STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

MOUND

 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 1, 

2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

April 1, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO 

WORKING GROUP CHAIR 10 

INTRODUCTION BY NIOSH 11 

MATRIX DISCUSSION: 

MATRIX ISSUE ONE: EXPOSURE TO RADIUM, ACTINIUM, 

THORIUM 12 

MATRIX ISSUE TWO: INDOOR RADON AIRBORNE CONCENTRATIONS 

IN SW AND OTHER BUILDINGS 57 

MATRIX ISSUE THREE: EXPOSURE TO TRANSURANIUM 

RADIONUCLIDES 67 

MATRIX ISSUES FOURTEEN/FIFTEEN: EXTERNAL ISSUE, 

NEUTRON DOSE RECONSTRUCTION 78 

MATRIX ISSUE SIXTEEN: BETA LOW ENERGY PHOTON 94 

MATRIX ISSUE SEVENTEEN: BADGING IN 

RADIOLOGICAL AREAS 98 

MATRIX ISSUE EIGHTEEN: INTEGRITY OF RECORDS 106 

MATRIX ISSUE FOUR: URANIUM ISOTOPES 139 

MATRIX ISSUE FIVE: OTHER ISOTOPES 

POSSIBLY DISCOUNTED 147 

MATRIX ISSUE SIX: STABLE TRITIUM COMPOUNDS 154 

MATRIX ISSUE SEVEN: REACTOR FUELS AND BYPRODUCTS 161 

MATRIX ISSUE EIGHT: MULTI-PURPOSE LABORATORY 170 

MATRIX ISSUE NINE: HIGH-FIRED ISSUE 198 

MATRIX ISSUE TEN: D&D ERA 211 

MATRIX ISSUE ELEVEN: ADEQUACY OF 

INTERNAL DOSE RECORDS 213 

MATRIX ISSUE TWELVE: INTEGRITY AND COMPLETENESS 

OF INTERNAL DOSE RECORDS 220 

MATRIX ISSUE THIRTEEN: MOUND EMPLOYEES RECORDS 223 

MATRIX ISSUE TWENTY: AMBIENT ENVIRONMENTAL 

INTERNAL RADIATION DOSE CONTRIBUTION 237 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 251 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

BRANCHE, Christine, Ph.D. 

Principal Associate Director 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

BEACH, Josie 

Nuclear Chemical Operator 

Hanford Reservation 

Richland, Washington 

1 CLAWSON, Bradley 

2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

PRESLEY, Robert W. 

Special Projects Engineer 

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 

Clinton, Tennessee 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

BISTLINE, BOB, SC&A 

BRACKETT, LIZ, ORAU 

BUCHANAN, RON, SC&A 

CORDY*, MARIA 

DEMERS, KATHY, SC&A 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A 

HOFF, JENNIFER, ORAU 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

JERISON, DEB 

JESSEN, KARIN, ORAU 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

RAMSEY, ANN 

STEWART, DON, ORAU 

ULSH, BRANT, NIOSH 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

1 (9:00 a.m.) 

2 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO

3 DR. BRANCHE: I am Christine Branche from 

4 the National Institute for Occupational Safety 

5 and Health. I’m the Designated Federal 

6 Official as well as the Principal Associate 

7 Director for NIOSH. I want to get a couple of 

8 things established before I let Ms. Josie 

9 Beach begin her meeting. Would the Board 

10 members please announce themselves, first 

11 those of you who are in the room? 

12 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, Advisory Board 

13 member, not conflicted. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, Advisory Board, 

15 not conflicted on this one. 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, Advisory 

17 Board member, not conflicted. 

18 MS. BEACH: Josie Beach, non-conflicted. 

19 MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Robert Presley, 

20 not conflicted. 

21 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. We do not have a 

22 quorum of the Board so we can -- 
7

1 DR. ZIEMER: Did you ask on phone? 

2 DR. BRANCHE: Oh, sorry, thank you very 

3 much. 

4 Are there other Board members on the 

5 phone? 

6 (no response) 

7 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you, Paul. 

8 We do not have a quorum of the Board, 

9 so we can proceed. Would the NIOSH staff 

10 please announce themselves, first those of you 

11 in the room? Excuse me, please tell us if you 

12 are conflicted with Mound. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, I have no 

14 conflicts with Mound. 

15 DR. ULSH: Brant Ulsh with NIOSH, no 

16 conflicts. 

17 DR. BRANCHE: On the phone? NIOSH staff who 

18 are participating by phone and please indicate 

19 if you have a conflict with Mound. 

20 (no response) 

21 DR. BRANCHE: ORAU staff who are in the 

22 room, please announce your names and whether 

23 or not you’re conflicted with Mound. 

24 MS. JESSEN: Karin Jessen, no conflicts. 

25 MR. STEWART: Don Stewart, ORAU team, no 
8

1 conflict with Mound. 

2 MS. BRACKETT: Liz Brackett, I am 

3 conflicted. 

4 MS. HOFF: Jennifer Hoff, no conflicts with 

5 Mound. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: ORAU staff participating by 

7 phone, please? 

8 (no response) 

9 DR. BRANCHE: SC&A staff in the room, 

10 please, announce your names and indicate 

11 whether or not you’re conflicted with Mound. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A, no 

13 conflict. 

14 MR. BISTLINE: Bob Bistline, SC&A, no 

15 conflict. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, SC&A, no 

17 conflict. 

18 DR. BRANCHE: SC&A staff by phone, please. 

19 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): John Mauro, SC&A, 

20 no conflicts. 

21 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Kathy DeMers, 

22 SC&A, conflicted. 

23 DR. BRANCHE: Other federal agency staff who 

24 are in the room, please. 

25 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 
9

1 DR. BRANCHE: Those by phone? 

2 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): I’m sorry, Jeff 

3 Kotsch, Department of Labor. 

4 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Liz 

5 Homoki-Titus, HHS. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any petitioners or 

7 their representatives who are participating by 

8 phone? Would you please state your names? 

9 MS. CORDY* (by Telephone): This is Maria 

10 Cordy. I’m taking notes for Karen Hatts* who 

11 was not able to attend today. 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you very much. 

13 Any workers or their representatives 

14 participating by phone, please? 

15 (no response) 

16 DR. BRANCHE: Any members of Congress or 

17 their representatives, please? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Anyone else who would like to 

20 mention their names? 

21 (no response) 

22 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. Before we get 

23 started I would ask that those of you who are 

24 participating in the room, if you would please 

25 mute your phones. If you’re participating by 
10

1 telephone, if you would please mute the line 

2 until you are ready to speak. It will help 

3 enhance all the quality for everyone 

4 participating being able to hear everything 

5 that’s spoken. If you do not have a mute 

6 button, then please use star six to mute your 

7 phone, and then again use star six when you 

8 are ready to speak. Thank you very much. 

9 Ms. Beach. 

10 WORKING GROUP CHAIR

11 MS. BEACH: Good morning. I’d like to go 

12 ahead and share some thoughts for the record 

13 with regard to work group meeting ground rules 

14 before we get started. 

15 First of all, to every extent 

16 possible, any white paper or any paper to be 

17 discussed should be made available to the work 

18 group, NIOSH, SC&A, a few business days in 

19 advance of the meeting. If material is 

20 provided at the table, discussion may be 

21 limited to just clarifying what has been given 

22 without actual deliberations. 

23 Second, we will use work group 

24 meetings to deliberate on SEC-related 

25 questions, adequacy, completeness, integrity, 
11

1 purely technical or historical factual issues 

2 may be better addressed on the one-on-one 

3 technical calls or meetings with notes to be 

4 taken. 

5 Third, the Board’s role includes 

6 independent validation of the evaluation 

7 reports, assumptions and judgment of 

8 historical facts and should not be construed 

9 as questioning the rigor behind the evaluation 

10 report. The discourse between NIOSH, ORAU and 

11 SC&A serves to inform the work board and the 

12 Board’s future recommendations on Mound. 

13 And fourth, the work group’s process 

14 is designed to use deliberative process to 

15 narrow the scope of the SEC important issues 

16 and questions to the point where the worker is 

17 in a position to advise the broader Board on 

18 any remaining issues that should be discussed 

19 prior to a vote on a recommendation regarding 

20 the SEC. 

21 And with that I’m going to turn it 

22 over to NIOSH to get started with the matrix. 

23 INTRODUCTION BY NIOSH

24 DR. ULSH: This is Brant Ulsh with NIOSH, 

25 for those of you on the phone. Just to let 
12

1 those of you know who are out there by phone 

2 who I am and my role in the process, I’m 

3 NIOSH’s Technical Lead and so I was NIOSH’s 

4 review authority pretty much on the evaluation 

5 report along with my managers. 

6 I have several folks here from the 

7 ORAU team who actually did a lot of the 

8 legwork on the evaluation report, were 

9 intimately involved in writing it. Karin 

10 Jessen is here and Don Stewart is here. We 

11 also have Liz Brackett to help on matters 

12 dealing with internal dosimetry. 

13 With that introduction then, the 

14 matrix was put together by SC&A based on their 

15 review of our evaluation report. The 

16 evaluation report was delivered to the Board 

17 at the Las Vegas meeting, and at that time we 

18 recommended, and the Board accepted the 

19 recommendation, to add a class at Mound from 

20 1949 to 1959 based on radium, actinium and 

21 thorium separations issues. And so a lot of 

22 these issues that we’re going to talk about 

23 today look at the remainder of the time and 

24 activities that happened at Mound. 

25 MATRIX ISSUE ONE: EXPOSURE TO RADIUM, ACTINIUM, THORIUM
13

1 So just starting through SC&A’s matrix 

2 then the first issue that was listed is 

3 exposure to radium, actinium and thorium 

starting March 1st 4 , 1959. So this picks up 

5 after the recommended class. 

6 Joe, I assume you’re going to be 

7 speaking for SC&A today. I don’t know if you 

8 want to go through SC&A’s statement of concern 

9 or Josie, do you have an opinion on how we 

10 should proceed here? 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: This is Joe Fitzgerald. 

12 I’m the Lead for SC&A, and we have Bob 

13 Bistline and Ron Buchanan here also. This 

14 being the first exchange, and it really is the 

15 first exchange on any of the issues relative 

16 to the evaluation report, I think the key 

17 thing that we were looking for is to clarify 

18 in some cases the basis for the conclusions in 

19 the ER. 

20 And again, this is our first read, and 

21 first read of the supporting documents. So we 

22 understand that you have spent a great deal of 

23 time looking at these materials. And we just 

24 want to certainly take the opportunity to 

25 clarify more than anything else at this stage. 
14

1 Did we understand the point being made in the 

2 ER accurately? And if so -- and we have some 

3 questions regarding the basis of the 

4 conclusions. 

5 So really in the context it’s 

6 clarification more than anything at this 

7 point. I think clearly there’ll be 

8 opportunities to get into these issues in a 

9 more in-depth way. So I guess I see a certain 

10 exchange back and forth. Did you mean this? 

11 Do we understand it correctly? Did we read it 

12 correctly? Is there more data than we were 

13 able to discern from the supporting 

14 documentation? If so, what is that data? I 

15 think that’s kind of where I would see it. 

16 DR. ULSH: Well, the first issue as I 

17 mentioned was radium separations or dealing 

18 with the actinium material after the 

19 designated class, so after the ’49 to ’59 

20 period. And I think Josie raised this 

21 question at the Advisory Board meeting as 

22 well. 

23 And I guess a point that I need to 

24 maybe clarify is the reason that we 

25 recommended the class from ’49 to ’59 would 
15

1 not extend to these other actinium separations 

2 is not that those activities didn’t happen. 

3 We know that they did happen. For example, we 

4 have interviewed a former worker who was in 

5 charge and intimately involved with the 

6 actinium work that happened in 1964. 

7 I think that’s the one you asked 

8 about, Josie. 

9 He had a very clear recollection of 

10 what was done, and in his recollection there 

11 were several points that he made that I think 

12 are relevant to our discussion today. First, 

13 those separation activities happened in a 

14 different facility from the one that was used 

15 during the ’49 to ’59 time period. ‘Forty16 nine to ’59 was done in the old cave, known as 

17 the old cave at Mound. And by all accounts it 

18 was a very, very dirty operation. And we even 

19 have air sampling results that indicate that 

20 there was spread of contamination outside of 

21 the old cave facility. 

22 And that really impacted our decision 

23 to recommend an SEC class. In contrast the 

24 activities that happened in 1964 were very 

25 limited in scope. In fact, the worker that we 
16

1 interviewed said, I think, yeah, said there 

2 were about four people involved in that 

3 activity, and it was done in the new cave, not 

4 the old cave. 

5 And the new cave had a hot cell 

6 inside. And for those of you who are not 

7 familiar with a hot cell, the picture that I 

8 have in my mind of a hot cell -- and I 

9 confirmed this with the individual that we 

10 talked to -- several inches of leaded glass, 

11 remote manipulators, totally isolated 

12 environment. And when I say that what I mean 

13 is the activities that are happening inside 

14 the hot cell, when the hot cell is operating 

15 correctly, are completely isolated from the 

16 outside environment. 

17 And so the reason that we didn’t 

18 include this activity in the recommended SEC 

19 was because there was no exposure potential. 

20 This was inside the hot cell. And he did 

21 mention that what they did was they opened up 

22 a couple of capsules of the actinium material 

23 inside the hot cell. And the first one that 

24 they opened spread a little bit of, spread 

25 some contamination inside the hot cell. But 
17

1 he indicated that nothing escaped and the next 

2 capsule didn’t have that problem. 

3 And so we didn’t see any exposure 

4 potential for that material unlike the period 

5 in ’49 to ’59 when there was widespread 

6 contamination. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Just a clarification if I 

8 could. There were later operations, I guess 

9 the one that comes to mind is the Cotter 

10 concentrate extraction process where actinium 

11 showed up as an almost contaminant in some of 

12 the production material. So that kind of 

13 explains why you tend to, I guess over the 

14 history of Mound, that you found some sources 

15 of actinium contamination and different D&D 

16 processes picked it up and certainly in the 

17 final D&D it was picked up. 

18 I guess what we were most interested 

19 in was the bioassay capability and the ability 

20 to actually monitor for it. And post-’59 I 

21 guess our concern was establishing when the 

22 actinium bioassay, for example, was available 

23 and actually being used for workers that were 

24 potentially exposed. And Cotter was one 

25 example, but I think in some of the D&D there 
18

1 were other examples. 

2 In looking at the King report you can 

3 sort of establish, yeah, it was a constituent 

4 here, there, different places. I wouldn’t say 

5 it was ubiquitous, but certainly it tended to 

6 show up in more places than you would expect. 

7 And, of course, the new cave was the most 

8 obvious operation, but there’s other 

9 operations like Cotter. 

10 So I guess my question is trying to 

11 track, and I think a lot of the issues kind of 

12 follow the same pattern, just trying to 

13 understand what the timeline for bioassay 

14 availability and capability was versus the 

15 source terms in different locations. It’s 

16 almost if you took the King document and the 

17 Meyer document, the Meyer document, of course, 

18 being sort of a world map of bioassay, and 

19 track that could you establish coverage over 

20 time and where were the gaps. 

21 And that’s probably the common theme 

22 that runs through a lot of this and runs 

23 through this as well. Was there, in fact, 

24 bioassay being done for in this case actinium 

25 across the various activities that where 
19

1 actinium would show up. And so in other words 

2 you were getting monitoring when the source 

3 term was identified. And that, again, we’re 

4 picking up some gaps, but we’re not sure 

5 whether we’re seeing all the data, but it 

6 appears to be some gaps of actinium. 

7 DR. ULSH: Let me make a couple of points 

8 from that. ‘Forty-nine to ’59 was when the 

9 major campaigns took place as SC&A indicated 

10 in the statement there. And in 1959 they 

11 D&D’d the old cave. And at that time they did 

12 identify, I mean it’s reasonable to assume 

13 that they did identify other areas where 

14 actinium had escaped. And they -- as you know 

15 since you were involved, Joe, in a lot of the 

16 D&D activities at a number of sites -- it’s 

17 common to D&D a facility by locating areas of 

18 surface contamination, immobilizing those with 

19 a seal and a painting over them. 

20 And what happened in the case of the 

21 actinium, the issue that we’re concerned about 

22 in 1990-ish, the early ‘90s, the R corridor 

23 job, they encountered an area that had 

24 previously been, I understand, decontaminated 

25 or D&D’d in that way. They had a spot of 
20

1 surface contamination of actinium that had 

2 been sealed over. When they went in to tear 

3 down the facility, there was scabbling, and 

4 that re-exposed that area of contamination. 

5 But I don’t think that you can draw a 

6 straight line between that incident and ’49 to 

7 ’59 and say that that indicates that there 

8 were actinium operations happening the entire 

9 time or actinium exposures happening the 

10 entire time. Now the one program that you 

11 mentioned, the Cotter Concentrate Program, the 

12 goal of that program was to isolate 

13 protectinium and I believe ionium, Thorium14 230. There might have been some small 

15 concentrations of actinium and on that I would 

16 have to look. I can’t really say. 

17 But the goal wasn’t to separate the 

18 actinium out, it was to get those other two 

19 elements. And that also happened in the new 

20 cave in the hot cell. We interviewed the 

21 individual who was in charge of that program 

22 and involved with it. And again, he indicated 

23 that there were maybe five people involved. 

24 They had 22 drums, well, they had a number of 

25 drums stored in a building onsite, but they 
21

1 processed about 22, maybe 23 drums of that 

2 material inside the hot cell. So again, our 

3 point is limited exposure, actually no 

4 exposure potential for that material. 

5 The Cotter concentrate was stored in 

6 Building 21 starting in 1974, I believe, after 

7 the Thorium-232 residue had been cleared out. 

8 And so I don’t know that if you were concerned 

9 about exposure to Cotter concentrate that you 

10 would actually monitor for actinium. You 

11 would probably monitor for some of the thorium 

12 isotopes or protectinium. I’m looking at Liz 

13 to let her correct me if I’m wrong, but she’s 

14 looking -- 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Just a comment, I 

16 appreciate your comment on the not drawing a 

17 straight line because that’s certainly, having 

18 been directly involved in the issues in the 

19 early ‘90s on the actinium flap, I understand 

20 where that came from. But more looking at 

21 operational sources, and I’ll be the first to 

22 admit, again, I’m looking at documentation 

23 such as the King report that’s, which is the 

24 roadmap of sorts in talking with different 

25 former rad people at the site trying to 
22

1 understand whether or not the bioassay tracked 

2 with those source terms. And I think what 

3 you’re saying is except -- and correct me if 

4 I’m misinterpreting -- except for trace 

5 contaminants in various operations, in this 

6 case actinium was handled in a hot cell that 

7 would not have been a very likely potential 

8 for exposure. Now that’s still, I guess in 

9 our own mind begs the question, well, if you 

10 have workers working in a hot cell actinium, 

11 would they have been on a bioassay schedule 

12 for actinium or not. And certainly we can’t 

13 find documentation that suggests that they 

14 were, post-’59. Now maybe there is some 

15 documentation on that. That would be the 

16 question in my mind. Post-’59 until the D&D 

17 era in the ‘90s, was there routine bioassay 

18 for actinium for workers that may have been 

19 operators or associated with operations where 

20 actinium was in excess of a trace quantity for 

21 example? And I guess I’m not sure either on 

22 the Cotter concentrate whether that 

23 necessarily was trace. Of course, that’s a 

24 subjective call, but nonetheless, that would 

25 be my question. Where it wasn’t a trace 
23

1 quantity and where you had a source term where 

2 one would look for routine bioassay, was it 

3 being done post-’59 because there seems to be 

4 a bright line there. And I understand that 

5 from the ER, but it sort of raises questions 

6 about did that sort of, because it wasn’t a 

7 main operation, did the bioassay sort of 

8 recede and not get taken up again until the 

9 D&D or not. And from the documentation it 

10 seems suggestive that it wasn’t being done in 

11 that era. And if it was simply a question of 

12 handling in a hot cell because actinium is a 

13 bad actor, then that would certainly be one 

14 explanation for why you don’t see a -- 

15 DR. ULSH: Again, we’re talking in somewhat 

16 vague terms, but in terms of major operations 

17 the ones that I’m aware of are ’49 to ’59 and 

18 that one in ’64. Now they did, Mound did have 

19 a history of working with small sources 

20 determining half lives, determining heat 

21 generation, determining a bunch of basic 

22 physical characteristics. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, batch scale lab. 

24 DR. ULSH: Exactly, very small sources of -- 

25 DR. ZIEMER: I have a couple of questions 
24

1 that Brant or Joe or maybe Liz could answer. 

2 Tell me the makeup of the Cotter concentrate 

3 is what? 

4 DR. ULSH: The Cotter concentrate started, I 

5 believe as airport residues from St. Louis. 

6 They were then shipped down to -- 

7 DR. ZIEMER: So they came from Monsanto. 

8 DR. ULSH: They were shipped then down to 

9 the Cotter Corporation in Canyon City, 

10 Colorado, where there was some further 

11 processing done on them. And then they were 

12 shipped to Mound in 1974. And the makeup -- 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Roughly, I’m -- 

14 DR. ULSH: Yeah, perhaps during the break I 

15 can pull up a document that will give you a 

16 more specific answer. But it had reasonable 

17 quantities of Protectinium-231, Thorium-230. 

18 I’m not sure about actinium. I’d have to 

19 look, but those were the isotopes that they 

20 were interested in. So it was those St. Louis 

21 airport residues. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Now the other question, if you 

23 could clarify, any hot cell work you do pull 

24 samples in and out from time to time. Were 

25 you suggesting all the drumming is also done 
25

1 in the hot cell before it’s removed? 

2 Obviously, there’s not zero probability of 

3 some outside contamination; therefore, 

4 external exposures were potential internal 

5 stuff. 

6 What was the nature of the things that 

7 were transferred in and out of the hot cell? 

8 I got the idea from what you said that 

9 everything was drummed in there and then 

10 removed, and you pretty well had it contained 

11 before it ever came out. Is that correct? 

12 DR. ULSH: I believe the latter part of your 

13 question is true. They had it pretty well 

14 contained before it came out. In terms of the 

15 drumming operations I can tell you that the 

16 Cotter concentrate was shipped to Mound in 

17 drums, and it was stored in Building 21 in 

18 drums. Those drums were taken into the hot 

19 cell where the processing occurred. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: So it was at least removed from 

21 the drums in the hot cell. 

22 DR. ULSH: I believe that’s the case, Dr. 

23 Ziemer, but I can double check that. 

24 MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Hey, Brant, 

25 this is Bob Presley. 
26

1 DR. ULSH: Yes, Bob. 

2 MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): The drums, did 

3 they have any type of pig in them or was this 

4 material just stuffed into a 55-gallon drum? 

5 DR. ULSH: I don’t know, Bob. I can check 

6 on that for you. 

7 MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): That would be a 

8 great help to know exactly how that stuff was 

9 packaged. 

10 DR. ULSH: Okay, we can get you some more 

11 information on that or at least try to. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: Let me bring up one thing 

13 before we go on with Paul. One of the things 

14 that I want to bring up was, yes, these were 

15 brought in in a drum. The drums and so forth 

16 were opened up in there. But once you opened 

17 up those inner containers and so forth, is 

18 when you get everything going out. Usually in 

19 a hot cell you can take them in there but then 

20 you have to make manned entries to be able to 

21 go in there and retrieve these things back 

22 out. So you’re basically going back into that 

23 environment that you now have a potential for. 

24 Now, it may not have been as bad as 

25 the old cell, but you still, to be able to say 
27

1 there’s zero possibilities, I think that I 

2 differ a little bit. Because even when 

3 they’re shipped in like that, they’re shipped 

4 in an internal pig which you have to open up, 

5 break open. And once you break those things 

6 open, you’ve got all the contaminants and 

7 everything else that’s going to be coming out 

8 of there that you’ve got to go back in and 

9 retrieve that drum back out, too. 

10 DR. ULSH: I think it’s important to keep a 

11 couple of operations separate and distinct in 

12 your mind. One is the 1964 work with the 

13 actinium, the two capsules. Those were 

14 smaller. I mean physically small. And then 

15 the Cotter operations that occurred ’74 to 

16 ’79, on a slightly larger scale, and we’re 

17 talking 22 drums. And there I think our point 

18 would be that if you were concerned about 

19 exposure to that material, actinium was not 

20 what you would sample for. It would be some 

21 of the other radiological ^. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, but if I could sort 

23 of recap on this one. I think we’ve kind of, 

24 as I said, our intent is to clarify a little 

25 bit better. I think it’s clearer from what 
28

1 you’ve said is that because of the ’64 hot 

2 cell operation, which was the main actinium 

3 extraction, and how the other operations were 

4 handled, there was a means limits exposure. 

5 However, I think what’s still in 

6 question was the bioassay program itself. The 

7 availability and use of that tracked the 

8 source terms that were, in fact, beyond trace 

9 quantities. And I think that’s not something 

10 that would be difficult to establish, but I 

11 don’t know if we can do that right now. 

12 DR. ULSH: Well, I can tell you -- I forgot 

13 to address this -- actinium bioassay is very 

14 difficult to do. It’s not common to routinely 

15 have that capability. And that was part of 

16 the problem in the earlier years. They had to 

17 measure it indirectly. There was a lot of 

18 interpretation involved. 

19 And that was, I think, also part of 

20 the problem in the early ‘90s because Mound 

21 didn’t have the capability or the desire to do 

22 that routinely onsite. And so they contracted 

23 the offsite laboratories to do it, and that’s 

24 where some of the problems came in. So it is 

25 certainly true that actinium bioassay is not 
29

1 the standard routine type of thing that you 

2 would see all over the place. It’s very 

3 difficult to do. 

4 I think it’s also true that for those 

5 middle years we don’t have in our possession 

6 actinium bioassay results. And I understand 

7 your question about I’d indicate no exposure. 

8 Does that indicate something that was missed. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, again, the only 

10 concern looking through the King report and 

11 looking at some of the activities is that at 

12 this point we’re not clear that there weren’t 

13 beyond trace quantities, the operations, that 

14 way that would have elicited some need for 

15 bioassay. And again, looking at what we can 

16 look at it doesn’t appear that there’s 

17 necessarily a match up with that. So that 

18 would be the question we have at this point. 

19 MR. BISTLINE: This is Bob Bistline. And 

20 I’d like to get some clarification, too, along 

21 those lines, Brant. We know that there was 

22 leakage from the old cave taking place for a 

23 considerable time after its supposed D&D 

24 activity. And so undoubtedly some of this 

25 material may have, was it just sprayed on or 
30

1 were there other isotopes that were getting 

2 into the areas. And since there was no 

3 bioassay being done, were these people being 

4 exposed during that period of time that there 

5 was no bioassay taking place. And up until 

6 the ‘90s when the D&D activity found traces of 

7 activity present where people might have 

8 gotten exposed. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: So there’s no bioassay or no 

10 bioassay for actinium? There’s bioassay for 

11 other things? 

12 MR. BISTLINE: For actinium. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Just actinium. But there was 

14 other bioassay which if there were uptakes of, 

15 I mean, you have a mix of stuff so if there 

16 was, it’s hard to envision they would have 

17 uptakes of actinium without other things. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: The third comment to look 

19 for an indicator rate^. 

20 DR. ULSH: It is certainly true, Bob, what 

21 you mentioned that there was leakage of radon 

22 from the old cave. I think there’s any 

23 indication that there was leakage of actinium. 

24 MR. STEWART: What they were doing was some 

25 workplace measurements, you know, smearing for 
31

1 contamination in that area. We certainly kept 

2 track of that. We don’t have those data to 

3 hand at this moment; however, the old cave was 

4 very effectively remediated or at least very 

5 thoroughly remediated. There was leakage of 

6 radon, no doubt about that because that’s 

7 going to suffuse through the capping materials 

8 that they used. 

9 DR. ULSH: So is it fair to state, I mean, 

10 we’ve talked about the 1964 operation that 

11 Josie had asked about. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

13 DR. ULSH: Is it fair to say you’d like to 

14 see maybe a summary of what other activities 

15 were done with actinium? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think really just a 

17 map that would clarify because there wasn’t 

18 bioassay, and I think you hit the issue. We 

19 do see some evidence of operations, 

20 intermittent as they were, that involved 

21 actinium as a constituent. But I think your 

22 comment’s fair as well. Was this simply trace 

23 and were other nuclides predominating as far 

24 as exposure issues or not. And if so, then I 

25 think the issue tends to diminish. 
32

1 But because of the difficulty in 

2 bioassaying actinium plus the, you know, it’s 

3 a bad actor radiologically, I think that would 

4 be useful. We felt there wasn’t, there was 

5 some more basis that could be applied there. 

6 And let me add just on this particular 

7 item, this being our first cut, we did 

8 indicate one other item in here which was the 

9 Thorium-229. This could have went somewhere 

10 else actually on the matrix chart, but since 

11 it was a thorium isotope, we indicated it 

12 here. 

13 And this again, based on our first 

14 read of the documentation, again we didn’t see 

15 evidence of bioassay for that isotope as well. 

16 And during that timeframe where it was being 

17 handled and, again, there’s a lot of 

18 documentation on this. And I know Liz is 

19 probably as close as you have to an expert on 

20 internal, but that was, that particular issue 

21 also struck us as one where the mapping of the 

22 bioassay didn’t seem to coincide with the 

23 actual operation. 

24 And again, it’s a clarifying question 

25 because everything we could get our hands on 
33

1 didn’t suggest that there was, but there may 

2 in fact be something somewhere. 

3 DR. ULSH: I think that the thorium bioassay 

4 that was done was not necessarily specific, 

5 isotope specific. And as is typical, I mean, 

6 we would assign whichever isotope from among 

7 the reasonable possibilities would be the most 

8 claimant favorable. We do have a history of 

9 thorium bioassay in the history of the site, 

10 but in terms of which specific activities 

11 involved Thorium-229, I don’t have that at my 

12 fingertips. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s actually the 233 

14 operation so we’re kind of looking at that and 

15 saying, okay. And we have a separate question 

16 on uranium. So we’re coming at it from 

17 different angles, but just to understand 

18 whether we read correctly that it doesn’t 

19 appear to be bioassay during that timeframe 

20 what the implications are. And if, in fact, 

21 it’s being captured with a broad thorium 

22 bioassay and you’re assigning a bounding, you 

23 know, sort of a claimant favorable estimation. 

24 And that’s a reasonable response. 

25 DR. ULSH: Well, also gross alpha. I mean, 
34

1 they did a lot of gross alpha. 

2 Liz, did you have a question? 

3 MS. BRACKETT: No, I looked at the timeframe 

4 that you were talking about -- 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s just in the matrix. 

6 Actually, it is the reference that we have 

7 there from ’66 to the late ‘70s on the U-233. 

8 MR. BISTLINE: Fourth line up on that first 

9 paragraph. 

10 MS. BRACKETT: 233 monitoring. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, this is the 229, 

12 thorium. 

13 DR. ULSH: Right, the extraction of Thorium14 229 from U-233, and your matrix says occurred 

15 from ’66 through the late ‘70s. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

17 DR. ULSH: And, Liz, are you saying that U18 233 would have been what you would have 

19 monitored? 

20 MS. BRACKETT: Well, I’m not fully familiar 

21 with what went on, but I mean if it was 

22 Uranium-233, that could be done. There is 

23 some thorium monitoring specifically in 1966 

24 without a particular isotope list, but they 

25 did do thorium monitoring at that time. 
35

1 MR. BISTLINE: If we could get some 

2 clarification on that it would be helpful. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s the same question, 

4 whether or not coverage existed. If not, what 

5 would constitute then the means of monitoring. 

6 Obviously, these are all first order questions 

7 at this stage. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: If there was, what was the 

9 extent of that monitoring in terms of the 

10 personnel and so on. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And this also gets down to 

12 I think you mentioned earlier the number of 

13 workers. We haven’t gone to that depth to 

14 figure out is this two workers, eight workers, 

15 20, 30 workers. And I think for U-229 

16 extraction probably was in small numbers. 

17 DR. ULSH: Yeah, that’s the context that we 

18 can’t really get from King; that’s not 

19 provided in the count document. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: So some of this may end up 

21 being, you know, it’s true that it existed, 

22 but maybe it was a very small number. 

23 With that I just think that -- that’s 

24 only 1-A. 

25 MS. BRACKETT: I was just thinking that. 
36

1 DR. ULSH: Well, it’s actually 1A and 1B, 

2 isn’t it? 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we actually got into 

4 Cotter a fair amount, but really I think on 1A 

5 it’s sort of the same theme that we’ll hit a 

6 number of times. It’s just the mapping and 

7 understanding whether, what the implications 

8 of the apparent absence of bioassay would be 

9 in terms of those operations. 

10 MS. BEACH: And, Brant, for the record, I 

11 would like a copy of the Cotter Concentrate 

12 Program you offered to Paul as well just for 

13 an understanding of it. 

14 DR. ULSH: Yes, sure. 

15 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: So before leaving 1A is 

17 that, I guess in terms of mapping, I guess 

18 that’s maybe one term that’d be popular. 

19 DR. ULSH: So the ones that we’re concerned 

20 about in particular are Actinium-227. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

22 DR. ULSH: Thorium-229 -- 

23 MS. BEACH: And U-233, at least that’s what 

24 I have. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, actually 230 because 
37

1 we got into -- I’m sorry, not 230. That was 

2 229, 229, yeah, 229 and Actinium-227. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: The 1B’s about the same issues, 

4 isn’t it? 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, no. This is 

6 where you get into Thorium-230. It’s related 

7 because we’re talking about Cotter. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: You’re still wondering what 

9 bioassay’s available for that. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, and that’s what I’m 

11 saying that the theme tends to be a repetitive 

12 theme because, again, in this case I think the 

13 ER indicated that there was some limited 

14 bioassay available, but that could be 

15 supplemented by air sampling data for 

16 uncovered years. I think that was the 

17 phraseology that was in the ER. And again, as 

18 far as clarification to understand that sort 

19 of combination of the limited bioassay data 

20 plus the available air sampling data that 

21 would get you there. I think there’s 

22 agreement that the thorium bioassay data was 

23 more limited than you would like in terms of 

24 coming up with coworker, I guess, models or 

25 what have you. In this case if you 
38

1 supplemented that with air sampling data that 

2 would be available for thorium, would that 

3 give you a sufficient basis for estimating 

4 dose for that activity. 

5 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, I think that would -- 

6 the representativeness of the air sampling for 

7 the use, for supplementing bioassay. 

8 DR. ULSH: Well, we’ve already talked about 

9 it in terms of the Cotter Concentrate Program 

10 that was done inside the hot cell. But I 

11 understand Brad’s point about the whole point 

12 about the exposure comes from not necessarily 

13 being absolutely zero there, but I would say 

14 that it’s pretty limited. 

15 I do want to state though that I don’t 

16 think that we’re ready to conclude that 

17 there’s absence of bioassay data, period. 

18 There may not be bioassay data for actinium 

19 for that operation or maybe for 230, Thorium20 230, although I’d have to look. But we 

21 certainly have the capability to do gross 

22 alpha at the site. And it’s certainly 

23 possible that we look like Don said, surrogate 

24 radionuclides, and we will check that. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: This is on B? 
39

1 DR. ULSH: Yes. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think that’s the 

3 root of our question. What would be the 

4 strategy for coming up with dose estimation 

5 for that particular period since there isn’t 

6 any direct bioassay apparent. 

7 DR. ULSH: And again, in B the Cotter 

8 Concentrate Program was all of four or five 

9 people, but it’s important for the four or 

10 five people, so we’ll check it out. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, just before we leave 

12 that, the four or five people were the ones 

13 that were doing the extraction I guess. But 

14 would there not be more people that would have 

15 been involved with handling, I mean, 

16 obviously, a lot of drums and packing, 

17 repacking, and some of what Brad was talking 

18 about I think. 

19 DR. ULSH: Right, and with the Cotter 

20 Concentrate Program keep in mind the source 

21 material, the Cotter Concentrate itself would 

22 have had on a per week basis much, much lower 

23 concentrations of the Thorium-230 and the 

24 protectinium. That’s why they had to separate 

25 it out. So in that case I would say that 
40

1 there’s almost certain to be other 

2 radionuclides that you would be sampling for 

3 if you were interested in exposure to the 

4 concentrate, the B material itself. 

5 MR. STEWART: The major constituents of the 

6 Cotter Concentrate were thorium, Thorium-232 

7 rather, 10,000 parts per million; Uranium-238, 

8 60,000 parts per million; Thorium-230 and 

9 Protectinium-231 were present at 300 parts per 

10 million and 0.5 parts per million, 

11 respectively. 

12 DR. ULSH: What document are you reading? 

13 MR. STEWART: This is a reevaluation of the 

14 Cotter Concentrate that was performed in ^. 

15 DR. ULSH: This is a document that we’ll 

16 need to get to Josie and Paul, actually, the 

17 whole working group. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I’m sorry. What was the 

19 document again? 

20 MR. STEWART: It is a white paper that was 

21 done by the Mound site, and it’s a relatively 

22 new capture for us. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: It is already on the O drive or 

24 do you know? 

25 MR. STEWART: It is not currently on the O 
41

1 drive. 

2 DR. ULSH: Does that indicate MDS or SRDB? 

3 MR. STEWART: Well, I do actually. This is 

4 an SRDB document. 

5 DR. ULSH: Yeah, it’s in the SRDB. 

6 MR. STEWART: Captured by Brant Ulsh. 

7 DR. ULSH: Oh, no wonder it sounded 

8 familiar. 

9 MS. BEACH: Does it have a number, Don? 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: What’s the SRDB number? 

11 MR. STEWART: It is -- oh no, that’s not 

12 going to help you. That’s the data captured 

13 section number. 

14 DR. ULSH: On the break we’ll give you a 

15 copy of this. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: If I can understand then, 

17 you’re saying at least from a standpoint of 

18 how this material was monitored probably gross 

19 alpha possibly, but that in terms of air 

20 sampling information with what seems to be 

21 some thorium bioassay. But it’s not clear how 

22 many samples would have been the basis for 

23 doing the dose estimation is to work going 

24 backwards I guess. 

25 MR. STEWART: Certainly look for the 
42

1 Thorium-232 which was the haystack rather than 

2 the needle. 

3 DR. ULSH: Well, and uranium which was 

4 60,000 -- 

5 MR. STEWART: And uranium and/or. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, the one thing that 

7 just as sort of a back drop -- and this came 

8 as much out of the interviews as -- and this 

9 is not specific to Mound but actually a kind 

10 of generic issue across the AEC at the time 

11 was the natural -quotation marks- source terms 

12 like thorium or uranium even radon weren’t 

13 considered in the same vein as the other 

14 materials and were handled that way as well. 

15 But they were downplayed, not considered 

16 particularly a radiological threat. 

17 So I think again our concern is in 

18 looking back did that sort of attitude or take 

19 at that time diminish the kind of monitoring 

20 that would have been done sort of in the later 

21 years, and what are the implications of that. 

22 Can we go back and somehow either take later 

23 measurements and use them retroactively or 

24 take what was done, limited as it may have 

25 been, and somehow knit that together and come 
43

1 up with some basis for doing dose 

2 reconstruction. 

3 And so in the early period I think 

4 that would be our concern for uranium, for 

5 thorium and for some of these so-called 

6 natural constituents as to whether they were 

7 monitored really from a radiological context 

8 in a way that would provide sufficient basis 

9 for doing dose reconstruction. 

10 DR. ULSH: I don’t know. I can’t recall 

11 what’s coming up in the matrix. So I think 

12 the ones that you mentioned here, uranium and 

13 Thorium-232, I think we -- 

14 MR. STEWART: And radon. 

15 DR. ULSH: -- and radon, do we get to those 

16 later in the matrix? 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I’m just saying as 

18 sort of our concern just to sort of tie this 

19 together is that with that kind of 

20 understandable attitude, I mean, I’m just 

21 saying that back in the ‘50s and ’60s -- and 

22 Fernald’s another example and some of the 

23 other sites -- the low level, low enriched 

24 uranium, thorium. 

25 I mean, it was just again considered 
44

1 pitchblende, sort of considered the natural 

2 sources, oftentimes were not monitored as if 

3 they were of radiological concern more of 

4 heavy metal. And so we’re particularly 

5 concerned about is there a way to look at that 

6 time period from the data that’s available and 

7 still come to a conclusion on the doses that 

8 might have been associated with this 

9 operation. 

10 MR. STEWART: Yeah, in fact, Mound had a 

11 procedure for 232, Thorium-232, bioassay in 

12 1950 so it’s clear that they at least were 

13 looking at that as passable. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, for this one really 

15 being able to understand then the amalgam of 

16 what bioassay data for 232 in this case might 

17 have been available, 230. And if it’s gross 

18 alpha from air sampling, how would you go from 

19 that then to coming up with some upper bound 

20 estimation for these workers. That would help 

21 us understand how that would be done. 

22 DR. ULSH: It’s also important to recognize 

23 that the Cotter concentrate material was 

24 stored in the same building that had 

25 previously housed the Thorium-232 sludges, 
45

1 Building 21. That was an unoccupied storage 

2 building and was located at a remote part of 

3 the site, the south end of the site. 

4 So in terms of 1B here, the Cotter 

5 concentrate material, I don’t, yeah, sure, 

6 there would have been some transfer 

7 activities. You take the 22 drums from 

8 Building 21 over to the hot cell. I don’t 

9 know how much exposure potential would be 

10 involved there. I don’t know. But in terms 

11 of material sitting inside Building 21, I’d 

12 say it’s almost nil. It was just so removed 

13 from the rest of the site, and it’s not 

14 accessed routinely. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And for the Cotter versus 

16 the monazite material, there wasn’t as, the 

17 degree of redrumming because it wasn’t as 

18 corrosive, as I understand it. So I think for 

19 the Building 21 storage issues I’d be more 

20 concerned about the next issue because you did 

21 have, I think, a lot of handling because of 

22 the redrumming, constant redrumming. So 

23 unlike Cotter -- correct me if I’m wrong -- 

24 where you didn’t have the corrosivity, you 

25 didn’t have to do as much direct handling of 
46

1 that material; and therefore, the exposure of 

2 site maintenance workers doing redrumming 

3 would not be there as much as the other ones. 

4 MR. STEWART: It had been neutralized. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Are there records of 

6 personnel going in there and monitoring the 

7 drums, checking for leakage, these type 

8 problems on a regular basis? 

9 MR. STEWART: Checking for leakers of the 

10 Cotter Concentrate? 

11 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, there’s a, make sure 

12 that the integrity of the drums are still in 

13 place. 

14 MR. STEWART: It is apparent that they 

15 detected when drums were failing associated 

16 with the other materials. So I would assume 

17 that they were making the same sorts of 

18 checks. We don’t have that at hand right now. 

19 DR. ULSH: Well, now to answer your 

20 question, are there records. We don’t have 

21 those kinds of records in our hand, but here’s 

22 a couple things to consider. We compared the 

23 Cotter concentrate material versus the 

24 Thorium-232. The Cotter concentrate materials 

25 were neutralized so you didn’t have those 
47

1 kinds of issues. The other important thing to 

2 keep in mind is that the Cotter concentrate 

3 material was on site for only a very limited 

4 period of time. I think five or six years. 

5 Am I right, Bob? 

6 MR. BISTLINE: I think so. 

7 DR. ULSH: So and we don’t see any 

8 indication, as Joe mentioned, that they had 

9 the same kinds of issues that required 

10 repacking, constantly redrumming the material 

11 with the Cotter concentrate material. That’s 

12 not the case for the hydroxide sludges. They 

13 did have a problem there before it went into 

14 Building 21. Does that answer your question? 

15 MR. SCHOFIELD: Kind of. I mean, obviously 

16 if they’ve got a program going to monitor 

17 these drums, make sure they’re not leaking, 

18 make sure there’s no problems, and there would 

19 have been a group of workers who went in there 

20 on some kind of basis, whether it’s weekly, 

21 monthly, quarterly, I don’t know. So there’s 

22 potential for those people to be going in. I 

23 was wondering if they actually kept a logbook 

24 or something saying these were leaks on such25 and-such a date. 
48

1 DR. ULSH: If there is such a logbook, we 

2 don’t have it in our hands. That’s not to say 

3 it couldn’t be looked for. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: So for 1B then, it sounds 

5 like there are perhaps some gross alpha air 

6 sampling records or maybe, maybe not. I don’t 

7 -- 

8 DR. ULSH: I don’t necessarily want to go 

9 that far. I don’t know for sure. And I 

10 wasn’t necessarily, when I said gross alpha, I 

11 wasn’t necessarily talking about just air 

12 monitoring. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

14 DR. ULSH: I’m talking about bioassay as 

15 well. I’m saying that it’s possible. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: So it’s just the issue of 

17 clarifying then how, what bioassay exists for 

18 232 plus this other additional information 

19 would clarify then what one could do for that 

20 period of time then. 

21 One C? 

22 MS. BEACH: We’re on to C. And I’m 

23 wondering if there’s a way to be more general 

24 in, this is SC&A’s what they see. This is 

25 what you understand. If there’s any way, I’d 
49

1 like to get through this today if possible so 

2 that everybody understands. I know these are 

3 hard. 

4 MR. STEWART: They get faster. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Well, one thing we need to keep 

6 in mind is that on all of these I think Joe is 

7 just raising what their issue is. I don’t 

8 think we should expect NIOSH to have the 

9 answers necessarily today or to get into deep 

10 discussions about the options -- 

11 MS. BEACH: Just the understanding of what 

12 they’re asking for is all we’re looking for 

13 today. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: What and why and so that if you 

15 say, well, you’re asking the wrong question, 

16 that’s fine. But otherwise -- 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: This is very helpful. I 

18 think one thing I wanted to clarify is kind of 

19 what we’re looking for to clarify or 

20 substantiate so that there’s no going in the 

21 wrong direction or misunderstandings or that 

22 kind of thing. 

23 MS. BEACH: No answers, we don’t need 

24 answers today unless you have something 

25 quickly. 
50

1 Before we move on we did have two 

2 additions to the room. We’d like to go ahead 

3 and state who they are for the record. 

4 MS. JERISON: I’m Deb Jerison. [identifying 

5 information redacted] was a Mound worker. 

6 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

7 MS. RAMSEY: My name is Ann Ramsey, and I’m 

8 a friend of Deb’s. And I’ve been following 

9 this issue, and she’s been working with it the 

10 last few years. 

11 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: One C. Well, actually, we 

13 sort of got into this to some extent. I think 

14 I was just pointing out you’d like to have the 

15 bottom line all the way at the bottom, but in 

16 this case I think it’s sort of two-thirds of 

17 the way down. And our concern here is that 

18 for these drums it wasn’t clear from the ER 

19 how the limited samples -- and we agree that 

20 samples were intermittent in some cases and 

21 somewhat limited, actually, very limited. 

22 How the representatives of the samples 

23 taken, we point out the 25 urine samples 

24 that’s in the ER for the 7279, how that’s 

25 going to be taken together, how that would be 
51

1 representative of the span of time that we’re 

2 talking about -- and this is a much longer 

3 time than the Cotter, you know, how that was 

4 going to be the basis for coming up with a 

5 dose estimation. I can see the data points, 

6 but given the length of time, it’s a little 

7 harder to see how one can use that to cover 

8 that time period and be sure that it’s 

9 representative of the kind of, because of the 

10 more extensive handling that was going on. 

11 I mean, to re-drum the entire 

12 collection of drums three times over is a 

13 relatively large amount of activity for a lot 

14 of workers. So I think that’s the standpoint 

15 that our concern comes from. Is that a 

16 sufficient basis by itself to give you that 

17 distribution of, or upper bound of the kind of 

18 exposures that these workers doing hands-on 

19 re-drumming, dirty stuff, whether that would, 

20 in fact, be sufficient. 

21 MR. STEWART: In fact, there are a limited 

22 number of samples for that activity. However, 

23 it’s clear from reading Meyer, and I’m sure 

24 you’re familiar with it, that he will talk 

25 about perform the thorium samples for the 
52

1 summer re-drumming campaign. 

2 It is, once again, I would agree with 

3 Brant in that you wouldn’t necessarily draw a 

4 straight line. We would see a flat graph and 

5 then a peak. You wouldn’t necessarily expect 

6 to see ongoing bioassay, routine bioassay for 

7 this. This is an activity that they performed 

8 when they could, when they had resources, and 

9 when the weather was consistent with the 

10 operation. 

11 So I don’t know that you would see a 

12 routine bioassay program that would go from 

13 1960 to 1974 for re-drumming. And it’s 

14 obvious that they competed for resources to do 

15 this, and they’re saying these drums are 

16 getting pretty bad. We need to get out there, 

17 and we need to re-drum. 

18 DR. ULSH: Just to, in the spirit of your 

19 suggestion to keep things brief today, we’ll 

20 provide more details later. But as Don 

21 mentioned, the thorium bioassay that we have 

22 for that time period when the drums were 

23 stored outside and they were doing the re24 drumming, many -- I don’t want to say all -- 

25 but many of the thorium bioassays that we have 
53

1 from that period are specifically marked as 

2 re-drumming, related to the re-drumming in the 

3 logbook that covers that operation. 

4 At a certain period of time in the 

5 ‘60s -- I don’t have the exact year at my 

6 fingertips -- those drums were emptied into 

7 Building 21. And so the re-drumming 

8 operations ceased at that point. It sat in 

9 Building 21 until it was removed from the site 

10 in 1974-ish. And it was removed from the site 

11 by a subcontractor that was hired to come in. 

12 They did their own health physics monitoring 

13 material off site. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: So let me twist the question a 

15 little bit. Are there re-drumming operations 

16 for which we don’t have bioassay? 

17 DR. ULSH: Not to my knowledge. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: I don’t know if that was clear 

19 or not. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, no, I think that is the 

21 issue. If -- 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Again, if you can correlate the 

23 bioassay fully with the re-drummings, I think 

24 that’s helpful. If there are re-drumming 

25 operations for which there is no bioassay, are 
54

1 they pretty much similar to those, can we use 

2 the other bioassay as surrogates for that? It 

3 would be that kind of question. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: And then after this final 

6 deposition that you described, then what do we 

7 have beyond that? 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think that’s 

9 exactly it. It’s sort of two questions 

10 embedded in there which is clearly the amount 

11 of data, bioassay data, is limited. I think 

12 that’s acknowledged. But my question would be 

13 the same question. Does that data -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Would it be sufficient? 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: -- it may be sufficient if 

16 the data is on the, focused on the re17 drumming, and whether there’s enough data for 

18 the re-drumming to characterize what the facts 

19 from exposure to a worker re-drumming might 

20 be. It wasn’t possible to delineate that from 

21 the ER from the site profile. But certainly 

22 if that’s where the data sits, that would help 

23 answer that question. So I’ll leave it at 

24 that. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: This is Brad, one more thing. 
55

1 You said that they were in competition for 

2 resources. So these bioassays of all the same 

3 people aren’t going to be in bioassay because 

4 they’re going to be different. You said they 

5 were in competition for resources so a lot of 

6 times like that you might end up with 

7 different operators performing these because 

8 they’re not able to. So we want to make sure 

9 that kind of have a good representative that 

10 people were being monitored. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the resource issue must 

12 have to do with the campaign itself. Bioassay 

13 would be a small increment I would think. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Well, a lot of things with 

15 personnel power is you may not have the same 

16 people doing the same process through there. 

17 You may have another operation going on, 

18 another slows down so you bring in a whole new 

19 group of people to be able to perform -- 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, cannibalizing on 

21 something else. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: -- and it’s a normally used 

23 event to do that. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: Which is the related 

25 question to the question of what data exists. 
56

1 Can that be tied to the cohort of workers that 

2 were, in fact, doing the re-drumming and it 

3 sounds like that would be in the data. 

4 DR. ULSH: Yeah, the bioassay samples that 

5 exist for Thorium-232 for that period I 

6 believe are marked regarding operations. It’s 

7 related to that. 

8 MS. BRACKETT: And most of those people have 

9 multiple samples. It looks like there are at 

10 least three samples for each person doing the 

11 thorium re-drumming. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And there was three cycles 

13 so -- 

14 MS. BRACKETT: This is for the ’59 to ’65. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, okay. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN: I had a question and 

17 clarification. This is Ron Buchanan, SC&A. 

18 In the SEC for 1949 to 1959, does that include 

19 all workers or is that just the people -- the 

20 way it’s worded here it sounds like in item 

21 one there it’s just people that worked with 

22 these certain isotopes and D&D. Is it all 

23 workers, external and other type isotopes, 

24 internal, external also? 

25 DR. ULSH: The basis for the class was the 
57

1 radium, actinium, thorium separations. But we 

2 recognized that during that period there was 

3 an escape, there was contamination occurred in 

4 other areas of the plant other than just the 

5 old cave. And so it’s plausible that people 

6 could have been exposed to that and not 

7 monitored. So for ’49 to ’59 it includes all 

8 workers on site based on the radium, actinium, 

9 thorium separation activities included for 

10 everyone. 

11 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay. They didn’t have to be 

12 directly involved? 

13 DR. ULSH: No. 

14 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that would satisfy 

16 us as far as being able to understand that a 

17 little bit better. 

18 MATRIX ISSUE TWO: INDOOR RADON AIRBORNE CONCENTRATIONS 

19 IN SW AND OTHER BUILDINGS

20 Okay, radon. 

21 DR. BRANCHE: Issue number two? 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Issue number two. 

23 DR. BRANCHE: Before you do, for those of 

24 you participating by phone, if you would 

25 please mute your phone. If you do not have a 
58

1 mute button, then please use star six to mute 

2 your phone. And then when you’re ready to 

3 speak, then please use the same star six. We 

4 appreciate it. Thank you so much. 

5 Go ahead, Joe. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to tee up this 

7 particular issue, we raised this in the site 

8 profile. This is sort of reflective of the 

9 same issue we had there. Our concern is 

10 really pre-venting pre-1980. And a concern 

11 there is the, I guess to put it in a general 

12 term, lack of characterization of what the 

13 radon values, radon daughter values, were. 

14 And this is both Radon-222 as well as the 

15 actinon and the thoron in the SW workspace. 

16 We have the one sampling exercise that 

17 was done there with the perm, and we have 

18 talked to Phil Jenkins. And the issue is just 

19 simply with the one measurement and using what 

20 we can get from his notes, his own calibrated 

21 instrument, we’re just concerned that it’s not 

22 clear what the levels would have been over 

23 time in these workspaces. And we know for 

24 that one week the measurement was between 90 

25 and 160, something like that, maybe 67 and 
59

1 160. 

2 But Jenkins indicates that the 

3 measurement that he took was to rule out radon 

4 actually because they were picking up in one 

5 of the workers an elevated lung count. So his 

6 role wasn’t to go characterize what the radon 

7 concentrations were in the SW workspace but 

8 was simply to rule out radon. 

9 It’s kind of interesting. They rule 

10 out radon because there was some concern that 

11 the individual was exposed to something else, 

12 and as it turns out, they didn’t rule it out, 

13 in fact, established that it was the likely 

14 and primary source of that, the high alpha 

15 count. 

16 And the concern that I think we have 

17 is that’s one measurement. It doesn’t 

18 characterize necessarily what the activity 

19 levels would have been in those workspaces 

20 pre-1980, pre-venting. And given the fact 

21 that you had since the D&D of the old cave 

22 roughly 20-some years where you would have had 

23 potential venting of radon into that 

24 workspace, I think you’re talking about a 

25 fairly sizeable potential for exposure to 
60

1 whoever would have occupied that workspace. 

2 Now, we didn’t know what the occupancy 

3 numbers were for that workspace, but 

4 certainly, if nothing else as I think Jenkins 

5 indicated, it was a heck of a lot of radon. 

6 And he called it an ideal radon production 

7 example because you had enclosed space. You 

8 had negative pressure. You had a hole. We 

9 talked to during the site profile a number of 

10 rad techs that, one rad tech said he measured 

11 something similar on a crack in the R Building 

12 which is sort of, you know, it’s a contiguous, 

13 next door to SW. And again, I think most 

14 would attribute that from the tunnel that was 

15 underlying the building. 

16 So I guess in a nutshell our concern 

17 is that it was a source, fairly productive 

18 source, of radon of various species, not just 

19 Radon-222, but thoron and actinon as well. 

20 And whoever would have occupied those areas 

21 would have been exposed to some level, 

22 relatively high level, of radon daughters, but 

23 in our view not something that is easily 

24 characterized because there’s essentially that 

25 one measurement. 
61

1 MR. STEWART: There are data available for 

2 this. They weren’t discussed in detail in the 

3 TBD because at the time the TBD was written we 

4 did not get to that level of detail. The goal 

5 of the TBD was a little different than it is 

6 now. However, we are evaluating these data. 

7 It is clear that Mound understood that 

8 they had a short-lived alpha problem in SW, 

9 and there were also measurements in R 

10 Building. We have not currently completed a 

11 database of these data, but we are in the 

12 process of analyzing them. 

13 DR. ULSH: And it’s true, I mean, SC&A’s 

14 statement here mentions a couple of different 

15 radon sources, the first being the tunnel that 

16 you mentioned, Joe. I want to make sure that 

17 everyone understands that this tunnel, that 

18 people weren’t walking through this tunnel. 

19 It was maybe two feet tall, but it was the 

20 source of the radon that leaked into SW-19. 

21 And they did measure the high radon next to a 

22 worker’s desk, and we know who that worker 

23 was. Of course, I’m not going to say his 

24 name. 

25 And the second source in your 
62

1 statement in the matrix mentioned was Building 

2 21 where the thorium material was stored. And 

3 I’ve already mentioned, we’ve already 

4 discussed that, where it was in relation to -- 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That was a fully ventilated 

6 building so I think that was just a case of 

7 whoever was handling would have been exposed 

8 to the radon there as well. But those are the 

9 only two sources that we felt were technically 

10 enhanced were potential sources of 

11 occupational exposure that would have been, 

12 you know, because of Mound’s high background, 

13 natural background, for radon, clearly there 

14 was an issue of radon at the site. But these 

15 two were above and beyond those natural 

16 sources. 

17 DR. ULSH: All right, Don. For those of you 

18 on the phone, Don has drawn a pretty picture 

19 here that I’m sorry you’re not going to be 

20 able to see, but let’s just keep it brief 

21 though, Don. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Don is now drawing the bushes 

23 around the building. 

24 MR. STEWART: Just a little bit of talk 

25 about the tunnel itself. What it appears to 
63

1 be, it is labeled on the construction drawing 

2 for the foundation of SW building is a duct. 

3 It is, in fact, two foot-three inches tall. 

4 So that is the place where they got the 88,000 

5 picocuries per liter measurement. And I know 

6 that they went down there to make those radon 

7 measurements. 

8 What is not clear to me in that 

9 drawing -- and I continue to research this -- 

10 it appears that this tunnel went from about 

11 here to the corner of R Building where it 

12 terminated. So underlying R Building is not 

13 really something that we can see at this time. 

14 If we have additional data about that, we’d 

15 like to see it. 

16 This appears to be a ventilation 

17 shaft, and I think what they were doing is 

18 venting the stuff up here. Later, in SW-11, 

19 this is where they added an additional stack 

20 with the radium venting. They got it vented 

21 out of the ceiling there. This is SW-19, the 

22 infamous old cave area. In fact, what you’ve 

23 got is some office space on top of the cap. 

24 You have a small staircase there to get up on 

25 top of the cap where they put some gloveboxes 
64

1 and some other stuff. 

2 Just another quick drawing here, SW3 19, old cave, drain trenches, they put some 

4 shielding and some other materials from the 

5 old cave. They laid it down, then they filled 

6 it with gravel, compacted it, and then put 

7 another pad on top of that. This is a 

8 concrete pad, just have a short staircase. So 

9 that’s why there’s four or five steps in that 

10 room there at the time it was demolished. 

11 So I know that they did samples around 

12 here to see if they had anything coming 

13 through. And this is the area again where the 

14 high measurement was made at that gentlemen’s 

15 desk. 

16 So if anyone has any additional data 

17 about the tunnel, I’d like to see that because 

18 I was trying to understand from partial data. 

19 DR. ULSH: So to summarize I understand your 

20 concern about measuring radon concentrations 

21 relative to the source and where it might have 

22 impacted in the SW Building and maybe the R 

23 Building. And Don says we have some data in ^ 

24 that we’re currently analyzing. We’ll be back 

25 in touch with you on that. 
65

1 MR. FITZGERALD: That’s fine and the focus 

2 again is location, whether, again, we have to 

3 collect the information as well for R. But 

4 where this was in fact located, the issue of 

5 the contribution of the other radon daughters 

6 because the amount of activity involved, just 

7 given the spot measurement that was made, even 

8 though they’re short-lived, at those levels 

9 they, it’s possible that 219 might have 

10 actually been on a par with Radon-222. 

11 That part of it we’ve gotten some 

12 guidance from people that have dealt with 

13 radon. So that would be useful to understand 

14 just from a dosimetric standpoint even though 

15 typically those are discounted because of the 

16 short-lived nature. Because of the 100,000 

17 picocuries per liter that was pouring in, they 

18 might actually be on par. So that’s another 

19 issue. 

20 DR. ULSH: You mentioned that you had 

21 conducted some interviews with several rad 

22 techs during the TBD review. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: We talked to a rad tech 

24 during the TBD review who indicated that he 

25 had an alpha counter over an alpha meter over 
66

1 a crack in R Building. And that was certainly 

2 a source of concern. Because again, I think 

3 we couldn’t find it, and we looked hard to see 

4 if there was any information about where that 

5 tunnel ended up. And we asked, I guess in 

6 this last round of interviews, and got 

7 conflicting information again. I think Phil 

8 Jenkins thought maybe it was under R Building 

9 as well, but it doesn’t sound like there’s any 

10 definitive documentation on it. 

11 DR. ULSH: Could we get copies of your 

12 interviews? 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, they’re -- 

14 DR. ULSH: Or do we already have them? 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: -- no, no, no, of course, 

16 and what we’re trying to do though is cycle 

17 those through in our DOE in terms of security 

18 review first in the ongoing effort to be 

19 conservative about that. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: When was Phil Jenkins’ first 

21 sample? Was it ’89 or -- 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: ‘Seventy-nine. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: ‘Seventy-nine. 

24 DR. ULSH: Just prior to the venting. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: And then there weren’t any 
67

1 prior to that? 

2 MR. STEWART: We’re still analyzing that 

3 data. We have information ^ supports. It’s 

4 clear that they knew that there was a short5 lived alpha problem in SW Building and in R 

6 Building. So once again, we’re still 

7 compiling the amount of new data that we have. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And that’s going to be the 

9 answer to our concern I think. Because when 

10 you have the one data point that gives pause 

11 because, for radon in particular, the 

12 variabilities involved would make that a 

13 number that you couldn’t hang your hat on I 

14 think because of the variabilities you’d 

15 expect at locations and the conditions and 

16 everything else. And Phil’s the first one who 

17 since he did the measurements we’re going to 

18 admit that it wasn’t a characterization 

19 measure as much as a swat sample. 

20 MATRIX ITEM THREE: EXPOSURE TO TRANSURANIUM 

21 RADIONUCLIDES

22 Item three, do you want to summarize 

23 that for Brant, number three? 

24 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, I guess the big issue 

25 on this number three is the lack of, well, 
68

1 very limited data for americium and Curium-244 

2 bioassay samples and concern for the lack of 

3 data and wondering how you were going to 

4 approach this in terms of assessing the doses 

5 of these individuals. And one of the issues 

6 that comes up is with regard to Americium-241 

7 levels, variability of the amount of americium 

8 that may be present in areas. 

9 DR. ULSH: I’m wondering if this is a type-o 

10 -- the SC&A statement says exposures occurred 

11 while working with Americium-241 sources and 

12 while working with highly enriched plutonium. 

13 Should that be highly enriched uranium or –- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: No, doesn’t make sense. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Circle that. 

16 DR. BRANCHE: You agree it’s not plutonium. 

17 You’re not sure what it is. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: You wouldn’t describe plutonium 

19 that way? 

20 DR. ULSH: Right, but americium would be 

21 associated with plutonium. 

22 MR. STEWART: They’re purifying this 

23 americium. 

24 DR. ULSH: Well, anyway, you can get back to 

25 us later on that. 
69

1 MR. STEWART: During some operations they 

2 were purifying Americium-241 for, as I 

3 understand it, for neutrons. 

4 We looked at, there are a number of 

5 rooms identified in King. Of these rooms, 

6 plutonium’s a dominant element in most of 

7 these processes. I talk a little bit about 

8 the rooms. I don’t need to go into a lot of 

9 detail. But it is important to keep in mind 

10 that the bioassay procedure used prior to 1981 

11 or through 1981, I don’t recall which, is 

12 gross alpha. And the method that they used 

13 would have brought down all actinites. 

14 DR. ULSH: Including americium. 

15 MR. STEWART: Including americium. Any 

16 alpha activity in a sample would assume to be 

17 plutonium. I think, and I very much welcome 

18 the opportunity to talk to you people in the 

19 program there. It seems to me they considered 

20 most of their processes to be plutonium 

21 essentially. 

22 MR. BISTLINE: I guess the concern is the 

23 high end specific activity of americium versus 

24 plutonium. 

25 DR. ULSH: Well certainly, we would treat 
70

1 Mound no differently than any other site where 

2 if we had a gross alpha result, and there were 

3 several different alpha emitters that were, 

4 could have been the cause of the activity that 

5 you see in that result, we would assign it to 

6 the most claimant favorable one on a case-by7 case basis. That would be the same as we do 

8 anywhere else. 

9 But I think what Don is trying to say 

10 though is that when you don’t see americium11 specific bioassay, but because they didn’t do 

12 americium-specific bioassay, instead they used 

13 the gross alpha. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Which gets us back to what 

15 we said before. In this one we’re just trying 

16 to clarify because it’s not as explicit 

17 perhaps as we need to have, and I understand 

18 the ER was a summary document. So really in 

19 this one, given the admitted limited sampling 

20 of bioassays, if it’s gross alpha, just 

21 mechanically how would that be used? And 

22 process information is mentioned as a 

23 supplement as well. So this is similar to 

24 what we said before. 

25 It’s understandable with limited 
71

1 bioassay that you would go to perhaps gross 

2 alpha, maybe to process information, and that 

3 combination would possibly get you there. And 

4 we would just want to clarify how that’s going 

5 to work so we can understand it better. It’s 

6 mentioned that way in the ER, but there’s no 

7 details of how that would actually be done. 

8 MS. BRACKETT: I just wanted to mention here 

9 -- 

10 DR. BRANCHE: Please speak up. 

11 MS. BRACKETT: -- one item that I just 

12 wanted to mention was that this notes that 

13 americium ^ plutonium, and that ^ take into 

14 account there would be ^ plutonium that the 

15 bioassay would assume to be plutonium, and 

16 then americium is added as a faction of a 

17 particular -- 

18 MR. STEWART: To grow in, yeah, yeah. 

19 MS. BRACKETT: -- so it is accounted for in 

20 that particular circumstance. 

21 MR. STEWART: In accordance with the TBD. 

22 Americium was neglected as part of the E23 source plutonium source term. 

24 MS. BRACKETT: Two thirty-eight -- 

25 MR. STEWART: Two thirty-eight. 
72

1 MS. BRACKETT: -- specifically weapons grade 

2 plutonium. 

3 MR. BISTLINE: This also begs another 

4 question that I’ve got, and I want to be as 

5 general as possible on this because of the 

6 sensitivity of ^. The concern is that the 

7 ratio of americium to plutonium, or your 

8 ratios of the isotopes of plutonium, vary. 

9 There was a time period when the U.S. was 

10 using some British material, and that I’m very 

11 well acquainted with and had a very high, or 

12 had a much higher PU-241 content which added 

13 to the in-growth and created problems for 

14 dosimetry, external exposures to the workers. 

15 And I’m wondering whether any of that 

16 kind of material was handled at Mound and 

17 whether that’s being taken into consideration 

18 on the part of you folks because it is, it did 

19 really create some problems in some of the 

20 other facilities. 

21 MR. STEWART: It does not currently compose 

22 a part of the Mound Technical Basis Document. 

23 DR. ULSH: But how about if we talk a little 

24 later, and you give me some details, and we 

25 can check that out. 
73

1 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, I don’t want to get in 

2 too deep. 

3 DR. ULSH: I know. 

4 MR. BISTLINE: But I think it needs to be 

5 clarified. 

6 DR. ULSH: Again with, similar to what we 

7 would do with other sites if there are a 

8 variety of isotopes present, we would pick the 

9 most claimant favorable one. 

10 MR. BISTLINE: And there’s a specific time 

11 period involved here, too. We can talk 

12 offsite. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: So for the curium, and we 

14 also bring up neptunium and less so the 

15 americium because I think it sounds like again 

16 americium was recognized and equated in the 

17 plutonium estimations. But for the curium and 

18 for the neptunium just to understand better 

19 what the dose estimation approach would be for 

20 those given sort of all the above process 

21 information, perhaps gross alpha, perhaps some 

22 limited bioassays. But we couldn’t find 

23 anything for neptunium. And again, this is 

24 just based on what we examined. That seems a 

25 little puzzling but if there is any neptunium 
74

1 data, that would be helpful as well. 

2 MS. BRACKETT: I’m not aware of any. 

3 DR. ULSH: So before you do, it sounds like 

4 what you’re asking for is just similar to what 

5 we’ve talked about with the previous ^, some 

6 details on what they were doing -- 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Clarification as to how you 

8 would actually get this together given the 

9 available sources of information. It’s a 

10 little bit of A plus B plus C. Does that get 

11 you where you need to get given the fact that 

12 maybe the bioassay data itself is either 

13 lacking or limited. 

14 MR. STEWART: Once again, it would have 

15 precipitated all of the other actinites, plus 

16 alpha, gross alpha. 

17 DR. ULSH: We’ll be providing detailed 

18 responses, and we’ll assume that kind of a 

19 discussion. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: That’s fine. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Isn’t the issue partially if 

22 you assume it’s all plutonium does that still 

23 bound it. Are you asking that or are you 

24 thinking that it might not bound it? Well, 

25 you want them to demonstrate that it does I 
75

1 guess. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that’s the notion, 

3 you know, we don’t have any prejudgment on 

4 this. It’s just that the ER points to a 

5 number of sources of information that could be 

6 used but nothing that would actually show us 

7 how it would be done. 

8 And that’s all we are looking for is 

9 clarification that if it’s a combination of 

10 the alpha bioassay, gross alpha, plus perhaps 

11 some of these assumptions regarding growth of 

12 plutonium plus maybe a couple of bioassay 

13 points here and there. That’s fine, but right 

14 now we don’t really understand how that would 

15 be done. The data is limited in some cases 

16 and lacking in others, so there must be a 

17 strategy that you’ll be using to come up with 

18 those estimations. We don’t know at this 

19 point. 

20 MR. STEWART: Neptunium work was rare. We 

21 typically, and under ER from Mound, we 

22 typically don’t get that level of detail in 

23 the cases. Sometimes we do get some very good 

24 detail, and we can go back and we can say, I 

25 mean, hypothetically, if a person described in 
76

1 detail the process that he performed with 

2 Neptunium-237, we would look, keep that in 

3 mind when we looked at his bioassay records. 

4 And we would assess, okay, well, if I assume 

5 this gross alpha measurement is Neptunium-237, 

6 is it a higher dose or is it lower to the 

7 particular organ. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And that’s all you can do 

9 at this point is you’re looking at the King 

10 document that identified neptunium as one of 

11 the lot trace elements, something that would 

12 be significant source term for a particular 

13 facility in a certain time period, and there’s 

14 no bioassay. So we get to the next question 

15 and say, okay, were people monitored for this, 

16 and, if so, where’s the data. If not, what 

17 would be the work around in terms of using 

18 other sources there. That’s pretty much the -

19 - 

20 MR. STEWART: What change to the TBD would 

21 be necessary to -- 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right. And this may 

23 end up being a site profile issue, but I think 

24 it does affect the question of how dose 

25 reconstruction will be done for those 
77

1 operations that might have neptunium as a, I 

2 won’t call it a major constituent, but 

3 certainly one that you wouldn’t want to 

4 ignore. So you might want to tweak the 

5 algorithm perhaps to take that into 

6 consideration or do an upper bound. I don’t 

7 know how that would be done, but that would be 

8 just the question on that. 

9 MR. STEWART: Once again, we’re talking 

10 about a process that affects a small number of 

11 individuals. Mound is one of the many sites 

12 that had diverse research programs and very 

13 small operational programs. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: And that would be an 

15 important qualifying statement that wasn’t 

16 clear in a lot of these cases. The King 

17 report doesn’t get into numbers so again, this 

18 is the first order. 

19 MS. BEACH: Are you ready for a break? 

20 DR. ULSH: They’re rumbling about a break 

21 down here, Josie. 

22 DR. BRANCHE: We’re going to put the phone 

23 on mute for these ten minutes, and we’ll 

24 unmute when we return. 

25 (Whereupon, the working group took a break.) 
78

1 DR. BRANCHE: For those of you participating 

2 by phone, if you could please mute your phone. 

3 If you don’t have the mute button, then if you 

4 would please use star six to mute your phone, 

5 then when you’re ready to speak, you can use 

6 that same star six to begin speaking. And we 

7 appreciate your cooperation with this whole 

8 mute business. 

9 Ms. Beach. 

10 MS. BEACH: Josie Beach here. We are going 

11 to go ahead and switch gears and move to 

12 number 14 on the matrix. We’re going to work 

13 through 14, 15 and 16, all the way through 19, 

14 and then go back to where we left off after 

15 those items have been covered. 

16 If you’re ready, did you want to 

17 start, Ron? 

18 MATRIX ISSUE FOURTEEN: EXTERNAL ISSUE, NEUTRON DOSE 

19 RECONSTRUCTION

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Ron Buchanan, who 

21 actually addressed a lot of the external 

22 issues, provided the details but these issues 

23 are actually kind of familiar issues because 

24 they’re generic to a lot of DOE sites. This 

25 question of NTA film use and sort of the how 
79

1 does one address the energy dependence issue, 

2 and application of n/p ratios, all these sort 

3 of play a role in the proposed approach in the 

4 evaluation report. So we have several 

5 specific issues that we’ve identified which 

6 Ron will summarize. 

7 MR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, SC&A. We’re 

8 looking at the neutron -- one of the external 

9 dose issues was the neutron dose 

10 reconstruction. And at Mound they used the 

11 NTA film up until about ’77 I believe. And 

12 the main issues that we had, they did have 

13 pretty good records in the NTA results. If 

14 you look at the database system, they did 

15 monitor some of the workers and that data is 

16 there. 

17 Our concern as far as being able to do 

18 the correct dose reconstruction is with the 

19 NTA film. Like at any of the sites, they 

20 recognized after they had used it awhile that 

21 it was missing some of the lower energy 

22 neutrons. And going through the Mound data, 

23 as far as SC&A could find, is that they did do 

24 a fairly good job of calibrating the NTA film 

25 in the lab and counting the number of tracks 
80

1 depending on the type of source they had, and 

2 realized in about ’63 that the lower energy PU 

3 sources were not, or any plutonium source was 

4 of lower energy and was giving a lower amount 

5 of counts on the tracks as opposed to the old 

6 polonium sources. And so they did recommend a 

7 change at that time on some of the 

8 calibration. 

9 And our problem that we would like to 

10 see clarified or additional data or issue 

11 addressed is the fact that when they did the 

12 calibrations, they did it in the lab. But I 

13 could not find anywhere in the documents where 

14 they went out in the actual work environment. 

15 I would think that to be able to use that NTA 

16 film to make corrections to the results, we’d 

17 have to have some documentation of where they 

18 took the NTA film out into the work 

19 environment, compared to an absolute neutron 

20 dose measurement to determine how many tracks 

21 were being missed so to speak. 

22 Now, we have two issues with this 

23 period between -- now that the SEC covers 

24 1959, we’d be covering 1960 through ’77 when 

25 they switched over to -- whenever the official 
81

1 date was they switched over to TLDs -- was if 

2 there was any documented evidence showing that 

3 they actually took the NTA film into the work 

4 environment, compared it with an actual 

5 neutron dose equivalent measurement and used 

6 those calibration factors as opposed to doing 

7 it in the laboratory, we didn’t have the 

8 moderated neutrons. 

9 You have two factors here. You have 

10 that the NTA film was lacking in response to 

11 below a certain energy of neutron, plus, it 

12 would fade faster if it was exposed to the 

13 lower energy neutrons. And this was addressed 

14 kind of haphazardly. I wouldn’t say it was 

15 address haphazardly, but the documents that I 

16 found address -- in Meyer especially -- 

17 address the issues, but you can’t really tie 

18 it all together like Joe was saying earlier, a 

19 thread to link them all together. 

20 And I could not find where they 

21 actually went in the work environment. I 

22 would think that it had been necessary to go 

23 in the work environment, expose the NTA film 

24 to some absolute neutron and some absolute 

25 neutron measurement device to get a 
82

1 calibration factor for different locations as 

2 moderations and sources changed over the 

3 years. Now, I did find evidence that they do 

4 the calibration in the lab. 

5 There was a few neutron energy 

6 spectrum measurements done in the work 

7 environment, but there was no comparison of we 

8 need to adjust the NTA film for these 

9 particular locations in these particular 

10 years. Now, these calibration sources were 

11 about 1.3 MeV, and the average neutron energy 

12 out in the field during this period from say 

13 ’60 to ’77 from what I can find averaged 

14 around 0.8 MeV. There was 0.7, a few 0.5s, 

15 some 0.9s, but it’s around something under 1 

16 MeV. 

17 And this might be considered not much 

18 difference than the calibration source of an 

19 unmoderated 1.3. But it is important because 

20 it drops off very rapidly, the NTA response 

21 does to energy. And so my concern here 

22 whether you’re talking about the polonium 

23 sources or the plutonium sources, my concern 

24 is out in the actual work environment where 

25 they were located, and the NTA film hung on 
83

1 the workers’ chest, that that NTA film was 

2 being exposed to a lower energy neutron source 

3 than what was being used to calibrate them in 

4 the lab and assign doses. 

5 Even though fading was compensated for 

6 some in later years, I don’t see a real 

7 correlation between the work environment and 

8 the calibration facilities that were used to 

9 assign doses. 

10 DR. ULSH: Well, as you know, this is an 

11 ongoing, living-type process, and we 

12 anticipated that this might be an issue 

13 because it has been at other sites as well. 

14 And in anticipation of that we worked with the 

15 Department of Energy Legacy Management folks 

16 to locate -- would I be overstating if I said 

17 a vast treasure trove -- a large body of 

18 paired neutron and gamma measurements from SM 

19 Building, from PP Building, from R -- 

20 MR. STEWART: Actually, I kind of broke it 

21 into five different exposure regimes, and that 

22 is: T Plant for polonium processing; SM 

23 building early, no shielding; SM Building late 

24 with the addition of shielding; PP Building; 

25 and a Californium-252 facility. We have 
84

1 paired neutron gamma results for each of those 

2 regimes. 

3 DR. ULSH: And there are spectral 

4 measurements, neutron spectral measurements. 

5 We’re currently in the process of capturing 

6 this data, uploading it, and we’ll certainly 

7 make it available to you as soon as we have 

8 it. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Are the spectral 

10 measurements also from the same treasure 

11 trove? 

12 MR. STEWART: They are part of the data that 

13 exists. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: What was the time frame on the 

15 spectral measurements? Did they use 

16 monitored? 

17 DR. ULSH: Yes, they used long counters, 

18 didn’t they? 

19 MR. STEWART: They had several different 

20 instruments that they used. Our principal 

21 internal dosimetrist, Jack Fix, is familiar 

22 with each of these. This is our principle 

23 internal dosimetrist. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess you were asking 

25 about time frame though? 
85

1 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, time frame will tell you 

2 a little bit about what might have been 

3 available, whether it’s long counters or -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Because that’s one issue. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: -- monospheres or -- I know 

6 these early spectrum measurements are a little 

7 crude, but they can at least separate, tell 

8 you what’s below the threshold and that’s 

9 helpful. I think in most cases the high 

10 energy stuff was still a bigger contributor to 

11 dose when you make the conversions usually. 

12 In terms of numbers of neutrons per unit area 

13 per second, it takes a lot of thermals to give 

14 you the same dose. 

15 DR. ULSH: Well, and I do want to make it 

16 clear here -- 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Talking about, well, okay. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, some of these are a 

19 little -- 

20 MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, 1 MeV is where you 

21 start dropping off so quick, and so you still 

22 get 25, 45 percent, so, you know, it depends 

23 on the moderation. 

24 DR. ULSH: Well, and we did recognize that. 

25 I mean, your statement says that SC&A 
86

1 questions the assumption that only high energy 

2 neutrons existed at Mound around polonium 

3 material. We never made that assumption. In 

4 fact, in Section 5.4.3 of the ER we state that 

5 neutrons in the workplace would be expected to 

6 include a continuous spectrum of energies 

7 below the maximum emission energies, and it 

8 goes on. 

9 So we never made that assumption. We 

10 recognize what you’re saying that there would 

11 be some moderation occurring in the workplace. 

12 And like I said, we’re in the process of 

13 getting this data into a, you know, we’re 

14 uploading it now. And we know that you guys 

15 are keenly interested in that, too, so we’ll 

16 make that available to you. 

17 MR. BUCHANAN: Can I, are you heading 

18 towards the direction of using just NP values 

19 for neutron assignment or are you going to use 

20 NTA results modified? 

21 DR. ULSH: We’ll use NTA results where we 

22 have them with appropriate adjustment to 

23 account for exactly what you’re talking about, 

24 the fraction of the neutrons that are below, 

25 for instance, the threshold detection limit of 
87

1 the NTA film and also for the track fading 

2 issue. Now, keep in mind, I would have to go 

3 back and look in detail about how they 

4 calibrated these things, but if you handle the 

5 calibration films the same way that you 

6 handled the films that people were wearing, 

7 then the track fading issue comes out in the 

8 wash. 

9 MR. BUCHANAN: Right, track fading was 

10 addressed later on. 

11 MR. STEWART: Nineteen sixty-eight. 

12 MR. BUCHANAN: Right, but they weren’t, 

13 well, they was kind of corrected sometimes, 

14 but they didn’t go back before that. When 

15 they recognized that, they said, okay, we’re 

16 going to do the correction, but they did not 

17 go back to 1960 on track fading. Is that 

18 correct? 

19 DR. ULSH: I think that’s because the fading 

20 issue was dominant in the PP Building with the 

21 plutonium. They didn’t go back into the 

22 earlier years into the SM Building where they 

23 were primarily worked on the polonium because 

24 it was, I think it was anticipated that the 

25 fading issue would be less of an issue because 
88

1 you had higher energy neutrons. 

2 MR. STEWART: That’s correct, and the memo 

3 that discusses that says that the factor of 

4 two is likely not applicable or not applicable 

5 to doses prior to the time that he stated, and 

6 I forget the exact date. And it’s clear that 

7 in their own mind at least, that they did not 

8 need to correct any additional data. We may 

9 come to a different conclusion when we 

10 evaluate this. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: One thing I picked up in 

12 some of the supporting documentation -– I 

13 think it was Meyer -- but there was some also 

14 problem with interference from, was it gamma 

15 or something. It was some interference that 

16 was making it difficult to read. 

17 MR. STEWART: Correct, and at that time what 

18 happens is NTA film is sensitive to photons as 

19 it is to proton recoil. So you’re counting 

20 the tracks, and if you have a lot of gamma 

21 background, it will darken the film so that 

22 it’s more difficult to see the tracks. And we 

23 often see this comment -- well, not often -- 

24 we have occasionally seen the comment that the 

25 film was too black to read. 
89

1 MR. ELLIOTT: I’m sorry, do they call it 

2 fogging? Is that fogging? 

3 DR. ULSH: Gamma fogging. 

4 MR. STEWART: And, in fact, it makes it more 

5 difficult. And the Mound site operated their 

6 microscopy equipment so that they could more 

7 easily distinguish the proton tracks. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: So really, to sum it up, 

9 given those limitations, the neutron-photon 

10 pairs are going to be the backstop to some of 

11 the issues where you can’t rely on the NTA. 

12 Is that -- 

13 MR. STEWART: I don’t know that we’re going 

14 to state that we can’t rely on NTA. NTA, you 

15 know, we have a high average energy for the 

16 Mound operations for the most part. Mound 

17 claims a threshold of between 0.5 and 0.7 MeV 

18 for neutron detection. So I don’t know that 

19 we’re going to totally throw out the NTA 

20 results for any particular era. 

21 DR. ULSH: It would just be in situations, 

22 if there are any, where you have someone who 

23 might have been exposed to neutrons but wasn’t 

24 monitored for it. Now, I’m, let me be quick 

25 to state I’m not saying that there are 
90

1 situations like that. But that’s typically 

2 where you would use the n/p ratio methodology. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: And also, I guess, where 

4 you might, if you do, in fact, have some work5 site-specific spectral measurements that were 

6 reflective of certain time periods, if you 

7 showed a component in the middle range, you 

8 know, 7, 600 KeV or whatever, you would have 

9 the basis for making an adjustment. I guess 

10 our issue is just that might work if you had 

11 enough spectral or some measurements that were 

12 site specific rather than sort of broad. I 

13 think -- am I right in terms of neutron 

14 degrading we’ve gone through this at other 

15 sites. Depending on the circumstances it’s 

16 going to be almost building to building or 

17 site to site. So in a way you almost need 

18 some understanding of how that bears on. 

19 DR. ULSH: Well, if you think back to our 

20 discussion with, our discussion on this issue 

21 at Rocky Flats, the way that they calibrated 

22 the neutron films there was they looked at 

23 both an unmoderated source and then a fully 

24 moderated with, I can’t remember of how many 

25 centimeters of polyethylene. I’m not sure 
91

1 about Mound, but I would have to check to see 

2 if they did something similar. But what they 

3 did at Rocky is a fairly good -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: I think this is a case of 

5 throwing in some of that information as to 

6 whether or not there’s a basis for making 

7 adjustments I guess. 

8 MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, Mound, if I recall 

9 right, didn’t do moderation until later on the 

10 calibration. I don’t know that they did a lot 

11 of moderation to begin with. But from what I 

12 could find I don’t see that that’s connected 

13 in the TBD. The TBD gives one, on two 

14 subjects an n-over-p ratio they suggest a 

15 factor of two, I believe, that’s all that’s 

16 really addressed in the TBD. 

17 MR. STEWART: I’ll just point out real 

18 quickly that we cannot use that for dose 

19 reconstruction. 

20 MR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Because, you know, I 

21 felt that was too general, and I didn’t really 

22 see a good basis for that. And so you’re 

23 proposing that perhaps you’re going to 

24 generate a more specific n-over-p for people 

25 that did not have neutron monitoring or you 
92

1 can’t read them. 

2 DR. ULSH: If there are people like that, 

3 yes. 

4 MR. BUCHANAN: And also, the TBD did not 

5 give an adjustment really for the missing, the 

6 lower energy neutrons for workers that had NTA 

7 results. They gave an adjustment of 14 

8 percent for the lower limits of detectability 

9 in the looking at missed dose, but the way I 

10 read the TBD, they really don’t give an 

11 adjustment for lower energy neutrons. For 

12 people that were monitored, they got 100 

13 millirem or 200 millirem. I could not go back 

14 and doing a dose reconstruction see where that 

15 was applied. 

16 DR. ULSH: Yeah, we recognize that 

17 limitation, and that’s going to be, that’s one 

18 of the topics that we’re addressing with the 

19 data that we -- 

20 MS. BEACH: Brant, how soon do you think 

21 you’ll have that data uploaded and out to us? 

22 MR. STEWART: Well, we had 28-41 special 

23 dosimetry files done as of Friday. I believe 

24 that that probably will be done pretty 

25 quickly, and that’s in a spreadsheet. The 
93

1 other data I can’t really say right now when 

2 we would have that available. A lot of those 

3 are already in the SRDB, but I’ll need to go 

4 back and index those in order to make it 

5 obvious what we’re looking at. 

6 DR. ULSH: We’ll put that down as an action 

7 item, too. Anything that we’ve already got in 

8 the SRDB we’ll point it out to you. 

9 MS. BEACH: Okay. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: The essential new 

11 information that we haven’t probably seen 

12 though is the paired neutron information and 

13 the additional spectral measurements. Those 

14 are two key pieces. 

15 DR. ULSH: Yes, we just got that recently, 

16 in a recent data capture. 

17 MR. BUCHANAN: And how that’s going to 

18 actually be used in dose reconstruction. 

19 MR. STEWART: Right. 

20 MR. BUCHANAN: How that’s going to be 

21 applied. And if we do have neutron energy 

22 spectrum measurements, I mean, that’s good, 

23 but I’d like to see how that’s going to be 

24 used to make the corrections. Because in the 

25 documentation it says in ’63 they got an 
94

1 average energy of 0.7, but I didn’t see that 

2 really applied anywhere. And so I would like 

3 to see how we’re going to use any neutron 

4 spectrum information that was done, how that’s 

5 going to be applied to correct any dose 

6 assignment. 

7 DR. ULSH: Right, that’s one of the standard 

8 things we do when we get information like this 

9 is talk about if you’ve got a particular 

10 neutron dose measurement and applied 

11 correction factor whatever. And we don’t 

12 anticipate doing anything different here. 

13 MR. BUCHANAN: Assumption as a function of 

14 building and time, and I don’t know how much 

15 detail you have, but from what I get I 

16 couldn’t gather too much, but -- 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I think Brant’s been there, 

18 done that, so we know the fire drill. 

19 Anyway, I think that Josie would be 

20 taking care of 14. I guess that is 14 and 15. 

21 MR. BUCHANAN: I separated those out because 

22 I wanted to indicate that we did that on SEC -

23 – 

24 MATRIX ISSUE SIXTEEN: BETA LOW ENERGY PHOTON

25 MR. FITZGERALD: So we’re up to 16. This is 
95

1 actually moving from neutrons to beta low 

2 energy photon. 

3 MR. BUCHANAN: On beta and low energy, 

4 originally from the documents I could read 

5 beta was a problem initially when they’d get 

6 slugs from Hanford and stuff, but most of that 

7 was covered under the SEC period. 

8 And then we had plutonium come to the 

9 site in the late ‘50s, at least according to 

10 Meyer, and then that took over from the old 

11 operation they had. And what you had is some 

12 lower energy photons. So we went on to look 

13 at shallow dose, really beta low energy 

14 photons. And from the records I could see was 

15 we really didn’t have this calibrated up until 

16 say ’79 or even into the ‘80s before they 

17 actually got to where they passed some 

18 accreditation for shallow dose. 

19 And so to me I see a blank period now 

20 between ’60 and say ’80 being able to assign 

21 beta dose on a calibrated basis other than 

22 just subtracting the difference between the 

23 windows but as far as having a documented 

24 calibration and procedure for low energy and 

25 being able to separate out that from the rest 
96

1 of the dose. 

2 Where do we stand on providing any 

3 dose reconstruction for shallow dose? 

4 DR. ULSH: First of all we stand corrected. 

5 You did catch us in a typo here. We’re not 

6 going to use n-to-p ratios to do that. So 

7 that’s a typo in the ER. 

8 Don, do you want to -- 

9 MR. STEWART: Sure. We’ve been looking at 

10 Meyer’s history to go back and see where we 

11 actually do have data results. We know when 

12 they show up in the records and the 

13 information is conflicting, you know, the TBD 

14 I believe says that we don’t have any prior to 

15 ’79. I’ve seen a number of documents where 

16 there were documented beta measurements. 

17 So we’re in the process of going back 

18 and seeing whether those are actually are 

19 taken, whether they are building-specific or 

20 whether they’re general. They are aware, I 

21 mean, as most of us at the table know, if you 

22 have a shallow dose, you will see it as a film 

23 processor because that area of the film will 

24 be darker than the gamma portion of the film. 

25 And I know that Meyer talks about 
97

1 this. In particular, I believe, one of the 

2 supervisors there said we have noticed some 

3 darkening of the open-window portion of the 

4 dosimeter. To that point Mound felt they 

5 didn’t have a beta or a low energy dose 

6 fraction, but they started to evaluate it. 

7 These bits of data, I need to go back and look 

8 at them in detail and make sure that the TBD 

9 adequately addresses them. 

10 MR. BUCHANAN: Have you found anything that 

11 you could, if they did notice or they recorded 

12 the difference in the open and shielded and 

13 such, have you found any calibration 

14 information that we could say how much dose 

15 that is? How can we equate that dose if we 

16 don’t have a calibration for it? 

17 MR. STEWART: We would expect the low energy 

18 photons to be overestimated to a very 

19 significant degree. There is calibration 

20 information in there. I can’t locate the time 

21 frame right now. So that’s why I wanted to go 

22 back, put together a roadmap and say what I’ve 

23 got and when. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: It sounds like you’re part25 way into that. 
98

1 MATRIX ITEM 17: BADGING IN RADIOLOGICAL AREAS

2 Number 17’s another familiar issue. 

3 This is more of a clarification question 

4 though again in terms of the most exposed 

5 worker question and badging. And again, this 

6 has been raised with just about every SEC I 

7 suspect. 

8 In this case what we’re trying to 

9 establish is the policy or documentation that 

10 sort of establishes that all workers in the 

11 radiological areas were badged. Now, talking 

12 to various former workers and HPs at this 

13 site, it suggested that it was a very tight 

14 system. So in a way from that recollection 

15 and from some of the documentation, workers 

16 that worked in radiological areas were badged. 

17 Maintenance people that entered radiological 

18 zones or buildings picked up a badge. There’s 

19 a little bit of a question on security staff, 

20 whether or not they were badged going in and 

21 out of areas escorting. 

22 But I think that comes down to just 

23 establishing behind this conclusion what the 

24 documentation of the policy or the record 

25 indicates so that we can rule out the 
99

1 potential for any cohort badging in the early 

2 years, that kind of thing. And again, this is 

3 an issue that we’d like to dispel at the 

4 beginning before we get into data integrity 

5 and the other issues. 

6 DR. ULSH: I think we can go a long ways 

7 towards dispelling that. In Meyer’s history, 

8 this is a direct quote from Meyer’s history, 

9 “In general, all personnel who enter a 

10 radiation area are monitored for possible 

11 exposures to external penetrating radiations.” 

12 He goes on with some details about how often 

13 those are evaluated. He does say that even 

14 occasional visitors to the risk areas are 

15 monitored by the use of film badges which are 

16 evaluated the day following usage. So 

17 certainly Meyer is indicating what you 

18 summarized, Joe, that people, when they went 

19 into radiation areas, they were monitored. 

20 MR. BUCHANAN: What page is that? Do you 

21 have a page number? 

22 MR. STEWART: I have the page number as 

23 “Meyer’s History”, Volume One, page number 1-

24 6-6. 

25 DR. ULSH: Now as you mentioned, this is an 
100

1 issue that we discussed at many other sites as 

2 well, but the cohort badging issue seems to 

3 keep coming up. We don’t have any -- well, 

4 first of all, we don’t have any indication 

5 that cohort badging occurred at Mound. We see 

6 nothing that suggests that. 

7 But secondly, as at other sites -- I 

8 mean, our response is going to be the same 

9 here -- if cohort badging did occur, that’s 

10 not necessarily the kiss of death in terms of 

11 being able to use that data. If it was 

12 focused on the people at highest exposure, it 

13 should be okay. If it’s focused randomly, it 

14 should be okay. It’s only if it was focused 

15 on people who had the lowest exposure 

16 potential that we would have problems using 

17 it. 

18 But again, I think it’s a moot issue 

19 here because we don’t have any indication that 

20 they did cohort badgings. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think that 

22 clarification helped because I think the 

23 statement’s made in the ER, but it wasn’t 

24 clear where that statement was derived, and I 

25 think what you’re saying is that, and in what 
101

1 we also have tracked, is it’s from 

2 contemporary histories of this site, in this 

3 case Meyer’s, and the fact that in your dose 

4 reconstructions that have been done and other 

5 means you have not seen any evidence that 

6 there was unbadged personnel that were clearly 

7 in radiological areas. I mean, I’m just 

8 trying to get a -- 

9 DR. ULSH: That’s an accurate summary of -- 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: -- okay, there’s been 

11 comments made, but it wasn’t clear from what 

12 we’ve seen. 

13 Now in looking at the usual 

14 distribution data and MESH and everything 

15 else, we’ll probably, in looking at data 

16 integrity and what have you, validate that 

17 from another source as well. But I think this 

18 particular issue we just wanted to clarify 

19 what the basis for the statement was. 

20 MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, I did have an 

21 additional question. Is there any company 

22 policy, I mean, do they have a health physics 

23 manual that outlines badging requirements and 

24 that sort of thing? 

25 MR. STEWART: This policy’s restated at 
102

1 various points in health physics documents, 

2 and this, in fact, is something, is from a 

3 document called “The Mound Laboratory 

4 Radiation Exposure Records System”. We didn’t 

5 cite that because there’s no date on that 

6 particular document in Meyer’s history. 

7 However, when we respond we will have a number 

8 of citations from Meyer that will show us 

9 where that is, that policy is restated. 

10 MR. BUCHANAN: Is this outside of Meyer? I 

11 mean, do we have something from the company, 

12 management or -- 

13 MR. STEWART: Meyer, as you know, 

14 incorporates a number of, a disparate number 

15 of documents within his history, and those are 

16 Mound documents. Currently, we haven’t gone 

17 outside to verify those documents as yet. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: To the best of your 

19 knowledge though there wasn’t any groups of 

20 workers that weren’t either (A) rad operators 

21 in radiological zones, or (B) site-wide 

22 workers that were badged or monitored when 

23 they went into a radiological zone. The 

24 reason I’m raising this is that looking at the 

25 various cohort of workers that might have been 
103

1 onsite. 

2 The only one that to me is a little 

3 ambiguous, and I haven’t seen anything that 

4 ices it, but for example, security guards 

5 would be a group that wouldn’t be considered 

6 radiological workers, would not be doing 

7 routine maintenance site wide, but nonetheless 

8 would be able to have access site wide. So 

9 just looking at the different worker 

10 population, just establishing that it was a 

11 rather rigid and universally applied thing 

12 that, yeah, you were monitored if you went to 

13 a rad zone or if you worked in a rad zone of 

14 course you were monitored. 

15 DR. ULSH: Yeah, I don’t think it was based 

16 specifically on -- I’m trying to think of a 

17 clear way to say this. I don’t think there 

18 was a judgment made about you, Joe Fitzgerald. 

19 You’re a security guard, and so you get a 

20 badge. It was more access specific. To get 

21 into these areas you needed to have a badge. 

22 So if you were a security guard and 

23 you made rounds in the cafeteria and the 

24 administration building, you may not be 

25 wearing a badge. But when you went into FM 
104

1 Building, you picked up your badge before you 

2 went in. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: And that’s sort of our 

4 perspective as well so far in terms of looking 

5 and talking to people and looking at the 

6 documentation. So we have nothing that would 

7 dispute that. And it sounds like the, your 

8 dose reconstruction information as well as the 

9 Meyer’s history supports it. So I think 

10 that’s where we stand. We’ll probably -- 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Are you looking for additional 

12 policy statements by the company as to outside 

13 of the Meyer’s thing or does Meyers cite those 

14 policies? 

15 MR. STEWART: We have not to date looked 

16 outside. 

17 DR. ULSH: Well, Meyer does cite a number of 

18 external documents. I mean, it’s not just 

19 stuff that Meyers -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: We’d like to go beyond the 

21 history to get specific -- 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, here’s a document that 

23 the company says this is the requirement. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: That plus sort of looking 

25 at it as NIOSH has done with dose 
105

1 reconstructions and as we would look at it in 

2 terms of data integrity. Just see if there’s 

3 any instances that would pop up that would 

4 suggest lack of monitoring for someone that 

5 should have been monitored if it’s true. 

6 We don’t pick up any instances and 

7 there’s the Meyer’s history as well as 

8 hopefully some company documentation. I think 

9 that puts the whole thing to bed. We’re not 

10 coming into this prejudging that there’s an 

11 issue for badging at all. And I agree that 

12 doesn’t mean necessarily there’s a problem 

13 with that per se. But I think just to put 

14 that behind before we get into other issues 

15 would be useful. So anyway, that’s how we 

16 would leave it. 

17 MS. BEACH: Before we get started with the 

18 next issue, we have two new people that joined 

19 us. 

20 If you would speak to the microphone 

21 and state what your name is. 

22 MS. RUSSELL: (inaudible) 

23 MS. BEACH: Thank you. If you can speak 

24 loud enough that would be great. 

25 MS. RUSSELL: My name is Mary Russell. 
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1 MR. RUSSELL: And I’m Larry Russell, her 

2 husband. 

3 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

4 MATRIX ISSUE 18: INTEGRITY OF RECORDS

5 MR. FITZGERALD: We’re on 18, and here’s a 

6 series of issues that deal with the integrity 

7 and completeness of records. And I’m not sure 

8 we need to spend time talking about that. 

9 This is something I think as a matter of 

10 course that the work group would expect an 

11 hour to go through, in this case, the MESH 

12 database and PORECON, PURECON, and what else 

13 to look at that from the standpoint of 

14 completeness and accuracy. 

15 But we certainly wanted to make sure 

16 that we framed the issue as an issue anyway. 

17 And if there’s anything that we can get from 

18 you all as far as whether the framing may 

19 raise questions of accuracy or if we’re 

20 missing something, certainly we’re 

21 interpreting this. I don’t think we’re going 

22 to do anything different than, for example, we 

23 did at Rocky Flats. 

24 I think we’re going to look at the 

25 records from the standpoint of do we find any 
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1 discrepancies as far as missing records. Do 

2 they agree electronic to paper, that kind of 

3 thing. So these would be part and parcel to 

4 that. 

5 Ron, do you want to add anything to 

6 that? 

7 MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, I have two additional 

8 questions on that. The way I read the TBD you 

9 really don’t, there is not a coworker database 

10 for gamma at this time. Is that correct? 

11 MR. STEWART: That’s correct. 

12 MR. BUCHANAN: You gave some ranges in 

13 there, but there’s no numbers that a DR can 

14 really use to assign to a monitored dose. 

15 And, let me see, that was my first 

16 question. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: The range is the second I 

18 think. 

19 MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, he said that, too, just 

20 gave ranges. I forgot the second question. 

21 I’ll talk about that later. 

22 DR. ULSH: Well, I think there’s some things 

23 that -- 

24 MR. BUCHANAN: Was there any quality check 

25 of the, have you uncovered, we have not been 
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1 able to uncover, and Meyers did not state any, 

2 a quality check of transferring the database 

3 from one database to another. Have you came 

4 across any of that? Did they do any, other 

5 than the PURECON and PORECON? 

6 DR. ULSH: Well, to clarify, PORECON and 

7 PURECON are for bioassay data. And MJW did 

8 extensive validation on that dataset. I don’t 

9 have documentation at my fingertips that would 

10 suggest that a similar level of detail has 

11 been done on the external data. 

12 I mean, it’s standard across the 

13 complex, and we’ve seen this numerous times at 

14 other sites, that when you’re migrating from 

15 one system to another there’s QA/QC involved. 

16 But in terms of a real in-depth description of 

17 it like we have from MJW’s dose reconstruction 

18 project, I don’t know that I’ve got that 

19 specifically. But we haven’t looked 

20 necessarily specifically for it. 

21 And if it’s an issue that the working 

22 group decides they want to pursue, then we can 

23 go look. I think, however, that this would be 

24 an issue for the working group to discuss and 

25 perhaps give us some guidance on what you’d 
109

1 like to see before we leap into a project of 

2 the scale of what we did at Rocky Flats for 

3 data integrity, data completeness. 

4 Because this is almost a repeat of 

5 what I said before we did it at Rocky. That 

6 is an enormously resource-intensive effort, 

7 enormously. And at the end of the process at 

8 Rocky Flats, what we found was not the smoking 

9 guns that indicated that there were vast 

10 numbers of missing records. In fact, we found 

11 almost complete data completeness records. We 

12 found it verified the integrity of those 

13 records. 

14 Now, there were some statements in 

15 passing and listed in the evaluation report 

16 that voiced some concerns about the rad data 

17 system. I’m assuming that that means the 

18 records systems at Mound. But it was a 

19 central tenet of the Rocky Flats ER that the 

20 dosimetry records were unreliable. So that’s 

21 why I think the working group felt obligated 

22 to go into a great level of detail examining 

23 that issue. It’s worth discussing among you 

24 guys what your priorities are here, I mean the 

25 work group members, before we engage in a 
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1 project on that scale. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Just a clarification, 

3 you’re saying at least for the external -- I 

4 agree on the internal. MJW did quite a bit on 

5 the QA side for those databases. But for the 

6 external you’re not aware of any reliability 

7 check -- 

8 DR. ULSH: I really don’t want to say that 

9 none have been done. I’m just saying that 

10 it’s not, it wasn’t a source of documentation 

11 that we went after specifically. I’m making 

12 the assumption that, you know, they were the 

13 typical types of QA/QC. But if the working 

14 group and you guys want verification of that, 

15 that’s something that we’re going to have to 

16 go look for in particular to find out exactly 

17 what measures they took. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I guess the first 

19 thing that we were actually raising was how 

20 reliable the external database happens to be 

21 and whether either the site or NIOSH or ORAU 

22 had done any look in that regard. And then 

23 the secondary question is there any evidence 

24 that would suggest otherwise. And I don’t 

25 disagree. I haven’t seen anything that would 
111

1 suggest problems with, in this case, the 

2 external database. 

3 DR. ULSH: And, you know, you can always 

4 slice and dice this up pretty thinly, but we 

5 took some comfort from the fact that MJW found 

6 a high level of data integrity in the internal 

7 dose records. Now, of course, you could say, 

8 well, that’s not external. But if we look at 

9 external, you could say, well, that’s not beta 

10 or that’s not gamma or that’s not neutron or a 

11 particular time periods, particular buildings. 

12 It just depends on how in depth the working 

13 group decides that they want to go on this 

14 issue. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, to give you some 

16 examples, addressing the neutron issue that 

17 would be, I think, instructive as to whether 

18 the fact that database were reliable before 

19 one got to the point of deciding if the dose 

20 assessment strategy was sufficient. You have 

21 a ^ issue for that perhaps. I wouldn’t say 

22 that you would have to do everything. I’m 

23 just saying that for certain instances you 

24 might want to at least validate that you’re 

25 dealing with a reliable database. 
112

1 I don’t know on external if I’ve seen 

2 anything that suggests that the site 

3 historically has done that kind of a QA check 

4 on at least external. I think the internal I 

5 feel, you know, I think MJW did a quite 

6 extensive look at QA for what was there in 

7 ’96, so that’s a slightly different story. 

8 But external, I don’t think that was done, and 

9 again, our point of raising this was to verify 

10 that that was your understanding, too, that 

11 there wasn’t really that kind of retrospective 

12 look at the reliability of all those years of 

13 data. 

14 DR. ULSH: No, well, I’m not aware of 

15 anything on the scale of what MJW did with the 

16 internal data. I’m not aware of something on 

17 that scale with the external data. That’s not 

18 to say that there was not QA when they 

19 migrated from one system to another. 

20 MR. STEWART: That is documented in Meyer’s 

21 history. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, and it seems to me 

23 that maybe the interim step. And I don’t 

24 disagree that one should launch into something 

25 that’s broad without some kind of indication 
113

1 we’d need to look at. But information may 

2 exist in terms of this QA in terms of 

3 evolution, one system to another and over 

4 time. Since you have such a long history on 

5 this site, see if there is anyway one could at 

6 least qualitatively say it looks like, looking 

7 at what they did do, there doesn’t seem to be 

8 any evidence that there were discrepancies or 

9 gaps or problems with the database as it 

10 stands. 

11 The other thing, and we’ve talked 

12 about this in the past, is to be able to look 

13 at the MESH database in terms of being able to 

14 not just simply draw from the information 

15 that’s there, but also to do some comparisons 

16 that would indicate that the information in 

17 there is complete. I think there’s certainly 

18 a charter, if I’m reading the SEC procedures, 

19 to be able to provide a basis for judging 

20 reliability of the database to the Board so 

21 that question can be answered. 

22 I think I’d be open to how one could 

23 do that through the working group in a cost24 efficient, readily ready way. So that might 

25 be something to explore as far as, 
114

1 particularly on the external side. Is there 

2 any way one could establish for the working 

3 group’s sake what the reliability of, in this 

4 case, the external database is? 

5 DR. ULSH: All I can say is we’re not aware 

6 of any disuse with the external data at this 

7 point in time. We can certainly, without an 

8 inordinate amount of resources being expended, 

9 go through Meyer and pull out qualitative 

10 descriptions of what kind of QA/QC was done. 

11 To go beyond that I’d really like to hear a 

12 discussion and consensus opinion from the 

13 working group because that has the potential 

14 at least to be a really big project. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: I would like for us to talk a 

16 little bit about how, the question at hand 

17 here is the databases and how they were 

18 developed and how they were transferred or 

19 transported into other databases over time. 

20 Is that right? 

21 DR. ULSH: Uh-huh. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: And how do, I think it’s 

23 worthwhile to spend some time here talking 

24 about how we use those databases if we use 

25 them in dose reconstruction. Because it’s my 
115

1 understanding that we take the dose of record 

2 that comes from the DOE point of contact at 

3 Mound for each claim and reconstruct a dose 

4 and whenever we have gaps or deficiencies in 

5 that data, we would bridge those gaps using a 

6 coworker database distribution which we don’t 

7 have here. We have not developed that. So to 

8 question the reliability of databases I think 

9 we have to look first at how often do we use 

10 the databases. 

11 DR. ULSH: Well, in a collective way we 

12 really don’t here at Mound with the exception, 

13 we do have a coworker model for polonium and 

14 plutonium. We don’t have the external 

15 coworker model because it’s our position that 

16 we don’t need it. Everyone was monitored. 

17 There are no unmonitored people for whom you 

18 have to apply coworker data which, like I say, 

19 in a collective way that’s what we typically 

20 use the database for is to generate coworker 

21 models. 

22 MR. BUCHANAN: But you go back, when you do 

23 a DR, you go back to the MESH database. I 

24 mean, that is where they’re getting, the DOE’s 

25 getting their information. I mean, that’s 
116

1 what is actually printed out. When you do a 

2 DR, the DR uses a MESH database summary to 

3 assign dose to that worker. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s correct. 

5 MR. BUCHANAN: And so if the end result is 

6 the MESH database, now that might have been 

7 the fact -- 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: The source of the information. 

9 MR. BUCHANAN: Right, it might have been 

10 back in 1962 that it was originally entered, 

11 handwritten or entered on punch cards or 

12 whatever. And that went from that database 

13 through several databases up until it got to 

14 MESH. And our question is, is the original 

15 handwritten information or whatever it was, 

16 punch card or whatever that said the guy got 

17 120 millirem for that quarter, does that 

18 appear in the MESH database. I mean, do we 

19 know that that got transferred over and wasn’t 

20 any of it dropped through the cracks or it got 

21 transferred correctly. That’s, and we have 

22 not -- 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s the root of the 

24 question, the root of your question. 

25 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, the root of the 
117

1 question. And Meyer’s, I have looked through 

2 his notes, and he doesn’t give any details. 

3 It’s more like this was transferred or at this 

4 time these were transferred or such. And 

5 there is no detail on how it was transferred 

6 like the internal dose was very well 

7 documented. Whether you agreed with it or not 

8 is a different point, but it was very well 

9 documented. 

10 Well, the external, the guy that 

11 actually does the dose reconstruction in 207, 

12 he uses those printed forms from DOE, but how 

13 accurate are they? And I’m not saying they’re 

14 not. I just don’t know, my question was have 

15 you done anything? Because I didn’t want to 

16 re-plow the same grounds. If you’ve done 

17 anything, I’d like to know about it. If you 

18 haven’t, do we want to do anything about it? 

19 DR. ULSH: Well, I think that’s a good 

20 summary. No, we haven’t gone back and done 

21 the scale of the review that was done at Rocky 

22 Flats where we took original logbooks and went 

23 through to look at -- gee, I’ve forgotten 

24 already. Whatever the name of the database 

25 was out there. HIS-20, that’s right. How can 
118

1 I forget that? 

2 MR. STEWART: I don’t know but it shows up 

3 at Fernald, too. 

4 DR. ULSH: And again, we don’t have any 

5 indications. I guess fundamentally it gets 

6 down to the assumptions that you carry into 

7 this process. Do you look at the data and 

8 say, well, we’ve done similar exercises at 

9 other sites, and we’ve not found indications 

10 of endemic problems here, maybe some specific 

11 situations, but nothing system wide. And so I 

12 come into this saying that we don’t have any 

13 obvious indications. There’s not big gaping 

14 holes that there are missing data. So in the 

15 absence of indications otherwise, I’m using 

16 the data. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Or corrupted data. I mean, we 

18 do look for that. We look for CEP data. We 

19 look at CEP, a corrupted entity at a point in 

20 time, so if they provided data we throw it 

21 out. 

22 DR. ULSH: Right, and we have done I don’t 

23 know how many dose reconstructions, 500 or so? 

24 MR. STEWART: Several hundred. 

25 DR. ULSH: At Mound, and in the experience 
119

1 of doing those dose reconstructions, no 

2 problems have jumped out at us. But in terms 

3 of going back and comparing original logbook 

4 entries to the current database, I mean, is 

5 that something that we’re going to be doing at 

6 every site, de facto? Are we going to go in 

7 and assume that it’s bad unless we -- 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I don’t think, 

9 certainly from our standpoint I wouldn’t 

10 suggest that strategy which ended up being the 

11 case at Rocky would be appropriate here at 

12 all. I think that was a case where you didn’t 

13 have much else to turn to, and there was an 

14 indication, as I recall, at Rocky from the 

15 union that the logbooks would be the source of 

16 whatever you could do to verify. 

17 In this particular case I think what 

18 we’re suggesting here is consistent with the 

19 SEC procedures that the Board has adopted 

20 which is to look at the reliability of the 

21 database, the records that are being used as 

22 part of the dose reconstruction process in 

23 support of the SEC. And certainly, we don’t 

24 want to duplicate any validation that’s been 

25 done whether it be by MJW for some of the 
120

1 internal or for whatever the site might have 

2 done historically. 

3 But where there’s no evidence that 

4 anybody has validated the reliability of the 

5 database, it seems like you have to start with 

6 that. Because if the database itself can’t be 

7 validated in some sense, I’m not saying 

8 there’s any set way of doing it, I don’t know 

9 if you could have the confidence, the only 

10 confidence you would have is we haven’t 

11 thought had any problems to date. But I have 

12 to go back to Rocky when I think we identified 

13 the ’69-’70 issue, for example. I don’t think 

14 anybody was aware that there were a couple 

15 years of missing information. 

16 DR. ULSH: No, no, no, it wasn’t missing. 

17 MS. BEACH: Let’s not re-do Rocky. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, I’m just saying that 

19 certainly the rationale for looking at or 

20 sampling for the purposes of supporting this 

21 procedure or this intent I think is one we’re 

22 looking at. Now how you do that I think is 

23 completely open and something that the work 

24 group I think would be in the best position to 

25 decide. But it is an understanding in the 
121

1 procedures that we would at least start with 

2 reliability and integrity as a starting point 

3 before getting into the later issues of dose 

4 reconstructability and some of the other 

5 questions. 

6 DR. ULSH: Would it be a reasonable first 

7 step to put this on the table for everyone to 

8 consider for us to summarize what has been 

9 done by this site? You know, we’ll go look 

10 for that kind of information. We’ll 

11 specifically make data requests to find out 

12 that information and to present that to SC&A 

13 and the working group as a first step. From 

14 there maybe you can decide -- 

15 MS. BEACH: I think that’s reasonable. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: If we can establish that they 

17 had a process in place to do that I would be 

18 quite satisfied with that. If they had a 

19 QA/QC process. You’re sort of asking did they 

20 even have that. Do we know that they had 

21 that. I think you are. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, certainly one 

23 question is on a continuing basis was there a 

24 QA/QC process which I think most sites do have 

25 something of that order. 
122

1 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but I mean specifically 

2 on transferring from one database to another. 

3 Isn’t that the question you’re asking? Are 

4 the numbers that the person got in the 

5 original record the ones that show up years 

6 later on the big spreadsheet? 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Because if there’s a QA/QC 

9 process that looked at that during the 

10 transfer times, then that’s at least a first 

11 step. In the absence of that then you say, 

12 well, how do we know that they did transfer it 

13 correctly. 

14 MS. BEACH: Well, I think I read there was a 

15 ^ percent error rate or -- correct me if I’m 

16 wrong, but it seemed like their 21 percent 

17 error rate in the data transfer. 

18 DR. ULSH: I don’t know. 

19 MS. BEACH: I’ve read it. No, I don’t 

20 recall. 

21 MR. STEWART: We read in documents here 

22 something like 21 percent error ratio in the 

23 database or something. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: That seems awfully high. 

25 MS. BEACH: I would be satisfied with the 
123

1 summary as a first step to start with. 

2 DR. BRANCHE: Just to give you a heads up, 

3 first of all you’re going to get a quality 

4 control -- 

5 MR. STEWART: Quality Assurance, Quality 

6 Control presentation. 

7 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you 

8 -- next week at the Board meeting as 

9 well as SC&A, John Mauro will provide some 

10 information about how, given the number of SEC 

11 petitions that you are going to see for the 

12 remainder of this year, how findings from 

13 previous sites might be helpful in the current 

14 sites, how there might be some ability for you 

15 as a Board to entertain some information from 

16 sites that have some similarities. And so I 

17 would just caution that you’re going to hear 

18 about that at next week’s meeting. 

19 And I’ve discussed this with Dr. 

20 Ziemer, we anticipate quite a few SEC 

21 petitions to come before you the rest of this 

22 year. 

23 MS. BEACH: How specific will that be from 

24 site to site? I’m curious. 

25 DR. BRANCHE: A great question for you to be 
124

1 able to think about asking next week. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: You mean on the QA/QC 

3 presentation or on John Mauro’s -- 

4 DR. BRANCHE: No, on the -- 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: Mine is not site specific. My 

6 presentation is on the Quality 

7 Assurance/Quality Control steps that we employ 

8 throughout the program. But it doesn’t go to 

9 individual site. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: It’s on your process is what 

11 you’re saying. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

13 MR. STEWART: You know, I think you want us 

14 to prove a negative here. I mean, you want us 

15 to prove that these databases were examined, 

16 evaluated as they were built, and that 

17 presumes that they weren’t. I don’t know that 

18 to be the case. And 21 percent sounds really 

19 high to me. That would be unacceptable in my 

20 parlance of QA/QC. We’d send people back and 

21 say, well, if you can’t get it any better than 

22 that, you’re fired, and we’re going to put a 

23 double blind entry in here. That’s what would 

24 happen. 

25 And I don’t know the answer here. I 
125

1 don’t know if there were regimented guidelines 

2 established when each site said, hey, we’re 

3 going to establish an Oracle database here and 

4 include everything that we have assembled in 

5 our dose information in the database. I know 

6 that was done at several sites. Oracle was, 

7 you know, came into being and then it went out 

8 within about two or three years, and they had 

9 to do all of that over again. 

10 I don’t know. Have we ever looked for 

11 those kinds of documents that say you’re going 

12 to create a database using these documents or 

13 these items, and this is what we expect as far 

14 as the quality. I don’t know if we’ve ever 

15 seen that. Have we ever looked for that? 

16 Maybe that’s something you want us to look 

17 for. Maybe it’s something SC&A might want to 

18 look for or say that it doesn’t exist. You 

19 can take it from there. I don’t know. It’s a 

20 hard thing to prove, Joe, as you know. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I agree. I think it’s 

22 instructive, and I have gone through 

23 everything MJW did for the internal side. And 

24 I think that’s both an appropriate and an 

25 important thing to do before getting into 
126

1 trying to assimilate bioassay information. 

2 I’m just looking for any indication, whether 

3 it be process related QA/QC, substantiation 

4 from Meyers of the world, or any ability just 

5 to demonstrate that there are no issues 

6 associated with the error rates, whatever. At 

7 this point on the external side I think we’re 

8 drawing a bit of a blank as to how that comes 

9 out, that’s all. 

10 DR. ULSH: So I think I hear the concern is 

11 focused more on the external data? 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: No, we haven’t got the 

13 internal, but external would be my focus area 

14 right now because I think other than what MJW 

15 didn’t do isn’t very big. I mean, I think 

16 that covered a lot of ground in the ’96 

17 review. So I think the concern about 

18 validation is much less. 

19 The external, I’d feel better if we 

20 found some contemporary evidence that the 

21 QA/QC was examined. Someone went back and 

22 looked at reliability. That’s not really 

23 clear, and it’s sort of an open question of if 

24 you have confidence, is there anything beyond 

25 not having seen a problem crop up that would 
127

1 give us some of that substantiation. And I 

2 think that’s pretty much it. 

3 We’re not coming in saying that we 

4 have allegations, concerns or anything. It’s 

5 just that we couldn’t find that 

6 substantiation. We’re asking you if you have 

7 it as well. The last thing I want to do, 

8 having lived it in real time, is go through 

9 what we went through before. 

10 On the other hand, there’s a 

11 responsibility I think to be able to account 

12 for the reliability, both internal and 

13 external, to the work group, and that’s kind 

14 of what I’m looking for if we can somehow do 

15 that. 

16 DR. ULSH: So we’ll focus on the years this 

17 data was collected. We’ll get back to you on 

18 that. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Some related QA/QC of the 

20 transport or development of the database. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: And I understand I guess 

23 basically back to what I’m kind of used to, 

24 we’ve gone through several evolutions of it is 

25 whenever we change over to a different program 
128

1 or whatever, they have somebody basically 

2 over-check it again. That’s just what it’s 

3 getting down to. And I’ve seen an awful lot, 

4 and that’s one of the big reasons why we don’t 

5 like to change databases because of this issue 

6 of the millions and millions of things that 

7 are in it. 

8 DR. ULSH: It only gets bigger over time. 

9 MR. CLAWSON: One other question I have. 

10 Who is MJW? I’ve heard this -- 

11 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: The ORAU team is composed of 

13 teaming partners. And if I may, MJW is one of 

14 those partners. It’s a consulting agency, a 

15 corporation out of Buffalo. The other one is 

16 Dave Moeller, Incorporated, out of Richland 

17 and then the ORAU is the mother ship, if you 

18 will, that completes the partnership. MJW had 

19 done dose reconstruction work separate from 

20 this program and separate from their 

21 association with ORAU and Dave Moeller on 

22 Mound. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Well, the reason why this ^ 

24 personal information because I’ve seen MJW 

25 appear in interviews and so forth like that, 
129

1 and Mutty, yeah, I think he works for that. 

2 And I was just getting the impression also, 

3 too, that MJW had worked at Mound previously 

4 before it closed. They did some work for 

5 Mound. I guess -- 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: They did some dose 

7 reconstruction for Mound. 

8 MS. BRACKETT: They did a large dose 

9 reconstruction project, just internal dose, of 

10 people who had the potential to have greater 

11 than 20 rem committed effective doses. That 

12 was in the late ‘90s. And then we also, after 

13 that we did do some technical basis 

14 documentation work for them. We went in and 

15 helped them write a technical basis document 

16 and procedures that was probably around 2000 

17 that we did that. And Mutty, actually he’s 

18 only been employed with us during this 

19 project. A lot of the people that you saw 

20 listed, they currently work for MJW, but they 

21 were actually employed by Mound. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, I was just trying to 

23 draw a clear line because it’s kind of 

24 interesting. I kind of go back and forth. 

25 MS. BRACKETT: Right, there are a number of 
130

1 people who did actually come from Mound. I 

2 never worked for this site myself. I just 

3 worked on the dose reconstruction project. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: Was that dose reconstruction a 

5 part of the legal issue that was there? 

6 MS. BRACKETT: Yes. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: I’m just trying to draw myself 

8 a picture of how everything fell in. 

9 MS. BRACKETT: I believe it came about as a 

10 result of the legal work. Part of the 

11 settlement I believe was to do that dose 

12 reconstruction. And so we came in and worked 

13 on that. And I think that’s where the greater 

14 than 20 rem came in. That was what they 

15 decided -- 

16 MR. CLAWSON: I read that, and I was just 

17 trying to make a clarification of where this 

18 was all coming from. 

19 MS. BRACKETT: That’s why you keep hearing 

20 our name. We did that. And that’s why we’re 

21 so familiar with, or why I’m so familiar with 

22 the data because we did a lot of digging into 

23 the old records to find data. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: I appreciate that 

25 clarification. Thanks. 
131

1 MR. BUCHANAN: I had a question. You said 

2 you was a dose reconstructor for Mound, right? 

3 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

4 MR. BUCHANAN: When the DR does a dose 

5 reconstruction, does he take this information 

6 from the MESH database, say for external. Or 

7 does he look to compare that to any of the old 

8 DOE files? I mean, maybe this is a way we’d 

9 see if there was any problems with that and 

10 completeness integrity. 

11 MR. STEWART: Those records are present only 

12 in a small number of cases. And I believe -- 

13 this is my own opinion here -- I believe that 

14 those are those cases who had termination 

15 dates prior to 1959 or 1960 when they migrated 

16 to the first computer database called Excess. 

17 They used a Form 1015-X to record personal 

18 meters, film meters as they called them, and 

19 neutron dose rates or neutron doses, Q and 

20 neutron doses. 

21 All those pieces of information would 

22 have been on these cards. We find those quite 

23 useful because we can estimate the missed dose 

24 more accurately when we have those data. When 

25 it goes to the MESH database, then we no 
132

1 longer have cycle information so we have to 

2 overestimate the missed doses. But we see 

3 that those are consistent with the data entry 

4 for MESH. 

5 MR. BUCHANAN: MESH is consistent with the 

6 old original cards. 

7 MR. STEWART: Right. 

8 MR. BUCHANAN: And you haven’t found a 

9 problem. 

10 MR. STEWART: We have not found a problem. 

11 MR. BUCHANAN: Did you check that? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s what I was going to 

13 ask. Is that standard practice? You get the 

14 DOE submitted data for the client, and then 

15 you look at that. Do you go to the MESH 

16 database and match that up and say, oh, 

17 they’re all here or, hey, we’ve got one or two 

18 missing. I don’t see this guy. 

19 MR. STEWART: No, that’s not a standard 

20 practice for dose reconstruction. Because I’m 

21 the lead dose reconstructor I would tend to 

22 look at that in a little more detail, make 

23 sure that things are happening the way they’re 

24 supposed to happen. 

25 MR. BUCHANAN: But they would use the MESH 
133

1 printout as the primary dose reconstruction 

2 document? 

3 MR. STEWART: That is correct. That is what 

4 is used for, actually, check that. They will 

5 enter cycle data when those data are present 

6 in the file. So if I got a data entry file 

7 from our data entry people, I would have cycle 

8 information through ’59 when those data are 

9 available, and then they would go to the MESH 

10 data. 

11 MR. BUCHANAN: And if there’s a discrepancy 

12 they would use the highest between the MESH 

13 and the original? 

14 MR. STEWART: I don’t know that that’s the 

15 case. I would have to check that piece of 

16 information. 

17 MR. BUCHANAN: But they do, they do look at 

18 the other database. 

19 MR. STEWART: Yeah, they do go back and they 

20 pull the actual doses from the cards when 

21 those cards are available. As I said, some of 

22 those people who terminated early, and my 

23 opinion, just a theory, is that those data 

24 cards went to their files, were entered into 

25 Excess and then put in a separate file 
134

1 somewhere so they were no longer in the 

2 employees’ personal records. And that’s why 

3 we don’t see the personal records any more. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: What part and partial to 

5 the request that we sent through Brant for a 

6 POC? We want a contact on some of these 

7 questions I guess it sounds like. 

8 Next question? 

9 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I’d sent a couple case 

10 reviews, and I could not find, I found the 

11 neutron data in the double neutron on the 

12 MESH, but I couldn’t find the gamma data on 

13 the MESH that was used in the dose 

14 reconstruction. Apparently, there’s a file in 

15 there I can’t identify that has a lot of the -

16 - 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: We can follow up. This was 

18 something we hadn’t cycled through you, and 

19 we’re asking if there’s somebody that might 

20 know that. 

21 MR. BUCHANAN: I need to get in contact with 

22 somebody to point me in the right direction. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: We can do this offline. 

24 Anyway, just to recap then, certainly 

25 we support looking at this as an interim 
135

1 question that would be picked up at the next 

2 meeting. Now, I’ve been working with Jack 

3 Gibson in terms of trying to solve the various 

4 IT issue respecting MESH to make it searchable 

5 from our standpoint. Is that something that’s 

6 being held in abeyance on this issue of being 

7 able to at least look at the MESH, or search 

8 the MESH database. We’re trying to get a 

9 search capability. 

10 We have access to the MESH database in 

11 terms of downloading tables and what have you, 

12 but in terms of being able to do any searching 

13 because it’s a Sequel database, Jack was the 

14 person that you put me to. He was working on 

15 the front end to make that searchable online, 

16 and that would give us at least the capability 

17 of being able to get our way through it. 

18 DR. ULSH: So that hasn’t been resolved yet. 

19 You guys still don’t have -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: No, but that wouldn’t be 

21 subject to this issue, in other words being 

22 able to look at that database. We’re still 

23 going to be able to look at the database quite 

24 apart from the question of looking at the 

25 completeness question which is what we’re 
136

1 talking about here. 

2 DR. ULSH: I guess I’m not following you. 

3 If you’re asking if there’s -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: We made a request to be 

5 able to get into the MESH database. You put 

6 the MESH database up, and we were able to 

7 certainly download useful, relevant tables. 

8 But because of the way the software’s set up, 

9 we couldn’t actually sort anything. 

10 DR. ULSH: And that’s still the case now? 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And that’s still the case, 

12 but that’s sort of a typical, classic IT issue 

13 which I can’t, I’m sure that’s a difficult 

14 situation. But that seems to be a separate 

15 question than this one here which is a more 

16 systematic review of data integrity-slash17 completeness. I just want to make sure, you 

18 know, we’re going to be looking at the 

19 database, but we’re not going to make any 

20 decision on how systematically to sample that 

21 until we’ve had this dialogue next time. 

22 DR. ULSH: Right, I will check the status of 

23 ^. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, he was very 

25 encouraging for the first week or so, but got 
137

1 progressively discouraging and sort of like 

2 after a couple of weeks you realize, okay, I 

3 guess it wasn’t that easy. 

4 DR. ULSH: Okay, I’ll check on that. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you. 

6 MS. BEACH: So does NIOSH go in and search? 

7 Do you have the capability to go into the MESH 

8 data and search out certain items that you’re 

9 looking for at this point or do you -- 

10 MS. BRACKETT: I think we have the same 

11 problem. There’s been discussions of trying 

12 to contact who’s the expert from Mound. I 

13 don’t remember her name. 

14 DR. ULSH: Let’s just say we’re trying to 

15 contact the expert. 

16 MS. BRACKETT: Okay, because we have the 

17 same problem. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, well, that’s 

19 comforting. 

20 MR. STEWART: As far as DRs, we take the 

21 printout that’s supplied by Mound from the 

22 database. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, do you have any -- 

24 MR. BUCHANAN: No. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: -- you’re the short 
138

1 traveler here so I want to make sure that you 

2 have your opportunity. Ron has a four o’clock 

3 flight so he should be leaving here shortly. 

4 MS. BEACH: That takes us through 19 or... 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think we’ve been 

6 discussing 18, and I think what we’re saying 

7 in terms of adequacy and completeness, that 

8 combination, I certainly prefer to see what 

9 NIOSH can come up with in terms of just sort 

10 of this historic QA/QC and any other 

11 substantiation on the reliability on the 

12 external side that would shed some light on 

13 this that would inform any discussion we have 

14 next time on this data reliability issue, sort 

15 of a decision forward. 

16 MR. BUCHANAN: And the adequacy, we haven’t 

17 really formed an opinion. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: No. 

19 MR. BUCHANAN: We haven’t determined whether 

20 there’s adequate data for dose reconstruction 

21 one way or the other at this point. I have 

22 not found a thing that says there isn’t or 

23 checked enough to say that there is, but 

24 that’s the Board’s decision. 

25 MS. BEACH: How do we feel about lunch 
139

1 break? Is everybody ready for that? 

2 DR. BRANCHE: All right, we’re going to 

3 actually turn this phone off, and I’ll just 

4 redial at 12:45 p.m., Eastern time. Thank 

5 you. 

6 (Whereupon, a lunch break was taken.) 

7 DR. BRANCHE: We’re going to start the Mound 

8 meeting again. Again, if those of you who are 

9 here in the room, if you could please mute 

10 your phones. And if those of you on the 

11 phone, if you’re participating by phone, if 

12 you would please mute the phones while you’re 

13 listening. If you do not have a mute button, 

14 then please use star six to mute your phones. 

15 And then when you’re ready to speak, you can 

16 use star six again to unmute your phones. 

17 It’s very important that we mute the phones 

18 for participants on the phone so that our 

19 court reporter can hear everything and that we 

20 have an unobscured line. So thank you so 

21 much. 

22 Ms. Beach. 

23 MATRIX ISSUE FOUR: URANIUM ISOTOPES

24 MS. BEACH: We are on number four of the 

25 matrix. 
140

1 And, NIOSH, if you’re ready to 

2 proceed. 

3 DR. ULSH: Number four, this issue deals, 

4 well, it’s similar to our discussions earlier 

5 this morning about some of these other type 

6 radionuclides. This one in particular deals 

7 with the particular isotopes of uranium. And, 

8 Joe, do you want to go through -- 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think you’re right. 

10 I think this is similar to what we raised 

11 earlier on some of the internal emitters as 

12 far as mapping the availability of bioassay 

13 for uranium is different forms during the 

14 history of Mound. And just basically in our 

15 reading of the usual sources, King, Meyer, so 

16 forth, there does seem to be some gaps that 

17 would suggest some issues that would have to 

18 be addressed in any dose estimation strategy. 

19 And we just are raising some questions 

20 as to whether given what seems to be a 

21 relatively small amount of bioassay data for 

22 certain periods of time, whether that can’t be 

23 bridged or not with the information that’s 

24 available. I think it is very similar to what 

25 we’ve raised for some of the other source 
141

1 terms. 

2 DR. ULSH: Yeah, and our response would 

3 probably be somewhat similar in that if you’re 

4 looking for uranium isotope specific bioassay, 

5 you may not find that. But you would expect 

6 to see more total uranium bioassay and to some 

7 extent gross alpha. And just like with the 

8 other sites, when we don’t have a specific 

9 bioassay, in other words, isotope specific, 

10 we’ll pick from among the possibilities and 

11 assign the most claimant favorable. 

12 But I did want to ask a question here 

13 about the SC&A statement in the matrix. You 

14 talk about you have some concerns whether we 

15 can bound exposures to uranium based, 

16 particularly given the inherent limitations of 

17 fluoroscopic analysis techniques used during 

18 the ‘50s to ’85. And I was just wondering 

19 what you were thinking of when you said that. 

20 What are your concerns on that? 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, that was a 

22 concern that was raised, I think raised the 

23 question of whether fluoroscopic, the 

24 techniques in the early days were very 

25 accurate at all in order to establish doses. 
142

1 And I think the only question there was given 

2 the techniques available, what kind of 

3 confidence in the actual measurements would 

4 you have from the early days? 

5 DR. ZIEMER: What would be an issue on the 

6 detection limits are not as good, but then you 

7 have a way of handling that for any whatever 

8 the lower limit of detection -- 

9 DR. ULSH: Right, it could very well -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: I guess that’s the question, 

11 isn’t it? 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, going back to the 

13 early techniques what kind of confidence do 

14 you have in terms of the actual measurements 

15 themselves. This gets into radiochemistry, 

16 radio analysis. 

17 MS. BRACKETT: Yeah, It’s beyond 

18 radiochemistry. It’s not my area of 

19 expertise. I know that fluoroscopy is used to 

20 current day. I don’t know that the technique 

21 has really varied over the years. And since 

22 it’s still in use, I -- 

23 DR. ZIEMER: I wonder if John Mauro may 

24 know. I think the procedure is reliable for 

25 identifying uranium. 
143

1 MS. BRACKETT: Right. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: That’s isotopes, but uranium 

3 per se -- 

4 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Paul, this is 

5 John. We were just engaged to look at this 

6 very issue on Blockson where the analyses ^ 

7 and gross alpha analyses for uranium samples 

8 in urine. And we were asked to look into the 

9 protocols. And this was the 1950s, I believe, 

10 that were used. And we did some tracking, and 

11 we tracked it back to the Health and Safety 

12 Laboratory in New York City which was an AEC 

13 lab at the time. 

14 And those are very formal protocols. 

15 They’re well established, and one of our 

16 radiochemists ^ and guess we walked away 

17 saying that at least that far back the 

18 standard protocol for doing fluorometric 

19 analysis and gross alpha analysis for urine 

20 samples were very scientifically sound and 

21 defensible. I don’t know if that answers your 

22 question. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that would be 

24 certainly another QA check on the question of 

25 how reliable fluoroscopic would be in the 
144

1 ‘50s. 

2 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): The reason we 

3 said it was mainly because it was the Health 

4 and Safety Lab, and that had a lot of good 

5 pedigree. 

6 DR. ULSH: I seem to recall seeing in one of 

7 the documents kind of a timeline where it 

8 talked about the major programs at Mound and 

9 the corresponding bioassay techniques as given 

10 in particular MRM reports. We’ll go look 

11 there to see if there’s something like that 

12 for either gross alpha or uranium, whatever 

13 the case is here. So we can do I think 

14 similar to what John described. Kind of look 

15 at what technique they used -- 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: The technology pedigree as 

17 to what was used and -- 

18 DR. ULSH: And we’ll do that. From where 

19 we’re sitting right now though, I’ll readily 

20 grant as Dr. Ziemer mentioned, that some of 

21 the MDAs in the earlier days were higher than 

22 they are now. You had progressive lowering of 

23 the MDAs, but that doesn’t pose an SEC issue 

24 to us, and we’d just assign a high missed 

25 dose. So we’ll check out what exactly the 
145

1 technique that they used. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: So maybe the more pertinent 

3 question going back to this sort of common 

4 issue is given the number of apparent bioassay 

5 samples for some of these isotopes, what would 

6 be the basis then for coming up with the 

7 actual dose reconstruction value. What 

8 strategy would be used. It wasn’t explicit in 

9 the site profile I don’t believe or the ER, 

10 but that’s not to say there isn’t a way you 

11 can do that. So I think this is similar, very 

12 similar to some of the other questions that 

13 we’ve raised. 

14 MS. BRACKETT: I don’t think that Mound used 

15 fluoroscopy, did they? All the results are in 

16 units of activity ^ mass for fluoroscopy, I 

17 don’t -- 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Unless they converted. 

19 MR. STEWART: I don’t recall. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: I don’t think that was a 

21 technique that they used. 

22 MR. STEWART: It is described in the TBD as 

23 being applicable through ’98. 

24 MS. BRACKETT: I have not -- and I’ve seen 

25 the calculational sheets that they did their 
146

1 uranium samples on, and they’re all activity. 

2 MR. STEWART: I agree. 

3 MS. BRACKETT: That’s not fluoroscopy. 

4 MR. STEWART: The results I have seen have 

5 been in activity. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Have been in activity. 

7 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

8 DR. ULSH: Well, we’ll check. We’ll find 

9 out what they used. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think that’s where 

11 the reference and the time period came from 

12 the TBD. 

13 MS. BEACH: Brant, I missed what you were 

14 going to provide for that. 

15 DR. ULSH: We’re going to go back and see if 

16 we can get details on the techniques that 

17 Mound used for uranium bioassay particularly 

18 in the earlier years. 

19 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Would there be any 

21 perspective though on how you would actually 

22 apply that information in terms of a dose 

23 reconstruction strategy? I think that was the 

24 question we’re trying to get to is you say 

25 maximum or best estimate doses can be 
147

1 determined. 

2 DR. ULSH: I think it would be similar to 

3 what we do everywhere else and that is if 

4 someone could have been exposed to -- just to 

5 make up an example -- Uranium-238 or -235 or 

6 several different isotopes of uranium, and all 

7 we have is a total uranium bioassay result, 

8 we’ll assign it to the one that is the most 

9 claimant favorable among those that are 

10 possible. 

11 I mean, obviously, if a particular 

12 isotope’s not even at Mound, we wouldn’t 

13 consider that among the possibilities. But I 

14 thing generally it goes to 234, right, just 

15 because that’s the most claimant favorable. 

16 MR. STEWART: Yeah, almost without 

17 exception. 

18 MATRIX ISSUE FIVE: OTHER ISOTOPES POSSIBLY DISCOUNTED

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Number five, you know, 

20 there’s a statement that the other isotopes of 

21 239 weren’t dosimetrically significant and can 

22 be discounted, in particular 241. I think we 

23 understand 240, 242 are much less so. But for 

24 241 there’s a numbers of tables and treatments 

25 that are in the Mound documentation that, one, 
148

1 they were aware that they had to account for 

2 241 and factor that in. 

3 So I guess on one hand I think it can 

4 be enveloped as far as a dose estimation. But 

5 I guess our concern was this question of 

6 whether it could be discounted. I don’t think 

7 it appears that even the site was discounting 

8 241. 

9 And then there’s this other question 

10 which I’ll defer to Bob on which is sort of 

11 uncertainties about what the isotopic 

12 concentrations were of 241 that might have 

13 come onsite in different ways. And I think 

14 certainly in the Mound documentation there 

15 were higher isotopic values than the 0.3 

16 percent. There was just variations in terms 

17 of the 241. 

18 I think what Bob raised earlier about 

19 the possibility of higher concentrations is 

20 something that was raised in a planning 

21 document that we read, and I think we 

22 highlight in here where the oxide feed might 

23 have been higher. And I think Bob was 

24 mentioning the possibility of a foreign feed 

25 as well. 
149

1 So just a question of how, one, sure 

2 are we of the isotopic concentration of 241 

3 and is it, in fact, discountable or negligible 

4 as a dose reconstruction issue. And we’re not 

5 sure about that given what I think we read in 

6 some of the literature. 

7 DR. ULSH: Well, let’s be clear what we’re 

8 talking about when we’re talking about 

9 discounting. We’re not throwing away dose. 

10 What we’re doing is, as with our earlier 

11 discussions, among the possible isotopes we’re 

12 going to assign the one which is most claimant 

13 favorable which is almost always... 

14 MR. STEWART: For the weapons grade mix we 

15 would use a mixed radionuclides. 

16 MS. BRACKETT: (inaudible) 

17 DR. BRANCHE: Please speak up. 

18 MR. STEWART: Weapons grade mix we are, and 

19 the plutonium is considered to a hundred 

20 percent Pu-238. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: We’re talking I think more 

22 239. 

23 MS. BRACKETT: And that would be added on 

24 top of the Plutonium-239 in a ratio to the 

25 Plutonium-239, right? 
150

1 DR. ZIEMER: Are you talking about ^ source 

2 or -- 

3 MS. BRACKETT: No. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: No, the 239, weapons grade. 

5 MR. BISTLINE: It’s understandable. The 

6 239, 240 alpha emitter which is, you can’t 

7 separate anyway with alpha spectroscopy with 

8 the 241 is a beta emitter, but it leads to the 

9 production of Americium-241 which is an alpha 

10 emitter. 

11 MS. BRACKETT: Right, but both of those are 

12 added to. You calculate the intake of 

13 Plutonium-239 and then you have a table that 

14 says, okay, if you have 20 percent of that 

15 would be Plutonium-241 and a certain percent 

16 of that in addition to -- 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, and I tend to agree. 

18 I mean, we had a sort of a two-part issue, and 

19 after having several additional weeks of 

20 reading, I agree that actually I did find 

21 tables where the site was able to, by virtue 

22 of the age of the plutonium, factor in what 

23 the 241 ratio was. 

24 I was kind of, I don’t know, maybe 

25 misunderstanding this discounted part because, 
151

1 again, I don’t think it was discounted. It 

2 was actually factored in and was something 

3 that was considered as a dosimetrically 

4 significant albeit something that could be 

5 estimated and factored in. 

6 MR. STEWART: Claimant favorably 

7 overestimated. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. But the second part 

9 again is whether the input concentrations were 

10 well enough known and there’s a couple of 

11 examples where it seemed like the 

12 concentrations could be double what’s in the 

13 Meyer or King document. And those we haven’t 

14 been able to pin down. One is the proposal 

15 that, in fact, higher feed material were used 

16 from Savannah River. 

17 Another is, I guess, the UK material. 

18 I don’t think this is like one of these, 

19 compared with some of these other issues, is a 

20 fundamental roadblock. This issue of whether 

21 or not you can -- again, the word discount 

22 kind of threw me I guess -- discount this as 

23 part of dose reconstruction. I don’t think 

24 that’s the case, but I don’t think that’s what 

25 you meant. Is that what you’re saying? 
152

1 DR. ULSH: Yes. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

3 DR. ULSH: And in terms of the two specific 

4 examples that you mentioned, we’re going to 

5 look into the UK. The other one that you 

6 mentioned and the report that you cited here 

7 in your statement, the Mound report, I’ve got 

8 it here. And this report clearly talks about 

9 a sample that they were looking at to see if 

10 they could make microspheres from some unusual 

11 material that they got from Savannah River. 

12 They were just evaluating it for whether or 

13 not they could even do it. They didn’t use 

14 this on a routine basis. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess the only question 

16 was whether or not that proceeded to 

17 application. So that’s the only question we 

18 have on that one. 

19 DR. ULSH: It didn’t. Because I contacted 

20 the author by e-mail and asked them. There’s 

21 two authors, and he contacted the other one. 

22 And both of them had no recollection of ever 

23 using this material beyond this -- 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: Beyond the one sample. 

25 DR. ULSH: And furthermore, they wouldn’t 
153

1 use it because as you know the purpose of the 

2 heat source program was for space 

3 applications. So you’re looking for the 

4 highest energy output per unit weight you can 

5 get. And so to lower the Plutonium-238 from 

6 the feed stock wouldn’t make sense for that 

7 application. And so that was their 

8 recollection that they had never used it 

9 beyond this particular sample. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So I guess the recap on 

11 that one is basically to understand whether 

12 the input parameters, the UK stuff -- 

13 MR. BISTLINE: And just to raise a flag, 

14 there may be something here that we need to 

15 look into that isn’t evident to a lot of 

16 people. 

17 MR. STEWART: The UK feed material? 

18 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah. 

19 MR. STEWART: Do I understand correctly that 

20 that is a complex-wide issue versus a Mound 

21 issue? 

22 MR. BISTLINE: I don’t know how complex-wide 

23 it was. I know it was a big issue at Rocky in 

24 the weapons material that we used at Rocky. 

25 It was a big issue in the ‘60s. 
154

1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think you can take the 

2 rest of it offline. 

3 MR. BISTLINE: It’s just something that you 

4 need to look into. 

5 DR. ULSH: We’ll check it out. 

6 MATRIX ISSUE SIX: STABLE TRITIUM COMPOUNDS

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Number six is the stable 

8 tritium compounds. And generally, we’ve 

9 raised this at almost every site that handled 

10 tritium just because most sites did have some 

11 form of particulates. And the question is, I 

12 guess, the same as we’ve had in the past 

13 whether it’s Savannah River or the other sites 

14 which is the extent to which dose estimation 

15 can be done with the information at hand. 

16 And the ER does point in a couple 

17 directions here, but I think we didn’t find a 

18 definitive basis for how you were going to do 

19 this. And I think that’s something that it 

20 would be useful to have that dialogue perhaps 

21 separately but just get into how the mechanics 

22 of estimating dose with the varieties of STCs 

23 how that would be worked. 

24 How that relates to OTIB-0066, 

25 certainly we grappled with that at Savannah 
155

1 River, how that would apply as a means to get 

2 to a dose from STCs. There’s a number of 

3 documents that were produced in the 2000 time 

4 frame. I guess 2003 the Department of Energy 

5 came out with a manual, and before that Mound 

6 had come up with some material. 

7 So there’s a number of things that 

8 speak to it, but I think we just need a 

9 clearer idea for the Mound-specific case. How 

10 one gets from what may have existed in 

11 operations to a dose contribution from that 

12 component. 

13 MR. BISTLINE: And I guess one of the 

14 particular points that I was concerned with is 

15 the fact that it appears that there was quite 

16 a bit, I mean, of all the sites around the 

17 tritides were probably the most prevalent at 

18 the Mound, most any of the other sites. It 

19 appears that there were quite a number of 

20 different tritides, different chemical forms. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Let me make a comment. I don’t 

22 think a tritide is a compound. I believe it’s 

23 simply tritium absorbed into a metal -- 

24 MR. BISTLINE: You’re right; you’re right. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: -- and so you can ask behavior-
156

1 wise, I think -- maybe somebody can clarify 

2 this. I don’t think tritides behave as 

3 compounds. The tritium comes off as tritium. 

4 You get this with accelerator targets like 

5 titanium tritide. What you end up with the 

6 contamination is always tritium. It’s just as 

7 you heat that stuff up or even at ambient 

8 temperatures, it just diffuses off as tritium 

9 gas. So I’m not sure why it would behave any 

10 different than any other tritium. 

11 MS. BRACKETT: It behaves differently in the 

12 lungs. It gets retained in the lungs unlike 

13 normal -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: You mean adhere, you’re 

15 inhaling the particles? 

16 MS. BRACKETT: Yes. 

17 MR. STEWART: ^ matrix with the ^ of the 

18 metal -- 

19 MS. BRACKETT: That’s right. So it could be 

20 -- 

21 DR. ZIEMER: It’s still not a compound I 

22 don’t believe. It’s simply absorbed on the 

23 surface of the metal. 

24 MR. STEWART: Technically, it’s called a 

25 matrix, but when it’s in that form from a 
157

1 biochemical standpoint, the retention 

2 properties are different depending on what it 

3 is adhering to. So it acts like -- 

4 DR. ZIEMER: So if the metal is vaporized, 

5 you mean, and then -- 

6 MR. STEWART: It’s one versus another the 

7 solubility would be perhaps different. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: In terms of how it diffused off 

9 from the metal. I understand what you’re 

10 saying. 

11 MR. STEWART: Some are more soluble than 

12 others. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: But they’re not handling things 

14 like tritiated thymidine or something -- 

15 MR. STEWART: Well, we don’t want to get 

16 into the specifics, but the different 

17 compounds would have different solubility 

18 dissolution rates. And those rates would -- 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Well, if they were handling 

20 organic compounds that had tritium labels, 

21 that would be very different. 

22 MR. BISTLINE: And they did some of that, 

23 too. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

25 DR. ULSH: Well, we understand your concerns 
158

1 on this issue, and as you mentioned, we’ve got 

2 OTIB-0066 out. There’s also a couple of 

3 articles in the general scientific literature. 

4 But we hear what you’re saying. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I don’t think this is 

6 a new issue, but for Mound in particular our 

7 interest is knowing how that would work in 

8 relation to the OTIB and specific information 

9 is available. 

10 MR. STEWART: There’s just a couple of 

11 issues here that we could put to rest. Real12 time monitors were not affected. Spare 

13 monitoring data are not used to assign dose 

14 typically. In some special cases that 

15 happens. Transfer efficiency of insoluble 

16 particles to swipes has not been studied. 

17 Contamination data are not used to reconstruct 

18 internal dose. Surface contamination 

19 measurements same issue, and the monitoring 

20 instruments for field measurements of swipes, 

21 et cetera, again, we don’t use that for dose 

22 reconstruction. 

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, and I think this was 

24 just a contemporary, ’96 snapshot, from a 

25 Mound individual who was express, this is 
159

1 really from his memo. He was raising 

2 questions. Actually, I think his questions 

3 may have prompted -- I don’t know. You can 

4 step in -- but may have prompted some of the 

5 work at Mound to come up with some onsite 

6 guidance which then informed the DOE manual 

7 that was generated in the early 2000. 

8 So in a way these frustrations or 

9 these considerations I think prompted some 

10 attention to how do we actually do dose 

11 estimation with this stuff because it’s a 

12 problem. And that then surfaced into a 

13 department-wide issue. So I don’t think it’s 

14 a new issue. It’s a generic issue. 

15 I think it’s just a question that if 

16 there’s a way to address that at a site with 

17 this kind of history certainly would be of 

18 interest to us. Because I think it’s going to 

19 be tougher than perhaps some other sites where 

20 it was more limited. 

21 MR. BISTLINE: It’s only new in that the 

22 recognition of tritides has only come about in 

23 the last ten, 15 years of history and the 

24 problems associated with trying to monitor for 

25 it. It’s the same question we’ve had before. 
160

1 MR. FITZGERALD: So as far as an outcome I 

2 guess I would suggest that we deal with it as 

3 a technical issue. We’re talking about these 

4 technical issues that perhaps we can deal one5 on-one on. I think that might be a way to 

6 sort of since it is a, it is in a sense as 

7 Paul is pointing out, a very big technical 

8 question revolving around biochemistry and 

9 dissolution rates and specific -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Have any groups done studies on 

11 -- 

12 MR. BISTLINE: There’s been some studies on 

13 it. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: LANL has looked at it. 

15 MR. BISTLINE: Hanford’s looked at it. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: LANL has written a paper. 

17 Particularly since the mid-‘90s there seems to 

18 be a much bigger consciousness and a lot of 

19 write ups. So really there’s a lot of 

20 analyses. But maybe the hardest thing is the 

21 context of retrospective dose reconstruction 

22 on the issue. I think the operational issues 

23 have been grappled with but not so much the 

24 retrospective. 

25 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, going back in time 
161

1 because all the analysis was done using or 

2 assuming that to be water vapor over gaseous 

3 form. 

4 DR. ULSH: Okay. 

5 MS. BEACH: And these technical meetings 

6 will be set up by; are you going to take the 

7 lead on that, Joe, or Brant? 

8 DR. ULSH: How about if Joe and I get 

9 together after this and we’ll work something 

10 out and let you know. 

11 MATRIX ISSUE SEVEN: REACTOR FUELS AND BYPRODUCTS

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, number seven. This 

13 one really speaks to the early period at Mound 

14 where they dealt with the reactor fuels and 

15 byproducts of that. And looking at the 

16 feasibility of actually being able to dose 

17 reconstruct against fission activation 

18 products, without the SEC period it would have 

19 been, I guess, a more pronounced issue since 

20 all this took place in the ‘50s. But there 

21 are some, certainly, fission products that 

22 existed post-’59 that we’re looking at here. 

23 And looking at the King report, 

24 particularly in the 1960 up to ’71 time frames 

25 in some of the labs in R building and some of 
162

1 the labs in T Building, specifically R-167 and 

2 169 and T Building, T-237 are places where 

3 fission products figured in what was 

4 identified. And again, it’s unclear, in some 

5 cases King wasn’t clear on what was the most 

6 pronounced. These may be very small amounts. 

7 Who knows? But that’s the general question is 

8 whether or not the capability to estimate dose 

9 due to fission activation products for the 

10 reactor-related programs existed. 

11 DR. ULSH: I’ll let Don address the 

12 specifics, but something you just mentioned 

13 about how it’s not ^ has been an issue in 

14 early years due to the SEC class. That’s not 

15 necessarily the case which is making my road a 

16 little harder. Because even though we’ve said 

17 that we can’t reconstruct radium, actinium, 

18 thorium, we still have a case of people who 

19 don’t qualify for the class due to not having 

20 one of the SEC cancers or not having long 

21 enough employment, whatever. So there’s still 

22 going to be some people for whom that class 

23 doesn’t affect them. And the main fission 

24 product program I think occurred in the time 

25 period. So -- 
163

1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, I stand corrected. 

2 Yeah, I think again though it’s a question 

3 based on the ER wasn’t clear whether or not 

4 that capability and that data existed. It 

5 didn’t appear to, but -- 

6 MR. STEWART: We don’t currently have a 

7 table of concentrations of that material in 

8 the TBD. However, we do have ^ in 

9 contemporary Mound reports. And we have it 

10 available as radiochemical analyses for the 

11 most part. And that program is well 

12 documented. So we have, you know, our problem 

13 is to identify the people ^ and guys working 

14 on the process oftentimes, name by name. They 

15 talk about their processes sometimes to the 

16 literal degree of the amounts that they were 

17 working. And so we didn’t talk about that in 

18 detail in the ER, but we have that source term 

19 information. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Would you explain plutonium 

21 as an indicator? I guess it was unclear when 

22 we read that in the ER what that meant or what 

23 technique was being used because that seems to 

24 suggest that you would have to have plutonium 

25 monitoring information as a tag of some sort. 
164

1 MR. STEWART: Yeah, certainly plutonium’s 

2 going to be a part of it. I think that we 

3 primarily worried about plutonium. These are, 

4 this example is second cycle crib waste from 

5 Hanford and there will be plutonium as part of 

6 that mix. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So the assumption of how 

8 much might be related to the plutonium if you 

9 picked up plutonium, which is the indicator, 

10 then the assumption would be you’d be getting 

11 a contribution of so much from the related 

12 fission products? 

13 MR. STEWART: Right. We may not end up 

14 doing that. We may end up going some other 

15 way because we haven’t had a chance to 

16 evaluate this in sufficient detail as yet. 

17 But certainly that’s one resource that we can 

18 look at. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: And you don’t believe 

20 there’s any instances where -- well, okay, 

21 you’re saying you may not stick with that. 

22 But the other question, of course, would be 

23 were there instances where there wouldn’t be 

24 plutonium necessarily to be an indicator. I 

25 really don’t have a good answer for that, but 
165

1 instances where the fission product itself, 

2 whether it’s just the yttrium or strontium, 

3 you know, whatever is the -- 

4 MR. STEWART: Titanium. You know, at this 

5 point we may find this process information 

6 itself may be the better bounding methodology 

7 for the few people involved. I would say that 

8 they would consider this with ruthenium and 

9 likely consider it as an external hazard 

10 primarily. It was very high dose rates from 

11 this material. And there is indication that 

12 that was one of the controlling hazards for 

13 this process. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So really just to recap 

15 that then you were, this goes back to what 

16 you’ve done before looking at some analyses 

17 that you can provide us, I guess, at some time 

18 in the future that would kind of frame this 

19 up. 

20 MR. STEWART: Things that were not captured 

21 in detail in the early days that we to ^ 

22 evaluating. 

23 DR. ULSH: So we’ll get back to you with our 

24 evaluation of whether or not, to what extent 

25 there’s exposure potential from this process, 
166

1 who was involved, and how we would handle dose 

2 reconstructions where we have a possible 

3 exposure for this. 

4 MR. STEWART: This is applicable to the ’49 

5 to ’53 time frame. We have to go to those 

6 things for some of these other radionuclides. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: And this question going 

8 back to progress reports, is that still 

9 pertinent to this approach you’re talking 

10 about? There were some descriptions here in 

11 terms of bioassay results. A progress report 

12 can be used to determine maximum dose. That 

13 seemed to imply the progress reports must have 

14 had some kind of measurements for -- 

15 MR. STEWART: For doses? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. I was just curious 

17 about the progress reports that were cited in 

18 the ER as far as the fission products. 

19 MR. STEWART: The title of this one is -- 

20 and I’m looking at some radiochemical 

21 analyses. 

22 DR. ULSH: Well, the progress reports have 

23 the source term information, right? 

24 MR. STEWART: Right. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: That was the implication 
167

1 from looking at this that the progress reports 

2 actually were a key document that would frame 

3 the dose estimate. And that was kind of where 

4 we’re questioning. Saying, okay, you don’t 

5 have bioassay results. You’ve got progress 

6 reports. And the progress reports must 

7 contain source term information. 

8 MR. STEWART: That is correct. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: So what we can hear from 

10 you is maybe some more definitive information 

11 as to how those, what’s contained in those 

12 reports and how that would be carried forward 

13 and used. 

14 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John. I 

15 just had a couple of observations regarding 

16 the number seven that might be helpful. 

17 Regarding the fission products, the strategy 

18 that’s identified here is similar to the one 

19 that was adopted in OTIB-0054 where you come 

20 up with a mix for different kinds of 

21 activities. 

22 In OTIB-0054 the emphasis was on 

23 reactors and different kinds of reactors and 

24 the fact that just gross beta or gross beta25 gamma analysis of urine samples were 
168

1 available. And so I think in principle what’s 

2 being described here is compatible and 

3 consistent with that approach which we found 

4 to be an appropriate approach. 

5 We just wanted to point out that one 

6 area that might be difficult is knowing which 

7 workers you would assume should have been, if 

8 they weren’t but perhaps should have been 

9 exposed, should have been monitored, let’s 

10 say, gross beta, gross beta-gamma urine 

11 samples, and would therefore be assigned. The 

12 fission product exposure that you judge is 

13 appropriately to be assigned. So it’s not so 

14 much, given that you have the data what mix do 

15 you use, I think that’s tractable. The 

16 difficult problem is knowing what workers 

17 should fall within that category. 

18 DR. ULSH: John, this is Brant. I think 

19 there’s a fair degree of detail about who was 

20 involved in these programs in the 

21 documentation that we’ve got -- 

22 MR. STEWART: In some cases, yes. 

23 DR. ULSH: -- but that’s not to say that we 

24 can give you a definitive, all-inclusive list 

25 of everybody. 
169

1 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Oh, no, I just 

2 bring it up because it’s come up before, and I 

3 think it’s, if we it on our mind, then we can 

4 think about that at the same time. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we cite that in our 

6 statement that how many and what workers may 

7 have had such bioassays. 

8 DR. ULSH: It’s a small group, right? 

9 MR. STEWART: Yes. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: There was a need for 

11 research, the returns from Hanford. So it’s 

12 just a question of can one have a fairly good 

13 idea of what workers may have worked both. 

14 Were they the same workers? I don’t know if 

15 they were or not, but I think that’s worth 

16 mentioning. 

17 MR. STEWART: Yeah, it was a process that 

18 actually set up a small process ^ site. And 

19 that activity was suspended and no further 

20 feed materials. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: So that might have actually 

22 turned out to be a simplifying situation where 

23 you had a common facility and potentially 

24 maybe the same cohort of workers that may have 

25 supported that facility even though it was 
170

1 different campaigns. 

2 MS. BEACH: And prior to John speaking we 

3 were talking about the programs. Is that a, 

4 can you explain that a little bit more and 

5 does SC&A have access to that? 

6 DR. ULSH: Programs. 

7 MS. BEACH: Yeah, you guys were speaking -- 

8 DR. ULSH: Program evaluation? Progress 

9 reports? 

10 MS. BEACH: Is that what it was, progress 

11 reports? 

12 MR. STEWART: It’s in the SRDB. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think the only 

14 thing we’re looking for is to tie the specific 

15 progress reports that you’re looking at and 

16 referencing here to the approach you’re going 

17 to take. And I think that’s similar to what 

18 we’ve talked about before and get a better 

19 understanding of how that’s actually going to 

20 be working. 

21 MATRIX ISSUE EIGHT: MULTI-PURPOSE LABORATORY

22 Number eight, we’re dealing with again 

23 a familiar topic just trying to deal with a 

24 multi-purpose laboratory over fifty years. 

25 Once you get past the primary source terms you 
171

1 do have this periodic table of other elements 

2 some which were understandably trace, others 

3 which were more substantial. 

4 And I think for any of the weapons 

5 laboratories I think there’s a challenge to 

6 understanding and validating that there was a 

7 means to encompass those that were in fact 

8 consequential in terms of dose. And that’s 

9 what we’re raising here is that it was not 

10 clear from the ER how the bioassay data or 

11 other information would be applied for -- and 

12 this is just an example list -- of just some 

13 of the constituents that were handled in the 

14 various labs and processes at Mound over that 

15 time frame. 

16 And looking at the King document, I 

17 mean, it’s pretty clear that, whether it’s the 

18 T labs or the R labs, they did do a lot of R 

19 and D over a lot of different things. And 

20 just being able to envelope that history with 

21 some means to estimate what workers would have 

22 been exposed to and monitored for in those 

23 labs would be, I think, what we’re looking for 

24 here. 

25 DR. ULSH: Well, this is a multi-part 
172

1 question. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, that was a preamble 

3 without getting to A or B. 

4 DR. ULSH: I think there’s a cut-paste error 

5 here in your NIOSH ER position-SC&A reading. 

6 You quote us as saying that we, both 

7 demonstrated that employees with the greatest 

8 potential for internal intake were monitored 

9 and determined that we can, that available 

10 bioassay data can be used to reconstruct or 

11 bound potential internal radiation doses for 

12 those employees -- here’s the problem part -- 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

14 DR. ULSH: -- with the exception of those 

15 who may have been exposed to Actinium-227 -- 

16 that’s okay -- Thorium-230 -- it should be 

17 228. And you said Thorium-232, but we said 

18 that we can do Thorium-232. We also said we 

19 can do uranium and -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I see what you’re 

21 talking about. This should be the actinium22 radium-thorium which is the basis for the SEC. 

23 I don’t know how that got in there. 

24 DR. ULSH: That’s a cut-paste I’m sure. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. 
173

1 DR. ULSH: So, yeah, I think this is very 

2 similar to the previous issues except that 

3 here you say, you know, earlier we talked 

4 about this straight line thing and how they 

5 D&D’d from the radium-actinium-thorium 

6 separations in 1959. And then it’s at least 

7 our impression that you don’t see a whole lot 

8 in terms of actinium exposure up until the R 

9 Corridor job. 

10 And I think -- now, I’m making some 

11 assumptions here and maybe the wrong 

12 assumptions. But you’re saying that assumes 

13 the bioassay data during one time period can 

14 be used to bound or estimate exposures during 

15 unmonitored times. Also indicated that for 

16 other potential exposures that D&D, 

17 decommissioning and decontamination, took 

18 place and no further significant exposures 

19 occurred. 

20 Yet 20 years later it is documented 

21 that further exposures were occurring to those 

22 radionuclides thus indicating that D&D at the 

23 time most likely was not likely effective or 

24 complete. Are you thinking of the actinium 

25 there or is that something else? 
174

1 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think it speaks to, I 

2 think we addressed actinium elsewhere. It 

3 speaks to the R and D program primarily but 

4 not exclusively. And this exotic other 

5 nuclides that any multi-purpose lab would have 

6 handled over the early years when they were 

7 doing active research and how this presents 

8 itself in later contaminations and D&Ds. 

9 But the exposure potential existed 

10 both during the actual R and D and afterwards 

11 when different facilities were being D&D’d. 

12 And what we’re looking for is how -- and this 

13 is a general question. How did the site 

14 actually do monitoring? Meaning that -- 

15 And this question is not exclusive to 

16 Mound. We’ve had the same issue at Los Alamos 

17 and Livermore where you’re dealing with the 

18 periodic table the first 20 or 30 years and 

19 monitoring was a state-of-the-art that was 

20 progressing at the same time that you were 

21 handling these nuclides understandably. 

22 So the question was how did the site 

23 monitor or bioassay or whatever for these 

24 various species of nuclides as time 

25 progressed, and where in terms of gaps that 
175

1 may have existed for certain radionuclides. 

2 And I think the point’s made in the ER very 

3 well. Either it was negligible, in other 

4 words it wasn’t something that you would go 

5 forward and monitor. Or it was more 

6 substantial but there was a way you could 

7 bridge gaps by using data from other periods 

8 of time or maybe indicator radionuclides. 

9 There was different techniques you 

10 would use, but there’s ways you could actually 

11 get some kind of a dose estimate, but that was 

12 all, I think, a compensatory approach to the 

13 fact that they did not have bioassay 

14 techniques for every single nuclide or would 

15 they need one. 

16 But certainly there was a need to 

17 envelope what was a large spectrum of 

18 radionuclides that were handled some of which 

19 were not trace quantities, some of which were 

20 more substantially used. We include for 

21 actinium in that as well as cobalt and some of 

22 these other species, but that’s the general 

23 question. 

24 MR. BISTLINE: And I think that also in 

25 addition to that, Brant, it gets us into the 
176

1 area of taking data from bioassay data from 

2 1955 through ’59, for instance, there were 

3 said can be used to bound doses over all 

4 operational time periods. There were back in 

5 those early days a lot of that Mound data 

6 indicates very poor efficiency in recovery in 

7 the bioassay program, ten percent recoveries 

8 and so forth. And then trying to apply data 

9 from that point on as a bounding issue and the 

10 concern as to whether that can legitimately be 

11 done from early data that is suspect data in 

12 terms of its quality to later periods. 

13 DR. ULSH: Well, I understand what you’re 

14 saying. And I think we would always be 

15 cautious about applying data from one time 

16 period to another. I mean, not to say that we 

17 never do it, but of course, there are issues 

18 we all know about doing that. In terms of the 

19 efficiencies, low efficiencies, there again, 

20 that would impact your MDA. 

21 MR. BISTLINE: Yes. 

22 DR. ULSH: But the efficiencies aren’t zero. 

23 So that would indicate to me that this is more 

24 of a TBD issue than an SEC issue in terms of 

25 that particular part of what you said. Now, 
177

1 that’s not to say about applying data from one 

2 period to the other. There’s a lot of other 

3 issues involved there. 

4 But I would point out that during the 

5 D&D years, which I’m loosely defining as 

6 roughly the ‘90s, there are bioassay results 

7 for a number of different radionuclides: 

8 Protectinium-231, there’s Polonium-210, 

9 Cobalt-60, Curium-242. There’s a few. So I 

10 think for some of these, and obviously the 

11 major radionuclides at Mound are going to be 

12 your plutoniums, polonium in the earlier 

13 years, actinium in the earlier years, uranium 

14 to a lesser extent, thorium to probably a 

15 lesser extent and tritium. Those are the big 

16 ones. 

17 You’re right, Joe, certainly, I mean, 

18 who’s going to monitor for whatever 

19 radioactive mercury is, or just as an example. 

20 But I don’t, I guess I’m still not clear on 

21 when you say here 20 years later it’s 

22 documented that further exposures were 

23 occurring, what situations you’re referring to 

24 there. The implication there is that it was 

25 occurring the whole time. 
178

1 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think there was 

2 intermittent D&D of facilities and labs before 

3 the final D&D. 

4 DR. ULSH: Exactly. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: And during those time 

6 periods they were potentially exposed to, you 

7 know, if it was a lab exposed to the source 

8 terms and would have been presumably monitored 

9 for them. But it’s not clear anybody every 

10 was monitored for a lot of these exotics and 

11 nuclides. 

12 And I guess reducing it to just the 

13 very basic level, if you took these 

14 laboratories that were in some of these 

15 buildings, whether it be T, whether it be, I 

16 guess R had some facilities, and look at some 

17 of the species of the isotopes that King 

18 identifies being handled in these facilities, 

19 you know, there’s a large number, the question 

20 is just a very basic one. How did the site or 

21 did the site monitor for the nuclides being 

22 handled in the laboratories? And if so, how 

23 was that done in a way that would enable you 

24 to dose reconstruct? 

25 If somebody was a lab worker and 
179

1 worked in T lab, one of the T labs, for 25 

2 years, they weren’t, Cotter concentrate, they 

3 weren’t messing with the plutonium, but they 

4 were simply working in the lab itself but were 

5 handling over time the kinds of nuclides that 

6 you would handle in a lab by just doing active 

7 R&D. 

8 How would you go about giving credit 

9 to the potential for exposures if, in fact, 

10 very little bioassay information existed for 

11 much of these because they were other nuclides 

12 or more exotic nuclides? And that wasn’t 

13 evident from the ^. 

14 DR. ULSH: Let’s start with what we know. 

15 We know that for some of the radionuclides 

16 that were present at Mound as listed in King, 

17 they did not do bioassay for them. I don’t 

18 think bioassay existed for them. We know 

19 that. But there’s a couple of steps before we 

20 can conclude that we have an issue here. 

21 One is what were the quantities 

22 involved. What was the dosimetric 

23 significance of that material? I mean, if 

24 they’re making a standard in a lab, that’s a 

25 whole lot different than doing a major 
180

1 program. So that’s something that we’ve got 

2 to consider and also the dosimetric 

3 significance. 

4 There’s some elements that, 

5 radionuclides that you can get a whole 

6 spoonful, and it’s not going to make a hill of 

7 beans difference in terms of dose. So I guess 

8 the question would be then are there any gaps. 

9 Are there those radionuclides where there was 

10 a potential for a problem here and there’s no 

11 bioassay, what do you do then? 

12 MR. STEWART: I’ll just point out that King 

13 mentions in a number of locations that labs 

14 used for one purpose are decontaminated ^ used 

15 for process are disassembled and disposed of. 

16 So they’ve got an ongoing program to utilize 

17 the space that they’ve got. And it seems to 

18 me, and he talks about this, this lab was 

19 decommissioned and used for cold work from 

20 1981 to 1996, and there’s a number of rooms 

21 where he talks about that. So I don’t think 

22 we should assume, and once again it’s a 

23 straight-line exposure down the line. Once 

24 we’ve used this in R-149, then it’s going to 

25 be available for uptake in significant 
181

1 quantities compared to everything else that’s 

2 available for uptake for perpetuity. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Again, what was provided in 

4 the site profile in the ER just speaks to the 

5 fact that the capability exists to, I think, 

6 bound these doses. And the only question we 

7 have it’s not clear given the history and 

8 given diversity and not knowing sort of the 

9 relative significance and practicalities 

10 involved, how you would do dose reconstruction 

11 for somebody who may have been exclusively a 

12 lab worker that might have gone through these 

13 evolutions of different R&D programs. 

14 And it may very well be that you make 

15 judgments as to which, you know, there’s no 

16 bioassay, assume that for most of the stuff, 

17 not all of it but a lot of it, that you make 

18 assumptions that certain of these isotopic, 

19 these radionuclides, are in fact 

20 radiologically significant. There’s enough of 

21 it. There’s maybe enough contact or potential 

22 for contact and maybe even some instances 

23 involved where you have events where people 

24 were exposed. 

25 And you key in on those and perhaps 
182

1 those are the ones that would be factored into 

2 a dose reconstruction or at least considered 

3 for some estimation. But there’s not much to 

4 work with from the materials that we’ve looked 

5 at so far that tells us how one gets their arm 

6 around the laboratories that handled most of 

7 this stuff. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: Also, I’d like to make a 

9 comment, too. From some of the interviews and 

10 so forth was performed, you may kind of agree 

11 with this at Mound, a lot of these facilities 

12 were used for different things, different time 

13 frames. One of their corrective actions was 

14 going down and pouring a little bit of 

15 concrete across the top of it. 

16 One of the things they came to find 

17 out is that as a project would come to an end, 

18 there’d be a time frame or sometimes it’d 

19 happen automatically, to go in there and tear 

20 it down or build it up or change it and so 

21 forth for something else to come in. But a 

22 lot times drilling back into a lot of this for 

23 scabbling or whatever like that brought up a 

24 lot of the old history I guess you could say. 

25 And it was just interesting to me to 
183

1 talk to some of the people that were there and 

2 so forth like that because the process here 

3 was just ripping out only dealt with this that 

4 in re-suiting it or whatever you’d want to 

5 call it, it brought up some other objects. 

6 MR. PRESLEY: Hey, Brad, Bob Presley. Did 

7 anybody ever bring up any information that 

8 might pertain to what they found when they 

9 went back in and redid this? 

10 MR. CLAWSON: As far as radionuclides? 

11 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: A little bit, but some of it 

13 was I don’t know if we can talk about. 

14 MR. PRESLEY: Oh, yeah, okay, I agree with 

15 that. But I mean, if that information is 

16 available, then they can go back and get it. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Well, this is just, what I’m 

18 trying to paint is the picture that I saw from 

19 it. Granted I wasn’t at Mound or anything 

20 else like that, but in some of the interviews 

21 and so forth like that, there were a lot of 

22 corrective actions and from what I look at as 

23 Mound is like a lot of our facilities. They 

24 kind of build facilities on top of facilities 

25 and use different rooms and so forth, go 
184

1 different directions. And it’s, there was 

2 kind of a legacy of stuff in there. 

3 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 

4 DR. ULSH: Well, there were some specific 

5 instances. I want to see if I can take a shot 

6 at what you’re talking about, Brad. When they 

7 D&D’d the old cave as Don mentioned earlier, 

8 the way that they D&D’d it was to pour 

9 concrete on top. And then they had office 

10 space and what, labs on top? So that’s 

11 certainly one example of I think maybe what 

12 you’re talking about. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Also, too, you know, it’s a 

14 site-wide practice to be able to use paint or 

15 epoxies or whatever to be able to just cover 

16 up. We still use that today. Part of the 

17 issues even we are getting into today is that 

18 we’re D&Ding these buildings. We’re looking 

19 for certain things but part of our history 

20 comes out. 

21 DR. ULSH: And that was certainly the case 

22 in the R Corridor job for instance. When they 

23 went in to scabble that, then they uncovered 

24 that spot of actinium contamination. So I 

25 understand what you’re saying there. I guess 
185

1 I’m looking around here for a path forward on 

2 this issue. 

3 We can certainly take a look at this 

4 list of radionuclides that you’ve got listed 

5 here and do our best to figure out a little 

6 more details on what was going on at the lab. 

7 At least get our arms around the scale of it. 

8 If there’s a couple chemists in a lab with a 

9 test tube, that’s a different issue. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think very clearly 

11 from a pragmatic level if you’re dealing with 

12 laboratory, with a history that’s going to go 

13 over a number of decades in terms of handling 

14 material, how would you actually dose 

15 reconstruct for an individual that was in 

16 those laboratories understanding that you’re 

17 not going to deal with the negligible source 

18 terms. 

19 You’re not going to deal with 

20 situations where it’s a sealed source. You’re 

21 not going deal with situations where it’s, we 

22 talked about a hot cell earlier where the 

23 proximity wasn’t there. But certainly if 

24 there’s potential for some of the other items, 

25 and there’s no bioassay I guess I’m at a loss 
186

1 to how you would actually manage to do any 

2 kind of estimation unless you had some 

3 bounding assumptions or something about what 

4 the people could have been exposed to. 

5 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, kind of going along 

6 with that, the issue, they found equipment 

7 that had been used and was contaminated. A 

8 year later they found a contaminated 

9 equipment. How are you going to bound that I 

10 guess is the question, the exposures to things 

11 like this. 

12 DR. ULSH: I think that issue is going to 

13 come up in a later matrix issue, the 

14 contaminated equipment part. But it seems to 

15 me that King has done, King has done part of 

16 the job here loosely. I mean, he says these 

17 are the major radionuclides of concern, these 

18 are the raw maybes and these are the, no, 

19 never minds. I’m paraphrasing here. We’ll 

20 see what we can do about explaining on that. 

21 MS. BEACH: So I basically have you’re going 

22 to investigate the issue and get back to us -- 

23 DR. ULSH: Yes. 

24 MS. BEACH: -- what you found and how to get 

25 a possible path forward. 
187

1 MR. CLAWSON: And maybe I didn’t make myself 

2 clear. I know that the painting and so forth, 

3 but the individuals that spoke to us during 

4 the interviews were basically talking about 

5 that they went in and yanking power cables -- 

6 DR. BRANCHE: We have an individual on the 

7 phone who needs to mute their phone, please. 

8 If you don’t have a mute button then please 

9 use star six. We can hear all parts of your 

10 conversation. Thank you. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: -- he was actually in a clean 

12 area, but they were pulling conduit, pulling 

13 wires, cracked himself up, opened himself up. 

14 He wasn’t part of the monitored group so forth 

15 like that da-da-da, and this is what brought 

16 up some of these issues with pulling stuff in 

17 from it. On the other side, you know, it was 

18 sealed off okay like you do in any kind of 

19 situation, but the electrical conduit and so 

20 forth and it brought up the issue of his 

21 monitoring and so forth like that. And 

22 basically it can contaminate himself and his 

23 colleagues and so forth. And this is kind of 

24 an underlying issue of the questions. And 

25 this is what I was just trying to bring out. 
188

1 DR. ULSH: Yes, and we’ll take a look at the 

2 interviews that you all conducted, what, last 

3 week. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Two weeks ago. 

5 DR. ULSH: We’ll take a look for that. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: No, this was actually at a 

7 Fernald work group meeting, but the guy that 

8 worked was asking me because he knew I was on 

9 this, and so I was discussing with him what 

10 his concern was. And he says this is what I’m 

11 looking at because he had looked at the Mound 

12 TBD and so forth, and he was issued, he just 

13 discussed with me are they looking at this 

14 because this is what we got into, how they 

15 added on the facilities and so forth like 

16 that. He says it wasn’t an uncommon practice 

17 to be able to get into situations like this. 

18 So that was kind of where my concern was 

19 coming and so forth. 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: I think that’s true of just 

21 about any of these facilities because they 

22 could be up there with electrical trades. 

23 They could be out there in the nooks and 

24 crannies of unistrut* and stuff that they use 

25 for mounting equipment, glove boxes to the 
189

1 walls. So they do a quick paint job, cover up 

2 what they could find loose and then somebody 

3 sits in that office, and they use that for 

4 different purposes yet there is this loose 

5 contamination in the nooks and crannies where 

6 people couldn’t reach. 

7 DR. ULSH: Right, and actually that -- okay, 

8 talk ahead just a little bit. It goes back to 

9 your issue, Bob, about the instances where 

10 they found contaminated equipment in what were 

11 supposedly clean areas. And we interviewed a 

12 few people, a couple of people about that and 

13 one was particularly helpful, a rad tech. 

14 And he described situations like that 

15 where they would survey the exterior surface, 

16 the accessible surfaces, of the equipment, 

17 find nothing and send it to different areas 

18 inside the plant for shipment offsite. Well, 

19 when they went to disassemble that equipment, 

20 then they found some contamination on some of 

21 the inner surfaces of the equipment. 

22 And that certainly happened. I don’t 

23 want to say it happened all the time, but it 

24 was not uncommon. I mean, it happened more 

25 than once. But the question you’ve got to ask 
190

1 yourself is, well, if this contamination was 

2 on the inner surfaces that were not 

3 accessible, what was the exposure potential. 

4 Until you pop it open and find the 

5 contamination, there really isn’t much of an 

6 exposure potential there. 

7 MR. BISTLINE: It depends on the equipment. 

8 DR. ULSH: Right, it depends on the specific 

9 situation. 

10 MR. STEWART: I think Health Physics 

11 practice has been pretty consistent in that 

12 when you’re entering an unknown condition that 

13 you characterize the conditions in the area 

14 prior to conducting work, and then you assign 

15 the personnel monitoring based on those 

16 conditions. 

17 And a lot of facilities have signs 

18 that say overhead areas are unsurveyed. 

19 Contact radiation protection prior to entry. 

20 I think you’re going to have that situation in 

21 all these legacy facilities. And I would 

22 think that Health Physics surveys are a 

23 necessary first step when entering the 

24 facility. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think that’s 
191

1 underscored by King who speaks to these 

2 overhead areas in some of the labs that were 

3 contaminated even into the ‘90s with actinium 

4 and what not. 

5 DR. ULSH: But I don’t want to confuse the 

6 issue in some of these, you know, like you 

7 said, the alphabet soup or Periodic Table of 

8 Elements to indicate that they were spread all 

9 over and you were constantly running into 

10 surprise situations where you encountered 

11 them. They did run into some surprise 

12 situations for some of the major 

13 radionuclides. You know, find the plutonium 

14 where you didn’t expect it maybe or finding 

15 actinium where you didn’t expect it. There 

16 was an example of that. But it’s not like you 

17 were going to find Mercury-203 or, is that 

18 Scandium-46 all over the place. It wasn’t 

19 like that. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think again we’re 

21 just responding to the reference in the ER. 

22 And we didn’t read this, but it’s set to the 

23 point from technical and published reports, 

24 process data such as proportions of exotic 

25 radionuclides -- this is under (b) -- in 
192

1 process material can be determined and the 

2 maximum dose estimated. 

3 So essentially that’s the work around 

4 when you don’t have bioassay for somebody 

5 saying that you have to go to your source term 

6 information and try to come up with a 

7 estimate. The situation is somebody’s in that 

8 environment and that would be probably your 

9 avenue. I guess our only question is in a 

10 practical way would you need to do that for 

11 the kinds of things we’re talking about here. 

12 And if so, -- 

13 MR. STEWART: Not in all cases. A number of 

14 these are external hazards only, Krypton-85. 

15 Zn-65 and Iron-59, those are in summary -- and 

16 correct me if I’m wrong because they were a 

17 constituent of the aluminum cans used for the 

18 polonium processing. Is that how they ended 

19 up in here? 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I can’t remember exactly 

21 now. 

22 MR. STEWART: It would be dealt with 

23 separately, and I think that it’s probably not 

24 inaccurate to say the Mound considered them 

25 primarily external dose -- 
193

1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think in this case we’re 

2 just talking about maybe another level of 

3 explanation. I think this gives us an 

4 indication of where you’re headed, but we 

5 couldn’t go much further than this reference, 

6 one-sentence reference. 

7 And I certainly wouldn’t recommend 

8 anything that would be comprehensive, not this 

9 massive matrix with a hundred nuclides on one 

10 side, no. Just really some sense of that, 

11 what matters, how you would, in fact, use the 

12 process information to come up with a bounding 

13 dose. I think that would help us understand 

14 that this balance of radiological source terms 

15 is being addressed adequately because there 

16 was quite a bit. 

17 And this has been an issue at other 

18 multipurpose laboratories just because there 

19 was so much, so little bioassay that was 

20 keeping pace. There were some questions for 

21 certain nuclides but not all. Some of it was 

22 tracer quantities and not significant 

23 radiologically anyway. 

24 MR. STEWART: Yes, and it is certainly true 

25 for some of these as well. 
194

1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I was surprised at 

2 some places where there were certain isotopes 

3 that because of the particular interest at 

4 that particular time there was enough that you 

5 definitely could get exposed if the controls 

6 were not stringent and back in the ‘40s and 

7 ‘50s they weren’t. So it may matter in some 

8 cases. 

9 DR. ULSH: All right, we’ll try to provide, 

10 like you said, an additional level of detail 

11 as to the scale of some of these things and 

12 what to do. 

13 MS. BEACH: And that’s going to take us 

14 through all issues for number eight? 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: We went from the preamble 

16 to eight to (b), and there’s an (a), but 

17 actually I think we managed to back into a lot 

18 of (a) in an earlier conversation on Cotter 

19 concentrate which is where you have bioassay 

20 data available for protactinium and where it 

21 was not available and can one demonstrate that 

22 process data, which is the backstop to not 

23 having enough bioassay data, whether that 

24 combination would cover the later years. 

25 We were only able to find the bioassay 
195

1 data for ’55 through ’59, and yet, obviously, 

2 the program or the exposure for protactinium 

3 existed after ’59 as well. So without 

4 bioassay could you extend that information to 

5 use it in a way that would give you a bounding 

6 analysis? 

7 MR. STEWART: You’re talking about the 

8 Cotter concentrate? 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, on (a), 8(a). 

10 DR. ULSH: I don’t think that we would 

11 necessarily try to apply the Protactinium-231 

12 data from the ‘50s into the Cotter 

13 concentrate. Don mentioned the makeup of the 

14 Cotter concentrate earlier, and that was 

15 60,000 ppm uranium, so much -- what was the 

16 next one, thorium? 

17 MR. STEWART: Thorium-232, 10,000 ppm. 

18 DR. ULSH: So those might be the things that 

19 you’re looking for rather than -- 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Is that the process 

21 information that you’re talking about here? 

22 That term kind of throws me a little bit. The 

23 process information would be those indicators 

24 -- 

25 MR. STEWART: Constituents. 
196

1 MR. FITZGERALD: -- constituents -- 

2 DR. ULSH: The makeup of the source term and 

3 also the facilities that they were doing it 

4 in, the hot cell again. And we’ll certainly 

5 make sure that you get a copy of this document 

6 that we keep talking about. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right. That’s what 

8 I’m saying. I think we backed into this a 

9 little earlier. But when you talk process, 

10 you’re talking about this specifically then. 

11 DR. ULSH: Yes. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, well, I think this 

13 doc’s going to help us on that one then. 

14 MR. STEWART: Well, it’s just information 

15 that to me is information about the 

16 radionucleic makeup. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, okay. 

18 MR. STEWART: It’s a word. It’s a word. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it actually helps 

20 because I looked at process and was thinking 

21 the production process or the operations as 

22 opposed to the necessarily the radionuclitic 

23 makeup. 

24 MR. STEWART: And the process is concern as 

25 well because the stuff is capturing the 
197

1 concentration cell with no human presence. 

2 That would also be something that we could use 

3 to reconstruct the dose. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: And again, this document is 

5 -- what’s the name of it again? 

6 MR. STEWART: We’ll get you a copy of this. 

7 It’s called “White Paper, Re-evaluation of the 

8 Cotter Concentrate”. It’s not a white paper 

9 that we generated, but -- 

10 DR. ULSH: BWST, right? 

11 MR. STEWART: Yeah, it’s a USCPA document. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that would probably 

13 satisfy this issue as well once we have a 

14 chance to look at that. 

15 MR. STEWART: August 1998. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: August 1998. 

17 MS. BEACH: And you said it was an EPA or -- 

18 MR. STEWART: BWST. 

19 DR. ULSH: A CPA? 

20 MR. STEWART: CPA? 

21 MS. BEACH: Maybe I just heard you wrong. 

22 MR. STEWART: USCPA ID number -- it may have 

23 been done by somebody under contract to CPA. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: So we’ll take a look at 

25 that when it’s available and offer any 
198

1 feedback to NIOSH or to the Board. 

2 MATRIX ISSUE NINE: HIGH-FIRED ISSUE

3 Number nine, this one is kind of 

4 another clarification issue because, again, 

5 we’re aware as you are that they ceramatized 

6 Plutonium-238 oxide is a high-fired issue. 

7 And we didn’t see any really treatment, 

8 treatment meaning sort of an explanatory text 

9 in the ER or the site profile. The site 

10 profile does mention pure -238. 

11 So this is really just an open 

12 question as to how you’re addressing that 

13 particular high-fired question at Mound. 

14 Because a lot of it was handled and certainly 

15 going through the King report it’s fairly 

16 extensive as you can expect. It really was 

17 everywhere Plutonium-238 was practically 

18 because of the way it was handled. And we 

19 think it obviously has implications for how 

20 one monitors for it, and we ran up against it. 

21 And sorry for the obscure reference 

22 here, [name redacted]. We interviewed [name 

23 redacted] at Los Alamos as far as site profile 

24 review and he kind of waxed eloquent about the 

25 problem he had when he had an event involving 
199

1 PU-238 oxide at the lab and how difficult it 

2 was to find it. And he just went on and on as 

3 to, it was a fascinating story, but it 

4 certainly informs this whole thing that, yeah, 

5 it’s certainly a different beast when it comes 

6 to trying to monitor for it and makes perhaps 

7 follow up on events harder unless you know how 

8 to do it. 

9 And so I guess our question is we 

10 didn’t see a whole lot to explain the approach 

11 being taken. So it’s just an open question. 

12 We just wanted to frame the issue up and sort 

13 of leave it to you to tell us what you think 

14 you’re going to do with it. 

15 DR. ULSH: There’s a few issues. You 

16 mention in here OTIB-0049, which is the Super17 S TIB. And that relates to Plutonium-239. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

19 DR. ULSH: And that was developed in support 

20 of the Rocky Flats. But that is not going to 

21 be applied to Plutonium-238 because we’ve not 

22 seen any evidence that Plutonium-238 behaves 

23 in any way like Super-S Plutonium-239. In 

24 fact, it’s specifically mentioned in that TIB 

25 that it’s not going to be used for anything 
200

1 other than -239. And the reason is because 

2 the high specific activity of -238 tends to 

3 break up that ceramic matrix. 

4 And so what you see, at least in the 

5 short time that I’ve spent trying to locate 

6 references on this -- I found about ten dating 

7 all the way back to the ‘70s by someone named 

8 Bob Bistline -- this is an issue that’s, I 

9 mean, health physicists have been aware of 

10 since at least 1970 and probably earlier, that 

11 Plutonium-238 behaves a little differently 

12 than Plutonium-239. But I’ve not seen any 

13 evidence whatsoever that it behaves like high14 fired, in other words, highly, strongly 

15 retained. 

16 Now, let me clarify a little bit. 

17 There’s some evidence, a fair body of 

18 evidence, that at first it can be strongly 

19 retained. But that as time goes by, within a 

20 short period of time, those alphas from that 

21 high specific activity -238 break up the 

22 ceramicized matrix and it starts to be 

23 excreted. So certainly there are data 

24 available. There are data available from 

25 Mound cases of people exposed to some 
201

1 ceramicized Plutonium-238. 

2 There’s also some data from the USTUR, 

3 Transuranium Registry, about people exposed to 

4 this material. So it’s not an unknown. And 

5 some have even looked at whether or not the 

6 ICRP models adequately can handle the behavior 

7 of Plutonium-238. And the conclusion, at 

8 least from this one in 2003 -- this is from 

9 the general literature, this is general health 

10 physics -- is that they can indeed handle that 

11 kind of material, just have to appropriately 

12 designate the solubility class which we do on 

13 a routine basis. 

14 I mean, every time you do an IMBA run 

15 you designate the solubility class. So we’re 

16 aware of the differences here about Plutonium17 238. We don’t see it as an SEC issue. I 

18 mean, it’s not unknowable. The models that we 

19 have with appropriate parameter selections can 

20 handle that. And we are currently considering 

21 putting together a TIB on this. 

22 Maybe you can speak a little bit more 

23 about that, Liz. 

24 MS. BRACKETT: Well, you mentioned the [name 

25 redacted] interview being -- 
202

1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, just as an 

2 illustrative -- 

3 MS. BRACKETT: Right. You said it was 

4 obscure, but really one of the papers is based 

5 on that case, and that’s what we’re looking at 

6 to develop the OTIB from. And, in fact, when 

7 MJW did the Mound dose reconstruction we did 

8 come across several cases where it was pretty 

9 clear that if the people had a lot of bioassay 

10 samples, and you could see it increasing over 

11 time, and we did special ^. So in the case 

12 where a person has enough data, you can just 

13 take their data and adjust the parameters in 

14 IMBA to get a good fit. 

15 In the case of people not having that 

16 kind of data, adequate data, then what we’re 

17 looking at doing is taking that paper from the 

18 Lawrence data, and I think there’s six other 

19 cases that were looked at in there. They 

20 mention seven cases. Only one was a 

21 Transuranium Registry case, but looking at 

22 that and coming up with a model, and it’s 

23 similar to what we did with uranium aluminide. 

24 What we would do is try to compare it 

25 against the other material types to see if it 
203

1 would ever give you a more living value. If 

2 not, then we would just stick with our default 

3 and use whichever one gave you the largest 

4 dose. But if it turns out that this 

5 particular model would give you a larger dose, 

6 then we would use that in that particular 

7 case. 

8 MR. BISTLINE: How about the situation where 

9 it’s, Plutonium-238 is in a matrix with 

10 another zirconium, something like this. There 

11 seems to be some difference showing there as 

12 far as solubility in some of the studies that 

13 I’ve seen. 

14 MS. BRACKETT: Would that be the one, the 

15 paper that you wrote? Is that the -- 

16 MR. BISTLINE: No, this comes out of some 

17 studies that Los Alamos showed me on some rat 

18 studies that they did with zirconium oxide. 

19 And very highly insoluble particles lodged in 

20 the lungs and just stayed there. 

21 MS. BRACKETT: And that would be Plutonium22 238? 

23 MR. BISTLINE: It’s -238. 

24 MS. BRACKETT: I guess that would be 

25 something we’d have to look at. Is that 
204

1 something Mound would have also? 

2 MR. BISTLINE: As I recall I think there 

3 were a couple of cases where they, a couple of 

4 compounds like that which were ceramicized 

5 particles that were made. 

6 MS. BRACKETT: And yet it’s different than 

7 the other material that -- 

8 MR. BISTLINE: It appears to be somewhat 

9 different from what you see in -- 

10 MS. BRACKETT: Then I guess that would be 

11 something we’d have to look at. 

12 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, it may, certain 

13 ceramicized conditions made for different 

14 durometers. 

15 DR. ULSH: Is that something you could 

16 provide to us? These citations where we could 

17 go get it? 

18 MR. BISTLINE: I’ll try to see if I can dig 

19 it up somewhere. It’s all in my file. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: You wouldn’t happen to know 

21 if that was in the Health Physics Journal or 

22 not, do you? 

23 MR. BISTLINE: I can’t remember where that 

24 was published, but I was down there visiting 

25 and they were showing me pictures of the 
205

1 zirconium oxide particles. On one of my trips 

2 down there back a number of years ago, they 

3 were showing me pictures of the zirconium 

4 particles in the lungs of the rats. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the plutonium, is it a 

6 plutonium oxide mixed with the zirconium 

7 oxide? 

8 MR. BISTLINE: Yeah, it’s a zirconium and 

9 it’s ceramicized together and real ^ stable 

10 mixture that the zirconium particles just 

11 stayed there. They had a lot of ^. 

12 MS. BEACH: Bob, where was this study from? 

13 MR. BISTLINE: This was done at Los Alamos. 

14 It was a study being done out at Los Alamos a 

15 number of years ago. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Going back to what you were 

17 saying, Liz, so if you have enough data as I 

18 understand it, you can go back to somebody who 

19 has a urinalysis record for plutonium and fit 

20 a curve depending on the solubility class that 

21 you would assign to that particular worker in 

22 that particular location, whatever work they 

23 were doing. Is that how you would make the 

24 adjustment for that contribution? 

25 MS. BRACKETT: No. Well, if you mean in 
206

1 general, do you mean have enough data for the 

2 person? 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: If you have enough data for 

4 the person, he was exposed to plutonium, you 

5 know, he’s got some data in there, urinalysis 

6 data, say, from the ’70s or ‘60s or whatever. 

7 Are you talking about adjusting that dose to 

8 reflect the high-fired solubilities that you 

9 know now that weren’t reflected -- 

10 MS. BRACKETT: So it would be taking the 

11 data and making adjustments in IMBA so that 

12 you fit that data. You don’t take any 

13 knowledge of anything they were exposed to 

14 that would fit their individual data. 

15 DR. ULSH: Which is what we always do. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

17 MS. BRACKETT: Well, not to this extent. 

18 This would involve modifying parameters that 

19 you didn’t normally modify, but if it 

20 exhibited that -- 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: But you need dissolution -- 

22 MS. BRACKETT: Right, in that case that 

23 would only be done if a best estimate were 

24 required for the person. Oftentimes an 

25 overestimate or an underestimate. If we 
207

1 needed to go to that level of detail, it would 

2 come probably to me or Tom LaBone to do that. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: How would you assign the 

4 solubility class in a circumstance where even 

5 in the Mound documentation it’s sort of across 

6 the board depending on the actual process 

7 involved? 

8 MS. BRACKETT: Well, the way it’s typically 

9 done, and this is pretty much for all sites, 

10 is that the dose reconstructor runs all the 

11 possibilities. Well, ICRP assigns plutonium 

12 to M and S. We’re talking -238, the dose 

13 reconstructor would run the -238 to both M and 

14 S, whichever gave the larger dose, that would 

15 be assigned. And then for -239 they’d run M, 

16 S and Super-S, whichever gave the largest dose 

17 would be the one that was assigned. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And you wouldn’t have any 

19 instances where sort of similar to what was 

20 established at Rocky and the OTIB-049 thing 

21 where you have something that’s even more 

22 insoluble than what would be in a class, I 

23 guess, in this case? 

24 MS. BRACKETT: Super-S? 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, yeah, Super-S. 
208

1 DR. ULSH: Now we’re estimating. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Not the -238, really, the S 

3 -- 

4 MS. BRACKETT: Right, well, that’s what 

5 we’re talking about developing an OTIB to see 

6 if that would give you more dose than M or S 

7 would and under what circumstances. I’m 

8 guessing it would be limited in time as to 

9 when it would be more limiting since you get 

10 the dip down, and then it’s back up. I think 

11 it’s probably going to fall in between the 

12 others except in certain circumstances. And 

13 that’s what we’d look at to see what 

14 circumstances there would be that it would 

15 give you the largest dose. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: So I guess in sum this is, 

17 you would consider this a very tractable 

18 issue? 

19 MS. BRACKETT: Yes. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

21 DR. ULSH: Well, before we leave the, issue 

22 nine, it still mentioned uranium and thorium 

23 compounds in terms of Super-S. 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, any -- this is sort 

25 of a question. Given the processes involved 
209

1 is there any evidence of any of that, I guess, 

2 in terms of the effects that would be not as 

3 pronounced perhaps with plutonium but where 

4 high-fired would have some bearing on those? 

5 DR. ULSH: Well, I think if I recall 

6 correctly, you also raised this question in 

7 terms of the Rocky Flats things when we were 

8 handling Super-S plutonium there. You asked 

9 about uranium and thorium. Our answer 

10 wouldn’t be much different from there. And 

11 that is that we have never, we’re not aware of 

12 any worker who’s ever observed Super-S 

13 behavior for the uranium or thorium. 

14 Now in answer to your question we 

15 specifically talked about the microsphere 

16 project where they draw small particles 

17 through a plasma torch, and they did do that 

18 with thorium oxide. I know that, at least on 

19 one occasion. I don’t know how many times. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I think only briefly. I 

21 think it was only a couple -- 

22 DR. ULSH: I think so, too. But we’re not 

23 aware of anything that suggests you should 

24 treat uranium and thorium as Super-S material. 

25 This question keeps coming up, and if you guys 
210

1 are aware of something that we’re not, we’d 

2 love to see it. But we haven’t addressed that 

3 question; we’ll see if it comes up. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: On this particular one 

5 though, on Super-S, I think it would be Super6 S now, high-fired oxides, it would be helpful 

7 to, I think we’ll take it upon ourselves to 

8 give you a review just to raise some questions 

9 on that. We don’t have to take the time now, 

10 but just to sort of put this to bed in terms 

11 of some of the technical questions associated 

12 with the approach. And I think we can deal 

13 with it as a technical issue and just kind of 

14 cross the T on that one. 

15 MS. BEACH: And I also have Bob to try to 

16 provide NIOSH with the study from Los Alamos 

17 if possible. 

18 We’re on to number ten. Does anybody, 

19 do you want to take a five-minute break? We 

20 have about an hour and 15 minutes left. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Are we going too fast now? 

22 MS. BEACH: My question is would you like to 

23 take a break or would you like to continue? 

24 MR. FITZGERALD: For those who have to 

25 drive, I guess that would be one issue. Do we 
211

1 want to keep going and get this done early? 

2 DR. ULSH: Let’s take five. 

3 (Whereupon, the working group took a break.) 

4 DR. BRANCHE: We’re ready to get started 

5 again. We don’t have much time left, and I 

6 would just ask again for those of you who are 

7 on the phone, at the risk of sounding like a 

8 broken record, if you could please mute your 

9 phone, then when you’re ready to speak you can 

10 unmute your phone. If you do not have a mute 

11 button, then please dial star six. Thank you 

12 so much. 

13 MATRIX ISSUE TEN: D&D ERA

14 MS. BEACH: Are we ready to move on to 

15 number ten? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, number ten I think is 

17 more or less a place holder. I think the ER 

18 is pretty clear that the D&D era is being 

19 investigated still. And I think certainly we 

20 believe it’s an important era to look at. So 

21 there’s nothing, I don’t think there’s 

22 anything unless you have any new developments 

23 that -- 

24 MR. STEWART: Well, there is one observation 

25 I’d like to make. And that is that DAC-hour 
212

1 tracking was not used in the dose 

2 reconstruction project. The site may use it 

3 to assign doses, but we don’t use site-to-site 

4 doses in the ER. 

5 DR. ULSH: And that kind is a good lead into 

6 a concern that I have on this particular 

7 issue. I’m not sure if there’s any 

8 significance to be read into the bold 

9 statements down there. I mean SC&A goes 

10 through a couple of issues that they see as 

11 problems like lapel sampling, DAC-hour 

12 tracking being used to track internal dose 

13 rather than routine bioassay. 

14 I think reliance on cohort lapel air 

15 sampling and samples randomly assigned to D&D 

16 workers, and then as I read the statement, 

17 SC&A agrees that issues like these associated 

18 with internal exposure during D&D for special 

19 consideration. That tends to imply that that 

20 was NIOSH’s concern, too, and that you’re 

21 agreeing with it. And that’s not the case. I 

22 mean, we never mentioned a concern about lapel 

23 sampling or DAC-hour tracking. 

24 In fact, it’s our understanding that, 

25 yes, they certainly did use those for more 
213

1 real-time sampling, but that was laid on top 

2 of routine bioassay like at other D&D sites. 

3 So we never made that an issue. The cohort 

4 sampling we’ve already talked about. So I 

5 just want to make it clear that -- and if you 

6 guys want to raise those issues, that’s fine, 

7 but it’s not issues that we’re raising. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: I agree. I think that 

9 wording needs to be certainly changed, and we 

10 will do that. 

11 DR. ULSH: Our concerns with the D&D era 

12 relate to the Price-Anderson Act violations, 

13 specifically the R Corridor job with regard to 

14 the handling of the actinium bioassay samples 

15 and how broad of an impact or narrow that 

16 might have on the reliability of the bioassay 

17 data for that time period. That’s what we’re 

18 concerned about. 

19 MATRIX ISSUE ELEVEN: ADEQUACY OF INTERNAL DOSE RECORDS

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we just go to 

21 number 11. This 11 and 12, actually 11, 12 

22 and 13 get into the data completeness, 

23 integrity question that we got through 

24 earlier. And I think what I had said earlier 

25 was certainly we’re impressed with and feel 
214

1 that the MJW QA process for what was done on 

2 bioassay was, at least from what we’ve read -- 

3 again, we haven’t done anything more than just 

4 read what was in the file, but it seemed 

5 fairly complete and would mitigate some of the 

6 concerns that we would normally have. 

7 The issue number 11 just gets to 

8 concerns over the basic radiochemistry, 

9 radioanalysis going back to the early years. 

10 And I guess this is just a question for Liz 

11 and for others who have looked at this. Has 

12 anyone kind of examined the radiochemistry or 

13 just the analysis itself to determine whether 

14 or not there’s validity in that quite apart 

15 from the bioassay per se? 

16 MR. STEWART: Sorry, Liz. I guess we had a 

17 radiochemist in the bunch and there was a 

18 concern over that issue. And I don’t have a 

19 good answer to that either. It just didn’t 

20 seem like I could find anything that spoke to 

21 the confidence on that early radiochemistry 

22 radioanalysis. 

23 MS. BRACKETT: Are there particular nuclides 

24 or you’re just questioning -- 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s just a broader 
215

1 question. I think I kind of pushed the 

2 individual for some examples, and that’s what 

3 these are, but just to illustrate what we’re 

4 talking about. But could you point in the 

5 direction as to where that information or 

6 analysis could have been done so that we have 

7 a clearer idea of whether -- because I keep 

8 getting feedback that certainly in the early 

9 years -- it’s not specific to Mound -- that 

10 was a big limitation to the reliability of 

11 some of the data that was being collected was 

12 just that it was very primitive time for a lot 

13 of the radioanalysis that was being done. 

14 And I don’t have a good answer to that 

15 because I looked through the documentation and 

16 couldn’t find anything that per se. And this 

17 is almost a QA/QC issue in a way, but it gets 

18 to the data reliability. 

19 MS. BRACKETT: Well, the polonium, for 

20 example, that was reviewed in more recent 

21 times. You’ve probably seen the papers for 

22 the New York University study where they 

23 reproduced the polonium measurements and 

24 determined that the recovery was less than 

25 what they believed that they had at the time. 
216

1 So I think my interpretation of that was that 

2 the method’s fine as long as you use ten 

3 percent recovery because that’s what they were 

4 able to obtain. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s [name redacted]report? 

6 MS. BRACKETT: No, well, he was involved 

7 later, but it was New York University, [name 

8 redacted] did his Ph.D. on that I think. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: [name redacted] ^ was involved. 

10 MS. BRACKETT: Yeah, there were a lot of 

11 people involved in that. 

12 The plutonium, I mean, a lot of it was 

13 just standard gross alpha kind of thing. I 

14 don’t know the details about plutonium. Some 

15 of these key other radionuclides as we call 

16 them, the primary reason for proposing the SEC 

17 in the early years was because of the 

18 interpretation of those data. 

19 DR. ULSH: The radium, actinium, thorium. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: Right, because that was, it’s 

21 very complicated, and I’m sure at the time 

22 they knew what they were doing. But in going 

23 back and looking at the records it’s very 

24 difficult to see all. They were plotting 

25 radium and making assumptions about the time, 
217

1 and it was just very complicated. So we don’t 

2 feel that we can use that now. 

3 DR. ULSH: The one example you give here 

4 about thorium urinalysis data for insoluble 

5 forms of thorium have been shown to be 

6 ineffective in detecting thorium uptakes. I 

7 don’t know that we would agree with that. I 

8 think we would go back to the characterization 

9 that Paul gave earlier in another context. 

10 And that is that the MDA is high, and we would 

11 certainly agree with that. But that just 

12 leads to high missed doses. We don’t see that 

13 as an example of an SEC-type issue. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: That is true in (a) I think if 

15 you’re getting low recovery, it just affects 

16 your sensitivity. 

17 MS. BRACKETT: Right. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Actually, for a claimant, given 

19 two people with the same numbers, it probably 

20 helps them because the uncertainty in the 

21 missed dose is higher. 

22 DR. ULSH: Yes, I think that’s right. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: But you used the ten percent 

24 figure. Very few uncompensated lung cancers. 

25 DR. ULSH: Joe, I can maybe provide a little 
218

1 more -- I’m trying to recall. I think the 

2 Meyer document, the history of the internal -- 

3 at least Don told me this is where I saw it. 

4 There’s a table in there. It shows the major 

5 programs, and then underneath it shows the MLM 

6 report that talks about the bioassay method 

7 that they used to cover those programs. I’m 

8 going to go try to find that again and get 

9 that to you or at least find out where it is. 

10 But that might provide more details about 

11 exactly what kind of analysis they did. That 

12 would help. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, it would help. And I 

14 think from what I understand is that other 

15 than the actinium, radium, thorium, that 

16 process in terms of analysis, the confidence 

17 on the other analytical techniques in terms of 

18 the time frames involved is sufficient with 

19 adjustments necessarily for polonium. The ten 

20 percent, it’s reliable enough for dose 

21 reconstruction. 

22 DR. ULSH: That’s certainly our impression 

23 at the moment. Yeah, we don’t see any issues 

24 with the exception of the radium, actinium, 

25 thorium that they’re insufficient. And, Joe, 
219

1 if you want to write this down, that reference 

2 is “The History of Bioassay” by Meyer. It’s 

3 on page -- 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, yeah, I think we have 

5 that. 

6 DR. ULSH: -- page 21 -- 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: In a certain volume, right? 

8 MR. STEWART: Yeah, the bioassay’s a single 

9 volume, 990 pages. 

10 DR. ULSH: This is on a PDF, page 21. 

11 MR. BISTLINE: What page? 

12 DR. ULSH: Twenty-one. And it lists the 

13 report. It has like a, well, I think these 

14 are report numbers: MD-20738. I think that’s 

15 -- 

16 MR. STEWART: This is an internal dose 

17 procedure. 

18 MS. BRACKETT: I was just going to note that 

19 there’s been a bioassay conference that’s been 

20 going on for around 50 years. I don’t 

21 remember exactly where we’re at now with it, 

22 but that was something that was started within 

23 the AEC complex for the sites to get together 

24 and develop bioassay techniques and discuss 

25 what was going on. And Mound was a very early 
220

1 participant in that. In fact, they gave 

2 papers almost every year, so they were very 

3 involved with the latest techniques and all in 

4 keeping up with what was going on. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, well, we’ll take a 

6 look at the reference and decide whether did 

7 we solve this issue the next go around on 

8 that. 

9 MATRIX ISSUE TWELVE: INTEGRITY AND COMPLETENESS OF 

10 INTERNAL DOSE RECORDS

11 The next two issues are really getting 

12 into something we talked about earlier which 

13 was how to handle the data integrity, 

14 completeness and whatever validation the work 

15 group believes we ought to do in the databases 

16 themselves. And I guess I would probably go 

17 ahead and defer to the interim -- I don’t even 

18 know what you would call it -- sort of an 

19 interim approach that you offer with certainly 

20 our awareness of the 1996 QA that MJW did on 

21 internal. 

22 So we’re acknowledging that, but just 

23 grappling in the internal and external and 

24 address that maybe in more detail next work 

25 group session. It would be helpful I guess if 
221

1 possible to get that before we actually sit at 

2 the table if there’s any way to take a look at 

3 that. 

4 I think that would inform whatever 

5 strategy the work group would want to go ahead 

6 and take as far as the data integrity and 

7 completeness. Because I think at this point 

8 there must be a happy medium using Rocky as 

9 one extreme and using, and not doing anything 

10 on the other but just simply being able to 

11 come up with an assessment of data reliability 

12 that would be suitable for the Board. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: What’s going to happen then 

14 when this thing is -- 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I think what we’re saying 

16 is that these next two items speak to the data 

17 integrity and completeness on the internal 

18 side. I think what Brant was offering earlier 

19 was to provide the work group a path forward 

20 based on what QA/QC is available in the Mound 

21 literature. 

22 And I was just proposing in maybe 

23 internal plus external we could do it in one 

24 piece. But then that would require a work 

25 group session to decide what the strategy 
222

1 ought to be as far as any further review on 

2 that subject. 

3 MS. BEACH: Part of our number 18 

4 discussion. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. 

6 MS. BEACH: Is there any idea, Brant, of 

7 time? How long it’s going to take you guys to 

8 come up with some kind of summary? And I’m 

9 not putting any specific dates down, just -- 

10 DR. ULSH: I don’t know, Josie, because 

11 we’re going to have to go, I’ve got a couple 

12 of things that I’m going to do. I’m going to 

13 talk to the Mound folks that I’m in touch with 

14 for leads on where you can find some of this 

15 information. We might include this in our 

16 next key word search to D&D Legacy Management. 

17 So I’m not sure how long that particular item 

18 might take. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Are we talking about item 13 

20 here or -- 

21 DR. ULSH: No, 12. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Just 12. 

23 DR. ULSH: Well, I don’t know. You can 

24 answer that, too. 

25 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 13 is a 
223

1 related issue, a different issue. Well, maybe 

2 we should treat 13 differently. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: I was going to say if the two 

4 you’re talking about is 12 and 13, then 13, I 

5 think we’ve already got some information on 

6 13. 

7 MS. BEACH: We haven’t got to 13 yet. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: That’s all right. I was 

9 completing 12 and 13. I think you’re right, 

10 12 is different than 13. So we’re talking 12 

11 and 18? 

12 MS. BEACH: Eighteen. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Twelve and 18. 

14 DR. ULSH: So without knowing how readily 

15 available this data is, I can’t really say. 

16 But if it’s going to take a long time, I’ll 

17 let you know. 

18 MS. BEACH: Fair enough. 

19 MATRIX ISSUE THIRTEEN: MOUND EMPLOYEES RECORDS

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess on 13 this is 

21 certainly more of a petitioner issue and again 

22 I would defer to the work group, but there 

23 were questions raised about what was in fact 

24 scanned, what was actually the criteria for 

25 choosing what came out of the records. Some 
224

1 of those questions of -- we don’t have 

2 anything more than what’s in the ER. 

3 And the question before the work group 

4 is in terms of validating that particular 

5 question that’s been raised in the petition 

6 process whether or not that’s sufficient or 

7 not. I think there could be some further 

8 information gathered or it could be left as 

9 is. I mean, I don’t, again, I think it is 

10 what it is. At this point whether or not 

11 there’s any need to review that information in 

12 terms of what was imaged, I don’t know. But I 

13 don’t know if NIOSH has information -- we just 

14 simply have what’s in the ER at this stage. 

15 DR. ULSH: Well, there’s the ^ record? When 

16 I say the ^, it’s called the History of -- 

17 MS. BEACH: I’m looking it up right now. 

18 DR. ULSH: It’s got a 2000, I think, page 

19 document. 

20 MS. BEACH: Let me get you the number for 

21 it. 

22 DR. ULSH: That certainly describes that 

23 situation. I would also refer you to our 

24 interviews with Ms. Brackett and Ms. Kirkwood 

25 who are intimately familiar with that whole 
225

1 situation. To briefly summarize, and I -- 

2 Feel free to fill in. 

3 There’s a number of reasons why we 

4 don’t believe that the -- 

5 MR. STEWART: Before you go on, this is not 

6 an O drive issue. It’s been on the O drive. 

7 There are some DOE documentation, a record 

8 transfer decision, making documents on what 

9 went where. Why these boxes were pulled aside 

10 and sent to Los Alamos to be buried. And in 

11 those decision-making documents it explains 

12 what our belief is that there are other 

13 documents that replicate or duplicate the 

14 information that has been buried. 

15 DR. ULSH: Right, and I know that those were 

16 presented to the Board. I don’t know whether 

17 they are -- 

18 MR. STEWART: They were presented to the 

19 Board. I don’t remember which meeting it was, 

20 but we can resurrect those documents. And 

21 that’s the basis of our position that we have 

22 not lost anything here because we can 

23 reproduce other sources. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Isn’t there an index or 

25 something that was in the other boxes? 
226

1 MR. STEWART: It included an index of all of 

2 the records that were so contaminated and not 

3 scanned or put to CD. 

4 DR. ULSH: Just going back to first 

5 principles there’s no reason to assume that 

6 the types of data that we use in dose 

7 reconstruction, so we’re talking film and TLD 

8 results, bioassay results would have been 

9 included in this records collection because 

10 it’s a classified records collection. It’s 

11 not dosimetry records. And that was confirmed 

12 by -- I guess now that she works for ORAU I 

13 can say -- Cheryl Kirkwood, if that was the 

14 case. 

15 So you wouldn’t expect to find primary 

16 dosimetry records in that collection in the 

17 first place. And then it was sent down to Los 

18 Alamos. This was right around the time MJW 

19 was doing their pre-’89 dose reconstruction, 

20 and Liz and I don’t know, a few others, Liz 

21 and one other person went down just to make 

22 sure that there wasn’t anything in that 

23 collection that they would need for their dose 

24 reconstruction process. And she identified a 

25 number of boxes that required further 
227

1 checking, pulled those back and I don’t know. 

2 I’m a little unclear what happened after that. 

3 MS. BRACKETT: To be honest I’m a little 

4 unclear, too. I’ve gone back and read the 

5 notes from the time, but we weren’t doing that 

6 in conjunction with Joe sending anything, I 

7 don’t remember. At the time we knew that they 

8 had just been sent to Mound to identify boxes 

9 that might be useful. 

10 On our trip there we did not look at 

11 very many. I think we looked at seven boxes. 

12 Because we were supposed to go for a week, but 

13 then Los Alamos didn’t want us there, and we 

14 ended up spending a day, and there were very 

15 strict requirements for coverage. And so we 

16 ended up not having a lot of time. And so 

17 after that we looked at several boxes that 

18 looked like they would have bioassay data in 

19 them. And we found some bioassay data. 

20 When we got it back, it turned out 

21 that some of it was duplicated. It was the 

22 original logbooks, but there were cards that 

23 had that same data. They did fill a few gaps. 

24 We found I think a handful that were missing, 

25 you know, they were from the ’40s for 
228

1 polonium, nothing other than that. 

2 And then there was the identification 

3 of a larger number of boxes, and those were 

4 returned. There were 43 I believe is what it 

5 said. Those got returned to Mound later on. 

6 And those were all reviewed. Although to be 

7 honest as I told them in my interview, my 

8 memory is not that good. 

9 I really don’t recall what we might 

10 have found there or why the particular boxes 

11 were identified. What I do recall though is 

12 that for the large part we found that we had 

13 already looked at these logbooks in microfilm 

14 form. That they were still in existence 

15 onsite but just in a different format. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it important to note 

17 for the working group, for the full Board, for 

18 SC&A and members of the public that under the 

19 moratorium that DOE established on destruction 

20 of records each time one of the sites comes 

21 forward and says here’s a series of records 

22 that we are proposing to destroy, they turn 

23 around to us and ask us if there’s any 

24 epidemiologic or compensation interest in 

25 retaining those records. In fact, today some 
229

1 of the, you’ve seen me busy on my Blackberry. 

2 I’ve been dealing with two of these requests 

3 right before me today on should we throw away 

4 records or not. And so we look at those very 

5 carefully when asked to do so. 

6 MS. BEACH: So we never did get back to on 

7 what you suggested, the records transfer 

8 information decision. Can we have somebody 

9 put that on the O drive so it’s -- 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s on there. 

11 MS. BEACH: It is on there. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s on there. I think we 

13 have looked at that. And I think the only 

14 question, and this gets to –- that’s why I’m 

15 saying I kind of conflated this one with the 

16 previous one because it gets to whether the 

17 work group wants any validation of the 

18 transfer of some of this information or not. 

19 And the information is strong in some 

20 respects, but it’s the issue of whether or not 

21 the records are complete. It gets to the 

22 completeness question. 

23 I don’t have a good answer for it, but 

24 I think this notion of what’s a measured 

25 response to establishing the reliability of 
230

1 the data is an ongoing question that we’ve 

2 grappled with from site to site to site. And 

3 we kind of indicate that Rocky’s is extreme. 

4 And I believe that was an extreme, but what is 

5 that middle road that allows the work group 

6 and the Board to feel that the database is 

7 reliable including the records that were 

8 implicated in that situation at Los Alamos. 

9 And that measured response I think is 

10 what we’re trying to grapple with. And I’m 

11 quite comfortable waiting, I think, to hear 

12 from Brant and NIOSH as far as strategy but 

13 then trying to weigh that. I think it’s a 

14 similar issue we’re going to have at many 

15 sites where you don’t have necessarily an 

16 alleged deficiency or gap per se, but still 

17 there may be some questions about how reliable 

18 is the data going into the dose reconstruction 

19 and being able to put the Board in position to 

20 independently answer that question. 

21 And in this case I feel that there’s 

22 been a fair amount of corroboration. We 

23 talked to Liz about it, and ten years is a 

24 long time to remember those details. I can’t 

25 remember back in those days much either. So 
231

1 the question is, is there a way, and I think 

2 the DOE is one way. We’re going to go to OSTI 

3 as another way. I feel confident we can 

4 probably corroborate if the work group, sort 

5 of the judgment on the reliability, for 

6 example, this issue. 

7 The other issue I think we would want 

8 to wait and see what comes out of the thing 

9 that Brant’s putting together. But I think in 

10 general all these issues we’re trying to come 

11 up with whatever the measured response would 

12 be that would give sufficient confidence that 

13 the database can be relied upon. And I’m open 

14 to different approaches on that, having lived 

15 through some of the other approaches. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Well, on this particular issue, 

17 Joe, were you asking whether or not there 

18 might have been some records that we don’t 

19 have that are in there in the other boxes that 

20 didn’t get in. What is being asked -- 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the premise is, you 

22 know, I think Liz touched on it that the 

23 notion was were the relevant records scanned, 

24 in other words, recovered from the boxes that 

25 would be, whether it be bioassay operation 
232

1 information, not necessarily everything that 

2 was there. A lot of it was not particularly 

3 relevant. And is there a way without 

4 prejudging it that you could sample to come up 

5 with that information or not. Or, as Larry’s 

6 suggesting, if you have enough corroborating 

7 references to this information, you know, it 

8 was scanned and here’s what was scanned, and 

9 here’s what came out of it. Or here’s -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Or here’s, they still exist 

11 elsewhere. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: -- they exist elsewhere, 

13 then I think that could be a way forward on 

14 that. I guess the way we wanted to couch this 

15 was you could sample. You could do something 

16 to verify. The verification I think is 

17 something that we’d like to provide the work 

18 group just so that question can be answered in 

19 the end. Whether it’s this issue or the other 

20 issues that the database itself is, has been 

21 looked at and is reliable. 

22 Perhaps on this one, even though it’s 

23 a not the same specific issue as the other 

24 data completeness, integrity issues, if the 

25 gold standard is the DOE transfer 
233

1 documentation, perhaps that would be one way 

2 to establish that this is probably going to be 

3 the basis for judging the reliability as it 

4 stands now for this question of the boxes. 

5 I’m just thinking out loud that that might be 

6 the path forward to -- 

7 DR. ULSH: That’s certainly one piece of 

8 important information. But I would also 

9 encourage you to, well, when you talk to Liz, 

10 look at her interview with Cheryl Kirkwood as 

11 well on this topic, and then ^ those three 

12 documents. Those together form the set of 

13 documents and interviews that we’ve used to 

14 address this issue. 

15 MS. JESSEN: I think you’ll find that ^ 

16 document pretty thorough. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: How far does 13 go to be, to 

18 relating to database reliability though? 

19 That’s not clear to me. Do we have any sense 

20 of that? I mean -- 

21 DR. ZIEMER: If the issue is, were records 

22 destroyed that we don’t have independently, 

23 I’m not sure you’ll ever quite answer that. 

24 But -- 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: I’m not aware if these records 
234

1 ever were a part of what was assembled into a 

2 database. That’s the question I’m raising. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, the logbooks, for 

4 example, would not have gone to the database, 

5 but they would have been mined, I would 

6 assume, for bioassay information that would 

7 have been perhaps -- 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: On cards probably. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: So the scanned logbooks are 

10 essentially the only information that has been 

11 saved from all that file. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s one thing to ask the 

13 question have we lost something here that’s 

14 critical for dose reconstruction, and it’s 

15 another question to say did something happen 

16 in these set of records that confounded the 

17 reliability of the database. And maybe both 

18 questions are appropriate, maybe not. I don’t 

19 know. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: Well, when we went looking, I 

21 think the reason we looked was because for 

22 polonium, we were the ones who created the 

23 database. And we noticed -- and people were 

24 pretty routinely sampled weekly. It was 

25 pretty constant for a number of years. And we 
235

1 could look and see that there seemed to be 

2 some gaps maybe months at a time here and 

3 there. And we said, well, maybe there’s some 

4 data missing and that was when we started 

5 looking at other records. And we did retrieve 

6 a few logbooks that filled in those gaps. And 

7 so I think that we are relatively confident 

8 that we have, that we did retrieve all of the 

9 polonium records because, like I said, you 

10 could, I think one of the final reports 

11 addresses that that said there were gaps here, 

12 and we found the data that went there. We 

13 didn’t identify gaps for any other time, and 

14 those were from the ‘40s. We didn’t find 

15 anything from really later times that we 

16 didn’t already have, so very old data. 

17 One thing I should point out is that 

18 when we were looking at the records, we were 

19 strictly focused on internal dosimetry. So we 

20 would not have looked, we wouldn’t have 

21 identified any external dosimetry records as 

22 part of that. But I think we only found a few 

23 that we didn’t have anywhere else, and they 

24 did fill in some gaps. And that was having 

25 through looked at lists of what were in the 
236

1 boxes and saying okay, likely in these boxes. 

2 And we did find what we were looking for in 

3 those boxes. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, we haven’t gotten to 

5 the scanned logbooks. I guess this 

6 information sits in the records file at Mound. 

7 We haven’t done any data retrieval there at 

8 all yet. So there’s at least some way of 

9 examining that and adding that to, I think, 

10 some of this corroboration as to what was 

11 pulled and what it actually was. We have 

12 descriptions but we actually haven’t seen the 

13 specific pieces of information. I assume that 

14 those scanned documents are in the, I assume 

15 they’re not classified, and they were in the 

16 repository. I think they are. 

17 DR. ULSH: I think they’re in OSTI. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, and we’re going to 

19 OSTI, too. So I guess I would say we have a, 

20 we certainly have a concern, but I think maybe 

21 we’re talking a little bit more data review, 

22 document review and not coming to any 

23 conclusion as much as trying to find a path 

24 forward as to how one could perhaps provide 

25 some validation, whether by using these 
237

1 various pieces of information or looking at 

2 all the records at OSTI, but just coming to an 

3 aggregate that we can offer the work group and 

4 say that given all these sources we feel 

5 pretty confident on the reliability of this 

6 information per se. 

7 MS. BEACH: Hopefully, we’ll get to that 

8 point. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, this is 

10 early; this is early. But, yeah, so we’ll 

11 follow that course with this particular piece, 

12 and we’ll have to come back and advise the 

13 work group on where that is. 

14 DR. ULSH: Nineteen? Is that where we are? 

15 MS. BEACH: Yeah. I think we actually got 

16 through it. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Twenty. 

18 MATRIX ISSUE TWENTY: AMBIENT ENVIRONMENTAL INTERNAL 

19 RADIATION DOSE CONTRIBUTION

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, on the original 

21 matrix, which has lost its headers, there used 

22 to be a header right here that said that 

23 everything above the line we thought was a -- 

24 I forget the term now -- 

25 MS. BEACH: Potential SEC -- it’s in small 
238

1 print. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, the print has 

3 changed. It was about ten inches high before. 

4 So these are ones that we have more 

5 questions with how the phraseology was in the 

6 ER. And I guess we had one of these former 

7 Mound environmental folk who raised questions 

8 about the comment about the environmental 

9 ambient contamination. So that, I think, is 

10 less an SEC issue and more of leaning towards 

11 a site profile question as to whether the 

12 ambient environmental sources would have been 

13 contributors or not. 

14 And I think what we’re saying there is 

15 we feel this number of sources that would have 

16 been contributors -- certainly the radon was 

17 what we talked about today, but there’s other 

18 sources as well. But I think we would offer 

19 that as more -- since we’re drawing a line of 

20 sorts -- more the commentary maybe with a site 

21 profile context about the contribution of 

22 environmental sources, onsite environmental 

23 sources. 

24 DR. ULSH: Yeah, I mean, you might be 

25 talking semantics here in terms of our 
239

1 statement. I mean, at Mound we do just like 

2 we do at other sites. We do assign a greater 

3 than zero ambient environmental dose, and we 

4 do that at Mound, too. 

5 But when we say that they generally 

6 didn’t experience site-wide ambient 

7 contamination, I wouldn’t be opposed to 

8 removing that statement. But the examples 

9 that you’ve got here, the contaminated canal, 

10 that was offsite and that was contaminated 

11 sediments which workers were not routinely 

12 exposed to. So that’s not an example of site13 wide contamination. 

14 The leaking storage drums I assume 

15 relate to the Thorium-232. We’ve already 

16 talked about that, that that was one area, the 

17 southern part of the site, remote again, not 

18 site wide. The leaking waste lines were 

19 underground so that’s not site wide. Radon, 

20 we need to talk about radon. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Now on the underground pipe 

22 I think there was an event. I can’t recall, 

23 it was a D&D. They were working on the pipe 

24 and were exposed or something. I seem to 

25 recall that being a -- 
240

1 DR. ULSH: Yeah, they dug it up to remediate 

2 it. 

3 MR. STEWART: Several people. 

4 DR. ULSH: But again, that’s localized. 

5 It’s not site wide. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Without getting into trying 

7 to come up with a list to substantiate the 

8 comment, I think the concern was that there 

9 were ambient sources that already factored in. 

10 I don’t think you’re disagreeing with that. 

11 It’s just that it wasn’t clear from this 

12 whether it was going to be not addressed. I 

13 think what you’re saying is it’s going to be 

14 addressed. That’s one reason I put it down 

15 below the line. Seeing the comment I just 

16 wanted to clarify what your intent there was. 

17 DR. ULSH: Now there was one thing here in 

18 SC&A’s statement. It says given that the 

19 officially estimated source terms for air 

20 emissions at other DOE sites have been shown 

21 to be incorrect in the past, often in the 

22 direction of significant underestimation by 

23 independent investigations, we wouldn’t 

24 necessarily posit that as a given without 

25 knowing the specifics that you’re referring 
241

1 to. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, well, we can provide 

3 examples, but I’m not sure it changes, but 

4 we’ll go ahead and provide the examples just 

5 to expand that a little bit. 

6 DR. ULSH: I agree with you. I think that 

7 this should be included in dose 

8 reconstructions, and it is at Mound. So like 

9 I said, I’m not so wedded to this comment that 

10 it causes heartburn for anybody if you would 

11 take it out. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: But you’re saying it’s not 

13 necessarily the same value for each part of 

14 the site; and therefore, it’s not a site-wide 

15 value. Or are you -- 

16 DR. ULSH: No, we do have -- 

17 DR. ZIEMER: -- you are going to assign a 

18 site-wide value for ambient -- 

19 MR. STEWART: We’ll take the maximum value. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Whatever it turns out to be. 

21 MR. STEWART: Yes. Typically. We have the 

22 provision to scale those back if we know a 

23 particular work location, but we rarely do it. 

24 I don’t know if we’ve ever done it. 

25 Typically, would be in a minimizing case. 
242

1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that’s all we have. 

2 DR. ULSH: Only one we agree. 

3 Investigation’s ongoing. 

4 MS. BEACH: How’s that going by the way? 

5 DR. ULSH: That’s another one of those 2000 

6 pagers so we’re plowing our way through that 

7 as well. Yeah, maybe I should wait until I’ve 

8 -- 

9 MS. BEACH: I think that’s a good idea. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: To be done. 

11 MS. BEACH: Does anybody have anything 

12 further? 

13 DR. ULSH: Actually, I’ve got something to 

14 just mention. 

15 Joe, I know I told you about this. I 

16 hope I told you about this, but we have been 

17 working, the ORAU team and NIOSH ^ Museum 

18 Association to access their collection of the 

19 MLM reports. It’s been represented to us that 

20 they represent about 85 percent of all of the 

21 MLM reports. 

22 Just for those of you who don’t know, 

23 like most national labs, I think, Mound 

24 documented pretty much the results of all 

25 their research in these technical reports. 
243

1 These are MLM reports. I’m not sure what the 

2 acronym stands for. So we’re in the process 

3 of working with the Museum Association to 

4 first create an index of that collection, 

5 which once that’s completed, we will share it 

6 with SC&A and the working group. 

7 And if you will let us know which ones 

8 you want us to go retrieve, we can go to the 

9 Museum Association and copy those, capture 

10 them. And that effort is ongoing. We 

11 estimate it will take about maybe a month to 

12 index that collection. It’s quite large. But 

13 that should help us. 

14 I mean, I know that like a lot of 

15 folks, DOE is facing some resource 

16 limitations. So to the extent that we can 

17 lighten the load on what we ask for from them 

18 by getting it through the Museum Association, 

19 that might be helpful to all involved. So 

20 we’ll get that to you as soon as the index is 

21 complete. 

22 MS. BEACH: Can you give us enough time to 

23 be able to give you a list of what we’d like 

24 to have also? 

25 DR. ULSH: Yes. 
244

1 MS. BEACH: Because I know there was a 

2 little glitch on the last time you retrieved 

3 records. Or SC&A didn’t have enough time to 

4 give you their list of four boxes. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That was sort of a train 

6 passing at the same time that we were 

7 beginning to think about how to coordinate it. 

8 I guess I would comment that we’re more than 

9 likely going to need to do a data review or 

10 document review at the Dayton Center at some 

11 point, maybe at the end of ^ early May. And 

12 we’ll share pretty much what you have 

13 essentially already, but we may augment that a 

14 little bit and go offsite with the 

15 understanding that, again, if there’s anything 

16 to withdraw for you, we’ll go ahead and do 

17 that. 

18 But that won’t happen for awhile. I 

19 think the last time I was there, they were, I 

20 think they had plenty of visitors and weren’t 

21 looking for visitors for at least another 

22 month and a half. So I have a feeling that 

23 we’ll probably get there sometime in May. 

24 DR. ULSH: We’re talking about three 

25 separate things. One is the Museum 
245

1 Association. There won’t be really any time 

2 pressures with that. I don’t anticipate that 

3 collection going anywhere. So we’ll provide 

4 you with the index and -- 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, this is separate. 

6 DR. ULSH: -- take the time that you want 

7 with that index. 

8 Secondly, there are situations that 

9 you just mentioned about the records. These 

10 are ones that we had requested back at the end 

11 of last year, and they just came in. And this 

12 is where we’re implementing, as Joe said, the 

13 coordination-type thing. I think we’re still 

14 holding those boxes. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: We just missed that. We 

16 had sent them back. We just missed it by a 

17 day or so. So again, it wasn’t the building 

18 specific. I can’t remember the building, but 

19 it wasn’t those boxes. It was the rad boxes 

20 that were relevant. But we’ll probably go 

21 back in when they’re ready to host us again 

22 and take a look. 

23 DR. ULSH: Anyway, I just wanted to let you 

24 know that was going on. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Don’t forget, if they say they 
246

1 have no money to support your visit, let me 

2 know. Because that’s not supposed to be 

3 happening right now. And for your OSTI visit 

4 please don’t pay for any documents down there. 

5 They should provide those. That’s their 

6 responsibility. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: What we’re going to try to 

8 do with OSTI is in spring there’s going to be 

9 an Oak Ridge visit, and we’re going to try to 

10 dovetail that visit and also look in OSTI. 

11 And I’m sure that we’ll again share what we’re 

12 going to ask OSTI for in case there’s anything 

13 from that file that you would want to add 

14 onto. I think that’s going to happen toward 

15 the end of April. I’m not sure. We just 

16 talked a little bit about it. So a couple 

17 things in the works on that. Anyway. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: I just had one other question. 

19 You know, we keep falling back in the lawsuit 

20 that you guys got involved with. Is that part 

21 of the CEP issue that come up with those 

22 bioassays? Was that totally different? 

23 MS. BEACH: That’s a separate issue. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: You said in this that any data 

25 that CEP had provided, bioassay or so forth, 
247

1 you basically ignored? 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: I said that. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: You said that. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: I said we’d look at it in the 

5 time frame when we know that CEP data was 

6 corrupt. I’m not sure that we can say all CEP 

7 data is corrupt. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: I just, I know this is -- 

9 MS. BEACH: That’s the stance that we’re 

10 taking though. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, that it’s all corrupt? 

12 MS. BEACH: Yes. That’s what I was told. 

13 DR. ULSH: That was the CEP data -- sorry -- 

14 the CEP Laboratory was involved in the 

15 actinium situation in the early ‘90s, the 

16 Price-Anderson Act. That was one of the labs 

17 that they sent the samples to -- I think that 

18 was the problem -- which were determined to be 

19 unreliable. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: I say what I say because we’ve 

21 recently run into some new CEP data that we’d 

22 have -- Stu would know this. I don’t know. 

23 And we raised the question is this considered 

24 corrupt or not. And once we looked at it we 

25 said yes. But we had heretofore recognized 
248

1 CEP data attributed to that site. 

2 MS. BEACH: And is it fair to ask for a 

3 report on the CEP data and what years are 

4 corrupt, not corrupt? Because I know this 

5 came up a couple of meetings ago, and it’s 

6 going to come up for NUMEC and now -- 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: All of NUMEC. 

8 MS. BEACH: Right, well, I guess I would 

9 just like something real standard if that’s 

10 possible. I don’t know, Larry, if it is. 

11 That’s why I asked if it was fair to ask. 

12 MS. BRACKETT: I mean, it’s basically all 

13 CEP data where we are not using any CEP data, 

14 and they operated from the ‘70s to the ‘90s. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Now this is maybe where we’re 

16 going to take care of it, the Board finding 

17 out how many sites this actually affected 

18 because we’re seeing bits and pieces of it 

19 coming along. 

20 MS. BRACKETT: I don’t think that we know 

21 that because there are some facilities used 

22 them as just a minor part and they were one of 

23 several labs that were used at a time. And we 

24 seem to keep coming across data that is from 

25 CEP. It’s not, I don’t think it’s a large 
249

1 issue for most of the large DOE facilities. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: A-W-E’s that had other work 

3 for AEC or DOE, Department of Defense work. 

4 That’s what CEP was primarily supporting. 

5 MS. BRACKETT: At Mound it was only 30 

6 samples. That’s all that they ever sent to 

7 CEP. 

8 MS. BEACH: And those are totally discounted 

9 at this time. 

10 MS. BRACKETT: Right. 

11 DR. ULSH: The site ^. 

12 MS. BRACKETT: Right. Because the site at 

13 the time they sent them it was just before it 

14 all came out that there were problems, and so 

15 they were aware at the time that shortly after 

16 getting it done that it was a problem. 

17 MS. BEACH: NIOSH, anything else? 

18 DR. ULSH: No. 

19 MS. BEACH: SC&A? Joe? 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think that’s it. 

21 MS. BEACH: The working group? 

22 Deb, you’ve been so quiet. Do you 

23 have anything you want to ask since we have a 

24 minute? 

25 (no response) 
250

1 MS. BEACH: And we did talk about notes. 

2 You’re going to send notes to me. I’m going 

3 to share them with Joe, and then we’ll get out 

4 a copy to the entire work group. 

5 Thank you. 

6 (Whereupon, the working group meeting was 

7 adjourned at 3:15 p.m.) 

8 
251

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of April 1, 

2008; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

8th day of July, 2008. 

___________________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102