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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

MONDAY

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 10:00 a.m., Eastern Time, 

Bradley P. Clawson, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

JAMES M. MELIUS, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

MATT ARNO, ORAU Team

JOSH FESTER

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

WARREN JOHNSON

JENNY LIN, HHS

MIKE MAHATHY, ORAU Team

JIM NETON, DCAS

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

TIM TAULBEE, DCAS
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Contents 

Welcome and Roll Call .................................................................................... 4

Update on Current DCAS SEC Work and Schedule for Competition ............. 6

DCAS explanation of how safe work permits data will be analyzed, statistical 

metrics for the "success" of this test, and the strengths and limitations of this 

validation approach ........................................................................................ 16

Follow-up Questions with Respect to Data Adequacy of CTW Primary 

Contractors, CTW Subcontractors and Operations Workers ......................... 42

Follow-up questions re: neptunium, thorium and metal hydrides coworker 

models ............................................................................................................. 54

Follow-up discussion of DCAS/SC&A work priorities ................................. 55

Petitioner Comments ...................................................................................... 67

Adjourn ........................................................................................................... 76
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 10:02 a.m.

3 Welcome and Roll Call

4 MR. KATZ: Why don't we go ahead. 

5 Let's start roll call. I'll circle back and ask 

6 for Dr. Richardson again after we're done with 

7 everyone else, but let's get started here.

8 First of all, welcome everyone on the 

9 line. This is the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

10 Worker Health, Savannah River Site Work Group.

11 We have an agenda today, which is posted 

12 on the NIOSH website under Schedule of Meetings, 

13 today's date. I'm not sure there are documents 

14 associated with the agenda. And just for 

15 protocol, for folks who are particularly not Agency 

16 folks, but really anyone, keep your phones muted 

17 except for when you're addressing the group. That 

18 will help with audio. And, please, at no point 

19 hang up -- I mean, at no point put the call on hold, 

20 but hang up and dial back in if you need to go for 

21 a piece.
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1 So, first of all, let me just say up 

2 front to cover -- so, we have Brad Clawson, he's 

3 the Chair of the Work Group. Phil Schofield, Jim 

4 Lockey, these are all Members of the Work Group. 

5 And Dr. Melius, the Chair of the Board, is also 

6 joining us for this meeting.

7 None of these individuals have 

8 conflicts with respect to the Savannah River Site. 

9 So, let me just say that to cover them, but everyone 

10 else Agency-related should address conflicts as we 

11 go through it.

12 And let's start with the NIOSH/ORAU 

13 staff.

14 (Roll call.)

15 MR. KATZ: So, Brad, it's your call, 

16 your agenda.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Great. If I can 

18 figure out how to unmute it. Well, I appreciate 

19 everybody coming here. It's been quite a while 

20 since you've got here.

21 Everybody, I believe, has got a copy of 
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1 the agenda. And so, I guess, first of all, I'd 

2 really like to start out with an update of where 

3 we're at, where DCAS is at on the schedule for 

4 completeness and just kind of get that out of the 

5 way right off the bat.

6 So, Tim, I guess that's you.

7 Update on Current DCAS SEC Work and Schedule for 

8 Competition

9 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Thank you, Brad. 

10 I'll go down kind of a rundown of all of the 

11 deliverables that Steve talked about during the 

12 Work Group meeting in September and give a status 

13 of each one, if that's okay, Brad.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, that's fine.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. With regards to 

16 the coworkers model, the interim -- or the initial 

17 or interim OTIB-81, is what we call it, this is the 

18 Savannah River coworker model. It's going to be 

19 covering tritium and the exotic radionuclides, 

20 americium, curium, californium, and thorium.

21 That document cleared Savannah River 
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1 ADC review on September 13th. It underwent 

2 internal review here last week and it is currently 

3 back with ORAU for comment resolution. And then 

4 it will come back over to us for approval.

5 We're still anticipating the release in 

6 October, at this time, to the Work Group. And 

7 although I am not sure whether it goes to the SEC 

8 Work Group or the Savannah River Work Group or both 

9 -- I imagine it goes to both, but we'll cross that 

10 bridge whenever we get the document completed.

11 The second part, which is the Rev. 4 of 

12 the OTIB-81 for the coworker models, this would 

13 have all of the models in it. Remember, the first 

14 one, the initial one, is to give the various Work 

15 Groups a chance to look at how we're implementing 

16 the draft implementation coworker model -- or the

17 coworker implementation guide, how we are 

18 following it and what our template is for producing 

19 these coworker models.

20 The Rev. 4 of this will include all of 

21 the coworker models. That is currently underway. 
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1 It is going through the various stages of data 

2 quality assurance, model fitting, et cetera, is 

3 well on its way. There's no major hiccups or 

4 concerns at this time with regards to this one, that 

5 we're aware of.

6 The next item is neptunium. RPRT-65 

7 was originally intended to be released to the Work 

8 Group in August, which was last month. 

9 Unfortunately, we didn't get it out to you all until 

10 last week. This was due to some difficulties with 

11 the ADC review. It did not clear the final ADC 

12 review until September 14th. Then it was approved 

13 internally here. Jim signed the document on 

14 September 19th, which was last Monday. 

15 We have submitted it for public 

16 release, for public reviews. It goes to DOE 

17 headquarters for the final ADC review and release 

18 to the public. That was sent on September 20th. 

19 Again, I sent this to the Work Group on September 

20 23rd.

21 So, once we get that final approval back 
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1 from DOE headquarters, then we will post it onto 

2 our website. Again, I apologize for the delay 

3 here, but it was kind of outside of our hands here 

4 for over a month.

5 RPRT-77, the identification -- or this 

6 is the identification segment of the neptunium --

7 there's three reports with neptunium. The first 

8 one is a broad overview of the operations at 

9 Savannah River, the second one is going through the 

10 dosimetry and looking at which workers were 

11 monitored for neptunium exposure and comparing 

12 that to where they worked, because we don't have 

13 as much neptunium data as we have for, say, 

14 plutonium at the Savannah River Site.

15 I mean, the primary reason is neptunium 

16 is only worked with in certain areas. And so this 

17 document demonstrates that these workers who 

18 worked in these areas were monitored for neptunium.

19 This particular report just got cleared 

20 from ADC review, as well, on September 14th. We 

21 have it over here for internal review. That's 
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1 currently underway.

2 I reviewed it last week and I've got to 

3 write up my comments and get them back to ORAU. So 

4 we're in comment resolution. So we're not going 

5 to make it by the end of this week, but I do hope 

6 that we will have it out in the first half of 

7 November. So we'll be a little bit late on that 

8 one.

9 The PuFF construction report is 

10 currently underway as well. We've got one that is 

11 -- I've not seen a draft of this yet, which means 

12 it also hasn't gone for the initial ADC review at 

13 Savannah River, but we don't anticipate any delays 

14 with this one at this time.

15 The thorium exposures, this would be 

16 RPRT-70 post-1972. This report is also in 

17 development. It's currently scheduled for 

18 January. We don't have -- they're not 

19 anticipating any delays. We are getting a little 

20 bit of delay -- I guess I shouldn't -- we're getting 

21 a little bit of a delay from the ADC side of things.
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1 We've selected a bunch of documents 

2 back in June. To date, we've only received about 

3 half of them. So, we are working with the site. 

4 The main difficulty, I think we've cleared that 

5 hurdle down at Savannah River, the lead, the 

6 manager for the review group down there is taking 

7 more of an active role and managing the workflow 

8 to make sure that we're getting documents out on 

9 a more timely basis. And that seems to be working, 

10 at least since the 1st of September, we seem to be 

11 getting a better response. Let me put it that way.

12 The thoron exposures, that work is also 

13 underway. Again, both of these are scheduled to 

14 be delivered in January. We do have all of the data 

15 for the thoron exposures.

16 The thorium exposures, the previous 

17 one, RPRT-70, that one we are, like I said, missing 

18 about half of the data, but it's only from the 

19 1980s.

20 The report development for the '70s, 

21 part of the '80s and -- '70s and '90s is being 
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1 written and analyzed completely now. The '80s is 

2 the part that we're still waiting on a little bit 

3 of data for.

4 The final component to talk about is the 

5 metal hydrides. Unfortunately, we got -- or not 

6 the final one; second to last. The metal hydrides 

7 reports, we did get notification last week that 

8 there's an issue with the ADC review. And so that 

9 one is going to have to be modified and then undergo 

10 ADC review again. So, we are currently working 

11 through that one.

12 Due to the transmittal of this document 

13 and we can't use FedEx between Savannah River and 

14 where our folks work on it there in Oak Ridge in 

15 a limited area, it can only be sent a certain way, 

16 it does add a few weeks to this particular report. 

17 I don't know for sure yet if it's going to impact 

18 the October date or not. 

19 With the neptunium report I talked 

20 about earlier, we actually were able to turn it 

21 around within a day and send it back to Savannah 
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1 River. So, I'm hoping that we're only going to be 

2 delayed on this by about two weeks, but I really 

3 don't know for sure. It depends upon the extent 

4 of the redaction that has to occur.

5 The final item that I'll give an update 

6 on is the job plan evaluation. And this is 

7 something that we are currently working on. We 

8 have gone through all of the job plans from 1981 

9 to 1986 and there's 3,023 job plans. Of those, 

10 1,193 are construction trades worker job plans. 

11 So, about 40 percent of the job plans are 

12 construction trades workers.

13 About 60 percent, though, are 

14 operations folks, where they're going into the 

15 caves or into other areas and doing some of their 

16 non-routine type of work. So, we've got a mixed 

17 bag in there.

18 Of the almost 1200 job plans, we've 

19 identified close to a thousand construction trades 

20 workers between Rolls 2, 4, 5 and 6. Nine-hundred 

21 and eighty-two, actually, individual workers. 
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1 And within just the Rolls 4, 5 and 6, which is where 

2 the subcontractors would appear, there's 624. So, 

3 out of the construction trades workers jobs, it 

4 appears about 63 percent of them are non-routine 

5 DuPont construction trades.

6 So, these would be your B.F. Shaw, your 

7 Miller Dunn, and other such subcontractors. So, 

8 in total, we have 624 individual workers identified 

9 from that particular group.

10 Our current plan with this one, 

11 initially we were going to do a sampling. And 

12 that's what I talked about in front of the Advisory 

13 Board last October, because we weren't sure how 

14 many of these we were going to get. Because we only 

15 have 624, we plan on evaluating all 624. We're not 

16 going to go through and do a sampling from that 

17 standpoint. We'll just evaluate them all to see 

18 if they have dosimetry.

19 And for those that were doing work that 

20 we feel would need a respirator -- or clearly, if 

21 they needed a respirator, they would need bioassay 
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1 as well. We'll do an evaluation of which ones had 

2 bioassay as well.

3 So, that's where we're currently at 

4 with our schedule for completion. As I mentioned, 

5 we do have a few delays here that are happening due 

6 to ADC reviews that are a bit outside our control.

7 So, with that, any questions?

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sorry. It takes me 

9 a little while to get off mute there. So, we are 

10 pushed back a little bit on this, but we are also 

11 getting the information that we need out of SRS.

12 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct, yes. 

13 It's been coming through -- the most recent data 

14 has been coming through in batches. I believe 

15 we've had three batches come through, about 20 

16 percent of our documents in each of the batches.

17 And we did get one last week, but I will 

18 say that most of this has really started to come 

19 in since the last of August and beginning of 

20 September, up through the middle of September. 

21 So, the response wasn't very good until we got here 
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1 into September. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Any 

3 questions or anything else that anybody would like 

4 to bring up at this time?

5 Not hearing any, let's go to No. 2 and 

6 kind of discuss in depth how these -- I call them 

7 safe work permits, but I've been corrected on that. 

8 Explain to me how this is -- what are we doing with 

9 this and what have you found out so far, I guess.

10 DCAS explanation of how safe work permits data will be 

11 analyzed, statistical metrics for the "success" of this 

12 test, and the strengths and limitations of this 

13 validation approach

14 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Well, what we are 

15 doing with this is we, as I, you know, first 

16 mentioned there a second ago, we're segregating 

17 these between what are operations work and then 

18 what is construction trades work, because we're 

19 primarily interested in the subcontractors: were 

20 they monitored and do we have the data?

21 Joe's write-up that he gave back 

22 earlier, I think, this month was very good, in fact, 
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1 focusing on everyone back into what the question 

2 is we're trying to resolve here.

3 And if you don't mind, I'll just repeat 

4 here what Joe said here in his email, was "SC&A's 

5 concern is, and has been, whether NIOSH can 

6 validate that subcontractor doses are, in fact, 

7 complete at SRS and fully reflected in the SRS 

8 electronic radiological databases to support dose 

9 reconstruction, particularly for the more 

10 transient and short-term, smaller 

11 subcontractors." 

12 So that's the purpose of what we're 

13 doing here in looking at these job plans. And so 

14 we went back, and this is why we identified these 

15 job plans, is because they identify all the work 

16 in that area that was non-routine. 

17 And so, like I said, you've got 

18 operations folks that are going in and cleaning up 

19 in the caves or laboratories, or taking apart glove 

20 boxes to get something out. There's operations 

21 work going on, but there's also construction trades 
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1 work going on where they're modifying the glove 

2 boxes or they're modifying something or pouring 

3 concrete in an area like a high-level cave type of 

4 scenario.

5 And so these job plans encompass both, 

6 and 40 percent of these job plans are construction 

7 trades work.

8 Now, within the construction trades 

9 work, there's kind of two types of construction 

10 trades workers. There's the DuPont construction 

11 guys that are part of the maintenance, the building 

12 maintenance, services, electronics and 

13 instrumentation technicians, which are really 

14 electricians, as well as millwrights and so forth. 

15 And so those show up on Roll 2. They show up at 

16 DuPont construction trades workers.

17 So, they are part of this group of 1,100 

18 construction trades worker job plans, but they only 

19 make up independently about 40 percent of those 

20 construction trades worker job plans. The other 

21 60 percent are what I would call non-DuPont 
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1 construction trades. These are the B.F. Shaw, the 

2 Miller Dunn, the folks that are working for other 

3 companies, subcontractors to DuPont.

4 And as I said, we've identified 365 

5 construction trades job plans, but 624 workers 

6 during this time period, because there's virtually 

7 always more than one worker within those job plans.

8 So we're going through, we're looking 

9 at the work that's being done, and we're looking 

10 at what protective clothing or what the 

11 requirements were for the work that they were going 

12 to be doing. And many of these construction job 

13 plans followed what we heard in the interviews, 

14 that they were doing more hazardous work.

15 In that, you'll notice that they'll be 

16 wearing two pairs of coveralls. And upon exit, you 

17 know, there will be indication there, 

18 instructions, to leave one pair of coveralls on at 

19 the exit or, you know, inside the room, and then 

20 exit with the inner set of coveralls to be checked 

21 outside the cell, for example. This is when 
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1 they're going into the hot cells. And we see that 

2 they're wearing respirators as well. 

3 So, when we look at these and we 

4 identify the names of these workers, we can go to 

5 dosimetry and see, one, do they have a film badge, 

6 as the job plan says they should? If they're 

7 wearing a respirator, was their follow-up 

8 bioassay? So we can go to these workers' dosimetry 

9 files and back to Savannah River and say, hey, do 

10 we have this data?

11 And if we don't, then clearly we've got 

12 an issue here that we're going to have to deal with, 

13 but this is the first part of this evaluation.

14 So, I noticed here on the agenda that 

15 you mentioned, you know, what is the metric for 

16 success?

17 Well, from my standpoint, if, you know, 

18 from the TLD side of wearing a film badge, they were 

19 required to wear them in there, I'm anticipating 

20 we're going to be, you know, over 95 percent, 

21 probably 99 percent or greater. That's where I 
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1 believe we're going to end up with this.

2 Bioassay is a little more questionable 

3 from that standpoint. The reason that it's 

4 questionable is because even today the 

5 construction trades worker, especially a 

6 subcontractor, finishes the job and is given a 

7 urinalysis kit to leave a 24-hour urine sample in, 

8 and they may or may not return that to the site.

9 Now, generally, people would get pretty 

10 good response of, you know, 75 percent or greater, 

11 but not always. So, following up with the 

12 bioassay, we may not have bioassay from these 

13 people. I'd consider success if we're greater 

14 than 75 percent, considering that these could have 

15 been a onetime job and, you know, you can ask 

16 somebody to leave a 24-hour urine sample and give 

17 them all the materials, but if they don't send it 

18 back, there's nothing really the site can do, or 

19 anybody can do, even today, other than restrict 

20 them on their next job coming into the site.

21 So I don't expect a hundred percent on 
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1 that one, but I do think that -- I do anticipate 

2 that we will have a fairly reasonable success rate.

3 And if we do, of, say, 75 percent, then 

4 I feel the coworker model would be valid because 

5 the people who would not be leaving their sample 

6 would probably be -- I can't see why they would be 

7 just the high jobs. I would think that they would 

8 be the more at random.

9 So, you know, a coworker model should 

10 cover those workers' intake potential. And so, 

11 that's what we're considering from this 

12 standpoint.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, Tim, let me 

14 interrupt for just one second.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, with this 

17 paperwork, your feeling is, is that there should 

18 be a bioassay tied to each one of these permits or 

19 --

20 DR. TAULBEE: No, within that year. 

21 By the way they were doing the monitoring, it was 
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1 quarterly with the maximum frequency, unless there 

2 was an incident or something like that.

3 So if we don't have an indication of an 

4 incident or something along those lines for these 

5 workers, but they were wearing a respirator doing 

6 this type of work, I would expect to see, within 

7 a year of that work, a bioassay sample for that 

8 work. 

9 Because some of them, even though they 

10 were subcontractors, they were not -- they were 

11 going from one job to the other, to the next, to 

12 the next, and we see many of the same names within 

13 this group.

14 So it wasn't a dedicated group 

15 completely, but they did tend to use many of the 

16 same workers. So I don' expect it to be at the end 

17 of each job plan. But if we don't have, you know, 

18 a bioassay within that year or half a year or 

19 something like that, then, yeah, I would consider 

20 that a miss.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, the reason 
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1 why I wondered, the reason why I keep referring to 

2 these as safe work permits, is this is exactly the 

3 same stuff we had out here later on, I believe. And 

4 all this is, and I'll be quite brutally honest with 

5 you, is when we went out onto a job, we would do 

6 one of these. And as far as bioassays, the only 

7 thing would be is to ask as if we're on a bioassay 

8 program, which of course we are, and either we're 

9 given quarterly or anything else like that.

10 In our world, they didn't drive us to 

11 do that. It was just to make sure that we're --

12 kind of a check and balance. Make sure that we're 

13 not missing somebody that should be on a bioassay 

14 program.

15 Is this kind of what it's looking like 

16 to you? Because that's what it looks like to me 

17 and I was just wondering.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Kind of. However, I 

19 think it's -- I mean, I don't see a check box of 

20 checking to see are you on a routine bioassay 

21 program.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Routine bioassay, 

2 that's what it comes down to. So, anyway, go 

3 ahead. I'm sorry.

4 DR. TAULBEE: That's all right. What I 

5 see out of this, to me, is that it's job 

6 plan-specific. That's how the construction 

7 trades worker bioassay was controlled.

8 When we look at the procedures, they 

9 indicated that the only thing that people were 

10 routinely monitored for if they were one of these 

11 kind of routine construction trades was plutonium. 

12 The rest of them were all kind of job-specific.

13 And so, to me, if you're going into 

14 these caves in the 773 area and you're potentially 

15 exposed to americium, curium, californium, we 

16 should be seeing the bioassay for that particular 

17 hazard. 

18 So it wasn't routine for that 

19 particular radionuclide amongst construction 

20 trades workers. But from our looking at the 

21 americium, curium, californium logbooks that we 
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1 have, we see a good number of construction trades 

2 workers that were monitored.

3 So, the question is whether or not these 

4 are the guys that are on these job plans in this 

5 time period.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

7 understand. Anybody else have any questions for 

8 Tim on this?

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. Tim, this is 

10 Joe. I did offer up some very, very early 

11 observations based on just scanning these job 

12 plans. But I guess just for a little bit more 

13 background, the genesis of the 3,000 job plans, was 

14 that basically just sort of discovered recently and 

15 that offered the opportunity to do this particular 

16 sampling?

17 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. When we 

18 were going through and looking for air sample data 

19 in the 1980s for the thorium report, we ran into 

20 these large volumes, these large books of job 

21 plans. And so that's how they were identified.
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1 And when we started looking, they all 

2 seemed sequential, you know, day in, day out within 

3 the same area, 773-A, including the high-level 

4 caves, and we started seeing the construction 

5 trades in there and the maintenance guys and the 

6 electricians, as well as the operations.

7 And so we were like, okay, this is the 

8 set of complete that we can evaluate to see if the 

9 subcontractors that are identified in here 

10 actually had monitoring data.

11 So, there are other job plans out at the 

12 site. Every area had job plans, how they 

13 controlled their work. We just felt that this was 

14 a very convenient group of records that we could 

15 evaluate and make some quick determinations on.

16 I can't see where it would be any 

17 different from this area versus other areas in this 

18 time period. It was all controlled by DuPont and 

19 they did things pretty uniformly across the whole 

20 site.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I did comment on 
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1 that a little bit that, you know, based on a couple 

2 of the interviews that we did onsite, it was sort 

3 of acknowledged that DuPont did ride hard on the 

4 subcontractors and more or less imposed the same 

5 planning processes and monitoring that they did for 

6 their own employees pretty much up until, I think, 

7 one of the interviewees suggested the mid-'80s: 

8 '83, I think, was a date that stuck in my mind.

9 That's kind of what gave me a little bit 

10 of pause that I think it sounds like the sampling 

11 process would try to ascertain, you know, sort of 

12 the completeness of records for this sample time 

13 period in the early '80s.

14 And my question is, how representative 

15 would that be for later years, when it appears 

16 DuPont did not manage the growing subcontractor 

17 population onsite quite what might have been early 

18 on?

19 And, you know, again, that's based on 

20 some feedback from HPs at the site, but it appears 

21 to be, you know, the situation was changing in the 
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1 '80s, as it did at most DOE sites, where outside 

2 subcontractors were brought in increasing numbers 

3 and became much more of an integrated management 

4 structure. And, of course, DuPont left by the end 

5 of the '80s.

6 So, I guess I would throw that caution 

7 out, that drawing conclusions based on the sample 

8 time period. I'm not quite as familiar what the 

9 job plans will look like at other locations, but, 

10 again, I think what we're trying to look at is 

11 whether this very defined sampling period and

12 sampling location should be the basis for 

13 concluding that, you know, the records are, in 

14 fact, complete across the site. That's just the 

15 reservation I expressed earlier. 

16 And, again, the time period is one where 

17 things were changing. I think it was pretty clear 

18 that DuPont managed its subcontractors. I say 

19 "its subcontractors;" subcontractors it brought in 

20 pretty tightly up through the early '80s. But then 

21 it, according to the interview, of course, it 
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1 appears that that started changing. That's the 

2 only thing I would offer that.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Within the records that 

4 we're currently seeing here, Joe, I'm not seeing 

5 a big difference here through the 1980s.

6 If I can just give some numbers here, 

7 from 1981 through 1986, the number of construction 

8 trades worker job plans changes, from 1981, 184, 

9 207, 253, 184, 129. And then the number of Roll 

10 4, 5 and 6 workers, where the subcontractors, from 

11 1981, is 80, 78, 94, 120, 164, 88.

12 So, it seems to peak a little bit 

13 between '84 and '85, the use of the subcontractors, 

14 and then goes down again, but this very well could 

15 be due to the fluctuation of the type of work being 

16 done in 773-A.

17 So I'm not seeing a whole bunch of that, 

18 but, again, this is just a small sample, as you 

19 pointed out. So, through that early '80s, it's 

20 looking fairly stable, to me, from what we see in 

21 the job plans right now.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. Again, the 

2 caution I would have, and this is, of course, 

3 something the Work Group will have to consider, is 

4 that in the '80s, particularly at Savannah River, 

5 you're talking about a period which started out 

6 pretty stable, in the early '80s, but as they start 

7 decontaminating, decommissioning some of the older 

8 facilities, and as they started having to deal with 

9 the EPA and the state on environmental restoration, 

10 there were a lot of subcontractors brought in to 

11 do cleanup.

12 And this is almost every site by the 

13 mid-'80s into the late '80s were being sued for 

14 environmental issues, and there was a lot of 

15 activity to catch up quickly, because you were 

16 under compliance agreements. And that's where the 

17 influx of subcontractors was substantial and it 

18 happened very quickly.

19 And I think the degree of DuPont's 

20 control and management of those kinds of subs 

21 changed radically, because the system changed 
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1 radically. You're talking about thousands of 

2 subcontractors brought in to do cleanup, to build 

3 ponds, restoration ponds, to clean up certain 

4 locations onsite. So, where you sample 

5 subcontractors makes a big difference.

6 In my opinion, you may see little change 

7 in an operational area that did not have much D&D 

8 and cleanup. If you were to switch to an area such 

9 as the tank farm or other contaminated areas that 

10 were under environmental compliance agreements, 

11 you would see perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, 

12 of subcontractors coming onsite all of a sudden.

13 And those are the ones I'd be more 

14 concerned about, because, again, it was rapid and 

15 it involved pretty dirty stuff. You were in the 

16 middle of a lot of contamination doing cleanup.

17 So, the time period does matter, the 

18 location matters. And I think the answer you would 

19 get might change a lot, because I think DuPont did 

20 exercise a lot of control early on, but I think that 

21 control changed quite a bit by the end of the '80s. 
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1 So, I would just offer that up as a broad 

2 perspective.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Would you 

4 consider this time period that we are looking at 

5 here to be valid going back to, say, 1972 or the 

6 early 1970s?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I would be more 

8 comfortable going backwards rather than forwards, 

9 just because I think you're talking about the cusp 

10 of change by the early to mid-'80s in terms of 

11 subcontractor management by DuPont. And I would 

12 be the first to say DuPont was a very rigorous 

13 manager of safety, but I think that it did change. 

14 It did change by the end of the '80s.

15 So, extrapolating these results, I 

16 think, would be something I'd be careful asking.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Extrapolating forward, 

18 not backwards?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. That would be 

20 the biggest concern I would have. Again, though, 

21 I think you've got to be careful with location, 
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1 because, you know, I think the radiological 

2 experience and the use of subs would change, but 

3 the management by DuPont and the exercise by DuPont 

4 of imposing its requirements, I think, would be 

5 less of a concern going backwards and forward from 

6 that time period.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I mean, we can 

8 certainly look at the more modern time period into 

9 the late '80s and '90s. We haven't done that.

10 We want to finish this first to see what 

11 we've got from at least this time period going 

12 backwards to make sure that these subcontractors 

13 that we've identified on these job plans that are 

14 wearing respirators going into the high-level 

15 caves, that are actually monitored and that we have 

16 their data. So, this is where we're currently 

17 going.

18 I can understand your hesitation to 

19 extrapolate forward. Sure. Maybe it will be 

20 something more that you want us to evaluate at that 

21 time period, but for this particular group we're 
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1 looking to see if these folks that we have 

2 identified that should have been bioassay 

3 monitored were in fact monitored.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Hey, Tim. This is 

5 Brad. How far are we into these at this time right 

6 now? What have we got done? Do we have anything 

7 -- I guess I'm trying to look at how are you going 

8 to validate these? What, I guess, is your 

9 criteria?

10 DR. TAULBEE: Well, our criteria of 

11 evaluation is pretty much what I just talked about, 

12 is we're going through the job plans themselves, 

13 we've identified the workers, we've been typing 

14 them out. And by the way, that leads me to a point 

15 that was in Joe's email as well about the legibility 

16 of these.

17 Based upon, you know, when you look at 

18 the legibility of these names, it does initially 

19 look like 10 to 20 percent appear to be illegible. 

20 However, through other means, such as payroll ID 

21 or comparison with other job plans, as a signature 
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1 would have a payroll ID, of the 982 Roll 2, 4, 5 

2 and 6, all the construction trades workers total, 

3 982, there's only been 16 that we haven't been able 

4 to resolve. So, that's 1.6 percent.

5 So we have been able to resolve these 

6 ones that are illegible by doing other comparisons 

7 and doing lookups in payroll IDs and so forth. We 

8 have been able to identify, you know, 98.4 percent 

9 of them to date. We feel pretty confident from 

10 that standpoint.

11 With regards to -- oh, shoot, Brad. 

12 I'm sorry, I just lost your question.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's all right. 

14 You've gone over it pretty good. I was wondering 

15 about the legibility myself. 

16 The thing that I'm looking at is, and 

17 I think you brought this up earlier, so if you see 

18 these names on there and different areas and so 

19 forth like that, if they are being sampled for what 

20 they're supposed to -- I guess I'm kind of nervous 

21 about some of, you know, the americium and 
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1 neptunium, all these other ones, that if they show, 

2 then you feel like you've got a pretty good handle 

3 on it, is that correct?

4 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. If we 

5 go through here, you know, we've gone through the 

6 job plans and we see this guy should have been 

7 wearing a TLD and he's wearing a respirator, then 

8 he should have bioassay. So that's where we're 

9 currently at, is identifying those two things.

10 The TLD part is easy for us. That is 

11 well underway from these job plans. By the way, 

12 we've been typing in these names. We've got these 

13 names in a database now. This is getting back to 

14 your earlier question, I just remembered, of where 

15 are we.

16 We've got these names into the 

17 database. We're comparing them against the TLD 

18 records to make sure that they show up during that 

19 time period. And then the next step is to check 

20 those bits clearly that should have been monitored, 

21 bioassayed - in other words, they wore a respirator 
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1 into this area -- if it was an airborne area, do 

2 they have bioassay? Yes or no?

3 And so that's where we're at with the 

4 analysis at this time.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Tim, Joe again.

6 You know, the original question that -- this goes 

7 back to the beginning where it was mentioned that 

8 these subcontractor individuals, these names were 

9 maintained in company files versus in the regular 

10 roster, you know, the DuPont roster.

11 Have you, in your going through all 

12 this, established any of that? Or is, in fact, all 

13 the subcontractors, you're finding they all have, 

14 you know, employee, somehow employee numbers or 

15 some means of traceability? I mean, that was a big 

16 question in the beginning.

17 DR. TAULBEE: So far, with the names, 

18 like I said, we've been able to identify them based 

19 upon the external dosimetry.

20 I don't know that it's a hundred 

21 percent. I don't know what those numbers are. 
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1 But it hasn't been reviewed yet, so I don't really 

2 want to give those.

3 But so far, we are finding most of them 

4 -- or the vast majority of them, from my 

5 understanding, in the payroll -- or in what we call 

6 quarterly dosimetry reports, which were the 

7 roll-outs of them. The bioassay is really the big 

8 question here. That's the one that I don't know 

9 about yet from that standpoint.

10 There might be a few so far that we don't 

11 see on the quarterly dosimetry, but we haven't 

12 tracked those down yet to see what's going on with 

13 them.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So, the dosimetry 

15 report would identify the subcontractor company 

16 that they work for?

17 DR. TAULBEE: No, they don't, but they 

18 do identify the roll. Roll 4 is your construction 

19 trades folks from the main subcontractors to 

20 DuPont: the B.F. Shaw, the Miller Dunn and so forth. 

21 But there's another roll of 5 and 6 that tend to 
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1 be more of the mom-and-pop-type of shop. But not 

2 always.

3 Sometimes there's some B.F. Shaw folks 

4 that appear in there that we know worked for B.F. 

5 Shaw, so it's really 4, 5 and 6 is where you find

6 those very small-tier subcontractors, but we do see 

7 them on the electronic printouts with dosimetry.

8 Whether we do for bioassay, whether we 

9 see them, I don't know yet.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

11 DR. TAULBEE: I mean, according to Ken 

12 Crase, when we did that interview with him, he felt 

13 that all of those files had been rolled into their, 

14 you know, individual dosimetry.

15 So, those left bioassays, they should 

16 have been rolled, you know, out of those company 

17 files and into the program. When we test this, 

18 we'll find out.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Do we have kind of 

21 a timeframe that we're looking at here?
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1 DR. TAULBEE: The timeframe was to give 

2 us some -- the current timeframe says February 

3 2017. I'm hoping to be done before then, but I'm 

4 not sure, once we get done going through the 

5 logbooks and identifying bioassay, whether we're 

6 going to have to have a few of them that we request 

7 from the site. And that can take 30 to 60 days. 

8 So, we did build in a little bit for that type of 

9 analysis.

10 What we do for dose reconstruction is 

11 we request from the sites this person's dosimetry 

12 records. Well, we're not going to be requesting, 

13 you know, 624 dosimetry records from the sites. 

14 We're going to go through the records we have 

15 in-house, the logbooks for plutonium, the 

16 americium, curium, californium logbooks, 

17 neptunium logbooks, and we will look for these 

18 people in those logbooks first before we get down 

19 to the site and be requesting that.

20 So, you know, it's kind of -- you know, 

21 the end date is out there a bit, but that's the 
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1 reason why we put it out there.

2 Does that answer your question?

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yeah, it does. 

4 Looking at the agenda here, this No. 3, I believe 

5 we've kind of answered that already, unless there's 

6 more questions, Joe, or from anybody.

7 Follow-up Questions with Respect to Data Adequacy of 

8 CTW Primary Contractors, CTW Subcontractors and 

9 Operations Workers

10 What about any follow-up questions 

11 regarding data adequacy of construction trades 

12 workers?

13 I guess, you know, looking back at our 

14 history on this and stuff, we've had quite a problem 

15 to separate construction trades out, and I was 

16 trying to think of how many different iterations 

17 we've kind of been through on that, Tim, and I did 

18 not think that we had got an adequate fast-forward 

19 as of yet that the Board had signed off on of being 

20 able to separate them out.

21 So, I guess what I'm asking is, is how 

22 are we going to be able to separate construction 
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1 trades and operations people to just -- I'm trying 

2 to think back. We did the -- there used to be a 

3 number or there was a letter on the side of the 

4 badge, and we got into problems with that one.

5 I mean, we really don't have, in my 

6 mind, I didn't know if we had had a clear path 

7 forward, if we had been able to settle this problem 

8 of separating construction trades from the 

9 operations.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Right. Well, the way 

11 that we are doing it currently is by looking first 

12 at the roll number. And by roll number, this is 

13 where there's a prefix to every dosimeter badge 

14 there onsite.

15 Roll 1 is where the DuPont technical 

16 folks -- these would be your chemists, your 

17 radiological engineers, your regular nuclear 

18 engineers, mechanical, et cetera. These are all 

19 the technical folks. Those are all Roll 1.

20 Roll 2 is all of your operations folks, 

21 your operators, your chemical operators. 
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1 However, there is a group of DuPont construction 

2 kind of thrown in there with that group. And these 

3 were the building trade -- or these are the 

4 millwrights, the E&I technicians - electronics and 

5 instrumentation technicians - maintenance 

6 mechanics that did a lot of the, what I would call 

7 non-Davis-Bacon type of work.

8 What we have gone through is, with these 

9 particular workers, these are all Roll 2 mixed in 

10 with the operators, we've gone back to the job 

11 history cards that we collected from the site a 

12 number of years ago for an epidemiologic study, and 

13 have gone through and looked at whether this person 

14 was a maintenance mechanic or an E&I technician or 

15 not, and categorized them operations versus DuPont 

16 construction.

17 The Roll 4 folks, 4, 5 and 6, they have 

18 an additional prefix associated with it that tells 

19 the trade. This one is a carpenter. This guy was 

20 an electrician. This guy was a pipefitter. And 

21 from Roll 4, you can basically tell which company 
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1 they were with depending up on their trade at that 

2 time.

3 I believe Miller Dunn was all 

4 electricians. Somebody can correct me if I'm 

5 wrong on that. And B.F. Shaw was the pipefitters, 

6 that type of work. So, from there, we can use those 

7 codes to identify which subcontractor.

8 Five and 6 we cannot, because some of 

9 those 5and 6, even with the prefix -- I believe 26 

10 is the pipefitters -- 26-xxx, whatever the number 

11 is, their badge number, those folks could have been 

12 working for B.F. Shaw, but didn't routinely go out 

13 to Savannah River, so they're on Roll 5.

14 Roll 4 folks were more routine; not 

15 strictly Savannah River, but they were more often 

16 out at Savannah River. Let me put it that way. 

17 And then 6 is the same way.

18 Those we can't actually identify which 

19 subcontractor they worked for based upon the badge 

20 code, but we can tell that they are definitely 

21 construction trades based upon that prefix of job 
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1 code. So, that's the triage that we have in 

2 sorting this out.

3 The Roll 2 were actually the hardest to 

4 do. These are DuPont folks separating out which 

5 were maintenance mechanics and which were E&I 

6 technicians that were doing some of the lighter 

7 construction work.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, you've got 

9 your work cut out for you, I'm going to be right 

10 truthful, because Savannah River is unique, in some 

11 ways, of the way that they use construction trades, 

12 unlike many of the other sites. And this is why, 

13 you know, I'm wondering what path we are going down, 

14 because I think you're going to have a hard time, 

15 because you're right, DuPont had their own 

16 construction trades that were the maintenance part 

17 of this, too. But also from the operational 

18 standpoint, the operators would start to get burned 

19 out on a higher dose so they're bringing in a lot 

20 of these construction trades to do some of the work.

21 So, you know, it will be interesting to 
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1 see what we finally end up with, but we want to make 

2 sure that you realize that separating these out has 

3 still not been validated from our standpoint. 

4 This is your path forward that you're going down.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Well, the good news on 

6 this, Brad, is that hopefully the middle of -- well, 

7 in October, let me just say October - you're going 

8 to be getting what we call the coworker model, 

9 OTIB-81. And in there, it has the breakdown of how 

10 we have identified the construction trades. 

11 So, you'll have an opportunity to see 

12 who we've identified as construction trades and 

13 why. So, you will be seeing that hopefully within 

14 the next month, and we're using the same 

15 methodology here. So, that will be coming to the 

16 Board for review within the next month.

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

18 appreciate that.

19 Joe or John, do you have any questions 

20 for --

21 MEMBER MELIUS: How about Jim first?
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, sorry. Hey, 

2 you're not always here. Okay. So, go ahead.

3 MEMBER MELIUS: I'm easy to ignore, 

4 right?

5 So, Tim, just one question and then a 

6 comment. So, are you doing a single coworker model 

7 for both production and construction, or are there 

8 dual or more than one coworker models?

9 DR. TAULBEE: There are two coworker 

10 models. One for operations, one for construction. 

11 And within this report you're going to see, well, 

12 for tritium, there's an operations coworker model 

13 and a construction coworker model. For the exotic 

14 radionuclides; americium, curium, californium; 

15 there's an operations coworker model and a 

16 construction coworker model.

17 But within that report, you'll see how 

18 we separated construction trades from the 

19 operations. 

20 MEMBER MELIUS: Oh, okay. And then my 

21 comment is going back to, I think, some of the 
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1 questions and concerns that Joe Fitzgerald raised, 

2 which is, I don't see how, given the limited scope 

3 of your job plan evaluation, how the Work Group or 

4 the Board can evaluate how good your coworker 

5 construction model is, that you have captured an 

6 adequate proportion of that and constructed that 

7 correctly given that your sampling seems to be in 

8 terms of such a narrow timeframe and such a narrow 

9 location for those.

10 And I think that's a very fundamental 

11 problem. So, when we get to February or whenever 

12 you say it's done, I think there's going to be a 

13 lot more work to do.

14 DR. TAULBEE: I can give an attempt 

15 here to answer your question on this.

16 When we did this coworker model, this 

17 report that's going to be coming, OTIB-81, the 

18 americium, curium, californium is all of the 

19 americium, curium, californium data onsite. So, 

20 it's not a sampling, it's all of it.

21 And for the tritium, we're actually 
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1 using NOCTS, because we have so much tritium data 

2 we won't have to go back to the site to get all the 

3 tritium data.

4 And so the question that was posed here 

5 that I read in the beginning was, are we getting 

6 the subcontractor data?

7 When we look at the americium, curium, 

8 californium coworker model where we use all of the 

9 data from the logbooks, we have thousands of 

10 construction trades worker samples.

11 The question is, are we getting these 

12 subcontractors? That's what this job plan 

13 evaluation is designed to look at.

14 From the coworker standpoint, we're 

15 using all of the data that was available from that 

16 standpoint. Like I said, there's thousands of 

17 exotic radionuclides for construction trades 

18 workers. But were those construction trades, I 

19 mean, is there a group of construction trades 

20 workers that are missing out of that?

21 That's what this job plan is going to 
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1 identify. Here are the guys going into the hot 

2 cell that should have been monitored. Were they 

3 monitored? Do we have their data? That's what 

4 we're trying to answer.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, I guess we'll 

6 cross that bridge, but I'm very skeptical given the 

7 limited evaluation that you're doing.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

9 MEMBER MELIUS: But I don't want to 

10 prejudge until I've seen the coworker model.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Is there anybody 

13 else that had any questions? John or Joe or --

14 MR. STIVER: This is John. I don't 

15 have any additional questions. I think we've 

16 pretty well covered the waterfront here.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, just as a 

18 closing remark. This is Joe, just a take-off from 

19 what Jim was saying.

20 Yeah, so, you know, certainly the 

21 coworker model based on the source terms that 
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1 you're dealing with, whether it's tritium or the 

2 exotics, I mean, I can understand that. And I 

3 think, you know, as far as a process, that's one 

4 issue.

5 I look at the subcontractor follow-up 

6 as sort of a more fundamental question. This would 

7 be sort of validation-verification, the V&V that 

8 we usually look for in all SECs as far as the 

9 database.

10 And for the subcontractors, this had 

11 not been done at the beginning. And I think it was 

12 prompted by that comment that Ken Crase had made 

13 that we started looking at this.

14 So, really, it's just down to, can we 

15 trust the completeness and accuracy of the 

16 subcontractor database and its reflection in the 

17 electronic database that you're using?

18 To me, it's a broader question that 

19 hasn't been answered. And I think the pause that 

20 I am expressing is whether this sampling is going 

21 to be enough to assure the Work Group of that V&V 
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1 question, the reliability of the database.

2 That's really everything I've come back 

3 for on that one, and I know we've tried a number 

4 of different approaches on that. And it's not an 

5 easy question, but it's a pretty important question 

6 given the way the site has used subs. So, I guess 

7 we'll also wait and see what the analysis comes up 

8 with.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I think we've 

10 kind of followed up on the question there in respect 

11 to data adequacy for the coworkers and primary. 

12 And I think what we're going to end up coming up 

13 to is generally we'll see when we get it and go from 

14 there.

15 We've got here follow-up questions on 

16 the neptunium, thorium, metal hydrides coworker 

17 models. Is there anything else -- I know that 

18 you've gone over this. I'm just wondering if 

19 there's anything else that you'd like to put out 

20 there or --

21 DR. TAULBEE: Not really, at this time. 
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1 And I know you guys just got the neptunium report, 

2 so I'm not expecting you guys to have any comments 

3 on it yet. But, you know, once you do, then we can 

4 have another call to discuss those.

5 So, I don't really have much more to 

6 offer other than we will be getting out the next 

7 report in October here to you all. And then the 

8 PuFF report should be coming in December.

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

10 DR. TAULBEE: And the metal hydrides, 

11 that one I don't have a good date for right now 

12 because we're going to have to be doing some 

13 redaction.

14 Follow-up questions re: neptunium, thorium and metal 

15 hydrides coworker models

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's always fun.

17 Joe, what about you? Any follow-up 

18 questions on any these? I know you guys have 

19 already got the thorium, but anything that you 

20 wanted to bring out or --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think we've 
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1 certainly done a first read on it and it's, you 

2 know, a pretty complete compendium of the 

3 operational history and kind of where we come out 

4 on the -- I guess there was four options for dose 

5 reconstruction. And I think we're sort of at the 

6 fourth option with this particular -- so, we're 

7 looking at that. And that's pretty much it.

8 Follow-up discussion of DCAS/SC&A work priorities

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well, with 

10 that being said, I guess a little bit of a follow-up 

11 discussion about the work priorities here. I 

12 think you've kind of hit a little bit on that.

13 I'm just going to be brutally honest. 

14 I'm looking at the timeframes for a lot of these 

15 things. I know that you've thrown them out there, 

16 but could you just kind of give us a follow-up of 

17 kind of where we're -- what our path forward is, 

18 what we're looking at for a time period?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Sure. You know, just to 

20 kind of recap here, we are working on all of these 

21 simultaneously, actually. We've got multiple 
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1 health physicists working on this. We are 

2 diligently trying to meet the estimated completion 

3 dates that Steve presented there at the Advisory 

4 Board meeting in August.

5 We are anticipating that OTIB-81 will 

6 be released in October. That would be Rev. 3. 

7 That's the americium, curium, californium, thorium 

8 one, as well as the tritium coworker models within 

9 that report.

10 I would look for it towards the end of 

11 October at this time just due to the delay getting 

12 it out of ADC review, but we are working to try and 

13 meet those dates still.

14 The neptunium reports, you received the 

15 first one, RPRT-65. RPRT-77 should be coming out 

16 the first part of next month. The PuFF report is 

17 scheduled for December.

18 I mean, this is PuFF construction, by 

19 the way. For those, just as a recap, while there 

20 was neptunium operations going on in building 

21 235-F, which is the plutonium fuel fabrication 
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1 facility, these would be for the Cassini and 

2 Galileo missions that were coming up, they added 

3 -- or they took a part of the building and turned 

4 it into a plutonium fuel fabrication area.

5 When they were doing that new 

6 construction on that side of the building, they 

7 were still doing some neptunium operations. So 

8 that's what this report is going to address, and 

9 that's scheduled for December. 

10 Again, the thorium exposures report 

11 post-1972, this would be our RPRT-70, is currently 

12 scheduled for January. We do have a draft in the 

13 works. We have all the data for 1970 and 1990 to 

14 support that report. We have half of the data from 

15 the 1980s to support that report.

16 And so, as long as the site continues 

17 to deliver the data on the schedule that they have 

18 been this past month, I think we'll be in prime

19 shape for that one.

20 For thoron exposures, we've got all the 

21 data in-house and are currently analyzing that to 
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1 get that report out.

2 And then the metal hydrides report, I 

3 just mentioned that we are having some issues. So, 

4 that may not come out until the beginning of 

5 November.

6 And then the job plan evaluation, we are 

7 underway. Like I said, we've got the names into 

8 a database and have already started checking 

9 against the dosimetry. And the next step is to 

10 start categorizing whether there is a need for 

11 bioassay based upon the job plan and whether there 

12 is bioassay.

13 Keep in mind, some of these 

14 construction job plans, they weren't required to 

15 wear a respirator. And so they weren't in any, you 

16 know, airborne type of area. So we're not 

17 necessarily expecting that they would be needing 

18 bioassay from that standpoint, but I would say at 

19 least half, if not more, of these job plans for the 

20 construction trades do indicate wearing a 

21 respirator. So, from that standpoint, we should 
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1 be seeing bioassay for these workers.

2 So, again, the February date, I 

3 explained that if we have to go back to the site 

4 in order to request a few workers to see their 

5 bioassay cards individually, or maybe if we have 

6 to go there to look those workers up, we're going 

7 to need a little time, which is why that date is 

8 out into February.

9 So, does that give you a good idea of 

10 where we're at with our work priorities?

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Again, we're working on 

13 all of these at the same time.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. And I 

15 appreciate that.

16 Any questions from any of the other 

17 Board Members or SC&A?

18 Not hearing any, we can discuss the 

19 priority for going forth. One question I do have 

20 is, Joe or John, for this thorium, what are we 

21 looking at a time period for you guys, that we're 
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1 going to be looking at?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You're talking about 

3 neptunium?

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thorium, I believe. 

5 This one that just got out -- or was it neptunium?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Neptunium.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Neptunium, yeah.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'll defer to 

9 John. I think we had Bob Barton working on that 

10 originally. And I think we just got that to him.

11 MR. STIVER: We just got that literally, 

12 you know, on the 23rd. So, we --

13 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah, I just sent it

14 Friday. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well, when 

16 you get a chance, just kind of let us know where 

17 you're at, I guess.

18 MR. STIVER: As Tim has mentioned, 

19 maybe we could have another call if we have any 

20 questions that need to be clarified after we, you 

21 know, get a more of an in-depth look at it.
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1 So, I mean, we could kind of do that as 

2 a technical call, if it's necessary, but we're 

3 going to get started on it right away. So, you 

4 know, I don't anticipate it's going to be an 

5 extremely long period of time. I would say, I don't 

6 know, probably four to six weeks, I would say.

7 MR. KATZ: Yeah, John, I mean, after 

8 you've had a chance to look at it, just send us a 

9 note with --

10 MR. STIVER: Right. After we have a 

11 chance, we'll have a better idea of --

12 MR. KATZ: Yeah. Send us a note and 

13 let us know when you expect to have completed your 

14 review.

15 MR. STIVER: Okay. Sounds good.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Tim, I have sort of a 

17 background question having scanned the neptunium 

18 report, if it's okay to raise it.

19 We've gone through the various options 

20 on sort of post-reconstruction strategies and, you 

21 know, we're sort of back to the original bioassay 
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1 data, albeit, you know, it was considered limited 

2 before and I think that was the reason the mass 

3 ratios and whatnot were a higher priority, if they 

4 would have worked.

5 Now that we're back to the actual 

6 limited bioassay data, is the confidence in 

7 extrapolating that data forward, is that more from 

8 the better understanding of the neptunium 

9 operations in place and the stability of those 

10 operations and knowledge of those operations, that 

11 you feel it's a steady state, that the limited data 

12 ought to bound any exposures going forward?

13 Again, that's what I inferred from the 

14 report, in the broadest way, that you have a more 

15 comprehensive knowledge. And it didn't appear 

16 there were any outliers that would have made using 

17 that limited data restrictive.

18 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. 

19 However, we're not using just the urinalysis. 

20 We're actually proposing to use the whole body 

21 count within that. And so the urinalysis is 
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1 actually showing significantly lower than what 

2 we're projecting for the coworker model and using 

3 the whole body count information.

4 And the reason for including that in the 

5 discussion is that there were some questions early 

6 on from SC&A about the separations of the neptunium 

7 and the timing of the whole body count and whether 

8 these were, you know, bounding estimates of the 

9 whole body count.

10 So, we've included the bioassay data 

11 that, again, is limited, but it does encompass, you 

12 know, a significant number of workers. And that's 

13 what the second report is going to be showing, is 

14 that these workers that have that neptunium 

15 bioassay are the ones that were in 235-F that were 

16 working with the neptunium.

17 And so we feel that, you know, those 

18 whole body counts are certainly going to be 

19 bounding. They're much higher than what the 

20 urinalysis of the people with direct hands on these 

21 material were receiving.
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1 So, yeah, we have gone back to using the 

2 whole body counts from that information, with the 

3 limited urinalysis demonstrating that the whole 

4 body count is bounding.

5 Did that answer your question?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. That's kind of 

7 what I got from the report, that it's sort of an 

8 operationally informed judgement that this would 

9 be a bounding dose.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah. Well, not just 

11 the operationally informed. The report you're 

12 looking at right now is mostly operationally 

13 informed. That was its goal, was to use just that. 

14 But then, you know, with the model and so forth, 

15 what you'll see is we're using the operationally 

16 informed, as well as the demonstration of these are 

17 the people working with neptunium, this is their 

18 urinalysis, and all of this is below the whole body 

19 count that we see. So it's a combination of all 

20 of this. It's weight of evidence.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Alright.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Are there any other 

2 questions that anybody has before we allow the 

3 petitioners the opportunity to comment?

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: Brad. I just got one 

5 question. I can remember when we do the modeling, 

6 for those who don't have bioassay, we give them a 

7 value, you know, like maybe it's half of the high 

8 value of what it is. I would like to see the 

9 justification on that if we are going that route.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. With the 

11 implementation of the coworker models, it tends to 

12 be based upon the type of work that that individual 

13 was doing.

14 For, like, example, the general 

15 guidance is somebody who's doing clerical type of 

16 work or, you know, clerk/inventory type of work or 

17 something along those lines that might 

18 occasionally go into an area, we tend to assign the 

19 geometric mean for their dosimetry -- or for their 

20 coworker model. However, people who are 

21 operations -- or not operations, but construction 
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1 trades and so forth, we tend to assign the 95th 

2 percentile.

3 So it really depends upon the 

4 individual claim and there's guidance that we've 

5 got out there that dose reconstructors use along 

6 those lines.

7 These coworker models won't be any 

8 different from that standpoint of how those 

9 coworker models are implemented.

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. Thanks.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Anybody else?

12 Ted, I'll turn it over to you and you 

13 can allow the petitioners or however you want to 

14 do that.

15 MR. KATZ: Yeah, Brad. Absolutely. 

16 So, Josh, I think you had distributed some 

17 material, which I've distributed to these Work 

18 Group Members, but, anyway, it's your opportunity 

19 to talk to the Work Group.

20 MR. FESTER: Okay. And I think Warren 

21 was on another line. Are you there, Warren?
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1 MR. JOHNSON: I am.

2 MR. FESTER: Okay. I think Warren had 

3 some comments that he wanted to --

4 Petitioner Comments

5 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, that's right.

6 First, thank you all for allowing us to 

7 comment. And I'm still trying to completely 

8 digest all that was just discussed, but I think the 

9 overriding point of it is this is highly technical 

10 information and clearly NIOSH is making every 

11 effort to accomplish its purpose here of bounding 

12 the dose with sufficient accuracy.

13 But having said that, what Congress 

14 created was a program for compensation for our Cold 

15 War veterans, the people that supported our Cold 

16 War effort. And the illnesses we're just talking 

17 about, our primary subject, are illnesses that are 

18 termed in terms of five- and ten-year survival 

19 rates.

20 We're now over 16 years past when this 

21 Act was created, and we're still hearing that more 
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1 records are coming out, the prior dose 

2 reconstructions, many of which have had to be 

3 vacated, and it sounds like the potential for some 

4 part of the end in sight will be hopefully in 

5 February where we get an evaluation of a sample of 

6 records that were just found.

7 Congress said for you all to be doing 

8 this to determine whether it was feasible for NIOSH 

9 to reconstruct the dose with sufficient accuracy 

10 and ensure it's claimant-favorable. All these 

11 prior dose reconstructions were not 

12 claimant-favorable because we found more records. 

13 That changed the coworker models. We've had 

14 numerous revisions and technical bulletins and so 

15 on which keep changing the analysis.

16 One big part of feasibility, obviously, 

17 is time. And clearly, Congress envisioned, when 

18 they're dealing with people who have five to 

19 ten-year survival rates, many of which have less 

20 than a 50-percent survival rate of ten years from 

21 diagnosis, they clearly didn't envision us to be 
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1 continuing to try and get this right almost 20 years 

2 later.

3 One of the primary benefits that are 

4 afforded to this isn't just compensation. It's 

5 the home health, it's full healthcare.

6 I've got many, many clients that tell 

7 the story of having a child or daughter having to 

8 quit her job and stay home and care for her dad who's 

9 basically wasting away. He's got -- one that comes 

10 to mind is pancreatic cancer. The individual died 

11 at 90 pounds and his daughter had to tell the story 

12 of having to change his dressings, change his 

13 diapers.

14 That's not the dignity that these 

15 people were supposed to have been granted. That's 

16 not what Congress intended.

17 And so when you consider whether it's 

18 feasible, you also have to consider time as an 

19 element of that.

20 I have no doubt NIOSH is trying its best 

21 and is clearly competent to do this, eventually, 
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1 but, also, the end result is only as good as the 

2 records that are fed into it.

3 Josh and I have been in litigation with 

4 a number of cases and deposed a number of 

5 individuals out at the site, and the records 

6 keeper, the person most knowledgeable on the 

7 records, cannot attest that the individual records 

8 provided to us pursuant to subpoena were complete.

9 And now we're talking about the 

10 completeness of a sample on some work permits from 

11 a sample of time. I don't know how you'll ever know 

12 that those are complete. And when something's not 

13 in there, I mean, it's missing or it didn't happen. 

14 If there's not an incident report, is it missing, 

15 or did it not happen? Well, you can't assume that 

16 it didn't happen and still have a 

17 claimant-favorable outcome. That's not a

18 claimant-favorable assumption.

19 So you're speculating, when there's an 

20 absence of a record, that everything went as 

21 planned. We've seen what happened from '54 to '72. 
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1 We also have seen the Tiger Team investigated in 

2 1990s. And what they found was, I believe it was 

3 well over 200 violations, many of which were things 

4 such as radiation zone that was dependent upon 

5 positive airflow with doors propped open to 

6 non-radiation areas.

7 Well, clearly people in the 

8 non-radiation areas wouldn't be assigned 

9 respirators. And so according to that philosophy, 

10 you only need to give a bioassay if you have 

11 respiratory protection, those people would never 

12 have a positive test, because they were never 

13 tested.

14 The other big problems are things like 

15 when did the tests occur? When did their intake 

16 occur? You can't assume it happened the day 

17 before. And if it's now down below the minimum 

18 detectable limit, it depends on when the person 

19 breathed it in or had a puncture or whatever.

20 All of these things are problems that, 

21 quite frankly, I think the only cure for is to grant 
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1 the SEC. I think it's not feasible to continue --

2 feasibility, again, has to be viewed in terms of 

3 what the goal was trying to accomplish. And what 

4 Congress tried to accomplish was to grant benefits, 

5 primarily including -- not just compensation, but 

6 primarily the healthcare. And you can't just 

7 continue to move this down the road. We're going 

8 to get to February and it sounds like there's, in 

9 all likelihood, more information to be found from 

10 there.

11 I believe, at this point, you see 

12 violations in 1990, they weren't following 

13 procedure. In fact, one citation they got in, I 

14 believe, '97, was for lack of follow-up on 

15 bioassays. They had a 79 percent 

16 non-participation rate. 

17 I believe somebody spoke earlier about 

18 we can trust the bioassays of the subcontractors 

19 if we had a 75 percent rate or better. Well, 

20 Westinghouse itself, according to that violation, 

21 only had a 21 percent participation rate. That's 
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1 not good enough and that's not going to lead to 

2 sufficient accuracy when you try and do a 

3 reconstruction for these people.

4 They deserve better, their families 

5 deserve better. And I think that Congress gave you 

6 all the power to fix this, and that is granting the 

7 SEC. Thank you. And Mr. Fester may have some 

8 comments as well.

9 MR. FESTER: Yeah. And I guess --

10 again, this is Josh Fester. I guess one of my 

11 concerns is something that I think Jim brought up 

12 and Warren touched on, is, you know, how can there 

13 be an accurate coworker model based on such a narrow 

14 sampling from a narrow period of time?

15 And I guess my concern is, giving the 

16 benefit of the doubt to these contractors and 

17 subcontractors when we know time and time again 

18 they've had these violations, the Tiger Team report 

19 shows, you know, very basic ALARA violations, OSHA 

20 violations, you know, up to 1990.

21 The Tiger Team report basically says, 
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1 well, you all are doing a good job, you're getting 

2 closer to your goals of not violating OSHA and being 

3 in accordance with ALARA, basically intimating 

4 that, you know, it had gotten better by 1990 even 

5 though we see all these violations.

6 So, I guess my question would be, you 

7 know, between that period of 1972 to 1989, 

8 Westinghouse, it was supposedly worse during that 

9 period of time. That's an issue and that's 

10 something that we have to consider. And I don't 

11 think they can get the benefit of the doubt, 

12 especially when we see -- you know, and this is 

13 something that we didn't submit prior to, but 

14 Westinghouse itself has gotten various violations 

15 over the years, particularly, as Mr. Johnson 

16 pointed out, you know, compliance with the bioassay 

17 program.

18 They were cited for a violation where 

19 they had 79 percent non-compliance with bioassays 

20 as late as, I think, 2000. You know, that's an 

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

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

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1 Another thing I wanted to point out, and 

2 I know that you all have to wait until NIOSH 

3 presents the evaluation on thorium, but what we 

4 presented is FOIA documents that show the presence 

5 of thorium in various areas, not just the lab. 

6 Various buildings throughout the 700, 300s area and 

7 even in 235-F. And that's throughout the '70s 

8 after 1972.

9 A person most knowledgeable, in the 

10 excerpts of the deposition that we submitted, he 

11 says that they didn't even have a program for 

12 monitoring thorium. They didn't have a way to test 

13 for thorium until at least 2000. So I'm just not 

14 sure how any evaluation of dose for thorium can be 

15 accurately recreated by NIOSH here.

16 And, again, it's not a criticism of 

17 NIOSH. I think they're very competent to produce 

18 dose reconstructions, but for things that we know 

19 were present at the present and were monitored for. 

20 So, that's just one thing that I wanted to point 

21 out and bring to the Board's attention. Thank you.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Savannah River Site Work Group,

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

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

certified by the Chair of the Savannah River Site Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should 

be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change 76

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1 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Josh and Warren.

2 Brad?

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yeah. Is there 

4 anything that we need to -- is there anything that 

5 anybody would like to bring up before we call this 

6 the meeting to a halt?

7 Adjourn

8 If not, I guess we'll adjourn. I 

9 appreciate all of you calling, and I appreciate the 

10 update, Tim, and we'll see you shortly.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

12 MR. KATZ: Yeah. Thank you, everybody.

13 (Whereupon, at 11:25 o'clock a.m. the 

14 meeting in the above-entitled matter was 

15 adjourned.)