This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Savannah River Site Work 

Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally 

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

reviewed and certified by the Chair of the Savannah River Site Work Group for accuracy at this 

time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to 

change. 

NEAL R. GROSS

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE (SRS) WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Montreal Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Mark Griffon, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MARK GRIFFON, Chairman*

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*

 
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

DAVID ANDERSON*

MATT ARNO, ORAU Team*

BOB BARTON, SC&A*

EULA BINGHAM*

ELIZABETH BRACKETT, ORAU Team*

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, SC&A*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

DeKEELY HARTSFIELD, HHS*

MIKE MAHATHY, ORAU Team

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A*

JIM NETON, DCAS

TRISH QUINN*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

TIM TAULBEE, DCAS

BOB WARREN*

*Participating via telephone
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Savannah River Site Work 

Group, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally 

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

reviewed and certified by the Chair of the Savannah River Site Work Group for accuracy at this 

time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to 

change.

NEAL R. GROSS

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AGENDA ITEM PAGE

Welcome and roll-call/introductions 4

WG Discussion

 - Radiological Monitoring for 6

Neptunium - presentation by Tim 

Taulbee

 - DCAS Response to SC&A report 139

"Review of the Methods for 

Estimating Neptunium-237 Intakes 

at the Savannah River Site for 

the Period 1972-2007"

 - Thorium exposures at SRS Post 

1972 - presentation by Tim 

Taulbee

 - DCAS response to SC&A report 

"Review of Addendum 3 to the 

NIOSH Savannah River Site 

Special Exposure Cohort

(SEC-00103) Evaluation Report"

 - Review of Issues Matrix: status 

of findings and path forward

 - Evaluating completeness of 

subcontractor bioassay records
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

(10:03 a.m.)

MR. KATZ: Let's get started. 

It's time now. This is the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health, the Savannah 

River Site Work Group. And let's go right 

to roll-call. For all agency-related 

personnel on the call, please speak to 

conflict of interest as well. Should we run 

through it? So let's just start with the 

Board Members.

(Roll call.)

MR. KATZ: Okay then. That 

covers attendance. The presentations --

well, the materials, the background 

materials, that are being discussed should 

be posted on the NIOSH website under today's 

meetings under the Board section for today. 

There are presentations there on the Live 

Meeting page that I believe was distributed 

to the petitioners. I have also sent to the 

petitioners the copies of the presentations 
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being made today by email because I wasn't 

sure that they would have that live 

connection, Live Meeting connection.

And, Mark, it's your meeting.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Ted, 

thank you. And since I had to join by 

phone, I also asked as we move ahead in the 

meeting, if Brad can help facilitate the 

meeting since sometimes it is difficult to 

do this from the phone.

But I think everyone has the 

agenda. I just wanted to check the order. 

I think we should get right into the couple 

of main items of the neptunium and thorium. 

And I think we're going to start with 

NIOSH's presentation and then sort of the 

White Paper responses to SC&A's finding or 

comments on those. So I think that is how 

we are going to proceed is the 

neptunium/thorium issues first and then 

matrix issues. And then I think we will, 

oh, yes, the last item talks about the 
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completeness of subcontractor bioassay 

records. So, with that, I guess I can turn 

it over to NIOSH to start off with the 

neptunium issue. Is that correct, Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: Sure. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: Sounds good. Okay. 

Thanks, everybody.

This first presentation is going 

to be kind of focusing on the radiological 

monitoring for neptunium in Savannah River. 

So I am going to start out with a little bit 

of the process of how neptunium was -- how 

it was used in Savannah River. And then I 

am going to get more into the radiological 

monitoring.

So this is kind of an overview of 

my presentation. The neptunium process is 

the radiological controls at Savannah River, 

specifically the special hazards bulletins 

in DPSOP-40, personal monitoring for 

neptunium, the bioassay, whole body 
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counting, and then the coworker model that 

we developed -- well, actually, my team, 

being led by Mike Mahathy and Matt Arno and 

Liz Brackett. They're the ones who actually 

did the lion's share of this work on the 

coworker model and, actually, on the 

neptunium work. So I'd like to thank them, 

first of all, for their support in this. I 

couldn't have done it, couldn't do this 

presentation without them 

And then the comparison of the 

coworker models for neptunium that we did.

So neptunium processes at 

Savannah River. The overall goal is the 

protection of plutonium-238. They produce 

plutonium-238 through an in-gamma reaction, 

where a neutron is absorbed by neptunium, 

emits a gamma ray, and becomes neptunium238. Neptunium-238 then beta decays to 

plutonium-238.

The production of plutonium-238 

using neptunium started back in 1961. The 
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production ended in July of 1984. Now, that 

doesn't mean that all of the documentation 

and data that we have for neptunium ended in 

1984 because it certainly continued on. 

There was still some processing that you'll 

see a recovery of neptunium, not processing, 

just recovery of it, that we'll talk about a 

little bit. But the main processes 

involving neptunium were the manufacture of 

the targets, the irradiation of the targets 

and the reactors, and the chemical 

separation of plutonium-238 from the 

neptunium.

So this is a flow diagram of the 

materials flowing at Savannah River. And 

it's very busy, but I am going to walk you 

through this kind of step by step a little 

bit of where the neptunium comes from, how 

it is produced, and then how it is handled 

and how plutonium is produced.

So you can actually trace the

beginning of the neptunium going back to 
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enriched uranium that is coming from Y-12 to 

the 321 building. At the end of this red 

bar that you see is a block representing the 

300 area at Savannah River.

The uranium was extruded in the 

321 extrusion press and made into tubes. 

These would be the Mark 16 and Mark 22 fuel 

tubes that are sent to the reactors: to the 

assembly area first, where they are staged; 

then into the reactors; then into the 

disassembly area, after they are irradiated.

After they are irradiated, they 

actually contain both neptunium or uranium235 and neptunium-237. This is through 

successive neutron captures of U-235 

capturing a neutron, becoming U-236; U-236 

capturing a neutron, becoming neptunium-237 

-- actually uranium-237 and then decaying.

So this is the introduction of 

neptunium back in 1961 time frame. 

Neptunium is -- then these irradiated fuel 

elements are dissolved in the HM process of 
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the H Area Canyon. You can see the HM 

process there in 221 building. And coming 

out of the canyon side is neptunium nitrate. 

And that is sent to the HB-Line, which is in 

the top levels of the H Canyon.

The neptunium is then converted 

to neptunium oxide, from nitrate to oxide, 

in the HB-Line and sent over to 235F. This 

is the billet fabrication lab. From 235F, 

the billets are assembled. And then they 

are sent back up to 321M, that same 

extrusion press, where the billets are 

extruded into tubes vis-a-vis the Mark 53 

targets that are then sent to the reactors, 

to the assembly area, where they are staged 

before putting into the reactor. After they 

come out of the reactor, they are in the 

disassembly basin and where they're 

separated.

Now, instead of following that 

previous path, going over to the HM process, 

this is where you have a neptunium target 
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that has a lot of plutonium-238 in it. This 

went to the end of the canyon, what is 

called the frames. This was an additional 

module that DuPont put into the canyons in 

order to separate out plutonium-238 from the 

neptunium targets.

Next from the frames, they 

actually cycle through the frames. So in 

the reports that we see, we see a first 

cycle stage of how much plutonium they were 

able to extract and then a second cycle and 

how much plutonium came off of there.

They did this a couple of times. 

And then once they extracted the maximum 

amount of plutonium that they could, then 

they sent the plutonium to the HB-Line, but 

they also sent the neptunium nitrate to the 

HB-Line. So the neptunium nitrate coming 

from the frames is blended with the 

neptunium nitrate from the HM process, sent 

over or converted to oxide, sent over to the 

235F. And the whole cycle starts again.
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For completeness, there is one 

other area where neptunium comes in from. 

This would be from depleted uranium targets.

MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. I should 

have reminded everyone on the line. Can you 

mute your phones, everyone listening? So if 

you don't have a mute button, press *6 to 

mute your phone. And then to take it off of 

mute, you just press *6 again. Thanks.

DR. TAULBEE: So the processes I 

just described to you make up about 97 

percent of the neptunium nitrate being 

handled at the Savannah River site. The 

other three percent is actually coming off 

from the depleted uranium plutonium-239 

series, going over to the F Area Canyon and 

from the PUREX process. You can see that 

coming into the 221F Canyon. And then the 

neptunium nitrate is being sent over to the 

HB-Line again.

So this is the basic process that 

is going on at the Savannah River.
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MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Tim. 

Sorry. There's someone on the line who has 

an open line. Can you mute your phone? 

Press *6 to mute your phone, whoever. You 

have background noise, someone talking in 

your office. Thank you.

DR. TAULBEE: So going on to the 

next slide here, what I want to focus on 

here is the three main areas where this 

neptunium is being handled: the HB-Line. 

And this mission, the mission of the HBLine, was to convert from neptunium nitrate 

to neptunium oxide, which also kind of --

MR. KATZ: Okay. Mark, can you 

hear everyone?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I can.

MR. KATZ: So it's on their end.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I hear the 

background comments, too, yes.

MR. KATZ: Yes. Thanks. --Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: So this HB-Line was 

actually toured by the Advisory Board back 
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in 2010, when we went there on site. As I 

mentioned, the two main sources, 97 percent 

are coming from the HM process of enriched 

uranium and then from the frames of 

dissolving these Mark 53 targets. 

Generally, about three to four kilograms per 

month are coming from the HM process. And I 

am going to say that this material has a low 

plutonium contamination. And I'll explain 

why that is important in a minute.

From the frames dissolving the 

Mark 53 targets, you get about 8 to 10 

kilograms per month, or about 74 percent of 

the total. And this has significant 

plutonium contamination in it because this 

is where they're making the plutonium-238.

So how much contamination is 

coming from the frames? This particular 

chart here is showing the -- I'm sorry. 

Yes. Okay. This is actually the plutonium 

contamination not coming from the frames. 

This is coming from the HB-Line 235F. So I 
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apologize. The title of this is wrong. 

Anyway, what I want to get to here is the 

average plutonium weight percent. And this 

was done on a per-month basis. They would 

tabulate the minimum, the average, the 

maximum. And you're looking at a weight 

percent of .16 for January of 1974 down to 

.03 for April of 1974, which are very small 

quantities because you are looking at -- you 

know, in the first case, you are looking at 

99.84 percent pure neptunium. And in the 

bottom, you are looking at 99.97 percent 

pure neptunium.

Plutonium contamination is 

important because of the specific activity. 

Plutonium-238 has a specific activity of 

17.1 curies per gram. Neptunium is .00069 

curies per gram. So, even when you have 

99.95 percent pure neptunium and only .05 

percent plutonium, the plutonium alpha 

dominates the exposure scenario here. You 

have about 12 plutonium alphas to every one 
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neptunium. So from a dose standpoint, 

plutonium is the main hazard here. It's not 

until you get to really what I will call 

ultra-pure neptunium that the neptunium 

begins to dominate the exposure. They're at 

about equal radioactivity if you're at alpha 

emissions when you get to 99.995 percent 

pure.

So the reason that I am pointing 

this out is that Savannah River was 

controlling a lot based upon plutonium 

bioassay during the 1970s time period. So 

let me talk here briefly of why they were 

controlling for plutonium.

If you look at 235F building, the 

next slide that I have here, you will see 

that the green box is the neptunium 

facility. The red boxes here are the 

plutonium facilities within the building. 

You are looking at the plutonium fuel 

fabrication facility. Those are blocks 8 

and 9 there in the red. And then box 11 is 
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the plutonium experimental facility.

The yellow box 14 down here is 

the men's change room. Box 18 is the 

women's change room. And so within this 

building, you have one room. Actually, it's 

two rooms there. They are subdivided. It 

is not well shown on this particular 

diagram, but you have one area of neptunium 

exposure. And you've got three main areas 

of plutonium exposure within this building.

This is a picture of the actual 

glove box line, the neptunium glove box 

line. Just for your general frame of 

reference, these are workers within the 

glove box. One of the things I would like 

to point out is that you will see that they 

are wearing white regulated clothing to work 

in this particular room, what I am presuming 

are supervisors that are wearing smocks and 

shoe covers. The technicians are all 

wearing the white regulated clothing. They 

are also wearing neutron dosimeters. Those 
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are the belly button dosimeters that you see 

down here in the lower corner there because 

there is a significant gamma and neutron 

dose rate coming from this neptunium that's 

inside the glove boxes.

This is the back side of the 

glove box line. On the front side is where 

the operations are primarily going on. But 

at the end, when they take the billets out 

of the line, and as you can see them being 

staged there on the floor, there is some 

work that is done on the back side. We have 

some documents that we have seen that are 

talking about one to two hours per week of 

work on the back side of the line versus the 

remainder, 35 or so hours, on the front 

side.

Some of the general observations 

from that photo is that this is a relatively 

small glove box line. We are looking at 

tens of workers, not hundreds, which --

MR. KATZ: Hold on. This must be 
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--

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. You're 

getting feedback.

MR. KATZ: A lot of feedback. So 

somebody has not muted their phone. *6, 

please. Everyone on this phone should mute 

their phone. Please press *6. Let's see. 

Is that better? Yes. The echo is gone. 

Okay.

Carry on. Thanks.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. As you'll 

see, this was a relatively small glove box 

line. You are looking at tens of workers, 

not hundreds. This is part of why we don't 

see hundreds of bioassay samples for 

neptunium at the Savannah River site.

This is a regulated radiation 

area. As I mentioned, the supervisors are 

wearing the white lab coats with shoe 

covers. Operators are wearing regulated 

clothing, neutron dosimeters. Along the 

glove box line, it is hard to tell from the 
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previous picture, but there are shadow 

shields due to the high gamma dose rate that 

I will talk about. And then, as you saw in 

the picture, the billets are bagged for 

transfer to the 321M building for further 

testing and evaluation and then ultimately 

extrusion.

Here are some of the controls 

from 235F. As I mentioned, the billets are 

surveyed. These are high gamma dose rates. 

If you look at some of these dose rate 

levels at three inches or eight centimeters, 

you are looking at, some of them, up to an r 

per hour, or a rem per hour, type of dose 

rate. Neutrons are significant. These are 

ten millirem per hour. This is the reason 

for those neutron dosimeters, fixed alpha 

contamination on these billets coming out. 

But they are monitoring for both the gamma, 

the neutron, and the alpha contamination 

coming off of these billets. The remarks 

off to the side show that most of these 
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billets in this particular section that I 

grabbed here are going to storage.

What I want to contrast these 

dose rates with is at the same time, in that 

same glove box line, they were occasionally 

making plutonium billets as well. These 

were also surveyed before they were 

transferred to 321M. But you'll notice they 

have a much lower gamma dose rate but a much 

higher neutron dose rate. So, from looking 

at just the gamma dose rates, you can figure 

out whether the billet in particular 

question was a plutonium one or a neptunium 

one.

Some of the other controls that 

are in 235F. You've got the engineered 

controls, which are the glove boxes. We've 

got workplace radiation monitoring. These 

are daily control surveys. And these are 

things where they check the high-volume CAM 

samplers. They change the air filters. 

They look at the manipulator collars in the 
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PuFF control room. The step-off pads --

that's SOP -- to clean areas, those are 

checked.

Leaving each of these regulated 

rooms into the regulated corridors, you are 

required to monitor your hands and feet. 

Those are posted on the doors that we see 

there from those pictures. And so in that 

area, there's a step-off pad, going from the 

regulated corridors into the clean areas. 

Those were being checked for contamination.

You've got floors in the process 

rooms that are being checked. You've got 

the gloves that are being checked and then 

disc smears of the bioassay stations. So 

these are daily checks that are going on 

within this facility, mostly because this is 

a high-risk facility in a sense. You've got 

a lot of plutonium operations. You've got 

neptunium operations. You've got high gamma 

dose rates going on. So there's a 

significant Health Physics presence here.
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We have some routine air 

monitoring going on. Room 107 here is the 

neptunium room. 107A is the process side. 

107D is that maintenance side that I showed 

you pictures of. If you look, they're 

monitoring for beta gamma or fission 

products, as they labeled there. The alpha 

is being controlled to .2 times 10 to the 

minus 12 microcuries per cc.

So that is actually the modernday DAC level. Typically, nowadays, we 

control rooms in modern era to a tenth of a 

DAC, but this is back in 1967. They're 

controlling this to a DAC level. So the 

arrows that you see going through, those are 

representing weeklong samples; whereas, the 

others are daily samples. So this is all in 

the air-monitoring records.

For personal monitoring, to work 

in these areas, you had to wear a dosimeter. 

This is due to that high gamma dose rate. 

And it was significant when we look at some 
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of those readings that we're getting off of 

there. Workers that we have interviewed 

have also confirmed this because they were 

swapped out. They would get burned out 

after several months of working in this 

area. And so a new crew would be coming in 

or if one person was the one being burned 

out, he would be rotated out. And they 

would go work in other areas where they 

weren't getting such a high gamma dose rate, 

high gamma and neutron dose rate. And that 

makes sense from what is going on here, 

which also plays into why we don't just see 

a very small grouping of neptunium bioassay 

for the workforce, but in the 1970s, we see 

a little bit larger than what would fit into 

that room. And I'll get to that data here 

in a minute.

From a bioassay standpoint, if

you look at DPSOL 193-302 from 1978, workers 

in 235F were under bioassay categories C and 

W. C meant two plutonium samples per year. 
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W meant one neptunium sample per year.

Switching now from 235F, going to 

321M, billet extrusion, that particular 

process involved the receipt of the billets 

that had been bagged. They surveyed the 

billets. They helium leak-checked them. 

They outgassed them, preheated them, 

extruded them into a long tube. And then 

the tubes are surveyed for shipment to the 

reactors.

Well, how do we know these were 

surveyed? We've got the survey records here 

that we've looked at examples of. In this 

particular case, we've got four neptunium 

billets from 235F reading 700 millirem per 

hour at 3 inches. This confirms with the 

previous log that you saw of the surveys in 

235F about these billets.

Reading on down, less than ten 

dpm alpha, less than ten counts per minute 

beta gamma smearable on the billets. One of 

the billets, number three, was probed at the 
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end of it. And it's 1,500 dpm alpha but 

less than 10 dpm alpha smearable. So this 

is at 1,500 dpm alpha fixed, alpha 

contamination. So this is a smear that's 

been taken in 321 building upon receipt.

Here is the extrusion press and 

the operator that you'll see. You'll notice 

that he is wearing brown clothing, not 

white. That's because this particular 

picture is of a composite billet of uranium 

aluminum being extruded, not neptunium in 

this particular case. And they did the 

separation of the brown clothing for uranium 

and the white clothing for plutonium and 

fission products, mostly for the laundry 

purposes, to keep the laundry separated so 

that they weren't laundering uraniumcontaminated clothing with plutoniumcontaminated clothing.

This is the extrusion press. 

This would be a billet going in. The flames 

are due to the lubricant being ignited. 
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This is an encapsulated billet going in. 

And you've got an encapsulated fuel tube 

that's emerging from the die.

These fuel tubes are then 

surveyed. This is an example of where the

surveyor surveyed 12 neptunium tubes being 

shipped to 105P reactor, less than 10 dpm 

alpha, less than 10 counts per minute beta 

gamma on exterior surfaces.

Next slide. So let me talk a 

little bit about the radiological controls 

and methods that they were using from 1972 

to 1990. Since 1956, Savannah River had 

these Special Hazards Bulletins and DPSOP40. This was what governed their 

radiological monitoring practices. And this 

covered work in regulated areas, 

investigating radiological contamination 

incidents, protective clothing, injury in 

regulated areas, disposal of contaminated 

waste, fires in regulated areas, and 

radiological exposure control.
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Now, on this slide, I plan on 

talking about four of these. And that is 

the work in the first three and then the 

seventh one: radiation exposure control.

So let's look at work in 

regulated areas. There are three basic 

parts to this bulletin: definitions, basic 

procedure, and responsibilities. And I want 

to look at each of these individually.

By the way, let me back up one 

slide here. Back to the other one, you'll 

notice the date. It's hard to read in the 

upper right corner. But this would be -- I 

believe that's six, right? Yes. June of 

1971. So this is in the area of time period 

that we are interested in from the 1970s, 

1972 forward.

So in this time period, they had 

definitions for their clean zones, for the 

regulated zones, for the radiation danger 

zones. And it all had to do with 

contamination control levels. The clean 
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zone was where no radioactive materials are 

handled, where the radiation contamination 

levels are equivalent to natural background. 

And they had their regulated zones, which 

they defined here as where the radiation 

level doesn't exceed 300 millirads or 50 

millirems per hour and the contamination is 

below acceptable levels as specified by 

Health Physics supervision. That's where 

that ten dpm that you're looking at on some 

of these surveys. In the other areas, it 

will be 20 dpm.

You've got special work permits. 

These are written instructions for work and 

regulated and radiation danger zones, 

includes instructions for control, 

radiation, and contamination exposure to 

personnel, job plans, a detailed step-wise 

instruction. Written before the job is 

performed, it describes work to be done and 

specifies radiation contamination controls 

and safety requirements. Job plans for work 
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and regulated and radiation danger zones 

must be approved by Health Physics 

supervision.

And the basic procedure here, you 

go through. We've got the same thing as the 

radiation danger zones. You can use 

operating procedures or job plans or special 

work permits within those particular areas. 

This all kind of predates what we refer to 

now as radiation work permits. They were 

using in place of that their operating 

procedures, special work permits, and job 

plans.

For work in the regulated or 

radiation danger zones, what I want to 

highlight here is partway down in that first 

paragraph where the Department's supervision 

controls access to the regulated and 

radiation danger zones by locking entrance 

doors or posting appropriate signs and 

barricading the zones with yellow/magenta 

tape, rope, and chain.
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So these are areas. These 

regulated zones aren't ones that you would 

just be wandering into. This was confirmed 

during our interviews with workers back in 

August of this year when we asked 

specifically about the controls in 235F, for 

example, where you couldn't just wander in. 

And in this case, that building, you had to 

go through the change rooms to get to these 

zones.

The other point I want to bring 

out here is the reviews of the job plans on 

specific monitoring requirements and Health 

Physics. They were one of their 

responsibilities, to review the job plans or 

special work permit, and specify monitoring 

requirements and add additional precautions 

and protective clothing and equipment.

So I just want to briefly mention 

here the protective clothing. I mentioned 

the white and the brown. And you can see 

the definition there in the lower corner: 
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whites to be worn in locations that may be 

contaminated by plutonium, fission products, 

or other artificial radionuclides. 

Neptunium would fall into that. Brown is to 

be worn in locations that may be 

contaminated by uranium. This is 1972. At 

this time period, there really weren't any 

areas of thorium exposure, but in the 

earlier versions of this one, you'll see 

where that says uranium and thorium.

Next I want to talk a little bit 

about DPSOP-40, the control guides. This 

leads into what the limits were for this 

time period. And this is June of 1971. And 

for external radiation, they said to look at 

Special Hazards Bulletin number 7, which 

I'll get to next. For internal radiation, 

they used the tech standard. It was DPSTSRH-0-07. That was the controls for internal 

radiation.

What you see listed below here is 

also the airborne radioactive 
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concentrations. This conforms with those 

air-monitoring data that I was showing you 

earlier, where for the plutonium, you are 

looking at 2 times 10 to the minus 12. 

Neptunium actually had a higher DAC value 

for -- or I'm calling it DAC. It's not a 

DAC. This was a concentration level that 

they were controlling to. They were 

controlling to 4 times 10 to the minus 12. 

That's significantly higher than what we 

would have for our current neptunium DAC 

values, but, nonetheless, for each of the 

radionuclides that they were dealing with, 

they had airborne control levels that they 

were using.

So let's look at the external 

first. This is Special Hazards Bulletin 

number 7. And I knew you can't read the one 

on the left. So I blew up the parts that I 

wanted to focus on. The section 103 is the 

plant radiation control guides, where it's 3 

rem per quarter or 3 rem per year. They had 
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a maximum three rem. But they would allow

them to get that entire three rem in the 

quarter. So this is where the workers are 

talking about they are being rotated out. 

They bumped up against three rem. They were 

moved out for the rest of the year. And 

this is again -- this was 1975 time frame.

If you departed from these 

guides, you had to have approval. Savannah 

River plant personnel had to have the 

Department's superintendent approval and 

Health Physics Section supervisor approval. 

Savannah River Laboratory required the 

research manager of the division involved 

and the Radiological Science Division 

research manager. That's the Health Physics 

equivalent for SRL-773A. And for Savannah 

River construction, you had to get the field 

project manager approval to exceed these 

limits.

So now let's look at the internal 

monitoring. This is DPSTS-RH-0.07. And the 
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part I want to highlight here is down here 

at the bottom. And it has to do with the 

monitoring of personnel. And all personnel 

entering areas in which they will receive a 

sustained radiation exposure rate of greater 

than one millirem per hour or intermittent 

exposures that will accumulate to greater 

than 25 millirem in one week shall be 

required to wear either a film badge or a 

thermoluminescent dosimeter somewhere 

between the waist and the neckline. And 

that will become important here in a minute.

Number 6 is where we get to the 

internal contamination. Personnel who can 

be exposed to internal contamination by 

radioactive materials other than normal 

background in the normal course of their 

work shall submit voidings to be analyzed 

for suspected contaminants. The frequency 

of submission of voidings shall be 

established by the Health Physics Division, 

taking into account such factors as the 
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likelihood of exposure, the sensitivity of 

the detection method, and the maximum 

permissible volume burdens listed by the 

AEC, NCRP, and ICRP.

So Health Physics wasn't 

establishing bioassay, just kind of at 

random. They were looking at what was the 

potential for exposure, what was the 

sensitivity of the detection method, and 

what was the permissible body burden. And 

this is August of 1969.

So let's look at some of the 

bioassay control. This is the actual 

procedure. I have highlighted the first 

one. This would be category G. This would 

be people working in the 221H B-Line, 221F B 

Line, JB-Line 235F. And, to read that, it 

says, "All personnel assigned to process 

section in building 235F and all assigned 

personnel to other facilities." They 

required two plutonium bioassay per year, 

one fission product, and one whole body 
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count. This particular procedure is 1971.

If you look down at the bottom, 

the note there is saying, "Neptunium 

analysis is performed when required by area 

Health Physics." Neptunium has never been 

detected without at least an equal amount of 

plutonium. This is the plutonium 

contamination I was talking about earlier, 

where it's the dominant hazard. They were 

seeing it from their 10 and 11 years of 

experience. They were always seeing 

whenever there was an exposure that there is 

at least an equal amount of plutonium. So 

in 1971, they weren't monitoring for 

neptunium, as I'll point out here in a 

minute. They were monitoring for the 

plutonium. If the plutonium came up 

positive in a neptunium area, then they 

looked for the neptunium.

You will see 321M. You've got 

plutonium, one per year; four enriched 

uranium. And then they've got also whole 
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body counts for enriched uranium.

Back up. If you look at the top, 

it says, "Routine bioassay sampling 

infrequencies, excluding Construction 

Division." This is for the normal, routine 

DuPont and Savannah River Laboratory folks. 

This is on page 2, page 3 of this particular 

procedure, "Bioassay Sampling Frequencies 

for the Construction Division."

MR. FITZGERALD: Now, this would 

be, just for clarification's sake, the 

DuPont Construction Division?

DR. TAULBEE: This would be all 

of the Construction Division that was --

MR. FITZGERALD: Maybe I should 

recast that. In the early days, it would 

have been all DuPont --

DR. TAULBEE: Exactly.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- Construction 

Division, but over time into the later '80s 

--

DR. TAULBEE: Into late year '80s 
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--

MR. FITZGERALD: You started 

getting --

DR. TAULBEE: -- began to 

separate.

MR. FITZGERALD: You started 

separating, getting --

DR. TAULBEE: With the 

subcontractors.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- non-neutron 

personnel as part of that?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

This --

MR. FITZGERALD: But this would 

apply.

DR. TAULBEE: This would apply to 

--

MR. FITZGERALD: This is? What 

year is this?

DR. TAULBEE: This is 1971.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. At that 

time --
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DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- not for all?

DR. TAULBEE: Right. But you 

still have done electric and the --

MR. FITZGERALD: That was --

DR. TAULBEE: -- Shaw folks, but 

they were actually considered based upon our 

interview with [identifying information 

redacted], --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- that they were 

at that time considered DuPont.

MR. FITZGERALD: So you had this 

evolution where it got more heterogeneous as 

time went on?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

That is correct. So this would be from this 

time period, the Construction Division was 

required to leave one plutonium sample every 

three years and when terminated. Other 

radionuclides are specified by Health 

Physics in construction job plans. This is 
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why I took that time earlier to go through 

who was reviewing the job plans, who was 

approving them. Health Physics was 

approving them. Here is where it would be 

specified if they were working in the 

neptunium area or some other area what their 

bioassay would be.

If you look down at the bottom 

here, whole body and chest counting, new 

employees who worked in radiation zones at 

other installations where radioactive 

materials are handled were required to take 

a whole body count and a chest count. This 

count is preferably made on the same day as 

their entry physical examination. Whole 

body counts and chest counts shall be made 

whenever an employee bioassay sample except 

tritium indicated yet a confirmed uptake or 

when he has been involved in a contamination 

incident and a count is considered necessary 

by Health Physics supervision. This is why 

we get whole body counts for Construction 
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Division employees. We see them. A) they 

either came from another facility and they 

were monitored them or they were involved in 

a contamination incident and they were 

monitored then. And then a count is 

required when terminating for those 

employees who had a previous count at the 

Savannah River site. Again, this is 1971.

Now, that was Rev 5 of this 

procedure. The next one that we have a 

complete copy of is Rev 8. Revs 6 and 7 

we've been having difficulty getting a copy 

of, although we have got one of a different 

procedure in 1973 and we've got one that's 

labeled Rev 7. But it's not the complete 

procedure. It's just that one table page. 

It doesn't have these other details.

What you'll see here, this is 

actually 193-302T, which is February of 

1985, but this is a duplicate of the Rev 8, 

which was approved in January of '78. So 

this would be January 1978.
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They changed their formatting, 

but you still have the same general thing 

here. You have 235F, personnel assigned to 

the process areas. This is that CW 

category. And the categories are on the 

next page that I'll go to here in a minute. 

HB-Line, you have D category. So we've got 

CWD that we need to pay attention to. And 

then 321M, we have all personnel assigned to 

charge prep casting, machining areas, B and 

H, and then all other personnel B and G. So 

we're looking at B, C, D, and W as the ones 

that I want to focus on.

So you'll see plutonium code B, 

one per year; C, two per year. That would 

be your 235F people. D, this would be your 

HB-Line folks, where they're working with 

plutonium-238 and neptunium contaminated 

with plutonium coming off of the frames that 

is heavily contaminated with plutonium, four 

plutonium samples per year, so quarterly. 

So the frequency is commensurate with the 
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exposure potential is what I'm getting at 

here. Neptunium, W, one per year, down 

there at the bottom. Okay?

This is 1978, 1985, and then 1993 

or 1989. Again, that table was applying to 

plant workers and to Savannah River 

Laboratory people.

The next page is where you have 

the Construction Division monitoring. It 

didn't change much from 1971 to 1978 here: 

plutonium, one sample every 3 years, other 

radionuclides, as specified by Health 

Physics and construction job plans. So from 

1971, at least through 1989, they were using 

the job plans and then the plutonium 

monitoring of one every three years for the 

Construction Division monitoring. Okay?

Bioassay control summary 

procedure basically prescribes the 

monitoring by the work area. Monitoring 

frequency based upon the procedures is based 

upon the potential for exposure. You can 
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see that from the procedure. You're not 

seeing monitoring for the plutonium in the 

reactor areas, where everything is 

encapsulated. You are only seeing it in 

areas where there is a potential for 

exposure. The sampling frequency is based 

upon that potential; for post-1978, 

neptunium urine bioassay for the highest 

exposure potential area, 235F, where they're 

actually handling the neptunium oxide and 

putting it into the billets.

So now let me talk a little bit 

about radiological incidents because what 

I've been showing you is effectively the 

rosy picture of everything going right, 

nobody ever gets exposed. Well, that's not 

the case in a processing area. You're going 

to have radiological incidents. You're 

going to have accidents. Things aren't 

always going to go right.

But they had a procedure for 

handling this and for investigating this. 
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And I want to focus on that very first part 

here. It's causes for an investigation: 

acts or conditions which caused or could 

have caused radiation or contamination 

hazards, incidents of contamination which 

require costly cleanup or they concern 

Health Physics. Incidents that cause 

internal body contamination are of concern 

to Health Physics or Medical, exceeding 

criticality control limits.

The responsibilities for 

notification of incidents is any individual 

who is aware of the circumstance, like one 

of those in item 101, reports it promptly to 

his supervision and Health Physics 

supervision. This conforms with what we 

heard in the interviews back in August of 

this year of the safety culture. This would 

be back in 1972 for this particular update, 

where everybody had a responsibility of if 

something happened, they were to report it 

to their supervisor or to Health Physics.
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From this, we basically have a 

series of incident reports that are 

available. The top tiers, the special 

hazards investigations, these are serious 

incidents that were initiated upon the 

request from either the Department or Health 

Physics. And these are where a committee 

was formed. When they sat down, they 

evaluated what happened and root causes and 

published a formal report. And we have all 

of these special hazards reports that were 

done. We have a copy of them in the SRDB.

There is a next tier down of 

reports that didn't make it up to the 

special hazards investigations. In other 

words, a committee wasn’t formed, but it was 

evaluated by the supervision or by Health 

Physics.

And these are reported by area, 

basically. There's a series of reactor 

incidents. There's a series of separations 

incidents, a series of fuel fabrication 
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incidents. For separations incidents, it's 

typically a 272 code. So it would be DPSPthe year, say 1974-272. And then they were 

sequentially numbered.

And then there are summary 

reports that we have captured for the SRDB, 

where they went through all of the reports 

in a year, all of these incidents, and 

summarized how many of them were personnel 

contamination, how many of them were 

exceeding criticality controls. And so they 

did analysis on all of these reports. DPST 

were from this 700 area.

The final one is the Health 

Physics logbooks that would also have these 

reports.

Now, within the monthly technical 

reports, Joe, you have seen and, Brad, you 

have seen, where there are incidents that 

are outlined in those reports. It can be a 

combination of any one of these. We have 

seen where some of them are special hazards 
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investigations, some of them are this next 

tier down of the Department or area incident 

reports. Some of them actually appear to be 

just Health Physics, be just in Health 

Physics logbooks.

So there was an incidentreporting scheme that was going on from 1972 

at least forward, actually predates '72.

But I want to go through some of 

these incidents. Especially I've wanted to 

focus on neptunium, and I wanted to try and 

focus on construction or maintenance type of 

incidents that we found in the works 

technical reports. And Mike is the one who 

has done the extraction of these records 

from the reports that we have.

We have requested more when we 

were down at the site in November going 

through the monthly technical reports. We 

have requested more of these reports so that 

we can get a larger feel of them. But let's 

go through this one.
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One construction worker continued 

installation of plutonium-neptunium 

partitioning equipment in the JT-3 process 

cabinet in room 311. This would be on the 

HB-Line in 1972.

Transferable contamination was 

measured up to 10 to the eighth dpm per 

square foot a lot. And gamma radiation 

exposure rates to 100 mR per hour were 

measured in the cabinet. Plastic suits were 

worn for personnel protection. And 

contamination huts were used for 

contamination control. Again, this is 1972.

Even with these precautions, as 

one employee undressed following work, he 

contaminated his hair to 80,000 dpm and his 

right cheek to 30,000 dpm. A second 

employee contaminated his coveralls to 

40,000 dpm when a seam in his plastic suit 

failed. Bioassay analysis indicated that 

neither employee assimilated radioactive 

material.
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Now, what I want to point out 

here with this particular incident is, one, 

the levels are extreme, I mean, from these 

contamination levels here, but one of the 

things that workers have told us, especially 

construction trades workers, when we have 

interviewed them is they talked about 

training and the lack of training that they 

had that it was OJT and they would follow 

whatever the guy in front of them did 

whenever they were putting on protective 

clothing and taking off protective clothing. 

This is a classic example of where they 

weren't properly trained, that they would 

end up contaminating themselves while taking 

off their equipment. So it's fully 

consistent with what workers have been 

telling us, but the incident itself was 

documented. This is coming out of 

controlled contamination hut. Health 

Physics is checking them. They find the 

contamination. And they do follow-up for 
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bioassay.

Looking at another incident in 

235F --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: This is Mark 

Griffon. Just one question on that. Did 

you, by any chance, cross check to see if 

the bioassay data was actually in the 

database?

DR. TAULBEE: From these incident 

reports, we don't know who the construction 

worker was. Okay? These are generic within 

the monthly reports. They just will define 

one construction worker.

For us to try and find this, we 

would have to go to effectively the January 

1972 bioassay and try to identify everybody 

from those logbooks to try and find who this 

worker was and cross-check that.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So you 

weren't able to. Okay. All right. Thanks.
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DR. TAULBEE: You are correct. 

The answer is no, we were not able to cross 

check that.

Let's look at 235F. This would 

be November of 1974, again, in the area of 

interest or time period of interest. Two 

maintenance mechanics and a separations 

operator received nasal contamination to 420 

dpm, 25 dpm, and 30 dpm, respectively. Due 

to a process cabinet glove failure while 

working in neptunium compact operating room, 

that room that I showed you earlier with 

those workers in it.

The maintenance mechanic with the 

highest nasal contamination also had 

contamination to 10,000 dpm on his wrist. 

There were five other persons in the room at 

the time. Their nasal smears were all 

negative.

Bioassay sampling for the three 

persons with positive nasal smears were 

initiated. A survey of the room identified 
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1 failed glove and 14 contaminated gloves. 

The failed glove was contaminated to 8 

million dpm alpha with levels of up to 

100,000 dpm on the other 14 gloves. The 

floor was contaminated to 100,000 dpm.

Again, what you see is a very 

serious contamination incident that happened 

from a glove failure within that room. But, 

again, the monitoring was there. Nasal 

smears were taken. Bioassay follow-up was 

conducted.

October 1978, same area, 235F. 

An operator working in the neptunium line 

incurred nasal contamination of 190 dpm when 

a cabinet glove failed. The glove was 

contaminated to 10,000 dpm and the floor to 

2,000 dpm, or 0.1 meter2. Room airborne 

activity remained less than the regulatory 

control guide, at that point 2 times 10 to 

the minus 12 microcuries per cc. A followup chest count of the operator indicated 

less than minimum detectable amount in the 
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urine samples were negative. So, again, 

follow-up --

DR. NETON: Tim, what would have 

prompted the nasal smear? Was that a 

routine one in the area or was it because 

they had identified an off-normal?

DR. TAULBEE: To be honest, I'm 

not sure of that. I can tell from my 

experience working in a plutonium facility 

at Mound, any time we exited the building 

going through the change room, we left a 

nasal smear. It was a question we didn't 

ask the workers from 235F that I wish we 

had, but we should be able to do follow-up 

and confirm given that --

DR. NETON: That certain cabinet 

failed. So --

DR. TAULBEE: Can we --

MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, from my 

experience, something triggered that. 

Something went off. If you had that high of 

levels, something triggered and went off if 
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--

DR. NETON: Yes. I was just 

curious.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Nasal smears for 

us are very, very --

DR. NETON: Well, that's a --

MEMBER CLAWSON: For one thing, 

they don't like to do them for one thing. 

So something had to trigger these to get 

into this --

DR. TAULBEE: Well, you don't 

want it at a plutonium facility. I mean, I 

know every plutonium facility I've been in 

and worked in --

DR. NETON: I mean, it's 

something we need to probably look into.

DR. TAULBEE: We will. We will 

certainly look into that.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, one other 

thing, too, Tim, you have these reports, but 

there is a report before this that calls out 

-- there should be an official one that 
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calls out the names. And that's where you 

could cross-check, make sure that the 

bioassay went that way.

DR. TAULBEE: The only ones that 

call out the names are the special hazards 

investigations. Others don't necessarily 

call out the names. Now, within each 

individual worker's file, you will see we 

had investigation reports. We see this in 

dose reconstruction. We'll see the official 

report that will have their name in it. 

What typically got forwarded up and rolled 

into the monthly reports don't contain their 

names. And that's easy for us to get to. 

To get to the individual reports, we would 

have to go through all, you know, 50-60 

thousand workers from the Savannah River 

site and pull each of their files.

MEMBER CLAWSON: This is a scrub. 

This is so that they can put it out to 

everybody and --

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.
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MEMBER CLAWSON: And usually when 

they have an incident like this, like I say, 

it doesn't matter what level. You've got a 

breakdown of who was there or why. This is 

so that they can put it out there.

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

MEMBER CLAWSON: This is the 

monthly report.

DR. TAULBEE: You are right. 

There is a report. But the only way we can 

get to those, like I said, is in the 

individual dosimetry files today. And Mike 

has cross-checked some of these. And those 

that we have been able to confirm, the 

report is in the bioassay or in their 

dosimetry file that we get from the site. 

But we haven't been able to cross check all 

of these. And, again, these are neptunium 

ones specific that we are trying to find.

So we have gone through HB-Line 

incidents, 235 incidents. Let's look at a 

321M incident. Alpha contamination to 
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200,000 dpm was detected in a 1.5-

millimeter-wide and 1.5-centimeter-long 

crack in the cladding of an extruded 

neptunium tube. No transferable or airborne 

contamination is detected. Gamma exposure 

rates to 200 mR per hour measured 45 

centimeters from the tube.

So on this tube that is being 

extruded, they were inspecting them, looking 

for contamination, looking for defects, 

looking for problems. This goes to a QC 

methodology that is going on there along 

these tubes.

Another one, 321M, transferable 

contamination to 3 million dpm alpha per 

1,000 square centimeters was detected on the 

hood furnace floor, valves, and manifold 

fittings upon completion of a neptunium 

billet outgassing. This would be where the 

outgassing failed. No particulate airborne 

radioactivity was detected in the work area. 

This is from our interviews. If you recall, 
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back in November, they were talking about 

when they did these neptunium extrusions. 

Health Physics was there. Air monitoring 

was being conducted because they were 

concerned about it. They didn't see 

anything getting airborne here. Employees 

wore appropriate respiratory protection. 

All equipment was decontaminated to less 

than 500 dpm alpha.

So those are a flavor of some of 

the incidents. There are more. We are 

compiling all of them that we can find from 

these monthly reports from the special 

hazards investigations and from the logbooks 

that we have and basically just to cross 

check and verify that this seemed to be 

well-controlled that they were monitoring 

for these exposures, they were looking for 

them, and then were reporting the incidents 

when they occurred.

From 1990 to 2007, a radiation 

work permit system was implemented in 1990. 
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Savannah River implemented a new radiation 

control manual, WSRC-5Q, in 1991. This 

replaced the DPSOP-40 and the special 

hazards bulletins that I showed you. Our 

interviews with workers discussed that, in 

their opinion, DOE took their rad control 

manuals and put them into a rad control 

manual. And basically that was one of the 

interesting comments that came out of that. 

So these early documents were the 

predecessor to your rad control manuals from 

1992, 1994, and then from 1995 codified 

under 10 CFR 835.

So let's look at the neptunium 

monitoring data, specifically bioassay data 

and whole body count that we have. We have 

divided this into three time periods. 1961 

to to 1969, urinalysis -- this would be 

separations, chemical separations, of the 

urine sample to extract the neptunium; and 

then a gross alpha count of your neptunium 

extract. 1970 to 1989, we only have limited 
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urinalysis. So during this time period, we 

looked primarily at the whole body counts of 

workers. Post-1990 to present, there is 

urinalysis. In this time period, they were 

using alpha spec.

So, again, just to refresh your 

memory that DPSOL procedure 193-302, 

monitoring was prescribed by area. 

Monitoring was prescribed for construction 

trades workers and their job plans. It 

wasn't -- they weren't done necessarily by 

area. It depended upon what job they were 

doing.

So here is the neptuniummonitoring data that we do have for 1972 to 

1989. This is urine bioassay. On the left 

column, this is the number of neptunium 

samples identified from the works technical 

reports. In these reports, every month, 

they would list the number of samples that 

they analyzed. And so from the 1972, you 

can see they analyzed 22 neptunium bioassays 
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for that particular year.

From the logbooks that we have 

been able to collect in urine samples 

because some of the neptunium were actually 

in americium logbooks, some of them were in 

enriched uranium logbooks, some were in 

plutonium logbooks, we have been able to 

recover 20 of those 22 samples that they 

reported.

We don't have any identification 

from '75 to '78 as to how many samples were 

taken. They didn't report it in the works 

technical reports. They picked it up again 

in 1979. Now, we know in January of 1978, 

that they started sampling everybody in 

235F, once per year, but we don't have the 

data or how many of those samples were 

actually taken. We do from '79 up through 

1985. The asterisks here are we don't have 

December of that year. So we have like 

October or November. So we don't have the 

actual final count. We have requested these 
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reports. That was part of why we were down 

there in November, was extracting this 

information out of the vault because these 

technical reports are actually still 

classified. So we have to extract these 

tables out of them.

Off to the right, you see the 

number of samples we have. And it's not a 

lot, but still in this time period, we're 

looking at 333 neptunium urine samples 

during this time period.

This is the breakdown that Mike 

was able to put together for me of by area 

where these samples come from. And so if 

you look at -- the totals is the easiest way 

to look at this particular table in my 

opinion of the 333 neptunium samples that we 

have been able to extract out of logbooks.

By the way, there are different 

places these bioassays are reported. One is 

in the logbooks, which we don't have a 

complete set of. The other is the 
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individual bioassay records. This is 

individual personnel files. This is what we 

get from the Savannah River Site when we do 

a dose reconstruction. That is one place it 

is kept. The other is a bioassay, a 

duplicate set of those cards that's 

maintained by Records Department down at 

Savannah River Site.

So we've got these logbooks, the 

individuals' files, and then the separate 

set that, to be frank, we haven't actually 

located. So we rely upon the individuals' 

bioassay cards primarily and the logbooks to 

come up with this data.

What you see here from this data 

set is that most of the data is coming from 

235F; next, the HB-Line, 50 samples over 

this time period; 321M, 40 samples. 773 and 

772F, 49 is misleading here because 88 and 

89, where they began to do some studies with 

immobilization of glass vitrification, which 

I'll talk more about during the thorium side 
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of the discussion today. If you take those 

out, you will see that it's 20 less than 

that. So that's why I left it in that.

MR. FITZGERALD: Seven seventytwo was the lab?

DR. TAULBEE: Seven seventy-two 

is the process lab, --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- where they would 

take a sample of the neptunium oxide from 

HB-Line and analyze it by its constituents. 

So they break it down by how much 238, how 

much 239, how much plutonium-240, 241, 242, 

and they would do a breakdown, chemical 

breakdown, of the actual neptunium.

MR. FITZGERALD: Was it possible 

to figure out the number of workers this 

represents or is that difficult?

DR. TAULBEE: We could from this, 

sure. We didn't --

MR. FITZGERALD: I am sure there 

are some repeats. I was just curious as to 
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--

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: We know there 

are tens of workers, as you pointed out 

earlier in the --

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- 235. When 

you see 36 samples, I'm wondering --

MR. MAHATHY: In '88 and '89, 235 

in maintenance voted for -- we have a 

comment. It says only three employees were 

in each building.

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: From that time 

period. But you see 36 here. And keep in 

mind that due to that high gamma dose rate, 

they are rotating people in and out.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: So, even though you 

probably couldn't fit ten people in that 

room, you might change out three different 
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crews over that time of the year.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So the 

operational impact is being seen here as far 

as the number of samples.

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

That is correct.

So from a dose reconstruction 

standpoint, the neptunium dose 

reconstruction methods, I can actually see 

four different ways that we could develop a 

coworker model based upon the data that we 

have to estimate neptunium exposures from 

1970 to 1989. First, we could use the 

limited bioassay. Based upon what we have 

seen, the frequency and so forth, high-risk 

type of areas, there's not a large number of 

people. So we're sampling what I believe to 

be the people that were actually exposed. 

So from a coworker standpoint, somebody 

intermittent through the facility would be 

less than those folks in my opinion.

Another method would be to ratio 
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the neptunium from the plutonium bioassay 

given that the plutonium activity is between 

two to ten times greater than the neptunium 

activity. If I were doing an epi study, 

this is how I would do it, to be quite 

honest. Based upon that plutonium 

contamination in the additional sampling 

frequency of plutonium, you've got two per 

year going on and four per year on the HBLine. This would be the more sensitive 

method. You would see the -- even using, 

you know, an average here of, say, three or 

four based upon those data tables and the 

weight percent, we could come up with a 

really good estimate for HB-Line and for 

235F that's probably below the neptunium 

detection limit here because the plutonium 

is so much more sensitive. So you could 

come up with a really sensitive measure.

You could also interpolate 

between the urine bioassay points in 1969 to 

1990. We're not talking about 
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extrapolation. We're talking about 

interpolation. We've got urine bioassay up 

through '69, and we've got urine bioassay 

post-1990 and some in between. And I'll 

show you that in a minute.

Another is to use the whole body 

count data to develop a coworker model. And 

this is the most claimant-favorable.

We chose to use the whole body 

count data because at the time, we didn't 

have complete information on the actual 

plutonium to neptunium ratio. We only had 

the sampling that I am showing you here.

When we went back to the site in 

November to the vaults, started going 

through all of those, we started seeing that 

they were reporting this plutonium/neptunium 

ratio every month. And so we started 

gathering large amounts of data, which is 

why for an epi study, I would use that now, 

instead of what we have done. But the 

coworker model from whole body counts is 
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certainly more claimant-favorable.

Based upon those procedures, we 

got confirmation that the workers in the 

neptunium areas were required to have whole 

body counts. If you read those procedures 

that we've got, they're required to do a 

whole body count and a chest count every 

year, shift employees two per year -- so 

those would be those technicians -- the day 

employees, one per year. So, again, the 

whole body count frequency is based upon 

potential for exposure.

And the other reason that we 

chose the whole body counts was neptunium 

doses calculated are claimant-favorable 

upper bounds but not unreasonably high as to 

be insufficiently accurate. And the reason 

I say that is if you look at the 50-year 

equivalent doses for some of these, 

urinary/bladder, you're looking at 350 

millirem. You're looking at kidneys at 

nearly a rem; red bone marrow, 10 rem. 
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Highest is bone surfaces, 268, but that's 

over 50 years. Divide that up. You're 

around five rem per year. So these aren't 

outrageous doses, especially when you 

consider their gamma doses. You know, their 

gamma doses are getting around three rem per 

year, and they're being rotated out.

So using the whole body count is 

not really unreasonable for these particular 

workers.

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

May I ask a question?

DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

DR. MAKHIJANI: You said that you 

could calculate the doses using the 

plutonium bioassay. Have you made a 

comparison between the doses as calculated 

and the method that you propose: whole body 

counts?

DR. TAULBEE: No, we have not, 

but I'll show you here --

DR. NETON: I'm sorry. Which 
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methods are we talking about? The whole 

body counts and the other methods that you -

-

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. The whole 

body counts versus using the plutonium as a 

ratio methodology.

DR. NETON: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: Go ahead.

DR. NETON: I believe that they 

would be lower, but, you know --

DR. TAULBEE: Right. I think the 

next slide will really kind of show that.

DR. MAKHIJANI: If I might have a 

follow-up before you move to the next slide? 

This is Arjun. The bone surface dose of 250 

millirem over 50 years, you said it would 

average 5 a year, but I presume that the 

doses in the early years would be much 

higher and the doses in the latter years 

would be lower.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that --

DR. MAKHIJANI: So is there an 
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order of magnitude that you can give us as 

to what the doses in the first three or four 

years would be?

DR. TAULBEE: I would have to go 

through and calculate that. I am just doing 

this as an example that I don't feel these 

doses are unreasonably high. That is all 

that I am trying to show here.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, we are 

talking 15, 20, 30 rem in the first few 

years. It might be -- I don't know what 

unreasonably high is, but they are pretty 

significant doses. I just want to say that 

for the record.

DR. TAULBEE: Sure. And I 

acknowledge that the first few years are 

going to be frontloaded for these. So yes. 

My simplification here is just that: a 

simplification.

If you get into the next slide, 

you will see this is the coworker model that 

Matt Arno and Mike and Liz have put 
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together. The red is the 50th percentile. 

This would be neptunium in urine coworker 

model that they have come up with. And I 

think it is fantastic here.

What you will see is in 1970, it 

jumps up a lot. This is because we are 

using the whole body counts from 1970 to 

1989. What I have overlaid here is the 

actual neptunium urine dpm per day results 

that we have. So these are one person, one 

sample or one person, one statistic results, 

effectively, where we have taken people that 

have multiple neptunium samples in a year 

and averaged them together.

And what we're looking at here is 

a box plot. The lower bar there is a tenth 

of a percentile. The lower part of the box 

plot is 25th percentile, the 50th 

percentile. The top of the box plot is 75th 

percentile. And then the top is the 95th 

percentile.

So what you can see here is that 
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our whole body count methodology is 

encompassing the urine data that we see. So 

we believe that these whole body counts are, 

in fact, bounding based upon the data, the 

limited data, the 330 samples that we have 

been able to analyze.

DR. NETON: Tim, I'm not quite 

clear on what you're graphing here. The red 

line is the whole body counting, using the 

whole body counting data.

DR. TAULBEE: What the urine 

would look like based upon --

DR. NETON: Based upon an intake 

calculated from the whole body count, we 

would infer what the urinary concentration 

would be?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

DR. NETON: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes?

MR. FITZGERALD: You know, I know 

on the last data capture, there were 
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additional -- what seemed to be additional 

NP bioassay results that were identified if 

I'm not mistaken. Were they retakes or 

something? I was wondering if --

DR. TAULBEE: There were some 

retakes in there, yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: I was wondering 

if that is going to change the 303 or is 

that yet to be addressed?

DR. TAULBEE: Actually, I don't 

know whether it is going to change it or not 

because we would have to look at those 

people and see if we already have those 

results.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So that is 

yet to be done?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. We 

don't have that data yet. But it was only, 

I want to say --

MR. FITZGERALD: It wasn't that 
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many.

DR. TAULBEE: It was around 20 --

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. It wasn't 

that many.

DR. TAULBEE: -- 20 or so. It 

wasn't that many samples.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: So this is our 

current coworker model. This is what we 

have proposed. I mentioned that you could 

do an interpolation. If you draw a line 

just from 1969 to 1990, it still fits 

between the data generally. It is much 

lower. It's not the method that I would 

use. In fact, we were using the whole body 

count because I think it is claimantfavorable. It is reasonable. It is 

bounding. And it is fair.

So that was our coworker model. 

And I am going to briefly go through this 

part because this is really a discussion 

that is part of the SEC Work Group. And 
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this is our coworker model comparisons. But 

I think it is important for this worker to 

hear and understand. In RPRT-56, we 

developed -- actually, we stratified all of 

the data that we had for the monitored 

workforce and to construction trades 

workers, non-construction trades workers, 

and those that we couldn't determine whether 

they were construction trades workers or 

not.

It is important to note that from 

1974 to 1989 in this model, there were no 

unknowns. All of our unknowns were prior to 

1974. Everybody post-1974 we could 

categorize into one or the other.

So we developed two coworker 

models: one based upon just construction 

trades workers, one based upon non 

construction trades workers. And we applied 

a statistical test called the Peto-Prentice. 

And, again, this is all being evaluated by 

the SEC Work Group, at a significance level 
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of less than .05. We didn't see any 

comparison year that was less than .05 for a 

p-value. So we can't conclude that they 

were different. We don't know. There isn't 

enough difference between the model 

developed for construction trades worker and 

the model developed from the nonconstruction trades workers to say that 

there is any difference between the two.

Again, this methodology is being 

discussed in the SEC Work Group and there 

are some consideration of is there 

sufficient power to detect anything. And 

that is all a discussion for the 

statisticians and such.

What I want to get to here -- but 

I think that is important for you all to 

understand here from a constructionmonitoring standpoint, a) that we did have 

data in these particular years that we could 

actually compare construction trades and 

non-construction trades.
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So I want to talk briefly here in 

closing a little bit about construction 

exposures and construction personnel 

monitoring. Dosimeters are required for 

working in regulated areas.

One of the things that came out 

of our construction worker interviews is 

that construction workers noted that one day 

an area would be a regulated area posted one 

day. And then the postings were removed for 

the construction work. And this is true. 

The site did this at different times. We 

have seen it in the works technical reports. 

And I want to give some examples of this 

because this is an actual procedure for the 

use of supplementary TLD badges to monitor 

the work areas. And the purpose of the 

procedure was to provide instructions for 

using these TLDs. So let me read this 

bottom part here, "Work is sometimes 

performed in the proximity of plant 

operating facilities by personnel who do not 
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and are not required to wear Savannah River 

plant personnel monitoring badges. These 

personnel may include construction, 

subcontractors, pulpwood harvesters, et 

cetera. To provide exposure dose records 

which verify the radiation exposures to such 

personnel do not exceed the limits in DPSTSRH-0.07, less than one millirem per hour 

dose rate and less than 25 millirem dose per 

week, Health Protection places supplementary 

TLD badges at representative locations in 

and around the work areas." So while they 

might have not have been monitored 

individually, Health Physics was monitoring 

the area that they were working in.

Let me give some examples here 

that we have been able to pull out of the 

records. This is a case of TLD badges for 

construction trades workers. You can see 

here in the central part this is new tank 

construction. This is in the tank farms. 

Here is the location of the TLD badges 
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around the filled tanks versus where they 

are working. So they're monitoring between.

Here is another example, new 

building being built, site 4, 724-7G 

building. Here is the TLD badges. They're 

around the fenced area from the area that 

they were working in. So they would carve 

out areas for construction to go in and 

work. So the area was posted as regulated, 

de-posted. But around the perimeter, they 

were monitoring to make sure it didn't need 

to be posted.

Another example at the tank 

farms, you've got new tank construction down 

here. You've got badges here, new building 

up here. You've got badges around.

So what I want to bring out of 

this is that the radiological records and 

the construction personnel interviews are 

actually consistent. Okay? They're not one 

or the other. What the construction workers 

told us is true. The radiological records 
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that we see are true. There is monitoring 

going on, but it's not personal monitoring 

for these workers.

There are times when construction 

trades workers were not monitored because of 

the low potential. There are times when 

they were monitored but they didn't know it 

because of these remote badges that were 

going on. The monitoring is of the 

workplace, not them personally.

In the case of neptunium due to 

the very high photon dose rate at one r per 

hour, I would contend that all construction 

trades workers that had a potential for 

neptunium exposure were personally 

monitored. You wouldn't have gotten near 

those billets in these areas without wearing 

a badge. They wouldn't have done one of 

these carve-outs for around this neptunium 

area. The dose rates were just too high. 

You wouldn't have been below 25 millirem per 

week in any of those areas.
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And so, with that, I would be 

happy to answer any questions.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Tim, you were 

saying that they had the film badges out on 

the outside of the area. And this is why 

you feel that the construction workers were 

saying that they weren't monitored, so 

forth. So with the doses for that, how did 

the construction workers come up with -- did 

they monitor everybody that went in and then 

gave them that dose or just said, "No"?

DR. TAULBEE: In this time 

period, 1970s and the early 1980s, there 

wasn't the requirement of 100 millirem per

year. And so if they were less than 25 

millirem per week, those badges, those 

areas, they were in compliance that 

everybody on the work site was giving less 

than their 3 rem per year and their 5 rem 

per year regulatory requirement. So they 

were assured of that is what they were 

doing.
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I don't think that they put these 

doses in any of these construction trades 

workers, these files.

MEMBER CLAWSON: So in a way, 

they were monitored to be under 100, but we 

don't have any data on -- we don't have any 

TLDs.

DR. TAULBEE: We don't have any 

TLDs.

MEMBER CLAWSON: And, just as we 

saw by --

DR. TAULBEE: But we can be 

assured it's less than this 25 millirem per 

week.

MEMBER CLAWSON: We're assured 

that it's 25 per week?

DR. TAULBEE: Less than 25 

millirem per week, which comes out to a 

significant dose. It's about a rem a year, 

a little over a rem a year, actually.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, as you 

remember in some of the interviews that we 
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had, some of these people would be working 

in this one area, which may have our 

perimeter badges and so forth, versus then 

they would go someplace else and come back 

in. I think it would be very hard to be 

able to put a good handle on where they're 

at.

But my other question is, too, I 

have seen where they have what they call 

background, which they separate and take off 

of those outside badges. Do you know if 

they did that on these?

DR. TAULBEE: They removed the 

background based upon where the TLD badge 

recs were from this particular case. So 

around these tank farms, they would be 

taking the -- which tank farm area it was, 

they would be taking the badges from that 

control area, where they would be going into 

that fenced area, where they would be taking 

the background from there off of -- but, 

again, I mean, this is a significant dose. 
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Yes, it is significant. It's 25 millirem 

per week. So it could be 1.2 rem per year.

That is an unmonitored exposure. 

But it's personally unmonitored. But for a 

group of workers, it is monitored. We know 

it is less than that.

If you look at some of these data 

points, you can see these doses are millirem 

per hour, are quite low. Some of them are 

zero. Some of them are not distinguishable 

from background. But others near certain 

areas are higher. We have not to date gone 

through and determined what a dose would be 

from trying to grab all of these instances 

where this occurred. But what we assign for 

construction trades workers, if you 

remember, is we take the plant workers, 

their external dose. And we take that dose 

and multiply it by 1.4. So we're taking 

workers within the regulated areas and 

assigning their doses to these construction 

trades workers when we believe that they 
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were in an area that they should have been 

monitored. So I believe we are covering 

this particular dose.

But what I wanted to try to show 

here is what construction trades workers are 

telling us and what we see in the records 

are consistent. They're fully explained.

MEMBER LOCKEY: Were there any 

examples where the perimeter or the 

peripheral doses were higher than you would 

have expected?

DR. TAULBEE: You can go through 

some of them. And you will see some badges. 

And they will have them circled in the 

records, some of the fence line ones, where 

they would be doing follow-up and adjust. 

So yes, you do see some of that.

MEMBER CLAWSON: And, Tim, you 

realize this would be set up like a new 

construction site, that one right there.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MEMBER CLAWSON: This is for a 
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site. But also in the interviews, it was: 

We were brought in to repair this road 

coming in. There were no outer fences 

there. There was nothing like that. And we 

had dug up all of this area. And we leave 

that night. And we come back the next day. 

And the whole area is roped off. And now 

we're under different regulations.

This puts a real pretty picture 

on everything, but it doesn't take in the 

whole picture. I agree with you this shows 

how some of the construction areas were done 

in a construction site, a new building 

coming on and so forth, but it does not 

cover all of the instances that were in the 

interviews because when they dug up the 

pipes that they didn't realize and stuff 

like that, then whole things change from 

that standpoint.

DR. TAULBEE: Right. What you 

saw and what you just described is they dug 

into the pipes. They got into something 
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that wasn't expected. And over the night, 

Health Physics came in, roped off the area, 

set new restrictions, new PPE requirements 

to go into the area, et cetera. So there is 

monitoring that is going on. Otherwise, it 

would never have been known that they got 

into that. So Health Physics is actually 

monitoring on the peripherals when they are 

not there or whatever to identify that, hey, 

they ran into some contamination and they 

changed it. They modified the job plan to 

show, hey, we've got to make a regulated 

area here.

MR. FITZGERALD: And new 

construction, for example, in 235F would 

have been a regulated area.

DR. TAULBEE: I'm not sure of 

that.

MR. FITZGERALD: That's the only 

part that kind of --

DR. TAULBEE: If you go back to 

that building or that --
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MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: Let me go back here 

to that picture.

MR. FITZGERALD: We can isolate 

it perhaps. I just --

DR. TAULBEE: You've remember 

seeing some of the pictures --

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: -- where the cork 

was capped. And that's what I think they 

were doing here within the 235F when they 

were building PuFF and PEF.

MR. FITZGERALD: It's the gray 

area in the middle here.

DR. TAULBEE: These red areas 

here, these we've got photos -- we've 

requested them; we don't have them in 

possession yet -- of when they were doing 

the construction in here, in this part of 

it. They were still working here in this --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- neptunium area 
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here. But what we see is a lot of the duct 

work that is being worked on is capped, 

looks like going into that side of the 

building during this time period.

Also, I have got some question as 

to how much production they were doing in 

that time period. It seems to have 

decreased some during the PuFF and PEF 

construction work.

MR. MAHATHY: It was very small.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I would be 

kind of interested in knowing what the 

monitoring regime was for that new 

construction. It lasted what, a year or 

two?

DR. TAULBEE: That would be, 

actually, about three years.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So --

DR. TAULBEE: It should be in the 

job plans.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.
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DR. TAULBEE: And that is where 

we would have to look for that.

MR. FITZGERALD: And, you know, 

just validating --

DR. TAULBEE: I think it's like a 

week --

MR. FITZGERALD: Validating what 

the regime was, bioassay regime, and what 

they, in fact, were because I think the 

stress report workers understand they're 

being monitored probably same as the 

operators, but these guys I think fall into 

this gray area where if they capped off the 

ventilation system and whatnot, they might 

have been handled as a separate --

DR. TAULBEE: But would you agree 

these guys are at a higher risk than those 

guys doing the construction?

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I was 

going to say I think it's sort of an 

intermediate. I can't see that as sort of 

being carved out, but it would be something 
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where you might do some surveying and maybe 

put them on a limited monitoring of some 

sort.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. But, I mean, 

from our current coworker model, we are 

using these guys' data.

MR. FITZGERALD: As limiting.

DR. TAULBEE: As a limit.

MR. FITZGERALD: As bounding.

DR. TAULBEE: As bounding.

MR. FITZGERALD: Now, do we know 

who those -- you know, that crew that came 

in and did all of that construction, do we 

know who they are?

DR. TAULBEE: The crew that came 

in and did the construction?

MR. FITZGERALD: Actually did. 

You know, if you could, in fact, be able to 

--

DR. TAULBEE: I don't know. I 

believe we could find that from the job 

plans and the EDWS determined who was going 
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in.

MR. FITZGERALD: That would be a 

--

DR. TAULBEE: The off-site 

construction folks --

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: -- I don't think we 

could. Remember all the pictures of outside 

in the trenches, where they are digging for 

-- to lay new piping. I don't think we can 

actually -- I don't think we would be able 

to identify those folks. I think they were 

being monitored based upon that perimeter 

type of monitoring.

MR. FITZGERALD: You have 

different grades of monitoring. Obviously 

those people are running outside the 

building.

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: I think the ones 

inside the building we could probably get 
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identified.

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun.

MR. KATZ: We hear you, Arjun.

DR. MAKHIJANI: When we did 

interviews with workers a couple of years 

ago, it might not have been exactly this 

case. I don't remember. But they had said 

that, you know, they were in an area of new 

construction where it was presumed that it 

was clean, that they would not be exposed, 

there was no exposure potential. But then, 

in retrospect, it was discovered that they 

did, indeed, have exposure potential.

It might have been the same 235F, 

but I don't remember. We'll have to revisit 

that interview to check. And I don't know 

whether it happened more often or it was 

just in this one instance.

Have you looked into it, Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: No, I have not. I 

don't have who it was that mentioned that 

particular interview, but we can certainly 
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follow that up and look and see if it was 

235F. I doubt that it was because from what 

I saw from the photos, the new construction 

was pretty significant. But that part of 

the building had never been used before.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: I tend to 

remember something about trench work that 

was done outside of the new construction 

that did not cover it. I'm not even sure it 

was anything with neptunium, but --

DR. TAULBEE: A trench makes 

sense.

MR. FITZGERALD: So that seems to 

ring a bell.

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think Brad was 

there during that interview as well. Brad, 

do you remember?

MEMBER CLAWSON: What? I'm 

sorry, Arjun. About?

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think, Brad, 

you were there during that interview when 
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construction workers mentioned that, you 

know, they were working in areas thought to 

be clean that turned out to not be.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. I kind of 

spoke about that a little bit earlier --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes.

MEMBER CLAWSON: -- especially 

tying in because, you know, one of the 

things that I get into this is we do this 

new construction, call it retrofit or 

whatever else like that, but tying in, tying 

a new facility into the old one, how they 

were there but also -- and we have heard 

numerous of the operators say if it was a 

real hot job, they brought construction 

workers in there because they could burn 

them out and send them on their way, where 

the operators, they wanted to be able to 

maintain them for the year.

So a lot of times on these 

production processes, if there were problems 

with it and they needed to fix them or 
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whatever else like that, they brought 

construction workers in there. Now, to what 

level that they were monitored and stuff, 

I'm sure that they had a pretty good 

monitoring. But there's a lot of other 

things along with it in that respect.

But yes, Arjun, I was there when 

they were talking about that it had been 

out-trenched and outside the building and 

then they came back and they couldn't go 

back in because it was too hot.

DR. TAULBEE: Brad, I think you 

just perfectly identified the scenario here 

for this HB-Line incident where a 

construction worker was doing the 

installation where normally maintenance 

folks would be here in the process cabinet 

in this particular room. And they got 

contaminated because of the poor training 

that the construction trades workers have 

talked to us about, the OJT type of 

scenario.
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This is definitely a high-risk 

job. They set up a contamination hut on the 

outside that they were monitoring of the 

airborne in there. They were padded in 

plastic suits taking them out. This would 

be a case where construction workers would 

be burned out.

The key here is that when things 

went wrong in here and they got 

contaminated, bioassay analysis was followed 

up for these employees. So they were used 

on some of these high-risk jobs, like the 

construction workers said they were and the 

operators have told us that they would be 

used. And due to poor training, they would 

inadvertently contaminate themselves, but 

there is follow-up here with Health Physics. 

And so when we see their record, we get 

their information.

MEMBER CLAWSON: I agree with 

you, Tim. And I do with that. One of the 

things that has been hardest for me to 
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understand in Savannah River because this is 

unique in some ways because when we refer to 

people as construction workers versus DuPont 

workers, in the earlier years, DuPont had 

their own construction people, plus outside 

construction workers. And they actually all 

came from the same halls, everything else 

like that. And this is why sometimes when 

we say DuPont versus construction, to tell 

you the truth, I really can't get my hands 

around how we would ever even separate that 

out.

So I just want to make sure that 

when we're -- they were all construction 

workers to a point, but they had in-house 

trades that would go in and do some of this 

stuff. Like more new construction I think 

kind of went to the outside construction 

workers, certain ones went back and forth.

Idaho struggled to try to figure 

out how to separate them out. And I still 

haven't figured it out because I still fight 
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with it.

DR. TAULBEE: I think if you look 

at the actual plant population and numbers 

of workers is when you really begin to see 

where the separation begins to occur. And 

it begins to occur in the 1980s because you 

see the population of construction workers 

really ramp up, I mean, huge, compared prior 

it seems really stable.

It seems like they were using 

your Dynalectric, your B. F. Shaw for your 

pipefitters. It seems like they were using 

them pretty consistently up until you get to 

about the 1980s. And then you see the 

population really go up. And that's where I 

think you see some of the subcontractors 

that we'll talk about later on today, so 

forth. And maybe that's where we need to 

focus on the evaluation.

And I think that's where we're 

having trouble getting our head around some 

of this because until that time period, they 
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were really more in-house. Even though they 

were coming out of the union halls, there 

wasn't the massive number of subcontracts 

being let. And so that is what I think is 

causing us difficulty.

MEMBER CLAWSON: I agree with 

that, but also when you jump back into the 

earlier years, where you had facilities 

being built, then --

DR. TAULBEE: Oh, it was huge 

then.

MEMBER CLAWSON: -- you have this 

whole, whole different construction.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MEMBER CLAWSON: But then inside, 

you still have this little nuance of 

construction, of DuPont construction and --

DR. TAULBEE: I'm really talking 

about --

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- the 1960s. That 

--
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MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. I just -

-

DR. TAULBEE: -- early time 

period is hundreds of thousands of workers.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. But once 

we look at this as a whole and you look at 

it from the individuals that have been there 

on the site and so forth like that, that is 

one of the things that we always need to 

take into consideration when they're talking 

to us about this because they see the whole 

spectrum.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MEMBER CLAWSON: And whether coop construction or they get some really 

dazed looks on their face with this, yes, I 

worked at a trades home, but I was on the 

site for 30 years as a pipefitter.

DR. TAULBEE: Exactly.

MEMBER CLAWSON: And so that's 

where I just -- it's very difficult. This 

site is unique in that standpoint versus any 
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other site.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And, Tim, this 

is Mark Griffon. Can I ask one question? 

And then I want to sort of path forward on 

this. The first question is for the 

neptunium coworker model, how do you do 

assignments? In other words, you mentioned 

that likely not that many people were 

involved in some of these processes where 

exposure potential was high. But how do you 

distinguish who gets neptunium internal 

exposure assigned and who doesn't? And have 

you thought about that?

DR. TAULBEE: This is outlined in 

OTIB-81. And it's done by area, just like 

the bioassay was, to where if we identify a 

person being in an area, as like H area or 

235F, then we would assign the neptunium 

coworker model if they don't have any 

neptunium-monitoring data. So it's done on 

a person-by-person basis and time period of 

where they were working basis as well.
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DR. MAKHIJANI: Tim, this is 

Arjun.

MR. KATZ: Yes. Go ahead, Arjun. 

We can hear you.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes?

DR. MAKHIJANI: You know, this is 

a little bit from memory since the last time 

I looked at worker records in this area was 

some months ago. But in the worker records 

that I have looked at, the area of work is 

generally not mentioned. There may be a 

general mention of the area or like in the 

compensation claim, but the area of work is 

often not known for that particular time. 

It may not be noted in that along with a 

particular bioassay sample. So how do you 

determine who to assign it to, you know, --

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. All --

DR. MAKHIJANI: -- whether a 

worker was -- you can tell when a worker was 

present if it's in their file, but can you 

tell if a worker was present if it's not or 
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not because it's not in their file?

DR. TAULBEE: Based upon, the TLD 

monitoring, yes, we can identify where it 

was that they were working. And, you know, 

we did this before with the -- we proposed 

it under the thorium SEC, the original one. 

And I know you guys did an evaluation of 

worker locations –-

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- and found 

errors. We went back since then and have 

evaluated all of those errors that you have 

identified. I think it was 140 of them or 

something like that. And we have found no 

errors that we could not describe post-1961. 

So all of the errors that were identified 

that we couldn't resolve after going back 

and doing the follow-up on your preliminary 

analysis, there was all of them we could 

resolve post-1961.

And, in addition, all of the 

bioassays actually do have location listed 
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on them. I think you said a minute ago that 

bioassays don't have location, and that's 

not true. All of the bioassays have a 

location. Whether it's in the logbook, 

whether it's a whole body count, or whether 

it's on their card, there will be a location 

listed for it. I am sure you are going to 

find one or two here and there where it's 

not, but you will be able to see others on 

that card showing which area it came from.

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think maybe 

what I am remembering is the location is not 

necessarily connected to the radionuclide 

because what you are proposing for a 

neptunium dose reconstruction are not whole 

body records in which neptunium is directly 

listed. Actually, thanks for that 

correction. From my memory, since neptunium 

is not listed in the file, how do you know 

which worker was exposed to neptunium based 

on the record which is in front of you, 

which does not actually have neptunium 
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mentioned in it?

DR. TAULBEE: Well, from the 

whole body count, there is an area listed 

that they came from of why they are being 

whole body counted and --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, but there is 

many more than one radionuclide in that one 

particular area. The areas listed are 

fairly general.

DR. TAULBEE: That is true. But 

from F area, -- for example, that would be 

the 235F people -- they would be encompassed 

in that group. And so we looked not for --

on the whole body count, when we looked for 

the neptunium, we looked at the region of 

interest, where the protac peak would 

appear. Okay? That was what we analyzed. 

And that is outlined in OTIB-81. And there 

is some methodology on how we did that. And 

those counts because we have raw count data 

and we have the efficiency for that 

neptunium peak in there, we can determine 
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what the detection limit is. And that is 

what we have ended up using.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. But I think 

that doesn't address the issue at hand. If 

neptunium is not mentioned in the whole body 

count record and you are attributing -- or 

protactinium, for that matter, and you are 

attributing a neptunium dose from presumed 

peaks, how do you know who to attribute it 

to when there are a lot of other 

radionuclides present.

DR. TAULBEE: I'm not 

understanding your question because in this 

case, you've got the whole body count for 

that person. That's what you're looking at. 

And if it's in 235F or in F area, then we're 

going to attribute those counts from that 

peak to that person.

DR. MAKHIJANI: But it's not a --

all I'm asking is, how do you identify a 

person with neptunium because neptunium is 

not in the record and protactinium is not in 
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the record? There’s an area name and a 

count that identifies a bunch of 

radionuclides but generally does not 

identify neptunium or protactinium. So how 

do you make the connection.

DR. TAULBEE: We make the 

connection by basically being claimantfavorable. In this case, working in that 

area, we're going to take those counts and 

that region of interest and assume that they 

are neptunium, whether they were actually 

exposed or not, because they worked in that 

area, F area, for example. We're not going 

to assign it for somebody who worked at the 

P reactor, for example.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. That 

clarifies it better. Thank you.

MR. FITZGERALD: And, just going 

back, you're pointing out that it is 

location-driven. And you resolve the issues 

revolving around those locations on the 

site, as you say. Is that going to be a 
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supplement to 81 or how is that -- you know, 

clearly you walk through rather rigorously 

to look at exposure potential related to the 

areas that were being keyed by SC&A as being 

possible additional areas or areas that were 

missed. Is that addressed somewhere or will 

be addressed somewhere?

DR. NETON: Well, it seems like 

we need to. I mean, if our basis is going 

to be that the --

MR. FITZGERALD: This is a 

complete set.

DR. NETON: -- records track 

properly --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: We have a draft 

report. That's never been an issue.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. NETON: Yes. I would say 

that it would be important for us to 

demonstrate that somehow.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.
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MR. FITZGERALD: That just 

follows from there.

DR. NETON: Yes, sure.

MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, we would 

want to --

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, yes.

DR. NETON: Otherwise the basis 

is still valid for --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right, 

right. And this goes, I think, to Mark's 

earlier question about path forward because, 

really, if the areas are complete and you 

are making that presumption, very 

conservative presumption, then that would 

be, you know, the avenue. But then without 

getting into the statistics, that would be 

certainly an approach. Right?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. One of the 

other things we have identified within those 

dosimeter codes is there's a Department code 

that actually specifies 235F, sub within the 

area. There's the area codes that would 
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identify F area versus H area versus M area 

reactors. There's other codes that identify 

Department code that's the next tier down 

that will actually --

MR. FITZGERALD: Is that is both 

OTIB SOPs, the 5th and the 8th, or was that 

just the 8th? I think we had a question on 

it earlier.

DR. TAULBEE: Which?

MR. FITZGERALD: Did codes show 

up in both earlier and later editions of the 

DPSOL, the 1293?

DR. TAULBEE: In this case, this 

is the bioassay --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- as to who is 

monitored and how. What I was talking about 

was the external monitoring.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. There was 

an area code.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. That's these 

here.
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MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Right, 

right.

DR. TAULBEE: This is 1977 

version.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So that's 

the --

DR. TAULBEE: Here you can see 

when you have a Department code of 209, 

there on the HB-Line --

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: -- versus 205 that 

you --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- put in 5F 

building. So this is one that Kathy 

collected that is --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right. So that 

is the --

DR. TAULBEE: '77.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- '77 version 

of it. Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. And here is 
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an '84 version of it.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: And then we've got 

a 1990 version.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. It 

carried forward.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: So we've got 

multiple ones.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Tim, this is 

Mark Griffon again. Before we break, I just 

wanted to summarize, well, one question and 

then to sort of maybe have you and SC&A 

restate sort of the path forward on this 

issue because I missed a little bit of the 

exchange in the last minute or so.

But one question, for 

individuals, I think you said the area will 

be tied to the area in OTIB-81. And that's 

tied to dosimetry files. And I do have to 

refresh myself on OTIB-81. But, aside from 
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that, if a person doesn't have dosimetry, if 

they're not badged, are you saying that they 

would not have access to these areas and, 

therefore, would not get neptunium assigned 

or is there another method for handling 

those people or what's -- so for the inside 

people, you don't know where they were or do 

you know? Are there other ways to know if 

they would have access to these areas?

DR. TAULBEE: Based upon all of 

the radiological controls and monitoring the 

procedures that I see and these dose rates 

coming from the neptunium billets and the 

neptunium oxide, I do not envision that they 

could have worked and gotten into one of 

these areas where there is neptunium 

exposure. That would be greater than the 

guys with the hands in the gloves. Well, 

actually, I can't envision them getting into 

those areas and being exposed to neptunium 

without having been personally monitored, to 

be quite honest.
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DR. BINGHAM: Why do you say 

that? This is Eula Bingham. Why do you 

say, "envision"? I don't understand. Why 

do you say you can't envision?

DR. TAULBEE: Because the 

requirement for monitoring was in all 

regulated areas. And a regulated area was 

defined as an area where somebody would be 

at a dose rate of greater than 1 millirem 

per hour or greater than 25 millirem per 

week. And that was a requirement for 

somebody to put on and wear a personal 

dosimeter badge. Due to these dose rates 

from these glove boxes from the neptunium 

and even from the tubes, the billets 

themselves, we're talking about r per hour 

type of dose fields. People would have been 

monitored. Even if they were construction 

or a subcontractor, they would have been 

personally monitored for gamma radiation 

based upon these dose rates. And that's why 

I say that.
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DR. BINGHAM: And that's what 

DuPont says or who says that?

DR. TAULBEE: That is what the 

procedures for requiring monitoring were.

DR. BINGHAM: Well, I'm asking, 

what is your basis for assuming those 

procedures were followed? Worker 

interviews? The industry says -- I'm sorry. 

And I don't know you. I don't know whether 

you -- I couldn't tell. I don't have a 

sheet. I don't know whether you work for 

DuPont or one of the industries or -- I'm 

sorry. And I don't know why you say that.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. My name is 

Tim Taulbee. I work for NIOSH.

DR. BINGHAM: Just because 

there's a reg at one of these places, my 

experience has been that that is not what 

happens frequently.

DR. TAULBEE: We are basing this 

upon what we see in the records of the large 

number of workers being monitored, in 
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addition to worker interviews, where we talk 

to operations workers, we have talked to 

construction trades workers about their 

monitoring. And when they were working in 

these types of areas, they were wearing a 

badge.

DR. BINGHAM: It sounds like it's 

quite different at Savannah River.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. We may 

need to -- I don't know if SC&A has reviewed 

that issue as well. We may need some 

follow-up on that. I wasn't involved in the 

worker interviews. I know SC&A and I think 

Brad was in on a lot of them, but yes. I 

think that's one part that I at least need 

to think about further.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes Mark, there 

are some summaries on the interviews. 

Certainly DuPont's procedures were a 

different kind than we have seen at other 

DOE sites. And the interviews seem to track 

that the construction workers, in fact, in 
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these regulated areas did get monitored.

But there are some issues and 

questions that we still need to look at, but 

in general, they seem to track from the 

feedback we got from the interviews.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Let's 

just then go on to the next question, which

is what is the path forward regarding this 

issue from both NIOSH's standpoint and 

further? I heard some discussion, Joe, 

between you and Jim and Tim -- I couldn't 

quite make it all out -- about an addendum 

to OTIB-81. So what are the next steps for 

NIOSH? And then what does SC&A have to do 

to further consider this as well? If you 

can both tell the next steps so that I can 

track some actions going forward.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Mark. Joe 

Fitzgerald. Yes. From the SC&A comments 

from before, we questioned whether, in fact, 

NIOSH in OTIB-81 had captured all of the 

locations of potential neptunium exposure 
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potential such that you could use a 

location-specific way to apply the coworker 

model. And I think what Tim was pointing 

out is that they had dispositions, what was 

over 100 locations I think we had identified 

in those comments, and were able to 

rationalize that none of those, in fact, 

were evidence of exposure potential based on 

the operational records and whatnot.

And what I had asked is, since 

that was the entry point for applying the 

coworker model, it would be very useful to 

see that dispositioning of all of those 

additional locations just so we could 

confirm that we agree with how that 

disposition was handled and that there is a 

basis for saying that a particular location 

had no historic neptunium exposure 

potential, obviously a very critical 

question if you are going to apply locationspecific means to apply the coworker model. 

And once we get past that point, then it's 
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more of a process question of, you know, 

which model you apply and whether that model 

is statistically valid. But, you know, this 

is the starting point of the process. I 

think it is important to agree that the 

locations were, in fact, a complete listing.

DR. TAULBEE: Mark, this is Tim 

Taulbee. I envision our task is to publish 

this draft report that we have from the 

further analysis.

Now, again, this was based upon 

our analysis. And SC&A's original review is 

based upon thorium. Now, we can expand that 

and do some statistical analysis of 

neptunium areas if you want, of neptunium 

bioassay and the dosimetry codes that we 

see, if you would like that. We can 

certainly do that if you would like that 

added.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It sounds like 

we need that added, yes.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.
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CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Others' 

thoughts on that?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, this is 

Arjun. Can you all hear me?

MR. KATZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. I never 

know whether I am on mute or not.

There are a number of other 

issues that are raised by NIOSH's response 

that is being discussed today. Are we going 

to go on with that discussion? Is your 

question specific to the issue that was just 

being discussed or is it general path 

forward related to the NIOSH document that 

we are discussing today?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was talking 

about path forward for the neptunium issue.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, right. So 

there are a number of other places, like 

this finding 5, where NIOSH says, you know, 

coworker model is applicable if these two 
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conditions are met. And we have had some 

discussion about that before. And, you 

know, SC&A obviously, you know, had been 

involved in some of these things. And we 

would obviously have to discuss some of 

these things. And it would need review 

beyond the one point that was discussed in 

my opinion. I don't know if Joe agrees. He 

is the task manager for this.

MR. FITZGERALD: I actually was 

addressing the whole thing in the context.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, you were? 

Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: The more narrow 

piece that we're addressing right now. We 

haven't gotten into the various findings, 

which I find on the agenda is sort of the 

next item.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: So I am just 

addressing the presentation and the process 

that Tim has laid out and the comment that, 
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you know, he did mention the dispositioning 

of the locations. And I think this would be 

pertinent to that.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Yes. I 

apologize. So let's get into those in our 

next question.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the next --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

DR. NETON: I do have a question 

about what we just talked about, though, 

which is the dispositioning of the 

locations. I think there might be a little 

disconnect here.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. NETON: You specifically I 

thought were saying that we needed to 

demonstrate or describe how we know which 

locations were the only locations that 

neptunium was processed?

MR. FITZGERALD: In the context of 

the questions that were raised in earlier 

SC&A review that said that how do you know 
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we have a complete listing. We offer some 

examples of other locations.

DR. NETON: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: And I think that 

was --

DR. NETON: I think Tim did a 

very nice job demonstrating that, at least 

on this presentation. But do we need to 

write that up further to say this is the 

flow path of the neptunium processing at the 

site?

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I sensed 

there was another set of more detail, which 

was basically, you know, these other 

locations that were identified and ruled 

out.

DR. TAULBEE: But that wasn't 

neptunium. That was thorium.

MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, I thought it 

was in the context of neptunium.

DR. TAULBEE: It was the context 

of the thorium --
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MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: -- standpoint, 

where you identified 140 discrepancies.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. NETON: That's location.

DR. TAULBEE: That was location 

for dosimeter code.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. NETON: That was ability to 

identify a person that had worked in a 

thorium area. That is different than I 

think what Joe is talking about.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, he's wanting 

to translate --

MR. FITZGERALD: I'm just trying 

to say that I think there is a rationale for 

pinning down, as you have done, so 

diagrammed, that this is exclusively the 

areas --

DR. TAULBEE: See?

MR. FITZGERALD: -- that you 

would recognize a worker's --
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DR. TAULBEE: Exactly.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- neptunium 

exposure potential. And I think that was 

very helpful, but I was saying that --

DR. NETON: There's two --

MR. FITZGERALD: -- are these the 

-- you know, what is your filter on the 

locations?

DR. NETON: That's two different 

pieces. The first piece is how do we know 

that these are the true locations where 

people work with neptunium.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. NETON: And the second piece 

is how do we know who we can ascribe to 

those locations.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. NETON: So there's two pieces 

there. I don't know that we --

DR. TAULBEE: The latter piece is

the one that --

MR. FITZGERALD: What triggered 
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it was your description of the thorium, 

which seemed like it was an --

DR. NETON: Yes, right, but 

that's the thorium location badging 

description.

DR. TAULBEE: That's the badging.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: And that's what I’m 

talking about these dosimeter codes that we 

have for --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right. That's 

thorium. Just a question of how you filter 

in terms of who you are going to apply this 

on the --

DR. TAULBEE: That's right. How 

we filtered it is based upon the material 

flow --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- that you see 

that I went through as well as we add in 

773A because they were the research arm. 

They were the ones that came over and 
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analyzed there at the 300 area, the tubes 

and --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: They were acquiring 

the cutting, the 222 that you see the 

sectioning. Those samples would go back 

over --

MR. FITZGERALD: Scrap metal and 

--

DR. TAULBEE: -- to 773A for 

analysis for electron microscope scanning, 

that type of thing, and then the 772 

analyzing the process samples coming out of 

HB-Line.

MR. FITZGERALD: So the 

facilities that are listed in your flow 

diagram were, in fact, the --

DR. TAULBEE: Are, in fact, the -

-

MR. FITZGERALD: -- the specific 

facilities for which workers are going to be 

assumed to have an exposure potential if --
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DR. TAULBEE: Right. That is 

correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- that example 

--

DR. TAULBEE: And we would 

identify those workers based upon their 

dosimeter badge code that they would have 

been monitored being working in one of those 

regulated areas within those buildings.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, which 

answers I think what Jim was saying, the 

second item, so we know --

DR. TAULBEE: That's right.

MR. FITZGERALD: And that would 

be the badge code.

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: So, Mark, I 

didn't quite grasp it, but that is, in fact, 

the answer to how the workers will be 

identified.

MEMBER CLAWSON: There's one 

other part that I wanted everything to go 
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through for this. You brought up something, 

Tim, it kind of triggered it. When that cam 

up there failed when you put the helium or 

whatever to it, now, that tube is going to 

be taken out. They're going to have to cut 

that open. You know, they're going to have 

to peel that all out. And they're going to 

have to take all of that out. Where was 

that?

DR. TAULBEE: 235F.

MEMBER CLAWSON: 235F.

DR. TAULBEE: The rejects were all 

sent back to 235F. They're broken apart. 

Some of them, if they weren't able to do 

that, they sent them back to the frames and 

dissolved them back down and just completely 

started over, effectively.

MR. FITZGERALD: Now, one 

clarification on that question of scope, 

though, we talked about the CTWs that were 

involved in new construction in 235F, some 

of whom would probably have been 
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subcontractors. How would they be earmarked 

for inclusion as exposure potential? If, 

you know, they weren't a 235 worker, they 

might have been brought in for whatever 

electrical work or whatever. How would you 

capture that.

DR. TAULBEE: They are going into 

the regulated areas. They had to go through 

the change rooms. So they would have been 

badged. And so we would have captured it at 

that point.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So the 

assumption here -- and this gets back to an 

earlier comment we heard on the phone -- is 

programmatically, in this case 

programmatically, the assumption is being 

made that they would be captured by having 

been in the regulated area?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: And I guess one 

question we were talking about earlier is 

just trying to pin that down a little better 
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as to the regime, the actual control, that 

was being exercised for that construction, 

just trying to make sure that, in fact, that 

was a regulated area. There were facets of 

that construction that were not. There 

might have been on the outside.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, I think --

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: -- when they open, 

when they -- you remember that picture of 

the big --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- hole that they 

knocked through the wall. I'm pretty sure 

that that area was not regulated.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: I mean, there was 

really no --

MR. FITZGERALD: And then the 

assumption there is that the exposure 

potential was not there.

DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.
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MR. FITZGERALD: So, therefore, 

it wouldn't have the neptunium potential 

anyway.

DR. TAULBEE: But if they went in 

through the changers into the regulated 

corridors --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- into the rooms, 

they would have been badged. And, you know, 

even if --

MR. FITZGERALD: They will be 

captured. Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: -- on this side of 

the wall, they were doing this work, but 

then they needed to go on the other side of 

the wall to finish that work type of 

scenario, they would be going through. And 

we actually do see some of that in some of 

the incident reports where they would be 

cutting through the roof.

MR. FITZGERALD: But were you --

DR. TAULBEE: Cut through the 
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roof when --

MR. FITZGERALD: In terms of 

their records, though, because, again, we're 

talking a location-specific filter for 

identifying people, would they be identified 

by facility that you would actually be able 

to know that they were 235 regulated zone, 

even though they were CTWs?

DR. TAULBEE: Construction trades 

workers actually fall into an interesting 

area on that scenario. And this was one of 

our solutions back when we were posing the 

issue with the Class of thorium was that we 

were just including all construction trades 

because if they came out of the central 

shops --

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: -- and that's where 

they were badged, then it wouldn't say 235F.

MR. FITZGERALD: No, it wouldn't. 

That's what I'm trying to say. So --

DR. TAULBEE: And that's why we 
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included all of them back even under that 

first Class.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: It's a new --

MR. FITZGERALD: Anybody who was

in the construction trades during that time 

frame --

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- could have 

been in 235F, will be if they have a --

DR. TAULBEE: We would assign 

them neptunium.

MR. FITZGERALD: We would assign 

a neptunium dose.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That is 

helpful, actually. So let me just 

summarize. And then I think we should take 

a break.

DR. TAULBEE: They would be 

badged to get --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But it seems 
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like, Joe, unless SC&A has questions, 

further questions, on the areas and the 

approach using job codes, you know, I think 

NIOSH sort of has their approach laid out. 

So the only follow-up, I would still reserve 

some chance to follow up on this question of 

the unbadged people, but I think that last 

exchange does to some extent answer some of 

that, that anybody that was out of the 

construction trades during a certain time 

period, you would assume that they got that 

or could have been in those areas.

DR. TAULBEE: Badged construction 

trades workers, though.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Badged 

construction. Okay. Yes. Still, it has 

the question of not badged. But so I think 

on this issue, anyway, you know, it's sort 

of if SC&A wants to further review those 

locations and that criteria, I think it's in 

your court, Joe. Is that accurate or --

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I think, 
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you know, just on face value, I think the 

facilities that are cited in the flow 

diagram are pretty comprehensive. I think 

we would want to confirm, you know, on the 

programmatic side. Certainly on the 

programmatic side, the assumption is -- and 

we have not from interviews or anything 

found any disconnects or contradictions 

that, in fact, you know, people that went in 

a regulated zone were included. You know, 

we have been testing that by talking to 

people that would have been in those zones. 

And we haven't found any exceptions. And 

that's kind of the one validation that is 

important, that you can assume that they did 

go in the facility. They would have had to 

go in a regulated zone if it was 

intentional. So that theme we have been 

testing and have not found an exception to 

yet.

And that also speaks to Professor 

Bingham's comment that, you know, again, we 
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don't want to assume that a program or 

people follow regulations because we found 

too many exceptions in other sites. But in 

this particular case, we have been testing 

that, trying to find if there were 

exceptions. We hadn't found any to date.

So yes, we'll confirm the 

facilities as a path forward. And I think 

the one element I would like to hear more 

about is the new construction of 235, just 

trying to pin that down a little better. I 

think we kind of got close to that, didn't 

quite finish confirming how that 

construction was handled and how the workers 

were monitored and how they fell into a 

regulated zone or a non-regulated zone. You 

know, were people outside the building 

digging the ditches? Were they sort of in 

this other controlled arena, which would 

have been handled differently? And was 

there a potential there?

I mean, I think that's a little 
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bit of a gray area, but that's the only one 

I can think of.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That 

sounds good. And what I would propose now 

is if we can break until 1:15. Is that okay 

with you, Paul? And then we'll pick up on 

the second item on the agenda.

MR. KATZ: Yes, Mark.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that okay?

MR. KATZ: That sounds fine. We 

certainly can be ready by 1:15 or even 1:00. 

So that's good.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

Give me to 1:15.

MR. KATZ: Yes. No, no. I 

understand. Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right.

MR. KATZ: Will do.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

MR. KATZ: So thanks, everyone 

else on the line. And we'll reconnect close 

to 1:15.
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DR. BINGHAM: And the second item 

is?

MR. KATZ: So the next agenda 

item is the response to the SC&A report 

review of the methods. The agenda for the 

meeting is on the NIOSH website under the --

DR. BINGHAM: Okay.

MR. KATZ: -- Board today. So 

you could see all the rest of the items 

there.

DR. BINGHAM: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Okay. Take care.

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 

12:06 p.m.)
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A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

(1:15 p.m.)

MR. KATZ: Before you take over, 

Mark, just let me remind everyone on the 

phone to mute your phone. Everybody mute 

your phone. And if you don't have a mute 

button, press *6. And that will make the 

audio quality a lot better for everyone 

else, particularly everyone else on the 

phone. Thank you.

And, Mark, go ahead.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So, just 

to pick up on the agenda where we left off, 

I think the next item we are going to cover 

is the NIOSH White Paper on the neptunium 

issues. Is that accurate? And, if so, Tim, 

I think you can start us off, right?

DR. TAULBEE: This is more of our 

responses to the comments.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's right, 

response to the SC&A, yes.
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DR. TAULBEE: Okay. How do you 

want to do this? Do you want to go through 

each individual --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

we should go back and forth, Finding 1, and 

then, you know, you can sort of give your 

response to the finding and then have a 

discussion. Right?

MR. KATZ: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But then give 

SC&A an opportunity in between each finding. 

Don't go through the whole, you know --

(Laughter.)

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

MR. KATZ: Okay. One by one, 

right?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

Yeah, sounds great. Okay.

- DCAS RESPONSE TO SC&A REPORT

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. The first 

one, the first finding, SC&A's -- basically 
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I'm going to read it here -- "SC&A has 

concluded that NIOSH's methods for comparing 

the measurements of two sets of workers 

requires the monitoring protocols of the two 

sets of workers to be the same. NIOSH has 

not established that there were protocols 

for whole body count monitoring of either 

non-construction trades workers or 

construction trades workers using whole body 

counts during the '72 to '90 time period, 

and if so, where they comparable. It 

appears unlikely that either group as a 

whole is routinely counted, except for fast 

scans in the mid-to-late-1980s, which is not 

relevant for the neptunium dose 

reconstruction."

Well, to start out in our 

response, from the worker monitoring data, 

they were collected in the past to 

demonstrate compliance. So this is all 

compliance-based monitoring or retrospective 

data. So we don't really have the 
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opportunity, if you will, to have matching 

protocols. But in this particular case, we 

do happen to have what their monitoring 

protocols were.

And as I pointed out earlier in 

my presentation, they're not the same. That 

the routine workers were actually -- day 

shift were only monitored for whole body 

count one per year. And the technicians 

were monitored twice per year from a whole 

body count standpoint.

Construction trades workers, as I 

outlined earlier in DPSOL 193-302, they were 

monitored when they came onto site, or as 

their job plans were specified, or if they 

were involved in a contamination incident.

But the goal here is to estimate 

the workers who were not monitored. So, I 

guess from my standpoint, I am not sure why 

the two protocols have to be the same. If 

we've got workers being monitored from both 

groups, some are routine, some are for-cause 
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sampling, if you will, that the for-cause 

sampling would tend to indicate that these 

people were exposed due to some event, a 

high-air sample or a nose smear or something 

like that, versus a routine, which is you 

are expecting somebody to have not been 

exposed. But they would then be caught 

during this routine monitoring.

So it comes down to are the 

unmonitored workers more likely to be 

workers who had a lower potential for 

significant intakes? Or are they monitored 

completely at random? This is how we apply 

the coworker model.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Hi. This is 

Arjun. Could I say something about why that 

is there?

DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

DR. MAKHIJANI: If Harry is on 

the line, he may want to amplify. But the 

finding about the further monitoring 

protocol required to be the same is not 
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about the coworker dose estimation. It was 

about under what circumstances you can 

compare the distributions of two groups of 

workers. 

So if you're comparing nonconstruction and construction workers, our 

finding was that you can't have a valid 

comparison unless the monitoring protocols 

are the same. It’s not about the actual 

coworker calculation, dose calculation.

Harry, are you on the line?

DR. CHMELYNSKI: Yes, I am, 

Arjun.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe you might 

want to amplify as to why we arrived at that 

conclusion.

DR. CHMELYNSKI: Well, there's a 

lot of reasons. In the routine monitoring, 

we're pretty sure we're going to pick up 

things. And when we do it on a cause basis, 

that assumes that we know all the incidents 

that occurred for these workers that were 
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not routinely monitored. So you're sort of 

dealing with an incomplete data set. And 

the issue here was whether one could compare 

construction workers, for example, with onsite workers by using these data collected 

under two different protocols.

And there what we're talking 

about basically is can you use the 

hypothesis test to compare apples and 

oranges. Well, maybe. I'm not sure what 

the conclusions that you draw from that tell 

you, though.

DR. NETON: Yeah. This is Jim. 

I think that we are getting into some areas 

here that were subject of discussion on the 

RPRT-53 issue that is taken up by the 

Working Group. So I'm not sure it would be 

fruitful for us to really hash this about 

too much in this meeting.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, Jim, I 

agree. This is Arjun. I only raise that 

point because, the way Tim presented it, it 
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was not about comparison and OPOS but about 

dose calculations and what doses you 

assigned and who had more exposure 

potential. Whereas, in this finding, that 

was not the issue.

DR. NETON: Yeah. I would argue 

on Tim's side on that one, but I won't take 

it any further because, again, I don't think 

we are going to solve it in this particular 

meeting. So I would say we just defer that 

one to the SEC Issues Work Group discussion, 

if that’s okay. I mean, I --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Jim, I'm okay 

with that, putting it in the SEC Work Group 

discussion, but --

DR. NETON: And I think, I might 

point out a number of these are going to 

fall that way. There are some that don't, 

but I don't want to --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah. You know, 

we had the SEC Work Group teleconference a 

few days -- a week or two ago. And our 
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report is essentially done. You know, the 

mechanics of sending it out, type setting 

and sending it for DOE review remain. But, 

just to remind you of our finding, principal 

finding in this regard, which is pretty 

settled, is -- you know, of course, it's 

subject to review by the Board and the 

Working Group, but internally in our team --

which is that we didn't feel that OPOS 

should be used as a general method for 

comparisons or for making coworker models, 

except in the circumstance where you could 

average incident-related samples and put 

that as a single point in a distribution of 

individual bioassay samples. So we didn't 

actually agree. Our finding was that we 

don't agree with the NIOSH approach.

DR. NETON: Right. And I 

remember that. And that OPOS is just one 

piece of the issue. I think the bigger 

issue is this practical significance and, 

really, in my opinion, comes down to 
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comparing the dose received or the intakes 

received by the two populations. And that 

is something that we will take up at the 

Working Group level.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. And we 

haven't addressed the internal dose piece of 

that at all as yet.

DR. NETON: Exactly.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Well, 

Finding 2 is actually following right along 

the same lines here.

DR. NETON: Yeah, I would say 

that, unless --

DR. TAULBEE: Do we want to defer 

Finding 2 as well?

MR. FITZGERALD: I think so. I 

think it's the same, pretty much the same 

issue.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Finding 3 is 

that NIOSH has not demonstrated that 30 

samples in each comparison group would be 

sufficient to simultaneously maintain low 
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levels -- for instance, less than 10 percent 

each of type I, type II errors -- in 

determining whether construction trades 

workers or non-construction trades worker 

sample distributions are the same or not. 

The issue is moot, in this case, for 

neptunium only because the minimum number of 

samples of 30 for comparison to be valid is

not available for construction trades 

workers in any year from '72 to 1990.

Now, in our response -- and this 

-- actually, is Matt Arno on the line?

MR. ARNO: Yes, I am.

DR. TAULBEE: Matt, were you the 

one who wrote up this particular response? 

Because, if so, I am going to defer to you.

MR. ARNO: Finding number 3?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Or was this 

Nancy?

MR. ARNO: Well, actually, that 

was, I guess, mostly drafted by Nancy 

Chalmers.
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DR. TAULBEE: Okay. And Nancy is 

not online.

DR. NETON: Yeah, I would again 

say that this one is very much tied in with 

RPRT-53 and where we're going with 

sufficient accuracy. And many of these 

findings in this particular neptunium 

discussion are like that. And I don't want 

to cut this short, but I really don't know 

that we're going to be productive and argue 

about the Peto-Prentice test and the power 

and that sort of thing at this meeting.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, maybe it 

would better, Mark, if we just try to 

identify the ones that are specific for 

Savannah River here.

DR. NETON: I mean, there are 

some. I mean, but --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah, that's 

fine. I also think overall we have to think 

about how the SEC Work Group work is going 

to impact on us moving along on the SEC 
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issues. So that's fine, Tim, if you can --

DR. TAULBEE: I'm going to try 

and do this quickly. It looks like Finding 

4 is also an SEC, if everybody is in 

agreement with that.

DR. NETON: Yeah.

MR. FITZGERALD: I think 5 as 

well.

DR. TAULBEE: Five is routine 

monitoring again. Yes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

Sorry. I was on mute. I didn't realize I 

was on mute.

On number 3, there is one, an 

SRS-specific aspect to that, which is all of 

the OPOS samples as they resulted for 

neptunium had less than 30 samples in that 

period. And if the SC&A finding is along 

the right line, then, you know, a lot of 

things are moot about whether you can 

actually calculate the dose or not, because 

then you can't make the comparisons. And 
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that would be a situation specific to 

Savannah River, assuming you accept the OPOS 

method. It's just about whether you have 

the right minimum number of samples.

So, to some extent, I think it is 

SRS-specific. Mark, I don't know how you 

want to proceed to parse some of these 

things, but pieces of them are specific to 

Savannah River, in my opinion.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I think we 

should try to discuss those as appropriate. 

Tim, do you have any discussion on that part 

of it?

DR. TAULBEE: Well, the minimum 

sample sizes is a guideline that our 

statisticians use. It's not a hard and fast 

rule. I mean, they look at the 

distribution. And if it seems to be falling 

a log-normal pretty steadily with, you know, 

even ten samples or something along those 

lines, then they'll call it a valid 

distribution. These aren’t being analyzed 
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by untrained people. They're looking at the 

data and making some professional judgments 

as to whether the distribution fits or not.

So I guess I disagree with SC&A's 

position of we have to have 30 samples in 

order to do a comparison, because I don't 

think we do. I think you look at the 

distribution itself and see how it's 

looking.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, that's not 

exactly what we said. What we said was that 

30 samples are often insufficient, and that 

sometimes even 50 or 70 samples may be 

insufficient and 35 may be perfectly good, 

actually. 

Harry might want to explain, he 

did a pretty extensive analysis that the 

number of samples is not the only criterion. 

And you don't necessarily, you know, say 

that there is some statistician who is going 

to make a pretty, you know, expert judgment 

for every case as you go along. There are 
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some specific circumstances and calculations 

that you have to do to know what the power 

of the result is.

I don't know, Harry, I think you 

did a lot of work on this particular 

question.

DR. CHMELYNSKI: Yes. And, to 

tell you the truth, it wasn't us suggesting 

30. It was NIOSH in their instructions for 

how to do the OPOS calculations and can use 

them to compare different groups of workers.

The reference they use for that 

sample size of 30, I think, is pretty much a 

hokum reference, but certainly it’s a number 

that a lot of statisticians pin their hat on 

for no good reason because usually it is 

meant for applying it to normal 

distributions.

The same reference that NIOSH 

quotes for the sample size of 30 has in it a 

chapter that's about 30, 40, 50 pages long. 

It tells you how to compute the sample sizes 
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depending on what the variability is. But, 

yet, all of that was ignored.

DR. TAULBEE: Sir, in this 

particular case, we don't have the ability 

to prescribe how many samples we get. This 

is retrospective sampling. We have what we 

have.

DR. CHMELYNSKI: I agree. And at 

some point, somebody has to make the 

decision that we don't have enough to make 

the decision. That's all we're saying. 

Where do you draw that line?

DR. NETON: All right. And I can 

say that this issue of practical 

significance needs to be worked out before 

we can say that. And that's where we ended 

up at the SEC Work Group meeting. Until one 

can define what is a practically significant 

difference, this is not really relevant. I 

mean, you can't answer that question.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I can't 

agree with that.
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DR. NETON: Why not?

DR. MAKHIJANI: There is a 

question of practical significance of the 

size of the dose. And, as I mentioned in 

the SEC Work Group, you have to address that 

not with some arbitrary hundred or 200 

millirem number. You have to address that 

in relation to the uncertainties of the dose 

calculation and how much you know.

DR. NETON: Exactly.

DR. MAKHIJANI: If you don't have 

the right number of samples to make a 

comparison, which is what we were saying, 

that in the case of neptunium, which is 

specific to this circumstance, there is no 

year in which you have sufficient samples to 

come to a firm conclusion that these two 

distributions are the same. So you can 

actually use non-construction worker data 

for construction worker dose estimates based 

on the hypothesis that NIOSH has produced.

So the further issue of practical 
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significance as to what is the uncertainty 

is is kind of moot until you can settle the 

first question, in my opinion.

DR. NETON: No. I disagree, 

Arjun. See, we are getting into the SEC 

Issues Work Group area, but the way the 

process was set up was to do an initial 

screening for significance between the 

actual bioassay distributions themselves. 

But the proof of the pudding is when you 

generate a model that predicts the dose, the 

intake per year, using all of the data. And

that's where the rubber meets the road. And 

that, in my opinion, is where we need to go 

to demonstrate a significant difference.

You know, if you take one year 

and you can say, "Yes, they're different," 

the next year, "They're not different," but 

we amalgamate all of those bioassay results 

into a distribution over a time period, fit 

it using bioassay models, and then you can 

say, does that difference in that one year 
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make a big difference in what we would 

assign the construction versus the nonconstruction? That’s really the end result. 

So I’m going to try to steer this discussion 

and the SEC Issues Work Group meeting down 

that path more and just looking at these 

base comparisons of the coworker 

distributions themselves to try to establish 

what is practically significant. 

MR. KATZ: So, then, Mark, this 

is Ted. This is clearly sort of central 

ground for the SEC Issues Work Group 

discussion that has been ongoing. And it 

probably doesn't work for you. You haven't 

even been attending that, right?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, but that's 

fine. I mean, I let it go a little bit 

because it's good for me to hear this 

background. And we can take it up further 

there. I don't have a problem with that.

Arjun, is that okay?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, that's fine 
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with me. It's entirely your discretion.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But keep 

raising any -- if you see Savannah Riverspecific things, bring them up. And we'll 

try to at least discuss them here a little 

bit.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, well, 

Mark, that's what I was trying to do here, 

because I do think that a great deal rides 

in terms of what distribution you are going 

to use to make these comparisons. And if 

you are going to a priori assume that you 

can put all the samples in one distribution, 

that's kind of begging the question that was 

initially raised in all of these comparison 

reports.

So that's why I'm saying that in 

this particular case, in all years, the 

comparison did not have a sufficient number 

of samples. So I don't know if you can 

resolve the question by simply putting all 

of the samples together. That's one thing.
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I think the other discussion is 

likely to be rather long because we haven't 

even started talking about internal dose 

yet. So, I mean, that said, you know, it's 

entirely your discretion. I just raised it 

because I thought it was Savannah Riverspecific in part.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah, no, at 

least we have the issue on the record. I'm 

not sure we can resolve much further right 

now.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Sure.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah. Okay. 

All right. Tim, go ahead, then. I think 

you said Findings 4 and 5 were also 

similarly SEC Work Group issues or --

DR. TAULBEE: That's my thought 

as well.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Joe or Arjun, 

do you generally agree with that?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I agree 

with that.
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CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, no. Five I 

have an issue with. Sorry. I was looking 

at 4 when I said yes.

The two bullet points that are in 

5, at the bottom of the page, just about the 

footnotes there, "Unmonitored individuals 

are members of a monitored population who 

are not monitored completely at random." 

And that these two bullets, these 

conditions, one of these conditions, have to 

be satisfied and then we're okay to develop 

a coworker model. However, we know that 

construction workers were monitored 

differently than non- construction workers, 

or so the records indicate. So the first 

bullet is not applicable because it was not 

at random. And the differences were not at 

random.

And the second is an assumption 

that we have had a long debate about at many 
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sites. For instance, this was also asserted 

at Nevada and many places, that unmonitored 

individuals had no or less potential for 

exposure. And I also believe that that is a 

very questionable assumption, including at 

Savannah River Site.

So if neither of these conditions 

apply, then NIOSH is essentially saying here 

that they don't have a coworker model. One 

of these conditions has to be shown to be 

true. You cannot assume them to be true, 

which is what I think NIOSH is doing.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, let me try 

and further explain this a little bit, then. 

From the first bullet, "Unmonitored 

individuals are members of a monitored 

population who are not monitored completely 

at random." Okay? So these would be people 

we know are in a regulated area, that went 

and conducted their work, but for whatever 

reason, maybe they were an intermittent 

person who went into the 235F building, for 
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example, and were potentially exposed to 

neptunium. We can identify them as such a 

worker, but they were not monitored for 

neptunium.

What we're doing with the 

coworker model is taking the workers who 

worked in that facility, those guys standing 

there at the glove box who left a sample 

once per year. And we're applying their 

dose to that person. So that’s one 

application of the coworker model.

The other assumption here is that 

unmonitored individuals were unmonitored 

because they had no potential for exposure 

to radioactive materials. This would be the 

scenario where we've got somebody who didn't 

even work in 235F. We have identified them. 

They weren't monitored for neptunium. We 

don't see any bioassay for them. We have 

identified they work at the P Reactor. So 

they meet condition two there, we would not 

apply a neptunium dose to that particular 
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person. Okay? So this is the application 

of this coworker model.

Now, when we throw in the 

construction trades workers into this group, 

they can actually fall into one or the 

other. They went into 235F. Their job plan 

was such that Health Physics looked at it 

and said, "We don't think you need to be 

monitored for neptunium," because maybe they 

were doing work in the PuFF facility or PEF 

facility. And so they did feel like they 

did need to be monitored for plutonium. And 

so they were specifically monitored for 

that.

When we look at a badge -- so 

there was a reason why Health Physics felt 

this person didn't need to be monitored 

because they didn't feel there was a 

potential for neptunium. When we look at 

their film badge, we see they worked in 

235F. And we don't see neptunium 

monitoring. We’ll look at this. And since 
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they were in that building, we would apply a 

neptunium dose, that coworker model, to 

them.

So these are the assumptions on 

how the construction trades workers fall 

into this. Okay? We know they weren't 

monitored the same. We know that they were 

not monitored routinely, except for 

plutonium, by the way. There it was once 

every three years.

With the whole body counts, if 

there was a contamination incident, then we 

know that they were monitored. But applying 

this coworker model, we feel, is a bounding 

upper estimate for these construction trades 

workers.

MEMBER LOCKEY: So if a 

construction trade worker went in to the 

monitored area, they would be assigned as if 

they were working that area?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

MEMBER LOCKEY: And can we 
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identify who those construction workers are?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, by the badges. 

If they went into that regulated area, then 

we would know that they went into -- 200F 

area is the global one that we would look 

at.

MEMBER LOCKEY: So, by default, 

any constructions trade workers would be 

assigned that --

DR. TAULBEE: If they were badged 

in the 200 area. Yes, 200F area, for 

example.

MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: And we actually 

expand that out to central shops as well 

because we know sometimes they were 

dispatched out of central shops to go up 

there. And so they would be badged out of 

central shops.

MEMBER LOCKEY: And that applied 

to DuPont and non-DuPont workers?

DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. 
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That's correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: Just to clarify, 

-- I know we talked about this before -- so 

for CTWs, construction trades workers, you 

would include them in if they were badgecoded for that area, plus the central shops.

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: That would be 

the universe of what they would get credit 

for.

DR. TAULBEE: Right, that's 

correct.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. In general, 

if we can't identify what area they worked 

in, we would probably assign neptunium 

anyway. But if we can place them in the P 

Reactor, no, we're not going to assign that. 

So it kind of works both ways.

There are some codes where it’s 

000, you might remember some of those from 

the early thorium discussion. We don’t know 
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–-

MR. FITZGERALD: Is this going to 

be treated in the draft you’re talking 

about? Because I think that’s helpful to 

have that kind of –-

DR. TAULBEE: It’s in OTIB-81. 

Correct?

MR. FITZGERALD: For the CTWs?

MR. MAHATHY: We haven’t put that 

-- yes, we do have codes, but we don’t have 

the response.

DR. TAULBEE: We don’t have the –-

okay. We don’t have that actual nuance of 

the construction trades in there. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: We don’t have the 

what? I missed Mark’s last words.

DR. TAULBEE: We don’t have the 

specific instructions for construction 

trades in OTIB-81.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

MR. FITZGERALD: But that’s where 

you’re going with this.
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DR. TAULBEE: Right, that’s where 

it goes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

One of the problems with what you said, or 

the issues with what you said, Tim, is that, 

you know, you’re speaking as if workers were 

monitored regularly for neptunium. But the 

records actually -- there are very few 

records that actually say neptunium or even 

protactinium, so that is, you know, as we 

said before in the earlier morning session, 

at least for me that’s a significant issue 

because we actually don’t have records that 

say people were monitored for neptunium. 

There’s a presumption that they 

were monitored for neptunium but you don’t 

know exactly what they were exposed to. So, 

when somebody was not monitored, in that 

respect they are sort of similar to somebody 

who was monitored in respect of neptunium, 

because nobody’s got neptunium in most of 

the records. So, you don’t have an idea, 
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actually, whether there was an exposure 

difference between the people who were not 

monitored and those who were monitored 

because almost no one was monitored for 

neptunium.

DR. TAULBEE: Arjun, I will 

disagree with you on that point. The whole 

body count monitors for a large number of 

radionuclides. We’ve got the full spectra. 

We can look to see what their potential 

neptunium exposure was. Yes, they won’t have 

a specific region of interest labeled 

neptunium but we know where that peak 

appears and we know what the counts are 

within that peak. So, these people –-

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, my –-

DR. TAULBEE: We know, sir, that 

these people were whole body counted. We 

know that. That’s from the records. And 

these people were whole body counted. We 

can evaluate their whole body record.

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m not 
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questioning that, Tim. I’ve seen these 

whole body records, and you’ve seen them, so 

there’s no question. I’m not questioning at 

the moment whether you can infer a neptunium 

dose. A lot of the discourse was what were 

the Health Physics people thinking and when 

did they monitor and not monitor people? 

That’s what this Finding 5 is about, not 

whether we can actually interpret the 

records to infer something from them.

So, if Health Physics people were 

making some decisions, as you presented, to 

monitor or not monitor somebody for 

neptunium, that presumes that they were 

actually monitoring for neptunium, and they 

would have indicated that in the record. 

There are radionuclides that are indicated 

in the records of whole body counts, you 

know, chromium-51, whatever. And you can 

actually see the designations of those 

radionuclides. But I’m not saying you can’t 

infer dose. That’s a separate question. 
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What I’m saying is you can’t infer what 

Health Physics was thinking about monitoring 

neptunium when they, themselves, didn’t 

leave any trace of what they were thinking. 

DR. TAULBEE: I believe the 

records show that they do show what their 

trace was. If you look at the bioassay 

control procedures from the 1971 era, they 

clearly indicate that neptunium exposures 

were only monitored when the plutonium was 

positive. Okay? That’s in those bioassay 

procedures. That was their trigger, was off 

of the plutonium.

Now, when we get to 1978, the 

bioassay control procedure, it identifies 

workers in the 235F building as being 

monitored for neptunium. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: But there are 

hardly any bioassay records.

DR. TAULBEE: There are very few 

workers.

DR. NETON: That’s because there 
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are very few workers, Arjun. You have to 

look at the population of potentially 

exposed. You can’t make these generic 

decisions about how many people were 

monitored relative to the potential exposure 

population. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. I mean, I 

–-

DR. NETON: Few monitoring 

records does not imply that they didn’t 

adequately monitor. That just doesn’t 

follow.

DR. MAKHIJANI: No. All I’m 

saying is that –-

DR. NETON: That’s what you said.

DR. MAKHIJANI: –- you can’t 

presume that they were adequately monitored.

DR. NETON: Because of few 

monitoring results. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Because we’ve had 

this discussion at many sites, that 

individuals were unmonitored because they 
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had no exposure potential.

DR. NETON: That’s a different 

subject –-

DR. MAKHIJANI: And we’ve often 

come to the conclusion that it wasn’t right.

DR. NETON: You just changed the 

subject, Arjun. You said that we have very 

few monitoring data, therefore they weren’t 

adequately monitored. I disagree with that 

statement.

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no, I didn’t 

say they weren’t adequately monitored.

DR. NETON: Okay. Now you agree 

they were adequately monitored.

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I said you 

can’t infer what was in the mind of the 

Health Physicist.

DR. NETON: We have the 

procedures that tell you exactly what was in 

the mind of the Health Physicist.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay.

DR. NETON: All right? I don’t 
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understand the logic. It’s not –-

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, my 

statement, again, is we’re talking about 

what was in the mind of the Health Physicist 

in relation to neptunium exposure for 

workers who were monitored or not monitored. 

And the records actually don’t show 

neptunium exposure, almost any records, so 

it’s very difficult for me, at least. Maybe 

you can, you know, maybe you can infer more 

than I can, obviously you can, but I can’t 

tell the difference between what somebody 

was thinking when they didn’t put neptunium 

explicitly in any of the records they left 

behind, except for those few bioassay and 

some whole body counts. 

DR. NETON: Well, how many 

bioassay records do we have, Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: Three-hundred and 

thirty-three.

DR. NETON: There’s 333 bioassay 

records, Arjun, that are saying neptunium.
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DR. MAKHIJANI: But we’re not 

using them for dose reconstruction. 

DR. TAULBEE: No, they’re all 

lower than the whole body count estimation.

DR. NETON: They’re lower than 

using the whole body count results which are 

more claimant-favorable. But if you saw 

Tim’s graph they track fairly well. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. I guess I 

have no more. I don’t want to drag this 

out.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: Think we’re on 

6.

DR. TAULBEE: Number 6. This 

finding, it’s “NIOSH coworker model for 

construction trades workers for neptunium 

for the period of ‘72 to ‘90 would often 

lead to results that are very claimantunfavorable.” I guess I disagree with this 

finding from the standpoint of claimantfavorability.
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The data that we have from the 

whole body count data is clearly very high, 

from all of the actual neptunium data that 

we have, for workers with their hands in the 

gloves that were doing this particular work.

Any time you try to define 

claimant-favorability and unfavorability and 

stratify a coworker model -- and this is 

really part of the SEC Work Group, the 

stratification issue -- one group when you 

stratify is going to be more claimantfavorable because you’ll be assigning a 

higher dose, and the other one would be 

claimant-unfavorable assigning a lower dose.

It doesn’t really apply in this 

case because we’re proposing that we use the 

one coworker model. When we did a 

comparison between the two, we did not see 

any difference between the two 

distributions. We can discuss power and all 

that later in the SEC Work Group, but we 

don’t have any reason to do this 
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stratification. So, to try and say that the 

construction trades workers would be very 

claimant-unfavorable, I just don’t agree 

with that particular basis.

We’ve got the monitoring records 

as to who was monitored and why. We showed 

that the plutonium contamination in the 

neptunium feed build is at least as equal to 

the activity of the neptunium. And that was 

their basis for monitor, at least from the 

1971 through the 1978 time period, where you 

saw in there that little footnote at the 

bottom talking about neptunium never being 

higher than –- or plutonium was always an 

equal activity. 

Constructions trades workers were 

monitored once every three years for 

plutonium, so claimant-favorability and 

unfavorability really depends upon whether 

the SEC Work Group decides that we should 

stratify construction trades versus nonconstruction trades, in my opinion.
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Jim, anything to add?

DR. NETON: Well, I think we need 

to focus this specifically on the neptunium 

issue. And if you look at the process that 

Tim outlined today, it seems to me that the 

workers who were directly handling and 

machining, and whatever, the neptunium 

sources themselves would adequately –- their 

exposures would adequately be bounded for 

the non-monitored workers, unless one can 

show us some different exposure circumstance 

where they were in a higher exposure 

scenario. And I’m having difficulty 

identifying that.

DR. TAULBEE: And not been 

bioassayed.

DR. NETON: And not been 

bioassayed. I mean, this particular –- this 

focus on the neptunium, which is the subject 

here, and based on what we know about the 

process, I just find it hard to envision 

that an unmonitored worker would have been 
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more highly exposed than the workers who 

were directly working with the materials on 

a daily basis. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Joe or Arjun, 

you got any comments on that?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, you know, I 

-

MR. FITZGERALD: I –

DR. MAKHIJANI: Sorry, Joe, go 

ahead.

MR. FITZGERALD: No, I was just 

going to say this is going to come from the 

statistical discussion that we have yet to 

have. So, I think, again, we could spend a 

lot of time going back and forth on it, but 

I think that’s a lot of what’s at the root. 

I’m sorry, Arjun, go ahead.

DR. MAKHIJANI: You know, I’ve

said this before, but we had this discussion 

about, you know, the general assumption that 

unmonitored workers had less exposure 

potential than monitored workers, and even 
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in regard to construction and nonconstruction workers. And, you know, we 

showed before that as –- if you –- in most 

cases that may well be true, but for certain 

groups of construction workers it didn’t 

look true in regard to particular 

radionuclides.

Now, we haven’t got enough data 

on neptunium to actually look at this 

question for construction workers, at least 

we didn’t think so, but in the case, which 

is another finding further down –- but in 

the case of –-and I think NIOSH agreed with 

that, that we don’t have data to compare 

groups of construction workers with other 

groups of construction workers. 

But in the case of tritium, where 

we did have some information for some 

periods, we found that for pipefitters, for 

example, if I’m remembering correctly, they 

were different than other construction 

workers, and they were also different than 
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non-construction workers. So, I think 

when you have a paucity of data for 

construction workers and you know they’re 

not the same, electricians and carpenters 

are different than pipefitters, and that’s 

not, you know, randomly looking for people 

who are higher exposed, it’s going by the 

physical and technical situation of what 

jobs these people did.

I don’t think that you can 

presume that somebody who was machining was 

less exposed than some particular 

construction worker who was fixing the 

equipment.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Just to go 

back to Jim’s statement, I mean, I think, 

from my standpoint, the only compelling 

argument I’ve heard that there could be a 

situation where -- well, non-monitored 

workers, but you may answer this that they 

were probably monitored -- could be higher 

than the others, was the circumstance or the 
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testimony about bringing in construction 

workers to do some of the dirtier tasks 

because they could burn them out, you know. 

But in that case, Tim, I think you gave 

examples where they actually did have –-

you know, they did monitor those folks. 

So, you know, if they were 

monitored and we could crosswalk that and 

say even these worst cases, clearly, they 

were –-you know, the construction workers 

were brought in for potentially higher 

exposure tasks but they weren’t monitored. 

If we can confirm that point, I think I 

would probably be in agreement with what Jim 

said earlier.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. How would 

you want us to crosswalk that, Mark?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I’m not sure. 

I’m just talking right now. I’m not tasking 

anything. But, I mean, I just –-

DR. TAULBEE: Because I think it 

can be done, but it’s going to be a weight 
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of evidence type of scenario.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Right, 

right, right.

DR. TAULBEE: Just looking at 

multiple records and just presenting, you 

know, volumes of data to –-

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah, I’m not 

ready to ask for that task yet.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I’m just 

thinking out loud about the one circumstance 

that I can conceive where those workers 

could get higher exposures.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, if you 

recall, a couple of years ago when we 

started down the path of the stratification 

or non-stratification for construction 

trades, and then within construction trades 

it’s by job type, we proposed tritium to 

start with. And my next move was to 

actually look at tritium, do as much 

comparisons as you wanted, then go to 
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uranium where we have another plethora of 

data, look at that. Look at plutonium then 

where we have more data, not as much as 

uranium, but pretty close. 

And when it comes to construction 

trades we know there’s a routine monitoring 

there. But at the time, instead of going 

through each of those, because this was 

going to be a lengthy evaluation, you had 

asked us to look at americium, curium, 

californium, neptunium and the fission 

products, and so that’s how we’ve jumped to 

neptunium here. 

And, I mean, I understand Arjun 

in saying that, you know, we don’t have a 

lot of data in order to try and satisfy 

further down. We get to where we have zero 

samples for a particular trade. And the 

reason is, is that the neptunium exposures 

were really confined to small, general 

areas. So we don’t have this large 

population that we can do that evaluation 
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effectively. 

So, we’ve got to try and do some 

kind of a weight of evidence, or reliance 

upon the procedures and the monitoring that 

we see. Otherwise, we should jump back up 

to uranium and plutonium and do the 

evaluation that Arjun is proposing for 

those.

DR. NETON: In this particular 

limited instance, I mean, you have to have 

some sort of a rationale for stratification. 

I mean, you can’t go around proving 

negatives all the time, that they weren’t 

more highly exposed. I mean, you have to 

look at on face value for this limited 

purpose operation and, you know, I don’t 

know. I think that you can’t just make up 

potential high-exposure scenarios, or say 

that you can’t –- you know, this is not 

bound. In this particular instance, I think 

we’ve got the waterfront covered. Yeah, I 

don’t know.
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CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And, again, 

Jim, I wasn’t trying to task or make, you 

know –-

DR. NETON: Yes. No, I agree.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But I also 

don’t think I’m making it up. I think you 

guys heard this from the interviews you did.

And Tim agreed that this did happen, so I 

don’t think that that’s a complete 

hypothetical, you know.

DR. NETON: Yeah, we also have to 

remember these are chronic exposure models 

that we’re assigning here.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

right.

DR. NETON: If they were present 

there for 10 minutes doing a job or assigned 

to that area, they’re going to get a chronic 

exposure for the entire year of operation 

for neptunium.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I agree, and I 

think it is –- I think several of these 
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things come down to weight of evidence 

arguments, and we may have enough evidence 

already. I’m not looking for more –-

necessarily looking for further validation 

of it. 

DR. NETON: Okay.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So, okay. 

MR. BARTON: Could I ask a 

clarifying question here? This is Bob 

Barton. It’s about the data set that’s 

currently being proposed for the coworker 

model. 

Now, as I understand it, the data 

that we have are in vivo records that were 

pulled from claimant files that we have. Is 

that correct?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. BARTON: Okay. So, I mean, 

would it be fair to say that, essentially, 

the data set that we have kind of represents 

an entire cross-section of the site of, you 

know, people who were in the controlled 
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areas. I’m not talking about people who 

never entered a radiological area, but the 

data that we have really represents a crosssection of the entire site. Is that 

correct?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

MR. BARTON: Okay. I mean, I 

guess I would ask has any comparisons 

attempted to be made between the people who 

were actually in these neptunium areas and 

who have in vivo data versus the rest of the 

population? Because I heard it just said 

that, you know, the people who were involved 

in this stuff and who were exposed were 

probably rather limited. And I guess just 

logically I would think you would find those 

people in the upper tail of this 

distribution of value since probably a 

significant portion of them never even 

entered these areas where neptunium exposure 

was possible.

DR. NETON: I think Tim did a 
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comparison of the people that had neptunium 

bioassayed to the generic in vivo model. 

Right? I mean –-

DR. TAULBEE: Just on that one 

graph, just showing the neptunium urinalysis 

versus the in vivo model that we came up 

with.

DR. NETON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: I think what Bob is 

asking is have we done a comparison of the 

people for which we have whole body counts 

in the F Area, M Area, H Area, and A Area to 

everybody else? And the only –- that 

comparison would be those four groups versus 

reactors. 

MR. BARTON: So, you’re saying 

the majority of the records you have are in 

these –- I mean, when you say, like, F Area, 

I mean, that’s a pretty significant portion 

of that site.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. That is 

correct. And, yes, when you look down the 
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breakdown of the whole body counts that were 

used in this analysis, and Matt Arno, please 

correct me if I’m wrong here, but the vast 

majority of the in vivo counts that we used 

in the analysis were from F, H Area, and 

specifically the HB Line, M Area, and 235F. 

Is that correct, Matt?

MR. ARNO: Yes, it is. 

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I want to 

say, and this is off the cuff here, I want 

to say it made up like 75 percent of the 

data.

MR. ARNO: I don’t remember the 

exact number but it’s definitely over half.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. 

MR. BARTON: You know, I’m 

wondering, and I’m just kind of thinking 

here. I wonder if it would be illustrative 

to take those workers that we know have 

neptunium urinalysis records, presuming that 

–- I guess it was triggered off of plutonium 

so you can’t really say for sure whether 
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they were the highest exposed, the neptunium 

workers -- but that would give you a 

starting point to try to make some 

comparisons and assure that those people who 

were on the bioassay program were also, you

know, represented in the distribution of in 

vivo counts that’s being proposed. 

Of course, this whole issue is 

just –- it’s sort of establishing that data 

completeness facet. I mean, there are the 

people that we wanted to grab, are they 

actually in that distribution? Where are 

they in that distribution? And then that 

kind of points to how you would implement a 

coworker model to assure, when you don’t 

know who necessarily were the highest 

exposed neptunium workers, or if there’s a 

potential that an unmonitored worker had a 

significant intake, you know, how you then 

apply that coworker intake to assure that 

you’re going to bound that dose.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, I think from 
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the first part of your comment or question 

there as to can we identify those workers 

that have the bioassay and the in vivo and 

do that comparison? I think that’s doable. 

It’s certainly doable. From the standpoint 

of -- I’m trying to think of the second part 

of your question there -- of applying that 

from the coworker, I think that’s where we 

were talking earlier in our opinion that 

these workers, that coworker model, and 

especially using the whole body counts that 

we’ve proposed here, would be a bounding 

type of scenario for somebody who was 

unmonitored for neptunium in these areas. 

Does that help any?

MR. BARTON: Yes, it does. Thank 

you.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. 

DR. NETON: I think we need to be 

a little careful here and remember that 

we’re talking about deciding whether these 

are SEC issues or not, as well. And 
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sometimes, you know, we can make a decision 

on that without really going to the 

complete, full degree of analysis on some of 

these areas. You know, the question is do 

we have enough neptunium data in some way or 

another -- enough data to evaluate neptunium 

exposures and generate a coworker model. I 

think Tim is showing that we’ve got several 

options. We’ve proposed the most 

conservative, claimant-favorable option at 

this point.

DR. TAULBEE: So, should we move 

on to Finding 7?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. This one I 

believe is actually part of the SEC Work 

Group, as well, because it’s talking about 

the statistical validity of the test, along 

with Number 8. Do you agree, Joe?

MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think 

those are all the same.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Number 9 is 
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one where this is actually Savannah Riverspecific. And this is, I think, just a 

misunderstanding between what we’re 

proposing here and what I think Arjun was 

trying to talk about earlier.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, that would 

have been Joyce.

DR. TAULBEE: Oh, okay.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, well, I kind 

of stood in a little bit for her.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. And this is 

are we giving preference to the results in 

the I-131 region over results obtained using 

chest geometries to calculate the neptunium 

body burdens and intakes in the period when 

results were reported in units of count 

rate. NIOSH did not explain why the in vivo 

results obtained from the 40 centimeter 

geometry were preferred over the results 

obtained from the chest count geometryderived neptunium-237 intakes.

What we’ve got actually is a 
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whole body count that is -- when they did 

the chest count they were using Phoswich 

detectors, and so they were looking at a 

lower energy portion of the spectrum. At 

the same time they were doing the chest 

count they were doing these whole body 

counts. And this was earlier a big detector 

with a 40 centimeter arc and in the latter 

time period they were on a table, on a 

stretcher, and there was multiple sodium 

iodide detectors underneath the body below. 

So, you know, the preferences to 

use the results from the I-131 region of the 

spectrum rather than a specific geometry. 

The in vivo measurements are based on the 

230 to 290 keV region of interest as shown 

in the Figure 1 of the SC&A report. 

Neptunium-237 has five different 

gammas in this region with a summed 

abundance of .08 percent. Protactinium has 

an additional two gamma rays with a summed 

abundance of .06 percent. However, in 
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contrast, proactinium-233 has five gamma 

rays with a summed abundance of 51 percent 

in the 300 to 400 keV region of interest. 

So, we’re looking at a little higher region 

of interest that’s two orders of magnitude 

greater which allows for the MDA to be two 

orders of magnitude smaller. So, this is 

why we’ve preferenced this I-131 region, is 

because that’s where the protactinium would 

appear. 

Now, from what you saw from the 

gamma dose rates coming off of these 

billets, the protactinium was present, it 

was growing in very rapidly. So, this is 

what we were triggering these whole body 

counts off of, because of this MDA two 

orders of magnitude smaller.

So, the gamma ray abundance from 

neptunium-237 in the 230 to 290 region of 

interest is simply, in our opinion, too low 

to allow for a reasonable use of the data. 

So we opted for the higher region of 
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interest. That’s the basics of why we chose 

the I-131 region of interest for our 

evaluation.

MR. FITZGERALD: That helped me, 

but Joyce isn’t here. I think that would be 

the real closure we need on this thing, so 

as I said -- I might have said a little 

earlier, we’re certainly going to focus her 

on this the next couple of weeks.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: And make sure 

that we have a final closure on the item. 

But, yeah, I thought that was very helpful.

Hopefully, it will be for her, too. 

DR. TAULBEE: Matt, do you have 

anything to add to that?

MR. ARNO: No, that covers it. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Anyone on the 

phone from SC&A? Again, I think that’s 

something I’d like to make sure Joyce takes 

a look at, but any other comments?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I agree 
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with you, Joe. This is Arjun, that and 

Finding 10, also I think is along similar 

lines.

DR. NETON: I think a lot of these 

findings are going to be in vivo-related.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, she really 

focused on this section and, unfortunately, 

the timing wasn’t good for her to be on this 

call. So I would suggest, 9 through 15, if 

we can defer those and have her -- rather 

than talk about it and have to go back and 

have her treat it again -- just go ahead and 

have her provide that response to you. 

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Sounds good 

to me.

DR. NETON: Might go beyond 15, 

16.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, 15 

definitely. I wasn’t sure about 16.

DR. NETON: Sixteen is, again, in 

vivo -- iodine and chromium in vivo –

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.
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DR. TAULBEE: Actually, let me 

speak to this one just a little bit here, 

because the findings --

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wait, which one 

are you on?

DR. TAULBEE: Number 16, I’m 

sorry.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sixteen, okay. 

DR. TAULBEE: It says assuming 

neptunium-237 doses to workers who had I-131 

or chromium in vivo counts but no exposure 

potential to neptunium-237 is scientifically 

unreasonable even though it may provide a 

claimant-favorable result.

The only reason that we’re using 

those regions of interest is because that’s 

how they’re identified on there. We’re 

actually not worrying about whether they 

were exposed to I-131 or chromium-51. We’re 

just looking at that region of interest. The 

actual potential for exposure has nothing to 

do with why we were using that region of 
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interest. So, just so that you all 

understand. 

MR. FITZGERALD: I kind of got 

that, but not quite sure --

DR. TAULBEE: We weren’t trying 

to say people were exposed to neptunium were 

also exposed to iodine and chromium. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Unlike some 

sites, you actually do have the curves, you 

have the data from the whole body counts so 

you can infer from those results --

DR. TAULBEE: That’s correct. We 

have the actual data.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, you 

actually have the data. 

MR. KATZ: Okay. So, that takes 

us through 16.

DR. NETON: Seventeen’s the same 

thing.

DR. TAULBEE: No relevant whole 

body count data available.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, 16 and 17 
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are related. 

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. All right. 

Number 18, the finding is there are sharp 

discontinuities between the intake estimates 

using the in vivo data and the urinalysis.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wait. Did we 

go over Finding 17, or –

DR. TAULBEE: Yeah, we’ve lumped 

that in with 16.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay.

DR. NETON: That was an in vivo –

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. All 

right. Sorry. Go ahead, it’s 18. 

DR. TAULBEE: Number 18, there 

are sharp discontinuities between the 

intakes estimated using in vivo data and 

urinalysis, with the former being much 

higher than the latter. NIOSH has not 

explained whether these discontinuities 

resulted from sudden changes in actual 

exposure conditions. If not, the 

discontinuities may indicate a problem with 
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our approach of using whole body count data 

to estimate neptunium body burdens and 

intake rates as described in RPRT-56. 

The observation, we fully 

understand the discontinuity. The 

discontinuity has to do with our switch of 

using from urinalysis data, where we have 

abundance from 1961 through 1969, you know, 

from 1972 or -- yeah, 1972 to 1989 we only 

have 333 samples. In that earlier time 

period we have several thousand samples, so 

they were doing a lot more neptunium 

monitoring in the 1960s. 

When you look at the bioassay 

control procedures from that 10 years of 

experience, they never saw neptunium 

exposure that didn’t have an equal amount of 

plutonium. They really started triggering 

off of the plutonium and not monitoring as 

many people for neptunium directly. 

Because at the time we were doing 

this coworker model we didn’t know what that 
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plutonium-neptunium ratio was or how it 

behaved over time, we chose to use the whole 

body counts. So, there is a disconnect, 

because the site stopped doing a lot of 

urine-specific neptunium bioassay, just 

triggering off of plutonium, but we do have 

a whole body count for the same workers that 

are doing this particular work. 

So there is a discontinuity, a 

higher MDA if you will, because the site 

wasn’t using really the whole body count as 

their dose of record for this particular 

person. The site was basically assigning 

zero unless there was a positive plutonium, 

then they would do an analysis for 

neptunium. And if the neptunium was 

positive, assign a dose. That’s why we have 

so few samples between really 1971 time 

period to 1978.

What we chose to do, we know 

these same workers were being monitored 

whole body count, so we chose to use the 
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whole body count, results in a higher MDA. 

That’s the reason for the discontinuity. 

That’s the reason for that big jump up that 

you see. 

When we assign the intakes we’re 

giving claimant-favorable dose in that time 

period, with a higher MDA, to the workers 

that were in that particular time period. 

But we don’t feel that those doses are 

unreasonably high, as I showed earlier with 

those organ dose assignments.

When we get back into the 1990 

time period when we have alpha spec and MDA 

drops below again, then we start using it 

again. That line that I showed if we were 

to interpolate between the two, you’re 

looking at almost an order of magnitude 

difference decrease over the 1970s and ‘80s 

in the actual coworker model that we see. 

So, these discontinuities aren’t 

anything that is a problem, really. It’s 

just showing our methodology and how we 
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changed and how we’re being claimantfavorable to make sure that this dose during 

this time period is actually bounding. 

Any questions on that? Joe?

MR. FITZGERALD: None from me. 

Anybody on the phone? I thought that was a 

pretty good explanation in the paper.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: I guess not. 

DR. TAULBEE: And 19 follows 

along that same line. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Nineteen is the 

same, yeah.

DR. TAULBEE: Yeah, for the 

discontinuities. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So it 

seems, on the balance, a lot of these things 

are going to the SEC Work Group, and the 

remaining ones are kind of issues that Joyce 

has to look at further.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, 

interpretation of region of interest. But I 
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think, again, those are kind of pretty 

technical questions on the in vivo data 

interpretation. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: We can respond 

to those in writing when we provide a 

response.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

And that would include this last one, 19, I 

think.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, all those.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. Is 

there anything else to be discussed here on 

these responses?

MR. FITZGERALD: We’re fine from 

here, Mark.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Then I 

think we should move on to the next item, if 

that’s okay with everybody. 

MR. KATZ: Yeah.
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CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think 

that involves -- Tim will take the lead.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Give me just a 

few minutes here. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sure, sure.

DR. TAULBEE: I need to log back 

into Live Meeting here.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Hey, Ted, I’m 

also looking at the time. Do we have any 

time constraints on the Board?

MR. KATZ: We do. We have to 

break by no later than 5, would be the 

latest.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Okay. 

Because I think we may want to -- we’ll let 

Tim do this presentation.

MR. KATZ: Yeah. We’ll need to 

schedule another meeting.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah. And 

then we may want to also move that last item 

up, but let’s let Tim go forward here, and 

then we’ll see where we’re at time-wise.
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MR. KATZ: Yeah, that makes sense 

to me.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

Okay. 

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. All right. 

Apologize for that. So, now this next one 

is to talk about thorium at the Savannah 

River Site post-1972. Some of this is going 

to be a repeat from the Board meeting that 

we held, was it December of last year, 

December 2012, some of these slides, but it 

kind of refreshes everybody’s memory a 

little bit about the thorium. 

So, I’m going to over the thorium 

inventory, the processes involving thorium, 

the radiological controls from ‘72 to 1990, 

the alternate bioassay method, the bioassay 

control procedures, specifically for the 

thorium areas, the americium-curiumcalifornium-thorium comparison, and then the

thorium from 1990 to 2007.

Okay. So, if you recall, when we 
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look at the thorium inventory at Savannah 

River over the time period of 1955 through 

2007 era, this is what it looks like. This 

is kilograms of thorium. And you can see 

that post-1972 time period it’s pretty 

stable, there at about a little under 10,000 

kilograms of thorium. 

Well, this particular thorium 

that’s there onsite that’s making up the 

bulk of the inventory is in the receiving 

basin for offsite fuels. This is 

encapsulated spent nuclear fuels from 

offsite reactors, from Elk River, for 

example. These reactors, when they shut 

down, they sent their fuels to Savannah 

River for storage. So these are thorium fuel 

elements stored under water. The fuels are 

repackaged under water and they’re store 

under water. Here’s a couple of pictures of 

the RBOF building, spent storage in the 

repackaging basin, so all of the work here 

that’s being done with thorium is under 
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water. There is, as I would contend, no 

potential for exposure to this thorium at 

the Savannah River Site.

So, if you go back to the 

inventory and you strip out the waterstored, encapsulated spent fuel from the 

thorium inventory, this is what it looks 

like. And you can see, post-1972, it’s 

extremely small compared to what they used 

to deal with. However, there is still some 

inventory. The inventory, as I said, is 

very small. 

This is now, if you look at the 

scale, this is from zero to 1,000 kilograms. 

You go back a scale, this would be less than 

that first tick on your graph. Okay? Let 

me point this out here. This first tick 

here is 5,000 kilograms. I’m going to onefifth of that first tick and that’s the 

thorium inventory that we have at Savannah 

River. These other ones going off-scale are 

the big years of production. Post-1972, 
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we’re down here under 400 kilograms, and 

when you get to 1985 time-frame through 1989 

time-frame it goes even lower, it goes down 

to less than 50 kilograms. Okay? So, we 

are talking about in this time period 

thorium used in research. This is not a

production type of scenario. This is thorium 

being used in research.

Here’s the actual thorium 

inventory. As I mentioned, there’s low 

inventory, it’s at minimal locations. The 

bulk of it here is in 773A; ‘73 you’ve got 

154 kilograms, goes all the way down 1986-87 

time-frame to 5 kilograms. So there’s not 

much thorium there. 

Two-hundred kilograms, just for 

your frame of reference, of thorium oxide 

would be 10 two-liter bottles of thorium 

oxide. So the inventory that you’re looking 

at there in 773 would fit on this end of the 

table easily. This is a very large chemical 

building. Okay? So, you’ve got small labs 
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in this building that are using the thorium. 

Other areas, 235F, during the 

startup of PuFF they used thorium as a 

stand-in for plutonium. And we’ve been able 

to see some pictures of the actual thoria 

spheres that they pressed together to 

simulate plutonium. Four kilograms, very 

small. 772F lab, again very small. 

M Area had some thorium but, 

again, 23 kilograms is pretty small for 

thorium. This 23 kilograms here would fit 

in one two-liter bottle. That’s all that 

we’re talking about here. A Basins, L 

Basins, and RBOF, this is all encapsulated.

MR. FITZGERALD: What was the M 

Area operation, again? I can’t remember.

DR. TAULBEE: The M area is where 

the extrusion presses were, where the 

uranium fabrication was. So there were 

times --based on this particular inventory, 

especially post-76 time period, it would --

it’s really -- help me out here, Mark.
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MR. MAHATHY: From what we saw, 

they did do extrusion in the ‘60s and that 

was storage that they were getting rid of. 

It’s smaller each year.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

MR. MAHATHY: So, they didn’t do 

anything with it in the ‘70s.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: Right. Now, we did 

see, in the late ‘60s here, that they were 

using some thorium in the M Area as a standin for those neptunium extrusions, by the 

way.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: So, we did see that, 

but that was back in the 1960s, not in this 

time-frame. Okay? So, we have minimal 

locations. This is the total inventory, the 

green is 773A, and then the non-storage area 

is all of the other areas. So, you can see 

773A is where the thorium was really being 

worked with on the site at this time period.
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And it’s also interesting to note 

here that the inventories from ‘73 to 1990 

are less than the inventories from 1990 

through 2007, so there’s more thorium in 

773A in the modern era than there was back 

in the ‘70s and ‘80s. 

So, what were they doing with 

this thorium? Well, in ‘72, there’s the 

Alpha Material Laboratory which used thorium 

oxide as a surrogate for plutonium-238 when 

they were testing out glove boxes. In ‘73 

they used gram quantities of thorium dioxide 

were used in the hot cells to test vapor 

deposition. From ‘77 to 1980, and this is 

where we interviewed all those folks back in 

August of this year. They were working as 

part of the alternate fuel cycles, and the 

Thorium Fuel Cycle Technology Program. 

There were several projects that 

were going on, and if you recall from their 

discussions, they were talking about using 

gram quantities, very small quantities, but 
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using lots of them. You know, baking small 

little fuel pellets and dissolving down four 

or five of them at a time inside their fume 

hoods. And this is the work that they were 

talking about doing with the thorium. 

And some of the other examples of 

research that they were doing as part of 

this thorium fuel cycle study, mechanical 

grinding in the high-level caves. And this 

was a study of effects of heat treatment on 

the thorium oxide, conceptual testing of the 

flow sheets of the Elk River fuel in the 

high-level caves, analysis of off-gassing of 

the spent foreign fuel from the Elk River 

fuel. They took some of the Elk River fuel 

from the RBOF, sent it to the high-level 

caves and cut it, actually, and they were 

actually looking at the tritium that would 

be coming off and whether that could be an 

issue or not. 

Hanford prepared and encapsulated 

30 fuel rods with 80 percent thorium oxide 
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and 20 percent uranium dioxide for 

irradiation in the reactors. SRS received 

the rods in 1979 and stored them in a cage 

in 773A. This entire program was cancelled 

in May of 1980 before they could be 

irradiated. So they were never irradiated, 

nothing was ever done with them. They were 

sent back to Hanford.

Other knowledge that we know, the 

plutonium or PuFF, Plutonium Fuel Form 

Facility, 1980, this thorium was used as a 

surrogate for some of the work. It was used 

in hot cells of PuFF. If you remember those

two red boxes on each side, those are the 

hot cells, the center part was the control 

room which had manipulator arms. The Galileo 

Project, thorium was used as a surrogate for 

plutonium during the testing of it. 

From 1990 to 2010, this is that 

increase from very small quantities, 5, 10, 

20 kilograms of thorium to 200 kilograms of 

thorium, is thorium was used as a surrogate 
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for plutonium and other radionuclides to 

test methods for Defense Waste 

Stabilitization and Immobilization. So 

glass vitrification is what they were using 

it for in the 1990s. And I’ll get into that 

in more detail here in a little bit.

Again, radiological controls, I 

went through this earlier with the 

neptunium. I’m not going to go through them 

all again, but if you recall, we’ve got all 

of the same work and regulated areas, 

protective clothing, radiation exposure 

control.

What we have for dose 

reconstruction for thorium in this time 

period in 773A is a large number of workers 

were monitored for americium, curium and 

californium. A review of the bioassay 

method during the development of the 

coworker model for this americium-curiumcalifornium revealed that thorium would come 

through in the analysis, and the alpha 
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emissions would be counted as if they were 

americium-curium-californium. 

This is where actually Sam Glover 

helped us out looking at their chemistry 

process, and going through and figuring out 

would the thorium come through. Because 

what we found is in a later procedure they 

added thorium as a possible concern -- or 

not a concern but an acknowledgment that 

thorium would come through in this analysis, 

that this was a -- byproduct is the wrong 

word. What word am I looking at? It’s not a 

contaminate, it’s –

MR. MAHATHY: Surrogate?

DR. TAULBEE: No. We’re using it 

as surrogate but it’s -- it came through. 

If you look at the actual publication by 

Butler & Hall in Analytical Chemistry in 

1970, they talk about a procedure that was 

developed for sequential extraction of 

plutonium, neptunium and uranium with triisooctylamine, TIOA, followed by extraction 
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of thorium, americium, curium, berkelium, 

californium and einsteinium with bidentate. 

Compared with previous methods, the new 

procedure is simpler, requires less analysis 

time and gives you better recovery. The 

recovery of americium-curium-californium 

from 250 milliliters of urine or 20 grams of 

feces was 90 percent. 

The alpha-emitting actinides from 

thorium through einsteinium extract 

indicating an excellent gross alpha 

analytical procedure. The data showed that 

in the analysis, americium-curiumcalifornium, any contaminating plutonium, 

neptunium and uranium must be removed. 

At this laboratory, thorium, 

berkelium and einsteinium are not present in 

biological samples in sufficient quantities 

to require separation or routine 

identification by alpha spectrometry. 

Because they were working with so 

little bit of thorium they didn’t view this 
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as a problem in their bioassay method. So 

they didn’t take any efforts to try and 

remove the thorium, so it came through in 

the analysis. 

So, no effort was made by the 

lab to remove the thorium contaminant from 

the urine samples. Why? The activities are 

much lower. It wasn’t viewed as a 

significant contaminant. Thorium was used 

as a surrogate because it was less hazardous 

than plutonium, safer to use. 

So, effectively, what we have 

with this americium-curium-californium 

method is that it doesn’t contain plutonium, 

uranium or neptunium, but does contain 

thorium, americium, curium, californium, 

einsteinium and berkelium. So, this is the 

method that we are proposing to use, is 

these americium-curium-californium gross 

alpha method that contains thorium, because 

they didn’t do any chemical separations 

against it and they knew that it came 
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through in their procedure.

If you go back to DPSOL 193-302 

1971, who was monitored for americium, 

curium and californium? The top line you’ll 

see 221F where some of the separations were 

done, and selected 772F people because they 

were doing some of the analysis for the 

americium-curium-californium. 

Down here at the bottom, 773A, 

they were getting two americium-curiumcalifornium samples per year. Who was being 

monitored? Analytical chemistry, high-level 

caves, building services, these would be 

your maintenance guys, radiation control, 

and your maintenance personnel. 

In 773A, Category W, the next 

line down, selected clerical supervisory 

personnel and selected 100 Area personnel 

were given one sample per year. So, again, 

the frequency, high-level caves and the 

building services, rad control, maintenance 

personnel, are sampled more frequently than 
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your clerical personnel in 773A, but they’re 

both being monitored. But was everybody in 

773A monitored? No. 

If you go to the second line down 

that I’ve highlighted, 773A reactor 

engineering group and 777 M personnel were 

not monitored for americium-curiumcalifornium. They didn’t have an exposure 

potential to it. They weren’t working with 

it. It was just the people in the 

analytical chemistry, high-level caves, 

radiation control, maintenance personnel 

that were really the ones that had the 

potential for exposure, and they were being 

monitored more frequently for this potential 

exposure.

This is 1971. Again, 

construction trades workers, you’ve seen 

this before, other nuclides as specified by 

Health Physics and the construction job 

plans. Okay? So, there wasn’t any routine 

monitoring for americium, curium, 
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californium, or thorium for construction 

trades. But if they were doing work in that 

area, the Health Physics reviewed these job 

plans and decided they needed to be 

monitored, they were monitored. But it would 

be in the job plans, their monitoring 

frequency. Okay?

MEMBER LOCKEY: What do you mean 

if they decided --

DR. TAULBEE: They did an 

evaluation of the job to see if there was a

potential for exposure to americium-curiumcalifornium, and then they would apply the 

monitoring.

MEMBER LOCKEY: And then they 

were monitored?

DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

Let’s see, did I jump ahead? Yes. I’ve got 

to go back, sorry. That was 1971, 1978, 

discussed that earlier. Again, if we look 

at the 773 here at the bottom, and I think 

I’ve outlined this on the next one, yes. 
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Oh, let me go up here. 773A, minimum 

potential, they were in bioassay category A 

right here. 773A, selected analytical

chemistry division, separations chemistry 

division, high-level caves, radiation 

control, building services, maintenance 

personnel. This was that other group that we 

talked about there. Reactor engineering, 

selected clerical and supervisory personnel, 

and then they identified a group of maximum 

potential selected personnel. 

So, let’s look at all these 

categories here. Minimum Potential A, one 

sample every three years of plutonium. 

Analytical chemistry, high-level caves, C 

and T, two plutonium per year, one 

americium-curium-californium per year. 

Reactor engineering, A, E, and L, one 

plutonium every three years, enriched 

uranium one per year, L, four natural 

uranium. Okay? Clerical supervisory 

personnel, B, one plutonium. Maximum 
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potential exposure, C, F, L, and U, C two 

plutonium, F two enriched uranium, L four 

natural uranium, U two americium-curiumcalifornium. 

So, people they viewed as having 

a maximum potential for exposure in 773A 

they monitored americium-curium-californium 

and thorium twice per year. Others, 

analytical chemistry, once per year. You’ll 

notice here in 1978 that the clerical 

personnel dropped off from that particular 

monitoring scenario. Okay? Again, 

construction trades workers by job plans.

So, again, bioassay control is 

prescribed by the work area and based upon 

the potential for exposure, which division 

they’re working in, which group. 

Construction trades workers were under job 

plans. 

Our dose reconstruction 

methodology, we propose to use the 

americium-curium-californium-thorium 
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bioassay results to reconstruct the thorium 

doses. Given a particular cancer, NIOSH will 

use the radionuclide -- americium, curium, 

californium, or thorium -- that results in 

the highest dose to that organ of interest. 

So, the people that are monitored here we’re 

going to evaluate their organ, or their 

cancer, where their cancer site was, and 

assign that alpha dose to one of these four 

radionuclides, whichever one is higher. If 

thorium is higher, then we’ll assign it.

Here is a table of americiumcurium-thorium doses that I can go through 

here and try and show you what these doses 

are. In this particular case, if a person 

had bone cancer, we run through and we 

evaluate. If the dose -- or based upon 

those bioassay results of that americiumcurium-californium-thorium result, if we 

assume it’s all americium, the dose to the 

bone would be 18.9 rem. If it’s all curium, 

it’s 15.2 rem. If it’s all californium, it’s 
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36.58 rem. If it’s thorium Type-M, this 

would be M-class solubility, it’s 37 rem. 

Thorium Type-S, it’s 37.9 rem. In this 

case, we would assign 37.9 rem due to 

thorium.

Moving on to the kidney. Here you 

can see that thorium is the highest, but in 

Type-M category, not in Type-S. Lung, in the 

lung particular case, it’s Type-S, 

obviously. It’s staying there in the lungs. 

But these doses are not incredibly large, 

they’re reasonable. These are doses that we 

can assign. They’re actually less than some 

of the plutonium missed doses that we have 

assigned. So these are what we consider to 

be reasonable doses for an example dose 

reconstruction. 

So, like we did with neptunium, 

we compared the bioassay for two different 

groups of workers, construction trades, nonconstruction trades, and the nonconstruction trades and unknowns. In this 
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particular case, instead of evaluating a few 

hundred samples of whole body count, the 

total number of americium-curium-californium 

bioassay that we have is about 17,000. So 

we have a lot more data here for this.

So, let me -- this is a table 

directly out of the RPRT-455. So, let’s 

look at 1978. I’ve highlighted it here just 

to try and show the amount of data that we 

have. In total of all workers that we have 

data for, we have 306 americium-curiumcalifornium-thorium bioassay results from 

1978. This is comprised of 228 people, one 

person, one statistic. 

So, this is the number of people 

that these 306 samples is divided amongst. 

Sixty-six of the bioassay were from 

construction trades workers that we’ve 

identified, making 49 construction trades 

workers, these are samples/workers. Nonconstruction trades workers were 232 workers 

-- or 232 samples amongst 171 workers. And 
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then when you add the unknowns in here, we 

add in eight more unknowns in that 

particular case. This is non-construction 

trades plus unknowns, 238 plus 8 gets you to 

240. So there weren’t many unknowns but we 

did have some in here that we didn’t know 

whether they were construction trades or 

non-construction trades.

So, here’s the data that we have, 

1978. If you look at the worker and 

bioassay proportions, if you look at the 

total site population of all workers, nonconstruction workers, there were about 

6,000: 5,944 in 1978. There were 1,900 

construction trades workers. The population 

ratio is about .33, the bioassay ratio is 

about .27. 

Remember the monitoring frequency 

of construction trades is based upon the job 

plans. What we can see here is that their 

bioassay frequency is actually about the 

same based upon the actual population on the 
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site. 

The reason I would attribute this 

to -- the reason I’m trying to point this 

out here is if the job plans weren’t 

properly evaluated and people were not 

monitored, construction trades workers were 

not monitored for americium, curium, 

californium or thorium, we wouldn’t be 

seeing in this previous example here 49 

construction trades workers that are 

actually monitored for americium-curiumcalifornium. A total of 66 samples, so some 

of those job plans indicated sampling is 

more than once, or they’re involved in an 

incident and left more samples. 

So, the job plans here for 

construction trades are actually following 

what the actual plant population 

distribution is, even though they weren’t on 

that routine monitoring. Those job plans is 

how they were identifying who would 

monitored.
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When we did our comparison of the 

Peto-Prentice, and again this is that less 

than .05 evaluation, there was only one year 

that the significance was greater than .05. 

Okay? This was 1985. However, the 

significance -- the Peto-Prentice -- I’m 

going to mess this up without Nancy here. 

The Peto-Prentice has to be less than .05 

and the Peto-Prentice has to be less than 

the Holm cut-off. That’s how that had to 

work out. Is that right, Mike?

MR. MAHATHY: Yes. 

DR. TAULBEE: Because that one 

there is less than .05, but it wasn’t less 

than the Holm cut-off. The Holm cut-off is 

another statistic of repeated analysis of 

the same group, and I’m sure Harry and Nancy 

and Tom will all be discussing this as part 

of the SEC Work Group, but I just wanted to 

show these results. We had one year that 

showed there was a statistical difference 

between the two distributions.
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When you fit the data in this 

time period, and this is what Jim was 

getting at earlier here of looking at the 

whole picture of the whole error bounds. 

What you’ve got here is the blue is the --

and these red -- or not the red dots, the 

green dots are covering up the blue quite 

nicely here -- are all monitored workers 

versus the construction trades workers are 

in the red. There’s 1985, by the way. And 

then the green here are the non-construction 

trades workers.

These are the two models. Three 

of them are all following on top of each 

other, all monitored workers, nonconstruction trades, and on non-construction 

trades and unknown. And then when you 

evaluate the construction trades workers 

separately it is slightly higher, mostly 

being driven up by this one sample point 

here when we did the two intake models. 

But if you look at the actual 
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error bounds, this is the errors bounds upon 

the central -- the lower of the two curves. 

You can see that the uncertainty that we 

apply to this is pretty large, and 

construction trades workers would still be 

bounded by this, by the uncertainty of what 

we’re looking at here. 

So, again, this is being 

discussed by the SEC Work Group. This is 

the actual big case that they’re evaluating, 

not so much neptunium because this is where 

we have more data than we have for neptunium 

data. 

So, construction trades workers 

from ‘72 to 1989, we have 1,600 samples. 

Non-construction trades we have 7,500 

samples. Unknown, 422. Recall, again, 

construction trades were only monitored 

based upon job plans. I contend that if 

construction trades workers were never 

monitored, then we would not have 1,600 

bioassay samples for construction trades 
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workers. But we do, so this is why I feel 

that we can estimate their dose.

Okay. Now, this is a little bit 

of a break. That was up to 1990. That’s in 

that time period where the inventory is very 

low, 1990, now the inventory goes up to 200 

kilograms. Actually all the way up to 400 

kilograms at one point. 

What we originally proposed, and 

this where I’m -- I guess I should apologize 

to you all. What we originally proposed was 

we’d use the whole body counts to bound the 

thorium exposures. We are changing that. 

The reason, though, is that although these 

doses are bounding, the assignment of the 

whole body count missed dose result in some 

significant doses in a modern era that we 

just don’t believe occurred given the 

radiological controls at the time. This is 

the time period of 10 CFR 835, lots of 

radiological controls going on. This is a 

modern era. 
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What we’re proposing to use is an 

air sample concentration which is 10 percent 

of the plutonium DAC as a maximum potential 

for exposure. And this 10 percent of 

plutonium DAC is the cut point for when they 

would people in respiratory protection. 

Now, our argument as to why we 

feel that this is appropriate is a weight of 

evidence approach. So if you’ll bear with 

me on this, this is going to take a little 

bit of time to go through.

If you go back to that inventory, 

you’ll see in the ‘87, ‘88, ‘89 time frame, 

5 kilograms, 17, 42, jumps up, 207, 208, 

206, way down here, 399, 299, type of time 

frame, so we’re looking at, what, a factor 

of 20 higher. In some cases it’s even higher 

than that, up through 2003. So, again, when 

you look at the volume of the activity, 200 

kilograms is 20 millicuries, maybe 10 twoliter bottles on the end of the table. I 

mean, this isn’t a huge amount of thorium 
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actually when you divide it up amongst labs. 

773A is a fairly large building with a very 

small volumetric source term.

Based upon our review, the 

primary work involving thorium during the 

1990s was the Defense Waste Processing 

Research. Thorium was used as a surrogate in

place of plutonium and other actinides in 

vitrification research. And let me give you 

some examples of this.

This is one of compositions and 

durabilities of glasses for immobilization 

of plutonium and uranium by Dr. Bibler, Dr. 

Meaker here. And I extracted another 

excerpt from this. 

“In the initial studies, thorium 

and uranium were used as the actinides. 

Because of the low radioactivity of these 

elements, the glasses could be prepared and 

tested on bench top.”

Let’s look at some of the other 

research that we’ve been able to identify 
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within this. And I’m just giving a sampling 

here. There are more of these reports that 

are out there. We’re hoping to get them all 

into the SRDB once the reviews get done. 

I’ve highlighted, again, names, Dr. Meaker 

here. 

“Homogeneous glass processing 

region defined for a lanthanide borosilicate 

glass composition for the immobilization of 

plutonium using thorium as a surrogate.” 

You can see over here on the next one 

clearly identified thorium oxide, Pu02 

surrogate. Here’s all the glasses that he 

was making. Here’s the thorium content, 

weight percent, 20 weight percent, 30 weight 

percent, whether it’s homogeneous or not. 

Another one by Dr. Meaker, 

Neptunium immobilization and recovery using 

phase-separated glasses. Again, they used 

thorium as a stand-in for neptunium here. 

Thorium loading exceeds 10 percent oxide, 

high thorium loaded glass is 15 weight 
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percent. Again, some of the names down 

here, Bibler, Peeler. Effects of uranium in 

thorium. Dr. Peeler. “In this study, 

glasses are designed and selected to assess 

the impacts of U-308 and thorium oxide on 

various glass properties of interest.” This 

is 2003. So, this is what’s going on in the 

1990s into the 2003 era.

This is the thorium handling 

procedure for 773A for the glass technology, 

from the glass technology manual. 

“Procedure applies to all immobilization 

technology section personnel who handle 

depleted uranium and/or thorium.” I want to 

go through this handling operation so you 

get a feel for what it is that they’re 

doing.

“Depleted uranium, natural 

uranium and/or thorium may be used in a 

chemical hood, minimum face velocity of 60 

feet per minute, or on a bench top if these 

elements are in the form of a hydrated 
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nitrate compound, in a solution or a solid 

block, depleted uranium and/or thorium 

containing glasses. It is recommended that 

the defined work area on a bench top be 

covered with paper before work is 

initiated.” 

Next section. “Size reduction of 

depleted uranium and/or thorium glass for 

subsequent durability testing should be 

carried out inside double-heavy-duty bags. 

Glass should be placed inside the double 

plastic bags and hit with a hammer several 

blows until the glass block is reduced to 

adequate non-respirable size. Nonrespirable size reduction should be carried 

out in the chemical hood, if possible, 

minimum face velocity 60 feet per minute, or 

on a bench top.” It is recommended, again, 

to define the area on the bench top.

“Depleted uranium, natural 

uranium and thorium in a powdered oxide or 

finely crushed glass.” So, before we were 
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talking about big chunks of thorium, or in a 

solution. Then they can work with it on a 

bench top. Here we’re talking about thorium 

oxide in a fine powder. 

“May be used in a chemical hood,” 

not on bench top. “Minimum face velocity 

150 feet per minute. After the use, the 

chemical hood should be smeared to check for 

contamination. If contamination is found, 

contact the Health Physics Office and 

decontaminate before further use.” So, when 

they were working with the fine powder, had 

to do it inside a hood, had to check for 

contamination afterwards. 

Bottom one, “The indicated 

handling of depleted uranium, natural 

uranium, and thorium, given in Steps 531, 

534, agrees with the definition set forth, 

Table 2.2 of Manual 5Q, Radiological 

Control, which is in compliance with 10 CFR 

835.”

So, there’s three components to 
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the radiological control program here that I 

want to talk about. And this is the 

radiological survey log sheets. They have 

these log sheets that involve daily wipes, 

or daily checks, weekly checks, monthly, and 

quarterly. Air sample log sheets, ASLs, 

daily, weekly, and they have two different 

defined locations, less than 2 percent of 

DAC and less than 10 percent of the DAC. 

Again, this is modern era. 

Routine workplace sampling to less than 2 

percent of the derived air concentration 

performed in general areas to provide a 

reasonable assurance those non-radiation 

workers located in close proximity to the 

radiological buffer areas, that they’re not 

exposed beyond 2 percent of the DAC.

Routine workplace air sampling to 

document radiological conditions, changes, 

detect gradual build-up of radioactive 

material, verify engineering controls, and 

identify likely sources of airborne exposure 
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to radioactive material. The routine 

workplace air sampling in non-airborne 

radioactive areas provides a general 

assurance that workers are not chronically 

exposed to airborne levels greater than 10 

percent of the DAC. So, this is what we’re 

using as our basis for our dose assignments 

in this time period.

Radiological work permitting 

system is issued in 1990. Let’s look at some 

of these radiological survey log sheets. 

This would be C-Wing, and these are paper 

towel smears, down here is paper towel 

smears .1 meter squared, disk smear is per 

100 square centimeters. Daily routine 

inspection of gloves, vacuum gauges on glove 

boxes in use, smear survey of control point 

step-off pads and laboratories in C-Section, 

see attached sheet for location. Here’s a 

map of the contamination, or the rooms where 

these surveys were done, where these 

triangles are in the C-Wing. All smears less 
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than 200 dpm alpha, this a paper towel smear 

so divide by 10, this is less than 20 dpm 

alpha which is the modern standard for alpha 

contamination control. 

We have another one, this is the 

weekly results, again paper towel smears, 

labs C-103. By the way, I meant to point 

out, I highlighted C-114, you’ll see why in 

a minute. I’m going to pick on it a little 

bit. Lab C-103, C-114, all areas smeared 

less than 200 dpm alpha. Perform survey of 

all low-level drain systems, all sinks 

smeared less than 200 dpm alpha from smear 

survey of all clean and chemical hoods in 

the area, all smeared less than 200 dpm 

alpha. Radiation survey of labs updated the 

tags. So, this is a weekly, daily routines 

you saw before. These are weekly routines in 

these labs where they’re checking the sinks, 

checking the hoods within the laboratories. 

B-Wing, again paper towel smear, 

daily smear, control point step-off pads, 
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floors, hood, lips, all disc smears less 

than 10 dpm alpha except number 18 was 30 

dpm alpha, number 16 was 20 dpm beta gamma, 

so those are over here, 16 and 18. Okay?

Let’s look at the air monitoring, 

and I know you guys can’t read this so I’m 

going to blow it up here. But this is the 

air samples within each of the rooms. Okay? 

What I’ve highlighted here is C-114. So, 

this is the bottom, this is C-114, the DAC 

location, this is translation of all that 

data there. Got the location number, the 

carrier number the sample was in, the 

activity to .6E to the minus 3. This is the 

initial count. This sample was started on 

7/5/1995 at 8 a.m. and stopped 

approximately, what is that, six days later, 

9 a.m., so this would be a weekly air sample 

that’s going on. And this count was 711 at 

1:00 in the afternoon, so about 5 hours 

afterwards. So, this is what I call the 

initial count. The DAC value was .158, but 
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this off an initial count so you’ve got a 

lot of radon on that sample. Twenty-four 

hours later, you’re down here at the --

above the MDA, just barely, 1.9U to the 

14th, the DAC level is actually less than 1 

percent of the DAC, .01. So, 24 hours, the 

actual true count on this is less than 1 

percent of the DAC. We’re proposing to 

assign 10 percent of the DAC as a chronic 

exposure. Again, that was lab C-114. Why was 

I picking on C-114? This is why, and let me 

read this. This is -- you’ll notice here 

this name here, D.K. Peeler. 

“As requested, we have evaluated 

the potential for volatilization of uranium 

and thorium compounds while making samples 

of glass and furnaces in lab C-114 of 

Building 773A.” So, C-114 in this time 

period, in 1996, was definitely using 

thorium in that lab making these glass 

samples.

“The furnaces are on the bench 
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top in the lab and not in radiohoods. The 

ultimate concern is the potential for 

airborne radioactivity in the lab. Airborne 

or even significant surface radioactivity 

contamination has not been and should not be 

a problem in lab C-114 in its current role 

for the development work making surrogate 

glass samples.”

Discussion. “Preparation of 

surrogate glass samples using uranium and 

thorium oxides has been going on in this lab 

for some time with the furnaces on bench 

tops outside the radiohoods. From 

communications with D.K. Peeler, the 

researcher for this work, uranium oxide and 

thorium oxide used in the glasses are high 

purity reagent grade chemicals; therefore, 

radionuclide impurities are not a concern. 

Also, the oxides of uranium and thorium are 

very stable at the temperatures used in the 

furnaces. Volatilization of uranium or 

thorium will not occur.
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Historical radiological survey 

and air sample data for the lab were 

reviewed and new smears were taken on the 

upper exterior surfaces of the furnace when 

hot air escapes during the operation. All 

smear data met clean area limits. Air 

entering the lab from the outside corridor 

moves past the furnaces on the way to the 

radiohoods where it is exhausted from the 

room. The air sampler in the lab is 

positioned next to one of the hoods and 

should detect airborne radioactivity which 

might escape the furnaces. 

The past nine months of air 

sample data show only background levels. 

This is a clean, well-run laboratory with no 

history of radiological problems. The 

evidence noted above supports the operation 

of furnaces on the bench top to make the 

surrogate glass samples. HPT supports the 

continued use of the lab in its current 

mission with the furnaces outside the 
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radiohoods.”

So, Health Physics here is doing 

an analysis of thorium use in this lab and 

determining there’s no potential for 

exposure. The potential for exposure is 

there, but it’s being monitored, it’s being 

controlled, is what I should say. Sorry.

So, the radiological work 

permits, I wish I could show them here but 

these are Official Use Only, lots of 

Personal Privacy Act data. I wanted to go 

through the sections of them because I think 

they’re important, and I do have some here 

that I can show the Board Members, but I 

can’t show them in public because of all the 

names on them. But there’s a requester 

section which identifies the tasks to be 

performed, there’s a radiological control 

operation section which identifies the 

monitoring requirements, and then the 

approvals. Each of these RWPs have sign-in 

sheets which have the RWP number, the name, 
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the Social Security number, the department 

and craft of the worker, the work location, 

the time in and time out, so all this data 

is in the RWPs that are available. 

We’ve only collected a few 

examples to show you all here the 

radiological survey log sheets, the air 

sample log sheets, and radiation work 

permits. They’re typically filed together 

through the 2003 time frame. In EDWS, the 

database system that both Joe and I have 

access to, there’s two record sets that I’ve 

identified, there’s a QH series which has 

2,695 records/boxes of this data. QR series 

which has 7,651 records/boxes. The reason I 

say records/boxes, well, we’ll get to that 

in a minute. 

Within this group, this is for 

the whole site, within this group the QR 600 

series pertains to Savannah River Technology 

Center, or 773A. Within this group, there’s 

407 records/boxes for this one building. 
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Some of the records contain 200 pages which 

would be on folder in a box, others contain 

2,500 pages which is an entire box, so we’re 

looking at somewhere between roughly 40 

boxes and 400 boxes of radiological 

monitoring data in this building that are 

available. So, what we’re proposing to do is 

assign this 10 percent of the DAC. We feel 

that they were covering the building pretty 

rigorously, they were meeting compliance 

with federal regulations, modern federal 

regulations. We’ve demonstrated the work 

that was going on there with this glass 

mobilization. We’ve got one evaluation where 

Health Physics specifically came in and 

looked.

When we assign the 2E to the 

minus 13th microcuries per CC air 

concentration to a worker in 773A, these are 

the doses we’d come up. For the lung we’re 

looking at about 700 millirem, for the bone 

we’re looking at about 5 rem thorium Type 
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M. so, this is the doses that we are 

proposing to assign.

I know we had put in our previous 

response of the whole body counts, what we 

were using, and lots of these findings are 

related to the whole body counts. Because of 

the questions and in order to solve them we 

would end up resulting in even more 

conservative assumptions. We just got to 

doses that we didn’t feel were warranted or 

reasonable given all of these other 

radiological controls that we have for this 

building in this time period.

So, in summary most of the 

thorium on site was stored in waste or it 

was waste/storage encapsulated fuel, very 

low unencapsulated inventory, more thorium 

inventory in the 1990s and 2000s than the 

‘70s and ‘80s, minimal use in certain 

defined areas, mostly 773A, knowledge of the 

process. We went through and we looked at 

the different processes. Through interviews 
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with SC&A and Brad from the Board here, they 

talked about doing gram quantities of this. 

Post-1990 it’s mostly used as a surrogate 

for Defense Waste Processing. Radiological 

controls procedures are in place, routine 

monitoring, daily, weekly of the workplace, 

survey data, air sample data available. This 

is all in electronic PDF format, meaning 

PDF, it’s electronic but it’s not a 

database. It’s not something that we can 

immediately start searching. We’ve have to 

code it. 

1972 to 1989 we’ve got this 

alternate bioassay method for 

americium/curium/californium/thorium, is a 

gross alpha for thorium. The doses are 

reasonable. 1990 to 2007, compliant 

radiological control program, air is 

controlled to 10 percent of the DAC and 

that’s what we propose assigning. Any 

questions?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks, Tim. 
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Joe or -- do you have any questions now, or 

–

MR. FITZGERALD: I was going to 

defer to the folks on the phone. I did not 

work as much on the original thorium paper, 

but we have three of the four authors I 

think available. Anyone have any comments 

before we get into the specifics?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And short of 

what’s in the findings, we don’t have –

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, right, 

right.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Preliminary, 

yes, yes. 

MR. FITZGERALD: General stuff. 

MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. I 

do have a question on the presentation. And 

it was sort of towards the beginning, it was 

a slide entitled Bio. I think it showed the 

-- I guess the schedule for -- you were 

giving a letter designation and it would say 

whether you had -- no, not quite that one. 
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DR. TAULBEE: Not this one?

MR. BARTON: This one right here. 

No, no. It showed the -- it had designations 

TUV I believe, and that was the amount of 

bioassays per year that you were to be 

scheduled on. Yes, there we go, that was it, 

one back. 

DR. TAULBEE: One back. That one?

MR. BARTON: Yes, right there. 

Okay. So, I see if I’m reading this 

correctly in 773A the -- okay, so the 

maximum potential worker would have been 

scheduled for two AM/CM/CF urinalysis 

samples per year if you were the maximum 

potential group. But I also see a V, but I 

didn’t see anybody assigned to the four 

samples per year. So, my question was, is 

there a group of workers either in 773A or 

somewhere else on the site that would have 

been actually assigned a schedule that would 

be four samples per year, which would be 

significantly double the maximum of source 
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worker at least based on that past slide.

DR. TAULBEE: Let me look that up 

here, just a second here. This is in the 

SRDB, by the way. 

MR. BARTON: I was just curious if 

they had that designation so I was wondering 

is there a group of workers that weren’t in 

773A that were -- had a higher exposure 

potential to those trivalent actinides that 

were maybe in another location and how does 

that location relate to any potential 

thorium, you know, laboratory experiments or 

operations that could have been taking 

place, or was there another area of the site 

where they were doing operations 

specifically with these trivalents that 

posed a significant -- enough exposure 

potential to warrant four samples a year as 

opposed to the two for the maximally exposed 

individual in 773A?

DR. TAULBEE: I do not see anybody 

where they used the V category.
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MR. BARTON: Okay. So, it was 

available there but nobody actually feel 

into it.

DR. TAULBEE: That’s the way it’s 

looking, yes.

MR. BARTON: Okay. 

DR. TAULBEE: They might have been 

using it in an earlier version.

MR. BARTON: Now, as far as the 

work performed actually with the trivalent 

actinides, I kind of got the impression but 

maybe I was misunderstanding your 

presentation, that the actual monitoring for 

those three which may include some alpha 

from thorium as well, was that focused on 

the 733A area, or was that, again, sort of a 

site-wide thing that they measured similar 

to the in vivo counts for neptunium that we 

discussed earlier? Was it site-wide or was 

it really more focused on this set of 

specific laboratory areas?

DR. TAULBEE: It was focused on 
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the 773 area primarily. However, there were 

other areas, I’m trying to think here. Let 

me see, is U one of them? Yes, if you look 

up on the slide that I’ve got up here, 221F, 

Selected Personnel, I can’t -- maybe I can 

point to it with the cursor here. Here we 

go. If you look at this particular line, 

their bioassay category was C and U, so some 

people in 221F would be monitored two 

plutonium per year, and two 

americium/curium/californium. This is due to 

the actinide, what was the laboratory F 

area? 

MR. MAHATHY: 772?

DR. TAULBEE: No, no, no, not 772. 

There’s the Separations for high-level 

transuranics. I can’t remember the name of –

MR. MAHATHY: I don’t remember the 

last –

DR. TAULBEE: There was a special 

part of the F canyon that was used for some 

of these separations of 
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americium/curium/californium.

MR. MAHATHY: MFFP.

DR. TAULBEE: MFFP, Multipurpose 

Fuel –

MR. MAHATHY: Facility.

DR. TAULBEE: -- Facility. So, 

that was a – 

MR. BARTON: Okay. That would be 

more focused on the actual trivalents, not 

necessarily -- I mean, was there any thorium 

exposure potential in that operation, as 

well? I guess, what I’m asking is have we 

gotten to like what percentage of the 

available data set the coworker distribution 

was directly for 773A versus, you know, 

maybe some of the other areas at the site. I 

don’t know if that information has been 

looked at or not. I was just curious.

DR. TAULBEE: We haven’t looked at 

it in a specific standpoint mostly because 

the vast majority of the 

americium/curium/californium is coming -- or 
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the bioassay is coming from 773A. 

MR. BARTON: Okay. So, suffice it 

to say that the majority of the data is 

coming from there. We just don’t have an 

exact –

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. BARTON: But the majority was 

focused on those laboratories.

DR. TAULBEE: Absolutely.

MR. BARTON: Okay, thank you.

DR. TAULBEE: And these were the 

same labs that were using the thorium. 

MR. BARTON: Okay, thank you. That 

was my question.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, okay. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Can I ask 

that we take a quick comfort break.

DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I know we’ve 

got a lot to get through, but take maybe 

just five minutes, if we can limit it to 

five minutes.
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DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then 

return, and we may want to reorder the final 

agenda, too. Come back at maybe 3:15.

MR. KATZ: It’s 3:12 right now, so 

–

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, mine says 

3:10, 3:17, whatever, five minutes.

MR. KATZ: Yes, we’ll be very 

precise about this.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. All 

right.

MR. KATZ: Some time before 3:20.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. All 

right.

MR. KATZ: Okay.

(Whereupon, the proceedings went 

off the record at 3:12 p.m., and went back 

on the record at 3:22 p.m.)

MR. KATZ: Mark, Jim Lockey’s 

still out of the room but if you want to 

talk about just reorganizing the afternoon, 
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that’s fine.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, sure. Yes, 

I was thinking I would like to move that 

last item up maybe just to discuss it now, 

the subcontractor question. 

MR. KATZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That way in 

case if people have to leave, and then work 

our way through, I think there’s 30 findings 

on the other -- the thorium piece, so I 

wanted to get through that first. And maybe 

even look at our calendars, too, to think of 

a next date.

MR. KATZ: Yes. No, I think we 

should do that.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: In fact, maybe since –

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We can do that 

right away once Jim comes back in, if you 

want.

MEMBER CLAWSON: He’s on the 

phone.
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MR. KATZ: Okay, thanks. Brad was 

just saying Jim’s on the phone. So, Jim’s 

back in the room with us, so why don’t we --

you want to schedule first?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Yes, let’s 

look at calendars.

MR. KATZ: So, folks, look at your 

calendars and let’s see when we can meet, 

because we have -- we know we’ll have plenty 

of material ready. Joyce -- Joe thought 

Joyce would be ready in about three weeks.

MR. FITZGERALD: I would think so. 

I’m going to talk to her when she gets back, 

but certainly she can address this if she 

has the availability. 

MEMBER LOCKEY: You’re talking 

about February or March?

MR. KATZ: So, I guess we’re 

beginning the end of February. Right? I 

mean, right now we’re on the 5th, so the 

week of the 24th, is that enough time for 

Joyce?
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MR. FITZGERALD: That probably 

would be pushing it. I would think maybe the 

latter part of that week would be better.

MR. KATZ: Right, that’s what I 

was thinking, the 26th?

MR. FITZGERALD: Which would be on 

the 27th –

MR. KATZ: 27th, 28th. How are 

those dates for folks?

DR. NETON: I’m available, if 

we’re talking about doing a teleconference.

MR. KATZ: That’s February. Yes, 

we could do it by teleconference. Right. And 

we’d have Live Meeting again so you could 

present.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, those are 

okay for me. 

MR. KATZ: So, 26th, anybody have 

a problem with that, or the 27th?

MEMBER LOCKEY: Teleconference?

MR. KATZ: Yes, teleconference.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So, the 26th
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then, Ted?

MR. KATZ: Yes, why not? Let’s do 

the 26th. 

MEMBER LOCKEY: We’re talking 

February?

MR. KATZ: That’s February 26th, 

and let’s -- we can start at, let me see, 

for westerners folks let’s start at 10 a.m. 

Is that okay for you folks out west?

MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, 10 a.m. 

Eastern Time?

MR. KATZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

MR. KATZ: Okay, 10 a.m. the 26th, 

another meeting. And I’ll get that posted. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And then 

if we could, if it’s not too disjointed, if 

we can just move for a second to the last 

item on the agenda. And I’m not sure who can 

open up this topic, whether it’s Joe or Tim, 

but I think we should discuss this one in 

case there’s any actions that need to be 
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considered. I think it would be good to do 

that now before people have to leave or 

whatever.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Go ahead, Joe.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you. This 

is Joe. Yes, I, I guess, added this to Tim’s 

list on the agenda, and primarily because he 

and I have been dealing with this issue I 

think since last August. It involves really 

sort of a basic question of how the 

subcontractor records or database, that 

pedigree, the same question we deal with 

almost every SEC site, how it was validated. 

And the question arose in an interview we 

had with a former HP who we have talked to 

several times in the past, who kind of 

clarified the status of how subcontractor 

records were maintained at Savannah River. 

And as I recall, and Tim can 

correct me here because, again, he has been 

addressing, I guess, the question of the 
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completeness of the database. What this 

individual mentioned was that, you know, at 

Savannah River you had several types of 

construction trade workers and contractual 

arrangements. Clearly, you had DuPont 

construction workers who were pretty much 

treated from a dosimetry standpoint the same 

as DuPont employees. They were included in 

the database, and there wasn’t much 

distinction made. And you have some -- I 

think it was mentioned a little earlier, 

like Shaw Construction and some other subs 

that were basically doing work for DuPont 

exclusively and fairly frequently in the 

earlier days.

The reason there’s a concern is 

that toward the mid to late ‘80s, similar to 

other DOE sites, this isn’t exclusive to 

Savannah River, the Department at its sites 

started using more and more first, second, 

even third tier subcontractors to handle a 

lot of the work, including radiological 
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work. So, one of the subjects we raised with 

this interviewee was since he was very much 

familiar with the way the records were 

maintained and all that, was how the 

subcontractor files were maintained. And he 

indicated that yes, you had DuPont 

Construction subcontractors who basically 

were historically and traditionally kept in 

the same bin as employees, but then you had 

some of these other subcontractors from the 

outside, let’s put it that way, who were 

maintained in the company files, meaning 

that the information was filed in my company 

and maintained that way. 

And I think that was sort of a –

not so much a revelation, but sort of an 

issue that we wanted to address from the 

standpoint of how complete were the company 

files? In other words, understanding how 

complex things began to get in the late ‘80s 

into the ‘90s, how sure was he? Could he 

recollect how complete these subcontractor 
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files were at Savannah River given the fact 

that more and more reliance was being placed 

on the subcontractors coming in. 

And maybe a secondary question 

that came up a little later was how sure was 

he that these records, the individual dose 

files that were in these company files, that 

they were, in fact, migrated to the 

electronic database that Savannah River 

maintained, and for which the records, in 

fact, are the ones that NIOSH has obtained 

and is the bioassay records that are being 

used. So, sort of two questions, the 

completeness of the so called company files 

that were developed and maintained, and then 

sort of a secondary question of to what 

extent were these completely migrated into 

an electronic database?

And I will switch to Tim, because 

I think the real -- the first question. I 

mean, this is sort of kind of developed as 

part of the interview process, wasn’t by 
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design, but sort of these tidbits started 

coming together, and it was -- and we reinterviewed this individual because we 

wanted to clarify some questions that both 

of us had really on what he really meant, 

make sure we clearly understood what he 

meant. And maybe to draw him out a little 

bit on his recollection. And this is, again, 

20, 30 years ago, so it’s a challenge of 

what he remembered as the process by which 

these found there -- the individual dose 

files found their way into an electronic 

database that we’re now relying on.

But the first question I want to 

come back to really, and I think we’ve 

touched upon this in the past, Tim, is what 

NIOSH has done, because this is really a 

first principle sort of question, which is 

the validity of the database, in this case 

the subcontractor database, and what -- in 

terms of the pedigree and the completeness 

of that file, what NIOSH had done in the 
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past to validate the completeness of that 

file, because I think that is the first 

question. And the second question is, does 

this change anything, or does it necessitate 

any additional review? So, maybe you can 

start with the first question.

DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

MR. FITZGERALD: Rather than jump 

in the middle of it all.

DR. TAULBEE: Let me go back to 

what it was we presented I believe it’s the 

December 2008 time frame where we did this 

early evaluation.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: And this was where 

we took the electronic database, and we were 

comparing from the dosimetry files that we 

had, the quarterly reports. These are largescale printouts of the numbers of workers in 

a given time period, were they showing up in 

the electronic database? Keep in mind that 

this comparison that we were doing was from 
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the 1960s up through 1975. And we looked at 

construction trades workers, but one of the 

things that -- what we found was that in the 

hard copy records of the dosimetry, we found 

more records than were in the electronic 

database. Part of that was because one of 

the things that [identifying information 

redacted] didn’t talk about when they were 

forming that early HPAREH data set, if a 

person never came back to the site, they 

never re-entered their records. So, it was 

only when a construction trades or an 

employee came back that they re-put them in 

there, so there was a discrepancy as far as 

the number of workers. And we had more paper 

copy records than what was in the electronic 

database. But we only evaluated up through 

1975.

What I’d like to -- it sounds 

like, if you all want us to do that, we can 

evaluate it in the more modern era starting 

say 1975, 1980, 1985. I don’t recommend 
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trying to do this on an every year type of 

basis just because the -- it gets to be too 

much. There’s a lot of data in the hard copy 

records that we have in-house in the SRVB, 

and to compare that against what’s in the 

electronic database is very time consuming. 

So, if we could limit it down to just a few 

years to do a sampling type of standpoint, 

that was how I would recommend doing this 

verification or validation of what it is 

that we see from hard copy records to this 

electronic records. So, that answers one 

part of your question that you’re getting 

at.

But if the subcontractors 

themselves -- and this is where [identifying 

information redacted] was making the 

statement that he felt they had all been 

migrated into the current database. I’m not 

sure exactly how we go about verifying that 

other than trying to identify some people 

who were clearly subcontractors and pulling 
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their records, and looking to see what do we 

have? Do we have a complete complement of 

what’s in the electronic database? Do we 

have the hard copy records? Was this person 

expected to be monitored? And I’m not quite 

sure how we want to go about doing that.

I thought it would be pretty easy 

to identify -- try and identify a group of 

50 or 60 workers, I mean, request their 

records and then see what we get and compare 

that to the electronic databases, both the 

bioassay database which is HPRED that he was 

talking about, as well as the HPAREH which 

is the external dosimetry databases. And 

that was where we began to run into a little 

bit of a roadblock of how do we identify 

these people? And this is where I think 

earlier on we were talking about going with 

-- talking with CPWR to see if we can 

identify any of those workers. And then 

trying to go to the site. And it just began 

to run into a whole bunch of issues of do we 
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have, you know -- it’s kind of commissioning 

a study that if they’re not claimants, do we 

have rights to their particular –

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is not 

an epi –

DR. TAULBEE: This isn’t an epi 

review, that’s right. So, I’m not sure where 

that’s going to go from that standpoint. We 

could try to go through another option, is 

we could go through NOCTS and try to 

identify subcontractors, pull all of the 

subcontractors that we have that are 

claimants, that we can identify and evaluate 

their records, in particular, against the 

electronic records, against the hard copy 

and see what we get. That’s something that 

is possible to do.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And I 

actually thought, you know, putting this on 

the agenda was sort of an opportunity to 

kind of think out loud on this a little bit. 

I agree it’s not necessarily a 
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straightforward issue. I think you can 

bracket it by time frame which you have 

already proposed, which I think is a good 

idea to kind of keep it –

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that particular 

part of the study is easy for us to do. We 

can do that now based upon the records we’ve 

got.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: It’s that second 

part of your question dealing with just the 

subcontractors –

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, and that’s 

kind of raised –

DR. TAULBEE: -- that’s really 

difficult.

MR. FITZGERALD: -- by the issue 

that we heard that, you know, he thought 

most of them, or all of them were migrated, 

but he wasn’t sure, and the hard copies 

apparently have been destroyed. There might 

be microfiche versions left. 
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DR. TAULBEE: There’s microfiche 

versions. 

MR. FITZGERALD: There’s a little 

uncertainty there, so I think you sort of do 

have the sampling process, and we have used 

that technique at other sites faced with the 

same circumstance. You do the best you can, 

you take, you know, what’s a good number? 

You know, we’ve taken 20, 30. I remember we 

did this at Los Alamos, we did it at Mound, 

even, I think. But just take a sample of 

workers most likely to have exposure 

potential and just see if one finds them in 

the database or not.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: And one can go 

from there. Now, how you do that is the --

and this is what we’ve been sharing, you 

know, ideas, the best way to put it. Try to 

be representative, which that’s easy to say 

but harder to get to, which is 

representative of not only time frame, but 
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job types, and maybe locations, perhaps. 

But, you know, just trying to be 

representative of that, and that’s where I 

felt that perhaps drawing from several 

sources might give you a diversity a little 

bit, maybe NOCTS for a third of this, maybe 

CPWR for a third, and maybe a third from 

some other source, but just basically have a 

pretty good suite of individual 

subcontractor workers with radiological 

exposure potential, not necessarily dose. 

And then go ahead and search by identifier 

against the database. And there’s no magic 

number, but if you get 50 percent or 95 

percent, I think that would be an indicator 

either way that you’re either in fairly good 

shape, or not so good shape. And that would 

be at least an indicator back and you can go 

from there.

Actually, I was more -- that I 

can actually see easier than trying to 

figure out, it’s like proving a negative, 
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trying to figure out whether or not the 

filing system actually captured the various 

and sundry subs that were at the site, 

because I know most sites, particularly as 

you get into the ‘90s, it got to be where 

you had all kinds of subs, even second, 

third tier subs were coming in and out, and 

I don’t know if anybody was systematic would 

have been Savannah River, but I don’t know 

whether that was the case or not. So, that 

part of it is more difficult in my mind to 

demonstrate that you could capture all these 

second and third tier subs. I don’t know how 

to do that except maybe to sample using 

individuals that came in as second and third 

tier subs. 

DR. TAULBEE: Well, that’s where I 

was -- you were trying to get at with the 

potential help from like CPWR or something.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, somebody 

like electricians who worked for, you know –

DR. TAULBEE: This particular 
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company.

MR. FITZGERALD: Who worked for 

Shaw, was brought in by Shaw, and they were 

subcontractor, Shaw is a subcontractor, that 

would be a second tier. And if they’re in 

the system, I’m pretty confident that that 

system is pretty complete. And if one could 

find those identifiers in the electronic 

database, then –

MR. MAHATHY: You know, we did 

look at people interviewed from Shaw. 

DR. TAULBEE: Right. We have a 

significant number of NOCTS claimants that 

worked for B.F. Shaw, and we have 

radiological records for them.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: And the same for 

Dunne Electric, and so forth. 

MR. FITZGERALD: But, actually 

hearing that this was, you know -- his 

comment that he felt all this was migrated 

was actually a bit of a saving grace because 
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I think originally I was concerned that 

you’d be looking through paper files trying 

to do the same thing. This way I think you 

have a test of saying okay, you know, let’s 

see if one could actually run the 

identifiers and sort through the electronic 

file and find those names, which once you 

have the names, at least that part, the 

process part of it it’s faster, yes. 

DR. TAULBEE: True. I’m concerned 

about how we identify those names.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the sampling 

process itself. I mean, is there any other 

thoughts on the phone? I think Tim and I 

have been kicking this around for a few 

months, but the sampling plan, how you pick 

the sample, I agree completely is probably 

the trick in this, that’s not as 

straightforward as anything else. I mean, I 

think the result is, you know, the pathway 

is clearer than the actual sampling. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Hi, this is Arjun. 
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Can you hear me?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: So, I agree with 

what Joe has just said, but I’m wondering 

whether we can find the names of a few of 

the smaller subcontractors and some workers 

who worked for them maybe from among the 

claimants to see -- to check whether the 

smaller subcontractors are adequately 

represented. So, I understand the 

difficulties of kind of trying to compile a 

list of subcontractors and doing the 

representative, however you might do that, 

but it might be worthwhile to make sure that 

the smaller subcontractors are represented 

properly in a less complete way at least. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

that’s kind of what we were saying, that 

your second tier -- how do we get to those 

second tier companies that would be smaller. 

And if they’re represented, then I think the 

confidence level goes way up.
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DR. TAULBEE: Right.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. So, what I 

was saying is rather than looking at 

individuals is good, but maybe we should 

start with -- a parallel path would be to 

have the names of a few smaller 

subcontractors and find claimants from among 

them. Maybe we’re saying the same thing, I 

don’t know.

MR. KATZ: You are saying the same 

thing, Arjun.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay.

MR. FITZGERALD: We would look for 

the small companies and then try to run 

against the database. You can’t run the 

companies, but you can run the individuals. 

MR. KATZ: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: How do we identify 

those small companies?

MEMBER CLAWSON: I think, 

basically, you’d end up going to -- because 
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part of this, where this came up from is 

when we did interviews at Savannah River, 

the electrical people were the ones that we 

were talking to. They know who the subs 

were. My understanding is that there was 

approximately five or six major companies 

that did business out there, and then there 

were subs underneath them. Those subs may be 

working for four or five different companies 

out there, but they got all their people 

from the hall. So, what I would say is do --

also bring kind of a level of confidence to 

the claimants, I would utilize some of those 

people’s areas of expertise. You know, I 

know that Kerhoot (phonetic) could probably 

help us get some subcontractor names. And I 

know there’s a couple of more locals out 

there that could give us some major ones and 

who their subs were underneath them. I think 

we’re going to have to ask some of the 

people, even some of the people at the site, 

the gal that we went and saw that one day, 
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she started going through a list of subs she 

-- well, there was Shaw, and then there was 

these that were underneath them, and we went 

through there. Utilize the people that 

actually worked out there, I guess is what 

I’m saying, to be able to pull these out. 

But to make sure to the claimants that they 

know how in depth we’re looking at it. It’s 

not bad to use them as a reference of who 

were some of these second tier subs.

DR. NETON: What do you do when 

you get the list of the subcontractors that 

you want to pursue? What’s the next step?

MR. FITZGERALD: You can’t 

guarantee they’re going to be in NOCTS. I 

mean, that would be –

DR. TAULBEE: This is different 

from subcontractors. Then we have to 

identify who was working for the 

subcontractors.

DR. NETON: I don’t know how you 

do that. That’s my point.
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DR. TAULBEE: I’m not sure either.

MEMBER CLAWSON: You know, this is 

true, but if you remember what they said in 

the record that all the people that worked 

for this subcontractor, all their names were 

put into a bundle in that contractor’s 

folder.

DR. TAULBEE: You know, that’s 

what [identifying information redacted] was 

saying before, then he said all of that got 

melded into the database. 

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. So, it may 

have been -- we don’t even know for sure if 

it’s spread out from that.

DR. TAULBEE: That’s what we’re 

trying to evaluate.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: But, see, we’ve lost 

that tact. We know the people -- the people 

that made it into the database, yes, we can 

identify them because they’re in the 

database.
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MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: But now we’re trying 

to evaluate did everybody make it into the 

database? That’s the problem. That’s what 

I’m trying to figure out.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the only 

uncertainty, the one possible out would be 

if the equivalent of those company files 

still reside in microfiche, that they 

actually, you know, recorded that before 

they ditched the paper. It’s not clear. He 

couldn’t recall to what extent that that was 

done. You know, two sets of those microfiche 

exist, but –

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. And I think I 

know what happened with those microfiche, by 

the way. The one set of microfiche went to 

record storage and that’s where I’m not sure 

where they went. The other set that came 

back to Health Physics, they cut for each 

person and put them into those jacketed 

microfiche so there’s microfilm or there 
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was, because when you go to pull the 

records, you will see where this is former 

microfilm. It’s been cut and put into the 

individual jackets. So, when they retrieved 

the records for us, they pulled that card 

and they copy all of the records off of 

there, but if the main ones are still 

intact, then I think maybe you’ve got what 

you were just pointing at, you’ve got all of 

this company together. But when they went 

back to Rad records, they cut them and put 

them into individual jackets.

MR. FITZGERALD: So, the only 

possibility is if central records maintained 

the original format.

DR. TAULBEE: We can ask.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I remember 

when we talked about it with him that was 

sort of like you know he didn’t know, so 

it’s one of these questions I guess we need 

to ask and find out. Otherwise, I think it 

is a challenge, sort of like you have to 
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then go to different sources to figure out 

historically what were your second tier 

subcontractors. And as Jim pointed out, 

either through the union hall or somebody, 

find out who might have worked for them, but 

that’s a little bit more amorphous to me, as 

far as –

DR. TAULBEE: Now, we can evaluate 

the claimants from that standpoint, because 

in the claimants’ files we get the DOL file, 

which typically would have that 

subcontractor that’s identifying, verifying 

employment –

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: -- out there at the 

site. So, we could identify some 

contractors, it’s just I don’t know if that 

type of a sampling strategy would be 

sufficient for you all. And if it is, then 

great, that’s something we can do.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the 

Work Group has to figure out, because it’s a 
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judgment call. I mean, I think you can do a 

lot but, you know, the question of the 

pragmatic, how practical is it?

DR. NETON: I think you’re going 

to start to go with NOCTS if we can identify 

the subcontractors that various claimants 

worked for and generate a list. And if it 

seems to include smaller subcontractors to a 

certain extent, that’s a start. I’m not 

saying that’s the end product, but that’s a 

place to start. If we have none -- well, we 

know we have some already, but we have very 

few additional small people, then we might 

behave differently. I don’t know. I mean, 

it’s an easy thing for us to do, it’s a 

computer search. 

DR. TAULBEE: And that would 

actually be the quickest for us to do, 

because going back to the site, remember 

everything that we’ve requested back in 

November and December is sitting in a big 

queue to be reviewed, so if we can mine 
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through NOCTS at this time and get as much, 

I guess preliminary data as possible that 

could help us inform decisions in the 

future.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, I see no 

problem with that. It would give us a better 

feel for where we’re at. We just -- in my 

opinion, we need to address the issue 

because even with CAM, the question of did 

they get migrated in, he felt they did to 

say for sure they did, that’s where the 

issue –

DR. NETON: Well, that – because, 

I mean, we can now identify they’re in there 

if we have bioassay records for them. If 

it’s not there, it doesn’t mean it’s 

missing. But if it’s there, it certainly is 

an indication –

MR. KATZ: Right. And that would 

make a sensible first step.

MR. FITZGERALD: Now, the only fly 

in the ointment would be this other question 
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of whether the sub file was complete, 

because if they’re not in upstream they’re 

not going to be in the electronic database 

anyway. And I don’t disagree, that’s kind of 

a -- it’s like proving a negative. But on 

the other hand, with subcontractors that 

kind of is the issue, whether they captured 

who was on site or not. And this is where I 

would think reaching out to the -- whether 

it be CPWR, somebody who was intimately 

familiar with the union hall and could serve 

up here are some second tier companies that 

were hiring, or did, in fact, use our 

members or whatever the case may be. And 

running that to see if, in fact, those 

companies show up. I mean, if you’re missing 

whole companies, then yes, that’s a problem. 

DR. TAULBEE: Just know what the 

whole company was.

MR. KATZ: Yes, a three-person 

whole company.

MR. FITZGERALD: I’m telling you, 
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some -- toward the late ‘80s into the ‘90s 

you got some pretty small companies that 

were doing piecemeal stuff, but –

DR. TAULBEE: And if they weren’t 

working in a rad area, they’re working in a 

clean area –

DR. NETON: I was going to say, 

the presumption that they had to be 

monitored is not necessarily true.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and that’s 

another issue. But, you know, that would be 

-- I think the NOCTS plus that would be --

and this is the Work Group, I think, has 

this. That would probably answer both 

questions, whether or not the migration 

happened. And, secondly, whether the 

companies were reflected in Savannah River’s 

files or not in the late ‘80s. Are you 

saying the late -- mid ‘80s to when? Because 

I think he pointed out that if we didn’t go 

to the early ‘90s, you were -- on HPAREH, 

you probably didn’t have a complete set. 
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Remember he kept saying that?

DR. TAULBEE: yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: I got the sense 

they were evolving this thing and was 

complete by ‘94 or something. 

DR. TAULBEE: I just think it was 

like ‘97 is what he said. We’ll have him 

correct –

MR. FITZGERALD: Some point it was 

complete.

DR. TAULBEE: He said it took 

about a decade.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, to complete 

and make sure it was –

DR. TAULBEE: To get everything 

into the records, yes.

MR. MAHATHY: And that’s a fact, 

what did other people do?

MR. FITZGERALD: So, you would 

probably want to take that –

DR. MAKHIJANI: Migration took a 

long time, yes.
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MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. But I would 

think those two sources would -- it’s not 

going to be a perfect answer, not any -- but 

it will be an indication that the reflection 

of the companies on site was fairly complete 

at the Savannah River level, and the 

migration was fairly complete. And say 

fairly because, you know, subcontractors 

it’s wishy, but at least that indication is 

there. 

MR. KATZ: Mark, is this making 

sense for you?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I’m a 

little -- I’m trying to feel out a path 

forward. I mean, I hear review -- the review 

NOCTS part makes sense. The checking with 

CPWR, I think was another parallel step that 

could be done. And I thought I heard, and 

Joe just said two, but I’ll add on a third, 

which was to check with the site to see if 

they retained any of this microfilm in 

central records.
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MR. FITZGERALD: That would be 

nice, but we’re not too sure –

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that’s --

I don’t know how hard or easy that is, but 

if you can look at this –

DR. TAULBEE: We can send a letter 

to the site and see what they say.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, and I was 

thinking if it’s possible before our next 

meeting in three weeks, I mean, maybe we 

can–

MR. FITZGERALD: We might have to 

fly down and actually look through the 

microfiche ourselves.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well –

DR. TAULBEE: I can tell you 

we’re not going to get an answer back in 

three weeks from the site.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, not an 

answer but maybe a little more direction on 

the approach, or the sampling approach so we 
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can all, you know, make sure everyone is in 

agreement with how -- you know, at least you 

might have more information on -- it’s one 

of those pieces. That’s all I was 

suggesting.

DR. TAULBEE: I think we can get 

started on the NOCTS evaluation. The other, 

I doubt.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

DR. TAULBEE: But we’re not going 

to have a report ready for then. I mean, I’m 

sitting here trying to think is it possible 

for me to get a report ready by the Advisory 

Board meeting in April, and I’m not sure I 

could for that. But just knowing all the 

reviews and everything that has to go 

through, so –

MR. FITZGERALD: Even for NOCTS.

DR. TAULBEE: Even from the NOCTS 

side. But I think we can get a preliminary 

start going from that –

MR. KATZ: It doesn’t have to be a 
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very formal report.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, internal 

reviews is just –

(Simultaneous speaking.)

DR. TAULBEE: But I do think by 

the Work Group meeting in three weeks we 

will at least be able to know whether or not 

we can produce something that would make 

some sense. I’m going to need to talk with 

the team a little bit and see what it is we 

think we can do. How does that sound, Mark?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That’s good. 

That’s all I can expect. 

DR. NETON: Our IT team is good, 

but sometimes we stretch them to the limit. 

Because this, I suspect, would be sort of a 

keyword search in each file.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

DR. NETON: It’s not like a 

searchable file at this point.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.
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MEMBER CLAWSON: Tim, the lady at 

the records center there, she seemed to be 

pretty well on the ball about it. Would it 

be out of character or -- I think she kind 

of felt what the issue was, and just to talk 

to her and see what possibilities, how we 

could double check this, because they didn’t 

have it by -- you know, when me and you 

talked to her a little bit about it she was 

able to pull up a few different things, but 

she may have some ideas, too, that may help 

us from a site standpoint to be able to pull 

this information up. Because if she can 

check out the folders for the contractor, 

because she’s the one that explained to me 

maybe what he was saying was these 

contractors, we didn’t send their dose out 

to each individual, it went into a folder 

for them, went to a contractor, and they 

gave them -- they went to each one of their 

employees and told them.

DR. TAULBEE: Those are their dose 
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reports.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. And there 

might be something from there. It might not 

hurt to try to -- I know things at Savannah 

River are hard. 

DR. TAULBEE: But I’m thinking 

that this is all -- what she was pulling up 

and showing us was all 1990s time frame, so 

I think they can pull that up from that time 

period. I’m not sure about prior to that.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: But we’ll certainly 

ask her.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Because I know 

that she started going through a list of 

contractors that they had.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, somebody’s 

got a pretty complete listing, I would 

think.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So, I 

think at least you have a path forward 
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there. And are we ready to go back to the 

thorium responses to the -- or to SC&A’s 

findings? Is it okay to move on to that now?

MR. KATZ: Yes, I think so. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And, 

again, it’s 4:00 now. If we don’t get 

through all these, I -- you know, we are 

scheduling another meeting.

MR. KATZ: Right. Maybe we could 

just run for 45 minutes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That 

sounds good. All right. So, I’ll turn it 

over to, I guess, Tim, do like we did before 

with the neptunium.

DR. TAULBEE: Sure. I think we are 

still going to run into some of the OPOS 

type of questions here.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sure.

DR. TAULBEE: So, we’ll skip over 

those. The first question, or the first 

finding is that NIOSH characterized various 

thorium storage processing activities in its 
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latest addendum to the Evaluation Report. 

However, NIOSH’s catalogue of places and 

times where such activities were carried 

out is not complete. More complete 

description of the source term is needed for 

scientifically reasonable thorium dose 

reconstructions by the methods proposed by 

NIOSH. 

I mean, we’ve got a lengthy 

response here of trying to respond of what 

all we know of the thorium operations that 

are going on in this time period from 1972 

to 2007. And, you know, breaking it into two 

parts of ‘72 to 1990.

What we have found is all of the 

work that we’ve seen has been focused on on 

773A. There is a few that we’ve pointed out 

here in our response of 235F, of fabricating 

thoria spheres, and these come out to, you 

know, about 300 grams each. They’re pretty 

small. And that kind of makes up for that 

whole 4 kilograms in the 235 building that 
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we were talking about. 

Some of the other areas from the, 

you know, the Elk River dissolution and the 

high-level caves, those workers are covered 

from that bioassay methodology we were 

talking about, the 

americium/curium/californium, and thorium 

methodology, so I’m really not sure here 

what more you all are looking for for us to 

identify and catalogue what processes were 

going on in here.

This is a chemistry laboratory, 

chemistry research building. You’ve got BWing and C-Wing, actually, and then you’ve 

got the high-level caves in E, and then 

there’s a machining area in the back. We’re 

only looking at 200 kilograms max during 

this time period, and some years we’re 

looking at 5 kilograms in the building. 

These are small quantities. These are, you 

know, literally can fit here on this table 

around us. So, I think we’ve done a pretty 
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good job of describing this, so I guess I 

would go throw back to you all what more 

information are you looking for here in 

addition to what we responded?

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. Can 

you all hear me?

MR. KATZ: Yes, Arjun.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. I think we 

have considerably more information now, I’m 

speaking a little bit from memory about our 

report, but there’s considerably more 

information points in the use of thorium as 

a surrogate, more detail than we had before. 

What we were looking for is a level of 

detail of the work that was done compared to 

who was monitored and where. And I think 

NIOSH has provided quite a bit more detail, 

and the Work Group can decide whether once 

it’s reviewed in relation to worker records 

or not, I mean, that’s a prerogative of the 

Work Group. But I think there is now quite a 

bit more detail.
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DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So, can we 

consider that one closed?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I mean, 

that’s up to the Work Group. In a sense we 

asked for this detail to compare this with 

monitoring records available, and whether 

people who were there were actually 

monitored. Now that we have the detail, 

there’s a potential to do that, but maybe 

the Work Group wants to consider it closed 

or not, I mean, that’s up to Mark and the 

rest of the Work Group Members, or whether 

they want this reviewed in a sense. I mean, 

I don’t know how -- it certainly is much 

more detailed than before. I can’t vouch for 

its completeness or not because we haven’t 

looked at all these documents that you’ve 

cited, or any related documents. Because 

you’ve done a lot of document recovery in 

the last year and a half, and done this 

analysis, and we haven’t gone over those 

documents. I think this is very responsive. 
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All I’m saying is that the Work Group might 

want to decide whether this is enough, or 

whether they want it reviewed, and whether 

they want it reviewed in relation to 

available dosimetry records. 

DR. NETON: This is Jim. I would 

say that wasn’t part of the finding was 

tying it to dosimetry records. I mean, the 

finding was that more complete description 

is needed, and it sounds like –

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. That what I 

say, responsive to the finding. It’s just 

that, you know –

DR. NETON: So, I don’t know –

DR. MAKHIJANI: Hard for us to 

sign off on the completeness of it without 

looking at it. Maybe it’s enough for the 

Work Group and that will be -- I mean, Joe 

is the task manager. I’m just speaking up 

because some of the earlier work was done –

MR. FITZGERALD: Now, the 5-1, 

that table basically has been updated. 
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Right? Or is that the same table you had –

DR. TAULBEE: No, it’s the same 

table.

MR. FITZGERALD: Same table. It 

hasn’t changed then.

DR. TAULBEE: No.

MR. FITZGERALD: It’s pretty much 

the same.

DR. TAULBEE: Right. I mean, 

during my presentation I went into more 

detail of what was happening in 1990 to 

2007.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: And then from our 

interviews back in August when we talked to 

workers, they kind of confirmed what we were 

talking about with the thorium fuel cycle, 

the small quantities and the dissolution, 

and so forth.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: So, I mean, Arjun is 

right, we have added a little bit of -- we 
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have added information as to what was going 

on, but that’s a combination of interviews 

as well as the –

MR. FITZGERALD: But it really 

hasn’t changed the baseline that you 

presented in the OTIB.

DR. TAULBEE: No. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I would 

certainly defer to the Work Group, but we 

spent August and October to November just 

going ahead and validating against worker 

interviews to make sure this was -- that we 

did not miss anything. And I think what’s in 

the description is pretty complete, so we 

don’t have any -- I don’t have any problems 

with the scope of facilities that were 

described and the history of this. And 

you’ve added the post-19 -- I guess post2000, 2007, right?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, post-1990.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, 1990.

DR. MAKHIJANI: And I might add 
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that our finding wasn’t that the -- isn’t 

the description was incomplete. It was in 

relation to places and times where such 

activities were carried out, and the 

relation to scientifically reasonable 

thorium dose reconstruction. So, I think 

those things are all connected in these 

three sentences in the finding, so I think 

there is more detail here that’s very useful 

and worthwhile.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And really 

the interviews were focused both on 

neptunium and thorium in terms of 

essentially confirming the time frames and 

the type of operations, and source terms. 

And I think uniformly they did that, so that 

is a source of validation over the past six 

months. 

MR. BARTON: Could I ask a 

clarifying question? This is Bob Barton. I 

just heard mention of Table 5-1 in TIB-81, 

the coworker model TIB. Did I hear that that 
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is not currently -- that table is not 

currently up to date as far as a complete 

source term and which facilities would be 

assigned a thorium coworker dose, or is that 

table in its current form, I guess Revision 

2, is that up to date as far as NIOSH’s 

position that the way a thorium potential --

a source of potential could have occurred, 

and these are the facilities and associated 

dosimetry codes that would be used to assign 

thorium intake. Is that table up to date, or 

does that need to be updated?

DR. TAULBEE: I believe it’s up to 

date. I need to check on that right now.

MR. BARTON: Okay. Because I did 

have a few clarifying questions on that, in 

particular, because to me that’s a major 

piece of this whole puzzle for both thorium 

and neptunium, because it pretty much 

specifies which dosimetry codes you’re going 

to use to identify workers who were at the 

particular area, and then once you associate 
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them with a particular area, then you have 

your radionuclide you’re concerned with that 

in Table 5-1 as to who is going to be 

assigned what intakes. 

And I guess one of my main 

questions was the dosimetry codes that are 

listed there, and for some facilities there 

are a lot of them, I guess where did those -

- what’s the genesis of those? Was there a 

central reference that listed those 

dosimetry codes? Were they pulled from 

experience? I guess, where did those come 

from?

DR. TAULBEE: Those dosimetry 

codes actually come from a series of 

different reports within DPSOP-40, DPSOP-47, 

and they were used by the dosimetry group 

for where badges were assigned. So, we have 

a series of tables. These changed over time, 

so we’ve got these codes by pre-January 

1973, and then we have January 1973, we have 

old code, new code. These are all documents 
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that we’ve been able to pull out of Health 

Physicist’s files. Kathy Demers was able to 

pull a bunch of these from her epi studies 

that she did, so we’ve got a 1973 version, a 

1977 version of these codes, a 1984 version 

of these codes, a 1990 version of these 

codes, and a 1992 version of these codes. 

So, that’s what the genesis of that table 

was.

MR. BARTON: Okay. I mean, just 

looking at them, I mean, you’ll have 

multiple facilities that kind of use the 

same code even in the same time period, so I 

guess I was kind of wondering, you know, was 

this done based on, you know, the best of 

our knowledge to this point, or it sounds 

like it’s kind of a combination of the SOP 

reports and some practical knowledge, but 

may not actually be a complete listing of 

dosimetry codes and locations. Do I have 

that correct?

DR. TAULBEE: No, I believe this 
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to be pretty complete. Is it 100 percent 

foolproof? No, but we’re covering about 

every two to three years for these codes. 

And one thing to keep in mind, this isn’t 

the only means that we have for identifying 

where people worked. We do have bioassay 

data, as well, which also identifies the 

particular code, or not code but location 

for a particular worker. 

Also, one other thing to point 

out is that the assignment of these internal 

doses to coworkers, at Savannah River when -

- the use of these coworker models that 

we’ve developed is actually going to be 

somewhat limited. And the reason I say that 

is, is back when we did the initial 

evaluation of the report, 80 percent of the 

workers have some bioassay in their files, 

so there’s a large number of people that 

have monitoring data for the Savannah River 

site that are claimants that we have. So, 

there’s a few instances where we have run 
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into somebody worked in an area that we 

don’t have bioassay for them and we would 

apply these models, so they’re actually 

applied to a very small number of workers. 

But, in general, these codes that I was 

discussing earlier, this is what we would 

use when we get these various variations of 

them. 

MR. BARTON: So, for example, if 

you had a worker who you didn’t have records 

for, say they had multiple codes in their 

monitoring file but no internal monitoring 

data, how is the table going to be applied 

to say, you know, they had two different 

codes throughout their employment and one 

code specifies, you know, for example, 

applying thorium, and the other code doesn’t 

specify applying thorium. Would that be 

parsed into the worker’s different time 

periods of employment, or the fact that he 

worked in that area at one time mean he was 

assigned a coworker intake for his entire 
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employment? I guess that wasn’t clear 

reading that section how this Table 5-1 is 

actually going to be implemented. 

DR. TAULBEE: We would apply it 

based on the dosimetry codes that they had 

at that time period because they did change, 

and they did -- one area would mean one --

or one code would mean one area for one 

specific time period, and then it will 

change, and that code meant for a different 

area. So, you have to interpret it, the 

dosimetry with the date, as well as the 

actual code value. And if a person worked, 

for example, and this is not uncommon, a 

person worked at a reactor, say P reactor, 

and we have the dosimetry data for that time 

period, we would not be assigning a thorium 

or neptunium dose, for example to that 

worker. But then we’ve got a dosimetry code 

showing them working in 200F, for example, 

that we would apply the neptunium dose to 

that particular worker if they didn’t have 
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monitoring in the time period that neptunium 

work was going on. Or if they went to work 

in 773A, went to go work at -- in the 

Savannah River Technology Center during the 

time period when thorium was going on, then 

we would assign that thorium dose. So, it’s 

really worker-specific, and we would parse 

it out.

MR. BARTON: Okay. And in cases 

where maybe you wouldn’t have a specific 

facility code specified in the monitoring 

record, or in the rare cases where you have 

a code that you can’t apply this table to, 

maybe it just slipped through the cracks, 

you don’t know what facility it is, then you 

would apply the unknown facility which looks 

like it applies all of the coworker 

radionuclides. Is that correct?

DR. TAULBEE: That’s correct.

MR. BARTON: Okay, thank you. 

MEMBER LOCKEY: Joe, what I hear 

you saying is that based on the worker 
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interview, it pans out and what NIOSH’s 

presentation was today –

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, our onsite 

trips were devoted to neptunium and thorium.

MEMBER LOCKEY: Right.

MR. FITZGERALD: And talking to 

workers from that era, just trying to verify 

the time frames, the source terms, and the 

facility locations, making sure that these 

facility descriptions, what was being 

addressed, number one, was valid. So, we 

talked to a fair number of the former 

thorium workers, and a fair number of the 

former neptunium workers on that basis, and 

I think it all matched up. I mean, that is 

probably the best validation we could do, 

and we also looked at whatever documents 

were available. But I think the documents 

themselves were the source of the original 

discussion, so this was sort of another 

venue to verify what was in the documents, 

making sure that nothing was missed, and 
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particularly with thorium, because again, 

sort of had this interesting history at --

and we had a couple of interesting things 

pop up that we had to run down on the ground 

making sure we heard the right thing. We did 

re-interview somebody who came up with a 

thorium activity that we thought we heard 

was related to something maybe with weapons 

or something. It turned out not to be the 

case, but nonetheless -- so, I think we 

shook it pretty good. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. I 

see this OTIB-81, Table 5-1 is, of course, 

new and there’s lots of detail in there. And 

as I was saying, there’s new detail on the 

table right now, and we haven’t reviewed it. 

MR. FITZGERALD: You’re talking 

about OTIB-81, not 5-1.

DR. MAKHIJANI: The 5-1 in OTIB81.

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. You were 

saying it’s -- it wasn’t changed. 
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DR. TAULBEE: It is up to date.

DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s new.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, it’s new 

possibly from the last time you all reviewed 

it. This is December of 2013.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, so it’s –

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. That’s what 

I was asking before. I’m sorry.

DR. TAULBEE: I’m sorry.

MR. FITZGERALD: I didn’t 

communicate very well. I was wondering if it 

had been updated and revised from the 

previous edition to be more complete.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, it has been. I 

apologize.

MR. FITZGERALD: In which case we 

probably would need to take a look at that, 

since 5-1 is sort of integral to this whole 

question, is matched up to –

DR. TAULBEE: Of who we assign the 

dose, yes.

MR. FITZGERALD: But to answer a 
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general question, I think there was a fair 

amount of validation on the thorium 

question, at least as far as history, so 

this would be a final verification on this 

revised table just to make sure the table is 

complete.

MR. KATZ: Okay. So, SC&A will 

review that before the Work Group –

MR. FITZGERALD: Is that the major 

change in OTIB-81? I’m trying to think –

MR. MAHATHY: It was a minor 

change.

MR. FITZGERALD: Huh?

MR. MAHATHY: It was a minor 

change.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I’m saying 

was 5-1 the -- if there was a change, was 

that one of the more significant ones to 

look at?

DR. TAULBEE: I’m actually not 

sure which one you looked at, whether you 

looked at Rev 0 or Rev 1, or Rev –
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DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, this is 

Arjun. I think Bob and I are looking at Rev 

2, and 5-1 is a new table in Rev 2.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right. It’s a 

much -- it’s a bigger table.

MR. BARTON: Yes, that’s my 

understanding, it’s not in Rev 0, Rev 1. It 

was in the revision of OTIB-81 that was –

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we can look. 

DR. TAULBEE: I believe this is 

from the last Work Group where you were 

asking us to identify who we would assign 

workers -- who we would assign these 

coworkers models to, so this was –

MR. FITZGERALD: Right. This is 

the mechanism. This is the mechanism. Mark, 

does that make sense?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that’s 

fine. That is an option, the right tick so 

that somebody is going to look at that.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think we 
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probably should move on to the next one.

DR. TAULBEE: Is Finding 1 closed?

MR. KATZ: So, Finding 1 they’re 

going to -- SC&A has an action.

MR. FITZGERALD: Just to look at –

DR. TAULBEE: Right.

MR. KATZ: We’ll close it at the 

next meeting assuming all goes well.

DR. TAULBEE: All right. Number 2. 

Let’s see. Significant amounts of thorium 

were involved in some activities such as 

using thorium as a surrogate for plutonium238. NIOSH’s argument that the amounts of 

thorium involved were far smaller than those 

of other radionuclides is not relevant to 

the feasible thorium dose reconstruction. 

Thorium-232 exposures need to be considered 

on their own right, and SRS during the ‘72 

to 2007 time period, as they have been at 

other sites, and at SRS during the period 

prior to October 1971. 

In our response to Finding 1 we 
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discussed the use of the thorium research 

surrogate activities. The amount of thorium 

activity is small as shown in Table 5-2 of 

the addendum. The maximum activity of 

thorium not in waste in a year ranges from 

.4 millicuries to a maximum of 39 

millicuries. We’ve revised the methodology 

to bound the thorium dose exposures, 

potential dose received from exposure to 

thorium during the period starting 1990. 

The methodology is discussed in 

our response to 27. That’s that latter time 

period, that post-1990 time period, where we 

have the maximum. I mean, we were looking at 

this 200 kilograms that’s running around 

there. We do feel that the small activity 

needs to be considered and taken into 

account. This is why we believe these doses 

are small. They were well controlled in that 

post-1990 time period. In the earlier time 

period, people were working with the 

thorium, using the thorium as the surrogates 
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were monitored with this 

americium/curium/californium, and thorium 

bioassay methodology. These are people in 

the analytical chemistry division, people in 

the high-level caves, et cetera. So, I do 

feel that this methodology is appropriate, 

even though thorium was being used as a 

surrogate for plutonium-238. 

MR. BARTON: If I could comment, 

this is Bob Barton again. I actually kind of 

see the notion that it was very small 

compared -- relative to the operations of 

the site. I kind of see that the opposite 

way. It’s very similar to neptunium. 

Essentially, what we’re talking about is 

using surrogate monitoring for a very small 

operation, but still we need to be able to 

reconstruct doses to it. And when I say 

surrogate monitoring I’ll tell you what I 

mean, because that’s not the usual way we 

use that term in this program. But, 

essentially, we’re using a very large data 
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set of -- comprised of people across the 

site, a little less so in the case of the 

Am/Cm/Cf data, but essentially we’re using a 

very large worker population that probably 

wasn’t involved in the thorium or neptunium 

operations because they were so small, to 

represent people who were but weren’t 

monitored. So, I’m wondering, this is kind 

of in line with what my comment I made 

during the neptunium discussion, to what 

extent were we able to match the thorium 

workers we do know that they were absolutely 

there, they worked with the material, they 

were doing the experiments. It’s reasonable 

to think that they likely had the highest 

exposure potential, to what extent are they 

included in this coworker distribution that 

we built. And, you know, obviously, I think 

there’s some weight of evidence that they 

have, if they weren’t included they 

certainly weren’t systematically excluded. 

But to what extent were they included for 
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the workers we do know, and then where do 

they fall in that distribution, as well?

I mean, if we take a look at it 

in all of the very upper tail, well now you 

might have a problem trying to apply this 

distribution to other unmonitored workers 

who we don’t know that could have been 

exposed at the same levels. So, I see the 

whole fact that it’s a very small operation 

in terms of worker power out of the fact 

that now we’re having to use all these 

records for workers who probably weren’t 

involved in it to try to reconstruct the 

doses to a very small number of workers who 

were, but we don’t know who they are.

DR. TAULBEE: Well, if I can 

answer part of your comment there, or 

address part of your comment there, Bob, is 

that keep in mind the work that thorium 

going on at the site was in the 773 lab, 

773A. Okay? Now, in the chemistry division, 

the analytical chemistry division, high-
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level caves, and that’s where we had this 

americium/curium/californium, and thorium 

bioassay data. Okay? So, those workers --

we’re proposing to assign the highest of 

those four radionuclides to each of those 

workers that have this monitoring data. So, 

we’re going to end up assigning thorium dose 

to some people that may not have actually 

been exposed to thorium, but we can’t 

actually distinguish the people in that 

building that had that bioassay type, 

whether they were doing some of the 

surrogate work with plutonium or neptunium, 

or one of these others in this time period. 

So, whether they’re using thorium as a 

surrogate in this time period, so we’re 

going to assign that bioassay result, that 

gross alpha result to the highest of those 

four radionuclides. So, these workers were 

monitored in that time period.

The application of the coworker 

model is to people who went into that 
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building that we can identify working in a 

regulated area that we don’t have one of 

these americium/curium/californium, and 

thorium bioassays for. That’s who would get 

the coworker model. Otherwise, if they 

worked in that building, they’ve got this 

bioassay monitoring, and we’re going to 

apply their data to that person. 

MR. BARTON: Right. And I 

understand that’s a very claimant-favorable 

approach to always use the highest 

solubility type per organ, and the highest 

radionuclide. I guess my comment was just 

kind of geared toward to what extent do we 

know -- I mean, we know that there was a lot 

of Am/Cm/Cf monitoring in the 773A area. How 

many -- I guess how many workers were 

actually in that area versus how many 

workers actually handling thorium, and then, 

you know, the add on to that is if we can 

identify some thorium workers and say hey, 

look, these guys worked with thorium. 
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They’re in our distribution of coworker 

intakes or, you know, bioassay results and 

by extension intakes. We can more 

confidently say listen, we know that thorium 

was a very small operation, but we did catch 

some of them and they were within the bounds 

of what our coworker model could assign. And 

if you can say that with reasonable 

confidence, then now in my mind at least it 

becomes more of an implementation issue of 

where along the curve you assign, do you 

assign the distribution, do you assign a 

fixed value like, you know, the 95th or 

something like that? So, I guess my comment 

was really not geared towards which 

radionuclide you assign, it’s more geared 

towards has there been any, I guess, closer 

look at how inclusive are the thorium 

workers that we do know were thorium 

workers? Are they actually in this 

distribution of Am/Cm/Cf results, because in 

my mind it is sort of a surrogate issue. And 
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I don’t assume to find this, but if we did 

take a look at it and say hey, you know, a 

lot of the thorium workers that we do know 

worked with thorium, they’re not in here. 

Then you start to question how 

representative that distribution is going to 

be in actually assigning thorium intakes to 

the small group of workers who would -- it 

would apply to because it’s such a small 

operation. You wouldn’t assume a whole lot 

of workers were unmonitored, but we still 

have to take that into consideration. 

DR. TAULBEE: So, if I understand 

what you’re proposing, is that we evaluate 

the americium/curium/californium results 

that we have, identify the thorium, the 

known thorium workers based upon our 

interviews and those type of people, and 

then look at their bioassay and see if they 

have americium/curium/californium, and where 

those results fall on the whole coworker 

model. Is that what you’re proposing?
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MR. BARTON: I think it would be 

rather helpful and illustrative to try to 

get to a point where we’re confident that 

this distribution that we’ve developed, 

which includes a whole lot of workers who 

wouldn’t have been exposed to thorium, can 

be used to represent those workers who were 

exposed to thorium, but who were 

unmonitored, and who this whole coworker 

model is designed to be geared toward.

DR. NETON: Bob, this is Jim. 

Remember that if it’s a worker who we 

thought was -- should have been monitored 

and wasn’t, they’re going to receive the 

95th percentile of the distribution, so if 

you get in the 95th percentile, if a thorium 

is the 95th percentile, fine. If some other 

nuclide has a higher 95th percentile, then 

we’re over-assigning it anyway, so I’m not 

sure there’s a lot to be gained by finding 

out –

MR. BARTON: Well, I guess that 
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what I’m saying, if you took thorium workers 

that you knew were thorium workers –

DR. NETON: Yes, I understand what 

you’re saying.

MR. BARTON: -- that were not in 

your database, and you see they all would 

be, in fact, bounded by some upper bound 

such as the 95th percentile, then great.

DR. NETON: Yes.

MR. BARTON: That’s a great weight 

of evidence argument. And, you know, in the 

off chance that you look at it and you say 

wow, look, these guys that we know are 

thorium workers that were monitored for 

Am/Cm/Cf, they’re way up there in the 98th99th, well, then maybe you have a problem. 

I’m just saying I don’t know if that work 

has been done, or if the Work Group or NIOSH 

thinks that work should be done, but I can’t 

avoid pointing out.

DR. TAULBEE: I can tell you the 

work has not been done, but if that’s 
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something that the Work Group wants us to 

do, then let us know.

MR. FITZGERALD: So, the 

assumption that you made was the 95th would 

be conservative enough. 

DR. TAULBEE: If it’s somebody 

that we believe should have been monitored 

like a chemist whom we don’t happen to have 

bioassay data for, then yes, we would 

absolutely assign the 95th percentile.

DR. NETON: Yes, like I say, if 

you have multiple distributions in there, if 

the thorium is the 95th percentile for 

distribution then we’re fine. If some other 

nuclide is a higher one, then we’re also 

fine. I’m not sure there’s a scenario there 

where we would under-assign a person’s dose. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. I 

think Bob is right, because there are not 

many workers presumably from the 

descriptions that you’ve given that you have 

some uncertainty as to whether the 95th
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percentile is adequate or not. And it might 

not hurt to look at a few workers that are 

identified as working with thorium in 773A, 

and just settle the question of what those 

numbers look like relative to the others. I 

mean, I don’t know that it will be a large 

amount of work. 

DR. NETON: Yes, I don’t know how 

much work it would be, but I guess if the 

Working Group feels like we need to do that, 

we can certainly do that. 

DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Mark?

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I’m persuaded 

that it would be good to validate it. I 

also, you know, Tim, if you look at it and 

realize it’s a lot more work than we might 

have anticipated, maybe report back to us, 

you know. But I think if it’s a quick, 

fairly straightforward activity to find some 

known thorium workers and verify that, at 

least the coworker amount bounds them, then 

that’s I think a worthwhile action. So, I 
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would support it. Others on the Work Group 

have any opinion?

MEMBER LOCKEY: If you have known 

thorium workers will you not have bioassay 

results on –

DR. NETON: No, we’re using the 

gross alpha measurement to cover the three 

different nuclides, or four, whatever. Yes, 

I’m not sure this really does it because 

let’s say you’ve got a guy who was a thorium 

worker but also worked with other nuclides 

and has a very high bioassay. It could --

high gross alpha could have come from any of 

the nuclides. It doesn’t mean because he 

worked with thorium on one occasion he 

exclusively worked with thorium, so I’m not 

really sure that that really does anything.

MR. MAHATHY: So, the work was 

minimal.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Jim, I’m confused. 

This is Arjun. Are we talking about gross 

alpha or trivalent actinide data?
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DR. NETON: Well, it’s an alpha 

measurement that’s separated out trivalent 

actinide, that’s true. But it’s a gross 

alpha measurement based on a chemical 

separation, so you’ve got potential 

trivalent actinides in there. And because 

the guy was identified as working in a 

thorium area doesn’t mean he also didn’t 

work with californium, and einsteinium, or 

whatever. So, a high bioassay would not 

necessarily indicate that that was from the 

thorium intake, so I –

DR. TAULBEE: We can look at this 

and see what we come up with. I mean –

DR. NETON: Yes. I mean, we can.

DR. TAULBEE: And see what the 

results come out.

DR. NETON: Yes, I’m not objecting 

to it. I’m just pointing out that it’s not –

DR. TAULBEE: May not be 

conclusive.

DR. NETON: It may not be 
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conclusive either way.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MR. BARTON: Yes. I understand 

there may be a number of confounding 

factors. I think even just the first order 

of being able to say the other workers, at 

least a fair percentage of the workers we 

know that worked with thorium, maybe you 

know the time frame they worked with it, and 

then you can look and see hey, they’re in 

here. At least they’re not excluded from it, 

and the ones we know that worked with 

thorium, there’s a reasonable percentage of 

them in here, and maybe you can’t make a 

definitive conclusion about whether 

something like the 95th percentile would 

always bound it because you have those 

confounding factors of perhaps handling the 

other actinides that are being measured. 

But, again, I mean it -- as Arjun said, I 

don’t think it would actually require that 

much work. I mean, if you have a list of 
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workers who worked with thorium, it’s just a 

simple matter of checking the names off, I 

would imagine. 

DR. TAULBEE: Well, if they’re 

claimants, yes. But if they’re not 

claimants, then we have to try and request 

their data.

MR. BARTON: Oh, I thought these 

measurements were from log books that 

transcended just the claimant data. Is this 

only from data that’s been pulled from 

NOCTS?

DR. TAULBEE: Wait a minute. Matt, 

this is a combination of NOCTS and the log 

books. Correct?

MR. ARNO: The trivalent data is 

all from log books, none of it is from 

NOCTS.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. That’s 

actually better. Okay, so then we should be 

able to find those people working with 

thorium within the trivalent database that 
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we formed. Correct? If I were to give you a 

list of known people that worked with 

thorium, we could look them up and get their 

trivalent data. Correct?

MR. ARNO: Yes.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. This may be –

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sounds good. 

DR. TAULBEE: -- simpler than I 

was thinking it was. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Ted, can you 

give me a sense in the realm of how we’re 

doing on time?

MR. KATZ: Well, it’s 4:32.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean, 

with -- do folks have to leave, or –

MR. KATZ: Yes, I mean, really 

about 15 minutes I should be making a move 

for the door.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. Do 

we want to do one more and then maybe call 

it – and wrap it up?

MEMBER CLAWSON: Hey, Mark, before 
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we go on, I need something right here. Tim, 

what I’m looking at is earlier today we went 

through the slides of the Savannah River 

bioassay health physics procedures. And I’ve 

been going through something, and I just 

want to put on the record as understanding. 

You understand this is a guidance document. 

It is just merely a guidance. If DOE was to 

come in and say, you know, what’s your 

program? They could go in and you could lay 

out everything that tells them well, these 

people should give this many bioassays, and 

it tells how to deal with skin 

contamination, and what forms to fill out. 

But you realize it still comes down like 

this one, airborne contamination, health 

physicists, shift supervisors will consider 

special urine samples. It’s still up to the 

operational people of how it happens.

DR. NETON: That’s what normally 

happens.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. I just 
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want to make sure, because you were putting 

up there that these people are going to be 

bioassayed on this routine.

DR. TAULBEE: This was their 

procedure. Okay? And it is guidance for the 

operational area health physicists, and they 

were -- from what we can tell, they were 

following this when we go through and we 

look at a person, but were there exceptions 

to it? Sure. I’m sure there were.

MEMBER CLAWSON: The reason why I 

say this is because in reading through this, 

because I have to go into my experience of 

it. We have -- we’re supposed to be sampled 

so many times a year, but because of our 

past history we don’t have to be, because 

they haven’t seen this much. I just am 

looking at this, and I know what you’re 

saying about this as being a guidance 

document, for the most part it was probably 

followed. But in some circumstances you’re 

going to find out that it was not. We have 
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certain guidance documents in the DOE world, 

but then our own operations have sometimes 

more stringent and less. You’re not going to 

find a whole lot of people to think because 

–

DR. TAULBEE: That is actually not 

DOE guidance that you’re looking at. That 

is–

MEMBER CLAWSON: Savannah River.

DR. TAULBEE: -- Savannah River 

operations guidance that they were giving –

this is from health physics.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. TAULBEE: This is who they 

were telling their area health physics, this 

is the frequency these people should be on.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. And this 

is when DOE would walk in and say this is 

what we’re -- this is our guidance for our 

people out here. Is there variances? Yes, 

there is. There’s not -- I just -- because I 

deal with these on a daily basis, and 
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usually there’s another document that calls 

out exactly where they’re at in that, so I 

just wanted to go on record because I find 

it interesting. This tells you each one of 

the steps and everything else like that, 

what paperwork to fill out for skin 

contaminations, to have a special request, 

it has the form here that you use, tells you 

how to label your bioassay, but as far as 

being able to use the table of 100 percent, 

I’d say no. I’d say that would come down to 

an operational decision, so I just – I’d be 

very careful with saying oh, yes, this is 

how many times they pulled bioassay because 

of this record right here, because you know, 

little side notes on here, it really comes 

down to each one of the operations. The 

health physicist for those areas will call 

more, they could call more or they could 

call less. I just worry that -- and I’ll 

tell you why, because if it says that you’re 

going to have two samples, and we have a 
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claimant that comes in and say yes, but I’ve 

only been sampled once this year, the next 

year I wasn’t, you know, what are they going 

to say, non-procedure compliance, or 

whatever. I want to just go on record 

because this really is -- this is a 

wonderful thing, but this is a guidance, you 

can do it this way, but each -- you’ll find 

out that each one of the health physicists 

for that operation or that facility, however 

they broke it down, still has the ultimate 

requirement of what they can do. And each 

one of their jobs if they start to see a 

higher amount they can increase them or 

decrease them. I just -- I worry about that 

one where you -- it’s going to be this many 

a year.

DR. TAULBEE: When you look at the 

bioassay records for the individual 

claimants that we did, it is generally 

following this. Do we see exceptions? 

Absolutely.
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MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. I just –

DR. TAULBEE: But -- and I 

recognize that, but this is the procedure 

that they were using, call it guidance if 

you want, but this was their procedure of 

how they were to be sampling. Were there 

exceptions? Yes. But what we see in the 

bioassay records tends to follow that 

document right -- that series of documents 

and the revisions, because you’ve got to 

look at it at each time period because it 

changed. Sometimes they weren’t monitoring 

for neptunium, and other time periods they 

were, so you’ve got to be really careful in 

your interpretation that oh, well, this says 

there should be two 

americium/curium/californium samples per 

year. If it breaches over one of these 

revisions, it may or may not be on the side 

of that revision, so you’ve really got to 

look at their individual records for each 

person. And what we’ve seen, it tends to 
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follow what we see here. And we see a lot of 

enriched uranium monitoring for the people 

in the 321-M which follows in particular 

that document. We see a lot of plutonium 

monitoring, four samples per year, for 

people in the HB-line. We see a higher 

frequency, which is what that procedure is 

showing us. Is it exact? No, there’s always 

going to be variations, but there is that in 

modern procedures and records. So, this is 

how we operate in a production facility.

MEMBER CLAWSON: An ideal in 

procedures, mandatory procedure compliance 

world, so a health physicist procedure may 

be deemed a little bit different. They’ve 

got the latitude to be able to increase, 

decrease, whatever. I mean, in our procedure 

world with one procedure, one, two, or 

three, it’s word for word verbatim, but 

that’s an operationalist procedure. I just 

-- I don’t want to see us, people come in 

and say yes, but according to this I was 
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supposed to get this many, and I never did, 

because it can vary. You can -- it can 

change determination of what it was on. 

That’s all I wanted to make sure.

DR. TAULBEE: And that’s in 

today’s procedures, as well. 

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

MEMBER LOCKEY: That would fit 

industrial hygiene. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks Brad. 

One thing you said was the key, that these 

are the procedures but we’re also looking at 

the records, and a change to indicate that, 

you know, that thought was being 

operationalized, you know. So, I think we 

want to compare procedures versus whether 

they were assigned, and make sure that’s a 

way to verify that whether they were or were 

not following the procedures.

MR. KATZ: Okay.

MEMBER CLAWSON: I think I took 

care of the last 15 minutes.
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CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You were 

filibustering, you did a good job. I think 

we should probably wrap it up so Ted doesn’t 

miss his flight.

MR. KATZ: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But we have 

another date in three weeks, so we’ll 

continue on and I will follow that, since 

we’ve got plenty of work to do, I want to 

keep things moving on this Work Group. So, 

thank you all, and talk to you in a few 

weeks. 

MR. KATZ: Yes, thanks everyone. 

CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you, 

everyone.

MR. KATZ: Brad for senator.

(Laughter.)

(Whereupon, the proceedings went 

off the record at 4:41 p.m.)