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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PROCEDURES REVIEW

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

+ + + + +

The Subcommittee convened via 

teleconference at 11:00 a.m., Eastern Standard 

Time, Wanda I. Munn, Chair, presiding.
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PRESENT:

WANDA I. MUNN, Chair

JOSIE BEACH, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor

HANS BEHLING, SC&A

KATHY BEHLING, SC&A

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

BOB BURNS, ORAU Team

ROSE GOGLIOTTI, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

JENNY LIN, HHS

LORI MARION-MOSS, DCAS

STEPHEN MARSCHKE, SC&A

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

JIM NETON, DCAS

STEVE OSTROW, SC&A

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team

SCOTT SIEBERT, ORAU Team

MATTHEW SMITH, ORAU Team

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

ELYSE THOMAS, ORAU Team
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T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

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

Review BRS status ............................. 5

White Paper paragraph clarifying wording for

 Overarching Issue 9, Concern 1

NIOSH.................................... 6

OTIB-54 - Findings ........................... 22

OTIB-82 Review ............................... 54

PER-42 - Response ............................ 74

Lunch ........................................ 98

PER-31 - Report Review - Carryover ........... 99

PER-45 - Response (8 added findings) ......... 99

PER-43 - Case Reviews ....................... 117

PER-18 - Review ............................. 141

PER-11 - Findings 3, 5 ...................... 158

PER-14 - Worker list comparison

with PER-11 ................................. 158

PER-52 - Review ............................. 169

PER-9 - Case Audits ......................... 187

PER-47 - Review ............................. 192

Administrative Detail

PER status - upcoming, BRS entry....... 231

Abeyance items ready for closing....... 233

Next meeting........................... 233

Adjournment ................................. 236
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 (11:00 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Let's get started with roll 

4 call. So let me start with a few things, as much 

5 material as can be posted had been posted for this 

6 meeting.

7 For people who are listening in and want 

8 to see the documents that we're talking about, so 

9 you'll find them on the NIOSH website under the 

10 Board Section, Scheduled Meeting, with today's 

11 date and you can go on there and click on a file 

12 and follow along.

13 There's a Subcommittee meeting with 

14 respect to conflict of interest. We don't have any 

15 agenda items that are apparently related to any 

16 conflicts we have with Board Members.

17 Josie and Wanda are conflicted, of 

18 course, for Hanford matters, but I don't think we 

19 have any Hanford matters on our plate, and Paul has 

20 conflicts for X-10 and LANL after 2000, and I don't 

21 think any of those are on our plate either today, 

22 so we should be clear there.

23 Let us do, so you don't have to speak 
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1 to conflict as we do roll call, but let's get 

2 started. We already, I don't need to do roll call 

3 for the Board Members because they are, the three 

4 are already there, Wanda, the Chair, and Paul and 

5 Josie.

6 Do we have any other Board Members that

7 are on the line? Okay, I didn't expect so.

8 (Roll call)

9 CHAIR MUNN: Good morning, everybody. 

10 Thanks for your efforts this morning. We have a 

11 significant amount of material to go through today 

12 and I trust that we're all ready for that.

13 The first thing we have on our agenda 

14 item is to review the BRS status. I think Lori has 

15 indicated to all of us that all of the responses 

16 that NIOSH had to post are up and I think you have 

17 indication of what those are.

18 We've had a comment from Steve about the 

19 difficulty in trying to get some of the attachments 

20 filed in and that is under advisement and I would 

21 not expect any resolution to that as of yet. If 

22 there is, Lori or Steve, correct me.

23 Otherwise, anyone who has any question 
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1 or any issue with respect of where we are with the 

2 BRS please let me know.

3 So I believe we have -- I'm taking that 

4 silence to mean that we are all happy with where 

5 the system is with a minor difficulty that we've 

6 already established of impacting what we're trying 

7 to do and that that's under control and going to 

8 be taken care of.

9 Unless we have any other concerns with 

10 respect to the BRS we're going to go right on 

11 through to the White Paper regarding Overarching 

12 Issue 9.

13 Jim, are you going to speak to that? 

14 Who?

15 DR. NETON: Yes, Wanda, I'm going to 

16 try to summarize what we've done here.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Good, thank you.

18 DR. NETON: Okay, everybody hear me 

19 okay? Is my volume alright on the phone?

20 CHAIR MUNN: Sounds great here.

21 DR. MAURO: Sounds good.

22 DR. NETON: Good. So this an issue 

23 that SC&A commented, it's been out there for quite 
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1 some time and it's related to skin contamination, 

2 a skin contamination review they did a while back.

3 And eventually we agreed on all the 

4 issues except for one and that is NIOSH's position 

5 that we believe that uranium was not difficult to 

6 remove from the skin and clothing by washing.

7 It was a direct experience of at least 

8 one NIOSH staff member who worked at a uranium 

9 facility that this was indeed the case. SC&A 

10 didn't necessarily disagree with us but they 

11 thought it would be prudent if we went and provided 

12 some additional documentation of this experience.

13 So there's a White Paper out there, I 

14 don't know is it being shown on the BRS? Yes, it 

15 is, okay. So we went out and reviewed the 

16 literature to the extent we could to see if there's 

17 any qualitative and/or quantitative information 

18 regarding this.

19 And, actually, to my surprise it wasn't 

20 abundant. Oftentimes it almost seemed like it was 

21 taken for granted that this was the case.

22 There is all kinds of evidence of 

23 people, you know, recommending to take showers when 
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1 they're contaminated and that sort of thing, but 

2 very little in the way of at least a quantitative 

3 evaluation.

4 We did manage to find a couple articles 

5 though. Back in the late 1950s there was one 

6 article published in the American Industrial 

7 Hygiene Association Journal by Blackwell in '59 

8 where they were actually reviewing methods of 

9 surface contamination control at a uranium rolling 

10 operation.

11 I don't believe this was a massive 

12 industrial operation like you might have had at 

13 Bethlehem Steel, but, nonetheless, it was a full 

14 rolling operation with salt baths and all that sort 

15 of equipment.

16 And a part of the procedure actually 

17 talked about personnel contamination and there was 

18 a quotation in there that I included in the response 

19 paper about personnel when they left the immediate 

20 area they were surveyed and if they were 

21 contaminated a washroom was provided for those who 

22 may have received contamination of the skin and a 

23 washing with soap and detergent usually removed any 
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1 contamination, so that's the first thing we found 

2 in the literature.

3 A second article appeared in the, most 

4 people know the existence of HASL-58, it's a very 

5 nice continuum of proceedings put on by HASL in 1958 

6 about uranium contamination control measures.

7 And one of those papers talked about a 

8 case study at the Hanford site where there was a 

9 worker who had visible amounts of UO3 powder around 

10 his nose, mouth, and chin.

11 A portable survey meter found that to 

12 be around 10,000 dpm per seven square inches and 

13 the report stated that a shower removed the 

14 detectable surface contamination. So at least 

15 there's those two late 1950s articles.

16 And this is, by the way, for intact 

17 skin. There is no, neither of these involve any 

18 sort of, you know, breakage of the skin where, you 

19 know, we would agree that there might be some issues 

20 there.

21 And then there was a quantitative 

22 evaluation done by Friedman in '58, and this is 

23 also, I forget exactly where this was published, 
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1 it might have been the AIHA Journal as well. I'll 

2 go back and look here. Friedman?

3 Yes, it was the American Industrial 

4 Hygiene Association Journal as well, where he 

5 looked at the, actually labeled soil with 

6 lanthanum-140 and applied it to the skin of the 

7 forearms of I think about 40 workers, well 45 

8 volunteers, and actually looked at the cumulative 

9 removal efficiency of various washing techniques.

10 In other words he did one washing, two 

11 washing, three washing, and I included an 

12 adaptation table of that article that was actually 

13 reported in a SENES DTRA report that demonstrated 

14 that the soil, the radiolabeled soil was taken off 

15 very quantitatively with the first washing to the 

16 extent that just soap and water, scrub and flush 

17 removed 95.8 percent, on average I think that is, 

18 of the 45, the forearms of the 45 people that were 

19 in the study.

20 We would certainly agree that this is 

21 not exactly analogous to uranium contamination. 

22 But I think I made this point earlier, the uranium, 

23 at least to our experience does behave more like 
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1 a dirt/soil contamination to some extent because 

2 it's a very low specific activity material, 

3 radioactive material and we calculate that 

4 something like 5,000 dpm on a small surface area 

5 of skin would be around three milligrams of 

6 contamination and, indeed, you saw the, when I 

7 talked about the Hanford case study, a 10,000 dpm 

8 measured on the chin and around the mouth of the 

9 person was considered to be visible contamination, 

10 that would have been somewhere in the vicinity of 

11 six milligrams.

12 And, finally, a note is that we looked 

13 at the personal decontamination guidance in the DOE 

14 manual Good Practices that is out there, and it 

15 recommends gently scrubbing the skin with soap and 

16 water to remove surface contamination.

17 There are other methods mentioned but 

18 only after the initial attempt which a general 

19 washing has proven to be ineffective. And, you 

20 know, as we mentioned at the beginning of this 

21 discussion it is NIOSH's experience that general 

22 washing is usually most often effective to remove 

23 contamination and abrasive decontamination 
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1 methods are not typically required at least in our 

2 experience.

3 So, in conclusion, there's a couple 

4 qualitative studies out there that talk about 

5 removal with soap and water and at least one 

6 quantitative study using soil on the forearms that 

7 demonstrates radioactive soil can be removed 

8 fairly effectively.

9 And, finally, the DOE Good Practices 

10 manual that I just talked about recommends washing 

11 with soap and water as their initial attempt. And 

12 that's it.

13 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Jim. SC&A, do 

14 you find this White Paper to be adequate for the 

15 concerns that you had expressed? We have 

16 discussed this several times and in our 

17 conversations this was, I think, just a wrap up on 

18 Jim's part.

19 We had asked NIOSH to give us a piece 

20 of paper that had the words on it and he's done so. 

21 Can we now move on from this concern? Does it meet 

22 your requirements? It's --

23 (Simultaneous speaking)
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1 DR. MAURO: With the silence I was 

2 going to jump in, this is John Mauro.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, okay.

4 DR. MAURO: I know that Hans and I were, 

5 I guess we were the ones that were primarily 

6 concerned and all I can say is that what was just 

7 explained to me was a very nice job and I think you 

8 did the best with what was out there and, you know, 

9 I'm satisfied.

10 I don't know if, Hans, you feel the same 

11 way?

12 CHAIR MUNN: Hans?

13 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, with regard to 

14 skin contamination I think the evidence is there 

15 to suggest that a simple washing is probably 

16 adequate.

17 But I think, if I recall, we did have 

18 a second issue that involved the clothing 

19 contamination and the potential contribution to 

20 skin dose from persistent clothing contamination.

21 And I think we talked about in days 

22 past, the time era, people may have worn their 

23 clothing a little longer than they do today and 
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1 often times work clothing was perhaps washed once 

2 a week at most maybe and that clothing 

3 contamination could contribute significant skin 

4 exposure, but I'm not sure if that was resolved 

5 independently of this White Paper.

6 DR. NETON: This is Jim. We did have 

7 that discussion and my recollection was that we 

8 pointed to the fact that we do have a method for 

9 addressing clothing contamination that's in the 

10 Bethlehem Steel Site Profile and that we are going 

11 to consider using that type of approach at 

12 facilities where this would be the case.

13 I think we used clothing contamination 

14 that was actually measured prior to laundering, I 

15 think it was at the Mallinckrodt facility. I 

16 haven't looked at that in a while, but that was, 

17 we acknowledged that that still could be an issue. 

18 We are going to address that in that way.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I had thought we had 

20 laid that to rest. Although, if it's still 

21 outstanding I suppose we need to get some words 

22 injected into the BRS to identify that.

23 DR. NETON: I thought it might be 
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1 there, but maybe I'm mistaken.

2 MR. MARSCHKE: This is Steve Marschke. 

3 I remember that we did talk about that. I am 

4 looking for it here in the BRS to see if there's 

5 anything on it and I can't see anything.

6 I'll have to go back and look at the 

7 minutes of meetings and the transcript there and 

8 see whether or not we talked about this and what 

9 we actually said about clothing contamination.

10 DR. H. BEHLING: Thank you, yes.

11 DR. NETON: Yes, I guess I'd like to at 

12 least get some agreement on this washing issue, 

13 though. It sounds like we do agree that that one 

14 is okay.

15 CHAIR MUNN: I think I heard those 

16 words, so with respect to the concern on skin I 

17 think we need to indicate that that concern has been 

18 met, that SC&A agrees that the concern has been 

19 adequately met and we can close that portion of it.

20 DR. NETON: I do agree as well that we 

21 don't to lose that other issue though and I'd have 

22 to go back and review the transcripts if it's not 

23 in the BRS somewhere as to what we said on that, 
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1 but I distinctly remember talking about the 

2 approach that's used in the Bethlehem Steel Site 

3 Profile.

4 MR. MARSCHKE: The only thing I can 

5 see, Jim, is in the same concern, Concern 1 here 

6 is that when John Mauro, the entry for John Mauro 

7 on January 7, 2014, we are talking about skin and 

8 clothing, and so I would go back and start looking, 

9 and there is a -- but that's --

10 CHAIR MUNN: There's a memo attached.

11 MR. MARSCHKE: Memo attached, but 

12 that's our memo so that wouldn't resolve the issue.

13 CHAIR MUNN: No.

14 MR. MARSCHKE: But there might have 

15 been a Procedures meeting sometime around that time 

16 period when the clothing was discussed and --

17 DR. NETON: You know, and, Steve, I 

18 think I remember, that issue may be resolved in that 

19 memo now that I'm thinking about it.

20 MR. MARSCHKE: Oh, you think so? Well 

21 let's open it up and take a look.

22 DR. NETON: Yes, take a look because I, 

23 you know, I hate to, you know, delay things, but 
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1 I --

2 CHAIR MUNN: No, it's not a delay 

3 actually. This is a --

4 DR. NETON: I think there was some 

5 mention of it made in there.

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, keep going down.

7 MR. MARSCHKE: I'm going to look for 

8 clothing.

9 DR. NETON: Yes, just do a search for 

10 clothing.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Well the title 

12 certainly suggests clothing is in this memo.

13 DR. NETON: Yes. I think somewhere in 

14 there -- Is it the one where it basically said that 

15 we resolved most of the issues?

16 All right, here it is. "During this 

17 discussion NIOSH pointed out that NIOSH accounted 

18 for skin and clothing, such as contaminated 

19 clothing, according to the methods used to 

20 reconstruct doses at Bethlehem Steel."

21 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

22 DR. NETON: "Based on this discussion 

23 it appears NIOSH is prepared to take this exposure 
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1 scenario into consideration on a case-by-case 

2 basis."

3 I'm not sure what that means. This is 

4 talking specifically about clothing not washing.

5 CHAIR MUNN: Looks like we may have to 

6 go back to the July 2014 transcript.

7 (Simultaneous speaking)

8 DR. NETON: I think this does cover 

9 both. It talks about --

10 (Off the record comments)

11 MR. MARSCHKE: "We recommend this 

12 issue be held in abeyance."

13 (Off the record comments)

14 DR. NETON: Okay, all right. Yes, I 

15 kind of consider that a separate issue than the 

16 washing issue.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it seems to be, and 

18 I think, I do think that we resolved the clothing 

19 in our discussions.

20 MR. MARSCHKE: I think it's right there 

21 in that first paragraph. Wanda, it says 

22 basically, "We now understand that this is in fact 

23 the approach that NIOSH plans to use, including 
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1 doses beneath clothing."

2 "Given this understanding our concerns 

3 with respect to this matter is resolved."

4 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

5 MR. MARSCHKE: So that's, I think 

6 they're talking, and in here they talk about how 

7 they're going to use IREP to skin --

8 CHAIR MUNN: To identify skin dose, 

9 yes, underneath clothing. Yes, and we know that 

10 it, from previous discussions we know that clothing 

11 is taken into consideration in that process.

12 I would interpret that sentence to mean 

13 that the clothing issue has been resolved. Do you, 

14 Hans?

15 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, Wanda.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, good.

17 DR. H. BEHLING: Sorry.

18 CHAIR MUNN: So with that it appears to 

19 me that we can now close the issue with respect to 

20 skin dose as it applies here. Let's --

21 DR. MAURO: Before we move on, this is 

22 John. Jim, those references you cited sound like 

23 really good references to have access to. Are they 
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1 on the archives so that in the future we could all 

2 take advantage of it?

3 DR. NETON: You know, John, they are 

4 not, but I could easily, I'll make sure that they 

5 get put there. I think there's a section on the 

6 Site Research Database that allows for generic 

7 items to appear.

8 DR. MAURO: That would be great, thanks 

9 a lot.

10 DR. NETON: Yes, I'll take and -- I 

11 didn't get, you know, I didn't have time to put 

12 those out there, but I'll make sure they get there.

13 They're actually fairly readily 

14 retrievable if you have a library that's got the 

15 AIHA stuff going way back. We happen to have one 

16 in NIOSH, it's kind of nice.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. I think we can 

18 close this specific concern, Concern 1, and let's 

19 move on then to OTIB-54.

20 We have quite a number of documents and 

21 issues to address here, first one being Items 1 

22 through 4. I believe Steve Ostrow is going to 

23 present those.
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1 DR. NETON: Wanda, this is Jim.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes?

3 DR. NETON: Before we get started could 

4 we confirm that Bob Burns is on the telephone? I 

5 expected him, he didn't chime in when we initially 

6 signed in.

7 MR. BURNS: Yes, I'm here.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, good.

9 DR. NETON: Okay, great. Thanks. 

10 Okay.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Terrific. Yes, good 

12 paper, Bob. All right, Steve Ostrow?

13 DR. OSTROW: Good morning, this is 

14 Steve. We had several findings on OTIB-54 and 

15 we've been resolving them every time we have a 

16 meeting.

17 Findings 1 through 4 all deal with 

18 reactor modeling, how ORAU did it and used ORIGEN 

19 to model reactors, how they selected the reactors, 

20 how they reduced the number of isotopes they were 

21 considering, and so forth and so on.

22 ORAU responded with the RPRT-67, which 

23 addresses these four findings that we have, 1 
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1 through 4. We took a look at the ORAU report and 

2 SC&A issued its own report on February 6th, which 

3 everyone should have, where we took a look at the 

4 these four findings.

5 I just wanted to say a little bit of a 

6 compliment here. ORAU did a bang up job on this 

7 report, on their report, very comprehensive, very 

8 interesting, very good, especially to nuclear 

9 engineering people.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, indeed.

11 DR. OSTROW: Yes. I enjoyed it. So 

12 anyway the, so to summarize what our findings were 

13 of the review, originally Findings 1 through 4 were 

14 all listed as "in progress," they're waiting to 

15 look at the, and the action on ORAU's part was to 

16 issue this report, which they did.

17 So as a result of our review we 

18 recommend that three of the findings be closed and 

19 one of the findings remain in progress and I'll go 

20 through them one at a time.

21 Steve Marschke, did you put in the BRS 

22 the four recommendations that we had on this?

23 MR. MARSCHKE: Yes, I did, but I can't 
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1 get to the, I'm trying to change the one from the 

2 last, the overarching one there and I'm trying to 

3 close that and it's --

4 DR. OSTROW: So I suggest we just hang 

5 on for just a minute until Steve gets there, it'll 

6 make things easier.

7 CHAIR MUNN: That's reasonable. 

8 Let's do it while it's hot.

9 DR. OSTROW: Well until he gets there 

10 I can read what our Finding Number 1 was, which is 

11 a short one. "SC&A is not able to evaluate the 

12 appropriateness of the input parameters used for 

13 the ORIGEN-2 run," didn't say not specified or 

14 references cited in the OTIB, so that was our 

15 finding.

16 And as soon as Steve gets to it you can 

17 see our conclusion. Okay, there we go. It's like 

18 in the middle of the screen right now, and, okay, 

19 I'll read in case everybody is not on the video 

20 conference, okay.

21 "After review of the data sources and 

22 input parameters presented in the ORAU reactor 

23 modeling report as well as an examination of 
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1 literature, SC&A is satisfied that the report 

2 adequately specifies and references the pertinent 

3 input parameters and assumptions associated with 

4 the ORIGEN-2 runs and finds them appropriate." 

5 SC&A therefore recommends that this finding be 

6 closed.

7 So we went a little bit further than 

8 just looking at the ORAU report. We looked at the 

9 actual source literature itself for the different, 

10 for ORIGEN and the different reactor types and 

11 satisfied ourselves that not only did ORAU address 

12 our concern, but they also did it correctly.

13 Their inputs were from the right 

14 sources and everything, so we recommend that this 

15 finding be closed.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Steve Marschke, can you 

17 please do that for us, indicate that SC&A and NIOSH 

18 agrees with NIOSH's approach and the Subcommittee 

19 as of this date closes this item.

20 MR. MARSCHKE: Will do.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you.

22 MR. KATZ: This is Ted. I don't know 

23 if any others hear it, but there's some background 
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1 noise coming through from someone's phone.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, someone has traffic 

3 going by. Very good.

4 DR. OSTROW: Okay, Steve, when you're 

5 --

6 CHAIR MUNN: Without any comment let's 

7 move on to Finding 2.

8 DR. OSTROW: Okay. I'll read the 

9 finding, it's also short. "The OTIB does not 

10 provide sufficient information to allow evaluation 

11 of its downselect from the initial seven to the 

12 final four representative reactors chosen."

13 What this means is that ORAU started out 

14 with a list of several reactors, ran ORIGEN and 

15 reduced the number of reactors considered to just 

16 four, the Advanced Test Reactor, Fast Flux Test 

17 Facility, the N Reactor, and a TRIGA reactor with 

18 stainless steel cladding.

19 And we had, I mean we didn't have any 

20 technical reasons to doubt what NIOSH did, what 

21 ORAU did, but as you can see in our finding what 

22 they put in their report is almost identical to what 

23 was originally in the OTIB, so they didn't really 
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1 answer the question.

2 What we would really have liked to have 

3 seen was some data from tables or whatever 

4 comparing the results from the seven different 

5 reactors and showing that the four representative 

6 ones that they selected actually encompasses the, 

7 I guess the parameter space of the original seven 

8 reactors, that these really are representative.

9 We needed some more explanation of this 

10 and as I said since the ORAU report just says the 

11 same thing as the OTIB did, that we don't think it 

12 was adequately addressed and we recommend then that 

13 this stay, you know, as an open item in progress.

14 CHAIR MUNN: NIOSH, any comments?

15 MR. BURNS: This is Bob. Looking at 

16 SC&A's report, as I understood it, the suggestion 

17 was to add some tables to your RPRT-67 or elsewhere 

18 that would further allow them to make those 

19 evaluations?

20 DR. OSTROW: Yes. Yes, that's 

21 basically it because I mean you say that the four 

22 reactors you selected are representative, but you 

23 don't say, and you said in your report the factors 
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1 that you considered, but you don't show us any data 

2 so we could actually judge for ourselves that these 

3 are representative.

4 MR. BURNS: Okay. I mean that data 

5 certainly exists. It would be a bit voluminous, 

6 but it could certainly be added if that's what NIOSH 

7 asks us to do.

8 DR. OSTROW: Okay. I mean don't 

9 totally bomb us with data, but, you know, some, you 

10 know, important tables, whatever, not, you know, 

11 hundreds of pages of data.

12 I assume you have all the data because 

13 you made all the runs.

14 MR. BURNS: Right.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. Can I 

16 just comment that, would it be possible if you were 

17 just to have two or three summary tables that 

18 illustrate the parameters that were used to show 

19 that it's equivalent?

20 MR. BURNS: The answer is yes, again, 

21 if that's what we're asked to do by NIOSH.

22 DR. OSTROW: That would be fine because 

23 we don't really want to wade through huge amounts 
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1 of data. Paul's suggestion is very good, it can 

2 all be, you know, summarized in a couple of tables.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, and SC&A is it your 

4 request that this be added to RPRT-67 or is that 

5 it simply be provided to us here?

6 DR. OSTROW: We don't care, whichever 

7 is more convenient. If it's something short maybe 

8 just, you know, a technical memo.

9 CHAIR MUNN: It would be more expedient 

10 to do it as a White Paper or technical memo here.

11 DR. OSTROW: In short, yes.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, if that's okay. 

13 Bob, is --

14 MR. KATZ: Oh, I think we need to hear 

15 from NIOSH if that's okay for ORAU to provide that.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I think 

18 a way to proceed here is for us to get with ORAU 

19 and decide a good way to provide the information 

20 that will allow this, the logic of the selection 

21 to be more obvious, and then we'll inform the 

22 Subcommittee and SC&A when a product's available 

23 and where it can be viewed.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Good. That's very 

2 helpful. Thank you, Stu. We'll take that under 

3 consideration and make a note that Finding 2 will 

4 be addressed by NIOSH next time.

5 DR. OSTROW: Okay. So if you want to 

6 we can move on to Finding 3. Finding 3, I'm not 

7 going to read the whole finding because it's a 

8 little bit long, but it deals with the information 

9 about the ORIGEN-S run, before we were talking 

10 ORIGEN-2, now we're talking about ORIGEN-S and we 

11 wanted NIOSH to provide an explanation of the 

12 ORIGEN-S runs that they did so we could see if it 

13 was appropriate.

14 And Steve is getting the finding here. 

15 Okay. And we think that what NIOSH provided is 

16 adequate, that we believe that the reactor modeling 

17 report contains sufficient information on the 

18 parameters selected for the ORIGEN-S run for each 

19 of the representative reactors to inform an 

20 assessment if the values chosen are appropriate.

21 SC&A therefore recommends that this 

22 finding be closed. And as on the first finding we 

23 went beyond just looking at the ORAU report, we went 
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1 back to the original source documents about the 

2 different types of reactors and we looked also at 

3 the, you know, the manuals for ORIGEN-S, which is 

4 part of a larger scale system that Oak Ridge 

5 maintains for reactor analysis.

6 So we recommend that this finding be 

7 closed, we're satisfied.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Any comment from Board 

9 Members or others?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I agree it should 

11 be closed.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Josie?

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I'm in agreement 

14 with that also.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Steve, will 

16 you please make note on Finding 3 that the 

17 Subcommittee agrees this finding is now closed.

18 Thank you, Steve. Now let's move on to 

19 Finding 4. Steve Ostrow?

20 DR. OSTROW: Okay. Finding 4 deals 

21 specifically with the TRIGA reactor and we had also 

22 some questions about which TRIGA reactor was chosen

23 in the aluminum or stainless steel cladding one and 
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1 we had some question about what fuel enrichment was 

2 chosen and a few other things.

3 The ORAU reactor modeling report 

4 provides all the information that we needed. It 

5 contains the information on TRIGA reactor cases 

6 that were lacking in the OTIB and it's consistent 

7 with literature.

8 We looked at the literature also on 

9 that, so we recommend that this finding be closed.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Any comment from anyone 

11 with respect to that recommendation? Agreed, 

12 Paul?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I agree with that.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Agreed, Josie?

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Steve will you please make 

17 the appropriate statement on the findings and close 

18 Finding 4? Thank you Steve Ostrow. Any other 

19 comments with respect to that portion of OTIB-54?

20 All right, thank you folks. That 

21 finding is now closed. That brings us to Finding 

22 5, the White Paper, that Bob Burns provided for us. 

23 Bob?
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1 MR. BURNS: This is Bob. No, I did not 

2 provide that White Paper.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, you didn't.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Are you talking about 

5 the December 19th one?

6 CHAIR MUNN: I must be looking at the 

7 wrong thing then. All right, then who's going to 

8 do Finding 5 at NIOSH?

9 DR. NETON: This is Jim, I'm a little 

10 confused. Is this the White Paper that dealt with 

11 the usage of the different release fractions in the 

12 emergency --

13 CHAIR MUNN: I thought it was release 

14 fractions.

15 (Simultaneous speaking)

16 DR. NETON: Yes, Bob, you did write 

17 that White Paper.

18 MR. BURNS: Oh, okay. I didn't 

19 provide it and I wasn't prepared to discuss this.

20 DR. NETON: Well your name is on it.

21 (Simultaneous speaking)

22 MR. BURNS: Oh, understood. I --

23 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Then --
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1 MR. BURNS: I'm at a bit of loss here.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well let's read the 

3 finding.

4 DR. MAURO: Can I help out? This is 

5 John Mauro. I read through the paper. It was 

6 clear that an enormous amount of work went into it 

7 and I understood it and in effect and in brief I'm 

8 hoping that maybe we can go through this now and 

9 at least give you our perspective on it and how you 

10 want to deal with that.

11 You could decide, but in reviewing it 

12 it's clear that the issue had to deal with the --

13 you will visualize workers handling a spent fuel 

14 and you wanted to estimate what might become 

15 airborne and become an inhalation concern.

16 And when you do that you have to assign 

17 that all of the, you know, the long list, the 

18 radionuclides to the fuel, and you have to

19 determine the release fraction, what fraction of 

20 the activities in which of these isotopes become 

21 airborne.

22 And some of the radionuclides are a lot 

23 more volatile, like the iodines are probably the 
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1 most volatile, cesium and ruthenium are a less 

2 volatile, and then just about everything else, 

3 argon, the lower volatility, and those release 

4 fractions will establish the mix.

5 If you recall everything is based on the 

6 mix, so you have an airborne mix now and the 

7 question that we raised is that a set of release 

8 fractions were selected in OTIB-54 to come up with 

9 that, that mix for release fractions, and they used 

10 a fairly simple approach.

11 I think they just had two categories. 

12 The iodines, which had a release fraction of 

13 something like 0.5, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm 

14 just doing this from memory now.

15 And everything else was given I believe 

16 it was 0.01, and that would be the high end of the, 

17 in fact that would be appropriate for 

18 semi-volatiles like cesium and ruthenium, but they 

19 used that for everything.

20 And the question I raise is since this 

21 is a relative number in the mix is it possible that 

22 by assigning everything else a 0.01 is that in fact 

23 claimant-favorable because in theory an 
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1 alternative approach would've been to assign 

2 everything else, except for the cesium or 

3 ruthenium, something lower like 0.001?

4 In fact that's referred to as the DOE 

5 mix in the literature, but NIOSH elected to go with 

6 what they call the alternative mix, and the 

7 question was since everything is relative, you 

8 know, on its face value you would say well, we gave 

9 everything 0.01 which is more conservative, but the 

10 reality is since everything is, in terms of 

11 relative to each other, it's not apparent that in 

12 fact that's a claimant-favorable assumption. So 

13 that was the issue.

14 What NIOSH and ORAU did was do an 

15 immense amount of work in terms of well, let's see 

16 what happens if we were to use what we would call 

17 the DOE mix for a whole, I believe it was said of 

18 100 cases, and what would happen if we use the

19 alternative mix, the alternative mix being the mix 

20 that OTIB-54 elected to use.

21 And they present an incredible series 

22 of tables, someone did an awful lot of work, to show 

23 the outcome in terms of under what circumstances 
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1 is the DOE mix more claimant- favorable and under 

2 what circumstances the alternative mix, the one in 

3 OTIB-54, are more claimant-favorable, and the 

4 outcome was that it depends.

5 MR. BURNS: Right. That's exactly 

6 what I was going to say, the answer depends.

7 DR. MAURO: It depends. Now the only 

8 -- now of course we did not check any numbers. All 

9 we did was look at the presentation and I have to 

10 say, you know, we take those results on face value.

11 My only question is that there really 

12 is nothing in the report shows what you plan to do. 

13 What I mean by that is when you're dealing with a 

14 case and we know that depending on which release 

15 fractions you use could affect the outcome.

16 Is it your plan to continue to use the 

17 alternative mix, and that becomes your standard 

18 mix, or is it now your plan to use both and see which 

19 one is limiting?

20 Because the report itself is silent on 

21 that and we're wondering, you know, what your 

22 strategy is going to be.

23 MR. BURNS: Okay. And I can't speak to 
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1 that. I mean the purpose of that report was to 

2 provide that information to NIOSH and I guess by 

3 extension back to the Board and then just put it 

4 out there for discussion of, in response to your 

5 question, what are we going to do next, do we stick 

6 with the status quo or make some adjustment?

7 I don't think it was our intention to 

8 pick one or the other, rather just to present the 

9 information.

10 DR. MAURO: Yes. I could help out a 

11 little bit. In discussing it amongst ourselves we 

12 recognized that the DOE mix release fractions 

13 really were intended for use for accident 

14 conditions.

15 MR. BURNS: Right.

16 DR. MAURO: And if a case could be made 

17 that under non-accident conditions your 

18 alternative approach would be more appropriate, 

19 but I don't think it's self-evident that that's the

20 case. In other words, I mean --

21 DR. NETON: John? Dr. Mauro?

22 DR. MAURO: Yes?

23 DR. NETON: I thought that when that 
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1 case was made in the paper, and it was our intent 

2 to stick with our mix versus, you know, for exactly 

3 that reason that, you know, for the situations that 

4 we're modeling here the alternative mix, as you're 

5 calling it, is more realistic.

6 DR. MAURO: Okay. I have to say that 

7 in thinking back to the Paper when I read it last 

8 week I didn't recall seeing that statement made, 

9 that conclusion.

10 I know you mentioned that the DOE mix 

11 was intended to use for accidents and I understood 

12 that.

13 DR. NETON: Right.

14 DR. MAURO: But it wasn't apparent that 

15 you decided to stay with the alternative mix as 

16 being the approach and now the only concern I have 

17 is, now this is just what I would call a 

18 self-evident, you know, whether you're under 

19 accident conditions or not clearly there are 

20 substantial differences in the volatility of 

21 iodine versus ruthenium and cesium versus just 

22 about everything else whether you're under 

23 accident conditions or not.
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1 So I guess I would say that I understand 

2 that the DOE mix was for accidents but it's not 

3 apparent to me why it would not also apply to when 

4 you're just handling the material.

5 DR. H. BEHLING: This is Hans Behling. 

6 Can I just give a quick update as to which the 

7 differences -- under what conditions would these 

8 radionuclides be released and exposed to 

9 individuals, are we talking about spent fuel in a 

10 hot cell?

11 DR. MAURO: It is -- the whole OTIB --

12 Well I'll tell you my perspective. The OTIB is 

13 intended to be used to reconstruct doses to workers 

14 who are exposed, who are associated with basically 

15 reactors and spent fuel and it covers a broad range 

16 of circumstances where people might be exposed to 

17 airborne fission products that are associated with 

18 spent fuel and the only information you have for 

19 that worker is a gross beta gamma analysis of urine.

20 So I guess to answer your question is 

21 the OTIB, in my understanding, has broad 

22 applications. There could be many circumstances 

23 under which it could be used, everything ranging 
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1 from a person working at a reactor to perhaps a 

2 person working in a glove box with fuel.

3 That's my understanding and so it's 

4 within that context that I raise the question 

5 regarding the release fractions.

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Well wouldn't the 

7 issue here really be one, when you talk about an 

8 accident you're talking about an operating power 

9 plant or a reactor that has a fresh inventory of 

10 most of the short-lived radioiodines that wouldn't 

11 exist in spent fuel.

12 MR. BURNS: All right. Well there's 

13 guidance in the OTIB for --

14 DR. MAURO: Age.

15 MR. BURNS: -- age and also for whether 

16 or not iodine should or should not be included in 

17 a particular case.

18 DR. MAURO: Yes. Yes, so we don't have 

19 an issue with that. You do address that issue. 

20 It's more along, it's just looking for a rationale 

21 that fundamentally there are these differences in 

22 the volatility, potential volatility for these I 

23 would say three classes of radionuclides.
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1 We'll say the volatiles being the 

2 iodines and, of course, the mix that's in the fuel 

3 itself takes into consideration, you know, what 

4 type of fuel you're working with, what age, or burn 

5 up, I mean all of that's all built into the first 

6 half of our conversation. We're really now where 

7 we talked about the fuel itself.

8 Now on the back end we'll say okay, 

9 somehow a person is going to be exposed to airborne, 

10 or radioactivity associated, somehow related to 

11 what's in that fuel, and the release fraction, of 

12 course, has an effect as you clearly pointed out 

13 and I don't remember the conditions under which the 

14 DOE mix as opposed to the alternative mix are 

15 limiting, and there were some big differences.

16 (Simultaneous speaking)

17 MR. BURNS: Well really it depends on 

18 what you're gamma counting or beta counting because 

19 the choice of the release fraction has such a big 

20 effect, order of magnitude effect on the 

21 cesium-strontium ratio for uranium fuel.

22 DR. MAURO: Yes.

23 DR. H. BEHLING: But isn't one of the 
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1 major factors that would differ from an accident 

2 scenario of DOE model the barriers we're talking 

3 about?

4 When you have a reactor that is 

5 operational and then you have an accident you have 

6 moveable barriers that may not exist, including, 

7 obviously, the water, the reactor vessel, the 

8 various filtration system that would remove some 

9 of the stuff before it would in essence expose 

10 individuals in an operating reactor that has 

11 undergone a transient or an accident.

12 These barriers wouldn't exist so it 

13 would clearly change the release fractions, the 

14 absence of water, many of these materials are 

15 soluble in water, obviously there are barriers 

16 involving the reactor vessel, the containment 

17 vessel where people general speaking are not there 

18 during a reactor operation.

19 All those things will impact what the 

20 release fractions are that people are exposed to.

21 MR. BURNS: Right. Yes, I don't think 

22 the DOE standard necessarily covered or was limited 

23 to reactor accidents. As I recall it's the 
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1 DOE-1027 standard that we utilized and that 

2 pertains to, I don't have it in front of me, but 

3 I think it pertains to Category II nuclear 

4 facilities, so not necessarily reactors.

5 Regardless, I don't think it takes 

6 credit for water and filters and such.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Does that help, Hans?

8 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes. You know, I'm 

9 used to dealing with these reactor issues coming 

10 from the nuclear power area and our concern was 

11 always what are the release fractions in the 

12 conditions such as the Three Mile Island accident, 

13 and they're quite different from what I believe you 

14 may be looking at here in this White Paper.

15 MR. BURNS: Yes, I think that's 

16 accurate. As I'm sure you know there's a whole 

17 series of NUREG reports that address release 

18 fractions for reactor accidents that don't 

19 necessarily look the same as the DOE-1027 standard.

20 But our rationale for setting the 

21 semi-volatile and particulate release fractions 

22 the same was basically we wanted to account for 

23 accumulation of routine contamination in the 
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1 workplace and I just didn't want a situation where 

2 there was an order of magnitude difference between 

3 the cesium and strontium on the source terms, 

4 because that's just not indicative of what you see 

5 in irradiated fuel.

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, I agree with what 

7 you just said.

8 CHAIR MUNN: So you're okay with what 

9 we have here, Hans?

10 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, I am.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes, Hans raised a broader 

12 question. Mine was really a narrow one namely just 

13 on when you do, and it sounds like after you've 

14 performed your analysis, which you couldn't have 

15 done more, you have shown that it depends which one 

16 is limiting and I guess when I read it I don't recall 

17 that you did come to a conclusion, but if you have 

18 that is to stay with the alternative release 

19 fractions.

20 You know, I guess it's not apparent to 

21 me, you know, why that in fact will be always 

22 claimant-favorable or appropriately -- well it's 

23 reasonably claimant-favorable for most 
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1 circumstances that you may want to account for. I 

2 mean that's where it left me.

3 I only bring this up because I read it 

4 and these were my impressions and I thought I'd just 

5 pass them on to see if perhaps we could even close 

6 this based on the discussions we're having right 

7 now.

8 CHAIR MUNN: That was going to be my 

9 suggestion.

10 DR. MAURO: But I have to say I haven't 

11 yet heard a good rationale for why staying with the 

12 alternative, you know, is in fact the appropriate 

13 approach, you know.

14 Not that there has to be great insight 

15 into it except a very simple assumption that yes 

16 there really are at least three different 

17 categories of volatility as opposed to just two, 

18 and notwithstanding whether you're talking the 

19 normal handling of this material or accidents.

20 And so it's not apparent to me that, 

21 that resorting just to the alternative approach, 

22 the OTIB-54 approach, is in fact the appropriate 

23 way to go.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: NIOSH, any thoughts?

2 DR. NETON: Yes. I think this is a 

3 case where we're probably never going to be 100 

4 percent certain that it's always going to be 

5 bounding but at some point you have to make a 

6 decision.

7 I have to take a look into running this 

8 both ways and it just --

9 DR. MAURO: It's too big, yeah.

10 Now, I have to say, I understand the 

11 dilemma and I understand that there are times when 

12 reasonable compromise has to be done just for the 

13 sake of expediency and not to find yourself in a 

14 situation where it's just impossible to run all 

15 these alternative cases.

16 And a little bit more of why -- and in 

17 fact, in looking over your tables, I think that 

18 maybe the answer does lie somewhere embedded in 

19 those series of tables from the 100 cases that were 

20 reviewed. And I didn't spend a lot of time sort 

21 of dissecting it, but I think embedded in those 

22 tables might be a rationale why the weight of 

23 evidence is such that staying with the alternative 
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1 approach is appropriate.

2 But I didn't go that far and maybe, you 

3 know, just looking at those, because I think you 

4 did all the homework and now it's just a matter of 

5 sort of teasing out the data to say to yourself, 

6 well, listen, we really can't, from a practical 

7 perspective, you know, run these variety of cases, 

8 it would be just overwhelming.

9 And if it could be shown that the 

10 current release fractions seem to be reasonable, 

11 applicable, across the board in its current form, 

12 I don't know, that would be helpful.

13 MR. MARSCHKE: John, this is Steve 

14 Marschke. Can I make a suggestion?

15 DR. MAURO: Sure.

16 MR. MARSCHKE: We know Jim Neton, or 

17 Jim has pointed out what he plans to do with it, 

18 and basically he planned on using what he had been 

19 using. And I guess, based upon that knowledge, I 

20 mean, can SC&A go back and look at those tables and 

21 see whether or not those tables support, you know, 

22 the continued use of the current approach, I guess 

23 it is?
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1 DR. MAURO: I'm almost embarrassed to 

2 say this, but I was overwhelmed by the amount of 

3 analysis that was done there. The sophistication 

4 of the analysis --

5 CHAIR MUNN: That was pretty 

6 spectacular.

7 DR. MAURO: It was truly spectacular. 

8 And I almost feel inadequate to be the one to go 

9 in there and try to do that. I think the people 

10 who authored that, who have great insight obviously 

11 into this analysis and the different 100 cases they 

12 looked at, and I guess, you know, it would be, I 

13 would think, a lot easier for them to sort of sniff 

14 it out.

15 I know that I have to say I don't feel 

16 as if I have the qualifications to make those 

17 judgments.

18 DR. NETON: John, this is Jim. I tend 

19 to agree with you. I think that maybe we didn't 

20 quite go far enough here and it really is -- the 

21 tables, the document does show that it depends, and 

22 I think more than usual, it seems like it's in our 

23 favor.
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1 DR. MAURO: I agree with that. That 

2 what it -- it sort of read that way to me, too, but 

3 I was afraid to say it.

4 DR. NETON: I think it may end up 

5 becoming sort of a small weight-of-the-evidence 

6 type argument, as you suggested, where we talk 

7 about the more reasonableness of the source term 

8 release fractions that we've used and go through 

9 the examples.

10 And I would agree, the paper itself 

11 doesn't come to a point of conclusion, at least, 

12 you know, a summary that says here's what we're 

13 doing and why. So I think maybe we'll take it upon 

14 ourselves and go back and maybe fine-tune that 

15 argument a little bit.

16 CHAIR MUNN: If it's possible to 

17 provide a couple of paragraphs summarizing the 

18 rationale, it would probably be --

19 DR. NETON: Wanda, that sounds -- we'll 

20 take a shot at it.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, let me make an 

23 additional comment, Wanda, if I may. This is 
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1 Ziemer again. It seems to me that you could always 

2 find a case where this wouldn't be bounding, but 

3 in the predominance of cases you're going to be 

4 fine.

5 I think that's what's going to be -- and 

6 in fact you said something to that effect, someone, 

7 I think, I was trying to locate it here, but I didn't 

8 find it. But there may be some case where this 

9 wasn't bounding, but it would be a rare case, the 

10 way you've approached this, I would think.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Paul. I will 

12 carry Finding 5 with a notation that we expect a 

13 summary of the rationale to be forthcoming from 

14 NIOSH and we'll have that on our agenda next time.

15 Any other comment with respect to this 

16 White Paper and our discussion? I guess not. 

17 Thank you, Bob, for an illuminating document. 

18 We'll move on to OTIB-82.

19 DR. OSTROW: Excuse me, Wanda, it's 

20 Steve Ostrow.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, Steve?

22 DR. OSTROW: Before we get off of 

23 OTIB-54, I see yesterday NIOSH posted on the BRS 
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1 something about Finding Number 9 that we had, which 

2 is in abeyance. This is the one that has to do with 

3 the actual tool that NIOSH/ORAU uses to implement 

4 the OTIB-54 procedure.

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, the workbook.

6 DR. OSTROW: Yeah, the workbook. And 

7 we had comments in the past that their workbook 

8 didn't match the version of the OTIB, or there was 

9 a mismatch. From what I read in the posting 

10 yesterday, it says, "a new tool, Version 1.5.10, 

11 has been published." 

12 We've been checking their workbooks in 

13 the past. Ron Buchanan has been doing that for us. 

14 We recommend that the Procedures Group, you know, 

15 direct SC&A to go take a look at the new version 

16 of the workbook and see if it matches the OTIB.

17 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott Siebert. 

18 Steve, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was 

19 just about to jump in and point out the exact same 

20 thing before we moved on.

21 Yes, this new tool now implements the 

22 air monitor and workplace monitoring portion of the 

23 OTIB that previously had not been in the tool 
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1 because we just did not have call for it.

2 DR. OSTROW: Right.

3 MR. SIEBERT: Right. And now what 

4 you'll be able to do is you'll use this to validate 

5 the Example 3 numbers that do have that workplace 

6 monitoring information in it.

7 So, yeah, it's ready for you to do so, 

8 if the Subcommittee asks you to do.

9 DR. OSTROW: Okay, thanks, Scott.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Seems to be a rational 

11 follow-up, from my perspective. Paul?

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. I think we 

13 just note that this says that the new tool has been 

14 published so it makes sense to have them take a look 

15 at that.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Josie?

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, I agree with that 

18 also.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. Thank you, Scott. 

20 Yeah, this Subcommittee requests SC&A, directs 

21 them, to take a look at that workbook and see that 

22 those tools meet the concerns that they expressed 

23 in Finding 9.
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1 DR. OSTROW: Okay, thank you, Wanda.

2 CHAIR MUNN: You bet. Thank you. Any 

3 other comments about OTIB-54? And thank you both 

4 for pointing that out.

5 If not, we'll move on to OTIB-82 review. 

6 SC&A?

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay, that's mine. 

8 This is Hans Behling. OTIB-82 is the guidance 

9 document for the dose reconstruction method for 

10 chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And that document 

11 was issued on December 20th, 2012. And just a quick 

12 overview as to what this really entails.

13 Regarding chronic lymphocytic 

14 leukemia, it's important to understand that it's 

15 the most frequent form of leukemia in the Western 

16 countries, and accounts for, approximately, based 

17 on recent NCI data, about 30 percent of all 

18 leukemias are CLL leukemias. And for the most 

19 current year that I've looked at, 2014, the 

20 American Cancer Society estimates about almost 

21 16,000 new cases of CLL among the 52,380 cases of 

22 all leukemias.

23 As a result, NIOSH has estimated that, 
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1 on the basis of the current claims that we have been 

2 receiving -- and where CLL has been diagnosed that 

3 were part of the claim filed, but in the past were 

4 rejected because of the fact that CLL was 

5 previously not considered radiogenic cancer -- we 

6 do expect to get 363 CLL cases that will now be 

7 available for a dose reconstruction. 

8 The Department of Health and Human 

9 Services, back in March of 2011, made the decision 

10 to consider the CLL cancer as a radiogenic cancer. 

11 And the final rule came out in 2012 that now regards 

12 CLL as a potentially radiation-induced cancer.

13 So, having said all of that, it was 

14 obviously the intent of NIOSH to provide a model 

15 which would allow us to assess what are the 

16 radiation doses associated with CLL.

17 And as just an overview statement, it 

18 is probably one of the most complex dose 

19 reconstructions among all the cancers that we have 

20 had to deal with in the past.

21 In response to this issue for devising 

22 a model, the people at SENES were asked to construct 

23 this model. And their model was defined in a 
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1 report entitled, "Review, Synthesis, and 

2 Application of Information on the Human 

3 Lymphocytic System to Radiation Dosimetry for 

4 Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia." And that particular 

5 64-page document was issued back in March 2012.

6 And it is on that basis of that 

7 technical document that SENES wrote that NIOSH 

8 developed ORAUT-OTIB-82, which is defined in terms 

9 of dose reconstruction model for CLL dose 

10 reconstruction. And, as I've said, this was 

11 issued in December of 2012.

12 Just as an overview, when SC&A reviews 

13 an OTIB document such as this, we usually have a 

14 protocol that we had established back in 2009. And 

15 in that protocol for our review of OTIBs, we have 

16 a total of seven defined objectives that I won't 

17 go through, but each of these objectives looks at 

18 the various components of our review system.

19 However, for reviewing ORAUT-OTIB-82, 

20 we were not asked to do a standard review or audit 

21 process, and this was due to the fact that it was 

22 considered that this particular CLL model, the 

23 technical basis for this model as was developed by 
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1 SENES, had been adequately peer reviewed and 

2 therefore the core of this model was something that 

3 we did not address in our review.

4 In essence, then, we were asked to 

5 really review the application of OTIB-82 and the 

6 methodology used to reconstruct doses based on this 

7 very complex CLL model.

8 Just as an overview -- I assume everyone 

9 has read both the OTIB-82 as far as the SENES 

10 report. And if you have, it's clear that this is 

11 a very, very complex model to work with. And the 

12 fact that the precursor cell, as we know it in terms 

13 of our current status of knowledge regarding CLL, 

14 it's likely to be a B lymphocyte -- the "B" stands 

15 for bone marrow-derived lymphocyte. 

16 And these cells, once they leave the 

17 bone marrow, become very extensively disseminated 

18 in various tissues of the body, not the least of 

19 which is the lymphatic system which represents well 

20 over several hundreds of lymph nodes in the body. 

21 But in addition to that, there is numerous other 

22 tissues where these precursor cells to chronic 

23 lymphocytic leukemia are resident.
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1 And so these locations, not only are 

2 they very diffuse and throughout the body, but they 

3 tend to change with time and over a period of life 

4 span and under conditions of health, so it's quite 

5 a difficult model to assess.

6 What I was hoping to do, with regard to 

7 just quickly brief the people for looking at this 

8 issue here, Steve, if you can go to Page 10 of my 

9 report, you will see Exhibit 1. And here you have 

10 basically the crux of this whole dose 

11 reconstruction model.

12 Obviously, we need to assess exposure 

13 doses from principally three sources, that is 

14 occupation; medical exposures, such as from 

15 X-rays, and that is in column number two, and there 

16 you see all of the different tissues that have to 

17 be looked at for the reconstruction dose, and many 

18 of these tissues will obviously be affected by how 

19 close are they to the primary field of an X-ray, 

20 et cetera, and so forth.

21 And so you can go down the list here and 

22 see all of the tissues that have to be looked at 

23 with regard to reconstructing, even with the simple 
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1 annual PA X-ray. Generally speaking, one would 

2 assume that the dose contribution from 

3 occupational medical exposures is relatively 

4 minimal. The most important one is the second one; 

5 that is internal dose organ. And, again, here you 

6 have a total of 28 different tissues that have to 

7 be looked at with regard to assessing a dose to each 

8 and every one of them.

9 And one of the things that we will 

10 probably not point out today, but when we actually 

11 go through some of the audits of CLL cancers that 

12 we've been asked to do under the 21st set that we 

13 are in the process of completing, we will talk about 

14 how significant the contribution of internal 

15 doses, based on this table here that we're looking 

16 at. And it's not an equal distribution by any 

17 means, and it's the most important one. 

18 Among the most important issues here 

19 that we talk at some later point in time is the 

20 contribution of internal exposures involved in 

21 alpha-emitting radionuclides that have very, very 

22 low solubility that are deposited in the lung and 

23 then removed from the lung by various means, 
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1 phagocytic cells that contribute mostly to dose 

2 exposures to lymph nodes, regional lymph nodes.

3 And so one of the hallmarks for this 

4 dose reconstruction, when you look at the 

5 distribution of doses for all these tissues, is 

6 that it is going to vary significantly, 

7 specifically for the internal exposure.

8 For X-ray doses and external dose from 

9 other sources, the distribution of radiation dose 

10 to the different organs that harbor the lymphocyte 

11 will be more or less constant. The only 

12 differences being based on the tissue depths and 

13 the attenuation that the doses will vary among the 

14 various organs, as you see in the third part there, 

15 there's external dose.

16 So one of the things we won't talk about 

17 today are the differences in terms of the 

18 importance with their contributions for the three 

19 sets.

20 Again, so let me go now to the next area 

21 where we are at least going to discuss the 

22 methodology that NIOSH developed in assessing the 

23 various exposures from internal, occupational 
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1 medical, and external.

2 If you go to Page 11, Steve, you will 

3 see an overview of what we had to do in terms of 

4 complying with the request to assess OTIB-82. As 

5 I had mentioned, the complexity of deriving 

6 weighted organ tissues was developed in the CLL 

7 Simulator Tool that NIOSH specifically developed 

8 in response to this particular SENES-derived CLL 

9 model.

10 And in the second paragraph, you can 

11 just read along with me, "The complexity of the 

12 Simulator Tool which allows the Integrated Modules 

13 for Bioassay Analysis, and the Chronic Annual Dose, 

14 that is the CAD Workbook files, to be imported for 

15 calculating internal dose to all CLL organs 

16 simultaneously."

17 What this really does, in essence, it 

18 doesn't force the dose reconstructor to do 28 

19 different tissues independently. And so a workbook 

20 has been developed that does this whole process 

21 automatically without the need for this excessive 

22 work effort that would normally have to be done by 

23 the dose reconstructor.
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1 The other tools that were modified on 

2 behalf of the CLL tool were issues such as, or 

3 documents such as OTIB-18, the Internal Dose 

4 Overestimates for Facilities with Air Sampling 

5 Programs; ORAUT-OTIB-54, the Fission and 

6 Activation product Assignment for Internal 

7 Dose-Related Gross Beta and Gross Gamma Analysis. 

8 Thirdly, ORAUT-OTIB-49. And, again, I'll just 

9 quickly go over the OTIB-11. 

10 In the process of reviewing this, SC&A 

11 was provided some training in running the CLL 

12 Simulator Tool. And in response to that training, 

13 we generated both IMBA and CAD files for all the 

14 CLL claim-imported files in the CLL Simulator Tool 

15 and evaluated the internal doses generated by the 

16 tool.

17 We were able to do all those things, 

18 and, as you see at the bottom, SC&A's evaluation 

19 of internal dose tools and technical guidance, we 

20 found no findings, but identified one minor 

21 observation. And that observation is at the 

22 bottom of the page there and it's just strictly an 

23 issue here.
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1 The OTIB-82 states that although the 

2 CLL tool for CLL internal dose is mentioned, 

3 details of its use are not included here. These 

4 are addressed in a tool user's guide. When we 

5 tried to find that tool user's guide we were not 

6 able to, and we still assume that up to this point 

7 in time it does not exist. And I think what we were 

8 told, in direct dialogue with NIOSH, it is really 

9 in essence not a user's guide but a training program 

10 that has been established for all dose 

11 reconstructors who are being asked to do dose 

12 reconstruction. So that's the only criticism we 

13 have, this one observation.

14 In review of the external dose -- that's 

15 on the next page, Steve, on Page 12 -- we once again 

16 looked at what had been done to expedite this whole 

17 process. And one of the issues that you have to 

18 do in assessing external exposure is to develop a 

19 blended DCF.

20 In other words, this blended DCF is 

21 really a combination of all the different organs 

22 that will be affected from external exposures. 

23 And they have to be, obviously, weighted by virtue 
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1 of the number of B lymphocytes that are expected 

2 to be there as a fraction of the total.

3 And in the process, as you see in that 

4 first equation, we developed a CLL DCF that's a 

5 blended value. And not to go into it in detail, 

6 but that was expressly detailed in the DCAS-RPT-004 

7 document. And just for the convenience of the 

8 reader, we have those numbers in Table 1, which is 

9 on Page 13.

10 And as you can see, this is a very 

11 complex table. It identifies the DCFs for a host 

12 of different photon energies, as you see up top 

13 here: 20 keV, greater than 30 keV, less than 30 keV, 

14 and so forth and so forth.

15 You have different exposure 

16 geometries, such as AP. As you go down on this, 

17 you have ISO, you have glove box configurations, 

18 and you also have, on the next page, on Page 14, 

19 the dose conversion factors for neutrons, standard 

20 neutrons, glove box neutrons, and electrons.

21 And, again, I won't go through details. 

22 We looked at all of those things and came to the 

23 conclusion that we agreed with everything that was 
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1 done, including the various types of 

2 distributions, the physical distributions, that

3 are defined in each of those, whether it's Weibull 

4 3 or log-normal 2, or normal distribution.

5 So, again, when we reviewed all these 

6 documents, we had no findings that we could point 

7 to. And that takes us to the third area, and that 

8 is the medical X-ray dose to compartments comprised 

9 in CLL models.

10 And, again, not to elaborate too much, 

11 but we realized again here, when you have a given 

12 X-ray, whether it's a conventional chest X-ray or 

13 otherwise, the exposures to these different organs 

14 were varied based on body locations and how close 

15 they are to the actual primary field for that X-ray.

16 And those numbers and exposures for 

17 those organs were calculated in a document that was 

18 defined in ORAUT-RPRT-64, and we looked at those 

19 again and we have no findings with regard to the 

20 CLL risk model that defines doses for occupational 

21 medical X-ray.

22 So there is no need to elaborate since 

23 there are really no findings other than the single 
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1 observation. SC&A's assessment of ORAUT-OTIB-82 

2 was limited based on a limited scope because of the 

3 fact that we were asked not to look at the actual 

4 technical background information document that 

5 defines the model itself as produced by SENES.

6 And we are going to be talking more 

7 about this CLL model, to some extent, within the 

8 scope of the audit of dose reconstruction program 

9 when we actually present the four CLL cases that 

10 to-date we have looked at in behalf of the 21st set 

11 of audits, dose reconstruction audits. And we 

12 will have a few comments at that time, hopefully, 

13 that we can at least make oblique reference to some 

14 of the issues that we were not able to discuss here.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Hans, for your, 

16 as usual, detailed and thorough report. Much 

17 appreciated.

18 DR. H. BEHLING: Thank you.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Comments? Hearing no 

20 comments, and there being no findings --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Wanda, just a question 

22 on that user's guide. Maybe NIOSH can comment, is 

23 there a plan to actually have such a thing, or is 
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1 it already taken care of in the existing 

2 methodology?

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we may need to 

4 defer to ORAU on that and their view of the utility 

5 of procuring a user's guide or where we stand, you 

6 know, compared to where we stand today.

7 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. 

8 Basically, and I'm glad that SC&A pointed that out, 

9 because I did not recall that being in OTIB-82 when 

10 we wrote that portion, because we were writing the 

11 OTIB at the same time we were developing the tool.

12 And they are correct, at this moment 

13 there is not a user's guide. However, we've done 

14 training with all of the dose reconstructors as in 

15 how to apply and use that tool. So I'd have to go 

16 do some more discussion, but I'm not aware of the 

17 plan to create an additional guidance document for 

18 that at this time.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: So it would be 

20 appropriate just to modify the wording so that it's 

21 not misleading. In other words, you are training 

22 the folks on how to do it but they don't have a 

23 specific user guide.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Correct, at this point. 

2 Now, if NIOSH decides to tell us to do it one way 

3 or the other that's what we want to do, but that's 

4 where we are right now.

5 CHAIR MUNN: It seems to me that we need 

6 to carry this just one more time to give NIOSH and 

7 ORAU an opportunity to discuss which is going to 

8 happen, whether the document is going to just be 

9 changed to remove that reference, or assure us that 

10 there is not a real need for the guide. Any other 

11 considerations?

12 MR. KATZ: This is Ted. Just clarity 

13 from the Subcommittee. I mean, so, SC&A has 

14 recommended no findings for these matters. So the 

15 Subcommittee just needs to speak to that, whether 

16 those are closed or not.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Correct. They are 

18 indeed, they should be closed on the BRS.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay.

20 MR. MARSCHKE: So, right now, the BRS 

21 -- this is Steve Marschke. I'm sorry, Wanda. 

22 Sorry to interrupt.

23 CHAIR MUNN: Mm-hmm.
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1 MR. MARSCHKE: Right now the BRS 

2 doesn't have any entries for the approval for 

3 OTIB-82. We could add a finding of no findings if 

4 we want to have this minor observation just kind 

5 of taken care of on the sideline, or we can add the 

6 minor observation as a finding.

7 MR. KATZ: So, Steve, I mean, we do, and 

8 we've done it elsewhere, we do have a finding of 

9 no finding. I mean, that is a finding.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Correct.

11 MR. MARSCHKE: Yeah, I know --

12 MR. KATZ: Ironic as that sounds, but 

13 --

14 MR. MARSCHKE: We can add that as a 

15 finding of no finding, if that's what the 

16 Subcommittee directs me to.

17 CHAIR MUNN: That's appropriate and 

18 that would be my direction. Paul, Josie, any 

19 negative reaction to that?

20 MEMBER BEACH: None here, Wanda.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, that's fine with 

22 me. I don't know if the Subcommittee actually has 

23 to do any follow-up on it, unless you just want to
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1 be sure that there's some proper wording there.

2 CHAIR MUNN: It seems appropriate for 

3 us to assure that the minor concern that exists was 

4 put to bed one way or another. So I would prefer 

5 to carry it just to make sure that it has been looked 

6 at and we --

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Based on how NIOSH and 

8 ORAU want to handle it, right?

9 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, right, exactly. 

10 Just a question of what we're going to do and having 

11 a notation in our record that that's what's going 

12 to happen. We'll carry that very small item for 

13 our next time and we'll do a finding of no findings. 

14 And we will, while Steve's doing that, 

15 we will move on to PER-42. We have --

16 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Wanda, to 

17 interrupt again, but just so that the record's 

18 right for Steve. So there are really three 

19 potential findings and they are all findings of no 

20 findings, not just one.

21 MR. MARSCHKE: So you want me to enter 

22 three findings of no findings?

23 MR. KATZ: For the X-rays, internal, 
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1 and external, right, those are the three areas that 

2 Hans covered where there were potential findings.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Ted, this is Stu, just 

4 because he broke the report into three areas and 

5 discussed each area separately, I mean, and there 

6 are no findings in the entire report, I don't see 

7 any particular reason to list those three areas.

8 You know, typically when there's a 

9 review with no findings, the BRS carries a single 

10 entry, a single no findings entry, regardless of 

11 how many sections of the report there were.

12 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah, I agree with 

13 you. In fact, in my observation, I said a way to 

14 correct it is simply delete that statement from the 

15 OTIB. It's a simple fix, as far as I'm concerned.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Right.

17 DR. H. BEHLING: The dose 

18 reconstructors are getting training and that is in 

19 lieu of this particular CLL tool user guide. So 

20 they've gotten their training, and as far as I'm 

21 concerned, the only thing that needs to be done is 

22 delete it from the text itself, that statement.

23 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Do we have 
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1 agreement from NIOSH that that will occur? I was 

2 postponing that decision for them.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I would suspect that 

4 would be our response, yeah. It just occurs to me 

5 that if SC&A is going to be reviewing the CLL dose 

6 reconstructions, does it fall upon us then to 

7 provide the training to them, the SC&A person that 

8 are going to review those DRs, so they will 

9 understand the use of the tool?

10 CHAIR MUNN: Right. So my only 

11 question here, Stu, is are we deciding now that the 

12 wording will be changed in the OTIB?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, sure, I'll decide 

14 that now.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, very good.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, let's have ORAU 

17 remove that phrase or that sentence from the OTIB.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Then what we 

19 are going to say here is that we have a finding of 

20 no findings and that the one concern with regard 

21 to wording will be changed to remove the reference 

22 to a guide.

23 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.
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1 MS. K. BEHLING: Excuse me, this is 

2 Kathy Behling. In reviewing some of the CLL cases 

3 that we've had so far, we've also taken notice that 

4 there is a guide that has been put into at least 

5 some of, at least I think most of these CLL claims 

6 that we've looked at. I think Liz Brackett has put 

7 together some guidance or instructions that we have 

8 been seeing in the claim files, so I think you can 

9 feel comfortable in taking that wording out of the 

10 OTIB.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Good.

12 DR. H. BEHLING: And I do want to say 

13 something in anticipation of future reviews of our 

14 CLL dose reconstructions. There was a document 

15 that Liz Brackett put out, which is a very, very 

16 informative one, and also gives me reasons to 

17 question whether or not there should be additional 

18 ones.

19 I think the CLL dose reconstruction 

20 process is a very, very tedious, very complex, and 

21 a very time-consuming dose reconstruction 

22 protocol. And I think it lends itself very, very 

23 well to certain changes that could potentially give 
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1 a heads up and says if you have certain things that 

2 you are looking at on behalf of a claimant, you can 

3 almost exclude the chance of doing anything other 

4 than a very, very abbreviated dose reconstruction, 

5 because you know up-front there is not a chance that 

6 this person will ever receive a PoC that approaches 

7 50 percent.

8 And I say that perhaps prematurely 

9 here, but in having reviewed this, we do know, and 

10 I alluded to this briefly, first of all, CLL as a 

11 cancer has been historically regarded as a 

12 non-radiogenic cancer, meaning that many of the 

13 epidemiologic studies that have been done to-date, 

14 including the prominent ones, such as the A-Bomb 

15 survivor studies where the principle exposure was 

16 external and reached doses that were 

17 approximately, you know, lethal doses, or 

18 approaching lethal doses, and still there was 

19 little evidence that CLL was a potential radiogenic 

20 cancer.

21 And that's understandable when you 

22 realize that perhaps the major contributor is 

23 really from internal exposures, and not only from 
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1 internal exposures but internal exposures 

2 involving an alpha-emitting radionuclide that is 

3 very, very insoluble.

4 And in our dose reconstruction audits, 

5 we will actually demonstrate what are the critical 

6 tissues that will give rise to a sufficiently high 

7 dose that will then promote a PoC value that 

8 approaches 50 percent. And there's plenty of 

9 opportunity to do both a minimal or a maximized. 

10 Minimized meaning the focus is strictly on the 

11 internal exposures if the exposure involves 

12 exposure to uranium, thorium, or plutonium as an 

13 insoluble alpha-emitting radionuclides.

14 And so there's plenty of options, I 

15 think, to develop a very, very quick and dirty 

16 method by which these CLL cases can be screened 

17 without going through a lot of work.

18 What Liz Brackett did and showed, and 

19 I often questioned, because the wording was there 

20 to do, whether it's plutonium, uranium, either as 

21 M or S or Super S for plutonium, when you know very 

22 well it's going to be Super S if it's plutonium, 

23 that'll give you the highest CLL dose.
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1 There's no sense doing S or M because 

2 you know up-front it's not going to give you the 

3 higher value. So those are the kind of things that 

4 I think can be done to expedite the dose 

5 reconstruction of CLL cases, both minimized and 

6 maximized potentials.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Hans. Okay. 

8 Steve, are we okay? I was looking away from the 

9 screen and I didn't see what you wrote.

10 MR. MARSCHKE: I just -- well, we're 

11 okay now. I just screwed it up a little bit.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

13 MR. MARSCHKE: But it's in there and 

14 it's closed, and you can see what the thing is and 

15 it's closed.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Very good, all right. 

17 Thank you very much. 

18 We'll move on to PER-42, Finding 1, 

19 record closure. NIOSH, who's going to --

20 DR. NETON: Excuse me, I was on mute. 

21 This is Jim. I think I'll handle this one since 

22 I wrote the response.

23 CHAIR MUNN: All right. 
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1 DR. NETON: If you recall -- could you 

2 scroll up a little bit, Steve, so we can see a little 

3 more of the response?

4 MR. MARSCHKE: Which, what is --

5 DR. NETON: I actually --

6 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay, yeah.

7 CHAIR MUNN: To PER-42, Finding 1.

8 DR. NETON: There should be a response 

9 in there somewhere.

10 MR. MARSCHKE: There is.

11 DR. NETON: Yeah, there it is. This 

12 came about at the last Subcommittee meeting when 

13 SC&A questioned the logic behind not, essentially, 

14 reconstructing doses for non-presumptive cancers, 

15 particularly in the residual contamination period, 

16 what appear to be the residual contamination period 

17 at Linde.

18 There was an operational period, then 

19 the residual contamination period extended, but 

20 part of that residual contamination period was 

21 added to the SEC, not because it was in a residual 

22 period but because there was additional work going 

23 on during that time period that kicked up a lot of 
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1 dust, so to speak, and limited our ability to do 

2 -- prohibited our ability to do dose 

3 reconstructions in that time period. And SC&A's 

4 finding was that, well, you got a residual model 

5 and it spanned that area so the exposure is at least 

6 X, some small fraction of that.

7 And I think we discussed it and we all 

8 agreed that that wouldn't be appropriate and NIOSH 

9 was tasked with just essentially writing up what 

10 we discussed. And that's what is represented 

11 here.

12 I don't know if I have to read the whole 

13 thing, but it talks about exactly that, that this 

14 was an infeasibility during the sort of beginning 

15 of the residual contamination period, it was added, 

16 and in accordance with the SEC regulation, NIOSH 

17 cannot -- we determined that we can't estimate the 

18 maximum radiation dose for every type of cancer 

19 with radiation doses are reconstructed. It 

20 could've been incurred in plausible circumstances 

21 by any member of class. This has been interpreted, 

22 looking at the regulation and the guideline, that 

23 that also means that you can't reconstruct any 
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1 doses for the non-presumptive cancer. Essentially 

2 that's what this says here.

3 Almost every, now, designation though 

4 that's added says we will, however, use any 

5 internal monitoring data that may become available 

6 to reconstruct doses for the people who aren't 

7 eligible for the SEC.

8 That is, you know, if there were 

9 bioassay data that was valid, or external 

10 monitoring data, we would certainly use that to 

11 reconstruct that dose. But any of the models, 

12 coworker models or otherwise, could be used to 

13 reconstruct doses in that period for the nuclide, 

14 for the reason the Class was added.

15 I kind of bungled that a little bit but 

16 I think you can get the idea of what I'm trying to 

17 say.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, thank you, Jim. 

19 That's only been posted for a little while, I think. 

20 Has SC&A had an opportunity to take a look at that 

21 and do we find that sufficient?

22 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, again, I was the 

23 author of that finding, and I understand why 
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1 there's a technical issue in excluding that time 

2 period that's covered by the SEC.

3 On the other hand, there is, I guess, 

4 that secondary problem where your 1954 data point 

5 is transported beyond the SEC period and used as 

6 a starting point from 1970. And that kind of just 

7 sort of prompted me to raise that question.

8 The fact that a 1954 data point simply 

9 jumped ahead by a total of 16 years and then this 

10 was used as a starting point for assessing the 

11 potential exposure post-1970. That kind of gave 

12 me reasons to question that whole process.

13 DR. NETON: Right. We talked about 

14 that at the last Subcommittee meeting. You can't 

15 say that it’s at least X, some small fraction of 

16 the dose, because doses can't be reconstructed with 

17 sufficient accuracy during that time period.

18 I mean, it's a logical conclusion of the 

19 way the Act and the regulations are written.

20 DR. H. BEHLING: I would've, Jim, said, 

21 okay, we'll do it that way, but then at least apply 

22 the 0.067 depletion rate as defined in OTIB-70, and 

23 then start out in 1970 with that much reduced. I 
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1 realize it's claimant-favorable and we always tend 

2 to say, well, it doesn't make sense, but if it's 

3 claimant-favorable, accept it.

4 DR. NETON: Well, we talked about this, 

5 Hans. I mean, you could also say, even during an 

6 SEC period where it doesn't bracket a residual 

7 period, the dose is at least equal to some general 

8 area air sample background.

9 I mean, that's not the way it’s done, 

10 you can't make up a small dose and say it's at least 

11 that, because, you know, it ends up begging to 

12 question, well, could it be a little higher than 

13 that, or X plus some percentage?

14 So we can't put a plausible upper bound 

15 on the person's dose in this period, period, is what 

16 is said. I mean, we talked about, I thought we 

17 agreed that, you know, in principle at the last 

18 meeting, and this is my attempt at a summary of what 

19 we discussed.

20 DR. H. BEHLING: No, I agree. If you 

21 have to comply with certain rules and regulations 

22 that say you can't use this because it was an SEC 

23 period, even though it might have been something 
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1 used under different circumstances, then we'll 

2 have to simply go with that.

3 DR. NETON: Yeah.

4 CHAIR MUNN: So do we find this 

5 acceptable?

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes.

7 CHAIR MUNN: All right. Then, Steve, 

8 would you please make the entry that the 

9 explanation has been accepted and this item is now 

10 closed.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: And could I make one 

12 minor editorial change?

13 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, in the seventh 

15 line, the word "it" suddenly has a capital I on it 

16 and it should be lowercase. "After review of 

17 available information, it could not be 

18 demonstrated."

19 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: At least Jim's, the 

21 document that NIOSH distributed. And I'm looking 

22 to see if that showed up in the entry on the BRS 

23 System. I think it did.
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1 DR. NETON: I can make -- am I on mute?

2 CHAIR MUNN: No.

3 (Simultaneous speaking.)

4 DR. NETON: That’s a simple change.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: But I agree with the 

6 closure. I just wanted to make that minor edit.

7 MR. MARSCHKE: I can't get to that. 

8 I'll have to get back to that, that's a separate 

9 edit. I'll have to go back to that.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, we'll --

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 MR. KATZ: Wanda, can I recommend that 

13 maybe we take a comfort break at least?

14 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, all right. We are 

15 very close to breaking for lunch, but, yeah, we can 

16 take five minutes while Steve --

17 MR. KATZ: Well, if it's five minutes 

18 and then you're going to break for lunch that's 

19 fine. I just know we've been going for a while.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, we have been going 

21 for a while, and we're almost to where we need to 

22 be for lunch, I think.

23 MR. KATZ: Okay. No, we don't have to 
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1 break and then re-meet in five minutes just to break 

2 again.

3 CHAIR MUNN: There are times when it's 

4 necessary, but we'll wait for just a moment, if we 

5 can.

6 MR. KATZ: All right.

7 CHAIR MUNN: As soon as we finish up 

8 with PER-42. And I think the other two findings 

9 may go well. We'll see. Okay, great. Very good. 

10 Thank you, Steve.

11 Now if we can take a look at the NIOSH 

12 response to see if we can take care of that clerical 

13 nit. Do we have an "it" that is capitalized and 

14 shouldn't be?

15 MR. MARSCHKE: I think it's in the line 

16 "it could not be demonstrated?"

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's correct. It's 

18 in the middle of the sentence.

19 MR. MARSCHKE: Yes, that's fine.

20 CHAIR MUNN: No, it's fine. It's 

21 lowercase here.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's good now.

23 CHAIR MUNN: So we're good. Yeah, 
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1 thank you. We'll move on to Finding 2. SC&A?

2 DR. H. BEHLING: Again, that's mine, 

3 and I thought that was resolved because --

4 DR. NETON: Yeah, this is Jim. Let me 

5 explain a little bit here. We agreed with that 

6 finding, and it was really just a typographical --

7 it's a cut and paste error when we revised the Site 

8 Profile to talk about, I think it was the occupancy 

9 factor or something like that.

10 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah.

11 DR. NETON: And we actually did indeed 

12 make that fix, but in going through the internal 

13 review process we do with every revision to a Site 

14 Profile, a slight administrative glitch occurred 

15 and somebody made some comments, so we have to go 

16 back and fix some administrative detail in the Site 

17 Profile. 

18 So we can't issue it at this time. The 

19 fix has been made. I probably could've cut and 

20 pasted the fix but I figured it would be better to 

21 wait until we just re-issue it completely. And the 

22 things that we're addressing had nothing to do with 

23 the technical content necessarily, it's more 
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1 administrative detail.

2 MR. MARSCHKE: The finding is 

3 currently in abeyance, so I guess, you know, we kind 

4 of agreed with -- that, to me, indicates that we 

5 agree with what Jim is saying.

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, it sounds as though 

7 --

8 DR. NETON: Yeah, I was just getting 

9 ready -- I was going to say, I could've provided 

10 you a copy of it this meeting, because we did fix 

11 it, but like I say, the final version hasn't been 

12 signed off yet.

13 So I'll have to wait until the next 

14 Subcommittee to do that.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Okay, that's fine. 

16 We'll just take that off of our follow list. We 

17 have taken care of what we can take care of and we'll 

18 go on to Subtask 4. Is Ron going to do this?

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, good. Okay.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron 

22 Buchanan with SC&A. Subtask 4 for OTIB-42 

23 consisted of reviewing two cases.
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1 Now, just a little background, PER-42 

2 was issued for Linde and it required that all the 

3 cases be reworked that were less than 50 percent 

4 and had non-SEC-covered cancer. And this was 71 

5 cases.

6 And so this consisted of complete dose 

7 reconstructions for all these cases, and so we 

8 selected two cases to determine if the rework was 

9 done properly. And so that's what we'll briefly 

10 discuss today.

11 And so Case Number 1 on Page 4 of our 

12 report was an inspector that worked there at the 

13 plant, had prostate cancer, worked in, you know, 

14 '52 through '84. And there is no DR.

15 It was in '05 and so it needed reworked 

16 and so they did a rework in August of 2012. And 

17 we then looked at the dose assignments, like we do 

18 on a regular audit of a DR report, and we found that 

19 -- I'll just briefly go through what they did --

20 they assigned the plant dose.

21 There's two doses assigned here, a 

22 plant dose, and then if you were a utility worker 

23 you also got some tunnels that ran under the plant. 
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1 So, utility workers, you more than likely would 

2 have spent some time in there so they assign a dose 

3 for that.

4 So we have the plant dose, there was no 

5 monitoring, so this was an assigned dose from Table 

6 424, Page 65 of the TBD-25. There's two periods, 

7 '52 to '53 and '54 to '84, as Hans had referred to 

8 earlier. And we see that they assign the dose 

9 correctly from the tables on Page 65 and Page 70 

10 for the latter period, and we had no findings there. 

11 This was for the plant area.

12 And then for the tunnel area they 

13 assigned the tunnel ambient external dose, and this 

14 was from Table 613 on Page 76, for the two time 

15 periods, and we see that they assigned dose 

16 correctly and that we had no findings.

17 The neutron and medical dose were no 

18 findings on that. And then we had internal dose. 

19 This was taken from Table 68 of Page 73. And take 

20 the projected intakes, put that in the Chronic 

21 Annual Dose Workbook, the CADW, determine the 

22 correct dose, and we had no findings in that area.

23 So, in a review of this first case, they 
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1 had a total of 7.898 rem assigned, PoC of 25.35 

2 percent, and we had no findings. And we were able 

3 to duplicate the dose in the PoC and agreed with 

4 that.

5 Case Number 2 of our report is on Page 

6 11, and we see that this was a similar worker, a 

7 similar time period. This was a maintenance 

8 person, pipefitter foreman, had skin cancer, and 

9 his first DR was in 2006 and it was reworked in 

10 August of 2012 using the new TBD.

11 And, again, we went through and 

12 evaluated the two periods for the plant exposure 

13 using the Tables 424 and Section 6.2. And we agree 

14 except for one finding, and it appears doing the 

15 calculations that we arrived at 4.434 rem compared 

16 to NIOSH's assigned 3.955 rem.

17 And we find that it appears that NIOSH 

18 used, for the skin, they used a dose conversion 

19 factor for ambient for skin, and we find that 

20 although the TBD says for the tunnel you use ambient 

21 dose conversion factor, for the plant it doesn't 

22 say that.

23 So for the plant it should've been the 
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1 normal one, according to OTIB-17, Page 6, instead 

2 of the 0.677 for ambient dose conversion factor 

3 from the IG-001.

4 And so this would create a slight 

5 decrease in dose as NIOSH assigned it compared to 

6 the way we calculated it. Now, we did check back 

7 to the previous case I just described, in Case A, 

8 and they did use the correct dose conversion factor 

9 there, 1.244 for the prostate. And so that did not 

10 appear in the previous dose reconstruction.

11 So we agree with this except for that 

12 dose conversion factor used for the plant exposure, 

13 and it would not significantly impact total dose 

14 for the upcoming PoC in this case. But it was what 

15 appeared to be an error.

16 Now, since it was skin, we assigned 

17 electron dose using the recommended in Table 424, 

18 Page 65 of the TBD, for the two periods. And the 

19 penetrating dose also. And we agree with those 

20 doses assigned.

21 Also, the tunnel dose, that was 

22 assigned correctly using the values of 613, and so 

23 we had no issues in that. We had no issues with 
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1 the neutron or the medical dose.

2 And so we registered the internal dose 

3 and we see that they correctly used the projected 

4 intakes, and we put those in the CADW, and the dose 

5 is correctly assigned for internal intake.

6 So, in summary, for the Case B, we 

7 arrived at a slightly higher dose, 23.839 rem, as 

8 compared to 23.360 rem. We got a PoC of 11.56 

9 percent; they derived a PoC of 10.73 percent 

10 because of the slightly dose on this dose 

11 conversion factor for plant exposure.

12 And so we agree except for the dose 

13 conversion factor for the plant external exposure. 

14 And so, in summary, for these two cases, we agreed 

15 that they were assigned except for that one 

16 exception and the outcome would not be impacted in 

17 this case.

18 So that's where we are at on those two 

19 case audits.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Fine. Any comments? I 

21 propose that we close this item with the comment 

22 that the reviewer noted an incorrect dose 

23 conversion factor used which did not affect the 
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1 outcome. And other than that, there is a finding 

2 of no findings. Does anyone have a problem with 

3 that?

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's fine with me.

5 MEMBER BEACH: That works for me also, 

6 Wanda.

7 CHAIR MUNN: All right, fine. Steve, 

8 can you do that, indicate --

9 MR. MARSCHKE: Yeah, I think so.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. And as Steve is 

11 starting to do that, he and I will stay on the line 

12 here for a little bit and make sure that that that 

13 finding of no findings essentially gets listed, and 

14 we will mark this item, Subtask 4, as closed. And 

15 I believe that cleans us up with respect to PER-42. 

16 We'll take another look at the BRS just to make 

17 sure. 

18 It's time for us to break for lunch. 

19 Let's take an hour. Be back here at five minutes 

20 to the hour. And, well, I'll see you, then unless 

21 anyone has some concerns one way or another. If 

22 not, I'll see you in an hour.

23 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Wanda, and 
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1 everyone.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

4 went off the record at 12:54 p.m. and resumed at 

5 2:00 p.m.)

6 MR. KATZ: This is the Subcommittee on 

7 Procedures Review. And we can get started again.

8 CHAIR MUNN: And we'll start with our 

9 first item being PER-31, report review that's a 

10 carryover from previous agendas. NIOSH?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, this is Stu. I 

12 think we're going to need to continue to carry that. 

13 We are in the process, we in ORAU are in the process 

14 of trying to get information from Y-12 that may 

15 provide a way to interpret that thorium to thorium 

16 in vivo data, which is kind of the primary --

17 CHAIR MUNN: All right.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: So we're just going to 

19 have to carry it forward again. We're not ready 

20 to -- we don't have anything ready yet.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Then we need to go on to 

22 PER-45, responses from NIOSH for eight findings 

23 that were listed recently, I believe.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Jim, did we enter those 

2 in BRS this week or --

3 DR. NETON: They should be in there, 

4 Stu. Is Mutty Sharfi on the line?

5 MR. SHARFI: I am.

6 DR. NETON: Yeah, we reviewed them and 

7 discussed them. But I think Mutty's going to carry 

8 the water on the responses here, with input from 

9 me as necessary.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is this Aliquippa 

11 Forge?

12 DR. NETON: Yeah, correct. Do we just 

13 want to go through these one by one, then?

14 CHAIR MUNN: Let's start with Number 1, 

15 yeah, failure to account for remedial activities 

16 in deriving estimate of residual exposure.

17 DR. NETON: This was a finding that 

18 basically stated that we used an inappropriate date 

19 going back in time. We started, I forget the year.

20 MR. SHARFI: '92.

21 DR. NETON: '92. And there had been 

22 remedial activities that took place prior to that. 

23 So, Mutty, could you maybe just fill folks in on 
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1 what our thinking is on that?

2 MR. SHARFI: Sure. This is where we, 

3 like I said, we took a 1992 survey and we 

4 back-extrapolated using a source term depletion 

5 correction factor back all the way to the start of 

6 the residual period.

7 In '88 there was kind of an interim 

8 remediation action that they did where they did 

9 some minor cleanup. So the comment was that there 

10 could be an underestimate since we're using 

11 post-remediation surveys and that, I guess, the 

12 external exposure rate could have been higher if 

13 the remediation actions wouldn't have occurred in 

14 '92.

15 Basically, I did find a 1978 

16 pre-remediation survey for when FUSRAP did their 

17 survey for the remediation activities. And when 

18 you did a back-projection of what we proposed, or 

19 we have in the TBD, versus the surveys that were 

20 actually done in '78, we're still bounding of those 

21 surveys.

22 So, our argument is that the 

23 back-extrapolation still doesn't result in an 
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1 underestimate of the external dose based on the '78 

2 surveys.

3 CHAIR MUNN: These are fairly recent 

4 postings. Has SC&A had an opportunity to look at 

5 them? Is there any comment? Do we need to give 

6 you time?

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, this is Hans. I 

8 have not really looked at it. I'm not sure when 

9 the responses were posted. But, in preparation 

10 for this meeting, I was kind of busy in the last 

11 couple of days here, among other things. So I 

12 haven't really taken a look.

13 But if I recall, that 1988 partial 

14 remediation effort may not have involved 

15 decontamination of surfaces but the removal of 

16 contaminated objects from one of the buildings, 30, 

17 I believe. And so it may not come into play 

18 depending on what NIOSH did in terms of assessing 

19 it in 1977 under FUSRAP.

20 Whether or not that calculation takes 

21 into consideration the removal of source terms that 

22 would have resulted in external radiation 

23 exposure, that had very little to do with surface 
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1 decontamination.

2 And that's as much as I -- as I said, 

3 I have not reviewed NIOSH's responses, but I'm just 

4 talking off the top of my head. So I can't really 

5 respond in a definitive way.

6 But if I recall, much of the remediation 

7 in 1988 was actually the removal of source terms, 

8 objects, rather than cleaning up the walls, the 

9 floors or other material that remained.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

11 DR. NETON: Yeah. I think that 

12 supports our case, then. I think maybe, Hans, you 

13 have to take a look at it. And Mutty wrote in here 

14 that the '78 survey, I think, had all values less 

15 than the detection limits of the portable survey 

16 instruments.

17 And if you take the value that we used 

18 from 1992 and back-extrapolate, it overarches the 

19 -- you know, it provides, even if you assume that 

20 it went over the detection limit, it provides doses 

21 higher than what they measured in 1978. So we 

22 believe it’s a fairly good bounding number.

23 But take a look at it. There's a White 
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1 Paper that was provided, I think, on this to SC&A 

2 at the same time it was posted on the BRS. I think 

3 that was around February -- it was posted on the 

4 BRS on February 10th, I think.

5 MEMBER BEACH: I think that paper was 

6 January 23rd, wasn't it, Jim?

7 DR. NETON: That was the date on the 

8 paper. But I don't think it was distributed until 

9 --

10 MEMBER BEACH: It wasn't posted, oh, 

11 okay.

12 DR. NETON: -- sometime later. But, 

13 yeah, that's the date on the paper.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. I got my copy on 

15 the 10th. I mean, it was emailed on the 10th, even 

16 though it was probably under internal review before 

17 that. So we didn't see it until the 10th.

18 DR. NETON: There's no difference 

19 between the paper and what's in the BRS. I cut and 

20 pasted the responses, so they're identical.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

22 CHAIR MUNN: All right. We'll carry 

23 that for response from SC&A next time.
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1 DR. H. BEHLING: Wanda, let me just say 

2 this. I'm not going to state that Jim is 

3 incorrect, except that when we have what we look 

4 at as our only source of information, it would 

5 appear that if you do have some remediation effort, 

6 and it's not quantifiable to the point where you 

7 can say this reduced anything by a certain amount, 

8 other than the fact that a remediation effort took 

9 place, first principles would suggest that that 

10 obviously reduced something that affects dose.

11 And on that basis, my finding was based 

12 on strictly the fact that you had a 1992 attempt 

13 to extrapolate backward in time that ignores a 

14 partial remediation effort in 1988, which you can 

15 reasonably assume would affect the dose strength. 

16 And that's really the sole basis on which that 

17 finding rests.

18 DR. NETON: Yeah. Take a look on it, 

19 Hans, and see. Like I said, we believe that it 

20 provides an overarching bounding approach based on 

21 the 1978 FUSRAP survey data. They actually use 

22 more sensitive survey meters. I think they used 

23 pressurized ion chambers in '92 and were reporting 
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1 something like 0.015 mR, 15 micro-R per hour, which 

2 includes a natural background component of 

3 probably around ten in that part of the country. 

4 So, yeah, take a look at it we'll talk 

5 more about it maybe in the next --

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. And as I said, 

7 I'm willing to accept that. But I just want to make 

8 sure Ted and other people, the Board, understands 

9 why I made it a finding. If it turns out that the 

10 calculation dose in 1992 extrapolated backward is 

11 still a bounding value, the only thing I'm asking 

12 you to do is to understand why I made it a finding.

13 DR. NETON: Oh, I completely 

14 understand why you made it a finding. We’re just 

15 trying to respond to it.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. That's fine. I 

17 will expect a response from SC&A to this NIOSH 

18 response to the finding next time. 

19 And we'll go to Finding 2.

20 DR. NETON: Okay, I think Finding 2 is 

21 very similar to Finding 1, and the backwards 

22 extrapolation issue is brought into play again.

23 MR. SHARFI: This one's a little 
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1 opposite. This one brings up the point that the 

2 main source of external dose during the residual 

3 period would have been associated really with more 

4 of a fixed contamination, and that realistically 

5 you should have had a constant external dose over 

6 time. And therefore the back extrapolation, and 

7 that's overestimating external dose.

8 And so, you know, numerically there's 

9 not a lot of -- there's limited data in the sense 

10 of locking in that. All the exposures associated 

11 with fixed contamination. You know, we still 

12 believe that the more bounding and 

13 claimant-favorable approach is going ahead and 

14 back-extrapolating the source term depletion on 

15 the external as well as the internal. Having 

16 external consistent with the internal is a more 

17 claimant-favorable approach and more bounding.

18 DR. NETON: Anyway, it does rely on a 

19 buy-in of the back extrapolation from 1992. So I 

20 think they are somewhat linked. So, SC&A can take 

21 a look at that and we'll discuss it further probably 

22 in the next go-around.

23 DR. H. BEHLING: If I recall now, 
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1 again, when I look at contamination, traditionally 

2 speaking, especially as a function of time, what 

3 you see is depletion that most quickly involve, or 

4 most readily involve the removable. Because any 

5 kind of physical activity, resuspension, 

6 evacuation by air flow out of the building, that's 

7 what's going to remove more quickly than fixed 

8 contamination, which, in some instances, is very 

9 stubborn. And the absence of scattering really 

10 won't remove anything. And yet it is the principle 

11 cause of external radiation, whatever is fixed.

12 In general terms, it's usually the 

13 limiting factor for cleanup activity, the fixed 

14 contamination, especially if you deal with 

15 concrete flooring or any other porous substances 

16 or surfaces that may be holding onto that 

17 contamination. And it's not readily removable.

18 DR. NETON: Yeah, we agree, Hans. But 

19 I think Mutty was saying our starting point, if we 

20 include some sort of removable contamination, will 

21 provide a higher initial starting point for the 

22 exposure during the residual period and ramp down 

23 what we used at the end, which was more than likely 
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1 a fixed contamination point.

2 The only other alternative would be to 

3 reduce the starting point to relate to the fixed

4 contamination at the beginning, but we didn't do 

5 that.

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. But as I said, 

7 what we're dealing here with is starting in the back 

8 end of this whole procedure, mainly in 1992, and 

9 seeing what is still removable and working 

10 backwards, when, in fact, you know, that is a 

11 limiting issue here, that there may not be much left 

12 to remove in 1992. And working backwards would 

13 potentially not be claimant-favorable.

14 DR. NETON: Well, no. But the 

15 airborne contamination -- we'll talk about this 

16 later -- started with the air sampling data at the 

17 end of operations before any -- well, before any 

18 real cleanup was made. There were some efforts to 

19 clean up things grossly, but there was more than 

20 likely still removable contamination. We'll get 

21 into that as we get into these findings. That's 

22 all. 

23 At any rate, I still think this is 
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1 hinging upon SC&A's acceptance of the backwards 

2 approach from Finding 1. So we probably can't 

3 decide anything here until Finding 1 is resolved.

4 CHAIR MUNN: So the two of them are too 

5 closely linked --

6 DR. NETON: Well, that’s the starting 

7 point, right?

8 DR. H. BEHLING: You know, now that I 

9 think about it, I hadn't really looked at that 

10 particular document for quite some time. But I

11 thought that, really, the number one problem in 

12 that whole document was the failure to acknowledge 

13 an air concentration that was somewhere -- God, I 

14 don't remember the exact numbers.

15 But what happened to that initial air 

16 concentration that started at the beginning of the 

17 residual period was totally ignored and then was 

18 converted into, if I recall, an airborne activity 

19 that was settled for a whole year, and then we would 

20 have a resuspension.

21 We used, obviously, the standard 

22 deposition velocity and then the resuspension of 

23 E minus 6. And we calculated an airborne 
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1 concentration that was 42 times lower than the 

2 actual empirical air concentration that was 

3 measured. That was really the central problem 

4 that I had with that whole document.

5 DR. NETON: Yeah, we actually agree 

6 with you on that finding.

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. And that, I 

8 think, changes the whole document. Because if we 

9 start with a different value, I think that almost 

10 -- that's probably -- that's 90 percent of the 

11 problems I saw.

12 DR. NETON: Yeah. What happened was 

13 we misinterpreted this -- there was an eight dpm 

14 air sample that was taken at the end of operations. 

15 And you had to read it closely, but it almost 

16 implied that it was an operational sample, meaning 

17 there was other activities going on to generate 

18 airborne. In fact, there weren't.

19 So that eight dpm air sample in fact 

20 should have been used as a starting point for the 

21 air concentration during the residual period. And 

22 we're going to do that. So we 100 percent agree 

23 with you on that finding. It was just a misread 
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1 of the air data itself.

2 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. You know, 

3 they're also linked together in this whole package. 

4 And I think if we correct that particular aspect, 

5 then I think most of the issues go away almost.

6 DR. NETON: Okay. Well, that's good. 

7 We agree with that. There was also a calculational 

8 error made that you identified.

9 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. But I think 

10 that is the number one error. If we eliminate 

11 that, I think we can probably clear the slate pretty 

12 much for the others.

13 DR. NETON: Okay. So maybe we won't go 

14 through the other ones. You take a look at it and 

15 see what you think of the other ones in light of 

16 us changing that. I think it was 0.2 dpm that we 

17 calculated.

18 And, really, in light of what that 

19 sample was, it made no sense to do what we did. 

20 Like I say, we misinterpreted what that air sample 

21 was. It went from 0.2 to 8 as a starting point for 

22 the residual contamination period. And that's 

23 written up in one of our responses.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: So, for our purposes here 

2 on the Board, I think I'm hearing that NIOSH has 

3 an action with respect to the originating 

4 documents. And we're going to hold for it. NIOSH 

5 has an action now? Do you want me to --

6 DR. NETON: No. I think SC&A’s --

7 (Simultaneous speaking)

8 CHAIR MUNN: SC&A's going to do 

9 something.

10 DR. NETON: Yeah, they're going review 

11 our comment, our responses to their findings.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Right. And then next 

13 time we're going to hear from them as to what 

14 actions they -- both NIOSH and SC&A have agreed on 

15 the basic issue. And SC&A is going to review the 

16 responses here and suggest how to incorporate that 

17 issue. Is that correct?

18 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes.

19 DR. NETON: I think so. We've agreed 

20 -- our response is we agreed, I think, with two out 

21 of the eight findings or whatever they mainly were. 

22 The rest of them may -- well, SC&A needs to look 

23 at the rest of them in light of our agreement with 
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1 those two findings.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

3 DR. H. BEHLING: And they're somewhat 

4 interrelated. All the findings are interrelated. 

5 They deal with the elimination of the 1988 

6 remediation which, if what I gather from Jim's 

7 comments, may not have had an impact.

8 And several of those findings relate to 

9 that particular issue. But the most important 

10 issue was the acceptance of an air sample that was 

11 42 times higher than the calculated air sample as 

12 a starting point.

13 And I think NIOSH just told me that, by 

14 and large, they agree that this was an error on 

15 their part. And if that's corrected, probably 

16 just about everything else falls by the wayside.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. I think I have that. 

18 But what I don't have is, the next action is whose?

19 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, I will review 

20 their responses. And then I think we can, I don't 

21 know, formally or in the presence of the 

22 Subcommittee, discuss our feelings, how to resolve 

23 it best. But I think we are close to coming to an 
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1 understanding in terms of how to make the necessary 

2 corrections.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. That's what I 

4 wanted to hear. Next time, I expect a review from 

5 SC&A of these NIOSH responses and a suggestion for 

6 resolution. Okay?

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Then is this 

9 applicable to all eight of the findings for PER-45? 

10 My screen has gone blank and so I'm not looking at 

11 the BRS. I'll get back to it.

12 So is this applicable to all of the 

13 others there? It looks, just ruffling through 

14 these, it looks as though they all, in some way, 

15 relate to that, to the post-dating issue.

16 DR. NETON: Well, yeah. Well, we 

17 responded to all eight findings. And SC&A needs 

18 to provide their opinion on the adequacy of our 

19 response.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Right. That's what we'll 

21 expect next time. Thank you. Unless there is 

22 other comments to be made with respect to PER-45, 

23 we'll go on to PER-43 and the four case reviews that 
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1 Hans has done, I believe.

2 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, that's mine, too. 

3 For those who are not necessarily familiar with, 

4 again, DCAS-PER-0043 was obviously the result of 

5 changes to OTIB-5 which changed internal and 

6 external target organs.

7 And part of our review under Subtask 4 

8 was to review four cases. And NIOSH identified the 

9 list of claims that were subject to this change 

10 under PER-43. And, Steve, if you can identify Page 

11 8 on my report.

12 MR. MARSCHKE: I've got to find it.

13 DR. H. BEHLING: Anyway, we had asked 

14 for four particular cases. And Exhibit 1 that I 

15 included in my write-up identifies all of the 

16 claims to-date that had been impacted by PER-43. 

17 And we chose four of them.

18 And I can identify which ones they are, 

19 although it's really not that important. But let 

20 me just state, for the sake -- and I will ask the 

21 Chair or the other Members for permission to do the 

22 following. There were four cases, two of which had 

23 no finding. And I'm not sure if it's worth our time 
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1 to go through those or just strictly focus on the 

2 two claims that did have findings. 

3 Is there any problem with me skipping 

4 over the two claims that I reviewed for which there 

5 were no findings?

6 CHAIR MUNN: That's certainly fine 

7 with me. I see no point in spending time with 

8 material that has been reviewed and approved. I'd 

9 like to hear from the other Board Members in that 

10 regard.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, that's fine with 

12 me as well. We have the report. So we have that 

13 information. We don't need to rehash it, I don't 

14 think.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Right.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Josie?

18 MEMBER BEACH: No, I agree with that 

19 also. I agree.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Then we can 

21 focus on these two that have findings on them.

22 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. The first 

23 case, and I guess I would ask Steve to go to Page 
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1 9 of the report. Okay. And you were identifying 

2 a number of things that I want to point out.

3 The first case is an energy employee who 

4 worked at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. 

5 And this individual was diagnosed with 

6 [identifying information redacted] carcinoma, 

7 which is sometimes referred to as [identifying 

8 information redacted] cancer, of the [identifying 

9 information redacted], in 2010. And that has an 

10 ICD-9 code of [identifying information redacted].

11 And that initial dose reconstruction 

12 was conducted on March 22nd, 2011. No, that was the 

13 time of the second cancer. But, anyway, the first 

14 cancer of the [identifying information redacted], 

15 the [identifying information redacted] carcinoma 

16 of the [identifying information redacted], you 

17 will see as the current DR in the PER dose in Table 

18 2-1. And you realize that, after the initial 

19 assessment of the total dose to that cancer, 4.951 

20 rem was reduced to 1.801 rem.

21 Then, as a result of the second cancer, 

22 as I said, the second cancer was identified as 

23 [identifying information redacted] carcinoma, or 
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1 metastatic to the [identifying information 

2 redacted]. And that has an ICD-9 code of 

3 [identifying information redacted].

4 Now, that, as a result of the changes 

5 that were introduced in OTIB-5, was also subject 

6 to a revision. So this dose reconstruction was 

7 subject to a couple of revisions. First, there was 

8 the additional, the second cancer, and then a 

9 revision as a result of changes to the OTIB-5. And 

10 in Table 1 you will see those changes.

11 In the second cancer, metastatic cancer 

12 to the [identifying information redacted], the 

13 change from PER-43 resulted in a dose that changed 

14 from 3.379 rem to 19.917 rem. That was a 

15 significant change.

16 And as a result of that change, the PoC 

17 went from 8.18 to 35.23 percent. And when I looked 

18 at that, and the first thing that struck me was very 

19 odd, is the fact that this cancer was identified 

20 as a metastatic cancer to the [identifying 

21 information redacted] and that it had a different 

22 ICD-9 code from the primary cancer.

23 And so the question that came to mind 
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1 is, how was it that this cancer was even treated 

2 as a primary cancer where dose reconstruction was 

3 conducted and a revised PoC?

4 And if you go to the next page, Page 10, 

5 you will see on the top of the page -- let me see, 

6 okay, right there on top -- my feeling was, right 

7 away, that this second cancer should have never 

8 been assigned an ICD-9 code [identifying 

9 information redacted].

10 And as I explain below, where I quote 

11 the fact that a metastatic cancer is, by and large, 

12 the same as a primary cancer by definition. And 

13 for that, you have to understand the following.

14 When you have a primary cancer, and, 

15 let's say, it's a tissue that involves the lung, 

16 if that cell in the lung undergoes a 

17 transformation, becomes a cancer, at a certain time 

18 during the clonal expansion of that primary cancer, 

19 depending on how aggressive the cancer might be, 

20 a cell or two breaks loose, hitches a ride in the 

21 lymphatic cell in the bloodstream and sets up a 

22 secondary or metastatic cancer somewhere else. It 

23 is still a primary cancer that was identified at 
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1 the point where the cancer was formed, namely in 

2 the lung.

3 So, in essence, what this particular 

4 case involved was a cancer that was identified as 

5 a metastatic cancer but should have never been 

6 changed to a [identifying information redacted]

7 ICD-9 code, by definition.

8 And when I went back into the records 

9 to see how did this happen, you will see the 

10 following. At some point -- and this is, now, if 

11 you scroll up a bit, Steve? No, I'm still on Page 

12 10.

13 MR. MARSCHKE: Want to go to 11?

14 DR. H. BEHLING: Go back to Page 10. I 

15 traced the timeline, where I started out by saying, 

16 in order to assess the circumstance on which this 

17 error occurred, SC&A reviewed records for these in 

18 order to construct the following timeline.

19 And under Number 1, sometime prior to 

20 April 4th, 2011, the particular case had been 

21 returned to DOL due to an additional cancer with 

22 ICD-9 code [identifying information redacted], 

23 which requires a medical review.
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1 On April 4th, 2011, an email was 

2 submitted by DOL that acknowledged the need for a 

3 medical review regarding the EE's additional 

4 cancer. Distribution included Dr. Ronald E. 

5 Goans, who is obviously the medical expert who 

6 voiced his opinion.

7 And on April 6th, 2011, Dr. Goans 

8 forwarded his medical review. And this is included 

9 in Exhibit 3 that follows in a couple of pages 

10 thereafter. And I'll point to that later on.

11 But he states, and I've quoted from his 

12 document, "In my professional opinion, the 

13 [identifying information redacted] tumor 

14 metastatic to the [identifying information 

15 redacted] is a secondary metastatic tumor 

16 undifferentiated from the primary [identifying 

17 information redacted] tumor of the [identifying 

18 information redacted]."

19 And he says, "I think the ICD-9 code of 

20 the primary appears to be correct, and I have not 

21 tried to change the ICD-9 code for the metastatic." 

22 The meaning of which, he wanted to say it should have 

23 been the same as the primary cancer, which obviously 
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1 had an ICD-9 code of [identifying information 

2 redacted].

3 On April 7th, 2011, a note to review was 

4 released. And that is in Exhibit 4, which we'll 

5 come to in a second here, which, by and large, says 

6 that the internal organ applied to the [identifying 

7 information redacted] cancer was the same as they 

8 applied to the [identifying information redacted]

9 cancer.

10 And in spite of this medical view, and 

11 in spite of that notification, that ICD-9 code of 

12 [identifying information redacted] remained. And 

13 so my first finding is that this ICD-9 code 

14 [identifying information redacted] change should 

15 have never been.

16 As by definition, when you have a 

17 metastatic cancer, it's the same tissue as the 

18 primary cancer. And there's no need to do a dose 

19 reconstruction on the cancer because, before that 

20 cancer was relocated to a secondary site, it 

21 received its transformation and dose as part of the 

22 primary cancer.

23 And the same thing, basically, Finding 
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1 1 and 2 are linked to each other. There's no need 

2 -- first, Finding 1 says we failed to not keep the 

3 same ICD-9 code for the metastatic [identifying 

4 information redacted] cancers as with the primary 

5 cancer. And, second, there was no need under those 

6 conditions, because it was even labeled as a 

7 metastatic cancer. There was no need to do a dose 

8 reconstruction.

9 And when you go now to Page 12, I 

10 included a definition from the National Cancer 

11 Institute. And you can just read the comments that 

12 pretty much define my concern here.

13 In the middle of the page -- scroll up 

14 just a bit here, and I've already mentioned this --

15 the metastatic cancer has the same name and the same 

16 type of cancer cells as the original or primary 

17 cancer. For example, breast cancer that spreads to 

18 the lung and forms a metastatic tumor is a 

19 metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer.

20 And so this may be an issue that needs 

21 to be told to all of the dose reconstructors so that 

22 when you have a metastatic cancer based on a medical 

23 review, there's really no need to do a dose 
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1 reconstruction. And there's no need to change the 

2 ICD-9 code. Because a cancer that comes from one 

3 source to another is still the primary cancer, 

4 regardless of where it relocates.

5 And the next page, on Page 13, is Exhibit 

6 3. This is the original memo from Dr. Ronald Goans 

7 that talks about the thing that I just quoted. And 

8 Exhibit 4 is strictly the note to reviewer that 

9 apparently was not acknowledged by NIOSH.

10 So are there any questions with regard 

11 to the first case?

12 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I don't 

13 really have any questions, but I think we'll need 

14 to spend some time. I don't know if we’ve really 

15 pulled these up and really analyzed these and are 

16 prepared. Jim, we haven't entered responses on 

17 these, have we?

18 DR. NETON: Well, Stu, I think the 

19 situation here is that metastatic [identifying 

20 information redacted] cancer is covered under this 

21 program. I've been looking online and I can't find 

22 a list of covered cancers. I mean, under the SEC 

23 -- when they added cancers, oh, wait a minute. 
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1 Metastatic [identifying information redacted]

2 cancer is an SEC cancer.

3 MR. KATZ: That's correct. It is an 

4 SEC cancer.

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 DR. NETON: But I'm not sure that was 

7 relevant to --

8 MR. KATZ: No, it's not. I don't think 

9 it is.

10 CHAIR MUNN: No, this is not 

11 [identifying information redacted].

12 DR. NETON: It's not [identifying 

13 information redacted] cancer, but it was a -- trying 

14 to think. Yeah, I'd have to look at it. Stu's 

15 right. I need to look at it.

16 But it just crossed my mind, there are 

17 some quirks in this program, especially in the SEC, 

18 that metastatic [identifying information redacted]

19 cancer and another one -- I think it might be kidney 

20 -- is covered, because they didn't specify, you 

21 know, they doctored the RECA list, which was primary 

22 cancers, then they added a couple more cancers, one 

23 of which was [identifying information redacted]. 
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1 And they said [identifying information redacted]

2 cancer, not specifying whether it was primary or 

3 metastatic.

4 MR. SIEBERT: Jim, this is Scott 

5 Siebert. I can tell you, this claim actually was 

6 accepted under the SEC a couple weeks later, because 

7 of the metastatic [identifying information 

8 redacted] cancer.

9 DR. NETON: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: But that shouldn't have a 

11 bearing on Hans' question, right?

12 MR. HINNEFELD: No, I don't that 

13 affects Hans' question. I think that we need to 

14 chase it down a little bit. And I'm not really 

15 prepared to speak a lot about this case.

16 But, you know, the determination of the 

17 primary cancers on a claim is DOL's responsibility. 

18 And if DOL said there were two primary cancers, 

19 theoretically what would happen, if we got a medical 

20 review from our consultant that said, hey, I think 

21 one of these is secondary and there's only one 

22 primary, we would have provided that information to 

23 Labor to see if they wanted to change the cancer 
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1 diagnoses for the claim.

2 But cancer diagnoses for the claim 

3 always come from Labor. And if they told us that 

4 there were two primaries, even when we pointed out 

5 to them that, hey, are you sure, then we would do 

6 a dose reconstruction for two primaries.

7 But we just need to look at -- I'm not 

8 familiar with the facts of the case. We just need 

9 to look at the history of the case. And I apologize 

10 for not being ready today. But we're not ready 

11 today to go into that.

12 CHAIR MUNN: All right. So we need to 

13 have Finding 1 and Finding 2 reviewed by NIOSH for 

14 next time.

15 DR. H. BEHLING: This is Hans. I'm 

16 just going to ask just a question that may or may 

17 not be essential to the issue here. But whenever 

18 you have a metastatic cancer, regardless of what DOL 

19 does with it, whether it includes it in the SEC, 

20 there should be no need to ever do a separate dose 

21 reconstruction for that secondary cancer, 

22 metastatic cancer.

23 Because, by definition, it was a cancer 
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1 while it was still part of a primary lesion. It 

2 only somehow or other detached itself from the 

3 primary lesion and then relocated, in this case, to 

4 the [identifying information redacted].

5 But the dose that was responsible for 

6 that transition of a normal cell to a cancer cell 

7 occurred at the primary lesion. So there's no need 

8 to do a second dose reconstruction.

9 MR. KATZ: Hans, I think that's 

10 understood. I think what Stu was saying was that 

11 if DOL says treat it as a primary cancer, they 

12 dictate that determination. And we could 

13 obviously give them information back, but at the end 

14 of the day, they decide what's to be treated as a 

15 primary cancer.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: Are we through with 

17 that discussion?

18 CHAIR MUNN: I believe we are. I 

19 believe we are. Yeah, as far as the Subcommittee 

20 is concerned, NIOSH needs to review both Findings 

21 1 and 2 and review the case to establish what 

22 actually needs to go forward. And we'll hear from 

23 them next time. So we can go on with the other two, 
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1 three cases.

2 DR. H. BEHLING: No, there's only one 

3 more.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, just one more case.

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 DR. H. BEHLING: But we have two cases 

7 that have no finding. So I'm on Page 17. And this 

8 involves Case Number 3. And this particular case 

9 involves an EE who worked at the Feed Materials 

10 Production Center. And he was identified or 

11 diagnosed with [identifying information redacted]

12 that had an ICD-9 code [identifying information 

13 redacted] in 1999. 

14 Well, that particular ICD-9 code was 

15 affected by changes in OTIB-5. And it was 

16 subjected to review. Now, one of the things that 

17 I looked at very carefully was that, in the second 

18 paragraph, I have, NIOSH completed DR for this case 

19 in 2006. It was based on the assumption that the 

20 external dose to the [identifying information 

21 redacted] was best determined by using the dose 

22 calculated for the [identifying information 

23 redacted]. And the internal dose to the 
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1 [identifying information redacted] was best 

2 determined by using dose calculated by the 

3 [identifying information redacted], as specified 

4 under OTIB-5. 

5 With the revision of that particular 

6 OTIB-5, there were changes to Code [identifying 

7 information redacted] in which the external organ 

8 was changed from the [identifying information 

9 redacted]. And the internal organ was changed from 

10 the [identifying information redacted], along with 

11 the following [identifying information redacted].

12 And this is the key here, the 

13 [identifying information redacted], which I quote 

14 below here. [Identifying information redacted].

15 So, in this case, I believe a medical 

16 review should have been conducted. And let me see 

17 here, what needs to be told here. I think that 

18 explanation will become obvious when I point to 

19 Exhibit 6, which identifies that the internal organ 

20 was a result of the [identifying information

21 redacted] as the internal organ of interest instead 

22 of the [identifying information redacted].

23 There was a change in -- obviously based 
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1 on the [identifying information redacted], and for 

2 that, I think, it's best to simply go to Page 19 

3 where I talk about what should have been done in 

4 response to [identifying information redacted].

5 When you have no definitive 

6 understanding of where that cancer took place, the 

7 American Cancer Society tells you that there are 

8 three potential options. [Identifying information 

9 redacted].

10 And if I could ask -- well, I will look 

11 at Exhibit B on Page 20, and that continues to 21. 

12 But I would like to turn to Exhibit 7 on Page 22 where 

13 you will see where the [identifying information 

14 redacted] locations are.

15 Okay. Here you have, on the far 

16 right-hand side, [identifying information 

17 redacted]. 

18 Finding Number 3, by and large, then 

19 says, "In the absence of a medical review that would 

20 specify the [identifying information redacted], 

21 NIOSH's selection of the [identifying information 

22 redacted] as appropriate internal organ is 

23 inappropriate and would obviate the need for Case 
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1 Number 3 to be reevaluated."

2 And I believe that we need to have a 

3 medical review, because it will determine which of 

4 the [identifying information redacted] locations 

5 would have been selected had a medical review been 

6 done.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Any comment or question?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I think, 

9 just like the previous finding, we'll need to go 

10 see, you know, if we can come up with a response or 

11 a reaction to the finding.

12 DR. H. BEHLING: At least as far as I can 

13 see, I usually try to look to see if there was a 

14 medical review done. In this case, I could not find 

15 any evidence of a medical review.

16 And so I can easily understand how the 

17 [identifying information redacted] may have been 

18 ignored that says, [identifying information 

19 redacted]. And that would change, obviously, the 

20 approach to doing a dose reconstruction for that 

21 cancer.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. We'll have to 

23 go back and see what happened there --
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Stu, this is Scott. One 

2 thing I can say on this, that this could have fallen 

3 under the fact of you can do an overestimate and if 

4 it's -- because we used the [identifying 

5 information redacted] the first time we did it.

6 And if we assessed it using the 

7 [identifying information redacted] knowing that 

8 was going to be more claimant-favorable, and it 

9 still was less than 50 percent, there would be no 

10 reason to slow down the process and get a medical 

11 review. Because either way that we assessed it, it 

12 was going to be less than 50 percent.

13 I mean, I can't tell you specifically 

14 that's what happened in this case, but that 

15 logically makes sense to me while doing PERs.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. It sounds as though 

17 it's a high possibility. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I thought of that. I 

19 thought that, Scott. And I think that we need to 

20 go back and come up with a reasoned response. And, 

21 I mean, there should be wording to that effect, I 

22 would think.

23 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. We'll carry 
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1 Finding 3 as a review due from NIOSH. And do we have 

2 anything more with PER-43?

3 DR. H. BEHLING: Before we go on, can I 

4 ask a question here? Would the dose reconstructor 

5 have stated that he did both in order to determine 

6 which is the more limiting or which gives you the 

7 higher dose and therefore higher PoC? I would have 

8 known that he tried both. I mean, I didn't see that 

9 in the dose reconstruction.

10 MR. SIEBERT: Well, I can tell you, if 

11 we did it with the [identifying information 

12 redacted] the first time, and the [identifying 

13 information redacted] is the only other option, if 

14 they did it with the [identifying information 

15 redacted] and it's a larger PoC, then obviously 

16 we're doing it both ways.

17 Because nothing else changed. The only 

18 change to this case was the organ of interest. So 

19 they didn't necessarily have to say they looked at 

20 it both ways, in my mind. Because if it was done 

21 with one in the original, and it was done under the 

22 PER with one that was larger, either one gave you 

23 a PoC that was less than 50 percent.
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1 So it probably could have been more 

2 clearly stated if that was the case. However, I can 

3 see the thought process involved.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. We all will see 

5 what the upshot is after you've taken a look at it 

6 specifically for next time. Thank you, Scott.

7 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I just have a 

8 little comment to add on that first case that Hans 

9 discussed.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Mm-hmm.

11 DR. NETON: I'll just kind of add 

12 quickly, and we’re not going to answer completely 

13 now, but it does appear, it says -- I looked at the 

14 NIOSH report summary document, the most recent one, 

15 and Labor reported that, I'm quoting, "An 

16 additional metastatic cancer has been reported. 

17 This new cancer will be accepted as the SEC 

18 specified cancer."

19 So that non-metastatic cancer was the 

20 one that got the person into the SEC. And then it 

21 says, "Please continue with dose reconstruction for 

22 possible non-SEC cancer medical benefits in regards 

23 to the other two primary cancers."
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1 So, we'll explain it, but it looks to me 

2 like the metastatic cancer got him into the SEC. 

3 And for non-SEC cancers, if you want to get medical

4 benefits for those, Labor asks us to reconstruct 

5 those doses to see if the PoC goes over 50 percent 

6 in toto. So, you know, I think there's a rationale 

7 behind that one.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, for the Gaseous 

9 Diffusion Plant case, right?

10 DR. NETON: Well, no. For any SEC 

11 site. But anyway --

12 CHAIR MUNN: Well, yeah. But 

13 specifically for Findings 1 and 2, yeah.

14 DR. H. BEHLING: But, okay, in this case 

15 he was covered under the SEC but --

16 DR. NETON: The primary cancer, the 

17 cancer that got him into the SEC, had to be 

18 considered along with the other non-SEC cancers to 

19 see if he qualified for medical benefits for those 

20 non-SEC cancers.

21 DR. H. BEHLING: Based on what I saw, 

22 obviously the medical reviewer heeded to the need 

23 to revise the ICD-9 codes from [identifying 
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1 information redacted] to [identifying information 

2 redacted]. And that wasn't obviously done.

3 And I guess the second issue is would 

4 there even be a need to do a dose reconstruction for 

5 a metastatic cancer that is identical to the primary 

6 cancer?

7 DR. NETON: Well, we'll have to 

8 research that a little further. But I can kind of 

9 see the logic behind what happened here.

10 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, I can see the 

11 issue that he might have been compensated under this 

12 special situation. But the fact is, when you have 

13 a metastatic cancer, the dose of the metastatic 

14 cancer is the same as the primary cancer, no matter 

15 what the issues are. There's no need to revise the 

16 dose reconstruction.

17 CHAIR MUNN: All right. We'll look 

18 forward to some additional thoughts on that after 

19 the review has taken place. And thank you, Hans. 

20 Anything else so say about PER-43 until we move on?

21 (No response.)

22 CHAIR MUNN: We'll look at that next 

23 time. And now we'll go to PER-18 review.
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1 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. This is Kathy 

2 Behling. And PER-18 was the LANL site. And under 

3 Subtask 4, I had presented our findings, I think, 

4 last time. And we had looked at three cases. And 

5 there were, I think I had four or so -- no, five 

6 findings that we entered into the BRS. And NIOSH 

7 has responded to those findings. So I can quickly 

8 go through them, if you'd like.

9 The first one was PER-18 in Finding 06. 

10 Because there were five findings from the review of 

11 the PER-18. And on this finding, I was questioning 

12 -- I saw in the records there was a neutron dose of 

13 80 millirem that didn't appear to have been 

14 accounted for in the dose reconstruction.

15 And based on Scott Siebert's review, he 

16 said that that was correct. And they did go in and 

17 add that dose to the official file now. So, based 

18 on that response, I assume that we can close this 

19 finding.

20 CHAIR MUNN: That's good. Can you make 

21 that notation, Steve?

22 MR. MARSCHKE: Yes.

23 CHAIR MUNN: How does that catch us up 
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1 with PER-18? Do we have anything outstanding? 

2 What's outstanding? We're done with that one.

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Yeah, there are 

4 a few other findings here. But I think that we can 

5 resolve all of these. But I'll just give you a 

6 brief explanation. Do you want me to wait?

7 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, let's wait. And 

8 let's see if we can close Finding 6 in real-time 

9 here.

10 (Pause.)

11 MR. KATZ: While we're doing this, can 

12 I ask either Kathy or NIOSH, does this PER relate 

13 to the period post-2000 for LANL or does it -- I 

14 don't know.

15 MS. K. BEHLING: I'm not sure.

16 MR. KATZ: Maybe, NIOSH, can you answer 

17 that question? Or is it more generic than that?

18 MR. SIEBERT: Give me a minute. I'm 

19 doing a little bit of digging. But I don't think 

20 it's post-2000. But let me check.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you, Scott.

22 (Pause.)

23 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, thank you.

2 MS. K. BEHLING: And would you like me 

3 to go on, or do you want to wait for Scott?

4 MR. KATZ: Oh, no. You can go ahead.

5 CHAIR MUNN: I think you can go on. 

6 PER-18, we're on Finding 7.

7 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. I'm going to 

8 address, if I can, Finding 7 and Finding 8 together, 

9 because they're very similar.

10 In Finding 7, this had to do with, when 

11 I went through the records, I did not see where, for

12 film badge records, that an uncertainty was applied 

13 as recommended in the Technical Basis Document. 

14 That's Finding 7.

15 In Finding 8, there's also supposed to 

16 be a Model 7776 dosimeter uncertainty factor for 

17 neutrons that I didn't think was applied.

18 And here, I believe, Scott also 

19 responded to this. And he indicated that NIOSH 

20 does not agree with this and that if you go into the 

21 various tools that are in this file, that you will 

22 see where these uncertainties are applied.

23 And he points specifically to a 
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1 simulation setup tab in the Voss MC simulation tools 

2 and told me where to look for this uncertainty 

3 factor, and also points out some information from 

4 the LANL calculation error workbook, and how they 

5 coordinate and how these uncertainty factors get 

6 applied.

7 And I did go into those workbooks. I do 

8 now see where these uncertainty factors are. And 

9 I agree that they were applied appropriately. So 

10 I do agree with Scott's comments and his response 

11 to both Findings 7 and 8.

12 But if I can just take a minute, Wanda, 

13 just so that I can elaborate on this finding a little 

14 bit.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, please do, Kathy.

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. You know, 

17 obviously, you know, as we can see just based on the 

18 response, the dose reconstruction process is very 

19 complex. And it continues to evolve.

20 And typically, in the old days, we used 

21 to be able to go into just an external calculation 

22 workbook, which is complex in itself. There's 

23 usually at least thirteen or more tabs that have 
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1 lots of information and calculations. If we would 

2 go into a scoreboard tab and marry that sometimes 

3 with a Monte Carlo tab, we can pretty much determine 

4 how NIOSH is calculating their doses.

5 I will say, and I know this is not new 

6 to NIOSH or to ORAU, but we're seeing now additional 

7 workbooks, such as these error calculation 

8 workbooks, these Voss simulation tools. It used to 

9 be they would run the Monte Carlo risk analysis 

10 using Crystal Ball. Now they use Voss.

11 The first time, as we were talking 

12 earlier today with the CLL cases, the first time we 

13 saw a Weibull dose distribution was in reviewing a 

14 case. We didn't know when that was being used, why 

15 it was used.

16 And so all I'm trying to suggest here is 

17 that, from a reviewer's point of view, and it just 

18 seems that it would make for a more efficient 

19 process if sometimes SC&A was made aware of these 

20 changes, perhaps, and kept sort of in the loop.

21 Now, in one particular case, you know, 

22 once we're aware of a new tool, we generally train 

23 ourselves. Now, I know we talked earlier about the 
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1 CLL simulator. The only reason we ended up 

2 requesting training on that particular tool was 

3 because there was no workbook. I mean, there was 

4 no guidance document.

5 And so I guess, from my perspective, it 

6 just seems that if we could be made aware of the new 

7 tools as they come out, if there's some training 

8 that we could get, or if even there's -- and Scott 

9 does allude to some instructional, these Voss 

10 simulator instructions, which I'm not even quite 

11 sure where that document exists.

12 But it would certainly make, you know, 

13 the process more efficient. And I think it would 

14 help to eliminate findings like this. And so we're 

15 sensitive to that today. 

16 MR. KATZ: I think that's a great 

17 suggestion, Kathy. And I wondered if, Stu, you 

18 don't need to answer now, but if Stu and Scott, if 

19 you could just figure out whether there's a way to 

20 bring them in. Because there must be sort of a 

21 notification that goes out internally when you guys 

22 have new tools and new methods. And maybe if SC&A 

23 can be brought into the loop there, that would be 
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1 helpful.

2 MR. SIEBERT: Well, this is Scott. One 

3 thing I'll point out that's difficult is the fact 

4 that they're looking backwards in time. These 

5 tools -- and we'll actually deal with this in one 

6 of the later findings on this one right here -- the 

7 tools that we refer to that are so complex, with the 

8 different ones we have to deal with, we no longer 

9 use those. We simplified them by putting them all 

10 into a single tool.

11 So, even if we had given you an update 

12 on when the tool had changed, that would have been 

13 back in, I guess, 2010, and you're reviewing it now 

14 --

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Correct.

16 MR. SIEBERT: -- which the newer tool 

17 actually is there. And this old tool is out of date 

18 for what we do these days. I'm not sure how helpful 

19 that would be. But I guess you know what I'm trying 

20 to say.

21 MS. K. BEHLING: Yeah. I guess what 

22 we're trying to avoid is, like I said, even with the 

23 Weibull distribution, the first time we saw it in 
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1 a dose reconstruction report we felt like we had to 

2 make it a finding, because we just didn't know where 

3 it had come from.

4 And if we were perhaps kept abreast of 

5 some of these changes, or these additions of new 

6 workbooks and new methodologies, like I said, the 

7 Voss versus the Monte Carlo and that type of thing, 

8 we would at least be aware of some of these things. 

9 And we could avoid, like I said, some of these 

10 findings. And if we need training, we would ask for 

11 it. If we can train ourselves, we try to do that. 

12 Just a thought.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. We'll 

14 work with ORAU and see what we can do about 

15 notifications. But like Scott said, you know, the 

16 chances are, you know, if we notify about any new 

17 tools, it'll be some time before SC&A would see that 

18 tool and complete a review. But we'll see what we 

19 can do.

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Yeah. But, like I 

21 said, even if it's going to be a few years down that 

22 we might encounter that in a dose reconstruction, 

23 if we're at least aware of it and it doesn't surprise 
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1 us when we see certain things.

2 So I'm not, you know, trying to justify 

3 my finding here and why I was wrong. But, you know, 

4 things are very, very complex and, you know, 

5 especially with these best estimates.

6 So I guess in resolving, or in reviewing 

7 the response for 18-07 and 18-08, Findings 7 and 8, 

8 I do agree, now that I'm aware of where to look for 

9 these uncertainty factors, I was able to track them 

10 down. I was able to see that they were applied 

11 correctly.

12 And so, again, I'll have to concede 

13 these two findings. And I think we can close them. 

14 Do you agree, Wanda?

15 CHAIR MUNN: I certainly do. If there 

16 are any comments from other Board Members?

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: I agree on these as 

18 well.

19 MEMBER BEACH: I do too, Wanda. This 

20 is Josie.

21 CHAIR MUNN: That's fine. Steve, will 

22 you please make the proper notation for both 

23 Findings 7 and 8 on PER-18?
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1 MR. MARSCHKE: Will do.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you. I think Steve 

3 has almost a template that can go right in there 

4 right now. And, Kathy?

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Would you like me to 

6 continue?

7 CHAIR MUNN: Please continue.

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Finding 9, in 

9 this finding I was questioning why the dose 

10 reconstructor used a median value rather than a 95th 

11 percentile value for the neutron-to-photon ratio. 

12 I felt that that was an underestimation when you 

13 actually looked at his records. It would have --

14 his measured doses would have given him a higher 

15 dose than the 95th percentile dose.

16 And in the response, I think, Scott, you 

17 know, you can jump in if I'm not saying this 

18 correctly, but I think NIOSH's response is fairly 

19 lengthy. And they do agree that, based on the 

20 records for the years 1951 and 1953, it was best to 

21 use either the 95th percentile value or actually the 

22 measured dose.

23 And they have gone in, from what I 
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1 understand, and made changes to the dose 

2 reconstruction guidelines and also, I believe, they 

3 made changes to the workbook. Yes. And again. 

4 Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, but they went in and 

5 they --

6 (Telephonic interference.)

7 CHAIR MUNN: Kathy, you're fading out 

8 badly. You're breaking up on my phone. I don't 

9 know whether it's just my phone.

10 MR. KATZ: It's not just you. It's 

11 everyone. It's all very garbled.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, okay. You're 

13 breaking up badly, Kathy.

14 (Telephonic interference.)

15 MR. KATZ: Yeah, Kathy. I think 

16 there's something wrong with your line. I mean, I 

17 could make out what you were saying, but it's very 

18 difficult.

19 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Let me grab 

20 another phone. I'll put you mute for just one 

21 second.

22 MR. KATZ: Yes.

23 DR. H. BEHLING: Kathy, try the other 
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1 phone next to you.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, Hans is very clear.

3 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. She sat at a 

4 different location to keep us separate from 

5 fighting.

6 (Laughter.)

7 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, that's probably why.

8 DR. H. BEHLING: No, she has another 

9 phone.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Is that better?

11 MR. KATZ: That's perfect.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Much, much better.

13 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, I'm sorry. 

14 Okay, let me repeat myself, then. Did you want me 

15 to go through this Finding 9 again?

16 CHAIR MUNN: Not all the way. Just 

17 back up a couple of sentences.

18 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. What I was 

19 saying is that NIOSH did agree with the finding. It 

20 appears that they are making changes. They made a 

21 change to this dose reconstruction report.

22 And they're also making changes to 

23 guidance and to the workbook associated with, I 
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1 guess, LANL. Or is it all the workbooks, Scott? I 

2 think you were telling --

3 MR. SIEBERT: It's LANL, because it's 

4 this specific issue with the neutrons at LANL.

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. So, based on 

6 their response and everything that they have done, 

7 like I said, they did agree with the finding. And 

8 they have made the appropriate changes.

9 CHAIR MUNN: The changes have been 

10 made? Or are they going to be made?

11 MS. K. BEHLING: Scott?

12 MR. SIEBERT: We have put the new 

13 information into the DR guidance document. And we 

14 have already updated the tool. So we have taken 

15 care of it already.

16 CHAIR MUNN: All right. So that leads 

17 me to believe that we can close this item. Is that 

18 correct?

19 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Paul?

21 MR. KATZ: Wanda, why don't you have 

22 Paul, unless I get clarification from Scott, why 

23 don't we just have Paul recused from this?
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Works for me on this 

3 one.

4 MR. KATZ: That's why, we don't know.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, okay.

6 CHAIR MUNN: Josie?

7 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I agree with that 

8 also, closing.

9 CHAIR MUNN: If you would make the 

10 appropriate notation, Steve. All right. That's 

11 very good.

12 MS. K. BEHLING: And would you like me 

13 to go on, Wanda?

14 CHAIR MUNN: Please do.

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. And this is the 

16 last finding. It's Finding 10. And in this case, 

17 I could not manually calculate the neutron dose and 

18 get close to matching the NIOSH numbers. My 

19 numbers came in lower than the numbers that were 

20 actually generated for the dose reconstruction.

21 And I believe that Lori responded to 

22 this finding. And she indicated that there was an 

23 error that, I guess, the neutron error calculation 
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1 was transcribed incorrectly into the simulation 

2 setup tab in the Voss simulation tool.

3 And apparently that -- and there's a 

4 very long explanation here -- but that is the reason 

5 their doses were excessively high and I couldn't 

6 match their numbers.

7 And they said that this potential 

8 situation has been resolved through the updated 

9 workbook, which contains all the necessary error 

10 calculations. 

11 So, it sounds to me that, again, they've 

12 made their changes, and they agreed with the 

13 finding. And so, again, I would suggest that we 

14 could close this, unless Lori would like to add 

15 anything to her response.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Lori?

17 MS. MARION-MOSS: This is Lori. 

18 Actually, I uploaded that to Scott.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Scott?

20 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. Yeah, 

21 that is the case. It was a case of the dose 

22 reconstructor just making the error when they 

23 transferred some numbers over and putting the wrong 
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1 ones in, which wildly overestimated the neutron 

2 dose.

3 And, yeah, we've entirely rolled that 

4 into a single tool where it's carried through 

5 without the dose reconstructor having to recreate 

6 those numbers between multiple tools. And that 

7 will avoid that same issue.

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, very good.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Excellent.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Again, I would suggest 

11 that we could close that.

12 CHAIR MUNN: That sounds wonderful to 

13 me. That's a salubrious outcome. Anyone with 

14 further comments regarding Finding 10 of PER-18?

15 (No audible response)

16 CHAIR MUNN: If not, then we can close 

17 that item, Steve. And thank you very much, all 

18 concerned. It's nice to be able to take PER-18 off 

19 of our list.

20 Now, we'll go on to PER-11, Findings 3 

21 and 5, NIOSH.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I'll 

23 start out with a little something here. As I 
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1 understand things, PER-11 and PER-14 are sort of 

2 intertwined here, because PER-14, as I understand 

3 it, is a construction trade workers PER.

4 And PER-11 is a K-25 TBD and TIB 

5 revisions to PER. And the findings, I believe both 

6 Findings 3 and 5 related to, were we correctly 

7 choosing to apply the construction trade worker 

8 adjustment to certain cases in that PER-11.

9 And it has to do with a specific word 

10 search for job type I think was used in PER-14 in 

11 construction trade worker ones, in fact, that same 

12 approach wasn't necessarily used in 11. Now, does 

13 that kind of summarize the situation, where we're 

14 at on these?

15 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. And as I recall, 

17 at the last meeting we kind of agreed that, gee, we 

18 probably want to make, we want to make sure we're 

19 making a comprehensive application, you know, in 

20 every case we should.

21 And now I'm kind of getting a little 

22 foggy on where the discussion went. It may have to 

23 do with in what order these PERs were worked. For 
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1 instance, if we did PER-11 first, it's a lower 

2 number. That doesn't necessarily mean it was done 

3 first.

4 And we missed some construction workers 

5 there. Some of them we reworked were not -- we 

6 didn't apply the construction trade worker 

7 adjustment when perhaps we should have.

8 But then later on, we did PER-14, where 

9 we looked for all construction workers. And we did 

10 the comprehensive search for construction workers, 

11 you know, the word search. Logic dictates that we 

12 would have found those K-25 cases from PER-11 that 

13 we didn't treat as construction trade workers when 

14 we did PER-11.

15 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I believe PER-14 --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Was there anybody else?

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: -- actually was done 

18 first.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Fourteen was done 

20 first?

21 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I believe so.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, that's 

23 certainly could happen. Okay. Well, I think we 
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1 kind of agreed that we should make sure we make, we 

2 don't want to miss anybody in PER-11.

3 But I don't know that we've proceeded 

4 any farther than that agreement yet. Jim or Lori, 

5 have you got other stuff to add here, or am I losing 

6 track of the thread here?

7 MS. MARION-MOSS: This is Lori. I 

8 believe that the issue here, and correct me if I'm 

9 wrong, Rose, but the issue here is that SC&A wants 

10 or would prefer that we include the list of titles 

11 in PER-11, similar to what we've done in PER-14. Am 

12 I correct?

13 MS. GOGLIOTTI: That's part of the 

14 issue. Well, previously we determined that 

15 OTIB-52 was being incorrectly interpreted to 

16 exclude construction trade workers that worked for 

17 the prime contractor. So those were being excluded 

18 already, incorrectly. So that's one aspect of the 

19 problem.

20 And the second is, because construction 

21 trade worker means different things to different 

22 people, we're concerned that different dose 

23 reconstructors would do the same case differently.
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1 MS. MARION-MOSS: But you go on to 

2 discussing your responses. And I can't remember 

3 which one, but you specifically say that we need to 

4 establish criteria for what a construction trade 

5 worker is.

6 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes. That would 

7 resolve a large portion of the problem.

8 MS. MARION-MOSS: And what we are 

9 assessing is that that is what we did in Revision 

10 2 of OTIB-52. We've established what that criteria 

11 was.

12 And I used your example that you used in 

13 the case that you referenced in your response. And 

14 if you take a look at that particular case, which 

15 is the K-25 case, yes, we deemed this individual, 

16 or this EE, as a non-CTW. But if you look at -- and 

17 the reason we did so was because of the criteria that 

18 was in OTIB-52.

19 If you go back and look at our revision, 

20 this particular individual, regardless of what his 

21 title may have been, would have been assessed 

22 against the new criteria, the clarification that 

23 was made. And this individual would have been 
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1 assessed to determine whether or not he would have 

2 been a CTW. And he would have been.

3 So basically, what I'm saying is that I 

4 believe we have addressed the criteria that you 

5 specified we needed to do in OTIB-52.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: And that, Lori, you're 

7 saying in the most recent revision of OTIB-52, and 

8 the PER-14 was in a previous one. But do we have 

9 a PER underway or that we have completed that was 

10 based on the qualifying language that we added to 

11 the construction trade worker TIB, OTIB-52?

12 MS. MARION-MOSS: No. That PER is

13 being developed.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So what we're 

15 saying then is that that PER where we address where, 

16 you know, since we clarified OTIB-52 to make it 

17 clearer that employees of the prime should also be 

18 construction trade workers if they had the right 

19 trade, we made that adjustment to OTIB-52.

20 We are getting prepared to do a PER based 

21 on that adjustment. And that PER, were it not to 

22 do, should rectify any situation like they observed 

23 in PER-11, or for that matter any other site where 
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1 we may have, you know, not applied construction 

2 trade worker adjustments to people who said they 

3 were employees at the plant. So that's essentially 

4 where we at on this, right?

5 MS. MARION-MOSS: Right.

6 MS. GOGLIOTTI: So the plan is, if I'm 

7 understanding this correctly, that a new PER will 

8 be issued to address the revision of OTIB-52 and 

9 that will encompass --

10 MS. MARION-MOSS: Correct.

11 MS. GOGLIOTTI: -- all these cases that 

12 were missed by PER-11 and PER-15 as a result of 

13 misinterpretation of 52?

14 MS. MARION-MOSS: Correct.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah.

16 MS. MARION-MOSS: PER-14.

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: So would it be 

18 reasonable to move these into abeyance until that 

19 PER is issued?

20 DR. NETON: Well, I don't know if it 

21 makes any difference. This is Jim. But PER-11 was 

22 done before PER-14.

23 MS. GOGLIOTTI: It was.
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1 DR. NETON: PER-11 was done on 

2 9/26/2007 or issued. And PER-14 was 11/28/2007. 

3 I don't know if that makes any difference.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah. But 

5 nonetheless, the ultimate fix is the upcoming PER 

6 from the clarification of OTIB-52.

7 DR. NETON: Well, I agree.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah. I think, you 

9 know, abeyance could be a status or, I don't know, 

10 you know. In progress could still be the status, 

11 and it wouldn't be closed until, somehow we'd want 

12 to link them to the new PER, to that upcoming PER 

13 which I don't think is numbered yet.

14 MR. MARSCHKE: Do we want to, this is 

15 Steve, do we want add a comment to this basically 

16 discussion under PER-11, what is it, 11-3 or 

17 whatever it is?

18 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, Findings 3 and 5.

19 MR. MARSCHKE: Finding 3, basically 

20 saying to summarize this discussion saying that,

21 you know, NIOSH is in the process of issuing a PER 

22 for revision, or OTIB-52, Revision 2, which will 

23 basically envelope all these --
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, will resolve this 

2 finding.

3 MR. MARSCHKE: Will resolve this 

4 finding.

5 CHAIR MUNN: That will make it simple 

6 enough.

7 MR. KATZ: Right. And I think it is 

8 abeyance then, because there's agreement there was 

9 an issue. And that will be resolving it. And 

10 there's agreement on basically how to resolve it. 

11 And we just need to see it.

12 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay. Then we'll do a 

13 change as opposed to the --

14 CHAIR MUNN: That statement is 

15 appropriate and abeyance should be, which will 

16 resolve this issue.

17 Okay, let's go back up to the very first 

18 line. And let's eliminate the words has explained 

19 that they are. Just take out that phrase and just 

20 say is. And the process of the PER associated with 

21 OTIB-52, Revision 2. That's fine for me. Anyone 

22 have any problem with that?

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: That looks good.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Let's move on.

2 MR. MARSCHKE: Want to do the same for 

3 the other one?

4 CHAIR MUNN: Finding 5. It appears to 

5 me that a similar statement needs to be made and in 

6 abeyance. Is that the feeling of the others on the 

7 Board? Paul?

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

9 CHAIR MUNN: And Josie?

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Same here.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Steve, if you will just 

12 repeat that comment under Finding 5?

13 MR. MARSCHKE: Will do.

14 CHAIR MUNN: We'll move on to PER-14. 

15 We'll take a look to see what the -- and NIOSH, I 

16 believe I interpreted what you said to encompass 

17 this PER as well. Is that correct?

18 MR. MARSCHKE: We're on 14 now?

19 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, on PER-14. Stu, 

20 Jim, it's my understanding.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yeah. I didn't 

22 think there was a, I don't know if there was a 

23 particular finding on 14 that we were addressing, 
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1 but it would be, I mean, that would actually give 

2 a comparison, the workers' comparison that was used 

3 in PER-14 that was not used in PER-11. So is there 

4 an active finding that's relevant to the discussion 

5 we just had on 14?

6 MR. MARSCHKE: The BRS shows all the 

7 findings on 14 closed.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah. So I didn't 

9 think there were any, I didn't think there was 

10 anything open on 14, to be honest.

11 CHAIR MUNN: All right. Then we can 

12 just take that off our list entirely.

13 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I believe that that was 

14 on the list initially because NIOSH was going to 

15 compare the claims from PER-11 and see what job 

16 titles in PER-11 came up versus what was used in 

17 PER-14.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: For me it was, it's 

19 there for sort of comparison purposes for the PER-11 

20 findings. Because there wasn't anything really to 

21 discuss on 14.

22 CHAIR MUNN: Right. All right. Then 

23 we'll remove that from our agenda. And we will go 
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1 on to PER-52. SC&A?

2 DR. H. BEHLING: That's me again. But, 

3 Wanda, can I just take one second to go back to the 

4 previous case number where we had a [identifying 

5 information redacted] cancer?

6 And I'm still confused. Because I 

7 don't want to make this mistake again where, I 

8 guess, NIOSH responded that the dose reconstructor 

9 may have then reviewed the internal dose, based on 

10 the decision to either assign it to [identifying 

11 information redacted] or [identifying information 

12 redacted] and use the [identifying information 

13 redacted] because it's higher.

14 And I always realize that I'm going to 

15 be questioned in terms of my failure to understand 

16 that. And I'm going back to the [identifying 

17 information redacted] which really states that, for 

18 those cancers that are described as [identifying 

19 information redacted], select the [identifying 

20 information redacted] as the internal organ.

21 But in the case where [identifying 

22 information redacted], a medical review should be 

23 conducted to determine the appropriate internal 
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1 organ of interest, appropriate organ of interest.

2 That does not mean select the higher 

3 one. There are certain instances, I understand, 

4 when you, for instance, determine whether or not the 

5 action for Type M or S is potentially an option you 

6 should consider, you select the higher one. But 

7 that is the decision of the dose reconstructor.

8 In this case, the way I interpret 

9 [identifying information redacted], it says that, 

10 and I quote again, [identifying information 

11 redacted], not the higher one, which would be 

12 optional for the dose reconstructor.

13 The way I interpret that [identifying 

14 information redacted] to say is, you will rely on 

15 a medical review to determine which is the 

16 appropriate, not necessarily the higher one.

17 And I just want to make that issue, 

18 because I always feel that we're going to get, 

19 perhaps, held accountable for introducing a finding 

20 that should not be a finding. And the way I see 

21 this, I will stand by my position that this is a 

22 finding until a medical review was conducted that 

23 says one way or the other.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So then what 

2 you're saying is that the footnote does not provide 

3 the leeway for an --

4 DR. H. BEHLING: Dose reconstructor.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: -- expedient, you know, 

6 expedient approach.

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: For instance, if you do 

9 the highest approach, and it's not going to be 

10 compensable or above 45 percent, then that 

11 typically is, you know, something that we've done 

12 for expedience.

13 But this [identifying information 

14 redacted] doesn't allow that flexibility. So an 

15 option would be to revise that [identifying 

16 information redacted] to allow for the flexibility 

17 of using the higher outcome as an expedient measure.

18 DR. H. BEHLING: That would be my 

19 recommendation. And I think that would solve the 

20 issue. Had that been reconstructed or considered, 

21 that would not be my finding.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

23 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. Once 
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1 again, I can understand how that could solve the 

2 problem. However, we don't necessarily have in 

3 every procedure to state that you can use efficiency 

4 methods if they're deemed appropriate.

5 In this case, you know, the medical 

6 review is going to select either [identifying 

7 information redacted]. And I agree, if you follow 

8 the letter of the procedure, and it says that we need 

9 to do that in a best estimate case, I would agree 

10 wholeheartedly that medical review would need to be 

11 done.

12 However, if you have two options and 

13 both of them are non-compensable, efficiency 

14 methods have been used in the past and continue to 

15 be used. So I understand where you're coming from. 

16 But I'm just pointing out that we don't necessarily 

17 proceduralize all efficiency methods.

18 DR. H. BEHLING: To me, I always feel 

19 that guidance should be as definitive as possible 

20 so that the option for deciding one way or the other 

21 should not be that of a dose reconstructor, at least 

22 in certain cases where you realize it could make the 

23 difference between compensation and not 
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1 compensation unless you segregate that case.

2 But in this case, that [identifying 

3 information redacted] should say use either one 

4 depending on which one's higher provided he's not 

5 compensable.

6 MR. SIEBERT: Well, that's my point. 

7 That, in our normal practice of efficiency methods, 

8 if one was compensable and the other one was not, 

9 the dose reconstructor would get the medical 

10 review. Because in a --

11 (Simultaneous speaking)

12 MR. SIEBERT: -- you can't --

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I'd like to intervene 

14 here. If I could intervene, Ted, you and I know why 

15 discussion's going on. And perhaps we can sort out 

16 a way outside the meeting --

17 MR. KATZ: This is actually, I mean, I 

18 don't want to get into it here, but this is actually 

19 a non-issue. So there's no reason to persist here.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, that's what I'm 

21 thinking. We can sort out a way that this is scored 

22 appropriately for --

23 MR. KATZ: And this thing would be 
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1 scored appropriately. This is just, like I said, 

2 a non-issue.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah. That's what I'm 

4 saying.

5 CHAIR MUNN: So how are we --

6 MR. KATZ: So, Wanda, you can just 

7 proceed from here. We really don't need to persist 

8 on this discussion at all.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

10 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. I will take 

11 PER-52. This is the review of the Westinghouse 

12 template. And that came about as a result of 

13 additional air sample data.

14 In the original template for the 

15 Westinghouse facility, there were only 3,093 air 

16 samples available to determine what potential 

17 intakes might have been on the part of workers and 

18 both from inhalation and ingestion.

19 And then subsequently, a substantial 

20 number of air samples were discovered that raised 

21 the total to 12,694 air samples. And in the process 

22 of analyzing that data, it became very clear that 

23 the potential inhalation and ingestion doses would 
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1 go up, hence the issue of DCAS PER-52 that would then 

2 assess the potential impact on those cases that had 

3 been previously completed under the old template.

4 And I'll make it quick here, if Steve 

5 could go to Page 10 of that report. Okay. These 

6 three tables, 2A, 2B and 2C, are the things that give 

7 me a little bit of a problem here.

8 These three sets of intakes were defined 

9 for three groups of workers. The one up top, 2A, 

10 intakes for unmonitored operators and general 

11 laborers. And the key here that I want to point out 

12 is unmonitored operators. Those are the highest, 

13 those are the 95th percentile values of the more 

14 than 12,000 air samples that were taken. And you 

15 have both intakes: inhalation and ingestion.

16 The second one is unmonitored 

17 supervisors. And again, the word unmonitored 

18 sticks out here. And the third is for unmonitored 

19 all other workers.

20 And we see that they are obviously the 

21 unmonitored supervisors are 50 percent of the 

22 operators and the other workers are ten percent of 

23 the unmonitored supervisors.
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1 And the thing that I had some concerns 

2 were the issues that are described on the next page 

3 as to how they might apply, on Page 11.

4 You have, and I'll read for you at the 

5 top of the page, during operational periods '71, 

6 '72, partially monitored workers, those who have 

7 bioassays for uranium and plutonium, should be 

8 assigned unmonitored exposures at the 95th 

9 percentile.

10 Now, here's the question. When I see 

11 the word unmonitored, does that mean completely 

12 unmonitored, partially unmonitored? And what does 

13 that really mean?

14 And I wasn't really sure whether we're 

15 talking about a categorization of people who follow 

16 in one of three classifications as operators and 

17 laborers, supervisors and all others. Or are those 

18 divisions subject to a secondary assessment based 

19 on whether or not they are potential bioassay data.

20 And my question is what happens if you 

21 have an operator who you know is defined as an 

22 operator or a laborer but, for some reason or 

23 another, he was never monitored?
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1 What do you do? Do you assign him the 

2 95th percentile value as it occurs in Table 2A? Or 

3 is he automatically, by virtue of not having any 

4 bioassay data, he is defaulted to Table 2B which is 

5 for unmonitored supervisors?

6 And so you have this conflict. Do you 

7 have an operator without bioassay who then gets the 

8 mean value? Or do you assess him with Table 2A?

9 And the second question is for the value 

10 of the supervisors, I'm not sure whether the 50 

11 percent value is a median value or is this just an 

12 arbitrary decision to say it's 50 percent of the 

13 operator value.

14 Because in previous, or the old 

15 templates, there was a geometric mean as well as a 

16 95th percentile. But I suspect that the Table 2B 

17 is not a median value or a geometric mean value. Is 

18 that correct?

19 CHAIR MUNN: Can someone --

20 DR. H. BEHLING: Could someone answer 

21 that?

22 CHAIR MUNN: -- answer the question?

23 (Simultaneous speaking)
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1 MS. MARION-MOSS: Mutty, would you have 

2 an answer?

3 DR. H. BEHLING: Can I interrupt? 

4 Because on Page 11, the second one, for completely 

5 unmonitored workers, unmonitored exposure should 

6 be based on the geometric mean intake. So I take 

7 it, it is a geometric mean intake. But it doesn't 

8 appear to be that. It's a 50 percent value.

9 MR. SHARFI: This is for which?

10 CHAIR MUNN: It's a review of PER-52.

11 MR. SHARFI: I would have to pull 

12 Westinghouse. Let me look it up a little bit and 

13 see if I can get back with you.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

15 DR. H. BEHLING: I mean, when you look 

16 at, for instance, the old templates, and you look 

17 at the value of the geometric mean which, during the 

18 operational period this, in fact, Steve, go to Page 

19 9, please.

20 If you look at Table 1, if you scroll up 

21 a bit, you can see, look at the geometric mean for 

22 1971 through '73. And we have a geometric mean of 

23 9.122.
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1 And you also have a GSD which is also 

2 missing in that, if it turns out to be a geometric 

3 mean. And then you look at the 95th percentile 

4 which is approximately more than fourfold higher, 

5 not 50 percent, which gives me reasons to question 

6 what is Table 2B.

7 It doesn't appear to be a geometric mean 

8 value as referred to, I guess, indirectly on Page 

9 11 where it says for completely unmonitored 

10 workers, unmonitored exposure should be based on 

11 the geometric mean intake and assigned either da, 

12 da, da, da, da.

13 You don't have that value, according to 

14 my assessment of what these numbers represent, nor 

15 do you have their geometric standard deviation 

16 which is usually incorporated when a geometric mean 

17 is used as an intake for a lower-exposed worker. So 

18 I guess I'm having problems with those three tables.

19 MR. SHARFI: Okay. Can you move back 

20 up to the first table? I don't have the document 

21 in front of me, so I was trying to pull the numbers 

22 9.2, 9.1.

23 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah, the first one is 
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1 9.122. And then it has the geometric standard 

2 deviation of 4.638. And then the 95th percentile 

3 is approximately fourfold higher, slightly more 

4 than fourfold higher than the geometric mean.

5 But that was the old template. I'm just 

6 using that as a reference for assessing the merit 

7 of the data that are presented in Table 2A, 2B, 2C, 

8 which are in the revised templates.

9 MR. SHARFI: I will bet you, without 

10 going into raw data, that the 95th percentile is not 

11 the calculated 95th percentile, but the actual, 

12 based off the data which is probably what you're 

13 seeing is, as you get to the higher levels of it, 

14 you're going to get tailoff.

15 And so the theoretical 95th, which would 

16 be about 115 if you calculate it based off the GSD 

17 versus the measured 95th percentile, the actual 

18 data set, that is probably the actual 95th 

19 percentile. The data set was used for that 95th 

20 percentile.

21 DR. H. BEHLING: So is Table 2B a 

22 geometric mean?

23 MR. SIEBERT: Can I interrupt? This is 
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1 Scott. We haven't, as far as I know, we have not 

2 created formal responses to this. So I'm not sure 

3 if we should really just be winging it. And I think 

4 we should probably develop formal responses for 

5 these, get them into the application and then move 

6 forward at that point.

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay.

8 MR. SIEBERT: I mean, Stu, feel free to 

9 tell me I'm wrong and move on and continue what we're 

10 doing. But that just seems wiser to me.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think you're 

12 right, Scott. I think if we haven't entered 

13 responses, then we should take the opportunity to 

14 put some reviewed responses together and get into 

15 the BRS.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes. As I said, it 

17 confused me to a large degree. Because in the 

18 event, as I've just mentioned earlier, if you did 

19 have someone who, on the basis of records, was 

20 clearly identified as a Westinghouse worker who was 

21 an operator or a laborer but who had no bioassay 

22 data, which category of data, Table 2A or 2B, would 

23 apply? And according to --
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1 MR. SHARFI: Well, they're the operator 

2 then. They would go to 2A.

3 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, but because, on 

4 Page 11, it says for completely unmonitored 

5 workers. It doesn't say laborer or operators or 

6 supervisors. Unmonitored exposure should be based 

7 on a geometric mean intake. And this is what really 

8 confuses me. Which table do you apply when you have 

9 a certain condition where you don't have any 

10 bioassay data but the guy is clearly identified as 

11 an operator or laborer?

12 MR. SHARFI: Well, then they go to the 

13 operator table. I mean, that's what those 

14 unmonitored intakes are for, is for unmonitored 

15 laborers and operators.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, but read the 

17 third paragraph on that Page 11. It says for 

18 completely unmonitored workers, exposure should be 

19 based on the geometric mean intake rate. So as far 

20 as I'm concerned, that option is yours, as a dose 

21 reconstructor, to decide whether you go to Table 2A 

22 or 2B?

23 CHAIR MUNN: So do we have a finding 
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1 that would encompass that question?

2 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. I include that 

3 finding on Page 11, at the very bottom of Page 11.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Then we will 

5 anticipate that NIOSH will take the finding into 

6 consideration and provide us with some response.

7 DR. H. BEHLING: It may just be, Wanda, 

8 in the form of some clarification, how to use those 

9 three tables: 2A, 2B, 2C.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Right.

11 MR. SHARFI: Okay.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Very good, Finding 1 will 

13 be due for a response.

14 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah, the Finding 

15 Number 2, just a brief thing. I think we may have 

16 even discussed this earlier. But, Steve, if you 

17 can go to Page 12, again, we have the issue of a 12 

18 percent 10-year-old fuel-grade plutonium ratios.

19 And you realize that, obviously, all of 

20 the air sampling that was done with Westinghouse was 

21 gross alpha counts, which means that you have the 

22 option of defining whether it's for plutonium, 

23 thorium or uranium as the option allows you to.
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1 But if it turns out to be ten-year-old 

2 fuel-grade plutonium, then the mixture has to be 

3 defined in terms of plutonium-238 alpha, 239-alpha 

4 and americium-241 alpha. Because the three of them 

5 combined obviously make a total two unity. And so 

6 you have to break down the fraction of each of those 

7 alpha contributors to the air sampling data that was 

8 collected.

9 On the other hand, plutonium-241 is not 

10 an alpha emitter. And it needs to be looked at, 

11 obviously, because it will contribute to the dose, 

12 but it is not an alpha emitter.

13 And so I just think that that should be 

14 at least identified. Eliminate the word 

15 plutonium-241 alpha and then put a footnote. It 

16 must be incorporated into the dose assessment. I 

17 think we've discussed that finding before somewhere 

18 else, if I recall.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Possibly. But we will 

20 continue to carry it as a NIOSH response due.

21 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. That's pretty 

22 much it for PER-52.

23 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Any comments or 
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1 questions? What I have now is that we have two 

2 outstanding findings. And NIOSH will review the 

3 review and respond to the two findings. Any other 

4 action, any other concern?

5 (No audible response)

6 CHAIR MUNN: If not, let's go on to 

7 PER-9, case audits.

8 MR. MARSCHKE: Wait a minute. This is 

9 Steve. I'm looking at the BRS.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

11 MR. MARSCHKE: Kathy, did you enter the 

12 second finding? I mean, I see the first finding 

13 that Hans was discussing on the partially monitored 

14 and completely unmonitored question. And then we 

15 get into Sub-task 4 findings. And I don't see the 

16 plutonium-241 question in here.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. It looks like we 

18 need an addition of plutonium --

19 MS. K. BEHLING: You're right, Steve. 

20 And I apologize. I've been having some problems 

21 entering some of this data into the BRS. And I have 

22 a lot of findings to enter, and I must have gotten 

23 confused here. But I can make a correction to that 
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1 --

2 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay.

3 MS. K. BEHLING: -- offline, if you 

4 prefer.

5 CHAIR MUNN: That's good. That's all 

6 we need is just to add that second finding in, Kathy.

7 MS. K. BEHLING: I will do that.

8 CHAIR MUNN: And that will be good.

9 (Telephonic interference)

10 MS. K. BEHLING: So I will make those 

11 changes.

12 CHAIR MUNN: That's true. Okay. 

13 That's good. Thank you much, appreciate that.

14 And thank you, Steve. Now, NIOSH, PER-9, case 

15 audits.

16 MS. MARION-MOSS: Before we move on, 

17 Wanda, Steve, can I ask you a question about that, 

18 the BRS?

19 MR. MARSCHKE: Sure.

20 MS. MARION-MOSS: So wouldn't that be 

21 the finding? The only thing she would need to 

22 remove is the wording Sub-task 4?

23 CHAIR MUNN: No. We haven't gotten 
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1 into Sub-task 4 yet. Well, hmm.

2 MS. MARION-MOSS: The finding is there, 

3 isn't it?

4 MR. MARSCHKE: As you read it, that is 

5 the Number 2 finding.

6 CHAIR MUNN: That's the Number 2?

7 MS. MARION-MOSS: That's the Number 2 

8 finding. She just added Sub-task 4. And it's --

9 MR. MARSCHKE: Oh, okay.

10 MS. MARION-MOSS: -- in there. So 

11 that's all you would need to correct, Kathy.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Right.

13 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Yes, you're 

14 correct. I see it now. I wasn't visualizing all 

15 of the finding wording. So, yeah. I just 

16 inadvertently put in Sub-task 4.

17 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay. That sounds 

18 good. Can we do that? Maybe we can edit that.

19 CHAIR MUNN: If we can edit it, just 

20 take it out now, that would be helpful. Super, 

21 done. That's great.

22 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay.

23 CHAIR MUNN: Alright, very good. 
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1 Thank you.

2 MR. MARSCHKE: Thank you, Lori.

3 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Now, the third time, 

5 hopefully is the charm. PER-9, case audits.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Lori, remind me. 

7 Who's speaking about this one?

8 MS. MARION-MOSS: I believe we only 

9 have one open finding which is Finding Number 6.

10 MR. SMITH: Sure. This is Matt Smith 

11 with the ORAU team. And on this issue, I think it's 

12 come up in the past as well, maybe during the TBD 

13 review.

14 On this particular one, the concern was 

15 that the older tool was not performing in the same 

16 manner with respect to applying correction factors 

17 and uncertainty as the current tool.

18 And as you can see from the response 

19 here, basically, we took a look at it. Excuse me. 

20 And the older tool was performing correctly in that 

21 it was not applying any kind of energy correction 

22 factor or a factor of 1.3 to account for dosimeter 

23 errors.
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1 When it comes to missed dose, we have an 

2 LOD value that typically encompasses whatever the 

3 response factors would be for the variety of 

4 energies that that dosimeter has to deal with.

5 And in addition, when it comes to 

6 uncertainty, we take the tack of always applying it 

7 as a log-normal distribution with that familiar GS, 

8 you know, 1.52.

9 So bottom line is the factors that would 

10 go against this measured dose don't go against the 

11 missed dose. This particular claim was missed dose 

12 only. So those factors would not be expected to be 

13 in there.

14 So the bottom line is we took a look at 

15 the current tool, the 1.5 version, took a look at 

16 the older tool, and found it was performing in the 

17 same manner. So we didn't find an error in the 

18 workbook process here.

19 MS. K. BEHLING: And this is Kathy. I 

20 did look briefly at this response earlier today or 

21 yesterday. And I do agree with everything that 

22 Matt is saying.

23 And you're correct, we had questioned 
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1 whether this missed dose should also have a 

2 correction factor applied. And we have concluded 

3 that that's not the case. I guess I just have to 

4 remind myself that these were all truly missed 

5 doses. But with that being said, he is correct. 

6 And I think that we can accept this response.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Kathy. Any 

8 comment otherwise?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Sounds like we can 

10 close that.

11 CHAIR MUNN: It sounds as though we can. 

12 Josie?

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I agree with that 

14 also.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Steve, would you please 

16 make the appropriate notation that SC&A agrees with 

17 the NIOSH response? And the Subcommittee has 

18 closed this finding. That will take us to PER-47. 

19 We have -- Hans, is that you again?

20 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes, unfortunately it 

21 is. And I'm going to frustrate everybody in trying 

22 to go through this one.

23 One of the things I want to point out is 
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1 that normally, whenever I identify an issue, I 

2 usually have the data right there in the body of the 

3 text. But in this case, I've had to introduce all 

4 of the exhibits, and there's plenty of them, at the 

5 tail end in various attachments because of the large 

6 number of pages that they represent.

7 So, Steve Marschke, please be kind to 

8 me. Don't get upset when I say turn to page 

9 such-and-such. Because we're going to be doing 

10 this in order to understand the issues that 

11 represent the four findings.

12 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay. Give me a chance 

13 to get to the document, to find it. The first --

14 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. And, Steve, I 

15 will identify each of the exhibits by page number 

16 so that you will have a better grasp in turning to 

17 the page that identifies each of the findings that 

18 I need to reference.

19 MR. MARSCHKE: Doesn't seem to be here.

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Excuse me, Steve. 

21 This is actually listed under the meeting minutes 

22 or the agenda for today's meeting. It was one of 

23 the documents, I believe, that should be --
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1 CHAIR MUNN: I believe we all have it. 

2 We should have it.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: It isn't the newest 

4 version, is it, Matt?

5 DR. H. BEHLING: Yes.

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. All you have to do 

7 is give us the page number, and we can go there.

8 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. Are we still 

9 waiting for Steve, or should I go ahead?

10 CHAIR MUNN: No, no. You can go ahead.

11 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. Just as a 

12 quickie, the Grand Junction had a template earlier 

13 that was based on a limited amount of data. And it 

14 was during a NIOSH evaluation of the Grand Junction 

15 SEC petition that they discovered a substantial 

16 body of new data and available new data that allowed 

17 certain changes to be made in a revised template.

18 Among the changes were external 

19 dosimeter data for the years between 1982 and 1999 

20 containing 15,000 records which contained data 

21 involving gamma and beta exposures and a limited 

22 number of neutron exposures. There were also data 

23 available for moderate neutron exposures which 
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1 we'll also discuss as one of the complexities.

2 And lastly, there was not actually, not 

3 lastly, second to lastly, surrogate exposure data 

4 for assigning annual gamma and beta doses to 

5 unmonitored workers were derived. And lastly, 

6 there was air sampling data that included radon 

7 measurements that we will also discuss.

8 Before we talk about any findings, if I 

9 can ask you to turn to Page 9, I did make one 

10 particular observation. And that is this is 

11 generic, this is not unique here.

12 But whenever we have a template that is 

13 made in lieu of a Technical Basis Document for that 

14 particular site, we usually have to go out and 

15 identify a claim that is affected by that template 

16 and then extract the template from a claim.

17 And I think there's just an issue here 

18 that perhaps we can simplify this and not have to 

19 rely on taking a claim that has the template as part 

20 of its document that explains what was done in 

21 behalf of that particular claim using the template 

22 as a reference document, because the claim does 

23 contain Privacy Act issues. And it would be very 
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1 useful if these templates were available on the Web 

2 that did not have any affiliation with a particular 

3 dose reconstruction, if that's possible.

4 I'm just throwing this out. This is not 

5 the first time I've sort of thought about making 

6 that an observation. And if that can be done, it 

7 would be perhaps useful for SC&A to have that 

8 template in the absence of any particular claim 

9 associated with that template.

10 Are there any comments on that issue 

11 about making a template available that is not 

12 attached to a claim? Stu?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I understand the point. 

14 And we'll have to see what the impact, what we can 

15 do.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. Let me try to 

17 get as quickly through this in order to expedite 

18 things. One of the things I did do again here, 

19 because of the need to reference the revised 

20 template, is Attachment A where I used excerpts from 

21 the revised template that are part of my discussion 

22 and part of the findings.

23 So on Page 24, you will see Attachment 
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1 A, and you will see various pages that are extracted 

2 from the template that we will be talking about. 

3 Among them is Table 1, which is defined on Page 25 

4 as well as 26.

5 And those are the unmonitored gamma 

6 doses that can be assigned to either operator, 

7 laborer, supervisor or administrative personnel. 

8 You see that on Page 25 and 26.

9 On Page 27, you have Table 2 which are 

10 neutron doses that were established. And those are 

11 neutron doses that are specifically aimed at 

12 assignments for geologists and all other people.

13 And then on Table 3, which is on Page 30 

14 of Attachment A, you have relative activity and 

15 total activity fractions or entailments. And that 

16 will come up as one of the findings, and also the 

17 Table 4, which is on Page 32, which is inhalation, 

18 ingestion rate intakes for the various four 

19 categories of workers which will also come into play 

20 when I talk about one of the findings.

21 So that's Attachment A. After that, 

22 you have Attachments B and C. And I will call out 

23 the page number as we get to them.
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1 When SC&A looked at Table 1 of 

2 Attachment A, which I just mentioned were on Page 

3 25 and 26, the unmonitored gamma doses that are 

4 defined in Table 1 of the revised template, I had 

5 a problem in trying to identify how these numbers 

6 came to be.

7 And one of the obligations we have under 

8 the contract in reviewing these things is to first 

9 duplicate those numbers and then say I know how 

10 NIOSH came to that number and then, secondly, 

11 determine whether or not we agree with that 

12 methodology.

13 And I realize that I wasn't able to do 

14 that because of the fact that the attempt to 

15 duplicate that number was very difficult for me with 

16 the available information that we had available.

17 And one of the pieces of information was 

18 a document that I can identify here as Exhibit B1 

19 on Page 35. And that particular document, if you 

20 go to Page 35, as Exhibit B1, identifies various 

21 numbers.

22 And just for the sake of focusing on a 

23 specific number as, whenever we do an attempt to 
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1 reproduce the numbers, we always look at one 

2 particular date that can be randomly chosen or 

3 whatever.

4 In this case, I chose 1985. And if you 

5 look at, on Page 35, under the year 1985, you see 

6 photon exposures that represent 118 people, 

7 individuals who were at the Grand Junction 

8 facility. And you see, obviously, other data 

9 including the average dose to those people, the 

10 maximum dose.

11 In this case, it had one individual who 

12 was, for that year, identified with an exposure of 

13 8500 millirem. And then you have also the 

14 geometric mean, the standard geometric standard 

15 deviation and the 95th percentile value.

16 The 95th percentile value here is 132.18 

17 millirems. However, important to understand is 

18 that it does not include any missed doses, as we're 

19 talking a few minutes ago, missed dose that could 

20 be added to that based on the information and 

21 guidance provided.

22 These people were monitored on a 

23 quarterly basis. And the assumption was that 
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1 whatever dose they received in one year was received 

2 in a single monitoring period, meaning that the 

3 other three monitoring periods are subject to 

4 missed dose.

5 In the case of 1985, the LOD value for 

6 people who were monitored would have been 20 

7 millirems. So half of that times three is 30, as 

8 the footnote suggests. So that in truth, according 

9 to Exhibit B1, the dose for the 95th percentile 

10 value would have been 132.18 plus 30 or 163 

11 millirem.

12 When you compare that to Table 1 in 

13 Attachment A, which I'll go back to now, making 

14 sure, okay, Page 25. And you realize that the dose 

15 for the -- where am I, 1985, okay -- for 1985 which 

16 is actually on Page 26, it's a continuation of Table 

17 1, you see for, in 1985 the operator/laborer dose 

18 is, in fact, defined by 0.90 rem or 90 millirem which 

19 represents really 60 millirem of actual dose plus 

20 30 of missed dose which is considerably less than 

21 the 162 millirem that I would have identified based 

22 on Exhibit 1.

23 And when I first had Exhibit 1 
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1 available, I wasn't even sure where that came from. 

2 And I called NIOSH to get additional information on 

3 this.

4 And I have to backtrack a little bit. 

5 This particular review is a Revision 1 review. And 

6 all of the Committee may have received the original 

7 draft Rev 0.

8 And I had identified that as a 

9 conditional finding, because I didn't really have 

10 a way of verifying how that number came to be, except 

11 that Exhibit B1 was, in fact, something that I knew 

12 had to have been something that NIOSH produced, 

13 except I couldn't place it.

14 Only afterwards did I come to the 

15 realization that that particular Exhibit 1 actually 

16 came from the SEC Petition Evaluation Report. So 

17 it was actually something that now has a genesis or 

18 a pedigree in terms of the NIOSH record.

19 So anyway, so that in essence became an 

20 issue. And as a result of the conditional response 

21 or finding that I listed in the original draft 

22 report, we were asked to confer with NIOSH to 

23 understand how it was that they came to the value 
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1 that they had listed in Table 1 of Attachment A which 

2 says 90 millirem is the 95th percentile that 

3 includes the 30 millirem of missed dose for people 

4 who were monitored a total of four times a year.

5 As a result, we asked NIOSH where did 

6 these numbers come from. And they in turn told us 

7 to go to a spreadsheet. And in that spreadsheet, 

8 they provided us with all the data for all the years.

9 And in turn, that spreadsheet became, 

10 obviously, Exhibit 2. Exhibit 2, B2, is on Page 36. 

11 And Exhibit 2 truly identifies all of the recorded 

12 values that represent B1. On Exhibit 2, on Page 36 

13 and continues on Page 37, and 38 and 39, it 

14 identifies, if you look at the far left hand side, 

15 it identifies the 118 personnel who were monitored 

16 in 1985.

17 It gives you all of the doses. And I 

18 will also tell you up front, the doses that are 

19 measured here are not real doses. They are doses 

20 that were defined in the DOE reports as the highest 

21 category. We talk about that a little bit later.

22 But right now, except for the fact that 

23 the data in Exhibit B2 on Page 36, 37, 38 and 39 
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1 represented data that I had initially identified as 

2 Exhibit B1, and all of a sudden realized where those 

3 came from, and they represent 118 people who were 

4 monitored.

5 And when you look at, on Page 39, the 

6 geometric dose, the average dose and the 95th 

7 percentile value, they match exactly what I had 

8 expected to see based on the original Exhibit B1.

9 Now, they represent 118 people who had 

10 a positive dose assigned to them in 1985. And, as 

11 I said, this is the discrepancy that I was not able 

12 to identify early on.

13 So, let me see where are we here in terms 

14 of Finding Number 1. Finding Number 1 on Page 12, 

15 no, Page 13 of the document, it said these data that 

16 I extracted up front from the SEC petition for the 

17 Grand Junction people, and it is contained in the 

18 SEC Evaluation Report, do not match the revised 

19 template data of Table 1 defined in Attachment 1A.

20 So we have 162 for that year in 1985, 162 

21 millirem versus the 90 millirem that are listed in 

22 the revised template in Table 1. So that is Finding 

23 Number 1.
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1 And on Page 13, my Finding Number 1 

2 states as follows. Dose estimates defined in Table 

3 1 of the revised Grand Junction template are not 

4 only inconsistent with data cited in Petition 

5 Evaluation Report for SEC 00175, but are 

6 inappropriately derived.

7 And the reason I say inappropriately 

8 derived is that, when I looked at the actual means 

9 by which dose numbers were derived, you have to go 

10 to Exhibit 3, B3, which starts on Page 40.

11 Now, Exhibit B3 is the same data as you 

12 saw in Exhibit B. But instead of 118 people, it has 

13 528 individuals who were monitored.

14 Now, if you turn the Page from 40 to Page 

15 43, you will see a yellow line that separates the 

16 people who were monitored in 1985 between those who 

17 had positive measurements that stopped at the point 

18 of 118 and then continue on with all people who never 

19 had a single positive measurement in 1985.

20 And all of their exposures, if you look 

21 down the total column on the far right hand side, 

22 they are 40, 40, 40 millirem down the line between 

23 119 and 528.
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1 And what it means is that NIOSH, in order 

2 to derive the 95th percentile value for operators 

3 and laborers, they used the entire complement of 528 

4 individuals of which 410 people had no exposure at 

5 all, meaning that it's hard for me to assess why you 

6 would assume that the majority of people, 410 out 

7 of 520 people in that pool of monitored workers, 

8 were people with no single measurable exposures 

9 throughout that year.

10 And I also feel that, in fact, that in 

11 the SEC Evaluation Report, NIOSH had, I found five 

12 doses that were consistent with the higher value of 

13 162 for 1985 was unmeasured.

14 So Finding Number 1 is, by and large, my 

15 assessment of the way in which NIOSH reconstructed 

16 which I was able to duplicate, but I disagree with. 

17 I can figure out how they arrived with Table 1 in 

18 Attachment A and where the 1985 data for the most 

19 exposed individuals, the 95th percentile says he 

20 was exposed to 90 millirem.

21 But it is obviously a value that I 

22 consider is not appropriate when you realize that 

23 that includes 410 people out of 528 people who had 
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1 no exposures or no measurable exposures and was 

2 strictly based on 40 millirem of missed dose. So 

3 that's my first finding.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: A quick question, Hans. 

5 Could you clarify, the ones that show 50, and there 

6 was a large number of them that show 50, is that 

7 minimal dose?

8 DR. H. BEHLING: No. In fact, I'm 

9 going to ask you to turn to, and I will go to, let's 

10 see here, 61 and 62, Page 61 and 62. This is how 

11 they measured.

12 As I had started out to say, none of 

13 these doses are real doses. They are, in fact, 

14 people who were classified -- and I will go back to, 

15 actually it's Page 62. Because that's the 

16 appropriate value. Or you can go to either one.

17 But you can see up until, in Exhibit C-2, 

18 the classification by DOE was based on no measurable 

19 doses which, if you had anything less than -- let's 

20 see, the categorization of people who were 

21 monitored, either in the earliest days between '65 

22 and '73, were between zero and one rem. There was 

23 no subdivision.
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1 That didn't come until 1974 when there 

2 was segregation between less measurable and 

3 measurable meaning somewhere above zero. And so 

4 this is how these doses were calculated.

5 If you go back to the Exhibits B2 and B3, 

6 you will see that they all have the same number. 

7 And it's strictly based on the fact that they happen 

8 to fall within the category of exposure which, in 

9 the early days, was based in increments of one rem.

10 If you go to Exhibit C2, no C1, on Page 

11 61, you will see that the subsequent timeframe that 

12 starts in 1986, you will see people who were 

13 monitored were categorized by less than measurable, 

14 measurable defined by less than ten, ten to 25, no, 

15 100 to 250 millirem and so on.

16 So these numbers that you see in those 

17 tables are, in essence, just categories in which a 

18 person fell which really brings you to a serious 

19 problem. Had 1985 been incorporated to an earlier 

20 timeframe, the actual default value would have been 

21 that one guy that I pointed out who in 1985 had 8500 

22 millirem assumption and that would have been really 

23 an outlier to speak of.
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1 So anyway, Finding Number 1 is really a 

2 question of, what do you use in terms of the DOE 

3 data. Do you use all personnel who were 

4 essentially monitored?

5 In the case of 1986, we had 528 people 

6 monitored. But of these 528 people, 410 had no 

7 exposure, and only 118 had measurable exposure. 

8 And those were probably, obviously, not necessarily 

9 real numbers either. But they fell into categories 

10 that are classified in B1 and B2.

11 Anyway, when I think of a 95th 

12 percentile value of maximally exposed, I think it 

13 would be wrong to weight them down with people who 

14 are the majority of monitored people with no 

15 exposure at all in 1985.

16 And this is my feeling, that I agree with 

17 what was done in the SEC Petition Evaluation Report 

18 that says you should stick with only those people 

19 when you're talking about assessing the 95th 

20 percentile people with measured dose.

21 Can I ask people to comment on this or, 

22 Stu or Jim?

23 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think that 
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1 there's a lot to digest here. And I think we'd be 

2 better suited to take the findings and work up some 

3 sort of review or response of them --

4 (Telephonic interference)

5 MR. SHARFI: Stu or Jim, I would add 

6 that there's currently ER data that's coming out for 

7 the post-'75 period that will, the new ER will cover 

8 all this stuff. Probably I can answer some of this 

9 stuff, if you want me to. This is Mutty Sharfi, 

10 sorry.

11 DR. NETON: I think we just got this a 

12 few days ago, not too long ago. I think I agree with 

13 Stu, we might want to, you know, go back and think 

14 about it a little bit and field a more formal 

15 exercise.

16 CHAIR MUNN: That seems appropriate. 

17 There's a lot of information and a lot of data. 

18 Yeah, I think we'll record Finding 1 as awaiting 

19 NIOSH response. And we'll go on.

20 MR. KATZ: Wanda, I'm just wondering if 

21 NIOSH hasn't really had time to digest this, whether 

22 it makes sense to really have Hans labor through the 

23 explanations and then they'll be two months stale 
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1 when Stu's folks are ready to actually respond.

2 DR. H. BEHLING: Do you see any point? 

3 I have similar issues with neutron doses. NIOSH, 

4 as I mentioned earlier, has identified additional 

5 neutron data. And in the case of the neutron data, 

6 they established a 95th percentile value on neutron 

7 doses that the vast majority of them were below LOD 

8 values.

9 MR. KATZ: I understand. I'm just 

10 raising the question without getting into more 

11 findings about whether it makes sense to really be 

12 reviewing these, have Hans reviewing these before 

13 NIOSH is ready to engage and respond to them.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Well, I think, speaking 

15 personally for myself, as a member of the Board, I 

16 would prefer to see us delineate the findings. And 

17 we haven't --

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's fine. I was 

19 only raising it just speaking as, and we'll have to 

20 reiterate it all the next time we meet. But that's 

21 fine.

22 CHAIR MUNN: Well, no. I don't think 

23 we would. Because the findings then are stated and 
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1 the response from NIOSH will be, they'll have 

2 adequate time to look at them and formulate 

3 responses to them.

4 MR. KATZ: Okay.

5 CHAIR MUNN: Perhaps I'm missing the 

6 point? But I --

7 MR. KATZ: But, anyway, it doesn't 

8 matter. My point was just that Hans makes a very 

9 thorough and clear explanation. And then you wait 

10 two months, and everybody's forgotten about Hans' 

11 clear explanation at the point that NIOSH responds. 

12 So that's my point. But that's fine, if you want 

13 to hear it and have him go through these, that's 

14 fine. It's your prerogative.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Well, I'd like to get the 

16 findings on the Board. And I'd like to have us hear 

17 what Hans has to say for those specific findings, 

18 for this one. So if you'll continue, Hans?

19 DR. H. BEHLING: Yeah. Again, I'd 

20 mention I'll try to cut it briefly here and not 

21 belabor too much. But in the case of the neutron 

22 doses, the SEC Evaluation Report also has data that 

23 I looked at. And that's defined in Exhibit B5 on 
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1 Page 56, if you would turn to that value. That's 

2 in that paper, and I'll explain the values I 

3 identified there.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, very good. We've 

5 got it.

6 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. On that page, 

7 if you look at the year 1986 which I selected as a 

8 reference value for it, then identifying the 

9 individual numbers here, you will find that there 

10 were a total of six individuals monitored, that the 

11 average neutron dose was 94.97, the maximum 85. 

12 Geometric mean value there is 79, and so forth and 

13 so forth. And the 95th percentile value was --

14 (Telephonic interference)

15 Now, when we talked to NIOSH and asked 

16 how did these numbers come to be as they appear here 

17 in the SEC Evaluation Report, they also gave us a 

18 spreadsheet. And they identified the values that 

19 are showing on Page 57, the next page.

20 And when you look at the data there, on 

21 that Exhibit B6, you will see on the top of this, 

22 you will see 1986. And those are the six dosimeter 

23 readings that you see in the previous Exhibit B5.
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1 And when you look at those particular 

2 values that are defined in Exhibit B5, you will be

3 able to match, based on those dosimeter readings, 

4 the high, the low. You will see 94.17, oh, that's 

5 not the one, because that's the average, but the 

6 highest dose. If you go back to --

7 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Hans? You're a little 

8 difficult to hear. Can you speak louder please?

9 DR. H. BEHLING: Can everybody hear me?

10 CHAIR MUNN: That's better.

11 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. If you go back 

12 to Exhibit B5, I just wanted to show that there is 

13 a relationship between Exhibit B5 and B6. If you 

14 go to B5 and you look at 1986, you will see that the 

15 maximum individual neutron exposure was 181.

16 Now, if you turn the page and go to 

17 Exhibit B6, you will see that the 181 is the second 

18 entry in 1986. And when you assess these 

19 particular six values, you will end up, again, with 

20 the average, and the 95th percentile, the geometric 

21 mean and so forth. They are all identified in B5.

22 So I know where these numbers came from. 

23 But now, when I look at Exhibit B6 on Page 57, and 
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1 you realize -- and it continues on to 58 -- you 

2 realize that these numbers contain a substantial 

3 number of values that are below LOD.

4 In other words, if you look at the values 

5 there, halfway down the page on Page 57, you will 

6 see doses of 6836 millirems. And so they're well 

7 below the 40 millirems that are considered LOD.

8 And I, again, question would you want to 

9 necessarily incorporate dose values that then will 

10 establish the values that we saw in the attachment, 

11 Table 2, Attachment A.

12 MR. KATZ: I think your phone is 

13 suffering from what Kathy's phone was suffering 

14 from earlier, I think. It's getting worse and 

15 worse to listen to.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah. So the bottom line 

17 here, I think, is, if I'm hearing you correctly, 

18 Hans, the bottom line is essentially the same type 

19 of concern that you had with the previous data. And 

20 so Finding 2 would therefore -- what page is Finding 

21 2 on?

22 (No audible response)

23 CHAIR MUNN: Have we lost you, Hans?
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1 DR. H. BEHLING: I'm switching phones, 

2 because the reason I'm getting, I'm on a cordless 

3 phone, and my batteries are dying out.

4 MR. KATZ: That's much better, Hans. 

5 Thanks.

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

7 DR. H. BEHLING: Number 2 is on Page 15.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

9 DR. H. BEHLING: And I will read it, 

10 switching here, SC&A recommends the exclusion of 

11 neutron dosimeter values below LOD value of 40 

12 millirems for devising a geometric mean and a 95th 

13 percentile neutron dose for unmonitored workers.

14 And as I said, when you look at the 

15 values there, Exhibit B6 shows that a total of 40 

16 dosimeters registered doses below 40 millirem and 

17 15 of those doses registered doses below LOD over 

18 two.

19 And so I came to the conclusion that 

20 maybe these values should not be used and excluded. 

21 Because one of the things that I did was to calculate 

22 what the new doses would be if we would exclude 

23 anything below LOD.
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1 And that is in Exhibit, let's see, where 

2 are these here? That's in Exhibit B7 on Page 9. 

3 This is where I recalculated neutron doses 

4 excluding all values that are below LOD.

5 And when we do that, you end up with a 

6 geometric mean of 67.8 millirems and a 95th 

7 percentile of 168 millirems, which are considerably 

8 higher than the values that were derived using the 

9 entire set of dosimeters that include the many 

10 dosimeter readings that were below LOD.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, good. And then my 

12 memory was you had one more finding, correct?

13 DR. H. BEHLING: No, there is a couple 

14 more. On Page 15, there was just an observation 

15 that I introduced that was initially a finding that 

16 we were asked not to consider a finding, because it 

17 requires nothing more than a change in wording.

18 So on Page 15 of the report, I have 

19 Observation 2, current guidance for the assignment 

20 of medical X-rays is ambiguous and requires 

21 clarification. Because the way it's stated in the 

22 middle of the page that it goes as follows. A 

23 pre-employment annual and post-employment 
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1 anterior-posterior chest and AP pelvis X-ray should 

2 be assumed for each year. Of course, that can't be 

3 true. And, of course, it's obviously an issue that 

4 just needs to be reworded properly. 

5 You don't have a pre-employment and 

6 terminal employment for each year that you might 

7 have been there. So obviously, it's just a 

8 question of rewording that.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, okay. And then 

10 Finding 3 then.

11 DR. H. BEHLING: Finding 3 --

12 CHAIR MUNN: That's on Page 17, I think.

13 DR. H. BEHLING: That's based on a 

14 reference to, there were three pieces of 

15 information that could have been used for air 

16 monitoring data. One, Page 16 on the bottom, you 

17 will see there was a 0.046 milligram per cubic meter 

18 of uranium is one of the means by which you can 

19 establish a dose.

20 And another one was maximally to be used 

21 on medical worker exposures, maximum of exposures, 

22 and they were, I find in 69 air sample measurements 

23 that were apparently uncovered as part of the SEC 
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1 evaluation.

2 And there's no reference to those. And 

3 the statement that says you may use these two to 

4 reconstruct doses, except that there's no way I can 

5 actually look at these data and see what they 

6 reference and what they ultimately entail.

7 So my Finding Number 3 is NIOSH provides 

8 neither the raw data nor a document, of course, for 

9 the 516 air sample measurements associated with the 

10 DNC work for the years '89 through 2006. And again, 

11 if they can identify a document where I could look 

12 at those, then that would be helpful.

13 CHAIR MUNN: All right. Maybe we can 

14 find that next time. And then Finding 4, the 

15 activity fractions on Page 18, I guess.

16 DR. H. BEHLING: That's relatively 

17 easy. Again, in the process of --

18 (Telephonic interference)

19 MR. KATZ: Sorry, could you repeat. 

20 There was some paper shuffling. And we couldn't 

21 hear you, or I couldn't at least.

22 DR. H. BEHLING: Are we on Finding 4?

23 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, we are.
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1 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. This is the 

2 decontamination decommissioning. And there's a 

3 table, Table 4, in Attachment A that identifies what 

4 those numbers should be.

5 And again, Table 4 is on Page 32 of the 

6 report that has these values. And in trying to 

7 match dose, I was able to match dose. And I was able 

8 to match the total uranium inhaled. And you see 

9 that on Page 18.

10 I looked at the approach that was taken. 

11 And I was able to match the 7.54 E minus 3 

12 microcuries per year. So that was okay.

13 But then when I looked at the total 

14 thorium-230 and radium-226 inhaled, I end up with 

15 a value of 3.74 E minus three microcuries per year 

16 which is approximately less or about half of the 

17 value that is cited in Table 4 of Attachment A.

18 And when I looked closer, I realized 

19 that the difference between my calculation and 

20 their calculation is that NIOSH failed to employ the 

21 activity fractions that are identified in Table 3, 

22 Attachment A, which would have reduced the 7.54 E 

23 minus three to 3.74 E minus three.
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1 So that's just an error that I believe 

2 can be corrected with just a simple acceptance of 

3 the activity fractions that are provided in Table 

4 3 which were not included in that calculation.

5 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, that's good. I'll 

6 ask NIOSH to take a look at that and have some 

7 responses for us next time. And does anyone have 

8 anything additional before we move on?

9 DR. H. BEHLING: Well, this is pretty 

10 much it. So these are the four findings that I 

11 identified with regard to the revised template.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Good. Thank you, Hans. 

13 Much appreciated. We were scheduled for a break. 

14 But we have very little left on our plate. Shall 

15 we take a five minute break or can we plow on?

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I'd like to go on.

17 CHAIR MUNN: All right.

18 MEMBER BEACH: I'm ready to go on.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, let's move on, then. 

20 Let's go on to take a look at a PER status. The 

21 Board Members should have a copy of the status 

22 report that Kathy sent us earlier. And she'll be 

23 able to tell us, get some feeling of where we are, 
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1 what we've done, what we haven't done. I believe, 

2 SC&A, you want to tell us, Kathy? You want to --

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes.

4 CHAIR MUNN: -- give us it quickly.

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, yes, I will. I 

6 just had provided a memo back in December. And what 

7 I had promised to do during the last meeting was to 

8 go into the BRS system and look at the PERs and see 

9 if we had already completed either a PER review or 

10 a PER Sub-task 4, the case reviews.

11 And they had not been recorded in the BRS 

12 system as a finding of no findings. And I did that. 

13 And that's what this table that Steve is showing 

14 represents.

15 I found that we had, I think, there was 

16 actually only five cases where I actually 

17 introduced a finding of no finding. And so, 

18 hopefully, that's all updated in the PER or in the 

19 BRS.

20 The only other thing that I expanded 

21 just a little bit, because I wanted to just give you 

22 a full understanding of everything that was in the 

23 BRS, and when I did that, I did identify that there 
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1 were a few cases where we either were not assigned 

2 a PER, and perhaps there was a good reason for that, 

3 or we were not assigned the Sub-task 4 version of 

4 that PER.

5 And so the first Sub-task 4 review that 

6 we haven't been assigned yet is PER-8, and that was 

7 our review of the IREP lung cancer model. And I 

8 know that during that review we had some findings 

9 that were, I guess, going to be discussed by some 

10 scientific committee or whatever.

11 And we realized that it was going to be 

12 probably beyond the scope of what we were doing 

13 here. And so perhaps that's why we didn't do the 

14 Sub-task 4. But that still remains open. And 

15 these are just things you may want to consider for 

16 next time around. But that's number one.

17 We never did a PER review of the Rocky 

18 Flats plant dose reconstruction mods which was 

19 PER-21. And again, maybe Ron Buchanan can help me 

20 here, if he's still on the phone, as to why might 

21 not have done that. I don't know if we're waiting 

22 on something on not. Ron, are you on the phone?

23 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm on. No, I 
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1 don't know why we had not done that. I don't know 

2 of the reason. There might be one, but I'm not 

3 aware of anything that's going on that postponed 

4 that.

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. And again, I'm 

6 not expecting the Subcommittee to make any 

7 decisions today but just to point these out. And 

8 I guess I did skip one here.

9 PER-11, for some reason in my mind I 

10 thought we had done a Sub-task 4 review on this. 

11 It's the K-25 TBD and OTIB revisions. But based on 

12 my review, it doesn't look like we did any case 

13 reviews on the K-25 TBD. And that's it for that 

14 particular memo.

15 MR. KATZ: So, Kathy?

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Could I ask you, this is Ted, 

18 can I ask you to, before the next meeting, you, Ron, 

19 whoever, for these particular PERs, can you look at 

20 whether you have already recommendations for a 

21 number of cases and nature of cases?

22 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, certainly.

23 MR. KATZ: And send that up. Actually, 
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1 I mean you can do that much before the next meeting. 

2 And then when you look through the records, if it 

3 looks like these are just ones where we dropped it 

4 and we should have assigned cases, then we can go 

5 ahead and, you know, identify those cases, make 

6 those case assignments even without waiting for the 

7 next meeting.

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, yes, of course.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay with Wanda and the 

10 Subcommittee, then that would be efficient, I 

11 think.

12 CHAIR MUNN: I think that's 

13 appropriate, yeah. Paul, Josie, does that meet 

14 your requirements to pursue this?

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, absolutely.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Of course.

17 CHAIR MUNN: All right. Thank you, 

18 yeah.

19 MS. K. BEHLING: And, Wanda, I don't 

20 know if you want me to go on. I'll, again, be brief. 

21 The other thing, the other memo that I did submit 

22 shortly after our previous meeting was on December 

23 10th. And what that was was a list of the new PERs 
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1 that have been issued. And there have been three.

2 I briefly discussed them during the last 

3 meeting, but it was recommended that we put together 

4 a little bit more formal information on that which 

5 I did in that memo.

6 And the first one was PER-55 which is the 

7 TBD-6000 revision. And I know we've looked at this 

8 a lot. But I think there is enough information here 

9 that I do think that we may want to look at this 

10 particular PER.

11 And so I did, excuse me just one second, 

12 I cannot believe this. My phone is -- I have my 

13 other phone. I'm going to pick up another phone. 

14 Just one second, I'm sorry. Okay. Can you hear 

15 me?

16 MR. KATZ: Yeah, you're clear.

17 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, I'm sorry. So 

18 what I am recommending here for this PER-55 which 

19 is, you know, there have been so many changes to 

20 TBD-6000, and there are really quite a few cases 

21 that are impacted by this, potentially, initially 

22 108. And I think there 30 cases that were actually 

23 reevaluated.
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1 But this is one that, because of the 

2 various changes, that we may want to look at and that 

3 you may want to task us to look at.

4 Now, the other two, and I was sort of 

5 laughing to myself, but we used PER-56 which is the 

6 BWXT Virginia and the PER-58 which is Dow Chemical. 

7 Dow Chemical, the 58, is actually impacted by 

8 changes to OTIB-70 and to this particular TBD-6000.

9 And so provided you decide to task us 

10 with reviewing TBD-6000, then I would not recommend 

11 us reviewing PER-58 because, as long as we, since 

12 we've already looked at OTIB-70 extensively and we 

13 have looked at TBD-6000, and both this Virginia and 

14 this Dow Chemical, it's very clear as to what cases 

15 they needed to select. I mean, so there is not a 

16 whole lot of reason I don't see in necessarily 

17 reviewing those two PERs.

18 But I did recommend reviewing PER-55. 

19 So I don't know if you're in a position at this point 

20 to task us with any of those or not or make a 

21 decision.

22 CHAIR MUNN: I think we probably can 

23 take a look at those at the same time that we look 
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1 at the others and try to do all of our PER decisions 

2 in one lump.

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Very good.

4 CHAIR MUNN: Probably the wisest thing 

5 to do.

6 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay.

7 CHAIR MUNN: And we'll have an 

8 opportunity to look at it offline. Thank you, 

9 Kathy.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Thank you.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Very helpful. The next 

12 item that we have on our administrative detail was 

13 abeyance items that were ready for closing. We 

14 were going to go through that. But I don't know how 

15 extensive those are.

16 If there's any real meat there, Lori, we 

17 will have considerably more time, I think, on our 

18 agenda next time than we have this one. But you 

19 might let us know what the status is.

20 MS. MARION-MOSS: Well, actually here, 

21 Wanda, Procedures 90 and 92 which I provided the 

22 Committee --

23 CHAIR MUNN: Uh-huh.
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1 MS. MARION-MOSS: -- are the documents 

2 that NIOSH is submitting to the Committee in hopes 

3 of resolving the outstanding findings that are 

4 currently in the BRS.

5 So I've provided the revisions to both 

6 of those documents for SC&A and the committee to 

7 look at. And we could possibly carry it over for 

8 next meeting, but it would give Members an 

9 opportunity to review those, and look at the 

10 findings and address them next time.

11 CHAIR MUNN: I suspect that's wise. 

12 Both of these procedures are administrative PROCs 

13 and not technical in nature. I think it would be 

14 wise for us to carry those next time unless there's 

15 some pressing need for us to address them today.

16 Does anyone have any strong feelings 

17 with respect to taking a look at PROCs 90 and 92 

18 today, or can we postpone those until next time?

19 MEMBER BEACH: To be honest, Wanda, 

20 this is Josie, I had put those aside, because they 

21 weren't on the agenda --

22 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah.

23 MEMBER BEACH: -- with everything we 
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1 had to review for this meeting.

2 CHAIR MUNN: This is true. Well, I've 

3 taken a look at --

4 MEMBER BEACH: My vote is for them to 

5 carry over.

6 CHAIR MUNN: As I said, they're 

7 administrative and not technical at all. So we 

8 can, I think, postpone those until next time. Does 

9 anyone have any other concerns with respect to the 

10 abeyance items that we are hoping to look at more 

11 frequently now?

12 (No audible response)

13 CHAIR MUNN: If not, then let's take a 

14 look at when we can do our next meeting and see what 

15 times are logical for all involved. We'll be here 

16 in Richland next month for our Board meeting.

17 Josie and I are looking forward to 

18 having you folks. April, do we need 60 days out? 

19 Is that appropriate? Or do we need 90 days?

20 MS. MARION-MOSS: I think that's up to 

21 NIOSH. They have most of the action items --

22 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, I think so.

23 MS. MARION-MOSS: -- at this point.
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1 MR. KATZ: Well, let's also ask SC&A 

2 though what they foresee delivering in the interim. 

3 Because that would also govern this. But, yeah, 60 

4 seems like a minimum. But SC&A, do you, is there 

5 a lot of payload coming?

6 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy Behling. 

7 I think, I don't see a whole lot of additional 

8 document reviews coming to the Subcommittee now.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks.

10 MR. MARSCHKE: Yeah. This is Steve. 

11 I don't see any procedures. I don't know that 

12 there's any actual procedures in the pipeline at 

13 this point. John Stiver, are you around, are you 

14 still on?

15 MS. K. BEHLING: I don't believe, this 

16 is Kathy, I don't believe that John is still with 

17 us.

18 MR. MARSCHKE: Oh, okay.

19 MS. K. BEHLING: But between you and I, 

20 Steve, I think we know what PERs or what additional 

21 procedures there are, you know, on the back burner. 

22 And I don't think there's any PERs either, just what 

23 I had introduced today.
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1 MR. MARSCHKE: Okay.

2 CHAIR MUNN: All right. So is it

3 reasonable for us to be looking at something just 

4 past tax time, like perhaps Tuesday, April 21st?

5 MR. KATZ: The 21st and the 22nd are 

6 out. In fact, that week is real, well, 21st, 22nd, 

7 20th are all out.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

9 MR. KATZ: Unavailable. But, yeah.

10 CHAIR MUNN: The following week or the 

11 preceding week?

12 MR. KATZ: Wide open.

13 MEMBER BEACH: How about the 28th?

14 CHAIR MUNN: Fine with me. Does anyone 

15 have objection to Tuesday --

16 MR. KATZ: The 28th.

17 CHAIR MUNN: -- April 28th?

18 (No audible response)

19 CHAIR MUNN: If not, then we'll 

20 establish that as the date for our meeting. And we 

21 will initiate an agenda for it when we are a little 

22 further along. Is there anything else for the good 

23 of the order?
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1 MR. KATZ: Just thank you, everybody, 

2 for all this good work.

3 CHAIR MUNN: I appreciate all the hard 

4 work that went into this, a lot of heavy 

5 documentation and a lot of heavy-duty thinking. So 

6 thank you very much, all concerned.

7 Have a wonderful rest of the day and a 

8 beautiful weekend, regardless of whether you're 

9 covered with snow or not. And we'll speak with you 

10 very shortly. We'll have an agenda in your hands 

11 at least three weeks in advance of our next meeting. 

12 Thank you all.

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

14 went off the record at 4:45 p.m.)

15

16

17