1 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701

S

(202) 234-4433 www.nealrgross.com

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 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON SAVANNAH RIVER SITE

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened in the 

Montreal Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 

2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky, at 8:37 

a.m., Bradley P. Clawson, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

JAMES M. MELIUS, Board Chairman*

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*
2 

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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

MATTHEW G. ARNO, ORAU*

ROBERT BARTON, SC&A*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

STUART HINNEFELD, DCAS

JENNY LIN, HHS*

MIKE MAHATHY, ORAU

JIM NETON, DCAS

*Participating via telephone
3 

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

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Contents

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

NIOSH Presentation summarizing status............. 9

and key issues.................................... 9

SC&A PRESENTATION AND RESPONSE TO KEY ISSUES..... 28

SC&A Response to NIOSH report on monitoring of... 85

CTWs in Bldg 773-A High Level Caves.............. 85

SC&A Response to Taulbee memo regarding.......... 90

stratification of CTW data between DuPont........ 90

construction and Subcontractor construction for.. 90

Pu and Tritium................................... 90

NIOSH Response to SC&A report on subcontractor.. 100

monitoring and effect of 10CFR830 violations.... 100

NIOSH evaluation of NOCTS subcontractor......... 255

monitoring 1991-1997............................ 255

WG SEC Recommendations and/or Path Forward on 

Discussion Items; Plans for December Board Meeting

................................................ 299

Adjourn......................................... 301
4 

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

2 (8:37 a.m.)

3 Welcome and Roll Call 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you. I'd like 

5 to welcome everybody out today. It's been a long 

6 time since we've met face-to-face.

7 This meeting has come at a critical 

8 point. We've been at this for quite a while and 

9 I think today is going to be very beneficial. 

10 And I hope that everybody will listen intently 

11 and if they have questions, that they'll raise 

12 them.

13 And with that --

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm sorry. Can the 

15 speaker move closer to a microphone, please?

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure. Does that 

17 help?

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: That's better.

19 (Pause.)

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Anyway, with that 

21 being said, we'll turn the time over to Tim and 

22 allow him to start.

23 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Can everybody hear 
5 

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1 me here? Okay.

2 I'm having problems here getting Skype 

3 Business to work. Apparently on my CITGO account 

4 I don't have the app loaded. So I was wondering 

5 -- yes, either Jim or Stu, do you guys have --

6 logged into the CITGO?

7 MR. HINNEFELD: I am.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Bring up the first 

9 presentations.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

11 DR. TAULBEE: I can point to where it's 

12 at on the A: drive. Or you can go from the one

13 that I sent yesterday.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: You sent the email, 

15 right?

16 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. The summary status 

17 and key issues.

18 For those that don't have access, I do 

19 have three hard copies.

20 MR. KATZ: While Tim's handing this out 

21 let me just say for members of the public that 

22 may be on the line, this is a presentation that's 

23 not cleared so it can't be shared at this point. 
6

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1 But we'll put it through clearance and after the 

2 fact it will be posted to the extent that it can.

3 DR. TAULBEE: And are we -- you're into 

4 CITGO, into the Skype meeting business meeting?

5 MR. HINNEFELD: I have not opened 

6 Skype, no. You want to put it on Skype?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I want to put it on 

8 Skype.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, so you want to 

10 share the screen on Skype?

11 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I want to share the 

12 screen on Skype.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: So it's not loaded into 

14 Skype Meeting anywhere.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Show it as you want from 

16 your desktop.

17 DR. TAULBEE: But I don't have the app 

18 on mine apparently.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

20 MR. KATZ: They just did the transition 

21 from Windows 7 to the new Windows 10, and so you 

22 have to have the app.

23 MR. HINNEFELD: So, did the meeting 
7

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1 announcement have Skype on it for today on 

2 account?

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, it does. It does. Ida 

4 sent that around. Everybody should have received 

5 that.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Should have it.

7 MR. KATZ: Should have it. I can 

8 forward it to you otherwise.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I have it.

10 DR. TAULBEE: I can go ahead and get 

11 started with this though. I've got the 

12 PowerPoint on here and we can go from the hard 

13 copy here.

14 MR. KATZ: Sure.

15 DR. TAULBEE: But we will get this 

16 uploaded to Skype for those who are dialed in on 

17 a CDC computer.

18 MR. KATZ: Yes. And folks that are in 

19 -- so I sent it to people who have a CDC account. 

20 But I couldn't send it elsewhere because it's 

21 PII.

22 DR. TAULBEE: So the board members who 

23 do have CDC accounts have this?
8

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1 MR. KATZ: Well, yes. But I'm not sure 

2 if that includes anyone at this point, because -

3 -

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Phil and Dr. Melius, do 

5 you guys have the CDC --

6 MR. KATZ: Phil has a CDC account. I 

7 don't know if he has access to it.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Do I want to use full 

9 audio or I just want to --

10 DR. TAULBEE: Don't use audio.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Don't use audio.

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, don't use the audio. 

13 Don't play an audio.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Is there anybody out 

15 there has -- can see the Skype presentation?

16 MR. KATZ: Maybe not. But there are 

17 people in here who can see it.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: So where do I want to 

19 go?

20 MR. KATZ: Well, let me just check, 

21 following up on Jim's suggestion, either Dr. 

22 Melius or Phil, are either of you attending by 

23 Skype?
9 

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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm not, Ted.

2 MR. KATZ: You're not. Okay, Phil's 

3 not.

4 Dr. Melius, are you?

5 BOARD CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, but not on 

6 CITGO.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, but you're on, you're 

8 on the Skype session?

9 BOARD CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. So Dr. Melius gets 

11 this, yes.

12 Dr. Melius, if you could go into 

13 CITGO, I've loaded this to the -- 

14 BOARD CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm not on 

15 CITGO.

16 MR. KATZ: Oh.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, okay. Then that's 

18 not happening then.

19 NIOSH Presentation summarizing status 

20 and key issues 

21 All right. Thanks, Brad. And I 

22 apologize for these delays here.

23 What I wanted to do is kind of start 
10

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1 with a quick recap of how we got to where we're 

2 at right now because it's been quite a while, as 

3 you've pointed out.

4 So, I'm on slide 2. Overview, just 

5 gives a background, kind of a chronology of 

6 events. Short, very short recap of our job 

7 analysis plans. And then get into the key issues 

8 that were kind of identified this last August 

9 during our work group meeting, and talk a little 

10 bit about the 95th percent analysis for bias that 

11 we sent out just before the Board conference call

12 the 1st of October.

13 So, as a background, the goal here is 

14 can we --

15 DR. NETON: Hey, Tim, I got it here.

16 DR. TAULBEE: You've got it there? 

17 Okay.

18 DR. NETON: I think I do. Looks like 

19 it's seven participants.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Check for the -- people 

21 on Skype, can you now see it? I'm trying to 

22 present it on --

23 MR. BARTON: Yes, this is Bob, we can 
11

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1 see the PowerPoint.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I think they're mine 

4 because I just logged in to Skype and shared my 

5 screen and I've got the thing on my screen.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Right. Okay, good.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

8 DR. TAULBEE: That works.

9 DR. NETON: Why don't you move it and 

10 see if it moves.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Did you guys see it move? 

12 Oh, yes, it did. I saw it here.

13 MR. BARTON: Yes, we're on the second 

14 slide now.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, never mind.

16 DR. TAULBEE: It's on Stu's, not yours, 

17 Jim.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I'm presenting.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

20 DR. NETON: Yes, I didn't present. 

21 I've got it on here but it's not --

22 DR. TAULBEE: Are we good?

23 DR. NETON: Yes, we're good.
12

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1 DR. TAULBEE: All right. So -- and 

2 then we'll go through the 95th percent analysis 

3 for bias. So the background here is can we 

4 reconstruct doses to unmonitored construction 

5 trades workers with sufficient accuracy?

6 And our response has been, yes, 

7 through the use of coworker models. And this led 

8 to a discussion of whether there is sufficient 

9 data and whether stratification is necessary.

10 So, if you go back and look at this, 

11 their initial approach was to compare 

12 construction trades workers versus non13 construction trades workers models to determine 

14 if there is a difference requiring 

15 stratification. So, in November of 2010 we 

16 issued Report 49, which was discussing the 

17 differences between tritium.

18 2011 a separate analysis regarding 

19 tritium.

20 2012 we looked at the exotics 

21 americium, curium, californium, and thorium.

22 And, again, we're comparing 

23 construction trades workers and non-construction 
13

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1 trades workers.

2 August of 2012 we issued a report on 

3 neptunium.

4 September of 2012 on mixed fission 

5 products.

6 These reports led to a discussion on 

7 general coworker models kind of in general. And 

8 this is where the SEC Issues Work Group came in. 

9 And in March of 2013 we discussed at a meeting 

10 the one person/one statistic methodology, and the 

11 statistical power to observe differences between 

12 these groups with regards to the stratification.

13 And this led to the request for NIOSH 

14 to write this down and issue a guideline on 

15 coworker models. And so then in June of 2014 Jim 

16 issued the Draft Guideline on Coworker Models.

17 March of 2015 the SEC Issues Work 

18 Group reviewed that particular guideline. And 

19 instead of the one person/one statistic we 

20 modified it to the time-weighted one person/one 

21 statistic methodology.

22 In June 2015 the Draft Guideline on 

23 Coworker Models Rev 4 was issued. The SEC Issues 
14

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1 Work Group generally liked the Draft Guideline of 

2 the Coworker Models but wanted to see a 

3 demonstration. And so that's where Savannah 

4 River begins to come in here. In August of 2015 

5 we began work on the coworker model.

6 August 2016 we presented the schedule 

7 to the Advisory Board for the completion of the 

8 coworker model. We had been working on it during 

9 that past year and it was nearing completion. We 

10 were projecting it to be in October of 2016 that 

11 the model would be delivered in two parts.

12 The first part would contain the full 

13 models for tritium and for the exotics americium, 

14 curium, californium, and thorium for both 

15 construction trades workers and non-construction 

16 trades workers. So we were going to stratify.

17 The second part, Rev 4, would provide 

18 all other radionuclides.

19 Again, the goal with two parts was to 

20 allow the Advisory Board to review and comment on 

21 Rev 3 methodology such that if there were 

22 substantial changes we could incorporate them 

23 before Rev 4, before we went through all this 
15

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1 additional work.

2 Rev 3 is still being reviewed by the 

3 SEC Issues Work Group.

4 But there is still this lingering 

5 issue of whether the subcontractor construction 

6 trades worker data had been incorporated into the 

7 SRS system of records such that we are looking at 

8 all of the data in the development of these 

9 coworker models. And where this came from was 

10 during an interview with [identifying information 

11 redacted], he indicated that he believed it had 

12 been incorporated into the system, but the 

13 question was how do we test this? What can we do 

14 in order to identify whether this data had been 

15 incorporated into the system of records?

16 In June of 2016 NIOSH located and 

17 captured a fairly large set of job plans for the 

18 773-A Building over an extended period of time, 

19 1981 to 1986.

20 In August of 2016 the SRS Work Group 

21 met and we discussed our plans to evaluate this 

22 data. And this work group had concerns that we 

23 were only covering one area over a limited time 
16

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1 period and tasked SC&A to expand the scope to 

2 include more areas and for a longer duration.

3 November of 2016 we delivered the 

4 first coworker model. This was at Rev 3, OTIB5 81. It was delivered to the Advisory Board 

6 demonstrating the separate models for 

7 construction trades workers and non-construction 

8 trades workers could be developed.

9 At the same time we were conducting a 

10 data capture of subcontractor construction trades 

11 workers identified on these job plans. This was 

12 the test, to evaluate whether their monitoring 

13 data made it into the system of records.

14 December 2016, we had a delay. The 

15 site classification review, the site 

16 classification officer unexpectedly retired and 

17 it delayed receipt of our November data capture 

18 until January 2017. This also inhibited SC&A's 

19 ability to conduct data captures until we got to 

20 February of 2017, which was earlier this year.

21 SC&A did conduct those data captures 

22 in February so that they could do their analysis.

23 We completed our analysis and issued 
17

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1 the report in June of this year. And that report 

2 is Report 83. It's entitled Evaluation of 

3 Monitoring in Construction Trades Workers 

4 Identified in High-Level Cave Job Plans at the 

5 Savannah River Site.

6 In July of 2017 SC&A delivered their 

7 report, The Evaluation of Savannah River 

8 Subcontractor Bioassay Data Completeness, to the 

9 Advisory Board.

10 During the August meeting of the 

11 Advisory Board both reports were presented in 

12 full.

13 Sorry, I missed one here.

14 August we had a joint SEC Issues Work 

15 Group and SRS Issues -- or SRS Work Group met. 

16 And that's where some of these key issues were 

17 identified that we'll be discussing hopefully 

18 today.

19 Both of the reports that I mentioned 

20 previously were presented in full to the Advisory 

21 Board in August, in the August meeting in Santa 

22 Fe.

23 So just to recap quickly. Our job 
18

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1 plan analysis was the analysis of job plans in 

2 773-A from '80 to '86 -- I think it's '81 to '86, 

3 sorry.

4 November of 2016 we conducted the data 

5 capture. We found bioassay for 105 of the 110 

6 subcontractor construction trades workers.

7 Of the 133 contractor CTW job 

8 pairings, 88 individual subcontractor 

9 construction trades workers required respirator 

10 use. And this was our surrogate for whether 

11 somebody needed to be on bioassay.

12 And so here is the table that we 

13 presented. The change that I've added to this 

14 particular one, and it shows first column there, 

15 is the year. The second is subcontractor

16 construction trades workers with respirator use, 

17 and then those with bioassay.

18 And you can see direct monitoring. 

19 It's 61 percent, 60 percent, 54, 78, 81, with an 

20 average over that time span of 68.2.

21 One of the things we looked at -- and 

22 this wasn't broken out in the report but we talked 

23 about it, was on these individual job plans we 
19

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1 looked at other workers who signed in on that job 

2 plan. This would be kind of the equivalent of an 

3 early RWP at that time. And we looked at, were 

4 those coworkers monitored.

5 And so if you combine the 

6 subcontractor with bioassay and if you look at 

7 those seven that did not have -- looking at '80, 

8 '81 here -- the seven that did not have 

9 monitoring, seven of them their coworkers did 

10 have monitoring. So either direct or coworker, 

11 coworker meaning somebody who signed in on the 

12 same job plan so they're doing the same work, at 

13 the same time, with the same source term.

14 And you can see that that direct 

15 monitor -- direct and coworker monitoring 

16 increases this to 100 percent, 90 percent, 81, 

17 95, 87, with an overall average of 92 percent.

18 So our job plan analysis evaluated the 

19 job plans that required respirator use. 68 

20 percent had direct monitoring, 92 percent had 

21 either direct monitoring or a coworker was 

22 monitored.

23 We concluded that the coworker would 
20

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1 be sufficiently accurate. We evaluated for bias 

2 and presented that to the Board during the 

3 presentation. Considered coworkers on the same 

4 job plan, that increased it to 92 percent.

5 We talked about other considerations, 

6 that the use of respiratory is precautionary, and 

7 if no incident, there may not have been sampling, 

8 you're not going to have 100 percent compliance.

9 During the work group meeting in 

10 August of this year the work groups questioned 

11 the combination of DuPont construction trades 

12 workers and subcontractor construction trades 

13 workers on coworker models due to differences in 

14 monitoring and work. And so these are kind of 

15 the two to three key issues here.

16 The work group also questioned whether 

17 the DuPont construction trades workers would bias 

18 the model, diminishing the true exposure of the 

19 subcontractors. In other words, were the 

20 subcontractors really a higher population, 

21 exposed population than the DuPont construction 

22 trades workers. And this is where the 95th 

23 percent analysis comes into play where we agreed 
21

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1 that we would do an analysis and break out, from 

2 an empirical standpoint because you can't really 

3 fit models when you get down to too few data, in 

4 order to do the comparison.

5 And the final key issue that we raised 

6 during it was our concerns with SC&A 

7 subcontractor reports. And this will be 

8 discussed later today. Specifically we have 

9 issues with the 30 to 90 day approach for non10 tritium samples, and the Notice of Violation.

11 So let's talk about the first one of 

12 the differences of DuPont construction trades 

13 workers and subcontractor construction trades 

14 workers in a coworker model.

15 We felt the work was similar based 

16 upon interviews with DuPont construction trades 

17 workers conducted in May of 2008. This was during 

18 our initial worker outreach meetings when the SEC 

19 was first filed.

20 And I want to quote here one of the 

21 statements from an E&I mechanic who was with 

22 DuPont construction trades workers. He stated 

23 that although the site profile accounts for 
22

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1 missed dose he believed we couldn't reconstruct 

2 the missed dose for unmonitored workers who were 

3 in and out of the hot areas all the time. He 

4 explained that E&I mechanics were like 

5 construction trades workers named in the proposed 

6 class and that they did not work in a specific 

7 area like the production workers did.

8 So this was their words indicating 

9 that they felt they were just like the 

10 construction trades workers.

11 During the August meeting we provided 

12 seven examples as we talked to DuPont 

13 construction trades workers and subcontractor 

14 construction trades workers performing similar 

15 work at similar locations with similar 

16 radiological controls. And what I mean by 

17 similar locations, basically the same locations. 

18 They're working on the high level drains, the 

19 same source terms, same location. And they were 

20 doing similar work.

21 We gave examples of millwrights 

22 working on -- millwrights and electricians 

23 working on fan motors; pipefitters on the high 
23

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1 level drains; electricians doing conduit, working 

2 with contaminated ceilings; pipefitters, sheet 

3 metal, and laborers doing manipulator work; 

4 pipefitters working on low level drains; sheet 

5 metal workers working on off-gas line; and some 

6 of the large scale maintenance work that was 

7 done.

8 The second key issue is the 95th 

9 percentile analysis for bias. We evaluated the 

10 maximum possible 95th percentile of the bioassay 

11 of DuPont construction trades workers and 

12 subcontractor construction trades workers. The 

13 data evaluation consisted of NOCTS data only.

14 I want to point out that there is 

15 significantly more data in the bioassay logbooks. 

16 It's available in the SRDB. If the work group 

17 feels a more robust analysis is needed, it can be 

18 done but it's going to be very time consuming and 

19 very laborious to do. So we only looked at the 

20 NOCTS data here.

21 Here's what we have for plutonium at 

22 Savannah River. And you'll see that the upper 

23 bar here, the upper black bar is the upper 95th 
24

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1 percentile of the distribution. These are box 

2 plots, and how to read these is within the box 

3 you have the 25th percentile to the 75th 

4 percentile the black line in the center is the 

5 median.

6 And you'll notice that for the time 

7 period of, let's see, '62 up through early 1984 

8 there's kind of a lower band there. That was the 

9 minimum reporting level for the site.

10 The logbooks actually have data that 

11 goes down into that range, but the actual 

12 bioassay cards that are on individuals' records 

13 will just say less than .1 dpm per day. So that's 

14 why that kind of straight line there.

15 But what we're looking at here is the 

16 upper tails here, these 95th percentiles. So 

17 that's on the next slide.

18 And here you can see that the DuPont 

19 construction trades workers and the 

20 subcontractors in red match fairly well. There's 

21 a period in the 1970s where the subcontractors 

22 were a little higher. There's a period in the 

23 1960s, 1962 where DuPont construction trades 
25

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1 workers were higher.

2 Get out to 1986, construction trades 

3 workers were higher. But then in 1988 -- I'm 

4 sorry, 1986 subcontractors were higher. In 1988 

5 the DuPont construction trades workers were 

6 higher. So you're seeing the mix back and forth 

7 associated with it.

8 One of the concerns we had is how few 

9 of samples do we have where they're deriving 

10 these 95th percentiles. I mean, are 

11 subcontractors represented within this group? 

12 And here you see the number of workers that are 

13 deriving this and, well, there's quite a few 

14 subcontractor construction trades workers. In 

15 fact, they really increase after 1980, which is 

16 commensurate with the site beginning to use more 

17 contract workers, even under the DuPont era.

18 We also looked at the 95th percentile 

19 for bias for tritium workers. And here you can 

20 see the full box plots with 95th percentiles, and 

21 5th percentile, 25th, 50th, 75, 95th. And when 

22 you look at the 95th percentile alone you're 

23 looking at, for tritium, you actually do see a 
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1 bias here. But the bias is subcontractors are 

2 lower than the DuPont construction trades workers 

3 for tritium, kind of systematically across the 

4 whole time period.

5 Now, the -- I'm going to say here in 

6 a minute that there's a slight bias. And the 

7 reason that I say there's a slight bias here, is 

8 that difference is really around 50 millirem. 

9 This isn't a huge difference between these two 

10 groups, even though it's systematic for 

11 subcontractor construction trades workers.

12 Again we looked at the number of 

13 monitored -- or number of workers that were used 

14 to develop that. And here you can see that DuPont 

15 obviously had more workers until you get out to 

16 the 1980s. And then that latter tail of that 

17 distribution is dominated by the subcontractors.

18 So we didn't see any systematic 

19 difference between DuPont construction trades 

20 workers and subcontractor construction trades 

21 workers. There's a few years where plutonium 

22 bioassay is higher for subcontractors than DuPont 

23 construction trades workers but it's not 
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1 systematic. The last five years, there's three 

2 years where subcontractors were higher and two 

3 years where they're lower.

4 Multiple years where the tritium dose 

5 is lower for subcontractors compared to DuPont 

6 construction trades. So there's a slight 

7 systematic difference. But, again, we're looking 

8 around 50 millirems. It's not a big difference.

9 Therefore, we feel the application of 

10 the 95th percentile of the combined construction 

11 trades worker coworker model to the unmonitored

12 construction trades worker would be bounding.

13 And with that I'll be happy to answer 

14 any questions.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Does anybody on the 

16 phone or in the room have any questions that 

17 they'd like to ask Tim?

18 And thank you for the overview, Tim.

19 I'm not hearing any. Joe?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Okay, I wanted 

21 to take the opportunity to just cover similar 

22 ground but in a slightly different perspective. 

23 And these handouts are not online, so I'm just 
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1 going to go ahead and read probably more 

2 literally than I would normally just to make sure 

3 that people who are on the phone who don't have 

4 this handout understand it.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Actually, Joe, Stu might 

6 be able to get that presentation up there.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Where is it? Is it on 

8 --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: It was an email from 

10 Ted.

11 MR. KATZ: Yes, but I think I 

12 distributed it to the Board members, so they 

13 should have it, the talking points.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. I'll 

15 start. And if perchance you can make it more 

16 widely distributed that would make it easier.

17 SC&A PRESENTATION AND RESPONSE TO KEY ISSUES 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: But in terms of 

19 background, it covers some of the same ground. 

20 SC&A was tasked in September 2016, as Tim was 

21 saying, to conduct a broad-based sampling review 

22 of bioassay data completeness at Savannah River 

23 for subcontractor construction trades workers. 
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1 And as Tim noted, this came out of an interview 

2 that we had in 2013 which suggested that there in 

3 fact were separately filed copies of 

4 subcontractor bioassay records which kind of cued 

5 out interest as to, you know, what the status of 

6 those records would have been and how complete 

7 they were.

8 And, of course, as Tim also indicated, 

9 the ongoing NIOSH review that was completed of 

10 one facility, 773-A High Level Cave Facility for 

11 1980 to 1986. And I think at the time, and I 

12 think Tim also noted this, a year ago the work 

13 group, if not the Board, felt that that may not 

14 be sufficiently representative of the 

15 completeness of exposure history for the site, 

16 given the fact that it was the five or six years 

17 and only one facility.

18 So certainly the Board wanted SC&A to 

19 broaden that review, not necessarily given the 

20 breadth of what we were looking at, we were 

21 looking at decades of experience over all the 

22 facilities at Savannah River, not to do perhaps 

23 something as comparable in detail but certainly 
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1 to come back with an indication in a broader 

2 context of the completeness that we'd be looking 

3 at.

4 And one component that we found fairly 

5 quickly, not only were there security constraints 

6 but also resource constraints at the site in 

7 terms of how much scope we would be able to 

8 address. And we addressed something on the order 

9 of about 300 to 350 workers that were sited on 

10 the RWP. So that was almost the extent of what 

11 we could possibly do with the resources 

12 available.

13 And I pointed out at the last work 

14 group meeting that we relied on available RWPs. 

15 And we did some electronic searches and also some 

16 physical searches to see what we could find. 

17 Surprisingly, at least from my vantage point, we 

18 didn't find very many considering the number of 

19 years involved.

20 And the ones we did find I would 

21 characterize as running the gamut of different 

22 formats as well as different scopes, and anywhere 

23 from a standing RWP to RWPs that were very 
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1 explicit about the end-of-job bioassay. Others 

2 that were actually very vague about the, you 

3 know, the nuclides involved.

4 We decided to go ahead and try to work 

5 through what RWPs we had even though in my view 

6 it was an incomplete set, and try to make the 

7 best of what we could in terms of coming back 

8 with an indication of completeness.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Excuse me, Joe. Are 

10 you speaking from the presentation you sent?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: The talking points for 

13 Tuesday?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Because I think I'm 

16 showing that on Skype now.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. This is 

18 entitled, these slides entitled Summary of SNA's 

19 Concerns.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, okay. That's the 

21 presentation I have up.

22 And are you on the background slides?

23 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm on the background 
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1 slides, exactly.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. All right.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: And I'm assuming 

4 everybody can hear me through this mic.

5 But anyway, so that was in my view a 

6 real impediment. You know, you'd like to think 

7 you had a relatively representative set of RWP

8 documents for the time periods involved. We did 

9 not. And to me it was indeterminate what slice 

10 of what was out there we did have because, you 

11 know, certainly 11, 12, 13 wasn't the extent over 

12 20 years. However, there was no way of knowing 

13 what was the full scope.

14 We never did establish, even though we 

15 did have some inquiries with the site, what the 

16 -- where the other, certainly the majority of the 

17 RWP documents and construction job plans might 

18 sit. But, you know, again they might be in other 

19 files. Some of them may have been destroyed. 

20 Some of them may be sitting with legal counsel, 

21 understanding that there was some, you know, 

22 regulatory concerns that were expressed later in 

23 the '90s.
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1 So, you know, pick any of the above. 

2 Certainly we didn't see very many of them.

3 We found varying levels of bioassay 

4 completeness as a function of what the RWPs were 

5 counting. And we said 16 to 34 percent. We could 

6 have certainly used different criteria and came 

7 up with anything from 10 to 50 percent. I mean, 

8 it was one of these where once you accept the 

9 fact that you have only a portion of the RWPs 

10 available and the RWPs themselves varied that 

11 much in specificity, we were dealing with a 

12 fairly biased sample to begin with.

13 But, anyway, given the charge to come 

14 up with an index, some indications of 

15 completeness, we did so.

16 In any case, this gets me to my final 

17 point that, frankly, there's been a lot made of 

18 the NOV that we happened to identify towards the 

19 end of our review. And it really was at the very 

20 end of our review. It wasn't even a revelation 

21 that came from the site visit, it was sent, 

22 frankly, on the NTS, the Noncompliance Tracking 

23 System that I, frankly, spotted that as I was 
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1 putting the report together and felt that it was 

2 relevant enough to go ahead and identify and 

3 bring forward.

4 We didn't do any further follow-up or 

5 review. I think that Tim's group did that after 

6 the fact. But we just wanted to make sure that 

7 was factored in.

8 Certainly from our standpoint we felt 

9 that was, given the qualifications of our on-site 

10 review, we felt the Westinghouse self-surveys 

11 that occurred in '97 actually were perhaps the 

12 only credible sampling review or reviews of 

13 samplings that were done. Because it was a 

14 contemporary review. It was -- they certainly 

15 had access to the RWPs, all of them that 

16 represented the job-specific bioassays. And they 

17 certainly had the motivation to get to ground 

18 truth as far as where things stood.

19 And we've covered this ground in the 

20 past, but in 1997 early on they did a limited 

21 survey to see where they stood. They came up 

22 with 67 percent incompleteness as far as the 

23 participation of workers in job-specific 
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1 bioassays required by RWPs.

2 They went back and did a full survey 

3 in September of '97 for the second quarter of '97 

4 and came up with 79 percent incomplete. So this 

5 was 79 percent of the job-specific bioassays 

6 required by RWPs at Savannah River were 

7 incomplete.

8 And they were incomplete because the, 

9 again the administrative controls that would have 

10 provided for workers to provide bioassays were 

11 such that a lot of the workers were -- did not 

12 leave bioassays and, again, there was not a 

13 system to compel that or to catch that and bring 

14 them to the fore. So that was the circumstance 

15 in '97.

16 I'm going to go to the next slide. 

17 Hopefully you can see this.

18 But I wanted to provide more context. 

19 You know, we've talked about the '90s and what 

20 was happening. And I've touched on this in the 

21 past. But I think there are real reasons, you 

22 know, you wouldn't expect to have, you know, 

23 fundamental bioassay issues, questions of RWPs. 
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1 And these are sort of basic parts of the program. 

2 And I know a lot of us didn't give the 1990s a 

3 lot of attention just simply because from 

4 experience perspective it would be kind of 

5 surprising to find any, you know, fundamental 

6 program issues during that time frame.

7 But at Savannah River in particular, 

8 if not maybe more broadly in DOE, there were 

9 fundamental program changes that were occurring 

10 that I think were stress points for these sites. 

11 And for Savannah River this was occurring pretty 

12 much 1989 and into the '90s.

13 In 1989 Westinghouse Savannah River 

14 Company assumes the operating contract from 

15 DuPont. And with the advent of the Westinghouse 

16 operating contract, certainly the objective is to 

17 instill more formality of operations, to bring 

18 commercial nuclear standards into -- to look at 

19 more procedure-based versus expert-based.

20 And this is all things that were 

21 occurring across DOE. This was not exclusive to 

22 Savannah River. But certainly with the advent of 

23 that contract in '89 these were actions that were 
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1 going on.

2 At the same time, because of K Reactor 

3 restart activities, broadening D&D, and 

4 environmental cleanup you had, you know, much 

5 more extensive outsourcing of radiological work 

6 and an increasing influx of transient 

7 subcontractor CTWs.

8 And I think Tim points this out in 

9 his, in his plots where you can actually see the 

10 increasing numbers of subcontractors at the site. 

11 So these were all things that were happening 

12 certainly in the early '90s.

13 And, again, the fundamental changes in 

14 the SRS mission where you went from a pretty 

15 stable environment during DuPont years, where you 

16 had production reactors producing tritium, you 

17 had processing in the Canyons. All these were 

18 pretty routine operations, stable operations, 

19 pretty much a core workforce.

20 All of a sudden you're talking in the 

21 '90s you're getting to a much more extensive 

22 operation with D&D cleanup, trying to get K 

23 Reactor up. So you're introducing not only a lot 
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1 of new workers coming in, in terms of outsourcing 

2 but new and different source terms. And you're 

3 talking about much more activities involving 

4 waste management, more activities involving D&D 

5 cleanup. And all this involves much more of an 

6 unorthodox mix of source terms, radiological 

7 hazards, and situations where you have a lot of 

8 job-specific issues revolving around unfamiliar 

9 sources.

10 And not to mention you're going to 

11 have a situation where because of the nature of 

12 the changing work you're going to have a much 

13 more extensive use of RWPs, radiation work 

14 permits. And particularly when you're dealing 

15 with transient workers, dealing with jobs, 

16 specific jobs, or jobs that really require 

17 special approaches where you have specific source 

18 terms that aren't typical of the normal work at 

19 the site.

20 And more independent outside audits 

21 and reviews, I think that's pretty clear.

22 And finally, you have 10 CFR 835 with 

23 Price-Anderson enforcement beginning in the '95-
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1 '96 time frame. And this brought with it its own 

2 scrutiny about procedural compliance.

3 So the take-away is that you had 

4 considerable change. This is not to say that 

5 Savannah River didn't have a sound dosimetry 

6 program. It did, internal dosimetry program. 

7 But the administrative part of it, the 

8 administrative system, the procedures, the 

9 practices that served as the framework under 

10 which this program was implemented I think it's 

11 fair to say based on the reviews that that lagged 

12 to some extent with these changes. And this 

13 caused some of the issues that I think were 

14 realized in the NOV and some of the activities 

15 that we looked at in terms of self-assessment.

16 And these have implications for dose 

17 reconstruction. I just want to set the stage for 

18 that that, you know, it's not so much the health 

19 physics, the dosimetry so much, but the 

20 implementation of the program, the administrative 

21 systems, the procedures and processes which 

22 because of these kind of stresses and changes 

23 you're talking about lagged in terms of those 
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1 changes, and that caused some of the issues I 

2 think we're talking about.

3 Okay. I want to turn to the actual 

4 Notice of Violation.

5 And, you know, during the last Work 

6 Group meeting I think the comment was made that 

7 the NOV, as I think we're calling it, was 

8 characterized as a distraction to this question 

9 of completeness. Now, I think I'd have to push 

10 back on that a little bit. It's not, okay.

11 I think it was a, certainly from the 

12 Westinghouse standpoint was a, was a bit of 

13 milestone in terms of bioassay implementation at 

14 Savannah River. And more broadly speaking it was 

15 a pretty significant issue across DOE such that, 

16 you know, the DOE headquarters' enforcement 

17 program in early '99 took a rather unprecedented 

18 step of having a 120-day enforcement stand-down 

19 to permit each DOE site to self-assess its 

20 bioassay program in terms of the implementation 

21 of those internal dose evaluation programs 

22 against what they found to be 31 general 

23 deficiencies that they were picking up in their 
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1 reviews across DOE.

2 So, again, the notion is that even at 

3 that late date from an enforcement standpoint, 10 

4 CFR 835, there was a real concern over whether 

5 the DOE sites were effectively implementing their 

6 bioassay programs.

7 And I would like to add that getting 

8 to the NOV, Savannah River was cited under 10 CFR 

9 830 for procedural noncompliance taking it as a 

10 whole, the correction actions from the NOV and 

11 the related self-assessments. Again, because of 

12 the stand-down there were self-assessments that 

13 Westinghouse did on the site to look at its own 

14 programs. And there was a number of major 

15 upgrades.

16 I mean, they looked at the RWPs which, 

17 you know, we looked at as well and found them 

18 wanting. Well, they took a hard look at their 

19 RWPs and also found them to be inconsistent and 

20 not specific to the nuclides that should be 

21 listed and they came up with a standard format.

22 In 1999 they looked at the lack of 

23 effective bioassay tracking and accountability 
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1 and came up with pretty much a wholesale 

2 revamping of how that system worked, that clearly 

3 it wasn't working from an administrative 

4 standpoint and there wasn't much accountability 

5 in terms of requiring the workers to in fact 

6 participate.

7 Again there was inadequate 

8 experience-based source term categorization, and 

9 that was replaced by a more analytic approach. 

10 I'm going to get into this a little later but I 

11 think this is a significant issue that -- at 

12 Savannah River where you had a basically an 

13 experience-based system where the line management 

14 or the RCO, the radiological control 

15 organization, specifying the source terms that 

16 would be the facility source terms for bioassay 

17 that would wind up in the RWPs.

18 However, as things changed at the 

19 site, whether new source terms were introduced at 

20 certain facilities, whether you had D&D perhaps, 

21 or maybe a more complicated situation with waste 

22 management, the specification of what nuclides, 

23 you know, what workers, you know, what would be 
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1 the enrollment nuclides for workers, wasn't 

2 keeping pace with that. In fact for source terms 

3 like americium for some of the facilities, that 

4 wasn't winding up in RWPs and, therefore, workers 

5 were not being necessarily bio-assayed for these 

6 sources.

7 And you have an RQ, I think it's RQB, 

8 Radiological Qualification Badge, I think that's 

9 what it is, which is sort of the passport for the 

10 worker in terms of what bioassays would be 

11 required of that worker. And the procedures at 

12 Savannah River in fact linked that RQB, which 

13 again is this sort of specific radiological 

14 passport, to the job-specific bioassay program 

15 where you basically had the job-specific 

16 bioassays in terms of the RWP identifying the 

17 routine source terms as opposed to actually 

18 requiring an analysis or characterizations of the 

19 actual job in terms of what the nuclides of 

20 importance might be. And there was a disconnect.

21 And a lot of this comes from, again, 

22 what I was saying earlier, you had a very changing 

23 environment. Where when you had a stable 
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1 environment where everybody, including line 

2 managers, knew what the source terms were -- this 

3 is a Pu facility, this is a tritium facility, 

4 therefore in the RQB and the requirements should 

5 be, you know, tritium or Pu or whatever, you had 

6 a changing environment where you were beginning 

7 to interview source terms or having people move 

8 around from site to site, facility to facility.

9 And instead of the RQB being flexible 

10 enough where you would have somebody add source 

11 terms as you moved around the site, it became 

12 clear that, no, actually the RQB was the, you 

13 know, was based on that home facility for the 

14 worker. And, therefore, if there were other 

15 source terms that might have come along by maybe 

16 that person being assigned to 773-A or that 

17 person being assigned to waste management, those 

18 source terms weren't being added and the 

19 bioassays on job-specifics weren't happening.

20 So we had those kinds of disconnects 

21 which were kind of administrative disconnects. 

22 But nonetheless, for this program in terms of 

23 dose reconstruction as you can imagine it has 
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1 some real implications as far as whether or not 

2 there was unmonitored exposure.

3 The other item I want to mention is, 

4 you know, we talked about, well, if, you know, 

5 somebody was on job-specific bioassay for a long6 lived actinide and, okay, the job-specific 

7 bioassay was missed, not a big deal. You could 

8 catch that later, you know, in a later bioassay. 

9 That would have been the case I think in the 

10 stable environment of the '80s under DuPont.

11 But as you increase the numbers of 

12 transient subcontractors that you are dealing 

13 with on site the dynamic changes. Then you have 

14 a lot of workers that are in and out. And if 

15 you're talking about a missed job-specific 

16 bioassay for a long-lived, say, actinide, there 

17 isn't that surety you're going to catch them in 

18 the next cycle. This worker may be gone.

19 And the termination bioassay program 

20 at the site wasn't necessarily designed for this 

21 transiency. It was a sort of a traditional, if 

22 they leave it, fine. If they don't, you know, 

23 that's not going to be an issue. And that 
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1 accountability was not built in until 1999 in the 

2 throes of the self-assessment that DOE 

3 enforcement required each site to look at.

4 And I think Savannah River at that 

5 point realized, yes, they needed a more 

6 accountable system that wouldn't let somebody 

7 leave without at least leaving a bioassay.

8 So, just again on the NOV, we've had 

9 some exchanges on this. But I'd like to indicate 

10 that I think it did -- was significant, I think 

11 it did demonstrate shortcomings in the bioassay 

12 program that has implications for dose 

13 reconstruction looking backwards saying, okay, if 

14 that's the situation, these are the corrections. 

15 What are the implications for the earlier years?

16 Okay, I'm going to turn to the next 

17 one. And this is a slide just, you know, kind of 

18 similar to the way Tim has framed this. On the 

19 job-specific bioassays non-participation, which 

20 is kind of what we've been talking about as far 

21 as the NOV and the completeness issues.

22 I'm not going to cover this in detail 

23 because we talked about this before. But what we 
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1 know is that DOE Savannah River identified this 

2 concern for the first time in December '95. This 

3 was the exit meeting following what was 

4 apparently a field office review of the question 

5 of completeness or participation in the job6 specific bioassay program.

7 Now, I've seen some indications, and 

8 I have not been able to find -- maybe Tim might 

9 have some other perspectives -- but some mention 

10 was made of a 1996 indication of a survey of some 

11 sort, but I have not seen that. This was 

12 something that was referenced by DOE in both its 

13 correspondence as well as some of the enforcement 

14 meeting notes. But I have not seen anything for 

15 '96.

16 The only thing that I've seen are 

17 self-surveys by Westinghouse in May of '97 and 

18 September of '97. And also a new sampling that 

19 was done by Westinghouse after the results of the 

20 September '97 survey was available. And I might 

21 add that that survey showed no internal dose was 

22 needed to be assigned, no intakes.

23 And I did not see any further re-
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1 samplings. I think there was an indication that 

2 resampling had been considered for 1996 but not 

3 done because it wasn't deemed as being cost4 effective. No intakes would have been expected 

5 so it wasn't deemed cost-effective to do.

6 What we do not know -- that's what we 

7 know -- what we do not know in my view is how far 

8 back in time non-participation goes for job9 specific bioassays. DOE in its enforcement 

10 process found the issue to be repetitive and not 

11 responsive to past corrective actions. So I 

12 think my concern is that this is not just about 

13 1997, okay, even though that's where these 

14 surveys took place, or even about '96. But I 

15 think it has implications going backward in time 

16 for the 1990s, and perhaps earlier. Certainly 

17 that's the indication.

18 For missed job-specific bioassays 

19 what actual intakes occurred due to, quote, 

20 unrecognized field conditions or other types of 

21 personal error, and this is the wording that we

22 see in Westinghouse's response in NOV, may not 

23 necessarily be discovered in subsequent bioassays 
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1 for the reasons I mentioned before, because of 

2 the termination bioassay program inadequacies.

3 My bottom line on this is that, those 

4 incomplete -- and I think this is where we're at 

5 quite frankly -- those incomplete job-specific 

6 bioassay records equate to missing data to 

7 support coworker models. Sort of comes to the 

8 same place that Tim came to, and I think that's 

9 kind of where we're at.

10 And perhaps this is where there's a 

11 bit of a fork in the road which I think is kind 

12 of what we're trying to talk about today.

13 I'm not going to go over this slide 

14 because I think we're going to cover this in more 

15 detail. Ron has spent some time looking at the, 

16 at the report that Tim's team put together on 

17 773-A, the caves facility. And we have some 

18 concerns over some of the considerations. But, 

19 again, I'm going to wait and let Ron get into 

20 that.

21 But it really gets down to questions 

22 of whether in fact we're in a comfortable place 

23 relative to bias and representativeness more than 
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1 anything else. And I think that's where we have 

2 some issues.

3 Next one, please.

4 So, from our standpoint, you know, and 

5 this question has also -- and I recall a number 

6 of folks raising this issue early on, even last 

7 year at the Board meeting when we sort of got 

8 into this, is how complete is complete? And 

9 realizing we've been all over the map. I mean, 

10 you know, anywhere from 70 percent is okay. We 

11 can deal with 60 percent. We can mitigate that 

12 and bring it up to, I think, Tim, you were saying 

13 90 percent.

14 You know, it strikes me that the 

15 absolute value of the percentage is becoming less 

16 important because, again, you can come up with 

17 whatever number you want. I mean, I think 

18 Westinghouse came up with 67 to 79 percent 

19 incomplete. But, you know, again the question of 

20 how complete is complete.

21 I'd like to go back to something we 

22 spent a lot of time on which is the draft 

23 criteria, the coworker guidelines that I think 
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1 Jim spent quite a bit of time in 2015. You know, 

2 I remember the discussions and it wasn't an easy 

3 process.

4 But I think the notion was that 

5 instead of having sort of this very subjective 

6 and, you know, a bit of hand waving approach to 

7 coworker model, the basis for coworker model 

8 development that maybe it would be useful to have 

9 some criteria that would guide the Board and 

10 NIOSH in terms of whether or not one had the 

11 appropriate ingredients, the basis, the 

12 justification for coworker models.

13 And so, you know, looking at this 

14 issue and realizing that, you know, we -- at 

15 reasonable interpretations of what complete is 

16 complete. I think what would be useful is to go 

17 back to those criteria and just walk through it. 

18 I mean, that was the whole intent was to have 

19 some basis for making judgments. And I think 

20 that still has some merit for, for our 

21 discussions.

22 The other thing is -- and I only bring 

23 this up because I think SC&A just submitted 
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1 comments in on the OTIB-75 Rev 1 revision. So I 

2 asked Ted to go ahead and -- I don't know if that 

3 got up on the website or not -- but I thought 

4 some of the comments there on the stratification 

5 issue would be useful to also touch upon, 

6 recognizing that just came out last month. But 

7 actually the original review which really I don't 

8 think has, we haven't changed our position much, 

9 was 2010. So that was seven years ago.

10 So, actually in some respects it's not 

11 a new issue at all but one that we had concerns 

12 with back then. And I saw some of the comments 

13 on stratification that were listed in Tim's 

14 presentation. So I think that's also a touch 

15 point that we'd like to do. So those two touch 

16 points I think would be very helpful just to 

17 clarify where things stand.

18 And I'm going to walk through how we 

19 read the draft criteria. And with the author 

20 across from me it's particularly daunting. So 

21 I'm just going to walk through it and with my own 

22 humble interpretation just say, you know, from 

23 the standpoint of Savannah River where we think 
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1 we are. And, clearly, this will be fertile ground 

2 for some discussion. But I think this would be 

3 a useful framework, frankly, of just seeing how 

4 things might pan out.

5 In terms of the draft criteria I'm 

6 just looking at the completeness piece of this, 

7 not all of the criteria but the notion of 

8 completeness. I think what was in the 

9 guidelines, and I'm quoting, these are direct 

10 quotes, the amount of available monitoring data 

11 must be evaluated to determine if there are 

12 sufficient measurements to ensure that the data 

13 are either bounding or representative of the 

14 exposure potential for each job or exposure 

15 category at the facility. Okay.

16 Secondly, if in fact it can be 

17 established that the categories of workers were 

18 potentially exposed, yet inadequately monitored, 

19 it could preclude development of a sufficiently 

20 accurate coworker model unless it can be 

21 established that the exposures to another 

22 adequately monitored category of workers reliably 

23 bounds the initial category's exposure.
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1 And from our standpoint we feel, and 

2 maybe I'm wrong about this, but it can be agreed 

3 that SRS workers under RWP prescribed job4 specific bioassays were in fact potentially 

5 exposed, not likely but potentially exposed but 

6 not adequately monitored, i.e., because of the 

7 non-participation they did not receive, a number 

8 of them did not receive bioassays.

9 The issue turns from the question of 

10 completeness to one of what category of monitored 

11 workers can their missing exposures be bounded 

12 with. And that's where we go to the question of 

13 an alternate category of workers.

14 And from our standpoint the alternate 

15 category of workers -- and this is something I 

16 think in Tim's presentation he identifies some of 

17 that -- for those under RWP who provide job18 specific bioassays would be presumably the 

19 Savannah River workers with routine sampling, 

20 routine bioassays. That's where you have 

21 considerable data for comparison standpoints.

22 However, again I'll go back to the 

23 guidelines, require that coworker data sets 
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1 should be established from monitored workers with 

2 comparable activities and relationships to the 

3 radiation environment. Okay.

4 And looking at that, that to me is a 

5 bit of a bellwether because this question of 

6 representativeness I think is where this, where 

7 we may again differ from where NIOSH is coming 

8 out.

9 And the criteria that guides that is 

10 one where to accomplish this, to accomplish this 

11 notion of representativeness, the coworker data 

12 set should be established from workers with 

13 comparable activities. It's required that each 

14 coworker data set be, quote, either 

15 representative of the distribution of exposures 

16 for the intended population or that provides a 

17 plausible upper bound for those workers.

18 Now, in terms of representativeness 

19 and use of routine sampling data, I think it's, 

20 you know, it's useful to go to where Westinghouse 

21 came out. Because I think they looked at this 

22 issue and realized in the early '99 time frame 

23 that they had a problem in terms of how their 
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1 RWPs were prescribing bioassays. That in fact 

2 they were linking the job-specific bioassay 

3 program in terms of identifying source terms with 

4 the routine program.

5 And they were purposely trying to 

6 unlink that because, again, it was leading to 

7 line managers relying on RQBs, these Radiological 

8 Qualification Badges, which serve these very set 

9 sources being the, you know, the Pu facility, the 

10 Pu bioassays, quite apart from whether or not any 

11 other activities were introduced or whether 

12 there's D&D going on in the corner and people are 

13 getting -- you know, RWP-driven bioassays over 

14 here in the corner they were just getting Pu 

15 bioassays, even if it might have been americium 

16 in the corner.

17 So, anyway, the Westinghouse 

18 statements on the subject of this whole question 

19 of RWP work and job-specific bioassays emphasized 

20 a key distinction that you can't do that. RWP 

21 job tasks may involve, and this is a quote, non22 routine mixes or concentrations of rad materials 

23 which differ from routine work in typical work 
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1 environments.

2 Okay, monitoring for the latter may 

3 not be appropriate for the former. Okay. And 

4 there's a couple of references on that.

5 And the notion is that the work 

6 activities in terms of routine, the routine 

7 sampling program workers in typical work 

8 environments are neither necessarily comparable 

9 nor relatable in terms of the radiation 

10 environment. You can't assume that these workers 

11 that are working over here doing D&D, doing 

12 cleanup, doing some specialized activity over 

13 here in a waste management operation where you 

14 have a whole, you know, a whole spectrum of source 

15 terms, that you can apply the routine sampling 

16 program for CTWs that are in a stable work 

17 environment to them.

18 And, unfortunately, the system that 

19 was in place, the administrative system was 

20 leading to situations where the -- there wasn't 

21 a characterization of that specific work, and 

22 that wasn't lining up on the RWPs. So you had a 

23 real disconnect there.
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1 So, in general the question that the 

2 guidelines pose, you know, can you in fact find 

3 an alternate category of workers for which you 

4 can apply their bioassays in a coworker model, I 

5 would say for these workers working under RWPs in 

6 these specific work environments you cannot.

7 There's two circumstances that 

8 workers at Savannah River were under these RWPs. 

9 The workers who were not on the routine program, 

10 as you can imagine, if you brought in a 

11 subcontractor and you wanted him to do a specific 

12 job and then that subcontractor would leave, you 

13 wouldn't put them on a routine program, you'd 

14 probably put them on job-specific. However, they 

15 might be working on something that, frankly, 

16 wasn't too exotic. So that might actually be 

17 comparable.

18 However, you might take a worker who 

19 was on site doing standard work and have that CTW 

20 go over and do some specific cleanup over here, 

21 and they would be on a job-specific bioassay, but 

22 it's not clear that they in fact would be being 

23 bio-assayed for the work that they're working on. 
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1 They might be more likely being bio-assayed for 

2 the RQP -- RQB required bioassay for the base 

3 facility they're from.

4 So, there's some real questions about 

5 those source terms.

6 The other thing, and this gets to 

7 OTIB-75, and OTIB-75 is the Use of Claimant 

8 Datasets for Coworker Modeling, this gets down to 

9 the question of the representativeness of the 

10 stratification itself, that the 

11 representativeness of the claimant population for 

12 tritium for one thing, but also the 

13 stratification of CTWs' versus non-CTWs' results 

14 for actinides and activation products. And the 

15 stratification over time and work areas for both 

16 groups.

17 And I think our -- Ron is going to get 

18 into it. He was one of the co-authors of that 

19 review. But I think there's real questions about 

20 taking NOCTS data in terms of making assumptions 

21 about different job categories and applying that 

22 without the kind of testing of the stratification 

23 that we're not fully aware of. And, again, I 
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1 think Tim presented some perspective on that. 

2 But I think what Ron's going to do is get into 

3 some of the concerns that we have on that. I 

4 think that's a question as well.

5 But that to me is a parallel question. 

6 It's not fundamental to this question of using 

7 routine sampling data for job-specific bioassays.

8 And actually, Ron, I set the stage. 

9 You actually have the next slide which I think is 

10 sort of a thumbnail sketch of those comments if 

11 you want to get into that now.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron Buchanan 

13 with SC&A.

14 I have to give a little bit of 

15 background before I can come to that slide that 

16 Phil has on the screen.

17 OTIB-75 was originally released in 

18 2009. And what it consisted of was that they 

19 looked to see if the claimant database 

20 represented the overall population. And so they 

21 looked at three sites: Y-12, they had a complete 

22 data set for the uranium; Mound had plutonium; 

23 and Savannah River Site they had a tritium data 
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1 set in the '90s.

2 And they compared the claimant data to 

3 the complete data set to determine if they were 

4 representative. And this was released in 2009 by 

5 NIOSH.

6 And then in 2010, January of 2010, 

7 SC&A released their evaluation of this. Now, I 

8 did not author that review, Hans Behling did 

9 that. But I have reviewed the recent release. 

10 NIOSH released a revision of OTIB-75 in 2016. 

11 And we reviewed that and released that in October 

12 of 2017.

13 And what we found was originally that 

14 the data did indicate that the claimant data 

15 information was sufficiently aligned with the 

16 complete data set for uranium at Y-12.

17 At that time we did not find that the 

18 plutonium aligned for Mound, however, the data 

19 was fairly sparse. And later that more data was 

20 acquired. And I'll address that in a minute.

21 And then the Savannah River Site had 

22 a limited, just a tritium database for the '90s.

23 And so our original findings, what 
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1 SC&A did was they looked at those comparisons, 

2 and they said that Mound did not seem to align. 

3 Now, NIOSH did come out with a revision in 2016 

4 which added some more data points. And we re5 analyzed Mound data and we found a statistical 

6 error, the plutonium data for Mound did align the 

7 claimant data with the total population database. 

8 Now, in our original review in 2010 we 

9 did put the qualification on Savannah River Site 

10 in that the tritium was just for that period of 

11 time, it was only for tritium and it was only for 

12 that location and that period. You couldn't 

13 extrapolate that to other times necessarily 

14 without further evidence.

15 Now, the team at that time, led by 

16 Hans, looked further at the claimant database and 

17 they looked at stratification to see if you could 

18 say that you could take this information and 

19 apply it to the general public, or the general 

20 working population I mean.

21 And so they looked at Savannah River 

22 Site. This was when the Savannah River Site SEC 

23 originally was being discussed. And so Hans 
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1 looked at the claimant database and looked at 

2 stratification, or looked for stratification. 

3 And he looked at the construction workers and 

4 non-construction workers, and looked at job 

5 scenarios within those construction and non6 construction and then compared them. And that 

7 report was issued in 2010 and had several 

8 findings.

9 And he did find that there was 

10 stratification in the intakes for the different 

11 workers, different areas, construction versus 

12 non-construction that should be addressed before 

13 you say that the coworker data could be applied 

14 across the board to the claimants.

15 And so we recently did a reevaluation 

16 of that. We did not find that the additional data 

17 points addressed stratification, they just 

18 increased the strength of the statistical 

19 analysis comparing the claimant data to the 

20 overall database. And like I say, we did say 

21 that finding two, which was for Mound's program, 

22 there were additional data points that did 

23 indicate they agreed.
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1 However, we don't find that the 

2 stratification of using the coworker model for 

3 the data at Savannah River Site has been 

4 completely addressed as far as stratification 

5 goes. And so we issued that report in October 

6 9th of this year.

7 So that's our current position on that 

8 OTIB-75.

9 And I'll read the slide. This was the 

10 original finding, and we find it applies today, 

11 that Joe has made. SC&A's evaluation of OTIB-75 

12 for Region I, use of claimant data sets for 

13 coworker modeling. SC&A evaluation of SRS NOCTS 

14 data which was compiled by NIOSH as the basis for 

15 a coworker model to demonstrate the ability to 

16 reconstruct dose with sufficient accuracy is as 

17 follows. And this is taken from page 55 of our 

18 original report in 2010.

19 Conclusion number one is the 

20 conclusion that the claimant data from the 1990s 

21 for tritium are representative of the claimant 

22 population can, at best, be applied to that 

23 radionuclide and that period. This conclusion 
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1 cannot be back-extrapolated to other periods. 

2 Even in this period there were differences 

3 between construction workers by year -- and we 

4 actually went by 10-year decades -- craft and 

5 non-construction workers.

6 There are considerable differences in 

7 exposure between job types and areas, even when 

8 the data is done by the decade period. This 

9 applies to all non-construction as well as 

10 construction workers when compared to other 

11 groups -- others in the same group. The data 

12 indicate that construction workers in some areas 

13 and periods had greater exposure than non14 construction workers.

15 SC&A's overall conclusion for 

16 Savannah River Site coworker model development is 

17 that the NOCTS claimant database may be 

18 inadequate for the purpose of -- for SRS 

19 construction workers. And we feel that a more 

20 complete analysis of this as far as 

21 stratification for construction and non22 construction workers' titles, jobs, time and area 

23 is warranted.
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1 And so at this point they did analyze 

2 plutonium, uranium, enriched uranium and mixed 

3 fission products as well as tritium in their 

4 analysis.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Can I just ask a 

6 question about the OTIB-75 review?

7 OTIB-75, it is my understanding, was 

8 intended to determine whether the claimant 

9 population monitoring data was essentially 

10 similar statistically to the entire monitored 

11 population. Is that correct?

12 DR. BUCHANAN: That's, yes, that's what 

13 NIOSH set out to do in that OTIB.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: So it didn't attempt to 

15 say are the construction worker claimants' data 

16 is that representative of the total construction 

17 workers? Is that what you're talking about by 

18 the -- it didn't really look at the 

19 stratification?

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Correct. It did not --

21 OTIB-75 did not address the stratification. And 

22 when we reviewed it, at this point we said, okay, 

23 we agree with your statistics on the three sites. 
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1 However, we looked in more detail at the claimant 

2 data. And within the claimant data there's 

3 stratification. So you really couldn't just take 

4 the blank claimant data and apply it to the 

5 population without looking at stratification.

6 DR. NETON: But that -- well, go ahead.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: But this -- so the 

8 question of stratification then is different 

9 from, is the claimant data representative of the 

10 total data?

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Correct. Yes. In part, 

12 yes, other than you can't say our claimant data 

13 represents the total data if you don't look at 

14 the stratification and say -- if you've got 

15 stratification in the claimant data you can't 

16 just blindly apply the average to the overall 

17 population.

18 DR. NETON: But that wasn't the intent 

19 of 75.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: No, that's correct. We 

21 --

22 DR. NETON: That was our initial 

23 comment on the findings that were issued was that 
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1 it was never intended to be a stratification 

2 model. It was, like Stu said, a proof of 

3 principle that the database, NOCTS database was 

4 statistically equivalent on a random sampling 

5 basis to the overall population.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: I think, yes, we may be 

7 talking past each other here. Because I don't 

8 really think it matters to your point.

9 Your point is that the data is 

10 stratified and you can't use one data --

11 essentially if the data is stratified and 

12 claimant -- construction claimants are different 

13 than anybody else, so there's a stratification in 

14 the claimant database. What that would say is 

15 that you cannot use a general all worker model.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Correct.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

18 DR. NETON: But that's really not a 

19 finding of 75. That's my point.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I understand.

21 DR. NETON: It has nothing to do with 

22 OTIB-75.

23 MR. HINNEFELD: But we're talking past 
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1 each other here because that, the point they're 

2 making I believe, they believe is relevant to 

3 Savannah River rather than just the general use 

4 of OTIB-75 that it's, you know, saying that 

5 claimant population is an okay -- what 75 is 

6 trying to show is that if you don't have an 

7 electronic database for all of the data from the 

8 site so, you know, you don't have an electronic 

9 database, the claimant data, claimants are 

10 sufficiently representative of the total 

11 population in terms of exposure, that the 

12 claimant data can be used as a surrogate for the 

13 total population of the coworkers.

14 It didn't intend to speak to the 

15 stratification at all.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Exactly.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: And so there's -- you 

18 know, whether it's a finding of, you know, 75 or 

19 not, the point you're making is relative to 

20 Savannah River.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Right.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: But not necessarily to 

23 the question of whether claimant data is 
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1 representative of --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think maybe the best 

3 way to understand it is when the comment was made 

4 was sort of a however, you know --

5 DR. BUCHANAN: With a big asterisk.

6 DR. NETON: Yes, I understand that. 

7 But I think the relevant comment is against maybe 

8 OTIB-81 because we've already done the 

9 stratification issue, we've done coworker models, 

10 you guys have reviewed it. And I think that's 

11 where we should focus the efforts, not on 75. 

12 Because 81 went and stratified a priori. And we 

13 did stratification for three different classes of 

14 radionuclides. And you commented on it. And 

15 none of these issue have come up in a review of 

16 81, and those are stratified coworker models.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I didn't really mean to 

18 --

19 DR. NETON: Yes, I'm just saying.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: -- taint the discussion 

21 here. I just felt like 75 had a specific purpose.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: And I was going to bring 

23 that up.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: And so to my mind the 

2 fact that it didn't address stratification is 

3 because it wasn't intended to address 

4 stratification, it was intended to say, you know, 

5 in general do claimants look like the total 

6 population. And that's essentially what it did.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I think we 

8 can accept that 81 would be the proper focal point 

9 for this issue.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: It was identified but 

12 this is the right vehicle.

13 DR. NETON: It was only identified in 

14 Savannah River, that was one of the test cases 

15 that we used to do proof of principle. We did 

16 Mound, Y-12, and Savannah River. And we said,

17 look, based on these three sites it appears that 

18 we have random sampling for the site. And we 

19 attempted to say that provides a general 

20 framework that could be applied to complex one.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

22 DR. NETON: That's all we were trying 

23 to say.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So I think we 

2 can bring this back to 81 if there's any issue 

3 that we need to surface.

4 DR. NETON: Agreed.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: But this was something 

6 that was fairly recent and didn't touch Savannah 

7 River, and there were some residual concerns 

8 that, again, we wanted to mention.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

10 DR. TAULBEE: If you go back to that 

11 2010 report which is where some of these 

12 conclusions come from, I'd like to point out that 

13 that was the reason we did all of those studies 

14 that I pointed out in the beginning of the 

15 chronology of comparing construction trades and 

16 non-construction trades, was that this 

17 stratification issue was raised under the guise 

18 of 75. And so that was the whole reason we issued 

19 all those reports.

20 And when the Work Group, the SEC 

21 Issues Work Group met about it, there were 

22 discussions of power, can you actually see this. 

23 All of that work was done before the time-
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1 weighted OPOS. And so those comments from back 

2 in 2010, while are still lingering, they should 

3 be addressed, as Jim was pointing out, under 81, 

4 not under 75.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we can accept 

6 that. Okay. And, again, it was just the currency 

7 of that having just been submitted a few weeks 

8 ago, I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose 

9 that, that item.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Understand.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, can you slide 

12 that back? Thank you for the clarification. I 

13 think we can deal with that.

14 I want to pick up again on the co15 worker guidelines. And, again, what we were 

16 saying earlier before Ron spoke is SC&A finds the 

17 RWP-required job tasks at Savannah River with 

18 potential exposures monitored by job-specific 

19 bioassays may not be comparable to typical job 

20 activities and routine monitoring.

21 And, you know, this has been part of 

22 the back and forth we've had on the question of 

23 applying the data that we have, which is the 
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1 routine sampling data, as well as traditional 

2 data that could be complemented.

3 If the data set for routine monitored 

4 exposure is not representative of RWP jobs and 

5 can be applied -- cannot be applied, again, a 

6 remaining option is to apply a plausible upper 

7 bound dose for those workers.

8 But, again, I think we run afoul of 

9 the question of whether it's a representative 

10 population. And given the, you know, the fact 

11 that we lack a large proportion of the job12 specific bioassays --

13 MR. KATZ: Can you hold one sec, Joe?

14 Excuse me on the line, somebody now 

15 has opened up a line that has a lot of background 

16 noise. So, if you're new to the call can you put 

17 your line on mute so that you're not disturbing? 

18 Otherwise other people on the line are not going 

19 to be able to hear the discussion. And to put 

20 your line on mute if you don't have a mute button, 

21 press *66. *6 I mean.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: *6.

23 MR. KATZ: That will mute your line. 
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1 Thank you.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Let me just 

3 repeat that one bullet that we have here.

4 However, while a representative 

5 population are lacking a large proportion of the 

6 job-specific bioassays upon which a valid dose 

7 distribution could be derived and compared, again 

8 I think in terms of applying a, you know, whether 

9 it's a 95th percentile, 99th percentile, an upper 

10 bound dose, you know, the question is, is there 

11 any mitigating circumstances in terms of 

12 additional data?

13 And I know back in August we were 

14 hoping there would be more resampling data. I 

15 think, am I right, Tim, all we have is the '97 

16 data as far as resampling data? I haven't seen 

17 any evidence there's additional resampling or 

18 sampling of these job-specific bioassays --

19 DR. TAULBEE: No.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: -- job-specific 

21 bioassays.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Only for '96 and '97. 

23 '96 they just did an evaluation and said they 
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1 didn't feel like anybody had --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: They did a sort of 

3 offline review saying it wasn't worth it because 

4 they didn't think there were any intakes. So 

5 really it's just the '97 survey data.

6 And in terms of intakes found by 

7 subsequent bioassays, you know, there were some 

8 exceptions that were identified. And I think in 

9 both the cases that we looked at they were picked 

10 up in subsequent bioassays. But I think our 

11 concern is the question of the transient 

12 subcontractors, and whether that would have been 

13 the case for that group.

14 Okay, other concerns. Almost done.

15 We didn't get a chance to pursue this 

16 in any great detail, but in terms of the 

17 documentation that came back in this last data 

18 capture a couple things piqued our interest, one 

19 of which was the apparent lack of tritium 

20 bioassay tracking prior to 1996. The 

21 Westinghouse Facility Evaluation Board, the FEB, 

22 reviewed and reported back in '94 and '95 citing 

23 deficiencies in the SRS tracking of tritium 
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1 bioassays.

2 It prompted Westinghouse to implement 

3 a tritium bioassay tracking delinquency program 

4 in May of '96. The program manager at the time 

5 said, and this is a quote, prior to this there 

6 was no tracking program for the tritium bioassay 

7 program.

8 You know, I actually posed that 

9 question to a dosimetry manager at the site. And 

10 I think the concern, the response was he felt 

11 maybe no centralized program versus tracking.

12 I don't know, it just concerned me 

13 that there would be an admission there was no 

14 tracking of tritium bioassays, particularly given 

15 the amount of tritium sources. That left sort of 

16 a lingering question in my mind. Even though 

17 tritium is very forgiving, I'll be the first to 

18 admit that, however it was still a surprise.

19 So, I just listed that as a revelation 

20 of sorts that there was no tracking before '96, 

21 particularly given my recollection of Mound and 

22 other sites where it actually was pretty well 

23 tracked and accounted for.
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1 So I, again, I'm a little concerned 

2 about that.

3 And of course this question of workers 

4 enrolled in incorrect routine bioassay programs 

5 prior to '99 and, again, from documentation there 

6 were unrecognized americium sources. And in 

7 terms of RWP preparation workers at some SRS 

8 facilities unmonitored for americium, even though 

9 it was a source term at the facility.

10 And this, again, I mentioned it 

11 earlier, site-wide formal radiological hazard 

12 characterization process was in fact established 

13 in March of '99, which was a full analytic process 

14 where facility by facility Savannah River came up 

15 with a systematic way of identifying what the 

16 important source terms, it had to be 10 percent 

17 of the -- I believe 10 percent of the internal 

18 dose contribution for a particular nuclide to 

19 wind up on the RWP.

20 So that was all done, but that was 

21 done in '99. So that certainly is a concern 

22 there.

23 We also looked at, you know, the 
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1 database, bioassay database to see if there's any 

2 other instances. You know, DOE cited one 

3 instance where a bioassay wasn't collected and 

4 somebody ended up with a fairly hefty internal 

5 uptake. And we looked as well, and we found a 

6 circumstance where a CTW was not enrolled in a 

7 routine plutonium bioassay program due to the 

8 primary work area.

9 And there is a case where the RQB had 

10 the worker, you know, enrolled in a certain 

11 bioassay program. Apparently the worker, CTW, 

12 this was in the '80s, he was a DuPont one of these 

13 CTWs that moved around the site, apparently 

14 picked up an intake and had an uptake of plutonium 

15 in some activity somewhere on site. It never was 

16 determined. But in a subsequent bioassay they 

17 picked up a -- the uptake.

18 And, again, I think this sort of 

19 amplifies the comment earlier that as far as 

20 source terms go it's not clear that the RQB 

21 system, the actual RWP identification of sources, 

22 was keeping up with the changes at the site.

23 Finally, the sort of compilation of 
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1 pretty much what we've covered. In general I 

2 think what concerns we have are that certainly 

3 within this Work Group discussion I'd like to 

4 address today is, one, workers who performed work 

5 at Savannah River under RWP required job-specific 

6 bioassays have substantially incomplete 

7 monitoring data.

8 Intakes may have occurred and may have 

9 been missed for transient subcontractors.

10 Secondly, RWP jobs often differed by 

11 source terms and potential exposure from routine 

12 work. And, again, I think Savannah River was 

13 very adamant about this in '99, routine 

14 monitoring data should not be used as a surrogate 

15 for missing RWP monitoring data.

16 Thirdly, based on NIOSH comparisons of 

17 maximum possible 95th percentile dose

18 distribution of Savannah River Pu bioassays for 

19 DuPont CTWs and subcontractor CTWs -- and this is 

20 coming from some of the analysis that Tim talked 

21 about earlier -- yes, I mean, I think there are 

22 results. And this is where it gets a little 

23 ambiguous where you did have subcontractor Pu 
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1 bioassays coming up higher, two to five times 

2 higher I think was the number that we heard in 

3 August, than DuPont CTWs.

4 And, yes, I think I understand the 

5 perspective that that works both ways. And 

6 tritium, you know, swung the other way as well. 

7 But sort of coupled with the interviews that 

8 we've had in terms of subs being brought in to 

9 take on the dirty jobs, the hotter jobs on 

10 occasion, it certainly raises the question about 

11 whether in fact these are two distinct and 

12 different cohorts in terms of exposure potential.

13 Certainly another item is the question 

14 of how complete is complete enough for coworker 

15 development? And, again, I think, as we 

16 indicated, we need to walk through the coworker 

17 guidelines and the stratification assumptions to 

18 make sure that, you know, that they're valid from 

19 those standpoints. And make sure that the data 

20 sets can be legitimately applied.

21 But, you know, sometimes I think we 

22 have to step back because, you know, I think we've 

23 had discussions in the past. I remember 
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1 struggling, I forget, maybe it was Mound or one 

2 of the other sites where we were trying to address 

3 5 to 10 percent incompleteness. We spent a great 

4 deal of time trying to figure out that was all 

5 right.

6 We're starting at least for these 

7 workers that were under these RWPs with upwards 

8 of 80 percent incompleteness, so I don't want to 

9 lose that perspective that, you know, this is a 

10 significant issue of completeness that I think 

11 the Work Group needs to focus on. And we need to 

12 reconcile, frankly, the question of does that 

13 equate to being unable to support a coworker 

14 model?

15 And, again, I think the question of 

16 source terms is very clear that at some SRS 

17 facilities workers went unmonitored for americium 

18 due to inadequate source term categorization and 

19 other radionuclides very likely would have been 

20 missed because of the system that was in place 

21 that was focused on basically the line manager 

22 making the calls and the assumptions that you had 

23 a stable work environment with stable source 
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1 terms going into the '90s when in fact that was 

2 changing rapidly.

3 And the time frame of the monitoring 

4 gap is unclear before '97, as is the worker 

5 cohort. You know, we've talked CTWs versus non6 CTWs, subcontractors versus CTWs. But in terms 

7 of the missing data, it's essentially workers 

8 that were under the RWP-prescribed job-specific 

9 bioassays that in fact had missing data.

10 And I think Stu raised this question 

11 last time, you know, who in fact are these 

12 workers? You know, and I think you end up having 

13 a mix, probably a lot of subs but certainly some 

14 CTWs on the site and there may be in fact workers 

15 that were on routine bioassay that had job16 specific as well. So it's sort of a mixed bag I 

17 think that end up being in that, in that group.

18 That's kind of the summary that we 

19 came up with as far as where I think we're left 

20 as far as the issues. Are there any comments on 

21 that before we get into probably more specifics?

22 DR. TAULBEE: I don't have any comments 

23 right now. I think I do want to come back to 
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1 some of this after doing a couple of my talks to 

2 try and address some of the disagreements, 

3 concerns we had with this.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

5 DR. TAULBEE: But not at this time.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That being said, do 

8 we want to take a break? Is it time for a break?

9 (Chorus of yeses.)

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. How about 10 minutes, 

11 15 minutes?

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Fifteen minutes.

13 MR. KATZ: A 15-minute comfort break. 

14 So, it's 10:07. So about 10:20 let's get back 

15 together.

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

17 went off the record at 10:07 a.m. and resumed at 

18 10:22 a.m.)

19 MR. KATZ: Well, who's up?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, I think 

21 we've finished the general presentation. And Ron 

22 was going to say a few words on the 773-A review 

23 that's on the agenda.
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1 SC&A Response to NIOSH report on monitoring of 

2 CTWs in Bldg 773-A High Level Caves 

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. This Ron with 

4 SC&A. This is RPRT-83, which is a report issued 

5 by NIOSH in June of this year. And it's titled 

6 "Evaluation and Monitoring of Construction Worker 

7 Identified in High Level Cave Job Plans at the 

8 Savannah River Site." And this was issued to 

9 determine how many were monitored in the caves.

10 Now, these were high level caves 

11 apparently where they handled plutonium. And so 

12 they had some job plans for 1980 through 1986 for 

13 Building 773-A. And the purpose was to address 

14 the sub construction trade workers were monitored 

15 different from the client construction trade 

16 workers doing the same type of work.

17 And so I'll give a little bit of 

18 background of what was done here and then our 

19 critique of it. We haven't issued a report on 

20 this. We hope to have a formal report out in 

21 time for the Advisory Board meeting in December.

22 And a little background was that in 

23 this report they found job plans which was 
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1 something like RWPs, a plan of job. And so they 

2 found about a thousand workers identified.

3 And they looked at the ones that had 

4 a potential for exposure and found about 300 

5 primes and about 350 sub construction trade 

6 workers. And they broke the analysis down into 

7 two parts, external and internal monitoring.

8 And for the external the results were 

9 that 99 percent were found to be badged, 

10 externally monitored within the year. And we're 

11 not sure if that's -- the time periods were 

12 exactly matched up or if they just badged within 

13 the year. That's one area we'd like to get 

14 clarification on.

15 And that 97 percent of the sub 

16 construction trade workers were monitored. 

17 However there was no quantitative analysis on the 

18 dose distribution such as millirem per year.

19 The internal -- and then the attention 

20 was turned to the internal --

21 MR. KATZ: It may be a problem -- okay, 

22 so there's some people who have open lines. I 

23 can hear a background sound too.
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1 So, would everybody on the phone 

2 please mute your phone? Press *6 to mute your 

3 phone, if you don't have a mute button. That 

4 might help some. Okay.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Anyway, I'll just speak 

6 louder. I'll repeat, the external results were 

7 99 percent was monitored for the primes and 97 

8 percent for the subs, but no quantitative dose 

9 rate data provided.

10 For the internal, they found 255 sub11 related jobs. There was no prime information. 

12 The subs, there were 255 job sub pairs. And they 

13 randomly selected 133 of those to look at. And 

14 they identified 88 sub construction trade workers 

15 that had respiratory requirements.

16 So they looked at the percent of those 

17 that were monitored on the job, usually within a 

18 year. There's some guidelines given in the 

19 report, what isotope they might have looked for, 

20 what time, according to the general rule of 

21 Savannah River Site monitoring practices.

22 Found that 67 percent had bioassays 

23 within a reasonable amount of time. And about 39 
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1 percent were on routine bioassays.

2 For internal there was no prime 

3 contract trade workers percentage given. And 

4 there was no quantitative bioassay data given for 

5 the primes or the subs.

6 Then on page 27, in conclusion, they 

7 conclude that dose reconstruction for subcontract 

8 workers can be done using external and routine or 

9 event-driven bioassays for the workers. And 

10 using coworker data or a combination of the two.

11 And when we analyzed this, what we 

12 were looking for was sort of eight pieces to the 

13 puzzle. And we found three. And to look and see 

14 if coworker data can be used to fill in for when 

15 they weren't monitored, we'd have to look at the 

16 external percentage. Which was given.

17 But we'd also have to look at the dose 

18 distribution to see if maybe one was one hundred 

19 millirem a year and another is five hundred. We 

20 don't know. So we don't know if we can use the 

21 coworker data from the primes to the subs.

22 And the same way with the internal. 

23 We don't know what percent of the primes were 
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1 bio-assayed for these jobs. And we don't know 

2 what the dpm per liter or what isotope data 

3 distribution was so that the subs and the primes 

4 were slightly similar.

5 So in this case, when we talk about 

6 using coworker data to fill in for the 33 percent 

7 that was missing from the subcontractor 

8 bioassays, we're not sure what coworker data 

9 they're talking about. And is it going to be 

10 separated into primes and subs, or it's going to 

11 be all lumped into one? That's, in other words, 

12 was their stratification in these dose rates and 

13 intakes?

14 And secondly, we'd like to say that, 

15 even if this is worked out, we would caution 

16 against applying this information to other areas 

17 or job titles at the Savannah River Site or other 

18 times in that considering this was a high level 

19 industrial exposure and it would be different 

20 probably from the waste facility or even some 

21 other production lines or other facilities. 

22 And so to extend this to other time 

23 periods, it would require justification and 
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1 documentation that would be applicable to other 

2 areas.

3 And like I say, we plan to have a 

4 review out, a report to the Board at the meeting. 

5 That concludes my evaluation. Any questions? 

6 Comments?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Just look forward to the 

8 report so we can address your concerns.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Thank you.

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. This is Brad. 

11 With that being said, I guess --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: We have some comments 

13 on the stratification memo.

14 Is Bob Barton on the phone?

15 MR. BARTON: Yeah, Joe. I'm here.

16 SC&A Response to Taulbee memo regarding 

17 stratification of CTW data between DuPont 

18 construction and Subcontractor construction for 

19 Pu and Tritium. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. You know, Tim 

21 sent out a memo addressed to Jim Melius and Brad, 

22 I think it was in September, on dealing with the 

23 -- basically I think it was the stratification 
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1 issue. And this was presented again today.

2 And I wanted to just comment. Because 

3 we thought it was a good review, but the results 

4 seemed to be a bit mixed in some places. And we 

5 wanted to focus on that question, because I think 

6 this notion of looking at the subcontractor 

7 population and how it compares with the CTW, I 

8 think obviously is a very germane issue when 

9 we're talking about how to develop the coworker 

10 models.

11 So, Bob has looked at that. And 

12 looked at the graphs that we had, not the latest 

13 ones, but certainly some of the graphs that we 

14 had earlier. Although I think they're pretty 

15 similar, aren't they?

16 DR. TAULBEE: They're the same.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: The same graphs. So, 

18 Bob, you want to take that? 

19 DR. TAULBEE: Bob, do you need to 

20 present here?

21 MR. BARTON: Actually, if I could just 

22 take over real quick. Yeah, I did pull out just 

23 some screenshots from that memo as sort of a 
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1 talking point.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

3 MR. BARTON: So just give me one 

4 moment here. Okay. So it says it should be 

5 presenting my desktop.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yep. It is.

7 MR. BARTON: Okay. So, again, these 

8 are the same charts. You saw this one already 

9 from the memo you sent, Tim, back in September.

10 And, again, we're really going to just 

11 focus on the plutonium results here, because I 

12 think, that's where we feel we maybe interpreting 

13 things a little bit differently.

14 So, you saw this chart. And the only 

15 point I'm showing this, as Tim already discussed 

16 in his presentation, was that you see here in the 

17 1980s there's a significant uptick in the number 

18 of subcontractors we've seen, at least in the 

19 claimant population that was evaluated.

20 And as you can see, right around 1985 

21 the amount of subcontractors actually surpasses 

22 the amount of DuPont construction trade workers. 

23 And we saw this graph before too. And 
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1 this is, again, the plutonium results. And it 

2 compares the DuPont construction trade, 

3 subcontractor construction trades, and also added 

4 in, as it said in the report, "for completeness, 

5 the non-construction trade workers."

6 And so as I was looking at this chart, 

7 and there's clearly a lot of variation by time. 

8 And there's a lot going on here.

9 So, one of the things I thought was, 

10 well, let's just look at, you know, the post-1972 

11 era where there currently isn't an SEC for 

12 Savannah River.

13 And also, since we're really just 

14 talking about a comparison between the 

15 subcontractors and the DuPont construction 

16 workers, I went in and just erased the blue line, 

17 which was the non-construction trade worker 

18 population.

19 And this is what it looks like. So 

20 again, this is the same chart. I just tried to 

21 erase the blue line. You can still see some 

22 remnants of it there. And, again, we're just 

23 kind of looking at '72 through '88.
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1 Now, when I look at this, to me it 

2 tells a little bit different story than what the 

3 memo concluded, in that you see these large 

4 spikes in here, especially beginning around 

5 1976/'77, in which to me it certainly looks like, 

6 visually, that the subcontractor population is a 

7 different exposure profile than the DuPont 

8 workers.

9 Now, in your presentation, Tim, I 

10 noted that you said that "in the last five years," 

11 so we're really talking about '84 to '88, you 

12 know, right here to here. You had said that three 

13 of the years were higher for subs and two of the 

14 years were lower. I mean, I'm looking at it and 

15 I only see 1988 as being lower for subs.

16 And I'm not sure if that's --

17 DR. TAULBEE: In 1987 they're pretty 

18 equal. The DuPont construction are slightly 

19 higher. But, again, the scale on this is -- we're 

20 looking at 95th percentiles here.

21 MR. BARTON: Right.

22 DR. TAULBEE: On this particular 

23 graph. If you look at the box plots you'll see 
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1 that they're actually much more similar.

2 MR. BARTON: Well, it's sort of being 

3 proposed that we're going to be -- the proposal 

4 is that we're going to be looking at the 95th 

5 percentile of the coworker model. So I think 

6 it's appropriate just to talk about these.

7 DR. NETON: Well, the coworker model 

8 is different then what you're seeing here.

9 MR. BARTON: These are the OPOS 

10 results. I understand that.

11 DR. NETON: Yeah. But you know how 

12 we fit coworker models. The 50th percentile is 

13 fit and one GSD is fit. It's a smooth function 

14 through those data points. Not smooth, but using 

15 those data points.

16 MR. BARTON: Right. These are just 

17 the time-weighted OPOS results. I hear --

18 DR. NETON: Right. This is not a 

19 coworker model here. This is just --

20 MR. BARTON: I'm not sure -- I 

21 understand what you're saying, but, still, this 

22 is meant to be a comparison of exposure profiles 

23 between the subs and the DuPont workers.
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1 DR. NETON: Correct.

2 MR. BARTON: So it is relevant to 

3 compare this chart. And I'm going to move on. 

4 This is a quote directly out of the memo. And 

5 I'll read it out.

6 "For most years there is little 

7 difference in the 95th percentile urinary 

8 excretion between DuPont CTWs and subcontractor 

9 CTWs. The exception appears to be in the later 

10 1970s and 1980s. This observation is somewhat 

11 supported by contemporary interviews with 

12 subcontractor CTWs. Subcontractor CTWs indicated 

13 that they were called in for more contaminated 

14 work to save the exposure of the onsite CTWs.

15 "For some years, 1977 and 1979, and 

16 1984 to 1986, this appears to be the case in that 

17 the 95th percentile of the subcontractor CTWs is 

18 a factor of two to five higher."

19 To me, that seems pretty significant. 

20 And then in the concluding paragraph of that memo 

21 -- again, these are directly out of the memo.

22 "We believe that these graphs support 

23 our conclusion that there is no systemic 
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1 difference between DuPont construction trade 

2 workers and subcontractor construction trade 

3 workers. While there are a few years that had 

4 plutonium bioassay for subcontractors higher, 

5 there are multiple years where the tritium dose 

6 is lower."

7 I mean, first off, the relationship 

8 between the magnitude of plutonium bioassay and 

9 tritium, they're unrelated, in my view. So, you 

10 know, the fact that the tritium doses on an annual 

11 basis are higher for DuPont workers then subs, 

12 doesn't seem really relevant when we're talking 

13 about plutonium.

14 And really, in the years of interest 

15 we're looking at, as it notes, you have a factor 

16 of two to five differences in those urinary 

17 excretion rates for subs over the DuPont workers.

18 So, I mean, we look at that and, 

19 purely under the guise of plutonium, we really 

20 question whether these are in fact a similar 

21 worker population or if the subs did have a higher 

22 source of potential than the DuPont workers.

23 And throw in the fact that we have at 
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1 least anecdotal evidence, but this data seems to 

2 support that notion, that they're bringing in 

3 subs to do the more highly contaminated work.

4 So, that's sort of our view on the 

5 comparison that was done. And, again, it's sort 

6 of subjective, in a way. You can look at the 

7 data and sort of make your own determinations. 

8 But, again, we look at post-1972 and just the 

9 comparison between subs and primes.

10 I look at that data and personally I 

11 don't feel that it says that they're the same 

12 exposed population. So that's really our 

13 commentary on that specific part.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Can I comment on 

15 this? Okay. Can you stop presenting there, Bob, 

16 and give me control? I want to go back to one of 

17 my slides on the key issues.

18 MR. BARTON: Sure. I think you can 

19 actually just take control of it.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, I can? 

21 MR. BARTON: I stopped presenting.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Sorry. Here we go. 

23 Alright. This is the one that I want to kind of 
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1 focus on here, to start with, to address your 

2 concern there of why I'm saying that I'm not 

3 seeing any systematic difference.

4 Now, if you look at just the 1972, 

5 from this box plot, up through 1988, you will see 

6 that the majority of the data, which means 75 

7 percent of the data, is all below .1 dpm per day.

8 So what we're looking at in that next plot is 

9 that upper tail, that 95th percentile bouncing 

10 around.

11 And, yes, I do believe that in some 

12 years they brought in some construction trades 

13 workers for some hot jobs. And that's why you 

14 see the uptick in that 95th percentile.

15 But when you get out there to the 1984 

16 type of time period, you'll see the bulk of them 

17 are matching very well. You'll see that 75th 

18 percentile, which is the upper part of the box, 

19 is very consistent between DuPont construction 

20 trades and the subcontractor construction trades.

21 You do see that there are some 

22 instances. I would certainly not say it's 

23 systematic that they were continuously brought in 
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1 for just high jobs and that they were the only 

2 ones brought in for high jobs. That's not 

3 consistent with this data.

4 You see that they are actually quite 

5 close all the way through, with a few upticks in 

6 both of them. And if you look at the last five 

7 years there, you're looking at, you know, three 

8 that are higher and two that are -- well, one is 

9 equal and one is lower.

10 So, that's why I come to that 

11 conclusion. It's not just that 95th percentile 

12 plot. Looking at all of the data.

13 Westinghouse Savannah River Corporation (WSRC)

14 era: 1989-1998

15 NIOSH Response to SC&A report on subcontractor 

16 monitoring and effect of 10CFR830 violations 

17 MR. BARTON: Well, then I guess to 

18 sort of talk about our main concern here. We are 

19 talking about that sort of upper tail of bringing 

20 in subs who -- if you're going to bring in a 

21 subcontractor to do a hot job that's most likely 

22 going to be your transient workers.

23 And they're most likely going to be on 
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1 the site to do that dirty job and then to get 

2 burned out on that job site.

3 Now, that's the group of workers who, 

4 in my mind, would be most affected by these job5 specific bioassays. Because they're only coming 

6 on for a short time to do a dirty job, they're 

7 likely not going to be on a routine program. 

8 So, I understand your point about, 

9 when you look at the entire data set that, you 

10 know, in the middle there's not that much 

11 fluctuation. But I think we are concerned about 

12 that upper tail, because those are the workers 

13 who would most likely be affected by that RWP14 required bioassay program.

15 So I do feel that that upper tail is 

16 relevant to these discussions.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I will address 

18 that component next, the job-specific issue, 

19 during my presentation.

20 Are there other questions?

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: No, I don't have any. 

22 So the next thing we have is Westinghouse 

23 Savannah River era, 1989 to 1998. NIOSH response 
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1 to SC&A's report.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Can I ask you a 

3 question about this upper tail? Do you know the 

4 number in that? What was the number of samples 

5 in that, do you have any idea?

6 DR. TAULBEE: I don't. But we can get 

7 that. I don't have it off the top of my head. 

8 Can you look that up, from those box plots? How 

9 many people were used in those last five years 

10 used to develop that plot.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: Per year. Just per 

12 year, I'd like to know.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah. Oh, actually, it 

14 is there. I'm sorry.

15 MR. BARTON: Tim, that's one of your 

16 graphs. It's just the number of workers, prime 

17 workers --

18 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah, I'm sorry. On the 

19 previous -- or the very next page. I'm sorry. 

20 Flip to the next page. The next one after that. 

21 There it is.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay.

23 DR. TAULBEE: That's the number of 
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1 people. And you'll see the subcontractors are 

2 dominant in those latter years. There's more of 

3 them than there are construction trade workers -

4 - or DuPont construction trade workers. 

5 Yeah. If you could bring up that 

6 second presentation. That will work. Oh, wait 

7 a minute. Jim had it the last time.

8 (Pause.)

9 MR. BARTON: Well, I guess while 

10 things are getting set up, if I can just maybe 

11 elaborate a little bit more about that concern. 

12 Again, the main question to me is 

13 obviously representativeness. And when you have 

14 a transient worker who's probably brought in for 

15 a hot job and maybe had an exposure potential, 

16 just based on the bioassay, that's two to five 

17 times higher, is the 95th percentile of the 

18 entire construction worker monitoring 

19 population, that includes everybody, truly going 

20 to be representative of that upper tail? When 

21 they're transient, onsite for a short time, and 

22 they may not have complied with the job-specific 

23 requirements of whatever job they were working 
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1 on. That's really our concern.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Actually I think I got 

3 it. All right. Okay. So what we want to try 

4 and -- we reviewed SC&A's evaluation on SRS 

5 subcontractor bioassay for data completeness. 

6 And we had some concerns with it. And that's 

7 what I want to try and discuss here.

8 But I think, in the course of 

9 discussing this, a lot of things are going to 

10 come to light as far as how they were monitoring 

11 workers. And there's some misunderstandings that 

12 I actually had before we got this latest response 

13 from the Savannah River Site as to how they were 

14 monitoring people on routine versus job-specific 

15 bioassay.

16 So, if you bear with me here, this is 

17 kind of a lengthy presentation, but I think 

18 you're going to find that at least it's 

19 informative.

20 The first thing I'm going to focus on 

21 is the subcontractor analysis and then our 

22 concerns with SC&A's report. And then we'll get 

23 into the evaluation, the notice of violation, and 
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1 how the monitoring, their methodology, led to the 

2 violation and why it's at 10 CFR 830 and not 835.

3 So, again, just to recap, and these 

4 are the numbers that we've been discussing all 

5 morning so far. In our analysis, we evaluated 

6 job plans, 67/68 percent. It's actually 68 

7 percent. We found an error when we added in the 

8 coworkers that we had missed somebody. So there 

9 was an additional person that changed that up by 

10 one percentage.

11 The subcontractors had direct 

12 bioassay monitor. If you consider somebody 

13 working on that same job plan, we looked at 

14 whether they were monitored. We have 92 percent 

15 of the subcontractors with either direct 

16 monitoring or a coworker on the same job plan was 

17 monitored -- job plan or RWP.

18 Okay. In SC&A's report, their full 

19 analysis of all RWPs in the 1990s found a 66 

20 compliance rate. They found 201 of 306 people 

21 had bioassays. And at the 30,000-foot level, you 

22 know, I looked at those results and I'm like, 

23 okay, that's similar to ours. And then the 90-
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1 day, there's increases to 244 out of 306, or an 

2 86 percent compliance rate.

3 When they looked at just at RWPs that 

4 specifically indicated bioassay, the numbers got 

5 a little better: a 71 percent compliance rate and 

6 an 84 percent compliance rate.

7 Now, our concern is the use of the 30-

8 and 90-day criteria for bioassay. Thirty days is 

9 appropriate for tritium. In fact, 100 millirem 

10 tritium detectable dose -- or a 100 millirem of 

11 tritium dose is still detectable after 70 days.

12 So, the 30 days is perfectly fine for 

13 tritium, although you should be aware that the 

14 site did use what was called T30 bioassay 

15 monitoring, to where if you worked in a tritium 

16 area you only had to leave a sample once every 30 

17 days. That was part of their monitoring 

18 criteria.

19 Per procedure, the annual monitoring 

20 was usually a requirement for non-tritium 

21 actinide samples. Thus SC&A excluded a 

22 significant number of the subcontractors from 

23 their analysis, and indicated that they were not 
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1 monitored.

2 So that's really our finding here that 

3 I'm going to go into more detail here. In our 

4 case, we believe the bioassay data should have 

5 been separated into tritium and non-tritium in 

6 the appropriate time intervals used for the 

7 evaluation.

8 So, the other thing that we came up 

9 with, or looked at here, is there's kind of a 

10 misconception about radiological work and 

11 monitoring at SRS.

12 If a worker was only required to leave 

13 a non-tritium sample once or twice a year, such 

14 as plutonium, enriched uranium, or strontium, 

15 then the 30 to 90 day criteria is not appropriate. 

16 You're going to see a sample once every 180 days 

17 if they're on twice a year.

18 In the 1990's radiological work 

19 control they had it to where a worker had to 

20 attend radiological training, Rad Worker II. 

21 They signed in on an RWP. And the worker was to 

22 check their bioassay code on the radiological 

23 qualifications card, or badge, against the RWP 
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1 requirements. 

2 So here's what the radiological 

3 qualification cards look like in 1994. You can 

4 see the Rad II off to the left. That's indicating 

5 their training. They're Rad Worker II trained. 

6 Their radiological qualifications. This one 

7 here, they had a whole body count, chest count. 

8 And the date of when they needed to get the next 

9 one, that's when that one expires. And then their 

10 Rad Worker training, you'll notice they all kind 

11 of correspond there. And then the bioassay 

12 codes.

13 And here you've got a bioassay code 

14 example here of Pu-02, EU-02, and Sr-01. That 

15 would be, plutonium-02 is plutonium twice a year.

16 EU-02 is enriched uranium twice per year. The 

17 strontium-90 would be once per year. 

18 Now, people who are more heavily 

19 exposed would likely have Pu-04, where they were 

20 on quarterly plutonium bioassay. So it was a 

21 graded approach as to what was your potential. 

22 And this is the radiological qualification cards. 

23 The second misconception about 
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1 subcontractor monitoring is that job-specific 

2 bioassay was not the only manner in which 

3 subcontractor construction trades were 

4 monitored.

5 A significant fraction were monitored 

6 via routine or prescheduled bioassay based on the 

7 radiological qualification card. And we'll 

8 demonstrate this later in the very next 

9 presentation.

10 This is the actual subcontractor

11 monitoring. This came out of the corrective 

12 actions report, which was over 100 pages, or 

13 around 100 pages, that the site did. And I'll 

14 show later a slide of what they thought was 

15 happening. This is what they determined was 

16 actually happening. Okay?

17 And I'll go into this in more detail 

18 in a little bit, but what I want to point out 

19 here is box one, the worker signs in on an RWP 

20 requiring bioassay sample.

21 And so that's what SC&A was looking at 

22 with their RWPs. And when we were doing our job 

23 plans we were surrogating or saying that if they 
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1 wore a respirator, we are assuming they had to 

2 leave a bioassay sample.

3 The next block is worker participates 

4 in a routine bioassay sampling for radionuclide 

5 specified on the RWP. This is where the worker 

6 checks their badge. Are they supposed to be 

7 monitored for plutonium? And does the RWP say 

8 plutonium?

9 And if it's yes, the worker doesn't 

10 submit a sample. The worker submits a sample on 

11 their routine schedule when they were required 

12 to. Not for that particular RWP.

13 So if you've got two subcontractor 

14 construction trades worker signing in on this 

15 RWP, and the first one has plutonium indicated on 

16 his radiological qualifications badge, he then 

17 goes over and doesn't submit a sample for this 

18 particular job, because he's on a routine that he 

19 will be picked up six months later or a year 

20 later, depending upon what his schedule is.

21 If the worker, the second worker, 

22 doesn't have plutonium indicated on his 

23 radiological qualifications card, then he's got 
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1 to submit a job-specific bioassay.

2 So you've got a split going two ways 

3 depending upon whether they were -- or whether 

4 they had the qualification for that RWP or not.

5 So, that's where the split goes. 

6 You've got two workers on the same RWP. And it 

7 depended upon whether they were on a routine 

8 program for that radionuclide or not.

9 But what our concern is, is that SC&A 

10 just jumped from box one to box two and said it's 

11 got to be within 30 to 90 days.

12 Well, if you do that, if a 

13 subcontractor was not scheduled to leave a sample 

14 for another hundred days, there won't be a 

15 sample. If they were on a routine schedule and 

16 they end up with -- they sign in on this RWP, 

17 they're supposed to leave a sample in another 100 

18 days, they did. In most cases, I should say.

19 So we went back with this and 

20 reevaluated the data that SC&A had for tritium. 

21 We broke it out into tritium and to non-tritium 

22 samples, the actinides, and we did a 

23 reevaluation. So, what we found was there was 
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1 108 of 119 subcontractors on RWPs that had 

2 potential for tritium exposure that they had 

3 bioassay data. We're looking at 90.8 percent. 

4 The mean number of days between the 

5 RWP and the bioassay was seven and a half days. 

6 But for tritium, less than 30 days. That makes 

7 sense. That was a reasonable criterion, but you 

8 needed to break out tritium versus non-tritium.

9 89.2 percent of these 108 were on a 

10 routine prescheduled monitoring. Now, these are 

11 all subcontractors on routine monitoring. This 

12 is that T30 that I was talking about. Had to 

13 leave a sample within 30 days of their work in 

14 the areas.

15 When you go and look at coworkers on 

16 that same RWP, you've got 117 of 119 were covered 

17 by either their personal data or a coworker on 

18 that same RWP had monitoring data within the 

19 criteria.

20 Now, since 1972, I want to point out, 

21 with tritium, the 95th percentile subcontractor 

22 tritium dose is less than 100 millirem. And it's 

23 got a downward trend as you get into the latter 
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1 years.

2 Now, since 1980, DuPont construction 

3 trades workers have been less than 100 millirem. 

4 Now, 100 millirem is the threshold for requiring 

5 monitoring. So the vast majority, in fact 95 

6 percent of these workers, by today's standards, 

7 don't need to be monitored. But they were. And

8 they still are.

9 So our conclusion is really tritium 

10 monitoring of subcontractors is not really a dose 

11 reconstruction problem.

12 Now, we also evaluated the non13 tritium. And, again, the misconceptions about 

14 how the bioassay monitoring was going led SC&A to 

15 exclude a significant number of samples from 

16 their analysis.

17 SC&A only identified 62 non-tritium 

18 bioassay. Oh, and I should mention, the 

19 prescheduled for the non-tritium bioassay are 

20 generally conduced on semiannual or annual basis, 

21 on or near the birth date and six months later.

22 That's how they were scheduled to be monitored. 

23 There was a limited number, primarily due too not 
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1 looking at samples outside of 30 and 90 days.

2 We reevaluated that data and found 

3 102 subcontractors on the RWPs that had potential 

4 for plutonium exposure. Eighty-nine of the 102, 

5 or 87.3 percent, have bioassay data. The mean 

6 number of days between the RWP and the bioassay 

7 was 125 days. Again, this is that semiannual or 

8 annual monitoring.

9 Eighty percent are on routine, 

10 prescheduled bioassay. If you again consider the 

11 coworker, we've got again 98 percent of the 

12 subcontractors are covered by either their 

13 personal data or their coworker who signed in on 

14 that RWP had a bioassay sample.

15 In their conclusion, SC&A concluded 

16 that the bioassay data set for CTW subcontractors 

17 specifically, and CTWs generally, is demonstrably 

18 incomplete for 1989 to 1998, and likely before 

19 that time period, and does not satisfy the 

20 criteria set forth in NIOSH's draft criteria for 

21 evaluation and use of coworker data sets. 

22 We disagree. We believe that 90.8 

23 percent and 87.3 percent direct monitoring of 
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1 subcontractors is not demonstrably incomplete. 

2 We feel that their sampling was really pretty 

3 reasonable. It's just you needed to look beyond 

4 that 90 days as to how the site was monitoring 

5 it.

6 Before I go on, questions? Comments?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Just one 

8 reaction. If Westinghouse would have conveyed 

9 this same kind of perspective to DOE, would not 

10 have -- would not that have, you know, responded 

11 to their issue about incompleteness? I mean, it 

12 just seems a little bit of a disparity between 

13 this perspective and the fact that, you know, DOE 

14 looking at the results, and the resampling to 

15 boot, basically acknowledged that there was non16 participation.

17 And, you know, the non-participation 

18 wasn't just people didn't get their bioassays for 

19 120 days. You know, they weren't available. And 

20 that's why the resampling. So, it just seems to 

21 be an incongruity there, that everything was 

22 fine, that actually they were 90 percent 

23 complete. Did DOE just misunderstand the 
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1 bioassay program at Westinghouse?

2 DR. TAULBEE: No. I think you're 

3 going to see, in the next slide, in the notice of 

4 violation, of why it became a 10 CFR 830 for 

5 procedural violations. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm not talking 

7 about compliance. Not the compliance context. 

8 Just the notion that, you know -- I understand 

9 where you're going with the plutonium bioassay 

10 and the fact that it eventually did get, you know, 

11 whether it's within a year or so.

12 But clearly, in terms of the 

13 completeness issue and the fact that they were 

14 cited, that certainly didn't seem to be factored 

15 in at all. I'm just trying to reconcile that.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Actually, I believe it 

17 was.

18 DR. NETON: We're looking at a 

19 different issue here, though. We're looking, you 

20 know, whether the subcontractors are on a routine 

21 monitoring program. And I think Tim has 

22 demonstrated that they were. And so, you know, 

23 you only have a very percentage of this bioassay 
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1 set that weren't left in that non-compliance.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. And one thing 

3 that in the --

4 DR. NETON: And so what percentage of 

5 those were -- you know, if a lot of the 

6 subcontractors were on the routine monitoring 

7 program --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me just throw out 

9 a question I've had too. You know, we've been 

10 focusing on subcontractors because that was the 

11 entry point to the discussion. But, when we look 

12 at the job-specific bioassay issue, it's unclear 

13 to me who actually made up the workers that were 

14 on job-specific bioassays. I think a lot of them 

15 were specific subs, but I think, you know, a lot 

16 of them were CTWs. It was a mixed bag. 

17 And really the data, if there's an 

18 incomplete set of data, it's sort of centered on 

19 those that were subject to job-specific bioassays 

20 where their participation is lacking, that data 

21 wasn't collected. And what I've struggled with 

22 is, it's not so much, given that finding, or given 

23 that revelation, it's not so much of a 
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1 subcontractor issue per se.

2 It's just how do you deal with the 

3 missing data or the non-participation for that 

4 set of workers, whoever they are, whatever niche 

5 you have in terms of reconstruction? How would 

6 you mitigate the -- do you see where I'm coming 

7 from?

8 DR. NETON: But isn't that a coworker 

9 issue? 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just saying 

11 --

12 DR. NETON: I mean, that's why you 

13 have coworker models, for performing that kind of 

14 monitoring.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

16 saying, in this is a coworker model, we're 

17 dealing with a strict definition of subcontractor 

18 or CTW. We don't know exactly who this group 

19 would be over time. We do have some notion. We 

20 could actually establish for '97 who they are.

21 DR. NETON: Stay tuned.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: But I'm just saying, 

23 you know, that's going to be a changing 
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1 demographic, if you may. And, you know, I'm not 

2 so sure it's just a subs issue.

3 But anyway, I'll let that ride, then. 

4 We can cover that when we get to it. I haven't 

5 looked at -- I haven't looked ahead enough to 

6 know.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Tim, what you've 

8 talked about so far, though, was the SC&A 

9 evaluation of bioassay where they got the RWP. 

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Reportedly not very 

12 complete, you know, not very clear in terms of 

13 what the RWP actually required. Or, you know, in 

14 terms of the RWPs they looked at. And they've 

15 looked at their study, which shows, even in their 

16 arithmetic, 60 to 70 percent complete.

17 But the real focus that was missing 

18 was actually Savannah River's self-evaluation. 

19 That was really the focus of it, that was the 

20 conclusion and the subsequent NOV. That's really 

21 the data set that says, well, 70 percent or so 

22 didn't comply with, you know, on the face of these 

23 things.
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1 So, really, the discussion of SC&A's 

2 report is, to me, secondary to what's in the 

3 discussion on the NOV.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Well, yes and no. Yes, 

5 I agree. But let me get at --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: I have some 

7 responses.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Because the 79 percent 

9 is on a very small fraction of people that go 

10 under the job-specific path.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, I understand 

12 that.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: And I was going to 

15 make the same point. But there's other points -

16 - why don't you go ahead and complete. And then 

17 I can come back and --

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: I just have one 

19 question. You kept calling out that 100 millirem 

20 to tritium. Under the 835 wasn't it the total 

21 dose of 100 millirem? Not just one isotope, it 

22 was the total. Correct?

23 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Of all 
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1 radionuclides. Yes. 

2 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

3 DR. TAULBEE: But if you're a tritium 

4 worker for all the radionuclides and you're doing 

5 work in a tritium facility, then -- this is what 

6 they saw.

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: And then you have the 

8 plutonium and uranium or whatever else that you 

9 can get into.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Not in the tritium 

11 facilities. It's not there.

12 So -- but, I get what you're getting 

13 at. Subcontractors might be going to different 

14 places. Correct.

15 But from a tritium standpoint alone, 

16 if they were just working at the K Reactors for 

17 the restart or something like that, that was 

18 their dominant exposure.

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, this is one of 

20 the issues that I have had from the very 

21 beginning. And why I've called Savannah River an 

22 interesting site.

23 Because you have -- at most sites you 
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1 have a home base of workers that are considered 

2 the site's workers. Savannah River you have --

3 you have trades that are coming in.

4 These trades come and go. And as 

5 we've seen, and in the interviews, they could be 

6 burnt out and go out on the road for 60 days and 

7 work a total other job.

8 And then come back in at the new year 

9 because they're clean and fresh and they can go. 

10 Part of the problem that we've heard from the 

11 people that we have interviewed is that in doing 

12 that, you are not -- you're not into a routine 

13 process.

14 You have both sides of the spectrum. 

15 You have a group of construction trades that are 

16 house, so far. But they can be utilized and their 

17 manpower has always gone up and down all the way 

18 through the year.

19 And then you have other construction 

20 trades that come in and that are working a new 

21 job or a new process that is going on. I really 

22 don't know how you're going to separate all that 

23 out.
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1 But, that just being said, this is why 

2 Savannah River is a unique character in itself. 

3 It's unlike that at any other DOE site there is.

4 DR. TAULBEE: The information I just 

5 presented is strictly subcontractors. Only those 

6 coming in for those peaks and valleys.

7 This is not any of the DuPont 

8 construction trades workers. We didn't include 

9 those. And we're not looking at any of the DuPont 

10 workers.

11 Okay. So this is just subcontractors 

12 we are now analyzing.

13 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. And understand 

14 as these ramps -- because I've heard this so many 

15 times, they were working for DuPont for four to 

16 five years as house construction people. And it 

17 dips down, they get laid off.

18 They go to the hall. And the next 

19 week they're out working a construction job out 

20 there. And also, some of them would rather have 

21 worked the construction because it was better 

22 pay.

23 So, I just -- the influx back and 
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1 forth is very unique. And I -- that is an issue 

2 that we're going to get into.

3 But, I'll just let it at that. I just 

4 wanted to make sure, because you were saying 100 

5 millirem of tritium. My understanding the way 

6 that this was put is 100 millirem period.

7 Everything combined.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: External and internal.

9 CHAIR CLAWSON: External and internal.

10 DR. NETON: No. They're separate 

11 source terms.

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: They're separate. 

13 Yeah.

14 DR. NETON: Internal and external are 

15 separate source terms.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I went through 

17 this. Yes. Before -- you're going to get into 

18 NOV next, right?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. If you don't 

21 mind, this is a good, you know, split point just 

22 to maybe comment on your comments. On the report.

23 You know, just -- and you were 
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1 actually with us the whole way. So, I think you 

2 recall some of the genesis of the 60 to 90.

3 And we went into looking at this 

4 thinking that we would have very explicit RWPs 

5 that would, as, you know, convention would have 

6 it, identify the specific source term nuclides on 

7 the RWPs that would specify, you know, when these 

8 would be collected.

9 And we looked at these RWPs, and I've 

10 said this before, but I'm going to emphasize this 

11 again. Because the practical approach was 

12 definitely affected by this.

13 You had cats and dogs in terms of RWP 

14 forms. Some were very explicit and said end of 

15 job. Very specifically whether it was actinides 

16 or tritium, it was end of job bioassay.

17 And then you had others that were 

18 undefined and very general. Now I understand the 

19 split plan and the process.

20 But when you're dealing with 

21 subcontractors, particularly transient 

22 subcontractors, the context of what you're 

23 looking at is these guys came and went. And if 
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1 they had job-specific bioassay for whether it's 

2 actinide or tritium, the fact that they were 

3 subcontractors, certainly look at them from the 

4 context that you would sample them before, you 

5 know, certainly before they leave. Or certainly 

6 if they were transient.

7 And so the -- and it made a 

8 supposition you say it wasn't necessarily true 

9 for the actinides. But we were looking for an 

10 indication that if they were doing a plutonium 

11 job that the subcontractor would be monitored 

12 within a few months, if nothing else because that 

13 subcontractor may not be around to be sampled in 

14 the first place. So the context was, did they in 

15 fact follow up the job with a sampling.

16 And I understand the notion that at 

17 some point later, there would be a bioassay 

18 perhaps. But I want to throw out here, is that 

19 assumption for a, you know, quote subcontractor, 

20 particularly in the vein of the ones that are 

21 coming and going as far as the site was concerned, 

22 you know, whether that assumption was a valid one 

23 or not.
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1 So what we did, frankly, when we found 

2 out the RWPs were so incomplete that we only came 

3 up with maybe a dozen, was to not even try to 

4 establish a specific -- and this was an actinide, 

5 look at a specific end date.

6 But I do recall deciding, okay, given 

7 the benefit of the doubt, if we could see any 

8 indication of bioassay, even if the bioassay 

9 didn't necessarily match the identity of the 

10 nuclide on the RWP, we would give them credit. 

11 Just because it was the index.

12 And we recognize that point that we 

13 only had a sliver of the RWPs. And therefore did 

14 not even have a representative sample to 

15 evaluate.

16 And with the RWPs that we did have, we 

17 did not even have a clear picture. And this got 

18 uglier and uglier as we got deeper and deeper 

19 into this thing.

20 And realized that no, we could not 

21 really do a representative sampling. So the 

22 decision was to provide indication using, in a 

23 sense, a short form, 60 to 90 -- 30 to 90 days as 
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1 some indication of whether or not there was 

2 completeness or not.

3 So again, I want to emphasize that 

4 context because there certainly wasn't the 

5 opportunity to do the kind of data searches that 

6 have led after the fact to a slightly better 

7 understanding of that.

8 But I would still contend that if you 

9 had a transient subcontractor doing a job with 

10 actinide source terms, and you did not sample 

11 that person, certainly within a few months, there 

12 was a good likelihood that person's gone. So 

13 it's certainly that question.

14 You might pick him up at some future 

15 job. But, there's certainly no surety that you 

16 will.

17 So I just wanted to throw that out as 

18 a comment.

19 The other thing --

20 DR. TAULBEE: Can I comment there?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, sure.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. You know, 30 and 

23 -- 30 days is fully appropriate for tritium. And 
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1 there's no problem with that.

2 It's the non-tritium is where our real 

3 concern is. And then combining the two together.

4 From the standpoint of the transient 

5 workers, you're right. They may not come back. 

6 And actually in our analysis, you know, we showed 

7 that 13 percent didn't leave a bioassay even 

8 though they were supposed to.

9 So, you know, you're right on that. 

10 Some of them did not come back. But does that 

11 mean we can't estimate the dose to that 13 percent 

12 that we didn't see based upon the 87 percent that 

13 did?

14 So, that's where the coworker comes 

15 into play here. And that's why when we looked at 

16 the other, you know, somebody else on that RWP, 

17 were they monitored, and we get 98 percent.

18 So, I understand. You're absolutely 

19 right. They may not have -- they may have left 

20 the job and never came back, and never left a 

21 bioassay sample.

22 And what we saw in this analysis is 

23 about 13 percent did not leave a bioassay sample.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. You know, 

2 certainly I don't want to belabor this. But, I 

3 think one of our concerns though is some caution 

4 about making assumptions about RWP work.

5 Again, I think this notion that one 

6 can generalize and apply other data, meaning 

7 whether it's routine sampling data, or even other 

8 job-specific bioassay data.

9 One thing that I thought Savannah 

10 River did very well, and Westinghouse did very 

11 well in '99, was stressing -- be very, very 

12 careful. Because the jobs we're talking about, 

13 whether it's a waste management job where you got 

14 a complex source term.

15 Whether it's a one off type of job 

16 where you're dealing with something that's, for 

17 example, and actually it did provide an example 

18 in a couple of memorandums of where, you know, 

19 you had a plutonium worker that was diverted to 

20 do a one off job, and that happened to have an 

21 americium source term and was central to that 

22 particular job. But the danger was that because 

23 the RQB had Pu on there, that unless they 
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1 characterized that specific job and included that 

2 on the RWP, there would be -- the americium would 

3 be unmonitored.

4 And so my concern with this whole 

5 group, quite sincerely, is that we're dealing 

6 with -- on job-specific bioassays we're dealing 

7 with specialized work in some cases.

8 Where it's not likely you're going to 

9 be able to generalize a dose distribution that 

10 you can apply from another data set. And if it 

11 weren't RWP work and it weren't this sort of, 

12 this question of one off jobs or unique mixtures 

13 of source terms, I'd feel more comfortable.

14 But I haven't heard something that 

15 makes me comfortable that you can apply, even if 

16 you were to take subcontractor data, apply it in 

17 a general sense and be confident that that would 

18 bound it.

19 But that's getting into another area. 

20 But when I hear you say that it gives me some 

21 concern there.

22 This second misconception about 

23 subcontractor monitoring -- I'll key in on your 
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1 --

2 DR. TAULBEE: That's fine.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't think we 

4 actually made the case that there weren't 

5 subcontractors on routine sampling. I think 

6 actually subcontractors weren't as monolithic.

7 They just came in and did job8 specifics. Actually I think they did a number of 

9 different things.

10 Some of them stayed on and did a lot 

11 of K Reactor restarts. So they were there for a 

12 while.

13 I mean, the K Reactor restart lasted 

14 a couple of years. So, I, you know, I would think 

15 a lot of them were on routine tritium bioassay 

16 sampling.

17 So, if somehow, somewhere we inferred 

18 that or whatever, I don't think we certainly 

19 meant it.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Well, the inference is 

21 with your notice of violation. In that when you 

22 say that the subcontractor monitoring data was 79 

23 percent incomplete. That's where you're 
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1 inferring that.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, okay.

3 DR. TAULBEE: That they are only 

4 monitored that way. And then --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. I think 

6 subcontractors were broader. And I think -- and 

7 as I said earlier, I think the workers affected 

8 by the job-specific bioassay isn't exclusively 

9 subcontractors.

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we have a 

12 mixed bag. We don't know what that mixed bag is 

13 year to year.

14 But we might know it for '97. I don't 

15 think we can extrapolate it before then. But, 

16 you know, we sort of got into this with the 

17 subcontractor context.

18 But, having gone through it and 

19 looking at things like the NOV, it's pretty clear 

20 that the -- if there's a tag line, it's the 

21 workers that were on RWP required job-specific 

22 bioassays. If there's an issue of completeness, 

23 it's that group.
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1 And I don't frankly know what the 

2 group is per se.

3 DR. TAULBEE: But your 

4 characterization there of workers who are on job5 specific RWPs, I don't believe is correct.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

7 DR. TAULBEE: It's an RWP that 

8 requires bioassay. And then the worker is 

9 checked to see whether they were on a routine 

10 bioassay for that radionuclide. They didn't have 

11 to leave a sample if they were not.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Then they had to leave 

14 the job-specific.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So, it's 

16 certainly not that --

17 DR. TAULBEE: So, it wasn't the job18 specific RWP.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It's a job-specific 

20 bioassay.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me be very clear 

23 about that. Okay. A job-specific bioassay.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Because they weren't on 

4 a routine monitoring for the program. Okay.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So then the -

6 -

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Joe, I just want to 

8 ask you a question. So you're worried about the 

9 RWPs and that 13 percent that you have no data.

10 Is that what you're talking about?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it may not even 

12 be 13 percent, you know, we're basing this on a 

13 snapshot in '97.

14 I mean, that's kind of the only place 

15 we have any markers, data. And my question is, 

16 if you looked at that question of completeness 

17 over time, meaning from the '90s on.

18 And particularly in the early '90s 

19 when there was a whole big influx of these 

20 subcontractors.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: It's less than 21 

22 percent had samples.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, the 
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1 one concern I have too, is that given the 

2 variables involved and given the disparities of 

3 how you count percentages, who knows.

4 I mean, it could be 15, 20, 25, 30. I 

5 mean, but the question is, it's incomplete to 

6 some degree. And how would you address that 

7 incompleteness?

8 What data set would you apply to model 

9 that so that you could in fact come up with a 

10 distribution that would be bounding? And that's 

11 the part where I have a problem with the job12 specific bioassays.

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. So let me --

14 so let -- there were 79 percent that weren't --

15 it was '97? What's the date?

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Ninety-seven.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: Ninety-seven. 

18 Seventy-nine percent in that it was five percent 

19 weren't monitored. In that five percent, 79 

20 percent.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. So we're 

23 talking about a relatively small population, I 
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1 think.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: For '97.

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yeah. And --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: All we know is '97.

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: Seventy-nine percent 

6 were not monitored.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: Is that true -- is 

9 that 79 percent true?

10 DR. TAULBEE: No. 

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 DR. TAULBEE: -- being misconstrued 

13 here. Let me go through this, if this is okay.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, this is the 

15 NOV. Yeah, why don't we go to that.

16 DR. TAULBEE: This is the NOV. This 

17 is that '97 issue.

18 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's what I was 

19 trying to figure out. Is that true, is that 79 

20 percent truly what they monitored? Or were they 

21 caught in this routine program?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's what all 

23 we have, and you know, again, I think what Tim is 
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1 going to get into is additional documentation or 

2 details that we don't have. But, on some of that 

3 --

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's what I'm trying 

5 to figure out.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: But I can only tell 

7 you what we know. Which is not what he apparently 

8 has brought back from the last month or so.

9 But certainly the NOV that I'm talking 

10 about, what DOE cited Westinghouse on, cited 

11 those Westinghouse self-surveys that showed, you 

12 know, and if Westinghouse --

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: I understand.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: My concern is that 

15 Westinghouse --

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: I understand that. I 

17 just want to get to the 79 percent.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. If 

19 Westinghouse can't get it right as far as where 

20 they stood as far as incompleteness, I'm not sure 

21 how we can do much better than that.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yeah. Okay.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Because that's --
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1 those are their numbers. Not our numbers.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay.

3 DR. TAULBEE: So one of the parts of 

4 SC&A's report talks about the notice of 

5 violation. And they state, in the course of this 

6 review SC&A also established that a chronic 

7 history of wide non-compliance with job-specific 

8 bioassay requirements existed at SRS, resulting 

9 in a departmental notice of violation being 

10 levied in 1998. The implication here is that 

11 there is inadequate workplace and worker 

12 monitoring for radiological hazards at SRS.

13 And therefore NIOSH cannot bound the 

14 dose with sufficient accuracy. The further 

15 implication is that this affects primarily 

16 subcontractors.

17 Now, okay. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Can I stop you right 

19 there now? I think you're taking it pretty broad.

20 DR. TAULBEE: I am?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: That there's 

22 inadequate workplace and worker monitoring for 

23 rad hazards at SRS. I think we were pretty 
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1 explicit about the fact that the -- for the job2 specific bioassays you had, there was an issue.

3 Definitely an issue as far as 

4 completeness.

5 DR. TAULBEE: But from the SEC 

6 discussion, you're meaning that we can't 

7 reconstruct doses. That the workplace had major

8 issues to where --

9 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: -- major completeness 

11 issues that would have implications for dose 

12 reconstruction.

13 I think that's exactly how we said it. 

14 Implications for dose reconstruction.

15 So yes. But I think what you're 

16 saying here is that there was SRS-wide inadequate 

17 workplace and worker monitoring for radiological 

18 hazards.

19 And I don't think we ever took it that 

20 broadly. We, I think, focused on job-specific 

21 bioassays. And certainly we tied it to 

22 subcontractors, which I think now knowing the 

23 makeup we would probably amend that to some 
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1 extent.

2 But, I think your first bullet is not 

3 accurate. I don't think we ever implied that the 

4 overall program was inadequate.

5 This says that the radiological 

6 program, the monitoring program for radiological 

7 hazards. I mean, that's pretty broad.

8 That's saying the entire Savannah 

9 River Site monitoring program was inadequate. I 

10 don't think we ever make that --

11 DR. TAULBEE: Well, an estimate -- or 

12 in designated special exposure cohort that's 

13 effectively what is being said. Is that the doses 

14 to workers cannot be estimated.

15 (Simultaneous speaking.)

16 MR. FITZGERALD: -- we have never gone 

17 -- and that's not even our -- that's not even our 

18 job to go so far as to suggest an SEC status.

19 That's the Work Group and the Board. 

20 All we said is, answer the question that the Board 

21 tasked us with. Which is --

22 DR. NETON: I would agree with Joe --

23 (Simultaneous speaking.) 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: -- yes, we -- I mean, 

2 I want to be very clear on that though.

3 Because I think the question of 

4 completeness, I don't know if we have a 

5 disagreement. We may have a disagreement on the 

6 level of incompleteness, which I think is valid.

7 But I don't think we have any issue 

8 about the question of the adequacy of the 

9 program, monitoring program at Savannah River. I 

10 think -- actually I think there was major 

11 improvements to a sound dosimetry program.

12 I think it was on the administrative 

13 side, the procedural side which is what in fact 

14 they were cited on, where I think there were 

15 deficiencies which may have implications for dose 

16 reconstruction.

17 That's kind of what -- that's what I 

18 said in the very beginning. This jumps so far 

19 that --

20 DR. NETON: Yeah. I agree with Joe. 

21 I mean, I think maybe it's a little bit 

22 overstated. But I think Tim's analysis speaks to 

23 exactly what you're talking about.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

2 DR. NETON: Which is the job-specific 

3 bioassay.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Excuse me, I just 

5 wanted to clarify that.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Well, so data requests. 

7 Here's what we did since the last Work Group 

8 meeting. Actually before the last Work Group 

9 meeting.

10 We requested information from DOE 

11 headquarters and from the Savannah River Site 

12 regarding this notice of violation to learn more 

13 information. Because we really needed to know 

14 more of these details.

15 SRS provided over a thousand pages of 

16 information. We sent a letter to the Department 

17 headquarters and they just provided the final 

18 noncompliance tracking system report, which was 

19 eight pages.

20 And they indicated they didn't retain 

21 any of the other information related to the 

22 violation. So, we only have what SRS maintained.

23 We asked headquarters. And they 
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1 didn't provide it.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: And this eight pages 

3 is what we've seen.

4 DR. TAULBEE: It's the same report 

5 that I have.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

7 DR. TAULBEE: We sent a follow up 

8 request to the site in September 2017 

9 specifically requesting those internal 

10 assessments that you talked about, Joe, that we 

11 don't have. There was one in '94, '95, '96 and 

12 '97 that were listed in the NTS report as well as 

13 other documents that we found in the thousand 

14 pages that Savannah River sent us.

15 Due to funding issues, turn of the 

16 fiscal year, SRS didn't have any money and were 

17 delayed in looking for these assessments. But 

18 they're working on it now.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, just for 

20 clarification sake. These are the surveys?

21 DR. TAULBEE: These are the 

22 Westinghouse internal surveys.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Westinghouse 
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1 internal surveys of completeness as far as they 

2 have?

3 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

5 DR. TAULBEE: So, let's look at this 

6 notice of violation and the details as to what it 

7 was. Because I think this is critical to this 

8 evaluation here.

9 What they were cited for was 10 CFR 

10 830.120(c)(2)(i), which requires work to be 

11 performed in established administrative controls 

12 using approved procedures.

13 The second violation was similar. It 

14 was quality improvement, requires that one, 

15 processes to detect and prevent quality problems 

16 be established and implemented.

17 And two, that item services processes 

18 that do not meet the established requirements be 

19 identified, controlled, and corrected according 

20 to the importance of the problem and the work 

21 affected. And three, that correction shall 

22 include identifying the causes of the problems 

23 and working to prevent the recurrence.
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1 This is what they were cited for. 

2 Now, let's look at the first one.

3 In their -- in DOE's final write-up, 

4 they indicated that -- and this is the part that 

5 Joe's talking about, from January 1996 to 1997, 

6 the Westinghouse Savannah River facility 

7 evaluation board reports identified that one, 

8 workers were on incorrect bioassay programs as 

9 identified by the radiation qualification badge, 

10 and consequently did not submit job-specific 

11 bioassays as required.

12 Line management did not always ensure 

13 that new employees were placed on the correct 

14 bioassay schedule. And again, this gets to what 

15 Joe's talking about some with the RWPs and were 

16 they on the proper schedule.

17 Bioassay schedule report was not 

18 always provided to line management for accuracy 

19 review. And job-specific bioassay sampling 

20 requirements were not always identified on the 

21 RWPs.

22 Okay, again that's one of the points 

23 that Joe pointed out. Bioassay assignments were 
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1 not always reviewed by personnel when they 

2 received an annual whole body count.

3 And this was the level of -- severity 

4 level two program, or problem. A civil penalty 

5 of $37,500.

6 Now, I want to focus on that first 

7 bullet point. Because that was the one that 

8 caused me the most concern of, were people on the 

9 incorrect bioassay schedule.

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: The bioassay program.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Right. Bioassay 

12 program. Which is the sampling schedule. So, 

13 just to reiterate that, workers were on incorrect 

14 bioassay programs as identified by their RQB. 

15 And consequently did not submit the job-specific 

16 samples as required.

17 The corrective action. Savannah River 

18 sent four thousand form letters on February 19, 

19 1998 and mailed them to every site employee and 

20 subcontractor currently on a routine bioassay 

21 program, asking them to compare their bioassay 

22 codes on their radiation qualification badge, and 

23 those listed on the letter. 
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1 There were less than one hundred 

2 discrepancies identified. There were 

3 discrepancies, yes. They got fined for it.

4 They weren't 100 percent accurate. 

5 But we're looking at less than two and a half 

6 percent were on incorrect schedules.

7 So, did that affect the coworker 

8 model? That's my question for the Work Group 

9 here.

10 Let's look at the next violation. And 

11 the predecessor paragraph here talks about 

12 Savannah River implementing corrections to their 

13 job-specific bioassay monitoring.

14 And they go on to say, contrary to the 

15 above, processes to detect and prevent quality 

16 problems were not adequately established and 

17 implemented, and corrective actions did not 

18 prevent recurrence.

19 And that in November 1995, DOE 

20 identified to Westinghouse Savannah River that 

21 radiation work permitted prescribed bioassay 

22 sampling requirements were not effectively 

23 implemented in that 23 percent of the workers did 
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1 not submit bioassay samples as required.

2 So that means 77 percent did back in 

3 November 1995. So here's a different data point. 

4 It's not just that only data point in 1997.

5 We have that 77 percent submitted 

6 bioassay samples. But they were cautioned about 

7 it.

8 Corrective actions were implemented 

9 by Westinghouse Savannah River. However, the 

10 corrective actions were not effective to prevent 

11 recurrence in that non-participation by radiation 

12 workers in the job-specific portion of the 

13 program continued through 1996 and increased to 

14 a level of non-participation of 79 percent by the 

15 second quarter of 1997.

16 So, they were at 77 percent. Thirty17 three percent in the first quarter of April 19 -

18 - well, actually I've got this on the next slide. 

19 Instead of trying to talk about this.

20 So, there's three data points here. 

21 November of 1995 you've got 77 percent 

22 participation. April '97 you've got 33 percent 

23 participation. And July of 1997 you've got 21 
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1 percent participation.

2 And this is just the job-specific 

3 portion. The other thing that I would point out 

4 here is that your characterization in your report 

5 of a chronic history of wide non-compliance, 

6 November 1995 to July 1997 is the only time period 

7 we really have data to evaluate this is 26 months.

8 So, a little over two years.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think we 

10 wanted to point out, some of these discrepancies 

11 are getting to be identified in the Tiger Team. 

12 In other words, in terms of the delinquency or 

13 what have you.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Those were different 

15 issues.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: But let me also ask 

17 you, I guess I'm not following the -- the emphasis 

18 on 830 versus 835.

19 I mean, yeah. I think I understand 

20 certainly the compliance context. But what are 

21 you trying to drive at?

22 DR. TAULBEE: Let me finish and we'll 

23 see. Okay?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

2 DR. TAULBEE: All right. So now if 

3 we look at the NIOSH evaluation, the SC&A 

4 evaluation and these few data points. This is 

5 subcontractors with monitoring data.

6 The green is our report where we were 

7 showing between 60 and 80 percent subcontractors 

8 with monitoring data. Our reevaluation of the 

9 SC&A data using an annual criteria for the non10 tritium shows that we're between 80 and 100 

11 percent.

12 And then when you get to 1996, the 

13 Westinghouse one, this is if you assume, and this 

14 is a big assumption. Which I think Joe has 

15 already indicated that while subcontractors may 

16 make up a larger fraction of the job-specific 

17 bioassay, they are not --

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: -- necessarily 

20 exclusive.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Right. But if you did, 

22 then from even that standpoint in that November 

23 of 1995, it falls within that era.
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1 Something happened there in '96 and 

2 '97 that the job-specific bioassay decreased as 

3 far as people complying with it. Which is why I 

4 believe they were fine, because there's a clear 

5 decrease that happened, where there wasn't 

6 management support.

7 And so my next slide here is talking 

8 more about the notice of violation of why was the 

9 violation 830 procedural and not the violation of 

10 835. I really want to go through this as to why 

11 it wasn't 835 because it gives context to this 

12 whole monitoring scenario.

13 If people were not being properly 

14 monitored, that is a violation of 10 CFR 835. 

15 Monitoring in the workplace and individual 

16 monitoring.

17 These are the two parts of the 

18 regulation. 10 CFR 835.402 is individual 

19 monitoring requirements.

20 Monitoring of individuals. I'm going 

21 to go through the first one first. Monitoring of 

22 individuals in areas shall be performed to 

23 demonstrate compliance with regulations in this 
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1 part, document radiological conditions in the 

2 workplace, detect changes in radiological 

3 conditions, detect the gradual buildup of 

4 radioactive materials in the workplace, and 

5 verify the effectiveness of engineering and 

6 process controls containing radioactive material 

7 and reducing radiation exposure.

8 Part B of that is area monitoring in 

9 the workplace shall be routinely performed as

10 necessary to identify and control potential 

11 sources of personnel exposure to radiation and 

12 radioactive material.

13 For individual monitoring, for the 

14 purpose of monitoring individual exposures to 

15 internal radiation, internal dose evaluation 

16 programs, including routine bioassay programs, 

17 shall be conducted for radiological workers who 

18 under typical conditions are likely to receive 

19 0.1 rem or more committed effective dose 

20 equivalent, and/or five rem or more committed 

21 dose equivalent to any organ or tissue from all 

22 occupational radionuclide intakes in a year. And 

23 this gets to what Jim was talking about, of 
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1 externals and internals being separated.

2 Under DOE Standard 1128-98, Section 

3 5.3.2, these are the monitoring requirements for 

4 selection of employees for bioassay programs.

5 Workers who are considered likely to 

6 have intakes resulting in excess of 100 millirem 

7 CEDE are required to participate in a bioassay 

8 program. However, because of the extensive 

9 radiological control practices for plutonium 

10 facilities, including a high degree of engineer 

11 barrier containment, no typical plutonium worker 

12 is likely to have intakes of 100 millirem CEDE or 

13 more.

14 However, this should not be used as an 

15 excuse to exclude workers from routine bioassay. 

16 Although no one should be considered likely to 

17 have intakes resulting in 100 millirem, some 

18 workers, not all, some workers are at a 

19 significantly higher risk for incurring an intake 

20 then others, and should be routinely monitored.

21 This is the standard today. This is 

22 how monitoring is done today. It was originated 

23 in June 1998, reaffirmed in May of 2003. And so 
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1 there have been small changes to this.

2 During the enforcement conference 

3 with DOE on July 28, Westinghouse described the 

4 purpose of their bioassay sampling program. They 

5 stated they had a formal no intake policy for 

6 radionuclides other then tritium.

7 And that along with its formalized 

8 workplace indicators program, including air 

9 sampling and contamination surveys, those were 

10 the primary means for determining whether a 

11 worker requires bioassay sampling outside of the 

12 routing bioassay program. For these cases, 

13 special bioassay sampling was performed.

14 The radiological control at SRS was a 

15 defense in depth. They had this zero intake 

16 policy, engineering controls, procedural 

17 controls, PPE, and surveillance.

18 And I'm going to focus here on the 

19 surveillance. Surveillance is used to verify 

20 effectiveness of the engineering controls, 

21 procedural controls, and the PPE.

22 There's air monitoring, the facility 

23 contamination surveys, their personal 
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1 contamination surveys, and a routine bioassay. 

2 The routine bioassay is used to check to verify 

3 -- used as a check to verify the effectiveness of 

4 the procedural and engineering controls, and to 

5 trigger for cause bioassay. So it's there as 

6 kind of the final check.

7 It's requested from workers who have 

8 a reasonable potential for intakes, but who SRS 

9 is confident did not have intakes in excess of 

10 two percent of the annual limit.

11 Westinghouse stated that the workers 

12 themselves were the last line of defense in the 

13 workplace indicator for which -- which was the 

14 reason why a confirmatory program at the site was 

15 conducted.

16 So, here's what the site thought was 

17 happening, this expected monitoring. They 

18 thought that workers signed in on the RWP.

19 And as I described earlier, they 

20 participate. If they participate in the routine 

21 sampling program for the radionuclides specified 

22 on the RWP, then they would submit under the 

23 routine schedule.
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1 If they were not, they went under job2 specific and RCO, or rad control, notes the 

3 requirement, issued a yellow label. Worker 

4 submits the sample, yes/no, if they didn't, they 

5 went into the delinquency tracking system.

6 That's what they thought was 

7 happening. The next slide is what was actually 

8 happening.

9 This is from their corrective action. 

10 So they went through and this is where they got 

11 to that 21 percent.

12 Okay. And here I've got the numbers 

13 from that April assessment, because that's the 

14 only hard numbers that we have without those 

15 facility -- or those Westinghouse analysis.

16 In April of 1997 the site looked at 

17 3,200 samples. Thirty-two hundred RWPs. And 95 

18 percent of those -- of people who signed in on 

19 those that required bioassay, were on routine 

20 programs. Ninety-five percent.

21 So, from that analysis, you can follow 

22 it going over. Okay.

23 Five percent were not on a routine 
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1 program and had to submit the job-specific 

2 bioassay. Now, the rad control office sometimes 

3 noted that there was a requirement, issued the 

4 tag, and the worker submitted the sample.

5 There were occasions where the rad 

6 control office didn't note that the sample was 

7 required. But the worker submitted a sample 

8 anyway.

9 A worker realized it, and submitted 

10 their samples. And so that was basically 1.65 

11 percent of that five percent total.

12 This is when there is 33 percent 

13 compliance which dropped a little bit by the time 

14 you got to the second quarter of 1997. So what 

15 we're looking at is 3.35 percent were not sampled 

16 in that initial limited analysis, or 107 samples.

17 The full assessment that keeps getting 

18 bantered about here, is about 21 percent 

19 compliance. That's 21 percent compliance of what 

20 may be five percent, I'm actually not sure until 

21 we see those facility assessments, because the 

22 numbers don't quite match here. But, another 

23 point I want to bring up here is that 1997, the 
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1 total number of samples not received was 256. 

2 That's in the notice of violation.

3 That's the number of workers they went 

4 back and requested sampling for. Okay. Now --

5 and by the way, of those 256, no one had an 

6 intake.

7 But this is the split here. It's not 

8 an RWP-specific bioassay. It's a job-specific 

9 bioassay from an RWP that workers signed in on.

10 But if you've got 20 workers here 

11 signing in on this RWP, 19 of them from this 3,200 

12 sample analysis, 19 of them are on a routine 

13 bioassay monitoring program and submitted 

14 samples. One of them goes down this other path.

15 Okay. If you look at the number of 

16 routine actinide samples from the Savannah River 

17 Site, and this is data presented to DOE during 

18 the notice of violation, the number of samples 

19 requested in 1996 and 1997, eight thousand, nine 

20 thousand samples requested.

21 These are routine actinide samples. 

22 So you've got a large number of samples being 

23 presented. The number of samples received is 99 
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1 and 96 percent.

2 The number that were initially 

3 positive, and these are false positives for the 

4 most part because of your monitoring methodology, 

5 you've got 79 that were initially positive in 

6 '96, and 105 in 1997. But the number of confirmed 

7 intakes are two in each of those years.

8 This is demonstrating they have very 

9 good radiological control of the facility. And 

10 that intakes are very rare. You're looking at 

11 less than .1 percent here.

12 And again, the internal dosimetrist 

13 who presented -- or provided this information 

14 indicated that bioassay was the final 

15 confirmation that the workplace controls were in 

16 fact working.

17 Now, are there lapses? Yes. You have 

18 two people here that got intakes. If you look at 

19 the job-specific samples, these are for 1997, 

20 which is the only data that we have provided. 

21 For this whole year there were approximately 

22 1,500.

23 And this is the information provided 
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1 to DOE. The number of positive, zero. Number of 

2 confirmed intakes, zero.

3 In 1998 there's 564 job-specific 

4 actinide samples. No positive, no intakes.

5 If you add up the routine and the job6 specific values from the past two tables, you get 

7 to 10,000 bioassay samples or actinides for non8 routine. Or non-tritium samples.

9 Now that breakdown doesn't match with 

10 that 95 and 5. This one is 86 and 14. So if you 

11 take that same number of workers, of 20 that I 

12 used earlier, you've got 17 that are on routine. 

13 And three that are on job-specific.

14 Again, we need those facility 

15 evaluation reports to get into more detail in 

16 order to understand this data better. But the 

17 256 workers that were initially missed, none of 

18 them had intakes when they did the follow-up.

19 So, we're looking at very good control 

20 of the rad environment. SRS also had a special 

21 actinide monitoring system.

22 And this -- these are samples taken 

23 for cause. This is where something went wrong. 
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1 They knew something went wrong.

2 They wanted -- the workplace 

3 indicators, something happened. And in 1996 they 

4 requested 134.

5 And so here the number of samples 

6 received is matching. Because if you've got an 

7 accident or incident, you're going to do a lot of 

8 follow up to make sure everybody leaves a sample.

9 And in this case, not everybody under 

10 these upset conditions gets an intake. In fact, 

11 6.7 percent did. 

12 And by the way, those two previous are 

13 included in here because of that -- those 

14 intakes, those positive bioassays would go back 

15 and trigger a special bioassay to find out what 

16 happened.

17 So again, the workplace surveillance 

18 indicators indicated something was wrong here. 

19 But you're still looking at a very low number of 

20 people that got intakes at this site in this time 

21 period.

22 So, we disagree with SC&A's conclusion 

23 that the notice of violation would prohibit dose 
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1 reconstruction of subcontractor construction 

2 trades workers. Job-specific bioassay in 

3 conjunction with the routine monitoring used for 

4 surveillance to confirm the adequacy of the 

5 workplace monitoring was used for surveillance to 

6 confirm the adequacy of the workplace controls.

7 Routine prescheduled bioassay 

8 monitoring was the primary method of surveillance 

9 as indicated by the large number of workers that 

10 are on the routine bioassay compared to the job11 specific. The number of intakes at the site is 

12 very low. Less than 21 percent.

13 Now, in their notice of violation, in 

14 the conference, DOE acknowledged the rigorous 

15 radiological control program during the 

16 enforcement meeting. DOE said, DOE is aware that 

17 for all radionuclides other than tritium, 

18 Westinghouse internal dosimetry program does not 

19 knowingly permit any worker to be exposed to 

20 airborne radioactive material.

21 Further it is noted that WSRC has 

22 implemented a rigorous program for comprehensive 

23 use of field indicators during work activities to 
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1 signal that an unexpected radiological condition 

2 may have led to potential occupational intakes of 

3 radioactive material by a worker.

4 Furthermore, with the follow-up of the 

5 sampling of 256 workers conducted by the site, 

6 there is no missing bioassay in 1997. Regardless 

7 of the initial 66 percent non-participation rate 

8 under the limited assessment, or the 79 

9 participation rate under the full assessment, 

10 there's no effect on the coworker model here.

11 For 1997, all the data was collected.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Thank God for 

13 resampling.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. But the site also 

15 evaluated the 1996. The site evaluated potential 

16 for those --

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm sorry.

18 DR. TAULBEE: -- who may be missing 

19 samples in 1996, and concluded that they didn't 

20 have a potential for intake.

21 Now, what exactly did they do? I 

22 don't know. I'd like to look at those assessments 

23 and find out.
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1 To us, and this has changed a little 

2 bit from our discussion this morning where I 

3 stated SC&A has not demonstrated that 

4 subcontractors were primarily or only monitored 

5 via job-specific.

6 I think our discussion today, we 

7 recognize that this violation affected not just 

8 subcontractors, but construction trades and 

9 operations. Because an operations worker can be 

10 signing in on an RWP and not be on a routine 

11 monitoring for that radionuclide and have to 

12 leave a job-specific.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure.

14 DR. TAULBEE: And I'd really like to 

15 know those numbers. Because I'm very curious if 

16 that's the dominant, from that standpoint of 

17 people who --

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: -- accurate 

20 representative source term on an RQB, too. Given 

21 the fact that some of these job-specifics are 

22 unique.

23 DR. TAULBEE: So, even if a larger 
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1 percentage of subcontractors used job-specific 

2 bioassay compared to WSRC employees, whether they 

3 are in-house construction trades or operations, 

4 a larger fraction of the subcontractor 

5 construction trades workers were monitored via 

6 routine bioassay, as we'll demonstrate in our 

7 next presentation.

8 But keep in mind here, from that --

9 the slide, and let me go back to it. For 

10 subcontractor RWP work, this would be page 32. 

11 This is the one with 3,200 samples, the actual 

12 subcontractor monitoring.

13 These are people signing in on an RWP. 

14 So for one, they have to be rad worker trained. 

15 Especially in this era.

16 10 CFR 835 requires our -- Rad Worker 

17 II. So they have to have a radiological 

18 qualification card.

19 When you complete Rad Worker II, 

20 you're issued one. And so everybody was trained 

21 from that standpoint. Everybody had one of these 

22 cards.

23 Now, subcontractors, even if they were 
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1 not, kind of a one-off job coming in to do 

2 whatever, they were signing in on this RWP. They 

3 had to have that card.

4 They had to have external monitoring. 

5 And they had to have the card in order to be on 

6 this.

7 Of a work crew of 20, again, I'll use 

8 the lower numbers of 84, or of 85 percent and 15 

9 percent if you want. Seventeen of them were on 

10 a routine schedule, okay, for bioassay.

11 A few were not under the job-specific. 

12 Those that were not, there was a follow-up to 

13 make sure that they left their samples.

14 And that was why they were fined. 

15 They were not following the procedure here, and 

16 you had some people that should have been 

17 monitored by the RWP that were not.

18 But from a coworker standpoint, when 

19 you have 85 or 90 percent of the people working 

20 on that same job being monitored, I believe we 

21 can take that coworker data and apply it to these 

22 unmonitored workers.

23 Now in 1997 it's not an issue. We got 
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1 all of the samples. '96 they said they didn't 

2 have a potential for 100 millirem.

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Wait a minute. One -

4 - in '97 you got 100 percent you said.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: For one quarter.

7 DR. TAULBEE: No. The whole year.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: For the year. They 

9 resampled.

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: For the year.

11 DR. TAULBEE: They went back and 

12 resampled everybody that did not submit a sample 

13 down here. These 107 samples from the third --

14 or from the first quarter, they went back and 

15 they got everybody, to make sure --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: It was the entire 

17 year, another sample.

18 DR. TAULBEE: So, for '97 there is no 

19 missing data whatsoever. If there -- because 

20 they thought this was the process prior to '95 as 

21 well, through the '90s, then there could be 

22 missing samples from these earlier assessments. 

23 We don't know yet.
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1 We know in November of 1995 that DOE 

2 identified, what was it, 23 percent had not 

3 submitted samples in November of 1995. But 77 

4 percent had.

5 And that's just the job-specifics.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, we don't -- I'm 

7 not sure we know for the year or what the scope 

8 of that '95, do we?

9 DR. TAULBEE: Fair enough. Fair 

10 enough.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think that -- 

12 yeah, I think the sample, given our personal 

13 experience, the sample is everything.

14 Because if you don't have a good 

15 sample, your percentage is almost irrelevant.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Again, that's just the 

17 job-specific component.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

19 DR. TAULBEE: And so what we're 

20 showing here that the bulk of it is actual routine 

21 monitoring from the rad qual card.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah.

23 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So, I just want 
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1 to make sure that that's clear.

2 Let's see. So, the implications from 

3 dose reconstruction under EEOICPA. And this is 

4 my last slide, Slide 40. There's no evidence of 

5 a workplace exposure nor an indication that there 

6 was a missed intake of radionuclides at Savannah 

7 River.

8 Significant workplace and individual 

9 monitoring information through the surveillance, 

10 including over 10,000 bioassay samples in 1997, 

11 to support that there was no internal dose that 

12 went undetected. Therefore, we conclude dose 

13 reconstruction is feasible and sufficiently 

14 accurate through the use of the coworker model.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay --

16 (Simultaneous speaking.)

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right, right. 

18 Okay. You probably know there's -- it's a 

19 comeback to some extent on this.

20 I feel like I'm in sort of DOE's 

21 position saying that yes, okay. I hear the 

22 strength of the program.

23 And the fact that it was conforming 
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1 with 835 in terms of assuring that there was no 

2 likelihood of 100 millirem being experienced by 

3 workers.

4 And that there's a special bioassay 

5 program, if there was any evidence of that. But, 

6 my concern is to take this from the health 

7 physics, excuse me, the health physics context or 

8 the radiological control context, or the 

9 compliance context, and just put it in the dose 

10 reconstruction context. Because I -- yes, you 

11 know, they did do some good monitoring, there 

12 were improvements in the '90s. We could go into 

13 this in a lot of detail. And I saw the same, 

14 certainly the same discussion in the compliance 

15 conference.

16 And I understand exactly where 

17 Westinghouse is coming from. You know, they were 

18 taking justifiable pride in the fact that they 

19 had implemented a pretty stringent program.

20 But the obvious question was, you have 

21 these missing job-specific bioassays, and since 

22 the whole purpose of the retrospective program 

23 was to verify that you had no failures, whether 
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1 it's engineering failures, or personnel failures, 

2 or equipment failures, or whatever, you know, how 

3 would you in fact be able to characterize, or how 

4 would you in fact be able to know what intakes 

5 took place?

6 Particularly for workers that may not 

7 be available for a subsequent bioassay. And yes, 

8 that was the procedural basis for the citation.

9 But quite apart from that, from the 

10 dose reconstruction standpoint I went back to 

11 Jim's criteria. And walking through that point 

12 by point.

13 If we have missing data, and you know, 

14 having been at this now for a while, I'm sort of 

15 less tied to whether it's 60 percent, 70 percent, 

16 80 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent. You know, 

17 there is some degree of missing data.

18 You know, and I don't know what the 

19 early '90s will show. That's going to be kind of 

20 interesting to see.

21 But there's missing data. And all I 

22 am interested in is the dose reconstruction 

23 context of how would that, you know, that missing 
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1 data be addressed in terms of the coworker 

2 guidelines, since that's kind of where we're at, 

3 you know, if we're going to certainly develop a 

4 coworker model.

5 And we've spent a lot of time defining 

6 criteria. Even though they're qualitative 

7 criteria, I think they're good criteria for 

8 judging completeness of a data set that would be 

9 in fact relied upon for coworker model 

10 development.

11 And all I'm saying is, you know, I --

12 you know, I feel like I was taking a chance 

13 walking through that criteria knowing Jim would 

14 be here.

15 But I walked through that saying okay, 

16 as a logic exercise, we have missing data in terms 

17 of job-specific bioassays for a group of workers. 

18 And I think Stu actually put the -- was the one 

19 that came up with the question.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I asked the question 

21 on the --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: It occurred to me at 

23 the time that we had gotten so much into 
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1 subcontractors that almost by rote, you know, 

2 we're using the term subcontractor. 

3 But no, these were actually the 

4 workers that were being given job-specific 

5 bioassays. They could be any mix.

6 And that mix will change year to year. 

7 So, but nonetheless, if that's the -- if that's 

8 the coworker, you know, coworker model that we're 

9 trying to get to, I'd say stick to the dose 

10 reconstruction context.

11 And walk it down. That's why I kind 

12 of suggested we put this at the -- as the end 

13 point.

14 And use what we've spent a great deal 

15 of time coming up with as the framework for making 

16 that kind of a decision whether you have 

17 sufficient data. Because I think that's kind of 

18 what we're saying.

19 You know, quite apart from all the 

20 Sturm und Drang of the violation, this and that, 

21 it's really coming down to you have a question of 

22 completeness, and how would you adjudicate that 

23 question of incompleteness given the available 
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1 data?

2 And I know you've already touched on 

3 it here and there. But, I, you know, without 

4 getting into sort of all the ins and outs of 830 

5 or 835 and all the rest of it, it really comes 

6 down to that.

7 I think, and this would probably be 

8 after lunch. I would suggest we just go through 

9 and walk that down and see where we may be apart. 

10 And where we may agree.

11 But then decide which way it points. 

12 I mean, I think again, a great deal of thought 

13 went into, you know, how would we figure these 

14 things out?

15 And I'd just as soon use the tool we 

16 have available and see how it works. This one 

17 has a lot of bells and whistles just because of 

18 the history and the fact that we have a program 

19 that had no obvious intake but has a question of 

20 completeness in one segment.

21 So that's all I'm coming from.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Well, let me address 

23 that last point there of completeness in one 
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1 segment. Because if you look at one of the 

2 criterion, and Jim has dropped the coworker line, 

3 is that the workers need to be performing the 

4 same work.

5 The actual quote that you have in your 

6 slide there is --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Similar work or, you 

9 know, that a coworker model would apply to it. 

10 If you go back to the slide with the actual 

11 subcontractor monitoring here, they're doing the 

12 same work on the RWP.

13 The sampling was, if they had it on 

14 their qual card, then they were routinely 

15 monitored. And so their monitoring was for that 

16 same RWP.

17 The job-specific ones that are 

18 missing, are on that same RWP. So the people who 

19 were monitored should apply to those ones that 

20 are not -- that we don't have the samples, that 

21 are incomplete.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think the big 

23 if I would throw there is that, if in fact the 
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1 source terms associated with the specific jobs 

2 that a lot of these workers were being assigned 

3 to under the RWP were in fact being reflected 

4 properly.

5 And I don't think they were 

6 consistently. And I think that's part of what I 

7 want to get into when we walk this thing through, 

8 that, you know, where do we stand on that 

9 particular question.

10 And whether or not you even have an 

11 appropriate set of monitoring data for these 

12 workers. I mean, quite apart from the RQB, I 

13 mean I think the point was made that the RQB 

14 wasn't appropriate.

15 DR. TAULBEE: How would that be not an 

16 835 violation then if they weren't monitored for 

17 the right radionuclides in the workplace and they 

18 were exposed to them?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, actually --

20 DR. TAULBEE: I mean, --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually it was a 

22 self -- it wasn't brought up in the NOV in terms 

23 of DOE review. It was raised by Westinghouse on 
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1 its own in terms of the enforcement stand out.

2 It was sort of a 120 day no fault, 

3 we're not going to cite you if you find it 

4 yourself. And as in this case, Westinghouse 

5 found it itself.

6 And I think --

7 DR. TAULBEE: In one facility.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And it was no fault 

9 meaning that, you know, typically under Price10 Anderson you had to self-report any findings of 

11 noncompliance.

12 In this particular case it was 120 

13 days during which you could, using this guide of 

14 31 deficiencies, identify issues that would not 

15 be subject to necessary enforcement.

16 So I think that was raised then. And 

17 I can show you the memos. But it was raised then 

18 as a real concern.

19 And I think that's the implication in 

20 -- and it's not, you know, it's not something 

21 that's a side bar because it's inherent to the 

22 way RWPs were filled for job-specific bioassays.

23 DR. TAULBEE: Again, under the 
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1 surveillance program, on a routine bioassay, 

2 particularly you're pointing out the americium3 241.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Which is caught on a 

6 chest count by the way, that would be found from 

7 that standpoint as well. And so I mean, you're 

8 -- yes there are -- I mean, all the programs would 

9 have an individual facility here and there where 

10 they might have a --

11 MR. FITZGERALD: This is systemic. 

12 I'm talking a systemic issue. This is not here 

13 and there.

14 DR. TAULBEE: I'm not saying --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: This was a --

16 DR. TAULBEE: We'll go through the 

17 documents again. 

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: We'll go through the 

20 -- we'll go through the program findings and the

21 corrective actions that took place.

22 But issue where you have a system that 

23 was applying a routine bioassay framework to job-
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1 specific bioassays, and where you have an issue 

2 where no one was actually doing characterization 

3 of D&D work, of waste management work, of 

4 specialized work that in fact had source terms 

5 that would not be reflected, I think that's 

6 something that has to be addressed.

7 DR. NETON: I think -- I'd just like 

8 to say one thing maybe before we break. Maybe a 

9 comment and an observation. Or a question and 

10 observation.

11 It seems to me that it's pretty clear 

12 that Westinghouse relied on a routine bioassay 

13 program for monitoring doses.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

15 DR. NETON: Now the fact that these -

16 - there were a number of missing job-specifics, 

17 I don't think would be any different if let's say 

18 they didn't rely on job-specific and they 

19 required 100 percent routine monitoring and five 

20 percent of the workers didn't do their routine, 

21 would that make it any different?

22 I mean, it's the same kind of thing. 

23 We've got five percent missing samples from 
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1 workers, okay. You know, it's not really that 

2 different.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: But I think -- I 

4 think when we're talking job-specific, and this 

5 is not a routine or typical work environment --

6 DR. NETON: But they relied -- but you 

7 have to -- they relied on a routine monitoring 

8 program to -- we could talk about that as a 

9 practice.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

11 DR. NETON: As a practice.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

13 DR. NETON: Because what it results in 

14 is that we are wedded to a chronic exposure model 

15 that we've used for all other sites to do a dose 

16 reconstruction coworker model for these workers.

17 And you could argue, maybe that's the point where 

18 this discussion needs to go.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

20 DR. NETON: And this is addressed in 

21 the imp guide to some extent.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

23 DR. NETON: Is it appropriate to take 
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1 a chronic exposure model using routine bioassay 

2 and assess dose to workers who are intermittently 

3 exposed to some degree? Or unknowingly --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Unknowingly 

5 intermittently exposed to maybe some unknown 

6 source --

7 DR. NETON: Well, that's a different 

8 -- the source term is a different issue. But 

9 what I'm saying now is, is there a series of --

10 is the chronic exposure model that we apply 

11 plausibly bound -- does it plausibly bound those 

12 potentially intermittently exposed workers or --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: That's kind of where 

14 I've been -- I've been anxious to get to the imp 

15 guide just because I think that's kind of the 

16 crux issue.

17 DR. NETON: Yeah.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And the core to this 

19 is can you in fact apply the routine or that --

20 DR. NETON: Well, see, to me --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Routine sampling to 

22 something like this?

23 DR. NETON: Ninety-five percent of the 
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1 workers left their routine samples. Okay. 

2 That's fine, you know. 

3 Okay, there's five percent missing 

4 here, or potentially missing. But that's a 

5 pretty good compliance rate.

6 And if you already -- if we can agree, 

7 and I don't know if we will or not, that the 

8 routine monitoring samples are the ones that are 

9 going to drive the coworker model, then these 

10 missing job-specific samples get lost in the 

11 wash. I mean, they're like a non-compliance, 

12 true.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. But whether 

14 those workers in fact would be --

15 DR. NETON: But they would receive a 

16 chronic exposure model.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: -- be bound by the 

18 chronic exposure model --

19 DR. NETON: Exactly.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: -- of the 95 percent 

21 of the other workers.

22 DR. NETON: That's the crux of the 

23 whole thing.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And that's the crux 

2 of the issue, but that also gets down to, I think 

3 a lot of the earlier debates we've had on sort of 

4 the subcontractors who come and go on site. And 

5 whether or not they've had these hazardous duties 

6 and whether they were exposed differently.

7 And it gets into a lot of that.

8 DR. NETON: But then what I'm seeing 

9 is, Tim is reporting that there were virtually no 

10 positive samples in this era. The 99th 

11 percentile is --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Of the routine.

13 DR. NETON: Yes.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think the 

15 dilemma I have is the same dilemma I think DOE 

16 was facing when they were given the same 

17 arguments that however, you know, and then they 

18 came up with one example.

19 DR. NETON: Yeah.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: But you know, 

21 however, you know, what happens if you have 

22 transient workers who you're not going to 

23 capture, and how can you know what you don't know?
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1 DR. NETON: Well, I can't sense that 

2 there's some magic exposure potential for these 

3 job-specific people versus the 95 percent 

4 routine. I mean, I just --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm going to 

6 talk about that after lunch.

7 DR. NETON: Okay.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Because we touched on 

9 that. But I think you just can't write them off 

10 as being part and parcel to the routines.

11 I think the subs that were brought in 

12 and we had one example where they were brought in 

13 to do the higher exposure jobs, the safe 

14 exposure.

15 DR. NETON: Yes. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think there's 

17 other questions where in fact they were brought 

18 in to do waste management. They were brought in 

19 to do D&D.

20 When you bring a subcontractor into a 

21 job-specific environment doing D&D, I think 

22 you're dealing with a spectrum of source terms 

23 which are unlike the typical work.
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1 DR. NETON: Yes.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You're not, you know, 

3 comparing those two would be different. So I 

4 think that's the caution I would have that -- and 

5 I kind of like the words in the end guide, free 

6 advertisement there.

7 Where you're actually looking at, you 

8 know, how representative is this group to this 

9 group? And, you know, what's the substantiation 

10 of that before we go much further, that kind of 

11 thing.

12 DR. NETON: Well, and really to put 

13 the issue to rest to some degree, we do need to 

14 know the distribution of the workers that didn't 

15 leave the job-specifics.

16 Because if it turns out it's mostly 

17 DuPont people or mostly subcontractors, it makes 

18 a difference, I think, in the interpretation.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Well, I think we can 

20 somewhat address that in the next presentation of 

21 the subcontractors by just looking at the 

22 monitoring.

23 DR. NETON: Yeah.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: You know, what 

2 monitoring data is available.

3 DR. NETON: Well, I do think we need 

4 to agree that a chronic exposure model can be 

5 applied to these workers at some point. I mean, 

6 that's -- because that's what we're going to do.

7 I mean, we -- right. We are not going 

8 to do job-specific. We don't have the data to do 

9 job-specific.

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. NETON: -- RWP-specific, it's not 

12 going to happen.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And that is 

14 a key issue. Can you take the routine sampling, 

15 which is the vast majority.

16 You have lots of samples at Savannah 

17 River. Can you in fact apply this to this group 

18 or not?

19 And is the -- and I think the words 

20 you used is the relationship to the exposure, and 

21 the rest of that, is that similar enough that one 

22 can make that argument?

23 DR. NETON: Right. But if you have 
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1 no exposures recorded, then you've got to worry. 

2 And you've got to think, well, I don't know what 

3 this really means.

4 And remember, there were zero positive 

5 job-specific bioassay samples that were taken. 

6 Zero.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm sorry --

8 DR. NETON: -- all the bioassay jobs, 

9 all the job-specific bioassay samples that were 

10 taken in 1997 were zero.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: You mean resampling 

12 for that year.

13 DR. NETON: No, no. No, all the ones 

14 that they got, the 1,500 that they had --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: For '97.

16 DR. NETON: Had zero positives. 

17 That's an important point. Not the resample. 

18 The resamples were zero, but also the ones that 

19 they actually took from people that left job20 specific, were zero.

21 There was not one positive detected in 

22 that whole group in that year.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: And that's aside from 
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1 the other question, which I won't badger, which 

2 is the question of whether or not the source terms 

3 are correct. But, beyond that --

4 DR. NETON: No. But I'm just saying, 

5 --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Beyond that.

7 DR. NETON: Just let's deal with the 

8 facts as they are. You have 1,500 people that -

9 -

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

11 DR. NETON: Bioassayed job-specific 

12 samples in '97. And not one detected positive.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And we don't 

14 yet know about '96, '95, '94, '93, and '92. But, 

15 we will have some more data hopefully.

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Boy, I bet you 

17 guys are tired of listening to me talk.

18 (Laughter.)

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: So, with that being 

20 said, let's break for lunch.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, I don't know for 

22 the folks in the room, before we break, this --

23 about timing, an hour may do it.
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1 But, the folks told us earlier that 

2 came in from the hotel that they're pretty jammed 

3 up. So, it may not be that quick.

4 So I don't know whether -- is an hour 

5 enough?

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: That's fine.

7 MR. KATZ: You want to say an hour? 

8 But I don't want the people on the phone sitting 

9 here for 20 minutes waiting for you people to 

10 show up. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the buffet might 

12 be. But, you know, if you only have what we saw 

13 last night, I would agree, it's going to be tough.

14 MR. KATZ: Yeah. That's what I'm 

15 saying.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: And that's a big --

17 usually they don't a --

18 MR. KATZ: And they don't -- and they 

19 don't have the -- well, they used to, but the 

20 place has shrunk. If you take a look at the new 

21 format, it's a different place to eat.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah.

23 MR. KATZ: So they don't have -- I 
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1 don't know how that works. But anyway, what do 

2 you want to say? Do you want to --

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let's say an hour. 

4 And go --

5 MR. KATZ: Okay.

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: And we can go from 

7 there.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Or we say an hour and 

9 five minutes, that makes it a nice even 1:15.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. An hour and 15 

11 minutes. Okay.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: No, an hour and five 

13 minutes. So we start at 1:15.

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: We start at 1:15.

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. 1:15, folks on the 

16 phone. Thanks. 

17 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

18 went off the record at 12:09 p.m. and resumed at 

19 1:16 p.m.)

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, that being 

21 said, before we stopped here, I believe it was 

22 handed back off to Tim, if I'm not mistaken.

23 DR. TAULBEE: We've got subcontractor 
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1 internal monitoring data in NOCTS. 

2 All right, so one of the issues here 

3 is the incomplete subcontractor data for 

4 coworker. 

5 And I bring up that conclusion again, 

6 the SC&A concludes the bioassay data set for 

7 construction trades-worker subcontractors 

8 specifically, and CTWs generally, is demonstrably 

9 incomplete from 1989 to 1998, and likely before 

10 that time period, and does not satisfy the 

11 criteria set forth in the NIOSH draft criteria 

12 for evaluation and use of coworker data sets. 

13 And this is where the job-specific 

14 bioassay and the routine bioassay, we had that 

15 discussion just before lunch. 

16 But if the above statement is true, 

17 there should be significant incomplete data 

18 within the current claimant population. 

19 And so since the report came out, we 

20 went back to the NOCTS claimant data set and we 

21 queried NOCTS to identify workers with 

22 construction trade titles, job titles, between 

23 1991 and 1997 to try and fill in some of this 
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1 time period. 

2 And this is assuming that we talked 

3 about -- well, not so much OTIB-75 -- but this is 

4 assuming that the NOCTS data set is a random 

5 sample of all workers. 

6 These are people who have disease who 

7 have filed claims. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, I'm sorry, is a 

9 subcontractor -- given the discussion earlier, 

10 has that been tested as a random sample? 

11 DR. TAULBEE: No, we have not tested 

12 it from that standpoint. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: I know the other 

14 categories have been looked at.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, it can be.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: It can be?

17 DR. TAULBEE: It can be, but we didn't 

18 and we haven't in this case. 

19 What we did is we queried and we 

20 identified 412 claimants between 1991 and 1997. 

21 We reviewed each claim and determined whether 

22 they were a subcontractor or a prime. 

23 And so we removed all the Westinghouse 
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1 Savannah River construction trades work to leave 

2 the formerly DuPont construction trades work. 

3 So, we've just again dealing with the 

4 subcontractor population that we've been 

5 discussing all day. 

6 So, these are the people that are 

7 transient, these are the people that are coming 

8 in and leaving, coming back, leaving, et cetera. 

9 So, we removed all the electricians, 

10 millwrights, mechanics that were Westinghouse 

11 Savannah River Corporation. 

12 We kept all the Bechtel because they 

13 were the subcontractor for construction trades 

14 workers, and that was the people that Joe had 

15 also singled out as you guys did your RWPs and 

16 when you were identifying whether this was a 

17 subcontractor or not, if they were Bechtel, you 

18 were categorizing them as subcontractor. 

19 One of the interesting things in here 

20 is we started removing crane operators and 

21 riggers, and I'm like what's going on here? Well, 

22 you think about the canyons, there are canyon 

23 crane-operators and canyon riggers who were 
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1 Westinghouse operations people effectively.

2 So, they're not included here. We 

3 just did subcontractors. These are people moving 

4 in and out. 

5 We do have crane operators in this 

6 group, they're under the heavy equipment tag of 

7 Bechtel --

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: Can I ask you the 

9 question of what was it like to work with the 

10 subcontractors?

11 DR. TAULBEE: If they worked at all, 

12 we included them. If we have any verified 

13 employment at Savannah River Site for the 

14 subcontractors in this time period of '91 to '97.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: So, do you know what 

16 that spread is?

17 DR. TAULBEE: No, but we can calculate 

18 that, and you'll see that from some of the slides 

19 here that it varies. 

20 Some people were only there for a few 

21 months, some people a year. Others were there 

22 that entire span, or we had monitoring data for 

23 that entire span. 
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: How did you 

3 separate, what was the criteria to be able to 

4 separate them? 

5 Because I'm trying to put my hands 

6 around how you did that with construction with 

7 trades being on both sides, how they were 

8 separated out. What do you use?

9 DR. TAULBEE: We used their employer, 

10 whether they were a Westinghouse Savannah River 

11 Corporation employee, or whether they were 

12 Bechtel or other, MK Ferguson or some other 

13 subcontractor. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, you were using 

15 the subcontractor?

16 DR. TAULBEE: That's right. 

17 Basically, what we separated out was 

18 the Westinghouse Savannah River people from this 

19 population and left everybody else.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

21 DR. TAULBEE: So, we identified 371 

22 claimants who were subcontractors, CTWs, between 

23 1991 and 1997. 
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1 Oh, I'm sorry, I'll refer to the 

2 slides here for those of you that have them. I'm 

3 on Page 2, or 3, I'm sorry. Yes, Page 3. 

4 All right, what we found is that 340 

5 of the 371 subcontractors have some form of 

6 internal monitoring. 

7 They either have the non-tritium 

8 bioassay or an actinide bioassay, a tritium 

9 bioassay, or they have a whole-body count, an in10 vivo bioassay. 

11 During their work at Savannah River 

12 between '91 and '97, there were only 31 

13 subcontractors in NOCTS that have no internal 

14 monitoring data. 

15 Now, our premise here is that we 

16 believe monitoring data from the 340 monitored 

17 workers can be used to bound the dose to the 31 

18 unmonitored workers. 

19 These are hard numbers; these are what 

20 we're looking at, what's in NOCTS and what isn't, 

21 who was monitored and who wasn't. 

22 The distribution by craft, next slide, 

23 you'll see that the bulk of them are again 
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1 electricians, pipe-fitters, and carpenters. 

2 This is just like the report that we 

3 presented to the Board in August. When we showed 

4 the distribution; it's the same top three. 

5 The other category was larger in the 

6 -- or construction general was larger in the 

7 previous report. 

8 Here, we have a little more 

9 specificity amongst them, and so we find that the 

10 laborers, welders, heavy equipment, iron workers, 

11 drivers and slaters, painters, boiler-makers, 

12 sheet metals, millwrights. 

13 And the other category here is very 

14 small. 

15 So, we were able to categorize 

16 virtually all of them as to what their 

17 occupations were by craft for this group. And 

18 like I said, that's the same relative 

19 proportions. 

20 So, the previous one, Figure 4-2, in 

21 our other report, was a true random sample. 

22 We took all the job plans and randomly 

23 selected them, and used the help of a 
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1 statistician to randomly select those job plans 

2 and looked at those trades. 

3 Here we have a much larger population 

4 in Figure 4-2, where there's 88 people in this 

5 larger one here. We have 371. So, you can see 

6 that we're looking at two random samples, really. 

7 So, we evaluated this on a per-year 

8 basis, and the total number of workers, 1991, 

9 there's 348, 284, 250. 

10 It goes down, as you see, by year 

11 because we're getting more into modern time 

12 periods. And work was actually kind of 

13 decreasing in that time period. 

14 External monitoring, I'm looking at 

15 1991, 321 of the 348 had external monitoring; 27 

16 did not. 

17 In this time period, especially the 

18 '96 and '97 time period, if you do not have 

19 external monitoring, you do not have the 

20 potential for an internal exposure at the site. 

21 Because you would have external 

22 monitoring from the rad standpoint. 

23 Now, in the earlier years, I believe 
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1 that could also be true because they were 

2 following 54, 84, and 11, and then the RadCon 

3 manual in 1992. 

4 So, no external is a clear indicator 

5 to me that they don't have the potential for an 

6 internal. 

7 For the non-tritium bioassay, we had 

8 205, 1991, and you can see it going down, and 

9 then the tritium, you can see those numbers, 

10 whole-body count. And then they were externally 

11 monitored but no internal monitoring data. 

12 You can see on a per-year basis, we're 

13 looking at a pretty small population, 13, 6, 5, 

14 7, 8, 5, 7, going down in time. These are people 

15 who wore a badge but had no internal monitoring 

16 whatsoever. 

17 If you look at this data from the 

18 standpoint of just the externally-monitored 

19 individuals, and calculate ratios based upon 

20 that, there were 1991, 321 externally monitored, 

21 205 had non-tritium urine bioassay, 57 did not 

22 have the non-tritium bioassay, but had a tritium 

23 bioassay and/or a whole-body count. 
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1 So, this is a progressive list going 

2 down. It doesn't mean that there are just 57 

3 that had tritium bioassay. 

4 We used a hierarchy here, that there's 

5 a large number of people that have -- the top 

6 criteria for us was looking at the non-tritium 

7 bioassay or the actinide bioassay as being the 

8 most critical. 

9 And if they didn't have that, did they 

10 have any tritium monitoring? Yes. Some people 

11 who worked at the reactors would only have 

12 tritium bioassay as well as a whole-body count. 

13 Forty-six of them just had a whole14 body count. So, the percentage that was 

15 internally monitored, or the number, comes out to 

16 308. That's 95.9 percent of subcontractor 

17 construction trades workers in NOCTS have 

18 internal monitoring.

19 The numbers vary a little bit from 

20 97.8 down to 92.1 in 1997. If you look at just 

21 the in-vitro bioassay monitoring, the numbers are 

22 lower. 

23 This is just if they had a urine 
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1 sample -- either a non-tritium sample or a 

2 tritium sample. 

3 Using the same external monitoring 

4 numbers, urine numbers come down to around 81, 

5 84 percent, then they begin to drop off: 93, 94, 

6 95, 96, 97. 

7 How does this compare to the previous 

8 slide that I showed you with the -- next slide -

9 - the percentage monitored, the November 1995

10 internal assessment of the job-specific bioassay, 

11 or at least what we think was the job-specific, 

12 and how does this data compare with that? 

13 And the hashtags are the urine only, 

14 which falls right in line. If you consider all 

15 monitoring, that's the green bars up behind. 

16 That's with the whole-body counts included, and 

17 you can see this workforce is quite well 

18 monitored.

19 I drew a line here, next slide, for 10 

20 CFR 835 era. That's where the difference is. 

21 That's where it became mandatory to monitor 

22 everybody for the potential for exposure greater 

23 than 100 millirem. 
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1 So, some of the extrapolation going 

2 backwards doesn't seem to hold here, and it seems 

3 to be actually worse in '96 and '97 than what you 

4 had in earlier years, based upon what we see in 

5 NOCTS. 

6 Now, the next slide, before I show 

7 some drafts that people can follow here, is 

8 details of NOCTS internal monitoring data. I'm 

9 trying to explain a spreadsheet here. 

10 You'll see on Slide 1, which will 

11 indicate non-tritium bioassay, H3 for tritium 

12 bioassay, WB for whole-body count. And again, 

13 this is a hierarchy. 

14 And then the red would be no internal 

15 monitoring; no extern means no external; and 

16 blank red would mean external monitoring but no 

17 internal monitoring, and that's the critical 

18 group that we would be applying the coworker 

19 model to. 

20 So, going to the next slide, here's a 

21 snapshot of the spreadsheet that we've got, and 

22 I've provided the whole thing in a PDF, released 

23 out on the Advisory Board's website, under the 
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1 SEC Work Group in this particular meeting.

2 And I want to walk you through this, 

3 because if you look at the first claim that's up 

4 there, this is an individual who worked at the 

5 site in '91, '92, '93, he has no external 

6 monitoring and no internal monitoring. 

7 No external monitoring in this time 

8 period could make a case that they had no 

9 potential for internal exposures. 

10 If you look at the next individual, 

11 and again, I'm an electrician, you'll see the 

12 green of the one: '91, '92, '93, '94, '95. 

13 And the one just is simply countering. 

14 It's easier for us to work with that in a 

15 spreadsheet, but that means that they had a 

16 non-tritium bioassay, at least one, in each of 

17 those years. 

18 And many of them -- and I'll get to 

19 that in a minute -- have many more samples than 

20 just one in a particular year. 

21 The next one is a painter who has '91, 

22 '92, '93, has non-tritium bioassay. He might 

23 also have tritium bioassay as well as whole-body 
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1 count. 

2 Ninety-four, he doesn't have 

3 non-tritium bioassay, but does have tritium 

4 bioassay in '94 and '95. He might also have 

5 whole-body count. Ninety-six, he has another 

6 non-tritium bioassay; in '97, tritium bioassay. 

7 Next one, well, actually, let me jump 

8 down here to the laborer who has two non-tritium 

9 bioassay, three whole-body counts, and then in 

10 the last two years, we were informed that there 

11 was no external monitoring, meaning he couldn't 

12 go into an area.

13 The next one down, this would be a 

14 heavy-equipment operator, has external 

15 monitoring in '91, '92, '93, but no internal 

16 monitoring, and then no external monitoring in 

17 '94. 

18 This is the type of person we would be 

19 applying the coworker model to. This would be 

20 somebody who's monitored for external, no 

21 internal monitoring. 

22 Next one down is an electrician who 

23 has monitoring in '91; that was the only year of 
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1 employment. 

2 The white spaces, by the way, means 

3 they were not on site, according to the 

4 Department of Labor's verified employment. 

5 If you look at -- I want to jump down 

6 to the painter with the last two digits ending 

7 60. This would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up from the 

8 bottom.

9 You see that they were monitored from 

10 non-tritium bioassay in '91, '92, whole-body 

11 count in 1993, were not on site in '94 and '95, 

12 came back on site in '96, but were not monitored 

13 for external radiation, meaning they probably 

14 didn't go into an area that required monitoring. 

15 So, what I want to show you here is 

16 we have a PDF, and now I'm going to switch out of 

17 this one --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Before you leave 

19 that, are these a mix of job-specific and routine 

20 sampling? 

21 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Is it apparent from 

23 the data set?
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1 DR. TAULBEE: From the data set, most 

2 are listed as routine monitoring, however, not 

3 all of them are. 

4 There's times when there's others you 

5 can see with people that were involved in an 

6 incident, because they will be special. 

7 So, the 8 hours and 24 hours, you'll 

8 see that intermixed. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm just looking at 

10 the number of years involved, and in most cases, 

11 it looks like it's routine, but there's a couple 

12 cases where, obviously, it's one year and it 

13 could be routine within the year or maybe just 

14 one job sample. 

15 DR. TAULBEE: And some of these are 

16 actually -- like one of the electricians or the 

17 one with the one year. 

18 It very well could be a termination. 

19 That was their last one and the bioassay sample 

20 that we get --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, so it's a 

22 variety.

23 DR. TAULBEE: So, it's a variety, it's 
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1 a variety. It was did they have a sample in that 

2 year?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

4 DR. TAULBEE: That was all we looked 

5 at. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, now let me stop 

7 presenting this and load another sheet to show 

8 you this. 

9 MR. BARTON: If I could make a quick 

10 comment here? This is Bob Barton. 

11 So, to your question, and, Tim, you 

12 can correct me if I'm wrong, but my experience is 

13 there's no way to tell from the records whether 

14 it was routine or job-specific. 

15 You mentioned that some of the special 

16 samples because they were involved in some form 

17 of incident, but to my knowledge, there's no way 

18 to delineate which is either routine versus job19 specific.

20 DR. TAULBEE: That is true but you can 

21 see some of them that were not necessarily for 

22 special, you would actually list other, and 

23 those, I think, are some job-specifics mixed in 
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1 there. 

2 It wasn't a special sample but it 

3 wasn't listed as routine either. So, it depends 

4 upon within the claim. 

5 Can you all see this particular sheet 

6 of per-unit? Okay, good. All right, so this is 

7 all of the claimants. 

8 This is all 370, and these are sorted 

9 by claim ID and I just want to try and page-down 

10 through here, and you'll see that there are some 

11 time periods here, like on the first page, where 

12 there's no monitoring but there's also no 

13 external monitoring. 

14 And as we go down to the next page, 

15 you'll see the intermittentness, but most of the 

16 red indicate that there's no external monitoring 

17 as well. 

18 Because if you look on Page 2, well, 

19 you can't see this, can you? I've got to move 

20 over next to Dr. Lockey. Sorry. 

21 Okay, so this is all 360 claimants, 

22 scrolling back up here to the top. And you'll 

23 see that there's no external in different spots. 
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1 Again you've got individuals that have 

2 no monitoring whatsoever; these are the people 

3 that we would apply. 

4 If you look at the sheet-metal worker, 

5 the last, I guess about three-quarters of the way 

6 down the page, actually I think I can point to 

7 it. Can everybody see the pointer? 

8 Okay, here's an individual that has no 

9 monitoring data in 1991, however, he has 

10 monitoring data in '92, '93, '94, '95, and '96. 

11 We can estimate his dose, especially 

12 with non-tritium components, from that 

13 standpoint, even though he doesn't have any 

14 monitoring data. So, we wouldn't even 

15 need a coworker necessarily for that individual. 

16 Down here with this particular pipe17 fitter here, this would be a year we would need

18 monitoring data. 

19 The second, '92, we have non-tritium 

20 bioassay as whole-body count in '93 and '94. No 

21 monitoring in '95 but he has whole-body counts in 

22 '96 and '97. 

23 So, like I said, we went through this 
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1 entire grouping, 371 individuals, and as you can 

2 see, it's kind of randomly distributed who was 

3 monitored and who wasn't within this entire 

4 population. 

5 We then took the same group and sorted 

6 by craft and trade to see is there any craft or 

7 trade that is under-represented. And so this is 

8 what we have here. 

9 So, all the boiler-makers up at the 

10 top and you got the carpenters. Again, there's 

11 a few that don't have any monitoring, one in 

12 particular has no external monitoring either. 

13 You've got the drivers, concrete, the 

14 electricians, which were the bulk of the whole 

15 population, heavy equipment. 

16 Again, who is not monitored appears to 

17 be kind of randomly distributed. 

18 Insulators, iron workers, laborers. I 

19 see some laborers; there's quite a bit of red 

20 down here at the bottom, but there's also that 

21 they weren't externally monitored either, meaning 

22 no potential. 

23 Machinists, millwrights, painters, 
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1 pipe-fitters, sheet metal workers, welders. 

2 So, from this, you can see that the 

3 population that we have in NOCTS is a good 

4 representation of all the traps and trades. 

5 Those that are missing for a 

6 particular year, we believe that the other 

7 workers in that year can be used to estimate what 

8 their dose is, or estimate what their intake is. 

9 I'll go back to the presentation now. 

10 So, the PDF of all 371 subcontractor 

11 construction trades workers indicates that the 

12 lack of monitoring appears to be randomly 

13 distributed and fairly sparse, and the breakdown 

14 by craft, it didn't appear, or it didn't show 

15 that there was any particular craft that was 

16 affected in this way.

17 And from the in-vitro bioassay sorted 

18 by claim, there are over 400 pages of 

19 subcontractor bioassay data in NOCTS. And I 

20 provided a PDF for the Work Group to look at. 

21 It's on the web, and there's multiple 

22 analyses per worker. It might be easier, though, 

23 to actually let people page through this. 
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1 I printed them out as well and I'll 

2 show the PDF here, but we'll start with this and 

3 then I'll pass it down to Brad. 

4 Let me pull this up. This might take 

5 a little while because it's fairly large, it's 25 

6 megabytes.

7 But what you can see is that we're not 

8 looking at, for many of these subcontractors, a 

9 single sample a year. 

10 We're looking at multiple samples in 

11 a year, and I'll just go through the first couple, 

12 just to try and illustrate the point here that 

13 I'm trying to make. 

14 Take this first individual right here, 

15 and here you can see all of the routine 

16 monitoring. 

17 If you look at his 1991 data -- can 

18 you guys see that up on the screen? Okay. 

19 1991, he was routinely monitored for 

20 strontium and enriched uranium. So, his bioassay 

21 qualification card, just from looking at this 

22 data, would be Sr-01 and EU-01. 

23 1992, you've got strontium-90, you've 
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1 got two strontium-90s and they are about six 

2 months apart again. 

3 So, that would be a change from being 

4 monitored once a year to twice a year. 

5 Plutonium was the same way. In this 

6 particular case, it would be monitored for once 

7 a year. Enriched uranium would be monitored once 

8 per year. 

9 So, this is one individual here that 

10 I've got on this first page, this is the same 

11 individual. By the way, this is a carpenter. 

12 We've got his claim ID in the upper-right 

13 corner as well as his craft, and then you can see 

14 here in 1996, there's some americium sampling, 

15 californium, curium, strontium-90. 

16 Ninety-seven, you've got more 

17 americium, curium, californium, strontium-90, 

18 plutonium. Uranium in 1997. More americium, 

19 curium, and californium in '97, '98. 

20 So, that's the first claim that we 

21 looked at. Going on to the next one, you'll see 

22 this individual doesn't have quite as much 

23 monitoring. 
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1 But again, there's more than just one 

2 sample per year or one analysis. And you can go 

3 through all the 483 pages of this if you want. 

4 Once you get to above Claim 30,000, 

5 the Site changed their reporting methodology to 

6 us; this was around 2005, 2006. So, the printouts 

7 become a little different. 

8 These are just the non-tritium 

9 bioassays. The latter years you'll see the 

10 tritium intermixed with it. So, the claim size 

11 files become bigger from that standpoint. 

12 But my point here is that there is a 

13 lot of data in NOCTS for this population, and 

14 very few workers that are not monitored for which 

15 this data, we would apply it to. 

16 So, again, SC&A concluded that the 

17 data set subcontractors specifically was 

18 incomplete between this time period. 

19 We again disagree. We feel that the 

20 NOCTS data indicates that subcontractors were 

21 quite well monitored. 

22 When evaluated on a global scale, over 

23 90 percent of the subcontractors have some 
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1 internal monitoring data, in vivo or in vitro, 

2 over this time period. 

3 Individual data can be used to 

4 estimate personal dose for missing data from 

5 previous years without needing a coworker model 

6 for some analytes, specifically for plutonium. 

7 If they're monitoring in subsequent 

8 years and they're not showing anything positive, 

9 it's bounded as to what the initial was. 

10 For those with no internal monitoring 

11 data, NIOSH believes that the monitoring data 

12 from the 340 internally monitored subcontractor 

13 construction trades workers can be used to bound 

14 the dose to the 31 unmonitored subcontractor 

15 construction trades workers that we currently 

16 have. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Did you plan to look 

18 at the stratification? I mean, I raised that a 

19 little earlier. 

20 Is that something that's in the works, 

21 or would be something incumbent if this were to 

22 go forward?

23 DR. TAULBEE: Stratification as in?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: As in the validity of 

2 the coworker carve-out. 

3 DR. TAULBEE: It can be done. The 

4 biggest issue that we have, we have the HPRED 

5 database. So, we have all the Site's bioassay 

6 data since 1989, we have it all. 

7 The issue is that it's sorted by 

8 Social Security number. With NOCTS, we can 

9 identify who was a subcontractor and who wasn't. 

10 Within that data set, what we need is 

11 the key to access the full data set to pull out 

12 all of the others that are not NOCTS claimants. 

13 The Site has such a database and used it, I did 

14 too, when we were down there. 

15 We'd go over and we couldn't tell 

16 whether this was a subcontractor or not, and 

17 they'd pull it up, I don't know if it was a 

18 security database or what, but they could tell 

19 which contracts --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: If the contracts were 

21 --

22 (Simultaneous Speaking.) 

23 DR. TAULBEE: Right, but the reason 
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1 I'm raising it is to me that would be really the 

2 only other question about applying NOCTS, is the 

3 data set choices I don't know if the correct word 

4 is limited. 

5 But certainly that question that 

6 you've raised in other venues on this particular 

7 issue with subcontractors, particularly given the 

8 questions that have arisen in that category of 

9 workers, about whether that would come out valid 

10 or not, clearly, it's a labor-intensive thing. 

11 So, it's not something -- it's 

12 unlikely but that would be something if it were 

13 the data set of choice to apply the coworker 

14 model, that could be something that might be 

15 necessary, I think.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, Rev 4 of the 

17 coworker model that we're coming out with, it 

18 only goes through 1989, primarily because of that 

19 issue. 

20 We're exploring whether to do just 

21 NOCTS beyond that, or whether the Site could 

22 provide that other database so we can sort out 

23 who was Bechtel and who wasn't? 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we get pretty 

2 volatile after '89. That's another reason that 

3 I'm not going to guess what death might look like 

4 but it would certainly be a consideration. 

5 DR. TAULBEE: I mean, again, we're 

6 looking at a large population here for these 

7 years, and do we need to go to that step? That's 

8 up to the Work Group. 

9 If the Work Group decides we need to, 

10 we can do it. It's doable. The data is there. 

11 That's not a problem. 

12 It is going to be labor-intensive but 

13 I say labor-intensive -- the big thing will be if 

14 the Site will release the biggest thing, the 

15 security one that we used when we're down there 

16 to identify individual claims. 

17 We identified subcontractors here by 

18 going to into the claimant file and from there, 

19 we could identify who was Bechtel and who wasn't, 

20 or MK Ferguson or one of the other subs?

21 We wouldn't necessarily have to do 

22 that on the full data set if the Site provided us 

23 a data set that we could marry the two up with. 
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1 And you marry them based on the Social 

2 Security number. 

3 HPRED has the Social Security number 

4 in that data set that we were using down there to 

5 identify who it was.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: For the '90s?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, for the '90s. It 

8 was all by Social Security numbers. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: You type in the 

10 number and you got it?

11 DR. TAULBEE: Right. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: That part is 

13 manageable.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Right. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Tim, I'm looking at 

16 some of these right here, from the years '91 to 

17 '95, they're just looking at plutonium, Pu-237, 

18 238, and 239?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Then, when we get 

21 to '95, all the sudden they start bringing in the 

22 uranium and the strontium --

23 DR. TAULBEE: Strontium-90.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Strontium-90.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Most likely, they went 

3 to another area and were doing work. 

4 This is a carpenter, and one of the 

5 things that Bob was pointing out was we can't 

6 really distinguish between whether this was 

7 routine or job-specific. 

8 These can actually be job-specific 

9 that he signed in on, and which is why you've got 

10 uranium for that particular area. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, if you take 

12 a look at this, this says '95 and then you go to 

13 '96 and it's the same thing.

14 DR. TAULBEE: They're in the same 

15 area.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, it looks like 

17 the one-year sample, now the samples have 

18 increased and, check, now they're back to just 

19 plutonium.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, by the way, on this 

21 particular page, this individual just has 

22 termination samples. So, he left at that point. 

23 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.
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1 (Simultaneous Speaking.) 

2 DR. TAULBEE: And they monitored by 

3 area.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: When I looked at that, 

5 there were what looked like short-term workers 

6 included in that group, people that worked there 

7 maybe three months, six months, nine months. 

8 So, to address Joe's question about 

9 short-term workers came in and went out, if you 

10 would look at those people that worked less than 

11 a year and compared their data to those who worked 

12 longer a year, would that answer your question?

13 DR. TAULBEE: I think that would help. 

14 I think it's difficult with NOCTS, I 

15 think Bob made the point, that you can't easily 

16 distinguish; you can only surmise by the time 

17 period involved, whether it's less than a year, 

18 less than six months. 

19 I mean people that are in and out, 

20 that would be probably a better indicator. If 

21 somebody's there four years, that's almost like 

22 a routine worker.

23 MEMBER LOCKEY: So, the question is 
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1 did they hire short-term workers to come in and 

2 take care of dirty jobs? That was the question. 

3 So, if they look at this data by 

4 people who have worked there less than a year --

5 DR. TAULBEE: That would be a better 

6 set. 

7 I don't have a real good handle on --

8 when you say in and out, I don't have a good feel 

9 for what that means, whether it's in months or a 

10 year or two. 

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: A year's a reasonable 

12 -- you have to make a decision.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I think a year 

14 would be a better measure of that.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: And compare that to 

16 the people that are greater than a year or greater 

17 whatever. 

18 That would at least help address that 

19 question, whether the short-term workers were 

20 brought in to take care of a dirty job or not. 

21 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, you're probably 

22 not going to see that, but we can certainly do it 

23 from that standpoint. 
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1 Especially if you look at some of 

2 these people, if you take them to where they've 

3 got monitoring data across the whole time and 

4 then they've got some monitoring data, a break, 

5 and monitoring data again, we can certainly 

6 compare that within the set, within the data set. 

7 Where was I going with this? Sorry. 

8 The issue, though, of the dirty job is that when 

9 we say they would burn out, they're meaning 

10 external burnout. 

11 They're working in a high-level 

12 external area and so their dosimeter badge showed 

13 high external dose and they were moved out. Very 

14 few intakes, even during this time period. 

15 So, the intakes that occur especially 

16 in plutonium facilities are typically due to 

17 incidents and accidents, and those are very few 

18 and far in between. 

19 So, we can certainly look at it, I'm 

20 just betting the 95th percentiles are still going 

21 to be basically the same.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Is that just a

23 different sorting process? 
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1 I mean, we're not talking so much 

2 labor-intensive, just sorting different -- it 

3 sounds like you can get a fairly quick --

4 (Simultaneous Speaking.) 

5 It would just be interesting to see 

6 what it would look like. 

7 DR. TAULBEE: That is something we 

8 could do.

9 What are the Work Group's thoughts on 

10 do you want us to try and compare this data set 

11 to the full data set in HPRED for subcontractors? 

12 Is that required? Because if so, we 

13 need to get working on it. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I would just 

15 intercede that we haven't even had a chance to 

16 look at this. This is the first time we've 

17 actually heard of it. 

18 I would like to take a look at it. 

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: I would suggest that 

20 we look through the data sets.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I'd be interested to 

22 see it in a little more detail today.

23 DR. NETON: I've been skimming this 
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1 data and I'm having trouble finding very few 

2 positive samples, just like before. 

3 So, I don't know what the 

4 distributions look like on this at all, but 

5 they're --

6 DR. TAULBEE: I mean there are several 

7 steps, one of which would be to look at this and 

8 certainly --

9 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: That would be another 

11 look at this -- above or below the level of 

12 detection.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: There's different 

14 ways to sort the data. 

15 I would like to think you could look 

16 at all that before you would go into a labor17 intensive process, which I think is going to be 

18 essential if it turns out to be the data set of 

19 choice, just because I think that question of 

20 validity would be there in any case. 

21 But I certainly wouldn't suggest 

22 pushing that trigger until we have a chance to 

23 really get familiar with the data and be able to 
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1 know what's there and to understand if there's 

2 any other issues perhaps that ought to be 

3 addressed by the Work Group. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, and you 

5 haven't even been be able to take a look at this.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: No, so --

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: First of all, let's 

8 let SC&A take a look at the information we're 

9 seeing here today and go from there. 

10 DR. BUCHANAN: You said that it's not 

11 in our report yet.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Not yet. It's up on the 

13 SRDB though. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the PDF --

15 DR. TAULBEE: But the data is not. I 

16 mean, we did a spreadsheet and we were just 

17 tagging did they have monitoring or not.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: So, it may be a while 

19 before we actually see something that's pulled 

20 together?

21 DR. TAULBEE: But that date is in 

22 HPRED so it won't take us too much of an effort 

23 to extract it all out of HPRED. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What type of time 

2 frame are we looking to add that report in?

3 DR. TAULBEE: I'm hoping to have it 

4 before the next Board Meeting but I can't 

5 guarantee that because of just our review cycles. 

6 And this data, it takes actually reviewing that, 

7 so. 

8 So, the same, by the way, with my 

9 presentation slides, I don't know if you saw 

10 them? There's some overview in there. 

11 And that's from the Site, some of 

12 their figures. That has to be reviewed by them 

13 and we can't review that. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, so we need to 

15 get these handouts back to you?

16 DR. TAULBEE: No, you can keep them.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: We can keep them? 

18 DR. TAULBEE: I mean, you're on the 

19 project. 

20 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

21 MR. KATZ: Your records, speaking of 

22 which, when you do get these cleared, the 

23 presentations and so on, you should get them PA-
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1 cleared and 508.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm also wondering 

3 about will the court reporter be able to --

4 MR. KATZ: Well, that's okay, we'll 

5 make do with that. 

6 DR. TAULBEE: I've not identified any 

7 claimants.

8 MR. KATZ: And on one of those things 

9 you had the case number or claim number or 

10 something? In the left column?

11 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, yes.

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: Some of the short13 termers had positive results.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Did they?

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We'll look at it 

17 and we'll go from there. 

18 Tim, is that it?

19 DR. TAULBEE: That is all that I have 

20 prepared. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

22 DR. TAULBEE: I believe so. Let me 

23 make sure on my next slide, make sure we covered 
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1 that last slide. 

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Tim, that's a lot of 

3 work. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I will raise my 

5 hand and say I put E on. 

6 Again, I think I said it earlier, a 

7 lot of good work done in terms of refining what 

8 we knew from a year ago. 

9 We didn't know a whole lot but 

10 refining it down to the kind of analysis that we 

11 talked about today. 

12 But what I'd like to do, sort of as a 

13 closing discussion, is to go back to the Imp 

14 Guidelines, the Implementation Guidelines, and 

15 talk about the issue of representativeness and 

16 some of the concerns I articulated earlier in my 

17 opening presentation.

18 Because I think the discussion a few 

19 years ago which presaged this guide was, yes, we 

20 have a situations where we needed more objective 

21 discussion of what the basis of judging 

22 completeness might be, what are some 

23 considerations and how that might result in some 
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1 kind of agreement on the viability of the 

2 coworker model. 

3 And I think this is actually a good 

4 example of a situation we're in, and what I like 

5 about it is there's a lot of other considerations 

6 whether it's health physics considerations, 

7 intentional intakes, or solid program, whatever 

8 that might be. 

9 Other issues such as the available 

10 NOCTS information on what might be applied, as we 

11 just discussed. 

12 But really, coming down to how one is 

13 going to judge comparable activities and 

14 relationship to the radiation environment. 

15 Which, for this particular group of 

16 workers, where you're dealing with job-specific 

17 bioassays and a basis for why those were job18 specific bioassays, I think that's fertile 

19 ground, just to be clear on where NIOSH might see 

20 a question of representativeness or not, and 

21 whether one should apply I know you called it the 

22 chronic database. 

23 I guess I call it the routine 
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1 sampling. But I guess that might be --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, chronic 

3 exposure model.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Chronic exposure model. 

5 And this is not the classic incident-based 

6 intermittent exposure. 

7 This is more or less the -- actually, 

8 the job-specific bioassays were considered part 

9 of the routine program at Savannah River, or one 

10 facet of it. 

11 But, yet, the exposures were not only 

12 intermittent, but also targeted to specific 

13 source terms that, in some cases, were somewhat 

14 unique given the particular jobs. 

15 Or in some cases more complex because 

16 of the type of activity, whether it's D&D or waste 

17 management, whatever. 

18 And what I want to read, just to kick 

19 this off, and this comes from, and I'll cite the 

20 SRDB numbers. 

21 I think we did that already in some of 

22 the discussions, but this comes out of some of 

23 Westinghouse's policy statements from the early 
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1 '90s on the issue of trying to get it right in 

2 terms of source terms that would be reflective on 

3 RWPs for job-specific bioassays. 

4 And for the folks on the phone, I'm 

5 just going to read it, but this first one, for 

6 example -- yes, 167760 is where I'm going to 

7 start. It's the second page. 

8 And I'm going to read this for those 

9 who don't have access to the SRDB on the phone. 

10 And this is an excerpt from what is -

11 - the subject is understanding urine bioassay 

12 sampling, which is sort of a Westinghouse, if not 

13 policy statement, it's sort of an expression of 

14 practice in this particular area. 

15 It's very important, and this is a 

16 quote, it's very important to realize that being 

17 on a routine sampling program does not 

18 automatically cover the bioassay sampling 

19 requirements specified on the RWP. 

20 In fact, section 5.2.4 of 5Q1.1, which 

21 is the radiological work permit procedure used, 

22 requires that the radiological control supervisor 

23 identify the RWP bioassay requirements so that 
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1 they were consistent with what is effectively 

2 5Q1.1, which was the routine program, the in vivo 

3 and in vitro bioassay scheduling and 

4 administration. 

5 And what it goes on to say is this 

6 link between the RWP procedure and the routine in 

7 vivo, in vitro bioassay scheduling procedure was 

8 eliminated -- this is 1999 -- because routine 

9 sampling programs may not be appropriate for work 

10 involving non-routine mixes or concentrations of 

11 radioactive material. 

12 For example, a worker with plutonium 

13 or Pu-02 only on his or her RQB, is performing 

14 work requiring respiratory protection on a piece 

15 of equipment of a questionable history in 773-A. 

16 Due to the history of the facility and 

17 the experimental nature of the work performed in 

18 SRTC, this is a technical lab, there could be any 

19 number of radionuclides present on the equipment. 

20 For the sake of this example, we'll 

21 assume americium is present. 

22 Thorough characterization of the work 

23 environment will then be needed to make such a 
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1 determination. 

2 In this case, the routine program 

3 would not be adequate because it does not include 

4 americium. This is the RQB. 

5 If there was an undetected break in 

6 the integrity of the respiratory protection, and 

7 radioactive material gained access to the body, 

8 the americium would go undetected by the routine 

9 Pu sample program.

10 A job-specific sample must be 

11 requested by radiological control for americium 

12 or the individual must be on the americium 

13 program. 

14 In this case, the routine program 

15 would not be adequate because it does not include 

16 americium.

17 The key word in this type of sampling 

18 is routine, and that refers to the typical work 

19 environment encountered by a rad worker. 

20 Now I'm going to go to another SRDB, 

21 which, same time frame, this was a little 

22 earlier, 167753. 

23 And this was the subject of this 
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1 particular one, and this was dated August 13, 

2 1998, with the specification of bioassay 

3 requirements on radiological work permits. 

4 And the summary is in response to a 

5 concern over prescribing the correct urine 

6 bioassay sampling program on RWPs. 

7 Radiological control operations, RCO 

8 and health physics technology, HPT at Savannah 

9 River --

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Which page are you on?

11 DR. TAULBEE: The first page, the very 

12 front page.

13 -- are working in tandem on a pilot 

14 program to establish guidelines in determining 

15 the radionuclides of concern for urine samples in 

16 the burial ground? 

17 For facility, and this is sort of as 

18 a observation, for facilities such as 221-F-B19 Line where the source term is well defined 

20 enough, subject to change, it's not a concern to 

21 actually reflect the actual source terms. 

22 Because unless there's a major change 

23 in the facility mission, to ensure the proper 
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1 radionuclides are identified for the RWP urine 

2 sampling program, it may be necessary to perform 

3 a thorough characterization of the work 

4 environment. 

5 It is important also that this 

6 characterization be performed on a routine basis 

7 and stay current with the source term present. 

8 DR. TAULBEE: If I could interject 

9 there for just a second here, Joe. We did some 

10 interviews: Brad, you, me, and Mike back years 

11 ago down on site.

12 And they indicated that whenever there 

13 was an upset condition, contamination was found. 

14 But they did the characterization 

15 before they issued the request for the bioassay 

16 to identify which radionuclides were present. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, if I can 

18 continue? Yes, the time frame is the key here 

19 because, again --

20 DR. TAULBEE: They said it starts at 

21 '86?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the did a self23 assessment in '98, which identified the fact that 
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1 this wasn't being systematically done in terms of 

2 the actual source terms, and weren't being 

3 reflected in RWPs, as far as job-specific 

4 bioassays. 

5 And I could give you the reference to 

6 that. And actually, the procedure they put in 

7 place is the one dated March 10, 1999.

8 This is 167754, which is the actual 

9 specifications of urine bioassay requirement for 

10 radiological work permits. 

11 And if I could read from this, this is 

12 routine bioassay compliance issues led WSRC to 

13 revise the site-wide in vitro monitoring program, 

14 effective March 1, 1999. 

15 The methodology used to determine the 

16 facility radiological source terms for bioassay 

17 compliance was also identified as needing to be 

18 reviewed and updated. 

19 Historically, bioassay requirements 

20 were identified by the Radiological Control 

21 Operations, RCO organizations through facility 

22 process knowledge, i.e. safety analysis 

23 documentation, procedural guidance, and 
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1 professional judgment. 

2 The methodology discussed in the 

3 memorandum, in this memorandum was used by Health 

4 Physics Technology, HPT, to update or re-verify 

5 facility-specific radionuclides of concern for 

6 bioassay program compliance. 

7 The routine urine bioassay program is 

8 based on the premise that monitoring must be 

9 performed after the fact to verify that 

10 radioactive material is not being internally 

11 deposited in workers. 

12 Additionally, this verification 

13 process confirms that established engineered and 

14 administrative controls, its function, and its 

15 design. 

16 This concept is fundamental to regular 

17 bioassay monitoring programs and establishing 

18 guidance by the Department of Energy. 

19 SRS radiological workers performing 

20 tasks in radiological control areas, it's HTAs 

21 and ARAs and I can't remember the --

22 MR. KATZ: High contamination areas 

23 for radioactive areas.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Which usually require 

2 respiratory profession have an increased 

3 potential of receiving intake of radioactive 

4 material. 

5 These workers are placed on a urine 

6 bioassay program for the radionuclides present in 

7 the workplace, as identified by the RWP. 

8 And going back to the impetus for 

9 this, this is on 167676, which is the response to 

10 the compilation of the Price-Anderson Act 

11 amendment internal dosimetry issues. 

12 And it was an item-by-item -- I think 

13 it was 31 items but I'm not positive -- review by 

14 Westinghouse in terms of what issues applied to 

15 SRS versus other sites. 

16 And number eight on that self17 assessment, workers enrolled in incorrect routine 

18 bioassay programs is the subject. 

19 And the response by Westinghouse was 

20 this was an SRS issue, both the workers who 

21 require routine bioassay and the correct 

22 radionuclides for analysis are determined by RWPs 

23 under which they work. 
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1 Earlier this year, it was determined 

2 that some area site workers were potentially 

3 exposed to americium, but that radionuclide was 

4 not recognized as an issue when preparing RWPs 

5 for those areas. 

6 And then it goes on to say, as a 

7 result, rad hazards are now more formally 

8 documented and are both a periodic review and a 

9 method for re-evaluation is to find in these 

10 other actions to do self-assessments and to issue 

11 the policy we're talking about, which is the 

12 specification for source terms in RWPs, which was 

13 the one on March 10, '99. 

14 So, just as general background, the 

15 issue I wanted to talk about represented in this 

16 is in terms of job-specific bioassays, one 

17 concern I have is that as far as the bioassays 

18 that were taken, it's not clear to me they were 

19 necessarily representative in any case, and it 

20 may not be exclusively job-specific; it may be 

21 across the board. 

22 This gets into the enrollment issue 

23 that DOE was concerned about from site to site 
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1 that, as I said earlier, you're talking about a 

2 site that went through a lot of fundamental 

3 changes. 

4 And you had a relatively stable site 

5 that was producing Pu-238 tritium in the DuPont 

6 era. 

7 And in the '90s, it had to do a lot 

8 of D&D, a lot of environmental cleanup, a lot of 

9 waste management, and bringing a lot of short10 term workers into the K reactor restart. 

11 And you're talking about going from a 

12 very stable source term environment. 

13 The one that was very unstable, that 

14 you in fact have -- it was a very dynamic 

15 environment that you had to in fact maintain an 

16 equally dynamic characterization of what the heck 

17 you were actually handling in order to make sure 

18 that your job-specific bioassays are targeting 

19 the right radionuclides. 

20 To me, americium is maybe the tip of 

21 the iceberg. 

22 It's unclear what wasn't being 

23 monitored for, but I think another example that 
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1 came out with documentation was somebody was 

2 looking at the solid-waste management program, 

3 and all of a sudden saw curium figure in some of 

4 the documentation.

5 I said wait a minute, we're not 

6 monitoring for curium. And went back, and as it 

7 turned out, curium wasn't present without 

8 plutonium so they were okay. 

9 But that also was a flag that the 

10 characterization program wasn't keeping pace with 

11 what was a pretty changing environment on-site 

12 with new and different source terms. 

13 And I think the admonition they've had 

14 here was be careful, don't continue applying your 

15 routine program as a framework for your job16 specific bioassays in the RWPs because you're 

17 dealing with unique mixtures in some cases, and 

18 you can't do that. 

19 And they had a procedural link which 

20 I think is -- if you think of it from an 

21 administrative standpoint, if you're the RCO or 

22 the line manager and the link is that you need to 

23 refer back to the routine program to basically 
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1 identify your source term, that can certainly 

2 continue a process where you're using the same 

3 source terms even though the facility itself has 

4 changed its mission, or workers are moving from 

5 one facility to another and they might have the 

6 RQB that has radionuclide X consistently assigned 

7 to this facility. 

8 But if it's CTW, they're moving around 

9 the site, and the situation there is, is the RQB 

10 keeping up necessarily with the source terms 

11 they're experiencing at different locations in 

12 the site or not. 

13 And if you were referring 835, I can't 

14 make a judgment about 835, but this certainly 

15 would have been a factor I think if this would 

16 have been identified as one of the issues 

17 because, again, you have unmonitored workers. 

18 In my view, and maybe I'm wrong about 

19 this, but this sort of reminds me of some of the 

20 issues that we looked at at other sites where 

21 neptunium was there but they were only monitoring 

22 for plutonium. 

23 And it was unmonitored exposure for 
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1 neptunium, and we looked and looked and looked at 

2 but could not find any monitoring data. 

3 There was no way to develop a coworker 

4 model for something that wasn't monitored for. 

5 And that ended up being SEC for that 

6 particular source term. And the same for other 

7 sites, mixed fission products, whatever the case 

8 may be. 

9 So, in terms of representativeness and 

10 I'll be very frank about it, my concern is whether 

11 or not, for this intermittent particular exposure 

12 category these workers are involved with, and 

13 given the circumstances of the administrative 

14 controls on how RWP reflected actual source 

15 terms, what's the confidence level that in fact 

16 you don't have unmonitored exposures due to these 

17 nuclides not being accountable. 

18 And that's the question. I don't have 

19 a good answer because there just isn't good data. 

20 You can't know what you don't know, 

21 because it was never necessarily collected. 

22 But by this procedural change and 

23 these acknowledgments I sort of touched on, I 
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1 want to put that out there as one of my concerns 

2 in looking at this particular situation. 

3 When I walked through the question of 

4 representativeness, I had a hard time getting 

5 past that particular issue. So, I'll leave it at 

6 that. 

7 DR. TAULBEE: I'd like to remind 

8 everyone that the routine monitoring program was 

9 part of their surveillance, the workplace 

10 indicators and things, the air monitoring they 

11 had going on, the contamination surveys, looking 

12 for not a particular radionuclide, but gross 

13 alpha, gross beta. 

14 The routine bioassay, the bioassay 

15 program was part of surveillance, these changes 

16 and these updates to make sure these people 

17 should be on routine americium as well are all 

18 upgrading the surveillance program from that 

19 standpoint. 

20 The doses were assigned at Savannah

21 River were based upon the special bioassay, based 

22 upon the surveillance when something happened, or 

23 they had noticed something in the routine, they 
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1 went and did --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: How would you know 

3 anything happened with americium if they weren't 

4 monitoring for it?

5 DR. TAULBEE: You get so many people 

6 at each of the facilities being monitored, and 

7 you've got airborne radioactive areas.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: But they weren't 

9 monitoring for it. I'm not saying it was 

10 something --

11 DR. TAULBEE: Contamination surveys 

12 are monitoring for alpha contamination in the 

13 area.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So, how do you know 

15 no americium would figure in that?

16 DR. TAULBEE: If you're seeing any 

17 alpha contamination, you need to follow up. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: No but, Tim, the 

19 issue is that your designing your bioassay 

20 program, for the radionuclides that have 

21 potential exposure, you would need to know that 

22 they were in fact a factor. 

23 And there's certainly no way to 
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1 establish that, unless you are looking for it and 

2 actually analyze for it. 

3 And this whole analysis that they came 

4 up with, this new approach, was a very analytic 

5 approach. 

6 I mean, if you look at the SRDB, I 

7 think it's 167754, you have a very analytic 

8 facility-by-facility approach that used ten 

9 percent I think it's ten percent of the --

10 But the point is the approach that was 

11 put in place as opposed to tribal knowledge that 

12 was passed on year to year is a approach that the 

13 actual characterization information from the 

14 site, looked at isotopic data, looked at waste 

15 certification process stream analysis data, and 

16 actually came up with a very deliberate and 

17 careful analysis of what in fact were the key 

18 contributing nuclides for what you would want to 

19 have a job-specific bioassay program designed 

20 against. 

21 And I would even go so far as to add 

22 that any bioassay program should be designed 

23 against. And this was lacking, it wasn't done 
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1 that way. 

2 It was done pretty much by line 

3 managers who had been in the facility for years, 

4 deciding that these are the things we're worried 

5 about, and that was reflected on the RWP. 

6 And that works fine if you have a very 

7 stable, contiguous program from year to year. 

8 It hardly changes, you have the same 

9 mission, but you start introducing waste 

10 management, cleanup, D&D, you have a much 

11 different environment, and that's when you have 

12 a problem. 

13 DR. TAULBEE: Well, in each of these 

14 documents you pointed out, 167760, 753, 754, the 

15 lead author or one of the authors on each of those 

16 is the same person. 

17 Can I propose that we interview that 

18 individual to find out the context of what a lot 

19 of the what-ifs that you're bringing up here, and 

20 the reasoning behind it, and find out directly 

21 from them? 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: I think I'd like to 

23 reserve that. I have the same reservations that 
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1 I had in an earlier interview and it's not 

2 anything to do with the credentials or anything 

3 else. I just want to be sure of that for now. 

4 But I want to have really the 

5 discussion that I started out with, which is the 

6 Implementation Guide puts a framework on looking 

7 at the if you want to call it routine. 

8 But we are going to apply the data 

9 set, this so-called representativeness, the 

10 relationship to the radiological source term, or 

11 however it's phrased, maybe I've got that wrong. 

12 But the whole question of does this 

13 fit the nature of the work and the source terms 

14 involved or not? 

15 I think a lot of this comes down to, 

16 it doesn't, and I have reservations, and I'm just 

17 being frank about it, and I have reservations 

18 about whether under these circumstances at this 

19 site, you necessarily have that fit or not. 

20 And maybe you can help me on that?

21 DR. NETON: Well, are you talking 

22 about -- is this post '91? Is that the time 

23 period we're talking about?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know how far 

2 back. It may very well go further back. The 

3 fact is you have a situation that's not too 

4 unheard of frankly.

5 You have very expert health 

6 physicists, veteran line managers who know their 

7 facilities and have been working the same 

8 operations for 30 years. 

9 And all of a sudden, there's some 

10 changes. 

11 Now, I would guess that it would be 

12 more pronounced after '91 because that's when you 

13 really start getting involved with new and 

14 different source terms, more so than you would 

15 have had in the past.

16 DR. NETON: But what we're really 

17 talking about here is the adequacy of the 

18 monitoring program itself. That's one of the 

19 criteria. 

20 Could the monitoring program 

21 adequately see what source terms were present, 

22 and that could have been generated? 

23 When I hear you mention it, it brings 
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1 into question some of that, but I don't know if 

2 it's a wholesale condemnation of the entire

3 program. 

4 I think it needs to be looked at a 

5 little bit closer, but I would say the one 

6 instance where an americium source term was 

7 identified doesn't mean that the program was 

8 deficient.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: No, but the 

10 implication is --

11 DR. NETON: Yes, I know, but you can't 

12 -- to take it to one extreme, I think --

13 (Simultaneous Speaking.) 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: -- careful to read 

15 what Westinghouse was saying, not try to give you 

16 my words. 

17 The question, though, is americium 

18 certainly was an example and curium as well for 

19 waste management. 

20 But the precaution about how one 

21 manages the characterization of the nuclides that 

22 go on the RWP almost precedes the actual 

23 bioassay. 
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1 DR. NETON: But you mentioned a little 

2 earlier about source term indicators and such 

3 too. 

4 I'm kind of wondering how that plays 

5 in here, where what's the likelihood that you 

6 would have only large amounts of curium without 

7 other transuranics like plutonium being present, 

8 that sort of thing. 

9 There could have been uncharacterized 

10 source terms but it would seem to me that if 

11 someone worked in a pure curium environment on 

12 something, that probably would be no. 

13 But when you're talking about mixture 

14 of isotopes where you may be underreporting or 

15 underestimating the dose.

16 DR. TAULBEE: They're not saying 

17 underestimating dose. They're not saying that.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I didn't say that.

19 DR. NETON: Careful here. I think 

20 firstly, if you monitor for plutonium and there 

21 is a curium source term there and it was 

22 unmonitored, and you are seeing no positive 

23 bioassays for any plutonium, then you've kind of 
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1 got to look at this in terms of the bigger 

2 picture. You know, what was there, what was 

3 present, and what are these additional source 

4 terms? What are their magnitude in relation to 

5 what was monitored for?

6 That would take some work. I don't 

7 think that's been looked at, at all.

8 This is a whole different issue, 

9 though, we've been talking about. This is really 

10 not just specific to subcontract workers or even 

11 construction trade workers. This is a site-wide 

12 issue.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It is interesting 

14 what's raised in the context of these bioassays 

15 supporting RWPs but, nonetheless, I don't 

16 disagree that it actually has a --

17 DR. NETON: This is a very different 

18 issue we have been talking about heretofore.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Are we going to be 

20 receiving a report basically going through what 

21 you just kind of went through, something that we 

22 can respond to?
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1 NIOSH evaluation of NOCTS subcontractor 

2 monitoring 1991-1997 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think today 

4 I just basically expounded a little bit more on 

5 what was in our presentation. But we certainly 

6 can put it in a report and we can certainly have 

7 that dialogue.

8 But what I wanted to do is just get a 

9 better feel for, and I think we are just beginning 

10 to get there, on the implementation guide. 

11 I think your point is that yes, it is 

12 a monitoring issue but it is one that may be writ 

13 large from the standpoint that you looked a 

14 little more broadly at the implications. But 

15 certainly, it gets into whether or not it would 

16 be representative to use a chronic sampling or a 

17 chronic data set to describe what this would be.

18 DR. NETON: Well, I think either way 

19 we'd use the chronic exposure model and that is 

20 something that is built in. I mean TIB-81, which 

21 SC&A reviewed and I saw no comments, it said that 

22 was an inappropriate exposure approach. We used 

23 the chronic exposure model, dpm per day intake, 
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1 based on fitting the bioassay over a number of 

2 years.

3 My concern though is, again, 

4 inadequate characterization of source term and 

5 inadequate monitoring program, which we would 

6 have to investigate. I don't think we've looked 

7 at that at all.

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: Because didn't we get 

9 into this -- well, we got into this, I believe, 

10 at a lot of the other sites. But I was thinking, 

11 I think it was Los Alamos and Rocky Flats.

12 DR. NETON: Right but where we got 

13 into those sites were specific operations, where 

14 they may have had a neptunium project going on 

15 and we didn't have any bioassay for neptunium or 

16 something like that.

17 What I am sensing here, though, is 

18 this is more about underlying source terms 

19 embedded within the operation. I think if they 

20 monitor for plutonium, I would assume, maybe I'm 

21 wrong, that there is plutonium present in that 

22 operation. But there may have been other source 

23 terms or isotopes there that weren't looked for.
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1 But again, if you look at it and say 

2 well I monitored plutonium, that was the 

3 overwhelming source term there and I see nothing, 

4 then, what do you do.

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well we got into this 

6 in Mound, too, if I'm not mistaken. We got into 

7 it on the hot cell because they would go in and 

8 they would survey for the overarching isotope and 

9 then they would rip out a piece of equipment and 

10 expose 30 to 40 years' worth of different 

11 isotopes.

12 DR. NETON: Yes, I don't remember. 

13 Mound, I think, but we came to resolution on all 

14 the issues at Mound, I know that.

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, it was an issue 

16 that we got into on that. I remember that.

17 DR. NETON: We've had issues, like I 

18 said, of specific source terms being worked on, 

19 you know thorium projects and that type of -- we 

20 had an americium operation. But I'm not clear, 

21 and this is the first I am hearing of this would 

22 be these mixed source terms that may have been 

23 not appropriately characterized.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: But apart from that 

2 issue, I mean that is certainly an issue, is it 

3 your position that the routine sampling -- the 

4 workers that were on routine sampling, their 

5 basic dose distribution, whatever, would be 

6 comparable in terms of the activity?

7 I'm just kind of looking here at the 

8 guidelines and the relationships for the job9 specific bioassays.

10 DR. NETON: I think they did routine 

11 sampling for these construction trades workers 

12 that were covered under RWPs. If they had -- you 

13 know, a chronic exposure model can be 

14 approximated by a series of acute exposures. I 

15 mean we've been down that path many times.

16 And it is my opinion that a chronic 

17 exposure model applied to those situations would 

18 bound the exposures, in particular if there were 

19 job-specific samples taken because they were 

20 considered to be more chronic in nature.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: But would you 

22 consider those specific jobs that would fall 

23 under these RWPs to be then not so unique that 
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1 they wouldn't be enveloped by what routine 

2 workers were exposed to?

3 DR. NETON: Well, I think we've already made 

4 that decision. We were stratifying the 

5 construction trades from the general operation 

6 workers, and that's already been decided, that's 

7 in the coworker model. We've already done that.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: So literally, there 

9 just isn't any distinction between what the 

10 worker -- whether the subcontractor did not 

11 perform under these RWPs in terms of job-specific 

12 bioassays.

13 DR. NETON: You mean the subcontractor 

14 versus the --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well no, I don't want 

16 to get into that stuff.

17 DR. NETON: -- the construction trade?

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the workers 

19 that were doing what could be relatively, you 

20 know, handling relatively unique source terms, 

21 whatever that may be, whatever Westinghouse 

22 described, for example, and what I read you, that 

23 could be enveloped by the experience of the 
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1 routine workers, the workers that were on routine 

2 sampling.

3 DR. NETON: The construction trades 

4 workers that were on routine sampling, which 

5 included subcontract construction trades 

6 workers.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So you're saying the 

8 in-house, whether it was DuPont or Westinghouse 

9 CTWs, that that would, in fact, envelope the 

10 workers on job-specific bioassays.

11 DR. NETON: Well, that's a different 

12 question and that remains to be seen because we 

13 still don't know of those job-specific bioassays 

14 that weren't taken what percentage were in-house 

15 --

16 DR. TAULBEE: Operations.

17 DR. NETON: -- operations and which 

18 were subcontractors. We don't know that. That's 

19 an unknown at this point.

20 DR. TAULBEE: But we do know that from 

21 the monitoring methodology, they signed in on an 

22 RWP and checked to see if they were on a routine 

23 for that radionuclide dose or not.
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1 And the fraction that needed a job2 specific bioassay is much, much less than those 

3 on the routine, which is why I feel it is 

4 encompassing that those other workers, 

5 construction trades workers that were on a 

6 routine for that radionuclide, their bioassay --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Your position is the 

8 construction trade workers, their dose 

9 distribution, whatever, would be in fact 

10 comparable and would address subcontractors.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Well, the subcontractor 

14 one as well.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I just wanted 

16 to get that clarified.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Which is another 

18 question I do have for the Work Group. 

19 We currently, in our OTIBs, OTIB-81 

20 combined DuPont construction trades workers and 

21 subcontractors. Does the Work Group feel that 

22 these need to be separated or not? Maybe that's 

23 not an issue for this Work Group. Maybe that is 
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1 for the SEC Issues Work Group.

2 But we can. It's the issue of do we 

3 need to do that.

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: I think right now, I 

5 think we've got to come down to clarifying this 

6 issue because, I'll be right honest with you, 

7 because I never got to see this either and when 

8 Joe writes it up, it will be -- I want to see 

9 this.

10 I think we have got to fundamentally 

11 figure out if they were monitoring for the right 

12 isotopes before we do anything else. And seeing 

13 that this is in their own words of where they are 

14 lacking, I think that is the biggest thing right 

15 now to be able to evaluate and be able to go from 

16 there.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Are you open to 

18 interviewing the author of each of those 

19 documents?

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let's get the write21 ups first.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

23 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let's get a feel for 
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1 where we are at and what we do. Then, we can 

2 make a decision from that standpoint there. 

3 But right now, we've got a lot of work 

4 out there. We've still got to get some papers 

5 from you and from also SC&A. But I think that we 

6 need to be able to take a look at this and be 

7 able to see what we've actually got and then I 

8 think we could make the determination if we were 

9 to go forward and then what direction to be able 

10 to go.

11 Because I'm going to be honest, I'm 

12 sitting here thinking back through the years of 

13 these issues and it's when we get to the very end 

14 of these sites that we've come to find out because 

15 correct me if I'm wrong, at Rocky Flats, we issued 

16 an SEC because they didn't monitor for what 

17 isotope was it?

18 DR. TAULBEE: Neptunium.

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Neptunium and also for 

20 Los Alamos, wasn't it?

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Mixed fission.

23 DR. TAULBEE: Lawrence Livermore was 
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1 the neptunium.

2 (Simultaneous speaking.)

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I'm sorry. A 

4 lot of these sites --

5 DR. TAULBEE: -- there are some 

6 specific examples of sites.

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 MR. FITZGERALD: U-233 was 

9 unmonitored.

10 DR. TAULBEE: But as Jim was pointing 

11 out, those were operational.

12 DR. NETON: There's specific 

13 operations where we couldn't find any monitoring 

14 data for it.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And as you just 

16 pointed out, we're not clear on what operations 

17 may or may not have lacked the source term 

18 characterization.

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay, I think we've 

20 got to be able to digest everything.

21 You know I think this has been a very, 

22 very good meeting. It's given me a headache. So 

23 it will give us a lot, but also a lot has come 
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1 out in this and we have got an awful lot to be 

2 able to digest and get a good feeling for where 

3 we're really at is my opinion.

4 I think that we've got -- each side 

5 has several things that we need to be able to 

6 produce to be able to give to us. And I think 

7 that's where we need to be able to go to and then 

8 evaluate where we're at because I'd like to have 

9 a write-up from SC&A on this. And I'd also, Tim, 

10 you've got a write-up for the paper that you have 

11 there that we still need to be able to get.

12 And I think that's where we need to 

13 get to first and then be able to decide from that 

14 point forward where we need to go.

15 DR. TAULBEE: For the upcoming Board 

16 meeting at Savannah River is on the agenda, what 

17 do you want from us to present?

18 Do you want me to condense this down 

19 into a shorter presentation?

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes.

21 (Laughter.)

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: No. You know what? 

23 You guys -- we don't have four and a half hours 
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1 to be able to do this. And you'll be leaving 

2 before then.

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: No, I won't be 

4 leaving.

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: Oh, you won't leave in 

6 the middle of it?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: I will stay.

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I don't --

9 everybody got a chuckle out of that. I don't 

10 want you to think that I didn't -- it was very 

11 good but we've got to be able to condense it down 

12 enough because these other people, at any -- we 

13 have an awful lot to be able to go through and to 

14 be able to understand.

15 But I think we need to get those 

16 condensed down, both sides of it, and review it 

17 and make sure that we're bringing out the points 

18 that we want to be able to address.

19 MR. KATZ: So do we have a Joe 

20 presentation and a Tim presentation?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I think we --

22 MR. KATZ: You just want one 

23 presentation and summarize the development?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: We have a set amount 

2 of information which might be about an hour and 

3 a half agenda item. And I think we can parse out 

4 how much time is necessary.

5 I would think Tim is going to need at 

6 least an hour. I don't think I need more than 20 

7 minutes.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay. Okay, but I'm just 

9 -- but we will have two separate presentations?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I think so only 

11 because I think there is still some difference in 

12 perspectives that ought to be conveyed.

13 MR. KATZ: Do you want Tim then to 

14 kick off and you to follow?

15 MR. FITZGERALD: That's fine.

16 MR. KATZ: Whoever wants to set the 

17 stage.

18 DR. TAULBEE: I think maybe for a half 

19 hour to a 45-minute presentation to allow some 

20 questions.

21 MR. KATZ: Yes, absolutely.

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well you're going to 

23 have some questions, I can guarantee it.
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1 DR. NETON: I'd like to be able to 

2 distill this a little bit.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, well --

4 (Simultaneous speaking.)

5 DR. NETON: No, but I mean not just 

6 to distill Tim's presentation but, is there any 

7 common points of agreement here?

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm going to have to 

9 go back to your seven points and look at those 

10 seven points you gave.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: How much time do we 

12 have? Yes, I agree. How much time do we have to 

13 kind of massage this back and forth?

14 I mean I do think we can identify 

15 areas of agreement and maybe highlight where we 

16 still have issues.

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: I think that would be 

18 the best thing.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be more 

20 coherent.

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: I mean just to go over 

22 both of these presentations again --

23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: -- with the Work 

2 Group involved, meaning you and Brad, and 

3 whomever, just so you can see what's going back 

4 and forth. And then come up with -- you know, 

5 maybe come up with one presentation. That might 

6 be a heck of a lot easier for people to digest 

7 instead of having two more.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, because I think you 

9 can agree on what you agree on. I think you can 

10 also agree on what you don't. And that can all 

11 be distilled in one presentation.

12 Tim has more material, I think, so he 

13 ought to kick it off.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I would be fine 

15 having Tim articulate where things stand now, as 

16 long as we have a chance to go ahead and --

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm not sure we 

18 understand.

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: What you're saying, 

20 Jim, is let's go over the seven points right now.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, I want to see 

22 where Joe and Tim, where they agree or don't agree 

23 on these seven points.
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let me make sure of -

2 - are you flying? Am I the only one flying out?

3 MR. KATZ: I'm flying out, too. We're 

4 flying out.

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: What time?

6 MR. KATZ: So I'm flying out at 

7 something like 4:30.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think it is 

9 important to do this.

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think we have a few 

11 minutes, right?

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let's go --

13 MR. KATZ: Yes, it's still not 3:00 

14 yet.

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let's go through this 

16 and figure out exactly -- because we have gone 

17 through an awful lot here.

18 MEMBER LOCKEY: We really have.

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: So let's go back 

20 through. As you said Jim, let's go through these 

21 --

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: SC&A concerns, their 

23 seven concerns.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, do you mind if I 

2 lead off? Okay.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, go ahead.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Workers who performed 

5 work at Savannah River under RWP-required job6 specific bioassays have substantially incomplete 

7 monitoring data. Intakes may have occurred and 

8 been missed for transient workers.

9 I think we have demonstrated that the 

10 job-specific bioassay -- this is the last slide 

11 -- the job-specific bioassays were just part of 

12 that routine monitoring program.

13 So I don't think that that is a --

14 that the data is substantially incomplete.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I would take out 

16 substantially because I think that is a judgment 

17 adjective.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: But I still would 

20 claim that --

21 DR. TAULBEE: I would agree that there 

22 is --

23 MR. FITZGERALD: -- incomplete 
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1 monitoring data, intakes may have occurred, and 

2 we still have the issue that for transient 

3 subcontractors, given the lack of accountable 

4 termination bioassay at the time, that they might 

5 have been missed.

6 So I think as a -- and of course, you 

7 wouldn't be working on a coworker model unless 

8 you were dealing with missing data. Otherwise, 

9 you wouldn't be here, right?

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: So I think the first 

12 one is just basically acknowledging that we do 

13 have missing data and intakes may have occurred, 

14 without getting into the likelihood, but that may 

15 have occurred.

16 So if we can agree on that, taking out 

17 substantially, I think, in retrospect that gets 

18 into a lot of --

19 DR. TAULBEE: You know there could be 

20 a lot of other issues that would affect our 

21 coworker but these job-specific bioassays 

22 missing, the only open item that I see is who 

23 that population was.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

2 DR. TAULBEE: -- whether it was 

3 operations versus the other, this the only 

4 follow-up we have with that.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: I was actually taking 

6 Stu's lead and throwing it out there saying that 

7 would be a good thing to look at. I guess I --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm still in kind of 

9 the same place I was, is that we kind of think 

10 that there may be three cohorts or -- there may 

11 be two or maybe three cohorts at work. There is 

12 the prime operations people, the prime 

13 construction contracts workers, and the 

14 subcontract construction workers. Okay? Maybe 

15 three, maybe all the construction guys go 

16 together. You know that's not necessarily firmed 

17 up but maybe there are three.

18 So, and we've got a lot of bioassay 

19 monitoring. A very high percentage of people 

20 were monitored, taking an aggregate.

21 So the question then becomes of those 

22 three cohorts, is there a cohort that is 

23 particularly affected by the missing job-specific 
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1 bioassay data, such that it would call into 

2 question whether your entirety of data, the whole 

3 big mass of entirety of data is really as good as 

4 we think it is for that one cohort.

5 So that was my question about who was 

6 missing. That's the thought process. Still, the 

7 question still in my brain is that when we've got 

8 missing data, who is that? What cohort is that 

9 and does that affect our ability to do that cohort 

10 in a coworker model, given all this abundance of 

11 data we have in general?

12 So that was my question. I still have 

13 that question.

14 And then to me the other question that 

15 is open is the -- were the sources characterized 

16 appropriately, in light of what Westinghouse said 

17 in its 1998 kind of get out of jail free 

18 enforcement period, apparently that was when they 

19 prepared that.

20 So to me, those issues are the ones 

21 that are out there. 

22 DR. TAULBEE: Those are the top two. 

23 Those are the number one and two.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So to me, those 

2 are things that still need investigation. And I 

3 don't know, of the other things that we've talked 

4 about, are there more questions than those two?

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: Well, let's go through 

6 this list, then.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. All right.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: Let's go through the 

9 list.

10 DR. TAULBEE: So number one, the only 

11 follow-up here is trying to identify within the 

12 job-specific bioassay, which -- was it random 

13 across the three distributions or was it 

14 primarily one of them?

15 DR. NETON: And we're waiting to get 

16 that, right?

17 DR. TAULBEE: We are waiting for the 

18 field assessments from the site, is the data we 

19 are waiting on. They did assessments there on20 site.

21 DR. NETON: But the job-specific 

22 distribution -- the distribution --

23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: So you're going to 

2 have that next time. And then you'll look at the 

3 transient subcontractors and that's in your gray 

4 area. See if there is any difference in those.

5 MR. KATZ: What's the time frame for 

6 those reports coming?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Well what we've 

8 presented here today I hope to get out --

9 MR. KATZ: No, I mean what you're 

10 still waiting on, we just talked about.

11 DR. TAULBEE: They started working on 

12 them the last week of October.

13 MR. KATZ: But like what's the time 

14 frame? Is it months?

15 DR. TAULBEE: Typically it's less than 

16 a month.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. KATZ: Okay but close to the Board 

20 meeting time you'll be getting it.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, but I won't have it 

22 digested by then.

23 MR. KATZ: Absolutely.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: But just to clarify 

2 again, that includes what Stu was talking about 

3 in terms of the identity of --

4 DR. TAULBEE: Well, I'm hoping to do 

5 it. We're hoping to. We don't know. We haven't 

6 seen these reports.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: That really addresses 

8 number two, too, is what you're saying.

9 (Simultaneous speaking.)

10 DR. TAULBEE: The other issue that you 

11 wanted us to look at was the transient workers 

12 are kind of part-time versus what we have --

13 (Simultaneous speaking.)

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: -- and the 

15 distribution of their bioassay data.

16 I mean with a short-term transient, 

17 the guy works less than a year. And their 

18 bioassay data is markedly positive in comparison 

19 to everybody else, then that raises a red flag.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's the short-term 

22 worker effect.

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, that would be 
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1 useful to know.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, that would be 

3 useful to know.

4 DR. TAULBEE: All right. So there's 

5 two items really with number one that we need to 

6 follow up on.

7 The second bullet is the RWP jobs 

8 often differ by source terms and potential 

9 exposures from routine work. Routine monitoring 

10 data should not be used as a surrogate for missing 

11 RWP monitoring data. And this is different than 

12 that RWP issue.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: No, right. And I 

14 think this is one that Jim answered, that 

15 basically you've already committed to the 

16 coworker model approach and therefore have, in a 

17 sense, made that judgment, that in fact you can 

18 apply it.

19 I think we have some reservations 

20 about whether or not it meets the criterion, 

21 which is that the work is similar and the 

22 relationship to the source terms are the same. 

23 So that was one where I think we have a 
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1 reservation that the data set for routine workers 

2 in fact can be used as a surrogate for the job -

3 - workers with job-specific bioassays.

4 DR. NETON: No, it's not routine 

5 workers. It is routinely monitored workers --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Routinely monitored 

7 workers --

8 DR. NETON: -- who happen to be 

9 subcontract -- who happen to be construction 

10 trades workers.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

12 DR. NETON: Because we have a 

13 construction trades --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

15 DR. NETON: That was what they chose 

16 to monitor the construction trade workers by and 

17 large with routine sampling.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

19 DR. NETON: And what you're saying is 

20 can a routine sampling program be used to bound 

21 exposures for construction trade workers.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, construction 

23 trade workers that are under job-specific 
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1 bioassays.

2 DR. NETON: Well, not even that

3 DR. TAULBEE: Again, it's the RWP work 

4 and the job-specific is from a work crew, if 

5 somebody didn't have that tag on their rad 

6 qualification badge. That's what got them into 

7 the job-specific.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Rather than belabor 

9 this today, I would like to maybe continue to 

10 dialogue by email or something. I think it would 

11 be helpful and this is a pretty important point.

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: You know I'd like to 

13 go through these seven points because we are 

14 going to be rehashing this at the next meeting 

15 again and we're not going to make any progress. 

16 We have to make some decisions here, 

17 I think. Not today but what we are expecting in 

18 the next one.

19 DR. TAULBEE: So is there any follow20 up with number two that needs to be done or is it 

21 --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think there 

23 is a position that NIOSH has taken on this issue 
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1 with respect to the job -- I mean coworker model 

2 that we have reservations. I'm not sure how else 

3 I can say that about you know I think we need to 

4 --

5 DR. NETON: But this is worded 

6 differently. This is a potential exposure from 

7 routine work. By definition, construction trades 

8 workers do not have routine work. They have 

9 construction trades jobs, specific jobs. 

10 So it's not like we took the 

11 operational people and the annual bioassay and 

12 used that. We said look at all people who did 

13 construction jobs, pipefitters, plumbers --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Source terms and 

15 potential exposure from routine work.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: See that's construction 

17 trade work instead of routine work.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

19 (Simultaneous speaking.)

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Routine monitoring data 

21 from construction trades workers.

22 DR. NETON: Well routine monitoring 

23 data -- it's not routine monitoring data.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Well it is routine for 

2 CTWs. If they had a rad qualification that said 

3 twice per --

4 DR. NETON: The question is, can a 

5 routine monitoring program bound exposures to 

6 construction trades workers? That's the 

7 fundamental question and I say yes. We've 

8 already done that.

9 If we can't use routine monitoring 

10 data to bound construction trade workers' 

11 exposures, then --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And this is sort of 

13 a reflection of the admonition that Westinghouse 

14 made very clear in '99. I think we actually 

15 touched on that a little bit that was a caution 

16 that certainly don't apply the routine monitoring 

17 data to address these -- this RWP work because, 

18 in a sense, it would not necessarily fit, given 

19 the unique mixtures that you're dealing with as 

20 source terms.

21 DR. NETON: That's a different issue. 

22 That's different than saying they can use routine 

23 -- if they adequately had an adequate monitoring 
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1 program and it was a routine program, can that be 

2 applied to construction trade workers? And I --

3 we say yes.

4 Now, is a source term on construction 

5 jobs fundamentally different than operations jobs 

6 and is that captured in RWPs? That's an open 

7 question in my mind.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Well, I think

9 this is a facet of that, less so to the issue.

10 So this is more source term and 

11 potential exposures tied to those source terms.

12 DR. TAULBEE: That I have kind of down 

13 with number six, bullet six.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, that might be 

15 overlapping bullet six. But I think, again, it 

16 is the same issue, maybe restated slightly 

17 differently.

18 MR. KATZ: But we should keep these 

19 organized, otherwise it is going to get confusing 

20 for people.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Well, I think I would 

22 like to keep that, the source term and the RWP 

23 issue down under number six, where it is very 
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1 evident.

2 MR. KATZ: Okay, well, let's --

3 DR. TAULBEE: We're going to talk 

4 about inadequate source term characterization.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That's subsumed in 

6 number six, then, just to dispatch this.

7 DR. TAULBEE: So two we can --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Make that number six.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, because it's going 

10 to be picked up in six.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Number three. We're 

13 down to six items now.

14 DR. TAULBEE: We're down to three.

15 Number three, based on NIOSH's 

16 comparisons of maximum possible 95th percentile 

17 dose distributions of SRS plutonium bioassay for 

18 DuPont construction trades and subcontractor 

19 construction trades, results indicate a number of 

20 years where subcontractor bioassay is two to five 

21 times higher than DuPont CTWs.

22 This corresponds with interviews and 

23 subcontractor CTWs who indicate that they were 
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1 called in for contaminated work to save the 

2 exposure for on-site CTWs.

3 I believe this is being addressed 

4 under number one, where you specifically asked, 

5 Dr. Lockey, about the subcontractors, the 

6 transients within our Work Group.

7 DR. NETON: I don't think that's going 

8 to address this issue.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I think this is the 

10 question I was talking about, we either have two 

11 or three cohorts, right?

12 DR. TAULBEE: What did you say?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: We either have two 

14 cohorts or we have three. Either we have 

15 operations and construction or we have 

16 operations, prime construction, and 

17 subcontractors.

18 DR. NETON: That's exactly right.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: And so you were 

20 talking about the 95th percentile as they had it 

21 is not the dose reconstruction. Why do --

22 DR. NETON: We need to go back and 

23 revisit this. I have some ideas about not 
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1 presenting but reassessing the data that we have.

2 Because remember those data were the 

3 maximum possible values.

4 DR. TAULBEE: That's how we calculate 

5 time-weighted OPOS. It's a maximum possible 

6 time-weighted OPOS.

7 DR. NETON: But again, there are ways 

8 -- like that is not the way we would fit an 

9 exposure model. We would fit those data points 

10 and we fit the exposure models. Take both models, 

11 both sets combined, and then you do a model for 

12 each of the ones, it may be possible to show that 

13 there is no difference at the end of the day.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: We actually do the 

15 dose reconstruction models.

16 DR. NETON: Right.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: But if those two, just 

18 looking at the data --

19 DR. NETON: Looking at the raw data 

20 plotted.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

22 DR. NETON: Because that's not how we 

23 would --
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: So that would be the 

2 thing to do to see if we think there is two or 

3 three cohorts.

4 DR. NETON: Exactly. Would it benefit 

5 -- after we plot the data for an exposure model, 

6 is there a net benefit to construction workers to 

7 pull them out? And I don't know. 

8 It looks on paper that, yes, it is 

9 higher in a couple of years but by the time you 

10 fit these intake curves through that, you make it 

11 less than a wash because what we don't use that 

12 95th percentile, the data point, we fit the 50th 

13 and the 84th percentile of the data and then 

14 impute the 95th percentile intakes.

15 So it is a little different way. We 

16 don't use the raw data in our model.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And the concern we 

18 have here is just what was seemingly a 

19 contradiction of sorts in the presentation. And 

20 it kind of -- and I don't want to make any more 

21 of it. Actually, I used exactly the words that 

22 were in the memo.

23 So really, it is just one of 
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1 clarifying what the heck is that.

2 DR. NETON: I think your finding is 

3 well taken. I mean on paper, there are some --

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: It would depend on the 

5 way it's presented.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, we can certainly 

7 do that. Okay, we're going to follow-up on that 

8 one.

9 Question of how complete -- this is 

10 item number four. The question of how complete 

11 is complete enough. Coworker development can 

12 only be answered in the context of coworker 

13 guidelines and stratification assumptions that 

14 have been validated.

15 They guide what data sets can be 

16 legitimately applied, however, 79 percent 

17 incompleteness strains credulity.

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I had the same 

20 problem. 

21 DR. TAULBEE: I think we have 

22 established, though, the 79 incompleteness is of 

23 just job-specific bioassays and that is not 
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1 falling into one particular --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think it is an 

3 admonition that one needs to look at the 

4 incompleteness but I don't want to get into the 

5 percentages. I think, again as I said earlier, 

6 I'm not sure that's the biggest issue we have.

7 DR. NETON: Well, I think it actually 

8 gets subsumed in number one.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: It does, yes.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: The issue there, I 

12 think ends up, the one that we really hesitated 

13 to go any further on, which is just verifying 

14 that the stratification can be done from the 

15 NOCTS.

16 DR. NETON: But we've already 

17 clarified that we're not.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, from 

19 subcontractor. I think, wasn't there a question 

20 of whether anyone had done a subcontractor, or am 

21 I wrong?

22 DR. NETON: No, our coworker model has 

23 subcontractor -- I mean not subcontractor --
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1 construction trades and primes, and operations.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: So going back to what 

3 was discussed earlier, you don't see the need to 

4 go back and validate the --

5 DR. NETON: Well, I think what will 

6 happen is that will be taken care of in the bullet 

7 we just discussed. Like if we go back and do the 

8 comparison of the 95th percentiles for the 

9 coworker models and say they're in or they are 

10 not in, that's the answer.

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 DR. TAULBEE: So this is really part 

13 -- number four is part of one and three.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the solution 

15 is.

16 DR. TAULBEE: The solution.

17 In terms of -- we're on bullet five. 

18 In terms of SRS coworker model development, not 

19 just claimant data sets, likely inadequate for 

20 dose reconstruction with sufficient accuracy for 

21 construction trades workers, OTIB-75 issues 

22 identified in 2010. Stratification test yet to 

23 be performed.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think on that 

2 one, I think that's actually a source of 

3 agreement where it is OTIB-81 --

4 DR. TAULBEE: Right.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: -- that ought to be 

6 the one that should be looked at. And as I 

7 understand, again, we did not express any issue 

8 with it.

9 So I think on that one we would say 

10 there is agreement. There is not an issue, 

11 although I think I'd want to take that back just 

12 to make sure everybody salutes on that particular 

13 one.

14 MR. BARTON: Joe, this is Bob Barton. 

15 I just want to point out, I believe it was finding 

16 six. You stratify it here in construction and 

17 operations personnel but didn't really present a 

18 physical basis for that. There have been 

19 previous supports but, again, that was before we 

20 came up with OPOS. 

21 So, it's not that our review is silent 

22 on the issue of stratification --

23 DR. NETON: Well, but you said we 
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1 stratified, not whether we should or not; we 

2 already did. And I think, did we not have a 

3 meeting on this already? I know it's in the BRS.

4 DR. TAULBEE: It was in the joint SEC 

5 Issues Work Group and this one back in August.

6 DR. NETON: Yes, we discussed this 

7 issue. And I thought there was agreement from 

8 SC&A to our response, which is we felt the nature 

9 of the two populations were very different.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's what I'm 

11 saying, I think we need to go back and just make 

12 sure everyone salutes and that is the case. We'll 

13 take that action.

14 DR. TAULBEE: So, number five is SC&A. 

15 Okay.

16 Number six, this is the one where is 

17 the source term proper for the RWPs, at least 

18 that's what we're combining now.

19 So we're going to look at the RWP 

20 jobs, the proper source term. SC&A, you are going 

21 to produce the report.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

23 DR. TAULBEE: That's what Brad was 
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1 wanting on this.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But it is probably 

3 going to be something relatively brief in a memo 

4 report that alludes to this particular item.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Right and from those 

6 reports, we'll meet again and discuss as to 

7 whether we want to pursue other interviews or 

8 other information in order to look at this review 

9 and put the context in the scale that this 

10 affects.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I would comment 

12 that, certainly, the next step would be maybe 

13 official interviews but also, in terms of -- you 

14 know these are nice sort of tidbits of policy 

15 issues but really the question is sort of the 

16 operational one and what are we talking about 

17 with respect to Savannah River in terms of the 

18 source terms, whether it's waste management, D&D, 

19 certain specific operations involving off-site 

20 americium, but whatever, that may or may not have 

21 been addressed by a routine program.

22 So that's kind of -- and that's not an 

23 incident task so I put that out there and say if 
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1 you walk down there, that would be the --

2 DR. NETON: Well, there may be some 

3 operational information that could be used to 

4 sort of shortcut that, which is if they took gross 

5 alpha air samples and had a pretty good 

6 monitoring program, that would flag them to do a 

7 source term analysis prior to doing bioassay.

8 I don't know. I'm just sort of 

9 putting that out there.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

11 unpacking it and figuring out okay what was the 

12 background on that between the experts from the 

13 site, as well as documentation of these.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Number seven, time frame 

15 of monitoring gap unclear before 1997 as a worker 

16 cohort affected by the lack of job-specific 

17 bioassay.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think this is 

19 one where you have, as I understand it, some 

20 additional sampling that might be presented as 

21 far as resurveys.

22 This is the question of --

23 MR. HINNEFELD: The what now, self-
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1 assessment?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we don't know, 

3 other than '97, what it looked like going back.

4 DR. TAULBEE: We do know '95.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, '95, yes.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: And in fact --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: We didn't have '95 

8 when we looked at it before.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I think it's a fair 

10 point to mention if in fact some issue or 

11 infeasibility is confirmed in these years that 

12 were evaluated. 

13 There is that open question because 

14 the data that is available has been evaluated 

15 roughly in the '90s. And so then you have a 

16 static condition analysis, which is what we used 

17 to call the corrective action reporting. You 

18 know, when you find an upset condition, the first 

19 thing you do is the extent of condition analysis. 

20 How far-reaching is this?

21 And so that is the question then, is 

22 how far back. So that would be a remaining 

23 question, if in fact it comes to this.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And these are two 

2 questions. That question, plus the one we 

3 already discussed, which is what makes up this 

4 job-specific worker cohort. And that's what that 

5 second one is.

6 DR. NETON: And to a large extent, we 

7 will address this issue, I think.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Well, that gets 

9 us through all of them. Just to quickly recap, 

10 if I can.

11 Number one is the job-specific cohort, 

12 job-specific monitored cohort. Is there a 

13 particular cohort that dominates that particular 

14 data set: operations, construction trades, DuPont 

15 or Westinghouse construction trade cohort, 

16 subcontract construction trades.

17 Another component to that is for NIOSH 

18 to compare the subcontractor NOCTS data, the 

19 transient workers versus the full-time workers, 

20 the bioassay results from that standpoint.

21 Number two has been kind of closed but 

22 really moved to number six.

23 Number three is we are to develop an 
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1 intake model for DuPont construction trades 

2 workers versus subcontractor construction trades 

3 workers to better illustrate why we believe that 

4 there is no substantial difference between the 

5 two. Or if it does show that there is a big 

6 difference, then, we'll consider breaking that 

7 out. So that is a test that we have to do there.

8 Number four has been also moved into

9 number one and number three.

10 Number five, SC&A is to review and 

11 uncover.

12 Number six, this is the SC&A to 

13 prepare reports, which is compiling the 

14 Westinghouse reports and summarize the issue of 

15 the radiation work permits, covering the proper 

16 source terms for the areas.

17 And we don't have any tasks on that 

18 now, right?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: We need to look at 

20 that issue. 

21 DR. NETON: I mean we really don't 

22 need to wait for SC&A's report. I think we know 

23 the gist of the issue.
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Are you going to look 

2 at the --

3 DR. TAULBEE: Well, I'm going to read 

4 those reports, number one, in great detail.

5 DR. NETON: Well, I don't know. I 

6 mean one aspect is what Joe did. Joe suggested 

7 we have got to go back and look at all the 

8 possible source terms, which is a huge job.

9 The other thing is to look at the 

10 operations program and say is it somehow covered 

11 through some mechanism, such as gross alpha air 

12 samples or these other contaminants, how it's a 

13 minor constituent of the source term so that 

14 monitoring, for example for plutonium, could be 

15 used to put upper bounds on.

16 (Simultaneous speaking.)

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: And more the case of 

18 where there may be more complex is there one 

19 bioassay that would cover others.

20 DR. NETON: Yes, and how big an issue 

21 is this?

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, and that's the 

23 context.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I would start 

2 with 167754, which is the characterization plan 

3 we came up with facility by facility, which is 

4 very interesting to me because what they did was 

5 take each facility and broke it down to the 

6 operations and assigned a source term vis-a-vis 

7 operations. And that was based on ten percent 

8 dose fractions.

9 DR. NETON: Okay. So we already kind 

10 of did that groundwork.

11 WG SEC Recommendations and/or Path Forward on 

12 Discussion Items; Plans for December Board Meeting 

13 DR. TAULBEE: Well, they did it in 

14 '97. The question is how far back does it go. I 

15 mean what was the magnitude of that problem that 

16 prompted them to do that.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: This is a snapshot 

18 for '97. And you took that backwards in terms of 

19 waste management, D&D, were there any operations 

20 here.

21 DR. TAULBEE: And number seven is 

22 looking for those Westinghouse self-assessments 

23 to see if they can shed light on both that one 
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1 and number one, by the way.

2 So, that's where we are at. And I 

3 will certainly summarize this, though, in a slide 

4 to the Board for December.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, actually, can 

6 you summarize the actions for us this week just 

7 to make sure everybody's on the same page?

8 DR. KATZ: Yes, that's a good idea.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: You don't want to 

10 wait until Albuquerque.

11 DR. TAULBEE: Right, but I will also, 

12 for the report to the rest of the group, Brad, I 

13 will have a slide on these.

14 DR. NETON: Yes, this is much more 

15 manageable.

16 MR. KATZ: Can one of you locals give 

17 us a lift to the airport because we're cutting it 

18 really close at this point?

19 (Simultaneous speaking.)

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: I would want to say 

21 one thing, though. I appreciate everybody, 

22 again, and I think we really came to ground on 

23 one thing, on a lot of things today. But also, 
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1 as we are going through this and we are evaluating 

2 these source terms, because this is not the only 

3 site that, at the very end, we've got to -- that 

4 keeps in the background that if we do find that 

5 there was as source term that they were not 

6 monitoring for and we can't cover it, that's an 

7 issue. And we've got into this at numerous sites. 

8 And this is kind of why I was taken back on this.

9 Adjourn

10 So with that being said, we can 

11 adjourn.

12 MR. KATZ: We're adjourned.

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

14 went off the record at 3:06 p.m.)

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 
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1 

2 

3 

4 

5