This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Board Meeting, has been reviewed 

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redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the 

Advisory Board for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for 

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1 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

98th MEETING

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

APRIL 29, 2014

+ + + + +

The meeting convened at 8:30 

a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, in the Augusta 

Marriott at the Convention Center, 2-10th 

Street, Augusta, Georgia, James M. Melius, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member*

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member*

WANDA I. MUNN, Member*
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JOHN W. POSTON, SR., 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
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT 

PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

ANDERSON, ALVIN, SRS

ANDERSON, DAVID, 

ARMSTRONG, DAN, SRS

BARRIE, TERRIE*

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

CHOAT, DONALD, SRS

CRAWFORD, FRANK, DOL

DAVIS, L.N.

DAWS, JULIE

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

HARTSFIELD, DEKEELY, HHS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

HOSHELL, GEORGE

FUNDERBURK, JIMMY, SRS 

GILCHRIST, CLAUDE

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

KELLER, KRISTI*

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MCFEE, MATT, ORAU Team

MOORER, MARY

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RICE, JEFF

RINGEN, KNUT

ROWE, GORDON

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

STURCKEN, ED

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

WALZ, MARK*

WARREN, BOB 

WORTHINGTON, PATRICIA, DOE
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A G E N D A

Welcome and Introduction .................. 6 

Dr. James Melius

NIOSH Program Update ...................... 8 

Mr. Stuart Hinnefeld

DOE Program Update ....................... 34

Dr. Patricia Worthington

Mr. Greg Lewis

DOL Program Update ....................... 56

Mr. Frank Crawford

SEC Petitions Status Update .............. 62

Mr. LaVon Rutherford

Sufficient Accuracy/Coworker Dose 

Modeling ................................. 73

Dr. James Melius

SEC Issues Work Group .................... 81

Dr. James Neton

Break ................................... 108

Nuclear Metals Inc. SEC Petition ........ 109

Dr. Samuel Glover

Lunch ................................... 162

Joslyn Manuf. & Supply Co. SEC 

Petition ................................ 164

Dr. Samuel Glover

Dr. Paul Ziemer

Board Work Session ...................... 188

Dr. James Melius
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Break ................................... 247
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Savannah River Site SEC Petition

Work Group Update ....................... 248

Dr. Tim Taulbee

Mr. Mark Griffon

Public Comment .......................... 321

Adjourn ................................. 350
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

8:32 a.m.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good morning and 

welcome to, what number are we? Number 98, 

98th meeting of the Advisory Board. And let 

me turn it over to Ted for housekeeping.

MR. KATZ: Yes. Welcome everyone 

in the room and on the line. And for people 

on the line B- for people in the room we 

have materials on the back table for all the 

presentations that will be made today. For 

people on the line, all of the materials 

that are being B- for presentation today are 

posted on the NIOSH website under the DCAS 

webpage, NIOSH section of it, I mean, Board 

section of it for today’s date, so you can 

find all those materials and follow along. 

And the meeting is also webcast, just the 

presentations, mind you, not a live feed of 

the room, but the presentations are all 
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webcast in a Live Meeting session. That’s 

also on the agenda for the meeting today, 

which is also posted on line with the 

presentations. So, if you’re on line you can 

follow along with presentations that way on 

your computer, as well.

Okay. For roll call the Board 

Members, we only have one session today that 

has a conflicted Board Member, that’s 

Savannah River Site. And Loretta has a 

conflict for that, Ms. Valerio, so for the 

rest of the Board Members you don’t need to 

address your conflicts because they don’t 

relate to today’s sessions. So, let’s just 

run down roll call alphabetically. And we 

have quite a few Board Members who should be 

on the line, so let’s go alphabetically.

(Roll Call.)

MR. KATZ: Almost a full house. 

Welcome, everyone. 
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Let me just also talk about 

etiquette for the meeting for people on 

line. Please mute your phones so that your 

B- whatever is going on in your background

doesn’t interfere with everyone’s audio. If 

you don’t have a mute button on your phone 

press *6 to mute your phone, * and then 6 

will mute it. And if you want to speak to 

the group, if that’s the right occasion to 

do that, you press *6 again to take your 

phone off of mute. And please don’t put your 

phone on hold at any point. Hang up and dial 

back in if you need to leave. And that 

should take care of things.

Oh, one last note. There’s a 

public comment session that begins at 5:15 

this evening. We’ll begin with folks who are 

here in the room, and then we’ll go to 

people on the line. For people who are here, 

there’s a sign-in sheet directly outside the 
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room so you can sign up if you want to speak 

to the group at that point. Thank you, 

everyone.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

Ted, and we’ll get started. And the first 

person to speak will be Stu Hinnefeld is 

going to give an update on the NIOSH 

Program. 

MR. HINNEFELD: Good morning, 

everyone. I feel like I should have 

something clever to say, but after doing 

this every meeting I run out of clever 

things to say. My computer doesn’t even want 

me to talk at all.

(Laughter.)

MR. KATZ: Let me remind you to 

please everyone speak directly into your mic 

so that folks on the phone can hear, as 

well. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And anyone who 
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like to submit clever remarks for -- 

(Laughter.)

MR. HINNEFELD: I would welcome 

clever remarks, opening jokes, anything 

anyone wants to offer. 

Okay, as is my habit, I’ve 

prepared an update slide to tell how we’re 

doing, update the presentation. It looks 

much the same as ones you’ve seen. Start off 

with a little program news. Yes, I always 

wonder what’s newsworthy to the Board and 

what’s not, so I think of things that I 

think might be newsworthy. I might leave 

some things out, and I might put something 

in that no one is interested in.

One thing that is of great 

interest to me is the second bullet here, is 

the Dose Reconstruction Contract. We had a 

B- generally, our Dose Reconstruction 

Contract both times has been B- well, the 
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last couple of times has been a series of 

five one-year contracts, so you can make one 

award and then you have four options so you 

can renew it if you like what your 

contractor is doing. 

The incumbent has been Oak Ridge 

Associated Universities and the team that 

they’ve teamed with since we started, and 

they have won the most recent re-award of 

the contract.

The contract was originally 

scheduled to expire in, let’s see, April of 

2013, and we went through a series of

extensions working with our Procurement and 

Grants Office. That was also the time of the 

sequester if you’ll recall, and so a number 

of things came together in association with 

that, and had our contractor spending at 

quite a low rate for about a year. It was 

essentially a double sequester rate. And 
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with this new award we are not B- we don’t 

have relief from the sequester. We still are 

operating under sequester, and we have less 

money each year than we did before the 

government sequester, and we face that going 

forward. That’s not a temporary thing.

However, because we have been 

operating at such a low spending rate as an 

artifact of the other contract, we have been 

spending at a much lower rate than we needed 

to. So, starting in April we have been able 

with ORAU to accelerate some of our site 

research, and we would hope the Work Groups 

will be able to see a more steady supply of 

products for now. We’ll have to evaluate 

spending rates and next year’s funding as we 

get toward the new fiscal year, but we 

believe we’re going to be in better shape 

for the foreseeable future than we have been 

for the past year in terms of the amount of 
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money available to spend on our products for 

our Dose Reconstruction contract.

The other items I’ve got in here 

are sort of outreach and outreach-type 

activities. NIOSH participates in the Joint 

Outreach Task Group with DOE and DOL, and we 

meet a few times a year at sites around the 

country where there is interest from either 

one of the agencies or a local interest.

In February we went to Denver for 

a public meeting on the latest edition of 

Class, the latest Rocky Flats Class that was 

added. It became effective, I think, in 

January. And when there is a new SEC Class, 

DOL sponsors a public meeting. It’s a large 

public meeting where they go out and explain 

the impact of this new SEC Class. So, we go 

along largely to answer questions because, 

inevitably, there are questions about our 

part of the process, so we go to that. We 
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did that in Denver.

And while we were in Denver we 

arranged largely through the efforts of the 

Department of Labor, I believe, we arranged 

for the three agencies to have a meeting 

with a group of program advocates who 

identified themselves, I’m not exactly sure 

how they were identified, and we had that 

meeting at the Denver District Office.

We got to address a number of Bor discuss a number of concerns that they 

presented to us in advance. Much of their 

questioning was for the Department of Labor. 

We did have a couple of items on the list, I 

think we provided some answers to 

satisfactorily, and I expect this will be 

probably part of the continuing dialogue. 

Periodically we might do this with the other 

agencies.

And, also, in the topic of 
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outreach we have a Joint Outreach meeting 

planned in June in New England. This is 

really a couple of sites that we expect this 

to be relevant to, Nuclear Metals and 

Controls, which I think is now run by 

Honeywell. And this kind of grew out of an 

initial effort that was spurred by 

Congressman Kennedy to kind of get word out 

to employees of Nuclear Metals and Controls 

because there is an SEC for Nuclear Metals 

and Controls, and the Congressman didn’t 

feel like it was that well publicized, and 

there were a lot of workers who didn’t know 

about it. 

So, there was one session that 

was about a year ago up there just for 

Nuclear Metals and Controls. This is going 

to go back now more formally as a Joint 

Outreach Task Group meeting, and again have 

a public meeting for that site, and also for 
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the Connecticut Aircraft Nuclear Engine 

Laboratory in Connecticut, which is close 

enough that we can cover, we think, both in 

one trip, probably a couple of meetings, but 

one trip. 

So, we’re going out there in 

June. There are a couple of other proposed 

meetings out there, but I think those will 

go probably in the next fiscal year, and 

there’s nothing firmed up on those visits 

yet. I think people are talking about going 

to Paducah, and there’s some interest in 

going to WIPP on some of the agencies’ 

parts. We don’t get much business from Bthat’s the Waste Isolation Pilot Project 

for the people who don’t know. We don’t get 

a lot of interest in our part, we don’t get 

a lot of claims from there, clearly.

And I don’t know if you’ve been 

following in the papers, the Waste Isolation 
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Pilot Project had a bit of an event there 

back in February, and they’re still 

struggling to recover from that, so I 

suspect they may not be terribly interested 

in having us out there until things settle 

down a little bit out there.

Let’s see. Moving forward, I get 

into the standard part. This is our lead 

statistics. I don’t think I’ll read these to 

you. It’s the same format we’ve used, all it 

changes is the numbers a little bit. If you 

have any questions, I’ll try to answer. 

These are the overall claim information. 

These are those 1,224 cases, the active 

ones, which ones are we working on. You can 

see there are some 280 where the draft was 

with the claimants, and so we kind of feel 

like we think we’re done with those.

And here is the summary of the 

outcomes of Probability of Causation, and 
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the total number of dose reconstructions 

that we’ve sent back where we had a final 

dose reconstruction and the number for 

greater than 50 percent, number less than 50 

percent. That’s slightly less than 30 

percent, I believe, which is kind of where 

it’s been trending for the past several 

reports I’ve made.

Submittals and production 

numbers, you can see here that the cases 

received from DOL is the palest line on 

there. I guess that might be a pale blue but 

I can’t tell colors, so I don’t know. And 

you can B- if you look here for the last 

year or two, there seems to be a slight 

downward movement in that line, a bit of a 

downward trend in the line of delivery. So,

while we’ve been going pretty steadily at 

200 a month for several years, it’s kind of 

dropped a little below 200 a month, not a 
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lot, but a little bit below 200 a month for 

the past year or two. And the production 

number is a little more erratic as we either 

get a little bit behind the delivery rate, 

or catch back up to the delivery rate, but 

they kind of mirror each other. And we’re 

maintaining pretty much what we consider a 

steady state set of cases. We have around 

800 or 900 cases in-house that have to be 

done, and it’s been that way for quite a 

while. 

And here’s our summary of the 

first 5,000 claims, status of the various 

claims. Anything that’s in progress or with 

claimants, those are cases that were either 

sent back as reworks or reinstated within 

the past year. And the same is true with the 

first 10,000 cases. Anything that’s either 

with the claimant or in process, or have 

been reinstated, you know, the one initial 
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is a reinstatement, I’m pretty sure, of the 

CLL case.

This is our tally of DOE’s 

responsiveness to exposure issue requests. 

You can see there the numbers are pretty 

low, and particularly the greater than 60 

day number is very low. That’s where DOL 

strives to get the response back within 60 

days and it’s really moving well in that 

regard. The 232 outstanding cases, that’s 

just a little over what we get in a month, 

so you would expect to have some cases, 

there are always going to be some cases that 

we don’t have a response back. So, that’s 

showing very good progress.

SEC Petition Summary Table, LaVon 

is going to speak about that a little bit 

later, so I won’t talk much about that. Just 

this is the summary of the Classes that have 
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22 

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been submitted. And, also, a breakdown of 

how many were 83.13s versus how many were 

83.14s; whereas, a while ago we were pretty 

much even. That was sort of at the end of 

our efforts to complete our site research. 

We went through the AWEs that we had for the 

first few years of the project we did, and 

researched some of the AWEs that didn’t have 

a lot of claims. And then eventually a few 

years ago we went through trying to finish 

up our research that we could do at all 

those places. And in a number of those cases 

we found that we couldn’t gather enough 

information to do dose reconstructions with 

sufficient accuracy, so there were quite a 

number of 83.14s, if you’ll recall, I forget 

when that was, two or three years ago, we 

were bringing 83.14s quite often. We’ve kind 

of worked through that now. We feel like 

we’ve researched pretty much everywhere 
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where we have claims, so now the 83.13 

process is again pulling ahead in terms of 

number of SEC Classes. 

It shows it’s 74 sites, I’m 

sorry. Yes, from 74 sites the total number 

of Classes, so they’re B- as you know, we do 

multiple Classes from sites as we research 

different years, and there’s still some 

petitions under HHS Administrative Review.

That process is strictly an HHS 

process, and we have no involvement with 

that. We send them the records, and then we 

don’t do any B- we don’t hear anything about 

it until they issue a report of their 

Administrative Review, so that occurs 

completely independent of DCAS. And, in 

fact, completely independent of NIOSH, it 

occurs at HHS. So, I don’t have any 

particular insight into that process other 

than we’ve sent files. 
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I believe that might be it. I 

hope that’s it, because I can’t get my 

slides to move. Yes, that is the last slide.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

Stu, Board Members? Board Members on the 

phone, do you have any questions for Stu?

MEMBER ANDERSON: I don’t, no. 

MEMBER FIELD: Nope. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER MUNN: No.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul. Paul 

has a question here.

MEMBER ZIEMER: Stu, you mentioned 

that you’re operating, in essence, as if the

sequester is still in place. Is that what 

you expect to happen throughout the rest of 

this fiscal year then?

MR. HINNEFELD: Well, maybe I 

wasn’t clear on that. For this fiscal year 

we’re almost at operating B- from now on 
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we’re almost operating as if there is no 

sequester because we’ve already saved this 

year’s money. The amount of money we had to 

save this year because of the sequester, 

we’ve already saved it in the first six 

months of the year because our contractor 

was spending at such a low rate. That was an 

artifact of their previous contract. 

Their contract year doesn’t align 

directly with the fiscal year, so their 

contract year ended at the end of March, I 

guess. So, their new contract starts April 

1st, but the fiscal year, of course, started 

in October, so from October through March, 

the first six months of the year, they were 

spending at essentially double the 

sequestered rate, cut twice as much of a cut 

as they normally would have needed to just 

for sequester. So it, essentially, saved the 

sequestered money already in the first six 
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months of the year, so we can be spending 

relatively close to the pre-sequestered 

amount. But next year’s money will be 

sequestered, so if we spend at this level 

for the entire 12 months, we will fall of 

the cliff for the last half of next year, so 

we’ll have to do some ramping down as we go 

in to have a smooth transition into the next 

year’s amount of money, as opposed to just 

going at a particular rate and then falling 

off a cliff, and not having enough money to 

continue doing what you want to do. So, it’s 

a funding and timing problem that we have to 

work out. 

MEMBER ZIEMER: And if I could 

follow-up then, that clearly affects how you 

operate with your contractor. How does that 

affect how the Board’s contractor operates? 

Is it the same way, or maybe Ted can speak 

to that. 
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MR. KATZ: Sure. So, the Board’s 

contract, the Board was actually awarded 

their new contract for Board support, SC&A, 

close to the same time, just ahead of BMR. HINNEFELD: A little ahead.

MR. KATZ: B- Stu’s group. Right. 

So, they’re on a different point in the 

cycle in the first place, but the sequester 

has affected their budget, too. Their budget 

has also been reduced sort of proportionally 

with BMR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think the 

difference is that SC&A didn’t face B- their 

timing at the sequester wasn’t quite the 

same and they didn’t face that double 

reduction, the double cut that ORAU did in 

order to get all of the first sequester in 

in the last six months of Fiscal >13.

MR. KATZ: Yes, that’s true. But, 

anyway, in short, I mean the one sort of 
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pinch is then that the last few months of 

their prior contract because there was a 

delay in awarding their contract, not as 

long as the NIOSH one, but that did pinch 

their ability to do work, as well. So, 

they’re just coming out of that sort of 

similar cycle to what the NIOSH folks have 

experienced.

MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, it seems 

clear to me that we’re operating in a 

different manner this year, even partially, 

a lot of the Work Groups are doing a great 

portion of their work by telephone 

conference, and that’s not necessarily bad, 

but sometimes it’s an impediment. But I’m 

just wondering as we move forward, it feels 

even very different to me in terms of the 

workloads are different. I don’t know what 

this implies going into the future, but 

certainly impacts on the meetings such as 
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the one we have here. There’s much less 

activity for us to deal with, and it’s not 

so much a problem for me, but I think about 

those who traveled two whole days coming and 

going for a one-day meeting, and I’m 

wondering about the efficiencies of our 

frequency of meetings and how much we do in 

C-- as we move forward. That’s maybe sort of 

rhetorical, but it seems to me we need to 

think about how this is going to impact on 

the Board’s work. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. No, that’s 

a good point, Paul, and I think two things, 

back to sort of the contract issue. I think 

with this B- as much B- well, both the cuts 

and then also the sort of timing when money 

does become available, I think we need to 

continue to pay careful attention to 

coordinating what work gets done and 

prioritizing it so that we put the resources 
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into where they’re most appropriately needed 

at a given point in time. I think we’ve 

talked about that before with the SECs, 

finishing up them, as well as then trying to 

catch up with some of the Site Profile 

Reviews that we haven’t kept up with. And 

that’s tricky, because it’s hard to pick on 

the SECs to predict how much time and effort 

is involved, and we’re coordinating 

different contracts, and so forth. So, we’ll 

need to continue to do that, and it already 

has affected our work, and so forth.

I also think, we all know that 

particularly with the AWE SECs sort of being 

B- we’re sort of caught up with them, or at 

least most of them now. So, there is less, 

you know, work on the part of Work Groups, 

and less time spent at Board meetings 

addressing those. And we have to sort of 

think, I agree, do we go to fewer meetings 
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per year, but at the same time when we have 

some outstanding SECs we don’t want to delay 

them. And it’s sort of not the most 

predictable set of circumstances. 

Do we go to doing some of our 

Work Group meetings in conjunction with the 

Board meetings so that one B- I agree with 

you, there’s many cases where an in-person 

meeting is much better than a phone call, 

even with the web-based presentations. I 

think certain kinds of issues you can deal 

with better in an in-person meeting. And, 

you know, are we more B- you know, will it 

be more efficient if we can do B- handle 

those that way, some of those that way?

And then, again, at some point I 

think we certainly will be having fewer 

Board meetings, just to be more efficient. 

And that time is probably coming hopefully 

within the next, you know, year. And we need 
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to think about that, and address that also. 

I don’t know if anybody else has 

comments, any other Board Members have 

comments on that? 

I do believe at this meeting we 

will be doing B- setting up some new Work 

Groups, or Work Groups that we’ve delayed 

setting up because we just didn’t have the 

resources to staff them. Deal with some of 

the Site Profile and other issues. And I 

think we’ll sort of continue that in our 

Board calls and so forth, and probably try 

to get the workload for the Board to match 

up with resources we have available both at 

the NIOSH and the SC&A contracting. Yes, 

David.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Just two 

comments. The first one is to second Paul’s 

comment about the kind of issue of 

efficiency if there’s a lot of travel time 
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versus kind of a shortage. And I think 

spacing out the meetings longer to have a 

fuller agenda makes a lot of sense to me.

The other one was going back to 

the B- what was described as the cause of 

some of the slowdown which was a contract 

issue, as I’m understanding it, with ORAU. 

There was a period of time where a contract 

wasn’t in place, and there was what’s being 

announced now as finally the contract. 

What’s caused that?

MR. HINNEFELD: I can take a shot 

at explaining that. The ORAU B- ORAU’s 

previous bundle of contracts, the five-year 

bundle was scheduled to expire in April of 

2013. Now, in March of 2013 was when the 

sequester became effective for Fiscal >13. 

So, the entire amount of the sequester which 

was about 8 percent of the annual budget for 

our program had to be absorbed in the last 
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six months of the year. And as we were --

and the largest -- you know, the majority 

of the program money is the Dose 

Reconstruction contract. You know, the two 

big chunks are the Dose Reconstruction 

contract and the SC&A contract is another 

big chunk. These are pretty big, easily 

identifiable things where you can save money 

relatively easily. So, the sequester cut for 

2013 came essentially all out of those two 

contracts, and it fell a little 

disproportionately on ORAU.

SC&A’s reduction was held at the 

amount, I believe, of the sequester roughly, 

wasn’t that right, Ted, about 8 percent 

reduction that they had to absorb. But they 

had until the end of the calendar year. 

Their contract didn’t end until the end of 

the calendar year, so they had nine months 

to absorb their 8 percent cut. 
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MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, there’s 

two things here. There’s the sequester, and 

then there’s also the renewal of the ORAU 

contract.

MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and that’s 

what I’m getting at. I’m getting to that. 

So, strictly talking about the ORAU contract 

then, ORAU bore the brunt of the sequester, 

so not only the 8 percent that would 

normally be attributed to their contract, 

but other spending items that were not easy 

to cut. We took that 8 percent, and they 

were smaller amounts, we took the 8 percent 

of those items and also took that cut out of 

the ORAU contract. And, in addition, they 

have some fixed costs that they have to pay 

for facilities before they even get to the 

program items. 

So, anyway, they were spending --

their cut was on the order of 20 percent 
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spending rate. The cut to their spending 

rate was on the order of 20 percent, I think 

maybe even a little over that. So, that 

happened at the sequester at the extension 

of their contract, which corresponded with 

the sequester, so we had a six-month 

extension from April through the end of 

October where they had to spend at that 

greatly reduced amount.

We were expecting then an award 

would be made, and we could then adjust the 

amount of money, the spending rate back to 

just the normal sequestered amount. However, 

for reasons that aren’t real clear to me, 

the contract award process didn’t really get 

done, and there were a series of extensions 

beyond that. There were two two-month 

extensions, and a one-month extension.

MR. KATZ: Excuse me, Stu. Let me 

- some people probably came on the line 
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after we got started. For everyone on the 

telephone line, please mute your phone while 

you’re listening to this. If you don’t have 

a mute button, press * and then 6 to mute 

your phone, but we’re hearing background 

noise. It’s probably interfering for other 

people trying to listen by phone. Thank you. 

So, * and then 6 will mute your phone for 

everyone. Thanks.

MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, the 

series of extensions, these two-month and 

then one-month extensions, in each case to 

my continuing frustration, by the time it 

became clear that award wasn’t going to be 

made and an extension was going to be 

necessary, there was insufficient time to 

revise the Statement of Work on the 

extension to get the spending rate back up 

to what it could have been. So, it remained 

at that more than double, you know, double, 
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we’ll call it double, double cut through all 

the months of the extension up through 

March. Okay?

So, we’ve been spending at 

essentially double the sequestered rate for 

six months. And finally we made the award, 

knowing how much money we had, we could then 

bring them back up to the spending rate 

almost before the sequester because we’ve 

already saved the sequestered amount. So, 

that’s why the award of the contract was key 

to getting the money back up. 

Now, we’re still operating under 

sequester, our money next year will be 

sequestered, probably it’s a little over 9 

percent, I believe, is the sequester for 

next year. So, we’re going to have to kind 

of -- we can’t stay at -- we’re going to 

have to slide down as we go into next year, 

next fiscal year. 
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Now, you’re 

totally confused?

MR. HINNEFELD: So, I think I 

probably made it worse. 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: No, I got it. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Thanks, that 

was -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

questions? If not, thank you, Stu, and we’ll 

go on to Department of Labor. Excuse me, 

Department of Energy. I changed the order 

here. Maybe we should mix up the agency, you 

know, like do a lottery. Why should NIOSH 

get to go first all the time? For those of 

you on the phone we’re just getting 

technical -- getting the slides set up.

DR. WORTHINGTON: Good morning. As 

always, it’s a pleasure to come before the 

Board and give some updates from Department 
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of Energy. I have joining me today Greg 

Lewis, who has primary responsibility for 

this program and the Former Worker Program. 

We worked on behalf of the 

claimants to ensure that all of the 

available data for workers and facilities 

are available so that NIOSH and Department 

of Labor can actually do their work. And I 

want to spend just a little bit of time 

giving you an update on some things that 

we’re doing.

The presentation today is pretty 

much consistent with what we’ve presented in 

the past, not a lot of new processes 

associated with what we’re doing, but I want 

to share with you changes in things that 

we’re doing to improve.

We certainly at Department of 

Energy were impacted by budget concerns at 

the beginning of the year, so we were very 
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aggressive at DOE in looking for ways to be 

more efficient and effective with the funds 

that we actually had available. So, Greg and 

his staff actually visited with a number of 

the sites in the field and worked with them 

on getting costs down; in particular, those 

sites in which we were having some trouble 

with regard to meeting deadlines and 

delivering information to NIOSH and 

Department of Labor.

We were very pleased that our 

colleague from NIOSH, that Stu gave some 

statistics to show that we had some 

significant improvements in providing 

information and a much smaller number of 

overdues, so we’re working on that. And as I 

go through the presentation I’ll give you 

some insights on what we’re doing.

But, again, the key thing that we 

did at DOE was to target those sites that 
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appeared to have some concerns with regard 

to spending, look for ways to help them 

improve, and in some cases to help them 

develop some new processes for managing the 

records.

I’m not sure that -- okay, maybe 

it’s a little bit slow today? I apologize 

for that. 

One of the things is related to 

the EEOICPA contacts. Greg has a network of 

EEOICPA contacts, POCs out in the field and 

at those various sites they are the people 

that he’ll go to with their concerns, or to 

move things along, or to help facilitate 

NIOSH visits at the sites. So, that’s a very 

large network and there’s regular meetings 

and interactions with them to kind of keep 

them going, and keep them pushing on getting 

the data.

I’m not sure, Stu, if the 
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computer might not need some -- let me go 

back here. 

A little bit about the DOE 

responsibilities. They’re sort of in two 

areas. One, the very first one I want to 

talk about is our Secured Electronic Records 

Transfer. Over the years, we’d had some 

difficulties with regard to privacy and 

security, as well as speed in getting 

information and materials to the other 

organizations, so Greg’s office developed 

the Secured Electronic Record Transfer. 

We’ve tried it out and the feedback that 

we’ve heard from the other partners is that 

it’s working very well, so we want to 

continue to do that, and look for ways to 

expand it maybe to some other programs for 

workers, as needed.

I think it’s more my eyes than 

the computer. I apologize for that. 
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Individual records, certainly, we 

start with the individual records. That 

number is pretty consistent in terms of 

employment verification. Dose records for 

NIOSH, again pretty consistent, and then the 

Document Acquisition Request which includes 

work histories and exposures. And those 

things are important. It’s not just in terms 

of whether you worked at the site, but what 

kinds of things you might have been exposed 

to.

At DOE over the years we’ve 

changed our contracting mechanism. At one 

time we had M&O contractors, single 

contractors that managed every aspect of 

Department of Energy work, and over time 

we’ve moved, especially to sites that have a 

lot of cleanup going on, we’ve moved to 

multiple contractors doing just certain 

pieces of work, so you can’t go to a single 
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place for information. We’ve increased 

subcontractors to the point that at some 

sites we have tiers, first, second, third, 

fourth tiers of subcontractors that are 

working on delivering DOE mission. So, when 

you’re looking for verification or other 

kinds of information it certainly becomes a 

little bit more difficult. So, we’re looking 

for ways to interact with the sites and 

gather that information. 

And while we can’t change the 

systems that they used in the past, we 

certainly are working with them to look for 

better systems of records, and to find ways 

to utilize and search in the old documents 

to get the data that we’re looking for. 

In terms of the type of 

documents, we certainly have some that are 

large documents, very large, some that 

require some security reviews, but I think 
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that we’re working towards improving.

The very last sentence is the one 

I want to focus on. We believe that the 

system has been successful, and we believe 

that because of the feedback that we’ve 

gotten from NIOSH, and from Department of 

Labor in that area.

I’m going to go back to the slide 

on outreach and talk about that, and build a 

little bit on the discussion that Stu had 

from NIOSH. One of the things that we found, 

as Stu mentioned, to be very helpful is for 

the agencies to come together and do 

outreach. So, you can have a great product, 

you can have a great service, but if people 

don’t know about it they’re not coming to 

you to utilize that, then you’re not being 

effective. So, we’ve worked together in 

terms of outreach. We were very happy to 

work with these agencies and go out in one 
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place at one time to provide sort of a onestop shopping for workers, whether they’re 

current workers, or whether they’re former 

workers.

I think at the last meeting, and 

maybe even the meeting before that, we 

mentioned that we had developed a video. The 

video was one in which we feature all the 

three agencies, and it’s something that 

people can use. You can take that and take 

it back and share it with your constituents, 

with other organizations so they can hear 

about the things that are going on across 

the three organizations. Also, it’s a good 

opportunity to see how government agencies 

are working together for the benefit of the 

workers. 

So, the websites, we checked them 

again, the links on Friday, they are active, 

they’re working, so you can go there and get 
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some insights or the joint video that we 

mentioned before. 

A little bit about the Former 

Worker Medical Screening Program. We’ve 

mentioned that program before. We’ll mention 

it again, because at some point the DOE 

workers do move from the DOE workforce out 

into retirement. And we’ve mentioned that 

there are a lot of unique operations and 

activities that go on at DOE, and we want to 

once they leave DOE, to give them an 

opportunity to come back and have a physical 

exam that’s tailored to the hazards and 

operations that they’ve been exposed to when 

they were at Department of Energy.

We have this program. We have a 

number of personal investigators who are 

associated with it that are very expert in 

occupational medical. We hear from the 

workers out in the field once they retire, 
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and some when they’re still at the agencies, 

that when they go to their regular 

physician, they’re not familiar with the 

hazards that they may have been exposed to 

and, therefore, they don’t know what kinds 

of things to target in their comprehensive 

exams. So, we’re offering this, and we’re 

working with the sites, we’re working with 

the unions and other organizations to find a 

way to advertise, to do outreach so that 

people are aware of this. One is the Joint 

Task Force that we mentioned, that we have 

literature at that, but we also offer to 

people when they’re retiring in their 

retirement package and other kinds of things 

that are made available to that.

And, again, the information is 

available here. The link that you see here, 

again, is working now, so you can go there 

and get additional information and share it 
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with people about the Former Worker Medical 

Screening Program.

We had a very interesting and 

important milestone in the program this 

year. Some months back we reached 100,000 

screenings for former workers. We’re very 

proud of that, and we want to continue to 

offer that service.

We have what we call the National 

Supplemental Screening Program and the 

Building Trades National Medical Screening 

Program. I want to talk about those just for 

a few minutes because what we have at some 

of the DOE sites, we have in the area Former 

Worker Medical Program PI facilities or 

information, and people can come within the 

areas where they live for the medical 

screening. But, also, people may move, they 

may retire and move to other locations, or 

they may not be near one of the areas where 
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we offer that, so you can call the numbers 

that are listed here, the 800 numbers, and 

they will find a clinic for you that’s very 

close to where you live, and one in which 

individuals there, the medical staff, that 

they’re very familiar with occupational 

medical, and they can give you the targeted 

exams that are featured under the Former 

Worker Program.

I’m sure you have a lot of 

questions since I had difficulties this 

morning with operating this computer, and we 

kind of went back and forth a little bit. 

But I’ll be happy to answer any questions. 

Again, the overall theme for 

today is that we’re still focused on 

delivering the information to NIOSH and 

Department of Labor for DOE workers, because 

these are DOE workers, and we want to make 

sure that everything is available for them. 
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And so often we don’t want to B- if we’re 

having difficulty, we don’t want to say no, 

we don’t have the information. We don’t want 

to leave any stones unturned. We want to 

continue to look for those records. 

We’re improving the process, 

we’re working with the sites to keep the 

cost down so that we don’t have to say no, 

or we don’t have to have delays in the time 

in which we can deliver the data. So, are 

there questions?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board 

Members with questions? Yes, David.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: One thing 

that’s not been clear to me, but since we’ve 

been talking about budget issues is, does 

DOE have a specific budget for running the 

services for this program?

DR. WORTHINGTON: With regard to 

the EEOICPA Program, there’s not a line item 
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in the budget to say that you will spend X 

associated with this program. What we’ve 

done over the years, especially over the 

last eight years or so when the Office of 

Health, Safety, and Security was created, we 

looked at the sort of trends in the program, 

you know, sort of trends in what was coming 

out of this Board in terms of the kinds of 

things that would be needed, and we tried to 

target out budget for EEOICPA to match those 

needs. And, certainly, it wasn’t a perfect 

game, and so what we had to do in some cases 

was to make mid-course corrections during 

the course of the year if we found that 

funds were low. I think, again, we’re doing 

a better job in doing that now. But, no, 

it’s not a line item, but we do have a 

specific budget, and we did not take all of 

the cuts that some other programs took. We 

took some cuts, but some other programs had 
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to take more so that we could continue to 

deliver the records so that we didn’t slow 

up the process for Labor or for NIOSH. 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. Because, 

I mean, I guess there’s several thoughts to 

this, but one of them is that you’ve done --

clearly done a tremendous -- a large amount 

of work. And if I was to ask how much has 

DOE spent on their side in terms of 

administration of this program, let’s say 

last year, is that something that can be 

answered, or it’s just wrapped into your 

overall HSS budget?

DR. WORTHINGTON: I can tell you 

the amount of money that we spent that was 

just under the umbrella of the EEOICPA 

Program. And Greg Lewis is here B-- Greg, I 

believe that was -- was it six point -- 

MR. LEWIS: About six.

DR. WORTHINGTON: About $6 
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million. And I want to address what you said 

about wrapped into other programs. The $6 

million that I’m talking about that we 

spent, it was money that we provided to 

headquarters or to the programs in the field 

at this very site to provide records and to 

work with NIOSH to get information to do 

employment verifications.

In terms of looking at documents 

when they are generated, for example, by the 

Board’s contractors or other things that go 

on in the EEOICPA Program, the security 

organization that looked at that and spent 

time either at the site or at headquarters, 

that was part of other funds that we had. 

So, there were a number of things that we 

did in terms of classification, other kinds 

of things, as well, that were separate 

budgets. So, I would say $6 million was the 

core, core money.
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MEMBER RICHARDSON: And that’s 

money that comes from the Department of 

Energy and it goes to current contractors at 

various sites?

DR. WORTHINGTON: At various sites 

for them to deliver the records, or to -- 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: For them to 

deliver the records.

DR. WORTHINGTON: -- interface 

with NIOSH and provide information. It 

includes some headquarters organizations 

like Legacy Management, because they’re 

experts in finding old records, or they are 

the organization keeping those records. And 

they work with us, they’re one of our 

contractors, as well.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, when you 

have a -- 

DR. WORTHINGTON: They do a lot of 

research.
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MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- contractor 

that comes in and either takes over 

responsibility as the primary contractor at 

a site, for example, one of their 

responsibilities is to maintain the records 

for the current employees. But something 

else that they may inherit is responsibility 

for historical records. Is that right? And, 

yet, this is -- in addition to that, this is 

funds for responding in a timely way to 

individual records requests for employees 

who may or may not be their own employees.

DR. WORTHINGTON: Contractors at 

the various sites have responsibility for 

delivering the mission, which includes 

keeping records of exposures, of worker 

activities, of incidents and things like 

that. They’re required to do that. At some 

point, however, records go to archives or to 

other facilities that actually store and 
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keep records. And if we within our program 

need to retrieve that, then our program will 

pay to go to those sites and retrieve them 

from National Archives or other areas and 

make them available to NIOSH or Department 

of Labor, you know, as needed.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: And just one 

last question. Something that you had 

brought up was the difficulty of claimants 

who have worked under multiple contractors 

or under contractors and subcontractors. And 

you pointed out the difficulty in the past 

of that, and efforts that DOE is making now 

to be able to improve retention of records 

for workers whose employment spans 

contractor/subcontractor relationships and 

so on. Do you have some examples of what’s 

been done to improve that, and is there 

money being put to current contractors also 

for ways of improving -- 
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DR. WORTHINGTON: I’ll ask Greg to 

start walking up to the podium. He may have 

some specific examples of things that we’ve 

done to help the sites in terms of improving 

their ability, for example, to retrieve old 

records. If they could somehow or another 

package the records up, you know, things 

that they could use, tools they could use to 

make them searchable so then we could 

respond in a timely manner to requests for 

that. We’ve developed B- Greg, they want to 

get some examples of some of the things that 

we’ve done.

MR. LEWIS: Yes. So, the 

difficulty we have typically with the 

multiple contractors, you know, they are 

supposed to retain the records. So, 

typically, the records are there recently. 

Now, in past years or when you go way back 

that’s not always the case for the subs, but 
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recently the records are there. And the 

difficulty is then with the multiple 

contractors and subcontractors, they keep 

the records in different databases and 

different systems, so we’ll have to go to 

multiple locations. So, that’s why it gets a 

little bit tricky. 

In terms of the ways that we’ve 

improved that, like Pat said, mostly it’s 

with taking existing collections or existing 

databases and making them more searchable 

and more sortable, so at Brookhaven we just 

went through a large-scale project to 

identify subcontractors, and construction 

workers, and both subcontractor workers and 

subcontractor companies, so we’re going 

through boxes and boxes of records, and 

every time we saw a subcontractor company 

listed we’d, you know, mark it down it down 

in a little searchable small database, or 
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every time we saw a name of a subcontractor 

employee listed we’d mark that down. 

Another example with the Sandia 

National Lab, we’ve struggled with their 

records in terms of being able to find 

things in a timely manner. And, you know, 

one of Stu’s slides showed that we had 

relatively few claims going over the 60 

days, and one of the reasons why we had had 

some claims going over in the past couple 

of years was because we had so much trouble 

finding records at Sandia. 

Well, we went through a largescale project a few years ago to digitize a 

huge collection of Sandia records. And when 

they were digitized versus being in 

microfilm or microfiche it was B- you know, 

we were B- just having them electronic made 

it a lot easier to find, but they still 
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weren’t searchable or sortable by name. We 

still had to scan through, it was just 

quicker. Instead of putting in different 

reels and changing out the slides, we could 

just go through that electronically, so it 

helped, but it wasn’t great. So, in this 

last year we went through a project where 

they added some B- it’s not some much OCR, 

but they were able to go through different 

B- kind of to segment that electronic 

collection to say, you know, this is where 

certain years are, this is where certain 

workers, so they were much more able to take 

a worker, you know, who worked for such and 

such a contractor in these years and go in 

and strategically find those records. So, we 

were able to improve our response time. So, 

that actually really helped lower the number 

of claims that were outstanding. So, that’s 

the type of things, usually it’s indexing, 
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searchability, sortability, that kind of 

thing.

DR. WORTHINGTON: I want to 

comment that there are two things that we 

were trying to do. One is, and it may seem 

like we spent a lot of effort on old records 

that would have sort of a limited use in 

terms of the number of workers, but we 

wanted to make sure that every data point 

that was available for B- even if it was a 

few workers, that we were able to provide 

the best data that we could for that. So, we 

can’t fix those old systems, that’s what 

they used, but how do we mine the data that 

we do have, that we do find in those old 

systems? And so with the newer contracts 

that are coming on line, they certainly are 

much more sophisticated with systems and so 

forth, and so those things are fixing 

themselves. So, we are working with them, 
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looking at things they are doing, and offer 

suggestions in the new ones if we find them. 

But our struggle is with these old records, 

and trying to do what we can to mine that 

data.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

questions from Board Members? Okay, thank 

you, Pat and Greg. 

DR. WORTHINGTON: Thank you. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Department of 

Labor now. Frank, Chris Crawford.

MR. CRAWFORD: Ted, should I 

begin?

MR. KATZ: Yes.

MR. CRAWFORD: Good morning. My 

name is Frank Crawford. I’m with Department 

of Labor, and I’m standing in for Jeff 

Kotsch who couldn’t be here because he has a 

scheduling conflict. 

I’m going to move fairly rapidly 
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through the slides. I’m sure that’ll be okay 

with everyone. They are up on the Board 

site. The numbers, of course, only grow 

larger, but I think the salient numbers on 

this slide, we’ve had over 170,000 cases 

filed, and we’ve disbursed over $10.3 

billion in total compensation to date. 

Rounding these numbers, these are 

the Part B status and location of NIOSH 

referrals. About 42,000 cases were referred 

to NIOSH, 39,800 have been returned, 34,000 

of those roughly with Dose Reconstructions, 

and the rest without. And there are by our 

count, which will differ slightly from 

NIOSH’s, 1,964 cases at NIOSH as of, I 

believe, April 20th. 

Here we have a graphic 

representation of the cases with Dose 

Reconstruction and Final Decisions. We have 

27,000 cases with Dose Reconstructions and 
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Final Decisions, about 10,000 of those have 

PoCs higher than 50 percent, and about 

18,000 have PoCs less than 50 percent, which 

is about a 65 percent to 35 percent denial 

to approval difference.

Another pie chart with Part B 

cases filed. I think it’s self-explanatory. 

I think the other category includes cases 

that either have not been sent to NIOSH, or 

that have been rejected because there wasn’t 

a B- for Part B cases it wasn’t a cancer in 

the claim, for instance, or for other 

difficulties. 

We have another look at the Part 

B cases with Final Decisions. We see that 

here approvals are running 51 percent, 

denials 49. I believe that’s because this 

will include SEC cases. These are not just 

with Dose Reconstructions, in other words. 

As you see, that makes a large difference.
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This is more of the same. I won’t 

go through these numbers individually. The 

totals we see with accepted SEC DR cases and 

combined just over 30,000 accepted for 

48,000 payees and $4.5 billion in 

compensation in the Part B Program. 

And this gives us our top sites 

for Part B cases. Hanford leads the list, 

and I have not on the slides, but I have 

some numbers to attach to these sites. 

Hanford has filed about 15,500 cases so far; 

Savannah River, 15,300 cases; Rocky Flats, 

6,800 cases; and finally, Los Alamos, 7,900 

cases filed. Give you some idea of the 

magnitudes of these sites. 

The next slide puts this in a 

different perspective. We see here that the 

AWE cases filed are declining steadily. 

That’s to be expected. I think the AWE 

sites, most of them are closed long ago, and 
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they had a smaller worker population to 

begin with, and there have been no new 

workers added, so those cases have been 

filed and are now declining, and will 

probably at some point go to zero. 

We are doing B- we’re continuing 

to do outreach activities, as we see. I’m 

going to move on to the details here. The 

Joint Outreach Task Group has been working 

steadily with monthly conference calls and 

recent meetings have occurred in Farmington, 

New Mexico, Denver, Colorado twice, well, 

within two days, and Albuquerque, New 

Mexico. And we’re having some future 

outreach events in early May at Pahrump, 

Nevada, and at the same time in Las Vegas, 

Nevada. That’s May 6th and 7th. 

And the sites to be discussed 

today for SEC consideration, we see the 

Savannah River with the cases claimed, that 
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I already mentioned those cases, but 15,300 

filed to date. And we see Joslyn, an AWE 

example, is 130 cases filed to date, and 

Nuclear Metals with 56. So, the difference 

in numbers is astonishing. These were in 

many cases quite small plants, the AWEs. 

Again, I’ll leave the details for those who 

want to go to the site. 

The remaining slides have to do 

with eligibility, and also for Parts B and 

E, survivor definitions, and payments as 

scheduled in the Act, so that’s general 

background information for possible future 

claimants that can go to the site, the ABRWH 

site at CDC-NIOSH to get that information. 

Is there any questions?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board 

Members with questions for Department of 

Labor?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, this is Wanda. 
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I have one question for Frank.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead.

MEMBER MUNN: Frank, in earlier 

presentations I had asked that you provide 

us with dollar amounts for the three or four 

largest sites that we deal with, and I 

noticed that was not included in today’s 

presentation. Is there a problem with 

providing that?

MR. CRAWFORD: I will ask again 

about doing that. It’s going to be 

proportional, Wanda, to the number of cases 

filed.

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I understand, 

but given the eccentricities with the 

program we can’t just simply multiple the 

number by 150,000 and get an accurate 

reading because of the medical costs 

involved and other things. And I realize, I 

can figure it out at the DOL sites’ 
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individual records. But, frankly, I’m asking 

because I’m lazy and I’d like to see that as 

a kind of running piece of information that 

we have as time goes on, if it’s at all 

possible to do without assuming too many 

sensibilities, it would be helpful. 

MR. CRAWFORD: Wanda, I will put 

in that request and see if we can get that 

posted to the ABRWH site so that it will be 

available shortly.

MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. I’d 

appreciate that very much.

MR. CRAWFORD: You’re welcome. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

questions from Board Members? If not, thank 

you very much. 

Next up, man with the slides. 

Probably get a bigger computer. 

(Laughter.)

MR. RUTHERFORD: All right, good 
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morning. I’m LaVon Rutherford, and I’m going 

to give the SEC update for NIOSH.

All right. We give this update at 

every Advisory Board meeting, we do -- I 

talk about the summary of what petitions we 

filed, numbers, and so on. We talk about 

petitions that are currently under the Board 

review, potential 83.14s. We provide all 

this information that gives the Advisory 

Board information for future Work Group 

meetings, planning future Advisory Board 

meetings, and so on.

Our SEC Summary Table, you can 

see we had 215 petitions. We haven’t 

received a new petition in some time. We 

have no petitions that are in the 

qualification phase. Of those 215 petitions, 

130 qualified. We have no petitions that are 

currently being evaluated at this time. We 

do have 12 petitions that are with the 
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Advisory Board for recommendation, and I’ll 

get into that a little bit more on the next 

slide. And then you can see that 85 

petitions did not qualify. Actually, not on 

the next slide, the following slide.

Currently, we have one petition 

that has -- the evaluation has been 

presented to the Advisory Board, and there 

has been no Board action at this time, and 

that’s the Kansas City Plant. At this time, 

I believe the Kansas City Plant, the Board’s 

contractor, and the Work Group are doing a 

number of reviews with that.

This next slide is actually --

Ted, the Designated Federal Official, Ted 

Katz, had asked me to go back and take a 

look at our past Petition Evaluations and 

ones that the Board has taken action on, and 

look back and see if there were any 

additional sites that still required at 
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least some action; meaning that the Board 

took action for a period that was evaluated, 

but there remains some period that future 

action still is required. So, I think this 

table actually cleans it up and gives you an 

idea of those sites that have a petition 

that a partial action was taken, and still 

have some remaining action.

You could see Fernald is 1984 to 

>89, still has a period. Grand Junction 

Operations, this one kind of fell off our 

table a little bit. We had added a Class up 

through 1974, and this one is actually a 

NIOSH action. The 1975 through 2006, we had 

committed to the Board to go back and do 

some further evaluation to determine if they 

-- if we had a Dose Reconstruction approach 

for that period. 

Since that time, we have come up 

with a methodology, and we have been doing 
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Dose Reconstructions; however, we never 

presented that methodology to the Board, so 

we will put that back on our plan to present 

something to the Advisory Board on that 

methodology. 

Hanford SEC 57, we’ve done a lot 

of work with that site. We’ve added a number 

of Classes; however, there still remains a 

period 1984 to 1990 that still needs 

resolution. Joslyn, which we’ll be 

discussing today, 1948 to >52 period. Los 

Alamos National Lab is 1996 to 2005. That 

one has been a number of work. We’ve been 

working with the site to try to get the 

information to support their implementation 

of 10 CFR 835, and I’m sure the Work Groups 

will discuss that a little bit.

Nuclear Metals, Inc., that again 

will be discussed today. Rocky Flats Plant, 

the 1984 to 1989 period, that petition B-
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continuing to evaluate. Just a little 

reminder, you know, when we qualify a 

petition, we qualify it for a designated 

period based on the basis that they provided 

to support qualification. If we determine 

there’s an infeasibility during our 

evaluation and recommend a Class, we 

recommend the Class not to stop at a defined 

period just because the petition said 

initially qualified for that. We would 

recommend the Class based on the 

infeasibility for doing Dose Reconstruction; 

meaning that if we had lacked monitoring 

beyond 1989, we would recommend the Class 

beyond to the period where monitoring 

existed. I hope that makes sense. 

Sandia National Lab, Albuquerque, 

again 1995 to 2011. We’re working on that 

period, and that is in our court, NIOSH’s 

court. Santa Susana, 1965; Savannah River 
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Site which Dr. Taulbee will give an update 

today for 1973 to 2007. Simonds Saw and 

Steel is a residual period, 1958 to 2006. 

And St. Louis Airport Storage Site, again 

this -- a lot of these early on were 

residual periods that were never really 

finalized. And this is a residual period 

with a little bit of remediation work in >72 

and >73 for St. Louis Airport Storage Site. 

Again, this is a mixture of some NIOSH --

that NIOSH needs to update to the Board, 

and some of the things that the Board will 

have to take action on.

Potential 83.14s, I presented 

this probably at the last four or five, or 

maybe six Board meetings, and it hasn’t 

changed much. The Sandia National Lab, 

Albuquerque, 1945 to 1948 period, this was 

the old LANL period was added into -- and, 

basically, what we’ve seen is these claims 
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have been absorbed into the SEC under the 

existing LANL SEC, so we haven’t got a 

litmus case to move this one forward.

General Atomics is -- this is one 

where we’ve been wanting to modify this 

existing Class Definition. This is one of 

the old Class Definitions that was 

specifically for buildings, and it limited, 

it was probably very difficult for 

Department of Labor to actually administer. 

We’ve had B- we haven’t had a chance to get 

a litmus claim to move this one forward, so 

there’s really no claims that aren’t being 

positively affected by it, but we do at some

point want to get this one moved forward.

Dayton Project Monsanto, this was 

based on the site facility designation 

change. Again, when we get a litmus claim, 

we’ll move this one forward, as well. And 

that’s about it. Questions?
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you, 

LaVon. You can rest up after all those 

slides. Don’t go away, we may have 

questions.

You don’t get off that easy. 

Board Members with questions? If not, I have 

one. Maybe it’s more of a comment, but you 

can maybe update me.

Santa Susana, a long time ago 

that we reviewed that initial SEC there, but 

as I recall at the time there were a number 

of outstanding issues, including how the 

facility was designated. There were several 

parts of it, there were people that appeared 

to work in -- that appeared to be -- should 

have been part of the SEC, but because of 

where they were employed, which parts they 

were actually employed in, they were not 

eligible at the time. I remember it was very 

confusing, a number of problems there, and I 
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just -- if that part of it has been 

addressed at all in terms of the facility? 

And then secondly, there’s this 

follow-up we have to do even from the 

original. Yes?

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. I definitely 

don’t think we have done anything on NIOSH’s 

end for the actual facility designation 

portion of it, or workers who should be 

included, and shouldn’t. And that would 

mostly be a Department of Labor issue. 

However, if there are actions that we could 

do, or information that we can provide the 

Department of Labor, we can definitely do 

that. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I think 

that goes back to Pete Turcic. I mean, it’s 

quite a while ago. And I think we committed 

when we were out there, as I recall, of 

following up on that, again, to the extent 
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that we can in terms of looking at that 

site. So, if you can look into that a little 

bit more, I think someone needs to sort of 

update that whole site and what we’re doing 

there. 

MEMBER BEACH: Well, Jim, on that 

one, I think the Work Group will become 

active again. We got the coworker data.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER BEACH: And I think we just 

need to schedule a Work Group meeting. Phil 

is the chair of that.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER BEACH: So, that just came 

out.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, I knew we 

were waiting on some work from NIOSH.

DR. NETON: Yes, and that might 

come out when we discuss the specific Work 
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Groups later on in the meeting. But, yes, 

there’s activity going, we cleared all the 

information on the hard drive that we 

received from them, and we’re working out 

and sorting out some of the issues related 

to neutron exposures at this facility, we 

have NTA film, we also have neutron/photon 

ratios. We’re trying to decide which is the 

best path forward.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

DR. NETON: And that should be 

coming up pretty soon.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

DR. NETON: We won’t be discussing 

the covered facility issues, though, I don’t 

think in the Work Group.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we just 

need to go back and see what we committed to 

doing and where that is. Again, it’s not 

something we can change, but at least be 
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cognizant of it. 

Any other Board Member with 

questions? Board Members on the phone? If 

not, okay. Now, LaVon, you’re free. Got your 

10 minutes of fame here.

DR. LEMEN: This is Dick Lemen, 

and I’m on the phone.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay. 

Welcome, Dr. Lemen.

Now, I guess I get to introduce 

the -- so, another presentation from the two 

Jims. 

I want to give a brief update. 

We’ve been -- the SEC, this is called the 

SEC Evaluation Work Group, been around a 

long time. Have been working on issues 

related to Sufficient Accuracy, and as part 

of dealing with Sufficient Accuracy we’ve 

been dealing with coworker model issues, and 

we have had a Work Group phone call a few 
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weeks ago, and continue to work on this. And 

some of the Savannah River issues have also 

sort of gotten folded into this because 

right now a lot of the Savannah River issues 

revolve around coworker models, and DCAS 

ORAU sort of used the Savannah River 

coworker models as sort of more general 

models for coworker models for some of the 

review efforts that are underway, so these 

two evaluations tend to get mixed up. The 

SEC and the Savannah River are sort of 

combined to some extent. 

Anywhere, as I said, we had the 

meeting. Jim Neton, in a second, will update 

on one part of the meeting which is our 

efforts related to sort of Sufficient 

Accuracy issues. And then the second part 

was -- of our recent meeting was dealing 

with the one person-one sample OPOS issue. 

But one of the things that came out of that, 
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and this is the slide, and I’m not going to 

go through these all in detail, we’ve used 

these before. Sort of how are we dealing 

with Sufficient Accuracy, and Jim will be 

talking about it.

I think one of the issues that we 

came up with in terms of having to address 

if we were going to be looking at the 

stratification issue in terms of coworker 

models, was sort of how -- you know, what 

level of exposure is meaningful? And I’ll 

let -- Jim in a second can describe the work 

that NIOSH has been doing there, and the 

reports that have been sent out there. 

I think on the coworker model 

issues, we’ve sort of focused on the one 

person-one sample, and I’ll get to that a 

little bit in a second, but I think there’s 

some more general issues that we haven’t 

dealt with. And we being the collective we 
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of both NIOSH and the Board in terms of how 

we’re going to evaluate these coworker 

models. 

And some of the problem, I think, 

when we go to think about that and sort of 

came in our last meeting is, we tend to 

think of some of these issues, and 

particularly when we’re talking about the 

one person-one sample sort of how you 

approach individual dose reconstruction. But 

these take on -- I think other issues come 

up when one is using sort of the same 

approaches to try to do a coworker model; 

when we’re taking, essentially, one person 

or one group’s exposure and using it to 

predict that of other people. And at that 

point we get into a number of statistical 

issues, and I think the statistical issues 

that we’re sort of wrestling with now, but 

we sort of have to get away from thinking 
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about two things. One is, that it’s not 

individual dose reconstruction, and the only 

issue is not the issue of does this 

adequately cap the B- you know, basically, 

is it claimant-friendly? It’s sort of really 

how accurate it is, and how do we B- how 

accurate do we want it to be? And how 

accurate do we want it to be in terms of 

compared to other alternatives that may be 

useful for approaching that particular Dose 

Reconstruction.

So, I think we have to look at 

how complete the data set is that’s being 

used. And, obviously, the less complete the 

data that’s being used, the greater the 

variability or variance in the data, and the 

more statistical problems that raises. How 

much data are involved in being modeled? Are 

we trying to just fill in, you know, for a 

year out of, you know, 10 years of exposure 
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at a site where we have lots of data, but 

maybe for six months or one year it’s less 

complete, and that. Or is it just for a 

small number of the workers there, a small 

proportion of the workers? Is it for a very 

high percentage?

Also, I think as we’ve discovered 

in the past in looking at some of these

other SEC issues is, can we really -- can we 

identify where the workers actually worked 

in the facility? I think that’s been the 

downfall of a lot of the models that can be 

developed for Dose Reconstruction. If we 

can’t identify a worker as being in a 

particular building, or doing a particular 

type work within the facility, then it’s 

very hard to use that -- to either use a 

coworker model to estimate that worker’s 

exposure, or to use that worker’s exposure 

to estimate other worker’s exposures. You 
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don’t know what type of work you’re actually 

estimating. And that’s not sort of a black 

and white issue, a simple issue because it 

depends on the type of work that everyone 

was doing at the facility, how similar was 

that work, and so forth.

So, what I guess I refer to as 

sort of operational stability. Is the same 

process, the same type of work going on 

during all the time periods involved? And 

that certainly wasn’t often the case at some 

of these DOE facilities. Was the, you know, 

the methods that were being used to evaluate 

exposure the same over a time period, and 

how they’re applied. And I think as we know, 

that wasn’t common. There were major changes 

in terms of how exposures were being 

evaluated.

There are issues of sample size. 

I think there’s also the issue of sort of 
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what are the range of exposures involved? If 

we’re dealing with fairly straightforward 

operation where exposures tended to be 

fairly stable over time, that sort of much 

simpler to model, and I think we have much 

more confidence in the outcome of that 

model. However, if there’s a large range of 

exposures that we’re trying to evaluate and 

are being modeled where people did a variety 

of different tasks, or there were major 

changes in the operation during the time 

period so that the potential range of 

exposures is greater, then also the ability 

of a coworker model to accurately 

reconstruct that person’s, or that group’s 

dose, their exposure is much more 

challenging to do.

An example of that, I think, was 

the coworker model for Fernald where we were 

trying to combine a group in one building 
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that had -- or some buildings that had 

essentially no exposure with people in other 

buildings that had significant exposures, 

and with less than complete information on 

where these people worked, so we could not 

place them even in those buildings. So, the 

model there, I think, raised a number of 

issues for the Board.

For Wanda’s benefit, I also 

mention the robustness of the data, Wanda’s 

favorite term, as being an issue, but I 

think it does come up in terms of how well -

- how good is the data in terms of being 

modeled?

And then, finally, the issue 

which has come up, and we probably spent the 

most time on, but I’m not sure it’s 

necessarily always the most important issue. 

That’s the issue of stratification. Do we 

use one model for everybody, or do we try to 
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look and see are people because of the way 

that they were monitored, or the type of 

work that they did, should there be 

different models?

The most common way we’ve looked 

at that has been the issue of construction 

workers versus production workers, but it 

can also apply even within construction 

worker populations, and within production 

worker populations. And we’ve dealt with 

that mostly through this issue where the 

OPOS first came up, one person-one sample. 

But, again, there are other issues that come 

up in looking at stratification, and I think 

we’ve talked about them here before. The 

next slide is actually from some of our 

earlier discussions on this. And we still 

have to sort of figure out that issue, but 

it’s, I think, in the context of other 

issues. So, we’re moving forward on the 
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coworker model, trying to look at it more 

generally, I think, and sort of stepping 

back a little bit from the one person-one 

sample, try to look at that issue. At the 

same time look also in a more general way at 

the issue of sufficient accuracy.

So, let me turn it over to Jim 

Neton who’s going to do a little explanation 

on where we are there. I think without 

slides. Correct? Yes, okay. Jim. Then we’ll 

both take questions. Do you want to do it 

from there?

DR. NETON: I don’t have any 

slides, but hopefully I can summarize what 

we’ve done. We’ve had a couple of 

productive, I think productive Work Group 

meetings on this issue. And really the last 

three slides that Dr. Melius presented, the 

coworker model general issues, and then 

culminating with the stratification issues, 
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I think summarize pretty well the basic 

problems that we’re having with coworker 

models.

I would say this is one of the 

toughest issues at least that I think we’ve 

faced in this program. This is sort of a 

watershed problem. I mean, how we deal with 

this will have a big bearing on how we 

proceed with a lot of cases in the future.

Those last three slides, those 

general issues that were presented, I did at 

one point at one of these Working Group 

meetings commit that we would try -- NIOSH 

would try to summarize the issues and put 

forward our positions on these into an 

implementation guide, some sort of guidance, 

because we have a lot of technical documents 

out there in our program that tell you how 

to do things, but not exactly sort of a 

10,000 foot view how you go about starting 
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to do these coworker models, or what are the 

principal elements. I have a very good draft 

on my computer of this but, unfortunately, 

every time we have a discussion, my thinking 

changes slightly on how to proceed. So, 

that’s in the works. I did commit to having 

that out in the not too distant future for 

the Working Group to consider.

But moving on to the issue of 

stratification, it’s a fairly significant 

issue we’ve dealt with. And this arose out 

of the fact, and Dr. Melius is correct, 

because Savannah River we developed a couple 

-- we had the capability, unlike many other 

places, to stratify the data into trades 

workers versus production workers and 

generate separate distributions. The obvious 

question is, how different do those 

distributions have to be when you would use 

one versus the other, what I call the 
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universal model, which includes all workers 

in a coworker model, or some subset, a 

stratification, if you will, of those 

workers.

NIOSH has proposed a couple of 

different tests, Peto-Prentice for certain 

situations, the Monte Carlo permutation test 

to evaluate when those differences are of 

such significance that you should use the 

other model. It became pretty obvious in the 

beginning, though, that those models Bthose tests could not reveal very subtle 

differences. You had to have pretty large 

differences in the geometric means, 

geometric standard deviations in order to 

say they were statistically different, so 

the logic question arose well, what is a 

practically significant dose? How different 

do they have to be when it really makes a 

difference in the Probability of Causation 
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calculation? And up until that time, we 

didn’t really know. No one had ever done 

that, so I had proposed a small study. And I 

discussed this briefly at the last Board 

meeting, as to looking at the claims in 

NOCTS. We have 40,000 claims in NOCTS, pull 

out the cases that fell between 45 and 49.99 

percent, look at those and add 100 millirem 

dose to each of those cases in a maximizing 

approach where we would add the 100 millirem 

to the point where it made the biggest 

difference that we could think in the PC and 

rerun them.

We found 175 cases that met that

criteria. We ran them 30 times at 10,000 

iterations each, and I think you all have a 

copy of the report that was issued in 

February. I think Ted distributed it to you 

a couple of days ago, where we found that, 

interestingly, after we did that and added 
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the 100 millirem, not one of those cases 

changed of the 175 from non-compensable to 

compensable, which is kind of interesting in 

itself. And, in fact, the difference was 

pretty small; 100 millirem dose only added a 

median difference of .02 PC value, and a 

mean value of .06. So, it was a pretty small 

increase in the overall thing per 100 

millirem incremental dose. 

The question then is, what does 

that mean? And, you know, I thought about 

this. Well, it’s interesting in itself, it 

may be very useful for making decisions on 

things like the residual periods where you 

have small doses and that sort of thing, but 

it wasn’t clear where we proceed with this 

after -- you know, where do we start adding 

more doses looking at internal and such. And 

I sort of ended up in a new place, and I 

broached this at the last Working Group 
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meeting.

Really what we’re talking about 

when we stratify is, if you remember, we 

have what I would call the universal model. 

It includes all workers who were monitored, 

and you generate a log-normal distribution, 

and we would select either the 50th

percentile value with its distribution, or 

the 95th percentile depending on what 

exposure conditions we felt the workers had 

in their work environment. If a worker were 

thought to have been more heavily exposed, 

they would automatically get the 95th

percentile of the coworker model, that 

exposure. 

And this, of course, would apply 

to people like building trades who were 

working in controlled areas, that sort of 

thing. So, it occurred to me, though, that 

really that 95th percentile is used because 
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of the uncertainty in where we feel they 

fall in that continuum. And, in fact, if we 

stratified -- if we’re able to have a 

stratified subset we would no longer use the 

95th percentile in the Dose Reconstruction, 

we would use the geometric mean and its 

associated distribution.

So, then the question really is 

how different do those two strata have to be 

for the mean with its associated 

distribution to be less claimant -- or more 

claimant-favorable than applying the 95th

percentile anyway of what I call the 

universal distribution? And we’re working on 

a way to evaluate that.

Right now, it appears to us that 

the geometric mean with its full 

distribution, if you had the GSDs were the 

same for both populations, the geometric 

mean would have to -- assigning the full 
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distribution is sort of like assigning the 

84th percentile as a constant. So, the 

geometric mean value would have to increase 

quite substantially in order for the 95th

percentile, the coworker model not to be 

claimant-favorable. 

In other words, in my opinion 

there would have to be very large shifts in 

the distributions of the stratification in 

order for the 95th percentile not to be 

claimant-favorable.

We’re looking into that. I have 

proposed to develop a sketch-out, and 

experiment of how we would test this. I’m 

working on that. I don’t have that complete 

yet, but hopefully by the next Board meeting 

we’ll have done this and be able to report 

where that goes.

That in itself, though, just 

tells you if you can stratify, how to 
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evaluate the difference possibly, but really 

what Dr. Melius alluded to is, how can you 

be sure that that stratification, that 

stratified model really is appropriate? You 

know, that gets back to my first point about 

how do you evaluate that exposed subset? 

Where they monitored under the same 

conditions? Was it incident monitoring 

versus routine monitoring? How many samples 

you have? That’s the kind of stuff that has 

to go into that analysis. And, again, I’m 

working on that first piece, as well.

I think that pretty much sums up 

where we are with this. Hopefully, I didn’t 

confuse everyone. I’d be happy to answer any 

questions, if there are any. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I just want to -

- before we take questions, I just want to 

sort of reiterate something that Jim said. 

I mean, this is an important 
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issue for us because, as we have gone 

through up to date, we’ve sort of said well, 

we’ve done -- we say we may have done an SEC 

and sort of what’s left, or we’ve not done 

an SEC because we thought that a coworker 

model would be able to be developed to do 

the Dose Reconstruction for those that 

didn’t have complete records, or groups that 

didn’t have complete records and so forth. 

And we really never sort of evaluated those 

very rigorously, and I think -- so, for lots 

of sites we have coworker models. Maybe less 

of an issue for models -- for sites for 

external exposure, but for internal 

exposures I think it is a significant issue 

because there tends to be less complete 

exposure sampling for those exposures. So, 

we’re more likely to be able -- sort of 

trying to fill in gaps for workers that 

weren’t completely monitored. 
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So, this is an important issue, 

and I think we have to be careful that we 

don’t sort of go overboard in terms of the 

criterion, and so forth. I think we have to 

look very carefully and understand what that 

is. And it’s a lot of difficult issues, and 

a lot of, I think, difficulty in terms of 

being able to do this. So, we’ll be spending 

a fair amount of time on it, I think, at the 

next few meetings, both the Work Group, as 

well as the Board. And I think hopefully by 

the time we get to the Idaho Board meeting 

this summer we’ll have more to present, and 

more to talk about. So, let me stop there, 

and if you have questions for either Jim, go 

ahead. Anybody on the -- Dave? Okay.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I’m thinking 

about your what you call practically 

significant dose, and you -- I think it’s a 

useful thought experiment. And it gets back 
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to one of the -- I think the third slide 

about sufficient accuracy, what accuracy is 

sufficient? And we’ve had this -- we’ve gone 

around with this discussion. Is it 

sufficient in an absolute sense or 

sufficient in a relative sense? And that 

becomes important as the, let’s say the mean 

dose for the group of workers gets lower. Do 

you want to say it’s, you know, known within 

two standard deviations, but if the whole 

range of dose in an absolute sense is very 

small, then maybe it is, nonetheless, 

sufficient. 

And what you have proposed as a 

practically significant dose, I think is the 

term, was framing this in terms of the 

absolute magnitude of the dose, and then 

considering its impact on a binary decision 

making rule. Is it going to shift somebody 

from being compensable, or not?
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And that looks useful. You went 

through a series of scenarios, and the 

starting point was positing one value, 100 

millirem, which you said you chose out of 

some discussion. And you showed that when 

you ran these calculations adding 100 

millirem causes a very small change in the 

distribution of the Probability of Causation 

for most claimants, and the tail of that 

distribution gets up to something like 0.3 

percent change. So, there are some people 

where adding 100 millirem in the tails 

there, they might have a fraction of a 

percent increase in the Probability of 

Causation.

I was thinking about this in 

terms of most of the -- I believe the 

Probability of Causation under the IREP 

model is -- follows out under a linear 

model, so are we bound, or have you thought 
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of this, are we tied now to your starting 

point of 100 millirem, or once we have this 

histogram of the impact on the Probability 

of Causation of 100 millirem, can we not 

double it and say well, if we had added 200 

millirem, that tail would be around 0.6, and 

if it was 300 millirem, we would be talking 

about a 1 percent change in the Probability 

of Causation for a group of claimants.

If that’s true, then we have 

another sense of what that practically 

significant dose might be, that there’s some 

people at 300 millirem where we’re talking 

about a 1 percentage point change. And that 

does -- I don’t know where my comfort 

threshold is, but I think what you’ve done 

is a useful starting point. And if that 

intuition that it all proceeds now on a 

linear scale because the IREP calculations, 

the probabilities are a linear function of 
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dose. That’s true. You’re saying no. I mean 

-- 

DR. NETON: It’s the excess 

relative risk over one plus the excess 

relative risk.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

DR. NETON: So, it’s not linear. 

It’s harder as you get higher. 

MEMBER ANDERSON: And it might 

vary by the cancer too.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: It’s going to 

vary by a lot of things, the cancer type, 

but you’ve taken a distribution of cancers, 

you’ve taken the ages, you’ve assumed an 

acute dose delivered at a time. Over this 

range, I guess that would be something I 

would be -- I’m not seeing that it’s -- that 

that doesn’t work. I mean, maybe I’m just 

missing something. 

DR. NETON: I think you raise a 
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lot of good points. This is what I was 

struggling with when the results came out, 

is okay, it’s small. And it was, I think, 

somewhat fortuitous that none of the 175 

cases changed. I mean, it could have -- it 

is likely that four or five, you know, just 

for some reason none of them moved over 50 

percent, but you can see, as you suggested 

or mentioned, the maximum which was .34. And 

if that happened on a case that was at 49.8, 

it would have been over 50 percent. 

So, then you get into the 

question that you just raised, which is what 

-- at what point are we comfortable saying 

I’m going to accept a certain amount of 

false negatives, so to speak. I mean, if you 

allow the model to produce larger results 

but you’re going to ignore that, where do 

you go?

The other problem with this is 
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it’s a small dose, but remember it’s only 

for one year.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right.

DR. NETON: A person typically has 

10, 20-year work history. I think there’s a 

distribution of work years in the document, 

so you start adding -- if it’s 100 millirem 

difference for every year, I mean, then you 

get into huge, huge differences. And that’s 

why I suggested the better way to maybe look 

at this is to look at the difference between 

using the 95th percentile of the 

distribution or assigning the full 

distribution of the stratified model, the 

stratified subset. Because really you’re no 

longer -- if you stratify -- if you have 

what I call the universal coworker model 

that includes everybody, and I’m going to 

say you were potentially a more heavily 

exposed worker, I’m going to assign you the 
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95th percentile and be pretty confident, 

well, you’re higher than 95 percent of the 

workers that were ever monitored. That’s 

what I’m going to say. I’m assuming that.

Now, I’ve identified this subset 

of strata that has a different geometric 

mean and a different geometric standard 

deviation, maybe slightly larger. And I 

would say okay, I’m going to use that, but I 

would no longer at that point feel obligated 

to use the 95th percentile because now I 

have a distribution that’s representative of 

that particular person’s subset. 

So, then I would assign -- I 

would use the geometric mean and the GSD, 

not the 95th percentile. Then one has to 

figure out which ends up being more 

claimant-favorable, the one that is the 95th

percentile of the universal model, or assign 

the full distribution. And the trick is to 
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figure out what those differences are, and 

it’s not real easy to do that. And I think 

we can get some -- get a handle on it if we 

look at some cases. We have a lot of cases 

in our database.

For instance, I think that if a 

preliminary calculation would indicate that 

for the -- if you had the same GSD, like say 

the universal model and the stratified model 

have the same geometric standard deviation, 

it would take something like the geometric 

mean would have to increase by a factor of 

six in order for the 95th percentile not to 

be more claimant-favorable. That’s suggests 

there could be huge differences in the 

strata, but the 95th percentile masks that. 

It’s more favorable to use that model. 

But the big question then becomes 

is that strata that you’ve pulled out really 

a valid strata? I mean, I think that’s sort 
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of where we’re heading with this, is okay, 

now you’re saying I have a stratum, but is 

that really representative -- is that little 

subset representative of what the workers 

were exposed to, or does it really give me 

an idea of what they were exposed to because 

maybe this strata is based on purely 

incident-driven samples, that sort of thing. 

So, it’s slightly complex but I’m confident 

that, you know, what I just suggested, the 

95th percentile comparing to the full 

distribution of the stratified subset is the 

test to do to see which one might be better 

used.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dave?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I’m really 

trying to understand conceptually your new 

suggestion. I would really appreciate 

getting your report several weeks in advance 

of the meeting so that -- because it really 
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will require some study, not just -- 

DR. NETON: Yes. I’ve committed to 

putting out -- first, before I even proceed, 

I’m going to put out a thought piece on this 

as to how we would proceed to do this 

analysis for the Working Group, at least. 

And then once we got that, I’d move forward. 

Yes, certainly, we’d get the report out, 

because it’s not easy to get your head 

around the concept.

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, it is not. 

One other -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We can circulate 

that to the full Board. I mean, I don’t 

think it -- 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I would 

appreciate that. The longer time we have to 

think about it, even if we’re not on the 

Work Group.

The one other concern I had was 
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in reading the report that you did do on the 

practically significant dose, I had not 

understood that you were making the change 

of 100 millirem for one single year. And I 

accept your statement that if we had done it 

for every year it would create a really 

radical shift. Nevertheless, I would like to 

know or see that, although I realize there 

was an awful lot of work going into just 

doing 100 millirem, but to see what -- I’m 

thinking -- I thought about it in terms of 

if you’re off by 100 millirem in an annual 

measurement, and the number of measurements 

matters. It’s not the question of 20 years, 

but how many years that you measure, right, 

and put 100 millirems in for the number of 

years where you had measurements. It would 

be very helpful, or be very interesting, 

let’s just say that. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I just think you 
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have to remember this is a limited data set 

to work from. I mean, it’s not like the 

sample is that large, and you start putting 

in multiple years I think you end up with a 

little bit more complicated data, you know, 

set of results to understand -- 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: That’s true. 

That’s true.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, it gets -- 

DR. NETON: Yes, it’s complicated, 

but it would be interesting. I agree with 

you in some sense, and it wouldn’t be that 

hard to do. I mean, now that we’ve got the 

files all set up -- 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: That’s what I 

was thinking. 

DR. NETON: It’s going to be 

fairly straightforward.

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, okay. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, the other 
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thing I -- the other context was, I think we 

have to remember is that a Dose 

Reconstructor makes lots of decisions that 

are more than 100 millirem decisions, I 

mean, they’re many times more than that in 

terms of claimant-friendliness judgment and 

so forth along the way, so I don’t think we 

should get sort of too hung up on just that. 

I mean, the exercise is -- it’s not just, 

you know, stratification or this application 

that’s going to be the only place that 

judgment is involved. And we could spend too 

much time focusing on the small one and, you 

know, not recognize it’s in the context of a 

lot of other decisions that are made. 

DR. NETON: One other thing I was 

going to mention is you have to keep in 

mind, too, that this was 175 cases out of 

40,000 they only apply to. The other ones 

were below 45 percent PC, so a very small 
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percentage of the cases fall between 45 and 

50 which surprised me a lot when we first 

pulled that number out. So, the other cases 

are well below 45, it would take some pretty 

substantial shifts to get them to be close 

to 50. You know, because a 5 percent shift 

in PC, now you’re into the range of 

plausibility. Well, you add 100 millirem for 

every year of exposure, who knows? But it 

might be B- I think it’s still possibly 

worth finishing that piece because, like I 

say, we’ve got all the files in place. It’s 

easy to execute.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

Member question or comments? Yes, Brad. 

MEMBER CLAWSON: It was B- I’m 

sure it’ll be interesting reading when it 

comes out if we can follow with it, but I 

wanted to clarify something when you were 

talking about that you were looking at, I 
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guess, basically a coworker model, the 

person, where they worked and so forth like 

that. Now, is this still part of that, or 

were you trying to go away from that?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This is still 

part of that.

MEMBER CLAWSON: How B- you know, 

this all comes down to data and the 

information that you have. And we’re trying 

to figure out significantly accurate, when 

you really are just taking a stab in the 

dark of what this person did. And it all 

comes back to the data that you have. And if 

it’s garbage in B- I don’t care how many 

papers you write on it, it’s going to come 

out garbage out. It’s a guess, you know. And 

you’ve talked to me so many times about 

can’t prove positive or anything else like 

that. Well, you know, I agree in a lot of 

sense, and it’s B- you know, I know we have 
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to use significant accuracy quite a bit in 

this program, but I really have my doubts of 

what’s going to come out.

DR. NETON: Well, I just B- a 

couple of thoughts on that. One is, we 

really need to look at each case separately, 

and in many cases, you know B- remember 

we’re trying to reconstruct doses for people 

who weren’t monitored.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

DR. NETON: And my opinion is 

there’s a lot of cases where people weren’t 

monitored because they had fairly low 

exposure potentials, not always, so you’ve 

got to be able to tease those types of 

situations out because, you know, if you’re 

going to assume that people that weren’t 

monitored had these large exposures that you 

can’t reconstruct, then you have this sort 

of situation where people that were 
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monitored were heavily exposed, are getting 

X dose, and you can’t reconstruct doses for 

people with no monitoring data because 

possibly they weren’t exposed. I mean, you 

get some B- funny situations are created 

when you start thinking that way.

MEMBER CLAWSON: And I understand 

that, and you have totally the opposite, 

too. You have people that were highly 

exposed that weren’t monitored.

DR. NETON: Well, I think that’s 

true in certain situations but I don’t know. 

We need to look at the data and see what it 

tells us. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

questions from Board Members?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, Jim, this is 

Wanda. I feel I need to make a comment here, 

a very brief one, if I might.

First of all, thank you for 
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putting together this extremely good list of 

the major documents that we’ve created with 

our administrative construct during the 

course of this program. It’s illuminating to 

have them all in one place again, and to 

look at them as we’re doing right now. 

MR. KATZ: Wanda, I’m sorry to 

interrupt, but can you try talking maybe 

more directly into your phone because it’s 

hard to follow you.

MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

MR. KATZ: That’s better.

MEMBER MUNN: Is this is any 

better?

MR. KATZ: Yes, it is. Thanks.

MEMBER MUNN: All right. The 100 

millirem exercise was very worthwhile I 

think, perceived as being very instructive. 

It’s the kind of thing that some of us have 

pointed out from time to time that what’s 
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seen as major differences by some really are 

not major differences in the cold hard light 

of day. So, it’s good to see, despite the 

smallness of the sample, it’s good to see 

that this can be continuously demonstrable 

even with the constructs that we’ve set up 

ourselves.

Dr. Richardson’s comments I think 

further demonstrate that the argument with 

uncertainty are irresolvable, they’re not 

absolute and they can’t be made so because 

of the numerous factors that we have to deal 

with here. But regardless of how the data 

from this program are going to be used 

politically in the future, I think it’s good 

for those of us who work with it every day 

to remember that evidence of excess cancers 

are still not present in these populations. 

So, that’s my only thought with regards to 

these things, but I certainly do appreciate 
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the efforts of both Dr. Melius and Dr. Neton 

in having put together this, what I consider 

a thought piece here. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

Wanda. Any other Board Member comments or 

questions? If not we’re due for a break, and 

we will be back here at 10:45. We have a SEC 

petition to discuss, and I believe the 

petitioner may be on the line, so we’ll try 

to start right at 10:45. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 10:27 a.m., 

and resumed at 10:51 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We're 

reconvening now, the Board is, and we will 

first hear a presentation from Sam Glover on 

Nuclear Metals, Inc. SEC. And Sam's going 

to do it from that microphone. 

DR. GLOVER: So this is a site 

that really has evolved over a long time. 
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Some of you guys -- it may even predate your 

being added to the Board. It started with 

MIT and the Hood Building back in the '40s. 

They consolidated operations at MIT into a 

barn, which was known as the Hood Building. 

And since they remodeled it and put stuff in 

the basement. And then eventually it went 

to Nuclear Metals, Inc. and they transferred 

those operations there. We have SECs from 

the early years, the '43 to '58. And then 

beginning at '58 at this facility up through 

1979. 

Beginning in 1980, we had 

substantially new data. We had a lot of 

data that came in, 20,000 bioassay samples, 

and we really -- and a bunch of air samples. 

We wanted to look at that. Thought it 

was -- we really need to make sure what kind 

of samples were available. Do we have 

thorium operation data? And so we wanted to 
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make sure what the -- and we hadn't had an 

opportune time really to take a look at it 

properly. And then we have done so now. So 

we'd like to discuss.

This is one of those sites like 

Bomber mentioned earlier. The covered -- 

the requested SEC was through 1983. That's 

when the petitioner ceased work at the 

facility. And in this case, we've extended 

through 1990 because the operations that we 

believe warrant an SEC continued through the 

end of the covered period.

So we have 1958, it moves to 

Concord. They provided the Atomic Energy 

Commission fabrication capabilities. And so 

that included uranium, thorium alloys. They 

did enriched uranium work up until 1974, and 

at that point they ceased doing enriched 

uranium work. They had in the mid -- the 

late 1970s they began a very large-scale 
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depleted uranium operation when they made 

munitions.

The covered period for this facility is an 

AWE from 1958 to 1990 and a residual period 

from '91 through March 1st, 2011.

Next slide, please. A few 

things, because it has been awhile since we 

discussed the original Class. We have a 

petition received on October 20th, 2011, 

proposed Class was from '70 to '83. So 

we've extended this on both sides, earlier 

as well as later.

Next slide, please. Okay. So we 

have some new tables here. So we had a 

proposed Class addition of workers from '58 

through '79. This was based on the 

inability to reconstruct internal dose for 

thorium and enriched uranium. They did have 

bioassay for some of the uranium, but it was 

for natural compounds. It was not based on 
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activity-based. And there is no evidence of 

thorium-based bioassay or air monitoring 

data at the facility. 

The Board agreed with this Class. 

It was added January 6th, 2013. At that 

time we reserved the period from '80 to '83 

to evaluate those air samples and bioassay 

records and see what they contained. And so 

we've reviewed those and we are looking now 

at the time frame from January 1, 1980 

through December 31st, 1990.

Next slide, please. Just very 

briefly, the typical types of sources we go 

through. We have the Site Profiles, our 

claims. Right now it is a fairly small 

claim base. There were maybe 800 to 900 

workers as we get into the later time 

frames, into the '70s and '80s. There was a 

few hundred in the early years. So right 

now it is probably smaller than what one 
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would expect. Maybe that will increase as 

we get farther away from the 1970s when 

that -- that goes up quite a bit as those 

large projects.

We did conduct a number of 

interviews. We had a very large scale 

outreach meeting where we had at least 50 

former workers going back to the beginning. 

And some of this is also -- we don't mention 

it here, but we actually went to MIT and the 

Hood Building. So there's a separate series 

of outreach meetings that we did for that. 

And some of those workers continued on, so 

those were all added.

Next slide, please. Again, 

Internet, Department of Energy locations. 

We did classified reviews down at a number 

of different facilities including Oak Ridge, 

OSTI, Hanford that all contained records 

related to this type of facility. The 
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Hagley Museum, the NRC, and also 

Massachusetts Department of Environmental 

Protection and the EPA. 

Next slide, please. For during 

this period we have a small number of cases 

at this time. Twenty-six submitted, 

nineteen for those who worked during the 

proposed time frame, eighteen with a dose 

reconstruction. And you'll see that there's 

a large number of people with external and 

internal monitoring.

Next slide, please. Just very 

briefly; we sort of discussed this, we had 

operated the Hood facility until October 

28th, 1958. Department of Labor established 

the beginning of the time frame very 

carefully based on contracts. They began to 

move operations and actually October 29th, 

1958 the Department of Labor established 

very clearly the beginning of it as an AWE 
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facility. And the range of workers was 

anywhere from 60 to 650. I believe it may 

have even been up to 800 in some of those 

time frames based on records that we have 

from the monitoring.

So we have a map, I think, and on 

one of these we have original facility 

consisted of three buildings and it was 

added to over time, office space and 

research labs. Based on worker testimony 

and discussions -- we're looking at the 

reports, they sort of overlapped. Outside 

the cafeteria they would store material. So 

it wasn't that it was a clear-cut piece on 

where things were and where things weren't. 

And so, maybe the next slide I think we may 

still have a map. 

So this shows some of the E 

Building and the different facilities. And 

there's some Butler Buildings, but there is 
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quite a bit of material storage in various 

places that you may not expect it.

Next slide, please. So a partial 

listing. I wanted to give you that flavor 

that we looked at the thorium ops in the 

beginning of the years. There's still 

classified things here, so I'd like to stay 

on script. And so, I'm only going to ask -- 

maybe be able to respond to certain 

questions, if you ask them. 

The flavor, however, is that 

during the beginning of these operations, 

there's thorium ops, they're not discussed 

in the AEC Reports. They're not discussed 

in the other reports. That same flavor 

continues on as you get into the '70s and 

'80s and up to the '90s. We have the worker 

testimonies. We see those same things. We 

have the background. But you don't see them 

discussed in the reports. 
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And so, while we don't have a lot 

of detailed documents to give you in this 

'80 to '90 time frame, I have a very strong 

feeling and the beliefs and the discussions 

with the workers that those were still 

substantial, they were radiologically 

significant and that thorium work continued. 

But I don't have pounds to give you. I 

don't have a -- this is exactly what the 

work was.

So but we do have kind of a 

research-style operation pre-'72 that grew 

out of a research organization on how to 

machine and extrude uranium. They'd shoot 

the extruded uranium through walls. Just 

trying to figure out what to do in the early 

years. And so they were the go-to guys 

on -- if there was a problem with the phase 

at Hanford as things were expanding, they'd 

ask these guys.
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And so then in the '70s you see 

the shift to the large-scale operation, 

depleted uranium shields and counterweights 

and penetrators. They began working a lot 

with the military on how to recycle this 

material, because if you produce it, you 

still have the waste associated with that 

and how to recover it. 

I did say that the enriched 

uranium operation discontinued in 1974, and 

that seems pretty clear and it seems 

consistent with all the records that I've 

seen. 

Next slide, please. So the post-

'79 operations, they seem to have continued 

this shift of the production, getting away 

from some of their original roots, but they 

still have this powder technology, 

particularly with a variety of materials 

including thorium. So you've got those 
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large-scale depleted uranium ops. You do 

see they were doing UF4 processing up until 

'83 and the time they shifted it to the 

Carolina Metals Plant in South Carolina. 

They continued to do billet operations. 

Assembly, extrusion, copper removal, 

pickling. So they still have those kind of 

ops.

Next slide, please. I think we 

get into thorium operations next. They 

provided depleted uranium and natural 

uranium for the AVLIS project at Lawrence 

Livermore. They continued -- they did those 

basically extruded metal powders where you 

take powdered metal and make odd shapes, so 

you can compress them and -- so that 

included thorium operations. 

And they maintained the license. 

This is kind of a thing that we really -- 

not only did they maintain the license, they 
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increased their license from 10,000 

kilograms up to 25,000 kilograms of at least 

90 percent thorium material. So they were 

dealing -- even though it's not welldocumented, they had stuff on site. You 

don't increase your license up two-and-ahalf times for no apparent reason.

So Health Physics Program. While 

we believe it got much better after they

started large-scale ops, there's still 

things that we -- they still continue to 

have problems. In the beginning years they 

had a lot of problems. They had no trained 

health physics staff until 1981. Again, 

they started in '58 at the Hood Building. 

Mostly research in nature in the beginning. 

And they shifted to a more production, but 

there's still this back element of different 

research programs and special ops. They had 

in the mid-'60s a lot of uranium spills and 
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fires and contaminations, so there was -- 

the Inspection Reports show a lot of 

deficiencies. They still -- they got 

better. There's no doubt that they improve. 

And as I said, they coincide on 

this next slide with the growth of the 

company into this production. The report 

access controls were reinforced. However, 

also note that the materials were stored 

broadly throughout the facility. They talk 

about increased air monitoring program. 

Currently we have found no thorium air 

monitoring samples for air monitoring that 

can be identified. That may have happened, 

but we can't associate them with the 

program.

They began an air and swipe 

sample analysis program. It was brought in 

house to reduce delays and to have more 

control. They certainly described and the 
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workers talked about improved radiation 

safety training, health physics coverage. 

They actually began coverage on all three 

work shifts instead of just at the end of 

the day. They still had, even in '80 to 

'84, the time frame we have documentation, 

70 documented fires, smoke and other spill 

incidents in that time frame. We don't have 

anything after '84 to really evaluate.

Next slide, please. So sources 

of internal -- this is sort of our standard 

slide. We have research and production 

activities involving numerous radioactive 

materials. These amounts change up and down 

over time. Some of the activities and 

materials remain classified. Internal dose 

sources include uranium, which during this 

time frame was depleted and natural in many 

physical forms and also as the results of 

fires and explosions. 
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We have recycled uranium 

components. These materials were -- the 

munitions are known to be contaminated with 

actinides, so we will treat those as part of 

our typical recycled uranium components, the 

actinides that are part of that, and the 

technetium. As I mentioned, the enriched 

uranium was removed as a source term in 

1974, so we don't have to worry about that 

in this time frame, but we do have uranium 

and thorium progeny and thorium oxides, 

powders and metal.

Next slide, please. So before 

1980, to kind of give you this flavor, we 

had about a ton of thorium transferred from 

the Hood Building. We know they extruded 

thorium rods for the British and French 

companies in the '60s. We know they 

converted thorium rods to powder and 

extruded thorium powders and shapes. They 
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cast thorium into billets following 

machining, jacketing, extrusion, pickling 

and machining. And they worked with thorium 

further supported by -- was further 

supported by discussions at the worker 

outreach meetings. 

Next slide, please. So given the 

limitations on records, we believe that a 

persistent and radiologically significant 

thorium source term continues during the 

operating history of NMI. So there's no 

monitoring records which exist from 1958 to 

1979. This formed the basis for the 

infeasibility, or one of the bases that also 

enriched uranium through 1979.

Next slide. So continued on the 

availability of records. This is a closed 

facility. Some of the records are 

destroyed. We don't have access to 

everything. They were basically the -- 
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their records had to be decontaminated and 

brought off site. These records may have 

been lost and we know that some were 

destroyed by the -- during cleanup.

Next slide, please. I mentioned 

the limits. There was originally 20,000 

pounds in '74. They asked to go up to 

25,000 kg of metal and oxide in '81. They 

specifically mention in the license about at 

least a 90 percent thorium minimum. So 

these aren't just a fraction, a trace of 

thorium. These are substantial thorium 

quantities. After the cleanup stops, NRC 

stated in their thing that even though they 

ceased DU munitions work, thorium and

thorium oxide were continued. And that's as 

of 1999. So just using some -- our best 

understanding of how this continued, those 

works never really stopped. Now, 1990 is 

the end of the covered period, but residual 
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period continues after that. So we do have 

to deal with sources of dose reconstruction 

up until 1990.

Next slide. We know of two 

thorium-specific bioassays. They have a 

single urinalysis bioassay in 1983. It was 

less than -- the value was less than 0.2 

dpm. It's unknown why it was taken, but it 

also gives you that -- there was some 

thorium source term. They did it for a 

reason. It's specifically related to 

thorium. We don't know why. Nobody could 

really tell us. For some reason they chose 

to do a single thorium bioassay. There's a 

single thorium-specific in vivo count. 

Again, we don't have a reason. But it also 

kind of gives you that feeling that there 

was a source term that was radiologically 

significant. They chose to do that for a 

reason. 
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Found no indication of any 

routine monitoring program involving air 

sampling or any other bioassay program to 

support the thorium operations at NMI.

Next slide, please. Thorium 

operations and quantities were never 

detailed during the known operation period 

for programs NIOSH knows used thorium. I 

don't know if this is based on

compartmentalization of the history of the 

classified programs and just 

compartmentalization and that's continued 

forward, but they simply aren't discussed.

Next slide, please. This 

practice continued through the entire 

history of NMI. So based on this, NIOSH 

concluded that these programs were ongoing 

and significant based on interviews with 

employees, senior NMI management and 

maintenance. I believe the -- I don't know 
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if maintenance -- I think we had a word 

change that may have happened. Maybe we got

a little help with the PowerPoint. It 

spelled something for me. 

Actual increases of the thorium 

license limits. Probably -- I believe 

that's maintenance as management. And 

management and probably employees. But 

actual increases to the thorium license 

limits up 25,000 kilograms coupled with the 

silence in the past thorium programs. We 

believe that was just a continuance of their 

history.

So given the limitation on 

records NIOSH identified that a persistent 

and radiologically significant thorium 

source term continued January 1, 1980 

through December 31st, 1990, which is the 

covered period.

Next slide, please. So since 
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this is an 83.13, we need to talk about the 

external briefly. Primarily processing of 

depleted/natural uranium and some thorium 

operations. So we have submersion to the 

contaminated air and exposure to 

contaminated surfaces. They have 

concentration of progeny during metal 

working and separation processes that 

enhance radiation. They did have some X-ray 

units and we believe those are probably 

still on site. This is a slide that 

continued through. They had industrial 

operation units that included some 

industrial units.

Next slide. However, I've got to 

mention they were heavily monitored for 

external. They were badged. So we look at 

the process records and the records of the 

personnel. They have a good monitoring 

program, putting badges on people beginning 
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in the late 1950's and '60s. Even clerical 

personnel were believed to be badged 

annually. And we've got good records through 

Landauer and we get a good response on our 

record requests.

Next slide, please. Internal 

dose monitoring programs. The bioassay 

program consisted of urinalysis samples and 

lung counts. And that should be the 

uranium. Air monitoring program for uranium 

consists of -- we had 34,400 results. A lot 

of those obviously are from this production 

period. 

In order to process the -- 

looking for the thorium air samples and the 

thorium bioassay we actually produced a 

coworker study for uranium urinalysis as 

part of this. I think it was an opportune 

time to give a detailed look at the records. 

And so we did produce a uranium bioassay-
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based coworker set. We have not a single 

sample from the air monitoring program that 

we could attribute to the thorium operations 

in this time frame.

As we said, the bioassay program 

evolved over time according to the AEC and 

NRC inspection reports. We have 44,000 

legible urinalysis samples for the uranium 

operations conducted from 1980 to 1990 and 

we found a single thorium urinalysis sample 

during that -- in 1983.

Next slide, please. A lung count 

for uranium annually based on -- the 100 per 

year is starting in around 1980 and through 

the mid-'80s. It stops in like about '85-

'86. We have a total of about 500 lung 

counts available for that period and we have 

a single thorium-specific lung count.

Next slide, please. I will not 

attempt to do this, but it does give you a 
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period of the -- or gives you a flavor for 

the coworker set. And basically it starts 

high and begins to drop down up to 1990, but 

this gives you an idea of the coworker 

urinalysis bioassay and how many employees 

were on the program. 

So why the Class? We believe 

that workers were potentially exposed to 

thorium and thorium progeny who were not 

monitored, nor does a suitable dose 

reconstruction method exist. Decision was 

based on a lack of adequate biological 

monitoring, sufficient air monitoring 

information and/or sufficient process or 

radiological source term data to reconstruct 

dose with sufficient accuracy.

Next slide, please. Why 

everyone? Based on reports by the AEC, 

facility layout and worker interviews, the 

process areas were not isolated from the 
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non-process areas and no barriers to access 

were in place even though they described 

better access controls, they're selfdescribed storage activities and we really 

can't identify who would be the population 

that it would be limited to.

NIOSH was unable to find any 

records on thorium operations that would 

allow it to identify specific employees or 

groups of employees that would limit the 

Class. 

Next slide, please. What about 

employees not in the SEC? We will use any 

internal and external monitoring data that 

may become available for an individual 

claim. And as I said, the internal bioassay 

and external monitoring data is pretty 

substantial for NMI for uranium. 

Does reconstruction for 

individual employees of Nuclear Metals 
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during the period January 1, 1980 through 

December 31st, 1990, but who do not qualify 

for inclusion in the SEC, may be performed 

using these data as appropriate.

NIOSH will estimate doses from 

medical X-rays using the employees' medical 

records and claimant-favorable medical dose 

reconstruction assumptions. 

This is our standard health 

endangerment. We believe that there were -- 

well, not a -- I'll just read it properly. 

The evidence reviewed in this evaluation 

indicates that some workers in the Class may 

have accumulated chronic radiation exposures 

through intakes of radionuclides and direct 

exposure to radioactive materials. 

Consequently, NIOSH is specifying that 

health may have been endangered. 

Next slide, please. Proposed 

Class. And we very carefully reviewed the 
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Board's typical change to it. I hope we get 

this right, Jim. All Atomic Weapons 

employees who worked at the facility owned 

by Nuclear Metals, Incorporated or 

subsequent owner in West Concord, 

Massachusetts during the period January 1, 

1980 through December 31st, 1990 for a 

number of work days aggregating at least 250 

work days, either solely under this Class or 

in combination with other work days will be 

included in this SEC.

Next slide. So our summary, 

reconstruction of dose is feasible for 

uranium internal all years. Thorium 

reconstruction is not feasible over the 

entire operational period. That we will 

reconstruct external gamma dose, beta dose 

and occupational medical X-rays during all 

years. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 
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you, Sam. 

And, LaVon, good job there.

Any questions from Board Members? 

 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. I thought 

was curious that they had such an extensive 

uranium bioassay program and no thorium. 

And it occurred to me -- or let me ask a 

sort of hypothetical question. Had they had 

a thorium bioassay program, is there reason 

to think it would have somehow be kept 

separate for classification purposes, that 

the records would not be with the other 

records?

DR. GLOVER: Based on the senior 

health physics people we talked to, it was 

never done.

MEMBER ZIEMER: Never done? 

Okay. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did they ever 

give a reason for that, I guess to sort of 
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follow up to Paul's question?

DR. GLOVER: I think it's sort of 

the same thing we have at a national lab. 

It's you have the big production facility. 

Obviously conjecture on my part, but have 

that big production program, the uranium 

that grew and it's like they never really 

dealt with the enriched uranium. It was a 

smaller part of their operations, but 

very -- could be substantially significant 

to people doing that work. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Brad?

MEMBER CLAWSON: Can you tell us 

what the enrichment of the uranium was?

DR. GLOVER: In the early years 

they had highly-enriched uranium.

MEMBER CLAWSON: How -- 

DR. GLOVER: They had a flood. 

It was good stuff.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.
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MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Do you know if 

they produced any thoriated plates for 

rocket flaps and ships? 

DR. GLOVER: Not to my knowledge.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board 

Members on the phone like to ask questions? 

Dave?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Since this is 

a public document, that last summary table, 

the grammar is a little off. Reconstruction 

not feasible. The answer is yes, not no. 

And that's exactly what you've shown. 

Reconstruction feasible. Often one uses a 

check, but if you would just get rid of that 

double negative, which -- 

DR. GLOVER: I agree.

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- seems 

to -- DR. GLOVER: 

Absolutely. Absolutely I definitely agree 

that that -- 
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MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

DR. GLOVER: -- is a no, we 

cannot do it. No, we cannot do it. Yes, I 

agree.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was surprised 

our other faculty members didn't notice 

that.

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Make that 

correction. Okay. Well, thank you.

Is the petitioner on the line and 

wish to make any comments? Not required to, 

but you're welcome to if you're on the line.

Okay. Hearing none, do I hear 

any further comments or questions from Board 

Members, or a suggested action? Yes, Paul?

MEMBER ZIEMER: This is a 

question -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER ZIEMER: -- maybe 
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procedurally. Did SC&A review this Petition 

Evaluation Report at all and -- because 

there is some dose reconstruction required 

for those who don't meet the SEC 

requirements? I couldn't recall if that had 

been assigned or not.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, I think our 

normal procedure would be assign for follow, 

but I think NIOSH -- I think Sam mentioned a 

coworker model. I'm not sure if that's been 

fully developed yet or not, but they would. 

And we'd handle those as Site Profile issues 

for follow-up. 

DR. GLOVER: The coworker model 

is a published document.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, it is? 

Okay. Okay. 

MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I was going 

to ask the same question about the coworker 

model. It was issued last year, so -- 
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

MEMBER BEACH: Also, let me ask, 

Sam, the rest of the story. The covered 

period goes until 1990, but the residual 

period is until 2011. Was there cleanup 

done or do you not do dose reconstruction on 

anybody after 1990 because they're not 

covered? How does that work?

DR. GLOVER: It ceased to be 

an -- AWE ceased to do DOE-covered work at 

that point.

MEMBER BEACH: Sure.

DR. GLOVER: So that's when the 

covered period ceases. But then it does go 

into cleanup operations. And there we would 

use the residual period, a residual activity 

that was related to the AWE. They have 

ongoing site operations as well. So they 

maintain a uranium bioassay program for 

existing operations.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And, 

yes, so we'd have to take a look at that 

later also. The petition doesn't extend, if 

I understand right -- 

MEMBER BEACH: Right, I 

understand that. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- up to that 

period.

Any other comments or questions?

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Just to get a 

handle on -- one way of reading the report 

was that there's a description of the 

workers saying that they didn't wear 

respirators, they worked with thorium 

powders and ground metals. And then you've 

got this curious fact that there's -- they 

hired an external consultant to do two 

thorium bioassays. Is that right? Or maybe 

just one?

And the discussion we had earlier 
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about when they choose to monitor somebody 

versus not monitor somebody. I mean, they 

clearly made an intention to choose this 

person, run the result with an external 

consultant doing the work and had a finding 

which is pretty low, right, for that 

bioassay.

DR. GLOVER: So we don't have any 

of the circumstances. You don't have -- if 

you're in an operational program like a 

modern DOE 10 CFR 835, you've got this 

comprehensive data network that looks at -- 

you've got an air monitoring program. 

You're looking at really evaluating. You're 

documenting why do I make these decisions? 

Those aren't available. We really don't 

have -- we have an absence of that that's 

over the entire operational period. And 

it's difficult to tease out that they 

were -- that, yes, they chose to monitor 
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this big bulk program, but these ancillary 

smaller ones -- we're just not clear why 

they chose not to. I hope that's -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. No, that 

makes -- it's clear. There's just not 

enough data to sort of -- to have any 

confidence in terms of making a decision 

that way.

Okay. Any other comments or 

questions?

MEMBER VALERIO: I have a 

question.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes? Speak 

into the mic, please, because it's -- 

MEMBER VALERIO: Okay. On page 

15 of the presentation, second to last 

bullet, it says that in 1980 through '84 

there were 70 documented fires. Is there a 

reason that there was a spike during that 

time frame in incidents?
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DR. GLOVER: I don't know if it 

was necessarily a spike. That's just better 

reporting. You're really just seeing a -- 

that's when they really started getting a 

better program on line. They were probably 

just undocumented before. And also that 

correlates to a much larger production time 

frame where they're really cranking out 

the -- sorry for the lack of a good term, a 

scientific term, but they were producing all 

the ammunition that was shot in Iraq, and 

all those depleted uranium bullets and 

shells. They were producing over a million 

rounds a month. So there was a lot of 

uranium metal on site. And so, that's just

probably just a capacity factor, and also 

better reporting, at least related to fires.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any 

other questions for Sam?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, this is Wanda. 
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I have just one little question really. 

Just a matter of curiosity, in the one

thorium bioassay that was done and the in 

vivo lung count, the single events that we 

had, were there indications from either of 

those that that particular worker that was 

covered by that in each case, that singular 

incident, had a significant exposure? Were 

they positive results or not?

DR. GLOVER: For the uranium -- 

or for the thorium bioassay we know that 

that was a less-than value, less than 0.2. 

MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

DR. GLOVER: We don't know when 

that exposure may have occurred. For the -- 

I believe we know a -- the -- we know a 

thorium lung count was done. I'm not sure 

if I recall if there was a result that we 

have. I know it was -- 

MEMBER MUNN: All right. It's
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not pressing and obviously it's not a -- 

DR. GLOVER: Yes. So that was 

done by an external contractor. They 

externally brought a person in to do those, 

but unfortunately I can't recall.

MEMBER MUNN: All right. Thanks, 

Sam.

DR. GLOVER: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Other 

questions? 

If not, do I have a suggested 

action, a motion from the Board?

MEMBER BEACH: I'll go ahead and 

make the motion that we accept NIOSH's 

proposal for an SEC for that time period.

MEMBER ANDERSON: And I'll second 

it. This is Andy.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That was quick, 

Andy.

MEMBER ANDERSON: Oh, yes. 
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(Laughter.)

MEMBER ANDERSON: Got to let you 

know I'm still here. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MEMBER ANDERSON: Hanging in.

(Laughter.)

MEMBER ANDERSON: Little tough to 

hear some of these on the phone, though.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we're 

trying to get everyone louder and closer to 

the microphones. Thank you.

We have a motion and a second. 

Any further discussion?

If not, then, Ted, you want to do 

the roll call?

MR. KATZ: We'll start with you, 

Andy. 

MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Yes. Ms. Beach?

MEMBER BEACH: Yes.
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MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

MR. KATZ: And I believe Mr. 

Griffon is absent. Dr. Kotelchuck?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey is absent. 

Dr. Melius?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.
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MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer?

MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

MR. KATZ: It's a clean sweep. 

Motion passes. 

MEMBER MUNN: One question. 

Again, this is an 83.13, right?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Correct.

MEMBER MUNN: Just like what we 

have on our agenda. Okay. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, it's 13.

Okay. It just so happens there's 

a letter that's been prepared, which I will 

just -- yes, make a prediction, wild 

prediction and as to the outcome and that 

made such a wild prediction that the other 

letter you can ignore, because it turns out 
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we won't need it, but this one we do.

So I have to read it in the record. 

"The Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health. The Board has evaluated 

Special Exposure Cohort, SEC Petition 00195 

concerning workers' at a facility owned by 

Nuclear Metals, Inc., or a subsequent owner 

in West Concord, Massachusetts under the 

statutory requirements established by the 

Energy Employment Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000 

incorporating in 42 CFR 83.13.

"Board respectfully recommends 

that SEC status be accorded to all Atomic 

Weapons Employees who worked at the facility 

owned by Nuclear Metals, Inc. (or a 

subsequent owner) in West Concord, 

Massachusetts during the period from January 

1st, 1980 through December 31st, 1990 for a 

number of work days aggregating at least 250 
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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 included in 

the Special Exposure Cohort.

"This recommendation is based on 

the following factors: Individuals employed 

at this facility in West Concord, 

Massachusetts during the time period in 

question worked on research and production 

for materials used in the production of 

nuclear weapons. 

"The National Institute of 

Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH’s 

review of available monitoring data, as well 

as available process source term information 

for this facility found that NIOSH lacked 

sufficient information necessary to complete 

individual dose reconstructions with 

sufficient accuracy for internal 
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radiological exposures to thorium and 

thorium progeny to which these workers may 

have been subjected during the time period 

in question. The Board concurs with this 

determination. 

"Three. NIOSH determined that 

health may have been endangered for 

employees at this facility during the time 

period in question. Board also concurs with 

this determination.

"Based on these considerations 

and the discussion at the April 29th, 2014 

Board meeting held in Augusta, Georgia, the 

Board recommends that this Class be added to 

the SEC.

"Enclosed is the documentation 

from the Board meeting where the SEC Class 

was discussed. The documentation includes 

copies of the petition, the NIOSH review 

thereof, and related materials. If any of 
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these items are unavailable at this time, 

they will follow shortly."

Pretty straightforward. Comments 

or -- yes, and just -- this does differ a 

little bit from the SEC Petition Evaluation 

Report. Just -- we added the subsequent 

owner issue, which had come up before. And 

DeKeely Hartsfield had looked into it and 

thought it still applied, so we'll include 

it in the Class definition.

Okay. We're at a break time now. 

We -- find my agenda. So 11:30. You want 

to talk a little bit about the -- do the 

scheduling things for a couple minutes while 

we have people on the Board? 

Yes, why don't we go -- we'll go 

for another say 15 minutes and then do some 

of our Board items. Then we actually have 

an hour-and-a-half set aside this afternoon 

for a Board work session. So we have enough 
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time there. Let's -- at least in case 

people need to check their calendars or 

whatever. 

MR. KATZ: So scheduling meetings 

weighs out now. The next teleconference 

that we need to schedule falls around the 

week of December 15th, or January 5th, 

depending on whether you want it sort of 

slightly early or slightly late. But so we 

can start with either of those as to whether 

they work with your schedules. The week of 

12/15 is really the last practical week in 

December for having a teleconference. 

MEMBER ANDERSON: Ted, that isn't 

good for me.

MR. KATZ: Is not good? Is that 

what you said, Andy?

MEMBER ANDERSON: It's not. 

January 5th is good for me, though.

MR. KATZ: How about others? The 
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week of January 5th?

MEMBER MUNN: What about the 

preceding week in December rather than going 

to January?

MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Wanda. Say 

that again, please?

MEMBER MUNN: I said what about 

the preceding week in December rather than 

going to January?

MR. KATZ: Well, there is just a 

lot of people on leave that week. It's 

pretty hard to -- 

MEMBER MUNN: Ah, okay.

MR. KATZ: -- unlikely that we'll 

get a quorum.

MEMBER MUNN: All right.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Why don't we do 

January 6th?

MR. KATZ: How's that? That's 

Tuesday, I'm guessing.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Tuesday. 

MEMBER MUNN: It is.

MR. KATZ: How's that for 

everybody? January 6th?

MEMBER MUNN: Fine.

MR. KATZ: That's for a 

teleconference. That would be normally 

11:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So the 

people on the West Coast get to sleep.

MR. KATZ: Yes.

MEMBER MUNN: How nice. Thank 

you.

(Laughter.)

MR. KATZ: Okay. January 6th it 

is then, 11:00 a.m. Thank you.

And then the next Board meeting 

falls around February -- the week of -- now 

there's a holiday on the front end of this, 

which is why I have just the latter part of 
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the week. Either the week of -- well, 

there's February 11th through 13th, 18th 

through 20th, or 23rd through 27th, those 

time frames. I don't know, we could start 

with the first one and work our way out, if 

that doesn't work.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I was 

thinking, given our earlier discussions, I 

mean, we're trying to forecast the future 

here in terms of actions -- is that we start 

to stretch out the Board meetings. And so 

let's -- rather than looking at February, 

let's look at March and see if that doesn't 

maybe make it more efficient in terms of -- 

well, we'd have a day-and-a-half meeting 

rather than the day meeting, or something, 

so we're making better use of Board Members' 

time but without getting too far off in 

terms of possible SEC action or something 

that needs to be more timely.
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MEMBER ROESSLER: There's an NCRP 

meeting in March. I'm looking it up -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER ROESSLER: -- to see when 

that is.

MEMBER MUNN: Or perhaps the last 

week in February. That's still -- that's 

almost two months away from the phone call.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We'll look at 

that. We can come back to this later on 

and -- yes -- 

MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, it's slow.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and I 

know -- and do that so that we can address 

that. But I'm just thinking that that would 

be a way of sort of starting to adjust our 

schedule without doing something too radical 

or too -- we're not always -- we're not very 

good at predicting anyway on some of these. 

We'll do that, but -- 
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MEMBER LEMEN: This is Dick 

Lemen.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: By the way, can 

you go through, Ted, the other Board Member 

Board meetings that we have coming up?

MEMBER BEACH: I was just 

wondering if we couldn't start that with 

November's meeting, stretch it out, because 

we have one in November.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have one in 

November and we have one July twenty -- the 

end of July.

MEMBER LEMEN: Can people speak 

up a little bit? It's hard to hear on the 

phone. Hello? 

MR. KATZ: Yes, we hear you, 

Dick. Thanks. I didn't have the mic near 

me. Sorry.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The 29th is 

Idaho Falls.
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MR. KATZ: Right, 29th and 30th 

we've blocked off probably at this rate 

we'd -- 

MEMBER MUNN: Well, but November 

is still quite a stretch from July.

MR. KATZ: Okay. And then 

following that we have a teleconference 

scheduled September 17th.

MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

MR. KATZ: That's 11:00 a.m. And 

then the subsequent meeting in November is 

currently November 6 and 7. 

MEMBER ANDERSON: Do we have a 

location on that one?

MR. KATZ: No, we do not. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, we do not. 

And then generally we'd be -- I mean, that's 

a four-month stretch there.

MR. KATZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So we're -- 
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basically would be -- and if we did March, 

we'd basically be on three meetings a year, 

something like that.

MR. KATZ: Right.

MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, do we want 

to push the July one later? 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It's a little 

hard to, I think.

MEMBER MUNN: No, we've already 

established the date.

MR. KATZ: And August is a more 

difficult month to schedule in general, too.

MEMBER ANDERSON: Because I've 

got a conflict there.

MEMBER LEMEN: Did you say that 

the November meeting was on the 6th and 7th?

MEMBER MUNN: Correct.

MR. KATZ: That's correct. 

That's correct, Dick.

MEMBER LEMEN: And do you -- 
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didn't we say at one time we were going to 

try and not schedule traveling on Friday 

afternoon?

MR. KATZ: We do the best we can. 

MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

MR. KATZ: But -- 

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Hopefully we 

will -- maybe we could go out there to 

California at that time in November.

MR. KATZ: Phil is just 

suggesting we think about California for 

November.

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I was going 

to say that if we want to be a little more 

efficient, I do not wish -- or let me be 

positive. It would be very good to go to 

places where there are large airports and 

therefore lots of planes flying in and out. 

I do not wish to avoid small towns where we 

all have to connect, but I think it would be 
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efficient and save money and time to think a 

little bit about moving toward larger cities 

or larger airports, really.

MEMBER MUNN: I think we're 60 

years too late. We should have -- 

(Laughter.) 

MEMBER MUNN: We should have 

talked to other folks about that a long time 

ago.

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, well, 

better late than never.

MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, no. I 

think what she's referring to is the siting 

of the DOE facilities. 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, well, 

that's true.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: They didn't put 

those in New York. Even though it was 

called the Manhattan Project, it wasn't in 
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Manhattan.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Is he saying he 

doesn't want to come to Idaho? 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, I 

certainly will exempt all arrangements that 

we have made, but just for the future there 

are -- for example -- well, that may not -- 

we may be able to look at larger towns where 

there are -- which are accessible to workers 

at the plant. Doesn't have to be -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, but I 

think our experience, Dave, has been that 

we've got to be at the site. People aren't 

going to travel an hour-and-a-half or two 

hours to come and -- even though we think 

it's close, it's -- for them, they -- I 

mean, even I think which side of Denver 

we're on makes a difference in terms of 

where people live. So being north of 

Cincinnati rather than out by the airport 
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makes a difference for the people working at 

Fernald because most of them lived in the 

eye of the facility.

So, I think that we felt it more 

appropriate to err on the -- maybe a little 

more difficulty in terms of traveling and 

to -- 

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I accept the 

reality, yes. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Now if we -- 

MEMBER MUNN: And but this 

gives -- the Manhattan Project is now giving 

Manhattan dwellers an opportunity to see 

America -- 

(Laughter.)

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. All 

right.

MEMBER MUNN: -- where the other 

half lives.

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We have a 
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number of facilities out there in 

California. We could -- there's Berkeley, 

Livermore, Santa Susana. And we don't have 

to worry about Idaho snow.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, the LA area 

we -- does deserve a visit. We haven't been 

there in quite a while, so -- and do that. 

So that's on the list. And then we had 

talked even for this meeting, though I think 

we decided we weren't ready in terms of the 

San Francisco/Oakland area. But we'll keep 

that in mind.

MEMBER LEMEN: Did you see the 

meeting on July the 29th is a conference 

call or an in-person meeting?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's in 

person in Idaho Falls.

MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, and we 

have testimony from Brad that the snow has 
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melted.

MEMBER LEMEN: We have what?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excuse me. 

Will have. Future tense. 

(Laughter.) 

MEMBER LEMEN: I'm sorry, I -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MEMBER MUNN: Good. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Andy just 

misses the fish. That's -- 

MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, right.

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Why don't we 

check? We can do -- yes, we'll do -- I 

think there's an agreement that March -- and 

we'll stretch it out. Then we can do it by 

email and deal with that. 

And given that, why don't we -- 

we'll take a lunch break now. Come back 

sharp 1:30. We have another SEC-related 
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issue here to discuss. And then we'll go 

on. We have an hour-and-a-half. When we 

come back, remind you to, if you haven't 

already, take a look at the public comments. 

We need to go over those. Think about your 

Work Groups and take a look at both the 

NIOSH and the SC&A schedules for reporting 

and so forth.

And particularly if there's 

something missing that you expected to see 

on there and isn't reported, grab a -- I 

don't know who takes responsibility for 

NIOSH? LaVon. We'll blame it on LaVon and 

ask him. And then John Stiver for the SC&A. 

But we'll -- because we'll go through our 

Work Groups. So take a break. 

We'll reconvene at 1:30. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 11:42 a.m. and 

resumed at 1:30 p.m.) 
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 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

1:34 p.m.

MR. KATZ: Let me just check on 

the line to see, do I have my Board Members 

back who are on the phone with us?

MEMBER FIELD: Bill Field.

MR. KATZ: Great.

MEMBER LEMEN: Dick Lemen.

MR. KATZ: Great.

MEMBER MUNN: Wanda Munn.

MR. KATZ: Bill, Dick, Wanda. 

How about Andy? Are you one?

MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, I think 

we could proceed anyway.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And a reminder, 
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please mute your phones. It makes the line 

better. 

And we will start this afternoon. Our 

first item is the Joslyn SEC petition. And 

Sam Glover will be presenting again. And on 

the computer presenting the slides -- 

DR. GLOVER: My able-bodied 

assistant.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- LaVon 

Rutherford. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you.

DR. GLOVER: Paul, you want to 

have me talk first, and if you'll -- 

So we had a Work Group meeting 

last week and discussed several projects 

that we prepared in response to the SEC that 

was added. It's just now coming due with 

Congress. I think it's in its final stages 

here and will become official I think 

within -- near the end of the month, I 
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believe. 

So we're going to discuss just 

part of what we went through, which is the 

use of surrogate data, which I believe is 

what the Board was concerned with at our 

last meeting when we described the time 

frame after the SEC, which the SEC now runs 

through July 31st, 1948. And we have said 

that we can do dose reconstruction beginning 

August 1, 1948 through 1952. 

So next slide. 

MEMBER MUNN: The mic is not 

picking Sam up very well.

DR. GLOVER: Okay. Is that 

better?

MEMBER MUNN: Much better. Thank 

you.

DR. GLOVER: Okay. I had to get 

close and personal here.

MEMBER MUNN: Okay. Thanks.
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DR. GLOVER: So Joslyn is listed 

as an Atomic Weapons Employer and the period 

is from March 1943 to 1952. It has been, as 

I said, added to the Special Exposure Cohort 

beginning March 1943 through July 31st, 

1948. So this is very focused. We're not 

going to discuss anything before the August 

1948 time frame. It's already in the SEC. 

And this discussion is solely focused on the 

use, the justification of the use of TBD6000 as surrogate data for the determination 

of intakes of uranium during that period, 

again August 1, 1948 through December 1952.

Next slide, please. So we used 

the Board's criteria, which are very similar 

to the DCAS criteria. So we -- because this 

is obviously a presentation to the Advisory 

Board, we're going to go down the elements 

that were in the draft document by the 

Board. 
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From a hierarchy of data 

standpoint, there is a report specifically 

written on this that was provided to the 

Working Group and the Advisory Board last 

week. There is no individual monitoring 

data collected at Joslyn. However, there 

were several -- and again, only beginning in 

August 1, 1948 forward there is some air 

monitoring data that was collected on a 

limited machining operations in 1951, and 

then a much more comprehensive data set that 

was collected in January of 1952. Both of 

those were collected by the Health and 

Safety Laboratory of the Atomic Energy 

Commission. 

The 1952 data was extensive 

enough that it monitored most of the -- 

actually all of the operations that were 

conducted at Joslyn. And so all of the 

machining, the rollings, all those different 
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operations were conducted and they developed 

time weighted averages for those exposures. 

And so it was a very large data collection 

effort and an in-depth analysis.

Next slide, please. So NIOSH 

determined; and the HASL measurements are 

very well described and we discussed those 

many times, that the data from this 1951 and 

'52 measurement meet the analytical and 

methodological requirements for dose 

reconstruction. We understand how they 

collected the data. We understand how they 

do time weighted averages. The concern is 

that we decided that we have a snapshot and 

we're going to back-extrapolate to beginning 

August 1, 1948 that we feel it was more 

claimant-favorable and more appropriate to 

use the surrogate data from TBD-6000, which 

is claimant-favorable, rather than using 

just -- and saying this data from the -- 
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facility-specific data should be used on its 

own right. So we're saying that we 

would prefer and it was justified to use the 

TBD-6000, specifically the operator category 

of the rolling machining operator. So not 

using the sub-categories of the clerks or 

the -- we're going to treat everybody as if 

they rolled or machined uranium and that -- 

to provide a claimant-favorable but 

realistic dose reconstruction approach to 

internal dose at Joslyn. Now, there 

weren't any controls. The facility was -- 

there's many different operations and many 

different parts of the facility. And we 

feel this is an appropriate approach.

Next slide, please. So the 

exclusivity constraints. So while we have 

HASL-collected data in '51 and particularly 

1952, NIOSH has utilized TBD-6000 to better 

describe the full range of conditions. So 
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those were -- and assumptions that may have 

been observed beyond the single time 

weighted average study in 1952 to describe 

this entire period back to August of 1948. 

TBD-6000 provides a peer-reviewed 

surrogate data set for thousands of 

measurements conducted by HASL beginning in 

1948. And they actually go all the way back 

to the original Simonds Saw and Steel data 

in the very first un-coded uranium rolling 

that -- since the highest upper end point. 

And I made sure to properly correct my error 

in the White Paper, which it is Harris and 

Kingsley as the appropriate reference. And 

I used a -- as Paul nods his head. 

Next slide, please. So the 

exclusivity continued. Comparison of the 

rolling operator data shows the use of TBD6000 is clearly claimant-favorable except 

for one operation. The nine-inch rolling 
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mill was a bad actor. Smoke, steam. And so 

when you compare the arithmetic mean of the 

distribution, you still have -- you're 

underestimating. 

You use the TBD-6000 geometric 

mean or the arithmetic mean and compare the 

time weighted average. You're not 

necessarily claimant-favorable for that one 

particular operation. However, if you look 

at the full distribution where we applied 

geometric mean and a GSD of five, all of the 

data is covered. Every data point that was 

collected at Joslyn is covered by that.

The other substantial fact is 

that Joslyn did not use the nine-inch mill 

with any frequency after the August 1, 1948 

date. The changed what they did. And so, 

based on the operations, the testimony of 

workers, the details, they rolled on a 

different mill. They had a different 
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purpose for what they were doing. So the 

nine-inch mill, while it was conducted in 

that 1952 study, really was not a 

significant source of contamination at the 

site. 

Next slide, please. So the site 

or process similarities. TBD-6000 provides 

comparison data across a number of 

facilities that were doing exactly the same 

type of work that Joslyn performed, sheeting 

and rolling of uranium with no protective 

coatings.

Review of the site data from '51 

and '52 show that the site's data compares 

very well to TBD-6000 and the use of the 

full distribution -- this is not just a 

single data point. We have a GSD of five 

associated to that geometric mean. When you 

look at that full distribution, that 

provides a realistic exposure assessment for 
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operations at Joslyn back to August 1, 1948.

Next slide, please. We know of 

no operational changes to the equipment or 

ventilation after August 1948. We do 

recognize that the nine-inch rolling mill 

did not get used, but there wasn't any 

changes to the operations, no engineering 

control differences. We concluded that the 

data obtained by HASL in the '51 and '52 

studies could represent the exposure 

conditions in TBD-6000 as early as August 1, 

1948. I should say could be represented by 

the exposure conditions in TBD-6000 as early 

as August 1, 1948 based on the following 

facts:

Beginning with August 1948, 

Joslyn was operated with AEC Oversight; 

previously it was operated under Hanford or 

MED-style operations, to provide increased 

certainty that the air monitoring data 
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collected was similar to other facilities 

collected by HASL.

Operations were reduced to become 

better defined and specific after August 1, 

1948.

Operation specifics, 

documentation, and worker testimony provide 

evidence that the operations are similar in 

nature and scope to those described in TBD6000.

Next slide, please. Beginning in 

August 1948 reduction in production levels 

to smaller rolling operations further 

supports specific -- in support of specific 

research projects were less likely to 

require simultaneous rollings. One of the 

things we were concerned about in the 

previous slide, or previous period is that 

they have three rolling mills that are next 

to one another and they were rolling 
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simultaneously, which obviously convolutes 

the -- what is the concentration that 

someone may be exposed to? At this 

point in time they were very concerned about 

the temperature that the material was being 

rolled to and they were very specific that 

it was done on a single mill. So they had 

protection requirements in its speed, the 

heat, the temperature. They wanted to make 

sure that this stuff wasn't expanding, which 

was causing the shutdown of the Hanford 

reactors. And so they had very specific 

requirements and that involved a single mill 

within that group. And mentioned here, it's 

the 18-inch mill.

So this removed the highest 

source of exposure, this nine-inch rolling 

mill, at Joslyn during many of these days of 

operations and provides some additional 

evidence that supports these multiple mills
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were not used.

Next slide, please. Temporal 

considerations. Obviously we gave a lot of 

thought into the changes over time when 

determining the feasibility of dose 

reconstruction and the comparability of the 

surrogate data. Joslyn used only 

electrically-heated furnaces to pre-heat the 

billets. You guys are very familiar with 

Bethlehem Steel and the lead coating of 

billets and then later the salt coating of 

billets. This was only done in gas-fired 

furnaces similar to the original Simonds Saw 

and Steel. So they would use uncoated 

furnaces, which is just the worst oxidation. 

But TBD-6000 accommodates that. They 

include those measurements in their data.

So NIOSH confirmed that TBD-6000 

data set extends to cover the Simonds Saw 

and Steel initial studies with rolling 
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furnaces which heated uranium in raw 

furnaces, uncoated. And also that's the 

highest data set we've really seen as far as 

the actual -- the measurements we discussed 

for Bethlehem Steel many years ago. And 

this extends the applicability of TBD-6000 

back to 1948. Helps us confirm that.

Next slide, please. 

Plausibility. The full distribution of 

intakes from the rolling operator and 

machine operator category is used at Joslyn 

with a geometric mean, a GSD of five. 

Now the site data, if you look at 

the 1952 measurements, suggests that the 

rolling mill operations were bounding. But 

the limitations in the data set would have 

used both categories. The machining 

operator, if you go to TBD-6000, there's a 

higher intake based on the history of 

operations. And so, if they only machined 
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at Joslyn, then the internal dose would be 

based on machining. The entire residual 

period is based on machining operations, 

because you can't flip back and forth. But 

if they only rolled, if they did both, you 

would still use machining. But if we know 

they only rolled uranium, then that's where 

a person would be -- and we use the TBD-6000 

rolling mill operator data.

The data is based on facilities 

from the same time period for the same types 

of operations conducted at Joslyn and whose 

full distribution provides a claimantfavorable and realistic approach for 

determining intakes of uranium at Joslyn 

from August 1, 1948 through December 31st, 

1952.

Next slide, please. So in 

conclusion, NIOSH carefully reviewed the 

operations conducted at Joslyn and data 
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availability during the period August 1948 

through December 1952. They felt the use of 

surrogate data for uranium intakes from the 

rolling and machining operator categories 

from TBD-6000 was evaluated against the 

Advisory Board's criteria for the use of 

surrogate data by NIOSH and we believe that 

the use of this data was found to be 

justified, that it provided a scientifically 

valid, claimant-favorable, and plausible 

dose from the intakes of uranium at Joslyn 

during this period. 

And I'm sure you'll have 

questions. But perhaps Paul would like to 

discuss where we stand before -- or whatever 

you feel is most appropriate.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Fine. Yes, 

whatever.

MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, the TBD-6000 

Work Group met on April 23rd, just last 
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week. That Work Group -- I chair the Work 

Group and the other Members are Josie Beach, 

John Poston and Wanda Munn. And we reviewed 

this evaluation that NIOSH did of the 

surrogate data criteria. And also that has 

been reviewed by SC&A. I don't know if -- 

John Stiver or perhaps John Mauro on the 

phone can speak to that if they wish, but 

SC&A has agreed that the criteria have been 

met. 

 The Work Group also agrees that 

the criteria have been met and that the TBD6000 data set serves as an appropriate 

surrogate for Joslyn.

Now, what that means in essence 

is that the period beginning August of -- 

what year is it? 

DR. GLOVER: 1948.

MEMBER ZIEMER: -- '48 and onward 

that dose can be reconstructed. Now actual 
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details on the dose reconstruction 

calculation methodology is presented in two 

White Papers, which I believe have been 

distributed to the Board. They're on the 

website as well. So you have those. That's 

the methodology. SC&A still wishes to go 

through details on that methodology to make 

sure that calculationally there aren't any 

issues, but everyone has agreed that the 

dose can be reconstructed. 

So in essence we are recommending 

that the period beginning August '48 and 

onward not be part of the SEC. So in 

essence we would -- the recommendation then 

would be to approve the use of surrogate 

data for that period and to deny the SEC for 

that period onward. I'm not sure that's a 

motion at this point, but it's a 

recommendation from the Work Group, if I've 

stated it correctly.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think you 

have. 

First, let's do questions from 

Board Members, if you have any. 

MEMBER CLAWSON: I do.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Brad?

MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm just seeing 

6000 used for a lot more sites coming up, 

and it seems like it's getting broader to me 

of what we're using this a little bit for. 

What is -- I guess getting back 

to what 6000 was originally designed for, 

the basis for it was to cover un-monitored 

workers but basically doing the same job, 

correct, Paul, or -- 

MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, in a sense 

that's correct. What has to be done is to 

assure that it is representative of -- for 

example, that's what -- the five criteria in 

the surrogate data criteria are a means of 
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assuring that it's appropriate to use the 

TBD-6000 data as a substitute or surrogate. 

If those criteria can't be met, then it 

wouldn't be appropriate. So that's -- the 

whole intent of TBD-6000 is to do pretty 

much what you described, though. I mean, if 

there are plenty of data available, those 

take -- those are what you use first. We 

have limited data here and they've used that 

to at least show that where we have data it 

fits in with the TBD-6000 data set.

MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, and the 

reason why I brought this up is because my 

original thought was that it was set up for 

like Bethlehem Steel, the facilities that 

basically did the same process. And I've 

just seen it pop up in a couple of other 

areas that I was just questioning. I'll 

have to check those five points now. 

Thanks.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I mean, I 

would just add that this -- seemed to me 

this was one of the sites that it was set up 

for and have use -- and we have the ability 

to anchor it to some extent with some of the 

data that's -- the monitoring that is 

available, but this extends it and 

essentially provides a more complete and 

probably more appropriate set of data for 

covering this entire time period that's 

involved and the types of work that were 

done at the site.

MEMBER LEMEN: Hi, this is Dick 

Lemen. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes?

MEMBER LEMEN: Can you hear me? 

I just have two comments. The first comment 

is I think this is an inappropriate use of 

6000. And secondly, I'm still against using 

surrogate data, so I will vote no against 
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this. But that's my comments.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you. Any other Board Members with 

questions?

Okay. I believe we have a 

petitioner who may be on the line. I don't 

know whether the petitioner would like to 

say anything at this point.

MS. KELLER: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So go ahead.

MS. KELLER: This is Kristi 

Keller for [identifying information 

redacted]. Can you hear me?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Yes, we 

can.

MS. KELLER: We the petitioner 

feel strongly that the SEC should be 

extended to 1952 to include the entire time 

Joslyn was an AWE site. To stop at 1948 

leaves us out. [Identifying 
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information redacted] began his employment 

there on July 12, 1949 and retired from 

there December 31, 1972. He had colon and 

bladder cancer, which put him at 44.57 

percent. He also had a skin cancer, 

however, this was not accepted because he 

was treated for it by a naturopathic doctor, 

not a medical doctor. 

There was no monitoring at the 

Joslyn Site. While surrogate data from 

another site may have similarities, each 

place, condition and employee is unique. 

With all due respect, use of surrogate data 

can be likened to a surgeon diagnosing a 

heart patient with the patient's neighbor's 

medical test results. 

To declare SECs the entire time 

Joslyn was an AWE site will be fair to all 

employees of that period and eliminate 

unknowns and uncertainties. 
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you. So we have a -- I believe any further 

questions. If not, I think we have a 

recommendation from the Work Group. I don't 

know if that's a formal recommendation. How 

that -- 

MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I believe 

that it could constitute a motion.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER ZIEMER: The 

recommendation of the Work Group is that we 

accept NIOSH's position that the TBD-6000 

can be used as surrogate data for that time 

period beginning in August of '48 and 

onward. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

MEMBER ZIEMER: And therefore 

that dose can be reconstructed.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So we 

have a motion. 
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So any further discussion or 

deliberation on this issue?

If not, then I'll ask Ted to do 

the roll call.

MR. KATZ: So, Dr. Anderson?

Are you on the line, Dr. 

Anderson? Okay. Ms. Beach?

MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

MEMBER CLAWSON: No.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon is absent. 

I'll collect his vote.

Dr. Kotelchuck?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

MEMBER LEMEN: No.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey is absent. 

I'll collect his vote.
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Dr. Melius?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

MR. KATZ: And, Dr. Ziemer?

MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

MR. KATZ: Okay. So we have some 

votes to collect, but the motion passes. We 

have more than a majority.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 
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you. And thank you, Sam, and your able 

assistant to help us out there. Do that. 

We just happen to have a letter 

prepared, so I will quickly read the letter 

into the record.

"The Advisory Board on Radiation 

Worker Health. The Board has evaluated 

Special Exposure Cohort Petition 00200 

concerning the workers of the Joslyn 

Manufacturing Supply Company in Fort Wayne, 

Indiana under the statutory requirements 

established by the Energy Employees 

Occupational Illness Compensation Program 

Act of 2000 incorporated into 42 CFR 83.13.

"The National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has 

recommended that individual dose 

reconstructions are feasible for all Atomic 

Weapons Employees who worked for Joslyn 

Manufacturing Supply Company, the covered 
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facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from August 

1st, 1948 through December 31st, 1952. 

NIOSH found that it has access to adequate 

exposure monitoring and other information 

necessary to do individual dose 

reconstructions with sufficient accuracy for 

members of this group and therefore a Class 

covering this group should not be added to 

the SEC. The Board concurs with this 

determination.

"Based on these considerations 

and the discussion at the April 29th, 2014 

Board meeting held in Augusta, Georgia, the 

Board recommends that this Class not be 

added to the SEC. 

"Enclosed is documentation from 

the Board meetings where this Class of 

employees was discussed. Documentation 

includes copies of the petition, the NIOSH 

review thereof, and related materials. If 
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any of these materials are unavailable at 

this time, they will follow shortly."

Okay. So now we have on our 

agenda a Board work session, and we'll go 

there. And then starting at 4:15 we will do 

the Savannah River Site. We will probably 

have a break in-between. 

We have LaVon and John Stiver 

here ready when we have questions, which we 

invariably do, about our -- where reports 

are, where things stand on sites. 

But before we get to that, I 

think we have public comments from the last 

meeting that we had. And I will briefly go 

through those. I'll just indicate most of 

them have to do with the Kansas City Site 

and most of them were essentially referred 

for further review as part of our Board 

review of that SEC, so and the ongoing work 

there. Do that. We have a couple of other 
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sites mentioned.

But comment No. 1 is from someone 

related to the Joslyn Site, and that was one 

we had voted on to add a -- part of the 

covered period to the SEC there. So 

thanking the Board for that.

We then have a whole series of -- 

well, let me go through -- so, comments 2 

through 10 related to the petitioners 

regarding the Kansas City Site. I think 

they're all pretty straightforward responded 

to. 

We then had a couple comments 

here, 11 through 14, that dealt with 

particular claims. Some of those were -- 

appeared to be Subtitle E claims not related 

to this program, but from people related to 

the Kansas City Site. Do that. 

We then have a number of comments 

again related to working conditions at the 
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Kansas City Site and to the questionnaires 

involved in some of the dose reconstruction. 

But I think all of these relate back really 

to the bottom of the third page to comment 

40, all to the -- really refer to the SEC 

for follow up. Do that.

Then we have comments numbered 41 

to 45 in our report that relate to General 

Steel Industries. Again these are referred 

to the NIOSH and to the Work Group for 

follow up. And then there was 

one question referring to a Freedom of 

Information request and why that had not 

been honored. And I believe they 

essentially -- the ones that were available 

were sent -- there were some quality issues

with some of the -- the nature of some of 

the records that -- in terms of legibility 

and so forth, apparently. But that has been 

followed up on.
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And then we have a final set of 

comments again related to the Kansas City 

Plant and again related to the SEC followup. 

So I think these are all pretty 

straightforward. I don't know if anybody 

has any specific comments on them. 

Obviously had a lot of participation in 

Kansas City. I believe we will hear the 

Work Group and NIOSH and SC&A or -- is it 

next week we're going? Yes. Yes, coming 

up. So good. 

So if not, do we need a motion on 

these, or they're just -- no? Okay. So 

these are all set in terms of follow up. 

Do you have your Work Group list 

or do I pull it up on -- 

Okay. As usual, I will go 

through these and alphabetical order, and 

starting with Brookhaven. You have 
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anything?

MEMBER BEACH: I do not have any 

report for Brookhaven at this time. We're 

at the Site Profile issues. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Fernald?

MEMBER CLAWSON: We had a Work 

Group meeting. Right now NIOSH is looking 

into the information that was brought up by 

Lou Doll and we're waiting for them to be 

able to come back and tell us their 

findings. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes, I

think we had talked about this at the Board 

call last time, but [identifying information 

redacted] had sent a letter to the Board 

regarding concerns about some of the later 

time period and whether or not that should 

be included in the SEC. So the Work Group 

is following up. Had a meeting with NIOSH 

and following up on that. Very good.
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Hanford. Sam, do you want to 

give a brief update on -- 

DR. GLOVER: So with Hanford we 

have been of course slowed down by the DOE 

funding situation. We have two operations 

that we're looking at there, both PNNL as 

well as the Hanford 1983 through 1990. 

There's a number of issues that SC&A has 

raised. We're looking at -- we're going 

through each of those, making sure -- 

because we have substantial new data that we 

collected as part of this. Making sure what 

we can answer with existing data and what's 

going to require on-site. So we're trying 

to weight those and move forward. But 

that's where we are right now.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

DR. GLOVER: Just going through 

those.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Great. Arjun, 
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anything to add or no?

Okay. Good. And I will -- I did 

receive an inquiry over the weekend from the 

petitioner and I will pass that on. 

Phil, Idaho?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We just had a 

Work Group meeting. We closed out a number 

of issues, but we have also got a lot of 

issues that are still outstanding where we 

are trying to arrange for site interviews 

with some of the personnel from there. 

Right now we're looking at the June 23rd, as 

this -- as soon as we can get it set up. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. And 

we -- yes, now that the Work Group 

meeting -- we're -- progress. And we're 

hoping that with doing some of the 

interviews and so forth we'll also generate 

some more idea on what information would be 

helpful to hear from at the Board meeting 
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the end of July in Idaho Falls also, and on 

that.

Okay. Paul, Lawrence Berkeley.

MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, Lawrence 

Berkeley was scheduled to meet and then we 

had to postpone waiting for completion of 

reviews of some additional documents. So 

we'll be rescheduling shortly on that.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And let 

me go back to Idaho. I had a question that 

I forgot to ask, but I noticed in the DCAS 

report that the coworker model is -- still 

have -- has an indefinite date of 

completion. And I think we had asked at the 

Work Group meeting if that could be pinned 

down a bit in terms of trying to -- seems to 

be a key item that's missing in terms of 

doing our review.

MR. HINNEFELD: Well, 

unfortunately I can't -- haven't been able 
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to identify a date going forward yet.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MR. HINNEFELD: But it's one of 

the activities on the list. We are trying 

to maintain momentum on INL move those items 

forward. I just don't have a report today.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. If you 

could get -- when you get that, could you 

communicate to the Work Group anyway, so we 

can -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think it's -- 

and if I don't hear from them, I'll let you 

know, Stu.

Okay. Good. Kansas City?

MEMBER BEACH: Yes, as you 

mentioned, Kansas City has a site visit and 

interviews scheduled for next week, a full 

week, Monday through Thursday. We have 

several interviews scheduled and I think 110 
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boxes of documents to go through. And quite 

a large group going. So most of the Work 

Group will be there.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. You're 

still on. Mound.

MEMBER BEACH: Oh, okay. Wait, 

let me finish Kansas City. And we do have a 

Work Group meeting scheduled in Cincinnati, 

a face-to-face for June 10th.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER BEACH: And then on to 

Mound. I have no current report for Mound, 

although I did see that there's I think four 

or five new revived TBDs and we're going to 

get on the list with the rest of them to 

review. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Nevada?

MEMBER CLAWSON: I can't really 

report anything on it. We've got the 

updated matrix and we're just getting -- we 
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just need to -- NIOSH just gave us their 

response to where the matrix is at. And we 

just need to set up a Work Group.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So you'll be 

planning on doing that, at least a Work 

Group call?

MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Again, I 

think we have additional resources 

available. And it's a big site and I'm not 

sure how much is involved in doing the 

further review, but we ought to think about 

getting that one moving, a little bit 

anyway, somewhat.

X-10, Oakridge. Gen?

MEMBER ROESSLER: The information 

I have on that comes from SC&A's status 

report on their Work Group activities. And 

in that report it says that they have found 

that NIOSH hopes to be ready to amend the ER 
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at the summer 2014 Board meeting. So I 

assume that means that they'll be reporting 

in Idaho Falls. And Tim's here and LaVon's 

going to -- 

MR. RUTHERFORD: I'll jump in on 

a couple of things. One, it's now -- since 

the actual Petition Evaluation and the Class 

that was recommended covered the entire 

petitioning period, what would happen if we 

did determine there was an infeasibility, we 

would do an 83.14 to address the 

infeasibility. However, we are working to 

continue our evaluation as we committed. 

And due to some site constraints on getting 

data -- and we just received a -- or we just 

found a large caché of air monitoring data, 

we will not be ready for the July Board 

meeting. I think we're working for the 

follow-on Board meeting to that; correct me 

if I'm wrong, Jim, to actually have that 
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completely evaluated by then. 

MEMBER ROESSLER: But give me the 

date again. I was -- 

MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't know 

what the follow-on -- I can't remember the 

follow-on Board meeting after July.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: November.

MR. RUTHERFORD: November. 

November.

MEMBER ROESSLER: So we're aiming 

at November?

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So a large 

cache of data? Good excuse.

MR. RUTHERFORD: Of air sampling 

data. What happened was -- 

(Laughter.)

MR. RUTHERFORD: No, what 

happened was -- honestly was kind of -- 
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oh -- 

MEMBER ROESSLER: I was trying to 

spell "cache" and -- 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Sorry.

(Laughter.)

MR. RUTHERFORD: I didn't know 

what I said. There you go. I was going to 

explain how we got the data.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Tell us. Good 

story?

MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, true 

story, we stumbled upon the data at OSTI. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Very 

good. Okay. 

Pantex?

MEMBER CLAWSON: We got the SEC 

pushed in last year. We haven't done much 

with the Site Profile yet. That's another 

we need to start working on. Go from there. 

That's about it.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Pinellas?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Same story. 

We're still stuck on the issue of the 

tritium that's -- and some of the swipe data 

they're still hoping to look at. And 

there's on interview they still want to do 

with one of the health physics people.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Otherwise no 

progress has been made.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: "They" is 

NIOSH?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, NIOSH.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

Portsmouth, Paducah, K-25?

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Paducah is 

completed. Portsmouth and K-25 we still 

have a neutron issue we need to get settled. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Otherwise, 
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we're just about done with them.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Rocky. Mark 

isn't here, but I think there is activity 

going on, so -- 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we've been 

working to address roughly five issues. 

There was an issue with follow-on tritium 

issues. We have just about completed our 

follow-on report for that. It's in internal 

review now. Would expect it to be complete 

at the end of the month. 

We have an issue with neptunium 

from 1984 through 1988 that we had committed 

to continue to evaluate. We have a hold up 

at Los Alamos National Lab getting the data 

search completed there. Otherwise, we've 

completed most of our interviews associated 

with that and our follow-on report. That 

hold up at LANL is going to push that report 

out until probably August of this year.
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A third issue that we have is the 

data falsification that was brought up by 

the petitioner. We've interviewed a number 

of people over the last few months. SC&A 

has been involved with that. Mr. Lipsky who 

was involved in the FBI raid has given us 

additional names. We've been interviewing 

those individuals. We've also gotten a 

number of documents through the individuals. 

Our complete review of all this information 

and interviews, our report will not be 

complete until August as well. 

A fourth issue was associated 

with magnesium thorium alloy. That was the 

issue of possibly it coming from Dow. And 

the only -- we've completed everything with 

that except for looking at the design 

documents at Sandia National Lab. We do not 

anticipate getting that data search complete 

until June due to funding with that site as 
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well. 

And then the final was a health 

surveillance report by the petitioner who 

had provided some issues associated with 

that health surveillance document. We have 

a draft report and response to that that 

will be provided at the end of this month as 

well.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

If anybody has questions on these, please.

Sandia? Dr. Lemen?

Dr. Lemen, are you on the line?

MEMBER LEMEN: I'm there. I'm 

there.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER LEMEN: I'm just -- can't 

get my mute off.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's why I 

asked again.

MEMBER LEMEN: I don't have 
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anything new to report. Do you, Sam?

Sam still there?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Sam's 

here. He's on crutches. You got to give him 

a couple minutes to get to the -- 

MEMBER LEMEN: All right. 

Well -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: He's here. 

He's at the mic now.

MEMBER LEMEN: All right.

DR. GLOVER: I apologize for not 

sending you an update. You're right, Dr. 

Lemen, we don't really have any changes to 

report. Just to reiterate, essentially some 

of the massive progress you saw with the 

late returns. Basically, we needed to leave 

the site alone so they could catch up with 

their work. They could either fund us to 

come on site or they could catch up on their 

responses for dose reconstruction. As you 
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say, they did a nice job. They've caught 

up. And now we're hoping with some funding 

that's come with Greg that we can start 

getting back on site to finish up the '95 to 

2011 time frame. And that's the focuses.

There are some thorium operations 

there that are not described in the TBD. 

And so we do have some work that we need to 

do. They have some thorium bioassay, but we 

need to make sure who was covered in the 

monitoring. So we do have a number of areas 

that we're going to target. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER LEMEN: And do you have 

any idea of future a site visit, or is that 

up in the air?

DR. GLOVER: The funding was just 

identified as coming up, so we've been in 

kind of a holding pattern. So it's probably 

either later summer or early fall, I would 
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imagine, in order to get everything set up 

now. 

MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

DR. GLOVER: But I would say 

that's a couple months out. It's not 

imminent.

MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. Thank you. 

That's all I have.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks. 

Greg, do you have anything to add or -- no? 

Okay. Good.

Phil, Santa Susana? We 

actually -- 

MEMBER SCHOFIELD: OTIB-80 has 

been put out. It's the coworker data. And 

right now that's still sitting in DOE, is my 

understanding. So the general public could 

not see that at this time.

The other thing is I would like 

to propose that we have a site visit there 
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and interview some of the health physics 

people because of the nature of the winds 

and stuff in that fishbowl, in that caldera. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Jim, you -- 

DR. NETON: I have a little more 

information I might be able to add on Santa 

Susana. We did do issue the external 

dosimetry coworker model. That was based on 

a re-coding, or a coding of the hard drive 

that we actually received from Santa Susana. 

That was a fairly large effort that was 

underway for quite some months. And that's 

complete now. 

We have -- what we're looking at 

right now though is the external coworker 

model resulted in the possibility of using 

the neutron track film as a coworker -- as 

an approach to coworker for neutrons. But 

we also have -- in the external dosimetry 

TBD we talk about using neutron/photon 
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ratios. So we have to figure out which of 

those two is the most viable option to 

proceed forward. And that's what SENES ORAU 

is working on right now. They're trying to 

figure out whether the NTA film or the N/P 

ratio is the best approach. And once we 

nail that down, we should be read to meet 

and discuss paths forward.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

Thanks. David, Science?

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I don't have 

a lot of progress to report. In July of 

2013 NIOSH had -- we had been working the 

issue of DDREF in a large document that 

NIOSH had produced. NIOSH had solicited 

seven reviews and as of July had gotten five 

of them back. There were two more that were 

expected very shortly. I believe at least 

those five, and maybe all seven, were 

provided to ORAU SENES. SENES had been the 
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lead organization on drafting the document. 

And there's been a delay in preparing the 

response to that.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So 

the -- 

DR. NETON: I can update this a 

little bit. We did receive eventually six 

of the seven reviews. We never received the 

last review. They were all passed on to 

SENES. Unfortunately the lead author of the 

document passed away not too long ago. He 

was the one responsible -- responding to the 

comments. And SENES is working to address 

the issues as best they can and maybe find 

someone else to help address the comments. 

But that was unfortunate, his passing.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. What I 

was about to ask, is there another issue 

that the Science Work Group should take up?

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, so this 
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was -- I mean, this has gone on for quite a 

bit, and first, I'm very sorry to hear that. 

We had started with -- we had enumerated a 

list of topics to work on and thought that 

this would be -- this is one where there was 

more -- we were further ahead than -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. Yes.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- some of 

them. So, yes, I think the thing for us to 

do is to shift gears a bit.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. And I 

think there's -- again, since the budget 

situation is a little bit better and so 

forth, that maybe -- I don't want to stretch 

NIOSH too thin, but I think they ought to be 

able to start on at least one of the other 

priority issues. Yes. Good.

SEC, I think we've already talked 

about. I think we will be planning meetings 

of the SEC Issues Work Group between now and 
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the end of July. And I'm actually thinking 

of an in-person meeting, so if we can fit 

one in there.

While I've got this opportunity, 

there is something I actually discovered 

that -- I won't say it fell between the 

cracks, but I think it would be worthwhile 

looking at. It's been sort of deferred. And 

there's a second document, another document 

on some of the coworker models at Savannah 

River. I think it's an ORAU Report, 0055 I 

believe it is, that covers some other 

coworker models. And I'd like to -- if it's 

okay with the other Members of the Work 

Group that we task SC&A with doing a review 

on that. We had held off on that a little 

bit because we were sort of focused on the 

one person/one sample issue. And 

SC&A -- this is a Savannah River document. 

SC&A had not reviewed it pending sort of 
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outcome of that, but I think it would be 

helpful at least to look at that in terms of 

general issues. We don't need a detailed 

review on the one person/one sample part of 

it. But I'm afraid we're going to be in a 

position of holding up both our work, plus 

some possible resolutions, some of the 

Savannah River issues, doing that. 

MEMBER BEACH: Jim?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes?

MEMBER BEACH: Just curious, is 

that a good fit for the new OTIB-84, the 

uranium coworker model that just came out 

last year that we were talking about 

earlier, or does that not fit into this?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It fits into 

the general model. It's a little bit -- at 

least from looking at it. I mean, I 

discovered it in Tim's slides on my -- 

reading them on the airplane on the way 
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down. And then I had Internet access, so I 

was reading the report there. And then I 

emailed back and forth. So I think it 

compliments some of the other coworker 

models. 

MEMBER BEACH: So 84 does?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MEMBER BEACH: I just read about 

it in the Nuclear Metals.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Is that 

the -- 

DR. NETON: I hope I'm not 

mistaken, but SC&A may have reviewed OTIB55. Have they not? No? Americium/curium? 

Maybe I dreamt that then. Sorry.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, yes. No, 

no. It was confusing the way it was -- and 

I spent a fair amount of time going through 

your -- the DCAS website trying to figure 

out this whole -- what had gone on. And 
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then finally emailed Joe and Arjun about it. 

Is that clearer now, Jim? 

DR. NETON: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, okay. 

Because as I said, I was confused on trying 

to understand that.

Okay. Dave Kotelchuck?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Okay. 

Dose Reconstruction. As you remember from 

earlier meetings, we had to postpone our 

February meeting because of lack of quorum. 

And so, what we did to make up for that was 

to have a special two-day meeting, two-day 

telephone conference call on April 1st and 

2nd. And we finished the very last one of 

nine that had been -- set nine that's been 

hanging around. And we're trying very hard 

to plow our way through sets 10 through 13. 

We combined the sets and we're focusing 

first on the larger facilities. 
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So right now we have completed 

the Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, Los 

Alamos, FMPC, Portsmouth, Paducah. We have 

one left over from Hanford. We have four 

left over from Oak Ridge. But still we have 

a total of, I have to say, as you might have 

seen on the table that was put out -- in 

sets 10 through 13 there are a total of 82 

that we still have to finish from smaller 

sites. And we have planned -- I would have 

liked that we might have had a meeting 

earlier, but with summer and vacation coming 

on, we couldn't schedule anything for June. 

So we have a July 7th conference call. 

And we've tried to plow ahead 

with that. We haven't asked for further 

work on the blind dose reconstructions, six 

of which have been completed. And we're 

going to push very hard to get 10 through 13 

done so that we can -- in July and in the 
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fall so that we can write a report up soon.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

Questions for Dave?

Okay. Good. Procedure Reviews? 

Wanda?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, the 

Subcommittee met last -- earlier this month 

on April 16th. We are continuing to deal 

with a broad range of findings from a broad 

range of documents. We're anticipating a 

brief paper on localized skin exposures in 

concert with one of the overarching issues 

that we have on our list.

One of the discussions that we 

had this last time had to do with a concern 

that had been raised by our contractor about

one of the new distribution options that 

have been a part of version 5.7 of IREP. A 

little discussion there.

We are looking at several PERs. 
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PER-31 and the Y-12 TBD revision algorithm 

question there that's being worked. And 

PER-30 we were able to close. That was the 

Savannah River TBD. We had our last item on 

that closed out this time, as did PER-14. 

The construction trade worker PER is now 

wrapped up. 

We're anticipating a very brief 

report on some wording changes that might 

occur, or might not occur in IG-001, one of 

the very early administrative documents. 

We are looking at the findings 

report from OTIB-83. That's a distribution 

module of insoluble plutonium criteria for 

ease of selection in determining that. 

We have just about completed the 

last of the PER-20. That's the Blockson 

findings that we had. Just about done now. 

I think we have one outstanding. 

OTIB-34, internal dosimetry 
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coworker for X-10, I believe, still is 

anticipating some findings to be discussed 

at our next meeting. And we have still on 

our agenda PER-38. That's the Hooker TBD 

revision. Those are just about done as 

well.

One of the large outstanding 

questions is the Mound OTIB-54, fission and 

activation product assignment for internal 

beta and gamma analyses.

MR. KATZ: Wanda, I'm sorry, this 

is Ted. You're often trailing off as you 

talk and it's making it very hard to follow.

MEMBER MUNN: Okay. I was 

speaking to OTIB-54, fission and activation 

product assignment for internal beta and 

gamma analyses. There are several technical 

issues that are at issue here and we're in 

the process now of arranging a technical 

conference call next month I think on the 
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12th to see if can resolve those off line so 

that we can have something ready for us when 

we come to our next meeting.

We are looking at OTIB-34 that I 

think I mentioned before, the internal 

dosimetry for coworker data for X-10 that 

has some wording issues as well as the 

finding itself that we're going to be 

talking about next time.

If you've looked at SC&A's 

report, you've seen our sort of wrap-up that 

tells you that we have now addressed very 

close to 700; I think the -- that's actually 

in the 600s, individual findings. We've 

closed right at 80 percent of those. The 20 

percent that we have left is easily 

identifiable for you in our Board Survey 

Document. 

And also I think you probably 

will have some information from SC&A a 
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little later here about their upcoming PERs 

that we'll be expecting to see very shortly, 

I think one on Linde, one on Aliquippa 

Forge, and dosimetry to organ, the new ICD9.

We're scheduled for our next 

meeting to be in -- I'm sorry, I'm looking 

it up. Didn't have it in front of me. 

MR. KATZ: Well, Wanda, it's Ted. 

But we're actually needing to reschedule 

that, so that's okay. You don't need to 

look it up.

MEMBER MUNN: Okay. I was going 

to say that we were due in June, but it 

looks as though we're going to have to move 

that to July because of the accessibility of 

some of our Subcommittee Members. 

So that's a pretty broad stroke 

of where we are right now, where we expect 

to be.
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CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you. Any questions for Wanda? We do have 

some SC&A review issues on some procedures 

we'll get to in a little bit, but -- 

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I certainly do 

hope. I specifically did not mention those 

simply because it was my understanding that 

SC&A was going to address those, especially 

with respect to Work Groups that we hope are 

being constituted, things of that sort. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you.

Paul, TBD-6000?

MEMBER ZIEMER: TBD-6000 is 

scheduled to meet again in June. I believe 

it's June the 6th.

Sixteenth. Okay. Close enough. 

(Laughter.)

The focus there will be on 

Simonds Saw and Steel. We have a number of 
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findings that we’re still dealing with. I 

believe NIOSH has completed their reports on 

the last couple of findings. SC&A has them 

right now and they've promised to have their 

reviews complete for that June meeting. So 

I think we'll be at a point where -- there 

were seven findings on Simonds Saw and Steel 

and I believe we'll be in position to 

complete our dealing with those, hopefully. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Henry, I 

don't know if you're on the line for -- 

MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, I am. I'm 

here. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MEMBER ANDERSON: I have nothing 

to report. We sort of put on hold -- we 

have still a few open issues, but they're 

not critical. They're related not to SECs. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And, Dr. 

Lemen, Weldon Springs?
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Dick, are you -- 

MEMBER LEMEN: I have nothing to 

report on Weldon Springs.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

MEMBER LEMEN: Did you hear me?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we did. 

 Okay.

MEMBER BEACH: Jim, I have Worker 

Outreach, the last one.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I was just 

getting to it. Go ahead.

MEMBER BEACH: Were you going to 

do it?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, go ahead.

MEMBER BEACH: Oh, okay. So 

Worker Outreach. We haven't met since last 

year, however, we've been working on the 

LANL report evaluation. NIOSH completed it 

last -- in January this year and SC&A just 

completed their final draft and sent it over 
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to Nancy. The Work Group should have it in 

their hand. Well, half of the Work Group 

should have it in a week or two. And then 

we will go from there. Whether we schedule 

a face-to-face meeting or a telephone 

conference call, we'll decide at that point. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And what about 

doing it as a presentation at the Idaho 

meeting?

MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I guess we 

did talk about that.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MEMBER BEACH: Yes, we can do 

that, certainly.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I don't 

think we talked about it before this, but we 

MEMBER BEACH: We actually -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- thought 

about this.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- briefly 
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talked about it. So, yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, yes, we 

thought about that, but I think that -- 

because I think we're also at a juncture 

with Worker Outreach. We've sort of done 

these bigger reviews.

MEMBER BEACH: Yes, we did talk 

about -- we did a Rocky review, we've done a 

LANL review now, and we probably need to 

correlate the two. What did we learn and 

where are we going from here? 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Yes.

MEMBER BEACH: So, yes, I do 

think we talked about that and it's probably 

a good idea.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we did. 

Yes.

MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Okay. 

Did I miss any other Work Groups?
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Good. We also have some -- well, 

we have tasking issues to do and we also 

have some Work Group formation issues to do. 

There are a number of potential Work Groups 

that have mainly Site Profile Reviews that 

have sort of been in limbo as we've sort of 

dealt with some of the resource issues and 

enough time available and resources 

available for doing reviews or responding to 

reviews. 

Like that includes -- like Ames 

we had talked about at one point of doing a 

Work Group. More recently I think PPG came 

up as an issue out of the Procedures Work 

Group, but one that may be better -- more 

appropriately handled through forming a new 

Work Group for that. We have a completed 

Site Profile Review from SC&A on that. And 

I think the NIOSH work is sort of static on 

that, so the timing is good. 
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And I think actually going 

through something that was put together in 

terms of the Procedures Work Group. I think 

Y-12 we had sort of -- I don't know what 

happened to the -- I think we had a Work 

Group a long time ago and it disappeared, 

whatever.

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, you did have 

a -- yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MEMBER MUNN: We did.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It's so long 

ago it's not even listed anymore, Wanda. 

That's -- 

MEMBER MUNN: Well, we were 

there.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. So that 

may be.

So what I would do -- and we need 

to -- I talked to Stu and Ted earlier. We 
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sort of need to -- I don't want to get too 

many new Work Groups and then find that 

we're lagging in terms of ability to handle 

them in terms of staffing and so forth, but 

we will assign -- so if people that would -- 

are interested in being on Work Groups -- if 

you can -- from the Board, let me know. 

We'll also reach out to those that aren't on 

the -- couldn't make it today. Jim Lockey 

and so forth who may have interest also. 

And then sometime between now and our Board 

call, I will at least get some of the Work 

Groups started, depending on how we see the 

resource information.

So the list of -- I think the 

priority should probably be to start with 

the PPG, Pacific Proving Grounds, and then 

we'll look at Ames and Y-12 as those. And I 

somehow have a feeling that there's another 

Work Group in there that I've forgotten that 
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we had talked about and then sort of dropped 

along the way. So I'll look back through my 

emails and so forth. 

So if everyone who's 

interested -- if you're interested in a 

particular Work Group, particular site, let 

me know. Obviously, if you're conflicted on 

a site, don't express interest in that, and 

we'll do there.

The other document that goes 

along with this is one that I mentioned when 

Wanda was presenting. We have a document

from SC&A that Ted's distributed to 

everybody that has a listing of some -- 

these are TBDs that have been revised, but 

haven't been reviewed by SC&A. Many of them 

are site-specific ones. And then there's a 

list -- another list of TIB reports and 

procedures that have also not been reviewed. 

Again, most of those are site-specific ones. 
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And I think part of the issue is where is it 

best to handle those? Where do those need 

to go? Should those -- some of those are 

ongoing Work Groups. Some of those are Work 

Groups that aren't as active right now.

And, John, do you want to say 

anything to that? I think you put together 

the list.

MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John 

Stiver from SC&A. And, yes, I did put 

together the list just over the last few 

days.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

MR. STIVER: Before we get into 

that, there are a couple of things I kind of 

wanted to touch base on about to sort of 

follow on, maybe expand a little bit on the 

Fernald situation. 

One thing that we have started 

looking at is the Site Profile issues that 
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have kind of been on the back burner for a 

number of years while we were addressing 

SEC. And earlier in April Mark Rolfes from 

DCAS had sent us responses to our issues 

matrix that we put together back in October. 

And we had about 33, I believe, outstanding 

findings that date all the way back to 2006, 

and then also things that developed and were 

shifted from SEC to the Site Profile side 

during all the -- I think there were a total 

of 16 Work Group discussions. 

So we got some responses from 

DCAS, and actually we were able to close out 

in our last meeting, the teleconference 

meeting -- we were able to close out six of 

those which related to basically air 

sampling concerns regarding the thorium DWE 

model, which basically was kind of the basis 

for the SEC Class last summer. And so those 

were essentially off the books. So we're 
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now in a position where we're ready to 

respond to the Site Profile issues. 

And a lot of DCAS' responses were 

based on the TBD revisions that were 

produced this year from February up even 

into April. And there's still one 

outstanding TBD, the internal dose TBD that 

we have not provided yet. So once we get 

those and we've reviewed those, we'll be 

able to provide our responses and be ready 

for another Work Group meeting at some 

point.

The other thing I wanted to say 

was kind of regarding to the Uranium 

Refining AWE. We still have -- we submitted 

our report for Hooker back in March of 2013 

and none of those findings have yet been 

addressed in the Work Group environment. 

And there are also several Site Profiles, as 

you I believe had alluded to earlier, NUMAC, 
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WR Grace, and General Atomics, that would 

make sense to put in under the AWE Work 

Group.

And the only other thing was 

that -- well, actually that kind of segues 

into the document list. In a sense, I broke 

this up. This was a three-page document. I 

believe it was all distributed to everybody 

The first two pages relate to TBD 

revisions. These are also basically 

going -- 

MR. KATZ: John, can you talk -- 

you may need to raise the mic because you're 

tall -- 

MR. STIVER: Oh, okay. I'm 

sorry. Is this better?

MR. KATZ: That's much better. 

Thank you.

MR. STIVER: Okay. As Dr. Melius 

said, most of these are related to -- 
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actually, all of them are related to ongoing 

Site Profile and SEC Work Groups that are in 

existence. 

The first one is Technical Basis 

Document-30. This is the Exposure Matrix 

for the Adrian facility and Bridgeport Brass 

Company and Havens Laboratory. And this is 

the second revision. We've already looked 

at Revision 011. And some of you may 

remember, I believe even under the very 

first contract there were three kind of 

mini-Site Profile Reviews that we did for 

some of these AWE facilities, and Bridgeport 

was one of them. And we had resolved all of 

the issues based on Revision 1 that we had. 

And then Revision 2 came out. And at this 

point we're really not quite sure what all 

was done in Revision 2. It may be one of 

those situations where we just need to do a 

quick look at it. 
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I took a look at it last night, 

and I believe Revision 2 basically addresses 

changes in the site description category. 

So I don't know that that really has much of 

an impact on any technical issues regarding 

dose reconstruction. 

And the author was Mutty Sharfi. 

And I don't know if maybe DCAS -- somebody 

from DCAS could share with us what was 

actually done. We might be able to just 

strike this one from the record right off 

the bat. I don't know. 

Do you know anything about that?

MR. HINNEFELD: No, this is Stu, 

and we're not prepared today to say. I 

don't really know.

MR. STIVER: This is John again. 

Typically what we do is, when we see 

something like this, we'll do kind of a 

quick pre-review, take maybe a day or so, 
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look it over, decide whether it warrants a 

full review or not. And I guess that's 

where this one kind of stays at this point.

Next on the list is Fernald. As 

I mentioned, there are new TBDs released 

this year. Brad and Ted have already given 

us the go ahead to start looking at those 

and produce our responses to the Site 

Profile responses from NIOSH.

Next on the list was the gaseous 

diffusion plants, and there's a new TBD on 

occupational medical dose that came out

March of last year. And this was after the 

last Work Group meeting. And so this 

document has not been looked at in the Work 

Group environment or neither have we had a 

chance to look at it. So that's another one 

that we would recommend as a pre-review.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I mean, frankly 

it's hard to see that as much of a priority.
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MR. STIVER: Yeah, I mean, it's 

one of those things. It’s medical dose. 

It's not going to really probably amount to 

much.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, I mean, 

again, I think we're in a time of limited -- 

some care about our resources, so keeping 

some prioritization is helpful.

MR. STIVER: Sure. 

Mound. Josie had mentioned that 

there are new TBDs for all but external. 

And these revisions have not been discussed 

in the TBD, although they were released 

prior to the last meeting, which I believe 

was in November of 2013. 

Pantex. There were three new 

TBDs released for Pantex: occupational 

medical dose, environmental dose and 

internal dose. These date basically from

January to March of this year. And once 
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again, the last meeting was in of June of 

2013, prior to the TBD revisions. And so 

there's been no chance for the Work Group to 

discuss it or for us to look at that. 

And kind of in line with that, 

Clarksville-Medina, as you recall, was kind 

of subsumed under the SEC for Pantex. And 

we had reviewed Technical Basis-39, Rev 2, 

for the Clarksville-Medina and had seven 

outstanding findings on that. 

Now, the fact that this new 

revision came up probably has more to do 

with -- you know, kind of addressed the SEC 

issues. And so a lot of those findings may 

not even be moot at this point. So we would 

probably like to get a response from NIOSH, 

or at least we could work offline on that 

and we could look at it ourselves. So I 

don't see that being a big problem.

TBD-6000, Appendix C, for Dow 
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Chemical was released April of this year. 

Appendix R for Alcoa, Aluminum Company of 

America, was released in March. Neither of 

these have currently been placed into TBD6000 Work Group at this point.

As far as the Uranium Refining 

AWEs, there's only one new document there 

for DuPont Deepwater. And I know some of 

you remember that we had several findings in 

abeyance waiting on this revision. So this 

revision is now available. And so we'd be 

in a position to look at those findings the 

next Work Group meeting.

Finally, as far as TBDs go, we 

have Weldon Spring. All sections revised 

and updated in 2013. And this is a 

situation where the Work Group has kind of 

been dormant for a while after the SEC was 

voted on in Denver in 2012. Nothing really 

has happened since then, but I guess this 
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might be an opportunity for the Work Group 

to take another look at what's going on on 

the Site Profile side of the house.

Finally, TIBs and Reports and 

Procedures. There are seven new ones. All 

but two fall into existing Work Groups. 

That would be the Santa Susana internal 

coworker data that we talked about a little 

bit earlier, the model for that. 

Another is OTIB-64. This is 

something that came up in the April DRSE 

meeting and was discussed there. And this, 

the coworker external dosimetry data for Y12. And this is a situation, once again, 

where there isn't a Work Group established. 

Possibly this could be subsumed into PRSC or 

possibly under the Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee, unless the Board wishes to go 

ahead and reestablish the Y-12 Group.

Four others relate to Savannah 
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River and Santa Susana, as I mentioned 

before. This is OTIB-80 and OTIB-81. OTIB84 was -- excuse me, that would have been 

RPRT-62, which is the Response for 

Dosimeters to Aged Fission Products in Tank 

Farm Environment at Savannah River. So the 

Savannah River Site TBDs obviously would be 

tasked, if they were to be tasked, under 

that existing Work Group.

And OTIB-84, Nuclear Metals, 

which was discussed earlier today, we have 

not obviously had a chance to look at that. 

And so that's something that is probably an 

open agenda item for a future date.

And let's see, the only one that 

really was not site-specific is RPRT-63, 

which is ICRP 116, External Dose Conversion 

Factors. And this was produced back in 

November of 2013. And this is something that 

would be, at least in SC&A's view, something 
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that the PRSC might want to take a closer 

look at as a pre-review where we could just 

take a quick look and come back with a 

response. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What is that 

model?

MR. HINNEFELD: ICRP 116 is a 

publication of new external dose conversion 

factors as a function of organ. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MR. HINNEFELD: It expands on the 

previous list. The previous list is the one 

that we incorporate into our dose conversion 

converting badge dose into organ dose.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Is it a 

significant change, or -- I mean, I -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: It could, in 

areas, be very significant. It provides for 

the first time gender-specific DCFs and it 

adds previously -- organs that previously 
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did not have a DCF. And so we would use a 

nearby substitute.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. 

MR. HINNEFELD: It could 

conceivably be very significant.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So we should 

look at it?

MR. HINNEFELD: Likely.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. Okay. 

We won't change it. 

MR. STIVER: So really that's the 

extent of our list at this time.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

John. Yeah, my suggestion, I mean, is that 

since many of the Board Members are just 

seeing this report, much of this is really, 

I think, up to the individual Work Group 

chairs to sort of look at and see where do 

these -- I don't know where some of these 

fit into the issues, for example, at 
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Savannah River. We're going to be talking 

about that more later, but seems to me 

there's lots of issues with Savannah River 

and I want to keep some prioritization on 

what we can handle and what's important for 

that. 

Some of these other sites, let's 

get maybe the Work Groups formed, if they're 

not formed, or get on their table. But at 

the same time, I want to keep in mind some 

of the resources issues also.

MR. STIVER: Oh, absolutely.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So let's handle 

that. And we'll get that out to the Work 

Group chairs that aren't here. Does that 

makes sense to everybody on that?

And I think we should go ahead 

and task the ICRP 116, if I remember right.

Okay. Wanda, is that okay with 

you?
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MEMBER MUNN: Yes, that's okay 

with me. 

DR. NETON: I would just suggest 

that ICRP 116 was really just a review of 

the document and how it compares to what 

we're currently doing. There was no 

decisions made in that document. It was 

just a flat-out comparison of the new values 

versus what we have, what we've been using. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So is it used 

or -- 

DR. NETON: No, not used at all. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay.

DR. NETON: It's just a 

preliminary comparison to see what we might 

be doing.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so are you 

going to -- what's your next step? I'm just 

trying to understand this. I'm sorry. 

DR. NETON: Well, we're going to 
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have to revise documents in accordance with 

the review. But we're not doing that just 

yet. There's still some preliminary steps we 

have to take before we would implement ICRP 

116. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay.

DR. NETON: There are some 

different distributions that we'll be 

enacting that currently aren't there, and so 

there will be some upgrades made to the 

software that generates the distributions, 

at least the DCF distributions.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So you're 

recommending we wait on that? You're 

overruling the head of the program here. 

DR. NETON: Well, I'm just -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, I'm 

kidding. I'm kidding. What's the right 

timing on this, I don't know, but -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Jim's point 
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is correct in that we've not embarked on 

changing anything. So nothing in ICRP 116, 

yet, is changing anything that we're doing. 

It's a comparison, like they said, a report 

of what the new report is compared to the 

old one, the old ICRP list. And so it's 

sort of to inform us about what are we 

facing when we go to implement 116, what 

exactly is the issue that we're facing? So 

that's kind of what it set the stage for. 

But we're not doing anything today with ICRP 

116 DCFs.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So you 

would then do that piecemeal or as a whole 

update?

MR. HINNEFELD: We would hope to 

do it all at one time.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MR. HINNEFELD: So that would be 

a fairly long implementation, or a fairly 
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complicated implementation. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Jim?

DR. NETON: Well, that's exactly 

right. I mean, I think if we're going to do 

it, we would implement what made sense. 

Preliminary analysis showed that some organs 

will go down, some will go up. It's not 

across the board change, so it wouldn't be 

claimant-favorable to everybody, just maybe 

a few cases. The most significant change 

that I can remember now is a prostate gland 

with a DCF where we've been using a 

surrogate.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

DR. NETON: Prostate doses will 

likely go way down. But we've not 

implemented it yet. We will do it one shot. 

There are some preliminary changes we need 

to make though to get these distributions 

put into the software. These distributions 
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tend to be fairly complex in shape. They're 

not amenable to some of the more simple 

distributions we've used, like triangular or 

even a Weibull distribution. 

So, again, there's nothing to be 

gained other than to say, yes, this is how 

ICRP 116 compares to ICRP 74, which is what 

we're using. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: John, you had 

a -- 

MEMBER POSTON: I'm trying to 

understand the conversation. Were you 

talking about forming a Work Group for this?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. No, this 

would be part of the Procedures Work Group. 

And I guess I to some extent misunderstood 

what the document was, thinking that it was 

the implementation, which made sense for the 

Procedures -- 

MEMBER POSTON: Well, it's likely 
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that the error bars on the two sets of 

calculations are within each other. So the 

fact that there are additional organs is 

important to consider.

But in another way of looking at 

it, it's like changing the horse in the 

middle of the stream. I mean, are we going 

to start this operation all over again and 

spend the next ten years spending federal 

money to reevaluate all the doses? 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. No, the 

precedent has been, if it's favorable to the 

claimant, to go back. If it's not 

favorable, not to go back. Is that a fair 

statement? And does it get better dose 

reconstruction? I mean, I think it needs 

careful review. I don't want to try to -- 

MEMBER POSTON: Well, I just have 

trouble when people talk about precise 

science. We're not doing precise science, 
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and don't anybody believe that if you hear 

it. So what I'm saying is the dose 

conversion factors are calculated values 

based on a series of assumptions. And I 

suspect the calculated values -- the error 

bars on those two sets of data overlap each 

other so that there's not much need to 

change. But that's one man's opinion.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Well, but 

I also think that's a consideration that 

ought to be taken into account in 

implementing that. And to the extent that 

it's decided to implement, the Board would 

have input in that, but it's not 

predetermined. And I don't think DCAS has 

determined what they're going to do yet. 

And so my sense is that now is not the time 

to review it. Let's give some time to think 

about it and so forth. And, again, not to 

criticize John Stiver for bringing it up. I 
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think it's -- 

MEMBER POSTON: I think it's 

appropriate that we know the result.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah. 

MEMBER BEACH: Jim, I have a 

question.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Josie?

MEMBER BEACH: So I understand we 

need time to look at this list. I guess I'm 

wondering how will we prioritize these. I 

know I'm waiting for Site Profile Reviews 

for Mound, so I would jump in and say let's 

get those done. But are we going to just put 

it -- I mean, who's going to decide what's 

important?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What I suggest 

we do is that before we do these assignments 

we talk at our next Board call.

MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Given the 
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amount of potential work involved. I think 

that's the only way fair of doing it. And 

we need input from DCAS and everyone 

involved. Is that satisfactory?

MEMBER MUNN: Yeah, that would 

certainly be helpful for me to have more 

feedback from more resources.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Good. 

Okay. Any other Board business?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Then I 

think we have an extended break and come 

back at 4:15.

Yeah, why don't we come back at 4 

o’clock, given the number of slides that Tim 

has. Unless I can get LaVon to do a 

revision, the five-slide version. Okay. So 

we'll reconvene at 4 o’clock.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 3:06 p.m. and 
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resumed at 4:04 p.m.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Welcome, 

everybody. We're going to get started on 

the Savannah River portion of our Board 

meeting today and start off. I believe Tim 

Taulbee is going to make a presentation on 

behalf of NIOSH. Tim?

DR. TAULBEE: Thank you, Dr. 

Melius. Can everybody hear me okay, or 

should I make some adjustments? Get closer? 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, you need 

to be very close to this mic.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Is this 

better?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that's 

much better.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. 

MEMBER MUNN: You sound fine on 

the phone, Tim.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Great. 
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Thank you. I'll try and keep this close to 

the mic.

Thank you, everybody, for 

allowing me this opportunity to talk to you 

and give you a status update on the Savannah 

River Special Exposure Cohort Petition 

Evaluation. I want to thank some of my 

colleagues who have helped put this together 

for me. This would be Mike Mahathy, the 

lead from the ORAU Team. Matt Arno, Liz 

Brackett and Nancy Chalmers have helped us 

all with some of the data here that I'm 

going to be presenting to you today.

So a little bit of an overview of 

what I plan on talking about. There are 

some key issues that are in front of the 

Work Group that we are still trying to 

address and close out. These are thorium 

from October 1972 to 2007, neptunium from 

1972 to 1989, and then construction trades 
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workers. Particularly what we're looking at 

is subcontractors monitoring data and how 

complete those records are. So these are 

the three key areas that I plan on 

addressing today.

So to start with the thorium, 

just to recap a little bit, back in December 

of 2012 I gave a presentation before the 

Board on ER Addendum No. 3. And we talked 

about the thorium and the monitoring data 

that we were proposing at the time. So I 

want to recap some of this to you so that 

when I talk about the status, you'll get a 

more cohesive-type of understanding.

If you look at the unencapsulated 

thorium inventory on site, and so this would 

be the thorium that's not in the basins or 

encapsulated fuel. This is the particular 

diagram from 1955 through 2010. And you'll 

see that by 1972 most of the thorium was 
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offsite. It went from 120,000 kilograms 

down to what looks like on this graph down 

to about zero. Well, it's not zero. 

If you look at the particular 

first tick here, this particular point here 

would be 5,000 kilograms. And if you blow 

up that particular portion five times, 

effectively, or look at one-fifth of it, 

that's what you get for the inset graph 

here. This is from zero to 1,000. And you 

can see that there is some thorium inventory 

on the site, although it does drop very low 

in the late 1980s. 

And to put this into context, 

earlier today my colleague Dr. Glover was 

talking about NMI and he was looking at 

25,000 kilograms. So 25,000 would be here, 

around this first tick right here, across 

there. And you can see we're looking at 

one-one hundredth of the thorium inventory 
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compared to NMI in this modern time period.

So where was the thorium? 

Predominantly it was in 773-A. And here you 

can see the actual inventories. And it's 

looking around 100 kilograms-type of 

scenario. So, again, we're looking at about 

one-one hundredth compared to some of the 

other sites. Other areas where 

there was thorium work. And you see even 

lower quantities of four kilograms or five 

kilograms. And this really isn't much mass 

of thorium. If you take 100 kilograms, you 

could fill it in five two-liter bottles and 

set it on a table. So you're really looking 

at a very small inventory, physical 

inventory of this thorium. The bulk of it, 

as you see here from this particular graph, 

is encapsulated out in the basin. So that's 

where the 6,000 kilograms-type of materials 

are.
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So what did Savannah River do 

with this thorium? What were they using it 

for? It was used as a surrogate in multiple 

research efforts. Thorium is a very good 

stand-in for plutonium, and so this is what 

they were using it for. It was safer. It 

had lower specific activity. They didn't 

have to effectively massively contaminate 

glove boxes. They could do the work with 

the thorium. Then they could clean it up 

and do other testing. They used it for 

plutonium heat sources. They used it for 

waste vitrification studies.

1977 to 1980 there was the 

Alternate Fuel Cycle Technology Program and 

the Thorium Fuel Cycle Technology Program. 

This past August, SC&A and NIOSH conducted 

some interviews of workers who participated 

in these programs. And one of the things 

from the workers, they talked about using 
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small quantities, where they would check it 

out from a central inventory source lab 

there in 773-A, go to their labs and use 

gram quantities or tens of grams-type of 

quantities. So these were all very small 

research-oriented activities that were being 

done. And so this is the work that was 

going on. So it's small, research scaletype of activities that were going on with 

this relatively small quantity of thorium.

So what do we have for monitoring 

data? Well, there's no specific thorium 

bioassay that we could find identified in 

people's records. But what we do have is 

what's called an alternate, or what I'm 

calling an alternate bioassay methodology. 

A large number of workers in 773-

A were monitored for americium, curium and 

californium. This is one of the main 

activities that was going on in that 
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particular lab. A review of the methodology 

indicated that the thorium would come 

through in this analysis. So a worker would 

leave a urine sample and the plutonium, the 

uranium and the neptunium would be stripped 

out and you were left with americium, curium 

and californium. So what effectively we had 

was a gross alpha urinalysis for these

particular three radionuclides.

Well, the thorium would come 

through as well, as well as einsteinium and 

berkelium. The site didn't consider the 

thorium to be a major hazard because the 

exposures were very low when they were 

looking at background-type of levels. So 

they never made an effort to extract it. So 

effectively what we have is a gross alpha 

urinalysis method for thorium amongst these 

workers. 

Well, who was monitored using 
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this particular methodology? And from here 

we look at the bioassay control procedures. 

Who was supposed to be monitored by 

americium, curium and californium? And for 

that, I'd look at this particular column 

here. It's very difficult to read, I 

apologize. But if you go down this 

particular column, the first people that you 

see is 221-F. These are people in the 

sample aisles, pulling samples as these 

targets were being dissolved. And from 772-

F, which was the analytical laboratory for 

the site. 

Going farther down on this 

particular column, you'll see another number 

two here -- two samples per year, by the way 

-- for 773-A. And the people here in this 

particular group, this would be Category V, 

were analytical chemistry, high-level caves, 

building services, radiation control and 
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maintenance personnel in 773-A. These are 

the people that would be exposed to thorium 

doing this low-level research that I was 

discussing. They work in the analytical 

chemistry division. Some of them worked in 

the high-level caves working on the Elk 

River fuel. And so these people were 

actually monitored with this other alternate 

bioassay method.

The next group down there is the 

selected clerical and supervisory personnel. 

And you'll see they’re monitored once per 

year instead of twice per year. So the 

monitoring frequency is based upon the 

potential magnitude of the exposure, which 

is indicative of a reasonable radiation 

control program.

There's another group here that 

I've highlighted that wasn't monitored, and 

this would be the reactor engineering group. 
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The reason that they wouldn't have been 

monitored, the reactors at Savannah River, 

in order to do the fuel core loadings, there 

was a lot of neutronics calculations that 

had to be done. These workers weren't 

people that worked with thorium directly. 

They weren't doing any of the dissolving 

studies. That was analytical chemistry. So 

you wouldn't expect these particular workers 

to be exposed, and so they weren't monitored 

as well.

One other thing I wanted to point 

out here is this is routine monitoring, and 

you'll notice here it says excluding 

construction division. Okay? So this is 

the routine monitoring people.

MR. KATZ: Excuse me. There's 

someone on the phone who hasn't muted their 

phone, or maybe you just don't realize that. 

Everyone on the phone should mute their 
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phone at this point. And if you don't have 

a mute button, press * and then six to mute 

your phone, and that way you won't be 

interrupting the meeting. Thank you.

DR. TAULBEE: Thanks, Ted. And 

so now how were construction division 

employees then monitored? When you look at 

this same procedure, you'll see the routine 

urine samples for mixed fission products, 

one sample per year, or when terminating. 

Tritium was done based upon the area that 

you were working in, if you were working in 

the tritium facilities or the reactors. 

Plutonium, one sample every three years and 

when terminating. And other radionuclides 

as specified by area health physics in 

construction job plans. So there wasn't any 

routine monitoring for 

americium/curium/californium for 

construction trades workers.
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(Technical difficulties.)

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 4:13 p.m. and 

resumed at 4:17 p.m.)

MR. KATZ: Okay. It looks like 

we're back to the presentation now. So if 

everybody can mute their phones, that would 

be great. Thank you.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. How far do 

you want me to repeat, or just continue on?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just continue.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. All right. 

Well, if we look at how construction trades 

workers were monitored for these other 

radionuclides, it was specified in the Area 

Health Physics Construction Job Plan. So 

there wasn't any routine monitoring of 

construction trades workers for this 

particular exotic radionuclide of americium, 

curium, californium or thorium. It would be 
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specified in their job plans.

So what we proposed for dose 

reconstruction from the 1972 to 1989 time 

period was to use this americium-curiumcalifornium-thorium bioassay result to 

reconstruct the thorium doses. And the 

methodology we have proposed to do this is, 

for a particular cancer, NIOSH will use 

which of the four radionuclides that results 

in the highest dose to that organ of 

interest. Since we can't distinguish this 

gross alpha analysis between the four 

radionuclides, we would pick the one that 

gave the highest dose. 

So one of the things we wanted to 

do was compare construction trades workers 

and non-construction trades workers. And so 

we did this comparison, this bioassay

comparison. And so first we took all of the 

urine bioassay samples and we stratified 
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them amongst construction trades and nonconstruction trades. And a third group fell 

out, and this was called the unknowns, 

effectively. So these were people that we 

couldn't place into one group or the other.

And so here's a table of the 

urine bioassay that we have for this exotic 

radionuclide, americium-curium-californiumthorium. And I'll focus on one particular 

year just to give an example here. And if 

you look at the 1978 -- and I'll start over 

for construction trades workers -- there are 

66 bioassay samples for construction trades 

worker to this americium, curium, 

californium and thorium distributed amongst 

49 particular workers. The one person-one 

statistic grouping would be an individual 

worker associated with this particular 

bioassay. 

Non-construction trades workers, 
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there's 232 distributed amongst 171 workers. 

And you can see the difference between the 

non-constructions and the non-construction 

trades plus unknowns is eight. And so in 

this particular case, for this year, there 

were unknowns that we couldn't identify as 

one or the other.

This is the two coworker models 

that we came out with, one using just 

construction trades workers, one using nonconstruction trades workers, and actually 

all monitored workers as well. And the all 

monitored workers and non-construction 

trades tended to overlap. You'll see 

construction trades workers here are 

slightly higher. 

One of the things I want to point 

out here is the dotted lines surrounding 

this particular bioassay, this coworker 

model. These lines up in here, this is the 
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uncertainty that we have associated with 

this coworker model. And so this would be 

the 95th percentile. And what you can see 

is that there's very large uncertainty 

associated with this coworker model. 

And this is what Dr. Neton was 

talking about earlier today. If you use the 

95th percentile here, where his thoughts 

are, that you are encompassing the 

unmonitored workers who this would be 

applied to. 

The other take-home point that I 

want everybody to at least notice is back in 

the 1960s, if you look at the data, it's 

much higher. In fact, about an order of 

magnitude compared to when you get into the 

'70s and '80s as far as the exposures that 

were experienced by this workforce. 

So in looking at construction 

trades workers and the monitoring in this 
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time period of '72 to '89, we have 1,600 

bioassay samples that we've identified as 

construction trades workers for this 

particular radionuclide set. For nonconstruction trades workers, there's 7,573. 

There's 422 that we haven't been able to 

place in one group or the other. 

If you recall, construction 

trades workers were not routinely monitored. 

They were monitored based upon their job 

plans. And so one of the things that we 

found about this is that the construction 

job plans were apparently indicating some 

monitoring for americium-curium-californium 

depending upon their work. Otherwise, we 

wouldn't have 1,600 samples for this 

particular workforce. And this is 

distributed amongst almost 900 construction 

trades workers. So that's the 1972 to 1989 

time period.
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Next I want to focus on the 1990 

to 2007 time period. And originally what we 

proposed in December of 2012 was to use the 

whole body counts to bound the thorium 

exposures. And although bounding, the 

assignment of the whole body count missed 

dose would result in some significant doses 

higher than what this coworker model 

actually was predicting for the earlier time 

period, which don't really seem possible 

given the radiological controls that were in 

place at the time, nor the work being 

conducted. 

This falls back on those 

interviews that we conducted with the 

researchers who were conducting some of 

these small-level research.

 And just given the quantities, 

the low-source inventory that they were 

working with and the controls that they were 
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using, of using a fume hood and using small 

samples, it just didn't seem like these 80-

rem-type of doses were really feasible or 

plausible. 

And so what we've changed to is a 

proposal to use the air sample concentration 

of 2e to the minus 13th as a maximum 

potential exposure. And this is based upon 

ten percent of the plutonium DAC. This is 

what the alpha activity in the air was 

controlled to in 773-A.

So kind of a summary of the 

thorium here that I want to go through. 

Remember, it's a very low unencapsulated 

inventory. We're looking at one-one 

hundredth, one-one thousandth-type of levels 

compared to what we heard Sam talk about 

earlier at NMI. Minimal use in certain 

defined locations. Mostly 773-A. 

Knowledge of the process. This 
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morning you heard where we were recommending 

an SEC where we weren't sure how the thorium 

was being used. Here we know. We've 

interviewed workers that were working with 

it. We know it was used as a surrogate in 

different time periods. 

And in addition, we have this 

alternate bioassay method from 1972 to 1989, 

which is effectively a gross alpha, that 

includes thorium. The doses are reasonable. 

 1990 to 2007 we have a Compliant 

Radiological Control Program. The air is 

controlled to less than 2e to the minus 13. 

Radiological controls in place at the time 

were procedures, routine monitoring, daily, 

weekly, of the workplace, survey data. Air 

monitoring data is available in electronic 

format. 

So currently what we're 

addressing with the Work Group and with SC&A 
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is this use of the ten percent derived air 

concentration. I will report back to the 

Work Group on this outlining our entire 

methodology from this modern time period. I 

went through it in a presentation-style back 

in February with the Work Group, but we're 

going to formalize that and put it into a 

report. 

Next we're also comparing the 

bioassay of workers known to have worked 

with thorium. We're going to take their 

americium-curium-californium, calculate 

their dose and compare that to the coworker 

model as if they weren't monitored. 

SC&A identified some high 

variability amongst some of the positive 

results of the americium-curium-californium. 

And this is another area that we're 

following up on. And of, for example, 26 

particular workers, 21 of them actually had 
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DTPA associated with it. So this explains 

the high variability that we were seeing. 

And that's a chelation agent designed to get 

it out of the body faster. So the other 

five we are following up on, and we'll be 

issuing a report on this.

And the final thing that we're 

working on is developing a thoron exposure 

model. We are going to be using the exhaust 

from Tank 15, which is one of the waste 

tanks containing thorium, as a bounding 

scenario. Savannah River Site actually has 

a lot of air sample data which has 6-hour 

and 24-hour count data. And so we could use 

that to actually show what the thoron 

concentrations are in the buildings and then 

compare that to that particular tank. So 

that's our update for thorium.

Next I want to shift gears here 

and go to neptunium exposures at the 
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Savannah River Site. The overall goal of 

neptunium at SRS was different than most of 

the other sites. The goal was produce 

plutonium-238 for use in heat sources for 

space projects: Galileo, Cassini, et cetera. 

Production actually started in 

1961 and ran through July of 1984. And the 

main processes were manufacturing neptuniumaluminum targets, irradiating these targets 

in the reactors and then the chemical 

separation of the plutonium-238 from the 

neptunium.

The photograph shown here in this 

particular slide is a female glove box 

worker working with neptunium on the 

neptunium billet line in 1978.

So to go through the basic flow 

of neptunium here on the Savannah River 

Site, if you start within that neptunium 

nitrate in the 221-H canyon frames -- and 
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the reason that I'm starting there is time 

period evaluation is 1972. This has been 

going on for ten years prior to the time 

period that we're actually showing here.

The neptunium nitrate from the 

frames is sent to the HB line where it's 

converted to neptunium oxide. The neptunium 

oxide is then loaded or sent to 235-F where 

it's loaded into aluminum billets. The 

aluminum billets are then sent to 321-M 

where the billets are extruded into target 

tubes. The target tubes are sent to each of 

the reactors for irradiation. After they're 

irradiated, the tubes are cooled and then 

sent back to the canyons where they're 

dissolved in the frames and the whole cycle 

starts again.

So this is the whole loop that's going on 

with neptunium at the Savannah River Site.

One thing that I want to focus 
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here on, if you look at the main areas of 

potential exposure, you're looking at the HB 

line during the conversion of neptunium 

nitrate to neptunium oxide. The loading of 

neptunium oxide is a powder into the 

aluminum billets. This is the two main areas 

where neptunium is unencapsulated. 

Technically, leaving 235-F, all of the 

neptunium was encapsulated when it came over 

here to 232-M. 

During the extrusion process it 

occasionally became unencapsulated. Things 

didn't go quite right, or during one of the 

tests something failed, and the neptunium 

would then be sent back. So the two main 

areas of potential exposure are the HB line, 

235-F. There is some potential for exposure 

here in 321-M. By the time it left 321-M, 

it went to the reactors. It was 

encapsulated.
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So let me focus on the HB line 

with the conversion of neptunium nitrate to 

neptunium oxide. The SRS Work Group 

actually toured this particular facility in 

2010. There are two sources this neptunium 

nitrate coming in from the site. I 

discussed the frames one earlier. That 

makes up 75 percent roughly. 

(Technical difficulties.)

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 4:29 p.m. and 

resumed at 4:32 p.m.)

MR. KATZ: Hello, can you hear us 

here at the conference?

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, we can hear

you.

MR. KATZ: Okay. We're back in 

business again. Thank you.

MEMBER MUNN: Yes, thank you for 

bringing us back. Are we still on Live 
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Meeting?

MR. KATZ: Yes, we're still 

online. If we can all mute our phones so we 

can get going, that would be great.

MEMBER MUNN: All right. Thank 

you.

MR. KATZ: Thank you.

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So picking 

up where I was, about 23 percent of the 

neptunium coming into the processing stream 

came from the HM process and about 74 

percent came from the frames. And that was 

the dissolving of the Mark-53 neptunium 

targets. 

So, as I mentioned, the neptunium 

oxide was sent to 235-F. And so this is a 

diagram, a crude diagram of the first floor 

of 235-F. And the room that I want to focus 

here on is legend number five here. This is 

the neptunium billet line. There's actually 
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two sides to this line. The lower side here 

is the actual operations or production side. 

The back side is what's called the 

maintenance side. About 85 to 90 percent of 

the work is on this side of the line and 

about 10 to 15 percent on the back side of 

the line.

This other area over here is 

what's the Plutonium Fuel Fabrication 

Facility, or PuFF. And then down here is 

PEF, the Plutonium Experimental Facility. 

Over here at Number 14 is the men's change 

room. And Number 18 here is the women's 

change room. So this is all the hot side of 

the building and in order to get there you 

had to go through the change rooms in order 

to dress out into those facilities.

This is the actual neptunium 

billet glove box line. These are workers. 

1980 is when this photo was taken. And you 
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can see that there's six workers there, or 

four workers actually. And two of them look 

like supervisors that are just not hands in 

the gloves, they're more watching the work 

that's going on. And so this is on the 

production side. 

This is the maintenance side. 

This is the back side of that particular 

glove box line. And what you'll notice here 

from this 1976 photo is these are the 

aluminum billets that are sitting here on 

the floor. Many of you might think of 

billets, thinking of Fernald, where you've 

got big large heavy uranium or thorium-type 

of billets. These are aluminum, aluminum 

and neptunium combined. So they're actually 

fairly light. You can actually pick them up 

type of scenario. 

So some of the observations of 

this 235 glove box line is it's relatively 
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small. We're looking at tens of workers, not 

hundreds. This is that particular line. 

You couldn't fit 100 people into that 

particular room. It's a regulated radiation 

area. Supervisors are wearing lab coats and 

shoe covers. Operators are wearing 

regulated clothing and they all had on 

neutron dosimeters. 

One of the things I showed the 

Work Group was their shadow shields, because 

of high gamma dose rates associated with 

this glove box. The billets are bagged. 

You saw them sitting there on the floor to 

go out to 321-M or to go to storage, for 

eventually going to 321-M.

There is routine air monitoring. 

This top line here is the production side 

and it's Room 107-A. And so there's daily 

monitoring. There's two other areas in 

there that were monitored on a weekly basis. 
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The back side is the maintenance line. This 

is 107-D. Again, daily air sampling data. 

I mentioned these billets are hot 

as far as radioactivity. If you look at 

some of these dose rates, at three inches 

you're looking at 700 millirem per hour 

photons and 10 millirem per hour neutrons. 

So these things are actually rather 

radioactive. They fixed alpha contamination 

and they were surveying to make sure there 

was less than 3,000 dpm from a fixed alpha 

contamination standpoint.

You also notice that this is 

August of 1980, so over this time period 

you're looking at the production of around 

seven to ten billets-type of time frame. 

Sometimes you'll see production of these 

billets up to 15 per month-type of scenario.

So the billets coming out of 235-

F are bagged. They're sent to 321-M. At 
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321-M, they're received. The billets are 

surveyed, they're helium leak checked, 

they're outgassed, they're preheated and 

then they're extruded into the long thin 

tubes. And then the tubes are surveyed 

before going to the reactors. 

How do we know these billets are 

surveyed? Here's an example of the 

radiation survey log sheets associated with 

the neptunium billets. Four neptunium 

billets from 235-F, 700 millirem per hour at 

three inches, 8 millirem per hour at three 

inches, corresponding to those previous 

measurements I showed you. By the way, this 

is 1972. Those other ones are 1980. 

These are the dose rates at 18 

inches. Less than ten dpm alpha and less 

than ten counts per minute beta-gamma 

smearable on the billets. So it's fixed 

alpha contamination, but you've also got 
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where they're checking for the loose 

contamination.

Number 3 billet was surveyed on 

the end, 1,500 dpm alpha, less than 10 dpm 

alpha smearable. So these are contained 

coming out of 235-F.

This is the actual extrusion 

press in 321-M. This particular picture is 

showing uranium work at the time, which was 

its dominant use, but there were times when 

they extruded neptunium billets and 

plutonium billets. 

This is a billet being forced 

into the extrusion die and then coming out 

the other end. You have this long thin tube 

where the neptunium is encased within that 

tube. It's being sandwiched between 

aluminum. 

The tubes are then surveyed 

again. This particular example is 12 
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neptunium tubes shipped to 105-P reactor, 

less than ten dpm alpha, less than ten 

counts per minute beta-gamma on the exterior 

surfaces.

So if everything went right in 

the particular process of the extrusion, 

there was no alpha loose activity such that 

workers could be exposed to. If things went 

wrong, they saw alpha activity and they 

would send it back to the particular place. 

Typically, the tubes were sent back to the 

canyons to be dissolved, whereas the 

billets, if they failed a leak check, they 

would be sent back to 235-F.

So the personal monitoring 

dosimeters are required to be worn in the 

regulated areas. These high dose rates, 

people were wearing these dosimeters around 

there. In fact, many of the incident 

reports that we typically read are involving 
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internal contamination where something went 

wrong. There's incident reports of 

overexposure from external, of people being 

around too many of these billets at a time 

and exceeding a monthly type of a limit. 

Interviews with workers indicated 

that there was a workforce swap-out where 

people would be coming up on their annual 

limit as far as external radiation and they 

were taken out of the area and sent to a 

colder area and other workers brought in to 

finish out the production lines.

This has been confirmed also 

within NOCTS. If you look people's claimant 

files, you'll see that they indicated that 

in their CATIs, interviews of being limited 

in the workplace. This is one of the 

examples, one of the places this happened 

where they were then taken out of the work 

area.
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The bioassay associated with 

this -- and this is something that's unique 

and different in that the neptunium 

analysis, '71 to '76 time frame, neptunium 

analysis are performed on samples from 

personnel designated by area health physics 

when plutonium analysis are positive. 

So 1961 to 1970 time frame, we 

have a lot of neptunium bioassay. 1970 

through 1989, we actually don't have a lot 

of neptunium bioassay. We have some. And 

then it picks up again in the post-1990 time 

period. And the reason was is they were 

triggering off of the plutonium 

contamination associated with the neptunium, 

not neptunium directly. This changed for 

one Work Group, in 1978, where neptunium 

urinalysis was reinstated for the people in 

235-F. 

So why were they triggering off 
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of the plutonium? Why weren't they just 

doing the neptunium analysis? Well, to give 

an example here, this is plutonium 

contamination and neptunium oxide. And this 

is weight percent. And so let me just pick 

March 1974 here of 0.18 weight percent of 

plutonium in this particular batch of 

neptunium oxide going to 235-F. So the 

neptunium is 99.82 percent pure. It's 0.18 

percent plutonium contaminated. Why is the 

plutonium contamination important? Due to 

specific activity.

Plutonium-238 has a specific 

activity of 17.1 curies per gram. 

Neptunium's specific activity is 0.00069 

curies per gram. So that means at 99.9 

percent pure neptunium you have a 25-to-1 

ratio of plutonium alphas to neptunium 

alphas. So if you have a sample, a smear 

sample or a glove box sample that's 26 dpm, 
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25 of them are plutonium-238, one is 

neptunium. So from a bioassay standpoint, 

this was actually a more sensitive method to 

find an intake of neptunium.

Plutonium was the main hazard 

here, and that's what they were controlling 

and monitoring based upon. That requires 

ultrapure neptunium to dominate the 

exposure. You're looking at, to get a 1-to1 ratio, 99.995 percent pure neptunium in 

order to get to this 1-to-1 alpha ratio.

So who was being monitored for 

the plutonium? Well, in this particular 

case, 221 HB line, JB line, FB line and 235-

F. So the people who were working with the 

neptunium in 1971 -- that's this Rev 5 of 

this procedure -- were being monitored for 

plutonium. 

And the interesting part is down 

here at the bottom of this particular 
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procedure. And it reads, "Neptunium 

analysis is performed when requested by area 

health physics. Neptunium has never been 

detected without at least an equal amount of 

plutonium." They had ten years of operating 

experience to come and draw this particular 

conclusion. And so this is why they had 

their monitoring method for neptunium in 

this manner.

So, the bioassay control. Again, 

the monitoring is prescribed by work area. 

The monitoring frequency is based upon the 

potential magnitude of the exposure. Post1978, the neptunium urine bioassay was reinstituted for the highest exposure area, 

that 235-F area. 

So the neptunium monitoring data 

that we have in this time period, we have 

333 neptunium urine bioassay results. The 

area frequency is clearly based upon the 
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exposure potential in this time period. And 

you can see that we have 178 of these coming 

from 235-F. Next is the HB line, then the 

321-M. 773 and 772 are actually mostly 

dominated by '88 and '89 time periods.

This is what the box plot of all 

of the neptunium bioassay results from 1961 

through 2007 looks like. So each of these 

boxes is the inner 50th percentile of the 

data that we have, and the error bars go out 

to encompass the 95th percentile of the 

data.

What we have here in this red 

line is our coworker model. This is how 

we've modeled the neptunium exposures over 

time. You'll see in 1970 it jumps up, and 

the reason is we changed from using urine 

bioassay to using whole body count 

information. And so it has a higher 

detection limit. And so therefore the 
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coworker model estimates that we assign jump 

up in this particular case. 

Next slide. I skipped a slide 

here. I apologize. This slide. 

When it comes to neptunium dose 

reconstruction, there's at least four 

methods that I can come up with of how we 

could estimate these doses. 

One, we could use the 333

samples. This is the limited bioassay. 

Number two, we could use the 

neptunium-plutonium ratio. Use the 

plutonium bioassay and ratio off of that 

contamination that I showed you earlier in 

order to get a more accurate number. 

Because the plutonium usually results in two 

to ten times greater alpha activity. If I 

was doing an epi study, this is how I would 

do it. I would use the plutonium bioassay 

methodology. 
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Another way would be to 

interpolate between the urine bioassay 

points of 1969 and 1990.

And then, finally, to use whole 

body count data, which is what we proposed 

to use because it's claimant-favorable. 

All right. This is what I wanted 

to show you there. That line that I drew 

right there would be an interpolation 

between the two end data points. And you 

can see that the data that we do have isn't 

inconsistent with doing an interpolation 

here. 

So why do we choose to use the 

whole body count? Well, at the time we were 

doing the coworker model we didn't have 

complete information on the plutonium to 

neptunium ratio. Back in November to 

December of last year, we captured this 

information. Unfortunately, due to 
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receiving data or getting the data, we 

didn't get it until last month, but that is 

something that we do now have in-house.

We also confirmed that the 

workers in the neptunium areas were required 

to have whole body counts. Shift workers 

were required to have two whole body counts 

per year. Day employees, supervisors, et 

cetera, one per year. And in addition, the 

neptunium doses calculated using the whole 

body count are claimant-favorable upper 

bounds, but they're not unreasonably high to 

be insufficiently accurate. 

And the reason that I saw that 

is, if you look at the 50-year equivalent 

doses here, you'll see that dose to the 

urinary bladder is about 352 millirem. Dose 

to the liver is about four rem. Dose to the 

bone surface is 268. That's the high one. 

But if you divide that up over 50 years, 
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you're looking at about 5 rem per year. I 

recognize that early years are heavily 

weighted. And so you might be looking at 10 

or 15 rem in those first years-type of 

scenario. So these doses are not extreme 

when you compare some of the plutonium 

missed doses that we routinely assign under 

this program.

So some of the things we're 

currently looking at to follow up with 

questions the Work Group has posed to SC&A 

and the Work Group is comparing workers with 

neptunium urinalysis and whole body counts 

to the coworker model. Also calculating the 

neptunium dose using the plutonium 

contamination data and comparing that to the 

coworker model. 

And then, finally, researching 

the potential for construction trades worker 

exposures during new construction of the 
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Plutonium Fuel Fabrication Facility. The 

diagram that I showed earlier shows the PuFF 

facility completed. It actually wasn't 

completed until 1978. From 1973 to 1978, 

there was new construction going on within 

that same building where the neptunium 

billets were being made.

Now, photographs that we have 

looked at so far seem to indicate that it 

was a clean area at that time. We know it 

had never been used before, but there is 

some concern as to whether the contamination 

would travel from one end of the building to 

the other. The ventilation systems appear 

to have been isolated. But we want to pull 

this thread and follow this up and make sure 

that construction trades workers in that 

part of the building during that 

construction were actually in a cold area 

and not had a potential for this exposure.
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A little bit of data here on the 

first bullet that I said we were working on. 

We've got 34 workers we've identified in 

NOCTS that have neptunium urinalysis and 

whole body count data. And so we went 

through and calculated what their dose would 

be based upon just their urinalysis, just 

whole body count, and then assigning, based 

upon their time period, what their coworker 

dose would be. 

 And for Worker A, you're looking 

at lung cancer. He has 24 neptunium 

urinalyses, 9 whole body counts. We'd be 

assigning 374 millirem if you just used his 

urinalysis data, three rem for using the 

whole body counts, and then seven rem based 

on the coworker model. So this is why we 

feel that the whole body count data is 

bounding for development of the coworker 

model.
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So let me wrap up here with the 

subcontractor records review. When we 

conducted interviews with SC&A, one of the 

comments that came out was that in earlier 

years subcontractors were treated 

differently from a radiological records 

standpoint than other employees, in 

particular construction workers. If you were 

DuPont construction, then you had an 

individual personnel file. If you were a 

subcontractor employee, they would keep all 

your records into one file. 

A follow-up interview indicated 

that the individual who noted this to us 

felt that all those records had been 

transferred over and either individual 

personnel files have been made or they've 

been put into electronic format. And so he 

didn't feel like this was a major issue from 

that standpoint. What we realized is 
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we've never checked this. We haven't 

verified as to whether these records 

actually made it into individual personnel 

files or not. And so this is something that 

we're following up on right now, is to go 

out and identify some of these subcontractor 

workers.

It's proving a little more 

difficult because when you pull up a 

construction trades worker, then you have to 

try and figure out whether they were a 

DuPont construction trades worker or a 

subcontractor construction trades worker, 

because we see both of them. And we have a 

lot of monitoring data for construction 

trades workers. Were they all just DuPont 

construction? We don't know that answer 

yet. And so this is something we're going 

to follow up on.

And with that, I'll be happy to 
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answer any questions. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Board 

Members with questions?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: All quiet.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have a 

couple of questions.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, you go 

ahead, David. Yes.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: You've 

described a lot about, starting with the 

thorium, with the process and the location, 

sometimes in terms of buildings and rooms in 

which the activities took place.

(Technical difficulties.)

(Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 4:50 p.m. and 

resumed at 4:52 p.m.)

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Can 

everybody hear us again?
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MEMBER MUNN: We're back. Thank 

you. Someone's doing that with their mute 

button, I think. I just don't know who's so 

connected that they could do that.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: So I had a 

couple of questions about the thorium issue. 

And the first of them, I was a little bit 

confused about, on the one hand, it's really 

useful and detailed information about 

characterizing the potential number of 

workers that are involved and their 

activity. But are you proposing, are you 

suggesting that for estimating or bounding 

thorium doses this can be done for this 

small number of workers? Or how is the 

information that you've described about the 

building and room related to the difficulty 

that we know we have of placing workers into 

those locations?

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. With regards 
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to the thorium at Savannah River in this 

time period, there's two indicators as far 

as us being able to monitor or develop their 

thorium dose. One would be their badge 

identifying them in 773-A. The other is the 

bioassay actually indicates which area this 

came from. We're particularly looking at 

the americium-curium-californium bioassay 

results. And so from that standpoint, 

that's a secondary identifier of people 

working in those divisions of analytical 

chemistry, or the high-level caves, or the 

building services, or rad control, or the 

maintenance personnel in 773-A.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: So we've had 

the discussion before, though, about hinging 

kind of dose reconstruction using the 

information about location that comes from, 

when available, dosimetry information about 

location, and it's typically administrative 
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location where they're issued or picked up 

their badge, and actually placing a person 

into a room for a period of time.

But the idea here is not that 

this becomes the basis for estimating 

thorium doses for everybody, but it's trying 

to identify those people based on the fact 

that they were badged and/or bioassaymonitored placing them into that building.

DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. 

That's how we developed the coworker model. 

Now, if we have other indication that 

somebody worked in the building and didn't 

leave a sample from that standpoint, then we 

would use this coworker model. And as Dr. 

Neton was mentioning earlier today, we're 

looking or investigating using that 95th 

percentile. And so if you look at that 

coworker model that we developed here -- and 

I’ll see if I can't get there quickly --
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what we would be assigning then would be 

along that particular blue line. And you 

can see all these other monitored workers in 

this time period are all significantly below 

that type of a level of exposure.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: So can I ask 

you, since you've got this figure up -- and 

this relates to another one of my questions 

-- something that caused me to pause, I 

guess, was the blue line appears to have the 

same width as we move from 1972 to 1987, if 

my eyes are relatively good.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: And yet the 

information over that period goes from 379 

measurements, if I'm understanding the table 

previously, in 1987, to nearly 2,000 

measurements in the early '70s.

DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, again, my 
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naïve statistical intuition would tell me 

that the confidence interval around the 

points in 1987 should be many times larger 

than the confidence interval around -- I'm 

sorry, from the late '80s should be much 

wider than around the 1970s because there's 

much more information there.

DR. TAULBEE: This has to do with 

how we calculate an intake based upon 

bioassay. So you plug in the bioassay data 

into IMBA and basically what you're doing is 

trying to come up with an intake, a chronic 

intake, that best fits the data. Okay. 

That's what's being displayed here. It's 

not that each of these individual data 

points has an error bar associated with it. 

It's on the intake model itself that we 

calculated from the bioassay data. 

So it's a regression that is 

done, and Jim can go into way more detail 
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than I can, about how we take the bioassay, 

the urine bioassay and figure out an intake 

of a chronic intake model over this time 

period.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: What's on the 

Y-axis there? Isn't it excretion, dpm per 

day?

DR. TAULBEE: Yes, based upon 

this model, based upon this intake model 

that we've developed, this chronic intake 

model, the urinary excretion would follow 

those particular lines there in the center, 

but the 95th percentile of that intake model 

would be those dotted lines.

DR. NETON: This is Jim. Part of 

what you might be seeing here is the way 

that we default to a minimum of GSD of three 

on all coworker models, as far as the bands 

on the excretion values. That's because we 

believe that that's the minimum uncertainty 
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that could exist because of the 

uncertainties in the metabolic models 

themselves. So you'll never see uncertainty 

less than a GSD of three on any of our 

models. Even if it comes out to be 1.5, 

we're going to automatically increase it to 

three. 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yeah, 

sometimes people make confidence intervals 

that are point-wise, and sometimes they make 

them on a smoothed line. And my take was 

that this was the confidence interval off of 

kind a smooth regression line where calendar 

time the explanatory variable, and that the 

point-wise confidence intervals would be 

much wider as you're going out in time 

because there's much less data there. I 

guess I'm not following the other parts, the 

other explanations.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I have the 
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same question, so it's confusing.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, at 

some point that does become relevant, 

because it becomes relevant what 95 percent 

confidence limit are you going to take? And 

if it's when there isn't very much data 

there, then you sort of would like to 

reflect that more than just leveraging the 

fact that there was information in the '70s.

DR. TAULBEE: I mean, effectively 

what we're doing is using all of this 

bioassay here and coming up with a single 

intake for this time period and then 

plugging that in from a chronic exposure 

model, on a per-year basis, what would the 

urinary excretion then look like? Okay? 

That's what this particular line is. And as

Jim was talking about, we assign a GSD of 

three associated with that, and that's 

what's giving you this uncertainty here.
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DR. NETON: I think we're really 

getting into the technical weeds on this, 

and we might be better served to present 

this to the Board maybe at a future meeting 

as to how this occurs.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If I recall my 

airplane reading correctly, this is that 

ORAU RPRT-55 that we were asking SC&A to 

review. It at least has some of this.

DR. NETON: Yeah, there's some of 

this.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yeah, as the 

model, the specific models. Some of the 

other reports have the basic -- 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, I 

guess there are other questions, but one 

that really caught me was what's being 

proposed to be done starting in 1990?

DR. TAULBEE: Okay. In 1990, 

what we would be doing is instead of using 
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that intake model that I showed in the 

previous graph, is we would be assigning 2e 

to the minus 13 microcuries per cc intake to 

anybody that was in that particular building 

as a thorium exposure. 

Because that was the trigger 

point, they would allow that concentration 

in the labs, in the rooms, people could 

breathe it in, before they took action to 

remedy the situation, remedy the airborne 

activity. And so that was the upper bound. 

And that's used today. Ten percent of a DAC 

of commonly used throughout the complex. 

And so that's where the intake value would 

be and that's how we'd calculate the dose.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

questions? David, I can't tell if you're 

still asking questions or not.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: No, I think 

I'm understanding what was said. That's all 
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I was aiming for.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks. 

Thanks. Anybody else?

Okay. Thank you, Tim. And I 

think we next have a presentation from Mark 

Griffon disguised as Joe Fitzgerald. Joe 

will be presenting on behalf of the Work 

Group.

MR. HINNEFELD: Ted, I don't 

think this presentation is in the content 

for Live Meeting. It's going to take me a 

minute to get it up here.

MR. KATZ: Okay.

MR. HINNEFELD: I have to think a 

minute about how I'm going to do this. 

MR. KATZ: So for people 

listening in, this is a presentation for 

Mark Griffon. And if you want to see the 

slides, you'll have to go to the NIOSH 

webpage for today's meeting and it will be 
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posted there. But I think Joe can talk 

through it and you'll understand it. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I'll just 

talk to the notes. Good afternoon. I'm 

going to start with the first slide and then 

we're tight on time.

In my list of what's ongoing 

review in terms of priorities, these first 

four pretty much match up with what you saw 

from Tim, except I wanted to emphasize we're 

still very much focused on comparing the 

construction trades with the nonconstruction trades population. That's a 

very big issue and it's an overarching 

issue. And we touched on it a little bit, 

but that's been certainly an undercurrent.

So neptunium-237, thorium and the 

subcontractor database validation. I want 

to remind the Board, there's a whole series 

of other issues. We have set priorities 
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within the suite of items for this SEC, 

which I think over the last several years 

things have been moved around, but certainly 

we're working on a report on recycled 

uranium, which should be ready next month, 

which certainly was an outstanding issue. 

And we were aware of the coworker 

model, 055 was mentioned earlier, that we've 

just been talked with. That came out a few 

months before the Addendum 3, and we chose 

to work on Addendum 3 because of certainly 

the novel approach with OPOS. But we will 

certainly go back now and look very closely 

at the trivalent have that ready for the 

Work Group. 

Tritium, tritides, exotics. I 

think those are all issues that we have on 

the table.

Going to Work Group activities, 

the only message I have here is it's been a 
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very intense review. I think SC&A has 

worked with NIOSH. We have walked down this 

coworker model, figuratively and literally, 

at the site a number of times. 

And the notion is, I think Jim 

said earlier, on the coworker model 

approach, what we're looking at is certainly 

the technical aspects, the robustness of the 

model, the completeness of the data, whether 

you have confidence that you have all the 

information you need. And I think what you 

heard from Tim is that certainly he has and 

we have worked with him to truly want to 

characterize the neptunium and thorium 

operations to make sure that sort of no 

stone was unturned in terms of the data we 

needed for that model. 

And if I may, there's almost a 

two-track process that you'll notice on both 

thorium and neptunium, which is to focus on 
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the technical aspects, the mechanistic 

aspects of the model, to be sure that it's 

accurate and complete. And also to address 

this question of stratification, which I 

think I won't go through that, but certainly 

Jim and Jim talked about it earlier, which 

is an overriding question which goes back to 

this comparing the two Work Groups, the 

construction workers and non-construction 

workers, and to justify and validate whether 

or not one can use that data as a whole, or 

turn to stratification. 

So that's been two avenues that 

have pretty much consumed the Work Group 

over the past seven or eight months, which 

is to certainly work at the site to be sure 

that we had all the necessary information 

that would feed into the coworker model. 

And also, in the SEC Work Group, to address 

the question of is there a way to validate 
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whether stratification is necessary or not 

and whether OPOS will get us there. 

I'm not going to repeat all the 

neptunium issues, because actually Tim 

covered the actions that came out of the 

Work Group pretty well. Again, I just want 

to point out that we did have those two 

tracks and we are very much in the process 

of looking at some of the activities or 

actions that Tim alluded to in terms of 

questions that SC&A had at the Work Group 

level on different aspects of how the 

coworker model for neptunium and the 

coworker model for thorium would be 

implemented.

And going back to the 

presentation on coworker models from the SEC 

Work Group this morning, this notion of 

being able to place a worker in a certain 

facility at a certain time period and to 
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know the specific nuclides that would have 

been -- that that worker would have been 

exposed to is certainly the very framework 

of the coworker model and one thing that we 

are taking a hard look at. SC&A did take 

actions from the Work Group sessions. It 

wasn't all NIOSH. 

As we're going through table 5-1, 

which in the addendum 3 actually -- oh, I'm 

sorry, OTIB-81 provides a matrix which takes 

the facilities, the Savannah River 

facilities and for certain time periods will 

identify potential source terms to which the 

worker would be exposed. And that's almost 

a road map that would identify how you would 

apply the coworker model. So we're 

basically going through table 5-1, which has 

been expanded, and to come back to the Work 

Group and actually be able to validate 

whether we think again the table has a 
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supportive basis and that we can see how it 

would be implemented. And this goes 

back to I think the questions that you were 

raising, David, earlier, is how can one have 

that kind of information and apply it with 

the coworker model? And I think this review 

on table 5-1 -- I think will illuminate 

that, hopefully.

Beyond that, I am going to just 

touch on this question of; this is the last 

page, this subcontractor database 

validation. Just to reiterate what Tim was 

saying, this is such a fundamental question 

that we really feel strongly that -- as does 

Tim and NIOSH, that we really just need to 

be able to validate the fact that the 

records that were compiled in these socalled company files over time in fact 

were -- can be deemed complete enough to be 

used in this process and that when the time 
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came to migrate those paper records into the 

electronic data file that in fact is being 

used in dose reconstruction and being used 

at the site, that in fact that was done 

adequately and completely as well. Two 

fundamental questions. 

And I think as Tim noted they're 

not easy to answer. Just the nature of 

subcontractor management in DOE. It's not 

just not this site. It’s all across the 

board. And when you get to the late '80s 

into the '90s it even gets sketchier and 

when you get to second, third and fourthtier subcontractors. So answering that 

question I think is fundamental to whether 

or not you can even get to the step of 

talking about coworker models. Do you have 

the data? Is the data complete? And that's 

what we're asking on that particular issue.

That's all I have, because again 
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I think you've gotten a pretty good 

characterization of the operations, but we 

have spent I think a fair amount of time on 

site and there's been a lot of discussions 

about the information. Any questions?

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

Joe?

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have a 

question.

You both have talked about the 

distinction between construction workers and 

non-construction workers. And Tim pointed 

to curiosity of if construction trades 

worker were never monitored, then there 

wouldn't be 1,600 bioassay samples among the 

construction trade workers, for example, 

which raises the question you either don't 

understand the bioassay procedures for 

making these determinations, or you don't 
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understand who the construction workers are, 

which is another possibility.

So at some facilities; I'm 

remembering, for example, Hanford, there are 

people who were construction trades workers, 

and then they were operations workers, and 

then they were construction workers. And so 

that the term itself is dynamic. And you 

wouldn't say there's X number of 

construction workers and Y number of 

operations workers. You would have to say 

something like there were X number of person 

years worked in construction trades and Y 

number of person years. Because people were 

both.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

MEMBER RICHARDSON: And the 

classification is not an attribute of a 

person's name. It's an attribute of -- 

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, and 
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it's -- 

MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- what they 

were doing when and who paid them.

MR. FITZGERALD: Right, and it's 

time-related. In a DOE complex you had a 

progression from a time; I think Tim alluded 

to it, when on site here at Savannah River 

you had DuPont construction workers. Well, 

these were subcontractors, but sort of in 

name only. They actually worked side-by-side 

and pretty much the same as your DuPont 

workers. And over time, however, 

work was outsourced until you got to a time 

frame probably in the late '80s into the 

'90s, for sure, where a lot of the 

construction and the crafts trades were 

brought in with subcontractors typically at 

some sites with D&D, but even here at this

site. And then you get into a situation 

where it's not just sort of this in-house 
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set of subcontractors. You have second, 

third-tier, fourth-tier subcontractors, ones 

that were very much removed. 

And so the question is if you had 

a monitoring practice, a bioassay practice 

that fit these earlier in-house subcontractors who were more than likely 

monitored the same way as perhaps the people 

that worked side-by-side with them, what 

happened 15 years into the outsourcing of a 

lot of the work at the sites where you no 

longer had a DuPont or Westinghouse 

imprimatur on the monitoring of workers, but 

in fact you had to rely on the subcontractor 

management.

So there's -- I think Savannah 

River, unlike some other sites, probably had 

more central controls and expectations, but 

nonetheless your question is -- it's very 

dynamic. And that's one reason I think it's 
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important to in fact look at not just the 

quantity of bioassay records, but look at 

the actual practices over time and within 

the different levels of subcontracting. 

It gets to a point where you have 

to validate what exactly is the practice and 

do the -- does the sampling match up with 

those populations, particularly over time, 

because things did shift quite dramatically 

over probably a generation and what may have 

held in the '70s would not hold in the '90s. 

So I think particular with this site that's 

something to look at. 

And it's not the first time we've 

looked at it. I know this subject has come 

up before at other sites. I know it came up 

at Rocky Flats.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Dave?

MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: How do you 

propose to get the information from the -- 
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to distinguish the first, second and thirdlevel subcontractors?

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's 

something -- there's been a pretty vigorous 

discussion, and there's a number of 

different options. One option, which I 

think Tim alluded to, was looking at the 

subcontractors in your NOCTS database, for 

example, and comparing that up against some 

known subcontractors. 

Other options would be to 

identify your second, third fourth-tier 

subcontractors and actually; and there's way 

to do that, and establish whether you can 

find those names in the electronic database. 

That's kind of a straightforward one. It 

sound simplistic, but it is not. Just 

trying to figure out what would be 

statistically significant and being able to 

identify and be able to compare, it's a 
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pretty big task. 

So there's different ways of -- 

different gradations, but answering the 

question how do you know whether the 

distribution of doses that you have are 

actually representative of the 

subcontractors that you're dealing with over 

time I think is an important question that 

needs to be answered before you can do 

anything else.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you, Joe.

Ted, I believe you're going to -- 

the petitioner has a comments that need to 

be read into the record. So go ahead.

MR. KATZ: Thank you. I was 

going -- is that Mr. Warren? I was going to 

read your statement into the record, Mr. 

Warren. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And after that 
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we'll open up for public comment.

MR. KATZ: Right. "So, since 

2008 my law firm or I have represented one 

of the original petitioners who petitioned 

this Board for a Special Exposure Cohort,

and this petition from a non-construction 

worker asked that all workers who had worked 

at least 250 days at the Savannah River Site 

from 1950 to the present be included. This 

petition was merged with another petition 

from construction workers, and in December 

2011 this Board found that NIOSH could not 

accurately perform dose reconstructions for 

all workers from January 1st 1953 through 

September 30th, 1972, primarily because 

records were not adequate to determine if 

they were exposed to thorium and other 

radionuclides. Now we are back before this 

Board with NIOSH's reliance or worker 

records and saying both construction and 
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non-construction workers should not be 

considered in an expanded SEC. 

"Congress, and the President at 

the time the EEOICPA was enacted, knew that 

DOE would have problems nationwide in 

providing records showing radiation exposure 

of workers. The purpose of the EEOICPA as 

set out in the original law ' ... is to 

provide for timely, uniform and adequate 

compensation of covered employees, and, 

where applicable, survivors of such 

employees,' That is why the SEC was 

incorporated into the law and why thousands 

of workers and their survivors were 

initially eligible for benefits in Paducah, 

Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio and Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee. This Board has been tasked by 

the President of the United States to ' ... 

Advise the Secretary of Health and Human 

Services (Secretary) on the scientific 
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validity and quality of dose reconstruction 

efforts ... ' as well as ' ... advise the

Secretary on whether there is a Class of 

workers at any DOE facility who were exposed 

to radiation but for whom there is a 

reasonable likelihood that such radiation 

dose may have endangered the health of the 

Members of the Class.' (See Executive Order 

dated December 7, 2000.)

"You will find that over the 

years we have already provided much evidence 

that the HPAREH system used at the SRS was 

not always accurate and did not correctly 

reflect the amount of radiation received by 

non-construction and construction workers. 

Annual differences in the number of millirem 

received can make a substantial variance in 

a person's dose reconstruction over the 

years worked at the SRS when NIOSH uses the 

HPAREH records.
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"We have other records showing 

subcontractors working in the 1990s who did 

not have HPAREH records and whose employment 

at the SRS was only confirmed by the 

president or the son of the president of a 

now-defunct company or a human resource 

director of a company, or in one case by a 

copy of a picture ID showing the 

subcontractor's name in the picture. Some 

of these workers could not be identified by 

the Center for the Protection of Workers' 

Rights (CPWR) because the Center has never 

been given a list of the DOE subcontractors 

by DOE. Companies, e.g., Diversco, 

Defenders, Inc., and HBS, which is Houston 

Building Services, Bonitz Insulation 

Company, and Burke Contracting, Incorporated 

had short-term contracts with DOE in the 

late 1980s and 1990s, and DOE cannot find 

the contracts. Cleaning jobs as well as 
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escort services were contracted out to 

workers who were usually not issued TLD 

badges or given personal protective 

equipment even though the workers were 

performing jobs in radiation zones or in 

areas where asbestos and other toxic 

substances were present.

"NIOSH gets some records from DOE 

when the case is sent for a dose 

reconstruction. If a lawyer is involved, 

NIOSH may receive additional records 

sometimes involving an incident, but NIOSH 

does not get DOE to give copies of minutes 

from 'Lessons Learned' or (later 

'Critiques') which would show what happened, 

when, how much radiation was involved, where 

the incident happened, who was involved in 

the incident and what things should occur so 

that the incident doesn't happen again. Our 

law firm has requested for our clients from 
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DOE all reports of incident including all 

supporting documents, but we have never 

received documents entitled 'Lessons 

Learned' or 'Critiques.' As far as I am 

aware, NIOSH has not received these 

documents either. Other documents which 

would provide useful information to record 

radiation received by workers are Radiation 

Survey Log Sheets maintained at each 

building in an area.

"These records (or lack thereof) 

should give you further reason to doubt the 

validity of NIOSH's assertion that HPAREH 

records can be used to perform accurate dose 

reconstructions after 1972. NIOSH cannot do 

correct dose reconstructions when they do 

not have the correct radiation exposure for 

each employee.

"Although I requested results for 

the SRS only, NIOSH did not provide the data 
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in that format and referred me to the NIOSH 

Compensation Results from dose 

reconstruction data nationwide as of 

February 20, 2014. Viewing those results, 

one can see that 1,799 claims for lymphoma 

and multiple myeloma (62.7 percent denial 

rate) have been made. This figure is an 

underestimate since it is unknown from this 

chart how many lymphoma and multiple myeloma 

claims were included in the subtotal 

categories of claims with multiple cancers. 

If one adds in the other leukemia (except 

CLL), the total number of cases is 535 with 

a combined denial rate of between 50 percent 

to 60 percent.

"Thyroid cancer is probably the 

most common cancer for people exposed to 

radiation, but for 344 thyroid cancer claims 

there is an 84.3 percent denial rate 

nationwide with again an underestimate for 
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the number which could be included in the 

multiple cancers. For the 1,272 claims for 

colon cancer at all sites (without 

considering the number included in multiple 

cancer tables), the denial rate is 92.8 

percent.

"If Members of the Board see some 

red flags with the NIOSH dose reconstruction 

process, we implore you not to allow the 

process to continue. You Members are the 

only hope for thousands of claimants who do 

not understand NIOSH's insistence on proving 

their case with records that are nonexistent or are hidden within the DOE. We 

have lost our way with the dose 

reconstruction process and the Members of 

the Advisory Board are the only way out of 

this nightmare."

And that concludes the statement.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 
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you. Thank you, Mr. Warren.

I think we now will go into 

the -- continue the public comment period. 

So, Ted, do you want to read the 

instructions and 

then -- 

MR. KATZ: Sure. So first of 

all, I hope folks have signed up in the 

sign-up sheet, which would be out -- back 

out the door, if you're planning to speak. 

But if you haven't, you can come up after 

other people have made their comments.

So just to let you know, your 

comments are recorded verbatim like 

everything else in this meeting and will 

appear in transcripts published on the NIOSH 

website for all the public to read. So any 

comments you make about yourself, personal 

matters, will appear for public view. The 

one exception to this though, if you make 
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comments about other parties, third parties, 

their privacy will be protected. So what 

you say about other people, to the extent 

necessary, those comments will be redacted 

to protect those persons' privacy. And 

that's sort of the summary of it. 

The full requirements are on the 

back table, I you want to know. Those are 

called redaction policy. And for people on 

the telephone, those requirements are on the 

NIOSH website under the meeting section for 

the Board.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do you want to 

get the list?

MR. KATZ: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Meanwhile, 

while Ted's getting the list, does anybody 

wish to make public comments on Savannah 

River, whether you signed up or not signed 

up? Who else? Yes, all you need to do is 
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identify yourself. If it will be easier for 

you to sit at the table here -- 

MR. ROWE: My name is Gordon 

Rowe. I am one of the petitioners on the 

original SEC. 

I would like to say that the 

number of delays that has been -- happened 

with this petition have been very, very 

numerous, and to me they are inexcusable. 

The Work Group could be more conscientious 

about their job. Because of all of this, 

there are workers that are not being 

compensated as they should be. As a 

petitioner, I have not heard one word of 

apology for these numerous delays. It's 

obvious that NIOSH would rather believe what 

the health protection workers and the 

supervision at Savannah River Site tell them 

rather than believe what the workers tell 

them. 
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As an example of this, as -- at 

one of these meetings a foreman told NIOSH 

that their records were inadequate, were not 

right. He said that he -- when he and other 

workers worked overtime on a Saturday, they 

came in on the job, they would pick up other 

workers' TLD badges because they didn't want 

the radiation recorded on their badges 

because if you got too -- picked up too much 

radiation, they would stop you and didn't 

work over -- stopped you from working 

overtime. As a result, he said that the 

records were inadequate. He wasn't 

questioned. He wasn't -- he didn't -- there 

was nobody ask him about this any further. 

This shows that the records 

were -- are not accurate, yet NIOSH 

continues to see that these records are 

accurate. And there has been too many times 

that the records have been wrong, yet NIOSH 
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continues to use these records to do a dose 

reconciliation and they -- everybody that 

works at Savannah River Plant will tell you 

that records are falsified, they're 

inaccurate. 

When they get records of the dose 

records through the mail, they are 

inaccurate. Some of them pick up many, many 

rems of radiation, but when they get the 

quarterly report, they didn't pick up a 

radiation. And they know they picked up 

more radiation in one day, one work -- one 

example of work -- in a work place and 

through the dose reconciliation, through the 

dosimeters and all of that, they pick up 

more radiation in one work time period than 

they get -- that the records show they got 

in an entire quarter.

So I think that NIOSH or -- and 

the Work Group and everybody should be -- 
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should put some more investigation into the 

record keeping at Savannah River Site. And 

if you did, you will find that there's many 

cases documented of falsification being done 

by shift supervisors and HP personnel, and 

everything else. So you -- NIOSH should not 

be using these records because they are all 

wrong. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mr. 

Rowe.

Next person I have listed is 

David Anderson. Yes, there you are.

MR. ANDERSON: Thank you, 

Chairman Melius. My name is David Anderson. 

I'm an administrative manager with the Law 

Offices of Bob Warren, lawyer for the 

petitioner, [identifying information 

redacted], and I am authorized to speak for 

the petitioner. 

But I would like to do something 
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a little bit different right now, and I 

don't know how redaction is going to deal 

with this, but I want to pay tribute to Mr. 

Bob Warren, the contributions of Bob Warren. 

Those of you who have been on this Board for 

years have heard Bob's presentations to you, 

both in person and in teleconference, and 

have received and hopefully read his many 

emails, faxes and letters seeking a just 

resolution for the hundreds of claimants 

denied by the dose reconstruction process.

Bob grew up in Allendale, South 

Carolina, right down the road, one of the 

many small rural communities in the shadow 

of the Savannah River Plant. As a young 

lawyer he took the rural cases other lawyers 

wouldn't touch. He never made any money; 

still doesn't, but earned a reputation for 

someone who would stand up for the little 

guy.
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When the EEOICPA passed into law, 

right away Bob recognized its potential to 

help hundreds, if not thousands, of the 

little guy workers at the Savannah River 

Site, not so much or not really the 

scientists and the management, but the 

laundry workers, the truck drivers, the 

forestry folks, the secretaries, as well as 

countless construction workers. Starting at 

the very beginning, 15 years ago, Bob 

eventually devoted his entire practice to 

these people, helping hundreds of claimants 

navigate the complexity of the program. I 

dare say, and I proudly say that no one 

understands the Act and the details of its 

implementation better than Bob Warren and no 

one has single-handedly, I might say 

doggedly, helped more Savannah River Site 

claimants. 

He is here today in his signature 
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red suspenders; he did not know I was going 

to say this about him, but due his failing 

health, there's a good chance this will be 

your last chance to meet him in person. I 

just wanted to put on the record an 

acknowledgment of the contributions that Bob 

Warren has made to the EEOICPA and to the 

former and current workers at the Savannah 

River Site and their families.

Thank you, Bob. That's him right 

there. 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. And 

I'd just like to add we greatly appreciate 

Mr. Warren's contributions to not only 

individual claimants, but for the work of 

the Board. He's been extremely helpful in 

dealing with what's a very complicated site 

and a lot of challenges involved. And 

appreciate both your efforts to help us and 

help us better evaluate the SEC and the 
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other issues that come up at the site as 

well as your advocacy for the workers 

involved. So thank you.

MR. ANDERSON: My comments will 

be somewhat redundant as they've been 

brought up already this afternoon, 

especially by Mr. Fitzgerald. He's 

summarized them I thought pretty well. 

Our view of the current status of 

the SEC petition is unchanged. We strongly 

believe that the acceptance or denial of 

this petition rests on the same two things 

it always has: The accuracy, and most 

importantly completeness of exposure records 

available to NIOSH and the accurate 

identification of exactly where an employee 

worked, especially construction workers.

Regarding records, NIOSH has 

consistently argued that record keeping at 

Savannah River was thorough, accurate and 
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available. And indeed today, it makes it 

look -- every time he makes a presentation, 

it looks so clean that it's almost 

unbelievable how much record keeping they 

kept there. But our own years of experience 

examining claimant records and the myriad 

stories we've heard from former workers, 

like the one Mr. Rowe suggested, makes us 

just as confident that DuPont's fervent 

desire for a nice clean record along with 

having simply too many employees, especially 

construction workers, to monitor made their 

record keeping spotty at best and 

duplicitous at worst. To make matters 

worse, many workers embraced the can-do 

spirit of the organization and knowingly put 

themselves at risk in order to fix a company 

problem or complete a dangerous task.

We've already provided you all 

over the years with lots of examples. I was 
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going to give more examples today, but I 

don't think you need to hear them. We have 

processed many FOIA requests for records, 

and it's amazing how often people who worked 

at Savannah River Site for 30 years have 55 

pages of records in their files. It's just 

unbelievable, especially for folks that were 

working in reactors. So we question that 

accuracy.

 But secondly, we seriously 

challenge NIOSH's confidence that it can 

place workers, especially construction 

workers at a specific location at a specific 

time. I'm actually surprised that Dr. 

Taulbee still believes that badge data can 

be relied upon, especially given that this 

Board previously acknowledged that badge 

information at SRS was amorphous and 

undependable. In addition, if you're 

relying on bioassay records to place a 
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person at a particular place and that record 

is unavailable, I don't see how NIOSH can 

convincingly say they know where a worker 

actually was. 

In a recent Work Group session, 

as well as in today's presentation, NIOSH 

suggested that construction worker records 

would have been kept by the various 

subcontractors. I can tell with frustrating 

experience that the subcontractor world at 

Savannah River Site was a shifting morass of 

companies that came and went, frequently 

changing names. Our experience, and I could 

give you many examples, is that most 

subcontractors have few or no records on 

their workers. With many companies working 

various sites at the same time, it's often 

difficult enough just being able to prove 

that a claimant was on site at Savannah 

River Site during a specific time, let alone 
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prove exactly where they were.

So we constantly come back to the 

same conclusion: If you can't be absolutely 

certain who was exposed and what they were 

exposed to because you're not exactly sure 

where they were at any specific time, how 

then can you claim to be able to with 

sufficient accuracy reconstruct their dose? 

We respectfully submit that this is exactly 

why the Act included to option of a Special 

Exposure Cohort and why we believe it's time 

for this Board to vote for this one. Thank 

you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mr. 

Anderson.

Next person I have listed is Knut 

Ringen.

DR. RINGEN: Good afternoon. My 

name is Knut Ringen. I'm the science 

advisor for CPWR. I'm the principal 
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investigator for the Building Trades -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Closer to the 

mic, yes.

DR. RINGEN: -- National Medical 

Screening Program. 

I'm going to briefly cover two 

things here. Three things, actually. The 

first is why the Work Group and the Board is 

allowing this modeling to go on for so long. 

We're talking about exotic radionuclides 

that emit alpha radiation, and so internal 

dose is necessary to make a determination 

about risk. Yet, for all of the years that 

are covered here, NIOSH, according to its 

one worker-one sample, has shown that they 

have data on between 25 and 50 construction 

workers per year. That's out of a total of 

between 6,000 and 7,000 construction workers 

on the site per year during those periods of 

time. 
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So what in the world do those 25 

workers that you have the bioassay data on, 

or that you have had some bioassay 

monitoring for -- what do they represent out 

of those 6,000 to 7,000 workers out there? 

Does this mean that only 25 of those 6,000 

to 7,000 workers had an opportunity for any 

exposure to any of these exotic 

radionuclides? And can you further conclude 

that the exposures of construction workers 

were sufficiently similar to exposures for 

other workers that you can extrapolate from 

that sample of workers to all construction 

workers who might be at risk? I don't see 

how you can do that statistically. There are 

better statisticians here than me, but 25 

out of 6,000 or 7,000 is not a whole hell of 

a lot to look at, yet this is being spun 

into model after model after model that we 

have trouble following. That's my first 
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point.

The second point is that when you 

look at risk, you have to think of it as a 

relationship obviously between exclusion and 

biological response. I know more about the 

biological response side of it. And we have 

just -- we're just now completing an updated 

mortality study for the construction workers 

who have been in the DOE facilities based on 

the people who are in our medical screening 

program. 

This cover 18,800 participants in 

our screening program who were enrolled 

before December 31, 2010, and 2,803 deaths 

among them. Within this population there are 

3,864 construction workers from the Savannah 

River Site with 562 deaths among them. And 

we can calculate things like person years of 

exposure and all of this kind of stuff. 

What we find from this mortality 
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study, which is an update of a much smaller 

one that we did five years ago and which 

provides us with much more statistical power 

and the ability to look at risk in much more 

detail are three important things: First of 

all, all-cause mortality in our population 

is significantly elevated even though 

mortality from common causes of death like 

heart disease and diabetes are very low 

compared to the general population. The 

reason that all-cause mortality is very high 

is that -- is higher than in the general 

population is that we have very high rates 

for cancers and for non-malignant lung 

diseases in particular. 

The rates for our construction 

workers in the DOE facilities are 

significantly higher than the rates for 

production or non-construction workers in 

DOE facilities as reported previously and 
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also among those workers in those 

occupational categories that we have within 

our screening program. So that to say that 

there is uniformity between the risk for 

instance construction workers or production 

workers simply does not hold up, in our 

opinion.

The list for cancer sites where 

we find high risks matches almost identical 

the list of SEC cancers in the EEOICPA 

legislation, as amended subsequently. This 

suggests for the construction trades workers 

that there's -- it reflects very significant 

risk for radiation exposure over the years.

And the third finding, which is 

quite significant because it's never been 

shown before, is that we now find excess 

risk for workers who were employed after 

1980. Many people have insinuated that most 

of the risks at DOE facilities were limited 
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to the early years. The Manhattan Project, 

the buildup of the Cold War and that kind of 

thing. And that was mitigated significantly 

later on, but we see that that is simply not 

correct and that therefore in regard to this 

SEC, which covers the years after 1972, you 

should assume that there's opportunities for 

very significant risk here as well, and that 

should be taken into account.

Finally, when it comes to the 

messy business of trying to understand what 

construction workers do and don't do and who 

they're employed to and who they're not; Joe 

Fitzgerald is absolutely right, it's not a 

neat picture. It's not an easy analysis to 

do. But I think we have learned how to do 

it very well with the 5,000 to 6,000 -- no, 

over 4,000 SRS workers who are now in our 

screening population and the work histories 

that we have done on them. And there's lots 
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you can learn about their employment, both 

within DOE facilities, when they go from DOE 

facilities to other facilities, and all of 

this kind of thing. That demonstrates to us 

that it is very difficult to do the kind of 

modeling that's being proposed here. We 

don't see how it can be done for 

construction workers.

Let me conclude by saying that we 

know a great deal about subcontractors. 

CPWR maintains a database for the Labor 

Department on subcontractors who have been 

in the DOE facilities across the country. 

For Savannah River I'm not sure exactly how 

many subcontractors there are in that 

database now, but there are many, many 

hundreds of these subcontractors. 

Let me make one point with regard 

to the delays that are taking place as a 

result of going through all of this 
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modeling, which I think is meaningless. In 

our population since the Savannah River SEC 

was filed, approximately 800 of our 

participants have died, SRS participants 

have died since that was filed. Of those 

somewhere between 260 and 300 of them have 

died from cancers that would have been 

covered under an SEC had that been available 

to them. As long as you keep delaying this, 

more of these workers will die off and in 

effect you will deny them their opportunity 

to have the compensation that they should be 

entitled to. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Dr. 

Ringen.

Jeff Rice? Welcome.

MR. RICE: Thank you. My name is 

Jeff Rice. I was a pipefitter out at the 

plant from 1988 to 1998. I had no plans of 

speaking today. I just got a letter about 
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the meeting and I come in to hear what it 

was about, and I'm kind of glad I did. 

I just got through -- started 

going through the dose reconstruction with 

NIOSH. And after going through it with the 

relevance of the numbers that they give me 

and after I got through studying the exam, 

it's not relevant to what's going on every 

day out there on the job. 

I was talking to one of your 

all's representatives and I said, well, you 

know, you're all showing me as a total pick 

up of 30.38 millirem at the highest dose, 

one time only. And I gave them 10 examples 

where I picked up more than that in a one 

time during the course of the day. 

I can give you the example where 

we were on the tank farms where I had to cut 

a dip tube in transfer line. I'm laying 

down. My TLD is laying over here under me. 
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My pencil dosimeter is clipped to my hood 

here. You know, I'm cutting a hole in the 

transfer line, so I get exposure to the 

core. I pick up 80 millirem that morning. 

We come back in that afternoon to weld it up 

to get it tied into the transfer line, I 

pick up another 120 millirems. The most 

they got me down there for is 0.38 millirems 

the whole time. 

I said, well, why doesn't this 

dose reconstruction show up on your all's 

records? He said, well, we don't use pencil 

dosimeters. We do it strictly off of TLD. 

Well, a lot of times with pipefitters and 

the awkward positions we have to get in, our 

TLD dosimeter may be behind us, over to the 

side of us, not getting any of the exposure 

that we're getting of the radiation out 

there in the plant. So these records are 

totally inaccurate on what they're putting 
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on the paper. 

And, you know, I'm going through 

it right now. Sign my conclusion. I'm 

going to request a hearing once it gets back 

from Jacksonville because there's no 

accuracy on these radiation levels that 

they're doing. And I named eight or nine 

different ones. He said, well, we can't go 

over all of them. You know, we have it 

noted. We understand you say you picked up 

the dosimetry, but we don't have the records 

to show it, so they use a calculation of 

beta. And all the numbers are impressive, 

but they're not relevant to what we got 

going on every day out there in the field.

And on a personal note, I heard 

you all talk about there was maybe three 

more organs that we're looking at. I heard 

somebody say, well, are we going to spend 

the government's money to -- you know, my 
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dad worked out there 40 years. He's been 

deceased eight years. I've probably seen 

about 30 to 40 of his cohorts leave this 

world with leukemia, most of them not having 

the experience of being able to have the 

exposure for this, because it wasn't around, 

you know, back when that was going on. But 

that's just a little personal note I want to 

say. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

you very much, Mr. Rice.

Anybody else wish to speak to 

Savannah River?

Okay. I believe that Terrie 

Barrie was on the line and -- Terrie, if

you're there, you wanted to make comments?

MS. BARRIE: Yes, Dr. Melius. 

Can you hear me? 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: A little 

louder, if you can.
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MS. BARRIE: Okay. Sure. Thank 

you for allowing me to speak tonight, this 

evening, Dr. Melius and the Board. 

This is Terrie Barrie and I'll 

state who I am a bit later in the comments.

I want to thank the LaVon 

Rutherford for providing the explanation 

this morning about Rocky Flat SEC petition 

years. You had all of us in Colorado a 

little bit worried --

MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Terrie. 

Sorry to interrupt, but you're very muffled 

sounding. It's very hard to -- 

MS. BARRIE: Really? Okay. Is 

that any better? 

MR. KATZ: Yes, I think so. 

Thanks.

MS. BARRIE: Okay. What I was 

saying was I'm thanking LaVon Rutherford for 

providing the explanation about the Rocky 
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Flats SEC petition years. We were all 

worried that DCAS would stop looking at 

issues after 1989, and we're thankful that 

they're not going to just stop and look at 

all the issues. 

And to remind the Board, some of 

the issues that remain to be fully evaluated 

are the destruction of records and the 

presence of neptunium, thorium and tritium 

at the site. 

Concerning tritium, I filed a 

FOIA request in January of 2013 for emails 

from NIOSH with respect to the Rocky Flats 

petition. I received those emails last 

week. While most of the good stuff was 

redacted, I did find a few that discussed 

the tritium issue. 

One email that I found quite 

interesting was from Stu Hinnefeld dated 

August 1st, 2012. And I believe this was 
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before the Evaluation Report was issued. He 

expressed reservations about the tritium 

model that was going to use a 1973 tritium 

incident as a bounding incident to 

reconstruct dose. He states about Rocky 

Flats, and I quote, "They had tritium all 

over the place without knowing it. They 

don't know where or when the highly exposed 

individuals, the ones that they did the dose 

assessment for this report, were exposed," 

end quote. 

That's my thoughts exactly, too. 

One worker supplied an affidavit to support 

the petition explaining how he was exposed 

to tritium but had no monitoring records for 

that incident. How could DCAS be absolutely 

sure that this worker did not receive a 

higher dose than the workers in the 1973 

incident? Additionally, workers have 

explained to DCAS about the frequency of the 
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tritium alarms going off and how all they 

were told to do was go home and drink sixpack of beer. I am looking forward to 

further discussion on the tritium issue.

Stu Hinnefeld also mentioned this 

morning that -- about the meeting the 

advocates had with the federal agencies in 

February and he was unsure of how to label 

the advocates. Like the program itself, the 

advocacy for the sick workers is a bit 

complicated. 

A few months ago the advocates 

formed a citizens’ volunteer group and we're 

called the DEEOIC Interim Advisory Board. 

DIAB is made up of sick workers, sick worker 

spouses, children and grandchildren of 

deceased workers and advocates for EEOICPA 

claimants. Together we have more than 100 

years’ experience working with EEOICPA. 

DIAB is dedicated to helping DOL improve the 
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implementation of the law by following 

guidance from various government sponsored 

studies and reports. 

DIAB also plans to work closely 

with DOE, NIOSH and this Board to achieve 

the same goals. DIAB will function until 

Congress amends EEOICPA and establishes the 

Advisory Board on Toxic Substances and 

Worker Health or until the President 

established the board by executive order. 

DIAB held its first town hall 

meeting for the Rocky Flats claimants 

earlier this month and also issued its first 

White Paper on DOL's Site Exposure Matrix. 

Town hall meetings for workers at Portsmouth 

and Paducah are being planned for June and 

July of this year. 

Because DIAB will only address 

involving DOL Part E and Part B lung claims, 

the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy 
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Group, or ANWAG, will continue to be the 

lead advocacy to address dose reconstruction 

and SEC petition issues. And I thank you 

for your time and I’m looking forward to 

working with you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

Terrie. Does anybody else on the phone wish 

to make public comments?

MR. WALZ: Yes, this is Mark 

Walz, petitioner for the NMI SEC.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, you'll 

need to speak up, sir.

MR. WALZ: Okay. This is Mark 

Walz, the petitioner for the NMI SEC 195.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

MR. WALZ: And if I could just 

make a comment first. I'd like to thank 

Vern McDougall and Dr. Glover and Josh 

Kinman and Ed Scalsky and the host of others 

who worked very hard to gather a great deal 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Board Meeting, has been reviewed 

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

redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the 

Advisory Board for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for 

information only and is subject to change. 

399 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

of past data in pursuit of this petition. 

On behalf of all the employees I just want 

to extend my thanks to them and the team.

Beyond that, I've got three or 

four questions that I'd like to ask, which 

for expediency I can either do here or 

perhaps I could submit to Josh Kinman. 

These are questions that employees have 

asked me, points of clarification, things 

like that on, for instance, how the 1990 

cut-off date was selected for the extension 

of the SEC Class and other questions. Would 

it be better if I submitted those to Josh 

Kinman and have -- 

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that would 

be fine if you contact Josh, and he'll talk 

to the technical people involved and can get 

right back to you. 

MR. WALZ: Okay. Let's take that 

path then.
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Board Meeting, has been reviewed 

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

redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the 

Advisory Board for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for 

information only and is subject to change. 

400 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

MR. WALZ: Again, I appreciate 

everyone's effort. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And 

thank you for your efforts also.

MR. WALZ: Got you.

CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else on 

the line wish to make public comments? 

Okay. That concludes our meeting. Thank 

you, everybody. And to the Board Members, 

we'll talked to you on the phone and see you 

in Idaho. 

(Whereupon, the meeting was 

adjourned at 5:56 p.m.)