This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho Argonne National LaboratoryEast (ANL-Esdy) Work Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) 

and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the INL Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader 

should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

1 

NEAL R. GROSS

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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 

+ + + + +

IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY/

ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY-WEST WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

MAY 16, 2017

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened telephonically 

at 10:00 a.m., Eastern Time, Phillip Schofield, 

Chair, presiding.

PRESENT:

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Chair

JOSIE BEACH, Member

JAMES M. MELIUS, Member
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho Argonne National LaboratoryEast (ANL-Esdy) Work Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) 

and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

BOB BARTON, SC&A

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, SC&A

DOUG FARVER, SC&A

MITCH FINDLEY, ORAU Team

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

BRIAN GLECKLER, ORAU Team

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

JIM NETON, DCAS

STEVE OSTROW, SC&A

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

TIM TAULBEE, SC&A
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho Argonne National LaboratoryEast (ANL-Esdy) Work Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) 

and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

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Contents

Welcome and Roll Call............................. 4

V&V plan for temporary badges at CPP.............. 6

NIOSH Priorities for August ABRWH................ 49

83.14 re: Burial Grounds......................... 49

Priorities for Evaluating Reactor................ 67

DR Records/Methods............................... 67

SC&A Burial Grounds Report...................... 114

Adjourn......................................... 129
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho Argonne National LaboratoryEast (ANL-Esdy) Work Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) 

and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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

2 10:01 a.m. 

3 Welcome and Roll Call 

4 MR. KATZ: So, for folks on the phone 

5 and the public or elsewhere the material for 

6 today's meeting, the agenda and the materials are 

7 on the NIOSH website, this program's website, 

8 under schedule of meetings, today's date.

9 You can pull up all of the documents 

10 that are going to be discussed or may be 

11 discussed today because this meeting has more on 

12 its agenda than we probably have time for.

13 But we have all those documents on 

14 there. The only thing that's not on there is the 

15 presentation that was prepared by Steve Ostrow, 

16 just really sort of a summary of other documents 

17 and discussions. And most of that material is 

18 covered in the documents that are posted.

19 But we will get that posted when we 

20 can; it couldn't be posted in time for this 

21 meeting.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Idaho Argonne National LaboratoryEast (ANL-Esdy) Work Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) 

and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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1 Okay, so roll call. Conflicts of 

2 interest. None of my Work Group members have 

3 conflicts so I don't need to address that, but we 

4 have Phillip up here, he's the chair of this Work 

5 Group on the line. 

6 (Roll Call)

7 MR. KATZ: I just realized, I didn't 

8 announce at the outset here. This is the 

9 INL/ANL-West Work Group meeting.

10 Okay, very good. Let's go to the SC&A 

11 team.

12 (Roll Call)

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, then. I just remind 

14 everyone to mute your phone except for when 

15 you're speaking. It will help with the audio. 

16 And Phil, it's your meeting.

17 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Thank you. I guess 

18 we'll go ahead and start off with SC&A. We're 

19 going to follow the agenda that's out on the 

20 website. So, if anybody has any questions they 

21 can go to the CDC website and find the agenda 
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1 there.

2 So, SC&A I guess it's yours now.

3 V&V plan for temporary badges at CPP

4 MR. BARTON: I guess that's my cue. 

5 The first discussion item on the agenda is the 

6 V&V plan for temporary badges at CPP. 

7 If you could just -- I'm trying to 

8 fight with Skype. I wanted to put up the memo 

9 just so people could try to take a look at a 

10 table that's shown in there so if you could bear 

11 with me one moment.

12 You know what? I can get started. 

13 The document is on the website under today's 

14 meeting as Ted had pointed out.

15 MR. KATZ: And Bob, everyone has it so 

16 it should be okay.

17 MR. BARTON: If people want to just 

18 follow along in that that's fine.

19 And this memo came out last September. 

20 And this was related to a lot of discussions 

21 that happened in both March, or January, March, 
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should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change.

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1 and August of last year in this Work Group.

2 And there's sort of two facets to it. 

3 So just to give everyone a little bit of 

4 background so we can kind of get up to speed 

5 because it's been a few months.

6 There were sort of two like I said 

7 facets to this to doing a V&V study on the 

8 temporary badge issue.

9 If you all remember what we discovered 

10 early in 2016, was that at some point during the 

11 mid to late nineteen sixties the policy at INL 

12 was they would issue a visitor badge. But if it 

13 came back as a zero dose for that wear period and 

14 you were not already in the health physics system 

15 they kept your badge but you weren't actually 

16 assimilated into these temporary badge reports 

17 with all the other workers, who were mainly the 

18 prime contractors aren't the same. So a lot of 

19 these are the I guess sub subcontractors you'd 

20 see. And if they had zero dose they weren't 

21 actually entered in INL's system for the purposes 
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and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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1 of being able to identify the people when it came 

2 to requests for their monitoring records.

3 So even though those records weren't 

4 destroyed or misplaced or anything like that they 

5 just simply hadn't been, what's referred to as 

6 indexed or coded so that when a request comes in 

7 for a specific worker those badges weren't 

8 recognized as being associated with that worker.

9 Now that problem was recognized and 

10 DOE has undergone, and I'm not sure where that 

11 stands right now. I don't know if Tim, you want 

12 to give an update on that coding effort.

13 I think maybe it was still underway.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, this is Tim 

15 Taulbee.

16 Back in April, Mitch and I talked with 

17 the site about their status and it is 

18 progressing. 

19 However, they are slightly delayed due 

20 to some resource issues. At that time -- this 

21 was about a month ago -- they were expecting to 
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1 be completed in mid-June.

2 MR. BARTON: Okay, great. So, anyway, 

3 like I said there are sort of two things that we 

4 really want to look at here.

5 One is do we physically have access to 

6 all of those visitor cards and temporary badges, 

7 or we're not missing whole groups of them which 

8 would obviously be a very large completeness 

9 issue.

10 Now that aspect of it was analyzed in 

11 depth and presented to the Work Group mostly in 

12 August but also in March of last year.

13 And in that analysis, I believe, in 

14 August it was -- essentially what we did, or what 

15 NIOSH went in and did is they counted physically 

16 how many of these temporary badges do we have in 

17 hand.

18 And then you can compare those to 

19 health physics reports which report out the 

20 number of temporary/visitor badges that were 

21 issued for a given period.
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and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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1 I think, again, I don't want to talk 

2 too much about the work NIOSH did, but they 

3 looked at it on an essentially year by year 

4 basis.

5 And the end game was that they 

6 actually had, I believe about 2 percent more 

7 badges, physical badges in hand than what was 

8 actually being reported in those health physics 

9 reports. 

10 So that's a pretty good weight of 

11 evidence argument that we're not missing whole 

12 groupings of these temporary badges. So they're 

13 there.

14 Now the question was, DOE is going to 

15 go in and code these badges, are they going to be 

16 in a form to where the implementation needs to be 

17 tested.

18 That is, we have a database now, or 

19 the database is currently underway so that when 

20 you have a claimant who's either going to qualify 

21 as the SEC or needs a dose reconstruction that 
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1 information comes in, they can identify the 

2 claimant, and these temporary badges which had 

3 heretofore been not associated with these workers 

4 can now be correctly associated and those records 

5 are transmitted both to DOL for any SEC 

6 determination, or to NIOSH for a dose 

7 reconstruction. So it's really that second 

8 part that this V&V memo was about. It was 

9 requested of SC&A to sort of come up with a 

10 protocol or a procedure on how we could go in and 

11 test the implementation of all this coding and 

12 indexing to be sure that when all is said and 

13 done we're still not going to be missing people 

14 who were in these temporary badge records that 

15 hadn't been officially entered into the INL 

16 dosimetry system.

17 So that's sort of the background to 

18 all this.

19 And we produced the memo again late 

20 September. Not a very long document, nine pages, 

21 but most of that is tables at the end.
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1 So if we can look at that, I kind of 

2 went through the introduction background.

3 But the method we came up with is 

4 fairly simple. What we wanted to do is go find 

5 some claimants who would require dose 

6 reconstruction from NIOSH mostly because the 

7 covered illness is not one of the 22 designated 

8 SEC cancers.

9 So despite whatever happens with the 

10 SEC they're still going to require dose 

11 reconstruction, it's still going to be required 

12 that NIOSH make a request for records from DOE so 

13 that it can get all these temporary badge reports 

14 which had been missing.

15 So what we did is sort of a pool 

16 principle. We said all right, we'll go into 

17 these -- groups of visitor cards which had been 

18 captured by NIOSH and we found some pretty large 

19 files from about mid 1967 into 1969, I think 

20 early 1970.

21 And we looked for claimants with 
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1 specific criteria. 

2 One, obviously that they still require 

3 dose reconstruction. And the reason why we made 

4 that a requirement is because DOE would already 

5 be searching and compiling the monitoring records 

6 for these people anyway. So this wouldn't be 

7 excess work on their end. It would be something 

8 that would already be being done so that the dose 

9 reconstruction could be revised given the new 

10 information. So that was one requirement.

11 And also one requirement that I put in 

12 there was that I wanted to see claims that had 

13 what's called an S number, or a security number.

14 This was a unique -- it's not Social 

15 Security. It's a unique security identification 

16 number for the site.

17 And the reason I wanted to include 

18 that criteria was simply because you could always 

19 run into situations where there's some ambiguity, 

20 some uncertainty which you might have a John 

21 Smith, but you don't know which John Smith that 
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1 is to put a very simple example on it.

2 So I wanted claimants that would 

3 require dose reconstruction, had an S number on 

4 these visitor cards so I could absolutely 

5 identify them for who they were, and then also 

6 the third requirement was these records that we 

7 see are not already included in the NOCTS file.

8 That is, these are the records that 

9 were missing, that had not been coded and 

10 indexed, and so were not being associated with 

11 the individual worker.

12 So as a proof of principle, and I 

13 think it's the first table there in the memo. We 

14 looked through several SRDB reference numbers and 

15 we came up with a group of 32 claimants who fit 

16 those criteria that are definitely going to 

17 require a revised dose reconstruction.

18 We have an S number that we can 

19 definitely tie them to these temporary badges. 

20 And the temporary badges are not currently in 

21 their file so they had been missed the first time 
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1 around.

2 And the idea is once all these badges 

3 are coded and a request is made to DOE to get 

4 these files for dose reconstruction now we can 

5 see, well, these missing badges which we've 

6 identified manually, are these now getting picked 

7 up by the electronic system that's now in place. 

8 So that's the general idea. There 

9 were 32 claimants with 51 total badges. So some 

10 claimants we were able to identify with multiple 

11 temporary badges at CPP again during this window 

12 that we looked at.

13 Really the proof of principle to say 

14 well, it would be nice if we had all these 

15 criteria and we could meet them. But in practice 

16 if we can't find claimants that we can put in 

17 this value then that wouldn't be worth a whole 

18 lot.

19 So, again these 32 claimants with 51 

20 records were part of the proof of principle to 

21 say this is the method that we feel is the best 
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1 way to test the actual implementation of this new 

2 database of temporary badges.

3 Can we find them? Yes, we found some. 

4 And this is how we propose for discussion with 

5 the Work Group on how we feel the best way to go 

6 about validating the implementation side of this 

7 issue.

8 And of course the other side was the 

9 total number of badges, do we have all of them, 

10 which is something that NIOSH looked into last 

11 August.

12 And I don't think there's much more to 

13 say on the actual memo. There's a fairly lengthy 

14 table at the end that shows those 32 claimants. 

15 And you can see what their work history was, what 

16 the illness was, kind of explain what their DR 

17 status is and also how many badges we found again 

18 in that subset of SRDB reference numbers that we 

19 present in the first table of the memo.

20 So with that I'd be happy to answer 

21 any questions or clarify any points. Hopefully 
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1 you're all still there and I didn't just speak 

2 for 10 minutes with nobody listening.

3 MR. KATZ: We're all here, Bob, 

4 thanks.

5 MR. BARTON: Okay.

6 MEMBER BEACH: So, this is Josie. I 

7 guess my question is so you did these 32. What 

8 sample size are you thinking we're going to need 

9 once the coding is done? Will it be a percent or 

10 a certain number?

11 MR. BARTON: That's where the method 

12 is somewhat limited. Again, we wanted to look at 

13 claimants who would require dose reconstruction 

14 for the sole reason that DOE is already going to 

15 have to go hunting and compile the records for 

16 these specific people anyway. So this wouldn't 

17 be extra work like, as you may remember, when we 

18 did some claimant studies earlier on the CPP 

19 Class Definition we found some that we really 

20 needed DOE to go back and get those records. 

21 And that generally took a couple of 
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1 months, extra months. So in my mind this was 

2 kind of -- at least there was a first sort of 

3 crack at it, but I feel it's killing two birds 

4 with one stone because we're already going to go 

5 searching for these records, for these specific 

6 people.

7 So it is restricted again by claimants 

8 and by claimants that require dose reconstruction 

9 and that have that security number that 

10 definitively ties the temporary badge to the 

11 claimant.

12 Now this was looked at CPP visitor 

13 badge, visitor cards again from about mid-1967 

14 into early-1970.

15 As I understand it the visitor cards 

16 prior to that period, so from 1963 through 1967, 

17 I believe they're also available. And actually, 

18 I was going to ask NIOSH to clarify that point 

19 because I was not able to find them yet and I 

20 don't know if they're still being held up for 

21 being uploaded to the SRDB or what the status of 
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1 those visitor cards are prior to roughly mid2 1967.

3 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim Taulbee. 

4 The status of those cards are, actually, we 

5 haven't looked for them. 

6 We looked at the temporary badge 

7 reports which is what was compiled from those 

8 cards. And that is the information that DOE is 

9 coding, is off of these reports, not the actual 

10 cards themselves. They've gone back to the 

11 reports and that is what they are entering at 

12 this time.

13 As far as the completeness standpoint 

14 that's where we looked at the monthly reports and 

15 then added up the names on all of those forms and 

16 got a very good positive match from that 

17 standpoint.

18 The status and the access of those 

19 cards, that I don't know. I know they're not 

20 coding those or scanning them from that 

21 standpoint.
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1 What we will be receiving in the 

2 future is a printout of that page with that 

3 person's name on it with their dose listed. The 

4 same thing -- what you see on these temporary 

5 badge reports up through 1967.

6 After 1967, we will be seeing the 

7 individual cards themselves because those they 

8 did not compile into a report.

9 Does that help clarify?

10 MR. BARTON: That does help. So 

11 essentially the issue that really sprung up was 

12 around that 1967 time frame when if you weren't 

13 part of the dosimetry system already even though 

14 you had a visitor card and it wasn't getting onto 

15 that temporary badge report listing.

16 Did I repeat that correctly?

17 DR. TAULBEE: Say that again.

18 MR. BARTON: Around 1967 is when the 

19 issue really cropped up that you had people who 

20 have visitor cards but if it was zero dose and 

21 they were not already in the dosimetry system 
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21

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1 then they keep the card but they did not transfer 

2 them, if you will, to those temporary badge 

3 reports.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Yes and no. You are 

5 correct. However, prior to 1967 if somebody had 

6 a zero dose they still weren't entered into the 

7 system. 

8 So you could have appeared on those 

9 temporary badge reports and you weren't entered 

10 into the system.

11 Now, in some cases, those people with 

12 zero dose are listed and we get them. But the 

13 nuance associated with that was that notes for 

14 anybody on the page that had a positive dose, 

15 they got pulled out and put to the front of the 

16 file, and those are scanned early on in the 

17 project which is why we get some zeroes but not 

18 all of them.

19 MR. BARTON: Okay, I think I 

20 understand. Really the concept would be the same 

21 then. So we're saying to a certain number, again 
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1 we're restricted by the criteria of who DOE is 

2 actually going to end up going back and pulling 

3 these records for just for dose reconstructions 

4 that have to be revised.

5 Now, the other option would be to just 

6 pull a random sample out of these temporary badge 

7 reports and ask DOE to go hunt down those people. 

8 This would obviously be sort of 

9 outside the normal record searches for dose 

10 reconstruction for Department of Labor. That's 

11 certainly something we could look into in which 

12 case you could have a definitive percentage of 

13 the records that we're looking at.

14 It gets a little bit muddy because as 

15 Tim just said some of those zeroes that are in 

16 there have already been captured for certain 

17 people. 

18 So again, we were trying to focus on 

19 those records that currently aren't making it 

20 into a worker's file. And the only way we know 

21 that is because we have claimants currently where 
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1 we have DOE files from before this coding effort 

2 happened, and then we'll have revised records 

3 requests which ideally would include all these 

4 records that were missing. And we know they were 

5 missing because we can compare those to before 

6 and after essentially.

7 So there's no real -- I can't put a 

8 percentage on it because it was really restricted 

9 by how many workers we can identify that fit the 

10 criteria of a claimant needing a dose 

11 reconstruction and also that those records are 

12 currently missing from their files.

13 And the alternative would be we could 

14 do a pure random sample and ask DOE to go and 

15 hunt them down. I'm not sure how that mechanism 

16 would necessarily work or what kind of time frame 

17 we'd be looking at to do that sort of validation 

18 of the implementation side of this issue.

19 I'm not sure if that answers your 

20 question, Jodie.

21 MEMBER BEACH: No, but I like the idea 
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1 of a random sample even though I know it's got 

2 some difficulties. 

3 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. I 

4 have another related issue.

5 You pulled together your samples for 

6 this report, the cases, claimant cases in 

7 September or maybe even before that. I don't 

8 know when you stopped ascertaining cases that 

9 would fit this.

10 It's now May, nine months later. By 

11 the time we get access to the -- by the time DOE 

12 is supposed to be done entering, doing all the 

13 data entry and so forth would it make sense at 

14 this point to add -- go back and look at 

15 additional claims since whenever you ended your 

16 ascertainment?

17 MR. BARTON: That's certainly 

18 something we can go do to expand.

19 Again, when I put this together it was 

20 intended to be a protocol with a proof of 

21 principle, not necessarily the entirety of what 
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1 we could potentially look at.

2 And don't forget, just to simply test 

3 the coding effort, this isn't just at CPP. It 

4 could be expanded to the other facilities just to 

5 see how from an implementation standpoint the 

6 coding effort is going.

7 If we find visitor badges at hand that 

8 were missing originally from the claimant files 

9 then those would certainly, in my mind, be just 

10 as valid as going towards validating the 

11 implementation and DOE's coding and indexing 

12 efforts.

13 So that's another avenue we can go to 

14 expand to a larger sampling size.

15 And again the other option would be we 

16 simply pull a random percentage of groupings. It 

17 could be just from CPP since that's the topic of 

18 the SEC. We could pull just random workers and 

19 ask DOE to go give us all the records on those 

20 workers.

21 That's the other option. Again, I 
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1 proposed the one in which we could look 

2 specifically at claimants because these are the 

3 situations where we have been missing those 

4 temporary badges. And we're looking specifically 

5 at those people where if you look at their file 

6 right now they're missing a badge that we can go 

7 manually find in the captured records that NIOSH 

8 has.

9 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. But there are 

10 some number more of those captured records now.

11 MR. BARTON: Yes. This is not by any 

12 means complete.

13 Again, I just wanted to prove that you 

14 could go in and I listed the ones I looked at. 

15 These were actually from the visitor cards.

16 We can pretty much go look at those 

17 temporary badge reports and do the same process 

18 to expand the grouping if that's certainly what 

19 the Work Group wants us to do.

20 DR. MAURO: Bob, this is John Mauro. 

21 I've got a question for you.
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1 I understand how the search and the 

2 completion of this I guess coding process would 

3 provide information that will help in dose 

4 reconstruction for the CPP workers.

5 To what degree does this very same 

6 investigation help toward the definition and 

7 implementation of the SEC which is based on 

8 having a film badge? Does this have play there 

9 also?

10 I don't know if that question is 

11 clear.

12 MR. BARTON: It affects both, 

13 obviously. If these badges are missing from 

14 workers' records that show that they entered CPP 

15 then obviously making sure that those are indexed 

16 and correctly associated with a worker will 

17 affect any SEC decisions for that worker.

18 At the same time, it also affects --

19 the DRs obviously would miss doses and that sort 

20 of thing.

21 And again, I keep talking about the DR 
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1 only in the context that DOE is already going to 

2 be going and getting these records for the 

3 subgroup of workers I identified, because they 

4 need a revised dose reconstruction.

5 But yes, this coding effort is 

6 definitely very important in the SEC context 

7 because all you need is that one badge. And if 

8 these badges aren't being associated correctly 

9 with the workers then that's obviously an issue.

10 DR. MAURO: Thank you.

11 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim Melius 

12 again.

13 So, I'm trying to think of what level 

14 of effort would be required to expand your 

15 current sample to bring it more up to date in 

16 terms of claims that have been filed since 

17 whenever you -- since your September report, the 

18 claims that are included in your September 

19 report.

20 MR. BARTON: It actually runs in the 

21 other direction.
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1 What we did is we looked at the 

2 temporary badges first and then tried to identify 

3 claimants from that population.

4 So it's not necessarily that we took 

5 claimant number one and then went and looked and 

6 see if we could find them in the temporary badge 

7 reports. It was really the other way around.

8 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay.

9 MR. BARTON: So that would be affected 

10 by any new claims. In other words, the first 

11 pass might have missed any claims filed since we 

12 did it last fall.

13 MEMBER MELIUS: Right.

14 MR. BARTON: But also there are other 

15 years, the years prior to 1967 mainly that we can 

16 look at in the temporary badge reports and pull 

17 out claimants from that to expand the sample size 

18 if you will.

19 So there's a couple of different 

20 things at play there.

21 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: This is Paul. I've 
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1 got a question. 

2 Some of these claimants look like 

3 outside of the card from the CPP. They have gaps 

4 of some of them several years with no other 

5 health physics records.

6 What's going to be the impact on 

7 those?

8 MR. BARTON: Could I ask -- I'm not 

9 sure I quite understood the question.

10 A lot of workers will have gaps, and 

11 we really just can't say with any assurance 

12 whether that gap is because they were in a non13 radiological area, weren't at the site at all, or 

14 we are still missing records.

15 I mean, we just can never definitively 

16 say that when you see a gap. I can say -- again, 

17 when we went through the sampled workers we have 

18 a badge, it has an S number that I can take back 

19 for that claimant, and I can look at that 

20 claimant's file and say this record is missing.

21 And then when those records get 
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1 revised and DOE sends the newly coded data over 

2 to perform the dose reconstruction then we can 

3 say well, either they got that record and it's 

4 now correctly associated with a claimant, or it's 

5 still missing and the coding effort did not 

6 correctly identify it.

7 But as for any individual gaps for any 

8 given person it's just very difficult to make any

9 sort of conclusions about why the gap exists.

10 Again, were they monitored and we 

11 don't have that data? Were they not monitored 

12 for good reason? Were they not even on the site? 

13 We just can't know.

14 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Okay.

15 MEMBER BEACH: So moving forward we 

16 need to decide what kind of sampling we're going 

17 to do based on this plan.

18 MR. BARTON: Right. I think there's 

19 probably two or maybe three options.

20 The first option is exactly what you 

21 see here which is -- again, it's restricted to a 
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1 number of years in '67 to roughly '70. But that 

2 can be expanded.

3 And then the other option, as we 

4 mentioned earlier, would be a purely random 

5 sample in which case we would essentially just 

6 give DOE a list of names, ascertain whether they 

7 exist, and ask them to pull records for those 

8 individuals and see if their coding effort has 

9 captured them.

10 The difficult part about the second 

11 one is we don't know what's currently missing 

12 from those workers' files. So we wouldn't know 

13 if DOE had already been correctly sending those a 

14 year ago, for example.

15 In this method we already know that 

16 DOE wasn't sending this record for this 

17 individual, and these records for this 

18 individual. We already know that they weren't 

19 included because they weren't properly indexed.

20 MEMBER BEACH: Right.

21 MR. BARTON: That's sort of the 
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1 difference.

2 MR. KATZ: So Bob, I'm just going to 

3 expand for Josie on that.

4 So, even though scientific study, like 

5 random samples. In this case, you're going to 

6 have a lot of wasted hits you might say or 

7 whatever, wasted cases in a random sample. 

8 There's going to be a bunch of those that really 

9 didn't matter anyway.

10 Whereas what Bob's proposing, it's 

11 focusing on the cases that will matter. So it's 

12 really a more intensive approach. Expanding it 

13 to get -- so all the cases that could be added 

14 once we have the coding done. If you do that 

15 it's a more intensive approach looking at exactly 

16 the problem that we're concerned about.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, that makes sense. 

18 Do we have a sense of how big that sampling 

19 would be at this point?

20 I mean, we just did 30.

21 MR. KATZ: We can't know what he has 
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1 back in -- when he did this look.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Right.

3 MR. KATZ: We don't know how many 

4 cases will be added. We find that out when the 

5 coding is done and Bob does that second run, 

6 basically, to pull cases.

7 MR. BARTON: That's correct, Ted. And 

8 I'd just add onto that that's it not just new 

9 claims that have been filed.

10 We didn't go through every single 

11 possible record just to find these sort of 

12 specialty claims where there is a real problem 

13 that we observed simply because we wanted to get 

14 approval from the Work Group before putting that 

15 kind of level of effort in.

16 What we did was a proof of principle 

17 saying well, we looked at these subset of records 

18 and we did find claimants who fit those criteria. 

19 So part of it would be simply expanding that to 

20 the remaining CPP records, and if the Work Group 

21 likes we can expand it even further to other 
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1 areas of INL where coding is still going on with 

2 those sites just like it's going on at CPP.

3 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. I 

4 think the initial step is we continue on this 

5 pathway with the expansion, as Bob just proposed.

6 I think then let's see. I'm not 

7 saying that we wouldn't want to look at a 

8 different area or whatever, but I think let's see 

9 what we find in this exercise, this evaluation, 

10 and then decide do we need to focus on different 

11 time periods and so forth or how we do it.

12 In terms of expanding to other areas 

13 of the site I think it somewhat depends on what 

14 we're -- I think the next item on the agenda 

15 would be potential 83.14.

16 Are there other areas where we're 

17 going to have this same issue in terms of concern 

18 about the Class Definition.

19 MEMBER BEACH: That sounds like a good 

20 approach, Jim. And not to expand it at this time 

21 to other areas.
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1 MR. BARTON: Just to clarify, I 

2 understand holding off on the other areas.

3 Would the Work Group want us to expand 

4 just to the rest of the CPP temporary badge 

5 records? We have a proof of principle here, but 

6 there are more records out there that we can look 

7 for additional examples of claimants where the 

8 files are missing.

9 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I would say yes. 

10 Gen is not on the phone call, but it's 

11 a point she's made in previous discussions with 

12 this is well, you know, I think Tim has also 

13 we've discussed in the Work Group is sort of how 

14 many is enough.

15 What is enough to say -- how many 

16 cases with claims that don't match up are 

17 adequate to say that we need a more open Class 

18 Definition. 

19 And so I think that having additional 

20 claims in this initial effort would be helpful. 

21 I also think it might help us to focus if there's 
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1 a particular time period, or type of worker, or 

2 whatever.

3 I think we'd probably do that as well 

4 as a random sampling. But let's see. We may 

5 want to focus a random sampling later as the next 

6 step.

7 I don't want to carry it too far in 

8 terms of speculating on what might be useful, but 

9 I think this would provide us with some initial 

10 information, enough initial information to 

11 decide, at least make a decision on what -- do we 

12 need to do more, or has this been adequate.

13 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Do we have any --

14 percentage-wise number of people that have this 

15 data missing that might show up in these cards?

16 MR. BARTON: So this is Bob again. 

17 Unfortunately no, we really don't know. It's a 

18 process of going through and first identifying 

19 claimants in the temporary badge records and then 

20 looking to see if those temporary badge records 

21 are actually included in their individual files 
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1 as opposed to, we capture files that NIOSH has 

2 that are thousands of pages and include hundreds 

3 and thousands of workers on them.

4 So, it's really not possible to know 

5 exactly how many which is sort of like -- you 

6 could get a percentage of the temporary badge 

7 records if you did the random sample.

8 But as Ted had mentioned, you'll have 

9 a lot of -- it sort of muddies the water. 

10 Because even though you could say well, you know, 

11 99 percent were found, 99 percent might have been 

12 found a year ago. 

13 And so we're not really testing the 

14 hypothesis of how well this new coding effort is 

15 going to be able to be implemented for those 

16 badges that we do know are missing, but only 

17 because we found them in sort of a manual effort 

18 really.

19 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Well, I've got one 

20 other question.

21 I know some of the people with missing 
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1 badges are union people. Did the local unions 

2 keep any of this information in their records 

3 that you are aware of?

4 MR. BARTON: I personally have not 

5 seen anything that would indicate to me that the 

6 individual subcontractors necessarily kept 

7 separate dosimetry files. 

8 But I'd certainly defer to Tim and his 

9 team on that.

10 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim Taulbee. We 

11 did not check with unions from that standpoint.

12 What I do know is that a copy was 

13 provided to them of their employees. But the 

14 main record that is currently being coded was 

15 also kept at the INL dosimetry records. And so 

16 that is what is being coded at this time.

17 So, we have not pursued that and we're 

18 not planning to. We don't do that at other sites 

19 either. We go with what the site's records were 

20 and as we indicated earlier we've already 

21 compared these temporary badge reports, these 
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and personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not 

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40

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 visitor badges with the number that they said 

2 they had issued and we're seeing really good 

3 agreement.

4 So, I believe this to be a complete 

5 set.

6 The question as Bob was pointing out 

7 is have these made it into the DOE records system 

8 once this coding effort is completed such that we 

9 can see these same badges now when somebody files 

10 a claim.

11 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: So, the question I 

12 would have -- this is Phil -- is what -- how long 

13 do we expect this, before we would have enough 

14 data that we could make a really well-informed 

15 opinion of where we need to be going on this.

16 Is there any particular timeline that 

17 you have knowledge of?

18 MR. BARTON: Well, this is Bob. I 

19 guess from my end the first step would be to 

20 expand to the other years at CPP and see how many 

21 more claimants we can identify that have these 
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41

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 missing temporary badges.

2 And that can be done while the coding 

3 effort potentially wraps up.

4 Then it's a question of requesting 

5 those records from DOE which I don't really have 

6 a good handle on. I assume it's probably a month 

7 or two for them to research a number of claims 

8 and get all those records together and send them 

9 over. 

10 But again, I don't have a great feel 

11 for that. I don't know if anyone over at NIOSH 

12 may have a better idea.

13 But once those records are searched by 

14 DOE and transmitted to NIOSH based on the new 

15 coding effort it's a very simple process of going 

16 through and seeing if the ones that were missing 

17 are now present.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Also, to give some idea, 

19 it actually depends upon how many people you all 

20 decide that you're going to evaluate and re21 request the records from.
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42

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 When we did the ANL-West effort of 

2 specific people from the early time periods to 

3 see if the records were complete, or whether they 

4 were in Idaho, or whether they were over in 

5 Illinois, it took about -- I want to say about 

6 one to two months for about 30 claims.

7 So, if the number stays about the same 

8 or maybe 40 then we're probably looking closer to 

9 the two-month range.

10 If the number increases and you decide 

11 you want to look at 80 you're probably looking at 

12 three or four months.

13 So it really depends upon how many 

14 people you all select and send over to DOE for 

15 them to pull the people's files. Does that help?

16 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Yes. I was just 

17 wondering if there's any way we could maybe, I 

18 don't know, make this process a little sharper so 

19 that we don't have as long of a lag time.

20 Because you know, this could drag it 

21 out -- given the number of years could drag it 
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43

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 out for quite a while.

2 I guess what I'm looking for are 

3 suggestions on how to speed this process up a 

4 little bit if anybody has a suggestion.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim. I think 

6 the only way to speed it up is going to be, you 

7 know, whatever can be accomplished before -- to 

8 make the June deadline then they've got to have a 

9 little bit of time for looking for additional 

10 cases, claims, and then it can also be done 

11 incrementally.

12 So the claims that have already been 

13 identified can request those records. And then 

14 new ones can be done as another batch or 

15 whatever.

16 Does that make sense?

17 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: It seems like a 

18 reasonable approach.

19 MEMBER MELIUS: Make sense to Bob and 

20 Tim?

21 MR. BARTON: This is Bob. I think 
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44

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 you're exactly right. I think right now -- as 

2 soon as the coding effort's done, we can send the 

3 first batch for DOE to start researching and then 

4 when they get those records in like I said it's 

5 going to be a pretty quick process to go and look 

6 at the new transmittal from DOE and see, alright, 

7 those missing badges are there, or they're still 

8 missing.

9 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. I agree. 

10 I would not send that list until they finish the 

11 coding though.

12 And the reason is the same people that 

13 are doing the coding are the same people who are 

14 going to be responding and culling the data.

15 If you send it now your coding's going 

16 to be delayed while they're beginning to look up. 

17 I would wait.

18 MEMBER BEACH: That sounds good. So 

19 the other thing we haven't talked about is you 

20 noted in your conclusion, Bob, that there were at 

21 least two claimants that had spelling errors and 
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45

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1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 coding transposed numbers.

2 And you said it has an implementation 

3 issue possibly. Can you expand on that just a 

4 little bit? Would these two individuals not be 

5 included because of those two issues?

6 MR. BARTON: I would want to include 

7 them, I think, because those types of errors are 

8 sort of what preempted this entire discussion is 

9 that notion that we're sort of working off in 

10 some cases handwritten records, in other cases 

11 they're typed.

12 But the human errors present such as 

13 spelling mistakes, or the transposition of the S 

14 number, and how is that reflected in this coding 

15 effort.

16 Now you know, I don't think it's 

17 possible or even reasonable to assume that they 

18 would be able to catch everything along those 

19 lines, but it would also be very informative to 

20 say like well, listen, we had this person that's 

21 part of our study. There was a transposed letter 
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46

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 in his last name but it still was caught based on 

2 the S number. There was a transposed S number 

3 but it was still caught based on that person's 

4 last name. It kind of goes both ways in that 

5 front.

6 So I think it would be useful to 

7 include those people just so we can have a 

8 discussion about how the coding effort either did 

9 or did not catch, I guess you can call them 

10 variations when you try to code that kind of data 

11 from some cases handwritten, some cases typed. 

12 But there's going to be human errors, 

13 unavoidable. It's good to understand what those 

14 are, how well they're dealt with, and then have a 

15 discussion about what the implications are on 

16 that.

17 MEMBER BEACH: So those two were 

18 caught and they would have been included so that 

19 that process you're saying worked and caught 

20 those.

21 MR. BARTON: I would certainly hope 
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47

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 so. I would hope that it would catch them. But 

2 again we don't know until all the coding is done 

3 and then we go and request the records for some 

4 of the individuals where we saw a couple of 

5 variations.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So it's good to 

7 make note of that then. Thank you. 

8 MR. BARTON: No problem.

9 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Does anybody else 

10 have any input on this particular subject?

11 DR. TAULBEE: None from NIOSH.

12 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: SC&A?

13 MR. BARTON: I guess I just want to 

14 clarify our marching orders if you will.

15 As I understand it obviously we're not 

16 going to be sending in any data requests to DOE 

17 until the coding effort is done.

18 But as I understand it we would look 

19 to expand the number of claims at CPP for some of 

20 those early years in the meantime while that 

21 coding is still being performed so that when it 
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48

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 is done we'll have a hopefully somewhat larger 

2 cohort to look at.

3 Or should we just keep what we have 

4 for now and when the coding effort is done we 

5 make the request for 32 claims and then we see 

6 what we see with those 32 first before trying to 

7 expand.

8 MR. KATZ: Bob, so I think the 

9 decision was and the recommendation from the Work 

10 Group was to expand as much as you can expand it 

11 at the point you have all the coding done.

12 MEMBER MELIUS: So it's expanding the 

13 earlier years and also additional claims from --

14 that weren't in the original sample that might be 

15 from the years that are covered already.

16 MR. KATZ: Right.

17 MR. BARTON: Okay, I understand. 

18 Thank you.

19 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Josie, do you have 

20 any input?

21 MEMBER BEACH: I'm comfortable with 
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49

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 that action.

2 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Okay, then I think 

3 we've got that covered. I'd like to spend time 

4 on the burial grounds now.

5 NIOSH Priorities for August ABRWH

6 83.14 re: Burial Grounds

7 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim Taulbee. I 

8 didn't notice this actual typo until it was too 

9 late here.

10 From the August Advisory Board on 

11 Radiation -- your August meeting the 83.14 that 

12 we'll be proposing to you all will be for CPP, 

13 not the burial grounds.

14 This is an expansion of the CPP Class 

15 up through 1980. So, the burial grounds 83.14 is 

16 a separate effort that I do want to talk to the 

17 Work Group about so it's okay to be on the agenda 

18 here. 

19 But as far as the Advisory Board 

20 meeting in August we do have a draft of the 83.14 

21 for the CPP expansion that is working its way 
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50

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1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 through review, and we do hope to have that --

2 well, we plan to have that out to the Work Group 

3 -- to the full Board in advance of that meeting 

4 such that I can present it at that meeting, at 

5 the August meeting.

6 So are there any questions about that 

7 before I jump onto the 83.14 for the burial 

8 grounds?

9 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, one question. 

10 Just in terms of timing, is it feasible for that 

11 to be released in time that we -- so the Work 

12 Group can have an opportunity to review it prior 

13 to the August meeting? And to possibly meet to 

14 discuss it.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Let me check the current 

16 timing of that. I'm actually not sure.

17 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay, so if you can 

18 just let us know. I'm trying to facilitate if 

19 there are questions about it or something.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Right, no, I understand. 

21 I understand. Give me just a second here. 
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51

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1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 It's currently scheduled to be 

2 delivered to us in the middle of June. So 

3 probably four to six weeks after that.

4 MEMBER MELIUS: So we're cutting it 

5 close.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we're cutting it 

7 close.

8 MEMBER MELIUS: So let's just see 

9 where we are then.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

11 MEMBER BEACH: To be clear, Tim, that 

12 83.14 is simply CPP, and it does not have 

13 anything in the later years, and it has nothing 

14 about the burial grounds.

15 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. That 

16 is correct. This is where we concur. What we 

17 found was those procedures and changes of CPP 

18 monitoring that were recommended by -- in that 

19 report of October 1974 to increase the bioassay, 

20 to clean up the areas, to reduce the 

21 contamination levels, improve the air monitoring 
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52

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1 and so forth actually do get implemented as fast 

2 as what we anticipated it might be.

3 And so we committed when we presented 

4 the original ER to evaluate when they actually 

5 implemented all of those things.

6 And the bioassay really didn't begin 

7 to kick in until 1980 is when that began to 

8 happen. And they did have some other incidents 

9 in the late nineteen seventies with that shift 

10 lot as well.

11 So that's the basis for the 83.14 for 

12 CPP, to expand that Class.

13 MEMBER MELIUS: And refresh my memory, 

14 but the monitoring practices at the time were the 

15 same as before, or changed, or what?

16 DR. TAULBEE: As far as badging to get 

17 into the area? Actually, they changed back. 

18 They reverted back to the one area -- one badge 

19 one area.

20 So that actually might have some 

21 bearing on what Bob and you all are proposing 
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53

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1 here as well.

2 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

3 MR. BARTON: So, they did implement --

4 they went away from the all-area badging back to 

5 one badge one area.

6 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay.

7 DR. TAULBEE: And like I said I'll go 

8 through all of this more when the report is out, 

9 the presentation to the Board. So that's what 

10 we're planning for the August Board meeting.

11 Okay. As I mentioned in the March 

12 Board meeting that we are going to pursue an 

13 83.14 for the burial grounds for the retrieval of 

14 waste.

15 Now, this is before we got the report 

16 that SC&A released last week, or the week before 

17 last rather on the burial grounds. That is the 

18 fourth bullet here on the agenda.

19 And so my question to the Work Group 

20 is do you want us to pursue the 83.14 for that 

21 waste retrieval operation, or do you want us to 
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1 focus on responding to SC&A's report. Due to 

2 kind of resource issues we can't do both 

3 simultaneously. I guess we potentially could, 

4 but that would take some herculean effort here.

5 Or -- so we prefer to do them 

6 serially, but which one is the higher priority to 

7 the Work Group.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Tim, a question for you 

9 on that burial ground. I had sent an email 

10 asking, requesting some information on some of 

11 your data.

12 And I thought we would have that 

13 before now. Can you say where you're at on that?

14 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Mitch and I are 

15 assembling that. I apologize for it being late. 

16 Both of us have been out quite a bit the past 

17 month. I'd hoped to have it to you last week, but 

18 we're just not ready yet from that standpoint. 

19 But we are working on your request there of 

20 pointing out specific special bioassay of workers 

21 being monitored.
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55

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1 I do hope to get that to you in the 

2 next couple of weeks.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So, you're 

4 talking about working on an 83.14 for the burial 

5 grounds, correct?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

7 MEMBER BEACH: And what time period?

8 DR. TAULBEE: This would be 1970 

9 through around '77, '78 when we began to see a 

10 lot of bioassay for the burial grounds. Specific 

11 bioassay for the burial grounds.

12 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And this report 

13 that SC&A has out is for those earlier years, and 

14 you're saying you cannot simultaneously work on 

15 both of those.

16 DR. TAULBEE: No, we've got the same 

17 people doing both. So I'm asking which is the 

18 higher priority for us to respond to.

19 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim. I'd say 

20 the 83.14.

21 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I can't say I 
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1 disagree with that, but how far off would be 

2 responding to that report be then, the early 

3 years?

4 DR. TAULBEE: It would be fall at the 

5 earliest, I would think.

6 MEMBER BEACH: It almost seems to me 

7 the 83.14 should encompass that '53 all the way 

8 to '77.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Well, we only made a 

10 decision about the earlier time period, and this 

11 is where SC&A's comments come into it.

12 The reason for us potentially 

13 expanding was there's a big change in operations 

14 in 1970. The big change is, one, they were 

15 burying waste. Starting in 1970 time frame, 

16 1971, '72 they started digging it up. 

17 So, from our standpoint there's a much 

18 higher potential when they were doing that 

19 digging up of the waste. And like I said, we 

20 don't see any bioassay right now, but that's part 

21 of the 83.14 evaluation.
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1 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: This is Phil. I've 

2 got a question on that kind of limited experience 

3 of our facilities that have burials going on.

4 That's the fact that these personnel 

5 working in those areas, the materials going into 

6 those dumps comes from all over the site.

7 You've got about every isotope you can 

8 think of going into this waste stream. Which 

9 unless they had a very broad spectrum analysis 

10 done, I would be concerned about whether you're 

11 catching a lot of what potential exposures are 

12 when they were burying this material, and not 

13 just when they were digging it up.

14 MR. KATZ: Phil, that concern is sort 

15 of at the heart of the SC&A review which they 

16 will address.

17 But with an 83.14 once NIOSH 

18 determines feasibility for a Class of workers it 

19 has to proceed with that 83.14. It can't really 

20 say okay, we're going to put that off and 

21 evaluate the present thing, and add that to this. 
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1 If they have a claimant who's 

2 represented by an 83.14 they're supposed to 

3 proceed with that.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Right, Ted, but we're 

5 not quite there yet with this 83.14. 

6 The potential that we see right now is 

7 that we know they were digging it up under what 

8 we call the initial drum retrieval operation, and 

9 then there was a second one where they were 

10 beginning to dig up the waste.

11 From the coding for the coworker data 

12 set looking at the bioassay for the people 

13 involved with that and we're not seeing much 

14 routine type of bioassay until we get into the 

15 '77 and later time period.

16 So, we're seeing the potential there 

17 that causes us concern which is why we want to 

18 investigate. 

19 (Simultaneous speaking)

20 DR. TAULBEE: -- the point you were 

21 saying yet, but we're kind of guessing that we're 
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1 going to have an infeasibility during those 

2 recovery operations, the early part of the 

3 recovery operations.

4 MR. KATZ: Okay, got it. So you would 

5 have to identify a claimant anyway to proceed 

6 with the 83.14, right?

7 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. 

8 MR. KATZ: Okay.

9 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. Just 

10 a quick observation. After reading Joe 

11 Fitzgerald's report, it's a very broad-based 

12 report with lots and lots of rich information on 

13 places where there may be some weaknesses in 

14 terms of the ability to reconstruct doses.

15 So I guess I would just say that 

16 reading the report and getting a sense of SC&A's 

17 perspective on where there's softness in the 

18 records, and the HP oversight program almost as 

19 if it's background information that I think it 

20 would be very useful as you're pursuing your 

21 83.14. It may be self-evident to say that, but I 
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1 just wanted to point that out.

2 DR. TAULBEE: I understand. I agree. 

3 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Just from my own 

4 perspective I have a question as far as you're 

5 looking at like the bioassays and stuff that were 

6 done.

7 Was there program bioassays that you 

8 would consider to be at least a decent standard 

9 in the earlier years when they were burying a lot 

10 of this material before they started digging some 

11 of it back up?

12 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. In the earlier 

13 years they were one of the first sites to really 

14 kind of implement whole body counting for the 

15 mixed fission products.

16 There was also from the alpha 

17 monitoring. The bioassay laboratory and the 

18 techniques at that time were RESL, Radiological, 

19 Environmental Sciences Laboratories. 

20 So they were quite top notch as far as 

21 being able to analyze the samples.
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1 The question that SC&A and Josie has 

2 posed -- well, from the report, and SC&A, what we 

3 want to get back with Josie on in our initial 

4 evaluation we indicated that when something 

5 happened that would require a bioassay or follow6 up that they sent people to Central Facilities 

7 for that particular analysis.

8 So Josie's asked for examples of where 

9 that has occurred. And that's what we're 

10 compiling hopefully within the next few weeks 

11 here for Josie. Well, for the whole Work Group, 

12 obviously.

13 But that's what we're currently 

14 looking at.

15 They did not have a routine monitoring 

16 program at the burial grounds during burial. It 

17 was on an as-needed basis.

18 Now, and that actually appears to have 

19 continued through when they were retrieving 

20 waste. And that's what's causing us some 

21 concern.
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1 But we do begin to see a routine 

2 bioassay monitoring program in the late-1970s for 

3 the burial grounds.

4 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Okay.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim. I still 

6 think the 83.14, or potential 83.14, ought to 

7 take precedent in terms of NIOSH efforts at this 

8 point in time.

9 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: I agree with you, 

10 Jim.

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. I just think it 

12 needs that. We'll get to the other report, the 

13 earlier years in turn. And maybe looking at the 

14 later years will shed light on the earlier years. 

15 More helpful to address that issue, some of 

16 those issues. 

17 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. If that's the 

18 direction then we can certainly pursue that. 

19 That's actually the opposite that I thought we 

20 were going to go, but that's quite all right. We 

21 can certainly adjust and do that. 
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1 MEMBER MELIUS: You said you were going 

2 to do the opposite. 

3 DR. TAULBEE: But that's quite all 

4 right. We can do that. Not a problem. Thank 

5 you. Thank you for the clarification on that.

6 That was all that I had for this 

7 particular topic there, Phil, was the requesting 

8 of the priorities of what it is you wanted us to 

9 work on from that standpoint.

10 I will say this for the whole Work 

11 Group's benefit. There are other reports that 

12 SC&A has put out in the past that we are going to 

13 begin to work on and we can work on those in 

14 parallel.

15 It's just the people that focus on the 

16 burial grounds are skilled in the burial grounds 

17 and so those people are the ones most informed on 

18 it. And that's the resource issue.

19 But other things such as Argonne-West 

20 and so forth we can begin to pursue in parallel.

21 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: I just had a 
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1 question. Was there any feel for -- I mean, I 

2 really don't know, did they tend to have a small 

3 crew that handled the burial grounds? Or was 

4 this a much broader effort where they brought in 

5 people from other areas to assist in the 

6 retrieval of some of these drums and burial 

7 containers? What kind of numbers are we looking 

8 at I guess is the point of what my question is.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Dozens. A few dozen, 

10 let me put it that way. 

11 But it might be more people. But at 

12 any one time it's probably around, even during 

13 the retrieval around 20 to 24 type of people 

14 working. But it might be a different crew every 

15 day. 

16 The burial grounds used yardmen and we 

17 found this from the interviews numerous times. 

18 So one day a yardman might be assigned 

19 to the burial grounds. The next day he might be 

20 assigned to a hot cell. The next day he might be 

21 at MTR. So they moved around a lot.
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1 Now, the health physics crew, there 

2 was four or five of them that were kind of 

3 dedicated from CFA and on any given day one of 

4 them might have been down at the burial grounds.

5 Heavy equipment operators, we don't 

6 think that there's that many of them, but that 

7 they might have also been rotating around as 

8 well.

9 So, it's not a huge number of people 

10 during this time period, but it might be a lot of 

11 different people, if I said that correctly.

12 Mitch, is that your impression and 

13 understanding as well?

14 MR. FINDLEY: That's correct, Tim. 

15 Looking at some of the area exposure reports in 

16 1975 it's like you said kind of dozens and then 

17 over time it looked like it ramps up as it 

18 becomes more of a -- more of a facility, if you 

19 will, instead of an operation.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Does that answer your 

21 question, Phil?
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1 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Yes, it does. I 

2 mean obviously the numbers will start shaking out 

3 as you get farther into this.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Tim, you also indicated 

6 you'd have a short White Paper on emergency 

7 responders. And I realize that hasn't been --

8 isn't out yet.

9 What is that about or for?

10 DR. TAULBEE: That was the -- kind of 

11 summarizing all of the interviews where the 

12 question at CPP was were they monitored during 

13 call-outs. That's what that's about.

14 MEMBER BEACH: So we should see that 

15 shortly as well.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you.

18 MR. BARTON: Are we ready to go to the 

19 next agenda item?

20 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Unless somebody else 

21 has some input I think we're ready to go on to 
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1 the next -- for the dose reconstruction records 

2 priorities for the reactors. 

3 MR. KATZ: So I think that's Steve, 

4 right?

5 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: I believe so. He's 

6 got the --

7 Priorities for Evaluating Reactor

8 DR Records/Methods

9 DR. OSTROW: This is Steve. I'm 

10 looking at the agenda. There's two points, 

11 priorities for evaluating reactor dose 

12 reconstruction records. That one we know about, 

13 who is doing it.

14 The second point is flush methods. 

15 That's my stuff.

16 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Your presentation is 

17 on the website for the public, isn't it?

18 DR. OSTROW: The presentation, I don't 

19 think so because I don't think NIOSH has been 

20 able to post things the last couple of days.

21 MR. KATZ: So Steve, the reactor 
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1 prioritization methods is the same, right?

2 DR. OSTROW: Okay. That's fine. I'm 

3 ready to give a presentation. Let me see if I 

4 can get a PowerPoint presentation up here.

5 Everybody in the Work Group and the 

6 SC&A and NIOSH and ORAU got my PowerPoint 

7 presentation a couple of days ago by email so 

8 they can refer to it. Let's see if I can get it 

9 up on Skype also. Let me see if it works here.

10 (Off the record comments)

11 DR. OSTROW: Alright, so this is the 

12 reactor prioritization. And if you have the 

13 slides, great.

14 Just a brief introduction is on page 

15 2. We've been looking at many different aspects 

16 of the Site Profile and SEC investigations one of 

17 which is related to reactors. And that's what 

18 I'm going to focus on.

19 And we have about a two-year history 

20 of discussions and White Papers and going back 

21 and forth between SC&A and NIOSH. 
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1 Did it just come up right now?

2 MR. BARTON: Yes, Steve, I just tried 

3 to throw it up there. I don't know if people see 

4 it.

5 DR. OSTROW: Okay.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes.

7 DR. OSTROW: Yes, it did go away. Do 

8 you want to give it another try and see if you 

9 can get it up?

10 Okay, anyway, we'll go on. So we're 

11 right now on the introduction slide, page 2.

12 Alright, so we came out with a report 

13 on December 8. Oh now it's up again. It 

14 disappeared. 

15 Anyway, we came out with that report 

16 on December 8 looking at responding -- as I said 

17 there was a whole series of going back and forth 

18 between us, NIOSH and ORAU about looking at 

19 reactor analyses.

20 And our latest report, the December 8, 

21 looks at NIOSH's reactor analysis plan that Tim 
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1 Taulbee had created. And also discussed a few 

2 other issues that were related to reactor 

3 modeling.

4 And the purpose of our report is to 

5 put everything together in one place and to 

6 inform the Work Group of where we are, and to 

7 provide for the Work Group and to provide some 

8 guidance to NIOSH and SC&A what we should do 

9 next.

10 NIOSH needs information on 

11 prioritizing the new reactor and the irradiated 

12 fuel characterization studies related to 

13 reconstructing internal doses where bioassay data 

14 are not available. So what do they look at next?

15 And we also address some specific 

16 concerns we had relating to modeling the Test 

17 Area North and test reactor area operations. We 

18 had expressed those concerns in separate reports 

19 in 2015.

20 Next page, page 3, background. This 

21 is the -- we've been discussing this for years 
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1 already, the OTIB-54 which is fission and 

2 activation product assignment for returning dose3 related gross beta and gamma analyses.

4 Where is this applicable? 

5 Specifically for INL reactors. We had performed 

6 preliminary assessments in 2015 and 2016 of 

7 whether the OTIB envelope be important condition 

8 to the INL and ANL reactors and prioritized 

9 reactors to high, medium, and low categories.

10 Subsequently we focused just on high 

11 priority category. 

12 NIOSH responded last July, Tim's 

13 report, with a plan for additional reactor 

14 evaluations.

15 We were asked by the Work Group to 

16 look at Tim's report and comment, and that's what 

17 the current December report is on which was about 

18 five months ago now.

19 Page 4 slides. Just to remind people 

20 why we were looking at this. The operations at 

21 INL/ANL-West were very complex involving 
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1 reactors.

2 And we had all sorts of unique 

3 situations about fuel, blankets, reflectors, 

4 moderators, coolants, operating scenarios, 

5 burnups which would all affect the applicability 

6 of the OTIB-54 methodology.

7 And to remind people, there were 52

8 reactors at INL. There were 34 INL reactors and 

9 ANL-West reactors. Those are the ones we're 

10 concerned with. And there were also four at the 

11 naval research facility which we're not concerned 

12 with, and two reactors never actually operated. 

13 So we're left with a lot of reactors. 

14 Next page, slide 5. Just to refresh 

15 everybody's memory about what is OTIB-54. And 

16 this is a real nice tool that NIOSH developed.

17 It determines internal doses when you 

18 only have gross beta or gross gamma measurements. 

19 And it assigns fission and activation product 

20 intakes to different radioisotopes that are 

21 directly tied to indicator radionuclides, either 
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1 strontium-90 and cesium-137.

2 So, the OTIB looked at four different 

3 reactors which are supposed to be representative 

4 of the whole universe of reactors and generated 

5 nine different representative cases using the 

6 ORIGEN code.

7 So the question we have now, this was 

8 investigating, is given a particular INL/ANL-West 

9 reactor does it fit within the OTIB-54 envelope,

10 or conversely can you use OTIB-54 to model these 

11 reactors adequately.

12 Okay, page 6. We had in two different 

13 reports as I mentioned looked at all the INL and 

14 ANL-West reactors, and assigned priority rankings 

15 to each, high, medium, low, which they should do 

16 first, second, third.

17 So, we looked at things like fuel 

18 types, moderators, reflectors, coolants, 

19 operational modes. Some were steady state, some 

20 were intermittent, some operated in burst mode. 

21 Some were deliberately or inadvertently melted. 
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1 Length of operation and overall burnup. 

2 And at the last Work Group meeting the 

3 Work Group asked us also to take a look at the 

4 potential for exposing workers to radiation.

5 Because if you had a reactor, a 

6 bizarre reactor, something which couldn't be 

7 modeled, but it didn't expose anybody, then you 

8 don't really care about. So that goes to the 

9 exposure potential. 

10 And in our report Appendix A covers 

11 that. Bob Barton did a terrific job with that. 

12 So it's there to look at.

13 And finally were there any particular 

14 incidents, other factors that have potential to 

15 expose people.

16 So we -- here we're at page 7. We 

17 ended up looking at just high priority category, 

18 and we categorized seven INL and seven ANL-West 

19 reactors in the high priority category.

20 For INL we had LOFT, OMRE which is the 

21 organic-moderated reactor, Power Burst Facility, 
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1 and the SPERT 1, 2, 3, 4 reactors.

2 ANL-West we had also seven reactors, 

3 the five BORAX, boiling water experiment 

4 reactors, and the two EBR reactors, experiment 

5 breeding reactors.

6 That's what we recommended for high 

7 priority. 

8 Page 8. Responding to our report, 

9 NIOSH wrote a long memo that made several 

10 recommendations. And I took this from Tim's 

11 report. I'll talk in more detail later.

12 But basically it posed merging the INL 

13 and ANL-West high priority categories together. 

14 It didn't make any sense to do them separately. 

15 Eliminating several reactors from the high 

16 priority category and reasons were given in the 

17 report for the SPERT reactors modeling the most 

18 extreme experiment as a bounding case, and also 

19 modeling the bounding case for the last two EBR-I 

20 cores.

21 That's a quick summary of what's in 
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1 Tim's report.

2 Page 9 lists that NIOSH proposes to do 

3 the evaluations they proposed to do. So it's 

4 OMRE, PBF, the SPERT reactor, BORAX reactors, 

5 EBR-I core 4 and EBR-II.

6 So I read that quickly but you can go 

7 read it from the slides or the report.

8 I'll get into the guts of it now. 

9 Beginning on page 10 of 15 pages I had listed 

10 here on the second column NIOSH's recommendation 

11 from Tim's report.

12 And the last column is SC&A's 

13 evaluation from the December report that we put 

14 out. And this is taken verbatim from both 

15 reports.

16 And there were eight different items 

17 here from Tim's report that we responded to. In 

18 general, we concur in most cases with NIOSH. We 

19 only have a few differences here.

20 So the first item, NIOSH proposes 

21 merging the INL and ANL-West high priority 
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1 categories for evaluation. And we concur. 

2 There's no reason to have INL separately and ANL3 West done separately. So however NIOSH wants to 

4 do it, whatever order, that's fine with us.

5 Item 2, NIOSH proposes that the LOFT, 

6 that's the loss of fluid test, be removed from 

7 consideration because nuclear operations did not 

8 commence until December 1978.

9 So we disagreed with NIOSH here. 

10 First, we recognized that the first five LOFT 

11 experiments were non-nuclear thermohydraulic 

12 experiments, and the potential for radiation 

13 exposure didn't occur until December 1978. So 

14 NIOSH is correct about that, which is after the 

15 SEC period.

16 But we believe that given the facility 

17 5 long operating history, beyond design basis 

18 operating scenarios, and potential to have 

19 exposed a significant number of personnel that 

20 LOFT deserved a more detailed examination with 

21 respect to OTIB-54.
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1 While it may not be an SEC issue 

2 they're recommending that this be conducted 

3 perhaps as a Site Profile exercise. We think 

4 it's important that LOFT be modeled. That was 

5 item 2.

6 Item 3, both NIOSH and SC&A agree that 

7 OMRE, the Organic-Moderated Reactor Experiment, 

8 be modeled because that had a unique moderating 

9 coolant that's certainly not covered by OTIB-54. 

10 It's not obviously covered anyway. So item 3, 

11 on OMRE, we agree.

12 Next slide is slide 11, item number 4. 

13 We agree that the Power Burst Facility should be 

14 evaluated since they used ceramic fuel which is 

15 different. So we agree on item 4 for OMRE.

16 Item 5, this is the SPERT experiments. 

17 NIOSH proposes a model for the most extreme 

18 experiment from all the SPERT in terms of 

19 possible departures from OTIB-54, be used to 

20 represent the bounding case to cover all four 

21 SPERT reactors.
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1 So NIOSH basically wants to pick one 

2 case that they think is the worst from all these 

3 SPERT reactors and model that.

4 We disagree. Although the four SPERT 

5 reactors were all part of the same series of 

6 reactor experiments that subjected the reactor to 

7 large reactivity excursions, they still differed 

8 significantly from each other and should be 

9 examined separately, perhaps by choosing the 

10 worst case scenario for each reactor.

11 So rather than picking one worst case 

12 for all four SPERT experiments, we recommend 

13 picking -- looking at each of the four 

14 experiments and just picking one worst case for 

15 each one of the four. 

16 So we disagree with NIOSH. We think 

17 they should do a bit more modeling than they're 

18 suggesting.

19 Item 6 which is on the next slide, 

20 slide 12. This is the BORAX reactors, boiling 

21 water reactor experiment.
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1 And NIOSH notes that BORAX-I, II and 

2 III all ceased operations toward the end of the 

3 SEC period for ANL-West. BORAX-I was 1954 it 

4 ended. BORAX-II was 1955 it ended. And BORAX5 III ended 1956.

6 So NIOSH proposes removing BORAX-I 

7 through III. But NIOSH agreed with us that 

8 BORAX-IV should be evaluated for the OTIB-54 

9 applicability due to the use of uranium thorium 

10 oxide flow which was different.

11 And NIOSH proposes that BORAX-V be 

12 removed from consideration because its primary 

13 function was to evaluate steam superheating. It 

14 was basically the same reactor as BORAX-IV, it 

15 just had a steam superheating module added to it.

16 So, we agree basically with NIOSH in 

17 this evaluation. But we do -- looking at it 

18 again like yesterday and discussing it with John 

19 Mauro, and we can write this down, we do have a 

20 bit of a concern for reconstructing doses even 

21 during the SEC period. 
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1 This is like a general comment too. 

2 You have non-presumptive cancers and you have to 

3 do a dose reconstruction for them even if they 

4 are in the SEC period. 

5 So it's a question if that happens it 

6 would be nice to know if OTIB-54 would apply to 

7 these reactors. That's just like a general 

8 comment John and I had. 

9 John, are you on the line? Do you 

10 want to say anything about that?

11 DR. MAURO: No, I heard you. Yes, I'm 

12 on the line and you explained it. It's as simple 

13 as -- yes.

14 DR. OSTROW: And this doesn't apply 

15 just to BORAX. This is a general comment about 

16 all these reactors that operated during the SEC 

17 period.

18 Okay, next page 13, next slide, item 

19 7. These are the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 

20 core, EBR-I.

21 And NIOSH proposed that the most 
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1 bounding case of the last two EBR-I cores be 

2 used. 

3 And they further stated while it was 

4 initially believed that plutonium core would be 

5 bounding, some preliminary modeling would need to 

6 be performed on all four cores to confirm this.

7 And we agree. We concur with NIOSH. 

8 And we noted also that several hundred workers 

9 and visitors were present during the period of 

10 operation for the Mark 4 core. That's one of the 

11 last cores, if not the last.

12 And finally, item 8. This is EBR-II.

13 NIOSH agreed with us that they should model the 

14 EBR-II.

15 And just a little note here also, in 

16 some years the average worker penetrating doses 

17 were greater than 100 millirem. So that has the 

18 potential to expose a good number of workers.

19 So that sums up our response to 

20 NIOSH's prioritization recommendations.

21 Our big report from December, also 
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1 adding Appendix A which the Board requested, and 

2 Bob Barton did this.

3 This looked at the exposure potential 

4 of different reactors. And I'm not going to go 

5 through it because it's many, many pages.

6 But just in summary, the reactor sites 

7 that we prioritized as high generally employed 

8 hundreds of monitored workers with the exception 

9 of PBF which only had about 30 workers assigned 

10 during most of its badging cycle. But most of 

11 the other reactors had hundreds of workers 

12 assigned.

13 Penetrating doses were significant. 

14 And with some monthly badging cycles averaging 

15 hundreds of millirem. So if you have hundreds of 

16 workers and the average was hundreds of millirem 

17 per monthly badging cycles those are significant 

18 exposures. We recognize external 

19 exposures do not necessarily imply internal 

20 exposure potential. We know that. But the 

21 magnitude of the external doses give you some 
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1 indication of the source terms that are present 

2 and the potential for internal exposures too.

3 So, coupled with the extensive 

4 internal dosimetry program at INL for fission 

5 products, an adequate characterization of the mix 

6 of source term contaminants appears warranted.

7 So basically, we concluded that there 

8 was an exposure potential at these prioritized 

9 reactors. So it's worth looking into.

10 Now, there's two special cases. This 

11 fell through the cracks somewhat, and the Board 

12 last meeting asked us to take a look at it.

13 We had put out two reports in 2015, 

14 both on the same day, September 28. One looked 

15 specifically at the applicability of OTIB-54 to 

16 the TAN reactors. And the other one looked at 

17 the applicability to the PRA facilities.

18 So we included the comments from these 

19 two reports in our December 8 report to put 

20 everything into one place.

21 So slide 16, Test Area North. And 
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1 John Mauro led this. It got complicated so if I 

2 stumble here, I hope John jumps in.

3 This report John studied, looked at 

4 the applicability of OTIB-54 which is --

5 potentially you only have gross beta or gamma 

6 data available. And in the TBD, internal dose 

7 TBD, tables 5-22 and 23. That's when you have 

8 bio data, bioassay data available. To the 

9 applicability in OTIB-54 and these two tables to 

10 the internal dose reconstruction at TAN.

11 And John's study looked at the fuel 

12 from the heat transfer reactor experiments, HTRE 

13 test. 

14 They were of particular interest 

15 because the reactor fuel operating conditions and

16 so forth that underpinned OTIB-54 methodology 

17 reflect situations in which the burnup usually 

18 occurred over protracted periods of time, 

19 hundreds of days. The fuel maintained its 

20 integrity.

21 In contrast, the HTRE fuel had very 
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1 short burnup times and the reactors operated at a 

2 high temperature which allowed the fuel to melt 

3 in some cases.

4 In addition, HTRE used highly enriched 

5 uranium which is a little bit different. 

6 Next page 17. So we decided to do a 

7 scoping study. To explore these potential 

8 concerns, SC&A performed ORIGEN runs ourselves 

9 where the isotopic mixture of fission and 

10 activation products were compared at different 

11 lengths of continuous operation.

12 We looked at 20 megawatts which is a 

13 low-power case and 200 megawatts, a high-power 

14 case.

15 When we looked at 20 hours and 200 

16 days as extremes of power level for both power 

17 levels. And we also did an additional 20-day run 

18 for the high-power case.

19 So these were intended to give us an 

20 idea, a general representation of the operating 

21 conditions of HTRE tests. For example, HTRE-I 
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1 was operated at the 20 megawatts for 151 hours. 

2 We were just getting some idea of what ORIGEN 

3 would do to these reactors.

4 So, the long period of time, the 200-

5 day case, this is on page 18, are indicative of 

6 the long burnup times that were used to derive 

7 mixes of radionuclides in table 7-3 of OTIB-54, 

8 while the shorter burnup times, 20 days and 20 

9 hours are typical of the TAN experiments. So --

10 and a further cooldown period of 10 days.

11 And then once we've got the isotopic 

12 mix we multiplied the relative amounts of fission 

13 products by organ dose conversion factors which 

14 yielded a relative index of harm for each fission 

15 product. 

16 Then we summed up the indices of harm 

17 for each of the burnup durations. That would 

18 give us a rough measure of how we compared to the 

19 OTIB or the TBD.

20 And there's a lot of information in 

21 our original reports which we did in 2015, but 
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1 just in summary, it's on slide 19, for fission 

2 products the high-power levels, 200 megawatts, 

3 the indices of harm for the 20-day burnup and the 

4 20-hour burnup -- rather short -- were about the 

5 same, were slightly higher than -- or slightly 

6 lower than the 200-day burnup organs of concern 

7 which is good, except for the thyroid where the 

8 relative index of harm was substantially higher 

9 by a factor of over eight. But for all the other 

10 isotopes it's about the same.

11 For low-power level, 20 megawatts, the 

12 derived indices of harm for the 20-hour burnup 

13 compared to the 200-day burnup for all organs of 

14 concern were not claimant-favorable.

15 So, for the case of HTRE, for example, 

16 where you have short burnup times we found that 

17 the comparison was not claimant-favorable.

18 Slide 20. We looked at actinides. We 

19 found that the ratio of the inventory of all 

20 actinides to the inventories of cesium-137 and 

21 strontium-90 were grossly overestimated compared 
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1 to the ratios in tables 5-22 and 5-23 of the TBD.

2 And we stopped our scoping analyses at 

3 that point.

4 So, what are our recommendations? We 

5 recommend that NIOSH continue these types of 

6 investigations to better understand the 

7 applicability and limitations of OTIB-54 and TBD 

8 tables 5-22 and 5-23 for reconstructing internal 

9 doses for TAN workers where the power levels and 

10 burnup durations are significantly different from 

11 those upon which the isotopic mixes are derived 

12 in OTIB-54 and the TBD tables.

13 So we did a scoping study and we came 

14 up with some -- looked like anomalies and avenues 

15 that we think NIOSH should be looking at further.

16 They're better equipped than SC&A to 

17 go through all these ORIGEN runs.

18 And finally, I'm running out of steam 

19 here, but slide 21. This is a test reactor area 

20 report which I did in September 2015.

21 I looked at the three major TRA 
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1 reactors which is material test reactor, the 

2 engineering test reactor, and advanced test 

3 reactor that were run there.

4 They were all material testing 

5 reactors of similar designs but with size and 

6 power levels and capabilities increasing from the 

7 smallest, the MTR, up to the biggest, the ATR.

8 And the idea is that they have high 

9 flux capabilities. So they could simulate long10 term irradiation of reactor materials in a 

11 shorter time.

12 The designs are similar. Pressurized 

13 light water moderated beryllium reflective 

14 reactors primarily using highly enriched uranium 

15 fuel and they had an unusual curved plate 

16 configuration.

17 Slide 22. So we found that the OTIB18 54, in general, adequately envelopes the three 

19 TRA reactors. So we're fine about that. 

20 And the OTIB actually explicitly 

21 modeled the advanced test reactor. It's one of 
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1 their characteristic reactors for uranium fuel 

2 operations.

3 But we noted that the MTR also ran for 

4 a period with plutonium fuel. In fact, in 1958 

5 it became the first reactor run with a plutonium6 239 core, which was different.

7 So the last slide 23. Our conclusion 

8 is not clear which, if any, of the nine OTIB-54 

9 representative reactor cases would envelope the 

10 MTR with plutonium fuel.

11 So we recommend that NIOSH actually 

12 look into that, make some runs and see if -- with 

13 plutonium fuel and see if OTIB-54 models that. 

14 So that's the end of my slides. Now I 

15 can breathe again.

16 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. Just 

17 a couple of perspectives.

18 In the examples of these index of harm 

19 tables that are at the end of the presentation 

20 this was a way in which Mike Mallett -- you may 

21 know him -- worked very closely who runs these 
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1 codes. 

2 And we sort of put our brains together 

3 and said listen, what can we do. And that's a 

4 relatively simple that it comes up in an index of 

5 harm that would give an indication.

6 I think what we did was an attempt at 

7 a shortcut to try to get a handle on this. It's 

8 not intuitively obvious under what circumstances, 

9 what type of reactor, and what burnup rates, and 

10 durations are going to deviate from the claimant11 favorability of OTIB-54. 

12 And it wasn't apparent until we make 

13 these runs. And there's a lot of discussion, by 

14 the way, that supports all of these tables 

15 explaining why are things behaving the way 

16 they're behaving and these ratios, can we trust 

17 them.

18 So I guess the first thing I'd like to 

19 bring up is that I don't know the extent to which 

20 NIOSH has looked at our work, but we're very 

21 interested in seeing if they see it the same way 
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1 we do because it is a unique way to try to come 

2 at this problem.

3 And then also given that it holds up 

4 you will note that in most cases the ratios, the 

5 degree of non-conservatism is on the order of 

6 less than a factor of 2, on the order of 1.5. 

7 In other words, OTIB-54, even in these 

8 unusual circumstances where these HTRE cases, the 

9 short-term versus long-term burnup, high burnup 

10 rate. 

11 OTIB-54 isn't that bad. I think 

12 that's one of the -- the glass is half full here. 

13 Pretty close. If it came out at 1.0 that means 

14 bingo, OTIB-54 works. 

15 When the number comes out greater than 

16 1 it means that, well, it looks like OTIB-54 at 

17 least in this simulation is what I would call a 

18 shortcut approach to come at this problem shows 

19 that for some organs, many organs it doesn't --

20 it's not entirely claimant-favorable, but it's 

21 not that bad.
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1 So I guess what I'm trying to say is 

2 that in the bigger picture where we're talking 

3 about just in my case here we're talking TAN, and 

4 really the heart of the TAN was the burnup rate 

5 and the burnup duration. Fundamentally simple 

6 but very fundamental to reactor operation and the 

7 fuel and what it might produce where we have 

8 fission products and activation products.

9 When it comes to a steam discussion, 

10 which is a much bigger story of a lot more 

11 reactors, that differ in more what I would call 

12 nuanced ways. In other words, as you described, 

13 reactor design, reflector, cooling, that sort of 

14 thing, as opposed to my HTRE where I said listen, 

15 these things had a very, very high burnup rate 

16 for a very short period of time so these are very 

17 different.

18 What I'm trying to say is that -- two 

19 things. 

20 One, I would really be interested in 

21 seeing if NIOSH agrees that this index of harm 
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1 approach that we applied here as the test for 

2 OTIB-54, for at least the HTRE fundamental 

3 situation, that they agree, yes, this is a good 

4 way to come at the problem. Or maybe no, you 

5 really can't do that, there are too many other 

6 complicating factors. 

7 And we would be the first to agree 

8 that that could happen if you start to actually 

9 run ORIGEN runs for these very specific cases.

10 But given it holds up more or less, 

11 one of the thoughts I had is given this bigger 

12 issue of all these reactors, high priority, 

13 medium, low priority, I would imagine, that these 

14 ORIGEN runs are not a walk in the park. These 

15 are complicated, very difficult runs taking a lot 

16 of resources.

17 And all I would offer is that there 

18 may be some way of a shortcut to try to say, 

19 listen, if it turns out OTIB-54 is not always 

20 claimant-favorable is there a way to say, listen, 

21 well one thing we can say is that when it's off 
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1 it could be off by a factor of less than two, 

2 except for this iodine issue that's brought up 

3 that might be a very special case.

4 So I guess what I'm trying to do here 

5 is to say there may be some innovative, 

6 simplifying, creative approach to attack this 

7 problem without having to run through all of 

8 these ORIGEN runs.

9 Now, I don't run ORIGEN, but I got the 

10 impression that it's extremely complex as applied 

11 to any particular real reactor and real operating 

12 circumstance. It might require a lot of 

13 resources.

14 And all I could offer up is that if 

15 there's a way to sort of scoping to see how far 

16 off -- first to see if the work we did holds 

17 water. We realize that we tried to do something 

18 pretty creative here.

19 And if it does there may be some ways 

20 in which to come at the problem that would help 

21 place a plausible upper bound, an adjustment 
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1 factor so to speak on OTIB-54 to accommodate 

2 these unusual reactors. 

3 So I just throw that on the table as a 

4 think piece for us. Because I realize we're 

5 entering into a mode where these could be very 

6 resource-intensive investigations. 

7 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. I 

8 certainly don't have any problem with us -- well, 

9 actually we'll get back to you on the index of 

10 harm comparison. We had not looked at that in 

11 great depth yet from that standpoint.

12 But I can tell you one quick 

13 comparison we can do is using your same index of 

14 harm is compare the OTIB-54 with the runs that we 

15 did for the Savannah River Site where we actually 

16 went through ORIGEN and developed a different set 

17 of factors for Savannah River to see if we've got 

18 -- if that possibly makes out the differences 

19 that we saw again with the iodine.

20 Does anyone hear a squeal on their 

21 phone?
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1 DR. MAURO: I'm hearing some static. 

2 I don't know if everyone else had the same 

3 problem.

4 MR. KATZ: I was hearing it too. It's 

5 gone away. Hopefully it's passed.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So, I guess at 

7 this point I'd say let us get back to you on that 

8 index of harm issue.

9 I can't agree more with you on the 

10 issue of ORIGEN being labor-intensive and 

11 resource-intensive. This is part of why we were 

12 trying to prioritize what the Work Group wanted 

13 us to look at kind of first high priority and 

14 which ones, and why we were trying to pare them 

15 down from that initial component because these 

16 are resource-intensive. 

17 But we will look at this index of harm 

18 more closely and get back to you on that.

19 I do have a few questions going back 

20 up to Steve's presentation here. And that is on 

21 the LOFT where you all disagree. 
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1 I don't think we're actually in

2 disagreement here. The issue is we do intend to 

3 look at LOFT. The question is whether it's under 

4 the SEC evaluation or under the TBD.

5 So, I really would like it to be put 

6 under a Site Profile issue and we will look at it 

7 at some point. But right now from an SEC 

8 standpoint we were wanting to exclude it.

9 It's not that we want it off the table 

10 completely, it's just for the SEC so that we can 

11 try and manage this a little better because of 

12 the resource intensity of doing such.

13 That was our point with number 2, the 

14 LOFT reactor. 

15 DR. OSTROW: This is Steve. I agree 

16 with you. We don't care whether you do it for 

17 SEC or Site Profile, unless the Work Group cares. 

18 But we agree with you on that.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Any questions 

20 from the Work Group on that?

21 MEMBER BEACH: None here.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. With regard to 

2 SPERT --

3 MEMBER MELIUS: Excuse me, I had 

4 myself muted. Jim Melius.

5 I guess maybe backing up a little bit 

6 are any of these reactors significant SEC issues? 

7 In terms of when you combine how difficult they 

8 may be to model and the years involved of 

9 operation and significant population of people 

10 exposed.

11 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. My general 

12 impression is no from the standpoint of we can do 

13 the modeling and so we can make adjustments to 

14 the TBD if we see differences.

15 DR. MAURO: Jim, this is John Mauro. 

16 I don't entirely agree with that and let me 

17 explain why.

18 One of the reasons we did the TAN 

19 HTREs is to ask the question -- because the basic 

20 approach that's been adopted in TAN which of 

21 course is not part of the SEC issue, or is it I 
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1 believe being held in reserve, is that the idea 

2 being that, well, we could use this OTIB-54 

3 approach.

4 And that was the reason we worked 

5 through this exercise is to say listen, can you 

6 do the OTIB-54 approach. Is it scientifically 

7 sound and claimant-favorable.

8 And the results are the results that 

9 we have here where we are seeing ratios of index 

10 of harms that's greater than one.

11 Now, does that mean that you cannot 

12 reconstruct the doses? I would say no, you can. 

13 Of course you can always run ORIGEN and do the 

14 full-blown treatment of the problem.

15 But at the same time I just want to 

16 caution that if that is going to be the solution 

17 we're talking about something that might be quite 

18 overwhelming.

19 So, I'm not disagreeing. I just want 

20 to point out that taking that -- if we determine 

21 that my index of harm approach is valid, and that 
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1 the difference that we're seeing -- and they're 

2 not big for most organs as may have noticed, 1.2, 

3 1.5.

4 The question of okay, we agree that 

5 OTIB-54 really is not always necessarily 

6 claimant-favorable by some factor of 20, 30, 40, 

7 50 percent for different organs. Okay, we agree 

8 with that.

9 Now the question is what do you do 

10 about it. And if there is a plausible reasonable 

11 way of expeditiously going through the process of 

12 reconstructing doses, great.

13 But it's not apparent to me that there 

14 is. And I think that is a challenge if it does 

15 turn out that OTIB-54 doesn't really work for 

16 these unusual burnups.

17 So I just wanted to add that into the 

18 landscape of the issue we're dealing with.

19 MR. KATZ: John, just to respond a 

20 little bit to what you just said there. It's 

21 Ted.
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1 Expeditious is not really a criterion 

2 for whether you decide, okay well, it's too much 

3 work so we're going to do an SEC instead. It's 

4 not really an option.

5 DR. MAURO: I agree. I guess I jumped 

6 the gun on that one. But I was just thinking 

7 about how are we going to do this. But you're 

8 absolutely right.

9 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: This is Phil. I do 

10 have to agree with one thing and that's that I'm 

11 more concerned about the fact that a lot of these 

12 -- I don't know how well the documentation is for 

13 some of these runs.

14 I mean, you used mixed fuel 

15 combinations out of their normal testing, and how 

16 this would affect the people that are there doing 

17 the operation.

18 DR. TAULBEE: So, this is Tim. That's 

19 what makes this quite complex is that this was 

20 the National Reactor Testing Station. So they 

21 did multiple different configurations.
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1 And so what we've done, or what SC&A 

2 has done, as well as NIOSH, is we've gone through 

3 the reactors and looked at what is different from 

4 the reactors they were testing there versus what 

5 is covered in OTIB-54, the style of reactors, the 

6 type of fuel, et cetera.

7 And so what we're talking about here 

8 is really just the outliers, the ones that caused 

9 us some concern that those values in OTIB-54 may 

10 be different than what we saw at a particular 

11 area. Does that help answer your question?

12 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Yes.

13 DR. OSTROW: This is Steve. Just 

14 following what Tim said, it's not only the 

15 outliers, but the outliers that we thought might 

16 have significant doses. Because they had a whole 

17 bunch of more reactors that were truly bizarre, 

18 but they were low power, short periods of time, 

19 et cetera, et cetera. And we didn't put those 

20 into high priority. Neither did NIOSH. 

21 They're really strange reactors but we 
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1 didn't think they had any high potential for 

2 exposures to people for various reasons.

3 My question is where do we go next on 

4 this. We agreed to modeling reactors and looking 

5 at the high priority, and looking at this table I 

6 have, this multi-page table we agree with NIOSH 

7 in most of the cases which reactors to model.

8 So what's the next step? Does NIOSH 

9 can just go ahead and start modeling whatever 

10 they have their time on their schedule the 

11 reactors we agree on and the reactors we didn't 

12 agree on?

13 DR. TAULBEE: Let's -- if we can I'd 

14 like to discuss it because there's only two more 

15 -- or only really the SPERT reactors, that I 

16 wanted to ask you all about.

17 You're proposing that we model the 

18 worst case or what we believe to be the worst 

19 case of each of the four, is that correct? Did I 

20 understand that correctly?

21 DR. OSTROW: Yes. I think so. That 
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1 is what we're recommending. Because they really 

2 operated fairly differently from each other.

3 And we're not convinced that you can 

4 pick one worst case for all four tests unless 

5 alternatively if NIOSH can justify picking one 

6 case for all four reactors that's fine, we'll 

7 look at that also.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Either way we're 

9 looking at a large number of test runs from that 

10 standpoint. It's not something that we'd just 

11 kind of use best educated guess to pick one. 

12 It's more of we would do some 

13 preliminary type of ORIGEN runs and then kind of 

14 hone in on, okay, this is having a bigger effect. 

15 And that was what we were planning on doing, much 

16 like what we were proposing for the EBR-II.

17 So it's not something -- or not EBR18 II, EBR-I -- where we believe it might be the 

19 concerning core there that would be bounding. But 

20 we'd perform some preliminary modeling to make 

21 sure of that.
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1 That's what we were kind of planning 

2 to do with SPERT as well, but only really report 

3 on one of them.

4 DR. OSTROW: Okay, I understand. I 

5 understand the procedure. I actually know how to 

6 run ORIGEN and have done it and understand how 

7 the whole thing works.

8 But your method -- all I'm asking then 

9 is if you do go through this and pick one reactor 

10 that whatever you deduce, point to it, document 

11 it. Show enough that we can actually take a look 

12 at it and say yes, NIOSH did it the right way.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, sure. Absolutely. 

14 Absolutely. Okay.

15 And the other one that I wanted to 

16 just briefly mention is you mention the BORAX 

17 ones for the BORAX-I, II and III with regards to 

18 the people who don't make it into the SEC.

19 I just wanted to clarify or to I guess 

20 in a sense let you know that we've designated the 

21 SEC due to an internal infeasibility in that we 
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1 believe these workers were monitored based upon 

2 some interviews and other documentation.

3 But we do not have data. It is 

4 incomplete. So we made it an SEC due to we know 

5 people do not have complete internal dosimetry 

6 records up through 1957.

7 So we really can't reconstruct their 

8 internal doses. If they have something then we 

9 will use it and we will apply it to 54, but we 

10 already know it's incomplete. So to do 

11 additional work there just doesn't seem fruitful 

12 in a sense.

13 DR. OSTROW: Okay, I understand and it 

14 sounds right. John Mauro, do you have a comment 

15 on that?

16 DR. MAURO: No, I can't add anything 

17 to that.

18 DR. OSTROW: Okay, so we'll -- your 

19 point's well taken.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Then the only 

21 other one that I have here is it looks like from 
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1 your TRA reactor, TRA slide 23, that you would 

2 like us to look at the MTR plutonium core.

3 DR. OSTROW: Yes, from what I 

4 understand about the MTR, I looked into it a lot. 

5 It seems that the core configuration is the same 

6 physically, the same curved plates, the same 

7 strange cylindrical control mechanisms and all 

8 that, but with a different -- so basically we'd 

9 like you to take a look at the plutonium case.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

11 DR. OSTROW: Because that's different. 

12 I didn't see -- looking at the OTIB-54 I didn't 

13 see where that would really fit in.

14 DR. TAULBEE: No, it doesn't. I think 

15 initially in our initial thoughts that's part of 

16 why we're looking at EBR-I separate from the EBR17 II while they are different reactors, different 

18 styles.

19 But the other issue is the EBR-I had a 

20 plutonium core as well, but unfortunately it's 

21 not light water so you're looking at a fast 
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1 reactor versus slow. So we probably should look 

2 at both. We concur with you on that.

3 DR. OSTROW: Okay. That sounds like 

4 we agree now on what you're going to be looking 

5 at.

6 Do you have any idea about schedule 

7 for this?

8 DR. MAURO: Steve, before we jump to 

9 that I just want to make one point that I think 

10 we went through very fast. This business of 

11 highly enriched uranium not having the U-238, to 

12 a large degree, which means that in this respect 

13 the approach that's being adopted by these tables 

14 5-22, 5-23 is grossly conservative because it 

15 predicts substantial quantities of plutonium-239 

16 which I believe are really not going to be there 

17 because you don't have the 238 where it would 

18 grow in from.

19 So, we didn't really talk too much 

20 about that, but I think an entirely different 

21 strategy might need to be taken with regard to 
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1 these transuranics when you're dealing with fuel 

2 that is highly enriched.

3 I just wanted to remind everyone on 

4 that aspect of this analysis which is still like 

5 the flip side.

6 In that case I believe your strategy 

7 will substantively overestimate your doses.

8 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. We believe 

9 that to be the case, and that's the goal of OTIB10 54 was to take these four different styles of 

11 reactors and one of them, the trigger reactor is 

12 high enriched uranium, just the scenario you're 

13 talking about, but combining it with the ATR 

14 which is highly enriched uranium.

15 But the Hanford inner reactor is of 

16 course plutonium production. So the goal of 54 

17 is to create a massive envelope around them all. 

18 And so what we're really looking at is does 

19 something fall outside the envelope.

20 DR. OSTROW: Okay. So you have that 

21 covered. I guess I have to say I missed that, 
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1 that you basically have that circumstance covered 

2 in your current OTIB-54. Thanks for helping out.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So if I could 

4 just briefly recap here which ones that we are to 

5 look at and then I'll try to address schedule a 

6 little bit.

7 We will evaluate OMRE, PBF. With 

8 SPERT we will then go through and do kind of a 

9 sub-analysis of which one tends to be the most 

10 dominant -- not dominant but outlier in a sense 

11 and that's the one that we will pick to do the 

12 full evaluation.

13 We'll look at BORAX-IV, EBR, the core 

14 number 4 which is the plutonium one, EBR-II and 

15 the MTR with the plutonium core, the Phoenix 

16 core.

17 DR. OSTROW: That sounds like it to 

18 me, Tim. This is Steve.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. All right, well, 

20 and now I'll try to address schedule a little bit 

21 here.
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1 From one standpoint there's really 

2 good news here is that we may have a resource 

3 that can work on these in parallel with all of 

4 our other efforts. So that I need to get with 

5 the ORAU team more on and we'll be doing so 

6 tomorrow. And we'll be trying to build out the 

7 schedule. So I hope I'll be able to provide an 

8 update to the Work Group on some of the schedule 

9 now that we've got a priority set.

10 So I can't give you hard numbers right 

11 now, but I do want to let you know that it's not 

12 going to be dependent on something else I don't 

13 believe. So that's the really good news.

14 I just can't give you exact time 

15 periods right now because I don't know that 

16 potential resource's availability completely and 

17 what the time schedule would be.

18 But I did want to show the Work Group 

19 that this is something that I do think can be 

20 going on parallel with the burial grounds 83.14 

21 that we'll be working on and the response to the 
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1 ANL air monitoring. 

2 So I do think we can have three 

3 parallel efforts going on right now from this 

4 standpoint.

5 Mitch, am I overstating anything?

6 MR. FINDLEY: No, I don't think so. 

7 Again, we're going to discuss it tomorrow so we 

8 can kind of work through the details of it at 

9 that time.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

11 SC&A Burial Grounds Report

12 MEMBER BEACH: So in terms of 

13 priorities if you cannot work on them in parallel 

14 the priorities are the burial grounds, 83.14, is 

15 that correct?

16 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that would be our 

17 top priority for sure.

18 MEMBER MELIUS: This is Jim Melius 

19 again.

20 And then I think the earlier years of 

21 the burial grounds would also be a priority.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: The problem with the 

2 early years of the burial grounds is that the 

3 same 83.14 folks would be working on that.

4 MEMBER MELIUS: I understand. So you 

5 would be doing this sequentially.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

7 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. I guess my 

8 concern is -- well, you're going to talk tomorrow 

9 about -- so the ORAU staff availability resource 

10 issue.

11 But there's also a bigger resource 

12 issue in terms of overall budget available for 

13 this and other sites. It seems we keep running 

14 into that issue more and more. And I guess 

15 that's -- so your internal prioritization overall 

16 in the program.

17 I guess I'm still not convinced that -

18 - and I don't know the resources involved in 

19 going into this, but it seems to me if they could 

20 be -- that they are a significant evaluation of 

21 reactors that we -- I don't see them as a 
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1 priority for the site.

2 If it's all the same resource and same 

3 people involved I think those are the last of the 

4 -- certainly after the burial grounds.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Understood.

6 MEMBER MELIUS: And I think the other 

7 thing that I guess I get concerned a little bit 

8 about in terms of how you prioritize the reactors 

9 is that -- which you've already taken into 

10 consideration in some of your responses is the 

11 whole issue, if we establish an SEC covering the 

12 site, the entire site for certain years then that 

13 may change your priorities in terms of which 

14 reactors to look at when and so forth. 

15 But those are all hypotheticals. But 

16 I just sort of keep it in mind so that when we 

17 complain about getting something done at another 

18 site, or ask Stu about it we don't get the answer 

19 well, you guys all wanted the reactors done right 

20 away.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Understand. Okay.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Good point.

2 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Sorry to change the 

3 subject here, but I was wondering if people need 

4 a short break before we continue or not.

5 MEMBER BEACH: What's our time frame, 

6 Ted?

7 MEMBER MELIUS: Ted has morphed into a 

8 dog it sounds like.

9 MR. KATZ: No, that wasn't me, but my 

10 phone keeps locking me out after I put my code in 

11 just to get the phone open to unmute it. Sorry.

12 Anyway, the time frame is really -- we 

13 set this meeting at 10 o'clock instead of the 

14 normal 10:30 because some Board member or two had 

15 at some point conflicts later today.

16 So it's really up to the Board 

17 members. You can run it longer if it works for 

18 the Board members. We can break and reconvene 

19 after lunch too at some point if people start to 

20 get hungry. I have no constraints.

21 MEMBER MELIUS: What's the time frame 
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1 for what's left to do?

2 MR. KATZ: Right. So there's two 

3 items. They're both SC&A items. I don't know 

4 how long they take to present. One I think might 

5 be Joe's.

6 MEMBER MELIUS: I don't think it makes 

7 sense to do the -- I mean, we may need a short 

8 update from Joe on the burial grounds, but I 

9 don't think NIOSH is ready to --

10 MR. KATZ: Right.

11 DR. TAULBEE: We are not ready to 

12 respond. That is correct.

13 MEMBER MELIUS: And the same on -- I

14 don't know where you are with the ANL-West 

15 monitoring in terms of a response.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Same with that one.

17 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I'd say 5 or 10 

19 minutes, Jim, on mine.

20 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: So then if it's that brief 
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1 and you want to hear a short presentation from 

2 Joe then we can adjourn after that it sounds 

3 like.

4 MEMBER BEACH: That sounds good.

5 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Let's go ahead and 

6 continue. It doesn't sound like it will take 

7 much longer here.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. You have the 

9 report and in fact I think pretty detailed.

10 I think we, Tim, NIOSH and SC&A agreed 

11 about a year, a year and a half ago that even 

12 though I think there was a conclusion in the 

13 first ER that there was sufficient data and 

14 programmatic considerations that NIOSH concluded 

15 it could dose reconstruct with sufficient 

16 accuracy.

17 I think there was the desire to 

18 supplement the information that was available. 

19 Most of the records for the early years of the 

20 burial grounds were fairly thin, I think that's 

21 safe to say. 
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1 And we wanted to go out and do a 

2 fairly extensive round of interviews with workers 

3 that worked at the burial grounds which we did.

4 I lost count, but we probably talked 

5 to specific to the burial grounds probably 20 or 

6 30 if not more of those workers trying to piece 

7 together something that again is not really well8 documented in terms of practices and the history 

9 of that site.

10 And we agreed to report. I'm not 

11 going to go ahead and present that in terms of 

12 the findings, but I think it's safe to say our 

13 conclusion after that year, year and a half is 

14 that we find ourselves in disagreement with some 

15 of the basic conclusions or tenets that are in 

16 the ER for that period. This is '52 to '70.

17 Granted it's a weight of evidence type 

18 of deliberation and I fully appreciate one has to 

19 consider availability of data, the programmatic 

20 issues.

21 But again we find some real concerns 
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1 in that.

2 Now, saying that we have not been able 

3 to pin down at this point in time what exact -- I 

4 think Tim alluded to this -- what exact data. 

5 And it's referred to in the latest ER as data in 

6 hand, but the bioassay information and maybe air 

7 sampling, we don't know.

8 So in terms of any conclusions one 

9 could make as far as the approach we don't know 

10 what the specific dose reconstruction approach 

11 will be.

12 So, it's sort of saying well, okay, we 

13 can probably paint around that issue and look at 

14 the weight of evidence as we have it. And we 

15 have concerns over what we do have.

16 But there can't be a real hard-edged I 

17 think conclusion from our standpoint for the Work 

18 Group until we are able to look at what Tim's 

19 referring to in terms of the information. 

20 And a lot of this was collected over 

21 the past year. So we have yet to do that.
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1 I guess in terms of how this might 

2 inform the 83.14, I would just kind of emphasize 

3 that certainly as NIOSH goes through their look 

4 for the '70 to '77 period I think a lot of the 

5 issues, the programmatic issues for one, the 

6 monitoring issues for another, and certainly the 

7 practices themselves did not shift dramatically 

8 even though the operations did.

9 They were certainly retrieving rather 

10 than dumping and burying, but a lot of those 

11 basic health physics practices were very similar. 

12 It didn't change from December of '70 to January 

13 of '71. So I would certainly emphasize that 

14 point.

15 And in terms of looking at the 

16 monitoring information, I think the key from what 

17 we were able to look at is needing to fit the 

18 monitoring that was being done to the actual 

19 activity on the ground.

20 I mean, yes, they had air sampling 

21 going on, but they also had workers inside the 
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1 pit cleaning up after spills. And they certainly 

2 weren't being monitored in the same way as 

3 somebody on the edge of a pit or a trench.

4 The same thing goes for the special 

5 bioassays. We talked to some of the former 

6 workers and it was pretty clear that this whole 

7 notion of drums breaking open and having contents 

8 spilled and having to clean up the kind of 

9 contamination you would get when an equipment 

10 operator buries contaminated soil as overburden 

11 over drums and containers, and you're dealing 

12 with resuspension, the kind of -- those weren't 

13 necessarily subject to special bioassays.

14 So this whole notion that you had 

15 special bioassays when you had "events." Well, 

16 these contaminations were so routine they weren't 

17 considered events. You would not have had any 

18 bioassays that would fit the kind of exposures 

19 they were experiencing.

20 So I would just encourage in this 

21 83.14 that NIOSH look closely at some of these 
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1 activities that predated '70 but certainly 

2 continued, and to look at whether or not the 

3 monitoring truly and effectively fit the activity 

4 at hand.

5 And from a programmatic standpoint, I 

6 think we tried to document very clearly, and it's 

7 all there in the report, that so-called defense8 in-depth I think is perhaps overstated for the 

9 burial grounds.

10 Certainly I've heard that term for 

11 reactor safety, but for the burial grounds it 

12 sort of evolved from a municipal landfill type of 

13 approach to something a little better than that.

14 But clearly there were some real 

15 questions about to what extent the radiological 

16 controls were comprehensive, thorough, and 

17 whether the monitoring was done as consistently 

18 or not.

19 And a lot of that wasn't remedied 

20 until the mid-seventies. So certainly a lot of 

21 that has to be addressed in the context of the 
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1 83.14.

2 I think that's all I'm going to say at 

3 this point. I think it's pretty well laid out. 

4 We tried to be complete. And I know Tim and his 

5 staff were along for a lot of these interviews. 

6 They heard the same things we did.

7 So, certainly I know they're going to 

8 take a hard look when they go through the 83.14. 

9 That's it.

10 MEMBER MELIUS: You left us speechless 

11 except for the dog.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: The dog likes it.

13 MEMBER MELIUS: The dog likes it.

14 MEMBER BEACH: I think that's Phil's 

15 dog.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: Phil, is that your 

17 dog? Phil's on mute, the dog's not.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, maybe it's not.

19 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Yes, that was mine.

20 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Joe. I think that 

21 will be useful actually for review.
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1 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: So with that, Phil, I think 

3 unless you have something else, or Board members 

4 have something else I think we can adjourn and 

5 thank everybody for all the hard work that went 

6 into preparing for this.

7 MEMBER BEACH: So, and I was wondering 

8 on the last report, on the ANL-West monitoring, 

9 is there anything that needs to be said on that, 

10 or we just hold off for the next meeting?

11 MR. BARTON: Yes, Josie, this is Bob. 

12 I put that report together and actually it was 

13 briefly discussed back in the August 2016 

14 meeting. I think I had four and a half minutes 

15 to try and go through it.

16 So, when we were kind of putting the 

17 materials together for this meeting, I had 

18 offered it up as something that's still yet to be 

19 discussed. 

20 But at the same time I think I heard 

21 Tim say that there's not really a response ready 
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1 from NIOSH's group. So I'm not sure if it would 

2 be all that fruitful for me to go through the 

3 presentation again, maybe in a little bit longer 

4 and more detail, if NIOSH hasn't had a chance to 

5 really sit down with it.

6 Do I have that correct, Tim? It's 

7 sort of still in the queue?

8 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, you're correct. It 

9 is in the queue and on our radar, but we have not 

10 worked on it. And so with the other things that 

11 are going on, I would propose that we kind of 

12 table this at this time, or put it to the side 

13 for a future meeting.

14 MR. BARTON: That's fine with me. I 

15 guess one other thing if we're going to adjourn 

16 shortly, I wanted to inform the Work Group that 

17 another piece of the puzzle that we sort of 

18 researched in parallel with the burial grounds 

19 work that Joe just described was exposures at the 

20 CPP prior to 1963, so prior to the currently 

21 proposed SEC period.
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1 And that report has gone through SC&A 

2 internal review. Right now it's with our tech 

3 editor who's fixing all my horrible grammar. And 

4 then after that, I imagine it will have to go to

5 DOE. But that is certainly in the pipeline and 

6 you all should be seeing that fairly soon.

7 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Thanks for that 

8 heads up, Bob. 

9 MR. KATZ: Phil, are you on the line?

10 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Yes, I am.

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. So time to adjourn?

12 CHAIR SCHOFIELD: Unless anybody else 

13 has anything I think we will adjourn at this 

14 point.

15 MR. KATZ: Great. Well, thanks 

16 everybody.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Before we adjourn, I 

18 was wondering, should we set up something 

19 tentatively just to discuss that 83.14, or are we 

20 just going to wait?

21 MR. KATZ: Well, Josie, I was thinking 
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1 about that. Why don't we just wait a little bit 

2 for more certainty from Tim in terms of the time 

3 frame.

4 The more time before the Board meeting 

5 the better, so I'd like to give Tim a little bit 

6 of time to make more progress, and then 

7 absolutely I'll schedule even if we may not be 

8 able to use it I'll schedule an INL Work Group 

9 meeting for before the August Board meeting so we 

10 have that opportunity.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, thanks.

12 DR. TAULBEE: And again, this is the 

13 83.14 for CPP.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Correct.

15 MR. KATZ: So thanks, Josie.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: We can only do it once 

17 with the agenda.

18 Adjourn

19 MR. KATZ: Okay.

20 MEMBER BEACH: Bye everyone.

21 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 
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1 went off the record at 12:22 p.m.)

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16