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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY 

AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

WORK GROUP ON MOUND 

+ + + + + 

MONDAY, 

OCTOBER 27, 2008 

+ + + + + 

 The work group convened in the 

Frankfurt Board Room at the Cincinnati 

Airport Marriot, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:30 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding. 

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: 

 JOSIE BEACH, Chair 

 BRADLEY P. CLAWSON 

 ROBERT W. PRESLEY 

 PHILIP SCHOFIELD 

 PAUL L. ZIEMER 
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ALSO PRESENT: 

 TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official 

 LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH ORAU 

 ROBERT MORRIS, NIOSH ORAU 

 BRANT ULSH, NIOSH 

 DON STEWART, ORAU 

 JENNIFER HOFF, ORAU 

 KARIN JESSIN, ORAU 

 BRYCE RICH, ORAU 

 LEO FAUST, ORAU 

 GENE ROLLINS, ORAU 

 JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A 

 BOB ALVAREZ, SC&A 

 BOB BISTLINE, SC&A 

 RON BUCHANAN, SC&A 

 NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor 

 KAREN HATCH, Department of Energy 

 JEFF COACH, Department of Labor 

 DOUG BABCOCK, Office of Senator 

 Sherrod Brown 

 JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

 JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A 

 KATHY ROBERTSON-DEMERS, SC&A 

 LIZ BRACKETT, ORAU 

 EMILY HOWELL, Health and Human 

 Services 
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 (9:30 a.m.) 

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning. This is 

4 the Mound Working Group of the Advisory Board 

5 of Radiation Worker Health. Someone on the 

6 phone, just let us know you can year. 

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Philip 

8 Schofield. 

9 MR. KATZ: Oh, Phil, great. Hi. 

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: How are you 

11 doing? Good morning. 

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, we're just 

13 going to start now with introductions of the 

14 board members, if -- starting with Josie, the 

15 Chairperson. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: I'm Josie Beach, 

17 Mound Chair and no conflicts. 

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, 

19 board member, no conflict. 

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, 

21 board member, no conflicts. 

22 MEMBER PRESLEY: Robert Presley, 
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1 board member, no conflict. 

2 MR. KATZ: Okay. And are there 

3 any other board members on the phone? 

4 Okay, no problem there. Now, if 

5 we go around the room, first with the NIOSH 

6 ORAU team, please identify yourself and your 

7 conflicts. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, 

9 Director of OCAS, no conflict. 

10 MR. MORRIS: Robert Morris, Oak 

11 Ridge Associated University Team, no 

12 conflict. 

13 MR. ULSH: Brant Ulsh with NIOSH, 

14 no conflict. 

15 MR. STEWART: Don Stewart, ORAU, no 

16 conflict with Mound. 

17 MS. HOFF: Jennifer Hoff, ORAU 

18 Team, no conflict with Mound. 

19 MS. JESSIN: Karin Jessin ORAU 

20 Team, no conflict with Mound. 

21 MR. KATZ: And the NIOSH ORAU Team 

22 on the phone, please? 
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1 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, I have a 

2 conflict with Mound, all ORAU Team. 

3 MS. BRACKETT: Liz Brackett, ORAU 

4 Team. I've no conflicts. 

5 MR. FAUST: Leo Faust, ORAU Team, 

6 no conflict. 

7 MR. ROLLINS: Gene on the ORAU 

8 Team, no conflicts. 

9 MR. KATZ: That was Ms. Brackett 

10 if you couldn't hear the first one. Okay, 

11 now, SC&A on the telephone. 

12 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Joyce Lypstein, no 

13 conflict. 

14 MR. ALVAREZ: Bob Alvarez, no 

15 conflict. 

16 MR. BISTLINE: Bob Bistline, no 

17 conflict. 

18 MR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, no 

19 conflict. 

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. Now, other 

21 federal employees starting in the room, 

22 please. 
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1 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS, no 

2 conflict. 

3 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH 

4 contractor, no conflict. 

5 MR. KATZ: And on the telephone? 

6 MS. HATCH: This is Karen Hatch 

7 with the Office of Legacy Management, 

8 Department of Energy, Morgantown, West 

9 Virginia. 

10 MR. COACH: Jeff Coach with Labor. 

11 MS. AL-NABUSI: Isaf Al-Nabusi, 

12 CDOE. 

13 MR. BABCOCK: Doug Babcock with 

14 Senator Sherrod Brown. 

15 MR. KATZ: Any other congressional 

16 staff? Okay. Then members of the public, 

17 please, if you would like to identify 

18 yourself, beginning with petitioners. 

19 Okay. And we left off SC&A people 

20 in the room, sorry. 

21 MR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 

22 conflict. 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And Joe 

2 Fitzgerald, SC&A, no conflict. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMURS: Kathy 

4 Robertson-Demers, conflicted. 

5 MR. KATZ: Okay. That's 

6 everybody. Then just a piece of advice about 

7 phone etiquette. Please, when you're not 

8 speaking, if you're on the phone, please use 

9 *6, or your mute button, so it doesn't 

10 interrupt the discussion in here. Much 

11 thanks. And now, please don't put the call 

12 on hold. Anybody, if you need to discontinue 

13 for a while, please disconnect and call back 

14 in. Much thanks. And it's all yours, Josie.

15 

16 CHAIR BEACH: All right. Thank 

17 you. Has everybody got the reports that were 

18 sent out starting with the very first one, 

19 the Issue 9, ceramic Pu-238? That is where 

20 we are going to start this morning. And I'm 

21 going to turn it over to SC&A. 

22 MR. KATZ: Okay. 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, thank you, 

2 Josie. I'm going to start it and we have all 

3 the internal dosimetrists both in the room, 

4 and from -- so, I won't be long on this. But 

5 just a little background. 

6 You know, originally SC&A had 

7 raised a question about the solubility of 

8 high fired plutonium-238 oxide at Mound, as 

9 part of our site profile review. I think 

10 it's been acknowledged as something that's 

11 been understood as being present at Mound. 

12 But we felt that the experience with 

13 analyzing the behavior of this material at 

14 other sites in particular, we have done a 

15 review at Los Alamos and certainly, that 

16 figured in that review as well, that this was 

17 an implication that needed to be addressed as 

18 part of the SEC. 

19 And we didn't find that to be the 

20 case as far as having addressed in either the 

21 site profile, from the standpoint of looking 

22 at the implications or in the evaluation 
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1 report. So, as part of our matrix review, we 

2 highlighted the fact that high-fired 

3 Plutonium-238 oxide ceramitized, ceramitized, 

4 I think is another way to put it, does exist 

5 at Mound, and pointed to some of the 

6 analogous studies that have been done in 

7 particular in study that was done at Los 

8 Alamos, involving eight individuals exposed 

9 in an event there, as illustrative of the 

10 implications of having high-fired 238 oxide 

11 with the low solubility and the kind of 

12 behavior you might get, and the complications 

13 that presents to dose reconstruction. Now, 

14 in this case, we're not making any judgment, 

15 or prejudgment as to whether it can be dose16 reconstructed, we're just saying that 

17 certainly, that behavior would need to be 

18 appropriately modeled. And it would need to 

19 be demonstrated that you could, in fact, with 

20 the right parameters, come up with 

21 sufficiently accurate values for those dose 

22 reconstructions. 
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1 So, in any case, we did receive a 

2 white paper in response to that initial flag, 

3 if you were, from NIOSH back in, I guess it 

4 was July, or maybe before that, even, 

5 actually. And what was presented in that 

6 white paper was the issue addressed from the 

7 standpoint of demonstrating, at least with 

8 the data that was available, that their 

9 interpretation since the NIOSH ORAU Team's 

10 interpretation of that data was that the 

11 phenomenon that was observed in the Los 

12 Alamos cases, did not seem to be present 

13 based on the data that we looked at from 

14 Mound. 

15 And that's a very, very short 

16 summary of what was a pretty detailed paper. 

17 So, just that was kind of the bottom line 

18 that we took from there. In our analysis, we 

19 wanted to go back and look at the, I think it 

20 was 896 -- the urine data -- case data, that 

21 was given us by NIOSH. And using that data, 

22 do some sampling and try to determine if we 
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1 could in fact, as NIOSH interpreted, come up 

2 with the same interpretation that, no, you 

3 would not see the same kind of phenomenon. 

4 The phenomenon I'm talking about 

5 is a lag in terms of seeing the plutonium in 

6 the urine, because of it being held up in the 

7 body because of the insolubility. And long 

8 story short, we'll get into more detail in 

9 the white paper. We found it to be at the 

10 very least ambiguous, as far as what the data 

11 would suggest. 

12 I mean, in some cases, we -- in 

13 terms of the samplings that we took, found 

14 situations where we could see the same 

15 curves, the same phenomena being played out 

16 that you would expect if you had highly 

17 insoluble plutonium P-238 oxide. And so, 

18 what we had come up with in terms of that 

19 review, is that we don't believe we can rule 

20 it out. And we think there's enough evidence 

21 that that phenomenon can been seen when in a 

22 number of the urine plots. That we believe 
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1 it needs to be demonstrated more. 

2 Again, not coming to a bottom line 

3 yet, but we feel that enough cases for 

4 demonstrating further, that you don't have 

5 the high-fired 238 oxide with the 

6 insolubility that we've seen at other sites. 

7 Based on this evidence as well, there's some 

8 bench-scaled solubility studies. 

9 And this was something that the 

10 work group had asked us to look at, which is 

11 going back and digging up some of the -- we 

12 did some bench solubility and particle size 

13 investigations at Mound. And those studies 

14 clearly showed that a high fraction in some 

15 cases, leaked Pu-238 oxide, was in fact 

16 insoluble, class YY or SS, whatever 

17 terminology. 

18 We're not using the Type J as 

19 you'll see in the white paper, as a 

20 nomenclature because again, we're not sure if 

21 the behavior of this material at Mound is 

22 identical with the behavior at Los Alamos. I 
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1 mean, it may be, but at this point, we don't 

2 have enough evidence to suggest that. So, 

3 we're kind of using, you'll see terminology, 

4 we're using a hot -- you know a -- let's see 

5 -- 

6 MR. ULSH: Type K. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Type K, or I 

8 think, we also used nonstandard solubility 

9 type, something that denotes that, you know, 

10 we're not sure exactly what these curves look 

11 like, but certainly they exhibit the same 

12 characteristics as a so-called Type J that 

13 was observed at Los Alamos. 

14 So, I think in general, based on 

15 the data points that were provided to us, 

16 we've taken this a little further, have 

17 looked at it, sampled it, but feel we're not 

18 convinced yet that you can't rule out this 

19 phenomena. And coupled with the literature 

20 and the events that we evaluated, and there 

21 was a couple of events for which there is 

22 data, we feel there's a fair amount of 
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1 evidence that tilts the other way. 

2 So, that's kind of where we came 

3 out with this. And at the very end of the 

4 piece, not wanting to just present a 

5 hypothesis on a problem, but go a little 

6 further and say, well, how would you perhaps, 

7 this is for the worker's benefit, how would 

8 you try to settle this out, being, you know, 

9 we looked at the same data, come up with a 

10 different conclusion. How could one settle 

11 this out? 

12 We identified, I think, seven 

13 validation points to say, you know, if one 

14 could walk through these validation steps, we 

15 believe it would clarify where this comes 

16 out, let the chips fall where they may. And 

17 the other thing I would say, just to qualify 

18 what we reviewed, these data points were not 

19 easily interpretable. I mean, you know, the 

20 scale that we were looking at, was not 

21 logarithmic. So, the first 100 days, which 

22 is kind of crucial, we're looking at the lag, 
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1 it was really hard to distinguish given the 

2 data points. 

3 So, we did the best we could. But 

4 I think what it would benefit from, perhaps, 

5 the kind of analysis that would focus in on 

6 that critical time period following what 

7 would be the exposure, the intake, and to 

8 look at whether or not you're seeing the kind 

9 of phenomena that suggests insolubility. 

10 So, again, we sampled the cases, 

11 looked at the curves, found it either 

12 ambiguous, or in some cases suggestive of 

13 this insolubility class we're talking about. 

14 But we also found cases that were suggestive 

15 of Type S NEP. So, I mean, I think it's a 

16 bit of a mixed bag. That's kind of where 

17 we're left at this point. 

18 I would invite Kathy or Joyce or 

19 Bob Bistline, our internal dosimetry, sort 

20 of, expert group, to chime in each one. Is 

21 there anything I left out, or anything you 

22 want to add? 
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1 MR. KATZ: Just, before you do 

2 that, just let the record recognize Dr. 

3 Ziemer, who is an alternate member of the 

4 work group, has joined us as well. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Joyce, Bob, or 

6 Kathy, anything in terms of summarizing the 

7 white paper? I guess that was a reasonable 

8 summary. 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, yes, 

10 Joe did a pretty good job. But one of the 

11 difficulties that I had when looking at the 

12 plots, was that the data was actually gross 

13 alpha, and not plutonium-238. And that may 

14 explain some of the discrepancy between what 

15 we see at Los Alamos and what is being seen 

16 at Mound. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And we're still, 

18 just to add a little bit more to that, 

19 looking at the radio-chemistry of gross alpha 

20 in sort of another venue on the issue of 

21 weapon. But this comes up in a number of 

22 places, and we, you know, this question of 
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1 whether one can discriminate through gross 

2 alpha over that time period, is a technical 

3 question that we want to unpack a bit more. 

4 And we're preparing yet another white paper, 

5 which we're hoping to have in your hands 

6 probably in a few weeks. 

7 So, these are connected, and this 

8 is another implication of the connection to 

9 this paper issue as well. It may add to some 

10 of the discrepancies, but I don't think it is 

11 the dominant issue. I think we still are 

12 looking at these curves and saying that we're 

13 seeing some evidence that there's 

14 insolubility at least from the data we looked 

15 at. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Joe, you said the 

17 white paper, that's on Issue 11, correct, 

18 that you're -- 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Right. 

20 CHAIR BEACH: -- you were just 

21 referring to? Thank you. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And we reference 
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1 that in some of the other issues that we're 

2 going to talk about today. 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Right. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: But that's not 

5 quite done. And we hope to get that to you 

6 as soon as possible. 

7 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Joe, this is Joyce 

8 Lypstein. I think you've summarized very 

9 well everything that is put actually on the 

10 preliminary response white paper. And I 

11 think what is very important is, and we've 

12 agreed, key questions to our problem, is if 

13 NIOSH is capable of recognizing exposures to 

14 this special case, such as Plutonium-238 

15 exposure with this solubility of Plutonium16 238 exposure. 

17 From their white paper, they did 

18 not recognize the presence of Plutonium-238. 

19 And we are dealing with -- it's very 

20 difficult to recognize it. But we have some 

21 evidence that there was exposures to both 

22 special solubility kind. So we come out with 
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1 something like that, we have pushed it 

2 through expected NIOSH risk analysis that 

3 weights exposure to this special Plutonium4 238. 

5 And second, how are they going to 

6 recognize both the exposure cases? Because 

7 even if it's possible to build a model for 

8 this special solubility type of Plutonium9 238, it has to be a model that is better for 

10 use for mild exposures. Weak, mild, is 

11 different and then the desirable states from 

12 the evidence was the publisher, from Sheehan 

13 and Woods, describing, telling the incident. 

14 Benefitted to this, benefitted to find it in 

15 Mound. The model doesn't fit exactly like 

16 the way Mound, Los Alamos that incident. 

17 And this might be another 

18 incident. This special solubility type of 

19 plutonium would behave differently. So, 

20 we'd have different times from when the 

21 mistake happened, and one that you can see it 

22 on your NIOSH expression. So, after 
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1 recognizing who were the people that were 

2 exposed to this special type of plutonium, 

3 then NIOSH has perceived -- it can be built, 

4 a Mound model for this special solubility 

5 type of Plutonium-238. 

6 So, first NIOSH tests must state 

7 that they had the ability to see an update, 

8 and which workers were tagged with the model 

9 applied, and which model to apply to the 

10 different kinds of incidents that might have 

11 happened at Mound. But it's not a simple 

12 case. It's a very difficult case. And it 

13 came up just, you know, applying for Mound 

14 and applying the model from Los Alamos to 

15 Mound and without knowing who were the people 

16 that were exposed, and how this dosage 

17 behavior, this special solubility to type, 

18 and at Mound. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think -- 

20 this is Joe again. I think Joyce is pointing 

21 out there was a comment that -- or, actually 

22 it was addressed in the NIOSH ORAU white 
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1 paper, where it was indicated that if one 

2 were to find incidences of low solubility, 

3 high-fired Pu, you could in fact apply the 

4 Type J, Los Alamos model as an upper bound 

5 for those exposures. 

6 I think one thing that we point 

7 out in this white paper of ours is that that 

8 may be fraught with some problems in the 

9 sense that there's other issues that come up 

10 in terms of the actual compounds that were 

11 being used at Mound, and that's one reason 

12 more to use the Type J as the handle for what 

13 we're seeing at Mound that may be different. 

14 That's one aspect of it. 

15 And the other thing I think Joyce 

16 is pointing out is, sort of going downstream 

17 a little further than I did, but if one were 

18 to acknowledge that the phenomenon does 

19 exist, then there's a need to model it. And 

20 I think one thing we pointed early on in this 

21 process is that we do not presume or prejudge 

22 that a model could not be developed. In 
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1 fact, we think it's -- as it has been done at 

2 other sites, and as it was done at Rocky 

3 Flats, a model can be constructed. 

4 But I think maybe the first step 

5 is to validate, you know, since we have 

6 different conclusions on the same data, that, 

7 you know, whether the work group and NIOSH 

8 would agree that you were seeing some 

9 evidence of this and then validate what 

10 exactly are we seeing. And then maybe go 

11 beyond that to, can one bound this, or model 

12 this and exactly what would that model look 

13 like if all the implications that Joyce is 

14 raising would be pertinent to that? 

15 So, there is a path on this. I 

16 mean it's, to borrow John's expressions, I 

17 think it's tractable. But you know, again, I 

18 think we're at the stage now where we both 

19 have taken a good look at the data, and we 

20 have you know, different conclusions. But I 

21 think there still is a path where we can 

22 actually validate and converge on something. 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: I do have a 

2 question, Joe. On the matrix, the updated 

3 matrix, under Issue 9, under Other Comments, 

4 the last comment was, particle size is 

5 important to the assessment of these 

6 radionuclides since you can get different 

7 doses for different particle sizes. Can you 

8 explain that just a little bit? I mean, I 

9 understand the difference in particle sizes, 

10 but -- 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think it 

12 just gets to the inhalation is a default 5 

13 micron, I believe, that's used. It's a 

14 question of characterizing whether you're 

15 dealing with something different than that 

16 default that -- in these situations. And 

17 where this comes most important, is with the 

18 -- what the heck it was called -- the plasma 

19 torch -- 

20 MR. STEWART: Microspheres. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: -- of 

22 microspheres. I think there's certainly not 
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1 history there where you're dealing with very, 

2 very small particles, fume-size particles 

3 which would present a different respiratory 

4 issue. So, there is varying particle sizes, 

5 we think, in that -- in the operational work 

6 place. 

7 But I think that's an issue, I 

8 think Joyce was kind of hinging on that. 

9 When you get to, okay, you agree one, high10 fired exists, two, that it exhibits 

11 properties that would suggest heightened 

12 insolubility, then if there's agreement on 

13 those two things, then the next thing would 

14 be okay, how do we actually model this, bound 

15 it, or whatever. And then, I think particle 

16 size becomes more of its parameters. Because 

17 I think that effects, you know, the model, or 

18 the -- whatever approach you would take. 

19 And I think for the plasma you 

20 know, plasma torch, that would be a different 

21 parameter than say, the different part of the 

22 operating line. And there's been some 
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1 studies. And the insolubility study it 

2 looked at the bench -- it looked at both the 

3 solubility of Pu-238 as well as well as 

4 particle sizing. So, there's certainly some 

5 data. 

6 Now, whether it's good operational 

7 data, we haven't gone quite that far. We're 

8 still a little up stream right now. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks. Ulsh, did 

10 you want to? 

11 MR. ULSH: I'll start out -- this 

12 is Brant Ulsh. I'll start out and just kind 

13 of give a big picture of this issue as I 

14 understand it. And then perhaps let Liz 

15 Brackett who is on the phone, get into some 

16 of the more -- some of the details. Liz has 

17 much more expertise in internal dosimetry 

18 than I do. 

19 Just briefly, in terms of 

20 development of this issue, as Joe stated, 

21 SC&A raised this concern, and we took a look 

22 at it and issued a report in advance of the 
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1 previous Working Group meeting back 

2 -- I don't even know when it was, July? 

3 CHAIR BEACH: July 14th. 

4 MR. ULSH: And SC&A issued their 

5 response to that report a couple of weeks 

6 ago. We have had a little bit of time to 

7 take a look at SC&A's report. We were not 

8 able to finish up a response to that report. 

9 We certainly will by the time of the Working 

10 Group meeting. But perhaps I can cover some 

11 of the main points of what our response is 

12 likely to be. 

13 The reason this issue was raised, 

14 I think, and I'll let Joe jump in if I 

15 mischaracterize it, but one situation where 

16 this type of material was recognized is known 

17 as the Wing 9 incident at Los Alamos. That 

18 incident involved a situation where, inside 

19 an inert environment, inside of a -- I don't 

20 want to call it a glove box, because it's 

21 not. It was an isolated chamber. 

22 They were cutting open an RTG, a 
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1 radio isotopic thermal electric generator. 

2 Basically, that is a power source used for 

3 space probes. And one of Mound's main 

4 missions was to produce Plutonium-238 power 

5 sources for the space program. 

6 So, one of these power sources was 

7 being cut open, disassembled inside of an 

8 inert environment at Los Alamos. A couple of 

9 situations led to exposure of personnel of 

10 this material. Number one, they were cutting 

11 it open with a torch after the power source 

12 had been subjected to severe vibration 

13 testing. 

14 And what that vibration testing 

15 did, was it ground a lot of the plates, the 

16 ceramic plates together, and generated 

17 respirable-sized particles of this material. 

18 And also, it was fairly fresh material. So -

19 - and that's important for a couple of 

20 reasons that if I remember, I'll get into a 

21 little bit later. 

22 The thing that led to the 
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1 exposure, though, was an accident on the 

2 glove ports to this chamber. The actual 

3 cutting was done inside the chamber and there 

4 were some glove ports, and there was a leak. 

5 And a couple of other events, positive 

6 pressurization inside the chamber, led to 

7 this material being ejected into the 

8 environment where workers were present, and 

9 so they inhaled this material. 

10 And it was an unusual type of 

11 Plutonium exposure in that it was a non12 monotonic excretion curve. So what that 

13 means is, immediately after the incident, you 

14 didn't see any Plutonium in the urine. Over 

15 time, the excretion peaked, and then 

16 declined. And that's pretty unusual. 

17 And the point that I think that we 

18 want to make, is that this is a very unusual 

19 exposure scenario. It's not common. It's 

20 not even typical at other places like Mound, 

21 for instance. Again, the vibration testing 

22 generated the respirable particles. And 
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1 there was certainly vibration testing done at 

2 Mound. I mean, that is certainly true. 

3 But the situation where this thing 

4 was being destructively analyzed, in other 

5 words, cut open, and workers were being 

6 exposed to this material, is not typical at 

7 Mound. So, we have looked at the 896, I 

8 think, cases, as Joe mentioned. And we did 

9 not see evidence of the type, solubility 

10 class, solubility behavior that was observed 

11 at LANL, in the Wing 9 incident. 

12 Now, SC&A has referenced a paper 

13 by Woods and Sheehan. And we have looked at 

14 that too. And the data in that paper also 

15 does not look like the type of material, the 

16 type of solubility behavior that you saw at 

17 Los Alamos. 

18 There is, however, evidence in 

19 that paper of non-monotonic excretion. In 

20 other words, a slight increase followed by a 

21 decrease, but it is not the same as was 

22 observed at LANL. And Liz, you fact-check me 
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1 here, but our other internal dosimetrist, Tom 

2 LaBone, has looked at the particular cases 

3 observed in that paper, and they're very well 

4 modeled by standard ICRP models that we use. 

5 So, I think that we're okay there. 

6 I do think that it would -- this 

7 issue would certainly benefit from further 

8 analysis in terms of, we'll be issuing the 

9 response to SC&A's report. We don't see 

10 evidence of the Type J. That's what the LANL 

11 material has been called. We still don't see 

12 evidence of that at Mound. 

13 We do see this kind of non14 monotonic behavior in the Woods' paper, 

15 certainly. But we don't think that it 

16 presents the same kind of a challenge that 

17 the LANL material would present. Liz, would 

18 you like to take it from there? 

19 MS. BRACKETT: Yes. I would just 

20 like to make one minor correction. It's not 

21 necessarily accurate that we think we can 

22 just use the standard type M and S. It's 
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1 just the paper was written specifically to 

2 address Type J. And that's what we feel was 

3 not present at Mound. 

4 What SC&A has called Type K, which 

5 I think we need to change that, because we've 

6 already used Type K for uranium aluminide 

7 modeling. But -- 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: L? 

9 MR. ULSH: We'll just take it -- 

10 (Laughter.) 

11 MS. BRACKETT: We need to keep a 

12 matrix of what we're calling these types. 

13 But, we do agree that it does not behave as 

14 the normal -- the standard type. But it 

15 looks like Type K's, the initial dissolution 

16 rate, where J is about 1,000 days for that 

17 base locate initially, this other type, that 

18 was seen at Mound is about 100 days before it 

19 peaks. And so we do feel that that is not 

20 that difficult to model. And it would 

21 certainly be detected sooner than the 

22 material that was seen at Los Alamos. 
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1 And so we do feel that it can be 

2 modeled adequately, maybe you know, with some 

3 changes to the model. But not with the 

4 difficulty that the Type J presents. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Liz, this is Joe. 

6 Does that present those confounding problems 

7 on a practical level in terms of monitoring 

8 the workplace by -- you know, again, I don't 

9 know what bioassay frequency would have been 

10 done for Pu, but monthly is what sticks in 

11 mind. Is that right? 

12 MS. BRACKETT: It's probably 

13 quarterly or annually. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Quarterly or 

15 annually. And you know, I'm wondering if 

16 there's any implications for you know, 

17 picking up what I would call events or 

18 instances, sort of acute exposure versus 

19 chronic. That's usually a bugaboo, if you 

20 have some of these situations. 

21 MS. BRACKETT: Well, personally, I 

22 don't think that it would present a problem 
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1 because you're monitoring, routine 

2 monitoring, is likely to be longer than when 

3 you do the peak. We could look at the 

4 variation it would present between, you know, 

5 assuming the standard midpoint for an acute 

6 intake, then look at doing it within the time 

7 between samples to see how much of a 

8 difference that makes for this particular 

9 type. 

10 Although, for most cases, we 

11 assume a chronic intake. You know, if there 

12 are no clear peaks in the data, and no 

13 identified incident, and particularly for 

14 people whose results are less than the 

15 detection limit, we just assume a chronic 

16 exposure. And there's no reason to assume 

17 anything different for these people. You 

18 know, because we're just looking at general 

19 intakes on that. 

20 It's just, you know, that's the 

21 default. If we don't know anything else, 

22 then we go with chronic. Because it can 
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1 approximate several acute intakes. So, I 

2 don't think this presents a problem. 

3 Although, we can certainly look at that. 

4 I believe that Tom might have done 

5 some calculations for that already. 

6 Unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it to 

7 the call today. But I think that he started 

8 looking at that already. 

9 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Liz, let me 

10 understand. So, you were recognizing that 

11 there was exposure to this type, solubility 

12 Type Plutonium-238 at Mound and that the 

13 model currently can be -- you can model it, 

14 and it's a different model than the Type J 

15 that was presented for Los Alamos. Right? 

16 And that, not only this accident, 

17 what described at Sheehan, but there might be 

18 other cases at Mound that had the same 

19 behavior. And you have to look at the 

20 urinary excretions and see what's the best 

21 model for Mound. Is that it? 

22 MS. BRACKETT: Yes, that's correct. 
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1 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. So, I think 

2 we are on the same pages. I think what SC&A 

3 would like NIOSH to show is how they are 

4 going to recognize which people were exposed 

5 to this special plutonium solubility type and 

6 how it's going to be modeled, and to who it 

7 is going to be applied, if it's possible to 

8 recognize it. 

9 MS. BRACKETT: Well, at this 

10 point, initial thought on that, I think that 

11 in many cases, since a lot of pre-trial 

12 progress on the detection limit, for many 

13 people, we would, at least for those cases, 

14 propose that, given no other information, 

15 that this would just be another model that we 

16 would try for the person to see if it was -- 

17 if it resulted in a larger dose than M and S. 

18 And so, it would just be another, another 

19 type that we would try when evaluating a 

20 case. 

21 Certainly, if we had more data, 

22 then we could try to do an evaluation of what 
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1 it possibly was. But I think for many cases, 

2 it would be just another option for the dose 

3 reconstructor to try. 

4 MS. LIPSZTEIN: And do you think 

5 if there was an different kind of incident, 

6 you could have another model, could have 

7 several models and probably would have to 

8 have a bounding model? 

9 MS. BRACKETT: Well, do you mean 

10 incidents where we have bioassay data, or -- 

11 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, where you 

12 have bioassay data and you didn't recognize 

13 at first that it was exposure to this special 

14 solubility type, but now you see that it 

15 might -- that might have been exposure like 

16 that? 

17 MS. BECKETT: Yes. Well, in such 

18 a case, we could use the data for the 

19 individual to look at it. But -- is that 

20 what you mean? 

21 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. Because 

22 within, you know, I'm worried about this 
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1 first -- okay. I understand that you would 

2 look again at everybody, at every person, and 

3 look at their possibility of exposure to this 

4 special kind. And then see which has been 

5 most great, and safest model; Type M, Type S, 

6 or this special solubility K1, let's say. 

7 But the problem is that, not for 

8 every case, K1 would be applied, it stems 

9 from the incident. 

10 MS. BECKETT: Right. If there -- 

11 if the individual had enough data, that would 

12 take -- make such determination, then 

13 certainly, we would do so. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think in 

15 general, I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm 

16 wrong Brant, it sounds like Liz, what you're 

17 saying, is you've moved to considering this 

18 model, whatever letter you're going to assign 

19 it, which has this -- which acknowledges it's 

20 nonmonotonic behavior, that may involve 100-

21 day lag, rather than a sort of 1,000-day lag 

22 that we had with the Los Alamos Type J. 
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1 And you're going to look at, you 

2 know, how that plays with the data that we 

3 have, what are the implications. And I think 

4 what Joyce is saying, there seems to be 

5 implications of, where you know you have 

6 different classes, you might have high-fired 

7 that would presumably exhibit this. 

8 I assume you would assign this to 

9 all high-fired, or not? I don't know if 

10 you've made that review or not. Have you? 

11 Or, is that something that's still in the 

12 air. 

13 MR. ULSH: I think we probably 

14 haven't made that review just yet. Certainly 

15 what you said earlier about the plutonium 

16 microsphere program, obviously that's the 

17 type of a process where you might see that 

18 kind of a thing. But I come back to once we 

19 get to a point of agreement, where a model 

20 has been proposed, and everyone buys off on 

21 it, then the question of application of that 

22 model is no longer -- it's not an SEC issue. 
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1 It is a TBD issue. 

2 At bottom line, I mean, if -- and 

3 I'm, please understand, I'm not proposing 

4 this, but it could be applied to everyone on 

5 site. It's a question of an application. 

6 It's not a question of can it be done. That 

7 is a TBD issue. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, this is a 

9 good point. I think we raised this early on 

10 with respect to the modeling and concept. 

11 Remember that whole -- we kind of had that 

12 early on as an issue, which meant that -- and 

13 I think we said this from the get-go. That 

14 we felt that conceptually a model could be 

15 arrived at. And I remember you sort of 

16 jumped in, well, it's all kind of, the SEC 

17 issue is over. 

18 Well, no, actually, we actually 

19 felt that you had to demonstrate that on a 

20 realistic or practical level, you can build 

21 parameters, and you know, you can distinguish 

22 who was exposed, and the things I think Joyce 
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1 had mentioned. You know, be able to feed the 

2 model, such that you could come up with dose 

3 reconstructions. And I guess, maybe that's a 

4 more generic question. 

5 But you know, if one can come up 

6 with a model, is that the end of the road? 

7 Or is, does one have to demonstrate the model 

8 can be applied? If it can't be applied, 

9 because you don't -- you can't, say, figure 

10 out who's actually subject to that model, 

11 then that kind of defeats the purpose of the 

12 model. 

13 So, I guess from our standpoint, 

14 it's yes, one needs to be able to come up 

15 with a model. But demonstrating that it can 

16 be used, and with sufficient accuracy, seems 

17 to be the other test under the SEC that, you 

18 know, if it can't be used, or you don't have 

19 the parameters that would enable you to use 

20 it, then I think that would fall short in 

21 being an implementable model. 

22 MR. ULSH: Well, I -- 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: That's kind of 

2 where I think what we're coming from. 

3 MR. ULSH: Yes. We might be using 

4 different terminology, talking about -- 

5 passed each other a little bit. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Maybe. 

7 MR. ULSH: When I say that we 

8 reach a point where everyone agrees that the 

9 model can be developed, a model has been 

10 developed, and we've shown that it bounds the 

11 types of behavior that you see at Mound, at 

12 that point, then the SEC argument is over. 

13 CHAIR BEACH: You still have to 

14 connect the workers to that model. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. That's 

16 what he -- 

17 CHAIR BEACH: And I'm wondering 

18 how that's going to happen. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: You use the model 

20 to demonstrate -- to take a look at maybe 

21 these 896 cases, or a subset of them, and 

22 show that, with the models that are 
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1 available, including Type K1, or 

2 L -- 

3 CHAIR BEACH: K, L -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: -- or whatever 

5 we're going to call it, and the standard ICRP 

6 models, one of those models adequately bounds 

7 those exposures. And perhaps, I mean, I 

8 don't know, this is down the road, when we 

9 look at you know, what kinds of processes 

10 would generate this possibility of exposure 

11 to this material, what time frames, that kind 

12 of thing, that those kinds of things are TBD 

13 questions. 

14 Like I said, at bottom, if we get 

15 to a point where we say, at worst, we could 

16 apply this to everybody on site. Now, I 

17 don't think that we would do that. Because 

18 number 1, it's not going to be claimant19 favorable in all situations. But if we get 

20 to a point where we say, at worst, that's as 

21 big a circle as it could be. 

22 Now, maybe we can narrow that 
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1 circle. Maybe we can say, people who were 

2 monitoring Plutonium-238, or during a 

3 specific time period, or with these cancers 

4 and these specific organs, it's possible that 

5 that circle could be drawn tighter. 

6 But once you find a point where 

7 you've demonstrated that this model in 

8 addition to the others, bounds the types of 

9 behavior that you see at Mound, we're done 

10 from an SEC perspective. Of course, all 

11 those other issues, when you would apply 

12 this, those are important issues. And 

13 they're appropriately handled under the 

14 context of the TBD issue, at least, that's 

15 our position. It's for the Working Group to 

16 decide that, though. 

17 MR. MAURO: Can I throw a -- from 

18 a precedent point of view, this is not unlike 

19 the situation we encountered in the past when 

20 we have a uranium exposure, and we have to 

21 make -- well, are we talking about Type M or 

22 Type S. 
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1 And very often, NIOSH would say, 

2 well, we're going to use the one that gives 

3 the limiting dose. And the reason now, 

4 that's certainly claimant-favorable. But 

5 there's one little aspect to it that I think 

6 is important to acknowledge. Is that there's 

7 also this issue I keep running across, is a 

8 plausibility. 

9 That is, the SEC requirements also 

10 say, not only be claimant-favorable, but you 

11 need to be plausible. And the reason -- 

12 MR. MORRIS: And they are a member 

13 of that cohort. 

14 MR. MAURO: In other words -- 

15 MR. MORRIS: -- or any member of 

16 the plausible for any member. 

17 MR. MAURO: Right. So, for 

18 example, when we were working with Chapman 

19 Valve, there was some uncertainty regarding 

20 whether we're dealing with S, or M or some 

21 kind of mixture. And it became plausible 

22 that any one of the exposures these people 
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1 experienced is tough to tell. And it's not 

2 out of the question, that what may be the 

3 right way to deal with this is, when S is 

4 limiting, that's what we'll use. When M is 

5 limiting, that's what we'll use. 

6 And it's certainly claimant7 favorable and plausible. Because the nature 

8 of the material was such that you could not -

9 - you -- it was not -- it was plausible that 

10 it could be either one of them. So, in that 

11 way, it almost, fit the definition of 

12 plausible. 

13 Now, what they're doing is now 

14 you're moving into this realm, and in this 

15 realm we're saying, well they have different 

16 names for it. Now, we're going to call it a 

17 Type S, versus this other type. To me, it's 

18 the same thing. But it's a new one because 

19 ICRP doesn't really, maybe, talk too much 

20 about it. But -- and you've come up with a 

21 solution. Okay, let's agree that there are 

22 certain biokinetics that we observe that seem 
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1 to be, don't fit the nice little clean boxes 

2 that ICRP creates for us all. 

3 And we got a new box here, and we 

4 want to give it a name. And also, we all 

5 agree, that given the data that we do have, 

6 sitting down, we can probably construct a 

7 biokinetic treatment of this problem to model 

8 that situation when we encounter it, for that 

9 person. So therefore, unless we all walk 

10 away and we agree, yes, we can do that 

11 person. We've got enough data, and it 

12 certainly has this lag, and we'll come up 

13 with a model for that person. Okay. 

14 Now, here's where I'm headed. 

15 Where I'm headed now, is good, I think we've 

16 got that locked. So now we have a coworker 

17 model problem. The problem is, well, we have 

18 people out there who are below the limits of 

19 detection. We don't know quite for sure what 

20 circumstances under which they might have 

21 been exposed to the plutonium, and we're 

22 confronted with the dilemma of whether we 
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1 treat that person. Whether we -- you know, 

2 let's say we have limited measurements, or no 

3 measurements above the detection level. But 

4 we do want to assign some missed dose to that 

5 person. 

6 And now what I'm hearing across 

7 the table is, a good solution is, well, use 

8 the one that's limiting. And that's very 

9 much analogous to what was done in other 

10 circumstances. Now, this is where the 

11 plausibility issue comes in. And this is how 

12 I see it. 

13 If it's plausible that the nature 

14 of the material that was being handled across 

15 the board at this facility was such that it's 

16 an unusual material, and it's possible that 

17 many of the workers might have been exposed 

18 to this unusual material, we're not sure. So 

19 therefore, it's plausible that everyone might 

20 have gotten that. It goes back to the 

21 Chapman Valve again. We really don't know 

22 because of the nature of the operation, the 
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1 nature of the material, all of a sudden -- 

2 the argument I'm making is that, yes., if it 

3 seems that it's plausible that that scenario 

4 could in fact be the case at this facility, 

5 then you could say, it becomes universal. We 

6 will always pick the one that's limiting. 

7 But, if it turns out that you 

8 can't really say that, you say, well, no. 

9 It's not like that. There's only a certain 

10 class of workers that we believe were exposed 

11 to this -- had this unusual pattern. And the 

12 other classes of workers clearly were not. 

13 Then we're in the SEC realm, in my opinion, 

14 where we're going to have to parse the two. 

15 We're going to have to be able to 

16 say, each time you have a person that's on 

17 the table, where you don't have clear and 

18 unambiguous data, where by you can do dose 

19 reconstruction either way, but you're saying, 

20 we have to make a choice. What are we going 

21 to assign to this person, which box are we 

22 going to put it in? What I'm saying is, that 
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1 automatically assigning into the limiting 

2 box, will work if it's plausible that he 

3 might belong in that box. 

4 But if the nature of his work, you 

5 know, if it turns out the nature of the work 

6 is such that no, no, no, you should be able 

7 to make that distinction. The nature of the 

8 work was different enough, that you can say, 

9 these people are going to be Type M, and 

10 these people are going to be Type S, to 

11 harken back to other situations where you did 

12 make -- where you are sort of like forced to 

13 make that distinction. 

14 I guess, if you see where I'm 

15 going, it almost is a question that goes to 

16 the Working Group and the Board, about 

17 plausibility. We're going to run into this 

18 time and time again on future -- and now, the 

19 question really becomes, what I'm hearing, is 

20 you folks have proposed, given that the signs 

21 could be dealt with, we'll come up with a 

22 biokinetic model just like we did on Rocky. 
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1 It can be done here, why not. Okay? And so, 

2 in principle, yes. 

3 Then the question becomes, on 

4 Rocky, I think you were in a situation where 

5 you could make a distinction between those 

6 workers that you felt you want to treat with 

7 high-fired, and those you decided no, we're 

8 not going to treat with high-fired, or not. 

9 MR. ULSH: Actually, Rocky, it was 

10 -- 

11 MR. MAURO: It was everybody. 

12 MR. ULSH: It was everybody. It 

13 turned out not to be the claimant-favorable 

14 choice sometimes. But it was, as a 

15 possibility, it was applied to -- 

16 MR. MAURO: Okay. Well, 

17 situation. So maybe it was, at Rocky, you 

18 had a circumstance where you're saying where 

19 you have all these workers, but you're going 

20 to assign high-fired to all of them, even 

21 though that may not have been limiting. And 

22 not only that, it may not be the scenario 
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1 that applies to that person. 

2 MR. ULSH: No, no, no. It was at 

3 Rocky, what we did was, we added that to 

4 among the universe of possible solubility 

5 classes. 

6 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

7 MR. ULSH: Of everybody. 

8 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

9 MR. ULSH: For some people, it 

10 turned out to be the limiting choice. 

11 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

12 MR. ULSH: For others, it didn't. 

13 MR. MAURO: Okay. And you made 

14 that distinction. 

15 MS. BRACKETT: In fact, that's 

16 pretty much across the complex now. Once we 

17 develop this super S, that's done at all the 

18 sites. 

19 MR. MAURO: Good. But now, that 

20 brings us right where we are, the only reason 

21 I bring this question up. And the reason I 

22 bring it up is we're here again, only on 
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1 Mound with a new type of material, with it's 

2 own biokinetics. And it sounds to me that 

3 once that model is agreed upon, which I 

4 believe there's general agreement it can be 

5 built, how are you going to parse it amongst 

6 workers? 

7 The universal approach may not be 

8 the one that will be what I would say 

9 consistent with the plausibility assigned it. 

10 It's just a little too convenient. Okay, we 

11 just give it to everybody. You know, 

12 everybody's got the worst possible scenario. 

13 I don't know if you can do that. And this 

14 is really a judgment to be made by the 

15 Working Group and the Board. 

16 You know, because you found 

17 universal solution that will bound everybody, 

18 but if that circumstance does not apply to 

19 everybody, is that consistent with the 

20 plausibility side? 

21 MR. MORRIS: But John, it doesn't 

22 have to apply to everybody. It has to apply 
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1 to any member of the proposed class. 

2 MR. MAURO: Right. 

3 MR. MORRIS: Not every member of 

4 the proposed class. That's the definition of 

5 -- 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: But it won't be 

7 in the proposed class if it'ssuccessful. I 

8 guess I'm missing something. 

9 MR. MAURO: Maybe I'm not making 

10 myself clear. 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, the proposed 

12 class can have any number of definitions. It 

13 could be everybody on the site, or it could 

14 be in a particular building, or a particular 

15 class of -- that's going to be very dependent 

16 on the definition of the class to start with. 

17 But I don't think Brant was saying 

18 you're going to apply it across the board in 

19 a site, are you? You yourself define what 

20 the class is. 

21 MR. MAURO: Well, the initial 

22 Mound -- initial proposed Mound class is 
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1 everybody on site. Now, of course, as in the 

2 past, the Advisory Board is free to, perhaps, 

3 define a narrower class. I mean, that's 

4 always a possibility. But right now, at 

5 least the initial proposed class is everyone 

6 on site. 

7 John, where I'm perhaps a little 

8 confused is, even at Rocky Flats, it may not 

9 be possible to say that these particular 

10 workers dealt with Super S Plutonium-239, and 

11 these particular workers didn't. I certainly 

12 think that it's not -- the people that were 

13 actually exposed to that material is much 

14 smaller than what we're applying it to. 

15 MR. MAURO: See, if you know who 

16 they are, I think you've got the problem 

17 knocked. In other words, I know that the 

18 people that were in the circumstance where 

19 they were exposed to this unusual material, 

20 we know who they are. And therefore, we know 

21 when we're going to apply it. 

22 I'm more concerned about not being 
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1 able to do that. 

2 MR. ULSH: But that's not what 

3 we're doing at Rocky. We're putting that in 

4 for everybody. I mean, there's precedent for 

5 that. And as Liz said, it's not just Rocky. 

6 It's pretty much across the complex. 

7 MS. BRACKETT: In general, for 

8 internal dosimetry, the way it works is that 

9 we take the possible universe of material 

10 types, identified by the ICRP, and we apply 

11 all of them to every person. I mean, we 

12 can't say with any certainty anywhere that 

13 these people only work with Type M, and these 

14 people only work with Type S. The dosing 

15 conceptions are always done assuming all 

16 possible material types. 

17 MR. ULSH: Now, it may be at 

18 Mound. Keep in mind, I'm getting ahead of 

19 the cart, ahead of the horse here. I can't 

20 really say where, if any, situations -- well, 

21 certainly there are some situations at Mound. 

22 I think that everyone one would agree where 
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1 you see this nonmonotonic behavior. That 

2 might be limited to a particular time. 

3 For instance, when they started 

4 the microsphere program. I'm just saying, a 

5 for-instance here. I don't know that that's 

6 the case. So, you might say for instance, 

7 whenever that program started, I don't know 

8 when it was, 1965, I don't know. Before that 

9 time, it's not plausible. After that time, 

10 it's plausible. 

11 There may be situations like that. 

12 MR. MAURO: You just answered my 

13 question. There might be ways to parse this. 

14 MR. ULSH: Perhaps. 

15 MR. MAURO: And it depends on, I 

16 guess, it's uncertain right now. 

17 MR. ULSH: Perhaps. But of 

18 course, that would be something that we would 

19 all have to discuss, and you know, come to 

20 consensus on, I guess. 

21 But at worst, we're left with a 

22 situation like at Rocky Flats, and everywhere 
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1 else in the complex, where we say -- 

2 MR. MAURO: You can't parse it. 

3 MR. ULSH: -- we can't parse it. 

4 Just apply it to everybody. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess my 

6 question that sort of led into this 

7 discussion was, whether that parsing was 

8 going to be part of demonstrating the model, 

9 or from the way you describe it, as part of 

10 the non-SEC application part. And I'm still 

11 not clear whether you would agree that the 

12 kind of parsing that -- I'll use that word 

13 that John's talking about -- would be part of 

14 your demonstrating the model, how it would be 

15 applied. 

16 If it is, then my issue doesn't 

17 play. If it isn't, then I still have some 

18 questions about whether the model is going to 

19 be truly demonstrated if you can't show how 

20 you're going to distinguish workers. 

21 MR. ULSH: Perhaps the way forward 

22 would be, from here, let's wait and see how 
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1 it all shakes out. If we wind up proposing, 

2 you know, what, we're just going to apply it 

3 to everybody, well, then that's one thing. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Okay. 

5 MR. ULSH: But if we come back and 

6 we say, it's only these particular workers, 

7 maybe then that would be the appropriate time 

8 to have that discussion. Do we need to talk 

9 about this now, before the SEC decision is 

10 made? Or is that more appropriate for a TBD 

11 discussion. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

13 that discussion can't be -- I mean, you've 

14 had the response now for at least a week. 

15 I'm just saying, it really is pretty early in 

16 the process. 

17 MR. ULSH: Yes, yes. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: But I think a 

19 discussion can happen the next go around. 

20 MR. MAURO: And talking it 

21 through, and listening, I can see why we 

22 would come to the decision it's not an SEC. 
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1 Because what you're saying is, once you have 

2 the model, then it becomes, okay, well, we're 

3 really in one or two places. 

4 Either if we really can't parse 

5 it, that means that we really don't know who 

6 really got this and who didn't get it, then 

7 you have no choice but to apply it to 

8 everybody. If you can parse it, you can 

9 parse it. So, I guess I'm going to sort of 

10 withdraw my little concern after my -- after 

11 thinking it out loud, so-to-speak. I guess 

12 my reaction now, in light of what you said is 

13 that, yes, we're not really dealing with an 

14 SEC issue. 

15 MR. ULSH: Well, it's early. 

16 Let's -- certainly I like that. 

17 MR. MAURO: No, no, no. I'm just 

18 trying to be thoughtfully honest about it. 

19 Because my first reaction was, wait a minute. 

20 You have an obligation to parse. But maybe 

21 if you really can't parse it, I mean, just 

22 about anybody could have gotten hit with this 
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1 stuff. 

2 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

3 MR. MAURO: Then you really, like 

4 everything else, like the uranium issue, then 

5 you have no choice than to pick the worst one 

6 for each person. 

7 MS. LIPSZTEIN: I think that's why 

8 we stop now, is that it has to be looked -- 

9 all the people that were exposed, that had 

10 bioassay focus done, and see which ones would 

11 have been exposed to this special Plutonium12 238 type, solubility type. 

13 And how is NIOSH going to do it, 

14 to distinguish which workers would have this 

15 specific model, so that -- because I think we 

16 are weighing that even exposure to this 

17 special type of plutonium, depending on the 

18 year, and on the circumstances, the model 

19 could be different. So, you would have 

20 different -- let's say, it's not -- what 

21 makes the model different is the assumption 

22 parameters. So, the assignment of the 
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1 assumption parameters, to the different cases 

2 and different years that the incidents might 

3 have occurred. 

4 So, what NIOSH has to demonstrate 

5 now, is how it's going to, NIOSH is going to 

6 distinguish who could have been exposed to 

7 this special type of Plutonium-238, and which 

8 model is the best one to be applied in each 

9 kind of incident. And which incidents 

10 occurred, and what shall be done if you have 

11 insufficient data to determine which form of 

12 the threat was involved. 

13 And also, how to distinguish from 

14 the bioassay data, what was Plutonium-238 and 

15 what was Plutonium-239. And there are some 

16 hints, if you go through the DOE files from 

17 the workers, that might be some exposures to 

18 the high fired Plutonium-239 also, which has 

19 what -- like in Rocky Flats. So, it's 

20 tricky to distinguish. I simply -- what I 

21 would like to do is wait for NIOSH response 

22 to tell us how they are going to distinguish 
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1 who were exposed to this special kind of 

2 Plutonium-238, how to distinguish from the 

3 bioassay from the Plutonium-238 from 

4 Plutonium-239, which different models are 

5 plausible to apply with Mound, which is the 

6 most claimant favorable, and what should be 

7 done if you have insufficient data to 

8 determine what kind of Plutonium is involved. 

9 MR. ULSH: Joyce, I think we might 

10 be shooting at the wrong target here. You're 

11 focusing on the importance of picking Type K1 

12 versus Type S. I'm focusing on looking at 

13 the bioassay data that is available for a 

14 particular claimant, and showing that using 

15 some model, either the predefined ICRP 

16 models, or this K1 model, that we can bound 

17 the dose. I can't say whether it was really 

18 perhaps K1 or Type S. But I can show at 

19 least with one model, I can bound, I can come 

20 up with a claimant favorable estimate of the 

21 dose for that particular worker. 

22 That's the end point that we have 
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1 to show. I don't think -- 

2 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. But there 

3 might be a K1, K2, K3, K4, depending on the 

4 case. 

5 MR. MORRIS: Do you really think 

6 there would be that many different models, or 

7 do you think that's just -- 

8 MS. LIPSZTEIN: I don't know. I 

9 don't know. 

10 MR. MORRIS: -- individual 

11 variability that's -- 

12 MS. LIPSZTEIN: I don't know. We 

13 have to look at the data. I don't know. 

14 It's clear -- 

15 MR. MORRIS: All I'm suggesting is 

16 that that's -- 

17 MS. LIPSZTEIN: -- now -- it's 

18 split judgment. I know that in different 

19 times, probably there was exposure to this 

20 special solubility type. Because we have the 

21 incident described by Sheehan and Woods, and 

22 then we have later, if you look at the DOE 
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1 worker statement files, there's even some 

2 notes saying that at a much later time, 

3 saying that the results don't -- well, they 

4 said for example, "His early data was lower 

5 than later. And before he couldn't calculate 

6 amount initial by the present to show the 

7 early movement of material to be high 

8 enough." 

9 The same problem is found with 

10 workers such and such. So, in several places 

11 in the DOE files from the workers, there are 

12 some notes pointing to this kind of exposure 

13 in different times. So, I don't know if all 

14 of them would fit the same model. But this 

15 is something that has to be done. I'm not 

16 saying maybe it fits the same model, maybe 

17 not. I didn't try. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess my 

19 question would be, from what you and Liz have 

20 said, you're going to look at the data. The 

21 Sheehan paper, just for -- well, it's a 

22 comment paper. It's one set of data. You're 
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1 going to be looking at samples of 89, so 

2 you're going to be looking at some of the 

3 plots that we kind of sampled. 

4 I mean, you're going to look for, 

5 I would assume, not a series of so-called K 

6 curves, but maybe a bounding K curve that 

7 would best characterize the Mound behavior, 

8 nonmonotonic behavior? I mean, certainly you 

9 could come up with a series, but that would 

10 seem to be inefficient and impractical. You 

11 would try to come up with a bounding, I would 

12 think. Is that kind of where you're headed? 

13 MR. ULSH: Liz? 

14 MS. BECKETT: Well, we do have all 

15 of the Mound plutonium data. And I'm pretty 

16 sure that we've identified cases there that 

17 we could use to look at a model for those, 

18 for those in the Sheehan paper. I'm thinking 

19 that there are one or two other papers 

20 published on Mound data but I'm not positive. 

21 But, yes, we would look at that 

22 whole sort of universe of data, not just 
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1 looking at the Sheehan paper. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: And so you would 

3 probably be looking to figure out what the 

4 most conservative model or curve would be, 

5 although, you could also, you know, identify 

6 maybe sets of curves. But that would -- 

7 again, that would be a choice of what makes 

8 the most sense in terms of the operations and 

9 the cohorts involved. 

10 But I think -- Joyce, is that what 

11 you're kind of saying? That really, we don't 

12 know, and I guess NIOSH doesn't know at this 

13 point either? But that strategy is something 

14 that I think Brant used, that that's what 

15 we've got to come back with. It's after we 

16 go through this, think about it, and what's 

17 the best approach. And it may be one 

18 bounding upper curve, or it might be a couple 

19 curves. And it's hard to know at this point. 

20 MR. ULSH: Yes. What I might 

21 propose to do is, that once we finalize our 

22 response to your report, do any additional 
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1 data analysis that we talk about, and decide 

2 we need to do, include that in there. 

3 Perhaps this might be a topic that would 

4 benefit from one of these technical calls, 

5 you know, that happens in between Working 

6 Group meetings. 

7 MS. BECKETT: And getting Tom 

8 involved would be very helpful. Because he's 

9 more familiar with the data than I am at this 

10 point. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think 

12 that would be good timing, you know, whatever 

13 time you need the model to have to get 

14 together and talk. 

15 MR. ULSH: Talk to my people and 

16 find out. 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

18 Kathy Demers. I just wanted to bring up a 

19 couple of things that you have to keep in 

20 mind in developing this model. 

21 You don't have to identify people 

22 necessarily for the application of the model, 
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1 but you are going to have to identify people 

2 who were exposed to this material when you 

3 develop that model? 

4 MS. BECKETT: Yes. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And another 

6 thing that concerns me and this kind of adds 

7 to what Joyce said about Plutonium-239, is 

8 that this is gross alpha. This is not 

9 Plutonium-238. And you have to take that 

10 into consideration. Because you're getting 

11 other actonides coming through. 

12 MR. ULSH: Certainly, that's the 

13 case, Kathy, where there is a reasonable 

14 possibility that they were exposed to other 

15 actonides. There were certainly limited 

16 situations at Mound where there was work with 

17 other actonides. But by and large, those 

18 pale in scale to the work that was done with 

19 Plutonium-238. And I think that if we 

20 identify people who say, for instance, were 

21 involved with the uranium program, or working 

22 with the thorium redrumming effort, that 
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1 would certainly be an issue where we might 

2 want to consider not using those people. 

3 But far and away, the biggest 

4 mission was the Plutonium-238. So, I think 

5 that -- I mean, the reason that they got away 

6 with using gross alpha as opposed to a 

7 isotope specific model, was because it was 

8 fairly easy to differentiate if you see a 

9 result, kind of you pretty much know what 

10 material it's coming from. 

11 But, I understand your point. I 

12 mean, if someone is working with multiple 

13 radionuclides, they may not be the best 

14 person to pick to develop the model. That's 

15 certainly true. 

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And the 

17 other difficulty is that because this stuff 

18 is so insoluble, you're going to have a lower 

19 excretion rate. And you may fall below the 

20 MDA, and there may be a higher MDA that you 

21 have to apply to the situation because of 

22 that insolubility. 
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1 MR. ULSH: Liz, do you have any 

2 thoughts on that? 

3 MS. BECKETT: No. Why would there 

4 be a higher MDA? 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Because 

6 it's showing up -- you're seeing less of this 

7 type of plutonium in the urine than you're 

8 seeing other types of plutonium. 

9 MR. ULSH: Well, the MDA wouldn't 

10 change that. It's the intake that you might 

11 miss, might be. 

12 MS. BECKETT: Right. But that 

13 doesn't affect the MDA. 

14 MR. MAURO: Yes. It's what you 

15 got -- you've taken a urine sample, you don't 

16 see anything. 

17 MR. ULSH: Right. 

18 MR. MAURO: And you know, if that 

19 was above whatever, one becherel per 

20 whatever, you would see it. Now, so you're 

21 saying, okay, it's one-half that. We're 

22 going to assume it's one-half, or whatever 
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1 your standard protocol for assigning missed 

2 dose. Then the question becomes, do we 

3 assume that material that the person took in 

4 that would have given that, is that this 

5 high-fired stuff, or the regular stuff. And 

6 that's -- and we're right back where we 

7 started from. 

8 And you were saying, hey, push 

9 comes to shove, we just assign it the worst, 

10 whatever the worst assumption is, we will 

11 assign it to that person, depending on the 

12 organ of interest. And I guess when I -- the 

13 more I think about it, the more I think 

14 again, my opinion is it Working Group? My 

15 reaction is, that's not an SEC issue. 

16 Because you're basically saying, we have a 

17 way to bound it. 

18 It's almost like to say -- in 

19 fact, we are avoiding this a little bit, 

20 Plutonium-239 versus 238. You might be in 

21 the same circumstance. You could say, well, 

22 we could do the same thing there. You know, 
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1 push comes to shove, we just make the worst 

2 assumption if you're looking at gross alpha. 

3 I mean, we've done that with enrichment. 

4 For example, at -- we'll be 

5 talking about this at Fernald. We don't -- 

6 in some cases, we don't really know an 

7 enrichment level of uranium people were 

8 exposed to. It could have been anywhere from 

9 natural up to perhaps two percent, perhaps a 

10 size ten percent is some unusual 

11 circumstance. 

12 And some judgment was made, we'll 

13 be discussing this matter, of what our 

14 default assumption's going to be universally, 

15 universally to everyone, of what the 

16 enrichment level was. Same thing goes with 

17 the recycled uranium. We're going to make 

18 some universal judgment that everyone gets a 

19 certain parts per billion of plutonium, even 

20 though we know it's not true. But we're 

21 going to make a certain judgment and apply it 

22 universally from the beginning to the end. 
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1 So, in effect, what we're dealing 

2 with is a -- I guess a philosophy of dose 

3 reconstruction that says that, when you're 

4 really not sure, in other words, if you're 

5 not really sure how you're going to parse it, 

6 in other words, okay, what are the people 

7 that got this unusual, what are the ones 

8 where it didn't? And you what, when push 

9 comes to shove, we have real trouble doing 

10 that. 

11 We're not quite sure. Especially, 

12 when you're dealing with a bunch of people 

13 that have low limits of protection, you don't 

14 have curves for them, you don't know what to 

15 assign to them in terms of what form they 

16 might have been working with. What I'm 

17 hearing is, well, the default of the case 

18 that gives him the highest exposure. 

19 That's almost like a universal 

20 policy that's happening over and over again. 

21 Would that be a fair representation of the 

22 philosophy that's been adopted here? 
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1 MR. ULSH: It's early. 

2 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

3 MR. ULSH: It may very well end up 

4 being that. If we have strong reason to say 

5 that this particular solubility type is not 

6 an option for these particular situations, 

7 and the example I used earlier was, if we 

8 said it only happened in 1965 forward -- 

9 MR. MAURO: Sure, absolutely. 

10 MR. ULSH: -- then we might say 

11 it's not -- 

12 MR. MAURO: Sure. 

13 MR. ULSH: -- for the earlier time 

14 period. But I -- it's possible that we might 

15 say, everybody across the whole complex. I 

16 just don't know yet. 

17 MR. MAURO: No, no. 

18 MR. ULSH: I guess, across the 

19 Mound facility, I just don't know yet. 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: A question to 

21 either Brant or Liz, when you're doing your 

22 modeling on this, do you have -- are you 
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1 assuming a particle size distribution, or do 

2 we have actual data? Is this mining for 

3 microspheres? 

4 MR. ULSH: Paul, I'm going to 

5 speak, and then let Liz correct me, because 

6 I'll probably go wrong. But my impression is 

7 that when you're dealing from urinalysis 

8 data, the particle size argument is really 

9 irrelevant. It's only when you're trying to 

10 go from air data. Liz, am I right, or am I 

11 overstating it. 

12 MS. BECKETT: I think it can 

13 certainly make a difference on, depending on 

14 what the range of possibilities is. 

15 MR. ULSH: Okay. 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think if you 

17 want to back calculate the organ doses, you 

18 may need to know what that distribution was. 

19 Liz, is that -- am I thinking about this 

20 correctly? You get a certain output. 

21 MS. BECKETT: Right. 

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Let's say you know 
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1 that it's plutonium. And you have to 

2 represent an organ dose for a given, if 

3 you're reconstructing at least, you need to 

4 know a distribution from the lung, which is 

5 particle-size related. 

6 MS. BECKETT: Yes. I think it 

7 takes a pretty broad variation and particle 

8 size before it actually makes much of a 

9 difference. But I don't know how much data, 

10 just off the top of my head. I was just 

11 trying to quickly go through some of the 

12 things that Tom wrote to see if he looked at 

13 this at all. 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I was trying 

15 to get a feel for Joe's point on the fumes. 

16 Intuitively, you feel like that's a really 

17 much different kind of particle size 

18 distribution, although I don't know that. Do 

19 you know? 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm sort of 

21 where you are, in the sense that fumes would 

22 certainly, I think, challenge the fallout 
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1 assumption of fine microns. But I -- 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I don't know 

3 that. 

4 MR. MAURO: Change the submicron. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: We haven't seen -

6 - I haven't seen actual measurements of the 

7 fumes. But I think in general, that's 

8 understood. And again, I think that's an 

9 implication, you know, in terms of that 

10 operation. 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Given output in 

12 urine for that, if what you're saying is 

13 true, it seems to me would look very 

14 different than if you had the pretty big 

15 particles and things were being swallowed and 

16 taken back up the escalator and out the 

17 stomach and -- 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: This would not 

19 likely to be -- 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: -- exhaled at the 

22 chronic state. 
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, what 

2 we do have is, we don't have the measurements 

3 for fumes, but we do have some measurements 

4 for Pu-238. And the range was 1 to 10 

5 microns. 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Air measurements? 

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: What they 

8 did was, they took a cascading factor -- 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: It seems to me 

10 things would be very different than that. 

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm not sure they 

13 did in fact, you know, it depends upon what 

14 time frame. 

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, they 

16 could -- 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Because they used 

18 a plasma torch a certain time frame, if they 

19 didn't take the air samples then, it probably 

20 wouldn't be included. 

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. They 

22 were not doing that when these measurements 
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1 were done. 

2 MR. BISTLINE: Paul, this is Bob 

3 Bistline, and at Rocky, I know the 

4 differences between one micron and five 

5 micron, I can always calculate it to be about 

6 a factor of three difference in dose 

7 calculation, because of particle size. 

8 MS. BECKETT: But is that starting 

9 from a bioassay result, or starting from an 

10 intake? It makes a big difference. 

11 MR. BISTLINE: That was taken from 

12 an intake. 

13 MS. BECKETT: Right. And we're 

14 starting from bioassay. So, it's -- 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: It may be less 

16 than that. 

17 MS. BECKETT: This whole project 

18 has been a lesson in -- 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

20 MS. BECKETT: -- intuition. 

21 Because I'm usually wrong when I try to think 

22 it through without doing the calculations. 
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1 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but you've 

2 been starting from urine excretion and you 

3 are calculating to go through the lungs, so 

4 the particle size would make a difference. 

5 MS. BECKETT: Well, for lung in 

6 particular. 

7 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. 

8 MS. BECKETT: But that's not 

9 necessarily what we're -- 

10 MS. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but in the 

11 state of Plutonium-238 there would be, going 

12 to be a large dose in the lung, that you are 

13 going to calculate it again. 

14 MS. BECKETT: And I thought, I was 

15 looking at something earlier, and I thought 

16 that there had been a study that said that 

17 the particle size was five microns. But 

18 maybe that was just an isolated incident. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: It was an 

20 average. The range was 1 to 10. 

21 MS. BECKETT: Okay. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And that 1 to 10 
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1 doesn't include the, necessarily some fumes 

2 from that one operation. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. This 

4 was for in the D&D era. 

5 MR. BISTLINE: How about during 

6 the, when they're actually processing? 

7 Because in the process handler, they had 

8 different particulate size of the 238. 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: That's what 

10 we don't have the data for. We haven't found 

11 it. All we have is data for what was done in 

12 the D&D era. 

13 MR. BISTLINE: Okay. 

14 MR. ULSH: I know that I have seen 

15 data on particle sizes but I don't remember 

16 the particulars, when and where and so I 

17 can't really speak to how representative it 

18 is. If this is an issue that is a concern, 

19 we will take a look and see what kind of data 

20 exists on particle size. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think the 

22 way we left it when we first brought it up, 
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1 was that would be part of what you would kind 

2 of consider in terms of parameters for the 

3 model. I don't know how that plays either. 

4 But I think at Mound in particular given the 

5 different ways the oxide was handled, the 

6 different techniques, it seems like you have 

7 a much broader range of particle size than 

8 some other sites. 

9 I think, I can think of fumes, it 

10 would be submicron. 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. No, I -- 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know what 

13 the implications dose-wise would be for that, 

14 but certainly that would stretch it. 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I think as 

16 they do the modeling, they could easily test 

17 the model to see whether that made much 

18 difference in the bottom line. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: But, I'm sorry, I 

21 don't want to show my ignorance here. You're 

22 telling me that it is not an SEC issue? 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Not yet. 

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: But if you can 

3 demonstrate -- okay. That's what I was -- if 

4 you can demonstrate the model. But if you 

5 can't apply it to the people? 

6 MR. ULSH: I think it's too early 

7 to say that it is or is not an SEC issue. 

8 Until we come back to the table with a 

9 strategy for saying, we have a bounding 

10 model, and then at that time, we might or 

11 might not have to discuss to whom it is 

12 applied. 

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, and this is 

14 what I was trying to get a clarification. 

15 Because you made a comment, and was very sure 

16 that this is not an SEC issue, because we can 

17 do this model. And if we can do the model, 

18 that's great. But if we can't apply it for 

19 the people, then? 

20 MR. ULSH: Well, there were a 

21 couple of preconditions there when I said 

22 that. 
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. 

2 MR. ULSH: And that is, that we 

3 come up with a model that can be added to the 

4 universe of possible solubility classes, 

5 where we can show that we can adequately 

6 match the bioassay data from the people at 

7 the site. Then it becomes -- and if we try 

8 to say, that we're going to apply this 

9 particular K1 model to a group of people that 

10 is smaller than everyone on site, it's only 

11 going to be limited to a smaller subset. 

12 At that time, we might have to 

13 have a discussion about okay, is this a TBD 

14 or an SEC issue? But we're not there yet. 

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I just -- 

16 I was -- I'm just having a hard time getting 

17 around that. I apologize. 

18 MR. ULSH: No, that's fine. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: There was 

20 two other things on this issue. The -- we 

21 originally talked about when we brought up 

22 the issue of high-fired oxide, one of them 
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1 was high-fired uranium oxide. And as of 

2 right now, we haven't found any data 

3 indicating that it was present at Mound. And 

4 unless we do, we're okay with closing that 

5 issue. 

6 And the other one was high-fired 

7 thorium oxide. And we have decided to defer 

8 that to the data adequacy write up. 

9 MR. ULSH: So are you saying that 

10 will come in under Issue 11? 

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. 

12 MR. ULSH: Might I ask, when 

13 you're talking about uranium, you said you 

14 hadn't found any data yet. Are there other 

15 places that you're planning to look? I mean, 

16 where are you in terms of -- I mean, are you 

17 still looking at the data? 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, if it 

19 comes up, then we'll -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I think, yes. 

21 We, you know, we've been -- would be all at 

22 the site probably three times. 
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1 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we 

3 probably have done everything we can dig out 

4 now. I think all we're saying is that unless 

5 something presents itself, this is closed as 

6 an issue for this particular item. 

7 But we're leaving it open if 

8 something does arise where there's some 

9 evidence that you know, you both have the 

10 high-fired process and the uranium present, 

11 and that would be an implication. But I 

12 guess in the big sphere of things, it just 

13 wouldn't be anywhere near the magnitude of 

14 the plutonium. 

15 So, all we're saying is, in terms 

16 of that issue, to close it out. We didn't 

17 find anything. We think it's a legitimate 

18 question, but you know, again, uranium did 

19 exist at the site issue now, but we haven't 

20 found that connection between high-fired 

21 processes and uranium in terms of exposure 

22 potentials. So, you know, we looked, got the 
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1 data, looked for the data, but haven't found 

2 anything that demonstrates that. 

3 So, we're parking it, not pursuing 

4 it any further unless something comes up that 

5 would make the case. Thorium as an issue, I 

6 think, is a broader question of just being 

7 able to see it adequately in terms of 

8 monitoring. I think that fits into 11. 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: I just want to 

10 make my usual remark here. And guess what it 

11 is? And that is, if that's an issue, and 

12 there's some evidence that you see that there 

13 is, I think it's NIOSH's job to pursue the 

14 issue. It's not our contractor's job to be 

15 looking for that information. It's fine to 

16 keep your eyes open for it, you know. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: That's the 

18 context. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes, that's 

20 -- 

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: But you know, 

22 pulling the string, ultimately, goes back to 
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1 NIOSH. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: If there's 

4 indicators along the way that this is an 

5 issue, then I think we want NIOSH to say, 

6 this needs to be pursued. So the contractor 

7 is not doing NIOSH's work. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: No. Just a 

9 little history in context. When this came up 

10 as part of the overall issue on Pu-238, we 

11 said that certainly, there's a good 

12 possibility other high-fired forms may be 

13 involved. And I think Brant's response at 

14 the time to paraphrase was, that we have seen 

15 no evidence. 

16 And our response to that was, 

17 well, we're going out to Mound to do records 

18 retrieval, and keep our eyes open. And if we 

19 do find anything, we'll pursue this issue 

20 further. This is sort of an acknowledgment 

21 that no, we haven't found anything. 

22 So, we're letting it go, unless 
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1 something else comes up. So, no, we 

2 certainly aren't doing extensive research. 

3 But in the process of data capture, we were 

4 kind of looking to see if there was any 

5 uranium or thorium data in this context. We 

6 didn't see any. So, this is more of a status 

7 acknowledgment. 

8 MR. MAURO: Before we move on, I 

9 was -- I am thinking and troubled by this 

10 question of parsing. And I gave you an idea, 

11 it's a thought problem. Let's say we were 

12 all -- we all worked at Mound, all of us, 

13 okay? Same year. We all worked there. And 

14 we also know that one of us, worked with this 

15 special type of material, one of us. Not all 

16 of us, just one of us, but we don't know who 

17 it is. 

18 Okay? Now, we're dealing with 

19 this dose reconstruction. Well, if we don't 

20 know who it is, well, we'll just assign it to 

21 everybody. Okay? Is that -- does that meet 

22 the threshold of plausibility and 
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1 appropriate, as a strategy for dealing with 

2 this class of problem? Since we know it was 

3 one, but we don't know who it is, you 

4 understand? 

5 And I would say, my reaction would 

6 be, no, that's not there. 

7 MR. MORRIS: Well, my reaction is 

8 yes. 

9 MR. MAURO: But as it is the 

10 question -- 

11 MR. MORRIS: In first fire, maybe 

12 we should defer with a lawyer on our a staff 

13 to answer the question. If I want to go back 

14 to the definition, it's not -- it has to be 

15 accurate for every member of the class. It 

16 has to be for any member of the class. And 

17 you know, I think you have to make a careful 

18 read of that. 

19 MR. MAURO: I agree. But I think 

20 that in thinking of it that way, sort of a 

21 crystalize the issue. In other words, and 

22 that would be a judgment call, or a legal 
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1 call. So right now, I don't know the answer 

2 to that question. But I think that's the way 

3 to think about it. 

4 MR. MORRIS: I'm not sure, again, 

5 that we might be using terms differently. 

6 Under the scenario that you have set up, 

7 where the data doesn't exist, or we don't 

8 have the data that would let us say, John 

9 Mauro was the guy that was exposed to this 

10 material -- 

11 MR. MAURO: But we do have the 

12 data that says, only one person was. 

13 MR. MORRIS: Okay. 

14 MR. MAURO: Because it was such a 

15 small amount. 

16 MR. MORRIS: Right. 

17 MR. MAURO: You know, or such a 

18 short period of time. 

19 MR. MORRIS: And if we don't have 

20 the data to draw a tighter circle than that, 

21 to say, particular workers were, or were not, 

22 in other words, we're saying it's plausible 
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1 that anybody at the table could have been 

2 exposed to that material. Then I think we're 

3 obligated to not assign it but enter that as 

4 one of the possible universe of solubility 

5 classes that we would consider. 

6 MR. MAURO: I can understand you 

7 coming down that side. I'm not sure. 

8 MR. MORRIS: And consequently, it 

9 is plausible. And therefore, would meet the 

10 definition. 

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Now you guys are 

12 starting to get into my realm of it. You 

13 could walk into the whole thing and say, I'm 

14 going to give this much, and we'll throw it 

15 to everybody now it's plausible. There's 

16 also another little bit in there too about 

17 accuracy and integrity of data. And that's 

18 where I start to get into some of the 

19 problems with this. And I understand where 

20 you're going with this and so forth, but I 

21 already have a hard time getting my hands 

22 around it. 
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1 Because of course, both, we're 

2 sometimes on both sides of this whole issue. 

3 But where does it come down to? 

4 MR. MAURO: Where does it end? 

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Where does it 

6 end, you know. And granted, when you read 

7 the law on this thing and what they're 

8 saying, I don't think that we're really 

9 hitting on it. I think we're sometimes on 

10 either side of it. And it's very vague to 

11 me. And I hate, I hate documentation like 

12 that. 

13 But, what it comes down to is, the 

14 plausible part of it, you could throw out a 

15 number out there, and if I'm not mistaken, 

16 you could throw it out there and say, hey, 

17 that will take care of everything. Then it 

18 gets back into the integrity, the data, and 

19 everything else like that and if it really is 

20 plausible for it. And we've had the 

21 discussion on several sides, so. 

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, let me take 
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1 the counter-argument. Throwing a number out 

2 there is not the approach. What number is 

3 used has to have some basis in reason and 

4 science. And the accuracy part, you're 

5 talking about an accurate decision on 

6 compensation, which is different than an 

7 accurate dose assignment to an individual. 

8 You've have to be accurate in the decision to 

9 compensate. 

10 And that often means, if you want 

11 to talk about individual accuracy, because of 

12 this unknown factor, you have the ten people 

13 John's talking about, you're going to be 

14 inaccurate on nine of them scientifically 

15 from a dose assignment point of view, but you 

16 will be accurate as the law defines it, in 

17 making the determination of eligibility for 

18 compensation, which is what we need to be 

19 accurate about. 

20 Because actually, I think NIOSH 

21 has shown that in general, the less -- often 

22 the less we know about a person's dose, 
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1 you're left with the less accurate, yes, the 

2 more likely they are to be compensated 

3 because of the fact that you have to assume 

4 some possibilities for that. Now, that's not 

5 always true across the board. But I've taken 

6 the numbers with student groups and have them 

7 plug it in. The less -- the bigger that 

8 unknown distribution is, the more likely you 

9 are to reach the POC level at 95 percent. 

10 MR. STEWART: I just want to add 

11 to that a little bit. When you have a very 

12 detailed work history, and a lot of bioassay 

13 data, then you are able to estimate an 

14 accurate dose. Which, in our universe, 

15 typically means a lower dose. 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now, because the 

17 spread is tighter? That 95 percent count, 

18 that interval doesn't move way out? 

19 MR. MAURO: But to go back to lose 

20 -- you use the word tension, it always 

21 exists. I like to -- we have an interesting 

22 tension. Because it is, we will all admit, 
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1 that if we do know that it's only one person 

2 that got the high dose in this room, but we 

3 don't know who it is, and then we decide 

4 within the context of the rule, it's 

5 appropriate to apply that higher dose to 

6 everyone. 

7 But then I would take the next 

8 step and say, however, we'd also agree that 

9 it's not plausible that every single one in 

10 the room got that does. So, there's the 

11 tension. We have a dilemma. 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think we have to 

13 look at it the other way. Is it plausible 

14 that any one of them could have. Not that 

15 all of them did. I think you got to ask how 

16 you're saying plausibility. We don't know 

17 which, is it plausible for you yet, 

18 plausible for Ted yet. Okay? 

19 MR. MAURO: That's good. 

20 MR. KATZ: If I could just point 

21 out, in the dose reconstruction rule, Part 

22 82, it actually specifies as an example 
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1 solubility that NIOSH would select. The most 

2 claimant favorable solubility when there was 

3 uncertainty about the solubility. So it 

4 really, it's actually called out very 

5 clearly, in those dose reconstruction rules 

6 as an approach. 

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: But the final 

8 numbers that are derived, although they may 

9 not be accurate, have a basis, not just a 

10 number, that you know, let's pick a big 

11 enough number and we can cover everybody. 

12 It's got to be some rationale for it. And 

13 we've had some arguments about what's 

14 rational. I think sometimes that SC&A has 

15 said that number is not only real high, but 

16 it's not rational. 

17 MR. MAURO: It's off the charts, 

18 yes. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: And sometimes it's 

20 the other way around. I mean, maybe NIOSH's 

21 number is not high enough, or something. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: So, is there 
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1 anything else on this issue we want to -- in 

2 keeping with the agenda, it's break time. 

3 So, 11:00, what time is it now? Is it 11:00 

4 now? Okay, 11:15. 

5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

6 matter went off the record at 11:12 a.m. and 

7 resumed at 11:14 a.m.) 

8 MR. KATZ: This is the Mound Work 

9 Group of the Advisory Board on Radiation 

10 Worker Health. And we're about to get 

11 started again following a short break. 

12 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you, 

13 Ted. Our next item is the SC&A Review 

14 Summary Notes regarding exposure sources at 

15 non-rad buildings at Mound. And I am going 

16 to let Joe introduce this topic. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Thank you, 

18 Josie. Bob, are you -- Alvarez, are you on 

19 the phone? 

20 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes, I'm here. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Where this 

22 all came from, just a little background, is 
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1 in the matrix, we identified a issue that we 

2 tend to look at for each, SEC, which is the 

3 degree to which there's a basis for assuming 

4 that the most highly exposed workers were in 

5 fact the ones that were badged. 

6 And this stems from the -- in some 

7 cases, I'm not saying this is the case with 

8 Mound, but in some cases, in the early years, 

9 that wasn't necessarily the case. And we do 

10 want to examine that issue as a starting 

11 point. 

12 And in the case of Mound, I think 

13 the issue was, we could not find a formal 

14 basis for the badging policy. Again, I think 

15 the statement or the assertion in the ER is 

16 that the history, operational history at 

17 Mound indicates that in fact the most exposed 

18 were badged. And we wanted to see something 

19 that was a firmer basis for that indication. 

20 And I think the response that we 

21 received early on, was that you know, the 

22 contemporary accounts, how business was done 
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1 in the early days, you know, the Meyer 

2 reports, and whatnot, was wrongly suggested 

3 that in fact, people were badged and that the 

4 -- where you had radiological areas, that was 

5 a requirement to go into those areas, was in 

6 fact, to be badged. 

7 And we looked at the 

8 documentation, did not find any formal 

9 policies, but did pick up on I think the same 

10 operational perspective, that they did define 

11 these radiological areas and were stringent 

12 about requiring badging of people entering 

13 those areas. 

14 In this course of this discussion, 

15 we indicated that we would keep our eyes open 

16 in our records review to in fact, find any 

17 policy, or any evidence that there was an 

18 approach or a procedure of badging workers. 

19 To date, we still have not found that. But 

20 in the interim, I think the Working Group, I 

21 forget where the suggestion came from, but 

22 the Working Group suggested that SC&A review 
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1 the available documentation to see if there 

2 were any evidence, or any situations where 

3 facilities considered to be 

4 "nonradiologocal," did in fact get 

5 -- were demonstrated later to have 

6 contamination that may have exposed nonbadged 

7 workers. 

8 And that was the task that Bob 

9 Alvarez took up, which was to look at the 

10 available documentation to see if in fact 

11 there were these so-called nonradiological 

12 facilities in which nonbadged workers may 

13 have been exposed to radiation, just as an 

14 additional factor to look at on this 

15 discussion. 

16 So, Bob, do you want to explain? 

17 Bob? MR. ALVAREZ: I'm still there. I 

18 may have to move to the other ear here. Good 

19 morning. 

20 We were asked to take a look at 

21 four different buildings: Buildings 48, 89 M 

22 and DS. And these were considered to be non-
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1 nuclear buildings at the Mound Laboratory. A 

2 preliminary review of various documents, and 

3 I assume you have a copy of the firming notes 

4 that I prepared, looked at these buildings to 

5 determine whether or not there might have 

6 been potential exposures to radiation going 

7 on, either during the period of historic 

8 operations or during the closure period. 

9 Those -- I guess the most 

10 significant and intriguing building is the DS 

11 Building. This building was constructed in 

12 the 1960s. It's about 47,810 square feet. 

13 And it was known as the Development and 

14 Standards Building. And it was not 

15 considered to be a nuclear building and had 

16 sort of carried out several functions. It 

17 was "a complete standards laboratory for 

18 measuring and calibrating the latest optical, 

19 electrical, mass-dimensional and 

20 environmental systems." 

21 In the 1980s, the building was 

22 involved in explosives component development 
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1 standards and in the 1990s, almost all the DS 

2 Building submissions ceased, with one 

3 exception. And then later on, during the 

4 closure period, probably beginning in the 

5 mid-90s, the building was used for 

6 administrative offices, change rooms, 

7 clothing distribution, bioassay sample 

8 collections, container distribution, a break 

9 room, document storage, respirator training. 

10 And it was considered to be, that 

11 the deactivation's building would be 

12 considered minimal because it did not handle 

13 any radioactive material. The -- in looking 

14 at this, what caught my attention was, in 

15 1997 radiological survey of the Mound -- a 

16 baseline survey of the Mound buildings, and 

17 that this particular building had a 

18 considerable amount of contamination from 

19 removable tritium in 36 out of some 100 

20 rooms. 

21 I think there were more tritium 

22 samples collected in this building than all 
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1 the other rooms. Contamination was found on 

2 furniture, in store cabinets, on equipment, a 

3 computer monitor, floors, desks, drawers, 

4 benches, trash cans, a door handle, and a 

5 supply bin. And that one reading was as high 

6 as 2.9 million DPM per 100 cubic meter of 

7 allocation. 

8 The survey indicated the DS 

9 building had the largest number of removable 

10 loose tritium examination surveyed, greater 

11 than 1,000 DPMs, of all the buildings that 

12 were a part of the survey. This included the 

13 radioactive -- the nuclear building, 

14 particularly the SW and the T building. It 

15 also appeared to have the largest number of 

16 tritium samples above the DOE control limit 

17 for removable contamination, which is 10,000 

18 DPM. 

19 Now, how this -- how and when this 

20 contamination came about is a mystery. And 

21 there may be several explanations. I'm just 

22 not sure. The DS Building was built directly 
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1 atop of the T Building, which processed 

2 significant amounts of radionuclides for 

3 several decades, including tritium. And that 

4 there, according to the structural process as 

5 the history of the DS Building, there was a, 

6 along the front of the building, a "high risk 

7 line from the T Building extended from the 

8 eastern and western sides of the building." 

9 And that the southern face of the T Tower 

10 formed to face an interior wall of the D 

11 building. So, it was what it was. 

12 The -- also in the late 1990s, the 

13 T Building was involved in the unloading of 

14 tritium bottles from 1995 until the late 90s. 

15 So, there was some activity that went on 

16 during the closure period there. There was 

17 one sample that they -- they found a 

18 Plutonium-238 sample on a cabinet that was 

19 higher than the DOE control limit. And they 

20 found the DS Building had three times as many 

21 readings for total alpha contamination in 

22 excess of 100 DPM than the T Building for 
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1 example. 

2 The Plutonium-238 was found about 

3 30 times greater than DOE for essential 

4 contamination where there were transuranics. 

5 And in my memo, you see, that I took a look 

6 at the number of samples. There were about 

7 50 samples for loose tritium contamination 

8 taken in the DS Building that were above 

9 1,000 DPM. Only 32 samples were in the SW 

10 building and six samples in the T building. 

11 This -- there may be several 

12 explanations for this. I just am not sure. 

13 But as this is something which I, it was 

14 suggested NIOSH take a closer look at. It's 

15 possible that this building might have been 

16 contaminated during the period of historic 

17 operation. We don't know. It's possible it 

18 may have been contaminated during the closure 

19 period either by people tracking in 

20 contamination or failure of the radcon 

21 program. We don't know. 

22 Although, I found that to be a 
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1 hard one to accept because of the pervasive 

2 contamination in so many rooms, and the high 

3 levels of contamination in so many rooms that 

4 were found. Or, it might have occurred in 

5 the, during the closure period when the T 

6 building was involved with processing tritium 

7 bottles. We simply don't know. 

8 And we don't know how many workers 

9 worked in this building during its historic 

10 operation, how many workers were in and out 

11 of that building during the closure period. 

12 Whether or not the workers were routinely 

13 monitored or not, we don't know. During any 

14 of these periods, I -- it's just a mystery; 

15 this, in my opinion, perhaps the most 

16 significant issue that needs to be looked at 

17 by NIOSH relative to potential contamination 

18 of non-nuclear building. 

19 The second building was building 

20 48. This was built in 1970, and it appears 

21 that it did not handle or store any 

22 radioactivity -- radioactive materials prior 
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1 to 1999. And there might have been some 

2 legacy contamination, associated with a waste 

3 line break near the building, involving 

4 polonium and cobalt-69 -- or cobalt-60, 

5 rather. 

6 A 1996 rad survey indicated radon 

7 contamination where equipment was found. This 

8 is prior to their having them -- the 

9 contractors brought in radioactive material. 

10 After 1999, when environmental health 

11 physics sampling laboratories were 

12 established there. Building 48 stored and 

13 analyzed samples for plutonium, thorium, 

14 uranium and tritium. 

15 In 2001, there was an incident 

16 involving tritium that affected several 

17 rooms. Contamination samples were taken from 

18 four drawers that ranged from 10,592 DPMs to 

19 208,000 DPM. I looked at the non20 radiological characterizations. Their report 

21 of 1997, and contamination was also found in 

22 room, in an additional two rooms. A "high-
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1 direct alpha reading was found in a vent in 

2 room 205," and according to surveys, a max of 

3 total reading of 205 was 382 DPM alpha, and 

4 500 -- something under 5,000 DPM beta. 

5 Building 89 was built in 1985 and 

6 served as a detonator storage building. The 

7 1996 site life characterization noted that 

8 readings in room 101 were described as radon. 

9 According to the 1997 baseline 

10 characterization, room 101 was maximum total 

11 contamination from alpha and beta activity of 

12 about 1657 to under 5,000 DPM respectively. 

13 They found samples from a sink 

14 that contained alpha activity, which the 

15 survey indicated was "still contaminated due 

16 to radon." A belt guard was found to have 

17 3,000 DPM alpha. In March 2000, tritium 

18 contamination was discovered in rooms 101 and 

19 -- 119, I'm sorry, from the storage of 

20 contaminated equipment in a storage cabinet. 

21 And this incident was reported in accordance 

22 to Price-Anderson. 
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1 The M building, is one of the 

2 earliest buildings. And it was -- 

3 construction was completed on this in January 

4 of 1948, and several modifications were made 

5 between 1960 and 1991. It was initially 

6 known as the maintenance shop. And it did 

7 lots of things over time, including machining 

8 lathes, lithium processing, drill presses, 

9 power presses, electroplating electronic 

10 maintenance. They added an ES&H office in a 

11 high bay area which was towards a crane 

12 spanning the area. 

13 According to a 1999 process and 

14 structural study of the building, the 

15 historical -- this report suggested that the 

16 M building may have housed a power plant, 

17 contaminating, high level spent fuel 

18 reprocessing waste prior to disposal. But I 

19 also discovered a 1952 directive from the 

20 AEC, that suggested that this facility was to 

21 be established in the semi-works building. 

22 So, there's sort of contradictory information 
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1 about whether or not that building was the 

2 building that might have handled the, 

3 essentially the high level radioactive waste 

4 coming out of Oak Ridge and Hanford during 

5 that period. 

6 The machining operations in room 

7 78, and 7-8, were originally implemented as 

8 part of the polonium operating, and depleted 

9 uranium were machined in room 7-8 -- 7 and 8. 

10 The environmental permitting document filed 

11 in the early 1990, suggested that uranium 

12 machining was part of the activities included 

13 in the M building. They were doing thermal 

14 studies for RTGs in the high bay area. And 

15 according to the 1997 baseline, radiological 

16 characterization report, samples from the 

17 high bay had maximum total alpha and beta 

18 activity of somewhere under 100 to somewhere 

19 -- to 5,000 DPM. 

20 Leak contamination was found at 

21 relatively low levels. And it appears that 

22 the machining room, 7, 8 and 20, were not 
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1 included in the survey. 

2 In mid-1998, the wooden floor from 

3 the high bay area of the M building was 

4 removed because of radiological contamination 

5 and I don't know the degree and extent of 

6 contamination. It was just simply noted. 

7 And on September 8, 2000, the building was 

8 demolished. 

9 So, this is sort of just a brief 

10 look at this. It appears that the Working 

11 Group should consider whether an assessment 

12 is needed to determine one, the potential 

13 exposure pathways during the operations of 

14 the T and DS building; and b, if data is 

15 sufficient to enable radiation dose 

16 reconstruction for workers who might have 

17 been exposed in buildings 48, 89, M and DS. 

18 MR. MAURO: Bob, this is John 

19 Mauro. Just one very quick question. When 

20 you make reference to 100 or 5,000 DPM, I'm 

21 assuming you mean 100 or 5,000 DPM per 100 

22 centimeters square? 
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1 MR. ALVAREZ: That's correct. 

2 MR. MAURO: Okay. Thank you. 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Anybody else on this 

4 topic? 

5 MR. BUCHANAN: Are those samples 

6 fixed, or swiped? 

7 MR. ALVAREZ: They were the, I 

8 think the 1997 samples were swiped. 

9 I mean, what I found interesting, 

10 remarkable about the 1997 survey, was the 

11 degree and extent they performed sampling in 

12 the DS building. And I think their -- that 

13 at least one of the contractors who was 

14 bidding for the closure of the Mound site, 

15 was concerned enough to ask some very pointed 

16 questions about the relationship between the 

17 DS building and the T building. And a lot of 

18 this was discussed in the structural and 

19 process history of this building. 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm requesting, 

21 Bob, this is Paul Ziemer. The reference to 

22 radon contamination is a curious one. Is 
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1 there any indication in the report that you 

2 looked at, as how they went about identifying 

3 -- I mean, radon is very short lived and it's 

4 daughters are very short lived. So, what are 

5 they looking at there? 

6 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, I really don't 

7 know, Paul, to tell you the truth. Because 

8 I'm just simply, essentially reporting -- 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

10 MR. ALVAREZ: -- what was in these 

11 documents, which do not sort of get into that 

12 level of detail. 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: They don't give 

14 the detail on how they identified 

15 contamination as radon? 

16 MR. ALVAREZ: I really don't know. 

17 I just simply am reporting what was in the 

18 document. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: That doesn't makes 

20 sense. 

21 MR. MORRIS: You can easily cover 

22 -- come back an hour later and make the same 
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1 measure, and if it's not there, in a pure 

2 context, decide that. I've seen that done in 

3 operational health physics program. 

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, this is a 

5 building survey done after the work was done. 

6 I mean, it's 

7 -- I don't know. It just seems a little 

8 strange to me that someone could have 

9 identified it. 

10 MR. MORRIS: It happens all the 

11 time on coolers, if they send shipping 

12 samples back and forth, and I can tell you -- 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: But that's an 

14 active process where some -- if you're 

15 accumulating something, and you take that 

16 sample and count it, it's usually not a swipe 

17 sample. Well, it could be, if it was an 

18 active process. 

19 MR. MORRIS: Sure. And in the D 

20 of E reg, you would have had Coleman coolers 

21 going back in the hundreds back and forth 

22 from a sampling location. I just have seen 
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1 that many times in my experience. 

2 CHAIR BEACH: Won't you see those 

3 decay? 

4 MR. MORRIS: That's right. That's 

5 why they say, it's the radon. 

6 CHAIR BEACH: Well, in this 

7 instance here, they're saying that -- 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Only if it -- only 

9 if the generating source is there just before 

10 you -- 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Right. 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- took it. I 

13 mean -- 

14 MR. MORRIS: It's a static 

15 electricity problem. It really is -- it's an 

16 on-going operational detail of any kind of 

17 program. 

18 MR. MAURO: From my recollection, 

19 the numbers that we were hearing, the 5,000, 

20 the 100, it immediately brought to mind Reg 

21 Guide I 1.86 in the DOE order, that goes 

22 toward acceptable levels of clearance. It 
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1 was basically the clearance standard. And 

2 whenever you're going through D&D, at least 

3 at one point in time, if you met that for 

4 removable contamination, 100 for gross alpha, 

5 which were presumed to be transuranics, along 

6 with alpha emitters, 5,000 for gross beta 

7 gamma, that meant you were okay. 

8 Now, perhaps the radon we're 

9 hearing is -- you would normally not include 

10 that. 

11 MR. MORRIS: Well, that was my 

12 initial reaction, is that you brought that 

13 up. And my reaction is, why would you even 

14 think about putting that in the report log? 

15 MR. MAURO: To get the short-lived 

16 alphas out of there. Because you don't want 

17 to leave the impression that the 100 DPM per 

18 -- 100 DPM to 170 squared number was from 

19 some long-lived radionuclides if in fact it 

20 was from short-lived radon progeny. 

21 My take on this is that it's a 

22 negligible idea. That you -- you know, radon 
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1 contamination at any level, if you decide 

2 that that's what it is, it's just a problem 

3 of being alive, you know. It's not an 

4 operationally related problem. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, 

6 there's a possibility when radcon found a 

7 sample of suspicious activity, they would 

8 send it over to the environmental monitoring 

9 group who would put it on a germanium 

10 detector. So, there's a possibility that's 

11 how they identified it. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Josie, I want to 

13 speak to the, sort of the broader implication 

14 on this one. I mean, it's sort of why we 

15 went through all of this. 

16 You know, we interviewed a number 

17 of workers, quite a few actually, between the 

18 site profile and the SEC review, probably 30 

19 or 40. And we came away with the same kind 

20 of sense, I think, that NIOSH did. The 

21 people we talked to felt that the badging 

22 process at Mound was pretty tight. And you 
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1 couldn't just walk into rad areas as a site2 wide maintenance person and not be badged. 

3 Even if you were unbadged, you 

4 would be badged when you entered a 

5 radiological area. And that kind of put 

6 forward though, the question of testing that 

7 premise. Because it's suggested it was tight 

8 enough that you didn't have to be concerned 

9 with the non-badge people, because they 

10 couldn't get exposed, essentially, and you 

11 could assign them the ambient environmental 

12 dose, and that would be fine. 

13 So, this was kind of a test to see 

14 based on the D&D data, because again, because 

15 Mound was D&D'd and you know, went through 

16 closure, you had a lot of characterization 

17 that was done on these facilities. Quite 

18 apart from what people remembered, they 

19 actually went through and characterized each 

20 one of -- each and every one of these 

21 buildings. 

22 And this data, I think, is what 
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1 we're looking at now, saying, you know, were 

2 there facilities that were understood to be 

3 non-radiological facilities that were in 

4 fact, you know, had some residual 

5 contamination based on these baseline 

6 reviews. And does that then suggest that, 

7 you know, one, is this just exclusive to 

8 these four facilities? 

9 I think Brant, you're all looking 

10 at the D&D data. And you know, there might 

11 be more information about perhaps other 

12 facilities that were deemed nonradiological, 

13 and open to nonbadged people, but may in fact 

14 have perhaps some identified contamination, 

15 and some pathway to address how does one 

16 handle then, exposure that may or may not 

17 have been received by workers that might have 

18 gone in there. 

19 And I think for maybe, clearly, 

20 there's one facility, the DS. It looks like 

21 it might have been appreciable amounts that 

22 there would be some accounting for that 
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1 contribution perhaps, by people that might 

2 have been in that facility. And I think 

3 that's where that was headed. This is just a 

4 first order, I think, testing of the 

5 hypothesis that it was a pretty tight system 

6 and people who were not monitored could not 

7 really have been exposed to operation. This 

8 seems to suggest there might have been some 

9 contamination. 

10 MR. ALVAREZ: I mean, the DS 

11 building was the most intriguing because the 

12 December 1997 baseline radiological survey of 

13 all the buildings, including nuclear 

14 buildings out there, the DS building appears 

15 to have the most pervasive and significant 

16 residual contamination from tritium of all 

17 the buildings, including the SW, the T 

18 buildings, the H buildings, the buildings 

19 where they were handling, you know, 

20 substantial amounts of radioactivity. 

21 MR. ULSH: Okay. Again, I want to 

22 start with kind of a larger context on this. 
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1 This piece was presented in support or 

2 related to issue number 17, which dealt with 

3 badging policy. And at the last Working 

4 Group meeting, as Joe stated, this was one of 

5 those that SC&A had taken a look at. And it 

6 was kind of headed towards, maybe this is not 

7 an SEC issue, but keep the possibility open 

8 while you look at other data. 

9 So, I'm presuming that since this 

10 piece came after that, this represents that 

11 category of other data that might make us 

12 say, hey, well, wait a minute, some more 

13 looking needs to be done here. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And again, 

15 it's not dead-on the issue raised in that 

16 particular item. 

17 MR. ULSH: Well, that was -- this 

18 is -- 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It's more of a, 

20 somebody, I think, at the last Work Group 

21 session, maybe it was Mike Gibson, or 

22 somebody, raised the thing saying that they 
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1 were aware of exposures that may have taken 

2 place. So, this is not a question of what's 

3 the most exposed badge. This is a question 

4 of -- and we got into this discussion in this 

5 context, which was how tight was the system? 

6 Because there was a, sort of a -- and we 

7 agreed, because we heard it from the same 

8 workers that you talked to, that it was a 

9 tight system and people just could not go 

10 into rad areas without getting badged. 

11 So, this was, I think, the result 

12 of that discussion that we got into, which 

13 was, can one test a hypothesis. And I think 

14 this is the first test that we did. 

15 MR. ULSH: Well, any reaction that 

16 -- we're holding our formal response to this. 

17 Because of the 15 references, we have access 

18 to 9, but there are 6 more that are in DOE's 

19 hands for review. And so, we don't have 

20 access to those six references at this point. 

21 Once we do, we'll take a look at 

22 those, and then incorporate anything that we 
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1 find in our -- 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: They should be 

3 forthcoming. 

4 MR. ULSH: -- okay, in our 

5 response. 

6 But the first thing that kind of 

7 confuses me about this particular piece, is 

8 your conclusion that these are nonrad 

9 buildings. We haven't seen anything that 

10 characterizes them as nonrad buildings. In 

11 fact, if you look at the Wayne King document, 

12 which was, the purpose of which was to 

13 provide some background characterization of 

14 what went on in particular buildings, and 

15 rooms in buildings, and what radionuclides 

16 you might find there. 

17 Clearly, there are radionuclides 

18 that are listed in that documents in these 

19 buildings. 

20 MR. ALVAREZ: But not these 

21 buildings. I mean, I went through that King 

22 document. And the more enlightening 
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1 documents are the structural process history 

2 of these buildings. Which -- and also, the 

3 other document which I think is important, 

4 which is not in DOE's hands, is the 1993 

5 physical characterization of the Mound 

6 facilities, where they -- it made it clear 

7 that these buildings were not nuclear 

8 buildings. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Weren't these also 

10 in the road map as nonrad buildings? 

11 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes. I don't know 

12 if they're on the road map, but I went 

13 through that King document very carefully to 

14 see, to try to find these buildings. And 

15 they weren't -- they really weren't 

16 referenced. And only when I found, went into 

17 the sort of the individual histories of these 

18 structures, that you find some of this stuff. 

19 With the exception of the DS and M 

20 building -- and by the way, the King report 

21 does reference the M building. It doesn't 

22 reference the other buildings. So, I stand 
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1 corrected. But the DS building is not even 

2 on the radar chart of screens 

3 -- of the King building. 

4 Now, attached to the King report, 

5 is this 1997 baseline characterization 

6 report, which has quite a bit of sampling 

7 data about the DS building. But there's no 

8 reference in the King report about the DS 

9 building at all. 

10 MR. ULSH: Well, I'll have to take 

11 a closer look at it. And we'll include that 

12 in our response to it. But the implication 

13 seems to be that these were not 

14 radiologically controlled areas. I don't 

15 know that we're prepared to accept that, 

16 either. And by implication, that workers, 

17 unmonitored workers, could have gone into 

18 these buildings. We've seen no evidence of 

19 that. In fact -- 

20 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, I don't know 

21 where the truth lies in that either, Brant. 

22 I just know that this is what they were 
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1 reported as being. And that several of these 

2 -- at least two of these buildings, the DS, 

3 48 and 89, were not considered to be handling 

4 any radioactive materials. 

5 MR. ULSH: Well, not at that time. 

6 MR. ALVAREZ: Actually, during the 

7 period of let's say, historic operations. 

8 Buildings 48 and 89, were explicitly used to 

9 handle radioactive materials during the 

10 closure period. The M building did have -- 

11 handled radioactive material off and on, and 

12 I'm not sure what exactly they did, other 

13 than what's been reported. But the one that 

14 really stands out here is the DS building. 

15 MR. ULSH: Well, in order for this 

16 to be an example of people with a significant 

17 exposure potential, but missed exposure 

18 potential, because they weren't badged, the 

19 people would have to in fact be not badged. 

20 And we don't find evidence that that's the 

21 case. 

22 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, it's not only 
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1 not badged, but were there bioassays 

2 performed. Because the contamination issue, 

3 especially with DS building, appeared to be 

4 mostly associated with loose tritium. And it 

5 was quite pervasive, and in some cases, 

6 significant. 

7 MR. ULSH: Exactly. That was 

8 going to be my point. Was that the 

9 contamination levels that you've cited here, 

10 while the numbers sound really big and scary, 

11 they certainly are not sufficient to indicate 

12 a need for external exposure monitoring. 

13 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, they do 

14 indicate a need for them to be cleaned up to 

15 a level to meet DOE's clearance standards. 

16 MR. ULSH: I agree. However, if 

17 you look at ANSI/HPS N13.12-1999, and we'll 

18 have that in our -- I'm sure you didn't quite 

19 get that written down. 

20 MR. ALVAREZ: No, no. I mean, we 

21 certainly didn't sort of go, dig that deep 

22 and this is a very preliminary paper. 
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1 MR. ULSH: Yes. But if you look 

2 at values of tritium and plutonium per 100 

3 square centimeters, they give you an exposure 

4 potential of one millirem per year. For 

5 tritium, it's 600,000 dpm per 100 square 

6 centimeters. And for plutonium, it's 600 dpm 

7 per 100 square centimeters. 

8 So, while the numbers that you 

9 cited sound eye-popping, my point is that, by 

10 and large, those contamination levels do not 

11 indicate a need for external exposure 

12 monitoring. 

13 MR. RICH: Hi, Brant. This is 

14 Bryce Rich. Can I make a couple comments? 

15 MR. ULSH: Jump right in, Bryce. 

16 MR. RICH: Number one, there are 

17 two issues of the King document. The later 

18 edition does include the DS building and the 

19 other buildings as rad buildings. And as you 

20 mentioned Bob, the survey, the closure 

21 survey, it was performed in order to clearly 

22 identify the conditions where they might have 
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1 to segregate materials for disposal. 

2 It's a little different survey. 

3 And perhaps a good deal more than what would 

4 normally be necessary for radiological 

5 protection on a routine basis. 

6 MR. ALVAREZ: I mean, I may be 

7 wrong, but I recall the 2000 iteration of the 

8 King report did not mention the DS building 

9 as a rad building. Attendant to that DS -- 

10 to the King report, was the baseline survey. 

11 MR. RICH: There's another issue. 

12 We can get that for you. 

13 MR. ULSH: Okay. Well, especially 

14 the big numbers that you had questioned, 

15 concerned about, were for tritium 

16 contamination. 

17 MR. ALVAREZ: And alpha 

18 contamination as well. 

19 MR. ULSH: Right. But my point is 

20 that I don't know what type of dosimeters are 

21 appropriate for tritium contamination, 

22 because you don't get an external exposure 
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1 from tritium. 

2 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, I guess the 

3 questions that arise here -- actually what at 

4 issue here is not whether or not -- I guess 

5 the first-order question, is not you know, 

6 whether this is -- these contamination levels 

7 are significant from a point of view of dose 

8 reconstruction in and of themselves. 

9 I think the first-order question 

10 is, why did this contamination occur? And 

11 did it occur historically, especially in the 

12 DS building, during -- because -- from the 

13 1960s to the 1990s or not? Where did this 

14 contamination come from, I think is the 

15 first-order question. 

16 MR. ULSH: Well, I don't know that 

17 I can answer that off the top of my head. 

18 However, I think the important concerns, 

19 since this is presented under Issue 17, are: 

20 does this represent a situation where you 

21 have unmonitored people being exposed to 

22 having some significant exposure potential. 
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1 And I don't see anything in here that 

2 indicate that that's the case. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. But you 

4 know, let's back up again. 

5 MR. ALVAREZ: But this is just a 

6 snapshot in time of 1997. That isn't to say 

7 that you might not have significant exposures 

8 historically, which may or may not been 

9 picked up. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I think -- you 

11 know, I don't think there's any argument 

12 about it. I think the question had come up 

13 in the context of badging. And I think -- we 

14 didn't pick these facilities. I think these 

15 facilities were suggested. And I can't 

16 recall who actually suggested them. 

17 MR. ULSH: I don't know. It was 

18 probably during a Working Group. Maybe it 

19 happened off line, or maybe I just don't 

20 remember. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: We were tasked 

22 with looking at these four facilities in this 
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1 context. And in terms of whether or not 

2 these nonrad facilities, in fact, had 

3 radiologically significant sources that would 

4 be considered. 

5 And I think that is a legitimate 

6 question, as to whether or not one would, had 

7 been badged, should have been badged, and 

8 that gets to the heart of this particular 

9 item anyway. And this only gets you half 

10 way. It says that we've looked at these 

11 facilities as directed by the Work Group. 

12 And I think as Bob has indicated, we've found 

13 some source terms that some of which may be 

14 questionable, others would need to be 

15 addressed from the standpoint of historically 

16 were people exposed who were badged or not. 

17 I think that's where it leaves it. 

18 And I think the step we took was just simply 

19 to look at the facilities from that 

20 standpoint. So, I think we still have that 

21 second question you're raising, which is 

22 okay, so what? Should these people have been 
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1 badged, were they badged? Were site-wide, 

2 people going in, or were they in fact, as 

3 people have said on and on, stopped at the 

4 door and given a badge? I think there's 

5 questions revolving around these specific 

6 facilities that have to be asked. 

7 MR. ULSH: Well, then, I would 

8 remind you that during the D&D era, you know, 

9 like certainly in 1997, the DOE, standing DOE 

10 orders at the time were that badging was 

11 required for, if you had exposure potential 

12 of 100 millirem per year. And I don't see 

13 anything in here that indicates an exposure 

14 potential of 100 millirem per year. 

15 Now, I mean, I'm not saying that 

16 that's necessarily the end of the story, I 

17 just don't see anything here that's a smoking 

18 gun. 

19 MR. STEWART: And just to magnify 

20 that a little bit, if you were considering 

21 potential exposure to tritium, your best bet 

22 is bioassay because it is easy and 
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1 inexpensive and very accurate. And if you 

2 ran a tritium facility, you would not rely on 

3 external dosimeters to give you any 

4 information of what was going on. 

5 MR. ULSH: That's right. 

6 MR. STEWART: Also true if you 

7 have an alpha contamination facility, you 

8 know, that might argue that you had a source 

9 in other parts of the facility. But alpha 

10 contamination in and of itself is not 

11 effectively measured by an external 

12 dosimeter. So, you'd consider those program 

13 aspects separately, bioassay versus external 

14 dosimeters. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: Well, in the D&D 

16 era, did they bioassay? I always understood 

17 they did not bioassay during that time 

18 period. 

19 MR. STEWART: There was bioassay 

20 conducted. 

21 CHAIR BEACH: During the D&D era? 

22 MR. ULSH: Oh, yes, absolutely. 
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1 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

2 CHAIR BEACH: Was there? 

3 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

4 CHAIR BEACH: I read a report 

5 somewhere that I thought it led me to believe 

6 otherwise. 

7 MR. STEWART: One of the other 

8 issues is, was monitoring adequate during the 

9 D&D era. That's one small possible universe. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think you 

11 know, certainly for DS, I understand what 

12 you're saying, Brant, in terms of exposure 

13 levels warranted monitoring, maybe 

14 contaminated facilities, but DS, I would 

15 think, we'd want to know to what extent 

16 tritium bioassay was done in that facility, 

17 just as it raises some questions about a 

18 source term that may have been known. It may 

19 have been that in fact, bioassays done in 

20 that facility. But, I think that would be 

21 the next question. 

22 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, the DS 
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1 building raises a question not just about 

2 what I call the closure era there, because 

3 D&D was on-going at the site, but rather the 

4 closure period. But is, whether or not there 

5 was contamination going on because of its 

6 relationship to the T building historically, 

7 and whether or not workers were being 

8 monitored, whether it be for external or for 

9 internal assimilation during that period. 

10 And these are all unanswered questions. 

11 MR. ULSH: Well, I think, okay. I 

12 think perhaps the next steps in this issue 

13 would be for us to respond to your report, 

14 which we will do once we get the other six 

15 references from DOE. 

16 MR. ALVAREZ: Okay. 

17 MR. ULSH: Assuming that that 

18 happens relatively quickly, our response 

19 should be in the Working Group's hand by the 

20 next Working Group meeting. But this is the 

21 kind of the issues that we're going to be 

22 addressing. 
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1 MR. FAUST: This is Leo. Can I 

2 make a 

3 -- jump in here, too, for just a second? 

4 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. Can you 

5 identify yourself again, please? 

6 MR. FAUST: This is Leo Faust. 

7 The DS building actually was, handled all 

8 kinds of radiological materials, mostly in 

9 sealed form for calibration and 

10 quantification purposes. The incoming 

11 materials that came from Savannah River for 

12 instance, were characterized in the DS 

13 building, because it was a metrology facility 

14 to start with. And they did find that they 

15 had some residual contamination on the 

16 shipping containers. 

17 MR. ALVAREZ: Leo, were workers 

18 badged and bioassayed in the DS building? 

19 MR. FAUST: Well, every person on 

20 the Mound site, as near as I can tell, was 

21 bioassayed at least annually. And there is 

22 some indication that all individuals on the 
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1 site were issued a dosimeter, post about 

2 1978, or `79. 

3 MR. ULSH: That wouldn't have been 

4 true after -- in the `90s, would it Leo? It 

5 would only have been based on your exposure 

6 potential, right? 

7 MR. FAUST: I can't answer that 

8 right off hand, but there is a letter that we 

9 uncovered that indicated that, as of that 

10 date, all personnel on site would be wearing 

11 a dosimeter. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: That was `79, 

13 Leo? 

14 MR. FAUST: I believe so. Just a 

15 moment. The letter is dated February 1987. 

16 It supposedly goes into effect the following 

17 quarter. 

18 MR. ULSH: Leo, you can't see my 

19 startled look here. Perhaps before we put 

20 that out there, we should talk about it and 

21 take a look at it. Because I would be very 

22 suspicious that that might not be true during 
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1 the D&D period. But we'll take a look. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again, 

3 before we leave this issue, I think again, 

4 this was a very specific tasking to check or 

5 test the premise on these so-called non-rad 

6 facilities. Now, if these non-rad 

7 facilities, ostensibly non-rad facilities are 

8 in fact considered rad and were handled that 

9 way, I think the issue tends to go away. 

10 But, again, we did the quick review and this 

11 is what we found, and I think that 

12 disposition isn't necessary at this point. 

13 MR. MORRIS: One thing I'd like to 

14 ask you to be careful of is nomenclature on 

15 this. Because I heard non-nuclear, non-rad 

16 and sort of interchangeably wording, you 

17 know, making that definition. They're 

18 significantly different definitions in some 

19 eras, and non-nuclear facility is not 

20 necessarily a non-radiological facility. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm more 

22 comfortable with non-rad. Nuclear gets into 
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1 facility. 

2 MR. MORRIS: I did hear Mr. 

3 Alvarez say that. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. It should 

5 be non-radiological. And that's what we 

6 have, I think, in the white paper. 

7 MR. ULSH: Yes, you have non-rad. 

8 CHAIR BEACH: Non-rad. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And again, that 

10 wasn't our handle. I think it was given to 

11 us to look at these ostensibly non12 radiological facilities and to validate 

13 whether there's any evidence of sources in 

14 those buildings. And I think that's all we 

15 were asked to do. And we didn't go any 

16 further than that. 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Well, our concern was 

18 that they were non-rad buildings, therefore, 

19 could workers be in those buildings non20 badged, which is part of this issue. 

21 MR. ULSH: Could I ask a favor 

22 from, I guess, Bob? If I missed it in the 
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1 white paper, and you talk about the genesis 

2 of that non-rad designator, could you just 

3 perhaps, maybe you know offline, you know, in 

4 an email or something, send that over to me, 

5 or if it's in some supporting document or 

6 something, just point it out to me? 

7 Because you know, it may be that 

8 we just haven't seen it. But we haven't seen 

9 anything that indicates that non-rad 

10 designator. So, if you have something, we 

11 would like to see that. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And you know, I 

13 think we very purposely put non-rad in 

14 quotations in the title of this piece. 

15 Because it was sort of given to us in that 

16 context that these were ostensibly non-rad. 

17 I don't think we had a judgment as to that 

18 classification at all. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: And could you 

20 clarify -- Bob, this is Ziemer again, clarify 

21 whether that nomenclature includes counting 

22 facilities. As I understand it, the DS was a 
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1 -- the DS building was a counting facility or 

2 a standards lab, which would mean that there 

3 would have check sources and standard sources 

4 and so on. If so, is that still a rad 

5 building? 

6 Because in most places, in fact, 

7 if it's going to be used as that, if you have 

8 any significant levels of contamination, 

9 you've lost the use of the facility. If they 

10 were able to use it up into the `90s as a 

11 counting facility, then the tolerance for 

12 contamination levels or significant sources 

13 would have to have been very, very low, or 

14 you couldn't use it as a standards facility. 

15 If things are, quote, crapped up or if there 

16 are significant external sources then, you 

17 have a problem. 

18 So, it's sort of inherently, it's 

19 sort of makes the case for the fact that you 

20 could not have significant sources. In many 

21 facilities, you don't badge those people that 

22 are handling little check sources in things 
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1 that would never give you close to the 100 

2 millirem. But I don't know. It appeared 

3 from the narrative, that it had that status 

4 at least up into the `90s. 

5 Was there also an issue of whether 

6 there was cross-contamination from tritium 

7 releases on site which might have permeated 

8 other facilities? 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think the 

10 implication which we can't run to ground, but 

11 given the tritium observed and what as you're 

12 saying, a check lab, its location above the 

13 fill pond, the T building, there's that 

14 implication that you know, is this a known 

15 cross-contamination? Is it something that 

16 was only picked up during the D&D process? I 

17 -- you know, I would think you would have 

18 picked that up during operations if there was 

19 some fugitive tritium. I mean, that would be 

20 something that they would look for, I would 

21 think. 

22 So, it raises more questions than 
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1 it answers at this point. And you know, this 

2 sort of just tees up the question for than 

3 anything else. 

4 MR. ULSH: Yes. The DS building 

5 was built on top of the T building for 

6 seismic stability. We haven't seen any 

7 indication that there was any transport of 

8 tritium between the two buildings. But like 

9 Joe, I can't say one way or the other. It's 

10 just that we haven't seen any evidence that 

11 that occurred. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the 

13 premise of looking at that facility was, it 

14 was known to be not a production-type 

15 facility but as a metrology thing. And I 

16 don't want to get hung up on this non-rad or 

17 rad. Because I think it was given to us as -

18 - I just went back to the white paper and 

19 just double-checked. It says, ostensibly not 

20 rad, non-rad in quotations. So, we're not 

21 labeling it that way. But that was the 

22 premise that we looked at it to see whether 
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1 or not there was any information. 

2 MR. ULSH: And really, it's a 

3 matter of semantics anyway. What we're 

4 concerned about is, to work in that building, 

5 were you monitored? 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

7 MR. ULSH: That's really what 

8 we're talking about there. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And I would 

10 -- and the underlying question is, was 

11 tritium known or unknown. And if tritium was 

12 known, was it bioassayed. Just some basic 

13 questions, I think, that would add to that. 

14 CHAIR BEACH: Anyone else? 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And in Paul's 

16 context, we didn't want to go any further 

17 than that. 

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, are we 

19 finished with this item? Action is to 

20 respond to SC&A's report and the agenda says 

21 it's lunch time. So, break for lunch until 

22 1:00 o'clock. Are we right close? 
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes, it's noon right 

2 now. 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. 

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 12:01 p.m. and 

6 resumed at 1:01 p.m.) 

7 MR. KATZ: Hello. This is Ted Katz 

8 the DFO for the Mound Work Group of the 

9 Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health. 

10 And we are just coming back after a lunch 

11 break. I do want to check to make certain we 

12 have Phil still back on the line, from the 

13 board. 

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm back on. 

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. And then, we're 

16 not going to run through the roster again. 

17 But you can begin. 

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you. 

19 Before we begin, I want to go back to the 

20 last issue, the Wayne King document. I know 

21 it was briefly mentioned that there's a new 

22 2000 version. If I am correct, I heard that 
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1 from -- 

2 MR. ULSH: Yes, I heard that too. 

3 MR. ALVAREZ: There's an Issue 3 

4 that -- this is Bob Alvarez, I'm sorry. 

5 There's an Issue 3 that was reviewed and 

6 approved by TD Morris on 3/22/01, and it was 

7 issued -- was authorized for use in July 

8 31st, 2000. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So is that 

10 available to everyone? 

11 MR. ALVAREZ: I assume so. I'm 

12 not sure. 

13 MR. ULSH: I will -- we will check 

14 and make sure that it's in the SRDB and if 

15 so, we'll let you know the number, the SRDB 

16 number. 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. 

18 MR. ULSH: And if not, we'll give 

19 that back. 

20 CHAIR BEACH: So, you'll take that 

21 on to email? 

22 MR. ALVAREZ: It's the same 
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1 reference number, except it's called Issue 3. 

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Is this the one 

3 Bryce was referring to? 

4 MR. ALVAREZ: I don't know. But I 

5 went -- perhaps. But I went through this 

6 over lunch time, and could not find any 

7 references whatsoever to the DS building. 

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: But you can 

9 follow up with Bryce, make sure we're on the 

10 same page of which one? 

11 MR. ALVAREZ: Sure. 

12 CHAIR BEACH: Thank you. 

13 MR. ULSH: Bob, I think, that's my 

14 action item. I'll take care of that and let 

15 you guys know. 

16 MR. ALVAREZ: Okay. Thanks. 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So the next 

18 on our agenda is, the SC&A Draft Preliminary 

19 review of Price-Anderson Issue 21. Does 

20 everybody have that, copy of that available? 

21 Everybody here? Are you going to start that 

22 also, Joe? 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Let me 

2 start that off. 

3 I guess starting in the beginning 

4 there were several issues raised by the 

5 Price-Anderson Act violations that were 

6 levied on Mound back in the mid, it might be 

7 `97, but mid-90s, basically. And these spoke 

8 to deficiencies of bioassay, the management 

9 and administration of bioassay program and 

10 the way it was administered in terms of the 

11 decision levels, MDAs, pretty much across the 

12 board. 

13 So there was some pretty serious 

14 issues which they received penalty for. And 

15 the implication for the Work Group was to 

16 ascertain how NIOSH intended to address those 

17 issues which pertain to dose reconstruction. 

18 And a white paper was developed, that 

19 brought the worker through a number of the 

20 RWPs, and I think it was your request, as to 

21 SC&A's view, review of that white paper and 

22 those findings. 
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1 And I think at the time, we said, 

2 well, it would be difficult without doing 

3 some sampling to give you that answer. And I 

4 think the Work Group wanted SC&A to pose an 

5 approach. And the approach we took was 

6 basically to walk through, since SC&A -- I'm 

7 sorry, since NIOSH had gone through all of 

8 the actions, to actually walk through all the 

9 RWPs involved and to draw our own conclusions 

10 about the implications for dose 

11 reconstruction. 

12 And this paper is really the, more 

13 or less the results of that review. And 

14 there's a matrix in the back in particular 

15 which goes item by item. And what you'll see 

16 there, is that by and large, we're in 

17 agreement with the NIOSH conclusion about 

18 these not being SEC issues, without going 

19 through a lot of detail. 

20 A lot of these are really 

21 programs, management questions that speak to 

22 compliance in conformance with required 
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1 practice by DOE, but not to issues that would 

2 preclude dose reconstruction. So we were in 

3 concurrence with that understanding. As I 

4 recall, there were a couple of issues that 

5 NIOSH was doing further investigation, so we 

6 kind of let that go as such, and are waiting 

7 that -- those determinations. 

8 And four of the issues got to a 

9 more generic question of follow-up 

10 monitoring, where you had relatively short11 lived nuclides, and whether or not bioassays 

12 were done in a timely manner. And we felt 

13 that really was less a issue -- a specific 

14 issue in the context of Price-Anderson and 

15 this particular instance, and more germane to 

16 this broader review that we're doing of the 

17 adequacy of internal monitoring. 

18 So, when we say, Issue 11, I think 

19 we have said Issue 11 in a couple of cases, 

20 we're just saying, you know, that's a broader 

21 question that we're addressing and we'll have 

22 white paper for in you know, two or three 
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1 weeks tops. And that's where we want to 

2 treat those issues of, you know, the 

3 implications for dose reconstruction, if in 

4 fact, follow-up monitoring bioassay wasn't 

5 done in a timely manner, and how that might 

6 affect the feasibility of dose 

7 reconstruction. 

8 So, the matrix is really a 

9 scorecard going through systematically, as 

10 NIOSH has already done as well, in showing 

11 where clearly in concurrence where they still 

12 have work to do, and where we think, you 

13 know, this is a broader issue that we're 

14 going to treat in this upcoming white paper. 

15 And that's pretty much it. I mean, I don't 

16 think -- I think the details are there. If 

17 there's any questions, Brant, you -- any 

18 clarifications, we can go through that. But 

19 I think it's self-explanatory. 

20 CHAIR BEACH: Go ahead. 

21 MR. ULSH: Okay. Joe, you 

22 mentioned our original white paper that we 
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1 sent over in advance of the previous Working 

2 Group meeting. I wonder if, though, you 

3 considered the followup document that we also 

4 submitted? 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes, we 

6 did. 

7 MR. ULSH: Okay. Gene, are you on 

8 the line? 

9 MR. ROLLINS: Yes, I am. 

10 MR. ULSH: It seemed like some of 

11 the issues that you raise as being 

12 outstanding were discussed in Gene's 

13 followup. And Gene, I'll kind of let you 

14 take it from here, and kind of walk us 

15 through that if you would. 

16 MR. ROLLINS: The two open items 

17 are for the 15 unanalyzed Actinium-227 

18 samples discovered in August of 2001. And 

19 I'll discuss that, but let me mention a 

20 second item. Other workers who entered the 

21 WD building on February 12th, 1998, when that 

22 building should have been posted for full-
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1 face respirators, while the ventilation was 

2 shut down for the filter change, and that one 

3 was addressed in a lot of detail in a follow4 up document, which I don't think you are -- 

5 SC&A is taking into account. 

6 MR. ULSH: Well, that's the 

7 Attachment A, right, Gene? 

8 MR. ROLLINS: That's the separate 

9 -- the WD building was a separate paper. The 

10 summary I provided was dated the 28th of 

11 July. I think you sent that to the Board, or 

12 Working Group. 

13 MR. ULSH: Boy, I hope so. I got 

14 one here that I sent over on August 21st, 

15 requested follow-up investigation, regarding 

16 the RWPs affected by the Price-Anderson Act 

17 violations at Mound. Well, Gene, walk us 

18 through it. And I'll get together with SC&A 

19 here at the meeting and make sure that they 

20 have received all of the documents on this 

21 issue that we have produced. I think so, but 

22 -- 
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1 MR. ROLLINS: Yes. The second one 

2 was the analysis, was, I titled it, An 

3 Analysis of The Other Workers Who Entered the 

4 WD Building When its Ventilation Was Shut 

5 Down and It Was Not Posted for Full-Face 

6 Respirator Use as Required. Short title. 

7 MR. ULSH: Okay, Gene -- 

8 MR. ROLLINS: Yes. That should 

9 have been provided to everyone. 

10 MR. ULSH: You know what, that -- 

11 I'm going to have to take that one. That 

12 might be something that I didn't get to you 

13 guys. I'll have to check. But can you walk 

14 us through the big picture on that? 

15 MR. ROLLINS: Okay. Let me start 

16 with that one. Basically the situation was 

17 that the Price-Anderson finding found work 

18 control issues with seven folks who did work 

19 on this filter change, and that their work 

20 did not properly control and so forth. I 

21 think SC&A has agreed that those people, you 

22 know, we pointed out the RWP. We know who 
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1 those seven people were. We know what their 

2 follow-up bioassay was and so forth. 

3 And so the issue was with the fact 

4 that the Price-Anderson documentation also 

5 indicated that the building should have been 

6 posted for full-face respirators during the 

7 period. And I think it was a period of maybe 

8 four hours. We have the sign-in dates and 

9 sign-out dates on the RWP. So, we know about 

10 how long the ventilation was shut down. 

11 Anyway, there were seven 

12 additional workers. So, we know it's in both 

13 cases, there's seven. That's not a -- that 

14 just happens to be a coincidence. There were 

15 seven other workers not involved in this job, 

16 who signed in on a general RWP on that same 

17 day. The RWP number was LW-015-098. This 

18 was February 12th, 1998. So we know who the 

19 other workers, the other workers were. 

20 And this is a, you know, a general 

21 RWP. I think most people are probably 

22 familiar with what those are used for. 
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1 Anytime you enter a building to do sort of 

2 routine sorts of things that are not 

3 invasive, and so forth, like it might involve 

4 checking a gauge, or some sort of routine 

5 maintenance type of thing. 

6 So, we have seven folks, as I 

7 mentioned, who signed in on an RWP on the 

8 date that work was done. So then we went and 

9 looked at, well, what bioassay did these 

10 folks have. And so, I looked in the MESH 

11 database for follow-up bioassays for the same 

12 radionuclides that were covered in the RWP 

13 for the invasive work, in other words, the 

14 actual changing of the filter. And to 

15 briefly summarize, and this is -- you'll get 

16 all this detail when you receive the full 

17 paper, but four of the seven workers on the 

18 general RWP did not have any results above 

19 the decisional level. I think I went out 

20 for, and looked for the next 12 months for 

21 those same radionuclides. 

22 Two workers had one thorium-228 
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1 above decision level, and the last worker 

2 showed Plutonium-238 and as well as thorium 

3 isotopes above the decision level. So, the 

4 question is, those are -- those positives are 

5 both rather long-lived, well-retained 

6 radionuclides. 

7 So, we then looked at what the 

8 bioassay history was for these workers. And 

9 found that in all cases, the folks who showed 

10 above-decisional workers, above-decisional 

11 results, for the same isotopes, did have a 

12 history of having positive results for those 

13 isotopes. So, it looks like that would be 

14 consistent with what their previous bioassay 

15 history had been. 

16 And as I mentioned before, four of 

17 seven did not have any positives in bioassays 

18 that were taken after this event. So, from 

19 that we conclude that we know who the folks 

20 were who entered the building on that same 

21 day when it was posted. And I think I forgot 

22 to mention that the general RWP would not 
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1 have required full-face respirators or in 

2 fact, it would not have required post-job 

3 bioassays. It's just sort of a general thing 

4 that stays open for about a year, in most 

5 cases. 

6 So, I think we know who the folks 

7 are, and we know the follow-up history. 

8 MR. ULSH: I would propose as a 

9 follow-up, that I will go back and double10 check and make sure that there are no 

11 documents in my inbox that need to go over to 

12 you all. If there are, I'll make sure to get 

13 that over to you perhaps we can discuss that 

14 at the next Working Group meeting. And then 

15 we will await your white paper on Issue 11. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, which should 

17 catch up with all this, too. 

18 MR. ROLLINS: Okay. If there are 

19 no questions or anything on that part, I can 

20 talk briefly about the 15 unanalyzed Actinium 

21 samples. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: That's -- I don't 
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1 have any questions. 

2 MR. ULSH: Go ahead, Gene. 

3 MR. ROLLINS: Okay. On the 15 

4 unanalyzed Actinium samples discovered in 

5 August of 2000, you may recall that these 

6 were mixed in with other backup sample -- 

7 with backup samples of an earlier incident. 

8 And they were thought to be a part of these 

9 backup samples, but it turned out they were 

10 not in fact. They should have been analyzed, 

11 and they were not being -- should not have 

12 been held for backup purposes. 

13 Eleven of the 15 people did not 

14 have any Actinium-227 samples collected after 

15 the date of the samples in the refrigerators 

16 and the date of discovery. So that would 

17 leave four that did, in fact. We could find 

18 no documentation, or haven't found any 

19 documentation as of this point listing 

20 exactly who these folks were. 

21 In other words, the following list 

22 was involved. But I did search the MESH 
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1 database in a number of different ways 

2 looking for how one might conclude who these 

3 folks were. And the best thing I've come up 

4 with so far, was using the fact that the 

5 Price-Anderson documentation indicates that 

6 the follow-up actions were taken and closed 

7 out, essentially the next day. In other 

8 words, they restricted the workers, and 

9 requested samples. 

10 I can find in the MESH tables 14 

11 Actinium samples that were scheduled on the 

12 1st of August, which is the date of this 

13 discovery. And there are no other Actinium 

14 samples scheduled between July 24th and 

15 August 7th. So, about a week window either 

16 way from this event. And the number is about 

17 right. So, this seems like a likely group of 

18 people. But I can't find anything in the 

19 MESH data that, you know, gives a code or a 

20 reason why these samples were taken that 

21 would tie all these together. 

22 So, I've provided a list of names 
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1 to Brant, and I believe he's going to 

2 followup on those. 

3 MR. ULSH: Yes. I want to make 

4 sure we've got the right people. On this 

5 issue, surprisingly, at least, it's a 

6 surprise to me how difficult it's been to 

7 find out who -- exactly who these people are. 

8 

9 As Gene mentioned, we've got this 

10 list of putative people, but quite frankly, 

11 I'd like to throw it out to SC&A and ask 

12 whether in your discussion with former 

13 workers, if you can think of someone who 

14 could perhaps help us identify who these 

15 people are. I'm thinking about talking to 

16 Mike Gibson. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be my 

18 first impression. 

19 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

20 MR. ULSH: And if you all can 

21 think of any other people that might be 

22 intimately involved with this, and would know 
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1 who their fellow workers were, that were 

2 affected by this, we would appreciate 

3 anything that you could provide too. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: I would start 

5 with Mike, and then maybe he would know other 

6 people that would help on that. 

7 MR. ULSH: Yes. And we can run 

8 this list of 14 people by him and see if that 

9 sounds like the right group. But it's been 

10 surprisingly difficult to figure out who 

11 these people are. I figured it would be 

12 pretty easy. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It's not ancient 

14 history, either. 

15 MR. ULSH: No, no. It isn't. I 

16 think part of the problem is that when DOE 

17 requested a report on this issue, they 

18 specifically requested that the names not be 

19 included for Privay Act, obviously. You 

20 know, that causes us a little problem when 

21 we're trying to back track and figure out who 

22 it is. 
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1 So, we'll check with Mike, and you 

2 know, I bet that list was in -- and see if he 

3 can provide any insights on that. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: And we found a 

5 lot of files in the data capture that we did 

6 with ORAU, that spoke -- and there was a 

7 whole box in this Price-Anderson Act 

8 violations. I don't recall seeing that list, 

9 per se, but that would -- it could be a 

10 resource as well, I think. 

11 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Internal records 

13 would have names. 

14 MR. ULSH: We looked through 2,000 

15 or so pages of material. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. There's a 

17 lot. 

18 MR. ULSH: And that didn't provide 

19 an answer to us. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I didn't 

21 recall seeing it. 

22 MR. ULSH: But we'll report back 
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1 to you on that as soon as we vet that list, 

2 and talk to Mike and whoever else we need to. 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Anything else on 

4 this issue, or are we ready to move on? 

5 Okay. The next on the agenda is 

6 open discussion. NIOSH, I guess we're 

7 putting it into your court, on data. You 

8 sent out a lot of just data. 

9 MR. ULSH: On the 20th. And so we 

10 -- let's start with the neutron. 

11 MR. ULSH: Okay. Leo, are you on 

12 the line? 

13 MR. FAUST: Yes, I am. 

14 MR. ULSH: Basically, the status 

15 on this is we are preparing a -- well, I 

16 guess for lack of a better word, a white 

17 paper, or a table, whatever you want to call 

18 it, on estimating neutron doses at Mound. 

19 It's not ready for this meeting. But I 

20 didn't want to -- I wanted to provide the raw 

21 data anyway, that we have in hand, to you 

22 all, as soon as possible. So, that's what we 
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1 put out earlier. It was like, just raw data. 

2 CHAIR BEACH: Right, exactly. 

3 MR. ULSH: We had -- there's a 

4 large body of data on instrument surveys in 

5 the field. There's also quite a lot of 

6 paired dosimetry data. And we're going to be 

7 using both of those sources of data, or at 

8 least, we're going to be talking about them, 

9 in the position paper that we will put out 

10 for the next Working Group meeting. But you 

11 all have the raw data that we have. 

12 MR. MAURO: Is that paired gamma13 neutron so you have ratios? 

14 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

15 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

16 MR. MORRIS: Yes. You'll hear 

17 them described as good surveys. So if you -- 

18 those are the key words. In fact, if you 

19 wanted to search SRDB would -- that -- those 

20 key words, you'll find all the documents. 

21 MR. ULSH: But you shouldn't need 

22 to because I provided the SRDB numbers. 
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1 MR. MORRIS: But you shouldn't -- 

2 but you shouldn't need to. That's right. 

3 CHAIR BEACH: Would it be 

4 beneficial to have a technical call, much 

5 like we're going to have on Issue 9 for this 

6 -- that item? 

7 MR. ULSH: I think it would. I 

8 think it would. As soon as we put out our 

9 paper, and give SC&A some time to, you know, 

10 adjust it, it might benefit from a technical 

11 -- an offline technical. 

12 CHAIR BEACH: What's the time 

13 frame on the white paper? 

14 MR. ULSH: Leo, do you have a time 

15 frame in mind? I'm thinking soon. 

16 MR. FAUST: Well, it will be some 

17 time after the first of the year. 

18 CHAIR BEACH: What? 

19 MR. ULSH: We'll talk, Leo. 

20 CHAIR BEACH: I was thinking 

21 before Thanksgiving. 

22 MR. FAUST: I doubt that very 
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1 much. 

2 MR. ULSH: We'll talk internally. 

3 MR. FAUST: I would think some time 

4 after the first of the year, perhaps before -

5 - I don't know when your next meeting is, but 

6 hopefully before that. 

7 CHAIR BEACH: We haven't scheduled 

8 it yet. 

9 MR. FAUST: Make it late in the 

10 year. 

11 (Laughter.) 

12 CHAIR BEACH: 2009? 

13 MR. ULSH: We'll talk, and get 

14 back to you with a proposed date. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: We'll get back to 

16 that. Okay. 

17 MR. MAURO: I would point out the 

18 paired neutron-photon measurements have been 

19 invaluable on other venues when we're 

20 concerned about trying to reconstruct neutron 

21 doses with poor neutron film dosimetry, when 

22 you actually have data sets, where you have -
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1 - you know, whatever you have your detector. 

2 I think the photon, this is -- SC&A's 

3 perspective is this is the good standard when 

4 you're looking for neutron to photon ratios, 

5 when you're going back -- when you have 

6 significant limitations in your neutron 

7 dosimetry. 

8 MR. ULSH: I agree in the 

9 situation where you have significant 

10 limitations. 

11 MR. MAURO: Yes. 

12 MR. ULSH: We'll be talking about 

13 that issue though, in the paper as well. And 

14 there is a significant body of good surveys 

15 that are out there. But we just wanted to 

16 get the raw data to everybody as soon as 

17 possible, so that's in your hand. So, we'll 

18 be getting that out hopefully before the end 

19 of the year. But that's something Leo and I 

20 are going to have to arm wrestle about. 

21 MR. MORRIS: There are literally 

22 thousands and thousands of paired neutrons. 
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1 MR. MAURO: We just looked at them 

2 for Hanford and we're -- it was very helpful. 

3 MR. ULSH: The next body of raw 

4 data that we put out was radon. But since we 

5 want -- 

6 CHAIR BEACH: Before we do that -- 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I want -- is Ron? 

8 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: I want to see if 

10 Ron's on the phone. Ron? 

11 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm here. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Did you -- 

13 before you move on from neutrons, the neutron 

14 data issue that you've been looking at, is 

15 there any clarifying questions, or anything 

16 you might want to bring up at this point? 

17 MR. BUCHANAN: Well, this is Ron 

18 Buchanan with SC&A and I've been working on 

19 the neutron issues at Mound. We understand 

20 what you're saying now is -- are you saying 

21 that the neutron and gamma data -- I looked 

22 briefly over that. And there's several 
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1 thousand pages of pretty good survey data 

2 there done with Rimbaud-type machines, 

3 instruments. 

4 Are you proposing to use this just 

5 for unmonitored workers, or are you proposing 

6 to use this to replace NTA film, or have you 

7 made that decision yet? 

8 MR. ULSH: We haven't made that 

9 decision yet, Ron. But I think part of it is 

10 going to be where we have reliable personnel 

11 dosimetry. So, I'm talking about a person 

12 wearing an NTA film, and a person also 

13 wearing a gamma -- beta-gamma film. That 

14 would certainly be the first source of data 

15 that we would use. 

16 In order to do that, we have to 

17 talk about limitations of the NTA film, in 

18 terms of Mound and whether or not that 

19 presents us with problems in terms of the 

20 reliability of those measurements. So, 

21 that's going to be part of our report, 

22 considering potential issues with the NTA 
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1 film, and whether that does or does not 

2 prevent us from using that as the primary 

3 source of neutron dose estimation. 

4 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, that 

5 decision has not been made yet? 

6 MR. ULSH: Not finally. Although, 

7 I can tell you that we're leaning towards 

8 using the NTA film results. But we still 

9 have a lot of things to talk about on that in 

10 terms of, you know, some of the issues that 

11 have been discussed in previous meetings, 

12 like, you know, fading on an NTA film, or how 

13 much of the spectrum falls below the energy 

14 threshold for the NTA film. Those are issues 

15 that we will address in that report. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay. That's where 

17 SC&A is standing at that time, is the energy 

18 ratio and the fading as opposed to the 

19 workplace neutron energy spectrum. 

20 MR. ULSH: Right. We're aware 

21 that those are issues that are of interest. 

22 So, we will be addressing them. 
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1 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Thank you. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Radon? 

3 MR. ULSH: Okay. It's pretty 

4 simple on radon. Same kind of thing. We are 

5 preparing a white paper and that will be 

6 ready in advance of the next Working Group 

7 meeting. In the meantime, we have provided a 

8 list of documents in the SRDB. They are 

9 health physics progress reports that provide 

10 radon data in them. 

11 We have those progress reports up 

12 through the 50s. I think that's as far as it 

13 goes. We have not yet located the documents 

14 for the 60s. But we're looking for those. I 

15 suspect that they exist, we'll just have to 

16 get them redacted. That's my suspicion. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. The 

18 question I have on that, you know, we talked 

19 about the one or two thousand data points, 

20 which I think really changes the issue from 

21 where it was before. Which, you know, we had 

22 this sort of one graph sample that was taken 
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1 in 1980. But these values, having taken a 

2 quick look, seem to be in the R building 

3 either prior to or during the D&D of the old 

4 cave. So, this is sort of contemporaneous 

5 with what they were doing with the old cave 

6 to you know, go ahead and cap that and all 

7 that. 

8 And then in the early 60s, they 

9 went ahead and built SW over that, you know, 

10 over that. Which led to the ultimate, sort 

11 of problem, that we were talking about, which 

12 seemed to be the exhalation of the radon into 

13 SW and to some extent R, but mostly SW. I 

14 guess I'm having a hard time, maybe you can 

15 help me on that. 

16 The relevance of these 

17 measurements in the R building, different 

18 rooms in the R building, presumably from 

19 residual contamination, perhaps the old cave, 

20 you know, from the old cave going into the R 

21 building. But how that would relate to a 

22 source term that would have come from an 
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1 enclosed, fairly hot source of radium that 

2 had a concrete cap, that you know, had a 

3 conduit into the overlying building, which 

4 was negatively pressured. Which seems to 

5 present sort of a perfect storm, if you're 

6 trying to you know, come up with a radon 

7 problem, is to build a building over top of a 

8 radium source, and then have it capped, and 

9 then have a you know, a pipeline or a conduit 

10 into the overlying building. 

11 And they were seeing, I guess, the 

12 higher levels coming from that source. I 

13 don't know how those measurements in the R 

14 building in the 50s, relate to the presumably 

15 concentrated values that resulted in the 

16 buried cave, and then coming into the SW. I 

17 realize that they're all radon measurements. 

18 But I'm not sure how -- 

19 MR. STEWART: First of all, the R 

20 building and the SW building were sampled. 

21 And the SW building is -- was not in fact 

22 built over the cave. It was actually room 
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1 SW1 of the -- the cave was actually in room 

2 SW1. And what they did in fact, just raised 

3 the level of the floor about three or four -- 

4 and built a new room over that. 

5 And we have measurements from that 

6 later I think, `79, `80, `81, and `82, in 

7 that time frame. Our reasoning is that it's 

8 quite obvious from the documentation, even in 

9 the 40s, that the processors knew they were 

10 going to have a big problem with short-lived 

11 alpha emitters as a result of this work. 

12 We're not going to estimate a dose. We're 

13 going to estimate a maximum dose. And we 

14 figure a great place to tell is during the 

15 process period of the activity in the cave. 

16 We can't imagine a dose higher than that. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess that's 

18 what I'm trying to figure out. Because in -- 

19 I guess talking to Jenkins and folks that did 

20 the monitoring, I think their concern was 

21 that the circumstances with the cap on the 

22 old cave area, and the concentration of, I 
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1 guess, radon in that space, and then the 

2 exhalation through that rather narrow 

3 conduit, whatever it was, served a little 

4 seam in the floor into the building, was 

5 pretty unique in the sense that it was almost 

6 a perfect radon machine in a sense. 

7 I was just trying to figure out if 

8 in fact the, you know, the room measurements, 

9 while the cave might have specific 

10 contaminations, of course in the 50s before 

11 the D&D, whether that would be bounding of 

12 that circumstance or not. 

13 MR. STEWART: Well, in fact, there 

14 are results from the entire operational 

15 period of the cave in operation. And there 

16 is a variety of ways of looking at it. You 

17 can take the maximum radon result from that 

18 operation period, and you can make that a 

19 maximum dose. You can also take, okay, this 

20 is what it was when it was remediated -- 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

22 MR. STEWART: -- and make that a 
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1 maximum dose. And I've always had a little 

2 trouble with the concept of a maximum dose, 

3 but it's clear to me in doing some looks at 

4 these things that a very small amount of 

5 radon can be considered in a maximum dose in 

6 a results -- in -- can I talk about this? 

7 MR. ULSH: Sure, go ahead. 

8 MR. STEWART: Results in a 

9 compensable case based on radon alone, or 

10 part of a year of exposure. It does not take 

11 much radon. Current value of the GPD, that 

12 they assign as the relevant, for R building 

13 or SW building, is eight and a half working 

14 level months. If you give someone that for a 

15 year, most lung cancers are going to be 

16 compensable wholly on that. And if you want 

17 to throw in Plutonium-238 or Polonium, you're 

18 only -- it's like being pregnant. You're 

19 only so compensable. 

20 So, you know, we can put a bigger 

21 number in there. And we've got some pretty 

22 big numbers from these short-lived alpha 
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1 products in the 50s. So, we are going to go 

2 look at those, find out what best big number 

3 to put in there was, and call that a maximum 

4 dose. We don't -- we cannot characterize in 

5 detail because there simply is no data to 

6 calculate an accurate radon dose for those 

7 people between `58 and -- 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And that's kind 

9 of where that's coming from. Because in a 

10 way, this is a surrogate data from the 

11 standpoint of the site, a surrogate data from 

12 different time frame, different set -- 

13 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: -- of 

15 operational circumstances, even through it's 

16 still the old cave. And I was just trying, 

17 you know, to figure out is this commensurate 

18 in terms of characterization. And I guess 

19 without knowing what the you know, what the 

20 actual measurements were in some of these 

21 areas during that later time frame, you are 

22 kind of guessing and trying to say, well, can 
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1 we pick a scenario where it's -- you know, as 

2 you were just saying. It's pretty high, it's 

3 not likely, but without a way to do it, not 

4 likely to be higher than that in these 

5 overlying buildings. 

6 MR. ULSH: Also keep in mind, Joe, 

7 that we've not yet retrieved the health 

8 physics progress reports for the 60s. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: For the later, 

10 yes. 

11 MR. ULSH: If they follow the same 

12 format as the earlier health physics progress 

13 reports, there are radon measurements in 

14 there. But we don't know that until we get 

15 those reports. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think 

17 that's going to be very instructive. Because 

18 once the whole gate is capped and SW is -- 

19 they raised the floor and all that, I think 

20 that would be a lot more indicative, I guess. 

21 MR. STEWART: Yes. We could 

22 assign them year by year, and certainly, when 
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1 we look at it, it would make more sense from 

2 a dosing point of view. More accurate dose 

3 reconstruction. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

5 MR. STEWART: But not necessarily 

6 a higher dose. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And I guess 

8 the reason this has been a salient question 

9 for us is that you know, interviewing Jenkins 

10 and looking at this issue, this all came up 

11 because they were picking up lung alphas 

12 that, you know, that were pretty high. And 

13 they were thinking they had a plutonium 

14 issue, when the back track turned out it 

15 wasn't plutonium at all; it was radon. 

16 So they would actually have been 

17 able to see it in in vivo counts, which 

18 suggests it was fairly hefty. And you would 

19 have to say, whoever was in SW19, or adjacent 

20 buildings, were probably getting this dose 

21 you were talking about, which is a hell of a 

22 dose. 
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1 MR. STEWART: I believe those 

2 current values are reflected, those values 

3 are reflected in current technical basis 

4 document. The numbers are pretty large. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: The problem with 

6 the technical basis document, I think as we 

7 originally reviewed it, was it was based on 

8 that one sampling that Jenkins had done. And 

9 it was just that one sample. And I guess 

10 there was some question as to how reflective 

11 of that area, given he himself admits that it 

12 probably isn't reflective. I think you have 

13 those interview notes as I recall on Jenkins. 

14 But that whole account of why they 

15 did it, how they did it, and whether there 

16 may be some implications for additional 

17 exposure in those rooms and buildings, I 

18 think, that was pretty evident. They felt 

19 that it was a real issue and that's one 

20 reason we went ahead in the `70s and did 

21 remedial action and ventilated that space 

22 just because it was so high. So, anyway. 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Joe, are you 

2 really asking whether the air concentration 

3 in the later building could have been higher 

4 than the original cave? What? 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: No. I'm just 

6 saying that under the circumstances by which 

7 they were seeing elevated concentrations in 

8 these overlying buildings -- 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: -- which was 

11 almost like a capped crawl space. 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, you're saying 

13 source term. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: But the volumes 

16 could 

17 be -- 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: With the -- 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- the room 

20 volumes could have been small, I suppose. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And the 

22 concentration that was going on with the 
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1 negative pressure, the question would be, you 

2 know, whether you would be seeing a much 

3 higher dose -- a much higher concentration 

4 level, which is sort of, and this is a little 

5 and/or, because you only have this one 

6 individual that they actually did the lung 

7 counts on. But they're picking up the radon 

8 daughters in his lungs. And they waited, 

9 actually took him out of the area, and 

10 waited, and it gradually went down. 

11 But so, it was, I would think, 

12 fairly hot in that particular area. The 

13 question is, how broadly do you want to 

14 define that area. 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Because it was 

17 only one sample taken, it is hard to 

18 characterize that area. 

19 MR. ULSH: Well, that's the -- if 

20 I'm thinking about the right guy, that was 

21 the guy that was sitting, had his office 

22 right on top. 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: In fact, he was 

2 sitting on top of the hole. 

3 MR. ULSH: Right. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you know, he 

5 was probably the maximally exposed 

6 individual. It may not -- it's not clear you 

7 know, how many other people were in the area 

8 and how many other adjacent rooms were 

9 involved. But there's no question, at least 

10 he was getting dosed to the point where it 

11 was showing up in his in vivo counts, and 

12 from radon, which, yes, they thought it was 

13 plutonium event that they were dealing with. 

14 It turned out to be radon event. 

15 So, you know, that's the 

16 implication of trying to figure out. If you 

17 only have one sample, is it possible to go 

18 back and come up with a surrogate, or a 

19 representative sample? I think it's a 

20 reasonable approach. And if you can get the 

21 1960s progress reports, I think that would be 

22 even closer. I'm a little concerned about 
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1 the pre-1960, because I'm not so sure -- this 

2 is your question -- I'm not sure if the 

3 operating phase of the cave and the 

4 measurements in these adjacent facilities 

5 would necessarily be the same as that. 

6 It might be. It might be even be 

7 more. But I'm not sure. That's hard to 

8 figure. 

9 MR. STEWART: We have three 

10 different types of results. Depending on 

11 where you look in the data, we have the cave 

12 ventilation itself, and then we have the 

13 access area behind, what they call the high14 risk area. The cave itself wasn't accessible 

15 in terms of you know -- and then they have a 

16 low risk area. They have three gradations of 

17 samples. And they are called out 

18 specifically in some spots. And they also do 

19 the corridors, and they do some results in R 

20 building, too. 

21 R building is not necessarily, 

22 it's not over top of the cave site. It's an 
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1 adjacent building. But it, I believe what 

2 you're seeing there is the same source term, 

3 but it's a limited processing going on there. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: With more 

5 dilution. 

6 MR. STEWART: Yes. Not 

7 necessarily the cave itself. So there are 

8 different results that you're going to get. 

9 So you have your choice of all them. I don't 

10 think it's plausible to assign somebody the, 

11 you know, the air concentration that they're 

12 measuring at the exhaust stack for the cave, 

13 for example. 

14 You just got to go pick a maximum 

15 number that you like. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I'm just 

17 saying, I don't -- without having any 

18 supporting data, it's hard to pick. Because 

19 you know, it's sort of like, this individual, 

20 four individuals in SW, had their own exhaust 

21 stack essentially. Because of the pressure 

22 gradient, they were actually getting -- and 
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1 you know, getting it through the fissure, or 

2 whatever they had over the collapsed cave. 

3 So, in a sense, they were getting continuous 

4 source. 

5 Now my question is, how much was 

6 coming through. But we'll find out a lot. 

7 MR. STEWART: Yes, it looks like a 

8 lot. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: It's sort of 

10 conjecture to say, well, how much is a lot. 

11 And I understand your issue is, at some 

12 point, it's moot. 

13 MR. STEWART: Yes. Yes. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I don't -- 

15 that's another argument to say, well, you 

16 know, we don't know, but we're going to go 

17 ahead and assign this. But clearly, it's 

18 overkill. 

19 MR. STEWART: Yes. There is a 

20 point at which latency issues begin to limit 

21 compensability. For instance, if you have a 

22 very short latent period between exposure and 
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1 the diagnosis of lung cancer, say 30 days 

2 wherein you were exposed to a large amount of 

3 radon, 30 days later, you're diagnosed with 

4 cancer, then the probability of causation, no 

5 matter how high the dose, is going to be 

6 essentially zero. And it plays out according 

7 to the epidemiological tables over five years 

8 or so for most cancers, I believe. I'm not 

9 an expert on that. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: But again, you 

11 know, the other question, too, is that it's 

12 hard to, outside this one individual, know 

13 what was -- what individuals are resident to 

14 the area in question. I mean, I hadn't seen 

15 anything that kind of gives you an idea of - 

16 because SW was, you know, probably a major 

17 process area. And who knows. So I don't 

18 know how that would, you know, how one would 

19 apply that, either. 

20 MR. STEWART: It's always 

21 problematical, because there are always 

22 different levels of information available in 
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1 a case. You may have a very detailed work 

2 history for the individual from a telephone 

3 interview, and you may have very little. 

4 So typically, our approach is to a 

5 little more sweeping, and that is, you know, 

6 all personnel assigned to R and SW, for 

7 example, would be one way to approach it. We 

8 can typically get to that level of detail 

9 based on bioassay records, and on external 

10 dose monitoring. If they have neither one of 

11 those, we can be pretty sure that they didn't 

12 work in R or SW. 

13 MR. ULSH: Well, and due to the 

14 nature of the exposure source, and we're only 

15 talking about radon. So really, we're only 

16 talking about lung cancers. And really, 

17 we're only talking about non-compensable lung 

18 cancers, or the ones that are non-compensable 

19 right now. So, that's a pretty small handful 

20 of claims. 

21 MR. STEWART: We haven't looked at 

22 that for some time because we have, we're up 
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1 to almost 28,000 cases now. 

2 MR. ULSH: Well, yes, but -- 

3 MR. STEWART: Yes. No -- yes, fewer 

4 than ten that were not yet compensated. And 

5 some of those had not been processed as yet. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you're still 

7 working this up. But from a plausibility 

8 standpoint, you would have to draw some 

9 parallels with comparable measurements or 

10 concentration levels to probably, you know, 

11 the limited data that exists for that one 

12 location. 

13 MR. STEWART: Possibly, but we may 

14 be looking at an unprecedented amount of 

15 radon. We have to be ready for that 

16 conclusion. In fact, the cave facility was a 

17 substantial dollar investment that was 

18 scheduled to be reused for other processes, 

19 but in fact, was demolished and disposed of 

20 just as a result of this radon problem. 

21 So, you know, they certainly 

22 changed their minds about health protection 
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1 as a result of this process. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's the 

3 issue of how one brackets the issue in terms 

4 of the data that's available, I think is the 

5 thing that I'd be interested in. I think the 

6 data itself suggests there's a lot of data, 

7 but how it would fit into that analysis is 

8 the challenge. I'm not sure one can. It 

9 might turn out that there might be some data 

10 from the later periods that would be closer. 

11 MR. ULSH: So if I hear you 

12 correctly, Joe, and if I could summarize, 

13 perhaps, there are two concerns that you have 

14 at least so far looking at the data that's 

15 available right now. 

16 One is applying the radon 

17 measurements from the earlier time period to 

18 the later time period. In order to do that, 

19 should we decide that we need to do that, we 

20 would have to discuss whether or not the 

21 earlier data is number one, representative, 

22 or number two, bounding. We'd have to make 
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1 the case that it is in order to be able to do 

2 that. If we find the health physics progress 

3 reports, and they do indeed have data for 

4 that later time period, then that issue kind 

5 of goes away. 

6 The second issue though is, let's 

7 just assume that we have the data that we had 

8 in the earlier period, and we have that data 

9 for the 60s once we find it. Then we have to 

10 make the case that these areas that were 

11 measured are indeed applicable or bounding, 

12 you know, across the site, or you know. 

13 Have I summed up your two 

14 concerns? 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think the 

16 first is clearly one where you can come up 

17 with a surrogate means of assigning a -- a 

18 concentration value to others getting seen 

19 there -- and the second thing, I think 

20 clearly is one of the defining what the 

21 bounds are. And we're not clear on how 

22 extensive the problem was in SW and whether 
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1 it -- well, it was formerly in R. We didn't 

2 see anything definitive, but we had an 

3 interview where a tech said, yes. His 

4 counter went off, you know, went off scale 

5 over a fissure in R. 

6 So, you know, clearly there's some 

7 implications for R, as well. So this 

8 discussion of bounding the issue both ways 

9 would be an issue. 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, the area -- 

11 because in the interview - and correct me if 

12 I'm wrong on this - when we were discussing 

13 this, when they found that fissure, they 

14 found the amounts that they found, they 

15 didn't look any other place. They looked -- 

16 they went, and the result with generation of 

17 where it was going, which ventilator, that 

18 whole system, but they never checked into 

19 where there was any other fissures or 

20 anything else. 

21 Because I guess this went through 

22 all sorts of different buildings and so 
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1 forth. They had issues with radon in 

2 numerous places. They - and my understanding 

3 is they blamed it on the coal fired 

4 generating plant down the road that did a lot 

5 of different things. But from the interview, 

6 and I guess this is what I found interesting, 

7 was once they saw the levels they did, they 

8 never did any more investigation, because 

9 when they figured out where it was coming 

10 from, they ventilated that. So they never 

11 looked into any other areas that it would 

12 have been feeding into the building, 

13 different parts of the building. 

14 MR. ULSH: We're kind of back to 

15 the same issue that we were talking about 

16 this morning in terms of how tightly you can 

17 go out of circle. And for people who didn't 

18 work at Mound, myself included, we can talk 

19 about R building, we talk about SW building, 

20 it's really one building. 

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. Right. 

22 MR. ULSH: So I think from this 
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1 particular source term, the biggest circle 

2 would be all of R and SW building. Can you 

3 draw the circle tighter? Well, I don't know. 

4 We'll have to make a case for that. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: You're not 

6 throwing building 21 in here? 

7 MR. ULSH: Building 21, the 

8 storage facility on the -- near the plant 

9 boundary? That was an unoccupied storage 

10 building. I mean, people went in briefly to 

11 do the routine surveys, but it wasn't an area 

12 that was routinely occupied. 

13 MR. ALVAREZ: This is Bob Alvarez. The 

14 environmental surveys through that building 

15 indicated significant depositions from 

16 radon/thoron emissions. 

17 MR. ULSH: That wouldn't necessarily 

18 surprise me, considering that they had 

19 thousands of drums of thorium stored in that 

20 building. Well, it wasn't the drums. 

21 Actually, they emptied the drums into 

22 building 21. So that wouldn't surprise me. 
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1 But the point is is that that 

2 building itself was unoccupied, and it was 

3 geographically removed from the rest of the 

4 site. It was near the site boundary. And 

5 there was a fairly large area between. 

6 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes. I mean, I 

7 think that that building probably had workers 

8 there in greater numbers when they were 

9 putting it there, and repacking it to remove 

10 it. 

11 MR. ULSH: Yes, I agree that we 

12 probably have had the maximum number of 

13 workers when they were doing -- when they 

14 were emptying the drums into that building. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: Didn't they do the 

16 redrumming in that building also where they -

17 - 

18 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes. They had -- 

19 they found a customer, of course in the mid20 70s or late-70s, and eventually got shipped 

21 off site. 

22 MR. ULSH: Well, we're talking 
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1 about a couple of different operations here. 

2 Yes, that did happen, Bob, where they found 

3 a customer. The customer came on site and 

4 removed that material. 

5 But prior to that, in 1955, Mound 

6 received -- well, late 1954, and in 1995, 

7 they received quite a large amount of thorium 

8 residues, Brazilian oxide residues and some 

9 other materials, in anticipation of a thorium 

10 pilot plant. That thorium plant never 

11 actually came to fruition. The project was 

12 canceled, and then Mound was left sitting 

13 there with all of these thorium residues. 

14 And some of those drums were in 

15 very poor condition, and they had to be 

16 repackaged, some of them a number of times. 

17 So I think that's what Josie was asking about 

18 -- 

19 CHAIR BEACH: Right. 

20 MR. ULSH: -- those earlier 

21 repacking operations. In fact, the thing 

22 that lead to construction of building 21 was 
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1 the problems that they were having with these 

2 thorium drums deteriorating. So they built 

3 building 21, and dumped all the stuff into 

4 that building. 

5 So I don't -- I can't remember off 

6 the top of my head exactly where the thorium 

7 redrumming operations occurred. I don't 

8 think it was in building 21, because building 

9 21 wasn't built until later. It was done 

10 outside. 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I remember the 

12 discussions, but don't remember the building. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It was done 

14 outside. 

15 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: 21 was built with 

17 outside venting because of the thoron 

18 problem. 

19 MR. ULSH: Right. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: But again, I 

21 think that would have been maybe a periodic 

22 exposure, but it wouldn't have been very 
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1 long. I mean, workers went in, went out. I 

2 think it was a pretty known issue on the 

3 thoron. 

4 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Anyway. 

6 MR. ULSH: I think the significant 

7 radon issue is going to be related to the old 

8 cave, and the environs around, and the R and 

9 SW building. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: That's pretty 

11 much -- I think you've captured it. 

12 MR. ULSH: So as an action item, 

13 I'll volunteer before you even -- we are 

14 pursuing the health physics reports from the 

15 60s. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Right. 

17 MR. ULSH: When we locate those, 

18 if any redaction is necessary, we'll work 

19 with DOE to accomplish that, and then we'll 

20 make you all aware that that's available. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. The only 

22 issue on that, whether, you know, you have a 
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1 freshly capped source like that, whether the 

2 actual exhalation came about through later, 

3 you know, fracturing, you know. These things 

4 typically are pretty solid in the beginning, 

5 but they over time fracture. And whether 

6 that was the -- so measurements right after 

7 it was capped may not necessarily reflect the 

8 circumstances five, ten years down the road. 

9 I'm just throwing that out. I'm 

10 not saying I know anything about it, but -- 

11 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: -- if it looks 

13 real clean, I wouldn't necessarily assume 

14 that that was the case throughout. 

15 MR. ULSH: Well -- 

16 MR. STEWART: It didn't look all 

17 that clean. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: What's what? 

19 MR. STEWART: It didn't look all 

20 that clean. 

21 MR. ULSH: Well, the D&D in the 

22 old cave a number of times, but I think the 
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1 final time was in 1959. So, yes. If you had 

2 data from say, 1960, or even 61, that may not 

3 be representative of later in the 60s. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: A little later in 

5 the 60s, I think I'd be more comfortable that 

6 that's probably more reflective. 

7 MR. ULSH: Yes, we're looking for 

8 these reports throughout the 60s. So we'll 

9 let you know when and if, hopefully, we find 

10 them. 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Are you coming up 

12 with a white paper on that, on the radon 

13 issue also? 

14 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: Any idea of time 

16 frame? 

17 MR. ULSH: Don't say next year. 

18 (Laughter.) 

19 MR. ULSH: You know, a lot of it, 

20 Josie, is going to depend on when we actually 

21 are successful in locating these progress 

22 reports. 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Those -- right. 

2 MR. ULSH: That's kind of the 

3 necessary precursor to it. 

4 CHAIR BEACH: That makes sense. 

5 MR. ULSH: I am hoping that it 

6 will be in advance of the next Working Group 

7 meeting. But it really depends on -- 

8 CHAIR BEACH: I understand. So I 

9 won't look for a date on that then. And the 

10 other item, if there's no more on radon, is 

11 the roadmap issue. 

12 MR. ULSH: Yes. The action item 

13 that we had on the roadmap was, at the last 

14 Working Group meeting, it was requested that 

15 we add in some information to the roadmap 

16 with regard to the incidents that occurred, 

17 and where information on those incidents 

18 could be found. 

19 Sam Chu of the ORAU team did, in 

20 fact, go in and add that information in, and 

21 that was the only minor change on the roadmap 

22 that we made this time around. 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: We did ask for hot 

2 cell descriptions under that same item. 

3 Those were made available, weren't they? The 

4 drawings, were you able to locate anything on 

5 that? 

6 MR. STEWART: Well, I was not able 

7 to identify detailed drawings of that, which 

8 kind of surprised me, because they worked 

9 with that fairly late. 

10 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

11 MR. STEWART: I did talk to some 

12 people who had worked with it. They actually 

13 -- the drawings of the cell itself are 

14 present on drawings made in the `50s and `70s 

15 -- `50s? No. `70s and certainly in 1991. 

16 Yes, that's the old cave. 

17 The hot cell is what they refer to 

18 as the new cave, and it basically was an 

19 isolation cell - Brant's talked about this 

20 before - and the idea was that it would be 

21 less permeable to radon. We have a drawing 

22 of it, and we have some dimensions. I'll 
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1 just read you what I have. 

2 It's an isolation cell in SW-140. 

3 The cell itself is including a -- included 

4 on drawings of the SW building, first floor, 

5 dated `73 and `91. The new cave area 

6 actually is a suite of rooms that encompass 

7 the areas surrounding the isolation cell, and 

8 it includes a number of different rooms in 

9 SW. I've got a list of them here. 

10 But the new cave area, when you 

11 see that referred to informally in a 

12 narrative, it could be talking about the 

13 isolation cell, or it could be talking about 

14 the room surrounding it. SW-140, the room 

15 where the cave actually was, had fume hoods 

16 in it, and some lab benches. The adjoining 

17 room, SW-120 -- or, SW-22, had glove boxes 

18 around the periphery of the room, and a work 

19 area in the middle. 

20 One of those glove boxes had a 

21 pass through to the isolation cells, so that 

22 they could put things in and out through that 
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1 glove box. Let's see what else we have here. 

2 If you look at that hot cell, you would see 

3 two large windows, very thick windows. 

4 People here are probably familiar with those. 

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Lead shielded. 

6 MR. STEWART: I don't know that 

7 they were lead shielded. I would assume that 

8 they are, but I haven't found data that shows 

9 that to be the case. There are two 

10 manipulator arms there by the windows, and 

11 in-line filter for the ventilation exhaust. 

12 Also on that wall were two air samplers for 

13 the operators of the cell. 

14 On the other side of the hot cell 

15 was a door, an access door you could actually 

16 go in, and that was room 136. So you could 

17 actually enter the cell. This room, later 

18 in its operational history, was always 

19 accessed on respiratory protection. So it 

20 was not a clean area, even in the outside 

21 part of the cell. I mean, you had to have a 

22 mask on to be in the new cave area and 
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1 operating the manipulators. 

2 So really all I was able to give 

3 you is a kind of a qualitative description. 

4 CHAIR BEACH: I think that's what 

5 brought the question up at the last Working 

6 Group meeting, and I think, Brad, you were 

7 kind of the lead on that -- 

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: -- and I think 

10 because -- 

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: We were trying to 

12 look at the ventilation system, and try to 

13 figure out how they to have this design 

14 because I guess I keep getting confused when 

15 we're talking about these documents and so 

16 forth, have them going into the new cave and 

17 doing this and this. And the next one 

18 they're in respirators and stuff, but there's 

19 no determinating -- it's kind of vague to me. 

20 I really had a hard time following it, 

21 because it seemed like, in some senses, they 

22 encompass this whole section of it, they 
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1 called it the new cave. And in other ones, 

2 they were calling them hot cells. And they 

3 were basically the same thing, is what I was 

4 being told. But I'm wondering if the center 

5 portion of it is what they were classifying 

6 as a hot cell. 

7 MR. ULSH: I think that's the 

8 case. The hot cell is inside the new cave. 

9 MR. STEWART: Yes. The hot cell 

10 is inside a suite of rooms that's called the 

11 new cave. 

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. And that 

13 -- I guess that's where I was getting into 

14 problems, because I was picking up in that 

15 they, like you just said, that they were 

16 respiratory, even on the outsides. And I was 

17 trying to figure out what the -- how the 

18 ventilation system worked. 

19 Because in talking with some of 

20 the interviewers, and stuff like that, this 

21 add-on to this building and then add-on to 

22 this created quite a problem with 
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1 ventilation. Those outer suite of rooms that 

2 you said were supposed to stay clean, but 

3 they didn't. And this is why I was looking 

4 into the flow pattern of -- that's why we 

5 were trying to find these prints and stuff 

6 like that, because those outer rooms were to 

7 be cleaned, and then they ended up -- 

8 CHAIR BEACH: And were they 

9 ventilated? 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: And how they -- 

11 yes, how they ventilated. And part of the 

12 issue in my -- and you've got to understand, 

13 I'm taking this just from some of the 

14 interviewers of some of the maintenance 

15 people, and so forth. We discussed these 

16 buildings were added one onto the other and 

17 back and forth, and the ventilation systems 

18 didn't quite match what the facility needed. 

19 And so they had -- that's where it got into 

20 a lot of this spread of contamination issues. 

21 That's why I was really trying to 

22 visualize what they were talking about, and I 
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1 had a hard time. 

2 MR. ULSH: Okay. I've got a 

3 couple of thoughts on that, Brad. 

4 I think I had some photographs of 

5 the new cave facility. I have to go back and 

6 locate those, and I'll get those to you. 

7 That may not entirely answer your question, 

8 but it'll give you a little bit of a visual. 

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: What I was really 

10 trying to look at, because it was a surprise 

11 from what I read, and some of the documents 

12 and so forth, from the Mound Museum and 

13 stuff, that it was a surprise that all of a 

14 sudden these other rooms started, and they 

15 come to find out that they had ventilation 

16 issues, and I guess there was a pass-thru 

17 path to the old cave that got into some 

18 issues, too. And that's why I was trying to 

19 get an overview of what we actually had here. 

20 The main thing I was looking at is 

21 the flow pattern for the air and so forth 

22 like that. Later on, I know that they made 
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1 some more modifications to try to get a 

2 handle on what the issue was. 

3 MR. ULSH: I know that the -- 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I've got a 

5 suggestion. In the mid-1990s, they went 

6 through room by room in buildings, and did 

7 air flow studies with smoke. And I don't 

8 know if that's available for that area. I 

9 would assume that it was because, at least 

10 for our building, they did it for every 

11 laboratory. 

12 And it was for the purpose of 

13 making sure that things were positioned, and 

14 there should be a diagram that was prepared 

15 by the person who did it that will show you 

16 the air flow. 

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Because what time 

18 period did the new cave come online? Do you 

19 remember what that was? 

20 MR. ULSH: Well it was after the 

21 old cave, and the old cave was ended in 1959, 

22 so it probably would have been early to mid-
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1 60s. 

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Because 

3 what I got was that there -- this was a 

4 reoccurring issue, contamination issues and 

5 so forth with these caves, and where they 

6 spread and where it went. And that this -- I 

7 guess it's called a -- it was actually a pipe 

8 chase or something between the old cave and 

9 the new area. 

10 MR. STEWART: Pipe chase? I know 

11 that that's a case. 

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: I wouldn't say 

13 it's a pipe chase, but -- 

14 MR. ULSH: Right. 

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is where 

16 they had the radon issues. 

17 MR. STEWART: Yes. It's -- 

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: I call it a pipe 

19 chase. You got to realize, each -- I call it 

20 access tunnel, whatever you want to be able 

21 to call it. 

22 MR. STEWART: Yes. I have not 
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1 seen evidence of that on the drawings that 

2 I've seen. I have a construction drawing 

3 from an as-built in the `50s that shows the 

4 new cave. Yes, sorry, `50s. 

5 The new cave, actually, the first 

6 operation we have starting in there is `66, 

7 although one source gives that date as 1960. 

8 King says 1960, and I believe he is 

9 incorrect in that assumption. But it looks 

10 like operation started in `66 in the new 

11 cave. 

12 I haven't seen anything 

13 underground, under the slab, under the floor 

14 level from the old cave to the new cave. Not 

15 to say that that's not a possibility, I just 

16 haven't seen evidence of that. If you look 

17 at a drawing of the building, SW-1, which 

18 later became SW-19, had a hallway from it 

19 that went right down to the new cave area. 

20 So it certainly was easy to access from that 

21 side. 

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I mean, this is 
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1 trivial, but we just found out a week ago 

2 that two of our facilities were connected by 

3 pipes, and now we have 23 people moving up to 

4 just last week. We now know it. We never 

5 knew any of these pipes' distance. And this 

6 is why it's such an interesting issue to me 

7 is because we have the same thing at our site 

8 of buildings being added onto buildings and 

9 so forth like that, and it's kind of a 

10 convoluted mess of stuff. 

11 And these came out in the 

12 interviews and so forth like that -- but 

13 these - we kept referring to them as 

14 communicators and so forth - they came up, 

15 and they said, the outside area is supposed 

16 to have been cleaned. It ended up 

17 respiratory. Now there was a lot of issues 

18 to it, flow ventilation and so forth like 

19 that, and we kept having experienced 

20 contamination. That's just why I wanted to 

21 get a handle on an overview of what were we 

22 looking at here. I don't know what we can do 
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1 on it, but -- 

2 MR. ULSH: Well, I think there's 

3 three things that we can probably do. Number 

4 one, I can go try to find those photographs. 

5 And that will at least give you the visual 

6 representation. 

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. 

8 MR. ULSH: Number two, if I could 

9 ask, Kathy, if you could perhaps just put in 

10 an email any information that you can think 

11 of that would help us locate that study that 

12 you're talking about, you know, that 

13 ventilation study in the early `90s, and we 

14 can look for that. 

15 And number three, I can go do a 

16 targeted search. There's a number of blue 

17 prints available at the Mound Museum that we 

18 really haven't messed with too much. 

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. 

20 MR. ULSH: And we can go look and 

21 see if we can find any blue prints related to 

22 the old and new cave in relation to the R and 
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1 SW building. 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: And that's where 

3 you run into the problem. The blue prints 

4 and the as-builts are often different, and I 

5 think that's what you're talking about. 

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, very much 

7 so. 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: So, if you pull a 

9 blue print, you've got to make sure it's an 

10 as-built, and not a design that somebody 

11 said, well, that won't work, so let's leave 

12 these pipes in there and add something. 

13 MR. ULSH: Well, I know just the 

14 guy who can help me look through these blue 

15 prints. I don't know what we'll find, if 

16 anything, but we'll look. 

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, and I'd just 

18 like to -- I'd like to be able to look, 

19 because there's a lot of -- almost all the -- 

20 most of the interviewees that we've 

21 interviewed and talked with and so forth have 

22 comments about the new cave and old cave and 
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1 how they were set up, and they were trying to 

2 explain to me how these buildings were added 

3 on, and new processes would come in and tied 

4 into other stuff, and it was -- it would be 

5 pretty hard to follow. And I visually 

6 couldn't see what -- half of what they were -

7 - I got a rough estimate. But if we could 

8 find anything -- 

9 MR. STEWART: There are excellent 

10 building descriptions for some, even many of 

11 the buildings at Mound, but I have not been 

12 able to locate them on that one, one of those 

13 for either R or SW. I would make -- 

14 certainly make this job a lot easier if we do 

15 that. Because they're quite detailed, and 

16 have photographs and diagrams. But I haven't 

17 found that yet. Could it be in the 

18 classified room? 

19 CHAIR BEACH: And Brant, you said 

20 Mound did update the old drive, or update the 

21 roadmap? 

22 MR. ULSH: Yes. 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Can we get a copy of 

2 that? Do we have to do download it from the 

3 -- 

4 MR. ULSH: No. We got it. 

5 CHAIR BEACH: I've got some 

6 questions about that. 

7 MR. ULSH: I had forwarded it by 

8 email, but it -- 

9 CHAIR BEACH: I didn't get it by 

10 email. 

11 MR. ULSH: You didn't? 

12 CHAIR BEACH: No. I believe it's 

13 on O drive, but I'm not going to have access. 

14 On the 20th, you did deliver to the O drive. 

15 I'm wondering, can I get a copy of it, since 

16 I won't have access for a couple of weeks? 

17 MR. ULSH: Sure. Sure, yes. 

18 CHAIR BEACH: Great. If you don't 

19 mind. 

20 MR. ULSH: I'll put it on a disk 

21 and FedEx it to you. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. And then we 
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1 talked about -- you had other questions on 

2 the roadmap? 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I did. 

4 CHAIR BEACH: Sorry. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: First of 

6 all, is there a classified version of it? 

7 MR. ULSH: There is a version that 

8 contains more detail that we're not 

9 circulating. 

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Which 

11 includes information from appendix B? The 

12 King document? 

13 MR. MORRIS: We haven't -- we 

14 haven't updated from appendix B yet. 

15 MR. ROLLINS: Will that version be 

16 on the O drive? 

17 MR. ULSH: If it is, we're in 

18 trouble. 

19 MR. ROLLINS: Okay. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: So, how can 

21 we -- cleared people view that, how can that 

22 be made available for those -- 
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1 MR. MORRIS: As I understand it, 

2 we have not -- our most recent updates of the 

3 SRDB to the incidents -- the SRDB contains 

4 some separate documents describing incidents. 

5 And most recent thing Sam Chu did was to put 

6 pointers from the unclassified version of the 

7 roadmap, or the less sensitive version of the 

8 roadmap, to the SRDB. I don't think he did 

9 that on the older, more detailed version that 

10 we are not keeping up to date. 

11 I think all we've done is maintain 

12 the newest version that has less -- that has 

13 been sanitized to some extent. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: And this does 

15 encompass appendix B? 

16 MR. MORRIS: It was not -- we've 

17 read appendix B at this point, but we haven't 

18 worked with it to the fourth templates done 

19 as I understand it. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Can you 

21 tell us where the location of that appendix B 

22 document is, where you update it? 
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1 MR. ULSH: We already have. 

2 Theresa Fowler in Albuquerque has it. I even 

3 object to that fact, but -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, we don't -- 

5 I guess the question is, it's just getting a 

6 shipped copy as we can deal with them 

7 directly. 

8 MR. ULSH: Let's talk about that 

9 afterwards. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

11 MR. ULSH: Because I can give you 

12 some ideas on how to get that. 

13 CHAIR BEACH: Does that cover also 

14 the roadmap? Is that part of this discussion 

15 for Issue 6? 

16 MR. ULSH: What is Issue 6? 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Issue 6 is the metal 

18 titrites, and there was a NIOSH action. So 

19 this is -- is that part of it, or -- Because 

20 there was going to be a separate roadmap that 

21 you guys agreed to come up with on that. 

22 MR. ULSH: How about we -- 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: That's fine. 

2 Anything else on the -- ? 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Ron, are 

4 you still on? Ron Buchanan? 

5 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm here. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Did you 

7 have any questions on the claimant cases that 

8 dealt with the shallow dose issue? 

9 MR. BUCHANAN: Not really 

10 questions. I guess at this point, SC&A needs 

11 to know of the Working Group's position on 

12 whether this should be pursued any further. 

13 Just a quick recap here, as you recall, the 

14 shallow dose was not measured in a long 

15 period of time, and must be -- the film 

16 showed some darkening, and then the person 

17 might read it. There was no set standard and 

18 no calibration for the shallow dose, which 

19 would include the electrons and low-energy 

20 photons, and differentiating those from the 

21 deep dose. 

22 And Mound did not have an accepted 
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1 calibration system up -- they didn't start 

2 calibrating at all until like `79. And it 

3 wasn't -- still had some problems up into the 

4 `88, one of the -- did not meet the DOE lab 

5 requirements even then. So I guess my 

6 question is, I looked -- NIOSH sent about 100 

7 cases from Mound that had skin-type cancer. 

8 And so I went back and looked at a few of 

9 those cases, and certainly not all hundred of 

10 them. And went back and looked at a few of 

11 those cases, and they are using the electron 

12 dose as recorded, if there was some recorded, 

13 and if there's not, they're generally 

14 assigning mis-dose. 

15 Now in some cases, they don't use 

16 shallow dose because they have a greater than 

17 50 percent POC without it, so they don't use 

18 it. But in some cases, they are using their 

19 recorded dose if there was one there, or 

20 assigning a mis-dose in some of these cases. 

21 A couple of them were not -- they were 

22 denied because they didn't reach the 50 
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1 percent. 

2 And so I guess at this point we 

3 would 

4 -- SC&A needs to know if the Working Group 

5 wants to pursue any further on the shallow 

6 dose, if that's an SEC issue, or where we 

7 want to stand on that. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think this 

9 goes back to comments that were made that, 

10 you know, certainly there's some issues 

11 there, but in the final analysis, the skin 

12 cancer wouldn't necessarily be an SEC 

13 relevant cancer. So I don't know. I think 

14 there was a little bit of a, you know, 

15 whether this should be pursued, but I think 

16 that is appropriately something that ought to 

17 be discussed before we expend any effort 

18 trying to chase all these cases down. It's 

19 not a small job. You know, because it's not 

20 going to lead to some resolution on SEC 

21 context, maybe it's not a good use of 

22 resources. 
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1 MR. ULSH: Well there were a 

2 couple of action items that we had. One was 

3 to provide that list of cases to you for 

4 which shallow dose would be relevant, and 

5 that includes primarily skin cancer, but a 

6 few others as well. And that list has been 

7 provided. 

8 The other action item, I believe, 

9 was for us to provide -- I don't know, we 

10 keep using the term, roadmap, but a position 

11 paper, or some way how we're going to handle 

12 estimated shallow doses at Mound. We have 

13 not yet provided that. We will do so. 

14 That's a deliverable for us for the next 

15 Working Group meeting for sure. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: That did not make 

17 the list either, under 16. 

18 MR. ULSH: Well it's somewhere 

19 after that, I'm sure. 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: You took it as an 

21 action. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Perfect. So I would 
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1 like to defer that until you provide that 

2 paper, and SC&A has a chance to maybe look at 

3 some more of those claims. I don't know. 

4 How does the rest of the Working Group feel 

5 on that one? 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Did you say that 

7 you had provided us with a list of the cases? 

8 MR. ULSH: Yes Paul, and 

9 unfortunately, I neglected to include you, 

10 because I forgot that you're an alternate. 

11 So I will go back and get all those emails 

12 that I sent out on Monday, and forward them 

13 to you, as well. 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. 

15 MR. ULSH: But yes, that is 

16 available on the O drive in the Mound area. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: This sounds like 

18 -- 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Approximately how 

20 many were -- are we talking about here? 

21 MR. ULSH: Well, Ron gave the 

22 number of about 100. That sounds reasonable 
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1 to me, especially if it was laid out so that 

2 each row was not an individual person, it was 

3 an individual cancer. So as you know, in a 

4 lot of cases where you have a skin cancer, 

5 you don't have just one. So there's numerous 

6 rows associated with one particular person. 

7 I'll take Ron's number at about 100. 

8 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes I counted 

9 there are about 108. There's a lot of lines 

10 there, but like you say, Brant, there -- skin 

11 cancer, someone has like four or five, or 

12 six. So I think a total of 108 cases. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I guess 

14 responding to what you're raising, Ron, it 

15 sounds like we should hold and wait for this 

16 white paper, whatever it's going to be. This 

17 is an illustrative sample of what's been 

18 done, but it sounds like this will be a 

19 little bit more definitive as to what the 

20 approach is. 

21 CHAIR BEACH: Bob can you hand me 

22 -- so this is the list that Brant actually 
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1 sent out, all five pages of the data? I 

2 think 16 is the first one. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Josie, we're 

4 going to hold on, you know -- 

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. MR. 

6 FITZGERALD: -- that part of it, and wait 

7 until we approach it. 

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So the next 

9 part of this is to determine what priorities 

10 we need to set for future meetings, and I 

11 think it might be a little too early to set a 

12 future meeting, unless -- because I know 

13 there's a couple things hanging. I think 

14 that would be tough to do. 

15 But I kind of wanted to ask the 

16 Working Group what priorities they wanted to 

17 have NIOSH pursue out of these items. If you 

18 have a chance to maybe think about those. 

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well Josie, I'm 

20 kind of looking bad on that whole issue about 

21 the ventilation, particularly with the new 

22 structure versus the old structures there. 
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1 Cave, the new cave. 

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And I think that 

4 needs to be looked at a little better. 

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Some of the 

6 ones that I came up with, and we can discuss 

7 them, of course, is a priority would be 

8 Number 9, the -- Number 9, 14 and 15, the 

9 neutrons, and then I threw in there the 

10 internal/external. I know we're waiting for 

11 SC&A to deliver a report on that very soon, 

12 I'm understanding. 

13 MR. ULSH: What about shallow 

14 dose, where does that fit into your priority? 

15 CHAIR BEACH: Well, that's up for 

16 discussion. I just didn't -- I know we have 

17 a lot of matrix items out there, and you had 

18 asked at the last meeting to which ones we 

19 wanted you to concentrate on. So I think you 

20 saw my list. They're all high. 

21 MR. ULSH: Yes. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: And we can continue 
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1 as we have been, unless there's other ideas. 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well to what 

3 extent do you have to focus on a linear 

4 fashion, I mean, can you give us a feel for 

5 it? Is it really happening that way, or do 

6 some of these inform each other so that it 

7 helps to work on multiple -- you're looking 

8 for certain kinds of information, and other 

9 information will be there at the same time, 

10 or what? 

11 MR. ULSH: Not necessarily. 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Work-wise, what 

13 makes sense? 

14 MR. ULSH: It's not necessarily 

15 that case, Paul, where we have to finish one 

16 before we do the other in a serial fashion. 

17 It's not really that. It's a matter of 

18 balancing priorities. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

20 MR. ULSH: We only have, you know, 

21 so many people available to work on this, and 

22 we want to focus on the things that are the 
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1 most important to you, and perhaps defer the 

2 other ones until later. If you tell me that 

3 they're all high priority, well then, we'll 

4 get the resources from somewhere, and we'll 

5 jump on all of them. 

6 But it's not so much the case of 

7 we have to do these in serial rather than 

8 parallel. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Any other ideas? 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: I want radon, the 

11 lung, I guess mainly in that building and so 

12 forth. I think that one can be kind of done 

13 in conjunction. 

14 MR. ULSH: So the radon issue is 

15 high priority. And that encompasses, Brad, 

16 your concerns about the different layouts of 

17 the buildings. 

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. And I 

19 realize, you know, we're trying to 

20 reconstruct a lot of stuff. I realize that 

21 we may not be able to do that. It's just in 

22 the earlier documents, and so forth like 
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1 that. In the interviews, it portrayed that -

2 - and I don't know how else to put it. These 

3 buildings were kind of bastardized together, 

4 and they never knew -- they didn't understand 

5 where they came out and so forth like that. 

6 They were put together poorly. So you know, 

7 that is a big issue for me. I'd set it as 

8 high priority, but -- 

9 MR. ULSH: And Josie, some of the 

10 other issues that were discussed today, and 

11 it might be good to get into the overall 

12 priority, is high or low, or -- 

13 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

14 MR. ULSH: Plutonium-238 issue. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

16 MR. ULSH: And Price-Anderson Act 

17 issue. I don't know, you might have 

18 mentioned this earlier, the issue 17 badging 

19 issue. Is that what you were talking about 

20 when you said internal and external, and 

21 you're expecting -- 

22 CHAIR BEACH: No. That was issue 
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1 11, 11-12. So they just -- the report that's 

2 coming out on that issue. 

3 MR. ULSH: Okay. So there's 

4 another one, on issue 17. If you guys have 

5 some feel for what your priorities are, we 

6 can focus our resources on those. 

7 CHAIR BEACH: I think the neutron 

8 is a high priority, too, or should be 

9 considered one that needs to be addressed. 

10 MR. ULSH: Okay. 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Of course, those are 

12 all the ones we've talked about at this time, 

13 too and -- 

14 MR. ULSH: Neutrons and radons so 

15 far is what I've heard. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Neutron, radon and 

17 the ceramic, the Pu-238. 

18 MR. ULSH: Okay. 

19 CHAIR BEACH: I just wanted to 

20 make sure we were all kind of on the -- 

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is that actually 

22 the modeling part? 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think that would 

3 be an important one to get a handle on. 

4 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. Are you okay 

5 with that? 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Perfect. 

7 CHAIR BEACH: I guess we carry on 

8 then. We're a wrap. So is there anything 

9 other? We can adjourn. 

10 MR. KATZ: That's a wrap. So the 

11 Mound Work Group is adjourned. 

12 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

13 matter was adjourned at 2:22 p.m.) 

14 

15 

16