This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Rocky Flats Work Group, has been 

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

been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of 

the Rocky Flats Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript 

is for information only and is subject to change.

1

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

ROCKY FLATS WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

TUESDAY,

MARCH 17, 2015

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened in the Brussels 

Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 2395 

Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., 

David Kotelchuck, Chair, presiding.

PRESENT:

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Chair

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

*Participating via telephone

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Rocky Flats Work Group, has been 

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

been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of 

the Rocky Flats Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript 

is for information only and is subject to change.

2

ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

TERRIE BARRIE*

BOB BARTON, SC&A*

JAMES BOGARD, ORAU Team*

ELIZABETH BRACKETT, ORAU Team*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

ROSE GOGLIOTTI, SC&A*

JENNY LIN, HHS*

JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A*

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

JIM NETON, DCAS

JUDY PADILLA*

LaVON RUTHERFORD, DCAS

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team*

DAN STEMPFLEY, ORAU Team*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

*Participating via telephone

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Welcome and Roll Call

1. DCAS/SC&A - provide brief overview

on petition status....................... 5

2. Discuss NIOSH/ORAU White Paper:

Rocky Flats Plant Health Surveillance

Document Review.......................... 9

3. Discuss NIOSH/ORAUT White Paper:

Existence of Mg-Th Alloy at

RFP Based on Worker Statements.......... 29

4. Discuss NIOSH/ORAUT White Paper:

Evaluation of the Potential for

Internal Dose from Np-237............... 62

5. Discuss NIOSH/ORAUT White Paper:

Follow-up Efforts on SEC-00192......... 109

6. NIOSH Provide status and schedule

for remaining open issues.............. 235

7. Petitioner comments.................... 255

Adjourn

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

2 (9:01 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning, everyone on 

4 the line, in the room. This is the Advisory Board 

5 on Radiation and Worker Health Rocky Flats Work 

6 Group, and we are ready to get going.

7 A couple of preliminaries. For this 

8 Work Group meeting, there is an agenda and related 

9 materials. They are all posted on the NIOSH 

10 website. You find them on the Advisory Board 

11 section under today's meetings, so go there and you 

12 can follow along with the materials that we will 

13 be discussing today.

14 Okay. And roll call.

15 (Roll call.)

16 Much thanks, and, Dr. Kotelchuck, it's 

17 your meeting.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, as 

19 folks know, Mark --

20 MR. KATZ: Griffon.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- Griffon has 

22 -- thank you -- has left the Board to follow up and 

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1 work full-time on his Chemical Safety Board 

2 appointment. So I have been appointed -- newly 

3 appointed as chair of this Working Group. And 

4 also, Dr. Field, who is on the line, has been added 

5 to the Working Group. So the two of us are 

6 relatively new, and we are going to have to depend 

7 significantly for our other Board Members with long 

8 experience -- Wanda Munn and Phil Schofield, who 

9 is not with us today.

10 So we have the agenda posted on the DCAS 

11 online. Let's talk -- let's start out -- so folks 

12 see it, there are seven points. Let's start out 

13 first with a brief overview on the petition status. 

14 LaVon Rutherford.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. I'll give 

16 a brief overview, and then I will let Joe Fitzgerald 

17 with SC&A kind of add things that I will surely 

18 leave out. 

19 We received the petition. It has been 

20 quite some time. I actually forgot to look at the 

21 date that we actually received the petition, but 

22 we issued an evaluation report back in December 

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1 2012. We initially identified that there was no 

2 SEC classes. We had identified the tritium issue 

3 associated with tritium exposure or that had -- an 

4 incident that had occurred in the 1973 timeframe, 

5 and potential exposure to tritium is our basis for 

6 qualifying the petition.

7 After some additional discussion, 

8 review of documents, and interviews that we 

9 conducted, we ultimately went back and we revised 

10 our evaluation report recommending a Class up 

11 through 1983. That recommendation centered not on 

12 tritium but on potential exposures to thorium, 

13 neptunium, U-233 exposures were the main items that 

14 drove the SEC Class.

15 After we made that recommendation, and 

16 the Board concurred with that recommendation, we 

17 identified that there -- we would continue to 

18 evaluate neptunium and look at the potential 

19 exposures to neptunium 1984 through 1989 period.

20 We also ultimately, through additional 

21 discussions with the Work Group, we identified that 

22 we needed to go back and do some additional research 

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1 on magnesium-thorium alloy. There were open 

2 issues with tritium that had not been resolved, so 

3 those were three open issues.

4 Additionally, the petitioner 

5 provided -- identified a potential issue with the 

6 health surveillance document that -- potential 

7 concerns with our ability to reconstruct doses 

8 because of that report. And then we also 

9 identified a potential exposure with the critical 

10 mass laboratory, and questions were brought up on 

11 data falsification as identified during the FBI 

12 raid. So these were the main six open issues that 

13 really kind of stayed open and have been -- we have 

14 been working through. 

15 We have had a couple of Work Group 

16 meetings. We initially put out a White Paper on 

17 the tritium exposures. SC&A responded. We 

18 revised and did some additional update, and then 

19 SC&A provided another response back in September. 

20 So tritium exposure is something that we are 

21 definitely going to talk about today. 

22 We also completed and issued a White 

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1 Paper on the health surveillance document. That 

2 will be the first item we will discuss after this. 

3 We have put together a White Paper on where we feel 

4 -- the activities with neptunium and any potential 

5 exposure past 1983, and later on, at the end of the 

6 day, I will give updates on two remaining White 

7 Papers that we are going to develop, and that is 

8 data falsification/destruction, and a lot of that 

9 is centered on the FBI raid period, and also 

10 exposures from the critical mass laboratory.

11 So, again, six open issues. We will 

12 discuss four of those today. 

13 Do you want to add to that, Joe?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that covers it 

15 pretty well. I would say that, you know, we have 

16 been addressing at least some of these issues from 

17 back when we did the original SEC review back in 

18 2007 I guess with magnesium-thorium. We have 

19 participated with NIOSH in a lot of the early data 

20 captures, almost -- most of the interviews actually 

21 covering all of these issues pretty much, and have 

22 responded to all the White Papers, save one, the 

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1 most recent one, which is neptunium. And that's 

2 actually in a final version as far as the response 

3 goes. It is not issued, but we certainly can speak 

4 to that today. So I think we are prepared to 

5 respond to pretty much all of these issues.

6 So I guess with that I will turn it back 

7 to Dave.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Very 

9 good.

10 Well, let's -- first, before we get 

11 started on the health surveillance document review 

12 discussion, just to note for people online that we 

13 are changing the agenda slightly such that we will 

14 deal with the tritium issues, Items five and ---

15 item five right after lunch, and then we will return 

16 to the agenda as posted online.

17 So let's start with the health 

18 surveillance document review.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. I believe the 

20 health surveillance document is out on the website 

21 and available to everyone to review, and hopefully 

22 Bill -- Dr. Field, I apologize -- hopefully you had 

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1 a chance to take a look at that. I know you are 

2 going to be getting yourself up to speed with 

3 everything. 

4 I will give you an overview of the 

5 document, and then our conclusion.

6 The petitioner -- well, the White Paper 

7 was developed in response to the petitioner's 

8 concern that dosimetry records cannot be relied 

9 upon for dose reconstruction. This issue was in 

10 response to -- the petitioner refers to the Oak 

11 Ridge Institute for Science and Education document 

12 Health Surveillance of Rocky Flats Radiation 

13 Workers. In that, it indicates that approximately 

14 10 percent of the former workers were found to have 

15 received internal exposures higher than reported 

16 in the health physics record.

17 So there was a concern that because the 

18 health surveillance document identified that 

19 exposures were actually higher than previously 

20 identified by the site that this brought into 

21 question our ability to reconstruct doses for the 

22 workers.

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1 Taking directly from that report, the 

2 report says approximately 10 percent of the 1,164 

3 participants for whom a dose assessment was 

4 performed were determined to have some unrecorded 

5 internal dose, and approximately five percent of 

6 the participants had a significant unrecorded 

7 dose. So, again, this brought up the issue that 

8 -- of concern that would affect our potential --

9 or affect our ability to reconstruct the dose. 

10 Back in SEC 30, we actually -- the 

11 evaluation report actually looked at the worker 

12 recall monitoring program, which was part of 

13 this --

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Just as a 

15 question, on that piece of data on the 10 percent 

16 that had significant unreported dose, how was that 

17 determined in that original paper? That is, how 

18 did they know what the original dose really was?

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, additional 

20 bioassays were taken as part of -- of some of the 

21 workers. So they actually took the bioassays --

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Bioassays.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- versus the --

2 right.

3 DR. NETON: If I recall, these were 

4 more sensitive bioassay measures.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. And I was going 

6 to get to that.

7 DR. NETON: Okay. I'm sorry.

8 (Laughter.)

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. That's okay.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. But I 

11 just -- and as I'm relatively new to this committee, 

12 I am going to ask maybe perhaps a few more 

13 questions.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure. That's good, 

15 you know, that --

16 MEMBER MUNN: That's all right. It 

17 helps bring us up to speed, too.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Good.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, it will 

20 be -- usually it's nice to be able to get a lead 

21 in. It helps me.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. So, 

2 again, they looked at this back on SEC 30, and taken 

3 from the SEC 30 or Rocky Flats evaluation report: 

4 bioassay results from recall programs can help 

5 refine estimates of dose from internally deposited 

6 radioactive materials. However, the ability of 

7 NIOSH to perform dose reconstruction is not 

8 predicated on the continuance of such programs.

9 So, again, this was looked back at early 

10 on, actually under SEC 30. So we went back and we 

11 looked at the report again. We also, you know, 

12 looked at some of the reference documents as well. 

13 And when you review the report, you can see that 

14 the apparent difference in dose from the early 

15 years and as -- and primarily the results are based 

16 on a difference in the detection limits. So the 

17 minimum detectable activity for bioassay samples.

18 So the ORISE health surveillance 

19 report, it is taking the original site calculated 

20 doses and comparing them to recalculated external 

21 and internal dose based on new bioassay data from 

22 the medical monitoring program as well as from the 

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1 neutron dose reconstruction project.

2 The report finding that the internal 

3 exposures are higher than reported in the health 

4 physics record reflects the lesser sensitivity of 

5 the detection limits. So when workers were 

6 resampled during the medical monitoring program, 

7 the sensitivity of the more recent bioassay was 

8 much better. Therefore, it is not surprising the 

9 intakes were not detected.

10 Okay. The second observation, there 

11 are two additional differences between the doses 

12 assigned by either the historical site program or 

13 the health surveillance program. Under EEOICPA, 

14 we assigned this dose. Okay? That's something 

15 that is not done, you know, normally at a site, so 

16 -- which accounts for any limitations in any 

17 analytical measurements by -- you know, by 

18 calculating the maximum dose it could have been

19 gone undetected.

20 Also, we assigned dose based on 

21 co-worker studies. So if we have unmonitored 

22 workers that, you know, did not get monitored 

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1 during that period, we look at those individuals, 

2 where they worked, the different -- you know, what 

3 groupings that they might be working in, and we can 

4 assign co-worker dose based on that.

5 So our conclusion was that the 

6 surveillance report does not indicate that the 

7 internal monitoring program was inaccurate. Our 

8 processes assess reliable and usable data to 

9 account for all potential exposures and 

10 determining bounding intakes, including 

11 unmonitored exposures through potential co-worker 

12 models.

13 Therefore, the conclusion is that all 

14 potential dose is accounted for, and the findings 

15 of the health surveillance report do not impact the 

16 ability to reconstruct dose with sufficient 

17 accuracy.

18 So, again, the main item was detection 

19 limits during those early years when new, more 

20 sensitive equipment that we have now allowed 

21 for -- you know, was the main indicator of the 

22 missed dose, or of those exposures being higher.

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1 And that's it for that document. I'll 

2 let SC&A respond. I know that --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Questions? Thank 

4 you, LaVon.

5 Actually, we've come across this issue 

6 once or twice before, so this is not an uncommon 

7 question, but we wanted to look at this de novo. 

8 And Ron Buchanan, who is sort of an internal 

9 dosimetrist by background, is on the phone. And, 

10 Ron, can you walk through your analysis?

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. This is Ron 

12 Buchanan, SC&A. LaVon gave a good overview of what 

13 took place, so I won't go into -- repeat that. What 

14 we did is we went back and reviewed NIOSH's White 

15 Paper of May of 2014 to determine exactly what was 

16 done and how they handled the situation. 

17 And we -- I do the auditing of the dose 

18 reconstruction cases, so I was familiar with how 

19 they processed their cases and how they did their 

20 calculations. And I can confirm that the way they 

21 do their dose assignments for internal doses does 

22 not depend upon the plant calculating doses in the 

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1 worker's files.

2 Now, what this consisted of, some of the 

3 DOE sites did have a program which projected out 

4 what the dose would be to major body organs when 

5 a person would have a whole body count. The person 

6 would have a whole body count, they would go in and 

7 project what the dose might be to their organs, not 

8 that they have the answer or anything, just what 

9 they might be for that worker at that time.

10 And many of these were zeroes because 

11 the detection level was fairly high in the older 

12 days. And what this -- NIOSH handles this by 

13 assigning a dose for that -- those zeroes, 

14 actually, a missed dose. And so this would 

15 actually result usually in a favorable dose 

16 assignment as compared to if they were surveyed 

17 with any more sensitive method, which ORISE used 

18 in later times.

19 And so we did not see a conflict. These 

20 are sheets of calculations in the workers' files. 

21 They are not actually used for dose reconstruction, 

22 especially those that read zero. NIOSH goes back 

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1 and uses the raw data from the actual detector 

2 printouts as opposed to a pre-set program and 

3 calculated dose back at that time.

4 So we did not see a conflict there with 

5 the way it is presently done under the Act, and 

6 would not indicate that the ORISE doses were better 

7 or assigned more dose than what the NIOSH would in 

8 dose reconstruction.

9 I would like to make a correction. In 

10 the revising of our statement we issued March 2nd, 

11 in the first paragraph, last lines, the reported 

12 dose should be -- should read "reported doses in 

13 health physics records," not the professional 

14 journals, not in Health Physics Society Journal. 

15 This got inserted and it shouldn't be, so it should 

16 just be -- read "higher than reported in the health 

17 physics records." That is called in the -- in the 

18 workers' files was the health physics records.

19 And so that's what we -- the concern 

20 was, and we did not see that this conflicted with 

21 the way the dose reconstruction is performed by 

22 NIOSH at this time.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Ron, this is Wanda. Has 

3 that clerical error been corrected in the master 

4 copy?

5 DR. BUCHANAN: No. Unfortunately, it 

6 was issued that way, and we will have to go out and 

7 revise that.

8 MEMBER MUNN: All right.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

10 MEMBER MUNN: That's what --

11 DR. BUCHANAN: I want to clarify that. 

12 The actual records referring to was the health 

13 physics records in the DOE files, not a journal.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Thank you. It's a 

15 nice net to keep your eye on, though. Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And the concern 

17 that was raised in the petition was with respect 

18 to that 10 percent data, with the Oak Ridge data, 

19 but that -- we're saying that, and SC&A is agreeing, 

20 that the measurements are made based on the data 

21 collected, and they are not on any estimates from 

22 the plant.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Well, what 

2 we're saying is that we will take the intakes or 

3 the bioassay data and the external monitoring data. 

4 We will make corrections based on detection limits, 

5 based on limitations that we know with this, and 

6 ultimately we don't -- we don't take a dose that 

7 is identified in the record and say, "Okay. That's 

8 the dose that we are going to apply in dose 

9 reconstruction." We actually go back and adjust 

10 it based on our internal procedures.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. And 

12 that includes missed dose and --

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Correct.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. And MDA. 

15 When were the -- just because I'm, again, 

16 relatively new, when were the actual evaluations 

17 or dose reconstruction -- we have been dealing with 

18 SECs, but a lot of dose reconstructions have 

19 happened. When were they done? What year? 

20 We're talking about 2007, something like that, or 

21 2004?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: They have been, I 

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1 mean, all the way back since '04, '03, but we have 

2 -- you know, and what we do, I mean, as you know, 

3 our process, I mean, as we get our claims in, we 

4 will reconstruct it dose-based -- or reconstruct 

5 the claimants based on existing TBDs and stuff that 

6 we have. And as a TBD is revised, we will determine 

7 whether a Program Evaluation Report will determine 

8 whether we have claims that need to be pulled back 

9 and redone to -- based on additional exposures that 

10 we identified in a revision.

11 So that process continues on, and so 

12 what will happen after the -- when they completed 

13 the evaluation report, discussion on SEC 30, we 

14 went back and we made changes to the Rocky Flats 

15 Technical Basis Documents, and then we continue to 

16 make changes based on, you know, programmatic 

17 changes within different things, you know, 

18 technical information bulletins. And then after 

19 we get done with this evaluation report and we 

20 revise -- or we resolve all of the issues, 

21 ultimately the TBDs will be revised again. And so 

22 -- which could drive additional claims coming back 

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1 into ---

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And, in 

3 particular, with respect to instrumentation, the 

4 MDAs, they have been lowered over time. Maybe not 

5 in this -- maybe not in this last decade, but over 

6 the years, and those are taken into account.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. And, you 

8 know, I think if you look at -- we have looked back 

9 at the analysis techniques that occurred all the 

10 way back, and we come up with detection limits based 

11 on those techniques, and then we use -- we take that 

12 into consideration for dose reconstructions for 

13 those time periods. And then, as we get new claims 

14 in for later years, those MDAs are adjusted to what 

15 analysis techniques they are using today.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Fine. 

17 So the MDAs at that time.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Good. 

20 Good.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: So, Jim, you can feel 

22 free to add --

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1 DR. NETON: No, I think we've got --

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes? So basic 

3 agreement.

4 MR. KATZ: Bill -- do you want to just 

5 check with Bill Field? Are you --

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: -- square with this, too?

8 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I just had a 

9 question for LaVon. 

10 LaVon, how was it, I guess, figured out 

11 or determined that the bioassay data was complete?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm confused here. 

13 What do you mean, how was it determined it was 

14 complete?

15 MEMBER FIELD: I guess the source that 

16 you are using now will be the actual bioassay data, 

17 right?

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Correct. Yes.

19 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. What I mean is 

20 was there reported doses that there is not bioassay 

21 data for.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, yes, there -- I 

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1 mean, there is -- again, there are unmonitored 

2 individuals that we know, I mean, had to -- that 

3 occurred, but we take that into account with the 

4 co-worker models, you know, for individuals during 

5 that era. Is that what you're asking me?

6 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

8 DR. NETON: Also, we did capture the 

9 medical monitoring data --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

11 DR. NETON: -- and I believe they have 

12 been placed in the individual files, so they're 

13 there. But those results, since they were done 

14 with a lower limit of direction, would only serve 

15 to lower the dose calculation.

16 MEMBER FIELD: Right.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And the 

18 co-worker data is calculated in each building or, 

19 I mean --

20 DR. NETON: No.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- I know that 

22 background issue, and I know you've talked for 

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1 years about --

2 DR. NETON: Well, the current 

3 co-worker model is the general co-worker model for 

4 all monitored workers. It fits a single 

5 distribution.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

7 DR. NETON: But those will be 

8 reevaluated in light of this new implementation 

9 guide that we are going to talk about at the 

10 Advisory Board meeting.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

12 DR. NETON: There are some more 

13 prescriptive criteria now that we have to go 

14 through to demonstrate that a one size fits all 

15 model is appropriate, and, if not, it will be broken 

16 out, probably not by building but by different --

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Division, 

18 whatever.

19 DR. NETON: -- different worker --

20 construction trades versus routine workers. That 

21 sort of thing.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Thank 

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1 you.

2 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. A 

3 quick question, Jim. So what I understand is the 

4 new draft co-worker model that we met on a week ago 

5 or so under the -- I guess it was the --

6 DR. NETON: SEC Issues Work Group, yes.

7 DR. MAURO: Yes. So that is a very --

8 by the way, everyone agreed on the phone that it 

9 was quite a comprehensive document addressing lots 

10 and lots of the nuances associated with co-worker 

11 models.

12 Did I just hear that you will be going 

13 back to not only this particular application of the 

14 co-worker model -- of course, it has been around 

15 -- these issues have been around for a while, but 

16 is there going to be a PER, for example, a series 

17 of them, that are going to be needed in light of 

18 this what I would consider to be a fundamentally 

19 much more comprehensive vision of the co-worker 

20 models?

21 DR. NETON: Yes. Well, yes, but it 

22 depends. If it turns out that some of the models 

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1 need to be stratified, we will do that and issue 

2 a PER. I'm not convinced that all cases that is 

3 going to be appropriate. Certain sites like AWEs 

4 maybe not, but, yes, we are going to -- we intend 

5 to do that once we -- hopefully we can get the full 

6 Board to accept the current draft model, and we will 

7 issue it probably early April and start moving our 

8 way through the files. It is going to take some 

9 time. We can't do this immediately, but that's our 

10 intent. 

11 DR. MAURO: Thank you.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: All right. So I 

13 think it sounds -- Wanda, do you have any comments 

14 or thoughts?

15 MEMBER MUNN: No. No. It's clear to 

16 me that the workers are being well represented 

17 here, and that everyone is having the kind of 

18 coverage allowed to them that gives them more than 

19 the benefit of the doubt in most cases.

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. I think 

21 we are -- if all agree, I think we are finished with 

22 this item.

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1 MR. KATZ: Let's close it.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Let's close it. 

3 And, let's see. We'll go on to the next item, which 

4 was -- which is the magnesium-thorium issues.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. Well, the 

6 magnesium-thorium alloy issue has been around a 

7 long time. Actually, magnesium-thorium alloy, we 

8 issued an 8314 SEC evaluation report for the Dow 

9 Madison site a considerable time ago. And that Dow 

10 Madison was the producer of magnesium, one of the 

11 producers of magnesium-thorium alloy. Also, Dow 

12 Midland did that as well.

13 So magnesium-thorium alloy has -- drove 

14 that SEC or the production of a magnesium-thorium 

15 alloy drove that SEC. During interviews and 

16 discussion with Dow Madison workers, one worker or 

17 group of workers identified that magnesium-thorium 

18 alloy was delivered to -- or sent to the Rocky Flats 

19 plant, at this time -- at the time we were going 

20 through the Rocky Flats evaluation, so there was 

21 a considerable amount of work to go back and look 

22 at that. 

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1 And it was driven for a couple of 

2 reasons, not only the exposures from 

3 magnesium-thorium alloy. You know, the thorium in 

4 it is low percentage, two to three percent of 

5 thorium, but the driver -- there was also a driver 

6 under the covered facility portion of Dow Madison.

7 If they could show that a magnesium and 

8 thorium alloy was used in nuclear weapons, then it 

9 becomes a covered exposure, and it also changes the 

10 covered period. So Dow Madison's site had an 

11 ending of a covered period I think in 1970 at the 

12 time, and so the petitioner for Dow Madison took 

13 a lot of effort to see if they could show that 

14 magnesium-thorium alloy was used in nuclear 

15 weapons.

16 Ultimately, it was determined that it 

17 was used in -- it could have been used in some 

18 weapons, and the exposures at Dow Madison were --

19 from magnesium-thorium alloy, were considered 

20 covered, and they extended the covered period up 

21 to 1973.

22 While one of the concerns was if the 

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1 magnesium-thorium alloy was used at Rocky Flats in 

2 weapons production, you know, could this extend 

3 that even farther beyond the -- extend the Dow 

4 Madison covered period even farther. And are 

5 these exposures covered under the current -- I 

6 mean, are they -- have we evaluated those 

7 exposures? All these questions came up.

8 So some initial work that went on under 

9 SEC 30 and the review of documentation, and also 

10 interviews, they found no corroborating evidence 

11 for the assertion that magnesium-thorium alloys 

12 were used or present at Rocky Flats during -- or 

13 at Rocky Flats.

14 And I actually interviewed Rocky Flats 

15 personnel to see if one of them were aware of the 

16 receipt of these types of materials, and none were 

17 aware that magnesium-thorium alloy was ever 

18 present or used in any significant quantity. The 

19 actual interview -- the person that was interviewed 

20 from Dow said, you know, a truckload of material 

21 being sent to Rocky Flats, which is a considerable 

22 amount of magnesium-thorium alloy.

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1 The issue came back up -- it was 

2 considered closed, and the issue came back up under 

3 this current SEC when a petitioner was -- she was 

4 approached by a former worker who wished to remain 

5 anonymous, and I will state this is from email. 

6 "Earlier this month, a former Rocky Flats worker 

7 related to me through a third party information 

8 concerning the use of magnesium-thorium alloy 

9 plates at Rocky Flats. You may remember that Dow 

10 workers submitted affidavits that Dow shipped 

11 these plates to Rocky Flats. 

12 "The information relayed to me was they 

13 were brought in on the 903 pad to 881 to refine them, 

14 sent to the mod center for modification to fit 

15 semi-trucks as to make them bulletproof.

16 "The semi bed was brought in, stripped 

17 down, and the sheets were refined to help armor 

18 plate the trucks." And then it goes on.

19 So because that issue was brought back 

20 up, we went back and we did additional interviews. 

21 We actually -- I talked to a person that was at the 

22 Board meeting at the time who was involved in this. 

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1 We set up classified interviews at the Denver 

2 records facility. We interviewed four to five, or 

3 it may have been -- you know, four to five workers 

4 that were directly associated with this work. 

5 And we also went back and we did 

6 additional data captures and research to see if we 

7 could find documentation on -- potential 

8 documentation that would show that 

9 magnesium-thorium alloy was used at the mod center.

10 From that review, from the interviews 

11 of the workers, and from the review of 

12 documentation that we had there, we found no 

13 indication that magnesium-thorium alloy -- we had 

14 no corroborating evidence that it was used at Rocky 

15 Flats. But through that research we also 

16 identified that Sandia National Lab may have been 

17 involved in the process, since they were part of 

18 the design team, and putting together for the mod 

19 for the semi-trucks.

20 So we went back to Sandia National Lab. 

21 We did a data capture search there as well. And, 

22 again, we found no information that supported that 

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1 magnesium-thorium alloy was used at Rocky Flats.

2 So, in summary, that's it. In summary, 

3 to date, we have found no evidence that supports 

4 that magnesium-thorium alloy was used at Rocky 

5 Flats. And that's it. I'll turn it over to SC&A.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. As LaVon was 

7 saying, this has a long history. I think this 

8 stemmed from a 2007 interview that we had recently 

9 conducted with a worker at Dow Madison, and, again, 

10 that was the first indication, and we have been 

11 following up ever since then, actually. So this 

12 does have, in fact, a long history.

13 At the time, there was some debate about 

14 whether that worker or workers may have gotten the 

15 destination for the mag-thorium wrong, because, 

16 again, I guess the Rocky Mount arsenal and Rocky 

17 Flats have some similarity in terms. But having 

18 been involved in that particular interview, it was 

19 a very clear answer, so it was certainly compelling 

20 enough that we wanted to make sure that due process 

21 -- we looked at documentation and talked to 

22 additional people.

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1 Mag-thorium -- I think one of the key 

2 issues that would concern us at this point is 

3 mag-thorium did have some wide application in the 

4 weapons complex in that timeframe. I'm working in 

5 the Kansas City plant SEC at this point in time, 

6 and mag-thorium figured in Kansas City all the way 

7 up to 1979, in terms of actual handling.

8 So as far as timeframe and 

9 significance, Kansas City used it. We know it has 

10 application in the weapons program. Rocky Flats, 

11 Sandia, Kansas City, Los Alamos, were all key 

12 components of the weapons complex under the 

13 Albuquerque Field Office. So, you know, this 

14 question of whether any of these facilities were 

15 actively involved in that application is a valid 

16 one.

17 So certainly when you look at it from 

18 that standpoint, we have some specific comments,

19 and that's in our response. But certainly the 

20 different specifications for the shipments, we 

21 felt there were a few more that needed to be 

22 addressed and searched against in terms of shipping 

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1 records, and we identified those. These came out 

2 of the interview with the Dow Madison work 

3 originally.

4 The other issue is I think there was --

5 and we participated in the NIOSH data capture at 

6 the Legacy Management Complex in Denver, and I 

7 think all of us recognize that the set of records 

8 that Legacy Management had there that we were 

9 searching for, and we have certainly looked at the 

10 issue of mag-thorium in those records, was 

11 incomplete. I would say significantly 

12 incomplete, because Los Alamos apparently had come 

13 down, to some of the chagrin of the managers at the 

14 LM facility, and took quite a few Rocky Flats 

15 records, a lot of classified records that had 

16 relevance to the weapons program.

17 And, understandably, they were 

18 concerned about these records. Given the status 

19 of Rocky Flats having been closed, they wanted to 

20 take these records back and bring them back to Los 

21 Alamos and retain them there. So, you know, this 

22 issue was raised at our full Board meeting in 

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1 October 2013. There were a number of boxes of 

2 Rocky Flats records at Los Alamos, which is not 

3 surprising. I mean, I think, again, it was 

4 recognized they took a lot of records.

5 So it does leave some question of 

6 whether, you know, mag-thorium would figure in 

7 those records, since it was an aspect of the weapons 

8 program in terms of processing.

9 Another issue is -- and I think this has 

10 turned out to be a fairly good tool, all of us have 

11 looked at the NMMSS, the nuclear material 

12 inventory, as a source of confirmation as to what 

13 strategic materials, you know, in fact are in place 

14 at different DOE facilities at different 

15 timeframes. And this has served to be a -- it is 

16 kind of a tool to verify, you know, what's being 

17 held.

18 And at least in Kansas City certainly 

19 we saw magnesium-thorium show up as an alloy 

20 thorium entry. We did the same thing for Rocky 

21 Flats for mag-thorium and did not find anything. 

22 But I want to caution, because we did actually talk 

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1 to the DOE managers who manage the NMMSS program, 

2 and, you know, they basically took what the sites 

3 gave them. You know, they just kind of compiled 

4 it, summarized it, and certainly whatever the site 

5 provided is what they used.

6 And it is very possible that Rocky 

7 Flats, given the source terms they were dealing 

8 with, which, you know, plutonium, neptunium, and 

9 uranium, that mag-thorium probably almost didn't 

10 get on their screen. So it could explain why we 

11 didn't see it there, although we did see it at 

12 Kansas City, because, again, the difference is that 

13 they had very few radiological source terms. 

14 They, in fact, did list thorium as one of them, even 

15 though it was very slightly contaminated.

16 So, in general, you know, we have not 

17 found much in the way of records for mag-thorium. 

18 Otherwise, this issue would have been gone years 

19 ago. We have had to rely on interviews of workers, 

20 mostly to discount the original input that we got 

21 that in fact Dow Madison has shipped it. And we 

22 haven't found any corroboration of that at all, so 

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1 it sort of leaves us in this situation where we 

2 don't have any records per se, any clear-cut 

3 closure on the thing from that standpoint.

4 We have sort of a disparate collection 

5 of interview inputs, most of which say, no, Rocky 

6 didn't receive it. We have one that says Rocky was 

7 sent it. So it's -- we are sort of at a point now 

8 where, no, we don't think it's conclusive, but on 

9 the other hand, short of trying to track down within 

10 Los Alamos' voluminous pile of records the boxes 

11 that might, and may not, contain mag-thorium, we 

12 are sort of at that point where I think the Work 

13 Group would have to consider if the search should 

14 go on.

15 I mean, I think, again, we are at that 

16 point where we have talked to a lot of people, we 

17 have chased down a lot of leads. There may in fact 

18 be some additional records at Los Alamos to 

19 validate this. And, certainly, the history of 

20 mag-thorium use suggests that it is possible that 

21 there was an application at Rocky, but to date we 

22 have not been able to verify that.

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1 So I think just trying to put all of that 

2 on the table is kind of where we are. We can 

3 continue looking, but given the cycle time that we 

4 have had with Los Alamos for the last three or four 

5 years, it could be a pretty lengthy search, quite 

6 frankly. So --

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Let me add something, 

8 too.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Sure.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I also want to point 

12 out that -- and I think Joe had -- I don't know if 

13 you mentioned it or not, but I know that the SC&A's 

14 paper mentioned it, and I think ours mentioned it 

15 as well, the magnesium-thorium issue and the time 

16 period is within the current SEC period at Rocky 

17 Flats. So this issue would only be from exposures 

18 to potential -- for partial dose reconstruction.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: That's correct.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. I just 

21 wanted to make sure everybody is aware of that. It 

22 has no -- the time period does not reflect -- or 

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1 would not extend beyond the current SEC.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Even if one would 

3 conjecture that given the Kansas City experience, 

4 the mag-thorium could be around through '79, that 

5 still would pre-date the '83 SEC cutoff. So the 

6 context is certainly of partial dose 

7 reconstructions only.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: This issue will 

9 come up again -- does come up again in the tritium, 

10 that much of the issue that we're dealing with is 

11 covered by the current SEC, except for partial dose 

12 reconstruction.

13 I don't have any feeling for how many 

14 people either have already filed claims that would 

15 call for a partial or -- and how many -- if one has 

16 any sense of how many there might be in the future. 

17 Let's first talk about the past claimants.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I'll let Jim 

19 jump in.

20 DR. NETON: It has been our experience 

21 -- I think it was holding fairly consistent that 

22 about 60 percent of the cases go SEC. If an SEC 

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1 is made, it covers about 60 percent of the cases 

2 we had in-house. So that leaves about 40 percent 

3 that would come in through what we call the 

4 non-presumptive cancers, you know, or they meet 

5 other eligibility criteria.

6 Of those cancers, the non-presumptive 

7 cancers, you know, have things like skin cancer, 

8 prostate cancer, organs that don't typically have 

9 much dose associated with the inhalation of things 

10 like uranium. So I'm not saying it's zero, but the 

11 dose would be pretty small. It is never a good 

12 idea, I don't think, though, to sort of couch 

13 whether we do something or not because it won't 

14 affect many people, because if I'm that one person 

15 affected, you know --

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Of course.

17 DR. NETON: -- but the reality of it is 

18 that it wouldn't affect like almost any cases. 

19 Doesn't mean it wouldn't -- it would be zero, 

20 though.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

22 DR. NETON: Because, like I say, once 

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1 you get into reconstructing doses for particularly 

2 this thorium alloy, which is typically around two 

3 to three percent thorium by weight, so it's a trace 

4 contaminant, that's probably not --

5 MEMBER MUNN: So this is a larger 

6 issue, really and truly. It's not how many would 

7 be affected; rather, how likely would this 

8 particular single incident that we are talking 

9 about affect any individual given the low number 

10 of actual thorium molecules that you are dealing 

11 with here. It's really very, very slight.

12 Add to that the fact that you have no 

13 reassurance from any of the interviewees who were 

14 in that very limited space at that very limited 

15 period who can or will say, "Sure, we had a project 

16 like that," which seems unlikely. You have a small 

17 team that works that particular very specific area, 

18 and they don't have indication that they were ever 

19 involved in that particular kind of activity would 

20 lead one to believe that the confusion about where 

21 that shipment went was a natural one that could 

22 occur for anybody. It seems unlikely.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

2 DR. NETON: You also have to consider, 

3 even if this were shipped to Rocky Flats, what would 

4 they do with it? And the only way one would be --

5 generally any significant exposure was to do some 

6 sort of grinding/cutting operation on a material 

7 that generated airborne source term. We don't 

8 know that that --

9 MEMBER MUNN: And the airborne source 

10 term would be very, very small.

11 DR. NETON: It would be very small, 

12 because it's mostly magnesium, not thorium.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And the concern 

14 raised by the petitioner was from a person who said 

15 they were using it for plating --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- for 

18 bulletproof plating.

19 MEMBER MUNN: They said it was sent for 

20 that purpose. They were not at the other end, so 

21 they don't know where it went and what happened to 

22 it. They said it was sent for that purpose.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But the concern 

2 -- but the recent concern is from a worker at Rocky 

3 Flats who was using it presumably, or had 

4 heard --MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And it was 

5 unnamed source, but the interviews were directed 

6 at folks that had worked in that facility to see 

7 if there was any knowledge of --

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: So one might 

9 simply have cutting -- I mean, some machining --

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Cutting, welding.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- fitting to 

12 size.

13 DR. NETON: That's what confused me a 

14 little bit is magnesium-thorium, I'm not sure of 

15 its application in bulletproofing. Normally, 

16 when you think of that, you think of depleted 

17 uranium or something like that.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. Right.

19 DR. NETON: The properties of 

20 magnesium-thorium -- I could be wrong, but I'm not 

21 familiar with how that was used in --

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I do remember as 

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1 a citizen reading about the period in the -- was 

2 it the Iraq war where there was suddenly felt a lot 

3 of people were getting hurt by bombs, and there was 

4 a big move to get -- that there was not enough 

5 bulletproofing, and that there had to be a lot, and 

6 they used depleted uranium, but I wouldn't be 

7 surprised if something else would work.

8 DR. NETON: Yes, I don't know.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: So it's credible 

10 that --

11 DR. NETON: It's possible.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- that it could 

13 have been used.

14 DR. NETON: Sure.

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Tell us about --

16 in light of what Wanda said, tell us about the 

17 persons who were interviewed for this. I mean, 

18 basically, we got a worker report -- I don't know 

19 that the person is even a worker. It's a third 

20 party. So we have an employee at the plant, and 

21 how many -- I mean, you gave a number of four, five, 

22 and then apparently, Joe, you also did some further 

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1 interviews?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no. We actually 

3 did a joint one.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Great.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: This was a very 

6 specific allegation that was at a particular 

7 facility, whether that particular facility, the 

8 mod facility, had received and used these plates. 

9 So the idea was to talk to folks that would be 

10 familiar with that timeframe and that operation, 

11 to see if they recollected it.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And it was -- I 

13 mean, what's really very -- I mean, there would have 

14 to be transport into the -- you know, receipt, 

15 transport, but the folks who are really "working 

16 with it," that mod facility, how many people worked 

17 at that mod facility in that kind of operation? 

18 Not that you had to interview all, but just give 

19 me a sense, if you would.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: It was 30, 40, 50. It 

21 was a decent-sized operation. They did the SSTs, 

22 the safe transport vehicles that the complex used. 

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1 So they were plating -- you know, putting armor 

2 plating on those. Not necessarily with this 

3 material, but the question was whether they were 

4 using this material, but they certainly were doing 

5 that as a mission.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Since I noticed 

7 that the petitioner was -- that they were part of 

8 a union, the Steelworkers Union, would you say that 

9 the people that you interviewed were -- included 

10 members of that union as well as managerial folks? 

11 Was that -- I mean --

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. It was mainly 

13 the workers that we talked to, and we talked to one 

14 or two -- I think there was one of the managers 

15 involved there.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: There was a mix.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Because 

18 --

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: But it was mainly the 

20 workers.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I mean, one 

22 might think something that could come in under the 

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1 radar, if you will, people down absolutely in the 

2 field would know or might know what they handled 

3 as compared to a person higher up in authority, who, 

4 you know, you give directions. If you're in 

5 authority, you give directions and you figure 

6 they're carried out by competent people.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, the only 

8 cautionary note on this is we went through the same 

9 kind of probing at Kansas City, for example, and 

10 the way a lot of work was done at the -- in the 

11 complex back in that timeframe, it was very 

12 compartmentalized as far as what you were working 

13 on. The average worker would not necessarily know 

14 what he or she was working on for classification 

15 reasons.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Sure.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you know, sort of 

18 a grain of salt caution, because sometimes asking 

19 a worker, "Did you work, or did you no work, with 

20 magnesium-thorium?" I'm not sure whether you would 

21 necessarily get an authoritative answer just 

22 because in a lot of cases they went right into that 

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1 material they were working on.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Fair enough.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: So that's just -- just 

4 would add that as a side note.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: I agree with that 

6 caution, but I do -- one of the workers was pretty 

7 definitive in his statement that, you know, he 

8 would have known if there was magnesium. 

9 Now, I don't disagree with Joe at all. 

10 I think Joe is absolutely right. So, you know, 

11 whether he was definitive on his own, you know, or 

12 he -- but there was one worker who was pretty 

13 definitive. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: And then this is the 

15 -- sort of the thrust of our comment, that, you 

16 know, we have been sort of compelled to use 

17 interviews in this process, because the 

18 documentation just -- I think everybody's hope was 

19 that you would find something that would clear it 

20 up in writing in a record. And we haven't been able 

21 to do that, except, you know, we looked at shipment 

22 records and we didn't see anything in the shipment 

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1 records, which I think is helpful, and --

2 MEMBER MUNN: On either end.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I mean, yes.

4 MEMBER MUNN: On either end. That's 

5 key.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: And when you get into 

7 the interviews, I think you are looking for 

8 corroboration. And I think we sort of got a 

9 corroboration that nobody raised their hands and 

10 said that, yes, we have it. 

11 So it's -- some of it is sort of a 

12 annulled feedback, but I think that's pretty much

13 all we have been able to get. And I think that is 

14 helpful, and I think that is what we are bringing 

15 back to the Work Group. We have not been able to 

16 corroborate any magnesium-thorium at Rocky Flats 

17 through these various inquiries, and we haven't 

18 seen anything in the records. So there we go.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And I have to say 

20 from my own -- myself that reading through what 

21 NIOSH -- its records search, its search, seemed to 

22 me pretty comprehensive. I was impressed at the 

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1 number of different ways one approached trying to 

2 figure out if something was sent, transport, 

3 receipt, different ways, and they found nothing. 

4 It's hard to believe. If these are metal plates, 

5 right, that's -- somebody would have noticed metal 

6 plates coming in, and, as you noted, in fairly large 

7 weights, right, and sizes.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. That was the 

9 Dow Madison indicator was that it was a 

10 significant --

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And I would also 

12 add -- again, I keep bringing up Kansas City because 

13 we are doing that there, but we did not find any 

14 issue with establishing receipt of mag-thorium in 

15 Kansas City at all. And it showed up in 

16 operational records as well as inventory records. 

17 So it would be a puzzler with the 

18 asterisk being, you know, I'm not sure Legacy 

19 Management had as complete a record set as we'd 

20 like, but it would be puzzling if there wasn't any 

21 record at Rocky Flats of receipt, just because we 

22 saw it fairly extensively at Kansas City.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. Right.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Well, and the number of 

3 shipments was not just one every once in a while. 

4 The number of shipments out of Dow Madison was 

5 significant, several a month, three or four a 

6 month, something like that. And they wouldn't --

7 none of them say that they are going there. So it 

8 doesn't follow. It just doesn't.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Although 

10 I did note in the record that [identifying 

11 information redacted] had 11 affidavits from folks 

12 at Dow Madison that they sent things there. But 

13 it does seem hard to believe that we wouldn't have 

14 something in the records of a large number of 

15 shipments of heavy -- large heavy items.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Well, you realize that 

17 anyone educated and undereducated, and everybody 

18 in between, east of the Mississippi, does not know 

19 what exists west of the Mississippi. So if 

20 somebody says "Rocky" to you, you're immediately 

21 going to see the Rocky Mountains, and you're going 

22 to see some facility there.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Yes.

2 MEMBER MUNN: But the designation of 

3 individual smaller facilities, individual kinds of 

4 activities, would not be something that would, from 

5 my experience, be known by people, unless you are 

6 in that area, working in that area, and even then 

7 people don't make the distinction in their minds, 

8 especially if they are both defense facilities of 

9 some sort.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Yes. 

11 Bill, do you have anything -- questions 

12 or comments or --

13 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I guess those 

14 things -- in the SC&A report, there is a sentence 

15 that says, "However, it is within the Work Group's 

16 purview to judge whether further investigation is 

17 warranted." And I guess, you know, thinking about 

18 this, what is sufficient investigation? You know, 

19 what scope really addresses what is sufficient? 

20 It sounds like there is -- you know, they have gone 

21 back and done more interviews.

22 I guess if the committee would say, 

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1 "Yes, we want more investigation," I mean, what 

2 would you really investigate?

3 MEMBER MUNN: The only thing you could 

4 do is go to Los Alamos and spend six, eight, 10 

5 months, two and a half years, trying to find in that 

6 set of documentation, which is staggering -- you 

7 know, they have taken over things, in my 

8 understanding, that otherwise would have been a 

9 part of the RIDS program. And so, therefore, you 

10 have multiples of the kind of paper information 

11 that you have at other sites.

12 So you would have to go and look through 

13 all of that hoping that you would find some 

14 indication that this particular shipment was 

15 received in that particular place, and you have no 

16 assurance that such a record ever existed or will 

17 exist after you have gone through everything that 

18 exists at Los Alamos. So this --

19 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I agree with 

20 that, Wanda.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Yes.

22 MEMBER MUNN: It seems pointless. It 

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1 isn't as though this is a single rodeo. It isn't 

2 something that has been looked at, shrugged off, 

3 and said, "No, that can't be." It has been 

4 followed assiduously, not just for a few days but 

5 literally for years, and at two different sites. 

6 So from this Work Group Member, I do not see any 

7 purpose in pursuing this further.

8 MEMBER FIELD: I guess you could say 

9 you think there has been sufficient investigation.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MEMBER MUNN: I think you can probably 

12 say that with some assurance.

13 MEMBER FIELD: Okay.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Let me ask in 

15 this line, we have -- I'm still impressed by SC&A's 

16 comment that you -- that there is really a chance 

17 that it really did happen and that folks -- there 

18 were mistakes made. If that were shipped, if 

19 despite all of the lack -- with the lack of records, 

20 that it really was shipped, we are still talking 

21 about something -- a material with two or three 

22 percent thorium.

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1 I don't know what kind of -- obviously, 

2 we have to know how -- if it came, how people work 

3 with it. But it would seem as if this was not a 

4 heavy exposure that people would get, even if they 

5 handled the plates. But the exposure would be --

6 and it would actually be on their badges.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Any external 

8 exposure.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: The external 

10 exposure, right. Internal -- although to get 

11 internal exposure they would have to do machining 

12 --

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: But to be fair, the 

14 thought process was that they would have to make 

15 modifications to those plates to install them, and 

16 so there could have been cutting, there could have 

17 been grinding, and, you know, that would have 

18 driven some -- would have driven some exposures.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: The essence of it is 

20 we haven't established what the operational use of 

21 this material was, if any, at Rocky Flats. So 

22 before we could get to that question, we'd have to 

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1 establish that it was at Rocky Flats, and what the 

2 operational application was. And that is what --

3 the thrust of the research that was being done, and, 

4 you know, I don't -- actually, we framed it up, not 

5 too dissimilar to what Wanda was saying, that, you 

6 know, it is a question of how much it is worth in 

7 terms of resources.

8 The only -- again, the only pause I have 

9 is that when you do a records review, and you hear 

10 from the, you know, records manager that a lot of 

11 the records were, you know, swooped up and taken 

12 away, in this case by Los Alamos, after a closure 

13 then it sort of gives you some pause as to, you know, 

14 whether or not there is records or not.

15 And I would add that you mentioned 

16 [identifying information redacted] comments, and 

17 he filed a Freedom of Information request 

18 apparently of Los Alamos for magnesium-thorium as 

19 it was, and was told, you know, it was like 

20 something -- this was at our Board meeting a couple 

21 of years ago. There was something like 400 boxes 

22 at Los Alamos of Rocky Flats files, which sounds 

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1 pretty onerous to me.

2 But on the other hand, you know, it just 

3 leaves you some pause. That's why we're saying 

4 here we don't have any confirmation or 

5 corroboration or indication. But, on the other 

6 hand, I think the records review is a bit 

7 inconclusive given that. So it is a question of 

8 whether or not it is worth pursuing further.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I'm trying to 

10 think ahead. If this is sufficient, if the record 

11 search is sufficient, I'm thinking suppose we're 

12 wrong. Suppose it really happened. There is some 

13 credible evidence -- some evidence; I don't even 

14 say credible. Some evidence that it's -- that it 

15 happened, and we're wrong, this is not likely to 

16 have resulted in exposures that would be -- highly 

17 affect the dose reconstruction for the 

18 individuals. That is --

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: For the 

20 non-presumptive cancers.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Right.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Because the 

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1 presumptives are covered under the SEC and already 

2 included, so -- in the time period.

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I mean, I agree 

4 with the others that maybe this really is 

5 sufficient, and that we really have done the best 

6 we could, short of going to Los Alamos. But we have 

7 tried many things.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: We have a collective 

9 wince at the thought of trying to get --

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: -- records from Los 

12 Alamos.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And given that 

14 there are other issues outstanding, that we do need 

15 to resolve that are --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: This would have been 

17 a different discussion, I suspect, if we would have 

18 come to this point early in the process before the 

19 '83 cutoff. I mean, I thought -- I think it would 

20 have been a different discussion just from the 

21 standpoint of having to cross the T's that way.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Yes.

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we can divorce 

2 it from that context now.

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I think that's 

4 true, and that most people -- for most people, well 

5 above 60 percent, it's resolved because they're in 

6 the SEC. So I'm ready to suggest for the committee 

7 that we do agree that it's sufficient, and I think 

8 maybe we should simply move that. Do other Work 

9 Group members agree?

10 MEMBER MUNN: I agree.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And Bill?

12 MEMBER FIELD: Yes. I agree.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. And I 

14 agree. So I think we have resolved this to our 

15 satisfaction. And this will eventually, at some 

16 point, be reviewed by the Board, if they wish.

17 Okay. So now the neptunium issue. By 

18 the way, it's 10:00, but we started at 9:00, which 

19 is a little late for some of our meetings, so that's 

20 fine. People live here in town, and 9:00 is fine. 

21 But I don't see any need for a break or upcoming 

22 for -- it's early.

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1 And so let's go to the neptunium issue 

2 and --

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. All right. 

4 White Paper is the evaluation of potential for 

5 internal dose from neptunium at Rocky Flats plant 

6 after 1983. And it's after 1983 because, again, 

7 the Class was added to -- up through 1983, and 

8 neptunium was one of the components of that.

9 Our White Paper summarizes our research 

10 on neptunium-237 processing at Rocky Flats after 

11 1983. It includes discussions, operations, 

12 inventories, available monitoring data, and the 

13 evaluation for potential internal exposure after 

14 1983.

15 I highlighted a number of sections in 

16 this report to kind of -- one, to get -- to remind 

17 people of some of the work that was done with 

18 neptunium, and also to kind of lead into -- as kind 

19 of our weight of the evidence of how much work after 

20 1983 occurred.

21 There was a 1981 paper, Neptunium 

22 Processing at Rocky Flats, that states that process 

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1 included preparation of pure neptunium oxide, 

2 metal, metal alloys, as well as neptunium-237 

3 recovery from a variety of residues. 

4 If you look back at when we recommended 

5 the SEC Class and the reasons for that, our 

6 infeasibility, one of the key issues was pure 

7 neptunium. It was dealing with the exposures of, 

8 you know, you've taken a process, you've produced 

9 -- and you've made neptunium oxides, you've made 

10 different forms of neptunium in itself, and the 

11 inability to define the exposure won't -- not only 

12 from the neptunium that was produced, but also the 

13 controls that were in place at the time, and the 

14 lack of monitoring for neptunium at the time.

15 The processes employed included 

16 dissolution, anion exchange, precipitation, 

17 filtration, calcination, conversion to fluoride, 

18 and reduction to metal. So it was basically the 

19 whole metal fabrication process using different 

20 techniques of isolating the neptunium.

21 Neptunium was recovered from residual 

22 metals including sand, slag, crucibles, casting 

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1 skulls, and various alloys containing plutonium, 

2 tin, uranium, or zirconium. And this was -- this 

3 whole process was also in other documents that 

4 supported, you know, actinide processing at Rocky 

5 Flats.

6 So, again, all of those operations 

7 occurred 1962 to 1983. And when we initially went 

8 through this, all indications that we had indicated 

9 that processing of neptunium did not occur after 

10 1983. So we went back -- and when we went back 

11 after committing to the Board that we would review 

12 the '84 to '89 period, we went back and did 

13 additional data captures. We also did additional 

14 interviews of individuals, and we did identify one 

15 operation that occurred in the 1985 period.

16 There was a -- the resultant effort had 

17 -- wait a minute. Okay. A single operation in a 

18 1987 document, production scale, 

19 plutonium-neptunium separation and residue 

20 recovery at the Rocky Flats plant. So we 

21 identified this one operation, and we went back and 

22 we interviewed the actual lead engineer for this 

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1 project and a couple of other workers.

2 The 1985 operation involved the 

3 processing of plutonium scrap containing down to 

4 .5 percent neptunium to separate and recover the 

5 two metals. Feed material was roughly 63,000-

6 64,000 grams of plutonium, and there was roughly 

7 200 to 230 grams of neptunium. The separation 

8 process involved oxidizing the plutonium residue, 

9 passing through an anion exchange resin, and 

10 leaving neptunium behind for subsequent pollution, 

11 evaporation, denitrification, and calcination.

12 So actually you're asking -- the 

13 process was to purify the plutonium. The authors 

14 reported completion of 24 separations over the 

15 course of a year, resulting in purification of 

16 58,000 -- roughly 58,000 grams of plutonium, and 

17 removal of 222 grams of neptunium.

18 Again, we interviewed the principal 

19 engineer who stated that project personnel 

20 consisted of roughly five experimental operators 

21 who performed the work in gloveboxes. So this was 

22 a very small process that occurred in 1985 period. 

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1 There were few individuals involved, and it was 

2 performed in a glovebox.

3 The final purified plutonium contained 

4 only .0069 percent neptunium, and so the neptunium 

5 product or the byproduct that was left over 

6 consisted of 14,000 grams of plutonium, 220 grams 

7 neptunium, neptunium ratio of -- plutonium to 

8 neptunium ratio of 6.4.

9 So what we looked at was -- a similar 

10 thing that we looked at with SRS was, one, you know, 

11 the small portion of neptunium that was actually 

12 left in this product would the plutonium actually 

13 dominate the exposure over the neptunium. Again, 

14 this operation involved no purified neptunium. 

15 The dose from the mixture making neptunium -- or, 

16 wait a minute. Sorry. The dose of internal 

17 exposure would have been dominated by the 

18 plutonium, making neptunium bioassay unnecessary. 

19 Given the much greater specific 

20 activity of plutonium, plutonium bioassay would 

21 account for all organ dose. So, again, we went 

22 back. We looked at, one, the operation. We 

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1 identified that the operation that did occur, that 

2 was controlled, the -- it was controlled in a 

3 glovebox, and that all individuals that were 

4 involved in that were on bioassay program, were on 

5 the plutonium bioassay program, which the 

6 plutonium would have dominated any exposure that 

7 occurred during that operation.

8 We also went back and we looked at 

9 inventories of neptunium. Again, we looked at the 

10 NMMSS database of neptunium at Rocky Flats. If you 

11 go on to page 5 of the report, you know, the 

12 inventories, you know, as reported in, you can't 

13 really draw a conclusion as to how much work that 

14 occurred with neptunium based on the NMMSS 

15 inventory, because as we've seen actually in our 

16 early evaluation, fluctuations during a given year 

17 -- you know, and you could start with one kilogram, 

18 you know, and have operations occur in -- and you 

19 could have received material ultimately, and at the 

20 end of the year still end up with one kilogram and 

21 be reported in the NMMSS database.

22 So unless you have the details of the 

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1 actual incoming receipt of materials and the 

2 operations, you can't really get a true picture of 

3 this. But it does give you an idea, if you look 

4 at after 1983 you have a relatively -- the '83/'84 

5 time period, you have relatively constant, I mean, 

6 inventory. And those people that we have talked 

7 to that work at MC&A, there is always minor 

8 corrections in stuff that go on with inventories. 

9 So you will see some fluctuation, and 

10 you will see in a follow-on table, if you look at 

11 -- and I'll get to it, but there's a follow-on table 

12 that identifies receipt of materials, so there was 

13 some little bit of receipt of material that 

14 occurred, and there was some material that was sent 

15 from the site.

16 So let's go on. Also, we looked at the 

17 actual waste product. One of the indications that 

18 we had was that, yes, there was neptunium waste, 

19 a lot of neptunium waste, that could have presented 

20 exposures as well that -- in the later years. 

21 Well, if you looked at the byproduct 

22 material or the amount of neptunium that was in the 

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1 waste, we went back and we looked at INEEL, which 

2 is where a lot of the waste from Rocky Flats went 

3 to. And you can see on page 6, Table 2, it presents 

4 measurements showing that drums containing 

5 neptunium-plutonium -- plutonium was also present, 

6 and the plutonium to neptunium ratio ranged from 

7 105 to 6,450. 

8 So, again, your neptunium was a very low 

9 -- small constituent within that matrix, and it --

10 the plutonium would have dominated exposures if it 

11 were actually, you know, processing these drums.

12 MEMBER MUNN: I think those tables are 

13 pretty clear. Orders of magnitude difference.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. We also 

15 looked, again, at -- we looked at the monitoring 

16 that occurred. There was no -- if you remember 

17 back, we reported that we had two neptunium 

18 bioassay samples, and those were in the sixties. 

19 So there was no neptunium monitoring past 1983, 

20 but, again, we didn't expect neptunium monitoring 

21 because the one operation we identified, the 

22 plutonium would have dominated. And so as long as 

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1 the individuals were on plutonium bioassay, they 

2 were covered.

3 We all looked at workplace monitoring. 

4 There was no additional workplace monitoring for 

5 neptunium-specific. But I think the biggest thing 

6 is the containment measures that employed during 

7 neptunium operations. One of the other reasons 

8 that we identified the Class early on was not only 

9 a potential exposure from the pure neptunium, but 

10 we had indications that early processes were not 

11 necessarily contained.

12 We did get the -- we identified the 1981 

13 document that identified additional controls that 

14 had been in place, and it wasn't clear when we did 

15 the original evaluation when those additional 

16 controls went into play. So ultimately we -- you 

17 know, we pushed it out to the 1983 period, but it 

18 is clear from this 1981 report that the neptunium 

19 processing that occurred later years was done in 

20 gloveboxes.

21 And according to the principal engineer 

22 who designed the processing and directed 

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1 activities, the operation -- that later operation 

2 in 1985 was performed in gloveboxes and tanks. So 

3 that was consistent with a 1981 report that we 

4 reviewed that identified neptunium operations were 

5 performed in gloveboxes as well as that 1985 

6 activity that occurred.

7 We have identified no radiological 

8 incidents involving neptunium after 1983. We also 

9 looked at shipments, receipts, and you can see on 

10 page 8 that no material was received for --

11 neptunium received after 1986, and from 1983 to 

12 1986 there were very small quantities that were 

13 received from -- some from SRS, ORNL, and Lawrence 

14 Livermore.

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: That's in grams.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. That's in 

17 grams. Those are in grams. Okay.

18 And you can see on the Table 5 on page 9 

19 that the shipments from Rocky Flats are very low 

20 as well after 1983. In fact, after 1986, there 

21 were extremely small quantities, and up until 2002 

22 and 2003, which is -- which we have presumed final 

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1 inventories were shipped out.

2 Okay. So, again, we identified one 

3 operation after 1983 that involved purified 

4 plutonium with neptunium. And that -- in that 

5 operation, the most highly concentrated neptunium 

6 product produced by this separation was still 

7 mostly plutonium with a plutonium-neptunium ratio 

8 of 6.4.

9 And since the specific activity of 

10 plutonium is 90 times greater than the activity --

11 or the specific activity of neptunium-237, the 

12 mixture is greater than 500 times -- or the activity 

13 ratio of this is greater than 500. So, again, the 

14 plutonium would dominate all exposure for that 

15 operation. 

16 So, in conclusion, we find no evidence 

17 that neptunium-237 intakes occurred at Rocky Flats 

18 after 1983. If intakes had occurred during this 

19 period from this single identified operation, the 

20 resulting organ dose would be adequately accounted 

21 for from the available plutonium bioassay data.

22 And that's it. I know Joe doesn't have 

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1 a report, but he's got a draft report that he can 

2 speak to.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Before I jump in, any 

4 questions of LaVon or -- okay.

5 We reviewed both Rev 0 of NIOSH's report 

6 that came out December 30th, as well as Rev 1, which 

7 is dated January 8th. As LaVon noted, we do have 

8 a review completed, and it's in a pretty finished 

9 draft. It just has not been issued.

10 And we are also certainly aware of the 

11 exchange of emails from the co-petitioner and are 

12 familiar with some of those issues as well. And 

13 we can certainly speak to those later.

14 I'm going to just focus, since LaVon 

15 gave a pretty good summary of the NIOSH review and 

16 the analysis, just sort of our lines of inquiry. 

17 You know, we wanted to probe some of the premises 

18 on the NIOSH assessment and just make sure that we 

19 are comfortable with those.

20 And the first one was, is there -- was 

21 there only the single neptunium operation that was 

22 identified in place at Rocky Flats after 1983, you 

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1 know, the question of, you know, is there -- was 

2 there just one operation that actively handled 

3 neptunium and processed it.

4 And we participated in the onsite data 

5 captures that -- in 2012, and actually through 

6 2013, looked for records on neptunium, and, 

7 frankly, looked for any source terms, any 

8 operational information for the entire period, 

9 both pre- and post-'83. And we looked at the SRDB 

10 references as well that were cited in the NIOSH 

11 review.

12 And certainly we did not see any 

13 evidence of an operation post-'83 in those. We did 

14 identify three additional SRDB documents that 

15 spoke to neptunium handling in the post-'83 

16 timeframe. I want to go through those, because 

17 these are sort of additional documentation of the 

18 issue post-'83.

19 MEMBER MUNN: What was the reference of 

20 those documents, Joe?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm sorry?

22 MEMBER MUNN: You said --

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm going to go 

2 through those one by one. Just for reference's

3 sake -- and I'll kind of summarize those, since, 

4 obviously, you don't have those references. 

5 But the first one is SRDB 130921. The 

6 second one I'm going to speak to is SRDB 138666. 

7 And the third one is SRDB 131225. I might add that 

8 I think in the NIOSH assessment they certain did 

9 capture the major ones. These are just additional 

10 ones that I thought were of interest.

11 SRDB 130921, the first one, is actually 

12 an interview with a former worker knowledgeable 

13 about Rocky Flats materials accountability. And 

14 the question was a fluctuation in terms of the 

15 material descriptions for neptunium that was part 

16 of the discussion. And while the individual could 

17 not be definitive about these differences in 

18 descriptions, this is sort of, you know, the 

19 classification that was being used from neptunium 

20 in this case.

21 There was a question regarding a small 

22 inventory of neptunium finished items reported in 

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1 1988. So this would fall in the post-'83 period.

2 And what was being spoken to at that 

3 point in time was an alloyed, finished, machined 

4 item, about eight grams worth, and an assembled 

5 product of seven grams that had been left over. 

6 And when we -- in this interview we are talking to 

7 the worker about what -- what are we talking about 

8 in the late '80s.

9 And what he was talking about in this 

10 case was, you know, at Rocky Flats they were a major 

11 source of neptunium for the complex, and they had 

12 this sort of cottage industry of producing 

13 different products. And certainly after '83, in 

14 addition to the one operation that LaVon was 

15 talking to, you will find neptunium showing up in 

16 the inventory at Rocky Flats, because they held on 

17 to materials. They received -- actually, received 

18 materials. These were components. These were 

19 finished alloys, pure metal material that was held, 

20 shows up in NMMSS, and it shows up in shipping 

21 records.

22 So this interview was a corroboration 

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1 that after '83 you did see neptunium coming and 

2 going and being stored at Rocky Flats. It just was 

3 in a finished form. They were no longer, 

4 apparently, fabricating or processing it.

5 So, you know, certainly from one 

6 vantage point was to validate the fact that, you 

7 know, even though you have neptunium being present 

8 at Rocky Flats in quantities after '83, the form 

9 of it and the handling of it was different than it 

10 was before the end of '83.

11 In the second interview, which was 

12 SRDB 138666, it was an interview with a former 

13 engineer at Rocky during the same years in 

14 question, and in this particular case the comment 

15 was that you had a considerable amount of former 

16 neptunium processing equipment abandoned in place, 

17 and that neptunium, including neptunium residues, 

18 were in the plant until site closure, until Rocky 

19 was closed for D&D, final D&D.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Residual stuff.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And, in other 

22 words, the gloveboxes, the ductwork, you just had 

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1 residual neptunium in the plant.

2 The worker further observed that, and 

3 this is a quote, "Equipment that processed 

4 neptunium was left in place and not stripped out, 

5 and that it was stored in shape or form until --

6 on the site until site closure, and that Rocky was 

7 still shipping neptunium contaminated materials up 

8 to site closure."

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Which was to --

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Which was 2003 was 

11 final closure. D&D was commenced, I think, in '91, 

12 11 or 12 years before that.

13 But, you know, again, you had a 

14 situation where cleanup was progressing and waste 

15 materials were being shipped, in a lot of cases, 

16 to Idaho and so you had certainly 

17 neptunium-contaminated material that was being 

18 processed and shipped. So --

19 MEMBER MUNN: And very carefully 

20 monitored.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So, anyway, 

22 this was -- this interview pointed out that when 

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1 D&D workers cut out the property, the equipment, 

2 and removed it, they became exposed to neptunium.

3 So, anyway, this was a commentary about 

4 D&D and waste management at Rocky Flats during the 

5 period when they were cleaning the plant up and 

6 closing it, and the fact that in the process it was 

7 likely there were workers exposed to neptunium. 

8 So that was the interview here.

9 And I want to point out that in that 

10 interview summary NIOSH did highlight its response 

11 to some of these issues, and I want to point these 

12 out for the record. While NIOSH -- and there are 

13 three bullets. "While NIOSH does not dispute the 

14 information provided in this response, the 

15 individual provided no dates or specific 

16 references to incidents or actions that could be 

17 traced or verified."

18 The second bullet is, "NIOSH is looking 

19 for information in the post-'83 period. Any 

20 discussions of the operations that occurred in the 

21 pre-'84 period would not be relevant.

22 "NIOSH does not dispute the potential 

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1 for personnel neptunium exposures in the post-'83 

2 period. However, NIOSH contends that the exposure 

3 would be dominated by the plutonium. Nothing 

4 involved purified or pure neptunium, and nothing 

5 provided up to this point disputes that 

6 contention."

7 So, in that instance, we are talking 

8 about in D&D and waste management this was, again, 

9 plutonium and neptunium mixed, that the pure 

10 components, as referenced in that first interview, 

11 were kept in vaults, were handled as pure, and did 

12 not figure in the D&D and waste management as far 

13 as we can tell from these interviews.

14 The final point was really identifying 

15 additional people to talk to, but I think that was 

16 the essence of that second interview, that even 

17 though you had D&D and waste management actively 

18 happening, and you had certainly neptunium 

19 exposures, this was neptunium combined with 

20 plutonium that would have been the source term.

21 So, anyway, the third interview --

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Were bioassays 

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1 going on in that --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: In the D&D phase, yes.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Absolutely. A lot of 

4 them. They were very, very closely monitored 

5 during that phrase.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. The D&D phase 

7 and waste management phase is one of sort of the 

8 modern era where you had active monitoring of 

9 bioassays.

10 And the third interview, this is 

11 131225, this is a foreign technician performing 

12 facility hold-up measurements in the '90s. This 

13 is where -- sort of is in concert with D&D and 

14 closing the plant. They were looking for 

15 unaccounted materials that might have been held up 

16 in ductwork, in flues, and whatnot, gloveboxes.

17 And this review, which was 

18 facility-wide, found traces of neptunium in about 

19 10 percent of Building 771 gloveboxes, and this was 

20 at levels relatively small compared to the 

21 plutonium present.

22 The interviewee believed that this was 

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1 neptunium that was likely separated prior to 

2 recovery streams, and there was no evidence that 

3 contamination spread. So this was within the 

4 gloveboxes themselves. But they were cutting up 

5 gloveboxes, so, again, as part of D&D, you know, 

6 there was certainly that exposure potential.

7 MEMBER MUNN: The process was very, 

8 very carefully controlled, as I recall.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I'm still 

10 talking about the '90s and beyond, so this is a 

11 pretty controlled process.

12 MEMBER MUNN: They were really very 

13 careful to make sure that no exposure other than 

14 what was absolutely necessary inside the 

15 enclosures was --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: And these 

17 interviewees agree that neptunium remained at 

18 Rocky beyond '83, and into final cleanup, and that 

19 contaminated equipment, like gloveboxes and 

20 ductwork, had trace amounts of neptunium and would 

21 have undergone D&D. 

22 However, none of the interviewees 

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1 identified any other operations involving 

2 neptunium, and no one cited processing of pure or 

3 purified neptunium would have had exposure 

4 potential. 

5 So, really, to answer that very first 

6 question, you know, was there any more than the one 

7 operation post-'83 that was identified in the NIOSH 

8 analysis, looking at these additional interviews 

9 that were not referenced in the White Paper that 

10 NIOSH produced seems to bear out that no -- other 

11 than D&D and waste management that was handling 

12 commingled plutonium-neptunium material, and the 

13 inventorying and shipping of pure forms of 

14 neptunium. There was no other operation that was 

15 handling neptunium at Rocky Flats.

16 So the second question -- that was the 

17 first question -- line of inquiry. The second line 

18 of inquiry, was there any exposure potential 

19 associated with this one neptunium operation or 

20 from any other neptunium source terms? 

21 And, you know, again, we looked at the 

22 interviews and looked at the documentation we had, 

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1 and the tanks containing the feed materials were 

2 located outside the gloveboxes. These were piped, 

3 as LaVon pointed out, directly into the gloveboxes. 

4 Recovered plutonium was piped as a nitrate directly 

5 to the production operation, so you had essentially 

6 a closed system for this one operation, the 

7 recovery operation.

8 The recovered neptunium nitrate was put 

9 into pencil tanks, converted to an oxide, and 

10 canned back out of the glovebox. The operation was 

11 monitoring by alpha air counters, and RCTs were 

12 positioned in the area.

13 There was one incident that I think was 

14 identified which was a leak from a feed tank of 

15 plutonium nitrate, but it was cleaned up and no 

16 exposure was reported as being associated with that 

17 one leak. So we are looking at the incident 

18 history for this one operation, and that was it, 

19 and there wasn't any identified exposure 

20 associated with that one instance. It was a minor 

21 leak from a valve on that tank.

22 At any rate, all workers in 

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1 Building 771 where this operation took place were 

2 on routine bioassay. So that's a pretty important 

3 factor as well. So the impression of --

4 essentially exposure potential, we did not see a 

5 routine exposure potential for the one operation, 

6 given that it was a closed system, and that -- and 

7 the one incident that did occur, there wasn't any 

8 uptake apparently recorded.

9 In terms of D&D and waste management, 

10 there was clearly exposure potential, but we didn't 

11 see any instances where that would have involved 

12 pure neptunium. So I think that distinction is 

13 important here.

14 The third line of inquiry was, was 

15 neptunium always present in combination with 

16 plutonium in this particular operation, or any 

17 other operation or source term identified? And I 

18 think basically we found that the PU neptunium 

19 separations work was effective at purifying both 

20 PU and neptunium, but as noted -- and I think and 

21 what LaVon was saying, it wasn't so perfect that 

22 you did not have sufficient plutonium to be 

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1 detectable through a routine bioassay.

2 So in this particular operation, as 

3 well as clearly in D&D and waste management, you 

4 -- at Rocky Flats particularly, you would always 

5 have plutonium with the neptunium, and that 

6 provides a marker, if anything, for the alpha 

7 analysis, the bioassay.

8 Were all workers having exposure 

9 potential from this one neptunium operation 

10 bioassay? Would those results encompass any 

11 intake of neptunium?

12 As I said earlier, all workers in 771, 

13 including this operation, were bioassayed, and all 

14 neptunium would have been associated with 

15 plutonium. So I think that is clearly an 

16 affirmative. 

17 And in terms of the incident, there was 

18 the one incident involving Tank 1007, and this is 

19 in SRDB 138682, which is the incident report for 

20 that. And it involved a leaking valve, and no rad 

21 alarms were triggered, and no worker intakes were 

22 found and recorded on that particular instance. 

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1 It was cleaned up and that was pretty much it. We 

2 looked for more reports, did not find any more than 

3 that one issue.

4 And, finally, I guess, is it 

5 technically sound? This is a key issue. Is it 

6 technically --

7 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Could I just 

8 before --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, sure.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- on the leak, 

11 what did you say about the leak?

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the leak -- like 

13 I said, there was an incident report on that. It 

14 was a valve of plutonium nitrate, and it was -- you 

15 know, it was discovered as a leak under the tank, 

16 and once it was discovered the RCTs supervised a 

17 cleanup, which was done without any intake. So 

18 there was no intakes by workers reported for that 

19 leak. And that was the only -- frankly, the only 

20 incident report we found for that particular 

21 operation. This is the one that we have been 

22 talking about.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: That's right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: And, finally, you 

3 know, this is I think an important question for the 

4 Work Group. Is it technically sound to rely on 

5 plutonium bioassays to account for any neptunium 

6 intakes that may have occurred during this 

7 timeframe?

8 And we reviewed the -- you know, 

9 obviously, the RFP documents, and particularly 

10 SRDB 137075, and that addresses the dominance of 

11 a specific activity of PU as compared with 

12 neptunium. And I think that was referenced in 

13 NIOSH's report. And we compared it against the 

14 legendary rad health handbook information, and 

15 some -- I thought there was a later edition, but 

16 that's the same edition I had back when. I guess 

17 it's so good you don't have to update it.

18 And Ron Buchanan did a lot of this 

19 analysis using the Chronic Annual Dose Workbook, 

20 the CADW. He does a lot of the DR reviews for SC&A, 

21 so it was particularly helpful for him to use those 

22 tools to double check on that analysis. And, 

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1 again, I think we would agree that the resulting 

2 neptunium dose is about equal to plutonium on the 

3 basis of dpm intake that would be 1/100 times less 

4 on a per mass basis. So, again, the specific 

5 activity is such that plutonium would clearly, 

6 clearly dominate.

7 So counting all alpha monitors as being 

8 plutonium appears to be claimant-favorable in this 

9 case, and I think -- you know, so the central thesis 

10 on this whole thing is if one could establish that 

11 there was one -- in fact one operation, and only 

12 one operation post-'83 that handled neptunium, and 

13 everything else was either pure -- in other words, 

14 handled in inventory as an alloy or a form, even 

15 if it was shipped, right? And there was no 

16 exposure associated with that, or as waste or D&D 

17 material, commingled with plutonium, which, you 

18 know, again, workers handling D&D would have been 

19 monitored. Then I think the use of the PU 

20 bioassays as dominant and applicable is okay from 

21 our standpoint.

22 That's pretty much where we are on that.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. When 

2 were you -- when will you finish it, roughly?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: It's in final draft. 

4 I actually, you know, noticed in one of the 

5 co-petitioners' emails that there might be some 

6 potential new information presented at this Work 

7 Group meeting, and I wanted to be open to that, 

8 since we are at sort of juncture of issuing this. 

9 And if there were new information that would be 

10 relevant, I was going to include that analysis 

11 here.

12 But as far as the NIOSH White Paper, I 

13 think that by itself we have looked at, reviewed, 

14 and this is where we are, and we have that paper 

15 written, and it can be issued at any time.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Very 

17 good. And we will hear later from the petitioners 

18 and representatives later in the day. But any 

19 questions by our Work Group members?

20 MEMBER MUNN: None. Thank you for the 

21 overview, Joe. That's very helpful.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

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1 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I just 

2 have one question. It may add a little bit more. 

3 I understand when dealing with the inhalation of 

4 the plutonium that there is some serious levels of 

5 neptunium. 

6 Just two questions. When it's 

7 inhaled, did the two radionuclides more or less 

8 travel together biokinetically and up in the same 

9 organs? And the second question, and this may go 

10 more towards Jim, when you are doing the dose 

11 calculations and you're assigning an uncertainty, 

12 very often I see very large sigma values associated 

13 with these exposures.

14 I think these are two questions that go 

15 toward the degree to which there is some separate 

16 concern that is needed regarding neptunium.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

18 DR. NETON: Yes. Well, this is Jim. 

19 Liz Brackett can probably answer better than I can, 

20 but I don't think the metabolic models are 

21 identical for plutonium and neptunium. There are 

22 some differences.

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1 MS. BRACKETT: Right. They are 

2 different.

3 DR. NETON: Yes. So --

4 MS. BRACKETT: But that shouldn't have 

5 any impact at all on using a ratio, because we would 

6 just ratio the intakes and then use the individual 

7 models to calculate the doses with them.

8 DR. NETON: That's right.

9 DR. MAURO: Yes. And I agree with 

10 that, so it really -- I just wanted to get a sense 

11 for that, whether it did go separate paths. And 

12 how about this uncertainty? Because I know you 

13 folks often decide a fairly large uncertainty, 

14 which would certainly account for this relatively 

15 trace level.

16 DR. NETON: Well, all of the internal 

17 dose calculations have a GSD of 3 on them, if it's 

18 not a co-worker model. And then, if it is a 

19 co-worker model, it is even larger. But that's the 

20 default value. It's a pretty large, large --

21 DR. MAURO: Yes. I thought it was 

22 important to get that on the record to complete the 

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1 story.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Dr. 

3 Field, do you have any questions?

4 MEMBER FIELD: I guess the question, 

5 did I hear it right, or I may have missed it, there 

6 was about five workers involved with this process?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. In the process 

8 that -- the one operation that occurred in '85-'86, 

9 yes, there was about five workers involved.

10 MEMBER FIELD: And they all have bio 

11 monitoring data?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

13 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. That's all I 

14 had.

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: All right. So I 

16 think we'll simply await the input from petitioners 

17 later in the day, and then expect to see it -- well, 

18 depending on what they say and whether there are 

19 things that need to be pursued, then we will see 

20 -- we will see the written document. And I don't 

21 know how the committee functions when that comes 

22 in.

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1 MR. KATZ: The petitioners are on the 

2 line.

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. That's 

4 true. I'm actually not sure how to phrase this. 

5 What is the -- how does the -- how do members of 

6 the Working Group feel about the report, except for 

7 that, the issues that may come up later? That's 

8 -- there really -- there have been -- there has not 

9 been, among us, questions about that, concerns, or 

10 our concerns were answered that you responded to, 

11 and basically agreed with NIOSH, I think pending 

12 completion of the report and possible later data.

13 MR. KATZ: Yes. I think as we went 

14 through that analysis, I think Ms. Barrie brought 

15 up a question of duration of the '85-'86 operation, 

16 and the fact there was some ambiguity about how long 

17 it was. And I did research that. I can, you know, 

18 touch on that if you'd like.

19 The precise duration of the campaign 

20 and the start date was questioned in the emails, 

21 as we were saying, and, you know, in interviews you 

22 do get comments like began around -- and this is 

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1 a quote, "Began around January '85," "ended in 

2 '87," or "was terminated in '88," respectively, and 

3 I went through some of the interviews and just 

4 trying to -- you know, it's a valid question. I 

5 mean, how long was this thing?

6 And I think the recollections seem to 

7 be a little vague about dates, but you're talking 

8 30 years ago. So it's not too surprising.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

10 MR. KATZ: But I think there was -- some 

11 of the ambiguity came from the fact that the one 

12 individual who was managing this did not file a 

13 termination report for the operation. He was 

14 pressed to do so, because that I guess was a -- at 

15 Rocky was the documentation that an operation had 

16 officially ended, and he was delayed something like 

17 six or seven or eight months in actually providing 

18 that report.

19 So there is some fuzziness at the tail 

20 end of this thing as far as length, but I think it 

21 was pretty clear it was about roughly a year, maybe 

22 a bit longer, and as far as the recollections it 

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1 took them about six to seven months to officially 

2 terminate the program and write the report. So I 

3 think that explains some of it as far as that goes.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Perhaps as a 

5 senior Member, Wanda might suggest how we ought to 

6 proceed in the Work Group. I'm not quite sure --

7 MEMBER MUNN: Well, thank you, Dave.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: -- how to 

9 proceed.

10 MEMBER MUNN: It is instructive 

11 sometimes to remind ourselves what we're trying to 

12 do here. And from my perspective, what we are 

13 trying to do here is to make sure that we have not 

14 overlooked any significant source of exposure for 

15 anyone who was ever employed at this facility. I 

16 can see no red flags having been raised in the 

17 process that has taken place with respect to 

18 neptunium.

19 It seems fairly clear that every effort 

20 has been made to identify any activity that might 

21 have gone on, any source of potential exposure from 

22 neptunium, and a fairly decent job has been done 

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1 of quantifying what that could have been. Our big 

2 question is always what is the maximum that could 

3 have occurred? I think that is fairly well in hand 

4 now, and it seems fairly sure that it is unlikely 

5 any major source of neptunium that could 

6 considerably increase any exposure has been 

7 identified now.

8 And since it has been identified and is 

9 incorporated as a part of the program, I don't think 

10 we can completely write off this issue until we have 

11 actually had SC&A's report in hand and taken a look 

12 at it. But from my perspective, unless something 

13 unexpected shows up in the final report from SC&A, 

14 we can put this to bed once we have reviewed that 

15 document and agreed that it is satisfactory.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Good. That 

17 answers one of my two concerns, which is that we 

18 need to see the document, but seeing that things 

19 are -- there is agreement and I'm comfortable with 

20 what the conclusions are.

21 The other part of it is if we said, 

22 "Well, something may come up later when the 

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1 petitioner speaks," then of course you will address 

2 that, if it needs further work. And that we can 

3 only say wait until it happens.

4 MR. KATZ: She's on the line. Do you 

5 want to consult the petitioner now? I mean, you 

6 don't have to put her off until the end of the 

7 meeting for comment. I mean, we do this all the 

8 time.

9 MEMBER MUNN: It seems it would be a 

10 good time to hear --

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Is the 

12 petitioner on the line? Ms. Barrie?

13 MS. BARRIE: Yes. This is Terrie.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Would you be 

15 willing to address the issue of the neptunium or 

16 -- you were going to talk later at the end of the 

17 meeting today, and there is -- we expect that you 

18 will talk. But if there is a particular issue with 

19 respect to neptunium that you want to raise, would 

20 you be willing to talk about it right now?

21 MS. BARRIE: Yes. I am able to talk 

22 about neptunium. It is basically --

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Good. Thank 

2 you.

3 MS. BARRIE: Thank you. Thank you. I 

4 was just writing you an email.

5 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

6 MS. BARRIE: I'm not a scientist. 

7 This came from a former worker that has been 

8 interviewed I think a number of times by NIOSH and 

9 SC&A.

10 And one of the -- now, I'll just be 

11 reading this off his email.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Sure.

13 MS. BARRIE: One of the issues that 

14 NIOSH bases their model on, or their position on, 

15 is that protactinium was used to determine if there 

16 was neptunium at the site. And the worker wanted 

17 to know if they used U-238 or neptunium-237 as the 

18 isotope.

19 He also goes on to say Line 1 in Building 

20 771 was the americium-241 production line. 

21 Americium-241 decayed into neptunium-237 by alpha 

22 decay at a rate of five percent for 22 years. 

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1 Rocky Flats produced one kilogram of americium-241 

2 per year for close to 40 years, so 10 percent of 

3 112 kilograms of americium-241 in 1998 was 11.2 

4 kilograms of neptunium-237. He says that, "We had 

5 our own source of neptunium-237 and didn't even 

6 know it." 

7 He is not sure that Line 1 was monitored 

8 for neptunium-237, and he wonders if the 60 keV 

9 gamma we were told was from americium-241 was 

10 really from neptunium-237.

11 He also -- this is the last part, and 

12 I'm sorting this out -- this has to be a discussion 

13 for NIOSH and SC&A and the Work Group because this 

14 is not my background. He found in Basic Radiation 

15 Protection Technology by Gollnick, it says that 

16 neptunium-237 produces a deep dose of 287 millirems 

17 per hour per microcentimeter squared at seven 

18 milligrams a centimeter, whereas plutonium-239 is 

19 zero, and americium-241 is 9.3 millirems per hour. 

20 So I'm wondering, if he is correct, if 

21 using the plutonium for dose reconstruction 

22 is -- or the bioassay is really accurate. 

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1 And the other part that I want to 

2 mention is I need to remind everybody, just because 

3 there was a glovebox does not mean it was contained. 

4 I know Joe Fitzgerald mentioned that there was one 

5 incident of the tank leaking, but there is numerous 

6 accounts of gloveboxes leaking at Rocky Flats. So 

7 I would not make the assumption just because this 

8 process was in a glovebox that nothing leaked.

9 Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Thank you. 

11 Thank you. Any comment from --

12 DR. NETON: I think we are going to have 

13 to maybe -- I don't know if this is new information. 

14 We have not seen this email before. This is Jim. 

15 We certainly need to look at it, because there was 

16 a lot of technical numbers thrown out there that 

17 I couldn't follow on the top of my head.

18 I will say, though, the last comment on 

19 the seven milligram per square centimeter dose 

20 really, in my mind, relates to skin dose, not 

21 internal dose. So, yes, it's true that neptunium 

22 has a much higher penetrating gamma than plutonium, 

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1 so the dose -- external dose would be higher. But 

2 that of course would be accounted for in the 

3 dosimeters that the workers were wearing I think.

4 But we would still like to take a look 

5 at it. I can't comment off the top of my head on 

6 something as complicated as --

7 MS. BARRIE: Okay. I'll send those 

8 off to everybody. Thank you.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Thank you. I'd 

10 certainly like to see that.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. So folks 

12 will take a look at that. Folks at NIOSH will take 

13 a look at that and at SC&A, and you will talk about 

14 it, and that plus the report will be written. And 

15 the report -- the part before Ms. Barrie spoke, 

16 there is agreement certainly from the Work Group. 

17 I shouldn't say -- I am in agreement, and Wanda has 

18 said she is in agreement. And, Bill, have you --

19 I believe you spoke also.

20 MEMBER FIELD: Right. I said I was in 

21 agreement as well.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. That's 

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1 what I thought, too. I just wanted that confirmed.

2 So this issue, except for that last 

3 item, is basically resolved, and we will either --

4 we can either handle it at our next meeting or 

5 possibly --

6 MR. KATZ: So, Terrie, if you will send 

7 your email or whatever that -- form that 

8 communication was to LaVon, then he can distribute 

9 it to me and I can get it to SC&A and the Work Group 

10 members as well.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. And I wanted to 

13 add something real brief. This is actually mainly 

14 for Dr. Kotelchuck and -- is to remind you that, 

15 you know, I know we have gone through all of this, 

16 and we've said we have identified no operations, 

17 and so on. At a later date, if the SEC is closed 

18 out here and we all of a sudden come up with a report 

19 that says uranium -- or that neptunium was 

20 processed in dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, that's new 

21 information and we can either -- if we determine 

22 there is an infeasibility, we can go through the 

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1 8314 process to add the Class.

2 So don't -- you know, I always want to 

3 remind everybody that just because we haven't found 

4 anything now doesn't mean if we find new 

5 information that we can say -- you know, we can go 

6 back to it. Okay?

7 MR. KATZ: Absolutely.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And which also 

9 means that claimants can later come up with 

10 information, because in some cases we have said do 

11 not continue to pursue searching the records for 

12 magnesium-thorium. But if somebody comes up with 

13 a record about that, and actually the 192 proposal 

14 exactly says that, no, I have some more 

15 information, and we are looking at it, and we have 

16 looked at it. Can't find it -- can't find backup 

17 for that documentation, I should say, for that.

18 It is there, and maybe more will come 

19 in, and we'll reopen it. Always reopen on new 

20 information, and that is important.

21 Okay. Well, folks, it is 11:00. We 

22 have, first, the tritium issue, which will take a 

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1 fair amount of time. And I am not sure -- I am open 

2 to suggestions on how to proceed. We can -- we have 

3 to break for lunch, but this is a little early. We 

4 could either start the discussion now until noon, 

5 break for lunch, and then come back, and then at 

6 that time -- it seems to me that's maybe the best 

7 way to go.

8 MR. KATZ: Can we have a comfort break, 

9 though? It's been two hours --

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. You're 

11 right, you're right. Okay. Let's take a short 

12 break, and let's get back together.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: I was hoping someone 

14 was going to --

15 MR. KATZ: So we'll get back together 

16 in 10 minutes?

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. Very 

18 good.

19 MR. KATZ: We're just putting the phone 

20 on mute, but we're not breaking the line.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. 

22 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 

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1 off the record at 10:59 a.m. and resumed at 11:18 

2 a.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. On the tritium issue, 

4 LaVon.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. I'm going to, 

6 basically, go through a little history, a little 

7 bit of, you know, where our report ended up. And 

8 then once I complete that, I'll turn it over 

9 --- answer any questions, and I'll also turn it 

10 over to SC&A for them to respond.

11 This is actually Revision 1, and I'll 

12 go through, again. Initially, when we issued our 

13 Evaluation Report, as I mentioned, tritium was the 

14 basis for qualifying SEC 192 for evaluation. And 

15 it had to do with whether the 1973 incident was 

16 clearly evaluated in SEC 30, and potential for 

17 tritium exposure and the lack of monitoring prior 

18 to that. So, we qualified the petition. Our initial 

19 Evaluation Report when we issued it, we identified 

20 that tritium dose reconstruction was feasible. We 

21 were, basically, using the 1973 incident as a 

22 bounding exposure. We used a lot of the dose 

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1 reconstruction that was in the report, the actual 

2 report of the incident, and we'd identified a 

3 bounding exposure I believe of 700 millirem from 

4 that incident. And we could use that to support all 

5 other operations.

6 The Board recommended at the time that 

7 we go back and do further evaluation. We committed 

8 to doing that, to doing additional interviews, also 

9 to do additional data capture. So, we had a 

10 follow-up. The follow-up was to clarify the 

11 existence of tritium on site and associated 

12 personal exposures, investigate tritium bubbler 

13 sampling, confirm the existence of shipping 

14 container tritium surveys, and also look at the 

15 sampling analysis of Building 123.

16 For our initial follow-up, we actually 

17 did some data captures at the Denver Record Center. 

18 We interviewed a number of individuals, a number 

19 of key individuals in classified interviews, and 

20 from those classified interviews we did identify 

21 the potential for tritium exposure from the receipt 

22 and opening of shipping containers.

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1 We also confirmed that in documents. 

2 There were a number of documents that later on after 

3 the data captures, we did find other documents that 

4 indicated that potential, as well.

5 We went back during that process, and 

6 we also looked at ways that we could potentially 

7 refine our previous analysis since it was pretty 

8 much tied solely to the incident. We went back to 

9 look and see if we could find additional survey 

10 information, additional information on the 

11 bubblers that were identified. One of the 

12 interviewers identified bubblers back in the 

13 earlier years in the '60s at the exhaust plenums, 

14 and we went to try to find additional data on those 

15 bubblers, what type of bubblers were used, do we 

16 have any additional information that would 

17 corroborate they were actually used earlier years? 

18 We also looked at the post-'73 

19 monitoring data. We went back to see how much data 

20 we had, what the data was telling us for the tritium 

21 monitoring data, the incidents -- any incidents 

22 that occurred post-'73, or even pre-'73, and we 

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1 --- all of this was in an attempt to, one, make sure 

2 that, one, we identified all our sources of tritium 

3 exposure, and that we --- to see if we could refine 

4 our analyses a little bit.

5 If you look in our report on page 4 

6 there's a follow-up --- you can see the follow-up 

7 information in that on tritium bubblers. You can 

8 see the table of the different items that --- on 

9 Table 1 it identifies all the different SRDB 

10 numbers associated with the tritium monitoring, 

11 and the tritium bubblers for the period.

12 What we found was pretty much pre-1973, 

13 there was very little data associated with tritium 

14 monitoring. We had a couple of ----- we had a few 

15 bioassay samples, but nothing that really 

16 identified a strong tritium monitoring program 

17 prior to 1973, which is consistent with what we had 

18 actually found in the initial evaluation.

19 We did there, as I mentioned, if you 

20 look on page 7, that tritium contamination in 

21 shipping containers was corroborated; however, no 

22 actual contamination surveys have been found. One 

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1 of the individuals we had interviewed indicated 

2 that, you know, he had been a part of starting the 

3 program, but they had never found any tritium 

4 contamination, which is actually kind of 

5 surprising, that statement.

6 We looked at the sample analysis in 

7 Building 123 and the program there to ensure they 

8 had the capabilities. And it appears after the 1973 

9 incident, they did have a good liquid scintillation 

10 technique for analyzing the tritium.

11 Our follow-up on our initial follow-up 

12 conclusions were the additional documents, 

13 interviews obtained during the post-ER follow-up, 

14 provide additional evidence for the potential for 

15 tritium exposure. And we also started to --- again, 

16 it also identified that the 1973 incident was 

17 bounding. We also were able to refine some of our 

18 calculations and to come up with a new approach for 

19 the tritium for bounding exposures. We basically 

20 isolated to three separate periods, pre-1973, 

21 1973, and then the post-1973 period.

22 So, we had a secondary follow-up which 

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1 was after we had issued our first revision, and it 

2 was to look --- to, again, refine our calculations, 

3 address the Work Group and SC&A comments on the 

4 initial tritium White Paper. So, we issued this 

5 report, the second, or the follow-up that included 

6 that in May of --- May 30th, 2014.

7 So, our findings initially, or actually 

8 our approach for dose reconstruction for tritium 

9 you have, again, I said the pre-1973 period, '73, 

10 and the post-1973 period. We used -- the 1973 period 

11 focuses on the incident that occurred in April of 

12 that year, and the individuals that the --- that 

13 incident was initially identified, actually, from 

14 environmental releases, and so it was not --

15 actions were not taken until September of that 

16 year, so there were bioassay samples that were 

17 conducted in September of that year. We used those 

18 bioassay samples to actually bound our 1973 

19 exposure. I'll talk a little bit about that more 

20 later.

21 We take a --- for pre-1973, we 

22 identified that the 1973 incident was the bounding 

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1 exposure, and we looked at other potential 

2 incidents of that magnitude. And, again, we came 

3 up with nothing that was close to the magnitude of 

4 the '73 incident.

5 So, what we looked at, what would be the 

6 most likely chronic exposure that would occur or 

7 that individuals would be routinely exposed to on 

8 a day-to-day basis of tritium. And we went back to 

9 the interview that was identified of shipping 

10 containers being opened and the bubbler, and the 

11 exhaust plenum, and if they heard --- and I'm just 

12 paraphrasing what the interview said. You know, 

13 sometimes they would get news that their bubbler 

14 was hot, later on so, you know, they could have been 

15 exposed to tritium. So, we felt like the shipping 

16 container was our most likely chronic exposure 

17 scenario that individuals would be exposed to.

18 We looked for pre-'73 data and, 

19 obviously, found no pre-'73 data on shipping 

20 containers and contamination. We have found a 1974 

21 incident that involved a shipping container. We 

22 felt like this 1974 incident was more closely 

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1 resembling the type of exposures that individuals 

2 would routinely be exposed to on a daily basis.

3 The 1974 incident was in August of that 

4 year, and it involved a release of 1.5 curies of 

5 tritium. And, basically, what we did was we took 

6 the bioassay samples, the highest bioassay sample 

7 for that period and determined the individual's 

8 exposure from that bioassay. And as I --- the 

9 individual's dose came out to roughly .15 millirem. 

10 So, we felt like, again, that this was very close 

11 to the --- something that individuals would be 

12 exposed to in the early years, so we took what we 

13 felt was a pretty claimant-favorable assumption 

14 and assumed that the .1 --- or that an incident of 

15 this magnitude occurred every day for 250 days in 

16 a year, and we --- so, 250 times the individual's 

17 exposed to .15 millirem, and it roughly came out, 

18 if I remember correctly, 37.5 millirem exposure for 

19 a given year. 

20 We felt like we could apply this 

21 exposure to all years previously because, one, we 

22 had no indication of any significant exposure 

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1 incidents prior to --- or other than --- in the 

2 magnitude of the 1973 incident.

3 We also went back and we did additional 

4 searches at Los Alamos, and the Denver Federal 

5 Records Center to look for potential incidents of 

6 that magnitude, and we could not find anything. 

7 Now, again, I will qualify that in 

8 saying that they weren't exactly looking for it, 

9 either. But we felt that from a routine basis, the 

10 exposure from opening a shipping container was more 

11 likely the exposure than individuals would be 

12 exposed to. 

13 So, our bounding, or our approach for 

14 dose reconstruction --- and, again, this is for 

15 partial dose reconstructions for the pre-1973 

16 period would be to give individuals 37.5 millirem 

17 per year for that period.

18 The 1973 incident, and we'll get into 

19 some of the details later, and some of the issues 

20 that will be brought up by SC&A. We went back and 

21 we modeled the five individuals. Basically, there 

22 were 250 individuals that were monitored initially 

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1 after the incident. And, again, this was six months 

2 after the incident, but there were 250 individuals 

3 that had bioassay samples. They had a cutoff or a 

4 trigger level ---

5 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Pardon me. Just 

6 five individuals after the '73 incident?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm going to --

8 actually, I'm going to add a little more 

9 information on that.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay, sorry.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: There were actually 

12 250 that were initially, I believe it was 250, 250 

13 or 225 individuals that were initially monitored 

14 after the '73 incident. These individuals were 

15 individuals that we felt would be likely to receive 

16 the exposure from the incident.

17 They had a trigger level of 10,000 

18 picocuries per liter for identifying individuals 

19 with further analysis. All the other ones were 

20 --- the initial 250 were not distilled, and then 

21 anybody that was over the 10,000, they distilled 

22 the samples to get a more refined account. They were 

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1 able to narrow it down to five --- I believe it was 

2 five individuals that they wanted to do further 

3 bioassay on. 

4 Those five individuals, we actually 

5 modeled those. ORAU, and specifically Liz 

6 Brackett, took and modeled those bioassay samples 

7 to come up with --- and looking at their exposure 

8 scenarios, when they were potentially exposed, the 

9 date of the incident, other activities that could 

10 have driven potential exposures, and a lot of this 

11 information was in the report that was issued from 

12 1973.

13 And then using our standard IMBA, and 

14 we modeled the bioassay data, and we had a highest 

15 intake of 84 millirem. We determined that we would 

16 take that 84 millirem and use that as exposure 

17 plutonium workers in the 1973 period, we would give 

18 them 84 millirem per year for tritium exposure.

19 And then for the post-'73 period, we 

20 looked at all the --- there was a bioassay program 

21 put in place. The bioassay program for tritium, 

22 there was a significant amount of bubblers and 

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1 monitoring that was done, contamination surveys 

2 post-'73, to try to identify sources of potential 

3 tritium exposure. And their monitoring program 

4 took plutonium workers and took 10 percent of those 

5 plutonium bioassay samples and further analyzed 

6 them for tritium. Again, this was not a 

7 task-specific, but it took all plutonium workers 

8 and did the 10 percent idea in the '74 to '75 period. 

9 All the bioassay samples we went back 

10 and we looked at them in a coworker type approach 

11 for '74 to '75, and analyzed that data. And based 

12 on the data, the '74 to '75 period would have been 

13 less than 1 millirem; therefore, we would apply 

14 zero dose for that period. And all other samples 

15 post-'74 were in the same category. There weren't 

16 that many samples, but all of them came up in the 

17 same order of magnitude or the same range, and so 

18 we applied zero millirem for exposure on the 

19 post-'75 period after they stopped that 10 percent 

20 monitoring program.

21 Let me get back to some of the specific 

22 questions. Okay. All right. Some of the initial 

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1 questions that were --- SC&A responded with their 

2 initial response to our tritium paper, and 

3 identified using a different tritium model, and 

4 also for the 1973 incident, the five workers, the 

5 main worker, or those five workers, SC&A 

6 re-analyzed those five workers using a newer 

7 tritium model and came up with --- and a different 

8 intake date, and came up with different numbers. 

9 That was one issue.

10 There were other issues that were 

11 identified. One of the concerns that was brought 

12 up with using the 1974 incident to back-extrapolate 

13 for workers was the concern that the 1974 incident 

14 probably had additional controls that were put in 

15 place that would minimize or would make the 

16 exposures not reflective of what may have occurred 

17 pre-1973.

18 We had one --- we had found one document 

19 that kind of indicated it --- that controls weren't 

20 in place until after that incident, but then SC&A 

21 identified another document that indicated that it 

22 could have been in place before that.

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I wonder, if 

2 you're going to talk about responding to the SC&A 

3 ---

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: This is just their 

5 first response.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Oh, okay. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm good, so far.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm going to let him 

10 ---

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Because I 

12 thought he might then do it, and then you might say 

13 there is some ---

14 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no.

15 (Simultaneous speaking.)

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: And some of these are 

17 open issues that ---

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: That went back.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Carried forward.

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Fine, fine. 

21 Please go on. I'm sorry to interrupt.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: So we did, you know, 

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1 again, additional research looking into the issue 

2 of whether the '74 incident was more likely or was 

3 a reasonable incident to use, or situation to use 

4 to round down pre-'73. 

5 We actually went back and we looked for 

6 documents at Pantex to try to figure out when Pantex 

7 had modified their program in support of the 

8 changes that were recommended after the 1973 

9 incident. And based on our review of records, and 

10 information, and discussions, we did not see 

11 changes in the Pantex program until 1981. Now, that 

12 doesn't mean the other sites hadn't made changes.

13 In the '74 incident, one of the concerns 

14 that SC&A brought up was the fact that it was, I 

15 think, Pacific Northwest Laboratories that 

16 actually had sent the unit, which most of the units 

17 were coming to Rocky Flats were from Pantex, so they 

18 were concerned that it would be two different 

19 sources. We still felt that the actual source 

20 material size of the release in 1974 was much more 

21 indicative or claimant-favorable of a source term 

22 from that release perspective. And then there were 

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1 other issues that SC&A brought up.

2 And then they issued a follow-on 

3 report, and I'll let Joe go through all the issues.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: That was a pretty good 

5 lead-up. You know, first off, you know, we 

6 certainly are acknowledging the context. You know, 

7 we're dealing with partial dose reconstructions 

8 now that the '83 cutoff is in place, and clearly 

9 the tritium issue is relevant before '83, 

10 particularly in the '70s.

11 We --- not trying to revisit all that, 

12 but I think our second report had the advantage of 

13 getting the responses from NIOSH, and we refined 

14 our answers in the second report. Which, by the way, 

15 the --- I noticed on the DCAS website, it's the May 

16 version of the SC&A tritium paper that's posted, 

17 and not the September version. But the September 

18 version, anyway, I think goes into more detail on 

19 -- certainly in all three time periods. And we had 

20 a chance to do some further investigation as far 

21 as looking at some of the SRDB documents and were 

22 able to provide a little more refinement, for 

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1 example, on the pre-'73.

2 I'm going to jump these time periods, 

3 but pre-'73, I think we were able to identify 

4 additional documents, as LaVon was talking about, 

5 that helped identify what may have been the 

6 controlling practices at Rocky Flats post-'73, 

7 which makes a big difference as far as what one 

8 assumes the --- what one can assume is the 

9 representativeness of that '74 release, for using 

10 that as a bounding analysis for all the exposures 

11 before '73 at Rocky Flats to tritium; which, you 

12 know, again, is a pretty major assumption.

13 We can go into more detail right now. 

14 We have this broken up pretty much the way LaVon 

15 mentioned. We have an analysis that focuses on the 

16 1973, the 84 millirem per year. And, again 

17 --- Joyce, are you on the phone, Joyce Lipsztein? 

18 I know we announced ---

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I am.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I was just 

21 concerned that maybe you thought this was after 

22 lunch, but I think everybody is here. John Mauro, 

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1 are you here, too?

2 DR. MAURO: Yes, I am.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Well, we broke 

4 this up into three time periods, the 1973 analysis. 

5 This is going to be not a tale of two cities, but 

6 a tale of three cities.

7 DR. MAURO: Yes.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: We have different 

9 perspectives, actually, on each time period. The 

10 first one, we have questions which may be leaning 

11 more TBD, but questions of the assumptions and 

12 start dates of exposures, and the particular model 

13 being used as far as whether it fits the particular 

14 circumstances of testing on the tritium, the 

15 monitoring on the tritium. And Joyce Lipsztein will 

16 be going into that in some more detail. She did the 

17 original analysis on the first review.

18 On the post-1973, a little different 

19 perspective for the Work Group. Our concern there 

20 is more questions of the validity of how the 

21 monitoring data is being applied. The frequency 

22 --- whether the frequency of monitoring was such 

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1 for tritium that you would see it in a 

2 representative way, and whether the location of the 

3 bubblers was such that you'd be monitoring in the 

4 right locations, things like that, and John Mauro 

5 will address those.

6 Pre-'73, as I was mentioning a little 

7 earlier, that's more of a question. This is kind 

8 of a standard question we get into when one is 

9 looking at back-extrapolation of data. You know, 

10 how representative is the data that you're trying 

11 to back-extrapolate? Does it fit the operations and 

12 the circumstances such that you can use that as a 

13 reasonable bounding analysis? And I'll certainly 

14 address that.

15 So, with that, Joyce, I'm going to turn 

16 it over to you as far as addressing some of the 

17 questions that you had for --- and issues that you 

18 had for the 1973 incident, and how that was modeled.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I'm going to speak 

20 about this particular accident and the exposures 

21 that occurred in 1973. And it's going to be very 

22 technical, I'm sorry. But just repeating what was 

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1 said before, there was a tritium accident that 

2 occurred in April 1973, and from then on then Rocky 

3 Flats people thought that there was exposure to 

4 tritium.

5 This accident happened between April 9 

6 and April 25, but the people were not immediately 

7 identified as having been contaminated, so they 

8 were monitored only in September 1973. So, we had 

9 more than 150 days; actually, the ones that the dose 

10 was calculated was around 170 to 180 days after the 

11 exposure. Also NIOSH identified there were also 

12 other opportunities for intakes in 1973. For 

13 example, there was an incident in September 1973 

14 before the monitoring took place.

15 Because, as was explained before today, 

16 there was a large number of people that were 

17 monitored. At first, they were analyzed, the raw 

18 urine samples were analyzed without distillation, 

19 and then the count deficiency was only about 3 

20 percent for this analysis. And from all this 

21 analysis, NIOSH says in its ER Revision 1 from 

22 September 2013 that the five most-exposed 

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1 individuals were identified.

2 Then NIOSH analyzed the data using only 

3 pre-distilled samples used for fix. They assume 

4 that tritium was in the form of tritiated water and 

5 used the IMBA model for inorganic tritium. And took 

6 several intake dates based on organ information and 

7 examination to urine sample results using IMBA.

8 And then 75 individuals, NIOSH only 

9 took two individuals as having been exposed in this 

10 April 1973 accident, which is supposed to be the 

11 highest incident that occurred in Rocky Flats, and 

12 would be the bounding dose. So, the bounding dose 

13 would be --- was calculated using only two 

14 individuals, not the five, only two. And NIOSH 

15 claims that the methods that were used to 

16 reconstruct these upper bound doses were 

17 scientifically sound because they followed the 

18 current ICRP guidance.

19 Okay. So, we have two things here. 

20 First, the model that was used to calculate the dose 

21 and to fit the intake to the excretion, because we 

22 had excretion rate results for those two workers. 

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1 The excretion rate results were fitted to an intake 

2 to calculate the intake and the dose using IMBA. 

3 What happens is that the IMBA model for inorganic 

4 tritium is not the model that is recommended by the 

5 ICRP. And there is nothing at least that I saw or 

6 that justifies the modification of the ICRP model. 

7 No peer-reviewed papers, nothing. But, anyway, 

8 it's not the ICRP model.

9 What happens with the ICRP guidelines? 

10 The current ICRP model was described in ICRP 78 in 

11 1997 with a clarification that was published in 

12 ICRP 88 in 2002. The ICRP does not recommend the 

13 use of the current model when, for more than 100 

14 days after the intake, so it's not recommended to 

15 use for about 177 days, 178 days, around 180 days 

16 after the intake, as was used by NIOSH. That's one 

17 of the things.

18 The second thing is that the current 

19 ICRP model is --- there is --- it's based 

20 --- actually, what ICRP 78 recommends is not to use 

21 for more than 30 days, but if you --- you can really 

22 expand it to 50 to 60 days after the intake. After 

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1 that, you kind of don't have the --- it's not very 

2 good, because the current ICRP model, it has like 

3 two compartments because there was a 

4 simplification, and 97 percent of the intake would 

5 have a half-life of 10 days, and then 3 percent a 

6 half-life of 40 days. But this is a simplification 

7 from ICRP 56 which had three explanations, and one 

8 of them was simplified and taken out. And because 

9 it was taken out, ICRP recommends that you 

10 calculate the body concentration divided by the 

11 water content of the body, and you have what is 

12 excreted in the urine. 

13 Okay. Even if you use the ICRP at the 

14 177 days after exposure, this was done, for 

15 example, by Potter in a paper he published in Health 

16 Physics in 2004, in which he expanded to calculate 

17 activities at 170 days and then using that, he has 

18 --- you can look in the Health Physics paper that 

19 he has expanded the ICRP model, even if ICRP doesn't 

20 advise on doing that. But if, you know, ICRP was 

21 used, then the results are different from the ones 

22 that are -- that were used -- calculated using 

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1 IMBA.

2 In addition, the model that uses IMBA 

3 is also different from the model citation in 

4 OTIB-0011 from 2004. And, in addition, if you go 

5 to 100 days, the IMBA model will be different from 

6 the ICRP model, which is reproduced in the agency 

7 document from 1994. And, again, it's different, 

8 also, from the results that were published in NCRP 

9 161 from 2008.

10 The NCRP 161 2008 goes only until 100 

11 days, and the agency documents from 1994 also only 

12 goes to 100 days. But after 60 days, even the NCRP 

13 and the agency document are in conflict. 

14 So, in summary, there is no model that 

15 is in the international agreement for calculating 

16 intakes from tritium for more than 50-60 days after 

17 the intake, so it's really a big problem on how to 

18 calculate this.

19 The ICRP is going to issue a model for 

20 a patient that was not published yet, that you can 

21 go beyond that. But I agree with NIOSH that even 

22 though it was published in the website of the ICRP 

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1 by public consult, is not an official document, and 

2 I really feel better not using it, although SC&A 

3 used it because it was published in the website for 

4 public consult.

5 I don't know when the report is going 

6 to be published. It was supposed to be published 

7 in 2014; now it's 2015, so I don't know. Anyway, 

8 it's only about .02 percent of the intake that's 

9 going to have a half-life of about one year.

10 Okay. So, this is a very big problem of 

11 the long-term biokinetic oxidation to calculate 

12 the bounding dose. So, besides this problem on not 

13 having an international model that everybody 

14 agrees on it, there is another problem. The 

15 bounding dose was calculated using data from only 

16 two workers that NIOSH considered were exposed in 

17 the April 1973 accident.

18 DR. NETON: Joyce, this is Jim. Could we 

19 stop there and maybe address that first, or talk 

20 about that first issue before we get into how the 

21 dose is modeled based on just two workers?

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, yes, of course.

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1 DR. NETON: Yes. I think it would be good 

2 to stop there and talk about that. It's been a while 

3 since I looked at that. I know Liz is on the phone; 

4 hopefully, she can chime in here, but my 

5 understanding from looking at this a while back was 

6 that we actually did use the current model. And the 

7 model that was used in IMBA was a modification of 

8 IMBA to incorporate that new model. Is that not 

9 correct, Liz?

10 MS. BRACKETT: What we used is actually 

11 the ICRP 56 model. Tom's feeling was that ICRP 88 

12 was just a rough approximation to be able to use 

13 software, you know, to do an assessment when you 

14 have results closer to the intake date. But IMBA 

15 doesn't actually have a model for assessing urine, 

16 so we had to put our own in. And, as I said, it's 

17 the ICRP 56 model that we used.

18 DR. NETON: And that's a 

19 two-compartment model. Right?

20 MS. BRACKETT: Yes.

21 DR. NETON: So, it's got the long-term 

22 compartment, and that was the current ICRP model?

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1 MS. BRACKETT: Yes, the 40-day 

2 compartment. Yes.

3 DR. NETON: Right, so it does have that 

4 40-day compartment. 

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: The 40-day compartment 

6 is in the 78 document, also, the 40-days 

7 compartment.

8 DR. NETON: Right.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: It's the 3 percent that 

10 has a 40-days compartment, because the inorganic 

11 tritium will transform into organic lead-bound 

12 tritium, and that will have the 40-days half-life.

13 DR. NETON: So, Joyce, I guess what 

14 we're saying is we used the current ICRP model with 

15 the 40-day half-life for ---

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, no, no, no. The 

17 current ICRP model, for example, if you take the 

18 Potter paper, he calculates until 400 days using 

19 the current ICRP model. And the results are 

20 different from the one in IMBA. And if you use the 

21 OTIB-0011 also on patient, the results are 

22 different, also, from the one that was used in IMBA. 

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1 And if you compare it with the NCRP model 161 which 

2 was done, I think, after this model, if you go only 

3 until 100 days -- it only goes until 100 days, but 

4 it's different from the current ICRP model, and 

5 it's different from the IMBA model, and it's 

6 different from the agency model. 

7 DR. NETON: Right.

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So, it's a whole mess 

9 this problem of --- after 50 to 60 days, the models 

10 don't agree anymore.

11 DR. NETON: Well, as you know, we are 

12 committed to using the current ICRP models in these 

13 calculations. There's no latitude.

14 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. But the one in IMBA 

15 is not the current.

16 DR. NETON: So, what is the model that 

17 Potter used that you're saying is the current ICRP 

18 model?

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, that's exactly. He 

20 extended it. Although ICRP says you shouldn't do 

21 it after 100 days, he extended it to 400 days.

22 DR. NETON: What model --- which ICRP 

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1 was that: 78, 56?

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: 78 was a clarification 

3 88. It's based on --- it was so confused. I'm saying 

4 this because I know from inside the ICRP, it was 

5 so confused that after 78 they issued a 

6 clarification in 88 because nobody knew exactly how 

7 to deal with it.

8 DR. NETON: So, what I'm hearing, 

9 though, is the 56 model and the 78 model are the 

10 same biokinetic model. 

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Not exactly, because 

12 they decide this for the term. The 56 just says 

13 there was a third term on the equation but they are 

14 not going to use it because it's very rare that you 

15 do monitoring after 100 days, so they took out the 

16 third term. And the new model that is going to be 

17 introduced by the ICRP puts again the third 

18 component.

19 DR. NETON: No, but what did the 78 model 

20 have in it, not the third term?

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Two compartments.

22 DR. NETON: Right, which is ---

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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: The 40 days and 

2 the ---

3 DR. NETON: Which is the same as the 56 

4 model.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

6 DR. NETON: Okay. So ---

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: It's based on ---

8 DR. NETON: --- we are using the ICRP 56 

9 model which is the same as the 78 model.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, no, it gives 

11 completely different results.

12 DR. NETON: Well, I don't understand 

13 what you're saying.

14 DR. LIPSZTEIN: You have the IMBA model, 

15 you have the ORAU-0011 which is almost exactly the 

16 same as the ICRP. You have the agency model which 

17 is exactly the same as the ICRP, and you have the 

18 Potter, which is exactly the same. But if you use 

19 the Potter ----the Potter model is the only one that 

20 goes until 200 days. Okay? If you use the --- if 

21 you look at the tables that were published by Potter 

22 in Health Physics and you look at the results you 

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1 have from IMBA, they are different. And it's 

2 significantly different.

3 DR. NETON: Which IMBA ---

4 MS. BRACKETT: IMBA does not have a 

5 model for tritium ---

6 DR. NETON: Right.

7 MS. BRACKETT: --- urine excretion.

8 DR. NETON: Right. So, I don't know 

9 which IMBA you're talking about, Joyce.

10 MS. BRACKETT: Right.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: That's the one that was 

12 used because here it says to use IMBA to fit the 

13 dose, so I calculated how much was going to be the 

14 excretion rate if I use the intake that was 

15 calculated by NIOSH, and the excretion rate is 

16 completely different from the one that was --- that 

17 the worker had.

18 DR. NETON: All right. I'm still 

19 confused, I guess, because ---

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Because it's confused, 

21 Jim. What happens is that --- I don't know what is 

22 done in IMBA, because I don't use really IMBA. What 

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1 I know is that if you use the Potter data, which 

2 is exactly the ICRP and you use --- you get a 

3 different result from the one that was obtained 

4 here.

5 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: For some of us who 

6 are less well acquainted with this modeling, are 

7 you talking --- let's talk about, are we talking 

8 on page 16, there is a three-component exponential 

9 function? Is that the correct equation that we 

10 should be looking at?

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Let me follow. There 

12 should be three exponential terms, but what ICRP 

13 did in the current model, it simplified and took 

14 out the third component. 

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Are you talking about page 

17 16?

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Page 16, yes.

19 DR. NETON: I guess ---

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes, page 16 of 

21 SC&A's report.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

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1 DR. NETON: So, what I don't understand 

2 is if we use the ICRP 56 model ---

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, Jim, you didn't.

4 DR. NETON: --- in IMBA ---

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I don't know what was 

6 done, but it doesn't ---

7 DR. NETON: Well, I could tell you, 

8 Joyce ---

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: --- match.

10 DR. NETON: I don't know what you 

11 compared. That's the problem. You ran ---

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, okay. I had the 

13 Worker D, Worker H. He had --- was calculated by 

14 his excretion rate that he had an intake of 1,240 

15 microcuries. Okay?

16 DR. NETON: Right.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So --- and I have to 

18 find it, just one second. The numbers, just one 

19 second, let me find the numbers. You'll see. Just 

20 one second. Okay?

21 DR. NETON: Okay.

22 MS. BRACKETT: While she's looking, I 

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1 would just mention that our doses are almost 

2 identical if we use the same intake date. The 

3 primary difference in the doses that we got were 

4 because of the choice of different intake dates.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, no, no. Only the 

6 ones that were very close to the intake. Like, for 

7 example, the Worker H is calculated using this 

8 --- as if the intake date was in September, and it 

9 was monitored in September, then we get the same 

10 results, but not if you do it for a long time after 

11 intake. After 50 to 60 days of intake, everything 

12 goes different. Even the NCRP model goes different. 

13 I want to find the numbers. I have it, but I have 

14 so many things open in my computer that I have to 

15 ---

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: We can wait. We 

17 have the time.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Don't feel pressured, 

19 Joyce.

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Don't ---

21 MEMBER MUNN: No.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Also, we will 

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1 come back after lunch.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, and then I'll have 

3 that, if you want.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: It might be good 

5 to break.

6 DR. NETON: Let Joyce find it.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, that would be a good 

8 idea, gives you an opportunity to find it.

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right, without 

10 our waiting on you and feeling under pressure. It's 

11 12:00 anyway, so it works well. So, why don't we 

12 take a break right now. It's a few minutes after 

13 12, we'll get back together at 1:00. You'll have 

14 a chance to look through the data calmly without 

15 our --- people looking over your shoulder.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. It's from our last 

17 report, but I just have so many reports in front 

18 of me.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Oh, absolutely. 

20 No problem. It works out, this works very well 

21 administratively that we break for lunch, and at 

22 1:00 we come back. We'll continue that. And also 

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1 for the petitioners who are on the line, it looks 

2 like we'll --- you know, we may finish earlier in 

3 the afternoon, but you're on the line, so whenever 

4 we finish and we get to that as the final item, we 

5 will ask for your report, or for your further 

6 report. Okay?

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: But just before you 

8 finish, Jim, think about it, and Liz, and 

9 everybody. Even, you know, if I say they don't match 

10 the results with the Potter data which uses the 

11 current ICRP model, the ICRP model says 

12 specifically it should not be used after 100 days, 

13 so it doesn't matter. I'm going to find this data 

14 to show that it's not the same model. But, anyway, 

15 it doesn't matter so much, because the ICRP says 

16 you should not use this model for over 100 days. 

17 Just that, okay?

18 DR. NETON: Okay.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: With that ---

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: See you after lunch.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: See you after 

22 lunch. Okay, we'll get together at 1:00. Okay, very 

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1 good.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Bye-bye.

3 MR. KATZ: Take care. Have a nice lunch, 

4 everybody.

5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

6 went off the record at 12:05 p.m. and resumed at 

7 1:07 p.m.)

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Let's resume the 

9 discussion that we were having before. Joyce, do 

10 you want to start out?

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I found the data. 

12 It's on page 17 of our response to NIOSH White 

13 Paper from September 2014. It's the second 

14 paragraph, the one that is in regular characters. 

15 And it says like if I use the ICRP model and the 

16 one that exactly matches the numbers from Potter, 

17 and the one that matches the number from the agency 

18 documents until 100 days, I get that the calculated 

19 intake of 1,240 microcuries. 

20 This was the calculated intake from 

21 NIOSH corresponding to excretion rates of 26,320 

22 picocuries for one of the results, and the other 

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1 result was 33,040 picocuries on days 177 and 178, 

2 respectively.

3 If you use the ICRP model as it is now, 

4 wrongly as it is now, you get 15,000 picocuries at 

5 177 days, instead of 26,320 picocuries, and you get 

6 14,756 picocuries at the 178 days, instead of 

7 33,040 picocuries. So, you have one-half of the 

8 results from NIOSH. 

9 So, the model is not the one in ICRP, 

10 but I think that, you know, this discussion, as I 

11 told you before, I think it's innocuous, because 

12 any model that we would apply at the 177 days after 

13 the intake, and 178 days after intake, they are not 

14 recommended by ICRP. 

15 And even if we --- if the new model was 

16 already published, the fraction that has a longer 

17 half-life of one year, this is the new model, is 

18 so small that the uncertainty is very high when you 

19 get to almost 180 days after the intake. So 

20 treatment should not be monitored for such a long 

21 time after the intake. You can't get a good --- you 

22 can't calculate a realistic intake by using data 

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1 that is so long after the intake. And all the 

2 recommendations from the agency, from NCRP, from 

3 the ICRPs do not use tritium models after 100 days. 

4 So, this is one of the big points, I 

5 think, on the model that you --- I was supposed to 

6 stop on the difference on the models. Right?

7 DR. NETON: Right. I guess now I'm 

8 trying to figure out what you're really saying 

9 then. We can't do any kind of calculations or not? 

10 I mean ---

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I think you can't do.

12 DR. NETON: All right. Now, that's new.

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: You know, until the 56 

14 that even 100 days is --- the problem between 60 

15 and 100 days is that the NCRP model doesn't match 

16 the ICRP model. But after 100 days, if you have 

17 excretion after 100 days, it's very difficult to 

18 go back to the intake because the models are not 

19 meant to --- the half-life is too small to really 

20 get a meaningful result at 180 days after exposure.

21 DR. NETON: I don't know. I mean, three 

22 half --- 40-day half-life and you go ---

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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but it's only 3 

2 percent, and it's different into OBT.

3 DR. NETON: I understand. Well, you know 

4 ---

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So, anyway, it doesn't 

6 match. It doesn't match. As I --- you can see on 

7 that page, the IMBA model doesn't match.

8 DR. NETON: Oh, yes. We ---

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And the other problem is 

10 that you have, for example, one worker that was 

11 Worker A. Worker A, he supposedly had --- he was 

12 exposed in the April accident, and then he was 

13 exposed again in September.

14 What happens with an exposure in April, 

15 one exposure in September, and you get monitoring 

16 data in September? What happens is that the 

17 September exposure will dominate the excretion 

18 rate of the monitoring taken in September. Right?

19 DR. NETON: Yes. No, I understand that, 

20 but I thought we looked at that, and the guy really 

21 wasn't in the position to have that exposure in 

22 April.

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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I didn't see why,

2 because Worker --- you had a work --- he was 

3 exposed together with --- he was working with 

4 Worker D, and he was working with Worker P, and the 

5 three of them were exposed on the April accident. 

6 So, to say that his excretion rate doesn't agree 

7 with the other ones, of course he wouldn't because 

8 he had also the September exposure rate. 

9 And I calculated, for example, what 

10 would happen if --- I used the new model, the one 

11 that has a component with one-year half-life, also. 

12 And if you --- you can do a combination of exposure 

13 in April and exposure in September, and the data 

14 will fit very well, you know, the urine excretion 

15 rate. But the difference in dose is more than 100 

16 times, so --- and this is, of course, because you 

17 have such a domination from the long --- from the 

18 recent exposure that any model that you use, the 

19 recent exposure will dominate. And you'll never 

20 know how much he was exposed.

21 DR. NETON: Right.

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And then if you let me 

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1 just continue to --- not only about the model, but 

2 then you have --- then the model was used on Workers 

3 D and H. Can I proceed with this?

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes, proceed.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. And the Case D has 

6 a lot of uncertainty, high uncertainty on those 

7 results. And this, you know, was recognized by 

8 NIOSH. It says, "Case D submitted samples on only 

9 three days, although there are two results on two 

10 of those days. In one instance, one of the samples 

11 was distilled. On the other day, there is a note 

12 stating repeated with sample generation. On the 

13 later date the results differ by a factor of almost 

14 2."

15 And then the Case H, which the bounding 

16 dose was calculated based on this result of Case 

17 H, if you look at it, it was based on only two 

18 results. This person has two non-distilled 

19 results, and has four distilled results, but the 

20 uncertainty is so large that both the distilled and 

21 the non-distilled dose, the urine excretion rates 

22 increase instead of decreasing when you have, you 

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1 know, different dates that the samples were taken.

2 So, for example, the non-distilled 

3 samples that were used, they were taken on day 177 

4 -- days after the intake, and 178 days after intake, 

5 and the results from one --- the excretion results 

6 from 177 days is smaller than the excretion rate 

7 for 178. And if you take the distilled samples that 

8 were not used, you have samples at 180 days, 185 

9 days, 170 days, and 188 days. And all those samples, 

10 they increase with time, instead of decreasing. 

11 So, the uncertainty is very high on 

12 those results, so you can't --- so, you are 

13 calculating a bounding intake and dose from a 

14 worker that has a high uncertainty on the bioassay 

15 results, and we are not certain about the 

16 application of the tritium model. 

17 DR. NETON: Okay.

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So, I --- in SC&A 

19 opinion, I think you can't --- there are great 

20 uncertainties on this calculation of the bounding 

21 dose aggravated by the lack of a correction 

22 international accepted model for tritium, so we 

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1 think that you cannot calculate a bounding dose 

2 based on this worker.

3 DR. NETON: So, do you suggest then we 

4 don't assign any dose to the non-presumptive 

5 cancers during the SEC period?

6 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

7 DR. NETON: That's the ultimate 

8 conclusion that you would arrive at.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, yes, yes, yes, I 

10 think so.

11 DR. MAURO: Joyce, this is John Mauro. 

12 I was reading over the weekend a lot of the 

13 literature standing behind what we're talking, and 

14 I seem to recall your picking one particular case. 

15 It might have been that Case A, I'm not sure, where 

16 you said well, if you really wanted to try to assign 

17 a bounding dose from the intake that occurred on 

18 the 18th of April --- in April of 1973 based on data 

19 that you've collected sometime in September, and 

20 you use the three-component model, you came up with 

21 a dose, if I recall, of something on the order of 

22 6,000 millirems.

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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. That's using ----

2 DR. MAURO: --- as opposed to their 84. 

3 And you seem to be ---

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

5 DR. MAURO: -- your sense was that it's 

6 not the greatest, but if you're going to put an 

7 upper bound, that might be a good one. So, I'm 

8 hearing two different things right now.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. John, you are 

10 correct, because it was a little bit confusing; 

11 because I was applying the new model that is going 

12 to be used, but I think NIOSH is correct in this 

13 way. The ICRP didn't publish it officially, so I 

14 don't feel --- you know, and I am on the committee. 

15 I should not apply it before it is officially 

16 published. 

17 I only did it because it was published 

18 in the website for public comment, so it was nothing 

19 that was confidential. It was open for the public, 

20 and it's still open for the public. It's just going 

21 into the website.

22 DR. NETON: Okay.

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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: It's unrealistically 

2 high, also, 6,000 rem. So, I think the best thing 

3 is to say it's not possible to calculate the 

4 bounding dose. There are too much uncertainties on 

5 this.

6 DR. MAURO: I'd make one more point 

7 certainly for the consideration by the Board. We 

8 have been in circumstances before, I think this is 

9 written up in our reports, where we were confronted 

10 with a difficult situation like high-fired 

11 plutonium, where there were really no approved 

12 models at the time from ICRP to deal with that. And 

13 somehow we tried to come to grips with it, and we 

14 actually ended up doing that. And by matter of 

15 --- this goes more to a policy decision.

16 If there is an interim model, such as 

17 the one that Joyce just described, that is under 

18 consideration, I don't know how --- you know, where 

19 it lies in the process, but if that --- you know, 

20 are we in a hard and fast position where well, if 

21 it's not published by ICRP, we really are not in 

22 a position to use it, or is there some degree of 

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1 flexibility here in trying your best to assign a 

2 plausible upper bound?

3 I understand what you're saying, Jim. 

4 If you can't do it, then you won't assign anything.

5 DR. NETON: Yes.

6 DR. MAURO: So really, it becomes a 

7 question of well, do we assign nothing, or do we 

8 try to assign a number but, of course, it has to 

9 be a plausible upper bound.

10 DR. NETON: Yes.

11 DR. MAURO: And therein lies the 

12 dilemma. 

13 DR. NETON: Let's look at what we're 

14 trying to accomplish here, though. They took 

15 samples on 250 people. These five cases were the 

16 ones that were the highest values that they could 

17 find. Right? And what we're trying to do is not to 

18 reconstruct these guys -- well, we could 

19 reconstruct these guys' doses and argue about what 

20 their doses are, but what is a valid dose to assign 

21 to everybody else?

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, yes.

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1 DR. NETON: Knowing that everybody 

2 else was well below these guys, including the 245 

3 other people that were sampled that had the highest 

4 potential. We're talking about assigning this 84 

5 millirem to everybody regardless of where they 

6 were.

7 DR. MAURO: Yes.

8 DR. NETON: So, I think that you do have 

9 to allow for some degree of uncertainty in this 

10 calculation. 

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: But then you have, as 

12 you consider the Worker A, which was doubly exposed 

13 in April, also. And if you want, all the --- you 

14 know, this 365 days, there are some papers that 

15 confirm this 365 days. And, actually, the HBA in 

16 the U.K. has adopted the 365 days. And there are 

17 many --- many, no, but there are some papers 

18 talking about this 365 component.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I don't know 

20 where the 365 comes in. Excuse me.

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, I'm sorry. The new 

22 model from the ICRP, the one that it's going to be 

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1 adopted, talks about the 10 days half-time, the 

2 --- half-life, the 40 days half-life, and he puts 

3 another component of OBT also, that has a longer 

4 half-time of 365 days. And so, we see it, you really 

5 could see what was the --- you know, related to the 

6 intake with excretion rate at around --- at about 

7 180 days.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: All right.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So the difference --

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Go ahead.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I'm sorry?

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Go ahead, Joyce. 

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, just the difference 

14 between the --- applying 365 days and applying 40 

15 days for OBT, because new model has two 

16 compartments. It's very large, so it will increase 

17 the dose. And you really can do, I think, not --- I 

18 think that probably this Worker A, he was exposed 

19 in both accidents, not only --- of course, the 

20 bounding dose was supposed --- as only exposed in 

21 April, but he probably had an exposure in 

22 September, also. 

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1 DR. NETON: You know, I'd like to talk 

2 about that a little bit, Joyce. I think Liz, maybe, 

3 has been looking at that.

4 MS. BRACKETT: Yes.

5 DR. NETON: Can you comment on that 

6 issue, the Worker A, and why we don't believe he 

7 might have been exposed in September?

8 MS. BRACKETT: I will have to --- I have 

9 to apologize, my computer died. It was dead all day 

10 yesterday, and I just got it back this morning, so 

11 I didn't have time to review this, and I ---

12 DR. NETON: I know we looked into that, 

13 and we have some reasons why we don't necessarily 

14 agree with that.

15 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Jim, what I read from 

16 the papers that you published, is that he didn't 

17 have an excretion rate that matched excretion rates 

18 from Worker D and Worker P, who were working with 

19 him in April. But the problem is that if he had an 

20 exposure in September also, of course, it wouldn't 

21 match. And even if they --- if he didn't have, not 

22 necessarily at 180 days after he would have the same 

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1 excretion rate as Worker D and P. And P didn't have 

2 anything, so even though D was with P, and D was 

3 considered having it. And Worker D is this one that 

4 has two urine samples on the same day, one double 

5 of the other result, so the uncertainty is very big.

6 I think the uncertainty in all this is 

7 very big. That's my feeling, what I think. 

8 DR. NETON: Well, I think what I'm 

9 hearing now is that SC&A has changed their opinion, 

10 that we can't reconstruct doses in this time 

11 period. And I guess I'd like to see that in writing 

12 so we can consider it. 

13 I mean, I understand what you just said, 

14 but if that's your official position, I'd like to 

15 see that documented somehow so that we can have it 

16 documented and look at it, and we'll consider it. 

17 Although, I'll have to be honest, I'm uncomfortable 

18 saying we can do zero for these people for tritium 

19 exposures.

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Jim, actually, our 

21 position, official position that we put in the 

22 paper is that either you consider the 6,000 which 

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1 is a huge number, which would be all --- a really 

2 bounding exposure in April, or you can't do it. 

3 DR. MAURO: Can I try something out? You 

4 know, I understand the dilemma, Jim, and I really 

5 understand the dilemma, the 84 versus 6,000, the 

6 fact that we only have five workers with measurable 

7 levels.

8 DR. NETON: Right.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And only three that 

10 could be exposed in April. The other two were ruled 

11 out. They were not exposed in April.

12 DR. MAURO: Well, let me --- that's 

13 where I'm headed with this question, one of these 

14 things. Let's assume that 500 people were --- I'm 

15 going to make up a number. Okay? This is more of 

16 a thought problem that may help us solve this thing. 

17 Let's say you've got a large number of 

18 people that were exposed in the April incident, and 

19 you don't --- and you start collecting data 

20 sometime in September. And just for the sake of a 

21 thought problem, let's assume everyone that you 

22 measured was below the limits of detection, okay, 

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1 for tritium. And then you're going to say well, we 

2 know that there were at least some people that 

3 actually experienced exposures to tritium in 

4 April. 

5 Perhaps we don't have any large 

6 exposures, but because we're collecting samples so 

7 far out into the future, 180 days later, that it's 

8 going to --- you know, we wouldn't expect to see 

9 anything, even if there were relatively large 

10 intakes because of the clearance and the retention 

11 functions. 

12 So, one could say --- I mean, almost 

13 thinking about this lower limit of detection 

14 question so, in effect, what you're really saying 

15 is let's forget about these five people for a 

16 minute. Let's talk about all the others that might 

17 have had some exposure, but you didn't see 

18 anything. 

19 Couldn't one ask the question, well, 

20 let's assume those other people, or at least some 

21 of those other people were at one-half the MDA for 

22 tritium, and you're reporting zero, or you're 

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1 reporting undetectable, but in theory they could 

2 have had some intake. 

3 I mean, the question is well, what 

4 intake would they have had to have for them to have 

5 experienced a reading in the urine that's below the 

6 detection limit. 

7 Now, we don't know who those people are. 

8 It could be a large number. And we don't know who 

9 those people might be, but some of them may very 

10 well have had a fairly large intake and be 

11 undetectable at 100 ---

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

13 DR. MAURO: I'm almost done. Now, the 

14 dilemma you have is, if you were to take that tact, 

15 then the question becomes do you use the 

16 two-compartment model that's approved by ICRP 

17 right now, or the three-compartment model to back 

18 calculate? You know, what would the intake have to 

19 have been to get one-half the MDA 180 days later? 

20 Isn't that one way you could come at this problem?

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I think it's a very good 

22 question, John, but I think there is no currently 

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1 accepted international model that goes back 180 

2 days. That's a problem, unless you use the new ICRP 

3 model which was not published yet.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Joyce, I'm sorry.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes?

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: No, no, I 

7 interrupted you. Pardon me. But I have a concern 

8 that comes from a different place, just in terms 

9 of what SC&A is proposing. 

10 I feel when you said that you were using 

11 a model that was on a website by another 

12 organization, professional organization that's 

13 contemplating something that is not --- not only 

14 I feel like we can't use it, we're acting on behalf 

15 of the U.S. Government. 

16 The U.S. Government --- this is a 

17 confidential source. I mean, confidential in the 

18 sense that they're asking for information from 

19 around the world. There may be somebody in 

20 Australia, or Brazil, or excuse me, Australia or 

21 Austria who will come in and say the whole thing 

22 is wrong. I want to change it this way.

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1 That model is not usable and is, 

2 essentially, in my opinion, confidential in terms 

3 of it is held by that organization. It is theirs, 

4 and when they announce it, fine. So, I don't think 

5 that we can as a government agency use the 6,000 

6 alternative that you propose. That, to me, is off 

7 the table. We need to resolve the question.

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I agree with you 100 

9 percent. I don't feel well to use it, also. I think 

10 that we don't have any approved model that will go 

11 beyond 100 days.

12 DR. NETON: I think, though, Joyce, that 

13 we are committed to using the best available 

14 science, and I stress the word "available." The 

15 best available science is the current model, and 

16 there are many things, as you pointed out, that Gus 

17 Potter published in a peer-reviewed journal, an 

18 extension of that model out past 100 days.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but he is using it, 

20 you know, outside the scope of ICRP. He says I'm 

21 using ICRP model, but ICRP says you don't use it 

22 over 100 days.

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1 DR. NETON: Again ---

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: NCRP 161 also goes only 

3 to 100 days, and has a different model. And it's 

4 from the, you know, United States, NCRP.

5 DR. NETON: I would prefer to use the 

6 best available science that the ICRP model has, 

7 recognizing the peer-reviewed literature has 

8 extended it beyond that, and assign some type of 

9 dose to these workers for tritium rather than say 

10 nothing, no dose.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. But, you know, 

12 Potter is the only one who goes beyond 100 days, 

13 and he says he's using ICRP model. And the ICRP 

14 recommends not to use it over 100 days.

15 DR. NETON: Then why would it be 

16 published in peer-reviewed literature if it wasn't 

17 --- had some validity?

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but you read it, 

19 you'll see he's using it beyond ICRP 

20 recommendations. And the NCRP also says --- also 

21 has that, until 100 days. The agency, the 

22 International Atomic Energy Agency only goes also 

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1 to 100 days.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Joyce --

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: You know, using beyond 

4 this is --- we have a mandate to use ICRP models, 

5 but ICRP doesn't recommend to use --- there is no 

6 ICRP recommended model over 100 days. And if Potter 

7 used, he used it wrongly. 

8 Anyway, it's not the one that using in 

9 --- was used by NIOSH. You can modify it, but I 

10 think it's going to be still wrong, because it 

11 shouldn't be used over 100 days. And we still have 

12 the problem of Worker A, that you can do a combined 

13 intake of in April and September and get results, 

14 because he has better data than Worker D and Worker 

15 H. 

16 And Worker H, you know, just getting a 

17 bounding dose with Worker H that has two points, 

18 and they go up instead of going down.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Joyce ---

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: You know, it's a lot of 

21 uncertainty in those two data.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Joyce, Joe is 

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1 trying to get something in. If you would excuse us, 

2 not excuse us, if you will wait for one second.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Thank you, Joyce. 

4 Sorry to cut you a little short.

5 What Jim, I think, is clarifying is that 

6 we're sort of in this non-ICRP space, meaning that, 

7 you know, the new ICRP three-compartment model 

8 isn't available. And given the fact that by policy 

9 we're held to what is available, he's offering that 

10 as with the high-fired plutonium issue that we 

11 worked on quite a while ago, that was resolved, in 

12 a sense, by a technical or scientific approach; not 

13 a model, per se, even though there were rumors that 

14 ICRP was working on such a model. 

15 But, certainly, using a very pragmatic approach 

16 based on, as I recall, transuranium data? 

17 But, you know, basically using 

18 empirical data and using what we had in the way of 

19 available methodology to come up with the best 

20 science to provide a fit, an imperfect fit, but one 

21 that was the best available.

22 I think --- my sense is that's where 

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1 we're at, that in the absence of this ICRP --- this 

2 new model, we're --- I think everybody wants the 

3 best, pragmatic, and empirical-driven fit that's 

4 going to provide some satisfaction on the post-100 

5 days issue. And that's kind of what we're asking 

6 for, is some consideration in that direction. And 

7 I think there are some differences of opinion 

8 whether we've achieved that in the best way 

9 possible.

10 That's a different issue than saying go 

11 or no-go. That's sort of saying is it the best fit 

12 and best approach available by science given those 

13 circumstances? And I think from our vantage point, 

14 that's what we want, too. Acknowledging that we 

15 just can't have that three-compartment model, it's 

16 going to have to be something that is founded on 

17 what we do have. 

18 Do you agree with that? I think that's 

19 where we're at. 

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but imagine we 

21 agree on a model, or there is a model that is done, 

22 so to which data are we going to apply this model? 

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1 We have only --- NIOSH only considered two workers 

2 from the five that were exposed in April. And those 

3 two workers have a lot of uncertainty on the data. 

4 The one that the dose was calculated, bounding dose 

5 was calculated only has two points, and the 

6 excretion rate goes instead of decreasing like you 

7 expect, it increases. And the other has also a lot 

8 of uncertainty, so we don't have really results on 

9 which to base, you know --- on which to apply any 

10 model.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But, Joyce, we 

12 have an imperative as a Board to decide issues on 

13 behalf of claimants. There are people out there who 

14 are ill, or possibly passed away, and they and their 

15 families need to know what our decisions are as 

16 promptly as we reasonably can so that it's not 

17 --- there is an imperative to make decisions, to 

18 make the best ones we can with understanding that 

19 we have to be pragmatic so that we can do something. 

20 We can't just say let's wait for ---

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, no, no. What I'm 

22 suggesting is that even if we had the newest model 

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1 published, the data that we have to apply the model 

2 is so uncertain that it wouldn't be correct, 

3 anyway. 

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So, I think that the

6 best thing is not --- you know, is to say we can't 

7 calculate the bounding dose.

8 DR. NETON: Joyce, this is Jim. I'm 

9 going to offer this up. We're going to go back, and 

10 I thought we had looked at these arguments that you 

11 made about why these certain people didn't --- you 

12 know, the guy could have had a previous exposure. 

13 And I thought we addressed that issue. 

14 Apparently, we're not ready to talk 

15 about it today, but we'll go back and relook at 

16 that, because I'm pretty certain when I looked at 

17 the data that there were valid reasons why the 

18 person probably wasn't exposed way back in April. 

19 So, we need to go back and look at that, and put 

20 that right in front of you so we can discuss it from 

21 our position. 

22 And, also, I want to go back and justify 

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1 --- not justify, but discuss why we believe we're 

2 going to use the current model extended beyond 100 

3 days. I think there's a valid reason for doing that. 

4 I don't think there's anything that prohibits us 

5 from doing that. 

6 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And, Jim, please look at 

7 the data from the two workers that were considered. 

8 They are very uncertain. The excretion rate goes 

9 up instead of going down in Worker H.

10 DR. NETON: Yes. Well, you know how 

11 bioassay models go, Joyce. I can show you a lot of 

12 models where ---

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, yes, but you'll see 

14 --- you know, it's working on a bounding dose on 

15 only two points from a worker leaves a lot of 

16 uncertainty.

17 DR. NETON: Two points out of 250 

18 workers ---

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Look at it. You're going 

20 to look at everything, look at it, though.

21 DR. NETON: I understand, but it's two 

22 points out of 250 workers that were sampled.

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1 MR. KATZ: Jim ---

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Ted.

3 MR. KATZ: I just want to say when you 

4 go back and think about this to keep in mind from 

5 a policy perspective you do have a feasibility 

6 issue. And you can't apply a new standard to 

7 feasibility because these are non-presumptives 

8 than you in other circumstances. There's not really 

9 much leeway for that, so if truly at the end of the 

10 day you decide this wouldn't hold water, and you 

11 would normally be establishing a Class on this 

12 basis, you can't flip around and then use these 

13 methods to reconstruct doses for other workers.

14 DR. NETON: I understand what you're 

15 saying.

16 MR. KATZ: Because then you're 

17 contradicting your own policy.

18 DR. NETON: We've also had a sort of 

19 --- I don't know if it's a written policy, but the 

20 policy has been where the doses are very small and 

21 we're adding them, we allow for a lot more 

22 uncertainty in the dose.

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1 MR. KATZ: More latitude, right.

2 DR. NETON: And we're talking about 80 

3 millirem here, it's not a huge dose.

4 MR. KATZ: Right. No, all I'm saying is 

5 --- I'm not making a judgment about the fact ---

6 DR. NETON: I understand.

7 MR. KATZ: I'm just saying if the 

8 science and the factual information, the base is 

9 really shoddy, then you need to think about it.

10 DR. NETON: I agree with you. I agree. 

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Wanda.

12 MEMBER MUNN: I hope that this is 

13 partially instructive, that we again look at why 

14 we're doing what we're doing. 

15 I believe we've shown by our experience 

16 that the primary thing our claimants are most 

17 concerned about is whether they were injured while 

18 they were employed by the federal government. 

19 There may be new information about the 

20 biological effects of tritium of which I'm not 

21 aware, because I don't work in that particular 

22 field, but unless I'm seriously mistaken, there is 

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1 no evidence that doses of the magnitude we're 

2 talking about of soft beta exposure is deleterious 

3 to human health. 

4 I can understand their attitude if we 

5 --- and we need to add that to potential exposures, 

6 but absent the fact that our claimants can't be 

7 expected to understand what I'm saying here fully, 

8 it seems reasonable that based on the best science 

9 available to us we can establish at least a limit 

10 that makes sense with respect to which no person 

11 can assume to have been exposed in this case at 

12 Rocky Flats.

13 Once we establish what that is, then 

14 surely the question of whether or not that is 

15 completely accurate is a secondary one. The 

16 question is not whether it's completely accurate, 

17 it's whether it's adequate, and whether it is 

18 reasonably accurate. So, if we're going to agree 

19 that 6 rem is an unreasonably high number, then I 

20 don't think that we can truly argue that less than 

21 1 rem is too small a number. It is, obviously, in 

22 the reasonable range. 

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1 It appears that the work we have to do 

2 is come to some conclusion as to what is reasonably 

3 acceptable given the best science available to us. 

4 If I'm incorrect, then we should go on a different 

5 tact, but it seems to me that that narrows down what 

6 we need to do. 

7 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Presumably 

8 ---thank you. Presumably, then you folks can have 

9 technical calls in the committee as you try to 

10 resolve this.

11 MR. KATZ: The technical calls aren't to 

12 resolve, but just to clarify matters. The 

13 resolutions always have to have to happen in the 

14 ----

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: That's right. 

16 Right, and just as I was going to say.

17 MR. KATZ: Sorry.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Then it will come 

19 back to us and/or to the Board --- actually, to us 

20 first, and then on to the Board. So, we'll leave 

21 it in your hands to be talking together.

22 DR. NETON: Yes. I will say that this is 

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1 truly a Site Profile issue, because it's not 

2 related to does this SEC after '83 move forward.

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

4 DR. NETON: We're talking about 1975 

5 time frame here.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. 

7 DR. NETON: So, again, this has nothing 

8 to do with --- well, it may have, but it's not 

9 really relevant for the Board to make --- the 

10 Working Group to make a decision whether or not an 

11 SEC should be extended after 1983.

12 MR. KATZ: Just how to do dose 

13 reconstructions.

14 DR. NETON: Just how to do the dose 

15 reconstructions for a Class that's already been 

16 added.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I think a 

18 clarification is, you know --- assuming that when 

19 you're ready would be one --- a two-part issue. 

20 One, how --- what's the best approach to doing a 

21 dose reconstruction? What dose reconstruction 

22 approach would be warranted based on the best 

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1 available information? And the second thing is how 

2 would you apply that to the worker bioassay data 

3 that we have? And, clearly, there's a question of 

4 implementation, as well as a question of what 

5 approach you apply. So, those two things, I think, 

6 would be laid out.

7 Now, to avoid going beyond 

8 clarification, I think it would be useful just to 

9 get that in writing back from NIOSH to the Work 

10 Group. And if we have a clarifying question about 

11 that, then we can certainly have that call.

12 I don't know if there's a --- you know, 

13 I mean, it seems like some of the issues that we're 

14 talking about are beyond clarification, more of a 

15 discussion about what --- so, that may be something 

16 that the Work Group on a telephone call ought to 

17 address rather than ---

18 DR. NETON: I would suggest that the 

19 other remaining issues that are before the Working 

20 Group that are SEC-related should take precedence 

21 over resolving this issue right now, because this 

22 is not required to determine whether the SEC 

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1 petition is closed. It's not relevant to that.

2 MR. KATZ: Right. It's not an SEC issue.

3 DR. NETON: So, if it's not an SEC issue, 

4 then the Working Group, in my opinion, at least, 

5 should focus on the issue that still may have SEC 

6 relevance after 1983. 

7 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: I'm not sure I 

8 follow that.

9 DR. NETON: Okay.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: In that the level 

11 of --- this relates to what exposures we're using 

12 to bound.

13 DR. NETON: During a period that's 

14 already an SEC --- it's already been decided that 

15 this time period, doses can't be reconstructed, not 

16 for tritium reasons, but for was it ---

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Neptunium.

18 DR. NETON: Neptunium, uranium-233. 

19 There's --- an SEC is already going to have the 

20 Rocky Flats up to 1983.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. I'm trying 

22 to think of people who are in partial --- who are 

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1 ---

2 (Simultaneous speaking.)

3 MR. FITZGERALD: That remains the 

4 standard.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's the standard that 

6 definitely matters for them, but the priority 

7 always for all Work Groups is to complete the SEC 

8 consideration, because that's sort of the biggest 

9 human impact is resolving that. 

10 And then sorting out the dose 

11 reconstruction issues for those who are already 

12 covered by an SEC is sort of second ----is second 

13 tier business. But I don't see any reason why these 

14 both can't go on if you've already sunk your teeth 

15 in them.

16 DR. NETON: But the other, prior issues 

17 should take precedence.

18 MR. KATZ: But like for this Work Group 

19 meeting you should be ---

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Priority.

21 MR. KATZ: Right.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. All right. 

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1 So, then that is decided upon, not resolved.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: For the specific 

3 proceeding ahead, I think you're going to, Jim, 

4 provide that interpretation and ---

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: We're also going to 

6 look at the justifications for the dates that we've 

7 chosen to start for intakes.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And I think that 

9 will be conveyed to the Work Group and SC&A. Then 

10 if we need clarification we can have a call. If it's 

11 a question of debating that, then that's the Work 

12 Group's ---

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, there may not 

15 be any clarification needed.

16 DR. NETON: These comments that Joyce 

17 has made, we've heard before, and I thought that 

18 we had addressed this, but nobody has it in front 

19 of them at this point, so we need to revisit those 

20 and be clearer as to where we're coming from.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: All right. Then 

22 that's finished for the moment, and we should go 

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1 ahead. Do we want to do post-'73? We're talking 

2 about --- that was '73.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Let's do post-'73.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Post-'73 it is, 

5 okay.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm not sure John needs 

7 any introduction on this, but, John, are you still 

8 on?

9 DR. MAURO: Oh, yes, certainly.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I know you've 

11 been waiting for your time.

12 DR. MAURO: I'd be glad to try to help 

13 out here. 

14 And, again, I'd like to preface this 

15 discussion also reiterating before we were talking 

16 about doses that were, perhaps, high 6,000 

17 millirems but, of course, we dropped that. 

18 We're now in a mode where we're talking 

19 about even smaller doses. And what -- so, in effect, 

20 we're going to be discussing data and strategies 

21 for evaluating exposures post-1973 where, in 

22 effect, we're talking about doses that are very 

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1 small. In fact, one could argue that --- Jim, 

2 remember you did that dosimetrically significant 

3 piece of work where you determined ---

4 DR. NETON: Yes.

5 DR. MAURO: --- that 100 millirem per 

6 year is from a practical standpoint probably of no 

7 dosimetric significance. We're in that --- and I 

8 know it was dealing with external exposure.

9 DR. NETON: John, it wasn't 100 millirem 

10 per year, it was 100 millirem total.

11 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay, my mistake. I just 

12 raised that because I think it has some play. 

13 Tritium exposure is a uniform whole-body exposure, 

14 in many respects it's like an external exposure 

15 from that perspective, so this 100 --- here's a 

16 place where we want to sort of keep that in our 

17 pocket, that the number 100 millirem has been found 

18 to be external --- likely to be of no dosimetric 

19 significance in terms of affecting change in a 

20 Probability of Causation determination. I wanted 

21 to just preface the conversation.

22 Now, we'll get to this post-1973. You 

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1 know, after the incident in April of '73, a lot 

2 happened. And there's quite a bit that's been 

3 written in the documents that are on the web. And 

4 anyone who really wants to dive into this, you know, 

5 you could read our report dated September 18th, 

6 2014. There's a transcript, and I believe there's 

7 a May 30th, 2014 NIOSH report. It's all there. 

8 That's basically what's on the record right now. 

9 So, what I'm going to draw upon is the 

10 report that we prepared that's dated September 18, 

11 2014. I believe that's the most recent official 

12 document that SC&A put out on the subject. And for 

13 those of you who might want to follow this along, 

14 it's on page 28 of SC&A's September 18th, 2014 

15 report.

16 And in that section, there are nine 

17 issues or concerns. You'll see those concerns 

18 regarding the strategy that NIOSH is employing for 

19 dealing with this circumstance. And I want to 

20 create --- I'm not going to go through each one of 

21 the nine. It's just too burdensome. I'd rather try 

22 to create a visualization.

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1 The way I understand it, after '73 a lot 

2 more attention was paid to tritium possibly showing 

3 up and resulting in some exposures. And the way I 

4 understand what happened was, there was increased 

5 attention to looking at the --- what they call 

6 bubblers which are --- the way I understand it, 

7 this is a way of collecting tritium, and they're 

8 in or near a hood, and they collect tritium that 

9 might be on its way out the plant, up the stack. 

10 And there's a lot more attention paid to the 

11 bubblers as a source of data that will let you know 

12 whether there's any airborne tritium around, and 

13 that's being exhausted out of the facility.

14 There was also a lot of swipe samples 

15 that were being collected to see if there's any 

16 tritium showing up. This is all because of this 

17 increased concern due to the April incident. And 

18 there's also --- they implemented a program, I call 

19 it the "One In Ten Program." This is something that 

20 we often call a cohort sampling, whereby one out 

21 of every 10 workers who submit urine for, I believe, 

22 analysis for plutonium, I think it was plutonium, 

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1 is also analyzed for tritium. It's almost like just 

2 we're going to grab it, you know, randomly, pick 

3 a number and see if we're seeing anybody with any 

4 tritium.

5 So, what we have here is sort of like 

6 a new program that's out there to keep an eye out 

7 if there's anything unusual happening with 

8 tritium. And it's these data that help us to come 

9 to grips with how are we going to go about assigning 

10 some exposures post-1973.

11 Now, the way I understand it is in 

12 post-'73, there are two sets of circumstances that 

13 you had paid attention to, NIOSH. One is that there 

14 was what I would call a chronic ongoing potential 

15 for exposure to workers that based on the data that 

16 you have collected, the answer is less than 1 

17 millirem per year. But then a little bit of a monkey 

18 wrench is thrown into this. There was a minor 

19 incident in August 1974 where there was some 

20 release, so you have to come to grips with that. 

21 And those are the two sets of circumstances and sets 

22 of data.

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1 And, by the way, when the 1974 event 

2 occurred, there were bioassay samples collected, 

3 I believe, in a timely way. You know, you're not 

4 confronted with the same circumstance we had with 

5 the April '73 exposures. So, what I understand we 

6 have here is --- and correct me if I'm wrong. 

7 The plan is this, for those workers 

8 post-'74 that were involved in the August 1974 

9 incident, I believe that you calculated the 

10 exposures as being .15 millirem from that single 

11 incident. Is that correct?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct.

13 DR. MAURO: That would be the doses that 

14 a number of workers would have experienced from 

15 that 1974 release, a very, very small dose.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct.

17 DR. MAURO: I have that correct, but I 

18 wanted to make sure that that was the number. And 

19 then --- but, of course, there are other workers 

20 that were not involved in that incident. And, 

21 certainly, you move on to 1975, and 1976, and so 

22 forth, the general sense is that there's data now. 

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1 Now, we take the 1974 incident out of 

2 the picture for a minute now. Now you're saying 

3 okay, what does the data, there's the "One In Ten" 

4 sampling, the bubbler sampling, the swipe sampling 

5 tell us? And my understanding is, the story that 

6 it tells us is that the doses to all these workers 

7 were less than 1 millirem per year, so for all 

8 intents and purposes they were zero millirem per 

9 year. And this is what the strategy is for assigning 

10 exposures post-1974. 

11 Did I fairly characterize that as being 

12 your --- the strategy you plan to use?

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. I think that's 

14 pretty good, John.

15 DR. MAURO: Okay, thanks. All right. 

16 Now, then I go on now on my --- given that strategy, 

17 on page 28 of the September 18th, 2014 SC&A report, 

18 I identified these nine issues. And I want --- and 

19 here's where ----recognize that we're talking 

20 about doses that are very, very small, so I think 

21 all I'm really saying is the logic of the problem 

22 and the strategy that's been adopted where there 

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1 may be some limitations in it, and where there may 

2 be some problems.

3 One problem is, from reading all of 

4 these SRDB reports, there was a whole long list of 

5 them, and I read through them. And what emerged from 

6 that was one of the problems is that --- is where 

7 the bubblers are. All right? Picture a 55-gallon 

8 drum, I believe, or some container shows up. It 

9 could be scrap plutonium, it could be pits, and what 

10 happens is, I think the 55 --- inside the 55-gallon 

11 drum --- it arrives and a worker is there. And it 

12 arrives, and it's placed at a location near where 

13 there's a bubbler. And the worker opens the can, 

14 55-gallon drum, and if there's any tritium that may 

15 be associated with that particular shipment, it'll 

16 come out, and it'll go up and be captured by, I 

17 guess, the vent of the hood, go up through a bubbler 

18 and be detected. So you'll know we've got ourselves 

19 a container that is contaminated, so I think 

20 there's a degree or control there, that says, you 

21 know, we're paying attention now. We're opening 

22 them by the bubblers.

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1 But then I understand that one of the 

2 other things that's done is inside the 55-gallon 

3 drum, the guy reaches in and pulls out smaller 

4 containers that contain material. I'm not sure what 

5 kind of material is in there, but the plutonium is 

6 inside another container that was in the 55-gallon 

7 drum. He picks that up and he brings that someplace 

8 else. Okay? Stay with me. And, certainly, correct 

9 me if I've got this movie in my head incorrect. So, 

10 he walks away and he goes to someplace where there's 

11 something called a down draft table, where he opens 

12 up this other container. And in theory, there could 

13 be tritium inside this other container that could 

14 come out. But in that case, it's not going to be 

15 captured by the bubblers, okay, because where he's 

16 taken the smaller container, there may not be 

17 bubblers nearby.

18 So, one of my concerns --- and I'm not 

19 saying this is of great import, but I think that 

20 the bubblers give you a certain amount of 

21 information, but it's a very good possibility that 

22 the guy that carries the container over to another 

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1 location, the bubblers are not going to catch that. 

2 They're going to miss that. So, somehow the person 

3 could have experienced some exposure that the 

4 bubblers didn't pick up. 

5 Then I say to myself but, okay, but 

6 you've got this one-in-ten sampling program, this 

7 sort of cohort sampling program where people's 

8 urine are being grabbed randomly, one out of every 

9 ten workers. But it's my understanding when you 

10 look at that data, it's really spread out. In other 

11 words, you don't have a --- for example, urine 

12 samples that are taken, let's say once a month from 

13 some group of workers. It ends up being more like 

14 on the order of one sample a year for a given worker. 

15 And what does that tell me? It tells me that you're 

16 going to have to get -- you know, if there are people 

17 that are --- had a tritium intake, the one in ten 

18 program could very well miss that. Maybe not all 

19 of them, but apparently the one in ten program, the 

20 results show no one got anything detectible above 

21 1 millirem per year. 

22 So, my takeaway is, on the face of it, 

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1 the bubbler samplers, the one in ten urine sample 

2 bioassay program, swipe samples, on the face of it 

3 look like a lot of attention is being paid to it, 

4 but then when you think a little bit more about, 

5 you know, where the bubblers are located, as 

6 opposed to where the workers are, and the bioassay 

7 sample being really a very infrequent sampling, 

8 that it's very easy to miss exposures. So, there 

9 may have been exposures going on that might be, you 

10 know, above 1 millirem a year, maybe not very much 

11 above 1 millirem a year. 

12 That approach to sort of keeping an eye 

13 on things is really not very good, so my --- I'm 

14 at page, I mentioned earlier, those nine comments. 

15 They basically go toward that with two additional 

16 questions, and then I'll stop. The two additional 

17 questions have to do with the efficiency of the 

18 bubblers themselves. 

19 When I hear about bubblers, I picture 

20 air flowing through water that --- and the tritium 

21 will stay, become tritiated water and stay with the 

22 water, but you don't know the efficiency unless you 

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1 have another bubbler after it that is connected to 

2 it downstream, and then you look at that. So, I'm 

3 not quite sure if the data that you're getting from 

4 the bubblers you have a good idea of what the 

5 efficiency is. I haven't read anything in those 

6 SRDB reports where the efficiency of the bubblers 

7 has been demonstrated. And, usually, you do that 

8 by having two bubblers in sequence. That's one 

9 question that's sort of layered on top of the story 

10 I just told.

11 And the second question is, I ran into 

12 some language that appears that there was some 

13 metal tritides associated with what was handled at 

14 the facility. And, of course, as we know, metal 

15 tritides are a lot different than tritiated water 

16 or elemental tritium. And I'd like to hear a little 

17 bit more about tritides and how that fits into this 

18 idea that really other than the 1984 --- I'm sorry, 

19 the August 1974 incident, how does that play out, 

20 the idea that some of this might have been tritides? 

21 The bubblers may not be very good in terms of 

22 capturing things, capturing where the exposures 

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1 were. And the urine sample, the one in ten urine 

2 sample program may, itself, provide you with 

3 information that could be a little bit misleading 

4 because of the way in which it's spread out. And 

5 that really is the essence of those items that are 

6 listed, one through nine in the report that I cited 

7 earlier.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. John, a couple of 

9 things. First, and I'm going to get Jim Bogard in 

10 on this here in a minute, but the one thing, 

11 post-'73 incident, I think that, you know, just the 

12 idea of bubblers fixed locations in the exhaust 

13 plenums, I don't think that was the only air 

14 monitoring that occurred. And I'll get Jim to weigh 

15 in on that when I'm done.

16 Also, the --- I think the '74 incident, 

17 if you look at it, the individual -- I mean, the 

18 monitoring that was in place was there, and it did 

19 show that it was able to detect an incident and 

20 identify the proper people to ensure that those 

21 individuals were monitored. And in that case, the 

22 highest exposed individual was less than 1 millirem 

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1 so, you know ---

2 DR. MAURO: Yes, yes.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't --- I think 

4 that was a very good example where they picked up 

5 the monitoring program. They went through a 

6 two-year period with this increased monitoring 

7 program. And, you know, again, I'll get Jim to weigh 

8 in on this in a second. And they identified nothing 

9 during that two-year period that indicated an 

10 additional problem. In addition, one of the main 

11 sources of potential exposure was opening up those 

12 containers. 

13 That was the other issue. Once they 

14 start --- once they identified the issue of opening 

15 up containers as being a problem, they instituted 

16 shipping requirements on shipping containers to 

17 the site, and what -- the maximum amount of activity 

18 that could be inside the containers. They 

19 implemented a survey program on those containers 

20 as they were opened. They actually, if you read the 

21 report, at one point they started --- they were 

22 sucking air from the containers to try to see what 

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1 containers were --- the concentrations were. And 

2 that presented a problem in itself, so there was 

3 an increased amount of monitoring that was done on 

4 the containers, which produced the highest 

5 potential for exposure. So, I'll let Jim --- can 

6 you add a little bit to the discussion on air 

7 sampling?

8 MR. BOGARD: Yes. The containers were 

9 opened at a down draft table, and after 1973 they 

10 did have tritium monitors in the work area near that 

11 down draft table. So, the hoods weren't the only 

12 places where bubblers were located.

13 DR. MAURO: That's --- let me --- I'm 

14 sorry to interrupt, but that's an important point 

15 that was not immediately apparent to me. So, not 

16 only was there the 55-gallon drums, the bigger 

17 drums were opened, they were close to bubblers for 

18 sample collection. But you're saying, in addition, 

19 the smaller containers, like 10-gallon, whatever 

20 they were, there were two of them. When they were 

21 lifted out of the 55-gallon drum and brought 

22 elsewhere. And I understand was brought to what's 

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1 called this down draft table, it was my 

2 understanding that the --- when they opened 

3 --- now, in theory one could say that the big 

4 55-gallon drum, maybe there wasn't very much coming 

5 out of that drum when it was initially opened near 

6 let's say a bubbler. But then they --- then later 

7 they open up this other container, these two that 

8 were inside, and my concern was when they opened 

9 that, the tritium might be in there, and could come 

10 out at that time, but there were not any bubblers 

11 nearby. But you're saying yes, they were. And that 

12 I'd be corrected if that's the case.

13 And then I understand what you are 

14 saying is really they had pretty comprehensive 

15 coverage of having bubblers where the potential for 

16 exposure existed, whether it was when you were 

17 opening the 55-gallon drum, or when you were 

18 opening the small 10-gallon drums. In both 

19 circumstances there were bubblers nearby that were 

20 being --- where tritium would have been picked up. 

21 And it's that program that caused the 1974, the 

22 August 1974 incident. Is that what I'm hearing?

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1 MR. BOGARD: Yes, that's correct. They 

2 started putting those out in the work area after 

3 the '73 accident. 

4 DR. MAURO: I see. Okay. You know, I have 

5 to tell you, when I read the --- you'll notice if 

6 you folks read my report, when I -- and I sort of 

7 summarized about a dozen SRDBs. And one of the 

8 messages that came out of that, to me, was that that 

9 wasn't the case. Now, I'm not saying I'm right. 

10 Please bear with me, but it appeared to me that 

11 there was --- that therein lied a hole in coverage 

12 for tritium exposure. But if that's not the case, 

13 that's not the case.

14 MR. BOGARD: Yes. But, of course, we 

15 were using this incident as a model for pre-'73, 

16 when the assumption is they did not have tritium 

17 bubblers in the workplace.

18 DR. MAURO: Yes. I don't want to talk 

19 right now about pre-'73, a whole other story. I just 

20 want to get a sense on post-1973, the fact that 

21 you're concluding that the doses were really zero 

22 per year to everyone except for this --- and even 

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1 this 1974 incident, you're saying that this August 

2 1974 --- so, even then the highest exposure was 

3 less than a millirem due to that incident. So, it's 

4 all based --- so, I mean, so your takeaway is that 

5 really no one received any exposures post-1973. And 

6 the reason being all of these provisions that were 

7 made to keep an eye on things. 

8 And all I'm trying to bring up in my nine 

9 items in my write-up is that, well, there may be 

10 certain places where the coverage was pretty soft, 

11 and it's very possible that there could have been 

12 exposures that were missed. And I don't know, you 

13 know, what the magnitude of those might have been. 

14 Probably pretty small, but if the bubblers were, 

15 in fact, catching everything, you know, all the 

16 workers that were opening these containers and 

17 working with this material, if there were bubblers 

18 there, there were bubblers there, and you got your 

19 data, and you're sitting pretty strong. But I've 

20 got to tell you, the SRDBs did not read that way. 

21 MR. BARTON: John, this is Bob Barton. 

22 Can I ask a clarifying question here? Because my 

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1 read on this was that --- and I might be confused, 

2 but the decision not to assign anyone any tritium 

3 dose after 1973, the way I read it was that a 

4 coworker analysis was done on 1974 and 1975. Now, 

5 was it just restricted to those two years? I guess 

6 I'm posing that to DCAS.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it was, only 

8 because the amount of bioassay after 1975 didn't 

9 support really adding those. I think, and Liz can 

10 --- well, Liz may be able to correct me, I don't 

11 know. But I believe there was 11 bioassay samples 

12 or so after '75 that could have been used, and they 

13 didn't really fit for the coworker model. 

14 MR. BARTON: But when we talk about 

15 coworker model, are we talking about actually doing 

16 sort of a best-estimate fit to each individual 

17 worker, or is it the sort of standard model where 

18 --- well, you calculate an OPOS result and you fit 

19 it to a distribution, and you pull off some 

20 percentile, and then you calculate the intake? I'm 

21 curious how that was done. 

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, it was 

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1 definitely not done in accordance with the new IMBA 

2 guide, if that's the question. But I think --- I 

3 don't know if Liz or Mutty can comment on that or 

4 not.

5 MS. BRACKETT: I'm trying to look 

6 quickly. I don't know if Mutty knows off the top 

7 of his head. I believe that we did this the same 

8 way we've done others, and that's doing each one 

9 individually, and then coming up with the --- you 

10 know, using the doses rather than the individual 

11 results. But I'm trying to find that right now. 

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Now, that's what I 

13 remember was done.

14 MR. BARTON: I mean, we have the data 

15 set, you guys provided that to us.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I was going to say, we 

17 provided that to you guys.

18 MR. SHARFI: This is Mutty. Liz is 

19 correct, that they assessed every individual, got 

20 their dose, and then they looked at the 

21 distribution of all the individual doses and they 

22 were all less than a millirem. 

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1 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: They were all 

2 what?

3 MR. SHARFI: This is separate than the 

4 one in ten program.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, this was actually 

6 taking that one in ten --- those individual 

7 bioassay samples, those individuals that were 

8 monitored, looked at their dose, and then 

9 established a distribution based on that.

10 DR. MAURO: But am I correct, that one 

11 in ten program really effectively resulted in one 

12 urine sample per person per year? And you could 

13 understand why I would be concerned if that, in 

14 fact, is your data set, because of the half-life 

15 of tritium, the effective half-life of tritium, 

16 where you wouldn't expect -- I mean, you'd have to 

17 get pretty lucky. You'd have to catch a guy that 

18 a week ago was exposed, you know. When you did pull 

19 that sample, I --- that was my understanding, that 

20 the one in ten sounds good, but when you look at 

21 it a little closer, you find out you're really only 

22 pulling one urine sample per person per year. And 

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1 do you really expect to pick anything up with 

2 something like that, if that's the data you're 

3 referring to?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: And off the top of my 

5 head, I don't disagree with what you're saying. It 

6 does --- and when you look at it closely, and if 

7 it is one sample per person per year. However, the 

8 other evidence that was used, the increased air 

9 monitoring surveys, and the smear surveys, and all 

10 the other things that point to the same result kind 

11 of give you, you know, a weight of the evidence type 

12 of thing.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: There's one --

14 effectively, one monitoring per person per year. 

15 How many persons were monitored?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think there were 

17 --- is there 250 samples on that?

18 MS. BRACKETT: Well, I have a file that 

19 it has 75.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, 75.

21 MS. BRACKETT: It looks like they have 

22 75 individuals. And what was done with that, it does 

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1 look like most had --- if not all had one sample 

2 per year, and it was assumed that that was their 

3 excretion rate for the entire year. So, it was 

4 assumed that there was a constant chronic exposure 

5 throughout the year.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But if there was 

7 a spike, you would expect the spike to show itself 

8 up in one of the 75. Not looking at one person, 

9 looking at the population that it's essentially a 

10 random sample of ---

11 DR. MAURO: Well, collectively, you 

12 would argue that if something was going on, at least 

13 one of those 75 people, you'd get a hit.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: That's right, one 

15 or two.

16 DR. MAURO: I hear that argument. I 

17 could see some merit to that argument. You know, 

18 without doing the statistics, what's the 

19 likelihood that something big could have happened. 

20 Not big, but something could have happened and you 

21 missed it, you know. I don't know.

22 MR. BARTON: Well, John, there is one 

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1 worker in this database that sort of gives me pause. 

2 And we're talking about 1978 now, so this is a 

3 little further down the line, but essentially the 

4 first samples of this worker in 1978 is at the 

5 beginning of April. And it's almost 120,000 

6 picocuries per liter, which is like four times 

7 higher than what you saw in those 1964 samples, I 

8 believe. So, I mean, there is at least some spikes 

9 in here that that particular worker might be worse, 

10 you know, doing the best estimate approach. I 

11 assume it's TIB-11, I guess, is what was used to 

12 come to the conclusion that all the doses were less 

13 than 1 millirem?

14 MS. BRACKETT: No. TIB-11 would assume 

15 that only the --- only that one result would have 

16 been collected at the time that they were 

17 potentially exposed. As I said, we assumed that 

18 they were exposed at that rate for the entire year, 

19 and that would not be the TIB-11 assumption. 

20 MR. BARTON: Okay. This worker can have 

21 several samples. It looks like they were on a 

22 monthly tritium schedule ---

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1 MS. BRACKETT: Okay. 

2 MR. BARTON: --- for '78. And prior to 

3 that April sample, in the previous year there were 

4 samples in October. So, I mean, there's a pretty 

5 big gap before you saw that one spike sample. It 

6 sort of seemed like they put them on a monthly 

7 schedule after that, maybe. I can send you the claim 

8 number offline if you want to take a closer look 

9 at it. 

10 MS. BRACKETT: Okay. But you said that 

11 their result was four times larger than the ---

12 MR. BARTON: It's 117,000 picocuries 

13 per liter.

14 MS. BRACKETT: I don't remember what the 

15 other --- what the magnitude of the others were, 

16 but ---

17 MR. BARTON: I thought they were around 

18 30,000. That's why I started looking at that 

19 number. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: Okay.

21 MR. BARTON: Yes. I mean, I'm looking at 

22 the report. I guess it's SRDB --- I don't have it 

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1 marked down here, but there's essentially a table 

2 that lists the individuals that were above 10,000 

3 picocuries per liter. And the highest one in that 

4 table is 32,000, but the one I'm looking at is 120. 

5 MS. BRACKETT: Okay. So, but we're 

6 getting less than a millirem dose, and four times 

7 that is going to be, you know, 1.5 millirem, 2 

8 millirem.

9 DR. MAURO: If I remember ---

10 MR. BARTON: Well, depending on when you 

11 assume the intake occurred, though, I mean, if 

12 you're assuming it happened right before they took 

13 the sample, and that might be borne out by the 

14 subsequent samples months afterwards. And you 

15 might very well be right, but if that intake 

16 occurred in some other method, an acute sample a 

17 month before, two months before when there was no 

18 sampling available for this worker, then it may 

19 not. It may actually get you over to where you have 

20 a measurable dose above 1 millirem, but I don't 

21 know, because I don't think that calculation is 

22 done. 

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1 DR. MAURO: Am I correct as a rule of 

2 thumb, this is --- I remember doing this. If you 

3 have chronic concentration of 10,000 picocuries 

4 per liter all the time in your urine, that means 

5 you're being chronically exposed at about 1 

6 millirem a year? I think that was about --- that 

7 was the rule of thumb I've been operating under. 

8 It helps to give some meaning to the numbers we're 

9 throwing around right now. 

10 MS. BRACKETT: I'm not familiar with the 

11 rule of thumb on this.

12 DR. MAURO: That's --- I remember doing 

13 the calculation while I was working on my report, 

14 and that sort of sticks with me. And I read it the 

15 other day, and I think that's about right. 

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But I thought the 

17 one in ten worker sample for plutonium only 

18 occurred in '74 and '75, and then was ended. 

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's correct. And 

20 then the others would be sampled because there was 

21 a reason to sample them, basically, or they were 

22 --- what they call this is, if they were in a 

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1 situation where there was a potential for tritium 

2 exposure, and they may have identified ahead of 

3 time that those individuals will be on a tritium 

4 monitoring program. So, in that case, that 

5 individual was probably identified as being an 

6 individual that could be exposed in 1977 or '78 and 

7 placed on that program. 

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Which is consistent 

10 with, you know --- the reason, you know, the idea 

11 they cancelled the program '74 and '75, after '75 

12 they weren't finding anything. They had 

13 established controls in place in the workplace. 

14 They felt those controls were doing an adequate job 

15 of identifying potential exposures, and so they 

16 stopped the individual monitoring program.

17 I think the one thing I can do, John, 

18 just to --- again, I mean, I think we all agree 

19 these doses are very low. I think we can go back 

20 and actually do a little additional write-up on the

21 bubblers as respect over time post-'73 in the 

22 workplace, and give you a little better feel for 

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1 that.

2 DR. MAURO: And, also, if you can look 

3 a little bit at the efficiency of the bubbler, and 

4 also the issue of tritides. Those are really 

5 --- you want to break all this thing down, and you 

6 say well, what are we talking about post-'73? Well, 

7 we're saying, are the data that's being collected 

8 adequate for you to judge that really there's no 

9 exposures, and the nature of those samples that we 

10 just talked about. And that would be like question 

11 number one.

12 Question number two would be well, what 

13 is the efficiency of those bubblers, because we're 

14 putting a lot on that. And, finally, what about 

15 tritides? They seemed to have showed up in the 

16 SRDBs, and where does that fit into the picture?

17 So, if I was to say the three general 

18 subjects that I'd like to hear a little bit more 

19 about would be those three. And, of course, 

20 embedded in the first one has to do with the one 

21 in ten program, the location of the bubblers and 

22 how representative they might be, sort of all 

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1 clustered together. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: What kind of tritium 

3 exposure do we really --- could you ever have 

4 gotten from tritides?

5 DR. MAURO: Well, in a urine sample 

6 --- if you take a urine sample and you detect 

7 tritium, and in one case the tritium you're 

8 detecting is from tritiated water, the other case, 

9 the tritium you're detecting in the urine is from 

10 hafnium tritide, the difference in the whole body 

11 dose is a factor of 10,000. So, an enormous 

12 difference. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, but I'm trying to 

14 very simplistically in my own mind identify what 

15 kind of tritium exposure would result from the 

16 presence of tritides. I have no feel for what 

17 activity was involved. I don't mean radiological

18 activity, I mean I don't have any feel for what kind 

19 of work activity was involved ---

20 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay.

21 MEMBER MUNN: --- with tritide metals 

22 in the plant during that period. What were they 

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1 doing?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think metal 

3 tritides had a weapons complex application, but 

4 that application was in a sealed component in every 

5 place except for Mound and Los Alamos. So, one would 

6 expect that to be a sealed component at Rocky.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Which means they weren't 

8 really and truly ---

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you have some 

10 residual tritides in locations, because it's just 

11 a particulate form of tritium. I'm just saying that 

12 from an application standpoint you would only 

13 expect to see non-sealed tritides, like hafnium

14 tritide at Mound and at Los Alamos, were the two 

15 locations I'm familiar with.

16 MEMBER MUNN: I'm trying to get a feel 

17 --- you know, I'm trying to see ---

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Operationally, 

19 you would see them in those two locations in the 

20 weapons complex. Everywhere else they would have 

21 existed, but in sealed components.

22 MEMBER MUNN: But I'm thinking that the 

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1 tritium is being so closely bound to the metal. 

2 That's what I ---

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, it was -- without 

4 getting into anything sensitive. It was just the 

5 form it was in, that it was useful.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Well, yes, but I'm 

7 speaking in exposure terms here. So, you have 

8 tritium bound ---

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, certain tritides 

10 were very insoluble and, therefore, would not have 

11 been picked up as you would pick up normal tritium 

12 in urine.

13 MEMBER MUNN: And that's why I'm asking 

14 this question. What kind of exposure ----

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the first 

16 question is, would you have a form of tritide that 

17 would be so highly insoluble as to not be picked 

18 up in urinalysis. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: That would create some 

20 kind of exposure route. And I'm trying to imagine 

21 what that would be, other than just soft beta 

22 external exposure.

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it has an internal 

2 issue but, you know, two questions. I mean, where 

3 does it exist in that form and would it be available 

4 for exposure? We beat this to death at Mound, and 

5 even if you do have it for exposure, the actual 

6 exposure amounts to a millirem. It's still a very 

7 small exposure.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Even fractions of a 

9 millirem.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it's --- even 

11 though it's not easily detectible, the 

12 implications are not as great as ---

13 MEMBER MUNN: I guess I can't see any 

14 probability of danger, of physical danger as a 

15 result of what I've been shown ---

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the first 

17 thing is, does it exist in an insoluble form and 

18 available for exposure at Rocky.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

20 (Simultaneous speaking.)

21 MR. FITZGERALD: You asked potentially 

22 that question first.

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1 MEMBER MUNN: I guess that's the bottom 

2 line question I'm driving at.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, that's the 

4 question you answer first, because beyond that, you 

5 know ---

6 MEMBER MUNN: The answer is not to 

7 worry. It is not going to affect what we have to 

8 do.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, yes. The answer 

10 to the first question will determine how far you 

11 go with it.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. 

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I think we're 

14 --- again, we're all in agreement the tritium 

15 exposures are low. I mean, if they --- you know, 

16 and this is an SEC period, so I just want to remind 

17 everyone. We will go back, we will look at the 

18 efficiency of the bubblers, and we'll also look at 

19 locations and try to get better documentation on 

20 the program for that period. And we'll look at the 

21 tritides, as well.

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, that's what I'm asking. 

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1 Thank you. You summarized it very well. 

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Does that 

3 close this part of the discussion? Unless there's 

4 from Working Group folks, any further comments?

5 MEMBER MUNN: No. It looks like the next 

6 meeting's agenda is pretty well laid out already.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, we were going to 

8 have another meeting, anyway, on a couple of other 

9 things, so we might as well talk about that, too. 

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. That's 

11 good. So, then we should go to the pre-'73 

12 exposures. Anticipating something, should we stop 

13 for 10 --- it's 2:30, stop for a few minutes, or 

14 just keep going? Keep going. Okay, I hear. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, let me jump into 

16 it. This will, I think, go more straightforwardly. 

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I agree.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: The issue for pre-'73 

19 is just simply they didn't recognize tritium as a 

20 source term of concern to monitor for radiation 

21 protection reasons at Rocky Flats. It just wasn't 

22 something that was on their screen, so there wasn't 

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1 any routine monitoring program. There were some 

2 limited bubblers, but nothing that would produce 

3 routine results.

4 And the approach that NIOSH took, a 

5 reasonable approach was to pick the 1974 event, the 

6 August event as a fairly prominent shipping 

7 container release, and to use that as --- represent 

8 that as typical and bounding of all the other 

9 container releases that may have occurred at Rocky 

10 Flats before 1973. Again, I think it wasn't 

11 certainly as high as the '73 event, which was sort 

12 of a spike and a once-only type event at Rocky, but 

13 it was considered typical.

14 The approach I took was, frankly, to go 

15 through the factors that were presented as 

16 supporting that particular -- because, again, what 

17 we're doing is retrospectively applying a value for 

18 all previous years. So, that's usually one where 

19 you want to be careful to have something that is 

20 representative. And I took the six supporting 

21 factors, now on page 30 of our paper, and the 

22 analysis is page 30-35 of the September paper. And 

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1 I think there was a series of factors, which I think 

2 are all very good key supporting factors that have 

3 to be satisfied. I kind of critique each one as far 

4 as how it --- whether it supported the application 

5 of that 1974 event.

6 And the first one I looked at was 

7 whether or not the background tritium levels before 

8 the August '74 event, whether they were pretty well 

9 defined and represented typical background levels. 

10 And the issue I have there, and it's detailed in 

11 the paper, is that my concern there is that they 

12 did establish in the investigation that followed 

13 the August event that there was a clear 

14 cross-contamination involved with the buildings 

15 and the rooms that were involved in the '74 event. 

16 And this came from, apparently --- and this is, 

17 again, from the investigation report. It 

18 apparently came from the '73 event, that once they 

19 got tritium in the building, it was everywhere, 

20 which is not too surprising and was, in fact, in 

21 the lines and in the plenums for these facilities. 

22 So, when they were doing some baseline measurements 

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1 in and around the --- before and after the '74 event 

2 --- I'm only raising that to question whether, 

3 really, there was a clear background level for 

4 Rocky after the '73 event, because you just had some 

5 fairly widespread contamination. So, that would be 

6 a question that I would certainly raise in terms 

7 of background.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Quickly, on that one.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: I mean, I kind -- I see 

11 that as more of potentially, you know, increasing 

12 the potential release of the '74 incident than, you 

13 know, by giving you that --- because, I mean, it 

14 kind of sounds like you're implying that we really 

15 didn't know the background levels, you know. 

16 Because we said everything was fairly well close 

17 to background when this event occurred, but you're 

18 talking about the actual, you know, the lines, 

19 exhaust lines, and things that were internal that 

20 could have potentially masked or contributed to the 

21 event.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I'm just saying, 

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1 you know, I think the whole thing comes down to how 

2 representative are the parameters in '74 to ---

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Previous to '74. You 

5 know, this thing can swing both ways.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: And they're saying, 

8 yes, actually the '73 event did screw up the 

9 background to some extent beyond that and, 

10 therefore, one has to consider that before you ---

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: --- establish that you 

13 have a representative background. I'm not even sure 

14 what a representative background would be after the 

15 '73 event.

16 On the second one, the quantity of 

17 tritium released was significantly less than the 

18 '73, is more typical of potential undocumented 

19 releases in work areas. And then this question of 

20 identifying six documented releases from '68 to '74 

21 average of one per year. 

22 This one gave me some pause because, 

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1 again, we're talking how representative is the '74 

2 event? And my concern there is that you had --- in 

3 terms of source term you had a pressurized 

4 container being opened with Battelle parts, where 

5 there's some evidence of contamination of the 

6 container. You had a workplace configuration in 

7 terms of ventilation, in terms of controls that had 

8 been beefed up considerably from what it was prior 

9 to '73. So, in terms of the source term, I'm not 

10 even sure we --- Rocky had a good feel for what the 

11 source term was once they unpacked the 55-gallon 

12 drum and got the interior pieces out. There really 

13 wasn't any monitoring of the interior. They did do 

14 some monitoring on the 55. When that went into the 

15 glove box, the workers actually, based on 

16 interviews, handled that directly, and there 

17 wasn't any monitoring to base whatever the source 

18 exposure was when that went into the glove box. And 

19 they handled hundreds of these. These were the pits 

20 coming -- returned from Rocky and Burlington in 

21 hundreds. 

22 So, in terms of source term what gives 

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1 me some pause is that even though the release in 

2 '74 was a large number, and just on that basis I'd 

3 say well, you know, probably bounding but, you know 

4 --- but the question is how representative would 

5 it have been for the kind of releases we're talking 

6 about. You know, I don't think the six incidents 

7 that we do have records for really characterizes 

8 the many, many returns that Rocky had from 

9 Burlington and Pantex. I think that's sort of an 

10 unexplored area ---

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I agree with 

12 that.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: --- so the source 

14 term, you know, I think --- I'm comfortable with 

15 it being a large number. I'm not comfortable with 

16 it being characterized as representative, and 

17 whether it's bounding, you know, I could probably 

18 convince myself.

19 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: It is certainly 

20 --- I mean, it sounds like you're saying it is 

21 bounding; that is to say, it's way above what people 

22 used to be getting.

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just saying 

2 it's a large number, and I could probably speculate 

3 that it would be bounding because it's a high 

4 number. I don't think we would exceed 1.5 curies 

5 as a source term anywhere in the pre-'73. As far 

6 as knowing what was in the returns from Pantex and 

7 the other facilities, we don't know that. So, you 

8 know, again, I think ---

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. And I understand 

10 what you're saying. I think what we used was we felt 

11 like this was clearly a high number. It was one that 

12 was an incident that occurred that was what we felt 

13 would provide the most likely chronic exposure 

14 scenario. And what, actually --- I think when you 

15 looked at the controls and stuff that were put in 

16 place afterwards were to focus on that very type 

17 of thing that potential contaminated containers 

18 and the return of pits and so on. So, I think we 

19 felt like that number, one, was high, and it was 

20 an exposure scenario that was more typical of what 

21 the individuals would see on a chronic basis. Now, 

22 whether 1.5 is right or one is right, or .8 is right, 

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1 I don't know.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But it is 

3 claimant-friendly. 

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, yes. I think the 

5 issue ---

6 (Simultaneous speaking.)

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the issue, I 

8 think you have this dichotomy. You always go 

9 through this, you know. Is it sufficiently 

10 conservative to be claimant-favorable and 

11 bounding? Is it sufficiently accurate or 

12 representative, because otherwise you can pick a 

13 large number and be done with it in every case. So, 

14 in this instance, are the conditions that you --

15 looking at the conditions of the container handling 

16 and opening, is it sufficiently representative of 

17 what preceded '73 for those years, 16, 17, 18 years 

18 the returns. 

19 Two things come into play. One, you 

20 know, what are we talking about as far as the 

21 release itself of source term? And, certainly, 

22 that's large, certainly not as large as '73 ---

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: --- but large enough.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: The second thing is 

5 getting into what kind of controls you had in place. 

6 And we had a healthy debate about that.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And the situation was, 

9 were you getting more controls, more mitigation out 

10 of '73 such that that '74 event wouldn't resemble 

11 how the returns, the other containers were handled 

12 prior to '73. In other words, you had many, many 

13 hundreds of containers that were opened. In those 

14 days, tritium wasn't recognized, and typically 

15 they got a 55-gallon drum, opened it up. They did 

16 some monitoring, some bubbler monitoring at that 

17 point, but then they opened the inner container and 

18 literally put the returned pits right into the 

19 glove box, so there was a potential for exposure. 

20 If exposure was going to take place, it probably 

21 took place then. We don't have any good measurement 

22 on that, so the issue is after '73, you know, a rigor 

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1 was instilled in the way containers were opened at 

2 that point where you had a down draft table, you 

3 had monitoring, active monitoring going on, RCTs. 

4 I mean, it was a much different picture.

5 Now, Pantex, as far as the senders go, 

6 they didn't come around to changing the actual 

7 practice until later. But as far as Rocky went, they 

8 had procedures in place because they kind of got 

9 hit with this and, therefore, they were protecting 

10 themselves. So, they instilled a lot more rigorous 

11 practices.

12 So, when we're comparing the two, you 

13 know, you have a couple of questions. One of which 

14 is, is the number conservative? Certainly, it's 

15 conservative as far as the source term. Is it 

16 representative of what happened before '73 in terms 

17 of rad controls, practices, monitoring? It was not.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But I'm less 

19 worried about overestimating a small quantity, I 

20 mean, a small exposure. We're dealing with some 

21 very small exposures, and if we're fairly heavily 

22 over-estimating where it's not going to affect 

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1 --- no, we're not doing --- let's just say, I don't 

2 worry about over-estimating on a very small 

3 quantity on something that is going to result in 

4 a very small dose. That's all.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. The difference in .8 

6 and 1.5 millirem is quite different than the 

7 difference in 8 millirem and 15 millirem. Right.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Exactly.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: So, anyway, this 

10 analysis goes through and looks at the factors 

11 involved. And, basically, I think the conclusion 

12 is it wasn't representative, and wasn't 

13 necessarily typical, but we're not going to argue

14 that it is a large number. So, if the Work Group 

15 is comfortable with a large number, we can go that 

16 way.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes. I'm not --

18 your charge was to critique it in terms of what is 

19 correct, what is most nearly correct.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: The question of 

21 typical and bounding. 

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think we 

2 concluded it certainly looked like it would be 

3 bounding, but it wasn't typical.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: There's the answer.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. Yes.

7 MEMBER MUNN: But there is an enormous 

8 difference at the low end, as opposed to at the high 

9 end.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, for sure.

12 MEMBER MUNN: With its affect for the 

13 claimants.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

15 MR. KATZ: Do you want to just check in 

16 with Bill, too, since both you and Wanda have spoken 

17 about this?

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. Bill?

19 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, I think it's 

20 sufficiently bounding but not unreasonable.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay, yes.

22 MR. KATZ: So, that's an item we can 

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1 close.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But let me -- let 

3 you finish --- I mean, do you have more that you 

4 want to say? I mean, I ---

5 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think, you know, 

6 I went through the factors in terms of the question 

7 of representation, how representative it was. I 

8 think it's all laid out here. I'm not sure I need 

9 to ---

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Fine. 

11 Excellent. No, I just ---

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: --- didn't --- I 

14 hoped we were not cutting you off.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think you grasped 

16 the essence of it, which is the ---

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. And we're 

18 in agreement so that this issue, I think, is closed 

19 now for this Working Group.

20 MEMBER MUNN: I think so.

21 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I just 

22 want --- one question that's been lingering with 

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1 me. It seems to me that there's a connection between 

2 the post-'73 data and understanding of the kinds 

3 of exposure that may have occurred, and the 

4 questions I raised just a moment ago. And I believe 

5 that the --- that you're drawing upon that 

6 experience which was that .15 millirem per event, 

7 the August 1974 and you're going to say well, let's 

8 just assume that that kind of experience happened 

9 every --- once a day pre-1973. 

10 Is there a linkage --- I mean, given 

11 that rationale, and I understand why you would say, 

12 geez, that's pretty conservative, but is there any 

13 more to the story in terms of when we get a richer 

14 and more complete understanding of the post-'73 

15 circumstances, let's say regarding the bubblers, 

16 and their location, regarding tritides and their 

17 existence or non-existence and that sort of thing, 

18 and the adequacy of the one in ten urine sample. 

19 The collective knowledge that we get from that, 

20 does that have any bearing on our judgments 

21 regarding how we're going to deal with pre-'73?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Are you asking me?

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1 DR. MAURO: I guess I'm asking everyone 

2 if there's ---

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I could comment 

4 on ---

5 DR. MAURO: Is there a linkage?

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Again, I think the 

7 difficulty, the things that occurred post-'73, you 

8 know, we made our case with the '74 incident as it 

9 being a good example, or an example; I won't say 

10 good example. I'll say an example of an event that 

11 causes a chronic exposure. And, you know, 

12 recognizing that, you know, the controls that were 

13 put in place after that point, obviously, were put 

14 into place to limit and minimize the exposure to 

15 personnel which, you know, those controls were not 

16 in place pre-'73. But I think what we've said is 

17 the source term we've used and taking a, you know, 

18 one event per day, and knowledge of thinking about, 

19 you know, the chances of tritium exposure, you 

20 know, from a chronic exposure standpoint are more 

21 in contaminated containers than they are in pit 

22 returns. If you know the history and know what 

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1 occurred, you know, at the various sites. Getting 

2 things from Los Alamos were much different than 

3 getting things from Pantex. So, I'm just leaving 

4 it at that. So, I think that this is a reasonable 

5 over-estimate of the exposure for those early 

6 years.

7 But, you know, John, again, if we find 

8 out new information that we think, you know what, 

9 we may need to refine this, or we may need to look 

10 back at this, we can always do that.

11 DR. MAURO: I really appreciate it. 

12 Thanks very much.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Well, then we are 

15 ready on Item 6.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Do you know what Item 

17 6 was?

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Item 6, the ---

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. Okay, yes.

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: NIOSH staff 

21 provide status and schedule for remaining open 

22 issues, and also associated with data 

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1 falsification, destruction and exposures from the 

2 critical main source.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. The two other 

4 open issues that we have that we're looking at has 

5 been data falsification and destruction. This has 

6 taken, and I'm sure that Terry, the petitioner will 

7 agree and will probably talk about, it's taken a 

8 long time. 

9 One of the concerns that was brought up 

10 was that during the FBI raid, that there was an 

11 identification of potential data falsification or 

12 destruction of records. We have done an enormous 

13 number of interviews. We've interviewed 

14 individuals that the FBI agent in charge, Mr. 

15 Lipsky, who had identified, we've interviewed a 

16 number of individuals that were in his documents. 

17 We've looked --- identified or interviewed 

18 individuals identified by the petitioner, 

19 individuals identified by people that we 

20 interviewed, we've interviewed, so we've 

21 interviewed a lot of people on this subject.

22 One of the things that was holding this 

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1 up was there were a number of documents that were 

2 provided to us by Mr. Lipsky early on, and when our 

3 review of those documents, it was not clear that 

4 the FBI had formally released those documents for 

5 public use. So, our general counsel recommended 

6 that we go back to the FBI and get an official 

7 release from them. This took a considerable amount 

8 of time. In fact, we did not get released until 

9 sometime December/January time frame.

10 There also --- and in that process, we 

11 had thought that the FBI was controlling all of 

12 those documents. There is actually --- the FBI came 

13 back and released eight or ten documents, or 

14 whatever it was. And they said you need to go to 

15 the other agencies to get their official release 

16 on those. So, now there's a few documents we're 

17 getting --- we have to get released from EPA. I 

18 honestly do not think that's going to take a long 

19 time, because I don't think EPA is going to be as 

20 difficult as the FBI was on this.

21 So, as soon as we get the release of 

22 those documents, we'll be able to finalize our 

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1 report. I know we have done a lot of work on that 

2 in drafting that, so I hope to get that report --- I 

3 can't really give you a date because of getting that 

4 EPA release. 

5 And the other document is the Critical 

6 Mass Laboratory. The Critical Mass Laboratory, we 

7 were --- this was actually identified, again, by 

8 --- through the petitioner, actually, as a 

9 potential issue. Critical Mass Laboratory at Rocky 

10 Flats took assemblies and such to, you know, the 

11 criticality level, so we're looking at activation 

12 and fixed --- fission products, potential 

13 exposures. 

14 Again, we've interviewed a number of 

15 people in this --- on this, and looked at a lot of 

16 data. And there's a very good history of the 

17 Critical Mass Laboratory done by the manager of 

18 that facility, with worker input. And right now 

19 we're doing some final modeling. 

20 We got in a situation, you know, the 

21 Work Group was stagnant for a period of time there, 

22 and we got into a resource where we're going to put 

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1 resources in certain areas of priority, so the 

2 individual who's been working on some of the 

3 modeling and work with Critical Mass Laboratory was 

4 instrumental in some of the other evaluations that 

5 are being presented next week. So, he was tied up 

6 with Hanford and some of the INL work, so we're 

7 going to get him back on this. And we should, I think 

8 in April, I think we have a current schedule of late 

9 April to have the Critical Mass Laboratory report 

10 out. I will work as best I can to try to get the 

11 other report out, but it's going to be tied up with 

12 the EPA release of those documents. And at the same 

13 time we will work the issues here with the post-'73 

14 tritium exposures. But we ought to be able to get 

15 a Work Group in sometime before the next Board 

16 meeting after this one coming up. 

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Try that again, 

18 what Board meeting?

19 MR. KATZ: Well, the next Board meeting 

20 is the summer, in July, so it sounds like we could 

21 have the Work Group work tied up before July, unless 

22 we have an unexpected bump in the road. Data 

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1 capture.

2 MEMBER MUNN: June is a good month.

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Let me 

4 understand the --- I've not been --- I don't know 

5 too much about the FBI raid, and that whole issue. 

6 But if I --- as I understand what you're saying, 

7 the FBI documents have been released to us.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we do have them 

9 now.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And they are also 

11 official.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And they have 

14 been gone over.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Does that mean 

17 that --- and there'll be a report on them.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it'll be all tied 

19 up in that data falsification, the data fabrication 

20 report, yes.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. So, there 

22 will be a White Paper coming out on this.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: These are two White 

4 Papers that we're producing, the data 

5 falsification, data fabrication, and a White Paper 

6 on the Critical Mass Laboratory.

7 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. And then 

8 SC&A will respond.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, yes, we'll 

10 respond.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: And you know the other 

12 nice thing is that SC&A has been involved with all 

13 the interviews in the process so, you know.

14 MR. KATZ: Can I ask this? I mean, if --

15 SC&A is behind the curtain just like you are in a 

16 sense, so is there any reason why -- is there 

17 anything holding you up from getting the paper to 

18 SC&A to review before, because the release by EPA 

19 doesn't really matter for what we do in-house?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't know. I'd have 

21 to speak to that internally.

22 MR. KATZ: I mean, it's all in-house.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. I think that --- I 

2 know that when that hold was put on those documents, 

3 we did not ---

4 MR. KATZ: Oh, you couldn't work on it 

5 either?

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: We couldn't work on it.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, I'm sorry. 

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, it becomes an 

9 issue, in fact ---

10 DR. NETON: We're not even supposed to 

11 have them.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we're not even 

13 supposed to have them. We wouldn't -- our 

14 contractor would ---

15 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's fine. I didn't 

16 understand that. I didn't understand that, so 

17 sorry.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: So, that's kind of the 

19 hold up.

20 MR. KATZ: Okay.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But the EPA is a 

22 release, but you have the documents.

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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: We have them but we're 

2 not ---

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: You're not 

4 looking at ---

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay, that's 

7 fine. Are there any other agencies beside EPA?

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: There's a couple of 

9 Department of Energy documents, again, that I don't 

10 think they're going to be an issue.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. So, 

12 basically, you'll give us reports in, what, April, 

13 and SC&A will be able to go over them by July.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: We've been involved in 

15 all the interviews, so I don't think there will be 

16 a very long review. I think we can turn it around 

17 relatively fast.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Oh, good. Okay. 

19 Excellent. 

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I want to say that 

21 the date for the Critical Mass is late April, 

22 because I don't want --- I know our contractor is 

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1 listening, and he hears us say April, and he's like, 

2 oh, gosh, you know, it's late April. 

3 MR. KATZ: It sounds like we could have 

4 a Work Group meeting in early June.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Early June, that 

7 sounds good. And remind me where we're meeting in 

8 July?

9 MR. KATZ: July, we don't know where 

10 we're meeting yet.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay, good. I'm 

12 glad, so that it's not my ignorance, it's that we 

13 don't have a place.

14 MR. KATZ: It's not. 

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: But we have a 

16 date.

17 (Simultaneous speaking.)

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: We have the date. 

19 That's fine. 

20 MR. KATZ: And we'll be talking about 

21 that at the Board meeting, where ---

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: We'll be presenting 

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1 our Argonne National Laboratory Evaluation Report.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Which?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Argonne National 

4 Laboratory, the West, out of Idaho. We will be 

5 presenting that in July. 

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, so we have talked about 

7 possibly going to Idaho again.

8 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Not Oak Ridge?

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes, we talked 

11 about that, too.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: So, that finishes 

13 that.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

15 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: And I --- it's 

16 ten of three. We do have petitioners, and I know 

17 that Ms. Barrie said that she wanted at least 

18 --- she needed at least 10 minutes. But my feeling 

19 is let's go and let's not break. Terrie, are you 

20 on the line?

21 MS. BARRIE: Yes, I'm here. I'm on, and 

22 I won't need 10 minutes because I gave part of my 

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1 presentation earlier today.

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

3 MS. BARRIE: And I thank you for that, 

4 and I thank you for this opportunity on behalf of 

5 myself and the petitioner, [identifying 

6 information redacted]. 

7 I want to start backwards, I guess, with 

8 the last discussion about the Criticality Lab. And 

9 I had just located this, LaVon, and I apologize for 

10 not sending this to you, either, but it's been 

11 within the past week I've located things. And I will 

12 send it to you, but it's a document from Lawrence 

13 Livermore, and I'll just quote this one thing. You 

14 can consider this when you're finalizing your White 

15 Paper.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

17 MS. BARRIE: It says, an example 

18 --- they're talking about a loss of Rocky Flats 

19 documents, especially for the Criticality Lab. It 

20 says, an example of such a loss might be that which 

21 took place upon the closing of Rocky Flats 

22 facility. Rocky Flats had assembled a substantial 

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1 collection of criticality safety documents. Dr. 

2 Rothe has noted that he retained a few of the less 

3 well distributed internal documents in his 

4 personal collection. Many others, evidently, had 

5 been destroyed or dispersed and are now unavailable 

6 to be scanned. So, everything that you have there 

7 may not be everything that was available.

8 Which gets into, I guess, the 400 boxes 

9 at Los Alamos. You had mentioned, or there was a 

10 discussion about whether it's worth going and 

11 taking a look to see if there's any documentation 

12 on magnesium-thorium plates. And I really 

13 appreciate everything that --- all the 

14 investigation everyone has been involved with. The 

15 reason I sent that little tidbit was because it was 

16 a lot more specific information than -- other than 

17 Dow Chemical --- yes, Dow Chemical shipped 

18 truckloads of this plate. And I really do 

19 appreciate that you took it seriously and tried to 

20 ascertain, you know, documentation for that. 

21 But I think because of that and this 

22 document about, you know, records being destroyed 

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1 for the Criticality Lab, that you might want to 

2 consider exploring those 400 boxes. There might be 

3 documentation that would support the position of 

4 the petitioners about, you know, policies not being 

5 followed, procedures not being followed, things of 

6 that nature. So, I'd just like to throw that out 

7 to everyone.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Terrie, I will 

9 ----just to add, you know, we did go look at those 

10 documents at Los Alamos with respect to exposures 

11 from neptunium, U-233, the tritium. We did go out 

12 and look at a number of those documents.

13 With respect to policies, I'm not sure 

14 that we necessarily looked at them on that scale, 

15 but I did want to let you know we did look at it 

16 from the other ---

17 MS. BARRIE: Okay, great. Thank you. 

18 Yes, when it comes to the policies and procedures, 

19 it's common knowledge that, you know, just because 

20 it was written down doesn't mean it was followed. 

21 There was, you know, the philosophy of production 

22 over safety, so there was a lot of corners that were 

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1 cut. Like I said, it is common knowledge.

2 I don't know how you can prove that, 

3 though, other than the testimony of the workers. 

4 And when it comes to the testimony of the workers, 

5 what seems to have been ignored so far when it comes 

6 to tritium is how frequently the tritium alarms 

7 went off. If you remember, there was a focus group 

8 back in, what, 2012, where they discussed tritium, 

9 and there was testimony from one worker I remember 

10 especially, where they would have to hold their 

11 breath to go through this one corridor. The 

12 petitioner actually mentioned in an interview that 

13 there was an alarm that went off frequently in the 

14 building that he --- or a room that he had to go 

15 into. So, I would not discount their testimony. 

16 They were there. They knew what happened. Just 

17 because you can't necessarily find it documented 

18 doesn't mean it didn't happen. 

19 And when it comes to --- yes, John Mauro 

20 mentioned about the location of the bubblers. And 

21 I tend to think that he might be right, that the 

22 bubblers may not have always been located at the 

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1 down draft tables. The affidavit that was submitted 

2 with the petition, the original petition, the 

3 worker mentioned he was at a down draft table and 

4 he drilled into the site return, and the drilling, 

5 drilling too far, obviously, and tritium was 

6 released. He had a nasal smear. There is no record 

7 of a nasal smear, nor did the worker, as far as I 

8 know, have a bioassay or a urine sample taken for 

9 tritium. So, you know, we might want to take another 

10 look at that part of it, too.

11 As for neptunium, I received an email

12 from, I think it's the [identifying information 

13 redacted] that you interviewed, and that's 

14 mentioned in the White Paper. She came back with 

15 a little bit more information today after the 

16 discussion, and I'd like to pass that on to you. 

17 Excuse me. She's talking about ----she 

18 got the impression that only five experimental 

19 operators are being considered as being possibly 

20 exposed, but that would have been --- there would 

21 have been a whole lot more workers. She says, and 

22 I'm quoting, the ion exchange, calciner, and other 

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1 process equipment used in Room 114 and Room 149. 

2 These are the two large processing rooms where many 

3 other workers would have been present around those 

4 special operator people. She's going to go check 

5 a little bit more to see if she can get further 

6 information for you. 

7 And she also says that she believes the 

8 process, the neptunium process was conducted out 

9 on the main floor using the same glove boxes and 

10 equipment used daily by others, and perhaps by the 

11 special operators because it was a relatively small 

12 batch operation, and a slightly different process, 

13 including extraction of the neptunium. 

14 And my last --- I have papers all over 

15 the place here. Wanda had asked about how metal 

16 tritides would be formed. And I'm not sure, but I 

17 remember reading in SC&A's report something about 

18 the hydride process. And there was a hydride 

19 process at Rocky Flats, and I believe it was in 

20 Building 779. So, that might be another avenue for 

21 investigation or exploration to see if metal 

22 tritides were there. And I think that's all I have 

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1 for today, and I thank you very much for allowing 

2 these comments and for everybody's hard work on 

3 this.

4 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Very good. Thank 

5 you. Thank you. Was there --- on the neptunium, was 

6 there --- the comment was five experimental 

7 operators. Was that the reference to the five 

8 people whose numbers were sampled out of the larger 

9 group of people who worked?

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, that was just the 

11 project engineer in charge of that process 

12 identified that there were five experimental 

13 operators that worked on that.

14 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. 

15 DR. NETON: We won't restrict the dose 

16 reconstruction to five operators.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right.

18 DR. NETON: Anyone who worked with 

19 plutonium will get the dose.

20 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Yes, yes. Okay.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, I think that's 

22 the difference, that we're still talking about 

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1 plutonium, neptunium being ---

2 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay, good. Well, 

3 again, thank you. Are there other folks from the 

4 petitioners to speak?

5 MS. PADILLA: Yes, sir. My name is Judy 

6 Padilla, and I have just submitted another 

7 --- myself and other people have just submitted 

8 another SEC petition just in the past week or so. 

9 And I would just like to make one short statement, 

10 if you would allow it.

11 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Surely.

12 MS. PADILLA: In 1993, Federal Judge 

13 Sherman Finesilver approved the release of the 

14 complete grand jury report for Rocky Flats as a 

15 matter of history. Rockwell International pled 

16 guilty of the environmental crimes, as well as 

17 falsification of paperwork, and paid an $18.5 

18 million fine. Nevertheless, NIOSH used information 

19 submitted by Rockwell as viable data when 

20 calculating the Probability of Causation for all 

21 radiation exposures. NIOSH and DOE, DOL allowed an 

22 admitted liar and criminal company to submit 

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1 documentation which was very possibly tainted, 

2 incorrect, and/or tampered with. 

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

4 MS. PADILLA: Criminal actions, 

5 fraudulent and illegal activities, and the 

6 omission of the truth in paperwork and deeds is 

7 proof that Rockwell could not be trusted to give 

8 accurate information concerning nuclear workers' 

9 radiation exposure; yet, NIOSH used only data 

10 provided by them as the basis to perform the 

11 analysis for workers' radiation dose. Can flawed, 

12 incorrect, or missing data be used in any 

13 scientific documentation? The grand jury report 

14 has shown us that any data which was provided by 

15 Rockwell International and EG&G should be negated. 

16 If you haven't read this grand jury report, I would 

17 suggest that you read it. It is now on the internet.

18 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. And that's 

19 in your petition.

20 MS. PADILLA: Yes, sir.

21 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, we 

22 will certainly have to consider the petition.

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1 MS. PADILLA: Yes, sir. And please 

2 consider the Colorado Federal District Court 

3 report of the Federal District Special Grand Jury, 

4 number 89-2. And this is as of January 24th, 1992. 

5 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: January 24th, 

6 '92. Okay.

7 MS. PADILLA: It's a complete redacted 

8 version of the grand jury report through 1993. 

9 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, thank 

10 you for that, and that's an important thing that 

11 we have to consider, and we will.

12 MS. PADILLA: Thank you.

13 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Thank you. Any 

14 further petitioner comments? Are there -- let me 

15 ask Ted. Can folks from the general public comment?

16 MR. KATZ: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: If someone from 

18 the general public is there, not a petitioner, and 

19 wants time, please so request. Hearing none, I 

20 think it's time to close our Working Group meeting. 

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right.

22 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. So, is 

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1 there anything ---

2 MEMBER MUNN: We'll try to ---

3 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Right. 

4 MR. KATZ: It's a little premature, I 

5 think, to establish a date.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

7 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay. So, Bill, 

8 anything? Wanda, anything to say?

9 MEMBER MUNN: Nothing here.

10 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

11 MEMBER FIELD: No, nothing here. Good.

12 CHAIRMAN KOTELCHUCK: Very good. So, we 

13 stand adjourned.

14 MR. KATZ: Yes, thanks everybody on the 

15 line. Take care.

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

17 went off the record at 3:06 p.m.)

18

19

20

21

22

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1

2

3

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