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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

 + + + + +

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR

 OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

 + + + + +

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

 WORKER HEALTH

 + + + + +

 86th MEETING

 + + + + +

 WEDNESDAY

 SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

 + + + + +

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

Mountain Daylight Time, in the Denver Marriott

Tech Center, 4900 South Syracuse, Denver,

Colorado, James M. Melius, Chairman,

presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member
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PRESENT: (CONT.)

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

THEODORE M. KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS:

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

ALEXANDER, TERRY

ALLEN, DAVE, DCAS

BARRIE, TERRIE

BROCK, DENISE, DCAS

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

CARROLL, STEPHANIE

DOBROVOLNY, MARK

EATON, CLARISSA*

EVASKOVICH, ANDREW

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

GALLAGHER, DEE

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

JERISON, DEB

JESKE, PATRICIA*

KENNEY, CECELIA, DOE

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A*

MAUSER, TERRIE*

MCCFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU Team

MCKEEL, DAN*

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RAY, SARAH*

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, DCAS

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

*Participating via telephone.
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

AGENDA ITEM PAGE

Welcome - Dr. James Melius, Chair 5

GSI SEC Petition Update - 6

 Mr. Dave Allen, NIOSH 15

 Dr. Paul Ziemer, WG Chair 6

 Petitioners: Dan McKeel 36

 Patricia Jeske 49

Pantex Plant SEC Petition (1984- 1991) 54

 Stuart Hinnefeld, NIOSH 54

 Mr. Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A 75

 Petitioner: Sarah Ray 88

Baker-Perkins (Saginaw, MI) Technical 94

Basis Document Review

 Dr. Henry Anderson, WG Chair 94

Weldon Spring Plant (Weldon Spring, 104

MO) SEC Petition 

 Dr. Richard Lemen, WG Chair 104

 Mr. Stuart Hinnefeld, NIOSH 105

 Petitioners: Tina Triplett 130

Mound Plant SEC Petition (1972, 165

1975-1976) (83.14)

 Dr. James Neton, NIOSH 165

Mound Plant SEC Petition (1980-2007) 173

 Dr. James Neton, NIOSH 173

 Ms. Josie Beach, WG Chair 174

Board Work Session 211

 Dr. James Melius, Chair 211

United Nuclear Corp. (Hematite, MO) SEC 231

Petition

 Dr. Henry Anderson, WG Chair 270

 Petitioner: Clarissa Eaton 270

Public Comment 301
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 (8:30 a.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If I can have 

4 your attention, please, we'll get started. 

5 Welcome to the second day of our meeting 86. 

6 And let me turn it over to Ted.

7 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Jim. And 

8 welcome, everybody.

9 It looks like we don't have a lot 

10 of people in the audience here this morning, 

11 but we may have on the line. To let you know, 

12 all of the materials for this meeting are on 

13 the NIOSH website for the presentations today 

14 under the Board section under meeting section. 

15 Just go to today's date or it starts on the 

16 18th, I think. And all of those presentations 

17 are there. So you can follow along as they 

18 present here in the room.

19 Public comment session today is 

20 from 6:00 to 7:00. It starts at 6:00. So if 

21 you are intending to comment, -- again, I'm 

22 addressing folks on the phone -- please attend 
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1 at 6:00 because if we get through early, we 

2 will conclude the public comment session 

3 early.

4 And also for people on the phone, 

5 please mute your phones. If you don't have a 

6 mute button, press *6 to mute your phone so 

7 that there's no interference with this call. 

8 And, for the same reason, please do not at any 

9 point put the call on hold. Hang up and dial 

10 back in if you need to because your hold will 

11 disturb the call for everyone else trying to 

12 listen in.

13 So let's go to roll call. And it 

14 will be a little simpler today because we 

15 don't have dose reconstructions to assign and 

16 don't have very many recusals. And I will 

17 mention recusals where there are any.

18 (Roll call.)

19 MR. KATZ: Very good. Thank you. 

20 That's it. Jim, your agenda.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have a fairly 

22 busy agenda, a number of items. And I'll 
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1 remind you they are all sort of timed because 

2 we will have petitioners or others involved on 

3 the line. And so we have informed them of the 

4 time to expect.

5 So we will be holding fairly 

6 firmly to those scheduled times today. And we 

7 have a Board work session later in the 

8 afternoon to go over. So we will start.

9 The first item is the GSI SEC 

10 petition update. And we will start. Paul 

11 Ziemer, the Chairman of the Work Group, will 

12 give us an update. So, Paul?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Good morning, 

14 everyone. I am going to report on SEC 

15 petition 00105 for General Steel Industries. 

16 Then we will also have an opportunity to hear 

17 from NIOSH and from the co-petitioners.

18 I do want to begin by reminding 

19 you of what occurred at our last meeting. 

20 Well, before I do that, let me remind you 

21 first of the timeline at GSI. The operational 

22 period began January 1st, 1953. And it ended 
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1 June 30th, 1966.

2 I have inserted here in this slide 

3 one other reference point, which the Work 

4 Group has used on occasion as we have 

5 considered the work at GSI. And that was the 

6 original AEC license application, March 7th, 

7 1962, which was kind of a reference point 

8 where one might argue that the work practices 

9 perhaps changed, then also a reminder of the 

10 residual period, which is July 1st, 1966 

11 through December 1992. And then there is an 

12 additional year of the DOE cleanup, which was 

13 January '93 through December '93.

14 Now, to remind you of what 

15 occurred at the last full meeting of this 

16 Board, you may recall that the Work Group 

17 recommended that the Board not take action on 

18 the SEC petition but, rather, defer action 

19 until the next Board meeting; that is, to this 

20 Board meeting. And this recommendation 

21 resulted from Work Group discussions, which 

22 were held on June 14th of this year, relating 
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1 initially to the residual period and the 

2 desire of the Work Group to confirm the 

3 appropriateness of the use of the TBD-6000 

4 model of a uranium slug facility as a 

5 surrogate for handling of uranium at General 

6 Steel Industries. And that particularly 

7 referred to the internal dose issue.

8 This applies, though, both to the 

9 operational period as well as the residual 

10 period since there is that one component in 

11 the operational period, a component of 

12 internal dose as well.

13 So the Board accepted this 

14 recommendation and tasked SC&A to review the 

15 surrogate data issue. I'm going to report 

16 here this morning first on the SC&A findings. 

17 I do want to indicate that, as far as I know, 

18 Dr. Anigstein, who is the lead for SC&A on 

19 General Steel Industries, I believe is on the 

20 line. And he can expand on some of these 

21 issues if, in fact, there are questions. And 

22 I'm pretty much just going to summarize and 
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1 will quote the findings of SC&A on the 

2 hierarchy of data or on the surrogate data 

3 criteria, of which there are five. And each 

4 of these five were addressed by SC&A.

5 First, the criteria relating to 

6 hierarchy of data. The finding was that the 

7 use of surrogate data does not strictly 

8 conform to the hierarchy of data and they are 

9 referring - - and specifically to the GSI 

10 surrogate. And also they said the appropriate 

11 adjustments were not made to these surrogate 

12 data.

13 The second criteria on exclusivity 

14 constraints, SC&A said, we do not agree that 

15 the use of the surrogate data was stringently 

16 justified. The exclusivity constraint 

17 requirement or criteria includes a stringent 

18 justification portion.

19 The third criteria on process 

20 similarities, SC&A said that the use of slug 

21 stamping as a surrogate for handling of 

22 uranium at GSI does not fulfill criteria 
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1 three; that is, the process similarity 

2 criteria.

3 Also, they said alternate sources 

4 of surrogate data; for example, the 124 work 

5 sites for which NIOSH has collected 

6 information, were not evaluated, the 

7 implication here being that perhaps there were 

8 some other potential surrogates that could 

9 have been looked at.

10 And then the criteria on temporal 

11 considerations, they said that there is a need 

12 to justify the application of this measurement 

13 to the entire period of operations at GSI. And 

14 I note here that during the Work Group 

15 discussions, SC&A concurred with NIOSH's 

16 justification in their response. Dave Allen 

17 will be talking about NIOSH's responses to the 

18 findings. So that is one that there is 

19 agreement on, the fourth criteria.

20 And, finally, the criteria on 

21 plausibility. There are two parts to this. 

22 One is scientific plausibility, and the other 
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1 is workplace plausibility. And SC&A found 

2 that the assumption that the deposition 

3 abruptly stops at the end of the operation is 

4 neither plausible nor claimant-friendly. And 

5 that has to do with how the resuspended 

6 material behaves during the operational and 

7 the residual periods. And we will probably 

8 hear a little more about that, although that 

9 whole item depends on a particular data point 

10 that was observed in 1993, a contamination 

11 level, which I will speak about in a moment.

12 And then workplace plausibility, 

13 they said the calculation of uranium 

14 concentrations described by Allen and Glover 

15 does not meet the criterion of workplace 

16 plausibility.

17 In addition to those findings, 

18 SC&A recommended that NIOSH develop a 

19 methodology for estimating uranium intakes at 

20 GSI that does not rely on surrogate data. And 

21 in their report, they suggested a model that 

22 uses the exponential source term depletion 
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1 rate recommended in OTIB-0070. And for this 

2 approach, they suggested the contamination 

3 levels on the floor of the old betatron 

4 building at the time of the 1993 cleanup, 

5 together with the depletion rate and various 

6 hours of uranium-handling operations at GSI 

7 could be used to calculate average surface 

8 uranium concentrations. In other words, they 

9 were saying there is an alternate way of doing 

10 this that does not require surrogate data.

11 One other important piece of 

12 information, however, came to light during our 

13 Work Group meeting. The co-petitioner 

14 provided documentation that the GSI facilities 

15 were cleaned and pressure-washed during three 

16 different time periods. And I have indicated 

17 those here.

18 In the '78 to '81 time period, in 

19 '84, and post-'85, all of these predated the 

20 1993 reference date for the proposed surface 

21 contamination level. Based on this, the Work 

22 Group agreed that back-calculating surface 
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1 contaminations from the 1993 contamination 

2 data pretty much had to be ruled out since all 

3 of this cleaning had occurred.

4 A couple of other items. Then 

5 NIOSH provided its responses as to why it 

6 believed the surrogate data, nonetheless, were 

7 met reasonably well by the surrogate, which 

8 was the handling of uranium slugs, which is 

9 set forth in TBD-6000.

10 Both NIOSH and SC&A, as the 

11 discussion developed, felt that it would make 

12 sense to review other data sets involving 

13 uranium metal handling to ascertain whether or 

14 not there was what I will call a better 

15 surrogate for the GSI situation.

16 So the Work Group ended up not 

17 giving a specific recommendation, but what we 

18 are proposing and what will occur here now is 

19 that NIOSH will review their position on the 

20 surrogate data matter and indicate how they 

21 propose to proceed to address this matter and 

22 come to closure on the petition. The 
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1 co-petitioners are also on-line, I believe, 

2 and will provide their comments on these 

3 issues and related matters. And the way we 

4 ended our meeting was that we agreed to report 

5 this information to the Board without a 

6 specific recommendation.

7 So we are not recommending action 

8 today, although the Board could choose to ask 

9 NIOSH to examine the alternate surrogate data 

10 sets, and that would be followed by SC&A 

11 review, or the Board could choose to act on 

12 the SEC petition on the basis of the 

13 information currently on hand.

14 The Work Group is not recommending 

15 that, but basically since this issue of 

16 surrogate data has come before the Board, I 

17 believe there was a feeling that a decision 

18 should be made by the Board and we would just 

19 report what we learned in the Work Group 

20 meeting.

21 I will be pleased to answer 

22 questions at this point if you have any. And 
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1 then I think we will hear from Dave Allen and 

2 then probably from Dr. McKeel. And I don't 

3 know if the other co-petitioner will want to 

4 speak as well. But are there questions at 

5 this point or, Mr. Chairman, do you prefer to 

6 wait until the end?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, if anybody 

8 has questions now. We may actually have more 

9 questions for you after Dave speaks. I'm not 

10 seeing anybody with questions. Why don't we 

11 have Dave present and then come back to 

12 questions then?

13 MR. ALLEN: Good morning. I am 

14 Dave Allen again, and as Dr. Ziemer said, I 

15 will be here to give a very brief presentation 

16 on General Steel Industries. It will only be 

17 the uranium airborne and use of surrogate 

18 data, is what I will be talking about.

19 A quick reminder. General Steel 

20 Industries is an AWE because they X-rayed 

21 uranium, various types and shapes of uranium 

22 metal, for Mallinckrodt. They only X-rayed 
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1 them, then gave the metal and the X-rays back 

2 for Mallinckrodt to interpret the X-rays. So 

3 GSI did not do any correction of defects or 

4 any other type of manipulation. Their job was 

5 to get a quality X-ray and give that to 

6 Mallinckrodt. Even at that, there is at least 

7 a potential for airborne with handling the 

8 uranium metal.

9 No data taken at GSI for airborne 

10 contamination, so we relied on surrogate data. 

11 And after the last Board meeting, this use of 

12 surrogate data was evaluated by SC&A, as Dr. 

13 Ziemer mentioned. And NIOSH replied to that 

14 review with a White Paper. And the rest of 

15 this presentation is just hitting some of the 

16 highlights of that White Paper, some of the 

17 key points.

18 Essentially one of the problems 

19 with this surrogate data is it's very limited. 

20 This work that was done at GSI essentially 

21 amounts to handling of cold uranium metal and 

22 not grinding it, not machining it, just 
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1 picking it, placing it in position, X-raying 

2 it, and taking it and shipping it back.

3 Most work with uranium metal 

4 elsewhere involves heating uranium metal, 

5 usually well over 1,000 degrees. That's so 

6 it's more malleable and you can forge it, roll 

7 it, extrude it, et cetera. And any time you 

8 heat uranium metal to that degree, you will 

9 get a much greater oxidation rate. And 

10 oxidation products are what cause the 

11 airborne. That is what can flake off and 

12 become airborne.

13 The one exception to that with 

14 uranium metal is machining. That doesn't 

15 require heating prior to that. And it's 

16 usually cooled with some sort of fluid that 

17 holds down airborne down as well as this 

18 purpose is to cool and lubricate, but, even 

19 then, sometimes the coolant isn't enough and 

20 you often will see air samples where it says 

21 what was taken in the smoke screen coming from 

22 the lathe or it's not unusual to get fires or 
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1 at least some smoke from the uranium chips 

2 that can accumulate if they're not taken care 

3 of.

4 Because of that and because of the 

5 airborne from just handling cold uranium metal 

6 is just not a high airborne-causing evolution, 

7 you will rarely see air samples from that 

8 operation, but when you do, they're often in 

9 the vicinity of some other high 

10 airborne-causing operation. And that causes 

11 interference with those.

12 The rest of this, what we found 

13 for the White Paper prior to our Work Group 

14 was we went through and tried to find three --

15 well, we found three that are somewhat 

16 representative, three different sites, had 

17 some air samples that we felt was somewhat 

18 representative. And we put those in the White 

19 Paper along with the actual data sheets 

20 themselves.

21 The first one held machining. 

22 Essentially they were machining uranium slugs. 
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1 They did not do any sampling while they were 

2 simply handling the uranium slugs, but they 

3 did do some while they were machining.

4 The theory here would be that if 

5 there was a great deal of airborne caused by 

6 handling these slugs and putting them in a 

7 lathe, that airborne would still be lingering 

8 around, at least to some extent, while the 

9 lathe was in operation. And we have air 

10 samples while the lathe was in operation.

11 Contradictorily, we did not see 

12 any airborne to speak of. It was very low. 

13 And the highest of several air samples was 11 

14 dpm per cubic meter, which is a fairly low air 

15 sample.

16 The next one, Chambersburg 

17 Engineering, was actually forging uranium 

18 slugs into washers. The maximum airborne we 

19 saw at this site was 174. And I want to 

20 clarify that that was the max we saw with a 

21 description that might be cold uranium metal. 

22 There were higher ones for the forge itself.
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1 As I mentioned, the work involved, 

2 the work that we included in this 174 dpm per 

3 cubic meter was actually removing or placing 

4 hot slugs into a furnace, but some of the work 

5 also included taking these slugs out of that 

6 furnace and placing them in an impactor that 

7 was 7 feet away. It essentially is the forge, 

8 where they use great force to essentially

9 hammer-forge these uranium slugs into washers. 

10 And that is and from the air samples was a 

11 high airborne-causing evolution seven feet 

12 away.

13 This is essentially what I 

14 mentioned earlier. It's very hard to find 

15 samples where it says we're loading cold slugs 

16 into a furnace, sounds like it's reasonable, 

17 but seven feet away, they're forging hot 

18 uranium metal, causing a great deal of 

19 airborne -- obviously is going to cause some 

20 sort of interference there.

21 The last one seemed to be the most 

22 relevant to GSI. And that was at Leblond, 
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1 where they were taking uranium billets --

2 these are large pieces of uranium metal -- and 

3 they were boring large holes through the 

4 center of them. They actually took three BZ 

5 samples, breathing zone samples, while they 

6 were hooking a chain hoist to the billets and 

7 placing them in the machine, which is similar 

8 to the type of work that you would see at GSI, 

9 where they were simply trying to rig a heavy 

10 piece of uranium into position so that they 

11 could X-ray it.

12 Obviously in the machine, it's in 

13 the vicinity of the lathing, or the drilling 

14 in this case, boring, but the coolant in this 

15 case was enough to where there was really 

16 little or no airborne during the boring 

17 either. So there was no interference.

18 The maximum airborne during this 

19 hoisting and placing the billet in place was 9 

20 dpm per cubic meter. The other two were not 

21 detectable.

22 In Appendix BB, which we wrote 
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1 some time ago, the theory we used was we used 

2 TBD-6000, which a lot of you know has multiple 

3 operations with uranium metal, the theory 

4 being that every operation, even if there's 

5 some heating or whatever, at some point during 

6 that operation, there is a task that requires 

7 you to handle cold uranium metal. Even if 

8 there weren't samples taking during that, that 

9 was occurring at some point during the 

10 operation.

11 So we started with TBD-6000. We 

12 took the lowest airborne-causing operation 

13 from that Technical Basis Document. And we 

14 use that as our bounding airborne estimate for 

15 GSI. The estimate was 198 dpm per cubic 

16 meter, we felt was not unreasonably high or 

17 not unrealistically high. So that is what we 

18 use, basically because it was very difficult 

19 to find representative air samples of just 

20 handling cold uranium metal.

21 As pointed out by Dr. Ziemer, the 

22 review of the surrogate data indicated that is 
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1 not -- the operation we use from TBD-6000 was 

2 not very representative of what they did at 

3 GSI. Essentially it is very hard to find 

4 anything that is representative of that 

5 because nobody really sampled the air for just 

6 handling the metal. They sampled the air for 

7 machining it, for rolling it, for various 

8 other operations but not for that one, small 

9 task.

10 After the Work Group meeting, we 

11 agreed that we would go back besides the three 

12 we found and look through everything we got to 

13 see if we can find some additional samples 

14 that might be representative of just handling 

15 cold uranium metal. And that's essentially I 

16 believe where we left the Work Group.

17 That is all I had for today, short 

18 and sweet. I don't know if there are any 

19 questions now.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I had one 

21 question to start with, just to make sure I am 

22 not confused because I may be. So what SC&A 
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1 was reviewing for the surrogate data was the 

2 TBD-6000?

3 MR. ALLEN: Yes. It is actually 

4 Appendix BB --

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: BB of that?

6 MR. ALLEN: Right.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So these three 

8 company -- the information you present on your 

9 slides, those were your response to the SC&A?

10 MR. ALLEN: To that review. That 

11 was what we --

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes, yes.

13 MR. ALLEN: That was what we were 

14 able to quickly come up with. We haven't gone 

15 through all of the entire Site Research 

16 Database yet or anything.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And then 

18 where does the power-washing come into this?

19 MR. ALLEN: The power-washing 

20 comes in because, during SC&A's review, they 

21 proposed an alternative model that did not use 

22 surrogate data.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Okay. 

2 Just to make sure everybody has got this. This 

3 is confusing. Yes, Gen and Jim, Dr. Roessler, 

4 then Dr. Lockey. Yes?

5 MEMBER ROESSLER: I think you are 

6 going to ask the same question. That's why I 

7 want to go first.

8 On slide 6, the Leblond 

9 information, it talks about three breathing 

10 zone samples taken. When a sample was taken, 

11 how many uranium billets were being loaded at 

12 that time? I'm trying to figure out just how 

13 much information that gives. Were there a lot 

14 of them?

15 MR. ALLEN: Their job was to do 

16 several, but the boring had to happen one 

17 billet at a time. So they took a BZ sample 

18 for loading one billet in. And later they 

19 took one for the next one, et cetera.

20 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay. So each 

21 sample represents loading one billet?

22 MR. ALLEN: Exactly.
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Which is not a 

2 lot of information, then?

3 MR. ALLEN: Not a lot.

4 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. Okay.

5 MR. ALLEN: But that is actually 

6 very similar to what would be occurring at 

7 GSI. They didn't X-ray multiple pieces of 

8 uranium at a time. It was one at a time.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Lockey now.

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Function of 65 and 

11 not hearing as well.

12 At the -- is it Heald, Heald 

13 Machine Company?

14 MR. ALLEN: Excuse me?

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Is it called the 

16 Heald Machine Company? Is that the proper 

17 pronunciation?

18 MR. ALLEN: I don't know the 

19 proper -- I pronounce it Heald. I don't know.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: Heald Machine 

21 Company. How many samples there were obtained 

22 while slugs were being machined? Do you know 
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1 the number?

2 MR. ALLEN: The air sample sheet 

3 was included in the White Paper for the Work 

4 Group, but I don't recall off the top of my 

5 head. It was one sheet of paper. So for all 

6 the different tasks, it totaled maybe 10 or 15 

7 air samples.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm sorry? How 

9 many?

10 MR. ALLEN: Ten or 15 maybe for 

11 all the tasks.

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: Paul, do you 

13 remember?

14 MR. ALLEN: I don't recall.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't recall the 

17 number of samples there.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else? 

19 Yes, Brad? Save you the trouble.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I was just 

21 wondering. You're talking about doing your 

22 radiography for these slugs. What size are 
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1 these slugs that we're looking at? Were they 

2 quite large or --

3 MR. ALLEN: Well, the slugs 

4 mentioned were what we used in TBD-6000 and a 

5 couple of these companies where we got 

6 airborne. At GSI, they are actually X-raying 

7 larger pieces of metal closer to the billet 

8 you saw for Leblond. They had some dingots 

9 that they -- you know, it's believed they 

10 X-rayed. They also had betatron slices, which 

11 were essentially a crop off the top of, a 

12 four-inch crop off the top of ingots or 

13 possibly dingots, but there were various types 

14 of uranium metal. And nobody can say for sure 

15 it was all one or the other. In fact, it's 

16 pretty certain that it wasn't all one or the 

17 other.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, the reason 

19 why I'm getting to this is I wanted to 

20 understand how they were doing this, if they 

21 were doing it with chain fall hoists, moving 

22 these billets around because under the 
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1 requirements for radiography under ANSI, you 

2 have to have a certain density. So anything 

3 of a difference of a quarter inch in these 

4 ingots, you would have to take multiple shots 

5 and be able to change these ingots. So there 

6 possibly could be more -- I know it makes it 

7 sound like they just moved this ingot here, 

8 but there could possibly be so much more 

9 movement, be able to form the radiography, 

10 than just putting it up into a machine and 

11 lathing it, too.

12 So I was trying to get a sense for 

13 what kind of ingots, what the size was, and 

14 how they were handled. And it sounds like to 

15 me from what you said there were all different 

16 sizes and that there was no real standard. Is 

17 that correct?

18 MR. ALLEN: That is correct from 

19 the best we can tell. Like I said, we know 

20 there were betatron slices, but we know there 

21 were possibly other forms of uranium, too. 

22 Nobody was real clear on that one.
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1 For the most part, at least the 

2 impression that we got from operators and 

3 everybody else, it was large enough it wasn't 

4 handled by hand. It was either a fork truck 

5 or a chain ball or something.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Let me add to 

7 that. The petitioner probably can comment to 

8 it when he makes his presentation, but in 

9 general, the items handled at GSI were quite 

10 large ingots and dingots. And one of the 

11 issues raised by SC&A on the slugs is that 

12 they are relatively small.

13 You could handle uranium slugs by 

14 hand. And the ingots and dingots and these 

15 large ones are handled with cranes and chains. 

16 And so there is the possibility of scraping 

17 the surfaces and that sort of thing. So 

18 that's one of the issues as to 

19 representativeness of the slugs as a 

20 surrogate.

21 Granted, regardless whether it's 

22 slugs or ingots or dingots, you are still only 
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1 talking about handling. You are not talking 

2 about the other processes. So one of the 

3 issues in finding the right surrogate is, is 

4 it just handling, and are the size and surface 

5 somewhat comparable. I think that is one of 

6 the issues.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: I understand.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: SC&A could speak 

9 to that also, but I think in general that 

10 would be the case.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So I have 

12 actually a question for Dr. Ziemer. I'm just 

13 trying to understand where the Work Group was 

14 on this issue because my understanding is that 

15 the Work Group was accepting the SC&A 

16 conclusions and didn't feel that the NIOSH 

17 response was adequate.

18 I'm trying to understand which 

19 parameters you were looking for. Was it that 

20 the Appendix BB was not the appropriate 

21 operations? Was it some of the issues you 

22 just raised? I'm trying to understand what 
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1 we're trying to address because it seems to me 

2 that this is a -- you know, given that it is 

3 handling of cold metal, that this is a 

4 relatively low-exposure situation.

5 I think we need to avoid trying to 

6 become too precise in what our assessment is.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: You are exactly 

8 right. And one of the issues is how you 

9 interpret the criteria as applying the 

10 surrogate data criteria.

11 I think the Work Group -- we can 

12 vote on this specifically. And we would have 

13 to sort of poll the group. But when we became 

14 aware that there were a lot of other possible 

15 sites that did not get looked at that may have 

16 been more like GSI -- for example, the Leblond 

17 site would be an example, but we don't really 

18 know if that database is sufficient. And what 

19 you're going to run into is because in most 

20 places, the handling part of cold uranium, the 

21 risk and exposure portion of that would in 

22 most facilities appear to be so low that you 
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1 typically wouldn't air sample for that.

2 So finding a good surrogate for 

3 air sampling of the handling is a little 

4 difficult, but when we became aware that there 

5 were some other possible ones and if there's a 

6 question on whether it's the right surrogate, 

7 we felt that perhaps a better surrogate could 

8 be found.

9 But, in all of these, whether it's 

10 the slugs or these other ones, all of those 

11 numbers -- and some of them differ by two or 

12 three orders of magnitude -- it's two or three 

13 orders of magnitude of a very, very small air 

14 concentration.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, yes. And I 

16 would just add that I think we need to 

17 remember that -- and it was my Work Group but 

18 that the Board adopted it. Surrogate data 

19 criteria were not absolute criteria. They 

20 were issues that we thought should be 

21 addressed in reviewing surrogate data. They 

22 weren't absolute requirements for that. And I 
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1 think we wrote them in that way, and I think 

2 that we adopted them in that context.

3 And so it is not like a checklist. 

4 It is a checklist that those issues ought to 

5 be at least evaluated, but, I mean, I think it 

6 is what it is. The bottom line, is that 

7 suitable for allowing dose reconstruction with 

8 sufficient accuracy?

9 And when you have very low 

10 exposures, I think that it's different than a 

11 situation when you're dealing with an 

12 operation that could have much higher and, 

13 therefore, a greater range of exposures and, 

14 therefore, make a bigger difference in terms 

15 of absolute dose reconstruction.

16 Jim?

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think I was on 

18 that Work Group with you, and I concur with 

19 you. It wasn't meant to be an absolute 

20 checklist.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: And we were 
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1 concerned to make sure that if we used 

2 surrogate data, that we weren't 

3 underestimating in a Work Group-friendly 

4 manner the real exposures.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: In this 

6 situation, when I looked at the Heald Machine 

7 Company, they were working with slugs. And 

8 they were machining slugs, which means it's 

9 more than just handling. They were actually 

10 doing a metal-on-metal process.

11 But the exposure levels -- and 

12 that's why I was asking how many samples there 

13 were -- the highest was 11 dpm per cubic 

14 meter, which sort of falls into the same range 

15 of the limited samples from Leblond and I 

16 would think also reflects a low-exposure 

17 situation based on the job task.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

19 comments or questions at this point?

20 (No response.)

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Let's 

22 hear from the petitioner, see if we have any 
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1 questions for them. I'm not sure if it's one 

2 or two people speaking. And then we will come 

3 back and have further discussion. So don't go 

4 too far away, Dave.

5 DR. McKEEL: Hello, Dr. Melius. 

6 This is Dan McKeel. Can you hear me?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can. Go 

8 ahead, Dan.

9 DR. McKEEL: Thank you. Are my 

10 slides ready to go?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Hold a second.

12 DR. McKEEL: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu is getting 

14 them.

15 DR. McKEEL: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I will let you 

17 know when. Here we go. Okay. Your title 

18 slide is up now.

19 DR. McKEEL: Okay. Well, let me 

20 just make a short introduction and to thank 

21 the Board for being so generous with letting 

22 me submit materials to them on GSI. In the 
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1 next ten minutes or so, I will try to cover 

2 the highlights. But I do want to comment 

3 while it's fresh in mind for everybody on a 

4 couple of things that just came up in the 

5 preceding presentations by Dr. Ziemer and by 

6 Dave Allen.

7 The first thing is that the ingots 

8 and the dingots from Mallinckrodt, the size is 

9 very well known. And basically they were 

10 3,300-pound objects. So they definitely 

11 needed to be picked up with a crane and a 

12 chain.

13 The other two types of metals we 

14 know are billets, uranium billets. We do not 

15 know the size of those. I don't think anybody 

16 does. And it was commented by Dave Allen, I 

17 think, that a betatron slice, which is 

18 described in one of the six Site Profile 

19 documents for Mallinckrodt, was just the crop. 

20 I think that is definitely not true because

21 the Mallinckrodt document describes quite 

22 clearly that a person spent long amounts of 
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1 time, at first at least, hand-sawing uranium 

2 ingots to get a slice. And SC&A has estimated 

3 they were maybe 4 inches thick, 18 inches in 

4 diameter, 12 to 18 inches in diameter.

5 Nobody really knows is the answer. 

6 And nobody knows the size of the billets. And 

7 nobody knows what mixture was sent to 

8 Mallinckrodt, although I did introduce a 

9 letter from the AEC that said the primary 

10 product sent from Mallinckrodt to GSI was 

11 dingots. And that would be the 3,300-pound 

12 metal.

13 Anyway, the first thing I wanted 

14 to do in the first two slides is to review the 

15 real data that is available right now for the 

16 AEC operational period at GSI from 1953 to 

17 June 1966.

18 And it really comes down to three 

19 data pieces. The first was there were 

20 Landauer film badges on 89 radiographers 

21 between November 1963 and 1966, June. This 

22 represents only 3 percent of the workforce of 
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1 3,000 people, represents 1 job out of 

2 hundreds. The radiographers did not wear 

3 their badges outside the betatron buildings. 

4 As a matter of fact, in the 2012 modeling of 

5 betatron doses, they were not even assigned 

6 the highest external doses. And so that's 

7 point one, very limited and nonrepresentative 

8 film badge data by radiographers only during 

9 the entire period from 1953 to 1966, in June.

10 In 1962, there was a one-time 

11 survey by GSI personnel of photons in the 

12 building 6 radiography room from a cobalt-60 

13 source. I'm sorry. The 1962 survey was by 

14 not by GSI personnel but by the Nuclear 

15 Consulting Corporation.

16 And then the third piece of real 

17 data they had in the operational period is 

18 they have a series of purchase orders from 

19 Mallinckrodt for uranium that extended from 

20 March 1958 through June 1966. There were no 

21 purchase orders found for 1953 through 

22 February 1958. So there was no real data on 
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1 the uranium source term for those years of the 

2 covered period. There was only an 

3 extrapolation, back extrapolation, from 1958 

4 forward as to what might have been present.

5 I need to comment that there was a 

6 comment made by Dave Allen in Appendix BB and 

7 today that GSI did not analyze the reports 

8 they made on the uranium. And that really 

9 goes against what we know about those 

10 operations. They, in fact, did send with 

11 every item radiographed with the betatrons a 

12 checklist of findings.

13 Now, that's not the final report. 

14 Mallinckrodt may well have analyzed that 

15 further, and I'm sure they did. But the point 

16 is that all of the Mallinckrodt GSI contract 

17 work records, which must be voluminous, every 

18 one of those has been lost. We don't have any 

19 shipping manifestations -- manifests. We 

20 don't have any weights. We don't have any 

21 X-ray records. So that's the operational 

22 period real data.
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1 Now, on slide 2, I review the real 

2 data on residuals contamination period between 

3 July 1, '66 and 1993. And, again, that boils 

4 down to three items, three first bullets, and 

5 the comments by me. They had a one-time 1971 

6 radiologic survey of the new betatron 

7 building. That was done by the GSI radiation 

8 safety people and they used an 80-curie 

9 cobalt-60 source, where the main work done in 

10 that building, of course, was with a 24 or -5 

11 MeV betatron. So the source they used to 

12 model the building was not the source that was 

13 primarily used in that building.

14 Then they also had additional 

15 Landauer film badge data on 19 radiographers 

16 during that period from July 1, 1966 to 1973 

17 late or early '74, when GSI ceased operations. 

18 And, of course, that was a much smaller 

19 percent of the workforce.

20 And, then finally, the data that 

21 they had that Dr. Ziemer mentioned was when 

22 Bechtel came in and did a radiologic survey of 
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1 the old and new betatron buildings. And ORNL 

2 surveilled that. And this was done for DOE 

3 under the FUSRAP program. They only surveyed 

4 the new and old betatron buildings, did not 

5 survey the rest of the plant at all.

6 The remediation took a week. And 

7 they found uranium and cleaned it up in the 

8 old betatron building only. No uranium is 

9 found in the new betatron building. They 

10 found some alpha uranium activity on the 

11 floors, which they had to chip out, in the 

12 vents and in the small industrial vacuum. And 

13 it's that piece of data that the washings 

14 relate to. And I'll mention a little bit more 

15 of that in a few minutes. But we do know of 

16 one additional set of washings, power 

17 washings, that was done in both the old and 

18 new betatron buildings in 1973, just at the 

19 time of plant closure. And this was an 

20 eyewitness account by a worker who is very 

21 well-known to this Board. So there were 

22 multiple power washings of the old and the new 
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1 betatron buildings that we have I think well 

2 documented.

3 A point that is really overlooked 

4 here for the residual period, I think, is that 

5 the residual period applies to everybody in 

6 the workforce. And most of the people in the 

7 workforce worked in other buildings than the 

8 betatron buildings. And workers there were 

9 also exposed to uranium along the whole long 

10 uranium pathway whereby it was transported 

11 from the weighing scales.

12 We know that everything was 

13 weighed that went into and out of the plant. 

14 Inspectors had to look under the tarps to make 

15 sure what was on those transport vehicles. We 

16 have operations at the loading dock. We have 

17 a transfer to rail cars. We have transport 

18 along the rail tracks through buildings 5, 

19 through 10. And then the railroad tracks ran 

20 into the old and new betatron buildings so 

21 that the actual areas that were surveyed for 

22 uranium were a tiny fraction of the whole area 
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1 that formed the volume and the space along the 

2 uranium transport pathway. And, as David 

3 said, there had never been any general air 

4 sampling, breathing zone samples, process 

5 sampling for uranium ever at GSI or by DOE 

6 until that 1993 survey.

7 Okay. If I could go to the slide 

8 3?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And, Dan, I'll 

10 ask you to please move it along.

11 DR. McKEEL: I will.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have 

13 something else scheduled at this time.

14 DR. McKEEL: Okay. Thank you, 

15 Jim. I don't think I've used my ten minutes, 

16 but I was trying to address questions --

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, you have.

18 DR. McKEEL: -- that weren't 

19 answered by anybody during the discussion 

20 period. So the key events during the residual 

21 period I would like to point out were the 

22 power washings for the old and new betatron 
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1 buildings and that multiple steel companies 

2 had done work within buildings 5 and 6 and 7 

3 through 10, but they required an overhead 

4 crane with a magnet to clean the dust from the 

5 GSI building. So there was lots of it there 

6 and that all of these multiple users in 

7 intermittent operations during the residual 

8 period meant that it would be very difficult 

9 to model and bound residual contamination.

10 Slide 4 and slide 5. I go over my 

11 reasons why I believe sufficient information 

12 has been presented to vote for the SEC at this 

13 point and that I hope very much the Board 

14 might consider that done.

15 And I think I have been over the 

16 work that was the real data that was there 

17 during the operational and the limited 

18 periods. I've been over the fact that most of 

19 the workforce, which should have been badged 

20 because of their exposure to activated steel 

21 had not been badged.

22 The slide you see after four shows 
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1 that the models that GSI --- for the GSI 

2 betatron and layout workers that SC&A and 

3 NIOSH had generated in 2008-2012 didn't agree 

4 with each other at those times, and they 

5 flip-flopped.

6 Whereas in 2012, the layout 

7 workers had a low dose assigned by SC&A, by 

8 2012, the SC&A layout dose had gone to 9.2 and 

9 the NIOSH layout dose was only 1.02 to 2. So 

10 they didn't agree with each other at that 

11 time.

12 And, finally, you can see in slide 

13 5 -- I apologize. I am going to go to slide 

14 6. I am going to go to slide 5, finish this 

15 up quickly.

16 It is often said there was a 

17 robust, relatively robust, radiation safety 

18 program between 1963 and 1966 and during part 

19 of the residual period at GSI. And we have 

20 just given you evidence now that I don't think 

21 that was true compared to other sites. I sent 

22 you the radiation safety program at the 
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1 Watertown Arsenal, which also was in 

2 compliance with AEC regulations in about the 

3 same time period as GSI's operational period. 

4 And they were far more extensive than anything 

5 that was done at GSI.

6 I have pointed out that NIOSH has 

7 no valid uranium intake model for the whole 

8 operation and residual periods. NIOSH didn't 

9 want to use SC&A's alternate model. In my 

10 opinion, the new surrogate data that NIOSH has 

11 proposed really would probably not pass the 

12 surrogate data criteria for the same reasons. 

13 There were two slug facilities and one billet 

14 facility. And there were no dingot facilities 

15 similar to GSI and the use of Mallinckrodt 

16 uranium.

17 And the other thing is none of the 

18 relevant records that would contribute to the 

19 accurate bounding have been recovered from 

20 Mallinckrodt on the work done at GSI.

21 So, in summary, then, I think that 

22 NIOSH has made a lot of errors of fact in 
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1 Appendix BB that still need to be addressed. I 

2 believe that the NIOSH betatron, the steel 

3 casting activation, and the uranium intake 

4 models are not valid for reasons I have put 

5 forward and, therefore, not bounding. There 

6 has been extreme underestimation of the exotic 

7 mixed activation fission radionuclides that 

8 were discussed prominently at Rocky Flats 

9 yesterday that were caused by a bombardment of 

10 uranium and the steel castings for the 

11 betatrons. At those high MeV, both things 

12 occur.

13 And NIOSH used only iron-59 as an 

14 activation product, where we sent you 

15 literature documenting that there are at least 

16 30 different radionuclides, some with 

17 half-lives that were days and weeks and much 

18 longer than they assigned for Fe-59.

19 And, finally, with respect to 

20 handling being a relatively low-dose exposure 

21 scenario, I will point out that one of the 

22 main references cited by NIOSH and SC&A from 
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1 TBD-6000 is that by Adley, et al., for the 

2 Hanford melt plant in 1952. And that showed 

3 that uranium rod handling caused intake doses, 

4 I quote, intake doses 2.5-fold higher than the 

5 permitted limits. So they may have been 

6 relatively low, but they were two and a half 

7 times what radiation safety limits at the time 

8 would permit.

9 So I thank you and appreciate your 

10 attention.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Is the 

12 co-petitioner on the line and wish to comment?

13 MS. JESKE: This is Patricia 

14 Jeske. And no, I don't have any comments. I 

15 do agree with Dr. McKeel. And I do hope that 

16 we can reach a vote and put closure to this 

17 for all of our Class Members. I appreciate 

18 everybody's help. Thank you so much.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

20 Any further questions, comments 

21 from Board Members?

22 (No response.)
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, we do not 

2 have a specific recommendation from the Work 

3 Group. Maybe you want to explain that, Paul.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Unless I hear 

5 otherwise, the Work Group would proceed, I 

6 think, in the manner that we have discussed 

7 already, and that is to look at some other 

8 possible surrogates and see if there is a, 

9 quote, better surrogate, keeping in mind the 

10 issues that you raised, Dr. Melius, that 

11 refining this at this level may not be worth a 

12 whole amount of effort, but we think it may be 

13 worth looking at and then being ready perhaps 

14 at the next meeting to vote.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Anybody 

16 has --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- unless the 

18 Board feels they have enough information now. 

19 Of course, someone is free to make a motion, I 

20 guess.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Brad?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I apologize, but 
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1 this has been real confusing throughout the 

2 whole process there. I thought at one time 

3 that they were also talking about that the 

4 plant jets that they had the film in had 

5 actually became activated when they shot it 

6 with a betatron because of the nickel in it, 

7 so forth, thought at one time they were 

8 talking about that.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: There is 

10 activation of the items that are radiographed 

11 with the betatrons. The activation products 

12 are taken into consideration in the modeling 

13 done by NIOSH and SC&A also. So activation 

14 products are considered in the modeling.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Paul, and I guess 

16 I would just ask this question from my 

17 background. Do they have an NDT or an ANSI 

18 standard that they were shooting these 

19 radiography shots to? The reason I say this 

20 is because that would determine, especially if 

21 it was bar around or whatever, how many shots 

22 does it actually take to be able to shoot 
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1 these ingots? I was wondering if they had an 

2 ANSI standard that they were --

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't know the 

4 answer to that. I don't know if Dave can 

5 answer that, but I don't think we are relying 

6 on -- number of shots doesn't really come up 

7 in the modeling directly. It is more based on 

8 some other parameters. But, Dave, can you 

9 answer that?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, hold on. 

11 Let's try to get back on track a little bit. 

12 We are already past our time. We have people 

13 waiting. So I guess I am trying to get a 

14 sense. Does anybody wish to try to bring 

15 closure today or is Paul's Work Group's plan 

16 acceptable to everyone at this point?

17 I am seeing a lot of nodding heads 

18 and no objections. So I think we go forward 

19 with that. I think if you have other 

20 questions, please -- yes, Jim? Go ahead.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: One comment. The 

22 issues raised by the petitioner on the slides 
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1 haven't been addressed or will be addressed?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, we have had 

3 extensive interactions during our Work Group 

4 meetings. Dr. McKeel has been very active in 

5 our Work Group meetings. And we are trying to 

6 address their issues.

7 As I pointed out, for example, the 

8 power-washing issue has --

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: No. I meant --

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- been an example 

11 where we have basically ruled out the use of 

12 the FUSRAP data as a means of calculating the 

13 exposures during the residual period.

14 And so yes, we are trying to 

15 address the issues raised by the petitioners, 

16 not always to their satisfaction, but at least 

17 we are aware of their issues and are trying to 

18 fairly address them as well.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Thank 

20 you, Dave. I really do need to move on, then.

21 Next on the agenda is an update on 

22 Pantex. And I believe Stu is going to start 
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1 with that.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, Dr. 

3 Melius. I tried to design things so I would 

4 have fewer speaking parts at this meeting than 

5 last meeting. And I failed, another failure 

6 of management on our part, my part.

7 I am trying to get my computer to 

8 cooperate. There we are.

9 Okay. I am here to give an update 

10 on SEC-68 for the Pantex plant. There was a 

11 partial action taken on this a while ago. And 

12 in the completion of, finishing up of other 

13 periods of time is probably what we are going 

14 to be talking about a little bit today.

15 The status of the petition was 

16 this. The petition Class after consult calls 

17 with the petitioner was all workers who worked 

18 in all facilities at Pantex from January 1st 

19 of '51 through 12/31 of '91 -- I think '51 is 

20 the first year of the covered period. And 

21 then '91 was the last petition year by the 

22 petitioner.
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1 NIOSH's initial decision was the 

2 petition didn't qualify for evaluation, but 

3 that was reversed by administrative review. 

4 And so it came to us for evaluation. And the 

5 evaluated Class was all employees who worked 

6 in any facility location at Pantex from '51 to 

7 '91.

8 The slight wording difference 

9 there is to make it clear that the workers 

10 didn't have to work in all areas of Pantex. 

11 It's a worker who worked in any area of Pantex 

12 to be in the Class. So that's the reason for 

13 the slight wording change.

14 You probably recall that at your 

15 November 2011 meeting, the Board recommended 

16 adding a Class for all workers from January 

17 1st of 1958 through December 31st of 1983 

18 based on the infeasibility of reconstructing 

19 internal doses for uranium. And that was in 

20 accordance with a recommendation from the 

21 Pantex Work Group.

22 The NIOSH ER had proposed that 
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1 internal doses from uranium could be bounded 

2 by the doses received during the dismantlement 

3 of the W28 weapon system. And I think there 

4 is fairly broad agreement from the people who 

5 have been involved in the discussion that W28 

6 was probably the dirtiest disassembly, 

7 certainly up to that time, due, in fact, to 

8 the unalloyed nature of the uranium that was 

9 used in the weapon. It's just uranium metal 

10 with an alloy and the fact that it had been in 

11 service for a long period of time. And so it 

12 had more time to be exposed to the elements 

13 and the weather. And so you would have more 

14 oxidation from that material.

15 The dismantlement of the W28 began 

16 in 1984 and then continued until the 

17 activities were suspended in 1989 because of 

18 issues with the amount of visible 

19 contamination that was being encountered 

20 during the disassembly.

21 When I talk about dismantlement 

22 here, this is essentially dismantlement for 
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1 the retirement of the weapon system. I want 

2 to distinguish that from disassembly because, 

3 for quite some time before 1984, W28s had been 

4 disassembled for the purposes of inspection or 

5 modification, but the dismantlement, which 

6 began in '84, involved far greater units per 

7 year being taken apart. And then the weapon 

8 was being taken out of service. So this was 

9 the final dismantlement and the retirement of 

10 the weapon.

11 Now, some months after suspension 

12 of the dismantlement activities, uranium 

13 bioassays were collected from workers who had 

14 worked on the W28 dismantlement. There is a 

15 document that I believe -- I have not really 

16 been engaged in this directly and only lately 

17 have gotten particularly engaged in it. I 

18 believe this document was provided to the Work 

19 Group some time ago. It dates from January. 

20 And it's analysis of Pantex 1990 uranium 

21 bioassay results for workers identified as 

22 being production technicians on the W28 
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1 program.

2 If I am not mistaken, I put that 

3 on the O: drive in advance of this meeting. It 

4 would be on the document review, AB document 

5 review part under Pantex. I believe there is 

6 a folder for this date, this meeting date. And 

7 that is the only document there. So it 

8 provides the details of the analysis of the 

9 bioassay data for that period.

10 So, anyway, our ER proposed that 

11 that data set could be used to bound internal 

12 doses for uranium in general.

13 Now, prior to the November 

14 meeting, before the Board's vote, the Pantex 

15 Work Group had concluded that the conditions 

16 and controls were not sufficiently static at 

17 Pantex, meaning things weren't always being 

18 handled in the way they were being handled 

19 from 1984 through 1989. And so you couldn't 

20 make the judgment that exposures from '84 to 

21 '89 were representative of what was going on 

22 earlier with different handling and control 
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1 measures in place.

2 So the Work Group reached that 

3 conclusion and recommended the addition of the 

4 Class to the Board. And the Board then 

5 followed that recommendation.

6 The dates for the recommendation 

7 from the Work Group were 1958 through 1983. 

8 And then they did not take a position on the 

9 '84 to '89 because that is the period of time 

10 that NIOSH reports the bioassay data collected 

11 in '89 can be used to interpret. They didn't 

12 take a position on '90 and '91, the remaining 

13 two years of the petition period. And they 

14 didn't take a position on '51 to '57, the 

15 covered period of Pantex that was in the 

16 petition, but were early enough so that there 

17 was some question about was there radioactive 

18 material at Pantex during that time. Pantex's 

19 earliest work is generally considered high 

20 explosive work only.

21 Nineteen fifty-eight was chosen as 

22 a starting date, I think, because it was 
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1 pretty clear that by 1958, they were working 

2 with radioactive materials. That may have 

3 even been the introduction of the W28. I 

4 don't remember for sure. But it was pretty 

5 clear by 1958 they were working with 

6 radioactive materials. And so that was the 

7 selection for the starting date. And there 

8 were clearly some components that the Working 

9 Group felt would have a potential for some 

10 exposures of some significance.

11 Now, it has come to light that 

12 there may have been some radioactive material 

13 there prior to 1958. I think some additional 

14 investigation would be required to look into 

15 that. I'm not 100 percent sure I know. I 

16 think I know what the pieces were. And I'm 

17 not 100 percent sure what I can say about it. 

18 But there was at some point, maybe not in 1951 

19 but at some point between 1958, it does appear 

20 that there was radioactive material being used 

21 at Pantex in some fashion. I don't know that 

22 that necessarily means the dose reconstruction 
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1 at that time is not feasible, but it needs to 

2 have some additional looking.

3 Now, the 1984 to '89 period, the 

4 reason that the Work Group didn't take an 

5 action on that I guess was because the 

6 discussion at that meeting, that Work Group 

7 meeting, all centered on the ability to 

8 interpolate this data set that we purported to 

9 represent, '84 through '89, the ability of 

10 that data set to be extrapolated back to 

11 earlier times. And so that was the focus of 

12 the discussion of the Work Group. And so 

13 based on the fact that that had been the focus 

14 of the discussion, the Work Group didn't 

15 include in their recommendation the '84 

16 through '89 period because they hadn't really 

17 addressed the feasibility or the acceptability 

18 of NIOSH's purported approach for using that 

19 bioassay data.

20 So we have provided an 

21 interpretation. Like I said, it's in that 

22 January document that is on the O: drive for 
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1 ways that the bioassay data set can be 

2 interpreted. Let me get the numbers right. 

3 Okay. There were 305 urine samples collected 

4 from February 10th to April 2nd, 1990. That 

5 was the huge data set that was collected after 

6 W28 had been suspended for a number of months. 

7 It had not been just suspended then. And 

8 NIOSH has included an analysis including 

9 distributions, log-normal statistical 

10 analysis, on that data. And it is in our Site 

11 Profile, the Pantex Site Profile. And Chapter 

12 5 is the internal dosimetry chapter.

13 These results were done for 

14 isotopic results. I believe there were four 

15 isotopes included: 234, 235, and 238, of 

16 course. And I believe there is a 236 result 

17 in there as well. But, anyway, they were 

18 isotopic analyses. The analysis in the Site 

19 Profile, the statistical analysis Site 

20 Profile, sums the results. And so you have a 

21 dpm per sample for a particular sample, a 

22 total dpm per sample. And that is how the 
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1 distribution is treated then.

2 So the ways that you can interpret 

3 this bioassay data -- now, this bioassay data 

4 -- the bioassay data in the Site Profile 

5 represents all 305 samples. And those samples 

6 were collected from the people they could find 

7 who were still there who worked on the W28 

8 program, the dismantlement. It didn't mean 

9 that they were working in 1989. That didn't 

10 mean that they were what are called production 

11 technicians, who are the real disassembly 

12 people, but those people are identified. The 

13 people, the real production disassembly 

14 people, are identified in a 1989 letter. And 

15 the people who were working there in 1989 at 

16 suspension are also identified.

17 So in order to analyze this data, 

18 we know the person. We know their data set. 

19 We know the sample date. We don't know their 

20 start date. We don't know when their exposure 

21 to W28 started.

22 So, not knowing that, there are 
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1 several possible options you can use to arrive 

2 at an estimate of what the intake might be. 

3 And these are described in some detail in the 

4 document I described I mentioned earlier. One 

5 possible thing to do is decide what would it 

6 mean if a person were exposed every day from 

7 '84 through '89 to the W28, they worked the 

8 whole time, left that bioassay sample when 

9 they left it. That's one way.

10 Another way is that they only, 

11 say, maybe worked one year. Now, we did not 

12 analyze what would happen if they worked less 

13 than a year. What if they only worked one 

14 year? And what if it was 1984? What would 

15 those bioassays tell you in that case in terms 

16 of picocurie-per-day intake? What if they 

17 only worked one year and it was 1989? How 

18 would you interpret those bioassays then if it 

19 was in terms of picocurie-per-day intake? So 

20 these are all laid out in the document. There 

21 are a few others as well.

22 You get the idea. There are 
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1 possible combinations of how people could have 

2 been exposed during that time, how does that 

3 change your interpretation of picocuries per 

4 day.

5 Well, the highest scenario that 

6 was evaluated -- and I think they probably 

7 evaluated all the possible ones. The highest 

8 scenario would be if the person worked only 

9 one year and it was 1984 and they weren't 

10 exposed in the intervening time and they were 

11 sampled in 1990. That's the highest 

12 picocurie-per-day intake.

13 The analysis goes on to look at, 

14 for all of these scenarios that they ran, what 

15 is the maximum intake that would occur for all 

16 of these scenarios because the total intake is 

17 really what determines the dose. You know, 

18 there is a timing issue on when it occurs, but 

19 the total intake determines the dose.

20 Interestingly, that same scenario 

21 provides the highest intake number, so in 

22 terms of total integrated intake over their 
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1 employment because the smaller intakes for the 

2 longer period don't add up to as much intake. 

3 So the analysis is all on this document.

4 This is why I didn't want many 

5 talking parts.

6 So NIOSH believes with this data 

7 set and no other data, we could develop a 

8 bounding dose estimate for the people at 

9 Pantex during this period based on this 

10 scenario. This would be their intake. They 

11 would be assigned that during their period of 

12 employment, you know, for the '84 to '89 

13 period. And then the dose would be based on 

14 that. And you would choose either type M or 

15 type S uranium depending upon which is more 

16 favorable to that particular claim.

17 And the intake numbers are 

18 different for type M and type S. So that 

19 would be the approach that we would propose.

20 Now, we believe that if we knew 

21 the start dates for these employees, we could 

22 do a more precise estimate, rather than this 
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1 bounding estimate. And we have been looking 

2 for a set of records, a set of access records, 

3 for months, asking Pantex for months, for a 

4 set of access records that we believe would 

5 allow us to decide what were the start dates 

6 for these people whose bioassay data we have. 

7 So we would have their start date and their 

8 sample date. And you can make a more precise 

9 evaluation of a coworker in picocurie-per-day 

10 intake.

11 Like a week Wednesday or two weeks 

12 ago, I guess it was two weeks ago, we get an 

13 email from our contact at Pantex that says, 

14 hey, we think we found those. Great, thanks. 

15 Right before a Board meeting. Thanks. So we 

16 will be heading down there shortly after the 

17 new fiscal year starts to see if, in fact, 

18 they can produce what they think they found to 

19 see if we can have a more precise 

20 interpretation of the bioassay data.

21 So now for the period 1991, 1990 

22 to 1991, the last 2 years of the petitioned 
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1 period, we have access to roughly 1,000 

2 uranium bioassay samples. Now, some 300 and 

3 some odd of those were that first cluster, 

4 that first bunch. So maybe there were 700 for 

5 the remaining period of work.

6 And, again, these are isotopically 

7 analyzed for those isotopes. And we have not 

8 really completed the coworker model for that 

9 yet, but we believe that there should be 

10 sufficient data to have it build a coworker 

11 model for those years, for 1990 and 1991 

12 intakes, for the people at Pantex.

13 So I believe I covered all of the 

14 time periods. I covered the early period. 

15 Yes, right. I will be glad to answer any 

16 questions I can.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I just 

18 want to add without going into detail after 

19 Brad expressed some frustration to me and, 

20 actually, at previous meetings about the long 

21 detail in getting this. And Stu and I talked. 

22 And Stu followed up and I finally got some 
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1 reaction. And I want to thank NIOSH for doing 

2 that and Brad for being persistently 

3 impatient, but it had gone on a long time. And 

4 I think we were facing the situation where 

5 they weren't going to be able to produce these 

6 records because of security or other issues, 

7 we would have to decide, reach closure without 

8 that information.

9 But, anyway, I went on to thank 

10 NIOSH, and I believe DOE helped out also. I 

11 am not quite sure with this. But, anyway, do 

12 that.

13 Brad, do you have questions?

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: I do. And, Jim, 

15 you are absolutely correct. I would like to 

16 personally thank Stu because we were able to 

17 go to Pantex and look at some of the documents 

18 in a setting where we could actually discuss 

19 classified matters. I was able to express 

20 some of my concerns.

21 The one thing that does get me is 

22 on your slide that you have right down there 
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1 on September 5th. Your emailed records we 

2 were seeking might have been located. I have 

3 been down this route before. And I know we 

4 have got to go down there and look at those, 

5 but, you know, we don't even know if these are 

6 the records that we really need at this time. 

7 Is that kind of correct?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: It is always an 

9 adventure down there. So until we get our 

10 eyes on them and see what they say, I don't 

11 know that we are going to know if they are 

12 going to do what we want them to do or not. 

13 You know, I just don't think we will be able 

14 to make that judgment until we can look at it.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. I would 

16 like to make one other clarification, too. And 

17 Joe will probably get into this. We chose the 

18 W28 for one reason, because it had the 

19 depleted uranium in it. During this time 

20 period, 1984 to 1989, that was not the only 

21 weapons that were being 

22 assembled-disassembled. There are numerous 
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1 other ones that came in and out of it. But we 

2 have to pick one to be able to deal with it.

3 Also, in the earlier years, the 

4 '51 to '57, I want you to understand that 

5 Pantex -- we found evidence that they actually 

6 disassembled earlier ones. But there is a 

7 burning pit. The reason they had burning pits 

8 -- and they had these at Medina; they had them 

9 at Clarksville -- was to separate the HE from 

10 the DU, burn it off. They couldn't go blow it 

11 up because it would go everywhere. And this 

12 has kind of been my basis of, that's true, but 

13 you had depleted uranium there from the 

14 earlier years.

15 And it has been very hard. And 

16 Stu has been working with me, DOE has been 

17 working with me to be able to prove this 

18 point. This has been my stance and also the 

19 Work Group stance that, actually, it was 

20 earlier. It's just as we are having trouble. 

21 But I want you to think common sense-wise. Why 

22 did we have the burning pits for the HE? 
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1 Because we found stuff everywhere on that. 

2 Medina, Clarksville both had them.

3 And I really would like to tell 

4 DOE also, too, though, Greg Lewis has done a 

5 wonderful job. I know it has been difficult, 

6 and I have been on him pretty bad. But I 

7 would like to thank NIOSH and DOE for the work 

8 they have done on this, but it might be what 

9 we need.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Bill?

11 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I had a 

12 question on the workers you are trying to find 

13 start dates for. This sounds like a silly 

14 question, but do you know who the workers are 

15 you are trying to find the start dates on?

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. With the 

17 results, we have the name; the sample results, 

18 we have the name of the people who left those 

19 samples.

20 MEMBER FIELD: So when you are 

21 trying to find a start date is when they start 

22 working at Pantex?
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Actually, access 

2 to the W28 disassembly.

3 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. But you know 

4 when they started working at Pantex?

5 MR. HINNEFELD: If they are 

6 claimants, we would know.

7 MEMBER FIELD: Okay.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: But I don't know 

9 that we have tried to find work dates 

10 otherwise. What we are trying to find out is 

11 access to W28 or --

12 MEMBER FIELD: Okay.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: -- perhaps that's 

14 part of what we have to interpret when we see 

15 the access records, is what is it going to 

16 tell us.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David?

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: This is just a 

19 follow-up on the same thing. Is it going to 

20 be an issue for the Department of Labor or for 

21 NIOSH to deal with any of these dose 

22 reconstruction strategies or administer any 
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1 sort of Class if you are focusing on W28 and 

2 you can't place people into that?

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, what we have 

4 been proposing to do is to use this data, 

5 which we believe is bounding, to bound the 

6 doses for everybody. So in the Class that was 

7 added, there was no trying to limit the Class.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: We believe there 

10 was opportunity for relatively broad exposure.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I see.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: And so we didn't 

13 try to limit the early Class. And probably 

14 the same thing would be done later on.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Dave?

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: If you can't 

18 get the start dates from Pantex, the IRS and 

19 Social Security Administration have them.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we can get 

21 the start dates for the employee, but we need 

22 their access, their start on like the W28 
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1 disassembly, not their employment start date. 

2 They had to meet certain requirements in order 

3 to gain access to certain things. And they 

4 were granted access so they could do certain 

5 things.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So they may 

7 have been working for --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: They may have been 

9 working on something else for a while before.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

12 you, Stu. Joe, I think you have an update 

13 now?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Good morning. 

15 Actually, Stu has done a wonderful job of 

16 covering these different periods. I am going 

17 to try to just fill in places where I think it 

18 would provide a little bit more context since 

19 it has been about a year since we have 

20 discussed this.

21 Just a refresher on some of the 

22 points that I think the Work Group went 
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1 through last year in terms of its basis for 

2 recommending a Class be considered for Pantex. 

3 This has some relevance I think for this 

4 consideration for the later years as well, 

5 particularly if you notice the second bullet: 

6 no approach presented to normalized 

7 operational differences. In the Work Group, 

8 we had a lot of discussion about trying to 

9 take the 1989 bioassay data and 

10 back-extrapolate it 30-some years. And I 

11 think we went back and forth. I think there 

12 was some closure obviously on the difficulty 

13 of doing that unless you can normalize over 

14 that length of time.

15 But then the counter-proposal -- I 

16 think that came back from NIOSH at the last 

17 discussion -- was yes, but the '84 to '89 

18 terminal dismantlement -- let's just call it 

19 that. I think the term static was used -- was 

20 a much more homogenous period, where you're 

21 doing the same thing. And if you're talking 

22 about doing a back-extrapolation of that sort, 
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1 it would certainly be more within reason to 

2 look at that because, again, your operations 

3 would be more similar over that period.

4 Now, the counterpoint to that is 

5 we did talk to a senior operator who was 

6 managing parts of the W28 disassembly. So he 

7 was right there. And it was his interview 

8 comments that, you know, were particularly 

9 relevant because in his comments, he was 

10 saying, yes, the '89 was a big deal. It was a 

11 big deal because management started paying 

12 attention. And that's why there was all this 

13 reaction.

14 But there were certainly other 

15 instances before '89. And he wasn't specific 

16 on exact times that in his opinion were worse. 

17 And, of course, again being right there in the 

18 operational sense and managing operations, 

19 that was a pretty strong comeback. So that 

20 was part of what -- and this again was more 

21 subjective. That was part of why there was 

22 some skepticism about whether you could really 
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1 bet on 1989 as the bounding event just because 

2 there were some questions, even right from the 

3 operational people, whether it was, in fact,

4 the worst one.

5 The other issue -- certainly this 

6 goes to something that Dave mentioned. The 

7 exposures weren't necessarily confined to the 

8 W28 handlers. Certainly contamination control 

9 before '89 was pretty abysmal. And I think 

10 that was something that we looked at.

11 And there was actually an audit 

12 finding by DOE Albuquerque that just really 

13 keelhauled the operation for lack of 

14 contamination control and the fact that it was 

15 pretty ubiquitous in the operating area, was 

16 actually being tracked out to some extent. 

17 There was some secondary evidence that it 

18 could have been tracked out. It was more of a 

19 broad contamination issue, I think, which is 

20 what Steve was saying. It was more of a broad 

21 issue of potential exposure.

22 And, of course, again, based on 
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1 all of these points, the Board agreed and 

2 recommended the Class for '58 to '83. Now, 

3 '51 to '57, the early period I think, as Brad 

4 pointed out, there was certainly -- and I 

5 think this is even in the Site Profile for 

6 Pantex -- some evidence of depleted uranium on 

7 the site before '58. Fifty-eight was chosen. 

8 That was the first operational deployment and 

9 surveillance of the W28. So this was the 

10 point where it went into the system and they 

11 immediately started taking them apart, just 

12 for surveillance sake. So that's the genesis 

13 of the '58 time period in the beginning.

14 But before '58, certainly there is 

15 some evidence that DU was on site. So the 

16 question really was, yes, but DU in what 

17 condition because the circumstances of the W28 

18 were very specific, unalloyed, certainly 

19 oxidation. Was this DU that would have been 

20 an exposure potential to workers or not? And 

21 this is something that I will get into in a 

22 second. But that is certainly the basis for 
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1 that early period.

2 Eighty-four to '91 -- actually, 

3 it's '84 to '89 that we're focusing on 

4 relative to the bioassay data. I don't think 

5 there is any disagreement with NIOSH that '90 

6 to '91 was the post-event period, where Pantex 

7 certainly very vigorously set up a 

8 contamination control program, a bioassay 

9 program. So there is certainly a lot of data 

10 after '89.

11 So we are going to look at that, 

12 but I think certainly '90 and '91 is a 

13 different time period substantially than '84 

14 to '89 even because of that singular event 

15 that occurred in '89 in terms of that 

16 contamination and the subsequent upgrade of 

17 the program. It was a big deal.

18 Now, other driving events, of 

19 course, at the same time, there was a Tiger 

20 Team review in 1990. There were other reviews 

21 by Albuquerque. So if you can imagine a whole 

22 bell wave of change happening in the way the 
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1 rad program was administered around the 

2 disassembly? It all occurred about the same 

3 time, in the late '89, early '90 time frame. 

4 So that's a very big milestone.

5 As I was saying, in '51-'57, what 

6 I have done over the last year is essentially 

7 focus at headquarters. If you can imagine my 

8 reluctance, to run down to Pantex again, to go 

9 through a cycle of review, I was trying to 

10 figure out whether we could based on what we 

11 have already in terms of classified Pantex 

12 documents and other documents at headquarters, 

13 as well as doing classified interviews with 

14 workers that go quite a ways back, whether one 

15 could glean any information on that pre-'58 

16 period as far as where was the DU used, what 

17 was the exposure potential, and is there any 

18 evidence that there was a lot of handling that 

19 would have involved exposure of workers to 

20 depleted uranium in condition where there 

21 might have been some exposure?

22 It proved very difficult, 
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1 actually, to nail that down. And it looks 

2 like at this point the interviewees don't 

3 quite go back to -- and, again, this is pretty 

4 ambitious when you think about it -- go back 

5 to an operating period of the mid '50s. As 

6 far back as I could go was '60-'61, which I 

7 thought was doing pretty good. They 

8 themselves could not give me any information 

9 on that particular question on the '57-'58 

10 time period. So we did interview a couple of 

11 people. But, again, the results were 

12 negative.

13 So it looks like to do the 

14 necessary confirmation, we will need to go 

15 back to Pantex and focus in on that specific 

16 question and just nail it down. I'm pretty 

17 sure we can. Just, you know, the kind of 

18 information we need is just only available 

19 probably in the records at Pantex. So we will 

20 have to do that.

21 Eighty-four to '91, I won't go 

22 through all of that because I think Stu did a 
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1 pretty good job on that. Again, we deferred. 

2 I think the Work Group deferred action on that 

3 period, primarily because I think NIOSH made 

4 the argument and which I think the Work Group 

5 accepted that, if it was a homogeneous in '84 

6 through '91, there might be a basis for doing 

7 or applying that set of bioassay data, that 

8 300 bioassays in '89, appropriately for that 

9 time period because you wouldn't have the 

10 difficulty with normalizing the operations and 

11 normalizing the controls, same number of units 

12 in the bay areas. So you have a lot of the 

13 consistency that was lacking in the early time 

14 period. So certainly I think the Work Group 

15 said, you know, basically, we don't know if 

16 it's going to work, but certainly there's more 

17 justification for going ahead and making that 

18 attempt.

19 A fly in the ointment, though, 

20 again, is still not entirely clear whether '89 

21 again represented, that data that was taken in 

22 '89 represented, some of the worst exposures, 
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1 but I think if one takes the data you have --

2 and, again, look at the distribution. There 

3 might be some approach that might work.

4 Again, I think, withholding 

5 judgment, we have not gone through and 

6 reviewed the paper yet. So, again, we will 

7 have to do that and recommend where we stand 

8 on that. That is pretty much where that 

9 stands.

10 The other issue I would raise is 

11 -- and this is something we have kind of put 

12 on the back burner -- there is a thorium 

13 exposure pathway that has been confirmed at 

14 Pantex associated with the weapons disassembly 

15 program. And that was back-burnered, 

16 primarily because the time periods of the DU 

17 involvement and disassembly subsumed or 

18 enveloped the thorium, potential thorium 

19 exposure.

20 So the notion was, even though 

21 there is some concern over that, it was felt 

22 that if there was a dose reconstruction method 
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1 or an SEC that was generated for the depleted 

2 uranium, it would make moot having to address 

3 the thorium issue.

4 I think if we are in this '84 to 

5 '89 time frame and we are trying to address 

6 that question, this again comes to the fore. 

7 So I just want to make sure the Board is aware 

8 that, you know, as we are trying to solve this 

9 DU issue finally, by having to look at dose 

10 reconstruction methods for this later period, 

11 we will also have to revisit how one is going 

12 to address the thorium exposure pathway. For 

13 thorium, there is no bioassay data.

14 So the question is looking at the 

15 later periods and seeing whether there might 

16 be some data in that last time frame, maybe 

17 the '90 to '91 time frame, and seeing whether 

18 that can be used, but, again, I don't think 

19 the Work Group got very far on that, primarily 

20 because we shifted our emphasis to the 

21 depleted uranium.

22 And that's it. Questions?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

2 Joe? Yes, Bill?

3 MEMBER FIELD: Just have a quick 

4 question. Can you remind us when film badge 

5 records started, what year?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, in the 

7 external?

8 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: External was --

10 MEMBER FIELD: Well, they had 

11 radiography --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: They went all the 

13 way back to the '50s. I don't have the 

14 precise day. It is in the Site Profile.

15 MEMBER FIELD: You can't assume 

16 that there was exposures prior to '58 based on 

17 film badge usage at that time or was there no 

18 film badge prior to '58?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, there was 

20 film badge prior to '58. They did have 

21 radiography.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the 
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1 earliest film badging was for radiography 

2 because they radiographed the high explosives. 

3 So, as I recall, there are a few early on. And 

4 I don't recall as we proceed through time, I 

5 don't remember how the usage changed. I don't 

6 know if I have seen that.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I don't 

8 know if that would help address the question 

9 of whether depleted uranium was an issue or 

10 not. I think, you know, again, it was pretty 

11 clear that the site did not become a nuclear 

12 site, so to speak, until the mid '50s. And 

13 whatever they did before that, as Stu 

14 mentioned, was radiography and X-ray machines, 

15 that kind of thing. So we're looking for that 

16 nexus where that may have, in fact, started.

17 And I think, as Brad pointed out, 

18 there is some circumstantial evidence because 

19 of the burn pits that, yes, it was on site. 

20 The thing that we can't really establish is 

21 what kind of exposure pathway are we talking 

22 about and would that have been something one 
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1 would have been concerned about or not.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

3 questions for Joe?

4 (No response.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I don't 

6 know if the petitioners are on the line. If 

7 you all wish to speak?

8 MS. RAY: This is Sarah.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Hi. How are 

10 you?

11 MS. RAY: I am doing well.

12 I do have a couple of comments I 

13 would like to make. In my research, I have 

14 seen back in the '50s -- and I can't give you 

15 the date right now -- that the Mark 15 was the 

16 earliest record at Pantex. And [identifying 

17 information redacted] tells that the Mark 

18 series was really radioactive. And so I might 

19 offer that, but that was just in a book. And 

20 I can't even at this point tell you what the 

21 book was.

22 Obviously, as you can imagine, I 
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1 disagree with some of the things that NIOSH is 

2 wanting to do. Really, six years is a very 

3 long time to wait. And it's quite an 

4 adventure. Well, it's probably the future for 

5 us.

6 But I question some of the things 

7 that we are talking about, talking about 350 

8 people you have the records for. And 

9 basically there were about 300 people on the 

10 entire plant through most of the history of 

11 Pantex who did direct hands-on work.

12 I know that [identifying 

13 information redacted], was one of the people 

14 who was pulled at random. It didn't matter 

15 whether they worked on the 28 or not, but he 

16 participated, I believe, in the bioassay or 

17 whatever was done on the 28th. He's not here 

18 right now, but what he told me was that people 

19 were just pulled at random and asked if they 

20 would be willing to do it.

21 Also, you're talking about going 

22 back and finding the records. And you're 
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1 thinking that you're going to have an eye on a 

2 pile of papers that is going to say, 

3 [identifying information redacted]. Okay. 

4 [Identifying information redacted] worked in 

5 the board, and she worked on the 28 and the 33 

6 and the 41. Those records don't exist.

7 Sometime in the '90s -- this is 

8 from [identifying information redacted]. He 

9 said they were asked to go back and come up 

10 with a list of all the weapons and all the 

11 processes. And every place that he worked, he 

12 started in the '80s. So they wanted him to 

13 just go back and write all of that down. That 

14 is not possible. I can't tell you what I did 

15 yesterday. Oh, I disagree with 

16 back-extrapolation.

17 Another thing, really, the problem 

18 is unique. The control, the engineering 

19 control, the administrative control, are so 

20 much different, even when [identifying 

21 information redacted] first started at the 

22 plant. They would have multiple weapons in 
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1 the facility at one time.

2 But talking about these 300 

3 workers, workers tended to specialize. You 

4 know, there would be people that only worked 

5 this program or only did what they would call 

6 the mechanical and there were other people 

7 that worked in the cells where the items were 

8 mated.

9 You know, I did have many, many 

10 problems with so much of the things. But, you 

11 know, it's kind of like, well, if we can find 

12 something. Well, maybe we've got something. 

13 And how long or how much longer can we give 

14 these people?

15 We have workers -- there's another 

16 worker today who passed away, a really good 

17 designer. Jack Laich, I'll go ahead and say 

18 his name. Someone who worked out there 

19 forever probably has never gotten any kind of 

20 compensation for his illnesses, but always 

21 ready to help and answer questions every day.

22 I appreciate everything that the 
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1 Board has done. I know this takes you all 

2 away from your families. And you've looked 

3 extensivly, everyone has worked very hard, but 

4 I just wonder how much more you will be able 

5 to find. Sometimes it's looking for a needle 

6 in a haystack, and sometimes you can't even 

7 find the haystack. And at some point you just 

8 have to stop looking.

9 Anyway, I encourage the Board to 

10 not delay, to go ahead and make some decisions 

11 and make it worker-friendly, worker-favorable. 

12 It's a hideous program. It's very difficult 

13 for workers and families to go through. We 

14 have been able to help probably about four or 

15 five hundred additional families since the 

16 passage of the SEC. And I know that mine is 

17 continuing to pull new records. I hope we 

18 will be able to help some more people, 

19 additional people out there.

20 So thank you for listening.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. And, 

22 no. We recognize it's been a long time. And 
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1 I think we are approaching a time when we can 

2 bring closure to this. And we're certainly 

3 not going to tolerate another long wait for 

4 records in order to do that.

5 MS. RAY: Yes. Even talking about 

6 the next public meeting, it would be in 

7 January. You know, there are so many others. 

8 These are people, and they are not the only 

9 people. You know, this is affecting workers 

10 throughout the United States. I am not asking 

11 for special treatment for us. I am asking for 

12 fair treatment for all of the workers.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

14 --

15 MS. RAY: Oh, let me say one other 

16 thing, though. There were no major changes at 

17 the plant until '92-'93. The RadCon manual 

18 went into '93. They trained the Rad Safety 

19 Department in '92. I was a training 

20 specialist. I developed a degree program. You 

21 know, I did many, many things. I set up the 

22 safety system. But at some point, within 
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1 everything that I did, I reviewed all of the 

2 training materials that were used to train the 

3 Rad Safety Department.

4 You cannot agree with 6 or 8 

5 Safety, Safety department -- the whole Safety 

6 Department was like 6 to 8, probably no more 

7 than 12, during this whole period that we 

8 proposed. There was no way that these people 

9 could cover 24 hours a day, 24/7 every day of 

10 the year. It just wasn't possible. The 

11 record is not accurate. It's just not there.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

13 you. Okay.

14 MS. RAY: I'm really through now.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So we 

16 will look forward for an update on this site 

17 at our next meeting. I know, Brad, you will 

18 keep me posted. I know Stu will also, but 

19 Brad.

20 I think we are ready to move on to 

21 the Baker-Perkins. Henry?

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: This is a 
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1 closeout from our AWE Work Group of a TBD, the 

2 review of that. So it's not an SEC petition. 

3 And this is for the Baker-Perkins Company in 

4 Saginaw, Michigan, the Technical Basis 

5 Document review.

6 The interesting thing about this 

7 site is it only covered a five-day period when 

8 they were testing for the usefulness of a 

9 specific industrial mixing machine called a 

10 Ko-Kneader for possible use at Fernald for 

11 mixing uranium. So they went to the 

12 Baker-Perkins facility because a piece of 

13 equipment was there, ran some operation tests 

14 for a five-day period. And, lo and behold, it 

15 becomes a TBD as part of the TBD-6000.

16 It was an Appendix P for TBD-6001. 

17 And when 6001 was broken down, then, and all 

18 of the appendices were to become stand-alones, 

19 this became a stand-alone TBD, rev. 0, as 

20 well.

21 SC&A in November of last year 

22 reviewed the TBD document. On November in 
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1 2011, we reviewed that document and the SC&A 

2 report. And in December, NIOSH issued a White 

3 Paper on the TBD review in response to SC&A's 

4 Site Profile review from November 2nd.

5 In January, we had some other SC&A 

6 response to the NIOSH paper. All of these 

7 documents I think you have had forwarded to 

8 you already if you were interested.

9 We met in February again to see 

10 where we were, and SC&A presented to us. And 

11 we agreed that basically all of the findings 

12 have been resolved. And then in May of this 

13 year, NIOSH issued rev. 1, which provided --

14 mostly our comments, as you will see, were 

15 related to needing greater detail in the TBD 

16 so it could be used for dose reconstructions. 

17 And largely it was trying to better quantify 

18 how much uranium was actually handled and the 

19 timeline of the events over the five-day 

20 period and anything that may have been before 

21 or after. And so the TBD revision obtained 

22 more information and provided that to us.
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1 And then in just -- now, what is 

2 it? -- almost two weeks ago, we had a 

3 conference call again to go over that, be sure 

4 that all of the issues have been resolved. And 

5 Dave Kotelchuck was a new Member at the time. 

6 So he needed to get up to speed.

7 And we voted at that time to 

8 accept SC&A's recommendation that, in fact, 

9 all of our issues had been addressed and 

10 closed. And so basically the primary issues 

11 were the use of breathing zone versus general 

12 air samples, use of the 50th percentile in 

13 assigning doses versus the 95th percentile of 

14 the air sampling data, a few other issues as 

15 well in the duration of the external exposure 

16 per day.

17 And those issues were fairly 

18 easily addressed by NIOSH and expanded the TBD 

19 to include answers to the four points, our 

20 primary issues; went through a step-by-step 

21 description of what actually went on so you've 

22 got to get a sense of where exposures or how 
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1 exposure may have occurred.

2 And the logs of the Ko-Kneader 

3 tests were also then referenced, including the 

4 start and stop times of each test and the 

5 times and locations of each air sample and 

6 designation of which air samplers were BZ

7 versus GA, general air, or breathing zone 

8 samples that provided better clarification of 

9 what exposures may have been.

10 And all of that now is in the TBD, 

11 rev. 1. And so that -- basically, we then 

12 closed this out. If there are any questions, 

13 this document now is finalized. And I think 

14 it has been posted now as of the rev. 1?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any questions?

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: We are working 

17 through our backlog in our group.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Well, 

19 we're impressed. You're on your --

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: We needed to get 

21 this. You know, we had a review. We talked 

22 about it and wanted to not let it hang. So we 
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1 actually were able to push NIOSH to close it 

2 out. And it was a fairly simple set of tasks. 

3 So that happened quite rapidly.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have the 

5 6000/6001 challenge here.

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, exactly. 

7 Yes, right.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It is always 

9 weighed down by --

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: So, if there are 

11 no questions, again, it was an interesting 

12 site. It is only a five-day period. But the 

13 data there may be useful at other sites as 

14 well as we move forward. So it is a useful 

15 document to have updated and actually current.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

17 Any -- Paul, yes?

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't know if 

19 you can answer this, but do we actually have 

20 any claimants from this operation, this site?

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: That's really 

22 what triggered going back over it. There were 
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1 some in the dose reconstruction using the 50th 

2 percentile versus the 95th. The 95th has 

3 traditionally been what has been used. And so 

4 we kind of questioned what that was. And 

5 NIOSH then agreed that that makes sense to 

6 move in that direction.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: So there were dose 

8 reconstructions done under the original 

9 document. Is that correct?

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: That is correct?

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. And 

13 thank you, Henry.

14 I think we are at a point. And 

15 given some of the scheduling issues, we will 

16 take a break shortly. I will remind everybody 

17 on the Board we have a work session this 

18 afternoon and before the public comment, 

19 fairly long. So we will have time.

20 But one of the things that is sort 

21 of a homework assignment is we do have the 

22 public comments from a prior meeting. I can't 
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1 remember which meeting it is. But you have 

2 both that and the associated transcript. So 

3 if you could go through those, pick out those 

4 that you are responsible for, if it's your 

5 Work Group or an issue you are involved in or 

6 addressing to make sure that the summary and 

7 responses are appropriate in terms of 

8 follow-up.

9 But those are fairly -- the first 

10 is sort of a spreadsheet that -- it's two 

11 documents. One is I believe a spreadsheet 

12 that has sort of a summary. And then there is 

13 a much longer document that is the associated 

14 transcript. So we will go through the 

15 spreadsheet, but unless there are questions 

16 that people raise which may be contained in 

17 the longer transcript sections of that. But, 

18 again, just locate it so we can do that and be 

19 prepared for it. And we have some other Work 

20 Group reports to get caught up on and so forth 

21 for this afternoon.

22 So, with that, why don't we take a 
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1 break? We will reconvene promptly by 11:00 

2 o'clock.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

4 matter went off the record at 10:24 a.m. and 

5 resumed at 11:03 a.m.)

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If we can get 

7 started again. And I neglected to ask for a 

8 call-out vote, a closeout, the call for a 

9 closeout vote, on the Baker-Perkins. We have 

10 a recommendation from the Work Group. So we 

11 have the motion and the second. I think we're 

12 through with questions and all I need is a 

13 vote voice. So all in favor, say aye?

14 (A chorus of aye.)

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed?

16 MEMBER MUNN: And what are we 

17 voting for?

18 (Laughter.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What did we vote 

20 for?

21 MEMBER MUNN: We recommended that 

22 we do not have an SEC --
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, no.

2 MEMBER MUNN: What was the 

3 recommendation?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: On 

5 Baker-Perkins, we are accepting the Work 

6 Group's recommendation on that, which was to 

7 accept the revised TBD.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. I'm 

10 sorry, Wanda.

11 MEMBER MUNN: That's all right. I 

12 just wasn't really clear what we were voting 

13 on.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So all in favor. 

15 Abstaining?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And objecting?

18 (No response.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So unanimous. 

20 Okay. Thank you.

21 The next item on our agenda is the 

22 Weldon Spring Plant petition. And the Work 
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1 Group Chair, Dr. Lemen, will give us a brief 

2 introduction. And then we will have a 

3 presentation from Stu Hinnefeld again.

4 MEMBER LEMEN: Well, I kind of 

5 inherited this as Mike Gibson was the Chair 

6 originally. And then with his change in 

7 status, why, I was asked to take over as 

8 Chair. And we have had a meeting recently: 

9 Bill Field, Dr. Melius and myself. And we had 

10 three issues that were still to be addressed. 

11 One was the bounding radon model. The second 

12 was an issue dealing with recycled thorium. 

13 And the third was the raffinate pit drying 

14 out.

15 There were several pits and they 

16 were located on the site. We addressed those 

17 three. And Stu Hinnefeld has put together a 

18 presentation which will give you what the 

19 Working Group found.

20 I know you haven't heard much from 

21 Stu this time. So we will let him speak 

22 finally.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, Dr. 

2 Lemen. I am thinking you guys are probably as 

3 tired of hearing from me as I am of speaking, 

4 but we'll see how we go.

5 Okay. I was asked to provide an 

6 update on these three specific Weldon Spring 

7 issues: bounding radon model; recycled 

8 thorium, the question of recycled thorium; and 

9 the question of raffinate pit drying.

10 I presented the bounding radon 

11 model at the last meeting. This is just an 

12 abbreviated presentation of that.

13 This is the scenario we presented 

14 to the Weldon Spring Work Group back a while 

15 ago. The scenario is that all of the radon 

16 released at the plant is either generated in 

17 or recirculated into the particular facility 

18 where the dissolution of the concentrates 

19 occured and as a bounding situation. And 

20 based on that input rate, we calculated a 

21 maximum concentration of radon based on an 

22 annual release estimate for radon for the site 
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1 that was done by Argonne. And then an intake 

2 would be assigned, then, essentially to all 

3 workers because we wouldn't be able to 

4 distinguish who would have been exposed to the 

5 radon or not.

6 So the document that provides the 

7 annual radon emission estimate is the Weldon 

8 Spring historical dose estimate from Argonne. 

9 It gives a range of estimates of the annual 

10 radon emissions from 12 to 34 curies per year. 

11 That is based on the range of estimates of 

12 annual throughput through Weldon Spring and an 

13 assumption of, relatively small, of the radium 

14 and, therefore, the radon being present in the 

15 concentrates that are a relatively small16 activity fraction of the uranium because it's 

17 not ore; it's a concentrate. So most of the 

18 radium has already been removed before it got 

19 to Weldon Spring.

20 The radon is assumed to be 

21 released into the work area in the refinery. 

22 All of it, even the stuff that went out the 
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1 stack, we assume came back into the building 

2 103. Radon emission rate and a very low 

3 building ventilation rate were used to 

4 calculate an equilibrium concentration in 

5 building 103. So you've got an input; you've 

6 got an output. You can have a steady state of 

7 a steady state problem there.

8 Here are the parameters of the 

9 model. I gave those last time. The volume of 

10 building 103, we assume a ventilation rate of 

11 one air change per hour, which is pretty low 

12 for an industrial building.

13 The production rate, which is 34 

14 curies per year, or 3 billion picocuries per 

15 hour, that's also 3 millicuries per hour. A 

16 working-level assumption or conversion of 

17 picocuries per liter as a working level is 100 

18 picocuries per liter in full equilibrium with 

19 the short-term alpha-emitting progeny. The 

20 hours in a working-level month are 170. The 

21 assumed equilibrium factor we did in our 

22 original model was 0.5. And I am using an 
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1 occupational work number of hours of 2,000 

2 hours per year.

3 When I presented this last time, 

4 the question was raised about equilibrium 

5 factor of .5. Maybe that's not appropriate 

6 for such a low ventilation rate. I think 

7 that's a fair question. I think that's a Site 

8 Profile question, as opposed to an SEC 

9 question, though, because it is a matter of 

10 arithmetic.

11 The resulting working-level 

12 exposure will be directly proportional to the 

13 two equilibrium factors. So if you say you 

14 chose .7 as equilibrium factor, that would be 

15 a 40 percent increase. So the dose estimate 

16 would be 40 percent higher. So I think that 

17 is a reasonable point, but that is an issue 

18 that can be addressed relatively easily.

19 This is a slide I showed last 

20 time. This shows the arithmetic for the 

21 model, how you arrive at the equilibrium 

22 concentration based on air changes per hour 
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1 and the volume and the input rate. And the 

2 numbers come out to 150 picocuries per liter, 

3 which at a .5 equilibrium would be 8.8 

4 working-level months per year and at a .7, 

5 then it would be about 40 percent higher, 

6 which I think would be about 12 working-level 

7 months per year, so essentially steady 

8 exposure at one working level. So that's the 

9 bounding radon model that we were proposing to 

10 use for employees at Weldon Spring.

11 The second issue relates to 

12 recycled thorium and the question of, was 

13 recycled thorium handled at Weldon Springs. 

14 That question arose because there are a number 

15 of documents that -- EPA Environmental Impact 

16 Statement from 1989 is one of them. There are 

17 other references from that period in the '80s 

18 that describe thorium-contaminated raffinate 

19 solids from processing thorium recycled 

20 products and words like that, other phrases 

21 indicating recycled thorium or thorium 

22 recycled products are used in other 
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1 references. They could just be quoting each 

2 other because that happens a lot when people 

3 write documents for similar purposes around 

4 the same time, but it's used a number of 

5 times.

6 Now, in our program, we tend to 

7 use the term recycled to describe materials 

8 that are irradiated in a reactor and then 

9 recovered for reuse, but when you recover them 

10 for reuse, you still have some contaminants 

11 that come along with it. We use that pretty 

12 consistently. As when we say, recycled 

13 uranium or recycled thorium, we use that 

14 pretty consistently, but that is not the 

15 universally accepted term of recycle. There 

16 are a lot of possible meanings for recycle 

17 that are used in the industry.

18 If this sounds familiar, by the 

19 way, I spoke to this at the last Board 

20 meeting. We didn't have a written product. 

21 And since the last Board meeting, we have 

22 developed a written White Paper and delivered 
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1 it to the Work Group that goes through this 

2 information. So the White Paper was available 

3 to the Work Group at their last meeting.

4 So our question is, had the 

5 thorium previously been irradiated, you know, 

6 recycled, in our terms? And, if so, to what 

7 extent would radiological impurities in 

8 recycled thorium affect the dose 

9 reconstruction? Because you bring along a few 

10 additional things, in addition to thorium, 

11 that would affect the internal dose 

12 assessment.

13 So we do have available to us an 

14 accounting of the inventory records for Weldon 

15 Spring. And they show that thorium was 

16 present in significant quantities only during 

17 the period '63 to '66.

18 The DOE thorium irradiations, 

19 which led to what we would call recycled 

20 thorium as we use the term "recycled thorium," 

21 those occurred at Savannah River. And for the 

22 reclaiming, the material that got back into 
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1 the thorium stream, they started in the 

2 mid-'60s. So they were producing U-233. 

3 That's why they irradiated the thorium. And 

4 then they would reclaim the thorium and put it 

5 back in the system.

6 We have documentation from 

7 Savannah River that indicates that the first 

8 shipment of the previously irradiated 

9 reclaimed thorium would be sent to Fernald no 

10 earlier than November of 1966. And we also 

11 have evidence that Fernald was the site that 

12 shipped thorium to Weldon Spring, but they 

13 didn't receive the recycled thorium until 

14 November of 1966, which is about the time 

15 Weldon Spring was closing.

16 I've got some water. It's not 

17 really helping. I don't really know what is 

18 going on. It doesn't seem like an -- if your 

19 allergies don't bother you in Cincinnati, they 

20 can't bother you out here.

21 (Laughter.)

22 MR. HINNEFELD: I've got a drop. 
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1 I've got hard candy. I've got some water. I 

2 don't know what's going on. I think I have 

3 exceeded my warranty.

4 (Laughter.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I looked at the 

6 schedule. I noticed that --

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Please do.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- that Jim 

9 Neton takes over for this afternoon.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, trade me in 

11 on a newer model? You sound like my wife.

12 Okay. From this information, we 

13 concluded that the thorium processed in the 

14 '63 to '66 period was not recycled, as we used 

15 the term in EEOICPA. So we can do the thorium 

16 dose reconstructions, just considering it be 

17 the thorium and whatever date the K products 

18 would be there as well from the thorium to K 

19 chain and don't have to worry about the 

20 impurities from the irradiation. And there is 

21 a White Paper on that. I can make it 

22 available to anyone who wants to see it about 
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1 that analysis.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It is available 

3 on the information that was given to us today.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you.

5 That one was kind of nice because 

6 the evidence really looked clear. You know, 

7 we could find it, and it really seemed clear.

8 Our third issue is raffinate pit 

9 drying. Just a real quick reminder about 

10 Weldon Spring and raffinate pits. Raffinate 

11 is the waste material from refining uranium. 

12 Pits were built at Weldon Spring to store the 

13 raffinate. It was slurried out there, pumped 

14 out there as a slurry into these pits.

15 They also threw a few other 

16 things. I think they threw what they called 

17 slag, which is mag fluoride that had been 

18 leached. Normally, the uranium plants, when 

19 they made uranium metal, the mag fluoride that 

20 was used as the refractory liner became 

21 contaminated with uranium. And frequently 

22 they would leach that slag to recover that 
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1 uranium. And that slag was waste. And they 

2 also threw some slag out there, you know, 

3 leached slag. Mainly, raffinate was pumped 

4 out there to those pits.

5 And there are references, again 

6 mostly from the '80s and '90s period, that 

7 state that the raffinate pits were typically 

8 covered with water, but pits 1 and 2 were not 

9 covered during dry weather periods. So there 

10 is a question, do you have to deal with 

11 resuspension from these drying pits? And then 

12 also, well, if they dried out then, wouldn't 

13 they have dried out during the operating 

14 period? You know, where you would maybe have 

15 to deal with resuspension during the operating 

16 period for your dose reconstructions at the 

17 plant.

18 So I will summarize real quickly 

19 the covered periods here because it is 

20 relevant to the discussion here a little bit. 

21 From '55 to '56 as the active period, as the 

22 covered period, for Weldon Spring Plant, I 
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1 think '55 was largely a construction year. I 

2 think their actual operations started a little 

3 later and then operated through '66.

4 From '67 to '85 was, a term that I 

5 invented, an inactive period. I just invented 

6 it for this slide because there wasn't any 

7 remediation work going on. And during this 

8 period, the plant was essentially turned back 

9 to the Army. The DOE had acquired this 

10 property from the Army originally. And when 

11 they left in '66 or '67 -- I don't know the 

12 exact date, but it's right around there --

13 they turned it back over to the Army because 

14 the Army was interested in making an herbicide 

15 there, Agent Orange. So it was under Army 

16 control at that time. Peripherally, the Army 

17 tried to do some decontamination for a couple 

18 of years, decided they couldn't do it at a 

19 reasonable cost and just left.

20 So for most of this period, 

21 there's no one there. From that period when 

22 the Army was there, since these people were 
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1 Army employees or contractors to the Army, 

2 they are excluded from our EEOICPA program.

3 The pits actually remained DOE's 

4 responsibility, but DOE didn't have anybody 

5 there. You know, they're just right there 

6 abutting this plant. And then from '85 to 

7 2002, the actual remediation kind of gets 

8 going. A remediation contract was let, and 

9 the remediation kind of gets going towards the 

10 end of the '80s, when they actually remediated 

11 the environment there. So that's kind of 

12 relevant to the discussion, is those three 

13 periods.,

14 Now, I mentioned the inactive 

15 period because it appears to us that during 

16 that inactive period -- that was '67 to '85 --

17 there don't appear to be any eligible 

18 claimants at the site. You know, there are 

19 periodic reports from companies -- I think it 

20 was National Lab at the time -- who would get 

21 a minor contract from DOE to pay attention to 

22 Weldon Spring. They did some groundwater 
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1 monitoring. And they kind of inspected, made 

2 sure the berms on the pits were okay.

3 There may have been a little 

4 groundwater monitoring. And some of their 

5 reports say that air sampling was not 

6 distinguishable from background, or air 

7 sampling did not detect any short or 

8 long-lived products that could be attributed 

9 to Weldon Spring. But there is nothing about 

10 how they sampled, where they sampled, or what 

11 the actual measurements were. There were 

12 statements like that in at least one, maybe a 

13 couple of those things that seemed to recount 

14 a visit that a group of people from Fernald 

15 made. National Lab was Fernald.

16 So there don't seem to be any 

17 eligible claimants who spent any particular 

18 time other than a day or so in one of these 

19 environmental visits during that inactive 

20 period. The Army controlled that area. And 

21 some of these reports say that the security is 

22 -- you know, you don't have to worry about 
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1 security of these pits because it's maintained 

2 by the Army because, you know, they control a 

3 large area around here and you have to go 

4 through Army-controlled places to get even 

5 close to the pit. So statements like that are 

6 made in those reports as well.

7 Now, we do have site perimeter air 

8 sampling for a couple of periods. We have 

9 site perimeter air sampling in the Meshkov 

10 document, 1986. And that covers '59 to '65, 

11 which is most of the operational period. They 

12 didn't have any for '57, which I think was 

13 really the first operational year, '57 to '58. 

14 And they didn't have any for '66. But for 

15 most of the operational period, they had 

16 boundary station data.

17 That is presented in Meshkov. As 

18 far as I know, that is the only place we have 

19 seen it. We haven't seen an original document 

20 that reported that.

21 From '87 to 2000, there are 

22 environmental monitoring reports prepared by 
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1 M. K. Ferguson and Jacobs Engineering, who 

2 were the companies who received the contract 

3 to do the remediation at that time. So there 

4 are environmental reports with air sampling 

5 data at the perimeter for those years.

6 And then, like I said earlier, 

7 from 1966 to 1986, you will see one of these 

8 reports periodically from National Lab that 

9 might make a mention that air sampling results 

10 couldn't be told from background, but you 

11 don't really know much about where the samples 

12 were taken or anything like that or how long 

13 they sampled.

14 The environmental reports from '87 

15 to 2000 actually do give a fair amount of 

16 information about how they did their sampling. 

17 They included a gross alpha count, I think, on 

18 maybe a weekly exchange basis and then a 

19 composite for isotopic analysis on a quarterly 

20 basis.

21 So, like I said earlier, it 

22 appears from 1967 to 1985, that it's unlikely 
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1 there were any covered employees at the plant. 

2 If, in the event we find out later on that 

3 that's wrong and there is a claimant or some 

4 claimants from there, we think that we can 

5 deal with that with information we have at the 

6 time. And realistically, since that was a 

7 period of essentially no activity -- and up to 

8 1987, really, the remediation was not really 

9 doing much activity, they were just trying 

10 their sampling -- we think the 1987 estimates 

11 of air exposure from the air sampling results 

12 in '87 could be used for that period if we 

13 identify a claimant. But that could be 

14 reconsidered if the need ever arises.

15 For the operational period, 1957 

16 to 1966, resuspension from the pits, if they 

17 dried -- if they did dry during that period --

18 should be reflected in the boundary station 

19 air sampling results for that period.

20 Now, it is not our position right 

21 now that the pits dried out during the 

22 operating period. The reason for that is that 
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1 there were people there. There were people 

2 there operating the plant and that would be 

3 advisable -- I think it was well-known at that 

4 time that it would be advisable to keep the 

5 raffinates covered with water.

6 There are statements, we have 

7 found documents that talk about the operation 

8 of pits, how the material was slurried to the 

9 pits, pumped out. There's a slurry. And the 

10 supernatant was discharged to the process 

11 sewer of the plant and discharged at about a 

12 half a million gallons per a relatively short 

13 time -- I knew this a minute ago -- were 

14 discharged to the sewer as supernatant. So 

15 clearly they're wet. The fact that the 

16 supernatant comes off and goes doesn't 

17 necessarily imply that there is water standing 

18 on top of it, but it could. So certainly they 

19 are very wet.

20 There is also an analysis from 

21 1968, right after the plant closed. A mining 

22 company was interested in mining the pits and 
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1 reclaiming some of the metals and other 

2 materials in there -- maybe the uranium that 

3 was in the pits, although it wouldn't be much 

4 -- but reclaiming the materials in the pits.

5 And they did an analysis. Air 

6 analysis says that the pits were 75 percent 

7 moisture. If they could be reduced to 50 

8 percent moisture by the DOE, then this company 

9 might be interested. But they didn't want to 

10 have to deal with that extra drying. They 

11 would still have to try it if they got to 50 

12 percent. So it was wet, for sure.

13 The other issue to deal with here 

14 is how are we dealing with environmental dose 

15 estimates in the Weldon Spring Site Profile? 

16 Because this is during the covered period and 

17 the Site Profile has to address this issue.

18 The Weldon Spring Site Profile has 

19 actually two components to the environmental 

20 airborne dose: one which is generated from 

21 the boundary station samplers and one which is 

22 generated from a dose estimate for being close 
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1 to a dust-generating operation. And it was 

2 cleaning hoppers. I think it was a 

3 hopper-cleaning operation that occurred during 

4 Weldon Spring's operation. The philosophy 

5 here being that a person who was not 

6 monitored, not in the bioassay program --

7 there weren't all that many, but there were 

8 some that are not in the bioassay program --

9 could have been in proximity to operations 

10 that were dusty and may have been exposed, at 

11 least some amount of time.

12 So there is a dose estimate in the 

13 Site Profile that says, given this -- and 

14 there are airborne measurements from this 

15 operation, airborne activity measurements from

16 the operation -- and someone being in 

17 proximity for this number of hours per year --

18 it's not 100 percent but this number of hours 

19 per year -- they would receive an intake of 

20 this much. And so there is an intake 

21 assessment as part of the Site Profile for the 

22 environmental dose.
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1 That environmental dose is far 

2 larger, from that dusty operation for a while, 

3 than spending the year, as determined by the 

4 boundary station sample. So it's far larger. 

5 I don't have the numbers with me right now, 

6 but we do have documents that we have 

7 prepared. And we can get them to the Work 

8 Group here as soon as I get done being at this 

9 meeting, I guess.

10 So if the pits did dry out -- and 

11 it is not our position that they did -- but if 

12 they did dry out, it's our position that that 

13 would change the interpretation of the 

14 isotopic ratio on the boundary stations. You 

15 would have more thorium-230 compared to 

16 uranium than the Site Profile presumes, 

17 because the Site Profile makes the assumption 

18 that the resuspension is more from the plant 

19 operations. And so there is a thorium-230 

20 content that they believe is the bounding 

21 estimate for if you're dealing just with the 

22 concentrate of about five percent. You know, 
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1 that thorium-230 activity would be about five 

2 percent of the uranium activity. So that's in 

3 the Site Profile now.

4 If you were to -- and I just got 

5 this Monday, this analysis Monday. If you 

6 were to use a raffinate resuspension as your 

7 environmental aspect, you would go from about 

8 5 percent thorium-230 to about 50 percent 

9 thorium-230, according to the analysis I got 

10 Monday.

11 So that will change -- you know, 

12 that would change the interpretation of the 

13 data. I believe the Meshkov data, the one 

14 that reports the boundary station data, 

15 reports it as uranium. So this is sort of 

16 additive.

17 You wouldn't reconfigure it. It's 

18 not a total activity number. So you wouldn't 

19 reconfigure that total activity differently. 

20 It would be additive to uranium. But it is 

21 still a small component of the very minor 

22 component of the total environmental dose that 
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1 someone would be assigned during this covered 

2 period, because of the much larger presumed 

3 intake from being in proximity to the 

4 airborne-generating activities.

5 So that's kind of abrupt, but that 

6 is the end of the presentation. I will answer 

7 whatever questions I can.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

9 Stu? Yes, Brad?

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Stu, I am not 

11 clear. When this originally started out, my 

12 understanding was we were using surrogate 

13 data. Now we have actually found Weldon 

14 Spring's data. Is that correct?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: How much data do 

17 we -- how many data points do we really have?

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Of which type? Of 

19 the boundary station sample?

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Boundary station, 

21 yes. What boundary --

22 MR. HINNEFELD: I think there were 
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1 seven boundary station results reported in the 

2 Meshkov document from '59 through '65. 

3 Something like that. It was on the order of 

4 seven. And the numbers are reported as -- I 

5 think they were reported as annual averages 

6 for each boundary station.

7 In the later monitoring data from 

8 the remediation contractor, there was a 

9 similar number of monitoring stations starting 

10 out. They added more later on. And so in 

11 '87, there was a similar number of air 

12 sampling stations. And those results were all 

13 less than detectable for both the weekly --

14 for the gross alpha results as well as 

15 isotopic results.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: Now, on the 

17 thorium, because I guess I was the one who 

18 brought some of this stuff up, do we have any 

19 personnel monitoring data for any of this? Do 

20 we have any bioassay or anything?

21 MR. HINNEFELD: No. We don't have 

22 bioassay for thorium. We have, for the period 
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1 we're talking about -- which period are you 

2 talking about?

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: Earlier years.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. For the 

5 thorium exposure earlier on, which is not one 

6 of the three issues that I got ready for 

7 today, there is a daily weighted exposure air 

8 sampling program that was used to estimate the 

9 thorium exposures during the thorium 

10 activities from '63 to '66.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Thank you.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Other questions 

13 from Board Members?

14 (No response.)

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I believe 

16 at least one of the petitioners is on the line 

17 and wishes to make a comment. Are you on the 

18 line?

19 (No response.)

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, then we 

21 do have a written statement from one of the 

22 petitioners that Ted will read now, or at 
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1 least summarize.

2 MR. KATZ: I'm not familiar enough 

3 with it to summarize it, but I can speed-read 

4 it.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

6 MR. KATZ: This statement is from 

7 Tina Triplett. I will just move as quickly as 

8 I can, because it is fairly long.

9 "Intent of the EEOICPA 2000. The 

10 congressional intent of the EEOICPA Act was to 

11 support timely, uniform, and adequate 

12 compensation for covered nuclear defense 

13 employees and their survivors. The program 

14 stated that the federal government should 

15 provide workers and their survivors with all 

16 pertinent and available information necessary 

17 for evaluating and processing claims. The 

18 federal government should also ensure that the 

19 program minimizes the administrative burden on 

20 workers and their survivors and respects their 

21 dignity and privacy.

22 "Time limits. I am fully aware 
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1 that this process is not a simple undertaking. 

2 However, there comes a time when a decision 

3 has to be made. Enough is enough. The 

4 countless stall tactics used by NIOSH to delay 

5 resolutions is no longer justifiable.

6 "Time is something that 

7 Mallinckrodt, Weldon Spring Plant workers, and 

8 their families do not have. Year after year, 

9 there is no closure for petitioners and 

10 claimants. Roundtable discussions never end. 

11 NIOSH wants to prolong any decision for 

12 petitioners, employees, and survivors. It 

13 appears evident that NIOSH is never prepared 

14 for discussions on the Weldon Spring Plant.

15 "Claimants and petitioners have 

16 heard countless times the words 'I'll have to 

17 get back to you with that' or 'I don't have 

18 that information at this time' when questions 

19 are addressed. The lack of initiation on 

20 follow-up is at the petitioners' and 

21 claimants' detriment.

22 "We can generate never-ending 
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1 discussions for several more years or we agree 

2 to disagree and move forward. There is 

3 nothing timely about the Congressional intent 

4 of this compensation program.

5 "Disclosure. Claimants and 

6 petitioners are at such a disadvantage in 

7 fighting for compensation. We have been 

8 treated unfairly as the petitioners from 

9 Mallinckrodt Weldon Spring. There appears to 

10 be no full disclosure of information.

11 "The petitioners have made futile 

12 attempts to gain access to records being 

13 utilized for Weldon Spring. We have submitted 

14 numerous FOIA requests and routinely check the 

15 CDC website as well as conducted extensive 

16 hours of research.

17 "There is no assurance that we 

18 possess all of the information requested. We 

19 have submitted countless FOIA requests for all 

20 data pertaining to Weldon Spring. However, 

21 when we submit a FOIA for a specific item, we 

22 get more information and there is no 
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1 explanation as to why it was not in a previous 

2 request.

3 "While NIOSH claims to have Weldon 

4 Spring information, the petitioners clearly 

5 disagree that there is enough data to provide 

6 accurate dose reconstructions. NIOSH has not 

7 provided any evidence as requested by 

8 petitioners, which presumably means the data 

9 do not exist. This predicament just creates 

10 more distress among administering agencies.

11 "In regards to the CDC website, 

12 SC&A's reviews of NIOSH White Papers are 

13 posted. However, NIOSH has not posted all 

14 Weldon Spring White Papers to the website. 

15 NIOSH fails to keep the petitioners and 

16 claimants informed in a consistent manner.

17 "In addition, when petitioners ask 

18 explicit questions about Weldon Spring data 

19 being utilized, we get evasive responses. 

20 NIOSH circumvents in queries to confuse 

21 petitioners and never provides reasonable 

22 explanations to our concerns.
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1 "For example, when the petitioners 

2 inquired what raw data was being used for 

3 daily weighted averages and these so-called 

4 blunders, we received three separate answers. 

5 As mentioned at the previous Advisory Board 

6 meeting, NIOSH stated that they had 1,400 air 

7 samples, then changed it to 1,400 operations, 

8 and then admitted it was actually 1,400 

9 calculations. The petitioners made several 

10 attempts to obtain clarification and we only 

11 received vague responses.

12 "NIOSH finally conceded that the 

13 1,400 operations did not refer to Weldon 

14 Spring Plant operations, which were implied in 

15 earlier discussions. The fact is there is a 

16 lack of original source data for this complex 

17 plant. Any attempts by NIOSH to create data 

18 are not acceptable.

19 "NIOSH claims to have information 

20 for Weldon Spring, yet never produces any of 

21 these documents. NIOSH has yet to answer what 

22 raw data is being used for these calculations. 
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1 NIOSH alluding to adequate data is just not 

2 realistic. Has anyone investigated or 

3 validated all of Mr. Rolfes' claims? If the 

4 petitioners and claimants can see through the 

5 obscure explanations, doesn't anyone else?

6 "SEC petition requirements. As 

7 petitioners for a Special Exposure Cohort, we 

8 are required to submit evidence involving 

9 unmonitored, unrecorded, or inadequately 

10 recorded exposure incidents. In addition, we 

11 are requested to submit proof of lost, 

12 falsified, or destroyed radiation records. 

13 Submission of affidavits supporting a lack of 

14 personnel or area monitoring was also 

15 suggested.

16 "The following describes the 

17 extent of evidence submitted on behalf of 

18 Mallinckrodt Weldon Spring Plant workers. One, 

19 employee affidavits. Weldon Spring employees 

20 have submitted numerous affidavits pertaining 

21 to accidents and the lack of appropriate 

22 monitoring. NIOSH continues to discount any 
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1 employee testimony. As a reminder, over 50 

2 percent of workers were not monitored for all 

3 radionuclides. And acute exposures were not 

4 routinely recorded. NIOSH interpretation of 

5 radiation exposure versus routine operations 

6 is lacking. What is routine? What is routine 

7 about furnace blowouts or explosions?

8 "Two, thorium. In the SEC 

9 Evaluation Report, NIOSH has concurred that 

10 the sufficiency of area monitoring data for 

11 thorium is uncertain." That's page 11. "NIOSH 

12 also determined that records related to 

13 potential thorium exposure might not be 

14 sufficient for adequate reconstruction of 

15 internal exposure," page 11. "The ER also 

16 indicated that Weldon Spring Plant records do 

17 not indicate specific analyses to define 

18 concentrations of thoron daughter activities," 

19 page 30.

20 "It appears NIOSH is only 

21 utilizing limited summaries of thorium dust 

22 studies and performing calculations to 
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1 interpret daily weighted averages. These 

2 calculations are not benchmark data and they 

3 do not meet the terms of representativeness or 

4 sufficient accuracy. In addition, many of the 

5 readings in the summaries were not true 

6 measurements. Measurements were often 

7 extended from other years. The use of DWA was 

8 already deemed not claimant-favorable in prior 

9 SECs, including the Mallinckrodt Destrehan 

10 Plant.

11 "Number three, thorium-230. Two 

12 documents referred to at the Ingle documents 

13 cannot be discredited by NIOSH. Both of these 

14 documents state that the AEC asked 

15 Mallinckrodt in 1955 to extract thorium-230, 

16 ionium, from raffinate residues on a 

17 production basis. This pilot work continued 

18 on a large-scale production basis at Weldon 

19 Spring from 1958 to 1966. Any efforts by 

20 NIOSH to discredit these documents or any 

21 submitted documents are clearly not 

22 claimant-favorable. Additionally, NIOSH cited 
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1 these same Ingle documents and misrepresented 

2 the content for dosing thorium using uranium 

3 throughput.

4 "Confusion and disagreement sets 

5 in on the concept of utilizing a thorium ratio 

6 intake to a uranium ratio intake. Are there 

7 not different uranium compounds in different 

8 classes of solubility? Don't uranium and 

9 thorium behave chemically in different ways? 

10 Don't the compositions change rapidly? Is 

11 there a state of equilibrium? What about 

12 enriched, depleted, and recycled uranium 

13 implications? Doesn't thorium result in 

14 larger doses than uranium per unit radioactive 

15 contamination in the air?

16 "It appears that Weldon Spring 

17 workers may be dosed on inaccurate or 

18 insufficient data. Additionally, stated on 

19 page 43 of NIOSH's Site Profile for the Weldon 

20 Spring Plant, `Measurement technologies for 

21 urinalysis did not provide sufficient 

22 information to have a reliable dose assessment 
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1 when there was a mixture of uranium compounds 

2 and uranium isotopes.' And NIOSH is going to 

3 use this unreliable information to attempt to 

4 dose thorium intake? There are so many 

5 unanswered questions.

6 "Furthermore, this proposal has 

7 never been validated to be accurate, feasible, 

8 or claimant-favorable. It appears like a 

9 last-ditch effort to deny compensation.

10 "Thorium is more toxic to the body 

11 than uranium. As stated in a Fernald 

12 document, solubility changes from outside the 

13 body versus inside the body. Insoluble 

14 compounds inhaled into the lungs, where they 

15 would remain for long periods of time, 

16 apparently present the greatest hazard. 

17 Thorium compounds are not readily excreted in 

18 the urine, which prevents urinalysis from 

19 being nearly as good an indicator for thorium 

20 inhalation and ingestion as for uranium 

21 inhalation and ingestion. Apparently this is 

22 because thorium compounds are generally more 
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1 insoluble and because soluble thorium 

2 compounds are converted into insoluble 

3 compounds in the body after ingestion or 

4 inhalation.

5 "How can this attempted approach 

6 be feasible or sufficiently accurate, 

7 especially since there is a lack of adequate 

8 air concentration for the Mallinckrodt Weldon 

9 Spring Plant? Prior SEC cohorts have been 

10 passed on NIOSH's inability to dose internal 

11 thorium and we request the same consideration. 

12 NIOSH's proposal is just not acceptable.

13 "Radon. There was no radon 

14 monitoring performed at the Mallinckrodt 

15 Weldon Spring Plant. Monitoring ceased in 

16 1955. NIOSH's suggested radon model appears 

17 to have uncertainty, too many assumptions, and 

18 does not demonstrate sufficient accuracy. 

19 First, NIOSH proposed no ventilation rate. And 

20 now they are going to incorporate a 

21 ventilation rate? How can anyone keep things 

22 straight? How many chances does NIOSH get to 
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1 make things right? Where is the guarantee 

2 that every single Weldon Spring worker would 

3 have accurate dose reconstruction? This is 

4 basically a model with no benchmark data.

5 "Six, destruction of records, 

6 V2161. As mentioned numerous times before, 

7 the V2161 shelf list that contains incomplete 

8 sets of medical files for Weldon Spring 

9 employees in dust studies has never been 

10 located. NIOSH claims these documents were 

11 not destroyed. However, we have requested 

12 them to be brought forward, and NIOSH fails to 

13 do so. The reality is that these records were 

14 destroyed because a scheduled destruction date 

15 had already lapsed. This was already 

16 established during the Mallinckrodt Weldon 

17 Spring SEC.

18 "Weldon Spring site visit. A 

19 Weldon Spring site visit during May of 1988 

20 demonstrated that prior attempts to locate 

21 records during operations at Weldon Spring 

22 were unsuccessful. Many records retained had 
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1 been exposed to the elements. Documents were 

2 wet, showed signs of decay, and were 

3 illegible. 

4 "Hard copy records. In September 

5 1979, Elizabeth Dupree evaluated the 

6 comparison of work history records versus hard 

7 copy records that were available at CER. 

8 Dupree discovered that the computerized work 

9 history records did not compare well with the 

10 hard copy records that were available.

11 "Dupree advised that one of the 

12 deficiencies found in the computerized work 

13 history data is that they do not contain 

14 sufficient detail to match jobs that a worker 

15 held to the dust exposure studies that exist 

16 for jobs in the Uranium Division.

17 "It was known that types of work 

18 history records available changed over the 

19 period of operation of the Uranium Division. 

20 The computerized work history did not appear 

21 to be adequate for linking a worker's job to 

22 dust exposure he/she received while doing a 
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1 job. No one document contained all of the 

2 work history information. In addition, the 

3 linkage to dust exposures was less successful 

4 for Weldon Spring since dust exposure studies 

5 only covered jobs being held in the 

6 manufacturing area.

7 "Building 1415. History documents 

8 show building 415 contained an incinerator 

9 which was used to burn trash and classified 

10 documents.

11 "Seven, surrogate data. I am 

12 still perplexed that Mr. Rolfes continues to 

13 deny the use of surrogate data for Weldon 

14 Spring. NIOSH has alluded to claims that no 

15 surrogate data is being used for the Weldon 

16 Spring Plant. However, NIOSH actually states 

17 that they are not using surrogate data for the 

18 proposed model.

19 "Previous email correspondence 

20 from NIOSH clearly indicates surrogate data 

21 from Fernald is being utilized for the Weldon 

22 Spring Plant. In fact, emails indicate NIOSH 
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1 admitted that if they use any actual data from 

2 Weldon Spring, the data would be less 

3 claimant-friendly.

4 "So which is it? Why does NIOSH 

5 constantly waver on what is being utilized for 

6 this plant? NIOSH's integrity with addressing 

7 the Mallinckrodt Weldon Spring Plant case is 

8 often questioned and unreliable. Countless 

9 discrepancies repeatedly reveal themselves, 

10 and it does not go unnoticed.

11 "SEC petition requirement 

12 conclusion. The above-mentioned examples 

13 demonstrate the necessity for a Special 

14 Exposure Cohort for Mallinckrodt Weldon 

15 Spring. The Weldon Spring Plant has an 

16 extremely complicated and hazardous history. 

17 The lack of data for Weldon Spring is 

18 irrefutable. Any attempts for NIOSH to fill 

19 these gaps just make dose reconstruction more 

20 imprecise.

21 "Documentation. Reiteration is 

22 essential to demonstrate that every piece of 
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1 evidence that has been submitted by the 

2 petitioners or claimants is ignored or 

3 discredited by NIOSH. If the findings are not 

4 ignored, the information is twisted. NIOSH 

5 always provides its own interpretation of 

6 presented documents, which will never be 

7 claimant-favorable/friendly.

8 "Any claimant-favorable documents 

9 are tossed aside every time as if they have no 

10 merit. Petitioners and claimants have to 

11 prove and back up everything. However, NIOSH 

12 is not held to the same standards and no one 

13 holds them accountable. Who gave NIOSH the 

14 authority to decide the intent or the content 

15 of any of these documents?

16 "Furthermore, it has been 

17 well-established and acknowledged by NIOSH 

18 that Mallinckrodt lacked the integrity of 

19 handling and reporting of monitoring data. 

20 Those circumstances did not provide NIOSH with 

21 a reasonable means to validate dose estimates 

22 based on monitoring data. Mallinckrodt 
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1 knowingly placed its employees at risk and 

2 this last chapter of Mallinckrodt's 

3 indiscretions needs to be closed.

4 "Burden. This entire process has 

5 been an emotional roller coaster for claimants 

6 and petitioners and their families. This 

7 process repeatedly victimizes these 

8 individuals. When does discovery end? How 

9 long do we have to be patient while NIOSH 

10 waits for the evolution of science to dose 

11 individuals? How long does NIOSH get to push 

12 off closure while attempting to locate reasons 

13 to deny compensation?

14 "The bottom line is Weldon Spring 

15 Plant dose reconstructions are flawed and 

16 inaccurate due to lack of data that exists for 

17 the facility. As discovered in the Work Group 

18 discussions, Weldon Spring dose 

19 reconstructions were in need of constant 

20 corrections. This serious predicament would 

21 not have been identified if a petition hadn't 

22 been submitted. Any effort to dose these 
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1 individuals from operations over 60 years ago 

2 are just offensive.

3 "NIOSH has made too many 

4 assumptions due to data deficiencies, which 

5 lead to uncertainty and a lack of confidence. 

6 How are these assumptions sufficiently 

7 accurate or plausible? NIOSH cannot guarantee 

8 that they can accurately dose every single 

9 worker from the Weldon Spring Plant.

10 "The benefit of the doubt is 

11 supposed to go to the claimants. Yet, anyone 

12 requesting compensation has to fight 

13 overwhelming odds for adjudication.

14 "My father filed for compensation 

15 in 2002. And this was my seventh year without 

16 him. Watching him lose his dignity because of 

17 the sacrifices he made for this country will 

18 be with our family forever. He was entitled 

19 to live a long live. And, yet, he was 

20 unknowingly cheated out of valuable time with 

21 his friends and loved ones. There is no 

22 mistake that his service at Mallinckrodt 
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1 Weldon Spring Plant is responsible for our 

2 heartache."

3 We're almost finished.

4 "There has been nothing fair or 

5 timely about this process. We will never get 

6 back the blood, sweat, and tears that have 

7 been devoted to this campaign to compensate 

8 those individuals who sacrificed everything 

9 for the nuclear defense program. We will 

10 never get back the lost time with our loved 

11 ones.

12 "The petitioners for Weldon Spring 

13 have never seen this much science and detail 

14 go into any other SEC petitioner. The 

15 Congressional intent of the compensation 

16 program has been manipulated long enough. 

17 Today I am requesting the Advisory Board not 

18 allow these Mallinckrodt Weldon Spring workers 

19 and their families to be victimized any 

20 longer.

21 "Evidence and discussions prove 

22 that NIOSH makes too many assumptions and 
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1 lacks the ability to perform accurate dose 

2 reconstructions. We request recognition of 

3 the numerous deficiencies in NIOSH's 

4 proposals. NIOSH's claims are not 

5 sufficiently supported and not sufficiently 

6 accurate or plausible. Weldon Spring claims 

7 necessitate adjudication for the price that 

8 these workers paid for this country 

9 unknowingly under hazardous conditions.

10 "Whatever the outcome is today, we 

11 will pursue every avenue until Weldon Spring 

12 Plant employee is justly compensated. The 

13 intent of this program was timeliness. And 

14 time ran out long ago. We are respectfully 

15 requesting the Advisory Board grant a Special 

16 Exposure Cohort for the Mallinckrodt Weldon 

17 Spring Plant.

18 "Thank you, Tina Triplett."

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

20 you, Ted.

21 Any other questions? Sorry, we 

22 are not taking public comment at the present 
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1 time. Any other Board Member, questions?

2 (No response.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I will remind 

4 you that the -- I think we have gone through 

5 this history before, but the Work Group and 

6 SC&A have done extensive reviews and had 

7 concluded that dose reconstruction was 

8 feasible, that the methods that NIOSH had and 

9 were in place were appropriate. There were, 

10 as I said, three issues left to be determined.

11 We had a Work Group meeting last 

12 week. When I joined the Work Group for this 

13 meeting, I spent a significant amount of time 

14 going through the old transcripts and old 

15 reports, trying to keep a record of all of the 

16 issues that had come up and so forth. And 

17 there was ample discussion and response to 

18 those past issues.

19 We had the three remaining issues. 

20 I think Stu has given us a good review on 

21 those. And although I think the Work Group in 

22 our meeting last week did not make any 
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1 specific recommendation, I think we have taken 

2 this, really, as far as we can at this point 

3 and need to try to bring closure here today.

4 I don't know. Dick, do you want 

5 to add anything to that?

6 MEMBER LEMEN: No.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Dave?

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The statement 

9 that was just read raised a large number of 

10 points. And so I was just hoping you might 

11 comment on a couple of them.

12 From the presentation, I thought, 

13 okay, the thorium issue is nailed down. And 

14 then one of the points in the statement was 

15 that NIOSH had discredited counter evidence 

16 regarding thorium-230. I wasn't clear. What 

17 was the context for that assertion within the 

18 statement?

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu, do you want 

20 to --

21 MR. HINNEFELD: There was a 

22 document, or maybe two documents written by 
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1 the same people at close to the same time, in 

2 the '80s, that made the statement that the 

3 individual read in the letter, saying that DOE 

4 asked Mallinckrodt to extract thorium-230 from 

5 raffinates in 1955. And this work continued 

6 at Weldon Spring.

7 We managed to contact one of the 

8 authors. We tried to contact the second 

9 author and got no response. The author that 

10 we spoke to allowed our contractor to look at 

11 records that had been collected. This was the 

12 ORAU -- it was the ORAU Epidemiology search 

13 study. They were describing thorium

14 exposures, potential thorium exposures. And 

15 they kind of grouped thorium-230 and 

16 thorium-232 exposures as a thorium exposure.

17 Certainly there is description of 

18 this extraction occurring at Destrehan Street, 

19 at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works on 

20 Destrehan Street. And there were discussions 

21 about building a plant for the purposes of 

22 doing this extraction. And they recognized 
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1 that this would be built pretty much like a 

2 plutonium plant because the 

3 thorium-230-specific activities on the order -

4 - plutonium, you have an alpha emitter with a 

5 pretty high specific activity, certainly far 

6 higher than uranium.

7 They seemed to have been done --

8 the extractions that were done at Destrehan 

9 Street seemed to have been done in a glove box 

10 type of environment. And we had seen a report 

11 of some four bottles of this extract being at 

12 Destrehan Street. And I believe they were 

13 moved to Weldon Spring for storage, stored in 

14 a storage area there when Destrehan Street 

15 closed. I don't know their ultimate 

16 disposition, but I did see a letter about 

17 that.

18 There was a plant called the Minor 

19 Elements Plant, which is kind of a pilot plant 

20 sort of thing where they did these 

21 extractions, and apparently in a glove box at 

22 Destrehan Street.
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1 We have not found anything else 

2 other than this epidemiology document that 

3 describes the thorium-232 extractions from 

4 raffinate in the period for Weldon Spring.

5 In the mid '50s, there was some 

6 DOE interest in thorium-230, which was 

7 colloquially known as ionium. So if you 

8 search for ionium in our Site Research 

9 Database, you will get a number of hits. But 

10 these don't seem to extend, you know, really 

11 much past '55. There is a document from 1960. 

12 It is written by Mound. Mound was involved in 

13 this a little bit, but they were just sort of 

14 proposing, "Gee, what if?"

15 There is also another document 

16 from about that -- from the late '50s period, 

17 that describes -- I forget which site wrote 

18 this, but I don't believe it was one of the 

19 Mallinckrodt sites -- describes the available 

20 amount of the extracted thorium-230, of 

21 ionium, that was around. And said, "well, no 

22 one wants it, so we think we have got enough 
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1 to last for a while," essentially is what it 

2 said.

3 So the interest in ionium kind of 

4 came up and went away relatively quickly, 

5 probably because people at Destrehan Street 

6 recognized that this is bad, nasty stuff to 

7 deal with, this is not a trivial thing to try 

8 to extract and stuff.

9 Try as we might, we have not found 

10 other definitive information. There could be 

11 some more definitive information at the CER 

12 records holdings, because that is where the 

13 records that our contractor did see were the 

14 CER records holdings. There might be some 

15 additional definitive information there. We 

16 have not found anything else about the 

17 thorium-230 extractions.

18 The material, when it was 

19 extracted, by the way, when they extracted the 

20 thorium-230, they would inevitably end up with 

21 thorium-232 as well because all these 

22 raffinates have some. You know, thorium-232 
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1 is sort of ubiquitous in soil or anything. And 

2 so in terms of a mass basis, the thorium-230 

3 was actually the majority of the thorium, by 

4 quite a good margin.

5 So the follow-on step from the 

6 extraction, whether these had to be fed 

7 through like a calutron or something in order 

8 to do this isotopic separation of the 

9 thorium-230 from the thorium-232. And it 

10 appears to us that DOE just said, you know, 

11 "This is going to be too complicated. There 

12 are other alternatives to ionium."

13 But I can't find anything that 

14 says it was done at Weldon Spring. We have 

15 looked, the places where we know where to 

16 look.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You said you had 

18 another question.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Oh. Just one 

20 other, another point that was raised was 

21 concerning blowouts and the difference between 

22 chronic versus acute exposures.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: That question is 

2 similar to what we addressed most places. A 

3 repetitive event or episodic event, episodic 

4 exposure, like a blowout, is in our mind akin 

5 and can be modeled as a chronic, part of the 

6 chronic exposure because you would have 

7 bioassay data from the exposure event.

8 And so by interpreting the 

9 bioassay data over a person's exposure history 

10 as chronic, our analysis would indicate that 

11 that actually covers a series of episodic 

12 exposures in the dose assessment.

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any another 

15 questions? Yes, Bill?

16 MEMBER FIELD: Being on the Work 

17 Group, I think there were a good number of 

18 issues. But it turned out as we went on, that 

19 I think a lot of these were Site Profile 

20 issues, drying of raffinate pits, and then 

21 bounding of the radon model. You know, I 

22 think there was a time when ventilation was 
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1 supposed to be no air exchange.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: It was described 

3 that way in a meeting, that there was supposed 

4 to be no air exchange, but it's not. The 

5 model did not include no exchange.

6 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, right.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: There was an 

8 implied one change per hour, which wasn't 

9 described in the document.

10 MEMBER FIELD: Right. So 

11 certainly I think a higher equilibrium ratio 

12 is needed for bounding, but I think most of 

13 the issues that we discussed turned out to be 

14 Site Profile issues.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So I 

16 would entertain, if there are no further 

17 questions, a motion on the Weldon --

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Does the Work 

19 Group have a recommendation?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The Work Group 

21 did not make a formal recommendation.

22 MEMBER LEMEN: This is Dr. Lemen 
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1 again. We didn't make a formal 

2 recommendation, I don't think. I am still 

3 having a little trouble with the model, but we 

4 wanted the Board to hear where we were at at 

5 this point in time and let them make some 

6 decisions. I think Bill summarized what we 

7 found, but I think this is a decision that the 

8 Work Group wants to pass on to the Board to 

9 consider.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I think 

11 that it is fair to say that the three of us 

12 agreed on the other two issues, that NIOSH had 

13 adequately addressed them. And I think -- at 

14 least the opinion I have expressed before here 

15 and I think Bill has also -- is that the radon 

16 model for this situation is appropriate. And 

17 I'm comfortable with it, and I think Dick 

18 still has some questions on that. And I think 

19 that is why we are bringing it -- brought it 

20 back to the Board and so forth.

21 Yes, Wanda?

22 MEMBER MUNN: I would recommend 
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1 that we accept the agency's position that they 

2 can, in fact, complete adequately the dose 

3 reconstructions that are necessary for the 

4 claimants at Weldon Spring.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can I have a 

6 second to that?

7 MEMBER FIELD: I will second it.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Bill.

9 Any further discussion?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Just for clarity, 

11 SC&A has also indicated that they are in 

12 agreement with these approaches.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, correct. 

14 And at the last Work Group meeting, they 

15 indicated that they were satisfied with 

16 NIOSH's responses on the other two issues, 

17 which were to some extent new information. 

18 Certainly the raffinate was more extensively 

19 discussed there.

20 The thorium issue was as Stu 

21 described. He presented it before the Board. 

22 And we have asked them at the Board meeting to 
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1 put out a report on it so that it was clear 

2 what the exchange of information was and so 

3 forth.

4 Yes, Dave?

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So, as I 

6 understand it, formally, this effectively 

7 rejects the SEC petition that was filed and 

8 that will go back to NIOSH to deal with the 

9 dose reconstruction and then dealing with 

10 compensation in individual cases depending on 

11 the Probability of Causation.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Correct. And 

13 there are some Site Profile issues we have 

14 thought that the Work Group would continue to 

15 work with NIOSH on. NIOSH generally tends to 

16 address those once the SEC has been settled in 

17 terms of efficiency and so forth.

18 I don't know if there's that much 

19 that needs to be adjusted, maybe the radon 

20 model, but that might want to be discussed, 

21 that parameter.

22 Okay. I'll let Ted go ahead.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay, I think I'll go 

2 in reverse alphabetical order. Change things 

3 up, variety. Dr. Ziemer?

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, and Ms. Valerio is 

6 absent. Mr. Schofield?

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston's absent; 

13 I'll collect his vote after this. Ms. Munn?

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey?

18 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

19 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

20 MEMBER LEMEN: I have to say no.

21 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon's vote I'll 

2 collect after. He's absent. And Mr. Gibson, 

3 are you on the line?

4 (No response.)

5 MR. KATZ: Absent. Dr. Field?

6 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. 

7 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: No.

9 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

10 MEMBER BEACH: No.

11 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. The motion 

14 passes. It's ten in favor, three nos, and 

15 some absentee votes to collect, too.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

17 you. We will now break for lunch and 

18 reconvene at 1:30 promptly. We have Mound 

19 petitions to deal with. Thank you.

20 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

21 matter went off the record at 12:03 p.m. and 

22 resumed at 1:36 p.m.)
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1

2

3

4
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

2 (1:36 p.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If everyone will 

4 get seated, we will get started, please.

5 MR. KATZ: So let me just check on 

6 the line and see if we have Mike Gibson on the 

7 line, by any chance.

8 (No response.)

9 MR. KATZ: All right, then. And 

10 I'll otherwise just remind everyone on the 

11 line, please mute your phones, press star-6 if 

12 you don't have a mute button, and please don't 

13 put the call on hold at any point. But dial 

14 back in if you need to leave the call for a 

15 piece. And, oh, yes. I'm sorry. Thank you.

16 I should also note Loretta Valerio 

17 is absent this afternoon. She actually was 

18 absent for the morning sessions, too. She's 

19 not well. Thank you.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. This 

21 afternoon we'll start -- we have, actually, 

22 two different Mound petitions to consider. So 
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1 we'll start with a presentation on the first 

2 one, the 83.14. Jim Neton, in from the 

3 bullpen to relieve Stu Hinnefeld, whose voice 

4 was going. No, no. We have LaVon as the 

5 closer.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MR. KATZ: Also, just to note for 

8 the record, Dr. Lockey is recused from this 

9 session and the next one, which also deals 

10 with Mound.

11 DR. NETON: Okay. I am not Stu 

12 Hinnefeld, for the record. This is Jim Neton. 

13 I am here to present the Mound Special 

14 Exposure Cohort Petition Evaluation Report 

15 for, I think it's petition number 207, which 

16 is an 83.14 petition that was submitted, as 

17 83.14s go, by someone whose dose 

18 reconstruction could not be completed. We 

19 notified them of that. And they submitted the 

20 claim form.

21 And it was our determination we 

22 were unable to complete the dose 
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1 reconstruction. So, therefore, it qualified 

2 on that basis.

3 The claimant was employed at the 

4 Mound laboratory during the period when the 

5 tritium logbook data are unavailable. And 

6 that will become a very key part of this 83.14 

7 process. The petition was received not too 

8 long ago, August of 2010. That can't be 

9 right. That has got to be August 2012. We 

10 proofread these things, and you think we would 

11 not have that. Yes, August 15th, 2012.

12 So, to understand the basis of 

13 this petition, we have to go back and look at 

14 the SEC petition that was established under 

15 171, which was that we couldn't reconstruct 

16 radon exposures in a certain portion of a 

17 building or two buildings in the Mound plant. 

18 That's the R and SW buildings, also known as 

19 the Mound Tritium Complex.

20 And we had established in that SEC 

21 Class that from March 1st, 1959 through March 

22 5th, 1980, we could not reconstruct exposures 
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1 to radon. And it's not just radon-222 but 

2 radon-220 and radon-219 that was emanating 

3 through a crack in a floor in the R building -

4 - or the SW building.

5 The Class Definition was kind of 

6 unique as Class Definitions go. And the way 

7 the Class is administered is all workers in 

8 the Mound Tritium Complex who were monitored 

9 for tritium. That was a way to establish who 

10 actually frequented the R and SW buildings. 

11 And since all workers who worked in the Mound 

12 Tritium Complex were required to leave a 

13 bioassay sample, then the thought process for 

14 the SEC was that would capture all people who 

15 had the potential for exposure to radon. So 

16 it was kind of unique. If you are monitored 

17 for tritium, then you are potentially exposed 

18 for radon, is the way that Class worked if you 

19 remember.

20 The way the Department of Labor 

21 administers the Classes, we provided them 

22 Mound tritium urinalysis logbooks. We had the 
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1 logbooks for the entire -- we thought so --

2 for the entire duration of the Class period, 

3 but after the Class was being administered for 

4 a while, it became known to us that there are 

5 gaps in the collection of the logbooks. 

6 Notably, that we do not have the logbooks from 

7 September 1st, 1972 through December 31st, 

8 1972 and from January 1st, 1975 through 

9 December 31st, 1976. So for those two 

10 discrete time periods, we have no way of 

11 establishing which workers actually could have 

12 frequented the R and SW buildings, or the 

13 Tritium Complex, as it's called.

14 This is basically what I just 

15 said. So the default assumption, then, would 

16 have to be, since we have no way of 

17 determining who actually entered those 

18 buildings during those years, that all workers 

19 could have been in those buildings on the 

20 Site. So the Class would have to become all 

21 workers who worked on the Mound Site during 

22 those years.
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1 So, based on that information, we 

2 don't have any way to establish an upper bound 

3 of radon exposures for any worker on the site 

4 during those periods. So there is 

5 insufficient information to estimate the upper 

6 bound.

7 As far as health endangerment 

8 goes, this is very much parallel to what was 

9 decided in SEC Class 171, that we couldn't 

10 reconstruct dose, so health was endangered. 

11 And the exposure, though, was via chronic 

12 exposure to the radon gas and progeny that 

13 existed throughout, or potentially existed, 

14 throughout the R and SW complex.

15 So here is the definition: all 

16 employees of the Department of Energy, its 

17 predecessor agencies, and contractors who 

18 worked at Mound in Miamisburg from September 

19 1st, 1972 through December 31st, 1972, or from 

20 January 1st, '75 through December 31st, '76 

21 for a number of work-days aggregating 250 

22 days. And that can be combined with other 
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1 Classes that are in existence.

2 And this is just a brief synopsis 

3 of that recommendation. So it's a pretty 

4 simple, straightforward Class I hope. And 

5 I'll be happy to answer any questions.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anyone have 

7 questions? For those of you who are new to 

8 the Board, this was sort of a difficult Class 

9 Definition to come up with. I think the SEC 

10 part of it was relatively straightforward, but 

11 it was trying to figure a way that was -- the 

12 appropriate way of putting it down. We worked 

13 with Department of Labor and so forth on that, 

14 but did find this gap and so forth with it.

15 Josie, do you want to comment?

16 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. We've 

17 discussed radon many times over the years in 

18 reviewing Mound - - we were presented with the 

19 83.14, knew it was coming at the last meeting. 

20 And the Work Group unanimously agreed to 

21 support NIOSH's decision with this 83.14 to 

22 recommend this new Class.
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1 DR. NETON: And I would add that 

2 we had to work hard to find a claimant that 

3 was affected by this. I mean, it was delayed 

4 for that reason, until we found someone who 

5 was affected by --

6 MEMBER BEACH: Right.

7 DR. NETON: -- who wasn't already 

8 in the Class and didn't happen to work during 

9 the years where we didn't have the logbooks in 

10 the R/SW buildings. So I don't know if there 

11 are any other ones out there at this point, 

12 but certainly if the Class is added as they 

13 come available, they will be eligible.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. My 

15 understanding is that the petitioner does not 

16 wish to speak to that. So I believe we then 

17 have a motion from the Work Group and a second 

18 to that. So we can go ahead. Any further 

19 discussion/comment?

20 (No response.)

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, then, 

22 Ted, do the roll call.
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1 MR. KATZ: Sure. Dr. Ziemer?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: I'll collect Ms. 

4 Valerio's vote. Mr. Schofield?

5 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

7 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: I'll collect Dr. 

11 Poston's vote. 

12 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: That was Ms. Munn, 

14 saying yes ahead of me. Thank you. Dr. 

15 Melius?

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey's recused. 

18 Dr. Lemen?

19 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: I'll collect Mr. 
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1 Griffon's vote. And Mr. Gibson is recused. 

2 Dr. Field?

3 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

7 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Anderson?

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: So it is 12 in favor, 

11 no against, some votes to collect, and the 

12 motion passes.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That has to be 

14 the quickest SEC approval I can recall. I 

15 will therefore add for the record that there 

16 is an extensive record and discussion of the 

17 original SEC and full documentation on that 

18 that I am sure will be forwarded up to the 

19 Secretary at the time to go back a little bit. 

20 So we have done our due diligence in the past 

21 on this.

22 Okay. We will now move on to the 
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1 -- I guess, a remaining issue from the older 

2 SECs. And Jim Neton again?

3 MEMBER BEACH: While Jim is 

4 looking for that, I will just say the Work 

5 Group had one item left and it was the 

6 tritides, if you remember, from the last Work 

7 Group meeting. My report stated that we still 

8 had some work to do. And there were four 

9 questions that we asked NIOSH to answer. And 

10 this is what you are going to hear at this 

11 point.

12 DR. NETON: Thanks to Josie for 

13 setting me up, because I was really just 

14 prepared to talk about the last issue that 

15 remained on the SEC at Mound that has been 

16 under discussion, the 83.13 SEC that has been

17 under discussion for quite some time. And the 

18 final issue had to do with how one might put 

19 an upper limit or upper bound on exposure to 

20 stable metal tritides at the Mound complex.

21 These stable metal tritides are, 

22 of course, metallically -- an element, a 
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1 metallic element, that is compounded somehow 

2 to a tritium atom to create a molecule that is 

3 fairly stable. Most forms of tritium, as we 

4 know, are fairly readily soluble in the body 

5 and clear with a biological half-life of about 

6 ten days early on, but there is also 

7 organically bound tritium that behaves a 

8 little differently, but it is still also 

9 pretty soluble. So there's not much challenge 

10 in an internal dosimetry program for 

11 monitoring for exposure of that type of a 

12 radionuclide because it readily shows up in 

13 the urine and not much dose per unit intake as 

14 it goes.

15 But stable metal tritides or metal 

16 tritides or metal tritides in general are a 

17 different beast. It's a metal bound to a 

18 tritium atom. And they have various degrees 

19 of chemical reactivity and solubility. There 

20 are various forms out there.

21 This term "stable metal tritide" 

22 refers specifically, tough, to a vary tightly 
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1 bound complex. And there are some elements, 

2 particularly at least one chemical form that 

3 was handled at Mound, that does not dissolve 

4 very readily in body tissues. So, again, the 

5 most unreactive forms, for example, a hafnium 

6 tritide molecule, have very long biological 

7 clearance times in the body. Once they're 

8 inhaled, they deposit in the lung. They 

9 actually behave like they are type S 

10 compounds, "S" meaning very slowly clearing 

11 compounds.

12 So a urinary excretion monitoring 

13 program is of little value in establishing 

14 exposure of those nuclides. And because they 

15 don't dissolve very readily in the lung, they 

16 can indeed deliver fairly large doses to the 

17 lungs relative to the unbound types.

18 So that's a problem at Mound. It 

19 happened in the SWR tritium research complex, 

20 which is exactly the area of the plant that we 

21 just discussed and added the 83.14. Most of 

22 the tritium work at Mound went on in this SW 
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1 building/R building tritium complex.

2 Operation started in the 1960s and 

3 continued beyond the '90s. So it had a fairly 

4 long period of time, although most active 

5 operations, you know, physically working with 

6 the compounds, stopped in the '70s sometimes, 

7 but there were some scrap recovery operations 

8 in later periods.

9 The thing about Mound, though, is 

10 that workers -- well, workers at Mound could 

11 have handled both the soluble and insoluble 

12 forms. So, again, you have a fairly robust 

13 urinary excretion monitoring program, but you 

14 don't know how much of the tritium coming out 

15 of the urine could be soluble or insoluble.

16 As we discussed on the 83.14 just 

17 a few minutes ago, all workers who worked in 

18 this tritium complex were on a routine 

19 bioassay program. They were required to leave 

20 routine samples.

21 And the other thing that is 

22 important to know is workers who directly 
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1 handled these special or stable metal 

2 tritides, the hafnium-type tritides, were 

3 relatively few. It was a special program. 

4 And, in fact, NIOSH has established identity 

5 of those workers. We know who were in the 

6 areas physically working with these compounds. 

7 And we also know in the later period who was 

8 involved in the scrap recovery operations of 

9 these programs. We have spent some effort, 

10 and Brant Ulsh, who was leading this early on, 

11 spent some effort tracking down those workers, 

12 interviewing workers to establish their 

13 identity. And we are pretty confident that we 

14 know of these workers.

15 In fact, that was one of the 

16 issues that SC&A had raised in their review is 

17 are you really sure you know all of these 

18 workers? In particular, have you nailed down 

19 the scrap recovery workers? And just last 

20 week, we had a teleconference with the person 

21 who was in charge of the scrap recovery 

22 operation. And he confirmed that we actually 
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1 did know the people that were working in that 

2 operation. He is retired now, but he is still 

3 very active and was very helpful.

4 So we need a method, then, though, 

5 to establish exposures for support workers. If 

6 we know that workers were handling the stable 

7 metal tritides directly, then we can make some 

8 assumptions that they were exposed to very 

9 insoluble tritides and used a urinalysis 

10 bioassay to bound their exposures because they 

11 indeed have potentially direct contact with 

12 the stable metal tritides. So we will rely on 

13 their bioassay program to estimate doses.

14 But then you have a problem with 

15 the support workers, people who are in and 

16 about the area. This stuff was done under 

17 very enclosed circumstances with glove box 

18 operations, that type of thing. But nothing 

19 is perfect. And there is evidence of some, 

20 albeit fairly limited, amount of material of 

21 the stable metal tritides could have come and 

22 contaminated the environment outside of the 
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1 controlled areas.

2 So then what do you do? You have 

3 a urinary excretion model that is good for 

4 soluble. But how do you estimate what the 

5 potential intake would be for workers to these 

6 stable metal tritides? And this would be for 

7 what we call ancillary support staff.

8 I mentioned that there -- a good 

9 thing is at Mound, there were routine tritium 

10 contamination surveys taken in the tritium 

11 complex. We collected -- and I use that word 

12 loosely -- our contractor and a lot of folks 

13 behind the scenes collected and reviewed 

14 survey data from about 10,000 documents and 

15 eventually resulted in a collection of 69,000 

16 smears that were taken in 4 rooms between 1968 

17 and 1989. So there is a lot of data out there 

18 as to how much tritium contamination was 

19 present on the surfaces in the rooms adjacent 

20 to where the materials were being handled.

21 One issue that SC&A had raised in 

22 their reviews was the data that we had had 
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1 some gaps. And specifically there were a 

2 couple year gaps in the '80s, almost a 3-year 

3 gap in the data collection. And that kind of 

4 raised a red flag. So we went back and 

5 interviewed some people that were 

6 knowledgeable about tritium operations, trying 

7 to establish why those data weren't there. And 

8 no one could tell us why they weren't there. 

9 They were certain that the samples were taken, 

10 but they just weren't available.

11 But we did quiz them about the 

12 type of ongoing operations. Were there any 

13 unique increases or decreases in the 

14 operations during that time period? And based 

15 on those interviews, it appeared to us that 

16 not much different was going on. So there 

17 weren't any huge increases in activity. So we 

18 felt pretty comfortable that we should be able 

19 to bound or extrapolate in those interim years 

20 of the data that we have to bound exposures in 

21 those time periods.

22 On top of that, we did an analysis 
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1 looking at the bioassay data that were 

2 collected in those years compared to the other 

3 years. And there's very little difference 

4 between the bioassay excretion values in those 

5 years versus the adjacent years.

6 Now, having said that, you are 

7 going to say, "Well, but if there were stable 

8 metal tritides, it wouldn't come with the 

9 urine," but you are rarely exposed to just one 

10 or the other. There would be some 

11 combination. So fluctuation and rapid 

12 increase in the bioassay excretion during 

13 those years might give you some indication 

14 that something different was going on. And we 

15 didn't see that. So we're pretty comfortable 

16 about extrapolating in those gap years.

17 I would also remind the Board that 

18 prior to 1980, there was already a Class 

19 established at Mound for all workers who were 

20 monitored for tritium. So it is sort of an 

21 artifact of how that definition was created.

22 The Class was added because of 
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1 radium, but if you have a tritium bioassay, 

2 it's the same workers, then, that we're 

3 talking about here. So, effectively, 

4 everyone that could have been exposed to 

5 stable metal tritides prior to 1980 is already 

6 in the Class by default from the previous 

7 Class. So, really, this only affects people 

8 that were employed after 1980.

9 So we took these 69,000 smears and 

10 developed a probability distribution, which, 

11 as usual, is a log-normal probability 

12 distribution of the contamination levels in 

13 the rooms, and used that to figure out what 

14 the levels of exposures could have been.

15 We took the 95th percentile value 

16 of that distribution of contamination values 

17 that were measured and used a 

18 claimant-favorable -- and SC&A agreed with 

19 this -- resuspension factor of 5 times 10-5 

20 per meter. And we would use that to calculate 

21 the intake for a support worker.

22 So you have the 95th percentile 
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1 contamination. You resuspend it with a 5 

2 times 10-5 resuspension factor. And you can 

3 generate air concentration data from that. And 

4 we'll assume that the worker was breathing 

5 that air concentration that entire year that 

6 they were exposed, or all the years that they 

7 were exposed.

8 We are also assuming fairly 

9 conservatively that all the intake was to 

10 stable metal tritides. Now, we know that that 

11 is probably not the case, but there is no 

12 other way to triage that any better or 

13 partition that.

14 So what we will use for the dose 

15 calculations, we would use the urine data that 

16 we have to estimate systemic organ doses 

17 because if it's systemic and it gets into 

18 these systemic organs, then we can estimate 

19 what the doses are. But if a person has a 

20 lung cancer, for example, we would use that 

21 95th percentile value to calculate the lung 

22 dose because it's obviously not coming out in 
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1 the urine. It's irradiating the lung. So 

2 sort of a two-prong test there for doing the 

3 dose calculation.

4 Interestingly enough, applying 

5 this bounding approach to support workers 

6 results in fairly small doses. They're not 

7 very large at all because 5 times 10-5 

8 resuspension factor is pretty small. It's 

9 pretty generous, but it's also a pretty small 

10 value. And if you combine that with the 

11 values that we're measuring in the workplace, 

12 you really don't get a lot of airborne intake.

13 The scenario, of course, would 

14 depend on what year a person worked and how 

15 many years you have to reconstruct their 

16 doses, but in general, the doses that are 

17 calculated in this manner end up being in the 

18 millirem ranges, you know, several millirems, 

19 five millirem, up to ten millirem per year 

20 maybe, but not much more than that. So 

21 they're pretty small doses that are estimated 

22 for these ancillary support workers.
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1 So I will say that one of the 

2 other issues that SC&A had raised was how 

3 NIOSH would address uncertainty in the model. 

4 And this was before we had proposed to use the 

5 95th percentile. Once you go up to the 95th 

6 percentile, you take away a lot of the 

7 uncertainty. You're bounding it at that 

8 level.

9 There was one other thing I was 

10 going to say about that. So we're using the 

11 95th percentile. So that addressed that 

12 issue.

13 So we believe that using this 

14 methodology -- and it's only applicable to 

15 Mound because of the unique collection of 

16 survey measurements we had -- it can 

17 demonstrate the potential doses to support 

18 workers are low and they could be bounded 

19 using this method. And that's what we intend 

20 to do for that first exposure to stable metal 

21 tritides. That answered, I think that is all 

22 I had to say in that.
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1 I did not cover one other issue 

2 that SC&A had raised. And that was how we 

3 were going to handle exposures in the D&D era. 

4 Remember, the exposures went on for a while. 

5 And we produced I think some pretty convincing 

6 documentation that the D&D era, which didn't 

7 happen until the mid to late '80s -- they were 

8 pretty well-aware of the problem by then and 

9 addressed it using breathing zone air samples 

10 that actually had scanning electron microscopy 

11 done and then look at the particulate that was 

12 collected and the particle size. And the 

13 breathing zone air samples were measured using 

14 liquid scintillation counters. So they had a 

15 pretty good handle on what the exposures were 

16 to stable metal tritides by that time frame.

17 And I believe that's all I have to 

18 say now.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

20 you, Jim.

21 Board Members, questions? Don't 

22 go away yet. Josie, do you want to make some 
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1 comments?

2 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. I didn't 

3 create a slide program because there were just 

4 the four questions. So I am going to go over 

5 each one of them and the Work Group 

6 recommendations. So the first one addressed 

7 the treatment of uncertainties in the tritide 

8 model, the 50th versus the 95th.

9 The Work Group agreed with NIOSH's 

10 approach to bound the internal dose to 

11 individuals who might have been exposed to the 

12 special metal tritides using the site-specific 

13 data. SC&A questioned why the approach is to 

14 compare the two values, rather than adding the 

15 95th percentile tritide complement to the 

16 bioassay-based tritium results and the higher 

17 with the two of these doses used in dose 

18 reconstruction.

19 I apologize for reading this, but 

20 a lot of this, if I don't get it down on 

21 paper, it won't all come out.

22 Okay. So we did question that. 
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1 While we agree that this was an important 

2 implementation detail and becomes a Site 

3 Profile issue, the remaining question is not 

4 trivial. NIOSH did agree to give it review 

5 and report back to the Work Group. So we will 

6 be continuing to look at that in the Site 

7 Profile aspect.

8 The second one was to ascertain 

9 the identity of the small number of operators 

10 and the scrap metal recovery workers 

11 post-1980, and under what conditions the 

12 special metal tritides of interest were used 

13 after the '80s.

14 Like Jim said, we had a Work Group 

15 meeting on the 31st. We did have an interview 

16 with one of the individuals. SC&A and the 

17 Work Group questioned NIOSH's ability to 

18 identify the operators who ran the scrap 

19 recovery. This was an important point 

20 throughout our discussions of Mound. And it 

21 was the topic of many, many discussions.

22 So we held the interview on the 
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1 12th. It was a success, and it helped to 

2 confirm the identity of the operators, two of 

3 whom were misidentified in the previous 

4 interviews as being technicians for the scrap 

5 recovery operation. So we were pleased to 

6 update that list, and we agreed with the 

7 conclusion on that.

8 The third one was identifying the 

9 gaps in the available swipe data. NIOSH's 

10 analysis using the air sample data and the 

11 bioassay data on either side of the gap year 

12 showed that they can estimate doses using the 

13 swipe results. We agreed with that after much 

14 discussion.

15 The fourth discussed dose 

16 reconstruction during decommissioning and 

17 decontamination periods. The Work Group 

18 acknowledged there is no hard evidence of 

19 exposure during D&D but decided to have SC&A 

20 continue reviewing that as a Site Profile 

21 issue.

22 These four recommendations were 
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1 all agreed upon unanimously again with the 

2 Work Group. So we don't have a recommendation 

3 that I can say, other than we agree with 

4 NIOSH. And pretty much, that does -- it 

5 doesn't pretty much, it closes out our SEC 

6 discussions for Mound at this time.

7 So ongoing review, I will just go 

8 through those. We still have Site Profile 

9 issues remaining. We have met on those, 

10 discussed them. We have a matrix for those 

11 that has been updated by SC&A.

12 And there is also one other 

13 period. It is the front time period, gap 

14 years between the Monsanto and the Mound. And 

15 I reported on that at the last Work Group 

16 meeting. That is from February 1st, 1949 

17 through September 30th, 1949. That's the 

18 extension of the existing SEC. It remains to 

19 be addressed. I know that that is another one 

20 of the difficult time periods. It is very 

21 early. But SC&A -- we will track that as 

22 well. And I don't think I have heard from 
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1 NIOSH on that one.

2 DR. NETON: Yes. We have looked, 

3 and there are no claimants that are affected 

4 by that issue or that gap at this point. But 

5 we continue to look in the claims that come in 

6 on a periodic basis. And once we find one, we 

7 can use that as our so-called litmus case to 

8 establish an 83.14. But right now there is no 

9 one that it has affected.

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. And the 

11 reason I bring it up, it just closes up what 

12 we were doing with Mound. So that concludes 

13 our work other than continuing with Site 

14 Profiles.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

16 you.

17 Any other Board Member questions? 

18 I have one. Sorry you sat down, Jim. I 

19 waited until you sat down. What were the 

20 years for the gaps?

21 DR. NETON: The one that is most 

22 prominent that I can think of -- remember, 
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1 before '80, it kind of doesn't matter because 

2 that's --

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's why I was 

4 -- yes.

5 DR. NETON: But the gap, I think 

6 it was '84 or '85 time frame -- '86, through 

7 early '86.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

9 DR. NETON: So it's mid '80s.

10 MEMBER BEACH: It was a two-year 

11 period, wasn't it?

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It is a 

13 two-year.

14 DR. NETON: I think it's a little 

15 -- two plus, you know, maybe a couple of 

16 months on either side, but yeah, in that.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

18 DR. NETON: And we interviewed 

19 several people that were knowledgeable about 

20 the spike program and everything. And most of 

21 them couldn't believe that we wouldn't have 

22 the data. For some reason, it's just 
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1 disappeared. But, again, we spent some time 

2 trying to determine if there was anything 

3 unusual that happened in those years. And 

4 there doesn't appear to be.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

6 DR. NETON: One other thing I 

7 forgot to mention -- it had to do with 

8 uncertainty analysis -- is there was some 

9 initial confusion -- and correctly so -- on 

10 SC&A's part on how we intend to apply this 

11 model. At first it appeared -- and I could 

12 see how they could read it. It looked like we 

13 were just saying that the doses were so low 

14 that we weren't even going to include them in 

15 dose reconstructions.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 DR. NETON: And we went back and 

18 made very clear, as I presented today, that 

19 this is a model that we applied to all workers 

20 in that R and SW tritium complex.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

22 Bill Fitzgerald, do you have 
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1 anything to add? I know you had presented to 

2 us, had presented to the Board on this issue. 

3 I didn't --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, no. You 

5 know, I think at this point I think the 

6 approach is pretty comprehensive. And we have 

7 been, the Work Group certainly has been 

8 pushing this for two or three years. This is 

9 really the place where we want it to be, in 

10 terms of identifying the workers, identifying 

11 the method, and dealing with uncertainties in 

12 that method. So I think we are pretty 

13 confident this is appropriate.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Great. 

15 Thanks.

16 Yes, Wanda?

17 MEMBER MUNN: So if the Work Group 

18 has finished its work on the SEC -- I think I 

19 heard that, right? -- and SC&A is confident of 

20 this method, is the issue before us whether to 

21 approve a recommendation that the SEC not be 

22 granted because it is possible to calculate 
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1 doses for the individuals covered?

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I believe 

3 that is in order, though my question, I can't 

4 recall the --

5 MEMBER BEACH: Last date?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. The SEC. 

7 And is this a separate SEC or is this an SEC 

8 that we have already approved parts of?

9 MEMBER BEACH: This goes back to 

10 71, and we have approved parts of it. In 

11 fact, through 1980 -- oh, it's '90. Sorry.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Sorry. '90.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

15 DR. NETON: There were several 

16 actions taken under SEC '90. The first one 

17 was to add the years 1949 through '59. And 

18 that had to do with the caves and the residual 

19 material in the caves. And then in the 

20 ensuing discussion over SEC '90, the radon 

21 issue emerged. And then that was added on top 

22 of that.
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1 So then the Class went through 

2 1980 for radon in the R and SW buildings. So 

3 there were two classes that were established 

4 there. And now what is left is the remainder 

5 of the Class that would be essentially denied 

6 if the Board so voted.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And essentially 

8 the correction that you have made to the 

9 earlier actions was the 83.14 --

10 DR. NETON: Correct.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- that we just 

12 approved. And there may be another 83.14, but 

13 that would be a new --

14 DR. NETON: Correct.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I just don't 

16 want to have us close out something where 

17 there is something still pending.

18 DR. NETON: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We would want to 

20 take it.

21 DR. NETON: This would close out 

22 SEC 90, which petitioned for all employees who 
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1 worked from February 1949 to the present.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: And right now there 

4 are Classes up through 1980. And so it would 

5 effectively close out any additional Classes 

6 to be added after 1980.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, Josie, 

8 essentially that's the Work Group's 

9 conclusion?

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So we 

12 essentially have a -- I hate to take away a 

13 motion from you, Wanda, but -- well, we will 

14 give you another chance later, but I think it 

15 would be a motion from the Work Group for our 

16 action on SEC CC-0090 from '80 to 2007 --

17 MEMBER BEACH: Correct.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and to accept 

19 NIOSH's recommendation.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can I ask if 

21 we're moving ahead before we do that --

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Sure. You sure 
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1 can, yes.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm not sure. 

3 I don't want to cut you off.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, no, no. I 

5 just wanted to make sure we all knew -- got on 

6 the record what the motion was and what it 

7 referred to and so forth.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So now we have a 

10 motion, second on the floor. And any further 

11 questions? Dave, go ahead.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm sorry 

13 because I know you sat down again, Jim. And I 

14 waited for that, too.

15 (Laughter.)

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, I mean, I 

17 think my question's turn around. You pointed 

18 out as being the reason that the doses which 

19 will be reconstructed for workers are as low 

20 as they are is because this 5 times 10-5 

21 resuspension factor, which is described as 

22 claimant-favorable?
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1 I mean, I guess I am trying to 

2 wrap my head around that a little bit. So 

3 could I start by asking -- because I think 

4 part of this is my thinking about tritium is 

5 often about tritium vapor. And this is not 

6 tritium vapor. Are these stable metal 

7 tritides -- they're in particle form?

8 DR. NETON: Yes.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And the 

10 particles would be characterized as what size? 

11 Are they nanoparticles? Are they particles of 

12 larger size?

13 DR. NETON: No. They would be in 

14 the micron range. I think Mound characterized 

15 them as about one micron particles. They did 

16 some scanning electron microscopy work on 

17 them.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And so when 

19 you swipe a surface --

20 DR. NETON: Yes, but, remember, 

21 though, that the surface smears are a 

22 combination of probably tritium vapor, water, 
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1 HTO, and some potential stable metal tritides.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right.

3 DR. NETON: Probably the 

4 overwhelming majority of the swipe is going to 

5 be tritium, you know, HTO.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And that would 

7 be -- because I am imagining usually tritium 

8 doesn't settle out. It comes into equilibrium 

9 with --

10 DR. NETON: Well --

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- the water 

12 vapor around.

13 DR. NETON: Yes. You would have 

14 some sort of equilibrium between the humidity 

15 in the room and the water vapor.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So if you were 

17 swiping it and counting it, that would mean 

18 that the majority of the tritium in the air 

19 was also -- see, I was picturing these as --

20 DR. NETON: But, see --

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- non-soluble 

22 things, which may settle out as particles and 
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1 the other tritium as being --

2 DR. NETON: Well, we assumed that 

3 they were all particulate. When we took the 

4 smear, whatever value was measured on the 

5 smear, we assumed that it was all stable metal 

6 tritide particulate.

7 It could have very well been a 

8 large percentage of that being HTO, tritium 

9 water vapor.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay. So that 

11 is one issue. I mean, I am having a hard time 

12 picturing why there would be most of what you 

13 would swipe off of the surface of a desk would 

14 be that. But leaving that aside, these are 

15 very small particles, and you are saying that 

16 for one, given one unit of that material, 5 

times 10-5 17 percent of those particles are 

18 resuspended in the complement of that. The 

19 remainder all remains there.

20 DR. NETON: Yes.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Why is that?

22 DR. NETON: That's sort of your 
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1 standard resuspension factors that are applied 

2 for surface contamination values. You 

3 remember there has been a lot of discussion at 

4 the Board level about what is a good 

5 resuspension factor to use. And we have 

adopted in many cases 1 times 10-6 6 , which we 

7 have been criticized some by SC&A for it being 

a little too low. One times 10-6 8 is sort of 

9 for a quiescent situation where the material 

10 has been sort of already cleaned up and fixed 

11 in place, is sort of the way SC&A presents 

12 that.

13 So maybe that's a little too low, 

but 5 times 10-5 14 -- and there is a lot of 

15 literature on this -- is sort of routine 

16 activities ongoing in a room but not doing 

17 anything mechanical to the room, like 

18 grinding, shoveling, doing things to the 

19 surfaces to disrupt the surface. So it is 

20 just sort of a situation where routine 

21 activities in a room, people walking around, 

22 emptying trash cans, doing stuff like that, is 
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1 about that ratio, the material on the ground 

2 that gets suspended in the air. And it is a 

3 fairly reasonable, I think, claimant-favorable 

4 value.

5 You know, stuff that is deposited 

6 on surfaces doesn't tend to just pop into the 

7 air without some reason. They usually require 

8 some sort of mechanical agitation to get it 

9 airborne. And we have allowed for some 

10 mechanical agitation, short of somebody 

11 grinding or cutting or doing something on the 

12 surfaces, because this is only applied to 

13 support workers who are in the areas outside 

14 of the rooms where the tritium was contained, 

15 the tritides were contained.

16 So there could have been some 

17 out-leakage of material into the room, 

18 deposited on the surfaces. Someone goes in 

19 there to empty the trash, do something, clean, 

20 you know, clean the sinks, whatever it 

21 requires them to do, that's what we would use. 

22 It's a fairly standard --
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Well, maybe it 

2 is. Yes. I mean, I am not talking about that 

3 as being standard. I am still talking about 

4 my imagination of stable metal tritides, which 

5 I have not encountered before --

6 DR. NETON: Yes.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- and trying 

8 to understand.

9 DR. NETON: Yes. Think of it as a 

10 metal particle that happens to have a tritium 

11 atom bound to it. So if you have a hafnium 

12 particle or a palladium particle or a uranium 

13 particle, it happens to have a tritium 

14 physically bound to it.

15 I'm not exactly sure what the 

16 chemical reaction is there, but, for some 

17 reason, when you get something like a hafnium, 

18 it's a pretty tightly bound particulate. And 

19 so if you inhale a one-micron hafnium 

20 particle, it's pretty insoluble. And that is 

21 why it is insoluble. The tritium is just 

22 bound to it. It doesn't leech off the 
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1 surface.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: So it's really sort of 

4 a metal contamination issue, stable metal 

5 contamination issue, that happens to have 

6 tritium, a radioactive particle attached to 

7 it. That might be a little too simplistic. I 

8 don't think so.

9 I think there is some discussion 

10 in the response that we provided, too. SC&A's 

11 review, actually, went through the different 

12 resuspension factors that could be applied. 

13 And, again, they felt fairly comfortable with 

14 the 5 times 10-5 value, as we do.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Dave. 

17 Any other -- we'll wait until Jim sits down 

18 before I ask for any more questions.

19 (Laughter.)

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any more 

21 questions from Board Members?

22 (No response.)
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, I will 

2 ask Ted to do the vote. Jenny, are we okay on 

3 this? You were asking Jim something there or 

4 going over something.

5 MS. LIN: That's between me and 

6 Jim.

7 (Laughter.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay.

9 MEMBER FIELD: Ted, could you 

10 restate what we are voting on?

11 MR. KATZ: Yes, I think I can. So 

12 you are voting to concur with the agency, with 

13 NIOSH, that doses can be reconstructed for the 

14 period from 1980 to 2007 for Mound. Okay?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And, 

16 therefore, reject the SEC --

17 MR. KATZ: Right, this element. I 

18 mean, there have been many Classes added under 

19 this SEC petition.

20 MEMBER BEACH: I just need to make 

21 sure I understand this. So right now we have 

22 a Class for radon, but the Class Definition 
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1 covered radon, actinium, thorium. So you 

2 don't really -- so I just wanted to make sure 

3 we didn't go back to the earlier days. So 

4 it's all covered regardless?

5 MR. KATZ: Right.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

7 MR. KATZ: So this would close out 

8 --

9 MEMBER BEACH: I think I answered 

10 my own question as I was asking it. Thank 

11 you.

12 MR. KATZ: Yes. This would close 

13 out consideration of petition 90, I think.

14 DR. NETON: Not really. Well, 

15 this is a little confusing because --

16 MEMBER BEACH: It is.

17 DR. NETON: -- you have pieces and 

18 parts of Classes. You have the radon Class 

19 goes from March 1st, 1959 through March 5th, 

20 1980, but it does not cover all workers on 

21 site.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Right.
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1 DR. NETON: It only covers people 

2 in the tritium complex. So, really, what you 

3 are saying is, except for those Classes that 

4 have already been added, NIOSH can reconstruct 

5 all doses at the Mound site. I think is what 

6 you are saying. And I think the one from '49 

7 was all workers, the --

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, that's true.

9 DR. NETON: Right. So except for 

10 those in the radon Class that was established 

11 between '59 and '80, NIOSH can reconstruct all 

12 doses up through 2007. I think that is kind 

13 of what we are saying here.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay?

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Thanks, Jim.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. Dr. Anderson?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, but 

18 confused. Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

20 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

2 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: And Gibson is recused. 

4 And Griffon is absent, we'll collect his vote. 

5 Dr. Kotelchuck?

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

8 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: And Lockey is recused. 

10 Dr. Melius?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Munn?

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: And Poston's vote will 

15 be collected afterwards. Dr. Richardson?

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Roessler?

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: And Mr. Schofield?

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: And I'll collect Ms. 

22 Valerio's vote afterwards. And Dr. Ziemer?
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: And that is 12 in 

3 favor, none opposed, some absentee votes. The 

4 motion passes.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We will 

6 get this in writing, certainly. Okay. We 

7 have a few minutes. At 3:00 o'clock, we will 

8 deal with United Nuclear. The petitioner will 

9 be on the line. And so I don't want to start 

10 until 3:00 o'clock on that. So I thought we 

11 would do some Board work for about, oh, 20 

12 minutes or so and then give you a break, if 

13 you are willing. I guess if you are not, you 

14 can just sit here. BOARD WORK 

15 SESSION

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So if everyone 

17 can go try now to find your Board -- the 

18 comments, the public comments from the earlier 

19 thing? And meanwhile I am going to also go 

20 over a couple of these letters here. But the 

21 next item on the agenda will be to look at 

22 those Board public comments.
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1 So we have two letters that I 

2 believe have been distributed to everybody. 

3 And I will start with the first one, the Oak 

4 Ridge. "Advisory Board on Radiation Worker 

5 Health. The Board has evaluated Special 

6 Exposure Cohort 0019 concerning workers of the 

7 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, X-10, in Oak 

8 Ridge, Tennessee under the statutory 

9 requirements established by the Energy 

10 Employees Occupational" --

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: You have already 

12 acted on this.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Already acted 

14 on, yes. This is just reviewing the letter. 

15 Yes. You're right, yes. That's okay.

16 "Energy Employees Occupational 

17 Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, 

18 EEOICPA, and incorporated into 42 CFR 83.13.

19 "The Board respectfully recommends 

20 that SEC status be accorded to 'All employees 

21 of the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

22 agencies, and their contractors and 
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1 subcontractors who worked in any area at the 

2 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, X-10, in Oak 

3 Ridge, Tennessee from June 17th, 1943 through 

4 July 31st, 1955, number of work-days 

5 aggregating at least 250 work-days occurring 

6 either solely under this employment or in 

7 combination with work-days within the 

8 parameters established for one or more other 

9 Classes of employees included in the Special 

10 Exposure Cohort.'

11 "The recommendation is based on 

12 the following factors. Individuals employed 

13 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory facility 

14 during the time period in question worked on 

15 the development and production of nuclear 

16 weapons.

17 "Two, the National Institute for 

18 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review 

19 of available monitoring data as well as 

20 available process and source term information 

21 for this facility found that NIOSH lacked the 

22 sufficient information necessary to complete 
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1 individual dose reconstructions with 

2 sufficient accuracy for internal radiological 

3 exposures for all principal sources of 

4 internal radiation dose during the time period 

5 in question. The Board concurs with this 

6 determination.

7 "Three, NIOSH determined that 

8 health may have been endangered for these Oak 

9 Ridge National Laboratory employees during the 

10 time period in question. The Board also 

11 concurs with this determination.

12 "Based on these considerations and 

13 the discussion at the September 18th to 20th, 

14 2012 Board meeting held in Denver, Colorado, 

15 the Board recommends that this Class be added 

16 to the SEC.

17 "Enclosed is the documentation 

18 from the Board meeting where this SEC Class 

19 was discussed. Documentation includes copies 

20 of the petition, the NIOSH review thereof, and 

21 related materials. If any of these materials 

22 are unavailable at this time, they will follow 
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1 shortly."

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have one 

3 question.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes?

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The basis for 

6 the recommendation is saying there is not an 

7 ability to reconstruct internal exposures for 

8 all sources of radiation, which would mean 

9 that for somebody who wasn't covered by the 

10 SEC, would NIOSH then not reconstruct any 

11 internal dose?

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, it is sort 

13 of a question. Remember, that was the one 

14 where they can do some during some periods --

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right? But not 

17 all exposures during the period of the Class. 

18 So it is a question, yes, how to exactly word 

19 that to capture that particular situation 

20 without repeating it all.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think we always 

22 have the possibility that individual cases 
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1 might be partially constructed.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so when I 

3 sent this to NIOSH -- another attorney for 

4 review. I actually sort of asked that 

5 question.

6 MS. LIN: And this one letter is 

7 not the only recommendation going up to the 

8 Secretary. So we do have a more thorough 

9 discussion about what can be reconstructed 

10 during what period and for whom. So we can 

11 take care of that --

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

13 MS. LIN: -- somewhere else.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any other 

15 comments, questions?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. The other 

18 letter is LANL. 

19 "Advisory Board on Radiation 

20 Worker Health. The Board has evaluated 

21 Special Exposure Cohort SEC petition 00109 

22 concerning workers at the Los Alamos National 
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1 Laboratory, LANL, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, 

2 under the statutory requirements established 

3 by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

4 Compensation Program Act of 2000, EEOICPA, and 

5 incorporated into 42 CFR section 83.13.

6 "The Board respectfully recommends 

7 that SEC status be accorded to 'All employees 

8 of the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

9 agencies, and their contractors and 

10 subcontractors who worked at the Los Alamos 

11 National Laboratory, LANL, in Los Alamos, New 

12 Mexico from January 1st, 1976 through December 

13 31st, 1995 for a number of work-days 

14 aggregating at least 250 work-days occurring 

15 either solely under this employment or in 

16 combination with work-days within the 

17 parameters established for one or more other 

18 Classes of employees included in the Special 

19 Exposure Cohort.'

20 "The recommendation is based on 

21 the following factors. Individuals working at 

22 the Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL, in 
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1 Los Alamos, New Mexico during the time period 

2 in question, worked on the development and 

3 production of nuclear weapons.

4 "The National Institute for 

5 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review 

6 of available monitoring data as well as 

7 available process and source term information 

8 for this facility found that NIOSH lacked the 

9 sufficient information necessary to complete 

10 individual dose reconstructions with 

11 sufficient accuracy for internal radiological 

12 exposures to fission and activation products 

13 and various other radionuclides of concern to 

14 which these workers may have been subjected 

15 during the time period in question. The Board 

16 concurs with this determination.

17 "NIOSH determined that health may 

18 have been endangered for these Los Alamos 

19 National Laboratory, LANL, employees during 

20 the time period in question. The Board also 

21 concurs with this determination.

22 "Based on these considerations and 
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1 discussion at the September 18th to 20th, 2012 

2 Board meeting held in Denver, Colorado, the 

3 Board recommends that this Class be added to 

4 the SEC.

5 "Enclosed is the documentation 

6 from the Board meeting where this SEC Class 

7 was discussed. Documentation includes copies 

8 of the petition, the NIOSH review thereof, and 

9 related materials. If any of these materials 

10 are unavailable at this time, they will follow 

11 shortly."

12 And, again, that wording, the 

13 second bullet, is taken from the Evaluation 

14 Report. And it will sort of be elaborated on 

15 in terms of what goes up. It's a little 

16 complicated.

17 Any comments on that?

18 (No response.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Two down. 

20 We will have a few more to do tomorrow 

21 morning. 

22 Okay. If you can then turn -- I'm 
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1 going to work off the spreadsheet for the --

2 from the June meeting and transcript from --

3 we'll start with June 19th. And, again, you 

4 will see that they are set up with the 

5 speaker, the site, significant issue, and how 

6 they have been -- sort of a description of the 

7 response, and so forth. The first one was a 

8 public comment relating to the Weldon Spring 

9 and pointing out that material could have 

10 gotten dried in the raffinate pits. I think 

11 we actually discussed and responded to that --

12 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- today and in 

14 Work Group meetings and so forth. 

15 Another petitioner comment related 

16 to Weldon Spring, complaining that it was 

17 delayed and there was no vote. I think we 

18 responded to that today also. There was a 

19 problem with attendance at the meeting. And I 

20 think that has been addressed. 

21 The next comment down is a 

22 petitioner related to the Los Alamos site. 
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1 There is a series of comments there. Again, I 

2 think those have all been appropriately 

3 addressed or forwarded.

4 MR. KATZ: Yes. So what's done 

5 for that is the Work Group discussed briefly 

6 those. Most of those have been addressed. And 

7 if there is anything outstanding on those 

8 comments, they will be addressed at the next 

9 Work Group meeting.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The next comment 

11 was the public comments from the Congressman, 

12 who was, again, here yesterday and had a 

13 number of comments related to the Los Alamos 

14 petition and questions for NIOSH and the 

15 Board.

16 We actually decided NIOSH should 

17 respond to both his comments and his letter, 

18 since by the time we got around to responding 

19 NIOSH was ready to prepare a new SEC 

20 Evaluation Report, which we've acted on today. 

21 And so that was followed up on. And I just 

22 actually sent a separate letter to the 
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1 Congressman, just thanking him for his 

2 attention and saying that NIOSH had responded 

3 to the questions there.

4 Again, comments related to the 

5 LANL petition. There is a whole series of 

6 these. Going down, a lot of it was just 

7 providing information to the Work Group for 

8 consideration. I think these are all pretty 

9 straightforward.

10 Moving to June 20th, a series of 

11 comments from petitioner related to the 

12 General Steel Industries and were really just 

13 informational. At least I don't think any 

14 response beyond taking them into consideration 

15 was necessary.

16 We had another comment related to 

17 the Los Alamos person that had submitted 

18 information to us, remember, brought in a 

19 number of CDs of various information 

20 monitoring, environmental monitoring that had 

21 gone out there.

22 We have comments related to Linde. 
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1 Again, I think these have been addressed in 

2 the actions of the Board and so forth.

3 And, then, finally, another 

4 comment related to the Weldon Spring petition, 

5 related to delays and so forth. And, again, I 

6 believe those have been addressed.

7 So I think we have at least 

8 documented everything related to these, unless 

9 as you look through them you have questions or 

10 comments. 

11 I actually recently reviewed the 

12 transcript. So all of this is fairly fresh in 

13 my mind, maybe fresher than it is in yours.

14 MEMBER MUNN: It's a lot of work, 

15 but it is very helpful to have those 

16 concentrated pieces of information together.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. And I 

18 think it is very important that we document 

19 that this is going on so that people making 

20 public comment understand that there is a 

21 follow-up process and so forth. It's 

22 inhibited a little bit about privacy concerns 
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1 and so forth, but we're doing that.

2 Okay. I want to maybe do one or 

3 two Work Group updates. And I'll start with 

4 Paul and TBD-6000.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, TBD-6000 is 

6 focused on General Steel. And you heard the 

7 report earlier today. We will meet again as 

8 soon as we have the follow-up information from 

9 NIOSH and the review by SC&A on the surrogate 

10 data issue. And our TBD-6000 Group still has 

11 the Appendix BB Matrix for General Steel, 

12 which is separate from the petition and which 

13 we will be dealing with. And then we need to 

14 -- I think we are basically closed on all of 

15 the TBD-6000, the main issues.

16 So it will be important to close 

17 the Appendix B Matrix because there are some 

18 revisions that will affect existing dose 

19 reconstruction, such as the increased time in 

20 the working day, as an example of one. And 

21 those don't get implemented until the revision 

22 is in place. And then we have a couple of 
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1 other facilities now that we will be looking 

2 at.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

4 you. Questions for Paul?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry, the 

7 uranium refining AWEs you're giving us? You 

8 have one more report to go and --

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: I've got one to 

10 go. Are you ready?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, no. We're 

12 going to -- any other Work Group updates?

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: No. We have one 

14 item with Dupont, is it? Deepwater, that I 

15 think the Procedures Committee is going to be 

16 dealing with on November 1. It has to do with 

17 the amount of dirt that people eat.

18 And there was a note we noticed in 

19 our Committee that the amount used in the 

20 ingestion model in the document was 

21 considerably lower than what the EPA Factors 

22 Handbook and other sources are. So our 
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1 question was, is that the appropriate basis in 

2 this particular site? So it's part of the 

3 DVD.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

5 questions for Henry?

6 (No response.)

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No? Thank you 

8 for all of your hard work.

9 And Worker Outreach?

10 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. I want to 

11 point out that Worker Outreach doesn't make 

12 DCAS' work coordination schedule, but that's 

13 just a minor point.

14 The last meeting was held on 

15 August 29th. Our focus was --

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: LaVon, do you 

17 have that?

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: What's that?

19 MEMBER BEACH: Did you miss that?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think you need 

21 to repeat that.

22 MEMBER BEACH: I said Worker 
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1 Outreach doesn't make DCAS' work coordination 

2 list. 

3 Okay. So we had our last meeting 

4 on August 29th. Our focus was on the OCAS 

5 PR-12 procedure, Rocky Flats review, and the 

6 10-year review items that were assigned to our 

7 Work Group. I am just going to go briefly 

8 over each one of those.

9 Rocky Flats review of the 101 

10 randomly selected worker comments has been 

11 completed. SC&A's report outlined findings 

12 and made recommendations for both the Work 

13 Group and NIOSH to consider. The next Work 

14 Group meeting we scheduled for November 8th. 

15 In addition to reviewing NIOSH's responses to 

16 the findings and recommendations, the Work 

17 Group will consider doing a follow-up review 

18 of a more recent site-specific worker outreach 

19 experience to gauge in communications and 

20 responsiveness over the past four or five 

21 years since the Rocky Flats experience and 

22 review.
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1 Remember, Rocky Flats was a site 

2 that we did, a fairly old site. And we know 

3 that there have been a lot of improvements 

4 over the years. So we would like to gauge 

5 that with one of the newer sites.

6 The latest draft of OCAS PR-12 was 

7 sent to the Work Group for review on August 

8 30th, the day after our meeting. Essentially, 

9 comments have been sent back to NIOSH. Work 

10 Group Members, I will remind you if you 

11 haven't got your comments in, do that quickly. 

12 I believe they have got everything they need 

13 to issue that procedure now. And I would like 

14 an update on that if anybody knows if that is 

15 going to be issued or not, or how soon.

16 DCAS also outlined issues and 

17 action items for the ten-year review report. 

18 Regarding quality of service, that was 

19 assigned to us. The next steps will be for 

20 the Work Group to review all of the changes, 

21 starting with the samples of changes that were 

22 sent out at the end of last month. We 
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1 actually got those the morning of our meeting, 

2 a couple of the different samples. So we 

3 haven't had a chance to really discuss those.

4 It's clear that a number of 

5 initiatives have been taken by NIOSH in 

6 response to the ten-year review to streamline 

7 and expand worker outreach and to facilitate 

8 worker involvement. The Work Group will focus 

9 on whether these actions are fully responsive 

10 and how they are being implemented. Of 

11 course, ongoing.

12 And then SC&A outlined a process 

13 improvement on how interviews are documented 

14 and reviewed by the interviewees. The 

15 proposed change to the Board's PROC-10 policy 

16 has been circulated to NIOSH and the Board for 

17 comment.

18 This was something SC&A brought up 

19 during our last Work Group meeting, gave the 

20 changes to us after the Work Group meeting. So 

21 it will be a focus of our attention the next 

22 Work Group meeting.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Questions 

2 for Josie? Yes, Dave?

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: You mentioned 

4 a ten-year report.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Ten-year review, 

6 yes.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Which one was 

8 that?

9 MEMBER BEACH: We were given 

10 quality of service. There were four action 

11 items within that ten-year report.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And that's 

13 online?

14 MEMBER BEACH: That's online, yes.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So Ted 

16 said he has provided those to you, Dave. Okay. 

17 Yes. I think it was before your time, then we 

18 had distributed the follow-up to those in 

19 conjunction with NIOSH to various Work Groups, 

20 for the most part. And so we will be 

21 following up and reporting on them from the 

22 various Work Groups. So they are in various 
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1 stages of follow-up.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Pretty early stages 

3 for us. We just asked DCAS to give us a list 

4 of kind of where they are at. And we 

5 discussed that. We haven't gotten into any 

6 real details.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Okay. 

8 Thank you. Why don't we take a break? We 

9 will reconvene at 3:00 o'clock here.

10 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

11 matter went off the record at 2:44 p.m. and 

12 resumed at 3:08 p.m.)

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If everyone gets 

14 seated, we'll get started. The item of 

15 business on the agenda is the United Nuclear 

16 Corporation petition and SEC petition and 

17 Henry Anderson.

18 MEMBER ANDERSON: Is John Mauro on 

19 the phone?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: John, John 

21 Mauro, are you on the phone?

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, I am.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

2 you.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay. Here we 

4 go. This is the United Nuclear. And to start 

5 out while I've got everybody's attention, our 

6 Work Group is recommending that Petition 116 

7 be denied. And what I am going to go through 

8 is the basis for our recommendation and the 

9 actions that our Group has taken.

10 And, as part of this, there are 

11 both Site Profile issues but many of them 

12 overlapped with an SEC Petition Evaluation 

13 Report. And some of the issues are closely 

14 intertwined. So while there are still some 

15 open issues as it relates to the Site Profile, 

16 we have really closed out all of those that 

17 are relevant to the SEC petition and dose 

18 reconstruction.

19 Just to give you some background, 

20 United Nuclear is located in Hematite, 

21 Missouri. They manufactured -- this again is 

22 the UAR, Uranium Work Group. So this is one 
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1 of the facilities that manufactured uranium 

2 metal and uranium compounds from natural and 

3 enriched uranium. And it was almost 

4 exclusively manufacturing fuel for use by the 

5 U.S. Navy as well as a few commercial 

6 customers.

7 They manufactured thorium oxide 

8 pellets in 1964 for a short period of time. 

9 And the operation, full operation, period is 

10 1958 to '73. And there is a residual period 

11 of '74 to 2009.

12 The chronology, most of these 

13 dates are quite accurate. It was pointed out 

14 to us that one of our meetings, the dates are 

15 off a little, but this is just to show you, 

16 kind of get a sense of what happened since the 

17 process began in March of 2008. Again, this 

18 was --

19 PUBLIC PARTICIPANT: It is hard to 

20 hear.

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: I don't know 

22 what more I can do for the phone.
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1 PUBLIC PARTICIPANT: Maybe 

2 somebody needs to mute their phone.

3 MR. KATZ: Hello? Yes. Thank you 

4 for whoever said that. Folks on the phone, 

5 part of the problem hearing is probably 

6 because it's -- actually, I think he's 

7 speaking quite clearly, is problems with 

8 interference on the phone. So if you would 

9 mute your phones? If you don't have a MUTE 

10 button on your phone, press *6. That will 

11 mute your phone. If everybody does that, that 

12 will improve the audio quality for people 

13 listening. Thank you.

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: Can you hear 

15 better now?

16 PUBLIC PARTICIPANT: Yes.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay. In March 

18 of 2008, this was part of the TBD-6000 group 

19 of sites. And this particular facility was in 

20 Appendix D. And then in June 2008, after the 

21 first Site Profile was released, they received 

22 this SEC petition.
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1 So this process began for the site 

2 in June 2008 as it relates to the SEC. The 

3 petition was qualified in November 2008. And 

4 in August 2009, they, NIOSH issued their SEC 

5 Petition Evaluation Report. And that's when 

6 our Work Group began with this site. And SC&A 

7 provided a review of the Site Profile only and 

8 had six review findings. And I will go over 

9 those since many of them also relate to the 

10 SEC.

11 In February 2010, there was a 

12 revision of the Petition Evaluation Report. In 

13 April 2010, there was Rev. 1 to Appendix D, 

14 the Site Profile. And it was revised to 

15 include considerable more additional 

16 site-specific data. June 2010, SC&A delivered 

17 to us their review of Rev. 1 to Appendix D. 

18 And all of these documents are now in our 

19 file. September 2010, they focused a review 

20 on a Petition Evaluation Report specifically 

21 for our Committee and had eight specific 

22 findings related to the SC&A Petition 
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1 Evaluation, the PER.

2 In March 2011, that is when NIOSH 

3 shifted from having the appendices to TBD-6001 

4 to a stand-alone Profile and issued their Site 

5 Profile, their stand-alone Site Profile. In 

6 November, in response to SC&A's review of the 

7 PER, they issued several White Papers that 

8 were explaining their -- responding to our 

9 issues.

10 September -- and I think that's 

11 just recently -- the Work Group proposed after 

12 considerable review and discussion and going 

13 through everything that it was feasible to do 

14 dose reconstructions. And, therefore, the 

15 Work Group unanimously voted to deny the SEC 

16 petition.

17 Here are our Work Group 

18 activities. These are the dates that there 

19 may be -- I think the February 1 may be off, 

20 but this just gives you a sense that we were 

21 quite active meeting multiple times from July 

22 7th, 2010 through this September, keeping 
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1 after the issues that were raised.

2 And just to give you a quick 

3 update on the monitoring data, there was quite 

4 extensive bioassay data available for the 

5 facility. And NIOSH proposed and developed a 

6 coworker model for the operators and 

7 supervisors for two specific periods, the 

8 period prior to June '63, then after June '63, 

9 when it was at that point in time when 

10 significant process improvements were made at 

11 the site.

12 And we spent considerable time 

13 because there's a gap in bioassay data. As I 

14 said earlier, there was extensive data 

15 available, but for a period of '61 to '62, 

16 just before this switchover in the process 

17 improvements that were made, the only thing 

18 that was available was air sampling data. And 

19 there then need to be a means and a process to 

20 utilize existing data to assign exposures 

21 during those years. And it was then quite a 

22 bit of work was done to look at during the 
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1 period when both bioassay and air data, air 

2 sampling data, were available to look at, 

3 could the air sampling data be used to predict 

4 what the bioassay data is so that we could use 

5 that during this two-year period to assign 

6 doses. And NIOSH did that and worked with 

7 SC&A. And we believe that that can now be 

8 done.

9 And coworker model intakes it was 

10 felt are more claimant-favorable than intakes 

11 based on air sampling for that particular 

12 period. So that is now the NIOSH proposal. 

13 Changes in 2011 were made.

14 NIOSH modified the coworker model 

15 to use to fix 95th percentile for the gap 

16 period and the full distribution in the 

17 traditional way that the coworker model has 

18 been used elsewhere for the other years. But 

19 for this period, we wanted to be sure. And 

20 so, rather than use 50th percentile or the 

21 distribution for the other years, we felt that 

22 the 95th percentile would be unlikely to miss 
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1 significant exposure in some of the 

2 individuals.

3 This just here is the urinalysis 

4 biomonitoring data. So it gives you a sense. 

5 You'll see 1961 there. There are no samples. 

6 And then you can see after '63, the testing 

7 really ramped up. And there is considerable 

8 bioassay data available for dose 

9 reconstruction. And after '71 to '73, there 

10 is data, but NIOSH felt that that data was not 

11 reliable.

12 So here are the Site Profile 

13 findings, the six findings. Some, as I say, 

14 are interrelated. But I am going to go 

15 through since there are not that many of them, 

16 both the six findings here for the Site 

17 Profile and the eight findings specific to the 

18 SEC. And all of the Site Profile findings 

19 have been resolved in principle, but there are 

20 still some minor issues. At least we felt 

21 that they were solvable. And cleanups remain. 

22 So that the actual document itself has not 
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1 been revised yet but is underway. And what 

2 remains really does not impact the dose 

3 reconstruction for the SEC.

4 The number one finding was 

5 assigning occupational medical dose was not 

6 sufficiently prescriptive. And we closed 

7 that. There really were no occupational 

8 exposures specifically at the site. And the 

9 medical monitoring exposures were utilized in 

10 a standard manner that has been done before. 

11 That really was not terribly critical to the 

12 SEC but did need to be addressed in the Site 

13 Profile.

14 Finding number two was that both 

15 doses from Appendix D for external whole body 

16 and skin doses are based exclusively on 

17 summary statements of a 1960 AEC inspection 

18 report. We felt that may not be appropriate. 

19 And, lo and behold, new dosimetry data was 

20 uncovered that covered the period '58 to '73. 

21 And those were subsequently incorporated into 

22 the TBD Appendix D now in the stand-alone. 
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1 And, therefore, our concern that there would 

2 seem to be not that much data or reliance on a 

3 very limited inspection report and time 

4 period. This really opened that up 

5 considerably. And so we felt that that issue 

6 was closed.

7 The third issue was potential 

8 exposures to neutrons were not being addressed 

9 in the original TBD. That again NIOSH 

10 introduced modeled neutron doses for three job 

11 categories that employed assumptions that SC&A 

12 and we felt were favorable assumptions and 

13 model parameters that could address our 

14 concerns about neutron exposures. And 

15 therefore, that we felt was also largely 

16 resolved.

17 Finding number four. And you 

18 heard a little bit about the 95th and 50th 

19 percentile issues in the previous report I 

20 gave. We really felt that in specific 

21 instances, the 95th percentile was a better

22 value and more claimant-favorable under 
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1 certain circumstances. So the geometric mean 

2 of the coworker intakes is recommended by 

3 NIOSH for all workers.

4 We felt initially, SC&A, that they 

5 may not correlate with empirical urinalysis 

6 data for specific years. And SC&A did some 

7 analyses that looked at that. And in response 

8 to that, NIOSH restricted the use of table D-1 

9 to workers for whom bioassay data was 

10 inadequate. And in our recent discussion, 

11 NIOSH has agreed to use the, for those 

12 specific individuals, 95th percentiles of the 

13 coworker intakes from that table for the '61 

14 to '62 period, when no bioassay data are 

15 available.

16 So there's a little modification 

17 in the modeling, as you can see and as doses 

18 are constructed to take into account this 

19 period of time when bioassay data were not 

20 available and an alternative model was needed.

21 Finding number five. Again, the 

22 methods used to derive inhalation intakes from 
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1 residual contamination was a bit vague in the 

2 first report. And we have had some 

3 conditional resolution to that in our last or 

4 early on in one of our meetings. NIOSH agreed 

5 that there was a mathematical error in their 

6 calculation that SC&A had pointed out and that 

7 they will address this error when the 

8 independent Site Profile was issued. And 

9 subsequently that still needs to be done. So 

10 some of the errors in this finding now have 

11 been addressed and will be corrected. And the 

12 TKBS-008 has been corrected. So we consider 

13 this to be resolved.

14 The last issue for the Site 

15 Profile again was -- we felt that there was a 

16 paucity of information in the original report 

17 that would allow validation of default 

18 external dose estimates again to the residual 

19 contamination period. And in an attempt to 

20 validate NIOSH's default external dose 

21 estimates from residual, SC&A had difficulty. 

22 It failed to include the dose contributions of 
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1 short-lived daughters with U-234 and 5. When 

2 that error was accounted for, then everything 

3 fell into line. And the calculations of NIOSH 

4 and SC&A were comparable and identical.

5 So we withdrew finding number six 

6 because it was an error on our behalf. But 

7 the good news is we took a careful look at the 

8 calculations, and it has all now been 

9 resolved.

10 So, as far as the PER findings, 

11 some of the findings, as I say, were 

12 interrelated. And I will quickly go through 

13 these. Finding A -- rather than number them 1 

14 to 6, we're now using the alphabet so you 

15 don't confuse one of one with one of the 

16 other.

17 The first finding was there was a 

18 need for better documentation of the 

19 beta-gamma ratios used to reconstruct the 

20 external doses. And then finding B was how 

21 were these ratios derived and how will they be 

22 used in a claimant-favorable way for 
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1 reconstructing external doses for '61 through 

2 '65?

3 And in response to that, 

4 additional data were included in the Site 

5 Profile, as I mentioned earlier. And that 

6 helped resolve these concerns about the 

7 adequacy of the documentation in the PER.

8 Finding C was the model used to 

9 reconstruct the neutron doses. It was felt to 

10 likely overestimate the doses significantly 

11 and needed to be based on assumptions that can 

12 be related to the actual operations at UNC. 

13 And here worker interviews came in. And it 

14 was determined that the assumption of 2,000 

15 hours per year was bounding. And NIOSH 

16 convinced SC&A and us that it was a plausible 

17 bounding. And, therefore, we closed this 

18 issue as well, that it did now seem to be not 

19 a gross overestimate.

20 Finding D, if the dose estimates 

21 are based in some cases on air sample data 

22 alone, it was necessary to consider the 
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1 possibility of inhalation of type F material 

2 to avoid underestimates of doses to systemic 

3 tissues. The coworker model now is based on 

4 the bioassay results, and air sampling is used 

5 secondarily in -- to validate the bioassay 

6 model but is not used now in the coworker

7 model, as it was previously proposed to do.

8 E might have been again the 

9 exposure to type F uranium. Frequency of air 

10 sampling, bioassay sampling, and/or chest 

11 counting does not appear sufficient to provide 

12 adequate data for dose reconstruction. This 

13 issue is discussed several times. It is 

14 NIOSH's position that chronic exposures 

15 currently calculated as type M or type S, are 

16 bounding for reasonable scenarios. After much 

17 discussion and back and forth, SC&A agreed 

18 that the scenario, bounding scenarios, were 

19 reasonable. And our Group when we looked at 

20 it really did not find any firm arguments 

21 against that, so found that was acceptable. 

22 Frequency of the air samples really is not 
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1 relevant since the air sampling now is not 

2 being used for the dose reconstruction. So 

3 the concerns about using the air sampling data 

4 fell out when we went with the coworker 

5 bioassay dose reconstruction modeling.

6 And there are, as you saw, 

7 significant bioassay samples available except 

8 for that short period of time. And we did 

9 feel that a method that is appropriate is now 

10 being applied for that period and that doses 

11 can be reconstructed for those two periods of 

12 time.

13 Again, air sampling data is not 

14 reliable. And, again, now that it is no 

15 longer being used in the model, the 

16 reliability issue, while it has to be 

17 addressed in the Site Profile, really is not 

18 part of the SEC dose reconstruction set of 

19 issues.

20 G, discussion of why the internal 

21 exposures can be reliably constructed, a 

22 written description given the limited bioassay 
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1 data available from '61 through '62 in what 

2 appears to be the unreliability of the air 

3 sampling data really was the major sticking 

4 point in our review of that period when 

5 sampling and biomonitoring was not available.

6 And the resolution of that was 

7 that the air sampling results were only used 

8 to validate the assumptions that exposures in 

9 '61 and '62 were similar to the years before 

10 and after the data gap period.

11 So we really didn't see anything 

12 that suggested at that period of time,'61-'62, 

13 that there was something unusual going on 

14 where exposures would not have been compared. 

15 The process was pretty much similar. It was 

16 more the administrative program changed at 

17 that time.

18 And then in '63, everything was 

19 revamped again and greater emphasis placed on 

20 the biomonitoring. And, again, NIOSH is going 

21 to use the 95th percentile of the bioassay 

22 coworker model for that period of time where 
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1 the other period of time, the coworker model, 

2 we'll use the full distribution of the values.

3 H is needing more information on 

4 the feasibility of reconstructing doses for 

5 the period where there was thorium workers. 

6 Even upper bound doses could be made.

7 NIOSH put together a very nice 

8 White Paper that -- you have a copy of that 

9 provided evidence to the Work Group that the 

10 upper bound doses could be plausibly 

11 estimated. And we agreed, and SC&A agreed 

12 with that. And, therefore, we closed that 

13 issue as well.

14 So the naval fuel operations, 

15 initially we had concerns about classified 

16 activities might not have been adequately 

17 reflected in the NIOSH assessments. And, to 

18 that end, a number of or a item plant worker, 

19 which is the specific facility component that 

20 we were most interested in, there was a plant 

21 worker, very experienced, knowledgeable that 

22 needed to be interviewed.
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1 And much of our delay in 

2 finalizing this SEC review was waiting for the 

3 interview of that worker because it was a 

4 classified interview, it had to go through the 

5 redacting process, and provision of that to be 

6 released publicly. So that added time, but 

7 ultimately it was released. And we were able 

8 to review that.

9 And it just underscored to us on 

10 the Work Group the importance of getting the 

11 worker interviews to be included, even if it 

12 is a challenge and frustrating to get it done 

13 in a timely fashion, but he really provided 

14 very good information on what went on in the 

15 facility. And so we got new detail that 

16 confirmed NIOSH's documented understanding of 

17 what really went on at the operations.

18 So, in conclusion, if you have 

19 questions, you can ask questions, but here is 

20 our recommendation, that the petition covered 

21 all site employees that worked in any area of 

22 the United Nuclear Corporation Hematite, 
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1 Missouri site from January 1, '58 through 

2 December 31, '73 and the residual radiation 

3 period, January 1, '74 through July 31, 2006.

4 And our conclusion was that that 

5 should be denied, that analysis of the 

6 available resources, that there is no part of 

7 the Class under evaluation for which doses 

8 could not be bounded under plausible 

9 circumstances. And for most of the 

10 individuals, those could be quite reasonably 

11 done. And it was really that short period of 

12 time where we had some concerns, but we do 

13 believe now the modeling and the work has been 

14 put together. So it is plausible and bounding 

15 for exposures throughout the full time period.

16 Last, here are just a series of 

17 references for those of you who may want to do 

18 more reading, which I doubt. If you are, this 

19 just lists all of the documentation so we have 

20 it here in the file.

21 So, with that, John, did I miss 

22 anything?
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1 DR. MAURO: No. I think you 

2 covered it very well. And Bill Thurber is on 

3 the line, too, I am hoping. Perhaps he is 

4 not. Bill was very much a contributor to this 

5 also. No. You covered everything that I am 

6 aware of.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Board 

8 Members with questions for Henry? I thought 

9 it was a very thorough review. I feel like I 

10 was there. Either of the other two Work Group 

11 Members: Bill or Dave?

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: Dave did a great 

13 job getting up to speed in a fast order, lot 

14 of minutes of meetings to read through. And 

15 we really appreciate the assistance and the 

16 participation of the petitioners as well. They 

17 really contributed, and they really helped 

18 identify the individual to be interviewed. And 

19 that really, as they say, has provided some 

20 confidence in what had been gleaned from the 

21 various records to actually talk to somebody 

22 who was there through the whole period.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David 

2 Richardson, you had a question?

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: One question 

4 was on slide 9.

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: This one?

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The footnote. 

9 Can you explain why the more recent data are 

10 not reliable?

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes. We didn't 

12 --

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: This is LaVon 

14 Rutherford. Actually, the '71 to '73 period 

15 bioassay was done by CEP. CEP we had already 

16 determined at another site that their 

17 activities with urinalysis was possibly 

18 fraudulent. And so we had decided a long time 

19 ago that we would not accept CEP data. 

20 However, we do have whole body counting during 

21 that period as well as we continued with the 

22 air sampling as well during that period to 
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1 reconstruct the internal dose from uranium.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So during that 

3 period, you proposed to use the whole body 

4 counting?

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: We have whole 

6 body counting during that period. We do have 

7 other bioassay data from another vendor, but 

8 the majority of the bioassay data from '71 to 

9 '73 was done by CEP. And we do have a 

10 significant amount of whole body counting.

11 Whole body counting picked up, 

12 actually, in the late '60s at UNC. And there 

13 is a significant amount of whole body 

14 counting. If you had the Evaluation Report 

15 available, you can actually see the numbers. 

16 There is a table inside there. It identifies 

17 the numbers of whole body counts that were 

18 done during that period.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could I ask 

20 one other question?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Why in 1970 
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1 did the number of samples drop off? Does that 

2 appear at a contract change, where this is the 

3 number of available samples or --

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: There was a 

5 contract change in 1970. Actually, a new 

6 contractor took over, not a new contractor 

7 doing the bioassay. There was actually a 

8 change in ownership of who was running the 

9 site at that time in 1970. I can't remember 

10 the name. I am not sure if it's indicative of 

11 production activities, why they dropped off 

12 the change in ownership that reduced 

13 production activities.

14 There was some change in the 

15 actual types of work that were conducted at 

16 that period. So I can't be definitive on 

17 that.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can I ask you 

19 now about the column headings?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The number of 

22 employees --
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- I am taking 

3 to be the number of people for whom there was 

4 a bioassay and the second column to be the 

5 number of samples taken. That is not the 

6 number of employees on site.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct. 

8 That's correct. Actually, and, you know, I 

9 knew this was going to come up again. And I 

10 can't remember, but when I originally 

11 presented the petition, I knew how many people 

12 were on site.

13 I know that the site, the number 

14 of employees at the site increased over time 

15 from 1958, from the initial operations. And 

16 from my recollection, it's around a couple of 

17 hundred. It got up to around a couple of 

18 hundred people.

19 And I am sure that if I am 

20 incorrect, that the petitioner will correct 

21 me.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So when you 
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1 want to look at -- I mean, there was a good 

2 deal of discussion about what was called 1961 

3 to '62 --

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- and I am 

6 guessing is referring to the row of 1961, 

7 where there is no information from bioassay. 

8 But for lots of the neighboring years, the 

9 number of people who have any bioassay 

10 information is relatively low.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, that is 

12 because there is a relatively low amount of 

13 workforce. I mean, if you look at the 

14 workforce size, the operators, the operators 

15 that were there, it is actually a fairly small 

16 workforce.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So when you 

18 said that the, let's say, 1963 was going to be 

19 a comparable year that you wanted to 

20 extrapolate to, I was taking the 110 number to 

21 be some representative number of the number of 

22 workers who are potentially exposed. And if 
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1 we look at 1960, there are 37 people who have 

2 been monitored. So are you saying the 

3 workforce is one-third?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. I am 

5 actually saying what -- we had the number of 

6 employees. The number of employees we have 

7 samples for, they may have four samples. They 

8 may have six samples. They may have ten 

9 samples.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. So what we 

12 did in the actual 1960 -- I can't remember the 

13 month. They stopped doing bioassay. All 

14 right? We had a period of roughly 18 months, 

15 I believe, 18-19 months up to the end of 1962 

16 where sampling commenced, where it kicked back 

17 in.

18 What we did, actually, to validate 

19 that our coworker model was correct was we 

20 actually took air sample data from 1960 where 

21 we were looking to see. We wanted to see if 

22 there was a change, as Dr. Anderson mentioned. 
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1 Was there a change in operations? Was there 

2 any indication in operations that we had an 

3 increased airborne activity where we had an 

4 increase in intakes that would have adjusted 

5 our distribution.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right. Yes. I 

7 understood that part of the extrapolation. I 

8 was wondering about the -- maybe I am not 

9 completely understanding. The coworker model 

10 I can see as being applied in 1961, when there 

11 is not monitoring data. But for a claimant 

12 who was employed in 1960 --

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- who is not 

15 one of the 37 workers for whom there is 

16 bioassay data --

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- is the 

19 coworker model also applied --

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it is.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- to that 

22 worker?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it is.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So the issue 

3 is not simply the comparability of the 

4 coworker model --

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right, right.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- spanning 

7 the period 1960 through '62? It's the 

8 comparability of the coworker model for any 

9 given year for which there is a claimant who 

10 is potentially exposed but who doesn't have 

11 bioassay data. So we have to believe the 

12 plausibility of the coworker model, not just 

13 for the comparability of --

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- looking at 

16 the air monitoring data, spanning that short 

17 period, but any place in which a coworker 

18 model is going to be applied?

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: That is true. 

20 Yes.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

22 DR. MAURO: Bomber, this is John 
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1 Mauro. A point of clarification to make sure. 

2 When you develop the coworker model, let's say 

3 you were going to use it from, let's say, 

4 1960. Then you do have data. There is a 

5 difference between the coworker model and how 

6 you apply it for the workers in 1960, then 

7 '61. And this was a subject of some 

8 discussion that I know that Jim was very much 

9 involved in.

10 When you have real data for a 

11 given year, we have a bunch of workers. The 

12 premise that we are operating under is those 

13 37 employees in the 106 samples, these were 

14 the employees that were bioassayed because the 

15 sense was they had the greater potential for 

16 exposure.

17 Now, given that premise, when you 

18 say, "Okay. Well, along comes a worker in 

19 1960 that could have been exposed but was not 

20 part of the bioassay program, in that case, 

21 the coworker model you would use, the full 

22 distribution, rather than a 95th percentile, 
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1 in order to reconstruct his intake" for 1960. 

2 However, in '61, you are using the upper 95th 

3 percentile of the year by data from the other 

4 years. So there is a fundamental difference 

5 in the strategy that is used for a coworker 

6 model when you actually have data for people 

7 in that year, as opposed to this 1961 special 

8 year.

9 Is that a fair characterization? 

10 SC&A is comfortable with that. I think it is 

11 important that the Board understand that 

12 distinction.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct. 

14 That's absolutely correct.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Dave?

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Just a small 

17 matter. Is there a typo on the first line, 19 

18 employees and 7 samples, or is it that some 

19 samples were lost but you know the people got 

20 sampled?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, that is 

22 a good question. Honestly, I think that is a 
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1 typo, but I would have to go look.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. I didn't 

3 notice it before.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: I never noticed 

5 it either.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So it's a typo 

8 from the Evaluation Report because it is in 

9 the Evaluation Report also.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. I will have 

11 to look at that. Right. I can find that out, 

12 though.

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: Other comments?

14 MEMBER BEACH: So, Jim, you're not 

15 going to call on me?

16 (Laughter.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm sorry.

18 MEMBER BEACH: I'll just go ahead.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Please?

20 MEMBER BEACH: I know you are 

21 probably reviewing.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was trying to 
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1 find some of the information back in the 

2 Evaluation Report that David was asking about.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So I was 

5 distracted. I found the table, but it didn't 

6 help.

7 MEMBER BEACH: I was reviewing the 

8 table, too. Some of the questions I had were 

9 on the air sampling data. The table is very 

10 helpful. It is very explanatory. But for 

11 number 3 under the 1961 data to 1962, it 

12 talked about that management agreed and 

13 decided when to do the air sampling. Some of 

14 the sampling was breathing zone, and some of 

15 it was general area. And I was wondering if 

16 you had a sense of how much, what percentage 

17 was the breathing zone versus the general 

18 area, LaVon.

19 And then the other one while you 

20 are at it is the -- there are a couple of 

21 hears that you said you have data under X, but 

22 you didn't list like you listed out all of the 
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1 rest of them.

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: I know the X 

3 you're talking about, where the film badge 

4 data is listed?

5 MEMBER BEACH: No. It is under 

6 breathing air, too. How about if you do --

7 the X's under number 2 indicates that data 

8 exists, but the specific number of samples --

9 I was wondering why it wasn't spelled out like 

10 all the rest of the --

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. A lot of 

12 those were summary reports. You know, it 

13 would summarize what the data was. And so we 

14 would not get the specific numbers associated 

15 with that.

16 Now, your first question --

17 MEMBER BEACH: The breathing zone, 

18 yes.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. Now, I 

20 can't remember the exact percentage, but, I 

21 mean, a good portion of the actual air sample 

22 data is breathing zone data. I mean, if you 
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1 want to take a comparison, here is a good 

2 example, actually. The thorium air monitoring 

3 that took place took place. And it was an 

4 operation that was consistent with uranium 

5 pelletizing operation.

6 There were 210 air samples taken 

7 in that 1964 period. Of that 210 samples, I 

8 think 167 of those were breathing zone 

9 samples, if I remember correctly. I have to 

10 go back and look at the report. A large 

11 portion of those were breathing zone samples. 

12 And I don't think that the operations for 

13 uranium would have been any different.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Josie?

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Thanks.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

17 questions right now? I believe the petitioner 

18 is on the line and wishes to make comments.

19 MS. EATON: Yes, sir. I am on the 

20 line.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Do you 

22 wish to make comments now?
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1 MS. EATON: Well, it seems to me 

2 -- this is Clarissa Eaton, United Nuclear 

3 representative. We have learned a lot upon 

4 the sampling, what little sampling done early 

5 on, with only air samples. And, you know, it 

6 was the management's decision -- and I believe 

7 it was a monetary decision -- to stop the 

8 sampling program.

9 And it wasn't, in fact, until Oak 

10 Ridge noticed excessively high levels on some 

11 employees I guess that it has taken a trip up 

12 there. So, you know, so we have got partial 

13 samples here, air only, lack of monitoring. We 

14 have got an reliable source in the mix.

15 I mean, it's just very hard to 

16 have a lot of confidence that-- I mean, how 

17 much of dose reconstruction is an exact 

18 science? Because, I mean, I am no health 

19 physicist or nothing of the sort. I am just a 

20 housewife, but I wondered how exact is the 

21 science because coming from a lay person, it 

22 just seems like there are a lot of things in 
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1 the way.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any additional 

3 comments or is that --

4 MS. EATON: Well, that is the only 

5 one I have for now.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

7 you. I wasn't sure I understood.

8 Yes, LaVon?

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: I want to clarify 

10 that of the 210 air samples, 133 were 

11 breathing zone samples. So if you want to 

12 look at it as roughly 65 percent, 70 percent?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

14 comments or questions? David, David 

15 Kotelchuck?

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Ms. Eaton, I 

17 taught graduate courses in nuclear physics and 

18 occupational health for many years and taught 

19 in this area. Of all the areas that I taught 

20 in in occupational health, this was always the 

21 most difficult. It was the most difficult for 

22 our students because there is a lot of exact 
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1 knowledge about some particular kind of 

2 particle, what the effects of an alpha 

3 particle of a certain energy are. These are 

4 very well-known.

5 The problem is that, first, we are 

6 trying to put together pieces from internal 

7 exposure, external exposure, alpha, beta, 

8 gamma neutron. And it does become, if you 

9 will, a bit overwhelming to listen to and to 

10 try to follow through.

11 Obviously we can't. If we could 

12 make an exact measurement or if exact 

13 measurements were available on all of these 

14 pieces, that would be fine. Normally that is 

15 not the case. And so you try to put together 

16 something that is the best estimate, being 

17 friendly to the claimant, because when in 

18 doubt, the claimant should be respected and 

19 compensated. So that is what is behind this. 

20 It is complicated. The science, if you will, 

21 the pieces, all of the pieces of the science, 

22 I think, are pretty well-known and quite 
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1 exactly known with research for decades.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board 

3 comments or questions?

4 (No response.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, we have 

6 a motion from the --

7 MS. EATON: Well, I guess my --

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excuse me?

9 MS. EATON: -- of these records 

10 that you supposedly got a hold of, a lot of 

11 records, are you referring to those that 

12 Westinghouse at first didn't think they had 

13 any records and then, all of a sudden, they 

14 had truckloads? Are you relying on the 

15 records that you received from Westinghouse?

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excuse me? We're 

17 just doing comments now. And it really is not 

18 the time. The Board needs to take action. 

19 There have been Work Group meetings and other 

20 meetings where there has been interaction on 

21 these.

22 So let me go back to the Board. 
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1 And we have a motion from the Work Group, a 

2 recommendation on that. Is there any further 

3 discussion on that recommendation?

4 (No response.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, Ted, do 

6 you want to do the roll call?

7 (Roll call.)

8 MR. KATZ: It was 12 in favor, a 

9 number of absentee votes, but the measure 

10 passes.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I believe 

12 we have done most of our Board business, work 

13 session business, except for some additional 

14 letters that will be ready for review 

15 tomorrow.

16 So, LaVon, while you are close? 

17 Let's get back to NIOSH. I thought that was 

18 the one that had so many slides it was taking 

19 a long time to load.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. After much 

21 ado, I am going to give the status of all 

22 current SEC petitions. This is LaVon 
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1 Rutherford for those on the phone. We provide 

2 this update routinely for the Board so that 

3 they can prepare for upcoming Work Group 

4 meetings, Board meetings. It identifies what 

5 petitions we have got in that are qualified, 

6 we are evaluating. Also it identifies the 

7 petitions that are in the 83.14 process as 

8 well.

9 As you can see, as of September 

10 7th, we have 207 petitions. We had zero in 

11 the qualification process at this time. We 

12 have 127 petitions that have qualified, 5 

13 petitions that are in the evaluation progress. 

14 Actually, this will be adjusted a little bit 

15 because some of these reports were completed 

16 prior to this Board meeting. And I will 

17 discuss that a little bit and so on through 

18 the table.

19 SEC petition evaluations presented 

20 at this Board meeting, we had Oak Ridge 

21 National Lab, where the Board took action. 

22 There is some additional work that is going on 
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1 at Oak Ridge National Lab associated with 

2 calutrons and cyclotron.

3 Los Alamos National Lab we 

4 presented as well revision 1. Again the Board 

5 took action. However, there is still 

6 additional work that has gone on post-1995.

7 Rocky Flats petition was presented 

8 at the Board meeting. The Board has pushed 

9 this on to the Work Group and some additional 

10 work that is going to be done by us at NIOSH.

11 Mound Plant, an 83.14 was 

12 presented that the Board took action on.

13 Nuclear Metals Inc. will be 

14 discussed tomorrow.

15 Currently we have the Joslyn 

16 Manufacturing and Supply Company petition that 

17 is in the evaluation phase. It was at Fort 

18 Wayne, Indiana. All employees who worked at 

19 the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Company 

20 from January 1, 1944 through December 31 of 

21 1952. This is one of those early year metals 

22 operations. We received this petition on 
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1 March 15th of 2012. We expect to be completed 

2 in December of 2012.

3 We did have a slight delay on 

4 completing this due to some -- we had done, 

5 actually, some classified document review at 

6 OSTI, and had identified some additional 

7 records Dr. Glover had and actually some 

8 outreach in interviews that had possibly 

9 identified other resources. We wanted to take 

10 those and make sure we got those resources 

11 before we completed our evaluation. We do 

12 expect to be completed in time for the 

13 December Board meeting.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What do you mean 

15 in time for a Board meeting?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: We will shoot to 

17 have the Evaluation Report to the Board one 

18 month prior to the Board meeting. Do you hear 

19 that, Dr. Glover? Where are you? Or sooner, 

20 or sooner.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excuse me. The 

22 Board meeting is in December.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, yes.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The completion 

3 date is December.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, 

5 as they --

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Where does the 

7 month come in?

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: We will shoot to 

9 have that to you 30 days before the Board 

10 meeting.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So in November?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, in November, 

13 November.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Sam?

15 (Laughter.)

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: This is a short 

17 presentation, but I want to say we are working 

18 on a couple of 83.14s at this time. These are 

19 83.14s that we have been working on Site 

20 Profiles for a while trying to get information 

21 back and forth. I didn't want to put them on 

22 here because the details really haven't been 
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1 ironed out on them, but we do anticipate we 

2 will be presenting at least one of those at 

3 the Board meeting in December as well. In 

4 fact, we will be presenting at least one of 

5 those at the Board meeting I am just thinking.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we will see 

7 those 30 days before --

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, you will.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- before the 

10 December Board meeting, that one that we will 

11 be presenting?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's pretty 

13 much it. Any questions on current SEC status?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can you read 

15 back -- no. Okay. So don't go away.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I thought I'd 

17 slip out of there.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Two 

19 things. I am just thinking ahead to the Board 

20 meeting and timing and so forth on that. And 

21 do we need three days?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I know we 
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1 have -- I think we have an addendum to, if I 

2 remember correctly, SRS addendum that -- and I 

3 wish Mark was here, but I am pretty sure we 

4 committed to getting an SRS addendum on the 

5 remainder of the thorium period to the Board 

6 for the presentation at that meeting.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: That's right, 

8 yes.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: So that is one 

10 additional item.

11 You know, actually, I apologize. I 

12 just missed another -- we do have another 

13 petition under evaluation. And that is Baker 

14 Brothers. It will not be ready for the 

15 December Board meeting, I do not believe. 

16 There is a chance it would, but I don't want 

17 to commit to it right now.

18 However, during a Board conference 

19 call, I am sure I could give you a better date 

20 on completion for Baker Brothers.

21 MEMBER FIELD: LaVon, what's the 

22 site? Where is it --
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Baker Brothers? I 

2 can't remember. Toledo. Correct. Toledo, 

3 Ohio.

4 MR. KATZ: I was thinking there 

5 was another maybe 83.14 that you had intended 

6 for this meeting but didn't make it. Not so?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, no. The 

8 ones that we intended for this meeting made 

9 it. The one that we have been working for 

10 some time, I don't believe it was intended for 

11 this meeting.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So the reason I 

14 wanted to bring this up now is, one, we have a 

15 little bit of time; but, secondly, if you 

16 remember, right, the December Board meeting 

17 starts on a Monday. And I think that if we 

18 are going to plan ahead for it and so forth 

19 and we think we can do our Board business in 

20 two days, we could come in on the Monday, 

21 rather than on the Sunday, --

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- for people 

2 and handle it that way, which would ease 

3 travel, at least for some people. For 

4 everybody, it should make it easier and so 

5 forth. And I think what I am hearing is that 

6 we should be able to do that.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: From the new SEC 

8 petitions, very few.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: There are only a 

11 couple.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, GSI we 

13 hope. Rocky Flats I'm not sure that we will 

14 be. I think there is enough by that meeting.

15 Pantex we don't know, but we could 

16 -- I don't think Pantex would necessarily take 

17 a lot of time because we have gone through 

18 that. I think we all know the issues. I 

19 think the question is going to be, one, is the 

20 data available that we think might be 

21 available. Is that the term, Brad, that we 

22 heard? Maybe, yes.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The right 

3 material. And either way I think we are going 

4 to know. No. But if we do have to deal with 

5 that, I don't think it is something that is 

6 going to take necessarily an extended period 

7 of time for discussion.

8 MR. KATZ: So I think we are 

9 talking about a two-day meeting.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Okay.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I wonder about 

12 Hanford 155. Do you think that the Work Group 

13 would be ready to act on that?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we will 

15 be ready for that. And, again, I don't think 

16 that -- it takes some time but not -- because 

17 we have done some briefing here. I think the 

18 issue is usually it's the first time something 

19 is presented to the Board or it's been a long 

20 review process from the Work Group and getting 

21 everybody up to speed. And enough information 

22 that people feel comfortable in making a 
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1 decision I think is usually what takes more 

2 time.

3 So let's plan on meeting on the 

4 11th and the 12th of December in Oak Ridge and 

5 coming in on the Monday.

6 MEMBER BEACH: And it is Henry's 

7 birthday on Monday. So he would probably 

8 rather travel that day than be in a meeting.

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Oh, yes, 

10 absolutely, yes. I'll party on the plane.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, maybe we 

12 should all greet him at the airport with the 

13 champagne --

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, right.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and the cake 

16 and that.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: December is Oak 

18 Ridge.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oak Right, yes. 

20 Do we have a hotel?

21 MR. KATZ: Not yet.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I didn't think 
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1 so. I just wanted to get practice asking that 

2 question. Yes. Okay.

3 We have one more item remaining. 

4 And, LaVon or Stu, do you want to try to get 

5 up Wanda's demonstration --

6 MEMBER MUNN: We can do that, no 

7 problem.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- while we have 

9 a little bit of time here? And then while we 

10 are getting that ready, I'll just remind for 

11 tomorrow morning, that would then leave 

12 Nuclear Metals to be presented. And I think 

13 that will be pretty much it. And then we will 

14 have some letters to go over.

15 So I am expecting that we can 

16 finish by 10:00-10:30, something in that 

17 range. I don't know how long Nuclear Metals 

18 will take, but if that helps people with 

19 planning and so forth for travel and so forth. 

20 I don't know. It doesn't help me.

21 MEMBER MUNN: All right, ladies 

22 and gentlemen. Come and play along with me. 
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1 You see what I have got on my screen. If you 

2 can get yours there, too, if you are not 

3 already there? In case you are, for those of 

4 you who are not ready to go onto your screen?

5 Once we get the virtual desktop 

6 up, we need to go to Explorer since we are 

7 going to take you to Tools. However you are 

8 accustomed to getting to Staff Tools is fine.

9 I have on my screen book marked 

10 the site as a favorite because it is a 

11 long-winded URL to get there. And I find this 

12 much simpler for myself. You probably will, 

13 too, if you have not already book marked this.

14 We are going to Explorer, as I 

15 said. Explorer will take you to the CDC 

16 Connects page. Since I have marked this on my 

17 favorites, what you are going for is DCAS 

18 Internet Staff Tools. And here is the URL you 

19 want. At the top of your screen, if you don't 

20 already have that one book marked, then if you 

21 are going to use this program, I would suggest 

22 that you do it.
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1 That was not where we wanted to 

2 go. And I rather desperately here need a 

3 mouse, which I don't have. No. That's okay. 

4 That's okay. I'm just complaining.

5 Here are the Staff Tools. And 

6 what you want to see is the Board Review 

7 System. When the Board Review System comes 

8 up, you get our full Board review database. 

9 And the database itself is very helpful if you 

10 want to start searching for documents. If you 

11 don't want to start searching for documents, 

12 then what you want to do if you are going to 

13 look for the report that I am trying to give 

14 you today, you ask specifically for the 

15 reports. You will see that a drop-down gives 

16 you three options. The first one is the one 

17 that will give you the numbers you want. I am 

18 trying to get this screen a little larger for 

19 you. Probably the best bet if it doesn't go 

20 completely off screen. It goes everywhere 

21 except where I want it to go.

22 There are three sets of large 
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1 groups of procedures that SC&A gave to the 

2 Subcommittee at different times. You will see 

3 the finding date on the left, which we have 

4 kept in this format primarily because it is 

5 easier for us to track it and make sure when 

6 we report to other groups or to the Secretary 

7 exactly what we had at what time.

8 In between those sets, we have 

9 been given the task of identifying findings 

10 for individual procedures. At various times 

11 through our history, you will see the dates 

12 that those individual procedures were given to 

13 us. And in the first column, you will see the 

14 total number of findings that we have from 

15 each of those groups or individual procedures.

16 Now, when you are looking at these 

17 and looking at the totals to see where we are 

18 at any given time, you need to keep in mind 

19 very clearly what the headings of those 

20 findings mean. Open means we have not 

21 addressed them at all. They are exactly what 

22 the heading says. Those are open findings 
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1 that we haven't addressed.

2 In progress means we have looked 

3 at them and that there is work going on to 

4 resolve those specific issues. When you get 

5 to abeyance, that is for our Subcommittee 

6 already a closed issue. Any finding that is 

7 listed as in abeyance is a finding that we 

8 have looked at, have addressed, have resolved, 

9 and is now in the hands of NIOSH to 

10 incorporate into the next document that is 

11 applicable to that particular finding.

12 In most cases, things that are in 

13 abeyance are findings that have been resolved 

14 with respect to procedures which either were 

15 very early procedures and have been 

16 subsequently overridden by or canceled or they 

17 are for procedures that are awaiting a 

18 revision and will be updated as time allows us 

19 to do that.

20 Addressed in finding in the next 

21 column simply means that this finding was at 

22 some other time, perhaps at the time of the 
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1 issuing of the original SC&A report or perhaps 

2 later, the finding was duplicated somewhere 

3 else. And addressed in finding simply means 

4 this is closed to us because we are addressing 

5 it in some other finding, some other place.

6 Transferred simply means it has 

7 gone out to a Work Group somewhere and some 

8 other Work Group is in the process of dealing 

9 with that particular issue. When that issue 

10 has been closed by the Work Group, hopefully 

11 the Work Group Chair will call to our 

12 attention the fact that that issue is now 

13 closed so that we can accommodate that on our 

14 database.

15 Closed means, for whatever reason, 

16 whether we resolved it, whether somebody else 

17 has resolved it, we have closed that finding 

18 or that set of findings.

19 If we go down to our totals, then 

20 you can see that we have in our Subcommittee 

21 been dealing with 561 different findings. We 

22 have currently open only 4 and a half percent 
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1 of those, or 25 are open. We have not yet 

2 dealt with them. We have 47 that are in 

3 progress. We have 81 that are in abeyance. We 

4 have 23 that were addressed in a different 

5 finding. We have 45 that have been 

6 transferred. And we have over 60 percent of 

7 all of the findings that have been handed to 

8 us to deal with have been closed.

9 In the event that you like color 

10 and would prefer to see something in graph 

11 form, then we can choose one of the other 

12 reporting formats that you saw up at the top 

13 of the list. We can go there if you want. 

14 They are very nice. They are very colorful 

15 documents. But, to all intents and purposes, 

16 the information you want to see I think is 

17 here.

18 We have put together that basic 

19 database from which we draw this information 

20 with the expectation that this kind of 

21 tracking system would be useful for those of 

22 you who have a fair-sized matrix to deal with 
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1 when you are given findings that have to be 

2 resolved in your Work Group or if you don't 

3 find it useful, then you can simply continue 

4 to do what we have done in the past and report 

5 your findings closed as they come along.

6 We appreciate hearing from you any 

7 time. If you have any questions about the 

8 database, you may ask me now or inquire of me 

9 later. Anything that you -- any question that 

10 you have based on what we have seen already?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody with 

12 questions?

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, Dave?

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Who puts the 

15 numbers in the table?

16 MEMBER MUNN: There are two people 

17 who put the numbers in. We have designated 

18 individuals, one in SC&A and one at OCAS, that 

19 handle the whole thing for us. They attend 

20 all of our meetings. And we deal with the 

21 database on a real-time basis in our meetings. 

22 As issues are resolved, we revise the database 
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1 accordingly. It was very cumbersome to get up 

2 and running, but it is almost where we need it 

3 to be now.

4 Our folks at NIOSH and DCAS have 

5 been working very hard to populate the back 

6 end of that database so that the hot links 

7 that we wanted to have, which will make it 

8 easy for you to get to original documents, is 

9 being incorporated a little at a time.

10 The documents themselves are 

11 already up-to-date as are the finding lists.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Wanda, I am 

14 thinking it might be helpful to the other 

15 Board Members to go back to the main page and 

16 maybe just select one of the procedures and 

17 illustrate how the findings are actually 

18 handled and recorded and so forth if we have 

19 time to do that.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. From that 

21 page, if you were just to select one of those 

22 documents or to even select the category.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: I am trying to get 

2 the page the size I want it. And clearly it 

3 is not easy to do with my finger. A good one 

4 might be IG-1. We clicked on it, and it is 

5 giving us the finding and SC&A pages. There 

6 are 24 findings on it, it tells us. And the 

7 first finding gives you first the internal 

8 review objective showing what the deficiencies 

9 are. This item has been addressed, and it has 

10 been closed.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I believe we can 

12 get the whole history of that, though, if we 

13 click on the plus.

14 MEMBER MUNN: The plus will expand 

15 it so that you see the discussions that took 

16 place and when all the way back to 2005. In 

17 2006, 3 different times; 2007, revision of the 

18 implementation guide. Notice it gives you the 

19 -- when it says "unspecified SC&A user," that 

20 means our SC&A contact who has responsibility 

21 for it has made that change during that 

22 meeting.
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1 And in the next one, Kathy 

2 Behling, who was the person who instituted the 

3 original finding, asked to review Revision 3 

4 to determine whether it was addressed in any 

5 of the findings. We debated the issue in July 

6 of this year and determined it was closed 

7 because it was covered in finding 19 of this 

8 same set of findings. So this is one of those 

9 things that now shows in our Covered in 

10 Findings column for this particular issue. It 

11 is closed to us because it is going to be 

12 taken care of in finding number 19.

13 If we want to go all the way down 

14 to finding 19, if I can just get this to go 

15 there without creating any real disasters. As 

16 you can see, we are going down the findings 

17 one at a time. One more, and we should be 

18 down to finding 19.

19 Finding 19 reads, "Review is 

20 fragmented structure and illogical sequencing 

21 of information. During the findings 

22 resolutions, NIOSH agreed that SC&A's comments 
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1 were constructive and future revisions would 

2 involve a change to the structure of the 

3 document, but no such modifications were 

4 introduced into Revision 2. So it still needs 

5 yet to be done in Revision 3. You see it is 

6 noted as "In progress." So we had closed this 

7 concern in the original finding, which 

8 essentially was that the language is not 

9 well-put-together. And we are covering it in 

10 this. We will wait until the next revision 

11 comes along, at which time we will be able to 

12 close it.

13 Being able to do these real time, 

14 let's expand another one to see where it might 

15 take us. We'll try expanding 15 and see what 

16 discussion had occurred on that before it was 

17 closed. We addressed it first in 2005. 

18 Non-correction for backscatter only makes the 

19 reported film dose higher. Appendix B organ 

20 dose correction factors are applied to these 

21 numbers. We addressed it again in 2006, at 

22 which time it was reported as closed. We 
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1 didn't do anything with it in subsequent 

2 findings because we had identified it as 

3 closed.

4 Here is one that is in abeyance. 

5 Sixteen is being worked on somewhere. And 16, 

6 also addressed first in 2005, an analysis of 

7 environmental uncertainty for film badge 

8 dosimeters was not done. OCAS will revise the 

9 uncertainty language so it reflects the basis 

10 for the uncertainty approaches.

11 And in 2006, we asked that NIOSH 

12 modify the procedure. Still outstanding, a 

13 Revision 2 was issued, but no discussion had 

14 been added that would cover it.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda?

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we got 

18 the point.

19 MEMBER MUNN: I think so, yes.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It is a little 

21 hard to follow from --

22 MEMBER MUNN: I know. That's why 
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1 I wanted people to do it themselves.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I know. Well --

3 MEMBER MUNN: I see that fell on 

4 deaf ears.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Wanda, I do have 

6 one question. How do you get to the next 

7 page? You have got all of these, and it will 

8 allow you to go --

9 MEMBER MUNN: There should be a 

10 tab up at the top that will move you over.

11 My primary purpose was to make 

12 sure that you had the URL in your own little 

13 arsenal of tools so that you knew how to get 

14 to it and that you understood that all you had 

15 to do to get to the report that gives you the 

16 full summary is just to click on the first of 

17 the report options that are available to you.

18 Having done that, I have nothing 

19 else if we can resolve --

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I don't 

21 think we want to resolve this in a Board 

22 meeting.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay? Individual 

3 --

4 MEMBER MUNN: We'll do this.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No individual 

6 instructions to --

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: We built this with 

9 the idea that it could be broadly used by 

10 site-specific groups and things like that and 

11 it could maintain the discussion of the 

12 findings on various documents like on a Site 

13 Profile review, they would be entered, the 

14 findings would be entered here. And rather 

15 than keeping it on Word matrices, you would 

16 have the history of it all in one place. There 

17 is an authorizations table. Who you 

18 authorized, who's able to write, change 

19 statuses.

20 And, David, to your question, the 

21 numbers in the table are actually generated by 

22 the software from the statuses. You know, 
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1 each of those categories of opened, in 

2 abeyance, closed, transferred, those are the 

3 options on the drop-down table for the status 

4 of a particular finding. And so when you 

5 generate that report, the application 

6 generates those numbers based on the statuses 

7 of the various findings.

8 MEMBER MUNN: So you don't 

9 actually plug in the report. It does it for 

10 you automatically. That is why I said you can 

11 always get the current status because no one 

12 has to do it. It has been done in Committee.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

14 Wanda.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe we are 

17 all set. And we now have a period of time for 

18 a break, a couple of quick announcements. One 

19 is just an update. The Rocky Flats Work 

20 Group, I have added Phil and Dave Kotelchuck 

21 to that. So they will be joining. And, in 

22 response, Stu has appointed LaVon as the DCAS 
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1 coordinator contact on that. So we are set on 

2 that.

3 Also, Josie has agreed to chair 

4 the Kansas City Site Work Group. And I 

5 believe I convinced Gen to chair the Oak 

6 Ridge, though she is still going to look it 

7 over tonight.

8 MEMBER ROESSLER: It is Oak Ridge 

9 National Lab?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Correct, yes.

11 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, I will.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Okay. She 

13 has agreed. I have got a few volunteers for 

14 those Work Groups. Those of you who haven't 

15 talked to me yet who are interested in serving 

16 or want to run the other way, just sort of let 

17 me know because I will try to finalize those 

18 by tomorrow before we leave, at least for the 

19 most part. I still have to talk to Loretta 

20 also.

21 And I think we should adjourn. I 

22 have no idea how many people will be here 
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1 tonight. And so I checked earlier. Nobody 

2 signed up, but one person I believe had signed 

3 up. But we won't know. So why don't we try 

4 to get here a little bit before 6:00 anyway, 

5 which would be the start of the public comment 

6 period. And we will see how things are.

7 So you are welcome to rest, 

8 whatever, for the next hour and a half. 

9 Practice whether you can recall Wanda's 

10 lessons today.

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

12 matter went off the record at 4:33 p.m. and 

13 resumed at 6:01 p.m.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If everyone gets 

15 seated, we will get started, please. LaVon, 

16 Jim, will you sit down, please, or move 

17 outside? Okay. We have a public comment 

18 period. And I will let Ted go through the 

19 rules.

20 MR. KATZ: So I am not sure there 

21 are any new people for the public comment 

22 session, but, as I said last night for public 
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1 comment session, there are verbatim 

2 transcripts for all of these Board meetings, 

3 including the public comment session. 

4 Everything that you say in your public 

5 comments will be captured and transcribed and 

6 available for the public to read, however 

7 private it might be.

8 Anything you might say about 

9 another individual, however, will be redacted 

10 to the extent to protect their identity and 

11 their privacy. And that is the basic rule. 

12 And more detailed information should be 

13 available on the back table as well as if you 

14 are listening by telephone, it's on the NIOSH 

15 Board website. It's sort of on the front end 

16 of that Board page.

17 Thank you.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And I am 

19 going to start with -- we have two people 

20 signed up that are here in the room. I will 

21 start with them. Terrie Barrie, please?

22 MS. BARRIE: Thank you again. 
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1 PUBLIC COMMENT

2 MS. BARRIE: The reason I am here 

3 is because I didn't have a chance to thank you 

4 last night for taking another look at the 

5 issues with the Rocky Flats Plant.

6 And I do understand that there 

7 might be like a little issue about you voted 

8 on them once before, but I do have some new 

9 information that Stephanie just gave me 

10 tonight or this afternoon that you might be 

11 interested in. This is an industrial hygiene 

12 processing report. And you can have this. She 

13 has other copies. Tritium is listed almost 

14 every year on this, but there is also thorium 

15 listed for waste certification technician. May 

16 21st, 1984 through 11/15/1990 lists thorium 

17 here. I don't know if it's the thorium 

18 welding rods or if it's another process or 

19 whatever, but I thought that you might be 

20 interested in that.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

22 MS. BARRIE: And the other thing I 
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1 wanted to say is on the Tiger Team report, 

2 there were four volumes published. Okay? I 

3 have two. And that's the environmental and 

4 the criticality assessment. But there is also 

5 one on the legal aspects of the raid or the 

6 review of the Tiger Team and one on worker 

7 issue, which I can't locate. So maybe you 

8 might be interested in finding that --

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

10 MS. BARRIE: -- and sharing with 

11 us.

12 But thank you very much, and I 

13 look forward to working with everyone.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

15 you.

16 And, just to update you a little 

17 bit -- I'm not sure you were in the room when 

18 we talked about this -- we have added Phil 

19 Schofield and Dave Kotelchuck to the Work 

20 Group along with Wanda Munn and Mark Griffon, 

21 Chair. And LaVon Rutherford will be the 

22 contact and coordinator for NIOSH --
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1 MS. BARRIE: Okay. Wonderful.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- which we were 

3 just told this afternoon also.

4 MS. BARRIE: Okay. Well, thank 

5 you.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So you should 

7 know also. Okay. Thanks. 

8 And the next person I have signed 

9 up is Dee Gallagher.

10 MS. GALLAGHER: Probably a little 

11 short for this.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That way is 

13 fine, too.

14 MS. GALLAGHER: I could be a 

15 singer.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 MS. GALLAGHER: Good evening, 

18 everybody, Dr. Melius and the Board.

19 I appreciate your time in allowing 

20 me this opportunity to speak. I will try to 

21 keep it short. I know it has been a really 

22 long day.
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1 My name is Dee Gallagher. I was a 

2 pilot for Ross Aviation, also known as Hangar 

3 481, Kirtland Air Force Base. I have a couple 

4 of things that I would like to say, but, first 

5 of all, I would like to thank the Board for 

6 all of the work that you did on our SEC. I 

7 understand it is in administrative review at 

8 this point. But I did want to thank everybody 

9 for the work that they did on our SEC.

10 I have a couple of things, though, 

11 that I would like to discuss. And one is the 

12 issue of the hot pads in Albuquerque on 

13 Kirtland Air Force Base.

14 It is my belief, but I don't have 

15 confirmation at this time, that there is a 

16 possibility that the hot pads are located on 

17 Sandia property. And if that is the case, 

18 then due to the fact that Sandia has had their 

19 SEC approved, then we could be covered under 

20 the Sandia SEC. It's my understanding that if 

21 it is Sandia property, then it is something 

22 that we can look at. Like I said, I don't 
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1 have confirmation of that at this time.

2 Also, I flew airplanes for Ross 

3 Aviation. And we typically flew out to --

4 well, we supported all of the sites.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

6 MS. GALLAGHER: But I also flew to 

7 Tonopah Test Range, Sandia. So I have 70 

8 flights over my 10-year period that could be 

9 credited also to the Sandia cohort, I guess.

10 Those issues are very important, 

11 but I believe that one of the most important 

12 issues to me -- and I understand that there is 

13 a law that says that our airplanes cannot be

14 covered, but those airplanes, those ten 

15 airplanes, were owned by DOE. We answered to 

16 DOE. We were a director contractor of DOE. 

17 Those airplanes that were owned by DOE, we 

18 flew and we flew everything. We flew all of 

19 the materials and weapons. And, you know, we 

20 were at risk.

21 And, you know, I just wish that 

22 there was a way that we could reconsider or 
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1 look at the possibility of including those 

2 aircraft in the facility. I don't quite know 

3 how to go about doing that, but it is very, 

4 very important to me and to our people.

5 I will say that I am not a victim, 

6 and I don't have a victim mentality. I am a 

7 tough little cookie. That is why I am here. 

8 And I am just seeking the truth, and I just 

9 want to be recognized.

10 And that is all I have.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

12 I think you should know sort of 

13 facility designation is sort of out of our 

14 hands at NIOSH.

15 MS. GALLAGHER: I do know that.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And both DOL and 

17 DOE are here --

18 MS. GALLAGHER: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and play some 

20 role in that. And I believe you have had a 

21 chance to talk to them or follow up with them 

22 also. Okay.
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1 MS. GALLAGHER: Thank you.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

3 Okay. I have at least one person 

4 I know that has signed up on the phone to give 

5 public comment. That is a Terrie Mauser.

6 MS. MAUSER: Yes?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You may go 

8 ahead.

9 MS. MAUSER: Yes. Terrie Mauser. 

10 I work for United Nuclear.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We are having a 

12 little trouble -- excuse me a second --

13 hearing you. First, are you using a speaker 

14 phone or are you using a regular phone?

15 MR. MAUSER: Is that better?

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that is 

17 somewhat better. And then, just for anybody 

18 else who is listening in on the line, if you 

19 could, if everyone could, either mute your 

20 phone or use *6, it really helps our 

21 reception. We found that out earlier today 

22 also. So for the others on the line, if you 
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1 could mute? You will still be able to hear 

2 us, but -- okay.

3 MS. EATON: I'm sorry. I was 

4 unaware of how to sign up on the phone to make 

5 a comment. Am I still going to be able to?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I don't know. 

7 Who is this?

8 MS. EATON: Clarissa Eaton.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, you can. 

10 First I'm doing people that signed up.

11 MS. EATON: Sure. Thanks.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

13 MS. MAUSER: Are you ready?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Terrie Mauser?

15 MS. MAUSER: I'm ready.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, 

17 please.

18 MS. MAUSER: Yes. Okay. My first 

19 question is in regards to the introduction on 

20 the White Pages. Basically the question is, 

21 what do you mean in the introduction exposures 

22 resulting from non-weapons related work, as 
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1 applicable, will be covered elsewhere? What 

2 do you mean by "elsewhere" and "non-weapons 

3 related work?"

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We are actually 

5 taking public comments. We are not really in 

6 a position here in public comment period to 

7 answer all of these questions. I think you 

8 can follow up with NIOSH to get answers to 

9 those questions.

10 MS. MAUSER: Okay. Okay. Well, 

11 then, okay. So my other question is this. Let 

12 me ask you this one particular question. And 

13 that's the only really important question I 

14 have.

15 It is in regards to me as an 

16 individual, I worked in the Recycle Recovery 

17 Department -- plutonium and technetium-99. I 

18 don't know if I was ever tested for those 

19 particular metals. How would I find out that 

20 information, either from your -

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So your question 

22 is regarding exposure to particular metals?
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1 MS. MAUSER: Yes, to the heavy 

2 metals, to uranium, technetium.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. If you're

4 talking non-radioactive exposures, again, 

5 that's outside the scope of this part of the 

6 program. In terms of filing claims, there is 

7 a process within the Department of Labor for 

8 that.

9 But, again, we're taking public 

10 comment. We're not here to answer questions 

11 over the phone.

12 MS. MAUSER: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay?

14 MS. MAUSER: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. But 

16 follow up with NIOSH, they will be able to, 

17 maybe can help you more directly.

18 MS. MAUSER: Okay. And can you 

19 answer one more? Who was the person that 

20 spoke as the spokesperson for the Hematite 

21 plant on your end?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I couldn't 
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1 understand you. Please?

2 MS. MAUSER: Who was the person 

3 who spoke on your end when Clarissa was 

4 speaking on the petition, on behalf of the 

5 petition? Who was your spokesperson?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, the person 

7 presenting from the Board was Dr. Anderson.

8 MS. MAUSER: Okay. Thank you.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Now, is 

10 there somebody else on the phone who wishes to 

11 make a public comment?

12 MS. EATON: Yes. I would.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Please identify 

14 yourself.

15 MS. EATON: This is Clarissa Eaton 

16 again.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

18 MS. EATON: I don't have a 

19 question. I do have a comment. I feel that 

20 this investigation has been very -- it's just 

21 not set well with us at all, and the reason 

22 being is we went from no records to no Site 
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1 Profile. The Site Profile was performed in 

2 the same year that my petition qualified.

3 The company had admitted that they 

4 had no records in a document that they had 

5 checked. And then somehow a few years later 

6 Westinghouse I'm assuming since they are the 

7 potentially responsible party that is actually 

8 doing the decommissioning at the site today 

9 had provided them some documents, to wit, I 

10 believe the NIOSH and the SC&A group have been 

11 basing their extrapolations and everything off 

12 of.

13 My concern, my most recent 

14 concern, is with the fact that Westinghouse, 

15 being the administrator, just back in 2011, 

16 they were sanctioned by the Nuclear Regulatory 

17 Commission for inaccurately supplying surveys 

18 about the uranium-235. And they were found to 

19 significantly exceed the amounts reported 

20 initially to the NRC. With that same 

21 violation, they were also cited with 

22 improperly storing the uranium in containers 
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1 that were emitting 300,000 per minute. And 

2 also they had deactivated the monitoring 

3 systems.

4 This company is obviously very 

5 reckless in their housekeeping, even today. My 

6 concern is that the workers are still being 

7 exposed and no one is protecting them. And 

8 then you add on top of the fact that they are 

9 supplying inaccurate information to our 

10 regulators that we pay to watch out for our 

11 safety as not only a workplace but a nation.

12 And this isn't the first time that 

13 they were sanctioned for safety issues. They 

14 had inadvertently shipped some fuel pellets to 

15 Canada twice, metal alloys. This company that 

16 has supplied you with these records should be 

17 deemed unreliable.

18 I would submit to the Board that 

19 they reconsider and possibly reverse their 

20 decision. There are too many things here that 

21 aren't adding up. And everything that does 

22 add up stinks to high heaven, administratively 
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1 speaking.

2 [Identifying information redacted]

3 also was -- excuse me. Westinghouse had also 

4 submitted a urinalysis that my petitioner 

5 [identifying information redacted] said he 

6 never participated in. No recourse was ever 

7 done on that end.

8 The data gaps, the unreliable 

9 vendors, the unreliable supplier with 

10 information like Westinghouse today is very 

11 troublesome to the fact that -- are we getting 

12 -- do we have truthful information?

13 I mean, these people went to work 

14 and signed a privacy agreement. And, for 

15 whatever reason, it has protected the company. 

16 And I just don't feel that these workers that 

17 were exposed that have these covered cancers

18 are getting a fair shake in this 

19 investigation. And I beg and plead the Board 

20 to reconsider and to check what I am telling 

21 you about the sanctions from the Nuclear 

22 Regulatory Commission.
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1 The most recent event, 48048, of 

2 June 26, 2012, again they significantly 

3 exceeded levels allowed in containers.

4 I just don't feel that this whole 

5 process has been claimant-friendly. We have 

6 too many bad things that have added up against 

7 these workers. And, for whatever it is worth, 

8 I am very disappointed.

9 Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

11 Anybody else on the phone wish to 

12 make public comments?

13 (No response.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Hearing 

15 no one else, anybody else in the audience wish 

16 to make public comments? Yes?

17 MS. CARROLL: Hello. My name is

18 Stephanie Carroll. And I am an authorized rep 

19 for many Rocky Flats workers, also some 

20 workers from Nevada Test Site. Thank you for 

21 allowing me to speak. I wanted to give the 

22 workers a chance yesterday.
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1 I usually order a copy of the 

2 Department of Labor file for all of my 

3 employees or all of my clients when I take 

4 them on. And none of my clients are getting 

5 dose reconstructions, and nobody is affected 

6 by the SEC at this time because I specialize 

7 in chronic beryllium disease. So all of my 

8 work for the SEC is not for profit or 

9 anything.

10 I am submitting a couple of 

11 documents that I have found. I have a lot of 

12 IH, industrial hygiene processing reports. I 

13 just gave one to Terrie that had thorium 

14 listed. But I could go through my files and 

15 find a lot more that have thorium listed, and 

16 I plan on presenting those to you in the 

17 future and getting to work a lot harder on 

18 this and looking for more documents for you 

19 because I really believe that the most 

20 important aspect of this is the data 

21 integrity. And we need to know that there 

22 were no intentions on the part of the 
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1 contractors or on the contractors to falsify 

2 any records or destroy records for profit.

3 I noticed that it just seems that 

4 some of the agencies have this attitude 

5 towards the workers that perhaps they could be 

6 not telling the truth because there is money 

7 to be made if they can apply for the program 

8 and get approved. There is $150,000 at stake.

9 There is something called in the 

10 EEOICPA Program probative evidence. If you 

11 can submit evidence that is produced or 

12 documented before 2000, it's probative 

13 evidence. The Department of Labor will accept 

14 it because they assume that you are not 

15 committing fraud to get $150,000 if you are a 

16 worker.

17 So I just think that that's 

18 amazing that they look at workers as being 

19 able to commit fraud for 150,000, but nobody 

20 looks at the contractors and wonders, are they 

21 changing documents to get these absolutely 

22 huge fees and bonuses for closing up Rocky 
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1 Flats 40-50 years early. And we really, 

2 really need to take into account, was there 

3 any motivation to change the documents. I 

4 don't want to say anything else about that, 

5 but let's just think about that.

6 I have a TLD detail report from 

7 1994 with handwritten calculations on it. So 

8 they have gone beyond what had been printed 

9 out and put in new calculations. I have an 

10 external dose-equivalent data handwritten 

11 original report with calculations not added to 

12 the final report.

13 I have a nasal smear report on the 

14 same day, the same employee with two different 

15 decision levels and counts. And this was -- I 

16 also have a failure to submit urine samples. 

17 And I have got that through most of my files 

18 where employees would not show up for their 

19 urine samples and over and over and over 

20 again. And a month later, they would come 

21 back and get their urine sample, two months 

22 later another failure to submit on the same 
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1 employee.

2 I also, since I do chronic 

3 beryllium disease, I look at a lot of 

4 pulmonary function tests. And I noticed at 

5 the medical office at Rocky Flats, that they 

6 would have different measurements for the 

7 pulmonary function test over and over and over 

8 again for all of my clients. And we're 

9 talking over and over and over again. It 

10 looks like a policy of changing the pulmonary 

11 function test so that I guess the workers 

12 could keep using the respirators and keep 

13 doing respirator work.

14 And I've got those. I will show 

15 them to you. I just didn't bring them to this 

16 meeting.

17 So I have these, and I also have 

18 an affidavit from one of my workers that has 

19 already been approved for his money. He has 

20 no financial gain from writing this affidavit. 

21 He gained his 150,000 for chronic beryllium 

22 disease after an 11-year -- it was a 10-year 
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1 fight. He actually was diagnosed in 2007 by 

2 an on-site doctor, but it took him until 2011 

3 to get approved. I am just going to read part 

4 of it into the record.

5 "Related to my radiological work, 

6 I would like to discuss my tritium work. I 

7 guarantee you there were releases of that 

8 material. Working with that stuff was one 

9 spooky job.

10 "I took numerous urine analysis 

11 tests and never received or had access to any 

12 results. After working with tritium, we would 

13 take the UA test at the medical building. The 

14 test materials were put in Mason jars and 

15 later into open top plastic bottles. Neither 

16 of these bottle types was tamper-proof, to the 

17 best of my knowledge. These tests were called 

18 six-packs by us workers. If a worker did not 

19 fill the test container to the necessary 

20 level, the medical staff would sometimes top 

21 it off with tap water. This practice would 

22 clearly negatively affect the quality and 
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1 consistency of the test.

2 "Lastly, I would like to add, on 

3 occasion I witnessed coworkers would take 

4 their dosimeter badges off their bodies and 

5 put them on the fence and then go back into 

6 hot areas to continue working."

7 And, remember, he gets no 

8 financial gain if an SEC is passed. So I just 

9 wanted to turn these in to you and thank you 

10 so much for being here. And I just wish that 

11 we had an advisory board for the Department of 

12 Labor because it would really help to have 

13 some place to go. Please, if there was any 

14 way we could get that to happen, it would be 

15 wonderful.

16 And, lastly, I would like to add 

17 great appreciation to Terrie Barrie and 

18 [identifying information redacted] for all the 

19 work that they put in, you know, another two 

20 people that they don't get any financial gain 

21 from this. And they put in hours and hours of 

22 work and dedication and love into this. And I 
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

323

1 just want to thank them for all their work.

2 So thank you. And thank you to 

3 you.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks. Okay.

5 Anybody else in the room wish to 

6 make public comments?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. If not, 

9 thank you for attending. And we will be 

10 following up. And we will reconvene tomorrow 

11 morning around 8:30.

12 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

13 matter went off the record at 6:26 p.m.) 

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NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

324

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