and so on. It can take -- 

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Years.

22 MR. KATZ: And I am concerned also 
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1 with Antoinette's point about going on and on 

2 and developing data, as opposed to making 

3 judgments based on what is on the table.

4 And I am not saying to you that 

5 it's not okay to do that, to go get more. I 

6 am just saying that I am concerned about it, 

7 though, about given that this has been a 

8 lengthy process already as well.

9 And so I am wondering if one sort 

10 of way of possibly satisfying these tensions 

11 might be you have until November to do some 

12 things that you could do, at least with data 

13 in-house and also to inquire, at least, about 

14 accessibility. I mean, that would already put 

15 you into middle of November but about 

16 planning, in any event, to present.

17 So, in other words, sort of 

18 develop your point of view. And it sounds 

19 like we're probably going to still have a Work 

20 Group that has different perspectives, as 

21 opposed to one perspective, on this, but 

22 develop your point of views, looking for the 
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1 November Board meeting ahead. Plan to present 

2 on that and explain.

3 One thing I think I need to say to 

4 Antoinette in this discussion is I know some 

5 of the pressure you feel is that you have 

6 knocked out so many issues at this site that 

7 you have put to bed, in effect, and now you 

8 have this one remaining thing. And you sort 

9 of hate to leave this one remaining item 

10 incompletely addressed when you have knocked 

11 out so many. And I understand that pressure, 

12 but, then, again, there is still this 

13 timeliness matter.

14 And so you could present to the 

15 Board based on whatever information you have 

16 at that point in November. You could also 

17 explain to the Board, you know, what you have 

18 knocked out already as well as this tunnel 

19 issue and how this tunnel issue sits at that 

20 point. And whatever prospect you have at that 

21 point, you could explain that all to the rest 

22 of the Board. And they could help you take 
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1 into consideration what do you do from here, 

2 do you actually go for more or do you actually 

3 then establish a Board decision based on the 

4 information that is on the table at that 

5 point.

6 I don't know, Antoinette, what 

7 your perspective is on that proposal, but --

8 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, we want 

9 this over with. We want --

10 CHAIR ROESSLER: So do we, 

11 Antoinette.

12 MS. BONSIGNORE: We don't want any 

13 more surveys. We don't want any more delays. 

14 We don't want to be told that you're still 

15 searching for documents. This is absolutely 

16 insane at this point.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. So that's what 

18 I thought you felt. In this way, I mean, at 

19 least, then, the judgment as to whether you go 

20 and get more information at that point in 

21 November is a judgment of the whole Board. It 

22 doesn't just rest on your shoulders.
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1 And if the judgment of the whole 

2 Board is we want more information, then you 

3 have the debate based on what is already 

4 accomplished by November.

5 DR. NETON: I have a brief update 

6 from Stu. He just sent me an email. He just 

7 spoke to the site manager at Praxair. And 

8 she's asking the Corps to see if they can dig 

9 up any radon data they have from the tunnels. 

10 Unfortunately, the Corps had 

11 changed contractors this spring. And they're 

12 not familiar. No one on the project is real

13 familiar with what data had been collected. 

14 So they're going back to the previous 

15 contractor.

16 So that's ongoing. It may be. 

17 And it would seem likely to me that someone 

18 would have taken measurements in the tunnel at 

19 some point. So that is ongoing right now. 

20 Stu has got that put in motion.

21 She has also indicated that the 

22 building 30 and the tunnel that runs beside it 
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1 have been demolished. They are no longer 

2 there. Some of the other pieces after what's 

3 called junction 4, which is sort of right by 

4 building 30, are still there, but they are 

5 undergoing active remediation. And some 

6 pieces may have been removed for 

7 decontamination.

8 The situation is changing rapidly 

9 there. It may be that there might not be 

10 enough representative stuff left there to 

11 survey. But I think this directive that she 

12 put to the current contractor to go dig up 

13 radon information I think is important.

14 CHAIR ROESSLER: And I think what 

15 Ted has just said is really important, that we 

16 probably should just take this to the Board 

17 for the decision. I think that is going to 

18 happen anyway because the way I have seen this 

19 Work Group work and the way we have voted 

20 before, it will probably be two to two. I am 

21 assuming that, which means that, in any event, 

22 we would probably go to the Board with a 
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1 report and maybe a minority report is what I 

2 had thought we would do. And this has 

3 happened in other situations. And then the 

4 Board makes the decision.

5 The thing I would like, though, 

6 that is a little different here -- I will wait 

7 until I have John's attention.

8 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry.

9 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think what Work 

10 Groups depend on a lot is this whole 

11 interaction between DCAS and SC&A. And I 

12 think Work Groups put a lot of weight on 

13 SC&A's final decision.

14 I think if you were to say, if 

15 SC&A were to say, at this point, yes, I think 

16 NIOSH can bound the doses, then I would feel 

17 comfortable going ahead with the report that I 

18 would make. And then I think we would have a 

19 minority report.

20 But at this point I don't think I 

21 see that quite from SC&A. And I guess I would 

22 want to have just a little more time, like Ted 
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1 suggests, between now and the Board meeting in 

2 November to see what NIOSH can find out and 

3 what SC&A can weigh-in on that and at least 

4 give us some sort of, give the Work Group some 

5 sort of, SC&A yes or no or yes if, decision by 

6 that time. And I would feel comfortable.

7 MR. KATZ: Well, just to be clear, 

8 though, there's very little opportunity for 

9 another Work Group meeting.

10 CHAIR ROESSLER: I know.

11 MEMBER BEACH: That was my 

12 question. Would we do this via email or would 

13 we --

14 MR. KATZ: I mean, it would not be 

15 via email. This is really too important for 

16 this to be something that is not handled in a 

17 Work Group meeting if it's going to be -- I 

18 mean, it's one thing if you're just saying to 

19 SC&A, you know, "If you're saying to DCAS, you 

20 know, see what you can get done between now 

21 and then and then report to the Work Group and 

22 SC&A and SC&A cogitate over what results from 
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1 that and make up your mind in time for the 

2 Board meeting," that's fine. And that could 

3 be a technical call for technical issues.

4 But if there's going to be 

5 dialogue, discussion that is sort of 

6 substantive on what judgment SC&A is coming to 

7 before the Board meeting, that really needs to 

8 be done in a Work Group setting.

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: You know, I am 

10 going to go back to what I suggested before is 

11 that the core samples are available. All 

12 right? Why not map them out and have the two 

13 groups look it? And then we'll go with the 

14 weight of the evidence based on those.

15 And we can handle that just by 

16 hearing the results by a conference call. 

17 There won't be a discussion. It's not really 

18 much change other than, this is what is 

19 outside the tunnel in the conveyor belt. This 

20 is what is outside the tunnels in the rest of 

21 the facility.

22 DR. MAURO: But that goes not only 
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1 to the radiological concentrations but also 

2 the characteristics of the soil.

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's correct.

4 DR. MAURO: Yes.

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's correct.

6 DR. MAURO: Absolutely.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: And I think that 

8 is doable if that information is available. 

9 And that is doable in the time frame we're 

10 looking at before the Board. I think we don't 

11 have to delay to have --

12 MR. KATZ: We could do that 

13 through a conference call.

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. And that 

15 could be handled through a conference call. 

16 It may be that we come up with the same 

17 conclusions that some people think that's not 

18 adequate for dose reconstruction. Other 

19 people can say the weight of the evidence is 

20 such that under most scientific conditions it 

21 is adequate. But then let the Board decide.

22 MEMBER GIBSON: One of the 
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1 frustrations I have though, if that data is 

2 available and we're sitting here in this 

3 process well over a year now, why has it not 

4 been used yet?

5 I mean, I don't care whether in 

6 our recommendation to the Board on this or 

7 whether it comes out of the Worker Outreach 

8 Group, there is the issue of timeliness as far 

9 as dose reconstructions and data.

10 DR. NETON: We just found this 

11 radon measurement like two weeks ago. We had 

12 no knowledge of this radon measurement until a 

13 couple of weeks ago.

14 MEMBER GIBSON: I was under the 

15 impression you had it longer than that.

16 DR. NETON: The measurement came 

17 about after the model was developed, Dave's 

18 model.

19 MEMBER GIBSON: How did you come 

20 across it?

21 DR. NETON: ORAU found it in a 

22 survey for another site. They were reviewing 
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1 some data for I forget which -- ElectroMet.

2 MEMBER GIBSON: So it was in a 

3 government database, but it had not been 

4 sought out before?

5 DR. NETON: It was in an 

6 ElectroMet report. And they said, well, 

7 there's no tunnel in ElectroMet. What is this 

8 all about? And it turned out they had done an 

9 ElectroMet survey and a Linde survey sort of 

10 in one path. And it was embedded in that. 

11 That's how we found it.

12 MEMBER GIBSON: When all of the 

13 data gathering things went on for this 

14 particular site, it had not been ever up in 

15 any searches or --

16 DR. NETON: No, no.

17 MR. KATZ: This happens all of the 

18 time. I mean, people are constantly stumbling 

19 into data for other sites in unexpected 

20 places. It's sort of part of the problem with 

21 disposition of records in this whole program.

22 CHAIR ROESSLER: And I don't think 
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1 we should totally -- that's just my view --

2 drop this modeling. I mean, this has been a 

3 very well constructed effort to come up with 

4 some bounding. And the way I see it -- and I 

5 don't think we have enough time to really 

6 discuss the details of it, that there may be 

7 more agreement on this modeling than we really 

8 realized.

9 Bob brought up some things. And 

10 Dave responded. And my conclusion from what 

11 Dave said is that some of the things may be 

12 higher, some are lower, and that it probably 

13 all comes out to the same value.

14 And so I don't think that we 

15 really should throw that out.

16 DR. MAURO: The only reason why I 

17 said I bound is that advective transport, 

18 which is not treated, is the single most 

19 important factor that drives the buildup of 

20 radon inside basements and in tunnels.

21 Now, that being said and, plus 

22 what we heard from Bill, advective transport 
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1 is driven by some very, very subtle 

2 differences in the characteristics of the 

3 soil, the fracture, particle size, water 

4 content.

5 And you can't get -- in other 

6 words, my experience in reading radon 

7 literature for many, many years is that one 

8 thing you really can't do is model the buildup 

9 of radon in someone's basement.

10 In other words, people measure 

11 radon in my basement. And they can measure it 

12 in another development. It's going to be 

13 completely different because the variables 

14 are, you know -- so modeling radon buildup 

15 doesn't work for the reasons we -- I don't 

16 think it was a bad thing that we went through 

17 this exercise. I think it revealed the 

18 difficulties in trying to model radon.

19 Others may feel differently, but I 

20 mean, this is what I walk away with.

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I think we 

22 should hear from Dr. Field on this particular 
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1 aspect.

2 MEMBER FIELD: You're talking as 

3 far as modeling radon?

4 MR. KATZ: Right.

5 MEMBER FIELD: I think it's very 

6 difficult to do myself. As mentioned, there 

7 are just so many factors to model. And what 

8 we're working with now, we're working with on 

9 the radium concentrations.

10 But I think what was stated 

11 before, that what is important is what kind of 

12 ventilation there is within the structure, 

13 what is the soil porosity, what is the 

14 underlying geological characteristics. And 

15 these things are very difficult to model in my 

16 opinion.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: Bill, it's Jim 

18 Lockey. If we go back, as I suggested, and 

19 look at the core samples that have already 

20 been done along the conveyor belt in building 

21 30 and along the tunnels within five meters, 

22 looking at those core samples and looking at 
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1 the concentration in the soil type, is that 

2 worthwhile doing?

3 MEMBER FIELD: Well, I guess 

4 you're asking me personally. I don't know if 

5 it would be enough for some Board Members, but 

6 if you have that information, I guess my own 

7 personal opinion, I am still somewhat 

8 skeptical that you may be able to do a 

9 reasonable modeling with that information.

10 DR. MAURO: Could I add one point? 

11 I wouldn't be doing collecting the data so 

12 that I could model. I would be collecting the 

13 data to see if the characteristics of the soil 

14 in the vicinity of the tunnel that we do have 

15 a measurement for, some measurements for, is 

16 similar.

17 So measurements made in the tunnel 

18 where we have data can be assumed to be 

19 bound, bound, to concentrations you might 

20 expect in the other tunnel where we don't have 

21 data.

22 MR. KATZ: Could I ask a simple 
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1 question? Is there someone who knows about 

2 geology, but is it likely -- is it that 

3 geology would be highly heterogeneous within 

4 100 yards? I mean, we're talking about the 

5 same site all the same.

6 I mean, it's like a couple of 

7 baseball fields we're talking about here. Is 

8 it reasonable to expect that you would have 

9 very different geology all in the same 

10 ballpark?

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: If they use 

12 backfill and use gravel against the tunnel 

13 walls, that's going to be different than if 

14 they used clay.

15 MR. KATZ: Right. But in terms of 

16 what Bill was talking about, clay fracturing 

17 and then conducting, you know, air under the 

18 soil and so on at assumedly the whole site, 

19 had the clay bedding and so on, I am just sort 

20 of curious that it just seems a little odd 

21 here that the tunnel and the building are 

22 basically cheek by jowl.
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Are what?

2 MR. KATZ: Cheek by jowl. They're 

3 approximate to each other.

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I would have a 

5 question for Bill. And that is in terms of 

6 the clay, would there be seasonal or annual 

7 differences depending on rainfall? Wet clay 

8 if it's optimally wet is an excellent barrier 

9 to diffusion. And dry clay is not.

10 MEMBER FIELD: I think you 

11 described that accurately.

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: And maybe the 

13 important thing about that is that the core 

14 sample that is taken under building 30 is 

15 going to be in a dry area. So that really is 

16 going to be a worst case situation.

17 MS. BONSIGNORE: May I ask a 

18 question from someone in DCAS about the other 

19 Linde petition that you are planning to 

20 present at the November meeting?

21 There isn't an ER yet for that. 

22 Are these discussions about the residual 
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1 radiation petition going to affect the 

2 conclusions you reach for the ER for the other 

3 petition?

4 DR. NETON: Yes, yes, because the 

5 tunnels existed during the covered period as 

6 well.

7 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I know. So 

8 you say you're going forward with the other 

9 petition in November, but there is no ER yet.

10 DR. NETON: Well, maybe I spoke 

11 prematurely. The ER is being worked on. I 

12 think it's our intent to have that ER 

13 presented at the upcoming Board meeting.

14 MS. BONSIGNORE: But in order to 

15 do that, don't we have to resolve this here 

16 and now for this petition?

17 DR. NETON: Well, they're going on 

18 in parallel.

19 MS. BONSIGNORE: I mean, they're 

20 inextricably connected here. So you can't go 

21 ahead with one without making decisions about 

22 the other.
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1 DR. NETON: Well, it could be 

2 presented. The same issue would exist under 

3 both ERs, yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Antoinette, yes. The 

5 bottom line is DCAS can make up its mind and 

6 put out a report. It doesn't mean that it has 

7 the support of the Work Group or anybody else, 

8 but --

9 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand 

10 that. This is becoming increasingly difficult 

11 for me to understand what is going on 

12 technically. And when I speak to the workers 

13 this afternoon, they are going to have a lot 

14 of questions, questions that I can't answer 

15 because this process has become so incredibly 

16 opaque it's, quite frankly, becoming -- you 

17 know, it's bordering on absurd because they 

18 don't understand what is going on. They don't 

19 understand why decisions are being made.

20 You know, it's really very unfair 

21 to them because they have a right to 

22 understand why you are making recommendations 
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1 or decisions based upon models or core samples 

2 or whatever. And, you know, there is really 

3 no avenue for them to understand what is going 

4 on.

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think what I am 

6 struggling with is that we have some sampling 

7 data from perhaps a situation in the conveyor 

8 tunnel that may be a bounding sample for this 

9 particular exposure. But I'm not sure until I 

10 know what the soil sample and the soil 

11 consistency is around the tunnels versus 

12 comparisons around a conveyor belt.

13 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. Who 

14 is speaking?

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey.

16 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: So those samples 

18 are -- if the soil samples are similar and the 

19 radon concentration around the conveyor belt 

20 is equal to or greater than what is around the 

21 tunnels, then the actual measurements that are 

22 taken within the conveyor tunnel probably do 
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1 bound the upper limit in relationship to radon 

2 exposure.

3 MS. BONSIGNORE: Dr. Field has 

4 been saying that, from what my understanding 

5 was, that he doesn't believe that it can be 

6 bound.

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: No. He is 

8 questioning the modeling. These would be 

9 actual --

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. This is not 

11 -- these won't be used in a model. These are 

12 just verifying that the actual sampling data 

13 from the site is truly an upper bound limit 

14 for tunnel exposure. It doesn't have anything 

15 to do with modeling.

16 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay.

17 CHAIR ROESSLER: Would there then 

18 be questions, though, about the construction 

19 of the two different types of tunnels? Have 

20 we resolved that?

21 DR. NETON: I don't know that we 

22 know the exact construction of the tunnels 
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1 themselves.

2 CHAIR ROESSLER: I'm just trying 

3 to anticipate what might come up to give us 

4 further delay.

5 DR. NETON: Yes.

6 DR. MAURO: And I would say that 

7 is one of the reasons you really would like 

8 some measurements in the tunnels of concern, 

9 especially if there is some historical data 

10 that is available. And in the end, they are 

11 going to have that problem, yes.

12 Let's say there are walls in the 

13 tunnel. And, of course, one of the very --

14 for example, my neighbor's house, my house, 

15 we're sitting in the same hill. Okay?

16 Now, I have different kinds of 

17 fractures and cracks in my basement and a 

18 different delta P because of his ventilation 

19 system. In other words, that's another 

20 variable, you see. So this is not a 

21 walk-away.

22 MR. ALLEN: Unless one of those 
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1 basements had a bunch of uranium ore in it, it 

2 is going to be the higher one.

3 DR. MAURO: Oh, I agree. Ore. I 

4 agree with that, even though we both have the 

5 same geological and radiological 

6 characteristics in the soil. That's why 

7 people go in and seal their basement. They go 

8 in. And they seal it. They put a sub-slab 

9 ventilation system in and boom. The radon 

10 problem goes away.

11 MR. ALLEN: To keep from getting 

12 --

13 DR. MAURO: So yes, walls will be 

14 important. And that's why that -- you know, 

15 so yes, if we had more information, the weight 

16 of the evidence ought to build nicely and say, 

17 "Well, maybe those measurements made in the 

18 other tunnel could be helpful, but there will 

19 be questions. You know, there still will be 

20 questions of the nature regarding the 

21 structure of the tunnel and the ventilation in 

22 the tunnel."
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1 So in the end, you know, certainly 

2 the thing that might get us to where we might 

3 be able to make some judgments, the historical 

4 measurements that were made, maybe not the 

5 ones that we made now, that might be off the 

6 table.

7 But if there are some historical 

8 data back there, I, for one, if they show up 

9 with radon measurements -- I don't know --

10 some years ago, whenever the previous 

11 contractor was in, now we're talking about 

12 some really hefty weight that will help us 

13 make some judgments.

14 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, Ted 

15 suggested that perhaps we could have some time 

16 for -- I see three things on the table that 

17 could be done -- that we pursue that and see 

18 if we could have a Work Group teleconference 

19 before the Board meeting. Is that feasible? 

20 Do we have time to do that?

21 MR. KATZ: It's difficult because 

22 there are actually very few dates open, even 
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1 for a teleconference. But I know we have 

2 another Work Group that is setting up, two 

3 other Work Groups that are planning to have 

4 teleconferences.

5 So those days when they are having 

6 teleconferences, they won't be whole days. It 

7 will be a couple of hours. And there may be 

8 four days when this can happen between now and 

9 the Board meeting. There's not a lot of free 

10 days, but especially if you are considering 

11 doing it close to the Board meeting, because 

12 otherwise how much time is there to get any 

13 more work done or look at any other data?

14 So there are a few dates, a 

15 couple, maybe three days in November when we 

16 could set up a teleconference, depending on 

17 when those other ones are set up. I could 

18 probably tell you the days now if --

19 CHAIR ROESSLER: Is there another 

20 option --

21 MR. KATZ: If you want to aim for 

22 that.
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: That we could 

2 meet when we all get to Santa Fe before the 

3 Board meeting? We have had Work Group 

4 meetings --

5 MR. KATZ: Well, there is actually 

6 -- the day before the Board meeting, there is 

7 a tour planned of Los Alamos, but nobody has 

8 to go on that tour. And we could certainly 

9 have a Work Group meeting there at the hotel, 

10 certainly that afternoon, I would say. 

11 Actually, I can't say for certain because we 

12 would have to find a room. But I think we 

13 probably can get a room and get the equipment 

14 for the telephone connection to do it the 

15 afternoon before the Board meeting, which 

16 would be, I think, the 15th of November.

17 CHAIR ROESSLER: But what about 

18 the tour? What time is the tour scheduled?

19 MR. KATZ: Well, the tour isn't 

20 set in -- it's not set in place yet. There 

21 are two elements of it. And DOE hasn't gotten 

22 back to me with anything definite about how 
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1 that will work. The only commitment, that 

2 there will be either or both a museum overview 

3 and possibly a tour. They haven't committed 

4 to the tour even yet.

5 So that is the 15th. The other 

6 dates, I believe, are something like November 

7 7th or 8th.

8 MEMBER BEACH: There was the 1st, 

9 the 2nd, and the 4th, I thought.

10 MR. KATZ: First, 2nd.

11 MEMBER BEACH: And the 5th I --

12 MR. KATZ: First, 2nd, 10th. 

13 Well, I could look it up, but I guess we need 

14 to --

15 DR. NETON: I guess we need to 

16 know how difficult it is going to be to do 

17 these analyses and how quickly.

18 MR. KATZ: I mean, all we would be 

19 doing in this case is having that as an 

20 option, not necessarily that it would come 

21 through. I mean, that's the thing. You can 

22 have uncertainty about whether there is any 
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1 more information to bring to the table is 

2 going to be uncertain. I mean, we're only 

3 talking about less than a month away, right? 

4 And then there is the Board meeting.

5 So we can try to set up. We can 

6 try to find a date for a possible Work Group 

7 meeting before the Board meeting. That is one 

8 alternative.

9 Another alternative is to just 

10 plan to have this, resolve this during the 

11 Board meeting, during your presentation. In 

12 other words, it would be whatever supplemental 

13 information would be brought to the table at 

14 that time. And the other alternative is to 

15 take this off of the agenda for the Board 

16 meeting.

17 CHAIR ROESSLER: I will see what 

18 the rest of the Work Group thinks. I would 

19 like to have one more chance to see what DCAS 

20 can find out, schedule a teleconference, come 

21 to a decision then, and then go to the Board. 

22 I don't want to delay it another time. I 
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1 think we're --

2 MR. KATZ: I would really prefer 

3 not to, too, but --

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. I think we 

5 just need to go to the Board and say, "Here is 

6 where we are."

7 MEMBER BEACH: In addition to what 

8 DCAS comes up with, SC&A has to have time to 

9 look at that and also get back to us.

10 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I'm 

11 thinking if we have a teleconference, then as 

12 a Work Group, we will be able to come up with 

13 what we want to present to the Board.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Sure.

15 MR. KATZ: Why don't we look at 

16 calendars to see if we can find a date? I 

17 mean, if nothing else, that teleconference can 

18 be used to present depending on what the 

19 situation is. There may be no new 

20 information, but you may be --

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: Then we decide 

22 what we're going to --
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1 MR. KATZ: Organize, at least what 

2 you are going to present for the Board meeting 

3 --

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: That is our job 

5 as a Work Group to say --

6 MR. KATZ: Because you are going 

7 to have to do that.

8 CHAIR ROESSLER: What to present 

9 to the Board.

10 MEMBER BEACH: Right, right.

11 MR. KATZ: So let me tell you 

12 about dates now. So November 1 is a 

13 possibility. I mean, I have a conflict on 

14 that date, but this is more important than my 

15 conflict.

16 CHAIR ROESSLER: I have a 

17 conflict, too, but if it comes down to it --

18 MR. KATZ: So November 1 is one 

19 option.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: What day is that?

21 MR. KATZ: That is a Monday. 

22 November 2, which is Election Day, is another 
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1 option right now. Again, that's --

2 MEMBER BEACH: I'm actually 

3 traveling for --

4 MR. KATZ: Okay. November 2 is 

5 not an option.

6 CHAIR ROESSLER: I'm traveling on 

7 November 2 also.

8 MR. KATZ: Well, let's just figure 

9 out what the days are. So November 1 you say 

10 is an option for you?

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: Not for me.

12 MEMBER BEACH: But the other thing 

13 is it might be better to go towards the second 

14 week, the end of the second week.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes. I'm just trying 

16 to come up with all of the options --

17 MEMBER BEACH: I understand.

18 MR. KATZ: At this point. Okay. 

19 So there is also -- Mound was canceled. That 

20 was going to be on November 5th. So that 

21 right now is open.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: What day is this?
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: Melius is working 

2 on a Work Group --

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: That day, Friday 

4 --

5 MR. KATZ: I know, but his is a 

6 teleconference too. So, he is talking about a 

7 couple of hours.

8 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay.

9 MR. KATZ: No. Maybe three hours 

10 most for --

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: November 5th is 

12 good for me.

13 MR. KATZ: Does November 5th work 

14 for -- how about you, Mike? So is that -- and 

15 how about for --

16 CHAIR ROESSLER: We need somebody 

17 from --

18 MR. KATZ: Where is Chris and Jim? 

19 Does that work for you, November 5th?

20 DR. NETON: That's okay for me.

21 DR. MAURO: November 5th should be 

22 okay.
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1 MR. KATZ: SC&A, everything's good 

2 for SC&A. So November 5th. November 5th, we 

3 will at this point set up a teleconference on 

4 November --

5 MEMBER BEACH: Can you look at the 

6 12th also just to give that extra week?

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, we can look at 

8 that.

9 CHAIR ROESSLER: I like that. 

10 That would be better. That would give DCAS 

11 more time.

12 MR. KATZ: November 12th right now 

13 is open. It also could be -- again, they 

14 could both happen.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: November 12th.

16 MR. KATZ: November 12th is fine 

17 for everybody here? Okay. Let's do the 

18 latest. Antoinette, you can hear this. 

19 November 12th is going to be a Work Group 

20 teleconference. And, even if there is no more 

21 information, there will be some discussion 

22 about how to present to the Board --
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: Right. That will 

2 be the --

3 MR. KATZ: Which will be useful to 

4 you, too, Antoinette.

5 CHAIR ROESSLER: Whatever 

6 information we have at that point in time. 

7 And we are going to identify the things that 

8 we think are going to happen.

9 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. So can I 

10 be confident to tell the workers later today 

11 that both petitions will go before the Board 

12 in Santa Fe?

13 MR. KATZ: Yes. That's not my 

14 choice. That's Gen's choice here.

15 CHAIR ROESSLER: As far as the one 

16 that we're working on right here, our intent 

17 is for the Work Group to come to a decision as 

18 to what we are going to recommend to the Board 

19 at the meeting in Santa Fe. And then the 

20 Board will make a decision. That is our 

21 intent at this point.

22 MR. KATZ: Okay. So that covers 
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1 it for the petition we are currently 

2 discussing. I am not sure that that is 

3 necessarily at what point will you decide, 

4 Jim, about the other petition or Chris.

5 DR. NETON: I think we are moving 

6 forward with the other --

7 MR. KATZ: Are you going to 

8 present, no matter what, the other one, 154?

9 MR. CRAWFORD: That is the current 

10 plan. Unless the Board tells us not to, we 

11 will present 154.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay.

13 DR. NETON: That's the plan. So 

14 any discussion about this would be relevant.

15 MR. KATZ: It is going to impact 

16 it. Okay, Antoinette?

17 MS. BONSIGNORE: Thanks.

18 MR. KATZ: Then both of them would 

19 be presented. The Work Group and DCAS 

20 presentation of the new one, newer one.

21 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. And am I 

22 safe in saying that this idea of actually 
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1 going out to the Linde site is now off the 

2 table?

3 MR. KATZ: Unless they go out to 

4 the Linde site before that happens, that seems 

5 incredibly unlikely.

6 MR. CRAWFORD: Very unlikely.

7 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay?

9 MR. CRAWFORD: Take measurements 

10 and analyze --

11 MR. KATZ: So that seems 

12 incredibly unlikely.

13 CHAIR ROESSLER: So the things 

14 that are on the table that I see that DCAS is 

15 going to look at between now and then is that 

16 you are going to look at the existing core 

17 samples and -- so that the soil 

18 characteristics near the conveyor tunnel can 

19 be evaluated so that they can be compared to 

20 the ones near the utility tunnel so that we 

21 can have a better handle on the actual 

22 measurement that was made, measurements made, 
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1 near the conveyor tunnel.

2 The other thing I have on the list 

3 -- I had two other things. One was see if you 

4 could do measurements in the existing tunnels. 

5 I think that's quite questionable, but let's 

6 just leave it there and receive that.

7 And the third thing was to 

8 continue the search for the historical data in 

9 the utility tunnels. And whatever you have at 

10 that point we are going to have to sit and 

11 evaluate.

12 And I think the Work Group, at 

13 least as one Member of the Work Group, I would 

14 say that I will base my decision heavily on 

15 those of you who are experts on it and what 

16 SC&A concludes from that.

17 MR. KATZ: And given the 

18 timeliness, I would just suggest that all of 

19 the Work Group Members sort of start thinking 

20 about developing your positions as if there 

21 will be no new information just to get 

22 yourself prepared because it's not leaving 
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1 yourself a lot of time.

2 We're talking about meeting, 

3 teleconference, the Friday before. So I 

4 think, for example, a presentation, Gen, if 

5 you're going to do a PowerPoint presentation, 

6 that only leaves you the weekend. If I were 

7 you, I would be preparing something, a 

8 placeholder.

9 DR. OSTROW: I think you have all 

10 the background in the slides and all of that.

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. I have some 

12 background slides I can use. But the other 

13 thing that I think I would like to talk about 

14 today, maybe after we break up, is I see, no 

15 matter what happens, I think what we are going 

16 to do is have a presentation.

17 I will make a presentation. And 

18 then I expect that Mike or Josie will want to 

19 make a -- whatever we want to call it --

20 another presentation, a minority presentation.

21 MR. KATZ: Yes.

22 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we need 
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1 to do it that way.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. I wouldn't even 

3 call it a minority if it's a two and two --

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, because it 

5 really isn't minority.

6 MR. KATZ: No.

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: We'll call it two 

8 presentations.

9 MEMBER GIBSON: But we've got five 

10 Members on the Work Group.

11 CHAIR ROESSLER: No. There are 

12 four of us.

13 MR. KATZ: Four.

14 MEMBER GIBSON: Four.

15 MR. KATZ: Bill's not -- Bill just 

16 asked to listen in.

17 CHAIR ROESSLER: And he'll weigh 

18 in with his input at the Board meeting as a 

19 Board Member.

20 MR. KATZ: Right.

21 CHAIR ROESSLER: So there are just 

22 four of us.
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1 MEMBER GIBSON: I thought maybe 

2 Jim had appointed him as a new Member.

3 CHAIR ROESSLER: No, no. I just 

4 asked him to listen in because he is the radon 

5 expert.

6 MEMBER GIBSON: Okay.

7 CHAIR ROESSLER: I would expect 

8 that perhaps Jim and I -- and I'm looking at 

9 Jim to see if this is true -- would prepare a 

10 report. And in that will be background as to 

11 what we have resolved, certainly, and then 

12 what we haven't resolved. And then the two of 

13 you would follow with a report. Does that 

14 sound like a reasonable approach?

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: I am still --

16 MS. BONSIGNORE: Would I be able 

17 to get copies of these presentations in 

18 advance of the meeting?

19 MR. KATZ: No. I mean, the 

20 presentations are never available in advance 

21 of the meetings as far as I know, never, but 

22 they will be available at the meeting. And 
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1 they will be put online as well. Are you 

2 going to be at the meeting, I assume?

3 MS. BONSIGNORE: I don't think I 

4 am going to be able to travel, no.

5 MR. KATZ: We will get them to 

6 you. Okay? As soon as we have them, we will. 

7 I will make sure that those are sent to you, 

8 --

9 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: For certain.

11 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Also, 

12 there was a report that SC&A had put together 

13 from the May Board meeting that I never got a 

14 copy of.

15 MR. KATZ: A report on the --

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. There is a 

17 May report.

18 CHAIR ROESSLER: While they're 

19 looking at that, did you get the report this 

20 morning?

21 MR. KATZ: Yes. Well, I sent, I 

22 asked someone to send it to Antoinette. So 
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1 I'm --

2 CHAIR ROESSLER: I'm just 

3 wondering if she had gotten it.

4 MR. KATZ: Assuming that it had 

5 been sent.

6 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. It's a May 

7 19th-21st report?

8 MR. KATZ: The interview notes?

9 MS. BONSIGNORE: It's from the 

10 interviews and from an evaluation of the 

11 documentation that we had provided to SC&A at 

12 that time?

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: It's the 

14 interview. I have the interview. This is Jim 

15 Lockey. I have interview notes from that 

16 date. Is that what you are talking about?

17 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, yes.

18 MR. KATZ: So, John, there was no 

19 PA-cleared version?

20 DR. MAURO: I'm going to have to 

21 look at Steve whether that was PA-cleared and 

22 distributed. I remember the report.
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1 DR. OSTROW: Hang on one minute.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: It has been 

3 cleared by DOE --

4 DR. MAURO: Yes. That --

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: Does contain 

6 privacy-protected information, not to be 

7 provided to any third party.

8 DR. OSTROW: I don't have a copy 

9 in front of me of the actual report. I don't 

10 think it was PA-cleared, the final thing.

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. Okay. Well, 

12 Antoinette, we will work to -- as soon as we 

13 get that PA-cleared with whatever redactions 

14 it has to have.

15 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you.

16 CHAIR ROESSLER: So I think we are 

17 about ready to conclude, but we are planning 

18 on a teleconference on November 12th and the 

19 time to be determined.

20 MR. KATZ: Time to be determined 

21 because we need to work that out with Melius, 

22 if he is going to set up a Work Group, too.
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1 CHAIR ROESSLER: Those of us 

2 involved should keep that --

3 MR. KATZ: Keep that day open.

4 CHAIR ROESSLER: That day open.

5 MR. KATZ: For a teleconference.

6 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Is there 

7 anything else that we need to do here? Mike, 

8 do you have any comments, suggestions, or 

9 anybody on the phone have any advice for us?

10 DR. MAURO: I would like to 

11 confirm SC&A has no action items except to be 

12 prepared to review material as it comes in.

13 CHAIR ROESSLER: And I think we 

14 have listed DCAS stuff, actually.

15 MR. KATZ: Right.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Did you want to 

17 explain, you know, this was like an initial 

18 memo, did you want a more formal report on the 

19 model?

20 CHAIR ROESSLER: I don't think 

21 that's necessary because I think that we're 

22 going in a little different direction.
202 

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1 DR. NETON: We're moving away from 

2 --

3 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes.

4 DR. NETON: We're not using the 

5 model. The model is not being used.

6 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. Anything 

7 else?

8 (No response.)

9 CHAIR ROESSLER: Then I think 

10 we're ready to adjourn.

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, thank you, 

12 everyone, on the phone for bearing with us.

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

14 matter went off the record at 12:23 p.m.) 

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16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

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