NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

United States of America

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

126th Meeting

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

The meeting convened at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time at 

the Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach & Marina, 300 

North Harbor Drive, Redondo Beach, California, Ted 

Katz, Designated Federal Official, presiding.
2 

Present: 

Henry Anderson, Member*

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

R. William Field, Member*

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member* 

Phillip Schofield, Member*

Loretta R. Valerio, Member* 

Paul L. Ziemer, Member*

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Registered And/Or Public Comment Participants: 

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Barton, Bob, SC&A

Barrie, Terrie*

Blaze, D'Lanie

Burgos, Zaida, NIOSH

Calhoun, Grady, DCAS

Crawford, Chris, DOL*

Domina, Kirk

Fitzgerald, Joe, SC&A

Frowiss, Jr., AL

Frowiss, Sr., AL*

Hinnefeld, Stu, DCAS

Howard, John, NIOSH

Hughes, Lara, DCAS

Jacquez-Ortiz, Michele*

Jerison, Deb

Lewis, Greg, DOE

Lin Naylor, Jenny, HHS

Lobaugh, Megan, DCAS

Mcfee, Matt, DCAS

Neton, Jim, DCAS

Pearson, Tiffany

Ringen, Knut*

Rutherford, Lavon, DCAS

Stiver, John, SC&A
3 

Welsh, Laura

Worthington, Patricia, DOE

*present via telephone
4 

Contents

United States of America Centers for Disease 

Control National Institute for Occupational Safety 

and Health Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health 126th Meeting Wednesday, December 12, 

2018 1

Welcome 5

NIOSH Program Update 8

DOL Program Update 17

DOE Program Update 21

Carborundum Company Profile Review 35

Y-12 Plant SEC Petition 54

SEC Update 70

Board Work Session 74

Santa Susana Field Laboratory SEC Petition 

#235 94

De Soto Avenue Facility SEC Petition #246

108

Public Comment 152

Adjourn 165
5 

Proceedings

(8:30 a.m.) 

Welcome

Mr. Katz: So, welcome, everybody. This is the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. It's 

our annual December meeting. We're meeting today 

and tomorrow. And just some preliminaries before I 

get into roll call and other matters. Everyone in the 

room is familiar, so I probably don't need to say 

certain things for you folks.

For folks on the phone who are with us, there's a 

public comment session, most importantly the public 

comment session that begins at 5:00 p.m. here 

California time, Western time, Pacific time. And so if 

you plan to make public comment, as usual we will 

have public comment from folks in the room first, and 

dealing with the California sites first, that we have 

two California SEC petitions we'll be addressing 

today.

But after that, we will go on two other subjects, and 

so folks on the phone, please we don't know how long 

that will go, the California matters and the matters in 

the room. But whenever that ends, we'll go right into 

other public comments from folks on the phone. So 

please be on at five, even though you're probably not 

going to be commenting quite at five. It's important.

And also, the agenda and the materials for today's 

meeting, those are all -- for folks on the phone again, 

those are all on the NIOSH website. They're on this 

program's portion of the website. If you go to 

Schedule of Meetings, which is a button you can hit 

there, today's date, you pull up that calendar of 

today's date and it will have all of the presentations 

for today, as well as the background reading 

materials for today and tomorrow are there for you 

to be able to follow along.

Now for the presentations, if you want, you can also 
6 

follow along. If you pull up that agenda on the 

website, it will have a Skype address for the web, and 

you can go on the web and see the -- see the 

presentation slides changed as they go here.

But either way, you have the presentation posted 

there. You can go through it on your own as people 

are, or you can follow it on the web, again with that 

agenda address. Let me also address, as I go, before 

I go through roll call, let me go address conflicts of 

interest for today, and tomorrow I'll deal with 

tomorrow's conflicts of interest.

Today there's only one agenda item for which we 

have a conflict of interest, and that's the Y-12 SEC 

Plant, I mean Y-12 Plant SEC Petition, and Dr. Lockey 

will recuse himself for that -- for that session. So 

that takes care of that. Also I guess before I do roll 

call, let me welcome -- we don't often have him here, 

but we have Dr. John Howard here, who's Director of 

NIOSH, and it's great to see him.

He's been to a number of these meetings, and John, 

would you like to greet the Board and others? Sure. 

There or there. Both should be live.

Dr. Howard: Good morning everybody. Thank you. 

Yes, it's true I don't often get to, but I happened to 

have a presentation at UCLA this morning, so I 

happen to be in the neighborhood. So I wanted to 

stop by and say hi to all of you. Thank you for all of 

your service on the Board. Not only is it statutorily 

required but it's vital to the claimants, our process of 

transparency and doing good science.

It goes without saying that 2018 has been a difficult 

year for all of us on the Board and the program, 

losing Dr. Melius like we did. I wanted to especially 

thank Dr. Anderson for stepping up, and to Ted for 

his yeoman work, keeping the Board together and 

keeping the program on track.

Finally, I wanted to wish all of you, each of you and 

to all of the NIOSH staff that works so hard on this 
7 

program happy holidays, and I hope that you have a 

very productive meeting here in La Ciudad de la 

Nuestra Reina de los Angeles, which is actually the 

formal name of LA. So thank you very much, and I'll 

be running out to UCLA. But have a great meeting.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Dr. Howard. So on to roll call, 

and I'll just do this alphabetically, so both phone and 

in the room. Dr. Anderson.

Member Anderson: I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And folks on the phone, if there are audio 

issues, please let us know. Beach?

Member Beach: Here, here.

Mr. Katz: Brad Clawson?

Member Clawson: Here.

Mr. Katz: Bill Field?

Member Field: Here.

Mr. Katz: David Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Here.

Mr. Katz: Jim Lockey?

Member Lockey: Here.

Mr. Katz: David Richardson?

Member Richardson: Here.

Mr. Katz: Gen Roessler.

Member Roessler: Here, and previously you were 

breaking up a bit, but we'll let you know again if it 

happens.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I'm breaking up, is that what you're 

saying?

Member Roessler: You were quite a bit at the 
8 

beginning of your talk, and then now it seems okay. 

But occasionally there's kind of a break.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thanks. We'll try to take care of 

that. Phil Schofield?

Member Schofield: Here.

Mr. Katz: Loretta Valerio, sorry?

Member Valerio: I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And Paul Ziemer?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. No, I wasn't expecting Paul, so we'll 

check in about him. He may join us for portions of 

this meeting. Thank you everybody. And so we have 

a quorum, which is great news, so we'll go forward. 

Let me just -- one other protocol before we get onto 

the business.

For people who are on the line, please mute your 

phones except when you're addressing the group. 

Again, for the members of the public, there's a public 

comment session at 5:00 p.m. Western time, but 

otherwise we shouldn't be hearing from members of 

the public except for Petitioners, when those petitions 

come up.

So mute your phones. If you don't have a mute 

button, press *6 to mute it, and you press *6 to take 

it off mute. Also please nobody put the call on hold 

at any point. That causes all sorts of grief, and we'll 

have to cut your line. So hang up and dial back in if 

you have to go for a piece.

Okay, and with that, I think we can go forward. The 

first item on our agenda is NIOSH Program Update. 

That's Stu Hinnefeld.

NIOSH Program Update

Mr. Hinnefeld: Good morning everyone. Is my 

microphone on? Okay. Thanks everybody. I assume 
9

most of you like me are happy to be --

Participant: Can you speak up?

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay, sorry. Happy to be some place 

warmer than my home town. It's quite a bit warmer 

here than where I live. This is my normal 

presentation of a few news items, and then a brief 

look at some statistics. Some news updates. We did 

do a few outreach activities between the August 

Board meeting and now in September.

With our outreach contractor ATL International, we 

again hosted a two-day dose reconstruction and SEC 

workshop in Cincinnati. This is for people that we 

hope will become resources for claimants. 

Largely we use our local union officials who come to 

these outreach meetings, and our hope is that they'll 

be able to provide information to the memberships 

about the program and working their way through 

the program, and answer some basic questions about 

the program. 

In October, we hosted the Third Authorized 

Representative Workshop that DOL has presented. 

At each of these workshops, we do go and present 

information about our part of the program, although 

the workshop is about both Part B and Part E. So it's 

not exclusively about our program, and the 

Department of Labor does most of the presentation, 

presents most of the material there.

The hosting in our facility worked out far better than 

I anticipated it could. We had good cooperation from 

our security folks and our IT folks, so that we could 

get computers for all the ARs, all the attendees to 

participate in the hands-on session on the SEM. So 

that went really, really well.

And then shortly after that, the Department of Labor 

hosted a stakeholders meeting in Washington, where 

they spoke to a broader, you know, not necessarily 

authorized rep but what we consider advocates, 
10 

program advocates, about the program. We did 

attend that, although we were mainly just there to 

answer questions. We didn't have a presenting role 

there.

Let's see. At the last meeting, I spoke about sort of 

the national debate that's going on about the low 

dose/no threshold dose model that we use, LNT 

essentially, and the use of a dose and dose rate effect 

in this factor. I think I mentioned at that time that 

we had just received a report from Oak Ridge Center 

for Risk Analysis, who is our -- essentially our 

contractor who keeps up with radiation risk research, 

and they proposed maybe the DDREF factor that we 

use should be calculated a little differently.

We also had comments at the time from reviewers 

that said well, you know, this might be a little 

premature to do this now, because there are other 

studies that are being done that are relevant. Our 

contractors did publish a paper in Health Physics 

Journal last summer describing their work.

And so in the interim, since I last spoke to you, I think 

I mentioned that we'd be attending some 

conferences about this. One was the Conference on 

Radiation Health, which occurs I think every other 

year in conjunction with the Radiation Research 

Society, and we went there and heard -- this has 

presentations from radiation biologists, physicians 

and there is this Council on Radiation Health was 

largely an epidemiology approach.

We also attended a meeting from -- a joint meeting 

by the Health Physics Society and the American 

Nuclear Society, which was called specifically to 

speak about is the data sufficient, should we continue

to use the linear no threshold theory or adjustments 

to it.

I think in my judgment, and probably in Dr. Neton's 

judgment as well, there is certainly no convergence 

of opinions. There tends to be an epidemiologist 

feeling that there's no particular reason to have, even 
11

to have even a DDREF and low LNT seems to be as 

good a predicter as any that you will find, and 

radiation biologists say well, based on what we 

observed there has to be a dose and dose rate effect 

in this factor.

So there doesn't -- there's certainly not, doesn't 

seem to be a consensus. A related item was that in 

the upcoming, I guess it's available, the Journal of 

Health Physics because it's online. If you're a 

member you can get the journal online, and this 

journal edition is available. 

The members of an ICRP committee who are 

addressing, you know, addressing the question of 

dose rate effectiveness factor actually wrote a paper 

I won't say criticizing, but suggesting that the paper 

that was published by our contractor early last year, 

that's saying it may be a little premature. There's 

other work going on. There are other studies that 

weren't considered. They questioned a little bit of 

the approach and the methodology. 

And so certainly the debate continues. There doesn't 

seem to be a particular consensus on whether to use 

LNT, whether to use a DDREF. If you use the DDREF, 

what should it be? 

So we felt at least justified in our go slow approach 

and not change anything at the moment. So we'll 

continue to use the risk models we have, and which 

does in fact incorporate a dose and dose rate 

effectiveness factor, essentially a distribution of 

values that are used for dose and dose rate 

effectiveness factor.

This next item, after a long fairly silent period in 

terms of significant media reports about the 

program, we did have a couple fairly recently, written 

by the Santa Fe New Mexican in conjunction with --

in cooperation with Pro Publica. 

One related to a specific claimant case and the story 

of the family of the claimant, and another one related 
12

to the SEC process, and the sort of extended process 

that's involved in arriving at a final decision when an 

SEC petition is presented.

I mention that only for general interest. I don't think 

the Board has anything to do with that, but in case 

you're interested or you see reports, we do in fact 

monitor the reports, and as does our press office and 

several other people. 

So the Pro Publica story had fairly broad, you know, 

was picked up a number of places. And so it's -- I'm 

sure a lot of people saw it. So we may have more 

attention from that or not. We'll see.

And the final item is bittersweet for some people. I 

wanted to mention a few retirements of Board 

Members or the Board Members are familiar with. 

Pete Darnell, who's been our lead on a couple of the 

sites, is retiring at the end of this month. And so he'll 

-- we are transitioning his work to other of our staff 

and we intend to fill behind that, you know, rather 

than take the attrition. We intend to fill behind that 

absence.

The next one is probably the worst one for the sake 

of the program, and that's that Jim Neton is retiring 

at the end of April. So I convinced him that since 

he's retiring in April, he should at least come to one 

last Board meeting. So he will come to the April 

Board meeting. 

So Jim is retiring in April, and in his case we are 

pursuing an approach of hiring an understudy in a 

competitive bid on the job, the way you do all federal 

hires, and hire an understudy for the last maybe 

three months who would, you know, essentially be 

mentored by Jim for that period.

Jim, we might -- it might be a possibility to bring Jim 

back as a contractor for issues when we need as well. 

He's amenable to that, and I think we have a vehicle 

for doing that. And then the final one is that I intend 

to retire next year, and I intend to retire in June, at 
13 

the end of June.

I'm still waffling on that date a little bit. I'm pretty 

firm on the end of June, but I'm waffling on that a 

little bit. So but I do intend to retire next year, and 

that is at -- because of my own tiredness and my 

wife's urging. So anyway, that's -- that will 

essentially change the face of DCAS quite a lot. 

There are a number of people who can do what I do; 

there are not very many people who can do what Jim 

does.

So this will be an adapting, you know, a time for 

adaptation and learning, and now these understudy 

positions are CDC-only positions. They're not 

advertised to the public. So I suspect that there will 

be some continuity, and I think the people most 

qualified probably to win these jobs in this bidding 

are probably already working in the program so -- or 

have at least experience in the program.

So I think they -- I'm thinking there will not be a 

major upset, but we'll see as we go forward. Okay. 

Any questions on anything I've mentioned so far?

Member Kotelchuck: Well, can you -- is my mic on? 

Yeah. 

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Member Kotelchuck: Is there any place that Board 

Members can access the media reports? I know you 

keep track of them.

Mr. Hinnefeld: I have them. I can send them to the 

Board or Ted, you could send them, right?

Mr. Katz: Yeah. We'll circulate a link to the reports. 

Member Kotelchuck: Right, and I think that's a good 

idea.

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.
14

Mr. Katz: We'll do that. Any other questions from 

Board Members in the room, or questions from Board 

Members on the line?

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay.

Member Anderson: Congratulations --

Mr. Katz: Andy, sorry?

Member Anderson: Yeah. I was just saying 

congratulations to the retirees. Maybe have a little 

party for them before this happens.

Mr. Katz: We need a roast at the next Board 

meeting, I think, for the two.

Member Anderson: Absolutely, yes.

Mr. Hinnefeld: I didn't announce it for those 

purposes. I announced it, rather than just leave 

people cold.

Member Anderson: Yeah. I saw online already 

you've got a list of gifts.

Mr. Hinnefeld: I thought it would be say a little 

impolite at the end of the next meeting to say goodbye forever.

Member Anderson: Exactly.

Mr. Hinnefeld: So I didn't announce it with the 

expectation there would be anything.

Member Anderson: Well, we'll certainly miss you.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I think Stu is a little bit understated 

in saying that anybody can do his job, because I don't 

think that's true. Both will be sorely missed.

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay. Well, thank you all. Thank 

you, Ted, for that.

Member Richardson: Stu, you talked about the idea 

of somebody shadowing Jim, and is the same process 
15

in mind for you?

Mr. Hinnefeld: Yeah, we're planning to do that, 

planning to do that for me as well.

Mr. Katz: Okay then. Well thank you, Stu.

Mr. Hinnefeld: And then the statistics, I'll go through 

these relatively quick. These numbers change by 

about 500 every time I'm up here it seems. So 

there's -- I don't know there's a lot to say, the same 

types of things, the number of cases that we've 

submitted and the number goal for a couple of 

different reasons.

Essentially our current active cases and the 

categories they fall into. Always we have a number 

of cases where the initial draft is in the hands of the 

claimant, and we're waiting for the OCAS-1 to 

proceed with the final dose reconstruction. 

Touchy screen. The percentages stay pretty close to 

27-28 percent, the percentage that are successful by 

dose reconstruction. That's a little lower than it was 

a number of years ago, and I think probably the 

reason is the addition of more SECs in those years 

has meant that some of the cancers that we tend to 

be successful with in dose reconstruction are now 

paid through the SEC, and so we don't get those, 

things like lung cancer and leukemia.

So I think that's why there's been this very slight 

reduction in the percentage over the years. 

This is the DOE records request statistics. By our 

count, the cases outstanding, you know. We could 

have sent that to them last week, you know. It 

doesn't particularly mean anything that a claim is 

outstanding. They have a certain period of time 

which I think is 60 days that they try to respond as 

quickly as they can.

When they get to 60 days, we put them in another 

category of being somewhat late, and there are only 

two in that category. So this is -- this response is 
16

really good. It's been really good in my last two 

reports, and that's -- there can be a number of 

reasons for that and it's always a site-specific thing. 

These were provided by sites.

So a summary of the first 20,000. Again, this doesn't 

change a lot because we get a lot of reworks back, 

and so we tend to still have claims in our possession 

in the first 20,000. When I get this slide and I see 

that there are initial cases in the first 20,000 that are 

not -- that we're working on now, I always look up 

and see what happened. Why are we having initial 

cases because we shouldn't from the first 20,000.

One of these was closed in 2008. It was admin closed 

because we didn't get an OCAS-1, and in 2018, it was 

reactivated. I think what happened was the claimant 

was diagnosed with another cancer, and so decided 

to go back into the process. So that's one of them. 

The other one was pulled by DOL in 2008 with the 

comment there was no known survivor. In the 

meantime, it appears that they have developed a 

survivor and it was reactivated again in 2018. So 

those two, even though they are called initial because 

we never sent a final dose reconstruction to DOL, 

those are actually relatively new claims in terms of 

our working on them. They came in this year.

Okay. That's it. Are there any questions about this 

or any other part of what I've presented today? 

Mr. Katz: So I see no questions from folks in the 

room. How about Board Members on the line?

Member Valerio: None here, Ted.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thank you, Stu. And next up we 

have Department of Labor. 

Mr. Hinnefeld: Okay. I'll be running the slides for 

Chris again.

Mr. Katz: So Chris Crawford, are you on the line?
17 

Mr. Crawford: Yes, good morning.

Mr. Katz: Good morning. We're ready to go. Thank 

you.

DOL Program Update

Mr. Crawford: Great. Just to comment, Stu's 

microphone is much lower in volume than say yours, 

Ted, for those of us on the line, I think.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. We'll 

try to deal with that while you're presenting.

Mr. Crawford: Great.

Mr. Katz: Thank you.

Mr. Crawford: Thanks in advance, Stu for handling 

the slides again. Okay. Are we -- let me know when 

the first slide is available, Stu.

Mr. Hinnefeld: Yeah, they're there. They're there, 

Chris.

Mr. Crawford: Great. Then we'll proceed to the 

second slide. These are the numbers for 

compensation paid. We see that Part B 

compensation in total is $6.7 billion at this point. Part 

E compensation, $4.6 billion, and medical bills, $4.5 

billion. Total, $15.8 billion program to date, with 

204,270 cases filed.

Next slide. We see here Part B cancer cases with a 

final decision to accept. Here we have 10,721 

accepted dose reconstruction cases, representing 

$1.6 billion in compensation. We have a further 

26,834 SEC cases, representing $4 billion in 

compensation. Then cases that are accepted on --

both on SEC status and on having a dose 

reconstruction with a Probability of Causation above 

50 percent, 1,058 such cases, representing $159 

million in compensation.

The totals for all accepted SEC, dose reconstruction 
18

cases, and combined, 38,613 cases at $5.8 billion of 

compensation. 

Next slide. Our figures show 50,684 cases were 

referred to NIOSH for dose reconstruction, of which 

48,912 cases were returned to DOL from NIOSH. 

42,515 cases had a dose reconstruction, and 6,397 

were withdrawn from NIOSH with no dose 

reconstruction, probably an SEC acceptance or no 

survivors, something like that. And then we show 

1,772 cases currently at NIOSH.

Next slide, please. Here we see Part B cases with a 

dose reconstruction and a final decision. That's 

34,013 such cases, with final approvals being 

11,809, final denials, 22,204. That's 35 percent 

approved and 65 percent denied for cases with final 

decision.

Next slide, please. Here we see Part B cases filed. 

Categories are as usual they don't change a great 

deal. We see that NIOSH received 35 percent of the 

cases for dose reconstruction. The next biggest 

category is Other, but that has to do with other parts 

of the Part B program, beryllium sensitivity, chronic 

beryllium disease, chronic silicosis. 

NIOSH got SEC cases referred to them for a dose 

reconstruction, in the amount of 12 percent of the 

total Part B cases. Then there were SEC cases that 

never went to NIOSH, and that represents 15 percent 

of cases. Then we have RECA cases, nine percent of 

total cases.

Next slide, please. Then we have all Part B cases 

with a final decision. That would include SECs and all 

other categories. That represents 100,964 cases of 

final decision under Part B, of which 53,183 were 

approved, 47,781 were denied. So that's 53 percent 

approval, 47 percent denial.

Next slide, please. Again, what I call our usual 

suspects. These are the top four sites generating 

cases under Part B. They include Nevada Test Site, 
19 

Savannah River Site, Hanford, and Rocky Flats. 

Next slide, please. This rather complex slide refers 

to the SEC petition site that will be discussed to some 

degree at this meeting. When you look at Y-12, first 

listed site, we see that there were 20,819 cases filed, 

4,988 were returned by NIOSH with a DR. We have 

9,202 final decisions, 5,445 Part B approvals, 5,990 

Part E approvals. Compensation and medical bills 

together amounted to $1.9 billion.

Area 4 Santa Susana Field Laboratory, we see 1,089 

cases have been filed. 264 cases have had a DR 

returned by NIOSH. We have 534 final decisions. We 

have 254 Part B approvals, 243 Part E approvals and 

$69 million in total compensation and medical bills.

Moving on to DeSoto Avenue facility, it would be 767 

cases filed, 226 cases returned by NIOSH with a DR, 

363 final decisions. 208 approvals, 190 Part E 

approvals, and $53 million in total compensation and 

medical bills. 

Superior Steel Company has only 52 cases filed. 35 

cases were returned with a DR by NIOSH. 48 cases 

have gotten a final decision. 19 cases approved 

under Part B, there is no Part E for an AWE site, and 

total compensation $2.9 million plus medical bills 

included.

Moving on to Metals and Controls Corporation, we 

already have 977 cases filed, 451 DRs returned by 

NIOSH, 943 final decisions, including 460 Part B 

approvals. There are no Part E approvals again, and 

total compensation and medical, $73 million.

Last on this slide, Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

We have 10,514 claims, 1,527 returned by NIOSH 

with a DR, 4,568 final decisions, 2,593 Part B 

approvals, 2,672 Part E approvals, $881 million in 

total compensation and medical bills.

Next slide, please. Then we have a Site Profile review 

coming up today for Carborundum Company. Here 
20

we have 5,334 cases filed. 1,529 cases were 

returned by NIOSH with a DR. We have 2,282 final 

decisions. We have 1,019 Part B approvals, 1,098 

Part E approvals, and we have total compensation 

and medical bills of $305 million.

Next slide, please. This slide is repeated in each 

meeting, but basically these are DEEOIC outreach 

events, including town hall meetings, traveling 

resource centers, and so forth. There are also 

quarterly medical conference calls, authorized 

representative workshops, and informational 

meetings, town hall meetings in some cases.

Next slide, please. I think we're all familiar with the 

members of the Joint Outreach Task Group and their 

function. Now go to the next slide, please. 

These are recent DEEOIC outreach events in reverse 

order, that is from newest back to oldest. There was 

one recently, an outreach event at Lynchburg, 

Virginia November 14th, of which we had 100 in 

attendance, and there were 11 new claims filed.

And then I believe Stu mentioned the same. There 

was a Cincinnati, Ohio meeting for authorized 

representatives October 16th-17th. We had 25 ARs 

in attendance. Then in September 11th and 12th, we 

had a teleconference for medical providers, and we 

have no numbers on that. Then, August 29th-30th, 

we had a meeting in Shiprock, New Mexico, another 

outreach event, 24 in attendance, no new claims, or 

none mentioned.

Then we had an August 22nd, 2018 meeting in 

Kensington, Pennsylvania, another outreach event. 

125 in attendance, 18 new claims filed. 

Next slide. This slide is not very informative. The 

TBD says it all. We are in the process of making a 

schedule for our coming year, and that will be posted 

when it's available. That concludes the slide 

presentation, and if there are any questions, I'd love 

to hear them.
21

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Do we have 

any questions from Board Members in the room for 

Chris?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: How about Board Members on the line?

Member Anderson: No, no questions.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Thanks. Thanks everyone, and 

thank you Chris for the presentation. I appreciate it. 

And we're up to DOE now, and we have first Dr. Pat 

Worthington. Welcome Pat. We're glad to see you.

(Pause.)

DOE Program Update

Dr. Worthington: Good morning. I hope that all of 

you can hear me here in the room and on the phone. 

I wanted to come to the Board meeting today, it's 

been a few meetings I've missed, and I wanted to get 

out to the Board to give you my thanks and my 

support and commitment for the work, and also to 

support Greg Lewis, who is our office director who 

works really hard on EEOICPA and former worker 

program, as well as to interface directly with our 

partners, Department of Labor and NIOSH, as we 

work together on this very important effort.

I believe that Stu started off saying that this was his 

normal presentation, so I will keep with normal 

presentation, and Greg will give some specifics as we 

go along as needed.

One of the things that we do, we view ourselves as 

being advocates for the workers, and in doing so on 

this program, we want to make sure that Labor and 

NIOSH have the information that they need, so that 

they can address the issues of the workers and make 

decisions.

Okay, Stu. We'll see if your system's going to work. 
22

There are a number of things that we want to do. 

Many years ago, we had some concerns about 

privacy information, about classified information, 

about other kinds of things creeping into the report. 

I think we worked with our partners and with people 

at Department of Energy to make sure that we had a 

secure system, and I think that we're having a lot of 

success in terms of speed and fewer or no breaches 

associated with that.

So again, we want to continue to refine that, but we 

believe it's working very well. Large scale research 

and identification of employment verification, 

exposure records, all these things were needed to be 

able to move forward, and we'll talk about some stats 

a little bit, about where we are with that in terms of 

getting information within the required period of 

time. We've been working hard on that, and I think 

that we've made a lot of progress in that effort. 

Individual records. Certainly, I think you've seen 

these numbers. You've seen these stats many times. 

We have not yet been able to predict the exact 

number, but we support our -- provide our funding 

and our efforts and our staff to support these kinds 

of numbers that we see for verification, for dose 

records and various kinds of documents.

We try to be creative in terms of our efforts to identify 

these records if they're not readily available. One of 

the things that over the years you've seen in the 

Department of Energy is that it's changing, it's 

changing in terms of contract mechanisms, the way 

that contracts are managed. 

Many years ago, you would have a single 

management and operating contractor, and you 

could go to them for various information, records and 

so forth. But in some cases now there are multiple 

contractors associated at the sites in terms of making 

information available. So we're trying to become 

even more creative in identifying our contractors and 

identifying records, and defining and redefining our 
23

subcontractors.

For DOE, it's important that we look at all contractor 

records, and sometimes that's a subcontractor or sub 

to a sub to a sub, and so sometimes it gets difficult. 

But we have organizations on the DOE side like at 

Hanford who have continued to be creative and to 

produce records and find, you know, new ways and 

new approaches for doing that. So we're asking 

Hanford to share some of those successes which they 

do across DOE, so that we can become better at all 

of the sites in terms of making the information 

available.

Volumes of records. We have some small 

documents, we have some large documents, but in 

many cases we are searching for documents, and it's 

a challenge when we make them available to NIOSH, 

for example, in terms of volumes if they're huge 

documents and so forth, and you'll hear a little bit 

from Greg about kind of some efforts that we had 

with classification reviews and so forth, and we're 

getting better with that.

We're challenged again with sort of the contracting 

mechanisms associated with that, but we continue to 

improve, and we actually do have a commitment 

internally from within our organization on the 

classifiers to help in the field, and help them move 

forward when necessary. I believe we've made some 

significant progress in that area.

The size of our records packages, certainly those 

things could vary depending upon the subject and the 

material associated with it. But we try not to let the 

size of the package, you know, interfere in making 

the information available as soon as we possibly can 

do so.

Response, 60-day goals. We worked with -- DOL was 

the lead in coming up, and we agreed with the goals 

for when we could make information available, and I 

think that when we see a 97 percent on-time 

response rate it's good, but it's not the best. So we're 
24

always looking for 100 percent on time so we can 

move on to others.

And so we've continued to work on that, and we 

always welcome feedback in terms of where we are. 

Sometimes lessons learned at one site doesn't work

at the other site, because there are different reasons 

for why documents may not be made available. But 

you hear some, see some statistics here about Idaho 

and Savannah River, and Savannah River's a success 

story. I think that was turned around, and Greg may 

mention that. 

Oak Ridge, it's always important to us what's 

happening at Oak Ridge and how well they're 

responding, because many of the records for the sites 

and the activities that we have and the claimants that 

are looking for that information, they're things that 

need to come through Oak Ridge. 

So again, it's always a challenge but also it's 

important. It's a great area for us to focus on, to 

make sure that we're getting what we need from Oak 

Ridge, and that we continue to improve in the area. 

They certainly have a heavy load to lift there. 

Do we need to go back one? 

(Off mic comment.)

Dr. Worthington: Okay, all right. Large scale 

research projects. Again, that's a big effort for us 

and we involve a number of organizations. We've 

mentioned over the years our reach back to legacy 

management. They're experts in searching for 

documents that we can't seem to locate from other 

places.

But everyone muted at this time? We're getting 

some feedback. I don't know if it's from here. 

(Pause.)

Mr. Katz: Go ahead, Pat. See if it's okay now.
25

Dr. Worthington: Here are a list of some projects 

that continue, Hanford, Savannah River, Idaho, 

Nevada, Oak Ridge, Sandia Labs. These are areas 

that we have large scale research projects that we 

put a lot of effort on trying to find these various 

documents from different sources.

Our document reviews. That's certainly an important 

area. You know, once we locate the documents well 

then what do we do? How do we carry out sort of the 

review process? I'll have Greg come up and talk a 

little bit about some activities that he's been focused 

on, and may mention a little bit more about the 

document reviews.

But we know how important it is to get the 

documents in the hands of NIOSH and Labor, so that 

they can do their job in terms of addressing the 

claimant and resolving things as quickly as possible.

Mr. Lewis: Good morning, everyone. I'm just going 

to give an update on two items we've been working 

on particularly hard since the last Board meeting. 

The first is with Savannah River, as I think some of 

you up here are aware, we've been running into some 

significant challenges with the document reviews. 

This goes back probably, oh, over a year ago that it 

kind of started. 

Basically the issue is with the manpower that we had 

doing the classification reviews at Savannah River, 

they were not able to keep up with the demand that 

was created by the NIOSH and the SC&A and 

Advisory Board, you know, reviews down there when 

you set aside documents. 

So we were slowly falling further and further behind. 

But we were still doing reviews, but the amount you 

were requesting was always a little bit more than we 

could keep up with. We identified this as a problem. 

I mean we knew it was kind of building, but we were 

wondering if we'd be able to catch up or if the 

demand would go down, it would kind of even out. 
26 

But about, oh, June of last year, we kind of realized 

that it was getting -- we were falling further and 

further behind and we didn't see it changing. So we 

worked with the site. We tried a number of different 

things. We were looking into bringing in a 

classification review where they would just do our 

work subcontracted to us. We were looking into 

retirees, they could come back. You know, at 

Hanford we have -- we're lucky enough to have that 

kind of situation, where the retirees can come in and 

do just the EEOICPA-related classification reviews, 

but there weren't really anybody at the site that was 

retired that was still in the area that had that 

expertise, and bringing in a contractor directly to us 

didn't work for a number of reasons.

We started working with the site and the upper 

management at the site, trying to explain, you know, 

what the challenge was and what our needs were. So 

they ended up hiring two new classification reviewers 

at Savannah River on the contractor side. It took 

quite a while, because one, they had to go through 

the hiring process and identify the people.

Two, they had to get them clearances, because they 

either didn't have clearances or I think one didn't 

have a clearance; the other needed -- he had it -- he 

had had a clearance in the past but needed it reupped. So we were able to get them cleared, and 

then we also, the site had to get them trained in 

terms of how to do these document reviews, 

particularly because most of the, you know, at the 

DOE sites most of the classification reviewers are 

reviewing stuff that's happening on site at that time.

So they have to be familiar with the current 

operations. The EEOICPA stuff can get tricky because 

a lot of it has to do with the operations that they 

haven't done there in years and years. So they had 

to get them trained up. So again, while all of this 

was happening we were falling further and further 

behind.

But about, I think it was November, they finally got 
27

these two guys up and -- two individuals up and 

running and working through the backlog. They've 

been doing about 5,000 pages a month and were able 

-- and I think they made a particular push. I think 

they were able to put some other staff on it that 

month of November.

So we went from, you know, there's a spreadsheet 

that comes through my office from NIOSH, and I'm 

sure the Board and the Working Group have seen it, 

that has the prioritized list of documents that are 

being requested from Savannah River. So I think 

there were maybe 12 categories on that, and in the 

last two months or so or month and a half, they've 

been able to knock that down to like only -- there's 

only six left or something like that, and they've made 

a significant dent in it.

NIOSH and the Board did adjust their request with 

one particular item which was very large. They 

pulled out segments of that to do. But based on 

what's left on the list and the rate at which we're able 

to conduct these reviews now, it looks like we should 

be through that backlog in a couple of months, you 

know, give or take, and I know it's a holiday season.

But things are -- things are moving much quicker 

now, and we believe that we've been able to resolve 

that issue or on the way to resolving it. Then the 

second issue is based on some feedback from a 

claimant advocate. We identified that there could be 

possible problems with the quality and completeness 

of the records responses for the Santa Susana Field 

Lab, that Boeing is the company that owns that 

facility and owns those records. 

So again there were some concerns raised which we 

took very seriously. So we've put together a team of 

three people from my office. We also worked with 

NIOSH, and they sent out a representative and we're 

working on the back end checking cases. Last week, 

we did an onsite review of those records, went 

through a number of cases. 
28

We haven't quite -- we haven't finalized our report, 

but there were some -- there were some issues that 

we identified. There were also some good things that 

we found there. So I just want to point that out as 

an example, you know, when concerns are raised 

about quality or any activity at our sites. We take 

those very seriously and so, you know, we went out 

there to see for ourselves and do an investigation.

Those are the two items that I was going to mention. 

I guess, Pat, I'll just go ahead and go through. 

Facility Research. I think you all know we partner 

with DOL and NIOSH when issues are raised as far as 

the covered facilities, and typically these are the 

smaller AWEs. We will go out and research those, 

and either make a determination if it's AWE or 

provide the information to DOL if necessary.

And then Stu mentioned and Chris both mentioned 

outreach. So I'll skip past that. And then I always 

mention our former worker medical screening 

program, which is again not directly related to 

EEOICPA, but certainly a lot of the same people can 

go through both programs.

We always encourage people out there if they haven't 

heard of the former worker program or haven't been 

through it, you know, it provides a free medical 

screening done by occupational medical physicians or 

run by occupational medical physicians I should say.

The results from those screenings and the letters that 

those physicians put together can be very helpful for 

any EEOICPA claims. So I always encourage people 

to pass on word about this program if you know folks 

that might be interested or eligible. So with that, I 

guess, are there questions for Dr. Worthington or 

myself?

Mr. Katz: And just before we get to Board questions, 

let me just ask one question for you, Greg. You said 

you'd report out on the Santa Susana situation. Are 

you going to report out to the person from the public 

who's raised the issues too? Is that how --
29 

Mr. Lewis: Absolutely.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thanks.

Mr. Lewis: Absolutely.

Member Beach: You stole my question.

Mr. Katz: Oh, I'm a thief, yes.

Member Beach: I can finish that. Will that report 

come to the Work Group, so the Work Group has it 

as well?

Mr. Lewis: Sure. We could send that to you as well.

Member Beach: Okay, and then Pat, I had a question 

for you on -- you briefly mentioned -- 

Mr. Katz: Speak right into the mic.

Member Beach: You briefly mentioned that Hanford 

reviewers were doing a great job, and you were 

looking at a way for them to train other reviewers. 

Can you expand on that, or is that just -- I was just 

curious if there were something in place or something 

in place, or something you were thinking about --

Dr. Worthington: They've used a lot of new 

techniques, new approaches, and typically we have 

people from other sites whenever they're going to 

Hanford, to go by and visit that site, visit the 

organization there doing the work, and to kind of 

share it on a one on one basis.

I think Greg and Hanford and others have been 

involved in annual meetings about records and record 

retrievals and things like that in terms of sharing 

lessons learned. I know from headquarters 

periodically we include information about new 

approaches from Hanford in the DOE-wide weekly 

reports going out, so that people are aware of it.

So we're looking for more and more ways, but we 

encourage the sites when they can, have their POCs 

come and visit with the ones out at Hanford, and also 
30 

different individuals from DOL side that are working 

on claims, I think, have visited with the folks at 

Hanford, and talked to them about lessons learned or 

whatever it is.

So we are looking for ways to share that, because I 

think they have been extremely successful, and I 

think it supports our overall goal and approach, that 

we don't simply say we can't find it, you know. We 

look for other ways. We listen to what workers are 

saying about the kinds of documents that existed, but 

we haven't seen those kinds of things.

So we are committed to, you know, not saying we 

don't have it, but to continue to look, you know, 

where appropriate to find these records so --

Member Beach: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Other questions from Board Members in 

the room? David.

Member Richardson: First a question about the 60, 

the 60-day goal, which was very impressive, 

reporting of 97 percent on-time response rate. And 

on that slide, you listed three sites that have nearperfect records, and I was wondering do you have a 

similar list of three sites which would be the ones of 

most concern, in terms of not having perfect records?

Mr. Lewis: Yeah, we probably do have that list. Now 

I wouldn't say it's not -- I wouldn't characterize it as 

perfect records. It's perfect, you know, it's perfect 

on-time response rates. So it doesn't mean -- just 

because they're late doesn't mean the records are 

poor. Yeah, I mean we usually try not to highlight 

those sites.

But I would also say with a 97 percent overall rate, I 

wouldn't characterize those sites as poor performers. 

They're actually, you know, I think one of the -- I 

don't have the list in front of me, but I believe one of 

the sites where we had some issues last year was Y12. 
31

But again, Y-12 is our either biggest or second 

biggest single site. It's Y-12 or Hanford are one of 

the two. So again, they weren't perfect. But you 

know, if Y-12 had had significant problems, it would 

have brought down our overall numbers much more 

than 97 percent.

In fact, last year, last fiscal year FY '17, we were at 

something like 88 percent, and that was probably our 

worst ever. One of the reasons -- there were a 

couple of reasons for that. One was we had some 

budget issues at a lot of our sites because of the way 

that the CR ended, and so a lot of our sites were kind 

of impacted with fits and starts budget-wise, but also 

Y-12 had moved their record storage facilities.

So they had to box up and palletize everything and 

send it to a different location. So that there were 

actually significant challenges with Y-12, and that 

really brought down our average. This year, Y-12 is 

one with again not perfect, but again I would think 

that they were still over 90 percent, and there's a few 

smaller sites.

I would say honestly of our 25 major sites, probably 

20 of them have similar to what you saw with those 

top three. They have, you know, less than five 

overall over 60 days, you know, or very close to zero, 

and then there are a few that have some. And then 

that kind of -- those sites change every year. It's not 

the same sites every year, and typically that's 

because of things like personnel.

You know, most of these sites -- most of these places 

other than Y-12 and Hanford and some of the big 

ones, most of these places that do the request have, 

you know, one person in medical that does, you 

know, that pulls a medical, or one person that might 

have a backup. 

But you know, when that person's out for a couple of 

weeks or if they're out on a medical or if they have a 

family issue, those are usually the kind of things that 

actually impact our numbers.
32

Member Richardson: Yeah. Could I ask you two 

more questions? Just these are very brief questions, 

I think. I'm used to thinking, it comes from a 

different perspective, but I'm used to thinking about 

time to event data as sort of being a distribution.

You've got -- your goal is to get to 100 percent, and 

we're looking at times to event. So you could 

imagine a curve which would show T naught, time 

zero being when the request was placed in, and then 

the curve that shows the function of as you -- as the 

proportion responses get to 100 percent.

You've chosen 60 days. Is that a -- is that kind of an 

internal goal you'd like to reach, 100 percent 

response by 60 days, or is there -- is that the 

administrative end of follow-up? If something 

doesn't happen after 60 days, is it no longer 

important?

Mr. Lewis: Well, I see -- I guess yeah. Our goal is 

under 60 days, and I guess what you're saying is 

once it's 61 days, well then you know, why worry 

about it? It's already over 60 days. I mean, I guess 

from a numbers perspective, that's probably true. 

But that's not how we treat the claims. You know, 

the more days over 60, the worse it is.

Member Richardson: From a claimant's perspective, 

does it -- does it go on infinitely, or is there -- will 

they wait and wait and wait, or is there an end point 

after which it's no longer relevant?

Mr. Lewis: I mean, we've responded to every -- I 

don't think there's ever been a claim where you just 

kind of, you know, we'll it's been too long; we're not 

going to get this one. At a certain point, if there's 

some real reason we're not finding it, then you know, 

we'll say well, the records aren't there. But you 

know, we've responded to every claim and, you 

know, we try to -- if it's over 60 days, you know, 

we're concerned about that and those are a priority.

It's not the other way around, where those are 
33

already done and we then ignore them. We make 

those a higher priority.

Dr. Worthington: Let me comment on that. We don't 

have a set period of time after 60 days or whatever 

it is, because we were driven by different kinds of 

things for a particular review we're doing. Maybe 

we've looked, we've passed the 60 days and we look 

at five different kinds of things that we've done in the 

past when we couldn't find things, and there's still 

some more we want to look at.

So no, it's not the specific hard line in the sand to say 

that we're done, that we're going to stop. We 

continue to look for those, especially if we have 

information or evidence or, you know, strong 

testimonies from people that, you know, these kinds 

of things did exist.

Greg didn't mention, but he has another document 

that I would call a peer to peer document, where I 

think it's on a quarterly basis you send out a report 

to all of the people in the field showing how they 

match up to each other, kind of where they are or 

whatever it is. I think that's an interesting story that 

has, you know, plots and things like that. It gives 

you an idea of what's going on and where we might 

want to target, you know, our efforts for improving 

or working closer with that particular site.

Member Richardson: Could I just ask one other 

question?

Mr. Katz: Yeah we -- but because we have to get 

going.

Member Richardson: Yeah. Well, just out of 

curiosity because we're here in California, you 

described a review of some records from Santa 

Susana, and I was just wondering about the sampling 

protocol for doing that type of review, because it's 

something we've thought about in other places.

Mr. Lewis: Well, there were kind of a number of 
34

specific concerns we were looking at. So based on 

those concerns, we sampled cases that were -- we 

felt were likely to have problems based on those 

concerns. So it wasn't really a random sample of all 

cases, you know. There were concerns about 

particular things, and so we targeted it to that. So it 

was kind of a little bit different of a thing.

But there was, you know, there were specific reasons 

why we were looking at each claim, either time period 

that we did it or time period that the person worked, 

or you know, whether there was a lot of dosimetry or 

should have been a lot of dosimetry. Things like that 

were what we targeted.

Member Richardson: And just a last, what was the 

size of the sample?

Mr. Lewis: We looked at about 20 claims.

Member Richardson: Okay.

Mr. Katz: Thank you. I don't want to shortchange 

Board Members on the phone. Do you have 

questions for Greg before we move on to the 

Carborundum presentation?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Hearing none, I think then next up 

we have a Carborundum presentation. Gen Roessler, 

who's the head of the Carborundum Work Group will 

-- this is her report. However, she is not with us in 

the room. She's doing this remotely. She's in one of 

these areas where it's hard to get in and out in the 

winter, and Stu will be handling the slides. So Gen, 

I'll let you know when Stu's ready.

Member Roessler: Okay, and I'll ask can you hear 

me okay?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, you sound clear. Thank you.
35

Carborundum Company Profile Review

Member Roessler: Good. The speakers in the room 

vary. Josie came through nicely. The speakers at 

the podium are sometimes hard to hear. Okay, I see 

the slides up, and as Ted said, I'm going to report for 

the Carborundum Work Group, and what I'm going 

to be discussing today are Site Profile issues.

I think we have plenty of time. It will take me a little 

time to get through this, but I'm sure we'll have time 

for questions. So the next slide, Stu. The Work 

Group Members are myself, Brad Clawson, and Bill 

Field, and we were all present. We had a Work Group 

meeting that we had last week, and so we're going 

to report on that meeting.

So first I'd like to give you a few reminders about the 

Carborundum Company. It was located in Niagara 

Falls, New York, AWCs, with two operational periods, 

June through September 1943, and then 1959 to 

1967. The first operational period they were 

engineering and shaping uranium fuel rods for the 

Manhattan Project, and then in the second period 

they made uranium and plutonium fuel cells.

And then there were also, you have two residual 

radiation periods, 1943 to 1958, and 1968 to 1992. 

You'll notice some years missing in there. In the 

50's, the company did some work that was not 

covered under EEOICPA. 

So on Slide 4, I want to also review a little bit about 

the Carborundum SEC Petition 00223. This petition 

was received in 2014 and it qualified on February 

2nd, 2015. The petitioning was they had a Class from 

1943 to 1976. NIOSH recommended that the petition 

be denied, and that was at the July 23rd, 2015 Board 

meeting.

Subsequent to that, there were a number of reviews 

by SC&A, presentations by NIOSH and some Work 

Group meetings. On March 22nd, 2017, the Advisory 

Board at that Advisory Board meeting, our Work 
36

Group recommended that the petition be denied, 

based on NIOSH's recommendation that they could 

do dose reconstruction. The Board voted at that 

meeting and agreed with the recommendation.

However, the Work Group pointed out that there 

were still some Site Profile issues that remain 

unresolved. So in the interim, we have been working 

in the usual pattern with White Papers from NIOSH 

and SC&A reviews. A lot of that took place, and then 

as I mentioned, our Work Group met just last week 

to discuss the open Site Profile issue.

And then we'll go to Slide 5. Yes, there we go. There 

are actually four pertinent White Papers dealing with 

these nine Site Profile issues that we addressed at 

the meeting last week, and these papers are listed in 

chronological order on the slide. 

I'm going to talk about it a little differently, because 

I want to point out that two of the papers deal with 

the nine issues, and then two other ones are on one 

special issue that took more details discussing. If you 

look at the second bullet, we list the paper issued by 

NIOSH on August 16th, 2018, and that paper 

summarized their responses to the nine open Site 

Profile issues.

Then in the third bullet, we list two papers. One is 

SC&A's November 27th, 2018 companion paper, 

which reviews NIOSH's approach to the nine issues. 

However, we have a special issue. One of the nine 

was a special issue, and so on August 3rd, and that's 

when NIOSH's White Paper came out, it was dealing 

with the special issue, and it dealt with external dose 

estimates from plutonium work, and that one was 

listed there in the first bullet. 

SC&A's review of dose plutonium work special issue 

was issued in a White Paper on November 28th, 

2018. So with these four papers in hand, the Work 

Group convened last week and we discussed these 

issues. What I'm going to do then, we'll go to the 

next slide. We'll go in order of the issues, Site Profile 
37

issues starting with Issue 1.

I will comment that eight of these nine issues are 

relatively straightforward, pretty easy to talk about 

and the other one is the one that will -- are calling 

the special issue, and we'll spend a little more time 

talking about that one and I put that towards the end 

of the presentation.

So on the first issue then, we talked about the dose 

from X-ray diffraction, and that will be dosed to the 

operators. In this case, SC&A recommended 

adjustments to the NIOSH exposure model. NIOSH 

then revised the model and provided additional 

calculations. They also said they will make the 

changes in this model and consequently SC&A 

suggested the issue be closed and the Work Group 

agreed. So that was Issue 1.

Issue 2 had to do with the use of surrogate data. 

SC&A commented that the beta dose rates for the 

second AWE operational period may be overestimated on contact, and under-estimated at one 

foot. NIOSH reviewed the recommendation on these 

estimates from SC&A, and they made the 

adjustments to the beta dosage for the Site Profile. 

So SC&A suggested the issue be closed and the Work 

Group agreed.

Going on to Issue 3, and this dealt with work hours 

in the residual period. SC&A pointed out that NIOSH 

did not use consistent work hours in calculations of 

dose in the residual period. As a result of that, 

NIOSH revised the exposure model calculations to 

agree with work hours used in TBD 6000. SC&A 

suggested this issue be closed, and the Work Group 

agreed.

In Issue No. 4, external dose distribution sites. SC&A 

commented that a NIOSH example dose 

reconstruction had the wrong dose distribution site 

for the years 1959 and 1960. NIOSH corrected that 

error in the spreadsheet, and used the estimated 

dose. So that one is for the easiest that SC&A 
38

developed from our point of view probably. But SC&A 

suggested that this issue be closed, and the Work 

Group agreed.

Mr. Katz: Gen, can you just reiterate just the last 

few sentences. They came through garbled.

Member Roessler: Oh, I'm sorry, okay. 

Mr. Katz: Thanks.

Member Roessler: Was this on Issue 4?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, just the last issue.

Member Roessler: Okay. Let me then just go over 

that again. So Issue 4 was on external dose 

distribution findings. Am I coming through clearer 

now?

Mr. Katz: A little bit. It's a little bit fuzzy at your 

end. It's almost like there's cotton balls on the mic 

or something.

Member Roessler: Hmmm. I'm on a phone. If it 

doesn't clear up in a little bit, I'll try and get on --

Mr. Katz: When you speak like you're speaking right 

now, it's easy to hear you. So I think if you speak 

up, that will take care of it.

Member Roessler: Okay. This is a geometry 

problem, maybe that's because we're getting to 

something like that next. All right, thanks. So any 

way, SC&A commented that a NIOSH had example 

dose reconstruction had the wrong dose distribution 

site for 1959 and 1960. NIOSH corrected the error 

on the spreadsheet used to estimate dose. SC&A 

suggested this issue be closed, and the Work Group 

agreed.

But then onto the next slide, Issues 5 and 7, and 

you'll notice a number is missing here and it's the 

Issue No. 6 that we'll talk about later. That was the 

one out of the whole group that wasn't closed. So 
39

going then to Issue 5, this had to do with internal 

dose for glovebox workers. 

SC&A commented that NIOSH had assigned intakes 

of both uranium and plutonium, not one or the other. 

NIOSH then explained or provided the rationale for 

how gross alpha data are to be interpreted as either 

plutonium or uranium. Well that statement's really 

not self-explanatory. In the NIOSH paper they 

explain that quite well, and if you have questions I 

would then ask them to comment a little bit more on 

it.

But anyway, what the explanation at the Work Group 

meeting, SC&A accepted the approach and suggested 

that this issue be closed, and the Work Group agreed.

Then Issue No. 7, incorrect intake used in a sample 

dose reconstruction. SC&A commented that one of 

the NIOSH example dose reconstruction used the 

wrong intake category. NIOSH acknowledged that 

there was an error in their example dose 

reconstruction. They said they will fix it; however, 

they made the comment that that actually is not a 

change in the proposed Site Profile. SC&A said okay, 

suggested closing the issue, and the Work Group 

agreed.

Okay, then No. 8. All right. This is on the photon 

energy assumptions for the residual period. Actually, 

this was quite a long discussion at our Work Group 

meeting. I will summarize it here though. SC&A 

commented that NIOSH had a small over-estimate of 

photon dose due to using a single energy band with 

the residual external doses.

NIOSH agreed to revise the Site Profile using the 

photon energy provided in TBD 6000. Based on that, 

SC&A suggested the issue be closed, and the Work 

Group agreed.

Mr. Katz: Gen, you're fading a little bit.

Member Roessler: And then, Issue No. 9 had to do 
40 

with ingestion intake. SC&A commented that NIOSH 

calculated a slightly underestimated dose from 

ingestion, and then I think that they're suggesting 

that NIOSH file OTIB-009, that method. NIOSH has 

agreed and has made the changes to these 

calculations. So SC&A suggested closing this item --

Mr. Katz: Gen, Gen, you're fading again. It's very 

hard. You either have to speak very loudly or maybe 

take it off of speaker phone.

Member Roessler: Okay. I'm not on a speaker 

phone. Is it better now?

Mr. Katz: It's better right when you make an effort 

like that, yes. It's much clearer.

Member Roessler: Okay, and I also moved the 

phone. Maybe the phone slides a bit. Keep 

reminding me. Is that better now?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, it's better. Right when you're talking 

right now, it's very clear. So if you can keep that up, 

that will work.

Member Roessler: Okay, I'll try that. So that finishes 

my presentation on the eight issues, all of which the 

Work Group agreed are closed. I could stop here and 

ask if there are any questions on that part, or I could 

proceed on and finish the other ones.

Mr. Katz: Why don't you just go ahead and proceed,

and then we'll get questions at the end of it.

Member Roessler: Okay. We'll know how much more 

time we've got too. So then let's go back to the open 

Site Profile Issue No. 6, and this one actually has 

three findings, and I'll go over all three of those. All 

three of these are related to the external dose from 

plutonium, and I'll remind you that Carborundum was 

handling fuel pellets in a glovebox.

During the SEC's Evaluation Report review, SC&A 

provided comments on the MCNP model used by 

NIOSH in 2015, and the source term used in the 
41

calculation. NIOSH then revised the source term 

based on that in exposure models in August 2017 to 

address the SC&A's comments. 

So the company did that experiment. However, 

SC&A's November 27th, 2018 review of NIOSH's 

updated model and dose rates resulted in these three 

findings that I mentioned, and these are the ones 

that require additional review. 

So let's go to the next slide, which we have up there. 

Okay, and on Finding 1, SC&A commented that the 

factors NIOSH had used to enter into the MCNP used 

to convert photons to ambient dose equivalent from 

ICRP 74 should be changed. The issue apparently is 

that ICRP 74 provides two sets of factors that provide 

relatively small differences in dose estimates. 

NIOSH is reviewing this issue. It's my understanding 

Tim Taulbee is familiar with this report. It's my 

understanding that one of these sets of factors is a 

little more up to date. So the Work Group will be 

awaiting their solutions and SC&A's review of what 

they come up with on that finding. Are you still 

hearing me okay?

Mr. Katz: Yes, you're okay. Thanks.

Member Roessler: Okay. Then on Finding 2, it had 

to do with the source bias settings used by NIOSH in 

the MCNP resulted in errors. SC&A pointed out that 

NIOSH used MCNP Verison 6.1, which they 

discovered has a calculation bug that was not 

corrected in the simulation set used by NIOSH.

NIOSH plans to re-run these simulations using MCNP 

Version 6.2, which corrects the bug. So it looks like 

we don't expect any problem on this, but we expect 

SC&A to review this and the Work Group will talk 

about it again at our next meeting.

Okay. Then on the next slide on Finding 3, again this 

is on external dose from plutonium, and this has to 

do with exposure geometry. That's why I was talking 
42

about geometry before. We have to talk about 

decision, I guess.

Mr. Katz: Gen, your voice, don't let it trail.

Member Roessler: Okay. Again, I think I probably 

moved.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thanks.

Member Roessler: Okay. Dr. Anigstein from SC&A 

explained the problem that he discovered here using 

a photo of the glovebox used by Carborundum, and 

a diagram of the glovebox showing the location of the 

fuel pellet and the dosimeter.

In this finding, he pointed out the geometry settings 

used by NIOSH in an MCNP simulation were set, but 

that the dosimeters used to estimate dose was 

partially shielded. Thus, the dose calculated is too 

low. So the issue is the NIOSH MCNP model had 

geometry settings such that the plutonium pellets 

were located in the most likely locations, the 

glovebox surface.

The dosimeter location was one foot away outside the 

glovebox as required. However, those MCNP settings 

were such that the dosimeter was partially shielded 

by the floor of the glovebox. I'm going to change the 

wording here a little bit from the slide, because I'm 

thinking, I'm hoping maybe this will make a little 

more sense.

SC&A ran the MCNP with the pellets and the 

dosimeter both in higher locations, and got higher 

dose results, because with this setup the dosimeter 

is not partially shielded by the floor of the glovebox. 

So the bottom line here is that NIOSH is reviewing 

this issue, the whole issue actually, Issue 6, and the 

three findings, in particular this final one.

So on Slide 13, is somebody running the slides? 

Maybe they can't hear me.

Mr. Katz: No, we can hear you.
43

Member Roessler: Okay. So the Work Group 

conclusions were that NIOSH and SC&A need to come 

to an agreement on the appropriate MCNP setting to 

resolve these findings. The Work Group agrees with 

all other NIOSH resolutions, and of course all the 

resolutions need to be implemented in the revised 

Site Profile. So that's my conclusion, and I'll certainly 

take questions.

Mr. Katz: Right. Thank you, Gen. Questions from 

Board Members in the room?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Or from Board Members on the line?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: So let me just clarify something here about 

the conclusions. The Work Group, these issues, the 

last issues that Gen addressed relating to the MCNP 

model, these are issues, they're as you gather I 

think, they're highly technical, they're relatively 

minor in certain respects in terms of --

They're not minor meaning unimportant, but they're 

in terms of sort of the Board's issues that it deals 

with, these are really sort of kind of minutiae in that 

sense, that they're highly technical and they're just 

about getting the model straight and right, and I had 

recommended to the Work Group and the Work 

Group had agreed to recommend. 

So this is in effect a motion to the Board, that as far 

as the Board's concerned, the Site Profile review 

would be completed. The Work Group would 

continue on until these MCNP matters are resolved to 

their satisfaction. If there's any issue that comes up

that needs to come to the Board, of course they 

would bring that back up with the Board.

But otherwise, we don't need to have another 

presentation on Carborundum for the Board's sense 

to close out the Site Profile. So that was my 

suggestion to the Work Group. They concurred with 
44 

that. 

So this is -- actually, since it's a Work Group 

recommendation, it's a motion. It doesn't require a 

second, and it just requires then Board discussion 

and then if the Board has no issues with this, then we 

can have a Board vote.

Member Roessler: Thank you, Ted.

Mr. Katz: So any -- yeah sure. So any questions on 

that matter or discussion, including Board Members 

on the phone?

Member Kotelchuck: So --

Mr. Katz: Sure, Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: So the issue is that if we

approve, we approve that --

Member Roessler: Dave, I cannot -- I can hear 

David, but I can't hear --

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. Can you hear me now?

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Member Roessler: Oh, yes.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, good. So if we approve, 

then that means that the review will continue to 

update the profile?

Mr. Katz: Yeah. So they'll pull the string all the way 

on these MCNP matters, in other words, keeping the 

Work Group involved and providing that there's no -

- nothing comes up out of that that's of concern that 

should come before the full Board, this would be 

complete. 

We will not bring this back up for the Board to 

approve again, but we'll -- in effect, we're approving 

it provisionally based on that all getting worked out 

correctly.
45

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Any other questions?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Then we have a Board vote on that. 

I'll just run alphabetically. So Anderson?

Member Anderson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Beach?

Member Beach: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Clawson?

Member Clawson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Field.

Member Field: Yes. 

Mr. Katz: Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Lockey.

Member Lockey: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Richardson?

Member Richardson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Roessler?

Member Roessler: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Schofield?

Member Schofield: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Valerio?

Member Valerio: Yes.

Mr. Katz: And Paul Ziemer, I don't know if you're on 
46 

with us or not.

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. He is absent, and I don't need to 

collect his vote on a Site Profile matter. We have a 

unanimous vote with his exception because he's not 

here, so it passes. Thank you very much. Thanks, 

Gen, for hanging with us. I know it's difficult to do 

this remotely. I much appreciate that.

Member Roessler: Well thank you for hanging in with 

me.

Mr. Katz: Sure, and we have a break. We've cut into 

a break a little bit, I think? No, we're okay. We have 

a break from 10:15 to 10:30, so I think we can just 

-- how much time do we have? Well, we have 15 

minutes. If you want, we can do some Board work 

session matter before the break. Is that -- how's 

that? Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So someone, someone remind me 

if we're running out of time, and then we'll go. I don't 

want to cut your break short. Okay.

Well, the first item of business is scheduling of 

meetings for the next meetings that aren't 

scheduled. We have several matters. One, we have 

a location question for -- we have an April meeting 

face to face, April 17 to 18, and we have to find a 

spot for that. 

So I have some thoughts and then I'm absolutely 

open to the Work Group Members' thoughts about 

these or other locations. Let's get your sense, 

particularly the chairs for the sites that are 

possibilities here. I mean one we don't know much 

about, but seems like would be a possibility is we're 

going to be hearing on Carnegie, right, SEC petition 

I'm hoping?

Superior Steel, I'm sorry. Superior Steel. It's in 

Carnegie, sorry, right, which is the Pittsburgh area. 

Sorry about that, and so that's one possibility. We 
47 

haven't been there. We've never been to Pittsburgh. 

We don't know much about this site other than what 

we've learned from the SEC petition and evaluation.

But that would be an opportunity for the Petitioner 

and others from that site to see the Board and hear 

the Board's discussion and so on, assuming that we 

don't dispatch this SEC petition at this meeting. 

So we may want to hold on that question, seeing how 

the discussion goes on that today. We don't have to 

decide this until we leave this meeting, a location. 

But that's one, Pittsburgh.

Another that I have a question about because I'm not 

absolutely clear. I know a good bit of work has 

gotten done and the work's underway, but we've 

been to Chicago about a year ago, Argonne East, and 

so we have had some work completed since then and 

there's some work, if I recall from the coordination 

documents, that's coming to fruition soon.

So that's another opportunity for people from that 

site to hear the Board's discussion and contribute to 

that, so Chicago. And then the other sites, again also 

possibilities. Idaho Falls, as I understand it, we're 

not expecting anything within this time frame on the 

burial site.

However, we will have -- right. We will have sort of 

completed a good bit of work that we've been 

wrestling with for some time, V&V and so on for 

Idaho Falls for the petitioning Class that's still 

awaiting resolution there. So that's another thought, 

Idaho Falls.

And obviously there's a lot of work underway. Aside 

from that in particular related to Idaho Falls. So 

that's another possibility. Then I'm not clear about 

whether -- about timing for things being ready, but 

and we've been there a bunch, but there's of course 

there's both the Sandia and the LANL petition. We're 

addressing LANL to some extent, but it's an update 

session here at the meeting. There will be more work 
48

coming. The timing of that is a little bit uncertain as 

to what might actually be ready in time.

And I guess my main concern is I would hate to go 

there hoping to have things ready and not having 

them ready, and I think the timing's kind of close 

there, but that's another thought. So those are the 

four locations that I've given some thought to, and 

let me just open this up for Board Members to 

contribute their thoughts.

And of course, SC&A and NIOSH, if you have 

thoughts about locations beyond what I've discussed 

already, we're happy to hear from you too.

Member Anderson: What are the dates again?

Mr. Katz: So the dates are April 17th through 18th.

Member Anderson: Okay.

Mr. Katz: What does anybody think, and maybe hear 

from the chairs of these different sites too, if you 

have particular thoughts, seeing what is expected to 

be delivered between now and then and so on.

Member Anderson: We'll have things delivered for 

Pittsburgh-Carnegie.

Mr. Katz: So we have a presentation for Pittsburgh 

here tomorrow.

Member Beach: And I don't think there's a Work 

Group for Pittsburgh or for Superior Steel.

Mr. Katz: No, we do not have a -- that's correct, 

that's correct.

Member Beach: I personally would look towards that 

since we've never been there, and giving them -- the 

Petitioners an opportunity to discuss it. And then I 

was thinking Metals and Controls again. We may be 

ready for that but I'm not sure at this time.

Mr. Katz: Okay, so I don't know if you could --
49

Member Beach: We were just there.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. So I don't know if you could hear 

that, but that would be the Boston area. I mean not 

the Boston area, but between Boston and --

Member Beach: Providence?

Mr. Katz: And Providence, right, near Providence. 

That's M&C, yeah.

Member Beach: But if I was choosing between those 

two, I'd still choose the Superior Steel, since we've 

never been there and giving them that opportunity.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Thank you, Josie. Other Board 

Members' thoughts?

Member Valerio: Ted, this is Loretta.

Mr. Katz: Go ahead, Loretta.

Member Valerio: My first option would be Superior 

Steel in Pittsburgh. My second option would be 

Argonne East in Chicago. 

Mr. Katz: Okay, thank you.

Member Schofield: This is Phil. I'm kind of leaning 

towards Pittsburgh, just because as Josie said we 

have not been there and this gives these people an 

opportunity to speak.

Mr. Katz: Okay. I'm here seeing some nodding of 

heads here. Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: I agree. We haven't been 

there, and we certainly want to have one meeting at 

a place where give the claimants a chance to be there 

and talk about their situation.

Mr. Katz: Okay, okay. Any other thoughts from folks 

on the phone? 

(No response.)
50

Mr. Katz: Okay, and from either SC&A or NIOSH? 

Do you have anything you want to add?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. So let's -- we have a presentation 

and some discussion on Pittsburgh, but let's assume 

that that's going to be a go at this point. Super, 

thank you. Okay. We still have a few minutes. We 

could -- let's see what else we could get done.

Okay, so then scheduling. The next teleconference 

that we need to schedule, we've scheduled up to this 

point is -- would be a teleconference the week of 

October 14th. So if you'd look at your calendars and 

see how that week looks. 

Member Lockey: Did you say October?

Mr. Katz: Yes. October, October 14th next year, 

next year.

(Off mic comments.)

Member Anderson: That's Columbus Day.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I'm not talking about the day; I'm 

talking about the week.

Member Anderson: Oh, okay.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. But thank you. Thank you. No, I 

appreciate you mentioning that. I knew that 

Columbus Day was in there somewhere.

Member Beach: The 14th is Columbus Day.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. It would be the Monday, yeah.

Member Beach: That's clear for me.

Mr. Katz: So I mean the tradition when we can do it 

is --- would be the 16th, the Wednesday. We tend 

to like those Wednesdays. Does that work? I'm 

hearing, seeing nods of heads in this room. How 

about from people on the line? The 16th, 
51

Wednesday, how does that work?

Member Schofield: It works for me.

Member Valerio: Works for me.

Member Anderson: What time would it be? The 

usual?

Mr. Katz: Yeah. The usual's 11:00 a.m. Eastern 

Time.

Member Anderson: Sure.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So let's plan on that, and then next 

in-person meeting, which would be the next 

December meeting, because we do this a year out, I 

mean the best week would be the week of December 

9th. But of course we'll move backward or forward, 

depending on what works for folks. 

So again, you know, we like to do Wednesdays and 

Thursdays when we can but --

Member Anderson: You can't do Tuesday because 

it's my birthday.

Mr. Katz: Cannot do Tuesday or we can do Tuesday 

because it's your birthday?

Member Anderson: Oh, depends on where it is.

Mr. Katz: Okay, Hawaii. How about --

Member Anderson: Hawaii sounds good. It's not 

Amchitka.

Mr. Katz: I don't think there's anyone on this Board 

hardy enough for Amchitka in December.

Member Anderson: Not anymore.

Member Ziemer: Hey Ted, it's Paul Ziemer.

Mr. Katz: Yes. Hi, Paul.

Member Ziemer: That date will work for me if I'm 
52

not back to the hospital again next year.

Mr. Katz: We hope not, we hope not, and it's good 

to hear your voice, Paul. Thank you.

Member Ziemer: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: So we're looking at -- that would be 9, 10, 

the 11th and 12th or --

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Member Beach: Works for me.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So let's write that in, December 

11th and 12th. Okay, and then we're pretty close to 

our break and the rest of what we have to do isn't 

that quick. So let's just go a few minutes early for 

break.

Member Anderson: We don't have a location for that 

December.

Mr. Katz: So we do. We think we have Pittsburgh. 

Unless something comes up, it's Pittsburgh.

Member Anderson: That's the December one?

Mr. Katz: Oh no, no, wait. That's for April, sorry.

Member Anderson: Oh.

Mr. Katz: No, we don't have a location -- we don't 

do locations more than one meeting out, only 

because we don't know what's going to be on our 

plate.

Member Anderson: That's fine. I just --

Mr. Katz: Yeah, yeah. But I'm thinking of Hawaii for 

you, right. Okay. So we're on break and please be 

back. We have the Y-12 SEC plant, so it's important 

to be back on time at 10:30 California Pacific Time. 

Thank you.
53 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 10:08 a.m. and resumed at 10:31 a.m.) 

Mr. Katz: Welcome back, everybody, to the Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health. We just were 

out for a break and we're back, about to hear the SEC 

presentation for Y-12. Dr. Lockey is just to note for 

the record recused for this session and he is gone 

from the table, and actually gone from the room.

Let me just check on my Board Members on the 

phone to see that I have you again. Gen, are you 

there?

Member Roessler: I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And Phil, how about you?

Member Schofield: I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And Paul, are you there? Paul? 

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: How about Bill Field? Bill?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: And how about Andy? Was that a yes?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Let's wait a moment and see if we 

can gather more of our Board Members from the 

phone.

Member Anderson: I'm here.

Mr. Katz: Okay, Andy's there. Let me go back again.

Member Anderson: I was having trouble getting 

here.

Mr. Katz: And how about Paul, are you back?

(No response.)
54 

Mr. Katz: Did I hear from Phil? Did Phil say yes? 

Phil, are you there?

Member Schofield: Who?

Mr. Katz: Phil, is that you?

Member Schofield: This is Phil. I thought you said 

Bill.

Mr. Katz: Okay, great. Okay. So I think we have 

everyone. But wait, Bill Field? Bill Field, are you on 

mute?

Member Field: Yes, I'm on. I'm on, Ted.

Mr. Katz: Okay, you're with us, good. Okay. So we 

have everyone but Paul, and I think we can go --

Member Valerio: And this is --

Mr. Katz: Oh Loretta, thank you, sorry. Loretta, I 

didn't -- I shouldn't have forgotten you, right. Thank 

you. Okay. Off we go, Lara, thank you.

Y-12 Plant SEC Petition

Dr. Hughes: Okay. Are we already -- can you hear 

me okay? Thanks, Ted. Good morning, everybody. 

This is an SEC Petition Evaluation by NIOSH for the 

Y-12 plant. The main discussion points here are 

thorium and plutonium-241. 

At this point, I'd like to acknowledge our contractor 

support from ORAU, Joe Guido, who did the very 

large majority of this work, pulling all this research 

together, because dealing with the Y-12 plant, we're 

dealing with -- you deal with a lot of information.

So the Y-12 plant has -- there are four previous SEC 

classes. SEC-18 and 28 were -- they were done early 

in the program. They're designated SEC Class from 

1943 through 1957. Those two classes were revised 

later in the program history, SEC-98 and SEC-186. 

The main objective of those two Evaluation Reports 

was to reword an earlier Class.
55 

Earlier in the program we often included a language 

in the Class Definition that wasn't workable for DOL 

or DOE to administer, DOL to administer to classes. 

So that's why we have four early SEC classes. So the 

entire period from 1943 through 1947 is currently 

already in SEC for Y-12. 

The current is SEC-251. It's an 8314 petition, which 

means NIOSH has designated that there was a 

petition for which we could not do dose 

reconstruction. A claimant was identified in October 

2018, the petition received November 9th, and the 

Evaluation Report was completed November 26th of 

this year.

Just a very brief, a very, very brief Y-12 history. This 

is a color photograph of the site. I'm not sure what 

the date is, but you can see that it's a very large site. 

It's 811 acres. It's about two-thirds of a mile long by 

three miles long, and at its peak employment, it had 

about 22,000 workers.

The EEOICPA-covered period is 1942 to the present, 

and NIOSH currently has about 6,500 claims in 

various forms of the dose reconstruction process. 

Most of them are complete. 

The Y-12 history, we typically talk of three eras. The 

first era, 1942 through 1946 was the uranium isotope 

separation, the early uranium enrichment process 

using what they call calutrons. 

It's an electromagnetic process to separate out the 

uranium-235 that was used in nuclear weapons 

production. The second era, 1947 through 1992, it's 

more generic Cold War nuclear weapons components 

manufacturing. They would produce and test key 

components of nuclear weapons. They are 

maintaining the stockpile of highly enriched uranium 

and work on technology development for new 

weapons designs.

The third era post -- after the end of the Cold War, 

there are multiple new missions. They're still storing 
56 

the highly enriched uranium. They continue to work 

on weapons port production on a smaller scale. Then 

they're involved in D&D decommissioning operations 

and they work on environmental and waste 

management.

So for this petition, we're looking at two different --

we came up with two different infeasibilities that 

were found over the past few years of research. The 

first one was regarding thorium production. This was 

-- this came out of continued research from yeah, 

outstanding issues, and part of this issue came up in 

the Fernald SEC when they had a similar issue with 

their whole body count data. So this is coming out 

of those dose findings.

So what Y-12 did with regards to thorium parts 

production, they started production of metal parts of 

made of thorium in 1959. They used thorium pellets 

that were received at the site. They were pressed 

into metal electrodes, and those electrodes were arcmelded to form these metal ingots that they needed 

for whatever they were producing.

So these ingots were pressed, rolled and machined 

to various forms that were needed. The scraps from 

this process were salvaged and also pressed into 

electrodes and run through the cycle again. The main 

issue from a contamination standpoint is not just the 

thorium but also the radium and the thorium, other 

thorium progeny that are volatilized during the arc 

melting.

The arc melting process involves the melting of the 

thorium at temperatures that are above the boiling 

point of radium. This major thorium processing 

ended in the mid-1970's. However, parts 

refurbishment and special projects continued until 

1999. The thorium production involved Buildings 

9202, 9766 and 9215. 

The exposure potential for thorium. The arc melting 

releases airborne contamination. The machining, all 

the process down the line releases airborne 
57 

contamination. A big issue is the ingot casting by arc 

melting disrupts the thorium decay chain and much 

of the radium contained in the metal is vaporized.

This releases large quantities of radium that are 

deposited on the inside of the furnace. The radium228 is a major radiological hazard, and the ingot that 

is produced has an enriched outer radium layer, so 

when it's afterwards machined there's a big problem 

of volatilizing these components.

Also the thorium, the subseries further down in the 

decay chain quickly were turned into secular 

equilibrium. So this was the first part of this 

infeasibility. The second involves plutonium-241, 

and we actually arrived at this by doing the exotics 

radionuclide research for Oak Ridge National 

Laboratory.

It turns out that ORNL actually used a facility at Y-12 

to do much of that research or that production. So 

when we came across this infeasibility that we cannot 

reconstruct plutonium-241 that was done by Oak 

Ridge National Lab. We realized that it was actually 

done at Y-12. 

So these operations are staffed by ORNL but at the 

Y-12 site in Building 9204-3. So for that reason, we 

have to -- the SEC is site-specific, so this is actually 

a Y-12 issue for our program. So again, this was part 

of the ORNL isotope production program. These 

plutonium-241 and other plutonium and other 

isotopes were produced since 1953 until the late 

1960's. 

What they did, they used the old calutrons at Y-12 

that were initially used for uranium enrichment to 

separate other radionuclides by their mass, and then 

using these -- they were selling these products to 

other national labs or interested parties.

So this facility housed calutrons, gloveboxes and 

processing laboratory, other equipment that was 

needed down the line to purify these components so 
58 

they could be sold. They also had the calutron wash 

area, so they had to clean these instruments before 

they were reused. There was also packaging, storage 

and shipping.

The specific plutonium-241 production quantities 

ranged -- was in the milligram to gram range, and 

that is a lot when you talk about plutonium, relatively 

speaking. The plutonium-241 exposure potential, it 

wasn't really considered a huge deal at the time. It 

was not considered to be the biggest problem, 

because it's a beta emitter. It has 20.8 keV 

maximum beta. That's not very high energy for beta.

However, it has a very short half-life, only 14.4 years. 

So we end up with a very high specific activity. So 

even though it doesn't look -- it looks fairly innocuous 

compared to other plutonium isotopes. However, if 

plutonium-241 is present in the mixture at the 

percentage like, I don't know, it's only several 

percentage points, it becomes the dose-dominating 

component of this mixture. So that is a problem.

So generally to evaluate these two infeasibilities, we 

looked at various sources of available information. 

We looked at our Site Profile, technical information, 

documents, the NIOSH Site Research Database, 

existing claimant files, electronic databases, and we 

did I think four or five interviews with four or more 

employees.

Those were classified. They had to be done in 

classified space down at Y-12, and also looked at 

scientific publications. So regarding the internal data 

that we have for thorium that was looked at, so they 

did, Y-12 did do lung counts for thorium from 1958 

to 1982. There are over 10,000 data points 

available.

They used the Y-12 in vivo facility using a sodium 

iodide detector system. However, what is available 

from this in vivo count is the results reported in 

milligrams of thorium, and that's all that is available. 

What we would need to assign a plausible accurate 
59 

dose would be calibration and counts per channel 

data to potentially assess the intakes.

So just we would need what we call the raw count 

data, what they actually saw when doing these lung 

counts, because of the thorium chain this equilibrium, 

which it's very -- it's impossible to assign dose based 

-- if you just have to mass, a mass unit of thorium. 

Even Y-12 has stipulated, considered this more of a 

qualitative measure, qualitative method.

We have no measurement for the radium-228. We 

have documentation from 1978. At some point 

between 1976 and '78, they changed the recording 

procedure, and we think that post-1976 the count 

data might be available to us. That's still something 

that we need to research. So I spent considerable 

time looking for the overall count data for these 

thorium in vivo counts and we have finally concluded 

that we're probably not going to find them. They 

don't seem to exist. They might have been 

computerized at an earlier time and they're not 

available.

We do think that the post-1976 data is available and 

could potentially be analyzed, but we wanted to move 

ahead with this part of the SEC as to not hold out on 

it, and there will be continued evaluation of the 

following time period. We also looked at thorium air 

data. There is gross general air and breathing zone 

operational data available. The majority of this is 

general air data. 

There is a Y-12 thorium air sample database that we 

looked at. We concluded that this database has 

issues with data pedigree and completeness, and is 

not usable for our program. Breathing zone data and 

operational samples are available, but they're not 

sufficient in quantity for an intake approach for all 

years.

For plutonium-241, there's generally an intake of 

plutonium-241 due to its low energy beta. It's hard 

to detect. There's no plutonium-241 specific 
60 

bioassay available before 1967, and that is because 

they didn't have a method in place. In 1967, they 

had developed a method, and we have a total of 222 

samples that were collected between 1967 and 1985.

There were 74 samples from 1967. So it looks like 

once they started with the method, that they made 

an effort to detect. This method, the method that 

was developed in 1967 was an ion exchange method 

followed by a precipitation step, followed by liquid 

ventilation counting.

So we have these two different infeasibilities. So as 

for the Y-12, the time line, the covered period 1943 

to 1957 is already an SEC. The thorium operation 

infeasibility goes from January 1st, 1959 through 

December 31st, 1976. The infeasibility regarding 

plutonium-241 operations goes from January 1st, 

1954 through December 31st, 1966, which 

overlaying those two, we're looking at current 

infeasibility, January 1st, 1958 through December 

31st, 1976, with a path forward to evaluate the 

thorium feasibility beginning January 1st, 1977.

So the proposed Class Definition finding is all 

employees of the Department of Energy, its 

predecessor agencies and their contractors and 

subcontractors who worked at the Y-12 plant in Oak 

Ridge, Tennessee during the period January 1st, 

1958 through December 31st, 1976, for a number of 

work days aggregating at least 250 work days 

occurring either solely under this employment or in 

combination with work days, within the parameters 

established for one or more other classes of

employees in the Special Exposure Cohort.

Here's our summary slide. So the thorium and 

plutonium-241 infeasibility and all other nuclides at 

this point can be reconstructed. That dose can be 

used for partial dose reconstruction for claims that 

wouldn't fall in the SEC, and that's it. So if you have 

any questions.

Mr. Katz: Right. So questions from Board Members 
61 

in the room? Dave.

Member Richardson: Thank you very much. I feel 

like I'm learning a lot. One question was in the 

report, and here just as a brief issue. The issue of 

the feasibility of reconstructing external dose for the 

Y-12 cohort. My recollection was that there was --

that data were available subsequent to 1961, but 

prior to 1961 there's very little external dosimetry 

information or there are many gaps in the external 

dosimetry information. 

So I was interested in the feasibility for the period 

1958 to '61 of reconstructing the external dose. 

Dr. Hughes: We have not really looked into that with 

regards to this SEC evaluation. Usually we -- once 

we identify an infeasibility, that's kind of what we're 

focused and recommend the Class. There are issues 

with -- I'm not too familiar with the external 

dosimetry issues at this point. I know they have been 

discussed in the past, but I would have to get back 

to you on those.

Member Richardson: Okay, and I appreciate that. I 

just believe there's implications for what we state as 

feasible and infeasible in terms of what fraction of the 

dose is reconstructed. If there's a statement that it's 

infeasible, then you don't reconstruct it. If for one 

component of the dose it's feasible, am I -- than you 

would proceed?

Mr. Katz: Yeah. I mean you do a partial dose 

reconstruction for whatever doses can be 

reconstructed.

Member Richardson: Okay. Anyway, I mean it's --

could I ask a -- at Y-12, there was -- and this again 

is my recollection. There's lots of bioassay data, and 

was the bioassay information, is it not used, was it 

not used at Y-12 for assessing thorium ever, because 

we've covered air sampling and in vivo counting.

Dr. Hughes: They did the in vivo counting for -- that 
62 

was their approach to assess intakes. But yeah, what 

they actually did with it, we don't -- I'm not sure. But 

so what we have is those in vivo counts, and they've 

been looked at and we've been trying to come up with 

a method to use those for internal dose assignment. 

We've come to the conclusion that we just -- the 

milligram result is just not sufficient to do that.

Member Richardson: Right, and that seems 

consistent with the quotes that you have in the report 

about their own assessment of the limitations of the 

in vivo program, which makes it interesting, I guess, 

to me that there wouldn't be a -- it wouldn't be 

coupled over with bioassay.

Dr. Neton: This is Jim. There's not a really good 

bioassay method for thorium. It's excreted very 

poorly in the urine, so I don't think it's ever really 

been routinely used at a site for bioassay for thorium 

intakes. I don't recall if they did fecal samples. If 

they did, it would have been on an incident-specific 

basis. There was never a routine thorium monitoring 

program to my knowledge at that facility so --

Dr. Hughes: I think that's correct. I think that --

yeah, there might have been fecal, but I'm not sure.

Dr. Neton: Right, and then to your question on 

external, we do have a coworker model for external 

dosimetry in the Site Profile for Y-12, and I don't 

know -- that is actually under review through an 

SC&A assessment or review, and we're looking at 

that now. If it comes out that we end up that we 

can't feasibly reconstruct external doses, we certainly 

would make -- would come to that conclusion and not 

do dose reconstructions.

Member Richardson: Okay. Thank you very much. 

Those are both very useful.

Mr. Katz: Other questions? Oh, David.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes. The other David.

Mr. Katz: The other David, Kotelchuck.
63 

Member Kotelchuck: Is this a recommendation for 

the Board to grant an SEC, or is this going -- or is 

this a recommendation to go to a Work Group to 

further look at it?

Mr. Katz: When NIOSH does an 83.14, it's because 

they found it infeasible through dose reconstruction, 

trying to do a case that they can't complete, a dose 

reconstruction case. So that it's already -- it's 

coming to the Board so the Board can approve it, 

because the Board has to -- has to support --

Well, it doesn't have to, but we need a Board 

recommendation before we go to HHS. Member 

Kotelchuck: Thank you. 

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Any other questions in the room? 

Josie.

Member Beach: Not a technical question. There is a 

Work Group, is there not on Y-12? 

Mr. Katz: There is not. So this is -- there was sort 

of Work Group before there were Work Groups in the 

formal sense that we've had them now all these 

years. There was a group. Most of those Members, 

I think, I'm not sure how many of them are with us 

even anymore. So we would have to constitute a 

group if we're going to have a Y-12 follow-up, but 

yeah.

How about Board Members on the line? Any 

questions for Lara?

Member Valerio: This is Loretta, I have a question.

Mr. Katz: Go ahead, Loretta. You're really clear.

Member Valerio: So on page 12 of her presentation, 

are the 74 samples from 1967 part of the 222 

samples collected between 1967 and 1985?

Dr. Hughes: Yes. As far as I know, they are.

Member Valerio: Okay. So it's not a question but 
64 

more an observation. So that leaves roughly 148 

samples from 1967 to 1985 for internal samples for 

plutonium. 

So I understand that moving forward, you're going to 

-- you know, NIOSH is going to continue to evaluate 

the thorium feasibility beginning in January of 1977, 

and I'm assuming that they'll continue to evaluate 

the plutonium as well?

Dr. Hughes: Yeah. I think we're going to look into 

it. I think some of it has to do also with the 

production winding down. This was a fairly small 

scale operation compared to the thorium operation. 

So but yeah, we can certainly address that.

Member Valerio: I'm sorry. Can you speak up just a 

little bit?

Dr. Hughes: Sorry. Yeah. We can look into it some 

more. I mean it was kind of -- the Class was cut off 

because data is available. But they can also -- there 

certainly would -- the analysis would certainly benefit 

from, you know, looking more detailed at the 

operational quantities that were produced in the time 

after 1967.

Member Valerio: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Thanks Loretta. Are there other Board 

Members on the line with questions? 

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Hearing none, do we have a motion from 

a Board Member?

Member Beach: Do we want to -- is there a petitioner 

comments at all or --

Mr. Katz: Oh yeah, sorry. I'm very sorry about that. 

Yes, thank you for the reminder. Do we have a 

petitioner on the line who wants to comment? We 

often don't for 83.14s but --
65 

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Asking again, petitioner are you on 

the line for this, and if you are you don't need to 

comment. But if you wish to comment, this is your 

opportunity.

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. How about now? Do we have a 

motion?

Member Beach: Yes, this is -- I'll make a 

recommendation to accept NIOSH's recommendation 

to add this as a Class. 

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Josie.

Member Clawson: I second it.

Mr. Katz: Okay, it's seconded, which means it's up 

for discussion. Board Members, do you have any 

discussion of the motion?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: And the Class has been defined pretty 

clearly in the presentation. You have that. We know 

what we're proposing. Okay. Hearing none, then I 

think we move to vote, and if I don't have all my 

Board Members, then whoever might be missing for 

an SEC petition, we'll collect their votes after the 

meeting. So Anderson?

Member Anderson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Beach?

Member Anderson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Clawson?

Member Clawson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Field.

Member Field: Yes.
66 

Mr. Katz: Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Just note for the record Dr. Lockey is 

recused from this. Richardson?

Member Richardson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Roessler?

Member Roessler: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Schofield?

Member Schofield: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Valerio?

Member Valerio: Yes.

Mr. Katz: And Ziemer? Paul, are you back with us?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Paul was absent at the outset of 

this, I'm assuming he's still absent. So anyway, it's 

unanimous among the Board Members who could 

vote and are present, and that's sufficient for the 

motion to pass. I'll collect absentee votes, but good 

work. Lara, thanks for a very clear, nice presentation 

of this SEC Petition Evaluation.

Dr. Hughes: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Much appreciated. All right then. So we 

are early for lunch. It's eleven o'clock here. We have 

another hour. I will say my guess at what we have 

left on the work sessions is we can do it all during the 

work session if we want. 

If it makes more sense to break now and go for a 

long, early lunch, what do you want to do? Or we 

can start launching into work session stuff. But we're 

going to get that all done within an hour either way.

Participant: Let's have a longer lunch.
67 

Mr. Katz: So why don't we do that? Why don't we 

just break now and lunch break ends at -- please be 

back at 1:30. We'll be on for the SEC petitions 

update from LaVon. 

Participant: Very good.

Mr. Katz: Very good. Thanks everyone.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 11:59 a.m. and 1:29 p.m.) 

Mr. Katz: Are we live again and we have the phone 

on? Yeah, okay. Thank you. So welcome back 

everybody, the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health. We're on our afternoon session of 

our first day here. So let me make a couple of notes, 

just or maybe just one note. 

We do have a public comment session today. It 

begins at 5:00 p.m. So for people on the phone as 

well as anyone, I can only see one or two strange 

faces in the room. People who want -- if you're here 

and you want to make public comment, there's a 

sign-up sheet outside this door on the table. 

Please do sign up just to let us know who -- because 

we'll go first with people who are in the room, and 

also first with people who have something to say 

related to the California sites that we're addressing 

this afternoon.

For people on the phone, of course you don't have to. 

You can't really sign up, don't have to. Don't send 

an email or anything like that. We'll get to you. We 

have a few people signed up already who did get in 

touch with me before this meeting, but for the rest of 

you on the phone, we'll get to you after we get 

through the folks in the room.

So just hang in with us, but please be on the line by 

five, and we might even, depending on how things 

go, we might even get to begin sooner than five. But 

we'll definitely at least go through the five o'clock 

mark, to make sure we capture everyone who intends 
68 

to have public comments.

We have all of our Members in the room who were 

here earlier, so their attendance is accounted for. Let 

me just check on my Board Members who are on the 

phone, and see who we have. So Bill Field, are you 

with us?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: How about Gen Roessler?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: I'm not even sure anyone on the phone 

can speak to me. Is there -- Phil Schofield, are you 

on the line? Are we sure that we have an incoming 

line?

Participant: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Somebody on the line. Would 

somebody speak up so I know that people hear me? 

Loretta? I'm not confident. Somebody on the phone, 

anybody, anybody on the phone, would you speak 

up?

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: No, no. No, we don't have a quorum so 

there's something wrong here, because I'm sure I 

had Board Members on there and they would be 

trying to speak. So there's something --

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: I think you should try reconnecting, 

because that's all I can think of. So folks on the 

phone, just hang in there. We're going to dial back 

in if you can hear me now, but maybe you can hear 

me but can't be heard.

Participant: Which I can send a message to 

everybody to ask if they're --

Mr. Katz: Yeah, yeah, why not. If you can do that 
69 

easily, that would be great. We had an issue this 

morning that was sort of like this, so I'm thinking it's 

just something about this line here. 

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Someone, someone on the phone 

line, anyone on the phone line, can you let me know 

you can hear me? Nope, it's not coming through. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 1:34 p.m. and resumed at 1:45 p.m.) 

Mr. Katz: Okay. Testing again, 1-2-3, testing. Phil, 

can you hear me?

Member Schofield: Ted, that's much better.

Member Field: Yeah, much better. Very clear.

Mr. Katz: Okay, that's glorious. Thank you for being 

with us. So let me get -- I don't think you heard any 

of the preliminaries then. Let me just run through 

them again very quickly. First one I'm going to say 

is please no one put this call on hold at any point. 

Hang up, dial back in. But don't put the call on hold, 

and also please everybody but someone who's 

speaking to the group, mute your phone and press 

*6 if you don't have a mute button to mute your 

phone. *6 will mute your phone, thanks. 

So just one important note before we get started that 

I made earlier. We have a public comment session 

this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. It's possible we might 

even get to it before 5:00 p.m. So please everyone 

on the line who has public comments, please be in 

attendance at five, so that if we get to it and get 

through public comments early, you'll still be on the 

line before we leave, since that's the last portion of 

the day.

Member Field: And Ted you're referring to 5:00 p.m. 

Pacific time?
70 

Mr. Katz: I am, and thank you Bill for clarifying that. 

That's 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time for everybody, eight 

o'clock Eastern Time. So I think with no further ado, 

we'll move on. We have LaVon Rutherford giving us 

an SEC Update, and then we have a Board Work 

Session later after that this afternoon. We're 

addressing the two California SEC petitions, and then 

we have public comment.

Mr. Rutherford: All right. Can everybody hear me?

Member Roessler: Yes. Did you take roll call?

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry Gen, what's that?

Member Roessler: Did you take roll call when we --

Mr. Katz: Oh, I'm sorry, thank you. I managed not 

to take roll call. So I've heard Bill and Gen, so how 

about Paul Ziemer?

Member Ziemer: Yes, I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And Loretta Valerio?

Member Valerio: Yes, I'm here.

Mr. Katz: And who am I missing? And Henry 

Anderson?

Member Anderson: I'm here. 

Mr. Katz: Andy.

Member Schofield: And I'm here. 

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Phil's already been on there. So 

okay. So we have all our Board Members on the line. 

Thank you. 

SEC Update

Mr. Rutherford: All right. This is LaVon Rutherford. 

I'm the SEC Health Physics team leader. I'm going 

to give the SEC Update. We give this update at every 

Advisory Board meeting. We'll talk about petitions 
71 

and qualifications under evaluation, currently under 

Board review, and potential 83.14s.

A little summary. We've had 251 petitions to date. 

We have one petition that at this time, at the time of 

the presentation was in the qualification process. 

However, that petition did not qualify. We have two 

petitions that are in evaluation, and we have ten 

reports with the Advisory Board. As you can see, we 

have a few other numbers up there. 

The petition that did not qualify was a petition for 

Clinton Engineering Works from 1943 to 1949. We 

do have a Class for that period. This was a specific 

petition for workers who did not fit into that Class. 

Sandia National Laboratory, these are petitions under 

evaluation. This is the remaining period from 1997 

through 2005. If you remember, we added a Class 

for '95 and '96 at the last Board meeting. We expect 

completion in March of next year.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Again, this is 

another petition that has the remaining years of 1990 

to 2014. We expect this report to be completed in 

May of next year. 

Okay. Petitions that are with the Advisory Board at 

various stages. Hanford. This SEC-56, NIOSH is still 

reviewing documentation to determine whether 

prime contractors, radiological control program, was 

meeting bioassay requirements, and I'm sure Mr. 

Clawson will have more of an update during the Work 

Group sessions.

Savannah River Site. NIOSH is working to resolve 

issues raised by SC&A in the Work Group. Sorry. Los 

Alamos National Lab. We did have a Work Group 

meeting recently, and we do have an update 

scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Idaho National 

Lab, this petition is with the Advisory Board. They're 

still reviewing the proposed Class definition in the 

initial Evaluation Report. 
72 

Argonne National Lab West. This petition says it's 

with the Advisory Board and SC&A. However, we are 

working issues that -- working to resolve issues that 

were identified by SC&A at this time.

Area IV Santa Susana. We do have a petition update 

scheduled for later I think this afternoon. 

Metals and Controls, there again is an update 

scheduled, and that one's for tomorrow. Oh, we're 

jumping all over the place. 

De Soto Avenue Facility. After the Santa Susana 

update, we have an update scheduled for De Soto as 

well.

Superior Steel is a new 83.13 petition/evaluation we 

recently completed. It covers the years 1952 and 

1957, and Dr. Lobaugh will be presenting that 

tomorrow. 

Y-12 Plant. This is the petition 83.14 that was just 

discussed by Dr. Hughes, and the Board 

recommended -- agreed with NIOSH's 

recommendation to add a Class. This table at the 

end is just a summary table of the things I just -- of 

the sites I just went over. These are the petitions 

that are awaiting some action at some point. Right 

now we have no 83.14s in the queue for anything at 

this time, and that's it. Questions.

Mr. Katz: Questions from anyone in the room? Or 

from any Board Members on the line?

(No response.)

Member Valerio: None here.

Mr. Katz: I have a question --

Member Ziemer: None here.

Mr. Katz: I have a question for Paul Ziemer. You, 

we lost you at some point, but we don't know when. 

We had the Y-12 presentation.
73 

Member Ziemer: I missed that completely, so you 

took a vote on what?

Mr. Katz: So we took a vote on Y-12 to add that 

Class. It's an 83.14 and you have the presentation 

and the materials for it.

Member Ziemer: I have the materials.

Mr. Katz: And it was unanimous. Everyone, with one 

recusal, voted in favor of adding that Class. But if you 

haven't had time to go through the materials yet 

though, we'll deal with this after the meeting.

Member Ziemer: Yeah, let me deal with it after. Was 

there any discussion on that item?

Mr. Katz: There was very minimal discussion.

Member Ziemer: Minimal, okay.

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Member Ziemer: I just -- I wanted to make sure I 

didn't miss any issues that might have been raised at 

the meeting?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, yeah. There were some -- there 

were some questions, Dr. Richardson and others on 

some items, but none that were really probative for 

the matter on the table.

Member Ziemer: Yeah. Well let me -- let me get 

back to you Ted.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, that's fine.

Member Ziemer: Because I haven't had a chance to 

go through those documents.

Mr. Katz: No absolutely, absolutely.

Member Ziemer: Yeah. So I'll follow up with you.

Mr. Katz: Right.

Member Ziemer: Thank you. Okay, and that takes 
74 

care of the SEC petitions update then, unless any 

other Board Member on the line had questions 

possibly for LaVon?

(No response.)

Board Work Session

Mr. Katz: No. Hearing none, okay. So then we move 

into Board Work Session, and I can -- why don't we 

do the Work Groups first, and then I'll run through 

the August public comments after that. 

So I am -- I'm going to run alphabetically, and I'll 

skip ones where I know that there's no update in 

effect. But some I may not be clear about and I'll 

ask about them. It may not be an update for all of 

them just the same. The first is Ames. Dr. 

Kotelchuck.

Member Kotelchuck: Really nothing new, nothing 

new to report.

Mr. Katz: Right, okay, and Argonne East. Brad?

Member Clawson: Yes. NIOSH actually delivered a 

paper to SC&A, and I believe it's in SC&A's hands. I 

believe it was delivered in October. So you've got --

SC&A's got that; correct?

Mr. Stiver: Yeah. Actually, we delivered our 

response in October, so it's in NIOSH's court.

Member Clawson: Okay.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Is there -- was it just one item that 

was awaited? Okay, okay. Blockson, I don't --

there's no update for Blockson. And Josie, 

Brookhaven?

Member Beach: There's no change. We're still just 

waiting for I believe the external TBD to be issued, 

and it just keeps moving back, not high priority.

Mr. Katz: Thank you and Carborundum we've heard 

from today. Dose Reconstruction Review Methods 
75 

have not met. Fernald, Brad.

Member Clawson: Actually main Site Profile was 

completed in the last few weeks.

Mr. Katz: Oh right. So we can actually -- we can 

actually retire Fernald for now. So I'll do that. Early 

retirement, okay. Hanford, Brad.

Member Clawson: Hanford we're still working on. I 

talked to Jim a little bit today about it. We've still got 

some -- they're still pulling data and doing some 

research data. But we did have a meeting to be able 

to get the matrix set up and review everything, and 

we're on our path forward.

Mr. Katz: Thank you Brad. Idaho National Lab. Phil 

on the phone.

Member Schofield: Yeah. We've got -- there's no 

new updates for the meeting today on Idaho National 

Lab, but we've got some -- well, we need to have a 

group meeting to kind of get back where we, exactly 

where we want to be. There's been a lot of data 

looked at by both SC&A and NIOSH that we need to 

go over.

Mr. Katz: So Phil, I can say a thing at least. SC&A, 

we finally -- we have gotten the rest of the data we 

needed from the cases for SC&A to complete their 

V&V work on the Class that was proposed by NIOSH. 

So that, that work is underway and I think is probably 

within a couple of months, will be ripe, right, for the 

Work Group, is that right?

So we're probably looking at a late February or March 

meeting? Is that -- late February? Thanks.

Member Schofield: Or March.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So you've got that. I know there's 

other items. That's not all that there is on our plate 

for INL, but that's an important item. Okay. 

Lawrence, Berkeley, there's no update there at this 

point I believe. LANL? Josie.
76

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: Well we actually -- we have this tomorrow 

on the agenda so --

Member Beach: Yes.

Mr. Katz: And Metals and Controls on the agenda for 

tomorrow as well. We've had a Work Group meeting, 

but we'll hear a lot more about that tomorrow. 

Mound, Josie?

Member Beach: There's -- that's one that should be 

retired also. We've completed all our TBD work. 

Unless there's something different I don't know.

Mr. Katz: I'll take care of that, thank you. Nevada 

Test Site.

Member Clawson: Actually, we've got one item left 

with -- I believe it's with ORAU at this time, and then 

it will be retired.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Do we have a sense, a timing sense 

there? That NTS has been with us for quite a while. 

(Off mic comment.)

Mr. Katz: Can you come to a mic? Thanks.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. We don't have a firm date 

yet, but we did receive the data that we need, I 

believe. And so I can get -- I'll send the Board a firm 

date once the schedule's finalized since we got that 

data.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Thank you very much. Let's see. 

ORNL. Gen? Gen, are you on the line for ORNL?

Member Roessler: Okay. I was on mute and talking.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Member Roessler: I don't think there's -- I don't have 

any updates, but I think Dr. Hughes is on the phone, 

so maybe she could chime in and let us know.
77

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Lara's right here, thanks.

Dr. Hughes: Yeah, there's no change from last time. 

We still owe the Work Group a response to the SC&A 

review. But it's going to be a while before that's out.

Mr. Katz: It's going to be a while, okay.

Dr. Hughes: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Thank you, Lara. Okay. 

Portsmouth, Paducah, K-25. That's Phil.

Member Schofield: I don't have anything new to 

report on that. We probably should have a phone 

conversation so that we can just totally close those 

out. I believe there's a couple of minor matrix issues 

still outstanding. But to be honest, we haven't looked 

at it in a while.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Well maybe we can get the staff to 

take a look at what's still on the plate or, oh, Jim.

Dr. Neton: Yeah. I think the issue with those sites 

has to do with the high enriched uranium analysis, 

the neutron exposures, and as far as I know, that 

document is very close to being finished maybe by 

January, is that right?

Mr. Katz: That's super. So then we'll give SC&A time 

to review that. That means that's probably looking 

at March-April, something like that, depending on 

how extensive that document is. Very good. Member 

Beach: Can I ask a quick question back on Mound. 

It shows here that the expected completion is 

12/2018. I'm wondering if we can get an update on 

that, if that's actually going to happen. It's on 

NIOSH's work document. Yeah, Tim's on it. 

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah, yeah. That's the one issue 

that Dr. Taulbee's working on, and I would say it's 

probably not going to be until January. 

Member Beach: Okay.
78 

Mr. Rutherford: Just with the holidays and 

everything going on right now. We had hoped to get 

it out before things, you know, earlier in this month.

Mr. Katz: So that's Mound?

Member Beach: That's Mound. Yeah, I should have 

looked at this sooner.

Mr. Katz: So we don't retire that yet?

Member Beach: No not -- Mound. Yeah, you're right. 

Mound should not be retired.

Mr. Katz: Right, okay. Resuscitated Mound.

Member Beach: Kansas City I was actually thinking. 

That's why I looked. 

Mr. Katz: Okay. Yeah, no I understand. Rocky Flats.

Member Kotelchuck: Nothing new, although I'm 

thinking about updating -- whether there's any need 

for updating the program, excuse me, the Site Profile 

as we did for Carborundum this morning, for partial 

dose reconstructions. I will take a look at that and 

report at the next meeting. I'm not sure if there's 

anything that needs to be done, but it is worth 

checking and I have not checked.

Mr. Katz: LaVon.

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. I'll add to that. We actually 

are -- once the closeout of the SEC petition, we 

initiated updates to the Site Profile and meet shortly 

thereafter, to update all the things. So the updates 

are almost complete. Should be complete by March. 

I would suspect that would be a good time to get, you 

know, SC&A back involved, reviewing those, that 

they're final, we incorporated things that needed to 

be incorporated and so on.

Also, we are looking at the box question that Terrie 

Barrie had, and the ones that she thought we should 

have reviewed. There's a little issue with that, 
79 

because our notes happen to be in Germantown 

because of classification issues. But once we get that 

one resolved, I will update Dr. Kotelchuck on that.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thank you LaVon, and then I mean 

I think we can just -- SC&A consider themselves so 

tasked, since this is sort of a continuing project, to 

review the Site Profile material when it's ready in 

March or whatever that might be. Okay SC&A?

Mr. Rutherford: Excellent.

Mr. Katz: John Stiver, right? Thanks. Okay, so then 

we're probably looking at more like a June time frame 

for a Work Group meeting there, depending on how 

extensive that work is for reviewing the Site Profile 

material. Good. Sandia. Dr. Anderson.

Member Anderson: Yeah. We've met and I think 

we're waiting for some more information.

Mr. Katz: All right. LaVon, do you want to just

address that a little further?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Actually on my presentation, 

I mention that we are working on the remainder 

years, 1997 to I don't know that it was now, 2011, 

and we expect to have that report completed in 

March.

Mr. Katz: March, okay. Thanks.

Member Anderson: We're making progress.

Mr. Katz: Thanks. So that report in March, and then 

again I think SC&A can review that report when it's 

ready, waste no time there. April, May, June maybe 

ballpark for Work Group to maybe finish up work on 

Sandia. 

Member Anderson: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Great, thank you. And Santa Susana we'll 

hear about shortly. Savannah River Site, Brad.

Member Clawson: Yeah. I just received an email 
80 

from Tim Taulbee on it. He's hoping to have out in 

January the coworker model and so forth. We've 

been having troubles getting information out of 

Savannah River, but he's hoping to be able to have 

the report done to this one by January.

Mr. Katz: Right, thank you Brad. So folks on the 

line, I hope you could hear all that. But so -- but it 

was addressed earlier this morning by DOE too. SRS 

had some issues with having the resources for 

classification reviews, which has held up a lot of 

records for quite some time.

They've worked through that, soldiered through all 

that, have some people hired there. They've gotten 

a lot of that work done now, and so the logjam, I 

believe, is broken there and we're hopeful about --

Jim, you have more to add?

Dr. Neton: Not to Savannah River, but well it's sort 

of related to Savannah River. If you remember, the 

Savannah River Site was the first site that we were 

using to sort of do the litmus test on the 

implementation guide for coworker models, and I 

guess I have a question in my mind of where that's 

going to go.

If this report comes out in March, I don't know 

whether that should be taken up under the Methods 

Work Group or whether the, you know, the Savannah 

River Work Group should take it up.

Mr. Katz: So the way we had been proceeding before 

is the -- is they both have a role. So the issues that 

were more just site specific matters of the records, 

what they say and so on were being addressed by 

Savannah River Site Work Group. The coworker 

modeling itself, adequacy of that modeling and so on 

was being handled by the SEC Issues Work Group.

Member Clawson: Right.

Mr. Katz: I think that would -- we might even -- I 

mean at one point, we actually had both Work Groups 
81

meet together to address some of this.

Member Clawson: It may be worth thinking about 

that. We're preparing a road map. We're getting 

close enough where we're working on a road map to 

sort of cross-walk what was done for the coworker 

models of Savannah River versus the 

recommendations in the imp guide, and we can 

provide that to both groups at any time.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, and I think it probably makes sense, 

at least for the first meeting following that material 

coming out, for the Work Groups to meet together 

jointly, since they both have sort of an angle on that 

material. 

Dr. Neton: It's a goal of mine to get the imp guide 

approved before I retire.

Mr. Katz: Oh okay.

Member Clawson: I'd like to be able to see that 

happen.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Well so that -- that will depend 

heavily on being able to get the coworker model out 

early January, at some point in January, so that SC&A 

has time to go over it, but so --

Member Richardson: Work until his retirement.

Member Beach: Well I was going to say he's going 

to hang around. 

Mr. Katz: Hey, that's incentive.

(Simultaneous speaking; laughter.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. 

Science Issues, David. 

Member Richardson: Yes. As was mentioned earlier 

today, there have been a number of organizations 

which have addressed the issue, which the Science 

Issue Work Group has been focused on, on dose and 

dose rate effectiveness factors. Those reports have 
82

finally mostly trickled out into public consumption. 

So there's an NCRP report and several papers from 

the ICRP Working Group on this topic, and 

correspondence related to the report that was 

produced for NIOSH by its contractor and responses 

to those comments. So I think we're at a point to 

issue sort of a conclusory memo on the topic. I've 

drafted that and we'll circulate that to the group.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So then we'll have a Work Group 

meeting at some point after that, once they've had a 

chance to digest it, right? Okay, super. 

Teleconference.

Thank you. So and we just discussed this with SRS, 

the SEC Issues Work Group, I think, will be involved 

then with SRS. Subcommittee on Dose 

Reconstruction.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. The folks that SC&A have 

just finished the -- their Set 26 lines, and I think that 

we're now probably ready to have a meeting on that, 

and finding out of course what they've been -- where 

they're up to on Set 25. So I think we have -- we 

have the makings of a meeting soon. 

Mr. Katz: Well so I can -- I think I can update you, 

and I'll look for John to confirm. But the Set 25 is 

the full set, regular dose reconstruction reviews and 

what SC&A has been doing for the past oh about six 

months to cover the time because of issues of 

scheduling and all that is they drafted, of course, all 

those case reviews and got those out to Board 

Members.

We have Board Members in teams of two that meet 

with SC&A then to give sort of initial feedback, more 

food for thought before those are completed, those 

dose reconstruction cases, and those are just about 

done and I think are expected to be done and turned 

in this month in December, correct John Stiver?

Mr. Stiver: I believe that's right.
83 

Mr. Katz: Yeah, right. So those will be turned in this 

month, and then what needs to get done before a 

Work Group can really productively meet on those is 

of course NIOSH, and there's Grady Calhoun in the 

back of the room here, has to review the reviews so 

that they're ready to address the comments that are 

raised by the reviews. That takes a little bit of time. 

They have to task with ORAU with that and get 

ORAU's responses back and so on.

So that it may be a few months off for those cases 

before you can sort of usefully engage on those 

reviews. 

The blind cases, though, blind cases also, I don't 

know where -- Grady, where is NIOSH on reviewing 

the reviews for the blind cases?

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. So what Grady just said, I know 

you can't hear him, but he's following up on that and 

he'll get back to us.

Member Kotelchuck: I will say that the last couple of 

the blinds for Set 26 have just come in in the last 

several days, but they are finished now.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, okay. Thanks. 

Member Kotelchuck: One other issue?

Mr. Katz: Sure.

Member Kotelchuck: About six months ago, several 

Members of the Board had asked me when are we 

going to update the report to the Secretary. I sent 

out requests about six months ago, and they have 

not been responded to either by SC&A or by NIOSH 

DCAS. If the Board, and obviously they weren't 

responded to I'm sure, because people were working 

very hard on lots of other projects. So I'm not -- I 

think it's up to the Board to decide whether they want 

to have an update at this time.
84

I have to revise the date at which we update to, since 

I sent those out six months ago. But the main 

question is do we want to task folks to gather 

materials to help update the report, and if so, other 

things will have to be put aside. So if we want to 

have one, then let's decide and if we want to 

postpone for a while, then that of course is 

understandable, but let us decide on that.

In that respect obviously, folks from the different 

staff organizations will want to say something.

Mr. Katz: Well, I have something to say there, 

because I don't understand. We already did task 

that. SC&A, I know you had some interaction with 

Rose about that, that we needed the support 

materials for that, and Rose -- I have a lot of faith in 

Rose. She's very diligent. So John, do you know 

what's the standing of that, because --

(Off mic comment.)

Member Kotelchuck: But she and I spoke, and there 

were other things that had priority that I did not feel 

appropriate to say to her the Board's decided you 

need to put this aside.

Mr. Katz: Okay. But that's sort of my responsibility 

over SC&A. But and this is -- they have dose 

reconstruction case review resources. So this should 

not be because there aren't resources available to 

address the needs of preparing that report. 

So that will -- that doesn't need to be re-tasked. That 

will get done. I think it's important. The Board had 

already agreed that we should have an updated 

report. I mean if the Board wants to decide they 

want to wait on the most recent set and blinds, they 

can. But that's then pushing this off for quite some 

time before that, those --

At least the blinds might be easily put to bed. In the 

meantime either way, you can go forward with the -

- because it takes a while to put together the report. 
85

But the case set that's still, that's just about to be 

delivered at the end of December in final form, you 

know, that's at least putting off getting through it for 

almost six months. 

So I mean you can decide that if you want to, but 

otherwise we already said we wanted to go forward 

with another report.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, I think this is helpful in 

clarifying, and I did not -- I looked at it as an 

individual chair of the committee, I felt like I don't 

have the authority to say no, go ahead. You as --

Mr. Katz: I can say go ahead.

Member Kotelchuck: Acting chair can and --

Mr. Katz: We asked for this to be done, so I'm really 

not sure right now what's gone wrong.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, this clarifies, this clarifies. 

But I will say to the parties that I sent emails to six 

months ago, I want to update data which we use as 

a cutoff.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, absolutely.

Member Kotelchuck: And I will do that.

Mr. Katz: And it's not -- honestly, it's not a 

gargantuan job to update the data as is necessary for 

that report. I mean it's substantial but it's nothing. 

It's not that difficult, so it should be getting -- it 

should get done. So okay. That's where we stand 

with that.

Member Schofield: This is Phil. I've gone one quick 

question.

Mr. Katz: Yes.

Member Schofield: I was just wondering if John could 

give us any idea how long it's going to take to review 

those two White Papers that we just received.
86

Mr. Katz: For, for which? Sorry, for which?

Member Schofield: For the air sampling data and 

the thorium and americium for Santa Susana? 

They're the ones that NIOSH just delivered at the 

Work Group meeting we went over.

Mr. Katz: Okay. But so we -- let's address that when 

we address those. They're going to be presenting 

their -- they're going to be presenting right after this 

work session meeting. So let's -- why don't we wait 

for that, Phil?

Member Schofield: Okay.

Mr. Katz: And then absolutely. Just re-raise -- if the 

question doesn't get answered as a matter of course, 

then please ask the question with each of those, 

because we have two presentations for those two 

sites. 

Member Schofield: Okay, thanks.

Mr. Katz: Thanks. Okay. Where are we? 

Procedures.

Member Beach: Okay. So the Procedures 

Subcommittee met last October on the 31st. We had 

a full and productive meeting. Prior to that, SC&A 

compiled a review status of all current NIOSH guide 

documents. I just want to point that out, because 

this was a tremendous effort, completed by SC&A 

and it was much appreciated by the subcommittee. 

A lot of work went into that.

The spreadsheet will be maintained by SC&A as we 

progress through the issues resolution process, and 

new documents will be added as they are published. 

The subcommittee closed out 17 findings on the 31st, 

and tasked SC&A with four new documents to review. 

Those are ORAU OTIB-0088, the Peek Street 

template, OTIB-006 and OTIB-45. Those are due 

before the end of February.

We also transferred one set of findings over to the 
87

Rocky Flats Work Group. That was done by email and 

Dave, I don't know if I ever heard back from you on 

that when I sent you the email transferring that. 

You're Rocky Flats chair; correct?

Member Kotelchuck: Right, I am.

Member Beach: And you remember receiving that 

email?

Member Kotelchuck: I did.

Member Beach: Okay.

Member Kotelchuck: I don't remember right now.

Member Beach: That's fine. I just wondered.

Member Kotelchuck: But no, I got it. I remember 

getting it, but I did not follow up.

Member Beach: Okay. That's a two-way street 

there, and our next meeting is scheduled for 

February 13th of next year.

Mr. Katz: Thank you. Okay, and I can -- TBD-6000. 

The Work Group has not met. I could cover that for 

Paul.

Member Ziemer: Right, that's correct.

Mr. Katz: And we also have the -- its sort of 

counterpart, uranium refining AWEs, which Andy 

chairs, also has not met. Andy, do you want to add 

anything to that?

Member Anderson: No. I think reviews, they're 

coming up though.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. There are -- I mean there's, for 

example, there's one review that's already been done 

by SC&A on General Atomics, which comes under 

that hat.

Member Anderson: Right.
88 

Mr. Katz: And there's some bits and pieces I would 

say of other reviews that probably at some point 

need -- they're not, they're not urgent, but they could 

be buttoned up whenever we do have a Work Group 

meeting.

Member Anderson: Right.

Mr. Katz: So for the General Atomics I don't -- the 

question I guess is whether where NIOSH is on that 

one. 

Mr. Rutherford: We've been waiting on actually, 

some of the coworker issues to be resolved once --

and we get an imp guide complete, then we can move 

forward. We've got the data and information but, you 

know, until that's finalized we don't want to put forth 

all the effort to do that and then have to go back and 

do it again.

Mr. Katz: That absolutely makes sense, right. So 

then that's sort of hinging on getting through this 

SRS coworker model. Thank you.

Member Anderson: Okay. So we're just waiting to 

hear.

Mr. Katz: So we're on hold, right. We're waiting, 

back of the bus. Surrogate data, that's Paul and 

there we don't have an update. We don't have a 

Work Group meeting or an update.

Member Ziemer: Right, and while you're mentioning 

that, let me give you sort of an update there and let 

me backtrack for a minute, because although Ted you 

mention there wouldn't be anything to report at 

Lawrence Berkeley, the Work Group has received a 

lot of information from Dr. Hughes.

But since mid-July, my own life has been focused 

largely on medical issues, and we do have surgery 

scheduled for next week. I'm expecting that I will be 

kind of continually out of the loop for at least another 

month or so. But we have Lawrence Berkeley to 

address, and then you have surrogate data.
89

Mr. Katz: Okay. So for Lawrence Berkeley, you're 

saying a couple of months down the road we might 

be ready for a Work Group meeting?

Member Ziemer: Well, we certainly have a lot of 

things to look at there so -- unless somebody else 

wishes to chair it. 

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Member Ziemer: But I'm thinking it will probably be 

into February before I'm sort of back in the loop and 

able to deal with some of these issues.

Mr. Katz: Okay, and Megan has something to add 

here. 

Dr. Lobaugh: Yeah. So Lara has been in the process 

of transferring this Work Group to me. So what we're 

currently doing is we've responded to SC&A's findings 

on the White Paper covering gross alpha beta gamma 

air sampling results there. Then one thing that I'm 

doing to get my arms around all of the TBD issues is 

entering everything into the BRS. So I had emailed 

probably a few weeks ago saying that I've started 

that effort so --

Member Ziemer: Right. We appreciate that, and that 

will be very helpful.

Mr. Katz: So you think Megan, maybe end of 

February or so we might be ready for a Work Group 

meeting?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So let's tentatively sort of plan on 

that. We won't schedule it yet, but --

Member Ziemer: Yeah, sounds good.

Mr. Katz: But that sounds good. Thank you very 

much. Thanks Paul too. Excuse me one second. Let 

me get this down. Okay, okay, and I think -- so that 

takes care of it for the Work Group reports.
90

Member Kotelchuck: I think Methods, DR Methods.

Mr. Katz: I covered that already. There was no 

update for DR Methods.

Member Kotelchuck: That's correct.

Mr. Katz: I covered it for you. If you have something 

to add, go ahead.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes I do, and I did miss that 

then. Grady, we're -- we've decided at our last 

meeting that we'll be talking only about gathering 

information going forward. I'm not trying to look 

back at comparing potentially NIOSH and SC&A. 

But Grady, I have a note down that Grady was going 

to look or tally up the professional judgments, the 

circumstances under which we did professional 

judgments were used to allow us to look at them, and 

I don't know. I haven't spoken to you in a while. 

Mr. Calhoun: You have not and --

Member Kotelchuck: So and actually --

Mr. Calhoun: As far as I know, I don't know what 

the status of that is, but I also will try to find that out 

for tomorrow.

Member Kotelchuck: You know what? No. Now let 

me -- I will clarify on my end. We haven't had 

meetings of the subcommittee --

Mr. Calhoun: That's true.

Member Kotelchuck: --and therefore there's nothing 

to move forward, and we're not going to look back. 

So that's something that you are tasked with, if you 

will, and it will take a while before you build up --

before we finish reviewing enough cases, that you'll 

have a chance to put together something to say when 

did we decide --

Mr. Calhoun: Yeah. If we start doing that from this 

point forward --
91 

Member Kotelchuck: That's right.

Mr. Calhoun: --- we're going to have to get so many 

done before it will even make a difference.

Member Kotelchuck: And therefore my report could 

have been well, we're waiting upon events. But 

you're not behind.

Mr. Calhoun: Good, thank you.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Kotelchuck: And I'm sorry I didn't think of 

that right off.

Mr. Katz: Christmas comes early for Grady.

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, okay. So --

Mr. Stiver: I just want to add something. We had 

the meeting of Methods on September 13th, and 

SC&A was tasked to put together kind of a matrix, 

different comments on consistency, and we 

circulated that to the Work Group September 20th.

Member Kotelchuck: You did, you did, and there 

were no updates. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Kotelchuck: But thank you for noting that 

you folks have done good work and followed through 

on what you said you'd do.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, John. Okey-doke. We have 

the August public comments, which I'll run through. 

Let's see if we have enough time. We still have -- I 

think we still have 15 minutes or so. So initial 

comments. We had comments from the petitioners 

from Metals and Controls. We're dealing with Metal 

Controls tomorrow. So that isn't a matter and these 

comments that were made there don't require 

response.
92

Oh, and also then, yeah, and that goes also for a 

number of -- you'll see in your reports of other Metals 

and Controls comments, where the response is 

noted, what the response was. 

But again, we're addressing Metals and Controls and 

these issues, and the Work Group has discussed 

these issues too in its meeting earlier, and you'll hear 

more about that tomorrow. So that covers the Metals 

and Controls.

Then we have also a number of comments from the 

petitioner for Santa Susana, who we'll be hearing 

from again later tomorrow. Some of these relate to 

the issue that we've heard about. DOE spoke to this 

morning about issues about potential issues with 

getting full records from Boeing, and we heard also 

from DOE that we would receive a report on what 

they learned from their field work on that matter.

Let's see. Savannah River site, okay, and we also 

heard there's no more response required. We heard 

last time about how long SRS has waited for a 

conclusion of this, the SEC petition matters that are 

still on the table, and we also heard this morning 

from DOE about resolving the data flow for that, and 

we've gotten past that and we've heard from Brad on 

that too.

So -- and we'll have public comments on Savannah 

River site as well in the public comment session I 

believe. 

Rocky Flats. The petitioner raised a couple of 

different issues there. Those have been responded 

to. One related to I think LaVon already addressed 

some records that the petitioner believes should be 

looked at at Los Alamos, and NIOSH is following up 

on that. That all seems appropriate.

Yeah, and another comment about exotics, and 

NIOSH has responded on that matter too. 

So next we have Sandia, and the matter that was 
93 

raised will be addressed in the addendum that we've 

heard discussed earlier today, that we expect at the 

end of March for Sandia. So that should be 

addressing that comment. 

We heard from the petitioner for Pinellas on several 

matters. These have all been responded to. One had 

to do with metal tritides and how they're dealt with 

there, versus Sandia, and that was explained that 

that metal tritides was not the basis for qualifying the 

Sandia petition, and there was also a question on --

for Pinellas about how dose reconstructions are 

handled with respect to skin cancers.

Now the Board has reviewed the NIOSH methods and 

approved the NIOSH methods for Pinellas there. 

Okay. Another comment on Metals and Controls. 

Again, that was actually addressed at the Work Group 

meeting, and you'll hear more again tomorrow. 

Another comment on Sandia. While it's related to 

Santa Susana and De Soto being the same entity, but 

it's been explained they're not the same entity.

They're separate sites by law. They're not the same 

facilities and they have separate radiological 

conditions, even though they were managed by the 

same, the same contractor. 

So other questions about Santa Susana are all 

matters going to be addressed this afternoon. So 

they're all substance for the discussions to come 

shortly. There was one comment, probably won't get 

addressed this afternoon about questioning whether 

NIOSH was having Boeing select who NIOSH 

interviews, and the response was that NIOSH doesn't 

have Boeing select its interviewees. It selects them.

There's another matter about interviewing a health 

physicist that the petitioner had identified, and 

NIOSH has interviewed that health physicist, and that 

covers -- those are the last of the comments for 

August meeting. Any questions from the Board 

Members about how those were responded to? Okay.
94 

Member Anderson: No questions.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Andy. All right then. So we're 

early. Where's the petitioner for Santa Susana? 

D'Lanie, are you in the room? Ah, she's out of the 

room, okay, okay. So I think we just take a break 

then, and we will be back in business at four o'clock 

for De Soto, starting with De Soto and then after De 

Soto -- oh no. Sorry, sorry, no, no, no. 2:45, Area 

IV and then De Soto follows that. Sorry about that. 

So 2:45, we're back. Thanks.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 2:32 p.m. and resumed at 2:49 p.m.) 

Mr. Katz: All right. We're on to the next session, 

which is Area IV, Santa Susana, and we have a 

presentation by Lara. Phil, before Lara starts, is 

there anything you wanted to say to the group?

Member Schofield: Not really at this time.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Dr. Hughes: Okay, are we ready?

Mr. Katz: We are ready.

Santa Susana Field Laboratory SEC Petition #235

Dr. Hughes: Okay, thank you. Good afternoon. So 

this is a follow-up presentation on SEC-235. This was 

an SEC evaluation for Area IV Santa Susana that was 

completed last year in 2017. There was a follow-up 

Work Group discussion later that year, 2017, and 

there were some follow-up tasks that were given to 

NIOSH by the Work Group, and this is --

The presentation is about what we found during those 

tasks. The follow-up was sent to the Work Group in 

the form of two White Papers. They were sent in 

early November, and with that, I start maybe. Okay, 

here we go. Just a couple of brief background slides. 

Area IV, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is the site 

that's relatively close to this location here.
95 

It's north of Los Angeles in the Simi Valley, California 

in Ventura County. It's 290 acres. This is a site that 

was a field laboratory that was operated by various 

entities, and it consists of four areas and the covered 

site is Area IV, which was the only -- was the area 

where the major DOE contract operations took place 

in the form of various nuclear reactor experiments 

and related activities.

The covered period, the DOE period that's covered 

under EEOICPA is 1955 through 1988, and there's a 

remediation period from 1988 to the present. There 

are several SEC classes for Area IV Santa Susana 

field lab. SEC-93, SEC-156 and SEC-234, all three of 

those together encompass the entire operational 

period.

1955 through 1988 has already been designated an 

SEC. SEC-235 has currently no Class added. There 

was no -- a NIOSH recommendation to not add a 

Class. The evaluated period was August 1st, 1999 

through June 30th, 1993. So a little bit of 

background of this petition. This is SEC-235, petition 

for Area IV for the period after 1988.

The petition was for the entire operational period 

after 1988, the remediation period. What qualified 

was August 1st, 1991 through June 30th, 1993, 

which was something we referred to as the CEP 

period. CEP stands for Controls for Environmental 

Pollution, and that was a bioassay contractor that 

was contracted by several DOE sites throughout, and 

this contract has to be found to be falsifying data. 

They were not actually running their samples. They 

were just kind of making up numbers as I 

understand.

So any CEP data we don't use because of that issue. 

The NIOSH evaluation to the Board on August 2017 

did not recommend a Class. We feel like we can 

reconstruct doses with sufficient accuracy for this two 

year period, despite not using the bioassay from CEP. 

This evaluation was discussed with the Area IV Work 
96 

Group on December 4th, 2017. The Work Group 

requested additional workup on two issues. The first 

was the status of thorium and americium operations 

post-1988, in light of SEC-234. SEC-234 was the 

infeasibility was because of the NIOSH infeasibility to 

reconstruct doses from thorium and americium at 

Area IV. That's the nuclides resulting from reactor 

operations, reactor fuel, transuranics. 

And secondly, the Work Group tasked NIOSH to 

evaluate available air sample data during and before 

and after the CEP period, when in vitro bioassay are 

invalid, and this was done to kind of reassure that 

there wasn't anything -- the exposure potential was 

somewhat comparable during that period where no 

bioassay is available.

So these two White Papers were issued by NIOSH and 

sent to the Work Group in November. So the status 

of Area IV after 1988, there were -- three facilities 

are the main focus from an exposure standpoint that 

were still -- they were not operational, but hey were 

undergoing major D&D operations.

One was the hot lab, Building 20, the RMDF, the 

Radiological Material Disposal Facility and the SNAP 

reactor facility. The main radionuclides of concern 

during D&D are efficient products, mostly cesium and 

strontium. Residual alpha activity in the Hot Lab was 

attributable to plutonium-239 and the major 

radionuclide of concern in the SNAP reactor facility is 

cobalt-60 from activating components during reactor 

operations.

This is -- this information's all out of the health 

physics report that were completed during this time. 

So it's -- so the infeasibility for the prior SEC was 

americium and thorium. So we kind of looked at the 

status of operations with thorium and americium 

after 1988.

It's very difficult to prove that there was absolutely 

none of this data. So all we can really do is go 

through the records and see if there's any indications 
97 

that these operations that were -- that any of these 

materials from the operational period were holding 

over during the D&D period.

So what we know is all reactor operations at the site 

had ended by 1980. The nuclear support operations 

ended by 1988. The thorium source term that was 

there pre-1988 was -- that thorium was a reactor fuel 

component of two different reactors, the SRE and the

ATR, and the AETR, I'm sorry. This is actually a typo, 

and the nuclear support operations of the thoriumbearing fuel.

The americium source term pre-1988 was the 

transuranics and all of the used reactor fuel and the 

sealed sources. 

So as for thorium, we know the thorium was present 

in the SRE Core Number II, which was in operation 

from 1960 to 1964. This was the thorium-232 and 

enriched uranium alloy. We know this fuel was 

assembled in the Engineering Test Building some 

time before 1960. The SRE Core II fuel was stored 

in the RMDF after the removal from the reactor in 

1964. 

This fuel was disassembled in the Hot Lab starting in 

1974, and was shipped offsite in 1977. There's pretty 

good indications that that's what happened. There's 

technical reports that support all this, and the 

Engineering Test Building that was used to assemble 

this fuel was released for unrestricted use in 1985.

So there's no indications that the SRE Core II 

operations, that there was any material left over in 

these buildings. The AETR operated from 1960 to 

1974. This was another thorium -- reactor that had 

thorium fuel, was thorium fuel-based. This fuel was 

fabricated at the AETR reactor building in 1959. This 

building was also released for unrestricted -- had 

been released for unrestricted use in 1980.

We also reviewed various other documentation, 

including the incident documentations, and we found 
98 

no incidents that involved thorium listed. As for 

americium, again americium, the main driver of 

potential americium exposure was the nuclear 

reactor fuel, because it's produced in the reactor.

All reactor fuel had been removed from the site by 

1988. There was the transuranic management by 

pyro partitioning separations program that was using 

sources of americium and other isotopes. But this 

program, by all indications that we saw was never 

actually -- never took off. So this material was 

shipped to Area IV but it was, you know, in storage 

and was not handled.

We have incidents mentioning americium only before 

1988 but not after. The only areas where there might 

be some potential residual americium contamination 

would be the Hot lab and the radioactive material 

handling facility. We did a thorough, fairly thorough 

review of the decommissioning and quarterly review 

reports and do not indicate any evidence that 

americium or thorium were encountered at these 

operational facilities.

So just in conclusion under the thorium and 

americium status, we know that the major source 

term for americium and thorium had been removed 

from the site by 1988, which is the nuclear reactor 

fuel. A review of the facilities during the remediation 

period do not indicate a sustained radiation exposure 

of these nuclides that would be similar to the 

operational period.

Now we know D&D can produce unpredictable 

exposures, and the site had fairly robust internal 

exposure monitoring program in place at the time. 

NIOSH does not find that the exposure potential from 

the operational period regarding americium and 

thorium held over into the remediation period. Keep

in mind that the main source and form of the reactor 

fuel had been removed from the site.

This was the first White Paper. So I'm now going 

onto the second White Paper, unless you prefer to 
99 

ask questions about the first part now, or I can 

complete my presentation. Do you have a 

preference?

Mr. Katz: Go ahead, Lara.

Dr. Hughes: Okay. So the second White Paper was 

some regarding the air sampling during the 

remediation period. So a little bit of background on 

the air sampling. They did -- the site did general air 

sampling. This was just fixed locations in the work 

areas. They pulled these samples weekly and then 

what we have in the form of records is quarterly 

reports.

So we look at a quarterly result would be four, you 

know, would be averaged, the weekly results 

averaged over a quarter or an average of 13 data 

points. We also have breathing zone air sampling. 

This is the sampler that was worn by a worker during 

various jobs that collects the respiratory -- the 

particles on a filter.

These results are then compared to a maximum 

permitted air concentration or MPC for the 

radionuclides of concern during the D&D period, 

which were strontium-90 for beta emitters and 

plutonium-239 for alpha emitters. There's an MPC 

limit in place. It's one times 10 to the minus 9 

microcuries per milliliter for strontium-90, and two 

times 10 to the minus 12 microcuries per milliliter for 

plutonium-239. 

For breathing zone, they compared to what they call 

an MPC hour limit, which is 2,000 per year or 520 per 

quarter. If you divide that, you get the quarterly. 

The breathing zone, the workers that were entering 

airborne areas were also either wearing full face or 

airline respirators. The full face just covers the full 

face. Airline has the supplied air and has a higher 

respiratory protection factor.

Until 1992, the air sampling was the primary 

exposure assessment method. Bioassay was 
100 

backup. Now this is how the site did it. That does 

not mean that we can -- that has not necessarily an 

effect to our dose reconstruction program. 

That's just how they operated. They do sampling, 

and then when they think oh, this is an area where 

somebody might have received intake, then they 

would send those people off for special bioassay.

So I have a brief, I have a slide for each of these 

operational buildings. Not operational, but 

undergoing D&D. So what the major operations that 

were going on during this period that we're focusing 

on. So for the SNAP facility T-059, we have some air 

data summary available for 1991, four quarters.

Again, the facility's undergoing D&D. They're taking 

down structural material. They're cutting up steel 

parts. The main contaminant is cobalt-60. This 

structural steel and irradiated concrete is reduced in 

size and sent to the RMDF for interim storage until 

it's eventually shipped offsite.

There's some reporting of airborne radionuclides 

observed during the removal of old sodium potassium 

lines. Workers were breathing some samples during 

operations, causing airborne contaminations. They 

did not have general air samplers in the SNAP area.

For the Hot Lab, we have the air data summaries 

available for 1990 through 1993, 15 quarters. They 

had 28 general air sampling stations throughout the 

building. They recorded air data for every quarter. 

Again, workers with potential for intakes were 

breathing zone and respirators if needed.

This is the facility where we have the largest amount 

of breathing zone data available. The D&D operation 

during this period mostly consists of removal of cell 

liners and drain pipes. There's some incident report 

that indicates small events of contamination, and 

there is a period in 1993 where we saw some 

elevated general air data points. I'll speak to that in 

a minute.
101 

We found out any potential intakes could be assessed 

using a combination of available bioassay air data or 

whole body count. The Radioactive Material Disposal 

Facility, again we have air data available for 1990 and 

1991. There's one quarterly report missing. This 

facility had seven fixed general air samplers. There's 

breathing zone data for up to ten workers available 

per quarter.

This is the only facility that was not in D&D mode, 

and they were not working on tearing it down. They 

were receiving and storing and shipping off material. 

They got material from other areas such as Area IV, 

and yeah, they were packaging, storing and shipping 

stuff offsite.

So this is a brief look back at the operational period. 

The air data during the operational period has not 

been a major focus of evaluations in the past, mostly 

because we have a lot of bioassay data or because 

we don't have the raw air data. Usually it's a very 

large amount of data that's potentially available, and 

we have not coded it or collected it at this point.

So this is -- this is a graph showing the time and 

years. This is the operational period, and the Y axis 

shows the general air beta annual average air 

concentration for the Hot Lab. 

This is from annual summary reports that was 

reported for the Hot Lab per year, and it's one value 

that was reported for air sample, because obviously 

you have a very large average -- it's averaged over 

a long period of time, and then it compares it to the 

maximum permissible concentration.

You see they were pretty much below except for 

1985, I believe is that, and then there's a drop-off 

towards the end of the operational period, which is 

kind of probably in line with them removing material 

from the facility before it's undergoing D&D.

So this is the quarterly -- the maximum quarterly 

averages for the remediation period. So the X axis is 
102 

the quarter. We started the first quarter in 1990 and 

end of the fourth quarter 1993. And so we have the 

blue dots. The blue line is the beta, the alpha, sorry 

the alpha, and the green is the beta activity.

This is quarterly gross measurements for alpha and 

beta, and then there's the dashed lines of the limits, 

and you can see the main -- the noteworthy thing is 

that they're mostly below the respective limits, with 

the exception of these three quarters in 1993, where 

we have some huge values.

So regarding those values, we kind of tried to find out 

what's going on there. I mean they're reported in 

the Hot Lab quarterly reports, but they're not in any 

way discussed. So we're kind of like at a loss what -

- if somebody encounters these type of values that is 

this high, they would usually say something about it.

We went and interviewed the people that were in 

charge at the time, and they had no recollection of 

this happening, and they also kind of doubted that 

these were real. They could have been spurious 

samples, something malfunctioning with the 

detector. However, we don't, you know, that's not -

- we can't just say that. We have no proof, so don't 

really know what to do with this data. It's kind of --

it's there. We don't know why it's there.

So moving on, we kind of looked at the breathing 

zone. This is the same type of graph for breathing 

zone that was reported for the Hot Lab and other 

facilities again, for 1990 through 1993, and the 

maximum MPC hour limit is that black line. You see 

they stayed well below all the breathing zone that 

they collected or reported stayed way below the limit, 

so that doesn't seem to be an issue.

So again, the elevated data for the Hot Lab. Quarters 

1 to 3 had elevated quarterly results in three 

locations, 3 of 28 locations. One was in the service 

gallery, which is the staging area behind the hot cells, 

and one was in the basement, which is an area not 

generally occupied but they did at some point go in 
103 

and had to remove contaminated drain lines. 

So this would certainly be an operation where they 

would expect some airborne, however maybe not 

quite in that range. Again, the worker breathing zone 

data remained below the regulation level. So what 

we did, we went and looked at worker rosters that 

are available. They're in the quarterly reports, and 

we kind of looked at what, you know, what other data 

is available.

We looked at the whole body counts. There are 

indeed workers that worked D&D that had some 

small intakes, but nothing that, you know, would be 

comparable to those high air data. We also looked at 

data from the new bioassay contractor. In the third 

quarter of '93, they had the new bioassay contractor 

come in and if there had been any significant intakes, 

that would have shown up in those workers. 

So in conclusion for the air data, we do have general 

air and breathing zone data available. Some quarters 

are missing and some facilities are not -- we don't 

have all quarterly data for all facilities. We're not 

quite sure if we don't have them or if they were never 

written. We're not quite sure about that.

Regarding further research into the higher, these 

elevated Hot Lab samples, potentially raw data and 

log books are available. However, I'm not sure at 

this point, you know, how far this type of research, 

what exactly is that really going to help with the 

decision on this petition. I would leave that up to the 

Work Group.

It's not clear. Any potentially raw data log book, it's 

not clear if it's available and how easily it could be 

collected. What we do know is the Hot Lab data set 

on these quarterly reports that I just reported on, we 

know that the Hot Lab data set is the most complete 

and is believed to be bounding.

The Hot Lab elevated samples are unusually high, but 

elevated samples in general would be in line with the 
104 

disruptive operations during the D&D period. 

Despite these type of operations, we still had no 

significant worker intakes at the time, and NIOSH 

believes that the available information is sufficient to 

bound doses from the D&D operations during the CEP 

period. And that concludes my presentation.

Mr. Katz: Do we have any questions for Lara from in 

the room to start with? Board Members? Dave, 

David.

Member Richardson: I'd just like to make sure I 

understand the connection between the two White 

Papers. One involved the status of the operations 

involving thorium and americium in Area IV during 

the remediation period, and the second report 

seemed to talk about, now help me if this isn't clear. 

I guess the question is are these two related? Is the 

discussion about the monitoring information available 

focused on the issues of monitoring and exposure 

assessment for thorium and americium, or have you 

switched gears and you're talking more generally, 

because it seems you were touching on exposure to 

other radionuclides?

Dr. Hughes: Yeah. Well, they're related in the sense 

they were two separate tasks that were given to 

NIOSH by the Work Group. But yeah, you're right. I 

should have made that clear. They're not necessarily 

-- the air data is more general. 

I mean this is general air data they analyzed for gross 

nuclides. They analyzed for plutonium and 

strontium. That's the limit that they used. So no, 

it's not -- the air data White Paper does not focus on 

thorium and americium necessarily.

Member Richardson: So when we think about the 

difficulties of quantifying or assessing exposure or 

intakes with thorium and americium in particular 

during this period, that's where as you go through 

some of the lines of evidence that you've assembled, 
105 

one might think well, indirectly evaluating whether 

we believe the air sampling data based on whole body 

counting data, for example, we'd want to consider 

how that was quantified for thorium exposures, for 

example, because you had previously talked about 

some of the difficulties of quantitatively interpreting 

in vivo counting, for example.

Dr. Hughes: Right. They did not do in vivo counting 

for thorium.

Member Richardson: So that's not a line of evidence 

that we could take to assess the questions of thorium 

and americium in the remediation periods?

Dr. Neton: Yeah, this is Jim. I think Lara did a pretty 

good job researching and demonstrating that the 

source term for thorium and americium was not there 

in this period, at least in the sense that there was no 

operational activities ongoing. That was the basis for 

adding the Class in the operations period, was 

physical work going on with these materials in larger 

quantities. By the residual contamination period that 

we're in now, those source terms were gone.

So there was really no reason to have a routine 

monitoring program for those nuclides. So what 

she's reporting on here with the air sample data is 

did they do a good job monitoring the remaining 

source terms, which was strontium-90, cobalt and 

such, and also was the 1991 through '93 period, 

which was the CEP, so-called CEP period, is that any 

different than the bounding time periods, so that we 

could use the monitoring data for the bounding or the 

adjacent periods to reconstruct doses?

Mr. Katz: Jim Lockey.

Member Lockey: Yeah, thank you. I think you did a 

good presentation. I just need clarification. On one 

of your slides --

Mr. Katz: The mic, thanks.

Member Lockey: On one of your slides, you say any 
106 

potential intakes could be assessed, and then on --

further on, you go on to say that, and maybe I just 

don't understand, no significant input, intake was 

observed. So --

Dr. Hughes: Right, based on the available bioassay 

data. We have the bioassay data.

Member Lockey: So the bioassay data. You said they 

would assess --

Dr. Hughes: There were some -- I mean there were 

smaller levels. Yeah, there were some workers that 

showed minor or small -- I'm not sure what the 

intakes are, because we didn't calculate them. 

They had such small levels of -- I think one was 

cesium in the urine as a result of working in the D&D 

operations. It's not something that's terribly unusual 

for this type of operation. 

Member Lockey: So was the policy such that if --

Dr. Hughes: They did monitor -- yeah, they did 

monitor that these workers were bioassayed. They 

were wearing breathing zone. They were also given 

bioassay and some of them were whole body 

counted. It was just kind of based on --

Member Lockey: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Hughes: Yeah.

Mr. Katz: Other questions from Board Members in 

the room or Board Members on the phone?

(No response.)

Mr. Katz: While I'm waiting, I'll just note one 

question no one's asked, but I'll give up. Is SC&A, 

this report received fairly recently, so SC&A is 

working on this. They were at the Work Group 

meeting and had a chance to get some -- ask 

clarifying questions to help them with their review. 

But they're still looking at this paper, so it's not a --
107 

they haven't done their work yet and the Work 

Group's awaiting that. I'm guessing that their work 

will probably get wrapped up in February or so, is that 

right Bob? Or you can just nod or --

Mr. Barton: Yeah. I believe February or March.

Mr. Katz: Okay, late February or early March. Late 

February would be good given contract 

circumstances. Yeah. 

(Off mic comments.)

Mr. Katz: We like to get paid for our work, but okay. 

So I just want to add that to the discussions, so you 

know that's ongoing. If I don't have any questions 

from Board Members on the line, more questions --

or in the room, then it's time to hear from the 

petitioner.

Ms. Blaze: I just want to address the Board after we 

hear about those SECs.

Mr. Katz: Oh, that's fine. That's absolutely fine. 

That's your prerogative, absolutely. So we have --

then we've -- it's 3:18, it's about 3:20, whatever. We 

have a good bit of time, but we have you here. 

I don't know if you know whether there are other 

people who would be on the phone listening, who 

would worry about missing the discussion of De Soto 

Avenue if we get started on that sooner, or what's 

your wish there D'Lanie?

Ms. Blaze: I'm prepared to address it. There may be 

some other advocates on the phone. That's fine.

Mr. Katz: Well so, do you want us to wait is the 

question, or should we just --

Ms. Blaze: Let's go ahead into it. I think we --

Mr. Katz: Barrel through?

Ms. Blaze: Yeah.
108 

Mr. Katz: Okay, very good. So then let's go on to 

the second item. De Soto. SC&A has a presentation 

for this. Thank you, D'Lanie.

(Pause.)

Mr. Barton: Okay. Can everybody hear me okay? 

On the phone?

Participant: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Just pull that mic up as high as you 

can. Thanks.

De Soto Avenue Facility SEC Petition #246

Mr. Barton: Okay, great. Well good afternoon 

everybody. My name is Bob Barton. I'm with SC&A, 

and we're going to be discussing the De Soto Facility 

SEC Petition No. 246. So just to give a little bit of 

background on Petition 246, the original petition had 

the proposed definition of all workers who worked at 

the De Soto Avenue Facility in Los Angeles County, 

California during the period from January 1st, 1965 

through December 31st, 1995.

The original position put forth in the petition reads as 

follows, and this is important for the rest of the 

presentation: "NIOSH has determined it cannot 

reconstruct radiation dose for americium, thorium or 

associated progeny at SSFL Area IV 1965 to 1988. 

Based on shared contractor and operational history, 

shared data limitations between SSFL Area IV and 

the De Soto facility, and the established presence of 

americium, thorium and associated progeny at De 

Soto facility until at least 1995, the following petition 

is submitted."

And as we just sort of discussed in the previous 

presentation, that was the basis for the Area IV SEC. 

The infeasibility was found that you can't actually 

reconstruct doses to americium and thorium during 

that operational period which ended in 1988.

While these two facilities are sort of like sister 
109 

facilities, as was mentioned earlier on a legal basis 

they are separate facilities. So we have to establish 

and ask ourselves the question whether similar 

exposure potential to that americium and thorium 

that was at Area IV also occurred at De Soto, and 

would constitute a similar infeasibility.

A little bit more on the background here. The petition 

was submitted on March 1st earlier this year. NIOSH 

releases its Evaluation Report on July 3rd of 2018, 

and it was first presented and discussed with the 

Advisory Board at Meeting No. 124 in Providence, 

Rhode Island. That was the previous face to face 

meeting.

Following those discussions at the August Board 

meeting, SC&A was tasked with reviewing the main 

conclusions of that NIOSH SEC Evaluation Report, 

and that's why I'm standing here now.

So it's very important to understand what those two 

central conclusions of the evaluation were, and again 

we're focused on americium and thorium here. 

That's not to the exclusion of any other potential 

infeasibilities, but really those are the two. If there 

are bad actors out there, those are the two we really 

wanted to concentrate on.

So for americium, the Evaluation Report reads 

"Neither documents available to NIOSH nor 

interviews with former workers revealed any 

historical -- history of fabrication of americium 

sources, or work with uncontained americium at the 

De Soto Avenue facility.

"Contrasting previous NIOSH evaluations of 

radiological work at Area IV of SSFL, NIOSH has 

found no indication that the De Soto had sources of 

americium associated with work processes." So the 

key here is not necessarily whether americium was 

ever at the De Soto site, but was it ever in a form on 

a process that would represent an internal exposure 

potential, like it was determined at SSFL.
110 

For thorium, the NIOSH Evaluation Report concludes 

"NIOSH has identified detailed documentation of 

thorium work episodes in 1970 and 1979, providing 

source term, operational procedures, radiological 

protection protocols, names of individual operators 

and dates of work.

"NIOSH has concluded that thorium grinding 

operations in 1979 represent the bounding 

operational or bounding thorium internal exposures 

at the De Soto Avenue facility during the operational 

period," which again was 1965 through 1995 is the 

operational period.

"As presented in Section 7.2.3.1, NIOSH has 

sufficient personnel bioassay data including," and 

this is a typo. It should say "pre-work and post-work 

urinalysis and job performance data to allow it to 

develop a bounding dose estimate for workers with 

potential thorium exposures during the period from 

January 1st, 1965 through December 31st, 1995."

So SC&A's review approach to investigating this 

Evaluation Report was obviously we start by 

reviewing all the relevant available documentation 

that's in the Site Research Database, and we also 

evaluated documents that had been supplied by 

CORE Advocacy for Nuclear and Aerospace Workers.

Beyond that, we wanted to evaluate documented 

interviews with former workers at the De Soto 

facility, and that also included a signed affidavit that 

was supplied by a former health physicist at De Soto, 

and that came by way of CORE Advocacy.

The third facet here, beyond the sort of official 

documented interviews specific to De Soto, let's 

examine a substantial portion of the claimant 

population that has job types that have the likelihood 

for potential and involvement in radiological 

operations during this time.

That review basically focused on what's known as a 

CATI Report, which is a computer-aided telephone 
111

interview that's done as part of the dose 

reconstruction process, and as appropriate, we also 

looked at the original Department of Labor case files 

that are submitted with each claim. A lot of times 

statements will be made in there that aren't included 

in the computer-aided telephone interview.

With regards to the relevant available 

documentation, in addition to retrospective historical 

documentation, these would be historical summaries 

of operations that occurred, but would also include 

such things as planning documents. We wanted to 

look at what I call the primary document types, and 

these would include the actual health physics log 

books.

These would be done on a daily basis. A health 

physicist would essentially document what jobs they 

did during the day. A second one is what is called at 

various times at De Soto a tagged area entry permit. 

This is essentially the equivalent of a radiation work 

permit for work that was going to be done in a 

radiological area where special precautions were 

necessary. There was a form that had to be filled out 

for each individual job.

The third one are routine contamination surveys, and 

these really go hand in hand with the health physics 

log books. But it's a standard form if you've ever 

seen them before, and you'd have a number of swipe 

samples that were taken. They were all given a 

number and then there's generally a map that goes 

with it to show where in each area the swipe was 

taken.

The last one are area air sampling results. So those 

would be general area, but also the personnel air 

sampling results, which are also referred to as lapel 

air samplers, which were discussed in the previous 

presentation by Lara. 

Our first finding when we looked at these primary 

documents is that we observed there are significant 
112

temporal gaps in what's available for us to look at, 

and you'll see what I mean in the next couple of 

slides. 

So these are the health physics log books available 

by year. That chart is very difficult to read, but on 

the bottom X axis you essentially have 1965 to 1995, 

and on the Y axis you have zero percent to 100 

percent of the month.

What we simply did here is go through and say do we 

have any of these types of records in this case, health 

physics log books, and what percentage of the month 

in each individual year do we actually have evidence 

of these. It could be one, it could be 30. So this is 

not necessarily saying that for example in 1965, we 

have 100 percent of the log books just at the 

temporal coverage was across the entire year.

As you can see there's a pretty big gap there, and it 

goes from about 1968 through 1980, where we just 

could not find the health physics logs, which were 

sometimes identifying specific activities that were 

going on. For example, I had to do room such and 

such to swipe for such and such.

The next one, these were those radiation work 

permits. Again, same type of chart. We have the 

years on the bottom, the percentage of months in 

which we observed that type of documentation, and 

again it's sporadic for some years. For some years it 

looks like we're doing pretty good, and then after 

about 1983 we really didn't see any of those 

anymore.

That's when these are the routine contamination 

surveys. Again, it would be a listing of swipes taken 

in a given room, and then accompanying a map 

showing where exactly in that room and why that's 

important. A lot of these are going to be gross alpha 

or gross beta, and might not necessarily call out what 

the contaminant is. 

But sometimes in the comments section on these 
113

things it would say we went there into this room and 

swiped as a result of looking for thorium as part of 

different operations. This is that last one. These are 

the area air samples. So these are the gross alpha 

samples. 

Unfortunately, I did not have time to compile the 

breathing zone lapel samplers for this report. But as 

you can see, the air samplers are really clustered 

around 1970 and right after 1979, in that kind of 

area. That was really where the two thorium 

operations that were identified by NIOSH were. 

So I'm going to move on to specific to americium 

exposure potential. What potential sources are there 

for this contaminant at De Soto? The first one would 

be handling or processing of de-clad spent nuclear 

fuel. This would have been stuff that had been put 

in the reactor, creating those transuranic 

contaminants, and then you strip off the cladding and 

they're available for -- to become suspended, 

inhaled, ingested, that sort of thing.

There's also fabrication of sealed americium sources 

and/or the loss of integrity of existing sources that 

had been sealed, but started leaking. That's one 

other potential source of exposure. There's the 

involvement in the Transuranic Management by 

Pyropartitioning-Separation, otherwise known as the 

TRUMP-S program.

That may have included some americium as well as 

other transuranic material. This last one here is kind 

of interesting, at least to me. They had americium in 

their smoke detectors. So any loss of integrity of 

those in handling by the workers could potentially be 

a pathway for internal dose.

Specific to the spent fuel, we do not find any evidence 

of actual de-cladding activities, direct evidence of 

we're going to take spent fuel, take it to De Soto and 

strip it of its cladding. We just did not find that direct 

evidence there. However, we found several 

examples of spent fuel arriving at the De Soto Site, 
114

but again no evidence that that spent fuel was 

handled or processed in such a way where the 

cladding was removed and those transuranic 

contaminants that are formed in the reactor would 

actually be available for any sort of internal exposure.

We did find one instance where they found a 

contaminated tray, and this is Building 4. I believe it 

was actually Building 1 upon retrospect. But basically 

what they found is this tray had been used to clean 

sodium off of de-cladded fuel elements.

Now based on the record, we don't know where the 

fuel had been de-cladded, but assuming that it had 

been irradiated, it would have contained those 

transuranic materials, and that was the subject of 

SC&A Finding 2. So again, this is related to the decladded spent fuel. While we didn't find evidence of 

the de-cladding operations, we found equipment that 

had been used with de-clad fuel.

There are sealed sources. Encapsulated americium 

at the site at De Soto is well-documented. Even as 

late as 1994, there was a notice of violation that they 

were not abiding by their six month leak check 

requirement, which was part of their license. This is 

actually a repeat violation of something that was 

noted in 1991. 

They were supposed to -- if the source was in use, 

they had to leak check it every six months. In this 

case they weren't doing that, but they were late 

between one and eight days, so it wasn't that crazy, 

I guess. But more importantly, we didn't identify any 

evidence of actual fabrication of americium sources

occurring at De Soto, though the facility was actually 

licensed to perform that fabrication activity.

With regards to the TRUMP-S program, we found 

some evidence in 1989 of TRUMP-S material arriving 

at De Soto. De Soto was the headquarters for all 

these sites, including SSFL, Canoga and Downey, the 

four sort of sister sites. There was sort of an incident 

where they thought it had become lost.
115 

What really happened was, excuse me, the material 

arrived at the De Soto loading dock and it was put 

into a radiological storage locker like it should have. 

However, what failed was the paperwork was not 

correct in that the Health and Safety Department was 

not notified to come in and swipe the outside and 

take radiation measurements as they were required 

to.

They eventually found it, and again it was in a 

radiological storage locker which was locked, and the 

packaging it came in was intact and there was no 

external contamination on the outside. Furthermore, 

this incident report that we discovered actually said 

that the material was depleted uranium and 

plutonium. Americium is not specifically mentioned.

We did not find any evidence or documentation in 

what was available that we looked at of the actual 

TRUMP-S activities, which would have involved 

unencapsulated americium occurring at De Soto. 

Then the fourth one had the smoke detectors. As far 

as we can tell from the historical records, De Soto 

didn't have the americium smoke detectors until 

about April 1985.

Prior to that, they were heat-based smoke detectors. 

Nonetheless, that's part of the period we're looking 

at. Any sort of preventative maintenance on those 

smoke detectors, which really consisted of just 

general cleaning activities with rags and cleaning 

solution, that was always performed wherever the 

detector was. 

So that would definitely be at the De Soto site. But 

any actual repair work on a broken detector, they'd 

take the detector and work on it in the electrical shop, 

where they call up the hill at SSFL. Furthermore, 

there was actually a radiological study by the HPs 

there about what kind of exposure potential that it 

was from the preventative maintenance activities.

Again, we're talking about cleaning, and they 

determine that all the cleaning materials used were 
116

below the NRC levels for least uncontrolled areas. 

They also monitored the workers involved. They 

submitted bioassays, which again we noted earlier 

are difficult to detect anything. But there was no 

detectable activity for those workers, and that's for 

americium.

One other thing we found when we were doing this 

research is that there was documentation describing 

a survey of an industrial waste drain in the mass spec 

lab, which is in Building 4 at De Soto. That's the 

radiological chemistry lab. We're going to take a look 

at the document in question in a minute so you can 

see what I'm talking about. 

But it looks like it was edited internally, and that 

there are red strike-through marks, sentence 

additions, that sort of thing from someone who was 

probably reviewing the document prior to finalization. 

The edits that are physically written on it, and again 

we're going to look at that in a second, they note that 

the americium was found and it also looks like they 

couldn't explain it at the time how it got on there.

Then it goes on to note that there are no documented 

releases of americium or plutonium, so they're sort 

of scratching their heads on how this stuff got in the 

waste drain. So we'll take a look at that, and this is 

very difficult to see from here. It's what I'm talking 

about is really in the lower right corner, which we 

have blown up on the next slide.

Hopefully you can see that a little bit. You can see it 

says "The presence of AM-241 in the drain sample," 

then it says "was unexplained," but that's crossed 

out. They give some indication on the magnitude of 

what that americium was at the time, and again that 

was found in 1988, and then it notes sort of in the 

bottom right corner there, "No recorded release of 

plutonium or americium."

Since we released this report, I actually did a little bit 

more digging and we found the original 1988 report, 

and that's exactly what they say. There's americium-
117

241 in the waste drain, and it was unexplained. 

Moving on to thorium, the NIOSH Evaluation Report 

identified three distinct thorium operations that they 

discuss in that report. There is the fabrication of fuelsimulant discs in June 1970. They did post-test 

analyses of those thorium capsules after they had 

gone, undergone destructive testing offsite, which 

actually occurred at Sandia later that year in 1970.

Then the third operation was grinding of 

approximately 540 thorium plates that occurred in 

early 1979. I think those 540 plates were about 200 

kilograms total if I remember correctly. NIOSH noted 

in the ER that grinding operation included pre- and 

post-operational bioassay sampling, and they were 

able to use that bioassay to develop representative 

thorium intake for that operation.

It's important to note that the NIOSH/SEC ER 

concludes that the calculated thorium intake from 

this grinding operation in 1979 can be used to 

represent internal thorium exposures to workers at 

De Soto during the evaluation period. I guess that's 

an important point. There's sort of a coworker model 

almost on the table. They're not saying there was no 

thorium there. They're saying it can be bounded by 

this operation. 

So what did we find at SC&A as far as additional 

activity besides those three, because the real 

question becomes does that grinding operation truly 

bound in a way that it can be applied to other workers 

who might have been involved in other thorium 

operations that aren't as well documented?

In 1969, we found some, in one of those smear 

contamination surveys, information about a thorium 

source program. They actually called it a thorium 

sealed source program, though I'll note that the 

smears that were taken were taken on things like a 

lathe and a welder, lab bench, that sort of thing. So 

that would indicate at least to me that they might 

have been fabricating those sources.
118

And again this is thorium. This is not americium. 

There was a personal air sampling report for a couple 

of workers in Building 1 in 1969 that specifically 

called out thorium as the operation being 

undertaken. There's a tagged area entry permit. 

Again, those are the RWPs, Radiation Worker 

Permits.

It talks about physical inspection of thorium fuelsimulant discs, and that was in March of 1970, and 

that might have been part of one of the operations 

that NIOSH noted in their ER. I guess I would just 

note that that predates the assumed dates that were 

put in there. So again, these are additional thorium 

activities that occurred at De Soto, that go beyond 

what was discussed in the ER.

There's another lapel sampling result that actually 

calls out that the operation was the cutting of thorium 

oxide, and that occurred in 1971. Again, this is 

outside the scope of what was discussed earlier. 

We'd also note that there are several indications that 

the SRE fuel and/or materials associated with it 

would arrive at De Soto and they would swipe it.

But then the trail really goes cold, in that we don't 

know what the intended future use was, if it was 

anything more than storage or if they planned on 

doing anything that would be considered a process 

that might constitute an internal exposure potential.

Now one confounding thing from our side was that 

those breathing zone samples, they're given in sort 

of funky units of microcurie hours per centimeter 

cubed. So as far as my knowledge, is you need to 

know how long the operation occurred to be able to 

convert that into an actual air sample.

That makes direct comparison of these activities a 

little murky with that grinding activity that's sort of 

on the table as a coworker approaches. So we 

conclude the NIOSH really consider at least these 

additional activities and potentially look for more, 

considering the data gaps that we discussed earlier, 
119

to really assure ourselves that that grinding 

operation is sufficiently bounding, and also while this 

sort of falls more into the Site Profile venue, provide 

guidance to assure that unmonitored intakes are 

appropriately assigned. If it's deemed that that is a 

viable coworker model.

Moving on to the interviews, we note that the NIOSH 

really documented just two interviews as happening 

after the petition was submitted. One of those 

interviewees did not work at DeSoto until the 1990's, 

and admitted they were giving a lot of information 

based on retrospective documentation.

The other didn't actually work in the radiological 

areas at DeSoto. They started in the late 1970's, but 

they were in a position to likely have knowledge of 

what types of operations were going on in those 

radiological areas. 

In addition to those documented interviews, there 

were seven sort of older interviews that had been 

done for various purposes besides SEC Petition 246. 

There were seven of them that we identified in the 

SRDB. But three of them appear to not have worked 

at DeSoto during our period of interest. They appear 

to have worked prior to 1965.

And the remaining four unfortunately did not provide 

any information particular to americium or thorium at 

DeSoto. Besides those seven interviews, there were 

actually quite a few interviews that were done by 

DOE and EPA in the 2010 to 2011 time period, and 

they were focused on former SSFL workers, but 

obviously that's going to include those who spent 

time at DeSoto as well.

As part of that effort, DOE had cleared 121 total 

interviews for us to look at, and those were cleared 

for release. 41 of the 121 reported work at the 

DeSoto facility during the SEC period we're talking 

about. And in our estimation, 13 of those actually 

contained information which could be considered 

relevant.
120 

Unfortunately, americium and thorium were not 

specifically discussed. But when I say "relevant," 

they clearly were in a position at DeSoto with direct 

knowledge of what sort of radiological operations 

were happening. So we point these workers out, as 

they might represent suitable future interview 

candidates if it's deemed necessary, and we'll get to 

that in a second.

And that third part of the SC&A review was to look at 

the claimant population, see what they had to say in 

their computer-aided telephone interviews. At the 

time of our review, there were 257 total claims. We 

looked at a sizeable portion, almost three-quarters, 

though not all of them had a CATI report completed.

We basically selected those claims based on the job 

title, that they would be in a position to potentially 

have knowledge of what the source terms they were 

working with and what they were doing. 

Unfortunately only a small fraction of this population 

indicated exposure to thorium and/or americium, and 

oftentimes they would work at multiple facilities. 

So we can't be sure whether they were talking about 

SSFL, DeSoto or both. But six of them were 

conducted directly with the Energy employee, and 

again these might represent suitable future interview 

candidates. 

Petitioner-supplied documents. As I noted earlier, 

CORE Advocacy for Nuclear and Aerospace Workers 

provided 20 primary references that were specific to 

DeSoto. A number of them were repeats of 

documents that had already been captured, and 

some were not. CORE Advocacy noted 59 individual 

items as relevant to SEC-46. Included with the 

documentation supplied by CORE Advocacy was that

affidavit with a former HP who was working at 

DeSoto.

Unfortunately the affidavit did not necessarily provide 

direct indications of exposure potential to again 

unencapsulated americium or any activity including 
121 

the de-cladding spent nuclear fuel or any other 

additional thorium fuel fabrication operations or other 

work that might not be bounded by again that 

grinding operation in 1979 that NIOSH has proposed 

as a suitable method for assigning thorium dose.

However, the worker who submitted that affidavit 

was actually re-interviewed by SC&A in conjunction 

with NIOSH. That occurred last month. But as these 

things go, those results have not yet been finalized. 

The worker needs to have a chance to go over their 

responses, correct any mistakes, and they also have 

to be -- the notes themselves have to be cleared and 

summarized. So it's a bit of a process, but that's 

ongoing.

We reviewed each of those items that was on the 

previous slide, 59 total items give or take, and we 

looked at each one and the supporting reference 

documentation that was provided with it. We didn't 

identify any evidence of internal exposure to 

unencapsulated americium occurring at DeSoto, 

direct evidence in those references.

There's evidence of spent fuel arriving at DeSoto in 

this documentation, but again no direct indication of 

processing and by extension the exposure potential 

to any de-clad spent fuel elements which would have 

contained transuranic material.

We also did not identify operations with the SRE fuel 

rods or with the SRE fuel rods, which is a uraniumthorium mix, or any other thorium activities in that 

documentation provided by CORE Advocacy that 

indicated to us a greater hazard to thorium than that 

fuel plate grinding operation in 1979, which again has 

been proposed by NIOSH as a potential coworker 

assignment.

So to summarize our findings here, Finding 1, SC&A 

noted significant temporal gaps in available primary 

documentation, such as health physics log books, 

tagged area entry permits, contamination smear 

surveys and general air sample reports. The 
122 

disposition of additional primary documentation for 

DeSoto is not known at this time.

Finding 2. A health physics log book entry involving 

a contaminated tray that had been used to clean decladded fuel was found in a DeSoto hood in a fuel 

fabrication area. Contamination from de-cladded 

fuel, which assumes that radiation would contain 

americium, and even potentially thorium depending 

on the original fuel composition.

Finding 3. The internal editing of a 1997 document 

concerning the mass spec lab indicated that a 

previous survey had detected americium-241 in the 

facility's industrial waste drains, and the source of the 

americium was not known then and it's not known 

now. 

Finding 4. Only two individuals were specifically 

interviewed about DeSoto radiological conditions 

after the submission of petition 246 in December. 

SC&A has identified several potential future interview 

candidates if deemed necessary. So this is -- I tried 

to give us a little wrap-up to this whole thing, and a

preliminary conclusion, which I'll read into the 

record.

Although SC&A did not find evidence of operational 

processes involving unencapsulated americium at 

DeSoto, at least one incident of material potentially 

contaminated with a transuranic material associated 

with de-cladded fuel was identified.

Furthermore, it appears americium was detected in 

the mass spec lab drain samples in 1988, whose 

provenance is unknown. SC&A has not identified 

direct evidence of thorium operations occurring at 

DeSoto during the period under evaluation that would 

not be noted by the calculated intake rates derived 

from the 1979 grinding operation that is being 

proposed for coworker application.

However, SC&A also noted significant temporal 

deficiencies in the available primary documentation 
123 

of health physics activities at DeSoto. Furthermore, 

the available documented interviews directly 

associated with radiological conditions at DeSoto 

under evaluation for SEC-246 are clearly limited at 

the current time. 

So Work Group recommendations and path forward. 

We met for SSFL and DeSoto last week, last Monday 

to discuss these things, and the Work Group 

recommends pursuing further interview with 

radiological workers at the DeSoto facility during the 

period of interest.

The other task coming out of that meeting is that 

NIOSH is going to go through SC&A's report and 

formally respond to each of these findings and 

observations that we put forth. That is the end of my 

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

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Bob. Thank you very much. 

So questions from Members in the room? Jim?

Member Lockey: Yeah, Jim Lockey. Just for my 

clarification, in Slide 26 you talked about the 

americium in the facility's industrial waste drains. Is 

that what you mean by this mass spec lab?

Mr. Barton: Yes.

Member Lockey: And how many drains in a mass 

spec lab that are involved?

Mr. Barton: I can't answer that right now. Again the 

--

Member Lockey: Well give me an idea of how many 

drains are in the facility versus the mass spec lab? 

I'm trying to get a handle on the --

Mr. Barton: Well, the drain was in the mass spec lab.

Member Lockey: So there's one drain in the mass 

spec. But the other drains, were they looked at 

outside the mass spec lab, do you know? 
124 

Mr. Barton: As far as I know, it was only found in the 

one drain.

Member Lockey: But did they look in the other 

drains?

Mr. Barton: As I recall, they were most gross data 

and gross camera measurements of it for the 

purposes of cleaning them up and/or ripping them 

out, because this was part of the 

decontamination/decommissioning of the facility. So 

there might have been alpha there, but I think this 

was the only incidence where they actually pointed 

out that it was americium.

Member Lockey: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Katz: David.

Member Richardson: Thank you for the presentation 

first of all, and it helped me to I think understand a 

little bit more about what's going on. I want to turn 

again to thorium. It seems like the theme for the 

day, and as you characterized it, what's proposed in 

this report was a coworker model, which was used --

I hadn't thought about it in those terms before, for 

developing a bounding thorium exposure potential 

for the period 1965 to 1995.

And now help me to understand, if I understand the 

basis for this coworker model, because as I'm reading 

it, it appears to be based on a single worker, a single 

pre-work bioassay sample of urine taken on February 

27th. 

The worker conducted grinding operations for let's 

say a very well aged 19 year-old thorium metal from 

March 5th to the 12th, and then provided a post-urine 

sample on March 25th, so 13 to 20 days after 

completion of the grinding operation.

And it's the difference between the pre- and the posturine sample here which is the basis for estimation of 

the bounding dose, and we would note that both of 

those were reported simply I believe at least in this 
125 

report as less than one microgram, is that right?

Mr. Barton: That's correct.

Member Richardson: Microgram per 24 hour 

sample. So am I understanding that correctly?

Mr. Barton: That is my understanding of it. Again, 

this was -- this was -- it is one worker. He was the 

one worker doing the grinding. He also wore 

breathing, so breathing zone lapel sampler, and they 

have that data as well.

Member Richardson: But the basis for the 

reconstruction is the difference in between the prepost --

Mr. Barton: So essentially it would be a missed dose. 

Member Richardson: And I don't know. I know that, 

as again as we've discussed, it's not easy to do 

bioassay for thorium. That was stated earlier, and 

one of the difficulties with doing that, am I correct, is 

the kind of short retention time, short biological halflife of the thorium?

Mr. Barton: My understanding is, and Jim can 

certainly back me up, but it's -- just not a whole lot 

of clear --

Dr. Neton: It has a fairly long retention time in the 

body, in the lung particularly if it's insoluble thorium. 

Not a lot comes out in the urine though, because it 

doesn't clear into the bloodstream very well. But you 

do have a known fraction that would be coming out 

of the urine, and that's what we would use to 

calculate what Bob correctly as missed dose.

And the problem with thorium is if you have a routine 

monitoring program like an annual program, the 

amount coming out in the urine on an annual, at the 

end of 365 days is very small. This is almost what I 

consider almost like an incident sampling or a realtime monitoring program, where they took it fairly 

quickly after the exposure, even though I forget what 
126 

the time frame was, week, month, I forgot.

So that buys you some better detectability, because 

it's taken much closer in proximity to the exposure 

itself. Admittedly though, it is a fairly small fraction, 

and the missed doses would be somewhat large. I 

don't recall what they were, but the doses that we 

would assign would end up being fairly large doses 

because of that.

Member Richardson: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Do I have other questions in the room? 

Brad.

Member Clawson: Bob, help me understand what 

you were talking about, that you can find -- I'm 

talking about the fuel and the hot cell. You didn't find 

anything of uncladded fuel?

Mr. Barton: That's right. I think when you refer to 

the hot cell, I think you're referring to a building at 

SSFL, where they actually did the de-cladding of the 

fuel for the purposes of analyzing it there. 

The question is, and again that was one of the major 

bases for the SEC at SSFL, the major question is were 

they doing something similar or comparable at 

DeSoto, or was the fuel that they were receiving still 

essentially in its casing.

Member Clawson: Right, and this is what I was 

wondering, because I -- and I'm going back years 

ago. I thought that DeSoto had a hot cell there.

Mr. Barton: They have a hot laboratory certainly. 

But again, if de-cladding was happening in there, we 

would hope to find evidence of it. But with what we 

have for documentation, there was just no evidence 

that that activity ever migrated over to DeSoto, or 

that those fuel elements that were de-cladded at 

SSFL made their way to DeSoto for some sort of 

analysis, other than that one tray that I described, 

which is stated to have been used to clean sodium off 

of de-clad fuel elements. 
127 

So that happened somewhere, and if it's 

contaminated from de-clad fuel elements, one would 

expect to have that transuranic activity, which would 

be americium and possibly thorium, depending on 

what the starting fuel composition was.

Member Clawson: Okay. I'm having a hard time 

remembering which one's at Santa Susana and which 

one's at Soto there.

Mr. Barton: Right. A large part of our effort here is 

to try to find evidence that similar activities were 

happening at DeSoto, that occurred at Santa Susana, 

which really preempted the SEC.

Member Clawson: Well if a lot of times when they 

de-clad a fuel, they're sometimes taking punchings 

and everything else. That's why I'm wondering do 

we have any traceability of that moving from Santa 

Susana to DeSoto?

Mr. Barton: Traceability I can't really speak to. 

Again, we went through what documentation is 

available, and as I pointed out, there are some 

temporal gaps in what's available from the Health 

Physics staff, the daily reports, which would often, if 

it was happening I assume it would be documented 

there. 

But as far as assurance, this is our evaluation of what 

we have for information to date.

Mr. Katz: Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah. Also a question of 

cladding. So the determination that unclad fuel, that 

unclad fuel was sent -- was sent to DeSoto, it's a 

negative. You didn't find anything, that it's a 

negative finding. It's the absence of information 

about de-clad events, except for the one instance 

that you do identify?

Mr. Barton: That's correct. We simply did not find 

any information in the affirmative besides that one 

contaminated tray.
128 

Mr. Katz: Board Members on the phone, do you have 

questions for Bob?

Member Anderson: No, this is Andy. I don't.

Member Valerio: I don't have any.

Member Anderson: You went over it. I think you've 

covered it well from our meetings as well.

Mr. Katz: Right. Thank you, Andy. Other Board 

Members?

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Katz: Paul?

Member Schofield: I've got a question for Bob.

Mr. Katz: Oh, go ahead Phil.

Member Schofield: Okay. You say that no decladding was done. How many -- do you have any 

feeling for how many times they would send 

samples? Was it just samples or would they actually 

take the entire fuel pan and send maybe -- was this 

a one time thing as far as there's only the one tray, 

or was this a reoccurring process?

Mr. Barton: You broke up a little bit there Phil, but I 

think I understand what the question was, and I think 

Dr. Kotelchuck put it well, in that it's a negative 

finding and that we did not find evidence of that sort 

of activity.

Whether it's taking samples and analyzing them 

outside of the cladding of the fuel element, possibly 

in the radiochemistry lab, that's just something we 

did not find documentation of, again except for a 

contaminated tray. Does that answer your question 

Phil?

Member Schofield: Yes, it does. Thanks.

Mr. Katz: Okay then. So I think you've heard about 

the path forward and you have no comments about 
129 

path forward. Then we'll go to the petitioner.

Ms. Blaze: Can you guys hear me okay?

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Ms. Blaze: Okay. I'm D'Lanie Blaze, the SEC 

petitioner. Before I get started on my comments, 

earlier we heard from Greg Lewis at Department of 

Energy. He updated us on their efforts to address 

concerns about the issues we're having with Boeing 

Records' responses at Santa Susana.

I just want to clarify that these concerns are relevant 

not only to Santa Susana, but also to all of its related 

work sites that we're talking about, which include the 

Downey facility, the Canoga facility, Vanowen and 

the DeSoto site. 

Employment exposure data for workers at all these 

locations, we're having issues with that. So I just 

want to be sure everybody makes that connection.

I'd like to thank the Board, NIOSH and SC&A for their 

focus on SECs 235 and 246, for Area IV of the Santa 

Susana field lab and its related work site, the DeSoto 

facility. Placement of both of these petitions on 

today's agenda underscores the shared operations 

and the consistent limitations in the data that have 

been repeatedly established at both of the work sites.

It gives us an opportunity to talk about the 

overlapping evidence, and to acknowledge its 

relevance at both Santa Susana and the DeSoto site, 

and to the rotating workforce that they shared. I'll 

talk about SEC-235 for Area IV Santa Susana, and I'll 

provide the Board with an update on the current 

situation there, and then I'll talk about SEC-246, and 

the use of americium and thorium at the DeSoto 

facility.

First, I'd like to briefly recap the shared operations 

between Santa Susana and the DeSoto facility. It's 

been established that NIOSH considers these 

worksites to represent the same entity contractually 
130 

and operationally. The sites shared the same 

Department of Energy contracts, and they were 

operated by the same DOE contractor. 

They shared the same recordkeeping program, 

environmental and worker monitoring practices, 

Health Physics Department, and they used the same 

radiation badges and badge numbering schemes. 

This keeps us from interpreting monitoring and 

exposure locations for workers often.

In addition, they operated under the same 

radioactive and special nuclear materials licenses and 

permits, wherein the DeSoto facility was listed as 

headquarters and identified as the main shipping and 

receiving location for nuclear materials. 

The worksites shared the same nuclear fuels 

inventory and safety committee, radioactive 

materials, waste storage and disposal locations, and 

most importantly the worksites shared the same 

employees, who routinely rotated between both 

locations as needed and without changes in their 

administrative affiliation or their badging.

It's also been established that employees routinely 

rotated and performed job duties throughout Santa 

Susana Areas I, II, III and IV, the Canoga facility and 

the DeSoto facility. Sometimes these workers 

rotated several times over the course of a single work 

day.

NIOSH has recognized that we cannot reliably track 

worker movements at or between these related 

worksites, and their radiation data alone may not 

provide the ability to identify which site a worker may 

have been at when their exposure occurred.

So basically we're looking at two worksites that 

function in support of each other. Their shared 

workforce fulfilled the same contracts and the same 

mission during the same time period. NIOSH uses 

the same Site Profile and the same Technical Basis 

Documents for dose reconstruction at both locations, 
131 

and NIOSH has passed SECs at Santa Susana, 

Canoga and DeSoto to encompass the same time 

periods based on the shared operational and 

contractual characteristics, the shared employees 

and monitoring programs and obviously shared data 

limitations.

One example would be SEC-093, which was written 

for Area IV and Canoga. The NIOSH ER for SEC-093 

states "NIOSH recognizes that the deficiencies of 

personnel monitoring data outlined in SEC-093 ER 

would apply to Canoga, given the fact that the Health 

and Safety Division of the contractor was a single 

entity, as indicated in the NIOSH Site Profile 

documents for Area IV of Santa Susana, Canoga, the 

Downey site and the DeSoto facility."

The data limitations are the same regardless of 

whether specific processes at any of these worksites 

may have been a little different. SEC Petition 235 for 

Santa Susana was submitted in 2017, and initially it 

was intended to welcome all Department of Energy 

contractor employees at Santa Susana, regardless of 

their time clock location or their administrative 

affiliation, with a particular area or with another one 

of the related worksites.

NIOSH's decision to limit this petition to 1991 to '93 

compromised its intent. It was intended to fix the 

problems that were caused by the established 

practice of routine worker rotation, since worker 

accessibility to Area IV cannot be reliably ruled out. 

This is well-supported by EEOICPA Bulletin 1010, 

which confirms undocumented rotation into and out 

of the covered area, regardless of a worker's 

administrative affiliation or time clock location. If we 

have time at the end, I'll read the excerpt from that 

particular bulletin.

SEC Petition 235 was also motivated by the 2014 

discovery that's been verified by Department of Labor 

and Department of Energy that since 2005, the 

Boeing Company has created misleading 
132 

employment verification responses, and supplied 

them to Department of Energy for use in identifying 

covered employment.

The contractors' information was discovered to 

routinely mischaracterize eligible employees as 

workers who just don't qualify for EEOICPA. In 2005, 

Boeing agreed to provide information that accurately 

identifies work locations for individual employees, but 

it was found that instead the contractor was actually 

creating information to obscure covered 

employment, effectively diminishing the perception 

of both covered employment and exposure.

On further investigation, it was found that this 

practice has dramatically reduced the number of 

Santa Susana and related site claims that are 

adjudicated under EEOICPA. This also resulted in an 

unknown number of incomplete dose reconstructions 

based on unreported and unevaluated covered 

employment. Under these circumstances, it's not 

possible to perform dose reconstruction with 

sufficient accuracy. 

There's evidence of this problem in the majority of 

case files that I've reviewed, claims that have been 

filed since 2002, and that have continued into the 

present. The problem has not been resolved since it 

was discovered. In fact, it continues to get worse.

At EEOICPA's inception it was verified that Boeing 

maintains extensive employment databases dating 

back to the 1940's. Although the contractor did not 

arrive to the worksite until 1996, well after expiration 

of these SEC periods, Boeing agreed to act as the 

custodian of the records and to provide them in their 

totality upon request for purposes related to 

EEOICPA.

Records responses were once robust and timely. 

Hundreds of pages are known to exist for individual 

employees. But once we identified the persistent 

discrepancies in Boeing's employment verification 

process, the quality and completeness of 
133 

employment records radically diminished.

Earlier this year, we verified that Boeing recently 

omitted and altered radiation records for a worker 

who was employed at Santa Susana and the DeSoto 

facility over a course of about 45 years. The 

contractor's records response was missing decades of 

external occupational radiation summaries, bioassay 

evaluations and whole body counts.

It contained multiple discrepancies in the worker's 

recorded dose. The contractor redacted the worker's 

name, his exposures and entire pages from incident 

reports that should have detailed his involvement in 

serious exposure events.

The contractor summarized external exposures by 

providing DOE with a newly-generated spreadsheet 

that conveniently omitted all of the work locations 

were monitoring and exposure occurred. This 

rendered the documents useless in establishing Area 

IV work locations. This also prevented Department 

of Energy from fulfilling the Privacy Act request for 

the worker's records. 

The contractor's response and behavior calls into 

question the integrity of every response ever 

provided. Had this worker failed to keep his own 

radiation records for nearly 45 years, he may never 

have been able to establish covered employment, 

much less that he was a member of an existing SEC.

This is the new normal for claimants affiliated with 

Santa Susana and its related sites. Currently, Boeing 

remains unresponsive to employment verification 

and records requests until the very day a claim is due 

to be recommended for denial.

I represent workers who should easily qualify for 

existing SECs, but over 120 days have passed 

without any response from Boeing, and we are 

receiving recommendations to deny these workers. 

On the very day the recommendation has been 
134 

made, Boeing has supplied a few scant pages of 

employment data. No medical documentation, no 

radiation records, no references to a single work 

location that can be used to establish covered 

employment.

But the contractor keeps supplying its misleading 

employment verification responses. What records is 

it using to create these responses? We don't know. 

While in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago, I met 

with Department of Energy about the problem. The 

agency's observation is that when its contractors 

omit, obstruct or alter employment records, when we 

cannot rely on such records to establish covered 

employment or exposure, an expansive SEC is 

justified, and I agree.

If Boeing won't provide complete and timely copies 

of original employment records that can be used to 

identify specific work locations, then we must assume 

that all DOE contractor employees were Area IV 

workers, based on established site practices that 

involve the routine and undocumented worker 

rotation into and out of the covered area.

That's the only claimant-favorable, non-adversarial 

presumption that can be made, and EEOICPA Bulletin 

1010 provides the basis for it. This situation presents 

a solid foundation on which to base an expansive 

SEC, and there's no excuse for these workers to not 

be able to move forward under this program. There's 

no excuse for them not to receive a fair and timely 

evaluation. I'm just going to get a drink of water. 

One second.

(Pause.)

Ms. Blaze: Okay, SEC-246 for the DeSoto facility. I'd 

like to briefly touch on what precipitated the 

submission of this petition. In 2016, NIOSH passed 

SEC-234 at Santa Susana, based on an inability to 

reconstruct dose to americium and thorium with 

sufficient accuracy.
135 

This SEC was passed as a stand-alone Class, basically 

unlike other SECs as Santa Susana, it did not take 

into consideration the shared operations, the worker 

rotation or the data limitations that have been 

identified at Santa Susana, Canoga and DeSoto. 

This raised some predictable questions. What about 

those DeSoto workers whose undocumented rotation 

to Santa Susana Area IV led to americium and 

thorium exposure? And what about the likelihood 

that shared operations and processes between the 

worksites involved the use of americium and thorium 

at the DeSoto facility?

The worker with the missing records that I just talked 

about embodies this problem, and he worked at both 

sites for 45 years. He went from the Hot lab at Santa 

Susana to the hot cell at the DeSoto facility routinely. 

If he had been assigned a clock-in location at the 

DeSoto facility, he wouldn't have qualified for the 

SEC.

In August, NIOSH presented its Evaluation Report at 

the Providence, Rhode Island Work Group meetings. 

A lively discussion erupted when NIOSH concluded 

that americium and thorium did not present an 

exposure risk to the workers at the DeSoto facility, 

conveniently seeming to forget its past 

acknowledgment of shared data limitations and the 

inability to establish dose for workers of all of the 

related worksites, regardless of their differences and 

actual processes. 

When pressed, NIOSH acknowledged that it cannot 

determine which workers may have been exposed to 

americium or thorium at Santa Susana versus the 

DeSoto facility because the radiation data for the 

workers of both sites is the same. This created some

frustration for many of us, because we're all familiar 

with the challenges of these worksites. 

Basically, we can't assume that there was no 

exposure risk when we can't recognize which workers 

were there. While SC&A was tasked with the review 
136 

of the Evaluation Report, it was decided that unlike 

previous SECs where shared facility operations, 

workers and monitoring practices presented the 

same data limitations for Santa Susana and DeSoto, 

somehow in this instance it was going to be 

necessary to prove that americium and thorium were 

used at the DeSoto facility.

Site specificity suddenly seemed to take precedent 

over worker radiation exposure, and our ability to 

accurately estimate it. 

So let's talk about the documentation that was 

supplied, that does establish the use of americium 

and thorium at the DeSoto facility, and let us begin 

with NIOSH's Technical Basis Documents that 

confirm americium and thorium in the DeSoto 

facility's stack emissions and air effluent between 

1955 to 1999.

NIOSH has acknowledged the presence of these 

radionuclides at DeSoto facility since the creation of 

the Site Profile, and the presence of these materials 

in stack emissions and air effluent suggests 

operational use, obviously outside the confines of the 

storage vault or a sealed source.

The DHS confirmatory survey of the DeSoto Building 

104 mass spec lab also confirms the presence of 

americium in 1999. Both NIOSH TBDs and the DHS 

surveys support SC&A's findings, which confirm 

americium contamination of waste drains due to the 

decontamination of irradiated components at the 

mass spec lab in Building 104.

It doesn't matter where it came from or what the 

process was. We've already acknowledged that we 

cannot dose reconstruct it. We submitted historic 

facility documentation consisting of technical reports, 

incident reports, log books and feasibility studies that 

confirm the presence and use of americium, thorium 

and associated progeny at the worksite.

These documents were supplied to NIOSH, the Work 
137 

Group and SC&A with an index citing page number 

and paragraph where the relevant information can be 

easily located. This information needs to be updated, 

because since then we've found additional 

documentation. So I'll provide everyone with a new 

index shortly. 

But the historical documents verify SNAP nuclear fuel 

fabrication at the DeSoto facility using highly 

enriched uranium-235, a known source of thorium. 

Routine shipments and processes involving spent, 

SNAP and other types of nuclear fuel like fuel from 

the Piqua project, Hallam and FCEL fuel from Santa 

Susana are also documented.

Fuel Committee reports verify storage of spent SNAP 

fuel outside the vault, in an open and uncontrolled 

mezzanine area, where workers were not necessarily 

monitored. X-ray processes of irradiated SNAP 

reactor components and fuel rods, waste 

consolidation and preparation for disposal, 

transuranic materials that presented an inhalation 

risk are documented in incident reports. Uranium, 

thorium, SRE, reactor fuel cutting and routine 

shipments of radioactive and irradiated items from 

Santa Susana to the DeSoto facility are all well 

documented.

In the Evaluation Report, NIOSH implied that Santa 

Susana never shipped items to the DeSoto facility. 

But exactly the opposite is true. The DeSoto facility 

routinely received items from Santa Susana well into 

the site remediation period. 

The former Atomics International health physicist or 

HP of Santa Susana and DeSoto provided a signed 

affidavit and interview, where he confirmed routine 

shipments of radioactive materials and spent fuel, 

and repurposed, recirculated, highly contaminated 

storage containers that were known as the bird 

cages.

This HP also confirmed the routine practice of labeling 

containers of radioactive material as mixed fission 
138 

products or MSP, with the understanding that any 

container that was bearing such a label was likely to 

contain any or all radionuclides generated at Santa 

Susana. Americium and thorium were no exception.

We located a company radioactive waste disposal 

report that provided an explanation of waste 

composition, and that confirmed that mixed fission 

products from Atomics International also contained 

man-made transuranic materials like plutonium, 

americium, uranium and thorium. That document is 

consistent with the health physicist's recollection. 

In addition, we reviewed the DOE Tiger Team report 

that confirms the improper waste, treatment and 

handling that occurred at the mass spec lab, along 

with the analysis of irradiated materials that 

originated from DOE nuclear reactors likely to contain 

americium.

The Tiger Team report is supportive of SC&A's 

findings, along with the NIOSH TBDs and the DHS 

survey, both of which confirm the presence of 

americium and thorium in stack emissions and air 

effluent at the work site to 1999. Moreover, the Tiger 

Team identified at least 30 serious health and safety 

infractions at the mass spec lab that during its 

evaluation had put workers at risk of exposure.

The findings of operational use and processes that 

involve the americium and thorium at the DeSoto 

facility are consistent with established operations at 

Santa Susana, where NIOSH has already determined 

that it cannot reconstruct dose to americium or 

thorium with sufficient accuracy.

Based on NIOSH's consideration of these limitations 

between -- I'm sorry. Based on NIOSH's 

consideration of these worksites as the same entity, 

operationally and contractually, the shared 

employees and the common data limitations between 

the work sites, it would seem that SEC-246 is well 

supported. 
139 

A decision to accept it would also be consistent with 

past SECs that encompass the same time periods as 

Santa Susana and DeSoto, in consideration of these 

shared data limitations, the shared workforce and the 

shared monitoring programs between the worksites.

In conclusion, the last item that I wanted to talk 

about is the Boeing incident report database. When 

SC&A presented its review of the NIOSH ER in the 

teleconference on December 3rd, it became clear 

that SC&A has not been provided with a copy of the 

database. 

The Boeing incident report database contains 

information that is vital to SC&A's ability to fulfill its 

assigned tasks, including technical documents on 

reactor releases that span the entirety of site

operations. There's some really important 

information in this database.

It's my understanding that NIOSH has been in 

possession of the database since at least 2008. 

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I obtained a 

copy of the database and I've submitted several 

documents from it in support of these SEC petitions. 

So I'm sure we all agree that it's necessary that we're 

all looking at the same information, and to have 

access to all of the information that is publicly 

available. Therefore, I brought copies of the 

database for SC&A, the Work Group and NIOSH.

We've covered a lot of ground. In support of SEC235, we discussed the established practice of routine 

undocumented worker rotation into and out of Area 

IV by Department of Energy contractor employees, 

the misleading employment verification responses 

supplied by Boeing, and the ongoing and worsening 

difficulties in obtaining employment records and 

radiation data from the contractor.

Clearly, these issues are unresolved, but there are 

compelling reasons to justify an expansive SEC at 

Santa Susana, so we can be sure all Department of 
140 

Energy contractor employees receive a fair 

evaluation under the Act. In support of SEC-246, we 

firmly established the use of americium and thorium 

at the DeSoto facility.

Moreover, after a decade of considering these sites 

to represent the same operational and contractual 

entity, and recognizing that worker records at the 

related worksites are the same, as Bob stated 

obviously including workers of both sides, NIOSH 

found it could not reconstruct dose to americium and 

thorium with sufficient accuracy, period.

If they could have done so, we would not have SEC234 at Santa Susana. Thank you very much for 

coming to Redondo Beach, and for your continued 

efforts on behalf of workers at Santa Susana and its 

related worksites. As always, it's a privilege to 

address the Board, and I welcome the opportunity to 

answer questions and of course to provide 

supplemental documentation if required. Thank you. 

Does anyone have questions?

Mr. Katz: Thank you, D'Lanie. Any questions from 

Board Members on the line?

Member Valerio: No, none here.

Mr. Katz: Dave, David.

Member Richardson: This is a question. I don't think 

it's for Ms. Blaze, but I think it's for SC&A. It was 

mentioned that there was a database, that it was 

clear that you had not had -- that you had not used. 

Had you ever asked for it, or did you know that it 

existed?

Mr. Barton: This actually came up during the 

December 3rd meeting when we were discussing the 

two White Papers for Area IV. This came up in 

December 3rd during the Work Group meeting, 

where we were discussing those two White Papers 

that Lara presented, and in those White Papers the 

statements were made that there was no evidence of 
141 

thorium or americium at Area IV in the incident files.

One the reference files we did not have access to at 

that time. We have since gotten it. I do not know if 

this is the same Boeing database that Ms. Blaze is 

referring to. So that came out of the most recent 

meeting.

Mr. Katz: Thanks. 

Ms. Blaze: Would you guys like me to read the 

excerpt from EEOICPA Bulletin 1010? It's quite 

short. I think it gives us a basis for SEC-235, if we 

decide to use it. EEOICPA Bulletin 1010 was issued 

by the National Office to helps claims examiners 

identify SEC eligibility at Santa Susana Area IV.

Item 8 just in part states "North American Aviation 

and its division of Atomics International employed 

workers at numerous locations in addition to Area IV. 

Some of these sites are covered under EEOICPA, but 

are not part of this SEC Class. 

"Therefore, the claims examiner will need to carefully 

evaluate the employment documentation in the file, 

i.e. records, to ensure 250 days of covered 

employment at Area IV. There are employees who 

would have clocked in at a Santa Susana field lab 

location other than Area IV, but who would have had 

reason to enter Area IV from time to time as part of 

their duties.

"In these instances, the claims examiner needs to 

use any reasonable evidence, such monitoring 

records and division and department affiliation 

records, affidavits, etcetera," the very types of 

records that we're now not able to get from Boeing. 

So I think it's reasonable to make the assumption 

that these workers had access to Area IV. That's it.

Mr. Katz: Thanks D'Lanie. I mean that is a basis by 

which DOL can determine how many days a person 

has in a Class, but it's not a basis for establishing an 

SEC Class. But so --
142 

Ms. Blaze: And they recognize the problem, that's 

all.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, thanks. So we have path forward. 

This is sort of like the previous petition in that there's 

more work already laid out to be get done. Is there 

any other questions? Are there any questions about 

the path forward before we close this discussion?

Member Lockey: Yeah, I have one question. You 

mentioned stack emission data, and I didn't hear that 

mentioned in the NIOSH presentation. 

Mr. Katz: Right.

Member Lockey: Did I miss it? Did I miss it?

Mr. Katz: No. There's no -- I'm sure there's been no 

discussion of stack emissions but --

Ms. Blaze: It's in the ETEC Occupational and 

Environmental Dose ORAU-TKBS 38-4. Page nine, 

Table 4.1 identifies the facility air effluents confirms 

americium, thorium and associated progeny at 

DeSoto, and page 12, Table 4.3, Annual Occupational 

Environmental Radionuclide Inhalation at DeSoto 

confirms americium, thorium and associated progeny 

at DeSoto facility, 1959 until 1999.

Mr. Katz: So do you have a question for Lara?

Member Lockey: I assume that will be addressed 

going forward.

Mr. Katz: Lara.

Dr. Hughes: It's my understanding this is the 

analytes they reported. They're not high levels or 

anything that they observed. They just reported the 

analytes. They did an analyte panel off the stack 

samples as far as I understand. Just I need to look 

into it some more.

Member Lockey: I would appreciate that.

Dr. Hughes: It's not, it's not pointing towards like, 
143 

you know, huge emission levels of these nuclides in 

any way. But I'm not -- I don't have the levels, the 

results handy right now. It's in the environmental 

TBD. It's the stack emission samples that were 

reported in this environmental TBD.

Member Lockey: See, I'm not knowledgeable enough 

to know if the levels would be from the work process 

or just background levels. That's what I don't -- I 

don't --

Dr. Hughes: Yeah, I think we're looking at 

background levels.

Member Lockey: What's that?

Dr. Hughes: It's more or less background levels as 

far as I know.

Mr. Katz: Is that something you can confirm I guess 

is what the --

Dr. Hughes: Yeah, we can -- we can come up with a 

response to that, yes.

Mr. Katz: What's being asked here is how those 

levels, whether those levels are relevant or not. 

Thank you.

Member Lockey: That's the question I'm asking.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. No, that's a good question, right. 

Thanks. Thank you Lara.

Member Clawson: While Lara is there I've got a 

question for her presentation if I can.

Mr. Katz: Go to it, Brad.

Member Clawson: Okay. Just in the back there, in 

the air data conclusion you put in there that the raw 

data log books are potentially available. Does that 

mean that they're available or not, or we have just 

not pulled them?

Dr. Hughes: We have not pulled them.
144 

Member Clawson: They are --

Dr. Hughes: We don't usually -- in the research we're 

done, we tend to look at reports that have the data 

in somewhat a digested manner. We don't 

necessarily go to like the log book level, but you 

understand that we're looking at the 50 year 

operational period of a site that employed hundreds 

of people.

It's an unsurmountable amount of data to go 

through. Most of those are handwritten. So we 

usually start at looking at data that is a little bit more 

easy to handle, that is not as time-consuming. So 

the same with the -- regarding those air data, the log 

books. We just have not searched for those because 

the air data has not been a major focus of DOL. We 

mostly look at bioassay.

Member Clawson: Okay. What was DeSoto's hot 

shop's major job? The reason why I'm asking this is 

because I just pulled up SNAP fuel. I've already been 

to the SNAP reactor, where it was up there and it's 

explaining the cladding on the ten was broke and 

everything else.

At some place, they had to be tearing apart this fuel. 

I know where it eventually ended up because I 

babysat it. But at some point, they have to be 

tearing this apart, and there's got to be some kind of 

a record of where this was done, because reactor up 

to SNAP was not designed for disassembly of fuel 

elements.

Dr. Hughes: Right. The SNAP reactor was at Area 

IV.

Member Clawson: Right.

Dr. Hughes: And the -- as far as I know, the fuel was 

disassembled at the hot, what they refer to as the 

hot lab, which was at Area IV.

Member Clawson: Okay, okay.
145 

(Off mic comment.)

Mr. Katz: Excuse me?

Ms. Blaze: If I could add to what Lara had to say 

about the SNAP fuel.

Mr. Katz: Go ahead.

Ms. Blaze: The health physicist that we interviewed 

was primarily assigned to the SNAP complex at Area 

IV and also at the DeSoto facility. They fabricated 

the SNAP fuel at the DeSoto facility. They tested in 

the SNAP reactors at Santa Susana, and that's I think 

really descriptive of why we have the degree of 

worker rotation that we do, because things were 

developed and components were created at Canoga 

and DeSoto, but they were implemented into 

prototypes that were tested at the test site in Santa 

Susana. So you have workers going all around the 

sites as needed.

Now according to the HP, because they were 

researching, they kept sending the fuel back down to 

DeSoto in order to check the enrichment levels, and 

that was why they kept getting these contaminated 

bird cages, which were the shipping containers, going 

back and forth, back and forth.

There's considerable documentation just on the bird 

cage scandal alone, because these highly 

contaminated vessels just kept surfacing no matter 

what they tried to do to clean them. But they went 

back and forth.

Mr. Katz: Okay, thank you. Thanks D'Lanie. Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: Ms. Blaze, you talked about a 

Work Group --

Mr. Katz: Can you speak right into the mic please?

Member Kotelchuck: Sorry. Thank you very much. 

You talked about a worker who kept his records for 

45 years, and you either implied or said that 
146 

disagreed with the information that was provided by 

the company. What happened? What followed from 

that in terms of that person's, the determination of 

that person's status as a claimant?

Ms. Blaze: We were able to establish that he was 

covered under the SEC that exists at Santa Susana 

Area IV, merely because he kept his records for 45 

years. So we were able to go through those and 

establish the work locations and stuff that was 

required.

But when we carefully compared them to what had 

been supplied by the Boeing Company, the 

discrepancy are very alarming. I did a case study on 

it, and I'd be happy to share it with you, a line by line 

case study of the comparison.

Member Kotelchuck: Is it possible that there are 

other workers who kept such records, and one case 

is one case. On the other hand, if there were several 

or a number of them?

Ms. Blaze: It's likely that he wouldn't have been the 

only worker in that particular situation. But it is very 

rare that we run into workers that had such 

forethought in keeping their records.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Ms. Blaze: And I've been saying for a while, after the 

number of case files that I've reviewed, I've become 

pretty familiar with what we should expect to see in 

them with respect to radiation data based on work 

processes and job titles. I've suspected for a while 

that we're just not getting everything, in particular 

the original Landauer external exposure summaries, 

which are vital in establishing Area IV employment 

because they have the location and monitoring.

So it will show if a worker was at the Hot lab in Area 

IV, for example. Those have been systematically 

vanishing from the records that we receive, even 

though based on a job title and the worker's 
147 

recollections, we really would expect to see them in 

there.

So finally it was kind of a miracle we ran into this 

worker, and he laid all these records on us, and we 

compared them to the response and we're pretty 

amazed.

Mr. Katz: Okay. So we should learn more when we 

get the DOE study, because they went specifically to 

follow up on this case that D'Lanie's talking about.

Member Kotelchuck: Right, and but again, one case 

is one case. It does, it's too bad that other similar 

estimates or documents don't exist. Perhaps not 

complete documents but --

Ms. Blaze: This was definitely the most glaring that 

we've seen so far. But I'd be happy to share the case 

study with you if you'd like to see it.

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer. Could I ask a 

follow-up on the Landauer question? 

Mr. Katz: Paul, go ahead.

Member Ziemer: Has anyone gone back to Landauer 

zone archives and checked their records, because 

they have archived most of the film badges that 

they've done over decades.

Mr. Katz: So that's a question for NIOSH probably. 

Member Ziemer: Yeah, I assume it is, right.

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Thanks, Paul.

Member Ziemer: Because I know another situation 

which included General Steel. We did, I get some 

records back from Landauer directly.

Dr. Hughes: We have not looked into the Landauer 

archives for the site, no.

Member Richardson: And could I ask? I mean this 

is probably not a question for NIOSH, but currently 
148 

does Department of Labor reach out to Landauer to 

ask for records, or do they only go to Boeing?

Ms. Blaze: Only Boeing.

Member Beach: Let me interrupt. Part of the issue 

is not being able to establish a worker in that Class, 

correct? 

Mr. Katz: Correct.

Member Beach: So that would be DOL's purview. So 

have -- Greg's report will be very enlightening, I 

think, in that case. 

Mr. Katz: David.

Member Richardson: So but what NIOSH does have 

as their responsibility is the dose reconstruction, and 

if you're receiving records which don't have location 

information, how do you proceed with some of the 

steps in a dose reconstruction?

Member Beach: Good question.

Dr. Hughes: Doses are typically reconstructed based 

on -- let's assume the worker has records, bioassay 

data and dosimetry data, that is used. It's not 

necessarily paramount to know the exact location 

where this worker worked. I think the location issue 

is mostly for DOL to place the worker at the given 

site.

Member Richardson: So for the Site Profile for Santa 

Susana or DeSoto or any of these facilities where 

people would be going to Boeing, I recall -- again, it's 

been a while. But in some situations, Oak Ridge for 

example, one might have different assumptions 

about energies or geometries based on work 

locations, or photon/neutron components.

Lots of things might have some spatial variation in 

them, and that's just not necessary at all at this 

point? 
149 

Dr. Hughes: Right. Often that type of information is 

available. If it's not available, typically they use the 

most claimant-favorable. Whichever results in the 

highest dose would be used for dose reconstruction. 

Member Richardson: So it's not -- so you're getting 

a feed of records back now which at one point would 

have had information of greater specificity with 

regard to location. You receive lesser specificity and 

it's not a concern because you're going to default to 

more general assumptions?

Dr. Hughes: Right. Keep in mind -- well, it depends. 

In some cases, where there's already an SEC and we 

determined the internal infeasibility, we wouldn't 

reconstruct internal dose. For cases where -- that do 

not fall in the SEC, we do partial dose 

reconstructions. For Area IV, for DeSoto, it would be 

a full dose reconstruction.

So yeah as I said, I mean. We use all available data. 

If location data is not available, typically they use --

they would use whatever's most claimant-favorable. 

Often some kind of information is available. We're 

looking at the worker records that we get back from 

Boeing.

Often, there is a worker -- we do a worker interview 

if the worker is available or with the survivor, if that's 

necessary. We typically look at all the information 

that is available to NIOSH. That includes the DOL 

file. There's like an exposure matrix type 

information. We usually take into account everything 

that's available. 

Member Richardson: Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Jim.

Dr. Neton: I just think it's important to point out that 

we reconstruct a dose, the dose to the worker that 

the Department of Labor said where he worked. We 

do not make that determination. So if it says he has 

covered employment at DeSoto for this time period, 
150 

that's what we do. We do not try to determine if he 

worked --

Member Richardson: I wasn't implying that. I was 

asking about the location information, which might 

be informative about the conduct of some of the 

assumptions in the dose reconstruction.

Dr. Neton: Well, the location doesn't matter. If the 

Department of Labor tells you he worked at DeSoto, 

that's what we're going to reconstruct. But we don't 

get that information. 

In fact, I think we have a database of all their 

monitoring information in-house. They've provided 

us that entire disk drive that had all their monitoring 

data, both internal and external but --

(Off mic comment.)

Mr. Katz: Hello. People -- wait. The outside line's 

gone? Oh great. Did it just drop just now or -- 

(Off mic comment.)

Mr. Katz: Oh, I heard the beeps. So that was at the 

end of the discussion. If we're at the end of this 

discussion at this point, I don't know. I can't read 

Paul's mind and the others on the call. We could --

at this point, we didn't -- we never had a break. It's 

been a while. Someone might need a comfort break.

Hello folks on the line. Folks on the line, if you can 

hear me, the line, your line just dropped somehow. 

But I think we have you back. Do you hear me?

Member Valerio: Yes. We can hear you now.

Mr. Katz: Okay, okay. But I think you missed -- you 

didn't miss anything. It actually -- we heard a beep, 

it dropped right after the last remark.

Member Schofield: We missed about three minutes.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, but three minutes of nobody 

speaking. So I think you're okay, and we're going to 
151 

take a break now, and then reconvene for the public 

comment session, which begins at five.

Member Field: Okay Ted, thank you.

Mr. Katz: So that's about 15 minutes.

Member Schofield: Thanks.

Mr. Katz: Thanks everybody.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 4:45 p.m. and resumed at 4:59 p.m.) 

Mr. Katz: Okay then. Let me just check and make 

sure I can be heard by people on the line. Paul or 

somebody, let me know.

Member Schofield: I can hear you just fine.

Mr. Katz: Right, thanks. Oh Phil, thank you. Okay. 

So we're about to start the public comment session. 

Just let me make a couple of remarks for in case we 

have any public commenters that are unfamiliar with 

the Board and its transcript policy.

Public comments go into the record with the rest of 

the Board meetings proceedings. So it's verbatim 

transcript. Everything you say as a public 

commenter is recorded, and ends up published for 

everyone else to read. So it's fine for anything you 

want to say pertaining to yourself and so on.

If you talk about other people, you're at liberty to do 

that, but we will redact the transcript, from the 

transcript any identifying information on other 

individuals that you might discuss in your public 

comments, to protect their privacy, because we don't 

know that they're willing to be discussed publicly as 

you might. But anyway, you're free to do so, 

understanding that's the way the redaction policy 

works for the transcript.

With that, I think we'll go right into public comments 

then, and let's begin if we have any -- we do have --
152 

we have at least one public commenter in the room. 

Are you addressing a California site? Yes, that's Al 

Frowiss.

Mr. Frowiss: Senior.

Mr. Katz: Huh?

Mr. Frowiss: That's Al Frowiss, Senior.

Mr. Katz: I know, but you also I thought were signing 

up. No? Oh okay, all right. Sorry.

No, no, thanks. I haven't gotten to the line yet. I'm 

just making sure. So there's no one in the room to 

comment. So then on the line, I'm just looking down 

the list, and there's only one party I don't know, and 

I don't know what site this party is interested in, but 

we'd like to start with the California sites. This looks 

like a Kirk Domina. 

He's in the room? Oh, he's Hanford. He's in the room 

though? Oh okay. So Kirk goes first. Oh Kirk, sorry. 

Public Comment

Mr. Domina: I just want to talk about the -- I'm Kirk 

Domina. I'm the Employee Health Advocate for the 

Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council. We represent 

about 2,600 active workers at Hanford, and I just 

wanted to talk about the SEC for our prime 

contractors from -- that's still being discussed from 

1984 to 1990, because they did approve one for the 

building trades in 2015 that covers '84 to '90, 

because they didn't want to hold up the Class. 

And so -- and I did listen to the subgroup meeting in 

October of this year discussing it, and I guess I was 

a little disappointed because it appears to me that 

we're a couple of years away, in my opinion, because 

there's some work to do -- and I don't -- you guys 

are busy, I get it. NIOSH, SC&A, the Board. But you 

know, today in the DOL report it talked about Hanford 

being number three for the new claims.
153 

Well I went back and looked, going back to about 

2009, and there's been like 31 meetings of this Board 

in person, and 28 of those times Hanford had the 

most new Part B claims. 

The other two times, we were number two. And so I 

guess I would just ask that if we could get a little 

more push, because you know we wholeheartedly 

accepted doing the building trades one from three 

years ago to get that Class going, and I just see 

where this one going a little bit longer than I guess 

we would like to see.

Because our workers that are getting sick are my age 

and younger. It's moved down a generation, and if 

I, you know, just ask for a little more push. Thank 

you.

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Kirk, and let me just say in 

response that we've had discussions at this meeting 

on the sidelines about just how to expedite the 

Hanford work going forward from Brad and members 

of the staff on both sides, so that we could do just 

what you're asking them for. So thanks for the 

comment, and we agree, and we'll hope to get there 

more expeditiously than you're worried that we 

might. Thank you, okay.

So now I'm going to folks on the phone, and the first 

I have listed first in, Terrie Barrie.

Ms. Barrie: Hello, and thank you so much. Good 

evening Dr. Ziemer and Members of the Board. My 

name is Terrie Barrie with the Alliance of Nuclear 

Workers Advocacy Groups, and I appreciate the time 

to call in my public comment.

I jumped on late today because I had other 

commitments, and when I jumped on, I heard Ted 

Katz mention that NIOSH responded to my comment 

about the Board at the August meeting. I never 

received a copy of those comments, and I have to 

admit that LaVon Rutherford is excellent about 

responding to my emails and acknowledging them.
154 

So I'm wondering if those comments are normally 

shared with petitioners, or if we need to file a FOIA 

request for those?

Mr. Katz: So Terrie, Terrie?

Ms. Barrie: Yes.

Mr. Katz: The comment to your comments. So the 

comments are your comments to the Board.

Ms. Barrie: I know but -- great but --

Mr. Katz: And the responses are I think with LaVon 

he generally contacts you by email or phone, but 

that's how it's done.

Ms. Barrie: Okay, because I haven't received any 

specific response, and I shared an email with him 

August 29th and again on September 25th, and he 

acknowledged and responded quickly, but not to my 

public comment in August. So I'll get with LaVon 

about those.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Do you want to come to the mic, 

just to clarify whatever might be the case here?

Ms. Barrie: I have an extra pair, LaVon.

Mr. Katz: Stu is -- Stu is a little closer.

Mr. Rutherford: Okay. Terrie actually, the number -

- one of the comments was there a number of exotics 

for which she does not believe NIOSH has come up 

with the methodology to reconstruct dose? Actually, 

this response was -- and it says it is unclear whether 

your exposure to these exotics was at Rocky Flats.

Those are -- that's an issue that would be addressed 

in our Site Profile, which we've been developing, and 

the updated Site Profiles will be out in April. So no, 

I didn't respond directly on that issue to you.

Another issue you had brought up was about the 

boxes, and I think you even discussed that with 

Doctor, or discussed some issues with Dr. Howard. 
155 

But the boxes, we are addressing that issue, and as 

soon as we have a detailed response for that, I will 

give that to you.

Mr. Katz: Right, and Terrie -- Terrie, that's what I 

said actually in the meeting, is that they were 

following up on the boxes issues.

Ms. Barrie: Right, I remember that, yeah.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Ms. Barrie: But it was the exotics that I didn't 

remember.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Ms. Barrie: And LaVon, thank you very much for 

clarifying that. So the bulk of my comments tonight 

have to deal with qualifying petitions, and for years, 

petitioners and advocates alike are confused why 

some petitions were qualified to be reviewed by the 

Board and others were not. Hello? 

Mr. Katz: Hello, wait. Someone else is on the line 

who shouldn't be talking. Right now, we're supposed 

to be hearing from Terrie Barrie. Terrie, are you still 

there?

Ms. Barrie: I am, yes.

Mr. Katz: Okay, go ahead.

Ms. Barrie: Okay. The published regulations are 

quite clear on what information must be submitted in 

order for a petition to qualify. Those are first of all 

the petition must be submitted by an authorized 

party, a worker, a survivor or a union representative.

Then the petition must provide documentation or 

statements by affidavit that the proposed Class was 

not monitored, or that records were lost, falsified or 

destroyed, or a report from a health physicist or other 

individuals with expertise in dose reconstruction 

documenting the limitation of existing exposure 
156 

records at the facility, or a scientific or technical 

report published by a government agency such as the 

Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which 

identifies dosimetry and related information is 

unavailable due to lack of monitoring or destruction 

or loss of records.

And that's it. It seems pretty simple. So we don't 

understand why some petitions do not qualify for 

review by the Board. For instance, seven -- and I 

understand that Pinellas was addressed today too. 

Seven petitions were submitted for the Pinellas plant. 

None of them qualified, despite having at various 

times the DOE Tiger Team report, a Pinellas health 

physicist report and documentation of five years' of 

dosimetry records are missing.

I think the answer may lie in the previously 

unpublished internal procedure DCAS-PR-004, and 

especially Revision 1, which was released April 15th, 

2011. Section 6.1.5.1(2) allows DCAS to determine 

the credibility of assertions offered by petitioners in 

sworn affidavits.

Determining the credibility of an assertion, affidavit 

or the relevance of scientific or technical reports 

should not fall under DCAS' purview, either under the 

regulations or the law itself. It is ANWAG's position 

that it is the Board's responsibility to determine 

whether the petition qualifies for review, not DCAS.

It is the Board's responsibility to review the evidence 

the petitioners provide to support their position. Now 

if the Board delegated this responsibility in the past, 

I would appreciate a copy of the transcript or memo 

which details this delegation of authority.

ANWAG submitted a letter to Dr. Howard, asking that 

the regulation be reissued for public comment, and 

that this reissuance include DCAS' responsibility to 

determine the quality of the evidence submitted with 

an SEC petition. That, of course, is a long, involved 

process.
157 

However, I respectfully ask the Board take it upon 

themselves to review the petitions, which DCAS 

determined did not qualify and ascertain if those 

petitions did indeed provide the minimal evidence 

required in the regulation. I also ask DCAS to post 

to their website all petitions which did not qualify, 

complete with the evidence the petitioners 

presented, as well as their letter why the petition did 

not qualify. 

Again, I thank you, the Board for its time and service, 

and have a good holiday. Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Thank you Terrie, and I will not respond 

fully to what you just suggested. But I will note for 

you that the Board actually did earlier on review a 

large sample of denied petitions, and the basis 

thereof and they concluded at the end of that review 

and these were appropriate decisions by NIOSH.

But you may receive more response from NIOSH 

subsequent to this meeting.

Ms. Barrie: Great, thank you.

Mr. Katz: You're welcome.

Ms. Barrie: Thank you. 

Mr. Katz: And next I have on my list Al Frowiss, Sr.

Mr. Frowiss, SR.: Thank you. This is Al Frowiss, Sr. 

and I'm a claims advocate for 11 years, 3,500 cases, 

and I'm also a petitioner on the Lawrence Livermore 

petition that's pending. I'm in Rancho Santa Fe, 

California. The phone number is [identifying 

information redacted]. I have a brief comment on 

the two California sites that were discussed today, as 

well as some brief comments on Savannah River site.

Since it's all fresh on our minds, I'll talk about DeSoto 

and Santa Susana first. I echo the petitioners' 

reporting regarding the deficiencies or stonewalling 

by Boeing regarding verification of employment at all 

of the Atomics International sites, all four sites. 
158 

They have routinely -- and I've done a lot of cases 

there. They've routinely over the years failed to even 

find any records of quite a few of my clients. But we 

were able to win most cases where the claimants 

actually found in their attics or their basements some 

shred of papers from 50 years ago, such as a 

dosimeter record or a transfer paper showing that 

they transferred from Rocketdyne to Atomics 

International.

With those kind of pieces of evidence, suddenly 

magically then Boeing would finally agree with the 

Department of Labor that yes they, you know, they 

had some records. So furthermore, I'd like to say 

that it's true that many employees at Canoga or 

DeSoto clocked in at that facility where their desks 

were located, but in fact spent a great deal of time of 

many of their work days at Area IV doing and dealing 

with tests.

But all of their records show that they were either 

Canoga or DeSoto employees, and thus they don't 

qualify under the Area IV SEC, particularly in regard 

to DeSoto employees. I've talked to Greg Lewis at 

the Department of Energy headquarters many times 

over the past several years, complaining about these 

deficiencies or stonewalling regarding the Boeing 

responses.

So that's basically all I have to say about that at this 

time. Savannah River site, much has been said today 

already about Savannah River site and all the 

different things that are going on that hopefully will 

break the logjam. I hope for the 5,800 denied SRS 

cancer cases that something gets done soon.

In August of 2017, 16 or 17 months ago, Brad 

Clawson asked Dr. Melius if the SRS petition now 

ongoing for 11 years covered all employees or just 

the construction trades. I believe Dr. Melius said 

construction trades only. I could be wrong, but I 

think that's what he said. 

What I'm questioning today is does that mean that 
159 

when any -- when any action may be taken by the 

Board, such as an SEC, will it be solely for 

construction trades people, or can it be for all 

employees? In other words, does the Board have the 

discretion to decide that, even if the petition was only 

for construction trades?

And if something needs to be done, should a new 

petition be filed to encompass all employees? That's 

all I have to say for today. Thank you.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Al. Does -- Stu, do you want to 

respond to that at all?

Mr. Hinnefeld: Well, I would just offer it depends 

completely upon the reason. If an SEC is granted, it 

depends upon the reason why the SEC is granted. 

So if the infeasibility applies only to construction 

workers because of some difference in how they were 

monitored or how they were exposed compared to 

the in-house workers, then the construction workers 

it would be limited to construction workers. 

If the infeasibility is not specific to construction 

workers, if it's a general problem then it would not, 

and the Board or we in our recommendation have the 

authority to expand beyond what the original petition 

group was, right.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Thank you, Stu. Okay, good. Next 

on the list, Knut Ringen.

Mr. Ringen: Thank you Ted and Members of the 

Board. I'm going to talk about Savannah River also. 

My name is Knut Ringen. I'm the senior science 

advisor for CPWR, the Center for Construction, 

Research, and Training, and I'm also the principal 

investigator on the Building Trades National Medical 

Screening Program.

I've spoken to you a number of times before about 

Savannah River, and I was not aware that it was 

being discussed earlier today, because I didn't see it 

on the agenda. So if it has been discussed, then I'm 
160 

unaware of that discussion and I apologize for that.

Obviously, we are in distress about the lack of 

progress on Savannah River, and really, really 

saddened by the failure of the NIOSH management 

to rein in this evaluation that has gone on forever, 

and we're also saddened that this Board has not had 

the courage to stand up and insist on something 

being done or that its Working Group has not been 

able to make a decision either.

The reason I'm calling in today is because on October 

9th, Gordon Rowe died. Gordon Rowe was an 

electrician at Savannah River site from 1952 to 1955, 

when he developed cancer and had to retire. Gordon 

was a very good friend of mine and a good colleague. 

Most of all, Gordon was a very strong and very 

honorable man, and he was the lead petitioner on the 

Savannah River SEC application or petition. 

For the last 25 years, he struggled with recurring 

cancer. But in spite of that, he first and foremost 

committed himself to helping people who needed the 

help more than he needed help. 

Now he is gone, and as far as we believe, because 

we've not been able to contact the other two 

petitioners or the lawyer who has represented them, 

because he is also generally disabled I believe, it's 

likely that all of the petitioners on the Savannah River 

site are no longer with us.

So in effect, there may be no one left to challenge 

the evaluation that NIOSH is promising that is going 

to complete any day and apparently is not prepared 

to do so. I just want to remind some of you of the 

history here. In 2003, the workers at Savannah River 

invited NIOSH to come down and hear their stories, 

because they said there's no way that NIOSH would 

be able to reconstruct dose the way that it said it 

would do it.

When NIOSH came down there and set up interviews 

with lots of workers that confirmed this generally, 
161 

and nevertheless did nothing in response to it, in 

2007 the workers, through their petitioners, filed a 

request for an SEC at Savannah River.

In 2011, this Board agreed that the SEC should be 

established because there was no way to determine 

whether certain workers, particularly the building 

trades workers on the site using this method that 

NIOSH had proposed to use, which was to rely on the 

codes, on the radiation dose records. 

So an SEC was established that runs through 

September 30, 1972. Since 2011, there has been 

continuous analysis and model building by NIOSH to 

prove that dose reconstructions can be done, and it's 

never been completed. Just recently, I happened to 

see that there's now still a discussion about when 

thorium dose in the tank farms can be constructed.

That's an issue that's been looked at and reviewed 

and evaluated since 2014 without conclusion. That's 

how bad things are. I urge you to go back and look 

at the transcript of the February 9 meeting of the 

Working Group on Savannah River that Brad Clawson 

has or supposedly has.

There's -- there's the discussion starting on page 73 

about a path forward. In it, Jim Lockey says, "I agree 

with Brad Clawson. It's gone on long enough and we 

need to identify the issues, get a plan in place and 

say yes, we can solve this or we cannot." 

Taulbee then responds, "I'm asking what data did 

you just request from us, so we can provide it?" 

Fitzgerald on behalf of SC&A then responds, "That's 

part of what we need to figure out." So now after 11 

years, we have a discussion here about what are the 

issues that we need to address, and can we develop 

a plan for it. But we don't really know what data we 

need, because we don't know what the issues are.

This has been going around and around and around 

like this for 11 years, and it's time to stop it. My 

request to this Board out of respect for the men and 
162 

in memory of Gordon Rowe, is to make two decisions 

today. First of all, I ask you to hold your next 

meeting, which is scheduled for April 17th and 18th, 

in Augusta, Georgia.

Secondly, at that time make final up or down vote on 

the remaining time period in this petition, so the 

petition can be closed. There are no more 

petitioners. You have to take this and settle it. It's 

time to get this tragic charade closed. Thank you 

very much for your time, and have a Happy 

Christmas. 

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Knut. I don't have any others 

on the list, but do we have other people -- other 

people on the line to comment? Sorry?

Member Valerio: I can hear, Ted. This is Loretta.

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry. So again, I'll ask again, do we 

have any other -- I don't have any listed. But do we 

have any other people who would like to comment, 

who are on the phone line?

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Yes. Ted, this is Michele with 

Senator Tom Udall's office.

Mr. Katz: Oh great. There you are.

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Michele Jacquez-Ortiz.

Mr. Katz: Okay.

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Yeah. No, I've been on for a 

while, but I didn't hear my name called up, so I was 

just waiting for other folks to finish. I'd like to read 

a statement on behalf of Senator Udall into the 

record.

Mr. Katz: Right. Go right ahead, and before you read 

it in the -- before you read it in the record, just let 

me ask you too, if you would email it after you read 

it, that will just assure that we get this correct in the 

transcript.
163 

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Okay. That will be in a couple of 

days.

Mr. Katz: That's fine.

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: All right. I'm happy to do that.

Mr. Katz: No rush, no rush.

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: I'll email it to you. Okay, very 

good.

Mr. Katz: Thank you.

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Okay. So this is a statement from 

United States Senator Tom Udall, December 12th, 

2018. 

"Thank you Chairman and Members of the Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health, for the 

opportunity to submit a statement into the record. I 

work with a bipartisan coalition in Congress to ensure 

that the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act is serving claimants 

consistent with the law and Congressional intent.

"You will hear tomorrow afternoon a presentation 

focused on challenges associated with the Los Alamos 

National Laboratory Special Exposure Cohort 

Petition. However, important questions raised in this 

discussion apply beyond LANL and are relevant to the 

Sandia National Laboratory SEC petition, among 

other Department of Energy facilities with petitions 

under consideration.

"In 2012, the National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health (NIOSH) submitted an initial 

recommendation with which the Advisory Board 

concurred, that allowed approval of LANL Security 

Guard Andrew Evaskovich's SEC petition through 

December 31st, 1995. 

"Five long years have passed before the Advisory 

Board Work Group held its first meeting in 2017, to 

discuss the remaining years through 2005. Since 
164 

that time, there has been much discussion. I am 

concerned that this LANL petition and other SEC 

petitions, including Sandia National Lab, have taken 

so long for a decision.

"The agencies that administer EEOICPA, including 

NIOSH, have a responsibility to act on these petitions 

in a timelier manner. For instance, in August of 2017, 

the Work Group requested NIOSH to report, 

investigate and respond to the issues raised in LANL's 

1999 self-assessment report.

"This 1999 report detailed serious deficiencies LANL 

identified with its bioassay program, after 

promulgation of 10 CFR 835. It is over a year since 

the Work Group requested this information, and 

NIOSH has not responded in a manner that 

substantively addresses the request.

"In addition to the New Mexico facilities, other sites 

are also experiencing major delays in resolving SEC 

petitions. Congress enacted EEOICPA with the 

intention that the program would be science-based, 

and that it would pay legitimate claims in a timely 

manner without unnecessary bureaucratic hassles. 

That is the spirit of the law.

"EEOICPA is complicated and requires expert analysis 

on many levels. While the Advisory Board has a 

difficult task before it considering the complex issues

associated with this program, I am concerned about 

the long delays and how they affect the workers with 

a specified cancer or their survivors.

"I appreciate the hard work and long hours each of 

you commit as Members of this important Board. I 

request that the Board, NIOSH, the contractor SC&A 

and DOE accelerate the SEC petition process, while 

maintaining the integrity of the research. Thank you 

for your valuable and generous service, and for 

allowing time on the agenda for this statement. Tom 

Udall, United States Senator."

Mr. Katz: Much thanks for reading in that statement, 
165 

and for getting that statement from the 

Congressman. 

Ms. Jacquez-Ortiz: Thank you, Chairman.

Mr. Katz: Any others? Any other members of the 

public with comments?

Going once. Okay. So that concludes the public 

comment session, and we will see you all bright and 

early tomorrow morning for the rest of the meeting. 

Thank you everybody, and thank you everyone on 

the line, Board Members, members of the public for 

hanging in with us today. Much appreciated.

Adjourn

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 5:29 p.m.)