This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford 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

Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group & De 

Soto Working Group

Thursday

October 15, 2020

The Work Group convened via Video Teleconference, 

at 10:30 a.m. EDT, Phillip Schofield, Chair, presiding.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford 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 

Present: 

Phillip Schofield, Chair

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

R. William Field, Member

Also Present: 

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Nancy Adams, NIOSH Contractor

Terrie Barrie

Bob Barton, SC&A

D'Lanie Blaze

Rose Gogliotti, SA&A

Milton Gordon, SC&A

Lara Hughes, DCAS

Jenny Naylor, HHS OGC

Chuck Nelson, DCAS

Lavon Rutherford, DCAS

John Stiver, SC&A

Tim Taulbee, DCAS
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

3 

Contents

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 Santa Susana Field 

Laboratory Work Group & De Soto Working Group 

Thursday October 15, 2020 1

Welcome and roll-call/introductions ............. 4

Area IV SEC Petition #235 ......................... 5

EPA and TRUMP-S documents ................... 23

De Soto Avenue SEC Petition #246 ........... 37

Discussion of Petitioner Submissions ......... 59

Review of Records from Boeing Incident Data 

Base...................................................... 75

SC&A 2020 White Paper........................... 87

Petitioner Comments ............................... 89

Adjourn ............................................... 107
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

4 

Proceedings

(10:32 a.m.) 

Welcome and roll-call/introductions

Dr. Roberts: Welcome to the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health. This is the Santa 

Susana Field Laboratory Area IV and Desoto Working 

Group. I'm Rashaun Roberts. I'm the Designated 

Federal Official for the Advisory Board. Before we get 

into the Group's business, let's start with roll call and 

address conflicts of interest. And I'll go ahead and 

speak on behalf of the members of the Board who sit 

on this Working Group.

Really in order for them to be on the Working Group, 

they cannot have conflicts. And with that, let me do 

roll call starting with our Chair and go in alphabetical 

order.

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: Before I hand the floor over to Phil who 

chairs the Work Group, Phil Schofield, in order to 

keep everything running as smoothly as possible, and

so that everyone speaking can be clearly understood, 

please make sure that you mute your phone if you're 

on the phone, unless, of course, you need to speak. 

If you don't have a mute button on the phone, you're 

going to need -- (telephonic interference) --- there is 

an example. You need to mute your phone. 

If you're on Zoom, the mute button is in the lower 

left hand corner of the screen. If you're on the 

telephone press *6 to mute and *6 again to get 

yourself off mute. Okay, so if everybody could 

periodically check and make sure that you're on 

mute.

The agenda and the presentations that are relevant 

and other materials that are relevant to today's 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

5

materials can, of course, be found on the 

NIOSH/DCAS website. All of the materials were sent 

to the Board members and other staff prior to the 

meeting. 

You'll see that today is a pretty full agenda. It can be 

difficult to know how long the meeting will run and 

that said, I did want to let everyone know that due 

to commitments that I have, we'll need to end the 

meeting at 5 o'clock Eastern, if it runs that long. We 

can, of course, schedule another meeting to cover 

any items that we were unable to cover today.

And also, if any of the Board members need to sign 

off before the meeting is over, if you would just 

please let us know.

So with that, let's go ahead and get started and I 

will turn the floor over to Phil.

Chair Schofield: This is Phil Schofield. As Shaun said, 

I have no conflict. There will be a chance for the 

public to comment later on. If you please hold your 

questions until the presentations have been 

presented, we'd appreciate that. And I assume Lara 

is going to be the first one presenting for NIOSH.

Dr. Hughes: Yes. Let me just try to share my screen.

Member Field: I see Henry is on now.

Member Anderson: Yes. Sorry to be a little late.

Dr. Hughes: Okay, can you see the first screen and 

presentation load?

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

Chair Schofield: You're good to go, Lara.

Area IV SEC Petition #235

Dr. Hughes: Okay. So this is the NIOSH presentation 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

6

for SEC-00235, Area IV for the Santa Susana Field 

Laboratory. This is a presentation that's based on a 

White Paper that we sent to the Advisory Board and 

the Work Group in February of this year. And it was 

meant to be a summary of the efforts that were done 

for this petition because the discussion has been 

going on for several years and there has been a lot 

of discussion back and forth, a lot of papers 

produced. It was intended to be a summary of the 

effort and hopefully, it helps the Work Group in the 

decision-making process.

So I'll give you a brief overview and also talk about 

the current status of the efforts and some petitioner 

submissions we have reviewed.

And we'll have questions and discussion.

Yes, was there a question?

Dr. Roberts: I'm sorry, Lara. I'm hearing something 

in the background. I don't know if anyone else can 

hear it, but again, just to remind people to please get 

on mute. Thank you.

Dr. Hughes: I can sort of hear myself talking in the 

background which is very distracting, but --

Dr. Roberts: That's what it is. Somehow your mic is 

picking up you again.

Dr. Hughes: Okay, I'm not sure what I can do about 

that. I can try to switch to computer.

Dr. Taulbee: I think the feedback is coming from the 

person whose phone ends in 949. You can see that 

as you're speaking that box is lighting up to where 

that person is not on mute.

Dr. Roberts: So if you're on the phone, press *6 to 

mute or use your mute button. Thank you.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

7

Dr. Hughes: I think this is better now. Can you tell? 

I think it sounds better to me. So I'll keep going. Is 

that okay? All right.

So a little bit of background. We've all heard this 

before, but just a refresher, Area IV of the Santa 

Susana Field Laboratory is a site or part of a site that 

encompasses about 2,850 acres and is located in 

northwest of Los Angeles. Does this forward? Does 

the presentation forward for you?

Dr. Roberts: It hasn't, no.

Dr. Hughes: Oh, okay. 

Dr. Roberts: We're still on the main slide.

Dr. Hughes: Because mine does. I'm not sure. Let me 

just -- okay, here we go. I have two screens and 

they're both shared and I'm trying to decide which 

one is -- is this better? I apologize. Every time I do 

Zoom, it's different.

So the site is located about 30 miles northwest of Los 

Angeles. It is divided into four administrative and 

operational areas and they're called Area I through 

IV. 

Area IV is the area I've highlighted in blue in the 

upper left corner and that is about 290 acres. And 

that is the only site that is covered under this 

program because that's the site that had nuclear DOE 

operations that are termed eligible for the site. The 

site eligibility again, that's not done by NIOSH. That's 

done by DOE/DOL.

So the operations at Santa Susana, there were DOE 

operations from 1954 through 1988 and then 

remediation from 1988 through the present. The DOE 

operations consist of reactor testing and 

development and nuclear support operations, such as 

nuclear fuel fabrication, energy and non-nuclear 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

8

research and development, also, at the back end of 

the process, removal of fuel from reactors and the 

disposition thereof.

The remediation period consisted of the D&D of the 

structures and components, the characterization, 

treatment, packaging, and temporary storage of 

radioactive and mixed waste.

As for the SEC petitions for the site, there are four. 

The current one is SEC-00235. This petition has been 

presented to the Board in 2017, I believe, and is 

currently with the Board and NIOSH has not 

recommended a Class to be added to the SEC. 

NIOSH's conclusion was that dose reconstruction was 

feasible for the evaluated period from 1991 through 

1993.

There are three prior SEC Classes that have all been 

added to the SEC. And those are all based on one 

form or another of internal dose reconstruction and 

feasibility which results in the entire operational 

period up until 1988 being in the SEC Class.

So NIOSH has produced a number of documents 

along with this petition. First was the SEC-00235 

Evaluation Report. That was published in May of 

2017. When this Evaluation Report was presented to 

the Board, it was handed to SC&A who did the review 

of the Evaluation Report and raised a few issues that 

we did not address in this report. One was it was 

suggested that we look at the air sample data for this 

evaluated period to rule out that there was some 

elevated aerosols, to demonstrate that the air sample 

results were in line with the remainder of the 

remediation period. Also, there was a desire to see 

an analysis, a detailed analysis, of the status of 

operations that involved thorium and americium 

during the remediation period. And this was 

addressed by NIOSH by publishing two White Papers 

that were the topics I just highlighted and those were 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

9

presented in November of 2018. Those again were 

presented to the Board -- the Advisory Board and the 

Work Group and they have been discussed.

And then in February of this year, we presented a 

write up that summarized the discussions so far. And 

that's what we're kind of discussing here now. 

So SC&A produced a bunch of documents as well. So 

first they did the review of the SEC-00235 Evaluation 

Report. The second report was an analysis of the 

remaining internal dose topics related to the 

evaluation. That was SC&A doing a review of these 

two NIOSH White Papers, the White Paper on air data 

and the White Paper on americium and thorium 

operations.

And then there was another report issued that looked 

at some petitioner-specific concerns regarding SEC00235. I think that was the evaluation of the Boeing

Incident Database that was submitted by the 

petitioner. That was something around 1500 

incidents and occurrence reports that were looked at.

And then also, SC&A produced a document to -- there 

was another review of documentation provided by 

the petitioner and that report was issued in 2019 in 

November. And just last week, SC&A issued another 

report -- there was another review of petitionersubmitted information.

So there have been five prior discussions before the 

Advisory Board for this petition, starting in August 

2017 and the last one was in August of 2019. Each 

time this was brought up, there were more questions 

raised by Board members and the petitioner and 

usually we receive additional documents by the 

petitioner that we review and then report back to the 

Board or the Advisory Board, the Work Group or the 

Advisory Board.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

10

And so there have been three prior Work Group 

discussions. The last one was in March 2019 where 

SC&A presented the review of the NIOSH White 

Papers.

So the current effort on the NIOSH side of SEC-00235 

and Area IV of Santa Susana overall is as follows. 

There are several outstanding issues related to 

internal and external co-exposure model. That is 

something that we are dealing with many of the sites 

that we are looking at under this program and that 

we have changed the criteria that are used to develop 

these models. So the existing co-exposure models for 

Santa Susana will also have to be reviewed and that 

hopefully should address some of the outstanding 

issues that are still on the issues matrix. SC&A has 

reviewed the co-exposure models for Santa Susana 

several years ago and there were still some 

outstanding issues. And those will be addressed when 

these models are reviewed.

There's also TBD update outstanding. We typically do 

a TBD update after SEC issues have been resolved at 

the site. The TBD itself is a summary document. It is 

not all we use for dose reconstruction, so the fact that 

a TBD document is outdated or somewhat older does 

not preclude us from doing dose reconstruction. What 

happens if we come across a claim that is -- has 

particular research needs to address that the dose 

exposure scenario, then what will happen if the dose 

reconstruction team will actually go and do research, 

research the documents that we have in our 

document database, so the TBD alone is the only 

document that is used for dose reconstructions, far 

from it.

So the current -- and now to the current effort that 

actually is directly related to SEC-00235 is the 

development of the dose reconstruction model using 

a breathing zone and general air data during the 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

11

remediation period. This is something that came out 

of the Work Group discussion for SEC-00235 and 

NIOSH has committed to doing this. 

And when we started looking through our database, 

we realized that we did not actually target breathing 

zone and general air data during the remediation 

period, during our prior data capture, just because -

- it was not the top tier of data. We usually look at 

bioassay data, things like that. 

Collecting air data is not typically done just because 

it's a very large effort to collect and catalog that type 

of data. So we decided we needed to capture this 

data. You'll see some materials that were not 

previously targeted. This data is available actually at 

the Cincinnati records center. However, when this 

effort was commencing, due to the close down, due 

to the current situation with COVID-19, so we cannot 

go and do data capture. And they also cannot do this 

for us. So this effort is currently on hold and it will 

commence as soon as it's possible to do so.

Also in this paper, what we did was some clarification 

of recurring issues or issues that have been made in 

the past that we did not address during Board 

discussions or Work Group discussions. 

And one thing I'd like to clarify for Board and Work 

Group members is the data access, that all parties 

that are involved in the decision-making process of 

this SEC petition and others which have access to all 

the database systems that are used to store relevant 

information such as the Site Research Database, the 

Claims Database, the SEC Document Database, all of 

this is available to every Board member and SC&A. 

NIOSH staff are available to help if something is not 

clear or cannot be found, NIOSH staff can facilitate 

search and access if needed.

The public website of NIOSH publishes the data, the 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

12

documents that NIOSH releases. However, those are 

often redacted because of the requirements of the 

Privacy Act. So if only those documents are 

considered, there will be some issues with not 

knowing who those are from because author names 

may have been redacted, especially when it comes to 

things like interviews. The interviewee name will not 

be on the publicly-available document. However, it is 

available in the SEC database or the Site Research 

Database. So if the Board or SC&A has questions 

about who a particular interview is from, they can 

contact NIOSH and we'd be able to help finding the 

unredacted version.

Again, the Area IV Site Profile, this is a somewhat 

outdated document. The main documents that deal 

with internal and external data are from 2010, so 

they do need updating at some point. However, just 

because the document is outdated, does not mean 

that the data is not available from other sources. 

Also, keep in mind that we're looking at a time frame 

starting in 1954 for some of these claims. So 

outdated is a somewhat relative term.

And there was another recurring discussion point 

regarding the NIOSH White Paper on air sample data. 

The issue is the granularity of the air sample data and 

this is something that NIOSH has addressed with the 

Work Group before this effort was started. However, 

it also has been an issue that has been raised and 

that we have not been able to come to a satisfactory 

conclusion. 

The issue here is that the air data analysis that was 

done for the NIOSH White Paper is using the 

quarterly averages reported in the quarterly reports. 

So if you take a quarterly average, and average it 

over a year, you end up with smoothing out the data, 

meaning you lose granularity and you would 

potentially miss a localized, very high sample by 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

13

doing this. 

However, for this White Paper, the desire was to go 

back and just get an overview of what the data looks 

like during this time. And it was not intended to be 

an effort to go and collect and analyze all available 

air data during this time. It would be a very, very 

large effort. It was okayed by the Work Group that 

we just use the quarterly reports. However, this has 

also been an issue that has been brought up over and 

over again as a problem as to why we cannot accept 

this data. So I'd just like to point out that this is 

something we've pointed out before we did the effort 

and now after we've done it, we could repeatedly --

I guess repeatedly brought up as a problem. 

So the next segment is the petitioner submissions. 

So since the Evaluation Report was presented to the 

Board, several more documents have been submitted 

in support of this SEC. There have been about 18 

documents or collection of documents totaling about 

1,700 pages of information. It has been reviewed by 

NIOSH and placed in the appropriate data collection 

database. 

There's also something called the Boeing Incident 

Database which is a collection of about 1500 incident 

and occurrence files that we reviewed and uploaded 

if we didn't already have them.

And then there was some additional documents that 

were submitted in June and August of 2020. This was 

new information related to SEC-00235 and SEC00246, about 29 pages of documentation and also 

Worker Affidavit. 

SC&A has been tasked with a review of this new 

information in July 2020 during the Board call. When 

reviewing this, all the entirety of this additional 

information, NIOSH has not identified information 

that would change the conclusion of SEC-00235 or 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

14

SEC-00246. 

So that concludes the NIOSH presentation on SEC00235 and I'll turn it over to discussion.

Member Beach: Lara, this is Josie. As I was reading 

that report, first of all, I appreciate the way you put 

it together. It was very helpful having the history all 

in one spot.

The question I had was on the last thing we were 

talking about, the air sample data, the quarterly 

review. I know the Work Group okayed that, but then 

when we got to the Full Board discussion, correct me 

if I'm wrong, isn't that when we had more questions 

that came up about using that data?

Dr. Hughes: Yes. It's been -- there have been several 

questions. That's true, yes. That's correct.

Member Beach: Have we come up with a way to 

resolve that within the Full Board? I know the Work 

Group said it was okay, but then it was questioned. 

And I don't remember if we've come up with a 

resolution for that discussion topic, because I suspect 

it will come up again if we don't come to some 

agreement.

Dr. Hughes: Yes, I do not think it has been resolved. 

No.

Member Beach: Okay.

Mr. Barton: Well, if I might, just to add a little bit of 

background to that. The whole discussion was about 

this approximately two-year period in which the site 

was using a vendor for the bioassays, called Controls 

for Environmental Pollution. And it was found out that 

they weren't a very good vendor. There were 

falsification issues. So that was really the 

qualification criteria for SEC-00235.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

15

So one of the things we were trying to validate was 

can we use a co-exposure model based on 

operational data, so that would be prior to 1989. Can 

we use that co-exposure data to cover this period in 

which we just simply can't use the bioassay data. And 

then again, that was in the early '90s. I believe it was 

mid-1991 to mid-1993.

So one of the things we thought of was, well, let's 

look at some of the general air and breathing zone 

sample data that we have in these quarterly reports 

and let's compare the operational period to the 

residual period of data to see can we use the 

operational bioassay data which is acceptable to 

reconstruct doses during that period when we just 

simply can't trust the bioassay. 

And this is where, as you point out, Josie, the Work 

Group okayed it, but in discussions with the full 

Board, and as Dr. Hughes pointed out, the granularity 

of the data was questioned because all we had was 

quarterly averages and quarterly maximums.

So I mean really, there's really two main issues under 

discussion for SEC-00235. This question of the twoyear period when we can't use the bioassay data and 

the other question is how do we construct doses to 

americium and thorium during the residual period for 

D&D operations and waste management and the like. 

And they're both really tied to air sampling data. 

The proposed path forward, as again, Doctor, you've 

pointed out, is to basically go and capture a lot of this 

breathing zone data. So as part of that effort, I mean 

I see them as both issues joined together in that we 

could probably do a better job and have more 

granularity to the air sampling data to give us better 

confidence that co-exposure from the operational 

period could be applied during the residual period and 

also to develop a co-exposure model for americium 

and thorium based on those residual period of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

16

breathing those samples for workers who are actually 

in there dismantling gloves boxes and the like. So 

hope that helped out.

Member Beach: That does help out. So let me clarify. 

Capturing the data is something that we may 

consider at this point.

Dr. Hughes: Yes, we do. And we're actually in the 

process of doing that. We can't currently. So as soon 

as the record center is telling us that we can come 

and collect data this will proceed.

Member Beach: Thanks.

Chair Schofield: Anybody else?

Member Anderson: Any outstanding data issue right 

now capturing that data?

Dr. Hughes: I'm sorry. Could you repeat the 

question?

Member Anderson: Is that the one outstanding datarelated issue we now have?

Dr. Hughes: Yes. It's a large one, but it is outstanding 

and the reason we can't go right now to collect this 

data is the record center is closed for visitors.

Chair Schofield: Any estimate how long that will take 

once you finally get access?

Dr. Hughes: I'm not sure.

Chair Schofield: How much time you will need?

Dr. Hughes: It's probably, I would say maybe a week 

or two of data collection and then it needs to be 

analyzed and input. So we're looking at months, 

sure.

Member Anderson: Do you have any sense of how 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

17

much data is there and how many boxes?

Dr. Hughes: Not really. I know they did quite a bit of 

air sampling, so there is a lot there. So I hope we're 

looking at a relatively reasonable time frame, so 

hopefully, it's, you know -- it's not something we 

normally do a lot, just because this is a fairly modern 

era and we tend to focus on a different type of 

bioassay data, urine bioassay or whole body counts. 

That type of thing.

Member Field: For your quarterly data, you don't 

even have any information how many measurements 

were collected during those periods I assume then?

Dr. Hughes: It is reported, yes.

Member Field: It is?

Dr. Hughes: In some cases, yes, if you look at the 

quarterly reports. It may be there. It may not be 

there. It just depends. I think that it reports on both 

measurements for those averages, yes. I'd have to 

go back. It's been a while since I looked at it.

Member Field: Yes.

Chair Schofield: Anybody else have any questions?

Mr. Barton: Because of reports that we have in hand 

were, again, quarterly summaries by the Health and 

Safety Department, again, the granularity wasn't 

necessarily there to have the confidence from the 

Board that we can properly bound the doses for this 

residual period. 

Again, I think that the path forward is there because 

part of the NIOSH's path forward is going to collect 

data anyway so that we can develop co-exposure 

intake for americium and thorium. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

18

Again, SEC-00234 was based on americium and 

thorium and so now we'd be talking about potential 

for exposure during D&D operations and again waste 

management, but we don't have necessarily the 

primary bioassay data which is preferable, so we 

don't have urinalysis or people monitoring to be able 

to use that to reconstruct the doses which is why 

we're taking this alternate route or at least looking 

into it to make sure it's feasible of using breathing 

zone data for again the workers who are actually in 

there doing the D&D work and the like.

Again, the two issues are tied together and I'm not 

sure we'll know how much data there is until the 

record center is open and we can go and capture it.

Member Beach: Sorry, Bob. I guess one of the 

questions, do we have any sense of when the record 

center will be open? 

Are you hearing anything, Lara? Other things are 

starting to open up quite a bit.

Dr. Hughes: I have not heard anything recently. I can 

check, but they know that we are looking and they 

have been very cooperative in the past, so the -- our 

ORAU Team, they have a very good rapport with the 

people over there and they do know that we're 

waiting. So I've assumed that as soon as it was 

possible for them to accommodate us that we would 

hear from them. I think that the ORAU Team checks 

periodically. I have not had a conversation with them 

in the last month or so, so I don't know.

Member Beach: Understand, thanks.

Chair Schofield: Does anyone from SC&A have any 

comment on that? 

Mr. Barton: Well, I think the path forward is there. 

We need to go and look at and capture this breathing 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

19

zone data. And as part of that, I think it might be just 

a follow-on that we might be able to gain more 

insight into what was part of the granularity of the air 

sampling data during the operational period as well, 

which might shore up some of the concerns about 

using the co-exposure model which again, during the 

operational period, the co-exposure model which 

covers plutonium, uranium, and fission products, is 

all based on actual bioassay data. 

So the question is can we use that for these residual 

operations. We did a comparison using the quarterly 

averages and the quarterly maximums. As I recall, 

there were orders of magnitude difference between 

the two values, the operational period being 

obviously much higher, logically much higher. But 

again, the granularity wasn't necessarily there 

because all we had was these sort of higher level 

summary reports. 

So I think the path forward is there to resolve these 

issues. It's just a question of when we can go and 

access the data, whatever data is available and I 

guess it's in Cincinnati.

I think the path forward is there. We just have to wait 

to see what we can find and what we can formulate 

as far as co-exposure intakes.

Chair Schofield: So I've got a question on the residual 

period. The monitoring for that, was that done on a 

daily basis? Did they have room air monitors or did 

they only bring equipment in when they had people 

working in the area?

Mr. Barton: Honestly, I don't want to shoot from the 

hip here because I don't think we know. I don't think 

we know until we can go and actually look through 

what the records were that went into creating these, 

again, they were quarterly Health Physics, Health and 

Safety Department reports, so we don't know 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

20

necessarily all the areas that they had perhaps to 

continuous air monitoring in versus really we'd be 

interested mostly in breathing zones. But I don't 

think we have information --

Dr. Hughes: We do have the number of general air 

samples that we're using. For example, the hot lab 

facility, which is kind of the -- what we consider the 

bounding scenario, I think it's listed in the quarterly 

reports. The breathing zone, of course, that was only 

on when they were actively doing stuff. So we have 

a little bit of information in the quarterly reports. We 

kind of know -- have a rough idea of what should be 

there, so hopefully we can actually find it.

Chair Schofield: So how is the breathing zone actually 

monitored, rather than the area monitoring?

Dr. Hughes: The breathing zone was -- they had the 

sampler. I think it was a lapel sampler and they were 

wearing it as they were doing the dismantling work. 

And I do not have any specifics of air flow and things 

like that. I think we have the total number of hours 

they were worn and things like that. I'd have to go 

back and look to give you the specifics, and then the 

general air data were just general air data. I think 

they were 24 hour -- maybe weekly. I'm not sure. I'd 

have to go back and look at the quarterly reports.

Chair Schofield: One other quick question. Were all 

personnel working in there just given those PUPs 

(phonetic) or breathing zone monitors?

Dr. Hughes: The people that would go in to do the

work, the dismantling work, for example, things like 

dismantling the glove boxes from the hot lab, yes, 

they were given breathing zone sampling. We're 

looking at small -- those were like teams. It was like 

a couple of workers, that type of thing from what I've 

seen.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

21

Chair Schofield: Okay. Thanks.

Mr. Barton: I think it would be not -- I don't want to 

say incident based, but maybe job based. I don't 

think, or at least I don't believe, that all of the 

workers wore breathing zones all the time.

Dr. Hughes: No, no. They did not.

Chair Schofield: Based on what the job was. So I 

mean it's going to come down to when we see what 

the data was for these different jobs, how we put that 

all together to make sure we come up with a 

bounding intake estimate for the residual records.

Member Field: I just had a quick question of that 

breathing zone monitoring. So you need that air data 

for the residual period for americium and thorium, 

right? Is that's what's actually measured then? Or is 

it some --

Dr. Hughes: No, it's a gross, it's a gross 

measurement.

Member Field: It's a gross measurement. Okay. 

Mr. Barton: So I imagine any sort of co-exposure 

intake would basically take that gross measurement 

and assume it's entirely americium or entirely 

thorium, whichever one is going to be bounding for 

the claim. I don't want to speak -- there is no coexposure model put together yet because we haven't 

captured the data yet, so I imagine it would be 

something along those lines.

Chair Schofield: Would SC&A like to make any 

comments?

Mr. Barton: Not beyond what really what we've 

discussed. I guess a couple of minor comments. 

Lara, you put up a slide about sort of on-going 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

22

concerns that included access to the data and let me 

just thank you for sort of holding my hand through 

figuring out how the SEC viewer works and I do want 

to say that you've actually been very responsive to 

all my questions that I've sent over.

With regard to the TBD, again, I don't really want to 

speak for NIOSH, but I know being involved, at least 

personally with the dose reconstruction audits, I 

think it has to be understood that TBD isn't 

specifically binding to have dose reconstruction 

performed. It's much more a fluid process than that. 

And as new information comes in, new methods are 

developed, it might not be necessarily reflected in the 

TBD, but they're in use in actual up to date dose 

reconstruction. 

I don't know if NIOSH wants to expound on that a bit 

more, but I think that needs to get out there because 

certainly I was under the misconception that the TBD 

is binding until it's updated, but as it turns out, the 

process is much more fluid than that and metrics are 

constantly being updated with what's referred to as 

a site-specific template which are essentially the DR 

methods that are being used for claims as they come 

in which are constantly being modified. So again, it's 

a much more fluid process that are being tied to a 

TBD that could be as much as ten years old. I just 

wanted to add in that point for clarification.

I think that's all from SC&A. 

Milton, I think I see you out there. I don't know if you 

had anything you wanted to add based on the NIOSH 

presentation. 

A lot of these topics are going to come up again with 

SC&A's presentation regarding Area IV, so there 

certainly will be an opportunity to ask more questions 

regarding this stuff.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

23

Mr. Gordon: Yes, I don't have anything further. Like 

you said, there's going to be some overlap and a little 

bit of reiteration as we go through our presentation. 

I don't have anything else.

Member Beach: I wonder if Phil is on mute.

Member Field: That's what I was thinking, too.

Chair Schofield: Yes, Josie, I was.

Member Beach: It looked like you were trying to talk.

Chair Schofield: I was. I was just asking if anybody 

else has any comments before we move on to the 

TRUMP-S and the EPA Documents.

Bob, are you presenting for the SC&A?

Mr. Barton: Yes, let me go ahead and share my 

screen here. Okay, hopefully, everybody can see the 

title flag for SC&A's material here.

Member Beach: Yes, I sure can.

EPA and TRUMP-S documents

Mr. Barton: Okay, great. Alright, so we have one 

presentation that's up on the Board website, but it 

actually covers four different reports, memorandum, 

and White Papers that SC&A has put together over 

the last year and a half or so. And so we put it 

together based sort of in order of the agenda. As I 

move along here, these are the four items that we're 

hoping to cover today.

The first one is very important to SEC-00235 and it 

concerns the TRUMP-S Program and also a 2012 EPA 

Characterization Study. These were brought up by 

CORE Advocacy and SC&A was directed to take a 

close look and to see how they might be applicable 

to the feasibility to reconstruct doses again after 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

24

1988 during this residual period.

These are sort of the four items and we'll go through 

the first one, I think, and then I believe NIOSH has 

the next item. But anyway, the first item again, 

relates to this TRUMP-S Program which stands for 

Transuranic Management by Pyropartitioning 

Separation. It's a mouthful. But anyway, this 

memorandum is also available on the DCAS website. 

It's titled Evaluation of Petitioner-Specific Concerns 

SEC-00235. And again it was mainly centered around 

other operations going on at Area IV after the SEC 

period that's currently been established that would 

preclude dose reconstruction.

It is really based on a set of reports that were 

performed for EPA in 2012 by a company called 

HydroGeologic which is out of New York surprisingly. 

But again, there's your Transuranic Management by 

Pyropartitioning - Separation. And what they were 

essentially doing was taking these transuranic 

elements and trying to figure out a way to stabilize 

them so that they could either be stored or perhaps 

later even reprocessed, but mostly just to make sure 

that they weren't such a hazard for internal doses.

And these sets of reports indicated that there might 

have been a 2-year period beginning in July of 1988 

that performed this work in Area IV which is 

obviously going to be of great concern because now 

you have transuranic doses that you have to be able 

to account for beyond what was already there from 

previous activities. So I mean absolutely they were 

doing a fuel decladding of spent fuel essentially, so 

you're going to have americium, you're going to have 

neptunium. We're going to have all these sort of 

nasty elements. That was the reason for SEC-00234 

which again was up through 1988. But if these 

activities were going on after that period, then that 

might obviously pose a problem from the feasibility 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

25

of dose reconstruction.

So these reports indicated, and again, they were put 

together for the EPA back in 2012 and it was 

essentially a paper study of historical documents to 

establish what might be in all these different site 

areas so that later on they can go and during further 

remediation activities sample and see what should 

we be looking for essentially in all these different 

areas in Area IV.

Now in TRUMP-S specifically, according to the 

documentation here, was planned to occur again 

beginning in July 1988 for two years in Building 4020, 

also known as T20 or the hot lab. But also support 

operations were supposed to occur in Building 4023 

which is essentially adjacent to the hot lab.

There were also 50 total areas specifically identified 

in this Historical Site Assessment that listed 

americium and thorium as a radionuclide of concern, 

meaning it might be there, not necessarily that it was 

there in an operational sense, but if you're going to 

go and sample it to figure out what you need to clean 

up, the 50 buildings in Area IV identified americium 

and thorium as potentially being there for future 

testing.

So we went in and we took a close look at again this 

Historical Site Assessment which was put together in 

2012 for EPA and let's figure out what's going on with 

this TRUMP-S research program, you know, did it 

happen essentially, and how does that affect any 

conclusions about feasibility of dose reconstruction. 

And that involved, basically what we did is we looked 

at the 2012 report and then we went and dug deeper 

into what references they were using and then we did 

further searches to see if we could find even more 

information to try to get a handle on whether this 

TRUMP-S is a real problem for Area IV.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

26

So there's sort of a time line here that we put 

together of the key documentation that really sort of 

laid out the story of whether this happened at Area 

IV or as we'll find out we eventually conclude most 

likely it did not actually happen in Area IV. And you'll 

see what I mean as we go through this. 

So the first document and these are sort of in 

chronological order was in October 1988. And it was 

talking about revisions to the Area IV usage 

application so that they could conduct the TRUMP-S 

Program. And again, this is right in line with what we 

saw in that EPA document that in mid-1988 they 

were supposed to start the TRUMP-S Program. And 

so now we've gone in and we see that there's internal 

correspondence that we need to modify our 

applications to be able to do this.

In July of 1989, there were meeting notes essentially 

that talk about -- it was a planning meeting to 

validate the use of a glove box for this research work. 

You move into mid-1989, we believe this document 

was probably from August although it's actually 

undated. There's a handwritten note on it that --

basically '89, so that could be a date. It might be 

something else. But it talks about what are we going 

to do with the waste. And again, the important part 

of this the use of a future tense, the waste to be 

generated in late 1989 and early 1990. So this 

suggests to us that they still hadn't gotten started.

October 1989, they had what's called a test readiness 

review and again, this is all pre-planning stuff before 

we're actually -- before they were actually going to 

go in and do this research program at Area IV. Also 

in October 1989, there's internal correspondence 

talking about the necessary actions again before 

beginning the radioactive portion of the TRUMP-S 

program. So at this point, we still don't think it had 

gotten off the ground.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

27

In February 1990, there's a letter to the NRC for a 

license amendment to allow the TRUMP-S program to 

actually get started. So again, February 1990, we're 

still not going yet.

Also in February, there's correspondence that 

Rockwell was still awaiting permission from DOE to 

start up the test and that's in quotes because that's 

exactly how they put it. It also indicated that it likely 

going to be impractical to do TRUMP-S at Area IV and 

so they start looking for another site to essentially do 

this work at.

Here's really where the evidence comes down for me. 

Again, February 1990, you have a local newspaper 

article talking about public opposition to again --- a 

future tense -- the planned TRUMP-S project. 

Apparently, several people had actually filed a lawsuit 

to block the project from occurring at Area IV. A 

follow-up article in May of 1990, again, the TRUMP-S 

project which was originally scheduled to take place 

was relocated to the University of Missouri Research 

Reactor, otherwise known as MURR. 

In September 1993, you have D&D for Building 4023 

which was the location identified in the EPA report as 

possibly being used as a support location for TRUMPS research, but we could not actually find any specific 

isotopic analysis of those D&D operations. So it's sort 

of a dead end for us, unfortunately.

October 1994, there's a confirmatory survey of that 

Building 4023, again it's supposed to be a support 

facility for the hot lab. The building was cleared for 

unrestricted release. And in this one we did find soil 

samples taken, but they only analyzed them for the 

uranium and cesium and used that for what it is. They 

apparently were not concerned that there was 

transuranic material necessarily there.

And then you have February 1998, the State of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

28

California released the site for -- without any sort of 

radiological restriction.

So that's really the story on TRUMP-S. And I think the 

important ones there are the newspaper articles 

which really document that there was basically public 

outrage about trying to use the hot lab for this one 

last experiment using transuranic material and 

eventually they just decided well, we're going to 

move it -- we're going to do it in Missouri and we're 

not going to do it in Area IV. And I think that's really 

borne out by the fact that all these references, I 

mean they were really trying to boot up the program. 

They were trying to get it done. It's described as the 

one last hurrah for operations in the hot lab. And 

from our view, the evidence suggests that it just 

simply never got off the ground. And so they moved 

it to Missouri and they definitely did the project there.

Now also, as I mentioned, there were 50 buildings 

that were identified in the Historical Site Assessment, 

that's again that 2012 EPA document, that listed 

americium and/or thorium as a radionuclide of 

concern. Now you have to keep in mind that it fully 

acknowledged that americium and thorium would be 

there during that residual period. The real question 

that we're trying to ask ourselves is was there an 

operation going on beyond your typical D&D activities 

that again preclude or make it inexcusable to 

reconstruct doses.

So we reviewed all the information contained in those 

reports for the 50 buildings. In fact, in our report 

which again is posted on the website, we describe 

each building. In a lot of cases, these buildings had 

already been D&D and maybe a concrete slab there, 

but again, you have to understand the purpose of 

these Historical Site Assessments was to aid in future 

analyses, soil sampling, what have you, to decide if 

further remediation was necessary. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

29

And with this document review, they weren't actually 

out there measuring americium and thorium and 

saying it's here. They're saying it could potentially be 

there, just based on the historical activities at Area 

IV which obviously, again, that was really the 

impetus for SEC-00234 up through 1988 was the fact 

that we can't reconstruct doses to the operational use 

of thorium and americium. They just said Attachment 

A contains a pretty thorough table of each of the 50 

buildings in describing what they did historically and 

why they were selected in this report as having 

americium and thorium as a radionuclide of concern.

As I said, we fully expect that there would be residual 

contamination there which again is the reason why 

we need to develop some sort of co-exposure matrix, 

again, based on these breathing zone samples of the 

D&D workers so that we can account for these 

contaminants because they are there in many of 

these facilities and we need to be able to account for 

them in dose construction.

So that is actually the end of that portion of the 

presentation. I'd be happy to field any questions.

Member Beach: Hey, Bob. Josie. I do have a question 

on the TRUMP-S project. I know you found the 

newspaper articles. Did any -- and this can go to 

NIOSH also, did anybody go in and look in Missouri 

and see if that project actually took place there, other 

than those newspaper articles?

Mr. Barton: It absolutely did take place at Missouri.

And, actually, Milton, I know you've been looking into 

this a bunch. Do you, do you want to weigh in on 

that?

Member Beach: And what years was it in Missouri, if 

you don't mind?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

30

Mr. Barton: I believe it was the early '90s essentially.

Member Beach: Okay.

Mr. Barton: And they tried to get it off the ground in 

Area IV, and then they moved it to the University of 

Missouri. And I believe that that research was 

conducted, again, early '90s. I don't know the specific 

dates, however.

Member Beach: Okay.

Mr. Gordon: I believe, yeah, I believe the dates went 

from basically 1990 through 1998. There was also a 

little bit of public opposition there from what I had 

read. And it did take place. They had to get some 

amendments to the NRC license to do it at their 

reactor. They conducted the experiments.

The transuranic waste that was generated from the 

project was ultimately moved to Argonne National 

Laboratory. And at that point Argonne completed its 

characterization and shipped it to WIPP.

Member Beach: Okay, thank you.

And just one more --

Chair Schofield: I have a question on that.

Member Beach: Oh, go ahead.

Chair Schofield: Go ahead, Josie.

Member Beach: I just wanted to know, a lot of times 

before they do some of these projects they'll do some 

testing. Are we 100 percent sure that there was no 

actual pre-testing done at Santa Susana on that 

TRUMP-S?

Mr. Gordon: I don't think, I don't think it can be 100 

percent ruled out. It is possible, like, in Building, I 

think, 123 to have an ICP lab in there. It could be 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

31

possible that maybe they analyzed a few samples or 

something. But we just don't have any 

documentation that really verifies it at all.

We do know prior to 1998 -- and this programming 

was an ongoing program in conjunction with Japan. 

It was more of a commercial operation where they 

teamed with DOE, DOE's facilities. And there were 

some activities that occurred in Japan.

And it is likely that some of the personnel, you know, 

at SSFL, were involved, even if peripherally. But we 

don't know the extent or anything at all. There's 

really just no documentation to say 100 percent sure 

absolutely nothing was done from a radiological 

standpoint.

For the main test itself, it definitely did not occur, and 

it occurred at the University of Missouri.

Mr. Barton: I think it's important that a lot of these 

documents that we point out, again, they all point to, 

you know, the planned radiological portions. And so 

I think they did, they did all their planning. They 

really wanted to get it going. And the pressure just 

got to be too much and they had to move it.

I think that's our best guess. But Milton is correct, I 

don't think we can be 100 percent sure that nothing. 

What we do know, that they had actually refused the 

material. And I believe it might have been, even been 

stored at De Soto, which is essentially the front door 

to that entire complex, ETEC. So, they even had, they 

had the material. Again, the use of the future tense 

all the time about talking about the startup of the 

radiological portion of the experiment again suggests 

to us that it just didn't take place.

And if you see the slide that's still up, again in 

February 1990 it was a planned TRUMP-S project, 

and a TRUMP-S project originally scheduled to take 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

32

place.

I have to imagine that if they had done some of the 

work there the newspaper coverage would use 

different terminology. But, again, we can't be 100 

percent sure.

Mr. Gordon: And we do know that there is document 

-- it is documented they moved, did move the 

equipment from Area IV to MURR in Missouri. And 

very likely they would have done that if the 

equipment had already been used and was 

radioactive or contaminated at the time.

Chair Schofield: Well, I've got a question for you. 

During this time when they might, as Josie said, they 

might have done benchtop scale size experiments 

with it, did you notice an increase in the quarterly 

reports of neutron exposure?

I mean, pyropartitioning has a tendency, you tend to 

see an increase of neutrons has been my experience.

Mr. Barton: Well, again, I don't want to necessarily 

shoot from the hip. We did not see anything like that 

that would indicate to us that the project was going 

on. However, I'm not sure that the quarterly reports 

would have had the specificity about neutron flux 

rates specific to these facilities.

I don't know, does NIOSH or ORAU have any 

comment on that?

Dr. Hughes: I don't have any. I do not think we've 

seen that, but I cannot, I do not know what the 

quarterly reports on neutrons during that period look 

like at this point. I would have to take a look.

I do not think that there was a noteworthy uptake 

during the remediation period in general. But, as Bob 

stated, I don't, I just don't think that we have that 

granularity at this point.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

33

Chair Schofield: Well, my only comment on that is 

that for the, you know, where they're doing the 

residual area I would not expect to see that, but only 

those personnel who might have been doing the 

experiments. Because you do quite often see a 

increase in the neutron levels using pyropartitioning.

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. I mean, we're, we're kind of 

speculating on whether they did any bench type of 

experiments or something along those lines. This 

wasn't a huge -- I mean, this was an experiment in 

and of itself. That's what this whole purpose was 

about. And, so, they were looking for a facility that 

they could do this type of work.

I can't imagine that you would get any significant 

neutron doses off of anything you'd be doing on a 

bench top type of scale.

And there's no indication that this even occurred from 

that standpoint. In fact, a lot of indication of it was 

planned to occur and then moved to the University of 

Missouri.

Chair Schofield: Okay. My point was being that if you 

did see that neutron increase, then more than likely 

there was some bench top scale. If you did not see 

it, well, obviously it's not going to be a real high 

neutron levels but it would kind of put a fingerprint 

on it. And if I would expect to see that, those 

personnel doing it, you would see their exposure 

records. Their neutron level would go up some only 

during that time they were dealing with the 

partitioning process.

Mr. Barton: And when we talk about bench top scale, 

I mean, they were still having meetings just trying to 

get the single glove box that they were going to, you 

know, doing leak tests and things of that nature. So, 

they, they wanted to do it, but again we just -- the 

evidence isn't there that the radiological portion 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

34

really ever got off the ground.

Member Field: In one of your previous lives wasn't 

there something about they were looking for, they 

were waiting for a license?

Mr. Barton: Yes.

Member Field: Or did I misread that?

So, was there ever any evidence they ever got the 

licensing that pertained to this work. Is that right?

Mr. Barton: Right. These were amendments and 

permission from DOE specifically to start up the tests 

in the glove box. You'll see the slide. I'm not sure if 

I'm still sharing those but, yeah, February 1990 they 

were trying to get DOE permission. And even at that 

point thy were, like, we need to probably find another 

location for this.

Member Field: Yeah.

Chair Schofield: Anybody else have any comments?

Member Field: I guess I don't.

Is there any follow-up at Missouri, at MURR?

Mr. Barton: Well, one thing, just a recent 

development, and maybe it will catch us back up, 

we're trying to contact people at the University of 

Missouri, and trying to track down some of the people 

who wrote up technical reports based on this work. 

Maybe they know --

Chair Schofield: Right.

Member Field: -- if any of it actually happened.

So, Milton, we were talking about that the other day. 

I think we have some correspondence out trying to 

get information from one of the professors that was 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

35

involved directly with that work. But I don't believe 

we've heard back.

Mr. Gordon: I emailed one of the professors asking 

about the project, and I've not got a response. And 

there's been some technical papers published that 

resulted from the tests. And trying to research the 

authors to see if I could find them, and have been 

unsuccessful with that.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Well, no more questions or 

comments, I think we'll move on to the De Soto 

avenue.

Mr. Barton: If I might ask or pose a question.

You know, I guess the records, a lot of them are 

contained in Cincinnati. If there was anything that 

indicated TRUMP-S work, NIOSH, I assume that you 

would be alluding to that documentation. And then 

maybe even any future data captures, obviously any 

new information found through that, I mean, maybe 

that's something that we could add to our search 

criteria for when the Records Center does open and 

we go to capture the air sampling data.

I wonder if there's any avenue there that might help 

clarify even further this --

Ms. Blaze: Bob, this is D'Lanie. I know I'm not really 

supposed to chime in, but this is relevant.

I spoke with Cincinnati office just last week about the 

FOIA for all the TRUMP-S documents I've been 

waiting on for I think over a year now. To my 

knowledge, they're in the office working on the 

fulfillment of this FOIA request.

Mr. Barton: Okay. So, there might, there might be 

more, more there that will help us to understand 

whether there was really a radiological exposure 

potential to this stuff.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

36

Mr. Gordon: Bob as well, and Lara, correct me if I'm 

-- more Lara -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 

we established that same search criteria with the 

Records Center as they go through all those records. 

We identified specific criteria for things that we 

wanted them to capture and to provide to us. And I 

think they've been doing that.

Am I correct, Lara?

Dr. Hughes: Yes. Yes. They have a keyword list that 

they search when they get new stuff in.

So, but as Bob said, we can certainly, you know, 

when we go back and do another search we can 

certainly look again. I do believe we attempted to 

collect what's available on this topic. But, I mean, you 

know, it never hurts to, to add it to the next round.

Mr. Barton: I guess to just summarize. At this point 

it's SC&A's belief that all the radiological work 

occurred at the University of Missouri, just based on 

the evidence that we have so far. And, again, like the 

dose reconstructions, these situations are always 

fluid, so as new information comes up we always 

learn a little bit more.

Member Beach: Bob, this is Josie.

Before you go on and, Phil, if you don't mind, can I 

ask Lara a quick question on the Record Center? I 

missed it earlier. Are you there?

Chair Schofield: Lara, did you hear that?

Mr. Barton: I can hear you.

Member Beach: Anyway, I was just wondering is 

there a way to have the Record Center scan the 

documents and put them online for access by NIOSH? 

Or is that, is it, is that too big of a project?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

37

Dr. Hughes: I think at this point it would be too big 

of a project. In some cases that has been done for 

other sites, depending on how many records there 

are to search. But if we're looking at, you know, 50 

boxes, and then you need to kind of have the 

expertise of our data capture team to go through and 

identify what needs to be collected.

We have had cases in other sites where we just said, 

well, you have to scan the whole box and send it to 

us --

Member Beach: Yeah.

Dr. Hughes: -- in a format. But, unfortunately, there 

are so many records there it just would not be 

efficient. And I think, I think we have tried that 

avenue with them, but it's also a matter of resources 

that they just do not think they can do it at this time.

Member Beach: Yeah. It's a huge undertaking. I just 

thought I'd ask. Thanks.

Chair Schofield: Anybody else?

(No audible response.)

Chair Schofield: Okay. Why don't we move on to the 

De Soto Avenue SEC Petition 246.

De Soto Avenue SEC Petition #246

Dr. Hughes: Okay. So, I think that would be me 

presenting on this again. Where is my presentation?

Okay. Sorry. Can you see the presentation mode or 

do you just see the --

Member Beach: Yes, it's up.

Dr. Hughes: Okay. Is it in presentation mode? Okay. 

Here we go. Do you see my notes page or the 

presentation page?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

38

Member Beach: Both.

Dr. Hughes: Both? You do see both? Okay. All right.

Member Beach: Oh, wait. No, no. Now it's just the 

presentation.

Dr. Hughes: Okay. All right.

Dr. Taulbee: If you go up to display settings you can 

make it one screen, Lara.

Dr. Hughes: Okay. Which one do you see, the slide 

view or the presenter view?

Dr. Taulbee: Oh, we see the presenter view.

Dr. Hughes: Okay. How's this?

Dr. Taulbee: That's fine.

Dr. Hughes: You see that. Okay, yeah. So, I cannot 

tell what you can see.

Okay. So, this is the update on the De Soto Avenue 

Facility SEC 246. Again a little bit of side background, 

petition history, and then some NIOSH responses to 

the SC&A review of the SEC 246 Evaluation Report 

and questions and discussion.

So, the De Soto Avenue Facility is also located in 

outside Los Angeles, California, Canoga Park. It is a 

DOE covert facility for EEOICPA from 1959 through 

1996 with a remediation period in 1988 -- 1998.

Two of the buildings were involved in radiologic work. 

Building 1 did fuel fabrication, and Building 4 did 

research and development.

They had a Gamma Irradiation Facility and Helium 

Mass Spectrometry Lab.

The De Soto Facility was located, is geographically 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

39

close to the Santa Susana Field Lab, and they were 

operated by the same contractor. So, they were 

essentially -- they were not the same site. They were 

not the same site under EEOICPA, but they did share 

the same administrative level, the same contractor, 

same employees to some extent.

The petition history. There was one earlier SEC 

Petition 168 for De Soto. That added a class to the 

SEC from 1959 through 1964. And this was based on 

the internal dose reconstruction and feasibility of the 

first official use of the early bioassay data.

And SEC 246 was evaluated, and NIOSH determined 

that the dose reconstruction was feasible for 1965 

through 1995.

Little bit of an overview of this petition. This petition 

was received in December of 2017. The Evaluation 

Report was sent to the Board in August of 2018. The 

NIOSH evaluated class was all workers who worked 

at the De Soto Avenue Facility in Los Angeles County, 

California, during the period from January 1st, 1965 

through December 31st, 1995.

NIOSH did their evaluation, and did not recommend 

the class to be added to the SEC.

When this was presented to the Board, the Board 

handed the task of reviewing the NIOSH evaluation 

to SC&A. And SC&A issued their review in December 

of 2018.

The main issue of the De Soto SEC evaluation was 

the question did the De Soto Facility have the same 

issue for internal dose reconstructions with 

americium and thorium that made SEC 234 at Area 

IV an SEC class?

So, the documents available, again the Evaluation 

Report, dated July 2018. SC&A did their evaluation of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

40

the NIOSH -- their review of the NIOSH Evaluation in 

December, published that in December of 2018, or 

presented it in December of 2018. And then NIOSH 

prepared responses to the SC&A review. And that is 

dated May 2019.

And then there was a recent publication by SC&A that 

summarized the additional worker interviews that 

were done for De Soto, but also for Area IV to some 

extent. These interviews were done in 2018, 2019. 

And they were finally published in 2020.

The reason there was some time between when the 

interviews were done and when they were published 

is the fact that we have to send the interview notes 

back to the interviewees and get their consent before 

we published this in a report.

So, the responses, the NIOSH -- quickly going over 

the NIOSH responses to the SC&A findings. There 

were four findings and six observations.

Finding 1 was related to gaps in documentation such 

as HP logbooks from smear and air surveys. SC&A 

pointed out that there are some years where we just 

don't have all of these type of data, you know, in the 

Site Research Database.

And, generally, NIOSH agrees that, yes, we don't 

have all of that type of data. But when we do an SEC 

evaluation those are usually pretty targeted toward 

certain areas when we do this. We typically have 

about a week or two at the data capture site. So, 

sometimes, as is the case for Santa Susana, or for 

the Santa Susana sites, there is a lot of data available 

because we're looking at a lengthy operational 

period.

We just cannot collect it all. And so we usually try to 

prioritize data capture efforts on what we think is the 

most important to answer the question at the end. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

41

And in this case we don't have all this type of data 

yet. We might collect it during a future effort, if 

needed. It's always nice to have more information to 

be able to refine the picture. But, again, we operate 

under a priority schedule.

Finding 2 was related to a contaminated container 

that was found in a hood. And I think the key word 

was that the Incident Report mentioned spent fuel. 

And so that was kind of researched to see if they 

actually did handle the spent fuel at De Soto.

We found that we do not think that they handled 

spent fuel at the De Soto Facility for the main reason 

that the facility was not equipped to do so.

The Area IV site was equipped to handle spent fuel. 

They had what they called the hot lab. That was a 

facility that was designed for that type of task, and 

the De Soto Facility did not have that type of facility 

that had this level of shielding and glove boxes that 

would be suitable for such a high dose environment.

Finding 3 was related to some contamination that 

was found in the drain of the Mass Spec Laboratory. 

There was some americium-241 contamination 

found. This is something we looked into a little bit. 

We haven't found a terrible large amount of data.

What this indicates is that there seemed to have been 

some kind of spill or something that happened in this 

analytical lab. This is a indication that they handled a 

laboratory, analytical laboratory type of amounts 

possible. It's not an indication of processing large 

amounts of americium or handling spent fuel. 

However, this is a somewhat puzzling occurrence, 

and we're kind of on a path forward to look into that 

some more to see if we find any additional 

information to shed some light on this, what this is.

And Finding 4 was related to interviews. SC&A 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

42

suggested that more interviews be done to get a 

better picture of the De Soto work environment and 

how -- what was done and how it was interrelated 

with Area IV operations. And that was something that 

was completed.

And SC&A just published the transcripts of those 

interviews in the summer.

And there were six observations. One observation 

was that there was some americium-241 source 

material present, but there was no evidence of 

fabrication.

The TRUMP-S material was shipped to the site 

because, as Bob mentioned earlier, that was kind of 

the front door. That was their main shipping, shipping 

and receiving area. But there is no evidence that they 

handled unencapsulated americium.

Americium was present in smoke detectors at De 

Soto. Observations 1 to 3, NIOSH acknowledges that, 

the statements, but no NIOSH response is needed. 

This is mostly findings. There's not really much to 

resolve here.

There was mentioning of Observation 4. A 1977 

license document had uranium-236 isotope 

information listed. However, we looked into this 

somewhat, and found no indication that uranium-236 

was present at the site.

And then Observation 5 was regarding the dose 

assignment details for thorium.

So, when the De Soto Evaluation was taking place 

there was some, there was some evidence that they 

handled, they did certain projects or campaigns 

where they handled thorium. But these observation 

were monitored. And we do have this monitoring data 

so we could come up with a dose bounding approach.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

43

This is something that needs to be detailed in a TBD 

revision.

Observation 6 was that additional thorium operations 

were not addressed. Again, this is a TBD issue, 

something to detail when the dose reconstruction 

approach is detailed or outlined, and any additional 

information will be added, if available. We do believe 

that what was presented in the evaluation for this 

bounding scenario, there is, I think SC&A pointed out 

there were some timeline issues. It could be that 

some material was handled possibly a little sooner or 

later than we had indicated in the report.

Observation 7 was regarding possible interview 

candidates from the EPA effort in 2011. There was a 

published document where EPA went out and 

interviewed former workers at the site. And the 

suggestion was that we could go and try to identify 

these workers, and also see if they would be willing 

to talk to us. And this was looked into and followed 

up on. I don't believe that actually anything came of 

this.

And the last issue was that the Board asked NIOSH 

to clarify, to clarify why americium and thorium 

nuclides were reported in the stack emissions at De 

Soto. This was also detailed in the NIOSH response.

This was because the site, both sites, De Soto and 

Area IV, sent the samples off to a commercial vendor 

and they just asked them what, you know, they 

discussed the fact whether they wanted these 

samples analyzed. However, none of the effluent 

levels were above the minimum permissible 

concentration. And the levels that were seen at the 

De Soto Facility were not indicative of processing 

americium or thorium at De Soto.

However, they did report back because that's what 

the site had ordered from the vendor lab.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

44

And that concludes my presentations -- presentation. 

So, do you have any questions?

Member Beach: I guess I'm wondering is there going 

to be any other papers coming on any of those topics, 

the observations or findings that you just discussed, 

other than what we already have?

Dr. Hughes: Not unless the Work Group requests us.

Member Beach: Okay.

Dr. Hughes: If you specify a certain topic, we can 

certainly go back and provide more information.

Member Beach: Okay. I just was wondering if there 

was anything in the works. Thanks.

Chair Schofield: Do you know if there was any 

positive detection of americium in the stacks? Or was 

that just like a generic -- I mean, I understand there 

was a basically generic box, but did they actually 

have any data showing positive results there?

Dr. Hughes: I'd have to go back and look. It was 

below the MPC. I'm not sure if it was above the, 

whatever the, you know, detection limit. I haven't 

looked at all the stack data.

Mr. Barton: I believe there was at least one year 

where there was a measured result that was slightly 

above the detection limit. And I believe it was in the 

'90s almost.

So, yeah, I do believe there was at least one positive 

measure that is above the detection limit for 

americium. And it's just barely above the detection 

limit. And, again, it was sort of, sort of odd.

You know, I guess, I guess when we talk about De 

Soto the real troubling or long point in the tent is 

that, that americium sample in the drain line. And, 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

45

you know, it's not an incredible amount that they 

found. Specific activity of what they found still was 

low.

But then it raises a lot of questions about when did it 

get placed there? What was the concentration of it 

when it got placed there? How much scale sort of 

mixed in over the years so that when you go to 

measure the actual concentration of that material is 

it diluted?

And, Bomber, if you're out there, I know we had this 

discussion related to Metals and Controls last month 

about when we talk about measurements in pipe 

scale, and how does that change over time, when did 

it get there. It's quite possible that it might have been 

placed there even prior to 1965, in which case it's 

already covered, whatever the situation was would 

already be covered by that SEC.

But it's troubling because essentially both SC&A and 

NIOSH hit a dead end. Just trying to figure out why 

it's there, how did it get there, when was it placed 

there, when was the activity that not necessitated but 

that caused that contamination to be placed in the 

mass spec drain line?

Member Beach: Well, and Bob or Lara, can I say you 

kind of led us to believe during your presentation, or 

me, that you were still looking into that drain line 

issue to try to figure that out. But I guess that's why 

my question if you've any ongoing work. Is there 

anything to try to pinpoint that or?

Dr. Hughes: There's future data capture. That's 

definitely one of the things we will keep an eye out 

because it is, as Bob said, it's somewhat puzzling. It's 

not a terribly large amount but it's also, it's unclear, 

you know, where it's coming from. Why is it there? It 

could have been a spilled lab standard of some sort, 

but it could have been something else.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

46

So, yeah, I would like to answer the question for 

sure.

Dr. Taulbee: Well, they certainly weren't putting their 

smoke detectors down the drain, that's for sure.

Chair Schofield: So, I've got a quick question. From 

everything I've read, do you know, did they maybe 

process some samples from Area IV in their lab? Or 

did each facility do their own analytical work?

Dr. Hughes: Well, the Mass Spec Lab was a specific, 

they had a specific objective, and it was, it was 

sampling -- was analyzing metal samples for helium 

content. So, it did receive samples from other sites 

within the DOE, or maybe not even necessarily DOE 

complex but from other sites in the country to, you 

know, achieve some kind of, some, you know, 

measurement objective. This was, I believe, done on 

a commercial basis.

So, I'm not sure the samples would have necessarily 

been from Area IV, but would have been from 

wherever they got them from to do these analyses 

that they did for this lab.

Member Beach: And I think that -- I'm sorry. Go 

ahead.

Mr. Barton: Oh, I was going to say, Bob, I cut off 

LaVon answering your question on the pipe scale that 

we talked about for Metals and Control and might be 

appropriate for this site also. So, I didn't, I didn't 

want to let LaVon off the hook.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Well, thanks, Josie. Appreciate 

that.

No, we are definitely looking at that, at variations in 

Metals and Controls. And we're reporting back to that 

Work Group.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

47

Whether it's, you know, applicable here, you know, it 

may be. I don't know. I really can't say for sure.

Mr. Barton: I think the main question that we were 

really trying to get at specifically with SC&A's review 

and the follow-up interviews that were conducted, 

and it was even in Lara's presentation, the same 

problems exist at De Soto as were found at Area IV, 

where they were definitely stripping and decladding 

spent fuel. And there was an issue with exposure to 

transuranic elements.

So, what we were trying to establish is to what extent 

because these are essentially sister sites. De Soto 

was the headquarters for the entire ETC complex. We 

know they received materials, they stored materials. 

The question is, to what extent is there an exposure 

potential from that transuranic material?

Specifically, we look at americium. But it would be 

any transuranic really. What was the exposure 

potential there?

So, we specifically look for evidence of, you know, 

production scale operations, or even just evidence of 

contaminations with americium. And the drain line is 

what we found. And we didn't necessarily find other, 

other evidence.

So, we'll be discussing later today when we talk about 

the Boeing Incident Data Base there was two 

incidents that indicate possible work with spent fuel.

So, it's something that we need to consider. But, 

again, I think the main question is, you know, SEC00234 at Area IV was really predicated on the fact 

that they were stripping and decladding fuel in that 

hot lab, and those transuranic exposures were not 

only dangerous, but they can't be reconstructed.

And so, again, the question is to what extent was that 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

48

material necessarily handled at De Soto?

The americium in the drain line it, again, wasn't a 

large amount, but it is rather troubling because we 

simply don't know how it got there.

Regarding thorium, too, I didn't want to give that 

short shrift. So, what NIOSH is proposing is they 

essentially have a framework for how they would 

reconstruct doses for thorium. And it's based on a 

well-documented grinding operation. And I believe it 

was sometime in the early 1970s in which there was 

air monitoring during it, but there's also, more 

importantly, fecal monitoring associated with the 

individual who did that.

So, a lot of SC&A's observations regarding that was 

how are you going to actually implement that 

information to reconstruct doses for thorium during 

that period. But, again, I think that if you can accept 

that as a founding scenario where they were actually 

grinding thorium, I believe it was a fuel rod, you 

know, there was a respirator worn and everything, 

but there was fecal monitoring before and 

afterwards, you can develop an intake rate based on 

that.

So, a lot of the questions SC&A has about thorium 

are about implementation. When we actually get to 

the level of performing a dose reconstruction, how 

are we going to apply that scenario, and when is it 

applicable? And that's why SC&A pointed out a couple 

of other instances in logbooks where they indicated 

work with thorium, thorium oxide, and grinding, that 

sort of thing. And, again, we have sort of a 

framework operation that could be applied. It's 

SC&A's question of how it would necessarily be 

applied.

But that generally falls into the Site Profile category 

rather than an SEC discussion.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

49

(Pause.)

Mr. Barton: Phil, you might be on mute still. I don't 

hear anybody talking.

Chair Schofield: Count your blessings.

Okay. If there's no more questions, unless people 

want a short break why don't we move on to the 

incident Data Base. That's a fairly lengthy document 

there.

Member Beach: Are we -- wait, are we voting on a 

break or not?

Chair Schofield: Yes.

Member Beach: Anybody want one? If the other one's 

pretty lengthy, maybe we should take 10.

Chair Schofield: Okay.

Mr. Barton: Well, per the agenda I think the next item 

is actually a description of the interviews that were 

conducted.

Member Beach: Oh, okay. That's not, yeah, that's not 

lengthy.

Chair Schofield: Bob.

Mr. Barton: Yes?

Chair Schofield: I'm sorry. Read wrong line.

Mr. Barton: Okay. Let me just see if I can share my 

screen here.

I know last time it was showing the futures next slide 

thing. Let me see if I can get rid of that so people get 

a better.

Hopefully that looks better for everybody. We should 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

50

be looking at a slide that says Summary of Worker 

Interviews Conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Support 

of the SEC-00246 Evaluation.

Member Beach: Yep. That looks good.

Mr. Barton: All right, great.

Yeah, these were really documented in a memo that 

was released publicly on July 14th of earlier this year. 

And, obviously, rather a sensitive issue when we 

have publicly released documents.

So, it is a very 10,000 foot summary of the interviews 

that we conducted. However, the full summary, the 

full notes, essentially, of each interview are available 

to the Work Group on the SRDB.

All right, let's move along.

So, again, as part of our SEC review we pointed out 

that there hadn't been a lot of actual interviews 

conducted with workers specific to De Soto and 

specific to this period, again, to establish were the 

same problems occurring at De Soto as were seen at 

Area IV that necessitated the SEC?

So, we interviewed six former Energy employees. 

And that number is pretty much limited by who we 

could find. I know NIOSH's contractor ATL did a lot of 

outreach work trying to find as many interviews as 

possible.

SC&A, we had made some suggestions in our original 

review. We ended up with six. Unfortunately, we 

were only able to get five of the summaries 

confirmed.

And just a little background on that. What happens 

is, especially in a telephone interview, there will be 

numerous people taking notes. Those notes are then 

consolidated into a summary. The summary is 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

51

cleared by the Department of Energy and then sent 

back to the interviewee. And they can either modify 

it, they can confirm it, they can add more 

information, they can take away information.

Unfortunately, one of the interviewees we just were 

unable to contact. And so only five of the summaries 

are actually included in the publicly released 

document because if we can't actually confirm the 

Energy employee's, essentially, willingness to go 

forward with the program and confirm that we got it 

right when we wrote the summary, it's just not 

appropriate to release in a public forum.

Now, these interviews were, again, the focus was De 

Soto, and specifically americium and thorium. Was it 

a major thorium campaign that occurred prior to 

1965 where they were actually making thorium fuels 

or was it sort of a one-off like the grinding operation 

that I described earlier that sort of serves as the 

framework for reconstructing doses during this 

period?

So, a target was those, those two exposure 

pathways. However, as has been discussed many 

times in the past, De Soto and Area IV are essentially 

sister sites. And there was a lot of movement in 

between the two sites. And so we obviously were 

interested in any information the interviewees had 

about both areas.

So, the focus was De Soto, but that doesn't mean we 

ignored Area IV.

So, I'm going to go through these, each of the five 

confirmed interviews very briefly. Again, we're sort 

of restricted by what is in the publicly available 

version. But for the Work Group members out there, 

you can certainly see these full summaries of what 

was confirmed by the interviewee.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

52

So, for the first worker the relevant employment 

period was from 1965 to 1978. They indicated that 

thorium testing did occur at De Soto. They don't

recall any thorium fuel fabrication, which would be 

obviously a lot bigger project.

As we already pointed out, there was some thorium 

work that occurred there, so those doses need to be 

accounted for. And NIOSH has proposed a 

framework, again based on that grinding operation in 

the '70s.

This worker also indicated that any work with spent 

fuel would only have occurred at the Area IV hot lab. 

And that's Building 4020, or T020, just also known as 

the hot lab. And this worker didn't believe that 

americium sources were opened or breached, or that 

fabrication would have occurred that would have had 

unencapsulated americium specific to De Soto.

The second worker worked from 1965 to 1967. Again 

believes that some thorium work occurred at De Soto 

but wasn't directly involved. Again, we've already 

acknowledged thorium work occurred there. We need 

to account for it in dose reconstruction.

And, again, indicated that spent fuel was all handled 

up at the Area IV hot lab. And also specifically 

indicated that only fresh fuel had been handled at De 

Soto. They had no knowledge of any americium 

source fabrication.

Worker three -- and, again, these numbers have no 

connection to the actual person. So there's no 

personally identifiable information included here. 

Again, relevant employment 1981 to 2006. They 

indicated no thorium fuel. But they did talk about 

natural thorium sources contained in a, I guess, 

commercially-obtained ceramic material. But 

certainly nothing like the thorium fuel fabrication that 

occurred prior to 1965 at De Soto which was part of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

53

that why there's an SEC up through 1965.

This worker only recalled remediation activity, could 

not recall any fuel fabrication occurring there during 

their employment.

And stated that americium was there in the form of 

sealed sources, and they were actually involved in 

leak checking them, which apparently occurred once 

per quarter. Did not indicate any issues with leaking 

sources.

Worker four, the relevant employment was from 

1972 to 1987. Again, no recollection of spent fuel 

work occurring at De Soto. Also stated specifically 

that no transuranic material was ever transported to 

De Soto. And had no recollection of americium work.

They may have had a solution concerning americium 

but the interviewee was not clear on how it might 

have been used. And this might be exactly the type 

of situation in a Mass Spec Lab where they might 

have had some bench-scale work done with it. Or, 

again, we don't know how that americium ended up 

in the drain line. But, you know, the person couldn't 

remember that the material might have been there 

but, again, did not recall how it might have been 

used. So, again, it's sort of a frustrating dead end.

But they actually stated that they didn't recall any 

work with americium except used as encapsulated 

sources to calibrate instruments and things of that 

nature.

We'll go from Worker four directly to Worker number 

six, again because we couldn't get that fifth interview 

finalized or confirmed by the Energy employee. And 

so we are just simply not allowed to include it here.

This person's relevant employment began in 1983. 

Somehow we didn't ask or none of us wrote it down 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

54

when they stopped employment, unfortunately. But, 

again, we're talking about 1983 and onward.

This person was actually selected specifically because 

we found their name in health physic logbooks as 

finding bags of thorium in Building 4 at De Soto. And 

so that we specifically targeted this individual 

because we wanted to know more about that.

But, unfortunately, the individual just didn't recall 

that happening, so had no more information along 

that line of questioning.

They stated they didn't recall large quantities of 

radioactive material being there. They stated that all 

that material would have been removed prior to 

remediation.

And, also, this individual had no knowledge of any 

fuel decladding activities occurring at De Soto.

So, in summary, these interviews did not suggest 

that decladding spent fuel happened at De Soto. In 

fact, a few of them, as I mentioned, affirmed that 

they believed at least that all those activities would 

have occurred up on the hill which is Area IV, what 

they refer to Area IV as, again in those speciallydesigned hot cells in the hot laboratory Building.

And based on these interviews, again this is just 

purely based on the interviews and what they stated, 

they suggest that unencapsulated americium 

exposures at De Soto were not probable. However, 

again we would remind that other documentation 

suggests the presence of contaminated material 

using clean and decladded fuel.

Lara mentioned that in her presentation, a container 

that had been identified in a hood at De Soto that had 

sodium -- excuse me, sodium in it that was used on 

decladded, clean decladded fuel.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

55

And also, again, americium in the Mass Spec drain 

line does suggest that at least at some point 

unencapsulated americium may have been handled 

at least on a bench-scale basis.

And, again, just bring these up because the 

interviews just didn't provide any direct evidence, but 

I wanted to remind the Work Group that there are all, 

there are these sort of troubling and unknown 

situations that might suggest there was decladded 

fuel at De Soto. And, obviously, we have the 

americium in the drain line.

But, unfortunately, none of the interviewees that we 

talked to had any other direct evidence or 

information to expound on how these things might 

have gotten there.

So, that's the end of the summary of the interviews 

that we did, again in response to our review of SEC246 for De Soto. Again, trying to find information that 

would indicate whether there are problems with dose 

reconstruction feasibility similar to what was 

happening at the sister site, Area IV, specifically 

those fuel decladding operations that were occurring 

in the hot cells in the hot laboratory.

So, with that I could field any questions.

Chair Schofield: I have just one question.

Is there, did you run across any documentation that 

shows they had a, for lack of a better word, a vault 

for any of the materials and any logbooks that might 

go with that vault?

Mr. Barton: I believe there definitely was a storage 

vault at De Soto. I guess the question would be how 

does that reflect any exposure potential?

De Soto, I mean that was the receiving area 

essentially for all material that ended up at Area IV. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

56

I think the main question is, you know, were they 

actually handling that material in any sort of 

production sense or in a way that would pose an 

internal exposure hazard similar to what was 

happening at Area IV?

But they absolutely had a storage vault. And they 

would store the material there. The question is what, 

how does that reflect any internal exposure potential 

to the transuranic material and/or thorium.

As I said, there is at least a proposed framework to 

take care of thorium. It would be the transuranic 

material and what potential is there that is the real 

question.

But to directly answer your question, absolutely they 

had storage vault where they would keep fuel. And, 

essentially, all material that eventually ended up at 

Area IV would likely have been at De Soto at some 

point.

Also, recall earlier that during the TRUMP-S 

discussion they actually, I mean they received the 

material, the TRUMP-S material that was to be used 

in the radiological portion of that experiment, that 

was stored at De Soto. So, absolutely they stored the 

material there.

Member Beach: Bob, did -- oh, sorry.

Bob, did you identify any other potential 

interviewees? Because I know we always ask the 

interviewees if they know of anybody else. Was there 

any others that we might be able to talk to?

Mr. Barton: I believe may -- I believe we maybe got 

one other name out of the interviews. I don't believe 

we were able to successfully either contact them, 

track them down, or they might not have agreed to 

be interviewed. I mean, it is --
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

57

Member Beach: Yeah. 

Mr. Barton: -- sometimes difficult to find people who 

really want to sit down and talk about these kinds of 

things. And in other cases they will chat your ear off 

all day.

But, I don't think at this point we have necessarily 

any names that we really need to track down or that 

--

Member Beach: Okay.

Mr. Barton: Yeah.

Member Beach: Well, and then the other thing I was 

wondering about is waste records. Are there any 

waste records from a lot of times you have 

documentation on all the waste that comes out of 

different facilities? Do you or Lara, do you remember 

looking at any of that?

Mr. Barton: Well, I'll pass this one along to NIOSH. I 

don't recall seeing anything of that nature that gave 

us pause. But, you know, the main mission at De 

Soto was really fresh fuel fabrication. I mean, that's 

what they did in Building 1.

So, there was a lot of uranium exposure potential. 

And so that, that's really the main radiological hazard 

that was identified for De Soto.

Now, there are co-exposure models that include 

plutonium that are just applicable to both sites 

because, as was stated before, they were essentially 

sister sites. They had the same administrative 

policies. They had the same, --

Member Beach: Right.

Mr. Barton: -- essentially, monitoring. And so it's one 

co-exposure model.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

58

But the question is can we reconstruct for any 

transuranic exposure potential, if it in fact existed? 

And based on these interviews there just wasn't a 

whole lot to go on.

Member Beach: And then the one interview that you 

didn't get into the report because you didn't get 

confirmation from that person, have you since gotten 

-- I know we got a document from him. Did you learn 

anything from that or?

Mr. Barton: Well, that, that document it was a signed 

affidavit. And that came out essentially right as we 

were interviewing that individual. They were 

identified through CORE Advocacy. And, yet, we 

interviewed the individual and also received the 

affidavit which essentially mirrors what our interview 

summary says.

We sent the interview via FedEx, like we normally 

did. Also, CORE Advocacy supplied a telephone 

number, which I personally repeatedly tried to 

contact the individual and just was unsuccessful.

Member Beach: Yeah. I saw your report that you did 

try several times. So, okay.

Mr. Barton: Yeah.

Ms. Blaze: I'm sorry. We had that interview all of us 

together.

Mr. Barton: That's correct. You were definitely on 

that, yes.

Member Beach: Right. Right, right.

Ms. Blaze: I must have misunderstood. Thanks.

Member Field: I thought the information on the 

americium as far as having a good number of sealed 

sources, it sounds like that leak test was helpful. It's 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

59

sort of the idea that maybe some of the 

contamination was from a leaky sealed source. I 

thought that was, that was helpful.

But it's still strange what liquid was, americium in 

liquid form was.

Mr. Barton: Yeah, I agree. It's sort of -- I mean, it's 

quite possible. I mean, I try to shy away from 

speculating too much or coming to conclusions that, 

oh, it was probably a leaky source that ended up in 

the drain. But it is absolutely possible. We just don't 

know.

Member Field: Yeah.

Chair Schofield: Any further questions or comments?

(No audible response.)

Chair Schofield: That being said, why don't we take 

a short 10-minute break if that's appropriate with 

everybody.

Member Beach: Sounds good, Phil.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 12:29 p.m. and resumed at 12:41 p.m.)

Discussion of Petitioner Submissions

Dr. Roberts: Phil, it's all yours.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Does anybody have any more 

questions on the -- that americium problem is really 

going to bounce us around. But if not, I think we'll go 

on to the discussion of some of the documentation 

provided by CORE Advocacy. Excuse me. Tongue tied 

today.

Mr. Gordon: Yes. This is Milton Gordon. I guess I'll be 

going through that. I guess we did have a 

presentation. I think Bob has not quite gotten back 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

60

on, and he's kind of controlling the presentation. But 

I can start giving some background information on 

our efforts.

I guess in 2017, there were a number of -- oh, there 

we go. Thank you, Bob. That summarizes our review 

of the about 1,500 pages. And it was issued in 

November of this past year. Basically in 2017, there 

were a number of Work Group discussions that raised 

a couple of issues. And a lot of this was covered in 

the earlier historical discussion this morning.

But basically, it (telephonic interference), which 

would remain implications for dose reconstruction 

feasibility potentially, and that raised the question of 

whether operational conditions sufficiently bound the 

residual conditions, basically post-operations during 

the environmental restoration D&D effort period, 

which would require analysis of available air sampling 

data.

And at that time, as was discussed this morning, 

presented this morning, SC&A had a November 2017 

report where we did not identify any evidence of 

internal exposure to thorium and americium that 

precludes dose reconstruction feasibility. We found 

no evidence that radiological conditions during the 

residual period would not be bounded by operational 

co-exposure models.

Next slide. Okay. Thanks. the SEC petitioner had 

notified NIOSH in January of 2019 that about 1,463 

boxes of DOE records were found. And based on their 

review of the materials, they concluded that the 

documents confirmed operations with americium and 

thorium at Area IV until 2008 and possibly all the way 

to 2010. There was new evidence of insufficient 

monitoring.

TRUMP-S operations occurred at Area IV from 1993 

through 1998. And we had a big discussion about that 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

61

already this morning. And TRU waste generation and 

processing occurred between 2002 and 2008 and 

stored TRU waste has been occurring for up to 20 

years.

So those are some of the conclusions the SEC had 

come up, the petitioner came up with.

So we conducted a review of the approximately 1,500 

pages or so that were made available. We reviewed 

over 1,200 pages that were related to program 

descriptions, procedures, incident reports and other 

documents.

These contain such things as radiation protection 

plans and procedures, letters related to compliance 

of the monitoring program with daily requirements 

and program certification related to lab analysis of 

internal exposure sampling.

We did not -- and a general comment upon review of 

all of that is that we didn't really find anything that 

suggested that workers were not monitored. And this 

excludes the issue raised this morning about CEP, the 

issues with CEP and their analytical results of internal 

exposure monitoring. And that occurred between 

August of '91 through June of 1993.

So outstanding that particular issue, we didn't find 

anything else that suggested workers were not 

monitored.

There was a lot of documentation in those pages 

related to DOE accreditation, their lab accreditation 

program. DOE wanted Boeing to comply with that lab 

accreditation program. And Boeing was trying to stay 

in a position that they did not feel that they were 

required to meet that dose equivalent program 

requirements because they did not come close to 

meeting 100 millirem per year, the affected dose 

equivalent limit.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

62

And some of their basis for that explanation was that 

the hot lab at that time -- we're talking about the 

2001 time frame -- had already been 

decommissioned or at least decontaminated, and 

there was no alpha contamination in the hot lab.

And regarding the RMHF, the Radioactive Material 

Handling Facility, the contamination was not of a 

respirable nature. There was some alpha 

contamination found, but it was of large particle size. 

And they described it as not readily respirable.

So those were a couple of the reasons why they 

argued that they would not -- workers would not 

have come close to exceeding the 100 millirem per 

year committed effective dose equivalent limit 

associated with the DOE lab accreditation program.

Now there are a lot of documents going in the 1,276 

pages that went back and forth between the two and 

then a lot of duplication of documents, of the same 

documents. But the end result was that from what I 

recall DOE still had them meet the DOE lab 

requirements.

But none of this documentation is an indication that 

workers were not being monitored. They were being 

monitored. It was a question of whether Rocketdyne 

was -- sorry, Boeing was going to meet the 

requirements of the DOE lab accreditation program.

There was also a 1994 Radiation Protection Activity 

Report that noted the presence of lab containers of 

uranium and thorium in Rocketdyne labs. But upon 

searching the research database, we couldn't find 

any subsequent activity reports after that one 1994 

report where they provide any kind of follow-up 

information at all.

We did find some activity reports, but they just did 

not cover bringing it up again. And overall we did not 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

63

find any additional information regarding thorium 

operations.

All right. Regarding site remediation workers and 

their dosimetry program, the monitoring of their 

workers, the report showed there was a plutonium 

inventory of waste packages, drain line debris in the 

holdup tank. However, all of this plutonium inventory 

was consistent with D&D activities that was ongoing 

at the time.

We didn't find any documentation that suggested an 

inadequate internal dosimetry program. That's from 

a 1998 UE letter that stated the program was in 

compliance.

There was also a 1995 Rockwell letter that showed 

radiation worker training programs met the DOE Rad 

Worker II training requirements. From what I recall, 

there may have been a couple of tweaks they had to 

do to the program, a couple topics had to be changed 

or something, but in general their radiation worker 

training program met DOE requirements.

All right. The TRUMP-S program, this is basically 

going to reiterate what was discussed this morning.

The process was demonstrated at the Missouri 

University Research Reactor, and there were Boeing 

personnel present. And I actually saw one or two of 

them that had participated in a couple of the 

technical papers that I found online. But I actually 

looked those individuals up just to see if they were in 

the NOCTS database as people who had fallen under 

this program, and I didn't find them at all so.

But to, I guess, reiterate, there was public pressure, 

you know, to keep the TRUMP-S tests from occurring 

at Area IV. And from all the evidence it was moved 

prior to any kind of radiological operations to MURR. 

And the TRU waste generated, in my slide I said we 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

64

didn't know the disposition pathway. But as I said this 

morning, I found out through some additional 

research that the TRU waste was actually sent to 

Argonne National Laboratory.

And I was kind of wondering if it was sent back to 

Area IV since the program was related to the SSFL, 

but it turns out it was sent to Argonne National Lab. 

And I got that information from a DOE legacy 

management fact sheet that they have on their site, 

on their website.

But based on all the documentation that we know on 

TRUMP-S program that was in this 1,500 pages and 

what we found through the research database, it 

appears that only computer simulation work was 

done. They constructed glove boxes and some other 

instrumentation at SSFL, but there's just no evidence 

that it was ever used there.

As far as TRU waste management, transuranic waste 

was managed at the site. There is no evidence that it 

was generated by operations after 1988. There was 

some TRU waste generated after 1998 that was 

related to D&D activities but not by operations.

In one of the summaries, acceptable knowledge 

summaries that was in the 1,500 pages, that 

particular waste stream was generated by D&D 

activities associated with removal of residue from the 

hot cell drain lines that had accumulated -- and they 

generated this waste between 1993 and 1995.

And the other TRU waste handling during the 90s 

would have involved legacy wastes. The transuranic 

waste characterization repackaging was done in a 

temporary sampling and repackaging facility. And all 

the TRU waste was eventually transported to Hanford 

in 2002 in one shipping campaign, which eliminated 

the transuranic waste inventory at SSFL.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

65

And that's kind of just a summary of our review of 

those documents. Any questions?

Chair Schofield: How long was the waste stored 

onsite? Do you have any idea?

Mr. Gordon: Well, I don't -- as far as versus when 

transuranic waste was first generated, I don't know 

exactly when. It would obviously go back a good 

ways. But we know that they eventually removed the 

waste in 2002.

So as far as the transuranic waste generated by D&D 

activities, which would have been in the early 90s, 

that would have been about 10 or so years until that 

particular new transuranic waste treatment was 

removed and sent to Hanford in 2002.

Chair Schofield: Okay.

Mr. Barton: I think it's safe to assume that they were 

storing this type of waste, and, as Milton mentioned, 

there was a repackaging operation that's very well 

documented. I mean, they basically filmed the entire 

thing with, I think, six cameras.

And, you know, they had triple enclosures and it was 

-- you know, the era it was done in, you know, health 

and safety standards were very different than earlier 

years, especially the operational years when the 

really dangerous work with transuranic material such 

as decladding of spent fuel took place.

But I think it's safe to say that this material would 

have been stored onsite until it was all moved in, I 

think you said, 2002 it was shipped up to Hanford, 

right?

Mr. Gordon: Yes.

Mr. Barton: I think really the key question here is, 

how do we do dose reconstruction? Now for 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

66

plutonium, which we mentioned the plutonium here, 

there is a co-exposure model that has been 

developed. And I assume it will be revised based on 

the new guidelines, the co-exposure implementation 

guidelines that were recently approved by the Board 

back in December.

So plutonium, unmonitored plutonium, would be 

taken care of via that pathway. We've already spoken 

about americium and thorium. Again, we're talking 

about Area IV here right now.

Those co-exposure frameworks are currently under 

development, but we have to wait until we can see 

the breathing zone data and how it's used and how 

much completeness and adequacy and all those 

guidelines for developing co-exposure models. We'll 

have to see how that shakes out.

But there are methods underway, under 

development, sort of the americium and the thorium. 

And uranium and fission products also, they have coexposure models developed based again on 

operational activity. So those were really the higher 

exposure potential activities. And those methods are 

at least proposed to be applied during this 

remediation period.

So, again, it's a question of is there something that's 

infeasible to reconstruct? And I guess that's really the 

main question that we're asking for SEC-00235 is 

after 1988, are there operations going on that involve 

transuranic material beyond your typical D&D 

activities which, again, we don't know if it's 

necessarily feasible because we haven't captured the 

data yet. But the path forward on that is, again, to 

collect the breathing zone data and develop intake 

rates for unmonitored workers.

But I think it's important to keep in mind when we 

look at all these things, the real question we're asking 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

67

is dose reconstruction feasibility. Is there something 

that we can't reconstruct with confidence?

So I just add to keep that in mind when we're talking 

about the TRU waste. And we're really trying to figure 

out again if there's something that happened after 

1988, which is the current cut-off for the SEC at Area 

IV. Is there something that we just simply can't 

reconstruct with any level of confidence?

Mr. Gordon: [identifying information 

redacted], I'm sorry if I don't pronounce your name 

correctly, he just posted a link in the chat regarding 

it looks like an NRC document. I went ahead and went 

to the link.

It looks like this is associated with activities at the 

University of Missouri research reactor. But I'll kind 

of go through it and let you know if I see anything 

that jumps out at me.

Ms. Blaze: You should go on the record that the 

document was submitted by [identifying 

information redacted].

Chair Schofield: Any comments? Other questions? I 

got just one quick question. On the transuranic waste 

there, they contain plutonium -- excuse me. Was this 

just, I want to say contaminated material rather than 

actual disposal of measurable quantities of plutonium 

in those waste drums, boxes, whatever they were 

using. Are we talking about a few grams, kilograms 

of material that was discarded? Or do we have any 

documentation on that?

Mr. Barton: Well, not being able to really tell you the

specifics, I think it's safe to say that legacy waste 

from the operations that occurred prior to 1989 

involving all of those decladding emissions in the hot 

laboratory, again, I think it's safe to assume that that 

material was stored onsite until it wasn't, which was 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

68

in 2002. And I would assume that it contained 

significant quantities.

But, again, the question that we really need to ask 

ourselves is can we reconstruct the dose from the 

management of that transuranic waste storage and 

then the repackaging of it?

And what's being proposed, again, is that you use the 

monitoring records for workers that were actually 

involved in those decladding operations and applying 

those to this residual period and that is specific to 

plutonium.

Now, americium is obviously different. We don't have 

sufficient monitoring data for americium, which was 

the impetus for the SEC-00234 through 1988. And 

that's where as soon as we move into this residual 

period, we still have to account for it.

Because we have to assume that if you can't 

reconstruct doses to americium during operations, 

well, it didn't just magically disappear from the site 

and magically go away from contaminated glove 

boxes and things of that nature, which is why NIOSH 

is working on creating a co-exposure matrix using 

breathing zone data, and, again, that will be gross 

alpha, but you can essentially assume it was all 

americium, to be able to assign intakes to these D&D 

workers.

I'm not sure if that answers your question or if I just 

rambled a little bit.

Chair Schofield: I think it answers some of them, yes.

Mr. Barton: I guess back to the original question, I 

think we have to assume it was significant quantities 

of this material that was being stored onsite. And the 

question is, can we reconstruct with the sufficiency

and reasonable accuracy the doses that plausibly 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

69

could have been incurred.

And really what is being proposed as a bounding 

approach is, again, using the records from workers 

who were actually involved in the operations, you 

know, back in the 70s and 80s when they were doing 

the really sort of nasty work with the transuranic 

material, at least for the plutonium part.

And then for the D&D operators, we'll just have to 

see what's available for breathing zone monitoring 

and things of that nature to be able to develop, again, 

exposures for the unmonitored worker.

Member Beach: Bob, we haven't seen what that looks 

like yet have we, those records or that data that's 

actually going to be used? Has it been reviewed by -

-

Mr. Barton: No. I don't believe that is actually in hand 

yet. This relates directly to the discussion this 

morning about the record center in Cincinnati and 

going to actually -- NIOSH is going to actually grab 

that data --

Member Beach: Okay.

Mr. Barton: -- and analyze it and develop a co-worker 

intake.

Member Beach: So that all goes back to that as well. 

I hadn't heard using the actual monitoring records 

from the workers in the 70s and 80s so that just 

jumped out at me.

Mr. Barton: That would only be for plutonium, 

uranium and mixed fission products.

Member Beach: Right, right.

Mr. Barton: We don't have the actual monitoring data 

for -- we don't have monitoring data really for 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

70

americium except for there were a couple of 

examples that were actually noted in a previous 

SC&A review of americium sampling.

Looking into that a little bit further, it turns out one 

of the two employees was actually at Argonne 

National Lab East and that's why he was sampled for 

americium. And the other individual we just simply 

don't know.

Member Beach: Yes, no, I caught that. Thank you.

Mr. Barton: It is possible that the other individual was 

involved in the operations at the University of 

Missouri on that slide. They sampled that individual. 

But, again, we don't have necessarily any evidence 

to make a connection either way. That's one 

possibility.

So the other individual, it was clearly because they 

had spent a few months not actually at Santa Susana 

but actually at Argonne National Lab and so that's 

why they were sampled for americium.

Chair Schofield: Looking at some of this 

documentation, I mean, excuse me. Were there 

many people that actually had their bioassays 

checked for americium too or is this a very limited 

number of people?

Mr. Barton: I believe there was two. It was two, 

possibly three, individuals but no. That's really the 

reason SEC-00234 is there is that there simply isn't 

monitoring data for americium during this operational 

period up through 1988. And now the question is, 

what is the exposure potential to americium past 

this?

And so that's why we took a close look at the TRUMPS documentation because that would be one 

"operational source term." It would have been a 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

71

small experiment but that would be something that 

would have to be accounted for with more specific 

monitoring than just a breathing zone essentially.

But if we're talking non-operational and really D&D 

activities and we find that workers are doing that 

type of, you know, dismantling of glove boxes, had 

breathing zone and we find its representative 

incomplete, then I think -- well from my standpoint, 

I would say those can feasibly be reconstructed.

But, again, that's sort of getting down the road 

because we simply haven't captured or really taken a 

look at what we have there as far as the breathing 

zone data to cover americium and thorium exposure 

during this residual period.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Andy, Bill, you got anything?

Member Field: No questions.

Member Anderson: I don't have anything.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Just out of curiosity, when 

they were doing a lot of this, was there an analysis 

done on these waste drums and stuff or were these 

just using gross temp procedures?

Mr. Barton: I'm not sure that I have necessarily come 

across assays of what was in the waste drums. I think 

we can assume that all of the nasty stuff they were 

handling during the operational period was still in 

those drums. I think that's a safe assumption.

I don't know if NIOSH wants to elaborate on that. 

But, again, I try to circle us all back to how are we 

going to reconstruct the potential doses to the 

handling of that waste?

Again, there was a repackaging operation that was 

very well documented, and it's described in the SC&A 

report. They were very cognizant of what the risks 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

72

would have been had somebody inhaled or ingested 

that material when it was repackaged.

And the rest of the time it would be stewardship and 

then also D&D activity, which also would pose an 

internal exposure potential, which is why they all 

have to be accounted for and which is why both SC&A 

and the Work Group and NIOSH have agreed that we 

need to see if we can find those doses. And the 

pathway to do that would be this air sampling data 

and specifically the breathing zone data, which is in 

gross alpha. And what would happen is you would 

take that gross alpha, whatever the numbers end up 

being with the breathing zone and you would assume 

it was the worst contaminant that was contributing 

the entirety of all that gross alpha measurement.

Chair Schofield: Okay.

Mr. Gordon: If I could say something, I've been kind 

of skimming through the link that [identifying 

information redacted] had provided in the chat. 

And it looks like it has to do with the University of 

Missouri research reactor when they had to go back 

to file license amendment requests to NRC to adjust 

the levels of the amount of source material they can 

have in their alpha lab that they were going to use 

there in the reactor for the TRUMP-S experiment.

So it looks like, you know, there's a number of 

arguments made by petitioners. The NRC basically 

had reviewed the increases, and they asked the 

University of Missouri or required the University of 

Missouri to add a sprinkler system in.

There may be a couple other things that I haven't 

gotten to in here. But all of this is related to the 

University of Missouri and not to any kind of -- it looks 

like there is nothing related to operations at Area IV. 

But I'll continue to look at it and go through the whole 

thing, and I'll let you know if I find anything.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

73

Chair Schofield: Okay. So the question comes up 

exactly where do we want to head at this point. 

Obviously, there's something like that question of 

americium whether it's possible to do dose 

reconstruction for some personnel.

There seems to be a significant amount of 

documentation for some personnel from their being 

monitored unless there's a group that has fallen 

through the cracks I'm not aware of unless I missed 

something. Anybody have any comments on that?

Mr. Barton: Well, I think again, and it's confusing 

even to me because we're sort of bouncing back and 

forth between Area IV and De Soto.

So what we're talking about right now is Area IV, 

again, during that residual period. And I think the 

next steps are we have to develop a co-exposure 

matrix and see if it really passes the test and the 

criteria that we've established so that we can assign 

doses to americium and thorium for those D&D 

workers.

And part of that will be to see who actually has 

breathing zone samples. What work were they doing? 

And as you point out, Phil, is there a group potentially 

out there that was completely missed that wouldn't 

be covered by the workers who have breathing zone. 

And so that's really the name of the game.

First, we have to capture the data and then it has to 

be analyzed not only for its completeness but also its 

representation among the affected worker 

population. If there's a group out there who is doing 

work that is not covered by that type of monitoring, 

that would certainly to me constitute a significant 

issue. I just don't think we're at that stage yet.

Ms. Blaze: Phil, this is D'Lanie. We're going to have 

time for me to address the Board, right?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

74

Chair Schofield: Yes, we are.

Ms. Blaze: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Dr. Taulbee: And if I could just add on to what Bob is 

saying here, I mean, we've gone over this quite a bit 

here that we need to go capture this breathing zone 

data so that we can look at who is monitored as well 

as, you know, what is the volume of data that we 

have. We just don't know these things yet.

It will be a gross alpha measurement as Bob pointed 

out. We can then assign it as americium or as thorium 

on a claimant-favorable basis depending upon the 

cancer type that is there. We just don't have this data 

yet and so we need to go get it. We can speculate a 

lot about it, but we need to get the data.

Member Anderson: That seems to be step number 

one, right?

Chair Schofield: Yes. So at this point, my feeling is, 

and this is a question for everybody, is that we really 

cannot make a recommendation at this point until 

that data is -- until NIOSH and SC&A actually have 

an opportunity to look at the data and retrieve some 

that may -- well, it probably is still hidden in a lot of 

those boxes.

Member Beach: Yes. Phil, that's absolutely correct. I 

agree with you. We still have a couple more reports 

to go through this morning also.

Mr. Barton: Well, if it helps, I think we have at least 

from SC&A's, at least from the agenda I'm looking at, 

we have the characterization of the Boeing Incident 

Data Base to go through and then --

Member Beach: Yes, and -- oh, sorry, Bob. Go ahead.

Mr. Barton: And then after that, it's an SC&A 2020 

White Paper tentative. I can give an update on that, 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

75

but we're not going to be able to discuss that today 

although the Work Group does have a copy of it. 

Since we have not been able to get the proper 

clearances to get it publicly released, we simply can't 

discuss the specifics of that.

Member Beach: Are you talking about the October 

9th one?

Mr. Barton: Yes. I believe that's the one that 

(simultaneous speaking).

Member Field: I got the last one we got.

Member Beach: And NIOSH hasn't had a chance to 

respond on it either so.

Mr. Barton: Correct.

Member Beach: Okay. So I guess one more to go 

through.

Mr. Barton: Okay. Well, I can certainly do that if it's 

amenable to everybody.

Chair Schofield: Yes. Okay. I have no problems.

Review of Records from Boeing Incident Data Base

Mr. Barton: Okay. This was a review and 

characterization of what's known as the Boeing 

Incident Data Base, which we document in a memo 

that was released in June of 2019, and it is publicly 

available on the DCAS website.

So back in December of 2018 CORE Advocacy had 

provided thumb drives to everybody, including SC&A, 

that contained the Boeing Incident Data Base, which 

hadn't been necessarily fully vetted or at least 

documented of what's contained in these incident 

files that are related.

So SC&A was really tasked, and we're going back to 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

76

SEC-00246, so we're talking about De Soto again, 

which, again, this would be the period from 1965 up 

through, oh, geez, what is the end date, I think it 

might be 1995 or something like that.

Member Beach: Yes. It is '95.

Mr. Barton: '95. But anyway the key start date is in 

the mid-60s there. So what we found is that the 

database had 784 incident reports and 486 unusual 

occurrence reports. That's their terminology that 

they use.

When SC&A went through, obviously radiological 

incident reports are very relevant to whether we 

reconstruct doses. The unusual occurrence reports 

seems to just be a different category. It was more 

industrial hygiene accidents. And they didn't actually 

involve any radiation contamination or spread of 

radiation.

So we can sort of -- we didn't fully evaluate those 

other than to go through them and sort of check them 

off the list as not being relevant in a radiological 

sense.

We saw that 95, or about 12% of those 784 reports 

were directly applicable to De Soto during the time 

frame that we're interested in.

There were also three that we can tell were actually 

missing it from the database. In other words, we 

don't have the original incident file. The only thing we 

really have is a date of when the incident occurred 

and an abbreviated one-line sentence about what 

occurred.

So those are sort of limited as to what we know about 

them. But we can use the information that was 

available. And they are included in our summary 

document.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

77

So here's just, you know, a nice graph. I apparently 

can't spell approximate if you notice in the Y axis. But 

these were the number of radiological incidents 

available in that database by year.

As you can see, it kind of varies. There's a bunch in 

the 60s and then it really tails off in the mid-70s for 

really unknown reasons. And then, again, you know, 

sort of a spike in the late 70s and then it tails off 

again, which is really consistent with cessation of 

activities in fuel fabrication in the powder room, 

which was in Building 001 at De Soto.

So what SC&A did is we went through each of the 

relevant radiological incident reports for De Soto 

applicable to SEC-00246, and we came up with our 

own sort of categorization, which is shown on this 

table.

So the first category was incidents that were strictly 

related to uranium contamination. And as I said on 

the previous slide, there are 98 reports. So you can 

kind of look at the second column where, you know, 

43 and say, all right, about 43 percent of them were 

related strictly to uranium contamination.

The second category, a little less than 10% were 

related to uranium, but there was no actual spread 

of contamination. So this would have been potential 

fires that might have occurred, as we know, uranium 

is very pyrophoric, but that the contamination was 

contained within a glove box or another engineering 

control.

The third category, roughly 6% where other 

contamination is, in other words they didn't involve 

uranium at all. They did not specifically involve 

transuranic material or thorium. These would have 

been typical mixed fission products like cobalt, 

cesium, iodine, manganese, that sort of thing.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

78

Roughly 30 percent of the incidents did not involve 

contamination at all. This would have been things like 

lost film badges or, you know, they did a lot of work 

with x-ray diffraction. So really the radiological 

aspect of it was pretty much restricted to external 

dose, not any chance of or potential for internal 

intakes.

Now these last two categories, 5 and 6, are where 

the action is at. Eight of the reports or roughly 8 

percent just identify that there was contamination, 

and there was no follow-up, you know, radiochemical 

analysis or spectroscopy to identify what the actual 

contaminant of concern was. So obviously those are 

of interest.

And then six is really where the action is at. It is 

incidents that mention decladding, which, again, if we 

go back to the earlier discussions, if you're 

decladding fuel that has been irradiated, there is a 

very real chance of exposure to the bad actors, which 

are really those transuranic elements such as 

americium.

So first the Category 5 incidents, these are the 

incidents where there was no information provided in 

the incident reports as to what the actual 

contamination was.

I mean, we reviewed them. But, as I said, there just 

simply isn't evidence there necessarily to indicate 

what it was. However, there was also no indication 

that they would have involved americium or thorium, 

you know.

Just, I guess, the wording and the situations 

surrounding the incident, which suggested they were 

more associated with the other typical incidents that 

we see at De Soto, which mainly involved uranium. I 

mean, roughly, I think 90 percent of them were 

directly involved with uranium, which was their 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

79

emission. They had fuel fabrication involving fresh 

fuel so fresh uranium.

Now these two Category 6 incidents, again, these are 

the decladding incidents. One was in 1965, and it 

actually described that there was an energy 

employee cutting and grinding an irradiated fuel 

element in a clean lab area.

As a result of this, the energy employee did submit 

bioassay samples and the results were not 

detectable. So that incident in and of itself is not 

necessarily an issue because the person was 

monitored. However, it does beg the question why 

are they cutting and grinding an irradiated fuel 

element at De Soto, and that's something that we 

simply had found no evidence of prior to this incident 

database. And that, again, occurred in 1965.

The second one was in November of 1975, and this 

one is described as a tool element, which is xenon 

tag gas, and it was included in a batch of elements to 

be used in destructive testing. And it was stripped of 

its cladding.

The exposure that was evaluated and associated with 

this event was restricted to really krypton-85. That 

was what was determined to be the radiological 

hazard as a result of this November 1975 incident. 

And it's just not clear from the documentation if the 

fuel element had actually been irradiated or if they 

were performing destructive testing and inspection 

on a fresh fuel rod.

So based on our review of these incidents, none of 

them really directly references any internal exposure 

that might have occurred to americium or thorium at 

De Soto. Of course, we know they did handle thorium 

at De Soto. And there is, as I mentioned, at least a 

framework for reconstructing the thorium aspect. 

It's, again, that really americium is the long pole in 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

80

the tent so to speak.

Almost all the incidents involved just uranium 

operations, which again was to be expected. 

However, you have that 1965 decladding incident 

involving cutting and grinding which actually said it 

was an irradiated fuel rod.

So the questions that SC&A really asked is was this a 

reportable incident only because it occurred in a clean 

lab or did this activity possibly occur in other 

locations at De Soto, other facilities? Was this a 

normal occurrence? And, again, this one was noted 

in 1965, which is again the first year after the 

established SEC for De Soto.

And then in 1975, again, we just don't have further 

information about that decladding incident and 

whether it actually involved an irradiated fuel 

element. So we sort of hit the end of the road with 

the information we have at hand right now regarding 

that 1975 incident.

So that's essentially the 10,000 foot view of our 

review of the Boeing Incident Data Base. There's 

certainly more specific information available in the 

report posted on the website. But I would be happy 

to answer any questions that people might have 

regarding our review of that.

Chair Schofield: Can you identify the people who 

were involved in these decladding operations?

Mr. Barton: I believe the names are redacted. 

However, as noted in the 1965 incident, the 

individual who was involved in the cutting and 

grinding of an irradiated fuel rod was bioassayed 

afterwards and the results were not detectable. But 

as far as the 1975, I believe the names are redacted. 

And I don't believe we necessarily have original 

copies that might include the names.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

81

Chair Schofield: What my concern is is I don't know 

how many of these -- how often they did this 

decladding, whether it was almost a daily activity, 

whether it was just an occasional activity. But do we 

have some way of putting a circle around those 

people who were involved in such or around, worked 

in that general vicinity where this was going on? I 

mean, from a dose reconstruction standpoint, it 

seems like we would need those numbers, those 

identifiers, excuse me.

Mr. Barton: Well, two issues here. Definitely in the 

1965 incident, it was an irradiated fuel element. It 

says that in the incident report. It's not as clear in 

the 1975 incident. Those were the only two incidents 

that mentioned something like decladding activities.

And that's exactly the question that SC&A asked, you 

know, for the 1965 one, I mean, how often were they 

actually working with spent fuel and decladding it? 

Because, again, those were materials that would 

contain transuranics that we don't have proper 

monitoring data for to be able to construct a coexposure model.

I mean, was that a one-off activity or did it occur 

more frequently? I mean, these are excellent 

questions that our current documentation doesn't 

answer. And that's really the reason why, as part of 

the De Soto review, we wanted to go back and 

interview workers.

Now, unfortunately, none of them recalled decladding 

of spent fuel as was summarized earlier in SC&A's 

presentations. Aside from that, I don't know what 

documentation is available or out there for us to 

capture that might get a better handle on the extent 

to which these decladding incidents might have 

happened.

Now, again, 1965 definitely included a spent fuel rod 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

82

or irradiated fuel rod. In 1975, it's not as clear. I 

know that they were doing destructive testing and 

experiments of that nature with fresh fuel. They were 

producing it there, that was their mission. So it's 

possible that this represented just a fresh fuel rod 

that was decladded as part of the destructive testing 

methods, or -- truly we just don't know.

But as far as the Boeing Incident Data Base, these 

were the two that we identified with De Soto that 

involve decladding of fuel, which is obviously one of 

the major concerns because that was really the 

reason why Area IV has an SEC for it.

They were doing decladding of spent fuel on a regular 

basis up on the hill in the hot laboratory and the hot 

cell that was designed for it. Again, that's why we 

went back, and we tried to interview people to see if 

we could find more information. Do you recall these 

activities occurring? And, unfortunately, the 

interviews did not bear that out. Or maybe 

fortunately, I don't know.

Member Field: Yes. It just seems like if these 

happened, I mean, you almost have to assume that 

the '75 one was irradiated as far as worst case 

scenarios, right? And if it was, we're talking about a 

10 year time period where there's these two ends to 

this that we know of where they're working with 

these fuel rods. So it just makes you wonder what's 

happening in between that we're not catching.

I think your point is well taken. Was it in an incident 

because it was in a clean lab or was it because of 

their activity? It's hard to tell.

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim, Tim Taulbee. Thinking along 

those lines though, if they were routinely working 

with irradiated fuel, that work is typically done in hot 

cells, okay. That was where Area IV was set up to do 

this.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

83

As Bob mentioned, you know, some of this 

decladding would be on fresh fuel because you would 

do destructive type of testing from that standpoint.

We do have the one evidence here of somebody 

working in a clean lab with irradiated fuel that they 

weren't supposed to be, I mean obviously from that 

standpoint. That's noted. And they did follow-up 

bioassay from that.

So to jump to the conclusion that they were routinely 

doing this decladding type of operations with 

irradiated fuel, I just don't see the evidence here. The 

interviews are all indicating -- or multiple people 

were saying that this was done in Area IV and not at 

De Soto. So we actually have some evidence of the 

opposite here that this was not routinely done at De 

Soto. And I think that's important to keep in mind 

here.

We don't have any evidence that this was routinely 

done at De Soto. And the one, if you go back to our 

discussions of americium in the drain line of the Mass 

Spec Lab, if this was routinely done with irradiated 

fuel throughout De Soto, you would be seeing other 

contamination that would be popping up from that 

type of standpoint. And we don't see that.

Member Field: I guess if they had biomonitoring, just 

because it was performed in the clean lab, and it 

seems like if it was performed in the hot lab, they 

would also be biomonitoring. I can't see why you 

would just do biomonitoring because it was the clean 

lab unless there was some ventilation issue.

Dr. Taulbee: That's correct. That's correct. I have a 

feeling that they were not supposed to be working 

with -- in that lab at that time or in that lab in that 

area.

Member Field: Right. I think Phil's question about it's 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

84

too bad that the worker couldn't actually be identified 

and see if they would be willing to have an interview. 

I mean, this is '65. It's hard to know how he or she 

is doing at this point.

Chair Schofield: The problem is if they're that far 

back, they're probably getting old like the rest of us.

Member Field: Yes. That's what I was saying. It's 

hard to tell.

Mr. Barton: It is very difficult to be able to find 

interviewees. Now the ones that we targeted, and 

again there were only six so it doesn't seem like an 

incredible number, but it actually started with many 

more than that, workers who had been interviewed 

previously about their work there, not part of the OPA 

program but interviewed elsewhere. And ATL, the 

NIOSH contractor, I feel did a very comprehensive 

job to try to find those people, also the people SC&A 

had identified in its original review, which essentially 

what we did was go through the claimant population 

and read through their CATIs and see, you know, if 

this person might have something to say.

One of the interviewees as we spoke of was 

recommended through CORE Advocacy. And they 

submitted a signed affidavit, I believe, just a day 

after we interviewed them, essentially.

In addition to that, I believe we did a fairly 

comprehensive search of the SRDB and the log books 

that we have available to find additional names. And 

it's just very difficult. We could only find six to 

actually sit down and talk with.

Member Field: And, Bob, it is basically -- one other 

question. I don't have it in front, I should have noted 

this, but of the people you did interview, what was 

the earliest start points for some of them? Were they 

around during these periods?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

85

Mr. Barton: One of them was there in 1965.

Member Field: Okay.

Mr. Barton: So we have pretty fair coverage. But you 

know what, I can go back. Let's see here. All right. 

So Worker Number 1 was '65 to '78, '65 to '67, '81 

to 2006, '72 to '87 and then 1983 to an unknown end 

of employment.

Dr. Taulbee: So it looks like to point out, if you go 

through, I mean, each of them are talking about the 

decladding and so forth being done in Area IV. I think 

your first worker there, the 1965 one, Bob, that you 

pointed out, Worker 2. Oh no, the Worker 1, yes.

Mr. Barton: Worker 1 as well, yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Spent fuel only occurred in Area IV. 

Spent fuel --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Taulbee: -- in Area IV.

Member Field: So that makes it sound like the 

incident may have been because it was in a clean lab 

that supports, I guess, that position.

Mr. Rutherford: This is LaVon. Hey, Lara, could we 

take a look at that 1965 incident? I don't recall.

Dr. Hughes: I have looked at it before, yes. But I can 

go back to look at it again and see if we can pull any 

names off it. There are some incident reports that we 

do have duplicates of that we do have the names. I 

have not specifically done that, but it's something I 

can look into.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Rutherford: I think we ought to take a look at it 

again just to make sure we pull the thread as far as 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

86

we can pull on that one.

Chair Schofield: How extensive of records are there 

on the people who, both at De Soto and Area IV that 

were under the bioassay program?

My thinking is that this decladding and stuff that went 

on in Area IV because of exposures or because of lack 

of manpower where some of these people rotated 

from De Soto up to Area IV to do some of this 

decladding type work or not is -- I'm wondering if we 

could identify some of those people through their 

bioassay records? This may not be something 

possible. I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Mr. Barton: Well, we had a fairly extensive 

discussion. And I think it's pretty well established and 

accepted that the two sites, I use the term sister 

sites, but they did rotate workers between the two. 

There was no wall keeping one from the other. I think 

it is assumed that the workers at both De Soto and 

Area IV essentially worked at both sites.

I think where our hands are tied is that these 

decisions about where covered employment is are 

really not -- we don't have much of a say in it. That's 

really Department of Labor who establishes that. But 

I think it's clear that workers at De Soto, including 

your security, your fire protection and your health

physicists did rotate.

Ms. Blaze: I can answer so many of these questions 

when I'm allowed to present. I'm sizzling like an 

isotope over here.

Chair Schofield: Since we're addressing that 

question, would you like -- if it's okay with everybody 

else, would you like to go ahead and address that 

particular issue?

Ms. Blaze: I would like to –
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

87

SC&A 2020 White Paper

Mr. Barton: If I could just give an update on the 2020 

White Paper that SC&A produced.

Ms. Blaze: Yes. Let me go after Bob.

Chair Schofield: Okay.

Mr. Barton: Unfortunately, so you all got an official 

use only copy of that report. And we're still working 

through the various levels to get it cleared for public 

release.

In that report, there is a discussion. We took a look, 

without getting into too much detail because we can't 

because it's still official use only. We did take a look, 

and there's a discussion about the movement of 

workers between the two sites.

There's also a discussion about concerns with the in 

vivo count program and possibly missing records 

from that. There's a discussion of the comments 

made by CORE Advocacy in August concerning the 

interviews. And then finally there's also a discussion 

of a case study that was submitted by CORE 

Advocacy in 2018 that essentially compared the 

records that a former worker had kept for themselves 

on their radiation monitoring against FOIA requests 

for the same records from DOE.

So there's a lot of material there. And, you know, we 

did our best to try to get it cleared for this meeting. 

But there's a site specific deal we reviewed that has 

to happen.

The report was cleared by DOE HQ but there's been 

some questions about who gets the final redaction on 

it before it can be released to the public. So I 

apologize for that.

There is considerable information in which we try to 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

88

address some of these things in that report. And we 

hope to have it out in the next couple of weeks if we 

can sort of get the procedural hurdles cleared. And 

that will be made available.

So I just wanted to give an update on that. It does 

appear on the agenda. But we just weren't able to 

get a publicly cleared version for this meeting and so 

we can't really discuss the specifics on that at this 

time.

Chair Schofield: Well then we better hold off.

Mr. Barton: That was all I had as far as an update on 

that item.

Chair Schofield: LaVon, you look like you're about 

ready to go to sleep. Do you got any comments?

Mr. Rutherford: I look like I'm about ready to go to 

sleep? Actually, I've got two monitors going here. 

And my video camera is on this one. And so I'm trying 

to bounce back and forth. No, I'm listening. No 

comments.

Member Field: Phil, would this be a good time for 

D'Lanie to present?

Chair Schofield: What was that?

Member Field: I said, would this be a good time for 

D'Lanie to present?

Chair Schofield: Since we can't discuss the White 

Paper and due to our limited time today, I would like 

to have her go ahead and present what she has for 

us unless somebody else has any objections?

Ms. Blaze: Are we good?

Chair Schofield: I think we're good. Go for it.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

89

Petitioner Comments

Ms. Blaze: Thanks, Phil. So thanks, everybody. It's 

really good to see all of your faces again and thank 

you for your continued work on SEC Petitions 235 and 

246 for Santa Susana and De Soto.

All of the presentations today were so impressive, but 

I want to focus my comments squarely on the need 

to pass the SEC for the De Soto facility.

That petition was prompted by NIOSH's decision to 

expand the Santa Susana Area IV SEC to 1988. And 

as we've been discussing today, NIOSH initiated that 

expansion based on the inability to dose reconstruct 

americium or thorium with sufficient accuracy.

Now Santa Susana and De Soto share a welldocumented joint history. In fact NIOSH has always 

considered them to represent the same entity, 

operationally and contractually. We've talked about 

that today a lot, too. The same site profile is used, 

the facilities shared workers, materials, 

recordkeeping. They functioned as one.

Therefore, it was reasonable to expect that a 

concurrent SEC would be passed for De Soto facility 

to match the one at Area IV. And that has been done 

in the past with all of the SECs up to 1964, but this 

time it just wasn't.

NIOSH explained that that was because americium 

and thorium were not used at the De Soto facility and 

so a concurrent SEC Class would therefore not be 

necessary. But that did not take into account the 

workers of De Soto facility who were routinely loaned 

to Santa Susana or who rotated on an as needed and 

undocumented basis.

NIOSH is well aware of this problem. And they're 

aware that these workers are just as likely to have 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

90

encountered americium and thorium as any 

employee who may have been administratively 

affiliated with Area IV, yet NIOSH turned their backs 

on these workers. And I'm going to tell you how 

NIOSH has completely changed their position since 

this SEC petition was first introduced.

NIOSH has always emphasized the similarities 

between these worksites, most especially the 

problem of undocumented worker rotation between 

them. In fact, NIOSH has relied on that very issue to 

explain their continued delays in resolving numerous 

open issues regarding the creation of internal and 

external co-worker models since 2010, and that topic 

came up today.

For example, in 2015 Dr. Jim Neton, the Associate 

Director of Science at NIOSH, stated on the record 

that one major problem in developing the co-worker 

model was that Santa Susana, quote, had other sites 

like the De Soto facility and that, quote, NIOSH 

simply cannot be sure where the bioassay data came 

from, end quote.

So here we are today, and NIOSH has totally changed 

its position, now insisting De Soto facility has an 

entirely separate burden of proof when it comes to 

establishing this SEC Class.

NIOSH expects us to prove that americium and 

thorium were present at De Soto before it will 

acknowledge that the workers were at risk of 

exposure. And NIOSH has passionately represented 

these facilities as separate work sites even while 

evaluating their petitions together as we've been 

doing all day.

Well, we did as NIOSH requested, and we focused 

efforts on establishing that americium and thorium 

were used at De Soto facility. Even NIOSH's own 

1995 stack emissions data confirm the presence of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

91

these materials in the ventilation samples.

We've supplied log books, documentation, incident 

reports, worker affidavits, evidence of previously 

unconsidered programs, et cetera. There's been so 

much good work done and NIOSH's expectations 

have been met, and yet they continue to move the 

goalpost.

I keep coming back to one question, and Bob asked 

that question today. I think that since it's NIOSH's 

responsibility to conduct dose reconstruction with 

sufficient accuracy, the question that we must 

answer is this.

Were De Soto workers at risk of americium and 

thorium exposure, like Santa Susana employees 

were? And the answer is yes. NIOSH is well aware of 

established site practices and undocumented rotation 

between this shared workforce.

And I think that Dr. Kotelchuck brought this up at the 

Providence, Rhode Island Work Group meetings. 

NIOSH immediately put it back onto Department of 

Labor stating that DOL will tell NIOSH which facility 

an employee was affiliated with and then NIOSH will 

simply conduct the dose reconstruction accordingly.

That's only partially true. Dr. Hughes, at that same 

meeting and on the record, stated that all radiation 

data for Santa Susana and De Soto employees is, 

quote, the same. That is, regardless of any 

administrative affiliation with a particular site, Santa 

Susana or De Soto, NIOSH knows that that radiation 

data applies to workers in both sites and that the 

majority of monitored workers had occasions to 

perform duties at both sites interchangeably and 

without documentation. And NIOSH also knows that 

oftentimes these very workers would go back and 

forth between the sites several times in the span of 

a single work shift.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

92

So DOL's interpretation of a simple administrative 

affiliation has no bearing on NIOSH's interpretation 

or understanding of worker radiation exposures at 

Santa Susana and De Soto facility.

It's NIOSH's responsibility to interpret that radiation 

data and to acknowledge site practices and data 

limitations that might prevent or compromise 

accuracy in dose reconstruction outcome. Being 

unable to tell which work site workers were at while 

they were monitored or exposed, that presents a 

challenge that should be acknowledged, and it 

supports passage of an SEC all by itself.

Today Dr. Hughes mentioned that the idea of 

outdated Site Profile documents is subjective since 

some of these claims are about work that was 

performed in 1954. But that, too, is misleading 

because there's a difference between the terms 

outdated and incomplete.

And the Site Profile and Technical Basis Documents 

are still missing information and relevant data that 

pertains to all eras of site operations from the 50s 

onward. They have never provided a complete or 

accurate depiction for all of the years that these sites 

have operated jointly with the shared workforce.

The bottom line here is that if NIOSH could have used 

De Soto worker data to reconstruct americium and 

thorium for Area IV employees, they would have 

done it instead of expanding that Area IV SEC by 24 

years.

But as Dr. Neton has said, one major problem is that 

NIOSH simply cannot be sure where the bioassay 

data came from. And as Bob Barton of SC&A 

reiterated today, there simply is not monitoring data 

available, and this statement applies to workers 

regardless of their administrative affiliation.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

93

We cannot have it both ways. Clearly, it does not 

matter if americium and thorium were present at 

both work sites because the workers were present at 

both of the work sites.

NIOSH's realization that they could not perform dose 

reconstruction with sufficient accuracy for the 

workers at Santa Susana means that they cannot do 

it for the workers at De Soto either. They are one and 

the same, the workers moved between these work 

sites. Americium and thorium didn't have to.

Still yet we have provided evidence that establishes 

the presence of materials at De Soto. We also still 

have a lot of mysteries as we've discussed today, and 

we've established the practice of undocumented 

worker rotation between Area IV and De Soto among 

those who were administratively affiliated with both 

of the work sites.

I respectfully urge the Board to recognize the plight 

of the De Soto employees routinely present in Area 

IV without documentation and summarily disqualified 

from the SEC to date.

Their exposures were no less deadly. Their cancers 

are no less worthy. It is not their fault that NIOSH 

cannot tell the workers apart or track worker 

movements from site to site. In fact, this has been 

made even more challenging since DOE stopped 

holding Boeing accountable for providing complete 

and timely worker records and radiation data.

Inability to obtain comprehensive worker data is, in 

and of itself, a reason to establish an SEC class.

Currently, Santa Susana and De Soto workers are 

unable to obtain employment verification, personnel 

records or complete radiation records. And we 

continue to seek involvement and explanation from 

DOE to no avail. It has become routine practice for 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

94

Boeing to indicate that hard copy personnel records 

are available for the employees of Area IV and for De 

Soto. But for some reason, those records are not 

being provided to Department of Labor.

The Department of Energy has not provided an 

explanation for the location of those worker records 

in case after case. These very records could be used 

to establish worker rotation and work locations. And 

we're now unable to get them from DOE and the 

contractor.

NIOSH has yet to respond to the revelations involving 

incomplete radiation data and radiation dose 

discrepancies for the workers who rotated between 

Area IV and De Soto hot labs.

Boeing provided no whole body counting data for an 

employee who was there over the course of 40 years. 

But the employee provided numerous records of 

whole body counts and a letter from his employer file 

indicating that the contractor typically did not report 

whole body count data for the workers at Area IV or 

De Soto.

This calls into question the completeness and 

accuracy of all radiation data supplied by Boeing for 

the workers of Santa Susana and De Soto facility.

Enough. The SEC for De Soto facility is the only way 

that we can assure that EEOICPA functions as 

Congress intended.

I respectfully encourage the Advisory Board to 

recommend acceptance of this SEC based on the long 

established, repeatedly acknowledged shared 

operations, shared data limitations and shared 

workforce with Area IV.

In fact, based on the information in DOE operations 

at these sites, so much of which we went over today, 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

95

including the site remediation period, both SECs 

should be concurrent until at least 1995.

As always, it's a privilege to address the Board. And 

I thank you for your continued efforts on these SEC 

petitions and for the workers at these sites.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Blaze: Thanks, Phil.

Chair Schofield: Yes. We're still fighting with that 

problem about the Department of Labor wanting to 

label people at one area or the other. I don't know 

exactly where we're going to be able to go on that 

one yet. I got a question for --

Ms. Blaze: To clarify, I'm not talking about areas. I'm 

talking about the difference between Area IV and De 

Soto facility.

Chair Schofield: Right. But some people, according to 

the Department of Labor, are labeled as only having 

ever been at De Soto even though we do have, you 

know, a great deal of testimony that shows people 

did move back and forth.

Ms. Blaze: That's what matters.

Chair Schofield: They could be at both facilities in one 

day.

Ms. Blaze: Yes. And we have to give them the benefit 

of the doubt when there's an absence of data. That's 

the whole premise behind the program. It's the whole 

purpose of claimant favorability in dose 

reconstruction.

Member Beach: This is Josie. How many workers are 

we talking about that are not covered in the De Soto 

facility? Do we have a count or any idea?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

96

Mr. Rutherford: Lara, do you have an idea? I don't 

know what we would have presented in the 

Evaluation Report. We would have identified the 

number of potential claims affected by the entire 

Class and then we would have separated out for the 

given Class that we were recommending for, so I 

don't know if we --

Member Beach: Yes. I'll go back and look.

Dr. Hughes: Yes. I don't have that in front of me. We 

have about 300 claims at NIOSH for De Soto. But that 

is not -- I don't have the number that has coemployment with Santa Susana or which of those 

claims would fall into a potential SEC. I don't have 

that.

Chair Schofield: I don't remember, somebody will 

have to correct me on this, but if I remember right, 

there were at least -- whether it was a job description 

on their personnel files or it was on their badge that 

a lot of people even though they worked in Area IV 

had identifiers that showed them in other areas.

I don't know if this also was true for those people who 

were labeled as working at De Soto or not. Maybe 

somebody can remember these documents and has 

seen it for De Soto, too.

Ms. Blaze: I'd like to go on the record, if I may. 

During the time that it was my time to speak on the 

agenda, and I've patiently waited since 7:30 this 

morning Pacific Standard Time to do so, Boeing 

representatives have been sending everyone text 

messages on the Zoom chat, which is highly 

distracting and very inconsiderate to the petitioner. 

And I'd just like to point that out. I would ask that it 

not continue.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Has anybody else seen that 

document? I remember there were some people who 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

97

were labeled as Area IV, but like I said, their badges, 

their personnel file, I don't remember which it was, 

would show them being out of another -- working in 

other buildings outside of Area IV, but they were 

assigned to Area IV? I mean, I don't remember how 

long ago I saw that. What was this?

Ms. Blaze: It was a widely known document. We had 

workers assigned to time clock locations outside of 

the covered area, provided with radiation badges 

assigned to Area IV work locations. We can't track 

worker movements between Areas I, II, III or IV. And 

we also cannot track worker movements between De 

Soto facility and Santa Susana.

And so if we're just looking at Area IV workers, and 

we're talking about Area IV and we're talking about 

De Soto, we can't tell where the workers were. Areas 

I, II and III were completely irrelevant, and we still 

can't tell.

Although I have obtained a memo from the 

Department of Labor just last week acknowledging 

DOE facilities in Area I. And so we're going to be 

looking at that more deeply as well.

Chair Schofield: Do you have any documents or 

documentation with personnel who were assigned to 

De Soto but have these identifiers that would say 

they also worked -- I mean, their film badge or 

whatever it is that may also have -- or be scheduled 

to work in Area IV --

Ms. Blaze: Yes. And I submitted it.

Chair Schofield: -- or vice versa?

Ms. Blaze: Yes. We've been talking about that 

document. There was an entire list of workers that 

were on loan that went back and forth between Area 

IV and De Soto for specific hot lab related activities. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

98

That was one of the documents submitted a month 

or two ago.

Chair Schofield: Yes. I apologize. I remember seeing 

that, but I don't have it in front of me. I'll have to 

look for it again. Thank you.

Ms. Blaze: Sure.

Chair Schofield: Okay. And so does anybody have 

any questions?

Mr. Barton: As I indicated, and hopefully you can 

hear me, you should have an official use copy of 

SC&A's White Paper that does discuss sort of the 

issue with information available to place workers, 

where it's lacking, and also the document that Ms. 

Blaze is referring to. There's a lot of information in 

there.

We tried to put a lot of it together, especially the 

more recent submissions including what was 

submitted in June, in August and as far back as the 

case study that was also alluded to by Ms. Blaze.

Unfortunately, as I said, I think by rule I have to hold 

my tongue because it's not publicly available and so 

we're not allowed to discuss it in a public setting until 

that happens. But like I said we're working through 

the procedural hurdles to make sure that document 

does get released and is available for the petitioners.

But you should also have an official use only copy. 

And if you do not, I will make sure that you get one 

as quickly as possible. But, again, we hope to have 

the publicly available version and a non-PA cleared 

version that sheds the official use only title so that 

it's a lot easier and accessible in the coming weeks.

Chair Schofield: Okay. I'll go back and look at that 

again.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

99

Dr. Taulbee: Yes. Phil, this is Tim. The SC&A 

document is dated October 9 so it was just a few days 

ago. But I would encourage you to read from that one 

that is not redacted. It contains all of the information. 

And what will end up going out to the public will 

potentially be redacted. So I would encourage you to 

read the unredacted version that has been sent to 

you.

Chair Schofield: Okay. I'll do that. Hey, by the way, 

Tim, are you really where that picture is?

Dr. Taulbee: No, I'm not.

Chair Schofield: You better not be.

Member Beach: I have a question for NIOSH. I know 

that NIOSH typically reaches out to DOL when there's 

an issue on the workers as there is between De Soto 

and Area IV. And I think I read through all of these 

documents that you had reached out to DOL. Is that 

correct or?

Mr. Rutherford: I can answer that one. We have back 

early on when this whole issue came up, Stu 

Hinnefeld, who was director at the time, actually 

corresponded with the Department of Labor over this 

issue.

And I don't remember the specifics on it, but we've 

also ever since their petition was submitted and since 

we've been going through this process when we see 

issues or information that's provided to us that we 

feel is appropriate to provide to the Department of 

Labor, we have done that. Like, the Department of 

Labor's position hasn't changed on this.

Chair Schofield: I remember Stu's discussion on that 

at one of our meetings.

Mr. Rutherford: I also wanted to give Josie the 

information she asked for earlier. I did pull up our 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

100

evaluation report. And this data was from May 21 of 

2018, and there were 255 claims that were submitted 

during the -- that covered the 1965 through 1995 

period, which is the entire period of that Area IV that 

was part of the petition.

Now that doesn't mean that all of those claims would 

be compensated if the SEC was extended through 

that period. It just means that they did have covered 

employment. It doesn't mean that they had the 250 

days. It doesn't mean, you know, and so -- and if you 

extended it, the SEC period as you mentioned, up to 

where the current SEC period is for Area IV that 

number would drop because this is up through 1995.

Ms. Blaze: Ted Katz had agreed to involve the 

Department of Labor in a roundtable about the 

eligibility issues and undocumented worker rotation 

like a year and a half ago, two years. I think we were 

at a Work Group meeting on the record, and I asked 

for it. And Ted said, yes, let's do it. It just hasn't 

happened.

But I think, really, given these issues and given the 

precedent at other sites, I would very much like to 

have NIOSH and the Department of Labor weigh in 

together with the Advisory Board as to why these 

sites were not considered to be the same.

If NIOSH considers these sites the same operational 

and contractual entity and we're discussing them 

together today as if they're the same, then why are 

they held to such separate burdens of proof for 

passing an SEC when clearly we have workers at both 

sites that are moving back and forth and we can't tell 

which ones they were.

Member Field: LaVon, earlier you said that DOL's 

position hasn't changed. What position were you 

talking about specifically?
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

101

Mr. Rutherford: Well, that they are separate covered 

facilities.

Member Field: I just wanted to make sure. Okay.

Chair Schofield: That particular subject goes back 

several years, LaVon. Somebody said Stu had kind of 

addressed this issue at one of the Board meetings we 

had because it had come up. And we asked him about 

it that, you know, well, wait a minute. We got these 

people we know.

Well, just for instance, like, some of the fire 

department guards and we know for a fact were 

going back and forth but at least, like some of the fire 

department was listed out of De Soto even though 

they responded to Area IV.

So this is not, unfortunately, a new issue. It's 

something that has been going on for a number of 

years now, the question on coverage for people from 

De Soto. Maybe Tim could elaborate on that a little 

more to LaVon.

Mr. Rutherford: No, I can't.

Chair Schofield: Okay.

Dr. Taulbee: I can't either. I mean, this is something 

that the Department of Labor -- I was not aware that 

Ted had indicated of meeting with the Department of 

Labor and getting people together. I'll certainly go 

back -- or we'll go back to the transcripts and try and 

see what it was that he had committed to and try and 

go forward from there.

Chair Schofield: Okay. I don't remember that either, 

so. Do you, Josie, remember when that was?

Member Beach: I sort of remember the discussion on 

it. But, no, not without looking at the transcripts. And

it's unusual. It would be the first time that I know of 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

102

it occurring. But it makes sense if we could do it.

Chair Schofield: Yes, it would.

Member Beach: It seems like there should be a way 

to prove those De Soto workers -- I mean, we know 

they went back and forth, to put them in Area IV at 

the time of the SEC that just seems -- it just seems 

like we should be able to do that even without 

regarding De Soto as a covered facility. It's the 

workers that --

Ms. Blaze: And if we don't have --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Blaze: If we can't get their records from Boeing, 

we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Member Beach: I agree, but that --

Chair Schofield: No. There's no disagreement, I don't 

think, on anybody's part there. It's a nut we've got 

to still crack. Anybody else want to address that 

particular issue at this point?

Mr. Barton: Well, I apologize. I got dropped off the 

call there. So I don't know if any questions were 

asked directly to me. However, again, I would 

encourage the Work Group to read through SC&A's 

unredacted report, which does delve into some of 

what information we have about how to place 

workers and how they are currently -- their covered 

employment appears to be established. And it goes 

into a lot of those details. So I'm not saying that will 

fully satisfy your concerns, or even partially. But I 

encourage you to read it for the information 

contained therein.

Chair Schofield: Okay. If you could re-send that to 

me, I must have missed it. I don't know how. But I 

would appreciate it.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

103

Mr. Barton: Sure thing. Do you have CDC access still? 

I know these things --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Schofield: I do on my -- I can on my CDC email. 

But --

Mr. Barton: So you do have access to CDC email? 

Because I believe --

Chair Schofield: Yes, I do.

Mr. Barton: Okay, great. Then yes, we'll make sure 

you get a copy of that.

Chair Schofield: Okay. I appreciate it. Okay. At this 

point, anybody have any ideas about how we're going 

to move forward at this point? Until NIOSH and SC&A 

have a chance to look at a lot of these documents 

and do searches, I think we're kind of at a standstill 

until they have that opportunity which, 

unfortunately, nobody has any idea when that's 

going to happen.

Member Beach: Well, there's a couple of things like 

pulling out the names of workers involved in the 

decladding incidents. That's something that can be 

done -- isn't that correct, Lara, that you can look for 

that now?

Dr. Hughes: Yes, that's correct.

Chair Schofield: Okay. I think you committed to that 

already.

Dr. Hughes: Yes.

Ms. Blaze: These workers, when they rotated back 

and forth between De Soto and Area IV, they often 

did so with no documentation showing that they 

entered Area IV or De Soto. They may have been 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

104

administratively affiliated and badged with one or the 

other facility.

They may have gone to the other site to use a lathe 

or a tool or an instrument or to pick something up or 

to drop something off. They may have done it several 

times during shifts. There just wasn't sufficient 

documentation.

The majority of monitored workers that we have 

found had an occasion to go back and forth between 

the work sites. And the Department of Labor has no 

idea when they did it or where they were when they 

were wearing their particular work badge.

So when we look at these sites and when we look at 

the radiation data, it's the same for the workers of 

Area IV and of De Soto. And we cannot tell without 

specific information, like perhaps if there was an 

incident report, where the worker necessarily was. 

And we can't rule out whether or not he or she was 

badged at the other site, if they wore that work badge 

and they went to De Soto, that film badge. I just 

wanted to provide that clarification in case there's 

any idea that we can really make the distinction. We 

can't do it.

Chair Schofield: I don't think there's any 

disagreement on that at all, so.

Ms. Blaze: Thanks, Phil.

Chair Schofield: So, Lara, you're going to see what 

you can find on that decladding incident and get back 

to us.

Dr. Hughes: Yes, that's correct. We will try to answer 

some of these leftover questions from the discussion 

and present to the Work Group or report back to the 

Work Group.

Member Beach: And, D'Lanie, did you say what 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

105

meeting you thought that agreement with Ted was 

made? Was that the --

Ms. Blaze: I almost want to say it was Providence. It 

was one where we had kind of a hot topic back and 

forth dialogue that was a little bit flustered because 

of the confusion and the frustration that these two 

sites bring to all of us.

Member Beach: But --

Ms. Blaze: I want to say it was the Providence, Rhode 

Island 2018 meeting.

Member Beach: Well, I know we tabled the discussion 

on this site twice at two different meetings. So I was 

wondering -- and I don't think that was at 

Providence, was it? Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't 

remember.

Ms. Blaze: No. I think the tabling happened, like, way 

later.

Member Beach: Okay.

Dr. Taulbee: I believe the tabling happened in 

Pittsburgh.

Member Beach: Yes. And --

Dr. Taulbee: Because when that occurred --

Member Beach: I thought Arizona, anyway, okay, or 

New Mexico --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Blaze: -- I can't wait to travel again.

Member Beach: Yes.

Member Field: So, Bob, it sounds like it may be 

worthwhile for us -- I haven't read the non-redacted 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

106

version yet. It sounds like it would be worthwhile to 

review that and then maybe discuss -- it sounds like 

there's discussion maybe of some sort of meeting 

with DOL to explore this further. That seems like the 

path forward for that.

Dr. Taulbee: We need to read the transcripts to see 

what the context was --

Member Field: Right.

Dr. Taulbee: -- with regard to that.

Member Field: Okay.

Member Beach: Well, and I'm sure NIOSH will have 

an answer or some document on the October 9th 

report as well. I know there was a couple of items in 

there that they may want to answer.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes. I would suspect we want to 

respond to that. I haven't looked at that report at all. 

As Tim had just mentioned, it just came out. And I 

know Lara probably hasn't had a chance to review it 

completely as well, so.

Dr. Hughes: Yes. I have looked at it, but I have not 

digested it. And we don't have any responses.

Member Beach: No. We wouldn't expect any.

Dr. Hughes: Yes. It would take some time.

Chair Schofield: That would be a good discussion to 

have, but we'll wait until everybody has a chance to 

review it. And I think we'll have to go through it with 

Rashaun also on this as far as Board members go. I 

may be wrong. Unless there's something else, I think 

we will call that a meeting for the day.

Ms. Blaze: Thanks again, everyone.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, De Soto 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 Hanford Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should be 

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

107

Adjourn

Chair Schofield: Thank you. Okay. Anybody else got 

anything else before we hang up?

Member Beach: No. I guess we're signing out.

Chair Schofield: Okay. Thanks a lot, everybody. 

Appreciate it. Be safe. Okay. Bye.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 2:19 p.m.)