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1

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 

+ + + + +

MOUND WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

TUESDAY,

JUNE 5, 2012

+ + + + +

 The Work Group meeting convened in 

the Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott Hotel, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky at 9:00 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

JOSIE BEACH, Chair

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member
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2

ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

TERRIE BARRIE*

ROBERT BARTON, SC&A*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A*

JOSEPH FITZGERALD, SC&A

KARIN JESSEN, ORAU

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU*

JAMES NETON, ORAU

BILLY SMITH, ORAU*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

*Present via telephone
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3 T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome and introductions/Roll Call ...... 4

Review of Agenda .......................... 6

Work Group Discussion: Tritides ........... 7

Work Group Discussion: Data Adequacy and 

Completeness .............................. 79

Break .................................... 105

Recap Tritides ........................... 105

Discussion by Ron Buchanan, SC&A ......... 107

Discussion by John Stiver, SC&A .......... 135

Work Group Discussion: Adequacy/Completeness 

of Internal Dosimetry - Thorium .......... 142

Work Group Discussion: Adequacy/Completeness 

of Internal Dosimetry - Polonium ......... 171

Lunch Break .............................. 182

Work Group Recommendations ............... 183

Site Profile Issues ...................... 185

Meeting Adjourned ........................ 235
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4 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 9:00 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Is everybody in here 

4 ready to get going? Josie, are you?

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

6 (Roll call.)

7 MR. KATZ: Very good. There is an 

8 agenda for this meeting. It's pretty simple. 

9 It's posted on the web and the Chair can go 

10 through that.

11 And there are also various 

12 documents related to this meeting, and they 

13 should be posted on the web as well.

14 And it's your meeting, Josie.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

16 MR. KATZ: And just to remind 

17 everyone on the line when you're not speaking 

18 to the group, please mute your phone. If you 

19 don't have a mute button, use *6. And then 

20 press *6 again to unmute your phone. Thank 

21 you.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Thank you. We are 
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5

1 going to go ahead and take off where we left 

2 off on our last meeting on April 10th.

3 We're going to start with 

4 tritides. The Agenda as Ted pointed out, is 

5 pretty brief. I didn't give any times because 

6 of that.

7 So, we'll start with tritides. 

8 We'll work into adequacy and completeness of 

9 internal dosimetry. There's a couple items on 

10 that.

11 We'll talk about Work Group 

12 recommendations, and then some action plans as 

13 how we'll proceed at our meeting in June in 

14 Santa Fe.

15 And then I did ask SC&A to put 

16 together the Site Profile issues for the last 

17 four to five years we've been working with the 

18 Mound. And we didn't really want to do 

19 anything with it other than just to get it on 

20 the table, give NIOSH a chance to look at it, 

21 SC&A, make sure that we're capturing all the 

22 Site Profile issues. And then make a plan of 
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6 1 how we're going to correct the Site Profile 

2 issues so that we don't lose any momentum 

3 there.

4 And then I did want an update, and 

5 I talked to Jim about it, it is not on the 

6 agenda, but an update on the radon issues that 

7 we discussed in our April meeting. So, just 

8 kind of where NIOSH is with those items.

9 And the last work paper that came 

10 out with tritides on May, was an SC&A White 

11 Paper. And I'm going to go ahead and turn 

12 this over to Joe and the SC&A Team to walk us 

13 through that paper.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Thank you, 

15 Josie.

16 Went ahead and did a bit of a 

17 chronology which is in the paper, because this 

18 has a fair bit of history. And so, the 

19 summary at the deliberations piece is the more 

20 detailed account, but let me just sort of back 

21 up and just go through this a little bit.

22 This particular piece of the STC 
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7

1 or tritides review really started in July of 

2 2010, almost two years ago. And we had spent 

3 time looking at different issues related to 

4 exposure potential and what available data 

5 there might be.

6 But at that point I think we had 

7 sort of reached a point where after a number 

8 of secure sessions and interviews, that I 

9 think the Work Group at that time felt it had 

10 a fix on the fact that there were support 

11 workers that might have been implicated, that 

12 there was an exposure potential for those 

13 support workers, and that there wasn't a clear 

14 pathway for dose-reconstructability. And I 

15 think at that particular Work Group meeting 

16 that's kind of where it came to.

17 And at that meeting, I think NIOSH 

18 alluded to having acquired about that time a 

19 lot of swipe data that I think there was some 

20 feeling that that might be applicable useful 

21 way to go forward on the question.

22 And at that point in time, I think 
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8 1 the Work Group wanted to see what would come 

2 from that analysis using swipe data as a basis 

3 for looking at inhalation using a resuspension 

4 factor.

5 Now, saying that, I think it was 

6 pretty clear we - meaning in this case SC&A 

7 and NIOSH staff - agreed to disagree on the 

8 question of whether that exposure was 

9 negligible or not. I mean, I think even two 

10 years ago we were having that sort of debate. 

11 There was no question of an 

12 exposure potential. I think there was 

13 agreement that that potential was established, 

14 but the question really was whether that 

15 exposure was trivial or not.

16 And at that point we didn't have 

17 any data, but we agreed to disagree on that 

18 question.

19 In any case, what's been proposed, 

20 and this is going back, geez, I guess we first 

21 saw pieces of an analysis back in October of 

22 last year.
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9 1 We saw pieces of a swipe-based 

2 theoretical model that would in fact as we 

3 found out in the December analysis, 

4 demonstrate that an exposure potential for the 

5 support workers based on that analysis was 

6 deemed to be very small and equivalent to 

7 negligible and that no dose reconstruction 

8 would be necessary.

9 In our analysis, we evaluated the 

10 pieces of that review and we had a Work Group 

11 meeting. I think it was in November. And we 

12 had an initial discussion then.

13 And at that meeting, I raised some 

14 questions on plausibility. Hadn't had really 

15 a chance to see the full analysis, but felt 

16 that at that very early stage there might be 

17 some questions on the overall plausibility of 

18 the approach.

19 That's where we kind of left it, 

20 and we did get the full analysis in early 

21 January, which was right before the January 

22 Work Group meeting.
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10 1 And that first White Paper which 

2 was sort of taking the pieces we saw in 

3 October providing the full analysis, is what 

4 we now call the extreme case, which is - and I 

5 tend to agree.

6 It tended to take the variables 

7 and assumptions and use the - more or less the 

8 extreme values. And I think in that case, the 

9 resuspension factor is the most influential 

10 variable. In that case, the assumed value was 

11 fairly extreme.

12 And we did a review of that 

13 particular White Paper. But before our review 

14 was completed and before the last Work Group 

15 meeting, we got a second White Paper which 

16 proposed what I think we call in our review - 

17 well, NIOSH does too - the realistic case and 

18 used the case study using what was termed more 

19 realistic values.

20 And that was issued in - well, it 

21 was written late March, but issued in - we got 

22 it in early April. And that was right before 
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11 1 the last Work Group meeting.

2 So, we chose to withhold the 

3 analysis we had done on the first paper to 

4 sort of scrutinize and to understand what's 

5 happened in the second White Paper and to 

6 provide a complete analysis with that second 

7 paper in mind. And that's what this analysis 

8 is.

9 I mean, again we started this for 

10 the first one, but we augmented it to include 

11 the second one and the - an approach which is 

12 in that second paper.

13 And our evaluation in short, and 

14 we're going to go through this in some detail, 

15 so I just want to summarize, first reviews the 

16 adequacy and completeness of the swipe data.

17 We had told the Work Group at the 

18 last meeting that we would start there, look 

19 at the question of adequacy and completeness 

20 of the data itself again because this was the 

21 first time we had actually seen this data that 

22 was alluded to back in July of 2009 - or was 
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12 1 it 2010? I'm sorry. 2010.

2 And we would also look at the 

3 assumptions in the same light in terms of the 

4 adequacy and the completeness of the 

5 assumptions that were included in that model.

6 The second thing that we looked 

7 at, and this is something, you know, I went 

8 back and looked at the transcripts that were 

9 posted and this is something that we did 

10 discuss at the last Work Group meeting.

11 I mean, it wasn't written down, 

12 but I think I went into some detail as to some 

13 of the concerns we had relative to the 

14 uncertainties that would be associated with 

15 using a theoretical model and the variables 

16 that are in that model and what the 

17 implications might be if one was looking at a 

18 use of that model as a go/no-go for dose 

19 reconstruction consideration.

20 And that's the - sort of the 

21 source of the sort of two -- I put in 

22 quotation marks "policy implications," but 
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13 1 these are just sort of questions that arise 

2 above the technical questions which are, you 

3 know, given the nature of the model, how do 

4 these uncertainties affect that and would that 

5 in fact have implications for how it's being 

6 applied in this particular case?

7 And that's kind of what we 

8 discussed at the last Work Group meeting, but 

9 what's in the paper is really a written 

10 rendition of what I had to say at that 

11 session, some of the concerns I have in that 

12 area.

13 And that would be, I guess, the 

14 going-in summary of where we are today. We 

15 wanted to go ahead and try to be as precise as 

16 we can about some of the concerns that we 

17 expressed verbally in the past two Work Group 

18 meetings.

19 We never quite got to the written 

20 word. We're kind of responding to these two 

21 White Papers that came up right before the two 

22 Work Group meetings.
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14 1 So, we did want to spend some time 

2 trying to as clearly as we could, write down - 

3 and some of this is a little nuance, but 

4 trying to write down what we thought were some 

5 of the implications that the Work Group ought 

6 to think about and perhaps query the data from 

7 that standpoint.

8 I think what we'd like to do, 

9 Josie, if you're agreeable, is since we did go 

10 through a fair amount of analysis, just to 

11 translate that and make it a little clearer by 

12 walking through that analysis.

13 The first one was looking at the 

14 adequacy and completeness of the swipe model 

15 itself and looking at the assumptions 

16 themselves.

17 That review was led by Bob Barton, 

18 who's on the phone. And what I'd like to do 

19 is just have Bob kind of walk through that as 

20 quickly and slowly as anybody wants to. And 

21 just to make sure that, you know, that's clear 

22 and that the conclusions are - 
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15 1 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I wonder 

2 if it might not be better to start off at this 

3 higher level, which is the policy implications 

4 and just get those on the table first.

5 Because if those can't be 

6 resolved, these little issues that you've 

7 identified to being smaller bit players in the 

8 whole - I saw nothing in the analysis - 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

10 DR. NETON: -- the technical 

11 analysis that would preclude us from using the 

12 model.

13 I mean, there were issues about 

14 the amount of uncertainty and representatives 

15 of some of the samples, but by and large I 

16 didn't see anything that said this is 

17 technically wrong. I mean, but there are some 

18 policy issues about us being able to use the 

19 model.

20 In particular - well, is it okay 

21 to start with the - 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.
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16 1 DR. NETON: I just want to say a 

2 few things about the distinct impression I got 

3 from reading SC&A's paper that NIOSH was 

4 committed to not including these doses in dose 

5 reconstructions.

6 I think there was a little bit of 

7 talking past each other maybe at this last 

8 meeting, but I was pretty clear that I thought 

9 at the last meeting that anything that would 

10 exceed one millirem exposure would, our 

11 practice, be included in dose reconstructions.

12 I don't think that we were ever 

13 saying that - I think originally Brant may 

14 have started off down that path with this 

15 analysis. But it's become pretty clear at 

16 least to me and SC&A has demonstrated that for 

17 other case scenarios that one can evaluate, 

18 the doses can exceed one millirem for the 

19 lung. No doubt about it. So, we would 

20 propose that this be used to reconstruct doses 

21 for people.

22 Now, the staff at Mound that this 
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17 1 applied to is somewhat limited. It's 

2 recognizing that there's an SEC prior to 1980 

3 in the tritium building where these exposures 

4 occurred. So, all those folks are already in 

5 the SEC.

6 This would only be applied prior 

7 to 1980 to those people who had non8 presumptive cancers. In particular, the 

9 tritide exposures would only affect people 

10 with lung cancers.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Did you say prior to 

12 1980?

13 DR. NETON: Right. Because we have 

14 an SEC up to 1980 for the SW building.

15 CHAIR BEACH: We have some time 

16 period between '80 and later years.

17 DR. NETON: Yes. Well, first I'm 

18 just trying to triage this a little bit and 

19 say - 

20 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

21 DR. NETON: - prior to 1980 these 

22 exposures are - people who have these types of 
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18 1 exposures are in the SEC.

2 There is the issue of the 

3 remaining non-presumptive cancers. But the 

4 way the tritide model was developed for this 

5 time period, re-suspended hafnium tritide in 

6 the air, assuming it was a hundred percent 

7 hafnium tritide and had people inhaled that 

8 amount of hafnium tritide, that would only be 

9 maximized where people have lung cancers. 

10 Because it would be - it would deliver a 

11 higher dose if they were to use their regular 

12 tritium bioassay, because then it would 

13 immediately go to the affected organs rather 

14 than being held up in the lungs and then 

15 slowly dissolve into the system.

16 So, prior to 1980 it only affects 

17 lung cancers. After 1980, it really only 

18 affects lung cancers, period. And it only 

19 affects people who worked in the SW building.

20 So, it does - it's a limited 

21 population of workers, but we would assign the 

22 doses derived from this model to those 
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19 1 workers.

2 So, I just want to make that clear 

3 that it's not an issue with us whether there's 

4 a de minimis dose here that wouldn't be 

5 included.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the reason 

7 we raise this and we did kind of make, you 

8 know, opened it up for revisiting it at this 

9 meeting because we weren't sure even though --

10 DR. NETON: Right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: -- at the last 

12 two Work Group meetings we came back and 

13 expressly asked that question because, you 

14 know, again that's what we heard, but we 

15 wanted to make it clear in the answer. And 

16 that's why we used the quotes in there.

17 DR. NETON: Yes.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: The answer was 

19 that, you know, that these were essentially 

20 negligible, but what you're saying now is 

21 that's not the intent.

22 DR. NETON: Right.
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20 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Help me to 

3 understand.

4 DR. NETON: So, I wanted to make 

5 sure we got that clarified before we proceed.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Because my 

7 understanding was that you did this, that 

8 NIOSH did this test and that the reports came 

9 back and that they were negligible, but were 

10 not going to do dose reconstruction, that it 

11 wasn't needed.

12 DR. NETON: Well, it - 

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: And that's why we 

14 went off and did this whole evaluation of what 

15 the uncertainty of it was and everything else 

16 was.

17 DR. NETON: I think that it was 

18 certainly -- the way it was originally drafted 

19 was an attempt to demonstrate that the doses 

20 were very small.

21 And in fact in a particular case 

22 example that was cited, it was -- I think that 
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21 1 the dose was less than a millirem or something 

2 like that and said, well, if they were that 

3 small, maybe we wouldn't worry about them.

4 But then it is clear I said that 

5 at the last meeting that if anything over a 

6 millirem would have to be included in a dose 

7 reconstruction, we cannot leave things on the 

8 table like that.

9 And I can understand the confusion 

10 on this issue. But our position as of today, 

11 you know, I think my position as of the last 

12 meeting, maybe it wasn't very clear, was that 

13 we would include this in dose reconstruction.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, this is Brad 

15 again.

16 So, each one of these dose 

17 reconstructions are going to come in and 

18 you're going to do a test to them to see if 

19 they're going to get this dose or not.

20 This is kind of interesting, 

21 because I've never seen - I've never seen 

22 where we test the dose reconstruction first 
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22 1 and then see if they get a dose or not. And 

2 to me, you have to run this test to see if 

3 they get it or not.

4 DR. NETON: Well, that's not true. 

5 We do that all the time, Brad. We always 

6 will run the gamut of the scenarios that are 

7 out there that are plausible, which there may 

8 be some debate on this, but all plausible 

9 scenarios and pick the dose that provides the 

10 highest dose to the cancer that we're 

11 evaluating.

12 So in this particular case, in my 

13 opinion, for non - for support workers, we 

14 have bioassay on these people because they 

15 were all bioassayed when they went in the SW 

16 building, we evaluate the HTO dose, tritiated 

17 water dose, they're on bioassay. And also if 

18 they have a lung cancer, though, then we would 

19 do a tritide, a hafnium tritide dose because 

20 the water inhalation is typically going to be 

21 higher than a hafnium tritide.

22 Because what happens, the hafnium 
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23 1 tritide holds up in the lung, sits there, it 

2 irradiates the lung a lot longer, and then the 

3 tritium slowly bleeds off into the other 

4 organs.

5 So, you're better off getting a 

6 more soluble intake.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the reason 

8 there's a little confusion is the model, you 

9 know, even the written White Paper expresses 

10 the approach as one to evaluate exposure 

11 potential versus an actual dose reconstruction 

12 method.

13 And that was surprising at one of 

14 the Work Group meetings. And we went back and 

15 said, you know, are we hearing that right? 

16 Because I think the Work Group had requested 

17 back in 2010, you know, to get a dose 

18 reconstruction approach and this seemed to be 

19 something a little different than that.

20 And that's why we are very 

21 carefully through the last two Work Group 

22 meetings, trying to clarify more than anything 
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24 1 else what exactly are we looking at.

2 And it was configured to be one 

3 that evaluated the dose from the standpoint of 

4 - and I even asked you that question as to, 

5 you know, is this a dose reconstruction 

6 method?

7 And the answer was, no, this was 

8 really one that would - I don't know whether 

9 the word would be "test," but this would be 

10 actually looking at whether it was a trivial 

11 or not dose. And the conclusion was as it 

12 turns out, it was a trivial dose.

13 So, this is definitely different 

14 than what's been portrayed in the two White 

15 Papers and the past discussions not to say 

16 that, you know, we're at a different place, 

17 but I'm just saying that's why we were 

18 expressing some concerns about that.

19 DR. NETON: I clearly said that 

20 anything more than one millirem would have to 

21 be included in the dose reconstruction. I 

22 know I said that.
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25 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, you did say 

2 that, but I'm - 

3 DR. NETON: I thought maybe - 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: We were trying to 

5 reconcile that with the context of what was 

6 presented before that.

7 DR. NETON: I looked in the 

8 executive summary of the tritide paper - 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

10 DR. NETON: - and the final 

11 sentence says the assessment demonstrates the 

12 exposures and inhalation of insoluble metal 

13 tritide at Mound were small, plausible and 

14 bounding.

15 Doesn't say not required to be 

16 included or anything. It would be the 

17 implication if all cases were that way, but 

18 it's true as SC&A has pointed out, that 

19 they're not all below a millirem.

20 That particular case study was, 

21 but there are numbers of other scenarios that 

22 one can come up with to put it over the 
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26 1 millirem - 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again I 

3 think the - and not to beat this thing, but 

4 certainly the dialog over the last couple of 

5 Work Group meetings, and I've gone through 

6 transcripts and everything, I mean, clearly we 

7 were concerned about that interpretation and 

8 went back a couple, two or three times to 

9 clarify it.

10 And am I the only one - I think 

11 the Work Group felt that that was what we were 

12 hearing.

13 Now, saying that - 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, can I just - 

15 while you're on that topic, just interrupt 

16 just for a moment if I might.

17 I think there was some confusion 

18 on the basis for the millirem value. And it 

19 came up again I think maybe in your paper, 

20 Joe, where you indicated you had gone back - 

21 there was some implication that IREP didn't 

22 handle anything below a millirem.
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27 1 Was it you that - or was it NIOSH?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: No, wait, I think 

3 - 

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Said, no, they went 

5 back and it does. It will handle smaller 

6 doses.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

8 DR. NETON: Yes, that's another 

9 issue.

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. NETON: But nonetheless, we 

12 would - 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: The millirem is not 

14 a magic number in any event. You're going to 

15 include it.

16 DR. NETON: Yeah, we'll - 

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: I mean, do you - 

18 DR. NETON: There are proximal 

19 implications for what one includes in dose 

20 reconstruction.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

22 DR. NETON: For example, if you 
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28 1 have an environmental exposure that the first2 year exposure gives you five millirem and then 

3 say IREP will calculate or IMBA will calculate 

4 doses ten to the fifth, ten to the sixth, ten 

5 to the eighth, ten to the ninth millirem out 

6 30 years.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

8 DR. NETON: And it's very unwieldy 

9 to keep including those type of doses. So, 

10 there's some practical limitations on what we 

11 include in --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And then 

13 this came up because --and Brant was sitting 

14 right there and he said, you know, 

15 categorically the doses to the support workers 

16 were not significant. And, therefore, there 

17 didn't need to be dose reconstruction.

18 I said, well, what do you mean by 

19 - how do you - what's significant? And that's 

20 when he threw the ball back at you and we were 

21 trying to figure out, you know, is there a 

22 definition of significant. And that's where 
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29 1 the one millirem came up as sort of a de 

2 facto, this is kind of a benchmark for what's 

3 considered significant.

4 And then that got into this 

5 discussion, well, where does the one millirem 

6 come from? And that's where we were talking 

7 about IREP and I - we, you know, as I said, I 

8 - you're right. That's not the important 

9 issue, but we kept hearing that sort of 

10 categorically that the doses to support 

11 workers - again, two years ago I think Brant 

12 was pretty clear that these were negligible. 

13 And that was pretty much the mantra all the 

14 way through this - 

15 DR. NETON: I don't know. I mean, 

16 the first few analyses that you alluded to 

17 back in 2010 were coming up with doses that 

18 were something in the order of hundreds of 

19 millirem, if I recall.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no.

21 DR. NETON: And they became more 

22 and more refined. As they became more - as 
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30 1 the process evolved and more and more data 

2 became available, it became more refined. 

3 They started to drop as you took out some of 

4 these very large overestimates.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, the 

6 chronologies - and back in 2010, we didn't 

7 really have any numbers. What we had was data 

8 for the ten operators who we knew by name.

9 DR. NETON: Yeah.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: And at that point, 

11 you know, we had a number of renditions where 

12 we expressed some concern that there was more 

13 than ten people. That in fact these ten 

14 operators had to be supported by support 

15 workers, you know, maintenance people, HP 

16 techs and that kind of thing.

17 And we established that was in 

18 fact the case and that there was exposure 

19 potential based on the interviews with Mound 

20 workers. The Work Group was part of that 

21 discussion.

22 And at that point back in July of 
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31 1 2010, there was agreement, actually. I think 

2 we did agree that there was an exposure 

3 potential.

4 MR. KATZ: Oh, I can hear it. 

5 Someone is talking on the line, having a 

6 conversation at their own location.

7 Will you please mute your phone? 

8 Press *6 if you don't have a mute button, and 

9 that will mute your phone.

10 Someone who is talking right now. 

11 There is a woman talking right now. Please,

12 if you're on this line, you shouldn't be 

13 talking on an open mic.

14 So, please mute your phone. Press 

15 *6 so the rest of us can hear each other. 

16 Thank you.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, let me just 

18 finish. So, in that July's meeting, we got to 

19 that point where we acknowledged that there 

20 was an exposure potential to the support 

21 workers. And, again, I think, however, the 

22 difference was Brant at that time felt that 
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32 1 that dose would be negligible and we felt that 

2 in fact that exposure potential is something 

3 that should be considered for dose 

4 reconstruction.

5 And the source of that difference, 

6 and I don't want to put too much on this, was 

7 interviews with people familiar with the 

8 program. And, you know, we were getting into 

9 these intermittent glove-box failure which you 

10 tend to have when you're dealing with tritium.

11 And we talked to these folks and 

12 said, you know, when you're handling in these 

13 tritide operations, did you have the kind of 

14 glove-box failures you tend to have in tritium 

15 operations? And they said, yeah, of course.

16 And would the tritides figure in 

17 some release scenario based on that? And they 

18 said, yes, but, you know, it would be 

19 understandably small.

20 So, you know, that's all we had. 

21 Literally, that's all we had. So, we 

22 interpreted that to say, well, there's an 
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33 1 exposure potential that needs to be reviewed 

2 and looked at.

3 And I think at that point, Brant 

4 felt that even though there's an exposure 

5 potential, it would be negligible and 

6 something that would not be of concern from 

7 the programmatic standpoint.

8 And we went from there, Jim, and 

9 we got to this first December 2011 White Paper 

10 and that was the so-called extreme case.

11 DR. NETON: Right. That was the 

12 one I thought that was in the hundred 

13 millirem, 200 millirem - 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: That got - yeah, 

15 that got to a couple hundred millirem.

16 DR. NETON: Right.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And that was the 

18 first time actually there was a number 

19 attached to it.

20 DR. NETON: Right.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: And, you know - 

22 DR. NETON: I don't think at that 
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34 1 time we were indicating that that wouldn't be 

2 included in dose reconstruction.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, it was called 

4 very small. But, again, if you go back to 

5 that particular meeting, which was January 

6 5th, and we went into that issue as to - I 

7 think I've got the citations here, but we went 

8 into that issue talking about the significance 

9 and the question of whether or not this was a 

10 dose reconstruction method, or whether in fact 

11 it was just simply to look at exposure 

12 potential.

13 DR. NETON: Well, I think we're 

14 getting caught up in the difference between 

15 saying we can demonstrate that we can bound 

16 things versus do we have a refined dose 

17 reconstruction methodology.

18 Those things sort of always kind 

19 of go hand in hand. Just because you can say 

20 you put an upper limit on something, 

21 eventually you have to come to some way to 

22 apply that to the cases.
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35 1 And in fact, I think this next 

2 iteration is exactly that, the one that came 

3 out a few months ago.

4 CHAIR BEACH: So, you're talking 

5 the March 30th, 2012, that paper?

6 DR. NETON: The most - 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: The most recent 

8 iteration.

9 CHAIR BEACH: That's the most - 

10 DR. NETON: Well, you know, as they 

11 became more and more refined, the doses went 

12 down and down and became smaller and smaller.

13 Brant's position was it became 

14 manageably small and I can understand that he 

15 was indicating that they were probably so 

16 small they wouldn't need to be included in 

17 dose reconstruction. It's clear to me that 

18 the dose is past some threshold where you'd 

19 have to include it.

20 So, what I'm saying here today, 

21 which I guess is probably the most important 

22 thing, is that we would include these in dose 
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36 1 reconstructions using this methodology.

2 DR. MAURO: This is John. I agree 

3 with Jim in terms of this is a clarification 

4 that we really needed because we weren't quite 

5 sure as Joe had pointed out, whether the case 

6 was being made that it's negligible, or the 

7 case is being made, no, we have a coworker 

8 model now that can be used to place a 

9 plausible upper bound.

10 And I think that we, you know, in 

11 our perspective, this clarification allows us 

12 now to focus in on the assumptions, the model, 

13 the approach that you have adopted and the 

14 degree to which you have sufficient data, 

15 swipe data, and that you selected are 

16 resuspension factors and other parameters that 

17 do represent a way to come at the problem and 

18 assign a plausible upper bound to some groups 

19 of workers that might have been exposed.

20 So, I think this is important. 

21 I'm very glad you brought that up, Jim, 

22 because we were not - quite frankly we were 
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37 1 operating on the premise that this was not 

2 being offered up as a way to do dose 

3 reconstruction.

4 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

5 I second what John just said.

6 I had asked Brant directly at the 

7 last Subcommittee meeting whether this was 

8 indeed going to be used as a coworker model. 

9 And I didn't get the point because this more 

10 realistic or not quite as bounding set of 

11 parameters that were chosen yielded doses that 

12 were, in his opinion, vanishingly small. He 

13 thought that it would be probably better just 

14 as a demonstration than just whether you'd 

15 need to be reconstructed.

16 But I think we're kind of 

17 incrementally getting to a point where we can 

18 see that indeed resuspension factor, the 

19 degree of solubility, the effectiveness of 

20 reasonable process and things of that nature. 

21 Oh, and uncertainties that were going to 

22 drive the range of plausible doses over a 
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38 1 millirem.

2 So, it does need to be 

3 reconstructed and Jim is presenting that now. 

4 I think that's a great - 

5 DR. NETON: And the only thing I'd 

6 like to point out in addition to this unless 

7 I'm missing something here, is this would only 

8 be applied - this technique would only be 

9 applied to lung cancers.

10 We have bioassay data, tritium 

11 bioassay data for everyone else. And I 

12 believe that those would end up being higher 

13 to organs that are nonrespiratory tract organs 

14 using the tritium water model.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: So, just to

16 clarify, so pre-'80 if you have someone who 

17 doesn't qualify for the SEC in terms of the 

18 250 days or whatever, if they have lung cancer 

19 you would use the tritide model. If they have 

20 another cancer, you'd use the tritium bioassay 

21 as - 

22 DR. NETON: Everyone was required 
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39 1 to submit that worked in the SW building.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. If it's 

3 after '80, it would only be used for lung 

4 cancer cases.

5 DR. NETON: Well, we would run both 

6 - 

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 DR. NETON: The maximum dose would 

9 be for lung cancer cases. You would probably 

10 end up with a higher dose using the regular 

11 tritium model.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: But that would be 

13 checked at least.

14 DR. NETON: Yes, we would check it.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I was 

16 wondering wouldn't you just run it and see - 

17 you're just saying that - 

18 DR. NETON: We could do both, but 

19 it seems to me that if you have - 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: If you validated 

21 it, you - 

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's likely only 
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40 1 lung cancer, but you would still run - 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You would still 

3 run it for everything just to make sure.

4 DR. NETON: Right. Because we may 

5 actually have higher tritium HTO intakes 

6 beyond the resuspension that occurred from the 

7 material on the ground.

8 I mean, so we would take the 

9 bioassay data and run it as if it were HTO.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: And the DR 

11 approach, I mean, let's call it a DR approach 

12 now since it's clearly not an exposure 

13 potential analysis, is the model as it's 

14 written. I mean, it's - 

15 DR. NETON: Well, there's still 

16 some -- it is subject to debate about whether 

17 the 50th or the 95th percentile would be used. 

18 That's always open for discussion.

19 We tend to use the 95th percentile 

20 in these cases, because there's a lot of other 

21 uncertainty that you - SC&A has well pointed 

22 out.
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41 1 And if we use this fixed 

2 resuspension factor, this approach would be 

3 totally consistent with what we've done in 

4 many other places and particularly residual 

5 contamination periods there. Resuspend the 

6 material, pick the 95th percentile value of 

7 the contaminant and assume that that is re8 suspended in that concentration for every hour 

9 of every day that these people work. And I 

10 think it sort of accounts for some of the 

11 other uncertainties that are in there.

12 The alternative would be to run it 

13 as a full-fledged distribution of values, you 

14 know, picking a distribution about the 

15 resuspension factor, distribution about the 

16 concentration using the 50th percentile of 

17 that and run it through in that way.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And this would be 

19 for all workers that - 

20 DR. NETON: All workers that had - 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: -- had tritium 

22 bioassay.
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42 1 DR. NETON: -- tritium bioassay, 

2 correct.

3 CHAIR BEACH: So, if you look at 

4 Joe's point, the second point, the use of the 

5 conceptional model for which site-specific and 

6 empirical values of the SECs are lacking, so 

7 basically you lack site-specific parameters 

8 and there's still too many variables that I 

9 can see.

10 DR. NETON: Well, I mean, we have 

11 site-specific data. There are smears taken in 

12 all the rooms by year.

13 The resuspension factor is not 

14 necessarily site-specific, but this is exactly 

15 how we model residual contamination. This is 

16 a TIB-70-type approach that SC&A has reviewed 

17 and has not said is invalid.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Well, that's a 

19 technical discussion. I think Bob Barton is 

20 going to - 

21 DR. NETON: Right. But what I'm 

22 saying is to say that the approach is not 
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43 1 valid, I would say that we've used this many 

2 times in the past and I don't know why it 

3 wouldn't be valid here to resuspend material 

4 into the air.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me clarify. I 

6 think - in fact, we actually say this in the 

7 review, and I think Bob will second this in 

8 his more detailed discussion, is that we don't 

9 fault the analysis or the model itself.

10 DR. NETON: Yes, when I read that, 

11 I thought I was done reading.

12 (Laughter.)

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. No, no. 

14 The model itself is not - 

15 (Simultaneous speaking.)

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I think it has a 

17 lot of history and all the rest of it. 

18 Clearly we're more concerned and have been 

19 from Day 1, on tritides. In fact, the 

20 uncertainties - this is a subjective thing, 

21 again.

22 And I think you said in one of the 
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44 1 Work Group meetings that applying models like 

2 this, it's not unheard to actually reflect the 

3 uncertainties - uncertainty ranges on some of 

4 these things.

5 That is where, you know, we had 

6 two concerns. And I think you satisfied the 

7 first one in your clarification.

8 But the second one is that when a 

9 theoretical model - and again this is - it's 

10 hardly one or the other. I mean, this does 

11 have some site-specific information and does 

12 have the tritium even though we don't know how 

13 much of the tritide is in the tritium.

14 It was done in the locations where 

15 the operations took place. So, you know, that 

16 could be considered site-specific.

17 On the other hand, we don't have 

18 the actual monitoring data per se for the 

19 tritides. And one has to make assumptions 

20 about all that, which is what we're talking 

21 about in the model. And we're just more 

22 concerned about the uncertainties that are 
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45 1 embedded in the model.

2 And this is a conversation that 

3 the full Board has had a number of times on 

4 models as to whether, you know, the 

5 uncertainties and the basis of the model in 

6 actual either empirical or site-specific data 

7 is sufficient to give one confidence in the 

8 application of that model in dose 

9 reconstruction.

10 I'll tell you that's not something 

11 that SC&A can offer. That's a study judgment 

12 call that the Board has to make on any model 

13 that's advanced like this. And it's not 

14 different than maybe the radon discussion at 

15 Blockson or some of the other models that have 

16 been considered.

17 It's a judgment call as to whether 

18 the uncertainties are acceptable or not 

19 acceptable, whether the site-specific roots of 

20 the model, the empirical basis of the model is 

21 sufficient.

22 And I, like I said, I think we 
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46 1 just wanted to present all the facts that we 

2 could in terms of the uncertainty issues and 

3 whatnot. And I think it's the Board that has 

4 to decide whether it in its judgement, has 

5 enough confidence that the model would support 

6 dose reconstruction with sufficient accuracy. 

7 And I think that's a judgment call.

8 I mean, I've been listening to the 

9 debate on the models in the past and I don't 

10 know what you can say about it.

11 DR. NETON: I'd say a couple things 

12 about this. It's not as unique, I think, as 

13 SC&A tends to think it is.

14 You think what happened here - the 

15 active use of the tritide compounds has 

16 stopped by this time.

17 So, what we're having here is 

18 essentially a classic period of there's no 

19 active airborne generators of tritium 

20 compounds during this period.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I can't speak 

22 specifically to the time frame - 
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47 1 DR. NETON: I understand. So, if 

2 there are no active source generators going 

3 on, then you have a resuspension problem just 

4 like we have in many other sites.

5 The only way this model works and 

6 if that's true - now, if there's other issues 

7 that come out that it might be --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: The Work Group is 

9 familiar with issues that date past 1980 that 

10 would - 

11 DR. NETON: Well, that's --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: - undercut that.

13 DR. NETON: - in the D&D era, I 

14 think, maybe.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: This is not D&D.

16 CHAIR BEACH: No, it's not D&D.

17 DR. NETON: Okay. Well, up until 

18 let's say - right now the model works if it's 

19 a resuspension because there's no active 

20 generators of material. So, you have a 

21 resuspension problem just like you have at 

22 many other sites. We have smear data. We 
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48 1 have re-suspended it.

2 The doses in resuspension periods 

3 tend to be very small because you're re4 suspending a very small fraction of what's on 

5 the surface.

6 By nature of reconstructing small 

7 dosimetric quantities, the uncertainty goes 

8 large because any time you have a small dose, 

9 the uncertainty value as far as that, that's a 

10 given.

11 But we feel that it is small and 

12 is bounded by this approach. So, I'm not sure 

13 why there would be an issue with it. But I 

14 agree, you know, the Board certainly can weigh 

15 in on that, but I - 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, and I don't 

17 disagree with what you said. I think the 

18 model - I mean, this approach has been done 

19 before and it is - we weren't saying it wasn't 

20 relatively common.

21 I think what we're saying is that 

22 this deliberation by the Board on whether a 
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49 1 model's inherent uncertainties and its roots 

2 and site-specific data are adequate enough to 

3 support dose reconstruction, that part of it I 

4 think does happen and would need to happen on 

5 this one in the Work Group, but there's two 

6 issues.

7 Really, the first issue is 

8 obviously the operational status, this 

9 question that we can't really get into in 

10 detail, but the Board - Members of this Work 

11 Group are pretty familiar with that postdate 

12 1980 in terms of generation.

13 The second issue is again because 

14 of the nature of the beast, this hafnium 

15 tritide, the - and we've had this discussion 

16 in the past. The source term can't - we don't 

17 have specific source term data. We do have 

18 the tritium data.

19 But I think again from the 

20 standpoint of the uncertainties that pushes 

21 you into, a judgment has to be made as to 

22 whether those uncertainties would be 
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50 1 acceptable or not given the uncertainty.

2 Now, not the mechanistic ones of 

3 resuspension, but just the ones where you're 

4 going to have to conclude particle size, 

5 you're going to have to conclude the, you 

6 know, in this case you're going to have to 

7 conclude a hundred percent tritide.

8 But the other issues that come 

9 into the uncertainties that we've laid out 

10 that there are a lot of uncertainties when 

11 you're dealing with theoretical model that has 

12 to be theoretical, because there isn't a whole 

13 lot of hard edges to it because of the nature 

14 of the analysis.

15 DR. MAURO: Joe and Jim, this is 

16 John again. Jim just said something that was 

17 very important to me in looking at the model 

18 that they're offering.

19 And that is I was always concerned 

20 that the resuspension model would be used at a 

21 time period when a person might be being 

22 exposed to both re-suspended material, but 
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51 1 also direct airborne contamination from 

2 leakage during operations.

3 And I just heard something that 

4 answered a very important question to me. And 

5 that is this resuspension model would only be 

6 used during time periods when the only way in 

7 which a person could be exposed to metal 

8 tritides is from resuspension and not from 

9 direct leakage.

10 That was, quite frankly, when I 

11 was reviewing the resuspension factor issue, 

12 you may have seen it, that - I was concerned 

13 that if you have direct exposure from leakage, 

14 the resuspension model is not going to 

15 necessarily do the trick for you.

16 So, I want to make sure that's 

17 confirmed here. I know this is a subject that 

18 was not directly addressed.

19 In fact, I remember asking Brant 

20 that question at the last meeting and they 

21 really for a variety of reasons, it was left 

22 ambiguous.
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52 1 But it sounds like that their - 

2 Jim, your position now is that this 

3 resuspension model that you're offering up 

4 would only be used for people who might have 

5 been exposed to material that was literally 

6 re-suspended as opposed to direct injection.

7 DR. NETON: Yeah, I mean, I see no 

8 other way it is valid.

9 DR. MAURO: I agree with that and 

10 thank you. That's clarification Number 2. In 

11 my mind, that was really fundamental to 

12 everything we're talking about.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, I 

14 don't, you know, starting with - I'm beginning 

15 to agree with your premise of talking about 

16 this first.

17 I think this sort of leaves us 

18 with the question of a dose reconstruction 

19 method that save a decision on maybe a 

20 distribution, which is what you're saying, and 

21 some resolution of this generating - source of 

22 generation issue which - 
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53 1 DR. NETON: This is a new issue to 

2 me. So, I haven't been privy to what the - 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Again, 

4 it's just difficult to talk about, but that 

5 actually was the whole source of the last 

6 year's worth of analysis of data if you look 

7 at the data, because the fabrication period 

8 was well before that.

9 DR. NETON: Yes.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So, that's not an 

11 issue.

12 DR. NETON: Right.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: But the reason 

14 we're even talking about it in this context 

15 and not just D&D, is because of that issue.

16 So, that certainly is a question 

17 which we have basically done all we can with, 

18 actually. There isn't much more we can do 

19 with that one.

20 DR. NETON: Well, let me ask - I 

21 don't know if you can answer this or not, but 

22 is it safe to assume that up to 1980 this 
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54 1 would be valid, this technique?

2 I don't want to say "valid." 

3 There's no reason to assume that there's 

4 airborne generators - 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, there is - 

6 DR. NETON: -- other than is an 

7 SEC already. And so, we're taking care of - 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, no, the 

9 problem is that you do have generators before 

10 '80. So, you couldn't apply the method.

11 DR. NETON: Well - 

12 CHAIR BEACH: You mean after '80.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

14 DR. NETON: But everybody is in the 

15 SEC before '80 primarily.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: But the method for 

17 those who are not if it's - 

18 DR. NETON: Right.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: The lung would not 

20 work for the generator because - 

21 DR. NETON: Well, and then that had 

22 been - I know Brant's opinion and I have no 
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55

1 reason to doubt it, but he knows who were 

2 physically working with these materials in 

3 that time frame.

4 We would assume that their urine 

5 analysis would be based on tritide exposures 

6 and then - 

7 CHAIR BEACH: But, Jim, isn't it 

8 true - 

9 DR. NETON: -- maintenance workers 

10 would get the re-suspended - 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, I was going to 

12 say we couldn't identify the maintenance - 

13 DR. NETON: All the ancillary 

14 workers would receive this.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And I 

16 would agree with that. They would be - 

17 DR. NETON: So, through 1980 it 

18 seems like it's okay. I'm not - unless I'm - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think that's 

20 - 

21 DR. NETON: I can't address the - 

22 what you brought up about after 1980, because 
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56 1 - 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: That was the 

3 subject of many a trip to OST, Brant and I. 

4 So, that took a while to establish and there 

5 is a real - well, there actually was agreement 

6 on it, but we added rooms. Originally there 

7 was two rooms, and now there's four. And 

8 that's the reason there's four.

9 DR. NETON: Okay.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So, yeah, that's 

11 an issue. And certainly that would be 

12 probably the - one of the bigger questions, 

13 technical questions - or one of the bigger 

14 questions that have to be resolved.

15 DR. NETON: Would that same 

16 situation apply if we knew the workers in that 

17 time frame - well, establish that they were 

18 the ones that get the high dose, then the same 

19 resuspension factors would apply to those 

20 workers, would that not work. Not knowing the 

21 circumstances of what you're talking about.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's the 
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57

1 question we'd have to answer. Now, you know, 

2 are the personnel the same, or not?

3 DR. NETON: Do we know the 

4 personnel?

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Do we even know 

6 the personnel? But that would be the question 

7 as to whether you can make that bifurcation 

8 and apply it that way.

9 And you're right. Do you know the 

10 personnel for the second as opposed to the 

11 first?

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: You're talking 

13 about '80?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's what you're 

16 asking?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: I thought that we 

19 just got into that and Brant felt he had a 

20 good handle on it, and it fell apart.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: More on the 

22 support workers. I mean, knowing the 
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58 1 operators by name was clear-cut, but the - 

2 it's like an iceberg.

3 Knowing all the workers who 

4 reported those glove-box operations, that 

5 wasn't as clear. That's why we're sort of 

6 into this you can't really distinguish who 

7 that population might be.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. That's 

9 what I want to make sure because we have never 

10 been able to do that. I mean, we have people 

11 come in that we changed out the glass in this, 

12 we changed out fans in this. It was an

13 ongoing thing. It wasn't just cut and dry ten 

14 people.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we've 

16 actually sat in interviews and got to about 20 

17 names because the operators could remember who 

18 supported them.

19 But at that point, you know, it's 

20 hard to figure out, you know, you've been in 

21 facilities. It's hard to figure out who 

22 actually all these folks are. There's a lot 
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59 1 of them.

2 So, but, no, I agree. I think if 

3 you had analogous to the pre-'80, you actually 

4 could identify operators versus others, then I 

5 don't see why you couldn't apply the same 

6 approach.

7 But of course then the overriding 

8 question would be treating -- or again the 

9 acceptability of the model from the standpoint 

10 of uncertainties and site-specific data again 

11 which, you know, beyond the mechanistic part, 

12 beyond this part is poor judgment. So, that's 

13 how I would sum it up.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Right. And I know 

15 we'll get into this later, but I know there's 

16 a lot of the swipe data that's missing in 

17 several years during that time period as well.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I think Bob can go 

19 into that, but that's all - well, that gets 

20 into a question of whether you can 

21 extrapolate, but I think NIOSH does that quite 

22 often.
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60 1 I think what Bob was pointing out, 

2 and he mentioned it at the last Work Group 

3 meeting, is that all these were two-month span 

4 of samples. And in translating that to annual 

5 dose estimates, that multiplier wasn't used.

6 So, he went ahead and came up with 

7 some really nice tables. He went ahead and 

8 made the adjustment.

9 So, I think that - is John on the 

10 phone? That's tractable. That can be 

11 adjustable. I don't see an issue there.

12 I think it really comes down to 

13 this one question of whether you can make it 

14 work post-'80. Another question as to whether 

15 or not the uncertainties can be - if that's 

16 satisfactory to the Board as a model.

17 And then, you know, we're left 

18 with this D&D issue, which quite frankly, you 

19 know, that was a new wrinkle. We had 

20 interviews that seem to suggest that there 

21 were tritide issues in the actual terminal 

22 cleanup of Mound.
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61 1 I think Brant had done additional 

2 interviews which - that seem to come up with a 

3 different answer from some of the same people. 

4 So, we didn't have time to look at that, but 

5 that would be another question.

6 I think - I'm not sure the model 

7 would work for D&D per se. Although, I guess 

8 I'd have to think about that. It would be a 

9 different kind of - 

10 DR. NETON: It would be harder to 

11 justify, but I got the impression from reading 

12 the earlier report that NIOSH put out that in 

13 the D&D era they had adopted a very different 

14 way of monitoring for tritides.

15 In other words, they had a filter 

16 sample, a BZ sample that they were going to 

17 analyze with a scintillation counter, as well 

18 as looking at the gaseous form.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and it may 

20 turn out that I've got to look at the timing, 

21 you know, the entire complex got alerted to 

22 tritides about the time that Mound was getting 
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62 1 through D&D. So, I don't know if that might 

2 have led to compensatory steps or something 

3 where that the exposure potential would have 

4 been pretty controlled.

5 DR. NETON: Right. You have to 

6 match up when the D&D activities actually 

7 occurred versus when they instituted these new 

8 protocols for tritide monitoring.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: But that, to me, 

10 is a different issue than whether or not the 

11 model would work as - in terms of 

12 implementation. So, that's more of a question 

13 - 

14 MR. STIVER: This is Stiver. I 

15 remember now that basically the D&D activities 

16 were going on in the post-835 environment. 

17 And there was as Jim alluded to, a different 

18 technique employed they also used scanning 

19 electron micron to identify particulates.

20 And so, they had a technique by 

21 which they were able to identify the 

22 materials.
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63 1 MR. FITZGERALD: It's just a matter 

2 of timing. I think Mound precipitated the 

3 attention. So, it may very well have been 

4 that the D&D was controlled from the get-go, 

5 because there was concern going into D&D that 

6 this would be - 

7 MR. STIVER: But, I mean, the 

8 question is whether this type of a model would 

9 be applicable or - 

10 DR. NETON: We certainly would use 

11 it if we had the type of data that I - it 

12 sounds like they collected - 

13 MR. STIVER: Fill that gap --

14 DR. NETON: Any time you have a D&D 

15 and try to estimate resuspension factors - 

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is Brad 

17 talking again. I remember something else 

18 about the D&D period.

19 Everybody wasn't tested for it. 

20 They took the stance of one out of 20 would 

21 have a BZ sample and then that was it.

22 So, you know, that's a whole other 
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64 1 - that's getting into - 

2 MR. STIVER: You're getting into 

3 representativeness and data adequacy - 

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: And this was 

5 brought out in many of the interviews and many 

6 of the people discussed that it was off, but I 

7 want to step back just a second.

8 So, we have a path forward. We 

9 actually have a dose reconstruction method 

10 that is going to be applied. I've been going 

11 for two years here and understanding that we 

12 have one, but it was more of a - just a 

13 general - so, the approach that you put out 

14 now is what NIOSH is standing on for a dose 

15 reconstruction for people. 

16 There's no half a millirem limit?

17 DR. NETON: Sorry to confuse the 

18 issue.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, no.

20 DR. NETON: I believe this would be 

21 the best - 

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: You've got to 
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65 1 understand we've been dealing - we've been 

2 battling this back and forth. And even 

3 started out with slight data and this is how 

4 we're going to get here, but it doesn't really 

5 matter because it's negligible and we're back 

6 and forth.

7 And I personally coming into this 

8 today, did not think that we had a 

9 representative path forward with the dose 

10 reconstruction for it. And I guess I just 

11 want to make sure that that's clear that we 

12 have - 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: And you have 

14 really, you know, it wasn't wasted effort, the 

15 analysis on the method, you know.

16 The only difference is I think 

17 some decision on the dose distribution guide 

18 50th or 95th, but essentially the model is the 

19 same model that's reviewed in the paper.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you're 

22 equipped to evaluate the model as a dose 
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66 1 reconstruction model, not as something else.

2 And as we were just saying, the 

3 only question really gets down to the adequacy 

4 and completeness of that model which is also 

5 analyzed in here.

6 And of course the remaining 

7 concern that we've expressed on uncertainties, 

8 but I think you've already heard about that. 

9 It's not the mechanistic. The actual model 

10 itself, the mechanistic approach is fine. 

11 It's been used in resuspension factors. 

12 That's all been pretty standard.

13 It's whether or not it's grounded 

14 enough, and that's a judgment call that I 

15 don't know how to say it.

16 It's just that you have to decide 

17 from a site-specific and uncertainty 

18 standpoint whether it's that famous 

19 sufficiently accurate or not to be used in 

20 dose reconstruction. And that's a Board call.

21 We, I think, pretty much have laid 

22 it out in probably excruciating detail as far 
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67 1 as what the uncertainties might be and what is 

2 the significance. They're all there.

3 DR. NETON: I don't have time to 

4 review all --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right. So, 

6 it's like - I don't know. And we can go 

7 through that as we proceed, but there's not 

8 much more that can be said. You have pretty 

9 much our full assessment of what those 

10 uncertainties are.

11 Some of the concerns over, you 

12 know, site specificity, which is kind of a 

13 term of art almost, but just what we consider 

14 some of the site specificity issues.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: And this is why I 

16 bring it up because - and this is Brad again. 

17 I'm sorry.

18 The thing is as we came into this, 

19 I was looking at that as more of a test of the 

20 test's validity or - 

21 MR. STIVER: Whether you need to 

22 reconstruct, basically.
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68 1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. And I have 

2 been on that premise for almost two years 

3 because it was kind of put forth to us this 

4 way. And now these gaps in the analysis, the 

5 way we look at this is a little bit more 

6 meaningful to me.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: And we say it's 

8 subjective, you know. I think, Paul, we were 

9 taking about trying to come up with some 

10 analogy. We're talking about the high-fired 

11 plutonium at Rocky because there's, you know, 

12 certainly the solubility question seems to be 

13 pretty parallel.

14 But there and again it sort of 

15 goes back to not necessarily the method as 

16 opposed to whether that method is grounded in 

17 either empirical data, in that case it's 

18 autopsy data, or grounded in site-specific 

19 information.

20 Of course Rocky had quite a bit of 

21 plutonium bioassay for both - for all workers. 

22 It was fence line to fence line practically.
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69 1 So, I don't think that's the case 

2 here, but it's a matter of degree. So, it's 

3 not sort of saying white or black. It's just 

4 saying that the degree of supporting 

5 information and the uncertainty range is, I 

6 think, relatively higher for this one versus 

7 for the high-fired plutonium.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: And I think it's 

9 important to realize that uncertainties per se 

10 don't dictate sufficient accuracy conceptually 

11 because general premise the bigger those 

12 uncertainties are, the more claimant favorable 

13 your decision is because it spreads that 

14 distribution out.

15 If you've got a 95th percentile, I 

16 would venture to say and I've done these 

17 exercises in class with students, the tighter 

18 your uncertainties are, the smaller - the 

19 lower the dose assigned is at the 95th 

20 percentile.

21 Sufficient accuracy means that 

22 you've bounded well enough to make any correct 
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70 1 decision on a claimant.

2 Usually sufficient - or 

3 uncertainties help the claimant. There may be 

4 an exception to that. I have not seen it yet.

5 Assuming you have a reasonable 

6 model, a model which is plausible which is 

7 important, it's got to be a plausible model, 

8 and certainly if you have site-specific data 

9 that that's built on, that helps you.

10 If you don't have that, then 

11 you're into other things like surrogates and 

12 so on. But I think it's important that we not 

13 think that uncertainties as they get bigger at 

14 a given site, tend to hurt sufficient accuracy 

15 decisions. The accuracy doesn't have to do 

16 with getting an exact dose. It has to do with 

17 getting a good decision.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: The only thing I 

19 would add is that what sticks in my mind is 

20 the famous stratification - radon 

21 stratification debate which was filled with 

22 uncertainties in terms of where radon would go 
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71 1 in a building.

2 And I think the representativeness 

3 of the model to a real situation, I sat 

4 through the debate I said, you know, I thought 

5 I knew how uncertainty would play in the 

6 model. Now, I have to assume that, yes, I 

7 think that's kind of a judgment call.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: It is a judgment 

9 call. I think the model is pretty good, but 

10 the - 

11 MR. STIVER: I think Paul hit it 

12 right on the - the crux of the problem here is 

13 that we're looking at - we're kind of defining 

14 "uncertainty" in different ways.

15 I mean, this is a classic 

16 definition of the uncertainty of the 

17 parameters that give rise to the distribution 

18 results.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, the 

20 definition of "uncertainty," yeah.

21 MR. STIVER: But what we're looking 

22 at here is just uncertainty and assumptions, 
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72 1 because we don't have site-specific data.

2 So, we have this one assumption, 

3 the percent of STCs ranges from zero - 

4 (Simultaneous speaking.)

5 MR. STIVER: So, we have no way to 

6 benchmark this model that on the surface it 

7 appears to be a good model. We have 

8 reasonable parameter values drawn from the 

9 scientific literature, but you just don't have 

10 that link back to any kind of site-specific 

11 information where you can benchmark it.

12 DR. NETON: But the zero to 100 

13 percent, I mean, SC&A has alluded in there 

14 that they believe that there was significant 

15 potential for tritide exposure in the 

16 workplace.

17 I mean, I don't know how you 

18 interpret significant, but to me that could 

19 mean as high as a hundred percent. It could 

20 be a spot, you know. We don't know.

21 MR. STIVER: This becomes a - 

22 DR. NETON: I don't know. And 
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73 1 everything that one has to consider and I know 

2 it's hard to get your head around it, but 

3 these are small doses.

4 The uncertainty and the 

5 stratification for the radon was because we 

6 didn't know what the uncertainty was. We 

7 couldn't put a bound on, you know, I tried. I 

8 tried to say, okay, how stratified could it 

9 be? 

10 Here I think you can bound the 

11 uncertainties because it's no more than a 

12 hundred percent, and the uncertainty in the 

13 resuspension factor can be easily quantified.

14 So, you've got an ability to put 

15 upper caps on these things that make some - 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I might add it was 

17 actually SC&A that enhanced that radon model.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I'm not saying 

20 that - 

21 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and I don't 

22 think that dose - how small the dose is really 
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74 1 matters, but it's how you're going to do the 

2 dose reconstruction.

3 And until today, we did not know 

4 that. We were left at the last meeting with 

5 that this was not a dose reconstruction. So, 

6 that does clear that up.

7 MR. STIVER: The magnitude of the 

8 dose isn't at issue. It's whether it's 

9 reconstructable and - 

10 CHAIR BEACH: Exactly.

11 DR. NETON: What I'm saying, 

12 though, as the magnitude of the dose goes 

13 down, the uncertainty goes up. It's an 

14 inherent nature of reconstructing small doses.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, are we 

16 ready to hear from Bob?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think that 

18 certainly - 

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: About five minutes 

20 ago I started in onto this because Paul made a 

21 comment, and I agree with him on it, that when 

22 he was speaking that this - just because we 
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75

1 get uncertainties and there that it basically 

2 comes back to the basis and that is with site 

3 data, that all of a sudden we're coming in and 

4 we don't have good site data.

5 And then we're putting 

6 uncertainties on that and we're adding to 

7 this, you know, half of nothing is still 

8 nothing.

9 And this is - this is one of the 

10 things that I want to point out because 

11 personally looking at their data, they haven't 

12 got much, in my eyes.

13 DR. NETON: There are 60,000 

14 swipes.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: What's that?

16 DR. NETON: There are 60,000 

17 swipes.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: 60,000 swipes, but 

19 there's also very large gaps in it. The 

20 process that was going on with it there was 

21 questions in that there we start getting into 

22 uncertainties on that.
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76 1 And this just compiles the issue 

2 and this is, you know, this is where we 

3 started off two years ago is to be able to 

4 with this swipe data and be able to look at 

5 this.

6 I do not disagree that when we 

7 have uncertainties that it makes the doses 

8 bigger or whatever else like that, but it is 

9 compounded by when we don't have good data to 

10 be able to track it.

11 If you go -- looking at it from 

12 just this, this is fine. But when we go clear 

13 back to the site and go through the process 

14 and there's holes and gaps, it makes it much 

15 harder to be able to do.

16 We have a hundred percent I'd 

17 agree with you, but we're not working in a 

18 classroom setting to where we can put this up 

19 there. This is a dose reconstruct - this is a 

20 compensation act for people.

21 When we don't have the data there, 

22 in my eyes, they set up an operation for us to 
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77

1 be able to take care of that and sometimes we

2 really go a long ways.

3 DR. MAURO: Brad, this is John. 

4 I'd like to second - I think you are now 

5 moving into the - we've sort of set the 

6 framework with the problem now very nicely in 

7 terms of we know there's a coworker model in 

8 front of us and it's to be used for workers 

9 only exposed to resuspension. That was a very 

10 important boundary.

11 Now, we're in that world and I 

12 think you brought up the first and one of the 

13 most important questions. Does the data that 

14 we - the swipe data that's out there, does it 

15 capture the full range of exposure scenarios?

16 And what I'm hearing is that there 

17 might be some question whether that data is 

18 complete. Do we have enough data representing 

19 all scenarios and circumstances so that we 

20 have a degree of certainty, assurance, that 

21 we're not going to underestimate the dose to 

22 any particular worker?
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78 1 And I think we're actually now 

2 into the substance of do we have sufficient 

3 data. And the first data point, and this is 

4 the only real data we're working with, site5 specific data, that is the swipe data.

6 So, everyone says, okay, that is 

7 the rock we're standing on. Is that rock 

8 solid, or is there something about it that's a 

9 problem?

10 Later on we're going to talk about 

11 given that data are complete and reliable, 

12 then of course we can talk about the 

13 resuspension factor and other assumptions.

14 But I think, Brad, you've just 

15 nailed down the single most important question 

16 given the context we're in now.

17 Does the swipe data capture the 

18 full range of exposure scenarios from 

19 resuspension that we need to address, or are 

20 there holes there that we can't deal with?

21 So, I'm glad we got to that point. 

22 That's where we should be.
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79 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, John, that's 

2 a perfect segue into Bob Barton's discussion 

3 of data adequacy and completeness.

4 DR. NETON: You guys must have 

5 rehearsed that.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So, Bob, are you 

8 still with us?

9 MR. BARTON: I'm still here, John. 

10 Thank you.

11 Okay. So, I guess I'm going to 

12 start with the completeness data. For those 

13 of you following along, the report is actually 

14 on the website. That starts on Page 25, which 

15 is Section 4 of the report.

16 As Joe sort of mentioned at the 

17 outset of this meeting, there's been sort of 

18 an iterative process to this whole thing. And 

19 that goes for the data that was compiled, too.

20 And in my mind, it sort of went 

21 through three stages where Stage 1 was sort of 

22 the data we were discussing at the November 
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80 1 7th meeting. And that covered two rooms. It 

2 was the SW-8 Room and the R-108 Room. And 

3 that data started in 1985, and it was compiled 

4 through 1989.

5 Stage 2 was about a report 

6 released early in January of this year and 

7 that added additional for those two rooms. 

8 So, now the SW-8 dataset actually started in 

9 1969, and the R-108 dataset started in 1983. 

10 So, more data was added in sort of a Stage 2 

11 iteration.

12 And then there's been the most 

13 one, so I'll call it Stage 3, which was the 

14 report released in late March. And this one 

15 added actually two additional rooms to the 

16 original two. And that's Room SW-13 starting 

17 in 1974, and SW-150 starting in 1968.

18 So, that's kind of the dataset 

19 that we're at now. And because of how the 

20 whole process has sort of been iterative, so 

21 is the completeness analysis and how it was 

22 set up.
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81 1 So, if it's agreeable, what I'd 

2 like to do is kind of start by talking about 

3 those first two rooms for which data was 

4 compiled. That's SW-8 and R-108. And then we 

5 can kind of discuss the final two rooms added 

6 at this latest stage at the very end.

7 And the reason I'd like to do that 

8 is so that anyone who's following along in the 

9 actual report can really go kind of page-by10 page through this completeness analysis and 

11 hopefully not get lost along the way.

12 So, if we start with Room R-108, 

13 like I said, the data begins in about mid-1983 

14 and goes up to 1989.

15 The intake periods that were 

16 defined off this dataset for this room and the 

17 corresponding number of samples are shown in 

18 Table 1 of Section 4.1.1, and are also shown 

19 visually in Figure 1.

20 It should be noted that no data 

21 had originally been compiled for 1987. And 

22 that's really kind of a two-year gap starting 
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82 1 in mid-1986 through mid-1988.

2 Any other gaps that were kind of 

3 noticed in the data were generally on the 

4 order of a few months. And this was the case 

5 for a lot of these rooms.

6 Moving on to the second room, SW7 8, again the dataset was expanded in sort of 

8 the second iteration so that the data actually 

9 begins in 1969 and goes up through 1989.

10 Similar to the first room, you can 

11 see what the defined intake periods were and 

12 the corresponding number of samples for intake 

13 period on Table 2, and again shown visually in 

14 Figures 2 and 3.

15 There are several gaps for SW-8. 

16 They're listed on Page 27 in the sort of 

17 bolded form. I don't really want to read 

18 through each and every one, but it's worth 

19 noting that a lot of them are on the order of 

20 a few months.

21 Although in some cases such as in 

22 the early '70s, the gap could be up to two-
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83 1 and-a-half years.

2 Sort of the next thing we did in 

3 relation to these two rooms is perform an SRDB 

4 search to see, all right, do we have any more 

5 available data that might be able to fill in 

6 some of these gaps?

7 And one of the types of reports we 

8 came across was what we called these HP trend 

9 reports. And what these are, originally it 

10 was preferable to use the raw datasets. That 

11 is you have essentially a map of the room, and 

12 you have a number in each area of the room 

13 where a swipe was taken and what the value of 

14 that swipe was.

15 Well, in the absence of the raw 

16 data there's also these trend reports which 

17 basically list out the week and will give you 

18 a high, a low and an average swipe result for 

19 any given day. They usually also provide the 

20 number of samples that were taken on that 

21 given day.

22 So, we found some of those. And 
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84 1 in particular we found one for SW-8 in 1980 

2 which previously didn't have any, you know, 

3 data compiled for it.

4 And there were also several of 

5 these trend reports in the late '80s that 

6 could kind of fill in some of these gaps where 

7 you have a five, six-month period without any 

8 of the raw data, but then you could always use 

9 these trend reports to kind of supplement the 

10 dataset.

11 These trend reports were actually 

12 used for years prior to 1985 by NIOSH for 

13 these two rooms. So, that wouldn't be 

14 inconsistent with what has essentially been 

15 already done.

16 So, I guess the conclusion there 

17 is there is a little more out there in the 

18 form of the HP trend reports that could sort 

19 of bolster the datasets of these two rooms, 

20 you know, if it's determined that that's 

21 necessary to sort of flesh out the proposed 

22 coworker model.
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85 1 Okay. So, I guess next along the 

2 line here in Section 4.1.3, we identify a sort 

3 of dose calculation inconsistency among the 

4 different years. Might be beneficial here 

5 just to briefly describe again what the model 

6 is.

7 You have a bunch of swipe data 

8 taken. Based on certain assumptions about the 

9 detector efficiency and that sort of thing, 

10 you can kind of get what the activity is on 

11 the ground. And you can use the resuspension 

12 factor to see, well, if that's the activity on 

13 the ground, what's the activity available to 

14 be inhaled in the air?

15 Then you take that and you apply a 

16 worker exposure time and a breathing rate and 

17 you can develop an intake, a radioactive 

18 intake for whatever period you want to define.

19 The way the calculational 

20 spreadsheets were set up, originally it was 

21 hoped that you could get a defined intake for 

22 each month of the year.
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86 1 And if you have an intake for each 

2 month, you sum all 12 months and you get an 

3 intake for the year. That's kind of how 

4 mechanistically these spreadsheets were set 

5 up.

6 The problem comes is when you 

7 don't have an intake defined for each month of 

8 the year. So, for example, say you only had 

9 data for one month. You could take all that 

10 data, develop, you know, the 50th percentile, 

11 95th percentile air contamination value and 

12 you can develop what the intake was for that 

13 month. But if you didn't have other months in 

14 the year, the, you know, hypothetical worker 

15 was only assigned an intake based on one month 

16 of exposure.

17 And that's not necessarily because 

18 he didn't have exposure, because that for the 

19 rest of the year it's more you didn't have the 

20 data to develop an intake value.

21 So, for situations where the 

22 hypothetical I gave where you could only 
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87 1 develop an intake for a single month, you're 

2 essentially underestimating the exposure 

3 potential by about a factor of 12 if you were 

4 going to extrapolate that to a full year.

5 It's not a real big deal. I mean, 

6 you can easily go in and sort of fix those 

7 errors and get it going. And we'll show a 

8 little later on how if you do go through and 

9 fix those errors with the most recent NIOSH 

10 case study, the doses change a little bit. 

11 But, I mean, again mostly on the order of 

12 about a factor of 12.

13 The very next section I really 

14 don't want to spend too much time on. 

15 Basically what happened was in preparation for 

16 the November meeting, we had performed our own 

17 data compilation of these HP trend reports 

18 just to see, all right, what's out there, you 

19 know, can these fill in the gaps, you know, 

20 how do these value shown in the HP trend 

21 reports compare with the raw data that has 

22 already been compiled and how might that 
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88 1 influence things?

2 And so based on that dataset that 

3 SC&A independently compiled, we were able to 

4 make a direct comparison to what NIOSH had 

5 compiled sort of in the Stage 2 where they 

6 added a lot more data for the first two rooms 

7 there, SW-8 and R-108.

8 The moral of the story there is 

9 any errors found, and errors could be a number 

10 was transcribed incorrectly or maybe it was 

11 transcribed twice or maybe it was just missed 

12 altogether, all those errors combined were 

13 very low. It was under two percent.

14 And even when looking at the 

15 magnitude as you went through and corrected 

16 all those little small, really, really, minor 

17 errors, it really did not affect the outcome 

18 of this dose model in any meaningful way at 

19 least in my mind.

20 And so, I don't want to spend a 

21 lot of time on that one because I don't think 

22 it's really important to this discussion.
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89 1 So, I guess next we move on to the 

2 final two rooms which were SW-13 and SW-150 

3 who had data added in the most recent 

4 iteration of the proposed method.

5 And one thing that was kind of 

6 different about the data for these two rooms 

7 is it wasn't compiled necessarily on a monthly 

8 basis. That is when they developed an intake 

9 value, kind of pooled all the data for a 

10 single year into one dataset. And then from 

11 there you could do log-normal fit and develop 

12 air concentration.

13 One concern that immediately 

14 jumped out to me when you do a model based on 

15 that, one, it's rather inconsistent compared 

16 with the first two-room analysis, because that 

17 at least attempted to do things on a monthly 

18 basis. But also if you're pooling all the 

19 data into a single year, there's always the 

20 off chance that the final result is unduly 

21 biased by a single month worth of data.

22 Hypothetically you could have a 
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90 1 month that only had ten samples that had --

2 seemed to be only higher contamination, and 

3 then the next month have 300 samples and it 

4 was a lot lower. When you pool them 

5 altogether, it kind of muddies the water.

6 That's one thing that SC&A took a 

7 look at and said, all right, what happens if 

8 we take these things and weigh all the data by 

9 month? Let's weigh it by month. So, each 

10 month gets equal weight in calculating the 

11 annual contamination and how does that

12 compare.

13 And it was generally favorable, 

14 you know. You don't see a very big difference 

15 for most months there. And I think there was 

16 a couple of - or most years there, there was a 

17 couple of years where, you know, if you had 

18 weighted all the data by month, that annual 

19 contamination value might increase by 25 to 35 

20 percent depending on the room and year. So, 

21 that might be a consideration.

22 NIOSH might want to consider 
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91 1 breaking down the data on a monthly basis if 

2 for nothing else to be consistent throughout 

3 their dose model.

4 So, they're really trying to break 

5 it down by month where you can. And if you 

6 can't, then you can extrapolate things to a 

7 full year.

8 And the last thing is this most 

9 recent case study which is essentially, all 

10 right, we have these derived intake values. 

11 Now, let's see what a potential dose situation 

12 might be like.

13 And when we define that is when 

14 we're going to have a worker who's exposed for 

15 two years, he's at two years with the highest 

16 contamination among all four rooms. And we're 

17 going to say, all right, he's exposed for two 

18 years, and then we're going to evaluate the 

19 dose ten years after that exposure period.

20 And what is shown in - I believe 

21 it's Figure - one moment, please, but those 

22 values were presented in Figure 1 of the 
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92 1 original NIOSH - or the NIOSH report for 

2 March.

3 MR. KATZ: Bob, Figure 9.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Figure 9, Page 42.

5 MR. KATZ: Page 42.

6 MR. BARTON: Yes, there it is. 

7 Okay. So, that's the original values. And as 

8 you can see, this sort of bounding case - when 

9 I say "bounding," it's based on the 95th 

10 percentile air contamination value for SW-8, 

11 and the total dose evaluated ten years after a 

12 two-year exposure was about 0.48 millirem.

13 Now, we also got the source 

14 spreadsheets on that, and unfortunately the 

15 same error that I discussed earlier about 

16 extrapolating doses to a full year applies 

17 here.

18 It especially has an affect on 

19 those two latter rooms in which data were 

20 compiled, because again the original 

21 spreadsheet calculation only assumed for each 

22 intake a one-month exposure time.
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93 1 So, since all the data was pooled 

2 into a single value for each year in those two 

3 latter rooms, again you end up with a dose 

4 that's approximately a factor of 12 below what 

5 it should be if it was actually extrapolated 

6 to the full 2,000-hour-per-year exposure.

7 So, as everyone can see in Table 

8 16 on Page 42, which is just below the 

9 original NIOSH results, these kind of show how 

10 the doses would change if they were actually 

11 extrapolated to that full year of exposure.

12 And so the limiting case becomes - 

13 again this is bounding 95th percentile 

14 contamination. Room SW-150 comes out at about 

15 3.7 millirem.

16 So, I mean, that's just, you know, 

17 one of those little things. That's kind of 

18 how it changes. Again, it's kind of a factor 

19 of 12 increase for that room.

20 And, you know, when you go through 

21 a fixed set error, that's the case study, you 

22 know. Assuming all the resuspension and all 
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94 1 these other uncertainties are out the window, 

2 we're just going to go with the original case 

3 study example and all those assumptions, this 

4 is kind of where it comes out. So, you're 

5 limiting cases up from 0.48 to about 3.7.

6 And I guess to kind of put a cap 

7 on the concluding statements, we didn't really 

8 feel that the data was incomplete or unuseable 

9 for this kind of application.

10 I guess where we come out on it is 

11 when there are gaps, for example, like a two12 and-a-half-year gap in the early '70s like 

13 some of these longer gaps, you know, it can be 

14 established within the bounds of security 

15 concerns and whatnot to have a discussion to 

16 kind of verify that these gaps, these time 

17 periods without any data that it is 

18 appropriate to sort of use the temporal 

19 neighbor, that is the data before and after 

20 the period with no data, as representative.

21 I mean, as long as there's no 

22 reason to think that these periods that don't 
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95 1 have data are decidedly different from the 

2 periods surrounding them, then we feel that 

3 the data is adequate and complete for this 

4 purpose and that proper extrapolation is 

5 likely possible as long as that connection can 

6 be made.

7 So, I guess that kind of sums up 

8 the completeness and adequacy end. Does 

9 anybody have any questions? I know I kind of 

10 went quickly through that.

11 So, is there anything I can 

12 clarify or - am I still on the line?

13 CHAIR BEACH: You're still on the 

14 line. We're all thinking.

15 MR. STIVER: Everybody is trying to 

16 absorb what you - 

17 MR. KATZ: You were actually very 

18 nicely clear.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

20 DR. MAURO: Bob, this is John. I 

21 think the question you're raising is something 

22 that really goes to NIOSH.
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96 1 When you do have time periods, and 

2 notwithstanding the extrapolation 12-month 

3 business, certainly that's something that 

4 could be dealt with, though, but you do bring 

5 up a point that there are these gaps.

6 And you mentioned a two-year 

7 period where you don't have swipe data for a 

8 particular room, and really the question goes 

9 to NIOSH.

10 How do you deal with that? That 

11 is in the past when there are gaps, you know, 

12 somehow you have to convince yourself that the 

13 other data you have, like you said, the 

14 temporal data that's around it somehow can be 

15 used to place a plausible upper bound on the 

16 gaps, you know, and I agree. I mean, that's 

17 the question. And the question really goes to 

18 NIOSH. How are you going to deal with the 

19 gaps?

20 By the way, the other question 

21 that I'd like to pose to NIOSH is, the data 

22 that are out there that we have, the swipe 
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97 1 data, did that capture different kinds of 

2 operations like inside ducts, inside hoods if 

3 that in fact is applicable that I could 

4 envision workers operating in a setting where 

5 there's a potential for resuspension that's 

6 unusual?

7 And so, I guess given the summary 

8 you just gave, Bob, I have a couple of 

9 questions for NIOSH. And one is the gap, and 

10 the other is the scenario. I think that needs 

11 to be explored.

12 DR. NETON: Okay. This is Jim. I 

13 think I'd like to turn that question over to 

14 the Mel Chew folks that are on the phone who 

15 were responsible for putting this report 

16 together.

17 Anything you can put - Bob or 

18 anyone else on that end can comment on that?

19 MR. MORRIS: Um, we took the data 

20 as they were available. It wasn't that --

21 excuse me. Robert Morris talking. Ted, I'm 

22 sorry.
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98 1 Do you hear me?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, thank you, Robert.

3 MR. MORRIS: Okay. We took the 

4 data then as they were available. And we 

5 didn't exclude anything based on location.

6 What we found is extreme 

7 consistency. So, if it were special job 

8 coverage, we never saw it. We didn't find the 

9 kinds of things you would see swiping the 

10 inside of ductwork or something like that.

11 So, all I can tell you is that we 

12 don't have knowledge of scenarios that might 

13 have been unusual like that, John.

14 DR. NETON: Bob, is there any 

15 intelligence you can provide on why these gaps 

16 may have been there? I mean, were there maybe 

17 not ongoing activities in the room at that 

18 time, or would that just be speculation at 

19 this point?

20 MR. MORRIS: I have no personal 

21 knowledge. I wasn't privy to the kinds of 

22 conversations that were in classified 
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99 1 meetings. So, I don't know that.

2 DR. NETON: Okay. Well, I think 

3 SC&A has got a valid point. I mean, NIOSH 

4 needs to go back and evaluate why these gaps 

5 were there. And if there were ongoing 

6 activities, what was happening that might make 

7 them suitable or not suitable for 

8 interpolation between the available points --

9 or extrapolation, I guess.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: And the related 

11 question, and I think somebody raised it was, 

12 are there any differences in the operations 

13 during those periods that would cause concern?

14 Extrapolating between or beyond, 

15 you usually have to have --

16 DR. NETON: Yes.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- some assumption 

18 about --

19 DR. NETON: No doubt.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- either things 

21 have changed or not. So, otherwise you're 

22 operating under the assumption that if you 
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100 1 have a lot of samples, they will cover the 

2 scope of the kind of work that was done.

3 I don't know how much we've seen 

4 of what the range of sample - well, we've seen 

5 in the charts what - there's a pretty big 

6 range in some of these samples.

7 And we've covered a lot of 

8 different scenarios, I presume, but that would 

9 certainly need to be confirmed.

10 DR. MAURO: This is John. One 

11 thought is you have lots of these monthly 95th 

12 percentile values rather than look at 

13 individual swipes.

14 If you have monthly 95th 

15 percentile values, and I'm not looking at the 

16 graph right now, but - and collect those, you 

17 start to get a sense of how variable the high 

18 end is.

19 Now, what I mean by that is the 

20 high - for a month, any individual swipe is - 

21 of course you're going to have enormous 

22 variability. Enormous.
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101 1 But when you start to collect 

2 hundreds, if not thousands, of swipe samples 

3 that were collected in a given room in a given 

4 month, and you take them all and, you know, 

5 for that month and you get a 95th percentile, 

6 then you take the next month and then the next

7 month, and then you start to look at those, 

8 that will start to give you a sense of how 

9 variable the high-end concentrations were over 

10 the course of a month.

11 And that will at least in my 

12 sense, is that will start to give you an 

13 indication whether, you know, what the 

14 variability on the high-end values from month 

15 to month could have been different by factors 

16 of - or by orders of magnitude. Then, you've 

17 got a problem.

18 But if you see that, you know, 

19 from month to month the 95th percentile values 

20 are clustered, then you start to get a sense 

21 that, well, is there any reason to believe the 

22 place where you have some holes might be, you 
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102 1 know, different. And you could argue, well, 

2 we haven't seen those kinds of differences in 

3 other months.

4 But then again as Paul pointed 

5 out, do we have reason to believe that there 

6 was nothing unusual happening, I mean really 

7 unusual happening in those months that have 

8 the holes?

9 So, I mean, I'm just looking for a 

10 way how I would come at a problem like this.

11 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert Morris 

12 again, please.

13 I think that if you look at the 

14 data as a whole, you will see that it's 

15 remarkably consistent without a lot of high 

16 swipe results in the set. It's a chronic low17 level dataset. It's not characterized by wild 

18 swings.

19 Now, having said that we haven't, 

20 I mean, I can't give you number values on how 

21 to describe that right now, but we certainly 

22 could take that approach if it's worth doing.
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103 1 DR. NETON: Well, clearly we've got 

2 some work to do on this piece.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, I have two 

4 action items. I've got NIOSH needs to 

5 evaluate gaps in the data, and then Paul's 

6 point, was there any difference in what work 

7 was being done during that time period. 

8 Hopefully I captured that correct.

9 And then what about the table - or

10 Figure 9 on Page 42 that Bob brought up? I 

11 didn't really hear any discussion on that.

12 DR. NETON: Figure 9?

13 CHAIR BEACH: Yeah, on Page 42.

14 DR. NETON: Oh, that was our own 

15 reconstruction of the doses. That was right 

16 out of Table 1 of our report.

17 CHAIR BEACH: But there were some 

18 mistakes there, and I guess I didn't really 

19 hear any discussion on what would - 

20 DR. NETON: Well, I think the 

21 implication is that Bob used where there was 

22 only one month worth of data, he assumed that 
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104 1 there were 12 months of exposure, not one 

2 month as we did. So, his doses are larger 

3 because of that.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

5 DR. NETON: It remains to be seen 

6 at least in my mind, whether it's justifiable 

7 to say there's an additional 11 months worth 

8 of exposure if it was - I'm guessing, but what 

9 if the room were locked up and nothing was 

10 going on there?

11 CHAIR BEACH: So, that goes back to 

12 the first two items.

13 DR. NETON: It all comes back, yes.

14 CHAIR BEACH: I just wanted to make 

15 sure that was covered.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: It's really a sort 

17 of campaign-based or routine operation.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, where does 

19 that leave us as a Work Group then?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's data 

21 adequacy.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Right.
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105 1 DR. NETON: I think I believe it 

2 may be time for a break.

3 (Laughter.)

4 CHAIR BEACH: I was definitely 

5 going to suggest a break here. So, we'll go 

6 ahead and take a 15-minute break and then 

7 we'll recap.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, it's about 

9 10:30 now. So - 

10 CHAIR BEACH: 10:33.

11 MR. KATZ: -- about 10:45.

12 (Whereupon, the proceedings went 

13 off the record at 10:33 a.m. for a brief 

14 recess and went back on the record at 10:53 

15 a.m.)

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. Welcome back, 

17 Mound Work Group. We're ready here in the 

18 room.

19 Phil, do we have you on the line?

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm on the phone 

21 there, Ted.

22 MR. KATZ: Hi, Phil. Good. Thank 
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106 1 you.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, let's just 

3 recap on the tritides discussion. We do have 

4 action items for NIOSH as discussed right 

5 before the break.

6 NIOSH is going to evaluate the 

7 gaps in the data, and then maybe what work was 

8 going on during that time period.

9 Did I have anything else or do we 

10 need to add anything to that?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: For tritides in 

12 general or for - 

13 CHAIR BEACH: For tritides in 

14 general.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Essentially what 

16 we did in the report, what Bob Barton covered 

17 was the review of adequacy and completeness, 

18 as well as to look at the assumptions, 

19 essentially the model itself.

20 And after we received the March 

21 2012, the very latest iteration White Paper 

22 from NIOSH, we actually wanted to take a 
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107 1 further look at the question of uncertainties.

2 And, Ron Buchanan, are you on the 

3 phone?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I am.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: I'd like to have 

6 Ron outline the analysis we did, which just 

7 essentially looks at the variables, the 

8 assumptions which were embedded in the model.

9 Because as I was saying earlier, I 

10 think that was one of our original concerns 

11 over the model itself. So, I think it would 

12 be helpful for the Work Group to hear that 

13 review.

14 And after that, we also looked at 

15 a - sort of an analogous model which DOE put 

16 together and used in our handbook in 2008. 

17 And I think actually the two models are very 

18 similar, but that in terms of contrasting that 

19 we went ahead and did that as well.

20 So, Ron, can you walk us through?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. In the 

22 report, it starts on Page 60. And the reason 
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108 1 for this was we have the basic equation there 

2 on Page 60 that simply looks at the count rate 

3 that was recorded on the swipe, and then the 

4 conversion factors and some constants put in 

5 and that sort of thing to arrive at a dose.

6 And what our initial concern was, 

7 how does this vary, you know, since we don't 

8 have - we have some specific data for Mound, 

9 but we don't have exact data throughout all 

10 the years for Mound.

11 If you vary these parameters, does 

12 this affect your dose much? That's the 

13 general overall picture we were looking at 

14 here.

15 And so we see on Page 61 there, a 

16 list of about six factors that are in the main 

17 equation. And they're like detector 

18 efficiency, there's counts per minute, how 

19 accurate are those, the swiping of the surface 

20 over periods of time, resuspension factor of 

21 course which we can talk about more in this 

22 section, we just address it, but not discuss 
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109 1 it, the breathing rate, the time of exposure 

2 and dose conversion factor.

3 So, looking at these -- and this 

4 is all summarized in Table 23 on Page 62. And 

5 so, essentially what I tried to do and said, 

6 okay - and this is subjective, you know. What 

7 is a lower value, what's a higher value, 

8 what's median value?

9 And so, I looked at the value that 

10 NIOSH was suggesting to use in their 2012 

11 value, which was more the reasonable estimate 

12 and say, okay, how much could this vary or how 

13 does this match up with what's published and 

14 stuff? And go on either side of that for low 

15 values and upper values within reasonable 

16 range. And I list the parameters there.

17 And then I said, okay, if you used 

18 all lower values or you used all upper values, 

19 how much would this change the median value 

20 that NIOSH put forth in their latest paper?

21 And so, you see I did it two ways. 

22 Since the resuspension factor was of major 
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110 1 concern here and had been related in the past, 

2 I did two analyses that you see in bold at the 

3 bottom.

4 I did it using a constant 

5 resuspension factor. And so, is resuspension 

6 factor the only thing that really matters 

7 here, or do other things matter?

8 And we see that if we were to 

9 settle on a resuspension factor, that the 

10 other variables within reasonable range would 

11 give you a dose that would range from 0.02 

12 times the suggested value to about 135 times 

13 the suggested value.

14 So, essentially this illustrates 

15 that the other factors are of importance also 

16 in this case when you're selecting a model 

17 which you have to plug in parameters that 

18 weren't set necessarily by the site or you 

19 were using a range of these parameters to say, 

20 what I should use, what's the reasonable value 

21 here. So, we see that it does have an impact.

22 Of course in the line above that 
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111 1 you see that if you factor in the resuspension 

2 factor that it varies a lot more, 0.0003 to 

3 8,000 times the median value.

4 And so in summary, you know, that 

5 illustrates that it does depend even if you're 

6 talking about low doses of millirem or so to 

7 an organ, you see that the values chosen --

8 the parameters chosen does have a significant 

9 impact on the outcome.

10 And of course the resuspension 

11 factor has the largest, because it has the 

12 largest range that we've discussed in the 

13 past.

14 DR. NETON: This is Jim. A good 

15 summary, but I'd like to point out I don't 

16 think - I don't suspect that SC&A was 

17 suggesting that one would use the high value 

18 for all the parameters in the dose 

19 reconstruction.

20 That does counter every piece of 

21 advice one gets in doing these types of 

22 calculations and not take the high end of the 
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112 1 value for each parameter and propagate that 

2 through the end result.

3 I think that would just not be 

4 good science.

5 DR. MAURO: And, Jim, this is John 

6 Mauro.

7 Bear in mind at least in the case 

8 of the resuspension factor where the range 

9 that we're looking at represents, you know, 

10 resuspension factor is observed and it's in 

11 the chapter on resuspension factors, you know, 

12 are quite variable.

13 But if we were to ask the question 

14 the average annual resuspension factor --

15 DR. NETON: Right.

16 DR. MAURO: -- it would bring this 

17 spread way down.

18 DR. NETON: Exactly.

19 DR. MAURO: So, that's an important 

20 point that is which one of these - which of 

21 these parameters would be the upper end? 

22 Would that represent a reasonable annual value 
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113 1 and where the variables from day to day may 

2 change. That's an important consideration.

3 DR. NETON: 80,000 times is not a 

4 realistic number.

5 DR. MAURO: No, and I also agree 

6 that if you were to do a Monte Carlo and you 

7 would say what's the probability that every 

8 one of the parameters would be at the high

9 end, it would be, you know, the probability - 

10 it would approach zero.

11 DR. NETON: Right. So, and the 

12 other thing I see missing from this table 

13 would be the effect of using the difference 

14 between the 50th percentile, 95th percentile 

15 in the comp rate distribution which is one 

16 thing we would weigh in on as well.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I think 

18 it also should be added that - and we said 

19 this in the paper that we thought the change 

20 of the resuspension factor which by far is the 

21 most influential variable, was in the right 

22 direction.
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114 1 We agreed it was overly 

2 conservative in the first paper. And even 

3 though it was changed two orders of magnitude, 

4 we thought the number had a better basis.

5 This goes back to what John was 

6 saying that we want to treat the 

7 uncertainties, but recognize that making the 

8 call as to where is the proper place to fall 

9 in the range is an important thing.

10 But given the fact it's a 

11 theoretical model, we just wanted to emphasize 

12 since it really didn't get treated as much in 

13 the two NIOSH White Papers, that somehow that 

14 had to be built into whatever final approach 

15 as to how you would treat that, what 

16 percentile distribution.

17 We didn't do a sensitivity 

18 analysis. I mean, that's clearly what this 

19 could have gone into. But, you know, frankly 

20 we just wanted to raise the question and to 

21 make sure it was clear that certainly these 

22 play into it.
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115 1 DR. NETON: And again I just point 

2 out for consistency purposes, I think what 

3 we've done here is very consistent with TIB-70 

4 approach. And it's nowhere that we have ever 

5 ended up using uncertainties about the 

6 resuspension factors in our calculations. We 

7 typically pick 95th percentile which we 

8 believe tends to bound the intakes.

9 We have some debate as John knows 

10 about the resuspension factor, but I think 

11 this one is quite reasonable. And I think 

12 there was some discussion in the NIOSH report 

13 as to why this one was selected.

14 But point taken, there is 

15 variability in these parameters. We have not 

16 selected a final model yet. Obviously we put 

17 a couple out there, the 50th percentile, the 

18 95th percentile. And how we address against 

19 these other parameters I think we need to talk 

20 about.

21 So, I think that should be an 

22 action item for NIOSH which is to describe a 
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116 1 finalized approach for this model that would

2 either incorporate or use the 95th percentile 

3 or do the full distribution, you know, 

4 whatever.

5 We've left a couple ideas on the 

6 table.

7 CHAIR BEACH: So, describe the 

8 final approach for the model.

9 DR. NETON: Right. Whether it's 

10 the 95th, 50th to full distribution or, you 

11 know, that sort of thing.

12 DR. MAURO: And, Jim, this is John. 

13 To help frame this problem within the things 

14 we're talking about within an SEC context is, 

15 you know, again when we look at the 

16 variability in the swipe data in just the 

17 numbers and we see how spread they are, there 

18 were also some, what I would say, important 

19 qualitative questions that we don't want to 

20 lose sight of.

21 The swipe data you're getting a, I 

22 guess, the total data count per hundred 
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117 1 centimeters squared. And it's important that 

2 we don't lose sight that what you're looking 

3 at in terms of the tritium whether you're at 

4 the 50th percentile, 95th or whatever, there 

5 are holes that need to be filled, et cetera, 

6 keep in mind what that data are.

7 And that is we're assuming it's 

8 all hafnium tritide.

9 DR. NETON: Right.

10 DR. MAURO: And I would like to 

11 alert everyone that there is a real - there is 

12 a plausibility question, in other words, and 

13 this is something that we have to deal with.

14 The swipe sample data, and it is a 

15 widespread value that would - the spread we're 

16 seeing and the holes we're seeing, we don't 

17 want to lose sight of the fact that we're 

18 making an assumption here that all those 

19 counts on the swipe sample are hafnium 

20 tritides.

21 And I think intuitively for me, 

22 that seems to be probably very unlikely that a 
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118 1 very significant fraction of whatever counts 

2 you're getting might very well be tritiated 

3 water.

4 And I know Ron may want to weigh 

5 in a little bit on that. So, I don't want to 

6 lose context. You can easily get lost into 

7 the numbers and forgetting about the context.

8 Same thing goes with the 

9 resuspension factor and the spread. I don't 

10 want to lose context on that.

11 The resuspension factor data that 

12 we summarize in the chapter, are data that 

13 really come from uranium, plutonium, dust 

14 itself, not radioactive material, and did not 

15 come from data that represent hafnium tritide.

16 I have no idea how it behaves, but 

17 certainly intuitively in this case we're 

18 really talking about hafnium as, I guess, some 

19 kind of metal, particulate metal of some size 

20 distribution that settled out.

21 The fact that it is attached to 

22 tritium, you know, we have to understand that 
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119 1 the numbers we have for resuspension factor 

2 literature are for very specific types of 

3 particulate material that settled out and 

4 particulate size distributions of that 

5 material.

6 How important that is in building 

7 a bridge and applying that to this particular 

8 problem related to tritides, we have to keep 

9 that in mind as a conceptual challenge and the 

10 degree to which we're comfortable making those 

11 assumptions.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Jim, I think there 

13 was some commentary in our review about what 

14 exposure duration and latency period was used. 

15 I know we kind of raised that as a question, 

16 but is there a specific reason for the ten17 year latency?

18 DR. NETON: No, I think - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, I'm just - 

20 DR. NETON: I got a little confused 

21 when I saw your comment on that, because then 

22 I got to thinking about latency in risk 
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120 1 models, but it's really nothing to do with 

2 that.

3 It's just saying that the cancer 

4 occurred ten years after - 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: As a hypothetical.

6 DR. NETON: -- exposure as a 

7 hypothetical situation.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

9 DR. NETON: So, all it really meant 

10 was there was ten years’ worth of exposure. 

11 You only construct the dose until you get the 

12 cancer.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

14 DR. NETON: So, they could have 

15 easily just said let's assume the cancer 

16 occurred ten years after exposure. Latency 

17 really didn't play in there.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. So, I 

19 mean, in other words it's just an example - 

20 DR. NETON: It was an example of a 

21 case study which was put out there to attempt 

22 to demonstrate that the doses were indeed - 
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121 1 MR. FITZGERALD: And clearly 

2 suggested that you did the - 

3 DR. NETON: Did the 20 years, 10 

4 years --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right.

6 DR. NETON: -- five years, six 

7 years of exposure.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

9 DR. NETON: And that's when, you 

10 know, I realized you could start getting into 

11 doses that far exceed a millirem because this 

12 was the one isolated case study. It was 

13 illustrative though, which demonstrated the 

14 doses are indeed in the millirem range.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I don't think 

16 there's any debate about the fact that they 

17 are relatively small. It's just a question - 

18 DR. NETON: And I think throwing in 

19 latency got me all confused because I 

20 immediately start thinking of risk model, the 

21 apportionment of latency between zero and ten 

22 and the S-shaped curve and all that kind of 
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122 1 stuff. It doesn't even come into play.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, do you have 

3 anything else?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I did want to 

5 address Jim's statement about the - no, I was 

6 not suggesting we use the 8,000 upper limit or 

7 anything like that.

8 This came about simply for two 

9 reasons. Number one was we wanted to give the 

10 Working Group an idea of how things change. 

11 That this was an equation that you could get 

12 an exact answer depending on the parameters 

13 putting in. That was to illustrate that.

14 And number two is that, you know, 

15 we were at the time, the mind set was we were 

16 looking at this one millirem magic number and 

17 we wanted to illustrate that, you know, 

18 depending on the parameters, you could come up 

19 with less than a millirem or more than a 

20 millirem.

21 And on the committed dose and the 

22 latent -- the exposure period and the latent 
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123 1 period, we just went into that area to see if 

2 it was really important in their case study.

3 Your scenario had two years of 

4 exposure and ten-year latent period. And so 

5 we said, well, is this important? Even though 

6 it's not in the first equation, is it 

7 important?

8 And so, we looked at it and we 

9 said, well, you know, it's kind of intuitive. 

10 If you increase your exposure time, double 

11 it, you get about twice the dose. If you half 

12 it, about half. If your latent period is 

13 greater, you know, you'll get not quite double 

14 the dose and stuff.

15 And so, we found that those were 

16 parameters you chose to illustrate the case, 

17 but it wasn't really influential on our 

18 overall umbrella analysis of the situation.

19 DR. NETON: Appreciate that. My 

20 only concern with the 8,000 is someone can 

21 read that and say the doses could be 8,000 

22 times higher when in fact I don't think anyone 
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124 1 would agree that they could be that much 

2 higher.

3 I admit there's a lot of 

4 uncertainty there, but it's not that great.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Right. I was 

6 looking at what more could it range and did 

7 these parameters, really, the details in 

8 there, what should we be concerned with, you 

9 know?

10 We don't want to worry about 

11 breathing rate and time. Those don't have a 

12 big influence. And, you know, it's the 

13 factors that influence the outcome the most 

14 that we want to spend the resource on.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think the 

16 other cautionary note is that you see some of 

17 these dose estimates, two or three significant 

18 figures, and I just sort of realize that we're 

19 operating in a realm where we say several 

20 millirem. That's probably as precise as one 

21 gets.

22 And that was a little bit, you 
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125 1 know, I didn't want there to be construed a 

2 level of precision that doesn't exist when 

3 dealing with this much - 

4 DR. NETON: Agreed.

5 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

6 I'd like to kind of weigh in a little bit on 

7 this.

8 You know, back when they were kind 

9 of grappling with how to present this, we 

10 thought about possibly doing a full-blown 

11 uncertainty analysis and doing Monte Carlo, 

12 Crystal Ball simulations for all the different 

13 distributions and we thought it would probably 

14 be better just to give more of an illustrative 

15 example.

16 But this is something I was kind 

17 of concerned with that putting out the extreme 

18 values out there could be misconstrued as to 

19 being realistic possibilities as opposed to 

20 what you might actually get in an uncertainty 

21 analysis.

22 MR. KATZ: This is Ted. In general 
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126 1 I think down the road not for this 

2 particularly, but generally when SC&A does 

3 these, I think it would be better to use 

4 reasonable assumptions to give a sense of the 

5 range of uncertainty instead of sort of 

6 theoretical limits or whatever that has been 

7 used here, which is giving a wildly broad 

8 range of uncertainty.

9 So, I mean, it's unreasonable to 

10 those choices you're making if you're going to 

11 try to illustrate to a Work Group, you know, 

12 how much uncertainty there could be in these 

13 figures realistically as opposed to tweaking 

14 every parameter to an extreme.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, anything

16 else?

17 DR. BUCHANAN: No. That was it.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I don't 

19 know if we - 

20 DR. MAURO: Joe, this is John. I 

21 just - I'd like to just bring one thing up I 

22 guess with Ron.
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127 1 I think we talked about it before, 

2 but it would be good to put it on the table 

3 here.

4 Am I correct when we take those 

5 swipe samples, am I correct that it's 

6 difficult to judge what fraction might be 

7 hafnium tritide and would you - now, this 

8 would be just your experience in this matter 

9 or anyone around the table, around the phone, 

10 or would you expect that most of that count 

11 that you would get from the swipe is tritiated 

12 water?

13 MR. BARTON: Well - 

14 DR. MAURO: You may not be able to 

15 - no one may be able to answer that. I don't 

16 know.

17 MR. STIVER: I think that the 

18 questions we're grappling with is what is the 

19 fraction --

20 DR. NETON: I mean I point, John, 

21 to your report that actually says that a 

22 significant fraction of the activities could 
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128 1 be tritides in the room. I mean, if that's 

2 true then there's some significant - 

3 DR. MAURO: Perhaps for some of 

4 them, you know, I don't - my problem is I 

5 don't know, you know.

6 When you have a swipe taken in a 

7 room where there may be some tritides and 

8 there was also tritiated water, that was, you 

9 know, and you take a swipe there, I have no 

10 sense whether there may be certain time 

11 periods and locations where it's predominantly 

12 the tritide, or maybe it's not, you know.

13 Something tells me, and this is 

14 terrible to say, but instinctively something 

15 tells me it's probably dominated by tritiated 

16 water. But, you know, and there's a - and 

17 this goes toward the uncertainty that Joe 

18 brought up in the beginning, you know.

19 We build a model, we try to probe 

20 it and say, well, listen, is this a good way 

21 to come at the problem? And I think it's 

22 important that we all understand the embedded 
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129 1 assumptions even in the spread and in 

2 uncertainties that we just talked about, you 

3 know.

4 We're being quantitative here, but 

5 in reality there are these issues that we are 

6 troubled by.

7 In my mind, quite frankly, there's 

8 no doubt that by using the upper 95th 

9 percentile for a given time period where you 

10 have data and you use the upper 95th 

11 percentile and assume it's all hafnium 

12 tritide, there's no doubt in my mind that for 

13 the purpose of that month of exposure you're 

14 off-the-charts high, you know. That's how I 

15 come at this.

16 Now, so I believe there are some 

17 issues here that the Board will have to 

18 struggle with. That is, you know, once you 

19 recognize that this could be an off-the-charts 

20 high characterization of how much tritide, 

21 namely hafnium tritide, was on surfaces in a 

22 given time period using the data that we start 
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130 1 with, I mean, this is something we have to 

2 struggle with, all of us.

3 DR. NETON: But, John, don't you 

4 agree though even if that's the case and the 

5 doses come out to be three millirem that it's 

6 - 

7 DR. MAURO: Oh, I got to tell you - 

8 DR. NETON: You got to take that in 

9 consideration, I think.

10 DR. MAURO: Oh, yes. Very 

11 important. I'm glad you brought it up. 

12 You're absolutely right. That is that, you 

13 know, by assuming it's all hafnium tritide, I 

14 would say that it's an extraordinarily 

15 conservative assumption.

16 And even then, I agree with you, 

17 you're coming in with doses that are 

18 relatively low.

19 DR. NETON: I would think if you 

20 were in very high doses where it could put 

21 someone on the borderline, you know, factor of 

22 ten would make it 70 percent TC versus a seven 
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131 1 percent TC, I mean, then you've got some 

2 issues there.

3 DR. MAURO: That's very important 

4 to put out on the table, and that's why I'm 

5 bringing this all up.

6 DR. NETON: You have to take into 

7 account the magnitude of the source term, I 

8 guess, is what I'm - 

9 DR. MAURO: Yes, yes.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, John, this 

11 is Brad. I'm glad you brought that up because 

12 my question now leads into this.

13 The swipe data that we have, do we 

14 really have any swipe data that calls it out, 

15 this is tritium?

16 CHAIR BEACH: No.

17 DR. MAURO: No, isn't this all 

18 tritium? I mean, Jim, or, Ron, this is what's 

19 -- how is this counted? I assume this is 

20 counted in a way that - 

21 MR. STIVER: John, this is counted 

22 in a PC-5 gas proportional counter, but it's 
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132 1 adjusted and calibrated to - 

2 DR. NETON: It's assumed that it 

3 was all in one particle, John. So, the 

4 efficiency was based on that.

5 DR. MAURO: Oh, I see. Okay.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: And we're looking 

7 at hafnium because it's the worst actor, 

8 right?

9 DR. MAURO: Yes.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: We're not looking 

11 at any of the other tritides that - 

12 DR. MAURO: No.

13 DR. NETON: We have urine samples 

14 that would indicate that the HTO component, 

15 and that's what we would use to calculate 

16 doses to the organs if the tritides wasn't 

17 bounding.

18 So, we have both ends of the 

19 spectrum. We have actual biological bioassay 

20 data that we can use, or we can use the 

21 tritide intake. That's our choice depending 

22 on whichever ends up with the higher dose.
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133 1 MR. STIVER: Is there a situation 

2 where you would use them both? I mean where 

3 you could have people who were being exposed 

4 to tritiated water in addition to the tritide? 

5 So, it's kind of - 

6 DR. NETON: Well, I would think you 

7 have multiple cancers maybe.

8 MR. STIVER: Yes.

9 DR. NETON: So, I guess there's a 

10 little bit of a conundrum. We've run into 

11 that before where you have two cancers and you 

12 can't be exposed to two different sources at 

13 once. I'm not sure how we would handle that.

14 MR. STIVER: Well, this situation 

15 would be, I mean, you have tritiated water 

16 basically permeating the work space, but you 

17 also have this other component of this - 

18 DR. NETON: Well, we would maximize 

19 one way or the other. Tritiated water would 

20 bound the dose - assume tritiated water bound 

21 the dose. We would use that. If tritides 

22 bound the dose, we would use that.
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134 1 MR. STIVER: Yes, but to such a 

2 small increment, mostly.

3 DR. NETON: It depends on the 

4 cancer, I think. I think mostly it's going to 

5 be lung cancers, but I did notice that the 

6 lower large intestine tend to be irradiated 

7 more over the long term because of the - 

8 MR. STIVER: Yes, insoluble 

9 particles being cleared - 

10 DR. NETON: Yes.

11 MR. STIVER: -- through the 

12 digestive tract.

13 DR. NETON: So, yeah, we were doing 

14 both models to get the higher of the two. So, 

15 we've covered both exposure scenarios, I 

16 think, or the extreme end of exposure 

17 scenarios.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Did you have anything 

19 more, Joe?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Bob Barton, 

21 are you still on the phone?

22 MR. BARTON: I'm here, Joe.
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135 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Can you spend a 

2 few minutes just summing this thing up 

3 relative to the DOE handbook 2008 method just 

4 to contrast that quickly?

5 CHAIR BEACH: Which is on Page 67 

6 if anybody is looking at that in the report.

7 MR. STIVER: Actually, I did that 

8 section there.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, I'm sorry. 

10 Never mind, Bob.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks, Bob.

12 MR. BARTON: No problem.

13 MR. STIVER: You can relax now, 

14 Bob.

15 Basically what we wanted to do is 

16 find a paper out there that would be kind of a 

17 benchmark study that would help to validate 

18 the NIOSH report and we did find one.

19 This is the 2008 DOE report called 

20 the DOE Handbook, Tritium Handling and Safe 

21 Storage. And there's an appendix in there, 

22 and I think it was Appendix E that describes a 
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136 1 method of calculating dose to the respiratory 

2 tract from these insoluble tritiated 

3 particles.

4 And so, we looked at the DOE model 

5 in comparison with the NIOSH model and they 

6 both use the same basic approach.

7 The DOE and NIOSH both take a look 

8 at this self-absorption factor. And what this 

9 really does is when you're looking at 

10 particulate forms of insoluble tritides, 

11 you're looking at an average beta energy of 

12 about six keV.

13 And so, the fraction of beta 

14 particles that actually escape the surface of 

15 that particle could be quite small and be 

16 limited to the surface area.

17 And so, the actual observed 

18 activity compared to the actual activity in 

19 the particle can go down quite significantly 

20 as particle size increases.

21 And so, to account for this using 

22 a liquid scintillation counter, basically any 
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137 1 - almost any beta particle that makes it into 

2 a cocktail is going to be registered as a 

3 count.

4 And so, what you're looking at 

5 really is this idea of observed activity. And 

6 NIOSH took kind of a slightly different 

7 approach than DOE. I can kind of talk about 

8 that a bit.

9 What they did was they corrected 

10 the PC-5 counts, basically the gas 

11 proportional counts by calibrating those to 

12 the liquid scintillation counting efficiency 

13 in the first paper.

14 In the second paper, they looked 

15 at this self-absorption factor for energy, and 

16 they basically corrected the PC-5 by dividing 

17 that by the absorption factor to get the total 

18 activity for the - that was in that particular 

19 particle.

20 And then from that, went through a 

21 series of calculations. And then at the tail 

22 end of the calculation, they then corrected 
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138 1 for the observed activity for the respiratory 

2 tract doses by taking a look at this 

3 distribution of these self-absorption factors 

4 for energy. I believe the geometric mean was 

5 about 0.12.

6 And so for the lung dose or any of 

7 the respiratory tract doses, mainly lung in 

8 the ICRP 66 model, they went ahead and 

9 multiplied that back by the 0.12 to account 

10 for the fact that only the particles that 

11 actually escape the surface are going to be 

12 able to interact with the tissue in the 

13 effective dose.

14 The DOE paper took a kind of 

15 similar approach, but with DOE they were 

16 really concerned with effective dose as 

17 opposed to individual organ doses.

18 And they used the same basic 

19 construct. They produced a self-absorption 

20 factor which was about a factor or two higher 

21 than the NIOSH calculation.

22 I think NIOSH used a method by - 
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139 1 in a paper by Knopf, I believe, in 1988, I 

2 believe, but that's kind of beside the point.

3 DOE then went through and they 

4 graphed everything into the tail end in their 

5 dose conversion factors for effective dose.

6 And so, what they did was they 

7 accounted for all these things in the 

8 intermediate steps. And then for the 

9 component for lung, they went ahead and added 

10 in, they multiplied by their self-absorption 

11 factor. And then those individual components 

12 were then weighted by the tissue weighting 

13 factors in some to yield the effective dose 

14 component.

15 But when you look at the 

16 individual organ doses for lung for NIOSH 

17 versus the DOE construct, the weighted values 

18 come in with about a factor of two to each 

19 other.

20 And this really gets back to just 

21 - the scale is almost exactly by the self22 absorption factor for energy. I think the DOE 
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140 1 value was about 0.26 and the NIOSH value 

2 geometrically is about 0.12.

3 And so, this kind of gave us a 

4 fairly higher degree of confidence that this 

5 particular approach NIOSH is taking is indeed 

6 a reasonable one.

7 We thought that it was based on 

8 our initial reading of it. It seemed to be 

9 perfectly scientifically reasonable.

10 And by being able to benchmark it 

11 against an existing study which is a fairly 

12 comprehensive study, we felt pretty strongly 

13 that they're kind of on the right track here,

14 but there really are big issues in terms of 

15 the methodology that were employed.

16 So, that's really it in a 

17 nutshell. Are there any other questions about 

18 it?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, in terms 

20 of self-absorption factor, which way would be 

21 preferable or is there even a difference 

22 really?
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141 1 MR. STIVER: Between the beta and 

2 the energy?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah.

4 MR. STIVER: Basically, it - NIOSH 

5 felt that - 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: It's just a 

7 judgment call.

8 MR. STIVER: Yes, the fraction of 

9 beta at the surface. In any case, you're 

10 going to get a potential with that. And 

11 obviously for dosimetric purposes, you want to 

12 look at the energy that escapes those 

13 particles.

14 So, I think we're on pretty good 

15 grounds there.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Any questions, 

17 comments on that?

18 (No response.)

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Phil, are you 

20 still with us? Any comments or questions?

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No questions at 

22 this time.
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142 1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, then we're 

2 ready to move on to the adequacy and 

3 completeness of the internal dosimetry.

4 And I know there was some 

5 comments, questions, there are a couple papers 

6 out. What's left here is the thorium issue, 

7 the early time period, the February '49 to 

8 September '49 polonium issue, and then of 

9 course the tritide issue that we just 

10 discussed.

11 Let's see. So - 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Do you want to 

13 maybe broach the thorium because - 

14 CHAIR BEACH: I was just going to 

15 say let's look at the thorium. Yes, let's 

16 look at the thorium.

17 So, we had several papers on 

18 thorium. And the latest one was sent out May 

19 30th, by SC&A. And it actually captured 

20 SC&A's comments, NIOSH's comments and then 

21 SC&A's replies.

22 So, if you have that, we should 
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143 1 work to that.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we were 

3 trying to keep this in real time in the sense 

4 that with this meeting coming up that we 

5 wanted to at least provide some reaction to 

6 the report that we got from NIOSH. I guess it 

7 was May 8th.

8 And I think what it comes down to 

9 is for want of a better term, you know, 

10 whether or not one is confident on the 

11 reliability of the program that was in place 

12 because it sort of comes down to that in a way 

13 that there isn't - this is reminiscent of a 

14 lot of the other internal dose issues.

15 And if Brant was here, we both 

16 would wince because we went through this for a 

17 couple years and I don't propose we go through 

18 it again.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Well, can I say, Joe, 

20 to that - 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

22 CHAIR BEACH: -- this actually 
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144 1 goes back before that to the January 8th, 2012 

2 White Paper.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Which had a table 

5 that had a lot of different open items, which 

6 is what we asked Brant - 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: On thorium.

8 CHAIR BEACH: On thorium.

9 DR. NETON: Thorium was one of 

10 those.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Was one of those, 

12 right.

13 CHAIR BEACH: One of them. So, we 

14 had actually given your - SC&A's 

15 recommendation was to totally close 

16 everything, but we wanted to tie all these up 

17 and make sure - 

18 DR. NETON: I think those were 

19 considered to be dose reconstruction Site 

20 Profile issues, is my understanding.

21 CHAIR BEACH: But there was a 

22 couple SEC issues embedded in there that we 
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145 1 were trying to - 

2 DR. NETON: I understand. I 

3 thought Joe's memo that came out most recently 

4 clarified that the thorium is the only 

5 remaining issue. The other ones were Site 

6 Profile issues.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and then but 

8 there's also the polonium in there - 

9 DR. NETON: Well, the polonium one 

10 I can address.

11 CHAIR BEACH: -- as well.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: There's three 

13 issues. And I apologize. I think the preface 

14 to that matrix was not crystal clear. But we 

15 did say in that preface that there was three 

16 SEC issues outstanding; the tritides, the 

17 polonium was the early years, and this thorium 

18 issue.

19 And the other ones which clearly 

20 we need to wrestle with a little bit is the 

21 baseline for the Site Profile issues. But 

22 beyond those three central SEC issues at least 
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146 1 from SC&A's standpoint, we didn't see anything 

2 that stood as an SEC-significant issue. The 

3 Work Group may disagree, but we kind of went 

4 through that and that's where we came out.

5 And this analysis of course is a 

6 response to the thorium White Paper that we 

7 received not too long ago. And we had some 

8 questions, and we went ahead in real time and 

9 posed those questions back to NIOSH and we got 

10 a response. And this is sort of a response to 

11 the response.

12 So, I think we pretty much have 

13 wrestled this as far as we can. I want to - 

14 not to be glib, but again I think where we 

15 came out in terms of what actual data and 

16 evidence is available, it does come down to 

17 accepting that the oversight and controls were 

18 adequate and working in terms of who got 

19 urinalysis, who did not.

20 I mean, there's no way that we can 

21 really pin that down too well.

22 DR. NETON: Exactly. I don't want 
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147 1 to cut you short, but I think it comes down to 

2 whether or not it's a believable scenario that 

3 Mound actually did have appropriate 

4 administrative control.

5 I went and looked through all the 

6 data I could find in the last week or so to 

7 try to have a fresh pair of eyes on it. And 

8 Brant was looking at it as well and - 

9 MR. KATZ: Jim, sorry. There's a 

10 conversation going on, on the phone. Please, 

11 someone on the phone is talking. Two people 

12 are talking on the phone. Can you put your 

13 phone on mute, please?

14 The lady that's speaking right 

15 now, can you put your phone on mute? *6. 

16 Thanks.

17 DR. NETON: And this has been 

18 discussed by Brant before, but I went and 

19 looked, went back and looked at the Herb Meyer 

20 reports that talk about redrumming being done 

21 on a periodic basis. Personnel were assigned, 

22 were provided contamination control equipment,
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148 1 clothing and monitoring surfaces.

2 This is Meyer summarized this over 

3 a period of years, and then I went back and 

4 looked at the - there's a lot of quarterly 

5 Health Physics reports out there that span 

6 from 1948 to 1960 something.

7 And each of these reports, at 

8 least the ones I was looking at in the 1960 

9 time frame, have a very nice statement that 

10 I'd just like to read that says: Personnel 

11 working with radioactive isotopes or in areas 

12 containing radioactive materials are required 

13 to submit urine samples. The urine specimens 

14 are analyzed quantitatively for radioisotopes, 

15 to which employees may have been exposed, and 

16 results are used to estimate employee's body 

17 burden.

18 And they go on further and explain 

19 what happens if there's what they call a hot 

20 sample.

21 Each of these reports have that 

22 statement, and then they go through and report 
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149 1 on all the various activities that occurred 

2 and the monitoring that was done in that 

3 quarter.

4 And in the periods that we know 

5 that redrumming was done, we see that there's 

6 a report on thorium analyses in the report 

7 that there were, in this case, three 24-hour 

8 urine specimens were analyzed for thorium 

9 content. The maximum concentration was 0.7 

10 dpm, that sort of thing.

11 So, there's a consistent body of 

12 documents out there that points to the fact at 

13 least in our opinion, that the workers were 

14 monitored.

15 And the Meyer document also talks 

16 about a small number of workers being involved 

17 and we see that in the quarter reports, where 

18 there are anywhere from three to four or so 

19 people monitored per quarter for thorium in 

20 urine, which is very unusual.

21 I have not seen this level of 

22 thorium in urine monitoring on a routine 
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150 1 basis. I can't think of any other site.

2 And, in fact, there is a database 

3 out there that had 350 total thorium and urine 

4 samples that were taken at Mound. And Brant 

5 actually went through for that last White 

6 Paper and picked 20 of those workers and did 

7 some dose reconstruction.

8 So, I don't know whether we just 

9 end up agreeing to disagree on this, but in 

10 our opinion it appears that the thorium 

11 project was monitored pretty well.

12 I'd also point out most of the 

13 thorium activity where there was - outside the 

14 drumming, the original refinery-type project 

15 that was done back in the mid-1950s all 

16 occurred during the - prior to or during --

17 just at the cusp of the original SEC that 

18 stops in 1958.

19 So, there were some thorium 

20 activities that were not redrumming that 

21 occurred. But if they would have occurred in 

22 the original SEC period, those people are in 
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151 1 the SEC already.

2 So, any reconstruction that we're 

3 talking about for thorium, in my opinion, is 

4 going to be either redrumming or there's just 

5 one - as far as I could find, there is one 

6 miscellaneous piece where they did something 

7 else which was using thorium, coating thorium 

8 with molybdenum or something as a surrogate 

9 for the plutonium-238 microspheres.

10 And the thorium particles in that 

11 particular experiment were a hundred micron in 

12 size which is respirable, to my knowledge.

13 So, I mean, that's where we're at. 

14 I don't know, you know, maybe this is one of 

15 those glass half empty, half full situations.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I suspect that's 

17 the way it's ended up with internal.

18 Ron, short of going through these 

19 one by one which I think the responses are 

20 before the Work Group anyway, is there any - 

21 you spent some time on this.

22 Do you want to add anything?
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152 1 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. This is Ron of 

2 SC&A.

3 Essentially it boils down to we 

4 looked at the dose reconstruction model and we 

5 don't have a problem with that. We do not 

6 have a problem with what NIOSH has said.

7 It's just that we don't have any 

8 assurance one way or the other. We don't have 

9 any red flag saying, hey, we've got a group of 

10 workers saying that they worked with it and 

11 weren't bioassayed. On the other hand, we 

12 don't have anything to say, yes, you know, 

13 it's like an operating - if you got a reactor 

14 operating accelerator, you can say, okay, how 

15 long did it operate or were people monitored, 

16 who was there, were they monitored, and you 

17 can go back over some of the claims and stuff.

18 In this case, we really can't 

19 prove a negative. We can't prove that people 

20 worked with it or were inadvertently exposed 

21 to it that weren't directly connected with 

22 redrumming or some other use of thorium that 
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153 1 weren't monitored.

2 So, you know, like Joe said, we've 

3 done about all we can do on it. And if they 

4 were monitored, you know, the procedure is 

5 there to assign them the dose. And so, we 

6 don't have any way one way or the other to 

7 prove that some people worked with it, weren't 

8 monitored.

9 CHAIR BEACH: As the report states. 

10 Paul, anything?

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, one part of 

12 this, the concept is accepting that oversight 

13 was in place. The existence of those samples 

14 tells you that there was some oversight in 

15 place.

16 I suppose you can always argue 

17 that could there have been someone working 

18 there that didn't have monitoring, but that's 

19 - you're probably going to raise that issue 

20 anywhere.

21 And I suppose if someone made the 

22 claim that they did redrumming as part of 
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154 1 their operation in their CATI or something and 

2 they said, yeah, I redrummed thorium, I worked 

3 with those folks, we can always, I don't know, 

4 do a coworker model or what would you do?

5 DR. NETON: Well, we have 350 

6 samples. There are also some air 

7 concentration data. Although, most of the 

8 data I saw were in the 50s and they were 

9 fairly low.

10 There was a lot of high activity, 

11 but I don't think those were necessarily the 

12 redrumming operations. I couldn't really 

13 quite tell. That was in Brant's report.

14 So, I agree with you. You really 

15 don't know and then what do you do? Do you 

16 add a Class of people who weren't monitored?

17 Those who were monitored are not 

18 in the Class, and then those who weren't are 

19 in the Class. It could be an issue.

20 CHAIR BEACH: That takes us into 

21 most of our internal and why we are where we 

22 are with just thorium left, because - 
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155 1 DR. NETON: Yes.

2 CHAIR BEACH: -- it's the same 

3 case.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, because 

5 we've gone through the saga of trying to go 

6 through the Meyer report and the King report. 

7 And basically there just isn't any other 

8 information that can pin this down. So, 

9 I think we agreed to disagree to some extent, 

10 but also agreed that you would need something 

11 that would be clearly corroborating. 

12 Otherwise, you would get into the same 

13 scenario Jim suggested that he would - 

14 MR. KATZ: Excuse me, Joe. Please, 

15 there are people on the phone that are 

16 carrying on conversations.

17 If you don't want to listen to 

18 this, then I would suggest that you 

19 disconnect. But you're interrupting everyone 

20 who's trying to listen to the discussion here, 

21 including other people on the phone who may 

22 have a harder time than the people in the room 
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156 1 hearing what's being said.

2 So, please, mute your phone or 

3 disconnect.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Thank you.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: But again that 

6 avoids the circumstance that Jim just alluded 

7 to that otherwise you're recommending SECs for 

8 periods where that data is lacking, but you 

9 have to, you know, you don't know one way or 

10 the other what it means whether it's 

11 operationally there wasn't anything or whether 

12 in fact the monitoring wasn't done.

13 So, I think that's the 

14 circumstance here, but there is information 

15 which actually there's more information on 

16 thorium than we found for some of the exotics.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Phil, are you still 

18 on the line? Do you have any comments or - 

19 hopefully you were able to hear the 

20 discussion.

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I notice that 

22 you were talking about the size of the 
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157 1 thorium. How long has that material been - 

2 will the records show - 

3 CHAIR BEACH: That was just one 

4 operation. One separate from the redrumming.

5 DR. NETON: Which one?

6 CHAIR BEACH: The size. The 

7 particle size.

8 DR. NETON: I read that in a 

9 report. There's a report titled "Uses of 

10 radionuclides." I forget the author, but they 

11 talked about the particle size that were used 

12 to coat these microspheres that were 100 

13 microns in diameter.

14 But those people were also 

15 presumably under the monitoring program as 

16 well. Because like I say, Mound is a little 

17 different in the sort of sense it's not quite 

18 in my opinion seemingly expansive as some of 

19 these other large DOE sites.

20 There were a number of buildings, 

21 but the operations were, I don't know, 

22 somewhat - not as many individual operations 
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158 1 going on at the time.

2 There were other campaigns with 

3 other small things, but I don't think anything 

4 like you would see at a larger, more national 

5 lab-type situation.

6 One of the reports -- I mentioned 

7 these quarterly Health Physics reports I think 

8 are particularly instructive. This is just 

9 out of a quarterly report that was issued in 

10 1960 again.

11 And I'll read this section called 

12 Other Areas, which is sort of outside the 

13 polonium/plutonium ones. And this statement 

14 reads: The thorium redrumming work was 

15 undertaken again this spring. Approximately 

16 2,500 drums of thorium will be redrummed yet 

17 this year. Work is being done in the area 

18 close to the railroad spur west of the oil 

19 pump house. A portable change house has been 

20 set up in the area. Personal monitoring will 

21 be carried out as in the past, you know.

22 So, there's clearly an awareness 
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159 1 of what's going on and an indication that 

2 workers were monitored. And in fact, we have 

3 350 samples.

4 So, it's a nice, little tight 

5 package there, at least in my opinion, based 

6 on what I've read.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, that 250 

8 samples - 

9 DR. NETON: 350.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: 350, excuse me.

11 It covers how many years?

12 DR. NETON: It covers a number of 

13 years out through -- maybe 20 years. 

14 Something like that.

15 The thorium, remember, we're only 

16 worried about thorium reconstruction 

17 necessarily after '58 and the material was 

18 actually put into the Building 21 

19 configuration. I believe in '64 they actually 

20 dumped all the drums.

21 They got tired of redrumming, in 

22 fact. They redrummed all the drums three 
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160 1 times. And then they finally developed this -

2 - it's sort of an igloo, in my opinion, like 

3 an open structure where they dump in all the 

4 drums into the igloo.

5 And after that point from the 

6 records I read, it pretty much sat dormant 

7 until 1975 when it was removed.

8 CHAIR BEACH: A company bought it 

9 or came in and - 

10 DR. NETON: Someone bought it. And 

11 Gray and Associates was in charge of the 

12 shipping operations. I'm not even sure Mound 

13 was involved in the removal of the thorium.

14 So, there was about a period, you 

15 know, '58 to '64, six years or so where there 

16 was active outdoor -- well, actually it's 

17 probably late '50 to '64 active outdoor 

18 drumming in the good-weather months outdoors 

19 removed from the site - or onsite, but in a 

20 remote area of the site.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: So, basically 

22 about five or six - well, six years of 
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161 1 monitoring for that.

2 I appreciate the paper that you 

3 read that this is how it is at the summary, 

4 but I'll always caution you of what goes out 

5 in the site is sometimes very different than 

6 the way it really did.

7 I hate to use that as this is how 

8 it was run, because today I still chuckle when 

9 I read the reports that go out.

10 So, I just caution some fan of, 

11 yes, that's the way it is.

12 DR. NETON: I appreciate that, 

13 Brad. I'm aware.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: I know, and they 

15 didn't -- well, that's what we can go with.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, SC&A's 

17 recommendation to the Work Group is to close 

18 this item. And I guess I'm going to throw 

19 that out to the Work Group what your thought 

20 is on that.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: I don't have a 

22 warm, fuzzy feeling on it myself. I've 
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162 1 listened to too many different interviews that 

2 contradict what was said, but that's just my 

3 personal opinion.

4 My opinion is that is that they've 

5 got 350 - I'm still - the people, are they 

6 exactly called out who was actually involved 

7 with - 

8 CHAIR BEACH: Brant said at the 

9 last meeting that they could identify the 20 

10 people that did the redrumming effort. I do 

11 remember that from - 

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 CHAIR BEACH: Yeah, they have the 

14 samples.

15 DR. NETON: He identified 20 

16 people, 20 claimants that had - 

17 (Simultaneous speaking.)

18 DR. NETON: Out of the three 

19 hundred and 50 or so samples, I believe about 

20 a third of them were positive.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: One third.

22 DR. NETON: Were positive.
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163 1 MEMBER ZIEMER: That represents how 

2 many workers? 

3 DR. NETON: I don't know how many 

4 workers. There were 350 samples. I didn't do 

5 that count. I was surprised there was that 

6 many positives, to be honest with you.

7 Thorium is - inherently it doesn't 

8 excrete very well from the body. Only about 

9 10 percent, by the old models. I'm not sure 

10 about the new ones.

11 But anyway, so, there was clearly 

12 positive exposures measured from them.

13 CHAIR BEACH: I have Brant's report 

14 here. And he said this report presents 

15 internal dose estimates for 20 workers 

16 involved in the thorium operations at Mound.

17 DR. NETON: Right.

18 CHAIR BEACH: And I would tell you 

19 the date, but it is not listed, as you pointed 

20 out at the last meeting that it would be nice 

21 if NIOSH would put dates on these.

22 So, I guess this just goes back 
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164 1 to, I mean, this was kind of for all the 

2 internal - you might - you're not comfortable 

3 with it and I agree with that, but then where 

4 does that take us or where does that lead us 

5 for a recommendation?

6 I guess I would have to say that I 

7 would take SC&A's recommendation to close 

8 this. That would be my vote.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: I would agree with 

10 that. This is a case where we have monitoring 

11 data, we have identified individuals, we have 

12 a description of the work site and the 

13 restrictions not entering and so on.

14 It's not like some of the others 

15 that we've had and I think it's Oak Ridge 

16 Hospital, where there's no indication that 

17 there's any control about who went in and out.

18 I mean, you can only speculate 

19 that someone might get past controls, but at 

20 least they existed here and it's much tighter 

21 than we've seen in many of these.

22 The SEC to me becomes very clear 
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165 1 if you can't show it, if there was some - at 

2 least a reasonable level of control.

3 I don't think it excludes - but 

4 the idea that anyone on the site is going to 

5 be wandering into this area.

6 And the only other thing is that 

7 on these with what apparently is in these 

8 drums, I'm not sure.

9 DR. NETON: Very high percentage of 

10 thorium by weight.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Was it?

12 DR. NETON: Yes, I was surprised it 

13 was that high. Not all of them. Some. There 

14 was a mixture, but I know a large number of 

15 them were monazite ores. I don't know if it 

16 was Brazil or India.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: But I'm wondering 

18 if the ingestions were actually inhalations 

19 versus oral.

20 DR. NETON: That's possible.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: If it's oral, you 

22 get a very different excretion pattern than 
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166 1 inhalation.

2 DR. NETON: The f1 value for 

3 thorium - 

4 CHAIR BEACH: Well, I think in this 

5 case from what I remember from Brant's report, 

6 was that the redrumming was done in the summer 

7 months and that uses of respiratory equipment 

8 was maybe a little haphazard.

9 Sometimes they wore them, 

10 sometimes they didn't, based on how hot it 

11 was.

12 DR. NETON: How many were exposed?

13 CHAIR BEACH: And I think we 

14 captured those particular workers. I agree 

15 that based on the urine samples, I think what 

16 we were really grappling with was the ones 

17 that weren't within those 20 people and how do 

18 you pinpoint those.

19 DR. NETON: Well, there were more 

20 than 20 people that were monitored. I mean, 

21 the 20 that Brant selected - 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Right.
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167 1 DR. NETON: -- were just the ones 

2 that he picked out of the population to do 

3 some case studies.

4 Dr. Ziemer has a good point. Out 

5 of 350 samples, I don't know exactly how many 

6 workers that covers.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

8 DR. NETON: Presumably it's more 

9 than 20.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, and this is 

11 - my concern with it was we have nothing to 

12 let us know that the hundred percent of the 

13 people over these time periods were done. 

14 We've got 60 different people, but - 

15 DR. NETON: Well, again, you know, 

16 and you could argue they do follow their own 

17 procedures, but they set up a change house, 

18 they cordoned off the area.

19 I mean, when you have controls 

20 like that, it's a little different like Dr. 

21 Ziemer says - 

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: And that's true.
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168 1 DR. NETON: You're restricting 

2 people coming into the area. You know who's 

3 been in there. And at least there's a proviso 

4 in there that everyone working with 

5 radioactive material is supposed to get their 

6 sample done.

7 It can't be proved a hundred 

8 percent here, but it appeared to me that there 

9 was a fairly good for that time frame, health 

10 physics practices in place for this operation.

11 I've known a lot of people who 

12 worked with thorium early on and they had zero 

13 monitoring. It's unusual to see this many 

14 samples for a thorium operation.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I agree 

16 because partly I think that Mound was the 

17 reason for a lot of this because the issues 

18 could -- have arose with the thorium.

19 DR. NETON: I mean, if you look at 

20 the report and personnel descriptions, I was 

21 actually impressed that for the quarter they 

22 had six man-months of bioassay support for 
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169 1 bioassay programs in that 1962 area, which I 

2 thought was pretty good for, you know, that 

3 time period.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, these people 

5 are for the most part already in the SEC 

6 unless they don't meet the criteria, right?

7 DR. NETON: No, prior to '58 

8 they're in the SEC. We have an SEC through 

9 1980, but they would have to have also worked 

10 in the SW building handling tritium.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, okay.

12 DR. NETON: But as I - 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: You don't know that 

14 the - 

15 DE. NETON: The early thorium 

16 activities - the thorium program started in 

17 the mid-1950s and there was an intent to make 

18 like a pilot plant to purify the thorium.

19 That only lasted less than a year, 

20 I believe. So, that was sort of a chemistry 

21 pilot plant operation and then the project was 

22 terminated.
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170 1 And so, the only activities 

2 associated with thorium here would then be the 

3 redrumming operation.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: right.

5 DR. NETON: They weren't doing the 

6 processing of the thorium as they had intended 

7 to in the early years.

8 MR. KATZ: I think we need Brad and 

9 Phil's final words on this.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: You know, it's 

11 fine with me. I just, you know, I'm not 

12 always going to feel a hundred percent good on 

13 it. I have no problem with closing this 

14 following SC&A's request.

15 I just wanted it to go on the 

16 record that I don't - I personally really 

17 don't think it's that clear-cut, but I'll go 

18 with the rest of the Board.

19 MR. KATZ: Phil.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm good at this 

21 time.

22 MR. KATZ: Thank you.
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171 1 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think you sort of 

2 weight where it is. Is it past the tipping 

3 point in your mind. For me it is past the 

4 tipping point. 

5 MEMBER CLAWSON Right. And I 

6 understand, Paul, and I'm not questioning it.

7 CHAIR BEACH: That's kind of where 

8 I'm at too and you can't, I mean, where would 

9 you go from here? That's what I was grappling 

10 with.

11 So, Phil, what were you saying?

12 MR KATZ: Phil said okay.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Phil, okay. Okay. 

14 So, thorium then will stay as closed.

15 And, Jim, that takes us to - you 

16 said you had a report on polonium.

17 DR. NETON: I'll be very brief.

18 CHAIR BEACH: No, please take your 

19 time.

20 DR. NETON: Let me take the easier 

21 one first. The two years where we're missing 

22 polonium logbooks, we are actively in the 
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172 1 process of developing an 83.14 for that.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. You're talking 

3 the radon.

4 DR. NETON: The radon, right. I 

5 forget which two years those were.

6 CHAIR BEACH: I have it right here. 

7 So, let's make it very clear because I think 

8 one of the reports was incorrect for radon.

9 It is -- the missing logbooks were 

10 September 1st, 1972, through December 31st, 

11 1972. And for January 1st, 1975, through 

12 December 31st, 1976.

13 Because I think the other report 

14 just says '77, which was wrong. So, okay. 

15 Thank you.

16 DR. NETON: And I spoke to LaVon 

17 Rutherford who is the keeper of the SECs. And 

18 he indicated to me that we intend to present 

19 this at the September Board meeting to be the 

20 next Board meeting after - 

21 CHAIR BEACH: So, an 83.14 for that 

22 time period.
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173 1 DR. NETON: An 83.14. It would be 

2 all workers who worked in those two time 

3 frames would be eligible to enter the SEC 

4 because we can't - we have no definitive way 

5 of documenting potential for exposure in the 

6 SW building.

7 As far as the early period for 

8 polonium between February '49 and September 

9 '49, this is the era when Monsanto transferred 

10 polonium work over to Mound.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

12 DR. NETON: And it perceived the 

13 initiation of the SEC Class at Mound. We 

14 intend to add that piece, but I checked last 

15 week. And as of last week we have no 

16 claimants that are affected by this.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

18 DR. NETON: So, you know, we will 

19 be monitoring for what we consider to be a 

20 litmus case, someone who would be eligible to 

21 file for an 83.14.

22 We keep our eyes open. I think 
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174 1 there's probably computer checks as they come 

2 in to make sure we don't miss someone.

3 But at such time as we get a case 

4 in, this will remain suspended until - 

5 CHAIR BEACH: So, are we talking 

6 about an 83.14 that will - 

7 DR. NETON: It would be an 83.14, 

8 but we can't proceed unless we have a case 

9 that's affected.

10 CHAIR BEACH: So, is there going to 

11 be any - I don't know. We're probably dealing 

12 with survivors possibly in this case.

13 DR. NETON: That's true.

14 CHAIR BEACH: So - 

15 DR. NETON: You mean an advertising 

16 campaign or something of that nature?

17 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

18 DR. NETON: We haven't done that. 

19 We don't normally advertise. We could put the 

20 word out through the Board, notify - I have 

21 notified the Department of Labor about our 

22 intent to add an 83.14 for the logbook error.
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175 1 I did not bring up with them the 

2 polonium error. I can mention that in our 

3 interagency calls and ask them to distribute 

4 that information however they can.

5 We just sort of let our ombudsman 

6 know, ‘identifying information redacted’, of 

7 our intent to be soliciting --

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: What are the years 

9 on that? 

10 CHAIR BEACH: February 1st, 1949, 

11 through September 30th, 1949.

12 And then the other question is, is 

13 that going to be a Monsanto or a Mound?

14 DR. NETON: That would be a Mound.

15 CHAIR BEACH: It would be a Mound.

16 DR. NETON: Mound was in operation 

17 and they transferred that to Monsanto - or 

18 Monsanto transferred that operation to Mound.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

20 DR. NETON: And there's no reason 

21 to believe that the procedure was any less 

22 messy than it was at Monsanto when it 
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176 1 transferred at that time period. They were 

2 irradiating slugs and dissolving them.

3 The other thing that was going on 

4 at Monsanto, as I mentioned a few meetings 

5 ago, is Monsanto is becoming a DOE facility.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

7 DR. NETON: There's also a campaign 

8 out to - Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong, but I 

9 think we need to do an 83.14 there to solicit 

10 anyone - well, there's a potential Class of 

11 workers out there who were contractors that 

12 had worked at Monsanto who were not eligible 

13 for the SEC at Monsanto by nature of it being 

14 a DOE facility.

15 So, an 83.14 could be done to 

16 recruit - we can't just change the Class 

17 definition. There's a Class out there already 

18 as an AWE. Now, it would have to be a DOE 

19 Class.

20 And so, we're working on that 

21 aspect as well. So, there's a few things in 

22 the early periods that are going on.
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177 1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You mentioned just 

3 to go back, you mentioned the logbooks in the 

4 context of SW.

5 Are you talking about the - anyone 

6 who got a tritium bioassay, it wasn't to SW 

7 per se, was it?

8 DR. NETON: Well, what we're saying 

9 is we don't have any logbooks for tritium 

10 monitoring in those years. So, you have no 

11 way of establishing if they worked in the SW 

12 building or not.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

14 saying, though, the Class Definition was 

15 broader than SW. I think it was fall of - or 

16 anyone who got a - 

17 DR. NETON: Yes.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right. When 

19 I heard you say SW, I wasn't quite sure if - 

20 DR. NETON: Well, what I meant was 

21 that anyone - we don't know who had tritium 

22 bioassays in those years.
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178 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

2 DR. NETON: So, therefore, 

3 everybody on site is in the Class - 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

5 DR. NETON: -- by definition.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

7 DR. NETON: But you're correct. 

8 There was another building that had tritium 

9 samples that was sort of brought into the 

10 Class.

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 DR. NETON: So - 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

14 DR. NETON: It gets confusing at 

15 times.

16 CHAIR BEACH: It does.

17 DR. NETON: Because there's tritium 

18 samples to cover radon exposure. I mean, that 

19 right there tells you how confusing --

20 CHAIR BEACH: So, this will be all 

21 workers.

22 DR. NETON: All workers who were 
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179 1 onsite during that time period.

2 CHAIR BREACH: So, I would suggest 

3 that we take our lunch break and then give 

4 anyone on the phone a chance if there's any 

5 public comments before we get into Site 

6 Profile - or maybe we should - is there 

7 anything else with data adequacy?

8 We do have that list May 29th that 

9 NIOSH sent out. And I was trying to go 

10 through it briefly to see if there was 

11 anything missing.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: That's going to 

13 get into Site Profile issues.

14 CHAIR BEACH: That's what I 

15 suspected.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be 

17 better after lunch.

18 DR. NETON: I think we should 

19 ignore NIOSH's response in those areas because 

20 they're redundant to what's going to be in - 

21 CHAIR BEACH: In the Site Profile, 

22 okay.
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180 1 DR. NETON: We were somewhat 

2 confused as to which were SEC and which were - 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Absolutely.

4 DR. NETON: Site Profile issues. 

5 But I think if we go over this entire list, 

6 it's going to take a little while especially 

7 because I need to refresh my memory on some of 

8 these. I wasn't intimately involved with 

9 these as much as I am going to be now.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: We can use this as 

11 an opportunity to do that because I think some 

12 of us haven't actually looked at these in a 

13 couple of years either.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Right, right.

15 DR. NETON: This just came out 

16 recently. I haven't looked at the gamut of 

17 the issues in a while.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, 

19 essentially other than the tritide issue, we 

20 have cleared up all the SEC issues.

21 And can I ask a time frame? You 

22 knew I was going to ask that on the tritides.
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181 1 DR. NETON: Can I get back to you 

2 on that, because I have not worked with this - 

3 I don't know what's on people's plates and I 

4 know this is a working product of one of our 

5 contractors. I can't speak for their time 

6 frame.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

8 DR. NETON: I don't expect it would 

9 take long, but I'll - 

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

11 DR. NETON: -- take commitment. 

12 It's one of my action items to get back to the 

13 Working Group within a week or so with a time 

14 frame. I just want to get a chance to talk to 

15 the people - 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Sure.

17 DR. NETON: -- that are actually 

18 going to do the work.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

20 DR. NETON: I'm very good at giving 

21 short commitments and then learning that - 

22 (Laughter.)
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182 1 CHAIR BEACH: Right, right. And 

2 we'll revisit recommendations and timing and 

3 stuff after lunch.

4 So, let's go ahead and break for 

5 an hour. Perfect timing. 12 o'clock.

6 MR. KATZ: So, thank you, everyone. 

7 (Whereupon, the proceedings went 

8 off the record at 12:56 p.m. for a lunch 

9 recess and went back on the record at 1:03 

10 p.m.)

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 
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183 1 1:03 p.m.

2 MR. KATZ: All right. We are back 

3 after lunch. This is the Mound Work Group of 

4 the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

5 Health.

6 Let me check on the line and see, 

7 do we have you back, Phil Schofield?

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. Yes, you 

9 do.

10 MR. KATZ: That's great. Thank 

11 you.

12 And while we have everyone else on 

13 the line at the outset, let me remind you 

14 again we had a lot of problems with people 

15 carrying on conversations on non-muted phones 

16 during the morning session. So, please, 

17 everyone, basically everyone except Phil and 

18 the SC&A staff, should have their phones 

19 muted. And if you don't want to mute your 

20 phone, then just cut out when you want to have 

21 a discussion, and dial back in.

22 And to mute your phone, you just 
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184 1 press *6. Every phone has a *6. Press *6. 

2 And then to unmute it, press *6 again. Thank 

3 you.

4 And, Josie, it's your meeting.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, where we 

6 are in the agenda is Work Group 

7 recommendations. And the only thing I want to 

8 say about that is we already closed out 

9 thorium. We know where we are with the 

10 tritide.

11 As far as this Work Group is 

12 concerned, I will do a presentation at the 

13 Board meeting in June in Santa Fe and 

14 basically just lay out what we've done over 

15 the last four to five years.

16 I did a presentation, I was trying 

17 to remember the date, but it was quite 

18 extensive a year or two ago, also.

19 And I'm hoping, and of course Jim 

20 is going to give us the okay on that, is to 

21 report out on the tritides issue in September 

22 at our next Board meeting after this one in 
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185 1 June. So, that's what I'm hoping and shooting 

2 for.

3 DR. NETON: I'm going to report 

4 out, or --

5 CHAIR BEACH: No, you're going to 

6 tell us when you're going to give us the 

7 tritides model. So --

8 DR. NETON: I should have that date 

9 before the June meeting.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Hopefully, yes. And 

11 then we'll decide on the next Work Group 

12 meeting and - 

13 MR. KATZ: But our aim would be to 

14 be done before the September meeting. That's 

15 what Josie is saying, Jim.

16 CHAIR BEACH: The final --

17 MR. KATZ: So, our aim would be to 

18 be -- to wrap up tritides before the September 

19 Board meeting.

20 DR. NETON: I would hope so.

21 MR. KATZ: If that's possible.

22 DR. NETON: It doesn't seem to me 
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186 1 to be that complex an assignment on our part.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Right. Okay. So, 

3 that's just the star I'm shooting for 

4 basically.

5 Okay. Is there anyone on the 

6 phone that has any comments or questions, 

7 would like to make any comments?

8 (No response.)

9 CHAIR BEACH: If not, then the next 

10 item on the agenda is the Site Profile issues. 

11 I asked SC&A just to give us kind of an 

12 updated Site Profiles matrix.

13 The reason we're going to do that 

14 now is just to kind of go through the items 

15 and get some clarification. We're not going 

16 to solve anything, I don't imagine, today, but 

17 just to rehash the past four or five years and 

18 see where we are with the Site Profile matrix 

19 to move this forward.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: And in that 

21 connection, what is the latest version of the 

22 matrix?
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187 1 CHAIR BEACH: Joe --

 MEMBER ZIEMER: The 26th. May 26th 2 . 

3 Let me double-check here.

4 DR. NETON: I can send it to you.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, let's see. It 

6 was sent out on the 25th?

7 DR. NETON: Yes, I believe so.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, pretty 

9 close.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I must have moved 

11 it into my Mound file. Let me see.

12 CHAIR BEACH: If you're like me, 

13 you have two Mound files.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, wait. I'm 

15 actually looking at the wrong file. I'm 

16 looking at the inbox instead of the Mound 

17 file.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. And, Joe, are 

19 you going to --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, let me give a 

21 little background. This is really two 

22 efforts.
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188 1 One, you know, we did a status 

2 summary of outstanding issues associated with 

3 the internal dose side of things. That was 

4 back a couple years ago: October of 2010.

5 That was when we were combining 

6 all these White Papers and all these issues 

7 into a consolidated internal dose item. And I 

8 think at that time the Work Group asked for, 

9 you know, what is the status of all these.

10 So, we didn't lose anything when 

11 we consolidated all these White Papers and we 

12 came out with that matrix. And I -- and we 

13 never did anything really with that.

14 We got involved with the -- just 

15 closing out SEC questions. So, that sort of 

16 stood as a status that was two years old 

17 essentially.

18 So, I started with that and added 

19 to it the items that fell out of each of the 

20 SEC discussions. There was a number of SEC 

21 discussions where certain things were put in 

22 the parking lot, so to speak, as likely Site 
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189 1 Profile issues and kind of verified that 

2 through the transcripts and made sure that we 

3 didn't lose anything in that process.

4 So, combining those items with 

5 what was in the October matrix is the source 

6 of what you see today.

7 Now, saying that and I think as 

8 Jim and I have discussed, it's kind of 

9 complicated in the sense that there were 

10 issues raised and the response to the issues 

11 sometimes were broader than the questions 

12 raised. Sometimes they dealt with a couple of 

13 the questions, that kind of thing.

14 So, when we go through this, some 

15 of the clarification's just to figure out if 

16 in fact some of these have gone away by virtue 

17 of the broader treatment of the issues, but 

18 some of the specific ones stand as outstanding 

19 Site Profile questions.

20 So, what you have is a combination 

21 of what's come out of the SEC discussions, and 

22 also what came out of the consolidation of all 
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190 1 those internal dose White Papers, which were 

2 quite a few of them.

3 And as I said earlier, this is --

4 I'm sure this could stand some scrutiny. And 

5 that was the intent was to give the Work Group 

6 and all of us a chance to go through this and 

7 just make sure that this is a reasonable 

8 baseline.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Joe, let me be clear. 

10 The earlier one you were talking about, was 

11 that the actual Site Profile matrix, the one 

12 that came out March 10th, or is that something 

13 different?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, back --

15 there was an October 2010 document called 

16 Mound Internal Data Adequacy and Completeness, 

17 Issue Status Report. And I think the concern 

18 there was that, because we were going to 

19 consolidate all these different internal dose20 related issues into one, which was this 

21 omnibus internal issue that the Work Group was 

22 going to deal with, your concern was not to 
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191 1 lose anything in that process. Because, quite 

2 frankly, these White Papers had a combination 

3 of clear SEC questions, as well as issues 

4 which were clearly Site Profile in nature 

5 pointing out perhaps inaccuracy questions, 

6 questions of consistency and those that are 

7 clearly more Site Profile-related.

8 So, we wanted to sort of divide 

9 that up and we have since dealt with the SEC, 

10 central SEC questions, but trying to pull out 

11 all those Site Profile questions is what we 

12 did in that October 2010 document. I have a 

13 copy of it, by the way.

14 And that's -- you know, the 

15 internal piece of this matrix, you know, leans 

16 heavily on that piece, but I'll be the first 

17 to tell you that again is a combination of 

18 clear SEC issues -- I'm sorry -- clear Site 

19 Profile issues, the ones which are sort of in 

20 between.

21 So, rather than making the 

22 judgment on priority to leave stuff out, I've 
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192 1 left more in. So, some of this is going to 

2 have to be one where we distinguish, try to go 

3 through and figure it out.

4 CHAIR BEACH: I'm sure it wasn't an 

5 easy task.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it was a 

7 little complicated, but mostly on the internal 

8 side, I might add. The rest of it was much 

9 clearer. Internal was a bit of a nightmare.

10 So, do you want to go through 

11 these and just --

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: One by one?

14 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, if that's okay 

15 with the rest of the Work Group.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Starting with 

17 Issue 5, this is one of the earlier ones, 

18 plutonium-240, -241 in which we closed out. 

19 However, there was an action. This came from 

20 transcripts for NIOSH to confirm the bounding 

21 intake for Pu-241. It was just a to-do that 

22 was in the transcripts.
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193 1 And other than that, I tried to 

2 give a little bit of a picture of the issue 

3 that was the basis for the action being levied 

4 by the Work Group. And that's what the basis 

5 and source means.

6 In terms of plutonium-240 and -

7 241, that particular issue, that was closed 

8 out as an SEC issue, but the Work Group agreed 

9 that there was some question about discrepancy 

10 and the relative concentrations of the 

11 isotopes, the 240, 241. And NIOSH offered to 

12 confirm the bounding intake for 241 that would 

13 be in fact used in the dose reconstruction 

14 program.

15 And that would be included in the 

16 TBD if it weren't there, and I guess it wasn't 

17 there.

18 DR. NETON: From our perspective, I 

19 can only agree that we will pursue this and 

20 close it out.

21 I don't know that anything has 

22 been done. It may have been worked on and 
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194 1 closed, to my knowledge, but I haven't had 

2 time to go back and look at it.

3 But this has to do with the amount 

4 of plutonium-241 that could have been the 

5 isotopic mix. Could have been -- looks like 

6 it could have been higher 241 which would I 

7 guess increase your accumulation of americium8 241.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think it 

10 was just the detail that --

11 DR. NETON: I can just accept this 

12 as an open item on our part. And like I 

13 mentioned earlier, I'll be taking this back to 

14 the Working Group -- I mean the Site Profile 

15 folks who handle these type things and go over 

16 this list. And then hopefully we can get some 

17 sort of a time commitment.

18 This will go onto our -- what we 

19 call our Gantt chart -- actually, we don't 

20 call it the Gantt chart. We call it our 

21 tracking matrix.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And as far as 
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195 1 background and the source of the item, I tried 

2 to be very specific about the transcript 

3 itself and the reference and the page numbers.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I was going to 

5 comment on that.

6 DR. NETON: That's very good.

7 CHAIR BEACH: That is good.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you can go 

9 right back to the actual citation and find 

10 that particular loose end.

11 Okay. Well, the sixth one is 

12 tritides. And the only issue there is 

13 something that came up, actually, several 

14 years ago when we got into this distinction 

15 between hafnium and the insolubles and the 

16 intermediates.

17 And a comment was made that there 

18 was a lot more intermediates that were being 

19 handled at Mound than -- actually, the hafnium 

20 was a small fraction of what they actually 

21 dealt with.

22 Then the question came up from the 
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196 1 Work Group, well, these are clearly not as 

2 insoluble as hafnium. But nonetheless, you 

3 know, would there be any need to perhaps apply 

4 a solubility factor beyond what is being added 

5 now?

6 And I think the offering was NIOSH 

7 was going to look at that and see if it was 

8 necessary to include that into the revision. 

9 And that was the item.

10 DR. NETON: It seems like that 

11 right now we've got a situation where we've 

12 bounded the extremes, the very soluble and the 

13 hafniums. And I'm not sure what benefit there 

14 would be in adding this intermediate Class of 

15 which we would not know the fraction anyway.

16 So, I don't really see a need at 

17 this point to do that unless I'm missing 

18 something. But it's either -- again, we have 

19 the two extremes. I don't know that it would 

20 make any difference in our dose 

21 reconstruction.

22 I do vaguely recall, though, that 
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197 1 there was a -- some of these nuclides did not 

2 have a determined solubility class. And there 

3 was some research being done at the time by --

4 I want to say Savannah River was contracting 

5 Lovelace or -- I try -- to do some solubility 

6 studies, but that's all I recall.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think the 

8 other issue, and again the transcript 

9 discussion's illuminating, you know, it's --

10 there are some extremes. But I think in terms 

11 of the intermediate, some of them clearly 

12 aren't hafnium, but they do have -- it's a 

13 continuum and they do have --

14 DR. NETON: Right.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: -- a degree of 

16 insolubility which it would look -- it would 

17 be useful to see whether or not any adjustment 

18 would be claimant-favorable or not.

19 I don't know. I think we left it 

20 that way.

21 DR. NETON: I don't think so 

22 because, you know, I looked at the lung model 
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198 1 this morning to confirm that the tritium lung 

2 model -- the way we handle tritium is the 

3 matrix is inhaled, the metal that the tritium 

4 was bound to, we actually account for the 

5 tritium dissolving off of the metal and 

6 becoming systemic.

7 And so once that happens, then all 

8 you would do is reduce the lung dose if you 

9 had a more moderately soluble material. So, I 

10 don't see that it would really affect 

11 anything.

12 But I'll tell you we will take 

13 that up, we'll go and run that to ground and 

14 just respond to it.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I was just going 

16 to suggest that.

17 DR. NETON: To get it in writing or 

18 in a more formal piece of communication.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: And whether 

20 there's any particular, whether it's titanium 

21 or some of these that fall just short of 

22 hafnium whether there be any value to applying 
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199 1 it, because I think that it is a bit of a 

2 continuum for some of these. It's not one 

3 over the other.

4 DR. NETON: We'll put some kind of 

5 formal response --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Titanium is one 

7 that comes to mind, but there may be some 

8 others that fall in that upper range.

9 Okay. This is an old favorite, 

10 Issue 9. Brings back fond memories. The 

11 high-fired Pu-238 and Type L excretion model.

12 And that was simply -- I think we 

13 -- after we kind of banged that thing down, I 

14 think NIOSH agreed that, okay, there might 

15 perhaps be a Type L that might come up on 

16 occasion, but we always have those excretion 

17 curves if we need to. And we will apply it if 

18 the phenomena shows up.

19 And I just put that down as a --

20 just to acknowledge that that was the 

21 commitment to add a Type L and make it 

22 available through dose reconstruction if in 
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200 1 fact that phenomenon shows up in terms of the 

2 urinalyses results that they kept. I think 

3 that's how we left it.

4 DR. NETON: I think I remember 

5 recently adding a proviso in the Site Profile 

6 indicating that this type possibly does exist 

7 and we're aware of it.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

9 DR. NETON: Don't try to force it 

10 in one of our standard models if it doesn't 

11 seem to fit the basic.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Exactly.

13 DR. NETON: Strangely, I do 

14 remember that.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. So, that 

16 was kind of it and there was a couple of cases 

17 that we conveyed it back and forth.

18 MR. KATZ: So, that sounds like an 

19 issue that's, in effect, in abeyance. It just 

20 hasn't shown up in the TBD.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, and there's 

22 several meetings and then I know that you 
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201 1 wrote up kind of a status in the matrix.

2 DR. NETON: Yes, I would want to go 

3 back and review the material. We're all based 

4 on recollection here.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

6 DR. NETON: So, it's better to go 

7 back and, you know, it's going to take some 

8 work on our part to go and more definitively 

9 outline what -- who said what and what we're 

10 going to do. It's got to be done.

11 DR FITZGERALD: Okay. Those are 

12 the easy ones. Now, we get to internal 

13 dosimetry data completeness: 11, 12 and 13. 

14 That was consolidated.

15 On A, uncertainties and low 

16 recovery for polonium bioassay procedures, I 

17 think that's one where I would say that would 

18 be one of the things to take a look at 

19 specifically. I don't know.

20 It would be a value to go through 

21 and repeat some of the discussions that we've 

22 had. But the citation that's in Section 3.1, 
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202 1 that's one of our White Papers.

2 So, I went back and looked at the 

3 NIOSH White Papers that came back in response 

4 and did not see that treated specifically. It 

5 was in broad responses, but I think that would 

6 be one where -- unless you could find the 

7 particular citation.

8 DR. NETON: I might have it right 

9 here, actually.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

11 DR. NETON: Section 3.2.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Do you have that 

13 one?

14 DR. NETON: Yes.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Which response --

16 DR. NETON: Well, you list it as 

17 Section -- this is the 2009, April 2009 NIOSH 

18 Internal Dosimetry Data Completeness.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, 9A.

20 DR. NETON: The polonium response I 

21 have is Section 3.2, not 3.1. Maybe this is 

22 not the right one.
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203 1 MR. FITZGERALD: Let's see.

2 DR. NETON: This talks more about 

3 the availability of records and not the 

4 recovery. So, that was just fortuitous that 

5 it seemed to line up.

6 Never mind. That's not the one.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is the 

8 section that's labeled Uncertainties in Load 

9 Recovery for Polonium Samples.

10 DR. NETON: Which one is that?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: This is on the 

12 April 2009.

13 DR. NETON: Okay. There were two 

14 pieces here.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. I cross

16 walked it with the responses we've gotten 

17 afterwards. And there were general responses, 

18 but that specific question I couldn't find in 

19 the -- but granted there's a lot of paper that 

20 came afterwards.

21 So, I went through and didn't find 

22 it. But if it's there, then that's fine. We 
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204 1 can go ahead and put that down.

2 DR. NETON: Yes, we can address 

3 this. This is a matter of what recovery is 

4 used.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That reference is 

6 correct. It's 2009,A, Section 3.1.

7 DR. NETON: Yes, it's the other 

8 document. There's a completeness, and then 

9 there's an adequacy.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: On B, I got your 

11 response on that and actually I went back to 

12 double-check that and I think the first two 

13 bullets are responded to in the general 

14 framework.

15 I mean, you almost have to step 

16 back because those issues are a little 

17 broader, are answered by the White Papers, but 

18 not specifically, but in general on this 

19 question of 95 percent of the data was found 

20 for selected individuals collected in 1990 and 

21 later, you know. This gets to the gross 

22 alpha, gross beta.
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205 1 DR. NETON: Right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Sort of 

3 radionuclide-specific versus gross alpha and - 

4 DR. NETON: Yes, yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: And when I went 

6 back and thought about it and read that thing 

7 through, I said, okay, this is really that 

8 issue and we are pretty much satisfied on 

9 that.

10 And the same thing with the next 

11 one that the majority of pre-1990 results 

12 again even though the original White Papers 

13 focused in on radionuclide-specific, I think 

14 as the dialogue went on we accepted the gross 

15 alpha and beta. So, those issues were 

16 responded to.

17 Now, the next ones I did not --

18 these were a lot more specific and I think 

19 clearly were Site Profile in nature to begin 

20 with in terms of the units and the 

21 radionuclides didn't match.

22 DR. NETON: Right.
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206 1 MR. FITZGERALD: The volume 

2 corrections were not possible in a number of 

3 the cases that were identified on that 

4 particular element from Section 3.6. I think 

5 that's clearly a Site Profile and how we'll 

6 improve the document type of thing.

7 On C, this was actually a 

8 collection of what I would consider Site 

9 Profile-specific issues. When Kathy was going 

10 through and doing a QA on the database, she 

11 was finding these discrepancies.

12 The question is are they, you 

13 know, are they ones that require any kind of 

14 adjustment in this TBD or some kind of 

15 explanation, or they're not significant or 

16 not, but these were sort of her QA check of 

17 the database found basically questionable 

18 issues or issues that raised some questions. 

19 And this is in Section 4.6.

20 There was a broad response. But I 

21 didn't in reading that response, find a --

22 again, because these are Site Profiles, didn't 
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207 1 see a specific response to some of these 

2 discrepancies that were raised.

3 So, again I went back and checked 

4 that given your -- when you came back with 

5 your response.

6 DR. NETON: Right.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So, anyway, that 

8 can be found in this 2009 C, which is a 

9 different White Paper. That's why I said the 

10 crosswalk is important. That's where the 

11 reference is.

12 2009 C, this is -- this is the QA 

13 document, Mound Internal Dosimetry Data 

14 Quality Assurance. That's April 2009. Same 

15 dates.

16 There are three documents of the 

17 same date just to make things more 

18 complicated. One was Internal Dosimetry Data 

19 Accuracy, the other was Internal Data 

20 Completeness, and the third was Dosimetry Data 

21 Quality Assurance.

22 DR. NETON: And this had to do, I 
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208 1 think, with the MJW.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: MJW did their post --

4 pre-1986 or whatever dose reconstructions.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

6 DR. NETON: And Kathy identified 

7 some issues with the data in the database. 

8 And so --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it was the 

10 question of if one is going to rely upon that 

11 MJW evaluation, should one reflect the fact 

12 that there were some issues that I think MJW 

13 itself raised.

14 A lot of these weren't issues that 

15 we originated. These were issues that MJW 

16 acknowledged in their report or were issues 

17 that they had dealt with.

18 So, I think the question in 

19 general was how does NIOSH see the report, MJW 

20 database, given some of these issues or 

21 questions.

22 DR. NETON: Right.
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209 1 MR. FITZGERALD: How do you 

2 reconcile those issues in terms of making use 

3 of that database?

4 And that was the broad issue that 

5 she raised and these are -- these are actually 

6 more specifically some of the illustrative 

7 examples of things that she thought NIOSH 

8 should treat in its TBD or at least 

9 acknowledge.

10 DR. NETON: Don't disagree.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. On D, I 

12 think this has been addressed already, 

13 tritium, missing tritium logbooks for --

14 CHAIR BEACH: The only thing I want 

15 to point out here is that the dates are wrong.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: The dates are 

17 wrong, okay.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I carried this 

20 over. So, I guess we got that wrong. '72 and 

21 '76.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, December '72 
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210 1 through '75, and then -- or excuse me -- '72 

2 through, and then '75, '76.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: '75, '76.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Do you want the exact 

5 dates, Joe? September 1st, 1972, through 

6 December 31st, 1972. And then January 1st, 

7 1975, through December 31st, 1976.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: 1976, okay. Yes, 

9 we've carried that over for a couple years now 

10 that way.

11 Okay. But anyway that's -- I 

12 think that's encompassed by the action that's 

13 being addressed. So, I don't know how you 

14 want to treat that. You can maybe remove it 

15 from the Site Profile list as that's being 

16 addressed explicitly.

17 Moving on to E, tritium, this gets 

18 to tritium bioassay in general. There were a 

19 couple of issues in two different reports 

20 dealing with the early dose calculations in 

21 terms of algorithm and compounds.

22 Now, compounds other than HTO is -
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211 1 - that drops out. Okay. That's tritides, 

2 basically. So, it's just the -- it's the 

3 first issue in that particular session.

4 DR. NETON: I'm not sure why we 

5 don't have an algorithm for those 

6 calculations. I'm not sure what --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think it 

8 goes with the context in the actual report

9 DR. NETON: I'll have to look at 

10 the document. For tritium HTO we definitely 

11 have algorithms. I don't know what this is.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: This is -- becomes 

13 the early dose calculation. It may have to do 

14 with the availability of the data there.

15 DR. NETON: Or maybe the Mound 

16 calculations that calculated the dose, we 

17 don't have the algorithm, but we're not using 

18 that.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that may be

20 the response. I mean, some of these like this 

21 one in particular came from that early October 

22 2010 listing. So, that may have been 
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212 1 responded to.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Excuse me. What's 

3 going to happen on D; did you say? I mean, 

4 sorry to back up a minute. On those missing 

5 logbooks, what --

6 MR. KATZ: Where at?

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 MR. FITZGERALD: So, that would 

9 disappear from our Site Profile matrix as 

10 something that's being addressed explicitly.

11 CHAIR BEACH: The answer, too.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, that is.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Two years ago, it 

15 was sort of an open question. That's been 

16 addressed.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: All right.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: E, I think, is a 

19 matter of checking back. This was an early 

20 finding that we're not too sure about, but may 

21 very well have been addressed along the way as 

22 well on tritium bioassay data accuracy in the 
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213 1 early years.

2 So F, plutonium data comparison, 

3 this is another Site Profile question that was 

4 embedded in some of the analyses and again a 

5 question of some gaps in the sources as far as 

6 information for dose reconstruction for 

7 claimants essentially.

8 The same thing with G for 

9 polonium, and this came from a data 

10 completeness review and raising questions 

11 about potential gaps.

12 DR. NETON: Yes, I don't know if 

13 this has a gross alpha issue with it or --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I didn't get the 

15 sense. Like I said, I have the documents 

16 right here. We can go back and check, but I 

17 think this is different from that.

18 DR. NETON: Okay. I'll look.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: H gets into fecal 

20 bioassay data, the question of -- this is 

21 going back quite a ways now. Few results in 

22 PURECON, poor overlap in logbooks, notion of -
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214 1 - I'm not even sure what --

2 (Simultaneous speaking.)

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: You're not using it 

5 anyway, are you?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: So, that may be 

7 the answer to the observation in the data 

8 completeness review.

9 I, again on tritium data 

10 comparison. Two individuals from the data 

11 completeness evaluation -- this is the 

12 evaluation of a sample of the claimant 

13 database that had bioassay data not reflected 

14 in the MESH tritium database. Again, sort of 

15 a very specific sampling issue that was done.

16 And I think because it was a 

17 limited sampling, the question was does this 

18 reflect a broader question --

19 DR. NETON: Now that we've 

20 reproduced the entire set of tritium logbooks, 

21 I think that this might be addressable. We'll 

22 look.
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215 1 MR. FITZGERALD: J, again this -- I 

2 don't know if there's anything we did not 

3 address, but the thorium bioassay data -- yes, 

4 this is a little different than what we just 

5 did. This is more Site Profile in nature in 

6 terms of procedures and the uncertainties.

7 This Super S or YY thorium is one 

8 that's come up before. In that particular 

9 case, I think --

10 DR. NETON: YY is the first time 

11 I've seen it.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I know. I'm 

13 saying it should be Super S maybe. But there 

14 was one scientific paper, I think, that was 

15 raised in one of the White Papers saying this 

16 sort of broaches this question.

17 And the response was, well, but 

18 the authors sort of downplayed it because 

19 there was a limited sampling where they found 

20 this phenomenon.

21 And I think the NIOSH conclusion 

22 was, well, because it was qualified that way, 
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216 1 that you couldn't -- you couldn't really use 

2 it as a reliable source for this question of 

3 whether this was a prevalent issue or not.

4 This seems to keep coming up and I 

5 don't --

6 DR. NETON: We just responded to 

7 this for another site last week.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I'm not quite 

9 sure. It almost is more smoke than fire. But 

10 anyway this came up in the White Paper, that 

11 one should at least address whether or not the 

12 Super S thorium, the high-fired thorium was a 

13 dosimetry question.

14 DR. NETON: I think we just 

15 addressed this very issue at another site. I 

16 remember looking at it and we'll just 

17 incorporate the --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: It's an old 

19 question. It was one that came up two years 

20 ago.

21 Anyway, that's all contained in 

22 this one section. These are issues that are 
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217 1 clearly not the same issue we just discussed, 

2 but ones that have the thorium bioassay in 

3 general.

4 And that's it for internal dose. 

5 This carries over from what was generated two 

6 years ago, updated it, tried to weed out as 

7 much as possible things that were covered in 

8 the SECs.

9 CHAIR BEACH: So, we didn't have 

10 anything on exotics? Nothing that would have 

11 been a Site Profile nature?

12 MR. FITZGERALD: No.

13 Now, keep in mind the exotics 

14 figure prominently in the SEC discussion. I 

15 mean, in the memo from January, it says right 

16 here, deals with the exotics and the fact 

17 that, you know, after much hand-wringing one 

18 could not figure that out.

19 (Simultaneous speaking.)

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that was -

21 - that was a large part of the discussion on 

22 the consolidated internal issues that the memo 
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218 1 addressed.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Nothing left from 

4 that, but these two are companion pieces. 

5 Because in essence, this hands off to what 

6 Site Profile issues are left.

7 The matrix that was attached to 

8 that memo in January is in essence this list 

9 from the internal side.

10 Okay. On neutrons, Ron, did you 

11 ever -- Ron Buchanan, are you still here?

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm here.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: My God. Okay. 

14 Actually, I forgot that you had -- I had Ron 

15 take a look at -- because he had been very

16 much involved in the back and forth on neutron 

17 issues, to try and scrutinize what would be 

18 left on that.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: That goes way back.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: That goes way 

21 back, but also there were a number of Site 

22 Profile questions that were parked because of 
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219 1 discussions on the -- remember the 12-inch 

2 MCNP and all that?

3 DR. NETON: Oh, yes.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: So, Ron is the 

5 reservoir of that institutional memory. So, 

6 I'm going to rely on him to walk us through 

7 that portion.

8 DR. NETON: That's when I was still 

9 young.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Well, you 

11 know, we addressed the common problems on 

12 neutron monitoring and NTA film. And we came 

13 to a solution where the threshold issue and 

14 NIOSH did some MCNP calculations, SC&A did 

15 some, we discussed them and we came out in 

16 agreement to incorporate those correction 

17 factors in the recorded neutron dose to 

18 compensate for the neutron dose missed because 

19 of the threshold of the NTA film.

20 And so that's A, Item A under 

21 Number 15. And so, we came to agreement on 

22 that. We just need to have that incorporated 
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220 1 in the revised TBD.

2 And some annotations follow at the 

3 bottom of the page there or a couple pages 

4 down that explains the interchange of papers. 

5 There's quite a few papers went back and 

6 forth between NIOSH and SC&A. And it was 

7 discussed in several of our Work Group 

8 meetings.

9 So, you know, I don't think that 

10 we have further discussion on it. It just 

11 needs to -- we just need to see it in the 

12 revised TBD.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: As Ron pointed 

14 out, we did put a couple, two, three pages of 

15 annotations in the back of this matrix just to 

16 try to reconstruct the history because it's a 

17 little hard to understand unless you know the 

18 history. So, that's what that is.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: So, Jim, is that 

20 your understanding as to --

21 DR. NETON: Yes.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: -- correction 
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221 1 factors will be in the revised TBDs?

2 DR. NETON: Yes.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, Item 

4 Number B, Item B is that neutron-photon ratio 

5 values were not consistent.

6 In the first TBD-6, the N over P 

7 values in one place is two-to-one, in another 

8 place is one-to-one.

9 And so, again that's -- the action 

10 item on that was to get the appropriate value 

11 in the revised TBD.

12 Okay. And then Item C, this was a 

13 quality factor in the original TBD. And the 

14 values listed in that came from Meyer's work 

15 notebook and such papers, but they listed 

16 variations in the number of neutron flux that 

17 provided 300 millirem per week.

18 And the first explanation was 

19 that, well, if you had a 40-hour week or 50-

20 hour week or you had one calibration source or 

21 another. However, if you went back and looked 

22 at the calculations, we see that this wouldn't 
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222 1 account for such a wide swing in the number of 

2 neutrons that created the weekly dose. It 

3 ranged from 30 to 250. So, that's a factor of 

4 five between 1947 and 1969.

5 And so, what needs to be done now? 

6 Perhaps this doesn't affect the way NIOSH 

7 creates, reconstructs the dose and that's 

8 fine, but we need to document it that NIOSH 

9 uses a method that doesn't depend upon those 

10 conversion factors. Or if it does, that it 

11 comes out in the wash. It comes out 

12 correctly.

13 And so, that was an issue that 

14 needed to be addressed and I assumed it would 

15 be either responded to or in the revised TBD 

16 to correct that.

17 DR. NETON: Now, does this have a - 

18 does this have a reference where we can look?

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Well - 

20 DR. NETON: Some of these are - I'm 

21 going to have to go back. I mean, the other 

22 ones had like sort of a reference of where the 
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223 1 issues came from.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: The annotations 

3 do, I think.

4 DR. NETON: Do they?

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, your 

6 annotations, do you indicate or identify the 

7 source? It looks like you do.

8 CHAIR BEACH: He does.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, in the 

10 annotations.

11 DR. NETON: Yes, yes, under 

12 neutrons.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't understand 

14 the concern about Item C. I mean, those 

15 numbers vary with the energy of the neutrons.

16 Is the question here that we don't 

17 know the energies, or what was - 

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, the original 

19 TBD in 2004 states that Mound Lab used between 

20 30 and 150 neutrons centimeters squared per 

21 second per 300 millirem per week between 1947 

22 and 1969.
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224 1 And the question was, why did it 

2 fluctuate back and forth? And it fluctuated 

3 several times in there - 

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: For a specified 

5 energy or - 

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, that's what 

7 we're trying to find out is - 

8 DR. NETON: There was a difference 

9 in source term or the energy of the source 

10 term or - 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: The conversion 

12 factor, I mean, you can find tables of these. 

13 And they go from about 30 for real fast, up 

14 to, I don't know, over a thousand. I don't 

15 remember the number, but this looks like it's 

16 an energy-dependent issue.

17 DR. NETON: And we'll take a look 

18 at it. I don't recall this one at all, 

19 really.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: And the point is, 

21 you know, if you're just quoting what Meyer 

22 had in his document, but it doesn't influence 
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225 1 the dose reconstruction, then it just needs to 

2 be explained that way in the revised TBD.

3 DR. NETON: We pull out - the 

4 quality factors were actually pulled out, and 

5 then added back by us because the modern 

6 quality factors are not reflective of the 

7 historical quality factors.

8 So, I've got to look and see how 

9 we dealt with this.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

11 DR. NETON: And then actually they 

12 get pulled out again in a distribution 

13 assigned in IREP.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

15 DR. NETON: I'll look into it. I 

16 don't recall this one very well at all.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: That was one of the 

18 original ones way back. A number of years ago.

19 Okay. And then Item D, which was 

20 NTA film fading, and we had a lot of 

21 discussion, probably too many to keep track 

22 of, on this issue. And it got included in the 
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226 1 Monte Carlo correction - not in the correction 

2 factor, but was being addressed at the same 

3 time. And we came up with the agreement of 

4 when it would be applied and - as such as 

5 illustrated in the annotations.

6 The original TBD addresses on Page 

7 30, it recommends 33 percent fading per week 

8 and 56 percent for two weeks to NTA film 

9 between '49 and '76.

10 However, then in the SEC 

11 evaluation and in a 2009 paper it says, okay, 

12 we'll do fading correction at nine percent a 

13 week.

14 And so, you know, we agree with 

15 the original TBD and to apply that fading 

16 factor, because that came directly from Meyer 

17 document.

18 The nine percent came from a 

19 related document, but it wasn't really Meyer's 

20 work.

21 And so, what we would like to see 

22 in the revised TBD is the original value and 
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227 1 not have it changed to nine percent.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. And then Item 

4 E was the coworker database, okay, for people 

5 that didn't have neutron dose recorded that 

6 meets the assigned neutron dose.

7 There was a coworker database that 

8 was created using categorical data in one of 

9 the papers referenced there. However, this 

10 was like somebody had a dose between zero and 

11 a hundred millirem, another one had a dose 

12 between a hundred and 200 instead of exact 

13 numbers.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: And if you look at 

16 the data, there is NTA-recorded neutron doses 

17 available to create a database of individual 

18 results. And I believe that was in Table 4-4 

19 of the '09 paper.

20 And so, what we would like - we 

21 recommended was that that be used to create a 

22 coworker database as opposed to using 
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228 1 categorical data.

2 DR. NETON: I remember this.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: And I know we 

4 discussed it, but, you know, it had never been 

5 done. And so, we wanted to keep that on the 

6 books.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Ron, this is Josie. 

8 Didn't we have something also on the inches 

9 for the glove boxes? Didn't that end up being 

10 a Site Profile issue?

11 DR. NETON: I think that was 

12 resolved.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: I think that was 

14 resolved. Brant's latest paper on that 

15 agreed, okay, it doesn't make much difference. 

16 You hit kind of a plateau between eight and 

17 12. We'll use the 12 and move on.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: I don't think there 

20 was a further issue on that.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: And so, that is 
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229 1 where we stand on the neutron issues.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: And you also went 

3 ahead and addressed Issue 16, which is the 

4 next one which deals with shallow dose which 

5 was one of the early ones that was sort of 

6 taken off the SEC list, but I think we had a 

7 remaining issue on that too, didn't we?

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Number 16 or 

9 shallow dose Site Profile Issue Number 8, that 

10 was - the problem was originally there was 

11 beta dose could not be reconstructed in the 

12 early days because there was no reliable 

13 dosimetry records.

14 However, we found out that it 

15 needed to be extended to a further period up 

16 into the '70s before beta dose is actually 

17 recorded and dosimetry was verified.

18 And so, in past discussions that 

19 was agreed upon to extend it up to the DOELAP 

20 accreditation in 1991. And that's quoted 

21 there in NIOSH's paper in 2009.

22 And so, again that's a bookmarker 
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230 1 we agree with and NIOSH agree. We just need 

2 to see that that's done in the revised TBD to 

3 extend that up to a later date.

4 DR. NETON: Yes.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: And so, that was all 

6 on that issue.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Thank you, 

8 Ron.

9 The last item is Issue 20 which we 

10 haven't talked about in eons, but has to do 

11 with the Environmental Occupational TBD and 

12 the wording in that TBD in terms of ambient 

13 environmental internal dose.

14 And we had this what seems to be 

15 an obscure date now, but the question of 

16 whether site-wide contamination existed and 

17 whether there needed to be a statement removed 

18 that Mound did not experience site-wide 

19 ambient contamination.

20 And maybe that was the peace 

21 offering, but I think that was just an item 

22 for TBD to remove that one statement that 
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231 1 factor might be in fact instances where you 

2 had some broader contamination to the site. 

3 And that was that one.

4 CHAIR BEACH: I mean, I do remember 

5 that discussion.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: It seemed like it 

7 was a long discussion.

8 (Simultaneous speaking.)

9 MR. FITZGERALD: It seemed like a 

10 long discussion to get to a point where, yeah, 

11 okay, we'll take that sentence out, but that 

12 was the resolution. I think weariness stepped 

13 in at that point.

14 DR. NETON: Well, we went through 

15 them quickly, but there's a lot of work 

16 embedded - 

17 CHAIR BEACH: There's a ton of 

18 work.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: But that 

20 represents a pretty good scrub based on the 

21 transcripts and the midterm analysis done on 

22 internal.
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232 1 So, I think it's a pretty good - 

2 like I said, it might, you know, once NIOSH 

3 goes through it there might in fact be some 

4 things that were missed. And that will take 

5 care of some of those issues readily, but 

6 that's pretty much it.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks for pulling 

8 that together on short notice.

9 That's the end of our agenda 

10 unless - and we can't really try to schedule 

11 another meeting.

12 MR. KATZ: So, do you need any 

13 discussion about the presentations in June or 

14 do you - 

15 CHAIR BEACH: I actually have a 

16 start on the presentation. Bill put one 

17 together for me. I looked at it and I was 

18 asking what we were going to do with tritides.

19 We'll send it out in the next 

20 week.

21 MR. KATZ: Do you need any support 

22 from DCAS on that front?
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233 1 CHAIR BEACH: I think just if 

2 there's questions.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay.

4 CHAIR BEACH: I'll definitely send 

5 it to Ted, and then he can send it out. And 

6 if there's any - 

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 MR. KATZ: Why don't you just go 

9 ahead and send it to the whole Work Group for 

10 everyone to take a look at.

11 CHAIR BEACH: It's pretty 

12 straightforward.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the 

14 tritides might require some consensus on how 

15 the - 

16 DR. NETON: But when it's ready as 

17 soon as you feel it's finalized, if you send 

18 it at least to me so I can get it to Chris 

19 Ellison because she needs to - 

20 MR. KATZ: Well, that's at the end 

21 of the process.

22 DR. NETON: Well, but it's getting 
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234 1 close to the end.

2 MR. KATZ: It is. We have a couple 

3 weeks.

4 DR. NETON: Once it's done.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and hopefully 

6 by the end of next week maybe, Joe, between us 

7 - 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And LANL.

9 (Simultaneous speaking.)

10 CHAIR BEACH: A week. Well, and 

11 I've got some notes and that's what I'm going 

12 to work on the rest of the day. And then - 

13 DR. NETON: Is there a LANL Work 

14 Group?

15 CHAIR BEACH: No.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: No, but it's a 

17 presentation because it's in Santa Fe and - 

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Mark's been in 

20 Australia. So, there's a little bit of - 

21 MR. KATZ: And Mark wanted to do a 

22 presentational update in this case.
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235 1 CHAIR BEACH: Well, let's go ahead 

2 and pull off there then since we're done with 

3 Mound and - unless anybody has any other 

4 comments or - 

5 MR. KATZ: No.

6 Adjourned?

7 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Thank you everyone on 

9 the line for bearing with us.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks, Phil.

11 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Phil.

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Thanks.

13 MR. KATZ: Thanks everyone at SC&A 

14 too and have a good afternoon.

15 (Whereupon, at 1:51 p.m. the 

16 meeting was adjourned.)

17 

18 

19 

20