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1

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

ROCKY FLATS PLANT WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

THURSDAY

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened in the 

Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 

2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky, at 9:00 

a.m., Mark Griffon, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MARK GRIFFON, Chairman

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*
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2

ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

TERRIE BARRIE

BOB BARTON, SC&A*

JAMES BOGARD, DCAS*

ELIZABETH BRACKETT, ORAU Team*

RONALD BUCHANAN, SC&A*

STEPHANIE CARROLL*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A*

DeKEELY HARTSFIELD, HHS*

LARA HUGHES, DCAS*

JOSH KINMAN, DCAS*

JENNY LIN, HHS

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A*

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

DAN McKEEL*

JIM NETON, DCAS

LaVON RUTHERFORD, DCAS

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team*

DAN STEMPFLEY, ORAU Team*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

*Participating via telephone
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3

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

PAGE

Welcome and roll call . . . . . . . . . . 4

WORK GROUP DISCUSSION

NIOSH Revised SEC

Evaluation Report .................... 4

SC&A Reviews on tritium ............. 78

LUNCH BREAK

SC&A Reviews on data

falsification concerns ............. 168

Petitioner Comments ................ 190

WG Plans for ABRWH

October meeting .................... 193

Adjourn .................................. 193
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 4

2 (9:02 a.m.)

3 (Roll call.)

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks, 

5 everyone, for coming. And I think we have a 

6 pretty straight-forward agenda. I hope I'm 

7 going by the agenda when I say that. We'll 

8 probably start off with a presentation from 

9 NIOSH overviewing what they've done so far on 

10 four issues, I think. Four or five issues. And 

11 then NIOSH has a couple White Papers in addition 

12 to the PowerPoint presentation. And then SC&A 

13 has at least one response document. And I think 

14 -- a couple papers, right. 

15 So I think it makes sense to start 

16 off with LaVon's presentation, give us an 

17 overview and then we'll go from there, okay?

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, this is LaVon 

19 Rutherford. And our presentation is really 

20 going to focus on the revision to, you know, what 

21 we've done and why we've decided we're going to 

22 revise our existing Evaluation Report.
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1 Some of the other items associated 5

2 with the tritium White Paper and the data 

3 falsification will actually be discussed in 

4 further when SC&A does their review of those two 

5 White Papers.

6 A little background. I don't think 

7 -- listening to the people on the phone, I'm not 

8 sure we even need much background here. I've 

9 prepared a little background just for if there 

10 was going to be people that might need to know 

11 that.

12 But we issued our Evaluation Report 

13 on September 5th of 2012. We presented the 

14 Evaluation Report in Denver on September 18th. 

15 Everyone should remember at that time our 

16 evaluation was focused on tritium exposures over 

17 the period at Rocky Flats up to 1989. And we 

18 recommended at that time for no Class to be added 

19 based on our evaluation.

20 At that time the Board made a 

21 determination that additional reviews should be 

22 done, you know, that review included classified 
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1 interviews, classified document reviews and 6

2 such.

3 On the third slide, just to make it

4 easier for people, some of the follow-up efforts 

5 that we did. We did additional data captures. 

6 We did data captures at Los Alamos National Lab, 

7 OSTI, EMCBC and DOE-Legacy Management, as well 

8 as some additional data capture at the Denver 

9 Records Center.

10 We had secure discussions, not only 

11 in Denver in November of last year, but also in 

12 Hanford this year, or this past August. We also 

13 did secure interviews and other interviews. We 

14 did some additional dose reconstruction 

15 modeling to try to fine-tune some of the tritium 

16 work, and we also looked at our analysis on the 

17 other issues.

18 As Mark had mentioned at the 

19 beginning, there were roughly four issues other 

20 than the tritium issue that we were looking at 

21 in the post-evaluation. There was some 

22 additional tritium work that we were doing, so 
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1 we had some follow-up efforts on that. 7

2 We had the evaluation of petitioner 

3 concerns. The petitioner, Ms. Barrie, brought 

4 up some potential data falsification and data 

5 invalidation that we were running down.

6 We also were looking at the 

7 U-233/thorium strikes, and I'll discuss that a 

8 little more in-depth why we went back into the 

9 U-233 and thorium strikes. Also neptunium. 

10 Neptunium became an issue at other sites and then 

11 that became an issue that we wanted to look back

12 into here. And then other thorium activities.

13 The last three items, the thorium 

14 strikes, our U-233/thorium strikes, neptunium 

15 and other thorium activities will be included in 

16 the Evaluation Report.

17 Next slide. The White Paper on 

18 tritium, just again a little background. And we 

19 issued that White Paper on June 25th. The White 

20 Paper at that time again concluded the same as 

21 the original ER did, that dose reconstruction 

22 was feasible. However, it did provide a little 
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1 refined analysis, I guess a little more precise 8

2 of what the potential chronic exposure could be 

3 to a worker.

4 And again we issued that paper on 

5 June 25th, provided it to the Work Group on June 

6 26th and to the petitioner on July the 3rd. And 

7 then we presented that to the Work Group at the 

8 Work Group meeting on July 8th.

9 There was some preliminary 

10 discussions at that time that the report had only 

11 been in the Work Group and SC&A's hands for a very 

12 short time. And so there were a few follow-up 

13 questions, but SC&A had not completed their 

14 formal review of that White Paper.

15 I'll hold off discussions about that 

16 until later on in the agenda. When SC&A discusses 

17 their review I'll discuss the follow-ups that we 

18 did as well.

19 The second White Paper that we did 

20 was the data falsification and data 

21 invalidation. Again, this was focused on 

22 issues brought up by the petitioner. We issued 
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1 that report on June 25th, and we provided it to 9

2 the Work Group on June 26th and the petitioner 

3 on July 3rd. And then again we presented that 

4 White Paper to the Work Group on July 8th.

5 Again, this was another White Paper 

6 that had only been in SC&A's hands and the Work 

7 Group's hands for a very short time. So there 

8 were a few questions that were brought up that 

9 we were doing follow-up work on, but their review 

10 was not completed yet.

11 Okay, let's jump into -- the next 

12 slide is on the U-233/thorium strikes, and this 

13 is more focused on the revision to the Evaluation 

14 Report. U-233/thorium strikes were originally 

15 vetted under SEC-0030 evaluation. We 

16 reopened this under SEC-0192 after indications 

17 that this may have occurred more than the two 

18 times previously identified. We had actual 

19 indications that we had support for possibly 

20 five, I believe, five different strikes.

21 U-233 was being evaluated for its 

22 use in the weapons program at Rocky Flats. The 
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1 problems with U-233, not only are there internal 10

2 problems with U-233 and U-232, but it also 

3 presented an external problem, the U-232, 

4 because of the progeny and the high gamma 

5 energies emitted by the progeny associated with 

6 U-232. Therefore it had an external hazard, so 

7 that presented concerns.

8 So because of that concern, a 

9 chemical process was developed called a thorium 

10 strike to remove the thorium 228 and its progeny, 

11 and basically to keep the external exposures 

12 down so the material could be worked with and 

13 they could, you know, do what they were going to 

14 do with it. Okay, next slide.

15 During the deliberations of 

16 SEC-0030, the bounding thorium dose was based on 

17 air sampling taken during the strike in 1965. 

18 So there were two strikes identified in 

19 SEC-0030. The 1965 strike was felt as bounding. 

20 The strike was considered bounding 

21 because it had the highest concentration of 

22 U-232 of the two strikes. It was roughly 50 ppm, 
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1 if I remember correctly. No credit was taken 11

2 for the ventilation, the hoods or the time 

3 limits.

4 Again, as I mentioned, the 

5 interviews that we had in documents indicated 

6 that strikes occurred other than the two 

7 previously evaluated. So our questions, 

8 knowing that there were additional strikes, 

9 were, okay, are these additional strikes, were 

10 they still bounded by the 1965 exposure? And, 

11 you know, could we verify that?

12 Other questions came up based on a 

13 recent addition of Classes at Hanford based on 

14 an inability to reconstruct doses to U-233, 

15 neptunium, thorium and highly enriched uranium.

16 Just a little background, the 

17 Hanford SEC, I believe it's number 201, added a 

18 Class up to 1983, and it was based on, as I 

19 mentioned, the U-233, the neptunium, the thorium 

20 and the highly enriched uranium.

21 We were aware that Rocky Flats had 

22 the U-233, as well as the neptunium, and so we 
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1 wanted to do a little comparison. Were these 12

2 activities similar? Were the materials' 

3 quantities similar? And how much monitoring do 

4 we have in comparison between the two?

5 Next slide. Okay, for the thorium 

6 exposures, we've come to the conclusion that the 

7 1965 bounding scenario that was in SEC-0030 is 

8 still, we believe, is the bounding scenario. We 

9 believe that because most documents indicate the 

10 U-233 was to be processed or shipped off-site 

11 prior to the 90-day period.

12 Once that hazard was recognized and 

13 in dealing with the U-233 they tried to ship the 

14 stuff offsite or process the stuff prior to that 

15 90-day period. Again, we do know that there 

16 were additional strikes, but the attempt was to 

17 limit the ingrowth.

18 Documents indicate that the 

19 concentration with U-232 did not exceed 8 ppm 

20 after 1965. As I mentioned, the 1965 

21 concentration was roughly 50 ppm, and the later 

22 years after that '65 period was around 8 ppm. It 
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1 did not exceed 8 ppm. 13

2 So we've concluded that the original 

3 scenario that was developed under SEC-0030 is 

4 still a bounding scenario. 

5 I will mention that we did have 

6 issues with the air sampling that was used in 

7 that 1965 -- or in that previous analysis. When 

8 we looked back and looked at the air sampling, 

9 we've come to the conclusion that the air 

10 sampling that was used in the previous analysis 

11 was not the right air sampling.

12 What we did, though, is we requested 

13 additional air sampling from the site and for 

14 that existing period and for the correct 

15 building. And then we used that air sampling 

16 and to revise our exposure, that exposure 

17 scenario. That'll be included in the 

18 Evaluation Report. So we came to the same 

19 conclusion, but we had to use different air 

20 sampling in doing that because we believe the air 

21 sampling originally done was not correct. 

22 Okay, the next issue associated with that, 
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1 other than the thorium strikes, the thorium 14

2 issue, was the U-233 exposures. As I mentioned, 

3 this was an issue at Hanford, and under the 

4 Hanford recommended Class we wanted to look back 

5 at this and ensure that we had a good method for 

6 identifying U-233 exposures and encompassing 

7 when needed in dose reconstruction.

8 The quantity of U-233 onsite at 

9 Rocky Flats varied from 1964 to the end of U-233 

10 operations in 1983. Again, this was being 

11 evaluated for use in the weapons program at Rocky 

12 Flats. Estimates from available documents 

13 indicate quantities could have been from 1 

14 kilogram up to 150 kilogram from 1965 through 

15 1983. The highest quantities from 1965 through 

16 1968. Bioassay data for uranium exists and a 

17 uranium coworker model exists for the period of 

18 concern. No specific bioassays associated with 

19 U-233. 

20 You know, initially, our idea was 

21 that we would use the uranium bioassay data and 

22 look at the uranium bioassay data and we would 
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1 assign the U-233 doses to anyone that had uranium 15

2 bioassay, based on the idea that if they were 

3 working with U-233 they were probably uranium 

4 bioassayed.

5 So in order to, you know, approach 

6 this, we thought we needed to come up with some 

7 type of validation or way to ensure that workers 

8 that were working with U-233 did actually 

9 receive -- did actually have uranium bioassay.

10 We have a logbook from a specific 

11 period of U-233 operations that listed names. 

12 There were 46 names of individuals that worked 

13 on the U-233 project for that specific time 

14 period in the logbook.

15 I want to make sure everyone 

16 understands that those 46 individuals, it's not 

17 reasonable to assume that those 46 individuals 

18 were the same 46 individuals that worked from 

19 1964 to 1983, but it gives you an idea.

20 We've got 46 individuals. If we 

21 could go back and we have a portion of those in 

22 NOCTS, that we can look at their internal data 
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1 sets and see if they had uranium bioassay, we 16

2 could make the assumption, okay, yes, good. At 

3 least we know -- our first step in validation is 

4 that these workers that were working on the 

5 project that are claimants had uranium bioassay.

6 Well, we went back, we have 18 of the 

7 46, believe it or not -- which is a pretty high 

8 number; I was kind of surprised -- 18 of the 46 

9 are claimants at this time. Now, of those 18 

10 claimants, though, 17 had uranium bioassay. So 

11 there is one individual that did not have uranium 

12 bioassay over the period in his file, not over 

13 any period. And we could not come up with a 

14 conclusion or a good reason why that individual 

15 did not have uranium bioassay. So that put a 

16 little hole in our initial idea of using uranium 

17 bioassay for the individuals.

18 So as I mentioned -- next slide --

19 indications that not all workers working on 

20 U-233 operations had uranium bioassay. We had 

21 this small sample set of individuals and we have 

22 one individual that did not have uranium 
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1 bioassay with no real good reason why he did not. 17

2 The problem with that is, is that 

3 forces us to assume then that all workers that 

4 we would use a uranium coworker model for, we 

5 would have to come up with a method with --

6 including the U-233 and U-232.

7 And the difficulty with that is, is 

8 that means that you're going to have a factor, 

9 an adjustment factor in doing that. And also 

10 the activities of U-233, and Jim will jump in if 

11 he needs to, associated with U-233, because of 

12 the very high specific activity similar to like 

13 plutonium, it was dealt with differently.

14 And using the uranium, standard 

15 uranium operations in support of a coworker 

16 model for that type doesn't necessarily make 

17 sense, okay? Jim, do you want to add anything 

18 to that?

19 DR. NETON: No, I think that's true. 

20 It's a different activity. I mean, it's short

21 duration projects targeted, you know, with 

22 specific activity almost equivalent to 
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1 plutonium, it's just much more active. So there 18

2 is no good reason to believe that the coworker 

3 model we established using natural uranium, 

4 depleted uranium type exposure, even HEU 

5 exposures, would be valid for those operations.

6 It's almost like a pure 

7 stratification issue. I mean, this is a purely 

8 isolated operation that, like I say, I wouldn't 

9 be convinced that the coworker models would be 

10 appropriate.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Was that the 

12 initial argument, though, was to use the 

13 coworker model?

14 DR. NETON: Yeah, and the 

15 interesting thing, there's two coworker models 

16 for Rocky Flats. There's a mass model and a 

17 gross alpha model. Well, obviously the mass 

18 model would give you ridiculous numbers because 

19 it referred to mass activity.

20 And then you would end up using the 

21 gross alpha model, the alpha urine model. But, 

22 again, that model is based predominantly on sort 
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1 of other operations that weren't necessarily 19

2 this U-233 strike activities. So what's to 

3 believe that the 50 percentile, or we use the 

4 95th percentile actually at Rocky Flats, 95th 

5 percentile, that model is valid for this other 

6 operation?

7 We also don't know that everybody 

8 was bioassay, even though there's 17 out of 18 

9 people that we knew worked on the project had 

10 bioassay samples, you always run into the 

11 situation about ancillary support work or clean 

12 up.

13 I mean, it's pretty clear that 

14 people that were directly making materials 

15 looked like they had good bioassay coverage, but 

16 after the operation's over, the clean-up crews 

17 go in, that sort of thing, you really have no 

18 idea. That's our thinking at this point on 

19 U-233.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: So DCAS management 

21 did not feel this was sufficiently accurate and 

22 quantities, activities, and available 
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1 monitoring were similar to a similar period at 20

2 Hanford where DCAS determined dose 

3 reconstruction was not feasible. Again, this 

4 is roughly the exact same time period as what we 

5 added the Class for at Hanford for similar 

6 activity.

7 Neptunium. I'm going to jump from 

8 the U-233/thorium to neptunium. General 

9 conclusion under SEC-0030, our original 

10 evaluation was neptunium was used in small 

11 quantities for research-type work and had 

12 limited exposure potential compared to uranium 

13 and thorium.

14 A determination was made to 

15 re-explore this exposure situation based on 

16 interviews and recent determinations associated 

17 with neptunium, U-233, and thorium at Hanford. 

18 Next slide, please.

19 Records indicate that neptunium was 

20 processed at Rocky Flats as early as 1962 and 

21 inventories existed until 1988. And, you know, 

22 we believe 1962 was the earliest based on what 
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1 we've seen in the neptunium processing, there's 21

2 a document that's out on neptunium processing. 

3 There could be questions on that just because it 

4 wasn't a special nuclear material until 1985. 

5 Neptunium was processed to produce 

6 pure neptunium oxide, metal, and metal alloys. 

7 The processes employed included dissolution, 

8 anion exchange, precipitation, filtration, 

9 calcination, conversion to fluoride, and 

10 reduction to metal.

11 So you basically went through the 

12 whole metal production process. So fabrication 

13 steps such as casting and rolling were performed 

14 to produce metal shapes and foils. It was also 

15 recovered from residual materials including 

16 sand, slag, crucibles, casting skulls, and 

17 alloys.

18 These residues were not only 

19 generated from operations at Rocky Flats but at 

20 Lawrence Livermore, and I believe Savannah River 

21 as well had operations that -- I know Lawrence 

22 Livermore did, but other sites provided residues 
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1 for Rocky to process. 22

2 Based on documents and inventories, 

3 it appears most work with neptunium was 

4 completed by the end of 1983. If you look at 

5 when the neptunium processing report that was 

6 done by Rocky Flats, it was done shortly after 

7 -- I think it was 1983 or '84. But it was right 

8 in that time period and operations are indicated 

9 in a past tense manner.

10 All inventories, when you looked at 

11 the NMMSS database as well as the MC&A database, 

12 there were still inventories of neptunium at 

13 Rocky Flats but they're virtually constant. I 

14 mean, they're small gram -- I mean, single gram 

15 differences, but nothing to indicate to us that 

16 there were operations past 1983.

17 Annual onsite inventories were 

18 typically maintained around 1 kilogram. And I 

19 emphasize on this that this does not address 

20 throughput. You know, if you looked at the 

21 inventory and then when we went to the NMMSS 

22 database out in Hanford, you know, they changed 
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1 over the periods that we would see, the quarterly 23

2 periods or other periods we would see, but it was 

3 typically maintained around the 1 kilogram time.

4 If you looked at it, they had, you 

5 know, the batches did not typically exceed 300 

6 grams, but there's no real way to -- how many 

7 batches actually were processed, how much 

8 material went through.

9 We didn't actually have the material sheet 

10 records where they, you know, shipped this 

11 amount out to say that, you know, there was 1 

12 kilogram throughput in a year. You know, based 

13 on what we read, it looks like there would have 

14 been significantly more than that.

15 Buildings having neptunium 

16 inventories included 371, 559, a number of 

17 buildings as you can see on the presentation. 

18 And the reason why there were a number of 

19 buildings, they had so many different little 

20 operations and methods that they were doing, 

21 little things with neptunium. So, you know, 

22 that's why it's not just in one single R&D area.
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1 Neptunium exposures, in the 24

2 neptunium processing document you will see 

3 there's a statement in there that documents 

4 indicate some early work was conducted in open 

5 hoods, but most work was performed in glove 

6 boxes.

7 So, you know, we have the early work 

8 that we know had the potential of open hoods and 

9 then later work with the glove boxes. Based on 

10 our review, neptunium exposure potential 

11 existed in every processing step including 

12 extraction and purification, 

13 hydrofluorination, reduction to metal, 

14 alloying, casting, and rolling.

15 The data that we have on neptunium, 

16 there are two bioassay samples. These were 

17 taken in 1966. One was listed as below the 

18 significant level and the other was a 0.9 dpm per 

19 24 hours.

20 And then we have gross alpha 

21 bioassay samples existed up until 1970s. What 

22 happened was, at the time gross alpha was used 
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1 as -- kind of used for workers that were working 25

2 in both uranium and plutonium areas.

3 If you remember, at Rocky, the early 

4 years at Rocky, uranium was their main focus and 

5 then shifted over to the plutonium work. They 

6 were doing the gross alpha. It allowed them to, 

7 if they had a large spike on a gross alpha they

8 could do a plutonium analysis on it to see if it 

9 was actually a plutonium exposure. It was kind 

10 of an indicator as well.

11 So workplace monitoring data, we 

12 have found no workplace monitoring data specific 

13 to neptunium operations. 

14 The reason why I pointed out the 

15 gross alpha was we looked at, you know, the 

16 initial idea was to use the gross alpha as an 

17 indicator for plutonium. If you have all your 

18 alpha-emitting radionuclides in this gross 

19 alpha sample, we ought to be able to -- if we 

20 could assume or if we had the concern that an 

21 individual worked with neptunium, we could apply 

22 that gross alpha from a neptunium exposure.
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1 The problem with that was we were 26

2 concerned that the actual analysis technique or 

3 the chemical process may have potentially 

4 stripped out the neptunium, since their focus 

5 was typically uranium and plutonium. And so we 

6 wanted to, one, go in and see if they were using 

7 a gross alpha as an indicator for exposure to 

8 other radionuclides, to other alpha emitters.

9 So we interviewed two former Rocky 

10 Flats plant employees, both of those, one who was 

11 in charge of the bioassay program from 1961 until 

12 -- and I can't remember the dates -- in the '80s, 

13 and then another who was a main player in the 

14 RADCON program itself. And we interviewed them 

15 to want to ask them, were you using the gross 

16 alpha as an indicator for neptunium? And if 

17 they said no, did the gross alpha, did you have 

18 the ability to see the neptunium in the gross 

19 alpha? 

20 When we interviewed both of these 

21 individuals, you know, both of them had concerns 

22 with being able to -- the actual neptunium 
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1 following through in the co-precipitation 27

2 process.

3 The way they, initially, up until 

4 1961, the bioassay samples, all the bioassay 

5 samples were completely ashed. And so all your 

6 alpha emitters would have stayed in that 

7 solution. But the problem with that, it took a 

8 considerable amount of time.

9 And so the individual that we 

10 interviewed actually came up with this 

11 co-precipitation process where they would 

12 basically focus the samples, and in that process 

13 -- and that individual, he said he couldn't be 

14 for sure but he questioned whether the analysis 

15 would support identifying neptunium.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Excuse me, I 

17 don't know what you mean by focus the samples.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, 

19 and I'm definitely not the best at internal 

20 dosimeters, but I will say that they were looking 

21 at, you know, uranium and plutonium mostly. So 

22 the analysis was to focus, to get the sample to 
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1 a point where it would be easier to see the 28

2 uranium or plutonium.

3 Would you agree, Jim?

4 DR. NETON: The analysis was 

5 optimized to precipitate the plutonium and the 

6 uranium, not with any concern about the ability 

7 of neptunium to also come down. It could have, 

8 but no one knows. No study was done.

9 MEMBER MUNN: So basically we have 

10 no gross alpha that is actually gross alpha?

11 DR. NETON: After certain dates.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Exactly. And 

13 it's -- well, we can't be for sure it's all gross 

14 alpha, exactly. It's kind of gross alpha for 

15 plutonium and uranium. That's what it --

16 MEMBER MUNN: And these folks who 

17 put this together didn't have any real concept 

18 of what alpha emitters they were stripping out 

19 of their sample? They're just saying they don't 

20 know.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: They don't know. 

22 It could have been in there but they don't know, 
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1 because they weren't, you know, they weren't 29

2 looking at that. And when we talked to both of 

3 them, they said, you know, we really weren't 

4 looking for that.

5 MEMBER MUNN: No, but you don't have 

6 to be looking for it.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure.

8 MEMBER MUNN: There's nothing in my 

9 education that prepares me for gross alpha not 

10 being gross alpha.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I understand.

12 DR. NETON: Well, but they had a 

13 specific chemical procedure that would bring out 

14 the plutonium and the uranium. They didn't 

15 optimize it at all for anything else, so it was 

16 optimized for precipitating out the plutonium 

17 and uranium.

18 MEMBER MUNN: When did they start 

19 this and when did they stop it, if they ever did?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, they started 

21 it in 1961 and they stopped gross alpha, period, 

22 in 1970. And our original approach was we were 
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1 going to look at using the gross alpha up until 30

2 that 1970 period, and then, if we could use that 

3 up to the 1970 period, we would look at, is it 

4 feasible to say that -- because after 1970 we 

5 really had nothing to hang our hat on.

6 But we were looking at, can we use 

7 that early period of gross alpha and say, based 

8 on engineering controls and the program, that we 

9 can extrapolate it to the later years? But 

10 there ended up being two holes with that problem, 

11 two holes with that idea, let's put it that way. 

12 One, the gross alpha we couldn't use.

13 The other end of it, when I went to 

14 Hanford and looked at the NMMSS database and 

15 looked at the inventories, the inventories 

16 didn't support that idea. Meaning that if 

17 you're going with the idea that the controls and 

18 everything are in place, it works if it looks 

19 like the operations and everything were constant 

20 and you were doing the same types of things. But 

21 there were large fluctuations in inventories 

22 after 1970 that I would struggle saying that the 
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1 activities stayed exactly the same. 31

2 MEMBER MUNN: At Rocky Flats.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: At Rocky Flats. 

4 At Rocky Flats specifically, yes. And the 

5 reason why I'm saying at Hanford -- and you guys 

6 are probably wondering. The reason we went to 

7 Hanford, Hanford now has an ability to review 

8 classified documents electronically.

9 And so these classified documents 

10 from the NMMSS database were sent to Hanford for 

11 our review electronically, and from the NMMSS 

12 database. And so I was able to look at 

13 inventories of not only neptunium, but U-233 and 

14 thorium in that classified environment.

15 MEMBER MUNN: And Rocky Flats 

16 inventories of neptunium are not adequate for us 

17 to determine a bounding dose on neptunium?

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you're 

19 saying -- are you looking at a source model, a 

20 source term model?

21 MEMBER MUNN: I'm talking about a 

22 potential source model, yes.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I'll talk 32

2 about that here in just a second, actually. And 

3 I'll be specific on that one too.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: So we have little 

6 to no personal area monitoring. Gross alpha 

7 bioassay can't be used as a viable means. We 

8 have too many different activities. And here's 

9 where I get into why a source term model is 

10 difficult.

11 You had wet, dry processes. You 

12 have many different chemical forms that you were 

13 dealing with, with the neptunium. It was alloy, 

14 it was oxide. It was, you know, nitrate 

15 solutions. And so it was many different chemical 

16 forms. And then it was processed in many 

17 different ways.

18 You know, they recovered the 

19 residues, and there wasn't a single method for 

20 recovering residues. There were three or four 

21 different methods. There were different 

22 methods for actually producing materials that 
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1 they used. 33

2 So with so many different operations 

3 and the chemical forms being different, it would 

4 be very hard to come up with a source term model 

5 that would support all these activities. Do you 

6 agree, Jim?

7 DR. NETON: Yes.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I can 

9 understand how it would be difficult to 

10 identify, for example, a minimum. But I don't 

11 understand why it would be difficult to identify 

12 a maximum, regardless of the form, regardless of 

13 the process. Neptunium is neptunium.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: I agree.

15 MEMBER MUNN: And if you have an 

16 adequate inventory, regardless of the process 

17 and regardless of the form, you ought to be able 

18 to establish a maximum. The only question that 

19 resides then is, is the maximum sufficiently 

20 bounding to be able to use it?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I agree with 

22 you. The only problem you've got is those 
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1 inventories were annual inventories. That 34

2 doesn't address throughput. It doesn't address 

3 how much -- at the end of year or end of the 

4 quarter they gave inventories of the material. 

5 That's what was listed. 

6 We don't have a mechanism. I mean, 

7 there's probably a way, I'm not sure, to go back 

8 and look at all the material shipped off-site 

9 versus all the material that came onsite to 

10 determine the throughput from the site. But 

11 that's what it would take to determine the 

12 throughput in order to come up with that bounding 

13 exposure scenario. Because you had operations 

14 that would use 300 grams, but we don't know how 

15 many times they did that, you know, over a year, 

16 because like I said, you know, they were 

17 producing material. They were getting material. 

18 They were getting residues from other sites. 

19 And so we have inventories in different, 

20 specific time periods, but we don't know the 

21 throughput between those time periods. Does 

22 that make sense?
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1 MEMBER MUNN: The probability that 35

2 it exceeded a kilogram is what?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, I just 

4 don't know.

5 DR. NETON: But if you get to a 

6 kilogram, I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot of 

7 mass, but activity-wise it's substantial. 

8 Hundreds of millicuries, I don't know, I haven't 

9 done the calculation, but the specific activity 

10 is pretty high.

11 So you have a very large amount of 

12 potential for intake from this material. It 

13 wouldn't be like if you just had a kilogram of 

14 uranium.

15 MEMBER MUNN: I understand.

16 DR. NETON: So this is not unlike 

17 what we've encountered, what I would call the 

18 exotics, at other facilities. I mean, it turns 

19 out that Rocky Flats had some exotics out there 

20 that we're not able to develop models for as 

21 well. I mean, the neptunium was not considered 

22 in the first Evaluation Report.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Tell as a little 36

2 about where they got their neptunium before or 

3 the raw material from that they processed.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: I mean, most of it 

5 was processed from residues or they received it 

6 from other sites. And it wasn't, you know, so 

7 good.

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So it was 

9 already worked on at other sites?

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, to a degree. 

11 I mean, sometimes it was worked on, you know, and 

12 sometimes they would receive it as a residue or 

13 a by-product in material, have to extract from 

14 that by-product then get it into the right form 

15 that they want to produce the metal. Okay, so 

16 they fluoride it and so on.

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So you could 

18 not rely on how much, really, was coming in 

19 because it was a residue within something else?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. And I could 

21 -- you know, if I knew what percentage of that 

22 material it came in and the quantity, and I could 
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1 come up with how much was produced, but every 37

2 shipment that comes in, doing that and trying to 

3 come up with that would be really tough.

4 That would be hard to do, I can tell 

5 you. Just because, you know, I'd have to go back 

6 and I'd find all the shipping records of every 

7 time that residues were shipped to Rocky Flats 

8 that contained neptunium, and then from that 

9 determine how much, possibly, the neptunium was 

10 retrieved from that residues and then processed.

11 And then you had neptunium that was 

12 worked on the site and had residues picked up 

13 onsite and reintroduced into the system as well. 

14 I don't know what to add to that.

15 MEMBER MUNN: It's hard to believe 

16 that all of the badging that was done and all of 

17 the bioassays that were done are worthless. It 

18 is just impossible for me to accept that nobody 

19 can say anything about all of the science that 

20 was done at Rocky Flats. It's hard to accept 

21 that. If I have to accept it, I guess I have to 

22 accept it.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: I recommend, if 38

2 you get a chance, to read the interviews with the 

3 two individuals. And these are very, I mean, 

4 well-educated, top of the line --

5 MEMBER MUNN: I understand.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- individuals. 

7 I would recommend reading those, because --

8 MEMBER MUNN: I understand.

9 DR. NETON: And neither indicated 

10 there was any intention of monitoring workers 

11 for neptunium.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: And, you know, I 

13 interviewed Leo Faust, who worked on the 

14 program, who worked out at Hanford, and I'm not 

15 one of -- I shouldn't say his name on there, 

16 should I?

17 (Simultaneous speaking.)

18 MR. KATZ: You're okay.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I interviewed 

20 Leo because working at Hanford, you know, and 

21 dealing with the same thing. And Leo said, you 

22 know, we had small operations going on with 
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1 neptunium and our focus was not neptunium. Our 39

2 focus was the plutonium work and the other work 

3 that we were doing onsite, and so -- yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But to argue 

5 Wanda's side for a change.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, did they 

8 not monitor for neptunium because they felt like 

9 it was just not that big of a hazard or that, you 

10 know, they had programs in place, that potential 

11 doses were so small? I mean, I think it --

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I would say 

13 it's probably true, but --

14 MALE PARTICIPANT: I'm not sure 

15 though. Well, maybe --

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: The problem you've 

17 got is, though, you only have two bioassay 

18 samples and one of them is positive, okay. And 

19 we know they worked in open hoods.

20 DR. NETON: You've also got to look 

21 at the monitoring programs that were in place. 

22 I mean, for example, the thorium strike 
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1 operations. If you look at that, they did some 40

2 monitoring there because they're worried about 

3 the thorium issues.

4 But, you know, their conclusions 

5 were that these were very small exposures 

6 because they didn't exceed 50 percent of the MPC. 

7 And so that was the mentality then, which was not 

8 to keep doses ALARA or, you know, worry about 

9 health endangerment, but did we exceed the 

10 maximum permissible concentration in air that a 

11 person could breathe every hour for a whole work 

12 year? I mean, so that was a slightly different 

13 mentality.

14 MEMBER MUNN: But it wasn't a 

15 reasonable mentality.

16 DR. NETON: I'm not saying it 

17 wasn't, but then if that's your monitoring 

18 mentality then how do you know why they did or 

19 did not monitor the neptunium operations? They 

20 could have said, look, this is a short duration 

21 project. It could exceed a huge amount, but 

22 it's only for ten hours so we're not worried 
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1 about it, as far as exceeding any exposure 41

2 limits. But how we would bound that I don't 

3 know. I mean, it would be a guesstimate at best.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, get 

5 through neptunium and then the other thorium. 

6 And then I have some questions on the thorium 

7 strike stuff, and then we'll go back and have 

8 some chance for questions.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, so, again, 

10 quantities and activities associated with 

11 neptunium at Rocky Flats are similar to the 

12 Hanford during the same time period, as I 

13 mentioned. Based on this, NIOSH has concluded 

14 dose reconstruction is not feasible for 

15 neptunium exposures.

16 Other thorium issues. You know, in 

17 SEC-0030, the NIOSH position was that documents 

18 supported that thorium quantities present at 

19 Rocky Flats were not in high enough quantities 

20 to contribute significant to internal dose 

21 potential. And, you know, this statement was 

22 taken out of our original evaluation.
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1 Beginning in 1952, thorium was used 42

2 onsite in quantities small enough that effluents 

3 were not routinely analyzed for thorium. 

4 Thorium quantities vary from as little as none 

5 to as much as 238 grams in a given month --

6 DR. NETON: Kilograms.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- kilograms, I'm 

8 sorry, in a given month. Okay, so zero to 238 

9 kilograms in a given month. The principle use 

10 was fabrication of metal parts from natural 

11 thorium metal and from various thorium alloys.

12 Thorium oxide might have been used 

13 as a mold-coating compound in limited 

14 experiments. And thorium compounds were used 

15 in analytical procedures. Most of the work 

16 associated with thorium during the SEC-0030 

17 evaluation was focused on specific activities 

18 that occurred in the '60s.

19 The ingot work, the thorium strike 

20 work, everything that was originally looked at 

21 was post-1960. You know, our concern was we 

22 want to look at and see -- we had indication that 
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1 thorium was onsite prior to 1960 all the way back 43

2 to 1952.

3 So based on interviews and document 

4 review, NIOSH decided to reevaluate the thorium 

5 issue, especially for the early years. We could 

6 not find any specific reports or documents that 

7 supported other activities occurring other than 

8 what were previously identified.

9 The problem we had is that we do know 

10 inventories of thorium existed back to 1952. We 

11 looked at those inventories and we've seen that. 

12 And those inventories changed. It was not just 

13 one year. I mean, it wasn't every year the same 

14 inventory type thing. The annual inventories 

15 changed at a point where it would give you 

16 indication that there was some work going on.

17 Again, we don't know what that work 

18 is, but we do have indication that there were 

19 other work going on. We know that there was 

20 things that were mentioned in the previous 

21 evaluation, that those activities could have 

22 been going on, but again we haven't seen any 
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1 additional documentation on that. 44

2 We do know that, based on the review 

3 of the NMMSS database, that thorium was pretty 

4 much nonexistent at Rocky Flats after 1971, at 

5 least from an inventory perspective.

6 And so, really, the only thing I want 

7 to say right now on the thorium is we're still 

8 looking at the early years of thorium use at 

9 Rocky Flats. We're trying to finalize our 

10 position on that.

11 Again, we have nothing that's 

12 identified, really -- I would say nothing that's 

13 really identified new activities. It's the 

14 question of with the inventories changing in 

15 those early years, which gives you an indication 

16 that there was activities going on with it, you 

17 know, what do we do with that?

18 Our revised Evaluation Report, 

19 again the current SEC Classes are from April 1, 

20 1952 through December 31st of 1966, and it's for 

21 all employees who were monitored or should have

22 been monitored for neutrons.
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1 Based on our inability to 45

2 reconstruct U-233 and neptunium, we will be 

3 recommending a Class at the October Advisory 

4 Board meeting. The parameters of that Class 

5 recommendation have not been fully determined 

6 but they will include the years previously 

7 discussed for U-233 and neptunium operations. 

8 Like I said, it may just be 1962 through 1983. 

9 We just haven't finalized this one portion.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can you go back 

11 to the slides on your next to last Other Thorium 

12 slide?

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Is that the 

14 right one?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Can you 

16 just -- I might have missed it. I might even be 

17 reading the previous slide. But can you go over 

18 that again? I mean, you're saying that --

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: What we were

20 looking for was something that said -- we were 

21 looking for documents or reports that indicated 

22 a specific other work that was going on in the 
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1 early years associated with thorium. And we 46

2 didn't find anything other than what was 

3 previously discussed in SEC-0030. There was, 

4 you know --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay, other 

6 activities.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, because 

9 the next bullet confused me.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You're saying 

12 you do have inventories?

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: We do have 

14 indication that inventories changed in those 

15 early years. And so --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you're just 

17 continuing to look for --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we're looking 

19 at this and -- there's changing in inventories. 

20 You know, do we feel like what we did under 

21 SEC-0030 is still appropriate? And that's what 

22 we're trying to finalize right now.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 47

2 Well, go ahead. Let's start with Terrie, if you 

3 have something.

4 MS. BARRIE: Okay. I just have a 

5 quick question on the other thorium issues. Our 

6 favorite, the magnesium-thorium alloy plates?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Now, the magnesium 

8 -- and I don't know if you heard me there at the 

9 very end when I said based on what's in 

10 inventory. Magnesium-thorium alloy, I doubt 

11 that it was inventoried as part those 

12 inventories, all right.

13 We have not looked -- and I will say 

14 we have that issue on our plate to look at that. 

15 But our focus over the last few months has been 

16 to get to a point where we could be ready for a 

17 meeting in October to discuss, you know, the 

18 Evaluation and the changes. 

19 So that's still on our plate. We 

20 have not had a chance to run that 

21 magnesium-thorium alloy issue down again.

22 MS. BARRIE: And I just have one 
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1 other thing if that's okay. And I don't know if 48

2 this is accurate or -- it's accurate, but if it's 

3 applicable. I have an inventory list for 

4 thorium nitrate. In 1974 there was three kilos, 

5 and 1988 there was 3.754 kilos. And I don't know 

6 if you'd like this?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I'd like to 

8 keep this.

9 MS. BARRIE: Okay, thank you.

10 DR. NETON: I mean, we do know those 

11 thorium inventories in those years. I mean, 

12 that's not in debate, really. It's really what 

13 they did with this material.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What were the 

15 activities, right.

16 MS. BARRIE: Okay, thank you.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: LaVon, can you 

18 summarize, I mean, to help my memory, but also 

19 for David, just the magnesium-thorium alloy 

20 question?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 

22 Magnesium-thorium alloy was back when we were 
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1 doing an evaluation of Dow Chemical in Madison. 49

2 And one of the operations for Dow was producing 

3 magnesium-thorium alloy.

4 And originally -- and we do have one 

5 of the main players on the line -- but originally 

6 when Dow was designated as a facility under this 

7 program, it was designated because of the 

8 uranium work that occurred at Dow in the 1957 to 

9 1960 period. Well, at the same time Dow was 

10 producing magnesium-thorium alloy. Later on it 

11 was determined that that magnesium-thorium 

12 alloy could have been used in weapons program, 

13 and because of that it was added as a covered 

14 process or covered under our program.

15 And so then the question came up 

16 that, you know, that people believe, workers 

17 believe that magnesium-thorium alloy was 

18 shipped to Rocky Flats and used at Rocky Flats. 

19 And so I know Terrie's given me at least one 

20 document in reference to this for us to look at.

21 And so the question is, is if 

22 magnesium-thorium alloy was shipped to Rocky 
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1 Flats and used at Rocky Flats, is there exposure 50

2 potential from that magnesium-thorium alloy 

3 under Rocky Flats' issue that we need to 

4 reconstruct? And so we're still running that 

5 one down.

6 DR. McKEEL: Chairman Griffon, this 

7 is Dan McKeel. Could I make a comment?

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sure, Dan. Go 

9 ahead.

10 DR. McKEEL: I just wanted to 

11 clarify the new information about 

12 magnesium-thorium that keeps this off the radar 

13 screen. So what LaVon just said is basically 

14 true about the original discussions related to 

15 SEC-0079 and Dow Madison. However, recently, 

16 within the past year, Terrie Barrie got an 

17 anonymous tip from a Rocky Flats worker who 

18 desires to be anonymous that the use of the 

19 magnesium-thorium alloy plates at Rocky Flats 

20 was specifically that it was used in, quote, "the 

21 mod center."

22 And this person said it was used in 
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1 Building 881 and it was used on Pad 903, and this 51

2 is pretty much a quote from the tipster, "to 

3 shield," or "bulletproof," I think was the term 

4 they used, "semi-trucks and railroad cars in the 

5 mod center."

6 Well, that led to a long chain of 

7 events which has included high level discussions 

8 with Department of Energy, Legacy Management, 

9 with their environmental management who has 

10 looked a little bit into classified records.

11 And also research that we've done on 

12 the Internet, where it's very easy to find under 

13 historical engineering records that as a matter 

14 of fact the mod center, which is actually -- the 

15 name of that really is the Transport 

16 Modification Center, and it was located at least 

17 for awhile in Building 440 at Rocky Flats, and 

18 in fact the HAER Library of Congress entry on the 

19 Internet clearly shows a photograph of the room 

20 in Building 440.

21 It has railroad tracks running 

22 through and a railroad boxcar sitting on the 
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1 tracks. And the legend to that, which I've 52

2 supplied to everybody -- NIOSH, the Board, the 

3 Work Group, and Terrie and I have done that --

4 clearly says that what was done in the mod center 

5 at that room is to retrofit semi-trucks and 

6 railroad cars with some kind of material.

7 Now, the HAER, which is an acronym 

8 for the Historical Engineering Records project, 

9 does not indicate exactly what material was used 

10 in Building 440.

11 However, armed with that 

12 information, which is highly specific and can be 

13 immediately confirmed right now on the Internet 

14 as giving credibility to that tip, led us to 

15 petition Department of Energy, to summarize a 

16 lot of work, to look harder, including the 

17 classified records, to verify this now even more 

18 specific information about how 

19 magnesium-thorium alloy, particularly HM 21A, 

20 HK 31A was used, and if it was used at Rocky

21 Flats.

22 And so Ms. Barrie and I have two FOIA 
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1 requests of, I would say, a large magnitude 53

2 pending with both NNSA and with DOE-Legacy 

3 Management. The fees for the search, for the 

4 first one, were originally said to have been 

5 $6,250, which we had to pay or the FOIA request 

6 would be cancelled. I appealed, and I was very, 

7 very happy that Department of Energy has decided 

8 to waive those fees.

9 So both of those FOIA requests are 

10 ongoing. And I'm really very upset, to be quite 

11 honest with everybody, that this information has 

12 been conveyed. The pictures have been 

13 conveyed. The information is very, very 

14 specific. And as far as I can see that shouldn't 

15 take a lot of effort to look into that.

16 And here I listened this morning, 

17 and specifically to hear whether that particular 

18 set of new information was going to be brought 

19 up, and it wasn't until right now when Ms. Barrie 

20 had to bring it up.

21 So I don't know where the priorities 

22 are, but I would say this is very, very old 
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1 business. I reiterate to you that we have 11 54

2 sworn affidavits from different people at Dow 

3 Madison who swore that they saw marked shipments 

4 going to Rocky Flats of truckloads of these large 

5 magnesium-thorium alloy plates.

6 And even I have wondered over the 

7 years, what in the world could you use that for? 

8 It's kind of hard to believe that that was used 

9 in a nuclear weapon, per se, or that they cut 

10 little pieces out to make little parts.

11 So those Livermore documents that 

12 led to Dow Madison being a AWE site may not have 

13 anything to do with this usage at all. 

14 However, when you hear that there 

15 was a material used to bulletproof, and we don't 

16 know whether that means actually to protect 

17 those rail cars and semi-trucks from attacks 

18 with guns and missiles or whether it actually 

19 means to shield them from the radioactive 

20 material that we do know Rocky Flats shipped away 

21 from that site by the truckloads for many years, 

22 including up to 2006 when the site was finally 
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1 decommissioned. 55

2 So that's where things stand. I 

3 really hope the Work Group, that NIOSH, and 

4 everybody, will work harder to find out --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, you're 

6 right, Dan.

7 DR. McKEEL: -- and once and for 

8 all, shed some light on that pretty clear-cut 

9 testimony from many workers.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You're right, 

11 Dr. McKeel, and thank you for adding to that, 

12 because that's why I asked LaVon to -- we're not 

13 going to lose track of this issue. But that's 

14 why I asked LaVon to give a little background, 

15 and thank you for adding that.

16 Can I ask one question, Dan?

17 DR. McKEEL: Sure.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Did the tipster 

19 give any time frames on when these activities 

20 were occurring?

21 MS. BARRIE: No, not really, no.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Not really. 
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1 All right. 56

2 DR. McKEEL: No, we don't have a 

3 handle on that.

4 MS. BARRIE: We were thrilled to get 

5 --

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yeah, no, I 

7 know, it's very specific, and you're right, and 

8 NIOSH will pull that thread, I'm sure.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I want to 

10 assure Dan that I had no intentions of glossing 

11 over the magnesium-thorium issue. That issue 

12 is on our plate, we're following it, and as I've 

13 told Terrie, that we will look into that. And 

14 later on in the discussion that would have came 

15 up.

16 DR. McKEEL: I understand that, 

17 LaVon. I simply thought it was very important 

18 to get that on the official record at this point.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, thank you.

20 DR. McKEEL: Thank you.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That was good, 

22 yes. Can I just go back to the thorium strike 
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1 information? I mean, I just wanted to get some 57

2 clarification on some things, because, you know, 

3 I think it's important that we understand -- it 

4 seems like it's definitely a change in position 

5 from what you had in the first SEC.

6 And so, you know, when I read things 

7 like you were only able to find 17 of 18 

8 claimants, I mean, I could see that presented 

9 differently saying we found 17 of 18, you know, 

10 and therefore we've got everybody monitored 

11 pretty much, you know, and the one was a 

12 supervisor and likely not involved.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, he wasn't.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I mean, I 

15 think it's important that we --

16 DR. NETON: I agree. That's a 

17 little bit confusing when it's presented that 

18 way.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

20 DR. NETON: In my mind, the idea is 

21 that you really don't know if everybody was 

22 monitored. You had no routine monitoring 
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1 program for this that we know of. They happened 58

2 to have uranium bioassay. Whether that uranium 

3 bioassay was specifically for the U-233 

4 operations or they just sort of coincidentally 

5 had uranium bioassay because they were working 

6 in an area that required it, we don't know.

7 And then you couple that with the 

8 fact that the coworker model that we have is not 

9 driven by these unique activities, this high 

10 specific activity U-233.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 DR. NETON: We also have to remember 

13 that most of our focus on the U-233 operations 

14 was the thorium strikes. That was the focus. 

15 And we really didn't pull the thread on the U-233 

16 operations, which was really more of an ongoing 

17 concern.

18 Thorium strikes occur, as you know, 

19 periodically because of the contaminant it would 

20 grow in. And whether there was two or five, you 

21 know, I don't know how many there were, but the 

22 reality ongoing was this U-233 sort of 
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1 production operation where they would make --59I 

2 don't know what they made. And I don't know how 

3 many of those operations actually occurred.

4 Do we even know how many times they, 

5 you know -- we know that it occurred in a number 

6 of buildings and it's essentially a mini --

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So we sort of 

8 overlooked that in our first --

9 DR. NETON: Exactly. You know, 

10 because the thorium strikes was really the 

11 focus.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

13 DR. NETON: But ongoing was this 

14 U-233 thing with material that has a specific 

15 activity of plutonium, so it's pretty hot stuff.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh yeah. Okay.

17 DR. NETON: Like I said, that's the 

18 idea here.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And I 

20 think that's also going to be important. I 

21 mean, when you make the presentation, and it 

22 sounds like you're going to write this up and 
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1 make your presentation at the full Board 60

2 meeting.

3 DR. NETON: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think it 

5 would be good to lay out, like, there was that 

6 previous position but,we learned, we have new 

7 information.

8 DR. NETON: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think the 

10 Board needs to understand that.

11 DR. NETON: It's such a new 

12 investigation into it. I mean, I think the 

13 original ER is probably fairly silent on 

14 reconstruction of U-233.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's right. 

16 I think you're right.

17 DR. NETON: I don't recall -- I 

18 think it was all focused on thorium strikes that 

19 involved U-233, but I raised the question early 

20 on. If I remember it, I said, well, heck with 

21 thorium strikes, how are we reconstructing 

22 U-233? And then we kept pulling that thread and 
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1 eventually it led to this, well, we don't know.61

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I just 

3 think we need to be clear. We'll come back to 

4 this.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'll make sure 

6 that's said.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Go ahead, 

8 David.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: On the 

10 neptunium, basically you have the annual 

11 inventory about kilograms. And what you said 

12 was, in terms of what was coming into the plant, 

13 that you used the word "hard." It was hard to 

14 estimate what was coming in.

15 I wonder if it was possible to sample 

16 a couple of particular years to see how much was 

17 coming in. I would be more persuaded about the 

18 inability to use sourcing if I thought that in 

19 fact a lot more was coming in than a kilogram in 

20 the course of the year. Because then the one 

21 kilogram wouldn't mean that much, or wouldn't be 

22 a good estimate of the sourcing there.
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1 And I realize there are lots of 62

2 different ways that they're using the neptunium. 

3 But, again, if I thought that there a number of 

4 years where the one kilogram represented only a 

5 small fraction of the source material that was 

6 there that year, then we really don't know 

7 anything about the neptunium.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, and one, I 

9 really don't think that's possible and I'll 

10 explain why.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: One, I don't know 

13 if you heard me mention or if I mentioned it. 

14 Maybe I was just thinking it. Neptunium did not 

15 become a special nuclear material until roughly 

16 1984-85, all right.

17 One of the documents that we read 

18 was, it said that updating the databases to get 

19 specific inventories of neptunium once it became 

20 a special nuclear material would be very 

21 difficult and we would question the accuracy.

22 Now I say that because, you know, so, 
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1 one, I have a little question with the inventory 63

2 that we already have because of that document. 

3 And the other issue is, I mean there's probably 

4 records that exist but I don't know how you would 

5 be able to take all the records for a given year 

6 of shipments coming in. You would have to break 

7 down and find out how many of those shipments 

8 have neptunium.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Because it was 

10 not listed as neptunium, it was a contaminant of 

11 something else?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: I mean, yes, it was 

13 listed as a contaminant because that's what they 

14 were getting it in to recover that neptunium, so 

15 it was listed. I just don't know that you would 

16 be able to pull together a decent number.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: LaVon, this is Joe 

18 Fitzgerald.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: The other thing I 

21 would add is that Rocky was a center almost 

22 within DOE for the processing and recycling of 
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1 neptunium. 64

2 And I think one thing that LaVon said 

3 earlier that adds to this conundrum, if you may, 

4 is that there was a myriad of activities on site. 

5 That they were, you know, not only doing 

6 fabrication of all kinds of different things 

7 whether it was foils, whether it was, you know, 

8 small items, coatings, I mean it was a whole 

9 bunch of things.

10 And they did it in all these 

11 different buildings and it really was a bunch of 

12 different activities, a large scope of 

13 activities that, you know, one would have to 

14 account for.

15 I don't think the -- certainly the 

16 quantities don't appear to be high per activity, 

17 but getting a throughput for the site is one 

18 thing. Getting a throughput for actual 

19 operations would be another thing.

20 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

21 Can I ask a question related to this issue 

22 related to trying to bound exotics that we run 
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1 into quite often? 65

2 And I recall on a number of occasions 

3 where OTIB-18 and OTIB-33 were used, where you 

4 were dealing with radionuclides, you knew that 

5 there was a good health physics program in place, 

6 and a decision is made using those OTIBs to say 

7 that well, there's a level of confidence that 

8 there might have been some exposures, but if 

9 there were any they were well below some level 

10 of MPC hours.

11 In other words I'm coming at the 

12 problem the opposite direction. Rather than 

13 trying to come up with throughput and let's say 

14 model, I know on occasion you took advantage of 

15 the fact that there was in fact a good air 

16 sampling program.

17 There was good documentation that 

18 was in place, and you would use, I think it's 18 

19 and 33, which goes to MPC hours as a way to place 

20 a plausible upper bound on any work it might have 

21 experienced. Have you considered that strategy 

22 for bounding neptunium, for example?
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1 DR. NETON: John, this is Jim. I 66

2 don't recall ever using that type of an approach 

3 for an exotic. I know we had, those documents 

4 were more specifically for routine operations, 

5 but I could be wrong.

6 But I'm not recalling anyplace where 

7 we've actually said we can bound exotics because 

8 of the air sampling programs that were in place.

9 DR. MAURO: You know what, Jim, I 

10 think you're right. My experience has also been 

11 with a more --

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 DR. NETON: You know, like uranium 

14 facilities. They had a lot of air monitors out 

15 and about the plant, and they were very careful 

16 about, you know, controlling it. But the 

17 exotics were typically, were sort of the 

18 off-normal type situations where they'd be 

19 working with, you know, this of course surfaced 

20 mostly at the National Laboratory where there 

21 would be people off working on their own.

22 (Simultaneous speaking)
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: The other thing I 67

2 would find -- this is Joe again, Fitzgerald --

3 is we wrestled the same question, I think Jim 

4 just touched on it, at Los Alamos as well as at 

5 Hanford and came up against the same kind of 

6 questions as far as how one could model, how 

7 could one take what data was there. And I think 

8 in all cases it proved to really be a big problem.

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This is Phil. 

10 I'd like to throw in one thing. Materials that 

11 weren't normally classified, I guess, as SNM, 

12 when you see a lot of these numbers that doesn't 

13 give you the whole amount, because there's some 

14 of this material could be held up in residues 

15 from the exchange columns, in salts, or just even 

16 cleaning the materials in glove boxes.

17 And since it wasn't accountable, a 

18 lot of that wasn't accountable, how much went out 

19 in waste, how much was actually recycled back 

20 through there? The number you see may be what 

21 was the final product, but they actually would 

22 have had substantially more than that at the 
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1 other end when they first started. 68

2 You know, well, Joe knows all about 

3 like the MUF accounts and stuff. I mean, when 

4 it's not accountable then nobody's really that 

5 concerned unless it's a very special material or 

6 something. So you can have a substantial, a 

7 larger quantity than what you see at the final 

8 product.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And I'd just agree 

10 with that. Yes, you find the MUF, the material 

11 unaccounted for numbers in all these inventories 

12 including neptunium.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And just 

14 to change the line of questioning a little bit. 

15 In your final slide you talked about a potential 

16 SEC. Is it just coincidental that both of these 

17 kind of, and in '83 was it just the --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, it seems 

19 coincidence, yes. It is coincidental, yes.

20 (Simultaneous speaking)

21 MR. FITZGERALD: One thing I would 

22 add -- this is Joe again -- you know, on neptunium 
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1 more than the U-233 is, clearly, the major 69

2 production operations phased out about that time 

3 but there remained an R&D and analysis function 

4 that employed neptunium beyond '83.

5 So that cut point is something that 

6 I guess one could examine when this thing comes 

7 to sort of closure, to make sure on that cut 

8 point. But I think certainly it definitely 

9 transitioned in '83.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, then what 

11 I was getting at, really, was the age-old problem 

12 I see at least for neptunium. I don't know if 

13 you did for thorium strikes but in neptunium you 

14 mentioned buildings, and so the question of who, 

15 you know --

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: How you define a 

17 Class.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is it going to be 

19 all workers? Is it going to be -- you know, and 

20 we see how much we struggle with trying to do the 

21 building kind of -- right. SECs, right.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: If you look at how 
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1 many different buildings that we've identified 70

2 between the U-233 and the neptunium, and the fact 

3 that maintenance workers moved between 

4 buildings and the work that they would have done 

5 on the glove boxes in trying to define a smaller 

6 Class, I think we've concluded it would be all 

7 employees.

8 (Simultaneous speaking)

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, because that's 

10 what I said. They're not --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I would 

12 support that, yes.

13 DR. NETON: I think we've learned 

14 from past experience that it's very difficult to 

15 administer --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We've all 

17 learned that. Okay, all right. Any other 

18 questions?

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I mean, the 

20 argument on neptunium about the operations I 

21 recognize, I mean because it just seems like the 

22 neptunium exposure is in many different forms, 
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1 right? Airborne, vapors from liquids, et 71

2 cetera, liquid intakes. I could understand 

3 that.

4 And I guess I didn't catch the 

5 argument that not just that it was hard. Hard 

6 is not a reason --

7 (Simultaneous speaking)

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Almost, but 

9 really difficult to estimate reliably, I assume, 

10 it's in there.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'll work on that 

12 portion of my presentation.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, I mean, 

14 even if I saw years where you might identify a 

15 big shipment of something where you could 

16 reasonably estimate the neptunium input into the 

17 facility and that number was far greater than a 

18 kilogram, that to me would be persuasive 

19 evidence that not only are the operations 

20 difficult, which I will accept, but that the 

21 sourcing also is unreliable.

22 I don't know if that's possible, but 
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1 that would be persuasive evidence to me. 72

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. 

3 Recognizing that uranium and the U-233 issue and 

4 the neptunium issue, the years are virtually 

5 identical coincidentally as Mark pointed out, 

6 the one is, I believe, '62 through '83, and the 

7 other is '64 through '83.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Any questions on 

9 the line? Any follow-up, Phil, or --

10 MR. FITZGERALD: This is Joe. I 

11 just have a question on when we might see the 

12 actual White Papers on those two.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, Joe, we're 

14 not going to have a White Paper on those. We're 

15 going to issue a revised --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, I'm sorry, the 

17 revised ER.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: We're working to 

19 have that, and as I mentioned in the email it 

20 probably will not be available until about two 

21 weeks prior to the Board meeting. It's just 

22 pulling all that information together and 
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1 getting the report out, and getting it through 73

2 classification review.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So that's not 

4 too far away.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. No, it's not 

6 too far away at all.

7 DR. NETON: Everybody's decided 

8 neptunium, uranium. And thorium is still being 

9 evaluated. That's a little bit harder to --

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, and that's 

11 why I asked about the years for the other, 

12 especially the magnesium-thorium, and if --

13 DR. NETON: Yes, because --

14 (Simultaneous speaking)

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- fell under 

16 this window it may not amount to that much. And 

17 I think that might likely be the case with, I mean 

18 I'm getting ahead of myself but the tritium 

19 question, you know, depending on how this SEC 

20 falls, right.

21 DR. NETON: Some of the other 

22 tritium issues would be subsumed --
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1 (Simultaneous speaking) 74

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Exactly. But 

3 if there's no more on this, thank you for asking 

4 the process question, Joe. I was going to ask 

5 that too. So a couple weeks before we should 

6 have the report, and that's good.

7 And if there's no other questions on 

8 this, I think can we take like a ten-minute break 

9 and then come back --

10 DR. NETON: Talk about the White 

11 Papers?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- and introduce 

13 some of the White Papers, right. Okay.

14 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

15 went off the record at 10:21 a.m. and went back 

16 on the record at 10:36 a.m.)

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, I'm sorry. We're 

18 five minutes late. This is Rocky Flats Work 

19 Group, we're back and ready.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, so I 

21 think, you know, the next items will be the White 

22 Papers, and maybe we can just do this back and 
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1 forth, you know, start with the tritium issue 75

2 maybe, or whichever one you want to do first, 

3 LaVon. And then the SC&A sort of say what 

4 they'd, you know, hook onto these things.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: What I had planned 

6 was that I thought SC&A was going to give their 

7 reviews of the White Papers and then we would 

8 talk about the issues that they had come up with. 

9 Then I'll also talk about the follow-up efforts 

10 that we did as well.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

12 Well, if Joe -- yes, that's fine. Joe, if you 

13 want to start, then either way, yes.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Mark, I'd 

15 like to suggest that perhaps the White Paper 

16 authors or LaVon could basically review the 

17 binning on the separate pieces of the tritium 

18 paper, for example, the '73, '74 to '75, then 

19 pre-'73, and have discussions in those parts. 

20 That's kind of the sequence that we went through.

21 I think it would allow them in their 

22 own words to describe, you know, what approach 
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1 they took, and then our paper responds to that 76

2 approach as written. To sort of lead in to what 

3 we evaluated, rather than having us basically 

4 describe the approach they took. That might be 

5 a -- (Simultaneous speaking)

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Back to my 

7 initial format.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, that's fine 

9 with me. And I know that Jim Bogard who is one 

10 of the co-authors, and Elizabeth Brackett and 

11 Mutty Sharfi, that all three co-authors are on 

12 so they will quickly correct me or provide 

13 additional information as needed when I get into 

14 this.

15 So basically the tritium exposures, 

16 initially the Evaluation Report had identified 

17 that we would use the 1973 incident as our 

18 bounding scenario for, at that time for all 

19 exposures to tritium.

20 We'd come up with a worst case 

21 scenario, taking the worst case bioassay sample 

22 from the '73 incident, and originally came up 
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1 with a maximum dose of 700 millirem. From that 77

2 then, in the White Paper we went back and looked 

3 at, was there ways that we could refine this? 

4 Instead of using the 700 millirem over the whole 

5 time period, was there ways that we could break 

6 this down?

7 So we looked back and said, well, 

8 there's a clear cut point, 1973, when the 

9 incident occurred. There's a cut point in the 

10 amount of data we have. There's a cut point in 

11 this big incident occurring.

12 And so we decided to break the 

13 exposure periods down into a pre-1973 period, 

14 like roughly 1959 to 1973, if you assume 1959's 

15 the first year of exposure, and then 1973 when 

16 the incident occurred, and then post-1973 when 

17 we had additional bioassay data.

18 And so the White Paper breaks down 

19 into the pre-1973 period. That was a time 

20 period when we had very few bioassay samples. I 

21 think a total of six, if I remember, four or six, 

22 something like that non-specific as to what they 
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1 were. It wasn't specific as if they came from 78

2 an incident or such.

3 So we had the '59 to '73 period. We 

4 had little to no modern data. We have 

5 indications that bubblers were in use. Based on 

6 our interviews that we had, the classified 

7 interviews, we had identified a potential 

8 exposure of returned units from Pantex or other 

9 sites, mainly Pantex, and shipping containers, 

10 opening up these containers and having a release 

11 from these shipping containers.

12 So recognizing that event, we 

13 identified this 1974 incident. That was where 

14 they opened up the container, had a release, the 

15 release was recognized here today. We had 

16 monitoring data, bioassay data, and we used that 

17 release scenario as our bounding scenario all 

18 the way from '59 to '73.

19 Our basis for that being a pretty 

20 good incident to use was when you look at the 

21 timeline of when that incident occurred. And I 

22 believe it was like the April to September period 
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1 or somewhere around there, I can't remember for 79

2 sure.

3 The incident was being monitored, 

4 but we do not believe that the shipping controls, 

5 or the controls for shipping containers had 

6 really changed since the '73 incident. The '73 

7 incident, remember, was processing a unit. It 

8 was not a shipping container being received and 

9 opened up.

10 And so the focus wasn't necessarily 

11 on contaminated shipping containers. 

12 Contaminated shipping containers, they started 

13 monitoring these shipping containers in early 

14 1974, if I remember by the letter correctly, and 

15 they went through a campaign of monitoring these 

16 shipping containers.

17 In late 1974, after the '74 incident 

18 is when they sent out the letter to the other 

19 sites that, you know, basically that they 

20 couldn't accept potentially contaminated, 

21 tritium contaminated containers because they 

22 found that some of these containers contained 
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1 low levels of contamination. 80

2 So we felt like this incident was a 

3 pretty reasonable scenario for a chronic release 

4 in the pre-1973 period, and since we could not 

5 define the numbers of releases that could have 

6 occurred, we assumed one occurred per day in 

7 coming up with our internal exposure approach 

8 for that period. So that was the pre-'73 period 

9 in a nutshell.

10 1973, we used the actual '73 

11 incident, and the '73 incident we actually went 

12 back and took the bioassay data and came up with 

13 a, we fitted the data based on each bioassay and 

14 came up with a refined analysis, and I think our 

15 numbers came up to around 84 millirem per year 

16 versus the 700 that we had originally 

17 identified.

18 And then the post-1973, we have 

19 bioassay data that, and if I remember correctly, 

20 roughly 75 bioassay samples in the '74-75 time 

21 period. We did a coworker analysis based on 

22 that data, and that coworker analysis identified 
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1 that there was no exposure, or zero. And so 81

2 post-1974 we would apply zero for that period.

3 Let's see, Jim, Liz or Mutty, do you 

4 want to add anything to that?

5 MR. BOGARD: No. That sounds fine.

6 MS. BRACKETT: Great, thank you.

7 MR. SHARFI: Agreed.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. So I 

9 guess we can -- does that help, Joe, to start?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: No, that's very 

11 helpful. And what we did was focus on those 

12 three time periods. We kind of took the order 

13 a little differently, but we spent some time 

14 looking at the -- and we've looked at this before 

15 but not perhaps in this detail with the advantage 

16 of your analysis.

17 So what we want to do is take '73 

18 first, and then, for making sense since that was 

19 where most of the data started, where we got the 

20 initial data that's been used in the past and go 

21 from there.

22 John, Bob?
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1 DR. MAURO: Yes, Joe, I'm here. 82

2 MR. FITZGERALD: You want to throw 

3 out the first ball?

4 DR. MAURO: Okay, I'll carry the 

5 relay race. I'll take the first leg. We did 

6 start in '73, because I think that's a pivotal 

7 year where the realization was that yes, it looks 

8 like there might be tritium problems. 

9 You know, prior to '73 there was this 

10 assumption -- I don't know how close the Board 

11 is with regard to these matters, but it might 

12 help, a little background. I'll try to be 

13 brief.

14 The general sense was prior to '73 

15 there really weren't any substantial tritium 

16 issues. That the material, the plutonium that 

17 was arriving was relatively clean of any 

18 tritium. Any tritium was removed.

19 However, what happened was the State 

20 of Colorado had an ongoing water sampling 

21 program in Walnut Creek, a receiving water 

22 stream from the facility, and you could look at 
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1 the data. There's data that they have showing 83

2 the concentration of tritium in Walnut Creek as 

3 a function of time as reported by the Colorado 

4 Department of Health.

5 Well, sometime in April, I believe 

6 it was, '73, it became apparent that there was 

7 a spike. There was a high level of tritium and 

8 that triggered a lot of research into, okay, what 

9 happened?

10 And really, I'm repeating a lot of 

11 the material that's already in the reports, but 

12 I think it's important to understand that this 

13 was a sea change. That is, in '73 it became 

14 apparent that the material that was arriving at 

15 Rocky could, not necessarily often, but 

16 certainly could contain elevated levels of 

17 tritium which could expose workers. So a 

18 very large investigation took place to look into 

19 this issue. And what happened was that in '73 

20 a major follow-up investigation took place that 

21 identified that yes, it was a shipment, I think, 

22 that came from Los Alamos that had a problem.
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1 Yes, and they went ahead and took 84

2 bioassay samples from 250 workers, very good 

3 follow-up urine samples. Did liquid 

4 scintillation detection on the samples, and they 

5 identified five individuals that had a 

6 detectable level of that were of concern, I think 

7 they call them action levels.

8 And action level was any person that 

9 had tritium in urine above 10,000 picocuries per 

10 liter. It sounds like a big number but it really 

11 is not a big number. And that's associated with 

12 if you had 10,000 picocuries per liter of tritium 

13 in your urine, chronically or continuously, 

14 you'd be getting about one millirem a year. So 

15 it's not a high number.

16 But they did identify five 

17 individuals. Now, and here's the first problem 

18 we have, and I'm trying to get to the issue in 

19 '73 that we do need to air out. What happened 

20 is the sampling didn't take place immediately 

21 after the realization that there was a possible 

22 incident in April of '73.
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1 The bioassay sampling began several 85

2 months later, September time period. So what we 

3 have here is people that might have been exposed 

4 earlier, April, May, June, their bioassay 

5 samples were not collected until, oh, several 

6 months later, a September time frame, let's say.

7 And so what we really have is we have 

8 five individuals who have fairly thorough 

9 bioassay samples but not starting until several 

10 months after the exposures may have occurred. 

11 And these are the five individuals out of the 250 

12 samples that had the highest levels.

13 Now, so what was done by the Atomic 

14 Energy Commission report, it's this big report 

15 that stands behind the White Paper that is being 

16 referred to in this discussion that NIOSH 

17 prepared, where a detailed analysis is provided 

18 of what the -- here's the bioassay results of 

19 these workers that started several months later.

20 They actually plot the 

21 concentration of tritium in urine as a function 

22 of time when they started sampling, let's say 
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1 September. And they say okay, given this 86

2 concentration that we're seeing they could 

3 back-extrapolate to the earlier time periods of 

4 what the concentrations might have been, and go 

5 all the way back to April in some cases, what 

6 there might have been. And you can do that and 

7 it's easily done.

8 So now you could actually say, well, 

9 we're seeing this concentration of tritium in 

10 urine in September. Back in April, the 

11 concentrations would have been much, much, much 

12 higher as you can imagine just going back in 

13 time, because tritium has a ten-day half life.

14 Well, anyway we have four- to 18-day 

15 half life, and ten is sort of like the going 

16 number. And it's a good number. Now what 

17 happens is, that's sort of like the setup to the 

18 story now.

19 Then NIOSH reported that well, 

20 there's a Table A-5 in their White Paper. And 

21 by the way, up until this point I was, you know, 

22 we were very comfortable with the whole strategy 
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1 that was being adopted here to try to bound or 87

2 understand what the high end exposures might 

3 have been from this incident. And by the 

4 way, we do believe by the way that this incident 

5 was a one-of-a-kind, because in other words we 

6 don't think incidents of greater magnitude might 

7 have occurred before because it would have been 

8 picked up by this water sampling program which 

9 was quite extensive.

10 It looked like data was being 

11 gathered by the State of Colorado at least twice 

12 a month, from the data I was looking at. So they 

13 would have picked it up if something big like 

14 this happened. Big, I'll call it big, relatively 

15 big happened.

16 So there's good reason to believe 

17 that this 1973 incident was a one-of-a-kind 

18 incident, was perhaps the most serious incident 

19 that had occurred. And now here at NIOSH, and 

20 the Atomic Energy Commission at the time and also 

21 later now NIOSH try to reconstruct the doses to 

22 the workers from this incident.
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1 Now here's where SC&A -- and these 88

2 calculations were only done a day or two ago. 

3 But there's this Table A-5, and this is Issue 

4 Number 1. It took a little bit of time to get 

5 to it but I had to set the table.

6 Table A-5 in the White Paper gives 

7 NIOSH's estimate of the doses, the time 

8 integrated doses, to the five workers that had 

9 the highest levels of tritium observed in the 

10 bioassay program.

11 And I went back, and so did Bob, and 

12 independent of me we had, really, two people 

13 looking at it. And the first one we looked at 

14 was Case Number D. Okay, this is one of the 

15 workers. And the number that's reported in this 

16 Table A-5 of the White Paper is 72 millirem.

17 Now when we look at the AEC 

18 reconstruction of this person's dose, what they 

19 say is, listen, you know, it's very difficult to 

20 predict what this person's dose is because we're 

21 back-extrapolating, and we really don't know 

22 when his exposure occurred. It's hard to 
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1 predict that. 89

2 And so what they do in the AEC 

3 papers, they have three different scenarios. 

4 They say, well, here's the low end number, and 

5 I think they came up with it could be as low as 

6 25 millirem. Then they said here's another 

7 estimate that might be a little higher, and they 

8 came up with 700 millirem.

9 And then they say here's our upper 

10 end case, and they come up with 2.2, I think it 

11 is, rem. And so that late case is the case that 

12 assumes the person's exposure may have been as 

13 early as April. That is, at the time that the 

14 shipment arrived the person might have been 

15 working with it and his intake could have 

16 occurred very early. And that being the case, 

17 when you back-extrapolate, you know, you're 

18 going all the way back in time and all of a sudden 

19 the intake at times zero could be substantial.

20 So what we, I guess, we're having a 

21 little difficulty with is that gee, it seems to 

22 me that if you wanted to place a plausible upper 
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1 bound on what the highest exposure might have 90

2 been to this worker, I'm only talking D now, I 

3 would have said it's not 72, it's probably more 

4 like 2 rem. Not 72 millirem, but 2 rem.

5 So regarding this issue which is 

6 really the starting point for all this is we're 

7 having a little trouble understanding the 

8 rationale for the doses for A, B, C, D, and H 

9 cases in Table A-5.

10 It seems that the doses were, if you 

11 were trying to place plausible upper bound on 

12 what the doses these workers may have 

13 experienced could have been substantially 

14 higher. And keep in mind that, you know, we 

15 reviewed this material relatively recently. We 

16 actually did the hand calculation, it's a pretty 

17 straightforward calculation, yesterday. 

18 And where we're coming out is, we 

19 understand the process you went through and we 

20 agree with the whole story that's told, but we're 

21 coming out with numbers that are quite a bit 

22 different than the numbers you're presenting in 
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1 Table A-5, which I believe are the basis for the 91

2 numbers that you're going to use to assign doses 

3 to workers for 1973. And so I guess that's the 

4 first issue that perhaps we should talk about.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. Well, I 

6 guess we better get some help from Liz and Mutty 

7 on this one. I'm not sure.

8 MS. BRACKETT: Okay, this is Liz. 

9 I guess I didn't see this in your paper.

10 DR. MAURO: No, I apologize. We 

11 reviewed your paper as best we could just about 

12 a week ago. You know, it had to go through 

13 clearance and everything. And at the time that 

14 at least I was looking at it I accepted the 

15 numbers that I looked at. I said, listen, I'm 

16 not going to go back to the original data and do 

17 a lot of calculations. We were trying to get our 

18 paper out.

19 So our White Paper was moving 

20 through the system, through DOE clearance, and 

21 in the interim we all agreed amongst ourselves, 

22 you know, we probably should go back to the 
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1 original source document, the source data, the 92

2 bioassay results, and see if we can match these 

3 numbers. And it wasn't until yesterday. 

4 So quite frankly, when you read our 

5 paper, our paper regarding 1973 is very 

6 supportive of your work.

7 MS. BRACKETT: That's what I 

8 thought.

9 DR. MAURO: And it was, until we 

10 said, listen, let's go back and do some number 

11 crunching and go grab some numbers, and lo and 

12 behold. So I'm sorry to spring this to you in 

13 this manner, but we are troubled by the fact that 

14 gee, we're coming, and not only us, but 

15 ironically when I did my calculations it wasn't 

16 until later I realized, gee, I came up with 2 rem. 

17 And that's exactly an upper bound for Case D. 

18 And by the way that's what the AEC report came 

19 up with.

20 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John. I 

21 think the source of the sort of comment at the 

22 end of that review where it points out that we 
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1 were troubled by Case D because we did see the 93

2 700 millirem as a chronic exposure for one 

3 quarter, and that's what sort of precipitated 

4 the, you know, this doesn't quite add up.

5 MS. BRACKETT: Right. Well, I 

6 believe I can explain the discrepancy, and I 

7 thought that it was described in this paper. 

8 But the AEC paper was done in the '70s. And from 

9 what John has said, I gathered that you're just, 

10 you said you were doing a hand calculation so 

11 you're probably just assuming a ten-day --

12 DR. MAURO: Yes, as simple as that. 

13 Yes.

14 MS. BRACKETT: But that's not the 

15 correct model anymore. And there's a 40-day 

16 component, which if you're only looking at the 

17 samples collected within the week or two after 

18 the intake occurred then the use of just strict 

19 ten days is fine and you'll get about the correct 

20 answer.

21 But going back to the '70s, they 

22 hadn't followed the tritium amount long enough 
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1 to see -- it's a small, I don't remember, I think 94

2 it's a few percent. But when you start 

3 collecting samples months after an occurrence 

4 then --

5 DR. MAURO: Okay.

6 MS. BRACKETT: -- 40 days makes a 

7 difference. And so that's why my values don't 

8 match theirs, because of that 40-day component 

9 that they don't account for, and I'm guessing 

10 that's why they don't match yours. Case D was 

11 the one that had the most subjectivity in it, I 

12 believe. They had the fewest number of samples, 

13 and they were kind of all over the place.

14 So that one definitely is a bit more 

15 subjective as to what the best fit is, but --

16 DR. MAURO: Liz, let me ask you a 

17 question. So you're saying that you used the 

18 two component model. You have the rapid release 

19 of ten-day half life, and then followed by the 

20 slower release excretion rate?

21 MS. BRACKETT: Yes. And that is 

22 the current ICRP model and that's what's in IMBA 
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1 if you use IMBA to do it. 95

2 DR. MAURO: Okay, but let me ask you 

3 this now. Why would you assume that at that 

4 point in time following this intake that 

5 occurred over several days that, you're saying 

6 that you're into this slower excretion rate 

7 component as opposed to the ten-day half life 

8 component. It's not intuitively obvious to me 

9 that you know that to be the case. And I'll tell 

10 you why I say that now.

11 If you look at the graphs that are 

12 presented, this is interesting now. If you look 

13 at the graphs that you provide in your report for 

14 A through D or H, I forget, the slope at that 

15 point looks like a ten-day half life.

16 And that's what brought me there. I 

17 said gee, it looks like, you know, I look at those 

18 numbers. I don't know if I have the graph here 

19 but I won't burden you with that. But the 

20 trigger for me was I looked at it and the fit for 

21 a lot of the data looked an awful lot like a 

22 ten-day half life. Because remember, the data 
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1 were collected, it looked like every few days out 96

2 for about a couple of weeks.

3 And the slope was, you know, in ten 

4 days went down by about a factor of two. So it 

5 looked like you were in the mode of clearance at 

6 that point in time which was still in the ten-day 

7 half life mode of removal and not the slower 

8 removal rate that might occur at the back end.

9 DR. NETON: John. John -- oh.

10 MS. BRACKETT: Right. It's not 

11 like, it doesn't do ten days and then at some 

12 point switch to 40. It's just they're both all, 

13 you know, apart at the same time.

14 DR. NETON: John, this is a two-part 

15 clearance model, and so you fit the data using 

16 the two-part clearance model. It has nothing to 

17 do with the early data being ten-day half lives. 

18 I mean it's a two-part model.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes. Well, I hear what 

20 you're saying, but I'm just looking at a graph 

21 right now. And you follow it for the time period 

22 and the slope is a ten-day half life. So you're 
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1 saying that that slope that I'm looking at for 97

2 the time period that the bioassay samples were 

3 taken --

4 DR. NETON: Is correct.

5 DR. MAURO: -- is not the slope that 

6 was experienced earlier. It was something 

7 different. It was flatter.

8 DR. NETON: No, no. The model 

9 predicts that the early clearance is ten days.

10 DR. MAURO: And it still is when you 

11 get to the back end.

12 DR. NETON: How do you know that?

13 DR. MAURO: I'm looking at the data 

14 right now. Go to Page, I tell you what, go to 

15 Page 31 of your White Paper.

16 Are you looking at that? I'm 

17 looking at Figure A-4. I just happened to pick 

18 this one. They all look like this. This is 

19 Case B as in Boy. And I'm looking at the line 

20 and I'm saying, okay, over a ten-day period look 

21 like you've got about a factor of two drop in the 

22 excretion rate, so it looks like you're in a 
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1 ten-day half life mode. And so I just went back 98

2 on that basis.

3 Now I hear what you're saying that 

4 the model's more complex, but the data belie 

5 that.

6 MS. BRACKETT: Well, look at the 

7 fit. I mean I don't want to argue with you what 

8 you think the slopes are, but the model is the 

9 model and that's what was used to do the fit. 

10 And you can see, and this is a semi-log file and 

11 not a --

12 DR. MAURO: You know, I have to say 

13 I do things very simply. I'm looking at the 

14 figure. Day 169, and then I go to Day 179 and 

15 I see, okay, how much did it drop in those ten 

16 days? And it looks like it dropped by about a 

17 factor of two.

18 MS. BRACKETT: Well, okay. But if 

19 you look at the overall plot it looks like a 

20 straight line, but this is not a linear plot. So 

21 it's not dropping linearly.

22 DR. MAURO: No, I understand what 
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1 you're saying. But I'm just looking at the 99

2 reading on Day 169, and you've got a 1.5 times 

3 ten to the fifth in this case, and then I go to 

4 Day 179 and I'm down considerably.

5 So I'm just looking at, it looks like 

6 about that you've got a factor of two reduction 

7 over ten days. Now am I thinking wrong about 

8 this? I mean I'd be the first to admit I might 

9 be thinking wrong about it, but it seems pretty 

10 straightforward. You're in a ten-day half life 

11 line here and that goes for every one of these 

12 figures.

13 Now if I got it wrong I'm fine with 

14 that, you know, and I'll let go of it. But right 

15 now it doesn't make sense to me to say that, you 

16 know, this ten-day half life seems to be working.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: When you go into 

18 IMBA these aren't every day plots. So they're 

19 connecting the dots only calculated on the 

20 individual bioassay points.

21 DR. MAURO: Yes.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: You have to 
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1 understand it's connecting two points with a 100

2 straight line. This isn't fitted with every 

3 day, so you don't actually see how the curve goes 

4 in between points.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Here's what I 

6 would propose, John, just for the sake of time 

7 today, because this is hard to do, you know, over 

8 the phone and on, you know.

9 DR. MAURO: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But why doesn't 

11 SC&A go and use IMBA and look at this, reassess 

12 your own position and then discuss further with 

13 Liz or Jim or whoever.

14 DR. NETON: John, you're suggesting 

15 the ICRP model is wrong for tritium, I guess we 

16 can be talking about that.

17 DR. MAURO: Well, I'm not saying, 

18 don't get me wrong.

19 DR. NETON: Well, that's what we're 

20 using.

21 DR. MAURO: I understand what 

22 you're saying.
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1 MS. BRACKETT: That is what you're 101

2 saying.

3 (Simultaneous speaking)

4 DR. MAURO: No, wait a minute. 

5 What do I do with this data which says that it 

6 looks like it's dropping? You know, forget 

7 about the line, just look at the --

8 DR. NETON: But your eyeball fit is 

9 not going to show you that John. You need to go 

10 back and look at the IMBA. I think you need a 

11 little more inspection of the data than just an 

12 eyeball fit.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's all 

14 I'm asking for, John --

15 DR. MAURO: I'll be glad to do that.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- is take it 

17 back, look at it with the model and then if we 

18 need a technical call to follow up.

19 DR. MAURO: Okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's the way 

21 to handle it. It's just hard that we're talking 

22 past each other at a certain point.
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1 DR. MAURO: Yes, I understand. 102

2 Well, anyway that's where we are, and I'd be more 

3 than happy to take a, run the data with IMBA, I'll 

4 load up the data with the points and see what 

5 happens then.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's good.

7 MS. BRACKETT: Well, and just to 

8 caution, IMBA is tricky with tritium because you 

9 have to add in some extra, you have to do some 

10 finagling to get it to run urine samples.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Liz, can you 

12 send your IMBA runs to make them available for 

13 SC&A so they can see the runs for this?

14 MS. BRACKETT: Yes, and I think we 

15 have the direction on it. It will do 

16 whole-body, so you have to convert whole-body to 

17 use it for urine so, but yes, I can --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: If you just send 

19 the runs that will give him a guideline too.

20 DR. MAURO: But could I ask you, I 

21 mean I will do that but can I ask you something? 

22 And this brings me to what my common sense -- just 
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1 look at the dots and where they are as a function 103

2 of time for all of these cases and ask yourself, 

3 if I'm going to back-calculate, you know, why 

4 would I believe that the slope is going, as the 

5 dots themselves, where they show up gives you an 

6 indication of the rate at which this is 

7 declining.

8 And you're saying that the rate at 

9 which it's declining is different in the earlier 

10 models than it is here. I mean that's what 

11 you're saying, and that's what you're saying 

12 IMBA says. And, you know, I want to think about 

13 that. Think about that a little bit too, I mean 

14 whether that makes sense or not.

15 MS. BRACKETT: That's what all of 

16 the models are. There's always different 

17 parts. It's not that for awhile it's ten days 

18 and then for awhile it's 40. They're both 

19 simultaneous.

20 DR. MAURO: Yes.

21 MS. BRACKETT: It's just that after 

22 awhile the 40-day would become more obvious 
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1 because -- 104

2 (Simultaneous speaking)

3 MS. BRACKETT: -- will be, you know, 

4 have less of an impact. And so it's not --

5 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver, if 

6 I could just jump in for a second. Why don't we 

7 just go ahead and we'll have Joyce take that 

8 data, your runs, and she could either use IMBA 

9 or AIDE, and do her own independent analysis.

10 DR. MAURO: I agree. That's the 

11 way to do it because --

12 (Simultaneous speaking)

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Just for time's 

14 sake, I think it's helpful, yes.

15 DR. MAURO: Yes, we'll do that.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So Joe, maybe 

17 you can tee up your next --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Okay, so 

19 basically the '74-75, which is the data source 

20 for the proposed coworker model that would be 

21 used, I guess, again for the pre-'73 doses from 

22 tritium is something that we also looked at in 
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1 terms of the 70 data points. And John, do you 105

2 have a second baseball?

3 DR. MAURO: Yes, listen, I'll take 

4 a shot at it. I don't mind striking out.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: He's still got a 

6 good arm.

7 DR. MAURO: I love getting up to bat 

8 but I often strike out, although I'm not 

9 admitting I'm wrong about the '73 yet. Let me 

10 look into that. I'm not ready to give up on 

11 that. But I certainly will bow to Joyce's 

12 wisdom on this.

13 Now something interesting happens, 

14 and let's talk about '74-75. As I understand it 

15 two things happened in that time period and the 

16 recognition that there might be some problem 

17 with the tritium coming in.

18 So a program was mobilized where 

19 what was done as I understand it is, one out of 

20 every ten bioassay sample that was taken for the 

21 purpose of plutonium urinalysis was sent off for 

22 tritium analysis. So you collected data, and it 
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1 turns out it was 75 people that were captured in 106

2 that program.

3 So it was an effort to say, listen, 

4 let's keep an eye on this tritium business and 

5 see if we come up with anybody that's something 

6 unusual. And out of that and out of those 75 

7 measurements, now granted, as you point out 

8 correctly, those 75 people that were measured 

9 ended up, you know, about one sample, I think, 

10 per year. So it wasn't that you had people being 

11 followed closely.

12 But I would be the first to say, 

13 listen, you took samples from 75 people over this 

14 two-year period and none of them had anything 

15 above this 10,000 picocuries per liter. I have 

16 to admit that that's a pretty compelling 

17 argument that no one's really getting very much 

18 tritium exposure in '74 and '75 from that sample. 

19 Now, stay with me now. But that's one side of 

20 the coin in '74-75. The other side of the coin 

21 is that there was this, what we'll call an 

22 incident of some type, where some tritium was 
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1 released. I think it was in August of '74. And 107

2 there was this follow-up investigation related 

3 to that where air samples were collected, 

4 bioassay samples were collected, specifically 

5 for that incident.

6 And it appears that there is no 

7 relationship between the follow-up examinations 

8 that were done to investigate that minor August 

9 1974 incident and the '75 samples collected. 

10 It's almost like it's two separate set of 

11 activities.

12 When I looked at the data for the 

13 1974 incident follow-up it appeared that there 

14 was a real potential for at least some of the 

15 workers that were involved to have experienced 

16 doses in excess, have concentrations in urine 

17 and that may have inhaled tritium at levels that 

18 could have given more than a few millirem from 

19 that incident.

20 I'll say one millirem, two. It's 

21 not big, don't get me wrong. We're talking 

22 about small numbers here. But it's the 
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1 thinking, the logic sequence that eludes me here 108

2 now. So what we have is two datasets, and please 

3 correct me if I'm wrong if I'm misrepresenting 

4 this, but we have two datasets.

5 One representing the follow-up 

6 investigations associated with the August 1974 

7 "incident" where we're getting a data that says, 

8 well, some of the workers might have gotten one 

9 or a few millirem from that incident, and then 

10 you have this other 75 people that were sampled 

11 where the highest level of exposure was 0.15 

12 millirem per year. In other words, so clearly 

13 there was two different things going on.

14 In one case you have this what I 

15 would say a cohort model where you're looking at 

16 a lot of people collecting data and clearly and 

17 unambiguously, none of those 75 people received, 

18 had any intakes that appeared that even 

19 approached one millirem a year. And then you 

20 have this other group --

21 MR. BARTON: John?

22 DR. MAURO: Yes.
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1 MR. BARTON: Could I interrupt you 109

2 here? This is Bob Barton.

3 DR. MAURO: Sure, guy, help me out.

4 MR. BARTON: NIOSH was kind enough 

5 to send along the actual data they compiled from 

6 the coworker dataset for '74-75, and actually 

7 some data points past that. And the statement 

8 that nobody had urine concentrations above 

9 10,000 picocuries per liter is not borne out by 

10 the data. There are definitely some samples in 

11 there. And again, we're talking about one 

12 sample per year.

13 DR. MAURO: Right.

14 MR. BARTON: So, you know, I'd 

15 really like to ask clarification from NIOSH. So 

16 we went into the claimant records and we pulled 

17 together this dataset, and from what I 

18 understand, and please stop me if I'm wrong, when 

19 you had a worker with only one data point in that 

20 year, we essentially assumed that they were 

21 sampled January 1st of that year and December 

22 31st, and that we came back with that same level, 
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1 and that we just assumed that was their chronic 110

2 excretion rate for that entire year. Am I 

3 correct so far?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'd have to ask 

5 Mutty or Liz to respond to that.

6 MS. BRACKETT: Unfortunately I did 

7 not look at this specifically. Again that 

8 sounds correct, but I need to double check on 

9 that.

10 MR. BARTON: Okay. And the only 

11 reason I bring this up because, you know, we kind 

12 of dug into the dataset, you know, we got it, I 

13 think, Monday, and so we've been kind of cracking 

14 at it.

15 And we found at least two cases in 

16 the '74-75 time frame that had excretion 

17 patterns that if you apply the method in OTIB-11, 

18 which deals with, you know, calculating tritium 

19 doses, you get some yearly doses that are above 

20 one millirem. They're not large but, you know, 

21 I think they range from between one and four 

22 millirem.
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1 And then even then there was two 111

2 cases afterwards in the data afterwards, one 

3 case in 1978, I know, and one case in 1981, where 

4 if you use the OTIB-11 methodology with the 

5 assumption of a constant excretion pattern you 

6 would get doses that are, you know, less than ten 

7 millirem but still above one millirem. So I 

8 guess that's where I became troubled with using 

9 this dataset to sort of say, you know, there was 

10 no exposure potential.

11 Now I know one part of this is, and 

12 I'd ask for clarification on this as well, it 

13 indicates that you used the 95th percentile. 

14 And I'm not sure if that means the 95th 

15 percentile of the data points, of the log 

16 normally fit data points, 95th percentile of the 

17 workers for that year. I guess I'd ask for some 

18 clarification on that because that may be why, 

19 you know, if you look at the 95th percentile 

20 maybe you're just under one millirem, but if you 

21 actually look at the highest exposed in that 

22 cohort of population you will get small doses, 
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1 really, I mean we're talking a couple of millirem 112

2 but definitely not zero.

3 DR. MAURO: I'd like to pick up a 

4 little bit on this also in that it seems that the 

5 basis for your coworker model are those 75 

6 workers, and notwithstanding the issue that Bob 

7 just brought up.

8 But let's just assume for a moment 

9 that whatever the process was using those 75 

10 workers as being the basis for the coworker model 

11 to be used not only for '74 or '75, but also for 

12 pre-'73, but then you do something that eludes 

13 me.

14 You then say, well, what we're going 

15 to assume is that one of these incidents that 

16 occurred in August '74 occurs every day, but I 

17 don't see any linkage between the bioassay 

18 sample of the 75 people and the follow-up 

19 investigation of that incident.

20 So it's a layered problem. It 

21 doesn't seem that there is a relationship 

22 between the cohort model of '75 and the follow-up 
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1 investigation of the incident that occurred in 113

2 August.

3 But then you assume that, well, 

4 let's assume that we have an August incident 

5 every day and we're going to use that, and that's 

6 in my mind, of course, that's fairly arbitrary, 

7 and make that assumption and apply that to 

8 pre-'73.

9 The multiple layers of concerns that 

10 we have related to this whole construct that 

11 eludes me as being the logic for it, and one is 

12 the separation of these two groups, which they 

13 may or may not be but appears that they were, one 

14 is this cohort and the other is the follow-up to 

15 the '74 incident.

16 And then there's a question of, 

17 okay, now we're going to assign some doses to 

18 pre-'73 people where you're assuming that this 

19 incident occurs every day. And, you know, why 

20 you would pick once a day? That's, I have to 

21 tell you, that's where my greatest concern is, 

22 this leap that went from what took place in 
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1 '74-75, and then bring that somehow and apply it 114

2 to how are you going to reconstruct doses 

3 pre-'73. You know, it just doesn't line up for 

4 us, for me anyway.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: John, this is 

6 LaVon. I'll jump in on this a little bit. If 

7 you look at the interviews that we conducted, the 

8 classified interviews, the exposure scenario 

9 that most likely occurred based on those 

10 interviews was opening a shipping container and 

11 a release from those shipping containers. This 

12 was close to that scenario, very close to that 

13 scenario, that 1974 incident.

14 And so the idea here is that, okay, 

15 if we had this release, okay, if these releases 

16 occurred pre-1973, and we believe that the 1974 

17 incident that controls had not been adjusted, 

18 and it was probably that yes, there was more 

19 monitoring in place in 1974 but the containers 

20 coming in had not changed, in our opinion the 

21 sites had not, the information that we've seen 

22 so far hasn't supported that the sites had really 
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1 changed in doing additional work to ensure that 115

2 shipping containers and shipments coming to the 

3 sites were going to have any less contamination 

4 at that period in 1974 than they did prior to 

5 1973. So that scenario we felt was a good 

6 scenario to cover those earlier years.

7 The reason we use every day is

8 because we have no basis and no information to 

9 support not. If we said, well, obviously this 

10 doesn't happen every day if you look at the 

11 '74-75 bioassay data it clearly didn't happen 

12 every day. But clearly at some point you would 

13 expect after they saw the shipping containers 

14 were contaminated in 1974 that controls would 

15 have changed and sites would have changed and 

16 that's supported by that letter.

17 So we had no basis to come back and 

18 say, well, let's use ten per year. Let's use 50 

19 per year. That the only reasonable thing to do 

20 was to say that it occurred every day. And 

21 remember, that was 0.15 millirem, if I remember 

22 correctly, from that release.
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1 And so, you know, the bounding 116

2 exposure of what, 37-1/2 millirem is not, you 

3 know, it's not substantial, so it seemed 

4 reasonable.

5 DR. MAURO: Okay, I hear what you're 

6 saying, and here's where I'm having a bit of a 

7 problem. Now let's stipulate just for a moment 

8 that the one a day of this type of incident is 

9 a good number. You know, I consider it to be 

10 somewhat arbitrary, but let's just go with that 

11 okay, for a moment.

12 DR. NETON: It's bounding, John.

13 DR. MAURO: Pardon?

14 DR. NETON: Wouldn't you agree it's 

15 bounding? Based on the data we've seen, I think 

16 it would not have been more than one per day.

17 DR. MAURO: Okay, I can't say one 

18 way or the other but I believe you. But here's 

19 the problem. It's not the follow-up 

20 investigation from that incident that you're 

21 using for your dosimetry. In other words, the 

22 0.15 millirem is from the 75 cohort, not from the 
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1 follow-up investigation from that August '74 117

2 incident.

3 When I looked at the data for that 

4 incident I see, now the data's not very good, but 

5 I have some air samples. I think we have a few 

6 bioassay samples, and the doses are not 0.15 

7 millirem. They're closer to one or greater 

8 millirem to the people that were involved in the 

9 August 1974 exposure.

10 So if anything, if we accept the one 

11 per day it would not be 0.15 times 365 days a 

12 year, it would be closer to 1 or 2 times 365 days 

13 in a year. And again I might have it wrong, but 

14 I think that you did not use the data from the 

15 incident as the basis for your coworker model. 

16 You used the data from the 75 people you sampled. 

17 And I don't know if there is a good correlation 

18 between those two.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: I want to ask Jim 

20 Bogard, when we did the pre-'73 calculation, 

21 which -- and I can't remember, and I guess I could 

22 go back and look myself, but what data did we 
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1 specifically use in coming up with the numbers? 118

2 MR. BOGARD: There were actually 

3 two populations. The '75, that's a chronic 

4 issue. The four or five people that were 

5 involved in the '74 incident that was a response 

6 to an incident. And so the 0.15 millirem is 

7 based just on the incident data as I recall.

8 DR. MAURO: That's a factual piece 

9 of information where we're disagreeing. I 

10 didn't read it that way. I might be wrong, but 

11 I read that the 0.15 is related to the 75 people 

12 while the incident data is substantially higher 

13 than that, maybe a factor of ten higher.

14 MR. BOGARD: I didn't do the dose 

15 estimates. I'd have to --

16 DR. MAURO: And certainly this is an 

17 easy problem to solve.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh yes, it is. 

19 Yes.

20 DR. MAURO: So we could just go take 

21 a look at it to see if maybe I got it wrong.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I think this 
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1 is -- 119

2 MR. BARTON: John, this is Bob 

3 Barton. I think when we talk about the 75 

4 claimants that were sampled from NOCTS, I don't 

5 think there was ever a number put on there except 

6 for the statement that when they evaluated the 

7 doses they were all under one millirem. I do 

8 believe that 0.15 millirem was associated with 

9 the people who were sampled immediately in the 

10 aftermath of that 1974 release.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes.

12 MR. BARTON: I'm not sure where that 

13 number actually came from, whether it was 

14 calculated by NIOSH or, I don't think I saw that 

15 in the actual documentation.

16 DR. MAURO: By the way that part of 

17 the analysis is in our White Paper. I did the 

18 calculation. You guys can take a look at it and 

19 see if I did it wrong. In other words I talk 

20 about the incident, talk about the air sampling 

21 data.

22 I talk about data that appeared to 
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1 me that was available at the time for 120

2 reconstructed doses to the people involved in 

3 this August '74 incident, and I come up with 

4 doses higher than 0.15. So again, you know, 

5 this is easy to figure out whether I got it wrong 

6 or not.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Let me just ask, 

8 I'll try to keep track of these. We're not going 

9 to solve this today so there's a couple action 

10 items already. The first one is John's hand 

11 calculation and having them relook at the 

12 models, and then this one, you know --

13 DR. NETON: I guess one practical 

14 question, this always happens over in the 

15 process of adding an SEC is that, you know, we 

16 are now proposing that we have an SEC for all 

17 workers at Rocky Flats at least from 1962 to 

18 1985.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: '83, through '83.

20 DR. NETON: '62 to '83. So then the 

21 question becomes, are these tritium doses which 

22 appear to me to be pretty small, are they SEC 
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1 issues, or is this something that could be tabled 121

2 as a Site Profile issue recognizing that it's not 

3 going to affect anybody's compensability under 

4 the SEC? It would affect how dose 

5 reconstructions might be performed, unless one 

6 wants to say these can be reconstructed and added 

7 to the SEC rationale, which I don't I'm hearing 

8 is probably warranted.

9 DR. MAURO: Jim I agree with you 

10 completely. I think that if, you know, if an SEC 

11 is going to granted based, let's say, on 

12 neptunium or thorium that cover these same 

13 years, this whole issue we're talking about goes 

14 away and it becomes simply a very, very modest 

15 Site Profile issue.

16 DR. NETON: Not a problem with 362.

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, yes.

18 DR. NETON: Not a problem. But we 

19 still would have a problem to covering 362 for 

20 tritium, but this whole thing around the 

21 incident and bounding and such is --

22 MR. KATZ: But just to be clear 
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1 though, John Mauro, you don't concede whether 122

2 it's an SEC issue or not based on whether an SEC 

3 would be granted for something else.

4 DR. MAURO: Okay, my apologies.

5 (Simultaneous speaking)

6 MR. KATZ: -- decision based on --

7 (Simultaneous speaking)

8 DR. MAURO: Okay, okay.

9 DR. NETON: I think we all 

10 understand what we're trying to say here which 

11 is if it's a Site Profile issue, if we could all 

12 feel that this one's bounded --

13 (Simultaneous speaking)

14 DR. NETON: -- or whatever word you 

15 want to use, then it's, you know, if we can do 

16 something with it then, you know. There's a lot 

17 of work going on here, other places that we need 

18 to prioritize so this would be --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, it may be 

20 lower in the priorities, right. All right, but 

21 I am going to keep targeting these actions 

22 whether they end up being Site Profile issues or 
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1 -- right, right. 123

2 DR. NETON: I guess the question is 

3 does this really have to be decided before we go 

4 and recommend the SEC, and I don't think it does.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't think 

6 so, right.

7 MR. KATZ: Although if you can put 

8 to bed these issues it's nice to --

9 (Simultaneous speaking)

10 MR. KATZ: It doesn't sound like it 

11 takes extensive work to put either of these to 

12 bed.

13 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. 

14 Can I make a comment here? I heard, I believe 

15 it was LaVon Rutherford say that one of the 

16 assumptions sort of backing the use of that 1974 

17 incident is that the conditions, or, you know, 

18 the contamination source term, or whatever you 

19 want to call it, for that incident would not be 

20 decidedly different than that found in the 

21 pre-1973 period. Do I have that correct?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, and I think we 
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1 believe that. 124

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I want to talk 

3 to that, Bob. Yes, this is Joe. Mark, I just 

4 said there was three parts to this thing. And 

5 the pre-'73, you know, the use of the '74 event, 

6 the bounding estimates from that to cover the 

7 pre-'73 is something I've been looking at.

8 And as LaVon knows, I've been a 

9 little troubled by how representative that event 

10 would be for all the preceding years before '73 

11 for a couple different reasons. Certainly one 

12 is it was almost a year between the '73 release 

13 and the '74 event.

14 And I'm certainly concerned that 

15 whatever actions were taken operationally, you 

16 know, whether it was to control contamination to 

17 have the vending site, the shipping sites 

18 scrutinized as they were supposed to do, but 

19 obviously they failed to do that carefully in the 

20 past on the containers that they were sending to 

21 Rocky, or frankly, whether, you know, the site 

22 was going to monitor carefully before proceeding 
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1 with handling at the site. 125

2 These were things that certainly, if 

3 not, intuitively I felt there would have been 

4 actions taken on an intermediate basis between 

5 the '73 event and what took place in '74.

6 And the importance of that is 

7 obviously if we're going to rely on the source 

8 term of that particular event and the doses, the 

9 bioassays that were taken from it, we need to 

10 know that it is in fact typical, which is the, 

11 I think, the adjective that was used to describe 

12 that event in the NIOSH White Paper. 

13 So that was my going-in concern and 

14 there's certainly some other concerns. But let 

15 me back up a little bit. You know, one thing 

16 about the shipments to Rocky Flats, you know, 

17 certainly there was a sense that there wasn't, 

18 I think something John said earlier, there 

19 wasn't really a tritium exposure issue, per se, 

20 at Rocky. Shippers were to screen what they 

21 sent, and there were in fact some alarming 

22 bubblers to double check to see if there were any 
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1 releases of tritium when the outer containers 126

2 were opened, that kind of thing.

3 So there wasn't a sense it was a big 

4 deal. There were some checks in the system 

5 procedurally and from a monitoring standpoint to 

6 make sure that inadvertent releases weren't a 

7 major problem.

8 Now one thing at Rocky, you had two 

9 types of shipments coming in. You had the 

10 non-routine shipments, these were shipments 

11 that came from places like Lawrence Livermore, 

12 Los Alamos, Battelle, Savannah River.

13 These were materials, scrap, 

14 general material that was being sent to Rocky 

15 essentially for recycling because Rocky was 

16 equipped to handle this. They had the 

17 operations and training and were certainly 

18 familiar with handling plutonium and other 

19 sources, so the rest of the complex tended to 

20 send materials to Rocky if it were PU and needed 

21 to be processed.

22 These were considered non-routine, 
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1 so-called SS shipments, and these are the 127

2 shipments they certainly did have problems with. 

3 You know, the rad chem releases that occurred 

4 even before the '73 event, plus the '73 event, 

5 they were all attributed to shipments from 

6 Livermore.

7 And clearly there was a quality 

8 control issue at the lab in terms of what they 

9 were sending. These items apparently were 

10 contaminated. Just the four that were caught 

11 were clearly contaminated.

12 And I say that very carefully 

13 because these were the four that their 

14 monitoring actually did catch in the system and 

15 did flag as providing a release in the building, 

16 in the plant. The '74 event, similarly, was a 

17 non-routine shipment from Battelle Northwest. 

18 And I say that somewhat guardedly because 

19 there's a document that's on the SRDB, let's see 

20 if I can get the number. It's 12460. I'm 

21 sorry, no, it's 24165.

22 But that document reviews the '74 
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1 event in some detail and basically analyzes it 128

2 as the source of the tritium comes from two 

3 possible sources. One being the container that 

4 was contaminated that was shipped in from 

5 Battelle, the other was entrained tritium in the 

6 lines, in the processing lines of Rocky that were 

7 remnants of the '73 event.

8 And as they say in that report, it's 

9 very difficult to figure out how much was 

10 contributed by what. Certainly they 

11 established, there was some residual 

12 contamination, tritium contamination in those 

13 lines, process lines at Rocky.

14 So clearly, as far as the source of 

15 the tritium it could have come from both the 

16 Battelle containers as well as the process lines 

17 at Rocky. But in any case, those were all the 

18 non-regular shipments, non-routine shipments 

19 that were coming in.

20 As far as containers, who knows? I 

21 mean, Battelle, whatever they sent was clearly 

22 in whatever form of container that they 
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1 routinely would send stuff to Rocky. Same with 129

2 Livermore. Each site, you know, had used their 

3 own set of containers. It's not clear how much 

4 standardization there was.

5 But at any rate, so you had a 

6 Battelle container coming in that was implicated 

7 but not necessarily the only source of tritium 

8 for the '74 event. You had Livermore containers 

9 implicated in the three releases before '73 as 

10 well the '73 release. Now the shipping that's 

11 missing from all of this is the routine, the 

12 returns that were coming from Pantex. Pantex 

13 routinely sent pits as far as returns back to 

14 Rocky starting in the '50s, and that went on for 

15 decades.

16 And that was a major part of the 

17 operation at Rocky, taking retired, and pits 

18 that were taken from dismantled weapons and 

19 processing them at Rocky for recovery purposes 

20 and what not. That was a much different 

21 operation than just taking scrap from Livermore 

22 or taking material from Battelle. 
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1 These routinely came in daily over the 130

2 years. There was residual tritium implicated 

3 with them. It wasn't a lot. I think it was felt 

4 that you had maybe one or two, and this was based 

5 on an interview we had, one or two releases a year 

6 that you could actually get picked up in a 

7 bubbler in front of an exhaust plenum.

8 Now I might add that that was an 

9 alarming device, it wasn't a measuring device. 

10 So it got to the exhaust plenum, you would have 

11 an alarm go off as far as the tritium escaping. 

12 I might also add that as we heard in our 

13 interviews at Rocky that we did together, 

14 there's a two-part process.

15 And I believe this two-part process 

16 may have applied, but I don't know for sure from 

17 the routine shipments to the non-routine

18 shipments. What they did was basically ship it 

19 in two containers. The outer container was 

20 opened in an area which did have the tritium 

21 monitor in the exhaust plenum, then it was moved 

22 to a different room, building, where the inner 
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1 container was opened and the pit was in fact put 131

2 into a glove box for processing. And it was this 

3 second step that was not monitored using any 

4 tritium monitoring equipment on the exhaust 

5 plenums. So clearly, the one to two per year 

6 was the, whatever was being measured from the 

7 opening of the outer container, not the inner 

8 container, which would according to the 

9 interviewee would have been where you would have 

10 had the higher tritium contamination in any case 

11 and where the worker would have been handling the 

12 pit and would have been in the proximity of the 

13 contaminated container, you know, longer and 

14 closer.

15 I'm just trying to give you this 

16 background because I think the operational 

17 setting for all this is, you know, it certainly 

18 has more ins and outs when you're trying to 

19 compare apples to apples and trade a basis for 

20 the '74 event being representative to the '50s, 

21 '60s and the 20 or so plus years before that.

22 So I want to go through to some 
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1 extent, I don't know if it's the same questions 132

2 on that, but I want to go through some of the 

3 factors. And I thought these were good factors.

4 And, you know, I guess my 

5 perspective is I kind of understand the '74 event 

6 being characterized as a more typical event with 

7 source terms that would be more typical or 

8 representative of releases in the past.

9 The '73 event clearly was from a 

10 number of vantage points, unique, extremely 

11 high, not characteristic, so it would be 

12 difficult to consider that sufficiently 

13 accurate as a bounding approach. Certainly the 

14 '74 one at 1.5 curies and the doses we're talking 

15 about seems more typical, but where I'm 

16 stumbling is just looking at whether the 

17 circumstances around that release could be seen 

18 as representative of the preceding 20-some years 

19 of operations.

20 And, you know, certainly the item 

21 about -- I'm going to go through the six factors 

22 because I think these are good six factors. I 
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1 couldn't think of any others. 133

2 But the six factors in terms of this 

3 weight of evidence discussion, the first one 

4 which is that the background tritium levels 

5 immediately prior to the incident described in 

6 the Rocky Flats report was felt to be undoubtedly 

7 elevated since the more significant '73 release, 

8 were well below dosimetrically significant 

9 values can be considered as fairly 

10 representative of typical background levels for 

11 this analysis.

12 My problem with that is I'm not sure 

13 how one would know what was a typical background. 

14 For example, the routine pit returns from 

15 Pantex, there are no measurements of the 

16 background for those returns.

17 You do have some sense that the 

18 Battelle contaminated container might be 

19 similar to the Livermore contaminated 

20 container, but I have no idea whether that would 

21 be similar to the pit containers.

22 I would think the containers would 
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1 be different from the routine versus 134

2 non-routine, but I'm not even sure they're 

3 similar from lab to lab. So there's a question 

4 in my mind whether you could actually assume that 

5 your background levels of tritium are going to 

6 be fairly consistent given the fact you have two 

7 different streams of operations and you have 

8 three or four different shipping sites involved. 

9 So right away I think you have to wonder about 

10 that. And also as I mentioned earlier, in the 

11 investigation of the 1974 event it was pointed 

12 out that the cross-contamination of the sampling 

13 apparatus and the rooms themselves as well as the 

14 process lines, you know, in my mind would make 

15 any assumption on background for the '74 event 

16 problematic anyway.

17 You know, what is background when 

18 you have both a contaminated container as well 

19 as contaminated lines, contaminated sampling 

20 equipment? I mean the sampling apparatus that 

21 they were using for tritium analysis during the 

22 '74 event, they found that the sampling 
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1 equipment was contaminated with tritium. 135

2 So my sense is that, you know, from 

3 a number of different vantage points it would be 

4 very difficult to know what the background would 

5 be for the '74 event and whether that background 

6 compares favorably with all the different other 

7 operations that were going on in the past.

8 I'll take a breath there. Any 

9 reaction of LaVon, others?

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I'm still 

11 listening. I mean, you know -- well, I'm not 

12 disagreeing with you but I don't think the 

13 background is going to overly affect what we've 

14 just done from the model we presented. 

15 I don't disagree that, you know, 

16 non-routine samples doesn't necessarily reflect 

17 what the Pantex returns would be, but I would say 

18 that, you know, our additional work that we did 

19 we looked for documentation. As you did, we did 

20 correspondence with Pantex and Rocky Flats to 

21 see if we could find communications between the 

22 sites to see if Pantex's containers or shipping 
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1 containers if their protocols changed and stuff, 136

2 and we couldn't find any indication.

3 The only indication we found was 

4 documents that in later years, in 1980-81 that 

5 supported that they made changes then in their 

6 program.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I'll get to 

8 that in Number 6.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I know. I'm 

10 just saying that, you know, I know where you're 

11 going with it, but I'm not sure that I really see 

12 that big of a difference right now.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Well, I 

14 guess my point is that one wouldn't know. There 

15 would be no way of objectively knowing if there's 

16 a difference because these differences and some 

17 of these unknowns associated with the operations 

18 would make it difficult to even compare A to B.

19 I'm looking for some sense of apples 

20 to apples in order to apply the '74 backwards. 

21 And the six factors, I think, which kind of are 

22 really six good factors, but up to six factors 
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1 I have problems with probably half of them as far 137

2 as one could objectively come to that conclusion 

3 or even weighted evidence come to that 

4 conclusion.

5 I think if you look at SRDB, here's 

6 a number, 24165, which is the investigation for 

7 '74. I think a lot of the questions about Item 

8 1, which is, you know, the reliability of the 

9 measurements and knowing a representative 

10 background level, sort of comes into better 

11 focus in the sense that I think it would be very 

12 difficult. So I'll leave that at that and move 

13 on.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's Number 1 

15 you're talking about?

16 MR. FITZGERALD: That's Number 1.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. If you 

18 can, prior to lunch, get through all six that 

19 would be great.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: It goes faster in 

21 the middle.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, okay.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Item 2138. 

2 The quantity of tritium release was 

3 significantly less than that released in '73, no 

4 argument there. And is probably more typical of 

5 potential undocumented releases in work areas 

6 for the reasons I just stated I don't think we 

7 know. There's no real good monitoring data for 

8 the routine shipments of pits over the 20-plus 

9 years that went into Rocky from Pantex. And --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, it's more 

11 indicative of a chronic release than the '73 

12 incident. Clearly, we can --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, as I said 

14 earlier, intuitively I would say it's more 

15 typical than the '73. Is it in fact more 

16 representative of the previous 20-some years? 

17 That's the question I have problems with.

18 And I don't disagree it's more 

19 typical, you know, compared with '73. Is it 

20 representative enough to be used as bounding for 

21 pre-'73? I have difficulty with that. I don't 

22 think we have any data for an entire line of pit 
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1 returns from Pantex. 139

2 All we have are data points 

3 associated with non-routine shipments which are 

4 the Livermore and Battelle shipments that in 

5 fact had releases. And these are the higher 

6 releases. We don't even know given the degree 

7 of monitoring that was done at Rocky whether we 

8 have all the releases below what ended up being 

9 multiple curie releases. I mean the smaller 

10 releases that were less than say 50 curies may 

11 have been missed entirely, who knows?

12 Anyway, Item 3 --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Joe, are you 

14 questioning whether the '74 data is, the acute 

15 incident from '74 is bounding of the potential 

16 smaller chronic exposures in the earlier 20 

17 years or --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the chronic 

19 and as well as intermittent acute exposures. 

20 One, there was no monitoring for that, and two, 

21 what data we do have is exclusive to, I would 

22 call, non-routine shipments from two labs which 
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1 are Livermore and Battelle. Battelle was the 140

2 '74 event, and the rad chem releases that were 

3 in that report plus the '73 are Livermore, 

4 apparently Livermore shipments.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the 

6 assumption is, as Jim just said that it was, 

7 they're applying it daily, right? The '74 

8 incident is assumed to happen every day prior to 

9 '73. So are you still questioning that being 

10 bounding or then sufficiently accurate?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: We don't have 

12 anything that would be sufficiently accurate. 

13 It's comparing these non-routine shipments 

14 which certainly you have a source term, but we 

15 have no idea how that compares with either a 

16 chronic release associated with a daily set, you 

17 know, you had very frequent, continuous 

18 shipments of pits being returned from Pantex to 

19 Rocky Flats over 20-plus years and how 

20 representative would that be of those shipments 

21 we don't know. We don't have the good data for 

22 that.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, I've got a 141

2 quick question, Joe, because it sounds like 

3 you're concluding something different than what 

4 your White Paper said. I mean if I read the 

5 White Paper here it says, "Hence," this is the 

6 last sentence on, or it's on Section 5.1, where 

7 you basically conclude that the '73 incident 

8 would be bounding but our model -- because you 

9 say, "Hence, the experience cannot serve as the 

10 basis for building a coworker model for pre-'73 

11 exposures to tritium except perhaps to conclude 

12 that no worker prior to '73 experienced tritium 

13 exposures in excess of 84 millirem per year."

14 So I mean, unless I heard you wrong 

15 you just said that you can't make that 

16 conclusion, but the White Paper says you can.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think what 

18 we're saying there is that, and that we said 

19 earlier that the '73 event stands unique given 

20 the amount of tritium that released and what 

21 circumstances dotted it.

22 You know, we're talking elemental 
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1 tritium versus HTO for the '73 event. So I think 142

2 there's no question that was a particularly 

3 unique and particularly major release. 

4 However, and you can correct me, I think the 

5 reason you went to the '74 event as your bounding 

6 approach is because the '73 event is that unique 

7 that it would not, you know, it's like a large 

8 number approach.

9 If you have a large number like that 

10 I'm not sure anyone would debate that it would 

11 be unlikely you could have an exposure that high 

12 and not have it been picked up. In fact, with 

13 the monitoring that the EPA had been doing since 

14 '69, it would have been picked up from '69 

15 forward.

16 But the more "typical," and I use 

17 that in quotations as the word that was used in 

18 the White Paper, the '74 release, that is where 

19 I think you do have to come up with an argument 

20 that that release bounds pre-'73 because it is 

21 representative of the most tritium, elemental 

22 tritium that would be released in a container 
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1 type situation where you had a contaminated 143

2 container.

3 And what I'm arguing here is that I 

4 don't see how one can make a case of the '74 event 

5 being representative enough of what has happened 

6 before '73 just because either we don't know or 

7 the monitoring was inadequate to give you much 

8 of a measurement, and that the operations 

9 themselves were diverse enough and different 

10 from the '74 event that it would not be comparing 

11 apples to apples.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, and I 

13 understand. I think I'll add that, you know, 

14 our thought was we want to verify that we knew 

15 this exposure scenario that was identified in 

16 the classified interview, we wanted to verify 

17 that that exposure scenario would not exceed 

18 what we had originally identified as our 

19 bounding incident from the 1973 event.

20 We were thinking, okay, can this 

21 continuous chronic exposure from a release 

22 actually come up with exposures higher on an 
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1 annual basis than what we previously identified 144

2 from the '73 event?

3 And so using that 1.5 curie release 

4 from the '74 event we felt was a reasonable, or 

5 this is a pretty high release, it's from a 

6 shipping container, yes, it's not from a Pantex 

7 shipping container, and we'll assume it happens 

8 every day and see what our numbers come out. And 

9 they came out less than that event.

10 I mean you've got good arguments in 

11 that, you know, it's not a Pantex return that 

12 typically, I mean that's what 95 percent of what 

13 they dealt with was Pantex returns, you're 

14 correct there. There is no monitoring data to 

15 support anything for pre-'73, you know, we have 

16 none. I don't disagree with that. But I think 

17 it was a reasonable scenario.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: No, it's 

19 reasonable, it's intuitive, and I think it makes 

20 more sense than trying to apply the '73. 

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, okay.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm just saying 
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1 that when sort of put to some objective test, I 145

2 just find too many unknowns and too many 

3 questions because of the operations that were 

4 taking place at the time.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Let's hear your 

6 other four factors.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Now I know 

8 lunch is bearing down on us --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm going to skip 

11 what we agreed on. We agreed it's elemental and 

12 not HTO. And, you know, as far as the shipping 

13 containers we talked about that. That there is 

14 definitely some question about the shipping 

15 containers not being the same. But let me go 

16 to 6, because I did talk to LaVon earlier in this 

17 process that I was concerned about the fact that 

18 picking '74 where it falls time-wise is almost 

19 a year after the '73 became a very public issue 

20 at the Pantex.

21 And having lived in DOE, you know, 

22 to have an outside agency find that you're 
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1 contaminating somebody's reservoir, there is 146

2 almost nothing that would be more dramatic than 

3 that.

4 So my concern was how representative 

5 would the source terms we're talking about in '74 

6 be assuming that, you know, Rocky and the AEC 

7 would have taken a number of actions or 

8 precautions in the intervening 10, 11, 12 months 

9 to minimize tritium contamination and therefore 

10 make the '74 event, while it wasn't an incident 

11 again, certainly it would not have been 

12 necessarily representative of the kinds of acute 

13 releases you might have had before '73.

14 And one thing I did work with NIOSH 

15 on is I made a request of Pantex, made a request 

16 of Legacy Management in Denver to look for any 

17 specific correspondence that took place between 

18 Pantex and Rocky Flats in that time period, that 

19 one year time period, to just gauge the level of 

20 feedback interaction that was going on.

21 And in short, we didn't find any 

22 actual memorandum or directives, and on one hand 
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1 that would have been helpful to get some feel 147

2 from that standpoint. On the other hand, the 

3 AEC didn't always communicate by memorandum and 

4 it wasn't necessarily the case that memorandum 

5 would have been retained in the file.

6 So I'll just stop there. I did go 

7 back to the SRDB to look for any documentation 

8 that would touch on this whole question of in the 

9 aftermath of the '73 event what operational 

10 actions were taken by management on an 

11 intermediate basis to address tritium 

12 contamination in containers dealing with this 

13 problem that Livermore sort of surfaced, which 

14 they were sending contaminated items in the 

15 containers that went to Rocky Flats and Rocky 

16 Flats inadvertently opening them was releasing 

17 this.

18 And in there, there were certainly 

19 a number of documents that's referenced in the 

20 White Paper. You know, certainly by the fall of 

21 '73 both Rocky management and AEC management 

22 were putting in place a number of actions. The 
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1 investigation of the '73 tritium release 148

2 prompted the AEC to set up an AEC investigation, 

3 a very formal investigation from the outside.

4 That investigation came up with a 

5 number of actions and recommendations. And one 

6 of the recommendations, Recommendation 2, was to 

7 come up with interim control measures for 

8 tritium contamination on these off site 

9 shipments coming in.

10 And this is on Page 13 on the top, 

11 and what they basically respond -- this was 

12 publicized as well. This was issued in a press 

13 release that one of the interim control measures 

14 was a three-point check coupled with a complete 

15 written history applicable to all shipments of 

16 material to Rocky Flats.

17 That was something that they wanted 

18 to assure the public they were doing as an 

19 interim measure. And they also wanted to tackle 

20 more specifically the so-called non-routine SS 

21 shipments which the Livermore and Battelle 

22 shipments represented and their coming up with 
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1 actual forms where these forms would specify all 149

2 the monitoring and, you know, statements of 

3 reassurance that they would have to give Rocky 

4 that they did due diligence on looking for 

5 tritium contamination and any contamination, 

6 actually, of the material they were sending to 

7 Rocky.

8 In looking at those forms, and the 

9 SRDB numbers are in there, it's pretty clear that 

10 the three-point check was looking for just about 

11 everything that was coming into Rocky that might 

12 have some tritium contamination.

13 And the non-routine shipping form 

14 addressed all of the non-routine shipments that 

15 were implicated in these more recent releases, 

16 and that form did not have Pantex on it. And 

17 it's understandable why it isn't, because it 

18 only applied to non-routine shipments.

19 And there's a memorandum LaVon 

20 identified which is the October 21st, '74 

21 memorandum, which seems to suggest that, you 

22 know, the site sent a directive, which it did, 
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1 in October of '74 which said, from here on out, 150

2 you know, we're not going to accept anything 

3 until we're ready to do so with a special room 

4 where these containers can be opened and 

5 monitored for tritium and all of that.

6 It was like a moratorium on 

7 shipments, non-routine shipments not Pantex 

8 shipments, but non-routine shipments.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: But Pantex was 

10 included on that memo.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: It was included 

12 but it applied to non-routine. So I think even 

13 though -- and it went to the world by the way, 

14 so it went to all AEC operations, but it applied 

15 to non-routine shipments which we can confirm 

16 further, but based on my reading that 

17 non-routine did not include the Pantex pit 

18 returns.

19 But in any case, I think the 

20 operational history between the '73 event, and 

21 this to me makes sense, because again I had 

22 trouble thinking that they took a year before 
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1 they sent a directive out to the complex that oh 151

2 by the way, you know, we want you to be careful 

3 with tritium contamination and supply 

4 assurances that you're not sending us 

5 contaminated material.

6 Given what happened in April 

7 through, I guess it was the mid-'73, I would have 

8 expected the Atomic Energy Commission and Rocky 

9 to take immediate action on it, at least an 

10 interim basis, to get their hands around this and 

11 actually ensure that the sites were checking or 

12 following procedures and making sure that when 

13 things were received that they were checked, 

14 just because of the concern.

15 This was of course part of the AEC's 

16 investigation from the investigation report. 

17 So I guess the picture I'm painting is that yes, 

18 actually management did do that apparently, and 

19 did put in place some interim directives, the 

20 three-point process of checking.

21 They also made it clear to the 

22 shipping sites that they were to again follow 
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1 procedure and monitor what they were sending to 152

2 Rocky, and that happened in September-October of 

3 '73.

4 So I think this raises some real 

5 question about how representative the source 

6 term would have been for the '74 event, because 

7 again these operational precautions would have 

8 been received, would have been listened to, and 

9 certainly as a factor in this Item 6 where the 

10 argument is that the incident was close enough 

11 to '73 that the practices and controls were 

12 similar to those prior to '73. And I think 

13 they weren't, and logically they wouldn't have 

14 been. Certainly actions would have been taken 

15 rather promptly and would have been put in place. 

16 And then more specific ones, engineering 

17 controls would have been implemented a year or 

18 so later which is what happened starting October 

19 '74. They had a moratorium and were putting 

20 into place engineering controls, new 

21 facilities, to handle these things more 

22 carefully.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. 153

2 MR. BARTON: Joe, this is Bob 

3 Barton. Could I just take a step back and ask 

4 a point of clarification? You mentioned a memo 

5 in October of 1974.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, a memo.

7 MR. BARTON: I'm also looking at a 

8 memo in October 1973, and it's referring to these 

9 non-routine SS material shipments, and this 

10 thing it went out to everybody, Los Alamos, you 

11 know, Battelle, NLO, everybody pretty much.

12 And I'm just reading here from it and 

13 it says, "In order to provide Dow Rocky Flats 

14 with sufficient information concerning future 

15 requests to receive non-routine SS materials 

16 from other AEC contractors, Form," and it gives 

17 the form number, "Authorization to Ship SS 

18 Material, is being initiated and is required 

19 from this day forward." And that is dated 

20 October 15th, 1973.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I referenced 

22 that on Page 13.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you have the 154

2 document number for that just so everybody has 

3 it, Bob?

4 MR. BARTON: Yes. The SRDB number 

5 is 111253 and I'm looking on Page 189.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, thank you.

7 All right, now I think we got the 

8 point. And is there anything else to add? 

9 Those were your six factors, although, Joe, I got 

10 five. But I'll catch up with you later to get 

11 the one I missed.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, there was 

13 definitely six although I skipped over --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, that's fine, 

15 that's fine. I mean, I think that last one is 

16 a very interesting argument to me that, you know, 

17 did things change a lot operationally between 

18 the '73 event and '74. That would raise a lot 

19 of questions on using that later incident for 

20 bounding. So I think we've got it. I think 

21 NIOSH probably needs time to consider it. Yes.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: I just need to look 
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1 at that. I mean, the question's going to be 155--

2 or if we go back, we look at it and it appears 

3 that controls were put in place prior to the '74 

4 incident that which makes the '74 incident 

5 question whether it would be bounding, the 

6 overall question is okay, if we can't find 

7 another incident and we go back to the '73 

8 incident, which is the, you know, as our bounding 

9 thing --

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And it's 

11 questionable whether that would be plausible so, 

12 yes. So I think you run into maybe not being 

13 able to reconstruct, but I think you need more 

14 time to -- yes, yes.

15 DR. NETON: I think, really, the 

16 issue is small doses.

17 I don't know. And then if you go 

18 back to '62 and we say, okay, what's the shipping 

19 status prior to '62, because it's all SEC after 

20 '62. If it can't be reconstructed then we'll 

21 just give zero tritium dose to anybody in those 

22 years, right, I mean that's the idea. It's not 
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1 sufficiently accurate. 156

2 But then we'd have to really focus 

3 on, well, what was the activity of shipments 

4 prior to '62? Can that be reconstructed? See, 

5 that's the only open issue in my mind. 

6 Otherwise we're going to end up with the 

7 conclusion you can't reconstruct tritium doses 

8 so we'll just take it away from all workers. 

9 Okay, fine. I'm not sure we need to do 

10 that because they're small doses and we can bound 

11 that. So we've got to be careful --

12 MR. KATZ: So you're just saying the 

13 point is that you'd be taking it away from people 

14 who would require dose reconstructions because 

15 they wouldn't be in the Class anyway.

16 DR. NETON: Exactly. And I think 

17 they're smaller --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But also the 

19 magnitude of this -- are they going to be a 

20 turning point anyway, so you can argue --

21 DR. NETON: I don't know.

22 MS. BARRIE: But aren't you using 
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1 the '74 incident for post-'74 dose 157

2 reconstruction?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: No.

4 MS. BARRIE: No.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: They started 

6 monitoring.

7 MS. BARRIE: Okay.

8 DR. NETON: Yes, and so I guess we 

9 just need to be careful on how we proceed with 

10 that because --

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the 

12 caution also applies to the fact we just don't 

13 have any good data on the Pantex returns and we 

14 can make some assumptions, we can apply what we 

15 know on these other types, these few data points 

16 we have on the --

17 DR. NETON: Right, and then we say 

18 we can do reasonable dose reconstruction.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

20 saying that, you know, it's just one of these 

21 things we have to be careful about taking an 

22 event and applying it backwards.
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1 DR. NETON: Understood. And in my 158

2 mind it's most critical prior to '62 at this 

3 point.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Well, 

5 let's leave it there. Is that all the issues for 

6 the tritium?

7 DR. NETON: I think so.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, if that's 

9 the case this may be a good break point for --

10 and we'll take lunch. I think we only have the 

11 one issue left after lunch.

12 DR. NETON: Falsification.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, the 

14 falsification issue. But let's --

15 MR. KATZ: Let's try to keep a 

16 shorter lunch though if we can.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, some people 

18 might be able to get earlier flights or whatever. 

19 So if we can get back by, I mean, by 1 o'clock, 

20 can we --

21 MR. KATZ: So let's try to --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Back by 1:00, 
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1 those on the phone and -- all right, great. 159

2 Thanks.

3 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

4 went off the record at 12:09 p.m. and went back 

5 on the record at 1:00 p.m.)

6

7 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

8 (1:00 p.m.)

9 MR. KATZ: So good afternoon, Rocky 

10 Flats Work Group. Let me just check on the line 

11 to make sure we have our other Board Member. 

12 Phil, are you on? Phil Schofield? Are you on 

13 the line, Phil? Are you on mute?

14 Do you want to give him a minute or 

15 two before we get started? Phil?

16 While we're waiting let me just 

17 check and see, Joe, do we have you on the line?

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Ted, this is 

19 Phil. I'm on the line.

20 MR. KATZ: Oh Phil, great. And 

21 Joe, do we have you on the line too?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I'm here.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay, super. I think 160

2 then we can get going.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. All 

4 right, so we just have the one last item for the 

5 meeting today, and I think we should do the same 

6 thing. It's with the data falsification 

7 concerns, data invalidation. And maybe just 

8 let NIOSH tee it up and then let Joe respond, SC&A 

9 respond.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, that seemed 

11 to work pretty well last time. I'll go ahead and 

12 do that.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: And also at the end 

15 of this we'll probably go over some additional 

16 items that Terrie had brought up, Terrie Barrie 

17 the petitioner had brought up. I want to make 

18 sure that we don't forget those, and I'm sure 

19 Terrie won't let me forget them. So we'll be all 

20 right.

21 Just a little, kind of go back over 

22 the White Paper we put together. Originally, 
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1 Terrie Barrie the petitioner had identified a 161

2 potential concern with data falsification or 

3 data invalidation at Rocky Flats, and it was 

4 based on the interview that was done with a 

5 former employee who had concerns with potential 

6 data falsifications. And one area was in 

7 Building 123 which was of concern to us because 

8 that was the area where bioassay data was 

9 analyzed. We went back through and reviewed the 

10 paper, went through each allegation and 

11 responded to each allegation originally with the 

12 White Paper. There was a couple of concerns 

13 that were brought up at the last Work Group 

14 meeting for to try to validate what we had done, 

15 and so we did interview two former Rocky Flats 

16 workers that, the same workers we interviewed 

17 with the neptunium issue we interviewed to try 

18 to get a feel for how the health physics program 

19 may have been affected by the 1989 raid and what 

20 went on there.

21 Both individuals indicated to us 

22 that the only people that were involved with the 
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1 raid you knew because it was done on a need to 162

2 know basis so if you weren't contacted you 

3 weren't involved. And since the raid related to 

4 environmental issues there was no involvement 

5 from the bioassay program perspective.

6 And accordingly there was no 

7 radiological program changes made as a result of 

8 the raid. This is coming from one of the 

9 interviewees. He indicated that the Department 

10 did not know the raid happened until they heard 

11 it in the news.

12 The interviewee also indicated that 

13 to this date he has not been informed of any 

14 aspects of the raid. That was one of the 

15 individuals.

16 And the second individual -- and I 

17 want to qualify these individuals. They are 

18 individuals that are part of management, so I 

19 want to make sure that that's, you know. 

20 Because I know that could be a question and I want 

21 to make sure, but these individuals were 

22 specific with the RadCon program in that they ran 
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1 the RadCon program and the bioassay program.163

2 The second employee confirmed that 

3 the first interviewee's point that the FBI raid 

4 involved specific people and only those who were 

5 involved received information about what was 

6 going on. He also confirmed the raid was 

7 related to environmental issues and not 

8 occupational or radiological issues.

9 And so we got pretty much the same 

10 thing from both interviewees. We also went back 

11 and we tried to pull together procedures that, 

12 you know, from prior years to later years.

13 We did get one individual that told 

14 us that we probably wouldn't find archived 

15 procedures, because up until the late '80s or so 

16 they didn't archive procedures, they just, you 

17 know, when new revisions were made they got rid 

18 of the old one.

19 But we did find some procedures for 

20 Building 771 that supported that, I think it was 

21 771, and Dan can correct me if I'm wrong, but that 

22 supported that nothing changed, the 
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be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change.

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1 occupational health physics program before the 164

2 raid and after the raid. So those were just 

3 a couple of additional things that we did. And 

4 I'll let Ron or SC&A go through their review of 

5 the White Paper and then I'll add a couple other 

6 things as well.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, let me just 

8 preface our remarks. You know, our focus, this 

9 is something the Work Group tasked SC&A with is 

10 looking for evidence of a crossover problem or 

11 implication from the environmental side where 

12 the allegations rested and the occupational 

13 bioassay side.

14 And we reviewed the White Paper, 

15 looked at the references that were in there 

16 including the FBI affidavit and the other 

17 references that were cited, we reviewed those. 

18 And we participated in the interviews that were 

19 arranged by NIOSH.

20 Clearly there were some other 

21 documents that LaVon's going to talk to that I 

22 think Terrie Barrie had identified that we have 
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1 yet to actually review. 165

2 So what we provided in a very brief 

3 form I might add, and I'll let Ron go through it, 

4 is more or less a status to this point that, you 

5 know, we have to this point haven't seen any hard 

6 evidence of a crossover but we have not completed 

7 this review on the other hand as well. So it's 

8 sort of the mid-course, you know, we still have 

9 more work to do.

10 Ron?

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm here. I 

12 had it on mute. Yes, this is Ron Buchanan with 

13 SC&A. I sat in on one of the interviews and 

14 reviewed the other interview. I did not sit in 

15 on the one in July but I did the one in August.

16 And these were interviews with many, 

17 many employees like they said, and so we did ask 

18 them some questions about the processing of the 

19 samples and how often was that, and some of the 

20 procedures mainly with neptunium but with other, 

21 gross alpha, that sort of thing also.

22 And from those two interviews we did 
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1 not get an indication of an issue from the raid. 166

2 However, as Joe as said we have not had the 

3 privilege of the other four documents that were 

4 brought forth and we haven't seen those yet, and 

5 we would like to see those and review those to 

6 further our investigation in the area. So 

7 that's pretty much where we stand now.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: And I'll jump in on 

9 that. One of the things that was brought up by 

10 Terrie, and I think is Stephanie Carroll as well, 

11 was there were four parts to the Tiger Team 

12 report and we had one of those parts. There are 

13 three other parts.

14 And I will say, to date we still have 

15 not received those other three reports. We've 

16 looked for those and we haven't found them yet. 

17 I think Joe has even offered to see if he can, 

18 you know, find them in some of his areas as well 

19 that he has access to and to see if we can get 

20 those reports. So yes, we have not received 

21 those reports and have not had a chance.

22 Now one of the other issues was the 
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1 sealed documents, and I'm going to give you a 167

2 general overview of it and then I'm going to turn 

3 it over to Jenny to give you a much deeper.

4 But generally what the concern was 

5 there were sealed documents that potentially 

6 contained information that supported that 

7 falsification occurred in the occupational 

8 health physics program.

9 And the concern was we didn't have 

10 those documents, and since we wouldn't have them 

11 we needed to get those documents and see if we 

12 could get those documents. So I contacted our 

13 general counsel, Jenny, and Jenny took, I'll 

14 just let her brief you on what she did.

15 MS. LIN: Sure. So we did contact 

16 our colleagues in the Department of Justice, the 

17 U.S. Attorney's office and the Department of 

18 Energy, which was a really good place to start.

19 They have an environmental 

20 litigation division, and one of the senior 

21 attorneys there happens to be a lead attorney in 

22 the Denver's office when the Rocky Flats raid and 
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1 investigation was going on. So even though she 168

2 wasn't the person on task she was very aware 

3 because their entire office was, you know, 

4 assisting DOJ and FBI.

5 So when we were looking at these 

6 sealed documents obviously we need to know what 

7 they are, where they are and how to get them. So 

8 we were able to answer all three questions.

9 So these sealed documents were 

10 documents provided by the Department of Justice, 

11 you know, through the FBI raids, and they were 

12 provided to -- actually, let me retract.

13 So the sealed documents are actually 

14 court documents. Those were sealed by the 

15 court. Those are different than what we 

16 typically think of classified documents and that 

17 sort.

18 So these sealed documents are jury 

19 reports, draft indictments, presentments and 

20 other court documents, and they were actually 

21 sealed by the U.S. District Court for the 

22 District of Colorado pursuant to the Federal 
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1 Rules of Criminal Procedure 6(e). And they have 169

2 been litigated.

3 This issue in release of sealed 

4 documents had been litigated at least twice and 

5 they resolved it in court opinion saying that 

6 they cannot be released. So because of that we 

7 know that the sealed documents, they would not 

8 be available to us.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And you said 

10 they include jury reports, draft reports and 

11 something else you said.

12 MS. LIN: I mean these are just the 

13 characterization. No one was able to give us 

14 the inventories of what these sealed documents 

15 are.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Generally 

17 though, right.

18 MS. LIN: So generally. So I 

19 looked at the Federal Rules of Criminal 

20 Procedure 6(e) to see what type of documents fall 

21 under that category and also look at the court's 

22 opinions, and they're pretty consistent in terms 
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1 of the type of document that was sealed by the 170

2 court.

3 And then obviously there's ongoing 

4 investigation so they're assuming for the courts 

5 to seal those documents. And I think at least 

6 one of the jurors had written a book about their 

7 experience.

8 But I think an outcome of this 

9 investigation by the Office of General Counsel 

10 is that we were able to have these concurrent 

11 statements from the DOE's litigation division 

12 and also from others who were doing the data 

13 capture that is pretty consistent with the 

14 source documents that were evaluated by the 

15 grand jury, have been gradually released to 

16 either the Rocky Flats plant when it was still 

17 in operation or to DOE.

18 And I think our data capture team 

19 also confirmed that's actually the case with the 

20 person who is maintaining the data. So it seems 

21 like the story that OGC is getting actually 

22 confirm, matched up with what the data capture 
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1 team -- 171

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, basically, 

3 and as Jenny mentioned, the source documents, 

4 the documents that they were using to evaluate, 

5 I guess, these legal issues, the source 

6 documents have been, some of those were 

7 classified and they were returned to Rocky 

8 Flats.

9 And there's actually an inventory 

10 sheet of those documents that were, you know, 

11 taken and then returned over time, and the Denver 

12 Federal Records Center has confirmed that they 

13 had those documents and we have those documents.

14 So the only outstanding one is the 

15 three reports that are still from the Tiger Team 

16 that we still have been unable to find at this 

17 time.

18 MS. BARRIE: So the documents that 

19 were returned by Justice is in the SRDB?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: They would be, 

21 either they have them in the Site Research 

22 Database or they're at the Denver Records Center 
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1 and we can get them. But I believe we've got 172

2 them all because, in fact I know we do because 

3 we had a data capture with the EMCBC locally in 

4 Cincinnati where some additional documents that 

5 were sent that were part of that and we retrieved 

6 those documents. So Dan, correct me if I'm 

7 wrong. Dan Stempfley.

8 MR. STEMPFLEY: What you're saying 

9 is how it is. We did identify and collect the 

10 pertinent documents that we were looking for.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Okay, 

12 thanks.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you have all 

14 the documents that run inventory to this? Okay.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, the only 

16 thing we don't have is the three reports that 

17 they have identified.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Got that, 

19 right. The three parts of the Tiger Team 

20 report, right? Okay.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, and I don't 

22 understand why we don't have this. It just 
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1 seems like that would be something easy for us 173

2 to get --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that should 

4 be easy.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- that we haven't 

6 been able to get.

7 MS. BARRIE: Well, that makes me 

8 feel better because I've been waiting years to 

9 try to get my, I've filed FOIAs two or three times 

10 on them and --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So when -- I'm 

12 sorry. When Joe at the end of his description 

13 mentioned, or maybe it was Ron said the other 

14 four documents that they're still waiting to 

15 see?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think he was 

17 talking about the three --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The three parts 

19 of that, okay. I think that's what he was 

20 referring to.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Is there a fourth 

22 one I'm missing, Jim?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the 174

2 bioassay procedures was another item that I 

3 think Terrie had cited in one of her --

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I actually, 

5 we have an updated White Paper that I didn't want 

6 to send it out, you know, at the 11th hour type 

7 thing because it came out, it just cleared ADC 

8 review yesterday and it hasn't been reviewed 

9 internally by us. So it does cite some 

10 additional Site Research Database documents for 

11 you to look at. So when you get your hands on 

12 that you can look at that in comparison.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: And on the three 

14 documents that we're missing, I think I even 

15 mentioned this to Terrie at one point, I will, 

16 you know, sort of beat the bushes at DOE 

17 headquarters both in the program office, safety 

18 office as well as in their archives to see if I 

19 can find them.

20 I know they have complete sets of the 

21 Tiger Team reports. The Rocky ones were not 

22 officially a Tiger Team so they should be there 
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1 as well. 175

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: I thought maybe 

3 you'd have it on your shelf or something.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: You would think. 

5 I actually didn't do that one. I did the one 

6 right afterwards.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron with SC&A 

9 and I had some questions for you. You know, one 

10 of the four documents was HP procedures, one was 

11 environmental and the other three you haven't 

12 been able to get yet, and then you talked just 

13 now about some new court documents.

14 Can you email me those documents 

15 that you do have? The HP procedure, the 

16 environmental and the new documents, or give me 

17 the --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: SRDB numbers?

19 DR. BUCHANAN: -- SRDB number by 

20 email so I can look them up?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I will. And 

22 hopefully we can get this revised report 
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1 released real quickly, but I'll get you all the 176

2 information. We also have inventory sheets 

3 from the documents that were taken as part of the 

4 raid. And I'll get you access to all that 

5 information.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, if you could 

7 email that directly to me I'd appreciate it so 

8 that I can start working on that.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, no problem.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And just to be 

11 clear just so I didn't miss something, the review 

12 of the sealed, you know, the court documents, all 

13 source documents were returned to the site, 

14 right, and it was inventoried and NIOSH has all 

15 of those?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that's 

18 the critical part, yes.

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Let me be 

20 clear. The allegation was that environmental 

21 data was manipulated or falsified. Is there any 

22 allegation that the occupational health data was 
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1 falsified, or is that just a concern because the 177

2 people who measure the one measured the other?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, that's the 

4 concern. And I mean, Terrie can correct me if 

5 I'm wrong, but we didn't see anything 

6 specifically of the allegation that the 

7 occupational health, you know, the bioassay data 

8 for the occupational health physics group was 

9 ever in question.

10 MS. BARRIE: Yes, and if you 

11 remember during the public comments during the 

12 July meeting, there was a Rocky Flats worker who 

13 filed a grievance through the union on that 

14 Building 123 was changing their doses.

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: A-ha. So 

16 there is an allegation within the union --

17 MS. BARRIE: Right.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- and a 

19 grievance procedure.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm glad you 

21 brought that up because that is another thing 

22 that we are following up on. We are doing an 
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1 interview, classified interview with that 178

2 individual. We've been working on that. It 

3 kind of got held up a little bit.

4 One, scheduling a classified 

5 interview is not easy especially depending on 

6 the location the individual is and whether we 

7 have somebody out in that area to do it and such.

8 But we're working on that and so 

9 we're going to interview that individual because 

10 they requested it be in a classified area which 

11 is good. That means they can tell us a lot of 

12 things.

13 So we're going to complete that 

14 interview. We'll see if we can get Ron Buchanan 

15 or somebody from SC&A to be involved in that as 

16 well, and then we'll go from there on that.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And can you 

18 clarify? Building 123 that Terrie referenced, 

19 that was the bioassay lab or was it -- did it do 

20 all --

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, 

22 environmental samples and --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And occupational 179

2 or bioassay samples, all right. Both, okay.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: But they weren't 

4 done by the same individuals or group. It was 

5 in the same building.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In the same 

7 building but separate, okay.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Joe, do you have 

10 anything to add?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: No, like I said, I 

12 think we will seek those missing documents and 

13 continue our review and try to get back to the 

14 Work Group.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, there is one 

16 other thing that Terrie brought up that I 

17 followed up on, and it's not related to data 

18 falsification, but if I don't tell it now I'll 

19 end up forgetting.

20 So one of the issues was a concern 

21 of tritium stripping. And you guys might 

22 remember an email questioning of what is this 
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1 tritium stripping, and it was identified. I 180

2 believe it was identified in our SEC-0030 

3 Evaluation Report. It was also identified in an 

4 email exchange that we had internally.

5 And that was a typo and I've provided 

6 SC&A, or Joe anyway, Joe Fitzgerald with SC&A, 

7 the SRDB reference that should have been 

8 titanium stripping and not tritium stripping. 

9 And I've given him the SRDB number and the chem 

10 risk report number that references that.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I have that.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Terrie, did you 

14 want to add or comment anything on this file or 

15 overall comments?

16 MS. BARRIE: I have overall 

17 comments, yes.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, well, hold 

19 those for a second just to make sure. Is there 

20 anything else on this topic on the phone or here 

21 in the room? Because I think it's still a work 

22 in progress. Obviously we have several things 
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1 to find in this review. Okay. 181

2 All right, so then yes, Terrie.

3 MS. BARRIE: Okay.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think at this 

5 point we've wrapped our -- you can make comments, 

6 yes.

7 MS. BARRIE: Right. I just want to 

8 thank everybody for all the work they've done. 

9 I mean, it's been a long hard road getting to this 

10 point of especially pointing out that oh, what 

11 about this thorium strike and what about this and 

12 what about that?

13 And I really appreciate everyone's 

14 interest and investigation. I honestly do, and 

15 I'm quite thankful that you are recommending an 

16 SEC for, you know, certain years and including 

17 all the workers.

18 When it comes to the -- and I hope 

19 that the full Board votes for it too obviously. 

20 When it comes to the falsification, this has been 

21 one of my sticklers because I have my husband's 

22 documents where there are erasures and there's 
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1 cross outs, and so that's how I first got 182

2 involved with that.

3 You know, I don't know if he was 

4 exposed to uranium 238, 235 or 233, because it's 

5 whited out. But that's that. And I think I 

6 sent an article or a report from 2006 from the 

7 former worker program, and I found one from 2004.

8 And this is why I keep getting back 

9 to the falsification, how important this is. 

10 And I'll give this to you too. It says this is 

11 for the former worker program eligibility 

12 criteria.

13 And the very last criteria on this 

14 list here, the reason that the former workers 

15 from Rocky Flats were invited to participate is 

16 because a review of their exposure or work record 

17 indicated significant likelihood that an 

18 internal deposition or external dose may have 

19 occurred that was not well evaluated in the past. 

20 Okay, to me that says, oops, we made a mistake 

21 on our dosimetry records and our testing.

22 So this is, like I said, a 2004 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Rocky Flats Work Group,

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

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

certified by the Chair of the Rocky Flats Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should 

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

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 paper. So I do appreciate you not closing this 183

2 out, and I hope that we can resolve that in the 

3 next few months after the meeting.

4 And what really bothers me about 

5 this was it was authored by a Site Profile author 

6 back then and he knew this when, you know, he was 

7 authoring the Site Profile. So if you'd like to 

8 see this or -- okay. But thank you everyone. I 

9 do appreciate everything.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you. 

11 Yes, and I think that grievance in particular is 

12 a good one that we really need to follow up on. 

13 So any other public comments before we close?

14 Okay, so I look forward to the report 

15 a couple weeks before the Board meeting 

16 hopefully.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The updated 

19 report and your presentation in Denver. And 

20 thanks for all the hard work by NIOSH and SC&A. 

21 All right, so meeting adjourned.

22 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Rocky Flats Work Group,

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

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

certified by the Chair of the Rocky Flats Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader should 

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

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 went off the record at 1:26 p.m.) 184

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