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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

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ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

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116th MEETING

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THURSDAY

MARCH 23, 2017

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

Central Time, in the Embassy Suites by Hilton, 

Chicago Naperville, 1823 Abriter Court, 

Naperville, Illinois, James M. Melius, Chair, 

presiding.
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PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member*

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS:

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

BARRIE, TERRIE

BROCK, DENISE, DCAS

DOMINA, KIRK

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

HUGHES, LARA, DCAS

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

JERISON, DEB

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MCFEE, MATT, ORAU Team

NETON, JIM, DCAS

PEARSON, TIFFANY

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STEPHENS, HUGH

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

ZIEMER, MARILYN
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Contents

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION.......................... 4

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE SEC PETITION UPDATE........... 5

ROCKY FLATS SEC PETITION UPDATE.................. 33

KANSAS CITY PLANT SITE PROFILE REVIEW............ 89

BOARD WORK SESSION.............................. 103

ADJOURN......................................... 105
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 8:29 a.m.

3 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION 

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Good morning, 

5 everybody. We will get started this morning and 

6 I will turn it over to Ted to do the housekeeping.

7 MR. KATZ: Right. Welcome, this is 

8 the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

9 Health, our second day of our Naperville meeting. 

10 Welcome, everybody.

11 Folks on the line, if you want to 

12 follow along with today's presentations, we have 

13 the agenda is on the NIOSH website under of 

14 schedule of meetings, today's date. The agenda 

15 is there, also all the written materials and 

16 presentations, written materials as the basis of 

17 some of the presentations and the presentations 

18 themselves. They are all posted there. You are 

19 welcome to follow along that way, you can just 

20 open up those documents, or we also have -- we 

21 also -- what's it called -- we also have a Skype 

22 link, which is on the agenda. And if you go to 

23 the Skype link, you can see the presentations as 
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1 we see them, as the slides change. So it's not 

2 necessary but that is if you would like to do it 

3 that way, you are welcome to.

4 There is no public comment session 

5 today.

6 And just as a note upfront, please 

7 mute your phones press *6 if you don't have mute, 

8 because that will improve the audio for everyone 

9 also on the line, as well as in the room.

10 (Roll call.)

11 SAVANNAH RIVER SITE SEC PETITION UPDATE 

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thanks, Ted. We 

13 will start with an update on the Savannah River 

14 SEC Petition and Site. I guess there is lots of 

15 work going on. So, we will star with Tim 

16 Taulbee, ably assisted by Stu Hinnefeld on the 

17 computer.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you, Dr. Melius. 

19 I am going to give a brief update of where we are 

20 at with the Savannah River Site.

21 As you may recall back in I believe 

22 last July, we listed nine different deliverables 

23 that we were planning to give to the Work Group. 
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1 We have delivered five of those over the past 

2 months and you will see our initial estimated 

3 completion and when we completed them here on 

4 this particular slide.

5 But what I want to focus on is the 

6 four remaining, to give you an update on where we 

7 are at. All of the green items we have delivered 

8 to the Work Group and are ready for discussion on 

9 those.

10 So, the first one that I would like to 

11 talk about is the coworker models. Revision 3 

12 was sent to the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

13 Worker Health, the Work Group -- the Savannah 

14 River Site Work Group, as well as the SEC Issues 

15 Work Group back in November. And then last week 

16 or maybe it was the week before, we did receive 

17 some comments back from SC&A on that and we are 

18 beginning to look at that.

19 Revision 3 just to remind everyone was 

20 the americium, curium, californium, thorium 

21 models, as well as the tritium model.

22 Revision 4 will cover the remainder of 

23 the radionuclides of interest for the Savannah 
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1 River Site.

2 Our current status is we coded some 

3 additional NOCTS data and it is undergoing data 

4 completeness and QA verification right now and it 

5 is progressing nicely there. The scheduled 

6 completion is the end of June of 2017.

7 The next report that I want talk about 

8 is what we call Report-70. This is thorium 

9 exposures at the Savannah River Site in the post10 1972 time period.

11 The coworker model itself will cover 

12 the time period from 1972 up through May of 1980, 

13 at which time the thorium fuel cycle research 

14 being conducted in the 773 Building was 

15 discontinued. The program was canceled.

16 And from there, you see a wind down of 

17 thorium inventory there in the building. And 

18 there weren't any significant operations going 

19 on.

20 So this report will be describing the 

21 justification of why we believe that ten percent 

22 of the derived air concentration will bound the 

23 thorium doses. This report is in draft form. It 
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1 is undergoing internal review. 

2 I'm not sure why that jumped there. 

3 Let me back up.

4 It is on my desk right now for review. 

5 So the scheduled completion should be the end of 

6 next month in April or the beginning of May.

7 The next report is Report-81. This 

8 is the thoron exposures at the Savannah River 

9 Site and this is where the report would 

10 demonstrate the appropriateness of the bounding 

11 approach of using the tank farm air monitoring 

12 data. And the tank farms is where there is 

13 30,000 kilograms of thorium stored in a tank. 

14 And so what we were looking at was the emissions 

15 from that to bound for on throughout the site 

16 during the miscellaneous thorium operations.

17 This has been delayed due to what I am 

18 calling a non-uniformity in the computation 

19 methodology. One of the kind of the lessons 

20 learned here is whenever you have different 

21 health physicists doing calculations of this 

22 manner of two-count -- we call it the two-count 

23 method of a six-hour count and 24-hour count on 
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1 samples to determine -- I'm not sure why it's 

2 jumping ahead here, Stu but -- but they will make 

3 different assumptions.

4 And so what we ended up with different 

5 methods for calculating this. So what we have 

6 decided to do here is come up with a generic 

7 methodology to be used by all sites, not just 

8 Savannah River, because we found that in various 

9 documents we have calculated it slightly 

10 differently. And so that just kind of opens up 

11 for multiple critiques of the different 

12 assumptions. So by having one method that 

13 everybody can agree to, then we apply that.

14 Report-81 has been revised to 

15 incorporate this and is working its way through 

16 the review cycle. We do hope to get both of 

17 these out by the end of next month.

18 And the final one that I want to talk 

19 about is Report-83. This is our subcontractor 

20 evaluation that was discussed back in July, as 

21 well as a little bit in November, and we had some 

22 technical calls on this.

23 We have sampled the job plans and 
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1 randomly selected 110 construction trades workers 

2 for follow-up. In November, we did a data 

3 capture out at the site about that. We were 

4 expecting to get those results right there around 

5 Thanksgiving, maybe a week or two after. It 

6 turns out that the Savannah River Site's 

7 classification officer abruptly retired in 

8 December. And so this resulted in a delay.

9 We actually didn't receive these 

10 records until January 26th. So this introduced 

11 a couple of months longer than what we 

12 anticipated. So it has pushed back the schedule 

13 but we do expect to have this completed in June 

14 of this coming year.

15 And with that, I will be happy to 

16 answer any questions.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Thanks, Tim. 

18 Questions from Board Members? Okay, thank you. 

19 Don't go too far.

20 And now we will switch over and SC&A 

21 will provide an update, Joe Fitzgerald, of their 

22 work at the site.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Good morning. Yes, 
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1 this is going to dovetail pretty well with Tim's. 

2 You know we had a special tasking last 

3 fall to look at the subcontractor issue in terms 

4 of records completeness and we have just last 

5 week, I think, issued three out of the five 

6 responses to the five deliverables that Tim 

7 mentioned a little earlier. So things are 

8 breaking but they are happening rather soon.

9 Let me see if I can get this to work. 

10 Okay, let's try that again.

11 Anyway, this is the issue we briefed 

12 you last, I guess it was even as early as July 

13 but maybe in the fall. The concern is that in 

14 terms of SRS subcontractor records, whether or 

15 not the records are complete. And of course this 

16 is an issue we typically want to address early in 

17 the process but in the course of an interview 

18 that we did in 2014 with a senior health physicist 

19 at the site, we learned that the subcontractor 

20 records were being kept separately in company 

21 files. And of course that kind of engendered the 

22 immediate question well, how were they addressed, 

23 how were they treated and were they, in fact, 
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1 incorporated into the main body of electronic 

2 records as thoroughly as the other records that 

3 we were familiar with. 

4 And so in any case, the notion was 

5 let's go and look at completeness. And I know 

6 that Tim and his staff actually tried several 

7 different options to validate that the 

8 subcontractor database is in fact complete and 

9 they looked at NOCTS. They looked at a subset 

10 of the Department of Labor records and just tried 

11 to do some comparisons. 

12 In these cases, and we have done this 

13 at other sites over the last ten years, in fact, 

14 where you sample to look at completeness and try 

15 to get some confidence level that you are dealing 

16 with a complete deck of cards. In this case, 

17 those options didn't really pan out as 

18 effectively as we were hoping.

19 So the basic question is how complete 

20 were the files when they were originally 

21 maintained and whether it is company files or 

22 other files, how complete are those files.

23 And then the second question is, and 
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1 this is a common question, were they in fact 

2 transferred into the electronic database or any 

3 database, in fact, that is relied upon for dose 

4 reconstruction or not. So that is kind of the 

5 basic question.

6 And this is the task that Tim just 

7 talked about. I'm not going to go through that 

8 again but that is ongoing.

9 In terms of our status, the Board 

10 tasked us with looking at an expanding scope for 

11 the validation to perhaps go beyond that one 

12 facility, 773A for the early '80s and see if there 

13 is any way one could expand that. And how we 

14 went about this was to rely on the EDWS, which is 

15 the secure electronic data system that Savannah 

16 River has and we used that to actually search 

17 their document file to see if we could find not 

18 only construction job plans but RWPs, radiation 

19 work permits, any mechanism, any permits that 

20 would indicate that workers would have been 

21 obliged to get a bioassay as part of the course 

22 of their work during a certain time frame at 

23 certain facilities. That was the trigger we were 
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1 looking for because that would lend some credence 

2 to the fact that that you would expect to find a 

3 bioassay record, either hard copy or electronic. 

4 So we were going to go ahead and do 

5 that kind of a sampling. And we were going to 

6 focus on CTWs, construction trade workers as a 

7 group and, therefore, we were looking for tags 

8 that would highlight the fact that we were 

9 dealing with subcontractors, on one hand, and 

10 ones that were more likely than not, or if not 

11 clearly outside contracts, subcontractors. And 

12 the distinction I am making there is that 

13 actually DuPont had an in-house group of 

14 construction trade workers and it was, in fact 

15 DuPont Construction, as they termed it. And they 

16 did, in fact, do some hiring from hiring halls 

17 but that was a pretty coherent group that was 

18 monitored, as far as we know, pretty much the 

19 same as the other DuPont employees. So we were 

20 kind of looking for subcontractors that were 

21 coming in, say electricians, construction trade 

22 workers that were being brought in. And the way 

23 we were doing that, of course, is in the DuPont 
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1 system, they had roll numbers, payroll numbers 

2 that signified that they, in fact, were 

3 subcontractors. And in the later Westinghouse 

4 system, they actually listed the subcontractor 

5 companies.

6 So anyway, we went ahead and searched 

7 those. We came up with the names and the 

8 identifiers, identified these for searches. We 

9 also found boxes that we had to look at on-site, 

10 did the data request, looked at those records, 

11 made two site visits. Effectively, two full 

12 weeks of review on-site. We had Tim and his 

13 staff along.

14 And these were scanned and will be up 

15 on the SRDB. So that was a key to that whole 

16 process.

17 And in the end, the notion, and this 

18 is not too complicated, to match the 

19 subcontractor CTW names and identifiers with the 

20 corresponding radiation record, particularly the 

21 bioassay. So, month-to-month, looking for that 

22 match.

23 These were workers that were on RWPs. 
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1 They signed RWPs. The RWPs signified that they 

2 in fact would need to leave a bioassay sample 

3 upon the completion of their task.

4 Now some of these RWPs were standing 

5 RWPs, there were sign-up lists, partly because at 

6 Savannah River you had such an influx of 

7 subcontractors that the discrete RWPs weren't 

8 necessarily used anymore. They were using sign9 up sheets. So that is less tight in the sense 

10 that we can do one for one checks on whether or 

11 not they actually did a certain type of work. 

12 But nonetheless, it was a good indicator that 

13 these were people that were being tagged to do 

14 work in radiological areas and they were to have 

15 dosimetry.

16 And this is just a quick status in 

17 terms of expanded scope. Here is the facilities 

18 that came off the RWPs, clearly a number of 

19 different facilities. Timeframes, even though 

20 we did look in the '80s, by virtue of the search 

21 results, most of our results were from '89 to 

22 '95. Not totally unexpected. This was when they 

23 had K Reactor restart at Savannah River and there 
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1 was a heavy reliance of subcontractors trying to 

2 get that reactor to restart. A lot of physical 

3 hardening of the reactor, a lot of seismic 

4 bracing. So they brought a lot of construction 

5 trades in from about '89 through the early '90s. 

6 So that sort of corresponds to the number of subs 

7 that we actually picked up on.

8 And here is just a list of some of the 

9 crafts that we identified as part of the RWPs. 

10 Quite a diversity of crafts.

11 We are still in the process of 

12 actually getting the records online. Actually, 

13 Savannah River did it. As Tim pointed out, they 

14 had a problem with declassification but to our 

15 benefit, not so much to Tim's, we were able to 

16 take advantage of the fact that they were solving 

17 those issues when we got our records and we 

18 actually got all of our documents cleared last 

19 week and we are now getting access to that online. 

20 And I think Tim has the records as well and is 

21 putting them up on the SRDD.

22 So we are going to be able to start 

23 crunching some of this information, getting it 
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1 into a report. But the bottom line so far, the 

2 only hard numbers is that we weren't able to find 

3 29 out of the 360 individual subcontractors in 

4 the process of working with Savannah River 

5 dosimetry records staff. And we will re-verify 

6 that but that is kind of one bottom line.

7 The other bottom line that we are 

8 going to look at is whether the corresponding 

9 bioassay records from a time frame standpoint 

10 match up with the RWPs. If the RWPs say that you 

11 need to leave a bioassay sample after you finish 

12 work at a certain time, we are going to be looking 

13 to see if that, in fact, is the case on the 

14 bioassay side. So we are going to look at that 

15 a little more tight. And we saw some evidence 

16 that there were some mismatches but, again, I 

17 think that takes a little more review.

18 So we are going to go ahead and 

19 expedite this for you. We are expecting maybe 

20 May-June that we can deliver reports to the Board 

21 on this. And that pretty much corresponds with 

22 what Tim is saying on his review as well.

23 That is it on those subcontractor 
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1 review. Any questions on that before I go over 

2 just -- there isn't much more to say about the 

3 neptunium reports. I mean we did look at them. 

4 We did provide some responses on that in OTIB-81 

5 last week. I know Tim hasn't had a chance to 

6 look at them and they are just relatively new but 

7 we should have all of those pretty much in hand 

8 as well.

9 Questions?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, Paul.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Joe, could you 

12 clarify is SC&A attempting to independently 

13 establish the completeness of records or are you 

14 simply monitoring what NIOSH is doing? In other 

15 words, are there two separate tracks of 

16 attempting to verify or you all doing the same 

17 thing?

18 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think they 

19 actually are very coordinated. This is an 

20 expanded version of what Tim is doing. And I 

21 think the Board from the last couple of sessions 

22 felt that the one facility that the construction 

23 job plans, you if remember, the 3,000 pages of 
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1 construction plans were identified, that one 

2 facility for those four years probably would not 

3 easily answer the question of completeness for 

4 Savannah River, given the diversity of operations 

5 and the time frame. 

6 And as I understood the Board tasking 

7 was look at to what extent one could expand that 

8 scope using the same approach, looking at the 

9 completeness by virtue of the subcontractors and 

10 the bioassay files. And we were very careful to 

11 follow the same protocol that Tim was using.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: So this is really an 

14 expanded scope review to answer the same question 

15 that Tim was getting into as well last year.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: So is it fair to say 

17 you are following the same protocol and we want 

18 to see if you come up with the same conclusion as 

19 NIOSH?

20 CHAIR MELIUS: But a different 

21 sample. A different scope --

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Different sample but 

23 the same protocol.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it is the same 

2 protocol, a broader sample, and hopefully the 

3 same answer. But, again, you are dealing with a 

4 difference in time frame and a difference in the 

5 scope of facility. One facility versus maybe 15-

6 20 facilities. So it is not clear.

7 I think the concern was whether the 

8 answer for the one facility for that time frame 

9 would be representative. And I think what we 

10 were hoping for is to deliver, both Tim and I, to 

11 the Board in June a complete answer that would be 

12 pretty solid from the standpoint of 

13 representativeness, rather than saying well, 

14 there is a concern we will go back and take 

15 another look and have this become a sequential 

16 process that will take a long time. This way, I 

17 think we will be finished with it, hopefully, in 

18 June.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Can I just add I mean 

21 the Board deliberately tasked it in this way. 

22 Savannah River Site SEC has been around for a 

23 long, long time. And we needed to be able to 
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1 expedite it. There is a lot of work to be done 

2 and we felt this was a key issue in terms of an 

3 SEC for the construction workers there and trying 

4 to resolve that issue. And this, having the two 

5 parallel efforts under it would be better than 

6 doing the usual sequential approach, saving time.

7 Again, this is probably a candidate 

8 for, you know we have never done this before, but 

9 for an SEC which has just been under evaluation 

10 for so long that we should consider what do we 

11 do. How long is long enough?

12 Yes.

13 MEMBER BEACH: I have a question.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, go ahead, Josie, 

15 then Brad.

16 MEMBER BEACH: You mentioned that the 

17 two types of subcontractors, the prime 

18 subcontractors and then the other subcontractors.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

20 MEMBER BEACH: How is the sampling 

21 being done? Are you sampling from both pools? 

22 Because that seems like it would lend to some 

23 complication and the records may not be the same 
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1 for both sets of or the two different types of 

2 subcontractors.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, these -- to keep 

4 the scope the same as where I think NIOSH started, 

5 we have scoped it to just be the construction 

6 trade workers, the subcontractors that were 

7 sourced in to Savannah River. And in the DuPont 

8 system, that would be roll -- payroll 4 and 6. 

9 Those were two codes. And for Westinghouse, 

10 those would be clearly Bechtel and other 

11 subcontractors. So that is kind of how we scoped 

12 it.

13 Now, again, there is construction 

14 trade workers that work for DuPont who might have 

15 been hired from town halls as well but they worked 

16 directly for DuPont Construction. And I think 

17 that actual practice probably carried forward to 

18 Westinghouse as well. We didn't look at those, 

19 per se. We were kind of sticking to the scope 

20 of CTW subcontractors that were in those specific 

21 other areas.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And then you 

23 said that the records were ready to get loaded on 
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1 the SRDB. Any timeframe? Tim, I think you are 

2 in charge of that, aren't you, of when those will 

3 be available?

4 DR. TAULBEE: Well, Tuesday morning 

5 before I drove up here is when I downloaded them 

6 from the site. So we are hoping within the next 

7 week or two.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, in the next week 

9 or two?

10 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Great.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that they will be 

13 in the SRDB.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, that's good. 

15 Thanks.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Which actually is 

17 pretty essential because I have access to the 

18 Savannah River secure system but I can't download 

19 anything from it. I can look at it but I can't 

20 do anything with it. So, it is an important 

21 distinction to have to go on the SRDB.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Right, thanks.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Brad.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Joe, help me 

2 understand this 29 that were not found. Out of 

3 360 subcontractors that you identified when you 

4 say were not found, what are you saying? Are you 

5 saying that they were on the RWPs but you can't 

6 find them or --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the process we 

8 went through at the site, we had three avenues by 

9 which we had to look at records. One was hard 

10 copies; a lot of the files there are still in 

11 hard copy. Some are on microfiches; these are 

12 the radiation records, both external and 

13 internal. And they, in I think maybe ten years 

14 ago, maybe longer, maybe 20 years ago, went to 

15 their electronic system which is called ProRad, 

16 which is the system they primarily rely on 

17 because it actually points to records that are 

18 maintained as microfiche or -- so it is 

19 definitely the more comprehensive system.

20 And we gave Savannah River the names 

21 and the identifiers, Social Security number, 

22 whatever, and when we could not find somebody in 

23 the system, we had them search ProRad as well. 
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1 And if they could not locate a subcontractor in 

2 ProRad, again these are the individuals that 

3 would actual handle claims for the electronic 

4 program, so if they could not find an individual 

5 in that system, we could not find anybody, and we 

6 did look, in the hard copy or microfiche, then we 

7 just kind of indicated that you know that worker 

8 could not be found. And that is kind of where 

9 we are at now.

10 Now, we will go back and probably 

11 revalidate those identifiers with Savannah River, 

12 have them look again, but that is where it stands 

13 right now. That is the only hard number we have 

14 because we haven't had a chance to look at the 

15 timeframes for the bioassays, which is another 

16 area of interest.

17 But for those, SRS came back and said 

18 we could not locate those individuals. So that 

19 is where that number comes from.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: That being said, is 

21 Savannah River, these people that are looking for 

22 this data, are they hampered by any of the 

23 problems, lacking manpower, or anything else, or 
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1 are they pretty good at this, I guess I would 

2 ask?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, there wasn't 

4 any issue. I mean the ProRad system is a pretty 

5 straightforward system. And you put the 

6 identifier in, Social Security number, and they 

7 can locate it.

8 Now the presentation yesterday where 

9 you have 60 days and Savannah River was actually 

10 the only site that was put up there as sort of 

11 100 percent. I mean it is a pretty good -- they 

12 have a pretty good program and good system. It 

13 is a tight system. So I think there is a 

14 relatively high confidence that if they can't 

15 locate a worker through that system, then it is 

16 probably a gap.

17 Now, normally you do have 60 days. So 

18 I want to go back and have them look again but 

19 right now, that is where it stands.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. This one is 

21 kind of more for Tim. Have we ever verified the 

22 operations personnel side of this for -- have we 

23 V&V'd the operations personnel?
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1 DR. TAULBEE: No, we have not.

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: What's that?

3 DR. TAULBEE: We have not. This 

4 petition was originally filed by the construction 

5 trades workers. So all of the evaluations we 

6 have done to date have really focused on 

7 construction trades.

8 Early on, we did look at external 

9 dosimetry. In fact in the initial evaluation 

10 report, we look at operations, as well as 

11 construction trades and did some comparisons from 

12 that standpoint, but we have not looked at 

13 operations bioassay from this standpoint.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I know that 

15 you guys did a verification of the data being 

16 transferred from the hard copy to the electronic 

17 copy and that has been done, though, correct, if 

18 I remember right?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Are you meaning from the 

20 NOCTS data set?

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. That is what we 

23 are calling data completeness and that is what is 
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1 currently going on within Revision 4 of the 

2 coworker model is looking at the data from NOCTS 

3 and going back and then looking at the hard copy 

4 and comparing with the electronic database to 

5 make sure it is all in there.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Now, Joe, 

7 your is overarching all of the different 

8 facilities but your ten years is only look at 

9 773A?

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. With 

11 773A, what we found was a complete set of job 

12 plans over a time period, so we could pull a 

13 random sample. We weren't trying to look from 

14 one box to another box. We could actually look 

15 at this group from 1981 through 1986 and sample 

16 from within that, a statistical sample, in a 

17 sense.

18 We did not have them, at the time, 

19 readily available in order to look at other 

20 facilities, job plans. And as Joe has learned, 

21 as well as myself, that those are more allusive 

22 by the way that they are named and there is other 

23 -- you type in job plan within the EDWS system, 
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1 you will get a lot of different hits and they are 

2 not necessarily what it was you were looking for.

3 So we had this one random sample here. 

4 We could pull it and look and see with the thought 

5 that if subcontractors are missing out of this, 

6 we would see it under any construction trades job 

7 over this time period in 773A. If you recall, 

8 that was the initial concern that was raised by 

9 the interviewee. He felt all of those 

10 construction subcontractor company files had been 

11 incorporated into individual files and that is 

12 what we are trying to verify.

13 So we felt that this sample should be 

14 able to do that.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, thank you.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I would say the only 

17 other comment was I think one impetus to look a 

18 little later in the time frame was the concern 

19 that the Savannah River System, if it was going 

20 to be stressed from the records standpoint, would 

21 have been probably in that era where you are 

22 bringing in the thousands of subcontractors, 

23 which was the '89 to the early '90s when they had 
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1 the influx. So you know if you are talking about 

2 a stress test for Savannah River records, that 

3 would have been the time period. So that is 

4 another reason we wanted to expand this and look 

5 at that particular time frame to see if you did 

6 see any issues with the completeness at that 

7 point.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: And that was with the 

9 K Reactor?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: That was with 

11 primarily -- it was other things but K Reactor 

12 restart was the only tritium source for the 

13 country and when that went down in '88, I guess 

14 it was, there was a large, large effort, almost 

15 no holds barred effort to get that back up, which 

16 was only shortchanged by the end of the Cold War. 

17 But before that time frame, there were thousands 

18 of workers brought in to do seismic bracing, to 

19 upgrade, and get that reactor so it would be 

20 operating again.

21 So you know that was an unprecedented 

22 amount of subcontractor influx at that site. And 

23 I think that was one concern to take a look at 
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1 that time frame.

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Thank you.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Well one quick 

4 question for Tim on the thoron computations.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: How far off are they? 

7 How much difference is there? Any estimate on 

8 the different methods that were used? Is it one 

9 percent, ten percent?

10 DR. TAULBEE: Within an order of 

11 magnitude.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Okay, good. 

13 I'm asking more concerned you know we are talking 

14 about dose reconstruction reviews and 

15 consistency.

16 Thank you very much. And with that, 

17 thank you both.

18 Any further questions? Did I miss 

19 anybody? Okay, thanks.

20 Okay, now we will move on to the Rocky 

21 Flats SEC Petition. And Dave, I guess you are 

22 going to start.

23 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

2 ROCKY FLATS SEC PETITION UPDATE

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Let's go 

4 ahead. The Working Group at Rocky Flats Plant 

5 was myself as Chairperson, Bill Field, Wanda Munn 

6 and Phil Schofield.

7 Just a quick petition overview. In 

8 2011, NIOSH received an 83.13 petition for 1952 

9 through '89, 4/1/52 to 12/31/89, covering tritium 

10 exposures.

11 The petition qualified for evaluation 

12 and the period was extended to 12/30 petition to 

13 12/2/05.

14 In October of 2013, the Board extended 

15 SEC-30 to cover all employees with at least 250 

16 workdays between April 1st, 1952, and December 

17 31st, 1983.

18 The Board then voted to extend the 

19 investigation from 12/31/83 to 12/31/2005 in 

20 order to do the following, the five following: 

21 Evaluate the use and exposure potential for 

22 magnesium-thorium alloy; continue to evaluate for 

23 '84 through '88 the neptunium exposure potential; 
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1 resolve open questions with SC&A and the Work 

2 Group concerning tritium; and examine implication 

3 of data falsification issues, which of course was 

4 a major concern; and examine exposures at the 

5 Critical Mass Lab.

6 There were other issues that came up 

7 as raised by the petitioners, the co-petitioners. 

8 I'd like to talk and deal with these -- there are 

9 five of them and you'll see there are other issues 

10 that came up -- in the order in which they were 

11 -- the Working Group was charged.

12 First, let's do magnesium-thorium 

13 alloy, which presented a number of important and 

14 difficult issues.

15 So, the alloy was allegedly shipped to 

16 Rocky Flats Plant for use in plates to 

17 bulletproof military trucks. Typically two to 

18 four percent thorium -- the plates contained two 

19 to four percent thorium.

20 As part of the earlier 192 

21 examination, NIOSH, in 2013, carried out another 

22 review of the Site Research Database for the 

23 magnesium-thorium link and found no corroborating 
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1 evidence. However, workers at the Dow-Madison 

2 plant in Wisconsin reported shipping magnesium3 thorium plates to Rocky Flats.

4 The Dow-Madison workers worked with 

5 these plates, according to records, between '62 

6 and '75.

7 NIOSH asserted in its report, that 

8 workers there were apparently not aware of Dow 

9 facilities in the Denver area and may have 

10 delivered magnesium-thorium to these instead.

11 That's a thought, a possibility, but 

12 we really -- ultimately, we don't know what 

13 happened, but we, again, found no corroborating 

14 RFP links.

15 So, on 5/31/13, NIOSH was informed 

16 that an RFP worker reported that magnesium17 thorium was used at the plant.

18 NIOSH further reviewed the databases 

19 and still could not find corroborating 

20 documentation, and concluded that there was no 

21 corroborating evidence for the use of magnesium22 thorium at the site.

23 Additionally, NIOSH observed that if 
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1 the alloy was sent to the Rocky Flats Plant, this 

2 took place between '62 and '75, which was part of 

3 the SEC period -- covered SEC period. SC&A, 

4 however, had a different perspective.

5 The workers interviewed both by NIOSH 

6 and SC&A provided a high level of clarity and 

7 detail and they specifically named five different 

8 magnesium-thorium alloy specifications or types, 

9 only two of which were searched for. 

10 Rather than confusion, SC&A concluded 

11 it is just as possible that the worker had it 

12 right all along, that is, the Dow-Madison worker 

13 had it right all along and the SC&A's conclusion 

14 was the receipt and use of magnesium-thorium 

15 alloy at RFP remains inconclusive.

16 Then the Work Group had to decide the 

17 path forward on this. There was basically 

18 disagreement between NIOSH and the SC&A, or a 

19 difference of opinion about what might be going 

20 on.

21 SC&A noted that 400 boxes of records 

22 sit at LANL, according to the Department of 

23 Energy, and would have to be hand-searched. 
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1 Estimated search time, two years.

2 Also in the SC&A report, a project 

3 manager noted that two percent to four percent 

4 thorium in the magnesium may not have been 

5 considered a reportable quantity, that is, that 

6 it was not a highly radioactive material and is 

7 used in a number of things.

8 For example, it was used in the 

9 bulletproofing of trucks and military vehicles. 

10 So, obviously, it was not considere4d by the 

11 military to be highly radioactive.

12 Two years ago on 3/17/15, the Working 

13 Group decided not to ask NIOSH or SC&A to pursue 

14 this issue further and to close the issue.

15 And our reasons were the failure of 

16 intensive, year-long searches for documentation 

17 at the plant and agency levels. This had been 

18 going on since 2007. So, it was ten years of 

19 looking at data.

20 And of course once the issue was open, 

21 it was clear that both groups, had they seen 

22 anything that related to magnesium-thorium, would 

23 have so reported.
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1 So, the searches had failed to 

2 corroborate the reports from the Dow-Madison 

3 workers and, frankly, consideration of current 

4 limitations on NIOSH resources of staff, time and 

5 funding. I mean, this source, these sources are 

6 not unlimited and we thought that finally we had 

7 to simply close this.

8 I should note that the vast majority 

9 of cancers during the years of possible 

10 magnesium-thorium use are compensable under the 

11 existing SEC, which goes to 1983. So, only those 

12 with noncompensable cancers not in the SEC might 

13 be negatively affected by this.

14 So, in February of this year, co15 petitioners released the transcript that they got 

16 via FOIA of a 2013 interview with an RFP worker 

17 who reported use of the plates between '84 and 

18 '89 that he believed might have been magnesium19 thorium.

20 An interview was held. The person 

21 when asked about the use of magnesium-thorium, 

22 said "It's hard to say." And, indeed, it may be. 

23 It may be that it was not discussed. It was, 
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1 again, might not have been considered a highly 

2 radioactive material. Co-petitioners asked that 

3 the interview be reopened.

4 At its meeting three days later, the 

5 Working Group, with input from NIOSH and SC&A, 

6 decided the transcript had been evaluated, the 

7 context of all the information, and did not 

8 warrant further reconsideration or elaboration 

9 and this issue remained closed.

10 So, then let's go now to the neptunium 

11 issue, the second one. A NIOSH search concluded 

12 that neptunium-237 was used at RFP after the '83 

13 SEC date perhaps up until 1988. 

14 Evidence points to a series of 

15 discrete tasks performed from '62 through '83 

16 involving a few grams to a few hundred grams, 

17 usually at the request of other DOE facilities. 

18 The maximum use was 300 grams in 1966 during the 

19 covered period.

20 The only processing operation in the 

21 post-'83 period involving neptunium was the 

22 plutonium-neptunium separation and residue 

23 recovery operation from late '85 to the end of 
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1 '87. Which was outside, then, of the SEC period. 

2 This was a glove box operation involving five 

3 operators and one engineer.

4 With the plutonium-neptunium mass 

5 ratio of 6.4 and the greater specific activity of 

6 plutonium, the neptunium operation and later 

7 waste cleanup were monitored by a plutonium air 

8 sampling, contamination surveys, and bioassays, 

9 which were consistently implemented in the post10 '83 period.

11 The SC&A studies independently 

12 confirmed this, and the conclusion only one 

13 operation involved neptunium. And the co14 presence with plutonium enabled radiological 

15 monitoring to account for exposure in a claimant16 favorable manner and this was closed. So, that 

17 was the second item.

18 The third was tritium exposure. Of 

19 course that was key during the pre-'83 period for 

20 establishing an SEC. This was the original basis 

21 for accepting SEC-192. The internal doses are 

22 the main health concern from tritium. 

23 Prior to the 1970s, the radiological 
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1 program did very little monitoring for tritium, 

2 because they believed there was limited tritium 

3 exposure potential. However, a '73 incident 

4 revealed that returned trigger containers could 

5 emit as much as 500 to 2,000 curies of tritium.

6 So, as a result, changes were 

7 implemented. This was a major issue, and of 

8 course majorly affected the -- the tritium 

9 majorly impacted in the environment and it was a 

10 national issue. But, as a result, a series of 

11 changes were implemented: increased number of 

12 tritium bubblers and swipe samples, air sampling 

13 on opening incoming containers that used pits, 

14 and urine samples for 250 workers thought to be 

15 most effective followed two years later by 

16 sampling only among those job-specific 

17 categories, because the earlier results showed no 

18 excess exposure levels.

19 In addition, ten percent of urine 

20 samples for plutonium were tested for tritium. 

21 Result: greatly reduced level of tritium exposure 

22 by the 1980s.

23 Since virtually all RFP workers before 
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1 1983 are covered by the SEC, the crucial issue 

2 for the Work Group, for NIOSH, SC&A, was whether 

3 the post-'83 tritium exposure control program was 

4 adequate and individual tritium exposures 

5 appropriately assessed.

6 After extensive group discussion 

7 about the placement of bubblers, their efficacy, 

8 the sampling procedures, the Working Group agreed 

9 that the exposure control program after '83 was 

10 adequate to protect workers exposed to tritium. 

11 So, we'll talk about partial dose reconstruction. 

12 So, the Working Group closed on this.

13 Now, data falsification. As is 

14 publicly well-known, an FBI raid was conducted at 

15 the Rocky Flats Plant in 1989 concerning alleged 

16 data falsification, improper bioassay 

17 processing, and document destruction. Also in 

18 '89, a related DOE study was conducted. However, 

19 the FBI did not release the redacted interview 

20 transcripts until 2015.

21 NIOSH and SC&A interviewed a number of 

22 Rocky Flats employees, including one who reported 

23 being ordered to destroy records. NIOSH reported 
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1 no loss in essential records which would 

2 interfere with radiation dose reconstruction, nor 

3 did it find evidence of relevant data 

4 falsification.

5 There may well have been problems with 

6 processing that might have affected chemical 

7 composition and chemical deterioration during 

8 storage, but we're talking in our program about 

9 radiation dose reconstruction.

10 Another interviewee made statements 

11 about the inadequacy of fume hoods, stack 

12 samples, and improper handling and/or preparation 

13 of environmental samples.

14 NIOSH said, from a radiological 

15 perspective, NIOSH finds no scientific basis for 

16 concluding the issues raised regarding the 

17 samples would compromise -- and my emphasis --

18 radiological count results.

19 Another interviewee raised the issue 

20 of dosimeter technicians writing down dose rate 

21 information in pencil, which might allow others 

22 later to direct changes in the data.

23 This might impact results recorded for 
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1 field survey instruments, but the primary sources 

2 of dose reconstruction data are personnel 

3 dosimeters and bioassays, which are assessed in 

4 the lab, not in the field.

5 SC&A reviewed eight documents 

6 mentioned in the NIOSH White Paper. The 

7 documents were concerned with other aspects of 

8 the operations and environmental issues rather 

9 than data falsification, record destruction, or 

10 bioassay data that would potentially impact the 

11 ability to perform adequate dose reconstruction.

12 Based on the interviews, analyses, 

13 evaluation of the 2015 FBI report, NIOSH 

14 concluded there exists sufficient quantity of 

15 individual monitoring to support the assessment 

16 of RFP personnel external doses. SC&A agreed and 

17 it was closed.

18 But in addition to its basic support 

19 of conclusions of the NIOSH White Paper -- I moved 

20 ahead of myself -- SC&A expressed concern that 

21 the data used to generate the intakes might be 

22 impacted by the environmental sampling and data 

23 issues that surfaced both after the FBI raid and 
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1 the DOE investigation.

2 The Working Group, having read the 

3 White Papers and heard the presentations, agreed 

4 with the NIOSH conclusions and referred the 

5 possible environmental occupational linkage 

6 issue to the Subcommittee on Procedures Review.

7 And claimant representatives wrote a 

8 detailed response to the NIOSH White Paper, and 

9 NIOSH combines all the issues raised by the 

10 petitioners and the relationship to Building 123.

11 Each of the issues raised are separate concerns. 

12 Some concerns may be related to Building 123, but 

13 not all of the issues are. Therefore, each of 

14 the issues needs to be addressed on an individual 

15 basis.

16 It is the petitioner's position that 

17 the problems associated with each individual 

18 concern is sufficient for NIOSH to determine that 

19 they cannot reconstruct dose with sufficient 

20 accuracy. And they itemized six different areas 

21 of concern.

22 Let's address some of these. For 

23 records destruction, the petitioner's concern was 
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1 that there was a relatively low number of urine 

2 samples -- 10,000 in 1984 -- which equates to 

3 less than two samples per employee that year.

4 NIOSH noted that this incorrectly 

5 assumes -- NIOSH asserted this incorrectly 

6 assumes that every worker employed at RFP in 1984 

7 had a potential for internal exposure and that 

8 this metric, as NIOSH noted, it was not 

9 appropriate.

10 In terms of record destruction, the 

11 petitioner said that no fecal samples were listed 

12 for years 1980 through '88, eight full years. 

13 The number of fecal samples pre-'88 is very 

14 important. And agreed, NIOSH said fecal samples 

15 are not necessary to bound inhalation intakes. 

16 Urinalysis can also be used. 

17 However, they noted in their White 

18 Paper about it that more than a thousand fecal 

19 sample results were available for the 1980 to '88 

20 period.

21 Based on its review of the rebuttal 

22 document, NIOSH concludes --- NIOSH --- sorry, 

23 typo -- concludes that no new information has 
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1 been presented that impact its ability to bound 

2 or reconstruct with sufficient accuracy and the 

3 dose for the Class evaluated. The Working Group 

4 concurred and this aspect of the investigation 

5 was closed.

6 Finally, next to finally, the Critical 

7 Mass Lab. The operations at the Critical Mass 

8 Lab took various assemblies and radioactive 

9 materials to criticality levels.

10 In addition to emissions from the 

11 criticality studies, the NIOSH White Paper in 

12 June of 2015, noted that "radioactive materials 

13 at the lab included the nuclear fuels and sealed 

14 radioactive sources used in criticality 

15 experiments, fission and activation products 

16 generated in the fuels, building materials and 

17 fixtures as a result of the nuclear criticality 

18 experiments conducted there are an additional 

19 source of radiological exposure." 

20 The White Paper concluded external 

21 radiation exposure to CML from criticality 

22 experiments is accounted for by the personnel 

23 dosimetry program, which assigned radiation 
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1 dosimeters to all CML workers. And this program 

2 also included periodic bioassays.

3 NIOSH found no significant personnel 

4 dose to CML workers from mixed fission and 

5 activation products over the lifetime of the lab. 

6 SC&A agreed and the Working Group accepted the 

7 paper.

8 However, in June of --- excuse me, in 

9 July of 2015, in the RF Working Group conference 

10 call, the last surviving of three senior 

11 scientists at CML from '64 through '86 joined the 

12 discussion and expressed strong disagreement with 

13 the conclusions of the NIOSH paper. He requested 

14 a personal interview at a later time, which was 

15 agreed to and conducted in October of 2015.

16 During the interview, this CML 

17 scientist argued that no one could bound the 

18 neutron flux in the lab's near-criticality 

19 experiments. He disputed NIOSH's ability to 

20 calculate upper bounds on the neutron flux via 

21 the reactor's energy input during the criticality 

22 experiment.

23 He also asserted that radiation levels 
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1 at CML were not properly documented and that 

2 Rocky Flats' personnel dosimetry program only 

3 performed lung counts, not full body counts, on 

4 the lab's 30 to 35 employees and conducted these 

5 urinalyses irregularly.

6 In addition to exposure to its full7 time employees, this CML scientist reported that, 

8 during the 1980s, typically one to 200 non-CML RF 

9 employees entered the lab annually to observe 

10 ongoing experiments.

11 At the conclusion of the discussion, 

12 NIOSH staff agreed to review existing data, 

13 extend the search, and issue an updated White 

14 Paper on CML. Including in this effort was a 

15 capture of CML data from Los Alamos National Lab. 

16 A reassessment paper was issued in November of 

17 2016. 

18 Here's what the NIOSH paper, 

19 reassessment paper -- NIOSH found that CML staff 

20 had on five occasions satisfactorily assessed the 

21 thermal power and neutron flux, and the power in 

22 all cases was less than the 10 milliwatts 

23 estimated in its 7/14/15 White Paper.
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1 Routinely collected data was found for 

2 external exposures monitored via personnel badges 

3 and daily radiation surveys at control points. 

4 Potentially contaminated surfaces were checked 

5 regularly for alpha radiation via tissue smears.

6 Internal exposures resulting from 

7 inhalation and ingestion of airborne dust and 

8 resuspension from contaminated surface were 

9 assessed via bioassays and with an adequate 

10 amount of exposure data and amount of data.

11 Thus, after reassessment, NIOSH again 

12 concluded that no significant personnel dose to 

13 Rocky Flats workers or contractors resulted from 

14 the generation of fission or activation products 

15 in the uranyl nitrate fuel or resuspended 

16 contamination from fuel spills as a result of 

17 criticality experiments conducted at CML over its 

18 lifetime. And the Working Group agreed and it 

19 remained closed. It --- yes, and it closed.

20 Another additional issue that came up 

21 from the claimants. In spring 2015, claimants 

22 raised new concern about radiation exposure from 

23 the 600-curie cobalt-60 source at Rocky Flats and 
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1 presented information from DOE via a FOIA 

2 application that --- presented information from 

3 DOE as well as employee testimony alleging lack 

4 of proper exposure protection during removal of 

5 this source from RFP.

6 A NIOSH White Paper on sealed sources 

7 was issued on 7/18/15. And in October of 2015, 

8 at an RFP Working Group meeting, NIOSH reported 

9 that proper standard radiation measurements were 

10 made during cobalt-60 use and removal, and only 

11 background levels of contamination were found. 

12 And this the Working Group closed on.

13 So, these are the issues. I don't 

14 know if they may be a little small to read, but 

15 basically we closed on each of the five issues 

16 that we were charged with investigating, as well 

17 as examining exposure from the cobalt-60, as 

18 raised, and a number of the issues that were 

19 raised in rebuttal by the co-petitioners.

20 Our recommendation is that for the 

21 period January 1, 1984, to December 31st, 2005, 

22 the Rocky Flats Plant Working Group finds that 

23 radiation dose estimates can be adequately 
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1 reconstructed for individual claimants and 

2 recommends that this Class not be added.

3 Okay. Questions?

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Thanks, Dave. 

5 Questions? Phil.

6 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yeah. I got a 

7 couple things I was thinking of yesterday. And, 

8 one, on the reading of either film badges or TLDs, 

9 depending on the timeframe, because of the 

10 different type of processes some people are going 

11 to be exposed to higher neutron fields and others 

12 are going to be exposed to higher gamma fields.

13 And based on my experience, did they 

14 give them full credit for those exposures, or 

15 were they assuming that some of this neutron or 

16 some of those higher gamma levels was erroneous?

17 CHAIR MELIUS: LaVon. Go ahead. 

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: I was going to say, 

19 the neutron exposures were checked for the CML 

20 lab and at different energy levels suspected. 

21 And it was also accounted for, I believe, in the 

22 NDRP report as well.

23 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Then the 
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1 other question I have is, when people were 

2 suspected of having an update, you know, maybe a 

3 minor one, 50-70 dpm, something like that, when 

4 they did swabs to see what they did, did they do 

5 just nasal, or did they do oral swabs, or both?

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Are you talking for 

7 any individual on the site, or CML, or what?

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm talking about 

9 individual. Say they have a --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: They were nasal 

11 smears.

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: They were all 

13 nasal smears?

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, from what I can 

15 remember. I don't remember any --

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Josie?

18 MEMBER BEACH: Dave, I'm going to go 

19 back to your slide 10 and those 400 boxes that 

20 sit at LANL.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

22 MEMBER BEACH: I understand the Work 

23 Group closed that out.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Who knows what could 

3 possibly be in those boxes, those 400 boxes and 

4 -- yeah, I just keep going back to that 

5 information.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: I would like to say 

7 that it's not 400 boxes. We have reviewed some 

8 of those boxes. When we went through the Rocky 

9 Flats early on in not only SEC-30, but SEC-192, 

10 we have been to LANL, we have captured documents 

11 and we have, you know, looked for this issue.

12 I know we haven't looked in all of 

13 those boxes, but it's not 400 boxes.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I'd also like 

16 to point out that, in our opinion, this is not an 

17 SEC issue. We can reconstruct the thorium 

18 exposures from cutting, grinding, welding, your 

19 two to four percent thorium alloy. And we've 

20 done this for a number of metals operations.

21 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. I understand 

22 that part of it. I just wonder if there's 

23 anything -- did you just overlook -- did you just 
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1 didn't go into some of those boxes?

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, what we did was 

3 we tried to -- LANL indexed the number of boxes 

4 when they got them. And we tried to pull boxes 

5 we thought we would find information in. So, we 

6 didn't look at all of them, but we pulled the 

7 ones we thought might have information.

8 MEMBER BEACH: So you don't know what 

9 you don't know, basically.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Exactly.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: But you never 

13 know what you don't know.

14 MEMBER BEACH: I know. That's why I 

15 like to look at all of them.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And I respect 

17 that, but --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: I would like to point 

19 out another thing is we did look at the classified 

20 documents at LANL. That was the ones we focused 

21 on, because the operation was a classified 

22 operation. And so those were the documents we 

23 were specifically looking at at LANL.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And I just went 

3 over, I mean, the list in the databases that had 

4 been gone over over the years and the interviews 

5 that have been conducted have been going on for 

6 ten years and we could never find anything to 

7 corroborate internally what was quite reasonably 

8 described by the Dow-Madison workers. We just 

9 didn't find it in the plant.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. We also did 

11 investigations at Sandia, we did investigations 

12 at Lawrence Livermore, we did investigations at 

13 Kansas City and have no indication of magnesium14 thorium alloy use from documents we retrieved 

15 there.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Obviously, if 

17 ever information were to come up of evidence, any 

18 time there's new evidence about any plant, that 

19 will be looked at, and that would be looked at, 

20 but the evidence has to be there.

21 And it would be easy to calculate, 

22 "oh, what could have happened if they had used?" 

23 Although we don't even know, if it was used there, 
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1 we don't know how extensively it was used.

2 It's just -- we just keep looking and looking and 

3 weren't able to find anything.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So, just a 

5 follow-up.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Sure.

7 MEMBER BEACH: So, the Rocky Flats 

8 individuals will not get dose, the four percent 

9 during that time period, because you haven't been 

10 able to prove that there was mag-thorium there, 

11 is that correct?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct.

13 MEMBER BEACH: If you did prove it, 

14 then you could.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

16 MEMBER BEACH: But they're not going 

17 to --

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Oh, yeah.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Exactly.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Absolutely. And, 

22 of course, most of the people -- if we are wrong 

23 and it was -- or if we corroborated the 
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1 assertions, the reasonable assertions by the Dow2 Madison workers, and they did use it, we could -

3 -- excuse me. If we were able to corroborate it, 

4 we could do the calculations, and we would. I 

5 mean, there's no question we would reopen, but it 

6 hasn't --- we haven't found that corroboration. 

7 And at a certain point, we just said it's been 

8 going on for a long time in ---

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Another thing I'd 

10 like to point out on that, most of the operations 

11 that we've seen throughout the DOE sites, those 

12 sites were not using any magnesium-thorium alloy 

13 after 1983.

14 Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, 

15 as Dr. Kotelchuck said, we may find something at 

16 some later date. But at this point, nothing we 

17 have seen goes past 1983, and we're already in 

18 SEC up to 1983.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Right.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. Again, if 

21 we had found any, most of it would be covered in 

22 the existing SEC.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Any other Board 
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1 Members with questions? Anybody on the line that 

2 has questions?

3 (No response.)

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

5 Dave.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: And I believe that the 

8 petitioner, Terrie Barrie, wants to make 

9 comments.

10 MS. BARRIE: Yes.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: I'm not sure if it's a 

12 PowerPoint or written.

13 MS. BARRIE: No, PowerPoints take 

14 too long to --- and we only have ten minutes and 

15 that's not enough for the petitioners to present 

16 our objections. And I ask the Board to 

17 reconsider that for the future petitioners.

18 My name is Terrie Barrie, and I thank 

19 you for appearing here --- or for allowing us 

20 comments.

21 I'd also like to mention that when 

22 NIOSH sends documents to the petitioners, we need 

23 a whole lot more lead time than two days, okay? 
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1 My packet is waiting at my house. I was already 

2 in Chicago. And although I got online, not every 

3 petitioner gets their information online. So I'd 

4 like that to be reconsidered also.

5 I'd like to --- obviously, I object to 

6 the conclusions by the Work Group and NIOSH and 

7 SC&A. And the reason for this, we'll start off 

8 with the tritium issue, which was the basis of 

9 the qualification in the beginning. They 

10 haven't researched the metal tritides. 

11 Now, I didn't know about metal 

12 tritides when [identifying information redacted]

13 and I first filed for the SEC petition, but it 

14 was mentioned in General Atomics and I brought 

15 that up in November. And also SC&A raised the 

16 issue of metal tritide presence at Rocky Flats.

17 And so that started me researching, 

18 and I did find a few documents that's publicly 

19 available. And one was an internal 1976 letter 

20 which describes processing a hundred kilograms of 

21 plutonium oxide containing 3,000 micrograms of 

22 tritium into metal. I provided that to NIOSH.

23 There's also a document titled 
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1 "Tritium Permeation and Passivated 304 Stainless 

2 Steel," a third one from DNFSB, and an FBI 

3 interview where a chemical engineer, former 

4 worker, stated that there was a tritium site that 

5 was separate. "Due to the ongoing practice of 

6 conducting classified projects at Rocky Flats, 

7 tritium was produced and disposed of at the plant 

8 in the areas of the 207 ponds."

9 And that's been overlooked. It 

10 hasn't been investigated at all although NIOSH 

11 has had this, that interview, for quite a while.

12 When it comes to the Critical Mass 

13 Lab, [identifying information redacted], the 

14 expert for that, voiced a number of concerns. 

15 [identifying information redacted] yesterday 

16 brought many of them up, but I'd like to call 

17 your attention to the White Papers on page 30, 

18 which states, "NIOSH has found no indication that 

19 confirmatory bioassays were performed for 

20 employees involving in the cleanup of any 

21 accidental UNH spills. Fission and activation 

22 products, which decay primarily into beta gamma 

23 emissions, are not likely, in any case, to have 
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1 been detected by bioassay intended to detect 

2 alpha particles emitted by uranium or transuranic 

3 radionuclides."

4 The question is, why didn't they find 

5 any bioassays? Were they performed? Were they 

6 not performed? And if bioassay can't detect this 

7 gamma beta emissions, how is NIOSH going to 

8 reconstruct dose for that? There's no 

9 methodology for that yet. And so all these 

10 workers are probably being underestimated.

11 And I know I'm kind of nervous here, 

12 but I did submit a fully-written statement to 

13 everybody and I hope you consider that before 

14 voting.

15 The other thing that they said was 

16 closed was the cobalt-60 issue. And when the 

17 last -- I think it was the last Work Group 

18 meeting, NIOSH had said --- actually interrupted 

19 Dr. Kotelchuck before closing it out, that they 

20 did -- that the person who owns or has possession 

21 of the cobalt-60 source has additional 

22 information and there was supposed to be a 

23 secured interview held with that person or 
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1 company or whatever. And it hasn't happened, as 

2 far as I know.

3 Let's see. The new information ---

4 and I apologize, this was brand new for us. I'll 

5 give you a little story. Deb Jerison was working 

6 on Part E database to help the claimants and she 

7 sent me some stuff over from the CEDR database 

8 that applied to Rocky Flats.

9 And I was just doing to thank her. 

10 You know, I thought I'd open it up and just take 

11 a look so I can, you know, properly thank her and 

12 tell her I'd take a look at it later. And lo and 

13 behold, at the top of the columns of her 

14 spreadsheet, it says "Gamma Neutron Radiation," 

15 along with the building numbers.

16 So, I scroll through, and sure enough 

17 Building 460, a cold building, has neutron 

18 radiation assigned to the workers, as does 

19 Building 444. And this is detailed in my 

20 response.

21 But Deb had previously went to NIOSH, 

22 asked if they were aware of the CEDR database and 

23 if it was used for dose reconstruction.
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1 And NIOSH replied, "NIOSH has made use 

2 of CEDR data to complete coworker studies for 

3 some sites. This includes all three Oak Ridge 

4 sites, as well as the Rocky Flats and Hanford 

5 sites."

6 So, if that information is in the 

7 database --- now, this is a chance I'm taking, 

8 you know, because they could possibly go back and 

9 say, "Oh, yeah, we should reconstruct dose with, 

10 you know, assign dose to these workers," but for 

11 10, 15 years they haven't been assigning proper 

12 dose, as far as I'm concerned, to these workers 

13 in the cold buildings. They're just making 

14 assumptions that are not based on facts. Okay?

15 And just to clarify, on the CEDR 

16 thing, that also is not complete. I know of one 

17 worker whose radiation records are not included 

18 in Building 460.

19 When it comes to NIOSH responding 

20 about my question about neutron radiation in 

21 Building 444 because there was depleted uranium 

22 and beryllium in the same building, and they 

23 responded that, "Therefore, it would take about 
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1 a thousand kilograms of depleted uranium and 

2 intimate contact with beryllium to give a dose 

3 rate of one millirem per hour at a meter."

4 Well, I found the document and I did 

5 send that off, I believe, to NIOSH a while ago, 

6 from DOE, that says that there was at least 300 

7 metric tons per year for many years at Rocky 

8 Flats, which would equate to about a thousand 

9 whatever I just said --- a thousand kilograms of 

10 depleted uranium in contact with beryllium.

11 Two site experts, which I know you 

12 will have to research this and find 

13 documentation, but I believe them when they tell 

14 me that the beryllium and the depleted uranium 

15 would have been in close contact, at least on the 

16 loading docks and in the ductwork, the heating 

17 ductwork, because it was one heating ductwork and 

18 they would intermix and, you know, neutrons 

19 penetrate different things.

20 So, I think --- oh, neptunium. My 

21 favorite. I'm sorry, I'm nervous here. I have 

22 to reiterate that the SEC for Los Alamos was 

23 approved because of a document from DOE that says 
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1 you cannot use plutonium bioassay to reconstruct 

2 dose for neptunium. And that's exactly what 

3 they're doing for Rocky Flats and that's wrong. 

4 It's inconsistent.

5 And let's see. I think that is just 

6 about it. And I did, through Cold War Patriots, 

7 they sent out an email asking for assistance for 

8 me. And I did have people come to tell me, "Yes, 

9 I worked on magnesium-thorium." They have no 

10 documentation. And, "Yes, I know people who 

11 worked with metal tritides."

12 So, I think that's about it. I 

13 believe, and [identifying information redacted], 

14 the petitioner, believes that NIOSH has failed to 

15 provide reasonable and factually-based evidence 

16 to support their position to reconstruct dose for 

17 the Rocky Flats workers after 1983.

18 The uncertainty of whether the 

19 documents were investigated and used for 

20 methodology alone should give pause for the Board 

21 before they vote not to expand the years. 

22 Omissions of factual evidence by NIOSH, which is 

23 readily available to the public, should also give 
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1 the Board cause --- or pause.

2 Rocky Flats, I know there's a problem 

3 with resources. This has been going on for years 

4 and years, but they deserve a fair investigation. 

5 And we just don't think -- to a degree -- to a 

6 degree, there's certain things that have been 

7 omitted. We just deserve a fair shake that all 

8 the evidence be honestly evaluated. And I ask 

9 that you vote to expand the Class. Thank you.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, Terrie.

11 LaVon or Dave, do you have responses 

12 to --- I think there's ---

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, why don't 

14 we start with the metal tritides. 

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Metal tritides, we 

16 actually assessed the metal tritide issue. I 

17 actually did get the documents from Terrie.

18 The only period where we initially 

19 thought there could possibly be was the mid-'70s 

20 time era when some activities were going on.

21 However, when we did classified search 

22 on that and discussions, we concluded that this 

23 was not a concern during that period. And so we 
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1 have assessed that and it was reported to the 

2 Work Group. And we also gave SC&A the 

3 opportunity to rebut that. 

4 CHAIR MELIUS: The CML cleanup 

5 workers spills?

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: The cleanup of 

7 activity was --- that they said that they could 

8 not --- that we were not detecting alpha 

9 particles. I mean, there was -- there was 

10 cleanup.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, we have 

12 documented surveys. We have contamination 

13 surveys. We have air sampling from the entire 

14 period.

15 The issue was, was there post-accident 

16 bioassay? We could not confirm that, but we do 

17 have the actual bioassay for individuals that 

18 worked in the actual Critical Mass Laboratory 

19 during their period.

20 It does not address fission and 

21 activation products, and we did mention that, 

22 because, at the time, the site did not feel that 

23 it was necessary. And our calculations prove 
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1 that it was not.

2 The highest dose we came up with was 

3 2.5 times 10 to the minus fourth millirem 

4 potential exposure at the Critical Mass Lab from 

5 fission and activation products.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah, I mean, if 

7 I may say, on the cobalt-60, the assertion is 

8 that we didn't interview someone outside ---

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, the 

10 cobalt-60 source, the person did request an 

11 interview. That interview was conducted in a 

12 classified setting. The individual was not 

13 concerned with Cobalt-60. She was concerned with 

14 a tritium capture system that was employed during 

15 the production years.

16 She did not identify any situation 

17 where exposures could have been received from 

18 work with that unit. I can't discuss all of it, 

19 but I can give you that much. But, in fact, her 

20 interview said she had no issues with the cobalt21 60 gamma cell. It was routinely surveyed. We 

22 could only come up with two or three of the leak 

23 checks, but we did find the complete work package 
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1 for the removal of the gamma cell and we had no 

2 indications there was ever any problems with 

3 that.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Josie, you had a ---

5 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, I have two, 

6 LaVon. Hang on. Hang on there.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: I might as well just 

8 hang out.

9 MEMBER BEACH: Can you just respond 

10 to the 460 building that was supposed to be a 

11 cold building, but --

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, and I do 

13 believe that we have, you know, found that there 

14 were some activities that were conducted, you 

15 know, just based on interviews, that there may 

16 have been some exposures in there.

17 However, we also have personnel 

18 monitoring data for all those situations that we, 

19 you know, we have personnel monitoring data for 

20 those individuals, so it's not a dose 

21 reconstruction issue.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And then the 

23 other one was on the CEDR. Did you guys look at 
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1 that?

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: CEDR database is 

3 part of our coworker model.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: However, it is also 

6 adjusted based on any additional data that we 

7 have. And, again, the coworker model will have 

8 to be reevaluated once the coworker methods have 

9 been finalized, you know, after SRS is completed.

10 MEMBER BEACH: Under the Site 

11 Profile.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. Right.

13 MEMBER BEACH: And then last one, the 

14 neptunium dose using alpha to ---

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Neptunium, 

16 actually, the reason why we can use it there is 

17 we have documentation of the maximum ratios 

18 between the plutonium and the neptunium.

19 We employed those maximum ratios and 

20 compared that to the airborne concentrations and 

21 they were negligible. You could not --- it would 

22 clearly be bounded by the plutonium intake. And 

23 those individuals had monitored plutonium 
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1 bioassay.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: LaVon, don't go away.

3 (Laughter.)

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Also, I may say, 

5 while we're waiting, I mean, when people, in the 

6 plant, there were at least two people who 

7 reported using magnesium-thorium. One of them 

8 was --- and it was told to us a while ago there 

9 was an interview that was held. And that was the 

10 quote that I said that it was hard to tell. And, 

11 sincerely, it may have been, but that’s not, if 

12 you will, solid corroboration.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I can say the 

14 interviews, when we conducted the interviews, the 

15 question was specifically asked, "Do you recall 

16 ever using magnesium-thorium alloy in your 

17 operations?"

18 No time period was put on it. It was 

19 basically, have you heard magnesium-thorium alloy 

20 -- and none of them that we interviewed, we 

21 interviewed workers that worked on the project 

22 that, you know, the SST&S, their railcars that 

23 were actually -- which were brought into 
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1 question, and none of them could corroborate that 

2 there was magnesium-thorium alloy.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: My question is 

4 different, and it's the X number of boxes, since 

5 we don't know it's 400. Are those ever going to 

6 be looked at?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: I would suspect that 

8 we will, but I, you know, again, I would suspect 

9 we'll look at them just because of other issues 

10 as we move down the Rocky Flats path of Site 

11 Profile issues. And given opportunities where 

12 we go to LANL for different things, we will have 

13 opportunities that we can look into those boxes, 

14 I believe.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And suppose 

16 that they corroborate the use of magnesium17 thorium. Are you going to --- I mean, I think 

18 you've stated that that's, you know, sort of a 

19 Site Profile issue that you can reconstruct dose, 

20 but will you be able to place workers into that 

21 area?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, obviously, I 

23 mean, we do actually have a pretty good list of 
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1 the workers that worked on that project. So, we 

2 do have that.

3 It would be more of timing of what we 

4 would probably end up doing is identifying the 

5 exposure --- first of all, if the exposure is, 

6 you know, when we calculate it, is it a measurable 

7 exposure? That would be the first thing.

8 Then we would probably identify it to 

9 just the people, any individual that worked 

10 within that building over that time period, and 

11 we could apply that dose.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Back to the boxes. Is 

13 there any sort of index of the boxes or of what 

14 the content may be?

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. Actually, 

16 LANL had an index, that I remember, but it wasn't 

17 a very detailed index. And, actually, I've been 

18 sending emails to our staff to get a better feel 

19 for that as well. So, and I haven't got it back 

20 yet.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. I mean, 

23 we have been --- also the Working Group has been 
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1 working on this for years.

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: And recognize, 

3 again, that this was also addressed under SEC4 30. This was looked at under SEC-30. It was 

5 extensively looked at by --- I mean, because of 

6 [Identifying information redacted] concern with 

7 Dow-Madison and his concern with extending the 

8 covered period at Dow-Madison. 

9 And so it was looked at there, because 

10 if they sent magnesium-thorium alloy to another 

11 plant after the covered period, then they would 

12 make the argument that it should extend that.

13 So, we looked at it there. We've 

14 looked at it under this, you know, so it's been 

15 looked at a lot.

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: LaVon, I've got a 

17 couple questions for you.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Was HF 

20 reductions done at Rocky Flats? And if so, was 

21 that an isolated area or was there other people 

22 working there who were not directly tied to the 

23 HF reductions?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, HF doesn't 

2 have --- it's not a radiological issue.

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, but if you're 

4 reducing plutonium fluoride with HF you do have 

5 that neutron flux.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. I can say ---

7 I don't know. I can say that the neutron 

8 exposures were thoroughly evaluated under the 

9 NDRP program. They were evaluated extensively 

10 under SEC-30 and all issues were closed out under 

11 that.

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Have you 

13 investigated --- there's some indication that 

14 some people say that californium was used there. 

15 Have you investigated that, or not?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: We have no 

17 indication that --- there may have been a small 

18 source. Again, that's an external exposure that 

19 may have been used for calibrating instruments. 

20 I don't know. I don't recall that, but that is 

21 an external exposure issue. We have film badge 

22 data on everyone. And, again, neutron exposures 

23 have been evaluated. It wouldn't have --- they 
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1 would have been picked up by our -- by the 

2 monitoring. 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Thanks.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Anybody else have 

5 further questions?

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: There were an 

7 extensive number of issues that we looked into 

8 and we tried to respond as we thought appropriate 

9 to the information that was provided by the co10 petitioners and their representatives. So, and 

11 this is the conclusion that we came to that we 

12 should not add the SEC.

13 And, of course, all the individual 

14 cases, all the individual exposures, all the 

15 exposures to individuals will be assessed. And 

16 possibly in the future there may be issues that 

17 we might want to revise the profile. We will do 

18 that, but we've gone through this as thoroughly 

19 as we could.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: So, we have a motion 

21 from the Work Group that we closed?

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, we do. 

23 Yeah.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Can I ask, was that a 

2 unanimous recommendation by the Work Group?

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, it was.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Thank you.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: So, further discussion 

6 on that?

7 I will say I have some misgivings 

8 simply because I wish we had more information on 

9 the X number of boxes available to us, to know 

10 how you targeted them and so forth. And it 

11 seems, I guess, a little bit troublesome that 

12 there's information out there that we're not 

13 looking at.

14 On the other hand, I understand the 

15 impracticality of it, and, you know, stretching 

16 out an evaluation for a longer period of time for 

17 what may very well be an SEC -- or a Site Profile 

18 issue, not an SEC issue.

19 Though, I can imagine a scenario 

20 that's fairly common when we discover these 

21 where, you know, not because of the nature of the 

22 exposure, but because the issue of placing 

23 workers into a particular area, that we can't do, 
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1 you know, dose reconstruction for that particular 

2 exposure.

3 But, again, we haven't really gotten 

4 to that point and we haven't been able to explore 

5 it yet.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. Coming to 

7 a conclusion that you can't find corroborating 

8 evidence is always troubling, I mean. But it 

9 seemed to us that there are many people who are 

10 going to be affected by the SEC petition and that 

11 it was reasonable after four years to say we've 

12 done a good job. And we are always open to 

13 reopening if more information is found ---- or I 

14 should say if information is found to 

15 corroborate.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'd like to add onto 

17 that, you know, recognize that SEC-30 went 

18 through the entire period. It was only because 

19 new information was brought forth by the 

20 petitioner that was not previously evaluated that 

21 moved this petition forward.

22 So, in the future, if there's new 

23 information that comes out that provides a basis 
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1 for an SEC petition, we will open that petition 

2 and look at it. So, I mean, it never shuts the 

3 door on future petitions. I just wanted to make 

4 sure everybody remembered that.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: I'll just add that some 

6 of us were not very satisfied nor agreed with the 

7 conclusion on SEC-30. So, I'm not sure I'm as 

8 comfortable with the investigation there as I am 

9 with what's going on so far, except for this one 

10 issue which is somewhat troubling.

11 Any further comment on that? Paul?

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, let me just ask 

13 a question on that.

14 Let's suppose that sometime in the 

15 future we found that there was the magnesium16 thorium, some records of it for those group of 

17 workers that you're talking about. The main 

18 issue there, would it not be one where those who 

19 were doing welding would have internal exposures?

20 So, the likelihood of that ever 

21 becoming an SEC issue seems, to me, it's pretty 

22 low. It's still reconstructible.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: I agree it's 
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1 reconstructible. I'm not sure that --- usually 

2 the problem we have is placing workers into those 

3 categories. Do the records support people being 

4 there and does it cover all the people that were 

5 potentially involved in that work?

6 I mean, it's a hypothetical. I don't 

7 want to go over, you know --

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's pretty hard to 

9 call everybody on the site a welder.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, and I don't 

11 recall enough about the record system there in 

12 terms of personnel records and placing people in 

13 sites. I'm going based on our experience at 

14 other sites. I don't want to exaggerate the 

15 possibility, but I don't think it's always, you 

16 know, it's as straightforward as just doing the 

17 dose reconstruction.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It's certainly, I 

19 think, for people there, I think that if we were 

20 to find, in the future, records that it would not 

21 result in majorly increase in a dose that that 

22 workers got.

23 And we do know something about the 
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1 nature of the plates that were put up. And it 

2 was largely, as I understand, punching, using a 

3 punch to punch holes so that they can --- no, not 

4 welding, but I won't say that they didn't do any 

5 welding, because I don't know, but I would say 

6 that it doesn't look like the operations and the 

7 nature of the material would turn things upside 

8 down.

9 It would require, however, going over 

10 every single case that has been assessed to 

11 reassess them. And that would be a lot of work. 

12 But it does not make sense to try to think about 

13 what the exposures might be if you haven't been 

14 able to find evidence that the material, the 

15 magnesium-thorium alloy, was used there.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: A separate set of 

17 issues that I have, or issue that I have, so 

18 assuming, I guess, one way or the other whether 

19 how we deal with this SEC, the next step would be 

20 to further review the Site Profile? And would 

21 that further review of the Site Profile involve 

22 looking at those boxes?

23 (Laughter.)
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It certainly 

2 could.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm looking at my 

4 director.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I hate to make 

6 decisions on the fly like that. I think it would 

7 be something, since it's on the table, it would 

8 be something we would have to consider. I think, 

9 going forward, you know, it competes, like every 

10 other task, with our time and attention. So, you 

11 know, it would be something we'll put on the list 

12 of things to consider going forward.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah. I mean, 

14 thinking about this over a period of time, 

15 there's no question that sampling could be done. 

16 That is, if we have the number of boxes, we could 

17 sample some of the boxes so we didn't have to go 

18 through all 200 to see if there's some end and 

19 make some assessment based on the statistical 

20 analyses that would suggest that there's a pretty 

21 good chance that there was no magnesium-thorium 

22 used at the plant.

23 MEMBER BEACH: So, can I ask 
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1 something, Jim?

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Go ahead.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Back on those boxes, 

4 we're assuming that we're only going to find mag5 thorium or not find mag-thorium. Is there any 

6 idea if there's other items in the boxes? I 

7 mean, we keep going back to that mag-thorium 

8 which ---

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: We don't have 

10 outstanding issues on the other, that's all.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Is that it?

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Of course, one 

13 could find information about any sorts of things. 

14 Either one of the five things we were charged 

15 with or others. I mean, that's always, of 

16 course, possible. 

17 But in terms of the issues, the only 

18 one that's outstanding in the investigation that 

19 the Board told us, suggested to us to do and the 

20 co-petitioners asked about, is the magnesium21 thorium. It is the only issue that has --- that 

22 there's still some quality of openness to. And 

23 a sampling might be able to tell us, but we will 
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1 always have boxes, even if we sample, there's 

2 always the possibility that there could be 

3 something in one of the boxes we didn't sample. 

4 And that's real. I don't want to skim over that.

5 Could I ask, Dr. Melius, I mean, is it 

6 in the Board's purview to suggest that there be 

7 a look, that NIOSH look into revising the Site 

8 Profile by perhaps looking, I mean ---

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's automatic 

10 after every SEC petition goes through its 

11 process. I mean, there's a number of Site 

12 Profile changes that will be necessary based on 

13 all the work that we've done.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, 

15 that's good.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: And I concur that ---

17 I'm not trying to make Stu commit to going through 

18 every folder or whatever. I mean, there may be 

19 --- I think you have some information on what's 

20 in them and so forth.

21 So, any further discussion on the 

22 motion? Yeah, Phil.

23 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Just one quick 
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1 question. I don't know, do you have access to 

2 their purchasing records? My point being that I 

3 don't know how common welding rods that contained 

4 thorium were used at Rocky Flats. Maybe they 

5 hardly ever used them, maybe they were only 

6 during the period of the SEC. I was wondering 

7 if you've run across those in any purchase 

8 orders.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. We did not look 

10 for thoriated welding rods. What we did look for 

11 was magnesium-thorium alloy. We looked for other 

12 items of concern.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. And it's 

14 use in plates. So we didn't look at that.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So, any further 

16 questions? Board Members on the phone, 

17 questions?

18 PARTICIPANT: I have a question. I'm 

19 not on the Board. Is it open for ---

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Sorry, no. This is 

21 Board. No public comments at this point. I'm 

22 sorry.

23 PARTICIPANT: Excuse me. I'm sorry.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: That's fine. Okay. 

2 If no further questions, then I think, Ted, do 

3 you want to do the roll call?

4 MR. KATZ: Thanks. So, Dr. Anderson.

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: It's been a long 

6 process here and complicated. I mean, there are 

7 some remaining issues, but I do think we've done 

8 the best we can and I would vote yes on it.

9 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach.

10 MEMBER BEACH: No.

11 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: No. 

13 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field? Bill?

14 MEMBER FIELD: Could you clarify what 

15 the motion is, Ted?

16 MR. KATZ: Yeah, sure. The motion is 

17 to agree with NIOSH that dose reconstruction is 

18 feasible. And as a result, to deny the petition.

19 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. Dr. Kotelchuck.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen is absent. I'll 

23 collect his vote after the meeting.
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1 Dr. Lockey.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: No.

5 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston, are you on the 

8 line?

9 (No response.)

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. Absent. I will 

11 collect his vote after the meeting.

12 Dr. Richardson, are you on the line?

13 (No response.)

14 MR. KATZ: Okay. Also collect his 

15 vote.

16 Dr. Roessler.

17 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio.

21 MEMBER VALERIO: No.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer.

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: We have eight yeses 

2 already. We have 15 Members. So, that's a 

3 majority. So the motion passes. And I will 

4 report on the remaining votes after I've 

5 collected them. And they will be reported on 

6 publicly for the teleconference, which is in 

7 June.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So, we're 

9 scheduled now for a break. It's 10:15. So, why 

10 don't we come back at 10:30 and we will restart.

11 (Whereupon, the meeting went off the 

12 record at 10:14 a.m. and resumed at 10:42 a.m.)

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, we are going to 

14 have an update on the review of the Kansas City 

15 Site Profile.

16 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: And Josie Beach.

18 KANSAS CITY PLANT SITE PROFILE REVIEW 

19 MEMBER BEACH: Alright. Can 

20 everybody hear me? Do I sound okay?

21 The first slide just gives you the 

22 Work Group Members, of course myself as Chair, 

23 Brad Clawson, John Poston, Loretta and Jim Lockey 
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1 -- Loretta Valerio.

2 The Site Profile activities to date, 

3 the notice went out on April 21st, 2016. The 

4 last time I presented to the Board was in November 

5 at the Oakland meeting and we completed our SEC

6 work at that time. We combined all Site Profile 

7 issues.

8 And then in 2017, NIOSH presented 

9 their final TBD-31 Rev. 1 for the Kansas City 

10 Site. We found that there was conformance with 

11 the matrix action items and the Work Group, the 

12 comments from the Work Group. In fact, we felt 

13 that NIOSH really responded to all the Work 

14 Group's comments over the years in all the Work 

15 Group meetings so we were pleased with that.

16 In March 2nd of 2017, the Work Group 

17 met and discussed all the issues.

18 What we have her is there is the first 

19 three slides are the SEC issues that were tabled 

20 for Site Profile later review. And then we had 

21 the Site Profiles from the 2013, the original 

22 TBD, and then we had comments that were made 

23 during our Work Group sessions that ended up 
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1 being added to the new TBD.

2 So, I will just start with the 

3 original SEC issues and some of them, you will 

4 notice, are similar.

5 So we started with worker job 

6 categories, worker locations, and the coworker 

7 model. Because there was a varied history of 

8 operations and there as a lack of specific work, 

9 worker locations, and they moved around, they 

10 moved different operations at different time 

11 periods, the application of the coworker model 

12 and the generalized TBD, we didn't feel like we 

13 would get a result in good dose assessments.

14 So the revised TBD provides guidance 

15 for different categories of workers for depleted 

16 uranium and for different categories of workers 

17 and time periods for other radionuclides.

18 Attachment B is the External Coworker 

19 Dose Assessment Guideline and that is helpful for 

20 dose reconstructors.

21 SEC 3, which was the chronic versus 

22 acute intakes, the uranium coworker model may not 

23 be applicable to all or most workers. When 
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1 estimating the intakes, dose reconstructors 

2 should assume exposure to uranium dust were 

3 chronic. A chronic exposure pattern best 

4 approximates the true exposure conditions for 

5 most workers with the potential for intake. In 

6 addition, a chronic exposure pattern approximates 

7 a series of acute intakes, which makes it 

8 approximate when no specific information was 

9 given for the individual.

10 The next one was non-penetrating dose. 

11 And for some of the periods, especially during 

12 the 1959 to 1962 time frame, there was 

13 information lacking. The TBD has resolved that 

14 issue and our concerns with the use of that 

15 recorded dose and the worker was satisfied with 

16 all three of these.

17 Of course, when you read the TBD, it 

18 is difficult to compile it down into a one- or 

19 two-minute brief presentation. So hopefully, 

20 you have the time to look at the full TBD.

21 The next slide, this is information 

22 that was collected as part of data capture during 

23 our SEC Work Group. There is three slides on 
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1 these. These were not in the original TBD but 

2 we found that they needed to be added.

3 So natural uranium operations from 

4 1950 to 1955 we are applying the TBD-6000 

5 methodology as a bounding for inhalation and 

6 ingestion intakes and accompanying information 

7 and guidance for these operations.

8 Then we had the post-operation period 

9 of 1955 to 1959. We are going to use the -- or 

10 NIOSH is using the max gross-alpha measured air 

11 sample 49 picocuries to determine internal 

12 exposure at KCP after natural uranium ceased in 

13 1955 and again until the start of KCP urinalysis 

14 program which started in 1959.

15 The tritium water operations, it was 

16 a short-term process where they were transferring 

17 bottles, the tritiated water into smaller 

18 bottles. It was an isolated grouping. That 

19 happened between 1959 and 1975. To account for 

20 doses the bounding scenario they used the 400 

21 millimeters of water as if it was spilled over an 

22 entire year and the worker absorbed that dose, 

23 giving them a 6.66 millirem dose per year and 
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1 that is going to be applied to all workers.

2 And then we get to the mag-thorium 

3 issue. The mag-thorium operations that we could 

4 find were between 1961 and 1963 and then again in 

5 1970 through 1977. They used an engineering 

6 control limit of 3 x 10-11 milliliters of alpha 

7 applied as a constant distribution to estimate an 

8 exposure dose identified for the identified mag9 thorium workers. They also used a TBD applied 

10 to determine the air concentration for classes of 

11 workers that have less exposure or spent less 

12 time in the mag-thorium machining areas, which 

13 were listed as Department 20 and the Model Shop.

14 The TBD also applies TIB-9 for 

15 ingestion rate of internal doses. We will talk 

16 about mag-thorium again, those years in-between 

17 '63 and '70.

18 And if you look -- well, I'll get to 

19 that in a minute.

20 So post-operations '72 to '84 bounded 

21 using a maximum measured surface contamination 

22 survey data during DU and D&D operations that 

23 also applied the OTIB-70.
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1 And organically bounded tritium 

2 operations, they were using tritiated phosphor on 

3 hi-lo switch plates. It was, again, a small 

4 operation between '63 and '68 and NIOSH is going 

5 to bound that using a 95th percentile 

6 contamination transferred to the skin and 

7 absorbed as a 1.77 millirem dose. That will be 

8 applied to all workers.

9 We weren't able in this one and the 

10 previous one I identified, we couldn't identify 

11 which workers. So it is going to be applied to 

12 all, as I said.

13 Okay. Then there was a lot of 

14 discussion on the D&D. Rockwell came in and did 

15 a D&D activity between '84 and '86. I don't 

16 believe they used any Kansas City folks but that 

17 time period was under much discussion in our Work 

18 Group meetings and NIOSH is going to bound that 

19 time period using assuming an alpha inhalation 

20 rate of 6.76 picocuries a day within an ingestion 

21 intake of 0.135 picocuries a day based on the air 

22 sample control level of 1 x 10-12, a breathing 

23 air rate of 1.2 m3 per hour for a period of 2,000 
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1 hours per year. This is all in Rockwell's 

2 report. They did air sampling during that time, 

3 Rockwell did, and we were able to look at those 

4 sample results but we weren't able to determine 

5 if any Kansas City people were in and around that 

6 area. So again, those rates will be applied to 

7 everybody during that time period.

8 Rad handling for the operations 

9 associated with routine rad waste handling, rad10 area maintenance, housekeeping, D&D bounding 

11 doses assigned to all unmonitored workers. They 

12 classified their D&D folks. During our 

13 interviews, we were able to kind of pinpoint who 

14 handled the rad waste. Anyway, so that we are 

15 using a coworker model and apply exposure 

16 category 2 to workers. And then there is also 

17 some occasional exposure there.

18 So now we are going to get into --

19 these are from the original TBD that was issued 

20 in 2013 -- or 2006, excuse me. Some of you will 

21 find are somewhat similar.

22 So the first one, activities at KCP 

23 involved handling substantial quantities of 
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1 uranium oxide powder. Site Profile recommended 

2 using a default option of AMAD of 5, which was 

3 questioned by SC&A. The revised TBD includes 

4 additional guidance and determined 

5 specifications for uranium oxide during that 

6 period. I believe they are using a smaller 

7 number there than the 5.

8 The bioassay data appears to be 

9 incomplete. That was resolved by revised 

10 coworker data and validation and verification 

11 that was performed.

12 The job codes, the admin job codes, 

13 that we handled earlier. That was one of the 

14 earlier questions, the approach on how to 

15 categorize workers. We were worried about that 

16 missed dose.

17 So now if you look at the TBD, you 

18 will find job categories, placement, different 

19 exposure rates of where different individuals 

20 would have worked. It is much clearer.

21 And then 13 was the mag-thorium alloy 

22 operations inhalation and ingestion intake rates 

23 by job category. Again, we covered that. I 
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1 covered that a little bit earlier. The TBD now 

2 provides information on this issue with the 

3 inhalation and ingestion rates by job category 

4 and time periods. It is much, much clearer.

5 SP20, photon calibration, correction 

6 factor for exposures to photon radiation, 

7 especially exposure to the skin and shallow 

8 organs was found to be needed. In the revised 

9 TBD it provides coworker with shallow dose 

10 parameters and recommends the use of a completed 

11 list of dose conversation factors in the IG-1 

12 Rev. 3, which is the External Dose Reconstruction 

13 Implementation Guide, instead of the abbreviated 

14 list that was in the previous TBD.

15 Now, so that takes care of all of our 

16 Site Profile issues. We do have one that NIOSH 

17 has agreed to carry forward back to that mag18 thorium operation, the years between 1963 to 

19 1970. We looked and looked but we were never 

20 able to find any documentation source term that 

21 showed that there was anything happening with 

22 mag-thorium during those years. We did have it 

23 on both ends. So NIOSH will carry that forward 
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1 and if anything comes to light in any document 

2 searches, of course, we will move forward with a 

3 Rev to the TBDs on that.

4 And I don't have a question slide. So 

5 that concludes my presentation. Questions for 

6 anyone? 

7 The recommendation from the Work 

8 Group, I can guess I can say that, is that we 

9 recommend closing all the TBD issues for Kansas 

10 City at this time. That was a unanimous Work 

11 Group recommendation at our March meeting.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Board Member 

13 questions? I'm assuming there are no boxes that 

14 we are looking for about magnesium-thorium.

15 MEMBER BEACH: We left no boxes 

16 unturned.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Right, okay.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Each one of these was 

19 vetted very rigorously.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, good. Yes, 

21 Phil, go ahead and then Paul.

22 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay, I have got a 

23 couple of questions here. One, did they receive 
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1 their uranium metal as like an ingot? And did 

2 they generate their own uranium oxide? And then 

3 did they actually have to process it to get it 

4 down to the size they wanted or did they receive 

5 it as an oxide powder?

6 MEMBER BEACH: They machined it. 

7 What I remember is that they machined it but that 

8 is more technical than --

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I am speaking from 

10 recollection here and I really wasn't engaged in 

11 the Kansas City discussion to a great extent. 

12 But we do know that they purchased oxide. We 

13 have a purchase specifications of certain 

14 requirements on the uranium oxide that they 

15 purchased, rather than getting metal and 

16 oxidizing it.

17 They machined components that 

18 included uranium oxide but it came in. You know 

19 they didn't manufacture the oxide out of metal. 

20 Very early on, they did machine some metal.

21 MEMBER BEACH: And I don't know, Joe, 

22 if you have any more information on that.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, Paul, go ahead.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: So this is sort of a 

2 follow-up on Phil's question. It has to do with 

3 the powder.

4 Originally, NIOSH was going to use a 

5 default for the dynamic mean diameter of 5 and 

6 then I think you said in slide 9 that they would 

7 use detailed specs for the uranium oxide. So 

8 where there actually specs for that powder that 

9 gives you a different distribution or were there 

10 air samples actually done?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: There is actually a 

12 purchase --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: The purchase specs.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: -- specified things 

15 that would give you information about particle 

16 size.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, thanks.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Any other questions 

19 from Board Members?

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: So has the Site 

21 Profile actually been updated, then?

22 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

23 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Did I not mention that? 

2 It was --

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, I think --

4 MEMBER BEACH: -- on the very first 

5 slide. It was updated on November -- January of 

6 2017.

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: So you were just 

8 describing what transpired --

9 MEMBER BEACH: What went into this.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: -- into it.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Correct.

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: So we don't have to 

13 worry about waiting for it to come out.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, the first one was 

15 in '06. This one was in 2017 and we reviewed it, 

16 yes.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, good. So 

18 then it is done.

19 MEMBER BEACH: And the thing that 

20 amazed me on this was everything that we 

21 discussed during our Work Group meetings, 

22 everything we asked for, it was in the new TBD. 

23 So we were quite satisfied during our meeting, 
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1 which is unusual. I mean it was.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: We often agree. Any 

3 further questions? Board Members on the phone 

4 with any questions?

5 If not, we have a motion from the Work 

6 Group to close out the Site Profile review.

7 So, if no further discussion or 

8 questions, Ted. Why don't we do it by voice? 

9 Okay, we'll do it by voice.

10 MR. KATZ: Sure.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, people on the 

12 phone, do you have your voice? Board Members, 

13 have your voices ready.

14 All in favor say aye.

15 (Chorus of ayes.)

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Opposed?

17 (No audible response.)

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Abstain?

19 (No audible response.)

20 BOARD WORK SESSION 

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, we're all set. 

22 Very good. Thank you, Josie.

23 We want to finish up. I think we have 
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1 taken care of our Board Work Session but I did 

2 want to mention Pat and I actually talked to --

3 we will do the letters afterwards. As soon as 

4 Stu reports back on the 400 boxes, I will finish 

5 the letters. No, seriously, I will do them 

6 tomorrow. I already told Jennie. She will hold 

7 me to it.

8 On a more somber note, I have already

9 mentioned this to Jim Lockey and Gen Roessler, 

10 one of our original Board Members, I believe it 

11 was, Roy DeHart, died recently over the Christmas 

12 holiday. A sudden illness. He was someone that 

13 was very involved on the Board for several years 

14 and worked hard. And I had the privilege of 

15 serving with him on a number of other Advisory 

16 Boards on Occupational and Environmental Health. 

17 So he was a very good person to work with.

18 I just wanted to acknowledge. I know 

19 many -- all the Board Members, we all knew him or 

20 many of us here served with him on the Board and 

21 he was always very involved and very thoughtful 

22 about reviewing and contributed a lot to the 

23 Board. So I just thought we should acknowledge 
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1 for the public record that he had died recently.

2 MEMBER MUNN: A fine life, well lived.

3 ADJOURN 

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. So on that sad 

5 note, I will close and we will see everybody in 

6 someplace -- New Mexico -- someplace in New 

7 Mexico and not in the casino hotel. No camping. 

8 We will find someplace. 

9 Anyway, so, thank you, and we will be 

10 busy between now and then.

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

12 went off the record at 11:03 a.m.)

13 

14 

15 

16 

17