STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

MOUND

 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 14, 

2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

July 14, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

WELCOME, ADMINISTRATIVE COMMENTS, AGENDA ADDITIONS OR 

REVISIONS 14 

WORKING GROUP CHAIR 

EXTERNAL DOSE FOR INTEGRITY/COMPLETENESS, 14 

MATRIX #14-19 

HIGH FIRED PU-238 MATIRX ISSUE #9 90 

SUMMARY OF THE PRICE-ANDERSON ACT VIOLATIONS 

MATRIX ISSUE #21 140 

ROADMAP TO BIOASSAY DATA 183 

NIOSH RESPONSES TO MOUND MATRIX ITEMS 224 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 248 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

BEACH, Josie 

Nuclear Chemical Operator 

Hanford Reservation 

Richland, Washington 

1 CLAWSON, Bradley 

2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

PRESLEY, Robert W. 

Special Projects Engineer 

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 

Clinton, Tennessee 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

ALVAREZ, BOB, SC&A 

BRACKETT, LIZ, ORAU 

BUCHANAN, RON, SC&A 

CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 

CHEW, MEL, ORAU 

DEMERS, KATHY, SC&A 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A 

GIBSON, MICHAEL, ABRWH 

GILLIAMS, COZELL, NIOSH 

HOFF, JENNIFER, ORAU 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

LABONE, TOM, ORAU 

LIPSZTEIN, JOYCE, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

POTTER, GENE, ORAU 

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS 

RICH, BRYCE, ORAU 

SHARFI, MUTTY, ORAU 

STEWART, DON, MOELLER AND ASSCS. 

ULSH, BRANT, NIOSH 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

1 (9:30 a.m.) 

2 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO

3 MS. BEACH: Good morning, this is Josie Beach 

4 from the Mound working group. Thank you for 

5 your patience this morning while we got 

6 started a little late. 

7 Lew, I’m going to go ahead and turn 

8 the microphone over to you to start. 

9 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Thank you, Josie. 

10 This is Lew Wade, and I’m acting as 

11 the Designated Federal Official for this work 

12 group. I would also note for the record that 

13 Brant Ulsh, a federal employee, is in the work 

14 group meeting room. 

15 Is that correct, Brant? 

16 DR. ULSH: Yes, I’m here. 

17 DR. WADE (by Telephone): So we have a 

18 federal official also in the work group if for 

19 any reason I was to lose contact with this 

20 call. I would also inquire before we begin, 

21 do we have a member of OGC on the line as 

22 well? 
7

1 (no response) 

2 DR. WADE (by Telephone): A member of the 

3 Office of General Counsel? 

4 (no response) 

5 DR. WADE (by Telephone): We don’t need a 

6 member of OGC. As a courtesy I was asking if 

7 there was one present. I’ll ask again before 

8 we conclude our introductions. 

9 Ray, are you up and running? 

10 THE COURT REPORTER: Yes, sir. 

11 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Great. This is a 

12 meeting of the Mound work group. This is a 

13 work group on the special exposure cohort as 

14 it relates to the Mound site, and the chair of 

15 that work group is Josie Beach. 

16 Josie, you’re in the room? 

17 MS. BEACH: Yes, I am. 

18 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Phillip Schofield 

19 is a member. 

20 Phillip, are you with us? 

21 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes, I am. 

22 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Present in the 

23 room? 

24 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

25 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Robert Presley 
8

1 present in the room? 

2 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, sir. 

3 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Brad Clawson 

4 present in the room? 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Yes. 

6 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Dr. Ziemer is 

7 listed as an alternate on this work group. Is 

8 Dr. Ziemer involved in the call or present in 

9 the room? 

10 MS. BEACH: Lew, he did indicate he would 

11 not be available today. 

12 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Good. Are there 

13 any other Board members who are either in the 

14 room and on the call who have not yet been 

15 identified? 

16 (no response) 

17 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Any other Board 

18 members? 

19 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): This is Mike 

20 Gibson, Board member. I am conflicted, and 

21 I’m listening in as a member of the public. 

22 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Okay, thank you, 

23 Michael. 

24 Any other Board members participating 

25 who have not yet identified themselves? 
9

1 (no response) 

2 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Okay, we do not 

3 have a quorum of the Board, and that’s 

4 appropriate for a work group meeting, so we 

5 can begin. 

6 Before I do the introductions, let me 

7 do a very brief explanation as to a part of 

8 the confusion for this morning with apologies 

9 to everyone who’s been impacted by it. But 

10 the situation at NIOSH is that John Howard, 

11 our very able leader, has completed his six12 year term as of last Friday. Whether or not 

13 John will be reappointed still remains to be 

14 seen. There’s much speculation about that, 

15 but starting this morning, Dr. Christine 

16 Branche is acting as the NIOSH Director, and 

17 therefore, Christine could not be on this 

18 call. 

19 Chia-Chia Chang from Christine’s staff 

20 is en route, but her plane was delayed, and 

21 Chia-Chia should arrive there before too long. 

22 Rather than wait until the originally delayed 

23 time of 10:45, I stepped in to let us start a 

24 bit early because I didn’t want to be 

25 disrespectful of the time of the Board 
10

1 members, the work group members who are 

2 already assembled. So with apologies to the 

3 little bit of a hiccup this morning, but 

4 there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to 

5 continue smoothly from here. 

6 Let me ask for other members of the 

7 NIOSH or ORAU team who are in the room or on 

8 the call to identify themselves. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT (by Telephone): This is Larry 

10 Elliott, Director of OCAS. I’m not conflicted 

11 at Mound. 

12 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Hi, Larry. 

13 Other NIOSH/OCAS -- excuse me, 

14 OCAS/ORAU team members present. 

15 MR. STEWART: I’m Don Stewart from Dave 

16 Moeller and Associates. I am not conflicted 

17 at Mound. 

18 MR. CHEW: I’m Mel Chew from the O-R-A-U 

19 team. I am not conflicted with Mound. 

20 DR. ULSH: Brant Ulsh from OCAS, no conflict 

21 with Mound. 

22 MS. HOFF: Jennifer Hoff with the ORAU team, 

23 not conflicted with Mound. 

24 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Liz Brackett 

25 with the ORAU team. I am conflicted at Mound. 
11

1 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Other members of 

2 the extended NIOSH/ORAU family. 

3 MR. SHARFI (by Telephone): Mutty Sharfi, 

4 ORAU team, conflicted at Mound. 

5 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, O-R-A-U team, 

6 conflicted. 

7 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Gene Potter, 

8 ORAU team, not conflicted. 

9 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Welcome, Gene. 

10 Other members of the NIOSH/ORAU team. 

11 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): Good morning, 

12 this is Tom LaBone, ORAU team. I’m 

13 conflicted. 

14 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Anyone else, 

15 NIOSH/ORAU team? 

16 (no response) 

17 DR. WADE (by Telephone): How about SC&A? 

18 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): This is Joe 

19 Fitzgerald. I’m not conflicted. 

20 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): John Mauro, not 

21 conflicted. 

22 MS. DeMERS: This is Kathy Robertson-DeMers, 

23 and I’m conflicted. 

24 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Bob Alvarez, 

25 not conflicted. 
12

1 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): This is Ron 

2 Buchanan, not conflicted. 

3 MS. BEACH: Ron Buchanan. 

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): Joyce 

5 Lipsztein, not conflicted. 

6 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Good morning, 

7 Joyce. 

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): Good morning. 

9 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Other members of 

10 the SC&A team? 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Do we have other 

13 federal employees who are working on this 

14 call? 

15 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Good 

16 morning, Lew, this is Liz Homoki-Titus with 

17 HHS. 

18 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Good morning, Liz. 

19 We asked for you earlier. We knew you would 

20 join us. 

21 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Thank you. 

22 MR. RAFKY (by Telephone): This is Michael 

23 Rafky, also from HHS. 

24 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Welcome, Michael. 

25 Other working federal employees? 
13

1 MS. GILLIAMS (by Telephone): Good morning, 

2 this is Cozell Gilliams standing in for Zaida 

3 Burgos. I wanted to make sure that certain 

4 participants were in attendance, and they are. 

5 I am disconnecting at this point. 

6 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Thank you. 

7 Other federal employees? 

8 (no response) 

9 DR. WADE (by Telephone): How about members 

10 of Congress or their representatives? 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. WADE (by Telephone): What about 

13 workers, petitioners, their representatives? 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Anyone else who 

16 would like to be identified associated with 

17 the Mound site? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Anyone else at all 

20 who would like to be identified for the record 

21 as being on this call? 

22 (no response) 

23 DR. WADE (by Telephone): The last chance to 

24 get your name in the record. 

25 (no response) 
14

1 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Okay, Josie, it’s 

2 all yours. 

3 WELCOME, ADMINISTRATIVE COMMENTS, AGENDA ADDITIONS OR 

4 REVISIONS

5 MS. BEACH: All right, Lew. Once again I 

6 want to thank you for stepping in and allowing 

7 us to start our meeting a bit earlier than 

8 what was anticipated. 

9 DR. WADE (by Telephone): My pleasure. It’s 

10 like old times. 

11 MS. BEACH: Yes, it is, and I appreciate it. 

12 First of all I want to direct your 

13 attention to the agenda. It is posted on the 

14 website. For those of you that don’t have it 

15 in front of you, you can look there. The only 

16 thing that’s changing with the agenda unless I 

17 hear from somebody else is everything is one18 half hour later than what was posted on the 

19 original agenda. So any changes that anybody 

20 -- we’ll get you one. 

EXTERNAL DOSE FOR INTEGRITY/COMPLETENESS, 

21 MATRIX #14-19

22 At this point then we will start with 

23 “External dose for integrity and completeness, 

24 Matrix number 14 through 19.” And I believe 

25 we’re going to start with SC&A. 
15

1 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yes, thank 

2 you. 

3 This is Joe Fitzgerald. Ron Buchanan 

4 is only available for the morning, so we 

5 thought we would go ahead and discuss this in 

6 this particular session. And before turning 

7 to Ron, I think our issue -- and this is not 

8 just 14, but a number of these issues that 

9 deal with the neutron dose estimations -- go 

10 to the same question which is the ability to 

11 rely on NTA film information given the energy 

12 dependence of NTA film. This is not a new 

13 issue. In fact, this is a pretty generic 

14 question that’s been raised at other sites. 

15 What concerns us is that the kind of 

16 measurements that would give some sense of 

17 what the spectrum is suggests that there’s 

18 certainly a number of neutron sources below 

19 the threshold for the NTA film that may be 

20 missed. And the question is can one still 

21 come up with a dose estimation? So starting 

22 with 14 I think we want to hone in on that 

23 particular point and get maybe some response 

24 from NIOSH and the ORAU team that would 

25 clarify that. 
16

1 Ron, do you want to -- I think we can 

2 summarize what we believe we read in the NIOSH 

3 response, and certainly, Brant, NIOSH can 

4 correct us if we get the interpretation wrong 

5 from this last set of responses. And then we 

6 can give you our take at this point. 

7 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): This is Ron 

8 Buchanan of SC&A. And the issue 14 and 15 are 

9 separated in the matrix because of the 

10 response in the evaluation report by NIOSH, 

11 but they are very closely tied. 

12 And I want to start off briefly by 

13 explaining the problem so that we can see what 

14 is needed to solve the problem and the reason 

15 that SC&A thinks perhaps that it could be an 

16 accuracy problem in assigning neutron dose at 

17 Mound. And so just briefly, 14 and 15 refer 

18 to the neutron energy spectrum at Mound. And 

19 in the earlier days they used polonium sources 

20 which had a fairly high energy, four-and-a21 half meV or so. 

22 And then they started working with 

23 plutonium sources in the ‘60s which was more 

24 like a 1.3 meV. And what we would like to 

25 know is how NIOSH would propose reconstructing 
17

1 the dose because of the following problems: 

2 As most of you know, NTA film decreases its 

3 response very rapidly when you get down around 

4 a half, 0.7 meV, and so neutrons below that 

5 energy aren’t registered. And the ones around 

6 that energy and above it fade with time 

7 depending on when the film is read after the 

8 exposure occurs. 

9 And so initially the polonium sources 

10 put out a fairly high energy neutron, four11 and-a-half meV. It gets degraded and in the 

12 evaluation report, it was stated initially 

13 that there was the high energy neutrons, and 

14 then later on in the report it stated that 

15 there was degraded neutrons. And so this 

16 would cause a problem in the calibration. 

17 Originally, it was calibrated with 

18 polonium source and that would create a 

19 problem in that in the work environment, the 

20 neutrons are rapidly degraded. And so the 

21 person wearing the badge would receive dose 

22 which wouldn’t be registered on the NTA film. 

23 And then later on it was switched to a 

24 plutonium calibration source which has that 

25 1.3 meV energy, and additionally, the same 
18

1 thing would happen. The worker in the field 

2 would be exposed to neutrons below the 0.7 or 

3 0.5 meV threshold, and it wouldn’t be 

4 registered. 

5 Now the problem is you really don’t 

6 know what the spectrum is out there in the 

7 work area as a function of location process 

8 and changes over time. And so you have to 

9 have some sort of absolute neutron measurement 

10 out there to compare your NTA film to before 

11 you can do a direct dose assignment. 

12 And so now if you read through TBD-6, 

13 they make several statements about adjustment 

14 to the dose, Meyers and such in his 

15 recollection and his documentation state some 

16 of that was done. And I want to briefly cover 

17 that that let’s you know what was done and 

18 what wasn’t done. 

19 I cannot find that there was any 

20 absolute NTA measurements done simultaneously 

21 with a neutron method such as rim balls and/or 

22 tissue equivalent proportional counter to say, 

23 okay, tintrac* is equal to a certain ^ dose 

24 out in the workplace. Now NIOSH has said that 

25 there is some -- 
19

1 MS. BEACH: Ron, Ron -- 

2 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): -- new data 

3 that they’re looking at, but I have not seen 

4 that data. 

5 MS. BEACH: Ron, could I stop you for just a 

6 moment. I’m going to take a page out of 

7 Christine’s book and ask those of you that are 

8 on the phone and are not speaking to please 

9 mute your phone. We can hear sneezing, and it 

10 is very disruptive. Thank you. 

11 Sorry, Ron. 

12 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): And so what we 

13 want to do is to, what we need to do is to see 

14 if there’s any absolute neutron measurements 

15 to compare the NTA film to. Now, in the 

16 Meyers documents he does talk about the fact 

17 that they found the polonium source and the 

18 plutonium source gave about a factor of 2.3 

19 difference in calibration so they made some 

20 adjustment or should make some adjustment at 

21 that period. 

22 And then in 1970 to ’76 they found 

23 that fading was a problem, and they adjusted 

24 the dose by a factor of two. Now, I cannot 

25 really find in the, looking at the MESH 
20

1 database and the old handwritten records I 

2 could find in documentation, I cannot see that 

3 that was done directly. Now, there might be 

4 evidence that was done. I could not really 

5 see it except in the MESH database they have 

6 neutron dose, and then they have another file 

7 called Double Neutron Dose. 

8 And that affects only 1970 to ’76 is 

9 fading. And so that information is there. 

10 And the dose reconstructions I’ve looked at do 

11 use the double neutron dose during ’70 to ’76 

12 to correct for fading during that period. 

13 MR. STEWART: Ron? Does or does not use the 

14 double dose? 

15 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): They do use 

16 the neutron double dose in the few claims I 

17 looked at. 

18 So where SC&A is at at this point, 

19 like I say, the neutron spectrum measurements 

20 that we could find in the documents, I found 

21 four or five from 1963 to 2001. And the 

22 spectrum measurements, there wasn’t much 

23 detail on how it was done. One of them was 

24 done with two rem balls that I did find which 

25 doesn’t give you a very fine tuning. And the 
21

1 average energy range ran from 0.5 to 1.2 meV 

2 with the average about 0.3 -- excuse me, 0.8 

3 meV. 

4 And I’d like to point out that if you 

5 have an average energy of around say 0.8 meV 

6 or 1 meV, and you’re calibrating with 1.3 meV 

7 neutron source, you’re going to register low 

8 because that’s going to skew your whole 

9 spectrum down. More of it’s going to fall 

10 below the threshold of the NTA film. It’s 

11 going to miss it. 

12 And unfortunately, if the average 

13 energy was 1.3 or above, you would be on or 

14 slightly claimant favorable. When you start 

15 scooting down to 0.8, 0.9, 1 meV, a lot of 

16 that tail’s going to fall below the threshold, 

17 and you’re going to have a low dose registered 

18 on your NTA film. And so that’s the point 

19 that we’re at now is that we have not seen the 

20 neutron energy spectrum that they have talked 

21 about other than the few I could find which 

22 were fairly low energy. 

23 And then also if you’re not going to 

24 use the NTA film results, the other option is 

25 using the neutron over photon value that you 
22

1 assign a certain N-over-P value, multiply your 

2 photon dose by that and assign neutron dose. 

3 And that’s been done at some of the sites. 

4 However, of course, the TBD did not 

5 address that in any detail, and I understand 

6 that NIOSH has some N-over-P values that have 

7 come up since December or so. And we have not 

8 seen them. We don’t know how they were 

9 measured or where or when, but you would need 

10 measurements done by something other than NTA 

11 film because you can’t correct NTA film with 

12 NTA film. 

13 And then you would need it as a 

14 function of location and time because the 

15 workers at different locations, different 

16 times and exposed to different neutron 

17 spectrums employing different neutron-to18 photon ratios to do that. So that’s where 

19 SC&A is at right now. And so I guess at this 

20 point we could open it up for discussion. 

21 DR. ULSH: This is Brant Ulsh from NIOSH. 

22 Thanks for that summary, Ron. We understand 

23 the issue with, I think you mentioned two 

24 issues. One is the neutron energy spectrum, 

25 and the second one that you briefly touched on 
23

1 was fading. 

2 Not only are we aware of it, but the 

3 Mound health physics staff appear to be aware 

4 of it, too. If you look at the document, I 

5 think it’s called “History of Neutron 

6 Monitoring at Mound” or something close to 

7 that. I don’t have it right in front of me. 

8 They explicitly talk about at least the fading 

9 issue. I’m pretty sure they talk about the 

10 neutron spectrum issue. 

11 In addition, I’ve got Don Stewart in 

12 the room, and he’s going to talk a little bit, 

13 in a little bit more detail after I’m done. 

14 But as you noted, in terms of the energy 

15 spectrum they started using plutonium in the, 

16 I think the ‘60s, maybe the late ‘50s, but 

17 they really got hot and heavy into it in the 

18 ‘60s. And that does have a lower, unmoderated 

19 energy than the polonium. 

20 But we explicitly talked about in the 

21 evaluation report that we are well aware of 

22 the degraded neutron energy spectrum. The way 

23 that it’s been done at other sites, for 

24 instance, at Y-12, is you simply apply a 

25 correction factor to account for the fraction 
24

1 of the neutrons that are below the NTA 

2 threshold. 

3 You’re correct if they used an 

4 unmoderated source to calibrate that you might 

5 be underestimating the neutron dose the 

6 workers would experience in the field. But I 

7 know at least at, well, the sites that I know 

8 of, I’m thinking specifically of Rocky Flats. 

9 They didn’t just use a bare, unmoderated 

10 source. They used varying degrees of 

11 moderation in their calibrations. Now, I 

12 don’t know if they did that at Mound off the 

13 top of my head. We’d have to check on that. 

14 But it would be surprising if they didn’t. 

15 Also, there’s an extensive set of 

16 neutron energy spectrum measurements. I’m 

17 looking at Don for confirmation. Yes, yes, 

18 there are. And perhaps Don can give you some 

19 more details on that. So the kinds of things 

20 that you indicated you would like to see in 

21 terms of neutron energy spectrum measurements, 

22 they do exist, and we do have them. 

23 You are correct that we are also, 

24 well, we plan to rely on NTA film, not 

25 primarily on an n/p ratio, although we are 
25

1 pursuing an n/p ratio as well. We have paired 

2 neutron and photon measurements for different 

3 gloveboxes in the different lines, and the SM 

4 and PP Buildings, a few I think in Building 

5 50. 

6 And Don can give you some more details 

7 there, but that’s strictly as a backup. The 

8 primary line of estimating neutron dose is 

9 going to be the NTA film. I know that we’ve 

10 done similarly to the way it’s been done at 

11 other sites. 

12 Don, do you want to give some more 

13 details? 

14 MS. BEACH: Before you start, Don, Brant, 

15 you mentioned a paper “The History of -- 

16 DR. ULSH: Yes, it’s -- 

17 MS. BEACH: What’s the name of that again? 

18 DR. ULSH: It’s referenced in the evaluation 

19 report. I think it’s called “History of 

20 Neutron Monitoring at Mound” or something like 

21 that. 

22 MR. STEWART: It’s in the site records 

23 database. 

24 DR. ULSH: I’ll tell you what, while Don’s 

25 talking I’ll try to find it. 
26

1 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

2 MR. STEWART: Just starting with the fading 

3 issue, Mound was aware of this issue, and they 

4 began in 1968 to apply a protocol when they 

5 developed the NTA films to correct for track 

6 fading depending on how, on the film’s last 

7 exposure and the date of processing. So we 

8 may have a gap there. We’ll need to go back 

9 and apply similar corrections to data related 

10 to plutonium prior to that date. I believe it 

11 was the middle of 1968. So track fading was 

12 addressed by the Mound people. 

13 We are preparing a document that 

14 discusses a number of neutron/photon ratios 

15 based on periodic measurements made through a 

16 fairly long, significant portion of the 

17 history of the SM and PP Buildings. We will 

18 use that n/p ratio primarily to assign missed 

19 dose rather than to apply unmonitored dose 

20 because our position is that most workers or 

21 all workers at Mound were monitored for the 

22 areas that they worked in. We don’t see a lot 

23 of personnel who claim exposure who do not 

24 have dosimetry records. And I believe SC&A 

25 has found that to be the case as well. 
27

1 DR. ULSH: Well, I would also note, Ron -- 

2 this is Brant Ulsh again -- as you mentioned, 

3 when you look in the dose reconstructions for 

4 1970 to ’76, we did use the double the neutron 

5 dose, and that’s noted on your spreadsheet on 

6 the Findings tab, column B-27. One hundred 

7 percent of the MESH neutron dose values for 

8 ’70 to ’76 were correctly entered as two times 

9 the original. I believe that the reason for 

10 that -- 

11 Was that fading, Don, or was that 

12 spectral issues? 

13 MR. STEWART: I believe that primarily 

14 spectral issues at that time. And it, the way 

15 the memos read, they had recorded those doses 

16 and committed to double those doses when the 

17 records were transposed or moved to another 

18 database, and that happened and they were 

19 entered in the MESH as I understand it. Mutty 

20 can correct me if I’m wrong there. 

21 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): This is Ron 

22 Buchanan. Yes, apparently, the MESH database, 

23 they entered the original neutron dose and 

24 then they doubled. They had a separate file 

25 with double neutron doses. And according to 
28

1 the TBD-6, this was due to fading. Now, 

2 whether that’s correct or not, I don’t know, 

3 but TBD-6 does say that that was due to fading 

4 as opposed to ratio. 

5 DR. ULSH: And I think that was mainly in 

6 the PP Building because they had additional 

7 shielding in PP Building that would knock down 

8 the neutron energy spectrum. Before they 

9 moved into PP Building, they had much less 

10 shielding in the SM Building. 

11 And in addition, they were working 

12 with, as you mentioned, polonium in the early 

13 days, so you had a much higher energy, 

14 starting energy so the fading issue was less. 

15 But they did also work with Plutonium-238. 

16 The only time you would have a fading 

17 issue though is if the calibration films are 

18 treated differently than the films that are 

19 worn in the field. If you examine that, the 

20 calibration films over time, the time period 

21 that you would exchange and read the ones on 

22 the film, it’s all going to come out in the 

23 wash. And we have every indication that 

24 that’s exactly what they did at Mound. 

25 So you’re right that there is a 
29

1 fraction, there is going to be some fading, 

2 but that’s accounted for in the way they 

3 handled calibration films. You’re also 

4 correct that there’s a fraction of the neutron 

5 energy spectrum that is below the NTA 

6 detection limit, but again, that was accounted 

7 for with spectral measurements which I 

8 understand you guys haven’t seen those. We 

9 will provide those to you. 

10 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Okay, now, on 

11 the track fading, I would like to emphasize 

12 that before 1968 there does not appear to be 

13 any correction for track fading. From the 

14 start of NTA film about 1950, they did do a 

15 measurement in ’51, but nothing became of it. 

16 As far as I can find, July of 1968 they 

17 started doing the one week-, two week-, four 

18 week-type thing. And then in 1970 to ’76 they 

19 did a two times correction factor. So we 

20 still have the ’50 to ’68 timeframe where 

21 fading is still unaddressed. 

22 Now, I realize this wouldn’t be as big 

23 a problem with your polonium sources as it was 

24 with your plutonium sources; however, that 

25 fading was not addressed during that period of 
30

1 time in any document I can find. And so that 

2 would be a large issue during the earlier 

3 times. I don’t know, it depends on the energy 

4 spectrum in the work area. 

5 MR. STEWART: Plutonium began to enter into 

6 the source term in the late ‘50s in small 

7 amounts, usually weapons-grade-related stuff. 

8 Later in the early ‘60s it began to be a 

9 production issue with the PU-238 sources. So 

10 there is a gap there. At some point they did 

11 not account for fading, and that is an issue 

12 that is currently under review for the 

13 revision of this TBD. 

14 DR. ULSH: But again, I think I would 

15 propose that this is more of a TBD issue. 

16 It’s a matter of what you multiply the neutron 

17 dose by. Is it two? Is it zero, or not zero. 

18 Is it one because they’ve already accounted 

19 for it? Is it two because they haven’t? I 

20 don’t see, it can’t be infinite. I don’t 

21 think it’s an SEC issue. I think it’s a TBD 

22 issue. That doesn’t mean it’s not important, 

23 but I would put it in the TBD issue. 

24 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): I would agree 

25 if the amount of neutron below the threshold 
31

1 can be accounted for by some other absolute 

2 neutron measurement or can be shown to be 

3 fairly insignificant. At this point I think 

4 that’s where the SEC issue comes in is that we 

5 don’t know at this time that it can be 

6 accurately, with sufficient accuracy, assign 

7 the neutron dose in the NTA film until we see 

8 how that would be done. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): And, Ron, 

10 this is Joe. It sounds like if one could see 

11 the spectral measurements, which is what Brant 

12 is suggesting, and see how the correction 

13 factors are derived from those that would, I 

14 guess, go a long way to answering your 

15 question. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes, at this 

17 point I cannot rule it out as an SEC issue, 

18 and I can’t say it is an SEC issue. I think 

19 it’s something that remains open until we can 

20 look at this further data that we haven’t 

21 seen. 

22 DR. ULSH: Okay, I have down –- Josie, with 

23 your agreement -- I have down as an action 

24 item that we will provide the spectral 

25 measurement to the working group and to SC&A, 
32

1 spectral measurement data. But again, you 

2 said yourself, Ron, earlier that, I think you 

3 said that the average energy was 0.8 which 

4 would mean that there is a fraction of the 

5 spectrum that is well above the NTA detection 

6 limits. 

7 So again it’s just a question of 

8 picking the right number. I mean, even if 

9 it’s one percent that’s above the NTA film you 

10 can estimate. You just multiply by the 

11 appropriate factor. I understand that 

12 agreeing to what that number is depends on 

13 providing the spectral measurement, but it 

14 seems very obvious to me that this is not an 

15 SEC issue. That’s my position. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Okay, well, I 

17 don’t know what the official definition of SEC 

18 issue is, but until it has been shown that it 

19 can be corrected for, and will be corrected 

20 for, then the accuracy would not be 

21 appropriate at this point. And so I guess 

22 it’s up to the working group to decide when 

23 that cutoff is. But as far as I see it now is 

24 that we cannot sign off and say, okay, it can 

25 be produced with sufficient accuracy until we 
33

1 see that it can be, that it’s been 

2 demonstrated that it can be. 

3 MS. BEACH: And then we also heard from Don. 

4 You had a paper on neutron/photon fading you 

5 were going to, you were still working on. 

6 DR. ULSH: That’s in the neutron history 

7 document I showed you, and I have that as an 

8 action item to provide that to you as well. 

9 MS. BEACH: So those two action items have 

10 come out of this. Did I miss any others? 

11 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes, we 

12 haven’t seen the details on the neutron/photon 

13 values. We talked about spectral measurements 

14 and then neutron/photon values. So we need to 

15 look at those, how they was determined, where, 

16 when and the details on that. 

17 MS. BEACH: Okay. 

18 MR. STEWART: That paper’s currently under 

19 review. 

20 DR. ULSH: And we’ll have that as an action 

21 item and provide that as well. 

22 MS. BEACH: Okay. Is there any other items, 

23 work group members? Questions? 

24 (no response) 

25 MS. BEACH: Ron, are you prepared to go on 
34

1 to 16? 

2 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes. Item 16 

3 was the shallow dose, and this again is kind 

4 of a thing that we couldn’t prove one way or 

5 the other. Beta dose mainly and low energy 

6 photon dose make up the shallow dose. 

7 And Mound originally had a lot of beta 

8 dose when they were using the irradiated 

9 slugs, and there’s some documentation in the 

10 early days about that. And then they did some 

11 rearranging, engineering measures to get the 

12 worker away from that. And so then it kind of 

13 went off the radar screen in the TBDs until 

14 the ‘70s. 

15 And the way I understand it is that 

16 the person reading the film badge, you have an 

17 open window which would record all the doses, 

18 and a shielded window which would record the 

19 deep dose. And if the dosimetrist seen a 

20 blackened area under the open window, it means 

21 that there was probably some shallow dose. So 

22 he would record that density and then record 

23 the shielded dose as normal, and they used, I 

24 believe, a radium calibration to determine the 

25 density reading and then convert that to a 
35

1 deep dose to the worker. 

2 Now there appears to be two areas here 

3 of concern that we have is that, one, I could 

4 not find any recording of shallow dose. Now I 

5 didn’t, I only went through a few records, but 

6 I couldn’t find in early days any recording of 

7 shallow dose. And, secondly, and there does 

8 appear to be some shallow dose recorded in the 

9 later years, ‘70s and ‘80s, and so there’s a 

10 gap there. 

11 There’s kind of a black hole there in 

12 the ‘50s and ‘60s and some in the ‘70s of 

13 shallow dose recording. And then there was no 

14 calibration, beta calibration, until ’79 or 

15 later, and then there was some difficulty in 

16 meeting some of the DOELAP programs or 

17 whatever was prevalent at that time. And it 

18 was into the ‘80s before you could really say 

19 you had a beta calibration so that you could 

20 assign a shallow dose. 

21 But that’s my understanding of the 

22 records and so those are the two things I 

23 wanted to point out was that shallow dose does 

24 not seem to be brought to the forefront much 

25 in the TBD. 
36

1 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

2 If you are not speaking, please mute 

3 your phone. We can hear your conversations on 

4 the line. Thank you. Also, if you don’t have 

5 a mute button, star six will work. Thank you. 

6 Sorry, Ron. 

7 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): That’s okay. 

8 So beta dose, we cannot really find out if it 

9 was a problem especially when they were using 

10 the polonium and before they brought plutonium 

11 in and had a lot of these lower energy 

12 photons. However, we want to point out that 

13 there seems to be two areas there of concern 

14 is the large gap in any recording of shallow 

15 dose in ’50s, ‘60s and up into the ‘70s. 

16 And even if you had it recorded, how 

17 would you assign shallow dose because of the 

18 lack of calibration. And SC&A has questioned, 

19 we need to ask the working group is this an 

20 SEC issue that needs to be presented here or 

21 is this a TBD, a site profile issue. 

22 DR. ULSH: I think we’ll follow the same 

23 format here. I’ll speak in general terms and 

24 let Don fill in the details. 

25 First of all I would just like to 
37

1 point out to the working group for your 

2 consideration, shallow dose is mainly an issue 

3 for skin cancers, not exclusively, there’s a 

4 few more, breast cancer, testicular cancer, I 

5 think, eye, so there’s a few. But the most 

6 common by far where shallow dose would be an 

7 issue is skin cancer. Skin cancer is not an 

8 SEC cancer at this point. 

9 So I think we’re all trying to do the 

10 claimant favorable thing. This doesn’t, of 

11 course, impact on whether or not we can 

12 accurately reconstruct shallow dose, but I 

13 would just ask you to keep that in the back of 

14 your mind as we talk about this in terms of 

15 whether or not it should be the basis of an 

16 SEC issue. If an SEC was granted based on 

17 that, it would disadvantage the people with 

18 skin cancer because they wouldn’t, we would be 

19 saying that we can’t reconstruct the doses for 

20 the skin cancers, and that’s where the shallow 

21 dose is an issue. 

22 Now in terms of whether or not it 

23 really was an issue at all at Mound, one of 

24 the main reasons they designed the T Building 

25 as they did was because of exactly this issue, 
38

1 shallow dose. And that’s why they made many 

2 parts of the processes where this was a 

3 problem, a remote process. I mean, that was 

4 explicitly done on purpose for that reason. 

5 Now, in terms of the history of 

6 shallow dose and when it was an issue, I’ll 

7 turn it over to Don and let you fill in the 

8 blanks, Don. 

9 MR. STEWART: Certainly, at the start of 

10 processing at the Dayton Laboratory they had 

11 some very high shallow dose measurements on 

12 their film dosimeters. And, in fact, they 

13 would, one of the problems was they would 

14 quickly reach their allowable dose, tolerance 

15 dose, at that time. So implicit in the design 

16 of the T Building was control of these shallow 

17 doses among other things. 

18 And so the first two steps of the 

19 process, the slug removal and the initial 

20 concentration step were done in concentration 

21 cells which were operated by personnel outside 

22 the room using long-handled valves and things 

23 of that nature under some very thick, I 

24 believe it was steel shielding to shield them 

25 from this shallow dose. 
39

1 It’s clear that on this basis the 

2 Mound program at least felt that they, quote, 

3 had no beta dose. Whether that’s something 

4 that we need to accept as gospel or we need to 

5 go back and look at their methods for measure 

6 of dose and come to a conclusion that they 

7 were reliable. Certainly, there is a gap 

8 there when they didn’t have a beta calibration 

9 prior to 1978. 

10 And we are reviewing that to see if a 

11 correction factor is appropriate for years 

12 prior to that. Once again, we have a reliably 

13 measured photon dose with our film and TLD 

14 dosimeters. From that we can infer an 

15 accurate or overestimating beta dose when 

16 necessary. 

17 MS. BEACH: I have a question. Can you guys 

18 give me just a brief summary of what is, how 

19 do you define shallow dose? I know each site 

20 looks at it a little bit differently, and I’m 

21 curious as to how Mound is defining shallow 

22 dose. 

23 DR. ULSH: I can give you the overview. I 

24 can’t give you the exact formula because those 

25 vary. At Mound the way that you’re going to 
40

1 get shallow -- well, first of all, shallow 

2 dose is penetrating plus non-penetrating 

3 radiation. So it’s going to include the deep 

4 dose, but on top of that you’re going to have 

5 dose from things like, well, beta, if it 

6 exists, or more importantly at Mound, low 

7 energy photon dose. It doesn’t penetrate but 

8 a couple of millimeters into the skin. So 

9 it’s going to be both of those components 

10 added together. Does that answer your 

11 question? 

12 MR. CLAWSON: It does, but you know it’s 

13 interesting because each one of these sites 

14 it’s all kind of different. I guess from my 

15 kind of point on that was do we kind of know 

16 how Mound set it up? Because all we’ve kind 

17 of seen is at different sites, they’ve all got 

18 kind of a different little process that they, 

19 and terminology for shallow and deep dose. I 

20 just want to make sure that we have 

21 documentation at Mound how they interpreted 

22 this because we’re getting different 

23 interpretations at different sites. 

24 DR. ULSH: I think the reason you’re getting 

25 different interpretations at different sites, 
41

1 Brad, is because different sites have 

2 different kinds of radiation. For instance, 

3 you may not have a low energy photon component 

4 if you’re not dealing with plutonium. So at a 

5 uranium site that wouldn’t be an issue, 

6 whereas beta would be. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: And I understand this. I just 

8 want to make sure that we’re all on the same 

9 track for Mound, their terminology and how 

10 they’re implementing-- 

11 DR. ULSH: I think that is in Meyer’s 

12 history of dosimetry at Mound. 

13 Am I correct, Don? 

14 MR. STEWART: Oh, I’m not sure of the exact 

15 documents. There are a number of places where 

16 they specify the filtration for their open 

17 window, and that for the density of their 

18 filters for the shielded portion of the 

19 dosimeters. And that really is the physical 

20 constraint as to what we consider a shallow 

21 dose. I don’t recall the exact factors 

22 offhand, but I think they used what I would 

23 call a standard filtration for their 

24 dosimeters. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: In Meyer’s, Volume One, page 
42

1 nine, shallow doses were not routinely 

2 reported until the ’69 era. Is that fairly 

3 accurate? According to Meyers that’s -- 

4 MR. STEWART: Yeah. 

5 DR. ULSH: And again, I think that is 

6 because the places where you would be 

7 expecting to get a lot of shallow dose were 

8 remote operations. I mean, that’s why they 

9 did them. 

10 MR. STEWART: And once again about that time 

11 period they were surprised to find that they 

12 had some darkening in the open window portion. 

13 So that’s when they started to look at that. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: That was in the ’77 to ’79 

15 timeframe? 

16 MR. STEWART: A memorandum I think was 

17 issued in 1962. 

18 MS. BEACH: Also, on page 45 the last 

19 paragraph it says what you said earlier about 

20 keeping in mind the shallow dose. Of 50 

21 claims with completed determinations and 

22 employment prior to ’79, 21 have been 

23 determined to be compensable. Could we have a 

24 listing of those 50 cases? I’d like SC&A to 

25 take a look at those. Is that a possibility 
43

1 to get that? 

2 DR. ULSH: Yeah, yeah. We’ll put that as an 

3 action item. 

4 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

5 MR. STEWART: Good. Those numbers may have 

6 changed subsequently. I believe I did that 

7 about a year ago or so. 

8 MS. BEACH: So there wouldn’t be less than 

9 50? 

10 MR. STEWART: No. 

11 MS. BEACH: It may be more. 

12 MR. STEWART: Correct. 

13 DR. ULSH: And if it was a year ago that 

14 would have included -- sorry, that would not 

15 have reflected the SECs from ’49 to ’59. 

16 MR. STEWART: Correct. 

17 DR. ULSH: So those numbers will be 

18 different, but we’ll provide you with those 

19 cases. So I think, if I understand what 

20 you’re asking for, the completed claims -- 

21 whatever the number is. It won’t be 50 any 

22 more -- with employment prior to ’79 that 

23 would have cancers of skin, testes, breast, 

24 lip and eye. 

25 MS. BEACH: Right. 
44

1 MR. STEWART: Probably actually want to look 

2 at skin cancers in this particular . . . 

3 MS. BEACH: Yeah. 

4 DR. ULSH: Well, we can pull you out the 

5 Mound cases that have those cancers. 

6 MS. BEACH: Okay, well, basically it said of 

7 the 50. I just kind of wanted to get an 

8 overview idea of what those looked like. 

9 DR. ULSH: Okay, you’ve got that as an 

10 action item. 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

12 Any other questions, SC&A or Ron, any 

13 other questions on this 16? 

14 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): No, we did not 

15 have -- this is Ron Buchanan. We did not have 

16 any definite points here other than to point 

17 out the gap and the calibration problem. 

18 MS. BEACH: Okay, and just the one action 

19 item or was there an earlier action item? 

20 Just the one I asked for? 

21 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes, that’s 

22 all I know of other than -- is it something 

23 that should remain on the matrix. The working 

24 group will have to decide that. 

25 MS. BEACH: Okay, thank you. 
45

1 And are we ready to move on to 17? 

2 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Okay, this is 

3 Ron Buchanan again and number 17 is the 

4 monitored workers were the most highly 

5 exposed. This is something that we actually, 

6 we get into on every site generally, how do 

7 you know the most highly exposed workers were 

8 monitored. 

9 Again, that’s kind of a placeholder. 

10 We came to the conclusion after looking at the 

11 documents that we did not find documentation 

12 one way or the other that there was no -- we 

13 could not find a documented, continuous 

14 printed document from the operators at Mound, 

15 the companies operating Mound said to lay out 

16 who would be badged and who would not be 

17 badged. 

18 Apparently, it was changed through the 

19 history of the operation of ^, and so we could 

20 not document it who was to be badged and not 

21 be badged other than the highest exposed 

22 workers who were badged. On the other hand 

23 when we get into looking at individual claims, 

24 which we talk about in the next issue, the 22 

25 claims -- went through about 30 really, we did 
46

1 not find an indication that highly exposed 

2 workers were not badged for a long period of 

3 time. 

4 For example, someone that wasn’t an 

5 operator or something did not show in out of 

6 20 years of unbadging or something. 

7 Additionally, secretaries were not badged, 

8 which one would expect, if the most highly 

9 exposed was badged. So at this point SC&A 

10 cannot find documentation showing who was 

11 badged. NIOSH said last time maybe they had 

12 some documents that showed the policy. We 

13 have not received anything on that yet, but we 

14 couldn’t find anything a really smoking gun 

15 saying that they weren’t badged. So that is 

16 where we’re at on number 17. 

17 MS. BEACH: NIOSH, do you have anything? 

18 DR. ULSH: Yeah. 

19 With regard, you know, you’re right, 

20 Ron, this does come up it seems at every site. 

21 And I have to admit that I find that a little 

22 bit frustrating, the idea that we would assume 

23 that a site would not monitor the highest 

24 exposed people. We have not found that 

25 anywhere, that that was at least the goal of 
47

1 the program. I mean, it would be the health 

2 physics equivalent of medical malpractice. 

3 If you monitored anyone other than who 

4 you believed to be a highest exposed. Now, of 

5 course, there are situations, you know, these 

6 are human beings. There are situations that 

7 might have gone unrecognized inadvertently. 

8 That is a possibility. We don’t have evidence 

9 of that at Mound. But I guess I would say I 

10 would have to see evidence that they had done 

11 this for some reason that I just can’t figure 

12 out. 

13 But in terms of cohort badging, well, 

14 it’s understandable that you wouldn’t see 

15 documentation talking about cohort badging if 

16 they never did it. I mean, why talk about it 

17 if you don’t do it. We don’t have any 

18 indication that Mound ever did cohort badging, 

19 and Mound’s dosimetry history is very well 

20 documented by Meyer, all nine volumes of it or 

21 eight. There’s no mention of cohort badging. 

22 And again, for those of you who may 

23 not know, the idea of cohort badging is that 

24 not every individual is monitored but rather 

25 one or more, you know, some fraction of a 
48

1 group of people would be monitored, and that 

2 would be taken as representative of the group. 

3 And our position on that, number one, 

4 it didn’t happen at Mound, but even if it had, 

5 the only way cohort badging would be 

6 unacceptable would be if it was biased low. 

7 If it was biased high, that’s not a problem 

8 for us. If it was even random and 

9 representative, that’s also not a problem for 

10 us. It would only be if it was biased low. 

11 I just don’t see that this is an 

12 issue. There’s just no evidence that it 

13 happened at Mound. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Well, Brant, 

15 this is Joe. I think this originated again 

16 from a statement made in the ER that made that 

17 very same assertion. And I think what we are 

18 looking for is a basis for the statement that 

19 was made in the ER. Because it does clearly 

20 say that again that the highest exposed were 

21 badged, and I haven’t found any evidence to 

22 the contrary. 

23 But I think the reason this issue 

24 originated was just simply to find what the 

25 basis behind that statement happens to be. I 
49

1 think you have articulated it, but again, it’s 

2 really the converse of proving that there’s 

3 any evidence. And we have not found any. So 

4 I think we’re at the point where unless we do, 

5 in fact, find some obvious evidence or 

6 information to the contrary, we’re going to be 

7 satisfied. 

8 But I think we want to at least look 

9 in terms of the documents retrievable. If 

10 there’s anything comes out of that, then we 

11 would certainly bring it back to the work 

12 group. But at this point we have not found 

13 anything to the contrary. 

14 But on the other hand I think the 

15 statement in the ER didn’t give us any of that 

16 understanding other than to accept the fact 

17 that good health physics practice would have 

18 been exercised by the people managing the 

19 program in those days, which I think we would 

20 have some difficulty accepting at face value. 

21 So that’s kind of where we’re at. 

22 DR. ULSH: Okay, well, on page 47 of our 

23 NIOSH responses to the Mound matrix items, we 

24 give you exactly what you’re looking for, Joe. 

25 The quote from Meyer’s document, Meyer, 1994, 
50

1 and that quote is, “In general, all personnel 

2 who enter a radiation risk area are monitored 

3 for possible exposure to external penetrating 

4 radiation. Personnel who work routinely in 

5 risk areas are monitored for whole body 

6 radiation by film badges which are evaluated 

7 biweekly. Occasional visitors to the risk 

8 areas are monitored by the use of film badges 

9 which are evaluated the day following usage.” 

10 So it’s not just an absence of evidence. We 

11 have evidence to the contrary that anyone who 

12 went in was monitored. I don’t know what else 

13 we could provide. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Right, and I 

15 don’t think we’re asking for anything more. I 

16 think what we’re saying is unless we would 

17 find any evidence to the contrary, we’re 

18 willing to accept the statement at this point. 

19 But the reason this issue came up, 

20 just to answer, I think, your original 

21 question to Ron, is the fact that we didn’t 

22 get that basis from the ER, and it wasn’t 

23 included in the ER. And so I think we wanted 

24 to be sure that, in fact, what was, in fact, 

25 the basis for the statement. 
51

1 MS. BEACH: So, Joe, this is close to being 

2 settled as I understand it unless you find 

3 something to the contrary when you’re looking 

4 through your documents in the retrieval 

5 effort. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yeah, and 

7 again, I think this is a difficult issue. 

8 We’re not going to persist in trying to prove 

9 the negative. I think all we’re saying is 

10 that whether it’s an account from the manager 

11 of the health physics program or a reliance on 

12 general health physics practice, I mean, I 

13 just think unless we come up with anything 

14 that suggests otherwise, we would be satisfied 

15 with this issue being settled. So I think 

16 that’s where it stands now. We don’t expect 

17 anything more from NIOSH other than we’ll go 

18 ahead and probably settle this in the 

19 documents retrieval next month. 

20 MS. BEACH: And I’d like to the work group 

21 members, I believe Brad has a comment. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: I was just, I guess I’m going 

23 back to my work. We’ve got a written policy. 

24 Did Mound have a written policy and this is 

25 what the Meyer’s -- 
52

1 MR. STEWART: In fact, he is quoting the 

2 written policy from the inception of 

3 operations at the laboratory in this 

4 particular excerpt. We see similar language 

5 throughout Mound’s history. 

6 DR. ULSH: Perhaps we should talk about who 

7 Herb Meyer is. Was he there at the beginning 

8 of the site? I know that at least the early 

9 health physics reports were authored by Herb 

10 Meyer. 

11 MR. STEWART: In ‘47. 

12 DR. ULSH: Okay, so he was in charge of the 

13 health physics operation from the beginning of 

14 the site, Brad. So this isn’t someone who 

15 went back retrospectively. This is someone 

16 who was there when it was being done. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: And I understand that. I 

18 guess I’m trying to paint a picture for myself 

19 of how this set up because I know that we’ve 

20 got written policies of certain areas. We 

21 have special areas that they have special 

22 requirements and so forth actually documented, 

23 and as the RWPs and so forth started to 

24 evaluate and so forth, that took care of a lot 

25 of that. I was just trying to paint a 
53

1 picture. I just want to make sure we had 

2 something -- 

3 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Brad, this 

4 is Joe. I think at the last meeting NIOSH was 

5 going to see if there was a written policy, 

6 and I would assume from what was provided 

7 there may not be a written policy but there’s 

8 this account, documented account, by Herb 

9 Meyers. And again, I think that may be the 

10 most definitive answer to that particular 

11 question. But it, you know, that’s where we 

12 stand right now. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I think once 

15 we have the documentation and if we don’t find 

16 anything that clearly contradicts any of that, 

17 then I think we can go with that. 

18 MS. BEACH: Okay, any other -- 

19 MR. STEWART: I’ll just point out one more 

20 thing. Page 49, the next to the last 

21 paragraph in the NIOSH response, the middle of 

22 the paragraph, citations from Meyer’s history 

23 are given that re-articulate the policy at 

24 different points in the program’s history. 

25 And once again, Meyer’s history, beyond being 
54

1 a narrative, also incorporates a very large 

2 number of policy documents and management 

3 memoranda for the program. So Meyer’s history 

4 is beyond what the exceptional individual for 

5 Meyer wrote down. He kept all of this 

6 documentation, and he put it into his history 

7 which is why it’s such a very large document. 

8 DR. ULSH: And that is available on the SRDB 

9 if you want to take a closer look. 

10 MS. BEACH: Is there any other items for 17? 

11 (no response) 

12 MS. BEACH: So we will move on. Bob -- 

13 Oh, go ahead. 

14 DR. ULSH: Before you do that could I just 

15 ask you what the status of issue 17 is then? 

16 Is it a closed item with the option to reopen 

17 if SC&A finds something or -- 

18 MS. BEACH: Joe, at this time do you want to 

19 close that item or would you -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Well, I 

21 think we’re going through documents retrieval 

22 next month so I would anticipate, unless 

23 something arises, I mean, it’s sort of a 

24 qualified close. I would close it qualified 

25 on this review that we haven’t yet done of 
55

1 documents we’ve requested at Mound. And 

2 that’s near term. That’s next month. So I 

3 don’t know if that answers your question, but 

4 I think that’s where it stands as status. 

5 MS. BEACH: At this time what I would like 

6 to do is leave it open until our work group 

7 meeting. That gives you the chance to look 

8 through the documents. If nothing is found, 

9 then we will close it at the next work group 

10 meeting. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yeah, like I 

12 said, again, we have not found anything. We 

13 accept certainly that there’s some definitive 

14 documentation, no policy, but I think, again, 

15 the history’s pretty detailed. But we still 

16 want to satisfy ourselves in terms of what we 

17 see in the documents. So I think it’s headed 

18 toward closure but I want to keep it open. 

19 MS. BEACH: Thank you. We will do that as 

20 long as there’s no disagreement. Let’s move 

21 on. 

22 Ron, are you going to take number 18 

23 to start with again? 

24 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes. In the 

25 interest of time I’ll talk about 18 and 19 
56

1 together, although I would like to keep them 

2 separate in our minds because they’re two 

3 separate issues. Eighteen is efficacy of 

4 external dose record, meaning is there enough 

5 dose records there to do dose reconstruction. 

6 And 19 is integrity and completeness 

7 of the external dose records which means was 

8 the data transferred faithfully from one 

9 system to the other control and does the old, 

10 handwritten records match the MESH database. 

11 And this is important at Mound because they 

12 went through several databases from the old, 

13 handwritten records to electronic forms and 

14 another electronic form in the MESH database. 

15 And so what SC&A’s question was, was this done 

16 faithfully. 

17 And so number 18, the adequacy of 

18 external dose, now this means is there enough 

19 there to do dose reconstruction. Now I did an 

20 analysis of 22 cases as a basis for my 

21 response to 18 and 19 of Mound workers. And 

22 the spectrum of job titles I tried to get over 

23 a wide area, all the way from operators to 

24 security guards to maintenance people so that 

25 we could get a -- 
57

1 Now this is like, I’d like to 

2 emphasize to begin with, this is all based on 

3 a very limited sample. In fact, only about 

4 five percent of the claims was analyzed, 22 

5 out of 447. And this was limited to a period 

6 when there was some original data. You have 

7 to realize that the handwritten, original data 

8 only starts in the ‘50s and goes to the ‘60s. 

9 In the ‘60s there are some handwritten 

10 summaries of yearly exposures up through ’68. 

11 And after that you have no original data to 

12 compare it to and so this is based strictly on 

13 the ‘50s and ‘60s there is no data. 

14 And then I went to the O drive to the 

15 MESH database and said, okay, for this worker, 

16 for this period of time if he got a certain 

17 amount of dose is that faithfully reproduced 

18 in the MESH database today. And so what I did 

19 was looked at these 22 workers, and I sent 

20 that three-page summary out, Joe did, which 

21 gives you a text summary on the first tab. It 

22 gives you a summary Excel spreadsheet on the 

23 second tab, and it gives you examples of the 

24 records on the third tab. I photocopied the 

25 records showing the original, the summary 
58

1 reports and the MESH database. 

2 And so what I found was that workers 

3 that I looked at that should have had dose 

4 recorded had dose recorded in most part. I 

5 mean, there were some gaps and that sort of 

6 thing, but I did not find any large gaps for 

7 set eight. The operator doesn’t show a change 

8 in work habits that he’s missing ten years of 

9 data out of 20 years, nothing. 

10 And so I did not find at this point on 

11 the very limited sampling I did, workers that 

12 were not monitored when they needed to be 

13 monitored. And so the amount of data was 

14 there to do dose reconstruction. And, in 

15 fact, these dose reconstructions were 

16 completed that I sampled. 

17 And then on the second point that the 

18 item number 19, the integrity, for example, if 

19 the person received a certain amount of gamma 

20 dose earlier was that in the MESH database. I 

21 only found one, 30 millirem was missed or 

22 something. So it was a fairly high percent 

23 of, I think on this in the reproduction of the 

24 data. 

25 And so I think it’s like 97 percent or 
59

1 99 percent like that. And so we did not find 

2 any large errors in the transfer of the data. 

3 And again, this is limited to just the few 

4 originals I could find in the ’50s and ‘60s 

5 compared to the MESH database. And so since 

6 there is no originals for the ‘70s, ‘80s and 

7 that sort of thing, I could not do any 

8 comparison from original to the MESH database. 

9 And so I guess what SC&A found out was 

10 that in this very limited sample we did not 

11 have anything that indicated right off that 

12 there was a problem. And so the working group 

13 wants to consider -- 

14 Okay, there’s two things I should 

15 mention though before I close those out and 

16 that is that it appears to me in this analysis 

17 that the MESH database put zeros when there 

18 was no monitoring. They put zeros in when 

19 there were zeros. They put positive values 

20 when there was positive values, but also put 

21 zeros in when there was no monitoring. The 

22 original, handwritten cards might have a dash 

23 or a blank for a cycle, but the MESH database 

24 automatically, zeros in. 

25 And this could lead to two problems, 
60

1 cautions here is that if a worker was not 

2 badged, and the dose reconstructor looks at 

3 his MESH database, it’ll say zero, and he’ll 

4 assign a missed dose based on LOD over two 

5 instead of saying, okay, this worker wasn’t 

6 monitored. We may need to assign coworker 

7 dose, which is generally higher than your 

8 missed dose. And so that would not be 

9 claimant favorable. 

10 And also it shows that shallow doses 

11 were measured all the time. And, of course, 

12 we know, we just discussed that wasn’t true 

13 because they put a zero in each of those 

14 entries. And secondly, if this database 

15 that’s used for coworker data, then it will be 

16 biased low unless all the zeros are eliminated 

17 and only positive values used. That’s one 

18 thing that we need to keep in mind. 

19 Number two is, and I pointed this out 

20 before, and it’s easily corrected, is that in 

21 the MESH database it appeared to me that the 

22 low neutron -- excuse me, the low gamma column 

23 and the neutron column are reversed. But now 

24 I did look at the dose reconstruction. Two 

25 cases had neutrons, and they used the correct 
61

1 column even though the ^ was incorrect. 

2 And so those are where we’re at on the 

3 data for Mound. And at this point with our 

4 small sampling that we’ve done, we do not have 

5 anything that points to a serious problem. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): And let me 

7 just add that this strategy of doing a limited 

8 sampling, 20 to 30 initially and then 

9 broadening that sample if it turns out there 

10 are issues or questions, is an approach we’ve 

11 taken in other sites. And so in this 

12 particular initial sampling, given the 

13 results, we believe that this is a sufficient 

14 result to believe that we’re in reasonable 

15 shape of completeness. 

16 MS. BEACH: NIOSH, do you have anything? 

17 DR. ULSH: Not much. I guess I take some 

18 comfort that you found the degree of 

19 completeness that you did and agreement. A 

20 couple of things though about some of your 

21 conclusions. 

22 We’re not proposing at this point in 

23 time to generate a coworker model at Mound for 

24 external dosimetry. Based on the evidence 

25 that we have that if you went into a neutron -
62

1 - I’m sorry, into a radiation area you were 

2 monitored. So we don’t see that there is a 

3 significant unmonitored population at Mound, 

4 if any at all. 

5 With regard to zeros being put in when 

6 a person was unmonitored, Ron, I think you 

7 said that what would normally happen is that 

8 an unmonitored person would be assigned 

9 coworker dose, and that it may not be claimant 

10 favorable if a person was unmonitored to 

11 assign a missed dose instead of coworker. 

12 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes, that’s 

13 what I said. 

14 DR. ULSH: That’s not always the case. We 

15 assign coworker dose when someone is 

16 unmonitored and they go into radiation areas 

17 either frequently or sporadically. If a 

18 person is unmonitored but does not go into a 

19 radiation area, we typically assign ambient 

20 environmental, which would be much lower than 

21 assigning missed dose. 

22 So I don’t think, at least in this 

23 situation at Mound where if you went into a 

24 radiation area you were monitored, I don’t 

25 think that it would be claimant unfavorable to 
63

1 assign, I guess, incorrectly assign a missed 

2 dose based on a zero that isn’t real. 

3 MR. STEWART: Yeah, I’ll just observe a 

4 little more detail. In terms of dose 

5 reconstruction at Mound we do assume that 

6 those are zero dose results. They are entered 

7 as zeros. We also understand that those are 

8 not necessarily valid zero dosimeter results. 

9 Typically, we don’t have cycle data so that 

10 forces us to estimate the missed dose high. 

11 And these doses do accumulate very rapidly. 

12 Typical missed doses at the Mound site are 

13 very large. 

14 We would not, for the Mound site, we 

15 would not assign a coworker dose at this point 

16 because we do believe that monitored, or 

17 individuals who were exposed were monitored. 

18 And all of our case evidence suggests this. 

19 At other sites we have seen cases where an 

20 individual worker will say I did such-and-such 

21 work in 1968 through 1970, go back and don’t 

22 see dose results for that work, then we’ll 

23 apply coworker dose. We have not seen 

24 instances of that in Mound cases. 

25 DR. ULSH: In large part with a couple of 
64

1 exceptions we’re in agreement. I mean, I 

2 haven’t looked at the cases that SC&A -- 

3 MS. BEACH: The 22? 

4 DR. ULSH: Right, but I guess I’d like to 

5 hear what the work group thinks about this 

6 issue. And if it requires, we could take 

7 another look, but -- 

8 MR. CLAWSON: I just want to make sure that 

9 we’re taking care -- I guess part of my issue 

10 is as we have seen at other sites and so forth 

11 like that, especially not being able to, the 

12 MESH database to the original data, we really 

13 don’t have a comparison, from my 

14 understanding. Is that correct? 

15 DR. ULSH: Well, I think that comes from 

16 similar to at other sites, Brad. Starting 

17 from the beginning of operations, early maybe 

18 ‘40s, ‘50s, maybe even ‘60s, the method of 

19 keeping track of doses was you handwrite them 

20 on cards or whatever. At a certain point in 

21 time they went to computers, and they stopped 

22 writing the originals so it’s direct entry. 

23 I think that’s what you’ve got here. 

24 You’ve got -- I can’t remember what Ron said, 

25 maybe up into the ‘70s perhaps where you have 
65

1 the original handwritten records, and then you 

2 don’t see them after that. That would be 

3 consistent with Mound doing what they did at 

4 other sites, and that is direct entry into the 

5 computer records. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I guess this is kind of 

7 where I get into the thing -- and we’ve looked 

8 at this at many different sites and so forth 

9 like that is, going from the paper to the 

10 database. How many different databases have 

11 we been through at Mound? I was trying to go 

12 through it. There was PORECON -- 

13 DR. ULSH: Well, hold on. There was XRAD? 

14 MR. STEWART: The first one was EXAS, E-X-A15 S. That’s an external dose system. I believe 

16 that was an IBM-based system. And then that 

17 was migrated I think to MESH. And that became 

18 their external database. In fact, I think 

19 it’s all their health records. PURECON is the 

20 plutonium database. PORECON is the polonium 

21 database. 

22 DR. ULSH: And that was, I think -- I might 

23 have this wrong. If Liz is on the line, she 

24 can correct me. One of those was used by MJW 

25 in their dose reconstruction. They got it 
66

1 from a site, PURECON I think. And I think MJW 

2 created PORECON. It might be the reverse of 

3 that. So there’s been a couple migrations, 

4 Brad, but not a lot. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: So what about the shallow, you 

6 know, we talked a little bit earlier about the 

7 shallow dose and so forth like that and the 

8 low gamma I believe is what it was, and there 

9 were zeros in that. We’ve already looked 

10 earlier that we kind of had a flaw in that in 

11 the earlier years. I guess I was just 

12 wondering how we’re going to handle those 

13 zeros in that area. 

14 MR. STEWART: The zeros in that area? 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, because -- I’m jumping 

16 back and forth but, you know, earlier we were 

17 talking about shallow dose versus deep dose. 

18 Now we’re seeing zeros in these areas but we 

19 knew that we had these issues and problems. 

20 And I’m just wondering how we’re 

21 tracking, how are we going to handle those 

22 zeros in that area. Because we showed a flaw 

23 early on somewhat that they were having 

24 problems. When I say flaw, I’m not saying 

25 they were just having trouble doing this. And 
67

1 I’m just wondering how we’re going to handle 

2 all those zeros in that area. 

3 MR. STEWART: We can go back and look at the 

4 data. Once again, we have reliably measured 

5 photon doses throughout Mound’s history, and 

6 since those data are based on individual 

7 measurements associated with the individual 

8 whose dose we’re reconstructing, that would be 

9 the most accurate place to start in terms of a 

10 possible proportional dose from low energy 

11 gamma. 

12 DR. ULSH: So what you’re talking about I 

13 think is similar to estimating a neutron dose 

14 by n/p ratio, I think what you’re talking 

15 about is if you’ve got a deep dose, it might 

16 be possible, if appropriate, to apply a factor 

17 to, a deep-to-shallow ratio. We can live with 

18 that. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: I’ll just be right honest 

20 here. What I’ve heard from some of the 

21 petitioners at Mound and so forth like that, 

22 they’re not sure how, you know, we’ve got zero 

23 doses here. We understand that there was some 

24 problems in that, but I’m still showing zeros 

25 in these areas and how are we going to deal 
68

1 with and take care of that. I guess my 

2 suggestion I’d like to be able to see how 

3 we’re handling this process and go from there. 

4 MR. STEWART: Yeah, we will publish that in 

5 the revision of the TBD. 

6 DR. ULSH: We will, but I think we need to 

7 address Brad’s question a little, before the 

8 official version of the TBD comes out. How 

9 about if we take it as an action item to 

10 present to you a strategy for estimating 

11 shallow dose at Mound? Or at least to 

12 summarize why we think it’s not an issue if 

13 that’s what we think. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, and that’s just what 

15 we’re trying to cover and so forth especially 

16 how and that will be taken into the zeros and 

17 so forth and their shallow doses and so forth 

18 like that. 

19 DR. ULSH: Okay. 

20 MS. BEACH: Will we do that under the 

21 shallow dose issue? 

22 DR. ULSH: I don’t know. Where is it most 

23 appropriate to do that? 

24 MS. BEACH: I think possibly at the, at 16. 

25 What do you think, Brad? 
69

1 MR. CLAWSON: Well, actually, and this is 

2 kind of where they overlap, it’s in 16 and 19. 

3 I think as we get into 16 it’ll take care of 

4 the shallow, but we need to be able to see how 

5 we’re going to implement that and so forth in 

6 19. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Sort of a 

8 broader question in how one implements the 

9 issue of zero -- 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Right. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): -- as actual 

12 data. And that’s both shallow as well as the 

13 one that Ron was discussing a minute ago. 

14 DR. ULSH: So how about if we take on 16 an 

15 action item where we will summarize the 

16 history of shallow doses at Mound and how it 

17 was or was not monitored? And then under 19 

18 we’ll talk specifically about zeros and 

19 whether or not they’re real zeros in terms of 

20 shallow dose. 

21 MR. CLAWSON: And how it was implemented. 

22 DR. ULSH: Does that sound reasonable? 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, that’s great. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): This is Joe 

25 again. Under 19, Brant, you mentioned 
70

1 something about summarizing QA/QC steps taken 

2 during the transfer of data. Is that 

3 something that would be forthcoming or are you 

4 going to refer to the, I guess, the documents 

5 that exist? How are you handling that? 

6 DR. ULSH: To be honest with you, Joe, 

7 that’s not one that we’ve had a lot of action 

8 on since the last working group meeting. 

9 We’ve been focusing on the road map which 

10 we’ll get to later. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Right, okay, 

12 just wanted to check on that. I think that 

13 was addressing Brad’s earlier, he was getting 

14 into that issue as well. 

15 DR. ULSH: I guess at the end -- 

16 Well, go ahead, Brad. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: I was just going to say I 

18 guess that basically does the QA of the MESH 

19 databases, the data transfer or whatever, but 

20 that was kind of, that’s not one, that’s kind 

21 of one that’s back there. 

22 DR. ULSH: At the end, Josie, maybe if we 

23 could talk about your priorities in terms of 

24 what issues you want to see action on. 

25 MS. BEACH: That’s what we’ve got settled 
71

1 for the end of the day. 

2 And just for the record our designated 

3 federal official has now joined us live. 

4 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Chia-Chia, 

5 welcome. This is Lew. I’ve been sitting in 

6 for you, but I’ll let you assume the mantle 

7 now. I’m available by telephone any time if 

8 you need me, Chia-Chia. 

9 MS. CHANG: Hi, is this working? Can you 

10 hear me? 

11 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Yes. 

12 MS. CHANG: Thanks a lot, Lew, and I 

13 apologize for being late, and thank you for 

14 everybody’s patience. 

15 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Bye now. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: But Lew, it’s always good to 

17 hear from you. 

18 DR. WADE (by Telephone): Thank you. It’s 

19 good to listen. 

20 MS. BEACH: Okay, do we have anything more 

21 on 19, 18 or 19? 

22 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): This is Ron 

23 Buchanan, and I want to make one summary point 

24 on the importance of the zero in the MESH 

25 database is that in some dose reconstructions 
72

1 I have seen where it says, okay, the worker 

2 has all zeros for neutrons or shallow or 

3 whatever -- not just shallow but for neutrons, 

4 too -- for this ten-year period. And he 

5 showed no positives so we don’t assign a dose. 

6 And so this is the problem I see with 

7 a database which automatically puts zeros in. 

8 The dose reconstructor can think, oh, he was 

9 monitored. He got all zeros. He doesn’t need 

10 a dose or just missed dose or something like 

11 that. And so this was the main point I wanted 

12 to make about the zeros being entered 

13 automatically. 

14 DR. ULSH: I understand what you’re saying, 

15 but if it hinges on, I guess it comes down to 

16 whether or not you, the working group, has 

17 confidence in if someone went into a radiation 

18 area, then they were monitored. If that’s the 

19 case, if you accept that, then I don’t think 

20 we have an issue here because we’re assigning, 

21 you know, as Don said, particularly in the 

22 early years when we don’t have cycle data, 

23 we’re assigning a lot of missed dose because 

24 we take the worst assumptions in terms of how 

25 many badges he might have worn. If you don’t 
73

1 have confidence in that, then we might have an 

2 issue that we need to discuss further. So I 

3 would put that in the working group’s hands. 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: How good is the data that 

5 you know of, historical data that they had for 

6 monitoring the neutrons at the facilities? 

7 DR. ULSH: For neutrons? 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

9 DR. ULSH: Well, it appears to be pretty 

10 complete. We haven’t noticed any big gaps in 

11 terms of that. 

12 MR. SCHOFIELD: And so there are records of 

13 them doing assays and -- 

14 DR. ULSH: Oh, certainly, there are records 

15 of people being assigned NTA films or later 

16 neutron TLDs. There are also records which we 

17 have as an action item to share in terms of 

18 measuring the spectral, the neutron spectrum 

19 and also n/p ratio measurements. Does that 

20 answer your question, Phil? 

21 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: I guess my question is, is I 

23 understand, and I’ve watched this at many 

24 different sites and so forth like that. We 

25 have a lot of people that should have been 
74

1 monitored, well, and that were monitored. And 

2 when we say that should have, would have, 

3 could have, I’m not meaning anything by that 

4 but I guess part of my thing is what we’ve 

5 also seen is people not routinely going into a 

6 radiation area all of a sudden show up with 

7 something, and they say it’s, this person 

8 doesn’t really work in that area so it’s just 

9 a false positive, a secretary, you know, 

10 different little things like that. 

11 I just want to make sure that we’re 

12 covering these people because these people, 

13 because these people may have, well, I’ve got 

14 a badge. I can go into these areas. It’s not 

15 a big deal. And then all of a sudden they’re 

16 getting doses or whatever like that, and it’s 

17 not being recognized. 

18 MR. STEWART: Well, let must assure you that 

19 anyone who has a recorded dose at Mound, that 

20 dose is used to reconstruct their total dose 

21 regardless of their job title. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: Well, and I realize that, and 

23 I’m not saying about you guys. But what I’m 

24 saying is the Mound standpoint because we 

25 still see it today in today’s areas that, 
75

1 well, this is basically a false positive 

2 because this person does not go into these 

3 types of an area. As a matter of fact in our 

4 areas there are people that aren’t wearing 

5 badges anymore, and I think it’s the pendulum 

6 theory. We’re going back to what it was in 

7 the early years. And unfortunately, I think 

8 it will bite us, but that’s a different issue. 

9 DR. ULSH: I understand what you’re saying, 

10 Brad. I think that’s going to be more of an 

11 issue at sites where people have access to 

12 radiation buildings but don’t, but there are 

13 parts of the buildings where it’s a radiation 

14 area and parts that are not. I think that’s 

15 where it gets into trouble. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, well, in the worker 

17 interviews we went through this and several of 

18 the people that we’ve discussed -- and this 

19 is, this is a problem that we find in many 

20 different sites. We have a building that has 

21 several different radiation areas in it and so 

22 forth like that, and some that aren’t. 

23 And basically the ones that aren’t 

24 they’re saying, well, you don’t need to be 

25 badged here. But you go through all these 
76

1 other ones to get to the other ones, but you 

2 don’t work in a radiation area. Just want to 

3 make sure that we’re, I guess the badging 

4 requirements and so forth like that. I 

5 understand that they had a policy there, but 

6 that’s working in the area that I think I’m 

7 looking at someone that didn’t. 

8 Because in the interviews we had 

9 several people that discussed that, no, I 

10 worked in this building. I didn’t work in the 

11 radiation areas so therefore I wasn’t badged, 

12 but I still went through these areas, and I 

13 still did these things. That’s kind of what 

14 I’m getting at with this. I know it’s 

15 roundabout, but we see this at numerous sites, 

16 and I just want to make sure that we’re, how 

17 we’re kind of handling some of that. 

18 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 

19 Mauro. I have a question related to this 

20 matter. Can you hear me okay? 

21 MS. BEACH: Yes. 

22 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Ron, when you 

23 looked at the sample sets of cases, did you, 

24 when you were going through them, was there 

25 any indication that individuals that were not 
77

1 monitored, let’s say in other words did you 

2 have cases where, let’s say, over some time 

3 period the worker was not badged, and it 

4 certainly appeared to you based on the record 

5 that there was no reason to badge them. This 

6 goes to the question of when we see that a 

7 person was not badged, and he was assigned a 

8 zero. Right now what I’m hearing is, well, 

9 there’s good reason to believe he really did 

10 not enter a radiation area, and he should be 

11 assigned a zero for the dose or just ambient 

12 as they mentioned. Any indication from the 

13 sampling that you did look at that that kind 

14 of situation existed? 

15 MR. BUCHANAN (by Telephone): Yes, this is 

16 Ron Buchanan. Yes, that is true. That’s the 

17 reason there’s 22 instead of 20. I originally 

18 planned on 20 workers, but the two last ones 

19 did not have badges. And I believe they had 

20 perhaps X-ray data and a spot bioassay if I 

21 remember right, but no badges. But they were 

22 secretaries and packing technician or 

23 something. And so I did look at two besides 

24 what I expected to be badged, and the two that 

25 I looked at that I didn’t expect badged were 
78

1 not badged. 

2 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, thank you. 

3 That was my question. 

4 MR. STEWART: And just a little more detail 

5 on that. I’ve seen quite a number of claims 

6 where the workers had job titles associated 

7 with non-radiological weapons parts. They 

8 call them small parts workers. They worked 

9 with adhesives and plastics and things of that 

10 nature. 

11 I have one individual who was for a 

12 number of years a small parts worker. And the 

13 records in MESH said not monitored. At some 

14 point she transferred and became a radiation 

15 protection technician and was badged early in 

16 the, right when she first transferred over, 

17 did that work for approximately a year and 

18 then went back to small parts. And then once 

19 again we see the records go back to n-slash-m. 

20 DR. ULSH: A couple of things that are 

21 different at Mound, and this is not 

22 necessarily from a radiation protection 

23 standpoint but from a tight security 

24 standpoint. If you didn’t work in SM, it’s 

25 not a building you just wandered through. 
79

1 There are a couple situations, Brad, 

2 like you mentioned where you might have had to 

3 walk through a hallway to get to a different 

4 building in other parts, but you didn’t go 

5 into TP Building or SM Building unless you 

6 worked there unless you were just passing 

7 through a little corridor. 

8 The other thing to keep in mind is 

9 unlike a lot of other sites, Mound had a very 

10 large component of work -- Don mentioned it -- 

11 that was not related to radiation. They did a 

12 lot of explosives work and that kind of thing 

13 where you wouldn’t expect to see radiation 

14 monitoring. So that perhaps is a little 

15 different from some other sites as well. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: This is Brad. And we saw this 

17 in the interviews. This is what’s interesting 

18 about all these complexes. You can’t, unless 

19 you get to the gaseous diffusion plant, they 

20 had one main issue. But you get to these 

21 other ones, and they had a lot of different 

22 stuff going on, and people crossing from one 

23 end to the other. 

24 But see, this is where the disconnect, 

25 I think, really comes in how did we monitor 
80

1 these. And this is where we get into the 

2 procedure process because a lot of times they 

3 were changing back and forth. And then you 

4 get into the roving maintenance people and so 

5 forth like that, and that really became 

6 interesting to me to be able to listen. 

7 Because if they needed people, they needed 

8 stuff now, and you can go back at the building 

9 and the facilities and so forth like that. 

10 They started out as this, but by the 

11 time they came to the end, they’d built inside 

12 of rooms, inside of buildings and everything 

13 else like that to be able to do new processes 

14 or so forth like this. And I just want to 

15 make sure that we’re looking at how this all 

16 came about because there is quite a history 

17 there. 

18 MR. STEWART: You bring up an issue that was 

19 documented in Mound’s history, and that is 

20 routine badging versus non-routine badging, 

21 and it was an issue that a number of 

22 maintenance personnel were not issued badges 

23 on a periodic basis like the people who were 

24 working the production areas were. This 

25 quickly became a problem as additional 
81

1 maintenance and modifications were required 

2 because those personnel were required to get a 

3 badge when they entered the area. 

4 And soon the cost of doing, and it was 

5 only a daily badge, but they called them 

6 visitor badges, when in fact they were for any 

7 personnel entering the area that did not have 

8 a routine badge. Those numbers quickly passed 

9 the numbers of routine badges that they 

10 processed. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I go back to one of the 

12 electricians or so forth that we interviewed 

13 in the Mound discussions and so forth like 

14 that. And he was just talking about, well, 

15 no, I wasn’t classified as a radiation worker, 

16 but we run power over to these facilities and 

17 because we weren’t -- where the boundaries of 

18 the facility ended it didn’t stop him by a 

19 badge. 

20 And he actually went into some of 

21 these areas and so forth like this. And I’m 

22 sitting there, well, how were you monitored or 

23 so forth. Well, I wasn’t required to be 

24 monitored. But he was going into these 

25 buildings to run these lines. And I know that 
82

1 this was more in the early years and so forth 

2 like that, and as security increased and so 

3 forth like that, it kind of took care of some 

4 of that because getting into the areas. 

5 But I just want to make sure that 

6 we’ve got a process to be able to take care of 

7 that. You know, this kind of falls back into 

8 several of these different issues. I don’t 

9 know where we could put it into one. 

10 MS. BEACH: It really goes into issue 17 I 

11 think. The one we qualified closed. It’s the 

12 badging policies used. The Meyer statement 

13 also talks about occasional visitors. So it 

14 seems like there’s still some questions on how 

15 people were badged. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: And I guess this will come up 

17 with SC&A. I just want to make sure because I 

18 know that I want to make sure that these zeros 

19 are being taken care of and so forth. 

20 MR. STEWART: Just to address that, Brad. I 

21 think what you’re talking about is what we 

22 would call ambient dose rate, something an 

23 individual could access just by being on the 

24 Mound site and not entering the controlled 

25 area. Currently, any area that an individual 
83

1 went into that required badging was posted as 

2 controlled. It is likely the case in the 

3 early days as well. 

4 In case it’s not we include in every 

5 dose reconstruction an ambient dose. That’s 

6 when the person’s not monitored. And the 

7 ambient dose that we assign is based on the 

8 highest measured outdoor dose on site. And I 

9 don’t remember offhand where that is, but we 

10 have those values. And even an ambient dose 

11 is a considerable amount of dose, at least in 

12 terms of what people typically receive now on 

13 their TLDs. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, and I understand that. 

15 I know where this one came from was I believe 

16 there was a radon issue and basically what 

17 they got into was this, to be able to run this 

18 electrical system, they went through the 

19 tunnel and in his recollections they weren’t 

20 monitored and so forth. So this is kind of 

21 where I get back to this. 

22 I know that we had a policy in there, 

23 but how, it seems like it’s a little bit 

24 lacking in some areas. But I’m sure this will 

25 come up as we go through the process. I’m 
84

1 just trying to make sure you kind of get an 

2 overview of what we’ve seen, and what we’ve 

3 heard as the working group myself of kind of 

4 the badging policy. And that’s why we 

5 question some parts of this. But I’m sure as 

6 Joe goes through this inspection and so forth 

7 like that that it’ll come out. 

8 MR. STEWART: We feel the highest measured 

9 ambient dose rates to all individuals at all 

10 times is claimant favorable and inaccurate, 

11 obviously inaccurate, but claimant favorable 

12 method of estimating what they might have 

13 gotten if they were walking around controlled 

14 areas but not entering them. 

15 So it’s one of those things that we 

16 build favorability for the claimant rather 

17 than going back and trying to estimate their 

18 point dose rates during their entire career. 

19 It’s simply not possible for us. 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: What about, say, some of the 

21 office workers who worked in the office 

22 literally just almost right next door to some 

23 of these processing areas and stuff. They 

24 were never badged and, true, they didn’t go 

25 down into these areas. They didn’t go around 
85

1 it. Yet from different information I’ve seen, 

2 these people were getting a dose just because 

3 of the, but yet they were not monitored for 

4 this. Are you going to take a different 

5 ambient dose? 

6 I mean, it’s a common problem. I 

7 mean, you can have a processing building here 

8 and right over here you have an office 

9 building. Yeah, you’ve got a security fence 

10 or something maybe dividing them, but there is 

11 dosage coming across. Just because that 

12 security fence is there, doesn’t stop the 

13 dose. 

14 So these people who worked in this 

15 office are going to get some dose, but they’re 

16 never badged because they never go on this 

17 side of the fence. So are you using different 

18 ambient doses or are you taking a general 

19 average? 

20 DR. ULSH: No, we’re taking the highest. 

21 MR. SCHOFIELD: You’re taking the highest? 

22 DR. ULSH: The highest measured on site. 

23 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, for everybody who’s 

24 not monitored? 

25 MR. STEWART: We can in some cases if we 
86

1 felt that we needed to moderate that a little 

2 bit, we could do that if we knew where a 

3 person worked, and we knew that no way could 

4 they have gotten that highest dose rate all 

5 the time. We could go back, and we could use 

6 the data and say, okay, while they were here, 

7 the dose rate here is most closely 

8 approximated by this measurement, take a 

9 claimant favorable, but less claimant 

10 favorable assumption for that one individual. 

11 In fact, we don’t usually get to that level of 

12 detail and simply assign the class. 

13 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, that’s what I wanted 

14 to know. 

15 MS. BEACH: So at this point 18 and 19 I 

16 don’t believe we’re ready to close those out. 

17 Do we have agreement there? 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Yes. 

19 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Josie, this is 

20 John Mauro. 

21 MS. BEACH: Hi, John. 

22 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I have just one 

23 quick question. When you look at the records, 

24 is it self evident which zeros are zeros 

25 because the person was monitored and the 
87

1 reading was below the detection limit and they 

2 reported zero, and those people who were just 

3 monitored -- I’m sorry, those people who were 

4 not monitored and perhaps deliberately were 

5 not monitored? Is it self evident the 

6 distinction between those two different kinds 

7 of zeros? 

8 MR. STEWART: Not always, usually not. And 

9 for that reason we typically assume that they 

10 are monitored and assign the missed dose. 

11 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): So on other sites 

12 this type of zero issue was very important. 

13 But you’re saying in this particular case 

14 there’s good reason to believe that when a 

15 zero was assigned because the person wasn’t 

16 monitored, there’s good reason to believe he 

17 did not experience any dose other than 

18 ambient. And I think that’s a very important 

19 rock that you’re standing on, and I wanted to 

20 just alert everyone to that. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yeah, and 

22 this is Joe. I think when I said we were 

23 going to get more data and more documents it 

24 was really to test the thesis that -- and we I 

25 think are on the same place that we’ve 
88

1 interviewed people, we’ve looked at 

2 documentation. Certainly, Mound’s history 

3 suggests that you didn’t enter rad-controlled 

4 areas unless you were badged and had business 

5 in that particular building. 

6 And that sounds like again a pretty 

7 strong operating principle. However, we want 

8 to validate that, or continue to validate 

9 that, that we didn’t have, say, security 

10 guards, maintenance people, crafts people 

11 entering these areas without in fact getting a 

12 building-specific badge which was the 

13 practice. 

14 And so we’ll be certainly very 

15 attentive to that particular issue because to 

16 my way of thinking that would be the only 

17 place where this notion of high ambient would 

18 not be correct if, in fact, you had people 

19 that were entering these areas. But it’s not 

20 likely, at least at this point, from our 

21 interviews and what we’ve seen. 

22 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): Josie, this is 

23 Mike. Can I make a comment? 

24 MS. BEACH: Yes, you sure can, Mike. 

25 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): And I know it’s 
89

1 inappropriate. I’m a member of the public, 

2 and I just want to make a comment for the 

3 record. There were several areas where people 

4 could just wander through controlled areas, 

5 hot buildings, and there were employees who 

6 were stationed in non-rad areas that did work 

7 in controlled areas and may have not been 

8 monitored. And I’ll get that information to 

9 the work group or SC&A at the appropriate 

10 time. I just, I had to challenge the 

11 statements that were made earlier. 

12 MS. BEACH: Thank you, Mike. I also 

13 suggested that we interview you officially so 

14 you’ll be looking forward for that at a future 

15 date. 

16 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): That’s fine, 

17 thanks. 

18 MS. BEACH: I have been asked to give us a 

19 short break. If there is no objection or any 

20 other comments you must make on this issue, 

21 when we come back from break we’re going to 

22 move on to issue number nine in trying to stay 

23 somewhat on schedule. We’re already a half 

24 hour behind our schedule, an hour if you must 

25 know the truth. 
90

1 Any objections to us -- how much time, 

2 five minutes or ten? We’re going to take a 

3 ten minute break. We will leave the line open 

4 although we’ll be on hold. 

5 (Whereupon, a break was taken between 11:05 

6 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.) 

7 MS. CHANG: We’re starting back now on 

8 Mound. We will proceed in one second. I just 

9 wanted to remind everybody to please put your 

10 phone on mute unless you’re talking. 

11 Preferably don’t put us on speaker phone. If 

12 you don’t have a mute button, use star six, 

13 and then when you need to speak you can unmute 

14 by pushing star six. And then when you finish 

15 speaking please do mute yourself again with 

16 star six. All right, end of speech. Thank 

17 you. 

18 HIGH FIRED PU-238 MATIRX ISSUE #9

19 MS. BEACH: We are going to go ahead and 

20 move on to issue number nine in the matrix, 

21 the high-fired Plutonium-238, matrix issue 

22 number nine. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Josie, before we start I just 

24 want to make a comment. You know, I 

25 understand that we refer to Meyers in a lot of 
91

1 sense, but this kind of an issue of mine is 

2 that I know he’s a subject matter expert, but 

3 he’s justifying his process that he’s built. 

4 You know, he goes clear back to the 

5 beginning of this so I want to take one thing 

6 in context and that is is that we’re referring 

7 to this man, and it’s just like me. I am not 

8 going to tell you all my flaws that I have 

9 even though they come out quite often. And in 

10 these processes and stuff he’s justifying his 

11 process that he has set up. I just want 

12 always -- why people are a little bit leery 

13 about that when we’re using this as a 

14 controlling document. 

15 There’s kind of a little bit of a 

16 conflict there because he was it. But I know 

17 that we need to be able to use it as a subject 

18 matter expert or whatever else like that. But 

19 I just want to go on record as saying that 

20 he’s basically justifying his process. 

21 MR. STEWART: Well, I’ll just reiterate what 

22 I said earlier. A lot of the value that we 

23 get from Meyer is the very large number of 

24 program documents that he integrates in his 

25 history. 
92

1 MR. CLAWSON: Right, and I understand that. 

2 I just want to go on record as stating that we 

3 do use him. And it’s just like any site, we 

4 use him as somewhat of a subject matter 

5 expert. And as dose reconstructors or NIOSH 

6 or whatever, if they can take that 

7 information, and they can be able to justify 

8 it and so forth just as we do in the process. 

9 But I just wanted to make sure that we’re 

10 aware of that. 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. And it’s my 

12 understanding we only have Elizabeth and Tom 

13 until noon, so we’ll go ahead and let you 

14 start at this time. 

15 DR. ULSH: I’ll just give you an overview 

16 and then let the people who really know what 

17 they’re talking about jump in. This is Brant 

Ulsh at NIOSH. We sent out, I think on the 4th 18 

of July, maybe the 3rd 19 , our position paper, our 

20 white paper on ceramic Plutonium-238 at Mound. 

21 This was in response to a concern raised by 

22 SC&A sometime ago in a paper that they in turn 

23 produced, mainly Joyce Lipsztein. 

24 And the question had to do with, well, 

25 we have -- if I can briefly summarize -- we 
93

1 have a method for estimating high-fired 

2 Plutonium-239, but what we have at Mound is 

3 Plutonium-238, and we have that certainly in 

4 high-fired or ceramic forms. So do we have an 

5 issue in terms of estimating dose from that 

6 particular form of that particular 

7 radionuclide. 

8 One part of the concern was based on 

9 an incident that happened at Los Alamos where 

10 they took an RTG apart at Los Alamos, and they 

11 observed some unusual behavior from the 

12 Plutonium-238 in that incident. In that it 

13 was initially at least very, very insoluble, 

14 similar to what we see with high-fired 

15 Plutonium-239. 

16 Over time the solubility increased, in 

17 other words more was leaving the lungs and 

18 coming out in the urine and going to other 

19 parts of the body. But that was an unusual 

20 behavior, and the question was raised would we 

21 expect to or have we looked to see whether 

22 that is an issue at Mound. 

23 So in response to that Tom LaBone and 

24 Liz Brackett of the ORAU team put together 

25 this white paper. And the bottom line, at 
94

1 least the bottom line that I can come up with 

2 from this paper, is that we looked at the 

3 cases of the people who were involved at Los 

4 Alamos, looked at their bioassay histories. 

5 And then we also looked at approximately 900 

6 cases from Mound. And we simply did not see 

7 that kind of behavior in any of those cases 

8 from Mound. 

9 So one part of our position is that 

10 this is just not an issue at Mound based on 

11 what we see there. The second part of our 

12 position though is even if you were concerned 

13 about this particular material behaving this 

14 way at Mound, it can be modeled. And that’s 

15 based in large part on an examination of this 

16 material done by Tony James and published in 

17 Health Physics. 

18 So if we determined that that was an 

19 issue, then we would simply be able to apply 

20 that model. But it’s our position that that 

21 is not an issue based on the 900 cases that 

22 we’ve looked at. 

23 Tom and Liz, do you want to go into 

24 any more depth or add anything? 

25 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): No, no, we’ll 
95

1 just see where the questions are. 

2 MR. CLAWSON: Particulate size, was that an 

3 issue? 

4 DR. ULSH: I don’t think it would be, Brad, 

5 because we’re basing it on urinalysis. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: What’s this cascade impact 

7 factors? 

8 DR. ULSH: Where are you looking? 

9 MR. CLAWSON: It’s just something I wrote. 

10 It was in the work area. 

11 MR. CHEW: We use that to determine particle 

12 sizes. It’s basically like different levels 

13 of sieves that measures different micron sizes 

14 and the air passes through it, and it gets 

15 captured in a different level. But I don’t 

16 know where the question comes from. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Well, one of the things was 

18 was that Mound purchased this cascade 

19 impactor, but did not complete the evaluation 

20 or process that was never used. 

21 MR. CHEW: Never used? Yeah. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: And so in theory they were 

23 basically saying that they were questioning 

24 the monitoring process they were having for 

25 the high-fired oxides. Were they really 
96

1 checking for what happened? Because they 

2 bought a lot of this equipment, came in, but 

3 it was never fully implemented or put into the 

4 process. 

5 MR. CHEW: Usually the cascade impactors 

6 were, tried to be in close to near the 

7 breathing zone. So you really have to have 

8 enough activity to have release because of an 

9 incident before the cascade impactor really 

10 works. 

11 DR. ULSH: But that’s only an issue if 

12 you’re calculating internal doses or intakes 

13 from air concentrations. It’s not an issue, 

14 as I understand it, -- and I’ll let internal 

15 dosimetrists correct me if I’m wrong -- that 

16 is not an issue if you’re looking at 

17 urinalysis results or fecal results. 

18 Is that correct, Liz or Tom? 

19 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): You can use 

20 different particle sizes, and you would get 

21 different answers even from bioassay. But, I 

22 mean, in general this issue, you know, we 

23 assume five microns because that’s the ICRP 

24 default unless there is other information. A 

25 lot of times it doesn’t make a very large 
97

1 difference given the relatively small range of 

2 respirable particles. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I guess it comes back to 

4 how are they determining the proper PPE for 

5 this process where this wasn’t even 

6 implemented into so we’re sitting there saying 

7 that we don’t have, this process was never 

8 implemented in and was never finished. How 

9 are we determining what the proper PPE was to 

10 the process? Were we, just to me it just kind 

11 of shows that they were trying to determine 

12 how the right size and everything else like 

13 that. We want to make sure, how do we know 

14 we’ve got the right PPE for all this? 

15 DR. ULSH: We don’t. And it doesn’t matter 

16 because we don’t take that into account in a 

17 dose reconstruction. 

18 MR. CHEW: They wouldn’t use that for the 

19 PPE. 

20 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Right, I 

21 misunderstood the question. Right, that does 

22 not impact the dose reconstruction at all 

23 based on bioassay. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. 

25 MS. BEACH: I have a comment. It was my 
98

1 understanding -- and SC&A can probably answer 

2 this -- it was my understanding that the LANL 

3 was just an example in your white paper, and 

4 it seems like it’s being used a little bit 

5 different with NIOSH. Do you -- 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: This is Joe, and I think 

7 Joyce will come in, too. I think Brant 

8 correctly characterized how we did this. We 

9 wanted to demonstrate that there was some 

10 question about whether a high-fired phenomenon 

11 existed with PU-238 and offered the LANL case 

12 as sort of an illustrative example of the 

13 phenomena. 

14 And our question, which I think NIOSH 

15 responded to in the white paper, was whether 

16 that phenomena has implications for Mound. 

17 And I think the white paper draws the 

18 distinction that the LANL example doesn’t 

19 apply phenomenalogically to Mound. I think 

20 that issue is helped by the white paper. I 

21 think that that’s something we weren’t fully 

22 aware of. 

23 But where we are now is I think we can 

24 agree conceptually that if one could model the 

25 Mound cases as laid out and have perhaps the 
99

1 so called Type J solubility model, the James 

2 model, as an upper bound for those cases that 

3 might come up that don’t tack with the 

4 conventional model, and that certainly would 

5 be an approach. 

6 I think our issue at this point is 

7 more in the details of how that would be done. 

8 You know, for example, in cases, we’re 

9 assuming the 896 cases, are they plutonium 

10 cases pre-alpha spec? There wasn’t much, 

11 maybe I missed that in the white paper. 

12 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): It’s all of 

13 the cases that were in, I believe it was 

14 PURECON. And PURECON goes through 1980 -- 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, that’s sort of a 

16 complete rendition then. 

17 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Right. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess my question, and 

19 Liz, I think you brought it up in some sense 

20 in the first meeting, which is for those cases 

21 that you don’t have very much data for, maybe 

22 not enough to really see that curve, how would 

23 you go about determining whether or not the 

24 conventional model would be applied? 

25 It’s the issue of this may be what 
100

1 fits the vast majority of cases, but if you do 

2 have some cases by virtue of the particular 

3 compound or whatever that might not, would 

4 they be identifiable do you believe with the 

5 data you have? And what would you do if the 

6 data wasn’t sufficient for the IMBA fit? Just 

7 more or less how would you implement this in 

8 practice? 

9 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Well, I think 

10 that the paper addresses that to some extent. 

11 One issue is that in a lot of cases where 

12 there aren’t a lot of data, the results are 

13 all less than the detection limit, and in 

14 those cases we typically assign a chronic 

15 intake. And there are some comparisons done 

16 in there to show, I believe, that the -- is it 

17 Type S that’s limiting? 

18 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): After a certain 

19 -- 

20 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): After a 

21 certain amount of time one of the 

22 conventional, you know, Type M or Type S is 

23 limiting. If that’s not the case, then we 

24 could certainly apply the Type J and make that 

25 assumption if it’s outside of the bounds where 
101

1 one of the others is limiting. 

2 In the cases where there perhaps are 

3 random positive results, one thing with this 

4 type is that you see an increase in excretion 

5 over time. So if you had an early result that 

6 was positive, and then later results that are 

7 negative, then that’s an indication that you 

8 don’t have this material types because the 

9 earlier excretion was larger than the later 

10 excretion. So you can make a judgment based 

11 on that if there were later data that showed 

12 the excretion rate had dropped off. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, I guess going to that 

14 question, these 896 cases showed no early 

15 insolubility. Have there been any cases that 

16 suggest otherwise? 

17 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I 

18 didn’t hear the first part of that. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s indicated that the 896 

20 cases from PURECON showed none of this sort of 

21 early insolubility phenomenon, sort of similar 

22 to Los Alamos. Were there any cases -- this 

23 is sort of the converse -- have there been any 

24 cases that don’t track with that conventional 

25 experience? 
102

1 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): Any cases in the 

2 complex or at Mound? 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, at Mound. 

4 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): I know they have 

5 situations at Mound where it kind of looks 

6 like a mixture between a Type S and a Type M. 

7 It’s even more soluble than M, but it doesn’t 

8 look like the LANL excretion. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: So there would be ones that 

10 would be less, it would be, in fact, bounded 

11 by this model but none that go the other way 

12 like the Los Alamos? 

13 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): We have not 

14 been able to identify any that would meet 

15 that, that would be more insoluble basically 

16 than the LANL cases. And we’re still looking 

17 at the literature. We’re doing an 

18 investigation of how the sources were 

19 manufactured and comparing that to, we’re 

20 trying to also get more information on the Los 

21 Alamos source that was involved in the 

22 incident to show that we wouldn’t encounter 

23 anything that that was insoluble at Mound. 

24 MS. BEACH: Kathy has a question. 

25 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): Can I say 
103

1 something about -- 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, yeah, I was just going 

3 to turn it over to you. I’m sorry. 

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): I think that 

5 we agree with NIOSH’s white paper that the 

6 model is not the problematic issue, that it’s 

7 possible to decide which is the most claimant 

8 favorable applicable model for Plutonium-238 

9 ceramic. The problematic issue I think for 

10 us, for SC&A, is how NIOSH is going to 

11 recognize exposure to this type of Plutonium12 238, ceramic Plutonium-238, and how to decide 

13 when and to whom to apply the model. 

14 And we had the impression by looking 

15 at the white paper that very rarely this would 

16 be applied because you say all the time, NIOSH 

17 says all the time that there isn’t such cases. 

18 There wasn’t seen any such cases at Mound. 

19 And our problem is that it’s very, very 

20 difficult to recognize exposures to ceramic 

21 plutonium because of the different behavior. 

22 What happens is that first you have a 

23 delay on the urinary excretion. And then you 

24 have an increase in the rate of the urinary 

25 excretion for a few months until you reach a 
104

1 peak. And then it follows by a decline at the 

2 rate which could be consistent with a more 

3 moderately soluble material. This kind of 

4 behavior, which is very different from the 

5 behavior of all other radionuclides, can be 

6 confounded with chronic intakes. 

7 We also at SC&A do not agree with you 

8 that it’s very rare. There are several cases 

9 in the literature that describe exposure to 

10 this kind of compound that has this different 

11 kind of behavior that we call non-monotonical 

12 because there is nothing, then there’s an 

13 increase, then there’s a decrease. Normally, 

14 what we expect is just the decrease. We have 

15 several cases in the literature about the 

16 exposure to uranium, to ^, to plutonium and 

17 americium that have shown a similar kind of 

18 behavior. 

19 Also, NIOSH says on the white paper 

20 that there were no other cases observed at Los 

21 Alamos like this one. And, again, we have 

22 published a paper in the literature from 

23 Gunther Miller, who used to be the internal 

24 dosimetry at Los Alamos, and he talked in a 

25 published paper in “Radiation Detection 
105

1 Dosimetry” in 2002, describing an accident 

2 case that took place in Los Alamos in October 

3 1980 which showed a urinary increase pattern 

4 that could be interpreted using the Winkanine* 

5 model or the Type J model as you call. 

6 And Miller said in a personal 

7 communication, Gunther Miller said that 

8 initially there was no record of any incident 

9 in the electronic database of Los Alamos. 

10 However, after he decided to use this case in 

11 a publication, there was a search for paper 

12 incidents records. And an incident was found 

13 to have occurred in October 31, 1980. And 

14 this incident was not included in the 

15 electronic database because the indicators of 

16 the, that this was an incident way too low. 

17 So thinking again that this is very difficult 

18 to recognize. 

19 And also at Mound there is a personal 

20 communication also from a former health 

21 physicist at Mound that said that he and 

22 another case that he remembers that showed 

23 exposure similar to Winknine* cases from 

24 Plutonium-238. And there is also a 

25 publication from Wood and Sheehan in the 
106

1 American Industrial Hygiene Association about 

2 five workers at Mound with release of 

3 Plutonium-238. And there was also this 

4 similar kind of behavior. The only thing is 

5 that at Los Alamos the peak was after two-to6 three years and at Mound it was, the peak was 

7 six-to-eight months after intake. 

8 Hello? 

9 MS. BEACH: Brant’s going to respond. 

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): So what we 

11 are very worried about, SC&A is very worried 

12 about is because of this very difficult 

13 pattern of excretion rate, it’s very difficult 

14 to recognize that there was any incident, and 

15 you have to know there was an incident. Most 

16 of the cases to recognize this kind of intake 

17 instead of associating it with a chronic 

18 intake. And unless there is a very good 

19 database of incidents, and it could at earlier 

20 times when it was not recognized because the 

21 exposures were undetected. The MDA was very 

22 high and all that, it could be mistaken. 

23 This person that, this health 

24 physicist that talked to us about the case 

25 that he remembered that had the same 
107

1 characteristics of the Winknine* Los Alamos 

2 accident at Mound, he said he first modeled it 

3 as a chronic intake rather than acute intake 

4 because there was an increase in the urinary 

5 concentrations for several months after it 

6 became detected. 

7 So what we’re saying is that I don’t 

8 know if there wasn’t any cases at Mound. I 

9 think we’ve seen that it’s very possible 

10 because of the composition of the compounds 

11 that were worked at Mound that there were 

12 exposures to these kinds of compounds but just 

13 they were not recognized, and they are very 

14 difficult to recognize. 

15 So what we want to know when is NIOSH 

16 going to apply any model that is derived from 

17 ^ Plutonium-238 and how it’s going to be done 

18 so that to recognize that there was exposure? 

19 Because we don’t think it’s feasible to 

20 recognize all cases of exposure to this kind 

21 of Plutonium-238. 

22 DR. ULSH: I’ll respond to that. This is 

23 Brant Ulsh. I’ll respond to a few things that 

24 you said. 

25 First of all, when you started, Joyce, 
108

1 you said that SC&A and NIOSH are in agreement 

2 that the model could be applied, the Tony 

3 James model could be applied. And based on -- 

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): May I just 

5 say something? A model can be applied. I 

6 think we can study if Tony James is the most 

7 claimant favorable model. But I think a model 

8 can be applied. 

9 DR. ULSH: Okay, well, in that case if one 

10 accepts that the criteria of an SEC issue is 

11 that doses cannot be reasonably bounded, and 

12 if we can agree that that model can be 

13 applied, this has just left the realm of an 

14 SEC issue. 

15 It is now a TBD issue that focuses on 

16 your other questions which is where and when 

17 would you apply such a model. Now, I would 

18 say that looking at 900 cases and not finding 

19 any evidence of it constitutes pretty strong 

20 evidence that it was not at Mound, but I’ll 

21 let Liz and Tom address that in greater 

22 detail. 

23 You also mentioned a paper in the 

24 Journal of American Industrial Hygiene 

25 Association by Wood and Sheehan. I talked to 
109

1 Sheehan less than a month ago when this issue, 

2 when we were debating this issue within NIOSH 

3 and asked him if he had ever seen anything 

4 like this at Los Alamos, anything like this at 

5 Mound. And he said, no, we’ve never seen 

6 anything like that. So I don’t know. I 

7 haven’t seen the paper that you referenced. 

8 If you could send that citation to us we would 

9 like to take a look at that. 

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): I will. 

11 DR. ULSH: And not online, but also if you 

12 could send us the name of the HP that you 

13 talked to. I mean, for Privacy Act reasons we 

14 don’t want to do that in open session, but if 

15 you could send us that that would be good. 

16 Tom and Liz, do you want to talk about 

17 our ability or the strength of the evidence of 

18 the 900 cases at Mound, whether or not we 

19 could detect that kind of thing? 

20 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): The first thing 

21 I wanted to say was that, yeah, I need to see 

22 the references that Joyce is talking about 

23 because I went and looked for it. Not saying 

24 I didn’t miss anything but to take a look at 

25 it, and so I’d be interested in seeing those 
110

1 that describe LANL-type behavior in other 

2 incidents. 

3 The other thing is is that we looked 

4 at as much of the published data as we could, 

5 and there was the case, I believe it was from 

6 Mound that was in Gil Metz’ paper that was 

7 described as a PU ceramic, and it’s similar 

8 basically to the LANL. 

9 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): The paper 

10 specifically said it was similar to the 

11 material that was involved in the LANL 

12 incident. 

13 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): And it didn’t 

14 have an excretion curve that looked anything 

15 like the Wing Nine excretion curves. I think 

16 where we’re getting down to is just to hone in 

17 on what exactly, what type of material gives 

18 you this kind of excretion and where would you 

19 expect to find it in the process of making 

20 RTGs, for example. I think we need to get 

21 more details on that. 

22 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Right, but 

23 going back to what Brant said, we believe we 

24 can model it if there is evidence that it’s 

25 present. We have a model and we can apply it. 
111

1 MR. FITZGERALD: Now the OTIB or the 

2 guidance piece that is being developed, is 

3 that for the upper bound fit if there is a 

4 need for an upper bound? Is that what that 

5 particular additional piece is? 

6 DR. ULSH: Joe, are you talking about our 

7 white paper? 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think at the last 

9 meeting there was some reference to additional 

10 guidance that was underway or being prepared. 

11 DR. ULSH: No, that was in reference to this 

12 white paper. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, this is the white 

14 paper. 

15 DR. ULSH: Right. 

16 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Right, I did 

17 call it an OTIB, but what ended up happening 

18 is that this is kind of the first step towards 

19 developing an OTIB is drafting this white 

20 paper. And then whatever is decided we would 

21 probably turn that into an OTIB so it would be 

22 guidance for the dose reconstructors. 

23 MS. BEACH: Kathy would like to make a 

24 comment or ask a question. 

25 MS. DeMERS: Liz and Tom, you said you used 
112

1 the PURECON data to do the analysis of the 896 

2 individuals. Is that correct? 

3 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Well, it 

4 wasn’t so much an analysis as it was just a 

5 plotting of the data, of all of the cases in 

6 PURECON. 

7 MS. DeMERS: Okay, it is my understanding 

8 that the data prior to alpha spec was gross 

9 alpha. Is that correct? 

10 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): As far as I -- 

11 well, it was, there was chemistry done on it 

12 so it’s basically a gross plutonium, I 

13 believe. 

14 Don, maybe you remember better. Maybe 

15 there are some other things that might be 

16 present. 

17 MR. STEWART: Yeah, gross alpha was a 

18 technique used for a number of radionuclides 

19 at Mound through about 1981. 

20 MS. DeMERS: And in that case how did you 

21 account for the other alpha emitters that 

22 would be in the gross alpha activities, and 

23 how would that affect the metabolic clock? 

24 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Well, my 

25 understanding of the data for the most part is 
113

1 that if the person was primarily working with 

2 plutonium, then it would have been considered 

3 a plutonium analysis. Other things -- 

4 although I’d have to go back and look because 

5 I know that there was some chemistry done. 

6 But in general then we have got overestimates 

7 of what the bioassay results were. If the 

8 person was working with other nuclides as 

9 well, then we’d have an overestimate of what 

10 was there. 

11 But like I said, I would have to go 

12 back and look to see what specifically is 

13 included in the analyses because I’m certain 

14 that there was chemistry done on them. 

15 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Liz, this is John 

16 Mauro. I’ve got a real quick question for 

17 you. Is this an issue that’s more related to 

18 having an incident where a person may have 

19 experienced a fairly large intake but then, 

20 let’s say, shortly thereafter you see very 

21 little activity in the urine. And then, of 

22 course, later it might go higher because of 

23 this unique J function? Or is this also an 

24 issue if a person were exposed to this 

25 material under chronic conditions? 
114

1 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Well, I guess 

2 it depends on what you mean is it an issue. 

3 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Well, let’s say, 

4 I guess what I’m hearing is that certainly if 

5 you do have this material that has this 

6 unusual clearance behavior, and you have an 

7 incident, a person is exposed, and then you 

8 monitor his urine following exposure. And 

9 let’s say you don’t see anything for a few 

10 months, and then all of a sudden you start to 

11 see something, I assume that that would be 

12 indicative that maybe we do have this unusual 

13 form of plutonium. 

14 However, what I’m not hearing is 

15 whether that same problem exists if a person 

16 is just working with this unusual form of 

17 plutonium on a day-to-day basis and maybe 

18 getting some small, chronic intake. Is that 

19 something of concern here also in terms of 

20 knowing that this is occurring? And if we do 

21 know that this is occurring, does that change 

22 the way in which you would reconstruct that 

23 person’s doses? 

24 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): If you look at 

25 the white paper it shows that, in fact, if you 
115

1 compare chronic intakes of M, this material, 

2 which we’re calling J and S, then J is not the 

3 claimant favorable assumption for a chronic 

4 intake for most cases. Tom did an analysis of 

5 various scenarios because it changes depending 

6 on how long the exposure is. But for many 

7 scenarios that we typically encounter it would 

8 not be claimant favorable so using M or S is 

9 more claimant favorable. So it’s not as much 

10 of concern if it’s truly a chronic exposure. 

11 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): So then the 

12 subject we’re really talking about is 

13 something that’s more of concern, if it is of 

14 concern at all, is under some type of incident 

15 where there is a short-term exposure, perhaps 

16 relatively high levels of plutonium, but you 

17 just don’t see it in the urine following the 

18 incident. That’s the issue. Maybe I’m 

19 oversimplifying. 

20 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): I’m not that 

21 familiar with the protocols at Mound, but if 

22 you have an incident, and you know something 

23 just occurred, and if you take urine samples, 

24 fecal samples and chest counts, you would see 

25 big intakes. You would, the fecal samples 
116

1 will work for this material. 

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): But it will 

3 be very difficult to recognize it was this 

4 material. That’s the problem. It’s very, 

5 very difficult to recognize it. And the 

6 problem is if you don’t recognize it to whom 

7 should you apply. And also this question of 

8 the chronic intake, I think that it depends on 

9 the time of the intake and depends on the 

10 model that you use. 

11 For example, the case that I have seen 

12 for Mound the peak excretion is different from 

13 the peak excretion for Los Alamos. So I don’t 

14 know what is the best model to apply to Mound. 

15 What I said is that I agree there is a model. 

16 It’s possible to model. I don’t know which is 

17 the most conservative for which cases. The 

18 big problematic issue is how to recognize and 

19 to whom to apply. 

20 And you cannot say that it’s rare. We 

21 eventually will apply if it happens. How do 

22 you recognize ^ will apply if it is very 

23 difficult to have it, and if you’ll know that 

24 the Mound people were exposed to this type of 

25 compound. 
117

1 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): John asked, what 

2 I heard him say was he asked about an 

3 incident. And so if I have a cam goes off, 

4 for example, and I collect a urine sample. 

5 And if I only collect urine samples, I agree 

6 with you, it may be difficult to decide if 

7 something happened. And LANL has a long 

8 history of only collecting urine samples when 

9 they do analyses just in contrast. But now, 

10 if I collect a fecal sample, I’m going to 

11 clearly know that there’s a problem. If I do 

12 a chest count, if there’s a big problem, I’m 

13 going to know it. 

14 And so it depends upon the data you 

15 collect at the time of the incident. So if 

16 you don’t collect the proper data, yeah, it’s 

17 going to be tough to decide that something 

18 happened for an incident. So it depends upon 

19 the incident and what they did. 

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): Yeah, the 

21 problem is that sometimes you don’t recognize 

22 there was any incident like it happened in 

23 1980 in Los Alamos. What I mean is that 

24 you’ll see something on the fecal, but you 

25 won’t recognize it’s this kind of exposure. 
118

1 And the other thing is the chest measurement 

2 of Plutonium-238, you know, it’s very 

3 difficult. It’s not that it cannot be done, 

4 but it’s even now today with the very modern 

5 techniques for lung counting it’s very 

6 difficult to measure Plutonium-238 unless 

7 there is a huge exposure. 

8 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): The people in 

9 Wing Nine had, you know, a number of them had 

10 positive chest counts. So if -- 

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): Yeah, yeah, 

12 I’m not saying it’s not feasible. What I’m 

13 saying is that today, now, even today with the 

14 modern technique it’s very difficult. You 

15 have to have a huge exposure to measure 

16 Plutonium-238 in the lungs. 

17 So imagine at the time it was not 

18 recognized there was an incident with this 

19 kind of compounds, and they didn’t measure it 

20 right, and the MDAs were very high. And even 

21 in the TBD for internal dosimetry it says that 

22 there was a very high variability and you 

23 cannot trust Plutonium-238 before 1994. 

24 So what is a problematic issue here is 

25 how to recognize and to whom apply this Type J 
119

1 or any model that is derived to be applied at 

2 Mound. I don’t think this is solved yet. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: This is Brad. Excuse me for 

4 my ignorance and stuff like that, but I have a 

5 question. And I’ve seen with Mound, we have 

6 tremendous different nuclides that we’re 

7 looking for and everything else like that. 

8 There’s a whole broad spectrum. 

9 Can you do this with just a -- I see 

10 some of them that the best way is a urine 

11 sample and the other one’s a bioassay. Can 

12 you do all these with just one or do you have 

13 to have a combination of them both to be able 

14 to do a representative sample? I know that a 

15 lot of times we’ve said, well, if these people 

16 are working with plutonium, we’d be looking at 

17 this. 

18 But there’s many of them that worked 

19 with everything, so are they going to have to 

20 have a combination sample to be able to do 

21 this? Because going through the O drive and 

22 stuff like that, I just see some of them as 

23 urine data, and I don’t see anything of the 

24 combination or so forth. I’m just wondering 

25 how are we looking for everything that we 
120

1 should be? 

2 MR. STEWART: I think Liz would be a good 

3 one to answer that. 

4 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I’m not sure I 

5 understand the question because urine is 

6 bioassay. You said some people have urine, 

7 some have bioassay, but urine -- 

8 MR. CLAWSON: How about fecal? Do you need 

9 to have them both to be able to do the whole 

10 spectrum that you should be looking for or can 

11 you do it with just one? 

12 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): You can do it 

13 with just urine. That’s typically what you 

14 would find at most sites is just urine 

15 samples. Fecal was typically used in the 

16 event of an incident to follow up on things, 

17 and it does provide you additional 

18 information. But it’s not necessary to be 

19 able to do a dose assessment. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: So you’re telling me that with 

21 a urine sample you’ll be able to see all the 

22 spectrum of the things that we’re working with 

23 at Mound. 

24 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I guess I’m 

25 still not clear what you’re -- are you talking 
121

1 about different radionuclides? 

2 MR. CLAWSON: Yes. Because you know as well 

3 as I do that we had plutonium there. We had -

4 - 

5 DR. ULSH: Uranium. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: -- uranium. We had tritium. 

7 We had -- 

8 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Right, and 

9 there’s different types of urine samples for 

10 each of those. There are specifically 

11 polonium urine samples. There were 

12 specifically uranium urine samples. The 

13 plutonium urine samples do pull out a few 

14 other things, but it does not include polonium 

15 or tritium because tritium is a beta emitter, 

16 and you need to do a different type of 

17 analysis. 

18 So there’s urine sampling for all of 

19 them. It’s just different chemistry is done 

20 on the samples, and so you get a more specific 

21 result for the specific nuclide. So if a 

22 person were exposed to many different things, 

23 then you would need to have different types of 

24 urine samples to do the full assessment. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, because the data I’ve 
122

1 seen is they’re using urine samples for one 

2 thing, but can you take like one urine sample 

3 and do multiple different checks? 

4 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Yes. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Or is there a quantity amount 

6 that they’re getting into? Because I beg to 

7 differ because my process at Idaho is urine’s 

8 very rarely used, but a fecal sample is the 

9 preferred one, and that’s -- 

10 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Idaho is 

11 unique in that. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: We’re very unique. It’s a 

13 different story, because I just want, because 

14 I’m trying to use my site information back to 

15 what this is. And going through the O drive 

16 and stuff like that, I see a lot of urine data 

17 but not any fecal. 

18 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Fecal is much 

19 more difficult to interpret for routine 

20 samples. It’s very useful for incidents, but 

21 on a routine basis it’s much more variable 

22 than urine is as far as what you see from day 

23 to day and individual excretion patterns. 

24 And so it’s a lot more difficult to 

25 pin down what’s going on. That’s why -- and 
123

1 workers frequently object to submitting fecal 

2 samples. It usually takes quite a PR campaign 

3 to get those done on a routine basis. So 

4 urine is what is typically used for doing 

5 assessments. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, and that brings up 

7 another question. Have we seen at Mound when 

8 an individual is requested to do one of these 

9 samples, how are they determining what process 

10 that they would use to do this, by their work 

11 locations or? You know, and this gets back to 

12 their procedures of did they have, like this 

13 facility. I know my facility, when they have 

14 me do one, they’re looking for these certain 

15 things that we work with. And I’m wondering 

16 if we have anything showing that. 

17 DR. ULSH: Liz, I’ll let you jump in in just 

18 a second. 

19 But you’re right, Brad, that they do 

20 base what the required urinalysis, what’s 

21 required based on where they’re working. For 

22 instance, if you’re working in a tritium area, 

23 you’re going to be required to give a tritium 

24 urinalysis. I would say that it’s certainly 

25 true that different kinds of analysis are 
124

1 required, but if you’re doing, like in the 

2 early years when they did gross alpha prior to 

3 1980. 

4 Let’s say a person was working with 

5 both plutonium and uranium, and you see a 

6 certain amount of activity in that urine. 

7 Well, was it uranium or was it plutonium? 

8 Well, what we’re going to do is take the most 

9 claimant favorable of the possible options. 

10 So if he’s working with both, and he’s got a, 

11 I don’t know, a particular kind of cancer, if 

12 plutonium is the most favorable of the 

13 possible options, we’re going to assign 

14 plutonium dose. I don’t know if that kind of 

15 answers your question. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: I guess my frustration is, and 

17 understand, I’m not a health physicist, and I 

18 respect everything because a lot of it’s new 

19 to me, but in going through the O drive and so 

20 forth, especially the MESH database and so 

21 forth like that, it shows that certain people, 

22 they were checked for these things, but we had 

23 so many other nuclides that were there. 

24 And I was wondering are they going to, 

25 you know, they weren’t looking for claimant 
125

1 favorable or anything else like that. How are 

2 we assured that they were monitored for what 

3 they should have because I’ve been going 

4 through some of the employees that we 

5 interviewed and so forth like that. They went 

6 to several of these areas but they were 

7 assigned a certain area, and that’s what they 

8 were sampled for, but they were working in 

9 these other areas. 

10 I’m just wondering how we take into 

11 consideration that they were doing work in 

12 these other areas. Because one of the 

13 comments that came out was I worked in this 

14 building, and this was the type sample that I 

15 was supposed to provide for them and so forth. 

16 But I also worked with this compound over in 

17 this area because it was part of our testing 

18 that we did and so forth like that. 

19 And I’m just wondering how are we 

20 assured -- and I guess this may get back to QA 

21 or whatever like that -- that the people were 

22 monitored for the right substances and then do 

23 the process. Because in looking at this 

24 that’d be quite a bit of urine to be able to 

25 provide to do all these. That’s why I was 
126

1 wondering if we have to have them both to be 

2 able to make a good judgment of what we’re 

3 really seeing. 

4 DR. ULSH: I think, Brad, you’re talking 

5 about a couple of issues that we’re going to 

6 cover later in the day, I think. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, well maybe -- 

8 DR. ULSH: Well, one is the roadmap document 

9 that we’ve produced, and that goes through the 

10 different processes, what radionuclides were 

11 involved and how they were sampled. 

12 The other thing I’m guessing that you 

13 might be thinking about is the Price-Anderson 

14 Act violations because those were related to 

15 that kind of an issue. So maybe we can talk 

16 about that later in the afternoon. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. That sounds good. I 

18 was just wondering if -- I know what we do a 

19 lot of times if we have an incident. You’re 

20 correct. We submit both, but also, too, at 

21 ours they kind of have to have both to be able 

22 to see what we really had. And I was 

23 wondering if this is the same thing here. 

24 MR. STEWART: Not so much. One of the 

25 reasons that fecal is useful is that it gives 
127

1 you a quick indication of what went inside a 

2 person. What a person breathed in. What 

3 makes it inaccurate is that it includes both 

4 respirable and non-respirable particles. If 

5 you inhale a large chunk of something, it’s 

6 typically excreted in the feces. 

7 We’re more worried from the standpoint 

8 of organ dose. What actually entered the 

9 system. If we’re trying to estimate a dose to 

10 the liver, we need to know what was in the 

11 blood because the liver would only absorb 

12 plutonium from the blood. And urinalysis is 

13 our best indicator of that. And for that 

14 reason for dose reconstruction, we almost 

15 always use exclusively urine data. 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, I’ve got a question. 

17 Here’s a scenario that I’m actually familiar 

18 with. There’s a leak of some kind. They do 

19 either nasal swipes or facial swabs. Don’t 

20 find anything. Six-to-nine months down the 

21 road when they submit this urine sample, 

22 bingo, there’s a positive. If you’re doing 

23 dose reconstruction, you find this in a 

24 claimant’s record, are you going to backtrack 

25 to the date of their previous urine sample 
128

1 where it was analyzed and effectually say, 

2 okay, you got this at this date and made it 

3 claimant friendly? 

4 MR. STEWART: We use all urine data when we 

5 do a dose analysis based on urinalysis. We 

6 use all data. Typically, what we do is we 

7 overestimate the dose. If you’ll look at a 

8 graph of urine dots all over the place, 

9 typically, what we do is we take the highest 

10 dot, and we make a curve, and that’s how we 

11 assign the dose. It’s very simple to do that. 

12 If we need to reduce that dose, we could do a 

13 more accurate estimate. 

14 And we do review incident reports, and 

15 these typically include nasal swipe results. 

16 So we go back, and we can make that 

17 connection. So okay, they took some special 

bioassay, took a nasal swipe on June 5th 18 , 1957, 

19 and sure enough, he’s got a positive 

20 urinalysis dose here. We can go back and 

21 reconstruct that from that data point. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay. 

23 MS. BEACH: Can we have a question from 

24 Kathy? 

25 MS. DeMERS: Liz, do you remember if they 
129

1 actually documented the simulated lung fluid 

2 dissolution rates at Mound, that study that 

3 they did? 

4 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I don’t 

5 remember. 

6 MR. LaBONE (by Telephone): I’ve never seen 

7 it. 

8 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I don’t recall 

9 seeing it recently. I don’t remember about 

10 the past, so I’m not sure. 

11 MS. DeMERS: Who would we ask about that? 

12 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I don’t know. 

13 It would have to go through the Records people 

14 I guess. 

15 MS. DeMERS: I mean as far as the process 

16 that they went through. Is there someone that 

17 was responsible for it? 

18 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I don’t know. 

19 I wasn’t involved in that at all. 

20 MS. DeMERS: Okay. 

21 MS. BEACH: What was it called again, Kathy? 

22 MS. DeMERS: Simulated lung fluid 

23 dissolution rates. 

24 MR. CHEW: Do you have that ^ information, 

25 Kathy? 
130

1 MS. DeMERS: I don’t. 

2 MR. CHEW: You don’t. You just know that it 

3 existed? 

4 MS. DeMERS: Yes. 

5 MS. BEACH: Is that something we need to ask 

6 for? 

7 DR. ULSH: I don’t know. What’s it related 

8 to? Is it related to Plutonium-238? 

9 MS. DeMERS: Yes, it is. 

10 MR. STEWART: It has to do with absorption 

11 types at Mound? 

12 MS. DeMERS: Yes. 

13 MR. STEWART: We typically assume claimant 

14 favorable absorption rates. And the TBD does 

15 have some recommendations as to the absorption 

16 rates that would apply to a given process. We 

17 typically use the most claimant favorable 

18 absorption rate. 

19 DR. ULSH: But if that’s of interest to 

20 SC&A, you guys could include it in your 

21 keyword searches. We could just proceed that 

22 way if that’s of interest to you. 

23 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): I think she’s 

24 asking because of this issue with the 

25 insoluble material. That’s what it would 
131

1 relate to that we were discussing but got off 

2 track on. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: I’m sorry. It’s my fault. 

4 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Tom and I need 

5 to go, so are there any last questions that 

6 you have for us? 

7 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Liz, this is John 

8 Mauro. Yes, I do, real quick one for you. 

9 When you gathered the data for the 900 cases 

10 and plotted it and was looking for patterns, 

11 did you also simultaneously look for fecal 

12 analysis that would go with some of those 

13 cases? What I’m getting at is it sounds like 

14 that the pattern itself in urine may not 

15 always be that conclusive that we do or do not 

16 have this problem, from listening to Joyce. 

17 But I also heard that, well, if this 

18 situation does exist where you have relatively 

19 large intake, nothing observed in the urine, 

20 but you would see it in the feces. So what 

21 I’m getting at is, it seems to me one of the 

22 most important points that are being made in 

23 this conversation is that you folks don’t 

24 believe that this phenomenon really exists at 

25 Mound or did exist at Mound based on looking 
132

1 at the pattern. 

2 But then I heard that, well, sometimes 

3 the pattern could fool you. And then I heard 

4 the fecal analysis would be the telltale sign. 

5 If you saw high levels in feces and relatively 

6 low levels in urine, at least for a period of 

7 months after the initial intake, that would be 

8 an indication that you might have this 

9 phenomenon occurring. Am I characterizing 

10 this correctly? 

11 DR. ULSH: No. 

12 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): First of all was 

13 my question clear? 

14 DR. ULSH: Well, yeah, your question is 

15 clear, John. This is Brant. I think there is 

16 perhaps some -- I don’t know, disagreement 

17 might be too strong a word, but we’re 

18 confident, I think, in the 900 cases that we 

19 looked at -- Joyce has expressed some doubt 

20 about our ability to detect it if it occurred. 

21 However, fecal sampling is a totally different 

22 subject. It’s not relevant to this Plutonium23 238 discussion I don’t think. 

24 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): The reason I 

25 asked it, Brant, is that what I heard is that 
133

1 if you did inhale this material, it would pass 

2 through the GI tract and be collected in the 

3 feces. But it may not necessarily readily be 

4 found in the urine even if it was in 

5 relatively large quantities. 

6 DR. ULSH: Well, only if it was of large 

7 particle size. That’s what Don referred to 

8 earlier. It wouldn’t necessarily be the case. 

9 That’s not really related to whether it’s high 

10 fired or not. Once it gets in the lung, at 

11 least the material at LANL, it was very 

12 insoluble so it went to the lung, and it just 

13 stayed in the lung. It’s not that it came out 

14 necessarily in the feces. It just didn’t go 

15 anywhere. And the question is, would that be 

16 the case at Mound as well. So it’s not really 

17 related to the fecal sampling. 

18 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, I may have 

19 misunderstood the concept. I thought that 

20 would be a telltale sign. If that’s 

21 incorrect, I’ll withdraw my question. 

22 DR. ULSH: Am I right? Or, Don? 

23 MR. STEWART: Well, a positive fecal would 

24 not itself suggest that you had the Type J 

25 exposure. It just says that you have non-
134

1 respirable particles. 

2 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): If you catch 

3 it immediately following an incident, you 

4 would always expect to find something in the 

5 feces. That’s going to be pretty sensitive 

6 the first several days following intake. 

7 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): And that’s what 

8 I’m hearing is that you may see that and not 

9 see anything in the urine, and that would be 

10 perfectly appropriate if the particle sizes 

11 were large. 

12 MR. STEWART: Right. 

13 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): If they were 

14 small though I’m assuming that you would see 

15 something in the urine, and if the particle 

16 size was small, and you didn’t see anything in 

17 the urine, then that would start to raise some 

18 suspicion maybe we’re dealing with the special 

19 form of plutonium. 

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN (by Telephone): The problem 

21 is it’s very difficult to recognize because of 

22 the special pattern. So if you don’t have 

23 anything, you don’t assume there was any 

24 incident. That’s what happened on the 1980 

25 incident in Los Alamos. And they didn’t 
135

1 recognize even taking nasal swipes. 

2 And so it could look like it was -- 

3 and after as the urine excretion rate starts 

4 to increase, then starts to increase before it 

5 decreases, it could be confounded with a 

6 chronic intake when the urine excretion rate 

7 increases. And so it’s just difficult to 

8 recognize it. 

9 So I think the whole point is even if 

10 you have the database, unless you know there 

11 was an incident, then it would be very 

12 difficult to recognize it. And the comparison 

13 that is done with the Tony James’ model with 

14 the chronic intakes for Type S and Type M 

15 depends on what the absorption rates that 

16 you’re applying for the lung model. 

17 So, you know, to compare it favorably 

18 or not favorably with one kind or another kind 

19 of exposure, and I don’t know if Tony James’ 

20 model is the best one. And the other thing is 

21 that the Tony James’ model was used with a 

22 five particle size. And Miller, Gunter Miller 

23 did a model where there were different 

24 absorption parameters with the same excretion 

25 rate, but he used 0.5 for particle size. 
136

1 I don’t know which one is the correct 

2 one. If you don’t measure the particle size, 

3 you don’t know if it’s 0.5 and five, and it 

4 makes a big difference. 

5 MS. BEACH: I apologize for cutting this 

6 short. I know we are losing Liz and Tom, if 

7 they have not already left us. I would like 

8 to recap, however, and make sure that we 

9 capture everything that needs to be, the 

10 action items. I know we’ve got Joyce 

11 supplying NIOSH with a couple of documents. 

12 Joyce, I don’t know if your question 

13 was answered on how to recognize the model and 

14 how to apply the model. I believe that would 

15 be for NIOSH to deliver. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Can I interject? 

17 MS. BEACH: Yes, please. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we having gotten 

19 this pretty thorough white paper and have gone 

20 through it for the past week, I think what we 

21 owe the work group is a, is to frame up this 

22 issue very clearly. I mean, we’ve had a lot 

23 of give and take. This is very useful. But I 

24 think what we need to do, and this would be 

25 relatively brief. This wouldn’t be more than 
137

1 a couple of weeks from now, but I think what 

2 we need to do is frame up this question of 

3 being able to identify who it would apply to 

4 and how it would be done, just lay that out 

5 very clearly with references. 

6 And I also would like to provide NIOSH 

7 some case examples that might represent 

8 exceptions to the convention of the experience 

9 at Mound, this would be Mound workers we have 

10 some data for that we would provide just as 

11 illustrative examples of exceptions to this. 

12 And I think that would be the response. 

13 I don’t think it changes our general 

14 conclusion that a model can be applied. I 

15 think I said that up front. Conceptually, I 

16 think we’re in agreement there. But whether 

17 it can be applied with sufficient accuracy I 

18 think is where we’re at now. And I think 

19 these issues speak to that. 

20 I would suggest we can provide the 

21 references that Joyce mentioned immediately, 

22 but I’d like to go ahead and frame this up for 

23 the work group with some of these case 

24 examples over the next couple weeks and relay 

25 that over through the work group to NIOSH to 
138

1 support whatever final dialogue we have on 

2 this. 

3 MS. BEACH: Great, that was actually what I 

4 was going to say but you said it much better. 

5 We do have somebody who has put us on hold, I 

6 believe. So if you have done that, please 

7 take us off hold. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: They’re on hold, so they won’t 

9 hear us. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: The second part of that is 

11 -- maybe this was, maybe Brant can answer this 

12 -- the 896 cases that were reviewed off of 

13 PURECON, have they been, Brant, sorted in a 

14 separate file that might be available on the O 

15 drive? 

16 DR. ULSH: Tom and Liz, are you still there? 

17 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): Yeah, we’re 

18 still here. I guess we have a PDF file that 

19 has the plots of all of them. It’s just, you 

20 know, a quick plotting of all of the results 

21 for the people. We haven’t put it on the O 

22 drive, but we can. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that would be 

24 helpful. I know it might be repetitive, but 

25 if it’s not too much, too onerous, that would 
139

1 be helpful to see some of these firsthand just 

2 as a case example. 

3 MS. BRACKETT (by Telephone): No problem. 

4 MS. BEACH: Is there anything else? 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: No, and we’ll take the 

6 action to provide references as soon as Joyce 

7 can provide them via e-mail, and then we’ll 

8 frame this up and provide a, more or less a 

9 response to the white paper that addresses the 

10 issues we just discussed. 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

12 Any other comments? 

13 (no response) 

14 MS. BEACH: Okay, we will move on from nine. 

15 How are we doing on time? 

16 DR. ULSH: Twelve. 

17 MS. BEACH: We’re actually scheduled 12:30 

18 to one. How much time do you think Price 

19 Anderson will take? It’s number 21. 

20 DR. ULSH: It’s probably not going to be 

21 quick. 

22 MS. BEACH: Okay, let’s go ahead and break 

23 for lunch. We will resume at 1:15. Thank 

24 you. 

25 (Whereupon, a lunch break was taken from 
140

1 12:15 p.m. until 1:15 p.m.) 

2 MS. BEACH: We are now ready to resume. We 

3 are going to continue on as the agenda states 

4 with the issue number 21. 

SUMMARY OF THE PRICE-ANDERSON ACT VIOLATIONS 

5 MATRIX ISSUE #21

6 And Brant, are you going to take the 

7 lead and start on this? 

8 DR. ULSH: Yes, I’ll start and quickly turn 

9 it over to Gene Potter. 

10 This deals with the Price-Anderson Act 

11 violations that happened at Mound. If you all 

12 recall, when I presented our evaluation report 

13 at the Las Vegas Board meeting, that was one 

14 issue that we had reserved judgment on because 

15 we wanted to take a look at these particular 

16 violations and see whether or not they had SEC 

17 implications. That was the real question. 

18 For those of you not familiar with the 

19 Price-Anderson Act and what it involves, 

20 basically, it’s a broad umbrella that covers 

21 violations that occur by contractors and DOE 

22 goes in and performs enforcement actions. Not 

23 all of those, in fact, the majority of those 

24 are probably not relevant to what we do in 

25 terms of dose reconstruction. 
141

1 But I was not confident that that was 

2 the case here because these Price-Anderson Act 

3 violations dealt specifically with issues that 

4 related to Mound’s bioassay program. And so 

5 we wanted to reserve judgment on that just 

6 because there was a possibility that it might 

7 be relevant to dose reconstruction and SEC. 

8 So the problem that we faced with this 

9 issue was that there appeared to be multiple 

10 Price-Anderson Act violations, and we were 

11 having a hard time getting our arms around 

12 what was what in terms of which subject each 

13 violation dealt with. So Gene Potter has gone 

14 through -- geez, I don’t know -- 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Nine hundred 

16 pages. 

17 DR. ULSH: -- 900 pages of Price-Anderson 

18 Act documentation and come up with a pretty 

19 concise summary. 

20 Gene, are you out there? 

21 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes, I am, and 

22 it was that one reference ID that is in the 

23 documentation that’s been provided, 37-7-33, 

24 was actually over 2,200 pages. 

25 DR. ULSH: Okay, so it was a lot. 
142

1 Gene, if you’re ready, I would just 

2 like to ask you to perhaps walk us through the 

3 report that you’ve prepared. This was sent 

4 out to the working group and to SC&A on -- 

5 well, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago. 

6 So, Gene, go ahead. 

7 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Just briefly, in 

8 the documentation there were three enforcement 

9 actions that you see listed in three different 

10 sections of what you have. And I can just 

11 read the brief description of each of those. 

12 I don’t think it’s probably a good use of the 

13 working group’s time if people had a chance to 

14 review this for me to go into a great deal of 

15 detail. Perhaps we could spend more time on 

16 questions if there are any. 

17 Anyway, the first violation occurred 

18 in 1997, and that was near the start of the 

19 Price-Anderson program which you’ll recall DOE 

20 had to publish a rule in the Federal Register

21 which was incorporated into the Code of 

22 Federal Regulations, 10 CFR 835, so that a 

23 basis would be available for taking these 

24 enforcement actions. 

25 The first violation is as I said in 
143

1 1997. Mound was fined $112,500 and a number 

2 of programmatic deficiencies involving 

3 administration of Mound’s bioassay program and 

4 methodologies used for determining and 

5 assigning internal dose to workers, including 

6 minimum detectable activities were not 

7 current, decision levels were not in use, and 

8 some individuals did receive bioassay as 

9 required by the RWPs. 

10 And you see in the documentation 

11 there’s sort of a timeline, the dates the 

12 things occurred. And then Mound was required 

13 to respond in writing to make the corrective 

14 actions for these items. And if we skip down 

15 to -- my impression at least was of what the 

16 SEC implications might have been from this 

17 first group of violations was that we can 

18 determine a superset of the workers who may 

19 have been involved in signing in on rosters 

20 that did not receive the appropriate bioassay. 

21 We have documentation in MESH and 

22 other places where we can make this 

23 determination. And so this does not appear to 

24 be a SEC issue should the working group 

25 determine that the follow-up actions were 
144

1 inadequate in some way. The MDA and the 

2 decision-level issue, again, does not appear 

3 to be an SEC issue. There were, Mound went 

4 back and made some corrections to the record. 

5 And the fact that they were comparing the 

6 results to the MDA instead of the decision 

7 level is not an issue for NIOSH dose 

8 reconstructions. 

9 DR. ULSH: Okay, Gene, that might be a good 

10 place to stop. 

11 MS. CHANG: This is Chia-Chia Chang, the 

12 DFO, please do not put us on hold. If you’re 

13 on hold, you are obviously not hearing me. 

14 I’m going to call and ask for this line to be, 

15 the line with the beeping, to be removed. But 

16 this is a reminder to everybody to please put 

17 yourself on mute, and if you have to leave for 

18 a call, please hang up, thanks. 

19 DR. ULSH: All right, Gene, go ahead. 

20 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Did we want to 

21 stop there for questions on this first 

22 violation? 

23 MS. BEACH: Yeah, I do have a question. I’m 

24 reading on page three of 16, last sentence. 

25 It says, however, the list was not located and 
145

1 DOE specifically requested that personnel 

2 identifiers not be used. Is that the same 

3 list you were just saying that you were able 

4 to come up with? 

5 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yeah, that 

6 refers to part of the corrective actions were 

7 taken. So we don’t know who specifically the 

8 76 workers were if that’s the number. 

9 However, we can determine everyone who signed 

10 in on those RWPs which are named in the 

11 documentation. So we can determine a superset 

12 of who may have been affected. 

13 MS. BEACH: Okay, so you’re going to do that 

14 from the RWPs? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right, from the 

16 sign-in rosters and RWPs. 

17 MS. BEACH: Okay, thank you. 

18 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): All right, the 

19 second violation occurred in 1998 for which 

20 Mound was fined $165,000. And the brief 

21 description, if you want to follow along. 

22 Radiological control deficiencies during the 

23 WD-Building filter change and bioassay program 

24 deficiencies were identified. Work control 

25 problems included: work control documents did 
146

1 not have adequate management review contrary 

2 to established procedures, an ALARA review was 

3 not conducted, a timely pre-job survey of the 

4 area was not conducted, and appropriate air 

5 monitoring equipment was not used. Bioassay 

6 deficiencies included the failure to provide 

7 timely analyses to numerous workers: namely, 

8 delays in processing Americium-241 results, 

9 delays in return of off-site vendor bioassay 

10 results, and delays in certification of vendor 

11 bioassay data. In addition, there were 

12 problems with the implementation of new alpha 

13 spectroscopy system that led to calculational 

14 errors. 

15 And so here we have each of the events 

16 sort of, in the additional details section 

17 sort of dealt with individually. The WD18 Building filter change was an issue where they 

19 did not have real-time air monitoring. And 

20 later they found out that they had exceeded 

21 the stop work levels and basically the issue 

22 there. 

23 And the bioassay program issues 

24 revolved around replacing part of the alpha 

25 spec counting capability, and they did not 
147

1 anticipate how long of a delay. They had to 

2 shut down some of their existing equipment, 

3 and they did not anticipate the delay, the 

4 extent of the delay, and this led to a backlog 

5 of bioassay samples which resulted in Mound 

6 exceeding their own guidelines or requirements 

7 for when results were to be determined and 

8 reported. 

9 And let me see. Let me skip down to, 

10 have Mound’s response. The SEC implications 

11 for the filter change were just a very limited 

12 number of workers. From the document in MESH 

13 we have we can determine exactly who those 

14 seven workers were. Follow-up bioassay 

15 samples were collected so this shouldn’t be an 

16 SEC issue. 

17 MS. BEACH: I do have one question for you. 

18 Back on page four of 16, the additional 

19 details, last sentence it says, during the 

20 pre-filter replacement, while the exhaust fans 

21 were shut down, workers consequently, 

22 personnel routinely entered the building on 

the 12th 23 without wearing full face respirators. 

24 They would also not have been on an RWP. How 

25 are you going to account for them? 
148

1 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes, that is an 

2 issue; however, let’s see, I believe I put a 

3 statement in the first paragraph under SEC 

4 implications. This has not been done to my 

5 knowledge, but the data from the workers who 

6 were monitored could possibly be used to bound 

7 the doses for any other workers who entered 

8 the building while the ventilation was shut 

9 down. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: So would that be using a 

11 coworker data or I didn’t think we had a model 

12 for that. 

13 DR. ULSH: We don’t have an external 

14 coworker data. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: You have an internal? 

16 MS. BEACH: I still am worried that we won’t 

17 be able to identify those workers unless they 

18 knew they were in there at that certain time 

19 period and told you they were in there. So 

20 I’m not clear how you’re going to address that 

21 in that aspect. 

22 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I don’t have a 

23 response for that. 

24 DR. ULSH: Josie, I’m reading the part that 

25 you referred to. During the pre-filter 
149

1 replacement while exhaust fans were shut down, 

2 the building entry requirement for full face 

3 respirators was not posted. As a consequence, 

4 personnel routinely entered the building on 

February 12th 5 , 1998, without wearing full face 

6 respirators as required. 

7 So, Gene, are we saying here that that 

8 part of the issue is that people should have 

9 been wearing full face respirators when they 

10 went in, but they were not because it wasn’t 

11 appropriately posted. But do we know, I don’t 

12 see anything here that says that we don’t know 

13 who went in the building. Did I miss 

14 something? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right. I don’t 

16 have any information to identify who may have 

17 gone into the building. But remember, this is 

18 a specific job on a specific day of rather 

19 limited duration. So there wouldn’t have been 

20 a whole lot of people affected. I think 

21 you’re right in that these people may have to 

22 self identify in order to take this into 

23 account. But looking at a person’s typical 

24 career over several years, this is a job of 

25 duration of hours and not, probably would not 
150

1 be significant in the overall scheme of 

2 things. 

3 MS. BEACH: Brant is correct. There are 

4 probably two issues. If it’s not posted, then 

5 the workers could inadvertently walk through 

6 without realizing that it was an en masse 

7 situation. Thank you. 

8 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): The other thing 

9 that I guess I should add was that that 

10 statement that you read was directly out of 

11 the documentation. And DOE must have seen an 

12 issue with this because they did not force 

13 Mound to do any additional follow up, at least 

14 in the documentation that I’ve seen. 

15 DR. ULSH: Gene, I think it might be 

16 worthwhile for us to take a follow up action 

17 to see if we can determine who might have been 

18 going in that building on that job. 

19 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Hey, Gene, it’s 

20 Leo. Look at your Mound response to that 

21 particular -- 

22 MS. CHANG: Yeah, excuse me. We’re having 

23 trouble hearing you. Could please get on your 

24 mouthpiece? 

25 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): This is Leo. 
151

1 Gene, look at your Mound response to that 

2 particular issue. It talks about five of 

3 seven workers submitted routine bioassays and 

4 the second worker was not notified until asked 

5 to sign the acknowledgement form. It looks to 

6 me like they all left bioassay samples. 

7 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Leo, this refers 

8 to other workers who may have not been 

9 involved in the job but entered the building 

10 while the ventilation was shut down. 

11 DR. ULSH: Gene, I think we should take a 

12 follow up action to see if there’s, if we can 

13 find any information on who might have been 

14 affected by that. I mean, the answer may be 

15 no, but we ought to look and get back to the 

16 working group on that. 

17 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Okay, we’ll take 

18 another look at that. I’m not very hopeful. 

19 I didn’t turn up anything with this initially, 

20 but there may be something we haven’t turned 

21 over yet. 

22 MR. STEWART: You possibly could look for 

23 some area monitoring results as well. We 

24 don’t tend to use those to reconstruct dose, 

25 but we can use ^. 
152

1 MS. BEACH: Thank you, Gene, you can go 

2 ahead and continue if you like. 

3 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): The second part 

4 of that fine, the bioassay program issues were 

5 mainly delays and things which don’t affect 

6 dose reconstruction; however, there were, as a 

7 part of this implementation of a new alpha 

8 spec system, some of the MDAs and decision 

9 levels were reported in error, and those were 

10 supposedly corrected. And looking in the MESH 

11 data you can see a number, there’s a MESH 

12 history table that goes with the bioassay 

13 data, and you can see that there are a bunch 

14 of changes. 

15 However, I wasn’t able to determine 

16 all the people potentially affected. All I 

17 can tell you is that I can see where at this 

18 timeframe where MDAs and decision levels were 

19 changed to eliminate the problem with double 

20 subtraction background. So basically what the 

21 issue was, was that the results were not being 

22 compared to an appropriate MDA and there were 

23 changes made. And so that data should be 

24 available to NIOSH, the correct ones without 

25 the double background subtraction. 
153

1 The last enforcement action in 2001 

2 with a fine of 137,500 comprises almost half 

3 of the documentation in that reference ID of 

4 over 2,000 pages. And there were a number of 

5 different events there. I think one of their, 

6 four of them that were specifically listed and 

7 then there were two that DOE identified but 

8 said they were not fining the site for, 

9 including one which I think will probably 

10 generate a lot of discussion, a discovery of 

11 unanalyzed bioassay samples. 

12 The first issue was Building 38 

13 plutonium intake event. And this again was a 

specific operation that occurred January 25th 14 

15 of 2001 where there was a limited number of 

16 workers involved, I think only two in this 

17 case. And things went wrong and we know who 

18 those, we can tell who those guys were. So 

19 that shouldn’t be an SEC issue. 

20 The second one involved an issue where 

21 the site shut down uranium processing, 

22 bioassay sample processing I should say, for a 

23 short period of time, and as a result when 

24 they returned to processing they found out 

25 that some of the samples due to a query 
154

1 deficiency, the samples were not -- excuse me, 

2 not the samples, but the reporting was not 

3 done in a timely manner. So again, this is an 

4 issue where it’s a problem for an operation 

5 radiation safety program, but as long as NIOSH 

6 has the results available, it should not be an 

7 SEC issue. 

8 Then, the third item involved another 

9 issue with bioassay on radiation work permits. 

10 And as a result of an audit for this one they 

11 found that the characterization data 

12 identified additional radionuclides that were 

13 not identified to be sampled in the bioassay 

14 required by that RWP. 

15 And just want to say that this is not 

16 too unusual a situation. That in a lot of 

17 cases you will sample for the dominant or 

18 indicate a radionuclide, and then you might 

19 have a number of different means of assigning 

20 doses to the other one, should an intake occur 

21 of an indicator radionuclide. That was the 

22 issue there. They did do an extensive 

23 analysis after this and tried to determine 

24 whether this was a problem, could doses have 

25 been missed and so forth and follow up. 
155

1 Unreviewed safety question program 

2 deficiencies is described there. Basically, 

3 this is a safety program that does not affect 

4 dose reconstruction. In other words they were 

5 required to do audits and this sort of thing, 

6 and they inadvertently dropped a requirement 

7 from a manual. So it should have no SEC 

8 implications. 

9 And then this is the August 1st 

10 discovery of 15 unanalyzed bioassay samples. 

11 This is the one that DOE stated they were not 

12 fining the site for but included it in the 

13 documentation. And this is a kind of a long, 

14 complicated scenario that involves an earlier 

15 discovery that led to a collection of follow16 up samples. 

17 Some of these samples were sent to 

18 CEP, which I think we’re all pretty familiar 

19 with that story, and eventually all 

20 invalidated. And more samples were collected 

21 and ended up being sent to Quanterra as well 

22 as Argonne National Laboratory East who had 

23 been doing the samples up ‘til a certain point 

24 for Mound. 

25 And as a result of this long scenario, 
156

1 which I think you have in your documentation 

2 there, follow ups were eventually collected in 

3 all of them, but some samples were retained as 

4 back ups. And then again in 2001 the site was 

5 getting ready to dispose of some of these what 

6 they thought were back up samples, and they 

7 found 15 samples that apparently got mixed in 

8 and were not, in fact, back up samples from 

9 the earlier go rounds. 

10 So at this time I’m unable to identify 

11 who those, which employees belong to those 15 

12 samples, but they were known to Mound at the 

13 time and follow-up action should have been 

14 taken. We’re still trying to pursue which 

15 workers may have been affected by those 

16 samples. 

17 I guess I kind of left out a 

18 discussion, the fact that these are Actinium19 227 samples, and so we’re still pursuing who 

20 those individuals might have been and haven’t 

21 been able to determine from the MESH data and 

22 other sources exactly who they were and to 

23 verify that there were appropriate follow ups 

24 or the doses could be bounded or Mound did 

25 some sort of analysis to say that, well, this 
157

1 person was not an actual worker on the 227 

2 project but may have been a manager or 

3 whatever. 

4 So we’re still pursuing that one. 

5 Which kind of, I’m sorry, it’s a pretty short 

6 summary. I’m sure I’ve missed some important 

7 stuff that you want to ask questions about. 

8 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): This is Bob 

9 Alvarez. I’m sorry I missed part of your 

10 presentation. I came in maybe in the last 

11 five minutes or so, but as I understand the 

12 situation this is a problem that went back as 

13 early as 1990, prior to the start up of the R 

14 Building D&D project. Is that right? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right, yes. As 

16 I mentioned, you may have missed this part, 

17 there was an early, there had been a couple of 

18 rounds of D&D. In the first one the samples 

19 were analyzed by Argonne National Laboratory 

20 apparently without any problems. The second 

21 go around Argonne decided that they didn’t 

22 want to compete with commercial labs and had 

23 other priorities, so that’s when the site 

24 sought other labs to do the samples. 

25 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Now, as I 
158

1 understand that in mid-1992 the Mound 

2 dosimetry coordinator apprised management that 

3 R building worker bioassays were unanalyzed 

4 and that management continued to ignore this 

5 information until late 1993. Is that a 

6 correct assumption? 

7 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I don’t have 

8 enough information to determine what was in 

9 the minds of the managers. All I can say is 

10 that there were -- 

11 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Well, I mean, 

12 whether or not internal management documents, 

13 did you review internal management documents 

14 to that effect? The reason I’m asking these 

15 questions is it goes back to a pertinent 

16 question is did you review the bargaining 

17 units root cause analysis of this? 

18 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I reviewed all 

19 of the documentation that was in this Price20 Anderson file. And with over 2,000 pages, I 

21 would have to take some time to look at what 

22 you’re asking about. It would probably best 

23 be done offline. 

24 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Okay, well, 

25 let’s talk about this offline because there 
159

1 are a bunch of details that I’m not clear 

2 about that I’d like to better understand. But 

3 I guess the bottom line question I have here 

4 is how many workers have that we understand 

5 where we may have missed their dose as a 

6 result of this situation? 

7 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Well, the first 

8 go around -- let me see if I’ve got this 

9 handy. As a result of the samples discovered 

10 earlier, in 1990 or -- I’m not looking right 

11 at the scenario or the timeline that I 

12 produced at the moment here. I seem to have 

13 it buried. In any case there were only in the 

14 neighborhood of 40 or 50 employees that were 

15 directly affected. And as a result the 

16 follow-up samples ended up being collected for 

17 close to 300 employees. 

18 So it basically was thrown open to the 

19 whole site if you felt like you may have been 

20 exposed. And those samples were, in fact, I 

21 think they collected two samples from each 

22 individual. And those samples comprised the 

23 back ups that were later discovered and the 

24 scenario was that they thought that all of 

25 these samples were back ups, but it turned out 
160

1 15 of them were not apparently back ups that 

2 were collected as a part of the follow up from 

3 the earlier events. 

4 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): So there were 

5 issues such as deficient MDA values for 

6 various radionuclides being used in MESH to 

7 flag positive results had not been updated 

8 since 1992. Is this something that has been 

9 corrected? 

10 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right, yes, I 

11 covered that earlier. That was a part of the 

12 Price-Anderson findings and those were 

13 corrected in MESH. I can see in MESH where 

14 the MDA values were changed in the history 

15 table that they have. 

16 The thing that I can’t determine yet, 

17 but we’ve now got a MESH site, access to a 

18 MESH site expert who may be able to help in 

19 this regard. I can’t tell who was supposed to 

20 have MDA values changed. I can only tell you 

21 that there are numerous examples where the 

22 MDAs were changed because there’s a history 

23 table in MESH that tells you what the MDA was 

24 when it was inserted and then when the record 

25 was modified. 
161

1 MR. ALVAREZ (by Telephone): Thank you. 

2 MS. BEACH: Any other questions from the 

3 work group? 

4 (no response) 

5 MS. DeMERS: For the 108 individuals who did 

6 not submit bioassay samples for the 20 RWPs, 

7 do you know what radionuclides were listed on 

8 those 20 RWPs? 

9 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes, we can 

10 determine -- 

11 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I’m sorry to interrupt. 

12 I’ve had the operator disconnect the line 

13 that’s got us on hold and beeping. 

14 OPERATOR (by Telephone): It will take me a 

15 moment to locate this to know which line it 

16 is. 

17 MS. CHANG: Thank you. 

18 OPERATOR (by Telephone): You’re welcome. 

19 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): In any case, I 

20 think we do know which radionuclides are 

21 involved in those. 

22 MS. DeMERS: Do you know off the top of your 

23 head? 

24 (no response) 

25 DR. ULSH: Gene, are you still there? 
162

1 OPERATOR (by Telephone): I might have to 

2 mute a few lines to locate this, sorry. 

3 DR. ULSH: Did you hear the question, Gene? 

4 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): What 

5 radionuclides were involved in the 76 workers 

6 who signed in an RWP roster? 

7 MS. DeMERS: Yes. 

8 DR. ULSH: One hundred and eight on the 20 

9 RWPs, page one of 16. 

10 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): And don’t I 

11 mention there -- I’m looking at a different 

12 part of it now -- but don’t I mention in there 

13 that later that it was reduced after they 

14 looked at it to 76 on 16 RWPs or something 

15 like that? 

16 DR. ULSH: Yes, page -- 

17 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): That the 

18 initial, I was confused at first by that, too. 

19 There’s two sets of numbers in the Price20 Anderson documentation, but apparently after 

21 they looked at it, they decided it was really 

22 more like 76 on 16 RWPs. So the first RWP was 

23 SW-0-0-8-97. That should have been plutonium, 

24 tritium and uranium. The second one was 

25 tritium only. The third one was tritium, 
163

1 thorium, actinium, radium and radon and so on. 

2 So they’re all different. 

3 MS. DeMERS: Are the RWPs actually in the 

4 2,000-page document? 

5 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): The RWP numbers 

6 are, yes. 

7 MS. DeMERS: Well, I meant the RWPs 

8 themselves. 

9 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): No. 

10 MS. DeMERS: Do you have those available? 

11 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): They’re in MESH, 

12 and the sign-in rosters are in MESH. 

13 MS. DeMERS: Okay. 

14 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): So for instance, 

15 SW-0-0-8-97 is one I looked at in detail. The 

16 workers signing in on that should have 

17 plutonium, tritium and uranium. And I found 

18 three workers had signed in, and I have the 

19 dates for, I have their last entry dates, and 

20 I have their bioassay dates for those 

21 radionuclides. So for each one of these it 

22 could be from one to hundreds of people 

23 signing in so that’s why it gets to be a 

24 little complex to verify all this. So I did 

25 it for a couple of them. 
164

1 MS. DeMERS: Do you know which tables in 

2 MESH this information is in? 

3 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes. Let me 

4 see. I think I’ve got a version here. The 

5 RWP tables all start with RWP underscore 

6 something. So there’s a table RWP Master, and 

7 there’s a table RWP underscore PER, underscore 

8 Roster, underscore Data. And there’s a table 

9 RWP underscore Rad, R-A-D, underscore P-R-O-T, 

10 underscore R-E-Q. And I think I pulled all of 

11 that information from those three. 

12 DR. ULSH: Can we, do you want us to e-mail 

13 it to you? 

14 MS. DeMERS: Yes. 

15 DR. ULSH: Gene, can you e-mail what you 

16 just said, the names of those tables, can you 

17 e-mail that to Kathy and Joe? 

18 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Okay. If I 

19 don’t have all their addresses, I’ll send a 

20 copy to you as well. 

21 DR. ULSH: Okay. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: These 32 employees that, 

23 individuals that were subsequently removed 

24 from the list, this says that the RWPs didn’t 

25 need -- let’s see, the signed in did not 
165

1 require bioassay samples based on workplace 

2 indicated for the job. 

3 DR. ULSH: Brad, are you talking about 

4 reducing the 108 number down to 76? 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, the 32 individuals, but 

6 they were still on RWP so they must have been 

7 around something. 

8 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I kind of took 

9 that at face value that the site had somehow 

10 determined that bioassay was not required. 

11 DR. ULSH: Did DOE accept that, Gene? 

12 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): This is all, in 

13 general, all documentation that went back and 

14 forth between Mound and DOE. So I saw nothing 

15 where DOE objected to that analysis. It’s not 

16 to say it doesn’t exist, but it wasn’t in the 

17 2,000-plus pages. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Part of my thing that I’ve got 

19 into is, number one, I don’t know how come 

20 those 32 people if they’re on an RWP, they 

21 would have been taken off because they’re 

22 still in there. Most RWPs, you’re there for a 

23 reason. It could be radiation only or 

24 something else like that, but that’s something 

25 that we’ve kind of got. 
166

1 But also, too, down at the bottom of 

2 it you make a statement here that affected 

3 workers should have provided bioassay follow 

4 ups afterwards. Do we have anything proving 

5 that they did or didn’t? 

6 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Okay, that’s the 

7 -- I was just talking to Kathy about there, 

8 that one can go through these and determine 

9 from those tables what radionuclides they 

10 should have been bioassayed for, when their 

11 last entry date was and when their next 

12 bioassay sample for that radionuclide was. 

13 That can be done. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: But we haven’t done it as yet? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Well, like I 

16 say, it becomes a little onerous, but I’ve 

17 done if for like the first three or so. 

18 Because you could have hundreds of entries on 

19 some of these. 

20 DR. ULSH: Just to clarify, Gene, the first 

21 three -- you’re talking about the first three 

22 RWPs out of the 20? 

23 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right, right, or 

24 16 or whatever the reduced, the list of all 

25 20, the original list that we don’t have. So 
167

1 that would be kind of hard to reproduce I 

2 think. What we have is the ones that Mound 

3 determined were the actual numbers after some 

4 sort of analysis that they did. So I’ve got -

5 - let me look at that again how many I have, 

6 RWP numbers. 

7 I’m looking at a little bit longer 

8 document than you folks have. Oh, I have, I 

9 actually have 19 RWP numbers that are in the 

10 documentation, the Price-Anderson 

11 documentation covering the SW Building, 38 

12 Building, WD, T and 88 Buildings. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: So you’ve got 19 out of 20 of 

14 them? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes, sir. 

16 Somehow I was thinking it was 16, but, no, 

17 there are 20 specifically listed in that 

18 Price-Anderson documentation. 

19 MR. CHEW: You said in your page three it 

20 was 19, Gene. 

21 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): And I was right. 

22 MS. DeMERS: This is Kathy DeMers. Can you 

23 clarify something for me? Did you look at the 

24 roster of three RWPs and then compare them 

25 back for 19? 
168

1 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Say that again, 

2 please? 

3 MS. DeMERS: Did you follow up and make sure 

4 that the individuals who signed in on three 

5 RWPs or 19 RWPs, did you follow up and make 

6 sure that they had a post-job sample? I 

7 wasn’t sure whether it was three RWPs or 19. 

8 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yeah, I said I 

9 only went through -- let me just double check. 

10 One, two -- I did SW-0-0-8-97, SW-0-1-0-97. 

11 And that was a long one. That had many people 

12 signing in. Okay, my apologies, it looks like 

13 I did all of SW-10-97, which is a long one and 

14 had many people signing in, but I only did the 

15 first two, not the first three. 

16 MS. DeMERS: Okay, thanks. 

17 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): And see, for 

18 each of these you have multiple radionuclides. 

19 In general, SW-10 was a tritium only one, so 

20 it was not too difficult to do. But say, this 

21 had over a hundred different people sign in 

22 and say that would have been one with three 

23 radionuclides on it, it gets to be rather 

24 onerous to follow all these up, but it could 

25 be done. 
169

1 MR. CLAWSON: Maybe we ought to remind. 

2 MS. BEACH: I was going to before the next 

3 discussion but now is fine too. 

4 MS. CHANG: Just a reminder to please do not 

5 put us on hold. Please use mute unless you’re 

6 speaking. And then when you’re finished 

7 speaking, please mute yourself again. You 

8 could also use star six if you don’t have the 

9 mute button. 

10 And this message is specifically for 

11 the person who has put us on hold multiple 

12 times today, and then you come back and you 

13 found that you’ve been cut off the line, and 

14 that is because your phone beeps, beep, beep, 

15 beep, and so we cut you off. So please, 

16 please, do not put us on hold. 

17 And we were interrupting the 

18 conversation to do this now because obviously 

19 we can’t tell you that when you’re on hold. 

20 So hopefully, you’re hearing this now. Thank 

21 you. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Gene, Joe. 

23 Some questions were raised, I guess, in that 

24 timeframe about the usability of the post-job 

25 bioassay samplings. I don’t know if you 
170

1 touched on that. Things like played out, 

2 things like maybe short half-life materials 

3 that were included. Anything that could not 

4 be adjusted for in your view? 

5 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): The only 

6 discussion that comes to light when you 

7 mention those type of issues is the 15 samples 

8 that were discovered in August of 2000. They 

9 were thought to be backups, but in fact, they 

10 were not backups. They should have been 

11 analyzed. Those samples were so old by that 

12 time that they were never, in fact, analyzed 

13 to my knowledge. 

14 And eventually, and because of legal 

15 concerns, they were not disposed of either. 

16 So they determined that technically if they 

17 analyzed them, they wouldn’t know how to 

18 interpret the results because of the age 

19 possible played out or something. And so they 

20 were ultimately turned over to DOE 

21 interestingly enough. Now, I’m not sure what 

22 DOE ever did with them. But that’s the only 

23 issue that I’m aware of where something like 

24 that came up in the Price-Anderson 

25 documentation. I’m not a Mound expert. 
171

1 MR. CLAWSON: Well, this kind of comes back 

2 on page nine here where the radiation permits 

3 and stuff like that is what I was talking to 

4 earlier. And I think we kind of pushed it off 

5 to that area. You know, what kind of protocol 

6 do we have to make sure that, how did the site 

7 make sure that we had, that we were analyzing 

8 for what we were supposed to be analyzing in 

9 this? 

10 And I guess that’s, you know, it kind 

11 of comes up to this right now. What Quality 

12 Assurance program did we have to make sure 

13 that the samples and RWP match for what they 

14 were needing. It says here that they went 

15 into a lot of them, and they found some 

16 shortcomings and so forth like that. But it 

17 comes back to that question that I have. 

18 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right again, I 

19 mean, this was the exact issue in a couple of 

20 these where people did not receive the 

21 bioassay that they were supposed to. If 

22 that’s the issue that, of course, those were 

23 issues were pointed up and they were dealt 

24 with through follow-up bioassay or whatever 

25 means they had at their disposal, like they 
172

1 had looking at actual work records or 

2 whatever. That’s one thing. And so these 

3 specific issues, which were problems, were 

4 discovered and were dealt with. 

5 The issue on QA with the laboratory, 

6 again, you are correct that this was a problem 

7 from time to time. You see the, at least one 

8 example that is a good and a bad thing for the 

9 uranium samples were exceeding their 

10 turnaround times for reporting the results. 

11 That was actually as a result of a QA being 

12 implemented in the lab. 

13 It turned out to be a bad resin which 

14 had to be replaced for determining the uranium 

15 analysis, which resulted in them missing their 

16 deadlines. But at least they were trying to 

17 do the right thing. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Do we know how many RWPs that 

19 they actually had at this timeframe? And the 

20 reason why I’m questioning this is because one 

21 of the comments that came out in one of the 

22 petitioners was that they were on an RWP, 

23 basically, supposedly it was supposed to be 

24 covering everything that they needed, but they 

25 went to multiple buildings, and they were just 
173

1 staying on this one RWP. 

2 And they went into different areas 

3 because what they were doing was, basically, 

4 they were doing some testing, but it took 

5 multiple areas that they delivered things and 

6 so forth like that. I’m just wondering at the 

7 accuracy of this RWP covering for all that 

8 because to me it shows that these RWPs were 

9 for a certain area. 

10 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Right, that 

11 issue is actually I don’t think is in my write 

12 up anywhere, but it did come up. That was a 

13 part of the corrective actions. You have -- 

14 for those of you who haven’t worked in these 

15 programs, you have what’s known as a general 

16 RWP, and then you have specific RWPs. 

17 A general RWP is sometimes done for 

18 very low hazard work and would be used for 

19 visits, tours and that sort of thing. And so 

20 it keeps it from being overly onerous on 

21 keeping records. You have one RWP that would 

22 cover a multiple of the things, but they’re 

23 all low hazard things. 

24 And during some of these corrective 

25 actions it was pointed out that, well, this is 
174

1 an issue, and from now on we’re not going to 

2 have any general RWPs that require follow-up 

3 bioassay. So this is going to be ultra-low 

4 hazard work is the only thing that will be 

5 covered by a general RWP. 

6 If you’re going to have any work where 

7 a follow-up bioassay would be required, then 

8 that will be done on a specific RWP, building 

9 by building and job by job. So that exact 

10 issue that you’re talking about was discovered 

11 to be a problem during these Price-Anderson 

12 follow ups. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: So they finally came to this 

14 conclusion around 2000? 

15 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I hate to quote 

16 a date without looking at the documentation. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I understand that. I’m 

18 just looking at your paperwork because that’s 

19 kind of what I’m seeing that this is where 

20 they’re doing this follow up and so forth like 

21 this. I guess my point kind of gets to the 

22 earlier one of how is this being taken care of 

23 earlier in these years. 

24 Because it’s like one of the 

25 petitioners were saying, I worked in X 
175

1 Building. I was on this RWP. So that was 

2 having me checked for certain radionuclides, 

3 but also in the process I would travel to 

4 other buildings, but I just stayed on the same 

5 RWP. 

6 And I’m just questioning to make sure 

7 that if he was covered for all radionuclides 

8 that he could, because he was going from 

9 building to building, with some of these tests 

10 and so forth that they were experimenting 

11 with. Because -- 

12 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): The only other 

13 additional information I might offer is that 

14 at these sites you always have a workplace 

15 indicator program above and beyond what 

16 bioassay may be required routinely in this 

17 case by RWP. In other words you sign in an 

18 RWP, you get a bioassay regardless of whether 

19 anything happens or not. 

20 And you also have workplace indicators 

21 so if there would have been high air samples, 

22 positive nasal swabs and so forth, some sort 

23 of upset condition even though you may have 

24 been on a general RWP or whatever RWP you 

25 would have been on. It is likely that they 
176

1 would have been followed up on. So what 

2 you’re really talking about missing are very 

3 low level, chronic events which are not likely 

4 to result in much dose. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I just, and you’re 

6 right. I know that we deal with general RWPs 

7 and so forth like that, and unfortunately, in 

8 ours we’ve had to go away from the generals 

9 because different requirements for different 

10 bioassays and stuff. And I just, to me it’s 

11 just kind of interesting to me that each one 

12 of these facilities in looking at the MESH 

13 database, they were looking for specific 

14 isotopes. 

15 And I was just wondering how they were 

16 catching to make sure that those people that 

17 kind of, they were on one RWP at one building, 

18 but were going to the other ones being 

19 covered. And I don’t think we can really 

20 capture that. 

21 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I accept that as 

22 a valid comment. 

23 MS. BEACH: Are there any other comments? 

24 SC&A, do you plan on putting together 

25 a white paper formally for this for NIOSH? 
177

1 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I think what 

2 we’re going to have is a point-by-point 

3 response. I think we have a couple of 

4 observations off the top. I think just based 

5 on the discussion we just had NIOSH obviously 

6 needs to verify that the individuals, the 

7 workers, on the RWP roster were sampled for 

8 the nuclides that would have been in the RWPs. 

9 I don’t think there’s any disagreement with 

10 that. 

11 And the after-the-fact bioassay 

12 sampling with the exception of the 15 that 

13 were discussed ought to be doable as long as 

14 the DL is available to NIOSH, the decision 

15 level. So we’ll have a point-by-point 

16 response as part of the overall, you know, 

17 we’ll have an overall set of responses to the 

18 NIOSH piece, the NIOSH responses. 

19 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

20 Kathy, did you have something? 

21 MS. DeMERS: No. 

22 DR. ULSH: Josie, I guess I would raise that 

23 up to the working group. In terms of looking 

24 at all, I mean, one option -- okay, it seems 

25 to me we’ve got a couple of choices, and it’s 
178

1 just a matter of what the working group’s 

2 pleasure is. We’ve got, of the 19, I believe, 

3 RWPs, Gene has looked at two of them. One 

4 option would be to say that’s enough. The 

5 other option would be to say, no, we’ve got to 

6 look at all 19, and then, of course, if 

7 there’s anything in the middle. 

8 MS. DeMERS: What year were those two RWPs? 

9 DR. ULSH: Gene, the two RWPs that you 

10 looked at out of the 19, what years were 

11 those? Do you know? 

12 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I can check 

13 quickly here. Specifically, they were the 

14 ones listed in the Price-Anderson 

15 documentation were both, the ones that I 

16 looked at were both ’97. The only other years 

17 affected by any of these are 1996. There are 

18 two plutonium anomalies from 1996 for 38 

19 Building. 

20 MS. DeMERS: And they were all from ’96 and 

21 ’97? 

22 MS. BEACH: Didn’t you say they were from 

23 ’97 but the only other year affected was ’96? 

24 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): Yes, ma’am. 

25 MS. DeMERS: So all of those RWPs should be 
179

1 in the MESH database. 

2 DR. ULSH: Yes. So keep in mind that there 

3 are potentially hundreds of people 

4 potentially, I don’t know, ten multiple 

5 radionuclides each. Is there some way a 

6 sampling strategy short of looking at every 

7 person, every radionuclide or is that what you 

8 want to see. I guess that’s the question I 

9 would throw on the table. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Just going 

11 back how did you choose the two that you 

12 chose, Gene? 

13 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): They were the 

14 first two on the list. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Okay, so 

16 just random more or less. 

17 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): I might mention 

18 that, for example, RWP 38-0-3-4-97 there are, 

19 I don’t know how many people signed in on it, 

20 but it is for it looks like three, six, nine 

21 radionuclides. So potentially that’s a query 

22 for all of those for each person signing in. 

23 MS. BEACH: Can you give me that RWP number 

24 again, please? 

25 MR. POTTER (by Telephone): 38-0-3-4-97. 
180

1 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I guess Brad 

2 raises a good question. 

3 Josie, why don’t we, I mean, this is 

4 one possibility, take it as an action and come 

5 back with a proposal on a sampling regime. It 

6 sounds like the balance would be an onerous 

7 task if, in fact, there’s a lot of data 

8 points. But since we haven’t actually 

9 reviewed one yet, perhaps we should do that 

10 first and then get back to the working group 

11 and NIOSH as to how we would propose to take a 

12 look at those. 

13 MS. BEACH: That sounds like a great 

14 suggestion. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I don’t 

16 know. It may mean that we would have to 

17 propose a sampling regime that would be 

18 something less than the 17 that are left. 

19 MS. BEACH: That sounds good to me. How 

20 about the other members of the working group? 

21 MR. CLAWSON: That sounds fine. 

22 MS. BEACH: I’m hearing yeses, Joe, so -- 

23 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): And I 

24 understand, and I guess Kathy has confirmed 

25 this, everything we need to tap into is in 
181

1 MESH, and we will have the file name. So I 

2 guess we’re able to do that rather readily. 

3 DR. ULSH: All right, we have an action item 

4 to send you the -- 

5 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yeah, we’ll 

6 get on that and the first thing is to get back 

7 with a strategy, a sampling regime, and then 

8 go from there. 

9 MS. BEACH: And you also have the action 

10 item to the workers, the one early on, the 

11 question that I had. How many workers may 

12 have been in the buildings and the en masse. 

13 DR. ULSH: Yes, we will look to see if 

14 there’s any additional information. There may 

15 not be, but we’ll at least take another look 

16 and let you know. 

17 MS. BEACH: How are we doing? Does anybody 

18 need a break or are we good to go? 

19 MR. CLAWSON: Ray, you’re the important one. 

20 MS. BEACH: I do think at this time we need 

21 to look at our agenda because I’m feeling like 

22 we were a little overambitious, and we’re 

23 definitely not going to get all these items. 

24 So I am going to ask for comments on which 

25 ones we feel are most important today, and 
182

1 which ones we’re going to have to come back 

2 to. So we do have roadmap to bioassay data. 

3 We have the Mound matrix items. 

4 DR. ULSH: The one that we’ve made the most 

5 progress on, at least I could give you a brief 

6 overview on it, is probably the roadmap. 

7 MS. BEACH: Okay. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Yeah, I 

9 would suggest that if we don’t reach the last 

10 item, we’re going to try to come up with a 

11 sort of a status summary of where we stand on 

12 each of the issues in terms of the responses 

13 we received this past week. And certainly, we 

14 can have that dialogue back and forth and make 

15 you aware and make Brant and NIOSH aware of 

16 where we think that issue stands, and how we 

17 intend to move forward to resolve it. So if 

18 nothing else, we’ll try to get that in the 

19 mail in the next couple of weeks. 

20 MS. BEACH: Okay, that sounds great. So we 

21 will move on to roadmap to bioassay. So we 

22 are going to take a five-minute comfort break 

23 at this time. We will resume at 2:20. 

24 (Whereupon, a break was taken between 2:14 

25 p.m. and 2:20 p.m.) 
183

1 MS. BEACH: Okay, we are back on line. 

2 MS. CHANG: We would like to remind people 

3 one more time to please use the mute button or 

4 star six, and please do not put us on hold. 

5 If you need to, hang up and dial back in. 

6 Thank you very much. And this message is for 

7 the one person in case you missed our previous 

8 announcement that’s been putting us on hold 

9 today, and we’ve had to disconnect them 

10 because it’s been very disrupting. Thank you. 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

12 Brant, I’m going to let you start on 

13 this. 

14 ROADMAP TO BIOASSAY DATA

15 DR. ULSH: I think it’s matrix issue one I’m 

16 going to talk about. I’m more affectionately 

17 calling it the roadmap. At the last working 

18 group meeting it was requested that NIOSH put 

19 together, well, for lack of a better word, a 

20 roadmap that kind of lays out the major 

21 processes, programs that occurred at Mound. 

22 What radionuclides were involved with those 

23 programs, and then pair that to the bioassay 

24 that might have been used to detect those 

25 radionuclides. 
184

1 So Mel Chew is here in the room. Mel 

2 and Don and other members of the ORAU team put 

3 together this document. It was sent out a 

4 little more than a week ago. It’s a rather 

5 massive document. They did quite a lot of 

6 things at Mound over the course of its 

7 history. I think we are up to 85 pages at the 

8 moment and complete with color coding. So 

9 with that I’m going to turn it over to Mel to 

10 describe some of the general features of the 

11 roadmap. Due to time limitations, we’re going 

12 to try to keep this fairly brief. 

13 MR. CHEW: Well, thank you very much. We’re 

14 not going to go down line by line. Let’s talk 

15 about what’s the purpose of the roadmap. And 

16 as Brant so correctly said, Mound was a very 

17 complicated facility, did a lot of research 

18 and development throughout the whole history 

19 of it, and many different exotic isotopes and 

20 so I’m going to let Don talk about that a 

21 little bit more. But we’ll try to combine to 

22 give you information of what program and 

23 processes took place, what timeframe took 

24 place, what radionuclides were talked about. 

25 And you can see just on looking at the 
185

1 first page, some of the quantities of the 

2 materials, those are still left fairly open in 

3 general terms. The majority of the quantity 

4 of materials are still, because of the R and D 

5 nature, are still classified information. 

6 There’s a, one of the primary sources of this 

7 particular roadmap was the King document. 

8 I think we have all talked about that 

9 one, which gives a lot of background 

10 information on that. Basically, left out the 

11 quantities of materials because of 

12 classification. However, we understand there 

13 is an appendix to the King document which the 

14 Albuquerque Operations office right now is 

15 trying to put their hands on it, and we’ll 

16 have a chance to look at that. 

17 When we do fill in the quantities, 

18 because of the classification nature here, and 

19 this follow-up document will have taken a 

20 little different form. The materials and the 

21 characteristics -- 

22 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Could 

23 you speak up a little bit, please? 

24 MR. CHEW: You can’t hear me. Is that you, 

25 Mike? I’m right next to the microphone. Can 
186

1 you hear me okay, now? 

2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Yeah, 

3 that’s better. 

4 MR. CHEW: I just finished talking about we 

5 have a column of not only the radionuclides 

6 but the quantity of radionuclides associated 

7 with each different process. You also can see 

8 which locations within the particular facility 

9 as clearly as well as we can define to talk 

10 about what processes took place and what 

11 quantity took place and what the material 

12 characteristics was of that particular 

13 material here. As I said we’re not going to 

14 go down, but there’s lots of information here. 

15 I just want to assure that we did not 

16 infringe on any classification issue. Some of 

17 the detail process information has been taken 

18 out of this particular document because we did 

19 not feel that it had anything to add to the 

20 dose reconstruction, but that information is 

21 available. 

22 I think the key is that what is the 

23 bioassay method so you can track along which 

24 of the different program process radionuclides 

25 that we would be using as far as the dose 
187

1 reconstruction side over here. And with that 

2 I’m going to let Don talk about that because 

3 he was the primary person that assigned the 

4 bioassay method for each of the radionuclides 

5 as it related to the particular program. 

6 MR. STEWART: Yeah, as Mel pointed out, and 

7 Brant, there were a number of different 

8 processes implemented at Mound. And what we 

9 typically we see small-scale research 

10 operation that was followed by a limited 

11 production experimentation. And in some cases 

12 that was taken to a semi-works or a full 

13 refinery methodology. 

14 We saw that several times in the 

15 course of the Mound history working with 

16 different source terms, different feed 

17 material, and in some cases different bioassay 

18 methods. So a campaign would come along. 

19 They would pursue the research, go through 

20 whatever processes they were going to do, and 

21 then they would finish it up. So there were 

22 discrete periods where you were exposed to one 

23 thing and not another. 

24 Typically, and we go back to Meyer on 

25 this, they would perform bioassay for that 
188

1 campaign from start to finish. There were 

2 holes, including as we pointed out previously, 

3 in the radium-actinium program when we really 

4 didn’t have a bioassay method for the first 

5 couple of years or so. A lot of the bioassay 

6 that we’ve paired with this is in the form of 

7 gross alpha analysis. 

8 We see that we had a very large number 

9 of these bioassay methods. That is typically 

10 good for actinides. In fact, it’s stated in 

11 the literature that they did all actinides 

12 with the gross alpha process. That wasn’t 

13 always the case, but a lot of the 

14 radionuclides are captured in that. 

15 When you get to a presumptive 

16 exposure, typically what we’re faced with in 

17 the dose reconstruction process there’s very 

18 little case-specific data. What we might have 

19 is a set of bioassay results and not a lot of 

20 information as to what the individual did. 

21 In some cases the individual can’t 

22 recall the work he performed. In some cases 

23 it’s not the actual worker himself, and the 

24 interviewee had little information about what 

25 they did. So the dose reconstructor is 
189

1 typically assuming what the exposure would be 

2 based on job title or whatever other 

3 information is available. But the presumptive 

4 exposure typically at Mound is Pu-238. That 

5 is probably what most people were exposed to, 

6 not in all cases. When we know more, we do a 

7 more detailed dose reconstruction. 

8 And just the way this came about, a 

9 little bit of background here, I wanted to 

10 identify each of these major processes that 

11 sort of ebbed and flowed and then come up with 

12 a bioassay method for each one. Subsequently, 

13 we had support to go and make this more 

14 detailed, and the King document was sort of 

15 added in line by line, and the matrix was 

16 expanded to include locations as well. 

17 With that I’ll turn it back over to 

18 Mel. 

19 MR. CHEW: I think a couple of key points, 

20 this is before I forget to mention, you notice 

21 there were some tritium, the word tritium 

22 compound shows up here. We deliberately did 

23 not go into any definitions of what kinds of 

24 compounds ^ in this particular document, and 

25 we’re just going to leave it that way, too. 
190

1 But there are some specific metal tritium 

2 compounds that we are aware of, and so we do 

3 have information on that. When we have a 

4 discussion later on about the tritides, we 

5 will probably talk about them. 

6 I think, as I said, this is a document 

7 in progress and working. I think we have 

8 refined the program and the different 

9 processes to a high degree. There is probably 

10 a combination of documents that you can see 

11 that you can add a little bit more to 

12 different processes, but we’ve basically tried 

13 to keep this thing down to a minimum of so 

14 many pages here. 

15 We actually eliminated many of the 

16 detailed processes but discuss the process in 

17 general. I think the key is that we need to 

18 look from left to right to look at the 

19 programs, materials and the bioassay method 

20 that has been assigned for to look at the dose 

21 reconstruction for these particular isotopes 

22 of interest here. 

23 As far as exposed individuals right 

24 now, that was another addition to see if we 

25 could find information. That’s probably the 
191

1 most difficult thing to do because the King 

2 document and the reference documents didn’t 

3 number them. We hope to still continue to 

4 look at more data, and either through 

5 interviews or additional documents, that we 

6 can at least bound or bracket the number of 

7 exposed individuals. 

8 I think this is going to be probably 

9 the most important when we’re going to be 

10 faced with some unusual exotic, and we would 

11 know that we would either try to find that 

12 there were only a few people that worked on 

13 it. And you also see a reference column here. 

14 Brant, anything you want to add? 

15 DR. ULSH: So I think the bottom line to 

16 take away from this as Mel already mentioned 

17 is that this is a work in progress, but we’re 

18 pretty far along the road here. And also, 

19 when you have a nonspecific bioassay, whether 

20 that be for a particular radionuclide like 

21 uranium but not isotope-specific or whether 

22 it’s a gross alpha technique for any of the 

23 actinides, we would do at Mound the same thing 

24 that we do at any other site. 

25 And that is, based on the specifics of 
192

1 the case, we would assign the most claimant 

2 favorable of the possible radionuclides that 

3 an individual was exposed to. So that’s not 

4 going to be any different here at Mound. 

5 And I think with that I’ll just open 

6 it up for questions from whomever. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: One of the earlier questions, 

8 and I understand from you that this is gross 

9 alpha. Is that what they were using for this? 

10 You’re using a gross alpha for bioassay? The 

11 reason I’m wondering because earlier in the 

12 day there was discussion of gross alpha versus 

13 one of the other ones, and I never got an 

14 exact answer if that’s the process that we 

15 were using to monitor. 

16 DR. ULSH: You could use gross alpha for any 

17 of the alpha emitters. Obviously, you 

18 wouldn’t use it for something like cesium or 

19 tritium or strontium or anything. But if it’s 

20 an alpha emitter, you could do a gross alpha 

21 urinalysis for it. Does that answer you? 

22 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, but I just didn’t 

23 understand because the two people who were on 

24 before were saying somewhat, no, we’re not 

25 using gross alpha. Well, I think you brought 
193

1 that up earlier. The process of gross alpha 

2 or -- 

3 MS. DeMERS: I guess what Brad’s probably 

4 trying to say is that Liz was saying that on 

5 the phone that the radiochemistry ^ the 

6 plutonium and she kind of insinuated that it 

7 wouldn’t point up the other actinides? 

8 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Would 

9 you repeat that please and ask the person to 

10 step to the microphone? 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

12 MS. DeMERS: Earlier today we were talking 

13 about the high-fired plutonium, and Liz made a 

14 comment that the radiochemical procedure for 

15 plutonium would separate out the plutonium 

16 specifically kind of indicating that it 

17 probably wasn’t selecting the other actinides. 

18 DR. ULSH: Okay, well, let’s consider what 

19 would happen in a situation like that. If a 

20 person was exposed to, I don’t know, any 

21 mixture of things -- okay, if our concern is 

22 high-fired Plutonium-238 or not high fired, 

23 and you do a plutonium-specific bioassay, well 

24 then you’re going to get an accurate result. 

25 In other words the activity that you see in 
194

1 the sample will be specific for plutonium. 

2 But let’s say on the other hand you 

3 didn’t do plutonium-specific. You did a gross 

4 alpha. Well, that could pull down plutonium. 

5 It could pull down uranium, thorium. And 

6 let’s say that there was some of that in 

7 there. What would happen? Well, we would 

8 pull it all down, get a higher activity in the 

9 sample, and we would assign that to the most 

10 claimant favorable of the possible 

11 radionuclides which is usually plutonium. It 

12 depends, but usually plutonium. 

13 So let’s say some of the activity that 

14 we assign to plutonium is, in fact, I don’t 

15 know, thorium. Well, it’s claimant favorable 

16 because we treat it as if it were plutonium. 

17 MS. DeMERS: And you looked in detail at the 

18 recoveries for the particular radiochemistry 

19 for the other radionuclides? Because I’m 

20 assuming they used a recovery ^ plutonium. 

21 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Would 

22 you come to the microphone, please? 

23 MS. DeMERS: I asked them if they looked at 

24 the recovery percentage for the other 

25 radionuclides for the gross alpha technique in 
195

1 addition to the recovery that they got for 

2 plutonium. 

3 DR. ULSH: For that I would have to turn to 

4 someone with more of a detailed knowledge of 

5 internal dosimetry. 

6 Is that you, Don, or do we have to 

7 wait for Liz? 

8 MR. STEWART: Yeah, I think Liz is somebody 

9 that would talk about that. But just a point 

10 on the earlier point. Tom said that he had 

11 used 896 claims. And Liz said that there was 

12 chemistry done on those. They had the option 

13 to use solvent extraction to separate the 

14 plutonium. 

15 We’re actually talking about 14,000 or 

16 more results for gross alpha. So I think it’s 

17 certainly consistent with a smaller sample of 

18 them being analyzed for plutonium ^. So, no, 

19 we haven’t looked in detail at recovery 

20 fraction. 

21 DR. ULSH: Well, I know there was an issue 

22 that you sometimes hear discussed about the 

23 recovery fraction for polonium being ten 

24 percent. I think there was some degree of 

25 contention about that early on in Mound’s 
196

1 history or maybe even in the ‘90s, but that’s 

2 the only one specifically that I’m aware of 

3 that I’ve seen discussed, Kathy. I’m not 

4 saying that the recovery fractions on the 

5 other radionuclides are not available. I just 

6 don’t have them. 

7 MR. STEWART: The gross alpha is pretty 

8 high. I don’t have it off the top of my head. 

9 MS. BEACH: Has this been posted onto the O 

10 drive yet? 

11 DR. ULSH: Oh, no, because it might be ^. 

12 MS. BEACH: I understand. 

13 DR. ULSH: We are going to submit this for 

14 security review. If we get the blessing to 

15 release it publicly, we will do that. 

16 MS. BEACH: Also, when I was looking through 

17 this on page three, I do not know if you can 

18 answer this. It’s probably pretty minor. 

19 Second column, I believe it’s gray on my copy, 

20 under the helium-3 separation, at the bottom 

21 of that it says, “released to the ERS in SW 

22 Building,” and I’m not familiar with the ERS 

23 term. I was wondering –- 

24 MR. STEWART: Full recovery. 

25 MS BEACH: Full recovery. Thank you. 
197

1 MR. FITZGERALD: Mel, this is Joe. I just 

2 have a quick question. You have a column 

3 called Program Process but clearly you’re much 

4 broader than, I think you’re identifying areas 

5 of contamination as well. 

6 MR. CHEW: Yes, Joe. Can you tell me what 

7 you’re trying to -- 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, no, no. I’m just 

9 saying that one issue that we’re more 

10 sensitive to, given the NIOSH responses, I 

11 think we’re focused in some areas with 

12 byproducts and contaminants of processes 

13 different than actual processes themselves. 

14 And I think your first column is 

15 encompassing both. Is that what I’m seeing in 

16 your first column there? I think there are 

17 some areas where you discuss the presence of 

18 contaminants at certain locations and 

19 byproducts as well as actual process source 

20 material. 

21 MR. CHEW: That’s correct, uh-huh. Yes. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: I’ve got a question for you. 

23 What about when you see a lot of the other 

24 actinides in higher than normal concentrations 

25 with the plutonium, whether it’s americium, 
198

1 thorium, whatever it is? It’s in above normal 

2 concentrations. 

3 MR. CHEW: The quantity or -- 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, the quantity. 

5 DR. ULSH: Well, how do we approach dose 

6 reconstruction in that case? Is that your 

7 question? 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, I mean, if you’re 

9 using this gross alpha, how is that going to 

10 affect their analysis? 

11 DR. ULSH: Well, let’s say that a person was 

12 exposed to plutonium because that’s the most 

13 common at Mound, but also, I don’t know, pick 

14 one, americium maybe or uranium, any of those 

15 three let’s just say for the sake of 

16 discussion. 

17 What we would do depending on which 

18 organ the cancer occurred in, we would -- we 

19 have a gross alpha result. That tells us how 

20 much activity is in the urine. We would look 

21 at the organ dose if we considered it all 

22 plutonium. We would look at the organ dose if 

23 we considered it all americium or all uranium 

24 and see which one is the most claimant 

25 favorable among those plausible choices. 
199

1 That’s the one we would pick. Does that 

2 answer your question? 

3 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

4 MR. STEWART: Supported by case-specific 

5 data when available. For instance, if we knew 

6 the person was a line worker in a Pu facility, 

7 we would not have a reason to assign uranium 

8 to thorium. 

9 DR. ULSH: That’s where I said plausible 

10 choices. 

11 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, there’s ^. 

12 MR. CHEW: We also tried to include a number 

13 of what we considered the significant 

14 incidences ^ too. That should be a valuable 

15 tool for us to look at, too. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Mel, I have a specific 

17 question on page 42. 

18 MR. CHEW: Oh, boy, you’re a quick reader, 

19 Joe. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, this pertains to a 

21 later issue. This is obviously the radon 

22 issue, and you cite timeframes ’81-’98, 2003-

23 2005. Is this based on actual recorded values 

24 versus what would have been inferred in our 

25 interviews and reviews? It suggests that 
200

1 certainly the radon issue existed before the 

2 venting in 1980. 

3 So the presumption is following the 

4 closure of the cave up through 1980 there 

5 would have been particularly elevated levels, 

6 and then there was the venting in 1980. We’ll 

7 get to that issue, obviously a separate issue, 

8 but in terms of your chart, is that timeframe 

9 not reflective of that? 

10 MR. CHEW: I haven’t caught up with you. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: The timeframe for the 

12 elevated rate -- this is on page 42. Am I 

13 reading this right? Elevated radon levels in 

14 SW Building timeframe begins in 1981? 

15 MR. CHEW: I think that the elevated levels 

16 was stated in the, I think the reference we 

17 used in that one was the Doug Draper interview 

18 here. You see it, Joe? 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, we interviewed 

20 Doug, and I’m understanding where he was 

21 coming from, but in terms of the, you know, 

22 the historic scope of the issue it was pretty 

23 clear to him as well as the Jenkins and others 

24 that the elevated radon levels in SW pre-dated 

25 that sampling that Jenkins did in 1980. 
201

1 MR. CHEW: Yeah, that’s probably true. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: So I’m just saying, so 

3 there’s a couple places in terms of 

4 timeframes. I realize this is a work in 

5 progress, just wanted to clarify that. 

6 MR. CHEW: Sure, thank you, Joe. 

7 DR. ULSH: Joe, you’re absolutely right. I 

8 know that they were worried about -- and Don 

9 can fill in more on this -- you look at the 

10 periodic health physics progress reports, they 

11 were done quarterly I believe, at least for a 

12 lot of the time periods. They were looking 

13 specifically at short-lived daughter products 

14 in air. So you’re absolutely right. There 

15 was concern about radon prior to ’81. And 

16 we’ll take a look at that particular place in 

17 the roadmap that you mentioned because I don’t 

18 think we want to say that radon was only an 

19 issue from 1981 forward. I don’t think that’s 

20 true. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Again, this is a pretty 

22 long document, and I think it’s a very 

23 comprehensive piece. I think there’s a couple 

24 places, you know, we’ll certainly offer any 

25 comments if we have any. 
202

1 MS. BEACH: Mel, I want to go back to the 

2 incident report. Can I find those incidents 

3 on the table? Is there an indicator of how to 

4 do that? I’m unable to see it. 

5 DR. ULSH: Are you on page 84? 

6 MS. BEACH: Yes. 

7 MR. CHEW: Yeah, it’s on 84. I’m just 

8 trying to see how you can go to the ^. 

9 MS. BEACH: I guess I just thought since you 

10 put them in the back then there would a space 

11 in your table to find them. 

12 MR. CHEW: I should probably ^ information 

13 or on the O drive we should put them in. I 

14 think that’s your comment. 

15 MR. STEWART: Yeah, those are quoted in the 

16 King document. 

17 MR. CHEW: Right, let’s put them in like 

18 references. Would that -- 

19 MS. BEACH: Yeah, I would -- since they were 

20 there, I thought, you know. 

21 DR. ULSH: It makes sense. We can do that. 

22 MS. BEACH: You should have more information 

23 then, anyway, okay, thank you. 

24 DR. ULSH: Well, we would, but you asked 

25 earlier when we, if we were going to make this 
203

1 publicly available. To get through security 

2 this will all have to be -- 

3 MS. BEACH: Taken out. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, but see, couldn’t we do 

5 that as an attachment that we could have so we 

6 can address that? 

7 You know, and, Mel, like usual you’ve 

8 done a tremendous job here. Everybody looks 

9 great. But one of my questions is is -- and I 

10 appreciate this the bioassay methods and stuff 

11 like this -- when you’re stating that they 

12 were done by the process and that’s what they 

13 determined what the bioassay should be for is 

14 the process that was going on -- 

15 MR. CHEW: It’s probably more the 

16 radionuclide associated with the process. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Right, and this is what came 

18 up because this basically comes back to the 

19 D&D era that we’ve seen at numerous other 

20 sites of all this stuff has gone. And Mound 

21 was a famous one for this. They would build 

22 something, and then they’d go in and tear it 

23 all out and bring in something new. Was there 

24 any way that they were checking to make sure? 

25 Because I think of one of the 
204

1 instances pulling up there and ripping out one 

2 of the processes and pulling it out and all of 

3 a sudden there was no tritium and all of a 

4 sudden there was. They had uncovered it 

5 because it was underneath the metal and so 

6 forth. And I was wondering was there, I just 

7 want to make sure that people were monitored 

8 for that. 

9 And this was in the later years as 

10 they were tearing it down in the D&D era and 

11 stuff like that. They had numerous, it wasn’t 

12 there at the beginning, but now it is. And 

13 they were determining it as they were pulling 

14 up floors, equipment, cutting it up and 

15 tearing it out that all of a sudden they were 

16 releasing the history from a long time ago. 

17 And I’m wondering if there was any, 

18 you know, that’s when we’re getting the RWPs 

19 because some of them mentioned that basically 

20 they weren’t on an RWP because they didn’t 

21 need to be because it would have been clean. 

22 But when they ripped the building, were 

23 ripping the building apart, all of a sudden 

24 they unearthed a lot of these things. I’m 

25 just wondering how we -- 
205

1 MR. CHEW: What you’ll see in the process 

2 side, and especially relating to a specific 

3 facility which we try to mention in here, 

4 those particular radioisotopes would have been 

5 present during the operation. Your point is 

6 correct. Sometimes they said, oh, gee, we 

7 cleaned it up, and later on found all that 

8 activity. 

9 And so I’m not personally aware of any 

10 -- but we can certainly look -- of any 

11 document that was just focused in on the D&D 

12 portion of it to say when we did D&D, these 

13 are the radioisotopes we encountered or we 

14 have found in the operation here. 

15 Don, maybe you could help me. Have 

16 you seen a document like that? 

17 MR. STEWART: I don’t know that there’s a 

18 single repository for that. It’s certainly 

19 something to look at. I mean, if they had 

20 just simply assumed a production source for 

21 Actinium-227, for example, it never would have 

22 been on the RWP-97 for a 21 year half-life. I 

23 mean, it was essentially gone by the time they 

24 started to do this D&D. 

25 So certainly, part of the RWP 
206

1 formulation process still considered what was 

2 in there. And the King document that we keep 

3 talking about is certainly a fund of 

4 information here because it records what was 

5 done in each room throughout the history of 

6 the Mound site. So it’s clear that that 

7 knowledge was there. And certainly, if you’re 

8 going to write an RWP for a given area, you’ve 

9 got to consult the history of that area. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: I know that we’ve fallen into 

11 some lacks of that in my area of knowledge. 

12 And to tell you the truth I wish we had some 

13 of this for some of our buildings. Because 

14 they’re coming up with some -- 

15 MR. CHEW: That’s ^. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: -- actually quite good. I’m 

17 quite enjoying it. But I know in some of the 

18 interviews and so forth like that, they were 

19 talking about that era and how it was here; it 

20 wasn’t here, and now it was and so forth like 

21 that. One of the questions was we don’t even 

22 know if they were monitored for that. 

23 DR. ULSH: Brad, I’ve heard similar stories, 

24 too, in the workers that I’ve talked to. It 

25 seems that toward the D&D era they lost a lot 
207

1 of institutional knowledge of what went on 

2 where. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Right. 

4 DR. ULSH: And so that’s a concern that I 

5 hear frequently expressed, too. 

6 The other part of this in terms of 

7 when you add radionuclides to an RWP, sure, 

8 you’re going to consult the process knowledge 

9 that you have. But the second part of it, 

10 assuming it’s done correctly, would be to do 

11 pre-job characterization. If you want to do 

12 swipe sampling, maybe core sampling, and see 

13 what kind of radionuclides you encounter. 

14 Now, of course, you know this better 

15 than I do, sometimes even that is going to 

16 leave you with a couple of surprises. You get 

17 into a job. You’re doing something. The cams 

18 go off, and it shouldn’t. Well, what you 

19 would hope that they would do would be to go 

20 in and take follow-up bioassay samples and 

21 find out what it was. Now, there’s a question 

22 about whether they reliably did that, but 

23 that’s what you would hope they did. 

24 MR. CHEW: Since this is a document working 

25 in progress, we’ll continue. What I think I’d 
208

1 like to do is to go look at several of the 

2 RWPs used for D&D and see what’s in there. 

3 And then see if it tracks with what we have 

4 here. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: This is what I was going to 

6 ask you to do. 

7 MR. CHEW: We can do that. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I can’t assign you to 

9 do, but as a working group member, this is one 

10 of the things that I’ve heard numerous times 

11 and so forth like that. And a lot of these 

12 processes -- and one of the things that I 

13 heard so often was, and Mound was especially 

14 for this, they would leave a room dormant for 

15 years. They’d come back. They’d decon it all 

16 down. They’d tear out some stuff. They’d 

17 bring something else new in there and do 

18 another process. 

19 That is not uncommon. We do that at 

20 Idaho. We do it at a lot of different places. 

21 But then when we fell into the D&D era, we 

22 were bringing up stuff from 20-to-30 years ago 

23 that all of a sudden that was not there. 

24 Because especially breaking out the concrete, 

25 bringing up anchor bolts and so forth like 
209

1 that all of a sudden it came. 

2 I just wanted to make sure that, 

3 especially from the petitioners’ part, that 

4 the RWPs covered what we potentially could 

5 have got into. Because in the later years I 

6 understood that it was a somewhat of an 

7 institutional loss and so forth like that. 

8 That there wasn’t too much follow up, and I 

9 just want to make sure we kind of look at that 

10 as we’re looking into this. 

11 DR. ULSH: I think we’re fortunate in that 

12 SC&A’s going to be taking a look at the RWPs 

13 related to the Price-Anderson Act. This is 

14 during the D&D era. One thing that we could 

15 look at is like Mel said, we could look at the 

16 radionuclides that were on RWPs and track it 

17 back to here and see if -- 

18 MS. BEACH: But my question is how many RWPs 

19 would you do? Would you pick and -- 

20 MR. CHEW: I don’t even know how many were 

21 done for the D&D, but I would imagine there 

22 would be some. 

23 MS. BEACH: So you’ll look specifically at 

24 the D&D -- 

25 MR. CHEW: Well, I think that’s the best way 
210

1 to do -- 

2 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, because we get back to 

3 the general RWPs and specific RWPs. I think 

4 you’ll come to find out there weren’t that 

5 many RWPs for the D&D era. My understanding 

6 is that we were looking at basically maybe 

7 four or five. It was kind of building 

8 significant. I just want to make sure we 

9 follow up on those. 

10 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. That’s 

11 what I’d like, to do it by area. 

12 MR. CHEW: Josie, I’d like to just make a 

13 comment that as you folks see this particular 

14 roadmap, there was a considerable amount of 

15 work to put together. Several of the staff 

16 worked with NIOSH and ORAU. I’d like to just 

17 make sure I acknowledge them and people like 

18 Sam and ^ and Leo Faust and Bryce and Bob 

19 Morris. It took a lot, a whole team to put 

20 this together. 

21 One more comment, Mound is very unique 

22 because they did a lot of R and D work and a 

23 lot of different isotopes. And so a roadmap 

24 like this makes a lot of very good sense. I 

25 hope I’m not setting a precedent for all the 
211

1 other sites. 

2 MS. BEACH: Oh, yes, you are. 

3 MR. CHEW: -- but that has already been 

4 mentioned. 

5 MS. BEACH: Since I wrote your name on the 

6 document. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Does Idaho come to mind? 

8 MR. CHEW: It is very good to be able to 

9 take a look at one document and sort of see a 

10 picture. It gives you a very good picture all 

11 at one time. 

12 Probably I’ll say this to Joe, my good 

13 friend Joe, it probably begs more questions 

14 than answers, Joe, but we can certainly go 

15 with that. 

16 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I’d like to compliment 

17 you on this because just in reading this it 

18 gives us a better idea of actually what went 

19 on. And I really commend you for it and so 

20 forth like that. 

21 MR. CHEW: Well, it was Brant’s idea and 

22 Don’s, and we just picked it up and... 

23 MS. BEACH: Okay, Joe, do you have anything 

24 else? 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: The only thing I would 
212

1 offer is that this is a good tool for the work 

2 group and for the dialogue we’re having. So 

3 as we go through and identify information that 

4 would be relevant to this, we’ll send it 

5 through the work group to NIOSH so that it 

6 might be considered as source material for 

7 the, you know, as this thing, since it’s a 

8 living document so in terms of updating. 

9 So we would, certainly, if we do find 

10 anything that would be location-specific, 

11 time-specific on certain nuclides, we’ll pass 

12 it on to, I guess, Mel through Brant and the 

13 work group, and just keep, feed it along with 

14 everybody else. 

15 MR. CHEW: I think, Joe, on that note we are 

16 aware of quite a bit of that, but we just 

17 decided to keep this a little bit more 

18 simplistic. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I mean, if we find 

20 anything that’s particularly noteworthy that 

21 would be useful in a discussion on the issues 

22 that we have, then we’ll make that known as we 

23 go. 

24 MS. BEACH: And I believe Kathy has one more 

25 question. 
213

1 MS. DeMERS: Have you guys identified any 

2 gross beta results? 

3 MR. STEWART: No. 

4 MS. DeMERS: Okay. Are you still looking 

5 into how you’re going to look for the beta6 gamma emitters? 

7 MR. STEWART: Specifically, which beta-gamma 

8 emitters are you talking about? 

9 MS. DeMERS: There’s several examples. 

10 MR. STEWART: Which processes? 

11 MS. BEACH: Are you talking about page 

12 three? 

13 MR. CHEW: I think she’s talking more about 

14 the, when some of the business plugs are being 

15 processed ^ T-59 building, too. 

16 MS. DeMERS: Yeah, there are several 

17 examples here where there’s -- 

18 MR. CHEW: ^ 

19 MS. DeMERS: And you’ve got gross alpha that 

20 was used, and my question is, was there gross 

21 ^? 

22 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): I’m having a 

23 hard time hearing everyone talk. 

24 MS. BEACH: Thanks for the reminder. If you 

25 could please speak into the microphones. 
214

1 Did you hear Kathy’s question? 

2 MR. GIBSON (by Telephone): I didn’t hear 

3 the question or the response. 

4 MS. DeMERS: I asked if there was gross data 

5 urinalysis to evaluate the beta-gamma emitters 

6 at Mound. 

7 DR. ULSH: And the reply was no gross beta. 

8 MR. STEWART: Yeah, throughout history there 

9 was no gross beta. 

10 DR. ULSH: What about specific, more 

11 specific like strontium or -- 

12 I think, Kathy, again, I would need to 

13 look at the specific situation, but when you 

14 see gross beta it could be -- sorry, gross 

15 alpha -- it could be an indicator that we 

16 would be looking for the indicator species, 

17 the dominant radionuclide as opposed to the 

18 very minor beta contaminant. 

19 MR. STEWART: Again, Kathy, a lot of these 

20 in this third or fourth column over come 

21 directly from the King document. And not that 

22 it’s always one hundred percent accurate, but 

23 King definitely says the primary radionuclide 

24 was Pu-238 with other exposures to these 

25 others here. So one thing that wasn’t 
215

1 considered in the former part of the TBD was 

2 the proportionate dose from these minor 

3 constituents of the source term. And as we 

4 say throughout here, the primary exposure is 

5 Pu-238 in most cases. 

6 MS. DeMERS: Can you clarify that under your 

7 bioassay method when you’re going to assume 

8 that beta doesn’t make up a significant 

9 portion of the dose? 

10 DR. ULSH: We’ll take a look. 

11 MR. CHEW: And if it’s process-specific, 

12 Kathy, that would be a good point. 

13 MS. BEACH: Any other comments? 

14 MR. CLAWSON: I’ve got one question. In 

15 coming through this and reading through the 

16 documents and so forth like that, I keep 

17 hearing the terminology of the hot cells at 

18 Mound. I have not been able to find an actual 

19 hot cell at Mound yet. The New Cave? What 

20 about the Old Cave? Do we have any drawings 

21 or anything of that? 

22 MS. BEACH: And that’s funny because in my 

23 notes I asked for you to define what the hot 

24 cell was, what type of material it was made up 

25 of so I had that same question. 
216

1 MR. CLAWSON: Because one of the things came 

2 down to the ventilation systems and so forth. 

3 I know that we had some earlier ones and then 

4 the Mound interviews and so forth like that 

5 the comment was, well, they called it a hot 

6 cell or it was basically a room. Now, later 

7 on they said when they built the new one, but 

8 it’s not what I consider a hot cell. And I 

9 was just trying to get a mental picture of 

10 what we were talking. Is there any kind of 

11 drawings or anything that would show us any 

12 kind of ventilation or how it was set up? 

13 Because numerous times we hear 

14 referring to the hot cell, so forth, and some 

15 incidences and so forth like that. And I’m 

16 just having a hard time picturing what it 

17 actually looked like. Now, when we went to 

18 the museum and so forth like that they were 

19 going to try to locate some pictures and so 

20 forth and some of the stuff. But I haven’t 

21 had the opportunity -- 

22 MR. CHEW: I’m familiar with many of the hot 

23 cells ^. We also would call hot cells that 

24 would be a shielded glovebox using a 

25 manipulator, too. But I don’t know that for a 
217

1 fact. 

2 DR. ULSH: The room that you talked about, I 

3 have seen pictures, and it is several feet of 

4 shielding or several inches of shielding with 

5 the remote manipulators. So that is the 

6 picture you had in your head of a hot cell? 

7 That’s what it is. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: Mine are five-and-a-half foot 

9 thick. 

10 MR. CHEW: Yeah, I know, but these are 

11 shielded gloveboxes possibly. I don’t know 

12 that for a fact. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Because I see the terminology 

14 going back and forth like that, and what I was 

15 looking at was, okay, how are we set up in the 

16 ventilation because I know that we made a, 

17 because they referred to caves back and forth, 

18 but they also called the same thing was a hot 

19 cell, and I was just trying to get a picture 

20 of what we had because we had the radon issue 

21 that came up and so forth. If we had any kind 

22 of drawings of that, especially the 

23 ventilation process because this was one of 

24 the add-ons versus so forth. And then when we 

25 had the crack and so forth like that. If we 
218

1 have any kind of prints or anything that’s 

2 showing what that really was like because I 

3 was trying to understand what they were 

4 talking about like this. And when they did 

5 talk about it I couldn’t see how that could go 

6 on like that and what I saw as a hot cell. 

7 DR. ULSH: They had two cave facilities, the 

8 Old Cave and that’s where they did the radium9 actinium-thorium separations, very messy, 

10 contamination spilled all over the place. 

11 That’s why we went SEC on that. They 

12 decontaminated that in 1959, ending 1959. And 

13 then they built the New Cave facility which 

14 included a hot cell. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Now, is that a glovebox or -- 

16 DR. ULSH: No, I don’t think so. This is a 

17 big -- I don’t know the dimensions, but it’s a 

18 long bay with remote manipulators and several 

19 inches of shielding. I’ve got pictures that 

20 were provided to me by the museum, but I can’t 

21 remember if it’s the Old Cave or the New Cave, 

22 but I’ll take a look. 

23 MS. BEACH: This says on page three of the 

24 matrix, third paragraph, fourth paragraph, 

25 that was one of my questions, too. That took 
219

1 place in 1964; however, this operation in 

2 contrast to the operations with similar 

3 materials in the ‘50s, was performed inside 

4 the hot cell in the New Cave. They completely 

5 isolated the material from the outside 

6 environment, but there was quite a bit of 

7 bioassays that were not done and they were 

8 depending upon the New Cave. And on this 

9 page, and then again for 1-B you guys 

10 reference the hot cell and that no bioassay 

11 was done because of the hot cell. So those 

12 are the things I was looking at also. 

13 DR. ULSH: Well, I’m not necessarily saying 

14 that there was no bioassay -- maybe I was. I 

15 don’t know. I would have to look 

16 specifically, Josie, at the 1964 actinium 

17 project. I know that I’ve talked to the guy 

18 who was in charge of that, the project 

19 manager, and he told me specifically that it 

20 was done in the hot cell. He told me that it 

21 was a successful operation. They opened up a 

22 couple of capsules, maybe there was more than 

23 one. The first one that they opened up they 

24 had some contamination inside the hot cell, 

25 but he said it never escaped the hot cell. 
220

1 The second one, and maybe the third one if 

2 there was a third one, they didn’t have those 

3 kinds of issues, but it was -- 

4 MS. BEACH: But from my work history, I 

5 worked in gloveboxes for Pu at Dash Five at 

6 Hanford, and we were still on a bioassay 

7 program even though all our work was performed 

8 inside a glovebox. So I don’t know if it’s 

9 the glovebox, a hot cell. 

10 DR. ULSH: No, I think it’s a hot cell. I 

11 can’t tell you whether or not the people who 

12 were involved in that ’64 project did or did 

13 not have bioassay. 

14 MS. BEACH: On page four it says bioassay 

15 not taken for Thorium-230 not because Mound 

16 lacked the capability, but because there was 

17 no perceived need. And what I got from that 

18 was because they didn’t perceive a need 

19 because they were in the hot cell. 

20 DR. ULSH: Okay. 

21 MS. BEACH: Unless I’m reading that 

22 incorrectly. 

23 DR. ULSH: A little bit, I might have 

24 written it incorrectly. Thorium-230 would not 

25 be the radionuclide that you would sample for 
221

1 Cotter concentrate. It was several thousand 

2 dpm of uranium, and you would use that as the 

3 indicator species. So you wouldn’t need to 

4 sample for Thorium-230. 

5 MS. BEACH: That’s all a part of that 

6 question, and the way it’s in that paragraph I 

7 tend to believe that that’s why -- 

8 DR. ULSH: I could see where you could get 

9 that impression. I should probably reword 

10 that. 

11 MR. CHEW: Brant, if you look at your page 

12 24 in the roadmap ^ in the 1940-1953 

13 timeframe. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Brant, is that interview 

15 with the project director, is that available 

16 anywhere? 

17 DR. ULSH: Yes, I believe it is. I believe 

18 that it’s in the SRDB, but I would have to 

19 give you the number, Joe. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, fine. 

21 MS. BEACH: And who is that project 

22 director? Do you know? 

23 DR. ULSH: Yeah, I know. We just can’t say 

24 the -- 

25 MS. BEACH: Oh, you just can’t say. Thank 
222

1 you, sorry. 

2 DR. ULSH: I’ll tell you offline, but, boy, 

3 good test. 

4 MS. BEACH: So, Joe, on this one I’m getting 

5 you will be sending your questions on the 

6 roadmap or comments to NIOSH. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, as we go, I think 

8 the point’s been made that this is a living 

9 document that’s going to be added to and 

10 corrected and that kind of thing. If we have 

11 those kinds of things, we’ll send them through 

12 the work group to NIOSH for consideration. 

13 But we understand the level of detail as well 

14 as Mel points out, so we’ll try to keep it 

15 pretty much in this level. 

16 MS. BEACH: Okay, and then NIOSH is going to 

17 look at RWPs and see how they track with the 

18 roadmap. So that’s an action. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: Also, the D&D era. 

20 MS. BEACH: Roadmap for the RWPs for the D&D 

21 era. Any other action items? 

22 MS. DeMERS: I have a request. 

23 MS. BEACH: Kathy has one. 

24 MS. DeMERS: SC&A, when you get a hold of 

25 the Appendix E, I’d like to see it. 
223

1 DR. ULSH: Okay, I’ll let you know when 

2 we’ve definitively located that. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: And I don’t care who does it, 

4 I’d sure like to try to find something, 

5 because, you know, I guess part of my problem 

6 is they’re reverting back. I’ve heard 

7 glovebox referred to as hot cells or whatever 

8 like that. I don’t have a problem with that. 

9 I’m just trying to draw a mental picture 

10 versus the Old Cave versus the New Cave and 

11 what, in my interviews, what was discussed in 

12 that. 

13 MR. CHEW: Josie, you can put an action item 

14 and we will look at it. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: I’d appreciate it. 

16 MR. PRESLEY: There’s a website that is 

17 entitled -- this is Bob Presley by the way. 

18 It’s on here and it states that the Old Cave 

19 was an A and L design. It’s got the 

20 dimensions, any windows -- 

21 MS. BEACH: Can you e-mail that? 

22 MR. PRESLEY: -- I can give you the website. 

23 MS. BEACH: E-mail the link. That would be 

24 great. 

25 MR. PRESLEY: It’s a good site. There’s 
224

1 some pictures of another one, showing some of 

2 the stuff on here. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I want to make sure that 

4 we’re up to that because some of the questions 

5 came up on the ventilation and so forth and 

6 how we got into the radon issue. And I know 

7 we’re not discussing that, but that’s just 

8 kind of feeds along with it of how everything 

9 was set up and so forth like that. So if you 

10 can find anything, I’d appreciate it. 

11 NIOSH RESPONSES TO MOUND MATRIX ITEMS

12 MS. BEACH: Okay, in the next 20 minutes 

13 what I’d like to see us do, we did not get 

14 into the Mound matrix items. Joe did promise 

15 to send the status of that. I don’t know who 

16 wants to go first or where they’d like to go 

17 for -- 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Can I jump in? 

19 MS. BEACH: Yes. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: There’s several that I 

21 think would be useful to get a, sort of a 

22 status on, issue two on radon. I think I 

23 understand what NIOSH is indicating in that 

24 one in terms of the data points that have been 

25 found for radon associated I guess with the 
225

1 D&D that took place in the Old Cave. And I 

2 guess my question is I know you’re going 

3 through that data, and certainly the proposal 

4 of that could represent an upper bound for SW 

5 and R in terms of exposure. Is that data 

6 going to be available or an analysis of that 

7 data going to be available soon? 

8 MR. STEWART: Currently, the data is, the 

9 data are available. An analysis is not yet 

10 available. When we get that done, we will 

11 share it. And that is exactly the point, to 

12 create a bounding dose estimate of radon for R 

13 and SW using these data from the ‘50s which 

14 will, I feel quite confident, overestimate 

15 dose to individuals later. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Now you indicate including 

17 even some short-lived species. Is that 

18 referring to perhaps the fluoron or acnon? 

19 MR. STEWART: Yeah, we’re going to take a 

20 look at what the exact constituents of this 

21 are. Just a kind of historical note. It’s 

22 very obvious when we went back and looked at 

23 these health physics reports that the Old Cave 

24 was a big problem. They had several plans to 

25 decontaminate it and re-use it. 
226

1 And, in fact, when they concluded the 

2 radium-actinium program, the plan was to decon 

3 it, leave it for awhile and then modify it for 

4 further uses down the road. But they saw that 

5 they had a short-lived alpha problem resulting 

6 from the cave that resulted in them completely 

7 decommissioning it which did not eliminate 

8 their radon problems. 

9 They still had high radon 

10 concentrations as we saw in the results from 

11 the 1980s. And for that reason we will create 

12 a bounding dose estimate for that intervening 

13 time period that we don’t have data for. And 

14 this will affect the very small number of lung 

15 cancer claims that are currently not 

16 compensated at this point. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Is it possible -- and this 

18 is sort of related to a question to identify 

19 the worker population that was exposed, or is 

20 it just assuming certain rooms within those 

21 two buildings? 

22 MR. STEWART: Well, I’m not sure how we will 

23 approach, but it is problematic to identify 

24 workers who never went into R or SW. Again, I 

25 think we’re talking about fewer than ten 
227

1 cases. And I suppose we could say whether 

2 they were non-radiological workers or not, but 

3 I don’t know that we’ll define it any more 

4 specifically than that. 

5 DR. ULSH: Joe, in the meantime if you want 

6 to get kind of a preview, I’d refer you to the 

7 health physics progress reports that are 

8 available on the SRDB. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I saw the reference. 

10 DR. ULSH: They have a periodic, I’m sorry, 

11 a recurring table in there that gives the air 

12 monitoring data for short-lived daughter 

13 products. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I think the approach 

15 is founded. I look forward to seeing the 

16 details. 

17 I’m going to jump around a little bit. 

18 I’m not sure how much time we’re going to end 

19 up having. We can maybe backfill as we go. I 

20 just wanted to revisit issue five, something 

21 we raised in terms of Pu-240 and -241. And I 

22 think we’ve converged on agreement that this 

23 involves more of a question of the relative 

24 concentration of the isotopes, but that would 

25 certainly be more of a site profile issue. So 
228

1 we would recommend that one as an SEC issue be 

2 closed. 

3 MS. BEACH: Okay, is everybody in agreement 

4 with that? 

5 (no response) 

6 MS. BEACH: So at this time issue number 

7 five is now closed as an SEC issue. It is now 

8 under the heading of a site profile issue. 

9 Thank you, Joe. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: This is Brad. While we’re on 

11 Health Physics 101, I’d just, we’ve kept 

12 talking -- and excuse my ignorance on this, 

13 but I’m just trying to figure this because 

14 when we do a bioassay, and we’re looking for 

15 gross alpha, that would show what it was at 

16 that time. You know, he could have got two 

17 months before and it’s decaying down to this. 

18 How do we bound, you know, I’m trying to 

19 figure how you guys do this because you know 

20 what it is there, but -- 

21 DR. ULSH: This is a recognized problem that 

22 you pull a sample, a urinalysis sample at a 

23 particular point in time. You’re not always 

24 able to tie that to a particular incident or a 

25 particular intake. And I always mess this up 
229

1 so I’m going to leave it to Don to fill in the 

2 details. But it has to do with going back in 

3 history and when was the last bioassay result 

4 taken. 

5 Don, fill that in, will you? 

6 MR. STEWART: It depends on the amount of 

7 data available on the claim, and in general, 

8 the more data that are available the more 

9 accurate the dose reconstruction would be. 

10 Our typical problem is to correlate a 

11 presumptive exposure with a negative result 

12 since very many people are tested for intakes 

13 for excretions of radionuclides and don’t have 

14 a result above a minimum detectable amount. 

15 So that’s our biggest problem. But we will 

16 relate that, we can go back and do that and I 

17 always attempt to go through all of this and 

18 start it out. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: I’m sure you guys on the phone 

20 will enjoy this. I hope that you can bear 

21 with me though. 

22 MR. STEWART: So for a given individual, we 

23 might have dose results from ’49 to ’65 and 

24 have data points all over the place. So we 

25 have to make some assumptions about when he 
230

1 had an intake and what that intake might have 

2 been. We don’t always go to all that trouble, 

3 frankly. We say, okay, this guy started in 

4 ’49, ended ‘67. Let’s just make it easy on 

5 ourselves. Fit the highest point and that’s 

6 his intake. So that’s how we’ll characterize 

7 that one. That one was easy. And typically 

8 an overestimate is easy. If the guy is going 

9 to ^ based on a simple result, you’re going to 

10 plot that first point -- 

11 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Hello? 

12 MR. CLAWSON: Hello. 

13 MS. BEACH: We’re still here. Don’s 

14 drawing. Hang on. 

15 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Joe, can you hear 

16 me? 

17 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I can hear 

18 you. 

19 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I can’t hear the 

20 group any longer. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT (by Telephone): Hi, this is 

22 Larry Elliott. I believe we’ve lost the 

23 conference room at the hotel. 

24 MS. BEACH: We can still hear you. We had a 

25 paper over it, sorry. 
231

1 MR. CLAWSON: You know how Ray gets. He put 

2 a paper on his own mike. 

3 DR. ULSH: While we were off we settled all 

4 the issues. 

5 MR. STEWART: I was talking about how we 

6 would fit a bioassay data to a given intake. 

7 And the point I was trying to make in my 

8 roundabout way is that we typically do it one 

9 of two very easy ways. In a case where we can 

10 assign a lot of dose to the organ and not make 

11 the claim compensable, we will overestimate 

12 the dose by picking one of the higher points 

13 or picking a dose excretion curve that’s not 

14 credible and results in a large dose but does 

15 not make the case compensable. 

16 Conversely, if we have a simple 

17 compensable case, say it’s a lung cancer and a 

18 person worked with Plutonium-238, we could 

19 often pick one or two data points, neglect the 

20 rest and you can see that this clearly, this 

21 curve, clearly moves under the data. We are 

22 underestimating dose, and that’s a compensable 

23 case. So to answer your question, we don’t 

24 often do it in a lot of detail. 

25 However, sometimes we are required to 
232

1 do that. We’ll go back, and we’ll look 

2 because some claims that are kind of around 

3 the compensation region so we have to 

4 accurately estimate the dose. And we can do 

5 that if we have sufficient data. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: If you use the high curve that 

7 you’re talking about there, do you have to 

8 have two or three more data points to be able 

9 to get at that? Because my one point is, is 

10 like the one that you have circled there. Say 

11 that was six months down the road, this point 

12 in time he had this much. That’s what he’s 

13 going to get. But actually, if you went back 

14 it would have been higher. 

15 DR. ULSH: That’s exactly what we do though. 

16 We go back to the previous bioassay result. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: So the previous bioassay. 

18 MR. STEWART: Whatever it is. 

19 DR. ULSH: So let’s look at a different 

20 case, Brad, where you’ve got a point out here 

21 that’s a positive result. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: All right. 

23 DR. ULSH: Well, when did that happen? It 

24 could have been the day before. It could have 

25 been the day after his last bioassay result. 
233

1 We don’t know. It could be anywhere in there. 

2 So what we’re going to do -- 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, that’s what I was trying 

4 to understand. 

5 DR. ULSH: Did I say anything wrong? 

6 MR. STEWART: Well, if we have a presumptive 

7 intake which occurred somewhere in this point 

8 in time, we typically assume that it’s halfway 

9 in between and that being the most logical 

10 approach given our approach for external dose 

11 which is to assign limited detection to. 

12 DR. ULSH: I think that’s right. That’s 

13 also what ICRP recommends, right? 

14 MR. STEWART: Yes, that’s an ICRP 

15 recommendation. So that’s what we do. 

16 We don’t have to do that a lot. A lot 

17 of times we’ll have case-specific data. When 

18 we do it’s kind of a big deal to go back and 

19 look at it and make sure it’s not overly 

20 claimant favorable and certainly does not 

21 underestimate the dose. 

22 MS. BEACH: Now I have a quick question. 

23 Once we close this and it becomes a site 

24 profile issue, what happens to it? Do you do 

25 something to change the site profile or, and 
234

1 will we hear about that? 

2 MR. CLAWSON: This kind of falls into the 

3 realm of I know that the site profile is a 

4 living document, but how to us in the work 

5 group do we keep up with the site profile and 

6 changes? 

7 DR. ULSH: I think that’s a question for 

8 Chia-Chia. We are going to be revising the 

9 TBD as an outcome of the SEC process. There’s 

10 going to be a lot of issues here that, you 

11 know, who know how this is going to turn out, 

12 so we are planning to do that. Now, in terms 

13 of once the SEC part of this process is closed 

14 out, however it turns out, well, then we move 

15 into revising the TBD. And I -- 

16 MS. CHANG: I don’t know. There’s not a 

17 work group on the Mound site profile, and is 

18 there a work group on site profiles in 

19 general? 

20 MR. CLAWSON: No, this is not just unique to 

21 the Mound work group. As we go into the SEC 

22 petitions and so forth like that a lot of 

23 times the TBDs do change. I guess my thing is 

24 is how are we going to be able to track these 

25 because we don’t want to lose them. We want 
235

1 to be able to see how they change. 

2 MS. BEACH: See, I don’t want to drop it and 

3 then never hear about it again. That’s why 

4 I’m asking. 

5 DR. ULSH: I can tell you internally this 

6 document that I’ve put together here, NIOSH 

7 Responses to Non-Matrix Items, I’ve got Issue 

8 Status. And let’s say we close number five as 

9 an SEC issue, I would add a status on there 

10 saying SEC closed, TBD opened, or something 

11 like that. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): And Josie, 

13 I’m sure Larry can also confirm that the Board 

14 has this as a generic issue in terms of how to 

15 handle site profile closures as well as issues 

16 coming in from SECs. And we have the same 

17 issue for Y-12 and some other sites. And that 

18 discussion’s been ongoing. 

19 MS. BEACH: Okay. 

20 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): So, Josie, this 

21 is John. By way of precedent in the past I 

22 could say for Hanford and for the Nevada Test 

23 Site what happened in those cases was almost 

24 perhaps the reverse of what we’re talking 

25 about now. In those cases a site profile 
236

1 group was formed, working group, was formed 

2 and then when the SEC issue, SEC was issued 

3 and that process began. 

4 What happened was the Board voted on 

5 this and merged the two basically saying, 

6 okay, Hanford, your mandate now is not only 

7 the site profile, but it is also the SEC 

8 petition. So that the two were really under 

9 the same umbrella. And what has been 

10 happening is the SEC issues usually take front 

11 and center, and we allow the issues to fall 

12 into, just as we’re doing now, into the site 

13 profile when that emerges from the process. 

14 But the good thing is from the others 

15 is that there is a place to catch them. 

16 Namely, there is a site profile working group. 

17 My guess is at the next Board meeting this 

18 certainly could be something that could be 

19 brought up by the SEC work group on whether or 

20 not your mandate should be expanded to include 

21 for it also to be the site profile work group. 

22 MS. BEACH: Thank you for that, John. I 

23 guess I haven’t been through a lot of this, 

24 and I wanted to make sure where it was 

25 captured. I appreciate that. 
237

1 We now have about less than eight 

2 minutes left so, Joe, I know we cut you off. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): No, 

4 actually, I think -- just trying to wrap 

5 things up. Issues one through nine, with the 

6 exception of the one we closed out on five, 

7 are really kind of similar issues. They deal 

8 with specific nuclides, questions of 

9 significance from an exposure potential 

10 standpoint and demonstrated dose estimation 

11 techniques that would satisfy the SEC 

12 concerns. 

13 And I think coupled with the roadmap 

14 we’re going to be focusing on this long 

15 awaited records retrieval that we’re going to 

16 hopefully get to in August. And I think a lot 

17 of these issues of significance and presence 

18 and exposure potential and what not, I think 

19 we can resolve in that context. So these were 

20 very similar issues. We could go through each 

21 of them, but I think it comes down to how 

22 significant were they in terms of exposure 

23 potential and is there an above and beyond a 

24 dose estimation technique. 

25 And we’ve talked a little bit about 
238

1 gross alpha and what have you, but is there a 

2 technique that can be used that’s claimant 

3 favorable. So we’ll take it upon ourselves to 

4 carry these through in terms of our 

5 investigation next month, but we will provide 

6 an issue-by-issue response, as I indicated 

7 earlier, to each of these in response to the 

8 NIOSH paper. 

9 MS. BEACH: And possibly we can think about 

10 getting back together late September 

11 timeframe. We’re not going to set a date 

12 obviously today, but this gives us a path 

13 forward. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Right. 

15 DR. ULSH: In the five minutes that remain, 

16 Josie, are there any issues that jump out in 

17 your head as being the top issues that you 

18 would like to see us pursue? I mean, there 

19 are a lot of issues on the table here. 

20 MS. BEACH: Right. Do you mind if I get 

21 that back to you in an e-mail and the work 

22 group? 

23 DR. ULSH: Not at all. 

24 MS. BEACH: Because I have mine listed as 

25 high, medium, and I think most of them are 
239

1 listed as high. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I might add 

3 we’re doing a survey, internal review, on 

4 completeness of the internal side. I think we 

5 discussed the external piece that Ron brought 

6 up this morning, but we are working on that. 

7 And that pertains to, I guess, issues 11, 12, 

8 somewhere in that neighborhood, so that’s 

9 ongoing as we speak. 

10 MS. BEACH: Okay. 

11 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Josie, this is 

12 John again. By way of this, what I guess 

13 these issues related to going in and looking 

14 at the data completeness, data adequacy, the 

15 kinds of matters that Joe just made reference 

16 to, it appears that a process has taken hold 

17 on other sites, specifically the Nevada Test 

18 Site and Fernald whereby what I would call the 

19 data reliability, completeness issue is 

20 always, of course, fundamental to anyone of 

21 these SECs. And these issues have come up 

22 obviously during this conversation. What has 

23 been done in the past is after, let’s say, a 

24 meeting such as this -- 

25 And, Joe, you may already be well on 
240

1 top of this so please let me know if it’s 

2 something that you’ve already taken care of. 

3 The first thing we do is put together what I’d 

4 call an overarching plan which identifies what 

5 I call the strata. That is, what facilities, 

6 what time periods, what categories of workers, 

7 perhaps what types of exposures are subjects 

8 of interest by way of data validation. It 

9 might be neutron exposures. It could be some 

10 type of radionuclide, internal radionuclides. 

11 In other words you identify those 

12 datasets that are going to be important for 

13 dose reconstruction for the individual workers 

14 and also for building coworker models when 

15 coworker models are needed. So that’s the 

16 first step is actually to sort of lay out what 

17 I call a master plan in terms of what are the 

18 categories of data that would be worth 

19 sampling in order to demonstrate that there is 

20 a robust dataset covering each of these 

21 strata. 

22 And that’s, in the past when presented 

23 to the work group, the work group would 

24 discuss it and then say, yes, we’d like you to 

25 proceed with that. And then we would go ahead 
241

1 and move forward with what I call a sampling 

2 plan of, okay, how many cases will we sample 

3 from this strata and from that strata. The 

4 intent of which is when we’re done we’d be 

5 able to say something insightful about the 

6 completeness and adequacy of data for each of 

7 the strata. 

8 Now, I guess, this is what we’ve been 

9 doing on other SEC, large SEC petitions and 

10 evaluation reports. It sounds like the same 

11 type of thing is starting to take form that 

12 has emerged but not in that type of structured 

13 approach. You’ve already identified a couple 

14 of areas, but it seems that are all the areas 

15 of interest, are they in the process of being 

16 defined? 

17 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Well, I 

18 think more for internal just to answer your 

19 question. I think for external it was a 

20 little more straightforward in terms of the 

21 MESH database and Ron -- yeah, you were on the 

22 phone for Ron. 

23 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes, I was. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): Identified 

25 pretty much what you called the strata in 
242

1 terms of the cross-section of the facilities, 

2 timeframes and types of exposures. And that 

3 was the sampling in the sampling size as well. 

4 So I think the only difference is the, we 

5 didn’t present a sampling plan before the -- 

6 well, this is only the second meeting. But we 

7 didn’t present a sampling plan between the 

8 first and today’s meeting. 

9 We went ahead using the entrée to the 

10 MESH database, and went ahead and did an 

11 evaluation based on a strata that we 

12 identified. So that’s kind of what Ron 

13 presented this morning which was the initial 

14 sampling on the external side. 

15 Now, on the internal side, that’s a 

16 much more complex picture as you can guess. 

17 And that investigation’s going on right now as 

18 far as trying to figure out what a sampling 

19 plan for these various internal sources would 

20 look like. So if the work group wants, we 

21 certainly can come forward with a plan for 

22 consideration. Again, I think it would have 

23 to be sooner rather than later because late 

24 September would be too late for this exercise. 

25 We’re already sort of getting involved with 
243

1 it. 

2 DR. ULSH: Josie, I’m a little confused 

3 because I thought at the last working group 

4 meeting -- and I might have this wrong -- that 

5 we had talked about PORECON and PURECON and 

6 MJW’s, for lack of a better word, validation 

7 of the two databases and how extensive it was. 

8 However, there was not a corresponding 

9 analysis of the external dataset. So I wasn’t 

10 really surprised to see SC&A send over the 

11 external data completeness investigation. Did 

12 I miss something? Are we going to do that 

13 same kind of thing on internal? 

14 MS. BEACH: Yes. That one just covered 

15 external, I believe. 

16 DR. ULSH: Right, but MJW did in their big 

17 dose reconstruction project, they reviewed 

18 PORECON and PURECON and found a very low error 

19 rate. 

20 MS. BEACH: But I believe that has not been 

21 completed yet for the internal. 

22 Joe, do you want to speak to that? 

23 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): I think what 

24 we had indicated we would review the Meyer 

25 report and review the MJW QA/QC from the dose 
244

1 reconstruction. And we’ve been through that 

2 and have done that although we’re not quite 

3 prepared to present the review results. But I 

4 think we initially said that the MJ review 

5 looked fairly robust in that we were focused 

6 on validating some of the radiochemistry 

7 procedures and were going to sample to get 

8 some feel for how that was done. But this 

9 would be likewise a very limited sample in 

10 terms of a plan, but it would be on the same 

11 level probably as what we discussed on 

12 external. But this would be coupled with what 

13 we did do which was to read two reviews. 

14 MS. BEACH: I meant to say that earlier, but 

15 it said external so I assumed that everybody 

16 realized we were just talking about external. 

17 DR. ULSH: Yeah, I knew that but at the 

18 previous working group meeting when MJW did 

19 their dose reconstruction back in, was it ’95, 

20 it was the pre-’89 dose reconstruction. I 

21 think it was completed in ’95. They were 

22 looking at internal doses, and they reviewed 

23 all of the internal data, compared it to the 

24 hard copy data, but that hadn’t been done for 

25 external. So I thought that’s why SC&A was 
245

1 focusing on the external part. 

2 MS. BEACH: And then they were going to do a 

3 review of the internal as well just to make 

4 sure the data integrity, completeness was the 

5 same. 

6 MS. CHANG: This is Chia-Chia. I’m going to 

7 jump in here for a second. I believe because 

8 we’re coming onto the end of the fiscal year, 

meetings before September 30th 9 will have to be 

10 scheduled by the end of this month, before 

11 August. You could do this by e-mail and just 

12 figure out your best schedule, but just so you 

13 know you’ll have to I think give Zaida the 

14 date if you’re going to schedule it before the 

15 end of the fiscal year, before August. 

16 MS. BEACH: Okay. And again, I apologize 

17 for the rush, the lateness of the hour now. 

18 Joe, did we finish on the sampling 

19 plan? Does the work group want a sampling 

20 plan submitted, or are we going to wait for 

21 what Joe has, what John suggested? 

22 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): And this 

23 approach is going to reflect I think some of 

24 what Brant just said that we’ve looked at 

25 PORECON and certainly it looks adequate. We 
246

1 would not propose to re-do much of what MJW 

2 did on PORECON, PURECON. Some of this really 

3 gets into areas that, based on the review that 

4 we did do of the MJW work and the Meyer 

5 report, are areas of interest where maybe it’s 

6 not quite as clean. 

7 So this is definitely a mixed bag. 

8 We’re not going to propose replicating any of 

9 the work that to our way of thinking is pretty 

10 thorough and demonstrable. But there are some 

11 issues with certain radionuclides, and I think 

12 there’s some questions on the tritium that we 

13 would like to at least look at that from the 

14 standpoint of what was done. 

15 So we can certainly bring this 

16 forward, and I would certainly invite work 

17 group comment, NIOSH comment if you want to do 

18 it. But I don’t think we have time to wait 

19 until the end of September if we’re going to 

20 pursue this. I’d like to make that a nearer21 term response if we could do it. 

22 MS. BEACH: At this time I’d like to just 

23 leave it open, and we can think about it and -

24 - 

25 MR. FITZGERALD (by Telephone): All right. 
247

1 MS. BEACH: So then I would like to call, 

2 unless anybody has a comment, a question. 

3 (no response) 

4 MS. BEACH: I’d like to go ahead and close 

5 the Mound work group meeting. Thank you all. 

6 (Whereupon, the working group meeting was 

7 adjourned at 3:35 p.m.) 

8 

9 
248

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of July 14, 

2008; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

8th day of January, 2009. 

___________________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102