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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

MOUND WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

MONDAY

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

JOSIE BEACH, Chair

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

 

 
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ROBERT BARTON, SC&A*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A*

MEL CHEW, ORAU Team*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

DEB JERISON*

KARIN JESSEN, ORAU Team

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU Team*

JIM NETON, DCAS

WARREN SHEEHAN*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

BRANT ULSH, DCAS

*Participating via telephone
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I-N-D-E-X 

Welcome and roll-call/introductions . . . .4

Work Group Discussion

 - Radon - NIOSH/SC&A. . . . . . . . .7

 - Neutrons/ NTA film track fading with 

adjustment factors; review NTA data for 

1951-1960 - SC&A/NIOSH. . . . . . . . . . 18

 - D&D Period - NIOSH/SC&A . . . . .133

 - Tritides - SC&A/NIOSH . . . . . .137

 - Adequacy/Completeness of Internal 

Dosimetry - NIOSH/SC&A. . . . . . . . . .208

 - WG recommendations

 - Action Items/Plans

Adjourn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 9:01 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning everyone 

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

5 Advisory Board of Radiation Worker Health, 

6 Mound Work Group just getting started and 

7 beginning with roll call, Board Members 

8 beginning with the Chair in the room, and 

9 please speak to conflict of interests since we 

10 are speaking about a specific site.

11 (Roll call.)

12 MR. KATZ: Very good. We have an 

13 agenda posted on the NIOSH website under the 

14 Board section, as well as some of the 

15 documents that we are going to be discussing 

16 today, or most -- most if not all should be 

17 posted there as well.

18 And let me just remind everyone on 

19 the line to mute your phone except when you 

20 are addressing the group. Press *6 if you 

21 don't have a mute button. That will mute your 

22 phone. Press *6 again and it will unmute your 
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1 phone for when you want to speak. And please 

2 don't put your phone on hold at any point, but 

3 hang up and dial back in if you need to leave 

4 the call at some point.

5 It's your agenda, Josie.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, thank you. 

7 Like Ted said, the agenda is posted on the 

8 website. We plan to take probably a quick 

9 break between 9 and noon, lunch at noon, and I 

10 assume we have a fairly full schedule but we 

11 may be finished by -- between 4 and 5 today.

12 I am going to give Work Group --

13 or not Work Group, excuse me -- claimants or 

14 members of the public an opportunity to talk 

15 during some of our discussion today.

16 We are going to first start with 

17 radon, and radon if you remember was issue 

18 number 2 for this Working Group. We added an 

19 SEC Class for radon at a full Board meeting in 

20 May of 2010. That was our Idaho meeting.

21 Since that time there have been 

22 several concerns from claimants over the log 
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1 book and not being complete and DOL not 

2 accepting alternate proof of the required 

3 tritium bioassay sample.

4 So it's my understanding the 

5 concerns over the Class Definition may be why 

6 we brought radon back on to our agenda item. 

7 However the Work Group did not request further 

8 work to be done post-1980 for either NIOSH or 

9 SC&A.

10 And for the record, I am just 

11 wondering, Brant, if NIOSH could explain the 

12 basis for the October 2011 radon issues paper, 

13 just so we have a clear understanding before 

14 we get started into any more discussion.

15 DR. ULSH: Yes, that makes good 

16 sense. We discussed the Class Definition for 

17 radon extensively at the Niagara Falls 

18 meeting. I can't remember when that was. It 

19 was the spring of --

20 CHAIR BEACH: It was May.

21 DR. ULSH: May.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, no, sorry that 
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1 was before then.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: It was earlier 

3 than that. It was like February.

4 DR. ULSH: Okay.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, anyway.

6 DR. ULSH: At that meeting, there 

7 was some discussion back and forth about 

8 defining the radon class by tritium bioassay.

9 Just to kind of refresh 

10 everybody's memory here at the table, and 

11 those on the phone, the situation with radon 

12 is that Mound conducted some radium-actinium13 thorium separation activities early in the 

14 1950s.

15 And to make a very long story 

16 short, there was some residual material left 

17 over from those activities that remained, and 

18 it was discovered in 1979 that one worker 

19 showed up for a whole body count, and he got 

20 some strange results.

21 So the ensuing investigation 

22 determined that there -- this worker had an 
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1 office on top of the Old Cave where those 

2 earlier separation runs had occurred, and that 

3 there was a crack in the floor near his desk 

4 and they discovered radon streaming out of 

5 that crack in the floor.

6 And they did a lot of 

7 measurements, you know, in different places 

8 around there, but that was the basis for 

9 determining, for defining that original radon 

10 Class, because we decided that we just really 

11 could not reconstruct the radon dose for that 

12 worker, in I think it was SW-19.

13 So then everyone around the table 

14 here had some discussions about well how do we 

15 really get our arms around defining this 

16 Class.

17 And I think SC&A in particular had 

18 some concerns based on an earlier interview 

19 that they had conducted, regarding the extent 

20 of possible radon exposure.

21 The source of the radon exposure 

22 was a tunnel that ran under the room where 
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1 this worker's office was located, and there 

2 was some discussion about what was the extent 

3 of that tunnel.

4 We didn't really know at that time 

5 and there was some concern that that tunnel 

6 might have gone on into the R building and 

7 posed an exposure potential for more workers 

8 than would be captured by the Class as we 

9 defined it.

10 Well, the problem was, at the time 

11 we were having those discussions, NIOSH, 

12 meaning me, stated that the Class Definition 

13 based on tritium bioassay would capture anyone 

14 in R and SW buildings because everyone was 

15 required to be on tritium bioassay.

16 So the discussion really kind of 

17 ended there. We went ahead with the Class 

18 definition. Subsequently to that, some 

19 information provided by members of the public 

20 demonstrated that in fact not all of the R 

21 building was an area that required tritium 

22 bioassay.
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1 So that was the genesis for NIOSH 

2 to initiate the October report, because we 

3 committed to the Working Group that if new 

4 information came in, we would revisit the 

5 issue.

6 DR. NETON: And I think just to 

7 clarify, in reviewing the transcripts, it 

8 appeared to us that the discussion by the 

9 Working Group was cut short once we declared 

10 that everybody in the R and SW building were 

11 monitored. Therefore it really didn't matter 

12 how far that tunnel extended.

13 DR. ULSH: Right.

14 DR. NETON: So that was the basis 

15 of why we chose to review this whole program, 

16 because it was really never discussed fully at 

17 the Working Group level what the exposure 

18 potential could have been for workers in the 

19 entire R building.

20 DR. ULSH: So that was kind of the 

21 reasoning behind our report. Now, do you want 

22 to discuss that Josie, or do you want me to go 
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1 into the report?

2 CHAIR BEACH: I think we should.

3 DR. ULSH: Which?

4 CHAIR BEACH: No, you should 

5 discuss that, yes, please.

6 DR. ULSH: All right.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: One thing, this 

8 is Brad from the Work Group, it kind of took 

9 me aside when all of a sudden I saw this 

10 report because I had no background for what it 

11 was for, where it was coming from.

12 I think in the future, as these 

13 things come up, it would be nice if you would 

14 kind of let us know where we are going at it, 

15 so we know what we are doing.

16 You know, we had some questions 

17 before on how radon was and the answer was cut 

18 short because it was the R and S building and 

19 it seemed like everything was kind of changing 

20 a little bit on us and I didn't really 

21 understand why until Joe kind of sat down and 

22 explained what his understanding was to us.
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1 So in the future, it may be good 

2 just to let us know, this is going to come 

3 out.

4 DR. ULSH: Well I apologize that 

5 you had some -- that that caused some 

6 confusion. It is described in the introduction 

7 of the report, why we were writing it.

8 However if that wasn't sufficient 

9 to avoid that confusion, maybe we should have 

10 taken additional measures and --

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, even that 

12 the report was being written, because I 

13 thought we were done with it, to tell you the 

14 truth.

15 CHAIR BEACH: And I also think the 

16 confusion -- there were several things going 

17 on. At our February meeting we were hearing 

18 from claimants and I know I had some 

19 conversations with Stu about re-bringing it to 

20 the Work Group.

21 But we never really knew what was 

22 coming until we got this report. So my 
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1 understanding, it was the Class Definition 

2 problem, or DOL was having trouble 

3 administering the Class.

4 So this, this does clear up some 

5 of it, but it just left -- left a lot of 

6 things in question also.

7 DR. ULSH: Well again, there were 

8 a lot of developments going on, like you said, 

9 after the action at the Niagara meeting, and 

10 we decided that since we were going to revisit 

11 this issue anyway, because of the tunnel, the 

12 extent of tritium urinalysis data, we should 

13 cover all the issues that were in play at the 

14 time in one report rather than piece it out.

15 So, okay, I understand what you 

16 are saying, that we could have perhaps 

17 communicated to you ahead of time that this 

18 report was coming and what was going to be in 

19 it. But that was our thinking behind doing 

20 the report.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Any other 

22 questions that -- for this -- are you ready to 
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1 start in on the report then?

2 DR. ULSH: Sure. As I mentioned 

3 just a minute ago, one of the issues that 

4 became again relevant, at least in our 

5 opinion, was the extent of the tunnel that 

6 went under the office in SW-19, from which the 

7 radon was leaking.

8 SC&A had raised some questions 

9 about the extent of that tunnel. So since 

10 that issue came up again, and we decided it 

11 was still in play, I did some further 

12 research, worked with some former Mound 

13 workers and to make a long story short, I 

14 worked with one of those workers who has a 

15 connection with the Mound museum.

16 They have in their possession a 

17 collection of historical drawings, blueprints, 

18 and with his assistance, I went and pulled the 

19 original drawings for that tunnel.

20 And it showed conclusively that 

21 the tunnel went under the SW building where 

22 this worker's office was, and it went from 
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1 there to the fan house and up the stack. It 

2 did not proceed further into R building.

3 So that was one of the questions 

4 that was still in play, and I have presented 

5 that in my report, some excerpts of the 

6 blueprints.

7 The full blueprints concerning the 

8 entire building are in the SRDB, Site Research 

9 Database, and the references are provided in 

10 the report.

11 So that was one issue. Another 

12 issue that was in play was the source of the 

13 radon that was observed at Mound and there was 

14 some question about that.

15 The workers that we had talked to, 

16 and I think the workers that SC&A had talked 

17 to as well, stated that they were told, or it 

18 was their belief or their observation, that 

19 the source of elevated radon around the Mound 

20 site was from the coal plant operated by 

21 Dayton Power & Light that was situated in the 

22 Great Miami River Valley, just upwind from 
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1 Mound, was the source of that radon.

2 So we treated -- or we addressed 

3 that issue in this report as well. To make a 

4 long story short, again, it's I think 

5 reasonable that that source could have 

6 contributed to elevated radon at Mound. I 

7 certainly have no conclusive evidence to say 

8 those workers were wrong.

9 It's also evident, however, that 

10 the source that we are talking about, 

11 underneath the Old Cave, contributed to 

12 elevated radon at least in localized areas.

13 And so the question -- it appears 

14 there was a combination of those two. So I 

15 provided some material in the report. There 

16 are some photographs that kind of provide some 

17 perspective about where the coal plant is in 

18 relation to the Mound site.

19 And again, I think the important 

20 thing here is that we are not taking a 

21 position that it was all the coal site, or the 

22 coal plant that contributed to Mound radon.
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1 We are simply saying that's what 

2 the workers said. It's a reasonable 

3 conclusion that it could have contributed. 

4 But we are not saying that that was the only 

5 source.

6 And so then once we determined the 

7 extent of the tunnel under SW-19, then we 

8 wanted to address the question, do we need to 

9 change our Class Definition.

10 Now, it's perhaps not intuitively 

11 obvious why we are talking about tritium 

12 bioassay when the Class is based on radon 

13 exposure.

14 The thinking behind that was in 

15 the area where we observed radon exposure, SW16 19, it was an area that required tritium 

17 bioassay.

18 So by saying workers who had 

19 tritium bioassay, we would capture anyone who 

20 could have been exposed in SW-19.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Can I ask you a 

22 question then?
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1 DR. ULSH: Fire away.

2 CHAIR BEACH: So I understand that 

3 tritium bioassay -- does it have to be a 

4 positive assay or does it just have to 

5 indicate the person was bioassayed for 

6 tritium? 

7 Because there has been some 

8 question from claimants if they have zeroes, 

9 they are not getting compensated.

10 DR. ULSH: It's the latter. It's 

11 only tritium bioassay. It does not have to be 

12 positive.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

14 DR. ULSH: The issue that you 

15 mention is another issue that we talk about in 

16 the report.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Right, right.

18 DR. ULSH: So we fully understood 

19 at the time that we defined the Class this 

20 way, that we would be capturing people who 

21 gave tritium bioassay, who never visited SW22 19. They didn't have an exposure.
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1 The problem is, we have no way to 

2 define the Class as only people who were in 

3 SW-19 for 250 days. We can't identify who 

4 those people --

5 CHAIR BEACH: Other than saying 

6 all workers at Mound, which expands it.

7 DR. ULSH: Right, that would be a 

8 broader definition beyond what we have 

9 proposed.

10 So, given the new information 

11 about the extent of the R building tunnel, we 

12 revisited the adequacy of our Class Definition 

13 based on tritium bioassay.

14 We also looked at the new 

15 information that was submitted by the public 

16 and we went back and looked in more detail 

17 what areas of the R building did require 

18 tritium bioassay.

19 I don't know if it would be 

20 helpful if I sketched real quick. Yes, why 

21 don't I do that. I apologize to those of you 

22 who are on the phone -- those of you who are 
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1 on the phone won't be able to see this.

2 Just roughly, because my artistic 

3 ability is very limited, this is the SW 

4 building. Roughly, SW-19 is down in this 

5 area. The workers' office was here. The 

6 tunnel ran along here and then down to the 

7 stack; the fan house that led to the stack.

8 The R building is attached to the 

9 SW building. So its designated as two 

10 buildings but they are joined. And this is 

11 the R building.

12 So we determined the tunnel does 

13 not go into the R building. Now originally I 

14 had said that this entire complex, R and SW, 

15 required tritium bioassay.

16 That turned out not to be the 

17 case. The new information that we got showed 

18 that really it was only the part of the R 

19 building that adjoined SW that required 

20 tritium bioassay.

21 This area over here did not always 

22 require tritium bioassay. 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Just a quick 

2 question. Is there a free passage or is there 

3 an airlock or some kind of a control between 

4 the two parts of R?

5 DR. ULSH: There's negative 

6 pressure. 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: There is a seal 

8 between the non-tritium and the tritium in R. 

9 DR. ULSH: Well, I'm not going to 

10 tell you Joe, that not a single of molecule 

11 air passed between them.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, no --

13 (Simultaneous speaking.)

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Is the tritium 

15 controlled such that you have to go through 

16 some kind of barrier to go from the non17 tritium into the tritium?

18 DR. ULSH: Yes, they did have 

19 doors, you know, doors that separated the two, 

20 and the airflow was from the hallways into the 

21 laboratories.

22 So yes, I understand what you are 
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1 saying. Could air have exchanged between SW 

2 and R? I'm not going to say that that didn't 

3 happen in a building this big and complex. 

4 But in general, the airflow I think was 

5 towards the SW building.

6 CHAIR BEACH: What about when they 

7 started D&D and changing the airflow and 

8 changing that type of --

9 DR. ULSH: So what time period are 

10 we talking, like the '90s or '80s?

11 CHAIR BEACH: Post-'80s.

12 DR. ULSH: Well, I know that they 

13 did smoke tests. But keep in mind that by 

14 that time, this source had been remediated as 

15 described --

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

17 DR. ULSH: by that worker that --

18 CHAIR BEACH: But what year was it 

19 remediated, just remind me?

20 DR. ULSH: Well, at the conclusion 

21 of the radium-actinium-thorium separation they 

22 did a round of remediation, and that was in 
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1 the late '50s. The problem is that there was 

2 still some residual material.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

4 DR. ULSH: So I think the 

5 remediation that you are talking about, that 

6 we discussed, were they went in and put a 

7 stack in to vent this tunnel. That occurred 

8 in late 1979, early 1980.

9 CHAIR BEACH: I remember now. 

10 Thank you.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Now, Mark, or 

12 DR. ULSH: Brad.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Brant, or -- part 

14 of that hot cell was -- there was a hot cell 

15 for that level, correct? Or was it just the 

16 tunnel?

17 DR. ULSH: I'm sorry, say that 

18 again.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: Wasn't there a 

20 hot cell that tied in as part of this?

21 DR. ULSH: There -- in this area 

22 of SW-19.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

2 DR. ULSH: SW-19 was an office 

3 that was established on top of the Old Cave 

4 facility.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

6 DR. ULSH: The Old Cave existed 

7 in, well in the 1950s, and that contained a 

8 hot cell that you are talking about. That was 

9 remediated in the '50s. They poured concrete 

10 in, and they established SW-19 on top of that.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Were they using 

12 the airflow from SW to support the R building? 

13 If you are saying that it has gone out of 

14 stack -- this is something that we get into 

15 all these -- in the earlier years, DOE would 

16 build a building like SW and then add onto it, 

17 and all they are doing is tying into the 

18 existing airflow systems to it.

19 So when you have got one that is 

20 at a negative flow, you are pulling -- you 

21 have got some -- you have got a lot of pull 

22 that is going to be coming in there.
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1 How is the airflow set up on, I 

2 guess, R is what I am mainly looking at, what 

3 I am trying to figure out.

4 DR. ULSH: Okay, I am going to be 

5 very general here.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

7 DR. ULSH: In general, air was 

8 pulled from the SW building into this stack. 

9 This stack also serviced the R building, in 

10 that R -- air from the R building was pulled 

11 into this stack and blown up this stack.

12 Does that answer your question?

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm just trying 

14 to figure out which one is the major one that 

15 has the pull, as we call it, because you have 

16 got to understand how to keep those at 

17 negative pressure and how the venting systems 

18 work.

19 DR. NETON: Well Brad, I think 

20 what Brant is showing is the source term was -

21 - the stack was very close to the source term, 

22 which was that cave that was contaminated.
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1 So I don't know that we know of 

2 any residual contamination in what I would 

3 call the cold side of the R building from 

4 radium, radon activities.

5 DR. ULSH: The cold side --

6 CHAIR BEACH: So let me make sure 

7 I get this straight. Anybody that worked on 

8 let's say the cold side of R did not have a 

9 tritium bioassay?

10 DR. NETON: It was not required

11 CHAIR BEACH: It was not required.

12 DR. ULSH: The work that they did 

13 in this part did not require tritium bioassay.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: If they worked 

15 somewhere else --

16 CHAIR BEACH: So if they 

17 supposedly only worked on the cold side and 

18 didn't have a tritium bioassay, how do we know 

19 that they didn't work -- cross over every once 

20 in a while?

21 DR. ULSH: Good question. The 

22 reason that we know that is because entrance 
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1 into the SW building and this part of the R 

2 building required tritium bioassay.

3 CHAIR BEACH: So we are 100 

4 percent sure that nobody entered that side 

5 without a tritium bioassay.

6 DR. ULSH: No. We are never 100 

7 percent sure of anything like that.

8 CHAIR BEACH: What percentage 

9 though? I get -- because we are excluding 

10 anybody that didn't have a tritium bioassay, 

11 and saying that if they didn't have one, then 

12 they weren't -- they weren't in SW and 

13 couldn't have been exposed to the radon.

14 DR. ULSH: We know from our 

15 interview with former workers that that area 

16 was posted. You know, could someone have gone 

17 in to deliver a letter and go back out? Yes, 

18 it's possible. It would have been contrary to 

19 the posting requirements but it's possible.

20 The real question is, could 

21 someone have gone in here and spent 250 days 

22 without giving us a single tritium urinalysis. 
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1 Is it 100 percent impossible? No. But it's 

2 not plausible. That's what the workers told 

3 us.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, yes, but 

6 also in talking with the workers too we have 

7 come to find out that a lot of the maintenance 

8 people were going from one side to the other 

9 and when they were talking about tritium 

10 bioassay, it was people that was continuously 

11 in there.

12 And they were going in and they'd 

13 change out glove boxes, they were doing all 

14 this other stuff, changing out fan motors or 

15 whatever else like that, and some of them have 

16 already mentioned that they weren't on the 

17 tritium bioassay, unless then they got 

18 assigned full-time to SW.

19 DR. ULSH: That is a different 

20 account than I have heard, Brad. If you have 

21 got access to interviews that say that they 

22 spent any significant amount of time in here 
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1 and were not subject to tritium urinalysis 

2 requirements, that's news to me.

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, this was 

4 just from the interviews up to now, because 

5 the construction worker -- not construction = 

6 but the maintenance people went all over the 

7 site, and they had certain ones that were 

8 assigned to certain buildings, specializing in 

9 certain parts of it, and those fell in to the 

10 tritium bioassay.

11 The other ones said, you know, 

12 we'd go in, we'd support projects and so forth 

13 like that, and then we were back out and we 

14 didn't have to do that.

15 DR. ULSH: So you're talking about 

16 the rovers that were maybe assigned to a 

17 centralized maintenance facility and just went 

18 into here for a job and left.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well yes, but 

20 some were -- but they could be there for quite 

21 a while. I guess one of them that got into 

22 this was -- on the outside of that building 
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1 you've got a power source that goes into the 

2 building but they were rerouting the power 

3 supplies into it, and they had to go into SW 

4 but they didn't have to submit any bioassays 

5 or tritium samples. They were actually inside 

6 the SW building putting in the power lines.

7 The point that I'm trying to get 

8 to is, I work in these facilities. I 

9 understand how the roving work forces work. 

10 We have got one main shop that most everybody 

11 works at. I've got a small group of 

12 maintenance people that work just for me.

13 And they are on all of our 

14 requirements, the other ones aren't. And 

15 that's what makes me nervous about this and I 

16 raised this before when we were getting into 

17 this. So you are right. We can't be 100 

18 percent sure one way or the other, but I want 

19 you to realize that that's -- that's where my 

20 issue lies with this.

21 DR. ULSH: I understand what you 

22 are saying. I understand that your concern is 
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1 the rovers. Keep in mind a couple of things 

2 here. We are talking about the time frame 

3 before 10 CFR 835 is it Jim?

4 Under 10 CFR 835, which I am sure 

5 you are very familiar with because it's 

6 contemporary, you are only to be monitored if 

7 you have a potential for a 100 millirem 

8 exposure per year.

9 That requirement was not in effect 

10 in the time frame that we are talking about 

11 here. The interviewees, at least that I am 

12 aware of, that we have talked to, said that if 

13 you went into this building for any extended 

14 period, for any work that would have even 

15 approached 250 days, you would be on tritium 

16 bioassay requirements, and that is not just a 

17 on-off. This is a couple of times a week. 

18 And it only takes one to put you in the SEC.

19 Now if your level of --

20 MR. SHEEHAN: Brad?

21 DR. ULSH: Yes.

22 MR. SHEEHAN: This is Warren 
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1 Sheehan.

2 DR. ULSH: Hey Warren.

3 MR. SHEEHAN: I want to answer 

4 something here though I think that Brad has 

5 brought up that's missed. The rovers that he 

6 is talking about, if they went in to do a job, 

7 they were on a work permit, and the work 

8 permit required them to get a urine sample.

9 These were guys that were not 

10 assigned to the building, okay, but would 

11 visit, and if they went in there for any kind 

12 of work, then the work that -- the health 

13 surveyor would check off if they had required 

14 a sample.

15 Now this doesn't address the 

16 outside electrician that went in that Brad 

17 talks about. That doesn't address that issue 

18 but I believe it does the other issues, okay?

19 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks Warren.

20 MR. KATZ: What's Warren's last 

21 name, I'm sorry?

22 CHAIR BEACH: Sheehan.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Sheehan.

2 MR. KATZ: Thank you.

3 DR. ULSH: The other issue that 

4 you mentioned Josie, was the interpretation of 

5 the MESH report but do you want to discuss 

6 this further before we get into that?

7 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

8 DR. ULSH: Okay. 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, why wouldn't 

10 the electrician have been on a work permit? I 

11 didn't quite follow what the argument was 

12 there.

13 DR. ULSH: I didn't either. Hey 

14 Warren?

15 MR. SHEEHAN: I'm back on. Well, 

16 when you have people on the outside of the 

17 building, in other words, I don't know -- this 

18 is way beyond the period that -- I don't know 

19 when this occurred Brad. This was probably in 

20 the D&D phase, was it? I don't know.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, one 

22 electrician that I talked to was talking about 
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1 how the power supply went in there and you 

2 could actually gain access to the main feed 

3 into the facility from the outside. There was 

4 supposed to be a door on the outside that you 

5 actually went into.

6 But part of the problem was, was 

7 when they started pulling electrical cables 

8 back out of SW, and so you know, this possibly 

9 could have been in later years and so forth.

10 But I just wanted, you know, 

11 there's always exceptions to all the rules.

12 MR. SHEEHAN: Well, whether or not 

13 this was on a work permit or not, that's kind 

14 of the crux of this matter, whether or not 

15 that job was covered by a work permit, and all 

16 the jobs in radiation potential areas were 

17 covered by work permits, so that's about where 

18 -- that's where we have to leave it I think.

19 DR. ULSH: So without knowing the 

20 details of the particular interview or 

21 situation that you are talking about Brad -- I 

22 don't know when it occurred or exactly what 
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1 the details are -- if it occurred in the D&D 

2 years after tritium work had ceased, and in 

3 the era of 10 CFR 835, it's entirely possible 

4 that someone could have gone in without 

5 tritium bioassay. I just don't know the 

6 details of what you are talking about.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, and to tell 

8 you the truth, these interviews, until we 

9 started getting into this deeper, it didn't 

10 make any -- you know, it was just listening to 

11 what they did.

12 But then when you started laying 

13 this out, to me it started making a little bit 

14 more of a question.

15 DR. ULSH: A couple of other 

16 factors to keep in mind -- this was also a 

17 plutonium facility so it was operated under 

18 negative pressure.

19 You didn't want plutonium blowing 

20 out of this building into the environment. 

21 You wanted air to be sucked in, to go through 

22 the filters.
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1 So if you have got a guy working 

2 on the outside of the building, I'm not going 

3 to say it's absolutely impossible that he 

4 could have encountered contamination. Just in 

5 general, the idea, it is to operate this under 

6 negative pressure. 

7 Now the other thing -- you know 

8 you have got maintain some perspective here. 

9 The situation that we are talking about, where 

10 the one guy was working in SW-19 sitting at 

11 his desk, they took measurements at the crack 

12 and they took measurements in the breathing 

13 zone of his desk, and they already observed a 

14 factor of 10 decline in radon exposures.

15 Now, there's a lot of 

16 uncertainties there, and that's the basis of 

17 us saying that it's an SEC. But I think you 

18 can at least look at the general trend and say 

19 there was a big decrease. Why? Probably 

20 because of dilution, because of decay of 

21 short-lived radon species.

22 When you then go beyond, not just 
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1 from the crack to his desk but from the desk 

2 to the entire room, from the room to the 

3 entire building, can we really say that radon 

4 was sufficiently high to endanger somebody's 

5 health?

6 They even did measurements right 

7 in this area and found low radon or no radon.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: How many radon 

9 samples do we have?

10 DR. ULSH: Well, I spoke to you in 

11 Niagara Falls, I gave you a set of 

12 measurements that were associated with that 

13 remediation activity.

14 I can tell you that they operated 

15 radon monitors throughout this building as 

16 required. I can't really describe to you the 

17 entire radon sampling network. I don't know -

18 - 

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was just 

20 wondering because I only remember a couple of 

21 samples by the crack, and that was about it.

22 DR. NETON: Right, well that's 
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1 where they discovered the source term. I 

2 mean, you've got to look at the source term 

3 that we are trying to cover here, and that's -

4 - essentially that crack in the floor there. 

5 That's what brought up this whole Class.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: But that was 

7 about it in 1980.

8 DR. ULSH: Right, that was -- the 

9 basis of the Class was that we didn't have 

10 radon sampling measurements between the first 

11 remediation of the cave in 1959, and then this 

12 crack was discovered in 1980. We didn't have 

13 radon measurements. That's why we said we 

14 need to designate an SEC here.

15 But when they remediated this, and 

16 then there was at least one or two rounds of 

17 post-remediation sampling, they didn't observe 

18 those higher radon concentrations anymore.

19 In addition to that, they had 

20 radon measurements throughout this building 

21 but I can't really characterize those off the 

22 top of my head. 
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: The corrective 

2 action for this tunnel was to actually vent 

3 it, because that's what we believe was the 

4 issue, was that they actually sealed the 

5 tunnel off at the start, creating radon inside 

6 --

7 DR. NETON: They also sealed the 

8 cracks though, I believe.

9 DR. ULSH: Yes they did.

10 DR. NETON: And most of the high 

11 activity was related to radon-219, which has 

12 like a 55-second half life. That's what 

13 really was sort of perplexing or confusing to 

14 folks when they first started taking these 

15 measurements.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Ready?

17 DR. ULSH: MESH.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Sure.

19 DR. ULSH: Okay. As Susan 

20 mentioned earlier, there's been a lot of 

21 confusion about interpretation of a particular 

22 report in the MESH database.
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1 In particular I think it's called 

2 the MESH Tritium Report or something like 

3 that. It's a standardized report that goes 

4 into claimant dosimetry files, to worker 

5 dosimetry files.

6 And the confusion is that in those 

7 columns, you sometimes see a 0.000 and it's 

8 typically dated in September of the calender 

9 year.

10 And some have interpreted that to 

11 mean see, I had a tritium urinalysis, it 

12 wasn't positive, but I had one. I should be 

13 in the Class.

14 DR. NETON: It was actually 

15 reported a tritium dose, right? That column 

16 was not a tritium bioassay result. It was a 

17 tritium dose.

18 DR. ULSH: Correct.

19 DR. NETON: And it was listed as 

20 0.000 as a dose for the year.

21 DR. ULSH: Right.

22 DR. NETON: Tritium.
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1 DR. ULSH: Right. So I think the 

2 correct interpretation of that number is a 

3 legitimate concern. The situation is, what we 

4 discovered, and that's one of the things that 

5 we reported on in our report, our latest 

6 report here.

7 During the time period in question 

8 that we are talking about here, when these 

9 numbers applied, Mound, like many other sites 

10 across the DOE complex, considered tritium to 

11 be a whole body dose, because tritium goes 

12 throughout the body. It's not just 

13 concentrated in one area, one organ.

14 In addition, external dose, the 

15 kind that you measure on a film badge, or a 

16 TLD, is a whole body dose. So what Mound did 

17 and many other sites did, they combined 

18 tritium and external dose into one whole body 

19 dose and they reported that as a combined 

20 number.

21 So when you look and you see a 

22 number in that column, it could be that the 
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1 person was monitored for tritium and had a 

2 negative dose. That's one possible 

3 interpretation.

4 It could be that that person had 

5 external dosimetry and did not have a positive 

6 reported dose. It could be both. Just 

7 looking at that number, you can't tell what 

8 the situation is.

9 One situation, if it was a tritium 

10 dose, they would probably qualify for the SEC. 

11 The other situation, if it was just external, 

12 they wouldn't automatically qualify for the 

13 SEC.

14 So how do you resolve it? Well, 

15 the way that we have approached data every

16 other time, is we go to the primary data 

17 source.

18 The primary data source in this 

19 case is the Mound tritium log books. This is 

20 where the internal dosimetry folks at Mound, 

21 when they collected tritium urinalysis 

22 results, they recorded them in these log 
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1 books.

2 Now from there, throughout the 

3 history of Mound, they were transcribed into 

4 computer databases, eventually winding up in 

5 MESH.

6 And in the past we have had to 

7 spend some effort looking at the transfer of 

8 that data from the original source in the log 

9 books to these various electronic databases 

10 and was anything missed, was it done 

11 correctly, we have examined that.

12 That's why we always try to go 

13 back to the primary data source when we can, 

14 when it's readily available. In this case the 

15 tritium log books were readily available. We 

16 captured them. We coded them.

17 And that was the genesis of the 

18 list that we made of individual workers who 

19 had given tritium urinalysis results.

20 Now when I say log books, don't 

21 get too hung up on that, because there were 

22 some periods of time that they weren't log 
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1 books -- they were typed sheets or various 

2 different hard copy forms. So basically I am 

3 talking about hard copy, original hard copy 

4 data. 

5 So as long as we were looking at 

6 this radon issue again, we took the 

7 opportunity to go back and double check and 

8 make sure that there were no chronological 

9 gaps in our collection of hard copy tritium 

10 urinalysis data.

11 Well unfortunately we discovered 

12 that there were a couple of gaps within the 

13 report. There were a couple of years I think, 

14 what '74 and --

15 CHAIR BEACH: September 1, '72 

16 through December 31, '72.

17 DR. ULSH: So the last quarter of 

18 '72.

19 CHAIR BEACH: And then the two20 year period January 1, 1975 through December 

21 31, 1976.

22 DR. ULSH: So for those two time
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1 periods, we did not have the original tritium 

2 urinalysis data. Therefore we are proposing, 

3 and this has not been acted upon, we are 

4 proposing to the Working Group and the 

5 Advisory Board, that for those two time 

6 periods we expand the Class Definition to 

7 include all workers because that was our means 

8 of determining who could have been in SW-19, 

9 was that data. We don't have that data for 

10 those two time periods.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Just a procedural 

12 question here. If we proceeded with this 

13 proposal, does that require that you revise 

14 the Evaluation Report or --

15 DR. NETON: I think it's more than 

16 that. I think it would have to be --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Because this looks 

18 a little bit like an 83.14 almost.

19 DR. NETON: I believe that would -

20 - I haven't thought about this, but I would 

21 think that it would need to be 83.14 because 

22 we have already opined as to what our position 
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1 is. The Board has acted on it. We are now 

2 recommending a change in the Class and to 

3 change that Class Definition then we would 

4 have to go through the 83.14.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: And that's for 

6 this particular period.

7 MS. LIN: And it's a different 

8 basis for having this Class. So you know --

9 DR. NETON: It's changed the basis 

10 for the Class. You'd essentially have to add 

11 an additional Class.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Will you be ready 

13 for that a the Board meeting in December?

14 DR. ULSH: Don't know. It depends 

15 on your recommendations.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I don't 

17 know. Let me ask the Chair. It seems to me 

18 that we could go ahead and act on it. But 

19 it's out of sequence because we don't have a 

20 83.14 request --

21 CHAIR BEACH: It is.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: We have -- we have 
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1 the report, which --

2 DR. NETON: Let me sort of back up 

3 a step though, because part of the resolution 

4 of this problem depends on whether this 

5 original argument that Brant proposed about 

6 the R building, if that holds, if that doesn't 

7 hold then we have got a whole separate issue.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay and so let's 

9 not talk -- let's not go to that until we hear 

10 from SC&A and hear from any petitioners that -

11 - or claimants that have questions.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, I just 

13 wanted to get a feel for process-wise, what 

14 would --

15 CHAIR BEACH: You stole my thunder 

16 because I was going to ask --

17 (Simultaneous speaking.)

18 MR. KATZ: Just to be clear I 

19 mean, you wouldn't -- the Work Group wouldn't 

20 be making a recommendation until the Board 

21 meeting and at that point you would have an 

22 Evaluation Report on the table and so on.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Can I ask a 

3 clarifying question? What's the status of the 

4 current SEC Class? Is that being implemented 

5 as we do all this? So this is not holding 

6 anything up?

7 MR. KATZ: No, it isn't.

8 CHAIR BEACH: It's only holding up 

9 people in that time frame.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: In that specific 

11 time.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Well, and I 

13 was confused. I know I sent Jim a couple of 

14 emails saying okay what exactly is this Work 

15 Group supposed to do here.

16 DR. NETON: So I think it's pretty 

17 clear at this point I hope --

18 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, it's much more 

19 clear.

20 DR. NETON: We need to decide 

21 whether this new finding about the R building 

22 monitoring status changes the Working Group's 
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1 opinion on the validity of the Class as it 

2 currently is defined.

3 Then we can take up the issue 

4 about the 83.14 with the missing bioassay if 

5 that --

6 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and let's be 

7 clear. Let's be clear. The Class Definition 

8 that is existing right now, the original one, 

9 that is not changing. You are still going to 

10 say R and SW as --

11 DR. NETON: Well, no, see here's 

12 the situation. We actually have -- this has -

13 - brought this up, and I think Brant said a 

14 member of the public, it's actually a claimant 

15 --

16 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

17 DR. NETON: Had clear, 

18 demonstrable evidence that he had worked in 

19 the -- the person had worked in the R building 

20 and had no tritium bioassay and our response 

21 was well how could this possibly be?

22 And then we dug into this. So 
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1 that person was denied membership in the Class 

2 because they didn't have tritium bioassay yet 

3 they had worked in the R building and through 

4 subsequent review, we realized they had worked 

5 in the -- what I call the cold portion in the 

6 half that was not contiguous with the SW 

7 building. So --

8 MR. KATZ: So another, just timing 

9 question, is have you located a claimant whose 

10 dose reconstruction you can't do through the 

11 83.14 process?

12 DR. NETON: I don't think we have 

13 gone down that path. I mean it's sort of like 

14 a --

15 MR. KATZ: It's a pretty, that's a 

16 pretty narrow, well -- the final claimant that 

17 I --

18 DR. ULSH: Well, the original --

19 DR. NETON: No, he would not be 

20 eligible. That person would not be eligible. 

21 If this went forward, anyone who worked on the 

22 --
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1 DR. ULSH: Oh, right, right --

2 DR. NETON: What I call the cold 

3 side of the R building, the non-tritium4 monitored side of the R building would not be 

5 -- would not have tritium bioassay and 

6 therefore would not be a member of the Class.

7 DR. ULSH: You know, I think it 

8 would be a little bit premature for us to get 

9 that far down the 83.14 road when we don't yet 

10 know what the Working Group is going to do.

11 DR. NETON: I mean we could try to 

12 identify that there might be people out there, 

13 but I don't think we've done that.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well and the other 

15 thing is that someone whose work may have 

16 spanned that area may already be in the SEC, 

17 because that's a pretty narrow band they're 

18 already covering before --

19 MR. KATZ: And so they wouldn't be 

20 a claimant for whose dose reconstruction you 

21 can't do unless they had a cancer that's not 

22 covered by the SEC.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

2 MR. KATZ: So that's what -- I 

3 only raise it only on a timing issue because 

4 they'll have to identify a claimant through 

5 the 83.14 process --

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's not like 

7 someone's waiting for a dose reconstruction.

8 MR. KATZ: So whether December 

9 timing works depends in part on that, if 

10 everything goes forward as they are 

11 suggesting.

12 DR. NETON: Well, let's put it 

13 this way. I suspect that there's a lot of 

14 people that could have worked at Mound in 

15 those two years, never have been in that 

16 building and then be -- all of a sudden become 

17 members of the Class. See even though it's 

18 only a two-year period, that opens it up to 

19 the entire site being eligible for the SEC. I 

20 think there's probably a reasonable chance 

21 that someone has been denied membership in the 

22 Class because they don't have tritium bioassay 
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1 but they worked in 1973 and '74, which would 

2 make them eligible under this proposal.

3 I think there's probably more 

4 people out there than you would think. I 

5 don't know.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mark, on -- how 

7 are you going to be able to distinguish for 

8 not the years, the people that worked on the 

9 cold side of R.

10 DR. NETON: I don't think you'd 

11 have to. They just wouldn't have tritium 

12 bioassay samples.

13 DR. ULSH: Right, what we're 

14 proposing, with the exception of those years 

15 where we have no original tritium urinalysis 

16 data, with those exceptions, we are not 

17 proposing a change in the Class Definition. 

18 We are proposing that the Definition, as is, 

19 is appropriate based on tritium urinalysis 

20 data.

21 Now the exceptions that we 

22 mentioned are when we don't have that data, 
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1 and we're saying include everybody because we 

2 can't narrow it down.

3 DR. NETON: Because the original 

4 Class Definition said nothing about the R 

5 building.

6 CHAIR BEACH: No it did not.

7 DR. NETON: It just said anyone 

8 who was monitored for tritium.

9 CHAIR BEACH: And I think the 

10 reason for this confusion is we went -- we had 

11 like four or five different --

12 DR. ULSH: Yes.

13 CHAIR BEACH: -- versions of the 

14 Class Definition when we voted on it. We were 

15 scrambling. At one point it said R and SW.

16 DR. ULSH: It did.

17 CHAIR BEACH: The letter that went 

18 to the Secretary said R and SW, but if you 

19 look at the actual definition that was --

20 DR. NETON: Well, the definition 

21 didn't say R and SW, but you are right, in the 

22 logic --
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Logic, yes.

2 DR. NETON: -- discussion, the 

3 rationale of adding the Class, it talked about 

4 the R building being monitored and that is 

5 something we also need to take up with OGC 

6 about what that means in modifying that 

7 original -- or not -- original discussion that 

8 went to the Secretary's office.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, if I can 

10 jump in.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: That's kind of 

13 where I was coming from too, that you know, we

14 had in the original Site Profile as Brant was 

15 mentioning, you know we raised it early on 

16 back when we interviewed somebody and we were 

17 trying to get a sense of the scope of this 

18 thing.

19 And SW-19 was the easy one. That 

20 was clearly a problem in terms of influx. But 

21 we did get this one interview that seemed to 

22 indicate there was some entry at the R 
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1 building.

2 And you know, being a Site 

3 Profile, we didn't spend a lot of time trying 

4 to you know, dig -- you know we had a set of 

5 interviews, we got that data point and we 

6 brought that to the Work Group.

7 And you know I think that was 

8 represented fairly accurately. We didn't 

9 really pursue that any further. We sort of 

10 focused on the implications of radon coming in 

11 and you know, whether or not it was dose 

12 reconstructable, and that kind of proceeded.

13 And certainly in the final 

14 discussions, it didn't really get addressed 

15 either, I mean it was just sort of assumed 

16 there was an entry point based on that, that 

17 could have included R. R and SW was 

18 contiguous. I think Jim, you brought up that 

19 you know, people did move from the R and SW. 

20 Now we know it's clear they only moved 

21 apparently on the tritium areas.

22 But there was some movement, so 
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1 they could have been exposed to the 

2 concentrations in and around SW-19. So there 

3 was a lot of discussion of that, which made it 

4 a more dynamic situation, which was part of 

5 the basis for the SEC.

6 And there was a lot of discussion 

7 about well, how do you scope that, and I think 

8 the Work Group at the time felt the easiest 

9 way was just to say R and SW because you know, 

10 radon sort of finds its own way so to speak, 

11 and there was some evidence that it was 

12 getting into both buildings.

13 And then, as I think we indicated, 

14 it was a lot of give and take and the feeling 

15 was that the trigger should be tritium 

16 bioassay because of this strong evidence that 

17 to get into R and SW you needed a tritium 

18 bioassay, and that seemed to be a cleaner way, 

19 just as opposed to using building 

20 designations.

21 I can't recall all the discussion, 

22 but I thought there was some unease about 
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1 using building designations at the time and it 

2 was a feeling that the tritium bioassay in the 

3 log was a much more cut and dry way of 

4 determining access.

5 And that certainly is the 

6 background. Now, the research I am hearing 

7 about is certainly taking what we did in that 

8 Site Profile interview a lot further, and I 

9 think it clarifies things that we didn't have 

10 a chance to clarify.

11 The only issue I have is that we 

12 did acknowledge influx into R building, and I 

13 think like this issue in general, once you get 

14 past the actual measurements in SW-19 and you 

15 know, sort of the concentrations in the 

16 tunnel, it gets a lot more subjective.

17 I mean you know, we don't really 

18 have good data points for radon measurements 

19 throughout R and SW. If we did we wouldn't 

20 have this discussion.

21 We don't really have, you know, a 

22 lot of specific information about you know, 
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1 did worker A go to worker you know, location 

2 B. So it becomes more subjective.

3 And I think the points that Brant 

4 is making are pretty persuasive, that if you 

5 have a negative pressure flowing into SW, and 

6 you have a sufficient barrier so that you 

7 know, you can assume that there isn't too much 

8 mixing of both people and air, and that you 

9 know, your rigor of tritium bioassay going 

10 from the cold -- cold side -- non-tritium --

11 the non-tritium side to the tritium side of R 

12 building, you have a rigor that precludes 

13 people from just dropping in a lot, then I 

14 think that's fairly persuasive.

15 But again, it's subjective and the 

16 only thing I would offer is that the Work 

17 Group might consider, given this turn, you 

18 know, sort of, because it did advocate R 

19 building, whether it wants anything more 

20 confirmatory about things like -- I didn't see 

21 a whole lot on -- I think that the discussion 

22 on negative pressure and you know fume hoods, 
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1 I think the issue on R building was that one 

2 interview, it was pretty clear that operation 

3 of a fume hood in a room seemed to really 

4 exacerbate the influx.

5 I don't have any idea how many 

6 fume hoods were in R building and didn't 

7 really have a chance to go look at the 

8 pressure -- not the pressure -- but the 

9 ventilation patterns.

10 But you know I think there might 

11 be some --

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Are you talking 

13 about the -- from the non-tritium side?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I mean if 

15 you have a --

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Whether they were 

17 going there --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, if you have 

19 fume hoods drawing -- see the issue is, yes, 

20 the tunnel ended. I'm not going to argue that 

21 because I think we didn't have a chance to 

22 really look at the line drawings. 
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1 But if radon was entering R 

2 building, I don't think anybody will know 

3 where it went. Now, the negative pressure I 

4 think is a very strong qualifying factor that 

5 it probably didn't go too far.

6 I think if there weren't these 

7 kind of fume hoods on the non-tritium side, 

8 that would be a very strong argument that you 

9 wouldn't have another way of getting any radon 

10 from the foundation into the non-tritium area 

11 either.

12 And if you had -- and this part 

13 bothers me a little bit, because we had some 

14 misgivings about how rigorous the tritium 

15 bioassay entry requirements were, because I 

16 think we even heard from -- Mr. Sheehan, was 

17 that you that admitted that you came into --

18 there was somebody who came into SW and sort 

19 of acknowledged in one of our discussions that 

20 yes, they dropped in and they didn't have to 

21 do tritium bioassay.

22 So we had some misgivings about 
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1 whether there were people that might be 

2 exceptions that might have frequented but not 

3 necessarily got tritium bioassay.

4 If that requirement was fairly 

5 rigorous, then I don't think there's an issue. 

6 I think this presents a pretty good argument.

7 But I think there's -- you know, 

8 we just got the White Paper last month, and I 

9 think there's a few -- there's a few questions 

10 like that, just go ahead and put the R 

11 building to bed as far as that side of the R 

12 building would basically do it for me.

13 I don't know about the Work Group 

14 but you know if you are going to take the non15 tritium part of the R building out I think you 

16 want to at least make sure about that and I 

17 think -- I didn't see too much on the 

18 ventilation but I did -- you just mentioned 

19 it. That's a pretty important theme in my 

20 mind.

21 If you had a reverse ventilation 

22 into SW from R, I would think that would have 
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1 a big mitigating effect on radon and the non2 tritium portion, and particularly if there was 

3 a -- not an airtight barrier, not the 

4 molecular barrier, but you know, something 

5 that would keep the flow from mingling.

6 And if we could you know have 

7 something a little harder about the -- because 

8 one thing that we talked about a lot, and I 

9 think was raised in our discussions, was that 

10 you know one of the arguments for the SEC 

11 based on the SW-19 was, well you can really 

12 know who went in and out, I mean people kind 

13 of moved around, so you couldn't get a set 

14 group of workers that you knew were the only 

15 ones that would have been exposed to the radon 

16 in and around SW-19.

17 So that came up and I think to put 

18 that to bed you would want to know that you 

19 don't have that kind of movement, you don't 

20 have support workers who would not have had a 

21 tritium bioassay.

22 So I think there's a little bit 
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1 more of making sure we understand that 

2 clearly, that that was a requirement that went 

3 across the board. It would include support 

4 workers and they would not have gone in and 

5 acquired and accumulated you know -- those are 

6 the one set of workers who could get 250 days 

7 if they were in maintenance or something.

8 And I kind of doubt that they 

9 would not have been tritium-bioassayed if they 

10 frequented it from a support standpoint, but I 

11 think that that confirmation somehow I think 

12 would put that to rest.

13 So I guess my overall sense is 

14 this is pretty persuasive but there's some 

15 confirmatory things that would be useful, 

16 given the fact that we are really defining a 

17 hard line on the SEC and that there was 

18 discussion.

19 And when we were before discussing 

20 this SEC about the R building as a whole, that 

21 should be included, and we backed off because 

22 we were reassured that the tritium bioassay 
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1 requirement would be the trigger, and that 

2 would in fact encompass both R and SW.

3 Now it appears that's not the case 

4 so -- or not the case in this context anyway.

5 CHAIR BEACH: So I think I heard 

6 some action there possible --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I -- no, 

8 no, no, not a whole lot of action. I think 

9 it's just things that are being said, I think 

10 if we could get some confirmation, I think 

11 that would be sufficient.

12 DR. ULSH: Well let me be clear 

13 about my basis for making those statements. 

14 It's largely anecdotal. I talked to a former 

15 Mound worker who worked in this building for a 

16 number of years.

17 If you want documentation of the 

18 tritium bioassay requirements, we would have 

19 to go look for that and I'm not saying we 

20 can't. We can. We can go look for that.

21 In terms of ventilation, again, 

22 that is talking about the same worker, it's 
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1 anecdotal. If you want information about the 

2 ventilation patterns in that building we would 

3 have to go look for that as well.

4 So I mean if that's the actions 

5 you are asking then --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I think, but 

7 I think those are very important, I guess, 

8 questions, but are they -- it seems like there 

9 must be something documented.

10 I mean it can't -- that kind of 

11 information sounds like to me engineering 

12 information that you would have at any plant. 

13 I mean am I wrong on that? You would have 

14 some evidence of what kind of patterns that 

15 you would have.

16 DR. ULSH: I'm not sure. I'd have 

17 to go look.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

19 DR. ULSH: It's not something that 

20 I have looked for in the past.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Do we know whether 

22 there were fume hoods in the other side?
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1 (Simultaneous speaking.)

2 DR. ULSH: -- there was at least 

3 one in the non-tritium part of the R building.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Non-tritium.

5 DR. NETON: They were working with 

6 plutonium and other actinides in that building 

7 so I am very sure they had hoods.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And to be clear, 

9 I mean, the thing that we found in the Site 

10 Profile Paul was anecdotal as well, I mean in 

11 terms of the --

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, but I'm 

13 thinking in terms of engineering drawings. It 

14 seems to me that I mean, do we have any 

15 engineering drawings of that building, 

16 operational drawings that would tell us where 

17 -- if you knew where the fume hoods were, you 

18 could easily determine where the air supply --

19 I mean it wouldn't make sense that they would 

20 be drawing their air from this other part of 

21 the building into there, otherwise that 

22 reverses your flow.
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1 So I mean, sort of --

2 DR. ULSH: I am sure that 

3 engineering drawings must have existed at one 

4 time --

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: But it's not 

6 something that you have?

7 DR. ULSH: I don't know if we have 

8 it.

9 DR. NETON: We may or may not. We 

10 haven't really looked at that level.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: You've got 

12 engineering drawings for the tunnel, correct?

13 DR. ULSH: I've got the blueprint, 

14 the line drawings for the tunnel and they're 

15 in the report and in the SRDB.

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: How about 

17 looking into possibly state permitting or even 

18 -- I am sure they were on some type of program 

19 for replacement of the HEPA filters and stuff 

20 in the building, which would probably document 

21 what they went to, where, and that would give 

22 you an idea what kind of fans, what kind of 
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1 ventilation they would have.

2 DR. ULSH: My initial thought, 

3 Phil, is that a state or federal regulatory 

4 agency would be concerned about what you are 

5 blowing out the stack.

6 Where it goes before it gets to 

7 the stack is probably not their big concern. 

8 But I don't know, we -- again it's not 

9 something that we have investigated.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: What I'm 

11 thinking is did you use your documentation for 

12 that, like, okay, we have these HEPA filters 

13 here, they go to this type of -- this 

14 ventilation system and then that goes into a 

15 file. 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, if this --

17 if this stack is pulling from the non-tritium 

18 side, which is I think what you indicated --

19 do we know that for sure?

20 DR. ULSH: Yes, this stack 

21 serviced both SW and R.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: So if there were 
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1 fume hoods over there, it's pulling on those?

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, if you look 

3 here you can see that the stack, well actually 

4 -- this is a better map. The stack goes all 

5 the way through.

6 DR. ULSH: Wait. Hold on.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Is that correct?

8 DR. ULSH: The stack is located 

9 here. Here's the tunnel right here. The 

10 tunnel --

11 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so what is 

12 this right there?

13 DR. ULSH: I don't know. I would 

14 have to look.

15 CHAIR BEACH: That looks like 

16 another source of ventilation to me or a 

17 stack, because it goes through --

18 DR. ULSH: It's too tiny to --

19 CHAIR BEACH: But I -- that -- I 

20 would want to know more about that. And then 

21 it changes. And just for those of you on the 

22 phone, we are must looking at the drawings on 
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1 page 11 and 12 of NIOSH's report.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's the October 

3 report.

4 DR. ULSH: I'll pull it up. Okay. 

5 Well, this might be relevant. The title of 

6 this drawing is SW building. I put partial, I 

7 put the word partial.

8 It's heating and ventilation. So 

9 it might be the kind of thing that you are 

10 looking for. It's a heating and ventilation 

11 drawing.

12 And yes, Josie, that telescoped 

13 line across the drawing there that you were 

14 talking about, it does give the dimensions and 

15 it does show that it -- where the -- different 

16 ventilation tunnels run.

17 Now again, I have only shown --

18 again I'll draw -- if you consider this entire 

19 line drawing, if it -- it's one of those 

20 building blueprints.

21 I snipped out the relevant 

22 portion. Well, I guess it's this part here. 
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1 There's more and that is in the original 

2 drawing that is in the SRDB. So if you want 

3 to see that kind of detail that's where to 

4 look.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Well, I think to 

6 separate the two buildings we are going to 

7 have to see that level of detail.

8 DR. ULSH: Okay, I think this 

9 drawing, this particular drawing is only of 

10 the SW building.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Is it only SW?

12 DR. ULSH: Yes, but --

13 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

14 DR. ULSH: But I'm confident that 

15 there's a corresponding drawing for the R 

16 building, which I could go get.

17 CHAIR BEACH: And kind of the way 

18 I see it, and correct me if I'm wrong, we are 

19 kind of struggling with two separate issues 

20 here. We are struggling with the initial Class 

21 Definition, and the R and SW, and then the 

22 second part of this, the 83.14 that you are 
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1 proposing, actually covers all workers, so 

2 it's really not part of this.

3 DR. NETON: It wouldn't be if the 

4 proposal that we put forth is accepted by 

5 everybody.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: I see -- Josie, I 

7 see a dilemma though, because the presumption 

8 that the you know -- the presumption the Work 

9 Group was working on was that the tritium 

10 bioassay entry requirements would in fact 

11 encompass both buildings. That was the reason 

12 they went forward that way.

13 And it was a claimant that came 

14 forward that proved that presumption 

15 incorrect. So now we are going back and 

16 essentially doing further research to -- and I 

17 think the research is good. Don't get me 

18 wrong. We are actually trying to back off the 

19 scope of the SEC based on the fact that we now 

20 know that that presumption has proved 

21 erroneous.

22 And now we are trying to figure 
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1 out, more subjectively I might add, you know, 

2 how far to back it off. And I think again the 

3 parameters that are being discussed are pretty 

4 good ones.

5 But I think, given the 

6 circumstances, that in fact the claimant has 

7 gone forward has shown that the SEC 

8 presumption on tritium entry as being a 

9 trigger was not adequate. 

10 I think there's a little bit more 

11 homework or just verification that we are 

12 clear that ventilation or the entry source in 

13 fact are adequate.

14 And I am a little concerned about 

15 anecdotal. I think anecdotal sounds, given 

16 the circumstances, maybe a little weak, that 

17 maybe we need to do more -- nothing wrong, I 

18 don't think we need to do a lot more -- but we 

19 just need to do a little bit more to make sure 

20 this is validated.

21 DR. NETON: I'd just like to -- I 

22 think it's a little different than maybe what 
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1 you portrayed the decision process was. My 

2 recollection was it was NIOSH's position that 

3 we did not feel that radon was -- should be, 

4 probably cover anywhere other than SW 

5 building.

6 SC&A's position was well, we don't 

7 know that it didn't go into the R building and 

8 until we know that, you know, we are not going 

9 to say okay.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, we did know 

11 it went into R but --

12 DR. NETON: Well we don't know it 

13 went into R. See, that's the point. The 

14 question was, where did the tunnel stop, and 

15 Brant has demonstrated --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no.

17 DR. NETON: -- conclusively that 

18 the tunnel stopped --

19 MR. FITZGERALD: But please, this 

20 is important. I think we did have the 

21 interview with the rad tech who actually 

22 monitored --
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1 DR. NETON: Right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: -- a room in R 

3 building where it was coming in, and I think 

4 Brant was able to validate that and even go a 

5 little bit further.

6 Now, that's where we left it 

7 because that was kind of the Site Profile 

8 inquiry, which says you know we don't know 

9 what the implications are for the building as 

10 a whole, but we can demonstrate that it wasn't 

11 just SW.

12 That's kind of what we told the 

13 Work Group and I think in the discussions it 

14 was clear that you know, okay, you know, the 

15 easiest thing to do is just say, since R and 

16 SW are joined, it's just both buildings.

17 DR. NETON: I agree. But in 

18 tracking that to ground, I think it's 

19 demonstrated that the radon was on the 

20 tritium-monitored side of the R building. I 

21 hope that's clear.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think, I 
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1 think qualitatively you have made a persuasive 

2 argument. I'm just saying that at this stage 

3 of the discussion, since we just are starting 

4 this discussion -- this is the first time we 

5 have actually had the information that Brant 

6 has brought forward in this White Paper -- I 

7 would say the only lingering question I have, 

8 is I think the ventilation pattern is 

9 important. I think the note that Brant made 

10 earlier about the negative pressure I think 

11 would be a key, key issue in my mind, that 

12 okay, yes, I think you got it.

13 But I would like to see certainly 

14 a little more than anecdotal reference from a 

15 worker that that was the case. And that's all 

16 I'm saying.

17 And I think that's got to be 

18 available somewhere, that you in fact have a 

19 ventilation pattern, a negative pressure, 

20 where you can be a little bit more conclusive 

21 that the -- you know, any radon would be 

22 moving in the other direction.
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1 I'm just a little surprised that 

2 all we have is the anecdotal reference from a 

3 worker. It must exist in something on the R 

4 and SW --

5 DR. ULSH: I'm not saying it 

6 doesn't. What I'm saying is that that's not 

7 one of the factors that we have gone into 

8 depth on in the research that we have done so 

9 far.

10 It may very well be sitting in our 

11 SRDB or it may be that we have to go look for 

12 it.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, yes, and 

14 that's what I'm saying. Just to make sure 

15 it's clear I'm not saying that I find your 

16 overall argument wrong. I'm just saying that 

17 I think, given the circumstances of how this 

18 came about, it would be very important to at 

19 least nail that down and there's a couple of 

20 other things I'd be interested about fume 

21 hoods.

22 I think this -- that actually to 
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1 me is maybe among the most important ones, 

2 that plus a little better tack on tritium 

3 entry, just to make sure that since we have 

4 had some hiccups on that in the past, that you 

5 know, we are pretty clear, if you were a 

6 maintenance person, you wouldn't be crossing 

7 back and forth into the tritium side of R if 

8 you didn't have tritium bioassay, that kind of 

9 thing.

10 DR. ULSH: So, Josie there's a 

11 couple of proposed actions on the table for 

12 further research, and I just want to be clear 

13 that we bring you what you want.

14 In terms of heating or in terms of 

15 ventilation, the ventilation issue, we already 

16 have in the SRDB and a portion of it in this 

17 report, this heating and ventilation drawing.

18 We don't have that drawing in our 

19 possession for the R building, but I am pretty 

20 confident I can get that. Once I do that and 

21 put it in the SRDB and let you guys know that 

22 it's there, is that the information that you 
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1 are looking for on the ventilation question?

2 CHAIR BEACH: That, yes, that is 

3 part of it, for ventilation.

4 DR. ULSH: For ventilation.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Let me ask a 

6 question though. Will we be able to tell do 

7 you think from those drawings actually what 

8 the movement, what's hooking up to what, the 

9 words -- for example, will we know that the R 

10 building ventilation goes through this stack -

11 - that's the only stack in the building --

12 will we know that from the drawings? How 

13 interpretable are they?

14 DR. ULSH: I don't know Paul. 

15 I'll leave that to your discretion. There's a 

16 sample of it here in the report and --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, we'll have to 

18 look at it and see whether we can make 

19 something out of it.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Josie, one other 

21 part of this -- because I want you to take a 

22 look at this. When you put a building at 
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1 negative pressure, you have to have a supply. 

2 That's how you maintain it at your negative 

3 pressure, so with the dampers.

4 And if you follow this on with 

5 page 12 over the top where it says the 

6 concrete plenum right here, and you see the 

7 ducts going across that, that's your supply 

8 air coming into the facilities.

9 And it flows into your main ducts 

10 that run down through the center of this. 

11 Through the use of the dampers and stuff is 

12 where you maintain your rooms, and also the 

13 building at it.

14 The thing that's --

15 CHAIR BEACH: Brad, it's not clear 

16 if that -- that looks like it hooks into the 

17 tunnel and it's not clear that it hooks into 

18 the other -- that one goes across the middle.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: That's -- that's 

20 the point I'm trying to get at --

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, sorry. Go 

22 ahead.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Because we need -

2 - we need to be able to see how the supply --

3 because to me right here, what bothers me is 

4 we've got the tunnel that goes right up and 

5 right across, and goes right into the bottom 

6 of this air plenum, and it's got that concrete 

7 plenum right here. That's -- that is your 

8 supply air.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so go ahead --

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: So we need a --

11 we need to determine from the prints. If you 

12 have got it, we can determine the flow chart 

13 from that. But it makes me worried about this 

14 being the tunnel underneath there, and right 

15 over at the other end of it, this is the 

16 supply air coming in.

17 Because if you look at your main -

18 - main tunnel right there, you've got 3,450 

19 CFM compared to the 6,500. On both sides of 

20 the building, flowing inward, you have your 

21 supply air coming into your exhaust going out.

22 You control -- those rooms are 
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1 controlled by dampers to maintain the negative 

2 pressure. I just want to be able to make sure 

3 where we are pulling that supply air from.

4 DR. ULSH: So, are you happy with 

5 this drawing or do you want something --

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, this 

7 drawing, what bothers me is the concrete 

8 plenum that you are drawing your air from is 

9 the same one right above the tunnel.

10 DR. NETON: Well, I think we just 

11 need to go get the drawing.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Well, I think we 

13 need -- this is SW. We need --

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: We need, we need 

15 help. We need help. R is going to tie into 

16 it. It's --

17 DR. ULSH: My action item out of 

18 this in terms of the ventilation question is 

19 to go get the corresponding drawing for the R 

20 building.

21 Now the other proposed action 

22 that's on the table is to --
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1 DR. NETON: Well, I think it does 

2 slightly go beyond just get the drawing but 

3 try to determine, at least internally within 

4 NIOSH, what we believe to be the case, where 

5 did the air -- was under negative pressure --

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Basically you want 

7 to be able to demonstrate that R isn't drawing 

8 air from SW.

9 DR. NETON: Exactly. I think if 

10 we get the right drawing, we should be able to 

11 do that.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So we're also 

13 looking at the fume hoods in R, if there are 

14 any and --

15 DR. ULSH: There are.

16 CHAIR BEACH: What their source 

17 is.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, there's 

19 still got to be plenums to supply the rooms 

20 where those fume hoods are.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: It's the same 

22 issue. Are they drawing them out you know, 
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1 that kind of thing.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

4 DR. ULSH: Now the other --

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: And you also have 

6 this, and many of these things, where you have 

7 a negative system but if part of the system is 

8 turned off, for example if the SW side is 

9 turned off, does the R side pull air back?

10 I mean I've seen this in hoods --

11 you have two hoods in the room, you turn one 

12 off and the other one is working and you get -

13 - you get air exchange. You need a little bit 

14 of definition out of that.

15 Is it possible for the air to move 

16 in the other direction if some subset of those 

17 things is turned off? Some of them work great 

18 if everything is running.

19 Of course nowadays, you get alarms 

20 if the rooms go -- if you lose the negative 

21 pressure. I don't know if they had that in 

22 those days.
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1 DR. ULSH: Yes, that's covered in 

2 the -- one of the followup interviews that we 

3 conducted, the question was asked, what 

4 happens when you had a power outage.

5 Because this stack right here --

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, even without 

7 a power outage, sometimes you lose negative 

8 pressure for other reasons, but yes.

9 DR. ULSH: The stack right here 

10 was an active stack, not a passive stack. It 

11 was hand-driven.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, okay. 

13 DR. ULSH: So when power was lost, 

14 that fan would shut off. The alarms would 

15 start to go off across the buildings and 

16 people evacuated. That's what happened.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: SW was built 

18 first, right, and then R was added on? I 

19 thought I remembered, because getting into 

20 this, the first SW is built and like all these 

21 sites, you know, they add on buildings right 

22 and left, the way it goes in.
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1 DR. ULSH: I don't know Brad. I 

2 don't know which one was built first.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so -- oh 

4 sorry.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was just going 

6 to say, 10 to 1 with -- because this is just a 

7 basic flow diagram for SW. You probably have 

8 a fume hood diagram somewhere in their, in 

9 their paperwork.

10 This can show how all that ties 

11 in, also how R ties into the facility too. It 

12 should be relatively easy.

13 DR. ULSH: If it exists over -- if 

14 I can find it, I'll grab it.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so let's be 

16 clear. Can you just run through your action 

17 items again, just to make sure we have covered 

18 them all?

19 DR. ULSH: I'm going to look for 

20 the drawing, the corresponding drawing for the 

21 R building. I'll do that. If there are 

22 drawings in this collection that deal with 
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1 fume hoods, I'm going to grab those too.

2 Now Jim talked about some further 

3 deliberations --

4 DR. NETON: To the extent we can, 

5 yes, based on the information we find, can we 

6 document the directionality of the flow of the 

7 air between the R and SW building?

8 That's the main goal here. I 

9 don't want to just throw data out to the 

10 Working group and say okay, here it is , what 

11 do you think?

12 I mean we should do some sort of 

13 interpretation of we find, that's all I'm 

14 saying. 

15 CHAIR BEACH: And then tritium 

16 entry requirements, what --

17 DR. ULSH: Yes, that was the 

18 second proposed action and I guess I am asking 

19 you what kind of documentation you want to 

20 see.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

22 that issue is just to -- you know we have had 
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1 in and outs on this issue. I think it would 

2 be helpful to see if there's anything that 

3 could clarify, you know, how rigorous I guess 

4 is the best word in terms of people going back 

5 and forth from non-tritium to tritium, whether 

6 or not one would expect them to receive 

7 tritium bioassay, not just for the dropping 

8 the mail off type thing, but you know, if they 

9 in fact had regular duties like maybe 

10 maintenance or something like that.

11 So just to clarify that because I 

12 am still a little uncertain about that 

13 situation, more so now that we learn that even 

14 within R building you had these two camps that 

15 were coexisting.

16 And I think that would help answer 

17 the question I think Brad raised earlier, 

18 which is would you expect to have much 

19 mingling and therefore some problems with 

20 that? I think that would help the Work Group 

21 clarify, no, it was fairly rigorous, there 

22 might have been some intermittent, but 
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1 certainly not 250 days type of thing. That's 

2 all I'm saying.

3 DR. ULSH: Well, we -- I 

4 understand the intent.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: But as far as the 

6 actual mechanics, I would look for any 

7 progress reports or something that would speak 

8 to Joe Schmo you know, was exposed to tritium 

9 but was not monitored or something that would 

10 show evidence that they were actually managing 

11 that so that you didn't have -- you wouldn't 

12 expect to -- because they had procedures that 

13 said that but I think we are finding they are 

14 not necessarily airtight in all cases.

15 In this case you have two 

16 populations in the same exact building 

17 separated by perhaps a door, where on one side 

18 you had a tritium bioassay presumably, on the 

19 other side you did not.

20 I can't imagine back in the '60s 

21 and '70s that was necessarily as rigorous as 

22 we would think it might be, you know.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: But in the actual 

2 case though that sort of raised this question 

3 it was sort of the reverse. It's not a person 

4 who claims they were exposed to tritium --

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: They weren't given 

7 that bioassay. They were not given bioassay 

8 and were in the building that was presumably 

9 what we were designating initially.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and we were 

11 concerned -- in this original assessment we 

12 were concerned about actually the reverse 

13 issue but --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: But what you are 

15 talking about seems to me it would be a little 

16 different. Are there people who were exposed 

17 to tritium that didn't have a tritium 

18 bioassay? That's sort of separate from the 

19 case that raised this.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh no, no, I am 

21 not raising that. I see it as the first, 

22 meaning that with the -- in this case it 
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1 wasn't a tritium worker, worked on a clean 

2 site, and the presumption is that he did not 

3 go over to the other side without -- because 

4 he didn't get a tritium bioassay.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: But I'm just 

7 saying are we -- how sure we are that -- how 

8 sure of that are we given the fact that this 

9 has come up before about is that a black and 

10 white line as far as entry into the tritium 

11 areas of R and SW or not?

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now the case, 

13 Brad, that you raised, the guy, was he 

14 claiming he got into the -- inside the 

15 building or was he --

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, he had access 

17 --

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Or he could get 

19 inside from --

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, he had access 

21 --

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: this outer -- he 
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1 was working outside on the main line?

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, yes the 

3 main power feed coming in --

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: They had to do 

6 electrical upgrade on it as a lot of them did, 

7 especially when they added on buildings, you 

8 could actually gain access into the building, 

9 into the electrical panel room out through an 

10 outside door.

11 There was a door that went into 

12 the --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: For the electrical 

14 stuff.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, but part of 

16 the thing was --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: It wasn't part of 

18 the regular entry?

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, this --

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got you.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Part of the thing 

22 was, is they were pulling cable from inside 
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1 the facility to do the electrical upgrade. 

2 Well like anything else, especially with the 

3 negative plant, you pull a lot of stuff 

4 through you know, it's what they call influxed 

5 air that runs through the electrical columns, 

6 especially where it's off conduit.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, any other 

8 actions there for radon?

9 MR. KATZ: Is that one clear, 

10 because it's still not clear to me what 

11 exactly how --

12 DR. ULSH: I mean we've got worker 

13 interviews that tell us what the policies 

14 were. I can probably find you written 

15 documentation that will at least cover -- that 

16 will at least be relevant to this.

17 I don't know whether it will 

18 answer every question. It's not clear to me, 

19 beyond those two data sources, exactly what we 

20 are looking for, but --

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

22 it's the rigor of implementation. I think 
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1 there's policy that says you should get 

2 tritium bioassay if you are in a tritium area. 

3 I think no one argues with that.

4 But you know, you called, Brant --

5 we did interview -- I can't remember who it 

6 was. But somebody -- we point blank asked 

7 them, we said you know, when you went to SW, 

8 did you have to leave a tritium bioassay, and 

9 this individual as I recall -- we can look up 

10 the notes -- responded that no because I 

11 didn't work there, but I went to, if I 

12 remember, I had a meeting or visit or 

13 something, and I thought that oh, that's 

14 interesting.

15 So you know, if you're not a 

16 worker in that building, you can still get in 

17 without a tritium bioassay. So that kind of 

18 raised some questions in my mind about how --

19 you know these days you could not even walk in 

20 the door without evidence of being bioassayed.

21 Back then it sounded like it was a 

22 little looser. You could go in but as long as 
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1 you weren't a steady worker, you didn't need 

2 it.

3 DR. ULSH: My recollection of an 

4 interview -- I'm not sure that we are talking 

5 about the same interview.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

7 DR. ULSH: But it was a particular 

8 worker, I will tell you his name when we are 

9 on break, said that -- the question was 

10 presented, if you worked in this building, 

11 would you be on tritium bioassay and the 

12 answer was yes.

13 But what about if you just went in 

14 intermittently, what if you went in to deliver 

15 a letter, or something like that, and the 

16 workers --

17 CHAIR BEACH: You had a meeting.

18 DR. ULSH: Right, had a meeting, 

19 right. That was another scenario.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

21 DR. ULSH: And the worker said, 

22 well, you know, it's possible someone could 
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1 have gone in for a meeting or to deliver a 

2 letter and not given tritium bioassay. They 

3 were supposed to but I can't swear to you that 

4 that always happened.

5 That's the interview and the 

6 answer that I recall. Again, I'm not sure if 

7 we are talking about the same one.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: I think it was. 

9 I think though that's kind of where we are at. 

10 I mean I think it's difficult to gauge 

11 implementation as opposed to policy because 

12 policy is easily written down but how you 

13 actually carry out the policy is always a 

14 question in terms of management of the 

15 program.

16 But in this case I think that it 

17 would be helpful to know if there's anything 

18 that would give the Work Group confidence that 

19 you know, anyone who went into those areas 

20 would have received a tritium bioassay if they 

21 were there you know, any appreciable amount of 

22 time.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is there anything 

2 more we could get that we don't have? We have 

3 this one interview. Are we going to interview 

4 a bunch more people and see how widespread 

5 this is?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know. I 

7 think it's partly can you in fact do anything 

8 more than just say that you know, the 

9 expectation would be that you wouldn't have 

10 that.

11 Now, this one individual, the 

12 claimant, who was in the no-tritium side of R, 

13 who worked on the non-tritium side of R, I 

14 mean, I don't know if anyone interviewed him -

15 - 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well he is not 

17 claiming to have gotten tritium.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I would ask 

19 him you know, did you go into the tritium side 

20 of R?

21 DR. NETON: I was going to say, it 

22 seems to me the issue is really the robustness 
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1 of the R -- the two sides of the R, like 

2 before, because there's already a Class based 

3 on this.

4 So presumably we would all feel 

5 comfortable with the fact that the tritium 

6 bioassay program was robust and you could do 

7 it, and now the only real difference here is 

8 that you have a building that's --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Implementation.

10 DR. NETON: Close to it.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, oh close to 

12 it, it's --

13 DR. NETON: What I'm saying though 

14 is that if it's going to focus anything, it's 

15 not so much of was that requirement in place 

16 because we have already had a Class based on 

17 that requirement. It's could people who were 

18 in the R building who had much more convenient 

19 access to that other side --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean I would 

21 even -- we could interview this one individual 

22 and say listen, you know, you clearly didn't 
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1 have it. Now, you and your colleagues, did 

2 you, you know, cross over on a regular basis 

3 because you know, it was just a door.

4 Did you have to in fact -- did you 

5 know you couldn't do that because you were on 

6 tritium -- I mean I just would want to have a 

7 little bit more than we have now, particularly 

8 since this came up the way it came up.

9 DR. ULSH: So we want more work 

10 interviews? Is that --

11 CHAIR BEACH: Does SC&A want to 

12 interview this particular worker that NIOSH - 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It's up to the 

14 Work Group. Certainly the Work Group can make 

15 that call.

16 CHAIR BEACH: I think it's a good 

17 idea.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Is there any 

19 reason we couldn't?

20 DR. NETON: I don't know. I was 

21 just thinking about that. I mean, this person 

22 is --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is this a closed 

2 case already?

3 DR. ULSH: Don't know.

4 DR. NETON: I don't know.

5 DR. ULSH: The information that 

6 was submitted to us wasn't submitted to us by 

7 the claimant. It was submitted to us by --

8 DR. NETON: The Department of 

9 Labor.

10 DR. ULSH: No, no, no. The 

11 information that suggested that this person 

12 worked in the R building but did not have 

13 tritium bioassay was given to us by a third 

14 person.

15 DR. NETON: I don't think so. I 

16 think --

17 DR. ULSH: Well, let's talk about 

18 it on break.

19 DR. NETON: Okay. Maybe I'm --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I think it's an 

21 important qualifier. But if we could talk to 

22 he and/or his colleagues, his coworkers in 
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1 that side, I think --

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: To confirm what 

3 the barriers --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to confirm, 

5 say okay, you guys were not on tritium 

6 bioassay, can we confirm that you did not 

7 spend any appreciable amount of time in the 

8 tritium area.

9 My concern is that they probably 

10 consider themselves Pu workers, not tritium 

11 workers, and -- but did that mean there 

12 wasn't, you know, that part that I hear, I 

13 would like to hear them tell us no, we didn't 

14 go over there because we knew we shouldn't go 

15 over there without tritium bioassay, or if 

16 it's the converse, then it sort of throws that 

17 out.

18 MR. KATZ: My concern is if you do 

19 this, and I think it's fine to do this, talk 

20 to this initial person or whatever, but then, 

21 depending on what you learn, you may need to 

22 talk to a lot more people, because it's not 
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1 going to get you past -- it's not going to 

2 resolve this issue depending on -- I mean, I'm 

3 not sure how you get a feeling of resolution 

4 from talking to one individual alone.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Well I think it's a 

6 combination of that person plus looking at the 

7 drawings, seeing how the buildings were 

8 connected --

9 MR. KATZ: No, but the drawings 

10 don't get to this issue --

11 CHAIR BEACH: No.

12 MR. KATZ: which is --

13 CHAIR BEACH: But it's a 

14 combination of --

15 (Simultaneous speaking.)

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I preface my 

17 remarks saying we are in a subjective part of 

18 this. There is no way to do it in black and 

19 white. We are just saying you know, weight of 

20 evidence, persuasiveness, and I think this 

21 would add to the persuasiveness of what we 

22 have heard today, and be a little more 
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1 confirmatory given the circumstances.

2 MR. KATZ: Right and I'm just 

3 saying, depending on what he says, so what if 

4 he says well you know, I did it, you know, 

5 once a month I went over there without a 

6 whatever, so then what do you do? Then you 

7 need to figure out, I mean, if you bring that 

8 back to the Work Group, I don't know what the 

9 Work Group makes of that.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't think we 

11 know until we hear what the answer is to --

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 MR. FITZGERALD: We do the best we 

14 can. We do as best we can. It may be 

15 equivocal and in which case, you know, no 

16 worse off but we are not going to --

17 MR. KATZ: No, so the only thing I 

18 was just thinking, is there a decision logic 

19 we can have here at the Work Group now as to 

20 if you find this, then you go interview more 

21 people or whatever, so that we don't have you 

22 know, four months between steps here?
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: It may be that 

2 this worker could tell you not only his 

3 personal experience but what about the others 

4 in your group or something.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That's what we 

6 are hoping.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: What was the 

8 practice? Because if you have one person 

9 either way you can say well that's him, but 

10 maybe there were others who were different.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: I think also, to 

12 the information that we have, the question 

13 will be able to be more addressed towards this 

14 R issue, not just in general, as it was 

15 before.

16 I think we are getting to the very 

17 end of that and the question can be pretty 

18 quick.

19 MR. KATZ: So if he says for 

20 example I don't really know, you know, I 

21 didn't have more exposure, because I don't 

22 really know, do you want at that point for 
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1 SC&A to interview some more workers or --

2 CHAIR BEACH: No, I think - 

3 MR. KATZ: That's what I'm just 

4 saying.

5 CHAIR BEACH: At some point we 

6 need to make a decision and move forward.

7 MR. KATZ: I'm just trying to say 

8 do you do this thing step-wise.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

10 MR. KATZ: Since we have this case 

11 maybe we can take advantage of it and learn 

12 something. If not, we leave it.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay.

14 CHAIR BEACH: I agree with that. 

15 And before we move on, Deb, is there any 

16 question you might have on this issue?

17 MS. JARISON: Thank you. The only 

18 thing that comes to mind is, and I don't 

19 remember the time period that I saw this, but 

20 I think in the documents I've looked it, I've 

21 seen references - 

22 CHAIR BEACH: We missed that Deb, 
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1 could you say that again? We are going to 

2 turn up the mic a little bit.

3 MS. JARISON: In some of the 

4 documents I have read and I don't remember the 

5 date, but I did see references to air reversal 

6 in R, but that's the only thing I could think 

7 of that speaks to the issue.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, and that's 

9 something we addressed a little bit earlier. 

10 If you think about where those references 

11 were, could you send me an email on that, 

12 because that would be important for us to take 

13 a look at.

14 MS. JARISON: I'll search the 

15 database a little later and see what I can 

16 come up with.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thanks Deb.

18 MS. JARISON: Thank you.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Brant, I've got 

20 a quick question for you. I'll assume the 

21 section at Mound who did all those urinalysis, 

22 fecal samples, all that stuff, had a logbook 
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1 they maintained. Have those been digitized, 

2 that you guys could search them by - however 

3 they did it -- maybe the employee number or 

4 social security or whatever?

5 DR. ULSH: We -- okay. We located 

6 the collection of tritium urinalysis logbooks 

7 for the time period '59 through '80 with the 

8 exception of those gaps we discussed earlier.

9 Those logbooks have not been 

10 digitized in their entirety. I mean, we 

11 haven't coded them into spreadsheets in their 

12 entirety.

13 What we did do is go through and 

14 pull out -- ORAU did this -- pulled out the 

15 identifying information, the name, the HP ID 

16 and when they gave the tritium urinalysis 

17 result.

18 I'm not sure if we put the actual 

19 result in there. The point was so that we 

20 could assemble a list of name for the SEC 

21 Class. Does that answer your question?

22 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, kind of, 
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1 what I'm kind of thinking of, there's a 

2 possibility that maybe some people are listed 

3 as plutonium workers rather than tritium 

4 workers, but yet they were actually on the 

5 combination bioassay program. And may not 

6 have been in the tritium database but might be 

7 in say the plutonium workers' database. 

8 DR. ULSH: Well, in the logbooks 

9 the workers are not identified -- they are not 

10 categorized as plutonium workers or tritium 

11 workers, at least not in the logbooks I'm 

12 talking about.

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

14 DR. NETON: These are just 

15 bioassay logbook records, they are not 

16 analytical laboratory records. They didn't go 

17 into any kind of detail about the job 

18 location.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay, so I just 

20 wonder if they'd broke them down or something.

21 DR. NETON: Not in this particular 

22 logbook.
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

2 CHAIR BEACH: So any more 

3 questions or comments on radon? Has everybody 

4 got their actions? And be thinking about how 

5 soon these actions can be completed too, 

6 because we are going to want to schedule 

7 another meeting for very soon.

8 MR. KATZ: So, and on that last 

9 action, so Brant, NIOSH is doing the look also 

10 at the worker interview for the worker 

11 interview we have, and follow up with that 

12 worker, or is SC&A following up --

13 DR. NETON: We don't have a worker 

14 interview. We have a case.

15 MR. KATZ: The case.

16 DR. NETON: And I don't know if 

17 that person is even available to interview.

18 MR. KATZ: But SC&A would be doing 

19 that interview, or --

20 CHAIR BEACH: I think a 

21 combination of --

22 MR. KATZ: Both together.
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1 (Simultaneous speaking.)

2 CHAIR BEACH: If it's possible, 

3 then NIOSH will have to provide that 

4 information.

5 DR. NETON: We need to find out.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

7 DR. ULSH: Yes, I don't -- I don't 

8 know the vital status of this person. I don't 

9 know if they are still alive and available, I 

10 don't know if they are willing to talk to us, 

11 so we are going to have to find out.

12 MR. KATZ: Right, okay. 

13 CHAIR BEACH: But that --

14 MR. KATZ: That makes it clear.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, just to 

16 clarify though, I think what Paul was saying 

17 earlier, it's not just that person. We can 

18 identify coworkers in the R building - 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, or if that 

20 person knew what the practice was as a group, 

21 because people often know that, yes, we all 

22 went here and did that --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: We had lunch over 

2 in the SW every day or something, you know.

3 MR. KATZ: So, if that case, that 

4 individual case, that worker is not available 

5 for one reason or another, you might look for 

6 someone else who worked in --

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Worked with that 

8 person.

9 MR. KATZ: the R building and was 

10 similarly situated. Is that what we are 

11 saying?

12 DR. ULSH: We could, or how about 

13 if I just let the Working Group know that 

14 result.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's the first 

16 step. Right. And I think we can, we can go 

17 forward by email on that, if we know what we 

18 learn.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So we are 

20 finished with radon. Yes, let's take a 10-

21 minute break.

22 (Whereupon the above-entitled 
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1 matter went off the record at 10:31 a.m. and 

2 resumed at 10:46 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Okay, we're back 

4 online, a short break. This is the Mound Work 

5 Group.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and so at this 

7 time we are going to move into neutron and NTA 

8 film track fading and adjustment factors, and 

9 I believe we are going to go ahead and have 

10 SC&A kick this portion off.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Ron 

12 Buchanan, are you on the line?

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes I am.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Would you 

15 summarize, and we did receive -- we exchanged 

16 a series of papers over last year and we did 

17 receive the most recent one from NIOSH I think 

18 it was in the spring.

19 CHAIR BEACH: March 2011.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, 2011. And 

21 we just provided our response late summer I 

22 think it was, August or whatever, September. 
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1 So if you can recap what we, you know, this 

2 history a little bit, and how we responded to 

3 the very last NIOSH paper.

4 CHAIR BEACH: So just to be clear, 

5 I believe the report Joe just referred to is 

the October 4th 6 , 2011.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, yes, that's 

correct, October 4th 9 was our last memo, and 

10 this summarized all of the previous 

11 discussions and action items down into three 

12 issues on the neutron part.

13 One was the debating over the 

14 correct MCNP correction factor to use, four or 

15 eight inch, a poly or water. We also had 

16 action two which was concerned with the 

17 fading, the track fading after a period of 

18 time, and item three was the data for 1951 to 

19 1960.

20 And so what -- we went through all 

21 the exchanges here and I briefly summarized 

them in that memo of October 4th 22 . But today I 
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1 will breeze through all those -- I will just 

2 summarize.

3 The first action item one, was 

4 concerned with the fact that we felt -- the 

5 SC&A felt that the eight inches of water was 

6 more appropriately used when modeling the 

7 neutron.

8 This was due to the moderation of 

9 the high energy neutrons to thermal and how 

10 much the NTA film had missed.

11 And so SC&A's last statement on 

12 that is that they would -- they felt that the 

13 four and eight were close and four was more 

14 representative but they would accept the 

15 recommendation and use eight and use the 

16 tables two and three in SC&A's report.

17 And so we agree with that decision 

18 and have no further issues on the fitness of 

19 material to use in that modeling. That was

20 action item number one.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Any discussion on 

22 that, comments from -- Work Group Members have 
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1 questions?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: It sort of ends up 

3 to be a moot point, you are saying in 

4 practice, in terms of the actual values 

5 between the four and the eight, right?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, but there 

7 was considerable concern early on --

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: That that would 

10 make a difference and as it turned out --

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: But it actually 

12 didn't so --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: It did not.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: So is that pretty 

15 much true across the board then?

16 DR. ULSH: What do you mean across 

17 the board?

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, are we going 

19 to have -- sort of intuitively you would think 

20 there would be a difference, but in every case 

21 where this is -- this is for calibration I 

22 guess mainly, right? Is it a calibration 
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1 issue?

2 DR. ULSH: No, it has to do with -

3 - well like Ron said, it has to do with the 

4 MCNP model that we did.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, yes, so if you 

6 model it with eight versus four?

7 DR. ULSH: Right. We proposed to 

8 use four inches. SC&A said no, we think you 

9 should use eight.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

11 DR. ULSH: We said you know what, 

12 we still think four's better but it doesn't 

13 make any difference, well, not much of a 

14 significant difference. Going from four 

15 inches to eight, the results are almost 

16 exactly the same.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

18 DR. ULSH: So, in the interest of 

19 coming to closure, we'll just agree.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, and this had 

21 to do with the number of neutrons that were 

22 missed by the NTA film, and in a couple of 
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1 instances it had made a small amount of 

2 difference, but essentially you plateau out 

3 when you get to between four and eight inches.

4 So I think we have settled that if 

5 there's no other questions.

6 CHAIR BEACH: No.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: SC&A's main concern 

8 is that we need to look beyond four inches to 

9 see what happens out there, and when we did, 

10 we've seen that there wasn't a whole lot of 

11 difference.

12 So that brings us back to item 

13 number two, and this had to do with fading, as 

14 NTA film is worn and then is say, turned in 

15 once a month, and what about the first tracks 

16 that register at the beginning of the month, 

17 there is fading especially if there's humidity 

18 and these weren't originally sealed against 

19 humidity.

20 And so we -- what that comes down 

21 to is that we agree with NIOSH's 

22 recommendation of 33 percent in one-week and 
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1 56 percent in two- and four-week films. 

2 What we didn't agree with was the 

3 nine percent fading factor, and so in TBD-6 

4 for Mound, it does state the 33 percent and 56 

5 percent. In the Evaluation Report there is 

6 recommended a -- the SEC Evaluation Report 

7 recommended a nine percent, nine percent 

8 fading factor.

9 And so we agree with this issue as 

10 long as the TBD values are applied, the 36 and 

11 56 percent, and I understand that's what NIOSH 

12 intends to do.

13 DR. ULSH: Yes I think so.

14 CHAIR BEACH: And so does the nine 

15 percent, does that go away, or --

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Right, we -- nine 

17 percent would not be used.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. All right, 

19 and so NIOSH is agreeing that they are going 

20 to use the 33 percent and the 56 percent. Any 

21 comments or questions?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: I had a question. 
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1 It wasn't clear to me when whoever did 

2 Mound's dosimetry, did they apply those 

3 factors already or are you applying them on 

4 their results?

5 At what point are those 

6 corrections being applied? I would have 

7 thought they would have been applied 

8 originally by the people reading the dosimeter 

9 based on those time factors.

10 MR. KATZ: Before you answer that, 

11 can I just -- there's someone on the line who 

12 doesn't have their phone muted and there's 

13 feedback, and I don't know, it's -- we can 

14 live with it in here, but I don't know how bad 

15 it is for people trying to listen.

16 So someone on the line needs to 

17 mute their phone, *6 if you don't have a mute 

18 button. Thank you.

19 DR. ULSH: To answer your question 

20 Paul, I know Ron Buchanan is on the line 

21 because he just spoke, and I am hoping that 

22 Bob Morris is on the line. Bob, are you out 
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1 there?

2 DR. BUCHANAN: He was on.

3 DR. ULSH: Okay, so I think the 

4 answer Paul, I haven't looked at this because 

5 we were in agreement, but I think the answer 

6 is we are proposing to go back and apply the 

7 fading factor to the reported results.

8 And I think it was based on some 

9 subsequent studies that were done at Mound, so 

10 after the NTA film, you know, had been used, 

11 at some point a study was conducted by Mound 

12 to look at the fading issue, and we are 

13 proposing to apply those --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, and I 

15 understood that, and it seemed to me that if 

16 they knew what the fading was, they would have 

17 applied it to their final numbers.

18 DR. NETON: But not necessarily 

19 retrospectively. Is that the issue?

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't know. 

21 That's what I'm sort of asking, has it already 

22 been applied, and -- well, even if it's 
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1 retrospective, is there some point at which 

2 you no longer apply it because it's already 

3 been applied?

4 In other words you are taking the 

5 number and recalculating it, or have they 

6 already done it? Do we know the answer to 

7 that? That's all I'm asking.

8 MR. MORRIS: This is Bob, Robert 

9 Morris, Ted.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, go ahead.

11 MR. MORRIS: In some cases the 

12 record was ambiguous about when or if 

13 correction points were applied.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, so if we 

15 don't know, we'll go ahead and apply it, is 

16 what you are saying. But are there cases 

17 where we do know?

18 MR. MORRIS: We do know that in 

19 some cases there were corrections applied and 

20 that in some cases they were the wrong 

21 correction factors from our assumptions, 

22 because we have gone back reconciled and said 
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1 well, that wasn't conservative enough.

2 So we backed out any correction 

3 factors that we had identified and then 

4 reapplied them in our work that went into the 

5 White Paper where our correction factors were 

6 defined. 

7 So our dose reconstruction method 

8 will have taken out correction factors that we 

9 have identified and replaced them with the 

10 correction factors that we specified.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got you. So 

12 even if they applied correction factors, 

13 you'll just start over with the original data 

14 and reapply.

15 MR. MORRIS: That's correct.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got you. Okay, 

17 that will work for me.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, Paul, this is 

19 Ron Buchanan, SC&A. In Meyer -- most 

20 estimates -- their work was taken from Meyer 

21 and in a lot of -- several cases he would say 

22 at the end of something, oh, this is the 
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1 correction factor, but it never did say, and 

2 he might say it should be applied but it's 

3 never stated that the data was changed and so 

4 we have to assume, unless we see in the

5 records that it was changed, that it wasn't 

6 changed.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, understood. 

8 That's fine. That works for me.

9 MR. MORRIS: Yes I agree with 

10 exactly what Ron just said.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Great. Okay. I 

12 think we are ready to --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: So both -- those 

14 two agree then and --

15 CHAIR BEACH: So that closes item 

16 two and then on to item three Ron please.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. On item 

18 three, in a certain period, 1951 through 1960, 

19 there was an individual, it was always 

20 individual neutron data, and so NIOSH proposed 

21 using a categorical data which we had some 

22 problems with in light that there was NTA film 
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1 available, and instead of trying to do an N/P 

2 method, just use the NTA film directly as it 

3 was, we had requested that NIOSH look at that 

4 and they said that they would go back and look 

5 at that and SC&A at this point does not see 

6 that this is an SEC issue.

7 We believe that either, you know, 

8 the categorical data, what NIOSH proposes or 

9 the method we propose of looking at the raw 

10 NTA data supplies enough information to 

11 provide dose reconstruction or coworker data 

12 for that period.

13 And so we do not believe at this 

14 point it is an SEC issue.

15 DR. ULSH: And to add to that, to 

16 bolster what Ron said, the argument that we 

17 are making is the time period that we are 

18 talking about using categorical data is 1951 

19 to 1960, and we already have an SEC Class for 

20 that time period.

21 So, and that SEC Class includes 

22 all workers. It goes from 1951 to '59, so 
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1 there is one year additional. But the effect 

2 of saying that we can't reconstruct neutron 

3 doses, it wouldn't add anyone to the SEC 

4 Class, it wouldn't benefit any claimant. It 

5 would just throw out neutron dose because you 

6 are saying we can't do it.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

8 DR. ULSH: I don't know if you 

9 really want to pursue that.

10 MR. KATZ: Although that's not 

11 really a basis for judging feasibility.

12 CHAIR BEACH: No.

13 MR. KATZ: Even though that's what 

14 you say is correct, it's really -- it's 

15 supposed to be just determined on its merits.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: Correct. Any 

17 questions? So I am going to say that with 

18 that neutron -- the neutron issue 14 and -- oh 

19 - 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: So, one as the 

21 sort of action then is to accept that. 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Well, because SC&A 
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1 is saying that either their calculations or 

2 NIOSH's, they are in agreement with that.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, it would be a 

4 TBD issue as opposed to an SEC issue.

5 MR. KATZ: But did I understand 

6 you? I thought what you were saying Ron is 

7 that either method, your view is either method 

8 is adequate, is that what you were saying?

9 DR. BUCHANAN: No, I'm just saying 

10 there's two methods available. SC&A 

11 recommends using the categorical data. SC&A 

12 recommends using the raw NTA data. But SC&A 

13 feels like the data is there and so it isn't 

14 an issue.

15 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you.

16 CHAIR BEACH: And Brant, what are 

17 your plans? Are you going to use the raw data 

18 or -- or just catching you cold here.

19 DR. ULSH: No, actually you are 

20 not. I have thought about this. But there's 

21 been some back and forth between NIOSH and 

22 SC&A about the acceptability of the 
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1 categorical data for 1951 to '60.

2 I think it's accurate to say that 

3 we are not yet in agreement about that 

4 question. We are just at the point where we 

5 both agree that it is not an SEC issue.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

7 DR. ULSH: We have got some 

8 reasons for favoring the categorical data but 

9 I don't know if you want to get into that now, 

10 since it's -- we are saying that it's really 

11 kind of a TBD issue.

12 CHAIR BEACH: What does the Work 

13 Group think?

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: If it's TBD - 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: If we agree that 

16 it's a TBD issue it takes it off the SEC plate 

17 and then we can discuss it as part of the TBD, 

18 which is what I think both sides are 

19 recommending.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I agree. Okay, 

21 so that closes issue 14 and 15. And well, I 

22 guess I shouldn't close it. Warren, are you 
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1 still on the line?

2 MR. SHEEHAN: Hello.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Hi. Did you have 

4 any questions or comments at this time?

5 MR. SHEEHAN: No. Oh there was 

6 one comment about Brad I think suggested that 

7 the SW building was built before the R 

8 building. That's not right.

9 The R building is part of the 

10 original construction. The SW building was 

11 added on.

12 CHAIR BEACH: I think his question 

13 was when was it built, so thanks for 

14 clarifying.

15 MR. SHEEHAN: Okay. Well it was 

16 built in about 1950.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, we were just 

18 trying to figure out how the airflow is going. 

19 We are going to pull up the prints on that. 

20 I appreciate that, though.

21 MR. SHEEHAN: Okay. Regarding the 

22 film fading correction, I believe that the 
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1 nine percent correct was never made on the 

2 films at that time. I don't know if people 

3 have ever substantiated that it was. I don't 

4 think it was.

5 And then later on, I think in the 

6 '60s, when we got into the plutonium-238 oxide 

7 problem and clearly started that calibration 

8 system of '68, I'm not sure that they went 

9 back from '68 to say '60 to correct the fading 

10 problem. I don't know who did.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you. 

12 All right. 

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I have a quick 

14 question. Do we know what shielding they 

15 actually had on the glove boxes? Was it like 

16 four inches of polyethylene or four inches of 

17 water?

18 DR. ULSH: We do. Bob Morris 

19 modeled it. So Bob, what was it?

20 MR. SHEEHAN: Is that a question 

21 for me? I don't know who the question is 

22 directed to.
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1 DR. ULSH: Sorry, I understand 

2 it's a general question but I am kind of 

3 directing it to Bob Morris.

4 MR. SHEEHAN: All right. Thank 

5 you.

6 DR. ULSH: Hello Bob, are you out 

7 there?

8 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert 

9 Morris. It was water-based shielding.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

12 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

13 Can you folks hear me?

14 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, we sure can 

15 John.

16 DR. MAURO: I thought I would just 

17 add a little -- I remember when we ran the 

18 analyses on the thickness of the shielding and 

19 the effects it had on the distribution of the 

20 energy, and one of the questions I asked of 

21 Bob Anigstein who made the runs, does the 

22 model of the glove box itself -- and such as 
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1 the question that you just raised, the 

2 thickness of the window, or the type of window 

3 and the material.

4 And he looked at a variety of 

5 glove boxes and he said really the glove box, 

6 it doesn't matter. What matters, you know, 

7 what, when we looked at that, that was not a 

8 factor and he was looking at how the energy 

9 distribution of neutrons changed when you 

10 increased from I guess anywhere from two 

11 inches up to 12 inches of water shielding.

12 So I guess to answer your question 

13 Phil, we found that the make and model of the 

14 glove box really didn't have much effect on 

15 the results.

16 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert 

17 Morris. One more thing, just I recall, in 

18 some cases there was Benelex shielding 

19 requiring, and so when we did this analysis 

20 initially, we interchanged Benelex for water 

21 and demonstrated there was not much difference 

22 in the shielding effect.
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1 So I think you can almost think of 

2 them as interchangeable kinds of materials. 

3 It's really the question of how much hydrogen 

4 is in the medium.

5 DR. MAURO: We agree with that.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you. 

7 So if we are ready, let's go ahead and move 

8 into the D&D issue which is item number 10.

9 And let's see. Just a little bit of history. 

10 The Work Group did a little work on D&D and 

11 then Joe sent out a memo back in April I 

12 believe, was it April?

13 MR. FITZGERALD: April 2010.

14 CHAIR BEACH: 2010, with some 

15 specific questions and then NIOSH's later 

16 report, April 2010, replies to all those 

17 questions.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: May 2011.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Or excuse me, May 

20 2011.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so who wants 
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1 to kick this off? NIOSH? Clarify?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, clarify. I 

3 think we had a lot of question on D&D and 

4 there was a response, and I can't remember if 

5 it was earlier than April, initial response, 

6 at the last Work Group meeting in January of 

7 2010, and I think there was a position 

8 advanced that there was a -- it wasn't an 

9 issue with bioassay compliance with D&D 

10 workers, yes, there's a couple of papers.

11 And I think at that stage we were 

12 concerned about getting more validation of 

13 that assertion. I think it was a 90 percent 

14 compliance rate that was indicated and we were 

15 concerned because that seemed to be a pretty 

16 high compliance rate compared with other 

17 sites.

18 And that was the genesis of the 

19 note back and the NIOSH response in May went 

20 one step further and did a sampling analysis 

21 of the RWPs and I defer to Brant to go through 

22 that part of it.
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1 But it was pretty in-depth 

2 sampling of the compliance rate that was 

3 associated with a random selection of RWPs, 

4 and I think it a '97, '98, it was the late 

5 '90s as far as D&D operations.

6 And that came out with a 

7 verification of something in the order of 84 

8 to 90 percent, something like that, high '80s, 

9 which is still an amazingly high compliance 

10 rate but that certainly validates that for 

11 whatever reason Mound had a lot of success in 

12 getting D&D workers to in fact follow through 

13 and get bioassay data into the system, which 

14 satisfies our concern that the coworker model, 

15 if it's going to be applicable across the 

16 board to both the operations as well as the 

17 D&D area, you would need to at least have some 

18 confidence that you are using a full deck of 

19 data, that you are not being short-changed on 

20 the D&D side, which is sometimes the case when 

21 you are dealing with transient workers that 

22 you don't have a whole success rate with 
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1 having them leave bioassays when they leave 

2 the site.

3 So I guess in sum, if that 

4 validation you know, with that validation and 

5 that sampling analysis, you know, we accept 

6 that high rate even though again, we remain 

7 surprised at that rate, it seems to be in fact 

8 the case at Mound that they had a very high 

9 compliance rate on D&D bioassays.

10 So you know, I think that 

11 satisfies our original concern that there 

12 wasn't sufficient validation, that that 

13 compliance rate was in fact as high as it 

14 appears to be.

15 So that's a short-hand answer. 

16 I'll turn over to Brant.

17 DR. ULSH: I'll respond to any 

18 specific questions, but you know, if we are in 

19 agreement, why rock the boat?

20 CHAIR BEACH: Your response speaks 

21 for itself, right? Is there any other 

22 comments, concerns, about this time period? I 
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1 know I was pushing for this, more data, 

2 because the 90 percent seemed awful high and 

3 so I do appreciate the work that went into 

4 this and the fact that you did it for us, and 

5 I have no further questions.

6 MR. KATZ: Closed.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Closed. Okay. How 

8 are we doing for time?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Pretty good.

10 CHAIR BEACH: So, the rest of the 

11 agenda basically deals with tritides and 

12 adequacy and completeness of internal data. 

13 The work packets from NIOSH to SC&A came just 

14 recently so this portion will get into the 

15 discussion, but it's mostly for clarification, 

16 because SC&A is not prepared to give us an 

17 answer at this time.

18 So I think tritides, hopefully we 

19 can get done before lunch and then come back 

20 and finish up with the adequacy.

21 And if not, we will just --

22 (Laughter.)
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1 Okay.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Hunger will be a 

3 motivator.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Do you want to kick 

5 off with questions, or NIOSH? I guess NIOSH, 

6 you maybe should since it was your --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, yes, it's a 

8 new approach.

9 CHAIR BEACH: It was your 

10 approach, yes.

11 DR. ULSH: Okay, tritides, right?

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

13 DR. ULSH: Okay. Basically the 

14 situation with tritides is Mound did a lot of 

15 work with tritides for the purpose of tritium 

16 storage, and there was some question raised 

17 about how we could adequately bound the dose 

18 for those compounds because some tritides 

19 behave very differently from the more common 

20 type of tritium, the more common form of 

21 tritium that we are used to thinking about, 

22 and that's gaseous or tritiated water, which 
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1 is very mobile, goes basically the whole body 

2 is the target organs.

3 Tritides are different. They are 

4 a particulate so it's more of a situation 

5 where the dose is concentrated in the lungs 

6 and there was some question about, for some of 

7 the less mobile of these tritide compounds, 

8 the adequacy of urinalysis data.

9 In addition, there was the 

10 question that has been discussed about which 

11 workers were exposed and which were not. So 

12 one of the issues that we clarified over the 

13 course of these discussions was that we are 

14 not talking about all tritide compounds, just 

15 those very immobile type of tritide compounds.

16 And for that particular compound, 

17 NIOSH has advanced the position that those 

18 workers were all bioassayed, just like any 

19 other tritium worker at Mound, and we knew who 

20 those workers were by name, based on worker 

21 interviews, and furthermore, we also knew of a 

22 few specific incidents that occurred and who 
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1 was involved with that.

2 I think some concern was expressed 

3 about that approach by the Working Group but 

4 that was our latest position.

5 Now, at the last Mound Working 

6 Group meeting, I mentioned that we also had 

7 access to some tritium wipe samples, because

8 this had to do with the concern that, yes, 

9 okay, we have got the names of these workers 

10 who were primarily involved, but what about 

11 the maintenance workers or the other people 

12 who could have been exposed.

13 We took the position that there 

14 wasn't a realistic exposure potential for 

15 those folks but concern remained. 

16 So I mentioned that we had these 

17 wipe samples for the areas where this 

18 particular compound was handled and I think it 

19 was Paul, if I recall correctly, requested 

20 that we go ahead and look at those wipe 

21 samples and come up with some kind of an 

22 analysis on whether or not that indicated an 
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1 exposure potential.

2 So, NIOSH just recently submitted 

3 to the Working Group and to SC&A, I think it 

was, I've got a date, it was November 7th 4 , a 

5 series of files that presented our analysis.

6 In the email that I sent, 

7 transmitting those files, I stated that we 

8 were in the process of collating all this into 

9 a more coherent format, a White Paper, but it 

10 would be easier to look at, but I wanted to 

11 get it to you guys with as much lead time for 

12 this meeting as possible.

13 And basically the outcome of that 

14 analysis was we did not see an indication of 

15 widespread exposure to tritide compounds, 

16 based on the tritium wipe samples that were 

17 conducted in those areas.

18 So that's kind of the 40,000-foot 

19 view of our analysis. I'm sure that you all 

20 have some specific questions.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Well I 

22 think as Josie pointed out, we are still -- I 
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1 think we have had a couple of weeks so we are 

2 still going through the files and we do 

3 appreciate getting the files. It certainly 

4 gives us a running start at it.

5 So our questions are more 

6 clarifying as you know, we are sort of half 

7 way through this, and we'd like the benefit of 

8 just understanding it better.

9 But I want to break it into two 

10 parts, you know, one I think is the classic 

11 plausibility question. We have been working 

12 this issue it seems like a long time, but just 

13 trying to get to this question of what is 

14 plausible in terms of dose reconstructability 

15 and we have been through a number of, you know 

16 a number of loops dealing with the, as you 

17 have pointed out, the -- can you identify the 

18 workers, exposure potential, those kinds of 

19 things.

20 And then there's the question of -

21 - of technical feasibility. You know, if one 

22 can get to a source term, can you in fact use 
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1 resuspension factors and other parameters to 

2 come up with a bounding estimate that could be 

3 used that way?

4 And I think that certainly is a 

5 technical feasibility question and we are 

6 working hard at that, looking at it from the 

7 standpoint of the resuspension factors and the 

8 analysis you have provided in those papers, 

9 these initial papers.

10 But I want to step back to part 

11 one, because I really see them as two separate 

12 questions, you know, one is the plausibility 

13 of going this route. This is certainly a new 

14 way to look at this. We haven't looked at it 

15 quite this way.

16 And the second part is, if you do 

17 look at it that way, is it technically 

18 feasible to derive that dose value in the 

19 process that you have presented?

20 So on the plausibility side, and 

21 now, going back in time, we had this 

22 conversation in Santa Fe at the Board meeting. 
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1 Jim Neton and I presented on this question of 

2 exposure potential, and trying to look at 

3 conceptually under the Act, certainly how --

4 and the regulations -- how one frames up 

5 plausibility from the standpoint of -- once 

6 you have established the exposure potential, 

7 what data come into play?

8 And in this case, for tritides, 

9 the dilemma is that of course they didn't 

10 certainly have a radiological control program 

11 focused on that, and therefore there weren't 

12 any bioassays as far as looking for tritides, 

13 inside the tritides, air sampling and source 

14 term characterization.

15 So we really don't have a lot of 

16 the specific kinds of data that would be 

17 helpful. And as I understand what you are 

18 proposing, and again, you know, we are just 

19 looking at this fairly fresh, you are 

20 proposing that what we do have is a lot of 

21 tritium swipes for the rooms involved in 

22 handling, and that you know, in terms of 
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1 looking for a conservative estimation of what 

2 the tritide exposure and therefore dose might 

3 be, you can make some assumptions going in 

4 that if what you are smearing is in fact 100 

5 percent tritide, you can then go from there 

6 and do -- using resuspension factors come up 

with a 96th, 98th 7 percentile, you know, 

8 distribution and therefore come up with an 

9 inarguably conservative number for what a 

10 worker might in fact -- what tritide might be 

11 available for that worker to breathe in.

12 Now conceptually am I getting that 

13 right or not? Am I off?

14 DR. ULSH: I don't want to 

15 interrupt.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh okay. What 

17 I'm getting at though is I -- you know I -- we 

18 have gone through this hierarchy of 

19 quantitative data as sort of the basis for 

20 trying to figure out dose reconstructability, 

21 and again we had that conversation back at the 

22 Board meeting in Santa Fe which was kind of 
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1 focused on you know, what is the basis for 

2 making that judgement.

3 And in this case we don't really 

4 have that site-specific information, and we 

5 said this in the very beginning, that one of 

6 the dilemmas with tritide, we don't have good, 

7 site-specific information that would tell you, 

8 you know, what exactly is that insoluble 

9 tritide source term that you could then 

10 somehow come up with a calculation for.

11 And in my opinion, and we've 

12 talked about this before, when you have to 

13 substitute a compound or a nuclide, in this 

14 case you are substituting something that's --

15 it's very much a carrier agent, the tritium 

16 for the tritide, to me it's sort of a 

17 substitute-nuclide issue of saying we don't 

18 have the information for tritide but we do 

19 have the information for tritium, and if we 

20 make that leap, you know, if we can make the 

21 leap, the presumption that we call it 100 

22 percent tritide, that would in fact lead us 
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1 down a path of a very conservative, inarguably 

2 bounding estimate.

3 But I would question that leap, 

4 saying that you know, if we don't have the --

5 any of the quantitative information on 

6 tritides, to make the leap of assuming 100 

7 percent tritide as the starting point for 

8 doing your swipe analysis, I think that is 

9 substituting another compound to enable you to 

10 make a very conservative, you know, inarguably 

11 conservative estimate, but one that is not 

12 rooted in the site information that one needs 

13 to use to come up with dose reconstruction 

14 with sufficient accuracy.

15 You see where I am going?

16 DR. NETON: This is -- I would 

17 argue that you know -- I would agree with you 

18 if those numbers, if those analyses came up to 

19 be extremely high values, tens of rems, 

20 hundreds of rems, thousands of rems.

21 But they don't. And in fact what 

22 I think the analysis demonstrated more than 
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1 anything is that there are oftentimes good 

2 reasons why people aren't monitored for 

3 bioassay, and it has to do with the source 

4 term that's available.

5 And I think the tritium smears 

6 clearly identify the source term that's 

7 available to these workers and under some very 

8 conservative assumptions, the source term 

9 can't get you there to get you doses that 

10 exceed -- I think 100 millirem was somewhere 

11 near the highest ones, and then more often 

12 than not they were in the 1 to 10 millirem 

13 range.

14 So I don't know that that puts you 

15 in a realm of insufficent accuracy or -- I 

16 think it's just using the data that are there 

17 to demonstrate --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, how do you, 

19 how do yo know if you don't -- I mean you can 

20 assume, based on professional judgment, that 

21 the tritide could not contribute more than 

22 what you are saying. It would be trivial.
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1 But on the other hand there's no 

2 data that would back that up per se. It's a 

3 small component of the tritium but you don't 

4 know how big or small --

5 DR. NETON: Yes but it would be 

6 just much lower, I mean the doses would be 

7 much lower.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: But before we go 

9 there, okay, we went through this with Pantex. 

10 Clearly this is a question of dose 

11 reconstructability and not dose level, and I 

12 just want to make sure we don't get into 

13 weighing the dose reconstructability by virtue 

14 of how much dose it delivers because I, you 

15 know, I don't think that's the issue as much 

16 as can you come up with a coherent way of 

17 applying the site-specific information that's 

18 available to base a plausible dose 

19 reconstruction on?

20 DR. NETON: I don't buy that 

21 argument at all.

22 MR. SHEEHAN: Well, let me see, 
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1 hold on. I think we are getting bottled up in 

2 language, at least I am not following the 

3 discussion. We started with tritium bioassay. 

4 To say that there wasn't monitoring is not 

5 entirely accurate. There was monitoring. It 

6 was tritium bioassay. The results of tritium 

7 air monitoring and there was tritium swipe 

8 monitoring.

9 Now we recognize that this is a 

10 different form of tritium that we are talking 

11 about than is more common, but the way that 

12 you sample for a particulate, especially an 

13 insoluble particulate, is through swipe 

14 monitoring, and fact that's what DOE did to 

15 ensure that they were complying with 

16 regulations, at least in the later years, was 

17 they recognized that the missed dose was 

18 higher than you would want from a regulatory 

19 compliance standpoint using bioassay, and 

20 therefore they relied on swipe monitoring 

21 because it gave you a lower missed dose.

22 And that's what we have shown 
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1 here, is that there is no huge potential --

2 there is no potential for huge missed doses.

3 DR. NETON: Right, but I think 

4 what Joe was getting at though is that we 

5 haven't demonstrated that it's either tritium 

6 or tritide that we are smearing and we are 

7 substituting a more insoluble form and I would 

8 argue we do this all the time when we 

9 substitute type S uranium or type Super S or 

10 type M or even F.

11 It's built into our regulations 

12 and we will default to the most claimant13 favorable assumption that's there to quantify 

14 the dose, put an upper bound on it, and that's 

15 just part and parcel of our regulations, and I 

16 don't see that -- I don't see the argument 

17 that you are making that we are substituting a 

18 more insoluble form because we don't know the 

19 exact solubility nature of the tritium.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, but I 

21 think this is -- I would say this is 

22 different, though. Well, I think you are 
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1 talking about, you know, going to smears, now 

2 stepping back from this issue, and this is why 

3 the Work Group is concerned, that you know, 

4 you don't have the traditional and key pieces 

5 of the personnel monitoring data that you 

6 usually have, because again, there wasn't a 

7 consciousness, certainly wasn't attention or 

8 focus on monitoring for insoluble particulate 

9 tritium.

10 It just -- that didn't come about 

11 until the late '80s and into the -- I'm sorry, 

12 the late '90s and into the 2000s, that's when 

13 that consciousness arose in DOE and it came up 

14 with the approach for it.

15 So you didn't have any of that, 

16 and you know, when you are smearing, you are 

17 smearing for tritium, I mean you are basically 

18 smearing for tritium and that's the data you 

19 have.

20 And I am just saying that in order 

21 to apply your tritium data, your smear data, 

22 you have to make an assumption that's not 
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1 rooted in any site-specific information, an 

2 assumption that 100 percent of it is going to 

3 be tritides.

4 We went through this discussion, I 

5 think, early on, when we got into the tritide 

6 issue, I think there was a proposal on the 

7 table at the time that, you know, one approach 

8 to solving this issue was, why don't we assume 

9 that all the tritium that was in the air being 

10 bioassayed for the tritium workers was 

11 tritides, and yes, that would present a very 

12 high and very conservative dose to the lung 

13 but that certainly would be a very 

14 straightforward way to deal with the question 

15 of you know, tritides being mixed in with the 

16 tritium.

17 And I think the conclusion, well 

18 that's not plausible to assume that you know, 

19 that tritium in the air was all tritide and 

20 that all the lung cancers would be in 

21 principle based on that.

22 And so we -- that was backed away 
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1 from but that was sort of a thinking out loud 

2 you know --

3 DR. NETON: I'm not sure we're not 

4 doing that now.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's what 

6 I'm saying. I think we are sort of back to 

7 that construct of saying --

8 DR. NETON: I would challenge you 

9 to explain to me why that is any different 

10 than looking at the solubility properties of 

11 the various compounds that are available and 

12 picking the most insoluble one to be claimant13 favorable, and we do that many, many, almost 

14 all the time.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: But in this case 

16 --

17 DR. NETON: Because it's an 

18 insoluble compound of hydrogen, just like a 

19 more insoluble form of uranium that's an oxide 

20 is more insoluble than a fluoride form. It's 

21 what it's bound to that determines its 

22 solubility class.
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1 So this is hydrogen and some metal 

2 binding versus some uranium and oxygen or 

3 uranium and fluorine. I don't see the 

4 difference. I really, I really have trouble 

5 with that.

6 DR. ULSH: And we're not proposing 

7 this as necessarily a dose reconstruction 

8 methodology. What we are saying is, even 

9 under worst-case assumptions it doesn't give 

10 you a dose which is not sufficiently accurate.

11 We are saying that this is not an 

12 SEC issue, because here is this analysis that 

13 makes very conservative assumptions and even 

14 then we don't get --

15 DR. NETON: And I don't see the 

16 connection to the Pantex where we had no 

17 monitoring data there, no bioassay, we were 

18 back-extrapolating.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again --

20 DR. NETON: If we had smears on 

21 all of these pits during that year I think we 

22 would argue that we could probably have done 
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1 the does reconstruction at Pantex.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But if you are 

3 going this way, you know, again we went 

4 through this discussion two years ago, that 

5 you could also assume that the tritium that 

6 workers were exposed to in general were 

7 tritides, and it would be the same kind of 

8 thing. You are going the most conservative 

9 route assuming that all the tritium was the 

10 tritide, most insoluble form, and --

11 DR. NETON: If there was 

12 potential. There has to be some reasonable 

13 source term there that would indicate that it 

14 would be a tritide. If it was all water vapor 

15 tritium, we would never assume that source 

16 term.

17 But if there are conditions there 

18 that exist that would make it obvious that 

19 there is a more -- there is potential for a 

20 more insoluble source term, that's when we 

21 would invoke that.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: But again, I 
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1 think the issue for the Work Group though, and 

2 this is where I still have a problem Jim, is 

3 the, you know, is it in fact plausible, 

4 realistic, rooted in site-specific data, that 

5 100 percent of surfaces in these two rooms 

6 were in fact coated with insoluble tritides?

7 I don't think that's plausible. I 

8 mean it's a means to an end but is it 

9 plausible to even make that assumption?

10 DR. ULSH: In fact that's the 

11 argument that we made. This stuff is handled 

12 inside of a tritium-tight glove box, and if 

13 there's any tritium that escapes it's going to 

14 be water vapor. It's not going to be 

15 particulate.

16 But I think you questioned that 

17 assumption.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes I have.

19 DR. ULSH: So to make the argument 

20 come to closure, we said well even if we 

21 accept your argument, even if that's true, the 

22 doses are not thousands of rem. It's at most 
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1 100 millirem.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I want to 

3 separate how much dose, you know, to whether 

4 or not one can plausibly assume 100 percent

5 contamination with -- surface contamination 

6 with insoluble tritide.

7 That's the part -- the dose part 

8 is a separate issue.

9 DR. ULSH: Well, if you want us to 

10 assume 10 percent or 1 percent or 5 percent, 

11 we can do that.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: You can assume

13 anything you want. That's what I'm saying. 

14 We don't know. Nobody knows and you know, I'm 

15 just saying that there's no site-specific 

16 basis for assuming anything as far as surface 

17 contamination with tritides. We don't know.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well I think the 

19 argument that is made for, for example 

20 high-fired plutonium is a similar argument on 

21 the percent-wise.

22 When you go to -- if you were 
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1 monitoring an area where you knew there were 

2 tritides, suppose you knew a priori rather 

3 than retrospectively, that there were tritides 

4 there, your smearing would be the same, your 

5 air sampling I think would be the same, your 

6 counting methods would be the same.

7 And then what would you do with 

8 the data?

9 MR. FITZGERALD: You wouldn't --

10 you wouldn't be able to count -- see there 

11 wasn't any means to ascertain what the tritide 

12 component was.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I know, but 

14 what would you do if you knew that they were 

15 using both with your sampling data is the 

16 point, I mean you take a tritium smear, you 

17 count it, you analyze it, if you want to use 

18 that to assign dose, what are you going to do? 

19 You are going to put an upper limit on it. 

20 It can't be more than this.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I think they 

22 came up with the protocol --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's not an 

2 unreasonable bounding in the sense that you 

3 have a sample. It's not like a location where 

4 we are saying we don't know what the air 

5 concentration was so let's load it up as much 

6 as we can with something that's almost 

7 unbreathable and then calculate it. I mean, 

8 you have the data.

9 So if you want to bound, you can 

10 assume it's all tritide, and that puts --

11 that's not an unreasonable bound since you 

12 have an actual number and the worst case is 

13 that it's all tritides, sure, it probably most 

14 of the time isn't.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't think we 

16 know.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: We don't. But it 

18 can't be more than 100 percent so why wouldn't 

19 that bound it?

20 MR. KATZ: But if we don't know, I 

21 mean then that throws out the -- then you are 

22 saying it is plausible in which case there's 
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1 not a problem with using it as a bounding.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm saying 

3 --

4 (Simultaneous speaking.)

5 MR. FITZGERALD: There's nothing 

6 from the site that would give you any basis 

7 for knowing anything, and I -- if you can't 

8 apply anything from the site, other than the 

9 fact that you don't know, I am just raising 

10 this question, if you don't know anything --

11 if you have no information from the site other 

12 than the fact that we have no data that would 

13 lead you to conclude anything in terms of 

14 contamination, it sort of leaves you with the 

15 only possibility of saying, well, you know, 

16 you go to 100 percent but there's no basis 

17 from the site. There's nothing that tells you 

18 from the site that that's even a plausible 

19 number.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well you have the

21 possibility of its being a tritide to start 

22 with.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, but 

2 certainly the exposure potential, the 

3 possibility of it being a tritide. I'm just 

4 saying that that's as far as it goes.

5 You don't have any more 

6 information than that.

7 DR. MAURO:. This is John. I have 

8 a couple of questions, if I may.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Go ahead, John.

10 DR. MAURO:. Yes, I can 

11 understand, and we discussed this a bit over 

12 the weekend, and certainly Joe could probably 

13 expand upon it, we have discussed that there

14 might in fact be a couple of time periods at 

15 play here, where, one, do you recall that 

16 there was a time that the tritium was being 

17 processed as tritides, was being processed, 

18 and then a time period when it wasn't. And I 

19 am visualizing you are taking swipe samples 

20 and let's say you are into a time period where 

21 you are no longer processing, perhaps there is 

22 no tritiated water or tritium being processed 
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1 in the building, and you are -- but now you 

2 have swipe samples taken from surfaces.

3 At that point in time, and this is 

4 a -- I was thinking that -- what would I 

5 expect to be on surfaces and those of you who 

6 are more familiar with swipe samples for 

7 tritium maybe could answer this. So this is 

8 more of a question.

9 Would you expect any old tritiated 

10 water that might have deposited on surfaces to 

11 clear away eventually because of evaporation 

12 and other processes while the tritides would 

13 sort of stay there, on a surface? This is 

14 after you are no longer processing.

15 So I guess the question I have is 

16 that I am trying to find a way to convince 

17 myself that, at least during certain time 

18 periods, the approach that you have taken 

19 might be plausible, if you feel that, well, 

20 you know, we are at a time period when you 

21 would expect the only thing left on surfaces 

22 was tritides.
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1 It's a question and those of you 

2 who have worked with tritium, you know, I 

3 guess there's really two questions in one 

4 here. One is, were there time periods when 

5 there was really no operations going on, with 

6 either tritide, or where tritium or tritides 

7 was being used, and do you have swipe samples 

8 for that time period?

9 And the second question is more of 

10 a technical one. Would you expect there to be 

11 tritiated water on surfaces, oh, a year or so 

12 after you have stopped operations. Wouldn't 

13 they sort of go away by evaporative processes 

14 or does tritiated water sort of stick around 

15 anyway?

16 MR. STIVER: John, this is John 

17 Stiver. I have looked into the data. We are 

18 going to actually get into that a little 

19 later, about the data representativeness and 

20 the completeness.

21 But one thing that we do have is 

22 that for all these reports that list the swipe 
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1 samples, we also have air sampling data, and 

2 recall that the air samples used a pre-filter 

3 to get rid of the particulates so you can 

4 pretty safe that what you are looking at is 

5 the oxide H2O, or tritiated gas in the --

6 those particular measurements were about, if I 

7 recall correct, about three orders of 

8 magnitude higher than what you would get by 

9 assuming the high-side resuspension factor in 

the 95th 10 percentile from the monthly swipe 

11 data.

12 So it looks like there is indeed 

13 tritiated water in the atmosphere in those 

14 rooms during the period in which this data 

15 were collected. Now --

16 DR. MAURO:. Okay good, that 

17 answers the question, the first part.

18 MR. STIVER: Getting back to the 

19 issue of when operations were going or not, 

20 you are kind of getting into a classified 

21 issue there and so I don't really want to go 

22 there at this point.
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1 But if you were to assume that 

2 this is post-operational, and we do have 

3 reason to believe that some of the data are 

4 indeed post-operational, that you may see that 

5 you are not just looking at tritides.

6 Plus you don't just have those 

7 two. You've got you know, hydrogen is 

8 essentially highly reactive, as you know, and 

9 tritium especially so, because of the 

10 ionization potential. It can then react much 

11 easily with other organics and dust particles 

12 and other things in that room aside from 

13 tritides, so you have that complicating factor 

14 as well.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

16 Buchanan, SC&A, and John, no, water-based 

17 tritium would not go away in a year. It 

18 certainly moves around more than the tritides, 

19 but it would not evaporate or disappear in any 

20 reasonable amount of time.

21 It's a real long thing to catch 

22 and it doesn't stay put but it doesn't go away 
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1 either. It moves around on surfaces and in 

2 the air and in the buildings.

3 So you couldn't eliminate water4 based tritium after a period of time.

5 DR. MAURO:. Okay, no, good. And 

6 that helps me think it through. John Stiver, 

7 you had mentioned that there were these air 

8 samples -- collected quite a bit of air 

9 sampling data and there was a pre-filter.

10 And I guess this is -- did we or 

11 did NIOSH see any data measuring the pre12 filter because if there were going to be any 

13 particulates, that's where you would find 

14 them?

15 MR. STIVER: I would have to ask 

16 Brant or Jim, if you guys would --

17 DR. ULSH: Go ahead. Take a shot.

18 MR. STIVER: If you had, I think 

19 you would have used it.

20 MS. JESSEN: I know Mel Chew is on 

21 the line. Mel, is anyone else from your team 

22 on line that could field that question? Or 
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1 you?

2 DR. CHEW: I'm online. Go ahead.

3 DR. ULSH: No, you go ahead.

4 (Laughter.)

5 DR. CHEW: Ask the question again.

6 MR. KATZ: The question, Mel, is 

7 whether anyone has looked or seen any data on 

8 the pre-filters, as to whether they -- we have 

9 such data.

10 DR. CHEW: Not that I recall. 

11 That doesn't necessarily mean that there 

12 wasn't any such data, but I'm not sure we 

13 analyzed any of the data that was on a pre14 filter.

15 But I'm sure -- I think though, 

16 Brant, you and I had that discussion, we were 

17 -- the pre-filters were counted, is that 

18 right? And so there should be some data.

19 DR. ULSH: I'm sure that they were 

20 but keep in mind, we started with the tritium 

21 swipe data because that's what we were asked 

22 to analyze.
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1 DR. MAURO:. This is John Mauro. 

2 If you have the counts of tritium on the pre3 filters somewhere, that's golden information.

4 DR. NETON: Well, I don't think so 

5 John, and I mean we run into the same -- it's 

6 sort of a reverse argument here. I would 

7 posit that these are probably not breathing 

8 zone air samples. They are room general area 

9 air samples, and so, to equate that with its 

10 potential exposure to the worker from a recent 

11 stretch of source term doing some kind of 

12 activity, as a maintenance function or 

13 something like that, is probably not going to 

14 be a good comparison.

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You know what, 

16 I've got a general question. I'd like to hear 

17 some clarification on these. On the swipe 

18 samples, did they take them and, say they took 

19 maybe a series of three, they let the first 

20 one cook for 30 minutes, second one, one hour, 

21 then one and a half hours, and then they take 

22 an average of those three?
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1 Or did they after, say, an hour 

2 and a half, they take that one, or did they 

3 count them immediately? I mean this is 

4 definitely going to have an effect on the 

5 final numbers, how they actually handled the -

6 - 

7 DR. NETON: Are you talking about 

8 letting them decay for radon? Is that what 

9 you are getting at?

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, letting 

11 them sit in there and decay for radon or 

12 possibly even --

13 DR. NETON: Sure they --

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: cooked them for 

15 a while. Because I know this -- I have seen 

16 this process go on at times where they give 

17 them a series of 30 minutes, take a 30-minute, 

18 one-hour and a one and a one and a half hour - 

19 DR. NETON: The radon progeny that 

20 might be trapped in --

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Not the swipes 
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1 though, the --

2 MR. STIVER: This is Stiver again. 

3 There is some examples of, in some of the 

4 historical references, where they were trying 

5 to develop methods to really get a handle on 

6 this using inhalation counting, that you would 

7 see over time that if you recounted the 

8 samples, it would go up, and that would 

9 reflect the increasing amount of material that 

10 was actually going into --

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I have 

12 actually seen this go on. So I mean I know it 

13 was done some -- you know like I said , I can 

14 only refer to LANL as having seen some of this 

15 done and that's why I'm asking.

16 MR. STIVER: Most of what I've 

17 seen in that regard is related to radon. You 

18 wanted to -- you want the radon to stay away.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Just looking at 

20 radon? Okay. That's what I need to know. 

21 CHAIR BEACH: Joe, any other 

22 questions?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: No I think we 

2 have got to go back since we have gotten into 

3 the technical feasibility question. As far as 

4 the completeness, I guess we have got to be 

5 careful about dates and locations, but is 

6 there any clarifying questions? We are in the 

7 middle of writing up the analysis so again, we 

8 are a little hesitant about trying to broach 

9 things that were not fully -- fully developed 

10 or fully vetted by DOE.

11 Is there anything that we can add? 

12 Ron, Bob, John? 

13 MR. STIVER: Bob Barton had put 

14 together kind of a data completeness summary 

15 and I had made some handouts of that. It was 

16 just the tables that -- look, it's the data 

17 that are available --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And again over 

19 the last couple of weeks what we have done is 

20 looked at the spread of the data based on what 

21 you have given us and one question, I know we 

22 have had Brant, is the focus seems to be on 
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1 the individual swipe data from '85 to '89, I 

2 think that was the four years that were 

3 included, as I recall.

4 And you know the period in 

5 question is '80 to 90, I think it is. And so 

6 my question is how representative is '85 to 

7 '89 for that 9 or 10 years that we are talking 

8 about.

9 I mean I can see where you -- you 

10 took the swipe -- individual swipe data for 

11 those four years and that covers, I think it 

12 covers pretty well the D&D era. But I'm -- we 

13 are also concerned about whether it would 

14 encompass any operations as well, without 

15 getting into specifics obviously.

16 DR. ULSH: I'm trying to think 

17 about what I can say. We chose the time 

18 period that we chose because there is a 

19 particular operation that was in question and 

20 we chose the time period to encompass the 

21 operation locations where -- that were 

22 relevant to that question.
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1 MR. STIVER: We have -- kind of 

2 wondering about that, because it looks like

3 the year you chose, you actually had the 

4 actual data, and some of the other years, I 

5 know in the early '80s, were just a high/low 

6 average and a number of samples.

7 But just the summary data. So we 

8 are thinking that maybe that was part of the 

9 reason why you guys stuck with those years.

10 DR. ULSH: I understand your 

11 question. Let's just note that that's a 

12 question and then we'll --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Something for 

14 later but that was one issue that came out of 

15 our initial look, to try to understand better

16 how that data -- why that data was being 

17 provided the way it was.

18 MR. STIVER: I'd like to move on 

19 to do the summary if --

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, because he -

21 - he hasn't looked at sensitive stuff so he's 

22 fine. He can talk. 
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1 MR. STIVER: Yes, Bob are you on 

2 the line?

3 MR. BARTON: Yes, I'm here.

4 (Simultaneous speaking.)

5 MR. BARTON: In addition to the 

6 data that NIOSH had compiled. For those like 

7 Joe just mentioned, that NIOSH compiled data 

8 for 1985 up through 1989, you have the full 

9 year in some cases. In some cases there was 

10 only half the year or something like that, and 

11 we originally thought that was just -- because 

12 those were reports that are available that 

13 actually show you where in these particular 

14 rooms this swipe was given.

15 Beyond that, as John mentioned, 

16 there were reports that basically will tell 

17 you on a daily basis how many swipes were 

18 taken and what the high, the low and the 

19 average for that day was.

20 The only problem with those 

21 reports, if you don't know exactly where in 

22 the room the swipes were taken, so you don't 
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1 know if they are on work stations or anything, 

2 but you could probably reasonably assume they 

3 are in similar locations as to the other 

4 reports that NIOSH compiled.

5 I know I am not supposed to get 

6 too specific about what the locations are, but 

7 I can say that there's two rooms that we 

8 looked at.

9 The first room really didn't have 

10 any swipe data we could find until about 1983 

11 and the second room -- we checked that data 

12 for all the years in the '80s except for 1981, 

13 and typically you had sort of data almost 

14 every single week of the year, and depending 

15 on which room it was you had between 15-or 30-

16 some odd samples taken on a daily basis.

17 So I guess that would kind of sum 

18 up what available data we were able to find 

19 anyway. Like I said before the problem years 

20 appear to be '80 to '82 for one room and then 

21 1981 for the other room.

22 But other than that there appears 
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1 to be -- at least there's summary swipe data 

2 really on a daily basis for the remaining 

3 years of the 1980s.

4 DR. MAURO:. This is John. I have 

5 a question regarding the swipe data. The 

6 presumption is that the airborne tritides are 

7 there as a result of resuspension, and not as 

8 a result of let's say direct leakage or you 

9 know, being injected direct -- it's almost you

10 know, I think of it like a uranium facility 

11 that may be hammering or grinding uranium.

12 And if you are in a process of 

13 doing that, you have airborne uranium 

14 particulates from two sources -- the stuff 

15 that is being resuspended, deposited, 

16 accumulated over time, on surfaces and there's 

17 material that is being injected directly into 

18 the air as you are performing your operation.

19 And of course, this is a 

20 completely different operation but it's 

21 conceptually what I have in my head right now.

22 And if you are using swipe samples 
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1 and resuspension factors, the presumption is 

2 the predominant amount -- it's predominantly 

3 the airborne activity that the person might be 

4 breathing is from resuspension.

5 Now that being the case, let's 

6 just presume that for a moment, certainly if 

7 you have sufficient swipe data that 

8 characterizes the amount of surface 

9 contamination, you certainly can apply a 

10 conservative resuspension factor, and assuming 

11 that the material on the surface is 

12 predominantly tritides, or as Jim said, let's 

13 just default to the worst case, let's assume 

14 it's all tritides.

15 Now to go back to the air sampling 

16 data for a minute and the filter paper, Jim 

17 you had mentioned that -- you are right, it's 

18 not breathing zone, but as you recall, in many 

19 of our other conversations regarding residual 

20 period, and where you are using surface 

21 contamination and then resuspension factors, 

22 you know we always argue 10 to the minus 6, 10 
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1 to the minus 5 per meter, but we were always 

2 in agreement that once you are in the mode 

3 where the airborne activity that you are 

4 observing, that might be occurring is from 

5 resuspension, the general air samples are not 

6 that bad. I'll explain what I am trying to 

7 say.

8 If it turns out you have a general 

9 air sample, the reason being -- the problem 

10 with having -- not having breathing zone 

11 samples occurs when a person might be close to 

12 the source of the material that is generating 

13 and injecting the aerosol into the breathing 

14 zone.

15 But once you are at a place where 

16 the source is a diffuse, widely dispersed 

17 surface contamination that is being kicked up 

18 from mechanical disturbance, then the air 

19 samples in combination -- the air sample that 

20 you would measure, even with a general air 

21 sampler, would be generally representative of 

22 what's in the air from resuspension. 
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1 So, the question I guess I pose is 

2 that, if there are air particulate samples, 

3 the pre-filters available, and where that was 

4 collected, and you are at a time period where 

5 there is a general consensus that the material 

6 that is airborne is from resuspension, and you 

7 have sufficient surface swipe sample data, you 

8 are in a mode where you are starting to close 

9 down very nicely on the problem and you are 

10 starting to get the kinds of data that's 

11 really going to answer your question.

12 So I go back to say that, you 

13 know, given those sets of conditions I just 

14 described, the air particulate data, if it 

15 exists, might very well be useful.

16 DR. NETON: Yes, I hear what you 

17 are saying John but I think that this might be 

18 a slightly different situation than we 

19 normally encounter when we are talking about a 

20 uranium facility, like a vast -- inside of a 

21 plant.

22 This is a, in my impression, more 
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1 like a laboratory type of a situation, like a 

2 room and you have contaminated work surfaces, 

3 lab benches, you know, all kind of stuff like 

4 that, where it's slightly different.

5 So any kind of mechanical 

6 agitation you know cleaning, wiping, you know, 

7 that sort of thing is very different, I think, 

8 than when we have applied this at a very large 

9 uranium type facility. That's my opinion. 

10 DR. ULSH: I think I can provide a 

11 little more background on why we chose the 

12 time frames that we did. Keep in mind we are 

13 talking about a tritium compound here, so 

14 remember our earlier discussion about radon 

15 and the R and SW buildings? 

16 We are talking about those same 

17 areas, because that's where this happened. So 

18 we were asked to focus on the post-1980 period 

19 because we already have an SEC Class that goes 

20 up to 1980 that would include tritium workers.

21 So there was a special concern 

22 about post-1980. I think I can also say that 
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1 work with the troublesome compounds had 

2 concluded by 1980, so we are talking about a 

3 period after when work with -- active work 

4 with those compounds was occurring.

5 That's not to say that there 

6 wasn't any of that material left on site. 

7 They had some you know historical archive 

8 samples, but the active work had concluded by 

9 1980.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Which is to say 

11 then that this would be resuspension only, no 

12 source term generation per se.

13 DR. ULSH: Well, for the most 

14 part. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I would have 

16 to qualify this and we can't get into details.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, I 

18 understand.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: There was 

20 evolutions after 1980 that the Work Group 

21 needs to look at along with NIOSH and SC&A 

22 that would help put this to bed and I don't 
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1 think we can do it here.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

3 DR. MAURO:. I have one more 

4 question, and something that was -- Joe, you 

5 brought it up and maybe you could elaborate 

6 because you know more about the facility.

7 But it's my understanding that 

8 where the tritides might be located might very 

9 well be in duct work, and the exposures that 

10 people might have experienced from 

11 resuspension, may very well have been during 

12 maintenance, repair or dismantlement work, 

13 where you are opening up an HVAC duct for 

14 maintenance or removal.

15 And that's where you are going to 

16 get your spoonful of a tritide as opposed to 

17 let's say the swipes that you may routinely 

18 take throughout a bench -- the surface of a 

19 bench or the floor or the walls.

20 So my question goes toward the 

21 scenario, does NIOSH envision that there might 

22 be some scenarios where workers are involved 
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1 in doing their job where they could be exposed 

2 to uniquely high concentrations of tritides 

3 that are not captured by the swipe sample 

4 data?

5 DR. ULSH: We have discussed this 

6 issue in the past and we interviewed a worker 

7 who was involved with taking down the duct 

8 work. His slant in this question, his answer 

9 was, look, we had -- I think he said 100 CFM 

10 airflow in the duct work.

11 If you are talking about 

12 particulates that are respirable, it would 

13 have been sucked out the duct and blown up the 

14 stack.

15 If you are talking about bigger 

16 particulates, well then it's not really a 

17 concern from a respiratory standpoint.

18 So it seems like the -- you can 

19 say that the respirable fraction of whatever 

20 might have been up there, if anything, would 

21 have been sucked out the duct work and blown 

22 away.
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1 DR. MAURO:. I guess I 

2 misunderstood. If you are working on the duct 

3 work, let's say for maintenance or repair or 

4 dismantlement, there wouldn't be any air 

5 moving through that duct work. Are you saying 

6 that any -- oh I think I see what you are 

7 saying. You are saying that you wouldn't 

8 expect there to be an accumulation in the duct 

9 work of respirable particulates because they 

10 would have blown out during the time when 

11 there was an operation.

12 DR. ULSH: Well that was his 

13 answer to me.

14 DR. MAURO:. Yes, I mean I have 

15 got to say, my -- I guess my readings 

16 notwithstanding, the postulate that any 

17 respirable particles would have been blown out 

18 during operations when that duct was being 

19 run, with the 100 CFM, I have got to say I am 

20 a little concerned about that because I think 

21 that you do have buildup of particulates in 

22 duct work that later on when you -- and 
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1 certainly the folks involved in maintenance 

2 could probably speak to this -- that no, there 

3 is an accumulation -- there may be filters, 

4 there may be vents where you do accumulate 

5 particulates in duct work, and when you go and 

6 open them up, for D&D, you will see that yes, 

7 there is the potential for particulate 

8 inhalation when you are working with these 

9 duct works, that there can be respirable 

10 particles resuspended during that kind of 

11 operation.

12 So I am not convinced that the 

13 inside of a duct has been cleaned of any 

14 respirable particles during operation.

15 DR. ULSH: Well, the second part 

16 of his argument was that whenever they did 

17 that, to go up in D&D or take down duct work, 

18 they did smear samples and they never saw 

19 anything.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes let -- can I 

21 jump in because I think John is responding to 

22 something that I had identified. This was an 
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1 interview, and I can give you the name off the 

2 phone, where it was an incident where some 

3 workers who were in fact were doing exactly 

4 this, were dismantling duct work on I think it 

5 was SW, were contaminated, had positive nose 

6 swipes, and they thought it was Pu initially 

7 and then they did some analysis and realized 

8 it wasn't Pu, and in fact was tritium.

9 Now that realization was there and 

10 it was after the fact. This was certainly 

11 later on. I think it was during the D&D phase 

12 actually. This was just in the '90s.

13 And I can give you that interview, 

14 I mean we have done it already, and that's 

15 just an indicator of -- and you know this is -

16 - looking at just the representativeness, can 

17 one rely on the smears as a representative 

18 representation of what the workers may have 

19 been exposed to.

20 I just saw that one incident and 

21 was questioning whether or not -- well, that 

22 might be a more elevated case because 
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1 certainly duct work would have collected 

2 material over a length of time, and this was 

3 the actual exposure that took place in the 

4 incident.

5 So that was the question mark. 

6 And again, we are very early in this process 

7 but that was a question that I would want to 

8 raise to your attention and just get some 

9 reaction.

10 DR. NETON: First of all I am 

11 very, very surprised that they would have 

12 mistook tritium for plutonium contamination. 

13 I don't know how that would happen.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know 

15 either.

16 DR. NETON: You have an alpha

17 particle you are mentioning versus an 

18 extremely weak beta --

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I'll show you the 

20 interview. I was most puzzled by --

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 DR. NETON: But secondly I would 
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1 suspect that this -- I can't believe that a 

2 person actually involved in dismantling duct 

3 work would not be on some sort of a work 

4 permit that would include -- well a 

5 respirator, but it would also include some 

6 sort of bioassay monitoring.

7 CHAIR BEACH: They do it all the 

8 time.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: This person was 

10 in half mask. The people that were doing the 

11 work were in half mask and I couldn't figure 

12 out how they came up positive to begin with.

13 DR. ULSH: Yes.

14 (Simultaneous speaking.)

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Something was 

16 screwy but I'll point you to the interview. I 

17 was questioning --

18 DR. NETON: I would be curious to 

19 look at that and if it's possible we could 

20 even look at the RWP.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well the 

22 individual is one of the more prominent 
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1 individuals we have talked to so it won't be 

2 difficult to go back and do a followup.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: One other 

4 comment, to pick up a little bit on what John 

5 Mauro said on bends in the duct work, the duct 

6 can act very much like a cascade. In fact we 

7 know that respirable particles can impact, 

8 depending on the velocity of the air train and 

9 the curvatures.

10 So I don't think we can assume 

11 that all respirable stuff was swept out. It 

12 could impact and then be loosened later so, 

13 just as a comment.

14 MR. STIVER: And I would like to 

15 kind of follow on about what Paul just said. 

16 I know when I was working on the NTPR program 

17 where you investigated this issue of fallout 

18 coming down through the duct work in chips 

19 when they'd button the ship up. It actually 

20 would go through some of these fallout 

21 depositions.

22 And there was a lot of issue, at 
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1 some point they would have to open these up 

2 again and a lot of the veterans would claim 

3 they got -- this stuff, it just came billowing 

4 out onto them.

5 And so we -- I did some 

6 investigations and some analysis, as an 

7 aerosol scientist, I just had given the number 

8 of bends and flow rates and things.

9 And I don't recall the exact 

10 numbers but you know, it's very specific to a 

11 particular case, but there is a good fraction 

12 of those small particles that played out in 

13 the duct work.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Also -- excuse me 

15 -- but it also comes down to the size of the 

16 duct going out of there because you are 

17 talking 100,000 or 100 cubic feet per minute.

18 We run 97,000 cubic feet per 

19 second and ours are highly contaminated, not 

20 that we can't ever get into a duct work until 

21 it's been through the HEPA filters because of 

22 the contamination. Also the HPs tell us, or 
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1 the RadCon techs, we get electrostatic charge 

2 sometimes from going to -- and it captures 

3 these.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so at this 

5 point I have one action item for SC&A to 

6 provide the interview notes to the Work Group 

7 and NIOSH. So that's it. Is there any more 

8 clarifying -- 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Interview notes.

10 CHAIR BEACH: For the --

11 MR. FITZGERALD: This issue?

12 CHAIR BEACH: This issue. For the 

13 positive sample for the individual --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: And you're going 

15 to have a formal analysis that you are working 

16 on?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh yes, right, 

18 we're two weeks in, so it's --

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Are these things 

20 that were passed out part of that analysis?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: That was part of 

22 the --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Because these 

2 aren't dated or labeled --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no, in the 

4 interests of just keeping things moving we 

5 gave you work in progress.

6 CHAIR BEACH: So we will see that 

7 again in a formal --

8 MR. STIVER: You'll see that in a 

9 -- a subsection of the formal report.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well what 

11 happened, they put these in the --

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 DR. NETON: Where was this, when 

14 was this, and what was this? 

15 CHAIR BEACH: This came out of 

16 NIOSH's report. So --

17 DR. NETON: What did?

18 (Simultaneous speaking.)

19 DR. MAURO:. This is John. By way 

20 of -- if I can interject. It sounds like that 

21 NIOSH folks have filed those files and I 

22 scanned over them and as you can see, our 
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1 folks did too. But you are actually in the 

2 process of preparing an integrated report 

3 telling your story and taking your position. 

4 Is there actually maybe a lot of the questions 

5 and concerns that we have been dabbling in.

6 DR. ULSH: Well actually, John, 

7 all the information that we plan to present in 

8 the White Paper is already in those files. We 

9 are just going to put it into a more coherent 

10 framework.

11 DR. NETON: Right now you have an 

12 email that sort of summarizes basically --

13 DR. MAURO:. Oh no, that's fine. 

14 The only reason I bring it up is that -- so 

15 for us to go forward, SC&A to go forward and 

16 prepare our White Paper on using the material 

17 that you had already sent us I guess last week 

18 some time, we are okay with that. Okay.

19 DR. NETON: Yes, I don't think 

20 there would be any reason to wait for our 

21 formal, final report because it's not going to 

22 say anything different than what you have 
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1 already have.

2 DR. MAURO:. Okay.

3 MR. STIVER: There's no new 

4 analysis or data.

5 CHAIR BEACH: How soon is your 

6 final report coming out?

7 DR. ULSH: I don't know. I'd have 

8 to look it up. Since the information was 

9 already presented to the Working Group and to 

10 SC&A, I didn't put an extremely high priority 

11 on reassembling it into a White Paper, but if 

12 you desire that I do that, we can --

13 MR. STIVER: Our real concern was 

14 just that we wouldn't miss any new analysis.

15 DR. ULSH: No, we are not going to 

16 present new analysis in there.

17 MR. STIVER: If that's the case 

18 then we are fine. We are ready to go.

19 DR. NETON: Yes, I think you know 

20 --

21 CHAIR BEACH: So this means --

22 DR. NETON: They are moving things 
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1 forward.

2 MR. KATZ: So you're saying there 

3 won't be a report, then?

4 DR. ULSH: Well I'm almost 

5 wondering, if SC&A is going to prepare a 

6 response to what we have already given you, I 

7 am almost wondering if we shouldn't hold off 

8 on issuing the White Paper, because then we 

9 could respond to it in that White Paper.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that 

11 would be more efficient.

12 DR. NETON: Yes I -- in the spirit 

13 of efficiency I don't know that we need to 

14 formalize this into a White Paper. I mean 

15 it's there. You have all the relevant 

16 information.

17 DR. ULSH: Don't take that as a 

18 direction yet.

19 (Laughter.)

20 DR. NETON: I think the concept is 

21 pretty straightforward, as you captured it, 

22 which is we have all this smear data, we have 
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1 analyzed the smear data, those are the dose 

2 rates that we came up with, if those are the 

3 representative smears for this facility, 

4 that's our position now. You guys are 

5 starting to take a closer look about the 

6 application of that and maybe various other 

7 wider activities or processes and what not --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: One thing I think 

9 we do need though before we would close on the 

10 White Paper to you all is have a secure 

11 meeting, because I think we can't really come 

12 to closure on the full response unless we have 

13 a candid discussion about time periods and 

14 locations, which we will have to have in 

15 Germantown.

16 So I would say we would signal 

17 when we had gotten to the point where we have 

18 most of it together but haven't crossed those 

19 Ts, and then maybe schedule something in 

20 Germantown that would I think help close the 

21 thing out.

22 MR. KATZ: Can you give me just a 
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1 ballpark sense of calender there?

2 I mean, you give them out before 

3 you deliver your report, right?

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 MR. FITZGERALD: This is the wrong 

7 time of year. I would say in January some 

8 time.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks.

10 DR. MAURO:. This is John again. 

11 One of the things I am a little concerned 

12 about is we had a lot of questions that we 

13 posed based on looking at the data, some of 

14 which, if we had answers to them, could 

15 affect, you know, what we have to say in our 

16 White Paper.

17 For example, I'll bring a couple 

18 of them up. I have heard some discussion 

19 regarding measurements made post-1985 were 

20 predominantly the basis for your calculations.

21 However as I understand it from 

22 listening to Bob Barton, there are a number of 
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1 measurements of a different nature I guess or 

2 level of granularity that were collected in 

3 the 1980 to 1985 time period.

4 Apparently there was some 

5 rationale in your -- why you have elected to 

6 use the post-1985 data and not use the pre7 1985 data.

8 You know, that's -- and there's a 

9 question we had, I wonder why they didn't do 

10 that if you know -- I don't know if the 

11 logistics work out but that's like a question 

12 that would help us understand because you can 

13 envision, when we write our reports, we may 

14 very well have a statement in it that says, 

15 how come, lots of questions that we are 

16 raising right now may still be with us.

17 And the extent to which some of 

18 these questions that came up during this 

19 meeting can be answered, maybe easily, by 

20 NIOSH to supplement what you have already 

21 provided us. 

22 Another question was mine, having 
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1 to do with the air pre-filters. I guess I did 

2 not hear a definitive answer whether those 

3 pre-filter samples data from the air samples 

4 collected, whether they were counted or not, 

5 and whether there are data out there or not.

6 I know that I for one would be 

7 very interested in seeing that data, if it 

8 exists. Again, that would be material that 

9 may very well emerge in one of our reports 

10 when we deliver it, but the extent to which 

11 you could address that before then, that would 

12 be another supplemental information.

13 In other words what I'm saying is 

14 that in light of the conversation we've had 

15 this morning, any supplemental information you 

16 could provide that would address some of these 

17 questions and concerns we have raised, would 

18 certainly help us in writing our report.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Any idea if that 

20 pre-filter data exists?

21 DR. ULSH: No, we can look for it.

22 MR. STIVER: I for one would like 
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1 to see that.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so action item 

3 for NIOSH to look for pre-filter data. My 

4 guess is they threw it away because that's not 

5 what they were after but --

6 DR. MAURO:. Yes.

7 CHAIR BEACH: I don't know for 

8 sure.

9 MR. STIVER: More than likely, 

10 yes. But, John, the other issue of that time 

11 frame I think is going to happen at the end of 

12 the classification. It's going to have to be 

13 -- it's not something we can deal with in an 

14 open discussion.

15 CHAIR BEACH: So if we shoot for a 

16 January Germantown meeting, maybe a couple of 

17 weeks after that we can look for SC&A's 

18 report.

19 DR. MAURO:. While you're 

20 scheduling that, I am sorry to interrupt 

21 again, because there are things in my --

22 another question. This matter of airborne 
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1 tritides that people might have been inhaling. 

2 As I mentioned earlier, they are from two 

3 sources, namely resuspension, and also direct 

4 injection.

5 Right now I believe the material 

6 you send us is silent related to what 

7 assurance do we have that applying the 

8 resuspension factor to surface contamination, 

9 the way in which you plan to do it, will also 

10 appropriately bound inhalations that might 

11 have occurred during time periods -- this is 

12 the question -- were there any operations 

13 going on where you had direct injection of 

14 tritides into the air in addition to 

15 resuspension for this time period of interest, 

16 namely I guess post-1980, or are we dealing 

17 with a time period when there was no 

18 operations and there was no direct injection, 

19 of possible injection of tritides into the 

20 air?

21 DR. ULSH: Let's talk in 

22 Germantown.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, that's a good 

2 topic for Germantown.

3 DR. MAURO:. Okay, if you could 

4 answer that, because as you can imagine, I am 

5 pretty familiar with the subject and the 

6 literature on tritides, and the resuspension 

7 factor -- that's right, I'm sorry -- on 

8 resuspension factors, and in general, their 

9 intent is really for the pathway of you know, 

10 surface contamination, although a lot of it, 

11 quite frankly, a lot of the data that was 

12 collected on air samples and surface samples 

13 was collected actually during operations.

14 So interestingly, some of the 

15 higher-end resuspension factors that they 

16 derive in the literature was actually derived 

17 during operations, and they are reflected 

18 both.

19 But that's a complicating factor 

20 that you don't want to have to deal with if 

21 you can avoid it.

22 You see where I'm headed? So the 
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1 degree to which something could be said about 

2 that, if you can, that would also help us in 

3 our deliberations.

4 MR. KATZ: Thank you, John.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Anything else?

6 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I wouldn't be 

7 surprised if those numbers would be higher 

8 during the operation.

9 DR. MAURO:. Yes, during the 

10 operation -- that's, you see, I've got to tell 

11 you what we are thinking, if in fact there was 

12 some operations going on when the swipe 

13 samples were collected and when the -- when we 

14 are going to use them. In other words we are 

15 going to -- let's say it turns out in the 

16 early 1980s there were operations -- I'm 

17 making this up -- there were operations going 

18 on and any person working there that wasn't 

19 wearing any respiratory protection would say 

20 when he -- any inhalation he may have 

21 experienced would reflect what was directly 

22 injected from leakages or whatever the process 
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1 is, I'm not sure, and resuspension.

2 Now, then you are in this 

3 difficult situation of arguing that the 

4 resuspension factor that we are using and the 

5 data we are using from surface contamination 

6 is more than adequate to cover the fact that 

7 the person was exposed not only to 

8 resuspension, but direct airborne injection.

9 It's a complication that makes it 

10 difficult to accept your method, if that 

11 scenario was real. If it turns out that all 

12 the exposures that people might have 

13 experienced of concern to us today are solely 

14 from resuspension, well, that simplifies our 

15 problem and it makes your approach a little 

16 bit more compatible with what the intent of 

17 the resuspension factor is.

18 DR. ULSH: Well, I can maybe 

19 provide some clarification right now, maybe, 

20 if you don't ask me a whole lot of questions. 

21 These were not abandoned facilities where 

22 there was only residual contamination. These 
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1 are facilities where there was active work 

2 still going on, including active work with 

3 tritium.

4 DR. MAURO:. Okay. With tritium 

5 but not necessarily tritides.

6 DR. ULSH: There was active work 

7 going on --

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You're getting 

9 in too far.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: John, we 

11 understand your point so --

12 DR. MAURO:. You understand my 

13 point --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

15 DR. MAURO:. Okay.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't think we 

17 need to discuss it further.

18 MR. STIVER: John, we might want 

19 to get you set up for a Q Clearance.

20 (Laughter.)

21 CHAIR BEACH: And one of the 

22 action items that SC&A had was to deliver the 
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1 interview notes, which Joe just handed to Jim 

2 and so -- glanced at them.

3 Joe will make copies of them at 

4 lunchtime.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: I'll make copies.

6 CHAIR BEACH: So that's then. At 

7 this time is there anything else on tritium, 

8 tritides, and if not we'll go to lunch?

9 (No response.)

10 So let's break for an hour.

11 MR. KATZ: So we'll be back around 

12 quarter after one. Thank you everyone on the 

13 line.

14 (Whereupon the above-entitled 

15 matter went off the record at 12:12 p.m. and 

16 resumed at 1:16 p.m.)

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-0-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

2 1:16 p.m.

3 MR. KATZ: This is the Advisory 

4 Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Mound 

5 Work Group. We are just reconvening after a 

6 lunch break and we are ready to get started.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so are we 

8 completely finished up with the last issue of 

9 tritides or did anybody have any lingering 

10 thoughts that they thought about during lunch?

11 (No response.)

12 No, okay. So our next discussion 

13 will be on adequacy, completeness of internal 

14 dosimetry and again, this paper that we got, 

15 SC&A delivered a White Paper, and I don't have 

16 the dates with me.

17 NIOSH came back with 111 data 

18 points and NIOSH, or SC&A is not prepared to 

19 close that out and just may do some discussion 

20 and clarifying questions again.

21 And NIOSH, would you like to 

22 start, Brant?
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1 DR. ULSH: I can.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, that would be 

3 great.

4 DR. ULSH: It seems like we are 

5 left with the issues that have been ongoing 

6 for, I don't know, years maybe, and this is 

7 certainly one of those.

8 We've talked about this a number 

9 of times in the intro to our report that we 

10 put out dated August of this year. I cover 

11 all the iterations that we have had on this 

12 issue.

13 And basically we focused at this 

14 point on exposure to exotics and by exotics we 

15 are talking about, at Mound at least, 

16 radionuclides other than the main ones that 

17 they had there, which were plutonium, polonium 

18 and tritium, so anything else, at least in the 

19 Mound context, we would call an exotic. It's 

20 kind of a loose term.

21 SC&A has expressed a concern that 

22 there were situations where workers had an 
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1 exposure potential to some of these exotic 

2 radionuclides for which there is not 

3 corresponding bioassay and then they asked the

4 follow-on question, how are we going to do 

5 dose reconstruction.

6 So after a lot of back and forth 

7 on this issue at the last meeting, we finally 

8 got to the situation where SC&A was going to 

9 provide some specific examples of what they 

10 were talking about, so that we could -- NIOSH 

11 could -- investigate those specific situations 

12 and determine whether or not there was an 

13 issue for -- what we described for you, where 

14 we couldn't reconstruct dosage from exotics.

15 SC&A did provide some specific 

16 situations in their last report, so in this 

17 report that we just issued in August, 

18 basically I took all of the specific 

19 situations that were provided and we did a 

20 number of things.

21 Number one, we looked at what 

22 radionuclide was involved. We looked at what 
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1 bioassay, if any, was done and we also looked 

2 at what the exposure potential was.

3 And we walked through every 

4 specific case that was provided and at the end 

5 of the day, NIOSH was left with the conclusion 

6 that we didn't see any examples here that 

7 would indicate, certainly not a widespread 

8 exposure potential to exotics, and I would 

9 contend that we didn't find an example that we 

10 could point to and say you know, we've got an 

11 unmonitored exposure situation here.

12 So our report was 79 pages long. 

13 I'd be happy to answer any specific questions. 

14 I'm sure Joe's probably got some thoughts to 

15 offer on this, but that's truly kind of the 

16 long and short of it.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, thanks.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I -- we are 

19 fairly far along, at least I am fairly far 

20 along in going through this. And these issues 

21 are not new issues so I think we will have 

22 something relatively soon, but I can't give 
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1 you a specific date. I think this is -- but I 

2 wanted to walk through this, particularly for 

3 the people on the phone, just you know, it is 

4 a lengthy history, I agree with Brant, and so 

5 we have gone through a number of steps.

6 So I have kind of outlined some of 

7 them. The issue began as separate 

8 deliberations on specific radionuclides --

9 exposure potential to exotic radionuclides.

10 Okay, issue one from -- and this 

11 derived from the Site Profile carried forward 

12 into the SEC discussion -- was actinium and 

13 thorium after the initial SEC period.

14 Issue two was -- I think that was 

15 radon, actually. Issue three was the 

16 transuraniums other than plutonium, so 

17 americium-241, curium, neptunium.

18 Issue four was the various uranium 

19 isotopes. Issue five was isotopes of Pu other 

20 than the weapon 239, 238. And then issue 

21 seven was fission activation products.

22 And then we had issue eight, which 
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1 was sort of other radionuclides, exotics, 

2 beyond some of these others, and that was 

3 essentially what we started out with, is --

4 and I think, again, the -- and this is going 

5 back a couple of years, but the position I 

6 think that NIOSH presented to us on some of 

7 those issues in the initial discussions that 

8 you know, while some of these exotics were 

9 handled in some quantities in the early '60s, 

10 pretty much in general with more bench scale 

11 in the later years and '70s and '80s and I 

12 think that's kind of what the response was.

13 The second issue that arose early 

14 on was the so-called King report in terms of 

15 you know, what the actual intent and use of 

16 that report was, and was it in fact a roadmap 

17 for D&D or not, and I think the NIOSH position 

18 was it didn't necessarily connote an exposure 

19 potential by itself, that it required you 

20 know, a corroboration via the quantities 

21 involved and the dosimetric significance 

22 involved.
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1 So there was other additional 

2 information that was needed and not just 

3 simply a listing in the King report.

4 And I think a third aspect of that 

5 discussion was that you know , there were some 

6 concerns about the historic use of gross alpha 

7 and whether or not that could distinguish some 

8 of the byproduct alpha, source nuclides that 

9 were involved and whether those were masked by 

10 the process or not.

11 And that's kind of where all this 

12 sort of started. And we had other issues 

13 which I'll get to, that sort of dealt with the 

14 classic data completeness and adequacy.

15 We initiated that as a separate 

16 issues. And in the end I think a lot of these 

17 issues kind of blended so the Work Group chose 

18 to go ahead and make it one consolidated issue 

19 dealing with the internal dose 

20 reconstructability.

21 But after we got through that 

22 iteration, I think NIOSH introduced what has 
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1 been called or labeled the roadmap as a 

2 response to at least these airway issues and 

3 what it was trying to do was match the 

4 radionuclides to location, time and bioassay 

5 availability, a sort of matrix.

6 And what became clear and what was 

7 made clear was that based on the King and 

8 Meyer reports, and it spoke to available 

9 bioassay procedures, and not necessarily that 

10 they were employed under all applicable 

11 exposure conditions.

12 So you know I think there was a 

13 lot of parsing outs to figure out what the 

14 matrix really provided and what it didn't 

15 provide, and I think what it provides is a 

16 pretty good graphic representation of the King 

17 and Meyer documents in terms of where source 

18 terms existed over time, location, what have 

19 you, but not necessarily whether or not there 

20 would have been an exposure potential or a 

21 need for bioassay during those particular time 

22 frames and locations and I think that was 
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1 something that came out of the discussions.

2 And I think, as Brant pointed out, 

3 there was some debate over that interpretation 

4 because the terminology used in the King 

5 report on usage and some of the other 

6 phraseology I thought was rather ambiguous on 

7 that point.

8 And there were subsequent 

9 interviews that were done that I'm not sure 

10 necessarily clarified everything, but 

11 certainly suggested that there was a viable 

12 point to be made that the context of the 

13 document might have been more in line of 

14 pointing out source terms rather than pointing 

15 out exposure potential.

16 So you know, looking back over 

17 this long litany I think it's a little 

18 ambiguous exactly how in the end the King 

19 report was being applied, but again this is 

20 just a document, I don't disagree -- I don't 

21 think we disagree that corroboration of some 

22 sort would seem to be necessary if you are 
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1 dealing with something as consequential as 

2 determining an SEC Class.

3 Beyond that, we have had some 

4 exchanges on data completeness and adequacy 

5 which is sort of a side issue which dealt with 

6 the alpha and beta, gross alpha-beta, analytic 

7 techniques and whether or not they adequately 

8 address the secondary nuclides and whether or 

9 not they were masked and I think all that 

10 process and we went to some lengths to find 

11 people who would have been perhaps expert on 

12 those processes, and I thought it was 

13 surprising at least from our standpoint, we 

14 didn't find people that really had -- were 

15 contemporary enough or really could walk 

16 through those enough and we did make some 

17 contacts.

18 So I think that was left without a 

19 firm conclusion as to whether or not there 

20 were some issues and I think NIOSH presented 

21 some reasonable arguments about the fact that 

22 one could rely on and in fact were relied upon 
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1 in others -- at other sites.

2 So in general I think it kind of 

3 was left, I thought it was resolved that we 

4 didn't have any lingering issues on gross 

5 alpha and beta as far as the analytic side of 

6 that goes.

7 Now, that's a quick history over 

8 about two and a half years. We get to the 

9 final point, and you know, we sort of got into 

10 a final questioning of the King report roadmap 

11 that I think at the Work Group meetings early 

12 last year it was pretty clear to me that it 

13 had evolved into a more qualitative, very 

14 subjective discussion of what the King report 

15 did or didn't do, and whether exposure 

16 potential, really, may have been there or may 

17 not have been there. We weren't making much 

18 progress.

19 I think it was my suggestion to 

20 the Work Group that you know, listen, just to 

21 bring this to a close, if we can't come up 

22 with specific examples of exposure potential 
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1 that would demonstrate that it's less 

2 subjective, then I think it's not compelling 

3 enough, and that was the genesis of -- and we 

4 didn't have any a priori sense of whether or 

5 not there were a lot of specific examples but 

6 we felt that we needed to look for those.

7 And that was the genesis of the 

8 June 2010 White Paper that we would try to 

9 highlight what we could in terms of specific 

10 examples and we have since now got a NIOSH 

11 response to that.

12 Now, to bring that up to speed, I 

13 do have some questions, clarifying questions, 

14 on the response, Brant, and just to help me 

15 understand where you are coming from, as I 

16 indicated you know, yes, on the King report I 

17 think that isn't something that I find 

18 compelling from the standpoint that I would 

19 argue -- I wouldn't argue that you would need 

20 some corroborating information in order to 

21 apply it. It's not enough by itself.

22 I think there's a lot of ambiguity 
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1 about how it's framed and how some people have 

2 said it was implemented but I think there was 

3 enough of that that I would not see that as 

4 being a whole point.

5 I would recommend to the Work 

6 Group that, as far as that goes, I think we 

7 accept the fact that some degree of 

8 corroboration seems to be necessary in order 

9 to apply what information is in the King 

10 report, and I think that's actually a pretty 

11 major leap for us.

12 But I -- looking at this thing I 

13 think that's kind of where I am at at this 

14 stage. I think that's a reasonable approach.

15 The second point I get from the 

16 response is -- there's 111 of them, I have to 

17 say, it was many, many days in front of 

18 various football games that I have gone 

19 through these thing, all 111, and tried to 

20 frame up all the responses in terms of what 

21 kind of categories of responses.

22 And one category of response that 
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1 gives me some pause, there seems to be some 

2 reliance on a programmatic basis, meaning that 

3 sort of reliance on the program performance, 

4 and I'll give you some examples.

5 You know certainly you continue to 

6 point to Meyer's bioassay history in terms of 

7 the procedures that were in that document. 

8 There's a reiteration of Mound laboratory 

9 incident findings.

10 You know, you have an incident at 

11 a typical DOE site and you get a -- I don't 

12 want to call it boilerplate but it sort of 

13 sounds like a boilerplate response where they 

14 say the incident did not result in any 

15 injuries, radiation exposure to personnel or 

16 loss of equipment.

17 You get that same -- over time. 

18 And there was another response, just another 

19 example I found in the -- and these were 

20 repeated over a number of these, that you have 

21 faith in the researcher, supervisor or 

22 bioassays in making the correct calls in terms 
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1 of communicating the need for monitoring, that 

2 kind of thing.

3 The only thing I would say is I --

4 you know, we have done this at other sites. 

5 It's -- certainly it's helpful to have some 

6 faith and confidence in the early performance 

7 of the programs but I think, I always hesitate 

8 because I think the reason the program was 

9 inaugurated was some of these programs, even 

10 though they were staffed with expert HPs and 

11 were managed well, they didn't always make the 

12 right call.

13 So I'm a little concerned about 

14 using a programmatic basis as a reason for the 

15 exposure being handled correctly, and I'll 

16 just use that in a general way.

17 And then sort of turning it back 

18 to say well it's up to you to prove otherwise, 

19 well, you know, I can't accept necessarily 

20 that the program did the right thing at face 

21 value either, and recommend to the Work Group 

22 to accept it at face value.
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1 So this is just a -- we have only 

2 had this for a little while, but just a 

3 reaction to some of those responses that a 

4 programmatic basis for again, claiming that 

5 the exposure potential was addressed or did 

6 not exist I think is a problem from our 

7 standpoint.

8 That doesn't apply to all of them. 

9 It only applied to, like I said, I came up 

10 with a matrix just trying to figure out which 

11 ones had that kind of a response but that 

12 gives me some pause.

13 And that doesn't impugn the 

14 expertise and credibility of Mound's HP 

15 community. It's just I think it's the reality 

16 of some of the historic practices at the 

17 sites.

18 Now the second thing, one standard 

19 response was you are talking about the 

20 primaries and not the exotics. I mean that 

21 was sort of a, what are you doing, the Work 

22 Group didn't ask you about you know, the 
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1 poloniums and the what have you, Pu-238s. You 

2 are off-scope.

3 And actually, the original 

4 document had a -- I actually jotted the page 

5 number -- had a -- oh page 13 of our response 

6 pointed out that there was a section in the 

7 White Paper that indicated that we are looking 

8 at radiological controls, the integrity and 

9 performance of radiological controls in 

10 general, and for that section, we were 

11 pointing out that the loss of control, even 

12 for primaries, would have some implications, 

13 understandably for the secondaries and I 

14 wanted to draw that parallel.

15 So you know, I think you sort of 

16 sliced the issues down to very specific issues 

17 but I think that that qualifier got lost in 

18 the shuffle, that we certainly understood what 

19 the Work Group was asking in terms of exotics 

20 but wanted to at least draw that parallel that 

21 for loss of radiological control, it would be 

22 useful just to point at some of the instances 
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1 where that happened in a significant way for 

2 the primaries and we did so, and page 13 gives 

3 you that background before we got into that 

4 discussion.

5 So somehow that got lost in the

6 context of the response to those issues. And 

7 there was a number of them that had that one 

8 response that you were off-message in terms of 

9 even thinking about primaries versus exotics.

10 There was another thing. I'm 

11 going to just throw these out because again, 

12 we are in the midst of this and I think it 

13 would be helpful to just give you some of the 

14 sense of what we are reading.

15 You note that instances cited by 

16 SC&A with event-driven bioassays, in other 

17 words that resulted in an event-driven 

18 bioassays were not examples of, quote, 

19 unmonitored exposure.

20 But I guess my question is, we are 

21 looking at examples that are suggestive of an 

22 exposure potential and certainly we understand 
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1 that these instances in most cases are cases 

2 where they are not unmonitored, they did have 

3 event bioassays, so prima facie, they did have 

4 a bioassay after the incident.

5 That wasn't the issue. I think 

6 the example was to illustrate that there were 

7 in fact instances where the radiological 

8 control was lost in that particular situation

9 and resulted in a release and, yes, there was 

10 a bioassay because that release was 

11 recognized.

12 But it demonstrated the potential 

13 for that particular nuclide to be released and 

14 then the question becomes, well, did they in 

15 fact report all incidences or in fact, only 

16 the -- this is the case, a lot of sites, only 

17 the ones that rose to a certain level of 

18 significance or not, and I think those 

19 examples were just to illustrate that there 

20 was this loss of control.

21 So it's not so much unmonitored 

22 exposure, it was whether or not they more 
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1 importantly showed an exposure potential by 

2 virtue of these -- an example, failure to rad 

3 -control to preclude worker exposure in those 

4 instances.

5 And then some of the things I sort 

6 of picked up in the responses, certainly in 

7 several of the responses but specifically 

8 response number 64, you seem to agree with 

SC&A's contention in its June 10th 9 , 2010 White 

10 Paper that the existing -- and again, I am not 

11 sure how to address this very well because it 

12 does have to do with actinium and thorium and 

13 radium, saying that the conditions for the 

14 current Class, one could argue, existed eight 

15 or nine months before, and I don't know where 

16 to take that except that, yes, I think there 

17 seems to be some convergence on the fact that 

18 that is the case, and I wouldn't use this 

19 vehicle to raise it but I guess I -- that 

20 would be a question for you and Jim as to what 

21 happens to that particular point and the Work 

22 Group certainly needs to at least be aware of 
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1 that particular point in terms of that --

2 whether the additional nine months or eight 

3 months, whatever it is, should be considered.

4 CHAIR BEACH: I believe that has 

5 come up in previous Work Group meetings.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: It has come up.

7 CHAIR BEACH: But it's never been 

8 --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: This has been I 

10 think - it looks like it's -- we are 

11 converging. I'm not sure what it takes to go 

12 to the next step. I just sort of am 

13 mentioning that I saw that in a couple of the 

14 responses.

15 And then there's, again, excuse 

16 this stream of consciousness, but going 

17 through the report at this point, there's 

18 another one where you point that SC&A is 

19 addressing issues that are already covered by 

20 existing SEC Classes. You know I think this 

21 has come up before. Maybe counsel can help. 

22 But I think the fact that an issue is already 
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1 covered in a current SEC Class doesn't 

2 preclude pursuing another SEC issue that might 

3 involve workers from that period.

4 I thought that came up in a 

5 different context and I remember somebody 

6 pointing out that you know, yes, I mean, you 

7 shouldn't use an existing SEC Class to 

8 preclude pursuing an issue that might in fact 

9 go into that time period. But I can't 

10 remember the exact context.

11 CHAIR BEACH: That was tritium.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Is that tritium?

13 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, because the 

14 radon Class had existed and tritium 

15 overlapped.

16 It was a brief discussion of --

17 yes, last year.

18 MS. LIN: I don't think that would 

19 be a legal issue.

20 DR. NETON: No, it's not a legal 

21 issue, it's -- I think Ted pointed out 

22 earlier, every instance of reconstruction 
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1 should be based on its merits.

2 CHAIR BEACH: And not whether --

3 MR. FITZGERALD: And not made moot 

4 by an existing Class.

5 DR. NETON: No, I mean it is 

6 sometimes -- there's a tendency to point that 

7 out in the sense that, well, then you leave no 

8 recourse for that. But technically there is 

9 no --

10 MR. KATZ: Right, I think the only 

11 other nuance or element to that discussion was 

12 that if you have a Class that covers everyone 

13 who worked with tritium already and then you 

14 have another issue and it's fully enveloped 

15 within that Class, the Board can't recommend 

16 another Class that's a subset of a Class that 

17 already exists because it --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it's the 

19 uranium --

20 MR. KATZ: Right. So there's no -

21 - maybe that is the context but --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, okay. But 
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1 that was -- some of the responses spoke to 

2 that and I thought that was where it came out 

3 so I wasn't sure whether -- well, I remembered 

4 that that actually seemed to be certainly 

5 justified but it seemed like it was a concern 

6 that we were doing that.

7 The other issue, it was a question 

8 on thorium-232 when it was used as a 

9 substitute for Pu-238 in R&D analytic programs 

10 and this is the '60s to '80, and that was -- I 

11 would put a space holder in there that you all 

12 indicated that you were investigating a 

13 thorium issue, and the Work Group might want 

14 to understand, if you can, what that means 

15 because it didn't really say too much more 

16 about it as far as the status of that.

17 And that's again, pretty much an 

18 outline of, at least at this stage, the 

19 takeaway. We are working on a response but 

20 those are some of the, I guess, reactions to 

21 the responses and certainly a pretty 

22 comprehensive, 111 specific issues so it takes 
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1 a little while to sort of get your arms around 

2 them all.

3 But you know, I think it was a 

4 reasonable analysis on the specific examples 

5 that were provided, and we will certainly try 

6 to come back with a response.

7 DR. ULSH: I have got some 

8 thoughts to offer Josie, if now is the 

9 appropriate time.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, that would be 

11 great.

12 DR. ULSH: I took some notes, as 

13 you were talking there, Joe, and I captured 

14 six points anyway. So I'd like to walk 

15 through and offer some responses on that.

16 The first one that you raised was 

17 the interpretation of incident reports and in 

18 particular you characterize it as boilerplate 

19 language.

20 The reason that I thought it was 

21 important to include those is that it was my 

22 understanding that SC&A was going to provide 
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1 examples of situations where there was a 

2 potential for unmonitored exposure to exotics.

3 So I looked at each incident that 

4 was provided, that was cited by SC&A as an 

5 example. And so number one, was it an exotic 

6 radionuclide, and that's another point that 

7 you raise and I'll talk about later. Number 

8 two, was it unmonitored, because if these 

9 incident reports are being offered in support 

10 of the case that, hey, here's a situation, we 

11 are having unmonitored exposure, I think it's 

12 legitimate to point out in those situations, 

13 based on the reports that were cited, if they 

14 said there is no radionuclide exposure, I 

15 think that's an important point to know, 

16 because I would say that that's not an example 

17 of an unmonitored exposure to exotics.

18 Now granted, if that was the only 

19 thing that I offered, just this boilerplate 

20 language, you know you could take it for what 

21 it's worth.

22 But it was kind of a weight of 
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1 evidence approach, that number one, you are 

2 citing this report as an example of an 

3 unmonitored exposure when the report itself 

4 says there was no exposure.

5 I went on to look whether or not 

6 it was monitored, whether it was bioassay, et 

7 cetera, but I thought it was a -- it's 

8 important to represent those cited reports 

9 accurately and that was in there, so that's 

10 why I cited it.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, before you 

12 leave the first point, I think there seems to 

13 be, and I want to clarify this for our 

14 response, a distinction between unmonitored 

15 exposure, which I think in terms of the 

16 instances that were in fact reported, clearly 

17 the site responded and did, eventually, a 

18 bioassay. 

19 Of course you would have to, if 

20 you had a formally notified incident, you 

21 would have to respond and do your subsequent 

22 bioassays.
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1 I think the original analysis 

2 tried to demonstrate that for the nuclides in 

3 question, you obviously had a breakdown of 

4 some sort and had an exposure and this was 

5 indicative of an exposure potential.

6 Now, you know, the discussion of 

7 whether that represented or was emblematic or 

8 an example of an exposure potential is the 

9 issue I think we are trying to drive at. 

10 Whether there was unmonitored exposure, I 

11 don't think there's any question. Of course 

12 it was -- if they had bioassays it wasn't an 

13 unmonitored exposure. 

14 So I think the whole thing was 

15 driven by trying to come up with instances 

16 where you could show for the nuclides in 

17 question there was an exposure potential. 

18 These instances did occur, and in that 

19 context, I think what I am saying is that the 

20 only thing that gives me some pause in the 

21 response is I am uneasy about the sort of the 

22 blanket statement that the sites tend to do on 
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1 some of these that you know, ding ding ding 

2 ding, no exposure, none of this, none of that.

3 And I understand that's all you 

4 have to work with. I am just pointing out 

5 that would be -- that would not answer my 

6 question about the exposure potential.

7 But it would answer my question 

8 about the fact that it was in fact bioassay9 monitored after the fact, and so it wasn't 

10 unmonitored exposure necessarily.

11 But it shows exposure potential, 

12 and I think that's kind of one of the things 

13 I've noticed in the give and take is that we 

14 may be talking past it a little bit, that the 

15 task which I recommended to the Work Group 

16 that we took on, was is there any way you can 

17 actually get your arms around exposure 

18 potential by looking at the operational 

19 history and looking at history reports and 

20 what have you.

21 And it's very difficult but what 

22 you have to work with, frankly, is the 
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1 historic record of what incidences occurred, 

2 where you had breakdowns and what have you.

3 They weren't reported. There's no 

4 history. So it's either interviews or 

5 incident reports, which primarily make up your 

6 basis for pointing at breakdowns and whether 

7 or not these particular source terms can get 

8 out and be exposed -- workers could be 

9 exposed.

10 So really I think the point there 

11 is that we are not arguing unmonitored 

12 exposure, but we are trying to say these were 

13 provided in the context of the exposure 

14 potential, that in fact the workers could have 

15 been and in fact were exposed in some cases 

16 and I am not sure I would write it off because 

17 the site wrote it off in the '50s or '60s as, 

18 you know, we didn't see any exposure, because 

19 I think in some cases that might have been a 

20 pretty standard answer back in the day.

21 DR. ULSH: Well that leads to the 

22 second point that I heard you make, and that 
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1 was primaries versus exotics and radiological 

2 controls.

3 And the reason that you gave in 

4 your White Paper for citing these instances --

5 incidents, many of which, I think most of 

6 which involve primary radionuclides, was to 

7 demonstrate a general loss of radiological 

8 controls.

9 And I think you said that that 

10 kind of got lost. I didn't lose it. It's at 

11 the bottom of page 13 of our report.

12 I clipped out the text from SC&A's 

13 report that talks exactly about that, why they 

14 cited these reports, and it's as Joe said, 

15 demonstrate weaknesses in general radiological 

16 controls, and I responded to that on page 14, 

17 so it didn't get lost. It's in there.

18 And my problem with this approach 

19 is that the logic seems to be that SC&A went 

20 to great pains to point out at that incidents 

21 happened and people were exposed. We have 

22 never said otherwise. We will posit that 
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1 incidents happened and people were exposed in 

2 situations, well, with these general -- with 

3 these primary radionuclides.

4 The problem is SC&A appears to 

5 then be extrapolating and saying, see, because 

6 these incidents happened and people were 

7 exposed to these primary radionuclides, then 

8 incidents must have happened or there must 

9 have been exposures to these other exotic 

10 radionuclides.

11 Well okay, fair enough. If you 

12 are going to extrapolate that way, then I 

13 think it's fair to extrapolate that, when 

14 these incidents happened, exposures were 

15 monitored, bioassay was performed; why 

16 wouldn't they then do that with the exotics?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: That was my 

18 point.

19 DR. ULSH: Well again, I don't 

20 think that came across in the individual you 

21 know -- the individual responses basically 

22 tactically, not generally, tactically address 
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1 and say this was a primary not exotic, that's 

2 the way the specific response was written.

3 I'm just saying that the context 

4 of that response -- the context of the issue 

5 is exactly the way we put it at the beginning, 

6 and you responded generically at the bottom of 

7 page 13 in the report but you know, you go 

8 through like 20 specific responses that 

9 basically say this is a primary not an exotic, 

10 have you lost your mind type of thing. I'm 

11 just saying --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't think I -

13 - 

14 DR. ULSH: I'm just saying --

15 (Simultaneous speaking.)

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Listen, you know, 

17 I could come up with a generic response, no, I 

18 mean we kind of explain why we are doing it, 

19 you can argue that, but as I was reflecting on 

20 the report, I said well, you know, I think 

21 it's understood why those were raised and 

22 there may be some real legitimate differences 
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1 on that point. But I'm just sort of 

2 advertising when we get into this thing that 

3 we are not going to argue each and every one 

4 of these responses because clearly you know 

5 where we are coming from and you may differ 

6 from it generally, but we didn't miss the 

7 mark. We purposely wanted to raise those. So 

8 --

9 And that was quite a few, like I 

10 said I went through this matrix, and I said 

11 well okay, I understand why there's this 

12 difference, but it does make for a lot of 

13 specific disagreements when in fact, I think 

14 it was just a general misunderstanding, 

15 perhaps.

16 DR. ULSH: So I will posit, on the 

17 record, we agree that incidents happened, and 

18 there were exposure potentials, certainly over 

19 the course of Mound, certainly with plutonium, 

20 polonium, and I won't even say -- I'm not 

21 trying to say that there are zero incidents 

22 that occurred with exotic radionuclides.
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1 What I'm saying is, based on the 

2 evidence that has been provided, it appears 

3 that, when those exposures happened, Mound 

4 performed bioassay. 

5 That's what the evidence shows 

6 here.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think -- I 

8 don't think we disagree.

9 DR. ULSH: Okay.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I think this give 

11 and take -- you know this was something that 

12 wasn't clear to me when I proposed this a year 

13 ago, you know, we would go and look at these

14 things and see whether or not -- again, not so 

15 much whether it was unmonitored exposure but 

16 whether or not these would suggest an exposure 

17 potential that may have been missed for these 

18 specific nuclides and I think two things came 

19 out of the analysis, one of which is what you 

20 just said. Basically for every incident you 

21 could demonstrate that they did have an event22 driven bioassay and follow-up that was 
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1 adequate apparently, and in terms of exposure 

2 potential, you know I think, as you said also, 

3 it's clear it was an exposure potential but it 

4 was addressed with the event-driven bioassay.

5 And that's about as far as you can 

6 take it with the record. So I don't think we 

7 have any disagreement there.

8 DR. ULSH: Okay. Well let's move 

9 on to another one where we don't have a 

10 disagreement. You mentioned the radium, 

11 actinium, thorium and the time frame February 

12 through September to '49. Oh here it is, yes, 

13 comment 64.

14 Kathy raised this issue, pointed 

15 out this gap, a long time ago. To kind of set 

16 the stage for it, we have an SEC for Monsanto 

17 which was the predecessor for Mound that goes 

18 up through, oh gosh, I'm going to say it wrong 

19 if I say it specifically, I think it goes up 

20 to 1949.

21 We designated the radon -- sorry, 

22 radium, actinium, thorium Class from February, 
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sorry, from September 30th 1 1949 up through 

2 1959.

3 The reason we picked that start 

4 date was because that was when the material 

5 involved arrived at the Mound site so that's 

6 why we picked that particular start time.

7 Kathy has pointed out that there 

8 was a gap between the end of the Monsanto SEC 

9 and the beginning of the Mound SEC, and at the 

10 time, I thought that was a good observation 

11 and I thought that we might want to expand 

12 either the Monsanto Class or the Mound Class 

13 to cover that gap, and I still think that.

14 With regards to procedurally how 

15 we go forward, I don't know, my thought was, 

16 let's wait until the dust settles and there 

17 will probably be a list of things that we want 

18 to address.

19 But I think that certainly this is 

20 one of them. I wouldn't argue that there 

21 should be a gap. I mean, that's how it came 

22 about, but now that Kathy has pointed out that 
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1 there is a gap, I think we need to address 

2 that.

3 CHAIR BEACH: I guess I wonder why 

4 you'd wait for the dust to settle. If you've 

5 seen it and you know it exists why not 83.14 

6 and move forward.

7 DR. ULSH: We could, well I assume 

8 we could. That's for Ted and Jim to say. But 

9 I think we could do that. It would be cleaner 

10 just to do one big one and kind of cover all 

11 the bases but I don't know --

12 MR. KATZ: One big -- it depends 

13 if you have other --

14 DR. ULSH: Right exactly, let's 

15 say at the end of the day you have got three 

16 or four issues where you think the SEC needs 

17 to be expanded, well, wouldn't it just be 

18 easier just to cover that all at once?

19 MR. KATZ: If they are independent 

20 of each other then I don't think that's 

21 necessarily -- they are independent Classes, I 

22 don't think so. Then you could go ahead and 
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1 do this. But if they overlap or intermingle 

2 somehow, that would be different.

3 DR. NETON: This is -- I agree. 

4 This is something that we need to take up 

5 independently and we are looking at it. This 

6 is also sort of coincidental with a 

7 redefinition of the Mound site at this time by 

8 Department of Labor or Energy.

9 I believe -- I hope I'm not 

10 getting this wrong -- but I believe it's 

11 changed -- reverting to a DOE site at some 

12 point in earlier years now. There's some 

13 movement going on about some redesignation.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Because of what?

15 DR. NETON: Well, proprietary 

16 ownership I think, though I might not -- I may 

17 be misremembering.

18 DR. ULSH: Mound site.

19 DR. NETON: Not the Mound, maybe 

20 the Monsanto; I don't know. I need to --

21 there's some movement with this early time 

22 period right now. I am not clear on it so 
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1 just take that for what it's worth.

2 But I think that I do agree that 

3 this is something that we need to take up 

4 ourselves, an independent effort, maybe 

5 outside of this discussion.

6 DR. ULSH: Okay, so there are some 

7 procedural questions about how to move 

8 forward, but I think on this particular sub9 issue we are in agreement that somehow or 

10 other, that gap should be closed.

11 In terms of existing SEC classes 

12 and issues that are entirely enveloped, I'm 

13 not necessarily arguing that that's a 

14 legitimate basis for dropping an issue, but I 

15 do know that I want the Working Group and the 

16 Advisory Board to be informed about what the 

17 outcome would be.

18 So for instance, just to give you 

19 an example that's not from this report, the 

20 neutrons issue that we talked about earlier, 

21 where I said look, this is not going to result 

22 in the addition of anyone to the Class. That 
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1 doesn't mean it's not a legitimate issue or it 

2 is a legitimate issue. It's just when you 

3 think about, you know, what's the effect going 

4 to be.

5 And you know you could choose not 

6 to consider that, or if the law doesn't allow 

7 you to consider that, fine. But --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean I'll 

9 accept, certainly I think it's what Jim said 

10 earlier and what you are saying now, is a 

11 piece of additional information or perspective 

12 and that's all.

13 DR. ULSH: Yes, exactly.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I -- some cases, 

15 and I read the response, was saying I don't 

16 think that's a message to us not to go there, 

17 it's just sort of an additional perspective 

18 just to be aware of.

19 DR. ULSH: And the last issue was 

20 thorium-232. The reason I went ahead and 

21 issued this report was because it's already 79 

22 pages and I didn't want to hold it up while we 
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1 have internal discussions about how to handle 

2 the thorium issue.

3 So at the time that I issued this, 

4 that was and still is an outstanding issue, 

5 how to handle thorium-232. At Mound largely 

6 this is a question of the gazillion oxides and 

7 oxalates -- the residues that Mound received 

8 in the '50s in advance of an anticipated pilot 

9 program to process that into fuel for the 

10 breeder reactor program.

11 Basically Mound received all this 

12 stuff, about 1,000 drums of it or so, in 1955 

13 and then -- 

14 CHAIR BEACH: That was the stuff 

15 they were continually re-drumming. Correct?

16 DR. ULSH: Yes. They received it 

17 in I think the winter of '54, '55, and shortly 

18 after that, I think that summer, the pilot 

19 program was cancelled. So there was Mound 

20 sitting there with all these drums of stuff, 

21 and they didn't have anything to do with it.

22 And as Josie said, over the next 
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1 10 or so years, the drums deteriorated because 

2 they were stored outside and they had to be 

3 repackaged a couple of times.

4 And then finally they were emptied 

5 into building 21 and stored there until they 

6 were removed from the site in 1975.

7 So anyway you have got this rather 

8 large collection of thorium residues and Jim 

9 and I have been talking and some of the other 

10 members of the ORAU team have been talking 

11 about how we handle thorium dose 

12 reconstruction. We haven't come to a 

13 conclusion yet. We are still talking about 

14 it. I would present it as an outstanding 

15 issue. But geez, if that was the only one 

16 left out of these 79 pages I think that would 

17 be a monumental step forward.

18 I will point out that back in the 

19 1990s, early 2000 period, MJW -- part of the 

20 ORAU team -- but separately from that, even 

21 before this program started, MJW did a 

22 reconstruction for Mound workers, dose 
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1 reconstruction for Mound workers, and they 

2 were able to reconstruct thorium dose for 

3 Mound. We might take a look at that and 

4 decide that it's not appropriate for what we 

5 do or we might say it's okay, I don't know, we 

6 are just not there yet.

7 So I would characterize that as an 

8 outstanding issue. 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Any idea when you 

10 will have some formal response?

11 DR. ULSH: How much work are you 

12 willing to do on others?

13 CHAIR BEACH: Well I think this is 

14 our last item, so you have already got your 

15 work.

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Just one 

17 question for you, Brant, in the documentation 

18 they are looking to, do you know if, after the 

19 incidents, it sounds like they might have 

20 actually had a fairly good program -- what the 

21 levels or what the drivers were for reportable 

22 incidents where they did bioassay and did the 
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1 -- were the decon crews under a bioassay 

2 program?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: What would the 

4 trigger be an event-driven bioassay? I don't 

5 know that I can give you an exhaustive list, 

6 but certainly, if the air monitors alarmed 

7 during a job, that would be a trigger. If 

8 they took nasal swabs and those came up 

9 positive, that would certainly be a trigger.

10 In general, these folks are going 

11 to be on a routine bioassay program. The 

12 incident bioassay is going to be layered on 

13 top of that because you are going to want to 

14 get a result quicker than you might get with a 

15 routine bioassay program.

16 So I would say those are some of 

17 the precipitating events. Jim, I don't know 

18 if you have --

19 DR. NETON: Yes, I guess I think 

20 when you pose the question more in the realm 

21 of the exotics where they might have not had a 

22 routine program, but I think the same trigger 
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1 criteria would be in place, and that is --

2 the discovery of contamination outside of 

3 where you would expect it to be. I mean, 

4 someone would detect contamination outside of 

5 the hood where they were working with it or 

6 something to that effect.

7 But I don't know in this earlier 

8 time period that there were formal criteria 

9 like there are now. That's certainly true.

10 DR. ULSH: I don't know. I would 

11 have to go back and look.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess I need to 

13 jump back to the very first one that I wanted, 

14 because I thought when we got into this, you 

15 showed me an example where they had the 

16 potential for exposure, because I know in the 

17 earlier years, these exotics, they really 

18 weren't looking for, and I believe SC&A did 

19 just what the Work Group says, we'll show you 

20 examples of where there were releases.

21 I don't think that they were 

22 monitoring for the exotics because if you had 
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1 uranium, plutonium, you would probably have 

2 some of the other stuff, because that's what 

3 they were working for.

4 And I think the point that SC&A 

5 was trying to make and that I agreed with was 

6 we wanted to be able to show that there were 

7 releases, unmonitored, monitored or whatever, 

8 the potential for releases and the potential 

9 for these exotics are there. 

10 Now if we don't have the 

11 information, if we didn't monitor for those 

12 exotics, that in itself is an issue.

13 DR. NETON: I tend to agree with 

14 you, Brad. I think the question is, were 

15 there potentials for routine releases such 

16 that a routine bioassay program was necessary.

17 You know, and I think -- one can 

18 demonstrate -- this sort of goes along the 

19 line of what Joe and I had talked about a year 

20 or two ago at the Board meeting that you know, 

21 because exotics were there, you need to 

22 demonstrate that there was enough potential 
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1 there for them routinely to be dispersed in 

2 the workplace where you would have to be on 

3 like an upper routine frequency and I don't 

4 know that this really answers the question, 

5 that they were monitored, there was -- I agree 

6 that it demonstrates a potential for exposure.

7 But I think at some point, we also 

8 are trying to describe what those potentials 

9 were on a more routine basis. I mean it's 

10 possible they could have had some experiment 

11 ongoing that was not routine where things kind 

12 of went awry, but if for instance, I don't

13 know what, pick a nuclide, curium or something 

14 like that, if they had a very small quantity, 

15 it was confined to hoods, they didn't do 

16 anything outside of wet chemistry experiments 

17 with it, I would argue that one doesn't need a 

18 routine bioassay program for something of that 

19 nature. That's -- you need -- I agree that we 

20 need to describe that, those conditions, to 

21 some degree.

22 DR. ULSH: And I think we have in 
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1 here.

2 DR. NETON: You see that's where -

3 - we haven't heard that discussion yet, about 

4 the potential outside of these sort of 

5 incidents that might have occurred.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I think the 

7 -- we went to the instances, the examples 

8 because we were having a sort of qualitative 

9 discussion about what the program of control 

10 was for exotics and it wasn't getting us very 

11 far because it was like proving a negative, it 

12 was sort of like you know, how do you know you 

13 have a substantial or lengthy enough program 

14 that involves exposure potential such that you 

15 have a routine program or not, and since there

16 wasn't any bioassay data being collected, we 

17 didn't have routine programs, so you are 

18 trying to find if that were --

19 DR. NETON: Well yes.

20 DR. ULSH: You are trying to 

21 figure out okay, if it wasn't anything there, 

22 was that because there was no need for one or 
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1 because they neglected to do it when they 

2 should have done it, if you can see where I am 

3 going with it. 

4 DR. NETON: It's a chicken or egg 

5 kind of thing.

6 DR. ULSH: Chicken or egg so okay, 

7 we went back and forth on that for almost a 

8 year, and finally said let's look for 

9 instances where it's pretty clear that there 

10 was an exposure potential but there was no 

11 routine program in place and there should have 

12 been, and quite frankly, it was the last 

13 straw, there was no other -- I couldn't think 

14 of any other way to really get a handle on 

15 that particular question so --

16 MR. KATZ: So wouldn't you have 

17 program information that would say they were 

18 doing X, Y, Z in this building?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: We did. You had 

20 the Meyer report, you had procedures and stuff 

21 like that.

22 MR. KATZ: So if you know that 
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1 they were doing X, Y, Z in this building with 

2 this radionuclide, this radioactive material 

3 whatever, and you also can show that there was 

4 no monitoring, that would be an instance 

5 right, that you were looking for.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: No, because we 

7 had -- here's the dilemma, is that -- this is 

8 why we spent so much time on the King report. 

9 We were looking for some documentation that 

10 would define an operational activity other 

11 than bench scale by time and location such 

12 that you know there was a program that has a 

13 source term that one could say it should have 

14 been routinely bioassayed.

15 But I think we did get hung up on 

16 the King report in the sense that it wasn't 

17 clear the fact that that did provide that 

18 information.

19 And there were certainly 

20 procedures in the Meyer's report that says you 

21 know they did have techniques and did these 

22 kinds of things, but then the question became 
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1 did they actually apply them and use them in 

2 instances where you had an actual activity 

3 that would have entailed not just an events4 driven thing which would have been maybe a 

5 small bench scale operation but something a 

6 little more extensive.

7 DR. NETON: But then I think that 

8 gets into the routine alpha monitoring program 

9 and what they were really measuring with the 

10 urine samples, right?

11 DR. ULSH: The first part of 

12 SC&A's report was talking about specific 

13 incidents. The second part of SC&A's report 

14 talked about specifics, what they termed 

15 programs, so for instance the Cotter 

16 concentrate activities, the activities with 

17 uranium, the ionium program.

18 That was in SC&A's report and we 

19 responded to that. We have shown where Meyer 

20 talked about here's the bioassay techniques 

21 that were available, and we have talked about 

22 what bioassay was taken. So that's covered in 
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1 here. We do have specific situations like 

2 that.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Were they working 

4 with the work permit process in those 

5 programs?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Not in --

7 DR. ULSH: I can tell you that 

8 they were in later days but I don't know when 

9 they started.

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Not in the 

12 earlier years but --

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You did what 

14 you wanted.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: It's the same as 

16 all the other sites, about 1985, you start 

17 seeing the difference.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: But you know, not 

19 putting too fine a point on it, I think you 

20 know everybody did due diligence on the issue, 

21 to answer your question, and I certainly at 

22 this stage wouldn't advise the Work Group that 
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1 we have found a salient enough example sorry,

2 but -- I'm not advertising -- of exposure 

3 potential that would have required you know, a 

4 routine bioassay.

5 Now, I didn't have that pre6 judgement going into this. I think that had 

7 to be tested and that's what we wanted to do, 

8 and looking at both the examples that Kathy 

9 came up with, and the responses, I am not that 

10 far apart from Brant in the sense that you 

11 know, I still have some questions and some 

12 concerns, but overall, I don't think there's 

13 anything that's glaring that suggests that we 

14 missed something.

15 MR. KATZ: That's all I was 

16 reflecting --

17 MR. FITZGERALD: But this is such 

18 a convoluted thing because you are trying to 

19 prove -- you are trying to actually validate 

20 something and there's a, you know --

21 MR. KATZ: But we have had that 

22 other side, we have definitely come across 
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1 these situations where there was a whole 

2 process and then -- 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: I think what 

4 skewed this thing is that we had this 

5 wonderful, I think we had this wonderful King 

6 report that, for once, somebody historically 

7 went back and mapped everything and so you had 

8 place, location, time, nuclides, available 

9 bioassay, and sort of like end of story, and 

10 then when you compared that against the actual 

11 bioassays that were taken, you say, well, wait 

12 a minute.

13 And I think that kind of threw 

14 things off for a bit and then we realized that 

15 that wasn't necessarily going to deliver the 

16 goods and then you had to go back and say, 

17 well, what can you do beyond that.

18 And I think this is about all you 

19 can do and so you know, we will write this up 

20 but that's kind of where I'm -- I think where 

21 we come out at this point.

22 CHAIR BEACH: So out of this we 
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1 have SC&A's response due to NIOSH's White 

2 Paper and for NIOSH, the action items are to 

3 complete that thorium-232 report and I think 

4 that the Work Group would like to track that 

5 issue about framing up that time frame from 

February 1st '49 to September 30th 6 '49. That 

7 did come out of this Work Group, so we would 

8 like to follow that through.

9 DR. NETON: I'll take that as an 

10 action item and follow up with our folks 

11 internally.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So really where we 

13 are is -- what I'd like to know is if we can 

14 get our secure meeting in mid-January, a Work 

15 Group scheduled at the end of January, and 

report out -- or the 1st 16 of February at our 

17 next Board meeting, and be finished with Mound 

18 by the end of February.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's when the 

20 Board meeting is. We should give SC&A enough 

21 time following the secure meeting, since there 

22 are some questions that have a bearing on --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well we have to 

2 go through DOE clearance ===

3 MR. KATZ: And that itself is 

4 another --

5 CHAIR BEACH: We need to push for 

6 that secure meeting as --

7 MR. KATZ: So I think relatively 

8 early in January if it's possible would be 

9 better if you are trying to make an end of 

10 February Board meeting. I think it's sounding 

11 a little bit tight.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the meeting 

13 in Germantown can be done fairly readily. I 

14 mean I think we can get that arranged and I 

15 think it's just the timing of how that feeds 

16 into our final response but we surely can move 

17 to make that earlier rather than later in 

18 January.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Well I'd say the 

first week of January, 1st to 2nd 20 . Or the 

21 second.

22 MR. KATZ: First week is tough for 
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1 people in terms of --

2 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, what's the --

3 (Simultaneous speaking.)

4 MR. KATZ: Well actually this year 

5 it's isn't because December, it comes at the 

6 end of a pay period or whatever, there is no 

7 January use or lose --

8 CHAIR BEACH: No.

9 (Simultaneous speaking.)

10 CHAIR BEACH: So I'm thinking end 

11 of the first week, beginning of the second 

12 week.

13 MR. KATZ: Do you want to look at 

14 the calender --

15 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Because do you want to 

17 send something to Greg soon to sort of set 

18 this up?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: We can do that.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think I'll be 

21 through the DOE process by then.

22 MR. KATZ: Yes, I hope so.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: All my stuff's 

2 been in for quite a while.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Tritides takes a 

4 while for some reason up there.

5 MR. KATZ: No no, Paul has his 

6 clearance.

7 (Simultaneous speaking.)

8 DR. ULSH: The second week is not 

9 great for me. There is a Procedures 

Subcommittee meeting on January 9th 10 . 

11 CHAIR BEACH: How does the 5th/6th 

12 look?

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Fifth or sixth?

14 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm just getting 

16 back from Hawaii.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: The sympathy is 

18 overwhelming.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: I can tell that.

20 MR. KATZ: When do you get back 

21 Brad?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I get back on the 
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4th 1 . 

2 MR. KATZ: That's a long flight.

3 DR. NETON: You can just fly all 

4 the way back to Washington.

5 CHAIR BEACH: There you go.

6 MR. KATZ: That's a little bit 

7 cruel.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Dump my wife off 

9 on the end there.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Well, if the meeting 

11 is on the sixth you have got the fifth to fly.

12 (Laughter.)

13 CHAIR BEACH: What's next then? 

Let's see then, the week of the 9th 14 is no good 

15 for Brant, the whole week?

16 DR. ULSH: Well, there's the 

17 Procedures meeting on Monday that -- I'm 

18 supposed to go to Savannah River the rest of 

19 that week but --

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay, but then that's 

22 pushing everything for --
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1 CHAIR BEACH: It's -- that's why 

I'm saying if Brad can agree to do the 6th 2 --

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: You know what, 

4 bottom line is you guys go look for fast --

5 CHAIR BEACH: You should be rested 

6 up.

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: I would go for 

the 5th or 6th 8 and --

9 CHAIR BEACH: I understand that if 

we wait until the 16th 10 then SC&A is not going 

11 to --

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: I understand --

13 MR. KATZ: Why don't we at least

do the 6th 14 , which makes it at least possible 

15 theoretically that you could make it, but 

16 whether you want to do that to yourself is a 

17 separate question.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, yes, I've 

19 got some other things on the plate there, so 

what I would do is I would set up on the 6th 20 

21 and we'll shoot for that and go from there.

22 CHAIR BEACH: What's a second date 
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1 in case that doesn't work? Is there any flex 

2 in your Savannah River or would we have to go 

3 clear to the --

4 DR. ULSH: Well, the third week.

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well the 

7 Procedures Subcommittee, but I would think if 

8 worse came to worst we could move that one 

9 Ted.

10 MR. KATZ: What date do we -- we 

11 have that for the --

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: I don't know 

13 there's anything pressing for Procedures.

14 MR. KATZ: Wait which day are you 

15 talking about?

 DR. ULSH: January 9th 16 . 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, the Procedures 

18 Subcommittee.

19 MR. KATZ: Oh not, but that 

20 doesn't -- oh I see. You are saying --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: No I'm saying, 

22 what if Procedures could move theirs. I mean 
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1 there --

2 MR. KATZ: It's possible.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's sort of a 

4 routine meeting.

5 MR. KATZ: They're all routine.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: I mean they don't 

7 have things that are pressing like SEC.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, well let's 

shoot for the 6th and check for the 9th 9 , Ted, 

10 if that --

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And 6th, 9th 11 

12 alternate. And this would -- let me -- I will 

13 send an email to Greg about this. This would 

14 be Board Members and who, Brant?

15 DR. ULSH: Probably Mel.

16 MR. KATZ: Mel.

17 DR. ULSH: Mel and Karin.

18 MR. KATZ: Karin. Okay and then 

19 Joe, you.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Myself, John 

21 Stiver.

22 MS. LIN: Do you need legal 
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1 counsel there?

2 MR. KATZ: Probably not. But you 

3 are there in Washington, so if you want to --

4 it's Germantown.

5 MS. LIN: It would be Rob.

6 MR. KATZ: It would be Rob.

7 MS. LIN: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: I don't think we need 

9 him, really, for this. I don't think there's 

10 anything very tricky about this at all.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Whenever we do it 

12 we have Isaf is --

13 MR. KATZ: Isaf. Greg can look at 

14 that, cover that. Okay. So I will -- anyway 

15 I will this week send Greg an email, try to 

16 set this up.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Do we want to try to 

18 go for our Work Group meeting? 

19 MR. KATZ: And for that, let me 

20 just ask before we finish on that topic, they 

21 don't need any specific materials to be 

22 available for that, or they do?
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: The classified 

2 wing.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: We have 

4 classified documents already stored in 

5 Germantown that deal with this issue from our 

6 past work. I don't see adding to that 

7 collection at this point.

8 MR. KATZ: So those would be --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: They are already 

10 there. 

11 CHAIR BEACH: You could just 

12 provide a list for what --

13 MR. KATZ: So Joe, you will give 

14 them a list of what you want.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: We'd just ask for 

16 the folder. I looked at the folder last week, 

17 it's still all there, your notes, my notes.

18 MR. KATZ: And you are talking 

19 about the Mound folder, the -- how do you 

20 identify that to them?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: It's the Mound 

22 tritides folder.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: They know what 

3 that is.

4 MR. KATZ: Okay. That's good to 

5 know. Okay. So I'll take care of that 

6 probably tomorrow and keep you abreast.

7 CHAIR BEACH: And then do we want 

8 to try and shoot for a Work Group date?

9 MR. KATZ: Yes so let's do that. 

10 So that --

11 CHAIR BEACH: How much time do you 

12 think SC&A, you -- I mean, Joe, would you 

13 need?

14 MR. FITZGERALD: After this 

15 meeting?

16 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and then we 

17 need to know --

18 MR. KATZ: We need clearance --

19 CHAIR BEACH: -- some of your 

20 items because I would like to have all the 

21 action items available, so that means --

22 DR. ULSH: Radon is not going to 
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1 be a problem.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay so radon should 

3 be easy. 

4 DR. ULSH: Thorium may not be 

5 easy.

6 DR. NETON: I don't think so. It 

7 depends. It could be quick. It could be --

8 it's not going to be in between.

9 CHAIR BEACH: So I don't mind 

10 giving a little extra time.

11 MR. KATZ: Oh absolutely, we have 

12 some time to play with here, I mean the Board 

13 meeting is at the very end of February.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we can 

15 get the tritide response in to DOE certainly 

16 in a couple of weeks after that meeting. The 

17 joker in the deck, I think, is DOE, but I 

18 think we can, with Greg, try to expedite that 

19 as much as possible knowing that we need it 

20 sooner than later and hope that will work. We 

21 don't have as much control in that. It might 

22 take a couple of weeks to get out.
NEAL R. GROSS

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275

1 MR. KATZ: So what about the week 

2 of -- I just lost my calender -- I was going 

to say the week of February 15th 3 . How does 

4 that work?

5 DR. NETON: There is no week of 

6 February -- 

 CHAIR BEACH: It's February 13th 7 . 

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, well whatever you 

9 want to call it.

10 CHAIR BEACH: President's Day is a

11 holiday so we don't want to get into that. I 

12 think it's a holiday.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Some time during 

14 this week.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, the week of the 

13th 16 is fine.

 DR. ULSH: It's the 20th 17 that's 

18 President's Day.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Week of February 

13th 20 . 

21 DR. ULSH: Oh you are really going 

22 to go on Valentine's Day?
NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

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276

1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Valentine's Day, 

2 that's the --

3 CHAIR BEACH: Well, a week is a 

4 week. And we only need one --

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 CHAIR BEACH: We can shoot for the 

15th 16th, 17th 7 . 

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the end of 

9 that week.

 DR. NETON: The 16th 10 is better for 

11 me.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Let's try to stay 

13 away from Monday. And what date, does 

Thursday the 16th or Friday the 17th 14 ? 

15 MR. KATZ: Friday is probably 

16 worst for you right? You'd like to get home 

17 before --

18 CHAIR BEACH: No I just don't want 

19 to travel on Sunday.

 DR. NETON: The 16th 20 is good for 

21 me.

 CHAIR BEACH: The 16th 22 is fine. 
NEAL R. GROSS

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277

The 17th 1 is fine. Sometimes I have Fridays 

2 off.

 MR. FITZGERALD: The 16th 3 would 

4 probably be the ideal.

 MR. KATZ: So 16th 5 . 

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, let's book that 

then. So February 16th 8 . Here, right? Here? 

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, actually 

10 Tampa Bay.

11 MR. KATZ: You'll get your Tampa 

12 thing soon enough.

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm just 

14 thinking of the weather. It might be easier 

15 for us to get in and out of Florida than here.

16 MR. KATZ: Cincinnati is really 

17 not that brutal. I mean the airport is right 

18 there and we don't get that much real winter 

19 here.

20 (Simultaneous speaking.)

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay so anything 

22 else?
NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

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278

1 MR. KATZ: Okay, we are adjourned. 

2 Thank you, everyone on the line for bearing 

3 with us.

4 (Whereupon the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 2:20 p.m.)

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