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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

+ + + + + 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

PANTEX WORK GROUP 

+ + + + + 

MEETING 

+ + + + + 

TUESDAY 

JUNE 18, 2013 

+ + + + + 

The meeting convened in the Zurich

Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 2395

Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky at 9:00 a.m.,

Bradley Clawson, Chairman, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, Sr., Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member 

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ALSO PRESENT: 

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ZAIDA BURGOS, CDC*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, NIOSH ORAU

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A*

SARAH RAY, Petitioner*

MARK ROLFES, NIOSH ORAU 

*Participating via telephone 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Intro/Background (progress since

last meeting)...............................4 

SEC Issues for Exposures to Uranium,

1984-1989...................................6 

Uranium, 1951-1957.........................33 

Uranium, 1990 to 1991......................44 

Thorium, 1984-1991.........................49 

Additional SEC or Site Profile Issues 

WG Conclusions/Recommendations.............96 

Preparations for July ABRWH

Meeting/Follow-up Actions.................157 

Adjourn...................................159 

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

2 9:02 a.m. 

3 MR. KATZ: So, good morning, 

4 everyone in the room and on the line. This is 

5 the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

6 Health, Pantex Work Group. Just getting 

7 started. 

8 The agenda for the meeting is 

9 posted on the NIOSH website under the Board 

10 meeting section and today's date. I'm not 

11 sure if there are other materials posted 

12 there, too. I don't think so. 

13 Let's do roll call. Since we're 

14 speaking about a site, please speak to 

15 conflict of interest as well. 

16 (Roll call.) 

17 Brad, it's your agenda. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, looking at 

19 this, it's almost been two years since we've 

20 met as a Work Group. Last time we met was May 

21 3rd, 2011. So, I kind of wanted to go over a 

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1 little bit of where we have been at. 

2 In the Work Group May 3rd meeting, 

3 we asked for a SEC from January 1st, 1958 

4 through December 31st, 1983. This was 

5 accepted and was put into place October 20th, 

6 2011. 

7 One of the key issues on that was 

8 that we have later years that have been carved 

9 out. The 1990 bioassay resulted in 350 Pantex 

10 workers with the following: the '89 depleted 

11 uranium incident during the disassembly of the 

12 W28. NIOSH felt that they, these last few 

13 years that they had sufficient data to be able 

14 to gain this and they were -- they sought for 

15 some access records at Pantex for the 1990 

16 bioassay data, and in this process, they 

17 determined that they could not gain access to 

18 these records and the result, we got 

19 production technicians on the W28, Rev 2 by 

20 Beal and LaBone in 2012 stating their stance 

21 on how they could do the dose reconstruction. 

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1 Since that time, SC&A and myself 

2 went to Pantex and we also had a technical 

3 call to clarify some of the scientific aspects 

4 of what their approach was and we went down to 

5 Pantex, and also Stu Hinnefeld accompanied us 

6 down there. 

7 The first time, we didn't make it 

8 because Sarah had too much snow. But, we 

9 finally did make it down there and gained the 

10 access to the records. 

11 So, where I'd like to be able to 

12 start today because actually this was a 

13 response to the LaBone and Beal letter and so, 

14 I'd just like to give NIOSH an opportunity to 

15 discuss their paper and we could go from 

16 there. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, I'll 

18 kind of set this up a little bit. 

19 Brad's described that we've got 

20 this bioassay dataset from 1990 and this was 

21 after the suspension of work on the W28 

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1 disassembly. The W28 disassembly had been 

2 going on for a while, probably throughout the 

3 '84 to '89 period, and it was suspended in '89 

4 largely based on employee concerns about the 

5 dirty nature of the work and though we had 

6 this dataset of a -- the dataset was collected 

7 really from anyone who had ever been, I think, 

8 associated with W28 and then there were memos 

9 that identified people among that group who 

10 were production technicians and a smaller 

11 subset yet, people among that group who were 

12 actively engaged in W28 work, production 

13 technicians who were actively engaged in the 

14 work and the work stopped. 

15 And we proceeded with that dataset 

16 feeling that there was sufficient evidence to 

17 conclude that the W28 disassembly was the most 

18 high exposure potential work and therefore, 

19 around that, we could bound all exposures. 

20 Now, in the interim in some 

21 interviews that we've conducted down there, 

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1 I've been down there a couple of times in 

2 interviews, it probably not quite as 

3 definitive in my mind that W28 was, in fact, 

4 the dirtiest work. There were other weapon 

5 systems that were described as also being 

6 dirty and so, while there are some reasons to 

7 believe W28 might have been the worst, you 

8 know, and it was kind of the largest amount of 

9 unalloyed DU, depleted uranium, and one of the 

10 guys said, well, he had to beat it up pretty 

11 bad to get it apart, you know, so, it was --

12 it may have been. But, I don't know that 

13 there's the same level of confidence that 

14 other weapon systems weren't similarly done, 

15 but all the focus at Pantex was on W28 because 

16 that was where the protests or the complaints 

17 about the work arose. So, there's that. 

18 There's that argument. 

19 And then once we tried to interpret 

20 this bioassay dataset, we were faced with the 

21 problem, well, we don't really know these 

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1 people's history. How long a duration was 

2 there exposure to W28? 

3 And so, the Beal and LaBone paper 

4 went through essentially all the potential 

5 interpretations of intakes assuming no earlier 

6 than '84. You know, because before '84, the 

7 Board has already, and the Secretary have 

8 already concluded that dose reconstruction 

9 isn't feasible for uranium intakes before '84. 

10 So, from '84 through '89 when the 

11 work was suspended, the Beal and LaBone paper 

12 looked at the potential intake scenarios. You 

13 know, one was: what if people were exposed 

14 continuously from '84 through the work that 

15 was suspended? What if they were exposed for 

16 only one year and that year was 1984? What if 

17 they were only exposed for one year and that 

18 year was like 1988 or '89? And then other 

19 increments of exposure. 

20 So, they kind of blanketed the 

21 possibilities of what would the total intake 

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1 be to a worker given this bioassay data that 

2 was collected in 1989, and they concluded that 

3 the largest intake would have occurred for a 

4 one-year intake starting in 1984 and then the 

5 person's not exposed any more until they give 

6 that -- and then they give that bioassay 

7 sample of 1989. So, they had this long period 

8 of time away from exposure. So, the bioassay 

9 would be interpreted as a very big exposure 

10 back there in 1984. 

11 And so, by running through all 

12 these scenarios, they demonstrated that that 

13 one-year intake in 1984 would bound, you know, 

14 the possible scenarios. 

15 So, I think that probably is 

16 bounding for intakes that occurred from '84 

17 through '89, but the other aspect of the 

18 argument is: how does that really relate to 

19 what really happened to these people? You 

20 know, we know that the workers weren't exposed 

21 for one year in 1984 and then not exposed any 

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1 more. 

2 We know some of them were exposed, 

3 you know, either throughout or at various 

4 times between then. So, it's not a -- to my 

5 mind, it's not a terribly satisfying approach 

6 just to say, well, I've got this number that's 

7 bounding and so that's good. I don't know 

8 that it really relates very well to the actual 

9 experience of the workers during their time 

10 and so, I wonder about the technical 

11 connection there between what was proposed and 

12 what's not. 

13 And, as SC&A has pointed out in 

14 some of their papers, if the exposures 

15 occurred before 1985, for instance, back in 

16 the '83 period or '82 or '81, that would also 

17 distort your interpretation of that bioassay. 

18 Those intakes back there would not be -- you 

19 know, we can't reconstruct those anyway. It 

20 does also distort the interpretation of the 

21 bioassay. 

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1 So, there's some issues with that 

2 approach that kind of make me not real -- I 

3 don't know that it's a really robust approach 

4 for that uranium exposure through '89 or 

5 perhaps '90. 

6 Now, in 1990, they collected a lot 

7 of bioassay data, but a lot of it was the --

8 this kind of W28 collection, but there were 

9 other bioassay samples taken that year, too. 

10 That's kind of when they started doing 

11 bioassay and then by '91 or -- by '91, then 

12 they had their bioassay program, you know, 

13 pretty routinely in place for a couple of 

14 years. That way they just kind of routinely 

15 bioassayed a lot of people. 

16 So, I guess from our standpoint, 

17 from NIOSH's standpoint, I think there is a 

18 number out there that's -- that would bound 

19 the intakes from '94 through or '84 through 

20 '89 or maybe into '90, but I don't know that 

21 just saying, well, this is a big number and, 

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1 therefore, it's good and bounding. As a 

2 general rule, we don't normally go that. We 

3 normally look for a more technical connection 

4 between what we're proposing and reality. 

5 So, I guess that's where we stand 

6 on that. So, I'm kind of lukewarm on the 

7 approach we're proposing, even though I think 

8 it is a number that would bound the intake. 

9 So, that's from that standpoint. From the 

10 uranium intake. 

11 That's mainly what we've been 

12 working on from our side, and I know that 

13 thorium's been in the news in the paper we got 

14 today. So, I won't get into that just yet. I 

15 think maybe we'll get into that discussion 

16 later on. 

17 But, that's kind of where NIOSH is 

18 on the '84 to '89 or possibly '84 to '90 

19 period, is that -- you know, that we got this 

20 number, but we don't know really if it's tied 

21 to the reality of work at the site. 

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1 You know, I'd just say that -- I 

2 mean, there's quite a lot in -- SC&A has 

3 talked about the various isotopes of uranium 

4 that were detected in that bioassay. To me, I 

5 mean, there's a way those isotopes sum up the 

6 total uranium activity. 

7 I think that's what LaBone and Beal 

8 did, is they added all those uranium isotopes 

9 together and treated them probably as U-234 

10 because it has the highest dose conversion 

11 factor among U-238, U-234 and U-235. U-238 

12 gives you the highest dose per atom or per 

13 activity intake. So, I think what they did 

14 was just summed all the isotopes and treated 

15 them as U-234. 

16 I mean, there is a question raised 

17 by SC&A about whether these were really 

18 depleted uranium exposures and since we have 

19 isotopic results, in our mind, that's really 

20 not a particularly important issue. We got 

21 the isotopic results. You can tell them as UNEAL R. GROSS 

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1 234 and view the dose that way, which is what 

2 we've done in many places when there were a 

3 mixture of potential isotope exposure. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. I guess, to 

5 respond, you know, this issue sort of 

6 originated with our concern about using 

7 retrospectively the bioassay data. I mean, 

8 the only real good bioassay set was from the 

9 '89 event which was taken in '90 and the 

10 concern was applying it backwards almost 30 

11 years and, you know, just the question about 

12 operations over time, the question of whether 

13 this effect was representative of the worse 

14 kinds of contamination you might see over that 

15 time. 

16 The W28 had such a long operational 

17 history. You know, this probably would have 

18 worked for something that would have been more 

19 short term, but this was a long-term issue and 

20 I think that's how the Work Group ended up 

21 dispositioning the issue. Thought it was too 

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1 long and the operations would not have been 

2 static enough to assume that it would be 

3 representative going back that far. 

4 And I think the Work Group accepted 

5 the counterpoint that NIOSH raised. Well, 

6 what about the dismantlement period for 

7 retirement? Which was the five-year period 

8 from '84 to '89. That certainly was a period 

9 of time where you did have relatively static 

10 type of procedures. You would expect the 

11 operation to be pretty normalized and, 

12 therefore, it's more possible that you could 

13 take that data and find a way to apply it for 

14 what would be a much shorter time period 

15 really. Five years. 

16 And that's kind of how it was left 

17 and I think the approach that's in the paper 

18 is certainly a different approach than what 

19 was originally proposed for the 30 years and 

20 applies a model that I think is certainly a 

21 better model in terms of providing bounding 

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1 scenarios. 

2 Our concerns really as we noted 

3 were twofold and one sort of ties to what Stu 

4 was saying in terms of a large number. A 

5 large number can, I'll use that as a code word 

6 for the kind of modeling where it is an 

7 umbrella type of model, can encompass pretty 

8 much the exposures that you would anticipate 

9 during that period. But, when you go broader, 

10 I think you also increase the uncertainties 

11 that might be associated. 

12 So, in a slightly different way, 

13 what we're saying in our review is that yes. 

14 Yes, we can see the model as being valid, but, 

15 you know, because it's applied broad enough, 

16 this large-number approach, your uncertainty 

17 starts growing and that's one thing that we've 

18 pointed out that appears to be an order of two 

19 magnitude. Uncertainly at least associated 

20 with the M Class of uranium from the analysis. 

21 The other issue we raised really 

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1 for Work Group discussion. I mean, it was 

2 kind of -- it wasn't this question of high3 enriched uranium being present. That wasn't 

4 discussed in the Beal and LaBone report and 

5 our concern was how it would be addressed in 

6 this proposed approach and, you know, we were 

7 concerned whether the approach, in fact, could 

8 do that. 

9 And part of what we wanted to do 

10 certainly today is have that discussion -- I 

11 think you've touched upon it already -- how, 

12 you know, NIOSH would propose addressing HEU. 

13 We weren't even sure -- now, I'll 

14 defer to Joyce because she did a lot of the 

15 hard crunching, numbers-crunching on the 

16 analysis, but we weren't really sure about 

17 whether this was, in fact, real. In other 

18 words, well above what might be attributed to 

19 environmental levels. 

20 And part of what we did down at 

21 Savannah River -- down at Pantex in our site 

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1 visit was to looking at more monitoring 

2 records and just see, you know, if it were a 

3 background level present in the workplace, you 

4 would probably keep seeing it. I mean, it's 

5 not something that you could clean up if it 

6 was a residual amount. 

7 So, we looked at some more 

8 contemporary bioassay -- bioassays that were 

9 down there and I picked a random sample to out 

10 -- and sure enough, we were able to see 

11 elevated U-235 in the two random samples that 

12 we picked out of the bioassay file. 

13 And we did talk to a couple of the 

14 health physicists who had been there for 

15 decades, 20 or 30 years and say, you know, 

16 this is what this seems to be and, you know, 

17 these are folks that are familiar with their 

18 monitoring and I thought it would be kind of a 

19 straightforward thing to, you know, explain 

20 why you happen to have enriched uranium 

21 contamination even at the smaller levels 

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1 present. 

2 But, they could not explain it. 

3 They had some theories of why it was there, 

4 but certainly it appears that it is real. 

5 That, in fact, you do have it there and what 

6 we were kind of looking for is how the method 

7 would accommodate that and there may be some 

8 straightforward ways to do that. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yes, to me, I 

10 think that my recollection of the Pantex and 

11 the interpretation of the current bioassay 

12 where they're seeing U-235 was in the cases --

13 in the recent case, the ones that we looked 

14 at, there was also detectable and more U-234 

15 and U-238, and the bioassay manager attributed 

16 the U-235 positive to natural uranium in the 

17 individual water source. Because, you know, 

18 the well, if they were on a well as opposed to 

19 commercial water, wells can have varying 

20 amounts of natural uranium in it and they 

21 attributed -- the bioassay manager attributed 

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21 

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1 those U-235 results to natural uranium. 

2 And when you get down around 

3 detection limits for, you know, 238 and 234, 

4 you've got so much variability in the 

5 analysis. You've got to be -- you know, if 

6 you're close to the detection on these, you 

7 got to be a little careful about reading too 

8 much into those ratios. 

9 But, regardless of all that, 

10 regardless of all that, in my way of thinking, 

11 the dosimetric way to handle this, since you 

12 have isotopic bioassay results, you're not 

13 doing mass analysis where you have to make 

14 some judgment about the specific activity, 

15 you've got the activity results from these two 

16 isotopes. If you sum those isotopes and you 

17 do the dose reconstruction as if they were all 

18 U-234 because it has the highest alpha -- it's 

19 the highest alpha energy of 235 and U-238 and 

20 U-234, and based on that, you then know that 

21 the exact mixture isn't the problem. 

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1 You have bounded the dose and 

2 you've bounded it pretty closely because the 

3 entire U-235 energy is higher or U-234 energy 

4 is higher, but it's not so inordinately higher 

5 that you're just throwing a big number out 

6 there. That, to me, is a good, valid 

7 technique and we do that at a number of places 

8 where we have uranium intake of mixed 

9 radionuclides and we say we're going use U-234 

10 as the one in the dose reconstruction. 

11 So, to me, the isotopic content of 

12 the bioassay and whether there was some -- and 

13 as I recall the conversation of the HP, they 

14 were quite puzzled by the U-235. They knew of 

15 one event where a U-235 component had been 

16 damaged and there had been an investigation 

17 with that, but they felt like in a routine 

18 situation they couldn't envision a U-235 

19 intake and that's why they couldn't interpret. 

20 But, a bioassay manager interprets U-235 as 

21 natural. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, two things 

2 and again, the notes are in Germantown. So --

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, along with 

4 everything else. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Right. 

6 right. One thing the U-235 levels were well 

7 above the MDL, minimum detectable. I mean it 

8 must have been --

9 MR. HINNEFELD: In a few, yes. In 

10 a few. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and those two 

12 sample bioassays are in Germantown. 

13 In terms of the interview, because 

14 I again showed them the bioassays and the 

15 levels that were in those bioassays and 

16 because they were appreciably above the 

17 minimum detectable, kind of asked [identifying 

18 information redacted] where do you think it 

19 came from and at least one of them opined --

20 and there was no way to, you know, verify 

21 this, that perhaps it came from Y-12 because 

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1 the deleted uranium, of course, comes from Y2 12 and Y-12 handles enriched uranium. They 

3 thought now there was a good possibility it 

4 was just simply a residual amount that came 

5 over on the depleted uranium, but they really 

6 did not know. But --

7 MR. HINNEFELD: They did say that? 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: She did opine. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: They did say that 

11 and --

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. He had just 

13 come there and he was probably --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Right. 

15 And that was his guess that maybe it came from 

16 that source, but they really didn't know. 

17 But, they did acknowledge. I guess 

18 I'll have to disagree with you. They did 

19 acknowledge that this wasn't a background 

20 level. This was certainly a real level, but 

21 they really didn't have an explanation for, 

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1 you know, where it might have come from. 

2 You know, clearly, some of this did 

3 come from natural sources, but this was enough 

4 above the minimum detectable that they felt it 

5 probably must have come from Y-12 or some 

6 other source. 

7 And there was other folks and we 

8 cited those who in the past have cited sources 

9 of -- you know, you got 30 or 40 years of 

10 handling enriched uranium. Even at component 

11 form, it's certainly could very well come up 

12 with a residual level in the background. 

13 You wouldn't be looking for it 

14 because frankly, you wouldn't expect to see 

15 it, but you would have a residual level. 

16 I want to stop there, because again 

17 Joyce had spent a great deal of time looking 

18 at that particular issue and had concerns 

19 about it. 

20 Joyce, I think you've heard --

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: -- the news. A 

2 rationale for how they might approach dose 

3 reconstructing even with the enriched uranium 

4 presence. Do you have any comments? 

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I do. I think 

6 the problem is not -- it's knowing what 

7 happened between '84 and '89. Because until 

8 '83, an SEC was granted based on you don't 

9 know what really happened and from '84 to '89, 

10 it was assumed that the workers had a more or 

11 less uniform exposure because they all worked 

12 in the same places, and then there was this 

13 accident in '89 with measurements done --

14 bioassay measurements done that gave what was 

15 supposed to be the highest excretion rate that 

16 would be extrapolated to '84. 

17 As already was pointed out before, 

18 there is a great uncertainty on what really 

19 happened and even with assuming that it only 

20 occurred in '84, it's about 100 times higher 

21 than if the exposure would occur uniformly 

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1 between '84 and '89 and that's on NIOSH 

2 papers. So, this is a big difference, 100 

3 times difference between exposures in --

4 uncertainty on the exposures. 

5 The other thing is that if this was 

6 the worse accident and the worse exposure, 

7 people could not have been exposed to -- would 

8 be exposed only to depleted uranium and not 

9 have enriched -- not have uranium-234 and 

10 uranium-235 and uranium-236 in their urine 

11 samples. 

12 So, the uranium-235 result in some 

13 of -- results in some of the samples are too 

14 high to be attributed only to natural uranium. 

15 The ratio of some workers rose up 

16 to 11 between uranium-234 and uranium-238 and 

17 all of the -- we only analyzed data that were 

18 above the limit of detection. 

19 Also, some of those workers had 

20 also higher than detection level uranium-235 

21 and uranium-236. So, it cannot be depleted 

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1 uranium. Even if it's mixed with natural 

2 uranium, you can't measure uranium-236 in 

3 natural uranium and depleted uranium. 

4 So, I think what we wanted to show 

5 with this and there were some other exposures 

6 to this work that cannot be attributed only to 

7 the depleted uranium exposure during the 

8 accident. So, if we don't know what these 

9 workers' rates, there is a big uncertainly in 

10 using those '89 exposures bioassay to really 

11 bound the exposures of all the workers. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes --

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Did I make myself 

14 clear or not? 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, Joyce and what 

16 you're saying is sort of consistent with when 

17 I started out -- and I didn't really spend a 

18 lot of time on this. Part of my lukewarmness 

19 towards the approach we've proposed is that 

20 the approach essentially is predicated on this 

21 W28 being the worse exposure and the 

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1 dominating exposure. 

2 And based on interviews we had and 

3 as Joyce has described, some interpretations 

4 on the bioassay, it's not so clear that among 

5 the sample population that the W28 was 

6 necessarily the dominating exposure. I think 

7 that's kind of what she's saying here. 

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. Thank you. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: There's 

10 uncertainties in the exposure and so -- and I 

11 don't think I'm going to argue with that. 

12 I think based upon what we've 

13 learned in our more recent investigation, I 

14 guess there's not really a good -- I don't 

15 really have an argument against that. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I might add 

17 to that that I, too, thought the W28 was the 

18 worst actor on the scene, but that was before 

19 I got into the W55 discussion with DU and that 

20 seems to be, you know, right up there. So, 

21 it's kind of -- you know, there is some 

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1 ambiguity about that. 

2 In talking to site experts on W55 

3 relative to thorium, they say yes, I think it 

4 was some thorium in there. But, boy, the 

5 depleted uranium was the -- by far the worst 

6 actor. 

7 So, you know, it is kind of 

8 ambiguous about the -- you know, which 

9 particular system gave you more DU. It sounds 

10 like a lot of them gave you bad DU at that 

11 point in time late in the game. So, I don't 

12 know. 

13 But, I do think Joyce's point 

14 relative to source of enriched uranium and 

15 representativeness is an important issue for 

16 using that 28 data back because there is some 

17 further question about the enriched uranium 

18 and where it came from and how to account for 

19 it I think is the way we put it in the paper. 

20 And I might add, you know, we did 

21 have some discussion earlier about, you know, 

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1 possible sources in addition to the interviews 

2 down -- I think in our technical call, we kind 

3 of opined that maybe it might have come from 

4 off-site and we did -- as it says in the 

5 paper, we did cross-check the best we could 

6 and it wasn't easy. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: No. Right. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: In terms of 

9 whether some of these W28 workers did 

10 sufficient work in other DOE sites that you 

11 could account for maybe exposures at these 

12 sites, we found no inconsistency to suggest 

13 that that couldn't clearly be an explanation 

14 for why this was showing up and, of course, 

15 so, we were trying to make sure that was real 

16 and from our opinion, it is real although it's 

17 a residual amount, a small amount. 

18 But, you know, as Joyce points out, 

19 it raises the question of, you know, how one 

20 can account for that using this dataset. 

21 Because again, we're relying on this single 

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1 dataset as the basis for the method. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Anything else, 

3 Stu or does that pretty well sum it up? 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that's kind 

5 of where we're at on the uranium. I think the 

6 -- kind of covered the '84 to '89. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Now, the 

8 only thing I might add, and I think Stu 

9 touched on it this, is that even though we 

10 felt bioassays of the '89 incident in '90 --

11 that were taken in '90 gives a benchmark, it 

12 certainly is not the same level of benchmarks 

13 you get in '91 and '92. I mean, it wasn't a 

14 step function. 

15 Well, you had, you know, more 

16 bioassays for more people in '90. You had a 

17 lot more bioassays in '91 and '92, but it was 

18 a judgment call and, of course, it sort of, 

19 you know, falls to Work Group and NIOSH as to 

20 whether, you know, -- you had the 305 samples 

21 taken covering, I think, 40 or 50 workers. 

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1 Did I get them right? Forty-nine in 1990. 

2 Certainly in my view, gets you a 

3 pretty good benchmark for 1990, but a lot of 

4 this is a judgment call and certainly, you're 

5 in the hundreds by '91 and '92 and thereafter. 

6 So, again, there seems to be enough 

7 of a benchmark for 1990 for uranium. Where 

8 you could certainly have a basis for a 

9 coworker model or certainly an approach for 

10 1990. 

11 But, it is not a step function. I 

12 just want to make that clear. It's sort of a 

13 -- you know, it goes up to '91 and you have 

14 certainly more data for '90 and you have no 

15 data really for -- you know, before that. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand. 

17 Well, I guess basically it falls onto the Work 

18 Group to be able to come up with this and what 

19 I'm proposing is that we have a SEC from 

20 January 1st, 1984 to December 31st, 1990 for 

21 the uncertainty of depleted uranium. 

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1 How does the other Work Group feel? 

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I totally agree 

3 that we want those numbers. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: I agree with that as 

5 well. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, we're 

7 going to bring this before the Board at the 

8 January meeting. 

9 MR. KATZ: Do you want to check? 

10 Dr. Poston, are you on the line? Dr. Poston? 

11 MEMBER POSTON: Yes, that's -- I'm 

12 in favor. 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, Dr. 

15 Poston. We didn't hear you come on. Sorry 

16 about that. 

17 MEMBER POSTON: Well, I didn't 

18 announce it. I had simply sent Ted a message 

19 because I didn't want to interrupt Joe in the 

20 middle of his dissertation. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

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1 appreciate that. 

2 All right. One thing that I did 

3 miss out on was in the earlier years, we were 

4 talking about from '51 to '58, there was a 

5 question that I believe, Mark, that you said 

6 that they had no radioactive materials showing 

7 up at Pantex if I'm --

8 MR. ROLFES: No, I never said that. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

10 MR. ROLFES: There's been 

11 radioactive materials on-site since I believe 

12 1954. Some of the uranium components that 

13 were coming in for assemblies where showing up 

14 in '54. So. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Good. Well, and 

16 this is probably a TBD issue. 

17 We're not -- depleted uranium 

18 actually started showing up in '51 time 

19 period, but this was clean DU and actually, 

20 they had the -- I believe it was Mark 6, 7 and 

21 8 that -- or the 6 was the worst one. They 

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1 actually showed up as early as '53, but 

2 different than what I thought, none of them 

3 were disassembled until Gravel Gerties were 

4 built, then showed up back to the plant, but 

5 nothing was done with them. 

6 Well, that's where I came into the 

7 misunderstanding of -- I thought they came in 

8 and they were disassembled at that time, and 

9 they weren't, because the uranium and the HE 

10 were bonded together, but they never 

11 disassembled. The basically clean DU was 

12 coming in. So, as far as we go for the 

13 earlier years, there -- there isn't really 

14 going to be any change from what the previous 

15 one was. 

16 MR. KATZ: So, Brad, you said until 

17 the Gerties were built. When were the Gerties 

18 --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Fifty-eight. 

20 MR. KATZ: Fifty-eight. Thank you. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Was the first year 

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1 for the classes that's already been --

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

3 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: The Class that's 

5 already been established. 

6 MR. KATZ: Thanks. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It had been 

8 built and that's when they were first used, 

9 was in '58. So --

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Do you want to --

11 want me to go ahead? 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, part of 

14 what we want to do -- there was some bookend 

15 issues, as I call them. The early period and 

16 the latter period on uranium and '51 and '57 

17 as Brad was pointing out, there was some 

18 ambiguity about, you know, when you might have 

19 had DU, what systems, what potential exposure 

20 may have existed. 

21 A large part of the site visits was 

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1 to nail down some of the ambiguity and try to 

2 make sure we had a very clear idea and 

3 frankly, our approach was just to identify 

4 what systems may have had disassembly issues 

5 or contamination issues similar to the 28 and 

6 just make sure that we were clear on, you 

7 know, what the implications might be for that. 

8 And we identified three systems, 6, 

9 7 and 18, and upon further review, it looked 

10 like the 6 was the one where you actually had 

11 some accounts where -- and then there were 

12 some contradictions in some of these -- you 

13 know, you're talking about 40-year-old 

14 accounts. But, clearly, there was some 

15 contamination issues associated with 

16 disassembly. 

17 So, we were looking at two things. 

18 You know, what was the earliest disassembly 

19 of a Mark 6 and, you know, was there any 

20 evidence, you know, whether it's former worker 

21 accounts or documentation that would suggest 

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1 that the mere handling of these forms might 

2 have had some contamination associated with 

3 them. 

4 As Brad pointed out, before the 

5 Gravel Gerties were built in '58, you did have 

6 handling of components. You did have handling 

7 of radioactive material, particularly DU 

8 forms, and so, that was the question and, of 

9 course, the challenge was: this was a long 

10 time ago. 

11 So, what we established as I think 

12 Brad pointed out was, even though the Mark 6 

13 was on the scene and, you know, certainly 

14 doing things, there was no disassembly of the 

15 Mark 6 until the Gravel Gerties were in -- in 

16 fact, there was no assembly or disassembly of 

17 any systems until the Gravel Gertie was in 

18 place and that was in '58. 

19 So, unless that was established, we 

20 felt -- unless there was some other 

21 documentation that suggested some residual 

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1 contamination associated with these forms from 

2 Y-12, then there really would not have been an 

3 exposure pathway and we did not find any 

4 documentation. I think the accounts are 

5 pretty uniform that the -- that the DU forms 

6 from Y-12 were -- were clean. There might 

7 have been some minor oxidation, but nothing 

8 that would have presented a major pathway in 

9 terms of handling. 

10 And so, we concluded that certainly 

11 from '51 through '57 we didn't find any 

12 evidence of any exposure pathway for depleted 

13 uranium such as existed after '57. 

14 And we also looked at -- there was 

15 some issues raised early on that we didn't 

16 want to lose, hydroshots and the firing pit. 

17 So, we went back just to make sure that was 

18 part of the analysis and tried to nail that 

19 down better and there and again, talking to 

20 the HPs down at Pantex and looking at further 

21 documentation, we felt that in neither case 

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1 the burn pit nor the hydroshots you had any 

2 situation where the air sampling data, in 

3 terms of the burn pits, wasn't sufficient to 

4 provide some information for the dose 

5 reconstruction going backwards. 

6 The issue here is that you had some 

7 data, but it was just over the cusp into the 

8 early '60s. Could you use it for the late 

9 '50? And we certainly found documentation 

10 that suggested that the factors were the same 

11 and that there was enough data to provide a 

12 basis for doing that. So, that was the 

13 reasonable -- that all bases were covered '51 

14 to '57 as it applies to depleted uranium. 

15 And that was the source term, of 

16 course, that we were concerned about. Wasn't 

17 any other source terms that we felt figured in 

18 that early period. So, we're comfortable with 

19 that. 

20 MEMBER BEACH: Joe, I didn't go to 

21 Pantex. Did you guys interview people from 

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1 that time period? I read through stuff, but I 

2 don't remember if you had someone that --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: We actually had 

4 interviews, quite extensive interviews, from 

5 that early period. 

6 Unfortunately, with the four or 

7 five years intervening, those people were not 

8 available anymore. Either they -- you know, 

9 just weren't available. 

10 So, but, the information that they 

11 provided --

12 MEMBER BEACH: Was there. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: -- which is cited 

14 and referenced was very relevant to this 

15 question both for the handling of the weapon 

16 systems as well as the -- as well as the burn 

17 pits and hydroshots. 

18 We did talk to one individual who 

19 was the sort of site technical expert on 

20 issues and really had a good grasp of the 

21 history and we talked to him about the Mark 6 

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1 and went through and not only him, but also 

2 the individual who was tied into the 

3 classification system at Pantex at the senior 

4 level and had both individuals, these are 

5 senior people, actually do extensive searches 

6 on the Mark 6 in terms of, you know, the 1950 

7 era. 

8 How it was handled? What was the 

9 exact time frame of disassembly? How the 

10 handling practices might have figured into 

11 that? 

12 And we did come up with one 

13 classified piece of information that bared on 

14 exposure associated with the Mark 6, but it 

15 was an incident. It was sort of a screwy 

16 incident and it wasn't really germane to any 

17 standard disassembly practice or anything. 

18 So, it was isolated. 

19 So, we kind of beat the bushes as 

20 much as we could to see whether or not, you 

21 know, any of these systems in the '50s would 

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1 have figured in any exposure potential for 

2 that time period and we did not find any. 

3 And understand, too, that, you 

4 know, we made a -- we had some interviews with 

5 individuals who've pointed out that depleted 

6 uranium oxidizes fairly quickly if you have a 

7 raw, you know, unalloyed form. So, certainly, 

8 the concern was whether you would not only 

9 have oxidation, but begin to have 

10 contamination and we're trying to look at that 

11 from a standpoint of any evidence, any 

12 accounts, any documentation that would show, 

13 you know, they were dealing with any 

14 contamination at all and we did not find any. 

15 And it looks like the major 

16 handling took place in the Gravel Gerties when 

17 they started taking these apart. They had 

18 been in the stockpile for four or five or six 

19 years at least, so. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, we did 

21 confirm that actually depleted uranium was 

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1 there as early as the '82 product. It was 

2 there. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think --

4 yes, before the Gravel Gerties, Pantex was 

5 limited to simply mating high explosives to 

6 the depleted uranium. They just didn't do any 

7 fissile material handling. So, I think we can 

8 make that distinction. 

9 That was a little ambiguous. I 

10 think going in and there was still some dates 

11 being thrown around. So, I think that was a 

12 value of going on-site and really trying to 

13 nail this down and classified reviews, what 

14 have you, was to really get some more precise 

15 information on that and I think we did get --

16 do that. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well, we 

18 talked about '51 through '57. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: And we did talk 

20 about '90 and '91. 

21 MR. KATZ: We need a recommendation 

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1 on that period. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, for '51 to 

3 '57, that we --

4 MR. KATZ: Because there's still an 

5 open question in the SEC. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, I 

7 understand. I'm proposing to the Work Group 

8 that we accept NIOSH's stand that on the --

9 that there was no contamination points from 

10 that earlier year, that we had confirmed what 

11 they suggested. 

12 MR. KATZ: So, your proposal is 

13 that reconstruction is feasible for that 

14 period. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We accept 

16 NIOSH's -- yes. Right. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And on the other 

18 bookend issue which is 1990/'91, I heard your 

19 conclusion on --

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: -- previous 

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1 conclusion. With the 1990 period being a 

2 step-up period. 

3 MR. KATZ: That'll be a separate --

4 separately --

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That'll be a 

6 separate one. Okay. 

7 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, I recommend 

9 to the Work Group that from 1951 to 1957 we 

10 accept NIOSH's recommendation that they could 

11 do dose reconstruction. Any feedback? 

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm in agreement 

13 with that. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: I'm in agreement 

15 with that, but I also -- how will you do dose 

16 reconstruction during that time period? 

17 There's some more sampling. Do we --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think the 

19 Site Profile has the firing ground, right? 

20 The burning ground. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Yes, the burning 

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1 grounds and the firing site weren't active 

2 until after 1958. So, there really isn't any 

3 source of intakes from uranium for that 

4 perspective. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, just to 

6 further answer, we looked at those dates and 

7 just wanted to make sure that that aligned 

8 with the current SEC. We agree with that. 

9 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

10 MR. KATZ: So, Dr. Poston, did you 

11 hear the motion from Brad? 

12 MEMBER POSTON: I agree, 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, now, 

15 let's talk about uranium 1990 to 1991. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, now, uranium 

17 1990 is part of the Class. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You covered 

19 this. Right. So, '91 to --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Ninety-one is the 

21 end of the --

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49 

 

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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Ninety-one. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: Ninety to '91. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Ninety is not even 

5 --

6 MR. KATZ: Just 1991. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Ninety-one. 

8 MR. KATZ: You're addressing that. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Yes, 

10 that's right and as we said earlier and we saw 

11 it down there that the '91 time period for 

12 depleted uranium and stuff. We saw that their 

13 bioassay sample process went up and I think 

14 that they had enough variety that they can 

15 actually do it for that period. 

16 So, I recommend to the Work Group 

17 that we accept NIOSH's stand that for 1991 

18 that they could do a dose reconstruction for 

19 depleted uranium and uranium. 

20 Any questions? 

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No. 

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50 

 

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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So support? 

2 Phil. 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We'll mark that. 

4 MR. KATZ: Josie? 

5 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Yes. 

6 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Poston? John? 

7 John Poston? Dr. Poston, I think --

8 MEMBER POSTON: Yes, I agree. 

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you. 

10 MEMBER POSTON: I'm having trouble 

11 with my mute button. 

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, I hear. Thanks. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. That 

14 bring us to issue number five. Which is 

15 thorium and then, Joe, I'll turn that over to 

16 you. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, thorium was 

18 an issue that I guess the best word is, it got 

19 subsumed a little bit because we were in the 

20 throes of looking at the W28 uranium issue, 

21 and I think the original NIOSH proposal was to 

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1 have, you know, thorium handled as a mass 

2 ratio of the uranium and obviously, as goes 

3 uranium goes thorium. 

4 So, we did touch on some of these 

5 issues at the last Work Group meeting, but I 

6 think decided as a group that, you know, let's 

7 handle the uranium first and then deal with 

8 the uranium -- thorium later, and I guess 

9 later is now. 

10 So, anyway, because of the SEC that 

11 was granted earlier, we're primarily focused 

12 on the '84 through '91, which is the end of 

13 the petition period. 

14 And what we outlined in our review 

15 -- and these issues were raised at the last 

16 Work Group meeting. It feels like eons ago. 

17 Almost two years ago. 

18 Our concern was just basically with 

19 the use of information from the 1990s and 

20 trying to have that information be the basis 

21 for characterizing your -- or bounding your 

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1 dose reconstruction in the '80s. Very 

2 familiar issue. 

3 And even though there's a mass 

4 ratio -- and this is of air samples. I think 

5 I -- in my second revision, I actually had it 

6 right the first time. I changed it. It's air 

7 samples. 

8 Either this approach or even the 

9 previous approach relies on mid-1990s and 

10 beyond data primarily. There's a couple of 

11 bioassays that happened to have been taken in 

12 '83, but the preponderance of the data comes 

13 from the '90s. 

14 And our concern is that in '91, 

15 it's almost like a split point. You got a 

16 split point at the end of '89 for the W28 

17 uranium exposures because that's when they 

18 sort of had an epiphany about the DU 

19 contamination and did a major overall of 

20 practices and came up with contamination 

21 control and a lot of bioassay monitoring and 

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1 that all happened after the `89 event. 

2 For the W55 which was -- like the 

3 28, served the poster child for the thorium 

4 question. That happened in '91 where 

5 recognition grew and this was driven --

6 (Background noise on telephone 

7 line.) 

8 MR. KATZ: Sorry, Joe. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: In any case, go 

10 back. The W55 was a pretty bad actor. 

11 Comparable -- it's hard to judge whether it 

12 was worse or better than the W28. Both of 

13 them are pretty bad. 

14 In terms of contamination on 

15 disassembly, they rate in 1991 --

16 (Background noise on telephone 

17 line.) 

18 MR. KATZ: But, go ahead and try to 

19 talk over her a while. It's quiet right now, 

20 Joe. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. I'll 

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1 go for it. 

2 I was just saying though, you know, 

3 one, thorium is relatively more hazardous than 

4 depleted uranium. I don't think there's any 

5 disagreement with that. 

6 Two, it's clear that there was a 

7 much smaller amount of thorium contamination 

8 than depleted uranium, but nonetheless, it 

9 existed, was an issue, something that arose. 

10 On the W55, they did go to a 

11 downdrafted glovebox table in late '91. We 

12 were able to pin that down a little better, 

13 with the notion to control the DU as much as 

14 anything else, but certainly to control 

15 thorium as well. 

16 The difference between thorium and 

17 DU contamination I think was clear. That, you 

18 know, with the DU, I think Stu pointed out 

19 earlier, you could lift the unit up and the DU 

20 would just fall out. I mean, it was sort of 

21 gross contamination using gross in the most 

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1 graphic way. So, it got everywhere. 

2 Thorium contamination was 

3 different. There you actually had to 

4 physically manipulate the material, the actual 

5 component to have any contamination. It 

6 wasn't something that -- I think we used the 

7 word spallate. It wasn't something that just 

8 sort of fell out. It was something that if 

9 you, you know, used a screwdriver as we heard 

10 from one of the workers to separate units or 

11 to move things around mechanically, you would 

12 get some loose contamination. 

13 I think one interview in particular 

14 pointed out that in a glovebox environment 

15 that in the downdraft table, they were able to 

16 qualitatively measure it as something like 

17 you'd get a teaspoonful of thorium 

18 contamination as compared with a cupful of DU 

19 contamination when you took the W55 apart. 

20 Our major concern really is just 

21 the fact that I think the mass-ratio approach 

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1 is predicated on some representativeness 

2 between what was going on in the '90s versus 

3 what was going on in the late '80s and we 

4 don't think that is true that it, in fact, 

5 would be representative. 

6 Because you get this downdraft 

7 table actually installed in late '91, and it 

8 was such a secure, you know, engineered 

9 safeguard that literally, they didn't do 

10 bioassays after '91 or '92. Primarily because 

11 they didn't see any contamination at all. 

12 It's very, very small in terms of the air 

13 sampling, what have you, that took place after 

14 that table was put in place and I think in our 

15 note they ran ten test disassemblies through 

16 and just didn't see much. So, they just said 

17 well, you know, we don't need to do a routine 

18 bioassay. 

19 But, before that, before '91, you 

20 essentially had a different situation. We 

21 discussed this with one of the individuals 

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1 that was prominent in the W55 program, first2 hand information and, you know, he confirmed 

3 that yes, you know, they had concerns on the 

4 W55 that, in fact, thorium contamination 

5 existed. It wasn't as bad as the DU, but it 

6 was there and that it was part of the 

7 motivation to put the downdraft glovebox in 

8 place and once that was put in place at the 

9 end of this tenure, that pretty much took care 

10 of the issue. 

11 But, there was a little bit of a 

12 lagged between the W28 practices and 

13 procedures that came into place, about a year 

14 lag, before the W55 was brought into a similar 

15 control state. 

16 So, our position is that, you know, 

17 the mass ratio assumptions that are being used 

18 in the method that's being proposed for 

19 thorium for '84 through '91 I think is 

20 undercut by the fact that the conditions 

21 before '91 -- whether it's handling practices, 

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1 because we did find a lot of practices that 

2 were standard in the '80s and before were 

3 quickly discontinued once they became more 

4 sensitive to the fact that if you manipulate 

5 thorium components they will give you loose 

6 contamination. So, the idea was to avoid that 

7 for one thing. 

8 And the fact that you had an 

9 engineer's safeguard to the extreme and I 

10 think this is reflective of the concern about 

11 the W55 to put a glovebox -- and there's a 

12 couple of pictures in there -- to put a 

13 glovebox in place like that, you're -- you 

14 know, with your manipulation through the 

15 gloves and everything, you're dealing with 

16 certainly concern over the contamination 

17 associated with that system. 

18 So, again, that's our concern. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, you 

20 know, since we've not talked about thorium for 

21 more than two years, we've not really gotten 

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1 very far into analyzing this issue. 

2 It occurs to me, though, that the 

3 mass ratio that we've proposed is based on 

4 smear -- a smear result. Right. 

5 MR. ROLFES: The mass ratio is 

6 based upon some BZ samples that were collected 

7 I think in the 1990s. Later -- mid to later 

8 1990s. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Nineteen ninety10 six. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Nineteen ninety-six. 

12 Thank you. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

14 MR. ROLFES: And they analyzed 

15 basically the BZ or lapel sampler data. They 

16 basically did an isotopic count of the filters 

17 and then they used scanning electron 

18 microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray 

19 analyses to characterize the individual 

20 particulate matter on the filters, and I guess 

21 they determined that in excess of -- I think 

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1 it was in excess of 98 percent of the measured 

2 alpha activity on the filter was attributed to 

3 depleted uranium and less than 2 percent was 

4 attributed to the thorium. Let me think here. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: And this is 

6 outside. Just to clarify, this is outside of 

7 the glovebox. The downdrafting. 

8 MR. ROLFES: These are BZ samples. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, they'd be 

10 outside the glovebox. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Yes. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: It would be outside 

13 the downdrafting. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to clarify 

15 that. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, then the 

17 question, then, would -- to me, this is -- you 

18 know, this to me is a kind of interesting 

19 ratio case. Because you have uranium present 

20 in some amount. You have thorium present in 

21 some smaller amount. Would the downdraft 

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1 table preferentially capture one over the 

2 other? I mean the -- it would seem to me that 

3 the capture of the downdraft table is, you 

4 know, sort of independent. It's going to 

5 capture the loose stuff that's there to some 

6 degree. 

7 And it also occurs to me that if 

8 we're talking about thorium content on the 

9 order of 2 percent of the uranium content, and 

10 you look at the uranium exposures that are 

11 going -- you know, based on the -- on the 

12 uranium bioassay from 1991, I mean, they're 

13 probably not going to be that big of bioassays 

14 given the bioassay data we have. 

15 You're talking about almost a 

16 vanishingly -- aren't we talking about almost 

17 a vanishingly small dose here from the 

18 thorium? I mean, if it's -- if the thorium is 

19 2 percent -- well, of course, if you do have 

20 the BZS --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: The thorium's -

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1 MR. HINNEFELD: If it's bone 

2 surface or something. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Certain organs like 

5 bone surface will be --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, just to 

7 continue your -- I understand what you're 

8 saying. That's kind of what we're after, too. 

9 Is that, yes, you have to account for the 

10 negative pressure in the downdraft table 

11 because that's going to have an effect on the 

12 particulates that are going to be available to 

13 get out. Then you have filtration and the 

14 seals themselves. 

15 Because what you're really seeing 

16 outside the downdraft tables is fugitive 

17 emissions, which are very small to begin with, 

18 because this is a pretty tight thing. That's 

19 why they discontinued bioassay in the first 

20 place. 

21 So, the question becomes: is the 

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1 ratio outside that, you know, contraption 

2 going to be different than the ratio inside? 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Inside the 

4 contraption would have been before they 

5 installed the downdraft --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: And our point is 

7 that it's doubtful, but there's not -- from 

8 our standpoint, it's not clear how you would 

9 do that, how you would validate or verify 

10 that. You'd almost have to compare it with 

11 date from inside the downdraft table or from 

12 the 1980s. You'd have to have some way to 

13 compare or validate that. Because otherwise, 

14 you're kind of theorizing, you know, relative 

15 capture of particles through filtration or 

16 seals and there's -- you know, you have to 

17 almost hypothetically figure out what the 

18 negative pressure is that then influenced. 

19 There's enough variables there. I 

20 don't know how you would do that. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the other 

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1 item you mentioned is this was not a -- this 

2 was -- as I understand this weapon system, it 

3 was not thorium alloyed with depleted uranium. 

4 But, there was a depleted uranium piece and a 

5 thorium piece. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. And so, the 

8 relative generation of the contamination of 

9 the two would be dependent upon the treatment 

10 of those two pieces on that particular 

11 sampling. Okay? 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And, you know, 

13 again, the practices differed because they 

14 manipulated them a lot more in the '80s before 

15 they figured out, you know, you probably 

16 should do that with the thorium. Uranium was 

17 a --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I do remember 

19 that interview. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: -- uranium was a 

21 lost cause because you opened up and --

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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But, the thorium 

3 if you didn't really handle it as much, it 

4 would give you as much loose contamination. 

5 So, that -- those practices were discontinued 

6 as we progressed through the '80s and you 

7 recall the interview with the screwdriver. He 

8 was told: don't do that again. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I do remember 

10 that interview. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Don't do that 

12 anymore. Yes. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: But, you know, 

14 they did do those things because they weren't 

15 aware of the potential. 

16 Now, presumably in the downdraft 

17 table, I guess that's -- I guess one could 

18 argue they might have done it just because 

19 they knew it was secure, but probably did not. 

20 They were probably careful about that. But, 

21 you know, my concern is that you end up with a 

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1 lot of speculation about how -- you know, if 

2 they didn't manipulate the unit as much in the 

3 downdraft table, they may not have generated 

4 very much thorium, but then we have that 

5 contemporary -- not contemporary, but 

6 interview where, you know, the teaspoon versus 

7 the cup. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: How did they 

9 manipulate those before the downdraft? Did 

10 they use mechanical devices to pick them up 

11 and move them or did they do it by hand? 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: No, they did it by 

13 hand. Directly with, you know, different 

14 devices. Just a -- they tended to pop things 

15 off and it wasn't --

16 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: -- done very 

18 securely and they didn't recognize -- they 

19 certainly knew -- to go back, DU wasn't 

20 considered that much of a hazard. And they 

21 did have to lob it around, but until the W28 

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1 incident, they didn't react to it --

2 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: -- in a control 

4 way. 

5 Thorium, didn't really see that as 

6 an issue at all, but toward the '80s, they 

7 recognized that they were getting thorium 

8 contamination as we learned from this one 

9 individual and it became clear to them that 

10 unlike uranium, depleted uranium, it was more 

11 due to the manipulation. 

12 MEMBER BEACH: Right. Right. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: If you 

14 mechanically manipulated it, you got 

15 contamination. If you kind of left it alone 

16 or were careful about it, you got a lot less. 

17 So, they got better at handling it, but until 

18 the downdraft table came along, you still had 

19 that exposure potential and this, you know, 

20 again was a lot less material. But, thorium 

21 from a relative hazard standpoint was a higher 

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1 hazard. So, it's kind of, you know, you had 

2 to juggle that. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, and 

4 something else I'd like to bring up. This is 

5 Brad. 

6 If you remember right, 55 was the 

7 only one that conducted a downdraft table. It 

8 wasn't -- the 53 would still have to be done 

9 because of its massive size. They could not 

10 build a big enough downdraft table to 

11 accomplish that. Plus, they were coming to 

12 the end on that one. 

13 And this is what kind of brought 

14 some of the workers issues out was you got us 

15 now doing it this way, but on this one, we're 

16 still doing it the old way and what were the 

17 issues on that. That's where some of the 

18 mistrust of the workforce was kind of being 

19 seen and this was brought to us in the 

20 interviews there. You got two different 

21 processes. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it's just 

2 the disparity of, you know, at one point 

3 you're handling the stuff directly and the 

4 next day, you have it in a sealed glovebox. 

5 You know, it was, you know, obvious that some 

6 major tightening of practices and what does 

7 that mean for the past practices? So, there 

8 was that implication. 

9 But, you're right. There were 

10 certain systems that just wouldn't fit in a 

11 downdraft table. They just couldn't do it 

12 that way. 

13 But, the 55, you know, was suitable 

14 for a downdraft table. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: So, I'm trying to 

16 decide if there -- would there be some type of 

17 evidence that would be sufficient to indicate 

18 -- you know, what type of evidence would have 

19 to be found that would be sufficient to say 

20 that in 1991 the thorium to uranium ratio 

21 technique can be used? I mean what kind of 

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1 evidence would there have to be. I'm trying 

2 to decide what -- if there's anything that 

3 could be pursued. Because I don't know. 

4 Presumably, the search has been 

5 done for this information. I don't know, 

6 though. You know, there was a method arrived 

7 at prior to the time when there was a lot of 

8 discussion about, you know, downdraft table 

9 installations and perhaps differences there 

10 and so, if the data search had been done today 

11 knowing about the concerns, about the 

12 installation of the downdraft table, changing 

13 issues, would there have been other things 

14 found that would have been relevant to the 

15 work in 1991 and I don't know that we've 

16 actually search for that yet. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

18 there's been a pretty -- and this is part of 

19 the search that we did at Pantex this last go20 round. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Was to hone in on 

2 whatever, you know, missing information might 

3 be had for thorium exposures and that was an 

4 expressed search pattern that we did and, you 

5 know, there was certainly a lot of thorium 

6 information that Mark and his folks had 

7 collected and this last go around see if there 

8 was anything that could augment that. 

9 And we did -- I think again the 

10 difference now is the acknowledgment of this 

11 downdraft table and the fact that the BZ 

12 samples were taken outside of it and that I 

13 think undercuts or raises some serious 

14 questions about the mass ratio approach. 

15 Mark can jump in. I don't think 

16 and, you know, given the fact that this 

17 issue's been around a while, I don't think 

18 there's any thorium additional air samples or 

19 specific thorium smears or thorium bio -- you 

20 know, there's never been any thorium bioassays 

21 that would give you that information other 

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1 than that which was taken outside of the 

2 downdraft table in the '90s. 

3 There is some -- I think a single 

4 identified bioassay in '83 and a handwritten, 

5 unidentified bioassay in '83. So, you get two 

6 data points in 1983 that were event-driven, 

7 but beyond those two items, you do have gross 

8 alpha, but that wouldn't give you much of a 

9 handle. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. No. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I don't think 

12 there's anything other than those two data 

13 points before 1991. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Mark, do you recall 

15 some --

16 MR. ROLFES: Yes, there's the 

17 component wipe database that we have there. 

18 They're not bioassay data, but they were 

19 characterizing the components in the 

20 workplace. 

21 In 1976, Los Alamos National 

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1 Laboratory or LASL at the time, issued a paper 

2 on thorium-232. Basically talking about the 

3 health physics and industrial hygiene concerns 

4 of thorium-232 exposures. 

5 Their conclusion in the paper was 

6 that there was no airborne contamination 

7 problem associated with the material due to 

8 the large size of the thorium involved. 

9 They had recommended using personal 

10 protective equipment to include gloves and lab 

11 coats and they did encounter some removable 

12 alpha contamination less than 20 dpm per 100 

13 square centimeters, and if they discovered a 

14 level of alpha contamination of 40 dpm per 100 

15 square centimeters, they had recommended 

16 prompt cleaning. 

17 There's hundreds of wipes that 

18 support a judgment that was made that a 

19 contamination area wasn't necessary at Pantex 

20 and then there were approximately 73 BZ 

21 results from the later 1990 period. That also 

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1 showed that there was no airborne activity. 

2 This LASL report was LASL 1976, the 

3 occupational and radiological health aspects 

4 of exposures to uranium -- or, excuse me, to 

5 thorium. 

6 Let's see. At Pantex, I believe in 

7 the 1990s they had established an 

8 administrative control level of roughly 40 dpm 

9 for 100 square centimeters, but the individual 

10 who was involved in sort of analyzing whether 

11 or not there was a potential exposure concern 

12 indicated that they didn't think there was a 

13 potential to exceed the 10 CFR 835 criteria of 

14 200 dpm per 100 square centimeters. 

15 So, they had a debate on the site, 

16 apparently, over whether they should post an 

17 airborne radioactivity area for a tenth of the 

18 DAC under a requirement of PRCM-235. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: That's Radiation 

20 Control Manual? 

21 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Yes. 

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1 They didn't have any area 

2 monitoring, but they did try the lapel and BZ 

3 samples, which we do have available, and 

4 that's what the thorium intakes were based 

5 upon or the activity ratios of the thorium 

6 uranium. 

7 I'm just looking at some of my 

8 notes from the review of these documents 

9 regarding thorium. I've got some of the 

10 production technicians listed during that time 

11 period 1996 here. 

12 Let's see. My notes also indicate 

13 that the scanning electron microscopy and 

14 energy dispersive x-ray analyses did find some 

15 smaller particulates in 2 to 5 micron size 

16 particulate. But, it looks like there was an 

17 analysis. 

18 Also, you had mentioned the 

19 bioassay result from 1983. I remember seeing 

20 a fecal and a urine sample which wouldn't be 

21 very effective at determining uranium or 

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1 thorium intake. Excuse me. Just because of 

2 the insoluble nature of the thorium. 

3 But I also do recall seeing some 

4 particle size characterization studies for 

5 thorium oxide that was conducted in roughly 

6 the same time period in 1983. I don't know if 

7 we might be able to use, you know, a 

8 comparison of the thorium oxide particulate 

9 particle size distribution, compare that to 

10 the uranium particle size distribution for an 

11 analysis. You know, to investigate whether or 

12 not that -- the thorium ratio to uranium 

13 ratio would be any different. You know, 

14 whether uranium would be more likely to escape 

15 from a -- like a HEPA filtration system 

16 associated with the downdraft table. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think the 

18 question can be simplified a little bit and we 

19 want to look at the time we're interested in, 

20 1991. Okay. That's the year we're interested 

21 in. 

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1 And I think of what we discussed 

2 the relevant information would be do we have 

3 component smear data from 1991. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Stu, the '91 is 

5 the time period there because the 

6 implementation of the downdraft table came in 

7 late 1991. That's where everything changed. 

8 Most of the samples that I saw for 

9 thorium and anything else were done after the 

10 downdraft table was put in. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yes, I mean 

12 that's what's been done in the argument so 

13 far, is that we got this air sample data from 

14 1996 and these are the ratios there. So, 

15 that's what we propose to use. 

16 And the year we're talking about is 

17 1991. So, the question Mark would discuss if 

18 we have component smear data from 1991 and 

19 from components from the W55, even then it's 

20 kind of where does that take us? 

21 We'd almost -- you need the -- you 

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1 need an --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I don't 

3 think there's any data from '91. I think the 

4 data starts arising after '91. And mostly, 

5 they were trying to verify that the downdraft 

6 table was working, and that's when they 

7 started taking the samples and --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that's why 

9 they took the air samples and things. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, and then 

11 they took more later in '96, but the '91 --

12 after '91, they were validating that this 

13 thing was working. They wouldn't have to have 

14 a routine bioassay program and, of course, 

15 they established that there was very little, 

16 if any, in the workplace. So, they stopped 

17 the routine bioassay program. 

18 So, really, if you want to just 

19 look at '91, '91 represents a point in time 

20 where lots of things changed. One, you had 

21 the engineered safeguard, but you also had 

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1 lots of sampling just to make sure that it was 

2 working. Before '91, you didn't have anything 

3 that was routine in the way of smearing or 

4 bioassay or contamination control. So, there 

5 was a certain juncture point there. 

6 And truthfully, a lot was driven by 

7 DU because 55 was a bad actor for DU. So, 

8 they were trying to figure out how to handle 

9 that, as well as this thorium question. 

10 But, I think just to go back to 

11 some of the issues Mark was saying and, you 

12 know, certainly, they had -- and this doesn't 

13 get to the mass ratio. So, but just to kind 

14 of cross that T, they had done some hourly 

15 particle sizing, just to decide whether they 

16 were going to worry about thorium and do some 

17 monitoring for thorium and similar to what 

18 happened with depleted uranium, because 

19 depleted uranium they also sort of came to the 

20 conclusion, well, the particle size is pretty 

21 large and, you know, don't worry about it. 

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1 They came to the same conclusion for thorium. 

2 But, I looked at that and we don't 

3 really have good DC sampling which would be 

4 the, you know, apples and apples for what was 

5 done in '96 in the '80s time frame, late '80s 

6 time frame that you could compare and 

7 likewise, I think there's some hazards with 

8 particle sizing analyses and I went ahead and 

9 cited at least one study that was done in the 

10 '90s by Coleman. Just to point out that, you 

11 know, even when they were doing some extensive 

12 particle sizing in the '90s, they were finding 

13 out that you had to be really careful about a 

14 representative sample and looking at thorium 

15 versus uranium, because you have so little 

16 thorium that, you know, if you didn't do it 

17 right, very easily you could misrepresent what 

18 you were looking at. 

19 And in this particular case, they 

20 found that the thorium particulate size, the 

21 sizing was actually a lot smaller than the 

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1 uranium, which wasn't expected. 

2 So, again, I think that's an 

3 interesting question, but again, I don't think 

4 it answers yours, which is for '91, do you 

5 have any data that would give you a starting 

6 point for looking at mass ratios that would 

7 give you some confidence that the mass ratio 

8 was valid for that time frame? 

9 And I think that's what we pointed 

10 out in our paper that no, you don't have any 

11 data. If you did, you could corroborate even 

12 the value that you have from the '96 data, but 

13 there's no data that you can compare it 

14 against to give you that confidence and that's 

15 kind of where we're at. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think we'll 

17 want to make a real careful statement about 

18 what are the -- what is it that leads us to 

19 the conclusion that in 1991 it's not feasible 

20 to reconstruct thorium doses for these 

21 reasons. I mean, and that's maybe the task at 

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1 hand is to come up with that careful 

2 statement. You know, being the -- see, 

3 because I have to essentially convince my boss 

4 and so --

5 MEMBER BEACH: So, let me make sure 

6 I'm clear. We're not talking about just '91. 

7 We're talking about pre. So, '84 to --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, everything up 

9 to '91 is already off the board because it 

10 relies on a uranium intake. Our thorium 

11 approach relies on a uranium intake. 

12 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: And so, the Work 

14 Group has recommended that --

15 MEMBER BEACH: Because we are --

16 okay. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: -- through '90 we 

18 can't do uranium. So, since we can't do 

19 uranium --

20 MEMBER BEACH: So, we're just 

21 looking for '91. Okay. 

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1 MR. HINNEFELD: We're looking at the 

2 single year 1991. 

3 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. I wanted to 

4 make sure I understood what was happening. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and so --

6 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: -- if that's the --

8 so, if that's the Work Group's consensus that 

9 in 1991 there is sufficient reason to doubt 

10 that the technique we proposed, because I 

11 don't see us proposing another one, that the 

12 thorium to uranium mass ratio is -- there is 

13 not enough evidence to support that and here 

14 are the reasons why. 

15 Then that should be a careful 

16 statement here and it should be on the record 

17 at the Advisory Board meeting, so that that's 

18 explained well on the record and then my boss 

19 and the Secretary can take that information. 

20 Because our Evaluation Report says 

21 we're going to -- we can do dose 

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1 reconstructions and so they have to have a 

2 rationed argument that says, a well-reasoned 

3 argument that says these are the reasons why 

4 we are concluding as the Advisory Board, 

5 assuming the Advisory Board works real close 

6 with the Work Group, that I, the Secretary, am 

7 concluding with the Advisory Board that this 

8 is not feasible. So, we have to have a well9 reasoned statement for 1991 for the thorium 

10 ratio not being valid. 

11 MEMBER BEACH: I was just looking 

12 at SC&A's conclusion on page 21 of 25 and it's 

13 pretty well stated in that paragraph, I would 

14 think. 

15 MR. KATZ: Do you want to read 

16 that? 

17 MS. LIN: Josie, I think there's a 

18 difference between the SC&A's position in the 

19 White Paper, which is a draft working paper --

20 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

21 MS. LIN: -- versus the position 

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1 adopted by the Work Group and the Advisory 

2 Board. 

3 MEMBER BEACH: Sure. 

4 MS. LIN: So, if that specific 

5 justification is something that the Work Group 

6 also concurs, that needs to be filed to the 

7 Advisory Board. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, and I thought 

9 that Stu might want to read that since that's 

10 what he was looking for as a well-worded 

11 statement. 

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, you can read it. I 

13 mean, if you have it, you can read it, if you 

14 think that's a rationale. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Joe, why don't 

16 --

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Do you want me to 

18 read it? 

19 Well, let me just read. There's 

20 two places that would be a basis for some 

21 wording by the Work Group. 

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1 On page 21 of -- I have 26 on the 

2 PA version, this is right -- this paragraph 

3 right before the conclusion. It says "For the 

4 mass ratios being proposed by NIOSH, the 

5 differences between the pre-imposed '91 W55 

6 disassembly practices and the advent of 

7 glovebox containment negative pressurization 

8 and filtration and improved workplace 

9 contamination, smearing and air sampling would 

10 have likely led to different ratios of thorium 

11 oxide to DU found in the 1980s than those 

12 found in '96 and beyond. Confirmation of this 

13 difference would require analysis of 

14 contamination surveys of both uranium and 

15 thorium from this earlier period which are not 

16 available." 

17 And then in the conclusion itself, 

18 the statement reads: "The use of a mass19 ratio-based intake value for thorium, i.e., 2 

20 percent, based on air sampling data from 1996 

21 is not valid for the SEC period in question -

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1 - 1984 to, in this case '91 -- because such a 

2 parameter would not be necessarily 

3 representative of or bounding for that 

4 operational time period due to significant 

5 differences in worker handling practices, 

6 contamination controls, and workplace and 

7 personnel monitoring." 

8 MR. KATZ: Can I just, as a 

9 layperson listening to this, see if I 

10 understand? 

11 I mean, what I heard Joe to say is 

12 that since, in the earlier period they would 

13 probably be generating more thorium than they 

14 were once they got wise to the need to be 

15 careful in how they did that disassembly, then 

16 when you get these measurements that you have 

17 outside the glovebox at that point in the 

18 glovebox, they would be more careful, more 

19 likely to be more careful with the thorium, 

20 they'd be generating less thorium. 

21 So, that ratio you're getting 

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1 outside of the glovebox, even if it was 

2 disproportional to what's inside the glovebox, 

3 wouldn't necessarily reflect a ratio you would 

4 have had when they had worse practices earlier 

5 on. 

6 Is that correct, Joe? 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think it's 

8 --

9 MR. KATZ: More or less. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: -- another way of 

11 saying it. It's just --

12 MR. KATZ: It's layperson's. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: If the mass ratio 

14 is meant to bound previous exposures, the 

15 values in that mass ratio have to be 

16 representative of those exposures. 

17 MR. KATZ: Right. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And there's no way 

19 to demonstrate that, given the data that's 

20 available and there's not any real good data 

21 available for '91. 

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1 That's the issue as I see it. That 

2 the data that's being relied upon comes from 

3 '96 and that is, after these practices were 

4 changed, after the glovebox was put in place 

5 and there's no demonstration that those values 

6 for uranium and thorium would be -- would 

7 represent the same values in the '80s when you 

8 had none of that. That it's more than likely 

9 that the quantities that were available for 

10 exposure were different. 

11 How different? It's not --

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, that I 

13 think where I'm coming from on this is that --

14 I think is that with the installation of the 

15 downdraft tables, of necessity the work 

16 practices would have to change because they've 

17 got different access to different parts 

18 because you're essentially out of the glovebox 

19 trying to -- and having changed because of 

20 that, if there's -- you would have little 

21 confidence that the new work practices would 

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1 generate the same relative ratios as was done 

2 with the old work practice. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Or there was no 

4 downdraft. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yes. Okay. 

6 So, that -- okay. So, that sounds like the 

7 argument and then you could even, you know, 

8 what we talked about earlier. Since we're not 

9 talking about uranium and thorium coexisting 

10 in the same piece, but they are different 

11 pieces, the behavior on any given unit could 

12 alter the ratio of that unit. So, you may not 

13 have a consistent ratio anyway. Even without 

14 the change of practices necessitated by the 

15 downdraft. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: When was 53 

17 finished? Was it before '96? 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: You're talking 

19 about 55. 

20 MEMBER BEACH: No, 55 was put into 

21 the downdraft. Fifty-three was still on the 

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1 outside because it was too big for the 

2 downdraft table, but that was because it was 

3 coming to the end of its project. So, was 

4 that even going in '96? 

5 MR. ROLFES: The 53 didn't contain 

6 thorium. 

7 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, I thought it 

8 did. Oh, it did not. Okay. Just depleted 

9 uranium. Okay. 

10 MS. LIN: So, maybe I missed it. 

11 So, how are we only talking about thorium in 

12 1991? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Because of the --

14 MR. KATZ: The SEC. It's covered 

15 already. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That's --

17 everything up to '91 is in the SEC. The SEC 

18 petition goes through '91. At the end of '91, 

19 the downdraft table is installed and so 

20 presumably, the conditions observed in '96 

21 would have pertained after the installation of 

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1 the downdraft. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I think your issue 

3 goes to the fact that the thorium value relies 

4 upon the uranium value and the Work Group 

5 recommended an SEC be considered for '84 to 

6 '90 for the uranium which subsumes the 

7 thorium. Yes, automatically. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: Wouldn't you still 

9 have -- because we're going to take it to the 

10 Board through the end of '89. So, you'd still 

11 have '90 and '91. 

12 MR. KATZ: The recommendation's 

13 through '90. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We've got one 

15 year that we're worried about, and all the 

16 thorium data is past -- but, their sample is 

17 '96 time era where everything is changed and 

18 that was -- you know, SC&A's standpoint on it. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that's 

20 something that we could write up. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, with that 

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1 then, I'd like to bring before the Board --

2 well, before the Work Group right now that we 

3 establish an SEC from -- let's see, it would 

4 be January 1st, 1991 to December --

5 MR. KATZ: December 31st. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: -- 31st, 1991. 

7 One-year period. 

8 MR. ROLFES: Brad, is this for all 

9 employees? 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. 

11 MR. ROLFES: This is for all 

12 employees? 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, until the 

14 downdraft -- the downdraft table was put in, 

15 everybody was under the same process and then 

16 it came in in part of '91. So, I don't think 

17 you'd be able to distinguish between it. So, 

18 let's say for all employees from January 1st, 

19 1991 to December 31st, 1991. 

20 MR. ROLFES: I did want to --

21 sorry. 

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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Go ahead. 

2 MR. ROLFES: I did want to point 

3 out that there is an Access database that 

4 would give you names of the employees that 

5 were specifically working on certain aspects 

6 of disassembly. That I didn't know if --

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You know what? 

8 We looked into that in great detail too, and 

9 in that time frame, everybody had access to 

10 those hallways and as a matter of fact, the 

11 assembly/disassembly areas where they were 

12 doing it still ran down through all -- the 

13 only thing that was protecting them was the 

14 screens. Bottom line, there was no buffers in 

15 between them. 

16 Remember right off that tour, we 

17 had that big fan that was pulling everything 

18 out into the hallway and then out. 

19 I don't think you'd be able to 

20 distinguish between which people there were, 

21 especially for thorium with that process. 

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1 So, I'm proposing that it be for all employees 

2 at that time. 

3 Any questions on it from other 

4 Board Members? 

5 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, that seems a 

6 reasonable approach to me. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, you accept 

8 that? 

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I accept that. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: I accept that as 

11 well. 

12 MR. ROLFES: I had another question 

13 --

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

15 MR. ROLFES: -- that might tip it. 

16 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

17 MEMBER POSTON: Yes, sir, I accept 

18 that, too. 

19 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, with that, 

21 we're basically done. 

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96 

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1 MR. KATZ: So, do you want to talk 

2 about preparing a presentation? 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. 

4 MR. KATZ: Do you want SC&A to 

5 draft something up? 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Actually, yes, 

7 they do a fine job on that. I do it the same 

8 as we did with Fernald. Joe will bring up a 

9 short synopsis of where we are at and then 

10 I'll bring my recommendation to the Board 

11 after Joe gets done. 

12 Well, go ahead, Joe. 

13 MR. KATZ: Do you need to present 

14 or --

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Like yesterday, I'm 

16 --

17 MR. KATZ: Yes. Okay. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: -- happy not. 

19 MR. KATZ: I'm just asking the 

20 question. That's all. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: No, I will be 

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97 

1 

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available for comment for the Board Members 

2 who want to come. So. 

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: 

5 -

6 MR. HINNEFELD: 

7 questions. 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: 

I would just say -

That have 

-- given the 

9 careful wording on a couple of these, I guess 

10 there will be enough cross-talk to make sure 

11 the wording is representative. 

12 MR. KATZ: Please do that. Yes, 

13 please do that up front. Okay. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Are there any 

15 other things that need to come before the Work 

16 Group? 

17 MR. KATZ: Well, so, are there any 

18 outstanding TBD issues at this point? 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: There is, but 

20 really, you have the presentation. I have the 

21 presentation before the Board from last -- and 

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98 

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1 we're going back historically here. So, some 

2 of this is getting old. 

3 But, what I would propose is that I 

4 update what was a survey outline of open and 

5 closed items and there's some nuances here 

6 because there's been some issues just by 

7 virtue of this process that we have closed out 

8 effectively, and I think for the Board's sake 

9 it would be helpful to provide the basis for 

10 how that was closed so that you can, you know, 

11 report to the full Board that this is how it 

12 was dispositioned. 

13 There's some other loose ends, but 

14 quite frankly, there aren't that many. There 

15 are a few. I think you mentioned data 

16 adequacy and completeness. A few T's that 

17 need to be crossed, but as far as substantive 

18 technical issues, there aren't any major 

19 substantive technical issues. Certainly no 

20 SEC issues that are pending. 

21 MR. KATZ: Well, there's no SEC, 

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99 

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1 clearly, because we've --

2 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

3 MR. KATZ: -- the SEC, but I guess 

4 my question is just, it will be good at the 

5 Board meeting to present, if there are any TBD 

6 issues whatsoever that affect how they plan to 

7 do dose reconstructions for those who they can 

8 do the incomplete ones in effect, partial dose 

9 reconstructions. 

10 If there are any issues remaining 

11 that need to be discussed, it would be good to 

12 just present that to the Board and they 

13 realize what -- if there's something left for 

14 this Work Group to do. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, since we have 

16 a little time, let me just kind of --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Can we take a 

18 comfort break before we get into that? 

19 MR. KATZ: Yes. Okay. So, just a 

20 ten-minute comfort break. It's 10:35. About 

21 a quarter to 11:00, we'll just set back up. 

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100 

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1 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

2 matter went off the record at 10:35 a.m., and 

3 resumed at 10:55 a.m.) 

4 MR. KATZ: Okay. We are the Pantex 

5 Work Group. We're back from a short break. 

6 Let me just check and see. John 

7 Poston, are you on the line? 

8 MEMBER POSTON: I am. 

9 MR. KATZ: Great. We can carry on. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Yes, this 

11 is Joe Fitzgerald again. 

12 We're moving to the -- what we call 

13 the site matrix listing of issues for Pantex. 

14 I'm looking at a May 2011 edition or version. 

15 Which is the last version that was developed 

16 and we haven't returned to the matrix because 

17 we've been focusing on the SEC issues, but 

18 just to go through this listing and identify 

19 where the status of Site Profile issues and 

20 closed issues might be. 

21 I know a lot of you don't have 

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101 

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1 this. I'm going to try to give you some 

2 background as I go. 

3 The first issue on this matrix is 

4 adequacy of internal dose records and much of 

5 this focuses on thorium, uranium, plutonium 

6 bioassay. Looks at the -- and tritium -- and 

7 looks at the methods in terms of the 

8 completeness of the data feeding those 

9 methods. 

10 And the last status which is going 

11 back to May of 2011 pertains to the data 

12 completeness and adequacy paper that SC&A 

13 generated in April of 2011 where we cite some 

14 concerns over how the TBDs read. Particularly 

15 the internal TBD reads as far as the handling 

16 of bioassay information, the completeness and 

17 adequacy of that bioassay information. 

18 And based on the discussion and 

19 conclusions reached on the SECs that dealt 

20 with thorium and uranium, I think a lot of 

21 that is certainly the basis for changing the 

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102 

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1 wording as NIOSH tends to do once an SEC 

2 passes. Goes back and changes the language in 

3 the TBD as well as supplements the existing 

4 evaluation report to illustrate the 

5 conclusions reached about the adequacy and 

6 completeness of data that supports dose 

7 reconstruction. In this case, internal. 

8 So, much of what we have in this 

9 first item, the adequacy of internal dose 

10 records, I think has been dispositioned by the 

11 discussions, extensive discussions that this 

12 Work Group has had on uranium and thorium. 

13 We did, I think, reach a 

14 satisfactory conclusion that there's no issue 

15 with tritium and plutonium. Certainly -- a 

16 lot of data revolving around -- you know, 

17 Pantex did a lot of bioassays around tritium 

18 and plutonium over time. So, to us, that's 

19 not an issue and in terms of uranium and 

20 thorium, we have dispositioned that. 

21 So, subject to changing the 

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103 

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1 language in the -- or supplementing the ER and 

2 changing the language in the TBDs, I think 

3 we've dispatched the question of the adequacy 

4 of the internal dose records. 

5 It was listed as open in the 

6 presentation before the full Board in August 

7 of 2011. So, I think that's something that 

8 the Work Group can consider as far as closure. 

9 MEMBER BEACH: Would we put that in 

10 abeyance or would that be a closure based on -

11 -

12 MR. KATZ: I mean the abeyance is 

13 sort of procedure stuff, but where you've put 

14 together -- where you've really put it all to 

15 bed because you have an SEC, I think you could 

16 just say closed. Because you don't really 

17 have to wait and see what technical approach 

18 is being preferred. There isn't one. 

19 MEMBER BEACH: True. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: So, is that 

21 closed? 

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104 

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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, that's good 

2 with me. I guess, you know, I just still want 

3 to be able to see what NIOSH -- if they change 

4 that at all, you know, I just -- I guess we're 

5 going to review -- are you going to change any 

6 of the --

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean if the 

8 Class is added for what has been discussed, 

9 assuming the Board agrees with the Work Group 

10 and goes forward, we revise that profile to 

11 reflect that decision. So, what we would say 

12 is that the approaches we have proposed for 

13 uranium from '58 to 1990 and for thorium in 

14 '91 are not feasible to be done for all 

15 workers. 

16 As far as I know there's not been 

17 any particular criticism of individual 

18 bioassay numbers. So, in the event that 

19 someone has some bioassay in that person's 

20 exposure record and they have a non21 presumptive cancer, we would use -- we would 

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105 

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1 interpret it as -- if we can interpret with 

2 our existing procedures, we would use that in 

3 their -- that's normally what we do. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: So, we would 

6 rewrite the Site Profile to say things like 

7 that. To explain why we're not doing uranium 

8 intakes for everybody, but -- if like a person 

9 has got a bioassay in the record we will. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand. 

11 So that one could be closed. Phil. 

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

14 MR. KATZ: So, Dr. Poston, is that 

15 good? I think maybe you took yourself -- put 

16 yourself on mute. John. 

17 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. Sorry. 

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, there you go. 

19 MEMBER POSTON: I lost count as to 

20 whether I was up or down. 

21 MR. KATZ: You need a special light 

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106 

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1 on your phone, John. Okay. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. On the 

3 second item, internal dose models for uranium, 

4 I mean that's what we closed out today. So, I 

5 think --

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's closed. 

7 Phil? 

8 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Everybody agree 

11 with that? 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, moving 

13 briskly along. Number three deals with 

14 plutonium which the conclusion we had here --

15 well, SC&A questions the methodology and we 

16 had some questions on that. The issues appear 

17 to be moot given the lack of any historic 

18 evidence that routine Pu internal exposures 

19 occurred due to lack of integrity of 

20 components handled. 

21 So, there and again, we had some 

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107 

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1 issues, but there was no evidence that we 

2 could identify where you had, you know, an 

3 exposure question with plutonium and the 

4 instance that we had identified were covered 

5 and we had recommended closure on that back 

6 two years ago and so, that's just pending 

7 before the Work Group. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I would say that 

9 we've closed it. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Mark, remind me. 

13 Because one of the logs that came up was the 

14 cracked pit and you guys had already --

15 MR. ROLFES: Back in 1961, there was an 

16 incident where there was a plutonium release 

17 into the cell and they basically -- there were 

18 three people involved that evacuated and 

19 subsequently provided a bioassay for plutonium 

20 intakes or to assess the plutonium intakes. 

21 They set up like a radiological 

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108 

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1 decontamination plan for the time and we have 

2 a list of workers who participated in the 

3 decontamination of basically the tools, the 

4 floor and the unit itself. They all 

5 participated in the bioassay and those data 

6 are available to us. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. And this 

8 would take into the cracked pit one? 

9 MR. ROLFES: That would be 1993. 

10 Okay. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You know, I just 

12 wanted to make sure. 

13 MR. ROLFES: There were two 

14 different incidents where there were plutonium 

15 releases that occurred. There was the one in 

16 1961 in the cell and then there was one 

17 subsequent to that in 1993 where those people 

18 also provided bioassay samples for --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

20 MR. ROLFES: -- the incident. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, I guess my 

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109 

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1 recommendation to the Work Group is that's 

2 closed. 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Second that. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: I agree with --

5 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, John. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Item four 

8 is dose estimate approach for thorium and 

9 clearly, we have dispositioned that today. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, this 

11 outstanding issue of thorium would be closed. 

12 Phil? 

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Agree. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Agree, Josie? 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Dr. Poston? 

17 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Item five 

20 is metal tritides and we recommended closure 

21 two years ago on that particular issue. I can 

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1 give you an update on that. 

2 That was really involved with 

3 sealed reservoirs and whether or not you might 

4 have some tritides present on the outside due 

5 to permeation through the reservoirs as well 

6 as the use -- possible exposure from the boom 

7 box if you remember some of the explosions and 

8 whatnot. 

9 And following a final data capture, 

10 that was in June of 2011 and that was the 

11 design to look at what actual compounds may 

12 have figured and we didn't find any evidence 

13 that there was any exposure potential from 

14 tritides, but we wanted to cross that T back 

15 then. 

16 So, we recommend the issue be 

17 closed back in May of 2011. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is also, 

19 too, when they quit reusing the reservoirs due 

20 to permeation through at Savannah River. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Well, you 

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1 know again that was -- we were going back four 

2 or five years and there was a question at that 

3 time on that issue and I think that's been put 

4 to bed. So, there's not a question on 

5 tritides with Pantex. 

6 You're right. This was a generic 

7 issue that was raised at several sites. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. So, for 

9 Pantex, this one would be closed, too. I 

10 recommend that the Work Group close the 

11 tritides. 

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree. 

13 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

14 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Item six is 

17 the interpretation of external dosimetry data 

18 and if the Work Group recalls two or three 

19 years ago we had spent a fair amount of time 

20 before we got into the internal dose issues 

21 trying to reconcile some questions that we had 

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1 on neutron exposures from weapons systems and 

2 some of the questions about how you -- neutron 

3 gamma-photon ratios and there was other 

4 questions about how those dose estimates were 

5 arrived at in the NIOSH scheme and some of 

6 these were actually cross issues. We had 

7 neutron-photon ratio issues from Mound at the 

8 same time we were trying to deal with them at 

9 Pantex. 

10 If you recall, this is where we got 

11 into some questions about how the data would 

12 be analyzed and how the information would be 

13 used and what we ended -- I'm just reading 

14 from the 2011 -- and this gets into the 

15 adjustment factors and this why we felt this 

16 was a Site Profile issue. During the May 2nd, 

17 2011 Work Group meeting SC&A noted that we had 

18 a number of Site Profile issues and most of 

19 these involved what we felt were incorrect 

20 adjustment factors of values that would affect 

21 the accuracy of dose estimates that would be 

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1 used. 

2 And at that time, NIOSH agreed to 

3 review the external dose findings from the 

4 SC&A Site Profile review in that context. In 

5 other words, not SEC, but whether those 

6 adjustment factors were appropriate or not and 

7 these were also cited in the adequacy and 

8 completeness paper that was presented in April 

9 2011. 

10 I think we did not get a --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. My 

12 recollection or what my understanding is is 

13 that I thought we had reached some sort of 

14 agreement on the NTA adjustment factors. That 

15 that was essentially disposition and the 

16 neutron dosimetry at Pantex, they are 

17 essentially divided in three blocks to think 

18 about. 

19 There was the NTA period. There 

20 was the initial, the early TLD period. We'll 

21 call it the TLD period and then it was the 

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1 late TLD period. 

2 The early TLD period, normally, you 

3 think when people start doing dosimetry with 

4 TLDs, they're pretty good for neutrons. But, 

5 after they had been using their neutron TLD or 

6 neutrons for a while, the DOELAP testing came 

7 up and they performed badly on the DOELAP 

8 testing and so, that called into question that 

9 early TLD period which runs up through about I 

10 want to say '92. Something like that. 

11 And so, what we've done is that the 

12 site -- you know, what it was was an algorithm 

13 problem. An algorithm is the set of 

14 calculations. It describes how they calculate 

15 the output of each of these films -- each TLD 

16 chip and what calculations you do in order to 

17 arrive at a neutron dose and a gamma dose and 

18 whatever doses you're measuring. 

19 And so, they -- after they had the 

20 poor performance on their TLDs, Pantex rewrote 

21 the algorithm and did a corrected or a revised 

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1 or corrected algorithm for that early period 

2 and recalculated people's doses with the 

3 revised algorithm and the revised algorithm, 

4 using that, then they're data didn't pass 

5 DOELAP. 

6 Shortly after that, they got a new 

7 TLD badge and they've been -- and it passed 

8 right away and so, the late TLD period, we're 

9 not concerned about. 

10 The early TLD period, we have the -

11 - here's what we have. We have the TLD 

12 adjusted data and the unadjusted, the old 

13 algorithm data for the early TLD period. 

14 We've got both sets of data and we have --

15 but, we have it unidentified. We don't have 

16 the person's name with it. 

17 So, based -- so, what we've done is 

18 we have taken the adjusted data, you know, the 

19 corrected algorithm data and generated neutron 

20 to photon ratios using that and then we'll 

21 apply that to the photon, because they always 

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1 passed photons. 

2 Apply that to the photon dose for 

3 the early TLD period to arrive at the neutron 

4 dose. 

5 So, that's what we're proposing to 

6 do. We just -- that work was just recently 

7 completed, but that is what we expect to do. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, SC&A has not 

9 been able to see that yet? 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: No. No. I mean 

11 this would be one we'd want to go through and 

12 sort out. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: There is -- we have 

15 -- it might be possible if we can get DOE to 

16 convince Pantex that we have a right to get 

17 it. Because this is data for all places. 

18 This isn't just claims data. 

19 We might be able to get it 

20 identified since they've recalculated all 

21 these with the new algorithm. We might be 

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1 able to get it identified. Because when I 

2 first saw this, I said why are we doing this? 

3 Why don't we just use the adjusted numbers 

4 and I found out that we got it de-identified. 

5 So, if we get it, you know, 

6 identified meaning we know who, you know, Joe 

7 Smith and this is his revised, we would just 

8 use that because that revised algorithm did 

9 pass the DOELAP testing that the earlier 

10 algorithm failed. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, basically, 

12 that one's still open? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I think it's open, 

14 but that seems to me as really doable and it 

15 falls almost entirely within the Class. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. Well, I'm 

17 going to be honest because this brings up one 

18 of the petitioner's issues and so forth that 

19 came in. Was when all of their -- you know, 

20 they got all these different notices and then 

21 a few years later, all of a sudden everything 

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1 got changed. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is --

4 MR. HINNEFELD: That's why. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, and this 

6 is going to bring that to bed, too. So, I'd 

7 say that's still an open issue that --

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I just looked 

9 up -- the last response we had was from March 

10 2011 which was NIOSH's answers to the Site 

11 Profile stuff. So, it's 54 pages and it goes 

12 right through each one of these and you're 

13 saying there's a later one so there's a 

14 change. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: We just got the 

16 most recent one. I think -- my understanding 

17 and I wasn't real engaged two years ago with 

18 Pantex. But, my understanding was that we 

19 felt like we had a good correction factor for 

20 the NTA film period and that the early TLD 

21 period still was an open question because that 

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1 TLD had failed DOELAP testing for neutron 

2 exposure. 

3 And so, that's what we've worked on 

4 recently. Is to determine what can we do and 

5 like I said, we got this de-identified 

6 dataset. If it's -- I hate to ask Pantex for 

7 stuff because it takes so long to get it. You 

8 know what I'm saying? 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. Yes. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: And if this is 

11 acceptable, I would rather go with what we 

12 have. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: So, that's what 

15 we're going go with. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I guess 

17 then what my suggestion would be is for SC&A 

18 to review this and --

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, they don't 

20 have it yet, but we --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: We don't have it 

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1 yet. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: -- we'll get it to 

3 them. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: And what we did 

5 receive, Josie was taking about in March, we 

6 were favorably disposed and at that point felt 

7 that it was responsive to some of the 

8 adjustment factor issues and if you look 

9 through the matrix there's a number of these 

10 sort of cats-and-dogs adjustment factor issues 

11 that weren't SEC issues, but questions of 

12 whether they were sufficiently accurate or 

13 adequate or that kind of thing. 

14 And I think because they weren't 

15 SEC, we didn't spend a lot of time trying to 

16 resolve them all. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: But, I think 

19 there's a lot on the table and with the 

20 addition of this newer piece, I think we can 

21 close this out, but it's probably not closed 

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1 now. 

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, that's an 

4 action item for SC&A just to review the new 

5 material when you get it. 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. The first 

7 action for us is to get it to them. 

8 MR. KATZ: Right. No, I --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And with the March 

10 2011 response which we did look at, but did 

11 not formally respond to, that will give us 

12 enough to recommend to the Work Group where 

13 that stands. 

14 MR. KATZ: And this is item seven. 

15 Right? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: That was item six. 

17 Item six. 

18 Item seven actually we did manage 

19 to reach closure on and it took a while. This 

20 is the neutron-photon ratio issue as a basis 

21 and we actually benefited from the Mound 

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1 discussion efficiency. 

2 This is where the MCNP approach was 

3 ultimately proposed as a better way to go and 

4 that was applied at Mound and subsequently 

5 applied at Pantex and if you look at the 

6 matrix, we are waiting for a disposition on 

7 the MCNP, but we did reach closure on MCNP. 

8 So, as a reasonable approach to apply to 

9 Pantex as well. 

10 As opposed to -- we had problems 

11 with the neutron-photon ratio. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. Which is 

13 basically still open there, but --

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think the 

15 MCNP approach was for the NTA film. I think 

16 that's how we arrived at the --

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. But, the -

18 - we had a generic issue with the --

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: -- ratios and the 

21 NTA film and how that was applied and I think 

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1 the overall strategy of going to MCNP is a 

2 better way to go. Was the resolution at 

3 Mound. I'm just saying that that carried over 

4 to Pantex and I think we agreed that all-in5 all that was satisfactory. 

6 So, the neutron-photon ratio has 

7 been closed, but we haven't officially -- the 

8 Work Group hasn't officially closed it. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And this isn't -

10 - I guess I'm kind of getting confused and so, 

11 this isn't tied to the earlier neutron? 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: No, this --

13 remember I said there were three periods. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: There's the NTA 

16 film period, the early TLD and the late TLD. 

17 The first thing I talked about was the early 

18 TLD period. The MCNP pertains to the NTA. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh. Okay. I 

20 understand that. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me just go 

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1 ahead and read the -- we haven't talked about 

2 this in a while and just sort of reach a 

3 bottom line. 

4 I'm going to start from the 

5 beginning. "The current Site Profile for 

6 Pantex recommends you use the following method 

7 to assign neutron doses prior to '94. For 

8 unmonitored workers who may have had the 

9 potential to be exposed to neutrons, multiply 

10 the claimant's photon dose by 0.8 to the 50th 

11 percentile neutron-photon ratio value to 

12 assign neutron dose. For monitored workers, 

13 if monitored for neutrons or had the potential 

14 for neutrons, multiply the claimant's photon 

15 dose by 1.7 which is the 95th percentile 

16 neutron-photon ratio value to assigned neutron 

17 dose. For '94 forward, third period, use the 

18 recorded neutron dose with the appropriate 

19 ICRP-60 adjustments. 

20 "In response to concerns that while 

21 the recommended neutron to photon ratio method 

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1 may bound some of the Pantex workers neutron 

2 doses, it cannot be assumed that it will bound 

3 all worker neutron doses for '51 to '93. 

4 "NIOSH proposed a new approach that 

5 mirrors a similar one proposed by NIOSH in the 

6 course of the Mound Work Group SEC review 

7 proceedings. This approach applies measured 

8 doses in place of neutron-photon ratios with 

9 corresponding correction factors for NTA film 

10 and MCNP modeling for missed doses of certain 

11 energies for the coworker model." 

12 Okay. This is the update. "In 

13 response to Work Group request to SC&A, review 

14 the new approach to neutron dose estimation. 

15 SC&A provided a review that was forwarded to 

16 the Work Group and NIOSH on December 27th, 

17 2010. 

18 "At the May 3rd, 2011 Work Group 

19 meeting, SC&A also raised the need for NIOSH 

20 to demonstrate in its upcoming response to 

21 this SC&A review how the proposed parameter 

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1 for MCNP are bounding for the ranged of 

2 systems assembled/disassembled for the period 

3 '51 to '91 at Pantex." 

4 And that was the endpoint. I 

5 believe NIOSH provided that information as far 

6 as the different systems. 

7 And we -- and I'll have to go back. 

8 We would clarify the implication in a memo 

9 report now that the notes have been cleared. 

10 So, we presented something and I don't have it 

11 with me on that. 

12 MEMBER BEACH: Right. And the last 

13 thing we got on this issue was the March paper 

14 and it's quite extensive of a write-up and I'm 

15 -- does that incorporate NIOSH's work? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: That's the MCNP. 

17 MEMBER BEACH: That is the --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And like I said, 

19 our concern was using the neutron-photon ratio 

20 for 30-some years covering all particular 

21 operations and, you know, we felt that wasn't 

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1 going to work for all those time periods and 

2 operations involved and that's where the new 

3 approach was introduced and I -- you know, I 

4 can go back and verify. I don't have it with 

5 me, but we had a memo, and I recall it, that 

6 basically closed this out. Recommended 

7 closure and laid it all out. We had it 

8 cleared by DOE and sent it to the Work Group. 

9 But, this was two years ago. 

10 So, I can -- if you want to 

11 condition closure based on my resurrecting 

12 that memo and making sure that everybody sees 

13 it again, but we felt satisfied with the new 

14 approach on neutrons and the issue of reliance 

15 on the ratio across all time periods 

16 effectively went away. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Like you 

18 said, I'd conditionally close that, but I'd 

19 still like to review it. It's been a while. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm going to go 

21 ahead and get --

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1 MR. KATZ: No reason to 

2 conditionally. Just we'll put that in the 

3 same teleconference when we address issue five 

4 and six. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I just 

6 wanted to read something to you. I just got a 

7 text from Sarah Ray that she wasn't going to 

8 be able to join us back, but especially for 

9 Mark, myself and Joe, "Please let the Work 

10 Group know that two wonderful members that 

11 they interviewed passed away. Bob Tolley and 

12 Tomes. Just passed away." 

13 You guys interviewed them and they 

14 were -- "Appreciate for all your help. Sorry 

15 I won't be able to return. Tell everybody 

16 thank you for all the sincere work and honest 

17 effort that they've put into this. Thank you, 

18 Sarah Ray." 

19 So, those people were 

20 inspirational. We interviewed them quite in 

21 depth. They were the last ones that we 

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1 weren't able to get to. They were in a rest 

2 home and stuff. So, I just wanted to make 

3 sure that everybody knew that. Okay. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: That was item 

5 seven. So, that's held pending. Producing an 

6 update and further information. 

7 Eight is completeness of 

8 interpretation of historical radiological 

9 exposure sources. This is kind of one of 

10 these -- it's not a technical issue. It's 

11 just the review that we had done of the TBD. 

12 We felt there were operations -- historic 

13 operational things. Like I think we cite 

14 Tweezer which is the off-site activity and 

15 other things that were not covered in the TBD 

16 and what we basically concluded, the types and 

17 sources raised exposure at Pantex from an 

18 historic had not been fully characterized in 

19 the TBDs. 

20 And I think the document of note 

21 for that issue is the data completeness 

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1 adequacy piece again that was submitted in 

2 April 2011 to the Work Group and NIOSH which 

3 talks to some of these activities. 

4 That is open. I mean it's 

5 certainly a TBD question of completeness and 

6 it's not very different from some of the other 

7 issues we raised at other sites saying that we 

8 identify certain activities or exposure 

9 sources that don't seem to be addressed in TBD 

10 and it's almost one of these informational 

11 things that certainly in the next revision 

12 maybe consideration ought to be given to 

13 including that for the sake of the dose 

14 reconstructor and that's kind of how we left 

15 it. 

16 And I think almost every review --

17 Site Profile review we kind of highlight if we 

18 find anything that doesn't seem to be 

19 addressed in the TBD. We highlight it for 

20 information's sake. 

21 So, that certainly is where that 

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1 comes from. 

2 MR. KATZ: Just a question, sir. 

3 Do these things that have been omitted, these 

4 operations that have been omitted, they have a 

5 functional impact on how the dose 

6 reconstruction would be done? 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: No. Again, that's 

8 what I'm saying. The way it's worded, it's 

9 completeness of the historical rad exposure 

10 sources. It's just a question of source 

11 terms. Whether there's any source terms that 

12 aren't highlighted in the TBD as a source of 

13 the exposure. It wouldn't change the 

14 methodology necessarily. 

15 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark and we 

16 did address this in the past I know, but the 

17 Tweezer facility operations weren't conducted 

18 on-site at Pantex. They were off-site at the 

19 Nevada Test Site. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Did we address 

21 the broken arrows that came in though? How 

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1 they dealt with that. Because that was a --

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, did any come 

3 in before '58 or what -- I mean the broken 

4 arrows that came back to be examined would 

5 have been either --

6 MR. ROLFES: Thule and Palomares 

7 wastes were shipped from the Medina facility 

8 at the time of closure over to Pantex and 

9 there was an incident that occurred in 1979 at 

10 Pantex in one of the igloos and we do have --

11 there were some contamination measurements 

12 made and some bioassays requests -- for 

13 bioassay samples requested from the employees. 

14 We do have a few memos and some 

15 group participants on who entered that igloo 

16 and was involved in the clean-up of the 

17 plutonium and tritium waste that were shipped 

18 to the sites. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, because 

20 that -- I'm trying to -- how can I word this? 

21 Because this was one of them that came in 

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1 that actually burned up in the fuel and --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me suggest 

3 this. You know, we recognized that there were 

4 a number of questions about completeness and 

5 that was the genesis of writing that White 

6 Paper in April of 2011 saying okay, now here 

7 is the, you know, collection of sort of 

8 completeness questions in terms of exposures, 

9 source terms, what have you that we felt were 

10 germane to Pantex and we put that in that 

11 particular paper. 

12 I don't think between NIOSH and the 

13 Work Group, we actually have dispositioned 

14 that paper and I would suggest that on this 

15 item as well as the previous item we, you 

16 know, go back to taking that White Paper and 

17 just dispositioning it. Because I think 

18 that's going to be the way to resolve, you 

19 know, where everything stands as far as the 

20 TBDs and everything without getting into a new 

21 round of discussion. That paper pretty much 

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1 presents this issue as well as questions on 

2 the databases. 

3 Now, the databases are pretty much 

4 resolved because we resolved them as part of 

5 the SEC discussions, but in terms of 

6 operations and whatnot, that's also reflected 

7 in the -- in that document and in the matrix 

8 we point to that document as the hand-off 

9 point for this issue anyway. 

10 So, I think that's -- you know, 

11 given the way it's laid out in the matrix, 

12 that would be the way to address it. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. We could 

14 regenerate that one or --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it's out 

16 there and I think it's even posted. So --

17 MEMBER BEACH: Well, I was able to 

18 find NIOSH's responses, but the dates are 

19 wrong and that was in May. But, I never did 

20 in just my quick review this morning find --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

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135 

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1 MEMBER BEACH: -- find the data 

2 adequacy paper of April. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: It's April 2011. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. And I'm sure 

5 I'll find it, but maybe we could resend it. 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So, we'll 

7 look then at the April 2011 completeness and 

8 adequacy paper and then also our May paper and 

9 see what we responded to there. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Yes. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Some of these 

12 things may have been overcome by events. 

13 MEMBER BEACH: This says March. 

14 Which seems odd. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, when you 

16 have an SEC Class '57 through -- or '58 

17 through '90 and what we can do in that period 

18 for internal intakes is going to be limited by 

19 what's in the person's exposure record. So, 

20 you know, as a practical matter, it sounds 

21 like it's probably going to be dispositional. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So, again, 

2 I think that would be item eight. That we can 

3 focus on the paper and where NIOSH stands on 

4 that and I think some of these issues can be 

5 speedily addressed. 

6 Number nine deals with incidents 

7 and where we felt there was some 

8 incompleteness with the incidents that were 

9 acknowledged in the TBD and that too is 

10 addressed in the data completeness piece. 

11 So, again, I would suggest rather 

12 than sort of having all these separate issues 

13 since that was how it was all consolidated 

14 that that can be addressed similarly. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's fine with 

16 me. Yes. 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think that 

18 was actually the purpose of that paper -- was 

19 trying to assimilate all these different SEC 

20 matrix issues and make sure they were 

21 addressed in some form so that it's in that 

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1 document. 

2 Number ten, inadequate 

3 consideration given to the firing sites. 

4 Obviously, in this last rendition, we spent 

5 some time focusing on that at the site and 

6 felt that that should be closed as part of the 

7 SEC process. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right. 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: There were some 

10 questions there, but now, there is a residual 

11 question on the hydroshots that is actually in 

12 this recent paper. Where I think a 95th 

13 percentile is used based on the data from the 

14 '60s applying it to the hydroshots with DU and 

15 we raise a TBD question there as to whether 

16 that's conservative enough given the variables 

17 that are cited in that analysis and there's 

18 quite a few variables, wind direction, assumed 

19 locations and they're all cited in the 

20 footnote to that item in this most recent 

21 paper we just gave you. 

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1 And that is something I think that 

2 would bear some further discussion as to --

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

4 MR. FITZGERALD: -- whether the 

5 95th or maybe even consideration at the 98th 

6 or 99th might be appropriate given the number 

7 of variables involved in coming to the 

8 conclusion, but again, that's a judgment call. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right. So 

10 --

11 MR. KATZ: Is there more that's 

12 needed from NIOSH on that? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: So this was 

14 described in the paper you just delivered last 

15 week? 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it's touched 

17 upon. I wouldn't say it's really --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Touched upon, but 

19 it refers back to earlier work? 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it -- in 

21 closing out the hydroshots in the '51 to '57, 

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139 

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1 if you look at that one, it's on page 16 to 

2 17. Actually, it's on page 17. 

3 We go on to say "The raw data SC&A 

4 reviewed do not support use of the 95th 

5 percentile. The 1960's outside air 

6 concentration of 24 picocuries per cubic 

7 meter's appropriate or necessarily claimant 

8 favorable given the likelihood of the large 

9 variance due to highly variable conditions 

10 during firings" and in the footnote, I say 

11 "For example, the TBD cites differing masses 

12 of DU and HEU that exist at location samplers 

13 in relation to cloud, varying particle sizes" 

14 and sort of a list of variables that were 

15 involved. 

16 And given the number and extent of 

17 the variables, we're questioning whether the 

18 95th might actually be conservative enough and 

19 whether some consideration of something that 

20 would be more conservative would be warranted. 

21 That discussion we really haven't had. That 

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140 

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1 was actually a Site Profile finding that got 

2 carried over into the matrix, but, you know, 

3 was acknowledged in the Site Profile issue 

4 from the get-go. 

5 So, not a question of whether you 

6 can do it. Whether the variables involved 

7 would argue for something more conservative at 

8 95th. That's just hydroshots. 

9 MR. KATZ: Right. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So, on number ten, 

11 that would be the only question that's sort of 

12 out there. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: So, we would put 

15 that under a Site Profile to be --

16 MR. KATZ: Yes, for the 

17 teleconference, too. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: And there may be a 

20 valid, you know, basis for saying the 95th is 

21 conservative enough, but we were concerned 

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141 

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1 given the extent of the variables cited. 

2 Number 11, we're recommending 

3 closure which is the question of whether the 

4 most highly exposed worker was badged or not. 

5 I think there was a fair amount of discussion 

6 in the Work Group on that. Let's just go back 

7 to this. 

8 I'm not going to read all of this, 

9 but we say "The information presented on this 

10 question by NIOSH addresses practices in the 

11 later disassembly years 1980 to 2000, but not 

12 in the earlier era. While no documentation is 

13 valid regarding the implementation of 

14 monitoring against these requirements, the 

15 issue of back extrapolating exposure 

16 experience and monitoring effectiveness has 

17 been challenged by SC&A for internal dose 

18 estimation. For external dose estimation, 

19 SC&A has indicated at the May 2nd, 2011 Work 

20 Group meeting that it believes the use of 

21 latter-day dose distributions for coworker 

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1 dose assignment per the Strom 2004 study is 

2 sufficiently accurate for the weapon systems 

3 involved." 

4 So, again for external which is 

5 what we're talking about here, we felt the 

6 basis in Strom 2004 was sufficient and this is 

7 again after some discussion. This went back 

8 and forth for a while. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So, that 

10 one is going to be closed then? 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Number 11's 

12 recommended for closure. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Any Work Group 

14 --

15 MEMBER BEACH: I agree with that. 

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree with 

17 that. 

18 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, John. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Number 12 is 

21 accuracy of plant exposure data. This is a 

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1 petitioner issue and let me just read what the 

2 issue is. 

3 "The ER implies that early film 

4 dosimeter data for Pantex are reliable. The 

5 ER and external TBD do not recognize the 

6 inaccuracies in calibration methods and 

7 uncertainties introduced into the dosimetry 

8 program by poor or improper practices. In an 

9 assessment of the external dosimetry program, 

10 the," and this goes back to a DOE 

11 investigation, "the DOE investigation cited 

12 key findings that concluded the following." 

13 This is from the petitioner. 

14 "Gamma calibration response curves for TLDs 

15 did not have sufficient range. The scientists 

16 and laboratory technicians assigned to the 

17 Pantex dosimetry program were inadequately 

18 trained. There were no formal operating 

19 procedures for the Pantex dosimetry program. 

20 The quality of the Pantex dosimetry program 

21 was less than adequate. 

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1 "SC&A considers the deficiencies 

2 identified by the DOE investigative Board to 

3 be highly relevant to the credibility of the 

4 dosimetry data for Pantex. The ER needs to 

5 consider these deficiencies for their 

6 implications on the accuracy of external dose 

7 reconstruction." 

8 Number two, "Further complicating 

9 matters are issues with individuals not 

10 wearing their dosimeters all the time. During 

11 a survey of film badge utilization in June 

12 '69, Pointer, a name, found several instances 

13 where personnel were not wearing their badges. 

14 The extent of issues that involved 

15 inappropriate wearing of the dosimetry is 

16 unknown. However, radiological control staff 

17 subsequently established a program to spot18 check badge racks to determine whether 

19 individuals were wearing their badges." 

20 And this is the bottom lines. The 

21 deficiencies noted in the 19 DOE -- 1980 DOE 

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1 investigative board only apply to the '72 to 

2 1980 period that the TLD program was operated 

3 in-house. Prior to '72, film badge service 

4 was supplied by a reliable commercial service. 

5 From '80 to '93, the TLD dosimetry program 

6 was based on a reliable Panasonic TLD and 

7 readers with an acceptable uncertainty range. 

8 After '93, the DOELAP-accredited Panasonic 

9 TLD program had an uncertainty range that was 

10 even less than that. Plus or minus 10 

11 percent. 

12 And then finally, SC&A noticed that 

13 this additional information response to 

14 petitioner issues -- notes this additional 

15 information that was provided by NIOSH in 

16 response to petitioner issues and recommends 

17 that the Work Group consider this issue 

18 closed. This was back in May of 2011. 

19 So, that additional perspective was 

20 provided. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, I move that 

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1 the Work Group would close. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree. 

4 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Number 13 

6 was too few workers monitored for valid dose 

7 reconstruction. This again was a petitioner 

8 issue, and our initial review showed that 

9 statistics provided for external monitoring by 

10 year are based on limited data prior to 1958. 

11 There was limited data prior to '58. 

12 The ER, Evaluation Report, does not 

13 provide the population of radiological and 

14 non-radiological workers by year for 

15 comparison to the number monitored. So, it's 

16 difficult to answer that petitioner question 

17 from that standpoint. 

18 Early monitoring was concentrated 

19 on radiographers. This is back in the '50s. 

20 Whereas, later years included multiple job 

21 categories. 

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1 The ER has not demonstrated that 

2 variations in badge radiation workers are the 

3 result of changes in weapons production rates 

4 on the rad material present. 

5 Now, in turn, NIOSH cites ORAU 13-6 

6 and a SRDB reference 14338 by statistical 

7 responses to SC&A questions regarding concerns 

8 raised by the petitioners. 

9 And, again, we haven't provided the 

10 Work Group an assessment of that particular 

11 issue, but the statistics provided by the TBD 

12 and this particular reference basically 

13 provides the distribution that supports the 

14 NIOSH ER recommendation. 

15 But we haven't closed that out yet. 

16 That's something that we owe the Work Group. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Can I say, 

18 because that also brings in a question that I 

19 had in the earlier years and so --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the earlier 

21 years. 

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1 MR. KATZ: SC&A action. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Number 14, 

3 records incomplete for subcontractors, temp 

4 workers, short-term employees. Again, another 

5 petitioner issue. 

6 And the question was the response 

7 was not specifically provided in any 

8 Evaluation Report. And we have as initial 

9 review SC&A responses pending additional 

10 record review, and our latest reading is all 

11 short-term or temporary workers were treated 

12 as visitors and monitored as such. These 

13 records were preserved by name and other 

14 identifying information. 

15 So, we recommended, based on our 

16 review of that and -- oh, I'm sorry. Let me 

17 go a little further on that. 

18 We've reviewed additional data 

19 capture information in our visit to Pantex. 

20 Unless additional information is found that 

21 would be inconsistent with NIOSH's 

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1 characterization of past practice and how 

2 temporary or short-term employees were 

3 handled, we would recommend Work Group closure 

4 of this issue. 

5 This was back in May of 2011 and we 

6 have not found anything that would question 

7 how that -- how short-term workers or 

8 temporary workers were handled. They were 

9 handled as visitors and we pretty much have 

10 found that to be the case in terms of the 

11 records. 

12 So, we would recommend closure of 

13 that issue. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: We can close 

15 that one? 

16 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree. 

18 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Number 15 is 

20 exposure from tritium leaks, and that was 

21 another petitioner issue. 

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1 You know, reservoirs began arriving 

2 at Pantex in late '56 or early '57. However, 

3 there's no mention of how tritium doses prior 

4 to '60 would assessed. So, there's a bit of a 

5 gap there in terms of tritium reservoirs. 

6 The ER indicates that Pantex 

7 tritium monitoring focused on workers of the 

8 highest likely exposure. Furthermore, they 

9 indicate this data can be used to bound 

10 tritium dose. 

11 Prior to 1972, the ER suggests that 

12 ten individuals were randomly selected per 

13 month for tritium bioassay from about 1960 to 

14 '71. However, the ER does not explain how the 

15 "highest likely exposed" individuals were 

16 selected and how they have verified this 

17 assumption. 

18 Table 5-3 of the TBD indicates that 

19 the number of workers monitored for tritium 

20 uptakes was not constant and only up to four 

21 workers were monitored per year from 1972 to 

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1 '75. 

2 But it goes on to say that -- so, 

3 there's some questions about the TBD in terms 

4 of how tritium exposures were characterized, 

5 and we go on to say that the TBD does not 

6 clearly define either the data used or the 

7 values that were derived from the data. So, 

8 there's some questions on how tritium in the 

9 early years was done. 

10 And we go on to say this issue's 

11 addressed in more detail in the data 

12 completeness and adequacy paper of April 2011, 

13 and we'll defer further conclusion until 

14 responses forthcoming from NIOSH. 

15 So, again, this is a question of 

16 data completeness. In this case, where 

17 tritium is included in that paper. So, again, 

18 this is one that would --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Still be open? 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be 

21 open, but would again be subsumed within that 

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1 review of that particular paper that was 

2 generated. 

3 To be frank, it was generated in 

4 April of 2011, right before the last Work 

5 Group meeting and we were in the throes of 

6 trying to disposition the W28 question. So, I 

7 think, you know, since this was a Site Profile 

8 question, it just wasn't picked up on at that 

9 point in time. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

11 MR. KATZ: So, this is a NIOSH 

12 response. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: To -- yes, for the 

14 paper. 

15 MR. KATZ: Right. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to go back. 

17 Item -- and there's only two more --Item 16 is 

18 badge placement, and this was another 

19 petitioner issue, and there wasn't a response 

20 that was addressed specifically in the ER. 

21 This gets to worker geometry and proximity to 

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153 

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1 radioactive materials, and in particular with 

2 the systems that were being handled. That, 

3 you know, obviously was a pretty important 

4 question and how they were handled in the 

5 early years were such that there was quite a 

6 bit of contact. So, the question of geometry 

7 was relevant. 

8 And the petitioners have stated 

9 some workers held bare pits on their laps 

10 during some work practices such as cleaning 

11 the pit surface. It was determined that the 

12 surface of a new pit could be cleaned in only 

13 a few minutes prior to assembly. It was also 

14 determined that throughout the history of 

15 Pantex operations, pits and other components 

16 have been handled in various fixtures. 

17 NIOSH acknowledges that while some 

18 workers could have held pits in their laps, it 

19 would be possible to estimate conservative 

20 doses requiring some adjustment to calculated 

21 organ doses for work in the early years. The 

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1 early years in this case being '59 to 1970. 

2 When use of fixtures for handling 

3 pits was not rigorously required, i.e., after 

4 '70, you had these frames that could be used. 

5 Before that, it's certainly, from worker 

6 accounts, likely that they held pits in their 

7 laps and that kind of thing. 

8 For pit operations that took place 

9 at waist level, the guidance of OTIB-10, and 

10 this is OCAS 2005, should apply and would be 

11 an adequate basis for any corrections to organ 

12 doses. 

13 And our response in May of 2011, 

14 SC&A still questions how NIOSH will apply 

15 guidance from OTIB-10 for a glovebox geometry 

16 to a -- that was for a glovebox geometry. For 

17 a more variable geometry such as a worker 

18 handling a pit, which is obviously different, 

19 so if the basis for an OTIB-10 is a glovebox 

20 geometry, how would that fact be applied to a 

21 much more variable situation where you're 

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155 

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1 having direct handling of a pit? 

2 That was kind of an outstanding 

3 question given that initial NIOSH response. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is still an 

5 open issue? 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I would think 

7 so. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: With NIOSH having 

9 the action. Right? 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: And maybe there's 

12 something that has superseded OTIB-10, but 

13 that's where we had left it. 

14 The last one, item 17 is the 

15 efficacy of the health physics and IH 

16 programs. This was a petitioner issue and 

17 this goes back to the 1990 Tiger Team report 

18 on Pantex which raised a number of HP and IH 

19 programmatic issues, and I think we're pretty 

20 familiar with most of those. And I'm not 

21 going to go through all of them. But, you 

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1 know, there's a litany of issues that were 

2 raised about how the IH and HP program was 

3 managed. 

4 SC&A addressed the adequacy of 

5 employee exposure records under Item Two and 

6 Seven of this matrix. The characterization of 

7 the workplace exposure conditions was 

8 addressed also under Item One. So, we were 

9 trying to parse out, of these many issues, 

10 which ones we had already addressed. 

11 Health physics support staffing 

12 levels and training, general health and 

13 safety, program inadequacies and the 

14 controlled rad sources provided valuable 

15 background information on the effect of 

16 control of the short-term, but are not 

17 directly pertinent to dose reconstruction. 

18 There was a lot of stuff that was in there on 

19 program management that didn't bear on dose 

20 reconstruction. So, we wanted to make that 

21 clear. 

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1 And maintenance of survey records, 

2 contamination records and field air sampling 

3 records were mentioned by the petitioner as 

4 being important to the dose reconstruction 

5 effort in the absence of personnel monitoring 

6 data. And we felt that was -- you know, that 

7 was something that NIOSH considers, you know, 

8 whether or not you have secondary survey 

9 records, monitoring records and field air 

10 sampling to backup dose reconstruction. 

11 That's the hierarchy of what data is relied 

12 upon. 

13 In any case, we in this particular 

14 item recommend that this be closed, and the 

15 issues that we felt important were, in fact, 

16 addressed elsewhere in the matrix. So, you 

17 know, the ones that dealt with the adequacy of 

18 -- let me see. You know, characterization of 

19 worker exposure conditions and the 

20 completeness and adequacy of the employee 

21 exposure records themselves for both internal 

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1 and external, which were three of the primary 

2 items that were cited in that particular 

3 petitioner comment we obviously addressed 

4 already elsewhere in this matrix. So, we felt 

5 this was one that could be closed as far as 

6 having been addressed pretty completely during 

7 the course of the Work Group proceedings. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I move 

9 that it be closed. 

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Second that. 

11 MEMBER BEACH: I agree. 

12 MEMBER POSTON: I agree. 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: And that is the 

14 list. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Joe, the last thing 

16 was the addendum note regarding burn area 

17 exposures, and everything has been covered on 

18 the note that you have in the matrix. I just 

19 wanted to just double check that that is all 

20 completely covered with the other items. 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, this is 

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1 addressed in the most recent analysis. Just 

2 to, again, one reason we went ahead and put 

3 the burn area exposures and the hydroshots in 

4 the most recent paper is that, one, they're 

5 germane to the early period, but, two, I 

6 didn't think we really dispositioned them 

7 completely. We had touched on, we had raised 

8 some questions, we had some dialogue. But I 

9 thought we ought to close them out. So, 

10 that's closed out relative to the most recent 

11 paper. 

12 We felt the information, the air 

13 sampling data that was available for the burn 

14 pits was, one, you know, certainly extensive 

15 enough for that time period and, two, the 

16 practices behind how they did that in the late 

17 '50s was comparable and representative of the 

18 '60s when the data was actually captured. 

19 So, the issue for us is could you 

20 take that data from the '60s and use it for 

21 the late '50s on the burn pits? And we 

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1 concluded, yes, you can because you have 

2 enough of it and the practices themselves had 

3 not changed in any degree. 

4 We have interview information that 

5 sort of supports that fact. We have the 

6 individual who was in charge of the burn pits 

7 from the '50s into the '60s. So, that was 

8 pretty strong substantiation of that. 

9 So, this was really put in here as 

10 a footnote to make sure that there was some 

11 detailed information on both the burn pits and 

12 hydroshots because, again, there was some 

13 nuances there that we thought wouldn't be 

14 captured in the Site -- I'm sorry, the issue 

15 matrix itself. So, that was tacked on the 

16 back. 

17 But, that's the reason it was 

18 addressed more fully in this latest paper. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And the only one 

20 in question is the hydroshots. The burn pits, 

21 we've determined that we've got sufficient 

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1 data to be able to cover that. That was the 

2 placement of the air sampling data, the 

3 boundaries around --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and if you 

5 read this here, this is almost the same 

6 assessment. In fact, I had looked at this 

7 when I wrote the other paper. We raised that 

8 question relative to the hydroshots. For the 

9 burn pits, we raised the question that all the 

10 sampling data came from the '60s, and so the 

11 question was whether you could retroactively 

12 apply it. And as we say in this latest 

13 analysis, we feel you can. 

14 So, we kind of -- these are just 

15 laying out the issues, but they don't really 

16 provide any conclusions. The latest paper 

17 provides the conclusions, but we do have that 

18 one hydroshot issue left. 

19 MEMBER BEACH: And I just found the 

20 last -- NIOSH's response to SC&A for data 

21 completeness and adequacy was August 5th, 

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1 2011. That's when we got that. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So, we 

3 actually have something we can use then. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Can you forward 

5 that to me, Josie? 

6 MEMBER BEACH: Sure. It's on my 

7 flashdrive. I'll give it to you off my 

8 flashdrive. 

9 MR. KATZ: So, are you saying, 

10 Josie, that some of these things that we think 

11 are not action items may already be addressed 

12 in that response? 

13 MEMBER BEACH: Potentially. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: It may be SC&A's 

15 action to close that out then. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: To look at their 

17 responses. 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we can take 

20 a read, too. I mean this going to be -- you 

21 know, it's kind of getting long in the tooth, 

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1 and so we'll take a look at the April report 

2 from SC&A and our response and how we feel 

3 about it today. 

4 And some of these things might be 

5 subsumed by events that have occurred in the 

6 meantime. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So, we'll deal 

8 with it on a joint basis and the timing of 

9 August 2011 was, of course, the W28, the date. 

10 So, I have a feeling that the response came 

11 in in the mail, but may not have been focused 

12 on at that time given the Site Profile issue. 

13 MR. KATZ: So, then it seems to me, 

14 for the Board meeting, Joe, you can give just 

15 sort of a very summary status of the TBD and 

16 let the Board know that down the road there 

17 will be a teleconference and then there will 

18 be a full presentation to the Board to close 

19 up the TBD matters. 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And it'll 

21 be much -- obviously, much more succinct. 

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164 

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1 MR. KATZ: Yes. Right. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But, yes, I --

3 MR. KATZ: But you don't really 

4 need to go into details at this Board meeting 

5 on TBD matters. 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: No. No. Just to 

7 acknowledge that we do have a few loose ends 

8 that --

9 MR. KATZ: Right. 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: -- you know, we 

11 had shifted focus to the uranium and thorium 

12 and are returning now to some loose ends that 

13 exist. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And let me bring 

15 up a question on that. Because I'd really 

16 like to keep the Site Profile issues separate 

17 from the SEC issues. I'd like to take care of 

18 them first and then maybe just have a follow19 up on the remaining issues there. 

20 MR. KATZ: Joe, I think we've got 

21 an hour and half for Pantex, too. So, we 

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165 

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1 should have plenty of time for, you know, him 

2 to give a footnote at the end about where the 

3 TBD business stands. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: So, I was just 

6 pointing out to Josie in the presentation in 

7 August before the full Board, that we 

8 acknowledge --

9 MR. KATZ: Yes. Yeah, our timing 

10 that you were saying. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, so -- yeah, 

12 again, we have to close that out. 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. So good. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Are there 

15 any more questions that need to come before 

16 the Work Group or, if not, I suggest that we 

17 adjourn the Pantex Work Group at this time. 

18 MR. KATZ: Thank you, everybody, 

19 for all the hard work and have a good day, 

20 everyone on the line. 

21 MEMBER POSTON: So long. 

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1 MR. KATZ: Bye, John. Very good. 

2 (Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the 

3 meeting in the above-entitled matter was 

4 adjourned.) 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 


11 


12 


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