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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON FERNALD

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TUESDAY

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

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 The Work Group met in the Zurich 

Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 2395 

Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky, at 9:00 

a.m., Bradley P. Clawson, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

MARK GRIFFON, Member

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor*

ROBERT ALVAREZ, SC&A*

SANDRA BALDRIDGE, Fernald Petitioner

BOB BARTON, SC&A*

RAY BEATTY, Fernald Worker

HANS BEHLING, SC&A*

MEL CHEW, ORAU Team*

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, ORAU Team*

LOU DOLL, Fernald Worker*

SAM GLOVER, DCAS*

EMILY HOWELL, HHS*

JENNY LIN, HHS*

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU Team*

GENE POTTER, ORAU Team*

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

JIM WERNER, SC&A*

* Participating via telephone

 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ITEM PAGE

Welcome/Roll Call 4

Agenda/Update 7

Action Items

 OTIB-78 11

 Recycled Uranium Review 102

 Dust collector data 114

 Radon breath data review 245

 Radon release/K-65 silo 270

 Thorium-232 daily weighted exposure 325

 Adjournment 372
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 9:00 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: I'm Ted Katz. I'm the 

4 Designated Federal Official for the Advisory 

5 Board. We're going to get started now, 

6 beginning with roll call. Board Members, 

7 beginning in the room. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, 

9 Work Group Chair for Fernald, no conflict.

10 MR. KATZ: Thank you.

11 MEMBER PRESLEY: Robert Presley, 

12 Work Group Member, no conflict.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Mark Griffon, no 

14 conflict.

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, 

16 Board Member, no conflict.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And Board 

18 Members on the line?

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, Board 

20 Member, no conflict.

21 MR. KATZ: NIOSH-ORAU Team, in the 

22 room?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes, Health 

2 Physicist, no conflict for Fernald.

3 MR. KATZ: And on the line, NIOSH4 ORAU?

5 DR. GLOVER: Sam Glover, NIOSH, no 

6 conflict.

7 DR. CHEW: Mel Chew.

8 MR. MORRIS: Robert Morris, ORAU 

9 Team, no conflict.

10 DR. CHEW: Mel Chew, ORAU Team, no 

11 conflict.

12 MR. KATZ: Welcome, all of you. 

13 SC&A in the room?

14 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 

15 conflict.

16 MR. STIVER: John Stiver, SC&A, no 

17 conflict.

18 MR. KATZ: And SC&A on the line?

19 MR. BARTON: Bob Barton, SC&A, no 

20 conflict.

21 MR. KATZ: Is that it?

22 DR. MAURO: No, there should be 
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1 others. 

2 MR. KATZ: Okay.

3 DR. MAURO: We've got two others, 

4 maybe calling later.

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, and federal 

6 officials or contractors to the Feds, HHS or 

7 otherwise, none in the room, except me. On 

8 the line?

9 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS.

10 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

11 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH 

12 contractor.

13 MR. KATZ: Very good. Members of 

14 the public, in the room?

15 MS. BALDRIDGE: Sandra Baldridge, 

16 petitioner.

17 MR. BEATTY: Ray Beatty, former 

18 Fernald, assisting the petitioner.

19 MR. KATZ: Great, welcome, and do 

20 we have any members of the public on the line?

21 (No response.)

22 MR. KATZ: Okay, not at this 
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1 moment. Let me remind folks on the line to, 

2 please, mute your phones, except when you're 

3 addressing the group. If you don't have a 

4 mute button, use *6 and then *6 again, to take 

5 yourselves off mute, and Brad, we don't have a 

6 published agenda for this meeting. 

7 Maybe you'll just give us an 

8 outline before you get rolling into to, so 

9 that everybody could have a sense.

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, this is 

11 Brad Clawson. For one thing, I'd like to tell 

12 Paul he doesn't sound all that good. So, we 

13 appreciate that he's not here, spreading it 

14 around.

15 When we finished up, we basically 

16 had six items for quite a while, and the first 

17 issue was that OTIB-78 did internal review of 

18 DCAS comments. They were due. 

19 The HIS-20 database, the coworker 

20 construction model, which I understand we 

21 don't have, right, Mark?

22 MR. ROLFES: Yes, if we could get 
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1 back to OTIB-78, I attached the revision of 

2 the coworker uranium urinalysis study for 

3 unmonitored Fernald workers.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That would cover 

5 the construction workers, is what you're 

6 saying?

7 MR. ROLFES: Well, no, issue two, 

8 if you remember, issue one and issue two were 

9 sort of tied together because issue two 

10 related more to the subcontractor construction 

11 workers, but it also was tied to the 

12 unmonitored employees.

13 So, we sort of, at the last 

14 meeting, separated the unmonitored 

15 construction workers from the unmonitored 

16 general population, and so, what we're doing 

17 right now, is looking at unmonitored 

18 construction workers, separately, and work is 

19 still ongoing on that. So, we don't have 

20 anything for you, today.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, so that 

22 was -- that was with OTIB-78? Is that what 
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1 you're -- 

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, the 

4 HIS-20 database, we've got the recycled 

5 uranium review. We got the radon breath data 

6 review for radon emissions, and we've got the 

7 thorium-232 daily weighted exposures, and 

8 these are basically, the six topics, the real 

9 cut and dry of where we're at.

10 But at this time, I'd also express 

11 a little bit of frustration. We were suppose 

12 to have this data in May, so that we could be 

13 able to review this.

14 A comment was brought up. It went 

15 to September. I followed up on it, said due 

16 to other workloads, it then went -- went 

17 another month, and now, we get this, five days 

18 before a meeting, of basically, six reports.

19 I really don't think that John, 

20 and I appreciate him getting on to that, and 

21 then to have it not even sent to the 

22 subcontractors is very, very frustrating, to 
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1 me, to be able to do.

2 One of my issues is, is this has 

3 been five years from the beginning of this. 

4 We have gotten to a point where we're 

5 basically locked up, and at this time, as the 

6 Work Group Chair, I'm putting out to the other 

7 Work Group Members, just so you understand, at 

8 the close of our meeting today, after we hear 

9 what we can from SC&A, I would like to push 

10 this for a vote, to be able to put this to the 

11 full Board, because I don't feel like we're 

12 getting anywhere.

13 I don't feel that we've had any 

14 kind of movement. The DWA, the daily weighted 

15 average, yes, there has been some movement on 

16 radon breath. Radon emissions, no movement. 

17 Uranium, no movement. 

18 It's been brought up many times on 

19 the HIS database, that -- and Sandra 

20 Baldridge, we've got to look into what the 

21 petitioners have said. There's falsification 

22 of documents there. That has never been 
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1 addressed. We still don't have a construction 

2 coworker model.

3 To all the Board Members, I'm 

4 throwing out to you right now that as we -- at 

5 the end of the day, we make a decision on this 

6 because five years -- I'm calling it 

7 untimeliness and non-responsiveness.

8 So, as we go through this, I'd 

9 like you to keep that in the back of your 

10 mind. So, I'd like to be able to have the 

11 questions and so forth, answered, that we can.

12 With that statement, I'm going to 

13 turn it over to John, and John, I realize I 

14 put you in a bad situation, when I called you, 

15 and I know that you've had your team work all 

16 weekend. 

17 So, if these are ones that you 

18 have not had adequate time to be able to 

19 really digest, I would -- just let me know, 

20 and we can go from there.

21 But let's start with issue number 

22 one, which is OTIB-78, and we'll go from 
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1 there.

2 DR. MAURO: Sure, no, I'll be glad 

3 to take them one at a time, and let you know, 

4 you know, our perspective on where they are 

5 and where we're making some progress and where 

6 we're not making progress.

7 Regarding where we -- when we talk 

8 about OTIB-78, we're basically talking about 

9 the sufficiency and adequacy of the uranium 

10 bioassay data, and for the longest time 

11 period, after doing quite a bit of analysis of 

12 that data, and it was looking at how much data 

13 do you have, as a function of time and 

14 location, job category, et cetera.

15 You know, we looked at it closely, 

16 after all of this, and the good news is that 

17 we're coming down favorably, with regard to 

18 the -- that fact that you have sufficient 

19 uranium bioassay data, going all the way back 

20 to the early 50s in order to, basically, just 

21 about -- almost everyone, especially starting 

22 in 1957, has some bioassay data that we looked 
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1 at in your database.

2 And so, in theory, you have the 

3 wherewithal to not only directly reconstruct 

4 the uranium intakes, based on bioassay data, 

5 but if you needed to build a coworker model, 

6 for those workers who weren't adequately 

7 monitored, you probably could build a coworker 

8 model that would capture different decades, 

9 different job categories, different buildings.

10 However, now, here is the --

11 there's always a however, unfortunately. One 

12 of the questions that came up, that we did not 

13 look at, and I believe you folks are currently 

14 looking at is -- and I believe Sandra had 

15 mentioned, well, what about construction 

16 workers?

17 I mean, in this massive amount of 

18 data that's out there, we don't really -- we 

19 never went into that data and parsed it.

20 Well, I believe there's great 

21 distributions in data, but are there 

22 construction workers and/or the 
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1 subcontractors, that might have worked at the 

2 facility, well represented also, and during 

3 the meeting, you may recall, one of the things 

4 that I did, I got up to the blackboard and 

5 said, "Okay, yes, that's a good question," 

6 we've got to -- you know, that deserves an 

7 answer.

8 And all I did was make a 

9 suggestion that perhaps, you can go into your 

10 data set, and break out, maybe in the 

11 claimants files or the totality of the files, 

12 of the HIS-20 database, separate the 

13 population of construction workers or 

14 contractors from DOE workers, we'll call it, 

15 and make a plot of the distribution, and see 

16 if, in fact, the two overlap very nicely, and 

17 if they overlap very nicely, that means any 

18 coworker model you build for the construction 

19 -- for the workers, would also equally apply 

20 well, especially, right across the 

21 distribution, from the mean to the tail. But 

22 there's a difference.
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1 MR. KATZ: John, let me just 

2 interrupt for a second. I think maybe some 

3 people have joined the phone call, since we 

4 opened up.

5 But I can hear some background 

6 talk, and it may be more disturbing to the 

7 people who are trying to listen in by phone.

8 People on the telephone, please 

9 mute your phones, so that we don't hear your 

10 discussions, side discussions, and if you 

11 don't have a mute button, press *6. That will 

12 mute your phone. When you press *6 again, 

13 that will unmute your phone, but please mute 

14 your phone. Thank you.

15 DR. MAURO: The bottom line is that 

16 it would be instructive and I think, useful to 

17 everyone concerned, to make a demonstration 

18 that the -- an understanding exists, of what 

19 the distribution of bioassay data are, for 

20 both -- for these two separate groups, and 

21 that if there are some differences, and often, 

22 there are, there are oversights, then you have 
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1 the wherewithal to be able to apply adjustment 

2 factors, to account for the fact that perhaps, 

3 construction workers, perhaps in a given 

4 decade, because we've seen that too, are --

5 have to be treated a little bit differently.

6 This is something I don't believe 

7 -- now, I have to say, I did not have time to 

8 read your -- this June 3, 2010 version of 

9 OTIB-78. Is it in there?

10 MR. ROLFES: Well, let me explain 

11 what we've done -- 

12 DR. MAURO: Okay.

13 MR. ROLFES: Since I believe a 

14 couple of Working Group meetings ago, the 

15 issue was identified, that we had only 

developed the 50th 16 percentile intakes for our 

17 coworker uranium urine study.

18 And so, at that time, we were 

19 asked by SC&A and the Advisory Board Working 

20 Group Members, to look at certain classes of 

21 workers, because there was some concern, for 

22 the urine samples from certain classes of 
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1 workers who were monitored. There were also 

2 some unmonitored workers in those classes.

3 So, the idea was brought up by the 

Working Group, as to whether the 50th 4 

5 percentile would be appropriate, or whether we 

should add the 95th 6 percentile into our 

7 uranium intake study.

8 And so, what we ended up doing is 

going back and adding the 95th 9 percentile 

10 intake rates for OTIB-78, and also, presented 

11 that -- we subsequently presented that to the 

12 Working Group Members, but then, I believe at 

13 the last Working Group meeting, there a 

14 specific concern about construction workers.

15 So, what we decided to do, after 

16 the discussion, we discussed, you know, 

17 comparing construction worker intakes rates or 

18 excretion rates, to the general population, 

19 which is documented in OTIB-78, and we have 

20 done a limited sampling, but we haven't 

21 completed that sampling.

22 So, right now, we're doing exactly 
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1 that. We're comparing the excretion rates or 

2 intake rates between construction workers and 

the OTIB-78, 50th percentile intakes and 95th 3 

4 percentile intakes.

5 So, we should be able to get 

6 something done, hopefully, in probably a month 

7 or two, I'm thinking.

8 DR. MAURO: By the way, Mark just 

9 reminded me of something I should have 

10 mentioned, also.

11 One of the points of contention 

12 early on, this goes back a couple of Work 

13 Group meetings ago, was -- as you had pointed 

14 out, you know, you have a distribution of 

15 excretion, and the coworker model was going to 

16 work -- the best estimate, as their -- their 

17 coworker tool.

18 One of our recommendations was 

19 that well, listen, there might be some workers 

at times when they should use the 95th 20 

21 percentile. In other words, there are certain 

22 Classes of workers that might have gotten 
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1 higher exposures, and -- agreed.

2 So, that was an important change. 

3 So, you know, we're glad to see -- we were 

4 aware -- well, we agreed in principle during 

5 the meeting, and you're saying now, it's 

6 actually the language is in here.

7 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

8 DR. MAURO: So, the language -- so, 

9 one of the important issues that we did 

10 originally have, we've made some progress, 

going with the 95th 11 percentile, when 

12 appropriate.

13 The place that we're -- the way we 

14 see it, that's still left to be dealt with is 

15 a demonstration that a coworker model, that 

16 also applies to construction workers, can also 

17 be built.

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: I have one question 

19 with this, and concern.

20 You are continually equating 

21 intake rates and excretions. That's only with 

22 the soluble uranium. It does not address 
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1 intake from insoluble form. It doesn't 

2 address how severe the intake was, what 

3 deposition rate there was and what the 

4 systemic uptake was.

5 MR. ROLFES: Well, the -- 

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: And all you're 

7 measuring is the transient uranium that is 

8 passing through the kidneys, which there are 

9 variables there, that are presented as issues 

10 against the usability of the uranium data at 

11 Fernald, and these are from qualified people. 

12 Dr. Quigley was a medical doctor, as well as 

13 an expert in the uranium radioactive materials 

14 area.

15 He spoke for years and years, at 

16 symposiums or whatever, as an educator to the 

17 nuclear community, about the issues of uranium 

18 intake, and he consistently says, you cannot 

19 use the uranium urinalysis data to determine 

20 internal dose.

21 Now -- 

22 MR. ROLFES: But you have to take a 
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1 look at the context of that statement, and the 

2 time period, as well. 

3 The important factor, back then --

4 we have the data. It was a matter of -- we 

5 have the uranium urinalysis data reported to 

6 us.

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: Right.

8 MR. ROLFES: What we didn't have 

9 back then, was a biokentic model, which showed 

10 the distribution of the different solubility 

11 classes and chemical compounds of uranium 

12 throughout the body.

13 Basically, you could make a 

14 judgment, as to how much uranium was inhaled, 

15 but the biokentic modeling, showing how much 

16 of that uranium was dissolved from the lungs 

17 into the blood stream and how much was 

18 deposited into the bone surfaces for those --

19 versus the liver, and how much came back out 

20 of the liver and back into the bloodstream and 

21 was redeposited into the bone or how much -- 

22 So, the complex biokentic models 
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1 didn't exist back then. We had the ICRP, the 

2 International Commission for Radiological 

3 Protection, too, back then. We now currently 

4 have more advanced biokentic models, which 

5 show very specific amounts of uranium being 

6 released back into the bloodstream.

7 It shows an extensive map of the 

8 body, as to what biological compartments that 

9 uranium enters and removes -- is removed from.

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: But it seems to me 

11 that those models all require some knowledge, 

12 about what the actual intake was, whether it 

13 was in the air, there -- you know, what's the 

14 distinction and particle size, in the density 

15 of the material?

16 You know, that can't be determined 

17 through the uranium urinalysis, and in -- in 

18 one document, I think it's listed as probably 

19 SEC-ISID-9362-165, they're opposed to 

20 uniformity and record keeping, and this is 

21 their statement.

22 "It doesn't make much sense to 
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1 keep very accurate records of industrial 

2 exposure, unless," and this is what was 

3 omitted from the online part of the petition 

4 for this document, "Unless complete medical 

5 information is available, radiation records 

6 will not be useful in worker's comp or 

7 epidemiological study purposes."

8 Now, they're acknowledging that 

9 they don't see any importance in the keeping 

10 of accurate records. So, how do you even know 

11 that the records that you have are accurate, 

12 when this is their mindset?

13 MR. ROLFES: Well, I'd have to take 

14 a look, once again, at the specific -- at the 

15 part of that you're referring to.

16 We've actually spent quite a bit 

17 of time making sure that the data that we have 

18 is reliable. 

19 One of the things that we had done 

20 in the -- 

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: The only -- 

22 MR. ROLFES: With regards to 
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1 reliability -- 

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: The only thing you 

3 have -- 

4 MR. KATZ: Please, one at a time, 

5 please.

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: Is what was 

7 submitted by Fernald, to DOE, or to the --

8 whoever they -- DOE, Department of Energy.

9 MR. ROLFES: What we have done, to 

10 compare the data that we have received -- I 

11 know there's been a lot of concerns about the 

12 HIS-20 database and the electronic data being 

13 transcribed appropriately and making sure that 

14 the data is available, et cetera, for us to 

15 use, in dose reconstruction.

16 So, one of the things that we've 

17 done was to compare the hard copy urinalysis 

18 results to the urinalysis results in the HIS19 20 database.

20 If you were concerned about some 

21 specific piece of information not being 

22 accurate, it would be very difficult to, you 
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1 know, modify the data.

2 If you were concerned about a 

3 single urine sample or a group of urine 

4 samples for a given employee, you would also 

5 have to take a look -- you know, that's not 

6 the only source of radiation exposure 

7 information. You could also take a look at 

8 the individuals in vivo data, and also, air 

9 monitoring data.

10 There is many different factors 

11 and many different layers of health physics 

12 that's out there, and information at a site, 

13 that to, you know, change something or to be 

14 concerned about the accuracy of something, 

15 you'd have to -- you can't -- I think you 

16 understand what I'm saying, but -- 

17 MS. BALDRIDGE: Right, but this 

18 does not address specific individual data. 

19 This reflects a mindset that the record 

20 system, this documented dated 1966, this was 

21 the mindset that they used, when they were 

22 preparing data to keep in their own files or 
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1 even to send onto DOE.

2 MR. ROLFES: Could you repeat that 

3 once again, and -- 

4 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay.

5 MR. ROLFES: And also give us a 

6 reference?

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, I did.

8 MR. ROLFES: Well, I didn't catch 

9 that part.

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay, it's SEC11 ISID-9362-165.

12 MR. ROLFES: Where can I find this 

13 document?

14 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, those are the 

15 -- those are the ID numbers that you assigned 

16 to the documents -- 

17 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: In the petition.

19 MR. ROLFES: Okay, so, this has 

20 been provided to us?

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: Right.

22 MR. ROLFES: Okay.
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1 DR. MAURO: Could I weigh in a 

2 little bit on this?

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: Sure.

4 DR. MAURO: Really, what I heard 

5 was two issues. I'll deal with -- something -

6 - an oversight that I forgot to mention, when 

7 I first spoke is, during the last meeting, 

8 Sandra, I believe, one of the questions you 

9 had raised is, records falsification.

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: Right.

11 DR. MAURO: Okay, and I think 

12 that's an important question, that is, great, 

13 we have all of these thousands and thousands 

14 of measurements of milligrams per liter in the 

15 urine, and not withstanding this transcription 

16 issue, which has to do with HIS-20. Let's 

17 just talk -- whether they're hard copy of 

18 they're electronic, we got these records. 

19 Okay, let's say, they're hard copy 

20 records. Go right back to the source.

21 At the time, you raised the 

22 concern, which has been raised at other sites, 
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1 because of concern of falsification of 

2 records, and how can we trust those numbers? 

3 Someone may have gone in and put their numbers 

4 in there, and therefore, any distribution 

5 already to do with it, can't be trusted.

6 We, SC&A, were asked at the time, 

7 to say, "Well, what are you doing, that you're 

8 concerned about that," and we have to look at 

9 this in the past, and we wrote a report, in 

10 the interim, on strategies for -- that you may 

11 want to consider and we're saying, "This needs 

12 to be done or," you know, we're saying that we 

13 were asked to say, "Well, how do you come at a 

14 problem like this?"

15 And Bob Barton, who was on the 

16 phone, very innovatively -- because was a very 

17 different -- came up with ideas, ideas that I 

18 think emerged because we were asked very 

19 similar questions at other sites, and we'll 

20 put that aside for one second.

21 But I would like Bob to summarize 

22 the three strategies, I believe it was three, 
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1 that he invented, as being a way to get at the 

2 problem, whether or not that's something that 

3 NIOSH or the Work Group or the Board would 

4 like to be done, is another question. 

5 But I forgot to mention that yes, 

6 we were asked to write that report. We did 

7 write that report. I think I'm holding it in 

8 my hand, right now. Yes, I am. It's dated 

9 June 2010, and in a second, if it's okay with 

10 everyone, Bob could give a brief summary of 

11 what those strategies are.

12 Now, I want to quickly change 

13 subjects and in this case, I'd like to speak 

14 in defense of what Mark just said, regarding 

15 the bioassay data.

16 I agree with Mark, that there was 

17 a time when you had urine sample data, 

18 milligrams per liter, where you collected the 

19 data, but you didn't know what to do with it, 

20 because what does it mean? How do we know 

21 what that means? 

22 I measured a certain amount of 
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1 uranium in urine. How do I know how much was 

2 inhaled? How do I know what the dose is to 

3 the lungs, to the kidneys, the bone and the 

4 rest of the body, and the reason I believe, 

5 and we discussed this at the last meeting, a 

6 reason to believe this -- the quote that you 

7 cited, had more to do with the fact that at 

8 that time, when that was written, no one 

9 understood the biokentics.

10 In other words, they -- it's, so, 

11 you know what's in the uranium and the urine. 

12 You don't -- that doesn't mean you understand 

13 what the health effects are, and how it 

14 behaved in the body. You really don't know 

15 anything. So, you can't use it.

16 But since then, and this is where 

17 -- an enormous amount of research has been 

18 done on understanding, what does it mean when 

19 I measure this much uranium in the urine? 

20 Well, I believe, as health 

21 physicist, that now, we're at a place where 

22 you tell me -- you give me some good data on 
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1 how much uranium is in the urine, and let's 

2 say, you have samples collected every quarter 

3 or every month, and now, I could look at that, 

4 and I feel confident, as a health physicist, I 

5 could go back and read that data, if you could 

6 trust it. If it hasn't been falsified, and 

7 it's fairly complete for a given worker, I 

8 could go back and reconstruct the dose, to 

9 just about any organ in the person's body.

10 So, I think that on that regard, 

11 SC&A's position, is that we agree with Mark, 

12 in the answer he gave.

13 So, this is where SC&A comes out 

14 on this, whether or not the Work Group agrees, 

15 you know, that's another subject. 

16 But SC&A's position is, yes, you 

17 can use bioassay data, taken from urine 

18 samples, of uranium, and if records are 

19 complete and have -- can be trusted, that were 

20 done correctly, you can reconstruct a person's 

21 intake and you can -- and take into 

22 consideration, all the variables you pointed 
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1 out, particle size, chemical form, they all 

2 have play, and they're all very important 

3 considerations, when you do that kind of 

4 calculation. But the wherewithal exists to do 

5 that.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: And I think the 

7 important thing is there, John, is that there 

8 is two separate issues.

9 DR. MAURO: Yes.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: And on Fred's 

11 initial agenda, one is the coworker model and 

12 the second is the sort of V&V, validation and 

13 verification of the data.

14 DR. MAURO: Right.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: And obviously, if 

16 test two turns out that the data is -- and 

17 Sandra's concern is, is that it can't be 

18 trusted, then you can't do the model. So, you 

19 know, one relies on the other.

20 DR. MAURO: And there may be -- 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I think -- 

22 DR. MAURO: No, I was starting to 
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1 say that -- 

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: I agree with you 

3 generally, that the -- 

4 DR. MAURO: Yes, you can -- 

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: There is a lot of 

6 uranium data, if we go through and say, it's 

7 all okay -- 

8 DR. MAURO: If you trust it.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Then, yes, right.

10 DR. MAURO: And there might be a 

11 bit of confusion, too, when you mentioned the 

12 HIS-20 database, we sort of left subject 

13 number one, and moved to subject two, and 

14 that's what -- 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and that's 

16 the -- 

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, and I think it --

18 just to help -- the point that Mark was making

19 is that one of the things NIOSH did, and wrote 

20 a report, on, was the -- listen, we've got all 

21 this electronic data, okay, but that 

22 electronic data, someone had to take hard copy 
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1 data, old stuff, and translate it 

2 electronically, and make it electronic data. 

3 And one of the concerns that we 

4 always have is, how faithfully was that 

5 transcribed?

6 Now, this doesn't have -- this 

7 doesn't pertain to data falsification, which 

8 is -- that's a different problem all together. 

9 That goes, actually, to the original records, 

10 the hard copy records, can you trust those?

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

12 DR. MAURO: The question is -- now, 

13 the question that NIOSH tried to answer, and 

14 we believe that it's only been incompletely 

15 answered, is how faithfully was the hard copy 

16 data transcribed into electronic data, because 

17 it's the electronic data that's going to be 

18 used to do dose reconstructions and to build 

19 coworker models.

20 What NIOSH did was, they went 

21 through a process. It's a fairly formal 

22 process. It's really data verification. It 
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1 has nothing to do with falsification --

2 verification, faithfully transcribe hard copy 

3 data into your electronic form, and they went 

4 through a process.

5 Now, we have been critical of that 

6 particular -- that's issue number two, by the 

7 way, so, leaving issue number one. 

8 Issue number two is that we've 

9 been critical in only one area. They really 

10 never completed that. They began the process 

11 with a design, to say, "We're going to sample 

12 these many batches of data. We're going to 

13 pull them out, take a look at them and see how 

14 faithfully everything was transcribed," and 

15 they basically found that well, there were 

16 about, on average, six percent, what you would 

17 call -- six percent of the data was not 

18 entirely appropriately transcribed over, and 

19 it was mainly missing data that is -- found 

20 out there was some data that was there, that 

21 wasn't transcribed over.

22 Now, then they did an analysis, 
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1 that said, "Okay, if we did transcribe the 

2 data," because now that they went back and 

3 looked at it and found it, they did try -- it 

4 really didn't change things -- the 

5 distributions very much, and you made a very 

6 strong case that, really, the distributions 

7 wouldn't change.

8 But never the less, we felt that 

9 in doing that process, you were originally, I 

10 believe, were going to sample 25 data sets, 

11 and you cut it short. You sort of said, 

12 "Listen, we did enough," and our only 

13 recommendation is, why don't you finish doing 

14 that?

15 Now, at the time, I believe, that 

16 you said, "Well," you'll give is some thought, 

17 and you never made a commitment to do that, 

18 and we simply feel that you started a process, 

19 and you didn't play it out to its end, 

20 especially when you uncovered six percent 

21 errors, when you were hoping to be less than 

22 one percent.
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1 Now, I'm not saying that's 

2 important. That's not going to -- everything 

3 is going to change, but in my mind, let it 

4 play out, finish sampling the 25 sets, get all 

5 that data completed, in place, and then say, 

6 "Okay, now that we understand how faithfully 

7 it was transcribed," then you could say a 

8 story that says, "This is the fact that we 

9 found," -- that turns out to be six percent, 

10 or whatever you find, in the end, what kind of 

11 effect does that have on our ability to 

12 reconstruct internal doses, or to build a 

13 coworker model?

14 I think that that has to be

15 finished. So, that actually is issue number 

16 two, that SC&A has with the work that has been 

17 done, and I don't believe that's been done, 

18 yet.

19 MR. ROLFES: Right, I mean, we can 

20 certainly look at that, but more work is going 

21 to be more time. I mean, that's the bottom 

22 line.
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1 We can certainly take a look at 

2 it. From what I recall, when we did the 

3 analysis and compared the hard copy data to 

4 the electronic data, most of the errors were 

5 related to name spellings, social security 

6 numbers, transposition of one of the digits or 

7 -- 

8 DR. MAURO: Yes.

9 MR. ROLFES: Date of birth, things 

10 that aren't really relevant to dose 

11 reconstruction.

12 And so, at that time, we had 

13 decided not to pursue doing this any further, 

14 just because the errors that we had observed 

15 were not important to the dose reconstruction 

16 process.

17 DR. MAURO: We understand that, and 

18 you know, certainly, that judgment, whether it 

19 is necessary or not, you know, right now, 

20 SC&A's position is, it seems that our 

21 recommendation -- I don't know how big of a 

22 job it is, but -- but I think -- and I think 
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1 that's the story on HIS-20.

2 But I'd like Bob Barton -- Bob, 

3 are you still there?

4 MR. BARTON: Yes, I'm here, John.

5 DR. MAURO: Bob, would you mind 

6 giving us a relatively brief conceptual 

7 description of strategies that might be of 

8 value in looking into issues of data 

9 falsification?

10 I think this is an important 

11 issue. I know it's important. Sandra brought 

12 it up at the last meeting. It's ultimately, 

13 the rock we're standing on. You know, you 

14 have to be confident that the original record 

15 that's out there, can be trusted -- and -- 

16 MR. BARTON: Okay.

17 DR. MAURO: And -- I'm sorry, Brad.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I just want to 

19 make something clear. It wasn't just last Work 

20 Group meeting, it's been the last four Work 

21 Group meetings, this has came up, and this is 

22 why you guys started into part of this 
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1 problem.

2 So, it wasn't just last Work Group 

3 meeting. It was numerous.

4 DR. MAURO: Okay.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, it's in the 

6 original petition, too.

7 DR. MAURO: Yes, that was -- 

8 MR. ROLFES: Let me ask a question, 

9 because you had mentioned issue two was 

10 related to HIS-20, and it sounded like the 

11 entire population of HIS-20.

12 What my understanding -- the issue 

13 that came about as of the last Work Group 

14 meeting, was the -- specific to the 

15 subcontractor

16 -construction workers not being monitored. 

17 DR. MAURO: Two separate subjects.

18 MR. ROLFES: Okay, two separate 

19 subjects. So, my understanding of the 

20 original HIS-20 hard copy to the electronic 

21 data, as I had mentioned, we had looked at it 

22 and found that the errors would not affect 
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1 dose reconstruction process. 

2 So, we stopped doing the analysis, 

3 because we didn't feel that it would be 

4 appropriate to finish the analysis, just 

5 because we, you know, found the answer.

6 Separate from that, we're looking 

7 at the hard copy data from construction 

8 workers, and comparing that to the HIS-20 

9 database and looking at the distribution of 

10 the coworkers intakes from OTIB-78 versus 

11 construction workers.

12 So, yes, they're sort of similar 

13 issues, and they -- 

14 DR. MAURO: Yes.

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

16 DR. MAURO: But I mean, this -- and 

17 I think the mechanics of going through the 

18 process you just described, it needs to be 

19 done, and when you're done, a story will 

20 emerge, as to whether or not construction 

21 workers and other workers are -- the HIS-20 

22 database, a story will emerge, how faithfully 
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1 was the data transcribed, and in fact, does it 

2 really have an effect?

3 These are the -- this a work in 

4 process. But now, but this other question 

5 that was in the petition, that was raised, by 

6 Sandra, a couple of meetings ago, has to do 

7 with a really tough problem, and that is, how 

8 can we be sure we can trust the original hard 

9 copy data, which is the rock we're all 

10 standing on?

11 And we are -- SC&A was asked to 

12 report on that, and granted we only came out 

13 in June with that report. So, it's been 

14 around now, for few months, and Bob Barton had 

15 some ideas. 

16 If the Work Group would like to 

17 hear it, we could summarize briefly, some of 

18 the strategies that might be worthwhile 

19 looking into, or not. That's a judgment 

20 others have to make, whether it's worth going 

21 through such an exercise, but if that's what 

22 you'd like, I'd like to ask Bob to give us a 
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1 quick summary.

2 MR. BARTON: Thank you, John, and 

3 I'd just like to say right off the bat, so 

4 everybody -- we're all on the same page, here, 

5 this is not a thing that we can really 

6 definitively say, one way or another, whether 

7 data was falsified in the hard copy records.

8 All we need to really do is come 

9 up with strategies that sort of put the data 

10 to the test, I guess for lack of a better 

11 term, but you know, give it the `smell test', 

12 to see if everything seems kosher, when we 

13 look at it from these different strategies, 

14 which I will describe briefly, or you know, if 

15 we put it to the test and you know, everything 

16 seems fine, and that's one thing.

17 But there is no definitive way to 

18 say, "Yes, it's clear that this data was 

19 falsified," unless you had someone -- or 

20 several people, come forward and say that.

21 With that being said, let me get 

22 into these different approaches that we came 
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1 up, and there were three strategies that we 

2 came up, to sort of look at the data and see 

3 whether, you know, everything looks okay, or 

4 maybe we have a problem and we really need to 

5 look into it further.

6 So, the first strategy involves 

7 comparing -- looking at individual workers and 

8 comparing their urinalysis results against 

9 their in vivo monitoring, or whole body 

10 counting, and as Mark Rolfes mentioned 

11 earlier, this is sort of comparing those 

12 different layers of health physics data that -

13 - you know, if they don't match up, you might 

14 have a problem there.

15 So, for instance, if you had a 

16 worker who had significantly elevated in vivo 

17 whole body counting results for uranium, you'd 

18 expect to see the same elevated results in his 

19 urinary excretion rate.

20 So, that's pretty much the meat of 

21 the first strategy, is just comparing these 

22 different types of monitoring data. 
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1 One of the limitations of that is 

2 in vivo monitoring wasn't present for, you 

3 know, the entire operational period at 

4 Fernald, so there is sort of only a limited 

5 time frame that we can look at for these types 

6 of workers, who had both whole body counting 

7 done for uranium and urinalysis performed.

8 But again, what we look for is, 

9 you've got a worker who consistently had 

10 elevated whole body counting results, and 

11 suddenly, you look at his urinalysis results, 

12 and wow, they're all coming up, you know, less 

13 than the MDA or zero or whatever, then you 

14 know, that might be an indication that the 

15 urinalysis results were maybe falsified. So, 

16 that's pretty much strategy one.

17 Strategy two involves just simply 

18 looking at the urinalysis results, and saying 

19 our -- you know, our understanding of how the 

20 biokentics work is, you can't have an 

21 extremely high uranium sample one day, and 

22 then a few days later, have nothing.
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1 But if you had maybe a small group 

2 of monitoring workers, who were falsifying 

3 documents, you know, where they could, that 

4 would bear that out, because you'd have some 

5 that were correctly showing the elevated 

6 urinalysis for a worker and then some that are 

7 suddenly zero, all of the sudden.

8 So, you'd be taking individual 

9 workers and looking a just their urinalysis 

10 results over a certain time frame, saying, did 

11 this actually make sense? Is this possible, 

12 what we're seeing, the trend of their uranium 

13 concentration in urine?

14 So, that's essentially strategy 

15 two. Strategy one, we're going to compare 

16 whole body counting and urinalysis results to 

17 see if those match up. Strategy two, we're 

18 going to simply look at urinalysis results and 

19 see if it's physically possible, with our 

20 understanding of how uranium moves through the 

21 body and is excreted.

22 The third strategy involves these 
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1 daily weighted exposure reports, which I 

2 believe, are on the agenda today, to discuss, 

3 and looking at these essentially, is -- they 

4 take air sampling results and essentially, 

5 compare them to what the jobs -- what the 

6 different jobs types were doing.

7 So, you come up with essentially, 

8 an average air sample of uranium in the air 

9 that could be inhaled, and you attach that to 

10 a certain job title. 

11 Now, if you go in and you find 

12 workers who had that same job title and worked 

13 in that same plant and time frame, you should 

14 see some correlation there, between the high 

15 daily weighted exposure for a certain job type 

16 and the urinalysis results for that same job 

17 type.

18 So, now, that one, again, is kind 

19 of limited. You have find the workers who had 

20 that same job type, was working in that 

21 specific plant, in that specific time frame, 

22 and then you can compare that. 
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1 So, if we, for instance, come 

2 across a worker who had a very high daily 

3 weighted exposure, but comparing him to the 

4 other workers in that same plant, you know, 

5 his urinalysis is coming up all less than the 

6 MDA or zero or something like that, you know, 

7 maybe you have a problem there.

8 If, on the other hand, you have a 

9 job title that has a very high daily weighted 

10 exposure, so, you'd expect him to have an 

11 elevated urinalysis result, and we see that 

12 yes, compared to his other workers, who had 

13 lower daily weighted exposures, and he -- his 

14 urinalysis results are maybe slightly 

15 elevated, compared to his contemporaries, 

16 then, you know, that would say that everything 

17 looks rather kosher.

18 So, those are the three 

19 strategies. Again, you know, the first one 

20 would be comparing urinalysis results to whole 

21 body counting. 

22 The second one would essentially 
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1 be comparing urinalysis results against 

2 themselves, to see if it's actually physically 

3 possible, what we're seeing with the data, to 

4 what we know about human biokentics, and then 

5 the third one would be comparing daily 

6 weighted exposures, which were based on air 

7 sampling, which is completely different from 

8 the urinalysis bioassay, to see if the job 

9 types with the highest potential also had

10 elevated results.

11 So, those are the three 

12 strategies, in a nutshell.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I comment?

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think each one 

16 of them has a lot of impending doom. The last 

17 one, I think the DWE stuff is -- if it really 

18 reflected thorium work, you got gross uranium 

19 alpha -- I mean, not gross alpha. You got 

20 uranium -- 

21 DR. MAURO: Uranium is messing you 

22 up.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, you're not 

2 going to have any correlation, I don't think.

3 The first one, bioassay in vivo --

4 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Go ahead.

6 DR. MAURO: Just to -- I just 

7 realized something.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't think it's 

9 -- 

10 DR. MAURO: If you have a grab 

11 sample, and you get your dpm per cubic meter -

12 - 

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

14 DR. MAURO: Right?

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Which is gross 

16 alpha.

17 DR. MAURO: Which is gross alpha in 

18 the air, and you get a DWE out of that -- 

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

20 DR. MAURO: And then you would take 

21 a urine sample, which is expressed in terms of 

22 -- 
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Uranium.

2 DR. MAURO: Well, no, if it is your 

3 -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's not gross 

5 alpha, now.

6 DR. MAURO: Yes, if it's -- all 

7 right, if it's milligrams per liter of uranium 

8 -- 

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

10 DR. MAURO: You've got a problem. 

11 If it's the -- 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: But that's what it 

13 is.

14 DR. MAURO: Okay, if that's what 

15 you're working with, if you don't have counts 

16 per minute, it's alpha counts -- 

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

18 DR. MAURO: You've got a problem.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: But if you had 

20 alpha, I agree.

21 DR. MAURO: Yes, you can't compare 

22 apples with oranges.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: But it's gross 

2 uranium.

3 DR. MAURO: Yes.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think it's all 

5 gross uranium.

6 DR. MAURO: You have to be very 

7 careful with that issue.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

9 DR. MAURO: I agree with you.

10 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

11 You have to worry about any other work, other 

12 than uranium, going on in an particular 

13 facility - 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, and the 

15 other ones, the other ones, I mean, the -- out

16 of all of them, I think A has the best 

17 potential. But B, looking at the urinalysis 

18 trend --

19 DR. MAURO: Yes.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: I can tell you, we 

21 did -- I did one case, over the course of a 

22 year at Mound, and we -- 
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1 DR. MAURO: And didn't find any.

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: Had as many people 

3 as we do at this table, debating -- 

4 DR. MAURO: What does it mean?

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Whether this lady 

6 falsified, and intentionally contaminated her 

7 own samples, and we never came to a 

8 conclusion, you know, and this is with Ken 

9 Skrable and Tom LaBone, et cetera.

10 DR. MAURO: Yes, and that's the 

11 group that you'll find -- 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: And it was all 

13 uranium data, and we never came -- you know, 

14 so, I'm concerned that we're going to really 

15 get an answer out of that.

16 The A, I guess, has the best 

17 potential, if you looked at body count versus 

18 in vivo, you might see some sort of trend, 

19 then you can't look at the -- you'd have to 

20 look at cases where they had high urinalysis 

21 results, I think, to -- 

22 MR. STIVER: And the problem with 
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1 Fernald being that data is only available from 

2 1968 on.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

4 MR. STIVER: So, we're pressing 

5 that whole -- 

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

7 DR. MAURO: I could tell you, when 

8 we went through this exercise, at the Nevada 

9 Test Site, it was a frustrating experience --

10 we spent considerable amount of time. 

11 It was a relatively large effort, 

12 and in the end, we really could not say we 

13 have anything definitive to say. It's going 

14 to be inconclusive. I suspect that will --

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Might not even 

16 know, yes.

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, we did C18 MEMBER GRIFFON: Kind of what the -

19 - 

20 DR. MAURO: And we can't say --

21 we're inconclusive, and it's very frustrating, 

22 for everyone, when you go through a process 
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1 like that, especially if it takes quite a bit 

2 of time, and walk away inconclusive.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

4 MS. BALDRIDGE: In regard to the in 

5 vivo, the petition document states that from 

6 1970 on, they were in-house and there was no 

7 data verification, that was done.

8 So, whatever they sent, was sent, 

9 and there was nothing in place, to verify that 

10 the process was being done correctly, and that 

11 -- there is a GA, Government Accountability, 

12 Accounting Office document that states their 

13 questioning.

14 You know, their process is error 

15 in data reporting to DOE and to employees, 

16 that's in document 2-37, and as far as the 

17 work records, there are at least two documents 

18 that workers were not working in the -- they 

19 were working in areas different than noted in 

20 the records.

21 Another one states, another 

22 problem, in determining internal exposure is 
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1 the difficulty in obtaining good work records, 

2 which show how long an individual worked at a 

3 various job. Records tell us, plant 

4 assignment and classification, but not the 

5 specific job operation performed.

6 So, you can't compare one worker 

7 with another, just based on their job 

8 classification, because there is nothing in 

9 place to verify that -- where anybody was.

10 DR. MAURO: Well, what -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: If I could respond?

12 DR. MAURO: Sure.

13 MR. ROLFES: To tell you how we 

14 complete dose reconstructions, I can 

15 understand, you know, they're trying to come 

16 up with a regulatory compliance dose estimate 

17 for an individual that worked at a specific 

18 location.

19 What they would try to do, in the 

20 more recent time periods, they take that urine 

21 sample and look at the types of uranium he was 

22 exposed to, what the solubility, based upon 
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1 the processes that were ongoing, in that 

2 particular plant that he worked in. They'd 

3 take a look at that information, to make a 

4 judgment as to the type of uranium that he was 

5 exposed to, and then also, consider what was 

6 going on in the plant, et cetera, and they'd 

7 likely come up with a best estimate of his 

8 internal dose from that uranium exposure, you 

9 know, that probably occurred within the past 

10 week or two weeks.

11 When we have urinalysis data at 

12 NIOSH, when we complete a dose reconstruction, 

13 we would assume a chronic exposure for the 

14 entire monitoring period, and the actual 

15 urinalysis data that is provided to us, you 

16 can actually make a good guess of the 

17 solubility of the materials to which the 

18 individual was exposed, based upon the changes 

19 in the excretion rate.

20 And we also assume the most 

21 claimant-favorable solubility class, based on 

22 the type of cancer that the individual has, 
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1 and we assume that the individual was 

2 chronically inhaling uranium, because that 

3 typically gives the highest internal dose.

4 So, we generally don't do 

5 regulatory compliance dose estimates. We're 

6 doing more claimant-favorable dose estimates, 

7 that assume an employee was chronically 

8 exposed, in the manner that gives the highest 

9 internal dose.

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, my knowledge 

11 of that is based on the assignment of dose, 

12 based on the best estimate and the assignment 

13 determined by OTIB's, that totally missed 

14 exposures because of the very reason they did 

15 not identify the work location.

16 So, the exposure, in my father's 

17 case, to the uranium hexafluoride, which 

18 caused the kidney damage was only -- could 

19 only have been incurred in the pilot plant, 

20 because that's the one that was open and 

21 operating when he was hired, but yet, his dose 

22 reconstruction was based on his assignment 
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1 that was made, that he would be assigned to 

2 Plant 6, which didn't open until a year or 

3 year and a half later.

4 So, that whole part of dose was 

5 missed, was not assigned, it wasn't a very 

6 effective process, to assign that way. Maybe 

7 my father is the only case. Maybe he's not. 

8 We don't know. 

9 But you can't make assumptions 

10 that the data and the assignments are where 

11 they really were, and you don't know the 

12 exposure dose, if you don't know the exposure 

13 dose.

14 MR. ROLFES: The exposure -- we do 

15 know the exposure, because the urinalysis tell 

16 us that, and we make claimant-favorable 

17 judgments to assign the highest individual 

18 dose, from the bioassay data that we have, 

19 based upon current ICRP models.

20 Essentially, if -- you know, 

21 urinalysis -- to determine uranium in urine, 

22 it's, you know, very similar to any other type 
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1 of laboratory test that you might receive 

2 currently from your medical doctors.

3 If you have, you know, a 

4 cholesterol test, it is the exact same -- you 

5 know, if you have a high cholesterol result, 

6 you have a high cholesterol result. If you 

7 have a high blood test for high level of high 

8 density cholesterol, then that could -- and 

9 for a low density cholesterol test, that could 

10 indicate a problem with your low density 

11 cholesterol levels, in your body.

12 Same with uranium, if you're 

13 excreting a lot of uranium, you could have a 

14 lot of uranium in your body. 

15 So, what we do is, we look at that 

16 excretion pattern to estimate historic 

17 exposures, that would have occurred. 

18 Basically, what we'll do, we'll 

19 look at the first day of monitoring of the 

20 first day of employment for an individual, 

21 say, they started in 1952 and had urine 

22 samples, you know, for their entire employment 
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1 period, up until 1980, we'll take a look at 

2 any uranium exposures that could have 

3 occurred, beginning in 1952 through 1980, 

4 using that urinalysis data, specific to 

5 uranium reconstruction -- internal dose 

6 reconstruction.

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: Another thing I has 

8 asked, probably two years ago, by now, or 

9 longer, was, did NIOSH bother to compare the 

10 documents to the actual doses that were 

11 recorded, for the high MAC levels at certain 

12 locations, at certain times?

13 Now, if those urinalysis didn't 

14 reflect the known exposures, based on the 

15 historical documents from Fernald, that would 

16 have shown whether there was any suspicious or 

17 anything out of line, because there should 

18 have been a direct comparison, and that was 

19 never done.

20 MR. ROLFES: This was something 

21 that SC&A just discussed in their report, and 

22 we all just said that it would likely come up 
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1 in inclusive.

2 It would take a lot of work and a 

3 lot of effort, but like we wouldn't tell you, 

4 one way or the other, whether the data are 

5 valid or are not valid.

6 DR. MAURO: If you were to go out 

7 and take -- have a whole bunch of air samples, 

8 high MACs, say, really up there, and you know 

9 people worked in there, in a building, for 

10 extended periods of time, you're absolutely 

11 right, you would expect to see fairly high 

12 levels of uranium in that person's urine, and 

13 the point that Bob -- 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Assuming no 

15 protection.

16 DR. MAURO: Assuming no protection, 

17 assuming the -- 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: And that's the -- 

19 DR. MAURO: You know what it is -- 

20 MS. BALDRIDGE: That's the 

21 assumption that you make.

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, here is the 
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1 frustration. You walk away from such an 

2 analysis, let's say, you say, "Well, you know, 

3 it's the same as," -- we're looking for a 

4 smoking gun.

5 We're saying, "Oh my goodness, we 

6 looked at 100 cases of workers, we knew -- we 

7 know they all worked in this area, with very 

8 high dust loadings of uranium," and every 

9 single one of them came back less than the 

10 total limits of detection, and we know they 

11 weren't wearing respiratory protection, 

12 smoking gun.

13 All of the sudden, your concern 

14 regarding falsification of records, at least 

15 the alarms go off. 

16 This is the kind of thing, by the 

17 way, we try to do at the Nevada Test Site. We 

18 went through this exercise, by the way, and it 

19 took -- going into that -- into the hard copy 

20 records and extracting that information, 

21 mining it out and processing the data, we went 

22 through that process and in the end, we could 
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1 not make a statement that we found anything 

2 like that.

3 We found things that were -- that 

4 make you say, you know, "I wonder why this was 

5 like that," but nothing that would be -- you 

6 know, it's almost like you really have to see 

7 the smoking gun, and it's going to -- now, 

8 that -- you may turn out, but your point is 

9 well taken.

10 If you did that, if we -- if that 

11 was done, and your saw -- and you sampled -- I 

12 picked 100 people that we knew were in the 

13 high area, and they -- and without respiratory 

14 protection, and you're not seeing any uranium 

15 in their urine, I've got to -- I'll be the 

16 first to say, what the heck is going on? So, 

17 yes, your point is well taken.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Do you have 

19 anymore that you'd like to speak on? We've 

20 gone basically, in two little places there. 

21 We've got OTIB-78, coworker models. We've 

22 discussed part of that. The HIS-20 
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1 validation, we've gone onto this.

2 Mark, where are we at on the 

3 construction worker? I know that we don't 

4 have a paper on that, but I guess, I'm 

5 wondering where we're at on that paper?

6 MR. ROLFES: That was what I had 

7 referred to, that would be complete in 

8 roughly, a month or two.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

10 MR. ROLFES: Assuming we -- well, I 

11 don't -- right now, we're undergoing some, you 

12 know, difficulties with funding and things. 

13 So, as soon as things get cleared up, I'll 

14 certainly, we'll give you an update as to how 

15 soon we might be able to complete something. 

16 So, I'll have to get back to you 

17 on that.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, well, this 

19 brings us into the recycled uranium.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, can we just 

21 summarize those first two, because we did the 

22 two items and I think -- I'm not sure -- not 
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1 withstanding the opening comments, I'm not 

2 sure if there's any clear actions. I want to 

3 be -- 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We have.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Clear, what's 

6 going to happen. Like, the coworker uranium 

7 model is -- I mean, SC&A says they're okay 

8 with that. The construction worker, coworker 

9 model is a separate issue.

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, at least we 

12 want to hear -- we want to see follow up on 

13 the construction worker model.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: And that's a clear 

16 action. The second item, there is two 

17 separate V&V issues, and one is the 

18 falsification issue -- 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: And the other is 

21 validating the HIS-20. 

22 I'd like to hear a little more 
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1 from Mark, on the -- and it might be just 

2 because this was stretched over time here, 

3 but the HIS-20, I'm trying to remember what 

4 was reported on your findings.

5 I know you said a lot of them 

6 were, these kind of social security entry 

7 errors, et cetera.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: But can you 

10 refresh my memory on where we stand -- what 

11 you concluded and if that's -- I do remember, 

12 like John, that it seemed like the -- you were 

13 planning on, you know, X amount to demonstrate 

14 that and then stopped it short.

15 So, I'm not sure, when you say 

16 your analysis was complete, I'm not sure if 

17 we're all in agreement on that. I'd just like 

18 to hear sort of a summary of that.

19 MR. ROLFES: Sure, I actually --

20 since I had said that, we had basically gone 

21 to a reduced sampling plan, after we found no 

22 errors of significance in our comparison of 
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1 the hard copy data to the electronic HIS-20 

2 records.

3 We ended up copying the sampling -

4 - or doing the -- we eliminated the reduced 

5 sampling plan and did the full sampling, and I 

6 didn't think that we had completed it, but 

7 according to what Gene Potter has just 

8 informed me, I believe he's on the line at the 

9 moment, he did inform me that he eliminated 

10 the reduced sampling of the HIS-20 hard 

11 records to the electronic records.

12 Gene, are you able to hear me on 

13 the line?

14 MR. POTTER: Yes, Gene Potter is 

15 on.

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay, could you give a 

17 brief update on what was done and how we 

18 eliminated the reduced sampling of the hard 

19 copy records, in comparison to the electronic 

20 records?

21 MR. POTTER: Yes, just briefly, at 

22 SC&A's suggestion, we did go back and do the 
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1 full sampling, instead of the reduced 

2 sampling, which we had thought was justified, 

3 based on the experience of what we were 

4 seeing, and it turns out that in retrospect, 

5 we were correct.

6 When we went to normal sampling 

7 from the reduced sampling, it did not change 

8 any of our conclusions.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, what are your 

10 conclusions?

11 MR. POTTER: Okay, I'm sorry you 

12 don't have this report, apparently, but --

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Not in front of 

14 me. I probably -- you know.

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I just -- I can 

16 go -- 

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't think we 

18 have it.

19 MR. ROLFES: I think we did keep 

20 it, a while back, over the summer, and may 

21 have not sent it out.

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: My understanding 
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1 was, it was -- it has just cut it short, and 

2 that's where it ended.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, well, maybe 

4 you can summarize, and then we'll get the 

5 report, and then we can discuss it more in 

6 depth next time. But go ahead, Gene, I'm 

7 sorry.

8 MR. POTTER: Okay, there were 

9 basically -- we went at -- well, other people 

10 went out, other team members went out and 

11 gathered the hard copy bioassay results, what 

12 we were looking for, to get some examples of 

13 each decade, that we then could compare to 

14 HIS-20. I think you've all -- 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

16 MR. POTTER: Are probably pretty 

17 familiar with this. We had -- ended up with 

18 33 different electronic files, and there were 

19 different sorts of things, from urine cards to 

20 annual summaries, and so forth. Preposition

21 Then there were eight files that 

22 were primarily subcontractor or gross alpha 
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1 beta results, and so, we did not -- it became 

2 obvious that there were -- subcontractors were 

3 not going to be found. So, we eliminated 

4 those files.

5 And so, we ended up with 25 files, 

6 and 20 of the 25 files met the criteria that 

7 we had selected. 

8 SC&A also criticizes us for being 

9 possibly too conservative in the criteria 

10 which we selected up front, and that's another 

11 issue. 

12 The five files that did not meet 

13 the criteria, were not likely to result in any 

14 significant changes to the coworker study, and 

15 I think we've -- SC&A has agreed with that 

16 finding.

17 And so, if we would have included 

18 the missing results that we found in hard 

19 copy, it would not have made any difference to 

20 our coworker study, and overall, approximately 

21 97 percent of the data that was found in HIS22 20, and as I said, this is the same basic 
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1 conclusion we came up with, before we 

2 eliminated the reduced sampling.

3 So, basically, it's the same thing 

4 we had before. We just eliminated the reduced 

5 sampling and finalized the report, which SC&A 

6 wanted.

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: When you said 

8 overall, not -- I'm sorry, 97 percent were 

9 found -- was the -- that's the overall cut. 

10 Was there anything -- did you try to parse it 

11 out by decade? Was there any difference over 

12 different decades, or anything like that?

13 MR. POTTER: I have the -- 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Or did you not 

15 have enough data to look at that? I don't 

16 know.

17 MR. POTTER: Yes, only a few --

18 well, only a few files -- yes, we did do the 

19 decade thing, and only a few of those files 

20 accounted for the vast majority of the missing 

21 results.

22 So, for the 1950s, the number of 
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1 files we evaluated were 14. The number that 

2 met the AQL of one percent, in other words, it 

3 was likely that 99 percent of the data was 

4 there, was 10 of 14, 1960s, five of six, 

5 1970s, two of two, 1980s, three of three.

6 So, basically, the 1950s were the 

7 primary issue.

8 DR. CHMELYNSKI: Excuse me, this is 

9 Harry Chmelynski. For the 1950s, you said it 

10 was 10 out of 14?

11 MR. POTTER: Yes, 10 files met the 

12 AQL of one percent, out of 14 evaluated, and 

13 that was after eliminating subcontractors and 

14 just alpha beta results.

15 DR. CHMELYNSKI: And the four that 

16 did not, they included these three files with 

17 a lot of missing records?

18 MR. POTTER: Yes, that would be an 

19 indication that less than -- based on the 

20 statistical tests we used, less than 99 

21 percent were likely to be in those files.

22 DR. CHMELYNSKI: Okay.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, how does the -

2 - I'm trying to compare that number, the 99 

3 percent overall comparison versus these 10 out 

4 of 14 files -- Paul, you sound horrible, if 

5 it's Paul.

6 How does that -- okay.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's not me. 

8 MR. KATZ: Someone is coughing, you 

9 might want to mute your phone.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, mute your 

11 phone.

12 MR. KATZ: It's the *6 to mute your 

13 phone, if you don't have a mute button.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's right, Paul 

15 would definitely be muting his phone.

16 MR. KATZ: Yes.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, how does the 

18 overall 97 percent compare to the -- when you 

19 say 10 out of 14 files, the four files must 

20 have had greater than one percent errors, 

21 right? 

22 So, what would -- I guess, I'm 
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1 trying to figure out, what contributed -- you 

2 know, in the 1950s, was it like a 90 percent 

3 agreement or overall, that drove the average 

4 down to 97 percent? You know -- 

5 MR. POTTER: Yes, I don't have that 

6 analysis in front of me, but obviously, it 

7 could be readily done.

8 MR. ROLFES: Gene, I was going to 

9 call your attention to page six of 15 on the 

10 report here that you sent to me, and it 

11 mentions reference ID 3169.

12 It says, "This file consisted of 

13 1950 to 1953 fluorometric analysis for 

14 uranium," done by the New York Operations 

15 Office, Health and Safety Division.

16 "After failing to meet the 

17 acceptable quality level, the file was given 

18 100 percent inspection. Results showed 84.2 

19 percent of the results in the file were in 

HIS-20. The 50th and 95th 20 percentile results 

21 for this data were identical with and without 

22 the missing data."
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1 Therefore, the coworker study 

2 would not be affected by the missing results.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's repeating 

4 conclusions. Yes, that's repeating, okay. 

5 All right, we still need to look at this 

6 report, but thanks for the summary.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: One thing that 

8 keyed on me was the subcontractor, he says 

9 that that was cut out of that. 

10 So, have we done any look at this 

11 data, of the subcontractors?

12 MR. ROLFES: That is what we're 

13 looking at separately now, as a result of our 

14 last Working Group meeting.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: The subcontractors 

16 would include a lot of the construction 

17 workers, is that -- 

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that's the -- 

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Is that a factor?

20 MR. ROLFES: You know C21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

22 MR. ROLFES: Individuals that 
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1 typically came on the site, for a week or two 

2 at a time -- 

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay.

4 MR. ROLFES: To do a small scope 

5 job or, you know, even possibly, over longer 

6 periods of time, as well. That's something 

7 that we're looking into, as well.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, that's an 

9 action to keep track of, that -- 

10 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Subcontractor 

12 validation of HIS-20 is also an action, 

13 including the -- the coworker model, but also 

14 the validation of data, right?

15 MR. ROLFES: Essentially, what 

16 we're doing right now is, looking at the 

17 construction worker intakes versus the intakes 

18 in OTIB-78, which were developed on -- upon 

19 HIS-20.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

21 MR. ROLFES: So, making sure that 

22 the distributions are, you know, the same or, 
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1 you know, if they're not the same, coming up 

2 with the correction factor, to make sure that 

3 we're accounting for their internal doses 

4 appropriately.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I guess, just 

6 to be clear, you're also looking at the 

7 records of the subcontractors to -- the 

8 validation piece, to make sure that there is a 

9 high percentage of those, like your 97 percent 

10 conclusion for the contractor workers?

11 MR. ROLFES: I think we said that 

12 we had eliminated the construction workers 

13 from the HIS-20 comparison because some of 

14 their data didn't make it into HIS-20.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, so, you've 

16 already decided that you're pretty sure that 

17 it's not going to be -- 

18 MR. ROLFES: I believe that's 

19 correct, I believe -- Gene, could you verify 

20 whether that is correct? 

21 Did we eliminate the subcontractor 

22 data from the analysis that we've completed, 
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1 because it didn't go into HIS-20?

2 MR. POTTER: Right, yes, it became 

3 obvious, very quickly -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

5 MR. POTTER: I might just mention 

6 that this -- we went out and -- or other 

7 people went out and captured examples of 

8 bioassay data for this comparison, you know, 

9 there was no thought to capturing 

10 subcontractors versus regular employees.

11 So, we got -- we just got examples 

12 of the -- of subcontractor bioassay results, 

13 mixed in with everything else, and one thing 

14 that we found, for instance, that we have more 

15 pre-job samples than post-job samples, because 

16 there was no attempt to specifically capture 

17 subcontractor results, and so -- and we don't 

18 have very many subcontractor results.

19 So, that's why we're re-looking at 

20 how we should proceed on this.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: But it seems like 

22 it will be a surrogate approach, right? 
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1 You'll use the -- the worker/coworker model, 

2 to bound the construction worker model --

3 internal doses, right?

4 You don't have -- you're not going 

5 to build a model out of that raw data. You're 

6 going to rely -- you're going to try to 

7 demonstrate that the one -- the one model 

8 bounds the construction worker hard copy data 

9 that you have, is that correct?

10 MR. ROLFES: I guess, it ultimately 

11 depends upon, you know, how much data we 

12 retrieve and what the results of the analysis 

13 are.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, all right, 

15 but that's what you're looking at? That's 

16 what --

17 MR. ROLFES: Correct, that's 

18 correct.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, all right.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, on issue 

21 two, basically, we've got construction 

22 workers, validation of the HIS-20 data, 
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1 correct? Is that it -- that was one part of 

2 it.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and they're 

4 going to provide us with this report, that 

5 they -- 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Construction 

7 worker intake model -- 

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just described for 

9 us.

10 MR. KATZ: But it's not validation 

11 of HIS-20, is what we just said, right? It's 

12 not the validation of HIS-20, for construction 

13 workers, because that -- 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Oh, not the 

15 construction workers, no. I thought you were 

16 talking about the first part of what we were 

17 discussing. No.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But it's 

19 construction worker validation of C20 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, it's the 

21 coworker model for the construction workers, 

22 or the approach, to reconstructing doses for 
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1 coworker -- for construction workers.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I would have 

3 -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, I guess, you 

5 have -- you know, you have the first issue was 

6 the coworker model, overall. 

7 I think SC&A is indicating they're 

8 fairly happy with the uranium model for the 

9 regular workers, not withstanding the question 

10 of the data that went into it. 

11 But the approach, if the data is 

12 good, it seems to be okay with SC&A.

13 The second issue would be the 

14 construction worker model, which Mark says is 

15 pending. They're going to get -- they are 

16 working on that.

17 The third item is the validation 

18 of HIS-20, which only includes the non19 construction workers, and they -- their 

20 presentation on the phone sounds reasonable. 

21 We want to see the report, though.

22 So, we have to see this updated 
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1 report. So, that's an action for NIOSH, to 

2 get the updated report. And then the last part 

3 is the falsification question, and that's the 

4 last thing I want to know, if we have an 

5 action or a path forward on that.

6 I know that -- you know, I don't -

7 - I didn't mean to be so flippant about your 

8 request, but I think they do lead us down a 

9 scary path.

10 You know, I don't think we're

11 going to get there with those. I'm actually 

12 intrigued more by the -- Sandra was sort of 

13 outlining the idea of looking -- and I don't 

14 know if you have the data, but I know that at 

15 some work I've done, where we've looked at 

16 sort of departments. You can -- you know, 

17 from interviews, from your knowledge of the 

18 site, you know certain departments that were 

19 involved in the highest, nastiest operations. 

20 You can pull department data by decade and 

21 see -- and look at bioassays, of those 

22 workers.
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1 DR. MAURO: Yes, I like that.

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know that that 

3 was very revealing at Paducah.

4 DR. MAURO: And if any place, it 

5 would be falsified for self-serving purposes, 

6 it will be these people that were in these 

7 areas.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

9 DR. MAURO: And so, if you're going 

10 to find the smoking gun, that's where you'll 

11 find it.

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right, so, 

13 that might be one -- I'm not saying it's going 

14 to be a perfect system. I'm not -- I agree 

15 with Bob Barton, that it's going to be hard 

16 to, you know, sort of prove the -- find the 

17 smoking gun. 

18 But that might be one way of 

19 saying, you know, where -- yes, I would see if 

20 there's issues of falsification, you would 

21 think it would be around the high values, the 

22 high portable kind of incidents or exposures 
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1 to -- 

2 DR. MAURO: Right.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: And if we could 

4 pick the nastiest operations, departments, 

5 buildings, I'm not sure how to stratify that, 

6 but I think if we did want to go down that 

7 path, that might be an action that would make 

8 sense, and we'd have an end point, and I'm 

9 concerned there is other approaches -- 

10 DR. MAURO: Yes.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's going to be 

12 so open to debate, and interpretation, that 

13 we're not going to get there.

14 DR. MAURO: True, yes.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't know what 

16 other people feel, but -- 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I think that 

18 sounds like a very good approach to really 

19 zero in on those potentially highly exposed 

20 sub-groups and get the -- 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Does anyone know 

22 in HIS-20, if we have that kind of information 
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1 that would allow for that stratification? I'm 

2 not too -- I'm not intimately familiar with 

3 HIS-20, for Fernald.

4 MR. ROLFES: From my recollection, 

5 I don't believe -- I don't believe that that 

6 type of information would be in there. I'm 

7 trying to recall. I can probably pull it up 

8 here, and give you an understanding of what is 

9 in HIS-20.

10 MR. BARTON: Now, just to make a 

11 comment there. This is Bob Barton. 

12 What we should discuss, this was 

13 sort of outlined in the -- our approach, 

14 number three, there, where we would look at 

15 daily weighted exposures by plant.

16 Now, whether there are daily 

17 weighted exposure reports for the really nasty 

18 work situations and years, we didn't 

19 specifically look to see whether those matched 

20 up.

21 But again, it would be looking at 

22 what were the real nasty jobs being done, by 
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1 plant and year, and in HIS-20, there are, I'll 

2 call it limited information, when you look at 

3 bioassay samples, sometimes, they do actually 

4 indicate a plant, where the worker was 

5 working, when the sample was taken.

6 So, there is some limited 

7 correlation that we could look at, and again, 

8 that's discussed under strategy three of the 

9 June 2010 report, that I had outlined earlier.

10 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert Morris. 

11 I would like to point out that the nastiest 

12 jobs reported in the daily weighted exposure 

13 data sets, often times, were specifically 

14 noted to have used respiratory protection, 

15 which is going to confound your issue about 

16 making decision on it. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Good point.

18 MR. STIVER: Yes, another potential 

19 confounding issue might be that a person who 

20 moved from a highly contaminated, dirty job, 

21 to a less dirty job, and you know, this data -

22 - he may still end up with a high urine 
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1 output, years later, if it's insoluble form, 

2 relatively -- to what his job category is at 

3 the time the data went into the database.

4 So, there is going to be -- you 

5 know, depending on whether there is -- 

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, right.

7 MR. STIVER: And particular 

8 categories, or whether they moved around, that 

9 could really be a confounding factor.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I mean, what 

11 we have -- 

12 MR. MORRIS: All good points. 

13 Although, I would like to point out that in 

14 the data -- in a few of the daily weighted 

15 exposure summary reports, they actually 

16 identified a few of the highly exposed 

17 workers, and compared their bioassay results 

18 to the values that might have been -- would 

19 have been identified for them in the daily 

20 weighted exposure reports.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: I believe you have 

22 a section about that in your DWE report, Bob, 
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1 if I recall.

2 MR. MORRIS: Yes, so, that may be 

3 an interesting place to look, since you do 

4 have, in few instances, people identified by 

5 name, in the report, that -- which identified 

6 a nasty exposure, as you described it. So, 

7 the -- 

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: But the -- 

9 MR. MORRIS: That could be 

10 something to look at.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I don't 

12 disagree with that, I just -- again, I thought 

13 that the DWE -- maybe I'm wrong, I thought the 

14 DWE focus was on thorium. You're going to get 

15 gross alpha, I know, right.

16 MR. STIVER: It's kind of a broad 

17 based technique, you can use to analyze any 

18 alpha emitting -- 

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I know, but 

20 where they used it at Fernald -- 

21 MR. STIVER: Well, actually, it 

22 could be -- 
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: They used it at 

2 the -- 

3 MR. STIVER: That was a particular 

4 example, for thorium.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

6 MR. STIVER: But it can't -- that 

7 was a -- we'll get into this a little bit 

8 later, but on our review, we did of a Strom's 

9 paper, it was really intended because we've 

10 seen this issue come up in several different 

11 sites.

12 And so, it's not just related --

13 even though, it got into origins and thorium 

14 at Fernald, it has applications throughout the 

15 whole -- 

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, I understand, 

17 but if you don't have the data for the other -

18 - 

19 MR. STIVER: Well, you often do. 

20 You have DWE data -- 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Oh, I didn't know.

22 MR. STIVER: You can link that to a 
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1 particular campaign or operation, then you can 

2 -- 

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's what I'm 

4 asking, I understand the concept, but if we 

5 don't have the data -- 

6 MR. STIVER: Yes, it's not just 

7 limited to thorium. Actually, that's one of 

8 the problems we had is, the fact -- to 

9 identify the thorium and tease that out from, 

10 you know, the broader issue, which was 

11 uranium.

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, okay.

13 MR. STIVER: But anyway, that's a 

14 digression.

15 MR. KATZ: I would just suggest, I 

16 mean, unless you have very persuasive evidence 

17 of systematic falsification, at the end of the 

18 day, I'm not sure what you're going to do with 

19 sort of the ambiguous results that you seem to 

20 be indicating, are likely to be, and if it's 

21 resource intensive on top of that, that means 

22 it's time intensive, too.
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1 And if you're, on the one hand, 

2 concerned about moving this along in a timely 

3 fashion, then the -- and on the other, you're 

4 going to engage in a costly and ultimately, 

5 probably ambiguous analysis, I'm not sure 

6 where there is to go with that. 

7 But that's my -- I appreciate the 

8 concern. We've heard this at other sites, 

9 too, this kind of concern, and as they've 

10 explained, we dogged that in a number of 

11 sites, expended great resources, and gotten 

12 nowhere.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, all right. 

14 Well, I'm not sure we -- 

15 MR. BEATTY: Yes, I just want to 

16 make a comment on something here.

17 I was going to hold my comments 

18 and my thoughts until possibly, the end of the 

19 day, but I think now, might be a good time to 

20 interject.

21 There was a federal lawsuit filed 

22 at the Fernald site, known as Day vs. NLO.
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1 So, a lot of the things that are 

2 smoking gun, so to speak, you're looking for, 

3 were discovered in that lawsuit, that 

4 settlement.

5 Even in the petition, some of the 

6 actual exhibits from the trial are included as 

7 exhibits -- or as part of the petition. 

8 It named some of those very things 

9 of discrepancies in the record keeping, shoddy 

10 record keeping, numbers being altered or 

11 missing, zeros in the place of, like stack 

12 emissions and various things, the TLD readings 

13 or breath samples and various things being 

14 modified.

15 And in another Work Group meeting, 

16 there was a mention of a certain document and 

17 it was -- it was finally decided, by different 

18 ones at the table, that this person, or this 

19 document, had an axe to grid or was sour 

20 grapes, and this person is no longer with us, 

21 to rebuttal that decision, or those comments 

22 that was made about that document.
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1 So, what I'm seeing is a -- you 

2 know, a back and forth thing here, that's 

3 absolutely getting nowhere, and that lawsuit 

4 should speak for itself, because out of that, 

5 was born a lifetime medical monitoring 

6 program, for the workers from 1951 through 

7 1985. That ought to stand for something 

8 itself.

9 There is a lot of things that were 

10 discovered and discrepancies that were 

11 revealed, and that's how that thing was 

12 settled and was won.

13 Then along in the 2001 time frame, 

14 NIOSH themselves did an investigative sort of 

15 report, or study, on the occupational 

16 exposures for remediation workers.

17 Now, we're talking -- I heard the 

18 date of 1968 mentioned a while ago, about a 

19 database that was more supportive or whatever. 

20 That should hold some weight, as well, and 

21 be, you know, taken into account.

22 However, this study, by NIOSH 
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1 themselves, revealed, even at -- even in the 

2 2000-2001 time frame, the record keeping --

3 there was like four questions, basically, 

4 asked in this report, and the short answer to 

5 all four questions was, "No, they cannot do 

6 what they say they can do with the medical 

7 records, training," -- you know, I hear HIS8 20 mentioned a lot.

9 I wish I was privileged to look at 

10 the HIS-20 database, because I, as a former 

11 worker, would badge into buildings, and that 

12 was how they monitored whether or not I was 

13 certified or qualified, trained to go into 

14 that building, and I had to be aware of the 

15 PPE requirements, based on the system. That 

16 system was down more than it was up. 

17 So, if the HIS-20 is looking at 

18 exposure times and like, try to associate our 

19 time in the building with that process, it's 

20 not real, real accurate information, because 

21 we had to do a manual sign-in process, when 

22 the scanner would be down. Our training 
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1 records was incorporated into the magnetic 

2 strip on our badges.

3 So, there is a -- and that's 

4 mentioned in this report, as well, by NIOSH, 

5 about the lack of -- or I'll call it the 

6 reliability of the data, the -- I've said this 

7 before, I'll say it again.

8 You know, I'm -- I can't challenge 

9 the methodology and the science of dose 

10 reconstruction, but I can sure as heck, you 

11 know, say how I feel about the reliability of 

12 the data that's being used, and the lawsuit 

13 and this study, should, you know, leave some -

14 - I don't know, have some weight towards that. 

15 Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Ray, I just 

17 wanted to clarify something. When you were 

18 talking about the individual that they were 

19 talking about, the axe to grid, you were 

20 talking about the air sample?

21 MR. BEATTY: Yes.

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, I just 
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1 wanted to make that clear.

2 MR. BEATTY: Yes, sir.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I had missed 

4 that.

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: Can I also add, 

6 along with that? The federal judge found it 

7 acceptable, and it did have a weight in his 

8 ruling. 

9 So, whether people debate his 

10 credibility, or whether he had an axe to grid 

11 now, is kind of after-the-fact, when federal 

12 court accepted the testimony.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I appreciate 

14 that. One other thing I'd like to point out.

15 You know, I'm not the swiftest 

16 person here, and I'm just trying to stay on 

17 track.

18 Well, that, John, if you'll help 

19 me keep track of these action items, no matter 

20 what the outcome at the end of the day, that 

21 would be -- just so we can go through that at 

22 the end of the day, and kind of, where we're 
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1 at. 

2 So, if that's all right, I just 

3 want to make sure -- to tell you the truth, 

4 I'm having a hard time following where we're 

5 at, and at this time, I was wondering if we 

6 could take a 10 minute break, and -- 

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, why don't we 

8 come back and recap the actions of the first 

9 two items?

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right.

11 MR. KATZ: So, about 20 of, we'll 

12 reconvene, for folks on the phone. I'm just 

13 putting the phone on mute, so you don't have 

14 to listen to the chatter in the room.

15 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

16 matter went off the record at 10:25 a.m. and 

17 resumed at 10:43 a.m.)

18 MR. KATZ: If you could mute your 

19 phone, because we keep hearing back chatter 

20 and it's probably more disturbing to other 

21 people on the phone, trying to listen, than it 

22 is to us in the room.
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1 But for everyone's sake, if you'd 

2 please mute your phone. If you don't have a 

3 mute button, press *6. The star button on 

4 your phone, and then six, that will mute your 

5 phone, and then folks won't have to listen to 

6 your coughing and your conversations and so 

7 on. Thank you.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, we're 

9 going to review kind of the action items that 

10 we had in the very beginning, but also, to --

11 since this morning meeting, we have had 

12 somebody walk into the room that never was put 

13 on, and I'd just like to have him introduce 

14 himself, and go onto the record that he was 

15 here.

16 MR. DOLL: I'm Lou Doll. I worked 

17 construction at the plant from 1983 through 

18 2004, originally for Rust Engineering, in 1983 

19 until Fluor came in, in 1993, and worked in 

20 construction in most areas -- well, every area 

21 of the plant. I'm not sure there's any areas 

22 down there, that we didn't work in.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you for 

2 coming, and John, if I could kind of have you 

3 go over the first two items that we've 

4 covered, issues one and two, what was brought 

5 for action items, so that we can make sure 

6 we're on board with that.

7 MR. STIVER: Okay, for the first 

8 issue, the OTIB-78, I think for -- NIOSH has 

9 gone ahead and allowed for other fractions of 

the distribution, other than the 50th 10 

11 percentile, to account for higher exposed 

12 individuals. We're okay with that.

13 So, that, I believe, has been 

14 resolved.

15 In regards to the construction 

16 workers, there is still a review of the 

17 database and sorting that all out, to how it 

18 applies to these construction workers. 

19 That's still an ongoing effort, 

20 evidently, Mark. That's in the process. Any 

21 idea on when that might be finished up?

22 MR. ROLFES: I'm going to have to 
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1 get back to you.

2 MR. STIVER: Okay.

3 MR. ROLFES: After this meeting.

4 MR. STIVER: Okay, so, that's in 

5 process on that particular aspect of it.

6 I believe we're satisfied with the 

7 explanation that Gene Potter provided on the 

8 validation, using the mil spec versus that one 

9 percent standard versus -- 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No, we -- our 

11 last understanding was, they had not finished 

12 it. Now, we come to find out that they have 

13 finished the -- 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: And we want to see 

15 the finished -- 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And we need to 

17 see the finished -- 

18 MR. STIVER: Okay, we still need to 

19 see that, okay. 

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: The explanation 

21 sounds reasonable, but -- 

22 MR. STIVER: Yes, it sounds 
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1 reasonable. We need to see the report, and -- 

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: And the action is, 

3 NIOSH is going to distribute the report.

4 MR. STIVER: And send the report 

5 out.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. STIVER: Okay, so, the -- 

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think that was 

9 it, for action items.

10 MR. STIVER: I think that was it, 

11 yes.

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Now, I just want 

14 to -- I went back and forth a couple of times 

15 on that, and I apologize, I'm having a hard 

16 time keeping up with it.

17 But I just wanted to make sure we 

18 were right on those action items, there. 

19 The next item that we're going to 

20 come up to is the recycled uranium review. 

21 DR. MAURO: The Fernald approach, 

22 to dealing with reconstructing workers doses, 
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1 associated with the uranium that contains 

2 plutonium, neptunium, technetium, because it's 

3 recycled uranium, they've laid out their 

4 protocol, and embedded in that protocol is, 

5 okay, if a person were to inhale some uranium, 

6 and we look at the bioassay, and we see his 

7 urine, and from that, we could figure out how 

8 much uranium the person inhaled, but you 

9 really don't know how much plutonium there 

10 might have been in there, because they don't 

11 measure the plutonium in urine. They don't 

12 measure the neptunium.

13 So, what NIOSH did is, they went 

14 into some records and some history and said, 

15 "Okay, well, we could assume and place an 

16 upper bound, or at least a plausible, high end 

17 position," to try to capture the position, 

18 certainly, that by -- and said, okay, for 

19 every, you know, gram of uranium or unit of 

20 activity of uranium inhaled, along with that, 

21 would come a certain amount of plutonium, 

22 neptunium, and a number of other 
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1 radionuclides.

2 Now, and it's like a default. 

3 They would automatically assume that, because 

4 everyone gets that. 

5 We were asked to look into that 

6 default mix, that is, is this appropriate, and 

7 that's bounded, it is possible, there might 

8 have been some workers or some sub-group of 

9 workers or at some period of time, where that 

10 particular assumed mix under-estimates or 

11 results in an under-estimate?

12 So, that was the concern. There 

13 was an exchange of White Papers, where -- so, 

14 this subject has been going on for some time 

15 now, where NIOSH, and in fact, most recently, 

16 NIOSH delivered to us, on Thursday, basically, 

17 what I would consider to be a reiteration of 

18 their original position, perhaps, a little bit 

19 more material, to develop the story a little 

20 richer, a little more deeply, and of course, 

21 we really didn't have too much time to look at 

22 this latest version.
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1 But John Stiver, sitting to my 

2 left, has spent some time, since Thursday, 

3 going over it and doing some calculations and 

4 going into the records, to try to see if, in 

5 fact, the mix that was selected as being the 

6 default is, in fact, appropriately 

7 conservative and applicable to the vast 

8 majority or workers that might have worked at 

9 Fernald.

10 And with that, I'd like to turn it 

11 over to John, and just let him know that 

12 though we have only had a few days, we did 

13 what we can, to give some insight into what we 

14 found out, regarding NIOSH's position.

15 MR. STIVER: Okay, thank you, John. 

16 I'd also like to, at this point, is -- do we 

17 have Bob Alvarez and Jim Warner on the line?

18 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes.

19 MR. WERNER: Yes, this is Jim.

20 MR. STIVER: These are two of our 

21 new Fernald team members, that bring a new 

22 perspective to this issue, I believe, and Jim, 
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1 could you just give the Members here, kind of 

2 a brief overview of your expertise in this 

3 area of recycled uranium?

4 MR. WERNER: Well, I hope I'm able 

5 to contribute, based on my involvement, while 

6 working, both as a contractor for DOE, during 

7 the 80s, and later as a DOE official, during 

8 the 90s, where I was involving in putting 

9 together the -- what we now know as DOE10 2000/DOE-2000B, the recycled uranium report 

11 and the balance elements, as well as, I think, 

12 the plutonium report that we released. 

13 We, I'm going to use the pronoun 

14 here, for Department of Energy, when I was 

15 there, and I was involved in also, the report 

16 called `Plutonium, the First 50 Years', that 

17 we released in 1996.

18 It included a special appendix, 

19 that I was the primary author for, about 

20 plutonium and waste, and that -- that we can 

21 get into perhaps, the nuclear materials 

22 management safeguard system.
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1 MR. STIVER: Okay, thank you, Jim, 

2 and Bob, you've been involved in this issue 

3 quite a bit, yourself. You're the Senior 

4 Policies Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy 

5 Assistant Secretary for National Security and 

6 the Environment, and what other things have 

7 you got, to bring to the table here? 

8 I know you've looked into the --

9 you've been researching this type of issue for 

10 quite some time, now.

11 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, along with Jim, 

12 I was involved in forming the 1999/2000 study, 

13 to look at the -- pardon me, I have cold. I 

14 was the person who was coughing on, so forgive 

15 me.

16 And so, I involved in helping them 

17 put together 2000 -- DOE 2000 study on mass 

18 balance of recycled uranium, and prior to that 

19 time, I served as -- on the professional staff 

20 of the Senate Committee on Government Affairs, 

21 and was involved in investigating the original 

22 problem of recycled uranium at Fernald in 
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1 1985, that resulted in a DOE Task Force 

2 report, and the matter of the product 

3 specifications material came to light.

4 More recently, I completed a study 

5 of how much plutonium has been discarded by 

6 the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, and it has 

7 resulted in the DOE Office of Nuclear Material 

8 Safeguard and Security proceeding to update 

9 their inventory. 

10 I found that about three times 

11 more plutonium has been discarded, based on 

12 DOE's own records of waste and its original 

13 official estimate in 1996.

14 MR. KATZ: So, before you go on, 

15 both of you, I don't think you were on the 

16 line when we began the Work Group meeting. 

17 So, this is -- I'm addressing Jim and Bob.

18 If you would just -- what we do in 

19 roll call in the beginning is, speak to -- if 

20 we're here part of the meeting, that's 

21 covered, but also, whether we have a conflict 

22 with respect to this site.
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1 So, if you would just both state 

2 clearly, for the record, whether you have a 

3 conflict with Fernald, based on your past 

4 employment.

5 MR. WERNER: I do not.

6 MR. KATZ: Thank you. That's Bob, 

7 right?

8 MR. WERNER: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Right, and Jim, can you 

10 also just -- 

11 MR. ALVAREZ: Yes, I do, and that's 

12 been evaluated by all the relevant parties.

13 MR. KATZ: Right, thank you. I 

14 just need that for the record. Thank you, 

15 okay.

16 MR. STIVER: Okay, I'm really glad 

17 that we could have you guys on board, because 

18 a lot of the issues that we've discovered the 

19 last few days, related to the validity of 

20 these default values, for the transuranics and 

21 fission products, really have their basis in 

22 these two DOE reports, the DOE-2000, which 
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1 came out of the Richland operations office, 

2 and deals primarily with the -- with Hanford, 

3 and the materials that were produced and sent 

4 out to the other production sites, and the 

5 2000B, which synthesized a lot of this 

6 material in the -- from the Ohio operations 

7 office, and only is applicable to some 

8 assessments that were done in that report, for 

9 Fernald.

10 And in addition to that, there is 

11 a report by the Office of Security that came 

12 out in 2003, that really looked at these other 

13 reports that had been -- you guys can verify 

14 this for me, it was done in kind of a hurried 

15 way, under the -- Bill Richardson's tenure as 

16 Secretary, and there was some internal 

17 consistencies regarding, you know, the 

18 materials accounting amounts that were 

19 produced and shipped among the various sites, 

20 that were inconsistent -- there were 

21 inconsistencies between those documents and 

22 also, within what was quoted in the White 
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1 Paper.

2 And the 2003 report, I guess, 

3 based on a more definitive definition of what 

4 recycled uranium was, revised those values, to 

5 some extent.

6 However, we still have some issues 

7 regarding the completeness and the 

8 applicability of some of that data in those 

9 reports, and if you guys -- I apologize to the 

10 people who are on the phone right now, I've 

11 prepared a packet of materials for the people 

12 here in the -- at the meeting today.

13 However, I have posted, for those 

14 of you who have access to the O: drive, under 

15 O:/Stiver-Fernald-10/11/09, I believe there 

16 are -- I've posted a set of references, which 

17 has these DOE reports and also, there's 

18 another set that has extracts from those, that 

19 we will be discussing.

20 And if you guys -- before we get 

21 started, if you just take a look at that 

22 packet in handed out, it will explain what 
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1 these are, so that you can follow along, all 

2 right. It's a little confused. Let's see 

3 where we are, here.

4 The first few pages are tables 

5 that came out of this DOE 2003 report. The 

6 first one is A9, which is Fernald receipts 

7 data, that shows the amount of material 

8 received from the various sites over a period 

9 of time, from 1953 to 1989.

10 The second is the Hanford shipment 

11 data. This is table A1, and that shows the 

12 amount of materials shipped to all the 

13 different sites, as were involved. So, this 

14 is going to be important, in a minute.

15 The next set of materials, there 

16 is a graph here that came out of Stu 

17 Hinnefeld's report, 1988, and this really 

18 tracks the plutonium C- the recycled uranium 

19 that was sent from 1961 and the plutonium 

20 content, in that material, and the next page, 

21 half of the graph has an accounting of the 

22 plutonium, both in grams -- there is total 
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1 uranium kilograms, grams of plutonium and 

2 parts per billion on the uranium basis.

3 As John reported to you earlier, 

4 all of the -- the dose assessments performed 

5 by NIOSH rely on uranium as the basis, because 

6 we have this very comprehensive database of 

7 uranium bioassay results, but not for 

8 plutonium or for the other transuranic, 

9 neptunium or for the fission product.

10 And so, this all related back to 

11 the uranium basis, parts per billion basis, 

12 for the most part, and the next page is a 

13 table from 1980, and this is this material 

14 that came from packet about Paducah tower ash, 

15 and the number of hoppers here, there are like 

16 16 of them, and it lists the -- the second 

17 column from the right gives you the parts per 

18 billion of plutonium on the uranium basis, 

19 which you can see, ranges from 6,700 up to 

20 7,700. So, there is huge amount of 

21 variability in that, which we'll also discuss 

22 in a minute.
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1 And then, the next packet is a 

2 series of colored graphics, and this is C- I 

3 think you guys have the -- yes, this very 

4 first one comes form Table 5 of the NIOSH 

5 White Report -- White Paper, and this lists 

6 the different sub-groups -- process sub7 groups, 19 of them that DOE-2000B produced.

8 And we took a closer look at that 

9 and looked at the ratios of plutonium, 

10 neptunium and technetium, and let's see, the 

11 second table here is basically the restatement 

12 of the table M from the White Paper, to show 

13 the default values used by NIOSH.

14 The next one, Table 2, here, on 

15 the following page, is the dust collector data 

16 that NIOSH used as -- to help confirm that 

17 their defaults were, indeed bounding, and this 

18 was a set of dust collector data, collected 

19 throughout Fernald at several different 

20 plants. You can see the sampling plant, the 

21 green salt plant, which is Plant 4, metals 

22 production plant, from Plant 5, scrap recovery 
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1 and the pilot plant.

2 These, you've got to keep in mind, 

3 this data here represents integrated 

4 aggregates collection, in these dust 

5 collectors, over an undetermined period of 

6 time.

7 So, we don't know what the time 

8 frame for this collection represents, and the 

9 reason this is important is, NIOSH used this 

10 as a site average. 

11 They took all the values, all 36 

12 samples, for the dust collectors, for the 

13 entire site, with -- in sensor depth, to 

14 remove the high end ones for reasons that 

15 we'll get into, in a minute, and then reported 

16 that, and then compared that back to the 

17 defaults, as confirmation.

18 And what we did is, we went in and 

19 looked at this data, with a little more 

20 granularity. We looked at it by each 

21 individual plant and looked at the average 

22 values, the range. 
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1 We did some descriptive statistics 

2 on each of these groups, you see the N values, 

3 over here, on the left-hand column, so you 

4 have an example, we are in each of these 

5 buildings, and then we compared -- the very 

6 top row here, you have the NIOSH defaults, and 

7 these are all in the microcuries per kilogram 

8 of uranium. 

9 So, it's just easier to work with 

10 that unit, because that's what most of the 

11 data reported in, in the Appendix B to the 

12 White Paper.

13 That gives you -- for each of the 

14 different nuclides, we've got plutonium-239, 

15 240, 238, neptunium-237, thorium-230, radium16 226, thorium-232, thorium-228, cesium-137, 

17 tech-99 and strontium-90. 

18 So, we had 10 radionuclides that 

19 we looked at here, and then the next page, 

20 basically, is some summary data, the summary 

21 findings, based on our review, and then 

22 finally, plant process description. 
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1 So, that's what is included in 

2 this little packet, and now, what I'd like to 

3 do is get back -- take a step back, here, and 

4 get back to our White Paper, which we produced 

5 in March 2009, and NIOSH has reviewed and 

6 provided comment on.

7 When I read through the 

8 commentary, I was kind of struck with a sense 

9 of deja vu because my very first meeting that 

10 I attended here in April 2009, when I started 

11 reading these responses, it set off a memory 

12 and I said, "Wait a second, we've already 

13 talked about all of this stuff, for the most 

14 part."

15 So, I went through that transcript 

16 and basically, these issues are our position, 

17 and it's stated pretty clearly, in that 

18 transcript, and rather than go through in 

19 intimate detail and address every single 

20 finding, what I'd like to do is just really 

21 talk to the issues that are important in the 

22 SEC context, and also, one issue that we feel 
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1 is important, in terms of the -- it was more 

2 of a Site Profile issue, which relates to the 

3 date of attribution of doses from this 

4 material, and so, I'll go ahead and jump in at 

5 that point.

6 This issue of the attribution of 

7 doses, if you look at that first table, Table 

8 A9, this is -- the data was evidently cleaned 

9 up in the 2003 report by DOE, and you'll see 

10 that you don't see any material coming from 

11 the Hanford until 1958. You've got 5, 19, 21, 

12 and so forth here, on the left-hand column.

13 And NIOSH has chosen to use a 

14 start date for dose attribution of 1961, based 

15 on their data set and their process knowledge 

16 that indicates that it was 1961 when this 

17 material was first introduced into the Fernald 

18 processes, and before that, they acknowledge 

19 that material was received from Hanford in 

20 1953, again in 1957, and in small quantities, 

21 which were then stored on site. 

22 Well, we understand that, you 
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1 know, on the larger scale, there may not have 

2 material introduced in production until 1961, 

3 but you can see that up until that point there 

4 are still 45 metric tons of the stuff in 

5 storage, and if we just accept outright, this 

6 table with the A9 values, then there is 

7 material that is in storage, and we have 

8 concerns about the exposure, not necessarily 

9 to production workers, but to the workers who 

10 were handling this stuff.

11 There is evidence, from our work 

12 on thorium, that there was re-drumming that 

13 had to take place every couple of years, 

14 because corrosive material and stuff sitting 

15 out there in 55 gallon drums, that it started 

16 to rust away, and so, that stuff had to be re17 drummed.

18 Now, we don't know whether this 

19 happened with the RU, but there is this issue, 

20 people -- warehouse workers, what have you, 

21 who were handling this stuff, and any 

22 potential exposures they may have gotten.
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1 So, regardless of any other 

2 amounts that may have come and gone through 

3 Hanford, through other sites, we feel that 

4 1953 is really the date that the dose 

5 attribution should be started, for this site. 

6 MR. ROLFES: We had discussed this 

7 at -- like you said, at a previous meeting, 

8 and we said we could take a look back at 

9 earlier years, because right now, we've got a 

10 default to 1961.

11 MR. STIVER: Yes.

12 MR. ROLFES: And interviews to back 

13 up, you know, that the material didn't enter 

14 the process until 1961.

15 MR. STIVER: Yes, and we're willing 

16 to concede that it may not have entered the 

17 process, but we still -- it's on site and 

18 being stored there, and there is always the 

19 potential -- 

20 MR. ROLFES: To be honest, we're 

21 cutting fractions of a millirem and it's -- 

22 MR. STIVER: Yes, well, it's -- 
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1 MR. ROLFES: I mean, in this 

2 assessment, because if you take a look at the 

3 uranium intakes that we are already 

4 assigning, a chronic exposure, and then 

5 assigning internal dose from U-234 solely, 

6 rather than looking at the specific isotopic 

7 compositions, 238, 235 and 234, the majority 

8 of the dose comes from the higher energy alpha 

9 emitter U-234.

10 And when you take that into 

11 consideration and also take into 

12 consideration, the transuranic contaminants 

13 and fission product contaminants, those are a 

14 small fraction of the uranium dose.

15 One other thing to consider is, 

16 well, is the earlier materials that were 

17 coming from Hanford, were much less 

18 contaminated, the recycled uranium had much 

19 less transuranic contaminants in it, 

20 plutonium, neptunium, fission product 

21 contaminant levels were much lower than the 

22 later shipments sent to Fernald in the 70s and 
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1 80s, which came from Paducah.

2 So, I mean, we're talking about --

3 you know, we've had a controlling from the 

4 get-go, Hanford had established a 10 parts per 

5 billion contaminant level for plutonium on 

6 uranium mass basis, and the earlier recycled 

7 uranium, coming from Hanford was likely much 

8 lower than that 10 parts per billion.

9 It wasn't until like, the 1970s, 

10 the Paducah tower ash shipments, which, we, 

11 for the first time, exceeded our default of 

12 our 100 parts per billion, which we're using 

13 for dose reconstruction, and you had indicated 

14 earlier that there were no bioassay data 

15 available for Fernald, for plutonium. That's 

16 not true.

17 We do have bioassay data in the 

18 1980s and it -- 

19 MR. STIVER: For the 1980s, yes, I 

20 mentioned an earlier period -- 

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct.

22 MR. STIVER: Of time.
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1 MR. ROLFES: And so, with a 

2 transuranic contaminated material -- 

3 MR. STIVER: Right, and this is all 

4 as a result of this interest in the 

5 transuranics that came about during the early 

6 1980s.

7 But my concern really is, you 

8 know, I'm not going to get into the dose 

9 reconstruction aspect, in terms of the 

10 magnitude of the doses involved, but I think 

11 from an SEC context, we really need to look at 

12 whether there -- the ability for you guys to 

13 reconstruct all the doses, for all the 

14 personnel, from all sources, for all periods 

15 of time.

16 If we can't get a firm handle on 

17 what these fission product and plutonium and 

18 that neptunium levels are, then I think we've 

19 got a problem, regardless of the actual dose 

20 that may be or may not be contributed to that, 

21 and we'll also get into it, in a minute, here, 

22 about the veracity of using a performance spec 
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1 from a production standpoint, in the -- that 

2 was coming out of Hanford, when this material 

3 was going through different chemical 

4 processes, it tends to concentrates these 

5 materials.

6 And so, for the worker in a 

7 particular building and time, the performance 

8 spec isn't necessarily as important as what's 

9 going on and what part he is being handled in 

10 a particular moment in time.

11 If I could just get back here, to 

12 the source of data, you know, regardless of 

13 the time frame, we also came into another 

14 issue here, which was the amount of material 

15 that was produced from 1952 to 1958, from the 

16 high level waste at Hanford, and you know, 

17 this is the area of expertise for Jim, so, he 

18 can jump in here, if he needs to, if I'm not 

19 really answering it.

20 But this material, because it was 

21 being used in a -- there was a -- evidently, 

22 redox and PUREX processes were both being 
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1 employed during this period of time, and this 

2 material was coming -- it was already depleted 

3 in plutonium, because it had already been 

4 processed to extract the plutonium, during 

5 that period of time, and there was also, 

6 analogously, a high concentration of fission 

7 products.

8 Now, we're concerned that, when we 

9 look at the materials balance sheets, let's 

10 see, if I've got that particular one right 

11 here, this material was produced in a graphite 

12 reactor, I guess, it was using a natural 

13 uranium, and so, it was lightly irradiated and 

14 we'd expect that material to be slightly 

15 depleted, and yet, when you look at the 

16 manifests here, or the summary data that came 

17 out of Table ES1A, I believe this is the --

18 yes, this was the 2000B report, if you look at 

19 the depleted and natural uranium contents, 

20 basically, all that's coming out of Hanford 

21 here is -- let's see, if I can find this. 

22 It's just cold metal scrap in the 
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1 normal and the depleted components, and then 

2 we're concerned that there is an entire source 

3 of not necessarily high plutonium, but high 

4 fission product levels that may be missed in 

5 these data that were then used to compile 

6 these 19 different sub-group averages.

7 MR. ALVAREZ: May I explain the, 

8 sort of, history of this, it was called the 

9 TBP Plant, the U Plant at Hanford.

10 MR. STIVER: Go ahead.

11 MR. ALVAREZ: This material in the 

12 -- during the original operations of the 

13 Hanford plant, until they built a second 

14 reprocessing plant, based on a different 

15 chemistry of redox, these were what were 

16 called bismuth-phosphate separation plants, 

17 and they were only separating plutonium.

18 So, the AEC and the contractors 

19 realized there was a great deal of uranium 

20 that could be recovered at a time when there 

21 was a much greater need for uranium that could 

22 not be met by mining, and they utilized one of 
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1 the cannons that they built in 1944, called 

2 New Plant, and removed the high level waste 

3 from the tanks and used tributyl phosphate, 

4 that's why they called this the TBP plant, to 

5 extract this uranium.

6 The uranium -- and it had to be --

7 they had to be very careful about how they --

8 the timing of processing this material, 

9 because they had to make sure that it was aged 

10 at a certain level, and they also became 

11 concerned that even after it was aged, because 

12 it was high fission product content, that it 

13 would have to be, again, pre-treated or 

14 blended with material that was coming out of 

15 the newly operated redox plant.

16 The pressure to produce this 

17 uranium was very high, because it was 

18 considered a serious short fall of uranium 

19 that was necessary to run particularly, the 

20 reactors that were going online at Hanford.

21 So, their records pertaining to 

22 the U Plant, or the TBP Plant, and how much 
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1 was extracted there, is quite substantial and 

2 they were having problems dealing with the 

3 decontamination factors, and the process was 

4 such that they would separate out the uranium 

5 using tributyl phosphate and then convert it 

6 to uranyl hexahydrate, and then have the 

7 material calcine due to uranium trioxide.

8 And they were finding that if 

9 there -- they were running through both pure 

10 TBP material 

11 that was not at all blended or pre-treated at 

12 the redox plant, as well as material that was 

13 blended with redox material, and pre-treated 

14 using silica gel and ozone, to try to reduce 

15 the short-lived fission.

16 But the decontamination factors, 

17 the DFs, in the UO3 plant, ranged from one to 

18 16, 16 being very high, high dose rates, and 

19 some of the dose rates that were coming off 

20 the pots, the calcine pots, were as high as 

21 two rad per hour.

22 So, there was a considerable 
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1 amount of this hot stuff being run through and 

2 sent off site. They weren't letting it sit 

3 there because this had to be processed and 

4 there was a great amount of this material to 

5 be rendered into fuel for the growing number 

6 of reactors at Hanford. This went on until 

7 1958.

8 So, that's sort of just a brief 

9 thumb-nail sketch history of this. 

10 The other thing about that is that 

11 if the -- with respect to plutonium, recent 

12 studies done of material mass balance out of 

13 Hanford have in there that the assumptions 

14 about the amount of plutonium that were 

15 showing up at the reprocessing plant from the 

16 reactors were not necessarily correct, and 

17 that the reprocessing plants were actually 

18 finding more plutonium. 

19 The reactors were producing more 

20 plutonium, and more plutonium was winding up 

21 in the waste treatment, and there were all 

22 these little problems that, you know, came out 
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1 about the 1950s, where a lot of this was new, 

2 first of a kind type facilities.

3 You know, if we didn't control the 

4 entrainment of solvents, for example, in your 

5 process of sending your material to the UO3 

6 plant, your actinide levels would go up rather

7 substantially.

8 So, there were issues that were --

9 and not everything was perfect, and the 

10 material, you know, until 1970, that were --

11 there was absolutely no mass balance system 

12 put in place.

13 So, there is a lot of 

14 uncertainties about how much plutonium was 

15 actually -- wound up in waste streams and how 

16 much was sent off site.

17 Plutonium, they kept an eye on, 

18 because it was considered a valuable product, 

19 but other materials that were of no concern to 

20 them as a product, they never really took the 

21 time to measure, unless it became a product.

22 So, there were a lot of things 
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1 missing in the specification requirements, for 

2 example, at the Hanford Site where a lot of 

3 this uranium trioxide came from the Savannah 

4 River Site.

5 There were no requirements made 

6 until the 1980s, to even bother to measure for 

7 things in the air, for workers being exposed, 

8 to other actinides, to any actinides, for that 

9 matter, and essentially, they went -- the 

10 contaminant of primary concern was uranium. 

11 So, and I'm not so familiar with 

12 Fernald and it's early history, and one of the 

13 questions I've been asking is, how adequate 

14 was the film batch program at Fernald during 

15 this period, when this TBP or U Plant material 

16 was being sent, and you know, I'm somewhat 

17 familiar with the Y-12 Plant, where until 

18 1960, only a very small fraction of workers 

19 were badged.

20 So, it's a question I have, but 

21 anyway, I'll shut up and --

22 DR. GLOVER: Well, thanks a lot. 
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1 Ted, this is from the -- it's hard to get from 

2 the phone side. This is Sam Glover from 

3 NIOSH.

4 MR. STIVER: Okay.

5 DR. GLOVER: There were two points, 

6 if I can, very briefly.

7 One, there was a comment made 

8 earlier about the 234, putting that into 

9 isotopics and reducing the dose and it was --

10 that comment would need to be -- some more 

11 review at NIOSH, before we would develop that 

12 as a -- put forth as a strategy.

13 I did want to make one brief 

14 mention of Hanford to my site. I'm a 

15 radiochemist, and the initial stuff that came 

16 out of Hanford, now, Bob may be talking about 

17 the stuff that went farther down when PUREX 

18 started, but the stuff that the true -- that 

19 the uranium plant did initially, had tanks 

20 since 1943 or 1944, and that solution was 

21 stored, short-lived radionuclides would be 

22 less of importance in that initial stuff that 
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1 would have come out.

2 Anyway, I'm not going to belabor 

3 that, but the uranium plant was pumping stuff 

4 out of the tanks to reprocess that.

5 MR. ALVAREZ: I must admit though, 

6 that the dose rates from the U Plant material 

7 that were being run through the UO3 plant, in 

8 terms of contaminants, such as ruthenium, 

9 niobium and zirconium, were significantly 

10 greater than those coming out of PUREX.

11 MR. STIVER: Yes, you know, niobium 

12 and ruthenium were limited by half-life of one 

13 year for ruthenium-106. So, I'm not too 

14 concerned about those particular isotopes.

15 However, we do have -- the data we 

16 looked at showed high levels of strontium-90, 

17 cesium-137 and technetium-99, which is also 

18 going to be a long lived one.

19 So, the short lived stuff may burn 

20 up fairly quickly and holding it up in the 

21 tanks for a couples of years would -- you 

22 know, you would get two or three half-lifes. 
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1 You pretty much decayed it away.

2 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, if I may say 

3 so, but there were finding, however, what they 

4 call age-based that was two or three years old 

5 was quite hot, and so, even though you -- a 

6 large fraction of these short lived isotopes 

7 were the -- 

8 MR. STIVER: Yes, the longer lived 

9 isotopes, if you're contributing to that dose 

10 rate, that's what you'd be seeing.

11 But I think the important thing is 

12 that trying to get a handle on when this 

13 material might have entered into Fernald, and 

14 if you look at Table A1, you know, we -- we 

15 back up a minute ago, and I showed you the --

16 there was no accounting of the natural and 

17 depleted, in those particular categories of 

18 this material that might have come out of high 

19 level waste plant.

20 But Bob, and I talked to you a 

21 couple of days ago, you indicated that maybe 

22 this stuff had been shipped off to an 
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1 enrichment plant and then found its way back 

2 into Fernald -- not as a direct source, but 

3 not as a shipment, but kind of coming in from 

4 other sources, in kind of an indirect way.

5 And if you look at Table A1, you 

6 can see that even in 1952 and 1953, 1954, 

7 there is fairly large shipments. In 1953 you 

8 had 227 -- 2,257 metric tons of this material, 

9 which is -- you've got 740 grams of neptunium. 

10 You can follow these numbers down, there is 

11 quite a bit of this material coming in to 

12 other sites.

13 I believe, if you look at the 

14 fourth column over, under other, this is all 

15 the remaining, Y-12, Oak Ridge. So, you've 

16 got this material circulating throughout the 

17 system, and we don't really have a good handle 

18 on what may have come in indirectly to 

19 Fernald, via one of these other pathways.

20 And so, that's kind of an open 

21 issue, here, and that kind of leads us into 

22 the -- you might also go to Table 5 of the 
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1 graph that I sent out, if you look down, now, 

2 this is the sub-groups that DOE had -- I'm 

3 kind of getting ahead of myself right here.

4 But these are 19 process sub5 groups that DOE-2000B produced with the best 

6 estimates they had, given their limited data 

7 for plutonium, neptunium and technetium, in 

8 parts per billion uranium.

9 If you go down to 6A, line 6A, 

10 this is UO3 PUREX source, okay, unblended. 

11 Okay, look at the technetium-99 levels. It's 

12 very close to the NIOSH limit of 9,000 parts 

13 per billion, and I might also add that this 

14 what they call a bootstrap mean. This is 

15 basically an arithmetic average. You have 

16 highly skewed data. 

17 If you look at the data that this 

18 number was generated from, it goes way, way 

19 over by a factor of ten or more, beyond that 

20 bootstrap mean.

21 So, you know, I'm not criticizing 

22 the methods that DOE applied, in generating 
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1 these numbers. I'm just kind of questioning 

2 how they might justify these values that were 

3 chosen by NIOSH.

4 While we're on the subject of 

5 these -- the sub-group means, one of the 

6 interesting points that Arjun had made at the 

7 very end of the April 2009 discussion was the 

8 data were used to generate these values.

9 If you look, I believe it's table 

10 -- it's F.51A, calculated and constituent 

11 masses referenced by receipts. This is off of 

12 the DOE 2000B report. 

13 So, any of you who have that, can 

14 look at it, and you'll see that there's 

15 basically, in this first set, under enriched 

16 materials, there are only one, two, about four 

17 different concentrations and what they do --

18 what this represents is that there is very 

19 limited data available.

20 And so, what NIOSH did was -- or 

21 not NIOSH, but DOE, they looked at process 

22 knowledge and they would take a set of data 
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1 that they had for a given site or a given 

2 process, and look at other sites, throughout 

3 the complex that had similar processes going 

4 on, and they just assigned them these values.

5 And so, you have a situation like, 

6 say with West Valley, they're basically giving 

7 them -- for the -- they're giving them the 

8 exact same values for PUREX that were coming 

9 out of Hanford without one data point to 

10 justify that.

11 And so, this is the -- brings up 

12 the whole issue of surrogate data, as defined 

13 by the Board and how it's going to be applied 

14 in the dose reconstruction.

15 MR. WERNER: John, this is Jim 

16 Warner. I apologize, I had to step away for a 

17 little bit.

18 MR. STIVER: Okay, do you have 

19 something to say, Jim? We lost you. 

20 MR. WERNER: Yes, if I could --

21 yes, if I could provide just a little bit of 

22 background?
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1 MR. STIVER: Okay, sure, glad to 

2 hear it.

3 MR. WERNER: On that source of that 

4 data, just briefly, in general, the process, 

5 as you alluded to earlier, for putting 

6 together that report, was very hurried. It 

7 was extraordinarily fast, and I think rather 

8 than -- you know, at least from my perspective 

9 -- I don't want to be defensive about it, but 

10 it's actually remarkable that so much was able 

11 to be put together in such a brief period of 

12 time, given the complexity of it.

13 There was some aggravating things 

14 that made it even more challenging, aside from 

15 just the time. 

16 But as some of you may recall, at 

17 the time, there was -- at the time, the news 

18 media revelation about the plutonium, the 

19 presence of plutonium contamination in the 

20 recycled uranium, and that was very much in 

21 the news media, and I don't mean suggest that 

22 we were just responding to that, but that was 
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1 certainly a major factor, going on.

2 There had already been going on, 

3 the efforts regarding the legislation we're 

4 now implementing, the EEOICPA, the law, the 

5 worker compensation law, and that was already 

6 kind of on the table, and this really just --

7 this revelation about the plutonium issue just 

8 accelerated it and of course, the bottom line, 

9 in terms of the legislation, was that it 

10 expanded it.

11 You may also recall that there was 

12 the 671 site list that was then released in 

13 USA Today, what is sometimes called the pre14 FUSRAP site, and so, there were these things 

15 going on that expanded the list, and again, I 

16 don't want to be apologetic, but I think it 

17 was just extraordinary, what was put together 

18 in a very brief period of time.

19 We relied on the input from 

20 different operations offices, to provide the 

21 recycled uranium data, and the major focus was 

22 relatively qualitative and binary, that is did 
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1 you or did you not receive recycled uranium 

2 and then secondly, how much, from what source, 

3 at least in a gross sense, and then, as 

4 available, some data and analysis on the 

5 nature of that material, and I think the 

6 record reflects the quick -- the 

7 questionnaires that were sent out and the 

8 responses we got back.

9 And I think it was remarkable. 

10 People did a terrific job and the offices and 

11 contractors worked very hard, long hours, but 

12 I think in the -- you know, the luxury of 

13 hindsight, there is all kinds of questions we 

14 now ask, that -- well, we knew them at the 

15 time.

16 I mean, among the ones that we 

17 were asking at the time was, what about the --

18 this -- the distinction of the different 

19 sources, that you were just mentioning here? 

20 You know, the material from West Valley, on 

21 the one hand, West Valley was a process didn't 

22 change much, like in terms of how the process 
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1 was done, and so, whatever recycled uranium 

2 came from there, probably did not vary because 

3 of the process, but certainly, varied a lot, 

4 as a result of the inputs.

5 West Valley, and you see this in 

6 the 1996, "Plutonium, the First 50 Years" 

7 report, got inputs from a wide variety of 

8 sources, both commercial and defense programs 

9 materials.

10 The others sites, and Bob was 

11 alluding to this in some detail, when I had to 

12 step away briefly, that this is a phosphate 

13 process and tributyl phosphate processes, 

14 those, I could tell you, you know, having 

15 worked as an auditor, visiting those sites, 

16 they did vary in processes and the inputs may 

17 not have varied a whole lot, from the 

18 reactors, but the processes did vary, and the 

19 -- you know, the people in chem-ops, the 

20 chemical operations staff, I think they really 

21 prided themselves on constantly tweaking the 

22 processing systems, with designs and operation 
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1 of slab-tanks, solvent mixtures, temperatures, 

2 you know, the exact flow rates and patterns.

3 So, they were constantly varying 

4 it, and so, we put together this recycled 

5 uranium report in 1999/2000, some of us were 

6 very aware that we were just kind of glossing 

7 over these distinctions of the variety of 

8 input that were going out, as recycled 

9 uranium, because we knew there was such a 

10 variety, and of course, you know, Department 

11 of Energy, in April 1992, made the decision to 

12 shut down all the reprocessing facilities.

13 And so, a lot of the staff, by 

14 1999, had already gone. So, we had a limited 

15 number of staff immediately available. 

16 Now, with a little more time, 

17 maybe we could have hired some contractors and 

18 gone back and gotten that sort of expertise 

19 about the variability’s of recycled uranium, 

20 but given the time we had, it wasn't really 

21 possible to bring on some of these people who 

22 had been let go or retired or whatever, as a 
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1 result of the April 1992 decision to stop any 

2 reprocessing.

3 The other factor is the time, and 

4 this may seem like a detail, but I think it's 

5 relevant, with today's discussion of Fernald, 

6 was we had recently reorganized Fernald under 

7 the newly created Ohio operations office, and 

8 previously, of course, had been under Oak 

9 Ridge, and Oak Ridge, as many of you know, was 

10 responsible for uranium operations in 

11 secondaries, really, dating back to the 

12 Manhattan project.

13 And so, there was enormous amount 

14 of expertise in Oak Ridge operations office, 

15 that was then, I wouldn't say lost, the people 

16 and the expertise were still there, but it 

17 made it a little bit difficult -- more 

18 difficult and clumsy when, you know, we were 

19 assigning responsibility to the operations 

20 offices, like Ohio, to provide the data, but 

21 in fact, the expertise was in Oak Ridge, and 

22 there hadn't really been enough time to change 
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1 it.

2 The higher operations office 

3 creation had only occurred, you know, a couple 

4 of years before, so, they were completely cut 

5 off. The Ohio operations office, of course, 

6 was focused on the environmental management 

7 and all the old expertise on, you know, these 

8 historical issues, at the time from the 1999 

9 perspective, you know, were still back down at 

10 Oak Ridge operations, from the reorganization.

11 So, all that, to say that it's 

12 really remarkable that as much data was able 

13 to assembled so quickly for that DOE 2000 

14 report, and it's no wonder that we're now 

15 here, maybe second guessing, the quality of 

16 it, but it's certainly not a surprise, to 

17 those of us who worked on it. But I think we 

18 were -- 

19 MR. STIVER: Well, Jim, you're 

20 probably in a pretty good position then, to 

21 comment on these limited values and the 

22 constituent values in table 51A.
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1 Do you know how these were arrived 

2 at and what the source data were and whether

3 that data is available in greater detail than 

4 what's presented in this table?

5 This really is the under-pinning 

6 of what's going into these values that NIOSH 

7 used as their default. So, the quality of 

8 this data is incredibly important here.

9 MR. WERNER: Okay, you've asked a 

10 series of questions, and let me attempt to 

11 tease them out, and also, go back to something 

12 -- I'm sorry, the NIOSH or other person said 

13 earlier, about putting in it the context of 

14 uranium exposures.

15 First of all, with regard to the 

16 question that you just posited, the source was 

17 generally, as you say, process knowledge, and 

18 that's why I mentioned what I did, about the 

19 expertise regarding reprocessing.

20 We always knew that to really 

21 understand these, you had to understand not 

22 just, you know, the operations at the uranium 
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1 reprocessing facilities, like Fernald and 

2 Weldon Spring, but you really should go back 

3 to the original reprocessing facilities. 

4 That's where you could sort of get -- 

5 I mean, these folks really did 

6 fingerprint the fission products, and they 

7 were very good at it, if you go back to the 

8 original chem-ops people, the chemical 

9 operations staff at wherever it was, and I 

10 mean, very basically, I mean, if you look this 

11 DOE2000, we were not even able to distinguish 

12 the input and the fingerprinting from the 

13 sites, much less the operations within the 

14 sites, much less the change in operations 

15 within the sites.

16 So, the process knowledge was 

17 limited at the time. But generally, you know, 

18 we relied on process knowledge and what -- it

19 was almost anecdotal, I guess, a summary word.

20 If somebody had something, they 

21 threw it in, knowing that, you know, really to 

22 know it better, you are going to have to go 
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1 back and dig into that process knowledge in 

2 more detail.

3 But we didn't even have -- if you 

4 look at it, you don't even see the difference 

5 between clearly, you know, INL, Chem Plant 

6 versus Hanford, PUREX versus U Plant, versus 

7 you know, Savannah River versus West Valley, 

8 each of those had different -- somewhat 

9 different operations and they were, in some 

10 cases, almost competing against each other, 

11 which would do a better job of more 

12 efficiently doing separations.

13 So, that process knowledge, of 

14 course, changed over time, but we were 

15 grabbing what information we could at the 

16 time, knowing a lot of our chem-ops people had 

17 left after the April 1992 decision.

18 MR. ALVAREZ: The source of the 

19 data that has been used by NIOSH was the 

20 result of a task force that was called in, to 

21 investigate the circumstances surrounding the 

22 processing of the product of the specification 
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1 material, the material that was sent up from 

2 Paducah, to Fernald, in the 70s and early 80s.

3 That report is very revealing, in 

4 that this was a task force of DOE officials, 

5 who basically concluded the following, that 

6 there were no -- there was no consistent 

7 technical standard setting a limit on 

8 transuranics or other isotopes throughout the 

9 system. They were more or less, implemented 

10 on an informal basis and could be changed on 

11 the basis of phone calls.

12 They showed examples of where this 

13 happened between Savannah River, for example, 

14 and Fernald.

15 They also pointed out that the 

16 health physics regimes for the Fernald workers 

17 did not include any form of protection, from -

18 - in terms of bioassay requirements or say, 

19 dosimetry requirements, to measure for intakes 

20 of the radiocontaminants that would be present 

21 in the recycled uranium.

22 They also -- and so, in 1988, the 
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1 department eventually, actually established 

2 formal specs, that set these limits for 

3 technetium, for neptunium or for plutonium, 

4 and prior to that time -- and this is what 

5 they -- and so, there was a scramble on the 

6 part of the DOE, after the `85 task force 

7 report, to start to collect data, and several 

8 sites began to look for this information, 

9 Hanford and Fernald.

10 So, but prior to that, there was 

11 some spotty data there, but there were no 

12 requirements to measure the air in the 

13 workplace where they were producing trioxide 

14 for these contaminants. There were no 

15 requirements to measure in the air at Fernald 

16 or no requirements to measure it in the urine 

17 or in other ways in the bodies of workers.

18 So, we have this long gap, 

19 especially during the period of peak 

20 production, when there did not exist any truly 

21 formal technical specifications limiting these 

22 transuranics.
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1 MR. STIVER: Okay, Bob, given that 

2 you've said -- that may be true, I guess what 

3 I'm trying to get at is this data that Jim has 

4 alluded to, this chem-ops documentation, and 

5 most of those people left by the late 90s.

6 Is that type of data available, 

7 that could then be used to sort of sort out 

8 what levels could be applied to different 

9 streams of materials that were coming into 

10 Fernald, just to get to that level? 

11 I mean, regardless of -- 

12 MR. ALVAREZ: Probably not.

13 MR. STIVER: Probably not, and what 

14 were these values, the constituents values in 

15 this table 51A, where do they come from?

16 Say, for example, you've got Oak 

17 Ridge -- the first line, Hanford metal, UO2, 

18 U3O8 residues. You've got a plutonium level 

19 of 4.297 parts per billion. You've got these 

20 values for neptunium, and they're repeated for 

21 other processes that are listed here, and I 

22 was just wondering, where did those numbers 
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1 come from?

2 MR. WERNER: As I said earlier, I 

3 think that they were somewhat anecdotal. If 

4 somebody had some data from their facility -- 

5 MR. STIVER: Okay, so, that --

6 okay, so, if you had some data that were 

7 applicable to that process, and that was just 

8 determined by this group of experts, that this 

9 was probably the best that you had, that's 

10 what went into that report, then?

11 MR. WERNER: Well, we threw that in 

12 -- 

13 MR. ALVAREZ: But what I'm saying 

14 is that -- 

15 MR. WERNER: But it's not reflected 

16 in the -- 

17 MR. ALVAREZ: But what I'm saying 

18 is, that this is data that was collected after 

19 the fact, from the `85 task force report.

20 MR. STIVER: This is actually --

21 this is basically data that was collected in 

22 the 80s. So, this was the -- 
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1 MR. ALVAREZ: That's right, and 

2 this does not reflect the data that 

3 necessarily would have existed during the 

4 period of peak flow on production of recycled 

5 uranium.

6 MR. WERNER: I think that's fair, 

7 Bob, but that was -- 

8 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover. 

9 Hanford, again, is my facility, and I have 

10 looked at specifications and reports that they 

11 have pulled out, from the late -- the early 

12 50s time frame.

13 So, there are measurements and 

14 they did have those, so, I think we're 

15 speaking pretty broadly here, and it's 

16 difficult for me to understand which section 

17 of time you're trying to respond to.

18 MR. STIVER: Basically, trying to 

19 respond to the section of time before the 

20 material arrived in 1980.

21 MR. WERNER: But Sam, you would 

22 agree that for plutonium, that was correct. 
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1 For neptunium, when was the first time they 

2 began to measure neptunium in workers, working 

3 in the trioxide plant? Did they ever do it? 

4 DR. GLOVER: I'd have to verify 

5 that. I don't have the -- 

6 MR. WERNER: Well, it would be -- 

7 MR. ALVAREZ: Well, the answer is 

8 no. The answer is no, not until the late 

9 1980s when these sites and plants were 

10 basically on the path of closure. So, the -- 

11 DR. GLOVER: So, I would take a 

12 little bit -- I mean, as far as Hanford, 

13 looking at it, they were measuring it, because 

14 I have the notes where they were worried about 

15 neptunium in the product. We've got the memos 

16 from 1948, when they knew they were going to 

17 start pulling the stuff out of the tanks.

18 So, I think we should be a little 

19 bit careful. We're putting facts into 

20 evidence, that I don't think are -- 

21 MR. WERNER: Well, I'll tell you, 

22 that I -- 
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1 MR. ALVAREZ: I can point you to 

2 the technical manuals, pointing to what the 

3 requirements were to -- what was to be 

4 measured in the air and what was to be 

5 measured in workers, who were working in the 

6 trioxide facility during those periods, and 

7 they were not requiring them to measure 

8 neptunium nor in airborne concentrations, 

9 plutonium, for that matter, only concerned 

10 about plutonium in the product, and if it met 

11 the spec.

12 But from the health physics point 

13 of view, there was no data there.

14 MR. STIVER: Well, I guess my 

15 concern is what is going -- what is the 

16 variability in that performance spec that 

17 actually found its way into Hanford -- I mean, 

18 into Fernald? I'm getting confused here.

19 So, you know, regardless of what 

20 vision you -- the health physics aspects were 

21 at Hanford, we really are trying to get a 

22 handle on what's coming into Fernald that 
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1 could have exposed workers.

2 And so, I guess, we have these 

3 performance specs that Sam was alluding to, we 

4 have values in this table and in 51A, that 

5 were then used to produce the values that went 

6 into table 5 of the NIOSH report, without any 

7 verification.

8 That's my problem here, it's the -

9 - these seem to be very tenuous numbers, and 

10 from what Sam is saying, there may be better 

11 data out there, upon which to base the 

12 defaults, and I've got a real problem with 

13 this. 

14 The more we dig into this, the 

15 more kind of shaky it all appears. 

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: This is not a new 

17 comment, by the way. We've said, at I don't 

18 know how many meetings, that this RU stuff is 

19 all based on the DOE summary reports, and 

20 we're back to the source data.

21 MR. STIVER: And from what Jim is 

22 telling me, that source data is -- just is not 
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1 -- it's not there. We just don't have it 

2 anymore, and that gets back to that issue in 

3 our report about the destruction of the 

4 classified documents. Rather than declassify 

5 them, they just shredded them, and so, that 

6 data may be lost forever.

7 MR. WERNER: This is Jim Warner, 

8 and I guess I tend to be a technology 

9 optimist, that with enough effort, you can 

10 perhaps, get you know, some data, possibly. 

11 I'd never give up hope.

12 But I did spend some time at the 

13 Hagley Museum and library, where the old --

14 some old DuPont/Hanford data is there, and I 

15 actually expected to see more chem-ops, and I 

16 know some of the ORAU people were there, too, 

17 from the visitor logs, and I wonder what they 

18 view as the possibility of getting it.

19 I did not see it there. I did not 

20 spend a huge amount of time, but I, you know, 

21 have gone through national archives before, 

22 and wasn't able to get it easily.
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1 Now, possibly, it could be done, 

2 but I think it would require a bigger effort 

3 than people have put in so far. But based on 

4 the DOE2000 report, again, I would just vary a 

5 little bit, maybe different from what Bob 

6 said, that it was -- you know, his limitation.

7 I would just say that it was 

8 limited, but I think were are just aware that 

9 it was not fully representative and was not 

10 really an attempt to be fully representative. 

11 It was an attempt to provide what data was 

12 available then, you know, before the clock 

13 ran. 

14 We had a very certain deadline. 

15 We provided what we could then, and but 

16 everybody working on it was aware that this 

17 was limited and not fully representative, and 

18 some of it was -- 

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's the key, 

20 right there, not representative.

21 MR. STIVER: Yes, Jim, as a 

22 technology optimist, do you feel that a 
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1 retrieval effort would yield a more reasonable 

2 -- not reasonable, necessarily, but a more 

3 accurate or applicable set of numbers that 

4 could then be used, to -- 

5 MR. WERNER: Well, that would be --

6 MR. ALVAREZ: No. I think the two 

7 major efforts right here, really need to dig 

8 into this -- one of these that you -- the 

9 recycled uranium piece.

10 I think we've maxed out, in terms 

11 of trying to get to the bottom of it.

12 MR. WERNER: Well, Bob, from my 

13 point of view, this is Jim, again, you've 

14 asked one side of the question, which is the 

15 amount of effort you put in, in terms of 

16 retrieving it, but I think one needs to also 

17 look at sort of the supply side question of 

18 quality of what is there, and what we know 

19 about that.

20 You know, the fact is that, and 

21 again, somebody alluded to it earlier, that 

22 every time we sent out a query, a request, I 
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1 mean, headquarters doesn't do this research 

2 itself. I mean, sometimes, we took credit for 

3 it, but really, the heavy lifting happened in 

4 our ops offices, and whenever we sent 

5 something out to ops office that says, "Please 

6 provide data on the following questions," you 

7 know, how much uranium, where did it come 

8 from, what quality.

9 First, the response we got 

10 virtually every time from an ops office 

11 manager or site manager was, "We did not 

12 measure it carefully," you know, and they were 

13 very frustrated, we kept asking these 

14 questions, and asking for data, on something 

15 that they didn't feel comfortable providing 

16 it.

17 They did a yeoman's effort of 

18 getting the data together and they were all 

19 good soldiers and they provided it, but they 

20 were always providing it with the caveat of 

21 saying, "Look, we just didn't analyze for 

22 these materials, very precisely," and of 
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1 course, that point that all the ops office 

2 managers made to us, as they still provided 

3 what data they had, was made in abundance 

4 officially in the 1996 report that I think Bob 

5 alluded to earlier, regarding NMMSS nuclear 

6 materials management safeguard system, that 

7 tracked fissile material.

8 Well, I mean, I'm happy to get 

9 into the details of plutonium and waste versus 

10 normal operating losses, but suffusive to say 

11 that as a result of that report, the 

12 Department acknowledge that there was a need 

13 to redo the NMMSS system to more precisely 

14 characterize plutonium and normal operating 

15 losses, because it certainly had not been done 

16 prior to that.

17 Now, we can debate whether it's 

18 been done adequately, subsequently, but that 

19 report at least, planted a flag in the ground 

20 and said, prior to 1996, that the -- the 

21 culture and really, the resources, it always 

22 come down to budget, is that if a facility was 
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1 dealing with plutonium and waste, it simply 

2 didn't have the equipment, the personnel and 

3 the time, most importantly, budgeted, to 

4 analyze for the plutonium with the same level 

5 of rigor.

6 And that's what I want to 

7 emphasis, the same -- I think, precision and 

8 accuracy as a facility like Rocky Flats or 

9 Hanford, even within Rocky or Hanford or INL, 

10 that you know, there was certain divisions 

11 that handled plutonium as a product and there 

12 were other divisions who dealt with it as a 

13 byproduct or a waste, and those decisions 

14 simply didn't form the same level of analysis, 

15 and it wasn't even considered in NMMSS and 

16 that's -- I was initially named the co-chair 

17 of task force on revising NUMEC, and that, 

18 frankly, didn't get very far. It's a 

19 challenging internal debate, that's another 

20 topic.

21 But if you look at, particularly 

22 at Appendix B, in that 1996 report on 
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1 plutonium waste, they -- we indicated that it 

2 just wasn't measured at the same level and it 

3 was a commitment then by the Department, to 

4 change it's NUMEC and change the 

5 accountability.

6 So, the same level of really, 

7 pretty good rigor and you know, some might 

8 dispute -- you know, it was a pretty high 

9 level rigor for most plutonium, but that same 

10 level of rigor, just didn't apply to anything 

11 where plutonium was in a byproduct or a waste.

12 MR. STIVER: Well, you know, I'd 

13 like if we -- I think we talked about this a 

14 lot, and there was -- kind of an impasse as to 

15 whether good data are available that could be 

16 used to really bound these transuranics and 

17 fission product levels.

18 I'm also concerned about the whole 

19 issue of just using performance spec data as a 

20 -- in relation to uranium, as -- for dose 

21 assessment, when we know that there were 

22 processes that were going on at Fernald that 
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1 concentrated this material.

2 MR. WERNER: No, you didn't -- you 

3 had varying specs, is the other issue, and 

4 there were no specs for -- 

5 MR. STIVER: Regardless of the 

6 specs --

7 MR. WERNER: For some of the key 

8 contaminants, and so, they didn't exist until 

9 1988, and this is where this data comes from, 

10 after that -- during that period.

11 MR. STIVER: Right.

12 MR. WERNER: So, the -- 

13 MR. STIVER: But say, if you did 

14 have good performance specs and you used that, 

15 you're going to find out, like, say, in Plant 

16 5, where they're doing the reduction to 

17 produce the metal, they put this material in 

18 these bombs and it's got this lag liner, made 

19 of magnesium fluoride, and we know that this 

20 material concentrates transuranic fission 

21 products, and we have data to show it and it's 

22 pretty well established, that it does take 
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1 place.

2 And then, we know that this 

3 material is -- we also know from DWE data, 

4 that we analyzed for thorium, that some of the 

5 highest exposures took place to these guys who 

6 were breaking out the bombs and charging them 

7 and this kind of thing.

8 And so, you know, you've got real 

9 high thorium content, and you are breaking 

10 open one of these bombs, to get the metal, but 

11 what does that -- what kind of implications 

12 does that have for the neptunium and plutonium 

13 and the americium-241 and fission products 

14 that are also being entrained in that slag?

15 And then they took that material 

16 and put it back into Plant 1, into this Titan 

17 mill, and ground it back up for re-use, and 

18 so, it's being recycled throughout the system, 

19 and we've got people who were involved in 

20 those aspects of production, who were getting 

21 potential exposures that are, in no way, 

22 related to the original performance specs of 
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1 the material that came into the plant to begin 

2 with.

3 So, there is another big problem 

4 I've got with it.

5 MR. WERNER: And as I've mentioned, 

6 in the 1985 task force report, there is a 

7 specific reference to Savannah River reaching 

8 a point where they could not meet their tech 

9 spec. They made a phone call and everybody 

10 agreed to double it, and that was the -- that 

11 was how the decision was made.

12 MR. STIVER: Okay, Mark, did you 

13 want to say something?

14 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I just wanted to 

15 add, there are product specifications for 

16 recycled uranium, if you take a look at Site 

17 Research Database number 4971, it's the 

18 Richland Field Office report information.

19 MR. STIVER: Let me get back on 

20 here.

21 MR. ROLFES: Anyway, I wanted to 

22 point out a few pages here that have some 
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1 product specifications.

2 Back in 1951, they had a tentative 

3 UO3 product specification, defined in the 

4 redox technical manual, and it gave 

5 specifications for the beta and gamma activity 

6 and the contents of the uranium, and in 1951, 

7 at Hanford, they started off with 100 parts 

8 per billion of uranium, and then, let me -- 

9 MR. WERNER: Were there any specs 

10 there for neptunium?

11 MR. ROLFES: I don't see any, 

12 readily, but it did describe the beta and 

13 gamma activity. So, you could make a bounding 

14 assumption -- 

15 MR. STIVER: Yes, they didn't have 

16 the gamma spectroscopy -- or the level of 

17 detail to identify the various isotopes until 

18 1967. So, they basically took gross beta 

19 measurements, and they knew that -- they had a 

20 pretty good idea of what the isotopic 

21 concentration was, and from that, they could 

22 get a handle on bounding levels of what 
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1 fission products might be.

2 MR. ROLFES: If you move onto page 

3 51 of that same document, it gives a 

4 specification from around 1959, showing 10 

5 parts per billion and then subsequently, page 

6 137 shows 10 parts per billion.

7 MR. STIVER: And what are the SRDB?

8 MR. ROLFES: It is 4971.

9 MR. STIVER: Four-nine-seven-one, 

10 and what is the title, again?

11 MR. ROLFES: Let me pull it up here 

12 for you. This was the review of generation 

13 and flow of recycled uranium at Hanford, from 

14 the Richland Operations Office, dated June 30, 

15 2000, and DOE/RL-2000-43.

16 MR. WERNER: Yes, I mean, that's 

17 the same report that also admitted that they 

18 did not have specifications or protection 

19 requirements for neptunium and technetium.

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay, all right.

21 MR. STIVER: All right.

22 MR. ROLFES: Could we make a 
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1 bounding assumption of the quantities of 

2 fission products or transuranics, based upon 

3 the beta and gamma activity that was measured, 

4 described in that report.

5 MR. STIVER: Well, you can get that 

6 as a performance spec for a certain period of 

7 time, from a certain plant.

8 I guess, my problem here is that 

9 you've got very sketchy data, upon which 

10 you've based your defaults, as we've already 

11 discussed here, and you have performance 

12 specs, but you don't have a full set of 

13 documentation of what was coming and what was 

14 going, what were the levels in that particular 

15 shipment.

16 And I've got a problem with that, 

17 and when you work in -- also, look at the --

18 you have the dust collector data, if we could 

19 take a look at the dust collector data here C20 DR. MAURO: Let's just move on to 

21 another topic.

22 MR. STIVER: And we looked at the 
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1 dust collector data, there were 36 samples -- 

2 DR. MAURO: Let's look at this 

3 table. 

4 MR. STIVER: Yes, let's take a look 

5 at the -- 

6 DR. MAURO: This is the rock, right 

7 here. I mean -- I want to just -- a lot is 

8 going on.

9 I will be -- what we just heard, 

10 that prior to this dust collection data, at 

11 Fernald, everything we talked about, on what 

12 might have showed up, at Fernald, is a 

13 construct, a construct that clearly, we could 

14 argue about the amount from now until the end 

15 of time, but can you trust it or you can't 

16 trust it, whether the specs are something that 

17 were held strictly to or were they loose, 

18 they're changing?

19 I think all -- that side of the 

20 discussion is not going to be productive. All 

21 it will do is reveal that it's a construct and 

22 we really don't know where, you know, whether 
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1 or not that's going to help us resolve this 

2 issue. It probably won't.

3 What will help us understand this, 

4 is where do we have the data, and it looks to 

5 me that the one place where we've got a 

6 considerable amount of data is the dust 

7 samples summarized in Table 2.

8 And to me -- and let that data 

9 speak to us, and what does it mean, with 

10 regard to NIOSH's default mix, and whether or 

11 not we're talking about a mix that just missed 

12 the boat, a mix that is -- where there might 

13 have been individuals that could have been 10 

14 times or 100 times above the numbers that are 

15 assumed by NIOSH, as being the correct mix.

16 If we can't get -- you know, if 

17 this table can't help us answer this, I don't 

18 know where we go.

19 MR. STIVER: This data was 

20 collected in 1985. These are dust collector 

21 samples from 36 different dust collectors at 

22 five different plants. Basically, it was a 
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1 sampling plant, green salt plant, metals 

2 production facility, scrap recovery and pilot 

3 plant. 

4 What is notably missing is Plant 2 

5 or 3, where the oxide would have been fed in 

6 to produce the material to go into Plant 4, 

7 and there would have been raffinate steam 

8 coming from that material, for at least -- not 

9 from the UO3, but from tower ashes that were 

10 recycled.

11 But let's get on to take a look at 

12 the table here. As I said, NIOSH's White 

13 Paper, they basically -- what you're looking 

14 at -- what they did was this very first row on 

15 Table 2, this is the site average, what the 

16 Titan mill, in NF-35, and you can see the 

17 numbers, if you compare it to the NIOSH 

18 default, the values on that first line, the 

19 average values look pretty good, with the 

20 exception of strontium-90 and thorium 

21 isotopes.

22 DR. MAURO: But let me -- you're so 
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1 close to it, what are we looking at?

2 In the -- right now, in this table 

3 two, which I consider to be the one that got 

4 my attention, okay, I'm trying to understand 

5 what's going on, you're going to look, there 

6 is a green strip on the top, all right, that 

7 green strip, and you're going to see the one 

8 that -- the third column over, it says 

9 plutonium-239/240 in the yellow strip, okay, I 

10 don't know if everybody can see that.

11 Just above that, you see 6.3, 

12 okay. Six-point-three is microcuries of 

13 plutonium-239/241 per kilogram of uranium. 

14 That 6.3, let's remember that number. That 

15 number is the number that NIOSH is assuming is 

16 the amount of plutonium that's present in the 

17 uranium, relative now, the plutonium that's in 

18 the uranium, as being default.

19 So, every time they do dose 

20 calculation and they say, "Okay, this is 

21 estimated how much uranium was inhaled by a 

22 guy, because we have his urine data," we're 
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1 going to assume along with that uranium that 

2 he inhaled, there was also 6.3 microcuries of 

3 plutonium-239, for every kilo -- you know. 

4 So, that is an anchor.

5 Now, the question becomes, now, 

6 that number, can we say with a degree of 

7 confidence, based on the data in this table --

8 I'm sorry, the whole problem in telling the 

9 story, is the preface, to set the table, set 

10 the story, what are we looking at, because 

11 it's so easy to go inside here and use --

12 you've got to step back for a minute. I do 

13 this all the time.

14 Now, so, what we're really asking 

15 ourselves, listen, we've got a lot of dust 

16 data here. Look at the first row, called the 

17 Titan mill, NIOSH site of -- in other words, 

18 35 separate -- and I'll turn it over to you in 

19 a second, but I -- but you have to get 

20 oriented, otherwise you don't know what you're 

21 looking at.

22 You've got 35 samples, okay, of 
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1 dusts were collected in 1985, and analyzed, 

2 for all these radionuclides. That's data. 

3 That's nice, for that building, and what we 

4 have is some information here and what does it 

5 say? It says, well, out of those 35 samples 

6 that were analyzed, plutonium-239, they found 

7 out that the number, the microcuries per 

8 kilogram is .9.

9 Okay, the first piece of 

10 information, well, at least the average, at 

11 least the average, out of those 35 samples, 

12 came in well below the 6.3. You know, you 

13 start saying, "Man, not bad."

14 You know, at least in this 

15 particular case -- and then you say, "Well, 

16 what about the range?" Wherever the word 

17 range -- I don't know what it means, when you 

18 tell me 6.1 -- 

19 MR. STIVER: Basically, the high 

20 minus the low, in that case.

21 DR. MAURO: Okay, so, but what's 

22 the high? So, it's about 6 -- is the high 
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1 probably around 6.1?

2 MR. STIVER: You can see, yes, the 

3 high is very close, and that particular one, 

4 since they omitted the Titan mill, yes, the 

5 highest low 6.1.

6 DR. MAURO: Okay. So, what we're 

7 really saying here is, at least in this first 

8 Titan mill of 35 samples, the highest that 

9 they saw out of a sample that was collected, 

10 of dust, was probably pretty close to what the 

11 -- what the default assumption of 6.3 was.

12 So, what I'm getting at is that 

13 when I look at this, and just take my -- just 

14 looking at it, you know, I'm just a health 

15 physicist looking at data, the 6.3 is looking 

16 pretty good, at least with regard to that 

17 particular cell, all right, and I think that 

18 what we need to do, is we all have to walk 

19 away form this table, looking at this data, 

20 and then making a decision, based on these 

21 data -- this is the only data we have, you 

22 know, as far as I know, that we can hang our 
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1 hat on. We have other data?

2 (Simultaneous speaking.)

3 Good, see, I'm wrong, remember, I 

4 came into this Thursday, that's when I came 

5 into this picture and -- 

6 MR. ROLFES: Keep in mind, that in 

7 1986 -- 

8 DR. MAURO: Okay.

9 MR. ROLFES: Following these 

10 events, in 1985 and these unusual occurrences, 

11 that's what prompted the bioassay for 

12 plutonium.

13 DR. MAURO: This is the -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: We're not looking at 

15 plutonium. This is the air -- 

16 DR. MAURO: If there is more data, 

17 good, we'll go there, but right now, to me, 

18 after all this, I say, "But what do I have?" I 

19 know there is problems, obviously, the records 

20 stink, the heroic effort that was made to 

21 recreate history, did what they could do, but 

22 it's an aggregate number. It's out there, out 
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1 there in stratosphere.

2 I don't care about the 

3 stratosphere. Even if -- you know, I want go 

4 down, some guy worked in a plant, a given 

5 year, working with recycled uranium and over 

6 the course of that year, is it possible that 

7 he was exposed to more than this 6.3 number, 

8 and if it is, that means this mix is no good.

9 And to the degree to which this 

10 table could help me get the defense out of 

11 whether or not that 6.3 is good or not, that's 

12 important to me.

13 Now, you may have other data like 

14 that, that we could look and make that 

15 decision. So, what that -- I'm sorry, I have 

16 to do this, with that as an introduction, I 

17 want to go down these numbers, because I'm 

18 going to tell you right now, in my opinion, 

19 this is -- I'm going to -- I do this when I 

20 get a little frustrated, this is where the SEC 

21 sits.

22 In other words, you can't get by 
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1 this one, you can't get by this one, I don't 

2 know how you're going to fix this problem. In 

3 other words, if we can't find the mix, that's 

4 -- everyone walks away from this table saying, 

5 "You know, I'm feeling pretty good about that 

6 mix," or, "I think I can fix the mix," if we 

7 can't get by that, I don't -- I think that we 

8 -- this story over.

9 We are going to be talking about 

10 other subjects, but I walked away from this 

11 weekend saying, "This is the table," and 

12 that's -- so, we may not even get through it 

13 today, but this whole -- in my opinion, we 

14 have other problems we're going to talk about, 

15 but this is the one that is -- the one that 

16 troubles me the most deeply, because right 

17 now, I can't tell you whether or not I think 

18 this is tractable, and I want to hear more 

19 about this table and whether or not the 6.3 

20 number -- and every other one of those numbers 

21 that were on the green strip, are numbers we 

22 could hang our hat on, and if we can't, can we 
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1 find a number we can hang our hat on? I'm 

2 sorry, just let me -- 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, let's --

4 boy, this has been stimulating conversation, I 

5 realize that, but I want to -- it is lunch 

6 time, and I'd like to take a break, before we 

7 get into this, really dive into it.

8 Also, to -- and Ted, I know this 

9 is your department, but people on the phone, a 

10 lot of times, we get excited to be able to get 

11 back into the conversation. We do have a 

12 Court Reporter that's trying to always keep 

13 track of who is talking and so forth, so if --

14 and Sam did a very good job of it, and others.

15 But explain who you are, so, that 

16 we can be able to keep a record of this 

17 conversation, so that we know who is speaking. 

18 I would appreciate it.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes, two things to add 

20 to that, it's -- one is, please identify 

21 yourself, because the Court Reporter is not 

22 familiar with all of your voices, particularly 
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1 folks who haven't been with us all along.

2 The other thing is, please, 

3 exercise a little restrain or courtesy, 

4 because sometimes, in your enthusiasm, you're 

5 trampling each other, and that makes for an 

6 impossible transcription, and it's also just 

7 sort of frustrating for each individual to not 

8 have their chance to say their piece.

9 There is time for everyone to 

10 speak. So, try to exercise a little restraint 

11 on that line. Thanks.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We could break 

13 for lunch for an hour?

14 MR. KATZ: So, we're going to 

15 break. It's about five after.

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

17 matter went off the record at 12:02 p.m. and 

18 resumed at 1:05 p.m.)

19 MR. KATZ: I think we have a number 

20 of other people on the line. I don't need to 

21 check on you all, but let's get started then, 

22 and let me just remind everyone who is on the 
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1 line, when you're not speaking, please mute 

2 your phone, and if you don't have a mute 

3 button, use *6, that will mute your phone. 

4 Thanks very much.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We'd also like 

6 to bring up too, that be very cautious to be 

7 able to announce yourself, for the Court 

8 Reporter, but also, try not to talk over one 

9 another. I know that's human nature 

10 sometimes, but on a phone call like this, it's 

11 important that we get all the information 

12 down.

13 So, if you could be cautious with 

14 that, we'd greatly appreciate it.

15 At this time, I'll turn it back 

16 over to John, so that he can continue on.

17 MR. STIVER: Okay, all right, where 

18 we left off, we were starting to look at the 

19 dust collector data from 1985, for Fernald, 

20 and that was table two in the handout here.

21 As John indicated, across the top, 

22 you see the NIOSH defaults. We have those in 
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1 units of microcuries per kilogram, uranium, 

2 and we really want you to look at -- let's not 

3 look at the top two rows, because those are 

4 the NIOSH site averages. That shows 

5 everything combined, without regard to the 

6 building of concern.

7 Now, let's look at the individual 

8 buildings, because I think this is where we 

9 really need to concentrate, given the 

10 different processes that are going on in these 

11 different facilities.

12 If you look at the third row down, 

13 this is the sampling plant. This includes the 

14 Titan mill, and the Titan mill was a -- is one 

15 sample in this set that was very high. The 

16 high value was 220 microcuries per kilogram, 

17 and the average for that value -- or the 

18 average for the entire plant, when you include 

19 that, is 38, and the NIOSH default there is 

20 6.3.

21 So, as you can see, we're 

22 considerably above that. Also, in that plant, 
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1 because of the Titan mill inclusion, we have 

2 high neptunium, which is a factor of 10 over 

3 the default, thorium-230 is way up there, it's 

4 just -- it's 625. All the thorium isotopes 

5 are high, and I want to just stop for a 

6 second, and we'll talk about the thorium thing 

7 here.

8 As you see, every one of these 

9 buildings, the thorium values are very high, 

10 and on thing we have to keep in mind here is 

11 that the plant actually used -- they had 

12 thorium campaigns, from 1954 and 1955, there 

13 was a -- one of the largest thorium metal 

14 production campaigns.

15 And so, what we're seeing here is 

16 probably not reflective of thorium levels in 

17 recycled uranium. There's probably a small 

18 component related to that. We can't tease 

19 that out here.

20 But my general feeling on this is 

21 that we don't need to dwell too much on those 

22 values.
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1 The one that is kind of 

2 interesting, though, you see the strontium-90 

3 values are high. This is the far right-hand 

4 column. The default value is 4.4, and you'll 

5 see the sampling plant and the metals 

6 production plant are quite high.

7 The metals plant is about six 

8 times higher than the default, and the 

9 sampling plant is just a little above the 

10 default.

11 Technetium-99 is high in the green 

12 salt plant, about a factor of two higher than 

13 the default, and that's kind of interesting 

14 when you look at this -- the green salt plant, 

15 remember, this is where the oxide is being fed 

16 in to into convert to UF4, and one of the feed 

17 materials you see from that table five was 

18 based on the averages that we looked at 

19 before, and we had the long discussion.

20 Those are very high in the 

21 technetium. These are just the average 

22 values, and we've determined that these are 
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1 not really credible values to be used in 

2 reconstruction, but it's illustrated, to see 

3 that in the process that they did look at, 

4 they have very high technetium, and we see 

5 that same thing in the plant that would have 

6 used that product, we got technetium values 

7 that are about a factor or two higher.

8 So, it does kind of lend credence 

9 to this idea that what's coming out of the 

10 high level waste and U Plant at Hanford, may 

11 very well have made it into the green salt 

12 plant.

13 One thing we started talking 

14 about, and never really got to before lunch, 

15 was the whole idea of using the performance 

16 specs to base our defaults values on to begin 

17 with, when we know that there are processes 

18 that are concentrated in this material. 

19 Two that come to mind, of course, 

20 being the metals production, where the 

21 material is reduced in the bombs, and then 

22 that material is then -- the slag is then 
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1 recycled through this Titan mill, and the 

2 Titan mill, I think is what is really 

3 reflective of what's going on in that 

4 recycling process, because every time you use 

5 that, you bring it back to the Titan mill, 

6 grind it up, recreate another slag volume to 

7 be used on the reduction phase again, this 

8 material is concentrating and then Phil 

9 Schofield can attest to the levels that can 

10 result over long periods of time from this, 

11 high levels of all the -- radionuclides of 

12 concern, and also, americium-241 is something 

13 that we need to be concerned with.

14 And so, we have this issue in the 

15 metals production plant, where you're seeing a 

16 neptunium, you can't -- the average is within 

17 the specs, but we have a high value of four, 

18 which is certainly above the default value, 

19 and the strontium is the highest of all, 

20 there, and tech-99 is not really all that bad, 

21 and then of course, we have a high thorium.

22 So, really, we're looking at, in 
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1 that particular case, the neptunium and the 

2 strontium-90 are high. Scrap recovery in the 

3 pilot plant are only elevated in thorium.

4 So, one thing we have to keep in 

5 mind here, of course, is this data set is --

6 we're taking integrated collections over a 

7 long period of time, and we don't know what 

8 period of time those were actually taken over. 

9 We know they were done in 1985.

10 It is the only data set that we 

11 were able to find, that really kind of can be 

12 used as a comparison to the default values, 

13 and I think what we're seeing here are those 

14 numbers, the defaults are really not high 

15 enough to account for the one data set that we 

16 do have, and we have demonstrated that the 

17 basis for those values is certainly in

18 question.

19 And so, I guess at this point, if 

20 some of the other Members would like to give 

21 their thoughts on this, I mean, at this point, 

22 I would say that we need to try to find new 
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1 sources of data that would possibly 

2 corroborate those air sampling data, and see 

3 if there is any other information out there 

4 that we could use to get a better handle on 

5 what would be bounding values for different 

6 Classes of workers, at different facilities 

7 over time.

8 So, Mark, you mentioned bioassay 

9 data being available for later periods of 

10 time.

11 MR. ROLFES: Correct, 1986.

12 MR. STIVER: Oh, 1986, and it's 

13 plutonium only?

14 MR. ROLFES: Both uranium and 

15 plutonium were present on site in 1986, both 

16 types of sampling were done in 1986, as a 

17 result of the high plutonium contaminated 

18 material coming on to this site, and workers 

19 handling that material and processing it, 

20 downblending it, and producing uranium metal 

21 out of it.

22 Ultimately, they had -- I don't 
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1 have the number of -- it is several hundred 

2 plutonium bioassays that were taken in 1986 

3 time period, as a result of the high 

4 transuranic contaminated materials.

5 MR. STIVER: Okay.

6 MR. ROLFES: These data that you 

7 are referring to here in table two appear to 

8 me to be process data, not necessarily air 

9 concentration data in the work environment. 

10 So -- 

11 MR. STIVER: Well, they are not 

12 DWEs. They are basically integrated 

13 collections.

14 MR. ROLFES: Right, correct.

15 MR. STIVER: And so, really, that 

16 was my other point, is, I'm asking you, you 

17 know, if based on your knowledge and 

18 expertise, if you know of other data that may 

19 be available, that could be used to 

20 corroborate these values.

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay, well, the 

22 bioassay data that we have for plutonium would 
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1 certainly allow us to bound plutonium intakes 

2 for workers that we exposed to the higher 

3 transuranic contaminated materials.

4 I mean, that's really, the concern 

5 here. This shipment that came from Paducah is 

6 really the sole shipment of greatest concern, 

7 and that didn't take place. This was the 

8 dirtiest recycled uranium and it was a 

9 completely different type of material that 

10 came into the plant, than the typical 

11 recycling of regular uranium, coming from 

12 Hanford and Savannah River Site.

13 The earlier materials that were 

14 shipped to Fernald were controlled at 10 parts 

15 per billion, and usually were much less than 

16 that, around one, three, five parts per 

17 billion. Sometimes, they approached ten, but 

18 we have got summary data from a recycled 

19 uranium report, showing the average 

20 concentration of the various shipments, and 

21 really, we've come down out of thousands and 

22 thousands of shipments, into and out of 
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1 Fernald, we've come down to a small handful 

2 that occurred, basically, right around 1980, 

3 late 70s, and that's what -- you know, we're 

4 most concerned about.

5 The more recent time period is 

6 really the concern for recycled uranium, and 

7 as I said, just looking outside the normal 

8 recycled uranium shipment -- 

9 MR. STIVER: The plutonium 

10 bioassays that you do have, for workers, were 

11 they the ones who were handling the tower ash 

12 in the Plant 2/3, to purify it, to extract the 

13 uranium, and how was those C- which workers 

14 were sampled?

15 MR. ROLFES: Plant 2/3 actually had 

16 very low concentrations of radioactivity in 

17 the air, just because it was a -- 

18 MR. STIVER: Well, I know it did, 

19 but I'm just trying to get my mind around what 

20 the groups of workers were actually -- 

21 MR. ROLFES: You know, I recall 

22 there were several different categories. I 
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1 mean, there were some, even forklift operators 

2 that had provided -- 

3 MR. STIVER: So, these were the 

4 guys in Plant 1, that actually received the 

5 material and -- 

6 MR. ROLFES: I'd have to take a 

7 look back at the data, to see what -- 

8 MR. STIVER: Yes, okay. Well, the 

9 reason I'm asking is, Plant 1 seems to be the 

10 -- by far, the highest values, by virtue of 

11 this being included in the data set.

12 But the Titan mill isn't exactly 

13 relegated only to this one Paducah ash sample 

14 that came through. I mean, this was a plant 

15 that was being used, to my mind, at least, and 

16 correct me if I'm wrong, but this would be 

17 going on, on a regular basis, whenever new 

18 materials were coming in that needed to be 

19 sampled or needed to be ground down to the 

20 proper particle size, they needed this Titan 

21 mill.

22 You know, five years after the 
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1 high POOS material came in from the Paducah 

2 ash, we still have a high value in this dust 

3 collector, that was half the maximum value in 

4 that shipment. It was 3,500 parts per 

5 billion. This is five years later.

6 So, the argument, that we've got 

7 workers who were wearing inline respirators 

8 and all this protective gear, to handle this 

9 one batch, I find that hard to believe, that 

10 they would still be applying those same 

11 standards three and four or five years later, 

12 assuming they are still using this mill.

13 I'm not exactly sure what the 

14 Titan mill looks like, what its configuration 

15 is, what kind of dust control measures are in 

16 place, what -- whether a person at a job 

17 station 10 or 20 feet away may be getting some 

18 of that material that is coming out of that 

19 mill?

20 So, we don't know that kind of 

21 information and without -- you know, we're 

22 looking at, at Simonds Saw, we had the same 
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1 kind of situation and you've got -- you know, 

2 near the milling area, you've got really high 

3 concentrations and you also have this 

4 material, you know, the air currents moving it 

5 around to different job locations.

6 So, you know, you can't just take 

7 that piece of equipment in isolation and 

8 exclude it and say everything is fine now, 

9 because we don't know what kind of cross10 contamination is going on here.

11 If you had air sampling data, DWE 

12 type data for that building and that period of 

13 time, that five year period, I think you could 

14 get a better handle on maybe what the actual 

15 concentrations might have been for workers 

16 that had been exposed.

17 MR. ROLFES: Yes, we can take a 

18 look for additional air sampling data, if 

19 that's what you'd like for us to do.

20 MR. STIVER: Well, what we're 

21 trying to get a handle on here, is really a 

22 bounding value, you know, given this data, 
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1 given that we no longer have much faith in 

2 these table five values, then where do we hang 

3 our hat?

4 It looks like this is the only 

5 data that we've got, right now, and if we 

6 could possibly supplement this data with 

7 something that's more pertinent to actual 

8 exposures, I think we'd be on our way to 

9 solving the problem.

10 MR. ROLFES: These data came about 

11 as a result of the high plutonium material, 

12 the exception, coming on to say -- 

13 MR. STIVER: Well, I know that's 

14 what triggered the interest.

15 MR. ROLFES: Right.

16 MR. STIVER: But what we're seeing 

17 here is, there is concentrations of this 

18 materials in residual quantities that are in 

19 the system, five years later, that aren't 

20 related particularly, to the exposures that 

21 took place during the initial processing of 

22 that material.
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1 So, we can't just isolate that 

2 from everything else and say, it was a 

3 different process and we've got that under 

4 control, and so, it doesn't make any 

5 difference. I think it does matter.

6 MR. ROLFES: Well, unfortunately, 

7 the person who is the subject matter expert 

8 from our team, on recycled uranium, he was 

9 also part of the recycled uranium team, he is 

10 not available on the call today.

11 MR. STIVER: Yes.

12 MR. ROLFES: We certainly want to 

13 make sure that we take any concerns into 

14 account, and we certainly want to make sure 

15 that we're in the right direction and make 

16 sure that we have a sound technical basis for 

17 assigning intakes to the other radioactive 

18 materials.

19 MR. STIVER: And plutonium, is of 

20 concern, but you know, we also have this issue 

21 of the high technetium in the green salt 

22 plant, which seems to be in inconsistent with 
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1 our initial premise about the high level waste 

2 uranium coming into that plant.

3 So, that has nothing, what so 

4 ever, to do with the produced processing. The 

5 concentration in the metals production plant, 

6 the strontium -- 

7 MR. ROLFES: Sure, but if you were 

8 to take a look at the dosimetric impact from 

9 all the various radionuclides that are coming 

10 on the site, plutonium and neptunium are going 

11 to account for the majority of the small 

12 fraction, in addition to the uranium.

13 I mean, the uranium alone is going 

14 to be the majority of the -- 

15 MR. STIVER: Well, I understand 

16 from a dosimetric standpoint, that it makes 

17 perfect. As a health physicist, a practical 

18 kind of guy, say, yes, two and a half percent 

19 or 100 parts per billion, it's basically lost 

20 in -- 

21 But we have this issue of 

22 concentration. We have this issue of 
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1 uncertainty, as to whether that 100 is 

2 bounding, even for the shipments that came in, 

3 when you look at the graph of the hoppers that 

4 came in -- or the table here, table one, 7,700 

5 parts per billion in one of the hoppers here. 

6 I mean, there's a lot of residual 

7 material that's found its way into the plant.

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And that 

9 recycling of the light -- the mag chloride is 

10 just going to increase those concentrations.

11 MR. STIVER: And there is something 

12 we don't have here, which is important, is we 

13 don't have anything for Plant 3, for the 

14 raffinates produced from the tower ash. We 

15 don't have any information about the guys that 

16 handled that. 

17 You could say that, well, it's 

18 being -- you know, it's enclosed in pipes and 

19 workers are protected from it, but the -- 

20 MR. ROLFES: There is a handful of 

21 exceptions, and I understand that there is 

22 certain interest in these and concern over 
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1 these exceptions. Those received a lot more 

2 attention than the normal routine material.

3 If you take a look at the 

4 thousands of shipments and the quantities of 

5 plutonium in the uranium that was sent between 

6 Hanford, Savannah River Site and Fernald, 

7 we're talking one or two parts per billion, in 

8 the earlier years, you know, 10 parts per 

9 billion, and really, we have a sound basis to 

10 use a 10 parts per billion control level for 

11 plutonium.

12 We defaulted a factor of 10 

13 higher, to 100 parts per billion -- 

14 MR. STIVER: All right, but you 

15 used a factor of 10, to be on the safe side 

16 and C17 MR. ROLFES: And you know, if you 

18 continue to look -- I mean, the real concern 

19 isn't until that tower ash shipment, in the 

20 late 70s, and still, I mean, if you consider 

21 the handful -- you know, we've got a handful 

22 of shipments, you know, 10, versus the 
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1 thousands that were done -- 

2 MR. STIVER: I know.

3 MR. ROLFES: I mean, to focus on 

4 one very unusual occurrence, when there was 

5 much additional concern by the Health and 

6 Safety staff, you know, to say that, you know, 

7 everything else could have been that way isn't 

8 a true representation.

9 MR. STIVER: Well, I'm not saying 

10 that it -- this is a whole issue of, you know, 

11 do you put everybody in the highest exposure 

12 category or is there the possibility that one 

13 person could be in that high exposure 

14 category? It's kind of a paradox, you know.

15 It's like, if you set an error 

16 rate of five percent, you know, any one person 

17 who engaged in that activity has a five 

18 percent chance of having a negative outcome or 

19 whatever, but take 20 people, one of them is 

20 definitely going to get it.

21 So, we have the situation where 

22 you've got a small number of workers, 
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1 potentially, you know, guys who were working 

2 in the dirty jobs in Plant 5 or handling 

3 raffinates, people who had been in the green 

4 salt plant, exposed to high levels of 

5 technetium, so, they're a small group and they 

6 might be a sub-population, but you know, in an 

7 SEC context, you really have to demonstrate 

8 that you can reconstruct the doses for all 

9 categories of personnel, for all periods of 

10 time.

11 MR. ROLFES: As far as technetium, 

12 though, if you take a look at the dosimetric 

13 impact, we don't assign doses of less than a 

14 millirem per year in our dose reconstruction.

15 MR. STIVER: Yes.

16 MR. ROLFES: So, I mean -- 

17 MR. STIVER: But your defaults have 

18 the values in there, so, you know, and we're 

19 questioning the veracity of those defaults.

20 MR. ROLFES: When we complete a 

21 dose reconstruction, we look at the bioassay 

22 data, reconstruct the uranium intake, 
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1 calculate the uranium internal dose in a 

2 claimant-favorable manner, and then on top of 

3 that, add in 100 parts per billion, 3,500 

4 parts per billion of neptunium in the 9,000 

5 parts per billion of technetium-99.

6 Technetium-99 doses don't result 

7 in anything.

8 MR. STIVER: Well, I see where 

9 you're basis for the 100 parts per billion 

10 plutonium comes from. I'm not quite sure 

11 where the neptunium and the technetium values 

12 came from.

13 MR. ROLFES: Okay, well -- 

14 MR. STIVER: Now, according to your 

15 White Paper, they came from that table five, 

16 and until we -- we argue -- table five is 

17 highly questionable.

18 MR. ROLFES: Table five?

19 MR. STIVER: That's the process -- 

20 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I mean, again, if 

21 you take a look at the other shipments, 

22 though, what you're referring to here are the 
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1 exceptions that exceeded the control level at 

2 the site. These are the ones that received 

3 additional --

4 MR. STIVER: Well, basically -- 

5 MR. ROLFES: Contamination levels, 

6 if you go back and look at all the other 

7 thousands of shipments, you'll see one or two 

8 parts per billion plutonium, three, sometimes 

9 five. If you look at the average, they're all 

10 less than 10 parts per billion, historically.

11 We based our 100 parts per billion 

12 default for plutonium, based upon these 

13 handful of shipments that exceeded the levels, 

14 and in addition, there were, you know -- it 

15 was during this time period, these shipments 

16 prompted the plutonium bioassays that we 

17 reviewed.

18 MR. STIVER: No, I understand, but 

19 what you -- where do you get the neptunium 

20 value of 3,500? Where did that come from?

21 MR. ROLFES: That was based upon 

22 the ratios, I believe, that was -- I'd have to 
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1 ask our subject matter expert, but I believe 

2 that was based upon the relative production of 

3 neptunium. I don't know if that was based 

4 upon actual measurement data. I don't know if 

5 that was -- 

6 MR. STIVER: Well, if it was based 

7 on table five, we know it's not actual 

8 measurements. Jim Warner gave a pretty 

9 compelling argument, why we wouldn't believe 

10 that.

11 MR. ROLFES: It could just be from, 

12 you know, first principles, you know, the 

13 production of neptunium in a reactor. I mean, 

14 that's -- I'd have to check on that.

15 MR. STIVER: Yes, the values change 

16 a lot, and looking at magnesium fluoride, I 

17 keep getting back to that, but I look at the 

18 statistical basis for this, that was provided 

19 in attachment one, to the 2000B, and there is 

20 100 times difference between the bootstrap 

21 mean and the high value.

22 That doesn't say that -- you know, 
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1 they could be a few exceptions, but when you 

2 look at the log-normal means, you might end up 

3 with factor of four higher on that. 

4 So, I've got a problem with that 

5 3,500 number, and the 9,000 number, and 

6 granted, I know technetium doesn't contribute 

7 much to dose, but you have it in there. It's 

8 obviously there for a reason. It was 

9 measured. It was considered important at the 

10 time that these tables were produced. You 

11 have the other fission products that really 

12 aren't accounted for. We don't know what the 

13 situation with cesium is. The value seems 

14 exceedingly high.

15 But we have the strontium-90 

16 issue. We have the concentration issue in the 

17 metals and in Plant 1. 

18 I guess, we've just got to come to 

19 some kind of consensus here. Maybe not today, 

20 but it would be nice if we could do it today, 

21 as to what is a bounding value that's 

22 acceptable and what is the technical basis for 
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1 it?

2 DR. MAURO: I stepped out for a 

3 minute. I had to do something important, that 

4 I had to get something, so, I apologize for 

5 that.

6 So, I may be asking a question 

7 that you already talked about, while I was 

8 out, but I'm looking at table two, metal 

9 production, this is number 5, what -- and I 

10 when I read this, I say, what is it telling 

11 me?

12 So, okay, it was 14 dust sample 

13 collections and basically, the highest value 

14 of plutonium that was observed is this 5.19, 

15 that's the upper range, which is probably 

16 close to 5.19 microcuries per kilogram of 

17 uranium.

18 Okay, so, one would argue that 

19 well, out of the 14, the highest values, 

20 knocking on the door of your 6.3, okay. 

21 Now, on first blush, one would 

22 say, that looks like it's okay, right? But 
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1 then I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, 

2 what is this 5.19?

3 This is -- as it visualize it, 

4 there is a building, the building 5, is that 

5 what that is?

6 MR. STIVER: This is building 5, 

7 the metal production.

8 DR. MAURO: Now, we've got a 

9 building, all right, and it's got all these 

10 different areas, HVAC systems with headers 

11 going to each room, headers come up and meet, 

12 they go up a stack some place, and some place 

13 along the line, there is a filter collector. 

14 So, it's an integrator, all right.

15 MR. STIVER: It's an integrator.

16 DR. MAURO: Integrator, so, it's 

17 collecting dust that's coming from a lot of 

18 different locations, all right.

19 Now, so, now, right off the bat, 

20 watch out a little bit, that means this 5.19, 

21 that was the highest value of the 14 samples. 

22 It represents, though, the average 
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1 concentration in the building, because it's 

2 drawing from the entire building.

3 So, in theory, in my mind, there 

4 could have been some locations that are 

5 relatively low, and others, you know, if 

6 different campaigns were going on, different 

7 mixes were being used.

8 Then I say, but not only that, 

9 that 5.19, that is the dust that's coming from 

10 the building, going up the ducts. How long C11 how many -- is this like one month worth of --

12 MR. STIVER: We don't know that. 

13 We don't know what the time integration on 

14 that.

15 DR. MAURO: So, this could be 

16 years?

17 MR. ROLFES: Conceivably.

18 DR. MAURO: Okay, let's make 

19 believe this is, okay, let's say, 5.19 

20 represents the highest of 14 measurements of 

21 dust that was collected that represented the 

22 average dust loading in a building over some 
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1 extended period of time, could be months, 

2 could be years, don't know.

3 So, then I ask myself a question, 

4 is it possible that at a particular location 

5 in that building, in a particular year, that 

6 the number of the actual ratio, is a lot 

7 higher than 5.19?

8 I can't -- I don't know that, and 

9 the -- 

10 MR. STIVER: You can't say that it 

11 isn't, because -- 

12 DR. MAURO: You can't say it is. 

13 You can't say it isn't. 

14 So, one of my problems has always 

15 been, is whenever we've been talking about 

16 recycled uranium, we're always talking about 

17 it in the aggregate. We've got this -- for 

18 example, you know, you've got a sample that 

19 represents some kind of integration over space 

20 and time that may be the highest value in that 

21 building, out of 14, which is certainly, in 

22 your favor, but at the same time, I don't want 
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1 to be surprised and find out, well, you know 

2 what? In this year, in this portion of the 

3 building, there was a shipment that came in, 

4 that some group of workers worked on, that 

5 could have been 10 times higher than that. I 

6 don't know. I don't know, one way or the 

7 other. Maybe not.

8 But you see, this is the -- the 

9 way I look at it is, I just let the data tell 

10 me what it tells me. 

11 Now, an argument could be made, I 

12 heard you say something very important, do we 

13 have actual samples of the -- I picture these 

14 trains showing up at the back door of Fernald, 

15 carrying loads of uranium. Were they sampled? 

16 Each time -- before, they were let in the 

17 door, and they showed up and they went into 

18 their various campaigns for recycling.

19 Is there samples that were taken 

20 to confirm what the plutonium levels were in 

21 the stuff that arrived at the door, or we 

22 don't have data like that?
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1 MR. ROLFES: I've seen bits and 

2 pieces of it. There are certainly, uranium 

3 samples that were taken and process samples 

4 and things.

5 As far as, you know, how much we 

6 would have, a better place to find it might 

7 also be the originators of the material, you 

8 know, where the material originally came from, 

9 where it was shipped from, to Fernald.

10 MR. STIVER: Yes.

11 MR. ROLFES: So, it's in the -- 

12 DR. MAURO: If I could have hung my 

13 hat on the spec, you know -- we heard a story 

14 this morning, you know, you can't -- 

15 But we heard enough today, you say 

16 we've got to be very cautious, saying that 

17 everything always was put into the spec.

18 I'm sort of like, saying, well, 

19 listen, I can't put my money on that. So, 

20 what I'm left with is this data, okay, and I 

21 say, all right, what can I do with this data, 

22 and the data tells me that on average, when 
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1 you integrate over space and time, several of 

2 the -- certainly, I would say the scrap 

3 recovery, well, you know, you got 4.54, 

4 knocking on the door of the 6.3, and it is 

5 possible, over some relatively short period of 

6 time, or some location, you could have been 

7 much about that? I don't know.

8 Of course, we got to these other 

9 ones, you probably talked about the sampling 

10 plant. Is there any reason why we're just 

11 disregarding the -- 

12 MR. STIVER: You were out.

13 DR. MAURO: I was out, when you 

14 talked about that?

15 MR. STIVER: It was kind of 

16 intimately related to Plant 5, because there 

17 is this process by which the slag comes back 

18 through the sampling plant and this Titan mill 

19 is used to reprocess it.

20 DR. MAURO: Is this within play or 

21 not? Is there a reason to take this off the 

22 table?
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1 MR. STIVER: Absolutely not. I 

2 think it's got to stay in.

3 DR. MAURO: Well, I mean, do you 

4 agree that the Titan plant, the dust -- the 

5 dust the workers might have experienced at the 

6 -- at sampling plant one, needs to be part of 

7 the -- at play, and we have to factor that in.

8 What do you do when you realize 

9 that you average 38, as compared to 6.3? We 

10 have to move off the -- in other words, are we 

11 off by this factor of whatever the multiplier 

12 is, five, six?

13 In other words, is the 6.3 too 

14 low, when it comes to Plant 1, sampling plant? 

15 I mean, that's what it tells me, and if it 

16 is, then that means that something -- you 

17 know, the number right now that you're using 

18 is not going to work, but there may be a good 

19 reason to take it off the table. Is there any 

20 reason why you'd want to disregard the 

21 sampling plant Titan mill data, what we're 

22 looking at there, that 38 number and the 219?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Well, these are dust 

2 collectors, essentially, not occupational air 

3 concentrations, and so, it's a little bit 

4 different. It's sort of like taking a process 

5 sample to understand -- 

6 DR. MAURO: Okay, good, so, you're 

7 saying that this air that's being collected, 

8 okay, I could see that, stay with me. 

9 So, you've got a glove box and 

10 you're venting that glove box. Well, it would 

11 be crazy to say that the air the person is 

12 breathing is the same as the air in the glove 

13 box. If that's the case, then I back away.

14 But if that dust sample really 

15 represents the integration of the air in the 

16 building that's being headed on, and going out 

17 and it hits this filter, then the people in 

18 the building, on average, are experiencing 

19 38.05, and you're saying that's not true?

20 MR. ROLFES: It's not 

21 representative of the air concentrations. 

22 It's more of a process related, I mean -- 
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1 DR. MAURO: Do we know that? 

2 That's important.

3 MR. ROLFES: The Titan 

4 concentrations -- yes, maybe Bob Morris or Mel 

5 Chew could verify, you know.

6 What we're talking about is table 

7 two in this handout, and I, unfortunately, I 

8 know you guys don't have that, but what --

9 we're discussing the Titan mill data, and 

10 we've got some different ratios of the 

11 concentrations which appear to exceed our 

12 defaults in the Technical Basis Document for 

13 Fernald.

14 We've got some, you know, 

15 plutonium samples taken from the Titan mill --

16 or taken from -- some process samples, 

17 essentially, is what I believe they are, taken 

18 from the Titan mill, which indicate, you know, 

19 higher concentrations of plutonium and 

20 neptunium.

21 Is that data -- that's not 

22 reflective of the air concentrations in the 
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1 operational plant. That is more of a process 

2 sample. If you might be able to, you know, 

3 correct me if I'm wrong, or elaborate on that, 

4 I'd appreciate it. Mel or Bob?

5 MR. ALVAREZ: I think we've got to 

6 defer that to Bryce, when he's available.

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

8 DR. MAURO: I think we just -- so, 

9 see, I am convinced that if we all look --

10 looking at the data, and we all understand 

11 what the data means, there's not going to be 

12 any disagreement around this table. We have 

13 to just understand what we're looking at.

14 The only disagreement would be 

15 weight of evidence. There might be different 

16 judgments, but I don't want there to be any 

17 disagreement of factual information.

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: I agree with that.

19 So, I want to understand what that 

20 38 is, and if we all agree that 38 represents 

21 air that people could have been breathing, and 

22 it represents average for a building that 
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1 perhaps, extends over a long period of time, 

2 that tells me very clearly, that your default 

3 6.3 is not going to work.

4 MR. STIVER: Hey, John, can I say 

5 something here?

6 DR. MAURO: Sure.

7 MR. STIVER: I think what have here 

8 is we have a particular piece of equipment 

9 within a sampling plant, and the question, in 

10 my mind, for the purposes of dose 

11 reconstruction is, is that sample -- or is 

12 that plant -- this is taken from the dust 

13 collector, so, I assume it's like a big funnel 

14 up above the piece of machinery, like we saw 

15 at Simonds Saw, when you went for the visit 

16 there.

17 And so, this stuff is sucking up 

18 all this dust, while these guys are working 

19 there, and there was a filter or some kind of 

20 sampling mechanism up there that integrates 

21 over a period of time, and we don't know what 

22 that time period is. It could be a week. It 
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1 could be a month. It could be a year. It 

2 could be multiple years.

3 What concerns me, is there 

4 potential -- and it's not going to necessarily 

5 represent an entire building. It's going to 

6 represent some portion of a building, for 

7 certain workers who were involved in that 

8 process, and to what extent is that dust 

9 collector efficient at removing that material 

10 and to what extent are other workers in the 

11 vicinity of that mill subjected to that 

12 concentration?

13 DR. MAURO: So, when you call this 

14 a dust collector, is this something, like a 

15 device that was installed to help clean the 

16 air before people breathe it, or is it just 

17 the dust that's collected at the back end of 

18 the process, before it's exhausted, so you get 

19 a sample of the air, before it's exhausted?

20 MR. BEATTY: Most of them backed 

21 off the process equipment, they pulled back in 

22 and sent it up through the dust collector, 
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1 before it goes out of the plant.

2 DR. MAURO: Okay, are the people 

3 that are working -- are they breathing in the

4 same air that's going up to the dust 

5 collectors?

6 MR. BEATTY: No.

7 DR. MAURO: They are not? 

8 MR. STIVER: It's integrating. 

9 It's concentrating. 

10 DR. MAURO: It's higher? The stuff 

11 is going to the dust collector -- it's 

12 concentrated, the dust -- so, really, then -- 

13 MR. STIVER: This is on per uranium 

14 basis here. So, this is the fraction -- 

15 DR. MAURO: It's the ratio? Oh, I'm 

16 sorry, you're right, it doesn't matter.

17 MR. STIVER: Right.

18 DR. MAURO: It doesn't matter.

19 MR. STIVER: Also, adds another 

20 wrinkle into this issue -- 

21 DR. MAURO: It doesn't matter.

22 MR. STIVER: The other wrinkle is, 
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1 you might have had -- 

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: Five years of 

3 processing after the -- 

4 MR. STIVER: Yes, but what if you 

5 have one -- 

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: One week of 

7 processing -- 

8 DR. MAURO: I got lost in the 

9 woods, you're absolutely right.

10 MR. STIVER: You could dilute --

11 that's the other factor, nobody has talked 

12 about a dilution factor.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: One person at a 

14 time, please.

15 MR. STIVER: Okay.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: It was hard to get 

17 in between -- 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I know, between 

19 John and them -- 

20 MR. STIVER: I guess if you just 

21 had one week -- or just the one short period 

22 of time, whatever it happens to be, where 
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1 you're handling this plutonium, and then you 

2 had a year or two of just uranium, and you can 

3 see how the dilution is coming into play here.

4 This 38 may actually be --

5 referring to that week when the material was 

6 present, it might be 400 or some other higher 

7 number.

8 DR. MAURO: It's a ratio.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can anyone tell me 

10 why this report -- why this study was done? 

11 Is there are report that goes with the study? 

12 It may just be that I've forgotten, to this 

13 point.

14 MR. STIVER: I believe there is a 

15 1987 -- 

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: What was the 

17 intent of the research, is what I'm getting 

18 at?

19 MR. STIVER: I think it was just to 

20 try to begin to get some sort of handle on 

21 what the -- 

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think it was --
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1 if it's anything like the similar sampling I 

2 saw at Paducah and other places, it was to 

3 establish presence. They were concerned, 

4 where did they have plutonium and neptunium to 

5 get, and really, it was to establish presence.

6 I don't think you're going to get 

7 -- I don't think this is representative either 

8 way, high or low, necessarily, because I can 

9 see a dilution factor, but I can also see 

10 Mark's point, and that is it's concentrating 

11 it from a processing -- 

12 DR. MAURO: Well, it's the ratio, 

13 you see, the -- I was corrected. In other 

14 words, it doesn't really matter. 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: But the ratio is 

16 affected by later processing, if it's done 

17 five years after -- 

18 MR. STIVER: But if anything, it's 

19 going to be a diluting factor, if you're not 

20 -- 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, either way, 

22 it's kind of like -- 
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1 DR. MAURO: No, it only could be 

2 worse. In other words, if we're looking at an 

3 integration -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: The ratio would go 

5 lower, right?

6 DR. MAURO: It's only -- 

7 MR. STIVER: It's going to go down 

8 if you dilute it out.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Assuming you're 

10 doing pure uranium - 

11 MR. STIVER: Yes, yes. 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: It could only go 

13 down after that Paducah --

14 (Simultaneous speaking.)

15 MR. STIVER: Well, another problem 

16 is, the other one we get -- well, we're 

17 talking about the sampling plant, that would 

18 probably be true.

19 Although you might actually have 

20 an increase due to what's going on in the 

21 metals production plant, because you 

22 concentrate the material in the slag, and then 
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1 you process it in Plant 1, you're adding more 

2 material in, every time you go through that

3 cycle.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, the flow, but 

5 -- 

6 MR. STIVER: Yes, assuming that you 

7 just had a simple flow diagram, but for this 

8 plant, and the other -- each time you go 

9 through the metals plant, you're adding 

10 another increment of TRU and fission product. 

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm just saying 

12 that there's a lot of uncertainty.

13 MR. STIVER: Absolutely, yes, and 

14 that was my point about the need for, you 

15 know, trying to find additional corroborating 

16 data, if such data exists.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Let's also look

18 at this time frame, too, when this was in. 

19 This is when the DOE orders were coming out 

20 that basically, we were going to one RadCon 

21 program.

22 We know, for a fact, that Fernald 
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1 was not run as a -- it was run as a heavy 

2 metals plant. That happened to go over to the 

3 DOE standards and start a lot of different 

4 monitoring and what I think you're saying 

5 there, Mark, is true, is that this is to 

6 establish what was really there -- what was --

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I would like 

8 to know, do you have the reference where this 

9 -- 

10 MR. ROLFES: No, I don't.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Because I would 

12 imagine they did a write up with this.

13 DR. MAURO: John prepared this over 

14 the weekend.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, but the 

16 sampling came from somewhere.

17 DR. MAURO: Oh, the data itself, 

18 the original data.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: And why -- you 

20 know, if it was in a report -- I'm assuming it 

21 wasn't just a random piece of paper.

22 MR. ROLFES: We need to take a look 
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1 at it.

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes, because 

3 maybe the authors will say, you know.

4 MR. STIVER: Well, we're not going 

5 to solve that today, but we can see if there's 

6 a reference to it.

7 DR. MAURO: One of the things we 

8 never talked about, and I'm not prepared to 

9 talk about it today, is that when you're at 

10 100 parts per billion of plutonium and you're 

11 inhaling that, it has dosimetrics that are 

12 relative to uranium.

13 If you're just inhaling uranium14 234, you know, whatever, say, 10 MAC, you're 

15 inhaling per year, you're going to have a dose 

16 delivered or dose commitment to the various 

17 organs in your body. 

18 Instead of that, you also have --

19 also, you have the 10 parts per billion of 

20 plutonium. What is the dose going to be to 

21 the different organs now? Now, we're talking 

22 about a big effect.
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1 Now, we're going to go back and 

2 look at those numbers, and you folks need to 

3 also, because it's important to know that is 

4 100 parts per billion dosimetric really going 

5 to change it?

6 In other words, all of the sudden, 

7 do the doses to the bone, let's say, that go 

8 up by a factor of 10, if you have 100, 

9 compared to -- if it wasn't there.

10 If it turned out to be instead of 

11 100 parts per billion, some people might have 

12 experienced 1,000 parts per billion, because 

13 apparently, there was some places where it was 

14 that high, some batches, somewhere. Does 

15 that, all of the sudden, increase the does off 

16 the charts, that that person would get, if it 

17 turned out, it wasn't 10, it wasn't 100 or 

18 1,000?

19 And right now, I have not sense, 

20 and I should, but I don't right now, have a 

21 sense for the magnitude of importance of

22 having these so-called trace levels of 
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1 plutonium. 

2 You had pointed out that 

3 technetium really isn't a big contributor. I 

4 know technetium-99 is a pure beta emitter, it 

5 takes a lot of it, it takes a lot of it to 

6 give you a big dose. 

7 But plutonium-239, no. Plutonium8 239 has a very high dose conversion factor, 

9 for different organs. So, it may turn out 

10 that 100 parts per billion is not 

11 insignificant, relative to the uranium 

12 contribution, and I think that needs to be put 

13 on the table, so we understand how important 

14 this difference is.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, you know, 

16 to be honest, we didn't get these until last 

17 Friday. You guys really haven't had a chance 

18 to be able to respond to this. We want to 

19 proceed forward with this work.

20 So, let's take a look at what the 

21 action item would be. One of the things is, 

22 is that we need SC&A to be able to write a 
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1 response to this, an official response back to 

2 NIOSH, so that we know what their stance is 

3 at, and John, this is at the time that you 

4 could do those calculations that you're 

5 thinking of, and so forth, and we need to give 

6 that to NIOSH, although, we know -- so, they 

7 know where we're coming from on this stance 

8 here.

9 My personal opinion is, is we 

10 could try to validate this and we're already 

11 into the same thing. It's the question of 

12 integrity of the information that we're 

13 dealing with, and I don't know if we'll ever 

14 come to that, but let's -- we've got to start 

15 out with a report from SC&A to NIOSH on this, 

16 and go from there.

17 Also, too, Paul, are there any

18 questions that you have? You know, I know 

19 that you're not feeling all that good and 

20 stuff, but is there anything that we could 

21 help clarify for you?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I think what 
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1 you proposed, Brad, is the way to go. We need 

2 to get a formal response from SC&A on this.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, well, I 

4 just want -- 

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm having a little 

6 trouble with locating the documents that they 

7 said were on the O: drive today, those ones 

8 mentioned earlier. I don't find them, but -- 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I have 

10 that trouble quite often, myself, but okay, 

11 well, we'll continue it on, and I'd like to 

12 make sure that these are sent out in the 

13 response, with SC&A, so that we have -- and 

14 that everything is PA cleared, everything is -

15 - 

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: Is there any other 

17 action for NIOSH, at this point? I mean, the 

18 one small thing that I asked was for the 

19 reference, for that dust C20 MR. STIVER: I've got that 

21 reference. It's in the report.

22 DR. CHEW: You have it, okay.
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1 MR. STIVER: It's in the White 

2 Paper.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Was Table 5 on the 

4 Titan mill, what document was that referring 

5 to?

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Table 5, I think 

7 he's talking about this -- 

8 MR. STIVER: Table 5, that was what 

9 NIOSH --

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: What paper was 

11 that?

12 MR. STIVER: That's from the NIOSH 

13 White Paper. It's an extract from that White 

14 Paper.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Which White Paper?

16 MR. STIVER: Hang on a second. 

17 It's the dose reconstruction considerations 

18 for RU contamination of Fernald. I believe 

19 that was one of the NIOSH White Papers that's 

20 been sent out, in relation to this.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Do you have the 

22 data on that one?
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1 MR. STIVER: What is it, 2008, 

2 Mark?

3 MR. ROLFES: Let me -- I don't have 

4 it open, and let me see if I can C5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, I can go back 

6 and pick it up. I was looking at more recent 

7 documents and didn't pick it up, okay.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, the authors are 

9 Bryce Rich and Paul Ruhter.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, okay.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: What's the 

12 reference for that raw data in that report?

13 MR. STIVER: Fernald 1987. FMPC14 2082.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay.

16 MR. STIVER: The history of FMPC 

17 radionuclide discharges.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

19 MR. STIVER: There is a whole 

20 series of authors, here.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's right.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I'll track it 
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1 down.

2 MR. STIVER: It's 1987.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Paul, that was the 

4 reference for the data in that table, the dust 

5 sampling that they did in 1985, or thereabout.

6 MR. STIVER: Correct.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, right, yes. 

8 DR. CHEW: Thank you.

9 MR. STIVER: And the raw data, or 

10 the summary data are included in the Appendix 

11 B of the White Paper that we just mentioned.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, thanks.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: But is there 

14 action for NIOSH? I'm just wondering about 

15 the source-term verification issues, and I'm 

16 not sure what we can ask, in that regard, 

17 whether -- you know, I think we've asked it 

18 before, on the raw data. I don't know if 

19 Bryce has anything to add to that, if he's on 

20 the phone.

21 MR. STIVER: From what Jim told us, 

22 it's not available.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You know, I'm 

3 going to be honest with you, this is part of 

4 the issue. This information and this data is 

5 sparse and convoluted, and why did we even get 

6 some of this?

7 That is the frustration with this. 

8 I've said it before, this whole program is 

9 set up like a big computer, and it's only as 

10 good as the information we put in there, and 

11 if there is questions of the material, that's 

12 where we get into trouble, and I really don't 

13 know how we would -- on this recycled uranium, 

14 how we'd be able to really verify it. 

15 I've dealt with the -- I know the 

16 errors that we've had in the programs. We 

17 deal with them for years. Yes, we've got them 

18 better, as we've grown up, but I really 

19 wonder.

20 So, I guess I'm looking to all of 

21 you, on this, because actually, what we have 

22 to do is respond to NIOSH. SC&A has to 
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1 respond to their recycled uranium and generate 

2 a paper for it, so that we know our stance.

3 But is there any -- you know, like 

4 you say, Mark, is -- 

5 MR. KATZ: Well, is there an 

6 additional explanation that you just -- I 

7 thought someone referred to getting additional 

8 explanation from Bryce Rich, about -- 

9 MR. ROLFES: Right, we were going 

10 to consult with Bryce, to see -- well, we had 

11 been talking about Table 5, -- 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: Table 5, yes.

13 MR. ROLFES: And whether they were 

14 processed, samples versus, you know, 

15 representative of the air concentrations in 

16 the buildings.

17 MR. STIVER: But I think that was 

18 what we already established, because that came 

19 directly out of DOE-2000B, that information 

20 comes exactly, right out of the table in the 

21 DOE report.

22 So, NIOSH really didn't do 
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1 anything beyond what has been done by DOE.

2 MR. KATZ: But we're talking about 

3 the dust collector information.

4 MR. STIVER: I thought you were 

5 talking about the --

6 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

7 DR. MAURO: If you recall, when I 

8 came in, there was this Table 2 I was looking 

9 at, and that's, you know, one of these, and I 

10 was looking at that -- the 38 -- the sampling 

11 plant, number one, where there is an average 

12 ratio of 38.05, and that ratio -- and my 

13 question goes toward, well, that's certainly 

14 higher than 6.3 and it's an average for a 

15 building. Is it possible that -- first of 

16 all, that number, that's higher than the 6.3 

17 ratio.

18 In addition, is it possible that 

19 there were time periods within that building 

20 and locations within that building, where the 

21 airborne dust loading over some time period 

22 could have a ratio that's even higher than 
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1 38.05?

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

3 DR. MAURO: And that's when we 

4 asked Bryce.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, yes.

6 DR. MAURO: That's when Bryce came 

7 in.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, this is all 

9 about the dust sampling and the -- 

10 DR. MAURO: The dust sampling 

11 issue. To me -- 

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: What we have for 

13 the source-term, what came in the door?

14 DR. MAURO: Or coming in, the 

15 shipments?

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, the 

17 shipments, yes. Beyond the DOE report, it 

18 seems like NIOSH didn't go any further than 

19 that, but it's -- they didn't get -- they 

20 didn't look for the source data -- 

21 MR. ROLFES: We looked at the 

22 thousands of shipments described in recycled 
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1 uranium flow report, and we took the bootstrap 

2 means, I believe right -- Bryce Rich had done 

3 that, took bootstrap means of each of the 

4 shipments and came up with the average, and --

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: When you say, 

6 looked at the shipments, you didn't go back to 

7 -- 

8 MR. ROLFES: We didn't - 

9 (Simultaneous speaking.)

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

11 MR. ROLFES: Right, we relied upon 

12 the report.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, and I don't 

14 even know if it exists. So, that was the 

15 question -- 

16 MR. STIVER: In our discussion this 

17 morning, it appears that those chemical 

18 process data don't even exist anymore, and 

19 that's really what we heard.

20 DR. MAURO: That's what we heard.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, that was 

22 their speculation. 
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1 MR. STIVER: Well, actually, he was 

2 involved in compiling that report, pretty 

3 intensively, Jim Warner was.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, well, what 

5 data did he use to compile? Somebody had to 

6 have the data -- 

7 MR. STIVER: A lot of that was 

8 based on process knowledge. They just -- they 

9 were best-guess estimates, and that's what --

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's a house of 

11 cards, that's the problem that I have. I 

12 mean, if there's nothing there, then there's 

13 nothing there.

14 MR. STIVER: Well, that's why we --

15 we determined that those 19 process means of 

16 bootstrap means, earlier, are not -- they're 

17 highly questionable.

18 MR. ROLFES: I think that was also 

19 one of the reasons that we decided to add in a 

20 factor of 10 conservatism. I mean -- 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, we're 

22 actually -- our action items, you guys have 
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1 got to generate a White Paper response for 

2 NIOSH, and I guess, I'll ask you, Mark, I'm 

3 not -- Bryce Rich, I guess we ought to -- my 

4 personal opinion is, is we've got to look at 

5 it, of where this data came from.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, that's going 

7 to be two questions, I think, the one on the 

8 dust sampling question, but then the other, 

9 where -- at least, the status report on, to 

10 date, have you found any of this raw data to -

11 - or the DOE report?

12 I don't know if it's turned up in 

13 the -- you know, or if they've even looked for 

14 it.

15 MR. ROLFES: Since Fernald was part 

16 of the Oak Ridge Operations Office at the 

17 time, you know, when many of the shipments 

18 were sent, do you if it could be at Y-12, or 

19 something, perhaps?

20 But no, we didn't go back and look 

21 for, you know -- to make sure the DOE averaged 

22 the numbers correctly and things, and made 
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1 sure that -- you know, I mean, there is -- I 

2 think we discussed this before and there is 

3 thousand and thousands of shipments, that you 

4 know, ultimately went -- I mean, it's just --

5 we could do a lot of work, but once again, 

6 it's not going to get us to, you know, a 

7 better understanding of, you know, what we 

8 have right now.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, validating 

10 it doesn't mean necessarily looking at 100 

11 percent of them, either. Some shipment 

12 records, you know, to corroborate with the DOE 

13 -- you know, you're just sort of validating 

14 it, not 100 percent validation. I don't know. 

15 I've got to believe some of these 

16 records still exist, and I would like to hope 

17 they would, anyway. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But you know, 

19 that looks -- so, let's have NIOSH check into 

20 that, and also, this sampling, what drove the 

21 sampling plan?

22 MR. KATZ: So, just to button up on 
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1 NIOSH, so, that might even be just a memo from 

2 Bryce Rich, to the Work Group, whatever. It 

3 doesn't have to be formal, depending on what 

4 extent he needs to dig, to answer the 

5 question.

6 MR. ROLFES: Right, we can send an 

7 email and let you know in an email and then, 

8 you know, if we find, you know, that we 

9 already have some of the data, perhaps you 

10 know, we can look at it and we can, I guess, 

11 take that step when we accomplish the first 

12 part.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

14 MR. KATZ: All right, sorry to 

15 interrupt.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, no, I'm 

17 having a real hard time getting a handle on 

18 which way we're going, because this comes back 

19 to the whole thing of the data, if the data is 

20 flawed, then -- and I'm just trying to figure 

21 out which way we can go.

22 We've already spent how many years 
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1 trying to get to this point, and where else do 

2 we go, you know?

3 So, Mark, do you understand what 

4 we're asking from you, for Bryce Rich? You 

5 know, I know that you want to refer to him, 

6 and go from there. It is clear, what we're 

7 asking?

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes, we'll look to see 

9 if there's any, you know, data that supports -

10 - we'll look to see if there's any original 

11 data from the recycled uranium field office 

12 report, for Fernald, and then, also, look at 

13 the source of this Table 2 results here and 

14 determine, you know, what prompted this and 

15 why -- why the samples were collected, what 

16 kind of samples they were -- 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Would that be 

18 sufficient and make everybody happy? Paul, 

19 are you okay with the way we're proceeding on 

20 this?

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm good on that.

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, SC&A is 
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1 going to do a formal report back, because we 

2 understand, you guys didn't have time to do 

3 this. We'll go back -- 

4 MR. STIVER: If we could get the 

5 memo from Bryce Rich, that would help us, in 

6 determining the quality of this data.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, well, that 

8 put number three into motion, and we've got 

9 issue four, which is radon breath data review, 

10 and -- 

11 DR. MAURO: Yes, I know folks 

12 didn't submit a report yet, and just so 

13 everyone knows what that is, there are workers 

14 that worked at the site, that handled, I guess 

15 we would call it raffinates, which included a 

16 mixture of radium and thorium progeny, the 

17 uranium separations.

18 And one way to get a handle on 

19 what exposure they were --

20 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

21 MR. ROLFES: Small quantity of 

22 uranium.
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1 DR. MAURO: Small quantity, very 

2 small quantity -- 

3 MR. ROLFES: Very small, about five 

4 percent of that came in -- 

5 DR. MAURO: Right, so, we took a 

6 urine sample, you do an analysis of the urine, 

7 you know, you're not going to be -- you're not 

8 going to find uranium in these workers, and if 

9 you're not looking for other radionuclides --

10 we know that they worked with these 

11 raffinates, you've got good reason to believe 

12 that others inhaled some radium-226, some 

13 thorium-230. How are we going to estimate the 

14 doses of the workers who worked with that 

15 particular product, with raffinates, and 

16 include stuff that went into the silo, the K17 65 silos?

18 Now, you came back with an answer 

19 and said, "Listen, we have a good portion of 

20 the workers that were doing that. We have 

21 radon breath analysis," -- the exhaled breath 

22 from a person contains radon, and it turns 
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1 out, there is a very well established, 

2 scientifically sound method to say, "Well, I 

3 could predict what the radium -- the radium4 226 body burden is," by measuring how much 

5 radon is in a person's breath.

6 If we review that OTIB and we have 

7 -- and we like it, that's a good way to do it.

8 Now, and you folks are -- your 

9 plan is that, well, we'll collect all that 

10 data and we'll develop a model, to say, "Here 

11 is all the data we have for -- on radon breath 

12 data," and in theory, you could build a 

13 coworker model that says, here is the 

14 distribution of radium body burdens, and 

15 workers that might have worked with this 

16 material had experienced some -- and on that 

17 basis, you know, for the people that we do 

18 have the data, we could reconstruct their 

19 doses. 

20 For the ones that we believe might 

21 have been exposed to this, but we don't have 

22 radon breath data, in theory, you could build 
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1 a coworker model, perhaps, assign the upper 

2 95th percentile. We're okay with that.

3 But here is where the challenges 

4 come in, and how we sort of left it, in our 

5 White Paper, how were you going to identify 

6 the workers that you're going to assign that 

7 to?

8 Now, there's workers that might 

9 have done it, but you don't know. So, you 

10 have this problem of saying, who are we going 

11 to put in that box? People who worked with 

12 the raffinates, with the radium raffinates, 

13 that's issue one, and how are you going to 

14 deal with that?

15 Issue number two is another 

16 subtlety. So, it turns out -- and I didn't 

17 know this, but Arjun explained it to me, and 

18 others also, it turns out there actually some 

19 streams, waste streams that were handled at 

20 Fernald, where it was -- the radium was 

21 separated. It wasn't -- and it just was 

22 thorium-230, without the uranium, with the 
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1 radium, so, now, you've got just thorium-230.

2 Well, what happens now? Now, how 

3 do you estimate the amount of thorium that 

4 person inhaled, because you can't use radon 

5 breath analysis, because there is no radium. 

6 You can't use the uranium in the urine, 

7 because there is no uranium. There is just 

8 thorium.

9 Now, what method are you going to 

10 use to reconstruct the doses to workers who 

11 might have been handling just the thorium, and 

12 one -- and maybe you could come up with a 

13 method to do that, but you're probably looking 

14 into that, but once you do that, you've got 

15 the same question again, who are you going to 

16 put in that box, the people that you're going 

17 to assign?

18 Let's say, you can build a 

19 coworker model, for thorium exposures, and 

20 you're going to have to decide then, who are 

21 the people we're going to assign that to, all 

22 right? That was the issue.
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1 MR. ROLFES: Correct me if I'm 

2 wrong. I believe we sent out a White Paper, 

3 prior to last Working Group meeting, on the 

4 dose reconstruction considerations for the 

5 raffinates, and that did include an assessment 

6 of the materials that went into Silo 3.

7 I believe that -- I'd have to look 

8 back, but I believe that we have a methodology 

9 that we proposed. 

10 But one of the things -- since 

11 we're discussing the first issue, the 

12 estimation of radium body burden, using radon 

13 breath data, the methodology we have basically 

14 had since the SEC petition -- as a matter of

15 fact, before that even, the first go-around of 

16 the Fernald TBD back in 2004, had a default to 

17 assign radium and raffinate concentrations to 

18 workers that were involved in dumping the K-65 

19 materials into Silos 1 and 2.

20 If we look at the data, the radon 

21 breath data, that we have referred to in the 

22 SEC petition presentation, I believe we had 
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1 done a dose estimate, using a radon breath 

2 sample, and provided that to the Advisory 

3 Board.

4 But if you take a look, we have 

5 gathered the data, the radon breath data, 

6 looked at the positive results and come up 

7 with a distribution of the concentrations, and 

8 it turns out that our default, in the Site 

9 Profile right now, is higher than what the 

10 actual data, the bioassay data indicate.

11 So, we have put together a report, 

12 and unfortunately, we didn't -- we were trying 

13 to consolidate all these internal doses issues 

14 into one consolidated report, over the past 

15 several months. That's one of the reasons 

16 that we had a due date, back in September, 

17 that we had hoped to get this completed by, 

18 and then it was -- you know, there were other 

19 shifts in priorities.

20 And so, the consolidated report 

21 didn't get completed, but we have individual 

22 reports for many of these things. This 
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1 raffinate coworker model, if you will, is 

2 embedded within this larger consolidated 

3 report, and we didn't break it out separately 

4 for -- you know, as a separate White Paper. 

5 We had hoped to get this consolidated report 

6 out.

7 But we've got something documented 

8 in there. If we can't get the consolidated 

9 report out in a short amount of time, then 

10 what we'll do is try to break out that radium 

11 body burden, or the raffinate discussion back 

12 out, and send it to you guys for review.

13 And also, look at that compared to 

14 the other reports. You know, early on, one of 

15 the indicators of these individuals that were 

16 working with the raffinate material -- they 

17 had quite a bit of high external doses on 

18 their film badges, just because of the radium 

19 content of the material.

20 And so, they were rotating workers 

21 out of the area, because of the -- so, there 

22 is some indicators that might help us to 
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1 identify who would have been exposed to the 

2 raffinates, and you know, when it comes down 

3 to it, for a dose reconstruction, if there is 

4 a uncertainty that the individual was involved 

5 in this operation, we would assume that they 

6 were, and we would assign that intake of 

7 raffinates to them, as claimant-favorable, 

8 benefit of the doubt type situation. 

9 DR. MAURO: Okay, so, then we're 

10 going to see a report.

11 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

12 DR. MAURO: Yes, great, looking 

13 forward to it.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, an issue 

15 for, I guess that's in NIOSH's hands, we're 

16 still waiting for the report on that, but 

17 we've also got the issue five, and that's on 

18 the radon release K-65 silo.

19 They have generated a report for 

20 that.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can we -- I hate 

22 to go back, but can we just go back to --
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1 unless we're going to be kept in suspense. 

2 How are you going to handle the 

3 thorium question, yes? Can you tell us --

4 MR. ROLFES: From what aspect? 

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: From the stream 

6 that John described, where it's radium 

7 deficient and it's mostly thorium?

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay, that would have 

9 been the time period, first of all, we're 

10 talking about the early time period where they 

11 were filling Silos 1 and 2, and they were 

12 processing the higher uranium content ores 

13 that didn't have the benefit of being striped 

14 of the radium at the process mill.

15 I don't have the specific dates, 

16 and I know Bob Morris is on the line. I'll 

17 give a brief introduction, and see if Bob 

18 might be able to add anything to what I have 

19 to say, or correct me.

20 But I thought this was -- 

21 MR. MORRIS: Mark, this is Bob. 

22 Give me a minute or two, to look at that 
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1 again, before you put me on the spot.

2 DR. MAURO: How do you -- 

3 MR. ROLFES: Bob, you're on. All 

4 right, basically, in 1958, I believe, there 

5 was a change over where they started receiving 

6 the milled ores from the local United States 

7 mines, and so, it's really that time period, 

8 where we were receiving at Fernald, the ore 

9 concentrates, which were striped of the radium 

10 bearing materials.

11 I believe what we had done, 

12 previously, is put together -- I know we had 

13 looked at the daily weighted exposure reports 

14 and looked at the concentrations of 

15 contaminants in the refinery, where they would 

16 have been processing the ore concentrates, and 

17 from what I recall, this operation was 

18 essentially, one of the cleanest on the site.

19 I mean, Plant 2/3 air 

20 concentrations, since it was a wet process, it 

21 was pretty low air concentration hazard.

22 But you know, the contaminant 
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1 there was, essentially, the thorium-230 that 

2 was of concern, and I'll have to rely on Bob, 

3 to hopefully -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: If you give him 

5 enough time.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MR. ROLFES: Basically, the 

8 process, ultimately, the contaminants, after 

9 they extracted the uranium from this ore 

10 concentrate, they sent the contaminants to be 

11 calcined and blown into in Silo 3.

12 So, these were low moisture 

13 contaminants that were blown into Silo 3, were 

14 striped of radium, but still had the same 

15 essential concentrations of thorium-230 and 

16 the other contaminants in there.

17 Bob, did I give you enough time to 

18 look at -- 

19 MR. MORRIS: Not really, I was 

20 still trying to find the original document.

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I know we had 

22 also spoken with a couple of long-time process 
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1 engineers, and personnel from the Fernald 

2 site, who were knowledgeable of the changes in 

3 the process and the material source, and I'll 

4 have to take a look back. It's been a while, 

5 since -- I think we sent out our report on 

6 this issue, back prior to the previous Working 

7 Group meeting in January of this year. So, 

8 from memory, I don't recall at this time. Let 

9 me -- 

10 MR. MORRIS: Mark Griffon, Could 

11 you put this on hold for about 30 minutes and 

12 come back to it?

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, sure, sure.

14 DR. MAURO: It's really a preview.

15 MR. ROLFES: Let me see if I can --

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: One of the 

17 things I want to bring up, and this comes from 

18 the workers comments and so forth.

19 You're correct, in the standpoint 

20 of that because it was a liquid base, it was a 

21 little bit cleaner.

22 But where a lot of the problems 
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1 came in, was the leaks, leaks from the process 

2 system, them having to be cleaned up, so 

3 forth, like that, replacing a lot of the 

4 piping and everything else like that.

5 That is when they really got into 

6 some of the big issues and some of the big 

7 problems with it. It may have been cleaner, 

8 because of the wet, but the leaks, the issues 

9 -- and we heard this from Fernald workers, 

10 when we were out here, it wasn't that much, it 

11 really wasn't that much cleaner, the process.

12 The process itself was clean, but 

13 the plant really wasn't that much better. 

14 MR. ROLFES: I'm looking at the air 

15 concentration data and the air counts -- I'm 

16 just reporting the data they gave to me. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right.

18 MR. ROLFES: I'm just relaying the 

19 relative concentrations of alpha emitters in 

20 the air, in this plant versus other plants.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.

22 MR. ROLFES: So, it's not 
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1 subjective. It's based upon what is said 

2 here.

3 I did pull up a White Paper on 

4 Fernald for thorium-230 and other associated 

5 radionuclides Rev. 7, the date is, let's see, 

6 back in November of last year, is when we 

7 would have provided it to -- White Paper, 

8 Fernald thorium-230 and other associated 

9 radionuclides, Rev. 7. Let me see if I can 

10 find an email, if you like, to give you a date 

11 -- or I can resend it, if you like.

12 DR. MAURO: I wasn't aware that you 

13 actually answered the question already. Is 

14 the question answered, or is -- was there more 

15 to come?

16 MR. ROLFES: Well, one of the 

17 intents, also, of the consolidated report that 

18 we're going to send out, this was going to a 

19 portion of that consolidated report, as well.

20 So, you know, if we have -- we can 

21 send this out in advance of the consolidated 

22 report, if you don't have it already, or we 
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1 can, you know, once again -- 

2 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I guess what 

3 John is asking is, is the position the same or 

4 is it -- 

5 DR. MAURO: You see, my 

6 recollection of thorium-230 was the way we 

7 were going to deal with it is assume it's in 

8 equilibrium with the radium-226, and 

9 therefore, once you know the radium, you know 

10 the thorium, and we're fine with that.

11 But you're saying that, no, you 

12 agree that there are streams where it was just 

13 thorium-230, without the radium, and you're 

14 saying this report talks about that, and I 

15 have to admit, I didn't know that.

16 MR. ROLFES: The Silo 3 material 

17 was a different material, different -- if you 

18 -- and that's what we've spoken about. Let me 

19 see if I can -- the basic topic of this paper 

20 was to address the concern of elevated 

21 thorium-230 concentrations, in the raffinates, 

22 in Silos 1, 2 and 3.
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1 We addressed, let's see, the 

2 radium dose from Silos 1 and 2 in a separate 

3 White Paper. So, this is -- essentially, 

4 should be the answer that you're looking for.

5 DR. MAURO: Then we should have 

6 seen it. My apologies, I wasn't aware that 

7 there was a White Paper, specifically on this.

8 DR. CHEW: Mark, I think I just 

9 sent it to you.

10 MR. ROLFES: Okay, all right. Let 

11 me see here, did you send my email that I sent 

12 out?

13 DR. CHEW: Yes, I sent it to your 

14 email account.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I guess the 

16 action shifts to SC&A reviewing that report.

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, I forgot to say --

18 MR. ROLFES: Here we go, thank you, 

19 Mel. I apologize, John, to cut you off, 

20 there.

21 I've got the Fernald thorium-230 

22 Rev. 7 and it looks like I have put some 
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1 comments in there, possibly, and it would have 

2 been dated January 6, 2010. Let me see, I can 

3 look for an email to see when I had sent it 

4 out, if you like.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: January 2010?

6 MR. ROLFES: January 2010.

7 MR. ROLFES: It would have been 

8 2010. So, this year.

9 MR. KATZ: You don't have to hunt 

10 that down right now. 

11 MR. ROLFES: I'll make sure that I 

12 sent it, and if I didn't, I can resend it.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's fine.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Moving on.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, SC&A's 

17 action item on that is to review that. I 

18 thought we had already reviewed that. I 

19 thought there was some issues with that. 

20 But anyway, let's go onto the K-65 

21 silo, the radon emissions from K-65 silo. 

22 DR. MAURO: I'll get started. This 
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1 has been a problem we've had for quite some 

2 time, and I did read the latest report that 

3 came into me on Thursday, and we have not made 

4 any progress, okay. We really haven't 

5 addressed our concerns.

6 I've reiterated, if you like the -

7 - this Piney or Pinney report, and I have a 

8 lot of reasons why I don't. I think Hans in 

9 on the line -- he probably has a lot of 

10 reasons.

11 You really have never answered the 

12 question, what happened? Why is there a 

13 disequilibrium between the radium and the 

14 polonium and lead, in the samples, and the 

15 idea is, the fact that there is this 

16 disequilibrium, it means, where did the radon 

17 go, and you can't ignore that.

18 All of the other arguments that 

19 you folks make, using atmospheric dispersion, 

20 using -- this transport, diffusion 

21 calculations, all these are, are second and 

22 third order methods at getting at a problem, 
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1 at -- that when you have primary information 

2 on this disequilibrium, along with these 

3 external gamma measurements that were taken 

4 before and after the head was vented, and what 

5 that meant, we feel that you folks keep side6 stepping that and not confronting it head on, 

7 because to me, you say, "I have a lot of 

8 different ways I can skin this cat," one of 

9 which is to go to these Pinney data, which is 

10 some -- I don't know how far away this was, 

11 or you come up with some diffusion model, 

12 transport model, you resort to those as like, 

13 your last resort, and it's so far removed from 

14 the problem and there's so much uncertainty, 

15 the list -- I could go on forever. So, I'm 

16 not going to go on with that.

17 Why don't you folks confront that 

18 fact that there is this disequilibrium, where 

19 did that radon go, and we're coming in -- and 

20 even modest estimates show that you had a 

21 release, at least not 6,000, but 60,000 curies 

22 of radon and you have not -- you guys never 
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1 said, "Listen, this is why you're wrong John, 

2 or Hans, this is why you are wrong."

3 This equilibrium does not prove --

4 and you know, I don't -- we all heard that,

5 and this gamma reading, you know, before and 

6 after the vented the head space, if those two 

7 facts together, to me, are so sound, and you 

8 really have not said why that's wrong.

9 You've got to tell us why that's 

10 wrong, and I'll tell you, I haven't heard that 

11 answer and it's not in the report. So, Hans -

12 - I probably stole some of your thunder, but I 

13 know you and I spoke about this on many 

14 occasions, but did I do justice to this thing?

15 DR. BEHLING: Yes, except I think 

16 there's been so much history, that it really 

17 needs to be some extent, summarized, to bring 

18 everyone back into the same arena, as to what 

19 we, or what I proposed in the two separate 

20 reports, and that's -- as far as I'm 

21 concerned, shows such strong evidence that the 

22 disequilibrium exists, and I think, if I may, 
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1 I would just like to verify a few things that 

2 were part of the history behind this whole 

3 issue, and summarize it and sort of 

4 systematically -- especially since we have a 

5 new person, and I'm going to ask the question, 

6 is Dr. Field in the -- at the conference 

7 table?

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No, he is not.

9 DR. BEHLING: Well, that's 

10 unfortunate, because I was hoping that as a 

11 radon specialist, he might actually take this 

12 particular issue on and review the historical 

13 data that involved the two White Papers that I 

14 submitted and perhaps, as a Member of the 

15 Board, and perhaps, as an adjunct Member of 

16 the Working Group, could assist in this 

17 effort.

18 MR. KATZ: Hans, I would be happy 

19 to invite him, but no one gave me a clue that 

20 that was of interest. I'd be happy to invite 

21 him, to look at any material then.

22 DR. BEHLING: Yes, as a matter of 
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1 fact, in the 2008 Richard Hornung and Susan 

2 Pinney report, he's actually referenced, 

3 because he apparently had conducted a study of 

4 radon induced lung cancer in that immediate 

5 vicinity, and as a radon specialist, I would 

6 assume that he will have a very, very educated 

7 background in understanding the two White 

8 Papers I wrote and perhaps, he can provide the 

9 Working Group with an independent assessment 

10 of what the information that we have provided 

11 to NIOSH and the merits of that information, 

12 versus what the response of NIOSH has been.

13 But I would like, if I have a few 

14 minutes here, to go over the history of what 

15 these data that I presented in two White 

16 Papers really amount to, and as already, John 

17 alluded to, we are talking about first order 

18 empirical measurements. We're not talking 

19 about a model that you can, in a subjective 

20 way, introduce various parameters and make the 

21 data fit to whatever you want to.

22 These empirical measurements --
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1 and if I have a -- if I'm given a few minutes 

2 here, I would like to go back over the data 

3 that I initially introduced in the first White 

4 Paper, then the issues that prompted the 

5 second White Paper, and why I still believe 

6 that all of the original data -- and as a 

7 matter of fact, in the second White Paper, I 

8 also introduced some additional paper, 

9 regarding the original 1995 RAC report and the 

10 1998 RAC report, that was not available in the 

11 original report, and was prompted by the 

12 intermediate discussions that have been held 

13 over the period of the last three years.

14 MR. KATZ: Carry on, Hans.

15 DR. BEHLING: Okay, let me start 

16 out. This whole issue of the K-65 Silo started 

17 when I reviewed the TBD for Fernald, and also, 

18 the SEC petition for Fernald, and that review 

19 of the Site Profile for Fernald occurred back 

20 in 2007, and one of the findings I identified 

21 there, identified this issue of the radon 

22 emissions that were based on a 1995 RAC model, 
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1 which had assumed that somewhere between 5,000 

2 and 6,000 curies of radon were released.

3 And I looked at that and I looked 

4 at the actual data that also were contained in 

5 the TBD, and specifically, I addressed the 

6 issue of disequilibrium, and we have 1991 

7 sampling data, that were samples taken out of 

8 Silos 1 and 2, that show a disequilibrium 

9 between lead-210 and radon -- radium-226. 

10 In the 1991 sampling data, this 

11 disequilibrium showed a 37 percent equilibrium 

12 ratio between lead-210 and radium-226. For 

13 the second silo, the ratio was 38 percent.

14 The following -- there was also a 

15 1993 data set which showed slightly higher 

16 ratio, but this disequilibrium is real, and no 

17 one would deny it. In fact, when we discussed 

18 this right about the time that we reviewed the 

19 TBD and the SEC, it was everyone's agreement 

20 that this disequilibrium was, in fact, an 

21 empirical fact that should not even be 

22 discussed -- disputed, and I think we can go 
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1 back on the records, to verify that NIOSH 

2 agreed with this.

3 However, NIOSH basically then 

4 defaulted to the issue that said, okay, we 

5 agree with the decision -- with the 

6 disequilibrium, but never the less, we believe 

7 in the RAC model and the reason we believe 

8 that the RAC model of 5,000 to 6,000 curies, 

9 prior to June 1997, is correct, is the fact 

10 that the radon accumulated in the head space 

11 and decayed in the head space, and therefore, 

12 was never vented out.

13 Now, I looked back and I looked at 

14 the 1995 RAC report, and in the Appendix J, 

15 you have data there, and the strongest point, 

16 as John already mentioned, and summarized it, 

17 briefly, there were measurements taken in --

18 by the RAC Committee, which is so surprising 

19 to me, because in effect, they have the data 

20 that they should have used in assessing what 

21 the radon releases were, and I included that 

22 as part of my Exhibit-1 in the original White 
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1 Paper that I had submitted, and that was back 

2 in November 2008.

3 For those who may have access to 

4 it, it is Exhibit-1, and the key issue here is 

5 the following empirical measurements.

6 They had, obviously, made major, 

7 major renovations to the dome in June 1997 --

8 1979, and that included removing of a big vent 

9 that was a gooseneck, 15 centimeter diameter 

10 gooseneck, and huge, huge numbers of cracks 

11 and fissions that obviously vented whatever 

12 was in the head space, into the environment.

13 And one of the things that they 

14 realized, if they tried to put workers up 

15 there, they would be exposed to very, very 

16 large doses, or dose rates, to gamma radiation 

17 and they intended to fix that, in addition to 

18 obviously, avoiding the venting of radon.

19 And one of the things that I 

20 looked at, and you will see in Exhibit-1 of 

21 the original White Paper of 2008, were dose 

22 rate measurements, and I want to mention --
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1 point out to you, these dose rate 

2 measurements, among the ones that I 

3 highlighted, were taken in May 1973, so, we're 

4 talking about six years prior to the actual 

5 sealing of the dome. In other words, the 

6 remediation effect that really made a radical 

7 change in the release rates of the head space 

8 air.

9 And the dose rates, in May 19 --

10 and I'm reading right now, from my Exhibit-1, 

11 the dose rates in May 1973 were about 70 to 75 

12 millirem per hour. 

13 Then in 1979, in June -- or let's 

14 go jump just a few months ahead, in April 

15 1980, this follows the major sealing of the 

16 silo openings. We now look at dose rates that 

17 are in the orders of about 200 to 250 

18 millirem. In other words, we jumped dose rate 

19 by a factor of three, as a result of the 

20 remediation effect on the top of the silos.

21 DR. MAURO: Hans, I'm going to -- 

22 DR. BEHLING: In other words, some 
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1 how or other -- 

2 DR. MAURO: Is there -- this is so 

3 important, it's got to be written down, 

4 because there's a lot of numbers here, and I -

5 - 

6 DR. BEHLING: Yes, and well, it's -

7 - I also included that same exhibit, as 

8 Exhibit-5 in the second White Paper, which I 

9 submitted to NIOSH and the Board, April 2010, 

10 and the same exhibit is shown in those papers.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes, I'm just trying to 

12 help the folks around the table, because not 

13 everyone has that.

14 So, you're saying, in 1973 -- you 

15 gave me a date and you gave me a 70 millirem 

16 per hour number. Give me that date and the 

17 dose, again.

18 DR. BEHLING: Okay, the date was --

19 and there is numerous ones.

20 DR. MAURO: Okay.

21 DR. BEHLING: And these were 

22 contact measurements on top of the dome and 
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1 the average doses -- dose rates then, at the 

2 time in May 1973, were about 65 to 75 millirem 

3 per hour, okay?

4 DR. MAURO: Okay, good, I wrote 

5 that down on a blackboard, Hans, because it's 

6 going to be an important number.

7 DR. BEHLING: Okay, and then after 

8 the sealing of the silo openings, there were a 

9 whole series of measurements, and this is in 

10 April 1980, the dose rates went to 200 to 250.

11 So, approximately three-fold plus 

12 a higher dose rate measurement, and that 

13 obviously was the result of the hold up time 

14 of radon that was no longer being vented, 

15 okay.

16 So, we have, after 1980, a three17 fold increase in the dose rate measurement, on 

18 top of the silos, so, it was -- 

19 DR. MAURO: So, Hans, I'm sorry to 

20 interrupt, because I want to make sure it's 

21 locked in.

22 So, the unsealed -- the dome, when 
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1 it was unsealed, it had cracks, it -- 

2 DR. BEHLING: It was about 70, and 

3 then it went to 200 to 250 -- 

4 DR. MAURO: Right, so before -- but 

5 it was unsealed, it was cracked, it had 

6 goosenecks, back in 1973, the dose rate -- 

7 DR. BEHLING: Yes.

8 DR. MAURO: Was 65 to 75, but 

9 after they corked it up, sealed the top, the 

10 dose rate -- 

11 DR. BEHLING: And that was in June 

12 1979.

13 DR. MAURO: Okay.

14 DR. BEHLING: Okay, and so, we 

15 increased the dose rates on top of the dome, 

16 by a factor of three, that were clearly, the 

17 result of the effort to seal up the dome cap.

18 Now, let's go back, and on that 

19 same Appendix J of the RAC report, and this is 

20 taken from the 1995 RAC report, we have 

21 another measurement in November 1987, okay, 

22 that again, it verifies the 1987, the dose 
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1 rate was 221 to 250 millirem, with an average 

2 of 230 millirem per hour, a gamma.

3 So, this higher dose rate was 

4 consistently demonstrated for years after the 

5 sealing of the dome, which occurred in June 

6 1979.

7 Now, again, because of the 

8 accumulation of high dose rates, they decided 

9 to introduce what was called a radon treatment 

10 system, RTS, and in my Exhibit-1 in the 

11 original report, and again in Exhibit-5, the 

12 same table shows that in November 1987, after 

13 the radiation treatment system -- radon 

14 treatment system was engaged -- let me just 

15 briefly -- make everyone understand what that 

16 system does.

17 This radon treatment system was 

18 basically, nothing more than a ventilation 

19 system, which removed air at the 1,000 liters 

20 per minute from the head space, and it was run 

21 for a full three hours, until the dose rate no 

22 longer dropped.
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1 And it is assumed that 97 percent 

2 plus of the radon that was now -- that had 

3 been in the head space, had been thoroughly 

4 removed, and guess what? The radon treatment 

5 system that reduced the dose rates to an 

6 average of 68 millirem per hour, and that 

7 coincides with the exact dose rate that you 

8 get, prior to 1978 -- 1979 time frame, when 

9 the dome was sealed.

10 So, the radon treatment which 

11 essentially avoided and -- up to 97 percent 

12 plus of the air space in the head space, 

13 reduced the dose rate to the exact same number 

14 that you observed to prior to June 1979.

15 Now, what that tells me is that 

16 the accumulation of radon in the head space, 

17 prior to the sealing, was about as -- the same 

18 as it was in the activation of the radon 

19 treatment system, meaning that all of the 

20 radon was basically vented from the head 

21 space. 

22 That's the only conclusion you can 
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1 come to, which means that the disequilibrium 

2 that you observed in the waste package was the 

3 result of all of the radon that was basically 

4 removed from the waste package, but not held 

5 up in the head space, but released from the 

6 head space into the environment.

7 And that, to me, speaks volumes. 

8 These are empirical measurements. They were 

9 part of the RAC 1995 report, and to this date, 

10 I cannot understand how they, themselves, did 

11 not come to look at this data, and say, "We 

12 have the answer," instead of modeling their 

13 5,000 to 6,000 curies per year, based on a 

14 model that relied on the thermal expansion --

15 diurnal thermal expansion of the air in the 

16 head space, in saying that if you pressurize 

17 the head space, then you will obviously expel 

18 some of that hot air that's build up in the 

19 head space, as a result of daily diurnal 

20 heating effect, and when I looked at the 

21 report again, and this is something that was 

22 introduced new in my report, the people from 
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1 RAC fully recognized that the diurnal thermal 

2 ventilation was really only part of the means 

3 by which radon could have gone out, and what 

4 it -- one of the things that I wanted to bring 

5 out, and I hope people had a chance to read 

6 it, was the issue of the Venturi effect, which 

7 I made reference to, early on, and that is the 

8 Venturi effect that's created by wind, that 

9 flows over top of these curved domes, and 

10 these curved domes, in effect, are very 

11 similar to what an airplane wing has. 

12 That is, when an air flow occurs 

13 over a curved surface, like an airplane wing, 

14 it creates a partial vacuum, and that partial 

15 vacuum, in an airplane, gives the airplane its 

16 lift. 

17 So, when you see a jumbo jet 

18 flying in the air, the lift of that airplane 

19 is due to the curvature of the wing, that is 

20 obviously creating a partial vacuum above the 

21 wing, and provides a lift.

22 Well, in this dome, as far as I 
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1 can see, this is what happens. When you have 

2 a prevailing wind that flows over top of the 

3 dome, what you create is a partial vacuum of 

4 pressure differential between the pressure 

5 outside the dome cap versus the inside, and 

6 the outside flow of air actually provides a 

7 suction of whatever you may have had in the 

8 head space, and prior to 1979, that suction 

9 basically evacuated the radon, as it built up.

10 In fact, it actually drew the 

11 radon out of the waste passage, as you would 

12 have in a house. 

13 The reason you have radon in a 

14 basement, if you have an underlying soil 

15 problem with radium, you actually draw radon 

16 into the house. It's not through natural 

17 diffusion. That is a minor, minor process by 

18 which radon enters the house. It is in a 

19 house, when you have a radon problem in the 

20 house, it's due to the operation of the house, 

21 meaning that if you have a wood burning stove 

22 or if you have bathroom vents -- ventilators 
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1 that are running, that small pressure 

2 differential between the outside and the 

3 inside of the house, it's a driving force of 

4 bringing radon into the living space, and this 

5 is what you have there.

6 And one of the things that I 

7 quoted in my report, the most recent report, 

8 White Paper that I issued in April 2010, was 

9 the very issue that was neglected, and I went 

10 back through the Appendix J of the RAC report, 

11 and they clearly state that, and I quote right 

12 now, because I'm on page 16 of my report, I 

13 report -- or I quote directly from the RAC 

14 1995 report, and this is verbatim.

15 It states, in pages J31 through 

16 J32, for those who may have a copy of the 

17 1995 RAC report, and it states the following, 

18 "For the present workers, it is assumed that 

19 the silo ventilation is the sum of the 

20 ventilation rate due to temperature effect," 

21 that I just explained, "and a ventilation 

22 rate, due to wind effect," and it gave the 
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1 equation of lambda V equal to lambda V 

2 external and lambda V of the wind.

3 Then they go onto say, "As 

4 discussed earlier, it is possible that the 

5 cracks in the silo domes are numerous enough 

6 and large enough that they action of winds on 

7 the domes could create additional ventilation 

8 in the silos, represented by lambda V wind."

9 "However," and this is important, 

10 now, "no data have been found to substantiate 

11 an estimate of lambda V wind, and since 

12 additional information has not been located to 

13 substantiate a value for lambda V wind, we now 

14 assume a value of zero."

15 In other words, what the RAC 

16 people did, they realized that winds would 

17 probably play a very, very important role, but 

18 because they didn't have a quantitative value 

19 for lambda wind, the ventilation rate, due the 

20 wind effect, they simply said, it doesn't 

21 exist.

22 And my estimation, based on the 
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1 empirical data, namely, the disequilibrium, 

2 only 30 -- about less than 40 percent of the 

3 lead-210 versus the radium-226, existed in the 

4 waste package, that was verified on two 

5 separate sampling counts, and the dose rate 

6 measurements taken on top of the silos, before 

7 June 1979, and after 1979, show that there was 

8 an increase, a three-fold, more than three9 fold increase in the dose rate, which when you 

10 introduce the radon treatment system, is 

11 reduced to pre-1979 levels, that again, shows 

12 that the radon treatment system which vented 

13 the air -- the head space by -- at a rate of 

14 1,000 liters per minute, had the same effect 

15 as the cracks and the gooseneck, prior to 

16 1979, meaning that there was no build up of 

17 radon in the head space, and to me, as far as 

18 I'm concerned, that, in itself, should answer 

19 the question, as to what went out, and I 

20 calculated what the source-term of radium was, 

21 and on the basis of the actual production of 

22 radon, I concluded that the actual ventilation 
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1 of radon during the period prior to 1979, when 

2 the dome was, obviously, mediated, would have 

3 been somewhere around 60,000 to 90,000 curies 

4 per year.

5 And I can go back and talk about 

6 the additional things that I was asked to --

7 when I introduced -- well, presented this 

8 information earlier, it was dismissed in 

9 saying, "Well, no, no, we believe in the RAC 

10 model," and that was blessed by the National 

11 Academy of Science. That was one of the first 

12 issues that was NIOSH's response.

13 Of course, I looked at the RAC 

14 model and the evaluation by the National 

15 Academy of Science, and they said, "No, we 

16 don't agree with it either," and I think they 

17 came to the conclusion that the National 

18 Academy of Science did not bless the RAC 

19 model.

20 Then, there was the issue of, "Oh, 

21 no, we never really believed that the RAC 

22 model was really the holy grail. We believe 
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1 that the Pinney model is really one that 

2 validated the RAC model," and I went through 

3 that, and I don't know if you want to get into 

4 that, but I looked at the Hornung-Pinney 

5 report that had a date of 2008, and I don't 

6 believe that they validated anything, other 

7 than the dispersion model, which is quite 

8 different from the source-term of radon 

9 releases.

10 What they validated was the Chi 

11 over Q value and it has very little to do with 

12 the actual source-term.

13 Then, at one of the previous other 

14 meetings, and it was Brad, who said, "We will 

15 ask NIOSH -- SC&A to respond, with two other 

16 sets of information," one of which was the 

17 radon measurements take with canisters on top 

18 of the dome, and I think I addressed that in 

19 my second White Paper, and the conclusion 

20 there was, the measurements have very little 

21 or no chance of really estimating the actual 

22 source-term.
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1 And also, another paper that was 

2 written by one of the co-authors of the 

3 initial RAC `95 report, as well as the second 

4 RAC `98 report, who then came up with a new 

5 release value that was a fraction, but it 

6 never explained how he came up with those 

7 numbers.

8 So, I think I tried to -- you 

9 know, I don't want to continue talking, 

10 because I think maybe I'll let the other 

11 people comment on this issue, but I don't 

12 believe that there is anything that I failed 

13 to address in my second report, that was asked 

14 of SC&A in response to comments made by Mark 

15 Rolfes, regarding these other two sets of 

16 information, that would potentially support 

17 the lower value as defined by the RAC `95 

18 data.

19 DR. MAURO: There is one thing I 

20 want to say, we just made our case, for why we 

21 believe we're right. NIOSH has not addressed 

22 why that's wrong.
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1 Now, I'm going to tell you why the 

2 Pinney report is not right.

3 You release radon from the cracks 

4 out of that stack, mostly likely, it's radon 

5 by itself coming out, none of the 

6 particulates, none of the lead-210, none of 

7 the polonium-210, all right.

8 Now, we realize, this radon gas is 

9 leaving -- the radon gas is leaving this 

10 thing, okay, coming out and it's flowing, 

11 okay, and it's dispersed, calcium dispersion, 

12 and now, you got some windows over here. I 

13 don't know how far away this is, a mile away, 

14 half-mile away, whatever, you made --

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: They were off 

16 the plant.

17 DR. MAURO: They were off site. 

18 Now, what happens is - 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, is that --

20 MR. ROLFES: Hold on, they were 

21 process -- 

22 DR. MAURO: Process buildings.
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1 MR. ROLFES: I think it was the 

2 refinery, Plant 2/3. So, you know, several 

3 hundred feet.

4 DR. MAURO: Several hundred feet. 

5 Now, stay with me, for a minute, all right.

6 Remember that the daughters have 

7 to grow in. In other words, you're going to -

8 - your collecting polonium-210, I guess, and 

9 lead-210, right. These are -- I think at 

10 least, maybe both, are alpha emitters, and 

11 it's these alpha emitters that are sort of

12 sticking to the grass, right, all right, now -

13 - 

14 MR. ROLFES: Embedded in it.

15 DR. MAURO: Embedded in it, they 

16 would stick to it, they decayed, the alpha is 

17 emitted and it leaves an etch, okay.

18 But now, I'm telling you, there's 

19 not too much lead-210 in the air here, because 

20 the tank doesn't -- if radon is leaving -- so, 

21 in other words, so you folks came up with a 

22 concentration of progeny, based on etching, in 
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1 the glass, and said, "Okay, based on that 

2 concentration," and it's an integrated 

3 concentration, you could back calculate what 

4 the source time would be.

5 But the reality is, there isn't 

6 any lead-210 and polonium-210 in the gas 

7 that's passing by that window, because it's 

8 too -- because what's coming out of here is 

9 probably mostly radon, without its progeny, 

10 and there is not enough time for the progeny 

11 to blow in.

12 So, you're going to get an under13 estimate over here, of what the airborne radon 

14 is. If you're looking at the progeny, the 

15 progeny may eventually -- now, the air handler 

16 -- it's going to take towers for the progeny 

17 to grow in. 

18 DR. BEHLING: John, can I 

19 interrupt? Actually, it takes only that long 

20 of time, because you're really looking at the 

21 in-growth of lead-210, which has a 22 year 

22 half-life.
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1 DR. MAURO: I was giving the answer 

2 to polonium, which is shorter. But so, what 

3 I'm getting at is, I was trying to -- see, 

4 just like we were hoping that you could come 

5 at us, and say why we're wrong, I took a look 

6 at your stuff and said, "Well," you know, I 

7 take the Pinney -- and see, now, why is it 

8 that you're coming up with source-terms that 

9 are grossly smaller, by a factor of -- now, 

10 you're down to about 300, instead -- you went 

11 from 6,000 to several hundred, and I think -- 

12 Now, why would the Pinney data 

13 give you such bad results, you know, when 

14 you're using it to back calculate, besides all 

15 the problems with meteorology, we're not even 

16 going to talk about that, and what it -- you 

17 know, because the wind is always blowing in 

18 different directions. We know that.

19 But even more fundamental than

20 that, there is not enough time -- if the -- if 

21 this is heavily radon without the -- but see, 

22 the particulates aren't going to seep out as 
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1 easily. 

2 The particulates, they are going 

3 to be sort of trapped a little bit more, and 

4 there may be some coming out, but if the radon 

5 -- you know, gas is coming out and it's going 

6 to flowing down and it's going to get to you 

7 in a matter of seconds, minutes, I don't know, 

8 and in those seconds to minutes, you're not 

9 going to grow in the progeny.

10 So, whatever you see here, is not 

11 the progeny and not going to be an equilibrium 

12 to radon gas, and I think there, is the 

13 fundamental, I guess, problem, with looking at 

14 the track etch.

15 I just thought about this over the 

16 weekend. So, you know, but I think that 

17 that's it. Why are we having this 

18 disagreement, and I think that that is the 

19 root cause to the disagreement, and why we 

20 think our approach to coming at the problem is 

21 a lot more fundamental and -- then using the 

22 Pinney data or the diffusion model, that was 
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1 described.

2 In fact, the diffusion model came 

3 in the report, that we just read, now, I just 

4 read it again, and I read it -- now, he wrote 

5 a diffusion equation of the movement of radon 

6 here, but I think it was diffusion, not 

7 invective transport.

8 MR. STIVER: But the one9 dimensional diffusion model -- 

10 DR. MAURO: Yes, now, you see, when 

11 you -- so, he's saying that oh, the radon is -

12 - moving very, very slowly, it's never going -

13 - now, this is 36 feet, by the way, all right, 

14 this thing -- I think from here to here, 36 

15 feet.

16 All right, now, he's saying --

17 what Sam was saying, well, listen, you know, 

18 if the radon -- once -- well, the radon --

19 when the radium atom decays, it turns into a 

20 radon, a gas, noble gas, it's going to start 

21 to move, and if it's only diffusion, it's 

22 going to move very, very, very slowly, and his 
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1 argument is, it's going to decay, and once it 

2 decays, it becomes the progeny, it's a 

3 particle, it's not going anywhere. It's stuck 

4 there.

5 Well, the point there, if that was 

6 true, it would be an equilibrium. You'd have 

7 the same amount of progeny as you would 

8 radium, but you don't. 

9 Now, so, you say, "Then how is the 

10 radium," -- now, wait a minute, then how does 

11 the radon that's produced down here, move up 

12 36 feet?

13 Well, the reality is, yes, you put 

14 a delta P across to here, because of this 

15 wind, and that radon is going to move, and you 

16 -- it's not surprising, now, that you're going 

17 to get a substantial amount of the radon that 

18 as it's being produced in the -- in this 

19 stuff, the raffinates that are in here, as it 

20 becomes radon, with that kind of delta P, and 

21 don't forget, this -- I don't know the 

22 temperature of this thing, but remember, there 
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1 is a lot of radium here, the thermal 

2 temperature, I don't -- that's another thing 

3 that's a driver. You know, you cause a 

4 chimney effect. 

5 So, what I'm getting at is, I'm 

6 not surprised that a lot of the radon, as it's 

7 being produced, or as it was being produced in 

8 this silo, is moving up and leaving behind the 

9 particulates, to a large extent, and the radon 

10 is leaving, and all of the sudden, you're 

11 fooled, you know, we're fooled by the Pinney 

12 data, because we think we're looking -- you 

13 know, we're looking at the progeny, which 

14 really didn't have a chance to grow in. 

15 It's got a delta P, by far, 

16 especially, you've got a goosenecks or cracks 

17 in here, that -- there's wind blowing over, 

18 the radon is going to -- and everything rings 

19 true. The gamma readings, they are -- I mean, 

20 there is the final nail in the coffin.

21 So, I'm telling you, I don't care 

22 if the RAC -- I don't care who said it, 
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1 National Academy of Sciences, you know, I 

2 don't -- Hans' answer is the right answer, and 

3 the releases of radon from that -- those 

4 silos, are not 6,000, it's 60,000.

5 Now, see after all that is said 

6 this is not an SEC issue. We could do it. And 

7 I hate to be the one to come and tell you guys 

8 how to do these calculations, but that's how 

9 you do it, and if you do it that way, the 

10 problem goes away.

11 DR. BEHLING: And let me just add 

12 this, this is Hans, again, just to -- on the 

13 basis of the strength of the data, we always 

14 talk about the hierarchy of data, which has 

15 merits in this world.

16 When we talk about dose 

17 reconstruction, we talk about the value of 

18 empirical measurements, the primary empirical 

19 measurements, and when you have, obviously, 

20 disequilibrium, a primary measurement it's not 

21 -- it shouldn't be something that NIOSH is 

22 even willing to dispute. We have, obviously, 
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1 disequilibrium.

2 Now, what happens? The original 

3 argument was that, well, the radon does 

4 migrate into the head space and then decays, 

5 but it's not released.

6 The truth is the empirical data of 

7 dose rate measurements, prior to and after 

8 1979, show clearly, that the hold up of radon 

9 in the head space was essentially equivalent 

10 prior to 1979, as it was in -- at the time 

11 when the radon treatment center was in effect, 

12 which is -- it completely vented the head 

13 space at a tremendous rate, and obviously, let 

14 no accumulation of radon occur. 

15 And so, what you ended up with is 

16 about 70 -- 65 to 75 millirem residual dose 

17 rate, which does not come from the head space, 

18 but that is the radioactivity that is in the 

19 waste package, below, which you essentially 

20 reduced it to a baseline level.

21 In other words, understand that 70 

22 millirem per hour is really the radiation dose 
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1 rate that is affected by the waste package 

2 itself, and has nothing to do anymore, with 

3 any of the radon build up in the head space, 

4 in their short lived daughters, and to me, as 

5 I said, these are empirical measurements.

6 Now, we're trying to compare these 

7 strong data measurements to something that is 

8 -- and I gave you previously, a parallel. 

9 What if you had a reactor facility that had a 

10 release point, a stack release point, where 

11 you had a very, very accurate understanding of 

12 what you're releasing, in terms of curies per 

13 unit time?

14 And I think we have that 

15 equivalent value, and then somebody says, 

16 "Well, you know, I was downwind with a gamma 

17 rate meter, and I measured something," and on 

18 the basis of a Chi over Q value and my gamma 

19 dose rate measurement that was taken 1,000 

20 feet or so from there, I'm contesting your 

21 dose rate measurement that you measured in a 

22 calibrated system, at the point of release.
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1 Now, anyone who understands 

2 priorities in giving strength to data, would 

3 say, "I believe the dose rate measurement 

4 taken in the stack, well over any kind of 

5 secondary measurements that you may have taken 

6 downwind, 1,000 feet," and then had to somehow 

7 or other, use that dose rate measurement, 

8 1,000 feet distance by means of a Chi over Q 

9 value, in order to end up with a value that 

10 you're now contesting as a release quantity.

11 I can't understand how anyone, in 

12 his right mind, would take that data and say, 

13 "I'll accept that data more than the stack 

14 data," and that's exactly what we have here.

15 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Brad, this is 

17 Ziemer, could I ask a question here?

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: John, I'm trying to 

20 understand fully, what you're asserting here.

21 Are you -- you're indicating that 

22 you believe that all of the particulates 
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1 played out as the radon is removed from the 

2 head space?

3 DR. MAURO: No, but I'm saying that 

4 it's preferentially, when the radon gas is 

5 being exhaled, for this chimney effect, or 

6 Bernoulli effect, all of the C7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now, the head space 

8 is actually filled with air, to start with, 

9 anyway, right?

10 DR. MAURO: Yes.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: So, most of the 

12 molecules in the head space are not radon, 

13 they are air?

14 DR. MAURO: Yes, okay.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is that not 

16 correct?

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, probably. I would 

18 have said -- I have to say, yes, yes.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I would think 

20 so. I mean, probably, billions of tons more 

21 air molecules. Now -- 

22 DR. MAURO: All right, we could 
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1 figure that out.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: But what I'm trying 

3 to get a feel for here is, obviously, you 

4 don't have instantaneous turnover of the head 

5 space. You've got to be removing air at some 

6 rate, and some fraction of that is radon.

7 Has anyone sort of tried to 

8 estimate what would be the residence time of a 

9 radon atom, that's generated into the head 

10 space, the average resident time?

11 I would think that you might get a 

12 fair amount, and this is just intuitive, now, 

13 I'm just thinking off the top of my head, you 

14 might get a fair amount of daughters, and I'm 

15 not sure why those wouldn't be exhausted with 

16 the gas.

17 DR. MAURO: Well, it's coming out 

18 of the -- 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Many of those would 

20 be, you know, attached to minute dust 

21 particles in the air. They attached to 

22 things, obviously. But why wouldn't a lot of 
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1 them be expelled, as well?

2 So, those are questions I have in 

3 my mind, but it's not clear to me, why we 

4 would necessarily say that everything coming 

5 out is pure radon gas, or mostly pure. Sort of 

6 intuitively, there has to be a residence time 

7 on a typical molecule --

8 DR. BEHLING: Okay, Dr. Ziemer, 

9 this is Hans.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

11 DR. BEHLING: I can give you the 

12 answer, because they did, in fact, based on 

13 the 1,000 liters per minute of ventilation 

14 rate of the head space, and I have to go look 

15 exactly how many cubic liters the head space 

16 really represents -- but I do remember, and I 

17 can quickly verify it by paging through my 

18 write up, the ventilation rate of the head 

19 space, with the radon treatment system 

20 operational was 1.2 ventilation rates per 

21 hour.

22 So, that's approximately what a 
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1 house has, when it is modestly sealed, during 

2 the winter months, when you have radon in the 

3 --

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, it's the -- 

5 DR. BEHLING: Ventilation rate of 

6 about 1.2 per hour.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, in those 

8 cases, you get a fair build up -- 

9 DR. BEHLING: Yes.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Not necessarily 

11 equilibrium, but you certainly get build up of 

12 the daughters, and those don't -- a lot of 

13 those do, you're quite right, attach to 

14 surfaces, but many of them remain within the 

15 microscopic dust particles in the air and in a 

16 sense, act very much like a gas, in terms of 

17 being, you know, following, if there's 

18 ventilation, they follow the radon out, as 

19 well.

20 DR. BEHLING: Yes, you know, and I 

21 didn't want to question John's interpretation, 

22 but my gut feeling is, you probably have an 
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1 equilibrium value of radon daughters to the 

2 ventilation rate of 1.2 per hour, that is 

3 possibly the equivalent of what you get in a 

4 house, which would assumedly be about 50 

5 percent.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, that was sort 

7 of my gut feeling, too. I would think that, 

8 you know, unless you're really -- you know, it 

9 would be very different in everything in there 

10 was radon, but this is mostly air.

11 DR. BEHLING: No, there is no 

12 question, and as I said, my argument is here 

13 is really the fact that we have empirical data 

14 that I think, has orders of magnitude, higher 

15 validity in representing the values that I 

16 predicted, as opposed to the CR-39 

17 measurements downwind, which, as I said, I 

18 liken to a dose rate measurement from a 

19 nuclear reactor, when somebody is standing 

20 1,000 feet --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I understand 

22 that part, I just wanted to make sure I 
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1 understood what John's argument was, on the 

2 exhaust of the radon.

3 DR. MAURO: Yes, what I was doing, 

4 Paul, I was trying to say, you know, what it 

5 is about the Pinney data, that may be 

6 misleading, and one of them says, well, maybe 

7 the progeny was not present along with the 

8 radon, at that location, where the glass was, 

9 in equilibrium, and I'm saying, what would 

10 prevent that from occurring?

11 And so, one of the things that 

12 would prevent that is that, the radon that's 

13 breaking surface in the waste package, or the 

14 waste, is breaking surface, becomes airborne, 

15 okay, then, as you point out, it's going to 

16 decay to some -- it has a residence time in 

17 the head space, and reach some degree of 

18 equilibrium, depending on the air turnover 

19 rate, in the head space.

20 But then that gas has to move out 

21 of the head. Now, I'm picturing, you've got 

22 these cracks, and so, the air that's leaving 
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1 the head space, is sort of going through a 

2 torturous path, and you're going -- you know, 

3 it's going to remove some of the particulates 

4 -- well, it's not going to remove the radon.

5 So, here is another place where 

6 you're going to get disequilibrium. Now, all 

7 I'm saying is that -- 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, keep in mind, 

9 the particulates, at this point, are atoms of 

10 other elements. So, we're not talking -- well, 

11 you know, we're sort of all just postulating.

12 DR. MAURO: We are -- 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm just saying 

14 that --

15 DR. MAURO: I'll be the first to 

16 admit.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think there is a 

18 fairly good chance that you get a fair amount 

19 of daughters out, too, certainly not 100 

20 percent, maybe not even 50 percent, but 

21 certainly, not pure radon gas.

22 DR. MAURO: Okay.
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: But here, I 

2 mean, here again, you have to start looking at 

3 the wind patterns, wind speed, as to how long 

4 that residence time at the head is. I mean, 

5 the higher that wind is, and then wind starts 

6 swirling around, now, that glass pane there is 

7 not being -- that flow is not directly to it, 

8 it would be away from it.

9 DR. MAURO: That's part of the Chi 

10 over Q problem, that we didn't even talk 

11 about.

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, but I mean, 

13 it's definitely going to have bearing on what 

14 you're seeing there.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's entirely 

16 correct, right. And, of course, the dosimetry 

17 systems are really integrating systems. They 

18 sort of give an average of what the thing is 

19 seeing, but Hans' point is probably well made 

20 that, you know, why not depend on the actual 

21 measurements?

22 DR. GLOVER: This is Sam Glover. I 
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1 have to sign off, because I do have to leave. 

2 I think there was one point that I 

3 wanted to ask Mark. The measurement, the 

4 stuff that was actually measured by the CR-39, 

5 that was restricted to polonium-210, right?

6 DR. BEHLING: That's correct.

7 MR. ROLFES: I'd have to check the 

8 data. Separate from that set of measurements, 

9 there was another set of measurements that 

10 were conducted as part of a degree -- a 

11 Master's degree thesis, I believe, by 

12 University of Cincinnati student, and he had 

13 actually done some sampling of the radon 

14 concentrations, near the K-65 Silo.

15 I believe in our most recent 

16 response, we've prepared a response, which was 

17 sent out with the latest email that I provided 

18 to the Working Group Members -- 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Signed by 

20 [Identifying information redacted]. 

 MR. ROLFES: November 2nd 21 , correct. 

22 There was two attachments, that [Identifying 
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1 information redacted] had put together. I 

2 believe the -- I don't have the date on the 

3 one, but there is two separate attachments, 

4 radon diffusion mechanism one, revised, and 

5 then also, the RSI response to SC&A second 

6 White Paper, submitted 6/15/2010.

7 Those are both in that email and 

8 also in the Advisory Board's document review 

9 folder.

10 So, we can -- you know, if there 

11 is something in there that you feel we haven't 

12 addressed, we'll certainly, you know, look at, 

13 you know, what your comments might be on our 

14 White Paper.

15 DR. BEHLING: Mark, this is Hans. 

16 Just in response to Sam's question, reading 

17 from the Pinney report, and to answer your 

18 question, here is the statement.

19 It states in the Pinney report, 

20 "The CR-39 film records tracks from polonium 

21 alpha particles that decayed from lead-210, 

22 which is a long lived 22 year half-life decay 
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1 part of the radon-222 embedded in the glass," 

2 and then it goes onto say, "The polonium alpha 

3 tracks were selected," and they discriminate 

4 against other tracks, based on the energy.

5 So, to answer your question, it 

6 was -- they tried to essentially count only 

7 tracks made by the alpha emissions from 

8 polonium-210, and I think that was your 

9 question Sam.

10 DR. GLOVER: It is, I just want to 

11 make sure, since we were talking equilibrium, 

12 which, there's a lot of short -- 

13 DR. BEHLING: Yes, exactly, that's 

14 exactly the noise they tried to eliminate, but 

15 by using the energy alpha as a track measure 

16 length and discriminated against other shorter 

17 lived radionuclides that also are alpha 

18 emitters in this decay chain.

19 DR. GLOVER: Well, I appreciate the 

20 opportunity to have a quick question there. I 

21 do have to sign off, so, I hope you guys will 

22 have a constructive discussion. Talk to you 
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1 guys all later.

2 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Sam.

3 MR. ROLFES: The one other thing 

4 that I wanted to mention is really, the target 

5 organ of concern for radon exposures is the 

6 respiratory tract, and if you take a look at 

7 the -- in the dose reconstruction process, you 

8 know, I don't want to throw out a specific 

9 number, but it's greater than 90 percent of 

10 the respiratory tract cancers at Fernald, are 

11 already compensated.

12 So, you know, we're not going to 

13 compensate them more, based upon more radon 

14 exposure. It's, you know, sort of something 

15 that, we're adding dose, but it's not going to 

16 benefit anyone. I mean, that's -- 

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: It might benefit 

18 those other 10 percent, but anyway -- 

19 MR. ROLFES: Well, I can get the 

20 specific numbers.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, we've been 

22 down that path, too, that's -- 
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1 MR. ROLFES: Most of the people 

2 that haven't received compensation are usually 

3 -- don't have, you know, the sufficient amount 

4 of latency between their exposure and their 

5 diagnosis of cancer.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, but we've 

7 been down this path before, that it's an 

8 exposure cohort, and not a disease cohort, so 

9 --

10 MR. ROLFES: It's a very small 

11 number of people that would be affected.

12 MR. BEATTY: Brad, if I could 

13 comment, please? 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I say one 

16 thing, on this -- on just John's comment, on 

17 the radon?

18 I followed you, with everything, 

19 until your last statement, which was that the 

20 good part is, this isn't an SEC issue and -- 

21 DR. MAURO: I don't think so.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: And the only thing 
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1 I question is, how do you assign dose, from 

2 this? You know, you could -- you're working 

3 on the source-term definition, but who? It's 

4 always the `who' question, right?

5 DR. MAURO: Well, all I could say 

6 is that, I think you could come up with 

7 source-term that could be bounding, using 

8 Hans' strategy.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

10 DR. MAURO: Next, you have to say, 

11 okay, when you've got an atmospheric --

12 there's an atmospheric dispersion model, which 

13 is your classic health physics atmosphere, but 

14 -- 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, you just 

16 assign to the whole set population?

17 DR. MAURO: Well, yes, we're saying 

18 that, okay, if there are workers, you know C19 the whole site, anyone down-wind, don't 

20 forget, the wind is always shifting, you know, 

21 so, what you could do is, you could say, all 

22 right, what is the exposures that workers 
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1 might have experienced?

2 Now, I'm -- I mean, if were doing 

3 it, I would say, okay, well, you got workers 

4 that, you know, where they worked, workers all 

5 over the place.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right.

7 DR. MAURO: And you could come up 

8 Chi over Q values, any way you want, and you 

9 could decide what you want to do about that. 

10 You could use high end Chi over Q or accepted 

11 average, I mean, you pick the atmospheric 

12 dispersion method that best suits the problem 

13 you're trying to solve.

14 But I think, just like we'd do it 

15 at a nuclear power plant, we always are 

16 calculating doses to nearby residents, from 

17 releases that are occurring, whether they're 

18 episodic or they're chronic.

19 So, I mean, the technique for 

20 evaluating doses from airborne emissions is 

21 well established and I think there's a way to 

22 deal with it. You could skin this cat.
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1 Once you've got the source -- once 

2 you have the source-term, and I think once you 

3 have the source term, you're probably in 

4 pretty good shape.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Then there is this 

6 other source-term, also, right, the other silo 

7 or the -- 

8 DR. MAURO: Three?

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Or the Q?

10 DR. MAURO: I don't know about 

11 that.

12 MR. ROLFES: But to explain a 

13 little bit more on what John has said -- this 

14 is Mark Rolfes, the Pinney report has actually 

15 done that.

16 They had, over several years, gone 

17 back and interviewed workers at the Fernald 

18 site, and I believe, had interviewed 2,000 or 

19 3,000 different workers, regarding job 

20 practices, areas of the plant that they worked 

21 in, what shift they worked on, et cetera, 

22 their distance from the K-65 silos, looked at 
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1 wind direction and speed, inversions, 

2 adiabatic inversions in the atmosphere, 

3 basically, in these seasonal variations and 

4 many, many different factors.

5 But they actually placed each work 

6 in an area of the plant, based upon the 

7 interview that they had with each of those 

8 employees, and came up with an individualized 

9 working level month exposure for that 

10 employee.

11 We have agreed, since the 

12 Evaluation Report was presented, to use that 

13 data, and I also wanted to make sure that 

14 everyone is aware, we now use that in our dose 

15 reconstruction process.

16 So, we have an individual exposure 

17 estimate, based upon the Pinney model residing 

18 as another personal exposure information. 

19 This is within our NIOSH claims tracking 

20 system, so, our dose reconstructor would see 

21 that, and if the individual has a lung cancer, 

22 for example, and needs to consider the radon 
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1 exposures, they would be able to go into that 

2 person's other exposure information and pull 

3 that up and get the working level months that 

4 that individual exposed to for each year of 

5 employment at the Fernald site.

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm generally 

7 familiar with this study, but how many people 

8 did -- how many workers did they interview?

9 MR. ROLFES: I think it was 2,000 

10 or 3,000 people that -- you know, this has 

11 been five years since I looked at this, since 

12 I looked at the study. This was five years 

13 ago, that I had looked at the study, in 

14 preparation for the -- 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: But that was my 

16 real question, was the movement of the workers 

17 around the site, not so much -- you know, you 

18 couldn't established quadrants, but how do you 

19 establish the path of the workers through 

20 those quadrants, and that might answer it.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: My 

22 understanding, K-65 wasn't one of the worst 
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1 players, too, though.

2 MR. ROLFES: Right, the earlier 

3 concern was the open silos for the radium 

4 bearing ores in process, the Q-11 silos that 

5 were outside of the plant, that were 

6 processing that.

7 It was the feed material that --

8 it was basically, an open -- it didn't have a 

9 dome on top of it, like the K-65 materials. 

10 It basically then, vented to the air, and it 

11 was really the materials from the Q-11 silos 

12 that were responsible for the higher air 

13 concentrations of radon, on the site in the --

14 I believe it was the 1953 to 1958 time period.

15 So, those were where the higher 

16 radon exposures were incurred by employees, 

17 certainly, much higher than the K-65 silo 

18 area.

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: K-65 becomes the 

20 big issue, because it was stored the for so 

21 long, if I'm not mistaken.

22 MR. ROLFES: Right, it was stored 
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1 there, subsequently.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: But also too, 

3 when they took and they sealed up the K-65 

4 silo, that was not really to seal it off, it 

5 was structural -- the top of it was ready to 

6 cave in.

7 My understanding is that when they 

8 sealed it, it was to do the structural 

9 integrity of the K-65, which then increased 

10 the dose on top of it, when they realized, 

11 we've got to be able to go out and make a 

12 release on this.

13 I thought that they had put the 

14 ventilation system in, after they had sealed 

15 it. The reports I was reading, that was the 

16 gist that I got from it.

17 MR. ROLFES: The radon treatments -

18 - I'm not exactly -- 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: The radon 

20 treatment system, as you call it, I thought 

21 that was a later -- 

22 MR. ROLFES: Correct.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Later addition, 

2 because they had sealed off K-65 silo, 

3 figured, this is all going to be wonderful, 

4 and then ended up with 250mR up on the top of 

5 it, and then all of the sudden, they realized, 

6 we've got an issue, we need to -- now, we need 

7 to be able to vent this off.

8 DR. BEHLING: Yes, this is Hans 

9 Behling, Brad. The radon treatment system was 

10 installed in 1987.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

12 MR. ROLFES: Yes, like you said, 

13 when they had sealed it around 1980, one of 

14 the concerns was, because of the degradation 

15 of the thickness of the dome, and I think it 

16 went from about six inches on the outside 

17 perimeter of the dome, down to about four 

18 inches in the middle, and I think the concrete 

19 was beginning to spall off of the center --

20 basically, the top of the dome, and they were 

21 concerned about the structural integrity of 

22 it. I think it had gotten down to a couple of 
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1 inches.

2 So, you know, you've got half the 

3 concrete there, essentially, which also could 

4 be one of the reasons that would account for 

5 the higher dose rate, because of the less 

6 shielding from the concrete.

7 So, there is many other factors 

8 that you would have to look at, and we've 

9 tried to, you know, speak to those factors in 

10 our responses.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Need a lot more 

12 -- two inches of concrete, to reduce that.

13 MR. ROLFES: Well, a factor of -- I 

14 mean, you're talking about, you know, 75 to 

15 250, and if you've got different detection 

16 equipment over the time periods, I mean, it's 

17 not too unusual.

18 I mean, two inches of concrete, 

19 you know, versus whether the detector was 

20 placed in the exact same location on the dome.

21 You know, we've tried to address 

22 some of these concerns in our most recent -- 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand 

2 that. Ray had something he wanted to -- 

3 MR. BEATTY: You touched on it 

4 already, Brad. This is Ray Beatty. The Q-11, 

5 I wanted to really throw some emphasis there, 

6 because of the -- we're talking like a 

7 quarter-mile away from K-65, 1, 2, 3 and 4, 

8 like Plant 2/3 would probably have been the 

9 closest production facility, or a maintenance 

10 building we use, 3045, and that CR-39 study, 

11 also revealed that that higher level of radon, 

12 around the 2/3 area, because of the Q-11s, 

13 well, the majority of the workforce was right 

14 there, at ground-zero. It wasn't a quarter15 mile away.

16 I think it's rather significant, 

17 if you do try to established a -- what you 

18 said, a bound -- yes, to do dose 

19 reconstruction, that really needs to be taken 

20 into consideration, and those interviews you 

21 were talking about, that you asked about, 

22 Mark, that is being done through the Fernald 
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1 Medical Monitoring Program.

2 The people do an annual physical, 

3 they're actually using that data from their 

4 physicals, and they interview them about job 

5 classifications and time worked, and location. 

6 So, I just think it's the significant.

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, that's the --

8 yes, I mean, that's -- I think, if you can, 

9 like John, the source-terms, if we can come to 

10 agreement on that, and it's really kind of 

11 Site Profile issue.

12 My question was not so much 

13 establishing the exposures over the site, it 

14 was placing the people in those quadrants, you 

15 know, if you will, so -- and I think the 

16 questionnaires might answer that question. I 

17 didn't know if they had done -- I didn't know 

18 it was that extensive. I knew they had done 

19 some interviews, but the -- 

20 MR. BEATTY: Pardon me, and while 

21 we're on that issue, I'd like to ask if NIOSH 

22 has considered the Pinney study, especially 
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1 the Q-11 information, into the Site Profile. 

2 I think you mentioned something 

3 about the dose reconstructionists do recognize 

4 that?

5 MR. ROLFES: Correct, yes.

6 MR. BEATTY: But you're saying if 

7 it's pulmonary or respiratory system related -

8 - there is evidence now from the Pinney 

9 report, of radon actually causing -- having a 

10 skin cancer association, as well.

11 MR. ROLFES: Okay, that's something 

12 that's different, because you know, what we 

13 are doing in dose reconstruction, that's 

14 something that, you know, can be looked into 

15 in a generic sense.

16 But the alpha particles for -- I'm 

17 trying to remember off the top of my head, I 

18 think the most energetic alpha particle would 

19 be around seven-and-a-half MeV.

20 From what I recall, I think it 

21 takes about MeV -- eight MeV of alpha energy 

22 to penetrate the dead layer of skin, to become 
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1 a concern for dose to the living layer of your 

2 skin.

3 You know, it would certainly be, 

4 you know, much, much less of a concern for a 

5 skin cancer, than inhaling radon and getting a 

6 risk of lung cancer, from inhaling radon.

7 It's not something I've looked 

8 into very closely, but the major, you know, 

9 thing of importance for skin cancers at 

10 Fernald would be, you know, direct handling of 

11 uranium and the progeny, which goes in there, 

12 and if a person, you know, had concern about 

13 radon contamination and there was a 

14 significant -- well, anyway, it's typically 

15 not something that's considered as a concern 

16 for skin cancer. It's very low risk.

17 MS. BALDRIDGE: Could I make a 

18 comment?

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: sure.

20 MS. BALDRIDGE: You know, I've been 

21 listening to this, you know, what data can be 

22 used and how it can be interpreted, and it 
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1 kind of goes back to where I filed this 

2 petition, and I filed it based on the TBD on 

3 Site Profile, especially as it regarded 

4 thorium processing.

5 But, you know, when it said, and I 

6 notice the situation has changed, I provided 

7 documents concerning thorium exposure, you 

8 located them, or NIOSH located them.

9 But the point is, there were a lot 

10 of dose reconstructions done, based on what 

11 you considered to be the best available 

12 scientific information in reconstructing data, 

13 and that's kind of what some of this 

14 discussion has been here, about how to 

15 interpret, how to do this and that.

16 But those dose reconstructions 

17 that were done under the flawed Site Profile 

18 are locked up, I mean, you can't get the 

19 Department of Labor to do anything about them, 

20 until the Site Profile is revised, and you 

21 have had that information for five years, 

22 concerning some of that exposure and those 
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1 exposures have never been applied to the 

2 claims of the people involved.

3 Now, that's kind of frustrating, 

4 you know. So, I don't know how many people 

5 that involves, but you know, even with this 

6 process, I went online the other day, and I 

7 couldn't believe there are 55 SECs, and 

8 probably 40 or more of those were filed after 

9 this petition was filed, and in my claim, that 

10 is not timely.

11 You're talking about priorities, 

12 it has been over nine months between meetings 

13 of this Working Group, and I know, seeing how 

14 busy you've been, not just, you know, the 

15 Working Group for Fernald, in general, with 

16 that many petitions being submitted and how 

17 many are still under consideration, why you 

18 are swamped.

19 But it seems to me that there is 

20 an obligation to deal with those that have 

21 been on the Board, been on the table for as 

22 long as this one has, with a little more 
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1 diligence.

2 I mean, there are petitions, I 

3 don't know how many people they involved, or 

4 whatever, that were filed in March and April 

5 of this year, that are already SEC.

6 I know this is a big one, covers 

7 almost 40 years, and a lot of people and a lot 

8 of processes, and it can't just be categorized 

9 by uranium processing or thorium processing, 

10 or, you know, all these other things that came 

11 in.

12 But I think it's time that 

13 something be done. It's not fair to the 

14 people who are dying.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you.

16 MR. KATZ: I mean, I think it is 

17 important to sort of press this to a close, in 

18 the reasonably near future, both. As well, to 

19 get those dose reconstructions that might have 

20 been done under previous methods, re-done 

21 under methods that -- perhaps, have sort of 

22 the benefit that all of the scientists have 
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1 been discussed here. I think that's 

2 important, in both points.

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: The response is 

4 always, "We cannot do anything, until the Site 

5 Profile is revised."

6 You asked -- I asked Larry, when 

7 he was still here, and Stu, too, and the 

8 answer I get is, "It's NIOSH policy, that we 

9 don't address this until the SEC is dealt 

10 with."

11 MR. KATZ: I think when we recently 

12 had this effort of sort of, coordinating, 

13 trying to coordinate priorities between the 

14 Board and NIOSH, to get certain work done, 

15 sort of ahead of other work, so, that certain 

16 Work Groups can complete work, and this is 

17 sort of a nice example, I think, of a Work 

18 Group that's been toiling time, and it would 

19 be good to bring this work to a close.

20 So, I think when we talk --

21 whenever Brad gets to the point, where we're 

22 talking about scheduling and so on, as to when 
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1 we'll get deliverables, to be able to close 

2 issues that are still open and then, meet 

3 again. You know, we have another Board 

4 meeting, for example, in February, I think, 

5 and we need to keep this in mind.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I was going 

7 to bring that up at the end, but I'm glad that 

8 you did, right now.

9 Let's look for an action item on 

10 this. I know that SC&A has made two attempts 

11 at this, and they really haven't changed that 

12 much, but NIOSH has responded with this radon 

13 emission, John, I guess what we'll need from 

14 you is another -- is another paper back, 

15 explaining the --

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: What I would like 

17 from SC&A is a position, sort of like what you 

18 just discussed, with John, that there might be 

19 differences in our acceptance of the source20 terms, however, here is our position on the 

21 ability to bound, and considering the Pinney -

22 - the approached used in the Pinney data or 
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1 whatever, I want to see SC&A's assessment of 

2 that.

3 And then, if it just comes down to 

4 differences in the source-term, we can move it 

5 off the SEC, yes.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand, I 

7 understand.

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Because we can go 

9 back and put on our source terms -- 

10 DR. MAURO: Yes, our position on 

11 the source-term, we're not going to talk about 

12 that again.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't think you 

14 should.

15 DR. MAURO: We're just say, given 

16 the source-term -- I'm willing to start that 

17 way, given the source-terms, here is -- 

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right.

19 DR. MAURO: Now, don't forget, the 

20 only thing I'm concerned about is, in effect, 

21 I'd be laying out a strategy that I didn't use 

22 to reconstruct doses, to workers -- 
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, no, no, I want 

2 you to opine on what is laid out, using the 

3 Pinney -- I mean, is it clear, is your 

4 approach spelled out?

5 MR. ROLFES: The Pinney report, all 

6 of the -- 

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: How are you using 

8 the Pinney data to -- 

9 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay, I 

10 misunderstood you, I'm sorry.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

12 DR. MAURO: So, you're basically 

13 saying, right now, you have a method for 

14 reconstructing doses to workers, outdoors from 

15 airborne radon and its progeny, and it's all 

16 laid out, not withstanding the Pinney source -

17 - you are using the -- 

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes, this is just an 

19 output of the Pinney report, and it's all in 

20 NOCTS under each individuals claim -- 

21 DR. MAURO: So, you're not using 

22 the source-term? I mean, did we just go 
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1 through all of this for nothing? You're not 

2 using the 6,000 curies per liter?

3 MR. ROLFES: Well, the -- 

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, you're using -

5 - 

6 MR. ROLFES: The RAC report is the 

7 one established the 5,000 to 6,000 curies per 

8 year, effluence from the K-65 silos. That was 

9 used by the Pinney -- that was used in the 

10 Pinney study, plus, an additional source-term 

11 of the Q-11 silos.

12 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay.

13 MR. ROLFES: And so, we've got two 

14 source terms, and the K-65 silos are only one 

15 of them. We have two that we're using for 

16 dose reconstructions, and all the data, the 

17 output of the exposure model that was produced 

18 in the Pinney study is now tagged as working 

19 level month exposures in each individual 

20 Fernald claimant's exposure information, that 

21 is considered by the dose reconstruction.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, I guess that's 
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1 the piece you should focus on. You could say 

2 -- we have disagreements on the source term, 

3 as discussed in prior papers, but the Pinney 

4 approach -- here is our discussion of the 

5 Pinney approach versus taking that source term 

6 information and assigning doses to 

7 individuals, and whether you'd buy-off or not.

8 MR. ROLFES: To get back to the 

9 report that we had discussed before, the 

10 thorium-230 Revision 7 report, I wanted to 

11 make sure I let everybody know, we did send it 

12 out in January 2010, and it's in the A: drive 

13 Advisory Board document review under the 

14 titles "Fernald Thorium-230 Rev. 7 MR-11510".

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: John, have you 

16 see that one? 

17 MR. KATZ: That's the one we talked 

18 about earlier.

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I can repeat it 

21 for everyone.

22 It's in the -- under the Advisory 
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1 Board document review folder, in the Fernald 

2 folder, and the title, it's a Word document, 

3 is "Fernald Thorium-230, Rev. 7, MR-11510", 

4 dated January 15, 2010.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can we get --

6 Brad, I think you have one -- we have one item 

7 left, right?

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, we do.

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I ask, can we 

10 take a little short break?

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure, let's take 

12 about a 10 minutes. 

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

14 matter went off the record at 3:20 p.m. and 

15 resumed at 3:45 p.m.)

16 MR. KATZ: Okay, we're just 

17 reconvening after a short break. This is 

18 Fernald Work Group, and Brad, why don't you --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, we've got -

20 - Lou Doll is here, who was a construction 

21 worker out -- a worker out at Fernald. He was 

22 asking us questions on the coworker model of 
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1 Mark Rolfes, and I'd just like him to go --

2 I'd just like him to refer back to what he was 

3 discussing and what part of the construction 

4 issues are with that -- with the model, 

5 possibly. Lou?

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think, for those 

7 on the line, he has to leave in a few minutes, 

8 so, we want to let him have a chance to speak 

9 to this issue, before he has to go.

10 MR. DOLL: Thank you. I've 

11 requested my records from the plant, as far as 

12 dose reconstruction -- or dose or security 

13 records, or anything, twice -- well, three 

14 times, over the past couple of years, just 

15 recently, two days ago, and I was down at the 

16 new Morgantown record center, a couple of 

17 weeks ago, and they gave us a presentation.

18 I asked a question at that time,

19 Department of Labor was there and also, 

20 Department of Energy, about what records were 

21 available from the early days up through 1992, 

22 and I was told that there are little or none, 
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1 closer to no records for any of the 

2 subcontractors that worked at the site, 

3 because the subcontractors, they were 

4 responsible for their own records. The 

5 Department of Energy and the primes, being 

6 National Lead of Ohio Westinghouse, never took 

7 care of those records.

8 We, as construction, were never 

9 told what was in the plant. We were 

10 definitely treated differently than the in11 house workers, because they had a working 

12 knowledge of what they were getting into, in 

13 the plant. We also had different standards, 

14 as far as like, with the work, and we were 

15 never monitored. We never went through the 

16 urinalysis program. There is no data on us.

17 So, I guess my question is, as far 

18 as the construction workers and doing dose 

19 reconstruction, through the EEOICPA process, 

20 I'd like to know what is going to be used to 

21 do the dose reconstruction, if we have no 

22 records?
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1 When we went to work in these 

2 plants, we weren't monitored. We weren't 

3 given respirators in that area, in 1983, I 

4 worked in the pilot plant, putting together 

5 and working during process of green salt 

6 process, and there is nothing there.

7 It just concerns me that we're 

8 going to be lumped into a diluted process with 

9 people throughout the plant, that didn't get 

10 near the same dose or exposure that we got, 

11 working these processes, which was in all the 

12 buildings, doing the demolition and the 

13 reconstruction of a lot of these processes on 

14 contaminated equipment.

15 So, I guess that's my concern. 

16 I'd like to have an answer on that, on how 

17 you're going to treat the construction worker, 

18 as far as dose reconstruction is concerned, 

19 and if anybody has got a question, I'll try to 

20 answer it.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: One of the 

22 things is, is NIOSH is in the process of 
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1 sending us a coworker model, or coworker 

2 paper, for the construction workers, which has 

3 not come right yet, correct, Mark?

4 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And when that --

6 Lou, when this does come out, after it's been 

7 PA cleared and everything else like that, 

8 we'll make sure that you get a copy of it, so 

9 that you can see what the process is. That 

10 would be fine.

11 MR. DOLL: That would be great. 

12 Thank you.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you. Okay, 

14 we have -- I just wanted to make sure that on 

15 the radon, we've got a clear line on that, 

16 before we broke on that, and everybody knows 

17 what it -- their issues are.

18 The next one we've got is issue 

19 six, which is the thorium-232 daily weighted 

20 exposures, and let's see, were you going to do 

21 that?

22 MR. STIVER: Yes, that's my issue. 
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1 I'll go ahead and lead out on that.

2 For some of these other issues, 

3 thorium-232 DWE, daily weighted exposure 

4 issue, those got some time, at the -- at 

5 January of this year, I had prepared a White 

6 Paper review of Revision 2 of the DWE report 

7 that Bob Morris had written. 

8 We proposed using the DWE data to 

9 reconstruct doses for thorium inhalation, 

10 prior to 1968 and when the in vivo lung 

11 accounting system came onboard, and in that 

12 review, I had identified -- there were 20 

13 findings.

14 Our main concerns had to do with 

15 the accounting for the variability and the 

16 uncertainty in the data sets, and the extent 

17 to which the data was complete for the sites 

18 that were -- that processed thorium, and there 

19 were several other findings related to the 

20 methodology that had been proposed by NIOSH, 

21 in order to reconstruct distributions of DWEs, 

22 to assess doses on a facility plant-wide 
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1 basis.

2 And recently, I think it was at a 

3 Weldon Spring meeting, which I did not attend, 

4 this issue came up again, in kind of a global 

5 context, and Bob had, at that point, mentioned 

6 that they were following the methods of this 

7 paper, published in the Health Physics Journal 

8 by Davis and Strom, in 2008, and where they 

9 essentially use a lot of the techniques that 

10 we had recommended in our report, basically, 

11 taking a distribution of these air sample 

12 concentrations for each task, doing Monte 

13 Carlo simulations to generate output 

14 distribution of DWE, that you could then use 

15 to assign a claimant-favorable percentile of 

16 that distribution.

17 And we had not seen this new 

18 revision of the report, this Revision 3, which 

19 we got last week, and so, I had prepared, 

20 under the direction of the Board, a White 

21 Paper, or not really a White Paper, more of a 

22 memorandum, outlining the Davis and Strom 
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1 methodology, the extent to which we felt that 

2 NIOSH was following that methodology, and then 

3 also, whether the methods that we had proposed 

4 in our reviews of NIOSH's methods were in the 

5 same spirit as the Davis and Strom memo.

6 I had -- I believe that went out 

7 to the Board last week. I don't know how many 

8 of you had a change to really delve into it. 

9 It's a 30-page report, and over the weekend, I 

10 took a look at this Revision 3. I haven't had 

11 a chance to really go through it in detail.

12 But it appears that a lot of the 

13 issues that we had raised in our report have, 

14 in deed, been addressed.

15 If I could back up for a minute. 

16 As I mentioned, Davis and Strom looked at five 

17 different AWE sites, that had DWE data, and 

18 they basically -- and the main difference here 

19 that we need to bring up, is that Davis and 

20 Strom had the DWE reports that they had, the 

21 HASL reports, actually, had the raw data, as 

22 an Appendix B, I guess, they included the raw 
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1 data sheets.

2 And so, they had the advantage 

3 that we don't have at Fernald, in that they 

4 were able to look at each one of those 

5 reports, see the raw data and go through and 

6 analyze it and look at its -- whether it had 

7 been transcribed with a degree of certainty 

8 and things of that nature, and also, to use 

9 that data to generate their distributions.

10 And so, they basically came up 

11 with three distributions. They did the 

12 version that HASL had done, historically. 

13 They took a Monte Carlo analysis where they 

14 used just the actual data that were collected. 

15 They randomly sampled that and generated DWE 

16 distributions, and then they fit a log-normal 

17 distribution to the data sets and ran the 

18 simulations that way.

19 So, we had three different 

20 constructs, and it appears that what NIOSH is 

21 doing is, they're using the results from the 

22 Davis and Strom analysis for the log-normal 
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1 fits, where they assess the GSD for the sets 

2 of those different data, and they came up with 

3 a range, I believe it was about three to seven 

4 and on average, about five.

5 And the way the paper is proposing 

6 to assess dose for the personnel in the given 

7 plant, for a given year, is to take -- for 

8 that plant, in combination, the highest DWE 

9 for any job in that plant, which is an 

10 average, and then assess it, given a -- and 

11 they created a log-normal distribution from it 

12 with the GSD of five, and then from that, use 

13 that to assess the dose for members of that 

14 Class, for that year, at that facility.

15 And while it's not in exact --

16 they haven't really gone through the same 

17 review process that Davis and Strom did, in 

18 using the site specific data. The range of 

19 GSDs appears to be fairly close to what would 

20 be expected.

21 So, without really looking into 

22 that, it appears at least to be a credible 
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1 methodology for assessing dose to a given 

2 Class of workers, or a particular worker, when 

3 you have a DWE for that facility in that year.

4 They also proposed a couple of 

5 other things. I guess there was a few 

6 situations that we identified in our paper. I 

7 think for the pilot plants, there was some 

8 missing data, over three years, and there was 

9 some missing data for Plant 1, in one year.

10 And so, we raised this whole issue 

11 of how are you going to use surrogate data, in 

12 order to account for the doses for the people 

13 who were in those plants that had missing 

14 data?

15 Davis and Strom have a section in 

16 their paper, where they look at -- at just the 

17 air concentration, unweighted air 

18 concentration. Basically, every measurement 

19 was taken during that plant in that year, and 

20 they look at that distribution, and they said, 

21 "Well, you know, because an actual worker's 

22 exposure is time weighted, then the highest 
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1 exposure tasks typically occur over a few 

2 minutes," and then the kind of ambient 

3 exposures occur over long periods of time. 

4 You ended up with the DWE, when you weight by 

5 task that is considerably lower than just the 

6 raw air concentration data.

7 So, if you look at the raw 

8 concentration data, you might have values that 

9 are in the tens to, you know, over a hundred10 thousand DWE per cubic meter, and those are 

11 given the same weight as the ones without 

12 regard to the time of exposure.

13 And so, you end with a 

14 distribution that's really skewed up to the 

15 high end, and Davis and Strom said, "You know,

16 if you just take the average, the mid point of 

17 that unweighted distribution, you basically 

18 include all the DWEs, except for just," I 

19 think there was only two or three that even 

20 exceeded the average, and if you look at the 

95th 21 percentile, you basically get them all. 

22 I think there was one DWE for one facility 
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1 that was higher, it was only like five percent 

2 higher.

3 But they have a caveat here, you 

4 know, and I'll read that to you, if I can find 

5 that paper, here. 

6 Yes, they say that, "Using the 

7 distribution of all air samples for a plant 

8 without time weighting or assignment to a 

9 specific job does not produce a DWE or GSD, 

10 which is representative of any individual 

11 worker for that site," and they conclude that 

using the upper 95th 12 percentile of a site-wide 

13 air concentration while, will almost always be 

14 claimant-favorable, it is unrealistically high 

15 for almost everyone.

16 So, it raises the plausibility 

17 issue. You know, you can throw a high number 

18 at this, if you don't have the data, but it's 

19 not plausible that any person in that building 

20 would have ever gotten that exposure.

21 And so, if you go back to Rev. 3 

22 of the NIOSH report, there is this situation 
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1 in here. If you look at, I think it's Table 

2 2, they have the DWE data availability by a 

3 thorium plant and by year, you see, for the 

4 pilot plant, for those three years we 

5 identified, 1964 through 1966, data doesn't 

6 exist, and then you look at 1967, you've got a 

7 value that's 77 MAC, and that's a factor of 10 

8 higher than the next highest value.

9 And it makes sense, when you look 

10 at the advice here, they say, "In instances in 

11 which time weighing data are not available," 

they determined that the 95th 12 percent -- and 

13 this is -- according to Davis and Strom, they 

put -- they determined the 95th 14 percentile 

15 will almost always be favorable to the 

16 claimant, in making compensation decisions.

17 They neglected to include the 

18 component about it not really being applicable 

19 to any individual workers, but they go onto 

20 say, in Section 5 here, that, "When time 

21 weighing average data aren't available, then 

the upper 95th 22 percentile of the air sampling 
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1 data for that facility may be used instead."

2 In the next paragraph, "When 

3 neither DWE data nor air sampling data are 

4 available, or when they're judged to be 

5 inadequate or incomplete, then DWE at the same 

6 facility may be assigned from an adjacent 

7 year," and this third bit of guidance makes 

8 sense, and if you have adjacent data within a 

9 given year, if you're just got one gap one 

10 year, you could use whatever is on either side 

11 of it, and you know, it's not really surrogate 

12 data. It's coming from the same plant, same 

13 processes, we're fairly sure.

14 But this idea that when you don't 

15 have data for more than a consecutive year, 

you just take the entire upper 95th 16 percentile 

17 of distribution, we have issues with that, and 

18 the plausibility of that really being 

19 applicable to any potential worker.

20 I haven't had time to really go 

21 through this in a lot of detail, to look at 

22 the data that were published and check the 
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1 DWEs in that, but I'd say that this is a 

2 marked improvement over Revision 2, but I 

3 think you're getting closer to Davis and 

4 Strom. I think it's in the spirit of Davis 

5 and Strom, which we believe to be a credible 

6 method, I might add, as part of our review, 

7 but I sent out -- we did compare two methods 

8 that we had generated, one that was in my DWE 

9 report.

10 We look at one plant, with a 

11 combination, and we essentially, without 

12 knowing -- having read this paper, we ended up 

13 doing the same thing that they did, with 

14 regard to doing the log-normal fits.

15 We did demonstrate that, here is a 

16 way that you can -- here is a methodology that 

17 could be used to really get your handle on the 

18 job specific DWE, where you know you'd be 

19 claimant-favorable to the workers, and we also 

20 developed another method that was not quite 

21 that way, that -- it was for Mallinckrodt. 

22 Harry Chmelynski had developed a 
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1 method where you look at the student's T2 distribution for the average, because you're -

3 - if you took it one step farther and said, 

4 "You know, we're not just looking at one 

5 measurement in time. This is a repetitive 

6 task that's going over again and again and 

7 again."

8 So, what he looked at was the 

9 uncertainty and the mean, and then proposed a 

10 way that that could then be used to get an 

11 percentile of the mean, and then that could 

12 then be propagated again, as we've mentioned 

13 two different techniques, in order to get a 

14 job description. 

15 But I guess in summary, I'm fairly 

16 happy with the methodology proposed here, 

17 there are a couple of things that still need 

18 to be resolved. 

19 I think we have issues with the 

20 unweighted air concentrations for the entire 

21 facility, and another thing that Davis and 

22 Strom brought up was the whole issue of human 
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1 error, they called it blunders in their 

2 report, and which is an actually, an ISO term. 

3 It's not meant to imply stupidity.

4 It's just kind of a gross error in 

5 methodology, and in the data set that they 

6 looked at, which were -- I think there were 

7 like, 400-some samples total, through the five 

8 -- there were 65 jobs in the five facilities,

9 there is 11 percent -- they said the average 

10 blunder resulted in about a two-fold under11 estimation of the DWE, and there's about an 11 

12 percent error rate, but the most egregious 

13 examples were off by a factor of 10 low, and 

14 so, that gives us concern.

15 One of our recommendations in the 

16 report that we presented at last year's 

17 meeting, or earlier this year, the January 

18 meeting, was that some undertaking of the be 

19 initiated to assess the availability of the 

20 raw data, and what's out there.

21 I know some of it's available. 

22 I've found it on my O: drive, but we know the 
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1 extent to which it's complete, and the fact 

2 that these early sites have the actual data 

3 sheets available, and some of the later ones, 

4 Mallinckrodt does, too, they have the raw 

5 data.

6 We think that the data are 

7 available. They just weren't put into the 

8 reports, and we don't know if they were 

9 destroyed or what the fate of that data set 

10 might have been.

11 But I think the due diligence 

12 needs to be made here, in order to identify if 

13 the data are available and then to generate 

14 some kind of a sampling plan, maybe not as 

15 rigorous as what went on for HIS-20, but just 

16 some sort of data validation exercise to get 

17 some sort of a confident estimate of what the 

18 error rate might have been and the 

19 transcription of what the blunder rate could 

20 have been.

21 MR. ROLFES: You're concerned about 

22 the blunders. Does that mean a factor of two 
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1 versus -- or a factor of ten, not to mention 

2 the ones that they had over-estimated?

3 MR. STIVER: Oh, there was over4 estimates, but they weren't the same. We're 

5 not concerned about the over-estimates. We're 

6 concerned about the under-estimates.

7 MR. ROLFES: Right, obviously.

8 MR. STIVER: So, say, if you have 

9 the -- 

10 MR. ROLFES: Neither are we.

11 MR. STIVER: Say if you had the 

12 high DWE -- 

13 MR. ROLFES: But keep in mind, 

14 though, I didn't get to finish what I wanted 

15 to say, I'm sorry.

16 The reports, the DWE reports, 

17 themselves, there's a couple of important 

18 things that were not taken into consideration.

19 The two big ones are respiratory 

20 use. We're taking the daily weighted exposure 

21 concentration of the, you know, the materials 

22 dispensed into the air. No respiratory 
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1 reduction factors are applied.

2 So, that easily can account for, 

3 you know, a factor of 10 and a factor of 50 --

4 I mean, depending upon the type of respirator 

5 that's being used, and then the other 

6 important thing to keep in mind is that the 

7 quantity of material suspended in the air, 

8 we're assuming that's 100 percent respirable.

9 MR. STIVER: Oh, sure.

10 MR. ROLFES: So, I mean, those are 

11 two things that are very conservative --

12 MR. STIVER: Absolutely.

13 MR. ROLFES: More than account for 

14 that factor of 10.

15 MR. STIVER: Well, I know that 

16 you're applying conservative measures here, 

17 but I still think that it would be -- you 

18 know, just -- especially in an SEC context, to 

19 do some sort of a data validation exercise, 

20 just to -- if you could identify the error 

21 rate and data sets, it wouldn't have to be 

22 across the board.
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1 I can't tell you how to go about 

2 doing it. I think it would be important to 

3 assess the validity of the underlying data.

4 MR. ROLFES: I mean, I understand 

5 where you're coming from, but I think it would 

6 be more important for us to do that, if we 

7 were using an actual distribution of the data.

8 We're not doing that anymore. 

9 We're using the highest result in any of the 

10 buildings, any of the years -- 

11 MR. STIVER: Well, actually, it 

12 would be the highest -- for a given year, it 

13 would be the highest DWE in that facility -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: In that facility, 

15 right.

16 MR. STIVER: But that's the DWE.

17 MR. ROLFES: Right.

18 MR. STIVER: So, say if you had the 

19 highest DWE and it was off by a factor of 10 

20 and then you throw a factor of five on top of 

21 it, you know, what do you come out?

22 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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1 MR. STIVER: Yes, but what I'm 

2 saying is, if you could -- it would be very 

3 unlikely, but there is the possibility that 

4 the data could be not really necessarily 

5 corrupt, but there could be significant errors 

6 in that.

7 But I think you guys are 

8 definitely in the right path. I mean, I would 

9 certainly try to identify some of the 

10 underlying data and look it over, and -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: Well, I guess -- 

12 MR. STIVER: Come up with some kind 

13 of a plan -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: Maybe you'll provide a 

15 written report to us, then on what your 

16 thoughts -- 

17 MR. STIVER: Yes, I think that 

18 would probably be a legitimate action item. I 

19 didn't get a chance to -- 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I know that you 

21 haven't had the opportunity to look at that, 

22 to really be able to -- 
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1 MR. STIVER: Yes, I was all set to 

2 go after -- and looked at it, but this is 

3 completely different. So, it looks, at face 

4 value, you know, at the -- the small amount of 

5 time I've been able to devote to it, it looks 

6 fairly good, like I said, aside from that one 

7 issue, about the unweighted averages and then 

8 assessing the blunders, I'm okay with that.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, I guess the 

10 action item would be in the SC&A's -- to be 

11 able to give us a response -- 

12 MR. STIVER: Give us a response and 

13 then -- 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And give a write 

15 up in the response.

16 MR. STIVER: Yes.

17 DR. MAURO: Just to point out, this 

18 is one -- you know, we talked about a lot of 

19 subjects today. This is one area where were 

20 really made some substantial progress, and as 

21 we all know, the DWE issue, we've been

22 struggling with for quite some time.
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1 The methodology, as described to 

2 me, over the weekend, by John, seems like 

3 that, you know, this Davis and Strom is a very 

4 -- it is the right way to do it, and I 

5 understand that the folks -- your folks have 

6 fundamentally adopted that philosophy. 

7 It would be, I would say, and 

8 abbreviated version of it, almost an -- but 

9 like John said, it's -- all I can do is say is 

10 that this is good news. 

11 I think that, you know, some minor 

12 work dealing with this -- the time periods 

13 when you don't have DWE that you could draw 

14 upon, to do this upper end, and this is 

15 judgment call, of whether or not you want to 

go with this 95th 16 percentile approach, which -

17 - you know, now, of course, whether that meets 

18 the plausibility issue or not, this is in the 

19 eye of the beholder, very often, or you elect 

20 to go with one of the other strategies that 

21 you identified, and this is -- 

22 I don't consider this to be a 
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1 major barrier. I consider this to be a home 

2 stretch issue. 

3 Now, this issue of blunders, given 

4 the importance that this issue of blunders was 

5 raised, in Davis and Strom, it does seem to be 

6 prudent to try to explore that a little bit, 

7 and how it might have an bearing on your work, 

8 so, you could put that to bed.

9 It's a legitimate concern that 

10 someone could raise and the degree to which 

11 you could, you know, address that issue, as 

12 best you can, given the limitations you have 

13 to access the original data, that would be a 

14 good thing to do.

15 This is not like the areas, where 

16 we're like -- where we have some real nuts to 

17 crack. This one, I think we're in the home 

18 stretch.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: I tend to agree 

20 with John's opinion, not a written -- 

21 DR. MAURO: I'm just -- this is --

22 right, at the Work Group meeting -- 
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: This is where we 

2 are on it.

3 DR. MAURO: Yes, I think that's 

4 where SC&A is.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I understand 

6 what you're saying, John, I just want to make 

7 sure that we also understand too, that I just 

8 don't want to be high numbers thrown at 

9 something, be able to get out SEC area. 

10 That's my issue.

11 As I spoke earlier this morning, I 

12 talked about a vote, and as Ted and I have 

13 spoke, I don't feel that that's in the best of 

14 everything. We have too many things to be 

15 able to go back over.

16 I have asked him to put Fernald on 

17 the February Advisory Board meeting, to be 

18 able to bring it up. We would like to try to 

19 be able to set up another Work Group before 

20 that time, to be able to iron these issues 

21 out, before we bring this to the full Board.

22 MR. KATZ: Could I just add
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1 something to that, Brad?

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

3 MR. KATZ: So, I mean, one thing I 

4 suggest, I know, Mark, and folks on the phone, 

5 from DCAS, I know it's always an issue, as to 

6 resources, as to when products can be 

7 delivered.

8 But I guess what I would say on 

9 sort of Brad's behalf, in this case, and it's 

10 really -- it's not just Brad, I mean, it's 

11 really, the Work Group needs to speak to this, 

12 because it's ultimately their say, as to pace, 

13 as well.

14 But I think this is probably a 

15 high priority for the Board, or at the Work 

16 Group, to sort of try to wrap things up, get 

17 deliverables on the table for that next Work 

18 Group meeting, so that the Work Group can make 

19 an attempt to come to some decisions about the 

20 SEC portion of what this Work Group is doing 

21 with Fernald.

22 So, I mean, I'm happy to send an 
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1 email to Stu, too, but if you carry that water 

2 -- I mean, we're aiming to try to bring this 

3 to the Board, for the February meeting, which 

4 is the third week, which means that getting 

5 deliverables in a timely fashion to the Work 

6 Group, for whatever we set that date, just 

7 would be a high priority, probably a higher 

8 priority than some other deliverables, and 

9 then I realize there are all these balls in 

10 the air at the same time, but I think this is 

11 an important one, to try to achieve some 

12 closure here.

13 DR. MAURO: I'd like to remind, 

14 there is one are that we had neglected to 

15 mention.

16 When it comes to the thorium 

17 issue, you can talk about a DWE, which is the 

18 thorium and reconstruction, pre-1969.

19 MR. ROLFES: Right, I was going to 

20 bring that up, earlier.

21 DR. MAURO: Okay, and you know the 

22 -- 
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1 MR. ROLFES: Yes, the other thing 

2 that we're working on at DCAS now is, SC&A 

3 provided comments on our thorium-232 mobile in 

4 vivo radiation monitoring data coworker model 

5 for thorium-232 intakes for the years of 1968 

6 forward, and I think we had put together a 

7 White Paper, about three years back.

8 SC&A has provided some comments to 

9 us on that, and we're currently working on 

10 attempting to resolve those comments, at this 

11 moment.

12 So, that and the construction 

13 worker issue are the two things that we have 

14 in our court right now, that we're working on.

15 DR. MAURO: I'd like to confirm 

16 with Ted, as these White Papers become 

17 available to the Work Group, does SC&A have 

18 the green light to go -- 

19 MR. KATZ: Possibly, I mean we want 

20 to be prepared at this next Work Group 

21 meeting, to make an attempt to wrap of the 

22 work of the Work Group, with respect to the 
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1 SEC.

2 You know, whether you accomplish 

3 that or not, is another question. But that's 

4 what we're shooting for.

5 DR. MAURO: Good.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Do we want to --

7 I guess my bottom line is, I'm looking for a 

8 time frame that we could basically be setting 

9 up a Work Group meeting.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, let's look at 

11 calendars, if everybody has them available to 

12 them.

13 DR. MAURO: While you're doing 

14 that, I would like to also -- I'd like to 

15 propose that John Stiver take over as the lead 

16 on Fernald, as opposed to me.

17 MR. KATZ: Happy to have him, sure.

18 DR. MAURO: As you can tell, he has 

19 been a force of nature, on this work and he's 

20 been really helping me get through this. So, 

21 it will allow me to take care of other matters 

22 on the program.
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1 So, John, as long as it's 

2 acceptable to the Work Group, I'd very much 

3 like to have John take over as the lead. I'll 

4 certainly be very much involved, as you know.

5 MR. KATZ: And you will be present 

6 for the next Work Group meeting?

7 DR. MAURO: And I will be present.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay, good.

9 MR. STIVER: To be able to get the 

10 presentations of the Board -- 

11 MR. KATZ: The big picture. So, if 

12 folks have their calendars out, I mean, I 

13 would suggest we push this pretty late, 

14 although, once we have that Work Group 

15 meeting, and part of that Work Group meeting, 

16 I think, would be to help the Work Group 

17 prepare whatever its recommendations might be 

18 to the Board, to not just to decide them, but 

19 then to figure out, in a general sense, and 

20 then SC&A can help and -- as might be needed 

21 with those reports out to the Board.

 But the Board meeting is the 23rd 22 , 
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24th and 25th 1 of February, and let me just see 

2 what else is -- I mean, early the week of the 

14th 3 , does that work for folks?

4 It would have to be -- I mean, 

5 you'd want it early -- you know, maybe the 

14th or the 15th 6 , or going back, the week of 

the 7th to the 11th 7 . 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'd rather go 

back to the 7th to the 11th 9 . 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, how about the 10th 10 , 

11 that's a Thursday, of February, does that work 

12 for folks?

13 MR. STIVER: It works for me.

 MEMBER GRIFFON: The 10th 14 of 

15 February?

16 MR. KATZ: Yes.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: You don't want to 

18 move it to the end of January?

19 MR. KATZ: Well, I'm just thinking 

20 -- 

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm just concerned 

22 that we might need a phone call follow up or 
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1 something before the meeting.

2 MR. KATZ: I'm thinking that this 

3 meeting would be where things got decided. 

4 But you're saying -- 

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I'm just 

6 saying, my past experience tells me that even 

7 when we say it is the last meeting, there is 

8 always one more you need, and we might want to 

9 leave time for a phone call -- 

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, I'm trying to also 

11 leave time though, for work to get done and --

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know.

13 MR. KATZ: And you have Christmas 

14 holidays and Thanksgiving -- 

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: Considering that 

16 is what is on the -- 

17 MR. KATZ: If you -- I think we 

18 want to get deliverables on the table two 

19 weeks in advance of the meeting, too, then 

20 it's hard to push it back too far.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, okay, all 

22 right.
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 MR. KATZ: Well, how does the 10th 1 

or the 9th 2 of February work for folks?

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm fine for that.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I would rather 

go towards the 8th 5 . 

 MR. KATZ: The 8th 6 ? 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

 MR. KATZ: The 8th 8 is open too.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, I'd rather 

10 go -- 

11 MR. KATZ: Does that work for 

12 folks?

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Tuesday the 8th 13 ? 

14 MR. KATZ: Does that work for you, 

15 Mark?

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: I might have to 

17 phone in, but I'll -- you know.

18 MR. KATZ: Yes.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: As long as we -- 

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 

22 It's okay for me.
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 MR. KATZ: For the 8th 1 , okay.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: And we'll send an email 

4 to Bob, checking with him. He is not here, 

5 but -- Presley, that is. That's good for you, 

6 Phil?

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, it looks 

8 good to me. I don't have a life.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay, so, let's say 

February 8th 10 . I don't have a life, either. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I would like to 

12 be kept apprised of the process, as these are 

13 coming up. 

14 MR. KATZ: Yes.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We've got this 

16 meeting up there, I would like to be able to 

17 have plenty of time for both sides to be able 

18 to review the information, so that we can come 

19 at this with a better feel for everything. 

20 So, if things are being pushed 

21 back or whatever, or whatever avenues we need 

22 to be able to do, to put -- to assist in the 
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1 matter, I would appreciate letting it be 

2 known.

3 MR. KATZ: Absolutely. Anyone, 

4 either side, if you are having issues with 

5 getting a deliverable out? Please, let us 

6 know, as soon as possible.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

8 MR. KATZ: Are we adjourned or do 

9 we have more?

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Actually, I 

11 would just like to run through the action 

12 items, to make sure that I'm - that we're 

13 clear with what each group has to be able to 

14 do.

15 Mark, you already mentioned that 

16 you had two deliverables for us. That was the 

17 -- well, go ahead.

18 MR. ROLFES: Do we want to do this 

19 again, or we've been sending emails. We can 

20 exchange emails and if there is -- 

21 MR. STIVER: Do you want to do 

22 that, just drop a list and exchange -- 
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1 MR. KATZ: I think we'll be good. 

2 We've gone over them already. If SC&A and 

3 DCAS send out their action lists -- then we 

4 can carefully go through the notes and make 

5 sure they've got everything, and that they've 

6 described it fully enough, everybody can say, 

7 "Yes, that's it."

8 DR. MAURO: There were a lot of 

9 action items.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, and there are some 

11 nuance as to what is to be done.

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: You're going to 

13 send that to the Work Group too, right?

14 MR. KATZ: Yes.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: I've got good 

16 notes.

17 MR. KATZ: To the full Work Group 

18 and to the staff, and I'll forward it, whoever 

19 doesn't get it.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: If that's all, 

21 then the Work Group is adjourned.

22 MR. KATZ: Paul and everyone on the 
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1 phone, thanks for hanging in with us.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, thank you.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

4 matter went off the record at 4:18 p.m.)

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