This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Weldon Spring Work Group, 

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

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

certified by the Chair of the Weldon Spring Work Group for accuracy at this time. The reader 

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

1 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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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 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON WELDON SPRING

+ + + + + 

MONDAY

MAY 9, 2011

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Frankfurt Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Michael H. Gibson, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Chairman

RICHARD A. LEMEN, Member

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member*
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has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable 

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2 

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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

MEL CHEW, ORAU Team*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

MONICA HARRISON-MAPLES, ORAU Team*

KAREN JOHNSON*

MARY JOHNSON*

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU Team*

GENE POTTER, ORAU Team*

BRYCE RICH, ORAU Team*

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

MATTHEW SMITH, ORAU*

BILLY SMITH, ORAU Team*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

DAVE SUNDIN, DCAS

TINA TRIPLETT*

*Participating via telephone
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Weldon Spring Work Group, 

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

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

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3 

NEAL R. GROSS

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C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome and Introductions.................. 4 

1. Brief Review of Weldon Spring Site and 

SEC petition - SC&A .................. 8 

2. Progress report on SC&A's

action items - SC&A ................. 11

 

3. Progress report on

NIOSH's action items - NIOSH ....... 119

4. Discussion of SEC issues - 

 NIOSH and SC&A ..................... 202

5. Discussion/assignment of action items

to be completed before AB meeting

the end of May ..................... 219
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4 

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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 everybody 

4 on the line. This is the Advisory Board on 

5 Radiation Health. Welcome to spring Work 

6 Group. We're just getting started, getting 

7 ready for roll call here while the Chair looks 

8 for a chair. Let me just check with Mr. 

9 Presley, are you on the line, Bob?

10 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Great. Good morning. 

12 How are you?

13 MEMBER PRESLEY: Good morning.

14 MR. KATZ: So let's start with 

15 roll call. Since we're speaking about a 

16 specific site please speak to conflict of 

17 interest. Beginning with Board Members, the 

18 Chair in the room. 

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Mike Gibson, 

20 Chair of the Work Group. No conflict.

21 MEMBER LEMEN: Richard Lemen, 
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5 

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1 Board Member, no conflict other than being 

2 raised in Missouri.

3 MEMBER PRESLEY: Bob Presley, 

4 Board Member, no conflict.

5 MR. KATZ: Are there any other 

6 Board Members on the line? Okay. NIOSH ORAU 

7 team in the room. 

8 MR. SUNDIN: Dave Sundin, no 

9 conflict.

10 MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes, NIOSH 

11 health physicist, no conflict of interest.

12 MR. KATZ: NIOSH ORAU team on the 

13 line.

14 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: This is 

15 Monica Harrison-Maples, ORAU team, no 

16 conflict.

17 DR. CHEW: Mel Chew, ORAU team, no 

18 conflict.

19 MR. MORRIS: Robert Morris, ORAU 

20 team, no conflict.

21 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, ORAU team, 
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6 

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1 no conflict.

2 MR. B. SMITH: Billy Smith, ORAU 

3 team, no conflict.

4 MR. M. SMITH: Matthew Smith, 

5 ORAU, no conflict.

6 MR. KATZ: Welcome all of you. 

7 SC&A team in the room.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, 

9 SC&A, no conflict.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, SC&A, 

11 no conflict.

12 MR. KATZ: And SC&A team on the 

13 line.

14 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 

15 conflict.

16 MR. STIVER: John Stiver, SC&A, no 

17 conflict.

18 MR. KATZ: Welcome to both of you 

19 on the line. There are no members of the 

20 public in the room. Any members of the public 

21 on the line? 
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7 

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1 MS. K. JOHNSON: This is Karen 

2 Johnson and my mother Mary Johnson.

3 MS. TRIPLETT: And Tina Triplett.

4 MR. KATZ: Welcome Ms. Johnson and 

5 Ms. Triplett. And HHS or other federal 

6 officials or contractors of the feds in the 

7 room?

8 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS.

9 MR. KATZ: And on the line?

10 (No response.)

11 MR. KATZ: Okay, that does it for 

12 roll call. Let me just remind folks on the 

13 line to mute your phones except when you're 

14 speaking to the group, *6 if you don't have a 

15 mute button and then press *6 again to take 

16 yourself off mute. And Mike, the agenda is 

17 yours.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. I'd like 

19 to thank everyone for being here. It's been 

20 awhile since our last meeting. We've had - 

21 the program's been pretty busy so we've had a 
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has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable 

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8 

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1 little trouble getting some things 

2 accomplished between NIOSH and SC&A but I 

3 think we have enough put together today to 

4 have a meeting. I thank SC&A for putting out 

5 a draft agenda that we're going to try to 

6 stick to. I have some things that have been 

7 discussed and possibly resolved between SC&A 

8 and Weldon Spring so we'll just, we'll start 

9 at the top of the agenda and go with that. So 

10 if, Ron, if you want to start out.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

12 MR. KATZ: Let me just note for 

13 the folks on the phone the agenda is on the 

14 internet. It's on the NIOSH website or it 

15 should be, under the board section. Go ahead, 

16 Ron.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. This is Ron 

18 Buchanan of SC&A and this is our third meeting 

19 on Weldon Spring Work Group, the SEC. And so 

20 I know that we've - it was January 25th since 

21 we had our last meeting and so I think it'd be 
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9 

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1 beneficial if I just do a very brief recap of 

2 Weldon Spring and where we're at on the Site 

3 Profile and the SEC issues and then we'll 

4 discuss some in detail. I'll discuss SC&A's 

5 action items first since we have a shorter 

6 list and then turn it over to NIOSH to discuss 

7 their action items. Then we'll have a mutual 

8 discussion of the issues and where we need to 

9 go from there.

10 So just a brief recap. Weldon 

11 Spring of course was an Army ammunition site 

12 from the '40s through to '53 or so and then in 

13 '54 to '57 they constructed the uranium 

14 processing plant there. '57 to '66 it was in 

15 operation and these dates have something to do 

16 with SEC issues, it's the reason I'm going 

17 over them. There in '57 to '66 they received 

18 uranium yellowcake ore which they processed 

19 into mostly uranium metals. They did receive 

20 some recycled uranium starting in the early 

21 '60s. They received some enriched uranium in 
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10 

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1 '63 to '67 and some recycled uranium right 

2 along in that time period too. 

3 Then in December 31st, 1966 was 

4 the official close-down date of the plant. 

5 The 1967 to 1969 was a period that they were 

6 going to generate Agent Orange at the 

7 facility. There were some renovations done 

8 but that never actually took place. It laid 

9 in monitoring and maintenance from '70 to '85. 

10 And in '85 to 2001 it was a decommissioning 

11 period and it was all the plant and the quarry 

12 and the pits were taken and put into an 

13 engineering disposal pile which is, if you've 

14 ever been there, it was finished in about 

15 2002. It's a big white pyramid-looking rock 

16 stone structure with all the material inside 

17 encased in some cement, slurry and that sort 

18 of thing. So that's - and of course it's 

19 under monitoring now and there's a visitor 

20 station there that you can get information 

21 from. 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Weldon Spring Work Group, 

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

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11 

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1 And so SC&A went there, we 

2 interviewed some of the workers when we 

3 received the Site Profile. And then the SEC 

4 was evaluated by NIOSH after it had been filed 

5 and they had done a Site Profile in June of 

6 2005. SC&A issued their review of the Site 

7 Profile in March of 2009 and we started with 

8 that about a year before that. In April 2010 

9 NIOSH issued their ER report for SEC 143 

10 covering the period 1957 through 1967. We had 

11 our first Work Group meeting in October of 

12 2010 here in Cincinnati. I've outlined some 

13 of the issues. In December of 2010 SC&A

14 issued their review of the ER report. In 

15 January 25th of 2011 we had our second Work 

16 Group meeting here and then we were scheduled 

17 for one in March of 2011 and that was 

18 postponed until today for our third Work Group 

19 meeting. So that brings us a little up to 

20 date of where we're at on the site. Any 

21 comments or corrections to that? 
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1 MR. KATZ: Thank you, that is 

2 helpful.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So that's 

4 the item one on the agenda. And so we want to 

5 move to item two which is our progress report 

6 on SC&A's action item. We just have four 

7 action items from the January meeting and I 

8 should probably say that there was nine SEC 

9 issues and 28 Site Profile issues. I did find 

10 a lot of Site Profile issues were covered in 

11 SEC issues. The nine SEC issues were the data 

12 accuracy and completeness, daily weighted 

13 average for air exposure and we'll have a 

14 session on that in a little bit and then 

15 coworker data. Number two is egress 

16 monitoring. Number three was the data for 

17 1967. Number four was radon and thoron. 

18 Number five was recycled uranium. Number six 

19 was neutrons. Number seven was quarries and 

20 pits. Number eight was accidents and 

21 incidents, and number nine was the geometry 
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has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable 

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1 and dosimetry. 

2 And so of these nine SEC issues we 

3 had four action items from the last group and 

4 one was the daily weighted average on air 

5 concentration. This is where you use the 

6 material in the environmental - excuse me, 

7 NIOSH's Evaluation Report on pages 39 through 

8 45. They list the available data for air 

9 sampling. And now the reason that we kind of 

10 held off on this issue was Fernald had the 

11 same issue. We didn't want to spend time 

12 doing it both at Weldon Spring and Fernald 

13 since they're similar issues and Weldon Spring 

14 received their material from - most of their 

15 material from Fernald. And so there was a 

16 group that was working on the DWE for Fernald 

17 and several papers went back and forth between 

18 Fernald and - I mean, excuse me, between NIOSH 

19 and SC&A on Fernald. And so what we wanted to 

20 do was to get that ironed out and then 

21 extrapolate it to Weldon Spring. And so we 
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14 

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1 have John Stiver on the phone. He's the one 

2 that was handling this for SC&A and we'll put 

3 him on in a minute. And so he has some 

4 handouts that I'll hand out from the ER 

5 report. John, are you there?

6 MR. STIVER: Yes, I am.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Now, we 

8 cannot hand out those slides but you can talk 

9 through them because they haven't been 

10 cleared, but I do have copies of the ER pages 

11 that you wanted me to make. And so you want 

12 to give a brief rundown of why this is an 

13 issue and where we're going with it?

14 MR. KATZ: Ron, I mean you can 

15 hand out here.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: I have the - the 

17 data from the ER report. Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Okay.

19 MR. STIVER: Yes, they're just 

20 five pages from the Evaluation Report, a look 

21 at the site-specific data. I thought it would 
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15 

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1 be handy for everybody to look at. 

2 MR. FITZGERALD: What we were 

3 sensitive of was the slides for obvious 

4 reasons.

5 MR. KATZ: Oh, I see. Okay.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: PowerPoint 

7 presentation. Okay, John could you give us a 

8 brief - 

9 MR. STIVER: Okay. I had just put 

10 together some slides but it's really not 

11 critical that everybody have them. We're 

12 going to be talking in broad brush strokes for 

13 the most part. However, I thought it would be 

14 helpful for everybody to have the site15 specific data when we get to that point. And 

16 what I wanted to do today is really kind of do 

17 an overview and look at, you know, the DWE 

18 concept and what it entails, what the 

19 advantages and limitations are, look at some 

20 of the historical milestones that led up to 

21 this review and then take a look at the 
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1 highlights from the Adam Davis and Dan Strom 

2 Health Physics Journal article in 2008 which 

3 is really a seminal article that provides the 

4 fundamental underpinnings for the new NIOSH 

5 methodology. I'll take a look at some of the 

6 highlights of the NIOSH methodologies and then 

7 finally get into the Weldon Spring site8 specific data and see if there are any issues 

9 that may arise in applying those methods to 

10 that particular data set.

11 Let's go ahead and get started 

12 here about the daily weighted exposure 

13 concept. And this was a concept that was 

14 introduced by the Atomic Energy Commission's 

15 Health and Safety Laboratory way back in the 

16 1940s. And what they intended to do is really 

17 provide an estimate of the average worker 

18 exposure by job type that would then be used 

19 to assess radioactive dust levels and to 

20 better control those levels in a plant. And 

21 it's really pretty amazing because that 
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1 methodology that was devised back in the '40s 

2 was basically unchanged all the way through 

3 into the late 1960s, especially at least at 

4 Fernald when they finally introduced in vivo 

5 accounting methods. 

6 And so you have about a 20- and 

7 25-year period where the methodologies did not 

8 change, a pretty good understanding of how it 

9 was done and in many cases the raw data are 

10 available for review. And this method is 

11 based on the - basically a gross alpha air 

12 activity concentration measured on a filter 

13 that was then counted in a zinc sulfide 

14 detector. And it's applicable to workplace 

15 alpha emitters whether it be uranium, RU, 

16 thorium and/or their progeny. 

17 Take a little look at this here. 

18 The time-weighted alpha air concentration in 

19 the individual sample is really the 

20 fundamental unit of the DWE. They're job- and 

21 facility-specific. There were typically 
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1 several tasks that were performed for any 

2 given job. Again, I'm using Fernald as my 

3 basis here. In that data set we had anywhere 

4 from three to more than 20 tasks per job. And 

5 the reports reported three values, a high 

6 value, the low value and the average alpha air 

7 concentration in units of dpm per cubic meter 

8 of air. And this was reported for each task 

9 associated with the job. The time to complete 

10 the task was reported and also the sample type 

11 which would be either a breathing zone sample 

12 which would be like a lapel-type monitor that 

13 an individual worker would wear during a task 

14 and also fixed general air samples were placed 

15 at various locations throughout the facility.

16 I had an example here which I had 

17 shown at Fernald. It's actually the same 

18 example that Bob Morris has in his - in the 

19 NIOSH White Paper. And basically it's just a 

20 table that shows, you know, it lays out how 

21 the DWE reports were formatted. You have an 
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1 identification, a breathing zone, general air, 

2 time per shift, give you the number of 

3 samples, the high, the low, the average and 

4 then how this would - the DWE would work. For 

5 each of those tasks it would take the time to 

6 create or to perform that particular task 

7 multiplied by the average concentration. So 

8 you'd have a time by average value which is 

9 then summed up for all the different tasks and 

10 then divided by the total amount of time per 

11 day. So what you have then is a weighting by 

12 - a time weighting for each given task.

13 I have an example here, we don't 

14 really need to go through that particular 

15 example. But in summary what you have, the 

16 DWE represents a task-weighted average air 

17 concentration for any given alpha emitter for 

18 specific days in which the samples were 

19 collected and for the monitored workers. And 

20 the time-weighting is really the salient 

21 feature of this methodology. It really kind 
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1 of gives a better idea of what workers were 

2 actually exposed to. It's really the link 

3 between the air concentration at a given 

4 location time to the potential worker 

5 exposure.

6 And in actuality what you have is 

7 a distribution of DWEs because these processes 

8 were going on continuously for a number of 

9 years. Not so much with thorium where you had 

10 more of short-term campaigns that would last 

11 anywhere from a couple of months up to maybe a 

12 year or so. But for uranium that was going on 

13 all the time. And you have a few little 

14 snapshots in time where these studies were 

15 done. And so you might, you know, you have an 

16 idea of what a particular worker was exposed 

17 to on a particular day for the time that the 

18 sample was done, but you don't really know, 

19 you know, how about all the workers for a 

20 given period of time. So you really have a 

21 distribution of these. And probably the 
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1 biggest drawback to DWE was that there's no 

2 uncertainty estimates were provided. And it 

3 really wasn't intended to use as a dose 

4 estimate, it was really to control workplace 

5 dust levels and potential exposures. So you 

6 have spatial and temporal variation in air 

7 concentration that were experienced by a given 

8 worker. 

9 And now what I'd like to do is 

10 kind of recap the history of this DWE issue 

11 for Fernald and Weldon Spring. Basically it's 

12 a global issue and this methodology is really 

13 applicable to any facility that used this 

14 approach for assessing or estimating intakes. 

15 And my experience with this goes back to when 

16 I first started with SC&A in February of 2009 

17 and that's when NIOSH issued their White 

18 Paper, revision 2 of the White Paper which we 

19 called Morris 2009. Bob Morris was the 

20 author. 

21 In July of 2009 SC&A issued our 
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1 White Paper that was in response to a Board 

2 request that we do a review and we came up 

3 with 20 findings in that paper. 19 October as 

4 we know was the first Weldon Spring meeting 

5 when the issue of DWE came up. In November 

6 2010 NIOSH issued revision 3 of the White 

7 Paper concerning DWEs but our review of that, 

8 we came out a little too late and our review 

9 of that methodology was based on revision 2. 

10 We then issued another revision to our White 

11 Paper which looked at Rev 3. And again, as 

12 you know the last Work Group meeting was on 

13 the 25th. We published our White Paper review 

14 of Rev 3 in February and now here we are.

15 So what I'd like to take a look at 

16 now is just some summary highlights of the 

17 Davis and Strom paper since it is a seminal 

18 paper that really underlies all these 

19 methodologies. What they did was they 

20 reviewed six of the HASL reports covering five 

21 sites. There were three involved in uranium 
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1 production, one thorium and one radon and 

2 thoron. There were a total of 63 job titles 

3 for which the DWEs were reported. Each title 

4 was held for one to 12 employees. There was a 

5 total of 165 employees over a 7-year period. 

6 Anywhere from one to 13 operations per job. 

7 Each operation would be characterized by up to 

8 27 samples. So you have a total of about 428 

9 air samples that were analyzed for this study. 

10 It's also kind of interesting to note that 

11 about 65 percent of these workers were exposed 

12 to levels above the maximum allowable 

13 concentration which I believe was about, let's 

14 see, before 1963 was 70 dpm per cubic meter 

15 and after '63 was 100 dpm per cubic meter for 

16 alpha values at least. 

17 They focused on the variability in 

18 the observations that was evidenced in the air 

19 sample data themselves. The idea was to 

20 generate an uncertainty analysis that could 

21 then be used in EEOICPA to assist in dose 
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1 reconstruction. They really needed to get an 

2 idea of what type of distributions are we 

3 looking at and what are the GSDs. What's the 

4 best characteristic of the uncertainties. And 

5 the main sources of uncertainty are 

6 variability in the data, what are the particle 

7 size distributions, process variability, 

8 placement of the air samples, changes in 

9 ventilation, you know, the kind of things 

10 you'd expect. And there was also 

11 uncertainties basically in whether the samples 

12 were representative of actual worker 

13 exposures. They also identified what they 

14 called blunders. Doesn't mean it was a 

15 stupidly performed task, it just meant that 

16 there were mistakes made, mathematical errors, 

17 transcription errors, things of that nature. 

18 And it turned out that these were fairly 

19 significant in their study. 

20 And so they ran a Monte Carlo 

21 simulation to generate distributions of 
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1 discrete DWEs as well as log-normal fits to 

2 the DWEs. And what they did was they'd just 

3 go through and for each of those tasks for 

4 discrete distribution they'd go through it for 

5 each run, they'd pick at random one of the 

6 AACs multiplied by the time and generate a 

7 DWE. And they'd go back and do this 10,000 

8 times and generate that alpha distribution. 

9 Typical Monte Carlo techniques. 

10 The fits, the log-normal fits of 

11 course are more claimant favorable typically 

12 because they allow for the possibility of 

13 exposures that were larger than the actual 

14 measurements. And as you can see because of 

15 the data limitations that's going to be pretty 

16 important. They found the upper 95th 

17 percentile of the GSDs for their data were 

18 about 4. The 99th percentile is between 7 and 

19 8. And so that lends support to the use of a 

20 GSD of 5 when a concentration measurement is 

21 available but there's no information on 
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1 uncertainty. 

2 They indicated that using the 

3 distribution of air samples without time4 weighting or assignments to jobs didn't really 

5 produce a DWA or any kind of a value or GSD 

6 that's representative in any given worker. 

7 They noted that the median of the unweighted 

8 site-wide distribution was typically higher 

9 than the DWAs for all the workers except for 

10 three. So of all those 63 job types, only 

11 three of them exceeded the median of the 

12 unweighted distribution. And they indicated 

13 finally, it was kind of a critical point here, 

14 the site-wide average is really, you know, 

15 while it is a biased estimator of exposure it 

16 could be used in making compensation decisions 

17 and those would be required to be favorable to 

18 the claimant. 

19 Take a look at the NIOSH DWE White 

20 Paper Rev 3. Basically you can distill this 

21 down to five different bits of guidance here. 
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1 Now one is that they propose to use the DWE 

2 data to estimate chronic daily intake rates 

3 for exposed workers. They assign a DWE for 

4 the job description with the highest DWE in 

5 the plant where the material was handled for a 

6 specific year to every worker in that plant 

7 with a GSD of 5. So you take - you look at 

8 that whole distribution of GSD - or of DWEs, 

9 you take the highest one, the most highly 

10 exposed job type. They assign that to 

11 everybody in the plant and they use this GSD 

12 of 5 for uncertainty. So you have a situation 

13 where you've got - essentially you do have a 

14 plausible intake for certain workers, for the 

15 most highly exposed workers because you're 

16 using their data. These were actual 

17 measurements for those breathing zone samples. 

18 And then you're using the GSD of 5 from Davis 

19 and Strom. And so you have kind of a shortcut 

20 method that's based on a fairly rigorous 

21 analysis. And this obviates the need to go 
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1 through for every single site and analyze 

2 data, generate your own distributions and then 

3 go through that. At the end of the day you're 

4 going to come up with something that's not all 

5 that different from a GSD of 5.

6 For situations where the data are 

7 judged to be inadequate or incomplete they 

8 propose to use a high DWE from adjacent year 

9 again with a GSD of 5. And then they propose 

10 to use the 95th percentile of the unweighted 

11 air sample when time-weighted average data are 

12 not available. And then finally they 

13 recommend to the dose reconstructor to search 

14 the SRDB if they have reason to believe that 

15 exposures have taken place that are not 

16 identified in the existing data sets.

17 And our particular - or the point 

18 we come to after two years of discussions and 

19 White Paper exchanges is that we - we accept 

20 NIOSH's latest White Paper. Revision 3 is 

21 scientifically sound and claimant-favorable. 
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1 However, there is about - there are three 

2 technical issues that we feel still need to be 

3 resolved. First involves this issue of 

4 blunders in the raw data. In Davis and Strom, 

5 I believe there were 16 out of 63 of these 

6 sets where you had blunders that resulted in 

7 either a high or a low measurement by greater 

8 than 20 percent. In most cases where the 

9 significant blunders did occur they caused 

10 twofold underestimated exposure and the worst 

11 case was a factor of 10. So you can see 

12 they've got an absolute worst case where 

13 you've got a factor of 10 underestimate and 

14 you throw a GSD of 5 on it you're still 

15 underestimating by a factor of 2. Now granted 

16 that's a pretty unlikely event but it was seen 

17 in this particular analysis. And we feel that 

18 the DWE data should be validated for a 

19 particular site just to identify the frequency 

20 and magnitude of blunders that may have 

21 occurred in the raw data transcription and 
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1 calculations.

2 We also feel that NIOSH should be 

3 using the 50th percentile of unweighted air 

4 sample data when DWEs for adjacent years are 

5 not available. And that was called out right 

6 there in the Davis and Strom paper that the 

7 50th percentile, I mean you captured 60 out of 

8 the 63 job DWEs by just using 50th percentile. 

9 And in our paper, in our review of Rev 3 

10 we've made an example there. That was for 

11 Fernald, I think the highest thorium exposure. 

12 You had a situation where the - they took the 

13 worst sample which occurred for I think it was 

14 scrubbing out reduction pots in the metals 

15 reduction. I can't remember exactly what it 

16 was. You had a value of about a million dpm 

17 per cubic meter and this is a short-term 

18 incredibly dusty operation experienced by a 

19 few workers in a very short period of time. 

20 And if you take that and apply it to everybody 

21 it just kind of goes against the concept of 
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1 plausibility. I mean, eventually you get 

2 something that's bounding but is it really 

3 plausible. Is this something that any 

4 particular worker could have actually 

5 experienced. So we feel that the 50th 

6 percentile is probably a better number to be 

7 using. Finally, we feel that the TBD should 

8 make available the necessary DWE data. We 

9 think that's an undue burden on the dose 

10 reconstructor to go looking for more data and 

11 it could result in inconsistencies from case 

12 to case. 

13 Finally, if you'd like to go ahead 

14 and get out the handout that Ron provided, on 

15 page 39 it kind of gives you a little bit of a 

16 description here and section 6.1.3, Airborne 

17 Dust Studies. And they introduced a different 

18 concept here for the uranium data at least 

19 where they used what they call a DWA index. 

20 And so what they did was because workers - and

21 a given worker rotated through the job they 
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1 did a secondary weighting by manpower 

2 allocation I believe is the word they use 

3 here.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Excuse me just a 

5 minute, John. This is Ron Buchanan, SC&A. 

6 What we're looking at for those on the phone 

7 is page 39 through 45 of NIOSH's ER report 

8 that lists the uranium and thorium air 

9 concentration measurements at Weldon Spring. 

10 Okay, sorry, go ahead John.

11 MR. STIVER: Oh, that's fine. 

12 Yes, I kind of got ahead of myself on that. 

13 This is the SEC ER report 143, page 39, just 

14 at the bottom of that page. And the last line 

15 there is the interesting thing because they 

16 indicate that some of the raw data are 

17 actually available and also provide a 

18 reference for that which I've listed, a 

19 Mallinckrodt publication in 1966. It's 

20 entitled Summaries of Dust Concentrations at 

21 Production Jobs, Life of Operation from Year 
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1 1957 to 1966. I believe that's in the SRDB. 

2 It would certainly be easy enough to find.

3 Let's take a look at the uranium 

4 data. This was on page 40 of 92. And you see 

5 what you have here is you've got data for 10 

6 different plants. This is a uranium 

7 production facility so it's set up pretty much 

8 the same as Fernald was. You had sampling 

9 plants, digestion, a refinery. You had green 

10 salt production where the tetrafluoride was 

11 produced and you had the metals plant where 

12 the tetrafluoride was reduced to metal. You 

13 had chemical pilot plants and scrap plants. 

14 So it's set up the same way. There are 

15 anywhere from four to 11 job titles per plant, 

16 a total of 78 job titles, and the data go from 

17 1958 to 1966. Like I said, the number of 

18 workers in the summary table are not provided 

19 but I believe that type of information would 

20 be in the source data. Most of the job titles 

21 here you can see, if you look at the key here, 
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1 some of them didn't - because there weren't 

2 enough workers for a particular task they just 

3 reported the DWA, they didn't use the DWE 

4 index. 

5 And if you look down, the second 

6 to last row, chemical - the pilot scrap plant, 

7 if you look at the worker title which is the 

8 third column over. You see that there's 

9 various - there's values, a little superscript 

10 F and these, basically what they did is they 

11 used the median unweighted air concentration 

12 because they didn't have the time-weighting 

13 for that. This is an example of what we were 

14 talking about earlier of when you don't have 

15 the data. What they did, they chose to use 

16 here was to report the median value. 

17 Summary, you can see there's no 

18 data provided for 1957 for any of the plants 

19 and the most comprehensive data sets are for 

20 the sampling plant and the green salt plant. 

21 From 1958 to 1965, a pretty robust data set 
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1 there. And the most sparse data are found for 

2 the metals core area, that's building 301. We 

3 only have data for 1960. However, you do have 

4 data other than for 1958 for the other 

5 portions of the metals plant. So you have 

6 data from different areas within the metal 

7 plant. And that's another thing that Davis 

8 and Strom pointed out was that the - just to 

9 digress a little bit - that the uncertainty 

10 within a given area in time was typically 

11 greater than the uncertainty between areas. 

12 And so using data from another portion of the 

13 plant may be appropriate, especially given the 

14 uncertainty values that are assigned here. 

15 And in this case you've got the reduction 

16 operations which are - you can see the values 

17 here are the highest. So if those are being 

18 applied then to the core area you can be 

19 pretty reasonably sure that you're assigning a 

20 bounding value. You can see there's gaps of 

21 from three to six years for the core area and 
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1 the pilot scrap special projects plant. And 

2 the others you have missing single years. So 

3 you have a situation where all the different 

4 aspects of Rev 3 come into play here. 

5 And let's take a look now, the 

6 next few tables here, table 6-5 of the thorium 

7 data and we have a lot better granularity in 

8 this data set than we had for Fernald, that's 

9 for sure. You have - basically you have the 

10 same type of situation you had at Fernald 

11 where you've got short-term campaigns. And 

12 you can see if you go down, column 5 time 

13 period. This gives you the idea, it tells you 

14 when those particular operations were going 

15 on. And then over here in the notes column 

16 it'll tell you what the test date was. So 

17 look at that first set of data in table 6-5 

18 Sampling 101. This first line, oven-drying 

19 thorium oxide in the pan transfer. This took 

20 place in March of '65 and you have one day, 

21 March 20, 1965 where they did the air 
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1 sampling. And you also notice in the notes 

2 column that they give you a lot of information 

3 here. They give you the manpower allocation 

4 to thorium work for some of the jobs and they 

5 identify when the airline masks were 

6 prescribed and worn. 

7 So you have a pretty robust data 

8 set here. You can see the highest DWAs, 

9 that's something we pointed out in our report 

10 for Fernald. So it's the re-drumming or the 

11 repackaging of the thorium. And you see that 

12 I believe is on the second, the next page here 

13 on page 44, bottom of that first table, 

14 repackaging thorium oxide and recast. This 

15 was the metals area. And you got the highest 

16 value, 2,060 dpm per cubic meter.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: It's page 43.

18 MR. STIVER: Yes, excuse me, page 

19 43. My mistake. I just got a summary output 

20 here. And so you'll see the notes along the 

21 side here that tell you what was going on, 
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1 when the samples were collected and the test 

2 days. So you have a pretty solid data set 

3 here. 

4 So I guess in summary what we can 

5 say is that if there are any issues here with 

6 uranium it's - with the metals area, the core 

7 area, you'd have to use data from other parts 

8 of plant 301. The pilot scrap plant, I would 

9 think that the 50th percentile of the 

10 unweighted distribution would be appropriate 

11 for that area. The gaps in the special 

12 projects area would require professional 

13 judgment whether to use the - maybe the 

14 highest - go back to the uranium data. The 

15 highest DWA here was 320 in '63. So there'd 

16 be a question. You've got a gap of - from '58 

17 to '62 there's no data there so would you 

18 assign the highest of that set to that value 

19 or would you use the 50th percentile. This 

20 will be something that would require some 

21 professional judgment on the part of the dose 
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39 

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1 reconstructor. It should be provided in the 

2 TBD. For thorium, like I said, the 

3 granularity appears to be pretty good and I 

4 would think that a GSD of 5 would adequately 

5 address the uncertainty. 

6 And that's really all I have to 

7 say. I guess if anyone has any questions or 

8 comments I can entertain those.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So your 

10 bottom line down there is saying that the main 

11 issue would be to do some verification of the 

12 raw data.

13 MR. STIVER: Really, yes. I think 

14 that probably the one thing that still needs 

15 to be done is some sort of a validation 

16 exercise. It wouldn't have to look at every 

17 single report or every single piece of paper 

18 in the raw data, but certainly some kind of 

19 sampling could be done that would give you 

20 some kind of reasonable confidence that you've 

21 got a decent handle on the frequency and the 
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1 magnitude of the blunders such as they exist. 

2 Without even looking at it all I think you've 

3 got this additional source of uncertainty 

4 there that could really potentially 

5 underestimate your intakes.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you 

7 John. Questions on - in the room or on the 

8 phone?

9 MR. ROLFES: John, when you - this 

10 is Mark Rolfes. When you had mentioned the - 

11 there were a couple of factors that the 

12 blunders resulted in under- and overestimates. 

13 You had quoted a factor of 2 for the 

14 underestimate and then also quoted a factor of 

15 10. So - 

16 MR. STIVER: That was the worst 

17 case scenario. They had one value that it was 

18 an underestimate of 10. I believe it was a 

19 time. They put in the wrong time value.

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I wasn't sure 

21 if that was an overestimate or underestimate.
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1 MR. STIVER: That was an over. 

2 You had others that were underestimates - or 

3 overestimates. The worst - the most probable 

4 was an underestimate of 2 and the worst case 

5 was an underestimate of 10.

6 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

7 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert 

8 Morris. Can I? 

9 MR. KATZ: Yes, Robert.

10 MR. MORRIS: I was - wanted to go 

11 to closure on whether or not this is an SEC 

12 issue at this point or a TBD issue at this 

13 point.

14 MR. STIVER: For this particular 

15 site and for Fernald I think this is more than 

16 a TBD issue at this point. That would be my 

17 particular - that would be my opinion. 

18 MR. MORRIS: That's my impression 

19 of what we had agreed to on a prior call but I 

20 wanted - 

21 MR. STIVER: Yes, when we did I 
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1 think it was the April meeting and also the 

2 February meeting for Fernald. So we came to 

3 that conclusion.

4 MR. MORRIS: But we do have this 

5 blunders evaluation on our schedule.

6 MR. STIVER: Yes, the blunder 

7 evaluation I think is the final thing that 

8 needs to be done here.

9 DR. MAURO: Yes, this is John 

10 Mauro. That's correct. For Fernald we really 

11 have gotten to the point where we think that 

12 our position is to recommend that this be 

13 treated as a Site Profile issue. We see sort 

14 of like the light at the end of the tunnel on 

15 how this could be resolved, especially this 

16 blunder issue. So, and I think what I'm 

17 hearing from listening it sounds like this is 

18 a very similar situation you have here with 

19 Weldon.

20 MR. STIVER: Yes.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you 
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1 John, both Johns. Appreciate you being on the 

2 phone. Wanted to get this off, completed 

3 first. Chairman, do you have any further 

4 questions or issues on this issue?

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So are we going 

6 to keep this open as a Site Profile issue for 

7 Weldon Spring as well until it's resolved?

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I think that 

9 the check for blunders, mistakes and posing 

10 the information would be a Site Profile issue 

11 as far as the methodology. Looks like it can 

12 be taken off the table as far as an SEC issue.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: As a matter of 

14 efficiency - this is Joe - it sounds like we 

15 have the same people working the issue between 

16 Bob Morris and people like John Stiver so it 

17 just sounds like in concert with the 

18 resolution for Fernald the TBD-scoped 

19 resolution for this would certainly be, hand 

20 in hand would be something that would be 

21 important all together. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So do we have 

2 any kind of time idea when this might be put 

3 to rest or?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: John? John? I 

5 mean, I guess Bob.

6 DR. MAURO: Yes, let me help out a 

7 little bit with that. I know our St. Louis 

8 meeting is coming up and I know that there is 

9 some discussion going on regarding Fernald. 

10 And you know, there are issues that are Site 

11 Profile issues and there are some very serious 

12 SEC issues. The strategy and certainly Ted 

13 could weigh in as to the thinking here, but 

14 when we have moved to a place where there is 

15 an emergence of - it looks like a judgment is 

16 taking form that there might be an SEC issue 

17 before us and perhaps even granting some SEC 

18 for some time period the Board and the Work 

19 Group usually says okay, though we have not 

20 resolved many issues and in fact many issues 

21 may be unresolved and on that borderline area. 
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1 Let's say they're in a borderline area on 

2 whether they might be - I'm sorry, SEC or Site 

3 Profile issues. Nevertheless, if it becomes 

4 clear that there are certain issues that are 

5 clearly unresolvable SEC issues I notice that 

6 the Work Groups will start to zero in on those 

7 and start to actually move forward with 

8 perhaps a recommendation for that. Without 

9 closing the door on possibly expanding the 

10 Class at some point in the future if it turns 

11 out that what appears to be a Site Profile 

12 issue may be in fact a more serious SEC issue. 

13 So I mean, I hope I characterized that 

14 properly and Ted, I'll defer to you on these 

15 kinds of judgments.

16 MR. KATZ: Well, I mean I think 

17 Weldon Spring and Fernald are different. Like 

18 I said, they have this common issue but in 

19 other ways they're quite different. I mean 

20 Fernald, we have reporting out on Fernald. 

21 We've been trying to report on that for awhile 
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1 actually and been working up towards that. 

2 And because it's a big and complex site we 

3 wanted to sort of lay a lot of groundwork with 

4 the Board which is why we started the 

5 reporting out actually in the last meeting, 

6 we're going to do some more in this meeting, 

7 so to bring the whole Board up to speed not 

8 just on one issue but on a number of issues. 

9 So I'm not sure what I'm 

10 summarizing about what you said, about whether 

11 - I mean, the Work Groups report out when they 

12 feel like they've taken their issues as far as 

13 they can bring them whether they have 

14 clarified that they have an SEC recommendation 

15 or not and in a number of cases the Work 

16 Groups actually don't have necessarily an SEC 

17 recommendation. They have sort of I think 

18 like you were saying, John, this sort of gray 

19 area where they have some difficult issues and 

20 they think they've brought them as far as they 

21 can and they're ready for really, for the 
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1 whole Board to engage and dig a little deeper 

2 as a Board. So.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, John?

4 DR. MAURO: Yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Joe. Just to 

6 clarify for Mike's benefit. I think the 

7 question is as far as time frame on this, 

8 settling the blunders issue and I think what 

9 we're saying is similar to Fernald it's 

10 certainly tilting toward more of a TBD/Site 

11 Profile context.

12 DR. MAURO: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: But I know you're 

14 trying to resolve the very same issues with 

15 Fernald and I suspect these will be joined in 

16 the sense trying to figure out how to deal 

17 with blunders. Is there any time frame on 

18 that front? You know, understanding that yes, 

19 there's some pressing SEC matters.

20 DR. MAURO: I mean to me in my 

21 mind if we try to create an analogous 
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1 situation which could be helpful is it's clear 

2 that the world of issues that we have engaged 

3 on Fernald have come down to one particular 

4 issue that may or may not emerge as an SEC 

5 that perhaps the Board is going to have to 

6 address very seriously as a possible SEC for 

7 Fernald. All the other issues have been put, 

8 I would have to say have been either 

9 tentatively resolved with maybe some minor 

10 mop-up. A couple of them are a little bit 

11 more serious but still within the realm that 

12 perhaps they could end up being something that 

13 would cause an expansion of a - the SEC 

14 definition of the Class. So I mean, if 

15 there's an analogous situation I would say the 

16 blunder issue in the case of Fernald is 

17 clearly being placed in a box that we'll say 

18 we're going to put this in the Site Profile 

19 and we're going to leave it in the parking lot 

20 and not worry about it right now until we come 

21 to grips with the - what we consider to be 
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1 very serious SEC issues and try to get closure 

2 on those which may end up meaning, you know, a 

3 recommendation for an SEC for a particular 

4 time period without closing the door on these 

5 other issues. But the other issues I have to 

6 say have waned into the background. Many of 

7 them either have been resolved, actually 

8 formally resolved and everyone agreed to close 

9 the issue that's been resolved. There have 

10 been a number of those on Fernald. But there 

11 were also a number in the gray area that we're 

12 calling Site Profile issues and there's 

13 general agreement and we've put those what I 

14 call in the parking lot while we zero right in 

15 on the ones that everyone knows are the hot 

16 SEC issues. That process means unfortunately 

17 that we don't have a schedule for closure of 

18 the blunder issue and it puts you folks in the 

19 same position.

20 MR. KATZ: Well I think, I thought 

21 I heard Robert say that ORAU has - is going to 
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1 be working on the blunders issue and analysis 

2 of that isn't it? Didn't I hear you say that, 

3 Robert? 

4 MR. MORRIS: Yes, that's true, it 

5 is on our - it's on our work chart, the - what 

6 we used to call the Gantt chart.

7 MR. KATZ: Right, so I guess the 

8 question right now is really it's not really 

9 in SC&A's ballpark right now, it's in yours to 

10 move this forward. Do we have a sense right 

11 now at least where is it on the Gantt chart 

12 right now in terms of you doing an analysis of 

13 this?

14 MR. MORRIS: Well, I don't have my 

15 Gantt chart open right this minute. I'm 

16 thinking that it's the end of this month.

17 MR. KATZ: Oh, okay. So 

18 relatively short term. 

19 MR. MORRIS: Monica, have I got it 

20 right?

21 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I'm not sure 
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1 because that's a Fernald issue. I mean, it's 

2 not on the WSP part of the Gantt chart I don't 

3 believe at this point.

4 MR. MORRIS: I think it is.

5 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

6 And at the Fernald Work Group meeting we were 

7 asked to address the SEC-related issues 

8 primarily first and then with the second set 

9 of issues being the TBD issues. So you know, 

10 without getting out the Gantt chart and 

11 discussing our specific, you know, dates that 

12 we've got planned right now let's, you know, 

13 we can probably put something together I'm 

14 thinking within a matter of a month or so, 

15 but.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay, so let's just 

17 have an action item for - DCAS can sort out 

18 its scheduling and give us a note by email 

19 just letting us know where this falls out in 

20 their schedule.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Sounds like the 
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1 important consideration just - I just 

2 overheard Monica say something about WSP not 

3 being sort of on there with Fernald on this 

4 particular issue. It sounds like it would be 

5 useful just to make sure Weldon is listed 

6 along with Fernald for this issue on whatever 

7 scheduling so that it's clear that it's 

8 feeding two sites as far as information. 

9 I guess the important take-home 

10 message is that as with Fernald this is more 

11 in the Site Profile context and it would be 

12 handled in concert with the analysis that's 

13 being done on this issue with Fernald. But it 

14 is program and will be done in the relatively 

15 short term.

16 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

17 I'd like to make one extra comment here. I 

18 think we also need to be cognizant of the 

19 issue of the site-specific data. So whether 

20 this is resolved for Fernald and Weldon Spring 

21 we'll be looking at two different data sets 
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1 and so it may turn out to be more of an issue 

2 for one or the other.

3 MR. KATZ: Good point, John.

4 MR. STIVER: We need to keep that 

5 in mind as well.

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that was one of 

7 the concerns with the petitioners as well 

8 that we focus on Weldon Spring data rather 

9 than on Fernald data for the discussion of the 

10 Weldon Spring Plant SEC evaluation. That's 

11 what we tried to do and we've tried to keep it 

12 separate to address that concern.

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I just want to 

14 keep on the schedule because I want to keep 

15 moving. I don't like these parking lot 

16 issues. They seem to just kind of - 

17 MR. ROLFES: Languish.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: - get behind a 

19 lot of things.

20 MR. STIVER: They do. This is 

21 John. You're absolutely right. I've seen it 
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1 happen. It's so easy to focus in on the SECs 

2 and once something happens there we sort of 

3 forget that, wait a minute, we still have a 

4 lot of things to deal with. You're absolutely 

5 right.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: It may be better 

7 just to keep them separate then. Sounds like.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

9 Buchanan, SC&A. That's true. We approached 

10 the generic issue of DWE because it was going 

11 on at Fernald and we didn't want to waste 

12 resources redoing it at Weldon Spring. But I 

13 think at that point it stops. We've agreed to 

14 methodology, the science behind it is set but 

15 the actual data set is a completely separate 

16 issue with Weldon Spring. So addressing its 

17 for correctness is a different issue than 

18 Fernald. We can't say that Fernald was 

19 correct, that doesn't mean that Weldon Spring. 

20 So definitely we want to do the Weldon Spring 

21 as a separate issue as far as accuracy of the 
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1 data that's being used in this model.

2 DR. MAURO: This is John again. 

3 Let me add to that a little bit. The process, 

4 the thinking that goes into it, that they want 

5 you to go through some data evaluation on 

6 blunders for Fernald which is on your Gantt 

7 chart. I think that the strategy that's 

8 adopted for dealing with the problem, let's 

9 say you make a determination that this percent 

10 of the data were, you know, mistranscribed and 

11 could have had an effect on some small but 

12 real number of people, could have been 

13 underestimated by a factor of 10 or whatever 

14 it is. You know, wherever you come out on it. 

15 The big question is going to be okay, how do 

16 we factor that into the dose reconstruction 

17 process to make sure you have a coworker model 

18 in effect that - which is what we're building 

19 here, that factors that in. That's going to 

20 be very interesting and I think something - so 

21 the process, the thinking that goes in is 
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1 going to be very valuable and of course will 

2 be transferrable to Weldon which would make it 

3 clearly - and once it's all agreed that yes, 

4 that's a good way to deal with the blunder 

5 issue. Then it becomes a matter of applying 

6 that same methodology to Weldon Spring. So 

7 it's almost a two-step process.

8 MR. MORRIS: Ted, this is Robert.

9 MR. KATZ: Yes, Robert.

10 MR. MORRIS: I think I 

11 misunderstood. We have that as a task on our 

12 Weldon Spring work effort. We're not talking 

13 about validating for Fernald right now, we're 

14 talking about validating for Weldon Spring and 

15 it's scheduled in my older notes that I've got 

16 here at the end of this month.

17 MR. KATZ: That's how I understood 

18 you. Thank you, Bob.

19 MR. STIVER: John Stiver. As John 

20 was saying, I mean, it could go either way. 

21 As long as you develop a methodology for one 
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1 of those sites which would then be applicable 

2 for the other at the time horizon.

3 MR. MORRIS: Well, and I guess the 

4 other thing that I'd say in response to what 

5 John just said, how do we factor in - whether 

6 it's small or large, how do we factor in the 

7 finding unless the - never anything is ever 

8 observed. So I think you have to say a GSD of 

9 5 is a pretty doggone generous assumption in 

10 most cases and it was probably bounded unless 

11 we find some real outliers.

12 MR. STIVER: It would be a matter 

13 of factoring it into the overall uncertainty 

14 term and whether that - would that GSD of 5 be 

15 accurate would be a statistical issue.

16 DR. MAURO: And that would be one 

17 approach to dealing with this that I, you 

18 know, certainly it should be entertained by 

19 the Work Group. 

20 MR. MORRIS: Well anyway, I think 

21 we'll deal with that and if it's obvious that 
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1 the blunders are obvious and important in 

2 scale, whether it's rounding errors and 

3 mathematics or you know, did we do the 

4 arithmetic wrong, those are two different 

5 kinds of questions and so I think it remains 

6 to be seen how we answer that question you 

7 raised, John.

8 DR. MAURO: Let me ask you 

9 something. Once - I'm trying to deal with 

10 this. Once you say that, okay, here is all 

11 the data and a couple of places where there 

12 was a blunder. Then do you - and maybe I'm 

13 not thinking right about this, but you could 

14 fix the blunder and then go back and say 

15 here's what the results would have been if you 

16 didn't have the blunder.

17 MR. MORRIS: Of course you can and 

18 that's - that's a possibility. If there are a 

19 lot of blunders it raises the question of how 

20 extensive does your sampling have to be. 

21 Maybe you would fix the blunder and say well, 
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1 it made a 0.01 percent difference in what our 

2 dose reconstruction for thorium intake would 

3 have been. And so you go, well, these 

4 blunders were not important in the overall 

5 picture and so maybe we can just relax on the 

6 rest of them. But if the blunders had a 

7 really significant change on the outcome of 

8 the dose reconstruction then you'd have to say 

9 well, let's go look farther and harder.

10 DR. MAURO: So you could see why 

11 you would consider this to be a Site Profile 

12 issue. There are strategies for wrestling 

13 this problem to the ground some of which are 

14 easier and some of which are more difficult, 

15 but in our opinion it's doable. And you know, 

16 and how that fix will actually be implemented 

17 might differ on Weldon and Fernald, but in 

18 both cases they seem to be tractable.

19 MR. MORRIS: I agree with you.

20 MR. STIVER: I would agree as 

21 well.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So I think 

3 we've reached a conclusion on that. Do we 

4 want to break or do you want me to continue?

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Go ahead.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. I didn't 

7 know. Okay. So we had four action items, 

8 that was number one, and we - so that brings 

9 us up to speed on DWE. Okay, number two was a 

10 recycled uranium question. I had brought up 

11 the fact that - that to bring - kind of get a 

12 summary, bring everybody up to date is that 

13 recycled uranium was introduced at Weldon 

14 Spring in the '60s and so it can contain more 

15 impurities of course than the uranium ore so 

16 it invades the contaminant of radioactive 

17 material. And usually it's around 2 to 10 

18 percent parts per billion of plutonium for 

19 uranium. And so the - the Weldon Spring TBD 

20 said that 100 parts per billion of plutonium 

21 for uranium would be a sign to the workers as 
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1 a bounding amount. And so we agree that this 

2 is probably a reasonable intake to assign and 

3 would cover what anybody would take in. 

4 However, we went back and did some claim 

5 analysis and I did five claims and I could 

6 only find one where they had actually added in 

7 the 100 parts per billion of plutonium for 

8 uranium. 

9 And so I sent that information to 

10 NIOSH on the second of February, those five 

11 claim numbers, and so what I'd like to do is 

12 wait until they give their response and see. 

13 The main issue here is okay, we agree the 

14 methodology is okay, but is it being applied. 

15 Is this limiting 100 parts per billion being 

16 applied in actual dose reconstruction. So 

17 that was item number two we responded to. 

18 Item number three was - 

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So on item 

20 number two then, so DCAS, when do you think 

21 that you'll have that response ready for SC&A? 
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1 MR. ROLFES: As far as a date I 

2 couldn't tell you honestly. We've been trying 

3 to get some of the bigger issues addressed 

4 right now and this is more of a claim-specific 

5 issue at the moment. I haven't had the 

6 opportunity to look at these claims. I do see 

7 what SC&A has provided here. Monica, do you 

8 have any feel? I don't have a copy of the 

9 Gantt chart here in front of me. We were 

10 provided a list of five claims for which SC&A 

11 looked at to determine whether or not the type 

12 of contaminants were applied. They found one 

13 of them did have the default 100 parts per 

14 billion plutonium on a uranium S basis 

15 applied. The other four did not. I haven't 

16 looked at those four cases to see possibly if 

17 we used some other, like an OTIB-2 approach or 

18 something for example. I don't know. Do you 

19 recall, Ron, if that might have been the case?

20 DR. BUCHANAN: It's been awhile 

21 but I don't believe so at least for job 
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1 titles. I picked out five job titles, 

2 chemical operators and stuff that you'd expect 

3 and I didn't analyze - go through all the dose 

4 reconstruction in detail but I didn't see 

5 anything that jumped out and said well, this 

6 is the reason they weren't assigned the 

7 plutonium from the TBD. And so anyway, that - 

8 SC&A responded and that's where it sits as far 

9 as our action item goes.

10 MR. ROLFES: So Monica then I 

11 don't know if you could give me a quick update 

12 if you might know the answer?

13 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I don't know 

14 the answer offhand. I can get with you after 

15 this call. I'll find out the answer and get 

16 it to you. 

17 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thank you. 

18 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: You're 

19 welcome.

20 DR. MAURO: This is John. As you 

21 probably know, recycled uranium is probably 
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1 the most important issue we're dealing with 

2 and have been dealing with, and certainly Mark 

3 Rolfes is well aware of the discussions we've 

4 had. I just have a question for you that 

5 maybe others might have on their minds also. 

6 Did Weldon receive any of this special 

7 material that is referred to as either tower 

8 ash or the CIP/CUP material directly from 

9 let's say Paducah or did they - did Weldon 

10 just get down-blended, material that was 

11 already down-blended at Fernald and then 

12 shipped from Fernald to Weldon?

13 MR. ROLFES: John, the answer 

14 regarding, you know, the shipment of the 

15 highly contaminated transuranic containing 

16 uranium materials from the Paducah facility or 

17 the other gaseous diffusion facilities, none 

18 of that material was ever sent to Weldon 

19 Spring. It was only sent to Fernald and it 

20 was only sent really in a couple of shipments 

21 in the mid-'70s and early '80s.
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1 DR. MAURO: Very good. That's 

2 what I thought but I wanted to confirm. The 

3 second thing, Mark, as you remember, one of 

4 the fixes dealing with one of the concerns and 

5 John Stiver could speak to it in greater 

6 detail, but and we want to sort of step back 

7 and look at the big picture, the business of 

8 the bomb reduction and the dolomite. As you 

9 know, one of our concerns was that as you did 

10 that process and reused the magnesium fluoride 

11 I guess, or that comes out of the process you 

12 get a reconcentration of the plutonium in that 

13 dolomite and you folks eventually came up with 

14 what we considered to be a very good fix. 

15 This is one of the subjects we discussed on 

16 Fernald and we came to I believe it would be 

17 fair to say a general consensus that the 400 

18 part per billion number that reflects the 

19 assumption that would be used for those kinds 

20 of exposures where a person may have been 

21 exposed to the airborne uranium that is 
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1 associated with the bomb reduction process and 

2 the dolomite might very well have as much as 

3 400 parts per billion as opposed to 100 parts 

4 per billion. I know you folks have offered 

5 that up as a way to deal with that scenario 

6 for Fernald. Do you have a similar 

7 circumstance for the reduction process going 

8 on at Weldon?

9 MR. ROLFES: Well, to address what 

10 you said previously we didn't observe up to 

11 400 parts per billion in that magnesium 

12 fluoride, it was only up to - it was around 96 

13 parts per billion I believe which was still 

14 under our 100 parts per billion default.

15 DR. MAURO: Okay, and you're 

16 saying that's at Weldon now?

17 MR. ROLFES: No, no, this is at 

18 Fernald. 

19 DR. MAURO: Okay, then I 

20 misunderstood. I thought that there were a 

21 large number of samples of this material 
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1 collected. John, you can help me out a 

2 little.

3 MR. STIVER: John, this is John 

4 Stiver. Yes, when you look at the source data 

5 that came out of the DOE Ohio Field Office 

6 reports they had about 400, a little more than 

7 400 samples for the dolomite for plutonium. 

8 And what NIOSH proposed was to do a log-normal 

9 fit on that data and then take off the 95th 

10 percentile. And that's where the 400 parts 

11 per billion comes from.

12 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay.

13 MR. STIVER: And then our point is 

14 that you can't really look at the feed 

15 material concentrations because at Fernald, 

16 for example, even though this material came 

17 in, the CIP/CUP residues in the '70s and the - 

18 the POOS material, the tower ashes in 1980 

19 which is the biggest one, that material was 

20 down-blended on the front end, at plant 1 and 

21 plant 4 before it ever even went into the 
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1 refinery. So what you're seeing going into 

2 the reduction area which is the highest 

3 concentration of all for all the workers is 

4 material that's already been down-blended. So 

5 at that point it didn't really matter whether 

6 it was CIP/CUP, PTA or the tower ash or some 

7 other source, you've got that concentration 

8 mechanism. That was our real point is that 

9 you can't just look at kind of the more 

10 simplistic view of what's coming in in the 

11 feeds and set your time periods on that 

12 because that's - 400 is probably a good number 

13 to bracket the - or to bound the potential 

14 intakes of the plant 5 and also the plant 1 

15 mill rise people that, you know, reconstituted 

16 the dolomite for reuse. And that's that 

17 subgroup, the most highly exposed subgroup. 

18 And so we were saying oh that 400 is a good 

19 number, but it's a good number all the way 

20 back too, not just for the '70s. But then 

21 you've got the other issue of this other 
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1 group, you know, the down-blenders.

2 DR. MAURO: Right. But that 

3 doesn't exist.

4 MR. STIVER: That doesn't exist 

5 for Weldon Spring.

6 DR. MAURO: That's the only - 

7 MR. STIVER: Four hundred parts 

8 per billion would certainly be applicable at 

9 Weldon Spring.

10 DR. MAURO: Okay.

11 MR. STIVER: You're looking at the 

12 same type of process.

13 DR. MAURO: Okay. My question I 

14 guess and to Mark and to everyone around the 

15 table is it sounds to me that one of the 

16 strategies that is being considered, and 

17 correct me if I'm wrong, at Fernald is to go 

18 to a 400 part per billion versus a 100 part 

19 per billion base because it's the 95th 

20 percentile of those 400 samples. Is there any 

21 reason - whatever approach you select, maybe 
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1 I'll say it a simpler way. Whatever approach 

2 you do select regarding RU as your baseline 

3 for Fernald, is there any reason why it should 

4 be different at Weldon?

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes, and that's the 

6 second part of your question that I didn't get 

7 to answer before.

8 DR. MAURO: Okay.

9 MR. ROLFES: You can take a look 

10 at page 27 of 90 of the SEC Evaluation Report 

11 for Weldon Spring. We actually have the 

12 maximum recycled uranium contaminant levels 

13 within Weldon Spring Plant. And the 95th 

14 percentile level of plutonium was 6.3 parts 

15 per billion of uranium. So that in comparison 

16 to the previous approach that we documented in 

17 using 100 parts per billion for Weldon Spring, 

18 the actual data upon review showed that the 

19 recycled uranium materials process at the 

20 Weldon Spring Plant were of lower transuranic 

21 contamination. 
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1 We have a note under this table 5-

2 6 and these bounding values that we reported 

3 in the table were calculated as the 95th 

4 percentile of an unblended uranium trioxide 

5 PUREX source and assuming a log-normal 

6 distribution. This provides the highest 

7 values for the two subgroups of recycled 

8 uranium like we received by Weldon Spring and 

9 this comes from DOE 2000.

10 DR. MAURO: Very good. Thank you 

11 very much. 

12 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

13 There's still one little thing that kind of 

14 bugs me. This is once again, what you're 

15 looking at at 6.3 is the feed material 

16 concentration. It's not really the magnesium 

17 fluoride concentration. It wouldn't be of 

18 concern for the metal workers. So I think we 

19 kind of still have the same problem here that 

20 we have at Fernald. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I actually 
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1 received a White Paper on recycled uranium. 

2 Well, I haven't received it yet but it's 

3 sitting in my office. So I haven't had the 

4 opportunity to review the most recent response 

5 on recycled uranium. I don't know if anybody 

6 on the line, either Bob, Bryce or Monica might 

7 have any details or updates for me as the 

8 status of our response on recycled uranium at 

9 Weldon Spring. 

10 MR. RICH: This is Bryce, Mark. 

11 We looked at this again and using some Fernald 

12 data, primarily operational subgroup 6a which 

13 is the recycled uranium directly from Hanford 

14 prior to its being down-blended at all and 

15 that was from mainly the material, a 

16 representative material that went to Weldon 

17 Spring. And that, the 95th percentile is in 

18 the 7 parts per billion range. So the 

19 material that went to Weldon Spring from 

20 Fernald and the material that came from the 

21 gaseous diffusion plant prior to the time that 
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1 they sent the - the ash and the tail and all, 

2 it was probably in the 10 to 20 parts per 

3 trillion. They decided on a foundation factor 

4 in the gaseous diffusion system. But we - we 

5 need to discuss this just a tad more.

6 MR. ROLFES: Okay. As soon as I 

7 have the opportunity to review the recycled 

8 uranium White Paper that I just received then 

9 we'll send that out to SC&A and the Work Group 

10 Members. So if it doesn't specifically 

11 discuss this we'll have to work to put some 

12 revised information in there so that we do 

13 discuss this.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So really, just 

15 to recap, there's two issues. One is the 100 

16 parts per billion, but it sounds like this 

17 paper will certainly address that issue 

18 relative to Weldon Spring anyway. Right now 

19 it suggests that maybe the 100 certainly is 

20 the conservative value for Weldon. I'm just 

21 saying we'll see that.
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1 The other issue is the one that 

2 you're going to be checking on with Monica 

3 which is the sampling that Ron was talking 

4 about, whether in fact I guess this factor, 

5 this RU factor is being added in on dose 

6 reconstructions and if not, why not, and just 

7 sort of some feeling for that. I think those 

8 are two parts, that issue is in that report.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that's 

10 correct. 

11 MR. KATZ: For clarity for binning 

12 things, that second part of the cases that you 

13 looked at, I mean that - it's almost like - 

14 that's a DR review issue, not even a TBD issue 

15 really except how it was implemented, like you 

16 said, which is really a reconstruction case 

17 review. I'm a little bit - I mean I 

18 absolutely should follow it up since you dug 

19 into that but it really in a sense, once you 

20 get results, unless they indicate there's a 

21 technical problem, a TBD, if it's just an 
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1 implementation issue it's really an issue that 

2 belongs in the Dose Reconstruction 

3 Subcommittee's court because they're the ones 

4 who worry about the quality of dose compliance 

5 with our own procedures and so on. Or I'm 

6 missing - 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

8 we've done this in other SECs, I think it's 

9 just a matter of understanding you know the 

10 rationale for how the factor is applied, not 

11 so much whether it was or wasn't and that part 

12 of which you're right, it's a task for dose 

13 reconstruction. But just trying to get a 

14 sense of if this is the application, 

15 understanding the rationale for how the 

16 application is used. And it's not clear how 

17 it's actually used. And I think that would 

18 help. It's not a - I guess the other is a QA 

19 function, I agree. That's not what we're 

20 doing here. But just understand if we're 

21 somehow not comprehending how that 100 is used 
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1 in this application, it's just a puzzle right 

2 now, so that's really the question.

3 MR. KATZ: Thank you, that's a 

4 helpful clarification.

5 MR. ROLFES: I suspect, you know, 

6 without looking at the specific cases I 

7 suspect that you know I do see from Ron's 

8 review of these cases that a hypothetical 12 

9 or 28 radionuclide was not used in these 

10 cases. We did assign thorium intakes but we 

11 did not assign recycled uranium intakes in 

12 four of the five cases. You know, I'd have to 

13 take a look back at the specifics of that dose 

14 reconstruction because if we did a best 

15 estimate of an individual's uranium intake and 

16 the internal dose from uranium and then add in 

17 the recycled uranium contaminants that would 

18 be more of an issue than if we basically 

19 overestimated the individual's uranium intake 

20 and you know, used another bounding approach, 

21 an overestimating approach, early on. You 
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1 know, there could be some other approach that 

2 we'd used so I have to take a look back and 

3 we'll do what we can to provide a date after 

4 this Work Group meeting with the response. 

5 It's probably not going to be till June before 

6 I can respond so.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Our third 

8 item on the - our action - SC&A's action item 

9 list was the neutrons at Weldon Spring. And 

10 at the last meeting I brought up the fact that 

11 the neutron N/P value was obtained at 

12 different times, the neutrons obtained in '95, 

13 the gamma was obtained in 2001. And Stu asked 

14 me to send that information to him and I did, 

15 I sent that out to the Work Group and to Stu 

16 and NIOSH on the second of February. This was 

17 quoted from the Fernald TBD. And so that was 

18 one issue we wanted NIOSH to respond to was 

19 while the numbers came out, the N/P ratios are

20 reasonable, the technical method of 

21 determining them did not look solid. 
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1 Issue number four was - or item 

2 number four I should say - 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Do you want to - 

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Does DCAS have 

5 some response on issue 3? I mean that's.

6 MR. ROLFES: Well, we did look 

7 back. This has been discussed quite a bit for 

8 Fernald and the information that was presented 

9 to us by SC&A identified, you know, that - I 

10 don't know if you wanted to summarize your 

11 data here, but it basically pointed out that 

12 the neutron dose rate was taken in 1995 and 

13 the photon dose rates were conducted in 2001. 

14 It was in a green salt storage area. We 

15 discussed this quite a bit and it came to a 

16 resolution in the Fernald Working Group that 

17 this wasn't an issue. We're using the 95th 

18 percentile neutron-to-photon ratio of 0.23 to 

19 1 from Fernald measurements to assign 

20 unmonitored neutron doses for Fernald workers 

21 that were in areas where they handled enriched 
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1 uranium. And it was primarily like the green 

2 salt storage areas. Really, since we're using 

3 the 95th percentile value there's no 

4 indication of, you know, it being in excess of 

5 that at the Weldon Spring Plant. And that's 

6 especially considering that the types and 

7 quantities of materials at the Weldon Spring 

8 Plant as well as the enrichments of the 

9 materials at the Weldon Spring Plant were 

10 lower than those materials that were handled 

11 at the Fernald site. So we really don't see 

12 any kind of reasonable scenario where we could 

13 have gotten a higher neutron-to-photon ratio 

14 or a higher neutron dose rate at the Weldon 

15 Spring Plant.

16 DR. MAURO: Mark, this is John. I 

17 have to apologize, you know, I don't recall 

18 the details of that. I do recall at one point 

19 we did some MCNP modeling of alpha Ns for I 

20 think it was green salt that might have been 

21 in storage that was enriched and you folks had 
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1 an approach for deriving the neutron dose from 

2 that. I don't recall neutron-to-photon ratios 

3 having some play there. It may have. So I 

4 hear what you're saying but I have to say it 

5 doesn't, you know, I'm drawing a complete 

6 blank on how that issue was resolved. I do 

7 not remember it being resolved from a neutron8 to-photon perspective. I remember it being an 

9 MCNP run on alpha N. But I think maybe we owe 

10 John Stiver, maybe we could take a look at 

11 what the history of that issue was and how it 

12 was resolved and so we have a better 

13 understanding of the context and how it was 

14 resolved and whether it is in fact applicable 

15 to Weldon. It sounds like, Mark, you're 

16 drawing upon some experience we had a few 

17 years back on Fernald and I apologize, I just 

18 don't recall.

19 MR. STIVER: John, I just stepped 

20 out for a second and missed that little 

21 exchange. Could you - 
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1 DR. MAURO: The idea, the bottom 

2 line is they were discussing doing neutron 

3 dose calculations and using a neutron-to4 photon ratio strategy that was originally 

5 developed, applied and accepted at Fernald and 

6 that the situation at Weldon is identical and 

7 therefore should solve the problem. There are 

8 some concerns that were brought up by Ron 

9 regarding the methodology used to get to the 

10 ratio, the neutron-to-photon ratio. It 

11 sounded like Ron wasn't all that disturbed by 

12 the ratio itself, but the methodology that - 

13 by which they got to that ratio.

14 MR. STIVER: The basis for the 

15 ratio.

16 DR. MAURO: Yes. And then of 

17 course reference was being made that we went 

18 through this process already for Fernald. And 

19 I have to say this must go back several years. 

20 I don't recall it and perhaps it would be 

21 appropriate for us to sort of refresh our 
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1 memory on what the process was, you know, how 

2 we came about whatever we came about regarding 

3 the resolution of neutron issues because there 

4 are no neutron issues on the table at Fernald 

5 right now. 

6 MR. STIVER: That seems 

7 reasonable, yes.

8 DR. MAURO: Right. Let us do a 

9 little homework, it won't take very much time, 

10 and feed back. And then I think maybe Ron and 

11 John, you could work out the degree to which 

12 the issue was in fact appropriately resolved 

13 on Fernald and the degree to which it applies 

14 to Weldon.

15 MR. STIVER: Okay, will do.

16 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

17 And to give you a little bit of background, 

18 what we had discussed at Fernald, SC&A had 

19 reviewed our approach and had tried to come up 

20 with an approach that would result in a higher 

21 neutron-to-photon ratio, or a higher neutron 
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1 dose rate. And our comment on the approach 

2 that was taken was that you had produced 2 

3 percent enriched green salt array that was not 

4 in a safe storage configuration so there was 

5 neutron multiplication going on. And so I 

6 think SC&A withdrew their review at that time.

7 DR. MAURO: Yes, see I do remember 

8 that. I remember when we ran - we ran a 

9 calculation where we were trying to do a 

10 bounding and our bounding was such that we'd 

11 have a criticality situation and it couldn't 

12 occur. But I didn't remember it within the 

13 context of a neutron-to-photon ratio. I 

14 remembered it more within a context of running 

15 an alpha N calculation for a pile, some 

16 conical pile and you were right. I remember 

17 we made the error that assumed a certain size 

18 pile that would have been a critical mass and 

19 of course that could not have occurred. But I 

20 don't remember it within the context of 

21 neutron/photon ratios. And it won't take us 
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1 long to get up to speed and clarify.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me offer an 

3 alternative. I defer to the Work Group but 

4 maybe NIOSH could just simply for the purposes 

5 of this Work Group since this Work Group in 

6 toto hasn't been involved with the Fernald 

7 discussions so we're completely ignorant of 

8 all this history. If Mark, you can simply, 

9 you know, lay it on the table as you did at 

10 Fernald for this Work Group and John and John 

11 and Ron and Joe and Work Group can together 

12 understand how that would be applied in this 

13 context. Because I think you said something 

14 important which I wasn't fully aware of, the 

15 you know, the enrichment levels that are lower 

16 at Weldon so there's a degree of conservatism 

17 that would be factored in in applying that 

18 approach to Weldon. And that would be useful 

19 just to lay that out as well. And then all of 

20 us can take a look and sort of judge in this 

21 Work Group whether it makes sense.
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1 MR. ROLFES: I actually sent an 

2 email to Ron awhile back with the excerpt from 

3 the Fernald Working Group where this issue was 

4 discussed and I think I also provided some 

5 additional information. I - unfortunately I 

6 can't get into my email right now, I'm sort of 

7 blocked out here for some reason. I was 

8 trying to find the date of the email that I 

9 had sent out.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: It sounds like it 

11 was some kind of analysis or something beyond 

12 the discussion. 

13 MR. ROLFES: Well, from us, from 

14 our standpoint. I don't know if we have 

15 addressed this in the Evaluation Report as 

16 well, but let me flip through here. Maybe 

17 someone on the phone, maybe Monica or Bob or 

18 anyone out there, could you point out anywhere 

19 in our Evaluation Report where we might have 

20 addressed neutron exposures?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess what I 
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1 was looking for is this - sort of cribbing off 

2 the Fernald discussion maybe just providing a 

3 brief analysis that can reference Fernald but, 

4 you know, for the situation at Weldon. It 

5 would at least provide a basis for the Work 

6 Group to come to closure on it. 

7 DR. CHEW: Mark, this is Mel. 

8 It's on page 60 of 92 on the ER.

9 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Let's see 

10 here.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And rather than 

12 go through something that we don't have in 

13 front of us, you know, I think from what Joe's 

14 saying, and not only this issue. I think it's 

15 important that any issue for this Work Group 

16 that applies as any Work Group that SC&A and 

17 DCAS has worked on, that final product needs 

18 to be brought before this Work Group so that 

19 we can look at it on the agenda and see that 

20 we agree, and secondly so that it's - it's on 

21 the transcript, it's on the record for the 
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1 claimants. You know, this - we've had quite a 

2 long time between meetings, we've had a list 

3 of action items and it's - well, this was 

4 discussed and resolved because of Fernald and 

5 we go on to something else. And I just, I 

6 don't think that's - that's not fair to the 

7 Work Group, it's not fair to the claimants. I 

8 think we need to be a little more detailed in 

9 making sure that everything is clear on the 

10 record, especially for the claimants.

11 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thanks Mike. 

12 I'll read our little section here. This is 

13 actually on - from SEC Evaluation Report 143 

14 dated March 23, 2010. It's on page 32 of 90 

15 of my copy here. It's section 5.2.2.3. It 

16 says, "The Weldon Spring Plant was operated as 

17 an integrated facility for the conversion of 

18 uranium ore concentrate from small quantities 

19 of recycled scraps of pure uranium trioxide, 

20 uranium tetrafluoride and uranium metal. 

21 During these processes and during the storage 
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1 of uranium tetrafluoride neutrons were not 

2 anticipated at the Weldon Spring Plant. Any 

3 neutrons would have resulted from the alpha 

4 neutron reaction from uranium tetrafluoride, 

5 green salt, or processing the slightly 

6 enriched uranium which was 1 percent or less 

7 U-235. 

8 "Most Weldon Spring operational 

9 employees were involved with the processing of 

10 natural and depleted uranium and were assigned 

11 to regular beta gamma dosimeter badge 

12 monitors. However, in a special study of the 

13 feed materials production center, neutron 

14 measurements were made in and around the 

15 arrays of drums and stored uranium 

16 tetrafluoride up to 2 percent enrichment to 

17 determine the potential for neutron exposures. 

18 The study included the use of Landauer 

19 NEUTRAK ER dosimeters as area badges over the 

20 period of one quarter and a special survey 

21 using a Nuclear Research Corporation model NP2 
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1 portable neutron meter. The results of the 

2 study indicate neutron exposures were minimal, 

3 a maximum of 0.089 millirem per hour for the 

4 area badges and less than the minimum 

5 detectable level of 0.02 millirem per hour for 

6 the portable neutron monitor. Calculations 

7 performed for Battelle TBD-6001 on similar 

8 materials are in agreement with the Fernald 

9 measurement data and support the conclusion 

10 that neutron dosimetry is not needed when 

11 processing uranium tetrafluoride under these 

12 parameters because there's no significant 

13 potential for neutron exposures."

14 It goes on to say in the next 

15 paragraph that, "Even though the Weldon Spring 

16 Plant received enriched uranium it was always 

17 less than 1 percent enriched. Therefore, the 

18 potential for neutron exposure was very low. 

19 The slightly enriched uranium was processed in 

20 buildings 103, 105, 201 and 301, and those 

21 employees that processed the slightly enriched 
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1 uranium were assigned special neutron 

2 dosimeter badges to be worn in connection with 

3 the regular film badge dosimeters. Neutron 

4 dose results for these Weldon Spring employees 

5 have not been located, probably because there 

6 was no measured neutron doses." So that's 

7 what we've discussed in our Evaluation Report 

8 and that was providing our basis for the use 

9 of Fernald data to assign neutron doses to 

10 workers who were not monitored at the Weldon 

11 Spring Plant.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Ron, do you want 

13 to elaborate on some of this? I think you had 

14 some questions on the technical basis.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: I really don't have 

16 a problem with your statement. Just from a 

17 scientific point of view when you do 

18 neutron/photon ratio you try to do the same 

19 experimental setup as similar as you can to 

20 measure, and usually you do it simultaneously 

21 measure your neutron/photon doses and then 
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1 determine the N/P value. What I have a 

2 problem with is that - is that this was 

3 measured in 1995 on canisters for the neutron. 

4 Six years later the gamma was measured in 

5 2001 on drums. Just from a technical point of 

6 view that is not a sound way to measure N/P 

7 values. That was my main concern and that's 

8 the reason I brought the issue up and 

9 forwarded that information to NIOSH from the 

10 last meeting. I really don't have a problem 

11 otherwise, it's just that technically it's not 

12 a sound way to determine N/P values.

13 MR. ROLFES: To make a difference 

14 though, in defense of what we have here, you 

15 know some major changes would have to take 

16 place. For example, the enrichments that were 

17 handled or the quantities of material that 

18 were handled at the Weldon Spring Plant and we 

19 have no indications that the materials that

20 were handled at the Weldon Spring Plant ever 

21 exceeded the material quantities and storage 
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1 configurations and enrichments that were 

2 handled at Fernald. So you know, certainly I 

3 agree with you, you try to keep, you know, as 

4 many variables as - try to keep as few 

5 variables as possible in any kind of 

6 scientific measurements but then again, you 

7 know, in looking at what was done we would 

8 have to have some question, you know. There 

9 would have to be a significant change in a 

10 source-term to drastically affect the neutron 

11 dose rates or the N/P ratio resulting from 

12 them.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: And I don't argue 

14 with that. I'm not arguing using Fernald data 

15 for Weldon Spring. My concern is just from a 

16 technical point of view that the measurements 

17 done, the way the N/P values were determined 

18 is not scientifically valid.

19 DR. MAURO: Ron, where you refer 

20 to the N/P values as they were determined and 

21 described we just heard or read to us, is that 
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1 the measurements that were made at Fernald or 

2 are those the measurements that were made at 

3 Weldon?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: At Fernald. 

5 DR. MAURO: Okay.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: This is directly 

7 out of the Fernald TBD page 18 and 19.

8 DR. MAURO: Okay. We at SC&A 

9 certainly need to go back and take a look at 

10 that to see, you know, clearly we have 

11 resolved that issue and I'll be the first to 

12 say well, maybe there are some questions 

13 regarding it. Hate to do that, but we'll take 

14 a look at it and let you know what we find. 

15 And then of course we could all make a 

16 judgment as to whether or not everything's 

17 okay or not, not only for Weldon but also for 

18 Fernald. 

19 MR. KATZ: Is that your point, 

20 Ron?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: My point is - 
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1 MR. KATZ: I mean you're saying 

2 technically it's not correct, but I'm just 

3 trying to understand what you're saying you 

4 would like to see to resolve it.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, I'm just 

6 bringing up the fact that if you're doing N/P 

7 values and you go in the lab and you measure 

8 them, this is not the way you do it, that you 

9 don't do it six years later. You don't do the 

10 neutron one time and six years later do the 

11 gamma under a different geometry. You would 

12 go and set up a lab and you would do the 

13 measurements simultaneously if you're going to 

14 use those values to assign dose to someone. 

15 You don't do it six years later using drums in 

16 one case and canisters in another case.

17 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And so 

18 just to clarify for me, this is really non19 scientific. Maybe you've already explained 

20 this. Why was that done? At one time one 

21 measurement and six years later the other 
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1 measurement. 

2 MR. ROLFES: Is that question for 

3 me?

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes.

5 MR. ROLFES: I'll have to take a 

6 look back but basically they were - at the 

7 Fernald site they were actually looking with 

8 different methodologies to try to detect 

9 neutron dose. Because the dose rate was so 

10 low they weren't able to detect it with 

11 typical detection equipment. They had 

12 actually put in a few different types of 

13 materials and CR-39 trackage materials as well 

14 as some bubble dosimeters I think. So I'm not 

15 sure, I'd have to take a look back at the 

16 data. I don't know if anybody on the line 

17 might be able to help me out with that, but 

18 they measured neutron dose rates at Fernald 

19 based upon the sensitive, let's see here.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Bubble detectors I 

21 believe.
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1 MR. ROLFES: Yes, it was the 

2 bubble detectors I believe. And let's see 

3 here. So we've got a neutron dose rate and 

4 that neutron dose rate wouldn't differ unless 

5 you increased the enrichments or increased the 

6 amount of material that would increase the 

7 alpha neutron interactions that were primarily 

8 responsible for that neutron dose rate. We 

9 have no indication that that was done at 

10 Fernald and certainly not at Weldon Spring. 

11 So you can say that that 0.089 millirem per 

12 hour would be a bounding value for neutron 

13 dose rates. Now, you'd have to compare that 

14 to the gamma dose rate to get your N/P ratio. 

15 And we have a neutron dose rate so it's not, 

16 you know, we don't - I'm trying to think. I 

17 don't know, is there anyone on the line, maybe 

18 Monica or Bob possibly or Mel that might be 

19 able to elaborate a little bit on the neutron 

20 dose measurements and, you know, any reasoning 

21 why the - or explanation for why the time 
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1 period wasn't the same?

2 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Or why didn't 

3 they take the photon readings in '95 as well.

4 MR. ROLFES: Right, right.

5 DR. CHEW: Mark, this is Mel. I'm 

6 looking at the distribution again. I think we 

7 don't really need to have the photon 

8 measurements or calculation because we do have 

9 direct readings from the portable neutron 

10 meters, as you said, of 0.089 millirem per 

11 hour, and that's what we should be using. So 

12 I don't think we need to even use that N/P 

13 ratio at all.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay, that's 

15 another approach as well. I mean, if we've 

16 got a bounding value of 0.089 at Fernald based 

17 upon the materials that were stored there 

18 versus the Weldon Spring Plant, the Weldon 

19 Spring Plant handled lower enrichments and 

20 lower quantities of the same chemical form of 

21 uranium. So that bounding value of 0.089 from 
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1 the Fernald site should certainly encapsulate 

2 or bound any values at the Weldon Spring 

3 Plant. 

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron, 

5 SC&A. That's true if the geometry, the mix 

6 and everything is the same. If your 

7 container's the same, you've got the same 

8 amount of attenuation, you've got the same 

9 amount of liquid and solid concentration. 

10 Your neutron emissions and attenuation within 

11 the source itself is going to vary depending 

12 on the geometry of the container and so your 

13 neutron, if you're going to use direct neutron 

14 measurements then your geometry, your 

15 container and everything has to be similar at 

16 both sites. If you're going to use N/P ratio 

17 then it isn't quite as crucial. But if you 

18 measure neutrons on a barrel filled with water 

19 and you measure gamma on something else, a 

20 drum filled with solids you're not getting the 

21 same attenuation of the neutrons or gammas 
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1 that you're going to see if they're mixed and 

2 measured at the same time.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Just coming into 

4 this a little more fresh than a lot of folks 

5 on the phone, it seems to me that it's not 

6 even the application part. It sounds like 

7 once you have these basic values whether it's 

8 the N/P route or just neutron measurements, 

9 beyond that I don't know if there's as much of 

10 an argument given the enrichment issues you've 

11 talked about. But that source, that source 

12 calculation seems to be a little bit fuzzy 

13 right now. There's a couple different options 

14 that you might want to look at. It sounds 

15 like maybe that would be useful for the Work 

16 Group to get your, you know, get your 

17 thinking, whether it's a new thinking or maybe 

18 the old thinking once you look at it and have 

19 that presented back and then we could react to 

20 it. But it's not so much - it does sound like 

21 there's an issue relative to applying it to 
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1 Weldon once you do come up with that value. 

2 It sort of goes back to Fernald as, you know, 

3 what that value means and where it came from 

4 and whether it's the basis for that value that 

5 seems to be in question right now.

6 MR. ROLFES: I'm looking back from 

7 the, let's see, from ORAU-TKBS-0017-6.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: What site?

9 MR. ROLFES: This is the Fernald 

10 site and it's discussing the development of 

11 the neutron-to-photon ratios. I'm just 

12 looking here. What we have - one of the 

13 explanations - or explanations for the 

14 difference in the measurements, couldn't store 

15 2 percent enriched green salt in a drum so it 

16 was stored in a smaller canister. So you've 

17 got, let's see, we've got some data in there, 

18 table 6-9, measured neutron dose rates at 

19 Fernald for different types of material. 

20 We've got average measured neutron dose rates 

21 for depleted and low-enriched uranium which 
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1 range from 1.25 percent to 2 percent. So that 

2 was compared to the photon doses measured on a 

3 large array of drums. And so that's primarily 

4 what I suspect one of the bases or one of the 

5 reasons for the differences in how the 

6 measurements were made because we couldn't 

7 store 2 percent enriched uranium in a drum 

8 because of safe storage requirements. 

9 Enriched uranium was stored in a smaller 

10 canister.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: And it would have 

12 been great if they had just put a gamma survey 

13 meter there with the neutron meter and got a 

14 point. And you know, and then I wouldn't have 

15 a problem.

16 MR. ROLFES: Sure, sure.

17 DR. CHEW: This is Mel. Can I 

18 address John Mauro's comment about the - using 

19 a modeling? John, I think you really need to 

20 look at actually the amount of neutron 

21 production from the alpha N reaction. We all 
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1 know, we know the cross-sections are very, 

2 very low for this kind of reaction. You want 

3 to confirm that with your own internal 

4 calculation?

5 DR. MAURO: Yes, we actually - I 

6 recall when we were looking at this issue. We 

7 modeled the - and it may have been to see if 

8 the neutron/photon ratio sort of rang true. 

9 We modeled the alpha N using 2 percent 

10 enriched uranium which is sort of the upper 

11 bound number that has been used for Fernald as 

12 being a reasonable value. And I remember it 

13 being a conical pile actually stored outside 

14 and not in a drum. And we ran it, and so we 

15 came up with numbers. Whether it was 

16 expressed in terms of a neutron dose rate or 

17 it was expressed in terms of a neutron/photon 

18 ratio that later on was shown to be 

19 inappropriate because the cone, the conical 

20 pile we assumed would have created a critical 

21 mass. So we withdrew that analysis as being 
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1 erroneous. Now, how the issue eventually was 

2 resolved and you know, and accepted is 

3 something that I don't recall and is probably 

4 worth us going back and taking a look at it. 

5 And then of course between us and John, myself 

6 and Ron we can just take a look and say okay, 

7 you know, was the issue resolved appropriately 

8 on Fernald and if so, does it have direct 

9 applicability to Weldon. So I mean, that 

10 seems to be the way to get - to bring this 

11 thing to closure pretty quickly.

12 DR. CHEW: Okay. I think you need 

13 to realistically model what the real piles 

14 need to be because I think Stu Hinnefeld was 

15 there when he mentioned that the pile that you 

16 did model would have gone critical.

17 DR. MAURO: Right, oh yes, I 

18 remember that and you know, we were 

19 embarrassed.

20 DR. CHEW: No, don't worry.

21 DR. MAURO: And it's not difficult 
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1 for us to go back and redo that. Those kinds 

2 of things are done quickly.

3 DR. CHEW: Okay. And I think you 

4 need to look at the total neutrons produced, 

5 neutrons per second, and then you can do any 

6 geometry you want to to get the dose rate. 

7 Okay?

8 DR. MAURO: Oh yes. We actually 

9 get the fluxes, energy flux coming off, you 

10 know, as a function of distance. Yes, we'll 

11 take a look at it and get back. We'll 

12 basically be talking to Bob Anigstein and 

13 looking back at the history of this thing. It 

14 shouldn't be difficult sort of to reconstruct 

15 the history of how this issue was resolved.

16 DR. CHEW: Make sure you keep on 

17 building this model so it looks like a 

18 reactor.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes.

20 DR. CHEW: Okay, thanks John.

21 DR. MAURO: Okay.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay, so this has ping2 ponged back and forth a little bit as to who 

3 has an action item. John is suggesting that 

4 SC&A do the homework of reconstructing - 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Workers - 

6 DR. MAURO: Ted, the only reason I 

7 bring it up is that, you know, the very fact 

8 that I'm sitting here, we're talking about 

9 Fernald and I don't remember how that issue 

10 was resolved, but it certainly was resolved 

11 and I think we owe it to not only the Weldon 

12 group but also the Fernald group to be clear 

13 on how we did it. Because it's possible that 

14 we resolved the issue but maybe there still 

15 are some matters of the type that Ron is 

16 describing that we need to take a look at. I 

17 hate to reopen an issue, but I feel that given 

18 the way this is unfolding we do need to take a 

19 look at it, you know, and make sure that we 

20 close that issue appropriately.

21 MR. KATZ: I don't have a problem 
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1 with that if that's - 

2 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, I want to 

3 say this, is I want it brought back to this 

4 Work Group how it was resolved at Fernald and 

5 then I also want a final discussion on this 

6 issue 3 that SC&A raised explaining in layman 

7 terms why the neutron doses were taken in '95 

8 and why the photon readings were taken in 

9 2001. Would there have been a difference if 

10 they had taken them both in '95? Would there 

11 have been a difference if they had taken them 

12 both in 2001? And just so that the Work Group 

13 can feel that it's satisfied with the issue 

14 and also so it makes a little more sense to 

15 the claimants.

16 MEMBER LEMEN: And what time frame 

17 are you talking about?

18 MR. KATZ: For reporting back? 

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: As soon as 

20 possible. You know, we - you know, I know 

21 everyone's busy and I'm not trying to bust 
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1 anyone's chops but it's been some time since 

2 we had a meeting. We had a meeting scheduled. 

3 It was canceled because there was no progress 

4 and it seems to me that this meeting is 

5 becoming, well, there's issues on the table, 

6 it's been resolved and we try to move on and 

7 I'm just not satisfied with that. I think 

8 there needs to be a little more detail on the 

9 table so that this Work Group can try to say 

10 we agree with some of these issues and they're 

11 closed or we have some specific questions that 

12 we want you guys to go back and look at.

13 DR. MAURO: Mike, this is John. 

14 We're going to jump on this immediately and 

15 I'm going to have an answer on how this issue 

16 was closed and whether there are problems or 

17 not on Fernald by next week. Because I do not 

18 want any matters like this sort of hanging out 

19 at the time of the St. Louis meeting. So 

20 we're going to close the door and understand 

21 exactly where we are by next week on this 
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1 matter for Fernald.

2 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, and I 

3 understand that we have a meeting coming up in 

4 St. Louis but I don't want to have a few 

5 convenient if you will answers for the people 

6 in St. Louis. I want this Work Group to make 

7 some substantive progress regardless of 

8 whether we have a meeting in St. Louis, you 

9 know. I want to see some things get done. I 

10 just think we're getting behind on it.

11 MR. KATZ: Right, okay. But John 

12 says he'll close the book on this one or he'll 

13 try to close the book on this one before St. 

14 Louis which is certainly before another Work 

15 Group meeting.

16 DR. MAURO: Sure, absolutely.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And John, the 

18 second part, I'm sort of intrigued by Mel's 

19 comment. I mean, if in fact because of the 

20 temporal and the source-term differences there 

21 may be some fault with using the N/P ratio, 
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1 could you in fact use the neutron readings 

2 directly or not. I mean, it might as well I 

3 think answer those kind of questions as well 

4 so the Work Group gets the full picture. 

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, would there be 

6 strict limitations if you used a neutron dose 

7 directly, would restricted limitations on 

8 where that would apply or would it be sort of 

9 a general, that the geometry wouldn't make a 

10 lot of difference? You know, we have to know 

11 how versatile using the neutron dose would be 

12 directly.

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And Dick, was 

14 your question just on this one issue or was it 

15 in general? Did you get your question 

16 answered?

17 MEMBER LEMEN: No, I think you 

18 answered it.

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

20 MEMBER LEMEN: And John answered 

21 it.
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1 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. 

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Is NIOSH going to 

3 provide anything on the neutron or are they 

4 going to wait on that? What's your decision 

5 there?

6 MEMBER LEMEN: You mean the issue 

7 of the gap in time?

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Right. I imagine 

9 it was when data was available. I mean that's 

10 probably the answer. If they didn't just 

11 happen - they didn't use gamma measurements in 

12 '05 so NIOSH found the data in '01 - I mean 

13 '95 and they found data in '01 and applied it 

14 back to '95. That's probably the answer, that 

15 the data wasn't there.

16 MEMBER LEMEN: Well, that 

17 shouldn't be hard to find out then. I mean, 

18 you should be able to get that in the very 

19 near future. Right? NIOSH? 

20 MR. ROLFES: Sure. Let's see. 

21 I've been searching for the transcripts where 
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1 this was discussed at Fernald and the 

2 transcripts of the discussion on neutron doses 

3 at Fernald came from our Work Group meeting on 

4 October 28th, 2008. It was pages 365 to 367.

5 DR. MAURO: Give that to me again? 

6 I'm writing it down and catching up to you. 

7 October 28th?

8 MR. ROLFES: October 28th, 2008 

9 and it was pages 365 through 367.

10 DR. MAURO: Thank you very much.

11 MR. KATZ: So I think we could 

12 just assume DCAS will come prepared to discuss 

13 this at the time we discuss it at the next 

14 Work Group meeting.

15 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Sounds good. Is 

16 there anything else going to be discussed on 

17 SC&A's issue 3 or did we about close that out?

18 DR. BUCHANAN: On the neutron 

19 issue, no. None.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So before we go 

21 on to 4 you want to take about a 10-minute 
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1 break?

2 MR. KATZ: Okay, 10 minutes and 

3 I'm going to put the phone on mute.

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 10:47 a.m. and 

6 resumed at 11:04 a.m.)

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, this is Ted Katz. 

8 Welcome back. It's the Weldon Spring Work 

9 Group, the Advisory Board on Radiation Worker 

10 Health. We're just returning from a short 

11 comfort break. Ron?

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Ron 

13 Buchanan, SC&A again. Just to get everybody 

14 on the same page here we're on item number 2 

15 of the agenda. I'm going through our action 

16 items and we - I covered item number 1, 2 and 

17 3. We're looking at item number 4 which is 

18 enriched uranium question. We brought up the 

19 fact that perhaps Weldon Spring received 

20 greater than 1 percent enriched uranium. And 

21 last time NIOSH was to send us two references 
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1 which was to illustrate that it was less than 

2 1 percent. And so I looked at those

3 references that they sent from the Site 

4 Research Database and both references coded 

5 handling procedures to handle something like 

6 0.86 percent and 0.90 percent enriched 

7 uranium. I agree that those were both less 

8 than 1 percent. However, they were handling 

9 procedure SOPs, not necessarily any 

10 documentation that the site handled less than 

11 1 percent enriched uranium. 

12 That was the four items we had on 

13 our action item list. Now two other items 

14 that we did participate in. Do you want that?

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Did we resolve 

16 that?

17 DR. BUCHANAN: I didn't know if we 

18 wanted to talk about it when they responded or 

19 do you want to talk about it now?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: It might be good 

21 to resolve it.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. 

2 MR. ROLFES: I was just going to 

3 say, you know, the site didn't typically 

4 document what they didn't have, they only 

5 documented what they did process or what they 

6 did have. So we found no indication that they 

7 had greater than 1 percent enriched uranium in 

8 our reviews of the records for, you know, the 

9 Weldon Spring site as well as any other 

10 documents tied to them possibly, like for 

11 example you know any shipments from Fernald 

12 for example. So we have no indication that 

13 greater than 1 percent enriched uranium was at 

14 the Weldon Spring Plant. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Which I think is 

16 a more definitive answer. I think the SOP 

17 sort of talked about what you would do rather 

18 than whether or not there was anything. What 

19 you're saying is that you haven't seen 

20 anything - 

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: - to give you 

2 pause.

3 MEMBER LEMEN: And no interviews 

4 have indicated otherwise.

5 MR. ROLFES: Let's see. Mel, I 

6 know you were responsible for conducting a few 

7 of the interviews with Weldon Spring Plant 

8 former workers. Do you recall if there was a

9 discussion of the enrichments that were 

10 handled at the Weldon Spring Plant in any of 

11 those interviews?

12 DR. CHEW: I think we asked the 

13 question to the interviews and I just don't 

14 recall right now. I think pretty much we had 

15 confirmed that yes, there was low enrichment. 

16 I don't remember exactly the number, but so 

17 that's how much I recall. But I think the 1 

18 percent was generally discussed.

19 MR. MORRIS: Mark, this is Robert 

20 Morris. If you give us a few minutes we can 

21 go back and review while you're continuing the 
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1 conversation and see what we've got.

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I think in our 

3 Evaluation Report one other thing we had 

4 identified as well, that 99 percent of the 

5 throughput for the Weldon Spring site was 

6 natural and/or depleted uranium. So you know, 

7 the 1 percent would have been of materials 

8 other than natural or depleted uranium would 

9 have been either thorium or the slightly 

10 enriched uranium. So based on everything I've 

11 seen the slightly enriched uranium that was at 

12 the Weldon Spring Plant was less than 1 

13 percent enriched in U-235.

14 MR. RICH: Mark, this is Bryce.

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Bryce.

16 MR. RICH: The Ohio Field Report 

17 on Appendix B-4 has a documentation of the 

18 enriched and normal and depleted uranium. So 

19 it is documented there.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Is that on the 

21 Research Database?
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1 MR. RICH: Yes.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: And can you give me 

3 that number?

4 MR. RICH: Yes, hold on. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Was this Appendix B 

6 of the DOE 2000?

7 MR. RICH: SRDB 3644.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Thirty-six forty9 four. And do you have a PDF page number that 

10 that's on?

11 MR. RICH: It's Appendix B-4.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Appendix B-4. 

13 Okay. I think that the last time I tried to 

14 look - is that on the Site Research Database 

15 now? Last time I tried to pull up 3466 it 

16 wasn't available. 

17 MR. ROLFES: Thirty-six forty18 four.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Thirty-six forty20 four.

21 MR. ROLFES: And you know, 
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1 actually Stu had asked me about that reference 

2 the other day and I had a problem accessing 

3 it. It is available, we can make a copy 

4 available to SC&A on the K: drive. So - 

5 MR. RICH: I have it on my 

6 database and it is in reference to 3644 I 

7 think, although I haven't tried pulling it up 

8 within the last week or so.

9 MR. STIVER: Well, this is John 

10 Stiver. I have a copy I can provide to you.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Because I tried to 

12 pull that up about a month or two ago and it 

13 wasn't available.

14 MR. ROLFES: I had the same 

15 problem.

16 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I just 

17 pulled it up. It is available now.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you.

19 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: You're 

20 welcome.

21 MR. RICH: It's on page 15 of the 
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1 enriched uranium on B-4.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you 

3 very much, that'll be helpful. 

4 DR. CHEW: Hey Ron? This is Mel. 

5 Can you hear me?

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, Mel.

7 DR. CHEW: This is a briefing with 

8 John. John, I'm sorry I had to leave but - 

9 right before you went on break here. When you 

10 guys start modeling the neutrons make sure 

11 that - I don't need to tell you that the - 

12 MR. KATZ: Can you stop one 

13 second? I think you may have a speaker phone 

14 or something. Someone has a speaker phone or 

15 something because we're getting sort of 

16 reverb, an echo of everyone speaking. It just 

17 stopped so maybe you're good now, Mel.

18 DR. CHEW: I hear a child 

19 actually. Hey John, I think just to make sure 

20 that when you folks model this thing you're 

21 going to model for 2 percent and 1 percent so 
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1 it would be relevant to Fernald and Weldon 

2 Spring. And we'll be very interested in 

3 looking at the - what you're going to be using 

4 for assumptions for modeling. And especially 

5 as you start building this pile as you well 

6 know there will be attenuation in moderation 

7 and using the right cross-section. I don't 

8 need to tell you.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Flipping back to 

10 the previous issue. On this issue I guess it 

11 sounds like the action is with us to go 

12 validate what is in those report - that 

13 report.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: That report and see 

15 if it does document that.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Document the 

17 historic source-term. I think that will 

18 address the issue.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: We have no issue 

20 really. We can handle 1 percent and our 

21 question was is there any documentation that 
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1 they didn't handle over 1 percent.

2 MR. KATZ: Hold on a second. 

3 Someone has their line open and we're getting 

4 an echo. So if everyone on the line who, when 

5 you're not addressing would you please mute 

6 your phones, *6 if you don't have a mute 

7 button. Thanks.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And we can take 

9 that action in realtime so I mean, it's just a 

10 matter of looking.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes and if we look 

12 at that and it looks like that it does 

13 document that Weldon Spring did not receive 

14 over 1 percent enrichment then we can close 

15 the issue. But at this time we'll leave it 

16 open until we do document that. 

17 Okay, so that was item, action 

18 item 1 through 4 for SC&A. Now, two other 

19 events have occurred I just want to summarize 

20 and I turn it over to NIOSH. Mark asked that 

21 I send him some accident case numbers and I 
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1 did that - 

2 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. We're just, 

3 we're getting this echo. Someone doesn't have 

4 their phone muted on the line. If you don't 

5 have a mute button please use *6. It's - 

6 we're still hearing it. Someone on the line, 

7 someone has the line open and they don't have 

8 their phone muted. Please use *6, mute your 

9 phone. Maybe you have - right. Maybe you 

10 have a speaker phone on instead of using the 

11 handheld. Maybe that's the problem. Okay, 

12 I'm just going to turn down the volume so we 

13 don't hear it so much. Okay, go ahead. 

14 Sorry, Ron.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. And so I did 

16 send those three accident cases to Mark to 

17 analyze for accidents in the incident 

18 question. And the last item is that SC&A 

19 received NIOSH's reply to some of the issues 

20 on - a couple of weeks ago on April the 21st 

21 and we read over some of those. Some of the 
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1 simpler ones we were able to address or 

2 discuss when Mark goes through. Those will 

3 have - take more time to analyze some of the 

4 longer papers. And so at this point SC&A has 

5 completed their action item list and I'll turn 

6 it over to Mark unless there's questions on 

7 anything that we were to do or have done.

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thank you Ron. 

9 Yes, as you had discussed I'll just go 

10 through the responses that we prepared as a 

11 result of the past couple of Work Group 

12 meetings on Weldon Spring Plant. We prepared 

13 responses to SC&A's review about concerns of 

14 documentation for an accident or an incident 

15 that was issued, 2-7. We've prepared a 

16 response to the Weldon Spring Plant Evaluation 

17 Report issue number 7 which was comparison of 

18 operational activities and Work Group issue 1. 

19 The third White Paper we provided a response 

20 on was issue 3 regarding a lack of information 

21 for workers during 1967. The fourth was a 
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1 response on the lack of personnel 

2 contamination monitoring. We've also provided 

3 a response on the Weldon Spring Plant 

4 environmental intake rates and external dose 

5 rates and previously we've provided an 

6 evaluation of the minimum detectable amount 

7 for uranium urinalyses. Let's see. I don't 

8 know if you have questions on what you've 

9 looked at so far or if you want me to go 

10 through these in a little bit more detail.

11 MR. KATZ: Please do.

12 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Well, SC&A 

13 provided a list of three claimants to us that 

14 had indicated that they were involved in some 

15 incidents. And what we found, we went back 

16 and looked to see primarily if there were 

17 bioassay data available to us for dose 

18 reconstruction purposes. We did find bioassay 

19 data for the three individuals. We looked in 

20 our Site Research Database. We searched first 

21 on keywords such as "accident," 
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1 "contamination," "incident," "intake," 

2 "uptake," "release" and "wound." We found 

3 some documents from the operational period. 

4 We had referenced 15847 - or excuse me, 874. 

5 That's 15874 had approximately 320 uranium in 

6 urine results above the Weldon Spring action 

7 level in 1960. There were some above action 

8 level 2 which would have been 0.1 mg per liter 

9 to 0.2 mg per liter and there were some 

10 explanations associated with those higher 

11 results such as incidents. Let's see. We had 

12 another reference, 15865 which contained 

13 approximately 150 urine results for 1961 that 

14 were over action levels. We had some 

15 information on action level 2 urinalyses with 

16 some explanations that said that there were 

17 high-exposure incident reports, investigations 

18 of high-exposure incidents and results of an 

19 investigation of high urinary uranium 

20 exposure. So it appears when you look into 

21 the records that the information we have 
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1 available to us does show that there is 

2 documentation of incidents available to us. 

3 If we don't have per se, you know, something 

4 documenting that there was a radiological 

5 incident that occurred we do still have the 

6 bioassay data available to us and that 

7 bioassay data would reflect a significant 

8 intake from an incident or accident. Is there 

9 any questions or comments about?

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: None of the data 

11 was out of line as far as exposures?

12 MR. ROLFES: Nothing - I mean, we 

13 had different action levels at the Weldon 

14 Spring Plant and if an employee had a higher 

15 exposure then they would track that employee a 

16 little bit closer to make sure that his 

17 urinary excretion came down below an 

18 acceptable level. They'd pull him out of the 

19 work area, for example. We didn't find any 

20 inconsistencies that - in the data. Let's 

21 see. I'll read our summary here. It says, 
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1 "NIOSH finds that the accident incident 

2 information is not available in all cases. 

3 However, the specific examples given by SC&A 

4 reflect the fact that favorable outcomes for 

5 claimants are still likely. The work group 

6 monitoring method that was used by Weldon 

7 Spring does not present an obstacle to NIOSH's 

8 ability to do dose reconstructions. In fact, 

9 the use of work group monitoring data is 

10 likely to result in a more favorable dose 

11 estimate." 

12 There were even - one of the 

13 former health physicists responsible for the 

14 site had actually, in order to better explain 

15 some urine excretion patterns had ingested 

16 capsules of uranium sodium diuranate and 

17 compared that - he basically ingested 0.11 and 

18 10 times the daily limit of sodium diuranate 

19 and monitored his urine excretion. I don't 

20 know if there's anything else that we haven't 

21 identified here that - without reading the 
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1 entire thing. Any other questions?

2 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

3 Buchanan, SC&A. This came about was that 

4 during some of the interviews the workers felt 

5 that their accidents were not recorded in 

6 their files and because at that time they 

7 weren't necessarily considered radiological 

8 incidents. A furnace blowout or something was 

9 a physical accident they considered at the 

10 time. And so my question was I looked at 

11 three of the major incidents that was related 

12 to me, found the claim numbers and then had - 

13 sent those to NIOSH to look to see was the 

14 dose reconstruction, you know, did they have 

15 bioassay for those incidents. And so although 

16 the file, in the worker's file it didn't 

17 necessarily always list it as a radiological 

18 incident was there data there to reconstruct 

19 the dose. And that was the purpose of this 

20 exercise. And so you know, this is kind of a 

21 subjective thing. Every site comes up with 
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1 radiological accidents and incidents, were 

2 they recorded and how could you find them, and 

3 so I wanted to explore this to a reasonable 

4 degree. And I do have a few questions. 

5 Number one, I understand that Weldon Spring 

6 does not have a list of accidents that you can 

7 go to and look at, but you do make the 

8 statement that accident information can be 

9 found in a global search from the Research 

10 Database by last name. Okay. Can you explain 

11 a little bit what you're talking about? Can 

12 you just put in a worker's last name and 

13 they'll come up and give you accidents he's 

14 involved in or what are you speaking of there?

15 MR. ROLFES: Within our Site 

16 Research Database sometimes the document 

17 title, it depends upon the descriptive 

18 information put into the Site Research 

19 Database. It's very possible that, you know, 

20 if there's a significant incident you know 

21 there might be an investigation of the high 
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1 exposure to such and such. So in that case 

2 that's one approach that might identify an 

3 incident in addition to looking at, you know, 

4 just a keyword search for "accident," 

5 "incident," "contamination." So but we have 

6 identified though that not every incident 

7 necessarily has a document tied to it. And so 

8 there could be an exposure scenario as shown 

9 by an individual's bioassay results where they 

10 investigated a high exposure. And in those 

11 instances there are notes sometimes that say 

12 this was a result of such and such that 

13 occurred in this plant on this date or 

14 something.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. And then on 

16 page 3 of your response you say in fact the 

17 use of work group monitoring data is likely to 

18 result in a more favorable dose estimate. 

19 Would you care to explain the basis of that 

20 statement, what you - how you get at that 

21 fact?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Well, the work 

2 group monitoring, they actually focused on the 

3 people that had the highest potential for 

4 exposure within that work group. And I'd also 

5 like Bob Morris, Bob, I believe you'd be the 

6 right person about the statement regarding the 

7 work group monitoring, if you might be able to 

8 elaborate a little bit as to why that would 

9 result in a more claimant-favorable dose 

10 estimate. Is that you, Bob, or maybe Monica 

11 would be the other one?

12 MR. MORRIS: I'm not - this is 

13 Robert. I'm not prepared to say anything 

14 right now.

15 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Monica, might 

16 you have anything to add about this?

17 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I'm just 

18 reading on page 3 of the response I think it 

19 kind of summarizes it. It talks about we 

20 spoke about the work group monitoring relies 

21 on the highest exposures in any given week to 
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1 determine - is determined from the work group 

2 data. And that's why we're saying it would be 

3 favorable because it couldn't - it would be 

4 bounded.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Well, this 

6 is Ron again. How do we extract that? When 

7 they do actually do dose reconstruction they 

8 look for Worker X, they look for his data, it 

9 looks for his bioassay data, and does the 

10 internal dose assignment using IMBA through 

11 his bioassay results. And so I guess what I'm 

12 trying to do is connect how the work group 

13 monitoring would be used for his actual dose 

14 reconstruction. 

15 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I would not 

16 like to really go into that at this time. Liz 

17 Brackett was unable to stay on the call, she 

18 had to travel today, and she would be the 

19 person to speak to that point directly. 

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Could we get an 

21 answer to that question how the group 
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1 monitoring data would be used in an actual 

2 individual dose reconstruction to cover the 

3 group monitoring.

4 MR. ROLFES: We can certainly do 

5 that. I don't know if when you send your 

6 action items if you could identify that and 

7 we'll certainly - 

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

9 MR. ROLFES: - have a response 

10 prepared for that question.

11 MEMBER LEMEN: I have a question. 

12 You're reading from the report that they sent 

13 you. Have you sent that to the Board Members 

14 too? Because I just asked Mike, he doesn't 

15 remember getting it and I don't remember 

16 getting it.

17 MR. ROLFES: Was the question for 

18 me?

19 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

20 MR. ROLFES: I have prepared 

21 responses and sent them out - thank you, Dave. 
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1 I sent out an email on April 21, 2011 at 

2 10:31 a.m. and it contained six attachments. 

3 Those attachments are also available on the 

4 Advisory Board document review folder under 

5 Weldon Spring in a folder titled NIOSH 

6 Responses 4/21/2011.

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: It went to the 

8 NIOSH email address.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. That's why I 

10 didn't get it. 

11 MR. FITZGERALD: You can hold on 

12 to that for now. I mean, I think I can look 

13 over his shoulder.

14 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: What we're 

16 talking about is the very last attachment at 

17 the very end.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay, so DCAS is 

19 going to put together something for that 

20 issue. Then you mentioned something else, 

21 Weldon Spring operational activities. Was 
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1 that?

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Let's see here. 

3 Okay. The next response that we had, let's 

4 see here, let me make sure I've got the right 

5 one. 

6 DR. BUCHANAN: By the way, that 

7 was SEC number 8, of accidents and incidents 

8 that was just addressed.

9 MR. ROLFES: Okay, let's see. The 

10 next one that I have here is regarding a lack 

11 of information for workers during 1967. So 

12 basically 1967 there were no operational 

13 activities ongoing at the site. The 

14 production was shut down of - the uranium 

15 production operation at the Weldon Spring 

16 Plant was shut down December 31, 1966. We 

17 have included 1967 as part of the covered 

18 period. The Department of Labor has actually 

19 approved 1967 as a covered year even though no 

20 operational activities were ongoing. So what 

21 we wanted to do, because there was not 
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1 anything going on there we felt that the use 

2 of data from 1966 for the employees that were 

3 working at the site in 1967 would be 

4 applicable for dose reconstruction if need be. 

5 And what we did, we took a look 

6 back at - let's see here. Here's - I'll just 

7 read our summary statement here. It says, 

8 "NIOSH concludes that while the working 

9 conditions and thus the exposure potentials 

10 were different in 1967 from those during the 

11 operational period, SC&A's original statement 

12 is not accurate. NIOSH contends that 

13 production worker data and environmental data 

14 from the production area can be applied to the 

15 1967 time period. The work activities and 

16 thus exposure potentials at the quarry and 

17 raffinate pits were similar before and after 

18 the facility shut down. The exposure 

19 potential due to the limited maintenance and 

20 shuttering operations in 1967 during the 

21 transition to the Department of the Army 
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1 control of the facility would also be bounded 

2 by operational period data." So there were 

3 concerns primarily about the raffinate pits 

4 and quarry exposure potential, and nothing was 

5 being done in the raffinate pit areas or in 

6 the quarry during 1967 so the use of the 1966 

7 data would provide a bounding intake value or 

8 dose assignment value for the 1967 time 

9 period. 

10 We also did look back at the cases 

11 that would be impacted and without going into 

12 what those cases were I - we queried the NIOSH 

13 OCAS Claims Tracking Software database, NOCTS, 

14 for Weldon Spring Plant employees to identify 

15 claims with employment during 1967. We found 

16 17 claims with covered employment during the 

17 1967 year. We identified those on February 

18 17, 2011. Of those 17 claims five were 

19 included in the Special Exposure Cohort 

20 designation from another site, for example, 

21 Mallinckrodt. Ten received dose 
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1 reconstructions and had a Probability of 

2 Causation of greater than 50 percent, and two 

3 had dose reconstructions with a result of less 

4 than 50 percent. We looked back at the 

5 methodology that was used for those two claims 

6 and without getting into the specifics of 

7 their dose reconstructions I recall one of the 

8 two individuals at least we applied an OTIB9 228 radionuclide overestimate and also 

10 assigned I believe an overestimate of the 

11 individual's external dose. And the approach 

12 that we used, we actually assigned that 

13 overestimate of external dose for every year 

14 that the employee was onsite, even though 

15 after 1967 it wasn't a covered site. So we 

16 assigned some dose for years that we 

17 essentially shouldn't have because they 

18 weren't covered. So in that scenario to look 

19 back at specific information from a previous - 

20 from 1966 for example it would result in a 

21 lower dose estimate for that particular case. 
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1 And I don't recall the details of the other 

2 one. Let's see if I can take a look here. 

3 Monica, was the other case one that we had 

4 assigned an environmental intake I believe?

5 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: That's 

6 correct. The other one was a crane operator - 

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

8 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: - and we 

9 assigned in the internal and external 

10 exposures the information from 1966 we felt 

11 would extrapolate to 1967 given our 

12 understanding of the job responsibilities and 

13 what kinds of things were going on at the site 

14 at the time. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thank you.

16 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: You're 

17 welcome.

18 MR. ROLFES: Are there any 

19 questions about this?

20 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

21 Buchanan, SC&A. Now you're referring to 
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1 number 3 on your list, information of dose 

2 reconstruction, 1967, correct?

3 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. And where 

5 this comes out, Mike, is that as I was - of 

6 course in the meeting I discussed is that 

7 Weldon Spring shut down operations December 

8 31, 1966 and then 1967 was a period that they 

9 - a gray area, okay? And then between '67 and 

10 '69 the Army contracted people to come in and 

11 decontaminate and revamp some of the buildings 

12 to do Agent Orange and that never did come 

13 about, they closed it down. And so my 

14 question was when did the facility actually 

15 transfer over to the Army and NIOSH did 

16 provide documentation showing that it was 

17 transferred on December 31, 1967, a year after 

18 the official operation started. Now, the 

19 quarry and the pits, the raffinate pits, were 

20 not transferred, just the chemical plant 

21 acreage. And so my question was since the 
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1 SC&A - SEC went through 1967 what about that 

2 year because according to the records I could 

3 not find any bioassays or dosimetry records 

4 for 1967. And so what NIOSH proposed to do is 

5 to use 1966 data to cover 1967 and my 

6 contention was, well, they were different 

7 situations between the two. Okay, now if 1967 

8 was a transition year that not much activity 

9 was going on then '66 data would meet or 

10 exceed '67 exposures. 

11 But what we were trying to get 

12 verified was what happened there in 1967. And 

13 really the way it stands now is that we have 

14 not located, NIOSH has not provided 

15 documentation regarding what happened in 1967. 

16 At some point they went in and started taking 

17 out some of the bricks and that sort of thing 

18 and redoing the floor and some people were 

19 exposed during that time and NIOSH in this 

20 paper here contends that that was in March 

21 1968 and forward. And so I guess where we 
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1 stand is we don't have anything to show what 

2 was done in '67 and really hasn't been any 

3 information presented showing that nothing was 

4 done in 1967. And so that's where it kind of 

5 stands is what was 1967, that's why I call it 

6 the gray area, what activity was going on 

7 there and we haven't found any document that 

8 actually shows one way or the other what was 

9 going on in '67.

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I think that 

11 clearly needs to be determined because the 

12 production data - production bioassay data 

13 wouldn't necessarily cover a period of 

14 decommissioning and decontamination. There 

15 could be higher exposures during that period 

16 than there are in operational periods.

17 MR. ROLFES: There was actually no 

18 - nothing done at the site during 1967 as far 

19 as remediation or decontamination of the site. 

20 That wasn't done really back until the DOE21 covered time period 1975 forward when the Army 
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1 - do I have that date correct, Monica? Is it 

2 1975 when DOE took the property back?

3 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I believe 

4 that's correct.

5 MR. ROLFES: Okay. But yes, as 

6 Ron had indicated there was some individuals 

7 that had indicated that there was some work 

8 done and we've got in our summary on page 4 

9 there were some operations conducted by 

10 Thompson-Stearns-Rogers, TSR Incorporated, 

11 which were consistent with the preparation of 

12 construction for the herbicide facility 

13 beginning in March of 1968 under the 

14 Department of Army. So that right now is not 

15 covered work because it's outside of the DOE16 covered employment time period. We didn't 

17 find any type of indication of decontamination 

18 work that was conducted under the DOE-covered 

19 time period at Weldon Spring. 

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So there was no 

21 information found or I mean is the 
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1 documentation complete just that you didn't 

2 find any?

3 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Can I just 

4 say that we did find some memos that were 

5 indicative although they were not definitive. 

6 They indicated that there were discussions 

7 going on, there was negotiations going on back 

8 and forth between AEC and DOE that seemed to 

9 imply that the site was in a shutdown state 

10 waiting for them to make this transfer, cross 

11 their t's and dot their i's in terms of 

12 paperwork. However, there's been absolutely 

13 no indication that we can find of any 

14 substantive work that was going on at the site 

15 during 1967. Ongoing, you know, reviews say 

16 things like looking at the quarry and the - to 

17 make sure that there was no leakage, you know, 

18 that kind of routine monitoring would have 

19 been continuing and there would have been 

20 safeguards and security issues in terms of, 

21 you know, walking the fences, but other than 
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1 that we have no indication of any kind of 

2 disruptive work going on at the site, nothing 

3 that would indicate any kind of decon or 

4 decommissioning going on at the site during 

5 '67.

6 MR. KATZ: Probably be good for 

7 SC&A to put your eyes on that documentation 

8 that Monica just mentioned that's sort of 

9 suggestive at least that the site was static 

10 at the time for that year and didn't have any 

11 kind of disruptive activity.

12 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Like I said, 

13 that wasn't definitive, but that was the 

14 indication. That was why I didn't reference 

15 it.

16 MR. KATZ: No, I understand, I 

17 said it's suggestive.

18 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Sort of trying to 

20 paraphrase what you were indicating.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Is that in the 
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1 SRDB?

2 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I don't have 

3 that in front of me right now but I can send 

4 it by email.

5 MR. ROLFES: Monica, this is Mark. 

6 I can provide some Site Research Database 

7 references here. We've listed them on - I 

8 think primarily on page 3. There's a few 

9 references here. Let's see. Got some 

10 discussion of the 1966 shutdown. There's some 

11 documentation regarding transfer of 

12 operations, materials, technical records and 

13 equipment. Talking about the orderly and 

14 thoroughly planned shutdown, SRDB 52726, 

15 52759, 52770. And then there is a 1967 memo 

16 regarding Weldon Spring disposal. It is noted 

17 that extensive decontamination would be 

18 required for any other than the building's 

19 previous use and that elaborate health 

20 precautions and radiation monitoring would be 

21 necessary during any equipment removal or 
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1 extensive building alteration which implies 

2 that neither was ongoing at the time of the 

3 memo. That memo was in Site Research Database 

4 document 13475.

5 MR. KATZ: What's the date of that

6 memo?

7 MR. ROLFES: 1967.

8 MR. KATZ: And the month?

9 MR. ROLFES: It doesn't - it's not 

10 listed here.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess that was 

12 Monica on the phone. Are one of those three 

13 documents in the memo what you're referring 

14 to, one of those documents?

15 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

17 MR. ROLFES: And then there's 

18 another one here. It goes on to say, "The 

19 lack of any record of health protection 

20 oversight by the AEC may also support the 

21 implication that extensive renovation work was 
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1 not being done at Weldon Spring Plant in 

2 1967." The November of 1966 memo, which is 

3 SRDB 11806, mentions, "Since the new 

4 contractor brought onsite may not have a great 

5 deal of competence in the nuclear business it 

6 was agreed that AEC staff onsite may have to 

7 provide guidance from time to time in matters 

8 related to health protection. And if the 

9 contractor appears to be having a sustained 

10 operation with a relatively stable staff it 

11 may be desirable to collect urine samples once 

12 or twice, for example during the beginning and 

13 conclusion of operations for record purposes." 

14 So.

15 MR. KATZ: Sorry, what was the 

16 date of that?

17 MR. ROLFES: That one was in 

18 November 1966. 

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So is there any 

20 documentation or such about layoffs or 

21 anything during '67? Or did they keep their 
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1 full complement of staff?

2 MR. ROLFES: The majority - from 

3 looking back, the majority of the claimants' 

4 employment from my recollection terminated in 

5 1966. We were - we had queried our - excuse 

6 me, our NOCTS claims database to look for 

7 individuals that were employed during the year 

8 1967 and we had identified the 17 cases that 

9 were employed during the 1967 time period. So 

10 and then I summarized the dose reconstruction 

11 outcome or the - whether or not they were 

12 included in the SEC. So it came down to 

13 essentially two individuals' claims that had 

14 employment during 1967 and had a Probability 

15 of Causation of less than 50 percent.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

17 Buchanan. The plant actually shut down in 

18 December of '66 and operation stopped. There 

19 was a few people kept over but the support 

20 staff and everything is the way I understand 

21 it in the other documents I've read on the 
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1 history of the plant is that everybody left. 

2 You know, there wasn't any secretaries, 

3 managers or anything after December 31st of 

4 '66. Apparently they - a few people still 

5 worked to drain some of the lines and package 

6 some of the leftover uranium ore, but there 

7 wasn't any operations, there wasn't any 

8 uranium metal being made and there was - it 

9 sounded like there was no medical staff or 

10 health physics staff or almost anything left 

11 after December 31st of '66. So '67 wasn't a 

12 production or operation or anything like that 

13 taking place. 

14 I guess the question comes up is 

15 when did they start - when did any employees 

16 working for AEC, what did they do there in '67 

17 and were they exposed to anything that was 

18 worse than '66. If they weren't exposed to 

19 anything worse than '66 then the method would 

20 work. If they were exposed to different 

21 conditions, the conditions were different, 
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1 they weren't operating, but were the 

2 radiologic exposures worse, the same or less. 

3 Well, then that's the question that we're 

4 looking for, some documentation there in '67 

5 that there wasn't any operations that wouldn't 

6 be covered by the '66 or '65 extrapolation.

7 These references, I did look 

8 briefly at some of these references and 

9 unfortunately you know, this isn't one of the 

10 matters where - it doesn't really say, you 

11 know, it says we plan on shutting down, this 

12 takes place, this takes place, but we don't 

13 have anything from '68 saying hey, '67 report, 

14 this is what happened here in 1967 at the end 

15 of the year. We kind of have what they 

16 planned on doing in '66, what they were going 

17 to do in '67, and then a little bit in '67, a 

18 memo or two saying you know, if this happens 

19 then we need health physics support and stuff. 

20 But we don't have anything in '68 to say hey, 

21 in '67 this is a summary of what happened. 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: So it doesn't 

2 sound like our review or a closer review of 

3 these documents is going to provide the 

4 definitive answer that Mike was referring to 

5 earlier which may not be possible. There may 

6 not be documentation that really delineates 

7 that.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Right.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: So we're going to 

10 be left with some uncertainty about '67.

11 MR. SUNDIN: This is Dave Sundin. 

12 I noticed one of the citations was that the 

13 transfer of the site to the Army Corps of 

14 Engineers was actually on the 31st of 

15 December, '67. So I mean, it seems not too 

16 logical that there would be work being done by 

17 the recipient of that property until the 

18 transfer had occurred.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: That's true, it's 

20 just the question. And that's okay because it 

21 doesn't cover the Army and it doesn't cover 
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1 '68. And so the question is what did - did 

2 AEC workers do there in 1967 at the plant.

3 MR. SUNDIN: In terms of 

4 refurbishing it or changing its purpose.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, right.

6 MR. SUNDIN: It seems unlikely.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: That would be 

8 different from '66. That would exceed any 

9 exposure, biological or intake or external 

10 exposure. That would be different. That 

11 wouldn't be bound by '66 data. 

12 MR. KATZ: I think at the end of 

13 the day you've got to look at the 

14 documentation that you do have and the 

15 interviews that you had and make a judgment as 

16 to what's the likely story here. I mean 

17 because it wouldn't necessarily have any kind 

18 of end-of-year report that says here's what we 

19 did when we weren't doing anything and 

20 whatever. I mean, you wouldn't necessarily 

21 have such a report.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Because there's no 

2 staff there.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Overseeing staff.

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: On the other 

6 hand, if these claimants in '67 recalled 

7 something they were involved in and they gave 

8 an affidavit to that point, if the program 

9 doesn't have anything to refute that, then 

10 their word should be taken as valid.

11 MR. KATZ: I mean I think you 

12 weigh your evidence that you have. You can 

13 weigh all the evidence that you have as sort 

14 of the normal course.

15 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Right and what I 

16 hear DCAS saying is there's a lack of evidence 

17 that anything went on. So if you have, you 

18 know, documentation or an affidavit from a 

19 claimant of what they did and there is no 

20 evidence to the contrary you have to be 

21 claimant-favorable I think. The program has 
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1 to put the weight, you know, in what they're 

2 willing to swear to.

3 MR. MORRIS: Ted, this is Robert 

4 Morris.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, Robert.

6 MR. MORRIS: Section 5.1 of the 

7 Evaluation Report has one sentence in it. I 

8 was not involved in writing it but I can - I'd 

9 like to read it for you. It says, "During 

10 shutdown several buildings were used for 

11 interim storage of drummed yellowcake." So 

12 that's in the context of the sentence before 

13 it saying shutdown was started in '67 and it 

14 was turned over to the Army in August '67, so.

15 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Bob.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, the 

17 negotiations took place in August '67. The 

18 way I understood the documents that NIOSH 

19 referred to it actually took place on December 

20 31st of - midnight, December 31st 1967. Yes.

21 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Can I just 
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1 interject something? The comment about 

2 affidavits. One of the interviews 

3 specifically laid out some of the work that 

4 the person did at the site and they were 

5 saying that they did this work in 1967. And 

6 it is - if you look at the summary of this 

7 documentation I'd like to read a paragraph. 

8 "The operation of Thompson-Stearns-Rogers 

9 described in SC&A SEC 2010 at 0015 seem to be 

10 consistent with the preparations for 

11 construction of the herbicide facility that 

12 began in March of 1968 under the Department of 

13 the Army. As described in the Site Profile, 

14 the Army began decontamination and equipment 

15 removal in buildings 103 and 105, used a high16 pressure hot water solution containing an 

17 acidic wetting agent to partially 

18 decontaminate the buildings and remove 

19 portions of some concrete floors to be covered 

20 with tar and new concrete. This description 

21 is consistent with the work described by the 
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1 EE interviewed by SC&A as that having been 

2 done by TSR between '67 and '69. NIOSH has 

3 not located any exposure records for the work 

4 by TSR but the EE interviewed by SC&A 

5 described monitors and removals of workers 

6 from the building. This is indicative of some 

7 oversight for health and safety. Assuming 

8 this work was performed for the Department of 

9 the Army it would logically follow that such 

10 oversight would have also been directed by the 

11 Army. Work performed by contractors to the 

12 Department of the Army would not be eligible 

13 for dose reconstruction under EEOICPA." 

14 I point that out because the 

15 person that was interviewed said that the work 

16 was done between '67 and '69 and it sounds 

17 like we do have documentation supporting what 

18 this person said. The only question is when 

19 exactly the work was done and I think that's 

20 the judgment that has to be made is whether 

21 this was in '67 which we have no 
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1 documentation, we have no indication of 

2 anything going on in '67, or if as it states 

3 in this other document, if that work was done 

4 in March of '68. That's all.

5 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Monica, I 

6 think that's helpful. 

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay, is there 

8 any other issues that DCAS responds to or put 

9 out reports or White Papers on?

10 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Let's see here. 

11 We've got four more here. Let's see. I 

12 don't know what order I gave them to you in 

13 before but let's see. This one was the - 

14 regarding the lack of personnel contamination 

15 and egress monitoring. We have provided a 

16 short response here. Some of the things you'd 

17 need to consider if you were concerned about 

18 an individual being contaminated with uranium, 

19 you know, you'd have to take a look at the 

20 probability that an individual - well 

21 basically, first of all if, you're concerned 
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1 about skin contamination, the dose rate from 

2 skin contamination from uranium is usually not 

3 of concern in comparison to the direct 

4 radiation from working with large quantities 

5 of uranium. If an individual is significantly 

6 contaminated it's pretty unlikely that they 

7 would have contamination exclusive to one 

8 portion of their body. So it increases the 

9 likelihood or the probability that an 

10 individual would have also contaminated their 

11 badge. And if an individual had a 

12 contaminated badge that dose from the 

13 contamination on that badge would be recorded. 

14 So it's not necessarily an unmonitored 

15 exposure. 

16 We've also discussed some of the 

17 radiological control practices to minimize the 

18 possibility of skin contamination. And these 

19 are on page - I think it's page 3 here of our 

20 response. And this, let's see. The measures 

21 involved instituting a work permit program 
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1 which was aimed primarily at protecting 

2 maintenance workers in hazard areas which 

3 involved establishing time limits and 

4 conducting survey meter checks for areas with 

5 radioactive materials. The second was 

6 conducting investigations and counseling to 

7 study causes for exposure trends or unusual 

8 individual exposures and also to educate 

9 employees about protective measures. The 

10 third was protective shielding, semi-remote 

11 operations and worker rotation to control 

12 exposure. The fourth was providing work 

13 clothing from the skin out for personnel 

14 working in regulated areas where radioactive 

15 materials were processed and handled which 

16 could not be worn outside of the production 

17 area except under cover clothing. The use of 

18 respirators is specified by the Mallinckrodt 

19 health department and six, instituting a job 

20 time limit program for personnel who worked 

21 routinely in areas where the exposure rate was 
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1 known to be above AEC-based tolerance limits. 

2 I think that covers. Let's see if there's 

3 anything else. Monica or anyone on the line, 

4 do you have anything to add to my brief 

5 summarization?

6 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I don't have 

7 anything to add.

8 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thank you. Are 

9 there any questions regarding our response 

10 here?

11 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

12 Buchanan, SC&A. Mike, this came up because 

13 contrary to you know like today's facilities 

14 where you go through a hand-and-foot monitor 

15 and that sort of thing when you left that 

16 Weldon Spring didn't have any egress 

17 monitoring for contamination. They did have 

18 showers and they did have - provide work 

19 clothing to be changed, however. During some 

20 of the interviews the concern was that the 

21 workers could - it wasn't rigidly enforced and 
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1 they could leave without integral monitoring 

2 as far as a final point. There might have 

3 been some monitoring inside for growth 

4 contamination stuff but there wasn't any 

5 individual hand-and-foot monitor, that sort of 

6 thing, either to go into the cafeteria, the 

7 offices or go out through the parking lot and 

8 leave. And so, you know, we brought this up 

9 as a point of - the fact that the workers 

10 weren't egress monitored, and main concern was 

11 the uranium in folds of the skin which would 

12 concentrate and perhaps cause irradiation that 

13 wouldn't be detected on the badge which would 

14 be on the chest. And now contrary to the 

15 point brought up here, I don't think that it's 

16 ever been - I've never seen any scientific 

17 studies showing where a contaminated badge 

18 gave any sort of correlation to body dose or 

19 skin dose. But that aside, this is a common 

20 problem at most older uranium sites and so one 

21 suggestion at the last meeting was that NIOSH 
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1 look at what was done at Mallinckrodt which is 

2 a very similar facility and Bethlehem Steel 

3 which had the same issues. And according to 

4 their response and from what I've found, you 

5 know, that Weldon Spring operated the same as 

6 the others did for that time period when 

7 material was handled. And so it's more of a 

8 global issue than a site-specific issue for 

9 Weldon Spring and so I don't have any solution 

10 on how you would correct the - the thought. 

11 We can't go back and correct it. And during 

12 dose reconstruction there are programs for 

13 bare skin and that sort of thing that 

14 calculates skin dose. And so it was a point 

15 that was brought up, that there was that 

16 lacking egress monitoring at Weldon Spring, 

17 but I don't have anything more to add than 

18 what's been discussed so far.

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: It seems also 

20 the issue that if there was a problem with 

21 skin contamination that could result in 
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1 additional intakes too.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that was - 

3 right.

4 MR. ROLFES: Go ahead. That's 

5 correct. 

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, there was one 

7 that was brought up. Go ahead.

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that's correct. 

9 And if there is, you know, intake from you 

10 know eating something with uranium 

11 contamination on your hands for example when 

12 we would estimate the intake of uranium using 

13 the individual bioassay data that route of 

14 intake from ingestion would also be detected 

15 or measured by the bioassay results. So when 

16 we complete a dose reconstruction, however, 

17 it's more claimant-favorable to assume that 

18 the uranium was inhaled rather than ingested 

19 because it results in a higher internal dose 

20 estimate for the claimant. So we wouldn't 

21 assume that the individual was ingesting 
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1 uranium because that wouldn't result in the 

2 bounding dose values. 

3 MR. KATZ: Can I ask a legal 

4 question, Jenny? And maybe it's something you 

5 guys already handle in dose reconstructions 

6 but just theoretically if someone has 

7 contaminated clothing and brings it home and 

8 say you know, spends the day in their clothing 

9 or what have you, you're offsite, you're off 

10 the DOE site, is that a covered - is that 

11 actually a covered exposure at that point when 

12 they're not on site? How does that work?

13 MS. LIN: Well, if NIOSH isn't 

14 able to distinguish the dose value when the 

15 contamination actually happened at home or is 

16 it a continuous contamination at workplace or 

17 at home, then we have to estimate that dose. 

18 But if it's something - this is very different 

19 than saying something that is a distinct 

20 exposure offsite.

21 MR. KATZ: I see. So if they 
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1 bring contamination with them home you cover 

2 that exposure - 

3 MS. LIN: If we can't distinguish 

4 it.

5 MR. KATZ: If you can't. If they 

6 were to stay - for example, we've heard 

7 stories of in one case of someone bringing a 

8 contaminated item home in their pocket or what 

9 have you. You would cover that exposure 

10 offsite?

11 MS. LIN: I mean, NIOSH is using 

12 the kind of - 

13 MR. ROLFES: I was going to relay, 

14 you know, there's also been occurrences where 

15 individuals have brought their film badges 

16 home and placed them in a little orange dish, 

17 Fiestaware, for example, that contains uranium 

18 in it and it's resulted in some elevated doses 

19 to that person's badge in excess of you know 

20 workplace controls and such. So situations 

21 like that have been investigated by health 
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1 physics staff to try to understand or you know 

2 figure out where that exposure came from and 

3 it turns out in some instances those were from 

4 employees putting their film badges into 

5 Fiestaware bowls. So there's I guess 

6 different - it would be a little more 

7 difficult to sort out when an intake occurred 

8 using bioassay data. If for example it was an 

9 external dose it'd be a little bit easier to 

10 you know for example, if a person went to 

11 another facility that isn't a covered facility 

12 and received a bunch of external dose, that 

13 wouldn't be covered. However, if they were 

14 potentially exposed to uranium at another 

15 site, for example, a mill that isn't covered, 

16 yet they work at the Weldon Spring Plant and 

17 come and get a bioassay data - a bioassay 

18 taken and the data shows that they were 

19 positive, you know, there was a positive 

20 exposure to uranium, if we had no indication 

21 that that work was done at some other non-
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1 covered site we would include it and assume 

2 that it occurred at Weldon Spring.

3 MR. KATZ: I mean, I was just 

4 thinking of the simple situation you have skin 

5 contamination, you spend the next 12 hours 

6 with that skin contamination offsite, so.

7 MR. ROLFES: Yes, as far as that's 

8 - that's more of a legal question rather than 

9 a dose reconstruction question.

10 MS. LIN: I think what Mark is 

11 describing is a more consistent approach 

12 towards dose reconstruction. If we can't 

13 distinguish when the intake occurred.

14 MR. KATZ: Yes, it's not intake in 

15 this case. It's skin contamination. 

16 MS. LIN: Well, but still I'm 

17 talking about what you absorb into your body. 

18 If you can realistically say well, 20 percent 

19 of this happened - 

20 DR. MAURO: There's a lot of 

21 dialogue that's not coming across the 
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1 telephone.

2 MR. KATZ: Okay, I think that's 

3 just because some folks are a little more 

4 remote from the audio.

5 MS. LIN: So I mean, whether 

6 that's a legal question or a technical 

7 question, I mean, NIOSH has followed a very 

8 consistent approach and using a very claimant9 favorable bounding calculation. So we'd be 

10 more comfortable with that.

11 MEMBER LEMEN: I have a question 

12 related to that. I think I know the answer. 

13 In relation to taking clothing home continuing 

14 to be contaminated, contaminating the home. 

15 Are any family members? They're not covered 

16 under this at all, are they? 

17 MR. KATZ: No.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: So there's no 

19 claimant could be given to the family members 

20 even though the family members may have 

21 received a dosage.
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1 MR. KATZ: That's correct. It's 

2 not covered.

3 MEMBER LEMEN: That's what I 

4 thought.

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: That's where 

6 lawyers get involved.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, I was just trying 

8 to understand where this leads, this question 

9 about skin contamination if it's contamination 

10 offsite. 

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay, anything 

12 else on that issue? And if not, do we want to 

13 continue on? Do we want to break for lunch? 

14 Just how does everyone feel?

15 MR. ROLFES: It's up to you guys. 

16 I don't know if you would like to work 

17 through lunch. We've got three more topics. 

18 Two of them are small and I think we discussed 

19 one of the two previous. The third and final 

20 one is the environmental intake rates and 

21 external dose rates, and I think these are 
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1 directly responsive to some of SC&A's previous 

2 questions about environmental exposures from 

3 site operations. I don't know, that's up to 

4 you to decide. I mean, I can do whichever you 

5 like.

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: If there's no 

7 objections we'll just work on through.

8 MR. KATZ: For the record, Bob 

9 Presley has dropped off the call.

10 MR. ROLFES: Let's see here. I 

11 guess we can go ahead to the NIOSH response to 

12 SC&A SEC issue number 7 on the quarry and 

13 raffinate pit exposures. Monica, I'm probably 

14 going to need some help from you to introduce 

15 this one. Sorry if I'm putting you on the 

16 spot.

17 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: That's okay. 

18 I was just hoping we would take a break.

19 MR. KATZ: Why don't we take a 10-

20 minute comfort break.

21 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: A 10-minute 
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1 comfort break would be very good right now.

2 MR. KATZ: Absolutely.

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay, sorry about 

4 that. Good suggestion, Monica.

5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

6 matter went off the record at 12:07 p.m. and 

7 resumed at 12:20 p.m.)

8 MR. KATZ: Okay, we're coming off 

9 of a short break. Weldon Spring Work Group. 

10 Where are we?

11 MR. ROLFES: All right. Thank 

12 you, Ted. This is Mark Rolfes once again and 

13 we were getting ready to introduce our 

14 response on the quarry and raffinate pit 

15 exposures at the Weldon Spring Plant. And 

16 basically we have the quarry where the 

17 materials were disposed of. You know we have 

18 some indication that some drums of material 

19 were dumped into the quarry. They were 

20 encapsulated at the time that they were dumped 

21 in, however, could have degraded over time. 
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1 We felt that the operational data that we have 

2 available to us would bound any potentially 

3 unmonitored exposures during the years that 

4 the quarry and raffinate pits are still 

5 covered facilities but that the main 

6 production facility at Weldon Spring Plant was 

7 no longer a covered facility. So we're 

8 talking about the 1967 period. Let's see, I 

9 don't recall. And then I don't recall - 

10 Monica, this is where I need your help. The 

11 dates for the covered facility right now for 

12 Weldon Spring Plant are '57 through '67 and 

13 the AEC retained ownership of the raffinate 

14 pits and the quarry. Could you - 

15 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: That's 

16 correct, they retained - well, they retained 

17 direction for the raffinate pit and the quarry 

18 for the whole time up through '85 I believe.

19 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Could you - I 

20 didn't really speak to the exposure scenarios. 

21 Could you maybe detail a little bit you know 
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1 the exposure potential and operations being 

2 conducted at the quarry during the covered 

3 time period versus - well excuse me, during 

4 the Weldon Spring Plant proper's covered time 

5 period versus.

6 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: The data 

7 that we have?

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

9 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes, I can. 

10 We were specifically asked about the 

11 operation - the comparison of the operation at 

12 the quarry and the raffinate pit compared to 

13 the data from '76 and '80 which we rely on 

14 relatively heavily and what's the 

15 justification for why that data is applicable 

16 to the operational period. But just as we 

17 were asked for more detail on the operations 

18 at the quarry and the raffinate pit. So 

19 that's what this response is attempting to 

20 deliver. At the quarry there's a pretty 

21 detailed I think description of operations 
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1 starting in about '59 when they started 

2 constructing a dyking system at the quarry. 

3 Then sometime in the early '60s is when the 

4 Destrehan Street plant rubble was delivered to 

5 the quarry. There's - and in '63 barrels of 

6 radioactive waste material were delivered to 

7 the quarry. So basically we just tried to 

8 summarize in one place what all was going on 

9 over the operational, you know, the years that 

10 are considered operational for Weldon Spring 

11 in terms of the rest of the plant.

12 Those operations didn't really 

13 change between those years and on down the 

14 road the whole time that the AEC maintained 

15 responsibility for the quarry, and let me 

16 handle these two separately if I may. The 

17 quarry was the repository, it was a place 

18 where materials had been deposited. There was 

19 no operational activity. It is an outdoors 

20 facility obviously. There are no enclosed 

21 structures. The question also arose having to 
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1 do with radon exposure to the quarry and why 

2 we applied environmental kinds of exposures 

3 and the answer is because it is an outdoor 

4 facility. We provided one schematic, a cross5 section of the quarry and sort of tried to lay 

6 out where things were deposited, the drums 

7 versus the debris, that kind of thing. Then 

8 basically the answer to the question that was 

9 asked is yes, we do believe that the later 

10 data is still applicable because of the in11 growth within the material that would have 

12 been deposited of radium daughters would have 

13 made that a conservative estimate as opposed 

14 to underestimating any potential exposure.

15 As far as we know there were only 

16 a very limited subset of personnel that would 

17 have been putting in any time, any significant 

18 amount of time at the quarry as well, 

19 environmental monitors and security staff, 

20 other than when materials were actually being 

21 deposited at the quarry. So those kinds of 
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1 operations didn't necessarily change. Well, 

2 actually they didn't continue on very much. 

3 There was some additional dumping in the 

4 quarry by the Army at some point but as far as 

5 AEC exposures they should not have changed.

6 Then the raffinate pit is actually 

7 kind of a similar story except that there 

8 should not have been any additional or any 

9 additions to the raffinate pit after the 

10 operational years other than I believe the 

11 Army was allowed to put some materials into 

12 before, after the ceasing of AEC plant 

13 operations at Weldon Spring. The question has 

14 been brought up that the material - the 

15 chemical composition would have changed, may 

16 have changed and I can't find any 

17 justification for believing that it would 

18 have. Basically the plant operated and 

19 raffinates were delivered into the raffinate 

20 pit through the piping system and at the 

21 cessation of operations it would have stopped 
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1 and the material just would have been sitting 

2 there in the raffinate pit. 

3 As far as the exposure conditions 

4 at the raffinate pit, it would not have been a 

5 high exposure potential place because of the 

6 nature of the pits themselves. My 

7 understanding is that it was kind of a 

8 quicksand type consistency so you couldn't 

9 really walk out into the pits or there was not 

10 any monitoring out over top of the pit. It 

11 was a sludge kind of a material. I can't 

12 remember any other specifics. The primary 

13 hazard would be if there were any dusting from 

14 the pits drying out and we found different 

15 studies that said that the raffinates were 75 

16 percent water in 1967, had effectively zero 

17 communication with groundwater at the time and 

18 that the pits had up to several feet of water, 

19 from several inches to several feet of water 

20 over the surface throughout the year was one 

21 reference that we found. 
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1 In 1974 there was the 

2 environmental assessment stabilization of the 

3 raffinate pit. It said that they were 

4 constantly underwater and the residue the pits 

5 went into even in the dryer - needed to stay 

6 moist, the areas around the pit and levees. 

7 So that was our understanding as of the end of 

8 the operational period which is what we were 

9 asked about, what were the activities there 

10 and what sort of exposure conditions were 

11 there during the operations period and why we 

12 felt that the later data was representative. 

13 Are there any questions?

14 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron. Do 

15 you know if the pits were fenced during 

16 operation? Do you recall reading anywhere 

17 about that?

18 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I believe 

19 they were. The pits were somewhat segregated, 

20 they were off to one side of the facility. I 

21 believe, I've got a schematic here in this 
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1 response document, yes. So they were part of 

2 the plant but they weren't integral to the 

3 plant, they were off on one side. Yes, they 

4 were fenced. The quarry was also fenced.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, the - this is 

6 Ron, SC&A. The reason this question was 

7 brought up was that was there a difference in 

8 the operation of the quarry and the pits after 

9 the closedown of the plant and also during the 

10 plant that it would be different than 

11 measurements taken later on. They did take 

12 parameter measurements of uranium by air 

13 samples, but there wasn't during operations 

14 '57, during the SEC period '57 to '67 there 

15 wasn't any air measurements around the quarry 

16 or the pits in themselves and the question 

17 that we raised. And so what they did was they 

18 used, when they started to, you know, 

19 remediation, before they did that they took 

20 samples and they have samples during the '70s 

21 and '80s to extrapolate - NIOSH extrapolated 
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1 those back to the '60s. And what SC&A's 

2 question was, was there any major difference 

3 between the pits and the quarries during the 

4 operational period compared to when the 

5 samples were taken or would that bound the 

6 exposures during the operational period. And 

7 so that's the reason we raised the question 

8 and at this point we don't have anything that 

9 indicates, you know, that there was a major 

10 difference in exposure between the two 

11 periods. We don't have anything that 

12 indicates that that wouldn't be usable and 

13 what NIOSH was supposed to do was to look at 

14 and see if there was any major difference 

15 between the two periods.

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Any questions on 

17 that? Okay.

18 MR. ROLFES: All right. Thank 

19 you, Monica, for the - 

20 MR. KATZ: Is that item closable 

21 at this point?
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1 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes.

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay. We had 

3 previously sent - we were asked a question by 

4 SC&A about our basis for a limit of detection 

5 for fluorometry which was the method used to 

6 analyze urine samples for their uranium 

7 content. We provided a brief 3- or 4-page 

8 explanation of how that 0.08mg per liter 

9 minimum detectable amount value was calculated 

10 and we've basically shown an equation to 

11 calculate the minimum detectable amount where 

12 you multiple a factor of 3.29 times the 

13 standard deviation of blank samples and divide 

14 that value by a calibration factor. That 

15 gives us a value of about 0.07mg per liter and 

16 supports the justification for our use of 

17 0.08mg per liter for uranium in urine. Oh, 

18 0.007, thank you Dave. I said 0.07, but 

19 that's 0.007mg per liter or 7 micrograms per 

20 liter. I guess if there's any questions. 

21 The significance of this I guess, 
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1 if an individual has a urine sample that's 

2 reported in their file that is less than 

3 0.008mg per liter we would assign a missed 

4 intake by actually assuming that they had a 

5 value less than the MDA and we would default 

6 to one-half of that MDA value of 8mcg per 

7 liter. We would give them credit for a 

8 potential exposure even though they didn't 

9 have a positive bioassay. So that's.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron of SC&A 

11 again. This was not a SEC issue, this was a 

12 Site Profile issue number 21. And this was 

13 brought up because TBD didn't really - a good 

14 explanation to where this number came from and 

15 so that's the reason we asked for it and I 

16 have no problem with their explanation. I did 

17 have a question on page 3 of your last 

18 sentence there. It says the MDA calculated 

19 from the - well actually, blank value of 0.008 

20 is of no practical use in these circumstances. 

21 That last paragraph, are you going to use the 
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1 one-half MDA or why is that put in there? I 

2 didn't follow that.

3 MR. ROLFES: Well, I think for 

4 claim-specific information if an individual 

5 has a value of less than 8mcg per liter then 

6 we would apply an intake equal to one-half of 

7 that MDA value to calculate their missed 

8 uranium intake. I don't know if we have the 

9 author. Mel, is Gene available to respond 

10 regarding Ron's question?

11 DR. CHEW: I think Gene's on the 

12 line.

13 MR. ROLFES: Gene?

14 MR. POTTER: This is Gene Potter 

15 from the ORAU team.

16 MR. ROLFES: Hi Gene.

17 MR. POTTER: Yes, that last 

18 statement probably should not have been 

19 included. It was merely intended to - one 

20 thing that Mark didn't discuss is that we 

21 looked at the pre-job samples and showed that 
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1 there was a 50 percent probability - to a log2 normal is 50 percent probability that an 

3 unexposed worker would have a value of 

4 0.0036mg per liter or greater as an unexposed 

5 worker. So it amounts to about the same 

6 thing, something like assigning an MDA or a 

7 half of the MDA of 0.008. So I can see how 

8 that, taken by itself is not - it's not - was 

9 not intended to be a statement about how dose 

10 reconstructions are done.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, so what was 

12 intended there was saying that one-half MDA is 

13 about the same as the non-exposed worker's 50 

14 percent value.

15 MR. POTTER: That's correct.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Okay, no 

17 problem. 

18 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Gene. Any 

19 other questions on that one? Okay. The last 

20 response that we prepared - 

21 MR. KATZ: That item is closed, 
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1 just for the record.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

3 MR. ROLFES: The last item that we 

4 prepared in response to SC&A's review was I 

5 guess SC&A had some comments about how the 

6 environmental intakes were assigned at the 

7 Weldon Spring Plant. This contains some 

8 updated information on our proposed 

9 environmental intake rates as well as external 

10 dose rates. There were some comments about 

11 the radon exposure potential. We've addressed 

12 the radon exposure potential in here. Let's 

13 see, I'm trying to think of any other specific 

14 things that. Let's see. Oh, this is 38 pages 

15 long here and I don't want to go through point 

16 by point, but if there's specific questions we 

17 can try to focus on those.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

19 MR. KATZ: It would be good to 

20 have an overview at least at some level.

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay.
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1 MR. KATZ: To tee up the - 

2 MR. ROLFES: All right. Well, 

3 let's see here. I'll just go through some of 

4 the brief tables in here and that'll try to 

5 capture the important data because that's 

6 where we've got - 

7 MEMBER LEMEN: Is there a summary 

8 of it? Don't you just have a summary there at 

9 the back? That'd probably be easier.

10 MR. ROLFES: I don't believe we 

11 have a summary in this document. The tables 

12 are probably our best bet for the 

13 summarization of - I guess that's the end 

14 product of the doses that we'd be assigning or 

15 the intakes that we'd assign. And this is 

16 just off of page 3 of 38. We've got tables in 

17 here that have the average airborne 

18 particulate and radon concentrations at the 

19 Weldon Spring chemical plant, the raffinate 

20 pits and the quarry. We have a table which is 

21 the estimated average annual inhalation intake 
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1 of radioactive air particulates and radon at 

2 Weldon Spring chemical plant, the raffinate 

3 pits and the quarry. We have estimated 

4 ambient onsite dose for each of those same 

5 three facilities. We have the estimated site6 wide maximum inhalation intake of radioactive 

7 air particulates and radon at Weldon Spring. 

8 And a table, the fifth table in here is the 

9 estimated maximum site-wide ambient dose at 

10 Weldon Spring Plant. And I could ask maybe 

11 Bob and/or Billy if there's any details. I 

12 know radon was one of the key issues that we 

13 had updated in this site - or in this White 

14 Paper here from our previous version of our 

15 Site Profile. But might you have anything to 

16 add about any significant changes from our 

17 previous Site Profile to what we currently 

18 have in this White Paper?

19 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert 

20 Morris. I would say that there is an 

21 interesting change or two, that it's going to 
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1 be hard to describe in enough detail to 

2 satisfy right now, but it's all documented now 

3 in this paper. What we've done is taken the 

4 perimeter air monitoring data and using a 

5 Gaussian plume dispersion model we've reversed 

6 the flow so that we can predict the 

7 concentrations near the center of the 

8 operating facility based on the perimeter data 

9 that were measured. And it's sort of like 

10 going backwards from a smokestack to a 

11 perimeter, we're going - going from the 

12 smokestack to the perimeter, we're reversing

13 that process and using - just solving the 

14 equation backwards. So what you come up with 

15 is a relatively large and consistent set of 

16 perimeter data that we can then use to infer 

17 the concentrations in the operating area, and 

18 that's where the intake rates come from.

19 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Bob. I do 

20 recall now that you say that that we had a 

21 discussion about which particular assumptions 
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1 we would use and whether we would use, you 

2 know, what type of dispersion model we were 

3 going to use and such.

4 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I guess I'd just 

5 add to that we've been mindful of the comments 

6 that SC&A has made over the years about which 

7 kinds of dispersion factors to use, where 

8 they're drawing from and we got these from the 

9 NRC recent assumptions that seem to be in 

10 favor at this point. And I think that you 

11 know, although you're certainly dependent on a 

12 model to go backwards we did use the Lambert 

13 Field St. Louis met. data and came up with 

14 what looks to me to be a fairly conservative 

15 claimant-favorable approach to this problem. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Bob.

17 MR. MORRIS: You're welcome.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: If I'm not 

19 mistaken - aren't calculations you come up 

20 with from dispersion models and everything 

21 else, isn't that mainly for environmental or 
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1 public exposures or readings and stuff like 

2 that?

3 MR. ROLFES: Well, this is - these 

4 are environmental exposures that we're talking 

5 about so these are basically for an individual 

6 who was not monitored at the site essentially. 

7 And what we've done, we've used data from the 

8 perimeter of the site to basically model back 

9 to in-plant conditions or conditions on the 

10 outsides of buildings for whom if there was 

11 some employee that was onsite that wasn't a 

12 radiation worker, for example, who could have 

13 potentially been exposed to something above 

14 background levels we have modeled this 

15 approach to assign intakes to that individual. 

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I understand 

17 that calculation, but that still to me just 

18 seems to be kind of a stretch that - to use 

19 that as opposed to some recognized type of 

20 worker monitoring. 

21 MR. MORRIS: This is simply 
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1 supplemental to the existing data that 

2 otherwise wouldn't be used, and so we're just 

3 using it to inform the rest of the 

4 information. I refer you to a spreadsheet 

5 that was carefully done to support all the

6 data tables in this intakes rate paper that 

7 we're talking about. And I don't think you 

8 can actually understand how we got from that 

9 without reviewing the spreadsheet. But we 

10 were careful to document it in the spreadsheet 

11 for you so I'd encourage you to look at them 

12 both at the same time.

13 MR. ROLFES: Bob, in referring to 

14 the spreadsheet here, is this the last page 

15 here that we're referring to of our response, 

16 page 38?

17 MR. MORRIS: Let me see. I don't 

18 recall how it actually ended up being edited 

19 so.

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay. This was 

21 primarily related to the radon concentrations 
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1 for the Weldon Spring Plant buildings and this 

2 was really the one where we focused on. I 

3 think most of the effort was related to and 

4 most of the concern was also related to radon

5 exposures. So I think that's - this is going 

6 to be one of the primary things that we needed 

7 work, or this was one of the things that we 

8 didn't have as much documentation on in our 

9 previous version of the TBD. And I think SC&A 

10 had pointed out we had quite a bit of 

11 discussion about how much of the radon release 

12 outside of the buildings could have been 

13 potentially brought back into the buildings 

14 and I believe we had assumed that, correct me 

15 if I'm wrong someone out there, but I think we 

16 believe that you know 100 percent of the radon 

17 that was released was brought back in via the 

18 ventilation system. Is that correct?

19 MR. MORRIS: We, I think we all 

20 converged to the idea last time that that 

21 would be a claimant-favorable assumption, that 
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1 really didn't depend on modeling the wake 

2 effects or anything else. And so as I recall 

3 that was the successful conclusion about the 

4 inside concentration based on that.

5 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: When you mentioned 

7 the samples taken at Lambert were those simply 

8 for background comparison?

9 MR. MORRIS: When I talked about 

10 Lambert Field I'm talking about the 

11 meteorological data that is taken for the 

12 Weather Service.

13 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. Not anything 

14 with background or anything like that.

15 MR. MORRIS: No, it was simply in 

16 order to - what the typical wind speed, wind 

17 direction - 

18 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

19 MR. MORRIS: - the parameters that 

20 you need to run a simple Gaussian plume model 

21 - 
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

2 MR. MORRIS: - are - across by 

3 ordinary data sets like that.

4 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. Thank you.

5 MR. MORRIS: You're welcome. 

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Now what 

7 spreadsheet - are you referring to Appendix A 

8 on page 38 or are you referring to something 

9 that's on the Research Database or something?

10 MR. MORRIS: Ron, it was posted 

11 with the White Paper right next to it and 

12 provided to you at the same time. It's 

13 titled, at least the title that I've got is WS 

14 Environmental Intake rate. And so you can 

15 look for that and read that spreadsheet at the 

16 same time you read the White Paper.

17 The logics, you know, what 

18 happened between this year and that year 

19 because sometimes we had different data sets 

20 and so we put a flow chart in so that you 

21 could figure out how we got from, you know, 
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1 some years we had gross alpha data, some years 

2 we had uranium data, some years we had radon 

3 data. If you don't have this decoder ring 

4 you're not going to be able to figure out 

5 where the number came from that got posted 

6 into the table.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Could I ask 

8 some questions then?

9 MR. ROLFES: Sure.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: I guess Bob, he's 

11 the one that has the details, if you don't 

12 mind. This is Ron, SC&A. The question that - 

13 I just had a chance to read over this a time 

14 or two. We haven't done a thorough 

15 evaluation. I guess on - are you saying, I 

16 think it's on page 14, that the thoron 

17 concentration was much, much less than the 

18 radon concentration and therefore you weren't 

19 going to model that. Is that what the third 

20 paragraph on page 14 is saying?

21 MR. MORRIS: I'm sorry, my 
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1 government computer is really slow, I can't 

2 even page up or down right now. So I can't 

3 tell you what's on page 14 right now.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

5 MR. MORRIS: But it seems to me 

6 that that's correct. There were some times 

7 when the concentrations of radon were so small 

8 that we said we're not going to - they're 

9 negligibly - they're negligible. My 

10 computer's locked up, sorry.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Well, on 

12 page 14 when you do get to look at it, it 

13 looks like you're saying that the radon-222 

14 release could approach 70 percent of the 

15 radon-222. The 220 could be 70 percent - the 

16 222. However, if I go through your 

17 calculations it looks like more like 3 

18 percent. That was a question I have but if 

19 you can't read that I can't discuss that with 

20 you.

21 MR. MORRIS: I'm sorry, my 
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1 computer just won't respond to me right now. 

2 So all I can tell you is we were very careful 

3 and if we didn't get the data in the logic 

4 chart that's in that flow sheet for how we got 

5 the numbers then that's certainly we need to 

6 revisit. But you should be able to follow 

7 through from any given point in the table back 

8 up to what our assumptions were from our 

9 spreadsheet.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Also, you 

11 have your tables, you have tables 1 through 5 

12 and table 2 I believe is the intake according 

13 to the major facilities. Let's see. Yes, the 

14 pits, the plant and the quarry. And you'd 

15 have for different years and uranium and 

16 thoron and that sort of thing, tritium. And 

17 then in table 4 it says maximum intakes. Now, 

18 I would assume that means that you selected

19 the intake for that year from those three 

20 major facilities and entered it in there that 

21 that would be maximum intake. Is that 
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1 correct? 

2 MR. MORRIS: Yes. We wanted to 

3 simplify it for the dose reconstructor. So we 

4 documented what each facility had as the 

5 maximum concentration or excuse me, intake 

6 rate. And then we said okay, which of the 

7 columns on this line give us the highest 

8 value. That's the one we posted for the 

9 assumption, for the default assumption for 

10 that year.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Well, I went 

12 through that and it didn't appear that that's 

13 what happened. For example, 1957, uranium is 

13 14 in both tables but thorium-230 is 8.2 times 

102 15 and on the maximum chart it's only 7.1 

times 102 16 . And so I just wondered if I'm 

17 reading this wrong or is there an error in 

18 filling in that maximum or something.

19 MR. MORRIS: I don't know from off 

20 the top of my head right now.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Well, that 
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1 would be one thing. I'd like for NIOSH to 

2 check their figures going from table 2 to 

3 table 4 because if they're correct then I'm 

4 missing the concept somewhere.

5 MR. MORRIS: The spreadsheet has - 

6 I can see it although I cannot manipulate it 

7 to move around in it. What I can see is that 

8 there's a set of columns that have the maximum 

9 - the concentration by facility and then over 

10 to the right of it it's like find the maximum 

11 of these three posted in that column. So that 

12 was the idea, Ron.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. And then 

14 appendix, on page 38, just as an overview 

15 there you're essentially releasing 34 curies 

16 of activity per year into a certain size room 

17 and it's stagnant in there. I mean, you don't 

18 have an air exchange or anything like that, 

19 you're just filling that room with that much 

20 material and then doing a breathing rate and 

21 then calculating the working levels per year, 
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1 is that correct?

2 MR. MORRIS: Those are - those are 

3 the variables that were used in the 

4 spreadsheet. They were just appears to be 

5 copied and pasted into that appendix. And the 

6 38 curies per year or 34 curies per year, that 

7 was the value out of Meshkoff's paper, that 

8 was what went up the stack, part of what we 

9 transported to a receiver location. So it 

10 looks to me like this appendix came right out 

11 of the spreadsheet and you'll see how it's 

12 used when you see it in the spreadsheet.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Well, like I 

14 say, we've only had this for a couple of 

15 weeks. We haven't had a thorough evaluation 

16 of it yet. I had some questions before I got 

17 dug deeper into it. I'll take a look at the 

18 spreadsheet and also have someone that's 

19 really familiar with radon look at this and 

20 probably write a short summary of our findings 

21 on it.
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: Do you think you 

2 can have it ready by our next meeting?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: By our next Weldon 

4 Spring meeting, yes. 

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: That was the

6 last issue that you guys had prepared?

7 MR. ROLFES: Correct, that's 

8 correct. That summarizes the six responses 

9 we prepared.

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Excuse me, but you 

12 did issue number 1 is the data. Issue 1, SEC 

13 issue A and C is the validity of the data 

14 that's used for dose reconstruction. That's 

15 number 2, let me see, I don't know which one 

16 it is on your list there. It's NIOSH's 

17 response to issue number 1 identified in the 

18 Work Group. 

19 MR. ROLFES: All right. Let me 

20 see. 

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Verification of 
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1 accuracy and adequacy of the data, issue 1 A 

2 and C.

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay that's on the 

4 back page. Let me make sure I've got the same 

5 thing. Okay, yes, thank you Dave. Okay. 

6 Yes. I didn't notice. Good catch, thank you. 

7 We had an additional response, NIOSH response 

8 to issue number 1 identified in the Weldon 

9 Spring Plant Working Group meeting. Thanks, 

10 Ron. It says, "During a meeting of the Weldon 

11 Spring Plant Work Group NIOSH was requested to 

12 respond to a question regarding the origin of 

13 the exposure record that NIOSH receives for 

14 the Weldon Spring Plant workers and what 

15 information is available to verify the 

16 pedigree of that information." I'll just go 

17 ahead and read it, it's two paragraphs here. 

18 "Considerable analysis of the Weldon Spring 

19 Plant bioassay data has been performed 

20 comparing available data to the original data. 

21 The comparison of hard copy data to the CER 
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1 database performed during the SEC petition 

2 evaluation was not intended to provide 

3 evidence relative to records used by the dose 

4 reconstructor. The dose reconstructor is 

5 provided with all available records and uses 

6 the hard copy original data for dose 

7 reconstruction purposes whenever available. 

8 Weldon Spring did not produce an electronic 

9 dosimetry database before the facility 

10 operations shut down and DOE has not developed 

11 a database for Weldon Spring dosimetry 

12 records. The dose reconstructors do not have 

13 direct access to the CER database. The 

14 primary hard copy records from the site are 

15 the original records that don't require 

16 validity - excuse me, validation of V&V and 

17 quality assurance. The CEDR and CER databases 

18 are not primary records but were derived from 

19 primary records. The CER bioassay data was 

20 computerized by 1978. Around that time Dr. 

21 Ellis reviewed the Destrehan and Weldon Spring 
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1 files and removed duplicate entries and took 

2 care to verify outlier results against the 

3 hard copy records. Additionally, Dr. Ellis 

4 did a sample comparison of the electronic 

5 files against the hard copy primary files. 

6 The external dosimetry electronic file was 

7 reviewed and the accuracy of that file did not 

8 satisfy Dr. Ellis. CER rebuilt the electronic 

9 file from scratch from the primary hard copy 

10 medical records."

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, the reason 

12 this came up was that they were, I guess part 

13 of the process, the protocol is to verify the 

14 accuracy of the data used for the dose 

15 reconstructor and the completeness of it. And 

16 so we had been debating where this information 

17 was because CER came up, database came up and 

18 that sort of thing. And so we wanted to know, 

19 you know, what was the dose reconstructor 

20 actually using. So that's what was the 

21 question we asked I think at the last meeting. 
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1 And so it looks like, and I've looked at some 

2 of these dose reconstructions, and I did find

3 that the photocopy of the original handwritten 

4 record or typed record is what the dose 

5 reconstructor receives. So he's not using 

6 some CER database or something to do dose 

7 reconstruction. And so that's good. 

8 Now that does bring up the 

9 question of accuracy. That's as far as that 

10 half of the question. The other half is 

11 completeness, okay. And so I think that we're 

12 supposed to due diligence to make sure that 

13 the records that they received, bio and 

14 external, are complete as possible. You know, 

15 are there large gaps or whatever. And so 

16 that's where issue number 1 A and C for both 

17 internal and external respectively set at this 

18 point. It looked like the accuracy is 

19 satisfied. However, the completeness has not 

20 been addressed, but that can be - or whatever. 

21 Has there been any efforts made to show that, 
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1 you know, there's not large gaps, there's not 

2 - no files missing. And of course that's a 

3 subjective opinion but that's something that 

4 the worker needs to address.

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So do you have 

6 enough information to go back and see if the 

7 data is complete or do you need more 

8 information from DCAS to verify your - or to 

9 do the review? Or have you, your question is 

10 you don't think there is adequate data.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: No, we don't have a 

12 - we don't have an opinion one way or the 

13 other at this time. We just, all we're saying 

14 is that it's chartered that is supposed to be 

15 done and it has not been done.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the 

17 Board has its own procedures to look at 

18 adequacy of the data and traditionally SC&A 

19 has taken a look at that on behalf of the 

20 Board. And on completeness, just looking at 

21 precedent, what we've done in the past is 
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1 we've sampled. You know, you really can't 

2 look at every single data point obviously. 

3 You sample and see if there's obvious gaps in 

4 terms of years or in terms of operations. You 

5 know, whether it's clear certain operations 

6 didn't have any data or it's clear you're 

7 missing, you know, months without any obvious 

8 explanation. You do a relatively small sample 

9 and that comes out pretty much, you know, 

10 okay, you typically stop there. If you do a 

11 small sample but it comes up with some 

12 discrepancies then you might take a larger 

13 sample, if the Work Group wishes, and that's 

14 worked in the past. That tends to be 

15 effective given the circumstances. So that's 

16 how we would do completeness. I think what 

17 NIOSH has done in terms of looking at accuracy 

18 is fine. But you know, again, I think the 

19 completeness thing is a sampling exercise.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So we still need 

21 to do that.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes and you know, 

2 I think we can do that. I mean, without 

3 splitting too many hairs, we can actually do 

4 some small degree of sampling. I think we can 

5 propose to the Work Group what a sample size 

6 would look like and just do it and if it comes 

7 up without any aberrations, say, or obvious 

8 discrepancies by year or by you know scope of 

9 operations then that would be it and we 

10 wouldn't go any further.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, so I 

13 think what we would propose to the Work Group 

14 is here's our sampling plan, a modest one, and 

15 we would conduct that once we get your 

16 approval and provide the results back to the 

17 Work Group before the next meeting. And that 

18 would be kind of it.

19 MR. KATZ: So if you want to send 

20 a plan for that to the Work Group Members.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: You guys can email me, 

2 say if you have any issues with it, and then I 

3 can task this accordingly. That way we can 

4 get it done without having another Work Group 

5 meeting.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

7 again the dimension would be scope by virtue 

8 of the operations and scope by virtue of the 

9 years. Seems to be obvious gaps.

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Do I send the 

12 initial plan to you or?

13 MR. KATZ: Well, send it to the 

14 Work Group Members and copy me too please.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

16 MR. KATZ: And you might as well 

17 copy everyone in case they have any comments 

18 on the sampling plan as well.

19 MEMBER LEMEN: Would you send it 

20 to both our email addresses, not just our CDC 

21 address?
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1 MR. KATZ: That's fine. If you 

2 send it to me, if you don't have that I can 

3 forward it on.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: But given the 

6 size of this site, we did this for Class at 

7 some of the bigger sites, this is definitely 

8 going to be contained and modest but we'll see 

9 if there's any indication first before we 

10 propose anything further.

11 MR. KATZ: So officially - I mean 

12 the Work Group doesn't meet when it's not 

13 needed, so you can just individually tell me 

14 if you have any issues. If you were to have 

15 issues we can have a Work Group meeting to 

16 iron them out.

17 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. So at 

18 this point next point on the agenda, is there 

19 any discussion of SEC issues either from DCAS 

20 or SC&A? Or have we?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: There's one more. 
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1 It goes along - 

2 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Oh, I'm sorry.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron. On 

4 1(d) is coworker model - and I guess at this 

5 point we would like clarification on what 

6 coworker model NIOSH plans to use both 

7 internally and externally. Because there's 

8 been different statements for the TBD, the ER 

9 and then this - the environmental part. We'd 

10 like clarification on what coworker model is 

11 proposed.

12 MR. ROLFES: For external and 

13 internal, is that what you said? For both?

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, for both.

15 MR. ROLFES: As of right now I 

16 don't believe we've identified a need for one 

17 because it appears that the people who needed 

18 to be monitored have been monitored. If we 

19 identify cases where that's not the case, if 

20 we identify claims that, you know, someone 

21 should have been monitored but was not we 
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1 would consider it at that time I believe. 

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, because - the 

3 reason I bring it up is in the - because the 

4 environmental work here paper that you just 

5 gave out said that - well, you just told Mike 

6 that the person that was onsite but not in 

7 operations, the reason he was doing the 

8 modeling and stuff was to assign dose to that 

9 person. And so I guess that indicated that 

10 there would be some coworker model data used.

11 MR. ROLFES: Well, the 

12 environmental ambient intakes would be for 

13 someone who didn't work necessarily in the 

14 production area and we have indication that 

15 the people that were working in the production 

16 area were monitored appropriately. There may 

17 have been some people that worked next to the 

18 production area and really, it's not really 

19 appropriate for us to assume that they were 

20 exposed at the same level as the production 

21 workers onsite. We're talking, you know, more 
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1 administrative type personnel that aren't 

2 working inside of the production areas.

3 MR. MORRIS: Mark, this is Robert 

4 Morris.

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

6 MR. MORRIS: I'd clarify that. 

7 You know, nobody was monitored for radon that 

8 I'm aware of so - 

9 MR. ROLFES: Right.

10 MR. MORRIS: So to the extent that 

11 that's true we will have to use environmental 

12 doses for radon for anybody. Whether the dose 

13 is from inside of the building where it's 

14 higher or outside the building where it's not, 

15 where it's lower concentrations, the 

16 dispersion modeling is the only difference 

17 there. So that is the exception as I 

18 understand it.

19 MR. KATZ: That doesn't sound like 

20 a - that's not a coworker model per se.

21 MR. MORRIS: No, I don't think of 
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1 that as a coworker model, Ted.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess - this is 

3 Joe. Just as an extension of what we just 

4 talked about on the completeness review, what 

5 - I guess is the interest on the basis for I 

6 guess the conclusion that everybody who should 

7 be monitored was monitored, the data is 

8 complete. Because that's kind of what we're 

9 sampling so I'm curious as to how you got 

10 there because that would help us understand. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Sure. For example, 

12 there was a subset of employees, the female 

13 population in the earlier years was not 

14 monitored because they weren't working within 

15 the production area.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

17 MR. ROLFES: So there's approaches 

18 that we can use certainly if we have 

19 indications that a female was you know 

20 routinely entering a production area or an 

21 unmonitored person. And that has to be taken, 
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1 you know, as a case by case basis. If there's 

2 information that supports that did occur, that 

3 an individual was not monitored and was in the 

4 production area then that would be, you know, 

5 we'd I guess have to address that when it was 

6 identified to us. Based on my knowledge on 

7 the review of dose reconstructions that have 

8 been done there have not been any incidents 

9 where we've seen someone that should have been 

10 monitored and was not monitored.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Well, I 

12 just want to draw the distinction. You're 

13 saying it was an empirical judgment because 

14 you're basically saying that you haven't seen 

15 it yet so therefore it's not likely. 

16 MR. ROLFES: There's always 

17 exceptions and - 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

19 saying that in terms of coworker, a coworker 

20 decision I think what we - I think we've 

21 established the completeness as a going-in 
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1 proposition as to whether a coworker model 

2 would be warranted. I'm just saying that this 

3 is - so we're kind of approaching it from that 

4 perspective. I think what you're saying is 

5 that empirically you've done enough dose 

6 reconstructions, you haven't seen any gaps so 

7 at this point in time you feel comfortable. I 

8 just want to make sure that's clear to the 

9 Work Group. And we're going to validate that, 

10 maybe doing a little more upstream and going 

11 through that analysis. You're looking at 

12 things like I guess, you know, maintenance 

13 workers, kind of those category workers where 

14 you tend to maybe find issues with gaps. But 

15 okay, that helps. So I guess it doesn't 

16 change anything we're planning on doing as far 

17 as completeness, but - one - the useful thing 

18 of course would be seeing whether or not we 

19 think there are certain gaps in certain 

20 categories or years and then marrying that up 

21 with the dose reconstruction experience to see 
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1 if it in fact uses - actually have done it. 

2 So that would kind of answer that issue. Does 

3 that?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, okay. 

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Ron, do 

6 we have any SEC issues that we need to 

7 discuss, that we're prepared to discuss? Or 

8 are there some we're not prepared to discuss 

9 but we need to keep on the agenda?

10 DR. BUCHANAN: This covered all of 

11 my issues - oh no, no, let's see. Let me - he 

12 didn't - yes. The issues that were covered 

13 today did not include site with uranium to - 

14 let's see. We did discuss that to a certain 

15 extent, okay.

16 MR. ROLFES: But we do have 

17 another response that is in the works that 

18 we'll send out as soon as it's available. 

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Was the geometry 

20 and extremity, issue 9, was not addressed. It 

21 was on the chart last time.
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1 MR. KATZ: For RU? Didn't we have 

2 a time frame for that, we already talked about 

3 that?

4 MR. ROLFES: Yes, the report's 

5 actually sitting on my desk.

6 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's right. 

7 That's the one. Okay. So that's fairly soon 

8 that that'll be presumably delivered to the 

9 Work Group. 

10 MEMBER LEMEN: What, the geometry?

11 MR. KATZ: The RU. RU.

12 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

13 MR. ROLFES: Now, as far as 

14 geometry I think we have an approach 

15 documented in our - I'm trying to recall what 

16 document it is. But there were some comments 

17 I think that we had received previously and I 

18 think we looked at those and I'm probably 

19 going to ask for help on the phone. The 

20 geometry issues I think SC&A had identified 

21 that they had reviewed the NIOSH approach to 
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1 interpret film badge data for Mallinckrodt 

2 Chemical worker employee exposures and we have 

3 a specific TIB that addresses those geometry 

4 correction factors. I think SC&A had reviewed 

5 that and had some comments on them and I 

6 believe we're in the process or have resolved 

7 those comments with SC&A. And so I don't know 

8 what else there might be that we need to 

9 respond to there, but we can - we can - 

10 Monica, is there anything else in there that - 

11 I know we had discussed this a little bit. We 

12 had - let's see. 

13 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Are you 

14 asking me in terms of other issues that need 

15 to be?

16 MR. ROLFES: Yes. I remember 

17 there was some uncertainty we would - we said 

18 that we would look at some of SC&A's comments 

19 on the external geometrical correction factors 

20 that were applied for Mallinckrodt workers. 

21 And I want to say that we had looked at that 
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1 but didn't see anything applicable.

2 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: We did. I 

3 think that is in - that was in one of the 

4 responses that we - 

5 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Okay, I do have 

6 it here. This was part of the NIOSH response 

7 to SC&A's Weldon Spring site SEC petition 

8 finding 2, a lack of personnel contamination 

9 egress monitoring. And on the last page of 

10 that document the last paragraph states that 

11 NIOSH has reviewed both the Mallinckrodt 

12 Chemical Works and Bethlehem Steel Site 

13 Profile review documents and found nothing 

14 that would suggest either of those sites did 

15 anything different than Weldon Spring Plant to 

16 address skin contamination nor was there any 

17 greater in-depth review or treatment of skin 

18 doses as was suggested previously. So maybe 

19 we need to address the geometrical correction 

20 factor portion of that, but from what I recall 

21 I think we've got an approved OTIB and I don't 
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1 know the number off the top of my head as to 

2 what that - it's - I think it's like special 

3 dose reconstruction considerations for 

4 Mallinckrodt Chemical workers. Does that ring 

5 a bell to anyone?

6 MR. M. SMITH: Yes, it's OCAS TIB7 10. I'm sorry, OCAS TIB-13.

8 MR. ROLFES: OCAS TIB-13. Okay. 

9 That must have been Matt.

10 MR. M. SMITH: Yes, it's Matt.

11 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Matt. So 

12 we need to take a look at that.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: So that's for 

14 Mallinckrodt Chemical workers, right? TIB-13?

15 MR. ROLFES: That's correct, and I 

16 think that's what SC&A had asked us to look 

17 at. So we went back and looked at that and I 

18 don't believe we saw anything. We should have 

19 specified that in our response here. We only 

20 addressed skin contamination. But let me give 

21 you an update on that as well. When I get 
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1 back into the office I'll send out an update 

2 about the geometrical correction factor 

3 issues, if there's anything that's different 

4 between Mallinckrodt and Weldon Spring.

5 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. 

6 MEMBER LEMEN: Anything else?

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that's us.

8 MR. KATZ: So I think we still 

9 need to clarify then whether the Work Group 

10 has anything more to do with respect to the 

11 '67 discussion and also the - let's start with 

12 that I guess. I think there was one other. 

13 The path forward was a little bit murky, if 

14 there is a path forward. 

15 MEMBER LEMEN: The '60s.

16 MR. KATZ: '67, what we discussed 

17 was that DCAS, Mark and company discussed the 

18 various - and Monica, the various documents 

19 there are which are sort of suggestive of what 

20 did or didn't happen in '67. And he also 

21 discussed at least one of the cases where it 
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1 was contended someone did work and Monica 

2 provided I guess the DCAS interpretation that 

3 that person's work activities fit into a 

4 Department of Army activity that was over - 

5 spanned from '67 or '68 to '69. That was the 

6 most sense they could make of that, that 

7 discussion from that - I guess from a - was 

8 that from an OCAS interview? A normal dose 

9 reconstruction interview?

10 MR. ROLFES: I think that was 

11 actually from an affidavit that was previously 

12 provided. SC&A had identified it and we 

13 looked at that. I don't recall if we re14 interviewed that same person or not.

15 MR. KATZ: Okay, so it wasn't a 

16 dose reconstruction interview, it was an SC&A.

17 MR. ROLFES: I believe so.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Personal interview 

19 but there was no date.

20 MR. KATZ: Personal interview, 

21 yes.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: There was no date. 

2 The worker did not give an exact date - 

3 MR. KATZ: Right.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: - of when it took 

5 place.

6 MR. KATZ: Right.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: It was between '67 

8 and '69.

9 MR. KATZ: Right. So you have an 

10 interpretation based on DCAS documents of what 

11 - where that work experience might fit and 

12 DCAS's interpretation of what's gone on in 

13 that period '67 and after. 

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So at this point 

15 the information about '67 is of no consequence 

16 to us unless there's a future claimant that 

17 has an affidavit or such that he did something 

18 in '67 that we need to - 

19 MR. KATZ: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

21 MR. KATZ: I think that's right. 
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1 I think if someone comes forward with concrete 

2 recollection or information that there were 

3 activities that haven't been captured so far 

4 in what people understand, I think that 

5 situation just rests as it is until - 

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I mean, this 

7 currently doesn't apply to any claimants.

8 MR. KATZ: Right.

9 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: If it comes to 

10 the point that it does.

11 MR. KATZ: So it's - I think you'd 

12 call this closed for the time being. Of 

13 course it could be reopened if there were a 

14 basis for reopening it.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: Anything else, Ted?

16 MR. KATZ: Well, let me just see. 

17 I think there was - oh, the other - well, the 

18 other item that we haven't really clearly 

19 resolved was the discussion about the skin 

20 contamination egress monitoring that was left. 

21 At least it was unclear to me whether - if 
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1 there is a path forward on that.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, SC&A doesn't 

3 have any more to offer. I mean, we just - we 

4 brought it up and we looked at the response 

5 and it appears to be, you know, similar to the 

6 other uranium working plants. But you know, 

7 we really don't have any more to add.

8 MEMBER LEMEN: So that can be 

9 closed?

10 DR. BUCHANAN: We have no new 

11 evidence or anything.

12 MR. ROLFES: Just keep in mind 

13 also that is something that we do look at in 

14 an individual's telephone interview and in 

15 their DOL initial case files. If an 

16 individual does mention contamination and it's 

17 something that could make a difference in the 

18 dose reconstruction outcome then it's 

19 certainly considered. There have been cases 

20 where we've done skin calculations and such to 

21 account for any skin contamination issues. 
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1 You know, a lot of it is important as to where 

2 you know skin cancer would be. For an 

3 external contamination issue it would be a 

4 skin cancer organ - excuse me, skin cancer 

5 would be for the skin would be the most likely 

6 affected organ from surface contamination that 

7 remained there for, you know, a long time. 

8 We'd have to take a look at the specifics of 

9 you know where that skin cancer was located 

10 and such. If it was under clothing then it's 

11 very unlikely that surface contamination on 

12 the clothing would have contributed a 

13 significant amount of dose that was not 

14 recorded to that particular skin cancer 

15 location. You know, if - there's more 

16 specific case details that are needed to make 

17 an assessment of the dose and that is 

18 something that has been done in dose 

19 reconstructions in the past.

20 MR. KATZ: And this, this sort of, 

21 this is where this seems to - this issue 
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1 always seems to end back with this same 

2 discussion. 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: We've heard it 

4 many times.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: We can go ahead 

7 and close it then. If it comes up related to 

8 a future claim then we can reopen it.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. So do we want to 

10 - do we want to run through the action items 

11 here or do people want to just deliver that by 

12 paper, Ron and Mark? Okay. I have notes if 

13 people, if either Ron or Mark wonders, I've 

14 taken notes. I think I've captured it.

15 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: The only thing 

16 I'd ask is when they're noted by paper, you 

17 know, SC&A will put theirs out and DCAS will. 

18 Let's make sure they mesh up so that when we 

19 set an agenda for another meeting - 

20 MR. KATZ: That should be one 

21 document. So who wants to take the - do you 
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1 want to take the first stab at putting out an 

2 action item list that covers both?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Yes, I can 

4 do that.

5 MR. KATZ: And then Mark can 

6 confirm or amend.

7 MEMBER LEMEN: Would you put that 

8 on the OCAS site or how will you give it to 

9 us?

10 MR. KATZ: So he'll distribute it 

11 to the full Work Group and Mark can - 

12 MEMBER LEMEN: Are you going to 

13 send it to our particular address and not the 

14 CDC address?

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. 

16 MR. KATZ: And then Mike, do you 

17 want to chat with - about the Work Group 

18 update for the Board? Do you need to chat 

19 about that? Do you want help from Ron or 

20 anyone or DCAS in preparing?

21 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes, let's - I 
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1 mean I could use any help because you know, 

2 it's - it don't seem we're making progress I'd 

3 like for it. 

4 MR. KATZ: Well, I think you 

5 actually - I mean, you have - you've gotten - 

6 I mean, you've put to bed a lot of issues. I 

7 mean, you're not finished but - 

8 MEMBER LEMEN: If we can get the 

9 list and we can get it before the Board 

10 meeting that would be the purpose of what you 

11 say to the Board.

12 MR. KATZ: Well, after the action 

13 item is put - I mean, it'd be nice given that 

14 you have - you're in St. Louis, it'd be nice 

15 to give them sort of an overview of what the 

16 issues were originally and here is where we 

17 are. It'd be nice, a summary.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes. If DCAS 

19 and SC&A could put out that summary or send it 

20 to me just so I know that they both agree on 

21 what's out there and what's open, what's 
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1 closed so that there won't be no discrepancy.

2 MR. KATZ: So Ron, would you be 

3 willing to maybe do this in a PowerPoint 

4 fashion to make it easy for Mike? Is that all 

5 right with you, Mike, in PowerPoint?

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Sure.

7 MR. KATZ: Just a sort of 

8 simplified overview of what the issues have 

9 been and where they stand.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: SEC or Site Profile 

11 and SEC?

12 MR. KATZ: I think you can focus 

13 on the SEC, but you can - in the tail end 

14 there it wouldn't be a bad thing to list what 

15 any of the more major TBD-type issues and 

16 where those stand as well. He has 15 minutes 

17 so it's not - it's not going to be interactive 

18 with petitioners because it's just a report, 

19 it's not an update. But it'll just be - it'll 

20 be just before we go to public session and I 

21 think it'd be nice for the people there from 
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1 Weldon Spring to sort of get - most of them 

2 won't have been listening to any of these 

3 calls. It would be nice for them to just get 

4 a sense of what kind of progress has been made 

5 on their petition, in particular on the 

6 petition, but on the site in general. So, but 

7 I think you can do a very nice job of sort of 

8 describing the site itself and what activities 

9 went on there and I think that's sort of a 

10 nice place to begin for Mike because not 

11 everybody there will even understand the site 

12 that well even if they've had a surviving 

13 member who worked there. It'd be good for 

14 them to get a little bit of that overview.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. 

16 MR. KATZ: Thank you. And if you 

17 could just - if you could distribute that 

18 maybe - I know there's not a lot of time now, 

19 but if you could get that to the Work Group 

20 just maybe a week in advance of the Board 

21 meeting? 
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: That's next week.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. I mean it's not a 

3 lot of time, but it's a fairly simple brief 

4 presentation. Then everybody can just have a 

5 glance at it and if anyone has anything to 

6 throw into the.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: I'll try to get it 

8 out at the end of this week. That way 

9 everybody will have a chance to look at it.

10 MR. KATZ: That's great. If you 

11 could do that it would be great.

12 MS. LIN: It needs to be PA 

13 reviewed.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Yes, I can 

15 give it to the Board Members to look at before 

16 I finalized anything.

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, and that's easy 

18 because they won't have anything except that. 

19 And it has to run through.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: And Nancy has to 

21 look at it, is that right?
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1 MS. LIN: Nancy Johnson will 

2 submit it to the OGC.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. I'll send it 

4 to her. When we finalize it I'll send it to 

5 Nancy and then she'll take care of it from 

6 there. Okay.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Don't include any 

8 interesting pictures.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Don't include any?

10 MR. KATZ: Not interesting ones. 

11 Not interesting ones, but a picture of the 

12 site would be fine.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, a picture of 

14 the site.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, you've got 15 

16 minutes, you've got 15 slides. That's the 

17 rule of thumb, right?

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: That's - I 

19 believe so. You do the St. Louis meeting and 

20 after that we'll try to set a date for another 

21 Work Group meeting.
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1 MR. KATZ: It sounds like it can 

2 happen relatively soon from my sense of where 

3 everything stands. Everything seems right on 

4 the verge of being delivered or if there are 

5 follow-up items that don't sound like they'd 

6 take very long. It seems like we might be 

7 able to meet in June or?

8 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: We can schedule 

9 it while we're in St. Louis - 

10 MR. KATZ: Sure.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Other 

12 than that there's nothing else.

13 MR. KATZ: We're adjourned.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: We're adjourned.

15 MR. KATZ: Thank you everybody. 

16 Thank you everybody on the line as well.

17 MS. M. JOHNSON: Excuse me?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes?

19 MS. M. JOHNSON: Excuse me?

20 MR. KATZ: Yes? Hello?

21 MS. M. JOHNSON: This is Mary 
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1 Johnson. Could I please make a comment?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. Yes, Mary, what's 

3 your last name? Sorry?

4 MS. M. JOHNSON: Johnson.

5 MR. KATZ: Johnson. Yes, go 

6 ahead, Mary.

7 MS. M. JOHNSON: First of all, I 

8 would like to tell you that I have the utmost 

9 respect and admiration for the knowledge and 

10 expertise you bring to this program. However, 

11 I do have some concerns. I have listened to 

12 all the Work Group meetings. I have read all 

13 the documents that have been sent out, all the 

14 studies, and I was hoping that with this Work 

15 Group meeting today I would have some sort of 

16 feeling of where we stand at Weldon Spring 

17 with our SEC petition. After listening I am 

18 more concerned than ever. I saw some 

19 questions answered but I thought I heard as 

20 many questions asked as answered which means 

21 more time. 
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1 I am overwhelmed with the 

2 knowledge that you all have. I understand 

3 probably very limited amount of it, but enough 

4 to know or get the gist of where we stand. I 

5 would like if you all can to please step back 

6 for just one moment and be a claimant. This 

7 whole process is overwhelming. The longer it 

8 goes on, the more overwhelming it becomes. I 

9 don't want to use the word "giddy" loosely but 

10 we're almost to the point where we think wait 

11 a minute, you know, I'm impressed with all 

12 this knowledge and all this study, but we're 

13 the claimants. Don't forget us out here. 

14 We're waiting, waiting and waiting for an 

15 answer and it is beyond frustrating. 

16 And I urge you not to come to St. 

17 Louis with the idea that we're just going to 

18 hear a synopsis of what has gone on so far and 

19 more time is needed. We urgently need an 

20 answer. Too many of us are dying. We're just 

21 - I can't tell you how frustrated we are. And 
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1 we need an answer, whether it's yes, no or 

2 indefinite, we need an answer. And so I urge 

3 all of you to please bring that to St. Louis 

4 when you come. There will be a multitude of 

5 us there and we want an answer. And that's 

6 all I have to say. Thank you for your time 

7 and for listening to me.

8 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mary. Okay, 

9 we are adjourned. 

10 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

11 matter went off the record at 3:26 p.m.)

12 

13 

14 

15