STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKGROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

PINELLAS

 

The verbatim transcript of the Workgroup 

Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held at the Airport Marriott, 

Hebron, Kentucky, on June 11, 2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

June 11, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY SC&A 11 

DR. JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

ISSUE 1: RECONSTRUCTION OF DOSES IN THE ABSENCE OF 

EARLY HEALTH PHYSICS INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE AND 

ENVIRONMENTAL RECORDS 20 

ISSUE 2: METAL TRITIDES 33 

ISSUE 3: MDCs FOR PLUTONIUM BIOASSAY SAMPLES 41 

ISSUE 4: PERSONNEL DOSIMETRY POLICY 93 

ISSUE 5: PROBLEMS WITH PERSONNEL DOSIMETRY 95 

ISSUE 6: D&D ERA 95 

ISSUE 7: MISSING INTERNAL DOSE ESTIMATION METHODS 

FOR UNMONITORED WORKERS 97 

ISSUE 8: POTENTIAL FOR MISSED DOSE FOR DEPLETED URANIUM

 101 

ISSUES 9,10,11: OCCUPATIONAL MEDICAL EXPOSURES 109 

SECONDARY FINDINGS 126 

REVIEW OF ACTION ITEMS 166 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 180 

 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- ^/ (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

BRANCHE, Christine, Ph.D. 

Principal Associate Director 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

BOARD MEMBERSHIP

1 CLAWSON, Bradley 

2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

GIBSON, Michael H. 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

PRESLEY, Robert W. 

Special Projects Engineer 

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 

Clinton, Tennessee 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH 

DARNELL, PETER, OCAS 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

GLECKLER, BRIAN, ORAU 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

MIAOULIS, SHIRLEY, CONG. YOUNG 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

PHILLIPS, CHICK, SC&A 

THOMAS, ELYSE, ORAU 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

(9:00 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO

1 DR. BRANCHE: Welcome to the first meeting of 

2 the Pinellas Working Group. I’m Dr. Christine 

3 Branche, and I’m the Designated Federal 

4 Official. It’s a pleasure to be with you this 

5 morning. I would first like to ask the Board 

6 members who are in the room to announce their 

7 names, please. 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Phillip Schofield. 

9 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson. 

10 MR. GIBSON: Mike Gibson. 

11 MR. PRESLEY: Robert Presley. 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Any Board members 

13 participating by phone, would you please state 

14 your name? 

15 (no response) 

16 DR. BRANCHE: Dr. Poston, are you on the 

17 line? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any other Board 

20 members who are on the line? 
7

1 (no response) 

2 DR. BRANCHE: We do not have a quorum so we 

3 can, of the Board, so we can continue. 

4 Would any NIOSH staff in the room 

5 please state your name? 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, NIOSH, no 

7 conflict with Pinellas. 

8 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

9 And state your conflict. I appreciate 

10 it. 

11 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH, no conflict. 

12 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, no conflict. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Peter Darnell, OCAS, no 

14 conflict. 

15 DR. BRANCHE: OCAS staff in the room, please 

16 state your names and say if you have a 

17 conflict with Pinellas. What did I say? 

18 ORAU. I said OCAS. I meant ORAU. 

19 MS. THOMAS: Elyse Thomas, no conflict with 

20 Pinellas. 

21 MR. GLECKLER: Brian Gleckler, no conflict 

22 with Pinellas. 

23 DR. BRANCHE: NIOSH staff participating by 

24 phone, would you please state your name and 

25 say whether or not you have a conflict with 
8

1 Pinellas? 

2 (no response) 

3 DR. BRANCHE: ORAU staff participating by 

4 phone, would you please state your name and 

5 state whether or not you have a conflict with 

6 Pinellas? 

7 (no response) 

8 DR. BRANCHE: SC&A staff in the room -- 

9 we’ll get back to them. John Mauro is here. 

10 SC&A staff participating by phone 

11 would you please state your name and say 

12 whether or not you have a conflict with 

13 Pinellas? 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. BRANCHE: Other federal agency staff in 

16 the room, please state your name and state 

17 whether or not you have a conflict with 

18 Pinellas. 

19 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS, no conflict. 

20 DR. BRANCHE: Other federal agency staff 

21 participating by phone, would you please state 

22 your name and state whether or not you have a 

23 conflict with Pinellas. 

24 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch, 

25 Department of Labor. 
9

1 DR. BRANCHE: Jeff, do you have a conflict 

2 with Pinellas? 

3 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): No. 

4 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

5 Petitioners or their representatives, 

6 would you please state your names? 

7 (no response) 

8 DR. BRANCHE: Petitioners or their 

9 representatives, would you please state your 

10 names? 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Members of Congress or your 

13 reps, would you please state your names? 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. BRANCHE: Anyone else who is 

16 participating by phone would you please state 

17 your names for the record, if you wish. 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

20 Again, I ask people in the room to 

21 please mute your phones. And those of you 

22 participating by phone, would you please mute 

23 your phones as well? It is very important for 

24 the quality of the sound for everyone 

25 participating by phone that you mute your 
10

1 line. If you do not have a mute button, then 

2 please use star six to mute your phone. Then 

3 you would need to use that same star six to 

4 un-mute your phone when you’re ready to speak. 

5 Thank you so much. I appreciate your using 

6 telephone etiquette so that everyone 

7 participating by phone can hear. Thank you so 

8 much. 

9 Mr. Schofield, it’s all yours. 

10 MR. SCHOFIELD: I appreciate everybody 

11 coming. This is the first work group meeting 

12 we’ve got on Pinellas. I don’t know, I 

13 haven’t really set on how far we’re going to 

14 get through today since this is the first one. 

15 I would like to get through it today, but if 

16 we don’t well then I guess we meet again. I’d 

17 like to go ahead and start with the first 

18 issue here and turn it over to NIOSH. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: What is the first issue? 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: The reconstruction doses. 

21 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, thank you. 

22 DR. NETON: It might be better if SC&A 

23 stated their position and then we would 

24 respond to it. 

25 DR. BRANCHE: We may have a bit of a 
11

1 challenge with that since our only SC&A 

2 representative is not in the room. 

3 (Whereupon, the meeting paused until Dr. 

4 Mauro joined the meeting.) 

5 INTRODUCTION BY SC&A

6 DR. MAURO: Good morning, John Mauro, no 

7 conflict, SC&A. 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: And it’s turned over to you. 

9 DR. MAURO: And I have it. Okay, that’s 

10 fine. I stepped away from the table for a 

11 moment to make a few copies of the matrix 

12 handouts. Christine is finishing up. We’re 

13 almost done. 

14 This I believe is the first meeting of 

15 the Pinellas Working Group. Most of you, if 

16 not all of you, have received not only our 

17 main report, the bound version, ^ bound, that 

was dated September 15th 18 , 2006. So that work 

19 was completed I guess over a year and a half 

20 ago. 

21 And in the interim by the way after 

22 issuing this report, which I believe is on the 

23 web available for public consumption, SC&A and 

24 members of the Board were asked to meet with 

25 Senator Bill Nelson’s folks. And Suzy Perez 
12

1 Quinn (ph) was the young lady that met with us 

2 to get a briefing on this. So there’s a 

3 little bit of background information. 

4 In addition, anyone who doesn’t have 

5 an extra copy, there are -- I made four all 

6 together. 

7 DR. BRANCHE: And three of them have been 

8 distributed. 

9 DR. MAURO: Very good. It looks large, but 

10 it’s not that large. There’s some empty pages 

11 for room for NIOSH to fill in. 

12 The matrix that you have before you is 

13 a little different in format than we’ve used 

14 in the past. 

15 DR. NETON: John, before you get too far, 

16 you talked about Rev 0 was issued 9/15/06. 

17 But there’s also a Rev. 1 with a May 2007 

18 date. Do you know what the difference is 

19 between those two documents? It might be 

20 potentially the same. 

21 DR. MAURO: It might be just the PA cleared. 

22 That is, the original one may have -- I’m 

23 guessing right now. 

24 DR. NETON: I’d be surprised because it’s 

25 actually listed I think as Rev. 1. 
13

1 DR. MAURO: Called Rev 1? 

2 Chick Phillips, are you on the line? 

3 (no response) 

4 DR. NETON: Sorry, no, it is Rev. 0 still. 

5 So that’s probably it. I was just confused 

6 because there’s two issue dates, and then the 

7 May 2007 is the one that I brought, and I 

8 think they’re the same document. 

9 DR. MAURO: I’m not aware of any changes. 

10 The only time that happens is when we go 

11 through from a non-PA to a PA-cleared version. 

12 Other than that I’m not aware of any changes 

13 that were made. 

14 DR. BRANCHE: There’s someone participating 

15 by phone who’s typing, and you haven’t yet 

16 muted your phone. Perhaps you joined us late. 

17 Would you please mute your phone? If you do 

18 not have a mute button, then please use star 

19 six. Thank you very much. 

20 DR. NETON: I checked the findings, and 

21 they’re the same. 

22 MS. MIAOULIS: Excuse me. I’m Shirley with 

23 Congressman Young’s office. I didn’t know if 

24 you knew I was on. 

25 DR. BRANCHE: No, I did not, so thank you 
14

1 very much. Shirley, do you have a last name 

2 that we can use? 

3 MS. MIAOULIS: Yes, it’s M-I-A-O-U-L-I-S. 

4 DR. BRANCHE: M-I-A-O-U-L-S? 

5 MS. MIAOULIS: No, M-I-A-O-U-L-I-S, and I’m 

6 with Congressman Bill Young. 

7 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you so much. I do ask 

8 that you use a mute button or star six so that 

9 you can mute your line so that everyone 

10 participating by phone will be able to hear 

11 without any hindrance. And I appreciate your 

12 joining us this morning. Thank you. 

13 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): This is Chick 

14 Phillips. I’m on now, with SC&A. 

15 DR. MAURO: Chick, good timing. Jim Neton 

16 raised a question. He noticed that our report 

17 that I have in front of me, the hard copy now, 

is dated September 15th 18 , 2006. And apparently 

19 there is a Rev. 0 and a Rev. 1, and he asked 

20 whether or not that, in fact, is the case that 

21 there was a revision made. And I just 

22 speculated that that might be going from the 

23 non-PA to the PA-cleared version. Do you have 

24 any further information regarding that 

25 transition? 
15

1 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): No, I don’t, 

2 John. I assume that to be the case. 

3 DR. MAURO: That’s what I do also because I 

4 don’t remember any change, any substantive 

5 changes made to the original draft. I think 

6 we all have -- 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Well, let me 

8 back up. We did, too. We went back and 

9 revised it to include the questions that were 

10 submitted to NIOSH. 

11 DR. MAURO: Okay, and I was about to talk 

12 about that a little bit. The reason why the 

13 matrix looks quite a bit different than what 

14 you’re used to seeing is we decided -- see, 

15 what happened, normally, when we prepare a 

16 site profile review, one of the steps in the 

17 process along the way before we issue the 

18 report is to prepare a list of questions, and 

19 we send it off to NIOSH to have what I call a 

20 technical clarification/verification session. 

21 Basically, in those conference calls 

22 we present to NIOSH some questions regarding 

23 the report that, the site profile, whereby 

24 we’re just seeking clarification, further 

25 information regarding those matters. It turns 
16

1 out because of at the time the press of the 

2 timing was such that it wasn’t possible to go 

3 through that particular step. 

4 So as a result we issued our draft 

5 report without the attachment that normally 

6 would contain the questions and the answers 

7 that result from those conference calls. 

8 Subsequent to issuing this report we did 

9 receive a written response from NIOSH to those 

10 questions. So in a way you could almost think 

11 about those questions almost like the first 

12 round of the closeout process in a way to look 

13 at it. 

14 So we thought that to expedite matters 

15 we would include those questions and answers 

16 in the matrix, sort of kick this off and get a 

17 step up on the process. So you’re going to 

18 see that, for example, you have the package in 

19 front of you. 

20 What we tried to do, on the very first 

21 page, we just have, we numbered the, there are 

22 a total of 11 findings and a number of 

23 observations. The important issues are the 

24 findings. You’ll see each page has a number, 

25 issue number, basically a very brief statement 
17

1 of what the issue is, to right of the number 

2 one. And to the right of the issue you’ll see 

3 a paragraph that is SC&A’s finding. This 

4 comes right out of the executive summary. 

5 Below, the second half of each page, 

6 you’ll see the question that SC&A posed in 

7 writing to NIOSH as part of the process. And 

8 then to the right of that column you’ll see 

9 NIOSH’s written response to us regarding that 

10 question. 

11 And then finally, to the right of that 

12 you’ll see SC&A’s what I would call 

13 recommended internal resolution. It’s really 

14 meant for our own purposes, but I thought it 

15 would serve the working group well to see the 

16 information that had transpired up to today. 

17 You’ll see behind there’s a blank 

18 page. The blank page is really there now with 

19 the expectation that as a result of this 

20 meeting, NIOSH might want to have some 

21 additional comments. SC&A might wish to 

22 respond to those comments. And, of course, 

23 there’s always the column for Board 

24 recommendation and actions. So each one of 

25 the 11 findings is structured this way. 
18

1 With that what I presume that we’ll do 

2 is march through the 11 findings and get the 

3 dialogue started. I’d like to point out that 

4 out of the 11, I believe three we wrote down 

5 as part of our recommended resolution. As far 

6 as we’re concerned the issue is resolved. But 

7 that leaves eight that probably require some 

8 discussion. 

9 I noticed when I was going over this 

10 that the reason it’s so thick is it does not 

11 only include the 11 findings, but behind the 

12 11 findings there’s a page for each of what we 

13 call observations. In reviewing the 

14 observations you’ll see that there’s a lot of 

15 similarity between the findings -- 

16 DR. BRANCHE: I’m sorry. 

17 If everyone would please make certain 

18 that you’ve muted your phones, I would 

19 appreciate it. Thank you. 

20 John, continue. 

21 DR. MAURO: You’ll see that if we do get 

22 through the 11, my guess is we’ll get through 

23 the observations pretty easily because there’s 

24 a lot of -- once we get through the 11, for 

25 all intents and purposes there really is not 
19

1 much left in the observation section, but 

2 we’ll take a look at that just to make sure of 

3 it. 

4 And I guess by way of introduction at 

5 that point I’d like to turn it over to Chick 

6 Phillips. Chick is with SC&A. He’s our 

7 radiochemist, and he also was the lead author 

8 for putting together the site profile review. 

9 So, Chick, if I may, I’d like to turn 

10 it over to you. 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. BRANCHE: You may need to un-mute your 

13 phone, Chick. 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. BRANCHE: Chick, you may be speaking, 

16 but you’ve got your mute button on or you’ve 

17 used star six. 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. MAURO: Did we lose the connection? Is 

20 there anyone else there on the line? 

21 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Hello. 

22 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, so we know that we have 

23 the phone working. 

24 Chick Phillips, are you there? 

25 (no response) 
20

1 DR. MAURO: I assume for some reason we lost 

2 Chick. Hopefully, he’ll be back and I’ll do 

3 the best I can to pick it up and take it from 

4 there. So let’s get started. 

5 ISSUE 1: RECONSTRUCTION OF DOSES IN THE ABSENCE OF EARLY 

6 HEALTH PHYSICS INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE AND ENVIRONMENTAL 

7 RECORDS

8 Issue number one that we call 

9 reconstruction of doses in the absence of 

10 early health physics industrial hygiene and 

11 environmental records. The essence of this 

12 point is that apparently 1980 was a pretty 

13 important year in terms of the transition of 

14 the records for Pinellas going from a time 

15 period when the records were relatively sparse 

16 to when the records were quite a bit better. 

17 And this issue goes toward, the 

18 question we raised is that we’d like to hear a 

19 little bit more -- remember, this one has a 

20 question and answer. So we raised the 

21 question we’d like to hear a little bit more 

22 about how you’re going to deal with the pre23 1980 where the records were somewhat sparse. 

24 NIOSH responded, and the answer was 

25 despite some limitations in reference 
21

1 detailing processes during the lifetime of the 

2 Pinellas plant, NIOSH is confident that the 

3 claimant favorability of the assumptions that 

4 were adopted for dealing with the early data 

5 are claimant favorable. 

6 Now I also understand that -- 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I’m back. I’m 

8 sorry. 

9 DR. MAURO: Okay, Chick, thanks for getting 

10 back. You just saved me. I was doing the 

11 best I could to carry the ball. Where I am 

12 right now I just started to introduce issue 

13 number one with the issue dealing with the 

14 1980 time period and the break point between 

15 pre-’80 and post-’80 and what the questions 

16 and answers were and what our position is. If 

17 you could take it from here, I’d appreciate 

18 it. 

19 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Okay. I might 

20 just amend what I heard you say in the 

21 beginning. And that is you said that there 

22 were three findings that we were in basic 

23 agreement with, and we considered to be 

24 closed. And I’m not sure that I heard 

25 everything because I was having a bad 
22

1 connection. But did you mention that some of 

2 these that we considered closed are dependent 

3 upon the revision of the site profile 

4 documents in accordance with what the NIOSH 

5 response was? 

6 DR. MAURO: No, I did not say that. So, 

7 yeah, perhaps you should clarify that for us. 

8 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): As we go 

9 through here you’ll see that the response from 

10 NIOSH indicates that there will potentially, 

11 at least, be some changes in the site profile 

12 documents. So when we say we’re in agreement 

13 with that, of course, it’s contingent upon the 

14 changes to the site profile documents. 

15 John, I’m not sure how far you got 

16 with number one. I’m sorry. 

17 DR. MAURO: Why don’t you just take it from 

18 the top. 

19 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Issue number 

20 one, reconstruction doses in absence of early 

21 records. In the site profile documents it 

22 indicates that there’s an absence of pre-1980 

23 records. And, of course, the problem with 

24 that is that one has to project into the early 

25 part of this, early part of the dose 
23

1 reconstruction, records and information that 

2 are post-1980. We went to considerable 

3 lengths beyond the information contained on 

4 the O drive and in the site profile documents 

5 to obtain additional records from other sites. 

6 We were not real successful in doing 

7 that, and there’s a summary of that on the 

8 right-hand side in the recommended resolution 

9 part of that. But that is still a concern, 

10 and I’m not sure if anything has been done 

11 beyond the site profile, the information in 

12 the site profile documents, by NIOSH to recoup 

13 any of those early records at this point. We 

14 have no indication that there has been. 

15 MR. DARNELL: This is Pete Darnell speaking. 

16 I don’t know if I can agree with you saying 

17 absent. Sparse is probably closer to the 

18 truth as far as records being available. 

19 NIOSH has done record searches, and as always, 

20 as more documentation comes up we’re willing 

21 to change the technical basis documents, add 

22 to the technical basis documents. If you have 

23 any other locations that we should be 

24 searching for, let us know, and we’ll go look. 

25 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. Just for my 
24

1 own edification because I’m not as up to speed 

2 on this as I’d like to be. What type of 

3 records are we really talking about are really 

4 sparse? It seems to me that we had a fair 

5 amount of external dosimetry data in the early 

6 years. So are we primarily talking about 

7 external dosimetry data, bioassay data, that 

8 kind of thing? 

9 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, those are 

10 the kinds of things that we’re talking about. 

11 DR. MAURO: Both, Chick, both internal and 

12 external? 

13 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes. 

14 DR. NETON: I saw some earlier analyses I 

15 thought though that the external was a pretty 

16 consistent 20 percent of the population 

17 monitored or so or something of that nature 

18 which I believe we would tie to the, probably 

19 the appropriate percentage of the workforce 

20 that needed to be monitored, that sort of 

21 thing. 

22 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): How the 

23 selection for the personnel that were 

24 monitored, those kind of records that would 

25 allow you to determine if the right population 
25

1 was monitored and those records, those actual 

2 records from that early. 

3 DR. NETON: We’re not talking about getting 

4 additional monitoring records because they 

5 more than likely don’t exist. We’re talking 

6 about documentation of the radiological 

7 protection program itself? I’m a little bit 

8 confused here. 

9 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, we’re 

10 talking about those kind of documents as well 

11 as any personnel records that are available 

12 from that time period. 

13 DR. MAURO: Chick, I noticed in looking over 

14 the matrix and reading the report issue number 

15 four deals a bit with this where dealing with 

16 the data, and there was a rather lengthy 

17 response provided in writing by NIOSH. It’s 

18 issue number four where they talk a bit about 

19 the program and how it matured over time, the 

20 external dosimetry program it appears. 

21 And our response in that case was 

22 NIOSH response is acceptable to SC&A. Is that 

23 indicative that perhaps that particular aspect 

24 of the early data are okay or is there still 

25 more to the story that you feel we need to 
26

1 talk about? 

2 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): It’s a matter 

3 of documentation of anything in the early part 

4 of this, pre-1980, particularly the records 

5 relative to the rad safety program and how the 

6 selection was made of the workers to be 

7 monitored. 

8 DR. MAURO: Chick, I notice that that 

9 documentation is, at least to a certain 

10 degree, provided in issue number four. Now, 

11 would you say that if the, that that material 

12 that’s described under NIOSH response for 

13 issue number four, if that were contained in 

14 the site profile, would that ameliorate a bit 

15 your concern regarding adequacy of external 

16 dosimetry data and documentation of the 

17 rationale behind the 25 percent or 20 percent 

18 of the people that were selected? 

19 Because when I read that, I got the 

20 sense that this particular, I guess I read 

21 this as new material that explain what the 

22 rationale was, and if there was some citation 

23 of some documents that were published by GE 

24 that’s quoted here by NIOSH that explains 

25 that, in effect, at least in those days -- 
27

1 they go back as early as 1966 -- that there 

2 was some discussion of the rationale for who 

3 was monitored and who wasn’t monitored. And I 

4 guess me question is does that do the trick? 

5 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): If it were 

6 adequately documented in the site profile, I 

7 think that would alleviate a lot of the 

8 concerns, yes. 

9 DR. MAURO: Okay, so that’s important. What 

10 this means that in principle with that 

11 response if that response, in fact, was 

12 contained in the site profile that would never 

13 have come up as an issue. And so it’s really 

14 a matter of revising the site profile to make 

15 that clear. Or is there anything else beside 

16 that that you would be looking for? 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): No, I think if 

18 we’ve done an adequate, you know, if we’ve 

19 done the search of the other sites, which we 

20 seem to have done, then I think that would 

21 satisfy number one. 

22 DR. MAURO: So what I’m hearing is two 

23 facets to this. One is the language that’s in 

24 response to number four goes to a degree 

25 responding to this concern. But it sounds 
28

1 like you’d also feel a little more degree of 

2 comfort if they went to some of these records 

3 centers such as LANL, Kansas City plant, SRS, 

4 Los Alamos, et cetera. And I heard from you 

5 that there was an attempt made to search those 

6 records by SC&A or was that a limited effort 

7 or, and you did not come up with anything? 

8 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, I think 

9 we went as far with that as we could. And I 

10 think we would like to be sure that NIOSH has 

11 depleted that effort, and they feel that they 

12 have retrieved from all these other sites 

13 which had some ties to Pinellas. And they 

14 came up with a similar result or either to 

15 include those in the site profile. 

16 MR. GLECKLER: This is Brian Gleckler from 

17 the ORAU team. I’m the site profile owner 

18 now, the new site profile owner. Just to make 

19 sure I understand this, like I’m still not 

20 real clear on what types of records we’re 

21 referring to. Are we, to me I interpret it as 

22 personal exposure records, but it sounds more 

23 like programmatic-type records that we’re 

24 referring to. Can I get a clarification on 

25 that? 
29

1 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, 

2 programmatic-type records, in particular as we 

3 go through this you’ll see that there were 

4 early concerns about the X-ray equipment and 

5 calibration and those kind of things, that 

6 that’s available at another location. 

7 MR. GLECKLER: Thank you. 

8 DR. MAURO: Chick, I also noticed that there 

9 was a lot of concern about -- in some of the 

10 other findings -- internal dosimetry records 

11 for some, what I would call the more exotic 

12 radionuclides, at least at this site. Would 

13 that be part of the concern, too? 

14 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, it would. 

15 Any other comments on that particular issue? 

16 Are we clear on that? 

17 (no response) 

18 DR. MAURO: Phil, I guess my question to you 

19 is there any action item or recommendation or 

20 do you feel that this issue, I mean, it’s 

21 really a matter now of is there anything more 

22 that you feel might need to be done to -- 

23 MR. SCHOFIELD: Not until the record search 

24 has gone on to see if there are any more 

25 records. I’d like to see if they can put a 
30

1 copy of the Tiger Team’s findings on the O 

2 drive if that would be possible. 

3 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I 

4 missed that. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: I would like to see the 

6 Tiger Team’s findings posted to the O drive, 

7 if possible, and any other records you find 

8 that we could use these for comparisons. 

9 DR. NETON: I’m a little concerned about us 

10 committing to do any additional record 

11 searches right now. I’m not saying we won’t, 

12 but I think we can prepare a response that 

13 sort of summarizes what we just talked about, 

14 which is the additional information response 

15 four is relevant to one. There may be some 

16 exotic nuclide issues to be addressed. 

17 And I think we would like some time to 

18 evaluate the appropriateness or the 

19 fruitfulness of us conducting additional 

20 searches at a number of sites. Those can be 

21 extremely costly and time consuming. We’re 

22 not saying we won’t but before we commit to 

23 that, I think we’d like to craft a response. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: For an action item what we’d 

25 probably have is NIOSH will further 
31

1 investigate the -- 

2 DR. NETON: Evaluate the utility of 

3 capturing additional records at these sites. 

4 We may indeed have gone to some of these sites 

5 already. I don’t know. We may know 

6 internally among our data capture teams that 

7 it’s unlikely that we’ll obtain some 

8 information because these sites can be very 

9 time consuming and costly. 

10 MR. SCHOFIELD: That sounds like a 

11 reasonable approach. 

12 DR. NETON: Just give us a chance, I think, 

13 to explore that, and we may indeed come out on 

14 that side of the equation which is, yeah, it 

15 makes sense to do it. But I prefer not to 

16 commit to that at this meeting. 

17 MS. THOMAS: We might be better able to 

18 document for everyone what records we did 

19 search to get the information we have, too. 

20 So that’s something else we could do. 

21 DR. NETON: That was my sense. Sometimes 

22 that’s not adequately communicated in the site 

23 profiles, you know, what we did look for, what 

24 we didn’t. 

25 DR. MAURO: As a backdrop I know that very 
32

1 often when we get into this stage of the 

2 process, especially if it’s an SEC, like we 

3 just recently went through this process with 

4 Fernald where, as a result of the triggering 

5 of the SEC and some of the important issues, 

6 one of the issues we raised was thorium. And 

7 as a result of subsequent efforts to deal with 

8 that one particular hot item so to speak, it 

9 was retrieval of a substantial amount of 

10 additional records. So in that case that was 

11 a very important exercise. I’m not saying 

12 that’s the same thing we have here, but, yeah, 

13 you got the idea. 

14 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): As I 

15 understand it you will prepare a response to 

16 that -- 

17 DR. NETON: Right. 

18 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): -- to indicate 

19 what has been done as well as what you see 

20 might be done beyond that. 

21 DR. NETON: I also think a very nice, robust 

22 summary of our position on the availability of 

23 current records in house, like we say, number 

24 four addressed, had a response to a lot of 

25 number one. I suspect there’s also additional 
33

1 information to talk about the, that there’ll 

2 be records for the exotic radionuclides, that 

3 sort of stuff. Those were monitored programs 

4 that were in place. 

5 ISSUE 2: METAL TRITIDES

6 DR. MAURO: Chick, if you want to go on to 

7 number two. 

8 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Hold on just a 

9 second, John. 

10 DR. MAURO: Sure. 

11 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): John, can you 

12 start with number two, please? 

13 DR. MAURO: Of course, I’ll be glad to. In 

14 fact, I’m pretty familiar with this particular 

15 item. And it’s one of the -- 

16 DR. NETON: I just have a quick 

17 administrative question before we go further. 

18 Who is going to be the person to keep the 

19 updated matrix, I guess? 

20 DR. MAURO: I’m taking notes, and Brad, too, 

21 do that. It wouldn’t hurt that there be some 

22 backup to that. 

23 DR. NETON: I think Elyse is taking them for 

24 our side as well. 

25 DR. MAURO: Between the two of us we can get 
34

1 it to make sure we’ve got the story right. 

2 DR. NETON: Just so we have a single -- 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Phil’s going to keep track on 

4 the matrix of what the action item is. 

5 DR. BRANCHE: You’re doing it 

6 electronically? 

7 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

8 DR. NETON: Just want to make sure. 

9 DR. MAURO: Item two is -- 

10 MR. PHILLIPS: (inaudible) 

11 DR. BRANCHE: Chick, you’re going to have to 

12 mute your phone, please. 

13 (Whereupon, multiple speakers spoke 

14 telephonically and unintelligibly.) 

15 DR. BRANCHE: We’ve got a bad echo. I’m 

16 going to hang up and start all over again. 

17 Please excuse us for this moment. 

18 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): That’s 

19 better now. 

20 DR. BRANCHE: Somebody must have muted or 

21 hung up. Again, if you would please mute your 

22 lines if you’re participating by phone. If 

23 you don’t have a mute button, then please use 

24 star six. Thank you. 

25 DR. MAURO: Thank you. Item number two is 
35

1 one of the items that from SC&A’s perspective 

2 might be one of the more important items in 

3 terms of some of the sites where metal 

4 tritides is an issue. I’ve only become 

5 familiar with the existence of what a metal 

6 tritide is recently, and I’ve learned a little 

7 bit about it. 

8 For those of you around the table that 

9 may not be familiar with it -- it looks like a 

10 lot of you are. It’s when you tie a molecule 

11 of tritium atom, yeah, I guess it’s T2 to a 

12 metal. There are different kinds of metals. 

13 And somehow that’s used in weapons, and I’m 

14 not familiar with it. That’s the extent of my 

15 knowledge. 

16 And it can become aerosolized. That 

17 is, if they break -- it’s a powder. And 

18 apparently, at Pinellas and also other sites 

19 apparently this material, metal tritides, has 

20 become airborne and has been inhaled. And one 

21 of the problems associated with that is that, 

22 unlike regular tritiated water -- we know the 

23 biokinetics. 

24 If you inhale some tritiated water we 

25 know it has a ten-day half life in the body. 
36

1 It’s clear. It goes through urine. You take 

2 urine samples, and based on the urine samples, 

3 you could figure out how much tritium was 

4 inhaled. Once you know that you could 

5 reconstruct the tritium dose. It’s really one 

6 of the easier ones to deal with. 

7 However, if it’s tied to this metal 

8 particle, -- it’s a real microscopic particle 

9 -- and inhaled, then the tritium is sort of 

10 stuck in your lung, and it’s going to sit 

11 there and decay while it’s sitting in your 

12 lung. Or I would imagine that it may be 

13 phagocytized whereby, if it’s a small 

14 particle, like any small particle, it could be 

15 grabbed and brought off to the lymph nodes. 

16 DR. BRANCHE: Phagocytized? 

17 DR. MAURO: Phagocytized. And so quite 

18 frankly, that’s the extent of my knowledge of 

19 metal tritides and its potential dosimetric 

20 implications. But I can envision it being a 

21 challenge to reconstruct the doses for two 

22 reasons. One, you take a person’s urine 

23 samples. If it’s not being cleared, it’s like 

24 high-fired plutonium, you’re not going to see 

25 anything in the urine. And even if you did, 
37

1 what’s the biokinetics? In theory you could 

2 assume it just sits in the lung. 

3 Now I understand very recently that 

4 there was an OTIB-0066 that’s been published 

5 which I haven’t looked at, but that might be 

6 the magic bullet. We haven’t reviewed it, and 

7 I guess my recommendation to the working group 

8 would be it’s probably a good time to review 

9 it to see whether or not it resolves this 

10 particular issue. And if it resolves the 

11 issue here, it’s very possible that it 

12 resolves the issues in many other places also 

13 where this has come up. 

14 DR. NETON: I think you summarized it real 

15 well. TIB-0066 was issued back in April of 

16 2007. It does treat more insoluble forms of 

17 these tritides, metal hydrides using the ICRP 

18 lung model. In other words there are 

19 solubility classes of M and S that can be 

20 applied and modeled based on the urine. So 

21 it’s really not that difficult to do. 

22 DR. MAURO: So there’s empirical data on 

23 these that people have been studied sort of 

24 like the transuranic -- 

25 DR. NETON: Right. To my knowledge there’s 
38

1 no Super-S tritide. The worst case we would 

2 treat that as Type-S solubility class. And so 

3 you take the urine and you model it just like 

4 it was a Type-S clearance from the lung. The 

5 systemic organs though can be treated just 

6 like, once it’s systemic then what comes out 

7 in the urine is proportional to what’s in the 

8 system, and you can calculate it that way. 

9 DR. MAURO: Does it always stay tied? In 

10 other words are the two together for life? 

11 DR. NETON: Once it becomes systemic, then 

12 it’s free to, just like tritium, it’s in the 

13 body. 

14 DR. MAURO: So when it becomes systemic, the 

15 tritium does part ways with the metal it’s 

16 tied to and goes its own merry way? 

17 DR. NETON: I believe so, yeah, because it’s 

18 dissolved in the system. We could look at 

19 that. The only other thing I would offer is 

20 that I think in our site profile for Pinellas 

21 should be modified to incorporate TIB-0066, 

22 but also to provide guidance as to which 

23 workers and which locations might be 

24 appropriate to apply that concept. 

25 MR. SCHOFIELD: Now the question is on these 
39

1 hydrides, does the metal make a real 

2 difference in the solubility factor? 

3 DR. NETON: It does. It does. In fact, 

4 there are tables in TIB-0066 identifying which 

5 metals would be more soluble or less soluble. 

6 I don’t recall them, but I think the titanium 

7 tritides are, actually might be Type-M or some 

8 of the more exotic or some erbiums or there 

9 are some other ones out there, scandium. 

10 And that’s covered in the TIB which 

11 SC&A would be able to review. I haven’t 

12 looked at the background literature 

13 completely, but I suspect that we could make 

14 this out if we pulled out the data from some 

15 study that had been done on solubility. 

16 DR. MAURO: So this type of material now is 

17 in the open literature. From my talking to 

18 our folks this was something that people 

19 didn’t talk about very much. 

20 DR. NETON: Apparently, there’s enough out 

21 there for us to have generated this. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: This is going to sound bad, 

23 but given the fact that, you know, like 

24 depleted uranium is one of those things that ^ 

25 how are you going to treat the different 
40

1 metals or if they don’t know which hydride 

2 they were exposed to? Are these going to be 

3 treated different during the dose 

4 reconstruction? 

5 DR. NETON: Yeah, we would do like we 

6 normally do, you know, take the most claimant7 favorable solubility type if we didn’t know. 

8 That’s sort of standard. 

9 MR. GIBSON: Jim, when were these studies 

10 done on hydrides? 

11 DR. NETON: I don’t know. I think this is 

12 going to have to wait until the review of TIB13 0066. I’m not, you know, I reviewed this a 

14 year or more ago. But there’s a Mound 2004 

15 Technical Basis Document for stable tritiated 

16 particles that was issued that’s cited in 

17 here. There’s also a couple of Department of 

18 Energy handbooks for special tritium compounds 

19 that were issued in 2004 that are referenced 

20 in here. I suspect those also reference 

21 additional studies. 

22 MR. GIBSON: So they’re fairly recent? 

23 DR. NETON: Fairly recent, at least 2004, 

24 2006. 

25 DR. BRANCHE: There’s a person participating 
41

1 by phone that needs to mute their line, 

2 please. 

3 ISSUE 3: MDCs FOR PLUTONIUM BIOASSAY SAMPLES

4 DR. MAURO: If it’s appropriate, I think we 

5 can move on to number three. 

6 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): John, I’m 

7 back. 

8 DR. MAURO: Okay, thanks. We just finished 

9 covering issue two on metal tritides, and the 

10 bottom line is SC&A’s going to review OTIB11 0066, and NIOSH is going to make appropriate 

12 revisions to the site profile to incorporate 

13 OTIB-0066 or make reference to it and identify 

14 those classes of workers at Pinellas that 

15 might be subject to that particular exposure 

16 scenario. So I think that’s pretty clean, and 

17 we can move on to number three. 

18 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Okay. In 

19 number three there were several concerns about 

20 the calculation of the minimum detectable 

21 concentration for the plutonium bioassay 

22 samples. For one thing if you look at the 

23 bioassay data, you see that the MDCs that are 

24 calculated in these data, it’s highly variable 

25 from sample to sample. So when it was not 
42

1 clear exactly what the reason for this is, but 

2 one would have to conclude that it probably 

3 had to do with the variable recovery in the, 

4 radiochemical recovery, in these samples. 

5 But the first question we had was 

6 regarding to the equation that was in the site 

7 profile as to how these were calculated. I 

8 think that has been cleared up in NIOSH’s 

9 response to this. But it is not clear, it’s 

10 still not clear to us how the average MDCs 

11 were calculated. 

12 And we believe it was worthwhile to 

13 discuss the high variability in the minimum 

14 detectable concentrations in the urine samples 

15 that are included. So the bottom line on this 

16 is we believe that in the site profile there 

17 needs to be a further discussion of the MDCs, 

18 the variability and the calculation for the 

19 average MDCs and the uncertainties associated 

20 with those. 

21 MR. GLECKLER: This is Brian Gleckler. So 

22 your primary issue with all this is coming 

23 from the variability that you’re seeing in the 

24 MDC values? 

25 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, and a 
43

1 further explanation of how the averages were 

2 calculated. 

3 MR. GLECKLER: Okay, that’s the average -- 

4 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): What the 

5 uncertainty of those might be given the high 

6 variability of the MDCs. 

7 MR. GLECKLER: How the averages, the average 

8 values that are presented in the TBD. Is that 

9 what you’re talking about? 

10 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): That’s 

11 correct. 

12 DR. MAURO: When I read this and spoke with 

13 Chick about it the thought I had in mind is I 

14 envision you have a worker that was sampled 

15 for bioassay plutonium. You see these below 

16 the MDC, and the question then becomes, you 

17 know, you’re going to assign something to him 

18 because he was monitored, but a zero is 

19 reported. 

20 And given the five-fold difference 

21 between, I guess, the range of the MDCs I 

22 guess are pretty variable. Is it a person23 specific MDC? Or is it one -- in other words, 

24 how do you, then how do you assign, I guess if 

25 you go into one-half the lower limit of 
44

1 detection as your missed dose. If it’s a 

2 missed dose, you would go one-half the MDC 

3 as... If a person was monitored, you come up 

4 with zero, what do you assign if there’s this 

5 kind of uncertainty in the MDCs? 

6 MR. GLECKLER: It’s like all the 

7 uncertainties appear to be sample specific. 

8 So they’re a specific sample for a specific 

9 person. They’ll have an MDC value. And as 

10 far as the calculation goes our standard 

11 approach would be to use the LOD-over-two. 

12 With it varying it’s like that you could still 

13 plug them in as half of it, you know, the LOD14 over-two value. 

15 DR. MAURO: And it would be sample -- see, 

16 I’m used to seeing that, well, here’s the MDC. 

17 It’s almost universal. And you’re saying this 

18 would be almost like sample specific. 

19 MR. GLECKLER: The ones that we receive with 

20 the data, it’s like they’re sample specific. 

21 It’s what they appear to be because they’re so 

22 like what’s been indicated. They’re so 

23 variable. And that may change. You’ll get 

24 like a few, there’s only a handful of 

25 individuals that will have more than a couple 
45

1 of bioassay samples for plutonium. It’s like 

2 you’ll -- each sample will have a different 

3 date typically. It’s like and they’ll all 

4 have different, they report them as MDL 

5 values. And so, yeah, they can be pretty 

6 dramatic as far as the difference. 

7 DR. MAURO: Chick, does that, I mean, the 

8 fact that each person would have his, every 

9 bioassay sample collected and analyzed for 

10 plutonium would have its unique minimum 

11 detectable level for that sample and that 

12 analysis. That’s what I’m hearing. And as a 

13 result that would be known when the dose 

14 reconstruction’s being done. And if the 

15 person came back with less than the MDL, am I 

16 correct, your protocol would be to assign one17 half whatever the person’s specific MDL or 

18 analysis specific MDL was and that would be 

19 assigned to that person? 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. And the simplifying 

21 approach that would typically be used on a 

22 dose reconstruction is like if you have 

23 multiple MDLs and one’s higher than all the 

24 others, we would use the highest one and use 

25 it across the board, that value as a claimant 
46

1 favorable approach rather than trying to 

2 account for all the different -- 

3 DR. NETON: But what I’m hearing here is we 

4 don’t have what I call censored data for 

5 Pinellas workers. We have the MDC values. If 

6 the value was below detection limit, they 

7 reported the detection limit for the 

8 individual samples. 

9 MR. GLECKLER: We’ve got a combination. 

10 It’s like they did report a number of zeros 

11 for it looks like a finite period of time, but 

12 they give the MDL values it seems for 

13 everything but the very early data from like 

14 the mid-‘70s when that project started to 

15 about 1980s timeframe. I know at least for 

16 1982 and beyond we’ve got MDL data from 

17 virtually everything. 

18 And then there’s a period of time 

19 where they, I believe, they report negative 

20 values rather than the censored data of zero. 

21 It’s like in all cases from like, at least 

22 from 1982 and beyond from what I can tell, 

23 it’s like we get the MDL value provided for 

24 that specific sample. 

25 DR. MAURO: That’s from ’82 and before? 
47

1 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah. 

2 DR. MAURO: And so throughout the history 

3 you have that kind of information, that level 

4 of detail, for the places where bioassay was 

5 done? 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah. And one thing to also 

7 be aware of, too, is they pretty much did a, 

8 from what I can tell, it looks like they did a 

9 baseline on virtually everyone before they 

10 went in to working it in the RTG areas. And 

11 it’s like and so even though we don’t have a 

12 MDL value, we essentially have a background 

13 value for those individuals because typically 

14 those 1970s data that they have is like only 

15 in d per m. 

16 And then they also give the sample 

17 volume so we couldn’t convert it to d per m 

18 per unit volume. But we don’t get any MDL 

19 information with that. But we have that 

20 baseline sample measurement. It’s like and 

21 that can be used as a background. In a lot of 

22 cases that baseline looks like it’s higher 

23 than the subsequent samples. 

24 DR. MAURO: So you have baseline numbers. 

25 Are we talking Polonium-239 or -238? 
48

1 MR. GLECKLER: Most cases both. I’m trying 

2 to think if the ‘70s data might be just 38 I 

3 think. It might, I think, I can’t remember if 

4 it’s both or from 1982 timeframe I know and 

5 beyond it’s like you get both, U-239 and -238. 

6 DR. MAURO: Chick, correct me if I’m wrong. 

7 My understanding is that in many, many cases 

8 in these records you find zeros for the 

9 results. And I’m hearing a couple things. 

10 One is when that occurs you have two pieces of 

11 information. One is you have a baseline 

12 reading for this person which might actually 

13 be a positive reading. I guess I was 

14 surprised to hear that. You actually see 

15 detectable levels -- 

16 MR. GLECKLER: I don’t know if it’s 

17 technically positive. It’s higher than some 

18 of the subsequent results in a number of 

19 instances. 

20 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): And the MDL is 

21 reported on those as well? 

22 MR. GLECKLER: That’s the problem, we don’t 

23 have the MDLs for those, but you can make 

24 inferences based on that baseline because they 

25 weren’t exposed when that baseline was 
49

1 provided. And so if they have a subsequent 

2 result that’s less than that that might be, 

3 you know, when you’re talking at the levels 

4 we’re looking at it’s like you’re going to get 

5 a reasonable number of false positives. 

6 It’s just a matter of how you deal 

7 with those false positives and your ability to 

8 identify those. It’s going to be tricky with 

9 looking at that early data. 

10 DR. MAURO: I have to say I’m a bit -- 

11 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I guess I 

12 would question if you don’t have the MDLs on 

13 those early values, how do you assign an MDL 

14 to those? 

15 MR. GLECKLER: Typically, there’s no intake 

16 associated with those from what we’ve seen. 

17 There’s a number of those that are reported as 

18 zeros, and usually it’s like they’re, like 

19 what I was indicating, a lot of the subsequent 

20 results are less than the baseline measurement 

21 result. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: Is it known that everybody 

23 was actually tested before they started 

24 working at RTG? Had a urine sample? 

25 MR. GLECKLER: As far as -- 
50

1 MR. SCHOFIELD: (unintelligible) 

2 MR. GLECKLER: I’m trying to remember. I 

3 believe there is documentation on that where 

4 most of these bioassays it says how they 

5 tagged, they tagged the results. They label 

6 them as -- they don’t call it a baseline. I 

7 think it’s preoperational measurement, 

8 something along those lines. But they are 

9 tagged as that type of a measurement, the 

10 data. And it’s everyone that has any PU 

11 bioassay that I’ve seen thus far has one of 

12 those in there. 

13 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I guess I 

14 still don’t see the utility of that if you 

15 don’t have the MDCs on those values. Just 

16 because it says zero -- 

17 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, but what if you use -- 

18 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): -- zero, I 

19 mean it means it might be below some MDC 

20 value. But if you don’t have that MDC value, 

21 then I’m not sure how much use that data is in 

22 determining the baseline. 

23 MR. GLECKLER: But you should be allowed to 

24 use the baseline as a background sample and 

25 subtract that from the other results. Then 
51

1 ultimately you get typically a lot of 

2 negatives and zeros. 

3 DR. NETON: Well, I think we need to go back 

4 and rewrite this up because I think there’s 

5 confusion here, and give you an example how we 

6 would do that. 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I think that’s 

8 it. I think that in the site profile it needs 

9 to be clarified how those MDCs were handled. 

10 DR. NETON: I agree. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: So NIOSH will provide to us 

12 and SC&A a sample of how it was done? 

13 DR. NETON: Description of how we’re using 

14 the averages or not using them and an example 

15 of how we would do that for someone who had a 

16 value that was reported as zero. How would we 

17 do that. 

18 DR. MAURO: And especially considering the 

19 variability in the MDCs depending -- there’s a 

20 five-fold variability. I don’t know how 

21 important that is in terms of dose, but it’s 

22 my experience that once you start to see 

23 Plutonium-239, you had a fairly good intake, 

24 you know, if it’s Type-S. It takes a pretty 

25 good intake to see some in the urine. And if 
52

1 the uncertainty in the MDL is a factor of 

2 five, that further increases -- 

3 DR. NETON: It’s all dependent on the 

4 chemical recovery because I can make a -- 

5 having done radiochemistry with plutonium in 

6 urine I can tell you a factor of five is not 

7 unusual to get in your yields if you’re 

8 especially inexperienced with this. But we 

9 need to look at that. 

10 DR. MAURO: Just in terms of the level of 

11 importance, so let’s say we have a person that 

12 we know was sampled, urine sampled, and 

13 routinely or whatever or periodically for 

14 plutonium analysis. And you repeatedly come 

15 up with a less than detectable level. Are we 

16 talking about, I guess we’re talking about a 

17 lung dose or a bone dose or one of the organs 

18 that plutonium might find its way in or even a 

19 thoracic lymphoma. There you go. My question 

20 is, are we talking about doses that are 

21 relatively miniscule, or are we talking about 

22 doses that are not insignificant? I don’t 

23 have a feel for it. 

24 DR. NETON: It could be very high. Missed 

25 dose for plutonium in the lung area is -- 
53

1 DR. MAURO: Could be very high. 

2 DR. NETON: -- very high. 

3 DR. MAURO: So this issue is not 

4 insignificant. 

5 DR. NETON: No, it’s not an insignificant 

6 issue. I agree. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Just to clarify for me, how 

8 many samples do we actually have for the 

9 Pinellas for plutonium? I see the radiation 

10 ones, but what do we actually have number11 wise? 

12 MR. GLECKLER: Oh, I don’t know that 

13 offhand. The relatively small population of 

14 the workforce that worked in the RTG areas, 

15 and from what I can tell it’s like all of them 

16 that worked in those areas at least as a 

17 minimum had a baseline before they were 

18 allowed to be assigned to that area. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: And we’re talking a range of 

20 workers, maintenance, operations personnel, so 

21 forth or just the operational end of it? 

22 MR. GLECKLER: Let me think, it’s like I’m 

23 trying to remember. It’s like they’ve got 

24 criteria for the external dosimetry. I don’t 

25 remember seeing anything in there on how they 
54

1 handled the internal. I believe there’s 

2 documentation on who they monitored or 

3 determined who they monitored. It’s like, 

4 well, I’d have to look into that. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: We need that kind of 

6 documentation because I’ve worked around these 

7 RTGs myself. We had people who worked with it 

8 were monitored. So we had crafts who came 

9 through the area that weren’t monitored for 

10 the same things. 

11 And so there needs to be that 

12 distinction of how whether all personnel who 

13 came and worked in that area whether they were 

14 temporary, whether they were craft or whatever 

15 their job classification was, were they 

16 monitored for this? Did they have baseline? 

17 DR. NETON: I think some of that goes back 

18 to issue number one which is who was monitored 

19 and why and under what criteria. That’s what 

20 ties I think, Phil, into that issue. Between 

21 that and then the analysis is probably what we 

22 have. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Just a question for SC&A 

24 before we get too far into it and stuff like 

25 that, the things that were brought up in other 
55

1 site profiles and so forth and that’s data 

2 integrity and so forth. I’m sure that we’re 

3 looking into that. 

4 DR. MAURO: I would say that I guess -- 

5 Chick, help clarify. 

6 We didn’t do any what I would call 

7 data integrity analysis, the kinds of things 

8 we’re doing right now for some of the other 

9 sites where we go back to the original 

10 records, maybe even some logbooks and the 

11 electronic data. Is this data in an 

12 electronic form? In other words are we 

13 dealing with a dataset that’s hard copy for 

14 each worker and you just go in and you do the 

15 dose reconstruction? Or is there actually a 

16 separate electronic dataset the way we’ve 

17 seen, for example, at larger sites? 

18 MR. GLECKLER: Both. Yeah, we’ve got 

19 datasets in the SRDV, and we’ve also got 

20 datasets that the DOE provides, you know, part 

21 of their response to our request for records. 

22 MS. THOMAS: But there’s no database that 

23 we’ve received. It’s all individual reporting 

24 on their personal exposure. Is that correct? 

25 I think that’s what he’s asking. 
56

1 MR. GLECKLER: I’m not familiar with what’s 

2 meant by -- 

3 MS. THOMAS: You know, like for Hanford, 

4 SRS, we’ve received an electronic database. I 

5 don’t think we have that in this case. 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, as far as I know, no, 

7 we haven’t received anything like that. 

8 DR. MAURO: So these were all like worker 

9 records. Basically, all the claimants come in 

10 and your worker records, and there’s your 

11 dataset. Some of them have bioassay data. 

12 Some of them don’t. And on a case-by-case 

13 basis you reconstruct the doses based on that 

14 data. 

15 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. 

16 DR. MAURO: As opposed to, let’s say, a site 

17 where they’ve taken all of that data and put 

18 it into an electronic file that can sort. You 

19 don’t have that. 

20 MR. GLECKLER: No, that has not been done 

21 for Pinellas. 

22 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): John, to 

23 answer your question, we have not gone to that 

24 level of data verification. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: Well, as lessons learned from 
57

1 many of these other sites I believe that is 

2 something we need to check into a little bit 

3 further, just the data integrity and so forth. 

4 DR. MAURO: Can we talk a little bit about 

5 how that would be done in a situation like 

6 this? In other words what we have -- how many 

7 claimants do we have here? Anybody have a 

8 feel for it? 

9 MR. DARNELL: Three hundred sixty-five. 

10 DR. MAURO: Three-sixty-five. Now a data 

11 integrity investigation for the 365, typically 

12 what -- let me sort of set the, what we’ve 

13 done in the past when we have thousands of 

14 workers. And let’s say there’s a limited 

15 amount of bioassay data. A good example would 

16 be what we’re doing right now on Nevada Test 

17 Site. I’m trying to draw an analogy of what 

18 we might do here or might not do. 

19 What happens is we say, okay -- for 

20 example, at the Nevada Test Site we have 1,500 

21 claimants. NIOSH selected 100 of the 

22 claimants that had the highest external 

23 exposures with the assumption that in general 

24 people with the highest external exposures 

25 probably also had the highest internal 
58

1 exposures. That’s an issue that we’re looking 

2 at. But that, you know, for better or worse 

3 let’s go with that for a minute. 

4 And then what happens is then you go 

5 and you say, all right, we go in and we look 

6 at the bioassay data for those workers that 

7 have been selected by NIOSH to be the ones 

8 that we’re going to use as our coworker model. 

9 In other words we have bioassay data on some 

10 subset of these 100 workers -- stay with me. 

11 And then the intent that NIOSH is 

12 using is that from there we could build a 

13 coworker model where we get an understanding 

14 of the distribution of tritium intake, the 

15 distribution of iodine intake, the 

16 distribution of polonium intake from some 

17 subset. And theoretically you could pick off 

the upper end of that 95th 18 percentile or some 

19 value and say, okay, we’re going to assign 

20 this upper end intake to all workers that 

21 weren’t monitored and perhaps should have been 

22 monitored at the Nevada Test Site. So they’re 

23 sort of like the model of how you build a 

24 coworker model. 

25 Now one of the things we’ve been asked 
59

1 to do -- because you want to do things the 

2 same way -- one of the things we’ve been asked 

3 to do, well, there are a lot of different -- 

4 when that group of 100 was selected as the 

5 body of workers that are going to represent 

6 the source of your data for a coworker model, 

7 one of the questions that came up around the 

8 table of the work group was, well, how do we 

9 know that you’ve captured all the different 

10 categories of workers, all the time periods, 

11 all of the different workers’ settings that 

12 the workers -- in this case a large number of 

13 workers at NTS -- might have experienced. 

14 So what we’re doing is we’re going in 

15 and going back into the 1,500 cases and 

16 developing a sampling plan which in effect 

17 would say, okay, let’s sample from all tunnel 

18 workers. Let’s sample from all carpenters, 

19 all welders and do a cut at the same 1,500 

20 dataset but come at it differently than the 

21 way NIOSH did. And then we’re looking at the 

22 data that comes out of that. 

23 I’m telling this story because I’m 

24 trying to make sure that we do everything the 

25 same way. And what we’re doing is say, all 
60

1 right, now when we look at the distribution of 

2 intakes that we get from these other samples, 

3 do they ring true with the distribution of the 

4 intakes that you get out of the dataset that 

5 NIOSH selected as the basis for their coworker 

6 model. 

7 And the test we’re really saying is, 

8 one, that if it looks like that set of 100 and 

9 the distribution intakes for those workers, is 

10 bounding or comparable to all the other 

11 different cuts that we’re making at it, we 

12 could walk away and say, yeah, I think that 

13 it’s a pretty robust approach. Because even 

14 when we look at different categories of 

15 workers, we still see that the set of 100 is 

16 bounding. Or we may find out surprise, 

17 surprise, some group of the 1,500 has a 

18 distribution that’s ten times higher, in the 

19 high end, of the set of 100. And then you 

20 start to say, oh, oh, we’ve got a problem. 

21 Now, given that model how do we, in 

22 order to, you know, to try to be responsive to 

23 Brad’s request, how do we transfer that sort 

24 of philosophy to this particular facility? 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you have to understand 
61

1 this facility first. 

2 DR. MAURO: Yes, right, right. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: This is not an NTS facility. 

4 DR. MAURO: I understand. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: I consider this to be -- and 

6 people are not going to like this when I say 

7 it, but this is a low dose facility. The work 

8 that they were performing is not a dirty type 

9 of operation. I think Pete has shared with 

10 the working group members the summary of 

11 external, this monitoring that was done. You 

12 can see that only about a third, or less than 

13 a third, of the workers were monitored because 

14 of the monitoring requirements at the time. 

15 And I hear we don’t have an electronic 

16 database that we can utilize to come up with 

17 the universe of dose records for this site. 

18 MR. GLECKLER: We can almost. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: We can almost? 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, it’s like in the site 

21 research database some of those records 

22 include all of the plant’s records -- 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: We must have something because 

24 we can come up with this from the annual 

25 reports. 
62

1 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, because one of the 

2 things we’ve come up with is unmonitored dose 

3 assignments for external doses and internal 

4 doses. And there’s quite a bit, it’s like a 

5 whole body dose which also includes tritium 

6 dose factored into it. That’s the most 

7 uniform dataset that they have, and we’ve got 

8 that for quite a few years, and that would 

9 develop -- 

10 MR. DARNELL: You have to realize that that 

11 unmonitored dose is based on the monitored 

12 workforce which is a very small subset of all 

13 the workers at Pinellas, and it’s biased very 

14 high. Of the workers that were monitored 

15 better than 95 percent of them received less 

16 than 100 millirem in a year. We had some 

17 cases where you got to 500 and some cases 

18 where you got up to a rem and a half. But 

19 most of them it would be very low. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Pete, you have to speak up. 

21 I’m having trouble hearing you. 

22 MR. DARNELL: I have a hearing loss so I 

23 don’t know how loud I talk. 

24 The other problem with a site like 

25 Pinellas is a lot of the operations were 
63

1 either on or off. You didn’t have a site 

2 population walking around getting exposed to 

3 an operation ongoing all the time. When they 

4 were doing the testing, the neutron generators 

5 were either operating or they were put away 

6 and not being worked on. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: So it’s campaign driven. 

8 MR. DARNELL: Yes, and you can see that in 

9 the dose records. It’s very spotty. You have 

10 a ten, 12 millirem exposure one month. A year 

11 and a half later you have your next exposure. 

12 And you’ll see that through a lot of the dose 

13 records that we have. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree with, you know, how do 

15 we come up with this is the question. 

16 DR. MAURO: In fact, I’m looking for help. 

17 In other words I think all of these sites 

18 require some degree of data adequacy and data 

19 completeness evaluation. And maybe every site 

20 you have to design something that works for 

21 that site. I’m not quite sure what that is 

22 here. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Every site is going to be 

24 different. We found out the differences from 

25 Rocky to Hanford to whatever. But I guess 
64

1 this is -- I agree with you, this is what 

2 we’ve kind of come to look into. Because if 

3 you looked at the claimants and some of the 

4 comments that were made to us in Florida and 

5 so forth like this, this was one of the 

6 questions that came up on this, and we need to 

7 make sure that we’ve addressed it. And I 

8 guess it’d fall down to SC&A and between NIOSH 

9 and SC&A -- 

10 (Whereupon, musical interruption played 

11 telephonically.) 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Excuse me. Telephone 

13 participants, please do not put us on hold. 

14 (Whereupon, music continued.) 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: And of course that person 

16 that’s on hold, can’t hear us. 

17 DR. BRANCHE: Right, I need to go and have 

18 the telephone operator cut that person on 

19 hold. 

20 (Music stopped.) 

21 DR. MAURO: Am I correct? What I heard is 

22 that perhaps NIOSH and SC&A could collaborate 

23 a little bit, come up with a plan that works 

24 for this that may make sense? Maybe nothing 

25 elaborate. 
65

1 MR. ELLIOTT: Brad’s absolutely right. We 

2 need to answer these folks’ concerns about 

3 this. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: And I understand what you’re 

5 saying about this site because this site is 

6 unique in its make up and how it was run and 

7 so forth. So this is why I believe between 

8 SC&A and NIOSH/ORAU that we need to come up 

9 with a way to be able to do this. And I guess 

10 this falls down to... 

11 DR. NETON: A lot of what we’re discussing 

12 here is covering this. I mean, finding number 

13 one, which is data adequacy, did we, were the 

14 workers who were exposed monitored properly 

15 based on a review of their procedures and 

16 their health physics plans and such. You 

17 drill down through all that and then 

18 eventually you get down to the bioassay 

19 records themselves. 

20 If you can say, well, the right 

21 workers were monitored, then are the data that 

22 you have accurate? You know, did the bioassay 

23 laboratory or program that took these samples, 

24 were they capable of measuring? We’ve 

25 experienced a lot of EML samples where we sort 
66

1 of decided that’s sort of the gold standard 

2 and AEC operations are in that time period. 

3 But was this in a laboratory they used, for 

4 example, like CEP that had some issues that we 

5 had to discount some of those samples? 

6 So I think that’s sort of drill down 

7 through it, I think it’s premature maybe until 

8 we dissect some of these other findings and 

9 figure out -- now if we can say that they 

10 didn’t monitor the right people or come to 

11 that conclusion, then there’s no sense to 

12 start drilling down any further. We don’t 

13 have sufficient data to begin with. 

14 MR. SCHOFIELD: I think the biggest concern 

15 here is not so much the external exposures as 

16 it is the question of the internal exposures 

17 and were they properly monitored -- 

18 DR. NETON: Exactly, and I think it’s been -

19 - 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: -- the procedures that were 

21 used for this, you know. 

22 DR. NETON: It’s been our position that 

23 internal exposures are fairly few and far 

24 between, if that, at this site because of the 

25 nature of the operations, and we need to do a 
67

1 better job, I think, explaining that. 

2 DR. MAURO: One other problem then that this 

3 is a site that’s very classified. We’re 

4 talking about one of the more sensitive sites. 

5 We’re going to do some of this diving. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: Hang up or what? 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Christine, we can hear you. 

8 DR. BRANCHE: Oh, sorry. Actually, I’d like 

9 to tell the people who are participating by 

10 phone to please not -- you can mute your line, 

11 but please don’t put us on hold. That only 

12 gives us music which interferes with 

13 everyone’s hearing. Thank you. 

14 MR. DARNELL: One of the issues Brad was 

15 talking about, worker concern over monitoring, 

16 we’ve had several mini-outreaches with the 

17 workers in Florida who were actually getting 

18 ready to go back to provide a more technical 

19 explanation, not only of how we do a dose 

20 reconstruction for them, but how they were 

21 monitored. 

22 There’s a very large misunderstanding 

23 with the workers down there. They feel that 

24 when they were working around the tritium 

25 process, they should have had a monitoring 
68

1 badge to measure external exposure. And their 

2 thought is we weren’t properly monitored 

3 because we didn’t wear a monitoring badge. 

4 Relying on the workforce for a heavy amount of 

5 concern is, you know, as always we should 

6 listen, but we should also understand their 

7 weaknesses in knowledge. 

8 And I’m not casting dispersions at the 

9 workforce. It’s just that I don’t believe 

10 that Pinellas itself did a good job explaining 

11 to the workers what the hazards were that they 

12 were working around. In all reality for this 

13 site the vast majority of the workers probably 

14 never came into contact with, and never really 

15 worked around the radioactive materials that 

16 were at the site. 

17 There was a lot of chemical exposure. 

18 There was a lot of other industrial hazards, 

19 but as far as actually working, putting your 

20 hands in and on the radioactive materials, it 

21 wasn’t done. A small workforce like Brian 

22 explained with the RTGs, a small workforce 

23 that worked with doing the testing in the 

24 neutron generators. However, with that 

25 workforce there were a lot of tours. That was 
69

1 the main thing that the site did, and even 

2 while testing was going on they gave tours. 

3 DR. MAURO: Let’s talk a little bit about 

4 the neutron generators. I guess that’s a 

5 Plutonium-238 problem? Is that what these, 

6 not neutron generators. I was thinking the 

7 radio. So we have basically -- am I correct? 

8 We have Plutonium-238 because of these 

9 thermoelectric generators that were produced 

10 here. And then we have the tritides and 

11 tritium problem associated with these neutron 

12 sources, these triggers. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Generators. 

14 DR. MAURO: And then I noticed from reading 

15 the site profile and the material that there 

16 are a few other places where, I guess, 

17 Plutonium-239 comes into the picture, which I 

18 don’t know why. But in other words we have a 

19 number of different isotopes, even Carbon-14 

20 was mentioned for some reason. 

21 MR. DARNELL: Used as research. There was 

22 research for a short period of time. But most 

23 of the plutonium was triple encapsulated, 

24 sealed sources. The Nickel-63 was sealed 

25 sources. 
70

1 DR. MAURO: Were these ceramic sources like 

2 they used for -- 

3 MR. DARNELL: No. 

4 DR. MAURO: -- these weren’t these little -- 

5 okay. 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Shards. 

7 MR. PRESLEY: Let’s don’t get into any of 

8 this, okay? 

9 DR. MAURO: Okay, okay. Yeah, I’m asking 

10 questions that as a novice I don’t know the 

11 answers. But I’m thinking about myself as 

12 trying to be responsive to concerns raised by 

13 concerned individuals that were they 

14 adequately monitored. Is the data complete? 

15 Can you build a -- I did hear that not 

16 everyone that was monitored -- there will be 

17 people where you’re going to have to assign 

18 some dose to because maybe they weren’t 

19 monitored but they should have been. I assume 

20 that was -- there are some workers where 

21 you’re going to assign some intake even though 

22 they weren’t monitored for, let’s say, 

23 tritium, or for Plutonium-238. 

24 MR. DARNELL: Actually, with a lot of the 

25 dose reconstructions we haven’t made that fine 
71

1 of a decision. Most of the time the workers 

2 are assigned an external dose and assigned the 

3 internal dose simply because they’re workers. 

4 Unless the dose reconstruction gets close to 

5 the 50 percent probability of causation, 

6 they’re really basically capers loading a 

7 bunch of dose on a worker. 

8 Anything to add to that? 

9 MR. GLECKLER: As far as how we deal with 

10 that is typically the vast majority of the 

11 cases like the work groups, we take a claimant 

12 favorable approach with them. And there is a 

13 large number of the workforce that was not 

14 monitored. And you can often tell from like 

15 their CATI, or the telephone interview 

16 information, that, yeah, they didn’t have 

17 anything to do with the radiological side of 

18 the house. 

19 But we typically still assign them 

claimant, we have a 95th 20 percentile unmonitored 

21 external dose assignment that we use. And I 

forget, but the 99th or 95th 22 percentile tritium 

23 dose that we assign. 

24 DR. MAURO: That’s where I’m headed. Once 

25 you move into the realm where you do have to 
72

1 build a coworker model, in effect, that’s what 

2 you’re doing. And once you move into that 

3 realm, that’s where the vulnerabilities lie. 

4 And that’s where questions regarding data 

5 adequacy is. 

6 In a paper like this. If you’re going 

7 to pick a worker, and you say, listen, here’s 

8 a person we want to assign a tritium intake to 

9 or a tritide intake or a plutonium intake. 

10 We’re going to draw upon a dataset that we do 

11 have data for and somehow use that to build a 

12 coworker model for that worker or for other 

13 workers. 

14 We continually run into the question 

15 is, is the dataset that you’re working from 

16 adequate, complete, sufficient to build a 

17 coworker model that you feel confident when 

18 assigned to that worker, it’s going to be 

19 claimant favorable. And the questions that 

20 always come up is, is the data set you’re 

21 working with, does it capture the full range 

22 of people that might have been exposed and 

23 that you did catch the upper end. That is, is 

24 it possible that there are some workers that 

25 had high exposures that are not in that 
73

1 population, and therefore, your coworker model 

2 has some weaknesses to it. 

3 Now, what’s very often asked of SC&A 

4 is, on behalf of the working group is, is 

5 there anything that you can do to go into the 

6 data -- and this could be asked of you folks 

7 or SC&A, and it’s really a reasonable 

8 question. How do we convince ourselves, how 

9 does the working group convince itself that 

10 the dataset that you’re working with is a 

dataset that when you pick off the upper 95th 11 

12 percentile, you have a high level of 

13 confidence that, and you assign that to 

14 someone else, the upper bound, that you feel 

15 confident that, yeah, it’s unlikely that he 

16 got that much. 

17 Because I think in the end that’s what 

18 the public wants to know. They want that 

19 trust. That’s what the Board wants to know. 

20 That’s the working group. And the question is 

21 in this instance, what is it that could be 

22 done by way of looking at the data that would 

23 help convince you, convince us, convince 

24 everyone that, yeah, that’s a reasonable thing 

25 to do. 
74

1 We’ve just been through this, for 

2 example, at Blockson. There’s a lot of 

3 discussion going on on did the distribution of 

4 the data, the sample, was it robust enough, 

5 complete enough. And time and time again we 

6 run into this. And sometimes it’s clear that 

7 the data agree and you can do it. And there’s 

8 sometimes where it’s not so clear. And I 

9 guess what I’m looking for from the working 

10 group and from everyone around the table is 

11 what is it that we could be doing to reinforce 

12 the coworker model that you guys are about to 

13 build or are building to deal with this 

14 question. 

15 MR. GLECKLER: We’ve been using this 

16 coworker based on unmonitored -- 

17 DR. NETON: We’re back to issue number one 

18 which addresses this, which is how do you know 

19 that the doses in the early health physics 

20 records capture the right population. If we 

21 go back and demonstrate that they had 

22 procedures in place -- again, the response to 

23 number four. They had procedures in place of 

24 who was sampled and why and when and 

25 documented that population was the most 
75

1 exposed, that goes a long way. That might not 

2 be the end of the -- 

3 DR. MAURO: The way we’ve been looking at it 

4 it’s one thing to have words, that is, go back 

5 to the protocols, the procedures that were 

6 used by the health physics group, we’re gonna 

7 do this, this and this. But really in the 

8 end, where the rubber meets the road, let’s go 

9 look at the data. And that’s what I think 

10 Brad’s talking about. 

11 Let’s go look at the data. Does it 

12 appear that they did -- is the data there for 

13 the people at the high end jobs. And way we 

14 usually do this we look at the data that we do 

15 have for workers, and we also look at where is 

16 it they worked, what they did, maybe there’s 

17 some air sampling data, maybe there’s some 

18 process knowledge. 

19 And the weight of the evidence starts 

20 to build, yes, it looks like the workers that 

21 were bioassayed were, in fact, the workers 

22 that had the highest exposures as opposed to 

23 the words that are said in some plan. 

24 DR. NETON: It’s a start. 

25 MR. DARNELL: From the monitoring data that 
76

1 we have, we’ve got in basically a couple of 

2 different sections. ‘Eighty-three to ’93 

3 shows the highest worker exposure ever. 

4 Annual exposure was about 550 millirem. From 

5 ’57 to -- 

6 DR. MAURO: Is it external? 

7 MR. DARNELL: External. Well, actually, 

8 total, that’s whole body. 

9 DR. MAURO: Does that include tritium? Did 

10 they do the tritium with it? 

11 MR. GLECKLER: And usually they get one or 

12 the other. It’s like they usually don’t get 

13 both. It’s like if they have a tritium dose, 

14 they usually don’t have an external dose and 

15 vice versa. 

16 MR. DARNELL: From ’57 to ’79 the highest 

17 was around 500 millirem. But out of those 

18 monitored workers, 95 percent of them had less 

19 than 100. And what we’ve done is use the 100 

as the 95th 20 percentile. There was only two 

21 years where 95 percent or more received less 

22 than 100. That was in 1958 and 1960, and 

23 respectively was 80 percent and 84 percent. 

24 DR. MAURO: We’ve run into, and what we’ve 

25 seen is that very often when you have a nice 
77

1 big dataset, you find out there are thousands 

2 of workers that have zeros, and then one 

3 percent, five percent have detectable levels. 

4 And so therefore, if you start to talk about 

5 the 95 percentile value, and you leave all the 

6 zeros in, you’re sort of, the median, the 

7 median is always zero. 

8 In other words so if you’re going to 

9 say I’m going to go with the median, it’s 

10 always zero because the vast majority of 

11 people have zero dose or less than a 

12 detectable level. So we’re always struggling 

13 with well what do you do when you build a 

14 coworker model. 

15 MR. DARNELL: Well, that’s what we did here. 

16 We biased it high and at -- 

17 DR. MAURO: Only those with a positive. 

18 MR. DARNELL: Only with a positive dose, 

used the 95th 19 percentile at 100, and that’s 

20 what gets assigned. 

21 MR. GLECKLER: And that’s the only 

22 assignment so that goes for compensable and 

23 non-compensable cases. So we don’t have, we 

don’t use a 50th 24 percentile-type dose. 

25 DR. MAURO: That’s the external. 
78

1 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, for the external. 

2 DR. MAURO: So the fundamental theme is you, 

3 of all the worker right now, the worker regs 

4 right now this is by year or did you roll up 

5 all years? 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Well, the 100 millirem is 

7 based on our valuation of virtually all years. 

8 There’s a couple years that are, there’s holes 

9 in those data slots. We weren’t able to -- 

10 DR. MAURO: So you pooled everything from in 

11 the ‘50s right out to -- 

12 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, we got stuff starting 

13 in ’58 up through ’95. 

14 DR. MAURO: And out of that some subset had 

15 positive readings, I guess is a... 

16 MR. GLECKLER: Well, basically the approach 

17 that we took with, it kind of the way it 

18 evolved just like, it sort of evolved versus 

19 the normal dose for coworker study-type 

20 approach that we take to where it kind of 

21 progressed to like a dose, an unmonitored dose 

22 assignment of 500 and 550. We’re using two 

23 different values at one point in time. It’s 

24 like which represented one of the highest 

25 annual doses that you would see for any given, 
79

1 more of a 99 percentile-type dose. And we 

2 needed to ratchet that down because it was way 

3 too claimant favorable. It allowed us to 

4 process a large number of cases, but then we 

5 had a large number of cases, well, that would 

6 put him over, close to the 50 percent range or 

7 even over the percent -- 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s unreasonable. 

9 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, and we can’t use such a 

10 claimant favorable approach on that type of a 

11 case. 

12 DR. MAURO: Would the rationale for that not 

13 be -- in other words what you’re saying so you 

14 have a subset of workers that do have positive 

readings. You pluck off the upper 95th 15 

16 percentile from that pooled data, and you get 

17 doses on the order of 500 millirem a year. 

18 MR. GLECKLER: The 100 millirem -- 

MR. DARNELL: The upper 99th 19 percentile. 

DR. MAURO: Okay, the upper 99th 20 percentile 

21 you come up, and then to say that anyone who 

22 wasn’t monitored got -- I guess who wasn’t 

23 monitored, not the zeros. The zeros use one24 half the MDL for the change out period. But 

25 for the people who weren’t monitored you’re 
80

1 saying that -- and I understand this -- to 

2 assign that dose to people who weren’t even 

3 badged seemed to be somewhat absurd, 

4 especially since the reason they weren’t 

5 badged is because you didn’t expect them to 

6 have any dose. 

7 MR. DARNELL: Yeah, through a lot of the 

8 history at Pinellas, they assigned external 

9 dosimetry based on whether or not you were 

10 going to hit ten percent of the limit of the 

11 day. 

12 DR. MAURO: And I tell you, the argument 

13 that you just made together with the answer to 

14 question number four, you know, it’s a pretty 

15 solid argument. 

16 MR. DARNELL: This is in the TBD, the 

17 summarized data and assigning the 100 millirem 

as the 95th 18 percentile. I forget which section 

19 exactly. 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: I have just one quick 

21 question going back to action number three. 

22 And my understanding was that they actually 

23 were manufacturing the RTGs there. 

24 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. 

25 MR. SCHOFIELD: That would make a difference 
81

1 for internal dose. 

2 MR. GLECKLER: Not necessarily. The sources 

3 were triple encapsulated. They weren’t put in 

4 the -- 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: ^. 

6 MR. GLECKLER: -- they received the sources 

7 as a triple encapsulated source. 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Oh, they received them as 

9 already encapsulated? 

10 MR. GLECKLER: Yes. 

11 MR. DARNELL: Most of your plutonium 

12 exposure there would be to contaminants on the 

13 outside of the source itself. 

14 MR. SCHOFIELD: That makes -- 

15 MR. GLECKLER: That would be their only 

16 sources. 

17 MR. DARNELL: I think the limit upon receipt 

18 was a 200 dpm limit or it had to be sent back. 

19 Nothing ever had to be sent back. And I don’t 

20 remember seeing data more than at the most 20 

21 dpm contamination. 

22 MR. GLECKLER: And then only that would be 

23 discovered upon the receipt inspection that 

24 they would perform. That was under hood 

25 conditions, and the sources were deconned at 
82

1 that point while in a hood. So it’s like 

2 exposure potentials were going to be next to 

3 nil. It’s like it should be nothing after 

4 that step in the process, after they’re 

5 deconned. 

6 MR. DARNELL: The internal exposure. 

7 MR. GLECKLER: Correct, yeah, the internal. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: You know, something came up. 

9 Bob brought up something a little earlier. 

10 How much of this stuff’s classified? 

11 MR. DARNELL: Nothing that I’ve said is 

12 classified. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I know you haven’t, but 

14 with DOE’s little comment that come out, were 

15 they dealing with classified information and 

16 the process there that we need to be aware of 

17 because we’ve talked of some other articles 

18 and so forth that I know were classified at 

19 other facilities, and I just want to make sure 

20 that -- 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: The activities at Pinellas had 

22 some sensitivity about them, and we can’t go 

23 into great detail here in any regards -- 

24 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, they did have some 

25 sensitivity and let’s stop it right there. 
83

1 MR. CLAWSON: Well, yeah, but, Bob, we also 

2 need to know what -- 

3 MR. SCHOFIELD: We don’t want to cross that 

4 line, Bob. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: We don’t want to cross that 

6 line. If we don’t know where the line’s at, 

7 we’re not going to know if it went across it 

8 or not. So I guess that’s one of the 

9 questions that I have. And are we going to 

10 have any issues with some of this 

11 documentation being classified? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I don’t believe that 

13 we’ve used any documentation that is Q 

14 restricted information or data. 

15 MR. DARNELL: We actually haven’t seen any -

16 - 

17 MR. CLAWSON: That’s why I was questioning. 

18 Because I haven’t seen anything and in 

19 reviewing the site profile and so forth like 

20 that there were some, I never got a clear 

21 feeling of that, of what was, I didn’t get any 

22 feeling that there was any classification 

23 issue. But I want to make sure that I’m right 

24 on that. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the only way that I feel 
84

1 that the working group or the Board members 

2 can be assured that our site profile is a 

3 sufficiently accurate approach to dose 

4 reconstruction in this regard would be you 

5 would have to send your Q cleared members 

6 along with maybe SC&A’s Q cleared staff and 

7 our Q cleared staff to go look at those items 

8 and satisfy yourselves that there’s nothing 

9 there that would influence the ability to 

10 reconstruct dose with sufficient accuracy 

11 here. That’s the only thing, the only step 

12 you can take. 

13 MR. DARNELL: The other thing you need to 

14 remember though is that the radiation 

15 producing activities at the site weren’t part 

16 of the stuff that’s classified. And the X-ray 

17 machines, the tritium wasn’t part of the 

18 classified process. 

19 MR. SCHOFIELD: Why don’t we take a short 

20 break here so we can discuss this stuff off 

21 whether or not -- 

22 MR. PRESLEY: We can’t do that -- 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: Can’t do that. 

24 MR. PRESLEY: We need to take a short break. 

25 MR. SCHOFIELD: Take a short comfort break 
85

1 here then. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: But I think Pete’s last 

3 statement is very critical for the record. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: And that’s what I was not 

5 understanding because when I reviewed the site 

6 profile and so forth like that, I didn’t see 

7 any classification issues. But then we 

8 started talking something and Bob deals with 

9 this quite a bit, and I wanted to just make 

10 sure that we don’t step over a line that we 

11 don’t know is there. And that’s all I wanted 

12 to make sure. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Well, most of what I learned 

14 about RTGs I got off the internet because I 

15 didn’t know a lot about it until I looked at 

16 the site. If it’s classified, then the 

17 internet’s got some stuff -- 

18 MR. GLECKLER: The same is true for neutron 

19 generators. You can actually buy them 

20 nowadays. Maybe not as small as the units 

21 that they had for the weapons, but definitely 

22 tabletop size, desktop size. 

23 DR. MAURO: Using metal tritides? 

24 MR. GLECKLER: They would have to use a 

25 similar method. The metal tritides were only 
86

1 the storage mechanism for the tritium, to hold 

2 and bind the tritium inside the glass vacuum 

3 tubes. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: I think we’ve gone far enough 

5 on this. But I mean, if there’s a need to be 

6 satisfied, the working group would have to 

7 send their Q cleared folks. We don’t need to 

8 go any further. 

9 DR. BRANCHE: Mr. Schofield has asked for a 

10 ten-minute break. We’re going to mute the 

11 line until 10:41 when we reconvene. 

12 (Whereupon, the working group meeting took a 

13 break from 10:31 a.m. until 10:45 a.m.) 

14 DR. BRANCHE: This is Dr. Christine Branche. 

15 We are restarting the Pinellas working group 

16 meeting. If someone who’s participating by 

17 phone can please let me know that you can hear 

18 me, I would appreciate it. 

19 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): I can 

20 hear you. 

21 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

22 I’m going to ask one more time that 

23 everyone participating by phone, mute your 

24 line. If you do not have a mute button, then 

25 please use star six. A new piece of 
87

1 experience here encourages me to say the 

2 following: please don’t put us on hold. If 

3 you need to get off the line, then do so. But 

4 putting us on hold subjects all listeners by 

5 phone to whatever music or beeps or whatever 

6 is going on with your hold system. So please 

7 don’t put us on hold. Remember, you are part 

8 of a community of people participating in this 

9 meeting by phone. Thank you so much. 

10 Mr. Schofield. 

11 MR. SCHOFIELD: I guess we’re going to start 

12 in here. Does anybody else have any comments 

13 on issue number four? 

14 DR. MAURO: Three. 

15 MR. SCHOFIELD: Three. I can’t count that 

16 high. So we’re going to be trying to complete 

17 issue number three here. 

18 DR. BRANCHE: And what issues do you think 

19 are outstanding? 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: I think we’ve got -- does 

21 anybody else have anything left on three? 

22 DR. MAURO: The only residue that I think it 

23 might be a good idea to close up now so we can 

24 move on to four is the question that Brad 

25 raised, namely data validation for the purpose 
88

1 of building coworker models. And I think 

2 Jim’s suggestion is the logical sequence. 

3 Namely, let’s first do one. Let’s go back, 

4 check out the other sources of data, make sure 

5 that we’re as complete as possible in having a 

6 dataset. Because in the end, the way I see 

7 it, and now I’ve just been informed that there 

8 is an SEC petition pending or undergoing 

9 review -- 

10 MR. DARNELL: It’s made it through -- 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s qualified. 

12 DR. MAURO: It’s qualified, okay. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Didn’t it qualify? 

14 MR. DARNELL: They just sent back the letter 

15 of clarification. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, okay. So it’s going 

17 through consultation. 

18 MR. DARNELL: It’s going through 

19 consultation. Thank you. 

20 DR. MAURO: And I would say that as we’ve 

21 seen before, the completeness and adequacy and 

22 reliability of the dataset, notwithstanding 

23 the good intentions of the plans and the 

24 programs, the dataset itself, if you have a 

25 certain number of claimants, and as you have 
89

1 pointed out, only a small fraction may have 

2 been bioassayed for various isotopes, and then 

3 the question becomes building a coworker 

4 model. 

5 So where I’m going with this is I 

6 think that first step in just making sure we 

7 have all the data we can get our hands on is 

8 important. And I think NIOSH agreed to check 

9 that out to see what they can do. 

10 MR. DARNELL: We’re going to evaluate the 

11 need to go back -- 

12 MR. PRESLEY: May I ask a question? Has 

13 anybody, do we have any type of data that said 

14 where these people, where they worked or what 

15 areas they worked in or anything during the 

16 timeframe to go along with the dose data? 

17 MR. DARNELL: Yes, we know what buildings 

18 the different processes -- 

19 MR. PRESLEY: I didn’t catch that if y’all 

20 talked about it a minute ago. 

21 MR. DARNELL: I don’t know if it ever came 

22 up, but -- 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: Is there more than one 

24 building? 

25 MR. DARNELL: Yes. There’s quite a number 
90

1 of buildings but the radioactive processes 

2 were pretty much in set places. I just don’t 

3 remember the building numbers off the top of 

4 my head. 

5 DR. MAURO: To complete my thought then, 

6 that once that question one exploratory work 

7 is done then I think then the question 

8 becomes, okay, what is it that would make 

9 sense to look at the dataset that you’re 

10 working with from the perspective of its 

11 adequacy and its completeness to build a 

12 coworker model? Something that I think is 

13 going to be essential to not only the site 

14 profile but eventually this SEC petition. 

15 Now, it turns out what I’m hearing is 

16 that may very well have to be a discussion 

17 that’s held amongst people who can hold that 

18 discussion. That is, it’s not going to be an 

19 open discussion because you’re going to be 

20 talking about work, job responsibilities, 

21 locations at the site, exposure settings. I 

22 don’t know the degree to which that could be 

23 discussed by people without clearance, and I 

24 guess I look for guidance. 

25 Robert, when we get to that step in 
91

1 the process where we have people looking at 

2 the job responsibilities, the buildings, what 

3 was going on, who was monitored, who wasn’t 

4 monitored, is that something that really can’t 

5 be done by us without Q clearance? 

6 MR. PRESLEY: Somebody’s going to have to 

7 look at that prior to, you’re going to have to 

8 ask for the documents and have somebody look 

9 at the documents and see whether we can do 

10 that or whether the documents can be let out 

11 to this group. That’s something that I cannot 

12 say one way or the other because I’m not that 

13 familiar with what they have in those 

14 documents. So they have people at their site 

15 that can look at that stuff and say, okay, 

16 this can be let out or it can’t be let out. 

17 And if it can’t be let out, then we’ll have to 

18 go look at it. 

19 DR. MAURO: We have two individuals that 

20 visited the site for the interviews as part of 

21 our report, both of whom have Q clearances. 

22 My guess is at the appropriate time they will 

23 be brought into the picture to talk to your 

24 folks that have the Q clearances and decide 

25 what do we do next once you finish step one. 
92

1 Does that seem to be a reasonable thing to do? 

2 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, we need to because 

3 especially in light of over the last couple of 

4 weeks what’s come down with DOE and so forth 

5 like that. It’s hard for us not to know if 

6 we’re crossing a line if we don’t know there’s 

7 a line there. 

8 MR. DARNELL: I’m sorry. You’re Bob. What 

9 do you do? You’re talking a lot about 

10 security classifications, and I apologize for 

11 my ignorance, but -- 

12 MR. PRESLEY: I’m Security Representative 

13 for the Advisory Board. Also, I sit on this 

14 Board. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: He’s a Board member who has 

16 ADS classification. 

17 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

18 MR. DARNELL: I’m not asking to question 

19 you. I just, curiosity just -- 

20 MR. PRESLEY: No, no, no problem. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: If you, you’ve got your 

22 clearance. 

23 MR. DARNELL: No, I don’t have a clearance. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: You don’t have a clearance. 

25 Well, we have to send somebody from OCAS with 
93

1 a clearance, somebody from SC&A with a 

2 clearance. If the Board wanted to have a 

3 cleared person, they could have one of their 

4 cleared people go and look at the documents 

5 and make a decision, is there something there 

6 that we need. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Christine, with the e-mails 

8 that were sent around last week and so forth, 

9 this is a prime example to be able to ^. So 

10 just in light of that I think this is a 

11 serious issue, and we need to take it 

12 seriously. But we also need to find out where 

13 the line’s at. 

14 DR. MAURO: Would you want to move on to 

15 four at this point? 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: Ready to move on to four. 

17 ISSUE 4: PERSONNEL DOSIMETRY POLICY

18 DR. MAURO: Four is really further 

19 discussion regarding personnel dosimetry 

20 policy. In other words I guess when we 

21 reviewed the site profile, some questions came 

22 up with what was the policy that was in place 

23 in determining who would be badged and who 

24 wouldn’t be badged. 

25 In response to that question for issue 
94

1 number four NIOSH provided a very nice 

2 response that’s in front of me right now that 

3 describes, going back, I guess, to the 1966 

4 report and 1971 report prepared by GE, and 

5 ’79, ’84. So there’s a whole series of 

6 documents. I’m not quite sure whether this 

7 was in the site profile or not, but it answers 

8 our question. So as far as we’re concerned, 

9 you have now put in place on the record a 

10 response to this question that is acceptable 

11 to SC&A. 

12 Chick, is that -- 

13 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): John, this is 

14 Chick. I would just amend to say that the 

15 site profile needs to reflect this 

16 information. 

17 DR. MAURO: Okay, so this was not in the 

18 site profile. This is new material. 

19 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Not all of it. 

20 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we’ll take that as a 

22 suggestion. 

23 DR. MAURO: Fair enough. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we have people looking 

25 to see if we modify the site profile in that 
95

1 regard. 

2 ISSUE 5: PROBLEMS WITH PERSONNEL DOSIMETRY

3 DR. MAURO: I’m going to move on to five. 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, I think that issue’s 

5 pretty well covered there. 

6 DR. MAURO: Five is very much related to 

7 four, and basically the response, the 

8 questions that we raised again refers to this 

9 external dosimetry issues and the historical 

10 protocols that were followed, and in effect, 

11 refers the reader back to the response to 

12 question number four. And SC&A agrees with 

13 your response so we feel that this issue has 

14 been resolved. 

15 Again, Chick, any more you would like 

16 to add to that? 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Again, it just 

18 needs to be reflected in the site profile. 

19 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

20 Six? 

21 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay. 

22 ISSUE 6: D&D ERA

23 DR. MAURO: Six has to do with the D&D era. 

24 It is my understanding that the site profile 

25 does not address the D&D era very much, and we 
96

1 raised a question. We said will NIOSH address 

2 the D&D operations in subsequent revisions to 

3 the TBDs. And the answer that NIOSH responded 

4 in their written response was, yes. And as 

5 long as that’s the situation that you would 

6 cover that stage, apparently, the current 

7 version doesn’t address D&D? 

8 MR. DARNELL: No, it does not. 

9 DR. MAURO: No, okay. So that’s where we 

10 are. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Do we know that the D&D was, 

12 well, it’s a recent D&D so it was performed, I 

13 suspect, with proper monitoring practices and 

14 procedures. 

15 MR. DARNELL: It’s post-10-CFR-835 so they 

16 were under that rule. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Have we seen a claimant come 

18 into our hands that required dose 

19 reconstruction during the D&D period? 

20 MR. DARNELL: Not that I know of off the top 

21 of my head. 

22 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, because there’s a 

23 number of them that have just gone to that 

24 employment period. I don’t know if any 

25 specifically identified themselves as being 
97

1 involved with D&D operations. There’s a 

2 number that indicate that they were involved 

3 with plant shutdown that may or may not have 

4 to do with the D&D operations. 

5 MR. GIBSON: I think we also have to be 

6 careful that just because they were under 10-

7 CFR-835 rules, it doesn’t mean that they 

8 followed them. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

10 MR. GIBSON: I mean, DOE’s enforcement was 

11 somewhat lacking in that. 

12 (Whereupon, multiple speakers spoke 

13 simultaneously.) 

14 ISSUE 7: MISSING INTERNAL DOSE ESTIMATION METHODS FOR 

15 UNMONITORED WORKERS

16 DR. MAURO: I’m going to move on to seven if 

17 that’s okay. I’m going to introduce it and 

18 then ask perhaps Chick to expand a little bit. 

19 In effect we found that, yes, a 

20 worker, there was a program for monitoring 

21 tritium and plutonium, and currently as 

22 mentioned earlier we did come across some 

23 language in the site profile and in some of 

24 our work where there were other radionuclides. 

25 We particularly mention two, Nickel-63 and 
98

1 Carbon-14 as being other radionuclides that 

2 might be of concern. And I guess our question 

3 was will there be additional, is there a need 

4 for the as you see or/and will there be 

5 additional guidance provided of how to deal 

6 with internal exposures to those 

7 radionuclides. 

8 MR. DARNELL: Actually, for Nickel-63 I 

9 don’t think there’s going to be a need for 

10 guidance on internal dose. Again, these were 

11 sealed sources mainly dealing with equipment 

12 that was being used. So this was a sealed 

13 source inside of a piece of equipment. So 

14 unless you had a worker that dug into the 

15 equipment, which isn’t part of the protocol, 

16 there shouldn’t be anything for internal 

17 exposure for Nickel-63. 

18 Carbon-14 was used there as during 

19 some research. There shouldn’t have been any 

20 internal concern for Carbon-14 because all the 

21 work was done within the hood system. That’s 

22 pretty much the level I know about Carbon. 

23 MR. GLECKLER: I’ve encountered even less 

24 information on it. 

25 MR. DARNELL: Carbon-14 is a very low 
99

1 exposure hazard. It’s on the level of tritium 

2 as far as external dose. And internal doses, 

3 you know, your body’s made up of carbon, and 

4 it changes it over quickly. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: But you also said you don’t 

6 believe or understand that there was an 

7 internal dose issue with Carbon-14 as well. 

8 MR. DARNELL: Not in anything, the effluent 

9 releases on these are, they’re extremely 

10 small. 

11 DR. MAURO: Is that described in the site 

12 profile? 

13 MR. GLECKLER: In the environmental -- 

14 DR. MAURO: In the environmental section, 

15 oh, about the effluents but not part of the -- 

16 by the way, I hear your arguments, and they 

17 certainly make sense to me. I know Carbon-14 

18 is not a big issue especially if they’re 

19 dealing with it in extremely small quantities. 

20 It’s probably a good idea to document that to 

21 put it to bed if that’s the case. 

22 Chick, is there any information you 

23 have related to these two isotopes and perhaps 

24 other isotopes that where a little bit more is 

25 needed? 
100

1 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, I believe 

2 what you just said. It just needs to be 

3 expanded upon in the site profile. It 

4 mentions that these are radionuclides, but it 

5 doesn’t go into enough detail like you just 

6 mentioned to eliminate the concern about them. 

7 MR. DARNELL: Well, we’ll certainly evaluate 

8 the profile to see what can or should be put 

9 in there. 

10 DR. MAURO: As a policy or process -- not 

11 policy. Process is a softer word. Very often 

12 at work group meetings like this an answer to 

13 one of our questions comes up and sounds 

14 reasonable. And the question is is it 

15 necessary for the site profile to be revised 

16 to reflect this or does the very record of 

17 this discussion that we’re having constitute 

18 sufficient documentation that this issue has 

19 been resolved. This is really something, I 

20 guess, that goes toward the working group and 

21 the Board as to what they’d like to see. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: I want to see a little more 

23 on this just because of the fact that some of 

24 the workers could potentially have been 

25 exposed because we all know hoods aren’t fail 
101

1 safe. 

2 MR. DARNELL: That’s definitely true. So 

3 we’re only talking the Carbon-14, not the 

4 Nickel-63? 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Right. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: I think we -- to answer your 

7 question, John, I won’t speak on behalf of the 

8 working group or Board members. But from 

9 NIOSH’s perspective there’s the site profile 

10 needs to be revised to address what happens or 

11 what is discussed, what’s resolved in this 

12 working group session. 

13 The reason for that is the dose 

14 reconstructors typically are not going to look 

15 and read the transcript of today’s session to 

16 learn, and they don’t take their guidance from 

17 this. They take their guidance from 

18 NIOSH/OCAS and the document that is used in 

19 the process which is the site profile. 

20 DR. BRANCHE: So you will amend it? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we’ll look, we’re going 

22 to look at all of these issues and make the 

23 modifications that are appropriate to provide 

24 the right guidance. 

25 ISSUE 8: POTENTIAL FOR MISSED DOSE FOR DEPLETED URANIUM
102

1 DR. MAURO: Move on to number eight. 

2 Chick, I’m going to need a little help 

3 with eight. It sounds like that this has to 

4 do with depleted uranium and the results of 

5 some interviews that there was some potential 

6 for exposure to depleted uranium. Could you 

7 tell us a little bit more about this and as 

8 described on this summary page? 

9 (no response) 

10 DR. MAURO: It sounds like Chick didn’t hear 

11 me. 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Chick, are you there? Or if 

13 you’re there, potentially you’re muted. 

14 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I’m sorry. 

15 I’m muted. 

16 We felt like that the site profile was 

17 deficient relative to the potential for 

18 exposure to depleted uranium. And there was 

19 some information, and it was discussed in the 

20 matrix here that one worker had mentioned the 

21 milling or grinding of depleted uranium. And 

22 I think that’s discussed in this issue. But 

23 if indeed depleted uranium is not to be 

24 considered, then that discussion should take 

25 place and justify it in the site profile. 
103

1 MR. DARNELL: We’ll certainly evaluate that. 

2 We do know of several incidents that happened 

3 with uranium beds. As far as milling or one, 

4 several reports on it. As far as milling, 

5 grinding, working with the DU, there was no 

6 process for that that we’re aware of at the 

7 Pinellas site, none whatsoever. The 

8 radioactive materials that got to Pinellas 

9 with the exception of the tritium were sealed 

10 sources. There would be no reason for them to 

11 break into a depleted uranium bed to grind on 

12 them. 

13 DR. MAURO: It was a depleted uranium -- is 

14 that a storage device for tritium? 

15 MR. GLECKLER: Yes. It’s another metal 

16 tritide type situation, contained. It’s how 

17 they store large quantities. 

18 DR. MAURO: And you describe some incident 

19 that might have occurred where there might 

20 have been some exposure, internal exposure. 

21 MR. GLECKLER: I believe, was it ’75? There 

22 was a valve that leaked. I’m not, they go 

23 into it in pretty good detail, but they took 

24 steps to fix that so it never happened again. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Any incident report? Based on 
104

1 an incident report? 

2 MR. DARNELL: Yes. It happened over a 

3 three-week period from an improper valve 

4 closure. Basically, uranium oxide and uranium 

5 nitrides were formed in the DU bed. And 

6 there’s documentation discussing how they 

7 were, prevented this occurrence from happening 

8 again. It’s documented that it’s the first 

incident that occurred on January 31st 9 , ’75, 

10 and it talks about how it was corrected and 

11 prevented. 

12 DR. MAURO: So if a person were in the 

13 vicinity of this particular incident, they 

14 would be exposed to tritiated water vapor and 

15 depleted uranium as aerosol? 

16 MR. DARNELL: No, the incident actually 

17 happened inside the bed, so I’d have to do a 

18 little bit more research, but it does not look 

19 like there was an exposure outside of the bed 

20 that occurred from this except for during the 

21 preventative maintenance, and the preventative 

22 steps that they took, and the repairs that 

23 they took. 

24 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): You’re saying 

25 that the beds were received from offsite in 
105

1 the form that they were used? 

2 MR. DARNELL: I’ll have to get back to you 

3 on that. I did not go into researching that, 

4 unless Brian knows. 

5 MR. GLECKLER: I’m trying to remember if 

6 they shipped the beds as the container for 

7 shipping the tritium or if they transferred 

8 them into the beds. But I know those beds 

9 were used as the basically the tritium storage 

10 tanks so to speak where all they would do is 

11 heat the bed, I guess, just like to drive off 

12 the tritium and into the manifold. And I 

13 can’t remember if they actually shipped it 

14 using the beds. 

15 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): My 

16 understanding is from what, from my review of 

17 the literature that they received the depleted 

18 uranium, but they prepared the beds there. So 

19 I think that needs to be addressed. You know, 

20 what did they do with that material once they 

21 received it to get it into the final form for 

22 the beds that were used in the tritium 

23 process. 

24 MR. DARNELL: Most application of DU beds, 

25 the preparation of the beds for use has to do 
106

1 with a heating cycle and a cooling cycle plus 

2 some other preparations of material already 

3 inside their containers. I have never read 

4 anything where the DU was shipped and then the 

5 DU put into the container for one of these 

6 storage beds. Like I said, I’m going to have 

7 to get back to you with more for the specifics 

8 of Pinellas, but what you’re describing 

9 doesn’t sound right in my experience. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: Let us look into -- 

11 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I don’t have 

12 the reference now, but I believe there are a 

13 couple of places where it would lead you to 

14 that conclusion. But we can talk about that, 

15 but I think for today, I think that needs some 

16 research on your part and maybe a little more 

17 on my part, too. 

18 MR. DARNELL: Yeah, you have to remember 

19 that Pinellas was a user not a builder of that 

20 type of stuff. So they would have received 

21 the final product not built the product to use 

22 at their site. But we do need to research it 

23 a bit more and get back to you on this. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: Chick, this is Larry Elliott. 

25 If you have any references that we don’t have, 
107

1 we would appreciate you sharing those. 

2 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I believe that 

3 what I got was from the O drive. I’ve been 

4 searching for it, but I can’t find it right 

5 now, but I’ll certainly share it with you when 

6 I do. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, sir. 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: How often was the machining 

9 done on these 50-gram loadings on these tubes? 

10 It talks about right here in your response it 

11 talks about the machinist. It goes on and 

12 says they were placed in their pockets and 

13 transferred. 

14 MR. GLECKLER: Now, I think that’s coming 

15 from one claimant in particular, I think, that 

16 got brought up, I think the claimant might 

17 have attended the worker outreach meeting on 

18 that. 

19 MR. DARNELL: What we’re talking about here 

20 is basically a stainless steel pipe filled 

21 with the DU. It had a centered filter to keep 

22 the DU inside. I don’t know, I haven’t spoken 

23 to this claimant, so I haven’t heard this 

24 story from, directly, but that doesn’t sound 

25 like something that Pinellas should have to do 
108

1 for the course of the work they were doing. 

2 Obviously, it could have been something 

3 special that went on, just not aware of it. 

4 Like I said, we need to research it. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: I know they had the 

6 facilities were low moisture controlled, a lot 

7 of those. And the drive trains, they used 

8 depleted uranium. Is there any documentation 

9 to that effect? 

10 MR. GLECKLER: I haven’t encountered 

11 anything on that. They did have uranium dope 

12 glass, and that’s one of the things that I 

13 think we need to watch out for on this 

14 discussion is that one instance where an 

15 individual’s talking about carrying it in 

16 their pocket, they mentioned glass pieces is 

17 like which I wonder if it might not be 

18 essentially glass beads, like bulk glass that 

19 would have depleted uranium in it versus 

20 anything to do with the uranium beds, tritium 

21 storage beds. That would make a big 

22 difference. 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: It seems like we’ve got more 

24 work to do here on number eight. 

25 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, so this one’s open 
109

1 yet. 

2 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

3 MR. SCHOFIELD: And showing research, I 

4 guess. 

5 ISSUES 9,10,11: OCCUPATIONAL MEDICAL EXPOSURES

6 DR. MAURO: We’re up to, I’m going to roll 

7 nine, ten and 11 together because it has to do 

8 with occupational medical exposures, the three 

9 of them. And they’re all really related. I’m 

10 going to try my best to communicate my 

11 understanding of the issues. 

12 And, Chick, if you would want to 

13 embellish on it at all, that would be great. 

14 When I reviewed this, this is a 

15 recurring question that perhaps has been put 

16 to bed. I’m not sure. When occupational 

17 medical exposures are being done, I noticed 

18 that when I reviewed a lot of the cases, we 

19 always use the generic approach developed by 

20 Ron Kathren. Originally, it was OTIB-0006, I 

21 believe, and now there’s an update of that 

22 which is not that much different. 

23 And we did a detailed review of it, 

24 and by and large the bottom line is that the 

25 numbers selected there we found favorable, 
110

1 claimant favorable. So what we usually look 

2 for when we’re looking at a site profile is 

3 are you adopting the Ron Kathren protocol in 

4 the OTIB. And my understanding is that the 

5 election was not necessarily to use that but 

6 to use some site-specific information related 

7 to the workers themselves, where you actually 

8 have worker records, medical records of when 

9 he was X-rayed, if he was X-rayed, et cetera, 

10 et cetera, which makes it less claimant 

11 favorable and specific for the claimant, I 

12 guess, which I was surprised to see. Because 

13 usually what I’ve seen is always gone toward 

14 this default. And it’s before 1970 when the 

15 worker worked there, you would default to the 

16 fluoroscopic examination, which is not a small 

17 exposure usually to, I guess, the chest area 

18 only like three rem per shot. 

19 MR. GLECKLER: Before 1960 I think. 

20 DR. MAURO: The guidance said anything 

21 before ’70 you assume annual fluoroscopic. 

22 MR. DARNELL: We have a program evaluation 

23 report on that. It’s much earlier than ‘70s. 

24 DR. MAURO: Okay, so that may be being 

25 revised then. 
111

1 MR. DARNELL: I think it is like through the 

2 ‘60s. 

3 MR. GLECKLER: I’m pretty sure the TBD 

4 reflects that. 

5 MR. DARNELL: Through 1960, not the ‘60s. 

6 DR. MAURO: So you can see when we do our 

7 audits of the DRs for the cases and that, one 

8 of the things we always do, we see it all the 

9 time is wait a minute, where’s the 

10 fluoroscopic examinations. You only gave him 

11 the ten millirem from the each X-ray to the 

12 chest and whatever -- it goes to the other 

13 organs -- as opposed to the three rem that you 

14 get from the fluoroscopic. 

15 And so again I’m looking at this, and 

16 I said it looks like that they’re doing 

17 something different here. And that’s one side 

18 of the recurring issues that we’ve raised 

19 related to this matter. And the other side 

20 has to do with things that -- the fellow that 

21 reviews these things for us, he’s sort of an 

22 expert in this area of medical X-rays. 

23 And there’s something he keeps 

24 referring to as retakes. That is, when a 

25 person goes for an X-ray, they get multiple 
112

1 shots often. It’s not unusual. And that the 

2 one X-ray per year, which is part of the 

3 medical surveillance program, may not do 

4 justice to the fact that there are other X5 rays that he may have been subject to during 

6 the year and that might need to be taken into 

7 consideration. He gives a long list of 

8 conditions under which those circumstances 

9 occur. 

10 MR. GLECKLER: As far as I can tell that is 

11 taken into consideration. That’s the retake 

12 or the need to do, that a retake was being 

13 performed will show up in the records or has 

14 showed up in the records. We’ve seen that, 

15 and we’ll count those X-rays. 

16 MR. DARNELL: And the TBD includes 

17 requirements for doing the photofluorograph, 

18 the chest X-ray, KUB and lumbar spine. 

19 DR. MAURO: And you have the 

20 photofluorograph and that’s in there also, and 

21 that’s starting with date, ’60 you said? 

22 MR. DARNELL: ‘Fifty-seven through ’60 I 

23 believe is when the PFGs were included. And 

24 then the chest, KUB and lumbar spine was in 

25 the medical records. One thing we have to 
113

1 make, understand with Pinellas is that the 

2 facility was also open to workers for non-, 

3 well, for other medical reasons, too. So they 

4 could have gotten X-rays for diagnostics that 

5 had nothing to do with the work. 

6 DR. MAURO: In other words the policy is not 

7 to include those others. If a guy breaks his 

8 leg on the job and gets an X-ray -- 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: So you’re saying those might 

10 be in the medical record, too, and have to be 

11 teased out. 

12 MR. GLECKLER: It looks like a lot of 

13 fluoroscopy-type procedures, barium enemas, 

14 barium swallow-type procedures, and you see 

15 all kinds of stuff. 

16 DR. MAURO: And you would expect that. 

17 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, for those. 

18 MS. THOMAS: If I can address your first 

19 issue, too, OTIB-0006 is only the organ dose. 

20 The organ doses in OTIB-0006 are only to be 

21 used when we don’t have site-specific data. 

22 So that’s used as a default. So if we do find 

23 site-specific data, then that will be used to 

24 develop site-specific organ doses. 

25 MR. SCHOFIELD: We’re going on the 
114

1 assumption they had an annual chest X-ray. 

2 MR. GLECKLER: And something to be aware of 

3 we’ve also gathered more information regarding 

4 the PFG use, and that’s looking like that’s 

5 very likely a very claimant assumption. We’ve 

6 interviewed the plant nurse that was there 

7 from, I think, like 1958 into the 1980s 

8 timeframe and took a lot of those, was 

9 involved with taking a lot of those X-rays. 

10 And she’s indicated that there is, they had 

11 not PFG capability. 

12 DR. MAURO: Okay, so you have documentation 

13 of that. 

14 MR. DARNELL: We only remember seeing one 

15 PFG record in the dose reconstructions that 

16 were done, but we applied it through that 

17 timeframe based on that one photofluorographic 

18 record. 

19 DR. MAURO: So when you have a worker that, 

20 let’s says you go into his records. You go 

21 back to the earlier years, and you see no 

22 records for him for X-rays or a PFG. What do 

23 you do? 

24 MR. GLECKLER: If it’s a non-comp case, 

25 we’ll take the claimant favorable approach and 
115

1 give him one extra PA chest X-ray per year. 

2 But if he’s got his records, we’ll apply it 

3 based on what’s in the records. 

4 DR. MAURO: So you wouldn’t automatically 

5 postulate that he did get an X-ray if that 

6 would cross the line and cause him to be 

7 compensated? 

8 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. If they don’t have 

9 any records at all, it’s like we’d be hard, we 

10 haven’t been able to justify making a case 

11 compensable on that assumption. We typically 

12 have to default for a compensable case if they 

13 had no X-rays. 

14 DR. MAURO: Now the reason you’re doing -- 

15 and I know you don’t do that -- at many other 

16 sites that wasn’t done. But for some reason 

17 at this site you feel confident that if 

18 there’s nothing in the records, you feel 

19 confident that he didn’t get the X-rays, I 

20 guess. And the reason for that is you have 

21 lots of information that says the records were 

22 complete with regard to -- even in the early 

23 years. This is important. 

24 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, if they provide the 

25 records at all, we’re assuming that those 
116

1 records provided by the DOE are complete for 

2 that individual, and we haven’t seen anything 

3 to indicate to the contrary on that. So if we 

4 received the medical records as part of the 

5 DOE response, and out of all those -- it’s all 

6 their medical records not just X-rays. It’s 

7 like if there are no X-ray records, then the 

8 case is potentially compensable or close to 50 

9 percent on that POC it’s like then we have to 

10 assume that they had no X-rays on that. 

11 MR. DARNELL: Basically, the default at 

12 close to 50 percent is to go as accurate as we 

13 possibly can using the records that we have. 

14 DR. MAURO: This is a bit different than was 

15 done in other places. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Sure. 

17 DR. MAURO: And that’s fine. You’ve got 

18 good reason for it. There’s no doubt if you 

19 have a rock solid, you stand on a rock, you’ve 

20 got it. You’ve got the records. You know 

21 that if there are no X-ray records for this 

22 worker, he didn’t get X-rays. And that’s the 

23 position you’re taking. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: All of the other sites that 

25 we’ve seen, I assume that they -- and using 
117

1 TIB-0006 or whatever it is -- AWE sites. We 

2 don’t have any information that tells us that 

3 they had such a monitoring program used in ^ 

4 or X-ray, so that’s why we default to that. 

5 In this case it’s my understanding 

6 from what I’ve heard and what I’ve been told 

7 that we have good records to support this 

8 position, and we’ve talked to the person who 

9 evidently was the principal in charge of 

10 taking the X-rays. 

11 DR. MAURO: What was the beginning start 

12 date for this facility when they started this? 

13 MR. DARNELL: ‘Fifty-seven. The nurse they 

14 spoke with was started in ’58. 

15 DR. MAURO: So you’ve got that information. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: She was probably the one that 

17 put it into the medical file, too. 

18 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): And do you 

19 believe that to be true for the ’57 to ’60 

20 timeframe as well? 

21 MR. DARNELL: Yes. 

22 MR. GLECKLER: At least the ’58 to ’60 

23 timeframe. She was there. So that leaves one 

24 year which it’s unlikely they would have 

25 changed any equipment within the first year of 
118

1 the plant’s operation. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: When did they start in ’57? 

3 January of ’57 or -- 

4 MR. GLECKLER: The plant itself, I think was 

5 it, yeah, it was some time in ’57 but 

6 something to be aware of, there’s a temporary 

7 facility in the St. Pete area that operated. 

8 I think it just had some tritium work going on 

9 there. 

10 It’s like up as early as 1956, and 

11 that’s, I think one of the issues that I still 

12 need to deal with in the TBD because I don’t 

13 think it properly addresses that and leaves 

14 that as a hole. Because there are some claims 

15 that have popped up for that employment that 

16 mention that. 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): And we would 

18 agree with that. 

19 DR. MAURO: And the only thing I’d like to 

20 say is that the X-ray side of the story, which 

21 is this is new information in terms of our 

22 experience over the last several years this is 

23 a special case where even into the ‘50s you’ve 

24 got this good information. And certainly, if 

25 you’re talking to the nurse that was there, 
119

1 not bad. 

2 The fellow that looks into this matter 

3 for us unfortunately is not on the line, Dr. 

4 Pettingale (ph). What I’d like to do is just 

5 a follow up to this. I’d like to talk to him 

6 a little bit about this to see his 

7 perspective. Because he had quite a bit to 

8 say about this matter. But your response 

9 certainly is responsive. You have the data. 

10 You have the people, and that’s a pretty 

11 strong argument. Something that we don’t have 

12 at other sites. 

13 MR. GLECKLER: The one thing we don’t have 

14 is good programmatic information to say that 

15 this was the frequency of what we performed X16 rays for at various intervals. I mean, 

17 there’s virtually none of that, but we did get 

18 the actual X-ray records. 

19 DR. MAURO: I’m especially -- 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Gonna need that information 

21 at that point. 

22 DR. MAURO: PFG, I mean, that is not a small 

23 dose. X-rays are -- 

24 MR. GLECKLER: It’s made a lot of cases at 

25 that site compensable. 
120

1 DR. MAURO: Yeah, and so I think a lot rides 

2 on that. We may want to -- if it’s okay with 

3 the work group -- ask Harry to look into that 

4 further because I wouldn’t want to walk away 

5 from three rem a year external exposure which 

6 may very well dominate exposures if, in fact, 

7 you were to make that assumption. Let’s say, 

8 you didn’t have the benefit of this 

9 information, and you would default it to let’s 

10 say up to 1970 or 1960, a PFG, my guess is 

11 that three rem a year would be the highest 

12 doses that anybody got there from external 

13 exposure. 

14 MR. DARNELL: That’s absolutely correct. 

15 DR. MAURO: This is in my mind a very 

16 important issue. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: So SC&A’s going to look into 

18 that a little bit further. Now you rolled in 

19 nine, ten and 11? 

20 DR. MAURO: Yeah, because they’re really all 

21 -- 

22 MR. CLAWSON: I just want to make sure that 

23 we’re clear on that. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: And I think we need to tighten 

25 up the TBD site profile in that regard, too. 
121

1 Not only the ’56 year but what we’re doing 

2 specifically on X-rays, and why we feel we -- 

3 I mean, let’s just be clear here. We have a 

4 standard approach for AWEs and DOE sites where 

5 we don’t have a lot of data. Here’s a site 

6 where we have X-ray data. And I think that 

7 needs to be very clearly articulated in the 

8 site profile. 

9 DR. MAURO: And bulletproof because the 

10 whole body dose turns on it. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s a shift in dose 

12 reconstruction approach. 

13 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I think if 

14 that were discussed more thoroughly, that 

15 would be very helpful. 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: Is it safe to assume that 

17 the, probably the only people who were 

18 monitored, they felt that should be monitored 

19 up until, what is it, about 1974 I believe it 

20 is, received an annual X-ray? 

21 MR. GLECKLER: No, it’s pretty much everyone 

22 received at least the pre-employment X-ray. 

23 That’s one way that we could quickly tell, 

24 hey, we might be missing some records here. 

25 There’s that, virtually everyone’s received a 
122

1 pre-employment. So we have that as a minimum 

2 typically. There’s a couple cases where there 

3 were GE employees that transferred over. In 

4 those cases we might be missing records in 

5 those instances where they’re transferring 

6 from one GE facility to Pinellas or Pinellas 

7 to another GE. Sometimes they transfer those 

8 records with them, and we might have to go to 

9 that other facility which is quite often ^. 

10 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, because it says right 

11 here in the SC&A statement that chest 

12 examinations are often quite limited after 

13 1974, and that’s why I was wondering about the 

14 period before 1974 for those who were 

15 considered radiation workers if they received 

16 an annual X-ray. 

17 MR. GLECKLER: Based on a review of all the 

18 records I’ve seen, there’s really no rhyme or 

19 reason of what any frequency. We can’t make 

20 any assumptions regarding frequency. And so 

21 it’s fortunate that they are providing the 

22 records for that site because some years they 

23 will receive more than one chest X-ray. Other 

24 years, they might go five years. I don’t know 

25 what’s, it’s hard to tell what’s driving it 
123

1 for that site. 

2 MR. PRESLEY: Have you been able to see what 

3 type of a frequency they had their health 

4 checkups? Is it a two-year program, site 

5 program? Is it a five-year program or 

6 something like that? 

7 MR. GLECKLER: As far as their physicals I 

8 think a lot of them are annual. I’m trying to 

9 remember. It’s been awhile since I’ve looked 

10 at, processed any Pinellas cases. It’s like -

11 - 

12 MR. DARNELL: The way the Pinellas records 

13 were given to us, we have records that show 

14 the X-rays. And there’s a supporting document 

15 that we don’t typically take a look at for the 

16 rest of the physical. What we have on our 

17 electronic database is the X-rays. 

18 MR. GIBSON: Do they have or was there a 

19 need for them to have a respirator fitting 

20 program there? 

21 MR. DARNELL: It wasn’t a need as far as I 

22 know. I don’t remember reading anything about 

23 a respirator fit program there. If there were 

24 one, it would not be for radiological. It 

25 would be more for chemical, industrial 
124

1 hygiene-type hazards. 

2 MR. GIBSON: But even on the other side of 

3 the house if they had one, it requires an 

4 annual physical which they may very well have 

5 been X-rayed. 

6 MR. DARNELL: May very well, but we don’t 

7 get into that side of the site’s operations. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: And we see the X-rays. 

9 MR. GLECKLER: The medical records we get 

10 show which periodic physical exams they 

11 received which not all of them did they 

12 receive a chest X-ray or an occupational X-ray 

13 during those. You can do that by matching 

14 them up. I haven’t done that in some time. 

15 It’s like now after doing quite a few cases 

16 for that site it’s like you realize, okay, 

17 this is what’s going on. You just go and look 

18 for the X-ray records and run with those. 

19 Sometimes if we think we’re missing some 

20 records, then we’ll go back and look at the 

21 physical exams and see if there’s a, or if 

22 there’s no indication of a chest X-ray record 

23 in there, we’ll go back and sometimes those 

24 might give us a clue of whether they received 

25 something or not. 
125

1 MR. DARNELL: When we were looking for them, 

2 if I remember right, looking through the 

3 medical records, if I remember right, the 

4 record actually stated whether the person was 

5 going to get an X-ray or not that year. It 

6 was written in the doctor’s notes. 

7 MR. GIBSON: But it just seems like from my 

8 history to that typically, I mean it changed 

9 from time to time over the years, but it was 

10 either you’re on an annual X-ray or you did 

11 have one every two years. But it was like in 

12 the protocol for the physical. 

13 MR. DARNELL: That may be true other places, 

14 but this is what we see with the records we 

15 have here at Pinellas. 

16 MR. GLECKLER: The only ones I typically 

17 have seen getting annual X-rays are the 

18 smokers, and that’s because, you see 

19 indications that there’s concerns about lung 

20 cancer. So they’re really probably not 

21 technically being done for occupational 

22 reasons in that respect, but we’re counting 

23 those as if they were though. Because it’s 

24 not that clear. 

25 It’s an inference that we’re making or 
126

1 that I’m making based on what I’m seeing. I’m 

2 making that connection. But we’re still 

3 counting them as occupational. But that’s 

4 about the only ones that are getting annuals 

5 from what I can tell. 

6 SECONDARY FINDINGS

7 DR. MAURO: That completes the findings, the 

8 11 findings and the action items. There are a 

9 number of what I call secondary findings. But 

10 I reviewed those, and they all link back in 

11 some way or another to the primary findings we 

12 just discussed. I would suggest that there 

13 really is no need to visit the secondary 

14 findings at this time for the following 

15 reason: 

16 Everything that we just talked about 

17 when we regroup and address the 11 items we 

18 just covered with the additional material, I 

19 think we’re going to find we will have covered 

20 all these other what I call secondary 

21 findings. In other words I think when looking 

22 at them they all almost reflect back -- 

23 And please, Chick, correct me if I’m 

24 wrong. 

25 That is, if we do satisfactorily 
127

1 answer all of the questions raised on the 11 

2 findings, I think we’re going to find 

3 ourselves in the position where all the 

4 secondary findings go away. I hate to jump to 

5 such an enormous conclusion, but that’s the 

6 way it looks to me in reading through the 

7 secondary findings. 

8 Chick, are there any secondary 

9 findings here that you think need to be 

10 brought up at this time because they differ 

11 substantially from the first set of 11? 

12 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I would say 

13 secondary issue three and four are not -- we 

14 haven’t specifically discussed, but those are 

15 relatively minor. It might be worthwhile just 

16 to touch on three and see what the NIOSH 

17 response on that is. 

18 DR. MAURO: Why don’t you go ahead and 

19 summarize them for us? 

20 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Well, there 

21 were perimeter tritium monitoring stations and 

22 the data should be available for those. And 

23 it wasn’t mentioned in the environmental site 

24 profile. And it just seemed that that data 

25 should be considered. 
128

1 DR. MAURO: Are these tritium? 

2 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: As we say here, we’ll look at 

4 that, environmental air data, and it will be 

5 reviewed and if the TBD needs to be updated, 

6 we’ll do so. 

7 MR. DARNELL: I’m looking at the 

8 environmental data, Table A-4.A of the 

9 technical basis document. It’s got tritium 

10 gas, tritium oxide, Krypton-85, Carbon-14. 

11 MR. GLECKLER: What I think you’ve indicated 

12 in there, Pete, is that those values are based 

13 off of, I think, a CAP-88 run or a dispersion 

14 model run to where did they ever go back and 

15 compare it to the perimeter concentrations 

16 that they were monitoring to just kind of 

17 calibrate the model? That I don’t know. 

18 MR. DARNELL: Is that what you’re asking, 

19 Chick? 

20 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes, that’s 

21 it. I think it should be considered. We can 

22 discuss it. 

23 MR. SCHOFIELD: People are going to, I think 

24 it needs to be addressed, but about the 

25 potential for those people having tritium 
129

1 uptakes from the stacks. That’s got to be 

2 addressed so that the people looking at the 

3 TBD can understand the issue of the stack 

4 floats being discharged. There’s quite a few 

5 ^. 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, but based on the 

7 dispersion model calculations we’re talking 

8 like the doses come out to be about ten 

9 thousandth of a millirem at their highest. 

10 MR. SCHOFIELD: But I don’t remember seeing 

11 that action spelled out in the TBD for people 

12 who are looking at this. They’re going to 

13 look at those charts, those lines and the 

14 number of curies that were put out to the 

15 stacks. 

16 MR. GLECKLER: Well, we’ve got the annual 

17 intakes that we’ve assigned from an 

18 environmental side where when we plug those 

19 into a dose calculation tool, that’s going to 

20 kick out what the dose is because it will be 

21 different -- well, it’s actually not different 

22 for each internal organ but with tritium. 

23 DR. MAURO: So you have numbers in the site 

24 profile that say using the source term 

25 information you have and the classic 
130

1 atmospheric dispersion model like CAP-88, 

2 you’re onsite, airborne tritium levels to 

3 outdoor workers could not exceed one millirem 

4 a year. 

5 MR. GLECKLER: That’s just what they come 

6 out to. They calculated intakes, annual 

7 intakes, based on the stack releases, and 

8 those models to where if you plug those 

9 intakes into to a dose calculation tool, one 

10 of the dose calculation tools that we have, 

11 it’ll kick out like about a ten thousandth of 

12 a millirem for dose. 

13 DR. MAURO: Is that where you’re coming in? 

14 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah. And actually, you 

15 know, those doses would only reflect what 

16 exposures outside the buildings were. 

17 Potential exposures inside the buildings were 

18 much higher. 

19 DR. MAURO: Well, I have to say, knowing 

20 tritium it takes an awful lot of tritium in 

21 the environment to deliver a substantial dose. 

22 As long as your source terms -- I guess the 

23 question is you have to be off by orders of 

24 magnitude on your source term to even make 

25 this onto the radar screen. 
131

1 MR. GLECKLER: It would be at least three 

2 orders of magnitude. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: We have committed to look at 

4 the environmental air sampling data, review it 

5 and see if we need to make a change. 

6 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Is that satisfactory? 

8 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): That’s 

9 satisfactory. 

10 DR. MAURO: And number four, Chick? 

11 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): That would 

12 have to do with the discussion of uncertainty. 

13 And again, I think it’s a minor issue. I 

14 asked to take a look at that discussion and 

15 see if it can be revised. 

16 DR. MAURO: This has to do with the 

17 plutonium? 

18 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): It’s just a 

19 discussion of uncertainty in general. 

20 MR. GLECKLER: This is in regards to the 

21 environmental stuff? 

22 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes. 

23 MR. GLECKLER: I think the reason that the 

24 TBD author kind of left that vague or that 

25 section vague is because it’s being run 
132

1 through a dispersion model. And to my 

2 knowledge there’s no way to really quantify 

3 that uncertainty associated with that. And 

4 it’s going to be a much larger uncertainty 

5 when you’re modeling Mother Nature than any of 

6 the other uncertainties that factor into that. 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yeah, just 

8 some discussion of that, and just like you 

9 gave then, at least to kind of set the stage. 

10 The discussion that’s there is, it seems kind 

11 of off the top of the hat, so I would ask just 

12 take a look at that and see if more specific 

13 things can be said. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Just why we plucked out three 

15 standard deviations as the parameter for 

16 assessing uncertainty. 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yes. 

18 Other than that, John, I agree with 

19 you. I think all the other things are covered 

20 in the discussion we just had. And if we get 

21 through the 11 issues that these will be 

22 cleared up, too. 

23 DR. MAURO: One more thing I’d like to ask 

24 the working group. Given that there is an SEC 

25 petition that has been qualified -- 
133

1 MR. DARNELL: It’s in consultation. 

2 DR. MAURO: Oh, it’s in consultation, okay. 

3 So it’s premature to talk about this then. 

4 Never mind. I was just going to say if there 

5 was qualification the degree to which the 

6 Board would want us to read the petition and 

7 the issues raised and perhaps that would be a 

8 pointer to some of the issues here and whether 

9 or not we, you know, what are the ones that 

10 are sensitive with regard to SEC. 

11 But in a way that brings us -- I don’t 

12 know if you’re ready to move into that world. 

13 We just keep doing our site profile work now 

14 and we won’t consider SECs until, I guess, 

15 until the evaluation report comes out. That’s 

16 something that we take our direction from the 

17 Board. 

18 DR. BRANCHE: It would be appropriate for 

19 you to wait. 

20 DR. MAURO: We will wait. 

21 I think SC&A has completed our issues 

22 discussion. 

23 Chick, anything else? 

24 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): No, I think 

25 you covered it, John. I think that, I agree 
134

1 with where we came out. 

2 MR. SCHOFIELD: I’d like to take a look at 

3 issue number five there. 

4 MR. GLECKLER: Secondary issue? 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, it’s a secondary issue 

6 about the bioassay. 

7 DR. MAURO: It’s the five-to-one ratio? 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. How they come up with 

9 these ratios. 

10 DR. MAURO: Chick, would you mind just 

11 giving us a conceptual description of this 

12 issue number five related to, I guess, the 

13 five-to-one issue, Plutonium-238, -239 and 

14 what the concern is? 

15 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): This relates 

16 to when a bioassay sample is considered to be 

17 non-detectable. And there were five criteria 

18 I believe that were set up. And this was post 

19 -- what was the date on this? I’m sorry. 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Had to be fairly modern era. 

21 I think in the ’88 timeframe was it? 

22 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Nineteen 

23 eighty-eight timeframe. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: ‘Ninety actually. 

25 MR. GLECKLER: ‘Ninety? 
135

1 MR. CLAWSON: ‘Eighty-eight, ’89 and ’90. 

2 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah. 

3 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): In one of 

4 those related to the criterion that’s shown in 

5 this particular issue, and that is the ratio 

6 of Plutonium-238 to -239, the bioassay sample 

7 should be five-to-one. Or the -238 is 

8 detected while Plutonium-239 is not detected. 

9 And we questioned that as being a viable 

10 criterion for rejection. 

11 And this relates back to the amount of 

12 Plutonium-239 versus -238 in the RTG devices. 

13 And this particular criterion, at least 

14 according to the site profile document, 

15 resulted in the rejection of a number of 

16 bioassay samples. It may have been in 

17 collusion with other criteria, but the way 

18 it’s stated is that it resulted in the 

19 rejection of a considerable number of samples 

20 as being non-positive. 

21 MR. GLECKLER: Something to realize on that 

22 it’s like that is Pinellas plant documentation 

23 being quoted in the TBD. That is not our 

24 document or our statement. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Not an interpretation. 
136

1 MR. GLECKLER: That’s not an interpretation 

2 on our behalf. That is exactly how it’s 

3 quoted to where one thing regarding the or, 

4 after the or part of that, is the PU-238 is 

5 detected while PU-239 is not detectable. I 

6 looked at the source. That is exactly how 

7 it’s quoted in the source document to where 

8 that’s probably a typo in the source document 

9 is the only thing I can think they flip10 flopped. It doesn’t make sense. 

11 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I would agree 

12 that that’s a viable criterion if you reverse 

13 those, that 239 is detected while 238 is not 

14 detectable. That would be a reason. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: We should correct that. 

16 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Can you 

17 confirm that that’s incorrect in the -- 

18 MR. GLECKLER: I don’t know if there’s a way 

19 to confirm whether or not the plant used that 

20 criteria as that or as it should have been, 

21 you know, if that was inverse. I mean, this 

22 is coming from plant documentation as far as 

23 the RAD-CON Program at the site. But the 

24 TBD’s just quoting that directly without any 

25 changes or interpretation. 
137

1 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): But it’s 

2 stated in that document that 238 is detected 

3 while 239 is not detected? 

4 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, and I found the source 

5 document for that because I was thinking maybe 

6 it’s a typo in the TBD. And, no, it’s that 

7 way in the source document coming from the 

8 Pinellas plant health physicist. So I don’t 

9 know. I suspect that it’s probably a typo in 

10 their document, but it’s going to be probably 

11 difficult or next to impossible to verify that 

12 that was a typo in their document, and they 

13 were actually using the inverse of that. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, maybe we don’t have to 

15 verify a typo. I mean -- 

16 MR. DARNELL: We’re talking about a very 

17 small amount of samples for a very, very low 

18 exposure hazard here with dealing with 

19 plutonium. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: We could make that 

21 interpretation technically and say it doesn’t 

22 make sense the way it’s couched. It makes 

23 more sense if it was reversed, and we could 

24 apply it that way. 

25 MR. GLECKLER: We could always reevaluate 
138

1 the data or take another look at the data 

2 ourselves and provide our own interpretation 

3 versus quote the plant’s. 

4 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Yeah, I would 

5 suggest that both of those need to be done. 

6 MR. GLECKLER: Both of what? 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): That the issue 

8 of 238 versus 239, the criterion needs to be 

9 addressed. And the data needs to be looked at 

10 to confirm, to the degree that you can, why 

11 those were rejected. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s only a small amount of 

13 dose either way, but it would perhaps help a 

14 best estimate. Am I correct, Pete or Brian? 

15 MR. GLECKLER: What’s that now? 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I say it’s a small amount of 

17 dose we’re talking about here, but it could 

18 help in a best estimate situation. 

19 MR. DARNELL: Only in a best estimate 

20 situation. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: If we did it wrong, that’s the 

22 risk, and I don’t want to take that risk. 

23 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I’m not sure I 

24 followed that. Could you say that again? 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, this is Larry Elliott. 
139

1 We have different approaches that we use in 

2 our efficiency process to help move claims 

3 through dose reconstruction. And a best 

4 estimate is that in and of itself. We try to 

5 make sure that we account for all dose so that 

6 we give the claimant the best dose 

7 reconstruction that we can. That’s what we 

8 call a best estimate. And generally, we find 

9 those in the area of 45 percent and less than 

10 49.9 percent POC. 

11 MR. DARNELL: Actually, it’s 45 percent to 

12 52 percent. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Fifty-two percent, that’s the 

14 way it’s written up, but you know, to make 

15 sure people get across the line, the 

16 compensation bar, that’s what we’re worried 

17 about. 

18 DR. MAURO: You’re going to have to help me 

19 out. I’m reading this, trying to make it make 

20 sense to me. So you take a urine sample and 

21 your expectation is that because the ratio, 

22 the mass ratio, of Plutonium-238 to -239, is 

23 there a mass ratio or is there an activity -- 

24 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Activity 

25 ratio. 
140

1 MR. GLECKLER: It’s set up as an activity 

2 ratio. It could be either way, but this one’s 

3 set up as an activity ratio. 

4 DR. MAURO: So there’s an activity ratio 

5 associated with the source. This is what you 

6 get when you’re working with those 

7 thermoelectric generators and use Plutonium8 238 as your source of heat. 

9 MR. GLECKLER: Still a certain amount of PU10 239. 

11 DR. MAURO: Yeah, they always put 239 in 

12 there. And there’s five times more activity 

13 in there, 238, than there is 239 

14 disintegrations per second. So that’s what 

15 you get when you buy this product. 

16 Now along comes a person working with 

17 this stuff and you pull a urine sample. And 

18 what I’m hearing here is that you would -- if 

19 you get a positive 238 result on your urine 

20 sample, you then look at, well, how much 239 

21 do I have. And if there isn’t any 239 in the 

22 urine so you can detect, you reject the 238 as 

23 being not real. 

24 MR. DARNELL: Actually, the way this is 

25 written it’s backwards. You detect the 239 
141

1 but have no 238, you would reject the sample. 

2 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): The way it’s 

3 written, go ahead with your analogy, John. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: You yourself as a health 

5 physicist would question that. When you read 

6 it -- 

7 DR. MAURO: I was taught to read it the 

8 other way. But you’re saying it’s written the 

9 opposite way. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: Right. 

11 MR. DARNELL: It’s written incorrectly. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: And that should be our 

13 interpretation. You would agree with that. 

14 DR. MAURO: I was just reading this as you 

15 were talking to me, and saying wait a minute, 

16 wait a minute, I got it. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Phil was right to ask us to 

18 talk about this on the record, and I think 

19 that was an important issue. 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: Well, I was confused. 

21 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): I think we’re 

22 all in agreement as to this makes no sense the 

23 way it’s written, so it just needs to be 

24 addressed. Other than that, John, I think 

25 that’s all that I would have on secondary 
142

1 issue five unless there’s another question. 

2 DR. BRANCHE: Phil was the one that raised 

3 the question. 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: No, I think that, the 

5 solution we’ve come up with will be adequate. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: If I could go back to issue 

7 number two when we got in there -- 

8 DR. BRANCHE: Regular issue or secondary? 

9 MR. CLAWSON: Regular issue. 

10 And Jim has left. This was dealing 

11 with the tritium and so forth and NIOSH feels 

12 that OTIB -- I call it 0061. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Sixty-six. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: NIOSH feels this would cover 

15 it? 

16 MR. DARNELL: Yes. Of course, we have to 

17 incorporate the, process it to the TBD, or put 

18 a reference to the TIB, one way or the other. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s the easiest. 

20 DR. MAURO: I think it’s going to be an 

21 important one because this is something new, 

22 and it goes to the heart of one place where we 

23 thought that we were going to run into some 

24 problems with the dose reconstruction. So, 

25 yeah, in my mind when I saw the OTIB-0066, my 
143

1 eyes lit up. I said, oh, okay. Sort of like 

2 the high-fired plutonium thing. Same thing 

3 here. This is something that I didn’t know 

4 that there was a well-developed record of 

5 empirical data that would allow us to come to 

6 grips with this thing. 

7 MR. SCHOFIELD: That should actually cover 

8 the secondary issue number six on plutonium 

9 solubility. Would it not? 

10 DR. MAURO: I think that’s a separate issue, 

11 right? One is dealing with the tritides and 

12 the other... 

13 MR. SCHOFIELD: I guess that issue could be 

14 closed then because they did not process any 

15 oxide. Is that what I understand in NIOSH’s 

16 response? 

17 MR. GLECKLER: From ^ -- 

18 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes, secondary issue number 

19 six. 

20 MR. GLECKLER: They didn’t process, but the 

21 RTG sources contained it. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: But that was the only source 

23 of plutonium oxide they had? 

24 MR. GLECKLER: They had a plutonium25 beryllium neutron source there at the start 
144

1 up, near the start up of the plant as well. I 

2 don’t know when that source left the site. I 

3 can’t remember. But those are the only 

4 sources of plutonium. 

5 DR. MAURO: I’m sorry, Phil. I had my pages 

6 out of order. I was trying to catch up to 

7 you. You’re looking at secondary issue number 

8 -- 

9 MR. SCHOFIELD: Six. 

10 DR. MAURO: Okay, now that I’ve got myself 

11 back in order again. 

12 MR. SCHOFIELD: We’re looking at the 

13 solubility of the plutonium. You know, this 

14 is going back to the same issue Rocky has when 

15 you’ve got Super-S. 

16 MR. DARNELL: Yes, but Rocky processed it. 

17 There was no processing done here at Pinellas. 

18 The TBD says choose whichever is the most 

19 claimant favorable, class S or class M. 

20 There’s not much more that I think it really 

21 needs to say. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: Do you know how many 

23 positive samples there were for plutonium in 

24 the records? 

25 MR. GLECKLER: It all comes down to the 
145

1 rejection criteria. It’s like based on the 

2 rejection criteria that the site used, and 

3 that there were none. And that was part of 

4 what was being disputed it was the first 

5 criteria and the rejection of that first 

6 statement in the rejection criteria on that 

7 that we need to kind of go back and take an 

8 extra look at just to make sure that they 

9 didn’t kick out any samples that were 

10 potentially positive and rule them as being 

11 less than detect based on that rejection 

12 criteria. 

13 Because I’m assuming that the 

14 rejection criteria that the plant established 

15 was probably the result of some false 

16 positives which you will encounter especially 

17 when you’re measuring low levels in 

18 radioactivity. A certain percentage of, if 

19 you have 95 percent confidence interval, you 

20 should have about, what, five out of 100 

21 samples as being false positives. 

22 DR. MAURO: Let me see, there’s a number of 

23 –- I’m starting to form a little picture in my 

24 head of the plutonium question. What I’m 

25 hearing is that the thermoelectric generators 
146

1 used Plutonium-238 with trace levels of -239 

2 in triple triple-sealed sources. And that was 

3 the only way in which plutonium showed up at 

4 the site. 

5 MR. GLECKLER: With one exception. They had 

6 a plutonium-beryllium source much earlier. 

7 MR. DARNELL: And encapsulated -- 

8 DR. MAURO: And again, that’s the standard. 

9 Now the way in which a person and the way in 

10 which they used this material in the 

11 thermoelectric generators is there was no 

12 reason to open these up, break them up. 

13 MR. GLECKLER: They were never opened up. 

14 DR. MAURO: But there could have been some 

15 surface contamination. And the surface 

16 contamination would be the way in which a 

17 person may inadvertently inhale or ingest some 

18 of the residue that might be on these sealed 

19 sources. 

20 So that brings us to, okay, you take a 

21 bioassay to see if you see anything. And then 

22 we have the minimum detectable level problem 

23 that says, okay, we don’t see anything. And 

24 now the question becomes if we don’t see 

25 anything, we’re going to have to assign. If 
147

1 we took the urine sample as we always do, 

2 we’re going to have to say, okay, we’re going 

3 to have to assign something. 

4 That brings us to another issue. It 

5 seems like the same ol’ story. That is, what 

6 do we assign? And what we assign is one-half 

7 the MDL. What if the MDL is somewhat 

8 uncertain because it varies from case to case. 

9 You’re position is that, well, for 

10 everybody who had a urine sample that was 

11 analyzed for plutonium, and it was analyzed 

12 apparently for both 238 and 239, there is an 

13 MDL unique to that person. That’s part of his 

14 record and if it came up zero, you would 

15 assign one-half that MDL to that person. I 

16 don’t know the degree to which that’s 

17 described in the site profile, but that’s what 

18 the regular plan is. 

19 MR. GLECKLER: That’s the project’s 

20 approach. That’s the standard approach. 

21 DR. MAURO: Now, if you got a positive 

22 reading of 238, we’ve got some 238. And you 

23 would expect also to see some 239 or not. And 

24 that’s where the five-to-one thing comes in. 

25 And what you’re saying is that, well, if we 
148

1 see 238 activity ratio, we should see 239 at 

2 one-fifth that value. Is that correct? 

3 That’s what you would expect to see. 

4 MR. DARNELL: Yes. 

5 DR. MAURO: If you don’t see 239 at one6 fifth that value, you reject the 238. 

7 MR. DARNELL: No. It’s the other way 

8 around. If you see 239, you should see five 

9 times that of 238. But if you have 238, and 

10 you don’t see 239, that’s not a reason to 

11 reject the sample. 

12 DR. MAURO: So you see the 239, which is 

13 hard to see, but you do see it. But then you 

14 don’t see the 238 five times higher there, 

15 right? 

16 MR. DARNELL: Yeah. 

17 DR. MAURO: Then you’re saying, well, 

18 something doesn’t look right. That means that 

19 I have a false positive and you reject the 

20 whole -- 

21 MR. GLECKLER: It could be a false positive. 

22 DR. MAURO: -- could be a false positive. 

23 MR. GLECKLER: And one of the other reasons 

24 for this ratio it like if I remember right I 

25 think I remember seeing some documentation 
149

1 regarding where that might have come about. 

2 It’s like I think the levels that they’re 

3 looking at they’re concerned about being able 

4 to detect even exposures to fallout. And that 

5 would be dominated by the 239. 

6 And that’s one way to distinguish it. 

7 The use of the ratio’s also a way to quickly 

8 discriminate that this is ours, but I think 

9 the other potential exposure of plutonium that 

10 they’re concerned about that might show up in 

11 the bioassay records was fallout. 

12 DR. MAURO: Now, my reaction to that is that 

13 you’re concerned that you have a false 

14 positive on 239, and one way to avoid false 

15 positives is to see if you’ve got that 238 

16 there also. If you don’t have the 238 there, 

17 something doesn’t sound right. I mean, that’s 

18 what you’re saying. And I can understand 

19 that. 

20 I guess, I just asked myself this 

21 question. If I was in the process of running 

22 that program, within the context of that 

23 program -- perhaps that makes sense to you 

24 within the context of compensation where you 

25 want to give the benefit of the doubt to the 
150

1 worker, would you want to do that. 

2 In other words use that criteria, and 

3 especially if there was a lot of rejected 

4 samples. In other words there’s a lot of 

5 workers where you saw some positive reading on 

6 239, but because you didn’t see the 238 

7 present in the ratio you would expect it, 

8 there’s something about it that you don’t 

9 trust, and therefore, you’re going to reject 

10 that intake that you would normally use. 

11 That’s a test that you’re putting your 

12 data through that no other site I know of does 

13 that. But it’s when you see a positive 239 in 

14 your urine, you use it. 

15 MR. GLECKLER: That’s because most other 

16 sites that’s the predominant plutonium 

17 isotope. Whereas, here they’re limited to the 

18 PU-238-type -- 

19 DR. MAURO: That’s the driver. 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Material which isn’t weapons 

21 related. It’s just a source material. 

22 DR. MAURO: I’m sort of thinking out loud of 

23 what I think would be a reasonable thing to do 

24 here. I could understand why a person would 

25 do this. Listen, you’re going to get the 238 
151

1 there. If you’ve got 238, you’re going to see 

2 the 238. Why don’t we see the 238? I 

3 understand that. 

4 But at the same time I’m going to say, 

5 geez, am I giving this guy the benefit of the 

6 doubt. I did see 239. Granted that it’s 

7 questionable. So, I don’t know. The fact 

8 that they adopted that philosophy in their 

9 plan, all I’m saying is that is there 

10 something necessarily that NIOSH would like to 

11 adopt in their dose reconstruction. 

12 MR. DARNELL: Actually, yes, because we’re 

13 trying to do a dose reconstruction based on 

14 the worker’s real exposure. Going to look at 

15 239 just because there was a 239 positive that 

16 was rejected because there was no 238, you’re 

17 actually looking at -- like Brian said -- 

18 fallout or some other -- 

19 DR. MAURO: Something else. 

20 MR. DARNELL: -- exposure that’s not there. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s not related to the plant 

22 operations. 

23 MR. DARNELL: It’s not related to the plant 

24 operations. It’s not related to reality even. 

25 MR. GIBSON: But in reality the plant 
152

1 criteria and their rejection criteria, the 

2 whole bioassay program, was basically in a lot 

3 of these sites incentivized by DOE to keep 

4 exposures low. That’s how they got their 

5 award fees. So their program wasn’t set up to 

6 be claimant friendly. It was set up to 

7 minimize exposures to employees so they can 

8 get their award fees. 

9 MR. DARNELL: You’re absolutely right about 

10 the award fee, but we also have to draw the 

11 line some place around reality. And for this 

12 material if you didn’t see the five-to-one 

13 ratio, and you detected 239, that’s not a real 

14 result. Even though there’s a detect there, 

15 it’s not a real result because you can’t have 

16 the 239 without the 238 for this material. 

17 MR. GLECKLER: I mean, the whole purpose for 

18 that criteria as I see it is they had to come 

19 up, you know, they were starting to see some 

20 of the false positives that they should see on 

21 that predicted rate depending on how many 

22 samples they analyze it’s like for that. And 

23 they have to be able to explain that because 

24 they also are going to be looking, I suspect 

25 that they were also looking at the likelihood, 
153

1 I mean, we’ve looked at the likelihood of 

2 potential exposure. 

3 The only real potential for exposure 

4 is upon the receipt inspection for these 

5 sources. As soon as those sources are 

6 received at the site, they’re inspected, and 

7 then they’re also surveyed for smearable 

8 contamination. If they’re found to be above a 

9 certain level, they get shipped back. They 

10 never shipped any back. 

11 None were ever above that level, but 

12 they did, there is indication that they did 

13 find some lower levels of contamination on 

14 them and they would decon them and that. And 

15 this is all performed in a hood. And then 

16 after being deconned they would progress into 

17 the plant. 

18 MR. DARNELL: The limit to send back the 

19 sources was 200 dpm alpha contaminant. They 

20 didn’t check whether it was 238 or 239. It 

21 was just 200 dpm. And I think the maximum 

22 that was recorded was a 20 dpm sample on one 

23 sealed source. 

24 MR. GIBSON: Well, I’m just stating the 

25 reality. I realize the sealed sources and 
154

1 everything else, but let’s just face it. At 

2 these sites if there’s any reason to question 

3 the results, that was DOE’s buzz word, false 

4 positive, you know. If there is an unexpected 

5 result, they would retest the employee three 

6 times, and if it’s two out of three, came back 

7 negative, you know, well, we got false 

8 positive. But on the other hand if there was 

9 a true exposure, they would never, or a 

10 negative, they would never retested a negative 

11 to see if it was a false positive. You still 

12 have that same criteria. 

13 MR. GLECKLER: But there’s only going to be 

14 like a, you know, there’s a small number of 

15 people that worked in the RTG areas relative 

16 to the rest of the plant. And the people 

17 involved with those receipt inspections is an 

18 even smaller part of the population. You’re 

19 talking maybe five people over quite a few 

20 years that are routinely exposed or had that, 

21 any potential to be exposed during that period 

22 of time. 

23 It’s like after that receipt 

24 inspection is performed and any potentially 

25 contaminated sources deconned, about the only 
155

1 potential for exposure is if the source is 

2 breached. And there’s a lot of documentation 

3 that’s available that indicates that none of 

4 those sources were ever breached. 

5 MR. GIBSON: I’m not necessarily arguing the 

6 merits of what you guys are doing, but I’m 

7 just saying you need to look at the reality. 

8 But that was, the way they operated at the 

9 sites was totally different from what we’re 

10 doing here, so just to take all of their work 

11 and data at face value, and their protocols, 

12 is not necessarily something to hang your hat 

13 on. 

14 MR. DARNELL: Well, that’s one of the 

15 reasons why we use the one-half the MDC to 

16 calculate missed dose because we do have to 

17 rely on records to a certain degree. But we 

18 also recognize exactly what you’re saying. 

19 And I think DOE’s point of view and their 

20 whole thing was to minimize as much as 

21 possible so they didn’t have to report to the 

22 Department of Energy they had exposures. 

23 And in addition, as long as we’re 

24 talking about reality here, in my experience 

25 as a DOE official -- I have no conflict with 
156

1 Pinellas -- it was a feather in the site’s hat 

2 to send something back that was shipped to 

3 them. So if Pinellas could have, they would 

4 have sent them back if there was significant 

5 contamination, and that would have been a 

6 feather in their hat meaning their radiation 

7 protection program was working in that 

8 particular aspect. That never occurred at 

9 Pinellas. 

10 So we’ve got records on one end and 

11 records on the other end that are pretty much 

12 showing that the contamination monitoring on 

13 these sealed sources was a good program. They 

14 did catch some contamination, took care of it 

15 at the source upon receipt. 

16 MR. GIBSON: I don’t want to belabor the 

17 point, but let’s just say that if Pinellas had 

18 scheduled to get an RTG out the door, and they 

19 received a sample that was a little bit over 

20 that contamination limit, they’d be ^ put it 

21 in the generator and get the generator out the 

22 door. 

23 MR. DARNELL: At that point they’d be guilty 

24 of violating a law, and I don’t think that 

25 would happen. 
157

1 MR. GLECKLER: But even the key thing is 

2 they deconned before they passed it through 

3 the rest of the system so that potential for 

4 exposure would be limited to just a very small 

5 number of individuals, and it’s because it’s 

6 performed in a hood, the potential’s going to 

7 be very low for them because you’re talking a 

8 small amount of surface area because they’re 

9 fairly small sources. 

10 DR. MAURO: This five-to-one rule, 

11 intuitively you say, sure, it makes sense. 

12 MR. DARNELL: It’s not really a rule. It’s 

13 a ratio. You look for about that. It doesn’t 

14 have to be -- 

15 DR. MAURO: Where I’m going with this is 

16 that I recall that the biokinetics in 238 

17 could be substantially different than 239 

18 because of the difference of specific 

19 activity. So though you may start with 

20 surface contamination or the source that’s at 

21 an activity ratio of five-to-one, what you 

22 might end up in the urine may not carry 

23 through because of they’re going to go 

24 separate ways in terms of because of specific 

25 activities if it’s inhaled, for example. I 
158

1 might be wrong about that. 

2 Where I’m going with this is I know 

3 enough to be dangerous here. I would like to 

4 ask Joyce Lipsztein, who knows this stuff like 

5 the back of her hand, to ask her whether she 

6 thinks this general policy for rejection of a 

7 positive 239 reading rings true with her as 

8 being a reasonable way to deal with this 

9 problem if that’s acceptable to the work group 

10 because Joyce is really our expert on this 

11 matter. 

12 And I think that, now, I know how 

13 important it is, but if all of a sudden, let’s 

14 say a judgment is made or SC&A comes back 

15 with, you know, I think if you got a positive 

16 239 reading notwithstanding a 238 reading, 

17 let’s keep it. Let’s make it a keeper. That 

18 would probably affect a number of dose 

19 reconstructions because all of a sudden you’d 

20 be assigning plutonium doses that you didn’t 

21 before. 

22 MR. DARNELL: Actually, for a level of 20 

23 dpm for an alpha contaminant maximum, still if 

24 you want to keep that 239 ^. Feel free to 

25 talk to that lady, but please let her know the 
159

1 actual scope of what this is. 

2 DR. MAURO: But it was my understanding from 

3 talking to Jim that even when you’re at the 

4 limit of detection for 239, you’re still, in 

5 other words the amount of 239 you have to 

6 inhale to see anything is not insignificant 

7 because it’s so difficult to detect. So what 

8 I’m getting at is that if you do see a 

9 detectable level, even though it might be a 

10 false positive and might not based on the 

11 ratio approach, I suspect we’re not dealing 

12 with an insignificant inhalation of Plutonium13 239. 

14 MR. DARNELL: The other thing you have to 

15 remember when you’re relating this to other 

16 sites is at the other site I had plutonium 

17 exposure ongoing. I mean every day, every 

18 other day, a couple times a week, whatever. 

19 But it’s an ongoing exposure. You go to 

20 Pinellas. You get a shipment in, a couple 

21 months later you get another shipment or 

22 whatever they’re -- I don’t know the exact 

23 timeframe of the delivery, but that’s the only 

24 time you have exposure potential, once in a 

25 while. So the build-up that you’re looking 
160

1 for from the way other sites do it don’t occur 

2 here. 

3 MR. GLECKLER: Another thing to keep in 

4 mind, too, is just because a person was 

5 monitored for plutonium exposure at Pinellas 

6 doesn’t mean they had the potential to be 

7 exposed. So in those instances if they 

8 weren’t involved with the receipt inspection 

9 process, it’s not really appropriate to assign 

10 a missed dose based on a bunch of negative 

11 plutonium bioassay data because it was just a 

12 precautionary thing that they were doing that 

13 was way and above the requirements. 

14 MR. DARNELL: There is precedence at other 

15 sites for not assigning missed dose for that 

16 exact reason. 

17 DR. MAURO: Not assigning because they were 

18 not actually in an area where they could have 

19 been exposed. I haven’t seen it, but I 

20 believe you. 

21 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): But having 

22 said all those things if there was a reason to 

23 collect the sample, then you have to treat the 

24 sample as having to be evaluated realistically 

25 irrespective of the exposure conditions. In 
161

1 other words if you’re going to collect the 

2 samples, then you have to evaluate each of 

3 those samples that there’s a potential for 

4 them to be positive. And that’s what we’re 

5 talking about in this particular case. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: ^ to the sample. 

7 MR. GLECKLER: Yeah, and that’s one thing 

8 we’ve already committed to do is to take a 

9 look at that criteria again and look at how it 

10 affected some of those samples on that. 

11 Because from what I can tell I don’t think 

12 I’ve encountered any of the positive bioassays 

13 that they applied that to yet. So there may 

14 not be any claimants -- 

15 DR. MAURO: It may not have happened. I 

16 misunderstood. I thought that happened -- 

17 MR. DARNELL: What we’re talking about is 

18 bioassay for something that I haven’t seen a 

19 positive on yet for material that was at an 

20 extremely low level of contamination in an 

21 extremely tightly controlled area, meaning the 

22 fume hoods, that only a few people did but a 

23 lot of people got monitored for. 

24 It’s a lot like the criticality 

25 badges. Everybody wore them, but they weren’t 
162

1 working in those areas, neutron badges at some 

2 of the Oak Ridge facilities the same thing. 

3 Everybody wore them, didn’t need -- 

4 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): No, that 

5 really doesn’t relate to what we’re talking 

6 about. What we’re talking about is how you 

7 determine if a sample is positive or not. 

8 Whether there was a need to take that sample 

9 or not has nothing to do with the way you 

10 evaluate that sample. 

11 MR. DARNELL: We’ve already said we’re going 

12 to look at that ratio. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: I think we’ve made our 

14 commitment. 

15 DR. MAURO: I just have a question -- 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t know what we -- 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): The other 

18 thing just to complete this that’s a little 

19 troubling is criterion number five, the 

20 recovery of the tracer must be greater than 50 

21 percent. What they did is they, if the first 

22 four did not reject the sample, then they re23 analyzed the sample and to a level of where 

24 they had a recovery of greater than 50 

25 percent. 
163

1 What that should have been applied to 

2 is all the samples because what about the 

3 samples who were negative but had low 

4 recovery? Do we have any information on 

5 those? We don’t really know the recoveries, 

6 right? 

7 MR. GLECKLER: That I don’t know. I mean, 

8 it’s going to be probably nearly impossible to 

9 verify what the plant actually did. I mean, 

10 that’s documentation that was provided in the 

11 site, it’s in the site research database that 

12 we found. And that indicates what they did 

13 and being able to verify exactly what they, or 

14 how it’s affected and that may be difficult. 

15 I mean, we can look at the results 

16 that are available on that, but I’m trying to 

17 think. I don’t think any of that would be 

18 censored yet. It’s like I think that’s just 

19 how they, I think they still provide the 

20 uncensored results. Well, some of them they 

21 do zero out so it’s like they wouldn’t be 

22 censored as zeroes, so it’s hard to say 

23 without going back and looking because there 

24 is some data that the TBD based the table off 

25 of that provides more kind of like a 
164

1 collection of bioassay data for quite a few of 

2 the individuals at that, that worked in the 

3 RTG areas. 

4 And I encountered that just recently, 

5 and it’s like, and that covers for more than 

6 just claimants to where I’m only familiar with 

7 what I’ve seen in the claimants’ files for the 

8 dose reconstructions that I’ve either done 

9 myself or peer reviewed which is probably the 

10 majority of the Pinellas cases. 

11 So there’s more data there to where we 

12 might see indications of the positives and get 

13 a, you know, but until we have time to take a 

14 look at that a little closer, it’s kind of 

15 hard to say if it’s more than just them trying 

16 to deal with the false positive issue or not. 

17 I suspect that’s really all that’s going to 

18 end up being. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we’ve committed to re20 look at this and revisit it. So I don’t know 

21 that we’re to say anything more. We’re 

22 beating a dead horse right now. 

23 DR. MAURO: The question I had, Phil, would 

24 you like us to ask Joyce to look at the five25 to-one philosophy because -- 
165

1 MR. SCHOFIELD: Please do. 

2 DR. MAURO: She’d be able to pretty quickly 

3 know whether or not there’s any reason to 

4 believe that 238 would differ biochemically 

5 from 239, and whether or not that criteria is 

6 something that you can hang your hat on. She 

7 may say that’s fine. Or she may say I 

8 wouldn’t do it for the following reasons. 

9 We’ll get some feedback from her. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: That was on secondary issue 

11 item number five? 

12 DR. MAURO: The ratio, yeah, that’s right. 

13 So that’s become something that’s probably 

14 worth looking at. 

15 DR. BRANCHE: Do you have another issue? 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: No, no. 

17 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): That’s also in 

18 primary issue number three as well. This is 

19 all part of the both of those. 

20 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

21 DR. BRANCHE: It sounds like NIOSH has its 

22 list of the things that they want to review. 

23 John, you and Chick have noted some 

24 things that you want to do. And the 

25 communication is with Phil. 
166

1 Phil, do you still believe that you’re 

2 done? 

3 MR. SCHOFIELD: We – 

4 REVIEW OF ACTION ITEMS

5 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, well, one of the things 

6 is I would like to review everybody’s action 

7 items before we get away from here if that’s 

8 all right with everybody. I’m also going to 

9 have to help him because his computer crashed 

10 halfway through the middle of it. So we -- 

11 DR. BRANCHE: I just want to make this 

12 clear. He delegated you as the reviewer. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: So what I wanted to go back to 

14 was item number one. And what NIOSH has said 

15 is they’re going to look into the feasibility 

16 of locating more information on Pinellas, and 

17 what the feasibility of that is. 

18 For SC&A I have an item that they will 

19 look into the data integrity and how robust 

20 the data is and who was monitored and why. 

21 SC&A will also set up with NIOSH or ORAU on 

22 how we can check out the data integrity 

23 especially internal dose. Is that correct? 

24 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: And I don’t know if this one 
167

1 really fell into the same place, but I put it 

2 under action item number 1 for the Board, is 

3 we need to find out if any of the information 

4 at Pinellas is classified. And if so, set up 

5 a time and a place to be able to review it so 

6 we know what’s classified and what’s not. I 

7 think that’s more of a Board action there. 

8 But, of course, SC&A and NIOSH would be 

9 involved with that, too. 

10 Item number two, NIOSH feels that 

11 OTIB-0066 will cover this and put it into the 

12 TBD and then get back with the Board and SC&A. 

13 Item number three, NIOSH will show how 

14 they did the reconstruction and show the Board 

15 and SC&A how they did these runs and how they 

16 were performed. 

17 Item four, NIOSH will look into the 

18 air monitoring ambient air data and if they 

19 need to clean up the site profile or TBD, 

20 whichever one we want to use. 

21 MR. DARNELL: That’s number four? 

22 MR. CLAWSON: No, that’s where I put it. If 

23 I put that in the wrong one, let me know. 

24 MR. DARNELL: Number four is external dose. 

25 DR. MAURO: You’re listing action items not 
168

1 necessarily coupled to each of the items in 

2 the thing. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Well, yeah, I was trying to -- 

4 right in the middle of this we kind of 

5 crashed, so I need to make sure this is where 

6 the ambient air -- 

7 DR. BRANCHE: Where do you think that what 

8 he said should go? 

9 MR. DARNELL: I forget which one it was that 

10 we had the discussion about the tritide 

11 monitoring, the boundaries. 

12 DR. MAURO: Tritium. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Tritium, excuse me. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Well, does this need to be 

15 moved to two? 

16 MR. GLECKLER: Because that’s the only thing 

17 that I note that I’ve got for number four is 

18 that we need to incorporate the new 

19 information in our NIOSH responses in the site 

20 profile. 

21 MR. CLAWSON: Right. 

22 MR. GLECKLER: But everything we need in 

23 that response -- 

24 MS. THOMAS: On the NIOSH side, four. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, where did we need to put 
169

1 this ambient air? Was that under two or 

2 three? 

3 MR. DARNELL: It was something that was 

4 talking about the boundary samples for 

5 tritium. I don’t know where that -- 

6 DR. MAURO: That was secondary -- 

7 MR. PHILLIPS (by Telephone): Secondary 

8 three, I believe. 

9 MR. CLAWSON: Secondary three? Okay, I’ll 

10 clean that up. 

11 Let’s go to number five. This is 

12 where we got into our problem. 

13 DR. BRANCHE: The computer problem. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Computer problem. I have 

15 nothing for five, but I thought that SC&A 

16 accepted it. 

17 DR. MAURO: That’s correct. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: So this is okay. 

19 MR. GLECKLER: The only note that I’ve got 

20 is I need to reflect that in the site profile, 

21 NIOSH response information. 

22 MS. THOMAS: Update the response in the site 

23 profile. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Then on to number six, and a 

25 lot of questions SC&A had when NIOSH addressed 
170

1 the D&D operations in their site profile. And 

2 my understanding was NIOSH will look into if 

3 they need to update the TBD, Larry, if that’s 

4 correct. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: Is that what you’ve got, Brian 

6 or Elyse? 

7 DR. BRANCHE: That’s what you said. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: I know it’s what I said -- 

9 MR. GLECKLER: I think we had a stronger 

10 commitment ^. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: I think we’ve got -- 

12 MR. GLECKLER: -- because the D&D isn’t 

13 addressed in there. It won’t make, I doubt 

14 it, very doubtful that it’ll make a difference 

15 in how we do our dose reconstruction, but it’s 

16 information -- 

17 DR. BRANCHE: You’re still going to -- 

18 MR. GLECKLER: -- it’s stuff that we need to 

19 look into and incorporate. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: I mean, you’re going to review 

21 that, and if we do need to then, the site 

22 profile is going to be updated. 

23 Item number seven, NIOSH will look 

24 into this and see if they feel that the site 

25 profile needs to be changed and will report 
171

1 back to us. 

2 MR. DARNELL: That was only for Carbon-14. 

3 MS. THOMAS: Yeah, Carbon-14. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: Carbon-14, yeah. 

5 Number eight, NIOSH will look into how 

6 the -- when I say NIOSH, it’s NIOSH/ORAU or 

7 whatever. NIOSH will look into how the DU bed 

8 was used and how it got to the site and will 

9 report back, and if needed, change site 

10 profile because there was a question on that. 

11 Then items nine, ten and eleven were 

12 rolled into one. NIOSH will look into going 

13 into the site profile and look into change, 

14 clean up a little more with the medical X15 rays. And for SC&A I just had that these were 

16 rolled into one. 

17 DR. MAURO: Yeah, and we’re going to have to 

18 -- 

19 MR. CLAWSON: Have somebody look -- 

20 DR. MAURO: The big ticket item has to do 

21 with fluoroscopic examinations. We agree that 

22 because that has, you know, we’re basically 

23 ruling them out unless they’re in someone’s 

24 specific record. In other words in effect -- 

25 MR. GLECKLER: Currently, we’re assuming PFG 
172

1 X-rays up through 1960, but there is new 

2 information available to where we may in the 

3 not so distant future try to pull back on 

4 that. We may or may not pull back on that, 

5 but just brought that to your attention. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: You’re going to look into 

7 that, and you’ll report back. 

8 DR. MAURO: Yeah, we’re going to have our X9 ray guy look into this, your responses, and I 

10 think the only thing in my mind is the 

11 sensitivity of this. This is something that, 

12 depending on where we come out on all this, 

13 could make a big difference in the external 

14 dose. 

15 MR. GLECKLER: It makes a big difference in 

16 a lot of compensability decisions. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Even though we’ve got new 

18 information, it says to us that PFGs were not 

19 used. Am I right? 

20 MR. GLECKLER: Correct. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: And we are using a claimant 

22 favorable assumption that they were used up to 

23 a certain timeframe. We’re not going to back 

24 away from that. That’s the way NIOSH policy’s 

25 working right now. We didn’t have the 
173

1 information when we started doing these 

2 claims, and we’ve seen a number get comped 

3 because we’re using PFG. 

4 We’re not backing away from that. So 

5 we’re going to finish the claims out for 

6 Pinellas with that assumption. We’ll 

7 characterize more clearly and appropriately 

8 how we’re dealing with X-rays in the site 

9 profile. That’s what we committed to. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. And that’s basically 

11 where we’re at. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: I’m sorry, Brian, I don’t want 

13 to override you, but NIOSH’s policy says we’re 

14 not going to downgrade doses just because in 

15 this instance we got better information that 

16 says that PFG wasn’t there. Since we’ve 

17 already comped them it wouldn’t be fair. It’s 

18 another disparity that would be created in the 

19 program. And Lord knows this law’s got enough 

20 disparities in it already. 

21 MR. DARNELL: Actually, what I thought we 

22 said we’d do is provide the record of the 

23 nurse interview and -- 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. 

25 MR. DARNELL: -- and just put the record -- 
174

1 DR. MAURO: We’re building a record on this. 

2 MR. CLAWSON: That took care of all the 

3 primary ones. We went to the secondary ones 

4 which number five, NIOSH will clean up the 

5 information on PU-238 and the 239 on the site 

6 profile. SC&A will look into this and report 

7 back to us. And I can’t remember who you had, 

8 who was going to do it. That’s up to you, and 

9 I won’t even try to spell that one. 

10 And then we had, I thought we had one 

11 other -- 

12 DR. MAURO: We had two others, I think. 

13 MR. DARNELL: Yeah, secondary issue three 

14 and four. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Secondary two -- 

16 MR. DARNELL: No, three and four. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, let me go back and see 

18 if I -- okay, what do we have on three? 

19 DR. MAURO: My recollection it had to do 

20 with tritium monitoring at the site boundary 

21 and compare the results of the monitoring 

22 program, the actual measurements, to the 

23 predicted values based on CAP-88. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Got it. 

25 DR. MAURO: And four, a little bit more 
175

1 discussion on certain, sounds like discussions 

2 we had. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Or three standard deviations. 

4 MR. DARNELL: Right, it has to do with the 

5 dispersion level. 

6 DR. MAURO: Right, dealing with 

7 environmental exposures. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: And did NIOSH have anything on 

9 that? Were they -- I think this was more 

10 SC&A. 

11 DR. MAURO: The uncertainty question? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that was ours. That’s 

13 ours. Both three and four are NIOSH. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, I’ll move that over. 

15 And four? I got three, but were three 

16 and four both those items? 

17 DR. MAURO: No, no, four was the uncertainty 

18 one. They both deal with environmental 

19 issues. Three deals with looking at the 

20 tritium data itself, the measurements and site 

21 boundary readings. 

22 MR. DARNELL: And how that coordinates with 

23 the models. 

24 DR. MAURO: With the models in terms of 

25 model validation. 
176

1 And separate from that, number four, 

2 had to do with uncertainty in this 

3 environmental modeling and address it, I 

4 guess, a little more completely than it 

5 currently is in the site profile. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: And that’s all I have. 

7 Anything else? 

8 DR. MAURO: I have a question in the 

9 mechanics of all this. Is this something 

10 where, I guess, a white paper comes out or is 

11 it something where we just sit and wait until 

12 the next version of the site profile comes 

13 out? 

14 In other words in the past usually 

15 when we come conceptually to some agreement on 

16 some actions to be taken, as an interim for 

17 the next work group meeting, one or more white 

18 papers are issued saying, okay, we were asked 

19 to do this, this, this and this. We did it, 

20 and here’s what we found. And we sort of 

21 distribute it before the meeting, and then we 

22 chance to sort of say, okay, it looks good. 

23 Is that how we’re going to act on this? Both 

24 from SC&A’s and NIOSH -- because it’s really a 

25 question that goes to both. 
177

1 MR. SCHOFIELD: I think an actual white 

2 paper needs to be issued. So I think that’s 

3 your approach. 

4 DR. MAURO: Put something -- 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yeah, just put it -- 

6 DR. MAURO: I call it a white paper. Just 

7 write something down before the next meeting. 

8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Right. 

9 MR. DARNELL: I’d like to work with either 

10 you or Chick in doing this, but I’m unsure of 

11 the procedures that we follow. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that’s appropriate. I 

13 think you guys can work together. And maybe 

14 the way, you know, that we capture in paper is 

15 in the matrix, very concise, short responses. 

16 I think that we’ll -- they don’t have to be as 

17 elaborate as what we may do in the revision of 

18 a site profile. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: But if they prove to be of a 

20 certain length, then you would. 

21 DR. MAURO: In the past when we do 

22 collaborate, the technical people from NIOSH 

23 and from SC&A, talk to each other about 

24 matters, we have in the past done that. But 

25 when we do that, someone puts out a minutes 
178

1 for the benefit of the work group that this 

2 communication has occurred, document that it 

3 occurred. In some cases the work group 

4 members like to sit in on it. So before we do 

5 that, we probably want to just check in with 

6 Phil and make sure that we’re about to do 

7 this. You may want, you or any other work 

8 group member, may want to sit in on that 

9 conversation. 

10 DR. BRANCHE: That will be at the full 

11 discretion of ^. 

12 MR. SCHOFIELD: Did you want to say 

13 something, Brad? 

14 MR. CLAWSON: I just wanted to say we just 

15 wanted to be kept apprised of what was going 

16 on and we have an idea of the issues and so 

17 forth. 

18 DR. MAURO: What we’re going to do is if 

19 we’re going to schedule a telephone call, 

20 we’ll let you know beforehand that we’re about 

21 to do that. And, of course, you folks can 

22 decide whether you want to join us or not. 

23 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, yeah, that’d be -- 

24 DR. BRANCHE: Please make sure you copy me. 

25 DR. MAURO: And I will certainly copy you. 
179

1 DR. BRANCHE: Mr. Schofield, is there 

2 anything else? 

3 MR. SCHOFIELD: I think that’s it unless 

4 somebody else has something for us to 

5 reconsider or for consideration. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: I believe we’re adjourned. 

7 (Whereupon, the working group meeting 

8 concluded at 12:30 p.m.) 

9 
180

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of June 11, 

2008; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

22nd day of July, 2008. 

___________________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102