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reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable 

information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed 

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cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

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

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Work Group convened telephonically at 1:15 

p.m. Eastern Time, Rashun Roberts, presiding.
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cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

2 

Present: 

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Paul L. Ziemer, Member
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3 

Registered And/Or Public Comment Participants: 

Adams, Nancy, NIOSH Contractor

Barrett, Andy, Savannah River Site

Barrie, Terrie, ANWAG

Barton, Bob, SC&A

Blaze, D'lanie, Petitioner

Buchanan, Ron, SC&A

Burgos, Zaida, NIOSH

Calhoun, Grady, NIOSH ORAU

Cardarelli, John, NIOSH ORAU

Crawford, Chris, DOL

Davy, Brad, DOE

Fitzgerald, Joe, SC&A

Frowiss, Albert, Petitioner

Gogliotti, Rose, SC&A

Gorden, Milton, SC&A

Halsey, Roger, ORAU Team

Harrison-maples, Monica, ORAU Team

Hicks, Stephen, Petitioner

Hughes, Lara, DCAS

Lewis, Greg, DOE

Naylor, Jenny, HHS OGC

Nelson, Chuck, NIOSH ORAU

Rutherford, Lavon, NIOSH ORAU

Sisko, Jeannie

Taulbee, Tim, NIOSH ORAU

Vinson, Kathleen
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cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject to change. 

4 

Contents

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health Tuesday, December 8, 

2020 1

Welcome 5

NIOSH Program Update 9

DOL Program Update 13

DOE Program Update 26

Update on Y-12 SEC Petition #250 (Oak 

Ridge, Tennessee; 1987 - 1994) 36

Board Work Session 57

Work Group and Subcommittee Reports 65

Update on area IV Santa Susana Field 

Laboratory SEC Petition #235 (Ventura 

County, California; 1991-1993) 86

Public Comment 114
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5

Proceedings

(1:17 p.m.)

Welcome

Dr. Roberts: So it's about 1:17 p.m., Eastern Time, 

time to officially open this meeting. Good afternoon 

and welcome, everyone. I'm Rashaun Roberts. I'm 

the designated federal official for the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health. And I'd like to 

welcome you to Board Meeting 137.

So let me get through some preliminaries for this 

meeting. So like the Board's meeting in August, this 

is a full Board meeting that was supposed to have 

occurred face-to-face. But due to concerns related 

to COVID-19, of course, it's being done virtually.

Today is the first half-day of this virtual meeting. 

And tomorrow will be its second and final half-day. 

Like today, tomorrow's session is scheduled to start 

approximately at 1:15 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.

All of the materials for both days of this meeting, 

the meeting agenda, presentations, and other 

documents are posted on the NIOSH website for this 

program under schedule of meetings for December 

2020.

If you'll be participating both days by telephone 

only, you can go to the website and read all of the 

materials. You can also follow along with the 

presentations. The materials that are posted were 

provided to the Board members and to staff prior to 

the meeting. 

If you look at the agenda on the website, you'll see 

there's a fair bit to cover. So there's at least one 

break built into the agenda for today. At the top of 

the agenda, there is a Skype link which will enable 

you to watch the presentations through Skype. But 
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6

I do want to advise you that you'll only be able to 

speak to the group and to hear the presentations 

through your telephone line.

And speaking of telephone lines, in order to keep 

things running smoothly, and so that everyone 

speaking can be clearly understood, I ask that each 

of you please mute your phone, of course, unless 

you're speaking.

If you don't have a mute button, press *6 to mute. 

If you need to take yourself off --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, here's a case in point. So make 

sure that your phone is on mute. If no mute button, 

use *6 to mute, *6 to take yourself off mute. And 

periodically, just check your phone to make sure 

that somehow you haven't come off mute. Because 

that sometimes happens.

Also, because we'll be unable to see each other for 

this meeting, please identify yourself before your 

comments or questions.

Let me also mention that we have a public comment 

session that comes at the end of the day today, and 

it will be between 5:30, it will start at 5:30, Eastern 

Time. It's scheduled to run until 6:30.

So I would encourage people though to be ready at 

5:30, Eastern for public comments. Because at 

5:30, we're going to go right to the public 

comments. And if we run through all of the public 

comments at the time, we will end. So it may be 

before 6:30.

We won't conclude before 5:30, but we could 

conclude at any point after that once everyone in 

the public who would like to comment has done so. 

So please join us at the beginning of the public 
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7

comment session, again at 5:30, so that you're 

assured to have your opportunity to speak.

So now we need to address conflict of interest for 

the Board. We only have one agenda item on 

today's agenda that relates to a conflict for one 

member. And that's for the Y-12 Plant at SEC 

update. And Jim Lockey is conflicted for that.

So, Jim, if you're on, you'll just need to abstain from 

the discussion, any tasking matters, et cetera, 

concerning that site, by disconnecting from the call 

at about 2:15, Eastern. 

So when we get to that agenda item, I will note, 

Jim, that you're abstaining for the record and 

remind you to disconnect from the meeting. And 

when discussion of that agenda item has concluded, 

we will find some way to get back in contact with 

you if necessary to rejoin the meeting. There appear 

to be no other conflicts to address for today's 

agenda with the Board members. 

So I'm hearing some background noise, so again, if 

you can make sure that your phone is on mute that 

would be great. 

So let's go ahead and move into roll call at this 

point. I'm going to start with the Board members in 

alphabetical order.

(Roll call.)

Ms. Adams: Excuse me, Rashaun, this is Nancy 

Adams. Genevieve, Gen Roessler is on as well as 

Richardson. They just have to hang up and call in, 

because they can't hear.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. And you said Richardson is 

there?

Ms. Adams: Yes.
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8

Member Roessler: Nancy, did you say Genevieve? 

I'm on. 

Dr. Roberts: Yes, I heard Gen. I heard Gen, I did 

not hear Richardson.

Member Roessler: Okay.

Ms. Adams: We're trying to get in contact with him.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thanks for letting me 

know. And we'll deal with his attendance when he 

actually comes in.

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: All right. So let me just circle back 

around. Has David Richardson joined yet?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Or Greg Lewis, have you been 

able to join us by telephone yet?

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I'm on. I was on the wrong line, but 

I'm here. I believe I'm on the Skype as well. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you so much. Okay. Well, 

we do have a quorum, so we can go ahead and get 

into the agenda.

Member Richardson: And this is David Richardson, 

just got on. 

Dr. Roberts: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. 

Okay, excellent. So now that we've done that part, 

let's go ahead and move on into the agenda, again, 

if you could periodically check the phone and mute 

it. If you don't have that button, press *6 to mute. 

And then take yourself off mute by pressing *6 

again.

With that, let's go ahead and move into the NIOSH 
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9

program update from Mr. Grady Calhoun. Grady?

NIOSH Program Update

Mr. Calhoun: Hi, everybody. It looks like I am not 

allowed to share my screen. It says the controls are 

disabled by policy, unless somebody else planned 

on sharing that.

Ms. Gogliotti: Grady, you have log in through Cisco 

in order to share.

Mr. Calhoun: From Cisco? Okay. All right, be patient 

a second.

Dr. Taulbee: Actually, Grady, if you want, I can go 

ahead and share my screen of your slides. And I can 

advance them for you if you'd like.

Mr. Calhoun: That would be great.

Ms. Adams: Zaida just gave Grady permission.

Mr. Calhoun: Okay, hold on here then. All right. 

Very interesting.

Well, this is not coming up. It says I'm progressing, 

but I'm not. I might have to go through Cisco, or 

Tim can do it.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, let me try then. Can everybody 

see that?

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: Yes. Thank you.

Mr. Calhoun: Sorry about that. Okay, this is a 

typical NIOSH program update. Feel free to start, 

Tim.

Okay, contracts and staffing, this is something we 

go over every meeting. And at the last meeting we 
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10

hired two health physicists. We're in the process 

right now of hiring another one, and that is due to a 

previous retirement. And that's the only contract 

and staffing news that I have at this time.

Next slide. We've also run into a little bit of a 

slowdown from at least NIOSH representation in 

workshops, town halls and outreach meetings, since 

August of 2020, we have done, that occurred or 

have been finalized that we are going to participate 

in. Same with any other outreach or workshop 

meetings.

Next. Record requests to the Department of Energy, 

we have 117 outstanding. Outstanding doesn't 

mean that they're late or anything like that. It's just 

they haven't been responded to yet. And only 18 of 

those have exceeded 60 days.

Next. Case report, these are the overall case 

numbers current as of December 3rd, 2020. We 

received 52,933 cases we can refer to as from 

Labor, for dose reconstruction, 51,040 returned.

We currently have 939 for dose reconstruction, 954 

have been administratively closed, 45,808 have 

been submitted to the Department of Labor with 

dose reconstruction, 1,679 have been pulled by 

DOL. And 3,553 have been pulled for Special 

Exposure Cohort reasons.

Next. Probability of Causation summary, overall 

45,808 dose reconstructions sent for final 

adjudication. Of those, 12,454 are greater than 50 

percent, 33,354 are less than 50 percent.

Next. Active cases, we have 939 cases right now 

that are at or in place for dose construction. Three 

hundred and seventy of those are in the dose 

reconstruction process, 169 of those are in the 

hands of the claimants for their review. And we 
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11

have 400 cases that are getting prepped for dose 

reconstruction. 

Next. This is just a little slide I started including in 

the last couple of Board meetings. It just gives you 

kind of an idea of the overall update progress of the 

program. You can see this started in September of 

'03, at least my reporting of it did.

And you can see that the red line, if you will, are 

initial cases received from the Department of Labor. 

And then the blue one is DOL returns. So that 

means that they requested -- they sent them back 

to us with the returns for whatever reason. 

Typically, it's additional cancers or modification in 

employment.

So the DOL returns have stayed pretty much 

stagnant with not a whole lot of fluctuation except 

for that time in March. That's the blue line, March of 

'07 through March of '08. That's because we had a 

big glut of returns.

And also what you'll see is a gradual decline in 

initial cases, really from the beginning of the 

program. There's that black trend line I put in there.

There's more of a significant decline in the last few 

months. But that is primarily due to the fact of 

COVID. And people aren't being able to meet faceto-face with their primary care physicians or 

whoever to get the referral started. So it's 

anticipated that these will go up once the COVID 

issues are resolved a bit.

Next slide. Okay. I'm hearing a buzzing. But this is 

what we call the age of our cases. We track how 

long cases are in our shop for dose reconstruction. 

And as you can see there, six to nine months, that's 

the one I'm usually most interested in. And that one 

went up significantly around October of this year. 
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12

But it's going down.

Basically our goal is to get all cases done within five 

months of the last piece of information being 

received. This graph does not actually reflect that. 

The numbers are based on the time the case was 

received initially.

So there's a few months lag time in there that 

allows for contact of the claimant, looking at their 

CATI, performing their CATI, getting them to review 

it, making requests of the Department of Energy for 

records.

And the Department of Energy has, I think, 30 to 60 

days to respond. So I'm glad it's trending back 

down. But in either case, we have been able to get 

close to 95 percent of all of our cases to the 

claimant within five months of the actual last piece 

of information being received for dose 

reconstruction. At that point, we can start it.

I think that's it. That is it, any questions for me on 

those?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, any questions? And if you do have 

a question or comment, please identify yourself by 

name first.

Member Richardson: This is David Richardson. What 

did you do to make that curve turn down?

Mr. Calhoun: The last one?

Member Richardson: Yes.

Mr. Calhoun: Basically, I talked to the people to 

make sure that we don't have cases sitting around 

in our queues too long. And I spoke with ORAU 

about that as well.

Due to the holidays right now, we're a little bit 
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13

short-staffed. And we also were short staffed when 

we lost a few HPs. But overall, that's an indication 

to me of what's going on.

But the goal that we have our contractor and 

ourselves work to is to get all the cases in the hands 

in the claimants within five months of getting the 

last piece of information. And we're over 95 percent 

right there.

So I've just got to keep an eye on that to make sure 

that people aren't getting overwhelmed with 

working on SEC issues and TBD issues that are 

brought up, primarily through Board meetings.

So it takes a little time to refocus, but it's 

something that I'm keenly in tune with, and it's 

something that's important to me. Because I need 

to, I like to have that number a lot lower than it is, 

even right now.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, any other questions from the 

Board?

Okay, hearing none, thank you, Grady. We're on to 

the DOL Program Update. So, Chris Crawford, are 

you still on the line?

DOL Program Update

Mr. Crawford: Yes. The situation is a little different 

than usual. Normally, I depend on Grady to show 

these slides. So I don't know in what shape we're 

in.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Taulbee: I don't know if Jim can do that or not. 

I'm going to re-log in with Cisco here. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)
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14

Dr. Taulbee: Give me just a second here. Yes, I'm 

going try. Give me just a second to make sure. I 

think it's the DOL update.

Mr. Crawford: That's correct.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, just a second. Is that viewable 

now?

Ms. Adams: It's loading, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Ms. Adams: I can see it now.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, it seems awfully small, doesn't 

it? All right. Let's see if I can't make it full screen. Is 

that better?

Ms. Adams: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, go ahead, Chris. Just let me 

know when to advance.

Member Clawson: Not really, I can't see anything.

Member Beach: Neither can I.

Member Clawson: This is Brad.

Member Beach: This is Josie, I can't, no way.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, this is Greg. I'm seeing a black 

screen.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Kotelchuck: It says all your windows are 

minimized.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. I've got to check something 

here.

Member Lockey: Yes, Jim Lockey, it looks good to 
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15

me.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes, this is LaVon Rutherford. I can 

see it fine.

Member Beach: I'm still not --

Member Kotelchuck: I can't see a thing, Kotelchuck.

Member Beach: But I have the slides up anyway. So 

I'm good.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, I am too. And I --

Member Roessler: This is Roessler, I don't see 

anything.

Dr. Taulbee: How about now, is this better?

Member Beach: No.

Member Anderson: No.

Member Beach: The only thing I see is, there's 

nothing to see right now. All presenters' windows 

are minimized, same as Andy.

Member Ziemer: Well, this is Ziemer. I'm seeing it 

just fine. I haven't touched the screens from the 

previous presentation. And it looks fine from here. I 

don't know what's changed for the rest of you.

Dr. Taulbee: I can tell you, the only thing that's 

different on my end is this is a PDF file versus the 

other one was a PowerPoint.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Calhoun: I see it now, this is Grady. I can see it 

now.

Member Clawson: This is Brad, I can see it now.
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16

Member Valerio: This is Loretta. I can see it fine.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Member Ziemer: This took longer to work its way 

out to the West Coast, ha, ha.

Dr. Taulbee: All right. I think you can go ahead, 

Chris.

Mr. Crawford: Thanks a lot, Tim. I can't see it 

directly. I'm looking at my own PowerPoint copy just 

to make it more confusing.

Let's go to the second slide, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, you're there.

Mr. Crawford: Okay. This is compensation paid, just 

an update on that. We now have paid $7.2 billion in 

Part B compensation, $5.3 billion in Part E 

compensation, another $6.3 billion in medical bills, 

and that's a total of $18.8 billion compensation plus 

medical bills. And we had 216,476 cases filed.

Next slide, please.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: This is a small one, compensation 

NIOSH-related cases, $1.66 billion for dose 

reconstructed cases of which we have 15,681 

payees. And of course, that's probably not the same 

as the number of cases we're talking about.

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, we're on four.

Mr. Crawford: Right, NIOSH referral case status. 

Our records show 53,752 cases referred to NIOSH 

for DR, and 52,148 cases were returned to DOL 

from NIOSH. Fifty-four thousand, six hundred and 
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17

twenty-seven of those were the DR, but another

6,521 withdrawn from NIOSH with no DR.

Also, we show 1,604 cases currently at NIOSH, 

we're probably using a slightly different end date 

than NIOSH's slides did, of which 1,071 are initial or 

original referrals to NIOSH, and 533 are reworks or 

returns to NIOSH.

Number 5, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay, we're there.

Mr. Crawford: Part B cases with DR and final a 

decision, here we see, both graphically and in 

numbers, we have final approvals of 12,460 cases. 

And we have final denials of 23,791. And you see 

the percentages of 35 percent approvals, 65 percent 

denials.

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: Part D cases filed, we show, I'll start 

with NIOSH in the upper right, 31 percent of the 

cases on the NIOSH side. The other category is 

defined below in smaller print. But it's beryllium 

sensitivity cases, CBD, chronic silicosis. That's 38 

percent.

As I said, now RECA is seven percent of cases filed. 

SEC cases that were never sent to NIOSH are 13 

percent of the cases filed. And SEC cases referred to 

NIOSH are 11 percent of the total cases filed.

Next slide, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: Okay, Part B cases with final 

decisions, here we have 106,247 cases with final 
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18

decision under Part B. That includes 56,948 Part B 

approvals and 50,039 Part B denials which is a 53 

percent to 47 percent split. This will, I am sure, 

include SEC cases. 

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: For this meeting, the top four work 

sites are Nevada Test Site, Savannah River Site, 

Hanford Site, and the Y-12 Plant.

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: These are SEC petition sites, some 

numbers on those. We had to divide them this time, 

so we'll see it up here again. At any rate, Y-12 has 

22,081 cases. And if you add Part B and E together, 

it's 33,540 cases, cases returned by NIOSH is 

5,393, final decisions, 9,766.

For Savannah River we have 20,441 cases under 

Part B only. We have 6,165 cases with dose 

reconstruction and 8,681 cases with final decisions 

under Part B.

Now Area IV, Santa Susana Field Laboratory, we 

have 1,110 cases under Part B. Two hundred and 

seventy-five cases have been returned by NIOSH 

with a dose reconstruction, 551 cases have final 

decisions.

Let's go to the next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: So here's the rest of the site 

information. With Y-12 Site we have Part B 

approvals, 6,014, Part E approvals, 6,754, total 
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19

compensation and medical bills paid, $2.35 billion.

Savannah River Site, we have for approvals 3,726 

Part E approvals, the former was Part B approvals 

only, Part E is 4,384, total compensation and 

medical, $1.5 billion.

And now Area IV, Santa Susana Field Laboratory, 

we had Part B approvals, 268, Part E approvals, 

256, $78 million in compensation and medical bills.

And on to the next slide, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: All right, we're on 11.

Mr. Crawford: Right. This is our usual boiler plate 

for this. We're now doing, of course, these virtual 

webinars, and quarterly medical conference calls 

and AR workshops. COVID has slowed this work 

down, I'm sure.

Let's go to the next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: All right.

Mr. Crawford: And we all know this one, this is the 

Joint Outreach Task Group for this outreach. And I 

won't go through the individual members. We do 

have monthly conference calls with all members. 

And we do conduct town hall meetings when that's 

possible. I think they're done virtually in most cases 

now.

Next slide, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: All right.

Mr. Crawford: The upcoming outreach event, the 

next one is December 9th which is coming right 

along tomorrow. That'll be from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. 

And, make sure here, yes, the registration 

information is there on the slide.
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20

Let's go to the next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: All right.

Mr. Crawford: Now, this is labeled past outreach 

event in the virtual webinar series. They give you a 

topics list including a new website tour, how-to 

guides, policy directives, program guidance, and 

resources. They also tell you about DOE records 

search, request types, site points of conflict, 

contact, sorry, and search process. And this was 

held on November 12th, 2020.

Next one, Tim.

Dr. Taulbee: Okay.

Mr. Crawford: Okay. This virtual webinar series was 

held on October 14th, 2020. And the topics included 

the resource center responsibilities, including 

operating status, claimant and AR assistance, 

outreach, provider assistance, occupational history, 

questionnaire interviews, and customer service.

Next slide.

Dr. Taulbee: All right.

Mr. Crawford: And the rest are just handout slides 

which are duplicated for every meeting, so we won't 

go into that.

Are there any questions?

Member Beach: Chris, this is Josie. Back on your 

Slide 11, I know you mentioned it on several slides, 

the virtual webinars and different meetings. Do you 

have any feedback on how those are going and how 

the attendance is?

Mr. Crawford: Unfortunately, I do not. And the 

attendance question is actually, of course, an 
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21

important one. Josie, I'll get that and send it to you.

Member Beach: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Crawford: Yes.

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer. Can you share that 

with the full board?

Mr. Crawford: Of course.

Member Ziemer: Yes. This is Ziemer again ---

Mr. Crawford: I'll send it to Dr. Roberts, and 

perhaps she can post it.

Member Ziemer: Sure.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, if you would send it to me, I can 

distribute it. 

Member Beach: Well, the other question I would 

have if there's any comments from attendees, if 

they have any suggestions unless everything's 

going great, just a curiosity of how that's working. 

Because we may be doing that for a while to come.

Mr. Crawford: Will do.

Member Beach: Thanks. 

Mr. Crawford: We'll comment on both of those 

things.

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer again. I have 

another question. I'm wondering on the medical 

compensation for a successful claimant, and I know 

going forward the medical is covered. But the 

question that occurred to me is some of the 

claimants; their claim is not approved until way into 

the process in terms of their medical bills. Are prior 

medical bills covered by the program --
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22

Mr. Crawford: As far as I know --

Member Ziemer: -- prior to their being awarded a 

successful claim?

Mr. Crawford: That I couldn't answer for sure. I 

rather doubt that. If it's an SEC case, and it's a 

quick approval, then the SEC accepted cancer will 

certainly have the medical bills paid.

If it involves a Part B case, of course, I don't think a 

non-SEC Part B case that is eventually approved 

pays until approval. I could look into that a bit 

further.

Member Ziemer: I suppose, in many cases, if a 

person had medical bills, they probably would have 

been covered either through their own insurance 

program if they have insurance coverage, medical 

insurance to their employer or, if they're already 

retired, perhaps under Medicare. But there are 

always portions of those that aren't fully covered 

also. So I just wondered whether we had looked 

back at all of them and covered those. 

Mr. Crawford: Yes. Another good question. And of 

course, often we only get the claims years after the 

cancer in the Part B case.

Member Ziemer: Right, exactly --

Mr. Crawford: And it has been identified. So usually 

those are paid, you know, at the time of service 

being delivered. And then they can make a recovery 

of anything out of pocket, I'm sure.

Member Ziemer: Yes.

Mr. Crawford: I don't know if there's a third party 

recovery involved.

Member Ziemer: Yes. Well, it's not a critical 
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23

question, but it just occurred to me. I know going 

forward, once they are a successful claimant, then 

they're covered. But I just wondered about prior to 

those.

If it's something easy to come up with, you can let 

us know, perhaps.

Mr. Crawford: I'm sure it's an easy question. I just 

will have to get together with our medical people to 

find out the answer. I'm not involved in that area 

directly.

Member Ziemer: Well, and this Board isn't really 

directly involved in that, but just by way of having a 

complete understanding of the program in there. It 

hadn't occurred to me before, so I just wondered.

Mr. Crawford: Absolutely. I'll get back to you, Dr. 

Ziemer, on that one. I could also send it to Dr. 

Roberts for the Board if that would be useful.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, why don't you go ahead and send 

it to me. Thank you.

Member Richardson: And this is David Richardson. I 

had a question which maybe follows up a little bit on 

that. 

I was wondering, for example, on Slide 7, where 

there's a description of cases, cases with final 

decisions, there seemed like there were three 

categories of terms being used. Dr. Ziemer was 

referring to successful claimants. And then we have 

some numbers you reported claims and some 

numbers you reported cases.

A successful claimant I think he's imagining refers 

to a unique individual. Could you help me 

understand? Can the difference between a claim, 

which I would imagine there could be more than 

one claim per individual, a case, in the case with a 
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24

decision, is it possible for there to be more than one 

case?

And when you finally have a case with a final 

decision, does that potentially represent multiple 

cases for the same individual before they finally 

resolve to a final decision?

Mr. Crawford: As far as I'm aware, there is only one 

case per employee. But there may be any number 

of claimants, survivors and so forth. So when we, 

on this slide for instance, we're talking about cases. 

That would involve 106,000 separate employees. If 

they have multiple cancers, that's not a new case. 

They're handled as a single case with multiple 

cancers, and a joint PoC is calculated.

Member Richardson: So could these --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Richardson: -- for these numbers --

Mr. Crawford: Yes?

Member Richardson: These numbers can change 

over time then for a final decision, just 

understanding it would be that a person could 

contest a decision, for example, or could come back 

with further information or, as you said, could 

develop another cancer.

So what you're describing here as this pie chart of 

approvals and denials could represent, for an 

individual, a long history, years or decades of 

claims. And that could shift. Is that what you're 

saying?

Mr. Crawford: Yes. One example might be skin 

cancer cases which might be denied repeatedly over 

the years. People typically develop skin cancers 

serially for those who are susceptible to them.
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25

It might not be until the 15th skin cancer that the 

PoC gets above 50 percent, let me put it that way. 

So that can take some years. But it depends on the 

cancers presented.

Member Richardson: And so is it possible for you to 

report to us how many people end up with a 

positive final decision and approval after one claim, 

or after two, or after three, and so on?

Mr. Crawford: I hate to over-promise, because I 

can't do it directly. But I will ask our support staff if 

they can come up with this. I don't know --

Member Richardson: I guess just my sort of 

impression is as you described, that there are 

people who may be spending years filing claims 

until there's finally, and so it would be, this is just 

another one of these issues of sort of the timing or 

someone's experience with the program. 

Mr. Crawford: Yes.

Member Richardson: Thank you, that's very useful 

in terms of those distinctions between people and 

claims.

Mr. Crawford: But another thing to keep in mind is 

that, for a person who is accepted as a member of 

an SEC Class, they may have gotten a payment 

based on that. But they will submit further cancer 

evidence in order to get medical bills paid for a nonSEC cancer. This is common. So that process might 

start out with a very quick payment and then go on 

for some time after that to evaluate the non-SEC 

cancer part of the Part B claim.

Member Richardson: So would that person 

contribute to, on your pie chart, an approval and a 

denial? Or are they in approval whenever they had 

any approval for anything?
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26

Mr. Crawford: As far as I know, they count as an 

approval. Now, if NIOSH hasn't seen the case, if the 

case was never sent to NIOSH, then it'll appear in 

NIOSH's records as an independent case, either as 

an approval or a denial.

There are little complications. But I think in this 

chart, what we mean by an approval is either an 

SEC approval or a dose reconstruction-based 

approval.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, any other questions from the 

Board?

Member Lockey: Just to follow-up on that though, if 

something was initially denied and then approved, it 

would move from the denial pie chart part to the 

approved pie chart, right, subtracting that?

Mr. Crawford: That's correct.

Member Lockey: Okay, thanks.

Dr. Roberts: Good discussion. Any other comments 

or questions?

Okay. So we're running just slightly behind. But 

let's go ahead and move on to the DOE program 

update given by Mr. Greg Lewis. Greg?

DOE Program Update

Mr. Lewis: All right, thanks. Hi, everybody. Can 

everyone hear me?

(Chorus of yes.) 

Mr. Lewis: Okay, good. There was a silence there 

for a second.

Tim, since you're doing such a good job with the 

slides, would you mind going through my slides as 

well.
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27

Dr. Taulbee: Sure. Give me just a second to get it 

uploaded here.

Mr. Lewis: Great. And while you're getting that 

uploaded, my plan is to basically give sort of an 

update of our situation in light of the COVID 

pandemic.

I have some standard boiler plate slides on the 

second half of my presentation, but I wasn't 

planning on going over those, although I'd be happy 

to if anyone would like me to. But those are kind of 

the typical slides that I've gone through on past 

Board meetings.

So again, I'm Greg Lewis from the Office of Worker 

Compensation Screening within the Office of Health 

and Safety at DOE. My office handles the records 

requests for EEOICPA, and then we also administer 

the Former Worker Medical Screening program.

Tim, if you'd go to the second slide. Okay. So again, 

I'm primarily going to be giving an update on DOE's 

situation with respect to COVID-19 and how that 

pandemic has, you know, affected our ability to 

respond to records requests.

In short, since March we've had a significant impact 

on some level to almost all of the DOE sites. 

Although, you know, the last time I spoke with you 

all in August, you know, things were just kind of 

easing up.

Since then, most of our sites have been able to 

make significant progress. And a lot of them have 

eliminated backlogs of claims. Although now, more 

recently in the last few weeks or the last month, the 

numbers seem to be getting a little bit worse. You 

know, so things, there are some sites that have had 

new restrictions or re-imposed previous restrictions.
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28

So the bottom line is that we are doing everything 

that we can to respond to all of the records requests 

from DOL and NIOSH. And it really varies 

significantly depending on the particular site and the 

numbers of infections in that area.

So if you'd go to the third slide. Okay --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Lewis: So again, oh, did someone have a 

question? No?

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim, I was asking what the third 

slide was showing.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, you're on, at least I'm seeing the 

right slide. It starts with site status.

So, yes, again for each site it really is different, 

depending on location. Like, some sites like the, you 

know, the Hanford site was hit early because, you 

know, the pandemic really was, I guess, started in 

the US in the Pacific Northwest, or at least that was 

hit hardest earlier on. But I think as of now they 

have no outstanding requests. So it really depends 

on the site.

And then, in general, when I spoke with you all in 

August, there were a lot of sites that were just 

starting to have access to site. You know, staff were 

able to come back onsite, maybe not full staff, but 

they were able to come back in shifts for a skeleton 

crew and access records. 

Dr. Roberts: Oh, I'm sorry.

Mr. Lewis: I'm getting some feedback.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, sorry, Greg. If everyone can 

please put their phone on mute please. We're 

hearing a lot of background interference. Thank 
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29

you.

Mr. Lewis: All right, that's a little bit better. So 

again, to talk about the long term trend basically 

from, you know, March when this started through 

about the June or July timeframe, many of the DOE 

sites were significantly impacted, maximum 

telework, many were unable to access any kind of 

paper records, microfilm records, anything that was 

physically onsite.

There were some sites that were still able to keep 

pace with the requests due to the records that they 

had electronically, whether it's data-bases or, you 

know, PDFs, things like that, that they could access 

from home. Some sites were better able to do this 

than others because of security, you know, 

requirements. But there were sort of significant 

problems being able to respond up through about 

June or July.

Around June or July, things started to turn around. 

More and more people were being let back in onsite. 

Even if the site wasn't fully operational, they were 

letting in sort of a skeleton crew into those physical 

record centers so we could pull boxes, pull 

microfilm, microfiche, et cetera.

We started to respond to claims and were reducing 

backlogs. And so we were kind of reducing backlogs 

all the way through, at many of these sites, up 

through, you know, around October or early 

November.

And then at a few of the sites, it started going 

backwards again as the numbers and, you know, 

some of the DOE site areas started to increase 

again. Sites started pulling people back offsite or 

going back to a higher telework profile.

What does this all mean? Well, right now there's 
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30

about three DOE sites that have a significant 

backlog. I'm talking more than ten requests over 60 

days.

But the remainder of DOE sites have very few, if 

any, requests over 60 days, just to -- I'm not going 

to go over site by site, but just, you know, as an 

example, when Chris gave his slide of the top four 

DOE sites by numbers of claims, I believe that was 

Nevada Test Site, Savannah River Site, Hanford, 

and Y-12, we do have fairly significant backlogs at 

Nevada Test Site and Y-12.

At both of those sites, a big reason for this is that a 

lot of the records are in offsite storage facilities and 

Federal Record Centers which have been closed. 

But at Savannah River Site and Hanford, two of the 

other larger sites, I believe we have zero claims 

outstanding over 60 days. So it really depends on 

how the records are set up at these sites. And it 

really varies.

Next slide. And I've touched on a little bit of this, 

but the ability of the sites to respond really depends 

on their records. And it's not just, even if a site is in 

maximum telework or not in maximum telework, 

that can even vary depending on the different 

department, the Medical Department, Rad, IH, HR, 

Records.

Some of those, like the Medical Department, there 

may be staff in there because of the nature of the 

work. They're more essential, and if they have down 

time, they may be able to respond to claims.

Places like a records center or HR may be all virtual, 

but they also may be able to access those records 

remotely because, you know, if they're digitized or 

electronic. So really, you know, it's hard to give an 

across the board answer for any of our sites.
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31

Next slide. And the top slide really hits on a Federal 

Record Center. There are some of our sites that rely 

heavily on Federal Record Centers. The bulk of them 

really don't anymore. Most of them have most of 

their historical records onsite or accessible 

electronically. But there are a few that really rely 

heavily on these Federal Record Centers. And we're 

at the mercy of their status.

And, you know, for the most part Federal Record 

Centers have not been shipping records since 

March. However, some of them have been open 

periodically. You know, since the July timeframe 

they've been open here and there or able to ship 

records, depending on staff.

But that's kind of out of our control. And when we're 

able to get records, we basically process as much as 

we can as fast as we can.

And to a lesser extent, there's an issue with 

classification review that really doesn't impact the 

individual records so much. That's more of a 

challenge for the large scale research projects.

So, you know, when NIOSH, or the Board, or SC&A 

is looking into special exposure cohorts or DOLs, 

trying to augment their Site Exposure Matrix, some 

of that, you know, requires a classification review.

And, you know, because of the nature of that work, 

it really cannot be done remotely. So it depends on 

who's onsite, what their workload is and, if they 

have a skeleton crew onsite, are they able to 

accommodate our requests?

So we're doing what we can to prioritize that. And I 

think, for the most part, we've kept pace. But that 

has been a little bit of a challenge during the 

pandemic.
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32

So I think the next slide there starts, sort of, my 

boiler plate, sort of the usual slides that I give. And 

I'm happy to go over those. But I guess, why don't I 

pause and take questions. And then if you'd like me 

to go over the rest, I could do that.

No questions?

Dr. Roberts: No, not hearing any.

Mr. Lewis: Okay. If there are no questions, if 

anyone would like me to go over the rest of the 

presentation, I could do that. But otherwise, I'll 

cede the time back and get you guys back on track.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Would Board members like to 

see the rest of the slides, or has this been 

sufficient?

Member Clawson: This is Brad. I'm good with it. 

We've seen this time and time again. But that's just 

me.

Member Ziemer: And this is Ziemer. We do have 

copies of the presentation as distributed. And we do 

have copies on it anyway. So I personally don't feel 

like we need to go over it.

Member Lockey: Jim Lockey, I agree with that.

Member Kotelchuck: Same, Dave Kotelchuck.

Member Roessler: And the same for Roessler.

Member Valerio: Same for Loretta.

Member Schofield: Same for Schofield.

Member Beach: This is Josie, I agree with that also. 

Thanks, Greg.

Mr. Lewis: All right. Well, thank you, everybody.
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33

Dr. Roberts: Yes, thank you, Greg.

Okay, so it looks like next on the agenda is the 

update on the Y-12 Plant SEC, after which Jim 

Lockey has a conflict of interest. So, Jim, you should 

disconnect from the meeting now and rejoin us. I 

think what we'll do is have someone give you a call 

and let you know when to rejoin. So I will note your 

disconnection now for the record.

Member Lockey: Very good, bye-bye.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thank you.

So moving right along into the update presentation 

for the Y-12, I will note here that Dr. Bill Field, he's 

the chair of the working group, but Mr. Bob Barton 

from SC&A will be the main presenter for this 

agenda item.

So, Dr. Field, I can turn it over to you if you have 

something you want to say. Otherwise, we can get 

into the presentation.

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: All right. First of all, has Bill, I did get a 

note from him that he might be joining right for this 

agenda item. Bill, have you joined us yet? I can see 

him on Skype.

Dr. Taulbee: I am wondering if he's tried to connect 

via audio Skype, Rashaun.

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

Dr. Taulbee: He might need a note to dial in on the 

phone.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. So, Bill, if you can hear, you'll 

need to disconnect from the audio on Skype and call 

in to the telephone line.
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34

Let me see, I'm not able to send a note right now. 

Zaida or Nancy, could you help out with that?

Ms. Burgos: I'm working on it. No, he's not going to 

be able, if he only has the computer audio, then 

he's not going to be able to hear you. But I'm trying 

to do that right now, send him a text through the 

link.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well, since Bill is the chair, let's 

pause and talk. And he can get on if that's okay.

Mr. Barton: This is Bob Barton. While we're waiting 

for Dr. Field, can everybody see the presentation 

slides up and hear me okay?

Member Beach: Yes, we sure can, or I can.

Mr. Barton: Okay, great.

Member Lockey: While we're waiting, I had a 

question for, I'm not sure if it's for Labor or DOE. 

We had mentioned some of the outreach activities 

that have been going on during the epidemic.

And I know that there's a lot of former workers who 

have various forms of lung impairment. And has 

there been any special effort to do outreach to 

them, or talk about services, and infection control 

efforts, or other special things that could be done 

for this large group of workers who are potentially 

at high risk?

Mr. Crawford: Sorry, I was on mute. This is Chris 

Crawford from DOL. Are you referring to only during 

outreach meetings or ---

Member Lockey: Oh, I'm interested in anything 

that's been done to address the issue.

Mr. Crawford: Right. I know we do approve medical 

equipment for people with breathing difficulties on a 
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35

frequent basis for, of course, accepted claims.

For people who are just inquiring or attending an 

outreach, I can't answer definitively. I rather doubt 

that we provide equipment in advance of an 

outreach meeting, but I can ask, certainly.

Member Lockey: Oh, I don't really mean providing 

equipment. I mean given the fact that you have a 

large number of people who, yes, you're providing 

equipment, or services, and compensation for 

known forms of lung impairment.

And recognizing that during this epidemic, 

pandemic, those people are at increased risk of poor 

prognosis or death if they do become infected, has 

there been anything tailored in terms of 

communication with them or to assist them because 

you sort of already have an established line of 

communication with these people and ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Lockey: -- you recognize ---

Mr. Crawford: And we communicate, I mean, even 

normally, before the pandemic, normally by phone, 

or fax, or letter, with either the claimant or, actually 

I should say the employee, or a representative if the 

employee has trouble communicating.

I don't know that we are doing anything, I mean, if 

they're under the care of their own physicians, both 

specialists and, you know, family physicians, so I 

would think that any protection against the 

pandemic would be discussed by the physician and 

his patient, her patient.

Member Lockey: Yes. So it's all still sort of trickled 

down to the individual or the expectation that their 

primary care providers. So there's nothing that's 

been coordinated through Labor or DOE?
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36

Mr. Crawford: Not to my knowledge. Our interaction 

is mostly to approve new devices, new treatments, 

and that sort of thing. But those are always initiated 

by the patient and the attending physician. In other 

words, we're not doing anything proactively, 

particularly about the pandemic situation. We 

depend on the medical practitioner who is on the 

site.

Member Field: Yes. I'm on the call. Sorry I'm late.

Dr. Roberts: Oh, good. Great.

Member Field: Thank you.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you, Bill.

Okay, are we ready to move into the Y-12 Plant? 

And, Bill, I was handing the floor over to you in case 

you wanted to say some words before we start with 

Bob's presentation.

Member Field: No, I think it's okay to start with 

Bob. But I think we had some very productive 

meetings. We had some petitioner, given the 

discussions with the petitioners too so we could 

understand their concerns. But I think it's fine just 

to let Bob provide the update.

Update on Y-12 SEC Petition #250 (Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee; 1987 - 1994)

Mr. Barton: Okay, thank you, Dr. Field. This is Bob 

Barton with SC&A.

Member Field: Thank you.

Mr. Barton: Again, we'll be talking about SEC-250 

for the Y-12 Plant. And while I'm giving this 

presentation on behalf of the Work Group, I'm also 

going to try to indicate where discussions are and 

the path forward, where NIOSH is at, based on our 
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37

review of the Y-12 Plant, which our review of SEC250 was released back in February.

I'd also like to recognize the efforts of Milton Gorden 

and Ron Buchanan who contributed a lot to this SEC 

review.

All right, so just a little bit of background. SEC-250 

was presented to the Advisory Board in August of 

2019. And it's sort of broken out into, the entire 

evaluated Class was from 1977 through the end of 

1994. And it's sort of broken out into three sections.

There's the recommended and accepted Class. The 

Board accepted this Class in January of 1977 to July 

1979. NIOSH did not recommend a Class from 

August of 1979 to December of 1986 and held a 

period in reserve pending the receipt of additional 

data related to thorium.

Because the basis for the recommended Class ---

I'm getting a little bit of feedback, but I'll just carry 

on if everybody's okay. Please mute your phones.

But the basis for the recommended Class was that it 

was infeasible to reconstruct thorium exposures. 

Again, that's for the 1977 to July 1979 period.

And I'd also note that the Work Group met in late 

September of this year to discuss SC&A's SEC 

review and figure out a path forward.

So our review approach at SC&A is really just based 

on, is dose reconstruction feasible to workers who 

don't have monitoring records or insufficient 

monitoring records? And we focused on thorium, 

because that's really the crux of the accepted Class 

up through the middle of 1979.

And what we really did was compare the available 

information and data that we currently have 

captured and on hand, and available for analysis, 
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38

against really just what I consider the three main 

tenets of the co-exposure implementation criteria. 

And that's completeness, adequacy, and 

representativeness. And I'll get into each one of 

these in the subsequent slide.

Also during that 2019 meeting when this was first 

presented to the Board, there were some additional 

concerns specifically regarding machinists and 

whether they were adequately monitored especially 

when they were doing work with uranium in addition 

to thorium.

And then the last bullet here is, like, okay, we're 

discussing uranium and thorium but what about 

other potential sources of exposure at Y-12?

So the processing documentation for thorium, and 

again this is captured material that's available in the 

Site Research Database, affirmed at least in SC&A 

to be within the large scale thorium where it seems 

to have ended in the 1970s. So it's essentially 

already covered by the established SECs.

But really, the captured documentation that we 

looked at, and what we really want to look at when 

we're doing this type of research is, is there more 

information about production, the management of 

thorium materials, worker exposures, and any 

incidents, things of that nature which really go to 

establishing the coverage of the internal monitoring

program at Y-12.

Regarding completeness, you want to say, you want 

to look at, all right, what locations handled the 

thorium, and how are they represented in any 

potential co-exposure model? Do we have 

monitoring records from the right locations where 

they were handling this material?

Our review identified about 14 specific locations that 
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39

were indicated as handling or processing thorium. 

But we're not at all sure that that list is exhaustive. 

And we really weren't able to find information about 

the magnitude of the source term as it maybe 

developed over time.

As I said, most of the large scale stuff ended in the 

1970s prior to the SEC period we're looking at now. 

But there were still smaller scale projects. And how 

large were they, and what was the actual exposure 

potential for that?

Also, when considering representativeness, you 

know, what types of workers, what job types were 

included in the thorium processing campaigns? So 

we looked at some interviews, mainly conducted in 

2018. But as I'll get to, subsequent interviews have 

been performed really in the last month or two. And 

I'll get into that.

But as far as job types from the documentation, 

what we came up with was a partial list. And this is 

in Table 1 of SC&A's SEC report.

And those would have been rad engineers, process 

quality control workers, procedure coordinators, 

system engineer supervisors, process engineers, 

boilermakers, plant maintenance, chemical 

recovery, machinists, which I mentioned earlier was 

of particular import during Board discussions 

previously. You also have your laborers, janitors, 

and material handlers. So a wide variety of people 

were indicated to us as having the potential for 

exposure to thorium.

We also tried to get a list of what departments 

possibly handled this. And again, this is all getting 

back to how well are these various areas, job types, 

represented in the data we have to try to 

reconstruct exposures to workers who don't have 

monitoring records.
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40

And what we found was that you really can't 

differentiate, at least with the documentation we 

have, between the thorium department codes, and 

uranium department codes. They're really 

intermingled.

But in Table 2 of our report, we came up with about 

33 distinct department numbers that appear to have 

the potential for thorium work. But is that list 

exhaustive, we simply don't know.

And that was really the impetus behind SC&A's 

Observation 1, is that our review of available 

documents that are found on the SRDB, while 

additional information was found, which is helpful, a 

lot of the documentation that we would have liked 

to see, such as possibly a list of workers involved in 

the actual thorium operations, and actual work area 

designations, and time periods, and throughput and 

such, was just not there at this time.

And we note that such information would have 

aided in evaluating the monitoring program's 

effectiveness. That was Observation 1.

In discussions with NIOSH, again back in 

September, and you'll see this is sort of a common 

theme throughout, is that basically the coverage of 

the thorium monitoring program is yet to be fully 

evaluated against the implementation guidelines for 

co-exposure development.

And so these are the types of questions that would 

have to be answered prior to accepting that doses 

to unmonitored workers are feasible.

So a little bit, again, about the completeness of the 

thorium data. What we did is we have a bunch of 

quarterly reports from the health physics 

department that list the number of in vivo counts in 

certain cases that were performed during that 
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41

quarter. And then we can take that number of in 

vivo counts and compare it to how much data we 

actually have in hand for analysis and potential coexposure development.

Unfortunately, those reports were only available, or 

at least listing the number of thorium in vivo counts 

for eight of the quarters during the period of 

interest. So they were available up through 

September of 1981.

And of course, the period we're looking at right now 

is through the end of 1986 with a reserve period 

after. So that was really Finding 1, is that we have 

limited information available to determine the 

completeness of the data we have in hand.

But I guess, for what it's worth, for those eight 

quarters we could have analyzed, we had about 95 

percent of the reported in vivo counts are available 

to NIOSH for co-exposure development.

And again, a similar theme, NIOSH has committed 

to a full completeness evaluation during the future 

formulation of a co-exposure model.

As sort of a parallel issue, we at SC&A actually 

found that there might be some additional thorium 

monitoring records that really were just coded 

under a different designation. They were shown as 

being uranium results primarily. But they also 

contained some thorium data, thorium counts 

associated with them. And so during discussions 

again in September, NIOSH intends to perform a 

formal analysis, again, of the completeness of the 

thorium data set.

Okay, moving along, another way you can sort of 

get at the completeness problem would be if you 

take a look at the number of samples you have 

during a certain period and compare it to the actual 
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42

production activities, the throughput of thorium 

materials.

You know, if you have a large amount of thorium 

being processed, you would think that at least 

during that period, or possibly in the immediately 

following period, you'd see an uptick in either the 

number of results or probably the number of 

workers involved in a thorium monitoring program, 

just based on the fact that the production was 

increasing.

We did find one reference that appeared to contain 

that throughput information. It's called the historical 

review of accountable nuclear materials at the Y-12 

Plant. However, just a key piece of information, the 

actual thorium throughput was redacted in the 

document that we had at the time of the review.

However, NIOSH has responded that subsequent 

data captures, associated with that reserve period 

after 1986, they were actually able to capture that 

data. So apparently, the throughput information is 

out there. And so we'd be able to look at that 

moving forward.

Moving onto adequacy, and when we say adequacy 

we really talk about how well does this method of 

taking measurements capture the exposure of 

interest, in this case thorium? So is the monitoring 

method adequate?

Now, interestingly for this site, the precedent has 

really already been set in that the same technology 

that was actually developed at Y-12 was used at 

other EEOICPA sites, notably Fernald.

In Observation 3, we note that in SEC-46, which 

was for Fernald, the in vivo monitoring program for 

thorium and its methods were quite well vetted. And 

so, sort of, the precedent is already there, that we 
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43

accept that the method at Y-12, which has already 

been accepted at other sites, is adequate.

Now, one sort of parallel issue is that during those 

deliberations for Fernald it was noticed that there 

was a negative bias to the data which had to be 

accounted for. And NIOSH developed correction 

factors for that.

And again, NIOSH has committed to formally 

evaluating the potential for bias as part of its coexposure development. And so they are considering 

that and looking to see if the same type of 

adjustment is necessary at Y-12.

Moving on to representativeness, the 

implementation guides generally indicate three 

types of monitoring. You have routine 

representative sampling, routine measurement of 

workers with the highest exposure potential, you 

know, basically targeting the workers who you think 

are going to have the highest exposure potential. 

And the third one would be incident-based 

sampling.

So among the thorium data, job title information 

was not available for every data point. But what we 

can do is we could match names up to a subset of 

claimants who are among that monitored 

population.

And so what we did is we classified the claimants we 

could find into 11 generic categories and just see 

how those job titles shake out, and which job titles 

were monitored more frequently, or which had the 

higher number of workers.

When strictly looking at the number of samples we 

had in our dataset, the greatest percentage was 

actually for health physics at about 28 percent. And 

then you had radiography and inspection, operators 
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44

and assembly workers which, to note, often those 

workers would also identify as machinists. And then 

you had electrical and instrumentation/maintenance 

workers.

So those would be the types of worker you would 

expect to be part of a regular monitoring program. 

That was the total number of samples. And you can 

see that actually in Figure 2 of SC&A's report. It's 

broken out into a pie chart.

We also looked at the total number of workers. And 

I guess the only real thing of note here is that even 

though health physicists had the highest percentage 

of samples, they were actually one of the lower 

number of total workers that were actually included 

in the data set.

Another thing we did is we tried to look at 

department codes. And there was a department 

code associated with each sample. So now we can 

look at the full monitoring data set, not just 

claimants. Again, but we had no definitive lists of

codes to really provide a name or location.

But we note that although there were 54 distinct 

departments associated with the thorium data, 

nearly two-thirds of all of those codes were 

associated with just five departments. And similar to 

the total number of results we have, the 

Department 2373 appears to be associated with 

health physics, and that had the highest amount of 

records.

So that's sort of to be expected based on what we 

saw when we did the claimant sub-population to 

look at job title.

But ultimately, the Department code and job title 

analysis, SC&A really could find no real discernible 

trend either way. So I really, our preliminary 
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45

conclusion here is that the monitoring program is 

likely reflective of a routine representative and not 

necessarily a targeted or incident-based program. 

And that was the subject of Observations 5 and 6.

NIOSH responded that, again, they will be 

evaluating representativeness during the 

development of a thorium co-exposure model going 

forward.

All right, moving on from thorium, we're going to 

talk a little bit about uranium. Again, completeness, 

we really looked at the same sort of exercises we 

did with thorium, and then that's to compare those 

health physics reports and the number of samples 

that were reported to have been taken versus the 

number of samples that we have in hand.

Unlike thorium, they reported that the uranium, for 

all but one quarter during this period of interest, 

and it even had some information for '87 and '88 

which were part of the reserve period, and what we 

found is that the range on any given year was about 

75 to 121 percent.

That is some years, the low for a year would have 

been 75 percent data in hand versus what was 

reported, and the high was 121 percent data in 

hand versus what was reported. The average over 

the entire period was about 98.4 percent 

completeness overall, which was SC&A's 

Observation 7, which 98.4 percent is pretty high 

compared to what we generally see in this program.

Representatives of uranium data, we really just had 

no information available to break out the uranium 

data into job title or department codes as was done 

with thorium. And so that was really Finding 3 and 

just pointing that out. We don't really have a 

method right now to be able to pull out where all 

these samples were coming from, what type of jobs 
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46

were involved, and that sort of thing.

And again, NIOSH's response, which was discussed 

in September, was that completeness and 

representation will be performed as part of the coexposure model development as laid out in the coexposure implementation guide, which was formerly 

approved earlier this year.

One other thing here is that we identified that the 

majority of monitoring was for in vitro, urinalysis 

data. But there is also a significant number of in 

vivo monitoring data as well, and we wanted to 

point that out.

And NIOSH committed to evaluating that data to 

assess its usefulness in possibly developing coexposure intakes and to assure that any intakes 

would be claimant-favorable.

As I discussed at the outset, one issue of particular 

import during Board discussions was what about 

machinists. You know, is the uranium monitoring 

program, and really the thorium monitoring 

program as well, adequate for machinists?

So what we did is we took a look at the claimant 

population again, and we found that there are about 

236 claims that are designated as machinists. And 

we found that just under half were monitored 

internally for uranium while they were also badged 

externally.

And the other thing we really looked at is like, well, 

what does this really mean in terms of dose 

reconstruction? So we looked at each of these 236 

claims and the records in their file and said, well, if 

we're just going to look at each individual claim, 

how many need a co-exposure assignment, how

many don't need one, or how many need a partial?
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47

In other words, there's a portion of their 

employment where they would likely require a coexposure, formerly co-worker intake assignment. 

And you can see under this third bullet just over 

half wouldn't even require a co-exposure 

assignment. And then about a quarter each, one 

quarter would require co-exposure for their entire 

employment, and another quarter at least have part 

of their employment that would require it.

Now, one thing that might confuse you about this 

slide is how could you have, if only 47 percent were 

monitored internally, how could you have 51 

percent would not require a co-worker assignment?

And really, the reason for that is the 47 percent, I 

considered any year in which there was dosimetry 

showing external monitoring, including non-covered 

years by DOL. But if you only considered the 

covered employment, which is obviously a DOL 

determination, that number actually increased to 51 

percent.

And NIOSH's response to this is, again, we're 

talking about is there a special category of worker 

out there that might not be covered by a generic 

co-worker model, either because their exposure 

potential has significantly increased or they're just 

simply not represented in the monitored population. 

And so this gets to the notion of stratification. 

And really, the question is do machinists or any 

other worker category, for that matter, need a 

separate co-exposure model distribution, again, 

possibly due to higher exposure potential?

And NIOSH is committing to obviously address the 

possible need for stratification. And that will come 

about when they evaluate and develop the coexposure model.
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48

So again, a common theme here is that a lot of the 

things SC&A pointed out in its review will be 

addressed. And they will be addressed by the 

development of a co-exposure model.

We do want to take a little bit deeper dive into the 

actual exposure potential for machinists. The 

previous slide I talk about how many were actually 

monitored, how many would require a co-exposure 

assignment?

But another thing we found was that we have 

airborne contamination data that was delineated 

into three categories. And that delineation was 

made by the site. That wasn't SC&A.

And you can see the three here under Bullet 1. You 

have metal fabrication, which is described as 

machining operations, so again, what is the 

exposure potential for machinists? Then you have 

two types of metal preparation, Type A and Type B. 

Type A included chemical processes, casting 

operations, rolling, and forming. And Type B was 

the chemical recovery processes.

And what we found is that those two metal 

preparation categories were really consistently 

bounding, at least when comparing the airborne 

contamination data to the fabrication activities, 

which again are described as machining operations. 

So SC&A's conclusion was that the metal 

preparation workers likely bound the metal 

fabrication work done by machinists. And that was 

Observation 9. 

Moving on again, that was thorium and uranium. 

And what about some other sources of exposure? As 

noted in, well, here in the first bullet anyway, RPRT90 is really the document that deals with this. And 

it's titled Monitoring Feasibility Evaluation for Exotic 
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49

Radionuclides Produced by the Oak Ridge National 

Laboratory Isotopes Division, which applies also to 

Y-12.

So SC&A has reviewed that report, and discussions 

are still ongoing. I know we're getting ready to 

produce a response to NIOSH's response to our 

original review on that. So again, any issues 

associated with exotic radionuclides would really be 

handled by that process.

However, specific to Y-12, one of the things that 

was noted was plutonium-241 in particular. And this 

was really borne out from the SC&A review of RPRT90. We just noted that in RPRT-90 there's a 

sentence about items requiring additional evaluation 

by NIOSH. And the quote from in there is, The one 

remaining plutonium-241 was processed and 

handled on the Y-12 campus and, as such, not 

addressed further in this document.

So we sent all that. And they said, okay, it really 

should be dealt with then in the SEC context. 

Because the prior period under SEC-250, I believe it 

was 251, but prior to the period we're really looking 

at, plutonium-241 was identified as one of the 

infeasibilities. So if it was infeasible before, it should 

be dealt with going forward. It was actually, yes, it 

was part of SEC-251 up through 1976.

And NIOSH's response was, and again this points 

back to SEC-251, not 250, which we're discussing 

today, but in 251 they determined that plutonium241 reconstruction is feasible, at least after 1967, 

based on the appearance of actual monitoring data 

for that radionuclide.

And we have some, we had a couple of clarifying 

questions on that, that we brought up to NIOSH 

during the September meeting really just to clarify 

some of the references and gain a little more 
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50

information on that.

And one of the key pieces is that it appears that 241 

might have ended in 1973. And so then it really 

wouldn't be that relevant to this SEC discussion. But 

we just want to really run that to ground just to 

make sure that that isn't a source term that we 

really need to be concerned about in an SEC 

context.

And then the last one here is that the Isotopes 

Division that really produced all these exotic other 

sources of exposure really ended production in the 

early '80s.

But D&D activities and how that would be 

reconstructed is not really addressed in the 

evaluation of SEC-250. And so we feel that it at 

least needs to be addressed in terms of how are you 

going to reconstruct any doses to D&D activities for 

a lot of these exotic radionuclides.

All right. So the ongoing evaluation activities and 

the path forward, again, we all met in September. 

And, as I said, on almost every slide all these 

findings and observations that SC&A had in our 

review are really to be handled through the process 

of co-exposure development which has to consider, 

again, adequacy, completeness, representation, and 

stratification.

Also, since the September meeting, SC&A, in 

conjunction with NIOSH and ORAU, we performed 

12 telephone interviews with former workers. One 

of them was in August. I think the remaining were 

in October and November.

There were supposed to be six additional interviews, 

but just communications were unsuccessful. We 

weren't able to really get those set up. Or if it was 

set up, you know, the interviewee just didn't show.
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51

So the notes from those interviews are currently 

undergoing classification review which is a standard 

step. And then once we get those declassified, 

everyone who was on the call will have our notes 

consolidated into a summary form. And then it's 

sent to the interviewee to confirm the accuracy, at 

which time they can also add information, take 

away information, as they see fit.

And NIOSH does continue to evaluate the thorium 

source term in that reserve period, 1987 to 1994, 

which will be, I suppose, in that upcoming 

addendum report to SEC-250.

And also, one of the things NIOSH indicated they 

were undertaking was to rebaseline technical issues 

from, I believe, their TBD reviews that occurred in 

2005 and potentially discussions in 2008, so quite a 

while ago, and to rebaseline those technical issues 

and see which ones are already handled by existing 

SECs and which ones need to continue to be 

discussed, whether in an SEC context or a Site 

Profile context.

Before we get to questions, I'm not sure, Dr. Field, 

if you would like to add anything or perhaps, Dr. 

Hughes, I don't know if you want to expand a little 

bit on some of NIOSH's activities. But this concludes 

my presentation. And I can take questions now, or 

give NIOSH a chance to speak up, or Dr. Fields.

Member Field: Lara, do you want to follow up with 

any information?

Dr. Hughes: This is Lara Hughes with NIOSH. I don't 

have much to add. So we are currently working, as 

Bob pointed out, on the Evaluation Report 

addendum that focuses on the internal dose 

reconstruction feasibility for thorium for the years 

1987 through 1994.
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52

And this is an ongoing process. There was some 

back and forth with the site to clarify information 

that was contained in the available data. This is 

currently progressing.

During the Work Group or before the Work Group 

there was this report from the petitioner that was 

submitted to NIOSH and the Work Group that raised 

several issues. And NIOSH was, during the Work 

Group meeting, tasked to provide a response paper 

to address those issues. And this is an ongoing 

process. And this response paper will also address 

the interviews that were done.

The petitioners have submitted to NIOSH 22 names 

of individuals that would have liked to be 

interviewed. And we proceeded to do this. We did 

12 interviews that were successful. And as Bob 

pointed out, this is currently in the process of the 

interview transcripts being sent to the interviewees 

where they can check for accuracy and make 

changes to it.

From past experience, this is potentially a lengthy 

process, because it relies on the individuals to be 

responsive. So we don't have a clear indication of 

the timeline. But once we have the responses for 

these interviews, this will be incorporated into the 

response paper that will address those petitioner 

issues.

And this is something that will be completed before 

the ER addendum is completed. So I'd just like to 

point out the change in timeline because of this 

additional effort.

And then after that will be the completion of the ER 

addendum and after which the additional Issues 

Matrix items will be addressed by NIOSH. That's 

really all I have. I'd be happy to answer any 

questions.
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53

Member Field: Yes. I think probably we'd take a few 

Board questions.

Member Clawson: Yes, this is Brad. So Bob, what 

you're telling me is that we're still doing the data 

completeness and adequacy check on the 

information?

Mr. Barton: Yes, Brad. I think that's accurate. Really 

what we were tasked with is to go and look and see 

what we have. And if there were any real red flags 

or, you know, where there's smoke there's fire type 

of things that stuck out to us, that would say, well, 

we don't even really think you can do a co-exposure 

model. We think there's an SEC here. 

So it's a very preliminary data evaluation, but really 

to get at whether dose reconstruction is feasible to 

the unmonitored worker, NIOSH needs a chance to 

really go and prove it against the co-exposure 

guidelines which, again, were approved by the 

Board earlier this year. Oh, I guess it was last year.

Member Clawson: Okay. I just wanted to make sure 

that I understood that correctly. Thanks.

Member Ziemer: Bob, this is Paul Ziemer. I have a 

question regarding the uranium urinalysis. I noticed, 

I forget what slide number it was, but you indicated 

that there was something like 98 percent of the 

uranium urinalysis. Yes, and I see you put the slide 

up, 98.4 percent completeness.

I wondered why that's considered an observation. 

Usually, observations indicate a concern you had. 

So it wasn't clear to me why that was an 

observation. Could you clarify what the concern is 

with the 98.4 percent.

Mr. Barton: So it's certainly not a concern. I guess 

from my viewpoint, observations could be a concern 
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54

that doesn't rise to the level of a finding. Or it could 

also be basically reporting out. I guess you could 

call it --

Member Ziemer: Okay, I misunderstood. I thought 

it was some sort of a concern. So you've used 

observation in a little different way than I was used 

to.

Mr. Barton: No, I understand. It's definitely not a 

concern in this context, no.

Member Ziemer: Got you. Okay, thanks, that helps.

Ms. Barrie: This is Terrie Barrie. Are the petitioners 

permitted to make a statement for the Y-12?

Dr. Roberts: No. There is a public comment period 

so you can make your statement at that time.

Ms. Barrie: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you. Are there any additional 

concerns, or comments, or questions from the 

Board?

Okay, I'm not hearing any. It sounded like maybe 

somebody had something. But we are scheduled 

next in the agenda for a break. But let me check in 

with you, Bill. Is there anything else that you 

wanted to do on this agenda item for Y-12?

Member Field: No. I think we're good. I look forward 

to hearing petitioners if they have comments for 

later during the public comment period.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, very good.

Member Anderson: This is Henry Anderson, just a 

quick one. Any sense of how long the process will 

go on yet? Do we have an estimated end where we 

may hear more?
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55

Dr. Hughes: This is Lara Hughes with NIOSH. So the 

current expected completion date for the ER 

addendum is at the middle of next year. But that's a 

tentative date. This is precluding any, you know, 

things coming up that we're not anticipating at this 

point.

Member Anderson: That's good. That's all I wanted. 

There's no firm date, but it's good to have a target. 

And again, if there's going to be interviews, that's 

always a challenge these days.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, anything else?

Okay, well, the next agenda item, as I was saying, 

is for a break. And that was scheduled from 3:15 to 

3:30. Is the Board, would anyone object to taking a 

break from now, which is about 3 o'clock, to 3:30 

and then resuming with the Board work session at 

3:30? It's a little bit of a longer break than planned. 

But is it okay?

Member Kotelchuck: Fine, Dave.

Member Beach: Josie, sure.

Dr. Roberts: Okay.

Member Valerio: Loretta, good.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Member Ziemer: Paul, good.

Member Clawson: This is Brad. I'm always good for 

a little extra break.

Dr. Roberts: Me too. Okay, does anyone object?

Member Roessler: This is Gen, I agree.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Very good. And Nancy, or Zaida, 

can one of you get in contact with Jim and let him 
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56

know that we'll be back on at 3:30. And then we will 

start the remaining part of the meeting with a work 

---

Ms. Burgos: I can do that.

Dr. Roberts: -- session. And I'll take roll call. All 

right, thank you.

All right, so we will see you all back at 3:30 Eastern.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 3:00 p.m. and resumed at 3:30 p.m.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, my clock is showing 3:30 p.m., 

Eastern, exactly. Remember, if you're back on the 

line, please mute your phones and make sure they 

stay muted. *6, if you don't have a mute button, 

and *6 to unmute. 

I'm going to take a quick formal roll call. I know 

that some of the members, the Board members are 

back. But let me go ahead and quickly take it. 

Anderson?

Member Anderson: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Beach?

Member Beach: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Clawson?

Member Clawson: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Field?

Member Field: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Here.
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57

Dr. Roberts: Lockey?

Member Lockey: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Richardson? Richardson?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Roessler?

Member Roessler: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Schofield?

Member Schofield: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Valerio? Valerio?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Ziemer?

Member Ziemer: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. So we do have a quorum. Let 

me just check back. Has Richardson joined yet?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, Valerio, have you joined?

(No audible response.)

Board Work Session

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well, we'll go ahead, and 

perhaps they can join as they are able. Let's go 

ahead with the Board work session.

So the first part of this is pretty straightforward. It's 

looking at our schedule of meetings of the full Board 

for 2021. 

Currently, we have one on the books for February 
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58

24th, 2021. And that will be a teleconference. And 

typically in those we simply plan for the next, 

quote-unquote, face-to-face Board meeting.

The next full Board meeting following that one 

would be April 14th and 15th. And normally we 

would be doing that in person. However, given the 

COVID situation, I am thinking that we're going to 

have to do that as another virtual meeting. And 

perhaps what we could do is have it on Zoom. But I 

do want to open that up for comment.

Member Anderson: Just back to the 24th, what time 

would that call be?

Dr. Roberts: Typically they're at 10:30 a.m. So I 

think that's what I scheduled it for.

Member Anderson: That's Eastern time?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, 10:30 a.m., Eastern. That's 

correct.

Member Richardson: Hi, David Richardson.

Dr. Roberts: Yes. Oh, hi. Thanks. Okay. So, David, 

we were just taking about the schedule of meetings. 

And I was saying that, due to some of the 

projections and predictions related to COVID-19, 

we're probably going to need to do the April 14th 

and 15th meeting virtually.

Are there any, you know, are there any comments 

or anything in response to that?

Member Lockey: Hi, this is Jim Lockey. Yes, I can go 

first.

Dr. Roberts: Sure.

Member Lockey: Perhaps I think, just for discussion 

purposes, I think this is for the Board. We're going 
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59

to have our phone call, I think, in February, I think 

you said, right?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, that's correct.

Member Lockey: So I find that having these types of 

meetings when there's complex issues is 

problematic. And I'd like to entertain the idea that 

in February we look to see what's going on with 

COVID. We see where the vaccine is, and at least 

talk about, if feasible, if it looks like things are 

opening up, and people are safe to travel, that we 

consider postponing that meeting until the following 

month or perhaps even June to have it in person.

I think these meetings leave, by Zoom or whatever, 

it leaves a lot to be desired. I think we're doing the 

best we can, but having something in person is far 

much better, especially when we're dealing with 

complex issues. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay.

Member Anderson: It could also depend on the 

agenda.

Member Lockey: That's correct. And I agree with 

that. But, you know, I think that this is lot to be, it 

leaves a lot, this morning's not an issue. But if 

there's something like Savannah River or Hanford, 

or something where there's a very complex issue 

that we've been dealing for a number of years, I 

think an in-face meeting is vitally important.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. So what --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Lockey: I would like to say, in February we 

look at it and see where we stand from a medical 

perspective in relationship to our own safety. 

Because I think a lot of us, including Brad, are old 
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60

people. And --

(Laughter.)

Member Lockey: Nothing personal, Brad, right? 

Please.

We can at least re-evaluate it, okay, and we can, if 

we have to, we'll keep the meeting on the April 

14th. But at least we can look at it again.

Member Kotelchuck: Jim, Dave Kotelchuck. The only 

concern I have is that I believe it will be difficult for 

Rashaun and her staff to arrange a meeting site 

from February 24th to April 14th.

I think, in a way, if we are going to make a decision 

to go in person, probably the April 14th, 15th 

meeting will have to be delayed for at least a 

month, just because it is so difficult making 

arrangements. 

Member Lockey: I agree with you. I leave that up to 

NIOSH. But if we have to postpone it, in February 

we can say it looks like the country's going open up 

and be safe in May or June.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes. Yes, I think that's right.

Member Lockey: Okay. And I think that's probably 

when it is going to be safe. I mean, I'm not going to 

delay getting my vaccine; as soon as I'm satisfied to 

where I should get it, I'm going to get it. And the 

data out for the vaccine looks like it's very robust. 

So I just want to throw that out for consideration.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

Member Ziemer: This is Paul. I think it may not end 

up being our decision. The CDC may have in place 
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61

some particular policy, pro or con, at that time. So 

we may have to depend on what the CDC allows 

travel-wise for its staff, and its contractors, and its 

consultants.

But I think you're right, we may have to wait until 

February and discuss it again and see where things 

stand.

Member Lockey: That's all I'm saying, Paul, I would 

like to raise the issue in February again.

Member Ziemer: Okay. I'm open to that too.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, so it sounds like most are in 

agreement that we should, in the February 

teleconference, we just re-evaluate whether or not 

we need to delay and have things face-to-face or if 

it looks like we need to go forward with the virtual 

meeting in April. So does that pretty much sum it 

up?

Member Lockey: Yes.

Member Clawson: That's correct.

Member Beach: That makes sense.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Yes, and I think a lot of 

good points have been raised about us needing 

enough lead time to book hotels, and get the 

locations. And also the CDC policy around travel is 

also a major consideration as well. So we'll talk 

about it further in February as suggested.

Okay, so beyond April 14th and 15th, we do have a 

teleconference, another full Board teleconference 

tentatively scheduled for June 23rd. Again, I try to 

have all the meetings started about 10:30 a.m., 

Eastern.

And then in terms of the next face-to-face meeting, 
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62

I'm assuming that by August of next year we will 

actually be able to meet face-to-face. So I'm 

optimistic that that will be the case. And we've 

tentatively got August 25th and 26th tentatively 

scheduled for that.

Member Beach: Yes, Rashaun, this is Josie. I 

actually have the 18th and 19th, so that date must 

have changed to the 25th, 26th. Is that correct?

Dr. Roberts: You have the 18th and 19th?

Member Beach: Yes, that's what I had listed from 

our last call.

Member Field: Yes, this is Bill. I have those.

Member Roessler: I have that too.

Dr. Roberts: Hum.

Member Roessler: The 18th and 19th.

Dr. Roberts: Interesting.

Member Beach: Either one is fine. I just wanted to 

make sure we're all on the same page.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well, I could do either week. Is 

there a preference? Because I have it on mine for 

25 and 26. I don't know if something got changed 

along the way, but we could certainly have it the 

18th and 19th if that's preferable.

Member Ziemer: Somebody raised a question 

before on the later date. I don't remember what it 

was.

Dr. Roberts: What is that --

Member Richardson: I thought it was Dr. 

Kotelchuck.
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63

Member Kotelchuck: I had raised concerns about 

the 18th. And I do actually have the 25th and 26th 

down, only because with schools opening earlier and 

earlier we often go out with the grandkids earlier in 

August. So I would prefer the 25th, 26th.

But given the way things are, I'm more than open 

to, at this stage, to going to 18th, 19th, depending 

on our mutual will.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Does anyone have an objection 

to the 25th and 26th?

Member Beach: No, not at this time.

Member Clawson: This is Brad, I don't.

Member Kotelchuck: Looks good. 

Member Valerio: This is Loretta ---

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Valerio: -- works for me.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, sorry.

Member Ziemer: This is Paul, it works for me.

Dr. Roberts: Okay.

Member Clawson: You know, you may want to talk 

to Lockey. Because, you know, the world seems to 

rotate around him anyways, so, oops.

(Laughter.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Gen, did you want to weigh in?

Member Roessler: Yes, am I, can you hear me?

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: Yes.
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64

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: I'm sorry, a few people were talking.

Member Roessler: I'm okay with the 25th and 26th.

Member Lockey: Jim Lockey, I'm okay with the 25th 

and 26th also.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Was someone else speaking in 

the background? It sounded like a few people were 

talking at the same time.

Member Roessler: This is Gen. I'm okay on the 25th 

and 26th.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, got it.

Member Valerio: This is Loretta. I'm okay on the 

25th and 26th.

Dr. Roberts: Perfect. Okay. Well, it sounds like 

we've got those dates nailed down well into 2021 

with the understanding that we will talk in February 

about whether or not it's feasible to have the next 

face-to-face actually face-to-face.

Okay. Well, are there any other questions or 

concerns about the meeting schedule?

Member Beach: The only thing I would say is if we 

cannot meet in April face-to-face I would hesitate to 

not have a meeting, especially when we already, we 

would have to push it out, I'm sure, a couple of 

months because of the scheduling part. 

Member Kotelchuck: Oh, yes.

Member Beach: Anyway, just a thought on that.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. All right. Well, it sounds like, you 

know, it will depend on a number of different 

variables to be assessed in February. So we'll see 
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65

where we end up.

Okay, any other concerns or questions about the 

meetings?

Okay, hearing none, I think we need to turn to our 

Work Group and Subcommittee reports. I do know 

there are a number of chairs that have reports. So 

I'll let you guys start.

Work Group and Subcommittee Reports

Member Clawson: This is Brad. We're going to have 

a presentation tomorrow with SRS, so that one will 

be taken up tomorrow. And I want to go over, we're 

still collecting data for the Nevada Test Site, as 

Greg mentioned today. I think we're still doing 

some final up work on Fernald. Is that correct, Tim?

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim --

Mr. Barton: Yes, this is Bob Barton. I believe 

Fernald, with all the Site Profiles, I think that's been 

essentially closed up. I mean, the only thing left to 

do is to have the documents appropriately revised. 

But I think all the issues have been settled. Is that 

your view on it, Tim?

Dr. Taulbee: That's correct. The current open action 

items that we have, whether it is in the open items, 

it is revising the TBDs. And that is currently 

ongoing. And so I don't have the dates for when 

those TBDs are going to be completely finalized at 

this time, but we are working actively on that.

Member Clawson: Okay. Yes, that's kind of where I 

was at. And as soon as those TBDs are revised and 

stuff, SC&A's going to review it per our 

requirements and go from there, correct, Bob?

Mr. Barton: Yes. It would essentially be to verify 

that any suggestions, or not suggestions, changes, 
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66

the changes agreed upon by everyone involved are 

correctly implemented in the revision. That's really 

just the last step.

Member Clawson: Okay. And, Chuck, I think that 

you're on. Where are we sitting at with Hanford 

right now? I think we've finished up all of the, we're 

just getting everything all put together. I think most 

of our issues are completed, correct?

Mr. Nelson: Yes, that's correct. Basically we're going 

to start co-worker evaluations very, very soon.

Member Clawson: Okay.

Mr. Nelson: So that's where we are with that. That's 

what's remaining.

Member Clawson: Okay. And I appreciate you 

keeping me apprised of the process that's going on. 

That's been helpful for me. I appreciate that, Chuck.

Mr. Nelson: Okay, thank you.

Member Clawson: So that covers most of my sites.

Member Kotelchuck: The Dose Reconstruction 

Review Subcommittee. Rashaun suggested that we 

might (audio interference) more than usual, give a 

bit of a report, an informal one today. And so I do, I 

can talk a little about it, and if it would be useful for 

five minutes or so.

I realize that the last report we gave was in 

December of last year, before you, Rashaun came 

on board as the Designated Federal Officer. I might 

just repeat one or two items, and also to bring to 

the attention of the Board, even though it was read 

and passed, but just to say a couple of nice things.

First, last December we reported a total of 498 dose 

reconstruction review cases that we had done and 
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67

32 blind reviews out of a total of 48,089 dose 

reconstructions completed by NIOSH. So that gave 

us a 1.04 percent rate of review, and that's been 

our goal and continues to be our goal which was set 

by the Board, that the Subcommittee review one 

percent of all NIOSH dose reconstructions.

And just to emphasize something, people -- this is 

something I think we can be fairly proud of as a 

board, that since 2002 in terms of the dose 

reconstructions, there has only been one single case 

where the Subcommittee compensation decision 

was determined to be different than NIOSH's.

Out of -- so out of the 498, there was one where 

there was disagreement, and the disagreement 

came because in fact there was new information 

that came in after the original comp decision was 

made. So if you will, if there was a disagreement 

rate, it is .02 percent. It's fairly impressive. I mean 

we haven't had a disagreement, a disagreement 

that changed the compensation decision, or debate 

about it to change it for many years.

Basically the other, the other really major emphasis 

that we've had or new emphasis that we've had 

certainly since I've been on the committee and the 

chair was we reported last December 32 blinds, up 

to and including Set 24, and out of the 32, the comp 

decision for 30 of those 32 cases was the same by 

both NIOSH and SC&A.

The one case was given to the Surrogate Data 

Committee, which upheld NIOSH's effort. So we can 

say that as of last December, there was not a single 

blind case in which the NIOSH, the original NIOSH 

dose reconstruction was not upheld. 

So that's a pretty good record. Since last December, 

we've done -- we have done another set of six, and 

then we are in the middle of another set of six in 
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68

Set 28, three of which have been completed. And so 

by our next meeting on February 25th, we'll have 

44 blinds done.

Now once we -- once we began doing more blinds, 

there were really -- before 2015, there were only 

two blinds that had been done. So we're really 

doing a steady, a steady stream of them. Before 

they -- let me just see, one second. My point, wait. 

Excuse me one second. Let me catch my --

something I wanted to say about the blinds.

Basically, oh yeah. We have been, we have been --

in choosing blinds, we look for cases that were 

evaluated, dose reconstructions that were done 

under best estimate, and for PoCs between 45 and 

52 percent. But as we've been doing more and more 

blinds we have also been choosing more and more 

difficult cases, in the sense that we've been 

choosing -- we've been choosing blind cases where 

the PoCs were within, typically often within one 

percent of 50 percent.

So even the slightest difference between NIOSH and 

SC&A might well give a difference of compensation 

decision. So we are now having a few cases and 

we'll report on them later, at some later time, when 

we finish our next set, where there are 

disagreements. But the disagreements reflect 

simply the variability in -- the slight variability in 

dose reconstruction determination.

So we're, I think we're both doing lots of blinds. 

These are very important to show that we are doing 

work consistently, and that the work that we're 

doing is reliable and consistent, and that's very 

good. So that's --

And then the other news for our Subcommittee is 

that we determined after the last report that we 

had, we were going to try to speed up our review of 
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69

just regular cases. Not blinds, just regular dose 

review, dose reconstruction cases by splitting them 

up into two categories. Category 1 was really fairly 

easy decisions because basically they're ones in 

which NIOSH and the SC&A agreed, or after some 

discussion agreed.

And so we were able to do a lot of them very 

quickly, and that leaves us more time for the 

Category 2s, which are more difficult because there 

is disagreement or either of the groups wishes us to 

consider some matter that they want to bring before 

us. 

So we're, I think we're moving right along and, you 

know, we have an active Subcommittee. Josie, 

Brad, Jim, David Richardson and Loretta, and of 

course we are helped by Rose Gogliotti from SC&A 

staff consultant. So that's sort of where we're at 

right now, and we'll be bringing a report on the 

blinds to, probably to the Board in the next, after 

our next meeting, which is on February 25th of next 

year. Okay, thanks. If there are questions --

Dr. Roberts: Thank you.

Member Beach: Rashaun this is -- are we ready to 

move forward? I don't want to step on questions. 

Dr. Roberts: Sure. Does anyone have any questions 

before we move on to Josie, the Dose 

Reconstruction Subcommittee?

Ms. Gogliotti: This is Rose Gogliotti. Can I just point 

out that we will be doing our one on ones? In the 

next month or so we're going to get started, so 

please look for my emails and respond with 

scheduling questions, comments. I would appreciate 

that.

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, right.
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70

Member Beach: Oh Rose, I -- can I follow up on a 

question for Rose? How are we going to do the one 

on ones? Have you guys determined how we're 

going to pair up for those?

Ms. Gogliotti: Rashaun, you can do the tasking on 

that.

Dr. Roberts: Yes. I will be working on that later this 

week. 

Member Beach: Okay, because we had some 

discussion on how we've done it previously and how 

it was done the last time, and I was hoping that 

that was going to be tweaked and not -- anyway, I 

think we had some comments on that at our last --

Ms. Gogliotti: I think we're hoping for three to four 

cases per call, and then the Board members would 

partake in two calls.

Member Beach: Okay, that sounds great. Thanks.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes, good. Okay.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well, hearing no additional 

questions or concerns, Josie, I think you can go 

ahead.

Member Beach: Okay. So I have five sites I'm going 

to report really very briefly on. The first one is 

LANL. We do have a Work Group scheduled for LANL 

on February 4th of next year. We have two 

remaining SEC issues for the time period of 1995 to 

2005 at LANL.

We have the 1999 LANL assessment that led to the 

non-compliance tracking system report. We refer to 

it as the NCID-484. The issues include data gaps for 

bioassay enrollment and drops of specific bioassay 

participation. NIOSH had a path forward that we 

discussed at our last Work Group meeting last year, 
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71

to determine the compliance with the bioassay 

requirements.

We had questions. Is it even feasible to conduct the 

sampling plan at LANL from 1996 to 2001? Are the 

RWPs available? NIOSH agreed during our last call 

to develop a sampling plan and submit it to the 

Work Group. This was actually due in November of I 

think it was 2020. LaVon, if you're on. I was trying 

to remember if it was 2019 or '20 that that was 

due.

Mr. Rutherford: It was actually due, yeah. Well, it 

was actually due in November of this year, but 

actually what we determined was that we did not 

need a sampling plan, that we could actually -- we 

had access to all the RWPs and we were going to 

pull the data from all the RWPs for analysis.

Member Beach: Oh, that's right. Okay, great. And 

so now our next meeting we will have that plan, and 

we as a Work Group will be able to -- it's not a plan, 

but we'll be able to look at what NIOSH will put 

forth. 

The next one is the mixed activation products and 

exotics. NIOSH is to compile in-house the data that 

they had on hand, and they were waiting for the 

site to send the other data sets to analyze. Those 

were held up because of COVID, and I believe they 

have all those in-house, in hand now as of what, 

November LaVon or first of -- did you get those last 

ones?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. I think it was in November 

period, October-November time period. I did 

misspeak. We were to have that sampling plan last 

year, but when we were held up with the site 

getting the data and then the COVID hit in March, 

and that pushed us off on getting that. 
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72

So we had anticipated -- we've been waiting on the 

site for some period of time. We did get all the data 

for the RWPs and the mixed fission activation 

product samples as well back October-November 

time period.

Member Beach: Yeah, and those all -- both of those 

are due to the Work Group in mid-December of -- or 

out --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah.

Member Beach: Right?

Mr. Rutherford: Yeah. Well, we were hoping midDecember. I'm going to get the update on that 

because we were having some difficulties on getting 

the last of that data downloaded. I need to check on 

that and get back to the Work Group within the next 

few days.

Member Beach: Okay. Yeah I just realized it is midDecember. And SC&A needs to have that in plenty 

of time. So if we need to push back our February 

meeting, we probably need to know that like you 

said, within a couple of days.

Mr. Rutherford: I'll get that to you.

Member Beach: Yeah, good. I want to make sure we 

have plenty of time for response. Any questions on 

LANL? Joe, anything to add?

Mr. Fitzgerald: No. I think that covers it pretty well, 

and we'll certainly look for the data when it's 

available.

Member Beach: Great, okay, thanks. On Metals and 

Controls, our last Work Group meeting was held in 

September on September 2nd, and we do have 
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73

another meeting scheduled for January 13th of next 

year. 

There are several open items. I started to kind of 

try to write this up, but there's some disagreement 

within the Work Group on how the plan is going to 

take, how the modeling is going to take place 

between SC&A and NIOSH.

So the Work Group really wants to know the finetuning of how we're going to do or how NIOSH is 

going to do some of this dose reconstruction. 

We still have a couple of SEC. We haven't actually 

voted on that SEC issues. So the Work Group has 

some work, and I'm hoping that we will have some 

clarity and will be able to bring this to the Board in 

April. If not April, it will definitely be by August. So 

we're getting close.

LaVon, and I was going to say that it's written up in 

the DCAS coordination, all the different items, and 

LaVon and I have sent emails back and forth on 

some items, to make sure that the Work Group or 

NIOSH understands what we're looking for. So I 

think we're clear. Anything else to add, LaVon?

Mr. Rutherford: No. I think you've covered it. Like 

you said, we're pulling the whole dose exposure or 

the dose modeling picture into one, and basically 

like how we would complete a dose reconstruction. 

We're pulling that all together, and we also had 

additional items that we were tasked with and as

Josie mentioned, we went over those and I think 

we're on track.

Member Beach: Thanks. Yeah, this has been an 

interesting site, to say the least. So any other Work 

Group members want to comment on Metals and 

Controls? No, no.
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74

Member Kotelchuck: Dave, no.

Member Beach: Okay. Thanks, Dave. 

Member Valerio: Loretta, no.

Member Beach: Okay perfect, and I'm not hearing 

from Andy so --

Member Anderson: Nope, I'm good.

Member Beach: I think we're on track for our next 

Work Group meeting in January, and hopefully we'll 

move on from there. So Brookhaven is one of my 

sites. We're just waiting for the OTB-0048 to be 

updated. That's not due until June of 2021. Yeah, 

and Mound, we have been waiting for the external 

TBD for several years. It's a low priority, and I don't 

actually even have when that's due. Does anybody 

know for Mound the external? All the others are 

completed. 

Dr. Taulbee: This is Tim. The Mound external, the 

issue is finalizing the neutron dose reconstruction 

methodology from that standpoint, and that work is 

ongoing right now. So there's some evaluation of 

that, the final time period. 

I believe it's 1971 to '77 time period. So that's 

where the holdup has been and as you indicated it 

has been kind of a lower priority, and as people 

have time they are working on that to update that 

TBD.

Member Beach: Great, and once that's out, I'm sure 

SC&A will look at that review, and the Work Group 

can set a call for that. Thanks, Tim. My last one is 

the Procedure Subcommittee. We've met a year ago 

or it's probably been a little over a year. 

Our next meeting is scheduled for February 18th. 

We have an agenda that, Rashaun, I know we were 
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75

looking at it the last couple of days, and Rashaun 

sent that back out to Kathy for review, and that 

should be finalized in the next couple of days. So 

that's all I have.

Dr. Roberts: Thanks, Josie. Any questions? Okay, 

hearing none, who else would like to report?

Member Roessler: Well this is Gen. I think it would 

be okay for me to report on ORNL, based on my 

overhearing Bob Barton's report this morning on --

or was that this afternoon on Y-12. As you know, 

NIOSH produced a major report on the ORNL exotic 

radionuclides. 

This was turned over by the Work Group to SC&A, 

and according to what Bob said this morning in his 

report on Y-12 and of course there's overlap there, 

SC&A is getting ready to respond to the NIOSH 

evaluation. So assume that means that soon our 

group will be able to meet again. I think if Lara's on 

the phone, she might know more, or maybe Bob is 

the best source on that timeline. 

Mr. Barton: Well, this is Bob. I might want to defer 

to Joe a little bit on this, but yeah the report on 

exotics was reviewed by SC&A, and NIOSH has 

provided responses to our review. We've responded 

to the responses, so it's probably about time to sit 

down and really kind of hammer these things out. 

Joe, if you're there, I don't know if you want to add 

anything to that. But I think that report is probably 

-- I'm not sure if it's -- it still needs to go to DOE, I 

believe.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yeah, I think to answer your 

question, you're quite correct. It's completed from 

our standpoint. Just requires ADC review and final 

editing. So it's about to be issued. 

Member Roessler: Okay. That's all I think we have 
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76

on that then. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you. Any questions or 

comments? Okay. Any other Work Group or 

Subcommittee updates?

Member Anderson: I can -- this is Andy. I can give a 

quick update on the URAWE and the SEC Issues 

Work Groups. For our URAWEs, I think we're waiting 

for some TBDs to be finalized and so we're moving 

along there. I don't remember if we have another 

site being assigned to our group and there was 

some discussion, but at least that hasn't happened 

yet.

On the SEC issues, we got involved with the 

Savannah River Site that we're going to talk about 

some, specifically addressing the coworker models 

issue. I think there were some at the last -- at the 

November Savannah River meeting, I think there 

was some discussion that some of the reports that 

are on model issues that were raised in actually 

reviewing the guts of the models, might need to be 

gone over again or presented specifically for work 

by the SEC Work Group, Issues Work Group.

I don't know if NIOSH has any thoughts further on 

that. Do we need to do that or -- I think our 

conclusion for the group was that we actually got 

involved with the Savannah River Site because that 

was to be sort of a test case, you might say the 

best test case because of the fairly extensive data 

available, and I think we thought that the approach 

used there was feasible.

But the issue really has come down to it really has 

to be looked at, whether the data to be put into the 

coworker models is adequate on a site-by-site basis. 

So we didn't sign off on this is now a basic tool to 

be used in coworker models, but it is something to 

be considered and looked at and then see if it does 
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77

meet the criteria that have been established. There 

are some disagreements on some of that.

Dr. Taulbee: I believe that's correct, Dr. Anderson. 

This is Tim Taulbee. I do think, and correct me if 

I'm wrong; maybe I'm misremembering here. 

But I did think that the -- one of the tools, one of 

the methods, multiple imputation, was discussed 

and was kind of decided upon that that was a 

reasonable tool to be used going forward. I think 

that was one of the outcomes.

Member Anderson: Yeah, I think that's -- yeah. I 

think you're right. But again that is --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Taulbee: Okay. Now whether we present that to 

the whole Board, that's up to your group.

Member Anderson: Yeah, yeah. 

Dr. Roberts: I'm sorry, I didn't hear that last 

exchange.

Dr. Taulbee: Oh, this is Tim.

Dr. Roberts: Can you repeat what you just -- uhhuh.

Dr. Taulbee: Sure, this is Tim. As to whether we 

present that methodology, the multiple imputation 

to the full Board or not, I don't know that that's 

necessary or needed because everybody seemed to 

be in agreement on that. But if you want that, that 

is certainly something we could do in the future.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you, and Henry, were you 

saying something too?

Member Anderson: I was just saying when he said 

that imputation model had been discussed, and we 
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78

found it to be a tool that could be used. Since our 

group has dealt with the coworker model things 

probably more than some of the others, I guess I 

would leave it. 

I'm not sure that that needs to be presented to the 

whole Board unless there's others that would like to 

become more familiar with it, because it's a kind of 

thing when, if it's going to be used on a site and it's 

part of the SEC determination, then on a sitespecific basis, it will come up and the Board will 

need to hear about it. 

So I think we want to be sure that the Board is 

familiar enough with it and comfortable that, when 

it is presented, we're not now going way back to is 

this an appropriate tool or not. So that would be --

Member Clawson: Hey, Henry? This is Brad talking. 

I think that we've got to bring that before the 

Board, because the whole Board needs to 

understand what this is and how it's going to be 

implemented, because all --

Member Anderson: Okay, well, that's fine. I mean 

I'm comfortable doing that. There's only three of us 

on our Subcommittee, so I think we're somewhat --

I think your Savannah River group is somewhat 

familiar. But I think it probably would be a good 

idea. We'll see after tomorrow's discussion as well, 

because it's one of the key issues related to 

Savannah River on the adequacy of the data.

So I think it might be -- it might be something 

worth looking at. I think that could be done on a 

conference call or issues like we're dealing with 

now. So if we're looking for not being able to go 

face-to-face in April, that might be something to put 

on the agenda, to have that presentation and 

discussion there.
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79

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thank you. Are there any 

other questions or comments about Henry's report?

Member Anderson: I don't know if we have anything 

new on Sandia. 

Mr. Fitzgerald: Yeah Henry, this is Joe Fitzgerald. 

We just issued a OUO version to the Work Group 

and NIOSH a couple of days ago actually, and the 

Sandia report's been finished for a while, but was 

held up pretty much COVID-related issues. 

It's taken a long time for ADC review and it took 

certainly a fair amount of time for the interviewees 

to approve the summary of the interview we did last 

January, just because of the mechanics of, you 

know, of getting ahold of them and having them 

respond.

So you now have that. It's an OUO version, but we 

expect that to be releasable once Sandia confirms 

the redactions that we had to make in it in the next 

couple of weeks.

Member Anderson: Okay. So that's probably 

something to bring to our Work Group.

Mr. Fitzgerald: Certainly. I mean it's -- like I said, 

we pretty much completed our review and provided 

our conclusions. You now have that, so it's 

essentially finished from our standpoint.

Member Anderson: And is NIOSH going to comment 

on it?

Mr. Nelson: Yeah. This is Chuck Nelson. The 

intention -- we got the document, and our plan is to 

provide a response to the Work Group to the report 

that SC&A provided. There's like one finding and I 

think four or five observations. We will provide a 

written response to that and get that to the Work 

Group. We're projected to have that done in March 
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80

of 2021.

Member Anderson: Okay. So then after that, just for 

the group's enlightenment, probably early April or 

the end of March when you get your data. We may 

want to schedule a meeting, Rashaun.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. 

Member Anderson: That's it. Those are my three.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Have we gotten everyone at this 

point? 

Member Ziemer: This is Paul Ziemer. I can give a 

brief report on Lawrence Berkeley.

Dr. Roberts: Okay.

Member Ziemer: Yeah. Lawrence Berkeley has 

ongoing work on the Site Profile. The Work Group 

last met just a year ago in November, but in 

January of this year there was a data capture effort 

by NIOSH and SC&A together, and NIOSH has been 

working on follow-up on that.

I got a brief report from Megan Lobaugh of NIOSH 

actually this morning, just to give me an update on 

where NIOSH is on this. It's a very brief report, but 

I'd just like to read it into the record. She says, I 

am writing to provide a brief update on the tasks 

from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 

Work Group that NIOSH has been working on since 

the last Board meeting.

The Board reviewed more specifics on these tasks 

as agreed to at the November 2019 Work Group 

meeting. In short, research efforts continue in order 

to more fully respond to the SC&A issues on the 

TBD, as well as the SC&A issues on the NIOSH 

White Paper entitled Method to Assess Internal Dose 

Using Gross Alpha Beta and Gamma Bioassay in Air 
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81

Sampling at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Then she goes on to say NIOSH is determining 

whether additional data requests and interviews will 

help to further refine our responses. We will keep 

you updated on the specific tasks as progress is 

made and any responses are completed.

So basically -- and that ends her report. Basically 

it's an ongoing effort by NIOSH to update the TBD 

and will have further efforts then by -- for SC&A to 

review those responses, as well as for the Work 

Group to interact. And that's my report.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you, Paul. Just as a reminder, 

I'm hearing some interference in the back. So if you 

could mute your phones if you're not speaking, that 

would be great. Okay. So thanks for that report, 

Paul. Are there any questions or comments about 

Lawrence Berkeley? Okay. Are there any additional 

reports, or have we covered everything for today, 

for Work Groups or Subcommittees? 

Member Schofield: Yeah, this is Phil. We're going to 

-- I'm sure everybody's aware of this on the agenda 

for this afternoon for Santa Susana/DeSoto Field 

Labs. We met in October. There were a number of 

things submitted by CORE Advocacy for us to go 

over and SC&A and NIOSH looked at some of these. 

So I believe Bob Barton will be this afternoon going 

over those. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Schofield: So and then INL, INL we have 

not met since back in July. It's probably time we 

need to follow up with SC&A and NIOSH and see if 

we have enough at this point to schedule a Work 

Group meeting, and that's really all I've got at this 

time. 
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82

Dr. Roberts: Great, thank you. Any questions? 

Okay. Any other Work Group or Subcommittee 

reports, or are we done? Okay. I did want to 

mention, for lack of a better word, that the Pinellas 

Work Group has been resurrected. Phil has kindly 

agreed to be the chair. Other members from the 

Board are Beach, Clawson and Anderson.

For SC&A, Bob Barton will be in that group and 

Laura Hill, Lara Hughes for NIOSH will be on that 

group as well. So I just wanted to let you know.

Mr. Rutherford: Rashaun, this is LaVon Rutherford. 

Actually Megan Lobaugh will be our lead for Pinellas. 

Dr. Roberts: Oh, okay. Let me change that.

Mr. Rutherford: We changed that on you. I 

apologize.

Dr. Roberts: No problem. Thanks for letting me 

know. Are there any other questions or corrections 

or anything to that? Okay. Well, we have about 

eight minutes until the next agenda item. I just 

wanted to give a brief summary of the August public 

comments. I believe they're comments from our 

meeting of the 26th, I think was the day that we 

had the public comment session.

Most of the comments were focused on monitoring 

at the Y-12 plant and difficulties related to obtaining 

employment records to support claims. So I think 

those were the majority of the comments. No 

comments, written comments were received for this 

meeting, just to provide you with that update as 

well.

Okay. So we have about a few minutes before we 

start. Do you want to just briefly check out until 

4:30 and then we will open up with the update on 

SSFL and DeSoto?
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83

Mr. Calhoun: Rashaun, this is Grady. I was listening 

when we were discussing the August potential 

dates, and there was a conflict there and that's why 

that was brought up, and that's why everybody else 

has that other date on their calendar. 

So I think that we agreed at least tentatively on -- I 

have to pull up my calendar here, but I think it was 

like the 14th and the 15th, because we have several 

-- 18th and the 19th, yeah, because we have 

several people out the 25th, the whole week of the 

23rd through the 27th.

Dr. Roberts: Yeah. You know what? I vaguely 

remember that. Okay, yeah. Somehow I didn't 

change it on my calendar. So --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Calhoun: It was in my brain. I just couldn't 

remember it until --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Calhoun: When everybody else mentioned it, 

that was -- that jogged my memory, as well.

Member Kotelchuck: Well, Grady and Rashaun, I 

was the one who said that I would really prefer the 

25th through 26th, right. I have no conflict for the 

18th and 19th I think it is, but that earlier week. So 

if we -- I mean if there's a problem, then I can 

certainly -- we can certainly go back to the one that 

most people had originally.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, yes. Both of us were still on the 

wrong dates. Okay, so 18th. So the correction is 

that the next face to face for the fall or late summer 

was the 18th and 19th. Okay, great.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay, good enough.
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84

Dr. Roberts: All right. 

Member Kotelchuck: So folks, fix your calendars 

back again.

Dr. Roberts: I'm sorry.

Member Kotelchuck: I am too, but we're glad to 

cooperate.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: I'm sorry?

Member Anderson: Is it the 18th and 19th now?

Member Kotelchuck: Yeah, it's back to the 18th and 

19th.

Dr. Roberts: Yeah, 18th and the 19th. Okay, and 

I'm going to change that now. But if folks want a 

five-minute break, if there are no other comments 

or questions, we could take five and come right 

back at 4:30 or what do you think?

Member Clawson: Rashaun, I'd just like to make 

one comment and that is for Lockey. Notice how 

that was done and Dave worked with us on this 

Lockey? I just want you to think about that, if you 

would. 

We'll see you in a few minutes.

Member Lockey: Was somebody of significance 

talking on the phone? I don't think so.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, behave. Okay, so see you at 

4:30.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 4:25 p.m. and resumed at 4:30 p.m.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. I do have 4:30, so we need to 
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85

get cracking with SSFL and DeSoto. Let me do a 

quick formal roll call for all the Board members, to 

make sure everyone's back. So Anderson, are you 

here yet?

Member Anderson: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Great. Beach?

Member Beach: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Clawson?

Member Clawson: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Field? 

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Kotelchuck?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Lockey.

Member Lockey: Yeah, I'm here.

Member Kotelchuck: Kotelchuck here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, Kotelchuck's there. Okay. 

Richardson?

Member Richardson: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Roessler.

Member Roessler: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Schofield?

Member Schofield: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Valerio?
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86

Member Valerio: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: And Ziemer.

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Paul, are you there?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, how about you, Bill? Have you 

come back?

(No audible response.)

Update on area IV Santa Susana Field Laboratory 

SEC Petition #235 (Ventura County, California; 

1991-1993)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well, why don't we let them 

come in as they're able? I think we have enough to 

go on to the agenda item. So next on the agenda 

we have the update on Area 4, Santa Susana Field 

Laboratory, SEC Petition 235 and the DeSoto 

Avenue, SEC Petition 246. Mr. Phil Schofield is the 

chair for that group, and I believe Mr. Bob Barton 

will be making the presentation on behalf of the 

Work Group.

Member Ziemer: Rashaun, this is Ziemer. I'm back 

on the line.

Dr. Roberts: Oh great, hi. And Bill, are you back 

yet?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, okay. We can move forward. So 

Phil, did you want to say anything prior to the 

presentation?

Member Schofield: The only thing I've got to say is 

that we did meet in October, and CORE Advocacy 
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87

submitted quite a bit of information to us that we, 

that SC&A and NIOSH has looked at. Bob Barton is 

the one who's going to be presenting that, and it is 

-- he has generated a rather extensive paper here. 

So I really appreciate all the effort and work he's 

put into this. So I guess it's Bob turn now so --

Mr. Barton: Okay, thank you, Phil. I guess that's my 

cue. You know, similar to the Y-12 presentation 

from earlier today, I'll be presenting on behalf of the 

Work Group, and this is an update on the ongoing 

status of activities. You know, I probably should 

have put in a little bit more background slides into 

this presentation. 

But just to remind everybody on the Board, Area 4 

and DeSoto, these two are sort of grouped together 

as they're sort of sister sites, you know, same 

general oversight of the program but potentially 

different source terms to consider. SEC-235 extends 

through 1988 on the basis of inability to specifically 

reconstruct americium and thorium. 

A lot of that comes from the fact that they were 

doing decladding activities that we know about up in 

Area 4. The DeSoto SEC has been granted up 

through 1964, again on the basis of inability to 

reconstruct internal doses that were going on in that 

earlier period. 

So what we're going to be talking about today, and 

oh, let me also just state that it has my name up 

here on the presentation, but I wanted to recognize 

the great work that Milton Gordon put in in helping 

me do the research and really try to get our heads 

wrapped around this issue.

So and another thing just to note is that SC&A has 

reviewed both of these SEC petitions, the one for 

235 in Area 4. I believe that was in November of 

2017, and 246 was about a year later. So 246 
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88

DeSoto was about a year later, in the winter of 

2018. 

Since that time, there have been a number of 

document submittals, information submitted by the 

petitioner CORE Advocacy for nuclear and aerospace 

workers, which required careful evaluation and 

review and in some cases significant further 

research to try to get our heads around it, which I'll 

try to summarize in a meaningful way in this 

presentation. 

So this is really a summary of what's sort of 

happened since the last time we reported out to the 

Board, and this first one is really the, perhaps the 

most concerning of them. It involves this TRUMP-S 

program, which stands for Transuranic Management 

by Pyropartitioning Separation. 

What this would involve is actual handling of 

actinides after, up at Area 4 after 1988. Since the 

SEC was granted for Area 4 up through 1988 based 

on the inability to reconstruct doses of those 

actinides, any sort of activities that occurs with 

these actinides, operational exposures would be of 

particular importance.

And also on this first sort of item, and we'll go 

through each of these sequentially in this 

presentation, there is a 2012 EPA characterization 

study that identified a number of buildings, again up 

at Area 4, where it was listed that thorium and 

americium were contaminants of concern.

So again, since the previous, the SEC that's been 

granted through 1988 specifically involves thorium 

and americium, we're very interested in the 

potential for exposure after that period. 

We're also going to talk about some worker 

interviews that were conducted in 2018 and 2019. 
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89

They were mainly tasks in support of SEC-246. But 

again, a lot of these workers worked at both 

locations, both at DeSoto, which is SEC-246 and 

Area 4, which is SEC-235. SC&A released a 

memorandum summarizing those interviews, the 

results of those interviews this past July. 

The third item here is again further documentation 

that was provided by CORE Advocacy specifically 

related to Area 4, but also some material related to 

DeSoto. Like I said, they're really, the sites are sort 

of intertwined in the oversight of the health physics 

program. So it's very important to establish what 

the source terms were at the different sites.

So there's actually two reports for the third item. 

One was November of 2019, responding again to 

the specific documentation provided by CORE 

Advocacy. There's also a second report which I 

believe Phil was alluding to, that was sent to the 

Work Group has an Official Use Only copy on 

October 9th of earlier this year, unfortunately it was 

very difficult to get that ready for public release.

It actually was only released to the public I think 

this morning or late last night. So Phil, you probably 

just got it in your hands and I know the petitioner 

just got it today as well. And so that report has not 

actually been discussed by the Work Group. So it's 

that October 9th, 2020 report. So while I'm going to 

provide a very, very brief overview of what the 

issues were there. 

It's probably not fair to discuss it in this setting 

before the Work Group has had a real chance to 

digest it. NIOSH has not had a chance to really 

respond to it and as I said, the petitioner just got 

that October 2020 report in a publicly releasable 

version this morning.

So I mention that here as one of the work products 
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90

that has occurred since SC&A's original reviews of 

the SEC petitions for 245 and 246, but it's likely not 

going to be a big discussion point here. 

And then the final, fourth topic to be covered is the 

Boeing incident database, which was provided by 

CORE Advocacy also, and is described in detail in a 

memorandum that SC&A released in June of 2019. 

So for this first item, again this is the TRUMP-S 

program, which again involves actinide, potential 

actinide exposures and also the 2012 EPA 

characterization study that identified areas at SSFL, 

specifically Area 4 where thorium and americium 

would have been a concern. Again, we released a 

memo evaluating that information that was 

provided again by CORE Advocacy since our original 

review. That SC&A memorandum is dated July of 

2019. 

I would also point out that all of these materials 

that I'll be discussing today are available in a 

publicly releasable form on the NIOSH website, for 

those of you who want to take a deeper dive into a 

lot of these issues. 

So just a little background. Again, it's TRUMP-S and 

it's EPA historical site assessment that was released 

in 2012. In that document, the 2012 EPA site 

assessment indicates that work on this TRUMP-S 

project might have occurred in a two year period 

beginning in July 1988, which is partially covered by 

the SEC that's already in place but for a two-year 

period extending beyond that.

According to that EPA document, the primary 

separation activities were to occur in the hot lab, 

which is Building 4020, or Building 20 depending on 

the era you're looking at. But also support 

operations were supposed to occur in Building 4023, 

which is something that was pointed out by CORE 
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91

Advocacy in that 2012 historical site assessment.

Also included in the HSA, which is Historical Site 

Assessment, again 50 total buildings were identified 

by CORE Advocacy where americium and thorium 

was listed as a radionuclide of concern. So first 

we're going to get into sort of the timeline of what 

we've been able to find out about this TRUMP-S 

program. Did it occur at Area 4? Is it of concern for 

exposures to actinides for workers after that, after 

1988 when the current SEC ends? 

So here's our review approach. First, we went right 

back to that EPA report where it indicated that 

TRUMP-S might have occurred for a two-year 

period, again beginning middle of 1988 and 

extending potentially two years past that. 

Our review approach really is let's see what EPA 

used to determine that TRUMP-S occurred there, 

and then let's continue to sort of follow it down the 

rabbit hole and see whatever references we could 

find in those references, and keep digging and see if 

we can get a better handle on did this occur at Area 

4 and what are the implications in an SEC context.

So what we provided is really a time line of the key 

documentation that both underpins the EPA report 

and also again, as we followed the references from 

the EPA report and the references in those 

references, here's what we basically were able to 

put together for a timeline.

So in October 1988, there's an internal letter that 

proposes a usage application, a change in the usage 

application to allow for the TRUMP-S material in that 

project to go forward. So again, that's in line with 

what is contained in the EPA report. They said in the 

middle of 1988 the thing was supposed to get 

started, and was supposed to run for a two-year 

period.
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92

However, about a year later in July of 1989 there's 

documentation of a planning meeting to be able to 

operate the TRUMP-S glovebox. Essentially, it's a 

safety overview, something that you would do 

before you actually started up any sort of 

experiment involving this TRUMP-S material, which 

again is actinide material. It's things like americium 

and neptunium and plutonium and that sort of 

thing.

Again, in mid-1989 there's another planning 

document that describes how, what to do with the 

TRUMP-S waste that is to be generated. In other 

words it's for a future term, and how it's to be 

handled later in 1989 or possibly in early 1990. But 

again, it's the future tense there used as in the 

waste has not actually been generated yet.

Again, later in October 1989 there's an internal 

letter describing an upcoming test readiness review. 

Again, this is all sort of prework before you'd 

actually start physically handling a lot of these 

serious alpha-emitting materials. Again, in October 

1989, there's another, an internal letter for Area 4 

that describes what actions had to be taken before 

you can start the radioactive portion for the TRUMPS program. 

Again, they're still trying to get this thing started 

up. One thing I would note is that these two 

references from October 1989 were actually the 

references that underpinned EPA's conclusion that it 

happened. 

But again, we sort of followed the rabbit down the 

hole to see well, did it actually happen? What 

references do we have later on beyond these 1989 

references cited in the EPA report to either affirm or 

deny that the TRUMP-S program occurred at Area 

4?
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93

So we move into February 1990. There's a letter to 

the NRC that concerns a license amendment, again 

just to allow the TRUMP-S program to be conducted. 

There's a technical progress report from the same 

month, and it indicates that, you know Rockwell 

International, who was operating Area 4 at the 

time, is still awaiting DOE permission to start up the 

test.

That's how it's put in February 1990. So it appears 

to us that it actually still hadn't gotten off the 

ground. 

But also in that technical progress report, there's 

implications that they're starting to question 

whether they can even try to have this experiment 

at Area 4, and you'll see why in a minute. But 

they're already considering well, let's see if we can 

find an alternate facility to get this work done. 

There's a local newspaper article in February of 

1990 that really describes the public opposition that 

was there at the time for the again future tense 

planned TRUMP-S project. Now it was planned, but 

it hasn't really started yet.

A follow-up article in May of 1990 indicates that the 

TRUMP-S project, which was originally scheduled to 

take place, was going to be relocated to the 

University of Missouri. Again, I think the future 

tense here is important. It was originally scheduled 

to take place, but they had to relocate it due to the 

public pressure that was mounting regarding --

Basically what was going to be the one last project 

at the Rockwell International hot lab was supposed 

to be this TRUMP-S thing and then they were going 

to basically shut the whole thing down. Moving 

along to the 1993, you started to have D&D 

operations in Building 4023, which was again the 

one that was identified in the EPA HSA as possibly 
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94

being associated with this TRUMP project.

So September 1993, that facility's getting D&Ded. 

In October 1994, they did a confirmative 

tour/survey of that building for DOE. It was cleared 

for unrestricted release, and when they -- when 

they went for the confirmatory survey, they only 

took samples for uranium and cesium in the soil, 

which is -- would be strange if they had actually had 

TRUMP-S material in process there because you'd 

want to be looking at some of the actinides and 

whether they're a contaminant.

That really needs to be either cleaned up or you can 

be reasonably sure that it's not there. But in this 

case, they only just looked for uranium and cesium. 

Moving along to February of 1998, the state of 

California concurs that that building can be released 

without any sort of radiological restriction.

So that's sort of our timeline on TRUMP-S. Again, 

our feel is that, you know, they really did -- they did 

all the planning. They had a glovebox ready. They 

were testing it with inert gases and they really just 

couldn't get their license amended correctly to be 

able to conduct the radiological portion of the test, 

and then there was significant pressure from the 

local community that said no, we don't want this 

happening, you know, essentially in our backyard.

So eventually Rockwell decided all right, you know 

what? We've got to find somewhere else, and that's 

when they identified the University of Missouri, who 

eventually actually did modify their license and build 

an alpha lab and did essentially the radiological 

work there. At least that is our read based on the 

information available.

So a little bit more about this 2012 Historical Site 

Assessment, because I think it's important. As I've 

said, CORE Advocacy had identified 50 buildings 
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95

where americium or thorium was identified as a 

radionuclide of concern. Now it's important to 

understand what the purpose of the EPA 2012 study 

was.

It was essentially a paper study of historical 

records, very similar to what we do in this program 

a lot of the time. It was to identify potential 

contaminants that could be present. This was simply 

to aid in any future sampling, to figure out if it 

needed to be remediated or not.

So historical documents would have gone all the 

way back, you know, into the 80's, into the 70's to 

identify what sort of operations were there. So it 

was really not surprising, at least to SC&A, that all 

these buildings were identified with americium or 

thorium as a radionuclide of concern because that 

material was there. Americium and thorium were 

the reasons for the SEC up through 1988. 

They were handling it and it was definitely a 

radionuclide of concern. The real question is, were 

there operations going on past 1988 that posed an 

exposure potential that is similar to or rises to the 

level of what caused the SEC up through 1988 in 

the first place.

So we reviewed the information for all the buildings 

identified. In fact, we reviewed information for all of 

the buildings included in say a site assessment. If 

you look at Attachment A of the SC&A memo titled 

Evaluation of petitioners' Specific Concerns 

Regarding SEC-235, we actually go and discuss 

each building that was included in that EPA study.

We just didn't identify any evidence of operational 

activities that would have involved americium, 

thorium. Aside from that, one mention of TRUMP-S 

which we just went through, and I provided the 

time line on, where we believe the radiological 
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96

portions just simply never got off the ground in Area 

4.

However, I mean you would expect americium and 

thorium to potentially be there in the form of 

residual contamination. It's essentially the residual 

period at Area 4 that we're talking about here. And 

so one of the action items for NIOSH based on that 

that the fact that you have residual americium or 

thorium, you have to deal with it in a dose 

reconstruction context.

So NIOSH is to develop methods to reconstruct 

those exposures during D&D and other remediationtype activities. So that's sort of a summary on 

Historical Site Assessment and what we have found 

regarding the potential for TRUMP-S materials such 

as again americium, plutonium, neptunium, actually 

being handled in an operational context at Area 4 

after the already-established SEC.

Talking about DeSoto, I'm going to kind of switch 

sites here a couple of times, but again they're sort 

of intertwined a certain extent. One of the 

conclusions of SC&A's review of SEC-246 is that 

well, you know, we really only interviewed a couple 

of people for DeSoto, you know. We should really 

talk to some other people to figure out was there 

still a, you know, significant thorium fuel processing 

campaign.

Did they have similar problems as Area 4, where 

they were doing decladding of spent fuel? Were you 

going to encounter those actinides? So we went 

through and we tried to find interview candidates 

that worked at DeSoto, to try to get a handle on 

what materials were there.

One thing we know that they were absolutely doing 

at DeSoto was fuel fabrication for uranium fuels, 

whatever processes might have been going on. So 
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97

we wanted to track down some former workers and 

talk to them. So we only found six unfortunately 

and we interviewed them in November 2018, and 

then five more in May and June of 2019. 

We were only able to confirm five of the summaries. 

As was discussed before under Y-12 and also during 

the Sandia update about a half an hour ago, the 

whole process is very involved when you interview a 

former worker. There will be numerous people 

taking notes. Those notes have to be undergo ADC 

review for classification issues, and all those notes 

are combined into a single summary.

That summary is sent to the interviewee, where 

they can modify it, add, delete, what have you and 

depending on how that goes, you might have to 

send it back for further classification review. 

And then after all that's done, you can finally 

produce a product that can be released in some 

form to the public. Obviously it will often be heavily 

redacted just because of the personally identifiable 

information that would be contained in that.

So we had five confirmed summaries. The focus was 

to really gain insight into activities at DeSoto. Is 

there americium there? To what extent was thorium 

used at DeSoto? We knew, we know it was there to 

a certain extent, and I'll get into that. But were they 

doing similar activities at DeSoto as they were doing 

at Area 4, which involved, you know, decladding the 

spent fuel in the hot labs up there. 

What we focused on trying to find interviewees 

specifically from DeSoto, as I said they're sort of 

sister sites. So a lot of the workers worked at both 

locations to varying extents. So while we were 

focused on DeSoto, we certainly tried to elicit any 

sort of information that would be beneficial to Area 

4 as well that these interviewees might know about.
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98

Just as a brief summary, the interviewees did not 

really suggest that the decladding spent fuel 

occurred at DeSoto, and also regarding specifically 

americium, none of them thought that it was very 

probable that you'd have significant unencapsulated 

sources of americium. However, I want to point out 

that other documentation, aside from these 

interviews and again we'll talk about that in a 

minute, other documentation that we identified 

suggested that there was contaminated material 

used in cleaning of decladded fuel that was found in 

the laboratory areas at DeSoto. 

Also, we found that when they were doing some 

remediation activities specifically in the mass 

spectrometry lab, they found americium in a drain 

line. So that suggests to us that it at least was 

handled on some sort of bench scale basis in all 

likelihood. 

But again, we just don't know how it got there, 

when it got there, in what quantity it was and what 

is the reason we're seeing it there if we're really not 

expecting to find these type of actinide materials at 

DeSoto?

Moving on to the next item, again this is more 

documentation and evidence provided by CORE 

Advocacy related to SEC-235, but also tangentially 

to SEC-246. 

As I mentioned at the outset, there are two White 

Papers that really handled this. One was from 

November of 2019, and then the aforementioned 

October 2020 report which has not yet been able to 

really have been digested by the Work Group, 

NIOSH or the petitioner.

But that was released in October (audio 

interference) version, basically uploaded (audio 

interference). So a little background on some of the 
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99

records review we did on the documentation 

supplied by CORE Advocacy. 

Again, what are we looking for? We're looking for 

thorium and americium, and what are the 

implications on those (audio interference). Again, 

we're back to TRUMP-S. Is there evidence in these 

submissions of TRUMP-S? 

And also transuranic waste management. Are they 

generating more waste, transuranic waste based on 

any sort of operations that are occurring outside of 

the SEC period at Area 4? 

The other item here beyond just thorium and 

americium really is the main question, and this has 

been under some discussion by the Board, 

especially in the past few full Board meetings when 

we presented our SEC findings. The main question 

is are operational conditions sufficiently bounding of 

the residual conditions, and why are we asking this 

question?

Co-exposure models have been developed for both 

sites essentially, since it was one, essentially one 

radiological monitoring program. And co-exposure 

models have been developed for fission products 

uranium and plutonium, again not americium and 

thorium. But the question is after 1988, there's an 

issue. There's a two year period in which the 

bioassay data they have for uranium and plutonium, 

the things the co-exposure model was designed for, 

was actually found to be faulty.

It was analyzed by a company called the Controls 

for Environmental Pollution, and they were found to 

essentially be fraudulent, fraudulently reporting 

results. I believe that it was first found at Rocky 

Flats, but they also serviced Santa Susana, both 

Area 4 and DeSoto.
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100

So the dose reconstruction approach to say okay, 

we had this two year period in the 90's when we 

can't trust the bioassay data. There's still an in vivo 

program, but we cannot trust the bioassay data. 

So what do we do? Well what we can assume is that 

the radiological conditions during operations, so 

that's pre-1989 when they're actually still doing 

these sort of higher risk operational activities, can 

we take that operational data, the co-exposure 

estimates based on that, and apply them to the 

residual period and be reasonably sure that we're 

going to be able to bound exposures to those 

workers who were doing the D&D during the 

residual period. So those are really the two main 

issues associated with SEC-235 for Area 4. 

I'd just point out that our original review, again that 

was in late 2017, we didn't find any evidence during 

that review of an internal exposure potential that 

would necessarily preclude dose reconstruction. 

However again, there was additional documentation 

after that 2017 review that was submitted in 2019 

and 2020, and both of those again they're on the 

website and were provided to the Board. And again, 

we did not identify really sufficient evidence that 

would give us pause and make us think that dose 

reconstruction feasibility was simply not possible.

Specific to the transuranic waste management, we 

actually don't have any -- there's no evidence that 

TRU waste was generated in any sort of operational 

capacity after 1988. It would have been managed, 

the site stored it after 1988 due to all the legacy 

operations, and then anything that was generated 

for D&D activities, you know, removing gloveboxes, 

drain lines, that sort of thing would have had that 

residual waste there.

CORE Advocacy noted that, you know, since TRU 
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101

waste contains plutonium, americium is a daughter 

product of plutonium, neptunium is a daughter 

product of americium, you might have all these 

nasty actinide contaminants in the waste packages. 

And again, NIOSH is developing dose reconstruction 

methods based on breathing zone data, which has 

yet to be captured. I'll certainly let Dr. Hughes give 

an update on that at the end. 

That is certainly one of the action items moving 

forward to try to get a handle. Can we for Area 4 

come up with a reasonable dose reconstruction 

method to account for americium and thorium, for 

which we really don't have sufficient direct bioassay 

monitoring?

Dr. Roberts: Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt 

you Bob. It sounds like someone is off mute. I can 

hear some, something moving or something in the 

background. If everyone could just please check 

their phones for mute.

Mr. Barton: Yeah --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Dr. Roberts: Sorry about that. Yeah, I heard some 

typing too.

Mr. Barton: Okay. Well I'll move along here. This 

last item was reviewing characterization of the 

Boeing incident database, and SC&A submitted our 

memorandum, an overview of this Boeing incident 

database in June 2019. That was supplied by CORE 

Advocacy as it shows here in the first bullet.

They provide a thumb drive that contains all these 

incident files in December 2018. SC&A was tasked 

to look at these files in the context of DeSoto, to 

see again is there evidence, are there incidents out 

there that suggest that actinides were handled in an 
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102

operational context at DeSoto, such that you know, 

an SEC similar to what's at this site at Area 4 is 

warranted.

Again, DeSoto the SEC ends in 1964. At Area 4 it 

extends all the way to 1988. So the question is how 

similar or dissimilar are the radiological conditions 

between these two sites. So just as a quick 

overview, there were 784 incident reports and 486 

unusual occurrence reports that were contained in 

that database. 

The unusual occurrence reports are really, you 

know, sprained ankles and that sort of thing. They 

didn't involve any sort of exposure potential. So we 

could pretty much discard those. The 78495 are 

roughly 12 percent were related to DeSoto. There 

were actually three reports that we don't actually 

have the original incident report. 

All we essentially have is a one line description of 

what happened, which may or may not have 

contained the actual contaminant, or it might have 

been often these radiological incidents, and these 

are all documented in the SC&A report, a lot of 

them involved fiascos with X-ray equipment. You 

know, someone walking into an area where they 

were doing some X-ray tests. The others were 

mainly involving uranium. 

However, there were two incidents that we 

specifically noted that are definite concern for 

DeSoto. In 1965, there's an incident where an 

energy employee was cutting and grinding an 

irradiated fuel element in a clean lab area at 

DeSoto. It specifically says irradiated fuel element, 

and that simply wasn't supposed to happen at 

DeSoto.

You know, they really didn't necessarily have the 

laboratory equipment and hot cells and everything 
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103

they had at Area 4 to actually deal with the 

irradiated fuel element. So it's very, very strange 

for us to come across this, where they're working 

with irradiated fuel at DeSoto. Whereas we really 

were under the impression that it was all up at Area 

4, sort of contained up there.

For this specific incident, the Energy employee did 

submit bioassays and all the results were no 

detectable activity. There's a second incident that 

we identified. Again, these are the two out of all of 

those that we reviewed that are of real concern. 

This was in 1975, and then again you had another 

fuel element that was getting stripped of its 

cladding for destructive inspection and this was at 

DeSoto.

The main exposure potential in the incident report is 

identified as krypton-85, and it's just not clear to us 

from the incident report itself whether that fuel 

element had been irradiated or was a fresh fuel 

element that was just simply being tested.

So in conclusion, based on SC&A's review of the 

Boeing incident reports, we didn't find any direct 

references to internal exposure to americium or 

thorium for DeSoto. Most incidents, as I said, 

involved uranium. However, you do have that 1965 

decladding incident which involved cutting and 

grinding, which could obviously create airborne 

activity.

We asked a question was it only reported as an 

incident because it occurred in a clean lab, or did 

this activity also occur at other locations at DeSoto, 

such that you really have to be cognizant and take 

into account the fact that decladding of fuel not only 

occurred at Area 4 but might have been at DeSoto 

as well.

Then also that 1975 incident which involved 
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104

decladding. We're just not sure whether that fuel 

element was irradiated, where you'd have to worry 

about the buildup of actinide materials, again the 

americium, the neptunium, that sort of thing. 

So a status on these two reviews. Based on the 

totality, we still feel that our original conclusions 

from 2017 and 2018 is that dose reconstruction is 

likely feasible. However, there are qualifiers here on 

the second bullet as you'll see. 

This conclusion that dose reconstruction is feasible 

is really dependent on methods that are still under 

development. This includes americium and thorium 

at Area 4 after the current SEC period. 

So that's after 1988, and again NIOSH is developing 

that or plans to develop that based on breathing 

zone data, to develop essentially a co-exposure 

model based on the air sampling to reconstruct 

doses to those two contaminants.

We have thorium at DeSoto post-1964, we know 

this, I mean, we have a few minor documented 

activities involving thorium fuels. NIOSH has at 

least a framework together to reconstruct doses to 

thorium based on a variable documented activity in 

which thorium fuel was being ground and there are 

pre-fecal bioassays and post-fecal bioassays. So 

there's a pretty good handle on that activity, which 

would have been expected to generate some 

airborne dust essentially, that certainly poses a 

concerning exposure potential situation.

Also as I mentioned, we found evidence of there's at 

least some amount of americium in the drain lines 

at DeSoto, and that really is not supposed to be 

there according to what we had assumed before. 

But lo and behold they found it there. So it appears 

that americium might have been used at least on a 

benchtop level. 
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105

So that's one of those things that NIOSH is looking 

into. What do we really do with that issue? How did 

the americium get there and how do we get a 

handle on what we do about it in an SEC and dose 

reconstruction context.

But SC&A does believe that these are likely Site 

Profile issues. Again, we believe that the breathing 

zone data can potentially be used at Area 4. We 

believe NIOSH has the framework for thorium at 

DeSoto post-1964 and really the evidence suggests 

that americium was likely on a benchtop level. But 

we really need to run that to ground and figure out 

what we're going to do there.

And again, I think these are at this point tractable 

problems, but frankly we need to see what's 

produced as far as the dose reconstruction 

methodology, to be able to make a recommendation 

on whether we think these are in fact tractable 

problems.

And then there's that question of the remaining 

source terms. Uranium-plutonium fission products 

at Area 4 specifically for that period where the 

bioassay has been invalidated. But as I said, NIOSH 

is planning future data captures to capture 

breathing zone data during that remediation period 

in Area 4.

And so that data could certainly provide perspective 

on what the differences in exposure potential during 

remediation versus operations. That's again back to 

that question of can we use operational monitoring 

data at Area 4, so that would be prior to 1989, to 

bound doses to D&D and remediation workers after 

1988.

So that concludes my presentation. As before, this 

may be a good time for Dr. Hughes to maybe 

provide an update on the activities that NIOSH is 
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106

undertaking, or you know Phil, if you would like to 

make some comments. Or I can answer any 

questions.

Member Schofield: You know, I've only got one 

comment that's probably not on the record, is if 

they had done any biochemical separations of the 

americium stuff, I think we could expect to see a 

higher level of neutrons in those (audio 

interference) because they all fit in the reaction, 

since they tend to use light metal elements in that. 

I don't remember there being any indications of 

that, unless you do. 

Mr. Barton: I don't recall that being documented 

anywhere. You know in addition to that, the whole 

TRUMP-S thing got started really because of that 

EPA report, which if you trace where EPA, or 

actually it was their contractor Hydrogeologica that 

put it together. 

If you trace where their references come from, 

they're all from 1989, and again that was sort of in 

that planning phase. Whereas if you continue to 

follow sort of the time line and documentation 

available, in 1989 they certainly expected that they 

were going to be able to do it. But as you get into 

the early 90's, it seemed clear that they just weren't 

able to get that operation off the ground and so had 

to move it to the University of Missouri.

Member Schofield: That was my only comment.

Mr. Barton: I guess I didn't answer that. But yeah, I 

don't think we've seen any documentation about 

elevated neutron levels. But I'm not sure that we've 

seen, you know, things like area dosimeters or we 

specifically know about which workers worked in 

these buildings and were they monitored for 

neutrons.
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107

So while I haven't seen any evidence of that, the 

information regarding neutrons is to my knowledge 

pretty scarce regarding these facilities.

Member Clawson: Bob, this is Brad Clawson. If they 

weren't monitoring for it, how are you going to 

know? I mean there's not that much information 

there. We've got documentation saying that we 

have these things and if they're not monitoring for 

it, you're not going to be able to do anything.

Mr. Barton: And that's a point well taken Brad. I 

guess I was just pointing out that we don't have 

information to affirm that there were elevated 

neutrons which would give us, you know, certainly 

cause for concern. I guess I'm just trying to say 

that we certainly haven't seen anything to that 

effect.

I think the, you know, if they didn't actually perform 

the activity there, then I'm not sure why they'd 

want to monitor for it there. I think the totality of 

evidence if you look through that time line we put 

together, it gets into much more detail in the actual 

SC&A report. Again, it just seems like they really 

wanted to do it as a sort of last, last gasp activity at 

the hot labs at Area 4 and they weren't allowed to.

Member Ziemer: Okay, so this is Ziemer. I was just 

going to comment. To produce neutrons on an 

Alpha-N reaction, basically you've got to have the 

alpha material mixed directly with the metal, such 

that an americium-beryllium source or something 

like that. Just having the alpha sources around is 

unlikely to produce any neutrons to any extent, 

unless you specifically were making an Alpha-N 

source.

I wasn't understanding that that's what they had, 

Alpha-N sources. They had just alphas, right? In 

other words, they didn't have like plutonium-
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108

beryllium sources, for example, or americiumberyllium sources, where you have intentionally 

mixed the alphas with a metal. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Ziemer: -- about that. But let me ask you a 

separate question. Bob, on the incident reports, 784 

reports, what was the time span over which those 

occurred? Was that pretty extensive or all in a 

couple of years or what?

Mr. Barton: They really appeared to be really the 

entire life of this --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Mr. Barton: -- beginning in the 60's, you know.

Member Ziemer: Yeah, okay. A couple of other 

things related to that. A lot of places have 

definitions of what constitutes an incident. Like it 

might be a spill that produces contamination greater 

than some amount. Do you -- do we have any 

indication of what constituted an incident at this 

facility?

Mr. Barton: No, I haven't seen any documentation 

that would establish set guidelines.

Member Ziemer: If we knew that, that would help 

us get a baseline of what the, sort of the lower level 

of contamination might be for an incident. So it 

would be something above some amount. 

Then I want to ask a question on irradiated fuel 

elements. Does that imply that the fuel elements 

have been in a reactor, or are we talking about fuel 

elements that have been examined for their 

consistency by an X-ray exam? Because there's a 

big difference on a fuel element that's been 

examined for consistency by X-ray, which would be 
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109

unused fuel versus fuel that's been in a reactor.

Mr. Barton: Right, I understand what your question 

is. You know based strictly on the incident reports, 

again I believe the site had a specific definition for 

what constituted irradiated. That's simply how they 

put it. 

We know that at Area 4, which is sort of the sister 

site to DeSoto, they definitely had irradiated fuel, as 

in irradiated in a reactor, which then they would go 

and strip the cladding off of for various testing 

purposes.

Member Ziemer: Okay.

Mr. Barton: In this case, all we have is an incident 

report that says irradiated fuel element.

Member Ziemer: But generally they meant fuel that 

had been in a reactor then it sounds like? That's 

what I wanted to clarify, or if we knew that one way 

or the other.

Mr. Barton: Well at Area 4 certainly. Certainly that 

was one of their production activities. Now our 

assumption has been that that material was not 

used in an operational context at DeSoto.

Really our research focus was to figure out well if 

these guys are, these two sites are pretty similar, 

they had the same sort of health physics oversight, 

you know, is it possible that any sort of the 

decladding of elements that had been in a reactor, 

did that ever make it down to DeSoto in a 

meaningful way that would really show that the SEC 

at Area 4, the same radiological conditions were 

present at DeSoto.

That's the main line of questioning, and this is about 

as far as we've been able to get as to whether that 

happened.
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110

Member Ziemer: Yeah. It sounds like they're 

referring to fuel that's been in a reactor then, based 

on what we know at this point, that they were 

examining fuel that had been. Otherwise, they're 

just doing quality control over new fuel, and that 

wasn't one of their tasks, right?

Mr. Barton: Oh no. At DeSoto, that certainly was 

something that would occur there, because they 

were producing fresh fuel.

Member Ziemer: Well, then they could -- yeah, then 

irradiated could have a different meaning then.

Mr. Barton: That's an excellent point.

Member Ziemer: Yeah, okay. Just wondering. 

Thanks.

Dr. Roberts: And do Board members have any 

additional questions or comments?

Member Richardson: All right. I guess just to follow 

back through with the logic that was just described, 

there was the observation of the similarity of the 

activities between Area 4 and DeSoto. The 

motivation was to investigate whether any of those 

activities had spilled over to DeSoto, and you have 

an observation of this work with irradiated fuel. 

Now I mean to carry the logic through or for you to 

help clarify it, because it sounded like when you 

came here today, your interpretation of what the 

meaning of irradiated fuel was was that it was used 

fuel. 

So we've got the sort of black swan event, which 

leads you to kind of refute the hypothesis that they 

were strictly separated activities or was this the 

type of information you were looking for, which 

would lead you to come to the conclusion that there 

was intermingling of activities between those areas? 
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111

So where do you stand?

Court Reporter: Would the speaker identify 

themselves?

Member Richardson: David Richardson. 

Mr. Barton: Yes. Thank you Dr. Richardson. I think, 

well at this point as Phil mentioned, we met in 

October and discussed a lot of these issues. 

I believe sort of the path forward is that NIOSH was 

going to look into this a little bit more and possibly 

acquiring further data capture. I don't want to put 

words in their mouths, you know. Dr. Hughes, do 

you have a sense of path forward to this? That's 

what I recall.

Dr. Hughes: Yes. This is Lara Hughes with NIOSH. 

This is exactly these two incident reports that were 

discussed in the October Work Group call. It's 

something that we're looking into further, and that 

will be presented in a response paper, formally 

responded in a response paper by NIOSH.

Along with -- excuse me, other responses to the 

SC&A recent paper on the petitioner submissions. 

Yes, you're absolutely correct, that for some of 

these issues that were raised, there could be the 

potential that we need to look for additional data, 

which is currently a little bit on a delay there 

because the Federal Record Center is currently 

closed.

So this is one of the -- I'm unclear on the schedule 

at the moment, but this is something that I'm 

working on and that our contractor staff is working 

on. 

Member Richardson: Thank you.

Mr. Barton: And this is Bob. I'd just like to reiterate, 
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112

you know. There are -- I'm sort of regretting saying 

that these are all going to be Site Profile issues, 

because we simply don't know. I mean they appear 

to be from where we are at this point in the 

evaluation, which has involved significant back and 

forth and you know, working with the petitioner in 

those document submittals.

There's certainly some items that still need to be 

run down, I think, before we can truly make a 

determination that dose reconstruction is feasible 

and then you move on to I guess, you know, sort of 

hammering out the details on how you actually go 

about assigning what dose to what worker and that 

sort of thing. So I don't think we're done here yet. I 

believe the action items are mainly in NIOSH's court 

at this point.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Anything else on this 

presentation? Questions, comments from the 

Board? 

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Hearing none, we have about 

eight minutes until the public comment session. We 

want to start that promptly at 5:30. But if folks 

want to just kind of take a quick break and come 

back at 5:30, we can get started on the comment 

session at that point. 

Member Anderson: Do we have public members 

signed up?

Dr. Roberts: Yes. There are some folks who do want 

to comment. 

Member Anderson: Okay, great. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 5:22 p.m. and resumed at 5:30 p.m.)
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113

Dr. Roberts: Okay. So I have 5:30 Eastern Time. So 

I want to go ahead and open the session back up, 

and first start with our attendance. So Anderson, 

are you back on?

Member Anderson: Yes, I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Great. Beach.

Member Beach: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Clawson?

Member Clawson: I'm here.

Dr. Roberts: Fields.

Member Field: On the call.

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Lockey.

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Richardson.

Member Richardson: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Roessler.

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Schofield.

Member Schofield: Here.

Dr. Roberts: Valerio. Valerio.

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Ziemer.
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114

(No audible response.)

Member Lockey: Lockey's here.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Has 

Roessler joined us yet?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: What about Valerio? Ziemer.

(No audible response.)

Public Comment

Dr. Roberts: Okay. It sounds like someone's trying 

to speak, but I'm not completely sure. At any rate, I 

just want to remind everyone to please put your 

phone on mute. This is the public comment session 

that we are opening up, and we'd like to welcome 

and thank members of the public for being here 

with us today, and I want to open it up for them to 

comment.

I do want to advise everyone who wishes to speak 

that you have about a five minute limit. But without 

further ado, we will open this session up to anyone 

who would like to comment from the public. Thank 

you. 

Ms. Barrie: This is Terrie Barrie and good evening 

members of the Board and Dr. Roberts. I'm from 

the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups and 

authorized representative for a couple of SEC 

petitions. I want to thank you for providing this time 

for the public comments.

I hope, I heard that Steve Hicks was on the phone 

and we were emailing each other, and I hope that I 

am not taking his comments away. But I wanted to 

remind the Board about the basis for the Y-12 SEC 

petition that Mr. Hicks submitted. It's SEC Petition 
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115

250.

He submitted DOE documents that internal dose 

assessments were not accurate. A few quotes from 

our presentation to the Work Group in September of 

this year is this. Number one, NIOSH says that if a 

claimant has fecal monitoring that would prove that 

they were exposed to uranium, yet the Y-12 

uranium exposure study said that this wasn't done 

before 1999. How can NIOSH assume that only 

workers with a fecal sample were exposed to 

uranium?

Number two, DOE's memo of 1999 states that 

internal dose assessments were not accurate. 

There's a third one from Dr. Kregel (phonetic) that 

states prior to 1989, bioassay measurements were 

not assessed for internal dose. So how can NIOSH 

say that they can reconstruct dose when DOE and 

their contractors say they can't? Maybe I'm a bit 

naive, but I think this should be an 83.14 SEC 

petition. 

Now I'd like to read comments from Ms. Kathy 

Vinson. She had prior commitments and couldn't 

call in her comments and asked me to read them 

into the record. I happen to agree with them, and 

so do other SEC petitioners because they 

experienced the same problem.

I start quoting. I am Kathy Vinson, a survivor 

claimant for my mother, Elise Meadows, a laborer at 

Y-12 from 1981 to 1994. Her claim for skin and 

pancreatic cancer was denied in 2016 after many 

submittals. It was clear that 'claimant-favorable 

assumptions were not an accurate model for her 

work.' No other proof was available --

Participant: Hello?

Ms. Barrie: -- because no records.
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116

Dr. Roberts: Hi, yes. Hello. If you could mute 

please. We're in the public comment session and a 

member of the public is making a comment. Please 

mute. Thank you. Sorry about that. 

Ms. Barrie: That's okay. Virtuals don't always work. 

No other proof was available because there was no 

records kept of her work. So I filed an SEC petition, 

No. 241. It did not qualify. I would like to 

respectfully disagree with many statements I see on 

the SEC update slide show that's scheduled for 

tomorrow.

They are (1) in the qualification process, it is stated 

affidavits are valid proof when no records exist. I 

was told on my phone interview with Pat Kraps of 

ORAU that I should submit affidavits from my 

mother's co-workers. I did just that and my 

experience with the affidavits were not considered.

Number 2. It states NIOSH works closely with 

petitioners during the qualification process to 

develop relevant information and explain any 

deficiencies in the petition, and to aid in submitting 

any needed materials.

I did not receive any of this guidance. NIOSH did 

not work with me at any time during the process, 

and they did not aid me in any fashion. Number 3. 

In stating the reasons the petition did not qualify, I 

was never told why my petition did not qualify other 

than to say 'no new information was submitted.' 

This is to imply that there had been other petitions 

that did not qualify, that had stated similar things to 

mine.

This caused me to wonder why the petitioners were 

not allowed to confer in an attempt to strengthen 

our case, especially when the same issues were 

raised during the same time period at the same site. 
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117

Number 4. The final difficulty came when I was 

attempting to find out my options going forward, 

and there was no one at NIOSH who would return 

my phone calls, finally causing Josh Kinman to 

apologize for the lack of support, saying they should 

have been -- they should be doing better. But by 

then, the clock had run out.

Overall, I came to believe that my petition was not 

seriously considered, and I was not able to find out 

why. This was very disappointing and caused me to 

believe that there are many practices relating to the 

SEC process that are not openly stated in policy, 

making the qualification and approval process 

onerous, opaque, overly burdensome to the 

claimant and pretty much impossible for the 

outsider to navigate. Thank you. Kathleen Vinson, 

Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 

As I said, I've experienced similar issues with the 

latest Rocky Flats SEC petition, and I did receive the 

letter from NIOSH finally, and I will be reviewing 

that to see another path forward. Thank you for all 

of your work, Dr. Roberts. You've been doing great 

as DFO and I wish everyone a happy holiday. Thank 

you.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you so much, Terrie. Now did 

Mr. Stevie Hicks want to make his comments at this 

point?

Mr. Hicks: I didn't hear you. I was taking the mute 

off and I didn't hear exactly what you said.

Dr. Roberts: Oh, I was just inviting you to 

comment, if you would like.

Mr. Hicks: Okay. In this document DOE Internal 

Standard, there's a Section 8.2.3 and it says, I'm 

going to read it to you. Doses due to intakes prior to 

January 1, 1989. Prior to January 1, 1989, 
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118

regulations in the DOE did not require computation 

of E sub 50 to HT/HR sub 50, values from bioassay 

and workplace monitoring.

From January 1, 1989, SAPS (phonetic) was 

required to access and record these values. Prior to 

1989, records of intake if they exist was likely 

expressed in fraction of maximum permissible body 

burden, MPBB. There's no simple or straightforward 

general metric to convert MPBB values to E-50 

values.

SAPS should consider whether it's feasible and cost 

effective to attempt to historically reassess doses 

prior to 1989. The dose position on these prior 

years' exposure records does not address doses due 

to intake prior to 1989 or intakes at non-DOE 

facilities. 

On my bioassay, it says that. Prior to 1989, internal 

doses were not recorded. So you know, if DOE 

cannot convert these values, I'm curious how 

NIOSH can convert them. You know, that was just a 

question I've got and I guess that's all I've got to 

say.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you so much. 

Mr. Hicks: Okay.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you for the comment. I'd like to 

invite additional folks to comment at this time. 

D'Lanie, for instance, if you'd like to comment now.

Mr. Barrett: Yes ma'am. I'd like to speak if I can.

Dr. Roberts: Oh sure.

Mr. Barrett: Yeah. My name's Andy Barrett. I'm a 

guard at Savannah River Site. I represent the labor 

union down here, and had a couple of questions and 

comments. I did some investigation, talked to some 
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119

people that have been in our union for a long time, 

and have been at SRS for a long time.

They just feel that the early years, '84 to maybe 

'92, had some concerns with accurate dosimetry. I 

looked at the briefing and just wanted to make sure 

I ask the question. Are we covered? We were not 

the prime contractor. I just wanted to make sure 

that we were captured in some of those evaluations.

And then I know at one point in time we had had a 

beryllium release, and I know that's not -- doesn't 

fall under NIOSH, but did have a concern. We had 

several people on our guard that were exposed to 

beryllium. I just kind of want to get that on record.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you. And you do realize 

that SRS is on the agenda for tomorrow?

Mr. Barrett: Yes ma'am.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, okay.

Ms. Blaze: Hi, this is D'Lanie Blaze.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, hi D'Lanie.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Blaze: Hi there.

Dr. Roberts: Sure.

Ms. Blaze: Okay. Can you all hear me?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, we sure can or I can.

Ms. Blaze: Thank you. Thanks everyone. I hope that 

you're all doing well. Thank you for addressing SEC 

Petitions 235 and 246 for Santa Susana Area 4 and 

the DeSoto facility today. I'd like to quickly talk 

about two issues. First, the established similarities 

between both of these sites and second, the 
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120

TRUMP-S program and its related processes possibly 

at both locations, and I do have a short update on 

that.

So first the similarities between the sites. As we 

know, NIOSH considers both of the sites to be the 

same entity operationally and contractually, and I 

know that we have continued to discuss this issue. 

But it just cannot be understated. If NIOSH cannot 

achieve sufficient accuracy in worker dose 

reconstruction for those who were affiliated with 

Santa Susana until 1988, then they cannot do it for 

those who were affiliated with the DeSoto facility, 

because the majority of workers had occasions to 

perform job duties at both work sites.

We've established that regardless of administrative 

affiliation, regardless of time clock locations, 

workers routinely rotated between the sites after 

clocking in, and therefore they performed job duties 

at both sites interchangeably and often without 

documentation. Sometimes they rotated between 

the two sites several times in a single day.

NIOSH admits that it cannot reliably track worker 

movements between the sites based on their 

administrative location or their radiation records. So 

essentially we don't know which workers who were 

affiliated with the DeSoto facility may have 

encountered americium or thorium exposure at Area 

4.

On numerous occasions and indeed again today, we 

are discussing these two SEC petitions at the same 

time, for two sites that NIOSH insists are the same 

entity for dose reconstruction purposes, but 

conveniently different and subject to separate 

burdens of proof when it comes to passing the SEC.

It seems that NIOSH is selectively using this same 

data set to perform dose reconstruction, but then 
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121

ignoring shared data limitations when it comes to

passing the SEC Class. That feels a little like an 

attempt to have their cake and eat it too. I want to 

point out that the reason we keep having to discuss 

these petitions together is because we keep finding 

ourselves in the position of having to acknowledge 

how the information about one site is relevant to 

the other.

And we keep having to examine overlapping work 

processes or shared contracts and radionuclides. 

Most importantly, we keep stumbling over the same 

undocumented worker rotation issue, and the 

inability to tell which workers were at either site 

while monitored or exposed to radiation.

Ultimately whether these work sites are ever 

merged to be considered the same site, concurrent 

SEC Classes are needed at both sites, one in Area 4 

and the other at DeSoto, always, always for the 

same time period. Nothing prevents NIOSH from 

taking that course of action, and of course NIOSH 

can share their observations on worker records and 

rotation with the Department of Labor.

Now at the last Work Group meeting on October 

15th, 2020, NIOSH was asked if they have ever 

raised these issues with the Department of Labor, 

and they indicated that yes they have, and that 

Department of Labor is steadfast on keeping these 

sites as separate facilities.

On October 16th, the next day, Alliance of Nuclear 

Worker Advocacy Groups filed a Freedom of 

Information Act request with the program's director, 

Rachel Pond, seeking copies of letters or memos 

between Department of Labor and NIOSH regarding 

this issue, specifically Department of Labor's opinion 

or their position on the treatment of workers who 

had performed job duties at both sites.
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122

On October 29th, Ms. Pond responded to ANWAG 

with the following statement: In response to your 

request, I've searched for responsive records 

relating to any records or memoranda that I sent to 

Stuart Hinnefeld at NIOSH regarding employees 

who worked at both Area 4 of Santa Susana and 

DeSoto. However, I did not find any letters, 

memoranda or other documents about Santa 

Susana and DeSoto between Stuart Hinnefeld and 

me. Therefore, DEE/OIC has no records responsive 

to your request. 

It really does not appear that NIOSH has been 

forthcoming with Department of Labor about its 

knowledge and its evidence of worker rotation, and 

how this problem can and so frequently does 

compromise the accuracy in dose reconstruction. 

It does not appear that NIOSH has been honest with 

Department of Labor by simply saying look, there's 

no point in trying to say that workers were confined 

to Area 4 or to DeSoto based on their time clock 

locations. We know otherwise, and confusing time 

clock locations with site exclusivity prevents us from 

conducting dose reconstruction in the way that the 

radiation records dictate, and here's what we know 

about the sites.

NIOSH has taken information like this to 

Department of Labor before for other work sites, 

and in those instances Department of Labor has 

responded appropriately. I just don't understand 

why that is not happening now. 

So I'll turn real quick to the topic of the TRUMP-S 

program and transuranic waste and repackaging 

processes. You guys remember about two years 

ago, 1,300 boxes of documents were found that 

Boeing had shipped to DOE's Cincinnati offices. That 

shipment included an inventory sheet that indicated 

that several of those boxes contained information 
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123

on transuranic and pyropartitioning processes, as 

well as the TRUMP-S program potentially at Area 4 

and at the DeSoto site.

In January 2019, I filed a FOIA request for some of 

those specific documents, and now nearly two years 

later I still do not have a response. In April of 2019 

at the Pittsburgh meetings, Dr. Hughes and Dr. 

Taulbee indicated that with respect to these boxes, 

NIOSH had provided Department of Energy with a 

list of key words and search terms that Department 

of Energy had agreed to set aside relevant 

documents for NIOSH to review.

And as Department of Energy progresses with their 

own inventory of the boxes and their contents, 

apparently they're involved in some reorganization 

efforts, at the last meeting on October 15th NIOSH 

reiterated this agreement. They indicated that 

Department of Energy's research and retrieval 

efforts are currently underway.

On November 23rd, a couple of weeks ago, I spoke 

to my contact at the DOE Cincinnati office for a 

situation update on fulfillment of my FOIA. I 

suggested that Department of Energy just copy 

some of the documents that they're currently 

retrieving for NIOSH, because obviously we're 

looking for the same type of stuff. 

But my contact person at Department of Energy is 

completely unaware that any such agreement exists 

between DOE and NIOSH. She was unaware that 

any such effort is underway, and she never heard of 

any list of key words or search terms that are 

supposedly being looked for by Department of 

Energy or the terms that were provided by NIOSH. 

She had no idea that any of this was even going on.

So clearly there seems to be some inconsistent 

information regarding NIOSH's assertions and their 
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124

attempts to engage Department of Energy and 

Department of Labor in meaningful dialogue and 

action regarding these SECs. 

At the end of all of this, I respectfully reiterate that 

if NIOSH cannot perform dose reconstruction with 

sufficient accuracy for Area 4 workers between 1965 

and 1988, then they just can't do it for the workers 

affiliated with the DeSoto facility.

If NIOSH considers Area 4 and DeSoto to be the 

same entity for the purposes of dose reconstruction, 

then I believe we must acknowledge that they are 

also the same entity when it comes to data 

limitations that would support a concurrent SEC 

Class at both sites without exception.

As always, it's a privilege to represent the workers 

at Santa Susana and DeSoto, and to present 

information to the Advisory Board. And again, I 

thank you for everyone's hard work on these SEC 

petitions and stay safe out there. Thank you.

Dr. Roberts: Thank you D'Lanie, appreciate your 

comments. I want to just kind of reach out and ask 

for someone named Josh who wanted to make some 

comments with regard to SRS. Would you, are you 

on the line and would you like to make those 

comments now?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Hearing none, are there any 

other members of the public who would like to 

comment?

(No audible response.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Well I'm not hearing anyone at 

the moment. So we will go ahead -- first of all thank 

you and thank you to all the presenters who 

updated the Work Group, the Board today. I really 
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125

appreciate all the work that went into all the 

presentations and the content of the presentations. 

Very informative, so thanks to all the presenters. 

And I want to thank the members of the public who 

commented this evening as well. We will go ahead 

and adjourn this session of the meeting. We will 

have another session of this Board meeting starting 

tomorrow at 1:15 Eastern Time. So please join us at 

that time. So thank you and have a good evening.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 5:53 p.m.)