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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

114th MEETING

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

+ + + + +

The meeting convened at 8:30 a.m., 

Mountain Time, in the Hilton Santa Fe Historic 

Plaza, 100 Sandoval Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 

James M. Melius, Chair, presiding.
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PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chair

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member*

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member*

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

ANIGSTEIN, BOB, SC&A*

BARRIE, TERRIE

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

CRAWFORD, FRANK, DOL*

EVASKOVICH, ANDREW

FIFER, ROBERT*

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

FROWISS, AL*

GRIFFON, MARK

HAND, DONNA

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

HUGHES, LARA, DCAS

JERISON, DEB

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

LIN, JENNY, HHS

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STEPHENS, HUGH

TOMES, TOM, DCAS*

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

*participating via telephone
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Table of Contents 

Welcome and Introduction.......................... 4

NIOSH Program Update.............................. 8

DOL Program Update............................... 18

DOE Program Update............................... 25

Review of Hooker Electrochemical Site Profile.... 41

Board Work Session............................... 53

Carborundum Company SEC Petition................. 69

Board Work Session: WG/SC Reports, Scheduling Meetings

................................................ 104

SEC Petitions Status Update..................... 138

Savannah River Site SEC Petition Update......... 143

Dose Reconstruction Report to the Secretary..... 172

Board Work Session, August Public Comments, 

Correspondence.................................. 178

Los Alamos National Laboratory SEC Petition Update

................................................ 185

Public Comment.................................. 197

Adjourn......................................... 239
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 (8:30 a.m.)

3 Welcome and Introduction 

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Hello. Hello first, 

5 and welcome to the 114th meeting of the Advisory 

6 Board on Radiation and Worker Health. We'll have 

7 a number of Members here and, obviously, we also 

8 will have a few calling in, some not for the entire 

9 time, but some for, we expect to be in the entire 

10 meeting. So you'll hear us refer to them also.

11 So let me turn it over to our Designated 

12 Federal Official, Ted Katz who will do the --

13 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Jim. Yes, 

14 welcome everyone here in the room, from the area, 

15 and on the line joining us today. So some 

16 preliminaries. For folks in the room, the 

17 presentation materials you'll find on the back 

18 table. You're welcome to them.

19 For people joining us on the telephone, 

20 the agenda and the presentation materials are on 

21 the NIOSH website under this program's portion of 

22 the website, schedule of meetings, today's date. 
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1 You can go there, get the agenda, see what you're 

2 interested in and follow presentations that way if 

3 you wish.

4 There's also, this is also available 

5 online through Live Meeting. And on that agenda 

6 for folks on the line, you can find the connection 

7 information so that you can get on Live Meeting if 

8 you want to -- all that will do for you is allow 

9 you to see the slides as they're presented. But 

10 you can do just as well, I think, just pulling the 

11 documents up on the website. Whichever you like.

12 So Board roll call, I am going to, 

13 because it's I think simpler, I'm going to run 

14 through roll call but before I do I'll cover --

15 well, I'll just do it in real time. As Members 

16 speak, we'll have some Members on the line that will 

17 be with us for portions of the meeting and not 

18 others, but I'll address their conflict of interest 

19 as I go.

20 So roll call, I'll do this 

21 alphabetically both for the folks on the line and 

22 for our Board Members that are on the phone, I mean 

23 in the room and on the phone.
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1 (Roll call)

2 MR. KATZ: Okay, so we have more than 

3 a quorum which is super. And let me just note for 

4 sessions where we have recusals because of 

5 conflicts of interest, for Savannah River Site we 

6 have Ms. Valerio will be recused from that, 

7 although it's not an action item. And for the LANL 

8 SEC, we have recusals from Mr. Schofield, Ms. 

9 Valerio, and Dr. Poston. So those are the only 

10 conflicts that relate to today's meeting. Josie, 

11 is there -- am I missing something? Oh, okay. 

12 Alright, so that takes care of roll call 

13 I think. And let me just then last note for folks 

14 on the line, everyone but the Board Members should 

15 mute your phones.

16 We do have a public comment session that 

17 begins at 5:00 p.m. this evening and we'll start 

18 with people that are in the room, but then we'll 

19 move to people on the line. And for that you of 

20 course can have open lines because we'll be 

21 welcoming your comments too.

22 But during the meeting, everyone on the 

23 line who's from the public, please mute your phone. 
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1 If you don't have a mute button, just press *6 to 

2 mute your phone, leave it on mute please because 

3 then it will improve the audio. You'll be able to 

4 hear the meeting better.

5 And also Board Members, when you're not 

6 -- that are on the line, when you're not speaking 

7 to the group, please try to mute your phones when 

8 you can too to help for that. And Dr. Melius, it's 

9 your meeting.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: You want to mention 

11 signing up for --

12 MR. KATZ: Oh, yes. So we do have some 

13 people here now already. So for people here in the 

14 room, there's a sign-in sheet for attending the 

15 meeting and there's another sign-in sheet for 

16 making public comments. So please do, if you 

17 intend to make comments this evening, at some point 

18 today sign you name to the sign-up sheet for 

19 comments.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, Ted. 

21 And we'll start with Stu, NIOSH Program Update.
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1 NIOSH Program Update

2 MR. KATZ: While Stu is getting ready, 

3 can I just ask someone, Paul or someone on the line, 

4 can you hear us well?

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: I hear you very fine.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, super. Thanks.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, everyone. 

8 Stu Hinnefeld again and my normal update on the 

9 program progress. I usually go through a few news 

10 items here such that I can to kind of get you up 

11 to date on things that are going on in the program.

12 First comment about budget, I don't 

13 have any inside knowledge on the budget. I only 

14 know what is expected to happen. Right now, we are 

15 operating on a continuing resolution that runs 

16 through December 7th or 9th, one of those two days.

17 And the current expectation from NIOSH 

18 OD is that the Congress during its lame duck session 

19 will pass another continuing resolution into the 

20 first part of next year. I think the date I heard 

21 was probably through March. And then the new 

22 Congress would take up the actions upon the 

23 Government for the remainder of next fiscal year.
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1 I don't have a lot of insight about, of 

2 course no one has much insight about what will 

3 happen speaking about the budgeting process from 

4 last year. There were appropriations committees 

5 or appropriations subcommittees I guess from each 

6 House that submit what they call a markup, what they 

7 believe the budget should be for various agencies. 

8 And our item, our line item was left unchanged from 

9 this year in both of those markups. 

10 So that's an indication and we're 

11 hopeful that we'll be able to continue on as we have 

12 been with the same level of funding. But like I 

13 said, that's more of a hope than any inside 

14 knowledge.

15 Other items I wanted to address is that 

16 we've been working with our partners at Department 

17 of Energy to obtain access to two reporting systems 

18 that we think will be helpful for us in our 

19 evaluation of sort of recent year activities at 

20 those sites.

21 One is the non-compliance, it's not 

22 Nevada Test Site, it's non-compliance tracking 

23 system, NTS. I should have checked that slide a 
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1 little more carefully. Non-compliance Tracking 

2 System which unimportantly has the same initials, 

3 and the Occurrence Reporting and Processing 

4 System.

5 Non-compliance Tracking System is a 

6 database where DOE contractors voluntarily enter 

7 non-compliances with the regulatory scheme. When 

8 I was working for DOE it was only 10 CFR 835 which 

9 was the radiation protection regulation. There 

10 are other regulations also now that are included 

11 in the Non-compliance Tracking System.

12 And so they, we believe that having 

13 access, that we need to investigate those items to 

14 evaluate how sites were behaving in the more recent 

15 era. And it would be from, like, roughly 1995 

16 forward.

17 In addition, the Occurrence Reporting 

18 and Processing System which is not a voluntary 

19 system, which is a mandatory system gives, there 

20 are quite a lot of criteria that would require 

21 people to write what we call the ORPS report.

22 A number of those are radiological 

23 related and so we want to make sure we do a thorough, 
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1 as thorough an investigation as we can with the 

2 sites, what's been identified at these various 

3 sites about compliances and to determine whether 

4 that doesn't have an effect on our judgement about 

5 our ability to do dose reconstruction and how does 

6 reconstruction should be, could be performed.

7 The next item is strictly 

8 administrative. It has to do with either CDC or 

9 HHS deciding that Live Meeting is probably not 

10 going to be supported anymore and we're going to 

11 have to switch platforms for the meetings we've 

12 been using to something called Skype for Business.

13 I think we're going to have some 

14 training sessions on that coming up, and I think 

15 we're going to start with probably Subcommittees 

16 or Work Groups to try that out. I believe it's 

17 going to work much the same. We'll just, it will 

18 just -- we'll just have to learn the nuances of 

19 that.

20 Covering quickly our outreach 

21 activities since our last meeting. We did in fact 

22 have in September with the systems of our outreach

23 contractor, ATL International. We did conduct our 
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1 annual Dose Reconstruction Special Exposure Cohort 

2 Workshop.

3 We had a number of representatives. 

4 Most of the representatives that come to these are 

5 representatives from local labor unions at the 

6 covered facilities. Although we do have other 

7 interested folks as well sometimes.

8 And in that, we spend a couple days to 

9 kind of go through somewhat in depth dose 

10 reconstruction process, SEC process and really get 

11 them acquainted with our website and where to look 

12 for various kinds of information on our website.

13 We did participate with Joint Outreach 

14 Task Group Meeting and two meetings in Iowa, one 

15 in Burlington and one at Ames. And the Joint 

16 Outreach Task Group Annual Meeting was held on 

17 November 14th. That's typically an in-person 

18 meeting, but it's a two hour meeting so we opted 

19 to call in rather than fly in for a two hour meeting.

20 A that meeting we oftentimes set our 

21 Joint Outreach Task Group agenda for the next year, 

22 and this time we didn't. No one really offered up 

23 a lot of sites they wanted to go to. I think 
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1 there's some feeling we might go to California, 

2 possibly go to California if there's an SEC change 

3 to Santa Susana. But other than that, there were 

4 no other sites selected.

5 Okay, I'll get on to the statistics now. 

6 I think you probably all have these in your packages 

7 so I won't dwell on these. We're up to 46,000 cases 

8 from Labor so far. However, 44,000 have been 

9 returned, various breakdowns with the ones 

10 submitted and the ones where DRs are pulled.

11 The number of cases we have in our shop, 

12 we typically have on the order of 200, 300 then are 

13 in the hands of the claimants, that's draft dose 

14 reconstruction in the hands of the claimants at any 

15 given time.

16 Probability of Causation summary, I 

17 think that remains pretty much at 28 percent 

18 successful, or 28 percent with PoCs greater than 

19 50 percent based on dose reconstruction. When you 

20 add in the SEC, the numbers, the overall percentage 

21 of compensable claims is higher than 28 percent.

22 These are the -- this was the records 

23 request information from DOE that we reported, we 
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1 report at every meeting. This is somewhat 

2 typical. It's somewhat higher and the total 

3 outstanding is somewhat higher than the last 

4 meeting and more than 68 for somewhat higher.

5 There's no particular site that really 

6 is contributing too much of this, although at 

7 Pantex there have been some personnel changes that 

8 may have held up the issue a little bit. But it's 

9 not like we have a lot of outstanding cases from 

10 any given site.

11 And as we were doing our summary of our 

12 first 20,000 as opposed to 5,000 or 10,000 and this 

13 is how they break down. Most of the claimants are 

14 back to DOL. A certain number, you know, most of 

15 the claims with us are with us because they're 

16 administratively closed and because the claimant 

17 didn't complete, didn't sign the OCAS-1 form.

18 And so those, our statistics, the way 

19 we do this tally, they show up as with us because 

20 they were closed when they were with us. And if 

21 any of those claimants would return, you know, the 

22 OCAS-1, then that case would be reopened and would 

23 proceed.
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1 And then all the ones that are, have DRs 

2 waiting are returns, they've been returned to us 

3 fairly recently. So I believe that's it for me. 

4 If anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to try 

5 to answer any questions.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions for Stu? I 

7 have an important one. Is this the new official 

8 DCAS slide format for this meeting?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we have some 

10 acceptable formats from CDC. And we're allowed to 

11 choose among about two or three or four acceptable 

12 formats. And the person who makes the slides can 

13 exercise his or her creativity among those, among 

14 those formats.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Nice change.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: So did you go first and 

17 others are following, or what's the --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I suspect not. I 

19 suspect my numbers, my reports since these numbers 

20 are as of, generally they're as of the end of 

21 October because, you know, we were going to start 

22 on November 30th. So my information was available 

23 pretty early. And so I think there's a little more 
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1 time to be creative with my presentation than with 

2 others.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Just checking. Any 

4 other important questions for Stu? Unimportant 

5 ones? On the line?

6 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I've got a question 

7 for him.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: I'm sorry, go ahead, 

9 Phil.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Stu, I got a 

11 question for you. On the occurrence reports, is 

12 that going to be available to you for all facilities 

13 or just selective ones?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: What we're working on 

15 is access in some fashion to all the facilities, 

16 or what we want to see. It may be that the 

17 Department of Energy will just provide them to us. 

18 We'll say we want all the ones from this. And my 

19 understanding is they'll be available for all the 

20 facilities.

21 Now I haven't asked this specific 

22 question about ORPS. I asked the specific 

23 question about NTS. NTS, the database 
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1 administrator says there is no classified

2 information in the NTS system.

3 So we should be able to just get those. 

4 And in fact, we have staff Members and our 

5 contractors and SC&A has staff members who have 

6 access to the Non-compliance Tracking System 

7 Database.

8 ORPS has a different -- it's in a 

9 different organization, has a different 

10 credentialing requirement in order to get access. 

11 And so heretofore they've only credentialed DOE 

12 employees and contractors. They've not 

13 credentialed other federal employees even, or 

14 other federal contractors.

15 So it's an open question about what kind 

16 of access that we'll get, although our counterparts 

17 at ORPS -- at DOE have, are committed to providing 

18 us the kind of access that will allow us to do the 

19 search we need to do.

20 Now if there's classified information, 

21 we won't get that. I don't know if ORPS has it or 

22 not. But it should be for all facilities.

23 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay, thanks.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Any Board Members on the 

2 line have questions? Okay, Stu. Give Stu a 

3 second and it's -- Greg, you're jumping the gun a 

4 little bit.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: That's okay, I just 

6 didn't know who was next.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Jeff, DOL. A little 

8 interagency war here. This is --

9 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Frank Crawford 

10 on the line for DOL. I believe Stu is changing 

11 slides for me. Thanks very much for that, Stu.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, it's Mr. 

13 Rutherford.

14 MR. CRAWFORD: Ah, LaVon, great. I 

15 will move through this --

16 CHAIR MELIUS: But don't worry, we'll 

17 keep an eye on it.

18 DOL Program Update

19 MR. CRAWFORD: That's very good. I am 

20 watching through Live Meeting so I can at least see 

21 the slides. We'll move through here fairly 

22 quickly. All of these slides are available on the 
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1 Board's website portion on the DCAS website. So 

2 if you don't see the numbers for very long, you can 

3 always look them up. Next slide.

4 And I think we have to hit a button to 

5 get the numbers to come up. There we are. So 

6 almost $10 billion in total compensation for Part 

7 B and E combined. If you add in the medical bills, 

8 next slide, you will see that we're at $13 billion 

9 in total compensation at this point.

10 Next slide. So we see where the cases 

11 are. There are some dollar figures on this too, 

12 LaVon, if you want to hit the key. There we go. 

13 And the next slide. There's quite a discrepancy 

14 between the cases currently at NIOSH.

15 Part of this is due to the data capture 

16 date. Ours is November 6th. I think Stu said his 

17 would be October 31st or thereabouts. And there 

18 are usually other reasons for these discrepancies. 

19 NIOSH shows a little over 1,200 cases active at 

20 their site. Next slide.

21 And there should be a pie chart. Here 

22 we are. So we're running about 35 percent 

23 approvals in cases with dose reconstructions and 
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1 final decisions. Next slide.

2 And this information doesn't change 

3 quickly. Next slide. Yes, there will be a pie 

4 chart here. Yes, here I believe the SECs are 

5 included, and we see that we have 52 percent 

6 approvals under that.

7 And the next slide. Top four work 

8 sites, no surprises here. Lawrence Livermore is 

9 fairly high for what is essentially a 

10 non-production site. It's more of a research 

11 establishment. But I think the SEC numbers are 

12 fairly substantial there.

13 MR. KATZ: Chris, can I just, this is 

14 Ted. If you would just actually orally speak the 

15 key points to your slides. Otherwise the 

16 transcript, people are going to have to refer to 

17 the slides to know actually what you're trying to 

18 tell them.

19 So the top four slides here, Hanford, 

20 Savannah River Site, Y-12, and Lawrence Livermore.

21 MR. CRAWFORD: Of course.

22 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

23 MR. CRAWFORD: I'll do that. Since 
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1 you just mentioned those, I'll go onto the next, 

2 but I'll pull in more detail. The next slide shows 

3 the chart of the monthly percentages of the new 

4 cases with DOE versus AWE sites broken out.

5 These are fairly steady, as you see. And 

6 I think we can go on to the next slide. Now next 

7 slide is SEC petition site discussions. Those are 

8 site discussions that are expected to be brought 

9 up at this meeting.

10 And what we're showing here are the 

11 number of cases per site with the number of DRs 

12 already completed. Number of final decisions, 

13 approvals, and that sort of thing. I don't think 

14 there are any real surprises here.

15 There are quite a few sites under 

16 discussion, Carborundum in Niagara Falls, Savannah 

17 River Site, Los Alamos Area 4 on this slide. You 

18 can see that Savannah River and Los Alamos are by 

19 far the largest here.

20 Next slide, please. And then we have 

21 Hooker Electrochemical, a relatively small AWE 

22 site with 383 cases, of which 180 have been returned 

23 by NIOSH with a DR. We have, however, final 
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1 decisions in 363. There is, I believe, an SEC that 

2 would account for the difference.

3 But the approvals are 73. And next 

4 slide, please. For the DEEOIC outreach events, we 

5 have the list of the FY2016 events. I won't go 

6 through those individually. Next slide, please?

7 This is constant information on the Joint 

8 Outreach Task Group and its members. Next slide 

9 please. This is the beginning of the list of the 

10 FY2016. I won't go through these, as I said, 

11 individually. Next slide.

12 And next slide. And next slide please. 

13 Now here I have no details except as you see here, 

14 there's one scheduled at the moment, one joint 

15 outreach event at Simi Valley San Bernardino.

16 Our budgets, like NIOSH, is under 

17 review let's say. So we have been unable to make 

18 concrete plans at this point, but I am sure we'll 

19 have quite a few meetings this year once the budget 

20 is straightened out.

21 The next slides are all standard 

22 handout slides with some information about the 

23 program. But I won't go through those 
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1 individually. So that concludes the 

2 presentation. Now if there are any questions, I 

3 would be happy to answer them if I can.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Anybody, Board Members 

5 have questions? Board Members on the phone with 

6 questions?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm good.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, this is Ziemer. 

10 Let me make one comment if I might. So Frank didn't 

11 actually give this slide details in most of the 

12 cases. And I am concerned about the transcript in 

13 this case because people reading the transcript 

14 don't necessarily have access to the slides.

15 I'm just wondering how we can 

16 incorporate that information into the transcripts? 

17 That said, do you have any advice?

18 MR. KATZ: Paul, so we do actually 

19 leave these, we leave these documents posted on the 

20 NIOSH website with the transcript.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, I know that. I 

22 know that.

23 MR. KATZ: Yes.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's just --

2 MR. KATZ: So people can in the future 

3 download the presentation as well as the 

4 transcript. Does that -- Paul, does that address 

5 your concern?

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I was just 

7 concerned about the transcript's own, sort of, 

8 viability that forces people to go to outside 

9 documents to supplement it. That was just a 

10 concern.

11 MR. CRAWFORD: Dr. Ziemer, this is 

12 Frank Crawford.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, Frank?

14 MR. CRAWFORD: Like Stu's slides, ours

15 are filled with numbers. So I was a little 

16 reluctant to read all the numbers.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I understand 

18 that. Just a concern about completeness of 

19 transcripts. I'm not sure how to find a happy 

20 medium on that. But that's fine.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Thank you. 

22 Any more questions or comments. Okay. Thank you. 

23 And Greg, now you can. I know you're anxious.
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1 MR. LEWIS: I was already ready.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Maintain that 

3 adrenaline rush and the focus.

4 DOE Program Update

5 MR. LEWIS: Alright, good morning, 

6 everyone. I'm Greg Lewis from the Department of 

7 Energy, the Office of Worker's Screening and 

8 Compensation Support which is within the Office of 

9 Health and Safety at DOE.

10 Pat Worthington is also listed up here. 

11 She was planning to come but at the last minute had 

12 to, actually is traveling for another meeting. So 

13 I'm sure she'll be at the next meeting. But you've 

14 got me instead.

15 And actually before I get into this, 

16 I'll just address two of the items that Stu brought 

17 up in his presentation. One was the gaining access 

18 to the ORPS database.

19 It's been a bit challenging just 

20 because, you know, I think Stu kind of alluded to 

21 it, the folks that administer the ORPS database 

22 weren't really familiar with the program. They 
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1 also hadn't given access to another federal agency 

2 or other federal contractors.

3 That's not to say they can't, but it was 

4 just kind of unfamiliar to them so they had a lot 

5 of questions. And they're also in the middle of 

6 working on new, their new regulation for ORPS. So 

7 they've been, you know, pretty busy with that. So 

8 it's been hard to get their attention.

9 I think they just finished that up, and 

10 I know we just had a conference call with them 

11 yesterday, those folks. So I'm hopeful that we'll 

12 be able to settle that and get either full access 

13 or enough access to meet NIOSH's needs shortly.

14 And then the other item, the number of 

15 late claims, I believe it was 20 and 300-something 

16 that are outstanding that are in play, and then 20 

17 of those are late. I believe, I actually believe 

18 that the bulk of those are Pantex. I could, at 

19 least a significant number are Pantex.

20 And we are working with them. We've 

21 gotten federal management down there involved. The 

22 challenge there was the change in contract, the 

23 contract for both Y-12 and for Pantex is now a 
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1 single contract managed by a single federal office. 

2 So everything changed down there with that.

3 And oddly enough, one of the sites that 

4 we had to work with quite a bit last year on late 

5 claims was Y-12 and we've gotten those resolved. 

6 But now of course we're having some issues with 

7 Pantex.

8 And as Stu said, a lot of it is staff 

9 changeover because they're kind of reorganizing 

10 things and moving around who does what. The person 

11 in the group that was responsible for EEOICPA is 

12 handing it off to another group, and that handoff 

13 has been a bit slow which is why we've engaged the 

14 federal leadership at the site office down there.

15 So we believe we're on the way toward 

16 resolving that and we'll continue to monitor it 

17 closely.

18 So as many of you have heard before, our 

19 core mandate is to work on behalf of program 

20 claimants to ensure that all available worker and 

21 facility records are provided to DOL, NIOSH, and 

22 their respective advisory boards.

23 And we do this in three ways. We do the 
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1 individual claims when someone applies to the 

2 program. DOL or NIOSH will request their records 

3 from us and we try to provide them as quickly and 

4 completely as we can.

5 We also work with DOL and NIOSH on large 

6 scale site characterization projects. And then we 

7 also work on research into facility coverage, 

8 primarily for the smaller AWEs, but you know, 

9 whatever comes up we'll try to do some research and 

10 get the answer.

11 I've revised this a little bit, you 

12 know, for those of you scoring at home. These 

13 numbers are slightly different than the numbers 

14 that have been on for a while. I probably actually 

15 should have updated this a while ago. You know, 

16 as you can see, this is about 18,000 and it used 

17 to be about 16,000.

18 A lot of that is because of SERT and how 

19 SERT counts things. Everything that goes over and 

20 back is counted. So these are supplemental 

21 requests, these are requests where, you know, like 

22 at Oak Ridge, things often go to all three sites 

23 because we're not sure if there was crossover 
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1 between the three.

2 So I don't know that we're actually 

3 seeing overall a larger volume of requests, we're 

4 just counting it a little bit more precisely. So 

5 I don't want to say it's a larger workload. But 

6 this is the numbers in SERT and so I want to stick 

7 by that.

8 And then because of the SERT system, 

9 which I think I've spoken about before but I should 

10 clarify, that's our Secure Electronic Records 

11 Transfer system.

12 So I want to say about three years ago 

13 now, maybe even four, time flies, we set up a system 

14 that instead of sending, you know, we started 

15 sending paper way back when and then we moved to 

16 sending CDs with that on it over to DOL and NIOSH.

17 Then we moved to encrypted thumb 

18 drives. And then the final step was to set up an 

19 electronic system where everyone can log on 

20 securely through, you know, encrypted measures 

21 with two factor authentication and all the cyber 

22 security requirements.

23 And, you know, DOL, NIOSH, and DOE can 
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1 send our records back and forth. The requests come 

2 over to us on SERT and we respond on SERT. And the 

3 primary reason was, you know, for data security, 

4 for transparency, and for quickness.

5 But one of the byproducts of that is we 

6 have a lot more data and can count things. So now 

7 that we're a number of years into the SERT system, 

8 we've been trying to set up some different measures 

9 and metrics.

10 And one of those that we've been able 

11 to do is the size of the records packages. And 

12 we've always, kind of anecdotally, you know, from 

13 the subcontractor employees that were there for a 

14 brief period of time we may not have any records 

15 on. And then I've personally seen packages that 

16 were over 3,000 pages. So we knew we had a wide 

17 range.

18 But this actually can, you know, can put 

19 a little bit better number on that in terms of 

20 averages. So for employment verification, the 

21 average number of pages is 14. And even that's a 

22 little misleading because the original request is 

23 probably something like five pages and we, you 
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1 know, fill that out and then attach some other 

2 additional pages.

3 So you know, it's probably in terms of 

4 what we add, it's probably eight or nine pages on 

5 average. For a NIOSH request it's 50 pages. And 

6 the for a DAR for the Department of Labor, it's 150 

7 pages. And then if you add that up for your typical 

8 individual that has all three types of requests, 

9 we're providing just over 200 pages of information 

10 on average. Again, that's, you know, it can vary 

11 significantly.

12 And one word of caution, some of that's 

13 duplicative. You know, in the DAR we're providing 

14 some of the same dosimetry information that was in 

15 the NIOSH and probably, you know, a few of the pages 

16 that were in the employment verification.

17 So you know, that's not 200 original 

18 pages on each individual. But, you know, the DAR 

19 is pretty reflective of providing at least on 

20 average 150 pages per person typically.

21 And then for individual records, 

22 claimants often worked at multiple sites, multiple 

23 contractors. They could have been a fed 
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1 contractor or subcontractor throughout their 

2 career. So we have to go to quite a few different 

3 places, different sites.

4 You know, you could have to check up to 

5 40 different sources for an individual, 

6 particularly if they had a 30-year career, multiple 

7 different entities. And that kind of plays into 

8 the we could respond with zero pages or up to 3,000. 

9 It really depends on the employee's circumstance.

10 And then response time. I just used 

11 FY16 numbers so this would be through September 

12 30th of '16. We responded to 17,674 out of 18,621 

13 records requests in under 60 days. So we have a 

14 95 percent on-time response rate.

15 And again, that five percent is 

16 typically within a few sites, and it's not always 

17 the same. You know, it's kind of rotating 

18 depending on what's going on, what kind of issues 

19 we're running into.

20 The bulk of the sites actually have 

21 little to no responses outstanding or that are late 

22 at any given time. So if you see last year, you 

23 know, I put a couple examples there. K-25, six 
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1 late out of 2,112. Richland, six late out of 

2 1,564. And Savannah River, zero out of 1,316.

3 So some of the sites have a very good 

4 response rate, and then others that we're trying 

5 to work on to get back where they should be. But 

6 overall, we have a 95 percent on-time response 

7 rate.

8 And then the large-scale research 

9 projects. You know, here's a few that we've been 

10 responding to. Some of these are more active than 

11 others. But you know, here are some of the sites 

12 that we were then working with NIOSH on recently 

13 for SEC and/or Site Profile updates, things like 

14 that.

15 And actually, I could read these off if 

16 you would like. We've got Hanford, PNNL, Savannah 

17 River, Nevada Test Site, or currently the Nevada 

18 National Security Site, Los Alamos National Lab, 

19 Sandia National Lab, Idaho National Lab, Lawrence 

20 Livermore National Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab, and 

21 the Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Lab.

22 And then we do document reviews. And 

23 I always point out that, you know, we review final 
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1 NIOSH products and documents, papers, things like 

2 that in which we have a very consistent review time.

3 We also review the source documents 

4 that come out of the DOE sites which is not as 

5 consistent because, you know, it can vary widely 

6 in terms of the volume, the level of difficulty, 

7 whether they're very dense documents with quite a 

8 bit of classified information or lighter documents 

9 that are assumed to be unclassified but we need to 

10 check just in case.

11 So our document reviews out at the sites 

12 vary, you know, a little more widely. But in terms 

13 of the final NIOSH products, we do them typically 

14 eight working days.

15 And then I've just got a little note on 

16 our facility research. Our database can be found 

17 at the link that's shown on the page. And you know, 

18 every year we do typically around five or so sites 

19 or between five and ten we'll be reviewing for site 

20 coverage.

21 And again, these are typically the 

22 smaller atomic weapons employers that did work back 

23 in the '40s and '50s. And I think both Stu and 
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1 Chris mentioned the outreach that we're doing.

2 We did participate in the annual JOTG 

3 meeting. And I think as Chris said in his DOL 

4 presentation, the next meeting is tentatively 

5 scheduled for the Los Angeles area, for Area IV, 

6 but we don't have a specific time frame on that. 

7 It's somewhat dependent on the SEC progress.

8 And I'll mention that my office and Pat 

9 Worthington participated in the National Day of 

10 Remembrance earlier this year at the end of 

11 October. We participated in an event in Las Vegas 

12 but there were events around the country 

13 celebrating the work that nuclear weapons workers 

14 did and their contribution they made to this 

15 country.

16 There was Senate Resolution 560, and 

17 I'm not going to read the text. But again, this 

18 is the eighth year, I think, or ninth. Anyway, 

19 it's been going for quite some time now and it's 

20 always something that our office takes pride in 

21 participating in, an opportunity to thank the 

22 workers for their service and their contribution.

23 And then I'll mention our Former Worker 
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1 Medical Screening Program. It serves all former 

2 workers at all DOE sites. That's federal, 

3 contractor and subcontractor workers at all DOE 

4 sites.

5 It provides a free medical screening to 

6 try to identify occupational illnesses in their 

7 early stages that lead to successful treatment. 

8 And for this area, the Johns Hopkins program would 

9 typically cover most workers, but we also have a 

10 supplemental screening program and a building 

11 trade screening program for construction workers 

12 who could cover folks as well.

13 Information can be found at our 

14 website, and we have a brochure and an annual report 

15 that I posted a link to on our PowerPoint as well 

16 for your information. And that's it. Are there 

17 any questions?

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave?

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Just a comment 

20 that --

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave?

22 MR. KATZ: I just have a note from 

23 someone in the public on the line that they're 
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1 having a hard time hearing when other people speak, 

2 so speak right into the mic, please.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Thank you. That 

4 fifth slide about the size of the record packages 

5 is, I don't believe you've shown it before, and it 

6 was useful, and thanks for doing that.

7 MR. LEWIS: Yes, that was new. That's 

8 kind of a because of the SERT system we have some 

9 increased reporting ability. And there's a few 

10 other things that we're working on too, so we may 

11 be adding as well. But I can keep that one on 

12 there.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, that one was, 

14 it's helpful for us Board Members. And also you 

15 might want to consider doing it by the median rather 

16 than the average just so you don't weight it by some 

17 very, very large reports.

18 MR. LEWIS: Yes. Well, and by a lot 

19 of, you know, there's unfortunately some zeros in 

20 there as well. So I'll see. I'm honestly not 

21 certain if we can do that. I don't see why we 

22 can't, but I'll ask the folks that administer the 

23 database if they can pull that as well.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Any other Board Member 

2 questions? Board Members on the phone, questions 

3 or comments? Are you just plugging yourself in, 

4 Brad?

5 Well, I'll bring this up. We continue 

6 to have delays at Savannah River, getting 

7 information. This is not on cases but on, I guess, 

8 what you would call bigger projects. And I just 

9 want to make sure that that's getting attention and 

10 being addressed.

11 MR. LEWIS: Well, I'll, you know, I 

12 talked with someone about that yesterday. I know 

13 there was an issue getting, I think it was Joe, 

14 access to a site database, something that he had 

15 access to and it lapsed or they had to redo it or 

16 something like that. And I guess that took a 

17 little bit longer than expected.

18 Honestly, other than that, I haven't 

19 been directly engaged. So if there's, you know, 

20 requests that are outstanding or overall slowness, 

21 I would be happy to get involved and see what I can 

22 do to pick up the pace. But I hadn't really been 

23 directly approached or engaged, so I would be happy 
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1 to get involved.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, we have a 

3 presentation later on Savannah River where it 

4 appears that either somebody was overly optimistic 

5 about their timing or was -- there are continued 

6 delays because it appears to be delaying some of 

7 our reports that DCAS is preparing.

8 So I mean, I don't want to get into the 

9 details or whatever right now. But if you could 

10 consult with NIOSH and SC&A and just make sure we 

11 can, doing what can be done to expedite this.

12 I mean, it may be great that they have 

13 100 percent compliance with individual requests, 

14 but you know, some of those could very well go for 

15 naught given that there's an SEC under 

16 consideration there. Multiple SECs. And so 

17 we're providing data that may not really be 

18 necessary.

19 MR. LEWIS: Yes, absolutely. You 

20 know, the SEC's very important to us and we will 

21 see what we can do to remove any delays or 

22 impediments to getting the information out.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: I have a question about 

2 -- I know Sandia, it's on. Sandia's a lower 

3 priority site. But how are things moving there? 

4 I know that there was some trouble with cooperation 

5 there. Can you update on that at all?

6 MR. LEWIS: You know, my understanding 

7 is I haven't really been engaged very much at all 

8 at Sandia. That's not to say that, you know, 

9 typically I get approached when something is not 

10 running smoothly.

11 You know, as long, either if there 

12 aren't any requests or if the requests are flowing 

13 back and forth and everyone's satisfied with the 

14 speed, the completeness, the performance of our 

15 sites, I'm typically not involved.

16 So I have not been approached or 

17 involved on Sandia. So if there is an issue, I 

18 would be happy to get involved. But I'm not aware 

19 of too much.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: I think LaVon has an 

21 update on that that he'll present.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, LaVon just told 

23 me that we've not had any issues recently with 
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1 Sandia.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, there were 

4 some previously, but not lately.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: We have some dates, 

6 actually coming up.

7 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: I always read LaVon's 

9 report very carefully. It's the first one I read, 

10 just before the plane landed. Okay. Anyway, 

11 nothing else? Thank you very much, Greg.

12 MR. LEWIS: Thank you.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. We now turn to, 

14 this is a review of the Hooker Electrochemical Site 

15 Profile. Henry?

16 Review of Hooker Electrochemical Site Profile

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: So our Committee has 

18 been working on the Site Profile for Hooker 

19 Electrochemical Company in Niagara Falls for some 

20 time. And we're now at a point to be able to ask 

21 the Board to approve our reports and close it out.

22 So just to go through very quickly, we, 
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1 Hooker operation, they processed C-2 slag from 

2 electrometallurgical company from the period of 

3 July 11th, '44 through January 15th, '46.

4 That was a byproduct of bomb reduction 

5 at Electromet and Hooker treated the slag to 

6 increase uranium content, and then upgraded slag 

7 was returned to Electromet. So you can see it was 

8 a two-year span in there, or less than two years 

9 that this activity was ongoing.

10 As far as our Site Profile, you can see 

11 the first Appendix AA was in 2007. It was, 

12 TBD-6001 was issued at that time. And then in 

13 2010, an SEC Petition Evaluation Report was issued 

14 by NIOSH. And in September of 2010, SC&A presented 

15 a review of the Appendix AA at that time.

16 And then in January of 2011, it provided 

17 a focused review on other parts of that site review. 

18 In April, a tech TBD revised Revision 00 for Hooker 

19 was issued. And it was at that point that the Site 

20 Profile replaced Appendix AA and went out of the, 

21 what is it? And TBD was then, we had a Revision 

22 1 in 2011.

23 Thirteen, then, when that revision came 
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1 out, asked SC&A to review that revision, and they 

2 came back to us in 2013 with six findings that our 

3 committee then discussed.

4 In December 2015 NIOSH issued Revision 

5 2 of that TBD. So you can see it's been under 

6 review for some time, but it's been sitting out 

7 there and we wanted to see if we couldn't close it 

8 out as quickly as possible.

9 In June of 2016, we had a review of 

10 Revision 2 to the TBD again by SC&A. July, our Work 

11 Group reviewed all the findings and determined that 

12 three were closed and put two in abeyance pending 

13 the final revision of the TBD and Finding 4 remains 

14 open.

15 September, revision three of the TBD 

16 was issued. And in November, SC&A reviewed 

17 revision three and sent that to our URAWE Work 

18 Group.

19 So here's the SEC determination. I 

20 won't read this through, but this again goes back 

21 to the determination in 2012. And you can see here 

22 that the primary problem cited by the review panel, 

23 this original review was challenged by employees.
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1 It went to a review panel. And that 

2 review panel, their concern was the use of 

3 surrogate air sampling data to construct internal 

4 doses, and the TBD can now be used only to estimate 

5 external doses during the operating period for 

6 non-specified cancer claims and during the 

7 residual period for both internal and external 

8 doses for all cancer.

9 Finally, just to go through the 

10 resolution of the six findings here, Finding 1, 

11 NIOSH should review assumptions regarding the 

12 composition of the slag.

13 You can see here they did that and 

14 amended that to change the composition of the slag 

15 that was coming in as well as the uranium 

16 concentration of the slag going out. And once we 

17 got that updated information, we felt we were 

18 satisfied that Finding 1 had been resolved.

19 Finding 2 is examining the position 

20 that external exposures are based on slag input to 

21 the leeching process ten times per month. It's 

22 possible that external exposures are understated.

23 Again, NIOSH reviewed this, discussed 
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1 it with us, and they revised the throughput from 

2 ten times per month to eighty-nine times. Based 

3 on that revision, the Work Group was satisfied that 

4 Finding 2 was resolved.

5 Finding 3, the basis for assuming 

6 internal exposure from the slag dust occurred five 

7 percent of the time. SC&A felt that needed to be 

8 reexamined, as does the assumption that the 

9 concentrate contained two percent uranium.

10 It appears that the exposure time was 

11 understated by a factor of five and the amount of 

12 uranium in the concentrate was understated by at 

13 least a factor of 2.5. Based on the new data, NIOSH 

14 revised the assumptions in the TBD. And based on 

15 that, we were satisfied that Finding 3 was 

16 resolved.

17 Finding 4 was a review of the ingestion 

18 intake to ensure that it was calculated in a manner 

19 consistent with the calculation of inhalation 

20 intake. This was not addressed in Revision 2.

21 And at our meeting, NIOSH agreed that 

22 ingestion needed to be addressed, and SC&A 

23 addressed Revision 3 of the TBD, the impact of the 
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1 Finding 4.

2 And Finding 5, we asked that NIOSH 

3 confirm that the correct units of measurement were 

4 cited in Tables 2 and 3, or Tables 3 and 4 in the 

5 NIOSH 2015-B revision. Typographic errors, NIOSH 

6 agreed to correct those in the next revision.

7 And therefore, resolution of the 

8 finding is placed in abeyance waiting for the next 

9 actual text or written update. But by-and-large, 

10 there's agreement between the committee and NIOSH 

11 to see how we can move forward.

12 The last finding was Finding 6 that 

13 units of measure, the photon dose conversion 

14 factors in Table 4, determine if they were correct. 

15 Then the companion text needed to be revised to 

16 discuss exposure rates rather than dose rates.

17 And we got an email dated July 25th, 

18 2016 that confirm that the units of measure in Table 

19 4 and the Revision 1 of TBD now Table 5 you can see 

20 as we're going through the various revisions and 

21 numbers and the phraseology here gets a bit 

22 confusing. I'm going through it quickly.

23 But we have sorted it all out. And 
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1 finding six is in abeyance again until the new 

2 revision of the TBD is where I would hope this will 

3 be the final revision will be issued. And so SC&A 

4 reviewed it and the Rev 3 addresses the impact also 

5 of Finding 6.

6 So that basically here's the set of 

7 references. And we're just asking the Board that 

8 we've been through this process. You can see it 

9 is important to have these documents carefully 

10 reviewed as we saw the numbers of the number of 

11 cases being reviewed, and the core basis for those 

12 risk determinations are based on the TBD.

13 And therefore, even though some of the 

14 changes were there and the reviewers knew about 

15 them and they have adjusted them, we now feel we 

16 will have a TBD that is fully updated and has been 

17 very, very carefully reviewed to be corrected. 

18 Any questions?

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, I'm a little 

20 confused.

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: Well, that's to be 

22 expected, James.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, it's pretty 
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1 obvious too here.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Right, yes.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: This and other 

4 meetings.

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: So just on the 

7 chronology, so on November 21st, SC&A's review of 

8 TBD Revision 3 was submitted as being edited. I 

9 don't quite understand how that reconciles with the 

10 footnote that you have on, like, for Finding 5 

11 addressed in -- I'm just trying to understand, did 

12 the Work Group see the final --

13 (Simultaneous speaking.)

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: I think this was in 

15 addition to the slide from when I first saw it. 

16 Yes, that was a late edition I think.

17 (Off microphone comments)

18 MR. KATZ: Hold on. I don't think that 

19 mic's on. Thank you, Craig.

20 MR. STIVER: Okay. We were in the 

21 process of finalizing a review, it's going through 

22 copy editing, just about we actually ended up 

23 sending it out to the Work Group later that day on 
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1 the 21st just because the timing was off.

2 And the Work Group hadn't had a chance 

3 to see the report. We didn't feel it was 

4 appropriate to include our actual findings in this 

5 particular presentation. So it was just a matter 

6 of, you know, it's now in the Work Group's hands.

7 I would imagine, you know, Jim Neton and 

8 his people wanted a chance to look at the Finding 

9 4 issue, and then we would have some sort of a 

10 teleconference or a technical call to work that 

11 out.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: So are we really closing 

13 out --

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: It doesn't sound 

15 like we are.

16 MR. STIVER: The only thing left is 

17 Finding 4 really. And so that's just we can't 

18 close it out today, obviously. It would have to 

19 be after another Work Group teleconference.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Does that fit with your 

21 understanding, Henry? I'm just trying to --

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.
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1 MEMBER ANDERSON: There was this 

2 last-minute flurry around Thanksgiving.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, which is --

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: Documents that we 

5 haven't had -- so we will not -- sorry. So I'm not 

6 asking you to vote anything today. But we are 

7 very, very close.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, no. Why don't 

9 we, I think we can reach closure, it's up to the 

10 Board, on all the findings except Finding 4. And 

11 then you have the revision quick meeting or 

12 something.

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: And then probably have 

15 a conference call. We can just close out Finding 

16 4.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Sounds good.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: I mean, when that's 

19 ready or at a Board Meeting. So yes. So I mean, 

20 let's --

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 MEMBER ADNDERSON: Committee, okay.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: -- all this again. We 
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1 have a quorum, let's take advantage.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, fine. Is that 

3 okay with the rest of the --

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Sure.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: And are there other 

6 questions about either the process or about some 

7 of the other findings?

8 MEMBER BEACH: Is it just four, or is 

9 it four and five for this TBD 3? I'm not quite 

10 clear on that. It looks on the slides like four 

11 and five are affected by that.

12 MR. STIVER: Actually, only Finding 4. 

13 I need to give a spoiler alert, but Finding 5 and 

14 6 were in abeyance.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

16 MR. STIVER: Those have been 

17 adequately addressed in revision three. Finding 

18 four is the only outstanding that still needs some 

19 discussion.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Any other 

21 questions? Board Members on the phone, have we 

22 thoroughly confused you?

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I think it's clear 
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1 now.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: When we have these 

4 revisions of slides, we should put revised data 

5 somewhere because these changed very recently.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. But especially 

7 with the holiday thrown in.

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, sorry about 

9 that.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Quick follow up meeting 

11 and so forth. Okay. So if not, then can we have 

12 a motion? Well, I think we have a motion from the 

13 Work Group for everything but, hold off on finding 

14 four. Do that. And so motion. And any further 

15 comment? I think we can go ahead, I think we can 

16 do it by a voice vote?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, yes, sure.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: All in favor say aye.

19 (Chorus of ayes.)

20 CHAIR MELIUS: All opposed?

21 (No response.)

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Abstain?

23 (No response.)
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1 Board Work Session

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you. So we 

3 have a break scheduled coming up. It's 9:30, and 

4 we need to start right at 10:15. So what I would 

5 propose is we try to get a couple of items done, 

6 sort of Board business work session items done. 

7 Then we'll break by 9:45, so we'll take our break 

8 then. And let's start with the meetings because 

9 that's a good time for that to, anybody needs to 

10 check their calendars or --

11 MR. KATZ: Yes, please. Of course, 

12 do.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: -- correspond with 

14 people that aren't on the phone or whatever.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: So we need a location 

17 for the March meeting which, Ted, can you remind 

18 us?

19 MR. KATZ: Right. We have a March 

20 meeting. I'll give you the date in a second, March 

21 22nd and the 23rd. But we don't have a location. 

22 We talked about some locations already that are 

23 possibilities I think.
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1 One is Chicago area for Argonne East. 

2 We have a Work Group for Argonne East now. They 

3 haven't met yet, and I don't know who's the Chair 

4 for Argonne East. Is that Brad?

5 MEMBER BEACH: Brad.

6 MR. KATZ: Brad. So I don't, the 

7 status in terms of when we're ready to meet, I don't 

8 know who we're waiting on, documents from DCAS or 

9 SC&A.

10 (Off microphone comments)

11 MR. KATZ: But I think some of the 

12 thought about Argonne East too was that this is at 

13 an early point. Might be a good opportunity to get 

14 information from people locally there, and that 

15 might be a good argument for going to the Chicago 

16 area. Right? That's what we discussed at the 

17 last Board meeting.

18 (Off microphone comments)

19 MR. KATZ: Well, we could also arrange 

20 for that. Yes, we haven't done one of those in a 

21 while. So anyway, that's one option. Another 

22 with a big question mark is mostly because it's a 

23 warm weather port and we have a lot of work that 
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1 is ongoing but I'm not sure about pace. We've got 

2 just recently a big document from NIOSH but SRS. 

3 That would be Augusta area. So that's another 

4 option.

5 And then again, LaVon, correct me if I'm 

6 wrong but I think Rocky Flats, we have documents 

7 coming out for that which --

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we have our 

9 critical mass lab report coming out within the next 

10 week or so.

11 MR. KATZ: So those are three 

12 locations. I don't know, Board Members, whether 

13 you have in mind others as well.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I would say I was 

15 thinking about it. I don't know if we will be able 

16 to make a final determination on Rocky Flats for 

17 March based on we need another meeting of our Work 

18 Group. But certainly by the next meeting, June or 

19 something, certainly I believe we will be ready.

20 MR. KATZ: Well, if we have documents 

21 coming, are we going to be finished with our 

22 documents, with these documents that are coming 

23 right now?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: What I anticipate is 

2 we will put our report out. Then SC&A and the Work 

3 Group would have a period of time as well as the 

4 petitioners to review that.

5 MR. KATZ: Right.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: And then we would have 

7 a meeting sometime early next year to discuss that.

8 MR. KATZ: So we do have three, you 

9 know, three months, two months, three months.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: The issue to me, 

11 Dave, the issue to me is whether we'll have a chance 

12 to have a meeting of the Working Group before March. 

13 That, because we have to put it on the --

14 MR. KATZ: Right. But we have months 

15 to do that. We have a meeting in January or 

16 February or early March, right?

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. But I know 

18 from our Subcommittee that we're scheduled for --

19 MR. KATZ: Okay, I mean, I think the 

20 difference --

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- a January 

22 meeting. So I'm not sure.

23 MR. KATZ: The difference, Dave, is 
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1 that Subcommittees, you need to post in the Federal 

2 Register 30 days in advance. That slows the 

3 process a lot. But Work Group meetings, we can 

4 have them whenever. We don't have to notice 

5 beforehand.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

7 MR. KATZ: So we don't have that 

8 impediment, or that just slows the process.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Very good. Okay, 

10 then I think it's possible for us to meet and then 

11 we can make a final determination on the SEC 

12 application then in the March meeting, in which 

13 case Rocky Flats would be a very appropriate place 

14 to meet if we want to do that.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Other comments? I 

16 mean, my concern, I'll speak up for Argonne East, 

17 is that we haven't been there for years.

18 MR. KATZ: Forever, yes.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: And we've, yes right, it

20 was the Senator Obama site visit. And so we have 

21 had, you know, very little input from the potential 

22 claimants there. And I think that would be helpful 

23 to have that input.
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1 MR. KATZ: Right.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: In terms of going 

3 forward and that. It's a big site and it sort of 

4 stands out among the laboratories in terms of not 

5 having an SEC, which is a little bit concerning. 

6 It might still be appropriate, but we need to 

7 understand that.

8 So, and then Savannah River is also, I 

9 think it's a question of timing. Maybe we put, and 

10 we don't have to decide location now. We should 

11 decide --

12 MR. KATZ: Well, we do have to decide 

13 March location now because we're --

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Right, right now?

15 MR. KATZ: Well, not right this second. 

16 But we actually are getting to -- it takes a while 

17 to make that machinery work to get contracts for 

18 the hotel and all that. So we really should decide 

19 about it at this point on location.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Chicago's fine.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it's been a while 

22 since we've been to Savannah River too. I mean --

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: If we select Chicago, 
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1 I believe we actually met in Naperville last time 

2 which is closer to the Lab. And it's probably 

3 pretty convenient to O'Hare Airport.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. No, it was 

5 Naperville was where we did meet. And even though 

6 I had lived in Chicago for ten years, I got lost 

7 on the way with John Howard in the car with me.

8 MR. KATZ: I mean, I'm all for that. I 

9 think we would like to try to get public 

10 involvement. And the earlier in the process is 

11 better. So it's just a, I think, we can work with 

12 DOL and our agency to try to get people to come. 

13 And maybe the Applicants can help with that process 

14 too, but try to get a good turn out to get people 

15 interested and involved.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. But if we hear 

17 something that changes our mind in the next few 

18 days.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes, for sure.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just want to make 

21 one thing clear. We haven't even met as a Work 

22 Group. We're still in the beginning which I would 

23 really enjoy public comment into it as we go into 
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1 it because TBD is out there and --

2 CHAIR MELIUS: But we have an SC&A 

3 review. Correct? So we would have a list of 

4 issues that are of concern.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Based on the Site 

7 Profile. Now there may be more issues that we want 

8 to hear about also that we're not aware of or 

9 whatever. So I think we could certainly structure 

10 it around those issues.

11 MR. KATZ: And that's one thing we can 

12 tackle in the Work Group, the first Work Group 

13 meeting, whenever we have that.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. And I think we 

15 should try to have a Work Group meeting, you know, 

16 before --

17 MR. KATZ: Definitely, definitely. 

18 Right.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Okay. Meetings 

20 after that.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay. So let me just remind 

22 you what we have already on the calendar and then 

23 go forward from there. So we just talked about the 
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1 March 22nd, 23rd meeting. That's face-to-face.

2 Then we have a June 6 teleconference. 

3 Then we have a July 25th through 26th face-to-face 

4 again, our sort of standard mid-summer meeting. 

5 We don't need to talk about --

6 CHAIR MELIUS: What are those dates 

7 again?

8 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, that's the 25th 

9 and 26th of July.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: And when was the 

11 teleconference?

12 MR. KATZ: The teleconference is June 

13 6.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Thank you.

15 MR. KATZ: So going beyond those then, 

16 the next teleconference date range that makes 

17 sense, works for other things is the week of October 

18 22nd or the 30th. So we typically try to, we shoot 

19 for Wednesdays normally, but any day those weeks 

20 is good. So for example, the 25th of October, is 

21 that --

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Did you say the 26th?

23 MR. KATZ: The 25th, 2-5.
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Twenty five, okay.

2 MEMBER BEACH: I'm actually going to be 

3 --

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Henry and I can't do 

5 that.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay.

7 MEMBER BEACH: I can't do it either.

8 MR. KATZ: Well, can you do that week, 

9 any time that week?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: No.

11 MR. KATZ: Oh, okay. Let's move on 

12 then from that week. What about the last week of 

13 October?

14 MEMBER MUNN: What's wrong with the 

15 preceding week?

16 MR. KATZ: Well, I suspect there was 

17 something wrong with the preceding but let me 

18 check.

19 MEMBER BEACH: I'm actually out that 

20 week, too.

21 MR. KATZ: Oh, okay. Josie's gone 

22 that week.

23 MEMBER BEACH: So after the, yes after, 
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1 the whole month of October/November is not going 

2 to work for me for anything.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay, so we don't really 

4 have to, we'll miss you for that meeting.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Both of you?

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Both of us.

7 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's right, that's 

8 right.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: So what are the dates 

10 exactly?

11 MEMBER BEACH: For me it's going to be 

12 around the 4th of October until mid November.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: And for you?

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: After the first two 

15 weeks --

16 MEMBER BEACH: And the month of 

17 October.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: And the month of 

19 October.

20 MR. KATZ: The whole month of October?

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: How about the 

22 third week in November, just before Thanksgiving?

23 MEMBER BEACH: That will work.
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1 MEMBER ANDERSON: How about the Friday 

2 after Thanksgiving?

3 MEMBER BEACH: That will work too.

4 MEMBER MUNN: How about just calling 

5 in?

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, well let's, that's --

7 CHAIR MELIUS: We'll let us talk a bit.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, okay. Let's do some 

9 figuring. We'll come back to this. The 

10 face-to-face meeting, then the next face-to-face 

11 meeting about, it's similar to this timing now. So 

12 the week of December 4th, or the 11th. Or we're 

13 moving into January if neither of those work. So 

14 why don't you look first at the week of December 

15 4th?

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: Ted, that week is not 

17 good for me.

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's Jim Lockey.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: And it's not good for me 

20 either.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, we need our 

22 Chair, and we need Jim. Okay.

23 MEMBER LOCKEY: The following week, 
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1 how about the following week?

2 MR. KATZ: So the week of the 11th, how 

3 does that work?

4 MEMBER BEACH: Good.

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's good for me.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's the week of, 

7 excuse me, so December 11th we're talking about.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: It's good.

9 MR. KATZ: Does that work for Paul, how 

10 about you?

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, had to get off of 

12 mute here. Yes, I'm good.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. So shall we say that, 

14 then? So that's the week of December 11th. Do you 

15 want to do the middle of the week?

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, so that would be the 

18 13th and 14th. Does that work?

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Hanukkah. It may 

20 be Hanukkah, but it's not worthy of taking special 

21 time off for those of us who are Jewish. I think 

22 we can go ahead with it.

23 MR. KATZ: Okay. So let's say the 
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1 December 13, 14. That's 2017. Where? Andy says 

2 where. Alaska.

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was thinking 

4 Hawaii.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Can we have a site 

6 there?

7 MEMBER FIELD: Or somewhere in the 

8 Caribbean would work.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's it for 

10 scheduling.

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: Maybe that's our 

12 SRS.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: Ted, Jim Lockey. Is 

15 there a meeting in October/November, or is that 

16 what happened?

17 MR. KATZ: So we didn't, Jim, we're 

18 going to come back to that question of when to do 

19 the teleconference.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: It's a teleconference 

21 so it's only, probably more of a question of making 

22 sure we have a quorum than --

23 MR. KATZ: Yes, we need a quorum and we 
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1 don't want to, if we do it before, it's going to 

2 be very early in the process and then it may not 

3 be that useful.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: Got you, alright.

5 MR. KATZ: So that's the catch. But

6 we'll come back to that later. Maybe tomorrow.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. It's 9:45. 

8 We'll break. We'll start promptly at 10:15 

9 because we may have petitioners on the line.

10 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

11 went off the record at 9:45 a.m. and resumed at 

12 10:17 a.m.)

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

14 MR. KATZ: Can I just check before we 

15 get started, on the line, maybe Paul, just tell me 

16 if you can hear me clearly?

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I'm here and I can 

18 hear you clearly.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay, thanks.

20 MEMBER POSTON: Ted?

21 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's John?

22 MEMBER POSTON: Yes, I'm here.

23 MR. KATZ: Super. And I can hear you 
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1 clearly.

2 MEMBER POSTON: I was on mute.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Anybody else here?

4 MR. KATZ: Well, we should have, let's 

5 see, Paul, John on the phone. No, that's it, 

6 right?

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So we're going 

8 to be talking about the Carborundum Company SEC 

9 petition and the report from the Work Group on that. 

10 Those of you on the line and here, how we do this, 

11 since it's a petition, first we'll have the 

12 presentation from the Work Group. My 

13 understanding is someone from NIOSH will be 

14 available on the phone if there are questions for 

15 NIOSH, for DCAS about this.

16 We'll have any Board Member questions 

17 or comments to be addressed. And then before we

18 take any action, we'll provide an opportunity for 

19 the petitioners if they wish to make any public 

20 comments about the SEC petition, to do so before. 

21 And after that, we will then let the Board 

22 deliberate and decide what recommendation to make 

23 on this.
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1 Unfortunately, in the agenda, Dr. Gen 

2 Roessler who is the Chair of the Work Group was 

3 supposed to present. She's not able to be here 

4 today, nor her initial substitute, Dr. John Poston 

5 who is also not available, I don't think for the 

6 entire time, anyway. I'm not sure about John.

7 So John Stiver is going to, from SC&A 

8 will do the presentation I think Gen was planning 

9 on doing. But, so why don't you go ahead, John.

10 Carborundum Company SEC Petition

11 MR. STIVER: Okay, thank you, Dr. 

12 Melius. I'm John Stiver from SC&A and we're going 

13 to talk about SEC petition 00223 for Carborundum 

14 Plant today.

15 Just some pro forma stuff here. This 

16 is the Work Group Members. Gen Roessler is the 

17 Chair. Brad Clawson, Bill Field and John Poston.

18 A little bit of backdrop on the 

19 Carborundum Company. It's located in Niagara 

20 Falls, New York, was an Atomic Weapons Employer for 

21 two different periods, one way back in 1943 from 

22 June to September, and again from 1959 to 1967.
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1 So we have to operational periods and 

2 also two residual periods, first from 1943 to 1958, 

3 and the second from 1968 to 1992. As a facility 

4 listing, from June to September of '43. In June of 

5 '43 the Carborundum Company at its Globar Plant, 

6 Buffalo Avenue locations, they performed 

7 experimental grinding of uranium metal using a 

8 centerless grinder.

9 The slugs were received in June, and 

10 then were shipped back in September 1943. From 

11 1959 to '67, Carborundum manufactured uranium and 

12 plutonium carbide pellets for an AEC research 

13 program. In addition to that, they performed work 

14 during the 1950s that's not covered under -- which 

15 included the fabrication of nuclear fuel elements 

16 for commercial purposes.

17 The proposed and evaluated Class, the 

18 requested Class was all employees who worked in any 

19 area of the Carborundum Company facility on Buffalo 

20 Avenue in Niagara Falls, New York from January 1st, 

21 1943 to December 31st of 1976.

22 And you can see this note here. 

23 There's no identified dose reconstruction
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1 infeasibilities for the site. NIOSH limited its 

2 evaluation to petitioner Class period from '43 to 

3 '76 rather than to 1992.

4 Here's the NIOSH feasibility summary. 

5 As you can see during the operation and residual 

6 periods for both internal and external, I believe 

7 feasibility is indeed possible.

8 Here's a little bit of a timeline on the 

9 SEC petition itself. It was received in November 

10 of 2014. Several exchanges led up to our first 

11 Work Group meeting which took place August 18th of 

12 this year.

13 And what's not included here is the 

14 second meeting which just took place a couple of 

15 weeks ago on November 17th where the issue of 

16 surrogate data was discussed. And we'll be seeing 

17 that later in the presentation.

18 This is just kind of an overview. 

19 We're going to go through each of these seven 

20 findings. This sort of lists what they are. 

21 They're all, two and seven are basically in 

22 abeyance. They are closed as SEC issues. 

23 Basically all of the seven findings are closed as 
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1 SEC issues.

2 Now take a look at finding one. This 

3 was that NIOSH failed to prescribe a methodology 

4 to assess dose to the skin and hands and forearms 

5 from x-ray diffraction equipment. And the basis 

6 of this was that NIOSH had a methodology based on 

7 x-ray diffraction or XRD equipment at Sandia 

8 Laboratories at Livermore.

9 But that same description and technical 

10 factors were not available for Carborundum. So 

11 SC&A really had our hands tied in determining how 

12 NIOSH intended to bound the XRD doses.

13 NIOSH then came back after they had 

14 acquired additional information. They assessed 

15 the doses to the XRD operators, and it was concluded 

16 that dose to the skin and the hands would be 

17 assigned using the exposure to uranium work areas 

18 because it was bounding.

19 I believe it was about 10 rads per year 

20 of shallow dose to the skin. I think, like, 115 

21 rads to the extremities of the hands. So that 

22 issue was closed.

23 Finding number two related to this 
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1 issue of processing of thorium on site, this 

2 actually took place I believe in mid 1950s. So 

3 then during that first residual period, there was 

4 no evidence. NIOSH presented a weight of evidence 

5 argument that there probably was no weapon-related 

6 work going on with thorium.

7 However, during the second operational 

8 period, because all sources of exposure have to be 

9 considered, NIOSH would therefore have to account 

10 for potential thorium exposures by using the air 

11 sampling data that were available at the time.

12 I believe in the August meeting, I 

13 believe Jim Neton indicated that they were going 

14 to look at that a little bit more carefully. And 

15 so that is deemed a Site Profile issue. It is in 

16 abeyance awaiting methodology on the part of NIOSH.

17 Finding three, this was the use of 

18 strontium-90 thickness gauges. And we had found

19 evidence that in 1952, the site acquired several 

20 thickness gauges as part of their QA efforts. And 

21 these had about two curies of strontium-90 in 

22 equilibrium with yttrium-90.

23 So we have pure beta emitters, 
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1 high-energy beta emitters. So there was a 

2 potential for Bremsstrahlung radiation exposure to 

3 workers. NIOSH agreed to go take a look and see if 

4 they could find some more information on this, and 

5 they did.

6 And it turns out that that, the gauges 

7 were indeed located in the Wheatfield, New York 

8 plant which was a town near Niagara Falls, but it's 

9 not a covered facility. So that issue was moot and 

10 it's closed basically. We withdrew that finding.

11 Finding four, a failure to assign doses 

12 for medical x-rays during the first operational 

13 period. They didn't assign any medical x-rays 

14 during that period because the correspondence from 

15 the contractor, DuPont, said the grinding of 

16 uranium and Carborundum didn't require medical 

17 supervision.

18 Well, that still doesn't address, you 

19 know, workplace exposures to medical x-rays as part 

20 of their employment which is required under 

21 EEOICPA. NIOSH agreed that they should indeed do 

22 an x-ray exam for claimants during that first 

23 operational period. And we agreed, and the Work 
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1 Group agreed, and that finding's closed.

2 Finding five is kind of related, it was 

3 the example DR that NIOSH provides along with the 

4 Evaluation Report. Failure to assign medical 

5 x-ray doses during the second operational period. 

6 And you see there's a lot of verbiage here. I'm 

7 not going to go through and read everything here.

8 Let's see. The sample DR in support of 

9 the ER, it's posted on the website, explicitly 

10 stated there's no medical x-rays doses were 

11 assessed to hypothetical worker. And we have felt 

12 that inconsistency needed to be resolved.

13 NIOSH agreed to include medical x-rays 

14 for the period, and we concurred with their 

15 resolution. So the Work Group agreed to close that 

16 finding.

17 Finding six. This was the 

18 inappropriate and incorrect use of FGR report 12, 

19 the dose conversion factors. And as opposed to the 

20 TBD-6000 factors, to estimate internal and 

21 external doses from intakes of uranium dust and 

22 from exposure to uranium metal.

23 NIOSH used FGR 12 to calculate doses 
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1 from submersion in a cloud of radioactive dust and

2 exposure to contaminated surfaces instead of using 

3 the values in TBD-6000.

4 Photon dose coefficients from FGR-13 

5 are only about 30 percent of the values in TBD-6000. 

6 There was a problem with that also in that FGR 12, 

7 the DCFs are for effective dose and not equivalent 

8 dose to organs.

9 And there's really no way to tease out 

10 organ doses from that. Now, granted the doses are 

11 small, but you know, it's a scientifically 

12 incorrect approach and did result in slightly lower 

13 doses overall.

14 NIOSH agreed to use the TBD-6000 values 

15 in the August 18th discussions, and the Work Group 

16 agrees to close that finding as well.

17 Finally finding seven, dose 

18 calculations in a sample DR were not reproducible. 

19 And we had tried to independently reproduce their 

20 doses assuming that they were best estimates.

21 And it turned out that there were some 

22 efficiency measures employed, for example using 

23 type F for intakes for the 1943 uranium grinding 
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1 work when really M and S were applicable.

2 NIOSH -- excuse me, my voice is kind of 

3 going -- does believe that those comments should 

4 be resolved before it provides an update. Oh, let 

5 me back up just a second.

6 This is going to kind of segue into the 

7 next issue. NIOSH had indicated or reminded us 

8 that in our review we had questioned some of the 

9 surrogate data that were being applied. And NIOSH 

10 felt that it was best to wait until those issues 

11 were resolved until they went back and took a look 

12 at this sample DR and made some revisions to it.

13 And that kind of brings us up to the 

14 November 17th meeting where we looked at the use 

15 of surrogate data from TBD-6000. The DCAS 

16 assessment relied on surrogate data in TBD-6000 to 

17 estimate external and internal doses for the 1943 

18 experimental work.

19 It also relied on surrogate data for the 

20 reconstruction of external doses from uranium work 

21 in the 1959 through '67. But external doses for 

22 mixed uranium/plutonium compounds did not rely on 

23 surrogate data or estimates of intakes from 1959 
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1 to 1967. So it's kind of a focused use of surrogate 

2 data.

3 Now we'll take a look first at the first 

4 operational period. We took a look at the 

5 surrogate data that were proposed and compared that 

6 to the Advisory Board criteria.

7 The hierarchy of data, exclusivity 

8 constraint, site and process similarities, 

9 temporal considerations and plausibility. And in 

10 every one of these situations, the surrogate data 

11 for this first period met the Board's criteria. So 

12 we felt that the surrogate data on uranium intakes 

13 satisfied all criteria in that particular case.

14 Now for external exposure to uranium, 

15 the actual source term during the first operational 

16 period was about 13.6 kilograms of natural uranium; 

17 that was slugs. And during the second operational 

18 period, there were 4.6 kilograms of uranium shot 

19 requested. And batches of it were produced in 30 

20 gram to 2.7 kilograms. So pretty small amounts 

21 overall.

22 NIOSH did MCNP modeling since none of 

23 the other, you know, there's obviously no personnel 
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1 monitoring, area monitoring or anything of that 

2 nature, so we had to default to source term 

3 modeling.

4 And so they went ahead and did modeling, 

5 but they used, like, a 477 kilogram ingot, about 

6 two feet high by ten inches deep and so forth. And 

7 we took a look at that to determine whether it 

8 really satisfied the criteria, the hierarchy of 

9 data.

10 The exclusivity constraint, we felt 

11 there were other sources of data available in 

12 TBD-6000 that were more appropriate. So we didn't 

13 feel that it met that. Site and process 

14 similarities, again major differences in source 

15 term.

16 Temporal considerations really didn't 

17 matter, really because site and process, it's 

18 really, it's a completely different time frame and 

19 so forth. Plausibility, we thought there were 

20 major differences in both the actual and the 

21 modeled source terms.

22 And our review came up with the 

23 suggested resolution during the first period was 
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1 to model the dose rates from seven slugs, much 

2 smaller slugs in a certain type of array. And the 

3 second period, to model the dose rate from uranium 

4 plate, and that was about three kilograms.

5 NIOSH is going to go back and take a 

6 second look at this. However, we stress this is 

7 not an SEC issue, as other source terms that are 

8 more appropriate are available in TBD-6000.

9 So the bottom line, the Work Group 

10 concludes that with appropriate adjustments, NIOSH 

11 can indeed reconstruct doses for the proposed SEC 

12 Class, and the Work Group moves that the SEC 

13 petition 223 be denied.

14 And I don't know if Tom Tomes is online. 

15 He's the author of the TBD, and would probably be 

16 in the best position to address any technical 

17 issues. Also Bob Anigstein, Dr. Anigstein from 

18 SC&A is online as well.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Questions from 

20 anybody? Okay, go ahead. Josie?

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Melius? Ted?

22 MR. KATZ: Right, Jim. We can hear 

23 you. It's just that --
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, the petitioners 

2 could not hear a lot of the presentation. So --

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Could you hear it, Jim?

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: It was soft, but I 

5 could hear it. But I don't know who the 

6 petitioners are, but I heard them talking to each 

7 other and they were having trouble hearing. So I 

8 just want to pass that on.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you.

10 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Jim.

11 MEMBER BEACH: And I was wondering how 

12 many workers this involved who were affected?

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Tom, can you answer 

14 that?

15 MR. TOMES: Yes. Tod Tomes. The 

16 operations at Carborundum was a relatively small 

17 operation. The early work was just experimental 

18 for barely a few weeks involving one machine. The 

19 later second period was initially was working with 

20 uranium, and then they expanded that work into the 

21 mixed uranium/plutonium pellets.

22 And for the most part, there was a 

23 one-man operation. However, there was other 
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1 people involved. So we do have interviews from 

2 workers who said that the work in the plutonium 

3 facility was basically a one-man operation.

4 But as I said, the other people 

5 involved, they had some testing going on of the 

6 pieces they were fabricating.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: But the number of claims 

8 looked, I thought --

9 MEMBER BEACH: It was huge. It was, 

10 like, three hundred and something. That's why I 

11 got confused.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: And the significant 

13 percentage of them had been compensated, I thought.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, 50-some odd had 

15 been compensated.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: That was in the 

17 Department of Labor --

18 MEMBER BEACH: That's why I was asking, 

19 because it was confusing.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well this is Stu 

21 Hinnefeld. As is the case in many, many times, 

22 there may be only a few people in a particular 

23 exposure category, but the records are just not 
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1 sufficient to identify which people those were.

2 And so we essentially, given evidence 

3 to the contrary, I mean, some people's records may 

4 contain information that would leave you to 

5 conclude with confidence that those people were not 

6 exposed.

7 If you don't have that sort of 

8 information in any particular person's record, we 

9 say well, this could very well be one of the people 

10 that was exposed. And so each individual then is 

11 treated as if they might.

12 Now when you do that, you end up with 

13 far more people getting higher dose 

14 reconstructions than maybe actually happened. 

15 But that's not that uncommon in how we do things.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Is that clear now?

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. So I think what 

19 you're saying is that the work records are not clear 

20 in terms of placing people in this particular 

21 operation. So if it were an SEC, it would cover 

22 a significant number of possibly additional 

23 people. We don't know from this. Phil?
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I've got one 

2 question that SC&A or NIOSH could answer. Is there 

3 any records for the ventilation, or is there any 

4 type of ventilation in the area where they're doing 

5 the centerless grinding? Was that just kind of an 

6 open-room process?

7 MR. KATZ: Tom?

8 MR. TOMES: This is Tom. I could not 

9 hear the question very well on part of that.

10 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. So there's 

11 someone on the line who's got their phone open and 

12 they're breathing into their phone, and that's 

13 probably hurting the audio quality for others.

14 But Tom, the question is what sort of, 

15 what do we know about the ventilation for this 

16 operation, and if you could just address that 

17 question.

18 MR. TOMES: 1943 work, we presume there 

19 was no ventilation required. And records suggest 

20 that there was no special requirements required by 

21 the Manhattan Engineer District for the testing 

22 they did.

23 The 1959 through 1967 period, most or 
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1 nearly all the work was done in hoods or glove 

2 boxes. The uranium work was done in hoods and 

3 glove boxes. Most of the work had to be done in 

4 an inert atmosphere.

5 The plutonium facility was fully 

6 designed, modern facility. But ventilation 

7 contained glove boxes, and inert atmospheres. 

8 Essentially it was a contained operation with only 

9 minimal fugitive emissions.

10 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Tom.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I have a couple 

12 of comments. And I guess in some way they're 

13 questions. Two parts. One is -- these are sort 

14 of procedural. One is that you have SC&A, and I 

15 think NIOSH agreed, that the original example dose 

16 reconstruction was not appropriately done and that 

17 the methods for that are going to be changed.

18 But as I understand it, those methods 

19 haven't been chosen yet. And so there is no, you 

20 know, representative example dose reconstruction 

21 done yet. And even more disturbing to me is the 

22 issues with the surrogate data where the surrogate 

23 data criteria were not met, and now we're going back 
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1 to develop a new set of surrogate data from 

2 TBD-6000.

3 And the issue isn't whether, you know, 

4 those are in general appropriate but the question 

5 is are they applicable to this particular site. 

6 And I really find it troubling that we would, in 

7 the case of a surrogate data, we sort of refer this 

8 automatically as a Site Profile issue.

9 It's not. I don't think you've 

10 demonstrated that the SEC can be, that the dose 

11 reconstructions can be done yet. You're assuming 

12 it. And you may very well be right, I'm not 

13 questioning that or questioning the Work Group.

14 But I don't think we have a 

15 demonstration on the record that those surrogate 

16 data can be met, criteria can be met. And I guess 

17 I find that troubling to do, unless I missed, and 

18 I guess my question is did I miss a report or a 

19 technical report that was done.

20 Otherwise, now I haven't read the 

21 transcripts from the Work Group meetings and 

22 perhaps there was something in there that fleshed 

23 it out more.
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1 But certainly not from the slides, I 

2 don't see an indication, and from the presentation 

3 that we actually have a methodology that will be 

4 used and that that methodology has been reviewed 

5 for, one, against our surrogate data criteria, and 

6 secondly against that we have an example of dose 

7 reconstruction done with that criteria now.

8 Again, so my question for I guess you, 

9 John, or anybody else who's involved is has that 

10 been done? Did I miss it?

11 MR. STIVER: Bob Anigstein did a pretty 

12 thorough review and it was discussed extensively 

13 in the August meeting. What you're seeing here is 

14 just kind of a 10,000 foot view. But Bob, if you're 

15 on, maybe you can answer Dr. Melius' question.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, this is 

17 Ziemer. I'm looking at the SC&A, they have a 

18 report called NIOSH use of surrogate data for 

19 Carborundum. And as I understood this report, 

20 SC&A agreed that they met the surrogate data 

21 requirements. This report is authored by Bob 

22 Anigstein and John Mauro.

23 MEMBER BEACH: Was it the November 10th 
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1 date, Paul, you're talking about?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, November 10th 

3 report.

4 MEMBER BEACH: The most recent one.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Then why isn't that on 

6 the slides? What are the criteria that they're 

7 using? The slides say that this is going to be done 

8 going forward.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is a report dated 

10 November 10th. So I'm not sure what their sequence 

11 was here. But the report was with the materials 

12 distributed.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, but what were the 

14 criteria being used, is my question. What were 

15 they, because that's not what the slide says.

16 MR. KATZ: Tom --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, they went 

18 through each of the five, there's discussion on 

19 each of the five.

20 MR. KATZ: Either John or Bob or Tom --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: John and Bob are on the 

22 line. I don't feel like I should discuss their 

23 report other than point out what their conclusions 
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1 were.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, this is Ted. They're 

3 different components of dose that were addressed, 

4 I think. But so one of them can speak to this 

5 matter.

6 MR. STIVER: Bob, if you're on line, 

7 that would probably be best since you did the report 

8 and heavy lifting on this. I can say that he looked 

9 at that uranium slug, felt that it really didn't 

10 match up with the Board's five criteria for 

11 surrogate data, but that there are TBD-6000 data 

12 which would. Now NIOSH would still have to come 

13 back with some sort of a proposal as to how they 

14 were going to address that. But based on our 

15 report, we felt, based on our judgment and review 

16 of TBD-6000 and what was actually going on at the 

17 facility, that this would probably, at least in our 

18 opinion, meet the surrogate data criteria.

19 MR. KATZ: Is Bob on the line? Bob 

20 Anigstein?

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I am.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: He did say he was going 

23 to be on.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay, he planned to, I know. 

2 I mean, just to add to what John just said, the 

3 discrepancy is that I think DCAS -- but Tom can 

4 speak to this. DCAS selected a different scenario 

5 from TBD-6000 than Bob Anigstein felt was 

6 appropriate.

7 And I think there's general agreement, 

8 there was agreement by the Work Group and so on that 

9 that's correct, that Bob was correct. And so they 

10 have not moved to putting in the, to use the 

11 alternative.

12 I know Bob Anigstein actually, I mean, 

13 they discussed the specifics of what the 

14 alternative should be from TBD-6000 from the one 

15 that was used. And I think there was general 

16 agreement that that's correct.

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: This is Bob.

18 MR. KATZ: But they haven't 

19 implemented it. So that's where that stands, is 

20 that correct, Bill?

21 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Yes.

23 MEMBER BEACH: Bob is on the line.
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: This is Bob Anigstein. 

2 I don't know if I can be heard.

3 MR. KATZ: Bob, you have to speak right 

4 into your -- Bob, go ahead.

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, basically the 

6 criticism on the use of surrogate data was that the 

7 source term of internal exposure was overstated, 

8 that they used a much larger quantity of uranium 

9 in their example DR.

10 MR. KATZ: Wait. Bob, can I just 

11 interrupt you because you're really not audible for 

12 at least some of us. Can you speak directly into 

13 a phone handpiece or something?

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Is this better?

15 MR. KATZ: That's 100 percent better. 

16 Thank you.

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay, okay. I don't 

18 hear as well on this phone, but I can speak on it. 

19 Okay, in summary, our objection to the use of 

20 surrogate data was that NIOSH used an implausible 

21 source term for the external exposure.

22 We agreed with the use of the source 

23 term for the inhalation, for the internal exposure. 
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1 But the external exposure, it was based on, I think 

2 it was a 470-kilogram, it amounts to, uranium slab 

3 whereas in reality they had only a few pounds of 

4 uranium, like, maybe 30 pounds at one time in one 

5 case.

6 So we simply suggested that there are 

7 other source terms available in TBD-6000 which 

8 would require a little bit of additional 

9 calculation on the part of NIOSH because that 

10 source term has been calculated with a lot of 

11 detail, but it's a very simple calculation.

12 And so we believe that NIOSH can define 

13 a source term, just not the one that was used in 

14 their sample calculations. So in principle, to 

15 restate probably what John Stiver said, I had just 

16 difficulty hearing him, all of the SC&A objections 

17 can be satisfied with the appropriate changes in 

18 the dose reconstruction procedures. 

19 CHAIR MELIUS: And I think the 

20 operational word is "can," but they haven't been, 

21 and haven't been demonstrated to the Board. I 

22 mean, that's my concern in that this is -- we're 

23 reviewing SEC and whether or not the use of 
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1 surrogate data is appropriate in an SEC situation 

2 is not of minor Site Profile issue that can be 

3 handled, you know, at some later point in time.

4 I think we don't require every dose 

5 reconstruction eventuality to be demonstrated, but 

6 here where you have, to mem what is a critical one, 

7 the use of surrogate data, and all we have is people 

8 saying it might be done, there are a number of ways 

9 of doing it. But what is the way that it's going 

10 to be done, is my question.

11 And before, this is a personal opinion, 

12 before closing out an SEC petition, I would like 

13 to have a demonstration that it can be -- what is 

14 being done to do those dose reconstructions, 

15 demonstrating it can be done with sufficient 

16 accuracy.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Dr. Melius, Stu 

18 Hinnefeld again. If I can offer something from 

19 essentially a programmatic perspective here. 

20 From the program standpoint, there is no particular 

21 advantage to reaching, hurrying a decision to deny 

22 a Class.

23 There's a programmatic advantage to the 
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1 claimant to hurry a decision to add a portion of 

2 a Class, for instance. We do that on many 

3 occasions where we haven't completed the 

4 evaluation, but a portion of a Class we feel this 

5 is certainly going to be added. Let's move that 

6 ahead. Those claimants will get paid.

7 There's no particular advantage like 

8 that to make a decision to deny a Class. But there 

9 is a programmatic interest in establishing a 

10 complete and solid record of the reasons why the 

11 Class will not be added.

12 So, as much as my colleagues probably 

13 want to shoot me, I would say that there's reason 

14 maybe to bring this back to the Board at a later 

15 time when the unresolved issues have been resolved.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, Stu. Any 

17 additional -- Josie?

18 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, I was just wondering 

19 about how they're choosing categories, because I 

20 know TBD-6000 only has three categories, I believe, 

21 and the earlier method may have missed some of the 

22 folks in the categories they should have been in. 

23 And maybe that will flesh out with this.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Any other Board Members 

2 on the phone wish to make comments, or at the table 

3 here? David?

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I also feel that 

5 this discussion misses the Chair, who's not able 

6 to be here today. So there's also a value in 

7 completing the discussion at a later time when 

8 she's here, because she, I would expect, of all the 

9 Work Group Members, probably is the one most 

10 closely, had most closely followed, although I do 

11 not wish to cast aspersions on the other group 

12 Members.

13 But, generally, the Chair has been 

14 thinking about this as carefully as anyone. And 

15 so it would be very nice if she were here. And we 

16 could do that if we were to postpone the decision 

17 today.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. If there are no 

19 further -- yes? I do want to give the petitioners 

20 the time to speak.

21 MEMBER FIELD: Yeah, as a Work Group 

22 Member, you know, thinking back on this, my 

23 recollection was that the source of what was being 
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1 used for the surrogate data was of much bigger mass, 

2 and that I think some of the concerns was that was 

3 over sort of an overexposure if you do the 

4 calculation.

5 So I think that was the concern. And, 

6 you know, less of the concern whether or not they 

7 could do it. It was just that it wasn't feasible. 

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Plausible.

9 MEMBER FIELD: Yeah, wasn't plausible, 

10 right.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Henry, yes.

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: I just want to 

13 underscore your comment about Site Profile issue 

14 versus SEC issue. It seems to me the Site Profile 

15 is the base document. And if that's unresolved --

16 SEC dose reconstructions are based on those Site 

17 Profiles. So I guess I don't understand the 

18 conclusion here that you push this out of the SEC 

19 but onto the Site Profile.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I think we --

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: I mean, they're 

22 related.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. I think what 
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1 we've tried to do is, and maybe overdone it a little 

2 bit, is we try to focus on SEC issues when we're 

3 reviewing SEC, and then address those because those 

4 have the most immediate impact, as Stu mentioned 

5 earlier, you know, for the claimants. And things 

6 that we're pretty sure can be addressed that aren't 

7 SEC issues we put aside until later. And one, they 

8 may not affect the Class --

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Site Profile.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Site profile, we may 

11 find later that they are actually SEC issues. And 

12 I think we have, there are examples in the past 

13 where what we thought could be done couldn't be 

14 done.

15 And I worry more about that in the case 

16 of here we have an older facility, not good records, 

17 and very limited data. And we ought to just be sure 

18 that the methods that we'll have in place will work, 

19 particularly with the use of surrogate data, which 

20 Members of this Board and others have some 

21 difficulties with.

22 Let's take a second, and I don't know 

23 if the petitioners wish to speak. I know they're 
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1 on the line. But if the petitioners would like to 

2 say anything now, you're welcome to comment. 

3 You're not required to.

4 MR. FIFER: Yes, I'd like to. It's 

5 Robert Fifer.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

7 MR. FIFER: I couldn't hear too well, 

8 but what I got was you mentioned something about 

9 other people that were questioned about this?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, I think that was 

11 a reference to the Work Group or to Tom. I can't 

12 remember. The DCAS staff.

13 MR. FIFER: I didn't quite make it all 

14 out, you know, what it was about.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: We're just trying to 

16 understand how many people potentially worked in 

17 the facility and might be affected by this 

18 decision. I think that was what the discussion was 

19 in terms of that. 

20 Stu, was that, Stu Hinnefeld is going 

21 to the --

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. I think maybe 

23 the discussion that he's talking about was Tom made 
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1 a comment about the number of people who worked on 

2 each of the operations, and we had our discussion 

3 about why are so many people getting high, you know, 

4 compensable dose reconstruction.

5 But I think that was -- we did in fact 

6 interview some people who have worked at the site 

7 as part of our investigation. And I think what Tom 

8 said was that the people that we talked to said that 

9 these were relatively small operations.

10 I think that's when we were talking 

11 about talking to people. We did interview some of 

12 the workers at the site.

13 MR. FIFER: I mean, were these people 

14 back in the time that my dad worked there?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I don't recall 

16 exactly when your dad worked there, but some of them 

17 at least did during --

18 MR. FIFER: Well, he worked there, you 

19 know, for 40 years. He was 1935 to --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think that they 

21 worked during the later operational period. I don't 

22 know if they worked in 1943 or not. But I believe 

23 they worked during the uranium and plutonium 
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1 carbide fabrication.

2 MR. FIFER: Because the reason I say 

3 that, they'd be pretty old if it was 1943.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. Any other 

5 comments from the Petitioners?

6 MR. FIFER: Jan, you got any?

7 MS. KNAPP: No, I think you covered 

8 pretty much what I wanted to say, too. It was way 

9 back, you know, years ago. But it's just that I 

10 don't know how you feel, Bob, but I cannot hear a 

11 lot of it.

12 I mean, are people just talking in a 

13 room or are you guys actually talking on the phone? 

14 Because it's very hard for us to hear.

15 MR. FIFER: Yeah, very hard.

16 MS. KNAPP: I mean, the guy that gave 

17 the seven reasons at the very beginning, we're 

18 probably lucky if we caught a quarter of that.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Well, the 

20 technology, we're talking on microphones that are 

21 then put into a phone line. We're doing the best 

22 we can.

23 MS. KNAPP: Okay, okay. 
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: And there is a 

2 transcript of the entire meeting that will be 

3 available on the website relatively shortly also.

4 MS. KNAPP: Okay. Thank you.

5 MR. FIFER: And another thing I would 

6 like to know, the Wheatfield plant was mentioned, 

7 but I couldn't hear much on that. What was that 

8 about?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: The comment, I 

10 believe, was about a Wheatfield facility. And 

11 that came up in the discussion because the Board's 

12 contractor, in reviewing NIOSH's work -- I'm sorry, 

13 this is Stu Hinnefeld again from NIOSH.

14 The Board's contractor had said, hey, 

15 we found evidence that there were 

16 strontium-yttrium sources used by Carborundum, 

17 have you considered those? And so that was a 

18 finding we had to go back and try to find more 

19 information about.

20 We found more information about that. 

21 We found that those sources of radioactivity were 

22 only used at the Wheatfield facility, not at Globar 

23 or Buffalo Avenue. And the Globar and the Buffalo 
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1 Avenue are the covered facilities. So anything 

2 used at Wheatfield would not be included in this 

3 program.

4 MR. FIFER: Okay.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thanks.

6 MR. FIFER: So I'm on the understanding 

7 now that the dose reconstruction is not been redone 

8 yet.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Correct. But the 

10 Board's got to -- we're going to need to deliberate 

11 and decide what to do. So we haven't decided 

12 anything yet.

13 MR. FIFER: Okay.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. We will in the 

15 next few minutes, though. 

16 So, back to the Board. I think we have 

17 -- I'm assuming we have actually a motion from the 

18 Work Group. And I just heard a motion to table. 

19 So, Henry Anderson has moved to table the motion. 

20 We have a second from Bill Field. I believe that's 

21 without debate. So with that, all in -- well, why 

22 don't we take a roll call.

23 MR. KATZ: I think you can do it by 
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1 voice vote.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, well, all in 

3 favor?

4 (Chorus of ayes)

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, opposed?

6 (No response)

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So what we will 

8 do is we'll table any action on this. I think we're 

9 asking NIOSH to come back with a proposal on the 

10 outline on what they will be doing in terms of the 

11 surrogate data issue, as well as an example dose 

12 reconstruction based on that.

13 Share it with the Work Group. I 

14 believe SC&A would review it. And then I don't 

15 know the timing, and don't expect to know the timing 

16 now, but we would bring it back at another Board 

17 meeting, perhaps the next one that we have. But 

18 that's up to Stu and SC&A to sort of figure out the 

19 logistics on that.

20 And we'll keep the petitioners 

21 informed. NIOSH/DCAS will keep the petitioners 

22 informed on what's happening and further meetings 

23 and then when it will be coming back to the Board. 
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1 So, thank you, everybody.

2 Now we have a Board work session. And 

3 Ted's going to correct a mistake.

4 Board Work Session: WG/SC Reports, Scheduling Meetings

5 MR. KATZ: Yes. First, I'm going to 

6 correct one of my mistakes, which is I had told you 

7 July dates for July 2017 for a Board Meeting. But, 

8 actually, that had been a problem for Dr. Melius 

9 and we had rescheduled that already for August 23rd 

10 and 24th. So, that's the correct date for the 

11 summer meeting: August 23rd and 24th of 2017. I 

12 just wanted to straighten that out.

13 And, Paul, another thing is I've spoken 

14 to James here with the transcription company. But 

15 we'll look into what the best way is for possibly 

16 appending the presentations to the transcripts in 

17 one fashion or another so that they're together in 

18 a package. So, we'll look into that.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, that's good. I 

20 wasn't trying to give anyone a hard time, I just 

21 was concerned that it was almost too sketchy for 

22 --
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1 MR. KATZ: No, I understand. I 

2 understand. Yeah, I think it's a good concern. 

3 Thank you.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Can I ask, Ted, do we 

5 know where the August meeting is?

6 MR. KATZ: No, no.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Do you have any 

8 suggestions we should consider?

9 MEMBER BEACH: We already talked about 

10 three of them. 

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

12 MEMBER MUNN: It would be a good time 

13 to be in Colorado.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, but then Brad 

15 would miss us. Okay. We have time on that one. 

16 I suspect it will change given the normal flow of 

17 work and so forth. It'll be nice and warm in 

18 Augusta. 

19 Okay. So, why don't we start to go 

20 through the Work Groups and Subcommittee updates, 

21 everybody. And we'll start with you, Dave. Ames 

22 Laboratory.

23 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Tom Tomes said 
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1 that he has gotten the data and analyzed data with 

2 respect to the external dose there at Ames Lab for 

3 the Site Profile, and is now looking at the internal 

4 dose, and, interestingly, said internal dose 

5 inconsistencies are problems for which he's 

6 apparently concerned about. He is concerned 

7 about.

8 So, we actually don't have any meeting 

9 scheduled until he finishes that analysis. So, 

10 there's really no change. But there has been 

11 progress in gathering data.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Would you bring your 

13 notebook and just stay at the --

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, not a bad idea. 

15 We are looking at a potential infeasibility at Ames 

16 for a period. And so we're going back to do some 

17 additional interviews to kind of define this period 

18 a little better before we move forward.

19 And we don't have a date, we don't have 

20 a good date for that yet because we've got to 

21 schedule those interviews and go back and do some 

22 additional data capturing.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: We already have an SEC 
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1 there. I'm trying to remember --

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we've got an SEC 

3 up through -- and, actually, Tom Tomes is on the 

4 phone. He could tell me the exact date that we're 

5 up to.

6 MR. TOMES: Through 1970.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Through 1970, there 

8 you go.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: So this is after that, 

10 then?

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it is.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Okay. Argonne 

13 East?

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: We talked about that 

15 today --

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Talk into the mic, 

17 please.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yeah. It's just at 

19 the start. SC&A has got a paper out there, is that 

20 correct?

21 MR. STIVER: Yes, delivered that back 

22 in June, based on the tasking you had from the March 

23 meeting.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, so that's in 

2 NIOSH's hands.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Blockson? 

4 Wanda?

5 MEMBER MUNN: Nothing happening.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, that's what I 

7 thought. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: No report.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: You're still on the list 

10 though, see.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, we are.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Brookhaven? Josie?

13 MEMBER BEACH: No report, nothing new.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: I will say, the TBD is 

15 scheduled to be out in May of 2017.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So now you have 

17 something to do, or you will.

18 MEMBER BEACH: We can task SC&A, 

19 correct.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Right. Okay, 

21 Carborundum we've done. 

22 Dose Construction Review Methods. 

23 What we're focused on now is the issues of sort of 
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1 looking at the consistency in certain parts of the 

2 dose reconstruction review process.

3 We believe that NIOSH will have a report 

4 on that from one of their contractors very shortly. 

5 And once we have that report, and NIOSH has had a 

6 chance to review it and comment, we will be 

7 scheduling a Work Group meeting to discuss that.

8 We may try to do something jointly with 

9 the Dose Reconstruction Review Subcommittee. But 

10 we'll figure that out when we see the report and 

11 figure out the logistics involved. So, anyway, it 

12 will probably be obviously after the first of the 

13 year, I think, before we have the meeting and 

14 report. Yes, Dave?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: The Dose 

16 Reconstruction Review Subcommittee did discuss the 

17 report that that was done last March by SC&A. And 

18 I'll report on that later.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Fernald?

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Fernald, we still 

21 have some Site Profile issues. And I believe, 

22 John, you were working on one of my -- I guess I'm 

23 trying to figure out who's hands it's in now, if 
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1 it's in NIOSH or SC&A's.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: So, John, you get to 

3 stand by that mic until lunch.

4 MR. STIVER: Okay. We have a review of 

5 TBD-5 underway. We expect to have that completed 

6 sometime early in 2017. We also did a review of 

7 the TBD-4 update. So, both of those pieces of work 

8 will be coming in. So, probably sometime in 

9 February or March we could have the Work Group be 

10 in position to do that.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Grand Junction, Bill?

13 MEMBER FIELD: Yeah, Grand Junction, 

14 we're finally making some progress. We received 

15 an SC&A review of the NIOSH SEC evaluation in May. 

16 And then that evaluation found two concerns and one 

17 finding.

18 We met October 5th as a Work Group. And 

19 there's still some information we need to gather 

20 yet about information on workplace air monitoring 

21 data that we need to get that NIOSH is working on. 

22 So that's what we're waiting for now. As soon as 

23 that's done, I think we'll be able to wrap things 
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1 up.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, great. Thank 

3 you. Any questions? 

4 Okay. So, Hanford, I'm the Chair of 

5 that. I guess my question is for NIOSH or LaVon: 

6 is our new NIOSH technical person up to speed now?

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, he is. He is up 

8 to speed and we are working to gather new 

9 information on -- we've actually got a lot of the 

10 information on the prime contractors.

11 That's been our focus, is to look at 

12 their bioassay program to make sure that they were 

13 meeting the contract requirements that the 

14 subcontractors weren't meeting for the reason that 

15 we recommended the Class the last time.

16 So, I don't have a good scheduled 

17 completion date for that, but we are working on 

18 that. And I think we can get you a good update 

19 probably early next month.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, good. Maybe we 

21 can do, like, a technical conference call or 

22 something with -- is Arjun still around?

23 (Laughter) 
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1 MR. KATZ: Yeah, he exists.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: He exists, he still --

3 MR. STIVER: He stops by sometimes.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, good. Good. 

5 Tell him I'll be looking for him soon. Okay. 

6 Thank you. Idaho/Argonne West.

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We have had --

8 there's been a lot of work done on that in the last 

9 while. There's some onsite interviews done 

10 earlier part of this month.

11 There's more, some of the people they 

12 were unable to talk to would be interviewed via 

13 phone. And hopefully all that will be set and 

14 we'll have a Work Group meeting in January or 

15 February.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: By phone.

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: By phone.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We didn't want to go 

20 up Brad's house in the winter.

21

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And we did 

23 receive one report from SC&A in this time period. 
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1 Dr. Ziemer, Lawrence Berkeley update?

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah. There's a 

3 pretty complete discussion of that that Lara Hughes 

4 put on the DCAS summary page. They had a data 

5 capture, they're still doing data entry. And her 

6 latest report there indicates that they don't have 

7 a completion date yet. So we're awaiting on that 

8 before the Work Groups convenes.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

10 Kansas City, Josie?

11 MEMBER BEACH: We're waiting on TBDs 

12 there, as well. LaVon, I don't know if you have 

13 any updates on when those are going to be available?

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, it's expected 

15 to be complete in December.

16 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. Next month?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: December of '16?

19 (Laughter.)

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: I have 12 of '16. 

21 '16's the year. So, sometime in December.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Under the tree, we'll 

23 find it under the tree?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I hope so.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. 

3 LANL, I guess, we'll be covering later 

4 today. I don't know if you want to say anything 

5 now, Josie?

6 MEMBER BEACH: No.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

8 MEMBER BEACH: I'll wait for -- I don't 

9 have anything new except for what LaVon is going 

10 to tell us later.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Mound?

12 MEMBER BEACH: Mound, we did meet for 

13 TBDs for internal. We closed all items except for 

14 the V&V. We got a report, I believe it was in 

15 October, from NIOSH. And SC&A just sent out their 

16 memo answering NIOSH's earlier memo. So, we need 

17 to schedule a Work Group meeting to talk about that 

18 V&V.

19 And we're still waiting for the 

20 external TBD. Maybe LaVon can tell us when that's 

21 out. I think that's soon.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, I don't have 

23 a completion date on that. I know that Dr. Taulbee 
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1 was working on that, and he's been pulled between 

2 Idaho and there. So, I will, as soon as I can, get 

3 you a completion, an expected completion on it.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And both those 

5 reports are in the Work Group's hands now. So I 

6 can get with Ted and we can schedule just a quick 

7 call, maybe before the next Board call.

8 MR. KATZ: Yeah, I mean, or we can wait 

9 until we have the external, right? I mean, it 

10 depends on what --

11 MEMBER BEACH: That might be -- it 

12 might be nice to close this, the internal out.

13 MR. KATZ: Yeah, whatever your 

14 preference.

15 MEMBER BEACH: We can talk about it.

16 MR. KATZ: Sure.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Nevada? Brad?

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Nevada Test Site, we 

19 have a Work Group meeting set up for January 5th 

20 to be able to go over the last remaining issues on 

21 it.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Good. Oak Ridge 

23 National Laboratory. Gen's not here. So, I don't 
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1 know if there's any --

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, we've been 

3 actually doing a lot of work with ORNL on the data 

4 and trying to resolve some issues with data 

5 discrepancies. We've been back and forth with 

6 different claims in working on that.

7 We're also trying to close out our 

8 radioiodine issue as well. So those are kind of 

9 going on concurrently. Lara's here, she can add 

10 anything that she wanted.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Pacific Proving 

12 Grounds?

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: Nothing really to 

14 report. We're essentially done with that. Stu 

15 could probably comment on the current status.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, our TBD was 

17 revised in June to incorporate the Work Group 

18 suggestions. I haven't gotten anything since 

19 then. Stu stepped out of the room, he may have 

20 additional information.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Has SC&A been assigned 

22 to that? I'm not --

23 MR. STIVER: Yeah, our review is 
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1 complete on that.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: So it sounds like it's 

4 back in our court?

5 MR. STIVER: Yeah.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. I will get a 

7 better update to Dr. Lockey on that one.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Pantax, Brad?

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yeah, Pantax, we're 

10 coming to a close on it. But we still have one or 

11 two outstanding. I thought it was a Site Profile 

12 issue, but I think we're just about done.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think we have a TBD 

14 we're supposed to issue in December. An external.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Bill, Pinellas?

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Pinellas, we've 

17 closed out, but we still have some issues on K-25 

18 on the neutron issue.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, that's kind of 

20 a global issue with the gaseous diffusion plants, 

21 the K-25.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Is somebody 

23 doing something about it?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, that is -- I 

2 guess I left you in suspense there, didn't I?

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. I was like, 

4 you'll come back after lunch, we'll --

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. We are expected 

6 to have a report out in March of next year that 

7 should address that issue for the gaseous diffusion 

8 plants.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you. Rocky 

10 Flats, Dave?

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: We talked about 

12 that this morning. And as soon as the DCAS report 

13 is completed, we'll schedule a Work Group meeting 

14 and hopefully have a decision on that, because that 

15 is our remaining unresolved issue, and have a 

16 decision on that by March.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. And, Dave, I will 

18 have SC&A review that before we meet, the report 

19 from NIOSH.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, that's right. 

21 Thanks.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Sandia, Dr. Lemen isn't 

23 here, but after lunch, LaVon will update us on --
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, you've already 

2 stole a bunch of my thunder already.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, you sent out your 

4 slides. That one surprised me.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Sounds like the Work 

7 Group might need to meet for that one in the near 

8 future.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah.

10 MEMBER BEACH: For the first time.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: But don't give away too 

12 much more. 

13 Santa Susana we'll hear about tomorrow 

14 morning. 

15 Savannah River we'll hear about later. 

16 Science Issues, David Richardson isn't 

17 here. I don't know if they've met or --

18 MR. KATZ: Yeah, there's no update.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Special 

20 Exposure Cohort Issues, there's really nothing 

21 there, we're caught up. 

22 Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction.

23 Dose Reconstruction Update
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. The DRR SC 

2 meeting, we've been active and there's plenty to 

3 report. We met eight days ago and our next 

4 scheduled meeting is on January 30th.

5 First, on the expedited dose 

6 reconstruction process, at the last meeting we 

7 completed the Category 1 cases for Sets 14 through 

8 18. And we will begin next meeting to start on the 

9 Category 2 and that set.

10 People, all of us, were really quite 

11 pleased with the results of this expedited process 

12 that the folks from SC&A had suggested. The 

13 Category 2 reviews are likely to be similar and take 

14 a fair amount of time, as had been done in the past 

15 when there were issues. So, we're moving along.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave?

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Can you explain to me 

19 Category 1 and Category 2?

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Category 1 

21 are issues where there is either it has marginal 

22 impact on the dose reconstruction, issues where 

23 there are only marginal impact, moderate impact.
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1 Category 2 will have much more 

2 significant impact, the findings that were found, 

3 than the resolution of it.

4 MR. KATZ: Dave, I mean, the key thing 

5 between 1 and 2 is 1 are the ones that are more 

6 easily resolved because there's already agreement 

7 between NIOSH and the contractors and the 

8 Subcommittee needs to weigh in on that.

9 But 2 are ones where they are actually 

10 quite apart between NIOSH and the contractor.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right, okay.

12 MR. KATZ: On what's correct.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, yes. Then, 

14 to discuss a little bit more, we did have a 

15 discussion on the memo from SC&A in March on the 

16 consistency in dose reconstruction. And it was 

17 the first discussion we had had of the memo.

18 And I would say -- first, maybe I should 

19 read just a little bit of the memo. Maybe the 

20 summary portion was that it suggested that our 

21 non-blind dose reconstruction approach is best 

22 used to verify if assumptions are consistently 

23 applied within a specific site.
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1 And there, the memo suggested six 

2 different areas in which we might take a look at 

3 consistency. And for example, the first one was 

4 the coworker dose, and the decision about assigning 

5 50th or 95th percentile.

6 And there was suggestions about how we 

7 might do this. But the discussion that we had --

8 and the memo, this memo was sent out by Ted to all 

9 of you. The discussion we had about it, though, 

10 I think was more basic than the details of the 

11 particular aspects of consistency that were 

12 suggested.

13 The first was -- and I will say, I'll 

14 admit I wrote up a set of notes for myself right 

15 after the meeting and said, hey, good, while it's 

16 fresh in my mind. Of course, I left that memo back 

17 home.

18 So this is slightly reconstructed and 

19 I will ask Members of the Subcommittee to comment 

20 further. But, really, the question was what 

21 question precisely do we wish to answer by 

22 examining consistency?

23 I mean, our current evaluation of blind 
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1 dose reconstructions is certainly a very good 

2 determination of consistency, or precision, 

3 really, of the measurements. And we went through 

4 three more on Set 21 at our meeting. And, again, 

5 they come up with the same basic determination in 

6 terms of compensation.

7 But there was really a lot of discussion 

8 about that, and question as to whether this really 

9 was a worthwhile effort, frankly, by Members of the 

10 Subcommittee.

11 And also, another question came up 

12 which was not -- which was a discussion, I don't 

13 know so much a question. But it appeared 

14 essentially we're evaluating the consistency of by 

15 dose reconstructors by another group of 

16 experienced professionals, the Board.

17 But basically this is -- we're really 

18 evaluating professional judgement of other 

19 professionals. And there was some question as to 

20 how we felt about it, let's put it that way. And 

21 I don't think that's as precise as I can make it, 

22 but it's my recollection.

23 Perhaps, if the Chair will agree, other 
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1 Members of the Subcommittee might want to, if a 

2 discussion is appropriate, might want to talk about 

3 our discussion.

4 We certainly agreed that the methods 

5 group needs to have further discussion about 

6 particularly the first question. And I gather, 

7 and I was not clear myself at that meeting, that 

8 there will be a report by a consultant to the 

9 methods group. And that, I would say, was a lapse 

10 in my remembrance of what we discussed in the 

11 methods.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, let me outline the 

13 procedure.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: The procedure will be we 

16 will get a report through NIOSH. I'm not sure what 

17 it will have in terms of recommendations or 

18 suggestions, but it will outline some potential 

19 issues that could be looked at, or need to be looked 

20 at.

21 In addition to that, we have the earlier 

22 memo from SC&A, and we also have input from, you 

23 know, various committees. So, first, we will 
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1 handle it within the Dose Reconstruction Review 

2 Methods Work Group and come forward with some 

3 recommendations for considerations for, I think, 

4 for the full Board.

5 And I think before we engage in any of 

6 these reviews, I think we should have agreement 

7 within the Board on what should be the next steps, 

8 because the review of dose reconstructions is 

9 assigned to the Board. And I think we've always 

10 done, in terms of methodology and methods and so 

11 forth, we do it within the Board.

12 So, I mean, that will be the plan. I 

13 don't know the exact time table because it will 

14 probably be into earlier/mid-next year when we're 

15 ready.

16 One question I have, two comments sort 

17 of disturbed me a little bit. One is blind reviews 

18 don't deal with consistency. We're dealing --

19 because they're even worse than our own individual 

20 dose reconstruction reviews in terms of 

21 consistency.

22 I think we're looking at consistency 

23 for doing the same -- judging the same set of 
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1 circumstances and doing a dose reconstruction 

2 within a site fairly specifically. Blind reviews, 

3 I don't think, address that. That's why we 

4 maintain blind reviews as a separate process.

5 Secondly, reassure me. I commented to 

6 Ted, you're talking about Categories 1 and 2. I 

7 guess we'll worry about doing the easy ones first 

8 and delaying doing the more difficult ones. So, 

9 I mean, it's up to the Subcommittee how they want 

10 to do it, because I'm not sure it makes a huge 

11 difference, except if you have a major finding 

12 coming from the technical contractor that NIOSH may 

13 agree or disagree with or needs discussion.

14 I would hope that you would, you know, 

15 sort of jump that one in the queue so we're not 

16 missing something very important. I don't think 

17 that's going to be a common occurrence, but it is 

18 something that's a little bit -- I'd worry that, 

19 you know, if we don't have a Dose Reconstruction 

20 Review Subcommittee meeting for six months, I 

21 wouldn't want to miss a major problem.

22 I don't think you would, but just keep 

23 that in mind.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, we are, I 

2 have to say, we are meeting frequently. But the 

3 folks at SC&A, as they suggested this expedited 

4 process, suggested that we begin this way. This 

5 is our first. And I think it's a good point that 

6 you make.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: And I suspect that, if 

8 there was such a finding, that SC&A or somebody 

9 would jump out.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I believe we 

11 would. I believe we would.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: If I could, actually 

13 from a Board Member on this, we're not bypassing 

14 any of -- we're going real fast on the first ones 

15 to get those done. We'll go into the other ones 

16 that we get up to.

17 What we were getting into as we get on 

18 one finding, and there was, like, 15 or maybe 6 or 

19 whatever that could be closed out relatively easy 

20 and we never got to them. And so it was kind of 

21 just a way for us to be able to swipe that out.

22 And personally, myself, I think it's 

23 made a big difference in being able to address the 
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1 top ones and how they fall into it, too.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. The other 

3 comment I would have is my own profession, and the 

4 profession of others here, by ignoring and refusing 

5 to judge professional judgment in medicine, we've 

6 killed more people than -- and I find it disturbing 

7 that in other fields we're reluctant to look at 

8 other people's judgment.

9 I mean, I understand the reluctance and 

10 the difficulty, and I think we've talked about it 

11 before. But it's hardly something I think we can 

12 avoid.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: And we're obligated in 

15 the law to review dose reconstruction. So I don't 

16 think that's a good reason for not going ahead. 

17 Doesn't it mean we have to be careful about it and 

18 sensitive about it, and understand that 

19 professional judgment, you know, is professional 

20 judgment and it has a range and it doesn't always 

21 come up with the same approach or the same answer.

22 But unreasonable professional judgment 

23 is not something that we need to tolerate.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. I think 

2 that, if I may, that people were, are, were a bit 

3 uncomfortable about that. And I understand what 

4 you're saying.

5 By the way, going back to the issue of 

6 consistency, I agree with you, you're absolutely 

7 right that consistency is different than 

8 precision. It's really the blinds really test 

9 precision of the process, that we can come, two 

10 different folks looking at it independently can 

11 come to the same conclusion as far as compensation.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Also, too, on the 

13 professional judgment, I think we had a very 

14 rousing discussion on that.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Which is good.

16 MR. KATZ: Apropos of that, what the 

17 Subcommittee Members had said is that if you --

18 actually, I thought maybe you had already heard 

19 this because you reflected that in what you said 

20 earlier about the next meeting of the Dose 

21 Reconstruction Review Methods Work Group -- is that 

22 some of them would like to join the Work Group in 

23 that next discussion of consistency. So, some of 
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1 these other concerns can actually just get 

2 discussed by a larger group.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, Dave. 

4 Just tell me where we are in terms of are we 

5 approaching the end of the backlog? I can never 

6 keep track of the numbers.

7 MR. KATZ: Well, at best we have three 

8 more meetings.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: That's the closest we might 

11 be. I tend to find us optimistic. So that's sort 

12 of the ballpark. But after we deal with a few of 

13 the type 2, I'll be able to answer that question.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

15 MR. KATZ: Because we discussed also 

16 the fact that we want to turn on the machine again 

17 as soon as we have a reasonable prospect of getting 

18 to the new dose reconstructions in a fresh way.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Good, okay. I 

20 just wanted to keep that in mind. Wanda?

21 MEMBER MUNN: Before we go on with the 

22 dose reconstruction, I just wanted to make a 

23 comment with respect to your concern over the 
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1 possibility --

2 MR. KATZ: Wanda, the mic.

3 MEMBER MUNN: From my perspective, the 

4 new method that we are addressing makes it more 

5 rational and more feasible for us to quickly 

6 address hot topics that may come up simply because 

7 the process that has been suggested is helping us 

8 clean out the really relatively minor stuff, which 

9 I shouldn't say that it's minor. It's just that 

10 in terms of the resolution, the resolutions are 

11 relatively minor, they've just not have been 

12 completed yet. And that has a tendency to obscure. 

13 We look at what we have to address, and we have a 

14 huge elephant.

15 If we remove the four legs of the 

16 elephant by the simple expedient of looking at the 

17 relatively easy resolutions, then that gives us a 

18 much better opportunity to focus quickly and more 

19 of our time can be spent directly on the hot topics 

20 that come up and the major issues that may affect 

21 a wider range of doses.

22 Enough for that Subcommittee. There 

23 is no new status report to make with respect to 
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1 Procedures. There is a great deal of effort 

2 underway right now by both the contractor and by 

3 the agency in terms of preparing for the first 

4 face-to-face meeting that this Subcommittee will 

5 have had in a couple years.

6 So, that is scheduled for January 10th, 

7 in our most convenient meeting place, Cincinnati. 

8 And we expect to have a full agenda at that hearing.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Good. And I'll save 

10 the other elephant stories, whatever --

11 (Off microphone comments)

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes. There's lots 

13 of elephant, I'll call them metaphors, I don't know 

14 what exactly the term is. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Excuse me. Wanda, did 

16 you say that's a face-to-face on the 10th? I 

17 didn't think it was.

18 MEMBER MUNN: January 10th, isn't it?

19 MEMBER BEACH: The date's correct, but 

20 you said it was a face-to-face, and that had me 

21 scratching my head.

22 MR. KATZ: Right, it's not in-person. 

23 It's by phone.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: That's what I meant. We 

2 had hoped for --

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, okay.

4 MEMBER MUNN: But it's not going to 

5 happen.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. TBD-6000, Paul?

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I'm going to focus 

8 mainly on General Steel Industries in my report 

9 here. I'd just remind you that in June we asked 

10 SC&A to review Rev 2 of Appendix BB, which is the 

11 General Steel Industries Appendix for TBD-6000.

12 And so that was done. And NIOSH then 

13 reviewed that later in the summer/early fall, and 

14 early this month and early November SC&A gave their 

15 response. The issue that was raised by SC&A on Rev 

16 2 had to do with how you actually, I'm going to say, 

17 input the neutron data, the MCNPX simulation data.

18 And there's some disagreement on how 

19 that's inputted into the model, even though the 

20 model itself was agreed upon. And NIOSH has now 

21 responded to that and we're just giving SC&A a 

22 chance to look at NIOSH's response.

23 We have a Work Group meeting scheduled 
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1 for December 14th. We're assuming SC&A will have 

2 finished their review prior to that. And if so, 

3 we'll go ahead on December 14th and see if we can 

4 resolve this issue of the input of the neutron 

5 information into the model.

6 So, hopefully one way or the other we 

7 can get this resolved. I don't know if that will 

8 end up requiring a Rev 3 or just an agreement as 

9 to how you input the data for the neutrons 

10 correctly.

11 But that's where we are on that. 

12 That's the only item that's weighing heavily on 

13 TBD-6000 right now.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, Paul. 

15 Any questions, comments? 

16 Uranium Refining? Henry, we're going 

17 to do it after lunch. You'll be back to the other 

18 side because I keep looking.

19 MEMBER ANDERSON: We have the SC&A 

20 report on Hooker that NIOSH will be reviewing and 

21 hopefully get their comments to us. And then we'll 

22 be scheduling a phone call once we get that all

23 done, hopefully before the next meeting so we can 
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1 close out Hooker. But I think that's the only 

2 other thing we have that's currently on our active 

3 agenda.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, great. 

5 Surrogate Data, the Work Group is moribund, so we 

6 haven't had anything for a while. 

7 Weldon Springs I don't believe there's 

8 any activity on. 

9 And Worker Outreach I don't believe 

10 there's any activity on.

11 So I think we've gone through our Work 

12 Groups. Did I miss anybody or anybody have 

13 anything they wish they had said and didn't say? 

14 Last chance. LaVon, you can sit down. Thank you.

15 With that, I would suggest we break for 

16 lunch. I know it's early, but since we already 

17 broadcast the schedule, we probably should stick 

18 to it.

19 The assignment over lunch is you should 

20 at least quickly read through your comments from 

21 the last meeting in case you have questions or 

22 comments on that, because I will go through the 

23 abbreviated version very quickly.
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1 So we will break and we will return, I 

2 believe, at 2 o'clock. Thank you.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

4 went off the record at 11:41 a.m. and resumed at 

5 2:03 p.m.)

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Anyway, welcome 

7 back for our afternoon session. And we have a 

8 number of issues to go over this afternoon and then 

9 we'll, what, about 5:00 o'clock is the LANL. And 

10 then after that we will go into the public comment 

11 period and we will -- so it will be helpful if you 

12 can sign up for public comments. There's a sheet 

13 out at the desk there if you wish to make them later 

14 on. And we may -- if we get done with some of the 

15 presentations and so forth earlier, we may start 

16 a little bit early for the people that are here. 

17 So, Ted, do you want to go through the 

18 --

19 MR. KATZ: Yeah, just a couple things: 

20 4:30 is LANL and then 5 is public comment. But let 

21 me just check and see on the line for Board Members 

22 who may be on the line. 

23 Dr. Lockey, are you there?
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1 DR. LOCKEY: Yes, I am.

2 MR. KATZ: Super. And Dr. Poston, I 

3 think you are?

4 DR. POSTON: Yes, I am.

5 MR. KATZ: Super. How about -- I'm not 

6 sure she'll be with us. But Dr. Reisler, are you 

7 with us? 

8 No. How about Dr. Ziemer?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I'm here.

10 MR. KATZ: Great. That's three out of 

11 four. 

12 And just related to the public comment, 

13 I don't know if Jim reminded you, but please sign 

14 up if you're here. Oh, you did that? Not paying 

15 attention. 

16 That's it for me. Please mute your 

17 phones, folks on the line. *6 to mute your phone. 

18 Press *6. That'll mute your phone. Thanks.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: And speaking of stars.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't get an 

22 introduction?

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I'm getting 
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1 there. You know, the star of the show. Mr. LaVon 

2 Rutherford will give us his brief update.

3 SEC Petitions Status Update

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it will be. 

5 Alright. I'm going to give the SEC update for 

6 NIOSH. We give this update to give the Advisory 

7 Board a chance to prepare for upcoming Work Group 

8 meetings and Advisory Board meetings. We're going 

9 to talk about petitions in qualification, 

10 petitions under evaluation, petitions under Board 

11 review, and potential 83.14s.

12 So, a little summary. We've had 246 

13 petitions. We have one petition that's in the 

14 qualification process. At the time of preparing 

15 this report, we had two in evaluation. We only 

16 have one in evaluation now, and we have 11 reports 

17 with the Advisory Board. 

18 Petition in qualification, Santa 

19 Susana Field Laboratory, this is not the petition 

20 that we discussed. This is a new petition and it 

21 addresses all employees from December 31, 1964 to 

22 present.
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1 Los Alamos National Lab, which we will 

2 discuss later, is a continuation of SEC-109. And 

3 this is an addendum that we plan to present in 

4 February of this -- or we actually will complete 

5 in February and get it to the Work Group.

6 Sandia National Lab is a follow-on, 

7 again, of another petition, SEC-108. It's a 

8 continuation of that one. And we expect to 

9 complete that addendum to address the remaining 

10 years there in June of 2017. So we got a lot of 

11 addendums coming up.

12 Lawrence Livermore National Lab, 

13 again, another continuation, from 1990 to 2014 of 

14 SEC-221. And it will address the remaining years 

15 and that will follow Sandia and be completed -- I 

16 anticipate completion in August of 2017.

17 INL, this is a petition that -- an 

18 addendum that we are working on that will address 

19 the reserved areas, the areas of the initial 

20 evaluation that were not covered. They were 

21 reserved. We anticipate that one to be complete 

22 in January. 

23 Metals & Controls is a new petition. 
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1 It's for the residual period, and we expect to have 

2 that report complete in June of 2017 as well.

3 So, petitions under Board review, 

4 Carborundum was discussed earlier. A lot of these 

5 we have already discussed during the Work Group 

6 discussion.

7 Feed Materials Production Center, 

8 again, we discussed. We are working on a Site 

9 Profile update due in December that will address 

10 a lot of the remaining issues.

11 Hanford, this is looking at the prime 

12 contractors. We have made action on the entire 

13 period of that petition but we are looking at the 

14 prime contractors who are not covered in the recent 

15 Class edition.

16 Area IV Santa Susana should be 

17 addressed with the petition being discussed 

18 tomorrow, the 83.14. SEC-93 was the open petition 

19 that we had that had the remaining year of 1965. 

20 Again, it should be closed out with the 83.14 

21 tomorrow.

22 Savannah River Site, NIOSH and SC&A 

23 have a planned update for that one. And, again, 
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1 Los Alamos National Lab, I mentioned the addendum 

2 and we have an update scheduled for this meeting. 

3 Grand Junction Facilities, again, we 

4 discussed earlier we are doing additional data 

5 capture and interviews to close out the -- to try 

6 to address some issues that SC&A brought up for the 

7 1990-91 period, I believe, on intakes. 

8 Rocky Flats Plant, again, we discussed. 

9 We have a CML report coming out next week and should 

10 have some Work Group activities soon after that.

11 INL, we have the current Class with the 

12 Advisory Board under review as well as the addendum 

13 that I mentioned earlier. That should say January 

14 2017, not December, for that expected completion 

15 of that addendum. 

16 ANL-West is with the Advisory Board and 

17 SC&A. 

18 So, these are the sites that are with 

19 the Advisory Board, but I think we have presented 

20 a path forward with all of these sites to try to 

21 address them and close them out.

22 And the 83.14s are the 83.14s we've 

23 pretty much said we have had these on here for some 
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1 time. The Sandia National Lab at Albuquerque, 

2 which used to be the Z Division for LANL, all the 

3 claims that have been coming in that have 

4 presumptive cancers have been moving forward in the 

5 SEC. So if we ever get a claim, we will move this 

6 one forward. Currently, we don't have one, nor do 

7 we really expect one. Same thing with Dayton 

8 Project-Monsanto. So, anyway, that is it. 

9 Questions?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Any questions or 

11 comments for LaVon?

12 MEMBER BEACH: No, I was just going to 

13 speculate that's quite a date change from December 

14 2016 to January 2017. 

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, yeah.

16 MEMBER BEACH: I guess it's only a 

17 month.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, 

19 honestly our schedule -- and I won't lie to you, 

20 our schedule had us completing it, like, December 

21 28th. And I was looking at, okay, we've got 

22 Christmas here and we've got New Year's here. I 

23 don't think that's probably going to happen. So 
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1 that's why we are pushing it to January. 

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Stu, have you approved 

3 the vacations yet?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't take vacation 

5 during that period anyway.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Any other 

7 questions? I thought I was going to slip -- you 

8 slipped up on Argonne-West, but I see you've got 

9 it in there.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I do. 

11 CHAIR MELIUS: This addendum stuff is 

12 new. Board Members on the phone have any 

13 questions?

14 So, a busy year next year. Yeah. For 

15 everyone. Stu, do you want to get ready? I'm going 

16 to grab a cup of coffee.

17 (Pause.)

18 CHAIR MELIUS: While we are getting 

19 ready here I guess I will -- I noticed LaVon did 

20 use the same formatting on this slide as Stu.

21 Savannah River Site SEC Petition Update

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, hello again. 
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1 I'm giving a brief update on our Savannah River 

2 status, mainly because we didn't want to fly Tim 

3 out here for a short presentation like this. Just 

4 an update presentation. I will answer questions 

5 as I am able to. I think I can answer most 

6 everything on how we're doing.

7 These are the deliverables that we had 

8 promised had been on our schedule for trying to 

9 address the remaining issues that are on the table 

10 at Savannah River having to do with coworker models 

11 and neptunium, thorium work, metal hydrides, and 

12 then the subcontractor investigation of were 

13 subcontractors monitored sufficiently. 

14 There are some date slippages in here 

15 which you'll see, and I believe I'll get to the 

16 reasons for those as I go through the remainder of 

17 the slides. Some of these are completed on time. 

18 The Plutonium Fabrication Facility construction, 

19 Report Number 80, should be out this -- it's just 

20 the 30th. I guess it's the 30th. So it'll be out 

21 next month. 

22 And the thoron exposures we expect to 

23 be done in January on schedule. So, I think I can 
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1 cover most of the rest of these in the following 

2 slides. 

3 Coworker model, remember we're doing --

4 this is OTIB-81 -- we are doing it in phases. 

5 Revision 3 is to demonstrate the coworker approach 

6 for tritium and trivalents, right? And then 

7 Revision 4 will be demonstrating -- you know, 

8 incorporating all the radionuclide exposures. 

9 And so the Revision 3 we're getting out 

10 there just so we can get that to the Work Group and 

11 to the Board and have a discussion about, you know, 

12 the propriety and is this the right way to go on 

13 coworkers.

14 Revision 4 will contain all the 

15 remaining radionuclides that have internal 

16 monitoring requirements, which are plutonium, 

17 uranium, neptunium, mixed fission products, 

18 strontium, cesium and cobalt. 

19 And the reason why this schedule 

20 changed or slipped a little bit is because we needed 

21 to code additional data. Now, the explanation 

22 behind that is that we are using the NOCTS data as 

23 our database to build these coworkers. 
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1 We have, you know, a huge number of 

2 claims from Savannah River, lots of monitoring data 

3 in those claims. We've done some tests on the 

4 NOCTS database or the NOCTS data in terms of its 

5 comparability to total data. We've gotten certain 

6 years where we have gotten all the data and it 

7 appears that it's sufficient to use for a coworker 

8 model. And we felt like, okay, great, we can have 

9 the NOCTS data coded. We will present -- you know, 

10 so we will use that as our data set.

11 Well, what we forgot when we made that 

12 schedule was that the NOCTS data that we have isn't 

13 necessarily all the data we got from DOE, because 

14 of efficiency measures.

15 For instance, if we would get a claim 

16 with several skin cancers, several basal cell 

17 carcinomas, we would just enter into -- you know, 

18 we'd code the external data, do the dose 

19 reconstruction with the external data, and 

20 wouldn't code the internal data. 

21 So, you know, we encountered that as we 

22 began starting work on this, and we realized that 

23 there was some data we had to code from the DOE 
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1 responses into NOCTS in order to -- or from, you 

2 know, DOE NOCTS into what we call the NOCTS database 

3 in order to be able to complete this. So that is 

4 the reason for the change in schedule on this item 

5 and the new completion date of June of 2017.

6 Report-70 is thorium exposures after 

7 1972 at the Savannah River Site. It posts thorium 

8 exposures and describes thorium work and dose 

9 reconstruction methods from '72 to '80 and '80 to 

10 '95. After 1980 we are intending to support the 

11 use of a 10 percent DAC to bound the thorium doses 

12 when thorium operations and inventory were 

13 minimal, meaning there wasn't a lot of active work 

14 with thorium going on. 

15 The thorium inventory during this 

16 period, much of it is irradiated fuel slugs, which 

17 is stored and not accessible for exposure. So the 

18 actual amount of thorium that is accessible to be 

19 exposed to is relatively small, even though during 

20 some of these years there is a lot of thorium there. 

21 It's in this irradiated fuel storage and isn't 

22 really available. It's just being stored. It's 

23 not available for exposure or intakes.
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1 And the reason for this delay was a 

2 delay in getting some air monitoring data out of 

3 Savannah River. But as you see, that goes back to 

4 a slip from July to September. So that issue of 

5 getting information out of Savannah River is 

6 somewhat old and that's why Greg has not been 

7 approached lately about any Savannah River 

8 timeliness issues. And the scheduled completion 

9 is March of 2017. 

10 Metal hydrides is Report-72, which 

11 describes metal hydride exposure at Savannah 

12 River. It'll discuss the research work operations 

13 and associated exposures. And the schedule change 

14 here is due to classification reviews. And part 

15 of the issue is we wrote our document on a 

16 classified system, submitted it to Savannah River 

17 for review to see if it was okay, and they said no, 

18 it's not okay, you're going to have to remove some 

19 things. And we removed some things and 

20 resubmitted it and then were told again it wasn't 

21 okay. 

22 It's not clear to me today right now 

23 whether it's because we didn't remove everything 
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1 they told us to remove or whether the second time 

2 around they said, oh, this stuff here shouldn't be 

3 in there, even though they had seen it before. So 

4 it's not clear to me which happened at this point. 

5 But for whatever reason, we had to take a couple 

6 passes through getting this released, or getting 

7 it into a form where it could be released to public. 

8 And so the scheduled completion now is next month. 

9 And then our final, our subcontractor 

10 follow-up work, we sampled the job plans randomly, 

11 selected 110 construction trades workers for 

12 follow-up. Data capture for all radiological 

13 records were conducted on November 14th, the week 

14 of November 14th. We went down there and captured 

15 records for a lot of workers, and now they are at 

16 the Savannah River Site classification office for 

17 clearance. And once we get that copy of the 

18 records, an analysis will be completed and provided 

19 to the Savannah River SRS Work Group. 

20 So we're in the process there. I think 

21 this is maybe a one-month change and I think it 

22 might be taking more time to get those records out 

23 of Savannah River than we thought. And I believe 
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1 that's the end of my update. I'll try to answer 

2 any questions anybody might have.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions for Stu? 

4 Board Members on the phone, were there any 

5 questions? 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: None here.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. Why 

8 don't we go ahead, and I think Joe Fitzgerald is 

9 going to present. And then, Stu, don't go far away 

10 because we may have some more questions for you, 

11 or some questions for you after Joe presents. 

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Good afternoon. 

13 This will be a bit of a takeoff from what Stu just 

14 presented. And this will just focus on the 

15 subcontractor records item that he just briefed on.

16 Okay. Just a little more background 

17 than perhaps he had given. This issue goes back 

18 to about 2014. Tim and I were doing interviews at 

19 Savannah River and we interviewed one of the senior 

20 health physicists and he actually was very familiar 

21 with a lot of these records migrations in the 1980 

22 time frame, which was a crucial time frame for 

23 Savannah River. 
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1 And he allowed that, you know, pretty 

2 much as we already knew, the primary records were, 

3 you know, put in electronic form. They were 

4 evolved and certainly migrated to the record of --

5 the official record that is being used for dose 

6 reconstruction. 

7 It was the subcontractor records and he 

8 commented that, well, those were in hard copy form 

9 and those were put in a different file. And he 

10 thought perhaps they were migrated sometime a 

11 little later but he felt they ended up in the same 

12 place. 

13 But there was enough, you know, 

14 speculation involved there that we were both 

15 concerned and this was both NIOSH's and from our 

16 standpoint that we had a different situation for 

17 the subcontractor records than we had for the 

18 primary records and there was a need for a real --

19 what we would call a validation and verification 

20 that in fact the records are complete and they also 

21 were all migrated into the electronic record, which 

22 is the basic thing I think we do for all the SECs. 

23 What's proven to be more difficult and 
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1 it's more germane to the fact these are 

2 subcontractor records is it's -- hasn't been easy 

3 to both identify the subcontractors, not only the 

4 first tier but the second and third tier 

5 construction contractors, and it's also not easy 

6 to pinpoint whether all those records were in fact 

7 migrated.

8 So there has been a couple of efforts 

9 that I know Tim led which looked at NOCTS as a basis 

10 for sampling and looked at even the Department of 

11 Labor's database as a means to sample to validate,

12 and in both cases either there wasn't enough 

13 information or it wasn't feasible to do so. 

14 So we are sort of at this juncture now 

15 where we are still asking the same question -- are 

16 the subcontractor records complete, quite apart 

17 from whether they were kept in these separate files 

18 or not, and did they end up, as this senior HP was 

19 allowing, that they were eventually all migrated 

20 into the same database that is being relied upon 

21 today. 

22 So, again, I think we still haven't 

23 answered those questions.
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1 And I won't go through this. You heard 

2 this in the last briefing and the last Board 

3 meeting. Certainly, quite a few construction job 

4 plans were found by virtue of the way the employee 

5 number is catalogued on those lists. You can tell 

6 by the prefix -- and this is nice because most sites 

7 don't do this -- but you get a prefix that shows 

8 which ones are prime contractors, i.e., in this 

9 case, DuPont, and which ones are subcontractors by 

10 looking at that number. 

11 So I think from that standpoint what --

12 as Stu was saying, what's going on now is basically 

13 you identify a sample from that -- those 3,000 pages 

14 of construction job plans and you walk that and 

15 compare that to the bioassay records, which are in 

16 microfiche, and see if you get a match up or not. 

17 And these would be subcontractor 

18 employees that should have been, quote-unquote, 

19 bioassayed by virtue of the work they were doing, 

20 which in this case would have been plutonium or 

21 neptunium or obvious operations at facilities that 

22 would have required bioassay.

23 Okay. So the tasking that we got was 
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1 based on a concern, I think, that was expressed at 

2 the last Board meeting that, you know, this was 

3 probably the right way to go, you know, even though 

4 there was a couple false starts in the past.

5 This was the, certainly, an appropriate 

6 path to go. But the concern there was this was a 

7 four- or five-year period covering one facility in 

8 the early 1980s and would there not be some concern 

9 whether that would be reflective or representative 

10 of a site like Savannah River where you have a lot 

11 of different operations and a 30-, 40-year span of 

12 operational concerns? 

13 So the issue here was could one, for 

14 efficiency's sake, pick up the pace, look at more 

15 facilities, look at more time periods and come up 

16 with a broader conclusion that would guide the 

17 Board, I think, on the question of whether the 

18 subcontractor records were in fact complete and 

19 available for dose reconstruction.

20 So this is the sort of genesis of what 

21 we are doing now actually in coordination with and 

22 collaboration with NIOSH. We are going through 

23 and reviewing the electronic search system, the 
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1 EDWS, to identify other facilities, other 

2 operations that would likely have 

3 subcontractor-identified records. 

4 And what we are focusing on, quite 

5 frankly, are kind of the same things that I think 

6 Tim and his team focused on, which is -- you know, 

7 you got safe work permits, rad work permits. You 

8 got training rosters. 

9 You have a number of different reports 

10 and documents that would catalogue workers by 

11 virtue of their names, their employee numbers, what 

12 have you. And looking at that you can find the 

13 subcontractors and basically use that information 

14 to identify whether or not they have records in 

15 terms of bioassay records and external records.

16 Now, you know, it's not a sure-proof 

17 thing. I mean, I've been going through the 

18 electronic search and what you're looking for is 

19 really document boxes that may actually contain 

20 these kinds of records. 

21 You don't have a surefire way of knowing 

22 it. So you really do have to go to the site and 

23 you do have to go through these boxes and see if 
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1 you do find the appropriate information to in fact 

2 base a sampling on.

3 So the whole exercise is to get to the

4 same place that I think NIOSH is right now, which 

5 is a sampling -- a random sampling of subcontractor 

6 IDs which we can then crosswalk against the 

7 bioassay records which are on microfiche and I 

8 think we will probably also, just be a little bit 

9 more complete, look at the electronic databases as 

10 well just to see if we can also see the badging 

11 showing up there.

12 We are pretty sure the externals are 

13 okay mainly because that was handled differently 

14 than the internal bioassay records. The internal 

15 bioassay records were in a separate file, 

16 microfiched, and not certainly in the electronic 

17 database.

18 We had a number of sessions on this. In 

19 one technical call we had, I think, with NIOSH and 

20 the Work Group the only issue that was outstanding 

21 was the familiar question of how good is good 

22 enough, which is, you know, okay, so we go through 

23 this exercise and we do come up with some 
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1 perspectives on, you know, to what extent the 

2 contractor records contain these bioassay records. 

3 You can match them up and they in fact 

4 did get bioassays. Is it good enough to have 95 

5 percent completeness? Is it 90 percent 

6 completeness -- you know, at what -- you know, what 

7 degree of adequacy and completeness. Again, this 

8 is a very familiar question. 

9 I think we have had this all along going 

10 back in all the SECs. How good is good enough when 

11 it comes down to whatever results would come out 

12 of -- with this, and how will the Board address 

13 that? And there is no, you know, simple answer. 

14 I think we have used the 95th percentile. We have 

15 used, in some cases, 99. You know, it's a judgment 

16 call.

17 Okay. Where things stand right now is 

18 I had to get my EDWS access renewed. I don't want 

19 to treat that lightly. That was an effort, you 

20 know. 

21 It probably took me about a month and 

22 a half to get -- to get keyed into the system. I 

23 was in the system before but they changed some of 
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1 the procedures and the access points in the -- that 

2 had to be done. 

3 I completed the EDWS search. I sent 

4 the results over to NIOSH. I think we are okay in 

5 terms of comparability. We want apples and 

6 apples. We don't want to go through all this 

7 exercise and find out the process was different 

8 enough that you really can't compare the results. 

9 So we are doing this very carefully to 

10 make sure it's going to be comparable and that the 

11 process is similar. I have already submitted the 

12 data request to SRS. I haven't sent the official 

13 letter but they are reviewing the box request --

14 about 70 boxes -- and we are shooting probably now, 

15 with some of the delays, shooting for the first two 

16 weeks of January for a on-site. 

17 That'll be a joint NIOSH-SC&A review 

18 and we will then proceed to match up -- as Stu was 

19 indicating, we will match up the identified 

20 subcontractors with the corresponding SRS dose 

21 records. Any questions?

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Board Members with 

23 questions? If not, I do have some. To what extent 
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1 does your sample overlap with what NIOSH is doing?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: We are not doing the 

3 construction job plans.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: So there is no overlap 

6 on that. I mean, the focus of the ongoing effort 

7 by Tim's team is the 3,000 pages of construction 

8 job plans for 1981 to 1985, I think it is, for 773A 

9 -- one facility.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. We are 

12 reviewing 1980 through 2000 -- 20 years across 

13 probably about seven or eight facilities.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, again, we don't 

16 know what's going to be in the boxes. But that's 

17 pretty much the search parameter and what we are 

18 asking for. So it's going to be a broader scope 

19 and a broader time period.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: But not that facility 

22 for those five years.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Okay. I was 
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1 just trying to understand that part of it. And 

2 where is -- do you know where NIOSH, slash, ORAU 

3 is with what -- with their activities?

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think you 

5 mentioned it.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we are -- I think 

7 we are awaiting the records which we identified. 

8 We have identified a group of 110 construction 

9 trade workers from those construction work plans 

10 who we feel like, from the construction work plans, 

11 should have been monitored and therefore should 

12 have monitoring data. 

13 We have gone to search the records, 

14 which were on microfiche, and these are not 

15 claimants necessarily. Gone to search the records 

16 which are on microfiche and then I am waiting to 

17 get those released from Savannah River and we 

18 anticipate we will be -- have our report done in 

19 March of this coming year.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: And Joe, about how many 

21 -- do you have any idea how many people would be 

22 included in your records that you're pulling?

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Not yet. I mean, I 
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1 think it's going to be as much dictated by what we 

2 find. I mean, I think when Tim found the 3,000 

3 pages, they were able to scan through those as I 

4 did, actually, when I was online with those, and 

5 you could certainly identify the subcontractors, 

6 the time periods. 

7 You could do a sampling. In this case, 

8 until we actually find the records and look at the 

9 records, we probably don't know what the sample 

10 size is going to be. 

11 My, you know, rough estimate would be 

12 300 or 400, I think, as far as the sample size. But 

13 that's not a statistical-based sample size and it's

14 hard to project until we actually see what we find. 

15 The construction job plans were very 

16 straightforward. They listed the personnel and 

17 had the de-identifiers there. I don't know what 

18 we are going to find in these other searches.

19

20 I am hopeful that since we use the same 

21 kind of search parameters they will be similar and 

22 we will find similar information. But, you know, 

23 again, we really don't know until we look at it. 
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1 But I think I would err in more sampling than not 

2 and trying to cover more diverse facilities and 

3 time periods. My concern is, at Savannah River, 

4 they increasingly outsourced the subcontractors in 

5 the late '80s into the early '90s, particularly 

6 with the D&D and remediation work they were doing. 

7 So at that point the centralized management that 

8 DuPont enjoyed sort of eroded and became more 

9 decentralized. So I think if we can get some 

10 match-ups in that time frame and we have confidence 

11 in those that's going to help answer the question 

12 that we are trying to answer, which is okay, across 

13 not only the '80s but into the '90s do you still 

14 see, you know, the records that correspond with the 

15 subcontractors that are identified or not and, you 

16 know, that -- I think that would give us confidence 

17 to recommend to you that, you know, it seems like 

18 we are okay across different facilities, across 

19 different time frames. I mean, if it's good in the 

20 late '80s it will be probably good before and after 

21 because that was probably the most disjointed time 

22 period. You had a lot of subs coming on site.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. I was going to say 
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1 it was, I think, the -- the larger the sample the 

2 better we are. I mean, it goes back to your 

3 question well, what's adequate. Well, adequate 

4 also depends on how big your sample is and how 

5 representative that sample is or, you know, how big 

6 a universe is that sample coming from and how is 

7 it drawn from that.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Actually, the 

9 limiting case is not so much copying down the 

10 identifiers. I think we can do that relatively 

11 easy. It's the matching up by hand --

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: -- with the 

14 microfiche, which takes time and, you know, I 

15 think, you know, if you have several hundred or more 

16 to match up the microfiche -- this is not automated. 

17 So I am trying to picture this. Yes, that would 

18 -- that would be a -- that would take some effort. 

19 But what we will try to do is, even 

20 though we are starting later than NIOSH, hopefully 

21 in January-February, do catch up. So we are going 

22 to -- you know, we will catch up with that schedule 

23 and be able to present our results about the same 
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1 time in March.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, but if you think 

3 about the whole approach, one is you're assuming 

4 that the NOCTS database is representative.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: The what database?

6 CHAIR MELIUS: The NOCTS -- what NIOSH 

7 is using -- is their basis for their coworker 

8 models, right, for -

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, we are 

10 going to primary records. We are -

11 CHAIR MELIUS: No no no, I am talking 

12 about -

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: -- for -- on a first 

15 level for the coworker model -- what I heard Stu 

16 just say, I thought.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. That's not a 

18 part of the subcontractor task. But yes, our --

19 but we are --

20 CHAIR MELIUS: But it includes the 

21 subcontractors, right?

22 MR. HINNEFELD: -- our view is that the 

23 NOCTS database is essentially a representative 
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1 sampling of all -- of all workers. 

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: And so that -- yes, 

4 that's the basis for it.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: And you have two 

6 separate approaches or considerations to how --

7 showing that that's -- whether or not that's 

8 representative. One, for the production workers 

9 -- they have a different set of records.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Yes.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: And then for 

12 construction workers where you have a much more --

13 less precise set of just employment records. We 

14 don't know how good that is and therefore how 

15 representative it may be -

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: -- and it's very 

18 complicated. So I am saying we are going from 

19 there and then now we are trying to validate with, 

20 you know, two separate sets of ways of identifying.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm sure Tim could 

22 speak more knowledgeably about that than I could. 

23 But yes, that's -- that is the situation we'd be 
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1 in.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Yes, no, I -- we 

3 are, and then we have this other so I think it gets 

4 very -- I mean, I am very skeptical on the approach 

5 that Tim is using simply because it's limited to 

6 such a small number. It'll be useful supplemental 

7 data but it doesn't answer some of the primary 

8 questions that you have as to what, you know, how 

9 complete are these and were people actually sampled 

10 and so forth and so on. So I think until we can 

11 put all of them together it's very hard to come to 

12 any conclusions, especially until the SC&A effort 

13 gets -

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. I was going to 

15 add that yes, that's absolutely true. We are 

16 actually going back to a primary question -

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: -- that wasn't 

19 resolved or answered in the first place and -

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Right.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: -- trying to go back 

22 and answer that at the same time that we are pretty 

23 far along --
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: -- on the other 

3 things.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: And, again, this -- I 

6 think there was an assumption that the records had 

7 been migrated and everything was fine and this 

8 revelation of a couple years ago was that no, 

9 actually there were two separate systems at play 

10 here -

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: -- and that required 

13 then that you go back and actually validate that 

14 your records did in fact wind up where they should 

15 have been.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Other questions, 

17 comments?

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Jim, this is Paul. I 

19 have a question for Joe.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Go ahead, Paul.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. Joe, I assume in 

22 your second to the last -- second to the last slide 

23 which you called remaining questions, I assume 
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1 that's more than a rhetorical question. Are you 

2 going to -

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, absolutely.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Are you going to try to 

5 establish that -- establish the adequacy criteria 

6 before you actually do the sampling? I mean --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I -- it certainly 

8 would be statistically pure.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- statistically 

10 average, it becomes very subjective.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: The problem is, 

12 understanding the nature of the beast, which is you 

13 don't know what you have until you actually look. 

14 We don't know what --

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: I understand that.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: We don't know the data 

17 that we are actually looking at until -- we don't 

18 even know what the n is. n equals, you know, 

19 numbers of subcontractor -- identified 

20 subcontractors until we actually go in and look and 

21 we don't know how many per facility. 

22 So it is kind of a rhetorical question 

23 in the sense that we are going to go ahead and find 
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1 these records, identify the numbers. 

2 In parallel -- I've talked to John about 

3 this -- we are going to have somebody look at the 

4 statistics just because it's an obvious question 

5 that we are going to need to at least understand 

6 the ramifications and get some -- it must be -- like 

7 I said, in the first week of -- second week of 

8 January we will have the -- what the n number is 

9 -- number of records.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, I guess --

11 (Simultaneous speaking.)

12 MR. FITZGERALD: And during that same 

13 time frame we are going to have somebody look at 

14 the statistics -

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: -- and help us decide, 

17 because there is a -- phase two of this thing is 

18 matching up the subcontractor identifiers to the 

19 records themselves -- the actual radiation 

20 records. So it would be helpful to know, you know, 

21 do we need 500, do we need 700. I mean, so that's 

22 what we are going to try to do in parallel is get 

23 that advice from, I guess, Harry or -- Harry 
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1 Chmelynski, our statistician, and give us at least 

2 a rough idea of, you know, you're going to need, 

3 you know, hundreds in order to have a statistically 

4 sound sample or not. 

5 So in the second phase we will have to 

6 go ahead and match that up and that's going to be 

7 two trips. I mean, the first trip -

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: -- is really to 

10 identify the subs. The second trip is to match 

11 that up against the microfiche where the bioassay 

12 records reside and that's -- again, that's another 

13 whole tall order of work and we are hopeful that 

14 we can do that maybe in late January into February.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, once you get the 

16 sort of the n value, you're going to try to 

17 establish the measure of adequacy value.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. I think --

19 like I said, that's sort of the discussion we have 

20 had within SC&A is that we do need to have that 

21 looked at and that needs to guide our second phase, 

22 which is to figure out how many we need to match 

23 up to have a -- you know, at least a statistically 
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1 sound -- it's not going to be a pure analysis but 

2 at least it'll be guided by some review and analysis 

3 that we will present to the Board at the same time.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, it's the impure 

5 analysis that we are worried about.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: You know, but Paul, I 

7 mean, and everybody here actually -- it's not just 

8 a Paul question -- but I think we also have to 

9 recognize that we are not just looking at the --

10 as a single, you know, uniform source of records.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. Right.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: There may be years where 

13 things are missing or better or worse or whatever 

14 and everything may be fine for 15 years and six 

15 years may be terrible and then -

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. There may be 

17 years where it's good and others where it's bad.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: We really don't have 

20 any idea, you know. In looking at this -- looking 

21 at these collections we don't have any idea what 

22 fraction of the true number this represents. 

23 There is just no way of knowing that -- you know, 
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1 how many records have been lost, how many records 

2 were destroyed, how many records weren't kept in 

3 the first place. All we are going to be able to 

4 do is identify if the ones we can identify, in fact, 

5 have corresponding rad records associated with 

6 them. 

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: That answers a good 

9 part of the question, not all the questions.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thanks.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Paul, if you'd like to 

12 answer those rhetorical questions for us you're --

13 we'd welcome it.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. Yeah, right.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Anybody else 

16 with comments or questions? Okay.

17 Dose Reconstruction Report to the Secretary

18 Okay. I am going to sit here after 

19 that. I refuse to move here. So dose 

20 reconstruction report to the Secretary. Ted 

21 circulated the most recent draft of the letter to 

22 the Secretary in our report. That incorporated 
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1 comments that I received from Board Members and Ted 

2 and Jenny and others. 

3 But I think that was it, and so forth, 

4 and there were not a large number of those but there 

5 were some. There are probably still some typos, 

6 as Dave reminded me over breakfast and we had 

7 discussions -- grammatical discussions over that. 

8 We wish you were here for breakfast, Paul. It 

9 would have -- probably could have helped us out with 

10 our discussions. 

11 So I guess I am interested now in what 

12 -- are there other comments? If there are -- if 

13 they are grammatical or phrasing or whatever and, 

14 you know, not -- don't substantially change the 

15 meaning of the report, whatever, I think we can 

16 just, you know, forward them and those will be 

17 incorporated and we will, obviously, do a final 

18 proofing before we send it out. 

19 But if there are significant things 

20 that would change a conclusion or a finding or 

21 whatever then we probably need to discuss that 

22 among the full Board here. So I open it up. Dave?

23 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I don't -- it's 
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1 fine. The cover letter is, in my opinion, perfect. 

2 I don't have any suggested changes. There are no 

3 substantial changes I can see in the report that 

4 was circulated. 

5 I do have a number of editorial changes 

6 and I found three typos, and others, I am sure, have 

7 found them too. Twice the word cases. But -- and 

8 I'll send them -- but I'll send them to you, Jim. 

9 But otherwise I think it's ready to go and it's 

10 nice. The data was up -- we started analyzing the 

11 data that went up through November 1st, 2015. So 

12 it's a year later. We have circulated and we have 

13 gone over everything. I think we are ready to go 

14 and this seems like an appropriate time.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Anybody else? Wanda?

16 MEMBER MUNN: One can't help but be 

17 amazed at how well it has come together, actually. 

18 And so it's a very good report.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: I think everybody 

20 contributed. Is that -- any Board Members on the 

21 phone wish to comment?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, it seems to be 

23 free of dangling participles.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. We discovered 

2 with our -

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: If you caught the 

4 spelling errors, then I am good to go.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I discovered 

6 with some of you former professor types, you know, 

7 the dangling participle one -- we have a semicolon 

8 one also who's very opposed to semicolons. I got 

9 chastised for that also. So I was feeling sorry 

10 for the poor students, the large number that had 

11 to go through class and learn grammar again. Okay. 

12 If not, then I think we need a motion. Dave?

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So moved that we 

14 approve the report and the cover letter.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Second.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Voice vote -- I 

17 can -

18 MR. KATZ: I don't see why not.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. All in favor.

20 (Chorus of ayes.)

21 Opposed.

22 (No response.)

23 And abstained?
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1 (No response.)

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: I second it. I just 

3 wanted to add, since this is important for the 

4 Secretary, don't we need to log in our individual 

5 votes?

6 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. Paul, it was 

7 hard to hear what you said.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: I said since this is 

9 actually a report for the Secretary, don't we need 

10 to individually vote on it?

11 MR. KATZ: I don't think so. I think 

12 this vote is fine for this. It's just --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

14 MR. KATZ: -- a report. 

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: I voted yes. I just 

16 wanted to make sure we are --

17 MR. KATZ: Okay.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- procedurally okay.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay. Fine. It'll be on 

20 me.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'll be right there 

22 with a dangling participle.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. And I would ask 
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1 Ted, though, to check with the Board Members who 

2 are not on the -- able to attend or be on the phone.

3 MR. KATZ: Right. That'll be part of 

4 my follow-up which I do after every Board meeting. 

5 Thanks.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Yes, so that we do 

7 that because it does represent conclusions from the 

8 Board and -- and, obviously, if any of them have, 

9 you know, significant comments we will let 

10 everybody know. 

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It may be 

12 appropriate somehow to incorporate -- well, no. 

13 The cover letter is the cover letter. It's done 

14 so -

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- I was just going 

17 to say, you know, if there were ways of sneaking 

18 in that was unanimous decision would be nice. But 

19 truth is we have approved it; it is final.

20 MEMBER MUNN: That letter is already 

21 perfect so -

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Let's not -

23 MR. KATZ: Right. Right. It really 
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1 it.

2 Board Work Session, August Public Comments, 

3 Correspondence

4 CHAIR MELIUS: -- mess it up. Okay. 

5 Good. So now we have -- well, we are super6 efficient today here -- a work session which was 

7 to last an hour -- which one? Yes, I know. 

8 Public comments -- I am getting those 

9 out here. I have 38 public comments from the last 

10 meetings and -- or meeting, I should say, and do 

11 that. First one was a correspondence from the 

12 Blockson petitioners that was read into the record 

13 by Ted at the meeting. 

14 It was considered overtime hour issues 

15 and were those -- that and I think Jim Neton 

16 responded and indicated it was -- that was a Site 

17 Profile issue and would be followed up on and do 

18 that. 

19 The second one regarding INL wanted to 

20 expand the time frame for the SEC Class. It's 

21 really not something -- I think we are sort of --

22 ongoing we can but it depends on findings and it's 

23 really a DCAS prerogative in terms of doing that 
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1 as we go through and -- but, again, with input from 

2 the Board in terms of what we find as we go along 

3 -- do that. 

4 We had a number of additional comments 

5 on that, one regarding the reactor list was from 

6 one person at -- regarding INL, a number of other 

7 individual comments which have all been responded 

8 to by -- one of them by -- I responded to, I think, 

9 at the meeting and the others -- Tim Taulbee has 

10 followed up on to that. 

11 Eight, nine and ten -- questions 

12 regarding Santa Susana and regarding an 

13 individual's particular record and so forth and 

14 Lara Hughes has responded to those. So another set 

15 of comments regarding Santa Susana regarding an 

16 issue regarding some of the Site Profile background 

17 records and so forth and that, again, Lara has 

18 addressed those and I think they will be addressed 

19 probably publically, at least not directly but 

20 indirectly in terms of the presentation later.

21 Numbers 15 through 17 were a set of 

22 comments on the Savannah River Site from one person 

23 involved in that petition and comments about some 
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1 of the revisions in the TBD and then some of our 

2 evaluation approaches. Tim Taulbee has responded 

3 to those. Another set of -- well, a single 

4 question, number 18, regarding sort of multiple 

5 issues with some other sites and so forth. LaVon's

6 followed up on that. 

7 Number of issues on -- from a 

8 petitioner, person involved, five sets numbered 19 

9 through 23 regarding Rocky Flats that have either 

10 been referred to the Work Group. One was a DOL 

11 issue and LaVon Rutherford, I believe, I guess he 

12 followed up on that one. That was the issue on 

13 residual periods on DOE sites, which are not 

14 included in the legislation. So we don't do those. 

15 Another -- numbers 24 and 25 some issues regarding 

16 several sites, one of which was a person had not 

17 heard back regarding an SEC petition in the early 

18 days.

19 So I think that's, again, Josh and LaVon 

20 have followed up on that. Numbers 26 through 28 

21 regarding Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley 

22 and, again, those -- LaVon has responded to that. 

23 There was questions about the petitions at 
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1 different sites. Further comments on Savannah 

2 River from petitioner -- that's number 29, and Tim 

3 has responded to that. Some questions on Pinellas 

4 -- again, Josh Kinman responded on that -- to that. 

5 Another person, number 31, regarding Nevada Test 

6 Site and the NIOSH DCAS project officer Mark Rolfes 

7 has responded on that one. Another Pinellas, Pete 

8 Darnell has responded to that and I believe that 

9 was -- has that been sent out, Pete's -- it was in 

10 our package. I just didn't quite, wasn't -- quite 

11 have a heading on it so I couldn't quite tell what 

12 had happened to it, okay, and do that.

13 Again, a letter from Rocky Flats --

14 petitioner urging extension and so forth. 

15 Referred to LaVon Rutherford. And then last but 

16 not least, some questions on -- I think there is 

17 five -- comments on General Steel Industries and 

18 Dave Allen, the DCAS project officer on that has 

19 responded on those as he has on many others about 

20 that site. So that -- so yes?

21 MEMBER BEACH: Question. Regarding 

22 the one that we talked about that Pete Darnell sent 

23 out, how -- what's the response on that? I mean, 
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1 did that go to the petitioner? Is it going to be 

2 read into the record? It's just an unusual way to 

3 have correspondence on the public comments. So I 

4 was curious -- the process.

5 MR. KATZ: I can't answer that. I 

6 don't know.

7 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. I just didn't 

8 know. It was unusual.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Stu or anybody? I 

10 didn't quite understand the context for that 

11 either.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Off the top of my head 

13 I don't remember it. But Ted, do you have one that 

14 I can look at?

15 MEMBER BEACH: I have one pulled up 

16 here. Actually, I have a hard copy, too.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: I would say we would not 

18 read that into the record because what we are 

19 addressing is, have these comments been responded 

20 to and the general way they were responded that's 

21 included in what's been transmitted as part of the 

22 transcript there. But how that -- what that 

23 correspondence is, is not -- just was sort of out 
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1 of context and usually we don't get information. 

2 A lot of times -- most of times probably done by 

3 phone or by email, I think. Okay.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: What -- who this one 

5 was sent to. I mean, we got copies of it but was 

6 it intended to go to the commenter?

7 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Paul. It was 

8 really hard to understand you.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: I just wondered who 

10 this was directed to. It says public comment 

11 response and we got copies of it. But was it 

12 directed to the commenter?

13 MR. KATZ: Yes. I assume the response 

14 -- the commenter was responded to. The comments 

15 were extensive, which is why I think he made a 

16 separate document for that.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, it's comment 

18 number 32 on what was distributed here and -

19 Okay. Ted, do we have anything else we 

20 need to do? We have no correspondence. 

21 We have done our -- do we have any --

22 no, we didn't have any leftover Work Groups. Okay. 

23 MR. HINNEFELD: I can't provide any 
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1 insight today. I don't recall right now. As a 

2 general rule, we provide responsive information to 

3 comments made at the meeting for, you know, back 

4 to the Board. But it's not normal -- we don't 

5 normally then correspond with the commenters. So 

6 I don't know that we did this in this case or not.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Yes, if you 

8 could just follow up. I don't think it's a major 

9 issue with that, nor is it, I think, inappropriate 

10 as a way of -- if there is extensive comments it's 

11 easier to -- sometimes easier just to write out 

12 answers to them and do that. Okay. So I think we 

13 will then break until 4:30.

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

15 went off the record at 2:59 p.m. and resumed at 4:31 

16 p.m.)

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. If everyone can 

18 get seated, we will get started. So we are going 

19 to start with a presentation on LANL from LaVon 

20 Rutherford and then we will hear comments from the 

21 petitioner about the -- so an update from him and 

22 then once that is -- whatever discussion among the 

23 Board and so forth we will then start the public 
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1 comment period. So before we do that we will do 

2 a little announcement about the -- how that works 

3 and so forth.

4 MR. KATZ: Right. Just a reminder, 

5 there is some new faces here. But if you want to 

6 comment during the public comment period there is 

7 a sign-in book outside with the lady sitting 

8 outside at the desk. So please do sign in. It's 

9 helpful. Thanks.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: But it's not required 

11 that you sign in. So if you decide based on what 

12 you've heard or haven't heard that you want to make 

13 comments later you'd be allowed to also. So do 

14 that. And so LaVon, go on.

15 Los Alamos National Laboratory SEC Petition Update

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Alright. I am LaVon 

17 Rutherford. I am going to give the update on our 

18 work with SEC 109 for the Los Alamos National Lab.

19 A little background -- this petition 

20 was received back in April of 2008. It qualified 

21 for evaluation in May of 2008. We initially 

22 evaluated all support workers from January 1, '76 
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1 through December 31 of 2005. 

2 We issued Rev 0 of our report in January 

3 1 of 2009 and Rev 1 in August of 2012. That Rev 

4 1 report actually recommended a Class from January 

5 1, 1976 through December 31 of 1995. The Board 

6 concurred with our recommendation and the 

7 Secretary moved the Class forward.

8 Okay. Our feasibility that we 

9 identified for that Class was unmonitored intakes 

10 of exotic radionuclides, alpha emitters, fission 

11 products, activation products and special tritium 

12 compounds.

13 We set an end date of December 31st, 

14 1995 for the Class based on the presumption that 

15 LANL would be in full compliance with 10 CFR 835. 

16 We committed to evaluate the post-1995 issues, 

17 though. So 10 CFR 835 requires internal dosimetry 

18 programs for radiological workers who under 

19 typical conditions are likely to receive a 

20 committed effective dose equivalent of .1 rem per 

21 year or more from all occupational radionuclide 

22 intakes in a year. So all intakes in a year .1 rem 

23 or 100 millirem. So if they met this requirement 
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1 and the individual did not have internal dosimetry 

2 we could expect that that individual did not 

3 receive more than .1 rem CEDE -- again, assuming 

4 compliance.

5 So since the ER -- since Rev. 1 of the 

6 Evaluation Report we received more information, 

7 documents and procedures about the post-1995 

8 period on exotic radionuclides. What we found is 

9 work with these radionuclides after 1995 has been 

10 sporadic. They are corresponding therefore and 

11 consistently there is corresponding few bioassay 

12 data.

13 Back in November of last year NIOSH, 

14 SC&A and ORAU, our subcontractor, went to LANL. We 

15 met with the LANL health physics team including 

16 managers, dosimetrists and fuel personnel. We met 

17 with them to get a better understanding how they 

18 were complying with 10 CFR 835. Not only complying 

19 now but complying back then. 

20 From that -- during that trip we 

21 captured documents including radiation work 

22 permits, respirator use, air sampling, radiation 

23 surveys, HP checklists, routine monitoring 
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1 instructions and external exposure data, the idea 

2 being collect as much of this information and kind 

3 of, you know, build a story from it.

4 We also, during that visit, we got 

5 information on the special tritium compounds and 

6 their site-specific radiation protection program 

7 in compliance with 10 CFR 835 and their dosimetry 

8 matrices program, which is a program kind of set 

9 up to identify when dosimetry would be required for 

10 specific jobs.

11 So after we -- it took some period of 

12 time to get a lot of this information. As well, 

13 we have also been looking at -- in the spring we 

14 began considering how we were going to, you know, 

15 basically reconstruct doses for the unmonitored 

16 workers during this era. If you think about it, 

17 you know, previously we have always used a coworker 

18 model for unmonitored workers where we found it 

19 appropriate. In this area -- era, if people were 

20 not exceeding 100 millirem, a coworker model would 

21 not be necessary. But we still had 100 millirem 

22 threshold so we have been looking at that.

23 LANL looked at -- LANL operated by a 40 
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1 DAC hour per year limit, which equates to their 100 

2 millirem CEDE and so we have been looking at how 

3 they are complying or how they are meeting that 40 

4 DAC hour limit.

5 So in doing that, we bounced around on 

6 how we were going to do it. Most recently we 

7 decided that we would review -- we have always been 

8 reviewing assessments, reports and things such 

9 like that, identified findings, responses and 

10 corrective actions but we wanted to look more at 

11 this -- the noncompliance tracking system which 

12 actually identifies noncompliances with 10 CFR 835 

13 as well as 10 CFR 830 and others. But we looked 

14 specifically at 10 CFR 835 violations. We looked 

15 at the site response in the corrective actions and 

16 we are also going to review the current reporting 

17 system as soon as we get access to that. 

18 I think Stu mentioned that earlier we 

19 are trying to -- working on getting access. In 

20 fact, that is our last item on this list to get 

21 access to. But when we are reviewing these we are 

22 looking at -- do the findings identify unmonitored 

23 exposures that may prevent reconstructing 
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1 exposures to a defined Class of workers or do the 

2 findings identify a programmatic flaw that would 

3 suggest unmonitored workers could have received 

4 exposures in excess of 40 DAC hours per year. 

5 If you think of that from the 

6 programmatic flaw of the DR perspective, in that 

7 case a coworker model would -- I mean, that would 

8 be like under your old requirement such that a 

9 coworker model would be required. 

10 So where we are, we have reviewed the 

11 available assessments on the different reports, 

12 however, and we have gotten access to the 

13 noncompliance tracking system and we have 

14 downloaded a number of the reports for LANL and we 

15 are putting those in our Site Research Database. 

16 We are working with DOE to get access to the 

17 occurrence reporting process. After we have 

18 reviewed all the assessments and report. The 

19 addendum can be completed. 

20 The long pole in the tent is the 

21 occurrence reporting process. We have every -- we 

22 have reviewed everything else up to this date. Our 

23 current schedule has the addendum being completed 
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1 by February of next year. And that's our current 

2 status.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you very 

4 much, LaVon. Board Members have questions? 

5 Okay. I have a related question, I believe. Have 

6 we in the past on LANL identified other Site Profile 

7 issues going back in time?

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Certainly. Yes.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: And where are we in 

10 terms of addressing those?

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I -- honestly we have 

12 been focusing on the SEC issues and I could not give 

13 you a good position on where we are with the Site 

14 Profile issues.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Because I think 

16 we need to start thinking about those. I mean, 

17 much of the site and time period of site is covered 

18 by SEC. But that still leaves a number of people 

19 with non-SEC cancers that would require dose 

20 reconstruction being done and where Site Profile 

21 issues are, you know, going to be -- could be 

22 important for them and so forth. 

23 And, you know, we have now done enough 
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1 on this site. I guess maybe Hanford's somewhat 

2 close to this, not quite, where one, this is a sort 

3 of a new -- you know, new challenge to look at.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Post '95 period. It's 

6 not been done before but it's also leaves a long 

7 time period with Site Profile issues that we ought 

8 to be thinking about how do we move forward on 

9 those, particularly ones that could have 

10 significant impact on exposures for people that are 

11 working at the site with non-SEC cancers.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. Yes, we can 

13 start working on that at least --

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, that would be 

15 something for the Work Group to think about and -

16 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, I think that's --

17 Josie Beach. Anyway, I think that's a good idea. 

18 I know the Work Group will get -- meet when the 

19 addendum comes out and I don't recall if we had a 

20 Site Profile Matrix at all. I'd have to ask SC&A 

21 on that also. That's a good point.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I think Mark 

23 Griffon was the lead at that time. So it's been 
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1 a long time ago.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, it was.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, another 

4 item I wanted to point out before I forget is, as 

5 Dr. Melius mentioned, this post-'95 period, this 

6 is -- this is really our first 10 CFR 835 era 

7 assessment and there is going to be others to follow 

8 quickly thereafter, Sandia National Lab, Lawrence 

9 Livermore National Lab, and not all sites handled 

10 it the same way based on it. So, you know, I think 

11 it'll be an interesting period.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Any other Board member 

13 comments or questions? Board Members on the 

14 phone, any questions? Okay.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: No questions here.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

17 Andrew. And do you want to identify yourself, and 

18 as usual, and go for it.

19 MR. EVASKOVICH: I am Andrew 

20 Evaskovich. I am the petitioner for SEC 109. I 

21 just got the slides about a day or two ago or found 

22 them online. So I tried to come up with a quick 

23 response. I found some abstracts that I am going 
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1 to read and there is a section of an article that 

2 I found that I am going to refer to as well plus 

3 some stuff that was already in the petition.

4 This is from 1997. Department of 

5 Energy appraisers found continuous air monitors at 

6 Department of Energy plutonium facilities alarmed 

7 less than 30 percent of the time when integrated 

8 room plutonium air concentrations exceeded 500 DAC 

9 hours.

10 Without other interventions this alarm 

11 percentage is consistent with the possibility that 

12 workers could be exposed to high airborne 

13 concentrations without continuous air monitor 

14 alarms. Past research has shown that the 

15 placement of continuous air monitors is a critical 

16 component in rapid and reliable detection of 

17 airborne releases. At Los Alamos National 

18 Laboratory and many other Department of Energy 

19 facilities, continuous air monitors have been 

20 primarily placed at ventilation exhaust points. 

21 The purpose of this study was to evaluate and 

22 compare the effectiveness of exhaust-register 

23 placement of workplace continuous air monitors 
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1 with other sampling locations. All dispersed oil 

2 aerosols were released from multiple locations at 

3 two plutonium laboratories and Los Alamos National 

4 Laboratory. 

5 An array of laser particle counters 

6 positioned in the room measured the time-resolved 

7 aerosol dispersion. Results show alternative 

8 displacement of air samplers generally resulted in 

9 aerosol detection that was faster, often more 

10 sensitive and equally reliable compared with 

11 samplers at exhaust registers. And from a similar 

12 document that was from 1994, a different author, 

13 false alarm rates, i.e., alarms occurring in the 

14 absence of elevated air levels, were also reviewed 

15 and found to be as high as 95 percent for some of 

16 the facilities surveyed. Though there are few 

17 actual uptakes, these results raise questions 

18 concerning generally accepted practices for worker 

19 protection and the value of active monitoring 

20 units. 

21 And just the information we have 

22 discussed as far as the petition that was approved 

23 up to '95, there are potential inadequacies in the 
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1 assessment of neptunium airborne contamination 

2 from instruments designed and calibrated for 

3 plutonium. The lack of comprehensive hazards 

4 analysis has resulted in the lack of appropriate 

5 documented technical basis for addressing these 

6 issues. 

7 And this is an article I just found this 

8 morning, in fact, dealing with spallation. 

9 Ensuring the safety of workers at 

10 accelerator-driven nuclear facilities is 

11 paramount before these systems can be deployed for 

12 nuclear transmutation or any other mission. 

13 Spallation neutron sources produce as many as 660 

14 rare radionuclides in either the target or the 

15 blanket during the spallation process. No data 

16 exists for many of these radionuclides in the 

17 current radiation protection guidelines and 

18 standards. This research program seeks to address 

19 this problem through generating internal and 

20 external dose coefficients for these new isotopes. 

21 So, and they do spallation work at the 

22 accelerator at the LANS facility. So that's why 

23 I mentioned that issue. And as far as the 
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1 derivative air concentrations, how it has been 

2 addressed, I think that's what the documentation 

3 will show. 

4 My position is I don't think it's 

5 sufficient and I'll probably find more information 

6 supporting that. I know there were reports in 

7 later years where they've had some findings 

8 concerning monitoring. That's all I have to say. 

9 Thank you.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, Andrew. No, 

11 I am sure as we are now identifying new issues --

12 I don't know exactly what to call them -- there will 

13 be a lot of questions and questions that will come 

14 up with some input and information from people that 

15 have worked at the facilities and so forth will be 

16 useful and helpful to try to resolve some of those 

17 issues. So that's good. Okay. So we will start 

18 the public comment period but first Ted will do an 

19 introduction.

20 Public Comment

21 MR. KATZ: Yes. Yes, just the 

22 preliminaries. For those of you who aren't 
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1 familiar, all of our Board meetings are transcribed 

2 and the written record of the meeting is a verbatim 

3 record. So everything's exactly as it's said and 

4 then that's published on the NIOSH website. 

5 So for the public comment session, 

6 everything you tell the Board is -- gets published 

7 and put out there for everyone else to read. So 

8 just keep that in mind in terms of anything very 

9 personal to you that you might say and might not 

10 want to be out there. But whatever you say about 

11 other people -- not about yourself but about other 

12 people, we will do redactions to the record for them 

13 -- for what you say about them to protect their 

14 privacy since they are not speaking for themselves. 

15 So I just want to let you know that's 

16 how that works. There is a lot more verbiage on 

17 the website for how that works. But there is no 

18 real need to go there. That's the bottom line, and 

19 that's it.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. We will get 

21 started. We are going to jump around a little bit 

22 here so it won't be in the order that you signed 

23 up in and then as I said if other people wish to 
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1 make comments we will make -- provide time and there 

2 may be people on the phone that are calling in that 

3 will want to make comments. We usually do them 

4 last, and we have one person who has to get back 

5 to work. So they get priority.

6 So and, again, I will apologize up front 

7 if I mispronounce or correct names and you're up. 

8 Go ahead. Yes. Eloy Giron. 

9 MR. GIRON: Chairman, Members of the 

10 Board, my name is Elloyd Giron. Thank you for your 

11 time right now. I work at Sandia National Labs. 

12 I am a security police officer and I am going to 

13 use an acronym, SPOs, later on. So I have a real 

14 quick statement right here.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

16 MR. GIRON: What I am here right now is 

17 just to ask for an update on our cohort that we --

18 that we petitioned for. I petitioned for it in 

19 2011 and it was granted up until 1994.

20 Since then, Dr. Glover has come and met 

21 with us and we have gone into classified areas and 

22 discussed other things and I have a real quick 

23 statement here. None of this is classified. Let 
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1 me put my readers on here.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Sure.

3 MR. GIRON: Okay. The reason we are 

4 asking for this update is, and this is some of the 

5 stuff that we spoke with Dr. Glover with, was the 

6 Sandia SPOs, the security police officers, were 

7 treated different than other Sandians. 

8 The security posture and protection of 

9 SNM -- special nuclear material -- was given more 

10 priority than the safety conditions of our 

11 workplace. SPOs routinely patrolled in all areas 

12 of Sandia National Labs. These areas contain many 

13 hazards to include SNM, radioactive material, 

14 radioactive waste, radiological producing 

15 machines, hazardous chemicals, biological 

16 hazards. 

17 SPOs manned many temporary SNM projects 

18 to include Tonopah Test Range, 6580 hot cell, new 

19 cable site, old cable site, 6505, 6636. Due to the 

20 temporary nature of these projects there are no 

21 built-in safety precautions and all this is -- none 

22 of this is classified. This was in the petition. 

23 This was discussed with Dr. Glover. 
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1 The SPOs manned permanent 24/7 posts 

2 and radiological areas of Buildings 6597 and 6590 

3 hard pool. The areas of disposement were not 

4 designated for a safe environment for them. They 

5 were just incorporated into the current testing 

6 facilities. 

7 SPOs could not leave these areas to 

8 either eat and use the restroom there. 

9 Radiological monitors routinely went off in these 

10 areas. When these alarms went off, the SPOs did 

11 not evacuate. 

12 These alarms often went off during 

13 nonoperational hours. During these hours, there 

14 were no rad techs on duty to assess these alarms. 

15 In hard pool, testing personnel and reactor 

16 operators evacuated the areas during the shots. 

17 SPOs remained in place. 

18 SPOs were only given a TLD to wear with 

19 no procedures in place to make sure the TLD was

20 worn. SPOs were never given any internal 

21 monitoring. Operating personnel for these areas 

22 were given internal monitoring and other external 

23 monitoring devices to wear for the operating 
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1 personnel. 

2 Right now I am asking for a status on 

3 this and if there is anything else that we can do 

4 to help out to get this going. I am about to --

5 I think Dr. Glover's gone.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, Dr. Glover is 

7 gone.

8 MR. GIRON: And you're the new guy.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I am not the new 

10 guy. Actually, Chuck Nelson, another health 

11 physicist, will be the lead for -- is the lead for 

12 that. We are actually planning to issue our 

13 addendum on Sandia to close out or to address those 

14 final years of that petition in June of next year. 

15 So it's going to follow the Los Alamos petition 

16 evaluation that's in February. It will be issued 

17 in June of next year.

18 MR. GIRON: Okay. If there is any help 

19 that we can be please get a hold of us.

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: I will make sure that 

21 I pass that information along. Yes, keep in touch.

22 MR. GIRON: Chairman --

23 MR. RUTHERFORD: And we actually 
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1 started -- one of our first questions this morning 

2 that the Board had was what's happening with 

3 Sandia. So we were -- been concerned also so and 

4 we will keep it moving.

5 MR. GIRON: Okay. Chairman, Members 

6 of the Board, thank you for your time.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. Thank you.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Is there anybody else 

9 here that wishes to speak to issues related to LANL?

10 (No response.)

11 Okay. Then I will start going down the 

12 list in the order that the people signed up. 

13 Actually, I have one more person signed up. Chad 

14 Walde. Okay. Go ahead. Yes.

15 MR. CHAD: Good afternoon. Chairman, 

16 Board Members, I appreciate your time in listening 

17 to me. I am a common man, maintenance, execution 

18 in Los Alamos. I was hired on there in 1999, fresh 

19 out of the Navy, and worked my way up into 

20 supervising craft and what not throughout the 

21 laboratory. 

22 I don't know what else I could add. I 

23 don't know what information you've already had or 
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1 what have you but when it comes to Los Alamos and 

2 the air monitors, what not, RCTs, yes, they made 

3 tremendous strides for protecting the employees. 

4 But there is quite a gap there regarding how people 

5 were monitored, what was reported back to the 

6 employees. The rad protection program has gotten 

7 a lot more robust but it hasn't -- in my 17 years 

8 wasn't always where it is now. 

9 I've -- from 2011 to 2014 I was the work 

10 execution manager for the rad liquid waste facility 

11 when we had, you know, monitored RCTs and everybody 

12 else, CAM alarms, respirators issued, what not, 

13 working in the plant. There were several times 

14 that the alarms would go off but nobody knew why 

15 or what have you. There was also times where 

16 employees as TLDs would start taking hits and 

17 nobody can explain why. The evaporator was found 

18 to be contaminated at one point in time during the 

19 maintenance inspection and nobody knew -- so but 

20 nothing had alarmed. Nothing told anybody. So 

21 there is still more reason to dig and look.

22 Another thing was during Cerro Grande 

23 I was assigned to the fire protection maintenance 
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1 crews as superintendent and sent employees out to 

2 -- after the fire was released or after the fire 

3 was contained we were allowed to access the site 

4 again. 

5 The fire alarm systems throughout the 

6 hill that were in alarm, either powered down or 

7 contaminated with smoke. Contaminated meaning --

8 I am sorry -- don't know if they were contaminated 

9 or not. I just know that they'd taken in the smoke 

10 and set off the alarms and I was tasked with sending 

11 crews out into the field, a lot of times going with 

12 them, and either cleaning the detectors and 

13 cleaning them and nobody still knows what was put 

14 in the air that day or those two weeks. 

15 None of us had -- not -- I shouldn't say 

16 none, excuse me -- not everyone was issued a TLD. 

17 Not everyone was monitored. Not everybody -- some 

18 of us were outside the categories that were 

19 monitored or found to be in a working Class that 

20 needed to be monitored even though we routinely 

21 went throughout the laboratory and the -- we just 

22 -- I guess what I am here to say is, you know, I'd 

23 really like you to -- I urge you to look at --
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1 looking at the people who worked there after 1995 

2 because it still wasn't locked tight and solid that 

3 we got everybody covered. I myself am diagnosed 

4 with cancer. In 2014, I was diagnosed with stage 

5 four glioblastoma. When I filed my documentation 

6 I was told, yes, we gave you so much radiation but 

7 in order to -- based on our models for the central 

8 nervous system you would need five rem for us to 

9 be able to have more likely than not. Well, I asked 

10 them well, what model did you use. They said a 

11 thyroid. And I am not here to plead my case or poor 

12 pitiful me or anything like that. I am sorry if 

13 that's what I'm coming off.

14 But there is a lot of work to still be 

15 done. There is people being denied. To me, I'll 

16 be honest, I could care less about the money. I 

17 am more worried about the insurance part of it, 

18 taking care of what not. But, you know, so to me 

19 a brain is different than a thyroid, a more 

20 sensitive organ. That's why it was protected and 

21 built that way, and I got three rem documented. 

22 There is periods of work there that we don't have 

23 any documentation on. So it's -- it is personal. 
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1 So and I, again, being supervisor for that fire 

2 protection crew I won't say any names but I do know 

3 several other employees that hired in and worked 

4 those periods, worked nights, worked what have you, 

5 weren't always monitored and have been developing 

6 cancer as well and they don't fall under extended 

7 cohort and if there is some trick, some way around, 

8 it's not quite enough or what have you. What we 

9 are doing here is not 100 percent, I guess, is why 

10 I am asking you to -

11 CHAIR MELIUS: No. Thank you, and it 

12 would be helpful if you can give your name and at 

13 least contact information to LaVon.

14 MR. CHAD: I do apologize for that.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Because we are 

16 evaluating this. We will follow up and may want 

17 to interview you and, you know, get more 

18 information and you can answer questions that, 

19 obviously, from a distance we can't. So --

20 MR. CHAD: Yes, sir. I apologize. 

21 I'll catch you --

22 CHAIR MELIUS: You don't need to 

23 apologize.
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1 MR. CHAD: You asked us to start out 

2 with that so --

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. That's fine. 

4 But if you want to talk to LaVon and just catch him 

5 on the way out and that or --

6 MR. CHAD: I will, sir.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you.

8 MR. CHAD: Thank you.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Again, anybody else 

10 from LANL that wishes to speak? Okay. Okay. 

11 I'll start at the top of the list. Terrie Barrie.

12 MS. BARRIE: Good evening, Dr. Melius 

13 and Members of the Board. It's a pleasure to be 

14 back in front of you again. It's been a long time.

15 My name is Terrie Barrie and I am a 

16 founding member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker 

17 Advocacy Groups and co-petitioner for the Rocky 

18 Flats SEC petition. 

19 Thank you for this time. About three 

20 months ago, the United Steelworkers Local 8031 

21 generously donated hard copy documents including 

22 safety concerns from the Rocky Flats site to ANWAG. 

23 I realize that NIOSH and SC&A reviewed some of the 
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1 concerns or at least the database back in 2007 but 

2 this donation is the first time the petitioner, 

3 [identifying information redacted] and I, along 

4 with other site experts had a chance to review these 

5 records. Of the almost 5,000 safety concerns in 

6 DOE's possession, NIOSH and SC&A determined that 

7 only about 40 or so could possibly affect NIOSH's 

8 ability to reconstruct dose for Rocky Flats.

9 This limited amount of safety concerns 

10 may have stunted the complete review of the safety 

11 concerns. According to SC&A's main report in 

12 2007, and I quote, a number of safety concerns 

13 relate to a lack of quality control in the internal 

14 and external monitoring programs. These concerns 

15 collectively reinforce issues raised in the 

16 petition regarding data quality, end quote.

17 Our review found a lot more. The 

18 site-specific concerns -- the specific safety 

19 concern numbers and the related issues can be found 

20 in the attached spreadsheet and a copy of it is 

21 available online and it's a pretty long address and 

22 I'll give it to the transcriber if that's okay, but 

23 it's http://www.rockyflatsambushgrandjury.com, 
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1 terriebarrieanwagpresentsrockyflatssafetyconcer

2 ns and I'll give this to the transcriber.

3 We reviewed the safety concerns which 

4 were not included in the NIOSH SC&A list. Briefly, 

5 we identified falsification of plutonium waste on 

6 the run sheet, falsification of medical records and 

7 falsification of RECA inspections.

8 We identified multiple problems with 

9 the health and safety labs from 1985 to 1999 

10 including this comment, quote, the HS&E laboratory 

11 has a major problem with contamination and efforts 

12 are underway to correct this situation, end quote.

13 There was a possible criticality in 

14 Building 774 in 1986. It was serious enough to 

15 have Rocky Flats, quote, obtain a nuclear 

16 criticality specialist from Albuquerque, end 

17 quote.

18 I cross checked this incident with the 

19 Department of Energy Rocky Flats assessment of 

20 criticality safety report and that is not listed 

21 in that report. We also identified a strong 

22 indication that radioactivity materials and 

23 contaminated equipment were present in Building 
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1 460 at least through 1996. The vast majority of 

2 these workers were not monitored for radiation 

3 since Building 460 was considered a cold building.

4 Numerous concerns were filed for faulty 

5 alarms, lack of qualified RCT coverage or even no 

6 coverage at all, and instruments being incorrectly 

7 calibrated. There were so many of these types of 

8 safety concerns that I stopped recording them on 

9 a spreadsheet. 

10 But these concerns are directly related 

11 to NIOSH's ability to reconstruct dose. If an 

12 alarm doesn't alarm, then the worker or the RCT will 

13 not know there was a release. If the area doesn't 

14 have an RCT, the worker won't know if he's been 

15 exposed. 

16 If the RCT's instrument is not 

17 calibrated correctly, then it's unlikely that an 

18 accurate assessment of contamination would be 

19 recorded. In any of these situations it is quite 

20 possible that the contaminated worker would not be 

21 decontaminated or given the opportunity to provide 

22 samples to see if there was an internal or external 

23 deposition. These are issues that affect NIOSH's 
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1 ability to reconstruct dose. As I mentioned, 

2 NIOSH and SC&A did identify a limited number of 

3 safety concerns. Some were resolved in 2007. 

4 However, the SC&A report states, quote,

5 NIOSH continues its investigation of two safety 

6 concerns involving lost or invalid bioassay 

7 results, number 90-169, and the inadequacy of the 

8 internal and external dosimetry program number, 

9 92-048. 

10 I have not been able to find if this 

11 investigation into these two safety concerns is 

12 completed. If they have not been resolved, NIOSH 

13 needs to complete this investigation and include 

14 the additional safety concerns the petitioners 

15 have now identified. 

16 I would like to remind the Board of two 

17 outstanding issues. Metal tritides -- this issue 

18 was raised during the Rocky Flats March 17th, 2015 

19 Work Group meeting. NIOSH promised that they 

20 would look into it again but I have not seen where 

21 that has been completed either.

22 I found safety concern number 94-158 

23 which alludes to the presence of tritides. 
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1 Earlier this year, I also supplied NIOSH with a 

2 couple of documents which I feel supports the 

3 possibility that tritides was present at Rocky 

4 Flats. I would like to remind the Board too that 

5 you approved SEC status for General Atomics in 2014 

6 in part because NIOSH determined that, quote, metal 

7 tritides were present during the operational 

8 period with no indication of any analysis performed 

9 to determine the type of tritide and that, without 

10 that knowledge, NIOSH admitted they cannot 

11 reconstruct dose with sufficient accuracy.

12 The other instance where consistent 

13 decisions on SEC petition affects Rocky Flats 

14 involves dose reconstruction for neptunium 

15 exposure. One LANL SEC petition was approved 

16 because a petitioner provided a document which 

17 states that plutonium bioassay cannot be used to 

18 reconstruct dose for neptunium exposure yet that 

19 is exactly what NIOSH is doing for Rocky Flats 

20 workers after 1983. How can this methodology be 

21 okay for Rocky Flats but not for LANL? 

22 Lastly, I am concerned about the legacy 

23 of the weapons production being ignored. The 
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1 workers employed from 1990 through the date of 

2 closure must not be forgotten. Many of the safety 

3 concerns we reviewed occurred during this time 

4 period, well after the 1989 raid by the FBI. The 

5 SEC should be extended to 2005 and I believe we have 

6 ample -- we have provided ample evidence that 

7 supports this position.

8 Thank you for allowing me to present 

9 these comments. I would also like to express my 

10 appreciation to the United Steelworkers and 

11 especially [identifying information redacted] of 

12 Local 8031 for donating these documents and to Cold 

13 War Patriots who generously provided the funds for 

14 this project. Thank you.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, Terrie. 

16 John Lipsky.

17 MR. LIPSKY: Greetings to the 

18 honorable Dr. Melius and Members of the Advisory 

19 Board. Hello, my name is John Lipsky. I was the 

20 lead FBI agent of the criminal investigation of 

21 Rocky Flats in June -- it actually started in 1987. 

22 The raid was in June of 1989 and Rockwell pled 

23 guilty to felonies and misdemeanors in 1992.
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1 I was also a subject matter expert 

2 witness in the Merilyn Cook v. Dow Chemical, 

3 Rockwell and Boeing civil trial regarding the 

4 adjacent property in 2005. That verdict ended up 

5 going through the court system but last May there 

6 was a settlement of $375 million for the plaintiffs 

7 who I testified for.

8 I am legally constrained from 

9 disclosing protected government information and as 

10 a result of my previous employment in support of 

11 those protections, I make the following comments 

12 regarding publicly available information.

13 In March 1988, the U.S. Department of 

14 Energy environmental safety and health reported 

15 its technical safety appraisal for Buildings 776 

16 and 777. I am going to call it the 1988 TSA and 

17 there is a contract number of DE88016374 and its 

18 findings.

19 The 1988 TSA was conducted as an 

20 appraisal -- some of us government employees called 

21 it an audit -- by outside experts who reported 

22 similar concerns by Rocky Flats nuclear workers. 

23 The 1988 TSA documented four major problem areas, 
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1 85 specific findings, nine of which had to be 

2 promptly within two weeks remedied.

3 It is not surprising that a good share 

4 of the deficiencies assessing the safety of 

5 activities was a result of management breakdown. 

6 The pervasive inadequacies in radiological 

7 protection at Rocky Flats, fire protection and 

8 maintenance, are indicative of management 

9 inattention. 

10 This is further evidenced by the 

11 appraisal team's categorizing of 41 concerns as 

12 involving failure to comply with some aspect of DOE 

13 mandatory requirements.

14 In regards to Ms. Terrie Barrie's 

15 public statement that you just heard, the list of 

16 Rocky Flats safety concerns and the interest of 

17 extending the Rocky Flats SEC petition, please 

18 consider the following safety concerns.

19 1986-013 regarding receiving 

20 dosimeters twice; 1986-115, molten salt crew high 

21 gamma radiation; 1988-121, barrels filled with hot 

22 materials next to work area ;1992-345, tritium 

23 detection alarm failure contact in Building 707; 
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1 1996-161, no requirement to submit nasal mouth 

2 smears contaminated step-off pad; and 2000-025, 

3 management interfering with medical decision in 

4 addition to the 1988 TSA. 

5 Radiation protection of all nuclear 

6 workers should be paramount at DOE facilities. 

7 The 1988 TSA was also concerned with a lack of 

8 essential coordinated information system of 

9 radiation records. Rocky Flats safety concern 

10 94-064 and 94-065 dealing with cross-contamination 

11 of air head filters in the analytical health 

12 physics laboratory, also known as Building 123, 

13 among other radiological issues range from 1985 to 

14 1996 and they still didn't fix it.

15 These safety concerns also refer to --

16 inside the file itself refers to other safety 

17 concerns, 1985-064, 90-051 and 90-212. It is not 

18 claimant-favorable to ignore the documented 1988 

19 TSA, previous TSAs with unresolved findings and the 

20 safety concerns that were contemporaneously 

21 documented issues regarding radiological 

22 protection for Rocky Flats nuclear workers, and I 

23 thank you for your time and attention.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Next person 

2 I have on the list, Donna Hand.

3 MS. HAND: Thank you very much for your 

4 time and listening. The Board Members have a 

5 yellow packet that's there in front of them. 

6 First, I would like to bring in to procedure number 

7 OCAS PR004, Pages 17 and 18, about the timeliness 

8 policy and that if the director of OCAS may, which 

9 is discretionary, determine that the records or 

10 information requested is not provided in a timely 

11 manner, it shall go ahead and issue a SEC. 

12 Also at the bottom of that, it says that 

13 if the petition raised issues that have not been 

14 fully addressed then the comprehensive and 

15 timeliness is important and they are to address 

16 those issues even if they said they could feasibly 

17 do the dose reconstruction and do not delay the SEC 

18 petition waiting on the documents. 

19 In the packet on the left-hand side you 

20 have what they call occupational radiation 

21 exposure. Whenever the 2010 petition was appealed 

22 and asked for an administrative review, Lara Hughes 

23 says what is REMS because I asked to review the DOE 
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1 REMS on the Pinellas plant. 

2 Well, the REMS is the radiation 

3 exposure monitoring system that DOE has and in 1992 

4 they had a report on Pinellas plant. Behind that 

5 you will see emails going back and forth stating 

6 that the Tiger Team report does satisfy the 

7 evidence for one of the criteria.

8 Later on, LaVon Rutherford also says in 

9 the email, we have accepted SC&A issues to be in 

10 the HP report to go ahead and be qualified. Then 

11 you also have the professional judgment report 

12 showing that Donald Staplefield said we qualify. 

13 But yet, we did not qualify. 

14 You had a new SEC petition recently also 

15 denied, denied based on there is no new evidence. 

16 According to the regulation in the preamble, new 

17 evidence is only required if it's been put in the 

18 federal registry. Our SEC has never been put in 

19 the federal registry because we never were 

20 requiring -- never qualified. Then you had in that 

21 SEC petition information that was given to the 

22 March Board at Tampa that also qualified that SEC 

23 petition before they finally decided and they never 
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1 used any information that was also given to the 

2 Board. 

3 Then you also have a new information 

4 report that was put into a journal regarding the 

5 flaking and gassing of the metal tritides and how 

6 they couldn't actually do a dose reconstruction for 

7 that. That's new evidence but yet that was 

8 ignored. You have metal tritides on the neutron 

9 tube and neutron generator that for ten -- over 20 

10 years was done there at the Pinellas plant. It was 

11 sent to Sandia and then it was sent to Los Alamos 

12 -- part tube and generator they have an SEC for 

13 their neutron generator workers after 1995 -- after 

14 1990. 

15 So if one of the workers that worked at 

16 Pinellas plant now goes to Sandia and they work 

17 there still on the neutron generator, same thing 

18 they worked at the Pinellas plant, they get an SEC 

19 cancer, they qualify, but all those years at 

20 Pinellas they do not. So why couldn't you use the 

21 surrogate data from Pinellas plant for the neutron 

22 generators at Sandia? Sandia, Livermore in 

23 California also had neutron generators, metal 
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1 tritides. You can't do their dose either. 

2 Recently a study came out in 2008 by 

3 Sandia saying that you can't use resuspensions on 

4 metal tritides. So all the -- you do not have the 

5 DAC. Also, there was recently a new report about 

6 the bioassays in metal tritides. You can't use 

7 tritium bioassay to determine the bioassay of a 

8 metal tritide because they are insoluble and 

9 soluble and there are other things. So your 

10 bioassays cannot be used. So these are some of the 

11 issues. 

12 Finally, on the other side you have 

13 documentation of what I am saying. In my first 

14 petition for SEC they -- it was -- they said well, 

15 you have a hazardous substance list. 

16 That hazardous substance list listed 28 

17 radionuclides that have never been addressed. The 

18 Technical Basis Document listed several radio 

19 generating devices. Never been addressed. And 

20 on and on and on. 

21 Also it says the peer reviewed that the 

22 site exposure -- the site expert in their peer 

23 review, well, it's not supposed to be -- have any 
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1 task with it. Well, their site expert is the 

2 person that does the dose reconstruction. They 

3 did the template and it's not even an HP and that 

4 all the dose reconstructions that have been --

5 being done now are not even reviewed by HPs.

6 So we are having a big issue with this. 

7 The Board was tasked with a certain responsibility 

8 and in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association the 

9 U.S. Supreme Court ruled policy and procedures do 

10 not -- and legislative rules do not have the weight 

11 of law, the force of law or the effect of law. So 

12 that statute and that regulation is what is 

13 effective, is what is mandatory and whenever in a 

14 qualification stage they use -- you must use a 

15 report. You must do this. Good guidance and the 

16 Information Quality Act -- they cannot use that. 

17 You cannot mandate. Only the law can mandate. 

18 Also, under the Information Quality Act if a 

19 professional judgment is to be used that must be 

20 backed by scientific and accepted 

21 community-established knowledge. 

22 So in Ms. Lin's statement I think that 

23 August the 10th was your second day -- also stated 
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1 the job's duty of the Board is to help 

2 reconstructors do the dose reconstruction for the 

3 people that is not with the SEC and that is when 

4 you come up with a Site Profile or default values. 

5 Well, 10 CFR 835 has default values. Why can't we 

6 use those default values? Thank you.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

8 Next Robert Amigo.

9 MR. AMIGO: I don't have anything.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I want to make 

11 sure, give you another chance. Thank you. Hugh 

12 Stephens. I thought I saw you here. 

13 MR. STEPHENS: Hello. My name is Hugh 

14 Stephens. I am an attorney with Stephens & 

15 Stephens and we have been representing claimants 

16 since about 2010 and one thing I can report is that 

17 we challenge dose reconstructions when we can find 

18 arguments against portions of those, and for a long 

19 time the Department of Labor did not want to engage 

20 in kind of a substantive assessment of those 

21 objections. 

22 And over the years they've changed 

23 their procedure and our objections are now being 
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1 reviewed by, I believe, a health physicist at the 

2 Department of Labor and then sent on very often to 

3 NIOSH for response. And so I can report that the 

4 process has improved significantly with respect to 

5 dose reconstructions and the claimants' ability to 

6 make objections to those.

7 We have struggled to understand the 

8 dose reconstruction process and we don't claim to 

9 be experts in it but we can review the documents, 

10 the referenced documents and do our best to make 

11 an argument.

12 We have had a couple overturned on 

13 circumstances as simple as a dosimeter badge 

14 exchange rate being biweekly instead of monthly and 

15 so that doubled the dose. So we are experts in 

16 arithmetic primarily in that one.

17 And another one that was -- that we were 

18 able to overturn related more to what we were doing 

19 today, which is improving the Site Profile and I 

20 think there was a sense today about the work that's 

21 done here and how important it is to prioritize and 

22 very often we might spend a year or two trying to 

23 get something right and if we were to think about 
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1 it for a second we'd say well, it doesn't matter 

2 so why don't we just skip it. 

3 But that's the key. So when we are 

4 talking about a Site Profile and a change, it's very 

5 difficult for us to go back and look and try and 

6 figure out if it matters. And I don't know that 

7 there is any kind of solution but certainly some 

8 of what we did today has a big impact on the dose 

9 reconstruction process and some has no impact at 

10 all. And in a program where we are supposed -- the 

11 claimant is supposed to be able on their own to 

12 understand this whole process, the dose 

13 reconstruction process, and then review the 

14 transcript of this meeting and understand that the 

15 new Site Profile is going to have an impact on their 

16 claim and therefore they should request reopening. 

17 These are difficult problems. I don't 

18 claim to have a solution. But we will continue to 

19 study these Site Profiles and try and understand 

20 whether our claimants can get compensated. And so 

21 there is that issue of prioritization. 

22 The other thing that I think everyone 

23 struggles with and I think Donna Hand referenced 
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1 it in her presentation just now is when the SEC is 

2 passed, now NIOSH can't do certain aspects of the 

3 dose reconstruction and so we then have a new 

4 assessment. 

5 NIOSH has backed away. Their 

6 expertise cannot be brought to bear. We have made 

7 a decision what they can do is not sufficiently 

8 accurate. So from there we lead directly to a 

9 determination that we know is false which is that 

10 that person received no dose connected to that 

11 aspect of the dose reconstruction. 

12 I don't claim to have the answer to this 

13 one either. But zero is what we know didn't happen 

14 or at least we know that zero is probably not the 

15 right number. When we do missed dose for external 

16 dose we know that if the limit of detection is .2, 

17 then .1 is kind of a happy medium -- halfway between 

18 zero and the limit of detection. 

19 That's a reasonable method of dealing 

20 with the problem. But what we know is happening now 

21 on all these claims where they don't qualify for 

22 the SEC but there is an SEC, and then you have the 

23 Site Profile and they do a partial dose 
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1 reconstruction, the number that has been chosen is 

2 the one we know is wrong and that's zero. That's 

3 all I have. Thank you.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. If you come 

5 up with solutions, let us know. Do that, and I just 

6 would like to add the one thing -- maybe LaVon was 

7 going to jump in on this.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: (off mic)

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Well, one of the 

10 things -- I'll correct him and you can take him 

11 outside and deal with it. But is -- one issue with 

12 the Site Profiles is when a Site Profile is updated 

13 any -- all of the claims that have been dose 

14 reconstructed under the old Site Profile are 

15 reviewed and if it does change the value in favor 

16 of the claimant then that is redone through DOL and 

17 so forth. So that is built in. 

18 I agree that it's a complicated program 

19 and it's very difficult for the claimant or their 

20 representative to weigh in on all the technical 

21 information and understand it and advocate for 

22 their client or whatever or for themselves. That 

23 cover it? 
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1 MR. STEPHENS: You got it.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: See, you taught me 

3 something. Yes. Thanks. Okay. Al Frowiss.

4 MR. FROWISS: Senior.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Senior. Okay. 

6 MR. FROWISS: Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

7 This is Al, Senior, like I've got an (telephonic 

8 interference) Anyway, (telephonic interference) 

9 phone number [identifying information redacted]. 

10 My question today is about Lawrence 

11 Livermore. I am an advocate nationally and I am 

12 the petitioner for the recently approved Lawrence 

13 Livermore lab for the 1964 to '89. My question is 

14 of the materials (telephonic interference) known 

15 as the MCA at the Lawrence Livermore (telephonic 

16 interference) official archives on the LLL job site 

17 show that the MTA was built there starting in 1950, 

18 which is the first year the original SEC. It was 

19 not under the state of California. It was 

20 (telephonic interference) with a company 

21 California (telephonic interference) which was a 

22 Standard Oil subsidiary.

23 MR. KATZ: Can I -- Mr. Frowiss, can I 
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1 just stop you one second? Are you using a speaker 

2 phone?

3 MR. FROWISS: I didn't (telephonic 

4 interference)

5 MR. KATZ: Because your audio is very 

6 strange. It's very echoey and so on. 

7 MR. FROWISS: I expect (telephonic 

8 interference) Anyway, I'll try to shorten it up. 

9 The MTA employees were California (telephonic 

10 interference) I am looking for --

11 MR. KATZ: Mr. Frowiss, you're cutting 

12 in and out. I wonder if you can't maybe at least 

13 in follow-up send me your statement in writing so 

14 that we can capture this correctly. Thanks.

15 MR. FROWISS: I'll do that.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: And we will -- and there 

17 will be a response to it. I mean it's not --

18 MR. FROWISS: Thank you.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Thank you. 

20 Okay. Next person I have is Stephanie Carroll.

21 MS. CARROLL: Hello. My name is 

22 Stephanie Carroll. Thank you for allowing me to 

23 make a comment. It is green. Okay. I am 
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1 Stephanie Carroll. I am an authorized rep mainly 

2 for workers at Rocky Flats. I specialize in 

3 chronic beryllium disease and I've been helping on 

4 this SEC petition.

5 Today I would like to present some 

6 documents that I've had for a little while. That 

7 one on your desk, Dr. Melius, I have the documents 

8 I am referring to and then my statement for the 

9 Board Members and the statement includes 

10 documentation and quotes from [identifying 

11 information redacted] during a telephone interview 

12 by NIOSH subsequent to the CML White Paper. 

13 The first document that I am going to 

14 refer to is dated 2/17/2012. It's an affidavit by 

15 [identifying information redacted]. He was 

16 [identifying information redacted]. The document 

17 identifies incidents and accidents between 1955 

18 and 1988 that are not found in the Site Profile. 

19 It also lists chemicals used in Building 771 that 

20 personnel came into contact with and it includes 

21 neptunium. The affidavit reads, the attached 

22 document was compiled by [identifying information 

23 redacted] for me [identifying information 
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1 redacted]. The document is one that identifies 

2 accidents and incidents that happened between '55 

3 and '88 in Building 71. The purpose was to educate 

4 the Building 771 personnel to the potential issues 

5 that caused either radiation exposure, 

6 contamination or injury to the people in the 

7 building environment. 

8 The second attachment is a list of major 

9 chemicals used in Building 771 that personnel came 

10 into contact with, and if you look at the document, 

11 you will see many incidents and I am just going to 

12 talk about a couple of them.

13 First one I find is in 1984 in Room 169, 

14 a file cabinet. A file cabinet contained vials 

15 holding PU of about 20 grams. I think it's grams 

16 -- 20g. The vials we returned to the blood box in 

17 Room 128. In Room 149 line 42, valve failure on 

18 tank 470 caused a four-foot area to be 

19 contaminated.

20 Now, we don't -- I don't know where the 

21 neptunium line was but if it had anything to do with 

22 149. NIOSH has been saying that there were no 

23 incidents reported on the neptunium line. So I 
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1 would like people to go through these incidents to 

2 see if they are related to the neptunium line in 

3 771.

4 And this is -- these are all incidents 

5 after the SEC. So I am not going back. The 

6 incidents actually go back all the way to I think 

7 the '60s is when it started.

8 So in 1985 a tank containing nitric acid 

9 overflowed. The operator left the room without 

10 turning off the transfer valve. Automatic shut-off 

11 valve failed also. In '85, tank overflowing onto 

12 floor while operator was out of room. '85 again, 

13 liquid was transferred from a safe pencil tank to 

14 an unsafe annular tank. How long did that stay in 

15 that annular tank? 

16 I also found something really 

17 interesting because it has the date, the room that 

18 the incident happened in and then a description. 

19 So 12/15/85 there was -- it's just blank what room 

20 this happened in or where this happened. But it says 

21 high urine samples sensitive report. So it looks 

22 like another one in '86, contaminated employee --

23 sensitive report. So it's something that they 
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1 didn't want to talk about and I am very interested 

2 in, you know, why did the [identifying information 

3 redacted]-- why was he unable to document this. 

4 And then the second attachment is 

5 interesting because it shows reagents and 

6 chemicals that were used in 771 that employees came 

7 into contact with. This is what his affidavit --

8 his sworn affidavit reads. Production materials 

9 -- americium oxide, americium nitrate, ammonium 

10 dichromate and neptunium. Plutonium isn't even 

11 mentioned so I find that interesting in this -- in 

12 this appendix.

13 Okay. So that's the affidavit by 

14 [identifying information redacted] and I've turned 

15 that in and I am hoping that it can be put on the 

16 site.

17 Number two, I also turned in a document. 

18 It's dated 6/2/97 from the USW and it was titled 

19 Location of Known Beryllium Areas Document. 

20 I have a question for NIOSH on this. 

21 Has inertial fusion in Building 881 been addressed 

22 by NIOSH? See the second page of the submitted 

23 Page 7 document. Inertial fusion in Rooms 143E, 
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1 143F, 199 and 283A. I want to know more about that.

2 And during the telephone conference 

3 call with [identifying information redacted] I was 

4 on the line and recorded his quotes. The Critical 

5 Mass Lab White Paper, unfortunately, isn't going 

6 to come out until next week and it would have been 

7 great to have it out a week earlier and to be able 

8 to comment on it more thoroughly today. But 

9 [identifying information redacted], who was 

10 [identifying information redacted] is my client. 

11 He's lived in the same house for 50 years. 

12 Nobody's ever interviewed him, questioned him, 

13 talked to him. 

14 He's been very easily accessible. But 

15 I got a hold of him, which was great, and he loves 

16 to teach me things. So anyway he had seen the first 

17 White Paper and he found a lot of problems with it. 

18 And so I gave you -- when you do get the White Paper, 

19 you're going to have quotes from this telephone 

20 call on the issues that he was having with the first 

21 White Paper. So I hope you keep that with you so 

22 when you're reviewing it you can kind of see what 

23 [identifying information redacted] was thinking 
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1 about this. He also wrote a book about the 

2 Critical Mass Lab, which I have a copy of, and he 

3 detailed all the documents that he owned. He's 

4 very meticulous and a fantastic site expert. I 

5 wish he would have been used many years ago.

6 Anyway, some of the things that he said 

7 -- any future White Paper must acknowledge that the 

8 desired radiation dose reconstruction at Rocky 

9 Flats plant can never be known with any reasonable 

10 degree of accuracy. All assumed conditions are 

11 likely to have been -- to have not been the case. 

12 No one can ever know the radiation levels at the 

13 Critical Mass Lab. Any -- these are all quotes 

14 from him -- any attempt to define or bound 

15 experimental power levels, neutron fluxes and 

16 gamma exposures as from fission fragments or the 

17 unavoidable ingrowth of unknown amounts of 

18 neptunium 239 and plutonium 239 has no defensible 

19 grounds. 

20 He was arguing over the phone with them 

21 about the facts. He did not -- there is no way that 

22 you can get a power reading from the experiments 

23 he was doing. He said this over and over and over 
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1 again. 

2 Body counts were never done at Rocky 

3 Flats, only lung counts that measured 

4 gamma-emitting radionuclides absorbed in the lung. 

5 The White Paper refers to body counts being done. 

6 They weren't done. It was lung counts.

7 The CML used outside neutron sources of 

8 polonium, californium and cobalt 60. This is a 

9 quote -- that was a quote -- [identifying 

10 information redacted] does not know how they were 

11 disposed of. The sources were added and removed 

12 by increments until the neutrons began to grow 

13 exponentially above critical levels during his 

14 experiments. 

15 That's a quote from him. Flux rates 

16 were not important to the experiments. That was 

17 not what they were looking for. You cannot bound 

18 the neutron flux rate. We never knew the power 

19 level, never knew the number of neutrons that were 

20 produced. 

21 There is no estimate of total fissions 

22 during these experiments. Many incidents 

23 happened in the lab and there were no special 
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1 bioassays done. So he had some bioassays but never 

2 any special bioassays. 

3 We had plutonium solution gamma 

4 standards that were never documented anywhere. I 

5 always turned off the criticality alarms during 

6 testing of sources. The alarm sounds during a 

7 prompt criticality and is meant to evacuate the 

8 building and because we were doing experiments that 

9 were meant to go critical we had to turn off the 

10 alarm to the building. NIOSH cannot reconstruct 

11 radiation doses at the Critical Mass Lab or in 

12 Building 886. Thank you very much.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Okay. 

14 Anybody else in the room want to make public 

15 comments? Okay. Now anybody on -- oh, I am sorry. 

16 You have to come to the mic and identify yourself 

17 please.

18 MR. SALAZAR: Mark Salazar. I used to 

19 work in LANL and I had cancer about three years ago. 

20 I had oral cancer. 1988 to 1989 I worked in Los 

21 Alamos as a contractor and then I started back in 

22 about '90s until present. The problem I am having 

23 and they keep on denying me because they cannot find 
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1 records of me working up there. 

2 Again, I have submitted dosimetry badge 

3 issued to me in 1988 and it shows me there -- being 

4 there from 1988 until present when I was really 

5 there from '88, '89 roughly until '90, I think. So 

6 it still showed me as an active employee up there 

7 and I was wondering what's the solution to having, 

8 you know, dosimeters that don't match employment 

9 records. Because back then we used to get visitor 

10 badges and I don't know if they are documented. I 

11 am not sure about that.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. If you talk 

13 to somebody from NIOSH we can get the individual 

14 information and then can follow up on -- I mean, 

15 we can't answer --

16 MR. SALAZAR: Okay.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- directly here and 

18 I don't want that to -- LaVon Rutherford over there 

19 will talk to you.

20 MR. SALAZAR: Alright. Thank you.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

22 Appreciate it. Anybody else? Does anybody on the 

23 phone wish to make public comments? You're 
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1 shaking your head, Terrie. I can't --

2 MS. BARRIE: I am sorry. No. I have 

3 a sidebar comment.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Okay. I 

5 couldn't tell if you knew of somebody that was going 

6 to call in and -

7 MS. BARRIE: No, I didn't.

8 Adjourn

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Hearing no 

10 one, then I will close the public comment period 

11 and we will adjourn the meeting until tomorrow 

12 morning. Thank you, all. 

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

14 went off the record at 5:42 p.m.)