NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

US Department of Health and Human Services

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

126th Meeting

Thursday, December 13, 2018

The meeting convened at 8:30 a.m., Pacific Time, at 

the Crowne Plaza, 300 North Harbor Drive, Redondo 

Beach, California, Ted Katz, Designated Federal 

Official, presiding.
2 

Present: 

Henry Anderson, Member*

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member*

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member*

Loretta R. Valerio, Member*

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Registered and/or Public Comment Participants: 

Anigstein, Bob, SC&A*

Barton, Bob, SC&A

Blaze, D'Lanie

Burgos, Zaida, NIOSH

Calhoun, Grady, DCAS

Domina, Kirk

Elliott, Michael*

Fitzgerald, Joe, SC&A

Frowiss, Jr., Al

Frowiss, Sr., Al*

Gogliotti, Rose, SC&A*

Hinnefeld, Stu, DCAS

Hughes, Lara, DCAS

Jerison, Deb

Lewis, Greg, DOE 

Lin Naylor, Jenny, HHS

Lobaugh, Megan, DCAS

Lorenzen, William*

Mauro, John, SC&A*

Neton, Jim, DCAS 

Rutherford, Lavon, DCAS

Stephens, Hugh*

Stiver, John, SC&A

Worthington, Patricia, DOE

*present via telephone
3 

Contents

US Department of Health and Human Services 

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health 126th Meeting 

Thursday, December 13, 2018 1

Welcome and Roll Call 4

Superior Steel Company SEC Petition #247 

(Carnegie, PA; 1952-1957) 5

Metals and Controls Corp. SEC Petition # 236 

(Attleboro, MA; 1968-1997) 36

Los Alamos National Laboratory SEC Petition 

#109 (Los Alamos, NM; 1996-2005) 82

Adjourn 98
4

Proceedings

(8:25 a.m.)

Welcome and Roll Call

Mr. Katz: Okay, everybody, I think we'll get started, 

get the preliminaries out of the way, and then get on 

to our first agenda item.

So welcome everyone. This is the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health, day two of our meeting 

here in Redondo Beach, California. Some 

preliminaries, well, today's agenda goes through 

2:30 this afternoon with a lunch break in there.

We have three SECs we're discussing today. First, 

Superior Steel in Pennsylvania, and then Metals and 

Controls, and then this afternoon, LANL.

Two of these SEC petitions are by way of, really, 

updates. We're not ready for action on a couple of 

these. But Superior Steel, we don't know. It's being 

presented for the first time to the Board, so we'll see 

where that goes.

For people who are on the phone, if you want to see 

the presentations that we have today, if you go to 

the NIOSH website, this program, today's date, 

schedule of meetings, in other words, today's date. 

For today's date, you'll find all those presentations as 

PowerPoints or PDFs, whatever. There, you can go 

through them on your own pace, or you can pull up. 

There's the agenda there, too, and on the agenda is 

directions for using Skype if you want to see the 

presentation in real time as it's presented here, page 

by page.

I would ask -- there's no public comment session 

today, although we do have petitioners for these 

petitions, and they have the opportunity to comment. 

And I know for a couple of these petitions, we expect 

them to comment. They expect to comment.

So last bit of instructions for general public is please 
5

to mute your phones, because that will improve the 

audio for you and everyone else. If you don't have a 

mute button, press star six to mute your phone and 

keep it muted for the meeting.

For those who are addressing the Board, petitioners, 

press star six again and it will take your phone off of 

mute. And please no one put the call on hold at any 

point. Someone did that yesterday and it caused a 

little trouble for everybody. So if you have to leave 

for a piece, hang up and dial back in, please.

Okay then, we will move on to roll call. Before we do 

roll call, I'll address conflicts of interest; in other 

words, people who are going to recuse themselves 

from sessions. We have no conflicts for the first two 

items, Superior Steel and Metals and Controls this 

morning.

This afternoon we have LANL. And for the LANL SEC 

petition, we have several Board Members that will 

recuse themselves. Paul Ziemer, who would be on the 

phone; and Loretta Valerio, also on the phone; and 

Phil Schofield, I believe also on the phone. So they 

will recuse themselves from that session.

(Roll call)

I do expect them, at least two of them, so they'll join 

us when they join us. We have a quorum so we're 

okay there. So let's get started with the presentation 

for Superior Steel. Megan? Thank you.

Superior Steel Company SEC Petition #247 

(Carnegie, PA; 1952-1957)

DR. LOBAUGH: Can everyone hear me okay? So I'm 

Megan Lobaugh and I'm going to talk today about our 

Evaluation Report for SEC 247, covering Superior 

Steel Company. I'd like to acknowledge our ORAU 

Team that helped with this which was Tim Kirkham, 

Mutty Sharfi, and Mike Kubiak.

So first a little bit about the site. The Superior Steel 

Company site is located in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, 
6

as we talked about a little bit yesterday.

There is a series of five interconnected buildings, as 

you can see in the picture on the right. These are the 

five buildings with the dark roof. This company did 

steel rolling during the wars, and then in the 1950s, 

the AEC was interested in their ability to roll metal 

and was looking for a contract to roll uranium metal 

into thin, plate-type elements for fuel for nuclear 

reactors.

The thought was that this fuel would be more efficient 

than the cylindrical types. So they put out a bid for 

contractors to do this work, and Superior Steel was 

successful in getting that contract.

The covered period that we're talking about, the 

operations were from January 1, 1952 through 

December 31, 1957. That's the current operations 

period. And then there's a residual radiation period 

from January 1, 1958 through the present.

There was some remediation done that we may talk 

about a little bit later, but it was not full-scale 

remediation of the facility. That's why it exists 

through the present.

Just a little bit about the processing that Superior 

Steel did. These are two pictures that are in the 

Evaluation Report as well. We pulled these from a 

review that was done in the 1980s of the facility for 

remediation purposes. So the areas that are marked 

in that top picture are actually specific to areas that 

were looked at in that study.

I'm going to speak more specifically about the picture 

in the bottom. So the bottom picture shows the 

typical processing that was done, starting on the 

right-hand side of the picture with a salt bath.

So the metal was entered into a salt bath that was 

then put into a furnace and taken to a very high 

temperature, about 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit for 

about an hour. So that heats up the metal so that 
7

then it can be put through the roughing roll and then 

through the finishing stands. So the slabs usually 

came in at about one inch thick, and by the end of 

this process they were down to about 180 

millimeters.

One thing I want to point out is this brushing station 

here in the middle between the roughing roll and the 

finishing stands. This brushing station was actually 

something that was added during the operations 

period just from research that they found. They 

wanted to get the salt off from the salt bath before 

putting it through the finishing stands, so that was 

something that was added during the processing 

time.

Then after it goes through the finishing stands, it's 

actually moved to shearing, where it would be cut or 

rolled into a useable form for shipment and the sites 

that it was going to.

So some specifics about the petition we received. It 

was an 83.13 or a Form B petition that we received 

May 1, 2018. The petitioner-requested Class was all 

workers who worked in any area at the Superior Steel 

Company facility in Carnegie, Pennsylvania during 

the period from January 1, 1952 through December 

31, 1957.

The basis for this petition was the fact that radiation 

exposures potentially incurred by members of the 

proposed Class were not monitored either through 

personal monitoring or area monitoring. The support 

for that basis was quotes from the current NIOSH Site 

Profile for Superior Steel.

We qualified the petition on July 19, 2018, with a very 

similar Class to what the petitioner submitted. All 

atomic weapons employees who worked in any area 

at Superior Steel Company in Carnegie, Pennsylvania 

during the period from January 1, 1952 through 

December 31, 1957.

As of October 2, 2018, we have received 35 claims 
8

for dose reconstruction for this site, for Superior 

Steel. All 35 claims had employment during the 

period under evaluation, during that operations 

period of January 1, 1952 through December 31, 

1957, and all dose reconstructions had been 

completed.

There are no records of internal or external dosimetry 

in any of those claims. So there's actually a typo on 

this slide. The bottom line should say External 

Dosimetry.

Next, I'd like to step through some of the 

requirements that we have for dose reconstruction. 

We need information about exposure time, the 

sources that employees were exposed to, and the 

exposure scenarios that existed at the facility, so 

that's what I'll do right now.

So the first one I want to talk about is exposure time 

and what information we have for this site. So 

according to the Savannah River Operations Office, 

the original contract was destroyed. They have 

provided information about the contract and what 

was likely in the contract, and some specific 

information about contract payments. So this is 

available to us via the Savannah River Operations 

Office, so they were the last contracting office that 

ran this contract.

So the effective date of the contract was June 27, 

1952, and that contract ended September 30, 1957. 

In the documentation that we have, and according to 

other reports, there's evidence that the fission 

material counting station, so the counting of the 

material coming in and leaving the site, actually 

wasn't revoked until November of 1957. So that's 

just a point that we may talk about later.

This contract was a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, and 

it was for intermittent, on-demand rolling. So they 

weren't doing this every day of the week for the AEC. 

This was something on request of the AEC that they 

were doing rollings.
9

We have a total number of payments and payments 

by fiscal year for that contract from 1952-57, so the 

total payments that Superior Steel received are right 

in the order of $350,000.

Our CATI information, so the interviews that are done 

with claimants, we know that overtime work was very 

common for this facility.

So all of this information together gives us a picture 

of the years that there are applicable exposures at 

this site, the annual hours of exposure that we'll talk 

about later, as well as daily exposure that we think 

may have happened when the rolling was occurring.

Next, I'd like to talk about the sources that we know 

of that existed at this site. So the majority of the AEC 

rollings and why they were contracted was to do 

uranium work. And the majority of those rollings 

were for natural uranium metal.

We know this from the contract as well as the natural 

part of it, the enrichment of the uranium from a 

compilation of sources that we have in the SRDB. So 

we reviewed several documents in the SRDB, which 

included technical reports, shipping reports, customs 

reports, because this material would often go to 

Canada for processing before coming to Superior 

Steel for rolling.

So we have lots of documents that talk about the 

weights and sizes and number of slabs that came to 

Superior Steel, as well as the type of source that they 

were, so whether it was natural or enriched.

So we have one indication of an enriched rolling, and 

it was really just a few number of slabs within one 

rolling campaign. So we have evidence of six slabs 

that were one-and-a-half percent enriched uranium. 

Our current Site Profile does talk about this, so we 

knew about this when we read that Site Profile.

All of the work was done post-1952, all the uranium 

work was post-1952. So we know that the uranium 
10

could have been recycled, which means there could 

have been other contaminants besides uranium in it.

In this evaluation we found that there was evidence 

that thorium could have been processed on the site. 

Our conclusion was that there was one commercial, 

small-scale rolling campaign with about 700 pounds 

of thorium, and I'll talk more specifically about that 

now.

So how we knew that thorium could have been 

processed on site was documentation of the material 

licensing that Superior Steel had with AEC. On March 

27, 1956, we have a letter from the AEC to Superior 

Steel that licensed them to receive, possess, use, and 

transfer 700 pounds of thorium metal from Babcock 

& Wilcox to perform similar studies that were done 

for AEC work.

So this tells us that the work they were doing with 

thorium would likely have been very similar to the 

uranium rolling that they were doing. It was -- later 

we learned it was specifically to make thorium fuel 

plates similar to the uranium ones. So that was the 

initial license they received to possess that 700 

pounds. Seven hundred pounds equates, according 

to the documentation, to about four ingots of 

thorium.

On April 20, and then again April 23, Superior Steel 

Company wrote to the AEC to request another 

amendment to their licensing to have unlimited 

quantities of thorium. And again they stated that this 

thorium was owned by Consolidated Edison and to be 

used at Babcock & Wilcox.

In these letters it also mentions that they have data 

from test rollings that they performed. So what these 

letters tell us is that this material was used for 

commercial work. Consolidated Edison is a public 

power utility that developed a thorium reactor that -

- well, they brought online a thorium reactor that 

Babcock & Wilcox developed, basically.
11

The other piece of information that we get from these 

letters is the fact that there was thorium rolled on 

site, at least during that time period from March 27 

through April 20. And we know the amount that was 

rolled, or could have been rolled, which is 700 

pounds.

On April 30, 1956, we have a letter from the AEC to 

Superior Steel licensing them, so granting that 

amendment license for unlimited quantities of 

thorium, with an expiration date of April 30, 1958.

So the next thing we had to do was figure out did 

large-scale thorium operations happen at Superior 

Steel?

Mr. Katz: Excuse me, there's some people talking on 

the line while we're having a presentation here. So 

perhaps you joined the call after the preliminaries 

this morning, but your phone should be muted. 

Everyone on the line, your phone should be muted. 

Please press star six to mute your phone. Can I hear 

from one of my Board Members? Are you hearing?

Member Anderson: Yes, we're hearing it in the back.

Mr. Katz: Okay, so that's Henry Anderson, so he's 

joined us.

Member Anderson: Yes, it is.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So can someone in the back of the 

room ask Zaida to have the line cut, there's someone 

who's got an open line and is chattering. Thank you, 

Grady. Okay, Megan, go ahead. Thanks.

Dr. Lobaugh: So as I was saying, our next question 

was did large-scale operations of thorium happen at 

the Superior Steel site. So what we did there was 

review the documents that we have in the SRDB, 

review the additional data captures that we did as 

part of this Evaluation Report, to see if there is any 

evidence of thorium shipping or receiving by this site. 

And we found no documentation that suggests there 

was any thorium shipped to or received by this site.
12

In addition, we looked at radiological surveys that 

were done in support of remediation. So there's five 

known radiological surveys that were done post-AEC 

operations for remediation of uranium on site.

We have access to four of those reports and results, 

and they did several different kinds of surveys and 

investigations. But the ones that we were interested 

in was the gamma spectroscopy and gamma scan 

surveys because those could give us information 

about the thorium if it existed.

So what we saw from these results were that the soil 

and other samples that were taken from inside the 

buildings and then processed in the laboratories 

showed evidence of uranium contamination as we 

expected, but no evidence of thorium contamination.

While the surveys weren't necessarily designed to 

look for uranium, the gamma spec samples would 

show thorium if it was at high levels.

Most recently, there was a gamma scan survey done 

in support of FUSRAP remediation efforts that are 

being done with the Army Corps of Engineers. And 

these gamma scan surveys were of the land 

surrounding the facilities.

Again, as expected, there's uranium contamination 

found, and it actually showed a spatial distribution 

outside the facilities, showing that the uranium 

emanated from the facilities.

They specifically did look at thorium because they 

knew of the potential for thorium processing on site. 

And the thorium results showed background levels 

and spatial distributions as would be expected for 

normal, natural-occurring thorium. So again, there 

was no evidence of large-scale thorium 

contamination as would be expected if there were 

large-scale thorium operations.

Because those thorium operations would have been 

similar to the uranium operations in terms of what 
13

was being done to the thorium and scale, I didn't 

mention this, but in the request to the AEC for the 

amendment licensing, while they wanted unlimited 

quantities, they mentioned the first batch would be 

about 45,000 pounds, which was very similar to the 

batches they were receiving for uranium.

So again, in terms of amounts processing that would 

have been done to the thorium, we would have 

expected that the contamination would be very 

similar to the uranium contamination. And given the 

lack of information on receipts and shipping of 

thorium, we conclude that there was no large-scale 

thorium processing on this site.

Next, I want to talk specifically about exposure 

scenarios, starting with internal exposure routes. So 

here there is a potential for inhalation and ingestion 

of the uranium and thorium metal that was being 

rolled. So this would be via dispersion during the 

rolling and any related processes, so the brushing 

that was done before, going through the finishing 

stands and everything else.

Then after dispersion, there could also be dust 

settling. So once that material is up in the air, it can 

settle out onto surfaces, and during that settling 

could be an inhalation or ingestion intake. And once 

it is on the surfaces, it could be re-suspended, so our 

typical exposure routes for internal exposure.

For external exposure scenarios, here we're 

concerned about the photon and beta radiation from 

the uranium and thorium metal ingots. So this would 

be via direct exposure. So being within distance of 

the material itself during rolling or during the storage 

on site, and then also exposure from the 

contaminated facility, like the surfaces within the 

facility and submersion and contaminated air.

And then again, occupational medical x-rays. I'm not 

going to speak much about those, but I can mention 

later how we'll handle those.
14

So what data do we have available to us? For internal 

dosimetry there's no evidence of personal 

monitoring. There's no in vivo results for the claims 

that we've received, and there's no indication that an 

internal dosimetry monitoring program existed.

However there are four campaigns of air sampling 

that were done by the AEC Health and Safety 

Laboratory, and these would have been specifically 

during the uranium rollings. So we have data for two 

dates in 1953 and two dates in 1955, and these air 

sampling campaigns would have been area airs and 

breathing zone monitoring.

So I just wanted to show some of the numbers that 

we're seeing. For the two dates in 1955, we have 

breathing zone data. And what I want to point out on 

this slide here is that the location of the highest value 

was for the same process for both of those, the 

stamping.

For area air monitoring, I apologize for those of you 

following along on your own with a PDF. The letters, 

the location of highest value, you won't be able to 

see, but I'll describe them.

So here we have data from the four dates that HASL 

was out doing air sampling. And again, I show the 

highest recorded alpha result. And I'll start with 

Location A. So this would be for the May 13, 1953 

date. Location A is between finishing stands 4 and 5.

Location B represents the August 3, 1953 sample 

with the highest value, and that would have been 

over the roughing roll.

Location C is May 9, 1955, the highest result for that 

date, and that was near in the vicinity of the shear.

And then the last location, Location D, would have 

been for the September 19, 1955 rolling, the highest 

result for that day, and that would have been 

between the brushing station and the roughing roll.

So what you can see from here is that those highest 
15

value locations were throughout the plant.

For external exposure, what monitoring data did we 

have available? There is no external dosimetry 

results and there's no indication of an external 

dosimetry monitoring program, so there's no 

personal monitoring.

As far as area monitoring, there's also no indication 

of area external dose monitoring program at the 

facility.

However we do have information available to us 

about the Superior Steel Company's AEC contract 

that tells us the dates that they were doing this work, 

as well as the radiological material licensing that I 

discussed before, specifically for thorium.

We have information about the processes, so this 

work was done in support of a research program at 

Savannah River, and so there are several technical 

reports out of Savannah River about the work that 

they are doing. There are several technical reports 

from Fernald, where the material was coming from, 

about the material itself. So we have a lot of 

information about the processes and the material 

itself to be able to make assumptions.

Second to last thing I'm going to talk about is our 

proposed dose reconstruction methods for this site. 

So I'm going to specifically talk about our years to 

begin with, because the timing here is different for 

uranium and thorium.

So the uranium operations we are assuming began 

with the effective date of the contract, so June 27, 

1952, and go through the end of that contract year, 

which was December 31, 1957, so that's our 

operations period. And the residual contamination 

would have been January 1, 1958 through the 

present.

For thorium, as we said, we concluded that there was 

no large-scale, production-scale thorium processes 
16

that occurred on the site. So our assumption is that 

the thorium rolling occurred during that test rolling 

phase, so March 27, 1956 through April 20, 1956. So 

the date of the licensing granted for thorium and then 

the date that they're requesting the unlimited 

thorium licensing.

Because this is commercial work, the post-operations 

contamination would only be April 21, 1956 through 

the end of the operations period, December 31, 

1957.

So our dose reconstruction methods for internal 

exposures. I'm going to specifically just talk about 

the operations period, 1952-57. Here, I've broken 

down our approach into the rolling doses and the 

resuspension doses.

For uranium, we're assuming that they did rolling 500 

hours per year. This number comes from the 

payments that were made through fiscal year 1957. 

We used the payments and took an assumed mill rate 

hour that we currently use in the Site Profile, and 

determined that it was somewhere in the ballpark of 

400 to 450 hours. We rounded up to 500 to be even 

and claimant-favorable.

Here we would use the uranium air concentration 

results that we have available to us from the HASL 

results. We know that overtime work was common, 

so the resuspension would be 2,000 hours per year. 

So the total exposure here would be 2,500 hours per 

year.

As usual, we'll assess the uranium via the U-234 as 

an efficiency measure, and we'll include recycled 

uranium contaminants because of the years this 

operation took place.

For thorium, given the small-scale nature of the 700 

pounds, four ingots, this is according to the data that 

we have for the uranium rolling, very easily done in 

one day. They were typically doing anywhere from 20 

to 50 slabs a day for uranium rolling, or per campaign 
17

I should say.

So we assumed that the four ingots were rolled in 

one day, one 10-hour day, given overtime. And this 

would be assessed or assigned for that March to April 

time frame that we talked about.

For the thorium air concentration, we would do a 

mass-loading approach. So take the uranium results, 

calculate a mass for them, transfer that to the 

thorium, and then calculate a thorium air 

concentration. This has been done elsewhere in this 

program with Bridgeport Brass.

For resuspension of thorium, it would be applied for 

the remainder of 1956 and all the way through 1957 

as I discussed, and assessed as thorium 232, 

including the thorium daughter products and secular 

equilibrium.

For external exposures during the operations period, 

we have four different scenarios here. Direct 

exposure during rolling, so direct exposure from the 

material during rolling; submersion exposure during 

rolling; direct exposure from storage of the material 

on site; and then post-rolling exposure from 

contaminated surfaces or contaminated air.

Again we have 500 hours assumed as the rolling time 

that was done each year at Superior Steel for the 

uranium rolling. And here we now have enough 

information that we can apply Battelle TBD-6000 

data.

Before in the current-type profile, we're actually 

using a surrogate site. We're using Simonds Saw & 

Steel data to assign dose. And we think it would be 

more appropriate, now that we have more data and 

more information, to apply TBD-6000.

For submersion rolling, again 500 hours. As I 

explained before, I calculated from the fiscal year 

payments. Also, I didn't mention this, but in looking 

at our compilation, there's Table 7.1 in the Evaluation 
18

Report that's a compilation of all the rolling data that 

we reviewed, and this 500 hours jives really well with 

that number of rollings that we see.

Direct storage, we're assuming it was on site for 500 

hours in addition to the 500 hours it was rolled. And 

that would again be TBD-6000 dose rates at one 

meter. For post-rolling it would be 2,000 hours to 

again take into account the overtime that we know 

was common on site.

For thorium, very similar to what I discussed for 

internal, 10 hours again. What I want to point out 

here is the direct storage. So for that time period, 

March 27 to April 20, 1956, there were 20 workdays 

in that time period. So one of those days would have 

been rolling, and we assume the other 19 days would 

have been storage on site of the material, so that's 

how we got the 190 hours.

So in conclusion NIOSH has sufficient air data and 

process information to bound internal and external 

dose from the AEC uranium rolling operations.

NIOSH has sufficient process information to bound 

internal and external dose from the small-scale 

commercial thorium metal rolling operation.

Given the new information that we found and 

evaluated during this report, the Site Profile needs to 

be updated. So we'll include that additional 

information we've reviewed and captured during this 

evaluation.

Lastly I would like to address the petition basis 

directly. So for internal monitoring the statement 

that was used from the Site Profile is individual 

uranium urinalysis data are unavailable for Superior 

Steel workers, and none are known to exist.

When personal internal monitoring data are 

unavailable, NIOSH uses air monitoring data from 

worker breathing zones and work areas in 

accordance with Implementation Guide 2 for internal 
19

dose reconstruction.

We have sufficient site-specific air monitoring data 

and process data to calculate estimates of worker 

internal uranium doses with sufficient accuracy. And 

we can apply airborne mass-loading calculations 

using that uranium process air data to calculate a 

thorium dose.

For external monitoring the statement that was used 

from the Site Profile is, "No external dosimetry 

results are available for Superior Steel employees."

When personal and area external monitoring data are 

unavailable, NIOSH uses workplace information. So 

this is that source term, the radiological sources I 

talked about, the process information that I talked 

about, we use that to estimate dose in accordance 

with our implementation guide.

We have sufficient applicable site-specific information 

using the methods of Battelle TBD-6000 to model the 

potential external uranium exposures at this site. And 

we can model thorium metal-related exposures in 

accordance with those methods in TBD-6000 as well 

using MCNP.

So this is my last slide aside from references, just a 

summary of the feasibility. We found that both 

internal and external dose are feasible for uranium 

and thorium.

I'll just speak specifically about occupational medical 

x-rays because they're up there and I didn't talk 

about that. But we have no evidence that these 

occupational medical x-rays would have taken place 

off-site. We have no evidence that they took place 

onsite either. But in this case we would apply the 

default assumptions from OTIB-6.

So with that, if there's any questions?

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Megan. That was a beautifully 

clear walk-through of the evaluation there, really. 

Kudos to you. So questions from Board Members in 
20

the room? Josie.

Member Beach: Megan, how big -- I know there's 

only 35 petitioners, but how many workers would you 

say would be affected?

Dr. Lobaugh: So total from what I've read in the 

documentation, I think there were about 100 

employees at Superior Steel during the time of the 

AEC contract.

Member Beach: Okay. And then was there any 

cleanup done, that you know of, between campaigns?

Dr. Lobaugh: So there is discussion of cleanup 

between the uranium rolling campaigns. Yes, they 

cleaned materials and the processing areas, but we 

don't with what methods or that any monitoring was 

done between those campaigns.

Member Beach: No mention of ventilation was -- do 

you know of any?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, there is. So this was actually one 

of the several times in the HASL reports they 

recommended including additional ventilation during 

the rolling. And there's evidence that it was 

implemented, but we don't know at what time or 

what date, or what specifically was implemented. But 

yes, there is discussion of ventilation being used.

Member Beach: Okay. Not to hog, but I got a couple 

more quick questions. I noticed that your report said 

you didn't do any interviews, that you wouldn't get 

any more information. That's somewhat unusual. Is 

there a reason for that?

Dr. Lobaugh: Given the time period, that's why we 

were thinking the 1952-57 time period, we didn't 

think that would be -- yeah, as LaVon's saying -- it 

was 66 years ago. So given that, we didn't know that 

we would get much more information.

Member Beach: Did you look to see if there was any, 

or just out of curiosity?
21

Dr. Lobaugh: No. Just given the time period, we 

assumed. Yes, that was the assumption on our part.

Member Beach: Okay. And then last question on the 

air samples. I noticed on August 3 you had a pretty 

high air sample, and it was over by the rough rolling. 

Do you know when they did those samples? Each one 

of these say they're in a different location. Did they 

only do one set of air samples, or did they do all of 

them?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. So that's something I didn't point 

out, but you'll see here in the second column there's 

the number of samples that were done. So samples 

were taken at several locations throughout the 

facility, and the location that I talked about was the 

highest location.

Member Beach: So you didn't combine them, just the 

highest of any of them?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, that's just the highest.

Member Beach: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, you're welcome.

Mr. Katz: Can I just add something to Josie's question 

about people to interview? The claims we have, are 

they all survivor claims?

Dr. Lobaugh: I don't know that. I'm not sure.

Mr. Katz: Okay. I mean that might lead you to people 

who could be interviewed. Board Members?

Member Schofield: I have a question.

Mr. Katz: Yes, Phil, go ahead.

Member Schofield: This is Phil. Do you know if they 

wore any kind of face mask, any kind of, even just 

one of the paper filter masks or cloth ones during the 

rolling process or not?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. So from my recollection of the 
22

documents, the only discussion of any kind of PPE 

would have been tongs that were used to transfer the 

material when they transferred it by hand.

So in part of the process they would have transferred 

the material by 10 of the people moving the slab, and 

there were tongs used at that time. From some of the 

CATIs, I remember people saying that they didn't 

have gloves either. So I don't believe that they 

would've had any kind of mask.

Member Schofield: Were they wearing their everyday 

clothing or were they issued special clothing during 

these rolling operations?

Dr. Lobaugh: I'm not sure about that.

Member Schofield: Okay, thanks.

Mr. Katz: Other Board Members? David.

Member Richardson: You mentioned that there was 

record of one rolling campaign involving 1.5 percentenriched uranium metal. Do you know the date of 

when that campaign occurred?

Dr. Lobaugh: I could figure it out very quickly. Let 

me look in the Evaluation Report.

Member Richardson: Or I guess does that correspond 

to the dates of the sampling of the monitoring results 

that you have, I guess is where my question was 

going.

Dr. Lobaugh: I don't believe it does, but I can check 

really quickly. Let me grab it.

So for those of you who have the Evaluation Report 

in front of you, this would be Table 7.1, is what I'm 

looking at.

Member Beach: Page 26?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, starting on page 26. So if you look 

at this table, it starts with the date of rolling in the 

first column, then the material, if the material was 
23

discussed in that report; the number of slabs, if we 

have that, or the weight of slabs, and then any other 

notes about that document.

So if you look through there, it would have been May 

9, 1955, which actually is one of the -- yes, that's 

true. That's a good question, thank you.

So what this means, actually how we did the initial 

mass-loading is we assumed natural uranium. 

Because natural uranium would give us the largest 

mass-loading on that filter. So while there would 

have been enriched uranium in those results, it's 

more claimant-favorable or conservative to assume 

natural uranium.

But one thing, I guess I didn't say this when I was 

talking about that either. So this was six slabs of the 

32 done that day of the hundreds of slabs that they 

actually rolled. So we think this was a very small 

percentage of the work that they did, the enriched 

uranium rolling.

Member Richardson: Thank you.

Dr. Lobaugh: You're welcome.

Mr. Katz: Are there other questions, Board Members, 

either on the phone or in the room? Yes.

Member Anderson: --- measurements that were 

made, they were only on one day in those years?

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry, Andy. Can you repeat that?

Member Anderson: My question was for the air 

monitoring data, it's only a single day sample?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, it would have just been samples. 

For the area monitoring, there were several locations 

done and it would have just been during that one day 

of rolling that the samples were taken.

Mr. Katz: Jim.

Member Lockey: Very nice presentation. I'm thinking 
24

back to Bethlehem Steel and the number of 

employees employed at Bethlehem versus here. 

What am I missing here? Bethlehem Steel was like 

20,000 employees, and here there's 100, so what's 

going on?

Dr. Lobaugh: Do you mean just the differences 

between the facilities?

Member Lockey: Is it that Superior Steel only had 

100 employees, or were just 100 employees 

dedicated to this area, and they had other employees 

outside this area? That's what I'm trying to --

Dr. Lobaugh: That's a good question. I'm not sure 

about -- the documentation that I would have seen 

would have been likely specific to the employees that 

could have been working on this uranium rolling. But 

given the documentation that we see, it was a very 

small-scale operation when it comes to rolling.

And even in some of the documentation when LANL 

went to review for other reasons, they made the 

statement that they would only be able to do batch 

processing. They would never get to a very largescale rolling process. So I think the facility itself is 

just a smaller-scale facility. But I don't know much 

about Bethlehem Steel, so I wouldn't be able to speak 

specifically to that facility.

Mr. Katz: Although the image of this facility would 

suggest it's much smaller than Bethlehem Steel.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, so I can go back to that.

Member Lockey: I'm just curious. I remember 

Superior Steel being a major -- maybe I'm wrong 

about that. But I'm surprised that they only had 100 

employees in total.

Mr. Katz: They could have many plants, too.

Member Lockey: That's true.

Mr. Katz: But go ahead, Dave.
25

Member Kotelchuck: There are also a lot of small 

specialty steel companies that always existed, and 

they had a special niche.

Member Lockey: Superior did?

Member Kotelchuck: I don't know Superior. I know 

there were a lot of small companies in the steel 

industry in niche production.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. So what was stated when they 

actually received the contract was that they were one 

of two facilities that could do this work when they got 

the bid. So I would imagine that that would probably 

be the case for here, like you're saying.

Mr. Katz: Josie.

Member Beach: Just one more follow-up question. 

And again, I agree it was a great presentation, thank 

you. It was very helpful. The petitioners, I won't 

name them, but are they survivors or are they actual 

workers? I'm back on this interview thing so --

Mr. Katz: We'll hear from the petitioner.

Member Beach: I know we will. But I'm asking Megan 

if they were --

Mr. Katz: Yes. So the one we'll hear from is not an 

employee.

Member Beach: Employee.

Mr. Katz: It represents --

Member Beach: Okay, all right.

Mr. Katz: But maybe we'll hear more from that 

petitioner about survivors. Other questions from 

Members? I don't see any in the room, but from 

Board Members on the line?

Member Anderson: On this point of information, of 

the 35 claims that were filed, and they apparently 

have all been reconstructed -- were any of them 
26

awarded?

Dr. Lobaugh: I don't know that off the top of my 

head. I can get that for you. Jim's nodding his head 

saying yes, he's sure.

Mr. Katz: Yes, some of them have been awarded. Is 

that what you're saying, or we could just get the 

information. I'm not sure --

Member Anderson: I was just wondering that --

Mr. Katz: Wait. Jim's coming to the mic.

Dr. Neton: I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty 

sure that they must have been awarded, at least for 

the lung cancers. If you look at the exposure --

Member Anderson: Well that's what I was wondering.

Dr. Neton: Looking at the exposure levels of uranium

that we're assigning, they're pretty high. So I would 

guess, but we'd have to check and make sure.

Mr. Katz: Yes, okay. Thanks Jim.

Mr. Frowiss, Sr.: Nineteen have been awarded.

Mr. Katz: Nineteen, I just heard on the phone. Who's 

that speaking?

Mr. Frowiss, Sr.: Al Frowiss. I'm looking at the 

website of the Department of Labor.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thank you. I didn't catch the name 

for our recorder.

Mr. Frowiss, Sr.: Al Frowiss.

Mr. Katz: Oh, Al Frowiss, thank you. That's Al 

Frowiss, Sr. Thank you, Al. Anyway, other questions 

from Members on the Board?

Member Richardson: Just one question. Again, 

setting this against something like Bethlehem Steel 

where -- I know you weren't involved in it. So the air 
27

concentrations reported in the tables, some of them 

seem to me quite high, like 38,000 dpm per meter 

squared, and 49,000 dpm per meter squared. My 

recollection is that it would be substantially higher. 

And do you have a sense, if you were to translate 

that, assuming natural uranium, what the air 

concentration would be in micrograms per volume 

air?

Dr. Lobaugh: For uranium, you're talking, and not the 

mass --

Member Richardson: Yes.

Dr. Lobaugh: I don't know that off the top of my 

head.

Mr. Hinnefeld: It's one-and-a-half dpm per 

microgram for natural uranium so you can to the 

arithmetic. One-and-a-half dpm per microgram for 

natural uranium.

Member Richardson: So to get up to 49,000 --

Dr. Lobaugh: 75,000 then, right?

Mr. Hinnefeld: I don't know if I can do the arithmetic 

standing here on my feet.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, I think it's about 75,000, if it's oneand-a-half.

Mr. Hinnefeld: 30 milligrams?

Member Richardson: 30 milligrams, right. You can do 

the arithmetic standing on your feet.

(Laughter)

Mr. Katz: Plenty of talent.

Dr. Lobaugh: So one thing I didn't mention here,

what we would propose to do is actually, you can see 

that there's a stark difference between the 1953 data 

and the 1955 data. So our proposal in the Evaluation 

Report is to actually split those into two different 
28

intake rates for air concentrations.

Mr. Katz: Thanks. Any other questions from Board 

Members?

Member Field: Ted, this is -- I was just wondering 

about CATI interviews. Who were they with? Were 

they with employees?

Dr. Lobaugh: They would be with whoever the 

claimant is.

Member Field: Okay. So you don't know if any of 

those were --

Mr. Katz: We don't -- well, let's see what LaVon has 

to say.

MR. RUTHERFORD: I know where you're going with 

this, Dr. Field. This is a -- we do not, I don't think we 

recall whether they were actual employees or if they 

were survivors, so we'd have to go back and look at 

that.

Mr. Katz: Right. We're going to follow up on that.

Member Field: All right. Thanks.

Mr. Katz: But thank you, Bill. That's Bill Field by the 

way. Any other questions, Board Members?

Member Anderson: This is Andy again. When you said 

you were going to break these into two different 

periods, what's the difference between the samplings 

that were done in '53 versus '55? Were hygiene 

practices better? Did they have better ventilation? If 

you could explain --

Mr. Katz: Your voice is breaking up a little bit. We 

heard your question about whether hygiene practices 

were significantly better in the second period, but the 

rest of what you said got garbled.

Member Anderson: Yes, that's --

Mr. Katz: It's still, Andy, you need to --
29

Member Anderson: To make sense of breaking this 

into groups or, if they're really only single-day 

measurements, we know that it was just common 

activities that were going on then? Was there a lesser 

volume of material going through in '55? Other than 

the counts being different, what's the justification for 

why those counts were different between '53 and --

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, so as I said before, there's 

indications that there was recommendations to 

improve ventilations and change some of their 

processes, but we have no indication of when that 

would have occurred. So we're suggesting to base it 

on the dates of the sampling. So we know that there 

were some changes to their processing and their 

ventilation, but we don't know specifically when or 

what was put in place.

So like I said, that brushing station, that was 

something new that was put in and seemed to 

increase airborne activity according to their reports. 

So changing that process as well as including 

ventilation occurred, but we just don't know when 

between those sampling dates. So we would use the 

sample dates and then the results themselves.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Andy. Other questions from Board 

Members?

Member Field: Ted, this is Bill again. I guess my only 

question, the representatives of these -- how well do 

these one-day samplings and other exposures --

Mr. Katz: So the question, I think, is how 

representative do you believe the samples are, the 

one-day samples?

Member Field: Right.

Dr. Lobaugh: So looking at the data in Table 7.1, we 

see that they did very similar volumes of batch 

processing. So given that, that the material was very 

similar, the numbers of slabs they were doing or 

pounds of slabs they were doing, we think that these 
30

are representative across the whole entire operations 

period.

Member Field: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Katz: Other questions, Board Members? Okay 

then. This is time to hear from the petitioner, a 

petitioner. Do we have a petitioner on the line?

Mr. Stephens: Yes, hello, Mr. Katz and Board 

Members.

Mr. Katz: Yes, we hear you. Can you identify 

yourself?

Mr. Stephens: I just wanted to make sure my mute 

was off.

Mr. Katz: Yes, it's off. We hear you.

Mr. Stephens: My name is Hugh Stephens. I 

represent [identifying information redacted]. 

We submitted a short letter to you, Mr. Katz, today 

by email. Hopefully you received that. I also sent a 

copy to -- We would just like to see this referred to a 

Work Group, so that we could review some of the 

information that this recommendation is based on. I 

agree with --

Mr. Katz: You're breaking up pretty badly. So far, I've 

followed what you've said. You would suggest a Work 

Group, this be submitted to a Work Group for review, 

and then we've lost you.

Mr. Stephens: Okay. I would just like to be able to 

review the source documents, and I have not been 

able to do so yet.

Mr. Katz: Okay. You would like to review the source 

documents. Good, okay, so we got that. Do you have 

more?

Mr. Stephens: Well, you know, with the phone 

breaking up the way it is --

Mr. Katz: I think you need to speak directly into 
31

whatever mic you have. Other people have been 

clear, but you're really hard to hear.

Mr. Stephens: Is that any better?

Mr. Katz: That's better.

Mr. Stephens: I apologize.

Mr. Katz: No, that's much better.

Mr. Stephens: Very good. So you know, we've 

reviewed the report and we agree with everyone that 

has complimented NIOSH on the presentation. We 

have some comments, but I'm not convinced that --

Mr. Katz: You're breaking up again. Your voice is 

breaking up again.

Mr. Stephens: Well, I'm just not convinced that a 

lengthy presentation by me now would be useful, as 

long as it can go to the Work Group.

Mr. Katz: Okay. That I hear clearly. I have to say, 

Hugh, I'm looking through my emails and not seeing 

one from you to me.

Mr. Stephens: Is it dcas@cdc.gov was the email 

address that we --

Mr. Katz: Oh, I see. So you sent it to the program, 

that's not my direct email. That's probably why it 

hasn't come to me yet. Which is fine. You followed 

procedures fine, I just don't have it yet. Is that 

something you want me to read into the record, or is 

that something that can be reviewed by a Work 

Group that would review this?

If you want me to read it into the record, you should 

probably just email it to me directly now. What's your 

preference? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear what your 

answer was, Hugh.

Member Field: Ted, this is Bill. We're having a hard 

time hearing you now. Is your speaker off?
32

Mr. Katz: So I'm very loud in the room, but I'm not 

sure what's going on. Let me just see what's going 

on with the phone. John?

Member Field: That's better now.

Mr. Katz: Okay, that's better now. I think our audio 

person is adjusting things as we go, and sometimes 

it gets out of whack. So Hugh, why don't you try me 

again. I don't know whether you want me to read 

your statement into the record, in which case I'll get 

you to email it directly to me, or if you're fine with 

that statement going to a Work Group that would be 

reviewing this?

Mr. Stephens: That's fine that it go to the Work 

Group.

Mr. Katz: Okay. I hear you there. And we haven't 

decided to send this to a Work Group yet, but that's 

something we always discuss. And if we don't do that, 

certainly I'll read your statement into the record. 

Okay, so thank you. If you're finished with your 

statement, then let's go back to Board Members and 

discuss how we want to address this.

Mr. Stephens: Let me just ask one more question.

Mr. Katz: Oh, go ahead.

Mr. Stephens: It appears that there's some breathing 

zone air concentrations in Table 6-2, but there do not 

appear to be any breathing zone air concentrations 

for the 1953 sampling.

Mr. Katz: Is that correct, Megan?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, that's correct. There was only 

breathing zone samples done in 1955.

Mr. Katz: Okay. More, Hugh?

Mr. Stephens: I couldn't hear the response, but in 

any event --

Mr. Katz: Oh, the response was the -- correct, the 
33

breathing zones were only in 1955. I got that right, I 

think.

Mr. Stephens: And apparently AEC used the mean air 

concentration in calculations?

Dr. Lobaugh: Could you say that again? You're asking 

about the mean air concentration?

Mr. Stephens: Exactly. It seems as though if they 

used the mean air concentration, the highest value 

would not be included. Is that correct?

Dr. Lobaugh: No. So what we're proposing to do is 

actually the 95th percentile of the data that we have. 

So all the tables are listing is the lowest value and 

the highest value for those dates. So we haven't 

actually presented what number we would use, but 

we're proposing to do the 95th percentile of the data.

Mr. Stephens: And this reference to mean air 

concentrations, what does that mean?

Dr. Lobaugh: Mean is average, but I don't recall 

actually ever discussing the mean air concentration.

Mr. Stephens: It's at page 21 of the report, and it 

talks about when multiple samples at a location were 

collected, AEC used the mean air concentration in 

subsequent calculations.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, so that's how the AEC reviewed 

and used these data. How we propose to use the 

data, or how we will use the data, is we have the raw 

results for at least two of these campaigns. And so 

we will use the raw results as we typically do with 

this program, and make our own calculations of 

them.

Mr. Stephens: Very good. And then the next sentence 

says, "At most facilities, AEC matched air 

concentration determinations with information about 

worker categories, locations, tasks, and worker's 

time at each location or task. However AEC noted 

that this was not feasible at Superior Steel Company, 
34

but did not include the reasoning for this conclusion."

Dr. Lobaugh: Again, so this is discussing the report 

that the AEC HASL laboratory put out regarding these 

results. So I don't have any more information to 

provide you regarding why they said it wasn't 

possible at this facility. But they were not able to give 

a time-weighted average for any particular job at this 

facility.

So what that means for our program is that we 

consider all of the data together, and that there's no 

difference from any of these worker categories or 

positions within the facility.

Mr. Stephens: So every worker gets the worst case 

scenario?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. What we're proposing is that every 

worker at the labor or worker category versus 

supervisors would be different, but at the labor 

category they would all get the 95th percentile. And 

then what we typically do for supervisors is the 50th 

percentile, I believe.

Mr. Stephens: And is it significant that there's 

breathing zone sampling in '55 but not in '53?

Dr. Lobaugh: We have no indication why they didn't 

do them in 1953. It may have been a change in their 

procedures for how they did these evaluations. One 

thing I will point out is that the breathing zone 

samples can't be tied to any particular individual to 

be able to do personal dosimetry from those data.

They're really going to be used as process 

information basically, because we have a location of 

where that sample was taken and that's it. So we 

can't use them for any particular individual.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Megan. Hugh, do you have any 

other comments, questions before we move on?

Mr. Stephens: I think that those were my main 

concerns so far, but I just haven't been able to look 
35

at any of these reports and I'd like the opportunity to 

do so.

Mr. Katz: Right, absolutely. Okay, back to Board 

Members now.

Mr. Stephens: I appreciate your help, Mr. Katz and 

Board Members. Thank you.

Member Beach: So Ted, as you pointed out, this is a 

TBD-6000 --

Mr. Katz: Your mic doesn't sound like it's on.

Member Beach: Is it on now? Yes? I would 

recommend that this be looked at by the TBD-6000 

Work Group.

Mr. Katz: So that makes sense. This falls within their 

purview. Any other comments from Board Members?

Member Clawson: Do we need a second?

Mr. Katz: No, we don't need to have a motion to do 

this really. Actually, we can just assign it. Everyone 

agrees? Everyone's nodding here. I expect folks on 

the line, too?

Member Valerio: I agree.

Member Field: I agree.

Mr. Katz: So we have Bill and Loretta. Do we have 

Paul on the line? And Andy, are you on the line?

Member Anderson: Yes, I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And you're good with this, right?

Member Anderson: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Katz: And Gen, did Gen ever join? Okay, so Gen 

and Paul are absent for this session. But anyway, we 

have a consensus of the majority of the Board 

Members that this should go to the Work Group, so 

off it goes. So TBD-6000 Work Group will review this.
36

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you 

for the presentation, and we are, I think we're at a 

break.

Mr. Stephens: Thanks again.

Mr. Katz: Right. So we're on break until 10:15?

Member Anderson: Okay, back at 10:00.

Mr. Katz: And at 10:15 please be prompt, because 

we have Metals and Controls. Thanks. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 9:34 a.m. and resumed at 10:14 a.m.)

Metals and Controls Corp. SEC Petition # 236 

(Attleboro, MA; 1968-1997)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Welcome back. We were just on 

break and we're back for Metal and Controls Corp. 

This is SEC petition. This is an -- by way of an 

extensive update to keep the Board well in tune with 

progress of the Work Group with this petition.

(Roll call)

Mr. Katz: So, John Mauro?

Dr. Mauro: Yes.

Mr. Katz: We have Stu here, who's going to handle 

your slides.

Dr. Mauro: Well, I just did something that I might be 

able to do it myself. I'm looking at my government 

computer and right on the screen it says, "Feel free 

to start presenting," which, theoretically, means that 

I could actually do the --

Mr. Katz: Well, let me just ask you. Do you want to 

do that or would you rather have Stu do it?

Dr. Mauro: I'd like to have Stu do it today. But, right 

now, the slides are not on my -- on my -- I have my 

-- both computers up. One with -- you know -- and 
37

one where I can control it and one where Stu can. If 

Stu would be -- would do that, that would make it a 

little easier.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I'd rather make it easy for you, John. 

Stu is happy to do that, I think.

Dr. Mauro: I appreciate that.

And, right now, I'm looking at my screen but I don't 

see my slides.

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay. Well, do you -- is there 

something you can do on your computer to return 

control back over to me?

Okay. Okay. I think that maybe I'm in there.

Dr. Mauro: Right now, it's a black screen.

Mr. Katz: Oh, wait. Stu has it. Stu has it. So --

Mr. Hinnefeld: I might be getting it.

Dr. Mauro: Oh, okay. Great.

Mr. Katz: Don't touch.

Dr. Mauro: I won't do a thing.

Mr. Barton: Just wait in the truck, John.

Mr. Hinnefeld: Just give me a minute.

Mr. Barton: John, this is Bob.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah.

Mr. Barton: There's a little blue --

Mr. Katz: No.

Mr. Barton: -- circle with a -- with a white rectangle 

in the middle. If you click that, that will bring -- that 

will make you presenter.

Mr. Katz: No, no. We don't want you to do anything. 
38

We want --

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay. Let me -- let me get back into 

the meeting.

Dr. Mauro: Okay.

Mr. Hinnefeld: And --

Mr. Katz: But thanks, Bob.

Mr. Hinnefeld: -- I'll try this and see if I can go from 

the start and see if I can get this to work.

Dr. Mauro: That's great.

Mr. Katz: And, while Stu's working on this, let me just 

check again.

(Roll call)

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I see my slides on my computer, 

right now. So I'm in good shape.

Mr. Hinnefeld: I'm ready, John. I will advance when 

you want me to.

Dr. Mauro: Thanks very much. I'll let Ted make the 

introductions and then I'll go on and get started with 

Josie.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So thank you, John. John Mauro is 

with SC&A and he is a lead SC&A member. He works 

with Bob Anigstein on this one, I believe -- this 

petition.

And you can roll, John.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. Thank you very much.

Good morning, everybody. And I'd like to point out 

that Rose Gogliotti, along with Bob, did a lot of heavy 

lifting on this work for me and they are on the line, I 

believe, to help out with some questions. But let me 

get started.

I'm here to give a status report on Metals and 
39

Controls Corporation. We could go to the second slide 

and --

Metals and Controls is a facility located in Attleboro, 

Massachusetts, quite close to Boston. And the facility, 

itself, actually began in about 1930. And what they 

were -- what they did was they fused pressure and 

temperature bonding of metals to make thermostats. 

And -- but they have grown and evolved quite a bit 

over the years.

And, in -- January 1st, 1952, they received a contract 

from the NRC to help out with weapons and -- the 

weapons complex in matters related to assembly of 

fuel assemblies, barium, uranium, enriched uranium; 

also the manufacture of oils, all of which was a part 

of weapons complex activities.

And that work continued from January 1st, 1952, to 

December 31st, 1967. At the end of that time period, 

all fuel was removed from the facility. The facility 

equipment was removed and they moved into the 

residual period. Okay?

Now, it turns out, for the AWE period, '52 to '67, that 

they had an SEC petition that was granted. And the 

reason it was granted is the inability to reconstruct 

internal doses to thorium. And so there was an SEC 

petition.

And then the petitioners realized that, you know --

through a number of -- oh, I guess measurements 

that were made later, it was found that there was 

residual radioactivity located throughout the facility. 

So a second SEC petition, the one that we're talking 

about now, Petition 236, was filed covering the period 

from January 1st, 1968 through March 21st, 1997.

Next slide, please.

I present, here, a timeline that is useful to us, just to 

get a picture of --

The top line is important because it gives an idea of 

what took place. From '52 to '67, that was covered 
40

by the SEC. Starting in January 1st, '68 is when we 

entered the residual period. Now, this is an important 

period because, when that period began, the work --

the work continued. Commercial work continued and 

there was a lot of activity that moved forward with 

the workers and that work was continued without any 

radiological controls or, quite frankly as I understand 

it, awareness that there may have been some 

residual radioactivity.

It wasn't until -- and we can certainly hear more later 

from the petitioners -- but as I've been reading all 

the literature, it really wasn't until the 1980s, when 

Metals and Controls -- and I think, perhaps, by that 

time they were taken over by Texas Instruments --

requested termination of their NRC license. Certainly, 

that perhaps -- that did not take place or entirely take 

place after the termination of AWE operations.

And a key from ORAU has been offered, as done in 

the past. That's to sort of initiate what they called a 

FUSRAP or FUSRAP cleanup. They went in to first 

characterize and say, okay, do we have any residual 

radioactivity here? Can we terminate, in light of this?

Well, this was a very important -- very important 

point in time, because it became apparent from the 

measurements that were made, which I find, as best 

I can tell, were measurements that were made in a 

number of buildings, indoors and outdoors, above 

grade, the floors, the air, swipe samples like that. 

And it was found that there was residual 

radioactivity.

So that triggered -- I guess we could move to the 

next slide.

That triggered an SEC Petition 236 and the petition 

basically said, you know, in light of the fact that we 

now know that there was residual radioactivity at the 

site, we'd like to file a petition for all facilities for 

construction and maintenance workers that worked 

in various buildings, both indoors and outdoors, for 

the time period January 1st, 1968, until March 1st, 
41

1997.

Next slide.

What we have here -- and I'm not going to go over 

detail. These are all of the items that, if you go on 

the web, that are posted, that is the history of all of 

the docket, so to speak. And this all starts with --

after the petition was filed, NIOSH published it's SEC 

Petition Evaluation Report for 236.

Now, what happened, though, not too further down 

the road is, when NIOSH appeared before the 

Advisory Board regarding its SEC Petition Evaluation 

Report, the petitioners said, hold the presses. I think 

that you missed a lot of very important exposure 

pathways and it does describe. The reason being, to 

go back to the original SEC petition. What that was 

was a classic -- not unlike Superior Steel in the way 

the residual period is -- where what you have is a lot 

of data characterizing contamination on surfaces, on 

equipment.

And, using that data, you can model the external 

exposure, theoretically, and internal exposure from 

these inspections. So you could -- and it was what I 

would call a classic OTIB-70 approach to doing dose 

reconstruction.

But the petitioner said, uh-oh, no, no, no, hold the 

presses. There was a lot of things going on, a lot of 

activity going on. We're going to get into all that. 

And, now that we know that the NRC has found 

contamination throughout the facility and -- you 

know, it -- we believe your SEC Petition Evaluation 

Report is incomplete. Okay?

And so, recognizing that, NIOSH convened a series of 

interviews just outside of Boston. I think it was 

Mansfield, Massachusetts, not far from Attleboro, 

where the facility is. And, over a three-day period, 

Pete Darnell, Pat McCloskey, myself, and Rose 

Gogliotti met with 12 of the employees and other 

representatives who were actually there and did the 
42

work. And I would have to say that was an incredible 

meeting.

We sat there and we posed certain questions, 

because -- to understand the nature of the work that 

took place. And those were recorded and it's on the 

web, the questions and answers and discussions. And 

it clearly became apparent to all that, oh, my 

goodness, yes. There are a lot of things that took 

place that need to be modeled and we're going to get 

into that shortly. But that was the -- that was the 

trigger, like I said.

You know, we have to amend the SEC Petition 

Evaluation Report. And asked -- and we were also --

we were asked -- SC&A was asked to review the 

original SEC Petition Evaluation Report. So, on 

February 12th -- slide -- we submitted our review.

Now, you can think of our review from two -- now, 

keep in mind that we were the beneficiary now of 

sitting in on the October 24th meeting. So we now 

had all this information that -- you know, describing 

all of the different types of things that took place 

indoors, outdoors, in various buildings, above grade, 

below grade. There was a lot of digging and stuff 

going on.

And so our review of the original April 5th SEC 

Petition Evaluation Report included evaluate -- not 

only a review of the analysis that was done in the 

SEC Petition Evaluation Report for the conventional 

residual-period type of scenarios, but we also did our 

best to understand the nature of these other 

activities.

And It's convenient to talk about these other 

activities using the term "maintenance" and 

"repurposing" activities. So we submitted that 

review, which was -- went into all of these other 

exposure pathways. Okay?

Let's flip to the next page. And what -- what we have 

now is a series of exchanges of White Papers, 
43

meetings, and discussions that probe. You have to 

realize that we were all in a -- I would say a unique 

situation from my perspective in that we had all this 

new information and a great deal of detail describing 

what -- the kind of things that took place during the 

residual period that needed to be looked at. So we 

had this exchange.

Let's flip to the -- I'm not going to go into detail but 

I want to go to the next slide. It's -- yes.

Now, these are -- these three items are the really 

important work files. On October 20 -- which is not 

that long ago, by the way. On October 24th of 2018, 

NIOSH issued what I would have considered to be a 

supplement or an amendment to the original 

Evaluation report that specifically went into what you 

would call the exposures that M&C workers might 

have experienced for a whole variety of exposure 

pathways that are associated with what we refer to 

as maintenance and repurposing activities.

This is a good point to point out what does that mean. 

And we're going to get into that in great detail. But, 

in effect, what was unusual here is that after the --

once the residual period began and maybe even 

during the AWE period there was a lot of maintenance 

going on at that -- of course.

But there was a lot of what's called repurposing 

where the -- let's -- where a number of buildings --

they would crack through the concrete floor and go 

into the subsurface for really two reasons. The best 

way I understand is one is that there's -- there were 

a lot of conduits and drainage pipes underground, 

down maybe as far as 8 feet. And they were -- they 

were -- very many of them of were clogged and had

to be replaced, cleaned out, snaked, so that they 

could continue to do the work that they do 

commercially.

This is no longer AWE activity, now. This is -- this was 

-- and I'm only talking about, now, non-AWE activity. 

And they were doing this maintenance work and they 
44

were doing repurposing. And what that is -- where 

you dig out to put in footings or a new foundation for 

new equipment that you just have to stabilize and 

put in place. So there was a lot of digging going on 

indoors, especially, you'll see in a moment Building 

10, and also outdoors where there -- we know that 

there was some contamination; especially in what's 

called the burial area.

So what happened was -- so NIOSH issued its 

October 24th White Paper. SC&A was -- and I want 

to look at these danger reports. SC&A said, you 

know, John, could you review that White Paper, 

because we just did our review. NIOSH reviewed our 

work, the February report that we put out. NIOSH 

reviewed that and did their own analysis and put their 

report out. And SC&A was requested, well, John, 

could you look at this new report as quickly as you 

can, because we're going to have a meeting on 

November 20th -- the Work Group. And, you know, 

we're talking about a few weeks ago, right before I 

called back. Yeah. Anyway, it was November 20th.

And we wrote a draft report that we put out as quickly 

as we could, which was a review of the October 24th 

-- but we'll call them a White Paper, which was the 

supplement to the original ER.

And then, after -- then we held this meeting on 

November 20th, which was a great -- another great 

meeting where we got into the nuts and bolts of the 

-- what I call the various pathways and scenarios of 

exposure where NIOSH did their analysis, testing, of 

course, independently -- did a review of their analysis 

and we discussed it at length.

And I have to say, now, we're in an interesting 

position because we then went ahead and were 

asked, could you please finalize your review, because 

I remember I mentioned that we did a pretty quick 

review of the October 24th before the 20th meeting. 

But then we were asked, could you please finish that 

review, adding material.
45

So, right now, the latest work product that you-all 

have before you from SC&A, the status and where it 

is, is this November 29th report that you should all 

have received perhaps a few days ago. You may not 

have even had a chance to read it. So, to a large 

extent, what I'm about to talk about is that report.

But I'm going to do a little bit more than that. I'm 

sort of going to set the table for where we are, as 

SC&A understands it, with regard to all matters 

related to what we'll call SEC issues and Site Profile 

issues and their overlap.

Now, If we go to the next page, I included here the 

original set of findings and observations that SC&A 

originally had, which is -- which was -- which is 

currently under BRS. But it's all, I guess, been 

eclipsed by everything that has transpired. So --

But I'm going to say a couple of quick things that 

might be helpful, because, if you do go on the website 

and look at the BRS and look at us there, I can tell 

you right now that observation 3 -- we're going to 

see the -- there are reasons for this that we can talk 

about but -- how observation 3 could be withdrawn.

Finding 1 is still -- in theory, I believe, has been 

resolved, been talked about. I'm going quickly, just 

to let you know that the bottom line is, I think that 

everything here has been at least resolved in 

principal but not in detail.

In addition, we have some new issues that emerged 

at the petitioner's rate. So what I'm getting at is we 

could put through -- and skip over this slide and also 

the next slide.

They're just here to sort of say, this is where we were 

before we went through this series of activities that I 

just described. And many of -- in my opinion, there 

was -- a meeting is needed to go through these items 

and determine the degree to which these issues have 

been resolved and where they could be closed out. 

And they're --
46

But, also, I want to point out that there are new 

issues that we're going to be talking about shortly 

that emerged from this process that will also need to 

be addressed by the Work Group.

Let's go to the next slide. I -- they're there just for 

your information.

All right. Now, this slide is basically our attempt to 

summarize what the petitioners' concerns are. They 

have more -- they may have more of them. So this 

is just SC&A's understanding of what they -- the 

petitioner's concerns are.

And it is the objective of NIOSH and SC&A to try to 

address these concerns to see, you know, can we 

reconstruct these doses and, if so, you know, how 

are we going to do it and what data are we going to 

use? And so there are these ten items.

And, when all is said and done, if you go -- what 

really goes through steps.

First, you have to understand, what is it that was 

going on in this maintenance and repurposing 

activities and what data do you have that allows you 

to predict what the doses were?

Remember, if we go back -- we don't need to do that 

now. You know, it wasn't until 1984 and then again 

in 1992 that lots of data is starting to show up. And 

we have to ask ourselves a question, how much data 

do we have and can we use that data to predict what 

the radiation exposures were to the maintenance and 

repurposing folks and all the folks that are working 

at that facility. And using that data -- and especially 

-- the important thing is -- and, also, not just the fact 

that people are walking around and working. But, 

also, the fact that there were people that were 

periodically doing very unique what I would call 

above-surface and below-surface maintenance and 

repurposing activities that needed to be modeled. 

And so this sort of lists the concerns. But that's really 

what it boils down to. And it begins to identify the 
47

kinds of things that went on.

Let's go -- go to the next slide.

Now, really this is the start of my presentation. 

Everything I gave you up to this point really sets the 

table.

The Work Group -- our Work Group, when we got 

together, I think there was general consensus that 

there really were two things that we were trying to 

do during our meeting on the 20th of November and 

had objectives. We -- it -- we try, as best we can, to 

separate what we see --- what we would call SEC 

issues from what we would call site-profile issues. 

That's not always easy to do, because they're interrelated, of course.

But the emphasis here today and the emphasis in our 

report -- our November 29th report was to try to 

come to grips with what I would call SEC issues, 

which really go to the heart of can you really do these 

doses and, if you can, then the secondary objective 

was, okay, if we think we understand the nature of 

the activities that took place and the nature and 

extent of the data that we have and we believe that, 

you know, it looks like that, I think we could 

reconstruct the doses to these workers that were 

doing these maintenance and repurposing activities.

Then it becomes a matter of, okay, how are you going 

to do it? You now, what models are we going to use? 

What assumptions are you going to make? And I like 

to call those Site Profile issues.

So, during the course of the rest of my presentation, 

I'm going to try my best to sort out what I would 

consider to be SEC versus high profile issues and give 

that perspective. Okay?

Next slide, please.

In navigating our way through the next series of 

slides, it's going to be easier to lose our way and I'll 

tell you why, because this is what's happening. What 
48

we're talking about is that the issues have to do with 

there were workers that worked indoors and above 

ground. They were walking around on the work floor. 

That gets back to the fact that those workers are the 

conventional residual-carrying workers, which the 

original Site Profile -- I'm sorry, there is no Site 

Profile, which the original SEC Petition Evaluation 

Report addressed.

Now, we have a number of concerns regarding that 

but that -- that's what I would call the conventional. 

And we talked about that and I think there's general 

agreement on the fact that what I would call the 

conventional exposures from the positive residual 

radioactivity to all workers in the various buildings --

we can reconstruct those doses, external and internal 

doses. And these are above-ground exposures.

What is interesting is, in the indoor environment, that 

you not only have that but you have what I would call 

part-time, intermittent, episodic maintenance and 

repurposing activities indoors. We're going to talk 

about those.

And, also, the same situations outdoors. And that 

includes different locations, different buildings. 

Indoors, you'll notice there's a list of buildings, 4, 5, 

10. I'd like to say that building 10 is by far the most 

important, because that -- because that's where 

most of the residual -- well, the AWE activities took 

place -- and we had a residual radioactivity located.

There's also outdoors, dirt, outside of various 

buildings. And, of course, there are people that are 

walking around at work outdoors. But there are also 

what I call below-grade contamination and belowgrade activities in various locations. So we -- and, in 

each case, you know, we could identify different 

types of work that took place indoors and outdoors. 

And it's good to think about that as above-grade and 

below-grade activities.

And it's -- and it's interesting to -- it's important that 

we separate external exposure from internal 
49

exposure. So you've got this array -- matrix that we 

need to address and see if we can reconstruct the 

doses from all of these different scenarios and 

exposure patterns.

Next slide.

Now, you have to imagine that the important thing 

here is these -- what I would call unique exposure 

scenarios. The workers --

By the way, can everyone hear me okay? I'm just 

hearing a buzz and I thought maybe we may have 

lost anybody?

Mr. Katz: You're fine. You're fine.

Dr. Mauro: We're good. Okay.

What happened is that you can envision us sitting 

down listening to these 12 workers. We spent about 

two hours with each one. And they were the ones that 

did the work. These are the guys -- many of them 

actually did what we're going to get into -- describing 

what they did. And we believe, both NIOSH and 

SC&A, had to use our imaginations and say, okay, 

what is it that they did where they could have gotten 

some exposure, external and internal, and that we're 

going to -- it's going to be important that we address 

and then do our best to quantify? Okay. And, in the 

end, I think there was agreement and, certainly --

that NIOSH could weigh in, in my mind, at any time.

But we broke them up into four scenarios. I call them 

scenarios, because each scenario has associations 

within it to certain pathways of exposure. And let me 

just quickly tell you what they are.

The first scenario is -- that we looked at is -- I think 

it's important that we look at exposure to workers in 

building 10 during the residual period whose job it 

was to perform HVAC maintenance activities. And 

what this was -- and here's what we believe to be one 

of the potentially important pathways -- is every 

quarter of every year or every half a year over some 
50

intermittent time period, workers would go in and do 

maintenance on the HVAC systems in building 10.

And the one activity that we felt -- SC&A felt was the 

one where you had the greatest potential for 

exposures -- the people that replaced the filters --

pull the filters out and replaced them, because, from 

talking to the workers, it was clear that that activity, 

though it didn't take a very long time, was associated 

with very high dust concentrations. Not -- and they 

didn't wear respirators but they may have had a dust 

mask on.

But there's where you say, what do we have here? 

You know? Here we are during the residual period. 

Dust is being kicked up from people working and then 

being deposited on these filters. The filters are 

accumulating this activity over time. And the longer 

you wait between change outs of filters, the more 

dust -- radioactively contaminated dust, uranium and 

thorium, are going to be on the filter. And, when they 

pull it out, it's still -- the dust shakes loose, becomes 

airborne and the workers inhaled it. So this is the first 

scenario that was important that we be able to 

model. We're going to get into the models.

The other one is, there was a lot of maintenance 

activity done on the upper levels of building 10, near 

the roof -- the rafters. And we know from the surveys 

performed in 1984 where -- we're going to get into 

this in a little more detail -- where -- that there was 

a lot of data that shows that there was a lot of dust 

and it was contaminated. Because there were swipe 

samples, hand-held surveys, alpha beta gamma 

surveys, lots of data. We'll get into how much.

And anybody who's up there doing maintenance work 

is going to be kicking up that dust. And that's another 

source of inhalation exposure. You could almost think 

of the guys that pull the filters, the guys that were 

doing maintenance work. And this was -- and this 

was intermittent. It wasn't going on all the time.

We had to take into consideration the dust loadings, 
51

the amount of radioactivity on the dust, and how 

many hours per year one or more people might have 

been involved in these activities.

The next -- the third scenario is subsurface work 

inside building 10. And bear in mind that, you know, 

we reconstructed these. You know, we think this is 

where the action is and let me tell you a little bit 

about this.

So what happens with the subsurface is that it turns 

out that it wasn't until the 1990s when they started 

the FUSRAP characterization and then cleanup 

activities by Weston and CPS. These are the 

contractors that came in.

And, by the way, the people we interviewed -- they're 

probably on the line right now -- they were the folks 

who managed and oversaw, including a very qualified 

health physicist. That activity that took place in 1992 

to, perhaps, '96 and, they were the ones that 

characterized the nature and extent of the residual 

contamination everywhere, including in the 

subsurface environment in building 10.

Now, that's important because it was inside the 

subsurface in building 10 where it was found that 

there was residual radioactivity in the soil beneath 

building 10 and, also, more importantly, in the 

drainage lines in building 10 where workers needed 

to go.

Remember, I started us off just -- you know, where 

they had to maintain these drainage lines. They 

actually had -- they had to snake the lines to clean 

them out and get the muck out. But they also dug 

down into the -- into, you know, underground and 

had to cut out and replace these drainage lines or the 

conduits. So they were physically in the holes in 

building 10.

And, in theory, what that means is that they could 

have become -- inhaled resuspended activity. They 

could have experienced external exposure for both -
52

- from uranium and thorium. And a new item that 

just -- that we addressed in our latest report that we 

didn't talk about before is, you know, they're in a hole 

in the ground digging with a shovel. And they're 

going to get really dirty with dirt on their skin, their 

face, their hands, their clothing. And so, therefore, 

you've got uranium and possibly thorium dirt, 

contaminated dirt that gives you what I would call a 

direct-deposit exposure.

So you think of the guy in the hole inhaling airborne 

radioactivity in the form of dust from resuspension 

and, also, being, you know, externally exposed but, 

also, direct contamination right on -- on your skin. It 

would be the skin dosage. All right?

Now, the next scenario is what I refer to as the 

outdoor areas. And right now it's the subsurface 

areas outside building 10. I think that's a misnomer. 

It's really outside areas around various buildings, 

both subsurface and below surface. So I -- you know, 

it has -- if I had to do it over again, the slide I would 

-- I would clarify that the outdoor activities, you 

know, was more than just outside building 10. It was 

-- there were a number of areas that are discussed 

in detail in our November 29th report.

So these are the four scenarios. And what the 

question is is these scenarios capture a range of 

types of work activities that represent what you 

would call the limiting maintenance and repurposing 

activities. Now, clearly there are other ways in which 

workers involved in maintenance and repurposing 

might have been exposed. In fact, in one of our 

reports, we explore some others.

But we've settled in on these four things. You know, 

I think if we could do these, we could place a 

plausible upper bound on the doses that these 

workers might have experienced. So that becomes 

the question.

If fact, what the really big SEC question -- just a little 

preview. We're going to get into it more -- is 
53

remember what we're using. We're using data 

collected in the 1980s, in 1984, by NRC contractor 

ORAU and lots of -- lots more data collected in 1992 

by Weston and CPS as part of the characterization 

and the subsequent cleanup of the entire facility.

And we're using that data from the point of view --

we're going to use that data and I'm going to -- I use 

the word as, substitute data or surrogate data.

One of the little debates we had in-house was, well, 

what term should we use, because, as you all know, 

the term "surrogate data" has a very specific 

meaning on this program. It means data collected 

from one facility, whether it's airborne activity or 

bioassay data or whatever, and use it to reconstruct 

doses to workers at a different facility. And there are 

whole sets of rules. There are five criteria for when 

you could do that. You have to do that on the dose 

criteria.

In a way, we're doing -- we're sort of doing that but 

it's not from a different facility, it's from a different 

time period. In other words, we have -- we have a 

limited amount of data in the '80s, a lot of data in the 

1990s and we're going to use that -- or can we use 

that to reconstruct the doses to these workers doing 

those activities that are on the site that took place 

primarily in the 1970s and the 1980s? So it's really a 

time difference.

And that's -- that, by the way, in my opinion, is one 

of the big SEC questions. And you're going to see --

I'm going to tell a story that says, I think we can do 

it. But, of course, this is a judgment that the Board -

- this is the big sufficient-accuracy question that 

needs to be addressed. And, once it's addressed, it's 

,yeah I think you can do it, or maybe not.

In that respect, to a certain degree, the surrogatedata criteria are helpful. They all apply to a 

circumstance like this. It's helpful to have that handy 

when you're thinking about can we use the data 

collected from this time period and what took place, 
54

you know, with what year -- that data and use it for 

a different time period?

Next slide, please.

Okay. We're finally going to get into some technical 

issues. It took me a half hour to get here but I think 

it was important to set the table. And now we're 

going to talk about each of these four tablets of 

scenarios and what we found out and what NIOSH 

found out. Okay?

The first one is, remember, we talked about HVAC 

filter replacement? Can we reconstruct those doses? 

Well, turns out that, at the end of this process during 

a meeting, NIOSH used SC&A's approach to address 

this question. In other words, we came up with some 

models/assumptions to say, yeah, I think we could 

put an upper bound on the doses to those workers 

whose responsibility it was to replace these HVAC 

filters. And it's all -- it's described in detail but let me 

give you the 30-second sound bite.

We did something that I think wasn't done before and 

it's going to be a judgment made by the Board to help 

us on whether this is a good approach for this kind of 

problem. All right. Think of it like this, we have to 

figure out what the number of becquerels per gram 

of soil is on the filter that's been accumulating dust 

over some time period during the residual period 

when, at the end of some time period, three months, 

six months, whatever, if the filter is removed and a 

big puff of dust becomes airborne.

All right. Now, what we did -- this is sort of SC&A's 

creation. And I'm very much looking to -- and it looks 

like NIOSH agrees. In our last exchange at the last 

report put out -- White Paper on October 24th. 

NIOSH has said, yep, we like it. And I think it's 

important that I explain conceptually how we came 

at that problem. And it's -- I believe it's a first. And 

how we --

We have lots of good data on the contaminations 
55

levels that were on surfaces based primarily on 

measurements made toward the end of the AWE 

operations period. In other words, we have survey 

data from handheld survey instruments and swipe 

data. We have this for the end of 1967 and we have 

lots of it. And we have it also in 1984 when the NRC 

came in. So we have this idea on the amount of 

activity.

And we can actually make a distribution of a lot of

that activity. How do we know what they mean, 95th 

percentile, et cetera? Well, we said, you know, what 

we could do is we apply a resuspension factor to the 

activity that's on the surface and we get an airborne 

concentration in becquerels per cubic meter. Very 

conventional.

And we'll use -- we have a choice, of course. We could 

use the median, the upper 95th percentile of what 

might have been on surfaces. And, in SC&A's opinion, 

you know, because this is the dust that's 

resuspended, the uranium, the thorium is 

resuspended. That's going to be sucked into the 

HVAC system and deposited on the filters. So that's 

the source of the dust that's on the filters. So, in 

theory, we could come up with becquerels per cubic 

meter. All right?

But -- and then we say, but you know -- you know 

what else we could do? We also know and we're going 

to talk about this -- we'll get to it -- what the 

concentration of the dust is in milligrams per cubic 

meter. Okay? So final becquerels per cubic meter in 

the air in a chronic -- this is like a chronic situation in 

a building -- and I know milligrams or micrograms 

per cubic meter, I know the specific activity of the 

airborne activity in becquerels per milligram -- okay 

-- in the dust.

All right. That's the becquerels per milligram, the 

specific activity of the dust sitting on something. All 

right? And -- okay. Good. Let's say we agreed. Yeah, 

I agree. That's a way to get a handle on the 

becquerels per milligram of airborne dust from the 
56

various resuspension activity that created the dust in 

the first place. And that stuff is deposited on the 

filter. I said, okay.

Now, the guys goes in and he pulls out and replaces 

the filter and the cloud of dust comes out. Well, we 

know this specific activity now. We know that that 

dust has a certain number of becquerels per 

milligram. And we say, you know what we're going to 

do? We're going to assume that the dust loading, 

while the guy is changing the filter, is at the highest 

level plausible. And we've been through this before. 

Okay? That's 100 milligrams per cubic meter.

A lot of precedent for using that. One of which I'd 

mention is Bethlehem Steel and we have a lot of --

we have documentation and precedent that, you 

know, you really can't work in an area without 

respiratory protection or air supply when the 

concentration of dust in milligrams, now, gets above 

that level, because you just choke up. You start to 

and it's not a setting that you could work in.

So we're saying, we're going to assume that in a 

short period of time, while the guy is replacing the 

filter, he's experiencing 100 milligrams per cubic 

meter of dust. And we're saying -- and this, here, 

becomes -- a judgment has to be made on, well, how 

long is he going to be sitting and working in that cloud 

while he's changing it out?

Well, I talked to a building engineer, a buddy of mine. 

And he says it really doesn't take that long to change 

out these filters. So we're -- we did an analysis and 

it said, well, let's simply present the dose. Let's do 

that calculation. And the last bullet on this line said, 

"We came up with a dose of 1.77 millirem per hour 

of exposure." I want to fix the wording here. It says, 

"effective dose commitment to the extrathoracic 

pathways." It really should say, "1.7 millirem per 

hour dose equivalent," just to be health-physics 

correct in our terminology, because you used the 

term dose equivalent when you're talking at a 

particular organ dose. "Effective dose" is when you're 
57

talking about a whole-body dose.

So, just for the purpose of communicating this to you 

folks, if you like or accept conceptually the way we 

came up with this, we end up with a dose rate of 1.77 

millirem per hour for very dose connected to the 

extrathoracic airways, limiting exposure pathway. 

And now, of course, the question is how many hours 

per year is a person exposed to this? But, right now, 

it's in terms of millirem per hour. That's a very low 

dose.

Now, I say that because you may recall that, on a 

number of occasions -- and this happens with AWE 

facilities often -- is that we're always -- especially in 

the residual period, we're always in a situation where 

we have limited data. And we have to somehow find 

a way to construct those when you really have limited 

data and whether or not there's an FCC situation here 

where, no, they really can't do it.

But one of the things that came up, and you-all may 

recall this, and that one of the things the Board 

discussed is that, you know, when you're doing this 

and you're taking it from an FCC perspective, to some 

degree, you have to have a sense are we talking 

about big doses are very small doses? So that 

becomes part of your consideration in my mind, the 

information you need.

So -- and that's why we did those calculations. So all 

I'm trying to do here is saying, using that conceptual 

approach I just described and the assumptions, 

which I consider to be quite extreme, you get 1.7 

millirem per hour to the extrathoracic doorways --

the airways, a relatively small number. So we were 

able to address that first scenario in my mind and 

that's how we came at it.

Mr. Katz: Okay, John.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: This is Ted. We are now at 11:07. And this 
58

--

Dr. Mauro: Oh, I've got to speed up.

Mr. Katz: This whole session goes to 11:45. And Josie 

has at least ten minutes of presenting.

Dr. Mauro: Okay. I'm going to pick it up. I'll pick it 

up and give it back.

Mr. Katz: So we have to pick it up and -- yeah.

Dr. Mauro: You've got it.

Mr. Katz: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: All right. We'll get -- I'm moving more 

quickly.

Now we're going to go to the roof. There are guys 

that are going to be working the -- doing work in the 

rafters. Okay? Bottom line -- bottom line, lots and 

lots of data characterizing the levels of contamination 

that are on the surfaces of the rafters, the walls, and 

close to the roof where there was maintenance work 

going on. Bottom line, using that data, NIOSH says, 

well, the upper 95th percentile contamination level 

for that kind of activity is 8.99 bpm per 100 square 

centimeters.

And they assumed that the guys that are doing that 

work -- they could have an inhalation exposure 

whereby ten percent of that activity is removable. 

That is a conventional number that's used Reg. Guide 

1.86 for what fraction of residual activity might be 

resuspendable. And they used a resuspension factor 

of 10 to the -4 per meter. Highest resuspension 

factor we've ever used on a project.

In my opinion, you know, they picked the right 

number. So bottom -- and they assumed that the 

guys that are doing that work do it for one month per 

year -- were up there. Maybe it's two months. We 

checked that analysis. We said, you know -- we 

looked at all the data. Yeah. We're coming in at 
59

numbers -- they came up with 8.99. We come up with 

maybe 10 or 12 but we're in the same ballpark 

looking at all of the data.

We concur with all of the other assumptions and the 

bottom -- and the important point here is the very 

last bullet we derived an annual effective dose 

commitment. Now, this is an effective whole-body 

dose of .01 millirem per year, a very small dose.

We're going to move on. Subsurface, here's the big 

one. Big one. This is the one that I think is going to 

be the one that's going to get everybody's attention. 

Subsurface in building 10 -- remember I mentioned 

before people go under -- go underneath the ground 

and they do work? Well, there is a lot of data 

collected in the 1990s characterizing the 

contamination levels in the sludge inside the 

pipelines and the -- and the subsurface soil under 

building 10.

But both SC&A and NIOSH did -- independently did 

their analysis. We think -- we've said that the upper 

95th percentile concentration of uranium that we met 

-- we -- looking at all the data, we come up with 

5,878 picocuries per gram and we went ahead and 

said, using that as my starting point, that 

concentration which is the upper 95th percentile level 

that we believe, you know, workers might have 

encountered while they were in the subsurface 

environment of building 10.

And then you could -- and we used aw dust loading. 

We said, while you're down here, for the purpose of 

internal dose, 200 micrograms per cubic meter. We 

have a lot of documentation on that. We have it all 

appendixed and we believe that to be a pretty good 

number. In fact, we think it's a high number, because 

we have information that the soil was moist. It 

probably wasn't that high but we're going to go with 

that.

And then we used the breathing rate of 2.5 cubic 

meters per hour. Never did that before. And we had 
60

a lot of discussion, because NIOSH -- the classic 

number that everyone uses and accepts is 1.2. We 

went with 2.5, because the guy is down in a hole 

shoveling. He's working real hard.

And we assumed 184 hours per year. In other words, 

this wasn't work that was done all the time. And we 

got information that it collectively amounted to about 

one month per year of work. And we assume that the 

same guy always goes down in the hole and does that 

work. We have lots of information from the 

interviewees that, no, no, no, whenever somebody 

had to go down in the hole, that was work that 

nobody wanted to do. They sent somebody in and, 

you know, it's your turn in the barrel, so to speak.

But we said, same guy every time. Well, we 

calculated an inhalation of 20 becquerels per year 

and a dose of 15.6 millirem per year effective dose 

committed. NIOSH didn't present a dose. So we have 

two columns, here. One is what SC&A did completely 

independent of NIOSH. And the numbers compare 

pretty well within what I -- you know, where we 

compare what we did. And, in my opinion, both sets 

of numbers are reasonable and are good.

The only question that's really -- that's important is, 

do you folks agree that the activity that was 

measured in the 1990s and in these conduits and the 

dirt and everything underneath building 10 can be 

used as a surrogate? And we said, let's go with the 

upper 95th percentile to make sure that we're not 

underestimating the dose. Okay?

So -- but, even doing all that and assuming it's the 

same guy going in the hole every time, we get 15.6 

millirem per year effected dose, a relatively small 

dose.

Next. We're going -- we're almost done.

The subsurface of the outdoor activity -- I'm going to 

do this quickly. We have the same situation outdoors. 

We've got all these different locations. Table 2 in our 
61

report -- I don't know if you've seen it. We sort of 

summarize all that data, these measurements that 

were made outdoors, both the surface soil and 

subsurface soil -- okay? -- that was out there.

And you go out there and you say, well, you know, 

there were -- the people that are outside who were 

walking around doing above-ground work, they 

might be exposed 2000 hours per year, you know, 

full-time. Probably not but let's assume that they're 

outdoors. That's where they do their job. And they're 

going to be exposed externally and, also, 

resuspension.

So we believe -- well, we know how to do the external 

doses. So, you know, we've got -- you know, we had 

lots of activity characterizing the soil and the 

subsurface from all that 1992 and even the 1984 

work. And we said, well, we can reconstruct the doses 

for the above-ground worker, you know, who we 

assume that he -- 2000 hours per year. And we used 

the average activity in the soil, where they're sort of 

walking around.

For the subsurface guy, no. We picked the upper 95th 

percentile. They got that. They went underground to 

do some work. We picked a higher end of 

concentration but we assume it's only 200 hours per 

year and that he's in the hole. And, again, we go with 

this number of 200 micrograms a cubic meter.

By the way, SC&A and NIOSH independently 

reviewed that number. We came up with it one way, 

looking at the literature on it. That's how you get --

do these kinds of estimates. NIOSH actually used real 

data from the type of activity at the metal plant. 

Turns out, we come up with 200 micrograms per 

cubic meter. They come up with 220, a little higher. 

We were amazed that we came so close, since they 

were independent.

Now, bottom line is, using these assumptions, we're 

talking about doses on the order of 12 millirem per 

year, whole body 30, 32 millirem per year. Again, 
62

that's outside.

Finally, all right -- five more minutes. Five more 

minutes -- we added a new cap on direct 

contamination of the skin. I'm not going to go into 

the details. It's all written up. There's -- there are --

there's a couple typos on this page.

I'm moving along. Could you flip the slide? I'm over 

here buzzing along using my handheld slide that I 

mocked up.

Oh, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Mr. Hinnefeld: Yeah. I'm not sure which slide number 

you want to speak to, John.

Dr. Mauro: Yeah, subsurface -- yes. Typos. The 

second bullet should say, "Soil residue on clothing, 

10 milligrams per centimeter squared." And the dose 

conversion factor, the next, is "40 millirem per hour 

per 10,000 bpm per centimeter squared."

I'm not going to tell you where. I could spend a half 

hour explaining to you where that comes from. It's in 

the report. It think it's pretty rock solid information. 

Bottom line is, if a person is in a hole working around, 

at the upper end, the contamination level of uranium 

in the soil, 5,878 picocuries per gram. We believe the 

doses -- direct dose to his skin, an upper-end dose, 

would be .67 millirem per hour that -- for every hour 

that that is on the skin and, you know, that's really 

dirty work. So a relatively low dose.

Now, the last -- let's go to -- go to the next slide, 

please. I may stop at this point, because I know you 

want to get through this.

We think that the approach that we used, which 

makes use of what I would call surrogate data, 1990 

data, 1984 data, can be done and this is the big SEC 

question and I made this slide for that reason only.

One -- the reason I'm saying it is, one, we 

deliberately are working with upper 95th percentile 

data, which really pushes you up at the top end.
63

We're using a dust loading of 220. NIOSH is using a 

dust loading of 220 micrograms per cubic meter. We 

believe that's an upper-end value, especially, since 

the soil is moist and this 220 number's probably good 

for remedial activities but not for the moist soil. If the 

soil got moist, the dust was cut down.

We're assuming that the same person doing this 

maintenance and repurposing activity is -- and going 

in the hole, whether it's indoors, is always the same 

person. And the reality is, we know it's changing 

people.

And, now, with the next bullet, notwithstanding these 

bounding assumptions, the doses are extremely 

small.

Last bullet that's interesting is we -- there is the 

remediation that took place in 1992. The kind of work 

that was done -- they characterize it as cleanup the 

site -- is a lot like the kind of activity that was done 

during repurposing and maintenance. And the 

bottom line is, they did do a complete 

characterization of the intakes and it turns out, our 

modeled exposures that we did using the assumption 

I just described are, in fact, higher than the actual 

exposures that workers received that were doing the 

remediation work and the maintenance.

So it's really a collective set of assumptions and 

findings and information that points us toward -- in 

the direction that says, you know, I think we could 

reconstruct the doses with -- keep flipping. We're 

going to go to the conclusions. You can flip the slides. 

Keep going. We don't -- we didn't -- because, 

basically, I handed you all this already.

We concluded that we think the doses for all these 

scenarios can be reconstructed in a scientifically 

sound and claimant-favorable manner. And we're 

thinking that, for the reasons I just went over very 

quickly that are gone into detail, that this surrogatedata idea, that is we're using 1980 and 1990 data for 

work that took place in the '70s, can be done for the 
64

reasons I just summarized, briefly.

And then I have one last slide. Would you go to the 

last slide?

During the course of our meetings, the petitioners 

said, you know, we heard what you said. We 

understand what you said. But we think you've 

missed two exposure pathways that you need to 

address. And we agree. One has to do with external 

exposures to thorium. And I don't want to get into 

details of it but a separate analysis specifically of the 

external exposure to thorium need -- we need to talk 

about.

And the other one is that welding operations took 

place. Now, welding operations, as we know from 

other work, create aerosols that are quite different 

than typical resuspension. So you need to look at 

that.

So these are two additional issues that we believe the 

Work Group needs to work on. And that concludes 

my status report of what I would say where we are 

now and what I believe is our path forward.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, John.

Josie?

Member Beach: Can you -- Stu, can you leave Slide 

14 up?

Mr. Katz: Well, are you presenting now or are we 

taking questions?

Member Beach: I'm just taking some notes. Do you 

want to do questions?

Mr. Katz: Okay. Why don't we just -- first, let's see if 

we have questions from Board Members for what 

John -- all of this that John has covered and then we'll 

get to Josie. And he was so thorough, that we might 

not have questions. I don't know.
65

Member Kotelchuck: I've got a lot of questions but I 

don't know where to start.

Mr. Katz: So Dave Kotelchuck.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. I would say that I read 

the 12 interviews that were done that were so 

important. And, to my mind, the results were really 

quite disturbing. I saw the complete absence of any 

radiological safety program. I saw that the people 

had ideas that were -- one of them -- one of the 

interviewees was in the Environmental Safety 

Division and talked about, well, you know, we can 

handle -- we don't have to worry about handling 

radioactive materials as long as you don't ingest 

them. I mean, that's -- that's really upsetting.

And, if any -- if there was any kind of a program, any 

HP would tell a person that that's a very primitive 

notion of health and safety.

Mr. Katz: Dave, I don't want to -- I don't want to 

interfere --

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: -- but do you have a question for John 

Mauro, because that's what we're trying to get 

through right now.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. Okay. No, I don't have a 

question for him. I have doubts about the --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. That -- your comments we'll get to. 

I mean, Josie's going to present, too, but --

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. Fine.

Mr. Katz: -- I just want to be able to give Board 

Members a chance to ask John questions before we 

get into the other thoughts and so on.

But -- so other Board Members' questions for John -

- for John? On the line as well?

Okay. In the room, I don't see questions. And then 
66

we have Josie and you can go and then we'll --

Dave, I don't -- the order doesn't matter to me but -

-

Member Kotelchuck: Josie should go first.

Member Beach: Okay. So --

Participant: Can the public ask questions at this 

point?

Mr. Katz: No. No. This is -- the petitioner will have a 

chance to comment and that'll come after these --

this interaction, here.

Member Beach: Okay. So I just want to make it clear, 

the Work Group does not have a recommendation at 

this time. I do have some comments and, hopefully, 

other Work Group Members may, also.

I asked Stu to keep the slide up. Those were the four 

SEC issues that are prominent in my mind and, so I 

don't have to read them, they're up there. I'm going

to make small comments to each one of those.

So the survey data from 1982, '85, '92, '95 and '96 

was intended to be used to remediate areas in and 

around Metals and Controls for the purpose of 

removing the NRC license. It was not to assign dose 

to unmonitored workers the 14 to 28 years prior.

The models are based on site characterization 

surveys, gross alpha techniques used to determine 

remediation and termination surveys to provide 

information to support NRC termination of 

radioactive materials license.

In 1982, the survey recommended that the former 

burial site remain intact and undisturbed. Yet, in 

1984, that survey reported the site was disturbed 

during construction of building 12 and contaminated 

soil was spread around the construction site. The 

report concluded the former burial site had been 

subjected to extensive disturbances. Contamination 
67

was spread throughout Metals and Control areas. It 

was found on floors, walls, ceilings, roof, piping, 

utility systems, soil in and around the building, tin, 

under equipment.

There was 9,414 feet of roof surface that was 

decontaminated either by vacuuming, scraping, 

and/or they cut out the entire sections of roof, 

leaving open spaced directly into the building 10 

production areas.

There was 45,000 feet of floor space that was defined 

in building 4, 5, and 10 to have contamination 

exceeding the unrestricted-release criteria, an 

additional 10,000 feet of affected floor area and 

localized areas of subsurface soil contamination was 

identified.

The 1996 Survey Report described work controls put 

in place to protect the remediation workers, including 

posted boundaries, volumetric data, breathing zone 

air sampling, and personal protective clothing. 

Remediation workers did not handle materials in and 

around the subfloor piping. Those were handled using 

planned radiological controls. Remediation workers 

would not have used the shop air to dust off their 

clothing. They knew the hazards involved.

The 1983 survey released buildings 3, 4 and 10. Yet, 

in 1985, the follow-up survey by NRC reported 

surface and subsurface contamination limits 

exceeded what was allowable by the NRC. 

Maintenance and Control maintenance workers were 

not trained, notified, warned, or monitored during 

residual -- the residual years.

Maintenance -- Metals and Control was an unusual 

AWE site in that source term was not properly 

removed, subsurface areas exposed personnel, there 

was drilling and welding in the rafters and on the 

roof. They exposed maintenance workers. Residual 

years at Metals and Control were busy years for 

maintenance personnel. There were -- there was no 

way to know how long, how often, or how much 
68

radioactive material they would have been exposed 

to in their daily tasks.

The Weston 1996 Survey Report reported only on 

uranium in the affected areas, including buildings 4 

and 10. Drainage system characterization 

investigation to assess the potential for inadvertent 

exposures to non-radiological workers performing 

routine drainage system maintenance and the 

potential for inadvertent or disturbance of highly 

enriched and concentrated uranium.

HVAC systems were never surveyed. They did not 

look at the fans, the exhaust ventilations at all. 

Interview notes describe men climbing through the 

duct work to change out filters. These are some of 

the same systems that exhausted out onto the roof. 

Workers reported changing filters quarterly. There 

were 12 to 1300 filters. They reported climbing inside 

the air handlers, cleaning duct work, power washing 

coils. They cut holes into the duct work to vacuum 

the stuff out. There's no surveys previously mention 

reporting any of the surveys of the exhaust fans.

I know this is a lot of information but there's a lot of 

surveys out there. And it describes the -- what was 

done in the later years. And during the remediation 

years, there's none of that. There's no survey data. 

So that's all I have to say, comment-wise. And I know 

we do need another Work Group meeting. We haven't 

had a chance, as Work Group Members, to discuss all 

these findings and our thoughts.

Mr. Katz: Dave --

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: -- Kotelchuck.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, I'm -- I think it's important 

for folks to realize that these -- the people who are 

petitioning are not like regular industrial workers, 

either at AWE sites or any other sites, who more or 

less work at one or two operations over a long period 
69

of time.

Even if we don't have data about those -- for those 

individuals, which we do not have here, we can make 

reasonable estimates because they're jobs that we 

know are done elsewhere. But the persons who are 

applying here, the maintenance persons, are really 

like -- in my opinion, more like emergency response 

personnel. They do everything: they work on the 

roof; they work on building --

As one of the people said in the interview, 

interviewee number 10 said, well, I was working in 

the electrical division but, if I came in and we had a 

plumbing problem, I became a plumber very quickly. 

So everybody was exposed to everything and it's --

and what we're doing is taking modeling without any, 

in my opinion, anchors with -- on the individuals, 

themselves.

And the result is that I'm increasingly skeptical that 

we can put together -- everybody is exposed to all of 

these scenarios. I'm increasingly skeptical that we 

can put together all of the scenarios, despite the hard 

work and creative thinking that went into developing 

the models and put all the models together and come 

up with an exposure level that -- of reasonable 

accuracy.

And so I do very much look forward to our Working 

Group meeting where we can hash out and discuss 

with the -- with the Members of our Working Group 

as well as the staff and maybe come to some, I hope, 

agreement about how to proceed. But, for the 

moment, I'm -- I am skeptical of the accuracy of this 

approach, despite its strengths.

Mr. Katz: Other Board Members either in the room or 

on the line -- questions or comments?

David?

Member Valerio: This is -- this is Loretta. I have a 

comment.
70

Mr. Katz: Loretta, go ahead.

Member Valerio: So I'm in full agreement with both 

Dave and Josie that we do need another Work Group 

meeting.

I don't agree that NIOSH is assuming that the same 

individual performed the subsurface work. Looking at 

the White Paper dated November 29th, on Page 13, 

it clearly states that "residues were found in the 

subsurface drains in Buildings 4 and 10." So I -- you 

know, it's hard to imagine that the same person is 

doing the subsurface work in both buildings for just 

the 173 hours or the 22 days. So I don't agree with 

that either. So I think we have a lot more work on 

this site moving forward.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Loretta. That sounds like 

something that can be discussed with the Work 

Group.

Board Members? Other Board Members? David 

Richardson?

Member Richardson: I'm interested in the Work 

Group's perspective on I think two issues. The first is 

whether this -- there's -- because there seems to be 

a lot of creative thinking and innovation going on how 

to address some exposure scenarios that we've 

probably not given much consideration before. And 

are they -- I'm thinking about this as being extremely 

specific to this facility or is it general? That's one 

questions. Or are -- are these the types of scenarios 

which we could imagine being encountered in other 

scenario -- in other settings that we haven't before 

addressed?

And I believe, right now, you're focused on these 

scenarios in the framework of this SEC for the 

residual period. And would these same activities have 

occurred during the operational period? And is there 

an issue of -- if so, is there an issue of logic that one

-- that all of those same things would have also been 

exposure scenarios that people would have 
71

encountered prior to the cessation of operations?

Member Beach: I think I can answer the second part. 

Yes, the subsurface flooring would have been flooded 

and they would have been digging out that 

subsurface flooring throughout the history.

Member Richardson: Changing air filters?

Member Beach: Changing air filters and such. Yeah. 

And, remember, the first period was a thorium. They 

were unable to reconstruct doses for thorium. So --

Member Richardson: All right.

Member Beach: This site is unique because there's so 

much left in -- I mean, if you read, they sent out 

railroad cars of -- hundreds of them of contamination 

out of that facility. There's -- it's a lot. It's not a usual 

AWE site at all.

I don't know if I got your first part of your question 

answered.

Member Richardson: Yeah. I was -- you know, I --

given just today's discussion about Superior Steel, 

for example, where they -- where there was a 

description of a lot of dust, would this -- would there 

be similar considerations there that we have not 

considered and have not addressed before?

Member Beach: Potentially. I think you really just 

need to get into the survey data that they do have. 

One of the interesting ones was the Weston 1996 

Drain Characterization Survey. It's very enlightening. 

It's out of the web and it's a good -- I mean -- and, 

like Dave said, if you read -- I encourage Dave to 

read the interview notes, because there is a lot of 

information of what was done and why I was so 

interested in the Superior Steel and -- with no 

interviews there, because there's a lot that happens 

that you don't know until you talk to the people that 

are -- were there. So --

Mr. Katz: How about Board Members on the line? 
72

Questions or comments, before we get to the 

petitioners' opportunity to speak?

Member Anderson: Yeah. This is Andy. I would agree 

with the comments made. There's still a lot but we 

got started with the Committee but we do have to go 

back over all of this. I think there's a lot of -- a lot of 

data that -- in the file that many of us have not had 

a chance to go over yet. That's been mentioned 

already.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Andy.

Andy's on the Work Group, by the way.

Member Beach: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Others? Board Members?

And if -- okay. Not hearing Board Members at this 

moment, let's just go to the Petitioners' opportunity 

to address the Board.

Mr. Elliott: Good morning. This is Mike Elliott. I'm one 

of the petitioners.

Mr. Katz: Right. Welcome.

Mr. Elliott: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity 

to speak on behalf of my fellow petitioners.

So, listening to the technical experts at NIOSH in the 

last few Work Group meetings and SC&A today and 

other times, we're asked to believe through their --

you know, continuous modeling and their ability to 

estimate bounding conditions such as short term dust 

loading and inhalation and ingestion rates and the 

like, that they claim that it's possible to estimate a 

bounding dose to members of this Class that is 

scientifically sound and a claimant favorable manner. 

But I would suggest that this is far from a foregone 

conclusion and remains quite uncertain.

Mr. Katz: Mike, I'm sorry to interrupt but I don't know 

if you're using a speaker phone or a cell phone but, 
73

if you could, I don't know, speak more closely to your 

mic or something. It's -- we can follow you but with 

difficulty.

Mr. Elliott: Sorry about that. I'm on -- I'm on a mobile 

phone here at --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. You have -- you just made it much 

better.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. Yeah. I've got it up to my -- hold 

the handset up to my ear. I apologize for that.

So first I would ask that you circle back, as I have 

done, to the regulation that prescribes procedures for 

designating classes of employees, as members of the 

SEC. Specifically, Part C, Section 83.13 stipulates 

how NIOSH will evaluate petitions. And, in 83.13(c), 

it states that -- in paragraph (1)(i), it states,

"Radiation doses can be estimated with sufficient 

accuracy if NIOSH has established that it has access 

to sufficient information to estimate the maximum 

radiation dose, for every type of cancer for which 

radiation doses are reconstructed, that could have 

been incurred in plausible circumstances by any 

member of the Class." Let's just add on that last 

statement.

And then in paragraph (1)(ii) of that same section, it 

states that, "To establish a positive finding under 

(c)(1)(i) of this section would require, at a minimum, 

that NIOSH have access to reliable information on the 

identity or set of possible identities and maximum 

quantity of each radionuclide" -- that is the source 

material -- "to which members of the Class were 

potentially exposed without adequate protection."

I contend that NIOSH has failed to satisfy these 

fundamental regulatory requirements and I think that 

for a number of reasons as I've stated in the past: 1) 

there's the source term calculation is incomplete for 

many of the reasons that Josie just outlined; we have 

incomplete knowledge of the nature, frequency and 
74

duration of jobs performed in contact with the source 

term. And I would -- I would agree with I think it was 

Dave who said we may not even be able to, you 

know, reasonably imagine every scenario that has 

resulted in exposure to the source term; 3) there's a 

complete absence of any --

Mr. Katz: Mike, I'm sorry but you're also -- you're 

becoming just very garbled again.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. Let me slow down a little bit and 

see if I can get a better angle, here.

Mr. Katz: That's better. Yeah. It's better.

Mr. Elliott: Okay. There's a complete absence of any 

measurement or monitoring of the workers who are 

covered by this petition and there is -- there are no 

comparable populations with measurements and 

monitoring data that can be relied on as a surrogate 

for this Class that's in question, the maintenance 

workers. We're referring to them as maintenance 

workers and remediation workers.

Concerning the lack of adequate source term 

characterization, the most obvious example is the 

1996 Drain Characterization Survey in Building 10 

and Building 4, the -- you know, the interiors of 

Building 10 and Building 4, which is where we found 

the highest concentration data -- volumetric 

concentration data. And, for a number of reasons 

that I previously described in my written comments 

on August 29th, we only analyzed the sediments and 

soil samples for isotopic uranium. We did not analyze 

the isotopic thorium. So we can never know what the 

thorium concentration was that these maintenance 

workers were exposed to.

And, as you'll recall, as Josie said moments ago, the 

lack of thorium data was the reason that the prior 

SEC, SEC 149, for the operational-period employees 

was allowed.

Furthermore, by the time the drain survey was 
75

conducted in 1995, there had been close to 30 years 

of disturbances of the drain line during the residual 

period. You know, they were snaked numerous 

times. Some of it -- the most plugged sections had to 

be entirely removed. So there's no guarantee that 

the levels we documented in 1995 represent the 

maximum levels that were originally present.

And recall, this is -- this is, you know, serious. This 

is source material. This is right underneath the area 

where the AWE operations were taking place. We 

even found, you know, a 6-inch-long fully-formed 

fuel rod. But it was highly enriched uranium. As I say, 

we didn't test the thorium, so we don't know what 

the levels of thorium were. And these were the 

highest concentrations that we identified that these 

people were working around.

And I'll just briefly mention, for the outside areas, I 

brought up in my previous written comments that, 

you know, even -- we're relying heavily on gross 

alpha screening for the majority of the soil 

characterization surveys that were done in 1994 and 

1995. And that method, although it was, you know, 

a godsend for us in terms of the decommissioning 

activities that we were doing, it was biased low at 

concentrations above our cleanup standard of 30 

picocuries per gram. So really -- and it was biased 

high below 30.

So, really, there's a majority of the isotopic analyses 

that we did for the exterior soil samples were those, 

you know, low concentrations where we were trying 

to -- we were looking for clean margins. We wanted 

to try to limit how much material we had to excavate 

and ship off in those rail cars that Josie referred to, 

of which I believe -- I believe there were 325 rail cars 

shipped out to Utah.

And, if you look at the letter from the NRC, you know, 

supporting the decommissioning where they 

summarized the activity that we did, they mentioned 

that, in the building interiors, we excavated 34,600 

cubic feet of soil and concrete rubble and, in the 
76

exterior areas, we excavated 532,000 cubic feet. 

That's close to 600,000 cubic feet that we shipped 

out to Utah from a facility that supposedly had been 

released for unrestricted use. So, you know, these 

employees were definitely messing around in some 

pretty heavy -- heavily contaminated areas.

I mentioned that there was incomplete knowledge of 

the nature, frequency and duration of the jobs 

performed. I really am baffled how NIOSH and SC&A 

could come away with the degree of confidence they 

have in their estimate that the average worker 

received one month -- your average maintenance 

worker received one month duration of intrusive 

activity both subsurface and overhead.

When I've spoken to the -- you know, the workers I 

know, they really don't know how long and, you 

know, their estimates generally seem a lot greater 

than that to me. You know, John Elliott mentioned 

near daily activity in the overhead areas, not to 

mention how much time he spent on the subsurface 

areas. And, you know, he was -- he's one of -- he's 

my co-petitioner and he was a working supervisor.

One of the other working supervisors who was an 

instrumentation guy, talks about, you know, two to 

three months a year in the overhead areas, not 

including the work in the subsurface. But somebody 

like John, who was a pipefitter and a plumber, he 

would have been, you know, down in the subsurface 

probably much more than the electricians.

There's also a complete absence of any measurement 

or monitoring of the workers who are the subject of 

this petition. NIOSH has relied on measurements and 

monitoring data from several populations, you know, 

either the radiation workers at the end of the 

operational period or the D&D workers, you know, 

during the decommissioned activities of the 1990s or, 

you know, in the case of the dust loading estimates, 

they referred to the Mound facility. I think that was 

1996.
77

But I would suggest that these populations are not 

comparable to the typical M&C maintenance worker 

in this Class. The surrogate classes did not 

adequately characterize the maximum radiation dose 

to any member of the Class that -- of this petition.

And I would ask you to just think for a moment, try 

to visualize what a typical M&C maintenance worker 

in this Class in this time period would look like. You 

know, it would be plumbers. It would be electricians, 

pipefitters, boiler lubricators and, you know, many of 

the trades that are involved in the maintenance 

activity.

As was pointed out by Dave and others, they had no 

knowledge of the radiation exposure that they were 

being exposed to. There were no safety and health 

protocols in place, no personal protective equipment. 

They were often in direct contact with the source 

material. You know, they would think nothing of just 

handling their tools with their bare hands. They 

weren't trained to wear gloves or wash their hands. 

They didn't have to shower or change their clothes.

They worked mostly in street clothes but, you know, 

even in cases where they had a uniform, they would 

generally just take that home and launder it at their 

home. So they'd be bringing that home with them. 

And it would be, you know, in their car. They were -

- you know, conceivably, they were exposed to this 

stuff 24/7.

So the typical M&C maintenance worker in no way 

resembles the population of workers for which NIOSH 

has relied as for the basis of their dose reconstruction 

modeling.

And I would just also bring to your attention a letter 

that was addressed to Josie Beach dated November 

20th, 2018 from Congressman Joseph Kennedy, who 

represents the Fourth Congressional District in 

Massachusetts, in which he acknowledged some of 

the uncertainties among Members of the Work Group 

as to how to evaluate the extent of the radiation 
78

these workers were exposed to, in order to ascertain 

their eligibility for compensation.

But Congressman Kennedy goes on further by 

stating, "It is my hope that the Work Group takes a 

broader view and considers the cases of these 

workers in their final determination." And I feel the 

Congressman has really hit the nail on the head with 

his advice to take a broader view.

Unfortunately, I think, you know, NIOSH, as much as 

they try, they've failed to take a broader view of the 

typical M&C maintenance worker and the exposure 

scenarios that might have existed at the time. The 

measurements and monitoring data from the '60s, 

the '80s and '90s are not suitable to estimate the 

bounding dose of the M&C maintenance worker.

So I'm left referring back to the regulation. I come 

back to Section 83.13(c)(3) that states, "If it is not 

feasible to estimate with sufficient accuracy radiation 

doses for members of the Class, as provided under 

paragraph (c)(1) of this section, then NIOSH must 

determine, as required by the statute, that 'there is 

a reasonable likelihood that such radiation dose may 

have endangered the health of members of the 

Class.'"

So I will end my comment there and promise to put 

as much of this in writing to the Board after the 

meeting. And I hope -- I think I heard my colleague, 

William Rusty Lorenzen, who is one of our operational 

health physicists. I think he's on the line. I hope we'll 

have time to hear what he has to say.

Mr. Katz: Before we go to that, Mike -- well, first, let 

me just ask if you have been reading from a script 

and you want to email that to me, that would help 

the transcriber for the moments when you were a 

little bit garbled. If you weren't, then don't worry 

about it. We'll do the best we can. But, if you have 

that written down -- what you were saying -- that 

would be handy.
79

Mr. Elliott: I do have it written down. It's actually 

handwritten in primer method. But I will -- I will 

transfer it onto a -- onto an email I'll send you.

Mr. Katz: Okay. And then --

Mr. Elliott: Who am I speaking to?

Mr. Katz: Just -- you can send it to whatever email 

address you have for NIOSH -- the NIOSH program. 

But just address it to me and I'll make sure that it 

gets to the transcriber, so that the transcriber can 

work this out.

Mr. Elliott: What's your name again? I'm sorry.

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry. I'm Ted. I'm Ted Katz.

Mr. Elliott: Ted Katz. Got it.

Participant: With a K.

Mr. Katz: With a K. Yes, thank you. All right.

Mr. Elliott: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Thank you.

And, now, you suggested that there's a Lorenzo on 

the line. We're over our time but that's okay. We 

have -- we're going into a lunch break. I'm not sure 

that's more important than hearing. If you want to 

have your person address us, too, that's fine. 

Lorenzo, I think that you said.

Mr. Lorenzen: No. It's William Lorenzen.

Mr. Katz: Lorenzen. Sorry. I apologize.

Mr. Lorenzen: That's okay. I'm a -- I'm a health 

physicist.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. If you could just keep it, William, to 

maybe ten minutes.

Mr. Lorenzen: I will. I don't have enough time to go 

into all my comments over that presentation.
80

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Mr. Lorenzen: I will probably try to provide 

something in writing because they are voluminous in 

nature. I was very concerned by the way we're trying 

to force fit a model to workers which we have no data 

for. I find that surprising and concerning from a 

health physics standpoint.

The fact that we have to call a friend who knows 

something about filter changes to make decisions 

about exposures is alarming and I would just 

suggest, as one who has worked in the uranium 

industry and have seen these processes and these 

maintenance workers' work, if it wasn't for good 

health physics, they would have been exposed 

unnecessarily and, in some cases, overexposed.

So, to think of these workers as being protected, they 

were not. And knowing my experience with this type 

of worker, I think it's an impossibility to try to 

estimate a dose of any reasonable nature based on 

the fact that we have zero data.

And, if I look at the last bullet on Page 20, which talks 

about the fact that some of this information data 

collected from the cleanup period was somehow 

relatable to these workers is totally ridiculous. These 

are workers that were protected, knowledgeable, had 

health physics support. So I just find some of this 

information in this really concerning from a health 

physics standpoint and I will try to prevent -- provide 

comments in writing, so you can work with those.

And I appreciate what the Board's trying to do to 

protect these workers from the unfortunate 

exposures that they experienced unknowingly.

That's all I'll say. Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Thank you very much. And, yeah, we 

-- we'd love to have your written comments and you 

can send those to the NIOSH program and they'll get 

both to the Board and to the program staff that work 
81

on this as well, as well as the Board's contractor staff. 

Thank you.

Board Members, before we close this session, I just 

said, is there any other questions, comments, what 

have you?

Member Clawson: I just --

Mr. Katz: Brad?

Member Clawson: I just had one. What classifies a 

facility as an AWE? I -- is it usually --

Mr. Katz: So DOE classifies facilities as AWE.

Member Clawson: Okay.

Mr. Katz: They're -- what specifically do you want to 

know about that?

Member Clawson: Well, my understanding of an AWE 

was that it was basically like you had one source of 

material depleted, you know, uranium or whatever 

else like that, that you were dealing with. And, you 

know, like Bethlehem Steel, we had one single source

of uranium content. So --

Mr. Katz: No. No. So that's not the -- it's not the 

nature of the exposure or the process, per se. These 

are all -- they're contractors. They're not government 

employees. They're not a government plant with 

contractor employees. They're -- it's a private plant 

with -- that's contracting with the government. And 

that's basically --

You know, when the Manhattan Project was initiated, 

I mean, they were relying, basically, on contractors. 

They had no facilities. And so, anyway, that 

continued for actually much longer than most people 

would think and a lot of support was given by these 

private companies doing contract work for the 

government to help support the effort in the -- in the 

early years of the Manhattan Project.
82

Member Clawson: Okay. That helped me out. Thanks.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. You're welcome.

Any other questions, comments, quickly?

All right. So we are concluding for now for lunch. We 

have a LANL SEC Petition that starts at 1:15. So, 

again, it's an SEC petition. It's also an informational 

update. We're not acting on it at this point but I would 

like to ask everybody to try to be here on time, 

because we will possibly have -- we will not have the 

petitioner, actually, on the line but we should still be 

timely. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 11:56 a.m. and resumed at 1:16 p.m.) 

Los Alamos National Laboratory SEC Petition #109 

(Los Alamos, NM; 1996-2005)

Mr. Katz: Okay. I think we should get started. Okay, 

folks. Joe. LaVon.

Okay. Welcome back. We just are about to resume 

from lunch break. We have one last item on our 

agenda for this Board meeting which is the LANL SEC 

Petition.

And, to note again for people that are just joining us, 

this is a sort of informational update; a sort of pretty 

thorough, I think, update of where the Work Group's 

come and the Agency has come since the last time 

we spoke to the Board about this Petition Evaluation.

Let me check on the line and see which Board 

Members I have on the line.

(Roll call) 

Mr. Katz: So it sounds very quiet on the line. Other 

than my Board Members, I think we're okay in audio 

quality. We probably don't have that many people 

following right now but, if there is anyone on the line 

from the public, please keep your phone muted for 
83

this session and press *6, if you don't have a mute 

button, to mute your phone. That way we won't have 

any audio issues or we have less audio issues.

And, Joe, why don't you -- this is Josie Beach's Work 

Group but we have presentation from Joe, which is 

sort of a joint presentation of -- covering the last 

Work Group and the work that's been done.

Thank you.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay. Thank you.

And, for those in academia, this is the proverbial last 

presentation after lunch on the last day.

So, anyway, yeah, as Ted was saying, this is more of 

a status briefing. We had a pretty productive Work 

Group meeting a couple weeks ago and this is, I 

think, to catch the Board up on where the Work 

Group stands.

I'm -- LaVon and I talked about doing a tag team but 

I'm just going to go through all the slides and I think 

he's going to jump in on the path forward, which I 

think is a good way to go.

Just to remind you a little bit on the chronology of 

this, this -- the 109 ER for '72 through '95 was voted 

on by this Board, approved by HHS in 2012. And that 

was -- and the addendum, which addresses the post-

'95 years, was issued April 24th, 2017. Again, for all 

support service workers after that time period -- I'm 

sorry -- that should be '96. that's a typo. '96 through 

2005 was the evaluated time period. And you can 

read the rest of the chronology. I won't go through 

all of it but a lot of activity since mid-2017 until now.

And the Evaluation Report Addendum dealt with an 

end date of, as I was saying, December 31, 1995 for 

the SEC Class. Now, that break point was selected 

with a presumption of the site compliance with 10 

CFR 835, which was the radiation protection rule that 

was promulgated then. That rule had a provision in it 

that monitoring would be required of any workers 
84

with a potential of 100 millirem CEDE per year. So, 

again, the presumption was, with an enforceable 

requirement on the books, that you would see the 

DOE sites pretty much monitoring to that level so 

that, for unmonitored workers, you could assume 

100 millirem would be bounding for those workers.

So that was the premise that we were addressing in 

the review. And, for Los Alamos, certainly, the -- that 

provision addressed the limitations that were the 

basis for the preceding SEC Class, which was the 

inability to bound what we were -- would call exotics. 

That includes the mixed fission/mixed activation 

products and certain specific exotic nuclides like 

neptunium and curium and what have you.

Okay. This is kind of where we are at this point. Last 

year, I think it was the August of 2017 Board Meeting 

in Santa Fe, we had a discussion on Los Alamos, at 

that point. We concluded that, certainly, the 

presumption of compliance, in other words the 

compliance with 835, was a key element; a key 

element of looking at how programs were managing 

field monitoring. But I think we wanted to make the 

point that it wasn't the full picture, that there were 

implementation issues that needed to be addressed 

that went beyond the question of compliance by 

itself.

And, in the NIOSH White Paper that was issued, I 

think it was back in September, I think there was 

some agreement on that, that, yes, NIOSH likewise 

felt that the presumption, by itself, wasn't enough, 

that, in fact, you had to look a little broader in terms 

of the implementation of those provisions, 

particularly the field surveillance or monitoring 

provisions, in order to be confident that, in fact, the 

100 millirem CEDE criterion would be, in fact, a valid 

one to apply.

And what I think NIOSH did, in fact, is look closely at 

the -- what they're calling the formality and 

completeness of the monitoring program itself, the 

radiation monitoring and contamination control 
85

program and its ability to, in fact, support the 

monitoring that would be required under the rule.

And the second part that would be looking at whether 

or not the monitoring of primary and exotic nuclides 

was robust and, in fact, would support that premise 

as well. So those are the two elements. And, in 

general, I think as I point out here there was a -- this 

has come up before, that, in fact, the implementation 

of the DOE's first enforceable radiation protection 

rule was a watershed moment that would, in fact, be 

reflected in the way programs are implemented.

Okay. So one of the first elements, and this is one 

we've addressed now probably since 2009/2010 --

Oops. Let me see. Should I hit cancel on that? No?

Thank you, Stu.

I think we were talking about the technical 

capabilities of the monitor. And this is one of the, I 

think, central questions that we addressed and 

NIOSH has looked at. It's pretty clear at Los Alamos, 

and we're talking Los Alamos. This is the premier 

national laboratory where a lot of health physics was 

invented in the '40s and '50s at this laboratory. So 

clearly the capability -- the technological capability 

existed and certainly paced technology developments 

along the way.

So they certainly did have the capability to monitor 

for a wide range of radionuclide, including mixed 

fission and fission activation products since the early 

'70s. So we have no disagreement on that. They've 

always had that technical capability. The question 

really was whether, in fact, that capability was 

employed or not in such a way that, at least for exotic 

nuclides, we find evidence that bioassays were being 

collected and, in fact, being recorded.

So, if you can imagine, the central question is no --

you know, there's no issue with the technical 

capability of the laboratory in terms of in vivo 
86

counting. The question is were they focused on these 

tangential radionuclides that we're calling exotics, 

just to cover the ground, and whether or not there 

are sufficient records to support dose reconstruction.

And I'm going to just point out that, in terms of time 

frame, we're talking what I would consider the 

current time frame, talking mid-'90s and beyond into 

the 2000s, you're talking a very mature program and 

you're talking about a situation at the laboratory. And 

we -- I think we have agreement with NIOSH on this 

as well, that the kinds of exotic exposures and 

pathways that we would have been seeing in the 

'70s, '80s and before, we weren't seeing as much in 

the 1990s, becoming somewhat more sporadic.

And so it raises the question -- this is the question 

I'm going to address with you later is, before '95, the 

question was whether you had sufficient data to 

support some dose reconstruction approach that 

could bound a non-negligible exposure to the exotics.

The question that we're answering or trying to 

answer after '95 is whether there's sufficient data. 

But whether or not the circumstance of the sites 

including -- involved in the amount of source term 

that might be existing for mixed-activation fission 

products were sufficiently low that you could 

demonstrate that those exposures, those potential 

doses were, in fact, under 100 millirem CEDE.

And a lot of the effort at Los Alamos I can account for 

in the past has just been trying to find any evidence 

from the lab that, when the promulgation of 835 

came about, that they, in fact, had done similar 

analyses as a basis for determining monitoring of 

these various exotics. And, again, LaVon can jump in 

but I don't think we ever did get something that 

demonstrated that kind of firm analysis that could 

give you some confidence that that was looked at. In 

fact, these doses were bound by 100 millirem. And 

that's why you couldn't find monitoring data for the 

exotics after '95.
87

So that's a question that I'm going to address a little 

later but I think that's a pathway that might be worth 

examining as a recourse to this issue.

Here, I'm going to speak for LaVon, which may be a 

little dangerous but I'm just going to follow his slides 

from last time. But, in terms of the weight of the 

evidence, I said there's two prongs to the NIOSH 

Report.

Uh-oh. Are we good? Yeah, I think we're good. Now 

it's not moving. Yeah.

Well, let me -- while he's fixing that, I can -- I can 

talk about it a bit more. You know, the first prong is 

looking at the -- essentially, the formality of the 

program; the scope of documents; whether, in fact, 

one could identify RWPs for which bioassays were 

required; whether, in fact, you had substantial 

evidence that they had a complete surveillance 

program in place that not only met the regulation but 

was complete from the standpoint of stipulating how 

they would monitor for a broad range of nuclides.

And I think, you know -- there's several slides here 

but I think it's pretty clear and not surprising, I might 

add, that Los Alamos had a very well designed and 

very complete program.

Okay. Thanks.

But, again, the question that we were focused on as 

well, in addition to whether the program was broadly 

designed and scoped, was whether, in fact, it was 

implemented. A lot of the DOE sites -- and I can 

speak from experience because I was at DOE during 

this time period -- you had the world's top health 

physicists managing those programs. The programs 

were designed and the procedures were written as 

good as they could be written as far as I'm 

concerned.

The hiccup, the problem was always in the execution 

in terms of the line programs, implementing against 
88

those standards and procedures, and to what extent 

you had, you know, complete adherence to things 

like bioassays and as far as checklists and all that.

So, when we looked at this, we wanted to look at the 

question of validation as well.

Let's see if I can do this. Here we go. Okay.

So, in any case -- so we were looking at the 

implementation part of it and our concern, 

essentially, was LANL performed a self-assessment in 

1999, which turns out to probably be the most 

comprehensive look at whether or not the bioassay 

program was being implemented effectively or not. 

And it came up pretty short.

And the question that we're most concerned about is 

to what extent the rather quick sampling that they 

did in that particular review reflects some serious 

deficiencies in the completeness of the bioassay 

records that may undercut come of the assumptions 

that we have regarding that program.

So we really did not have a chance to go much 

beyond what was available in the compliance records, 

as far as that assessment. But we would only point 

out in reference to the whole question of the -- you 

know, the completeness of the bioassay program, 

that, certainly, this review suggests that it was -- it 

had some pretty substantial problems and it led to a 

corrective action that was finally accomplished in

2000 that pretty much rewrote a lot of the 

procedures, put a electronic tracking system in to 

assure that workers all got their bioassays, as 

required, and was a pretty substantial change.

So I guess our conclusion on this thing is that -- and 

we don't disagree that Los Alamos had a very formal 

and a very well established field monitoring program. 

What we have a problem with is leaving it at that. We 

think it's a functional program but we really have 

some questions of whether or not it was being 

implemented effectively on the ground. And it has 
89

real implications for any conclusion that we would 

reach about the validity of the bioassay program.

Okay. The second prong on the NIOSH program is 

looking at a comparison of monitored worker dose to 

100 millirem CEDE. And Los Alamos has, in response 

to questions, noted that certainly it only monitored 

what it was required to in terms of the anticipated 

dose.

In terms of the dose history for exposure pathways 

and for exotics and particularly for mixed activation 

fission products, Los Alamos was pretty clear that, 

you know, they did not see a potential for 100 

millirem CEDE and they did not monitor for it on that 

basis and that their in vivo counting capability had 

the ability to pick up any exposures that may have 

occurred in any case. So that was kind of the answer 

and -- but they still could not really show any records, 

as well. So it was a little bit of a conundrum on that 

one.

Okay. NIOSH reviewed the LANL bioassay repository 

database and you can read the statistics. But, 

essentially, plutonium and americium made up over 

80 percent of the records. Uranium and thorium 

made up about 20 percent of the balance of the 

records and there was also a considerable number, 

7,000-plus records, that were consisting of fission 

activation products from the LANSCE operation itself.

And we'll get into LANSCE. But LANSCE -- the 

accelerator -- defense accelerator at Los Alamos was 

a prodigious emitter of gaseous mixed activation 

products. It just -- and it was dramatically probably 

one of the highest sources of off-site exposure in the 

'70s, into the '80s. So this was a very significant 

fraction that was being released.

In the primary nuclides, in this case, primary tritium, 

plutonium and uranium, over 450,000 urinalysis 

records for 1945 through 2008, just in general -- just 

some -- there were just a lot of bioassay records for 

the primaries. No question that, as far as Los Alamos 
90

was concerned, this was the focus of most of the 

surveillance, as well as the monitoring that they did. 

There was a considerable number of records.

The question on this whole matter of monitoring 

records is just one of, yes, there's lots of primary --

a lot of records for the primaries but the basis for the 

SEC that this Board addressed some years ago for 

the preceding years were focused on the exotics. And 

that situation has not changed. We don't have any 

additional records, per se. And, at the time when we 

-- I think the Work Group was trying to figure out 

with NIOSH, actually, how, perhaps, the primary 

nuclides could be used as I think we call them 

radionuclide surrogates for these exotics.

I think, in the end, NIOSH concluded it just wasn't 

going to work adequately to do that to compare or to 

use them as surrogates. So I guess our sense at this 

point is that that's a bridge that's already passed and, 

really, the focus has to come back to what extent the 

exotics can be bounded someway, somehow. And, 

again, I think a lot of us were hoping Los Alamos had 

that information. But now it's becoming clear they do 

not.

I think that kind of puts us back to where we were 

when we looked at the preceding SEC time period. 

You know, is there any way to gain confidence that 

one can bound the exotics to at least 100 millirem?

And this gets me to this point that -- and this is a bit 

of a sidebar to our review -- but understanding that 

the source terms for a lot of the exotics, particularly 

the mixed activation products, were coming down 

readily. And what was happing in a place like 

LANSCE, the accelerator, they simply were looking at 

how could one reduce the emissions? So you weren't 

talking about 10s to 20s to even 100 millirem at the 

site boundary, which is kind of unheard of.

And a number of things, because these were short 

lived, they came up with holding -- you know, 

mechanisms that hold up the emissions so they 
91

would decay. And they also dealt with the source 

term in terms of operational changes at the 

accelerator. The accelerator, itself, was being used 

less.

So, at least for this one particular source term, it 

became clear that, whereas that was a prime issue of 

discussion for the preceding SEC Class, I guess the 

question I wanted to tee up was: it looks like the 

source term certainly had changed by the mid-'90s 

and was -- and it was becoming rapidly smaller. And 

to what extent could that be a starting point to 

looking at whether or not other exotics were, in fact, 

not the issue they were and whether or not they could 

be bounded below 100 millirem, which I think would 

be an avenue to kind of address this question of, you 

know, whether the exotics could or could not be 

shown to be at less than 100 millirem CEDE.

And just, again, this isn't -- I mean, this is basically 

immersion dose but what this shows, I think in a 

quick way, is what's happening with this one source 

of mixed activation products from one facility, which 

is this LANSCE facility, over about ten years, into the 

'90s, the time period we're talking about.

And I think it's fairly dramatic that, really, you get 

down to a point where the actual measurable 

exposure is negligible by probably '96/'97/'98, in that 

time frame. And, if you took this curve and you took 

it out to the earlier years, it would go up even ten 

times that. So you're talking about a dramatic shift 

in releases of mixed activation products in that time 

period.

And I just took this right out of the environmental 

TBD. And, again, this was looking at occupational 

doses, external occupational whole-body doses to 

workers at LANSCE and adjacent facilities and really 

talking similarly, a dramatic shift in the -- from over 

100 millirem in 1990 to something that is fractions 

by '98/'99.

So, again, just as a matter of perspective, I think 
92

there may be some pathway where, you know, one 

could examine the source terms and establish 

whether those conditions have changed enough and 

whether or not there was data available that could 

allow you to look at this question of 100 CEDE without 

relying on, sort of, the regulatory status or to what 

extent Los Alamos may or may not have addressed 

the issue in terms of monitoring for exotics.

And this is something that we had Mr. Evaskovich, 

the petitioner, involved in. Los Alamos, I think, went 

through a fairly systematic review of all the various 

documents and records and comments that the 

petitioner had provided the Board and NIOSH over 

the years, since the beginning. And the Work Group 

had requested that NIOSH do a dispositioning of all 

those comments and issues. And that forms this 

Appendix A to the Report.

We have reviewed that. I personally looked through 

all of it and, other than the 835 issues or questions 

which we -- you know, is part of the broader 

discussion, we had one clarification issue, which we 

will be providing to NIOSH. But I think it was a pretty 

rigorous job and we will provide that comment to 

NIOSH as soon as we get a chance.

I will give you the NIOSH conclusion to its White 

Paper, as presented by LaVon at the last meeting. 

But the field monitoring contamination control 

program at Los Alamos, again, from their standpoint, 

was well established and formalized by this January 

1st, 1996 cutoff date to ensure that workers that 

might -- may exceed 100 millirem were, in fact, 

identified and controlled or monitored.

And, again, based on a review of the existing 

bioassay records, again, based on the primary 

radionuclides, they felt that it was unlikely that 

workers would have received intakes exceeding the 

100 millirem CEDE. And based on, again, looking at 

the program and routine monitoring and 

contamination control provisions, they didn't see any 

--
93

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry, Joe. Can you hold?

(Off the record comments while resolving telephonic 

interference) 

Mr. Katz: Sorry, Joe. Thank you.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Okay. Let me just finish up on the 

NIOSH conclusion.

And, based on the fact that the program was well 

established and you had the primary nuclides as the 

basis for the monitoring, again, I think the conclusion 

was there was no reason to believe that the intakes 

of exotic radionuclides for unmonitored workers 

would be any different than the primaries.

Okay. From our assessments, our conclusions, and I 

kind of alluded to this earlier, we still believe there's 

just not any substantiation that 100 millirem per year 

of CEDE bounds the unmonitored intakes of exotics. 

I meant his was the basis for the SEC for '72 through 

'95. We just don't see any substantiation that has 

changed, other than the fact that the regulatory rule 

was issued. There just isn't any evidence on that.

And the second thing is that we still -- you know the 

1999 self-assessment -- you know, normally, I'm 

skeptical about outside reviews. This one was a 

pretty detailed review. They actually -- this was 

something that Los Alamos HPs ran. They brought in 

some internal dosimetrists from some other sites that 

had similar issues with bioassay programs and they 

did an in-depth review.

Now, granted, it wasn't a -- you know, more than a 

few days but they were looking at themselves and I 

think, again, looked at the actual execution of the 

bioassay program, whether or not -- not just the 

standards but whether the standards were being 

implemented or not. And the real motivation is that 

there was a moratorium that DOE had put in place 

that said, basically, if you find it first, you know, we're 

not going to take an enforcement action against you.
94

So it was very much to their credit to, in fact, find 

issues and be able to come forward with those issues 

in that time frame; otherwise, face enforcement 

action later. So, again, this wasn't just Los Alamos. 

This was every single DOE site in the complex was 

being asked to take a look, see if you have issues 

with your bioassay programs and, if you do, selfreport. And that was happening in the '98/'99 time 

frame.

And that's the -- sort of the basis of our last 

conclusion, is that, you know, this whole question of 

a paradigm shift, I think -- I think we can answer that 

with DOE's conclusion that they had a major problem 

in about the '98 time frame. They were finding 

common issues of implementation of the bioassay 

program implementation at the various DOE sites, at 

least five major sites. And they decided, at that point, 

to have all the sites take a look and come back with 

any results of their review and that, after a certain 

grace period, they would come in and actually do a 

pretty rigorous enforcement review of this issue. So 

that's what was happening in the '98/'99 time frame.

And, with that, I think LaVon's going to talk about 

some actions.

Mr. Rutherford: All right. So I'm going to talk about 

our path forward. The main thing is we're going to 

respond to the 1999 self-assessment. We issued a 

White Paper that identifies the findings of the 

assessment, provides the background information for 

the findings and corrective actions taken by the site. 

And we'll talk about how it affects dose 

reconstruction.

We plan to have that by March of next year. I think

we've got all the information to do that. And we'll also 

draft a plan and schedule for addressing how we will 

reconstruct the mixed fission activation products and 

other exotics. And we expect to have a plan and 

schedule by March of next year.

Yeah. There you go. And that's it.
95

Questions?

Mr. Katz: Questions from Board Members, including 

Board Members on the line?

Member Anderson: No questions from me.

Mr. Katz: Are you back, Andy?

Member Anderson: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Josie?

Member Beach: I don't have a question but I --

Mr. Katz: Jim?

Member Lockey: I have a question. Joe, is --

Mr. Katz: Wait. Can you speak into the mic?

Member Lockey: This is Jim Lockey. I just want to --

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Just speak into the mic, not --

Member Lockey: Joe, is this -- is -- I know we 

shouldn't be worried about time but I am worried 

about time. Is this it, then? Is -- with NIOSH 

addresses these issues one way or the other --

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yeah. I think we're pretty much on the 

same page. There's two central questions. One

involves the implications of the '99 self-assessment.

Member Lockey: Right.

Mr. Fitzgerald: And the other is this older question of 

whether one can, in fact, bound the exotics. That is 

it.

Member Lockey: So no additional questions going 

forward other than these two?

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yes.

Member Lockey: Okay.
96

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. And I'd like to add that the 

thought process here is provide the plan and 

schedule to the Work Group and make sure the Work 

Group and SC&A are agreeing with that plan and 

schedule. And, hopefully, we don't get any more of 

the back and forths in the process. So --

And then I had mentioned to Joe on the side we may 

have some technical calls in between now and March. 

And I will make sure I contact Ted before anything 

like that's conducted.

Mr. Katz: Okay. It also occurs to me and it probably 

occurred to you before it would occur to me but you 

may want to work with the site when you're coming 

up with your plan with them realizing that this is 

urgent and maybe that can help you with your time 

line, to keep it as reasonable as it can be.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Our intentions are to -- if we 

identify additional data captures that are necessary 

in the process of developing our plan, we will get with 

the site to make a -- I'm sure we can work out a 

reasonable schedule that -- to get any additional 

information that we need.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. And I think Greg will be on his toes 

to help if he needs to.

Member Beach: Okay. I was just going to say moving 

forward, once the plans -- when you're finished with 

the plan, that will go over to SC&A and then we'll 

have a Work Group meeting or a Work Group call to 

--

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Definitely. I would think we 

would have a -- I would -- you know, I mean, this is 

obviously your call but I would think we would have 

one in March anyway to go over the 1999 -- our 

response to the 1999 self-assessment.

Member Beach: Yeah. I just didn't want to -- I want 

to give SC&A enough time to look at both of those 

before we meet but --
97

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Member Beach: -- depending on when it comes out 

in March, maybe end of March, first of April --

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Member Beach: -- so we have something. I don't 

want to just have a meeting and then have to wait 

for SC&A to come through. So that's --

Mr. Rutherford: Right.

Member Beach: -- you know, what my thinking was.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. And SC&A can add -- it'll be an 

opportunity, even though they'll have just received 

the report, to ask clarifying questions and so on that 

helps them with their review of the report. So --

Member Beach: Right. And then we also --

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Member Beach: I know we're talking about having 

things done at the end of February, because of the 

ongoing contract stuff. So I don't know how that'll 

progress.

Mr. Katz: Well, that'll be a new contract here and a 

new -- whole new contract at that point, assuming 

that that gets awarded right. It's all out of my hands 

at this point.

Member Beach: Yeah. I know. I know.

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Member Beach: Okay. Thanks.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Any other matters on this 

issue/matter, on this topic from Board Members or 

on the line? Anything else for the good of the -- no?

Do we have a motion to adjourn?
98

Adjourn

Member Beach: I make a motion we adjourn.

Mr. Katz: A second?

Member Lockey: I second it.

Mr. Katz: There we go. We're adjourned. Thank you 

everybody on the line. Thanks for sticking with us. I 

know it's hard. And here in the room and for all the 

staff work and so on.

(Whereupon, the meeting in the above-entitled 

matter was concluded at 1:55 p.m.)