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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

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104th MEETING

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THURSDAY

MARCH 26, 2015

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

Pacific Time, in the Red Lion Richland Hanford 

House, George Washington Way, Richland, 

Washington, James M. Melius, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:
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JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member*

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member*

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member*

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE
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CRAWFORD, FRANK, DOL

DAVIS, TIKI

DOMINA, KIRK

ENGELMANN, RAMONA

FINDLEY, MITCH, ORAU Team

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

KNOX, WAYNE

JOYNT, GABE*

JOYNT, TOM

LIN, JENNY, HHS

LUZZO, MIKE

MCFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU Team

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RHOADS, CARRIE, DOL

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

SPLETT, GAIL, DOE Hanford POC

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAIT JOYNT, MARCIA

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

WOLZ, GERALD*

WORTHINGTON, PATRICIA, DOE

ZINK, BRIAN*

T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

PAGE

Welcome and Introduction

By Dr. James Melius, Chair............... 5

Dow Chemical Corporation SEC Petition

 (1947-1957; Pittsburg, CA)
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By Mr. LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH........... 8

Statements of Petitioners

By Marcia Tait Joynt.................... 32

By Gabe Joynt........................... 37

Reading of Proposed letter to Dow

By Dr. James Melius, Chair.............. 46

Uranium Refining AWEs WG Review of DuPont

 Deepwater Works Site Profile (Deepwater, NJ)

By Dr. Henry Anderson, WG Chair......... 49

Finish Work Group Reports

By Dr. James Melius, Chair.............. 55

Reading of draft response to public comments

By Dr. James Melius, Chair.............. 62

Discussion regarding timing of meetings

By Ted Katz............................. 65

Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee Review

 Discussion

By Dr. David Kotelchuck................. 80

Break ........................................ 96

Grand Junction Operations Office SEC Petition

 (1975-2010; Grand Junction, CO)

By Dr. James Neton, NIOSH............... 96

Board Work Session

By Dr. James Melius, Chair............. 140

Lunch ....................................... 146

Idaho National Laboratory SEC Petition

 (1949-1970; Scoville, ID)

By Dr. Tim Taulbee, NIOSH.............. 147

Remarks, SEC Petitioners .................... 215

SEC Petitions Status Update

By Mr. LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH......... 233

Adjourn

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

2 (8:30 a.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good morning, 

4 everybody. We're here for our second day of 
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1 Meeting 104, the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

2 Worker Health. And I'll turn it over to Ted to do 

3 the roll call and other work here.

4 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Good morning, 

5 everybody. Just a couple of preliminaries before 

6 the roll call. The agenda and all the materials 

7 for the meeting are in the back of the room here 

8 for people in the room. And for people online, 

9 those materials could be found at the NIOSH 

10 website, under the Board section, under the 

11 schedule of meetings, today's date.

12 So you can find all of these documents 

13 that we're discussing today there and follow along 

14 with the discussion. And you will also see the 

15 agenda for today there, and the agenda has on it 

16 the Live Meeting link if you want to follow along 

17 with the presentation in real time as it is 

18 presented here.

19 It'll show on your screen at your 

20 computer at home. So that takes care of that. 

21 Another thing, for people listening on the line, 

22 please mute your phone and keep your phone muted 

23 for the meeting.
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1 There is no public comment session

2 today. The petitioners for the petitions we're 

3 discussing today will have an opportunity to speak, 

4 but there is no general public comment session.

5 In terms of phone etiquette also, 

6 please don't put the phone on hold at any point, 

7 but hang up and dial back in if you need to leave 

8 the meeting for a time.

9 So, roll call. I'll do this 

10 alphabetically again and I'll speak to any 

11 conflicts that are relevant for today's agenda as 

12 we get to them.

13 (Roll call.)

14 MR. KATZ: Great. And then just to 

15 note, of all of these, the only conflict today, Mr. 

16 Clawson has it, and he'll recuse himself in the INL 

17 session. And that takes care of roll call. And, 

18 Jim, it's your meeting.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did you do the *6?

20 MR. KATZ: I thought I said that, maybe 

21 I didn't.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good.

23 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?
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1 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. Mr. Chairman, I 

2 move that the Advisory Board on Radiation Worker 

3 Health take this opportunity to wish a happy 

4 birthday to Josie Beach, and many, many more.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you.

6 (Applause.)

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Congratulations, 

8 Josie.

9 MEMBER BEACH: Thanks, Phil.

10 MEMBER VALERIO: Happy birthday, 

11 Josie.

12 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do I have to prepare 

14 a letter for --

15 (Laughter.)

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We did do the 

17 birthday card, so I guess that's the letter. And 

18 it was approved by the attorney. In fact, they 

19 signed it.

20 Okay. The first order of business 

21 today is the view of the Dow Chemical Pittsburg, 

22 California SEC Petition. And LaVon Rutherford 

23 will do the presentation, then followed by Board 
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1 questions. And then we'll hear from the 

2 petitioners, and then we will have further 

3 discussion and possible action on that petition.

4 So I will just tell, just for the other 

5 Board Members, I think what we'll do if we finish 

6 this up early and so forth -- I guess the next 

7 session people may be on. So between then and ten 

8 o'clock, until we start the next session, we may 

9 catch up on some more of our Board work, so just 

10 don't go running off. 

11 And, LaVon. We're anxious to hear from 

12 you.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Alright, thank you. 

14 I'm going to talk to you about NIOSH's Petition 

15 Evaluation of the Dow Chemical Company.

16 The Dow Chemical Company was an Atomic 

17 Weapons Employer facility in Pittsburg, 

18 California. It covered the time period from 1947 

19 to 1957. Dow was contracted during that time 

20 period to do small scale research on uranium 

21 recovery from phosphate residues, which I will talk 

22 about a little further.

23 A little background. Our petition was 
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1 received on June 12, 2014. The petitioner 

2 petitioned that there was a -- as a basis, that 

3 there was a lack of monitoring data. We reviewed 

4 our records, and from our records we concurred with 

5 the petitioner and qualified the petition for 

6 evaluation on August 5th, 2014.

7 The Class evaluated was for the entire 

8 operational period, 1947 to 1957, and there is no 

9 residual period for the Dow site. We are going to 

10 recommend a Class today of all workers at Dow 

11 Chemical through the entire operational period, 

12 and I will get into further discussions on why.

13 A little history. Back in the late 

14 '40s, a lot of the domestic ore hadn't -- the AEC 

15 was looking for more of a routine supply of uranium 

16 ore, and a lot of the domestic ores had not been 

17 identified at that time.

18 It was recognized that the phosphate 

19 ores contained a small percentage of uranium within 

20 that ore matrix. And so what they looked at was, 

21 is there a process that we can employ to actually 

22 extract that uranium?

23 So they contracted with Dow to look at 
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1 various extraction methods with residues and raw 

2 materials. That contract lasted more than nine 

3 years. It included small scale extraction 

4 experiments, bench top and pilot plant scale 

5 production operations.

6 The idea was that, after they went 

7 through these processes and approaches, they would 

8 scale up and put this into a production mode at 

9 other sites.

10 The Pittsburg site is 513 acres. Most 

11 of that is wetlands. Forty-one of those acres are 

12 used by Dow. During the AEC operational period, 

13 the second floor of the research laboratory was 

14 used for AEC operations. The first floor was 

15 commercial activities.

16 Stu, I don't know your pin number.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: I was right in the 

19 flow of things there.

20 Okay, so the AEC used the second floor 

21 of the research building at Dow. The first floor 

22 was the commercial work.

23 The Dow research portion consisted of 
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1 roughly seven rooms, 4200 square feet. Again, as 

2 I mentioned, the commercial work was on the first 

3 floor.

4 They employed -- roughly 100 workers 

5 were involved in this operation. That did not 

6 include support personnel. And then also, you 

7 know, that number fluctuated up and down. There 

8 was actually indications from Dow reports that they 

9 actually got some of their commercial engineers, 

10 engineers that were working commercial work, 

11 involved in some of the AEC work whenever they 

12 needed additional support.

13 Also, in addition, because I know this 

14 question is going to come up, the site is -- you 

15 know, I've gotten various indications on the actual 

16 site population. Today, the site has roughly 350 

17 Dow workers and 250 contractor employees. So 

18 that's roughly 600 people. And there's one report 

19 that indicates that during AEC operations there was 

20 up to 800.

21 However, one of our workers was 

22 indicating 400. So, that gives you an idea. The 

23 population surely adjusted over time during that 
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1 period, 400 to 800, but it does give you a feel for 

2 how many people were at the site.

3 The main three processes they looked at 

4 in uranium extraction was precipitation, ion 

5 exchange, and solvent extraction. There were a 

6 number of other activities involved in this, other 

7 different analyses that they looked at other than 

8 these three main process approaches. But 

9 precipitation, ion exchange, solvent extraction 

10 were the main ones that they used for recovering 

11 the uranium. 

12 Precipitation is the actual method that 

13 was used at Blockson Chemical. The ion exchange 

14 method, they looked at that process and then they 

15 recognized ultimately that it was not going to be 

16 a very economical process. 

17 They moved to solvent extraction. 

18 Solvent extraction was the process that became the 

19 process of choice and was the one that a significant 

20 -- well, a number of sites moved to implement.

21 However, around 1960, or in the late 

22 '50s, it was recognized that there was plenty of 

23 domestic ore, uranium ore, that the recovery of 
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1 uranium through the phosphate process was really 

2 not practical. And so around 1960 these 

3 operations pretty much ceased.

4 The raw materials involved at the site 

5 were residues and ores, phosphoric acid, and 

6 phosphate rock. The significance of the 

7 phosphoric acid: phosphoric acid was used as 

8 basically the starting point for each of these 

9 three processes. And the phosphoric acid, because 

10 of the process of converting it to the acid from 

11 the phosphate rock, it actually removed the uranium 

12 progeny. And so the radium and polonium and such 

13 were actually moved into another matrix and were 

14 not part of the acid.

15 So when we initially looked at this in 

16 wet processes we thought we really didn't have that 

17 issue to deal with. However, upon further 

18 research, we recognized that there was a 

19 considerable amount of work with residues and ores 

20 and the phosphate rock that contained those items.

21 There is no indication of thorium 

22 separations that took place under this AEC 

23 contract. Actually, there was documentation that 
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1 indicated that there could've been thorium ores, 

2 however we have not seen anything.

3 Okay. Now, this is the Claims Tracking 

4 System. We have one claim for this site. It's 

5 during the operational period. And it's kind of 

6 weird, we have dose reconstruction completed 

7 outside of the SEC period. Well, since the SEC 

8 period is the whole period it's kind of a moot 

9 point. 

10 We did attempt to do a dose 

11 reconstruction on this one claim. We looked at 

12 using Texas City Chemicals, some of the actual 

13 modeling that we did at Texas City Chemical. 

14 However, after further review, during the SEC 

15 evaluation, we recognized that there are so many 

16 other processes involved in the work that was done 

17 at Dow. Not just the solvent extraction, you had 

18 the precipitation, the ion exchange, some 

19 additional work on particle sizing of the phosphate 

20 rock and so on, that we recognized that Texas City 

21 Chemical was probably not a good surrogate data 

22 approach for that one claim, nor would it be a good 

23 approach for the entire Class.
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1 So the one claim does not have internal dosimetry 

2 or external dosimetry. 

3 Where we looked for information. We 

4 have 166 documents on the Site Research Database, 

5 and we looked at the claim file. The petitioner 

6 and petitioner's son provided us some additional 

7 information, which was very valuable and it 

8 actually gave us some different places to pull the 

9 string, basically, and look for more information.

10 We contacted Dow Headquarters. 

11 Landauer, the reason we went to Landauer is because

12 we interviewed three former workers and one of the 

13 workers indicated that they were badged and they 

14 believed that it was a contractor that provided the 

15 badging and reading the badges.

16 So we assumed that Landauer may be the holder of 

17 those records, so we contacted them. However, we 

18 did not get anything.

19 Searches on OSTI. We recognized that 

20 a number of the Dow reports, if you look at some 

21 of the reference documents that are identified, the 

22 Dow 162 report identifies a large number of reports 

23 that were produced during this operation. And, 
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1 you know, it's kind of obvious, because you can look 

2 at 162 and you can see there is one statement in 

3 162 that mentions over 248,000 uranium analyses 

4 were conducted during the contract period.

5 But that report in itself also 

6 identifies all these different things that Dow was 

7 doing at looking at different approaches, 

8 different things to maximize uranium recovery, and 

9 all different kinds of things in support of this 

10 operation. So we were able to retrieve a number 

11 of the documents, the Dow documents, from OSTI. 

12 We also did, as I mentioned, the worker 

13 interviews which we discussed the operations in 

14 itself. And, you know, although the workers felt 

15 that the exposure potential was low, they also 

16 identified that there was no monitoring. So, 

17 nobody knew exactly from an internal perspective 

18 what they would be getting.

19 All of the wet chemistry work was 

20 conducted in a hood, and with the wet chemistry work 

21 you would not expect a major internal exposure 

22 anyway, but the reason it was conducted in a hood 

23 was because of the flammability. It was not 
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1 conducted in a hood because of potential exposure 

2 potential. 

3 All the bench scale work, the pilot 

4 work, the grinding and operations, all the other

5 things for the product material were conducted 

6 outside of the hoods. And when one of the 

7 interviewees was asked about respiratory 

8 protections, he said "respiratory protection was 

9 on the wall in case of an emergency, but we did not 

10 use respiratory protection."

11 So, our internal exposure potential, I 

12 just kind of identified some of it. Uranium and 

13 progeny, if contained raw materials -- and I say 

14 "if contained in the raw materials" because, as I 

15 mentioned, the phosphoric acid in itself, the 

16 progeny, was extracted.

17 Now, there is something to think about 

18 with that as well, though. There is indication 

19 that they did work with the actual phosphate rock 

20 and the ores. One indication, which we don't know 

21 for sure was conducted onsite, but up to a ton of 

22 ore was worked with on the site.

23 And one of the things that we were doing 
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1 was actually taking the phosphate rock and breaking 

2 it into different sizes and doing acidification 

3 with it, with that phosphate rock, at different 

4 sizes to see if they could increase the amount of 

5 uranium production based on that.

6 So you had that operation occurring. 

7 And, again, other than the dealing with the -- I 

8 mean, the grinding and such, all the operations 

9 would have been conducted outside the hoods.

10 Thorium and progeny, as I indicated, we 

11 have found nothing to support the thorium-bearing 

12 ores. Again, this was a FUSRAP report, it 

13 indicated that the site did uranium work, worked 

14 with uranium ores and thorium-bearing ores. At 

15 this time, we have found nothing. That doesn't say 

16 that there wasn't something done there, but we have 

17 found nothing to prove that there was thorium work 

18 at the site.

19 As I mentioned, uranium, polonium, are 

20 typically not carried into the phosphoric acid 

21 during the phosphate rock process. External 

22 exposures would've mainly been from product 

23 material, beta and photon.
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1 Our data. We have no internal or 

2 external monitoring data. We have no air sampling 

3 or air survey data available.

4 Source term information. Without a 

5 good idea of the source concentration -- and these 

6 phosphoric acids and phosphate rock came in from 

7 not only the Florida mining, but also West Coast 

8 mines. It came from all over the place.

9 We also have some indication that 

10 raffinate, believe it or not, raffinate material 

11 from Mallinckrodt may have been processed. And 

12 the idea would be such that, I would think, that 

13 low amount of uranium in the raffinate, may have 

14 been looking to recover that residual uranium, I 

15 don't know.

16 But the source term information, we 

17 don't have a good feel for the throughput on the 

18 product material. There is indication from the 

19 reports that they produced UF4 and UF4 was sent out 

20 to other sites for further processing. So, not 

21 good source term information.

22 Process information. You know, the 

23 Dow repots are really good at identifying the 
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1 process and how the process -- I mean, the process 

2 of producing, how it actually works. But from a 

3 health and safety perspective and quantities and, 

4 you know, the throughput, we don't really get that 

5 feel, so that makes it very difficult.

6 And there is no medical occupational 

7 exposure information available, as well. 

8 So our feasibility is, based on the 

9 available monitoring records, process 

10 information, source data, they're insufficient to 

11 complete dose reconstruction with sufficient 

12 accuracy for the evaluated work Class.

13 Our evidence reviewed and the 

14 evaluation indicates that some workers in a Class 

15 may have accumulated chronic exposures through 

16 intakes of radionuclides and direct exposure to 

17 radioactive materials. Consequently, NIOSH feels 

18 health may have been endangered.

19 Our proposed Class is all Atomic 

20 Weapons Employer employees who worked for the Dow 

21 Chemical Company in Pittsburg, California, from 

22 October 1, 1947, through June 30, 1957, for a number 

23 of work days aggregating at least 250 days.
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1 Our feasibility table, again, we really 

2 felt we couldn't come up with a good approach for 

3 reconstruction of any of our internal or external 

4 components. However, if any personal or area 

5 monitoring does become available we will use our 

6 standard procedures and apply them for partial dose 

7 reconstructions. We also do feel that we can do 

8 occupational medical x-rays. And that's it.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

10 LaVon. Board Member questions? Yes, Paul?

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: The thought that was 

12 occurring to me was that, at least for the external, 

13 it would seem, sort of intuitively, that if it's 

14 bench top and pilot-types of studies one might be 

15 able to bound the source terms in terms of amounts.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: From an external 

17 exposure.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah. And knowing 

19 that, one might be able to bound external. What 

20 are your thoughts on that? Maybe you could discuss 

21 that.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, I 

23 definitely initially felt that way. I felt that, 
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1 I mean, from an external perspective, I mean, we 

2 would expect that the external exposures would be 

3 low. However, the problem we got into is there's 

4 so much information that doesn't give a clear 

5 indication of where it was done, meaning that the 

6 one indication where we had phosphate ores at the 

7 site with up to a ton of phosphate ores. And you 

8 say, okay, well, we could bound that, probably come 

9 up with a decent bounding number to that. Then you 

10 hear, well, there could've been raffinates from 

11 Mallinckrodt. Okay, well, how does that change? 

12 Then our product materials that were produced. It 

13 just becomes, you know, you're almost at a guessing 

14 game of where do you put that bound, you know, where 

15 do you set it at, from an external perspective?

16 The internal perspective, I don't know 

17 exactly where you'd go, you know, because there was 

18 just so many different throughputs of different 

19 types of materials involved, and you got different

20 exposure points with that.

21 You know, the grinding and crushing of 

22 the product, the grinding and the crushing of the 

23 phosphate rock, where did the phosphate rock 
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1 originate from? You know, was this phosphate rock 

2 Florida phosphate rock, was it Western part of the 

3 United States? There's just a number of different 

4 things that we really felt like it was going to be 

5 very difficult.

6 Also, if the phosphate rock was there, 

7 the radon exposures, you know, would've been an 

8 issue as well. We don't know anything about that.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah. So you had 

10 given some thought to that, because, particularly 

11 for those who don't meet the SEC criteria in terms 

12 of time or cancer type, it would be useful to be 

13 able to at least reconstruct the external.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. I think that 

15 something that we could always -- you know, if 

16 additional information or if we feel like a method 

17 comes up, we could always revisit that, the 

18 external portion of it.

19 You know, and you bringing that up 

20 reminded me of another thing, the claims. Because 

21 right now we only have one claim. And I know one 

22 of the questions would be, why do you think we only 

23 have one claim for a site that's, you know, 600 to 
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1 800 people, whatever?

2 And I think that's two-fold. One of 

3 them, in our interviews with the workers, the three 

4 workers that we interviewed, they did indicate that 

5 most of the people were deceased.

6 In fact, the one guy said, "Everybody 

7 I knew at the site is deceased." So, you know, 

8 that's one issue with the survivors probably not 

9 recognizing -- and the other issue was initially 

10 the site was identified as Dow Walnut Creek, A.K.A. 

11 Pittsburg. In our review, we recognized that 

12 actually Pittsburg and Walnut Creek are two 

13 separate facilities. And the Walnut Creek 

14 facility was not built until around 1960 and the 

15 actual AEC work was done at the Pittsburg site in 

16 '47 to '57.

17 So, another thought could've been that 

18 -- and we've got that changed through the 

19 Department of Energy -- but another thought 

20 could've been that workers or survivors looked and 

21 said, oh, well, my father or grandfather, so on, 

22 they worked at Pittsburg. This is a Walnut Creek 

23 thing, I can't -- so we may get more claimants that 
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1 will come, which would mean that we may need to have 

2 a partial dose reconstruction approach for.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just to follow up on 

4 that, because I think that is the key question that 

5 I had when I read the report, and also what Dr. 

6 Ziemer raised, and I thought you covered in the 

7 report and more here and addressed that issue. I 

8 just things there's, you know, just such a paucity 

9 of information to be able to do anything with any 

10 confidence there.

11 One of the things, though, that may help 

12 would be if the outreach group, whatever it's 

13 called, could do a session out near there, and it 

14 might bring some more people forward. Because, 

15 again, I'm not sure the external would, you know, 

16 help people that much, but it might, and you might 

17 get some more information that would be useful for 

18 that.

19 But at least an outreach session would 

20 also at least get more people aware of it and maybe 

21 do away with this confusion between Walnut Creek 

22 and Pittsburg.

23 Any other Board Members? Yes, Dr. 
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1 Poston?

2 MEMBER POSTON: LaVon, good report.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you.

4 MEMBER POSTON: I just wanted 

5 clarification here, because on Slide 14 you say 

6 occupational medical X-rays can be reconstructed, 

7 but on Slide 10 you said you didn't have any data. 

8 So I'm wondering what kind of magic wand you might 

9 have. It wasn't clear in the write-up that --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: We actually have -- I 

11 think it's a TIB, OTIB -- a TIB that we used that 

12 actually pulls in information from the era and we 

13 come up with a dose approach for all of the 

14 facilities. So we've been able to get support, I 

15 think, from the Board and SC&A to use that approach 

16 for reconstructing medical exposures.

17 We don't have any information, you are 

18 correct, and that is correct in here, but we have 

19 a site-wide kind of OTIB for doing occupational 

20 medical exposures.

21 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. You just didn't 

22 explain it too well and I said, "Wait a minute, I'm 

23 fully awake here, I was just" --
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I appreciate 

2 that. I appreciate that.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda?

4 MEMBER MUNN: LaVon, refresh my 

5 memory, what's the highest concentration of 

6 uranium that was actually handled? My memory from 

7 the report was that it was exceedingly low.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I mean, on 

9 average, or what they were saying, it was only 0.01 

10 percent, very, very low. And you are absolutely 

11 right, from an actual amount, that is a very low 

12 concentration, but the processing in and of itself 

13 and the actual producing of the product we really 

14 felt like, you know, we didn't have enough 

15 information from the processes, the throughput, 

16 the amount of the material that was produced, to 

17 really come up with a good bounding approach for 

18 it.

19 I agree with you, it is a very low 

20 concentration in the actual matrix itself.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Of course, this is not 

22 our first rodeo with this kind of process.

23 MR. RUTHERFORD: No.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: And it still is very 

2 difficult to come to grips with the possibility 

3 that one could be radiologically harmed by this 

4 kind of process.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right.

6 MEMBER MUNN: I can understand how a 

7 dust inhalation over a period of nine years would 

8 affect the lungs, but it's difficult for me to 

9 understand, at that concentration, how -- I've 

10 never seen any documentation anywhere that would 

11 lead me to believe that that kind of low exposure 

12 could be detrimental radiologically.

13 DR. NETON: But I think the incoming 

14 material had that very low concentration of 

15 uranium, but the whole point of this process was 

16 to concentrate -- enrich is the wrong word, but to 

17 concentrate the uranium. So they ended up with 

18 quantities of uranium tetrafluoride and purified 

19 uranium that were pure uranium compounds. 

20 Now, how large a mass of that material 

21 is, we don't know. They did run these pilot plant 

22 columns that were fairly large, within the building 

23 themselves, to concentrate it. But the fact of the 
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1 matter is we just don't know. There was purified 

2 uranium there, but the quantity that was generated 

3 is unknown.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Yeah, I never saw 

5 anything that led me to believe it was really 

6 production-level quantities.

7 DR. NETON: That's correct, but you 

8 can't think of it as 0.2 percent uranium in a 

9 product. It's the purified product that we're 

10 worried about.

11 MEMBER MUNN: No. Yes, I know, but 

12 that's different than what people were handling 

13 generally in the plant.

14 DR. NETON: True.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Yeah.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie?

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, you mentioned 

18 that, in the Evaluation Report, neutrons aren't a 

19 big issue and were only mentioned on Page 25, but 

20 when I was looking at the Evaluation Report under 

21 your table for summary of feasibilities, neutron 

22 is X'd as not reconstructable, and here it says N/A. 

23 So I was just wondering --
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: It's N/A. It should 

2 be N/A.

3 MEMBER BEACH: So it is definitely N/A?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Board 

7 Members on the telephone, do you have any 

8 questions, comments at this point?

9 MEMBER LEMEN: None for Lemen.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Hearing 

11 none, I'll assume you're okay. I think next we'd 

12 like to hear from the petitioners.

13 MS. TAIT JOYNT: That's me. Thank 

14 you. I'm Marcia Joynt, Marcia Tait Joynt, and my 

15 father worked at Dow Chemical as a scientific 

16 apparatus glassblower. I'm going to read my 

17 statement here so I don't forget anything.

18 He worked at Dow at the time on projects 

19 and investigation. As a glassblower, he had a 

20 background in chemistry and engineering, as well 

21 as five years of working as a glassblower at the 

22 National Bureau of Standards from 1941 to 1946.

23 I have read the petition and 
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1 recommendation for adoption, and it is, in whole, 

2 the outcome I had requested, I have requested. 

3 Although I wanted proof that my Dad died from his 

4 exposure to dangerous levels of uranium or thorium, 

5 what I have is a thorough investigation by NIOSH 

6 that has not revealed any records that will prove 

7 or disprove anything.

8 No records of invoices, production, 

9 accidents, or incidents, monitoring, safety 

10 inspections, deliveries of raw materials by truck, 

11 van, rail, or ship have been found.

12 I might point out that the Dow Pittsburg 

13 plant is located on a slough where there is rail 

14 accessibility and ship. At the time they were 

15 bringing things in from all over.

16 No budget records, dose badges, medical 

17 reviews, or hazard reports have been located, so 

18 I must accept that those records are now gone.

19 The NIOSH report looked at what records 

20 are available and clarified the misunderstanding 

21 that the physical plant where the Atomic 

22 Weapons-contracted work of Dow was performed was 

23 in Pittsburg, California, rather than Walnut 
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1 Creek. They are about 13 miles apart.

2 And we've seen aerial photos now that 

3 show that the Dow Chemical plant in Walnut Creek 

4 wasn't even started until '62, so we know that. I 

5 first started my claim almost -- oh, and there's 

6 been sort of a misunderstanding about that because 

7 a FUSRAP report had said that it was done at the 

8 Walnut Creek location.

9 I first started my claim almost three 

10 years ago. From the first phone call to EEOICPA, 

11 I have been treated with respect and compassion, 

12 even when I expressed occasional frustration at the 

13 pace of the process.

14 Last year, my son called Josh Kinman to 

15 see if a petition to establish Dow Walnut Creek, 

16 A.K.A. Pittsburg, might qualify as a special 

17 cohort.

18 At this time, I would like to thank Mr. 

19 Kinman, LaVon Rutherford, Stuart Hinnefeld, Monica 

20 Harrison-Maples, and the whole team at ORAU within 

21 NIOSH who put this Petition Evaluation together. 

22 And I recognize I may be not clear on all my 

23 initials, I may have that wrong.
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1 They have worked on this report for nine 

2 months and we, my son and I, have been kept informed 

3 as the work progressed. I am very grateful for 

4 their work and their expertise.

5 Josh Kinman has been very helpful and 

6 gracious when dealing with the many questions and 

7 concerns voiced by my son or myself. Thank you, 

8 Members of the Advisory Board, for your time and 

9 consideration on this petition. Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you very much. 

11 You actually brought up two more questions. One 

12 is that I am hoping the FUSRAP was done in the right 

13 area, not 15 miles away, or 12 miles, whichever it 

14 is.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. Actually, the 

16 FUSRAP, they did not do any decontamination because 

17 that wasn't necessary, what they did was they put 

18 together a report. And in that report they had 

19 identified Walnut Creek but clearly the surveys 

20 that were taken, it was indicated they were done 

21 at Pittsburg.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The other question, 

23 and you mentioned it in the report, and I've 
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1 forgotten until it just was brought up, but did Dow 

2 cooperate with this effort to get information?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, actually, Dow 

4 was fairly cooperative, and they had indicated that 

5 most of the information had been archived. And 

6 they did give us some information that was really 

7 kind of proprietary information, so they've been 

8 very cooperative.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good, because there 

10 was mention earlier on that there was some trouble 

11 getting information.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I shouldn't say 

13 it easy. Initially it was tough, so, yeah.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. But they 

15 eventually did, okay. Any other comments or 

16 questions on that? If not, do we hear some 

17 suggestion for some action by the Board?

18 MR. JOYNT: This is Gabe Joynt. I had 

19 a brief comment to make.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm sorry, I didn't 

21 realize you were going to also be making comments. 

22 Okay, go ahead.

23 MR. JOYNT: Yeah, sorry. I don't 
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1 think I announced myself. So, if it's 

2 appropriate, I have a few words to say.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, please, go 

4 ahead. 

5 MR. JOYNT: I'm Marcia's son, you know, 

6 representative or co-petitioner on this, and I also 

7 wanted to say just thank you, for the Board, for 

8 considering the petition, and for NIOSH for really 

9 what's been, you know, an impressive amount of work 

10 done to work with the evidence available and kind 

11 of describe what was going on using the science and 

12 evidence available at the time.

13 The effort is impressive, and, you 

14 know, I've learned enough about kind of the science 

15 involved to appreciate how thoroughly NIOSH has 

16 pursued this and appreciate it.

17 As a student of history and kind of my 

18 own, you know, family history, I wanted to address 

19 a couple comments around the plant that can't 

20 really be described based on the scientific 

21 evidence and yet I still think are useful contexts 

22 to put around the site.

23 And for simplicity, I want to focus this 
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1 on just one interview that was conducted with Frank 

2 Woods McQuiston, who was the former head of the AEC 

3 Raw Materials Division, who oversaw procurement of 

4 uranium for the AEC prior to and during at least 

5 the beginning of the Dow contract.

6 The document is called "Metallurgists 

7 for Newmont Mining Corporation and U.S. Atomic 

8 Energy Commission, 1934 to 1982, Oral History 

9 Transcript, 1986, 1987." So, this is an interview 

10 that was conducted with McQuiston in, I believe, 

11 '86 and carried on into '87 shortly before he passed 

12 away.

13 To put one thing into context, I'm 

14 mainly just going to read directly from it because 

15 I don't want to paraphrase it too much, and it's 

16 fairly short.

17 Wilhelm Hirschkind was the head of 

18 research at Great Western Chemical. It was a 

19 company acquired by Dow, and Hirschkind oversaw 

20 research basically of this contract. And the 

21 plant, the Great Western Chemical plant, was at one 

22 point the largest chemical plant in the Western 

23 U.S., and it is the site of the current Dow 
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1 Pittsburg location.

2 Hirschkind was a German -- or Austrian, 

3 I believe, native and he was actually enlisted 

4 during -- kind of right after World War II to go 

5 and investigate German nuclear facilities and 

6 activities. So he was kind of a known expert in 

7 this area. And at this point I'll just go into the 

8 interview quotes. And I'll try to read this just 

9 as directly as I can so it's not me paraphrasing, 

10 but if I do paraphrase I'll let you know.

11 So, quoting the McQuiston, he said, "I 

12 had a discussion with Dr. Hirschkind, who was a 

13 Director for Research at Dow Company at the 

14 Pittsburg Plant in California. He was a very 

15 brilliant man and was very keen to be part of this 

16 project in South Africa." He was talking about 

17 kind of the initial procurement of uranium 

18 following the war.

19 Interviewer: "Were you still trying to 

20 be secretive about all of this also?" McQuiston: 

21 "Oh, anybody who worked on it had to be." Swent, 

22 or interviewer: "Did you have to go through 

23 clearance to talk to these people about supplies?" 
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1 McQuiston: "Oh, no, I just told them we had to build 

2 the plants. They didn't know what kind, but I said 

3 they were vital to the U.S. government. But no, 

4 we didn't. But we had certain men in certain 

5 companies, like Hirschkind, he finally got his 

6 clearance, many of them did. We already had 

7 clearance for the MIT people at Watertown Arsenal. 

8 We had clearance for those at Battelle." 

9 Interviewer: "I was wondering if it was 

10 an extra delay to have to get these commercial 

11 contacts cleared?"

12 McQuiston: "I was fortunate enough to 

13 foresee that we would need this, so I went to Dow 

14 Chemical, oh, almost nine months before. I went 

15 to Dow Chemical with Rohm and Haas, who were leaders 

16 in the development of ion exchange," dot, dot, dot, 

17 "because I had a feeling, if we couldn't work 

18 carbonate in then we would use ion exchange 

19 pellets."

20 I'm going to skip here for a moment. And 

21 then he says, "The Dow Research people at 

22 Pittsburg, California, finally made the 

23 breakthrough and we erected a small plant, made 
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1 uranium solutions by using uranium chemicals in --

2 that was a secret plant, very, very secret."

3 Interviewer: "Out here at Pittsburg?" 

4 McQuiston: "Yes. And Dr. Hirschkind devoted, I 

5 would say, 95 percent of his time, he practically 

6 took retirement to devote full-time to this 

7 project."

8 So, that's kind of the conclusion of 

9 that context, but for me it just painted a picture 

10 that this was, especially at the very early part 

11 of this campaign, or this research effort, it was 

12 very, very close to the head of the kind of raw 

13 materials at AEC, and, you know, there's not a shred 

14 of scientific evidence in that passage, but it does 

15 certainly seem to suggest to me, kind of, from that 

16 history lens, that there was potentially a lot 

17 going on there.

18 It was very urgent in trying to get that 

19 team ready to go deploy a plant in Africa and to 

20 do other work that was needed to kind of get this 

21 work launched.

22 One other just brief comment, just to 

23 echo something that LaVon had said about kind of 
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1 the city. Walnut Creek, California, is an 

2 affluent suburb. 2800 Mitchell Drive, where kind 

3 of this work had been initially attributed or 

4 described to, was one of the first, literally one 

5 of the first, suburban office parks built in the 

6 Western U.S.

7 It's kind of the place that if you go 

8 there now you'd have medical offices, there's a 

9 Kaiser facility, there's, you know, a daycare and 

10 a storage facility right next to it. It is a 

11 tree-lined, quiet little street.

12 If your dad or if your grandfather 

13 worked at a busy chemical plant, you would never 

14 think that that happened in Walnut Creek. So, it's 

15 only 13 miles away, but if you read in the paper, 

16 in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, saw 

17 something else that said workers in Walnut Creek 

18 are entitled to compensation, and you knew that 

19 your dad worked at a chemical plant, there would 

20 just be no connection between those two places.

21 Pittsburg is a bustling chemical 

22 facility on the Bay of San Francisco surrounded by 

23 rail lines and other chemical facilities. It's 
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1 just a fundamentally very different place.

2 It's not just that they are different 

3 cities, the character of those communities is quite 

4 different. And so if somebody had heard that there 

5 was, you know, an ability to file a claim or 

6 something, they wouldn't have necessarily 

7 connected the two places together even though they 

8 were both potentially Dow facilities. That's all.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you 

10 very much for the comments. I've been to Walnut 

11 Creek and I agree with your description.

12 MR. JOYNT: Yeah.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie?

14 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. I'd like to make 

15 a motion that we accept NIOSH's proposal to add a 

16 Class for Dow Chemical in Pittsburg for the years 

17 stated, 1947 through '57, June 30th. 

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: I second it.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We have a 

20 motion and a second to that. Any further 

21 discussion? 

22 Okay, if not, I'll ask Ted to do the roll 

23 call, please.
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1 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

4 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

8 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen? Dr. Lemen, are 

12 you --

13 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes. This is Dr. 

14 Lemen, yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Dr. Lockey?

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

20 MEMBER MUNN: Abstain.

21 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

22 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

23 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

3 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

5 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

7 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: And the yeas have it and the 

11 motion passes.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

13 and thank you for your comments and attention. 

14 And by the way, on the Dow, I have a

15 letter ready which is being copied, we'll do that 

16 later today when we have time and when the letter 

17 gets copied.

18 (Pause.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So, let me 

20 read it into the record. "The Advisory Board on 

21 Radiation and Worker Health, the Board, has 

22 evaluated a Special Exposure Cohort Petition 00216 

23 concerning workers at the Dow Chemical Company 
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1 Facility in Pittsburg, California, under the 

2 statutory requirements established by the Energy 

3 Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 

4 Program Act of 2000, incorporated into 42 C.F.R. 

5 Section 8313.

6 "The Board respectfully recommends 

7 that SEC status be accorded to all Atomic Weapon 

8 Employer employees who worked for Dow Chemical 

9 Company in Pittsburg, California, from October 

10 1st, 1947, through June 30th, 1957, for a number 

11 of work days aggregating at least 250 work days, 

12 occurring either solely under this employment or 

13 in combination with work days within the parameters 

14 established for one or more other Classes of 

15 employees included in this Special Exposure 

16 Cohort.

17 "This recommendation is based on the 

18 following factors: individuals employed at this 

19 facility in Pittsburg, California, during the time 

20 period in question worked on research for the 

21 production of materials to be used for nuclear 

22 weapons.

23 "The National Institute for 
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1 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review of 

2 available monitoring data, as well as available 

3 process and source term information, for this 

4 facility found that NIOSH lacked the sufficient 

5 information necessary to complete individual dose 

6 reconstructions with sufficient accuracy for 

7 internal and external radiological exposures to 

8 uranium to which these workers may have been 

9 subjected during the time period in question. The 

10 Board concurs with this determination.

11 "Third, NIOSH determined that health 

12 may have been endangered for employees at this 

13 facility during the time period in question. The 

14 Board also concurs with this determination.

15 "Based on these considerations and the

16 discussion at the March 25th and 26th, 2015, Board 

17 Meeting held in Richland, Washington, the Board 

18 recommends that this Class be added to the SEC. 

19 Enclosed is the documentation from the Board 

20 Meeting where this SEC Class was discussed. The 

21 documentation includes copies of the petition that 

22 NIOSH reviewed thereof and related materials. If 

23 any of these items are unavailable at this time they 
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1 will follow shortly."

2 So, it's in the record. If you have 

3 comments or questions let me know we can still make 

4 some changes. The lawyers have looked at it.

5 (Pause.)

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Are we ready?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: Unlike the others 

9 which we're going over today, our SECs, in our 

10 Committee, and I think most of the Committees, we 

11 give priority to moving SECs as quickly as 

12 possible, and, when time allows, get caught up on 

13 the Site Profile reviews. And this is one of those 

14 at the DuPont Deepwater Works in Deepwater, New 

15 Jersey.

16 It's a site that was laboratory 

17 research producing UF6 in early 1942. They 

18 started production in '43. And you can see that, 

19 as with a lot of these sites, they used different 

20 sets of processes to concentrate and arrive at 

21 uranium.

22 The site operated from, as you see 

23 there, at the start of '42, '43, through '48. So 
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1 it's a fairly early site. And site 

2 decontamination occurred in 1948. There was a 

3 final site survey done at the end of December 1948. 

4 And then there's a long residual period from '49 

5 through March of 2011.

6 As far as a chronology of our activity, 

7 this is one of those that started out as assigned 

8 and was being operated and managed through the 

9 TBD-6001 with an initial report in January of 2008. 

10 Then there was a TBD in February of 2011, when it 

11 became a freestanding Technical Basis Document, or 

12 Site Profile, replacing the Appendix B. And that 

13 TBD was revised in March of 2011.

14 It was assigned to be reviewed, and in 

15 August 2011 SC&A did a review of the document and 

16 had seven findings. In September of '12, the Work 

17 Group met and discussed those findings.

18 In 2013, in March, the SC&A critique was 

19 then reviewed by DCAS and they provided a written 

20 critique of the findings. Then SC&A reviewed 

21 those again and we had a report response in June 

22 of 2013. In September, the findings were reviewed 

23 at the Work Group meeting, and in October we 
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1 reviewed the Work Group reports at the Board 

2 Meeting.

3 At that time, on the resolution of the 

4 findings, there was some activity to begin to look 

5 at the review of some of the procedures, and in 

6 December of 2013 there was more comments.

7 By 2014, we were pretty well caught up 

8 and had a White Paper on the extent to which the 

9 earlier findings have been resolved in the Rev 1 

10 of the TBD. And then we had a teleconference where 

11 we basically closed out most of the findings.

12 And then one of the issues that had been 

13 discussed, and I think we were at one point waiting 

14 for the TIB-9 review, but an issue came up that at 

15 this work site the length of the work day was more 

16 than the typical 8-hour work day. And for the TIB-9 

17 procedures, really, the work days' conversion to 

18 calendar days was an issue, that for the workers 

19 who had longer hours in the work day, some 

20 discussion of how were hours assigned, and then in 

21 a facility like this where a workday was longer than 

22 the standard workday that the TIB-9 was working 

23 with.
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1 This resulted in a discussion of did it 

2 cover it or not? And the discussion was, yes, it 

3 would, and that the conversion would be done on an 

4 hour in a workday basis rather than just a generic 

5 workday, and that would result in a small increase, 

6 about 9 percent, in the daily ingestion rate. 

7 Again, this is the residual period with dust and 

8 ingestion at the time.

9 So, basically, everything was resolved 

10 and now we're just waiting for -- as you can see 

11 here, we feel we can close this out, that we would 

12 approve it, ask the Board to approve it, with the 

13 caveat that the document, Rev 1, would be amended 

14 to ensure that this calculation of the ingestion 

15 doses would be consistent with the TIB-9 that I 

16 think now has been reviewed. I think you folks 

17 have reviewed and closed it out, so everything 

18 should be copacetic right now between the various 

19 Work Groups. 

20 And so that's what we are right now 

21 asking to close this out, and to accept this with 

22 this statement as you see it here. Here is the 

23 references. I don't think, unless you'd really 
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1 like to belabor the issue and go through what our 

2 findings were and the resolution of those, I think 

3 you all received that, so I don't think I need to 

4 go through that unless -- I got a couple extra 

5 slides at the end here, but I'm not going to go 

6 through those unless you have specific issues to 

7 raise. 

8 It's pretty straightforward, and the 

9 issue on the hours was one of unusual wording, I 

10 guess, of what's a workday versus a calendar day.

11 So, any questions? I've got you all 

12 thoroughly confused after six years of working on 

13 this?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board Members on 

15 the phone have questions? I was going to say, it 

16 seemed pretty straightforward.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yeah.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: Lemen, no.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Then I believe the 

20 action will be the Board -- the Work Group is 

21 recommending to the Board that we essentially close 

22 out this Site Profile review.

23 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So it's a motion, 

2 essentially, from the Work Group.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: From the Work Group, 

4 yeah, so you don't need a motion from the floor.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Unless there's 

6 further comments. If not, all in favor, say aye.

7 (Chorus of ayes.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed? 

9 Abstained? Okay, thank you.

10 Well, you've helped the Board earn 

11 maybe a little extra time on the break. What I'd 

12 like to do now is start and finish up the Work Group 

13 reports.

14 And, Henry, your Work Group, I don't 

15 know if you have anything additional for your Work 

16 Group besides what you just presented to us?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: No, that's the last 

18 active one. I think we have a couple of other sites 

19 assigned to our group and we're waiting for those 

20 reports to come out. So we'll be active again once 

21 we get those documents.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. The next 

23 group I have that I believe is active is Weldon 
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1 Spring. Dr. Lemen? I think we're also waiting on 

2 a report.

3 MEMBER LEMEN: There is nothing new to 

4 report on Weldon Spring at this time.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

6 And someone who reminded me yesterday that their 

7 Work Group was being forgotten because it's the 

8 last in the alphabet, the listing: Worker Outreach. 

9 Josie?

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, that's been 

11 forgotten before, so I was just assuming. Okay, 

12 Worker Outreach, I reported to the Board in July 

13 of last year looking for recommendations on what 

14 to do with Worker Outreach. And to be honest, that 

15 is all I've done since then. So I think, Jim, maybe 

16 we'll have a conversation offline and kind of 

17 decide where this Work Group will go. That's all 

18 I've got, thanks.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So that 

20 finishes up our Work Group reports.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Pardon me. Dave 

22 Kotelchuck. We do lots of things, calculations, 

23 analyses, that many of the claimants, most of the 
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1 claimants, feel not able to understand because it 

2 involves perhaps some advanced technical 

3 knowledge.

4 And I wondered, in terms of Worker 

5 Outreach, if it would make sense, it's a thought, 

6 to develop some sort of educational material on our 

7 website that would introduce basic ideas in nuclear 

8 physics and radiation hazards.

9 Obviously, there are statistical 

10 analyses that are done that probably would be 

11 difficult. On the other hand, Dr. Neton's paper 

12 that he produced yesterday on the coworker data 

13 certainly gave me ideas that we could simplify or 

14 outline processes of how we do things.

15 Now, I don't think it's a matter of our 

16 writing a book. I mean, people teach courses about 

17 this, many of us have taught such courses, and there 

18 is lots of material around. It may be just a 

19 question of identifying some such material.

20 And I wondered, Josie, if your Worker 

21 Outreach Committee, whether that's something that 

22 might be done. And I think it would be worthwhile. 

23 So, I just wondered, it's an idea, and I put it out 
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1 for comment, thought.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. We'll look 

3 at that.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu, do you have a 

5 comment?

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, this is Stu 

7 Hinnefeld from DCAS. I would just offer that there 

8 are some materials like that on our website.

9 There's at least one video. I think two 

10 videos: one video series is from all three 

11 agencies, DOE, DOL, and ourselves, describing the 

12 program and our role in the program.

13 There is an older video that, as far as 

14 I know, is still up on our website, where several 

15 of our staff talk about various aspects of what's 

16 done in dose reconstruction.

17 We have a Worker Outreach contractor 

18 who assists us, and lately much of their work has 

19 been done in the SEC investigation world. We get 

20 them incorporated in the SEC investigation to get 

21 worker input during Evaluation Report time. But 

22 they also host a dose reconstruction and SEC 

23 workshop each year in Cincinnati where we invite 
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1 interested parties from around the sites. That is 

2 a two to two-and-a-half day workshop.

3 And they have an abbreviated workshop 

4 that they will take once or twice a year to 

5 interested parties at specific sites. And I 

6 believe we're going to Idaho Falls in the spring, 

7 later on in the spring. So, we do some things along 

8 those lines that may not be readily apparent to the 

9 Board.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Oh, there's no 

11 question that we do such things. I wondered, for 

12 example, some of the materials in that course, 

13 might they be put online?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: There's probably 

15 nothing that would prevent us from putting those 

16 on our website.

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I mean, I assume 

18 that, for claimants, many of the claimants never 

19 have looked at issues of radiation hazards, 

20 radiation physics, and they are brought to it by 

21 their claims. And it may then be an appropriate 

22 teaching point to have them -- they might be looking 

23 for materials then, and if it were onsite it would 
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1 be helpful.

2 It's not so much criticism of what we 

3 haven't done, but essentially thinking about 

4 outreach a little more to claimants.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. There could be 

6 some more fundamental information like you 

7 described: radioactive decay, radiation versus 

8 contamination, some things like that, that 

9 probably are not specifically addressed in the 

10 training and materials we have so far.

11 So there might be -- I guess we could 

12 look into, you know, some topics like that, or if 

13 the Board would like to suggest topics to us that 

14 we think would be helpful to put public 

15 communication or training materials together on we 

16 might be able to do that.

17 Like you said, chances are we can just 

18 find them and link to it rather than right them 

19 ourselves.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Oh, yes. I 

21 thought maybe the Worker Outreach Committee might 

22 be the appropriate place from the Board to take a 

23 look at it and talk with you.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We'll let Josie 

3 follow up next time. I think one -- I'm sorry, go 

4 ahead, Gen.

5 MEMBER ROESSLER: As long as we're on 

6 the subject, and as far as radiation fundamentals 

7 goes, that's been done a lot. I would recommend 

8 maybe Josie take a look at the EPA website, and I 

9 can show you how to get there.

10 You might think I'm a little biased, but 

11 I think on the Health Physics Society website we 

12 have an extensive amount of information on the 

13 fundamentals. And maybe I can just point it out 

14 to Josie and see if some of this could be linked 

15 from the CDC website.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Excellent.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. There's one 

18 important clarification, Dave, and you may have not 

19 been around when we talked about this, though. We 

20 got to be a little careful. The Board is not 

21 charged with, you know, doing outreach and in the 

22 legislation we have particular topics we're 

23 supposed to focus on, particular tasks. So I think 
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1 we have to be a little careful.

2 We're not charged with developing 

3 outreach materials for the program. NIOSH can ask 

4 us to review materials or ask for advice on what 

5 to do, but, really, much of this is outside our 

6 scope. And we've struggled with that with the 

7 Worker Outreach Work Group, because it is something 

8 we're not charged with doing.

9 So, again, we can talk about this more 

10 maybe at the next meeting, Josie, but it is a 

11 limitation and we need to stay focused on what we 

12 are charged with doing, for the most part.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Thanks.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda?

15 MEMBER MUNN: Well, just a comment, a 

16 follow-on to what you were saying, Jim. Sometimes 

17 it's instructive to go back and read our actual 

18 charge.

19 I did that recently and one forgets 

20 exactly what we were charged to do here and the fact 

21 that we do have some limitations. So it was just 

22 a thought, that it surprises me a little when I go 

23 back and read what we're actually supposed to do, 
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1 and it does limit us.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I would like 

3 to turn next, which I think will be relatively 

4 straightforward. If you go to the materials that 

5 you were sent, we had received correspondence to 

6 the Board from Bonnie Klea, and also I think that 

7 was preceded by a letter, I believe, from Terrie 

8 Barrie that was transmitting Bonnie Klea's but in 

9 her own letter, I think, is how it came in.

10 They are raising concerns about 

11 comments that the Boeing Corporation had submitted 

12 after our last meeting near the Santa Susana site 

13 objecting to that and wanting the letters in your 

14 materials, essentially, we somehow reject that, 

15 those comments or something. And so the letter, 

16 which I think is relatively straightforward, but, 

17 you know, is that we do welcome public comments and 

18 we aren't going to, you know, sort of pick and 

19 choose in terms of who's allowed to provide those 

20 comments and that.

21 So let me just read my draft response 

22 into the record. So it would be: "Dear Ms. Klea, 

23 thank you for your letter of February 23rd, 2015, 
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1 to the Advisory Board on Radiation & Worker Health 

2 concerning comments submitted to the Board by the 

3 Boeing Company regarding NIOSH's and the Board's 

4 ongoing evaluation of the Santa Susana Field 

5 Laboratory site. 

6 "While the Board understands your 

7 concerns the Board has long maintained a policy of 

8 welcoming public comments about matters before the 

9 Board. This submission will be submitted in the 

10 same manner as any other public submission. We 

11 also appreciate your efforts to provide the Board 

12 with information useful for our review and 

13 deliberations and hope that this response 

14 clarifies the reasons for also accepting these 

15 comments from Boeing."

16 And I think we can copy that to Terrie, 

17 or a similar letter. So if there are no comments, 

18 we'll put that on official stationary and send it 

19 out.

20 Ted, while we have everybody here why 

21 don't we at least start the discussion on timing.

22 MR. KATZ: Sure. If all of you will pull 

23 out your calendars, looking pretty far forward, 
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1 but, as you know, we need to do this pretty far 

2 forward.

3 I had included possible dates in some 

4 annotation I gave you. We're scheduled through 

5 the rest of this calendar year. So the next 

6 appropriate teleconference date, or period for a 

7 teleconference, is approximately the week of 

8 January 17th or 24th. So that's what I'd be 

9 looking for. Of course, we can move outside that 

10 range.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: 2016, yes?

12 MR. KATZ: This is 2016 we're talking 

13 about, right. The week of the 17th and the week 

14 of the 24th, those two weeks are sort of about the 

15 right ballpark, but if those don't work we can move 

16 outside that ballpark.

17 We're just talking about a 

18 teleconference so we're talking about really an 

19 11:00 to whatever, 1:00 or 2:00 p.m.

20 (Off-microphone comments.)

21 MR. KATZ: So the 21st, is that what you 

22 are suggesting? Okay, the 20th. Anyone on the 

23 line have a problem with the 20th, of January 20, 
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1 2016?

2 MEMBER LEMEN: That works for me, Dick 

3 Lemen.

4 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Dick.

5 MEMBER VALERIO: That works for me, 

6 that's Loretta.

7 MR. KATZ: Right, that's an 11:00 a.m. 

8 Eastern start time. And do we still have you, 

9 Bill, on the call? I knew he had to leave, but --

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I don't have any 

11 problem with that, this is Phil.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. So let's say that, 

13 then, the 20th, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. 

14 Okay, then going to the next meeting, 

15 and approximately the right dates for that are the 

16 weeks of March 14th, 21st, or 28th, those weeks, 

17 2016.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, I can't do it 

19 the week of the 13th into -- between the 13th and 

20 the 22nd I'm tied up, but I can do it after the 22nd.

21 (Off-microphone comments.)

22 MR. KATZ: So how is the 23rd, 24th, for 

23 everyone, of March?
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Very good.

2 MR. KATZ: On the line?

3 MEMBER LEMEN: Did you say the 23rd?

4 MR. KATZ: Yeah, the 23rd or 24th of 

5 March of 2016.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: Either one is all right 

7 for Dick Lemen.

8 MR. KATZ: Yeah, both days. Okay.

9 (Off-microphone comments.)

10 MR. KATZ: And the dog is welcome, yes.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, Easter is 

12 early that year, so that's on the 27th.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. So does that make 

14 sense?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, the 23rd and 

16 24th.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay. The 23rd and 24th of 

18 March.

19 (Pause.)

20 MR. KATZ: Wait, do you have a 

21 question, Jim, that I didn't hear?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We just want to 

23 review when our next meeting dates are.
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1 MR. KATZ: Oh, sure, yeah, one second, 

2 let me give you that.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

4 MR. KATZ: Okay, so, moving out from 

5 today --

6 MEMBER BEACH: It's July 22nd or 23rd.

7 MR. KATZ: That's the face-to-face, 

8 July 23rd through -- wait, no. July 23rd through 

9 24th.

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, I had 23rd, 24th, 

11 and then someone else, I think Jim, said he had 

12 22nd, 23rd.

13 MR. KATZ: Yeah, it's 23rd through 

14 24th. That's this next face-to-face, the 23rd 

15 through 24th of July.

16 The teleconference by the way, backing 

17 up, is June 9th. June 9th is the teleconference, 

18 but then the 23rd through 24th --

19 MEMBER LEMEN: You're back in 2015 now?

20 MR. KATZ: Yeah. We're back in more 

21 present time right now, yes.

22 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay, thank you.

23 MR. KATZ: Yeah, sure thing. So those 
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1 are the next two meetings coming up. And the 23rd 

2 through 24th, should we talk, Jim, about locations?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, let's talk 

4 about -- we've been talking about locations in 

5 terms of where we will be, and there's usually two 

6 factors. One, where are we in terms of an SEC 

7 evaluation? But also where do we need additional 

8 information that would be useful in evaluating an 

9 SEC, and particularly public comments and 

10 otherwise.

11 We had talked about where we'd be: 

12 Denver, Kansas City, and INL. I think I've talked 

13 to some of you already about this. We had some 

14 discussions, and we'll come to INL later, but I 

15 think there's a number of issues related to that 

16 site and there are additional reports coming from 

17 NIOSH that they have areas of that report that 

18 they've reserved.

19 I think at least the consensus of some 

20 of us trying to sort of figure this out was that 

21 going back to INL would probably make the most sense 

22 in terms of being productive for the Board in terms 

23 of getting information that we need for making some 
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1 decisions, and particularly some public comments 

2 and input from people around the site, because 

3 we'll have, I think, some specific questions in 

4 particular specific areas and so forth.

5 Not that that will be the only way we 

6 will follow up on INL, but it'll be one way. And 

7 we weren't as sure of where we would be with Kansas 

8 City or Denver, and we've already done a fair amount 

9 of outreach in those places, and we have more 

10 scheduled. I believe that's gotten clarified now. 

11 (Off-microphone comments.)

12 MEMBER VALERIO: This is Loretta.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- perhaps another 

14 hotel in Idaho than the one we used last time.

15 MR. KATZ: Oh, my feelings are hurt. 

16 No, the trouble with hotels is we have pretty strict 

17 guidance about sort of lowest bidder and so on. So 

18 we'll do the best we can. I know it wasn't a happy 

19 place for everybody. My room was great, but we'll 

20 try to do -- there are not a lot of options that 

21 can host a meeting, is the problem, in that town.

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: You will note that 

23 this is the first time I have raised such an issue 
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1 in many meetings. So, enough said.

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: There is plenty 

3 empty spud cellars.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do you want to go 

5 through the times for the rest of the year?

6 MR. KATZ: Oh, sure, one second. Right. 

7 So, following July, the next teleconference is in 

8 September. September 23rd.

9 That's a teleconference, 11:00 a.m. 

10 Eastern Time, September 23rd.

11 (Off-microphone comments.)

12 MEMBER VALERIO: Ted, this is Loretta, 

13 can you hear me?

14 MR. KATZ: Yes, we can hear you, 

15 Loretta.

16 MEMBER VALERIO: Okay. You're 

17 breaking up. It kind of fades out. So, the July 

18 face-to-face meeting, was that decided on to be in 

19 Idaho?

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's in Idaho.

21 MEMBER VALERIO: And that's a 2-day 

22 meeting?

23 MR. KATZ: That's a 2-day meeting 
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1 probably.

2 MEMBER VALERIO: Okay, got it. Thank 

3 you.

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Dave Kotelchuck. 

5 I just checked. The Wednesday the 23rd is the 

6 holiday Yom Kippur. I will not attend and I am 

7 hoping perhaps others may not be able to. It's a 

8 major Jewish holiday and it starts the evening 

9 before.

10 So if it were possible to change that 

11 day, either the day after or the day before, but 

12 not that day. That's a request, otherwise I will 

13 just recuse myself.

14 MR. KATZ: Why don't we try to do that 

15 right now.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Couldn't we do the 24th?

17 MR. KATZ: How's the 22nd for 

18 everybody?

19 MEMBER MUNN: Well, wouldn't the 24th 

20 be better since sundown is an issue on the 24th --

21 I mean, the 23rd?

22 MR. KATZ: Well, it's evening on the 

23 22nd, right? You're okay the 22nd at 11:00 a.m.?
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Absolutely.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. So is the 22nd, does 

3 that work for everybody on the line, too?

4 MEMBER LEMEN: Would you say which 

5 month again? I'm confused.

6 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Dick. It's 

7 September 22nd.

8 MEMBER LEMEN: Thank you.

9 MEMBER MUNN: 2015.

10 MEMBER LEMEN: That works for me. 

11 This is Dick, that works for me.

12 MR. KATZ: That's super. That's 

13 super.

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Works for me.

15 MR. KATZ: Great.

16 MEMBER VALERIO: This is Loretta, that 

17 works for me.

18 MR. KATZ: Okay. That's my wedding 

19 anniversary, super. Works for me.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'm sorry, just to 

22 double check, I have originally Thursday the 24th 

23 for that and you said it was, but you announced 
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1 verbally that it was Wednesday the 23rd, is that 

2 correct?

3 MR. KATZ: That's correct.

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah, and we've 

5 moved it to the 22nd and I thank you.

6 MR. KATZ: Right. Okay, that's super. 

7 Okay, then, following that, the next meeting 

8 face-to-face is November 18th to 19th, November 18 

9 through 19. No location yet.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We would decide that 

11 at our next meeting, next in-person meeting.

12 Okay. I'd like to move on to some 

13 discussion on the Dose Reconstruction Review 

14 Subcommittee. Dave, first, I don't know if you 

15 have an update on the Committee. That would be 

16 helpful. And then we'll talk about the going 

17 forward issue.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I do. Just an 

19 update for the Board, we had a scheduled meeting 

20 on February 27th that was canceled due to lack of 

21 a quorum. We are one Member short, at least in 

22 terms of a current Subcommittee. We have our next 

23 meeting scheduled for April 14th. Basically, as 
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1 I think I may have indicated yesterday, we have 

2 finished 10 through 13. That has gone very slowly.

3 We put that as our highest priority 

4 because we wanted to be able to get to a report 

5 quickly to the Secretary. But a number of issues 

6 were raised yesterday, and important ones, and I 

7 personally concur with the notion that we have to 

8 rethink the way the Committee is structured and how 

9 we go about our tasks.

10 I have the files that were sent to us 

11 by SC&A. Really, sets 14 through 21 are really 

12 quite valuable. I don't know. They deserve a bit 

13 of statistical analysis soon, and also I think we 

14 need to do a similar job for 10 through 13 -- that 

15 is, the ones that we've already been through -- to 

16 see how things have changed.

17 If you are interested, if the Board is 

18 interested, I did not type it up, but I did some 

19 simple calculations, which is to say I added the 

20 columns, and I'm not sure they are absolutely 

21 perfect but they're pretty good, I think.

22 And just to give you a sense of that, 

23 14 through 21, there are a couple sets for blind 
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1 review. But there are 166 cases. They were 

2 evaluated between 2004 and 2014. The number of 

3 findings was 305. So the number of findings that 

4 SC&A had were, as I say, 305, which is 1.84 per case. 

5 So a little under two findings per case.

6 Interestingly, I looked at those SC&A 

7 reports that had zero findings and I found that 52 

8 of them, which is to say 31 percent of those that 

9 were reviewed had no findings, zero findings. 

10 Which is at one level fine, it means that there's 

11 agreement between the NIOSH review and the SC&A.

12 And on the other hand, that's a lot of 

13 work put in for materials where there would be no 

14 change in the NIOSH findings. That is, they were 

15 fine, and it would be lovely to think of a way of 

16 sensing what those might be.

17 Looking at the categorization of the 

18 52, is there anything that identifies them to us 

19 a priori? In terms of types of finding, you'll 

20 remember the Board has set up A, B, C, D, E, F. And 

21 I'll do quickly the findings A about location in 

22 the plant. There were only two findings, that is 

23 1 percent of all, that was in disagreement between 
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1 SC&A and NIOSH, or DCAS. So that's really yielded 

2 very little information.

3 Particle type, B, 17, ten percent. 

4 Surprisingly, to me, item C, external exposure: 

5 disagreements 86; 52 percent. That is, more than 

6 half of those there is a difference in the findings 

7 for external.

8 For internal exposures, the 

9 differences were 34 in number, or 20 percent. So 

10 20 percent of the findings there was a disagreement 

11 internally. And, of course, there are multiple 

12 findings for different cases, so this is not 

13 rigorous, it's just a quick count of the columns.

14 We are debating within the Work Group, 

15 and we have not had a chance as a Work Group to go 

16 over these. There is an Item E, Quality Concerns. 

17 And there were 68 Quality Concerns representing 41 

18 percent of the cases. And F, Other, which is very 

19 large, not surprisingly. F, 100. Sixty percent 

20 of them there is some other difference that is not 

21 well classified by A through E. 

22 On the other hand, the quality 

23 assurance findings, which we are trying to do in 
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1 the future, and the Committee has talked with SC&A 

2 about that, and there are a total of 206 quality 

3 assurance findings that SC&A found.

4 We will discuss them, you know, with the 

5 findings with the DCAS, with the Committee and with 

6 DCAS. Which is to say there are one-and-a-quarter 

7 QA findings per case.

8 And, finally, the number of 

9 observations, which the Committee, for the other 

10 Board Members, in terms of observations, we simply 

11 -- we observe. We do not pass on them, but those 

12 are discussed in terms of -- presented and 

13 different points of view are presented and then 

14 it's so noted. But we don't act on them.

15 There were 146 observations in 14 

16 through 21, which is to say 0.9 per case. So about 

17 one per case, so one finding per case roughly. So 

18 one finding per case -- excuse me, one observation 

19 per case and two findings per case, just as a quick 

20 summary. So perhaps that's useful to the Board as 

21 an outline. Thanks.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Dave, 

23 could you give us an update on the blind reviews, 
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1 where that stands?

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: There has not been 

3 progress on blind reviews. The Committee is 

4 focused on getting 10 through 13 finished. We are 

5 now ready to consider going forward on the blind 

6 reviews.

7 So we just have the six that were done 

8 long ago, and it is on our agenda at the next meeting 

9 -- and the next meetings, if need be -- to move ahead 

10 on that. We admit we prioritized completing 13.

11 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver from 

12 SC&A, and I would just like to kind of expand on 

13 that a little bit.

14 We have completed the Set 20 of blind 

15 reconstructions, but we have not completed the 

16 comparison studies yet at this point. And we've 

17 kind of changed up the process a bit to where 

18 instead of reporting out our blinds at one meeting 

19 and then, you know, sometimes a year later we 

20 finally get around to discussing the comparison 

21 reports, what we're going to do now is just go ahead 

22 and complete the comparison report as soon as we 

23 get the information back from NIOSH, and then just 
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1 do one report and then we just discuss that. It 

2 makes a lot more sense, and it's something that Ted 

3 had suggested, and we're going to run with that.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I guess my comment 

5 would be that I think we -- I know we've put this 

6 off for a while, but I'd be a little concerned about 

7 trying to move forward with a letter to the 

8 Secretary without having some possibility of 

9 addressing the blind reviews.

10 I mean, they were an important part of 

11 our original plans. And lots of reasons that they 

12 got the delayed in that, and to me they would, in 

13 some ways, be more of a priority than trying to move 

14 forward with 14 through 21, though I don't think 

15 those are mutually exclusive issues.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Our goal was not 

17 moving ahead on 14. Our goal was finishing 10 

18 through 13, and that was finished. We really have 

19 only started 14 and we are ready to move in other 

20 directions. And doing the blind reviews, I am most 

21 open, and you have mentioned that before and it is 

22 a priority, and I think the Work Group perhaps 

23 should move that as its highest priority 
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1 immediately.

2 And some of us are working on trying to 

3 look at 14 through 21 and looking at the data and 

4 comparing it for 10 through 13 to see how we might 

5 streamline the process of dose reconstruction for 

6 the future. So I agree and I'm open and I trust 

7 the Subcommittee is open to that.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ted, do you have a 

9 comment?

10 MR. KATZ: Well, I just wanted to say, 

11 and maybe this is what you intended, but I had 

12 always assumed that we would -- because we had it 

13 on our agenda we just weren't able to meet -- but 

14 I always assumed the six blinds that we have now 

15 complete with the Subcommittee, I'd have assumed 

16 that we would address those before we write the 

17 letter to the Secretary so it would cover those.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes, Wanda?

19 MEMBER MUNN: Yeah, just a thought with 

20 respect to 14 through 21 that's upcoming. It was 

21 very heartwarming for me to hear Dr. Kotelchuck's 

22 brief overview of just what he saw taking a look 

23 at those, because I had only scanned them and hadn't 
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1 made any attempt to parse them.

2 If might be worthwhile, given the tenor 

3 of what he believes he sees there, for us to make 

4 sure that the Subcommittee has an opportunity to 

5 at least partially verify some of what he's saying, 

6 because although they probably would not 

7 appropriately be a major topic of a report to the 

8 Secretary, it seems to me that, since our entire 

9 objective in the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee 

10 was to try to assure that the dose reconstructions 

11 were being done in an appropriate and efficient

12 manner, the raw data that Dr. Kotelchuck just 

13 reported indicates to at least the casual observer 

14 that the number of findings have decreased markedly 

15 over the period of time we've been doing this. 

16 Which, of course, would logically be the aim of our 

17 Subcommittee.

18 So it might be worthy of at least taking 

19 a look at those more closely before we continue very 

20 far on the report to the Secretary, just to be able 

21 to say that it appears that the fruits of the labors 

22 of the Subcommittee are being seen to some degree.

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul?
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I certainly 

2 agree with Dr. Melius on the need to get the blind 

3 reviews addressed and include that in the letter 

4 to the Secretary. And then I just want to 

5 reemphasize, you know, we've only addressed this 

6 once in the last roughly 15 years to the Secretary, 

7 and it's the bottom line of what we're charged to 

8 do as a Board. And so I think we just need to keep 

9 that letter as a high priority and let's get it 

10 done.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, I concur, 

12 though I agree with Wanda that we need to -- the 

13 Subcommittee and the Board need to take a look at, 

14 you know, the data on 14 through 21.

15 This was put together fairly quickly. 

16 And I thank SC&A for it. This was, what, the last 

17 week or so, two weeks, I don't know how long they've 

18 been charged. It is helpful. But I also agree 

19 with Paul that the focus on the letter ought to be, 

20 you know, 10 through 13 and get this moving along 

21 and this whole process and so forth.

22 And so to get that complete, along with the blind 

23 reviews. And it's not to say that we can't make 
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1 other comments, but they will be maybe not as 

2 rigorous a review as what we've already done and 

3 that should stay as the focus.

4 So I think if we think about this, our 

5 sort of priorities, one is to complete what needs 

6 to be done for the letter to the Secretary. Number 

7 two, we have to figure out how do we resolve 14 to 

8 21? Do we change procedures for doing that? 

9 They've already been reviewed, but we need that. 

10 And number three is, what do we do going forward 

11 in terms of do we change the methodology that we're 

12 using for doing the reviews?

13 And so I think, in some ways, those may 

14 overlap, but they're also are sort, you know, have 

15 different -- you probably can't obviously change 

16 the methodology if it's already been done, so for 

17 what's already been reviewed maybe we look at how 

18 we do those reviews.

19 We did get some comments from SC&A 

20 suggesting that, for 14 through 21, we only should 

21 look at the findings and not look at where there 

22 wasn't a finding. And I think that has some merit, 

23 but I'm a little concerned that, really, the Board 
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1 is supposed to be making a finding, not our 

2 contractor. We're not hiring, you know, a 

3 contractor to make our decisions for us. And so 

4 there has to be some way of resolving that, whether 

5 it requires as much of a review on how we go about 

6 that may be different, but we need to talk about 

7 it and make sure we're doing our due diligence on 

8 that.

9 Secondly, we also need to, you know, 

10 maybe to some extent for resolving 14 through 21, 

11 but going forward is there a way that we can focus 

12 on what are the more important parts of the dose 

13 reconstructions that are more likely to raise 

14 concerns that the Board should be paying attention 

15 to? Is it a change in the methodology? Is it a 

16 site we haven't looked at in detail before? So 

17 it's applying maybe, you know, a general OTIB to 

18 a new site and, you know, does that apply, you know, 

19 to a Site Profile maybe -- or some of these sites 

20 we don't have Site Profiles. So it's going to be 

21 looking at that.

22 There may be others that I'm not, you 

23 know, thinking of off the top of my head. And I 
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1 think we need to see if we can come up with a 

2 methodology that would allow us to look at a higher 

3 proportion of the cases but in a way that's more 

4 likely to be productive. Not to find NIOSH 

5 mistakes, but to address and make sure we're doing 

6 the right thing and that we're looking at what are 

7 the more important exposures, say, for a person at 

8 a particular site. Or there may be more 

9 inconsistencies where it may be a higher, a more 

10 likelihood that, because of the nature of the 

11 procedure or something, that a mistake or something 

12 would need to be corrected in that.

13 That's not something I don't think we 

14 can do sitting here. Yes, Dave?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: You suggested 

16 yesterday that we set up a special subcommittee to 

17 look at what were -- a special subcommittee of the 

18 Subcommittee to look at what you have said are 

19 really Items 2 and 3, how do we go forward, how might 

20 we change procedures?

21 And, to me, that's a very good idea and 

22 that would allow the existing Subcommittee to 

23 complete the letter to the Secretary, which is to 
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1 particularly look at the blind reviews. And then 

2 also, at our April meeting, we could do -- we want 

3 to look as a Subcommittee at 14 through 21, at the 

4 results that I just preliminarily went over, and 

5 have other people's thoughts to give to the 

6 Subcommittee, so that I would see our Subcommittee 

7 as doing Item 1 and having a discussion at the next 

8 meeting of 14 through 21, how we view the results 

9 from SC&A. And then pass on Item 3, how do we go 

10 forward and the changes and procedures that follow 

11 from that discussion, for the special ad hoc 

12 committee to review.

13 To me, that would be a good way of going 

14 forward, that we have two groups looking at two 

15 rather different tasks.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just one correction. 

17 My suggestion was a work group that would include 

18 some people from the Subcommittee and some other 

19 Board Members to look at, I guess, what you're 

20 calling 2 and 3 here.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Fine.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But, again, one is 

23 because I think the Subcommittee's energies are 
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1 best focused on the other priority, number one.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, absolutely.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And second, I mean, 

4 I think other people, you know, Board Members have 

5 input into this, and any decision we make is going 

6 to be the decision of the whole Board.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right, that's 

8 correct.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I mean, you know, as 

10 Wanda has reminded us, this is one of our key 

11 charges in the legislation, so it's up to the Board 

12 to decide what we need to do. And so we would have 

13 to have a process that involves everyone in the 

14 Board in that.

15 Again, we also have some timing things. 

16 We don't want to spend three years deciding what 

17 to do and so forth, and we have a contractor that 

18 has some resources and we need to keep moving 

19 forward and appropriately utilizing those 

20 resources to get our work done. So I think we have 

21 to find sort of the right balance between all those 

22 and that.

23 And, again, not criticizing what the 
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1 Dose Reconstruction Review Subcommittee has done 

2 or not done, or whatever. I think they've been 

3 doing excellent work, and it's a lot of work, and 

4 a lot of work on the part of SC&A and NIOSH staff 

5 to get through these resolutions and do this.

6 I would also just add one more sort of 

7 complicating factor. We have to also remember 

8 that these are not, you know, random selection of 

9 cases. We've been targeting sites. And that's 

10 changed over time, the approach that's used, which, 

11 again, is appropriate, but so when we're looking 

12 at any data from there we have to remember that it's 

13 not a random sample.

14 We don't have to get into OPOS 

15 statistics or anything crazy, but it has changed 

16 over time. And that may be part of the 

17 recommendations, too, is how do we sample? It's 

18 just not what do we look at, but which sites and 

19 which kinds of cases and so forth.

20 So I guess my question would be, to the 

21 Board, is the Board -- is there a consensus, does 

22 this make sense in general as a way of going 

23 forward? 
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And I'm looking at 

2 Subcommittee Members, especially, personally, to 

3 see how you're feeling.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda always agrees 

5 with me, so --

6 MEMBER MUNN: Always. Absolutely 

7 always.

8 MEMBER BEACH: I agree.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Josie, okay. 

10 So I think we need a motion, then, to form a Work 

11 Group to move forward to look at the process of 

12 doing dose, how we should move forward on both 

13 resolving 14 through 21, as well as how we should 

14 go in the future in terms of doing the dose 

15 reconstruction review process on that.

16 I would hope that that Work Group would 

17 actually be a very short-lived work group. Not all 

18 of our Work Groups are as short-lived as we expect, 

19 but this one should be.

20 And I would even hope that we could at 

21 least provide some recommendations back to the 

22 Board at our June 9th conference call, rather than 

23 waiting another two months until the Board Meeting 
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1 at the end of July, or fairly far into July. But 

2 first can we get a motion or --

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Can I?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, sure.

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So moved. That 

6 is, that we establish a special Working Group, dose 

7 response, to report back to the Board at its next 

8 meetings, it's next teleconference, to first 

9 report at the next teleconference, and that the 

10 existing Subcommittee continue to work on 

11 completing the blind reviews and doing their review 

12 of 14 through 21.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do I have a second to 

14 that?

15 MEMBER BEACH: I'll second that.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Further 

17 discussion on that? I guess the understanding 

18 would be the Work Group would be made up of people 

19 from the current Subcommittee as well as other 

20 Board Members.

21 MEMBER BEACH: And this may not be the 

22 appropriate time, but I think maybe one of those 

23 new Members should -- well, it sounds like we need 
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1 to add another Member to the Subcommittee as well.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What I plan to do, 

3 since not everybody's on the call and so forth, is 

4 we need to -- I'll do a solicitation out to the 

5 Board.

6 We also, I think, will need a Grand 

7 Junction Work Group. We've got someone we need to 

8 add to LANL. We need an addition to the 

9 Subcommittee, and we also have this new Work Group. 

10 So there will be a menu and people can pick, choose, 

11 and volunteer. I've already got one volunteer, 

12 Gen, but I think it's important we leave it open 

13 to everybody, even people that couldn't make it 

14 here today.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, absolutely.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. And, also, 

17 you know, we can also, once we get the Work Group 

18 in place and so forth, charge SC&A with doing some 

19 more data evaluation for us. And, again, we would 

20 like to keep moving forward on dose 

21 reconstructions. And that's one reason, you know, 

22 given the resources and personnel at SC&A, I do 

23 think we need to try to keep that moving and get 
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1 them assigned also.

2 MR. KATZ: We need to vote on that 

3 motion.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we do need to, 

5 thank you. Our parliamentarian reminded us we had 

6 not voted on the motion. I think we can do orally, 

7 yes. So, all in favor of this new Work Group, say 

8 aye.

9 (Chorus of ayes.)

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: All opposed? 

11 Abstain? Okay, good. I think we have now earned 

12 a break until 10:45. Again, try to be back here 

13 directly at 10:45 because we have an SEC petition 

14 to review and evaluate. So we'll see you back here 

15 then. Thanks.

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

17 went off the record at 10:21 a.m. and resumed at 

18 10:47 a.m.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Next on our agenda 

20 we'll hear from Jim Neton, who will give us an 

21 update on -- there he is, I couldn't see you hiding 

22 behind the podium. This will be the Grand Junction 

23 complex. It's the continuation, a few years 
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1 later, of the Grand Junction SEC.

2 DR. NETON: All right. Thank you, Dr. 

3 Melius. I am indeed here to talk about the Grand 

4 Junction Facilities. I should point out at the 

5 outset here that the name has been changed as of 

6 November last year. The Department of Energy 

7 changed it from Grand Junction Project Office, or 

8 Program Office, to Grand Junction Facilities. So 

9 you'll see several -- it was hard to change them 

10 all and be consistent. So you'll see some various 

11 different designations here, but they all refer to 

12 the same facility.

13 I'd also like to say at the beginning 

14 that Tom Tomes is the DCAS point of contact and did 

15 most of the work here. I'm just presenting the 

16 presentation. So I think Tom may be on the phone 

17 in case I get stuck with some difficult questions 

18 that I'm not prepared for.

19 The was SEC, originally, SEC 175. And 

20 we are going to be discussing today an addendum to 

21 that SEC petition. I'll get into that a little bit 

22 later, but first a little background information, 

23 because we haven't talked about this for a while.
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1 It's the Grand Junction Facilities. 

2 It's a Department of Energy facility located in 

3 Grand Junction, Colorado. Its covered period 

4 covers a wide range: 1943, one of the first 

5 facilities, one of the oldest facilities that we 

6 have, through the present day. I think in around 

7 2001 it became a remediation facility. But it 

8 still is on our list. 

9 It did a lot of things. They did a lot 

10 of things at Grand Junction. But most importantly 

11 for our discussion today, they processed a lot of 

12 samples, thousands of samples per month over 

13 certain periods of time, that included uranium ores 

14 and tailings that were, of course, elevated not 

15 only in uranium but all the uranium along the 

16 progeny that tend to be in ores.

17 Numerous projects use large 

18 quantities, as I said, of these ores and tailings 

19 for materials. And what's going to be of central 

20 interest to us today is to talk about these 

21 calibration pads.

22 At one point they started to make, I'll 

23 call them elaborate check sources, but they're 
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1 really calibration pads for survey instruments to 

2 go out into the field. You go out in the field and 

3 try to measure and survey for uranium or thorium. 

4 And you need to figure out what your sensitivity 

5 of your detection instruments are. So they made 

6 these large concrete pads that were labeled, 

7 radiolabeled, with various isotopes. We'll talk 

8 about that a little bit later.

9 As I mentioned, the site started its 

10 operations in 1943. The U.S. Army established it 

11 as the Colorado Area Engineer Office. It later 

12 became the Grand Junction Operations Office. As 

13 I mentioned, now it's referred to as the Grand 

14 Junction Facilities.

15 The first operations on the site, in 

16 '43, was the construction of a refinery to make 

17 uranium concentrates for the MED. They took what 

18 they called green sludge that was left over from 

19 vanadium mining operations and used that to recover 

20 significant quantities of uranium, uranium ore 

21 concentrates, at that point.

22 The plant only ran a couple of years, 

23 1943 to '45. After 1945, Grand Junction became the 
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1 center of uranium ore exploration, procurement, 

2 processing and sample activities.

3 Up through '75, they did a lot of 

4 assaying of ores. People would produce ore 

5 products in the area and samples would come to Grand 

6 Junction to be assayed to look at the purity and 

7 that sort of thing.

8 Over that time period, through '75, a 

9 substantial quantity of concentrates were 

10 received, sampled and assayed. This slide says 

11 there was almost 350 million pounds of that 

12 material. So these weren't like little laboratory 

13 samples. Quite of material came through there. 

14 But the last of the drums were shipped 

15 offsite in January of '75. So all of the major 

16 source term was gone by that point.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Did it all come in 

18 drums?

19 DR. NETON: I believe so, yes. I could 

20 be wrong on that. But the majority of it, at least, 

21 was in drums. They did operate -- and we'll talk 

22 about it a little bit later -- an ore processing 

23 plant, a pilot plant. So they may have received 
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1 some ores not in drum state. I'm not sure about 

2 that.

3 This next slide talks about these two 

4 pilot plants in the '50s. They were trying to 

5 develop methods for extracting uranium, trying to 

6 improve the efficiency, that sort of thing. The 

7 tailings from those ore processing plants were 

8 buried onsite, which led to some significant 

9 contamination around that facility.

10 Of interest to us today, though, is this 

11 last bullet. They managed, between 1974 and '84, 

12 the National Uranium Resource Evaluation Program. 

13 And that program was targeted at the exploration 

14 and sampling of the nation's uranium reserves. 

15 They would accept core samples that were taken 

16 around various uranium areas to determine the 

17 uranium content of those materials. And they did 

18 literally thousands of those samples a month during 

19 this time period.

20 This slide, I know it's pretty 

21 difficult to see on the screen here, but I think 

22 you have it in your presentation. It's just sort 

23 of a graphic of the various operations that were 
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1 conducted. The long bar you see on the bottom is 

2 the laboratory operation that extended from the 

3 beginning of the Grand Junction operation's 

4 inception all the way through around 2000.

5 The bar right on top of that is green 

6 on my computer. I can't tell what color it is up 

7 there. It looks sort of orangish. The bar right 

8 above the second one from the bottom is the 

9 uranium/vanadium assay and brokerage period. And 

10 that's the period where they were doing all the 

11 assay of those drums, those 300-and-something 

12 million pounds of assay.

13 Two up from that, though -- well, all 

14 the way at the top you'll see the National Uranium 

15 Resource Evaluation Program. And that's really 

16 where we're going to focus today, that ten year 

17 period where they analyze these core samples. And 

18 also, at that same period, they constructed these 

19 calibration pads.

20 The other bars on the right-hand side 

21 really more refer to remedial action projects that 

22 were conducted primarily offsite. They provided 

23 offsite support services for the Grand Junction 
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1 Project Office's Remedial Action Program, Grand 

2 Junction Remedial Action Project.

3 Workers were stationed, located, at the 

4 Grand Junction Project Office, but their work would 

5 actually be performed in these remediation sites, 

6 although some samples would come back to the site 

7 for analysis in the laboratory.

8 So, to get into the petition history, 

9 SEC 175 was received in June of 2010 and qualified. 

10 And the petition requested that it cover all onsite 

11 personnel who worked at the operations office from 

12 January 1, '43, through July 2010.

13 At the Augusta Board meeting in 2011, 

14 I checked this, LaVon actually presented the SEC 

15 Evaluation Report where we recommended that we add 

16 a Class from the beginning of the plant, the 

17 facility's operations, in '45, through January 

18 31st, 1975.

19 The Board heard our recommendation and 

20 agreed with it. And that Class has subsequently 

21 been added to the SEC. So, right now, Grand 

22 Junction is covered all the way through the end of 

23 January '75.
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1 But at that time, even though our SEC 

2 Evaluation Report said that we thought we could 

3 reconstruct the remainder of the dose, just prior 

4 to the release of the Evaluation Report, we 

5 received a lot of additional data.

6 So we informed the Board at the time we 

7 delivered the presentation that this new data 

8 source was available, had not yet been reviewed by 

9 NIOSH, and we would evaluate the data in light of 

10 that and report back to the Board.

11 So that's what we're doing today, we're 

12 reporting our analysis of where we are in light of 

13 -- I think, originally we had something like 675 

14 documents. And now we're up to, like, 1,600. So 

15 there's about 1,000 new documents that were 

16 recovered for us to review.

17 So, after our analysis of all those 

18 data, we drafted an Evaluation Report Addendum, 

19 which we're talking about today. And we are going 

20 to propose a Class that goes beyond 1975. And 

21 we'll discuss the rationale behind that, but we 

22 believe the Class should go from '75 through 

23 December 31st, 1985. And after that we believe we 
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1 can do dose reconstructions. So that's a little 

2 bit of a preview of what we're going to talk about.

3 So, after 1975, I mentioned all the 

4 drums were gone, the drum samplings were gone. So 

5 all that was really left at the site was legacy 

6 contamination of the soil and the buildings from 

7 the prior work. And there was considerable 

8 contamination. I think it covered 19 buildings, 

9 over 23 acres, or something like that, of 

10 contaminated land still existing at the site after 

11 '75.

12 Again, the buried uranium ore tailings 

13 from the pilot plants was out there. But there 

14 were continuing operations that remained. The 

15 sampling project for this National Uranium 

16 Resource Evaluation program. I'm not sure how you 

17 pronounce it. I couldn't figure that out. But 

18 anyway, the NURE program was the bulk of the 

19 continuing operations that involved radioactivity 

20 onsite. Although I did mention that there are a 

21 number of other activities that occurred offsite, 

22 like these remedial projects offsite that they 

23 provided assistance with. But the sample 
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1 processing at the site provided the greatest 

2 potential for exposure.

3 That processing involved the crushing 

4 and grinding of samples of ores and tailings. Now, 

5 these samples were not very particularly 

6 radioactive. The NURE program was not really a 

7 uranium exploration program. It was a program 

8 that took samples that went out to determine where 

9 conditions may be favorable for uranium to exist. 

10 So it wasn't really going and taking samples in 

11 well-known, established uranium deposits. So the 

12 bulk of these samples were barely, you know, higher 

13 in uranium than what you would consider to be a 

14 normal distribution. 

15 So there were exposures associated with 

16 these samples that were processed in the 

17 laboratories. But, again, the radiological 

18 implications of exposures were not that great for 

19 those type of samples.

20 The analytical laboratory continued to 

21 operate through 2003 to support the various site 

22 projects, including the analysis of these samples 

23 that were processed in the crushing and grinding 
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1 operations.

2 The bottom three bullets that are on 

3 this slide are the ones that really are not relevant 

4 to what we want to talk about today exposure-wise 

5 because these activities, by and large, took place 

6 offsite. They were supported by the site 

7 administratively, but the exposures, since they 

8 were not acquired on the facility itself, are not 

9 considered covered exposures for this program.

10 Okay, a little bit more about the 

11 crushing and grinding. It happened in Building 

12 7A, which was an addition on to Building 7 in 1956. 

13 This was something that we really hadn't considered 

14 a lot in the original SEC Evaluation Report. It 

15 is the greatest source of internal exposure from 

16 onsite operations after '75. It was a very dusty 

17 operation. They had these inverted V blenders 

18 where they would blend the samples and then dump 

19 them, take samples, that sort of thing.

20 And it was a sufficiently dusty 

21 operation that they actually had a ventilation 

22 system that vented the materials to a baghouse. 

23 And they would fill up a couple of 55-gallon drums 
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1 from the dust from that operation every year. So 

2 it was somewhat messy of an operation.

3 But as I said, the radiological implications of 

4 that dust were not too bad, because these were not 

5 particularly highly concentrated uranium samples.

6 But the last bullet, I think. is the 

7 most relevant here. They ground uranium ores, 

8 tailings and thorium ores to specific mesh size 

9 prior to downblending the referenced materials for 

10 use in calibration pads.

11 This is what was not understood in the 

12 original SEC Evaluation Report. They made these 

13 concrete pads and bore hole calibration standards 

14 that could vary from five feet in diameter, two feet 

15 thick, to 30 by 40 feet, where they actually built 

16 four of those large pads and installed them at an 

17 airport so that people could actually do flybys and 

18 calibrate their detection survey meters from the 

19 air. They also supported drive-throughs and that 

20 sort of thing.

21 But they made a number of these samples. 

22 I think we know of at least 27, I think, that were 

23 made during this particular period. And to start 
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1 making those samples, they actually had to grind 

2 fairly highly concentrated ores, five to ten 

3 percent uranium-by-weight ores and blend them. 

4 And then they would dilute them down to make the 

5 calibration standards. 

6 They started with thorium ore that was 

7 fairly concentrated. And in some cases, they 

8 started with monazite sands, which are highly 

9 elevated in thorium content.

10 So this is the operation that we were 

11 saying we really don't have any idea of what kind 

12 of exposure potentials were occurring in this time 

13 period.

14 The analytical laboratory, as I 

15 mentioned, supported the operations in Building 7. 

16 And they did the assay of the ores and such. And 

17 they did have an upper concentration of incoming 

18 samples. I think they wouldn't accept any samples 

19 that were greater than 2,000 picocuries per gram. 

20 And so some of these monazite ores and such had to 

21 be blended down so that the laboratory could 

22 actually assay them. Again, as I mentioned, the 

23 samples were prepared in 7A. And the laboratory 
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1 was actually permanently closed in 2003.

2 So, our usual list of sources of 

3 available information, we use our already existing 

4 Technical Information Bulletins and procedures, of 

5 course. There were interviews conducted with nine 

6 former employees. We've looked through claimant 

7 files. There was some documentation provided by 

8 the petitioner. And we also looked at the files 

9 that we had captured in our Site Research Database.

10 As I mentioned earlier, 1116 additional 

11 documents have been added to that Site Research 

12 Database since we last presented this site's 

13 Evaluation Report in 2011. And that was obviously 

14 a result of additional data capture efforts that 

15 took place since 2000. Well, some of the data came 

16 in prior to that. But there's a lot of additional 

17 data here.

18 Of course, we always look, where we can, 

19 at the AEC documentation, DOE OpenNet. Internet 

20 searches are standard now. CEDR is also a source 

21 of information for exposure data. NARA and other 

22 DOE sites.

23 As far as claims go, there are 75 claims
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1 from Grand Junction that have been submitted to 

2 NIOSH, 48 that have employment in this time period 

3 that we're talking about today.

4 Forty-seven of those were completed, and only ten 

5 of those claims had a PC, Probability of Causation, 

6 greater than 50 percent. Six of the claims had 

7 some type of internal dosimetry data. 

8 Some monitoring was conducted. We'll 

9 talk about that in a little bit. But it's pretty 

10 sparse in the earlier years.

11 And 22 of those claims had some type of 

12 external dosimetry data. I think the criteria was 

13 at least one film badge measurement, or one TLD 

14 measurement.

15 As far as external exposure sources, 

16 you could imagine, this is uranium ore and thorium 

17 ore type exposure, so you have direct radiation 

18 from the handling and processing of the ore and 

19 tailings. One could also get exposure from being 

20 submerged in a contaminated air cloud, although 

21 that's not usually a very high exposure pathway for 

22 external anyway. And then one could receive 

23 exposures just from walking around the 
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1 contaminated grounds and buildings at the site.

2 There were also some sealed sources 

3 that were used for data logging. They were used 

4 offsite primarily, but they were stored onsite. 

5 And there were some potential exposures to those 

6 data logging sources.

7 So, from those source terms, the 

8 thorium and uranium, of course you have photon 

9 exposures from uranium progeny. The largest 

10 source, of course, would be the radium. 

11 Radium-226 has some shorter-lived progeny that 

12 emits some fairly energetic, high abundance 

13 photons.

14 That's the main source of exposure 

15 there, beta exposures, of course, from uranium 

16 progeny, protactinium-234m, most notably. And 

17 then, as I mentioned, the neutron exposures would 

18 occur from those data logging sources:

19 californium-252, as well as -- this is something 

20 new to me - a zetatron, which is a vacuum-tube 

21 neutron generator. It's a 

22 deuterium-tritium-containing device that 

23 accelerates the material and generates neutrons 
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1 back via that pathway. So, that is, neutrons are 

2 legitimate potentials for some exposures at this 

3 facility.

4 As far as external dose reconstruction, 

5 we have dosimetry data in the claimant files, as 

6 I indicated. Twenty-two of the claimants had some 

7 type of dosimetry in them.

8 They measured, early on, before '81, I think, with 

9 film, and after '81 with was TLDs. We also have 

10 access to the REMS database, which gives summary 

11 -- you know, summary and categories of exposures 

12 for various years. And we can use that.

13 We've modified that to account for 

14 missed dose. For example, if you took the 95th 

15 percentile in the REMS database and said, okay, 

16 it's one rem -- or not one rem, let's say the highest 

17 exposed person had 100 millirem, then if we knew 

18 that there were, like, so many other badging 

19 periods, we would give them the MDA for the 

20 remaining badging periods.

21 So we would assume that that annual 

22 roll-up occurred in one monitoring period. And 

23 then it's not a missed dose. That's a sort of 
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1 standard technique that we use.

2 But beta exposures, we've adopted a 

3 beta-gamma ratio to supplement the individual 

4 records. I think the beta-gamma ratio used in the 

5 ER is 1.5.

6 And, again, neutron exposures, 

7 although not many people are exposed to neutrons, 

8 it was possible, some people were monitored. The 

9 neutron data are in REM starting in 1985. And 

10 we're assuming, in prior years, the exposures were 

11 pretty similar.

12 So we believe that there's enough 

13 information to estimate external doses from 

14 operations starting February 1st, '75, all the way 

15 through July 31st, 2010, the period that we 

16 evaluated. We also believe that we can estimate 

17 with sufficient accuracy the medical X-ray dose 

18 using our existing program technical 

19 documentation.

20 Okay. Now, some of the more fun stuff, 

21 in my mind: the internal sources of exposures. You 

22 have uranium exposures, of course. But you also 

23 have the progeny, thorium-230 and radium-226. 
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1 Thorium-232, it says limited quantities. It's 

2 limited compared to some sites, but we're talking 

3 in the hundreds of kilograms. I think at one time 

4 they had a couple hundred kilograms onsite that 

5 they were using for these calibration pads.

6 Now, that's a one shot deal. I don't 

7 know how many times that was replenished and such. 

8 But there was at least a couple hundred kilograms 

9 at one time onsite. And you always have the 

10 progeny associated with the thorium, including 

11 radon or thoron gas, which is one of the short-lived 

12 progeny of thorium.

13 So the internal sources would be 

14 inhalation and ingestion from the sample 

15 preparation of the ore used in those calibration 

16 -- they're called models here, but I call them 

17 calibration reference sources, or reference pads.

18 They would have to crush, grind and dry 

19 those materials in Building 7A. And then they 

20 would downblend them and then actually mix them 

21 with concrete to create these, you know, five-foot 

22 diameter pads that can be used to calibrate these 

23 reference instruments.
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1 There was also sources of exposure from 

2 residual contamination from previous operations at 

3 the site. I mentioned the site was contaminated, 

4 so if you weren't working in Building 7 and you were 

5 in another facility, there are known levels of 

6 contamination around the site. And, of course, 

7 from resuspension of those materials, there's 

8 another additional exposure pathway.

9 Not much in the way of bioassay data at 

10 this facility. None, actually, from '75 to '83, 

11 that we found, at least that we had located, and 

12 very few samples for onsite workers in '84. Most 

13 of the samples appear to have been baseline 

14 samples. So they're not of much use if you didn't 

15 take a follow-up sample.

16 There are some fecal samples which will 

17 become relevant in a little while, for these 

18 workers in Building 7A, in 1986. After around '86, 

19 the monitoring program became somewhat more 

20 robust, and we have some indications that there 

21 were time-weighted air samples, some fecal 

22 sampling going on. They were very conscious of the 

23 potential exposures from some of these higher level 
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1 concentrated thorium and uranium sources. 

2 And there are some bioassay samples 

3 starting in 1991 when the requirements earlier of 

4 10 CFR -- or DOE Order 5480.11 came into effect.

5 There was some very good documentation, Technical 

6 Basis Documents, for the site that were written in 

7 that time period that described, at least on paper, 

8 a pretty substantial knowledge of the hazards and 

9 how to go about monitoring for them.

10 Again, not much in the way of air 

11 samples in this time period, '75 to '79. There is 

12 a maximum air sample result reported for that 

13 sample prep lab, that's the Building 7A laboratory, 

14 taken in July of 1980, although it's a very low 

15 sample. It only measured about three picocuries 

16 per gram.

17 As I mentioned, most of the samples that 

18 were processed by this laboratory were these sort 

19 of core samples that were taken from the field, not 

20 necessarily in areas that were highly enriched or 

21 highly concentrated in uranium. So it's somewhat 

22 deceptive. And this is what we were basing our 

23 last presentation on, in '75, that this was the type 
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1 of exposure that occurred there. 

2 Now, this is true. This is, in 

3 general, the type of air concentrations that one 

4 would see. But when you start processing these 

5 higher reference materials, the five to ten percent

6 uranium concentrated materials and the monazite 

7 ores, you could get much higher -- you know, they 

8 used the same equipment, it was the same equipment 

9 that was used -- you get much higher air 

10 concentrations.

11 And in fact in this next bullet, in 

12 1986, they did an MPC hour tracking sample in the 

13 prep lab. And for the first quarter of 1986, for 

14 this one operation, they estimated up to a 307 

15 MPC-hours of exposures.

16 So, those of you familiar with how this 

17 works, 520 MPC-hours would be the limit for that 

18 quarter. So these people's potential exposures 

19 were bouncing up against the limit in that time 

20 period. 

21 I will say that there is some indication 

22 that respiratory protection was used. But it's 

23 not clear how often and what type. I mean, it's 
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1 sort of spotty. We couldn't really determine. We 

2 weren't comfortable enough to say that the 

3 respiratory protection factor was effective for 

4 limiting these exposures. There is also some air 

5 sample results in the sample prep lab in 1990 that 

6 were pretty good.

7 There's some indication of onsite 

8 environmental samples taken in '85. They were 

9 discontinued in '94 after the land was remediated. 

10 These are of not much use for us in dose 

11 reconstructions, though.

12 However, during the site remediation 

13 effort that started around 1988, there are records 

14 of air monitoring, surface contamination, and 

15 worker bioassay that are pretty substantial. I 

16 think we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 

17 air samples taken during this period, as well as 

18 a good indication of bioassay and why it was taken.

19 I'll talk a little bit about radon at 

20 the site. When you have uranium ores, you're 

21 always going to have a radon situation. And not 

22 much was taken in the earlier years, up until 1990, 

23 as you can see on this slide.
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1 However, in 1985, and this is prior to 

2 the D&D operations, the after all the drums were 

3 gone, the source term, but prior to cleanup, they 

4 took 300 air samples in three different buildings 

5 which were thought to be the highest buildings 

6 where radon could have existed. And we have those 

7 values. They aren't very high at all. I think the 

8 highest four samples were around four picocuries 

9 per liter or something like that.

10 They were actually measured in working 

11 levels. I think they were reported about 0.02 

12 working levels, which, at 50 percent equilibrium, 

13 would come out about four picocuries.

14 So you really don't have evidence of a 

15 lot of radon exposure, although we would certainly 

16 consider this to be occupationally derived, 

17 because it's ADC source term. But, again, they are 

18 not very high.

19 So as far as internal dose feasibility 

20 goes, the sample preparation processing of these 

21 ores and tailings and the reference materials, we 

22 just believe there's insufficient data and 

23 information to reconstruct internal dose from 
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1 February 1st, '75, through December 31st, '85.

2 We do believe that we can reconstruct 

3 exposures, internal exposures and external 

4 exposures, from January 1st, '86, through July 

5 10th, 2010. And we'll talk a little bit about

6 that, why we think we can do that.

7 As far as intakes uranium, thorium and 

8 their associated long-lived -- yeah, so we're 

9 saying we can't reconstruct the intakes from 

10 thorium and uranium in that time period. And 

11 here's the reasons listed why. But we do think we 

12 have methods that we can use to estimate radon, 

13 radon progeny, after '75 through 2010, for the 

14 reasons I just mentioned.

15 We have those 300 radon measurements 

16 prior to the remediation period after the drums 

17 were taken offsite. And they're fairly low, 

18 they're in the maximum four picocurie per liter 

19 range. So we would be using those values to 

20 reconstruct radon exposures at the facility.

21 As far as uranium, thorium and 

22 long-lived progeny after January 1st, '86, again, 

23 the most significant exposures were either from the 
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1 sample prep lab or from the site remediation and 

2 building demolition, which actually happened 

3 starting in around 1988.

4 So let's just talk about the sample prep 

5 lab first. I mentioned we have that one sample in 

6 1986, the 300-and-something MPC-hours. They were 

7 clearly using the occupational limit to control 

8 exposures at that point. So we believe that if we 

9 assigned the maximum intake of 520 MPC-hours per 

10 quarter during this time period, it would 

11 sufficiently bound exposures to workers during 

12 this period.

13 I will say that there's only a couple 

14 instances where those calibration pads, as far as 

15 we know, were produced after 1980, in this time 

16 period that we're talking about.

17 Of course, the intakes from the site 

18 remediation and building demolition from '88 

19 through '91, we have, as a I mentioned, a lot of 

20 air samples, 600 or so. And we have analyzed those 

21 data.

22 We would assign the highest dose to what 

23 we call the operator category based on the 93rd
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1 percentile of those air samples. Other personnel 

2 would be assigned using a graded approach as listed 

3 in TBD-6000, which is 50 percent for the non-rad 

4 worker types and then ten percent for 

5 administrative people. That's a fairly standard 

6 prescription that we use out of TBD-6000.

7 Okay. After 1992, as I mentioned, DOE

8 5480.11 came in, subsequently followed by 10 CFR 

9 835. There's a pretty good Technical Basis 

10 Document out there that talks about limiting 

11 exposures internally to 200 DAC-hours per year 

12 prior to taking airborne -- prior to requiring 

13 bioassay samples.

14 And intakes for non-rad workers will be 

15 bound and based on a 40 DAC-hour per year trigger, 

16 which is pretty standard these days. That would 

17 result in 100 millirem internal dose. 

18 So this chart is our standard chart that 

19 summarizes what we think we can and cannot do at 

20 the facility. And you see, from February 1st, '75, 

21 through 12/31/1985, we say that dose 

22 reconstruction is not feasible for internal 

23 exposures, and that would include thorium and 
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1 uranium. Radon can be reconstructed, as well as 

2 all external doses. And after 1/1/86, we think we 

3 can reconstruct both internal and external 

4 exposures in all categories.

5 So, health endangerment, we believe 

6 that some workers may have accumulated chronic 

7 exposures through intakes of nuclides and direct 

8 exposures. We are specifying, then, that health 

9 may have been endangered for these workers.

10 And our recommendation is for the 

11 period March 23rd, 1943, through -- well, that's 

12 the last SEC period. So let's just skip to the 

13 proposed Class. That's what happens when cut and 

14 pasting occurs. Sorry about that. I'm surprised 

15 I didn't notice that.

16 So, at any rate, to summarize, our 

17 proposed Class here is all employees of the 

18 Department of Energy, its predecessor agencies, 

19 and contractors and subcontractors who worked at 

20 the Grand Junction Facilities site -- and this is 

21 correct -- February 1st, '75, through December 

22 31st, 1985, for a number of work days aggregating 

23 at least 250 days, with the standard caveats after 
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1 that. And I think that concludes my presentation.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Jim. 

3 That was almost what I -- before the last meeting 

4 I had actually sent around a letter for review where 

5 I had copied an old letter, and I had not only the 

6 wrong dates but the wrong decision, because I had 

7 changed it, but I hadn't saved it and I ended up 

8 sending out the old, saved letter that I was copying 

9 from. I got this real, you know, shock --

10 DR. NETON: What's sad is I looked at 

11 this thing at least six times. I must be getting 

12 old. That's all I can say.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just one thing for 

14 the record. I had this question earlier to Jim. 

15 There is no Site Profile for this site.

16 DR. NETON: That's correct.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. And so 

18 there's no prior review by the Board or SC&A of any 

19 of this information, really, other than the earlier 

20 SEC. And I think that one we just accepted. So 

21 I don't think SC&A has ever looked at this site at 

22 all.

23 DR. NETON: They have not.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. Questions, 

2 Gen?

3 MEMBER ROESSLER: Jim, as you went 

4 through the whole sequence, it looked to me like 

5 there were a lot of changes in the mid-'80s in 

6 activities and monitoring and so on.

7 And as I look at it, I think you could 

8 have picked a date to end in '83, or it could have 

9 been '88. And I'm wondering what was the most 

10 significant thing that determined the December 

11 1985 for the end date?

12 DR. NETON: Yeah. It really was that 

13 air sample that estimated the 

14 300-and-whatever-it-was DAC-hour or MPC-hour 

15 exposures, where they really were consciously 

16 monitoring and taking air samples during the 

17 processing of some highly elevated ores.

18 And I didn't mention this, I don't 

19 think, but they also took fecal samples associated 

20 with that. So we have some ways of sort of doing 

21 a sanity check. Do the air samples really match 

22 up with what the fecal samples are trying to tell 

23 us? So they were doing the right things at that 
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1 point.

2 Originally, we were thinking about 

3 using that and saying, well, we can go back in time 

4 and use that to bound exposures. But we just 

5 didn't feel comfortable doing that. But from that 

6 point forward, it seems like there was more of a 

7 conscious effort to control, or at least monitor, 

8 these workers during that time period.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry?

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yeah, I just had a 

11 question about that 307. That was a single? I 

12 mean, to say, well, because the standard and the 

13 guideline at the time was 520, to use that as your 

14 bounding, if all you ever had is one sample at 307, 

15 that doesn't encourage me that they were closely 

16 tracking to keep their exposures below what the --

17 DR. NETON: Yeah, we could discuss 

18 that, I suppose. But I don't know that it was one 

19 single sample. It was for the quarter. So that 

20 was a cumulative, you know, MPC-hours. So it was 

21 sampling over the quarter. But it was one 

22 campaign. I'll grant you that.

23 However, as I mentioned, we only know 
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1 of about 27 of these campaigns in this ten-year 

2 window. It seems it took about a month for each 

3 of these reference things to be made. So, part of 

4 the issue is we don't know. I mean, in the case 

5 of 27, were there more that we don't know about? 

6 That sort of thing.

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: Are there any 

8 letters or documentation that they were paying 

9 close attention to the 520?

10 DR. NETON: Oh, yes. There's a memo 

11 associated with this, actually --

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, okay. I'm 

13 just looking for, you know, is that a reasonable 

14 thing to use, in the light of this? Or was it just 

15 serendipity that it was only 307?

16 DR. NETON: No, no. There was a memo. 

17 And remember, they did use some sort of respiratory 

18 protection. But it's somewhat vague, to me, as to 

19 what they used.

20 They had one type of respirator they 

21 were recommending at that point. Then they 

22 switched to another one. And, you know, we 

23 certainly don't have any indication of any kind of 
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1 a respirator fit program or that sort of thing.

2 And typically in our program, we don't 

3 have any of that information. We just assume it 

4 didn't happen. So, in all likelihood, the 

5 exposures are less than that 307. But it 

6 certainly, in our opinion, is the maximum.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board Members on 

8 the phone have comments or questions?

9 MEMBER VALERIO: This is Loretta. I 

10 have a question.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead.

12 MEMBER VALERIO: It's on that same 

13 slide. And it was breaking up a little bit. I 

14 don't know if you were stepping away from the 

15 microphone. But I'm not clear on the air sample 

16 results that were reported for the sample prep lab 

17 in 1990. Are those sample results reported for 

18 that MPC-hour tracking that was done in 1986?

19 DR. NETON: No, no. The air samples 

20 that were taken in 1990, I don't exactly remember 

21 now what they -- I don't believe that they were the 

22 MPC-hour tracking.

23 By 1990, they were switching over to the 
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1 5480.11 implementation. But honestly, I can't 

2 tell you the nature of those samples off the top 

3 of my head. If Tom Tomes is on the phone and he 

4 knows, maybe he can chime in.

5 MR. TOMES: Yes. This is Tom Tomes. 

6 We don't have any indication they were MPC-hour 

7 tracking samples in 1990. But there was a -- we 

8 have a table of results that they were looking for, 

9 mostly thorium-230 was the isotope of concern. 

10 But they were not MPC-hour tracking results.

11 MEMBER VALERIO: Thank you.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks, Tom. Dr. 

13 Ziemer?

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't recall is you 

15 mentioned this in the original document or not, but 

16 in the Grand Junction case, unlike many other DOE 

17 facilities or AEC facilities, the operations 

18 office and the operational stuff seem to be sort 

19 of combined. But there clearly are administrative 

20 people on this site. Could you clarify the extent 

21 to which people have access to all the facilities?

22 DR. NETON: Yeah. That's a good 

23 point. I meant to include that in the presentation. 
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1 I don't think it's mentioned in the ER. But much 

2 like many other sites that we encounter, we're not 

3 aware of any controls that would prohibit anyone 

4 from entering these areas.

5 So we're not going to be able to exclude 

6 anybody, you know, from the Class. It's going to 

7 have to be all employees, just because we really 

8 don't know who had access to which areas or when. 

9 I meant to include that. Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

11 Members on the phone have questions?

12 MEMBER LEMEN: None for Lemen.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would just have one 

14 comment to sort of follow-up to my earlier question 

15 to Jim.

16 Given that we have not reviewed this 

17 site at all, other than the original SEC, while I'm 

18 comfortable with their SEC recommendation, I think 

19 a little more due diligence on the follow-up period 

20 would be helpful.

21 I don't have any specific doubts, but 

22 I think there's enough uncertainty there that we 

23 ought to pay some attention to that. I don't think 
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1 it would necessarily take a lot of effort, but it 

2 should take some to make sure that, given some of 

3 the questions that have been asked and given some 

4 of the changes that have occurred at the site and 

5 so forth.

6 But that's just my sort of personal 

7 sense from when I looked at the report last week 

8 and wrote the letters.

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Kind of focusing on 

10 the end point area.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The end point and 

12 sort of the methods. Since we haven't done a Site 

13 Profile review, or they haven't done a Site Profile 

14 and we haven't done a Site Profile review, again, 

15 not that it was necessary, but I think this is our 

16 one opportunity to sort of review the site other 

17 than the SEC.

18 MEMBER ANDERSON: I think we should 

19 send it to the 6000 group. Paul, I think they --

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I had actually 

21 suggested a new Work Group. I wasn't going to 

22 burden --

23 MEMBER ANDERSON: This is going to pile 
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1 on Paul one more time, right?

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: He did kick me 

3 several times when I started mentioning a further 

4 Work Group review.

5 MEMBER BEACH: So, I agree with a Work 

6 Group for this. But can we still do the tasking 

7 today?

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. No, I think 

9 there's no reason we can't do that. But first, 

10 let's go back to the -- my understanding, by the 

11 way, there is a petitioner, I'm not sure they are 

12 even -- they may or may not be on the line. But 

13 my understanding is that they don't wish to comment 

14 today. So, just that for the record. And Josh is 

15 indicating that's correct.

16 PARTICIPANT: I wish to make at least 

17 a brief comment.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, sir. You're not 

19 a petitioner on this site.

20 PARTICIPANT: Okay. Oh, not on this 

21 site, I'm sorry.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. It's just the 

23 petitioner on this site. Those are the rules. 
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1 I'm sorry. 

2 So, having said that, do I hear a 

3 suggested action from Board Members?

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: Sure. I would move 

5 that we accept and then create a Work Group to --

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Why don't we do them 

7 separately? 

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, fine.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Reading your intent, 

10 one would be to recommend the SEC and the second 

11 we'll move on and --

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, yes.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, I'll second that.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any further 

15 discussion or comment? Then if not, go ahead, Ted.

16 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

19 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field, I believe, had to 

23 leave. He hasn't returned, right? Dr. Field?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think he's up in an 

2 airplane.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's right. Dr. 

4 Kotelchuck?

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

7 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey?

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

15 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON? Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

19 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

23 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: And the motion passes, and 

4 I'll collect a vote from Dr. Field post-meeting.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The second part of 

6 that, Henry, if you want to continue with that now?

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: The second part was 

8 to form a Work Group and task SC&A to review the 

9 documentation that we have, specifically focusing 

10 on, you know, the appropriateness of the end of this 

11 period and the utility of the data and the 

12 monitoring. Not a full-blown, but a careful look.

13 MEMBER BEACH: I'll second that.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have a motion and 

15 second. Any further discussion on that?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And then we 

18 can do, yeah, just a -- we'll do a voice vote here. 

19 So all in favor, say aye.

20 (Chorus of ayes.)

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed? Abstain? 

22 Good.

23 MEMBER ANDERSON: And we do have SC&A 
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1 allocation time to work on this?

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. No, we've 

3 tasked them that as part of the motion.

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: Good, okay.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, yeah, Work 

6 Group and task SC&A. So Ted will follow-up with 

7 SC&A and work that out.

8 In the meantime, I will send out an 

9 email to all the Board Members asking for 

10 volunteers for this Work Group, as well as the 

11 others we've talked about earlier.

12 So I don't believe we have any more 

13 Board work to do. I think we've completed our 

14 Board work period.

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: We missed the letter 

16 from yesterday --

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Actually, we can do 

18 the letter, I can do that. And then, yeah, let me 

19 do that now. Let me first start with the Grand 

20 Junction letter.

21 So, the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

22 Worker Health, the Board, has evaluated Special 

23 Exposure Cohort, SEC, Petition 000175, concerning 
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1 workers of the Grand Junction Facility site in 

2 Grand Junction, Colorado, under the statutory 

3 requirements established by the Energy Employees 

4 Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 

5 2000, incorporated into 42 CFR, Section 83.13.

6 The Board respectfully recommends that 

7 SEC status be accorded to "all employees of the 

8 Department of Energy, its predecessor agencies, 

9 its contractors and subcontractors who worked at 

10 the Grand Junction Facility site in Grand Junction, 

11 Colorado, during the period from February 1st, 

12 1975, through December 31st, 1985, for a number of 

13 work days aggregating at least 250 work days 

14 occurring either solely under this employment or 

15 in combination with work days within the parameter 

16 established for one or more other Classes of 

17 employees included in the Special Exposure 

18 Cohort."

19 This recommendation is based on the 

20 following factors. Individuals employed at this 

21 facility in Grand Junction, Colorado, during the 

22 time period in question worked on research and 

23 production for materials used in the production of 
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1 nuclear weapons. The National Institute for 

2 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review of 

3 available monitoring data, as well as available 

4 process and source term information for this 

5 facility, found that NIOSH lacked the sufficient 

6 information necessary to complete the individual 

7 dose reconstructions with sufficient accuracy for 

8 internal radiological exposures to thorium, 

9 uranium and their progeny, to which these workers 

10 may have been subjected during the time period in 

11 question. The Board concurs with this 

12 determination.

13 NIOSH determined that health may have 

14 been endangered for employees at this facility 

15 during the time period in question. The Board also 

16 concurs with this determination.

17 Based on these considerations and 

18 discussion at the March 25th and 26th, 2015, Board 

19 meeting held in Richland, Washington, the Board 

20 recommends that this Class be added to the SEC.

21 Enclosed is the documentation from the 

22 Board meeting where this SEC Class was discussed. 

23 Documentation includes copies of the petition, the 
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1 NIOSH review thereof and related materials. If 

2 any of these items are unavailable at this time, 

3 they will follow shortly.

4 (Pause.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: While Ted passes 

6 this out, I'll start reading it into the record.

7 The Advisory Board on Radiation and 

8 Worker Health, the Board, has evaluated Special 

9 Exposure Cohort, SEC Petition 000226, concerning 

10 workers at the Hanford Site in Richland, 

11 Washington, under the statutory requirements 

12 established by the Energy Employees Occupational 

13 Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, 

14 incorporated into the 42 CFR 83.13.

15 The Board respectfully recommends that 

16 SEC status be accorded to "all employees of the 

17 Department of Energy, contractors and 

18 subcontractors (excluding employees of the Hanford 

19 prime contractor during the specified time 

20 periods: Battelle Memorial Institute, January 1st, 

21 1984, through December 31st, 1990; Rockwell 

22 Hanford Operations, January 1st, 1984, through 

23 June 28th, 1987; Boeing Computer Services, 
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1 Richland, January 1, 1984, through June 28th, 1987; 

2 UNC Nuclear Industries, January 1, 1984 through 

3 June 28th, 1987; Westinghouse Hanford Company, 

4 January 1st, l984 through December 31st, 1990; and 

5 Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, January 

6 1st, 1984 through December 31st, 1990) who worked 

7 at the Hanford site in Richland, Washington, during 

8 the period from January 1st, 1984, through December 

9 31st, 1990, for a number of work days aggregating 

10 at least 250 work days either solely under this 

11 employment or in combination with work days within 

12 the parameters established for one or more other 

13 Classes of employees included in the Special 

14 Exposure Cohort."

15 This recommendation is based on the 

16 following factors. Individuals employed at this 

17 facility in Richland, Washington, during the time 

18 period in question worked on research and 

19 production for materials used in the production of 

20 nuclear weapons.

21 The National Institute for 

22 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review of 

23 available monitoring data, as well as available 
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1 process and source term information for this 

2 facility, found that NIOSH lacked the sufficient 

3 information necessary to reconstruct internal 

4 radiological exposures and thus unable to complete 

5 individual dose reconstructions with sufficient 

6 accuracy for the Class of employees as described 

7 by the proposed Class Definition. The Board 

8 concurs with this determination.

9 NIOSH determined that health may have 

10 been endangered for the Class of employees as 

11 described by the proposed Class Definition. The 

12 Board also concurs with this determination.

13 Based on these considerations and 

14 discussion at the March 25th and 26th, 2015, Board 

15 meeting held in Richland, Washington, the Board 

16 recommends that this Class be added to the SEC.

17 Enclosed is the documentation from the 

18 Board meeting where this SEC Class was discussed. 

19 The documentation includes copies of the petition, 

20 the NIOSH review thereof and related materials. 

21 If any of these items are unavailable at this time, 

22 they will follow shortly.

23 And I would add, at the next Board 
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1 meeting we're going to have a quiz on that Class 

2 Definition to see if we can recall it from memory. 

3 And we'll include the NIOSH staff in that.

4 (Laughter.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was very happy when 

6 I was able to cut and paste that Definition. 

7 Because I know if I had tried to type it out I would 

8 have messed up.

9 So, I think we're all set with letters. 

10 And I think that completes our work session items. 

11 But we may have more later.

12 So we have another presentation at 1:30 

13 on the Idaho site. And then we have our favorite 

14 presentation of the day, of each meeting. LaVon 

15 will give us the SEC update, status update, and so 

16 forth. And then we'll see if we have other tasks 

17 to do.

18 So we'll take a break now. We will 

19 reconvene promptly at 1:30. We do expect to have 

20 petitioners either on the line or here, I'm not sure 

21 which. I think they're on the line for the Idaho 

22 presentation.

23 So we would very much like to start 
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1 promptly. So make your post-lunch nap short. 

2 We'll have Ted call everybody's room if you're not 

3 here. Anyway, thank you. And we'll reconvene at 

4 1:30.

5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

6 went off the record at 11:41 a.m. and resumed at 

7 1:35 p.m.)

8 MR. KATZ: Good afternoon. I was about 

9 to get started again. Let me check on the line and 

10 see which Board Members I have with us.

11 (Roll call.)

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We will start 

13 with our afternoon session. And we have two 

14 presentations left. The first one will be on the 

15 INL site. And as you all know, a long report. I've 

16 been kidding with Tim a little bit about the length 

17 of his presentation and so forth. But we will bear 

18 with him for a reasonable amount of time. We've 

19 worked that out and so forth.

20 And he told me he thought we weren't 

21 kidding and we were going to put him on a timer. 

22 But he checked through his PowerPoint before he got 

23 up there, so we're all set.
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1 But, no, this is a very thorough report 

2 and one we're going to be working with for a while. 

3 And there are parts of it that are reserved in terms 

4 of decisions and so forth. So it's something that 

5 we'll be using.

6 And for those of you that did notice, 

7 there are two sets of presentations. One was his 

8 earlier planned one, and we're getting the slightly 

9 abbreviated version, 35 less. But we appreciate 

10 everybody's effort on this site. And go ahead, 

11 Tim.

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

13 Members of the Board. The presentation today will 

14 be the Idaho National Laboratory Special Exposure 

15 Cohort Petition Evaluation Report.

16 And before I get started here, I want to 

17 recognize my ORAU evaluation team. There were 

18 four health physicists working with me on this. 

19 The lead health physicist was Mitch Findley, Mike 

20 Mahathy, Jason Davis, Brian Gleckler. And then we 

21 had a large data capture support team: Bill 

22 Connell, Jennifer Warner, Art Gutzman, Guy Babin 

23 and Sally O'Neil.
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1 We conducted five data captures on-site 

2 from September through January of this year, as 

3 well as one in the Seattle Federal Records Center. 

4 So this was a very large effort. And the team did 

5 a fantastic job with this report. And I just have 

6 the privilege of presenting it to you today.

7 I'd also like to recognize the Department 

8 of Energy, the Idaho National Laboratory site. 

9 They did a phenomenal job of reviewing and clearing 

10 our documents, documents that we would select 

11 during data capture.

12 Since September, the data captures, 

13 they've cleared somewhere between 80,000 to 

14 100,000 pages of information that my team captured. 

15 And they were able to get it to us so that we could 

16 evaluate it and then present this report to you.

17 In particular, I'd like to thank Craig 

18 Walker there at the site. He was the one who was 

19 kind of feeding everything there. And so I really 

20 want thank the site for that effort.

21 A little bit of an overview of this 

22 petition. The petitioner is an authorized rep for 

23 an energy employee. We received this petition 
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1 back in July of 2014. The petition qualified on 

2 September 16th.

3 We sent a notification to both the 

4 petitioner and the Advisory Board that we were 

5 going to be exceeding 180 days due to site 

6 complexity and the need for multiple data captures 

7 at multiple locations, again, Seattle as well as 

8 on-site.

9 We got the Evaluation Report here sent to 

10 the Board about two weeks ago, on March 12th. And 

11 then after the final ADC clearance was received 

12 from DOE, we sent it to the petitioner just one week 

13 ago. So this has been a really crunched timeline 

14 in order to meet this particular schedule.

15 The preliminary Class that was proposed 

16 by the petitioner was all employees who worked in 

17 any area of the Idaho National Laboratory from 

18 January 1st, 1949, through December 31st, 1970.

19 So the initial Class suggested by the 

20 petitioner does not include the full site history. 

21 It was just up through 1970. And the petitioner's 

22 basis was that, to their knowledge, there was no 

23 internal monitoring for plutonium, neptunium or 
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1 fission products.

2 And what we found when we were doing our 

3 qualification process, there is a lot of fission 

4 product bioassay for the site. But we did find 

5 that there's very limited plutonium and neptunium 

6 bioassay and monitoring. And so that was why we 

7 qualified this particular petition.

8 The current dose reconstruction for 

9 plutonium within the Site Profile and the TBD is 

10 to use mixed fission product bioassay and apply a 

11 ratio off of that, with the assumption that any 

12 plutonium exposures would be associated with mixed 

13 fission products, and so you could use this ratio 

14 to bound what the plutonium exposures were.

15 What we found during the evaluation is 

16 that's not necessarily the case. And so to jump 

17 to the end here, what we're actually recommending 

18 is a Class of workers for the Idaho National 

19 Laboratory, in particular the Chemical Processing 

20 Plant.

21 And so I'll read the first part of this 

22 proposed Class Definition, then I'll explain why 

23 or how we came to this conclusion.
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1 Our proposed Class Definition is: All 

2 employees of the Department of Energy, its 

3 predecessor agencies and their contractors and 

4 subcontractors who worked at the Idaho National 

5 Laboratory in Scoville, Idaho, and were monitored 

6 for external radiation at the Idaho Chemical 

7 Processing Plant.

8 And for an example, at least one film 

9 badge or one TLD dosimeter from CPP between January 

10 1st, 1963, and December 31st, 1974, for a number 

11 of work days aggregating at least 250 work days.

12 So what you will immediately notice is our 

13 initial evaluation period was '49 to '70, and we 

14 are starting the proposed Class in 1963 and 

15 extending past our initial evaluation period to 

16 December of 1974. And hopefully it will become 

17 clear as to why we did that by the end of the 

18 presentation.

19 One of the first things that we learned, 

20 much to our surprise, was how complex the Idaho 

21 National Laboratory site is. The original 

22 petition included both INL and ANL West. The 

23 energy employee who worked the majority of his 
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1 career at Argonne National Laboratory West, in 

2 particular the early 1960s through 1995.

3 So, what we found was that, due to the 

4 covered facility Definitions, we actually had to 

5 break this into two petitions, one for the Idaho 

6 National Laboratory and then one for Argonne 

7 National Laboratory West. And the reason was, 

8 again, due to these covered facility Definitions.

9 In 2005, the two sites were combined. So 

10 when you talk about Argonne National Laboratory 

11 West, to the current people at the site, there is 

12 no Argonne West. It's all one site, INL.

13 The petitioner was gracious enough to 

14 submit a new petition for Argonne West so that we 

15 could evaluate that one. We received that on 

16 December 4th.

17 The petition, the slide, it needs to be 

18 updated here that it's no longer in the 

19 qualification process. It has qualified, and we 

20 are beginning the evaluation. That was published 

21 in the Federal Register this week.

22 And, in fact, next week the evaluation 

23 team that I listed on that second slide there will 
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1 be headed back out to Idaho next week to begin the 

2 evaluation of Argonne National Laboratory West.

3 The current evaluation for SEC 219 is just 

4 the INL facilities. So, what am I referring to as 

5 the Idaho National Laboratory facilities?

6 The boundary here, the black boundary, is the Idaho 

7 National Laboratory as it is today.

8 But within this site, traditionally, this 

9 little area here with EBR-II was considered Argonne 

10 National Laboratory West. However, in 1949, that 

11 area didn't exist. That site didn't come into 

12 existence until around 1957. And so this area down 

13 here was Argonne National Laboratory West back in 

14 the early years of 1952, being EBR-I, and ZPR and 

15 BORAX.

16 So what were actually evaluating in this 

17 petition are these blue boxes. This would be Test 

18 Area North, Test Reactor Area, CPP and 

19 miscellaneous reactor areas, Central Facilities 

20 and the burial grounds. So that's what this 

21 Evaluation Report is covering, is these facilities 

22 that we're considering Idaho National Laboratory.

23 This red dot here in the center is the 
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1 Naval Reactor Facility, which is not even covered 

2 under EEOICPA. So what you've got here is two 

3 covered facilities and one facility that's not 

4 covered, all within this boundary of Idaho National 

5 Laboratory. So that was why we had to break this 

6 out for the evaluation.

7 So the areas I'm going to talk about today 

8 are the six main areas that I just showed you on 

9 the map: the Chemical Processing Plant, Test 

10 Reactor Area, Test Area North, miscellaneous 

11 reactors, central facilities and burial grounds.

12 The bulk of the presentation I'm going to 

13 focus on the central or Chemical Processing Plant 

14 because that's where we're recommending a Class. 

15 And so a lot of the slides that got cut, from the 

16 75 slides down to the 47 that we're at today, is 

17 due to other things within these other areas where 

18 we're not recommending a Class.

19 So, the Chemical Processing Plant, it's 

20 comprised of multiple buildings, but the main 

21 processing buildings would be the enriched uranium 

22 reprocessing facility, the analytical 

23 laboratories, there was a fuel storage building 
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1 where they received fuels from offsite before they 

2 were dissolved down and the uranium extracted. 

3 There's a remote analytical facility, there was a 

4 solvent burning building, as well as the 

5 calcination building.

6 Unlike Hanford and Savannah River, as far 

7 as storing waste from the chemical separations 

8 process, Idaho took that liquid waste and turned 

9 it into calcine. So they went through that whole 

10 process.

11 So I'm going to start here with the 

12 reprocessing facility of 601. The top floor is --

13 this is a diagram starting with, actually, the 

14 operating floor. It was a very modest building 

15 that was a process makeup area where they would 

16 store chemicals and add into some of the tanks. 

17 The operations corridors where the workers 

18 primarily worked as far as making sure fuels were 

19 being dissolved as they were going through the 

20 process and then manipulating different valves.

21 Around this outer ring from this first 

22 floor is what's called the sampling corridor. And 

23 this was where the operators, as well as physics 
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1 technicians and others, would go.

2 And there were sampling stations where 

3 they could monitor for each of the cells what was 

4 going on inside the tanks. They could extract 

5 chemicals, they could extract what the solution 

6 was. And they would send them to the analytical 

7 laboratories for analysis.

8 Below that is the service corridor where 

9 piping changes would be done to move materials 

10 between cells if they needed to modify something. 

11 And then the bottom was an access corridor.

12 All of these cells -- these are tall, 

13 vertical cells, roughly three stories -- the access 

14 to them was from the bottom. And that's where the 

15 access corridor was. And I will get into that a 

16 little bit more.

17 So, unlike the canyons of PUREX and 

18 Savannah River, where nobody went back into the 

19 canyons, they could go into these particular cells 

20 and do modifications. It was designed to do 

21 hands-on type of maintenance and reconfiguration, 

22 if you will.

23 So, the picture down here at the bottom 
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1 is a worker in the operating corridor. This 

2 happens to be L cell. It was the only cell that 

3 had a window to it. But you see a lot of valves 

4 and changes, things that they could do from that 

5 operating corridor. So that was the main job of 

6 the operations people there.

7 The general process of extracting uranium 

8 was to first dissolve the fuel. And then there was 

9 a first stage separation where the mixed fission 

10 products primarily went away. And you were left 

11 with a solution of uranium, some mixed fission 

12 products, plutonium, neptunium and other 

13 transuranic radionuclides.

14 Generally, after the second and third 

15 stages, the uranium was extracted. That was the 

16 product. The product here was not plutonium at the 

17 Chemical Processing Plant. It was just uranium, 

18 enriched uranium.

19 So, generally, the raffinates then were 

20 sent to the tank farms, recombined with the mixed 

21 fission products. It would go to the calciner 

22 then. And so from the Technical Basis Document 

23 standpoint of our dose reconstruction method, using 
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1 the mixed fission products to estimate the 

2 plutonium, it works quite well for the calciner and 

3 for the general process that was going on here. 

4 Where it didn't work well is for the one 

5 campaign where they did separate plutonium and 

6 neptunium. That took place from 1965 to 1972. And 

7 so in talking a little bit about this campaign, in 

8 this case that raffinate that normally went out to 

9 the tanks was actually collected and stored in N 

10 cell.

11 It took about six years to reach the 

12 capacity that they had there of leftover capacity 

13 within N cell. They could have built more, but they 

14 actually wanted to just get rid of it. They weren't 

15 accumulating a lot of it, and so it wasn't a big 

16 product for the particular facility.

17 Through interviews with workers, some of 

18 the activities that were conducted during that six 

19 years was they would be sampling the neptunium and 

20 plutonium out of the tanks. With every different 

21 uranium-235 batch of fuel that was dissolved, they 

22 would then go, after the campaign was done, resample 

23 from those tanks and analyze what was the 
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1 concentration change of the neptunium and the 

2 plutonium.

3 They also did some chemical separations 

4 work there in the analytical chemistry laboratories 

5 in order to extract this. You've got people that 

6 would be going into cells to do maintenance where 

7 they would have this particular material.

8 And when they got ready to do the final 

9 extraction, they did some of these experiments. And 

10 we interviewed the chemist who did them. And he 

11 indicated it was a short duration project to him. 

12 You know, by 1972 they pretty much knew how to 

13 extract plutonium from uranium. The question, 

14 really, that he was trying to solve at the time was 

15 more of, what's the most efficient way for CPP to 

16 do that?

17 So, this campaign was conducted, the 

18 actual extraction of plutonium and neptunium, was 

19 conducted during a three week time period in June 

20 of 1972. The solution was pumped between various 

21 cells and eventually to the multi-curie cell where 

22 it was loaded into L-10 bottles, about 140 liters, 

23 so it took 14 bottles to fill up this solution of 
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1 neptunium, plutonium and uranium.

2 And what you can see here is the actual 

3 recovery of neptunium was about five kilograms. To 

4 put this into a little bit of perspective as to why 

5 they only did this once and didn't do it more --

6 (Technical difficulties.)

7 DR. TAULBEE: Sorry about that. From 

8 interviews with the workers when they did this 

9 recovery, one worker actually did the actual 

10 bottling of all of the solution, the 140 liters. 

11 But there were a lot of observers, and health 

12 physics was present, so it was kind of a big 

13 production at the time.

14 So that was one of the potentials for 

15 plutonium exposure there at CPP that didn't 

16 accompany mixed fission products, that we ran into. 

17 Another one that turns out to not be a significant 

18 exposure potential but is worthy of mentioning here 

19 was what was called the umpire qualification 

20 program. And we ran into this by looking at 

21 material transfers between different sites.

22 And the thing that really caught our eye 

23 was 13 bird cages of plutonium being shipped from 
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1 Hanford to CPP. And we are, like, where is this 

2 material going and what are they doing with it?

3 This was part of a round robin testing 

4 qualification process where they were getting 

5 differences between receiver and shipping 

6 laboratories. So they awarded a contract to CPP in 

7 May of 1965 to manage this program and qualify 

8 laboratories.

9 And so CPP and K-25 prepared uranium 

10 standards; Rocky Flats and Hanford prepared 

11 plutonium standards. And they were all sent to 

12 CPP. And they were sent out from there to different 

13 laboratories.

14 And the exposure potential appears to be 

15 minimal, because --

16 (Telephonic interference.)

17 MR. KATZ: Excuse me, Tim. Folks on the 

18 line, someone has not muted their phone, at least 

19 one person. Can you please mute your phone. 

20 Someone on the line? Is that me, an echo?

21 (Off-microphone comments.)

22 DR. TAULBEE: All right. And so we 

23 haven't uncovered any evidence that they analyzed 
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1 any of the plutonium coming from Rocky Flats or from 

2 Hanford. It was more of receiving these standards 

3 and sending them out, is what this appears to be.

4 But, of note, there were several people 

5 in that analytical laboratory that were monitored 

6 for plutonium exposure during this particular time 

7 period. Not many, but a few.

8 So, now, I hope I've established that 

9 there is a potential for exposure to plutonium or 

10 neptunium without associated mixed fission 

11 products associated at CPP.

12 And so I want to talk a little bit about 

13 what I'm going to call the degradation of 

14 radiological control. And what we found from the 

15 RAD surveys from the 1950s -- 1961 here as an example 

16 -- they had good control of contamination there 

17 within the processing building.

18 This particular slide here is showing, 

19 the note here in the center is less than RCG for 

20 beta, gamma and alpha, which would be less than the 

21 radiation control guideline. And the guideline at 

22 the time period was 20 dpm per 100 square 

23 centimeters, which is the current standard in 10 CFR 
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1 835 today.

2 So they were controlling contamination 

3 very well here in this time period, 1961 and 

4 earlier. There will be time periods where they 

5 would have a spill, and they would mop it up, clean 

6 it up, and we would see, again, back to completely 

7 clean areas.

8 And the reason that this was important is 

9 that they were not doing routine bioassay for 

10 plutonium, neptunium or any transuranics. They 

11 were doing it based upon incident-based issues, to 

12 where if an incident happened, then they would do 

13 follow-up bioassays. So we do see some bioassay, but 

14 it's really incident driven. And so they were 

15 relying on identifying these incidents.

16 But by 1963, there doesn't appear to be 

17 any severe contamination issues, but perhaps the 

18 beginning of a slow degradation. And what you'll 

19 see here is this small, little area here. And if 

20 you zoom in on your slides, you'll see that that says 

21 60 dpm alpha.

22 So now we're about three times what the 

23 rad control guideline was, from 20 up to 60. And 
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1 a note there that they suggest cleaning this. So, 

2 again, there's times of it being clean and times 

3 where it was contaminated.

4 By 1965, we're beginning to see a spread 

5 of contamination in this access corridor. And what 

6 you'll see here now is, instead of a small area, 

7 you've got this whole area between the cells. And 

8 the alpha level down here is now 80 to almost 2,000 

9 dpm per 100 square centimeters.

10 So now you're looking at four to 100 times 

11 that rad control guideline that was going on. And 

12 so this is just, you know, a short four years after 

13 that previous time period when everything was 

14 clean.

15 When you jump to 1970, you'll notice the 

16 whole area is contaminated. That SC means shoe 

17 cover area. The only area here in the entire 

18 corridor that was less than RCG is this small, 

19 little area off to the right. That's the only clean 

20 area within that entire corridor.

21 So we see this continual spread of 

22 contamination and it getting worse over time. So 

23 there was a slow degradation of the radiological 
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1 control.

2 And like I said, in general, if you've got 

3 good control and you're using incident-based 

4 bioassay that Jim was talking about earlier, you can 

5 identify the incidents, and you can do appropriate 

6 follow-up.

7 What ends up happening is, as you get 

8 continuous contamination, if you don't have a 

9 routine bioassay you lose the ability to identify 

10 those incidents and do proper follow-up bioassay.

11 And so what they've got is this noise 

12 level coming up of contamination control, and they 

13 didn't institute a routine bioassay monitoring 

14 program.

15 What this led to was, in November of 1972, 

16 there was a plutonium intake in the analytical 

17 laboratories. Contamination was found, rather 

18 severe contamination levels. And so they did 

19 follow-up bioassay among the workers. And those 

20 that were positive, they did further analysis to do 

21 isotopic to figure out the plutonium-238 to -239.

22 And what they found was one of the workers 

23 had a different ratio than the other workers. And 
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1 it didn't match the material that was actually there 

2 in the lab that was available for intake that the 

3 other workers inhaled. And so they started doing 

4 an investigation of what caused this. Where did 

5 this worker work? What caused this intake?

6 And they narrowed it down to that they 

7 concluded the intake occurred six months 

8 previously, in May of '72, in another part of the 

9 plant, in the X cell, during a cleanup activity that 

10 was going on in one of those other cells in another 

11 part of the building area.

12 So we went back and we looked at the survey 

13 logs in X cell in that time period. And what we 

14 found was the cell was severely contaminated with 

15 alpha, and it was cleaned up. "Cleaned up," I say, 

16 because after mopping there was still a few thousand 

17 dpm of alpha in the cell. So the background levels 

18 were so high there, they couldn't identify that an 

19 incident occurred and a worker was actually 

20 exposed.

21 And I am not doing that.

22 (Telephonic interference.)

23 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So the site took 
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1 this particular incident rather seriously, that 

2 they knew they had a problem. They hired in some 

3 health physicists to come back and help them conduct 

4 the evaluation and see what they could do to improve 

5 radiation control in that area. Stu?

6 (Technical difficulties.)

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So the site hired 

8 health physicists back, and then they began to 

9 evaluate and propose upgrades of the radiation 

10 contamination control for CPP.

11 This particular committee issued a report 

12 in October of 1974. So if you think about the 

13 timeline there, that incident happened in November 

14 of '72. By the time they got the analysis, you're 

15 looking at 1973.

16 (Technical difficulties.)

17 DR. TAULBEE: So this particular 

18 committee went through and evaluated the program at 

19 CPP and was to make recommendations to management 

20 to improve their radiation safety. And so I want 

21 to read a couple of the excerpts that were in that 

22 report from 1974.

23 One of them was the access corridor is 
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1 contaminated routinely to several thousand dpm per 

2 100 square centimeters. That I showed you from the 

3 radiation surveys.

4 They also indicate here at the bottom, 

5 significant levels, greater than ten to the fifth 

6 dpm per 100 square centimeters of plutonium 

7 contamination, have been identified recently in a 

8 number of cells.

9 And so they begin to recognize that they 

10 have a plutonium contamination issue here that they 

11 didn't know about previously, that was getting out 

12 of control, effectively.

13 Other issues were that they were working 

14 with higher levels of radioactivity on open bench 

15 tops and in hoods where they should have been using 

16 more glove boxes, at least compared to other 

17 facilities.

18 And then, finally, they indicated that 

19 bioassay samples, both fecal and urine, are 

20 collected and analyzed presently only when an 

21 exposure incident is suspected.

22 So a routine bioassay program hadn't been 

23 instituted yet. They were still on that 
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1 incident-based monitoring. This is why they 

2 missed that one particular exposure, at least one 

3 anyway.

4 They were adding a routine bioassay 

5 program. It was being developed. And a draft of 

6 that program was being submitted to management at 

7 this time, in October of 1974.

8 So our Class recommendation for January 

9 of '63 through December of 1974 is because there is 

10 known alpha contamination in the analytical 

11 laboratories, the processing cells, that access 

12 corridor in the 1963 time period with very few 

13 workers being monitored for plutonium exposure, 

14 plutonium and transuranics. There is a potential 

15 for routine exposure to these transuranics during 

16 that campaign that was going on from '65 to '72 where 

17 workers would be pulling samples from those sample 

18 blisters around in the corridor.

19 You have, at the same time, this 

20 degradation of the radiation control program where 

21 before areas were clean and now they can't identify 

22 these particular incidents.

23 So the potential for exposure continued 
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1 past 1970. When we identified this particular 

2 deficiency, we started looking for what's a logical 

3 end date for now, at this standpoint. And so we 

4 went through the end of 1974, based upon the review 

5 committee's published report. Because prior to 

6 that, there didn't seem to be any recognition by 

7 management that they had a major issue that they 

8 were going to be dealing with. After that 

9 particular report, things began to change.

10 And so what we will do is, from our 

11 standpoint, we're very confident that nothing began 

12 to change before the end of 1974. That's why we've 

13 designated the Class now from January 1963 through 

14 December of 1974, with the intent of looking at the 

15 years beyond that and potentially expanding the 

16 Class through the 83.14 process.

17 But since we've identified this 

18 discrepancy or this issue in feasibility, we didn't 

19 want to hold up any potential claims while we tried 

20 to figure out a real end date for this potential 

21 exposure.

22 Somewhere between 1974 and the 1980s, 

23 operations began to improve. Now, whether that was 
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1 '75, '76, '78, '80, '85, I don't know. We only were 

2 evaluating through 1970, and then we were looking 

3 for a reasonable cut off for the Class to evaluate 

4 further under 83.14.

5 Some of the things that changed that will 

6 make this process more difficult, not as 

7 straightforward, is that after 1974 we begin to see 

8 more routine bioassay.

9 At the same time, there is significant 

10 effort to decontaminate facilities. And we heard 

11 about that through the interviews that were 

12 conducted this past summer and in November where 

13 there was concentrated efforts to clean up the 

14 buildings and get the contamination back under 

15 control.

16 So it's not going to be a very quick, very 

17 easy evaluation to find a good end date for this. 

18 So, that covers the Chemical Processing Plants. 

19 Now, briefly I'm to try and go through the remainder 

20 of the areas. 

21 Test Reactor Area, you've got three main 

22 reactors: the material test reactor, engineering 

23 test reactor and advanced test reactor. They 
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1 operated from May of '52 through present. ATR is 

2 still running. But the main goal of these, they 

3 were all materials test reactors that were 

4 operating at various power levels of increasing 

5 intensity so that you have a higher neutron flux 

6 amongst those reactors.

7 Other facilities within the Test Reactor 

8 Area that were of significant was the neutron 

9 chopper. And for nuclear engineers, this is where 

10 a lot of the neutron cross-section data came from. 

11 There was a beam coming off of the side of MTR where 

12 they would do cross-sectional measurements for 

13 reactions.

14 There's a gamma spectroscopy laboratory 

15 that was operating next to MTR. And those of us who 

16 are health physicists, in all of our initial 

17 radiation measurements laboratories, we went 

18 through looking at spectroscopy. We all used 

19 Heath's simulation spectroscopy catalogue. 

20 That's where it was developed, right next to MTR.

21 And then you've got chemistry labs that 

22 did some exotic radionuclides. There was a gamma 

23 building for cobalt-60 irradiations. And they had 
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1 an alpha hot cell which is a cave. And that started 

2 operating around 1960.

3 Over 200 exotic radionuclides have been 

4 identified as being produced at MTR and ETR. 

5 Pretty much anything that they could irradiate, 

6 they irradiated. The vast majority are beta-gamma 

7 emitters. There were some actinides produced and 

8 were separated in the alpha laboratories.

9 This particular picture is a chemist 

10 that's working there at the alpha cave. You can see 

11 its remote manipulator arms. It's not a hands-on 

12 through a glove box type of operation.

13 So our recommendation for TRA is that 

14 there's minimal potential for internal alpha 

15 exposure. There were a few workers exposed to 

16 alpha materials. However, we do have plutonium and 

17 other actinide bioassay available for these few 

18 workers that we've identified.

19 So from the reports and other survey 

20 records, we know some of the chemists that were 

21 working in there. We went and pulled their 

22 records, looked at it, and we see some plutonium and 

23 other actinide bioassay. So we feel those workers 
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1 are covered, and we could reconstruct their dose.

2 Internal exposures throughout the Test 

3 Reactor Area were generally controlled through 

4 smear surveys and continuous air sampling. The air 

5 samples accounted for both alpha and beta. And so 

6 they were trying to keep tight control and keep 

7 alpha at bay, such that they didn't see any alpha 

8 contamination at all throughout the facility.

9 There were times when there were 

10 incidents that did occur from that standpoint, and 

11 there was significant bioassay follow-up 

12 associated with those incidents.

13 Mixed fission products, we believe, can 

14 be reconstructed. However, a coworker model is 

15 needed for the post-1967 time period. And let me 

16 try and explain why we believe this.

17 If you look at the whole body counting 

18 procedure in 1963, and this is very difficult to 

19 see, and I apologize for that, but it's an exposure 

20 potential based sampling scheme.

21 And so what you'll see is welders, and 

22 fitters, as well as operators, in the far left 

23 column, are monitored four times a year for whole 
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1 body count in 1963, whereas machinists in the 

2 machine shop were only monitored once per year. 

3 And clerks and secretaries were not monitored at 

4 all.

5 So it's clearly those that had a higher 

6 potential for exposure were being monitored from 

7 the whole body count standpoint up until 1967. At 

8 that point, it changed. The sampling methodology 

9 went from exposure-based potential to one quarter 

10 of the workforce per year.

11 So if a supervisor was to take his number 

12 of workers, select one fourth of them, send them for 

13 a whole body counting, the next year a different 

14 quarter, with the goal of a complete monitoring over 

15 a four year period for mixed fission products.

16 So this is why we need a coworker model, 

17 because if you have somebody that comes in and only 

18 works two years, and they weren't monitored at any 

19 time during that, we've got to rely upon the 

20 coworker model test to make their dose.

21 They were more using this to make sure 

22 that they were below the maximum permissible type 

23 of limits at the time, is what they were doing.
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1 So now I'll jump up to Test Area North 

2 which is about 30 miles north of the rest of the 

3 facility. And just as a little bit of a reference 

4 here, actually Mound and Fernald are about the same 

5 distance as Test Area North and the burial grounds 

6 here. So these facilities are really not that 

7 close together.

8 MR. KATZ: Excuse me. Someone's 

9 listening, but they're not, they haven't muted 

10 their phone. If you press *6, that'll mute your 

11 phone.

12 (Off microphone discussion.)

13 MR. KATZ: Well, there is no comment 

14 right now. So please, whoever is on the phone and 

15 is talking, mute your phone. Press *6. Thank you.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. With Test Area 

17 North, you've got the initial engine tests which 

18 were run by GE. These are the aircraft nuclear 

19 engines that were tested there in the 1950s. 

20 You've got Test Area North hot shop. You've got an 

21 actuator building, a low power test facility and a 

22 shield test facility.

23 The pictures here, the one to the right 
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1 is actually the initial engine test. The reactor 

2 was pulled into that building, hooked up to the 

3 exhaust so that the exhaust came out a stack.

4 The workers were actually shielded here 

5 inside a bunker. And the lower picture is the 

6 workers looking through a periscope to look at the 

7 operations that were going on. So the reactor 

8 wasn't shielded, the workers were shielded, kind of 

9 the inverse of what you typically see at a reactor.

10 The left hand picture happens to be the 

11 Test Area North hot shop where they could roll these 

12 large aircraft engines in and do maintenance on them 

13 remotely.

14 The key with Test Area North is that 

15 fission products and actinides were not separated, 

16 and they always appear to be together from the 

17 radiological standpoint. So that methodology in 

18 the TBD should be applicable for this particular 

19 area because of the ratio.

20 And to illustrate this Test Area North hot 

21 cell, this is a survey of it. And if you look at 

22 some of these survey results, if you can zoom in, 

23 and looking at them, what you'll see is, like, 14 
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1 counts per minute alpha and 800 counts per minute 

2 beta. So you can definitely see that these two are 

3 tied together from an exposure standpoint.

4 So the one exception here appears to be 

5 the actuator building which was built in 1956 for 

6 testing prototype control mechanisms. So think of 

7 a building to just simply test control rod drives 

8 going in and out of the aircraft engine.

9 Sometime after 1961, it was renamed to the 

10 Test Area North Fuel Handling Facility. So between 

11 '61 and '63, they handled some fuel in that 

12 particular building. Because by '63, during the 

13 turnover from GE to Phillips Petroleum, it was found 

14 to be contaminated with uranium.

15 And so we're reserving judgement on this 

16 facility, because here we have an alpha exposure of 

17 uranium not associated with mixed fission products. 

18 And we don't really understand the full range of 

19 this exposure or when this facility was 

20 decontaminated and returned to clean.

21 We do know in later years that this 

22 building was not contaminated with alpha. So this 

23 is why we're reserving the judgement on this 
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1 particular area.

2 So our recommendation for Test Area North 

3 is no appreciable exposure to actinides without 

4 mixed fission products. The actinide exposures 

5 can be bounded using the ratio methodology.

6 But given the decrease in urinalysis and 

7 whole body counting from '67 to 1970 and beyond, by 

8 the way, until they got more of a routine program 

9 reestablished, we recommend the development of a 

10 coworker model to estimate the mixed fission 

11 product doses to these workers.

12 We'll prepare an addendum to the 

13 Evaluation Report for the actuator building from 

14 the '61 through '70 time period once we can get to 

15 evaluate that further.

16 Miscellaneous reactor areas, this will be 

17 the special power excursion reactor tests, 

18 auxiliary reactor area, which consisted of ARA-1 

19 hot cell. There was not a reactor there. It was 

20 just a hot cell.

21 ARA-2 is stationery low power where SL-1, 

22 as most people have heard about, it operated from 

23 '58 until January of 1961 when it had a catastrophic 
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1 accident. ARA-3 was the gas cooled reactor 

2 experiment. ARA-4 is mobile low power unit, ML-1. 

3 And then you have the organic moderated reactor 

4 experiment which was the predecessor to the Piqua 

5 Reactor.

6 Special power excursion tests were to 

7 investigate the safety of water cooled reactors. 

8 What's important here is that you have a central 

9 control point in the center here. And then you've 

10 got SPERT-1, 2, 3, 4, all about a half mile or so 

11 away from where the central control room was.

12 Personnel were evacuated from each of the 

13 areas during the operation. There were continuous 

14 air monitors on the facility exhaust for each of 

15 these. And health physics was involved during the 

16 re-entry during this.

17 So we believe dose reconstruction in 

18 SPERT is feasible since the exposure is limited to 

19 mixed fission products, and the workers were 

20 monitored. ARA-2 through 4, dose reconstruction 

21 we think is feasible because, again, it is limited 

22 to mixed fission products. OMRE is the same thing.

23 ARA-1 is the exception here. Dose 
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1 reconstruction is feasible with the possible 

2 exception of 1968 for protactinium-233 work, and 

3 we're reserving it.

4 And the issue here is we ran into some 

5 facility modifications that were taking place in 

6 1968 to handle thorium fuels coming in and being 

7 dissolved down to extract the protactinium-233.

8 And so we feel we need to evaluate that 

9 one further because of what was done with the 

10 thorium, the waste, as well as the protactinium-233 

11 at that hot cell. We need to investigate further.

12 Central facilities, the main potential 

13 for exposure there would be the laundry. The 

14 clothing coming in from all the facilities was 

15 segregated by type and contamination level. It was 

16 cleaned, and dried and monitored again, and each 

17 type of clothing had a permissible contamination 

18 level.

19 Any item over the limit was re-washed. 

20 If it still wasn't clean, they would let it decay 

21 for 30 to 90 days. If it's still not good, they'd 

22 send it back to the site for disposal.

23 The laundry had a radiation detector over 
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1 the receiving room door and a CAM in the working 

2 area. So any large, highly radioactive clothing 

3 coming in would be caught by this radiation detector 

4 over the door. And if either of those two alarms 

5 sounded, the room was evacuated.

6 And let me wrap up here with the burial 

7 ground. And for those who've been out to Idaho 

8 National Laboratory and have been to the 

9 Radioactive Waste Management Complex, the burial 

10 ground in the first 20 years is nothing like what 

11 it is today, absolutely nothing.

12 The initial burials were dig a trench, put 

13 waste in it, cover the trench up, dig another 

14 trench, put waste in it, cover the trench up. So 

15 that was the general process.

16 And the same thing with the Rocky Flats 

17 waste. The waste would come in, they would stack 

18 the barrels or, in this case in 1957, the first bulk 

19 items were arrived in large glove boxes. They were 

20 put into pits. And then once the pits were full, 

21 they were covered up.

22 In 1958, the drums were actually stacked 

23 by hand, and we've got photographs. If you look 
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1 through the extended slide version, you'll see 

2 that, where they're actually rolling them out and 

3 stacking them.

4 In 1961, they're using a crane to move 

5 them around and stack them neatly. 1963 they 

6 decided to stop stacking them and start dumping 

7 them. And so their method of dumping was a land and 

8 sea container that you back up to a pit, grab a hold 

9 of the front of it with a crane and dump it out the 

10 back into a pit.

11 So that continued on through 1968 and 

12 l969. But at the end of 1969 was the first 

13 retrieval of plutonium drums from Rocky Flats. And 

14 so things began to change at that point. And I'll 

15 get to that more here in a minute.

16 The last bullet there of 1970 burial PU 

17 waste was discontinued. That just means they 

18 weren't putting it into the ground. They were 

19 still receiving it and putting it on storage pads.

20 At the burial ground in these early years, 

21 there was restricted access. There was a locked 

22 gate that people could not go in through without 

23 health physics accompanying them.
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1 There's a 1959 memo that indicates 

2 workers were required to wear a film badge going 

3 into the area issued out of Central Facilities. 

4 They had to wear anti-contamination clothing, and 

5 they had to work under a safe work permit. 

6 Workers were monitored by health physics 

7 before leaving. And health physics was always 

8 present during these dumpings. Air sampling 

9 during the drum dumping was conducted during the 

10 dumping of Rocky Flats waste. And then there were 

11 radiological surveys of the burial ground.

12 So I want to go back to this drum retrieval 

13 in 1969 to explain a little bit of why we're 

14 reserving this particular operation. And what you 

15 can see here from this photo is there are no 

16 buildings here at this time period.

17 The first buildings for RWMC were built 

18 in the early 1970s. So this was really an open 

19 field that was covered up with dirt. But here they 

20 went to extract some drums. So they had to dig 

21 down, and then people get down in the holes in order 

22 to pull them out. That's a very different exposure 

23 potential compared to the previous operations.
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1 And so now you're extracting drums that 

2 have been rusting for 15 years or likely breached 

3 in some cases. You've got contaminated dirt. 

4 This is very different than taking a drum off of a 

5 truck that's been surveyed and cleaned on the 

6 outside and stacking it. And so as a result, we 

7 feel we need to evaluate this potential exposure 

8 further.

9 In the 1970s, the first buildings were 

10 erected, and then you begin to have continuous 

11 worker presence there at the Radioactive Waste 

12 Management Complex or the burial ground.

13 So we do believe doses can be 

14 reconstructed in the period '53 through '68. We're 

15 uncertain about the '69 drum retrieval and forward 

16 from that standpoint.

17 We will prepare an addendum to the 

18 Evaluation Report when we get into looking more 

19 closely at these exposures in '69 and '70. And if 

20 we end up recommending a Class during the addendum, 

21 then we will certainly evaluate further the 

22 post-1970 years and may expand the Class through an 

23 83.14 type of process.
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1 So this is the summary of the feasibility. 

2 The dark green here is the areas where we feel we 

3 can reconstruct doses. The light green off the 

4 right, '67 to '70, is all governed based upon that 

5 coworker modeling and that decreased sampling from 

6 exposure potential to one quarter of the work force.

7 The red is CPP, where we're recommending 

8 a Class. The yellow here is that actuator building 

9 in Test Area North with the uranium fuel handling 

10 that was going on. ARA, that one block of yellow, 

11 is that protactinium work. And then the burial 

12 grounds are '69 and '70.

13 This is just another version of that same 

14 feasibility summary in the form that you all are 

15 familiar with.

16 And so for SEC Petition 219, we do feel 

17 that some workers of the Class may have accumulated 

18 chronic exposure through intakes of radionuclides 

19 at CPP.

20 Therefore we're specifying that their 

21 health may have been endangered, and those workers 

22 monitored at CPP who were employed at least a number 

23 of work days aggregating 250 should be included in 
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1 the Class.

2 What about employees that worked at CPP 

3 and not included in the SEC? There is some 

4 plutonium bioassay for some of the lab workers but 

5 not many of them, just a handful. If we have 

6 bioassay data, we will use that data to try and 

7 reconstruct their doses if they have a non-SEC 

8 cancer.

9 And again, our proposed Class is all 

10 employees of the Department of Energy, its 

11 predecessors agencies, and their contractors and 

12 subcontractors who worked at Idaho National 

13 Laboratory in Scoville, Idaho, and were monitored 

14 for external radiation at the Idaho Chemical 

15 Processing Plant, CPP.

16 As an example, at least one film badge or 

17 TLD dosimeter from CPP between January 1, 1963 and 

18 December 31st, 1974 for a number of work days 

19 aggregating at least 250 work days occurring either 

20 solely under this employment or in combination with 

21 work days within the parameters established for one 

22 or other Classes of employees in the SEC.

23 And with that, thank you very much. And 
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1 I'll be happy to answer any questions.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: All right. Despite 

3 our best attempts, that made it through, so good. 

4 Thank you, Tim. You bet.

5 So next up we'll have questions from the 

6 Board Members. And then we will give, I believe, 

7 the opportunity for the, I believe the petitioners 

8 on the line would like to make some comments. But 

9 first we need to hear any questions from the Board. 

10 And Paul, you're up first.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: The requirement of one 

12 external dosimeter is a little unusual. Why do we 

13 require any external monitoring?

14 DR. TAULBEE: Idaho National Laboratory 

15 is unique from the rest of the DOE complex, in that 

16 to go into any of the areas you had to monitored. 

17 You had to wear a dosimeter. And so it was governed 

18 to the standpoint to where if you worked at CPP and 

19 you went down to the Test Reactor Area, when you left 

20 CPP you left your badge there. And you got a new 

21 badge down at TRA.

22 And then if you went from there up to Test 

23 Area North, you got another badge. And so we have 
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1 this issue of multiple badging in the same cycle, 

2 if you will. So from the missed dose standpoint 

3 when we do dose reconstruction, we see multiple 

4 dosimeters for a single person that did bounce 

5 around.

6 You couldn't have done work, especially 

7 in those cells or the analytical laboratories 

8 without being monitored. Because you couldn't get 

9 in through the gate.

10 The reason that we require one badge is 

11 that, in the 1960s when they switched to TLDs, some 

12 workers, secretaries in particular, didn't wear 

13 monitors with a dosimeter, but they were on an 

14 annual exchange frequency.

15 So they could have one dosimeter and have 

16 been in that area for the entire year. There wasn't 

17 anything to really restrict them from going into CPP 

18 or into the processing building, 601. And so that 

19 is why we have this unique language.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, could I follow-up 

21 on that? And I sort of understand the rationale, 

22 because basically it confirms that they worked 

23 there in a sense.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Would there never have 

3 been anyone that worked there that was given, for 

4 example, only a pocket dosimeter?

5 DR. TAULBEE: No. From our interviews 

6 with workers, it's the one thing that's been very 

7 consistent, is that every worker going into the area 

8 said that they were monitored by wearing a film 

9 badge dosimeter.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And how many 

11 interviews was that?

12 DR. TAULBEE: About 60.

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And how many 

14 thousand?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Please, if you hold 

16 your comments, you'll have a chance in a little 

17 while. Oh, I didn't recognize the voice, Phil. 

18 Other Board Members here? Yes, Dave?

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Dave Kotelchuck. 

20 Might it be, you gave convincing evidence why one 

21 film badge or dosimeter was absolutely required. 

22 Might it not be safe to say that you have to have 

23 at least one a TLD or otherwise be able to establish 
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1 the presence in the plant? That's really all that 

2 it's there for, is to establish that they're in the 

3 plant.

4 Now, that would of course be a violation 

5 of the rules and should not have happened. But that 

6 doesn't mean it didn't happen.

7 And that allows, if the person can 

8 establish, somehow, through records, that they were 

9 in there, they would be compensated. Because they 

10 satisfy the criterion that they worked in the plant 

11 for 250 days. Might it not be wise to do that?

12 DR. TAULBEE: I don't disagree with that, 

13 from that standpoint. You do run into one 

14 particular issue. And that was when they were 

15 doing some additional buildings that were not part 

16 of that reprocessing facility, they would actually 

17 move the fence line in and put dosimeters on the 

18 outside of that fence line, so the construction 

19 would not have been monitored.

20 But those construction workers, if they 

21 went inside the fence, would have to be monitored.

22 So you could have some people that were 

23 established at CPP doing this new construction work 
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1 that were not going into the process cells or not 

2 going down into that access corridor and not in 

3 these analytical laboratories. So they wouldn't 

4 have been exposed.

5 So that's the only downside I can see with 

6 your particular recommendation there. But it is 

7 another way that this could be done, I think. I 

8 don't think it would be that difficult.

9 With the particular dosimetry reports, 

10 they were issued by area. So in talking with the 

11 Department of Energy and the Department of Labor, 

12 this seems to be the easiest way for us to identify 

13 workers, is to look at these area dosimetry reports 

14 which will have construction trades on there, 

15 Kaiser, as well as Fluor, and the operating 

16 contractors and then other visitors coming in as 

17 well. But even visitors though would have to 

18 establish 250 days of employment type of scenario.

19 So really the best way, in our opinion, 

20 was to use these dosimeters, to use that gatekeeping 

21 that was done by the health physics, actually the 

22 security guards were the ones who were checking it.

23 Health physics wasn't continuously there 
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1 at the gate. But if somebody needed to go in, 

2 didn't have a dosimeter on the board, then they had 

3 to go get a dosimeter.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry?

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: I mean, I can see that 

6 everybody had to have it. Have you done some 

7 quality control to see, yes, they have it? Were 

8 they all measured? I mean, there's not a single 

9 page of records that was lost? Or, you know, was 

10 there a log of people going in and out? I mean, how 

11 certain are you that they got a badge and every badge 

12 that was assigned actually was recorded and read?

13 DR. TAULBEE: We asked the Department of 

14 Energy, their records, as to how complete they were. 

15 And they believe they're complete all the way 

16 through. There's 3,000 pages of these dosimeter 

17 records, and there's about 25 people per page on 

18 this. So this is about 80,000 dosimeter readings 

19 during this particular time period. So we feel 

20 it's pretty complete.

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: But pretty complete 

22 isn't enough. I mean, if you have any --

23 DR. TAULBEE: I do not have any sense that 
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1 is not complete, let me put it that way.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But you've not done any 

3 evaluation of that. That's the question.

4 DR. TAULBEE: No, we have not.

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: I mean, from that 

6 standpoint --

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I mean, I think you 

9 understand our --

10 DR. TAULBEE: We asked the Department of 

11 Energy if all visitors were included on those 

12 reports, and the answer was yes.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But that's a 

14 statement, not any sort of evaluation of that. 

15 And, you know, I think you understand why we're 

16 skeptical. We've, you know, revised previous SEC 

17 Class Definitions, we went through what we did at 

18 Savannah River where we had pretty good evidence, 

19 at least on the construction workers, that they 

20 didn't fit the Definition there. Because records 

21 were incomplete. And we will --

22 DR. TAULBEE: I would --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Let me finish, Tim. 
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1 And we will, you know, we are extremely skeptical, 

2 at least I am, of any statement that's based on what 

3 was policy without very much evidence that that is.

4 And it is, you know, difficult to prove 

5 that records are perfect. But I think some 

6 evaluation of that would be much more convincing 

7 than just a policy, given our experience at many 

8 other DOE sites.

9 And maybe this site was different. And 

10 I hope it is, for the sake of the workers and others 

11 involved. But at the same time, we want to be 

12 careful on that.

13 DR. TAULBEE: I understand. I would 

14 like to just clarify one particular point. You 

15 brought up Savannah River for example. We have 

16 since gone back and looked at some that.

17 And during the time period where you have 

18 these electronic records and we issued a report 

19 about this, that we did not see any of the 

20 discrepancies in the post-1960 time period there at 

21 Savannah River.

22 All of the issues that were identified by 

23 SC&A were prior to 1960. And so this Class that 
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1 we're recommending is in the mid-1960s through '72 

2 where you've got better record-keeping than what 

3 was conducted that caused some of the issues there 

4 at Savannah River.

5 So it's just a clarification. But I 

6 understand your hesitance, and I understand the 

7 need to do this type of verification. And we're 

8 certainly willing to do so.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry, then Wanda.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Follow-up. I mean, 

11 another way to look at this would be how many of the 

12 claims that people filed said, you know, a 

13 determination was made, well, you didn't work there 

14 because you didn't have a badge.

15 I mean, do we know that all of, I mean, 

16 the practical reality, yes, you could have missed 

17 some. But if a person didn't develop disease and 

18 file a claim, you know, then it, kind of, no harm 

19 done sort of.

20 I shouldn't say no harm done, but no 

21 claim. So do you have any sense of any of those that 

22 have applied where they, you know, denied or told 

23 no because they wouldn't have met this criteria?
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1 DR. TAULBEE: I do not have a sense from 

2 that standpoint as to how many of those would be --

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: This is David 

4 Richardson. Can I follow-up on that?

5 DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, go ahead, Dave.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: In Table 42 in the 

8 report which has 1,000 claims that match the 

9 Definition of the Class that was being evaluated, 

10 of which approximately 71 percent of the claims had 

11 external dosimetry records obtained for the years 

12 in the evaluated Class Definition, I mean, it's not 

13 directly addressing Henry's point.

14 But it seems to me this appears, because 

15 there aren't complete dosimetry records for all the 

16 people who were filing claims, certainly.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Well, I guess I would 

18 disagree a little bit there, David, in that you've 

19 got the Central Facilities area which had a large 

20 number of people that were not required to be 

21 monitored. So you have all of your maintenance 

22 shops and that type of operation going on at Central 

23 Facilities.
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1 What we're talking about is going into CPP 

2 and that those people from, like I said, all of the 

3 interviews we've conducted, they were required to 

4 be monitored.

5 So how to tease out that 30 percent that 

6 Dr. Richardson was just pointing from whether they 

7 should have been monitored or not is not trivial.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda, then David, 

9 David Kotelchuck, I should --

10 MEMBER MUNN: I hesitate to ask this 

11 question, because I don't know the answer to it. 

12 And I've been told you should never ask a question 

13 unless you know the answer.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's lawyers.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I should have gone to 

16 law school, right? The question that I have is 

17 whether we have any indication from any source other 

18 than this Board that there might be people who are 

19 being overlooked in this way?

20 DR. TAULBEE: I do not have any 

21 indication other than the discussions here. But 

22 the discussions here make sense in our experience 

23 at other sites. And it is potentially something we 
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1 should look at from that standpoint.

2 But please keep in mind that Idaho was 

3 different from the rest of the sites, that they had 

4 multiple badging for each area that you went into. 

5 Other sites you would wear your dosimeter into a 

6 different area. Here it was a different badge 

7 there at CPP.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We're not saying it's 

9 impossible. We're just saying --

10 MEMBER MUNN: And one comment having 

11 absolutely nothing to do with this, thank you so 

12 much for the completeness of your presentation and 

13 especially for the horizontal colored bar graph 

14 which finally made sense to me about where things 

15 were and which people were monitored and which were 

16 not. That was most helpful. Thank you.

17 DR. TAULBEE: You're welcome.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David Kotelchuck, I 

19 think you're next.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. My thought was 

21 if we simply -- I was going to suggest that, I was 

22 initially going to suggest that we simply delete, 

23 e.g., at least one film badge or TLD dosimeter. 
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1 Because that's an operational thing for us to 

2 decide.

3 That doesn't have to be in the wording of 

4 who was in the Class. But the problem is it does 

5 say they have to be monitored for external 

6 radiation.

7 We could, let me just see, if we talk about 

8 who worked in the Chemical Processing Plant at the 

9 Idaho National Laboratory in Scoville, and it 

10 leaves it to the Department to decide if that 

11 happened. It doesn't force us into saying you must 

12 have a badge or not, just in case. Would that take 

13 care of it?

14 DR. TAULBEE: I would have to defer to Stu 

15 Hinnefeld and our OGC. Because this particular 

16 Definition was vetted through the Department of 

17 Labor. And so to change that Definition as to 

18 whether they could administer the Class that way, 

19 I don't know.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. The question, this 

22 is Stu Hinnefeld, the question comes down to have 

23 we written a Class Definition that can be 
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1 administered?

2 And so before we come, you know, before 

3 we present the evaluation, you know, 

4 recommendations, we provide our Class Definition to 

5 the Department of Labor. And oftentimes the 

6 Department of Energy assists in those discussions. 

7 And they determine that, yes, with this Class 

8 Definition, we can administer it.

9 If we're going to change the Definition, 

10 it might be in our best interest to run that 

11 Definition past the Department of Labor to see if 

12 they can administer the Class.

13 And typically, the Department of Labor 

14 has told us that the Class Definition is what they 

15 rely on to administer the Class. They're not 

16 really particularly interested in other 

17 communications which wouldn't have the same 

18 official weight as a Class Definition to sort of 

19 work out the details of determining the Class.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Thank you. I see 

21 what the complication is.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do Board Members on the 

23 phone have questions or comments?
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. This is Phil. 

2 I've got some questions here. One of the big ones 

3 is it concerns me that, if you have people that don't 

4 have security clearances at times or if you're 

5 bringing in people from another area who typically 

6 wouldn't work in the plant but because of their 

7 expertise, whether it's some form of chemistry or 

8 whether it's a craftsperson, they could be brought 

9 in and out of there under an escort. And maybe only 

10 the escort is given a badge? I mean, has this been 

11 vetted or not?

12 DR. TAULBEE: All indications that we 

13 have at this time, Phil, is that each individual 

14 person was given a badge to go into that area. So 

15 a visiting person, a visiting chemist or something 

16 to help out with a particular process would be given 

17 a badge to do that.

18 And again, from the 60 or so interviews 

19 that we've conducted in June and July, or June and 

20 November, we asked every single person whether they 

21 were required and whether they wore their film badge 

22 going into the area. And all of them indicated yes, 

23 they had to wear a film badge dosimeter to go into 
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1 the area.

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: What about people 

3 working on the perimeter of the facility? I know 

4 we know they've had spills, they've had 

5 contamination that has gotten outside of the 

6 building. I'm curious about those people who 

7 worked on the perimeter who didn't necessarily go 

8 in the building, but they still have that potential.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Well, the potential for 

10 exposure is really in the process cells in the 601 

11 Building where those separations were conducted 

12 down in the access corridor, the process cells, the 

13 analytical laboratories.

14 Around the perimeter, the alpha 

15 transuranic radionuclides are associated with the 

16 mixed fission products that would be coming from the 

17 calcine operations and the others that were going 

18 on.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

20 Members on the phone have questions or comments?

21 MEMBER VALERIO: This is Loretta. I 

22 have a couple of questions.

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead.
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1 MEMBER VALERIO: My questions have to do 

2 with the burial ground. It states that the health 

3 physics was always present during dumping. Was 

4 this prior to that 1959 memo as well? Or was this 

5 as a result of that memo, that the health physics 

6 were there?

7 DR. TAULBEE: No. Our indication is 

8 that they were there from the very beginning to 

9 always be present while dumping was going on. We 

10 have some photographs of some of the dumping that 

11 was going on in, like, 1953 or something like that 

12 -- I believe it's there in the extended slides --

13 that shows a health physicist standing beside the 

14 truck measuring radiation levels during the dumping 

15 process.

16 So our indication is that actually on gate 

17 entrance it clearly says to gain access you had to 

18 contact health physics at the central facilities in 

19 order to get in.

20 MEMBER VALERIO: Okay. So then that 

21 brings me to my second question. If they were 

22 required to wear a film badge that was to monitor 

23 for external radiation, what about internal 
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1 radiation when they were stocking these by hand?

2 DR. TAULBEE: The procedure was for the 

3 drums to be surveyed. And we have some photographs 

4 of health physicists or health physics technicians, 

5 rad techs, climbing into the trucks and taking 

6 surveys of the drums before they were coming out to 

7 make sure there weren't anything leaking or any 

8 problems at that standpoint.

9 After they were done removing the drums, 

10 the trucks were also surveyed. And in those 

11 particular instances, there were a few occasions 

12 where the trucks were found to be contaminated. 

13 They were sent to CPP for cleaning. And health 

14 physics was doing additional monitoring on those 

15 particular workers that were involved during that 

16 process.

17 Typically, we're looking at between three 

18 to four workers during one of these unloading type 

19 of operations, I guess, maybe as much as five.

20 MEMBER VALERIO: Okay. All right, thank 

21 you.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else on the 

23 phone, Board, any other Board Members on the phone 
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1 have questions?

2 MEMBER LEMEN: No. All of my questions 

3 have been answered, thank you.

4 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I have another 

5 question on that. When the RCTs were checking 

6 things, were those smear samples? Did they just 

7 take random smear samples, or were they using their 

8 wands on their Pee-Wees, or exactly how were they 

9 sampling for contamination?

10 DR. TAULBEE: Based upon what we can see, 

11 it looks like they were monitoring for 

12 contamination based upon hand held instrumentation 

13 and that if they began to see something, then they 

14 might take a smear. I believe there are some smear 

15 data for the burial grounds, but it's pretty 

16 limited.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Jim Lockey, did 

18 you still have a question?

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: I was just curious. You 

20 know, I asked you, Jim, this question going forward. 

21 Because NIOSH has other work to do on this site and 

22 the other sites. If they find that, in fact, where 

23 people who worked at CPP who may not have been 
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1 badged, can this be modified going forward in the 

2 future?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We've done that in the 

4 past, I think. So the question is sort of the 

5 timing involved and the effort to go up to the 

6 Secretary, get this approved and then, you know, to 

7 come back, you know, in a short period of time, it 

8 doesn't sort of make sense. If it was something 

9 that was going to take two or three years or 

10 something --

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's my concern.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Then I think we 

13 do. And I'm not sure we can judge on that time 

14 period right now.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: And that's what I'm 

16 concerned about. This is a complex process, and 

17 site. And this could take more than months. And 

18 it's a balancing act here.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Just, again, 

20 hypothetically, if we decide not to take action 

21 today doesn't mean we couldn't take action on our 

22 Board call or the next meeting. I mean, nothing, 

23 you know --
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: But I don't want it to go 

2 out three years --

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, no. I don't think 

4 any of us would want to do that. But again, there's 

5 sort of due diligence. And, you know, again, the 

6 Class Definition is sort of the end of the process.

7 And in fairness to everybody involved, 

8 both us, and NIOSH and so forth, this is, you know, 

9 they really haven't had time to do a lot of the kind 

10 of vetting and the kind of questions we're asking 

11 them to do. And I think we have to decide what is 

12 it going to take to do that and how long, what's 

13 appropriate. And we have a Work Group formed and 

14 so forth, again, sort of the next step. David?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: After the discussion 

16 of how, Stu's discussion and the time that it will 

17 take, I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of 

18 the good.

19 And therefore, I'm going to support the 

20 Class as it stands so that the people who worked in 

21 the site, were badged, will be able to get their 

22 compensation and hope that somehow we could 

23 communicate to DOL that the people who are turned 
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1 down, if they feel that this missed them 

2 inadvertently, then we can make a change in the 

3 future.

4 But for the moment, let's get it, I say 

5 let's get it done. This is a good resolution to 

6 help lots of people, hopefully almost everybody.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul? And after Paul, 

8 I want to turn it back to the, we need to give the 

9 petitioners an opportunity to talk.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think on this issue, 

11 there's two possibilities. One might be a little 

12 -- I have a little angst about one is, was everyone 

13 truly badged? That's one part of it.

14 The other is if they were all truly 

15 badged, is some of the information lost? Two 

16 different questions. But I'm willing to go ahead 

17 and say, yes, everyone truly was badged.

18 And if we have a claimant for whom there 

19 is not a badge, I think the claimant would be in a 

20 position of saying, yes, but I had a badge. And 

21 then it would be a matter of establishing that 

22 either the information was lost or some other thing 

23 occurred.
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1 But I don't think the Definition, as it 

2 stands, will necessarily exclude someone if truly 

3 everyone had a badge. Because the claimant would 

4 say, yes, I had a badge, if truly that was the case.

5 But I suppose what we're looking for at 

6 some point, if we're going to have follow-up, is to 

7 demonstrate, in fact, from the actual data that 

8 there is this correspondence. You don't find any 

9 cases where people didn't have a badge that were in 

10 CPP.

11 DR. TAULBEE: If I could add also to this 

12 document, to follow on with what Dr. Kotelchuck was 

13 saying, in that if we were to go and evaluate this 

14 further in order to try and satisfy some of the 

15 questions that you've been raising here, keep in 

16 mind the evaluation team is the same team that's 

17 currently working on the Argonne West SEC petition 

18 which we're under timelines to try and produce and 

19 the petitioner himself actually worked at the 

20 Argonne National Laboratory during the bulk of this 

21 time period that we're talking about currently.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. All right. If 

23 the petitioners are on the line and wish to speak, 
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1 you may speak now.

2 MR. ZINK: This is Brian Zink. I'm the 

3 petitioner. Can you hear me?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can.

5 MR. ZINK: I was listening, and I just 

6 received the report a week ago or so. So I don't 

7 have a specific comment on any of the details that 

8 Tim talked about.

9 On this question that's been bantered 

10 about with the badge issue, I would comment, and I 

11 certainly don't want the Class not to go forward as 

12 it's described. As many of you have said, it's 

13 better to have the folks that would fit into that 

14 category and can prove that they had a badge to be 

15 paid.

16 From a practical standpoint, as an 

17 authorized representative for many cases, not just 

18 at Idaho but all over the United States, the most 

19 difficult process for a claimant, or even me as the 

20 authorized representative, to prove is actually the 

21 employment unless, by some circumstance, the worker 

22 kept a copy of his badge, or wrote it down or had 

23 it on some document.
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1 I really don't, being a suspicious sort, 

2 I am a little concerned. And I'm not as confident 

3 that all of those records still exist. You know, 

4 whether it's one claimant that I get that says, yes, 

5 I worked there, but he's not on the list, trying to 

6 approve that, in knowing how it works with the 

7 Department of Labor, becomes very difficult.

8 Because I know that, you know, the 

9 Department of Labor is going to strictly scrutinize 

10 the Class as identified. And without the proof of 

11 that badge, that person would be eliminated.

12 Now, whether there are ancillary 

13 documents to establish that he was there, you know, 

14 they often ask about coworker affidavits, stuff 

15 like that, certainly those would be out there as 

16 possible sources of proof.

17 But I just wanted to add my two cents in 

18 terms of the authorized representative coming in 

19 and looking at a case and saying, okay, now we have 

20 to establish that you were monitored. And what is 

21 your badge number, et cetera, et cetera? That 

22 tracking, from a practical standpoint, oftentimes 

23 that can be more difficult.
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1 And it would be, I guess, the question 

2 would be how well would the claims examiner or the 

3 Department of Labor be able to access this list or 

4 whatever it is that identifies every badged worker 

5 that went in there. Those are some of my concerns.

6 I appreciate Tim's report. It was hard 

7 to hear some of it. So that might be my own 

8 telephone problem. But I just wanted to make sure 

9 that you knew I was on the line, heard it. I believe 

10 the actual worker, Mr. Wolz, has been listening. 

11 But I don't know for sure. He may want --

12 MR. WOLZ: I'm on.

13 MR. ZINK: -- to comment.

14 MR. WOLZ: I'm listening.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Mr. Wolz, do you, 

16 first of all, thank you for those comments. And I 

17 think you did summarize up one of our concerns. And 

18 I think we have to remember that if they cannot 

19 verify under the Class Definition, that means we 

20 have to go through the whole 83.14 process. And 

21 you're putting the burden on the worker to prove 

22 that it's wrong.

23 And it's not an automatic, not even the 
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1 affidavit would help him in that particular case in 

2 terms of getting into the Class. It would, I think, 

3 refer back to NIOSH, and there would be a process. 

4 It's not going to be ignored. But it's not a 

5 straightforward process.

6 Mr. Wolz, do you wish to make any comments 

7 at this point?

8 MR. WOLZ: No. I've had trouble 

9 listening. It seemed like a good report, and I 

10 appreciate the comments the Board has. The early 

11 part of the presentation that had to do with CPP was 

12 quite interesting to me, because I worked at CPP 

13 during the years in the analytical lab and 

14 particularly in the X cell in the years '55 to '58, 

15 in those years. And it was a good presentation.

16 I note that most of my radiation that I 

17 received throughout the course of my employment for 

18 nearly forty years at the site, I worked at CPP and 

19 at MTR, ETR facilities. And then further, starting 

20 in '94, you know, not '94, it'd be about '62, '63, 

21 I was at Argonne National Laboratory.

22 My INL radiation dosimetry summary shows, 

23 that they came up with over the multiple years, 40 
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1 years, and loss of badges, it shows a 6,671 deep and 

2 a 11,440 shallow.

3 It doesn't show anything about internal 

4 contamination I might have received. I know there 

5 was some urinalysis. And I went through several 

6 decontamination processes that, you know, as a 

7 result of working in different capacities.

8 But I don't know what the records are as 

9 far as urinalysis, and thyroid monitoring and 

10 things like that. So I just, I don't have a record 

11 of that.

12 And somebody mentioned on the Board, 

13 which I appreciated, it's hard for people going back 

14 from young man back in '55 to reconstruct and 

15 remember all that.

16 But anyway, I know that we were young guys 

17 and total trustworthy on the system. And we really 

18 didn't know what we were getting into or how 

19 effective the monitoring was and so forth.

20 But having worked there over the years, 

21 I understand a lot about geometry now, and where the 

22 film badges are worn and where the radiation sources 

23 were coming from in the streams.
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1 And I just don't know how, with certainty, 

2 we can always know whether the doses which we 

3 received would have or would have not caused cancer. 

4 So that's all your question. I recognize we went 

5 into it with taking risks, so I guess we were 

6 innocent to the fact we didn't know what they really 

7 were.

8 Anyway, I appreciate your time. I hope 

9 that my effort, most of all, would be helpful to 

10 others in the future and they improve the systems 

11 where they could be improved.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you very 

13 much. And I would just add, if you weren't 

14 listening earlier, which you may not have been, was 

15 that our next meeting, which will be towards the end 

16 of July, will be at INL. So we will be gathering 

17 more information at that meeting and looking for 

18 people to help us out. But thanks again for your

19 input.

20 MR. WOLZ: You're welcome.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Before we go forward, 

22 I'd like to have some information so I understand 

23 a little bit. We have an Argonne West SEC 
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1 evaluation which is mentioned, and I think it's in 

2 LaVon's upcoming presentation. But do we have a 

3 time on that, estimated?

4 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Our current schedule 

5 is projecting that that report will be delivered to 

6 the Board the middle of September, is what the 

7 current schedule for the Argonne National 

8 Laboratory is.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And how about the 

10 reserved portions of this petition?

11 DR. TAULBEE: Our timeline is to finish 

12 the Argonne National Laboratory West petition 

13 first. Because that's the one that really affects 

14 the current petitioner as far as this next 

15 evaluation. And he's the one who filed this 

16 particular petition.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

18 DR. TAULBEE: So after that report was 

19 done, at that point we would go back and probably 

20 start around the beginning of September. Because 

21 the last few weeks are a lot ADC type of reviews that 

22 we would start initiating the completion of the 

23 addendum to this particular petition.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. We have 

2 suggested action. Are there are any more comments 

3 or questions from Board Members? And I think we 

4 need to make a decision on what to do. Paul?

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is there an INL Work 

6 Group --

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- that has reviewed 

9 this?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. There is an INL 

11 Work Group, Phil Schofield's in charge. I'm a 

12 Member of it. I believe Josie, and Loretta and --

13 MEMBER BEACH: Loretta and John Poston.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And John Poston. Six. 

15 Oh, wow. Gen, oh no, I mentioned Gen.

16 And given the timing and the uncertainty 

17 about the timing of this report, that Work Group did 

18 not meet, it has not had a chance to review the 

19 report. And actually it's not met for a fair amount 

20 of time because of getting the Site Profiles and 

21 everything updated. And this has been an extended 

22 time period with this whole site.

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: I am not necessarily 
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1 wanting to slow down the process, but I'm wondering, 

2 particularly since the petitioner is going to be 

3 awaiting the other site materials anyway, if it 

4 would be useful to have the Work Group take a look

5 at this and maybe address the issue also on the film 

6 badge requirement?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What I would suggest is 

8 that we postpone decision on this particular 

9 petition today, that we convene the Work Group 

10 meeting for at least a brief meeting to work out a 

11 plan for going forward on that and to try to 

12 prioritize what needs to be done, and particularly 

13 this issue of the Class Definition.

14 We include NIOSH in that meeting 

15 obviously, Work Group meeting, and so then we would 

16 be able to come up with a plan. And I think NIOSH 

17 has to make some decisions about how it would 

18 prioritize its resources going into this effort 

19 also.

20 I don't think it's necessarily 

21 appropriate that we wait until September and then 

22 start working on this Class Definition. I think a 

23 number of us have expressed concerns about that.
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1 And I don't see any reason why it couldn't 

2 be addressed earlier. But I think we have to look 

3 at the scope of the amount of work involved. I 

4 don't want to, you know, judge prematurely.

5 But I think if we get that Work Group 

6 together and get a focus and then have SC&A start 

7 doing some work, even now we can task them to start 

8 working on it. And then we can meet relatively soon 

9 to make sure we've got this issue coordinated in 

10 terms of timing and so forth. Does that make sense 

11 to you, Paul? Josie, I'm sorry.

12 MEMBER BEACH: Well, I initially had mine 

13 up, because I was going to say that we could go ahead 

14 and still task SC&A to start their review. And you 

15 mentioned that at the very end. So I put it down. 

16 But I do agree with that path forward.

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You know what, Josie, 

18 I back you on that one 100 percent. This is Phil.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu?

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: That was Phil.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Stu to come to 

22 the --

23 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I 'm here.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It's hard on the phone, 

2 Phil. I know, and we understand.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we would like, I 

4 mean, I tend to want to defer to the Board's wishes 

5 on priorities. You know, we can prioritize in 

6 accordance with your desires.

7 I think it certainly, coming out here 

8 today, it certainly seems like the first thing we 

9 want to do is investigate this Class. And that's 

10 clearly first.

11 And then beyond that, we can see, I mean, 

12 you know, Tim is working under the assumption that 

13 the resources available from our contractor are the 

14 resources available and that we have to accomplish 

15 all of this work. And so he's kind of laid it out 

16 in that way.

17 We can look at what does it do to other 

18 things in the program if we get our contractor to 

19 add, and perhaps have two teams sort of working 

20 collaboratively at Idaho to see if we can accelerate 

21 some of this.

22 We also have to bear in mind that the 

23 people at DOE Idaho who will be helping both teams, 
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1 that's a person, that's the same set of people at 

2 Idaho who now, instead of assisting one of our 

3 teams, would be trying to assist two of our teams.

4 So I don't know, that may actually be the 

5 rate limiting factor as opposed to how much staff 

6 we can put on the thing. So we can sort that out.

7 But in the meantime we can do some 

8 investigation, and perhaps collegially with SC&A, 

9 because they're being tasking to work on this. I 

10 think they probably will have some specific 

11 questions about what kind of evidence can we pursue 

12 that would either support or not support our 

13 proposed position about how to define the Class.

14 So, I mean, that might even be something 

15 best left to them, because they do, you know, they 

16 are kind of the well, yes, but sort of people in 

17 terms of the devil's advocate position. Well, they 

18 are.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We weren't sure how 

20 many T's there were in but there.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: It's no surprise to 

22 anybody, right? So I think that might be actually 

23 an avenue, is for them to say, you know, what holes 
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1 can you poke in this? I mean, what's the story 

2 here?

3 And so I think we can kind of work out how 

4 to do this. And we'll work, certainly, as quickly 

5 as we can on this.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I would just add, 

7 I mean, I think what we were, or at least I was trying 

8 to propose was that we task SC&A. The first thing 

9 that SC&A comes up with is sort of a plan. How do 

10 we, you know, I hesitate to use validate, but 

11 evaluate this Class Definition?

12 We then have a quick Work Group call to 

13 get everybody onboard and discuss. Because I think 

14 we're also concerned that if that evaluation is 

15 going to take years, which I don't think it will, 

16 but I think we need to have some estimate of how long 

17 that will be. Because I think that would affect 

18 what actions we might take on this petition in the 

19 meanwhile and so forth.

20 I had also, when I first read the report, 

21 I had asked some questions. And I understand 

22 better now the reserved section. I was sort of 

23 hoping, well, do the areas that are reserved, would 
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1 they cover enough of the site in the same time period 

2 and get resolved quickly enough that they might sort 

3 of obviate having to look at just this area. 

4 And I'm not sure that they're going to be 

5 quick to complete either, judging from what Tim was 

6 saying. So I think it's just, this is where our 

7 focus should be. Are Board Members on the phone 

8 satisfied with that approach?

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I can live with that, 

10 Jim.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 MEMBER LEMEN: I can too, Jim.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

14 MEMBER VALERIO: This is Loretta. I 

15 agree.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

17 And thank you very much, Tim, and your team 

18 involved. They've been a helpful and a very 

19 thorough report. And we appreciate the effort and 

20 the number of slides. And we didn't do it, I didn't 

21 do it to your computer.

22 And the next item on our agenda, and I 

23 think we can actually say last but not least -- Where 
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1 is he hiding?

2 Search party underway. We called the 

3 airport.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: After you heard those 

5 schedules from Tim, I wasn't sure I wanted to tell 

6 you the other schedules. No, I'm just kidding.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We're testing. We 

8 know what's there. We're going to start a new Q/A, 

9 Q/C evaluation, you know, competing presentations, 

10 and see which one has more credibility.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right, ready? 

12 Okay, this is a final presentation. I'm going to 

13 give the Special Exposure Cohort update. By the 

14 way, I'm LaVon Rutherford. You probably heard that 

15 from Dr. Melius while I was outside.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Are you going to give 

17 me a chance to introduce -- no. Go ahead. Go 

18 ahead, LaVon. We all know who you are.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right, thank you. 

20 So I'm going to talk about Special, I'm going to give 

21 a summary of the current petitions, petitions that 

22 are outstanding, evaluations, again, talk about 

23 petitions qualification, petitions under 
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1 evaluation, petitions currently with the Board for 

2 review, potential SEC 83.14. And we do this to

3 update the Board to prepare for future Work Groups 

4 and Board meetings.

5 Our summary table, we added a little star 

6 to the summary table. And I'll explain why. If 

7 you look at the summary table, these numbers were 

8 put together as of March 16th, 2015.

9 We actually received Petition Number 227 

10 shortly after this was prepared. And that is 

11 another petition for Rocky Flats. It's for the 

12 years post-84 to 2005, and so it is in the 

13 qualification phase.

14 So it won't show up on the rest of the 

15 table or the rest of the slides, I'm going to put 

16 up but just to let you guys know, so you can see we 

17 have three petitions in the qualification phase.

18 Petitions that were qualified, 138, 

19 various phases, and 85 petitions that did not 

20 qualify. So our petitions in the qualification 

21 phase, we actually have another petition for Grand 

22 Junction Operations Office.

23 I know there is probably people that 
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1 reviewed our summary report, it kind of threw them 

2 off, just wondering where this one came from.

3 But this was a petition that was for the 

4 later years, '86 to '90. But it was really for some 

5 of the calibration pads were actually moved out by 

6 the airport. So currently, the portion of the site 

7 that they were requesting a petition for is 

8 currently not covered in the program.

9 We are providing that information to the 

10 Department of Labor, Department of Energy, to see 

11 if either another site would be established or what 

12 they would do with that.

13 We have a Carborundum Petition 

14 Evaluation. And it is now qualified, I believe. 

15 It was just qualified. And that will be moving 

16 forward.

17 And we have a Blockson Chemical petition 

18 that is in the residual period. And it is in the 

19 qualification phase. Again, like I said, the 

20 Blockson Chemical in the residual period, it is in 

21 the qualification phase.

22 We have a few petitions under evaluation 

23 right now, Westinghouse Electric Company, this was 
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1 a petition that we received some time ago that was 

2 for the residual period. However during our 

3 evaluation we uncovered some information that 

4 supported that there was actually some operational 

5 work that occurred during this residual work.

6 We presented that information to the 

7 Department of Energy, the Department of Labor. And 

8 we had a small portion of operational period added, 

9 so that kind of pushed our evaluation out. We're 

10 almost complete with that. We expect completion in 

11 April of that report to present at the July Board 

12 meeting.

13 Lawrence Livermore National Lab, this 

14 one, it's qualified. And I know the 180 days are 

15 somewhere, you know, June/July timeframe. 

16 However, what we found is that, as most of you Board 

17 Members know, a lot of the work that was conducted 

18 at Lawrence Livermore National Lab has 

19 classification issues such that it's going to be 

20 required a lot of review.

21 There was a lot of different operations 

22 that took place there. For example, we went to the 

23 site, I can't remember exactly, recently, that we 
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1 did the data -- end of January, and identified a 

2 number of documents there for the evaluation. And 

3 we've just found out recently that the ADC is not 

4 going to start reviewing those documents for 

5 another month.

6 So we anticipated completion of the 

7 Evaluation Report in November. The site's been 

8 very cooperative, but it's, you know, it's going to 

9 be a challenge.

10 Argonne National Lab, I think we've 

11 already talked about that, so I won't go into that 

12 much more.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There's a little 

14 discrepancy, I think, here. I thought I heard 

15 September for --

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: For? Oh, you know --

17 Yes.

18 PARTICIPANT: The report will be 

19 completed in September. But we're proposing to 

20 present it in November.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, instead of the two 

22 weeks. So now we get reports --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The Advisory Board 
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1 goes into shock.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: We've got three 

4 Petition Evaluations there. Well actually, this 

5 is not true now. But Petition Evaluations that 

6 were waiting on initial Board action, Kansas City 

7 Plant, Grand Junction we presented today, and 

8 actually the Board moved forward on that.

9 Dow Chemical was presented today, and the 

10 Board moved forward on that one as well. And then 

11 Idaho National Lab was presented today. That has 

12 been delayed. And the Hanford was presented 

13 yesterday. And the Board took action on that one 

14 as well.

15 Sites with remaining evaluation periods, 

16 Fernald, I think we're working hard to get that 

17 closed out as Brad and Stu had talked about 

18 yesterday.

19 Hanford, the issues are working through 

20 there as well. Los Alamos National Lab, the 

21 challenge of dealing with the site, and we're 

22 working on a path forward with that one. Rocky 

23 Flats, I think Dr. Kotelchuck summarized very well 
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1 yesterday where we are with that one, a few 

2 remaining issues.

3 Sandia National Lab, I believe that Sam 

4 talked about it a little bit yesterday and where we 

5 are with that one. Santa Susana, we have one short, 

6 I want to say 1965.

7 That was the initial Petition Evaluation 

8 that we approved for review went through 1965. So 

9 we have a 1965 year for that Petition Evaluation 

10 that's still left out.

11 There still, as Jim Neton presented and 

12 Phil Schofield presented, there are still a number 

13 of issues that we're working on at Santa Susana as 

14 well, and Savannah River.

15 And 83.14s, again, we discussed this one, 

16 Sandia National Lab early years, they're still 

17 waiting for a litmus claim for that one. It appears 

18 that the claims are being pretty much moved forward 

19 as an SEC under Los Alamos National Lab.

20 So if we ever get one, we will move forward 

21 in 83.14 there as well. Dayton Project Monsanto, 

22 will move forward if we get a claim there as well. 

23 And that's it.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for LaVon? 

2 Are you going to make a correction or --

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. Tim said I should 

4 add to that, Idaho potentially 83.14s, yes, where 

5 there are, because Tim had mentioned, we could end 

6 up with doing it additional 83.14s for that.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: All right. I guess 

8 this goes back to the INL issue. I think, since 

9 we'll be in Idaho in July before the Argonne West 

10 report, if you can, Tim and the ORAU team could 

11 identify issues where we need more input on that 

12 would be helpful, I think that's helpful in terms 

13 of both conducting interviews and what SC&A will be 

14 doing there, but also when we have the, you know, 

15 public comment period and so forth.

16 I think we can at least help to identify 

17 people that have information, get some input from 

18 people working on the site and a little bit better, 

19 more involvement last time. We were up there last 

20 July and hopefully get more interest this time also. 

21 And so it would helpful, given the weather there, 

22 we probably won't be back until the following 

23 summer.
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1 Okay. If there are no more questions, 

2 Board Members on the Board have any questions for 

3 LaVon -- excuse me, on the phone? I've talked to 

4 much.

5 Okay. That's it. And we have one more 

6 Board action to take. Do I hear a motion to 

7 adjourn?

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: So moved.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: So you know I'm still on 

10 the phone, I'll second that.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. KATZ: Goodbye, Dick.

13 MEMBER LEMEN: Goodbye.

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

15 went off the record at 3:18 p.m.)

16

17

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22

23
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