ORAU Team

NIOSH Dose Reconstruction Project

Technical Basis Document for the Fernald Environmental 

Management Project – Introduction

Document Number:

ORAUT-TKBS-0017-01

Effective Date:02/17/2004

Revision No.: 00

Controlled Copy No.:_______

Page 1 of 9

Subject Expert: Terry A. Kuykendall

Document Owner

Approval: Signature on File____________ Date: 02/17/2004

Terry A. Kuykendall, TBD Team Leader

Approval: Signature on File____________ Date: 02/18/2004

Judson L. Kenoyer, Task 3 Manager

Concurrence: Signature on File_________ Date: 02/18/2004

Richard E. Toohey, Project Director

Approval: Signature on File____________ Date: 02/19/2004

James W. Neton, OCAS Health Science Administrator

Supersedes:

None

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Section

Record of Issue/Revisions ...................................................................................................................

Page

2

Acronyms and Abbreviations ...............................................................................................................3

1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 4

References .......................................................................................................................................... 9
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RECORD OF ISSUE/REVISIONS

ISSUE 

AUTHORIZATION 

DATE

EFFECTIVE 

DATE

REV. 

NO. DESCRIPTION

Draft 12/29/2003 00-A New Technical Basis Document for the 

Department of Energy Fernald Environmental 

Management Project - Introduction. Initiated by 

Terry A. Kuykendall.

Draft 01/21/2004 00-B Incorporates comments from internal and NIOSH 

review. Initiated by Terry A. Kuykendall.

02/17/2004 02/17/2004 00 First approved issue. Initiated by Terry A. 

Kuykendall.
Effective Date: 02/17/2004 Revision No. 00 Document No. ORAUT-TKBS-0017-1 Page 3 of 9

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

AEC Atomic Energy Commission

DOE U.S. Department of Energy

EA exposure area

EEOICPA Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000

FEMP Fernald Environmental Management Project

FMPC Feed Materials Production Center

MTU metric tons of uranium

NIOSH National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

ORAU Oak Ridge Associated Universities

RMI Reactive Metals, Inc.

TBD Technical Basis Document
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1.0

Since World War II, Federal law has recognized nuclear activities as involving inherent hazards. 

Nuclear weapons production and testing have involved unique concerns that have resulted in 

exposures of personnel to radioactive substances (and other hazardous nonradioactive substances 

such as beryllium) that can cause medical harm. Since the inception of the nuclear weapons program 

and for several decades afterward, a large number of nuclear weapons workers at Federal sites and 

at sites of vendors who supported the Cold War effort were involved in activities that included 

potential health risks as a function of providing support for the national military program.

INTRODUCTION

Congress enacted Public Law 106-398, Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 

Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA), as official recognition of the hazardous nature of producing and 

testing nuclear weapons, and acceptance of the responsibility for compensation of those workers who 

developed certain health effects after exposure to these circumstances.

The purpose of the EEOICPA is to deliver benefits to eligible employees and former employees of 

DOE and its contractors and subcontractors or to certain survivors of such individuals. This includes 

benefits to certain beneficiaries of Section V of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. This 

program is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Worker Compensation. The 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), under the U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services, has been assigned the responsibility for determining the dose to individual 

workers by reconstruction of actual exposure records and estimated exposure criteria and for verifying 

the basis for individual claims. 

Under the EEOICPA, workers who have developed selected types of cancer, or their survivors, may 

be entitled to compensation and medical benefits. The Act requires the estimation of radiological 

doses from ionizing radiation received by workers in the various nuclear weapons and materials 

production programs of DOE and its predecessor agencies. Methods for implementing provisions of 

the EEOICPA have been promulgated in Part 82 of Title 42 of the Code of Federal Regulations, 

"Methods for Radiation Dose Reconstruction Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000." 

The purpose of the Site Profiles is to provide information to expert dose reconstructors that will enable 

them to perform their functions for the NIOSH Dose Reconstruction Project in the simplest, most 

effective manner possible. Each profile provides the rationale and historic background information 

required for dose reconstruction related to a particular site that participated in the manufacture or 

assembly of nuclear weapons or their components.

This Site Profile provides specific information concerning documentation of historic radiological 

practices at the DOE Feed Materials Production Center (FMPC), later known as the Fernald 

Environmental Management Project (FEMP). This profile can be used by dose reconstructors to 

evaluate internal and external dosimetry data for unmonitored and monitored workers and can serve 

as a supplement to, or substitute for, individual monitoring data. This document provides a site profile 

of FMPC that contains technical basis information to be used by the ORAU Team to evaluate the total 

occupational radiation dose for EEOICPA claimants. It provides information on facilities, operations, 

site conditions, modes and methods of potential radiological exposure, and inferred best estimates of 

dose parameters where data are missing or might be inaccurate. 

In addition, this document provides supporting technical data to evaluate, with claimant-favorable 

assumptions, the total Fernald occupational radiation dose that can reasonably be associated with 

worker exposures. This dose results from exposure to external and internal radiation sources in 
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Fernald facilities, occupationally required diagnostic X-ray examinations, and onsite environmental 

releases. The discussion includes the doses that workers could have incurred while not monitored as 

well as doses that could have been missed for other reasons. The information in this Site Profile has 

been assembled to assist in the evaluation of worker dose from FMPC processes and activities using 

the methodology in the NIOSH External Dose Reconstruction Implementation Guidelines (NIOSH 

2002a) and Internal Dose Reconstruction Implementation Guidelines (NIOSH 2002b). 

This Site Profile consists of this introduction and five additional technical basis documents (TBDs) with 

supporting tables and attachments. This introduction provides a summary description of the 

remaining TBD sections, which address site and facility descriptions (with focus on locations and 

forms of radiological materials), occupational medical dose, occupational environmental dose, 

occupational internal dose, and occupational external dose.

Part 2, Site Description, describes the facilities and processes that have been used at the Fernald site 

for the manufacture and development of nuclear materials. It includes discussion of remediation 

activities after the cessation of operations.

FMPC operations played an important role in the U.S. nuclear weapons program and were 

instrumental in the nuclear materials production process. The processes conducted at FMPC

included nuclear material processing and machining, fuel fabrication, radiochemical processing, and 

waste management. 

During the Cold War, the Fernald site produced high-purity uranium metal products for the Nation’s 

weapons production program. The site’s history began in 1951, when the AEC awarded a 

$113 million contract to the George A. Fuller Company of New York to construct a uranium processing 

plant on a 1,050-acre parcel of land 18 miles from Cincinnati, Ohio. The AEC also contracted the 

Catalytic Construction Company as the architectural and engineering design firm for the site. 

Fernald had a primary mission to produce high-purity uranium metal products in the form of ingots, 

derbies, billets, and fuel cores for other sites in the nuclear weapons complex. Some sites used the 

products as fuel for nuclear reactors to produce plutonium. The Fernald site was a uranium 

processing facility; it did not contain a nuclear reactor, nor did it produce or handle explosive devices, 

nuclear weapons, or highly radioactive material. 

The AEC awarded a prime contract in 1951 to National Lead of Ohio (NLO), a wholly owned 

subsidiary of National Lead Company, to manage and operate the site. In 1986, DOE awarded the 

management contract to Westinghouse Material Company of Ohio, a subsidiary of Westinghouse 

Electric Corporation. 

Five months after the May 1951 groundbreaking, NLO initiated operations on a plant-by-plant basis. 

As construction of each production plant was completed, NLO tested the processes and started 

operations. In October 1951, the Pilot Plant became the first production plant to operate; all plants 

were fully operational by 1954. By the time construction was complete, 19 acres of the 136-acre 

production area were under roof, 4 miles of railroad tracks were installed, and 24 acres of paved 

roads and storage areas were constructed, equivalent to a 20-mile stretch of highway.

During its 38 years of operations, the Fernald site played a critical role in the nuclear weapons 

complex, delivering nearly 170,000 metric tons of uranium (MTU) metal products and 35,000 MTU of 

intermediate compounds, such as uranium trioxide and uranium tetrafluoride. From the mid-1950s to 

the early 1960s, metal production peaked at nearly 12,000 tons a year. Many of the production plants 

were enlarged in the mid-1950s as part of a site-wide facility expansion effort. In 1975, the site 
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production rate dropped to approximately 900 tons of metal. Production picked up again in the 1980s, 

but by 1989 demand for uranium feed material was low due to the cessation of the Cold War. This 

decrease in demand, coupled with an increase in environmental compliance and waste management 

issues, led to the site management decision to shut down plant operations. In 1991, Congress 

approved the final closure of site production operations and authorized an environmental remediation 

mission. To reflect this new mission, DOE changed the name of the site to the Fernald Environmental 

Management Project.

The 1,050-acre site was designed as a large-scale, integrated facility capable of converting uranium 

ore and recycled material into uranium metal through a series of chemical and metallurgical 

conversions. The actual production processes used about 136 acres in the center of the site; the 

remainder included administration facilities, laboratories, waste storage areas, and buffer zones. The 

production area contained nine primary plants, each with a specific function in the uranium metal 

production process. 

The first step in the production process was the purification of uranium. In the early years, the site 

processed uranium ore, including pitchblende from the Belgian Congo, through a series of chemical 

processes. In later periods, Fernald extracted uranium from scrap metal or recycled material (i.e., 

floor sweepings, dust collector and production residues) received from onsite operations and other 

nuclear weapons sites. 

Incoming material was weighed, sampled, dried, ground, and classified in Plant 1, then drummed and 

transported to Plants 2 and 3 where the material was converted to uranium trioxide. First, the material 

was dissolved in nitric acid to produce a crude uranyl nitrate solution for solvent extraction purification. 

Purified uranyl nitrate was concentrated by evaporation and thermally denitrated to uranium trioxide, 

called orange oxide. The orange oxide was either shipped to the gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, 

Kentucky, or transported to Plant 4, where it was converted to uranium tetrafluoride, called green salt, 

for reduction to metal. 

As an intermediate step, uranium trioxide was converted to uranium dioxide, called brown oxide, by 

reducing it with hydrogen. The brown oxide was reacted with anhydrous hydrogen fluoride to produce 

green salt. Fernald also produced green salt from uranium hexafluoride received from other sites in 

the nuclear weapons complex. 

The green salt was packaged in 10-gallon cans and transported to the metal production operations in 

Plant 5, where it was blended with magnesium metal granules, placed in a closed reduction pot, and 

heated until the contents reacted, producing a uranium mass called a derby. The product, which 

resembled the top of a man’s derby hat, weighed up to 370 pounds. 

Fernald shipped some derbies to other DOE sites but most were remelted in a vacuum induction 

furnace and poured into preheated graphite molds to form ingots. Ingots varied in weight, size, and 

shape and weighed up to 1,400 pounds. Fernald sent ingots to the Reactive Metals, Inc. (RMI) 

Facility in Ashtabula, Ohio, where most were extruded and sent back to the Fernald site for heat

treatment and final machining to target element cores for the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. 

Enriched uranium ingots were prepared by RMI to produce a billet for direct shipment to the Hanford 

Site in Washington. In Plant 6, ingots were cut to various lengths and then machined to very tight 

specifications for the Savannah River Plant. 

The Fernald site served as the thorium repository for DOE, and maintained long-term storage facilities 

for a variety of thorium materials. On several occasions from 1954 through 1975, the site produced 

small amounts of thorium in Plant 8, Plant 9, and the Pilot Plant. 
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Throughout the production years, products from the Fernald site were used at many different sites in 

the nuclear weapons complex. From 1952 through 1976, depleted, normal, and enriched uranium 

cores and fuel core elements were fabricated for the Hanford and Savannah River Sites. From 1976 

until 1989, the main products were depleted uranium fuel elements for the Savannah River Plant, 

enriched extrusion ingots and billets for Hanford, derbies for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee 

and the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, and slab billets for the Rocky Flats Plant. 

In July 1989, Fernald site management shut down uranium metal production to focus on 

environmental compliance and waste management issues. Later that year, the U.S. Environmental 

Protection Agency added Fernald to its National Priorities List of Federal facilities that required 

remediation. Since that time, the Fernald workforce has been dedicated to cleanup, waste 

management, and restoration of the site.

Part 3, Occupational Medical Dose, provides information about the dose that individual workers 

received from X-ray examinations that were required as a condition of employment. These X-rays 

included preemployment and annual chest X-rays during physical exams. 

Part 4, Occupational Environmental Dose, discusses the dose workers received when working outside 

the buildings on the site from inhalation of radioactive materials in the air, direct radiation from 

plumes, contact with particles on the skin, and from direct exposure to radionuclides in the soil. The 

occupational environmental dose includes the dose received by individuals working in radioactive 

waste areas or administration areas inside or outside the fenced production areas. The primary 

radiation exposure pathways are inhalation of airborne radionuclides, exposure to direct radiation from 

materials in the process plants and radioactive waste storage areas.

Due to the various locations of radiation sources at FMPC, the dose received by the worker is highly 

dependent on the amount of time spent in specific work areas. For dose reconstruction, the FMPC

Occupational Environmental Dose TBD has divided FMPC into 11 smaller areas, designated as 

Exposure Areas (EAs), on a grid that provides a realistic estimated representation of radiological 

conditions where claimants might have worked. 

The technical basis for occupational environmental internal dose is presented as airborne radionuclide 

concentrations and annual uptakes of individuals, and direct radiation exposure is provided as annual 

exposure to ambient radiation in millirad in each EA and for each operating year (1951 to 2001).

From 1951 through 1988, the FMPC production years, airborne radionuclide concentrations were 

derived from routine emissions from operations, including handling and storage of radioactive wastes. 

From 1989 on, after the end of uranium production, emission quantities from specific remediation and 

decommissioning activities are not readily available. The resulting radionuclide concentration was 

derived using environmental air monitoring data from the annual site environmental reports. 

Direct radiation dose is the result of photon radiation (i.e., gamma and X-rays) emitted from 

radionuclides stored on the site. The ambient direct radiation field at FMPC was developed primarily 

from the waste stored in the K-65 Silos and the materials handled in the radioactive waste pit area. 

Part 5, Occupational Internal Dose, discusses the internal dosimetry program at the Fernald site. 

Internal doses were highly dependent on specific facilities and operations and are best discussed on a 

location-specific basis, as in the following paragraphs. Each process involved some releases that 

could have resulted in uptakes and internal dose.
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There were ten facilities, or plants, at the FMPC, each of which had specific internal dosimetry issues. 

Internal dose potential existed in the Pilot Plant throughout the history of the site as a result of 

continuing processes with a variety of uranium compounds. In addition, 70% of the thorium 

production at the site was performed in the Pilot Plant. Plant 1 was designated as the official AEC 

sampling station for determining uranium and isotopic assays of uranium ores and concentrates; 

internal dose exposure potential resulted from releases from equipment and during handling. Plants 2 

and 3 conducted the chemical processing of ores and residues, and involved large quantities of 

uranium and its daughter products in liquid and solid forms that resulted in the release of significant 

quantities of uranium compounds to the work environment. Plant 4 conducted a chemical conversion 

process that resulted in measurable levels of activity of in-process uranium compounds in the air in 

the work environment. Plant 5 metal handling processes were inherently dusty and produced air 

contamination. Plant 6 fabrication activities produced internal exposure potentials of significance 

through relatively frequent uranium fires and handling operations. Plant 7 handled UF6 for three 

years, which is volatile and inherently difficult to contain, and produced significant releases. Plant 8 

processed large quantities of uranium and thorium with resultant releases. Plant 9 provided 

fabrication of uranium and thorium metal parts, and the internal exposure potential was consistent 

with the other FMPC facilities performing similar operations.

Each plant had waste or scrap products that it stored or processed for reuse or disposal in areas 

called Production Area Waste Sites. Each of these operations had relatively high (with respect to 

other FMPC operations) internal exposure potential. 

Other waste sites include the K-65 storage silos and the disposal pits that were constructed for 

radioactive waste products from plant processes. Internal exposure potential exists for disposal 

operation personnel and results from materials in the silos and wind-borne waste materials from the 

pits. 

In addition, Part 5 addresses the issue of potential missed internal dose and discusses the changing 

radiation detection techniques and equipment at Fernald during the period of interest.

Part 6, Occupational External Dose, discusses the program for measuring skin and whole-body doses 

to the workers from radiation sources outside the body. The methods for evaluating external doses to 

workers have also evolved over the years as new techniques and equipment have been developed. 

In addition, concepts in radiation protection have changed. As in the internal dose discussion, this 

Part describes the potential for missed external dose. 

Occupational external radiation exposure occurred at every manufacturing and waste storage facility 

on the FMPC site. The major contributors to external dose were plants that contained large 

inventories of raw materials, finished products, or wastes and the radioactive elements in those 

materials. The products were uranium metals, some containing technetium when recycled uranium 

was introduced. Thorium also was handled and stored at FMPC. The wastes included those 

generated by the production processes along with radium from materials stored in concrete silos.

Considering the amounts of materials processed and the relatively small number of production 

workers, it seems likely that few workers routinely exceeded established exposure limits. However, 

many workers might have approached these exposure limits. Early dosimetry programs complied 

with the precedents established by the Oak Ridge Reservation, and used Oak Ridge dosimeters until

FMPC converted to a commercial DOE-accredited system. By that time the FMPC mission had 

changed; for all practical purposes, production had ceased and planning for the retirement of facilities 

had started. Since that time, worker exposures have been well within established limits. 
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REFERENCES

NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), 2002a, External Dose Reconstruction 

Implementation Guidelines, Revision 1, OCAS-IG-001, Office of Compensation Analysis and 

Support, Cincinnati, Ohio.

NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), 2002b, Internal Dose Reconstruction 

Implementation Guidelines, OCAS-IG-002, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, 

Cincinnati, Ohio.