NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Date: June 19, 2007 6:00 pm 

Meeting with: Hanford SEC Petitioners and Union representatives 

Attendees: No one signed the rosters for this meeting. 

NIOSH and ORAU Team Representatives: 

Sam Glover: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Office of

Compensation Analysis and Support (OCAS) 

Laurie Breyer, NIOSH/OCAS 

Chuck Nelson NIOSH/OCAS 

Ed Scalsky, Dade Moeller and Associates 

Mike Kubiak, MJW Corporation 

Also Attending: Kathy Robertson-Demers, Sanford Cohen & Associates

Proceedings 

Sam Glover opened the meeting and explained that they had contacted the Department of Energy 

(DOE) about the logbooks that were maintained by the J.A. Jones Company and were trying to 

find out if those were available for the Dose Reconstruction Team to review. 

 

Comment 

Those guys that we were talking to you about, they were building trades or metal trades. You 

know that, right? 

Sam Glover 

 I’m just letting you know. 

Comment 

See like when that one guy was talking last night and taking them guys to 500, like working it in, 

I don’t know if they did or not, they might, but the bargaining unit on the metals trade side stated 

300 unless you were exempt and then they took them to 500 when we were refueling. 

Sam Glover 

 The weekly exposure rates? OK. 

Comment 

Ours stayed on the seven day thing. And when I was hired in 83 it was always that way, it 

stayed on the seven day thing because a lot of times when you got late in the year, like 

September on, the last two years we operated, I did not do squat because I had too much

exposure. As soon as January came around you had a new deal. We all thought if the weeks 

moved rotating then the year should move too because we take a lot of exposure at the end of the 

year and than a bunch at the being of the year. 

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Comment 

Sam since this is such a small group so we know who we are talking to could everyone introduce 

themselves. 

Sam Glover 

You just, want everybody to go around?

Excellent suggestion. 

Introductions 

I’m Brad Clawson, Advisory Board and also on the Hanford working group advisory board. 

I’m Kathy Robertson-Demers, I work with the SC&A Team as a Technical Contractor. I have 

worked out of Hanford for a short period. 

Laurie Breyer 

 I did not catch your name. 

Response

Kathy Robertson-DeMers 

Laurie Breyer 

Thank you. 

My name is [name redacted], and I am the [redacted] Steelworkers and we have the biggest 

group of the Nuclear Chemical operators out on the Hanford site. 

I’m [name redacted], I’m an NCO also a Steelworker and [redacted]. Been out there for twentyfour years, predominantly in the 100 areas. 

I’m [name redacted], we were invited to attend this meeting. I am a petitioner my father, our 

father, worked out at Hanford from 1942 – [redacted]. He was in the building trades and he was a 

carpenter and maintenance mechanic. 

I’m [name redacted], I am [redacted] and I am also a participant in SEC 57. 

I’m [name redacted], I’m a Nuclear Chemical Operator here. Before this, I was at Oak Ridge. I 

was very involved with the SEC there and I’m a Health and Safety Trainer for US Nuclear. 

I’m [name redacted], I’m an NCO and also do Occupational Health and Safety Training with 

the International and am a Rad Supervisor. 

Sam Glover, Health Physicist with NIOSH 

My name is Mike Kubiak, I’m a Health Physicist contractor to NIOSH with MJW Corporation. 

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Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

I’m Laurie Breyer, I’m the Special Exposure Cohort Petition Counselor. 

I’m Ed Scalsky, I work for Dade Moeller & Associates and I’m the Document Owner for the 

Hanford Site Profile. 

Hello I’m Chuck Nelson, I work for NIOSH as well and I’m a Health Physicist. 

Sam Glover began by explaining that there had been some changes and they were there as 

promised in the earlier meeting held on March 28th to discuss any issues that they might have 

with the SEC process. He explained that Mark Lewis had been following up with them but was 

unable to attend due to budget and contract issues but that those issues would be resolved soon. 

He let them know that this was not the only time for them to provide input and informed them of 

two previous public meetings that were held that week. He stated that this was an opportunity 

for the unions, in a separate forum, to give their input into the SEC 57 petition. 

He recognized some of the individuals from the previous meetings and continued to explain that 

the purpose of the meeting was to get their input about some of the areas of interest and to 

answer some of their questions. 

He discussed the attendance with one of the attendees and was informed that the leadership of 

HAMTC had been informed and they were expected to attend and could possibly show up later. 

It was also discussed that hopefully they would have more attendees at the meeting in July. 

He asked them if they were familiar with SEC petition and opened the discussion up for 

comments. 

Comment 

Well you were actually discussing the J. A. Jones logbooks as far as exposure goes. They are 

actually based behind B Plant and that is where they were pretty much centered at; in the 200 

areas. We had some very interesting incidents that happened there. We had transfer pits that we 

used primarily to transfer liquid, liquid waste to the Tank Farms and these were concrete pits 

covered with concrete blocks. They would routinely go into the pits to the change valving 

lineups. There was a rule of thumb that you never went into the pits when the wind was greater 

than 10 miles per hour and reason being because they were extremely contaminated and they 

would routinely, I can, I could think of about four times in my... and the last one being as late as 

the 1990’s. I don’t know if you guys heard of or are familiar with the infamous fruit fly incident

that happened here in Hanford. They tried to go in to fix that contamination in that transfer box, 

because when they pulled the block it would routinely spray contamination all through the J. A. 

Jones laydown yard. They had lunch room trailers and everything in there and what they did was 

they tried to apply a fixadent and this fixadent ended up being a sugar based fixadent and we had 

garbage dumpsters back behind B Plant and the fruit flies found the sugar and came back and 

went into the trash and ended up contaminating the trash and that trash ended up going to the 

land fill. 

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Sam Glover 

From the fruit flies 

Comment 

What was name of the sub that brought the technology in because it wasn’t Jones; they brought 

that in... it was another sub and I’m trying to remember their name because they did some stuff 

out at K. 

Comment 

But routinely, when we deactivated the plant in 98 we were routinely using the same fixadent. 

Comment 

What my point is because that company, if I could remember what the heck their name is, would 

be another company to get information from. 

Comment 

But there was a little track down on that because we were thinking that it was our stack releasing 

the contamination and we tracked it down to the actual transfer pit where they pulled the blocks 

and the wind was blowing a little too much and it would scatter right across from the laydown 

yards where people were eating, the lunch room was there and everything. We would go back 

there and dig-up the hot spot drums. That just came to my mind and I’m pretty sure those were 

incidents that were never really publicized too often. 

Mike Kubiak 

Now were the J. A. Jones workers in those areas during these times frames, were they badged 

already just by virtue of being on site?

Comment 

Yeah they were badged, yeah that was 200 eastern. 

Sam Glover 

In the very earliest times, you often hear that the badges are key to getting into areas and I know 

that changed over time, but you guys may know, perhaps anecdotally, what or how things 

changed with time and the mobility of different workers. It seems in our records that when the 

guys are allowed to go in the 105 building it says in there on his badge that these are the places 

he’s allowed to go. 

Comment 

You had like a 1 or 2 on your badge for 100 or 200 area and it would have, what might be, what 

your access was too. Just like last night when those guys were talking about neutron exposure. 

We never wore anything for neutron exposure and it was brought in, probably in the late 90’s. It 

was on your badge because they wore it in the other areas and we used to see them wearing it but 

we did not know what it was because it used to be the patrol guys. But we never wore those and 

we only wore them for a short period of time but by then we were already shut-down. I think we 

were probably already de-fueled. 

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Chuck Nelson 

You were wearing TLDs starting in 1972 weren’t you? 

Comment 

Right. 

Chuck Nelson 

Those have a neutron chip in them. 

Comment 

I know, but it’s just like what they are talking about where you get towards the end of the year 

and your exposure was already, always it would stay a certain level you know and they would 

round it down to try so that you could go into, so you keep working. 

Chuck Nelson 

Are you talking about pencil dosimeters or are you talking about TLDs?

Comment 

Both. 

Chuck Nelson 

So you had a weekly and, did you have pencil dosimeters that were read daily?

Comment 

Right . 

Chuck Nelson 

You had weekly total. 

Comment 

Right. 

Chuck Nelson 

And if you had approached your administrative limit then you’d have your badge read. Right?

Your TLD badge would be read, right?

Comment 

No, no, like if you were going in B11 for a charge, discharge and they haven’t done a reactor decon for a long time you had to climb down ladders, lot of places did not have landings and they 

would always make sure you had on tennis shoes so you could stick your feet in between the 

risers and turn the B11’s low flow by the time you get down to the bottom your padding and 

everything would be going off. You would be over 300 before you could even get out because 

once you go down you have to come up. So you’re climbing forty feet and so I mean it was 

routine depending on what time of the year. Exposure was a premium. That’s when they started 

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to bring those guys up from the 300 area and they were slow but because they were a separate 

job classification we made an agreement with them so they could come out because they were 

still a part of our local, that they could come out and work and they could use that for exposure. 

Because like I said there are a few years from September on I did not do much. 

Sam Glover 

Is that a later term practice, late term like in the late 70’s or 80’s or as far as with people coming 

from the 300 area, going to the reactor? 

Comment 

Mid 80’s. 

Question 

Those were the fuel, metal operators?

Comment 

Yeah metal operators. Those were the metal operators...1053. ..they fabricated the fuel rods. 

That agreement was probably made in 85, I would say...sometime around there. 

Question 

What difference did you see from what your pencil dosimeters read and inaudible, was there a 

big difference? 

Comment 

A lot of times there wasn’t until they got towards the end of the calendar year, in toward the last

quarter because it also affected overtime. See if they had one guy with say 50 mr left and all 

these other guys were burned out then they’d have to call all those other guys because it wasn’t 

our fault that we got burned out. You know just to get to whoever. 

And there were, as those guys were talking last night, there were certain jobs that people did or 

whatever, that varied by what exposure you had and what time of the year it came up. I mean 

because I hired in ’83, so I’m the new guy and I could go in and do a new job that someone 

that’s been at Hanford for 15 or 20 and has never done, just because of where the exposure rolled 

out. Because supervisors pay increases were based on in and out exposure across their shift. So 

their pay raise reflected and if they did a bad job doing it they didn’t get much of a raise. 

And then there is always like I said the 105 and 109, different buildings on the hot spots that you 

knew where not to go. 

Sam Glover 

So checking the N reactor....do we still have questions on the N reactor stuff? N Reactor and 

where else were you at? 

Comment 

N and K, N from 83 to 90 to Nov. 95 and I’ve at been K ever since. 

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Comment 

The K reactor has not been operating for sometime? 

Comment 

Since ‘72, see but when I hired in a lot of the guys, the reactor operator guys, most of them were 

hired in the late 40’s to ‘55 or ’56. They were the old timers and we were the new guys so those 

guys predominately worked at K. When they were hired in they would go and re-fuel the reactors 

and they would spend a lot of time on K. You know 4 or 5 of those were on the original start up 

at N. 

Question 

So what year did you start?

Comment 

’83...May of ‘83 

Question 

So you never worked around the operational K reactor? 

Comment 

No it was shut down when I was in high school. All those guys hated working at the K. There 

was something about the K reactors, some stigma or something, because nobody liked working 

at them. 

Comment 

You guys mentioned last night something about accidents or events that may have happened that 

you wanted to know about... is that correct?

Sam Glover 

There was some discussion about when they had accidents, often time the badging was 

discarded. Accidents and incidents that are in the record we have taken into account but 

certainly if there are things that weren’t in the record, yes I would be interested. 

Comment 

Which groups file incident reports? 

Comment 

Well I guess Operations because that is usually like on the weekend back shift and the

Operations are the ones that are in charge of everything and it would have started from there. 

Comment 

And sometime would it have been the HPTs?

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Comment 

Well they would do that through the contamination level on a person but the official report 

would come from Operations. Theirs would just be a part of it. 

Comment 

 What about the fire department?

Comment

You know they would respond to things but I really don’t remember that coming up. 

Comment 

From what we have seen from other sites and also inaudible we have a pretty good report of 

times, we got an option for which they call now but in earlier years you wouldn’t. The HPs, the 

Rad con, and so forth, hazmat and fire dept. actually all these are somewhat separate. 

Comment 

And to, because you had separate contractors so they would each have their own system, we 

were a union and UNC and then you have Rockwell in the 200 areas. 

Comment 

Another organization that often filed its reports of the security inaudible.

Comment 

Usually the security stuff that we dealt with them was because of somebody bringing something 

in or crashing a door alarm or something I don’t know, uh. 

Inaudible comment 

Comment 

That would be mostly the 200 Area which, we got special nuclear material, but for us it wasn’t a 

big secret because it made it to 300 and brought out to us and we ran it through the reactor. It 

wasn’t a finished product so it’s not like you could do anything with it. 

Inaudible comment 

Sam Glover 

DOE was talking about some operations reports that they may not have sent us yet. There are a 

fairly significant number of reports so they are checking into that. 

Comment 

I know Rockwell did a compilation of all their incidents and of their unplanned and unscheduled 

releases dating back into the 40’s and what was done to remediate the spills and releases. You 

remember last night the man talking about the release of ruthenium and REDOX plant that 

showed up in Spokane and Canada? That release was documented. It’s about yeah thick. This 

document goes back into the 40’s and upwards into the 70’s and 80’s. 

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Sam Glover 

That was mostly stack releases. 

Comment 

Uh huh, yes. 

Comment 

Stack releases and other types of releases also. I think there were also liquid releases. Put six 

inches of dirt on top of it or that asphalt type stuff but that document, I got it from DOE reading 

Room here locally. I can go home tonight and get the exact document number and e-mail it to 

you. 

Sam Glover 

Yes, to make sure that we got it. 

Comment 

Do you know if they ever did any stack cleaning on those stacks? 

Comment 

Yes I can remember doing some clean up in the tunnel prior to going up the stack. That was 

down wind of the exhaust filters and heat clad and going in and doing some de-con. Of course 

that was after the filters so it was going up the stack, whatever contamination was there because 

we routinely... 

Comment 

We had what we called cornflakes there, we got burnt and inaudible throughout and can’t see 

where it’s at inaudible and we have to be ready to hold the stack down to take care of that. What 

was interesting about the inaudible question was the sampling of the water and what they found. 

Comment 

It would be nice to have someone here from tank farms. 

Sam Glover 

Understanding the tank farm monitoring would be certainly, I am sure there are some questions 

SC&A has raised about what were the practices in the tank farms and were the people monitored 

for internal dose. I don’t know if we have anyone here today that could talk about that. 

Comment 

Not today, one of our guys is supposed to be here.... 

Laurie Breyer 

You can always have them call me or anyone else and I can get them in touch with someone that 

can answer their questions, Sam or Chuck would talk to them. 

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Comment 

With certain accidents that happened if we can give you the approximate date and time then you 

can go and ask for that report. How does that work?

Sam Glover 

In an SEC what we are trying to find out is.... if you had or if there was an accident and you 

were monitored we can do dose reconstruction. While it impacts the individual claim it doesn’t 

change our ability to make a determination of an SEC. Can you do dose reconstruction?

And so if you had accidents, thorium has typically been a problem because in the early years 

there was little monitoring. In the early years we didn’t have plutonium monitoring pre 19...uh, 

so those are the kinds of things, like if we don’t have monitoring data, that would mitigate or if 

the monitoring was inappropriate, that would drive...saying yeah, we had this stuff and it wasn’t 

properly monitored and we had a lot of problems with it, that is what is going to drive our ability 

to do an SEC. If we have monitoring that shows you were badged and that added dose to a 

person, it affects their claim but it doesn’t necessarily affect our ability to do and SEC. 

Comment

But it also does a check, kind of a counter balance checking; especially if you know the 

individuals that are involved in the accident. When there is a major accident we go back and 

check their records and when the end up with a goose egg on it that is telling us there is a flaw in

the system. Sometimes, I like to paraphrase, if there was an accident and their badges were burnt 

up and they just threw them away, well all that dose is now gone and that gives us the 

opportunity to go back and check into some of these incidents and do a counter check. 

Comment 

I think there are problems with some of the monitoring today and do we do a very accurate dose 

reconstruction. Just last week we got an operator that got a reading on a name but on the back of 

the TLD, over 407 mr, and they said that it would have happened with just a freak accident like a 

beam that hit it, and you know it’s got a window just like this. So they wanted to write that off. 

Comment 

Well this is some of the stuff that we are looking at. If you would pull my records up they took a 

lot of my dose off and called it noise. They said it was where the badges were set and they would 

subtract so much a month off. There’s a 5 to 1 ratio with the pencil dosimetry. Inaudible. And 

that’s why I just laughed. Because I’ve been fighting with DOE because my gap on our 

monitoring program went like this, now we’re bringing all these contractors on and we’re going 

back to the 80s. 

Comment 

I know that is the same at least at the place I work now. They call it noise and if you have less 

than 10 mr on your TLD they put you down as zero. 

Sam Glover 

They administratively zero it out. 

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Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Comment 

They zero it if it’s less than 10 and we are using supplemental dosimetry now, you know finger 

rings, pencil, gamma pencils and bar dosimeters. They are there just in case you have an incident 

because they are not going to go by what your pencil reads but by what your Hanford TLD reads, 

not what your supplemental dosimeter reads. 

Comment 

What’s the difference between monitoring in the different areas? You got to realize, I’m acting 

dumb on this but I was listening to a lot of the guys talking last night about, well...we didn’t 

have any of this or in this area we had that. 

Comment 

There really wasn’t anything defined they primarily went by a facility by facility basis. It wasn’t 

until really 1993 when 10 CFR Part 835 when people issued that and said this is how it’s going 

to be and issued the RadCon manual, was developed in ‘94 and prior to that it was pretty much a 

facility by facility basis. 

Comment 

I can remember in Oak Ridge you couldn’t even find a rad tech and I am sure it was the same

way out here. (Chatting back and forth) at K25 and Y12. 

Comment 

I asked an operator one time if you put your TLD in the microwave..... 

Comment 

And I know as far as the bioassay program we have some questions even today. There was an 

individual that worked with me on the deactivation of 223 S, which was a facility that was tied to 

the Rad ops facility, and he was bioassayed for plutonium and at the current facility where I 

work, which is a rad facility, we were picking up drums that were certified with a shipment to 

New Mexico. We reached the threshold for the bioassay monitoring requirements for uranium at 

our facility so everyone was bioassayed for uranium as well as plutonium and this gentleman had 

a hit on uranium.

Comment 

And this was just recently! 

Comment 

This was in the past year and they did follow-up and said that it was just a false negative. 

Comment 

Do you guys remember when they started inaudible rigs at the tanks farms and whether or not 

inaudible.

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Comment 

Who does bioassays now? Is it an ACR, are they contracted..? 

Comment 

It’s still Battelle 

Comment 

How long have they (Battelle) done the bioassay’s out there? I guess what I am getting at is 

that.... 

Comment 

Since they fired United Testing. 

Sam Glover 

Did Battelle take that over? I thought they still contracted that out. Anyway, I didn’t think 

Battelle had a rad chem lab. 

Comment 

Battelle is responsible for the records but they actually have sub-contractors. 

Comment 

Battelle actually does do the bioassays – because they had an incident at their lab a year or two 

ago where people turned up positive with some ventilation problems and there were people that 

turned up positive for plutonium and they said “oh, it’s just a ventilation problem in our 

building.” 

Comment 

That was just in the paper a few days ago that in the Battelle lab about 3 people got contaminated 

in one of the testing areas. 

Comment 

I have a question on reactors? They don’t do any radon monitoring?

Comment 

No 

Comment 

Was that PFP..... 

Comment 

No 

Comment 

No, what I was told, they made tritium out of there in 1968. 

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Inaudible conversation 

Comment 

It’s just like they never started checking for alpha till, and that lasted for years because they said 

they never had it. 

Comment 

Sam, do you have the survey document that states what the facility has to survey here? 

Sam Glover 

I don’t know, not that I know of, do we have, are you talking about the reactor areas? 

Comment 

No, this would be site wide, probably inaudible, this would be survey requirements and because, 

PFP only has to survey for alpha, certain facilities would have to survey for beta gamma. 

Sam Glover 

I don’t know if we have it in our...we have an extensive list whether we have that or not I do not 

know but we will find out and ping you. If not, we will ping DOE. 

You know, from the records there is tritium bioassay and tritium monitoring and I know that 

there are issues that they cannot find tritium monitoring until 1982. So we know there are issues. 

I know there are some issues on the bioassay on the tritium.

So the question about the accidents, I guess it sounds like if we had some specific instances that 

are listed it would serve as a QC task for the Board when it comes time to evaluate the 

appropriateness that these people had accidents and that their data was properly...how we choose 

that I do not know, when you have hundreds or potentially thousands of accidents over the 

course of time how to properly choose that, but thinking outside of the box it offers another way 

of looking at that. 

Comment 

I’ll give you date help, make sure that I get it, because I’m going off the top of my head because 

I don’t think it’s an accurate date. The reason I ask is because this person received a lifetime 

dose. So I guess that would be a way to find out. 

Comment 

Also, inaudible... involved... inaudible

Sam Glover 

What did you say – I couldn’t hear what you said Brad. 

Brad 

Inaudible response. 

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Comment 

I just want to get the accurate date and time because I want to give you the exact date and year 

that we’re talking about. 

Sam Glover 

So we can address that in maybe a private forum or if you want to tell us, obviously they’ll need 

names, it’s easier if they’re claimants, Hanford I think has been pretty quick about getting us 

stuff. The Rex database gives us a significant co-worker dataset so those things ought to be in 

there. 

Comment 

That brings up a question that I have on the co-worker. How do you, when there all these 

questions about the monitoring and unresolved questions from SC&A how do you do the coworker? Because so many people, you are doing the worst case category, or I can’t remember the 

exact name, there’s three categories, one is the worst case, the actual monitoring and the 

minimum exposure; overexposure, exact and the minimum?

Sam Glover 

For the way we do dose reconstructions?

Comment 

Right, but how do you come up with co-worker data especially when it seems that so much of 

this data is missing? 

Sam Glover 

The concept is for someone who was not monitored; typically we use the ninety fifth percentile. 

You take the data from the folks that were monitored, and if you know that the highest exposed 

people were monitored and you use the ninety-fifth percentile of that than you should be 

overestimating everybody’s dose. That you are basically assigning the unmonitored worker as if 

they were the highest exposed worker at the site. 

Comment 

I guess it is just not computing with me, there are several people that have been paid, that have 

gone over the 50% and yet it doesn’t seem that they are included in the co-worker because they 

would seem to raise up the co-workers if you used - am I making sense?

Sam Glover 

When they use co-worker they take all external dose data and would do that by quarter and what 

is the distribution and what is the ninety-fifth percentile, what is the average, what are the 

statistics that are associated with the data from everybody at the facility. The same thing that 

would be done for plutonium depends on site specific... but for Hanford I think we have internal 

and external co-worker data for Hanford. So they would take all workers at that entire site and 

develop a co-worker model based on all that data. And typically they use it for people that do not 

have any exposure records. 

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Comment 

And who developed this program, there’s got to be a software program for this? 

Sam Glover 

It’s, I don’t know that we have a particular software package for this, it can be done in Excel 

after you get the data together, it’s probably the Rex database. 

Comment 

She’s asking where the data from the Rex came from. 

Sam Glover 

The site provides and it is the responsibility of the Department of Energy to give us data. So 

they give us the external data, this is the data for everybody, so this is the Rex database. 

Question

Is that what you were asking?

Comment 

Well, that’s part of it, I was reading that there was a man who used to work at Hanford for a long 

while and then retired, quit, moved on, whatever and now he is writing software programs to do 

dose reconstruction. And I know that ORAU and NIOSH have purchased software programs

from this person. And I was wondering if that would be a conflict of interest and how that 

program is used? When I have listened to all the stories of inaccurate monitoring and you are 

still coming up with co-worker monitoring it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me. So do you 

have any answers for me?

Sam Glover 

Well if you take a certain person’s dosimetry badge and there may be some inaccuracies but the 

largest number and you have thousands and thousands and thousands of measurements you are 

going to expect that distribution to reflect...certainly if you have people that were 

inappropriately monitored and there is a bias then it may need to be corrected. 

Comment 

What do you think [name redacted]?

[name redacted]: I understand what you are saying because last night when some of those guys 

were talking about pulling those red wagons and different stuff and when you worked N reactor, 

for instance, primarily your dose is coming from a lower level, that’s like I know guys that 

would wear their badge at their waist or have a longer lanyard because if you were out in the 

base processing it and you stick a pencil down here the one that you are supposed to be wearing 

between your waist and chest the reading is going to be twice as high. And even like figuring 

your extremities, they can figure it a lot lower because I was on the reactor side and we stood in 

primary water and some of the times if we had a leak in the upper rupture room and we’re up and 

operating and you’re trying to squeeze your primary water into the drains and the dose that you 

Final Minutes 15 of 21 07/13/07 
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pick up from here to here; that dose is probably 3 or 4 times higher because sometimes we took 

extra pencils with us. Just ask for another one and click it down here just to see what you got. 

Comment 

I think it’s interesting to hear why they changed to the red wagons, how they got there, because 

they used to stick them in their back pockets. 

Comment 

Yeah, tuna fish cans. 

Sam Glover 

So it was the standard practice to put them in their back pockets and walk them over there so that 

they would not have a criticality? 

Comment 

No separation, they were in the back pockets. 

Sam Glover 

Yeah, you don’t have them together. 

Inaudible conversation 

Comment 

Sam, I have to go, I have another appointment but one thing that I wanted to make sure... and 

that the workers realized, is this TBD, this site profile that has been put together as a living 

document and as we find more information... I think some of the things that I have been 

interested in is the leakage from these reactors and a lot of different inaudible went up there and 

a lot of different tests went up there and stuff so there’s got to be information of what forced 

them into that situation. And that is something that I’m very interested in because usually there 

is a reason for what we’ve done and a lot of the changes in the reactor and so forth. I know in 

reading it and other documentation they talk about pencil shine, beams that came out and they 

didn’t realize, because they didn’t have shields and I guess there were ports or something like 

that? 

Comment 

They used a shuttle facility right out of the rod room but there was not a control rod in there, they 

used to send in for experiments you also had because of, over time where graphite started to 

grow and I remember that over time the graphite started to grow so you had certain tubes that 

were warped and used shorter fuel and at one of the outages it actually took graphite off the top 

of the reactor because it was getting too close to the shielding. 

Sam Glover 

The damages it makes would be larger because of the degradation. They thermally treated that 

to remove some of it but I am not sure how successful they were. 

Final Minutes 16 of 21 07/13/07 
NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Comment 

We actually cut if off. We blocked off hallways and whatever while they brought it out. Because 

you’re talking about coming down from the forty foot level off the reactor then coming to the 

zero foot level to get out of the building. Then when you’re talking about the shine, like out of 

the process tubes or out of the ball hopper on top of the reactor, there was a lot of shine out of 

that. The ball hopper was our safety system because you had slow rods in the column for shut 

down and you get balls for ... 

Sam Glover 

I remember you talking about that at the first meeting because they would do tests on that. 

Comment 

Yeah because like on scram rods that had to go in within a second and a half so if you had a slow 

rod or two slow rods in a column then you would have a ball trip on both sides. And you have 

the shine coming out of the ball hoppers like when inaudible, it’s screaming hot. Just once in a 

while you ended up with those samarium balls in there that they used before they went to the 

barium carbide, those things didn’t decay. 

Sam Glover 

You said some would get caught up at times and were hotter then a pistol?

Comment 

Yeah, you go in and bang on it with a pipe and run around the corner. Stick a CP in and see what 

you got, run it through a vacuum system put in a cast and bring it out of room 19. 

Sam Glover 

And the samarium balls, that was early on?

Comment 

Yeah I don’t know, when I came on in ’83 they weren’t using them but they still did every now 

and then because the ball hoppers channels, they’re almost like those ground columns that went 

up and down and with the graphite shifting you’d end up with a shelf and every now and then on 

a ball trip one would get hung on those shelves. Then until you got another trip or did some type 

of maintenance where you flushed other balls down there. The ball hopper held 5 gallons about 

the size of marbles, and it might knock it lose and you would know down in room 22, that’s 

where the ball recovery room, was when you got a hot one. You tried to separate it, and then 

take it out with the vacuum and take it in this cast which was kept in another room, Room 19. 

Sam Glover 

Now would people get up and mess with these things while the reactor was on? 

Comment 

No! That’s Zone 1. 

Final Minutes 17 of 21 07/13/07 
NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Sam Glover 

Zone 1 – No?

Comment 

When we are up and operating it’s probably 190°. 

Sam Glover 

So that would be during an outage, this is an N reactor? 

Sam Glover 

So it would be a gamma ray exposure circumstance for gammas. 

Comment 

A samarium ball would read, I don’t know how many mr, but several hundred if not more. 

Sam Glover 

Especially if it got stuck in a reactor. Did they use those at the B reactor as well? 

Comment 

I don’t know. 

Sam Glover 

I thought I heard you talk but that I guess that was the process engineer talking about the N 

reactor when we talked the last time. You were talking about the samarium balls. 

Comment 

Inaudible... single pass reactors?

Comment 

No that was done before; 1972 and before – right, and those are sub-critical and we still have 

some old fuel from those old reactors. There’s some of that floating around the basement. Most 

of it was shipped out by 2005 but there’s some they found last year but I need to find out...those 

use a lot smaller fuel pieces and they are aluminum clad to try and identify what it was, so there 

is still some floating out there at K. 

Sam Glover 

And those were refueled and they basically said go sub-critical, push out the next one? 

Comment 

Yep. 

Sam Glover 

We’re going to see it tomorrow. 

Final Minutes 18 of 21 07/13/07 
NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Comment 

Are you all going to do dose reconstruction on the divers? 

Sam Glover 

On the what?

Comment 

Divers 

(Misc. talking to figure out what exactly this lady means by divers) 

Pools 

They are bringing divers into K 

So you guys are going where tomorrow?

Sam Glover 

B Reactor, Plutonium Finishing Plant, and T Plant. We have had a lot of discussion on B 

reactors so it will be good to go see what the different issues are and imagine where people can 

get dose; see what was going on. 

Comment 

You should stop at K on your way by. 

Sam Glover 

So K is still up? 

Comment 

K’s only a couple of miles apart, you need to go by K to get to B. Because it’s the same single 

pass style reactor, operating from ’51, ’52 through ’72. 

Sam Glover 

What would we see different at K than at B?

Comments

Inaudible..... see where they are going to send the divers. They are still finding rods, different 

pieces. 

Sam Glover 

Yes, I saw some of the pictures of the degraded fuel at the bottom of the pool, it’s not very 

pretty. I imagine it was a nasty shut down when they stopped everything. 

Final Minutes 19 of 21 07/13/07 
NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Comment 

See the fuel that they shipped from K East was not what they called encapsulated; the stuff from

K West was. You actually had lids and you put a little chemical thing in there and that was in 

stainless steel cans and a lot of the stuff at east was, a lot was in aluminum and open to the water 

and they degraded and we had ruptures and that fuel would be there too and would be open and 

would degrade quicker. 

Sam Glover 

Remember the guy last time that had to bust out the ruptured fuel rod and get that stuff out, well 

that was from B Reactor I guess, some of the old reactor I guess. 

Ed Scalsky 

Kathy, you were asking if there was a listing of the bioassays at the different buildings. Is that 

what your question was?

Kathy

No, I was talking to inaudible about inaudible. 

Ed Scalsky 

Because they would have certain listing of what requirements were. I don’t know if they have it 

in a specific place for all buildings but I am sure that they do have that. 

Sam Glover 

I think Kathy said she’s got it. 

This is just operational health physics. 

Comment 

When will your recommendation come out? 

Sam Glover 

We are coming out on July 17th and 19th to talk about the first period, the ’43-’46 timeframe, and 

our report is due, that’s when we will actually make our presentation to the board and the second

period is due to the Board in late July. 

Comment 

I know there were some concerns that were brought up in the Hanford working group, one was 

Sodium 24, was there any resolution that came out of that? 

Sam Glover 

I believe the Sodium 24 issue was resolved to my understanding. 

Comment 

And what was the resolution?

Final Minutes 20 of 21 07/13/07 
NIOSH Dose Reconstruction 

Hanford SEC Petition Meeting 

Chuck Nelson 

I guess what they were talking about was a possible activation of Sodium 24 and they way they 

do their neutrons and we found quite a bit of documentation on the bioassay program and there 

was a discussion in there that closed out their issues. I do not remember all of what the issue was 

because it was a few months ago but to my knowledge the working group was satisfied with the 

response. 

Comment 

It was the drinking water. I believe there was some concern that it was the drinking water. 

Chuck Nelson 

Well they were insinuating that it might come from neutron activation to the body and there was 

good documentation on the drinking water that it was actually good for the drinking water. 

Sam Glover expressed his appreciation to those in attendance and continued a discussion about 

the upcoming Board meeting in July. He invited them to bring any information about the 

practices of the early time frames with them to the meeting and assured them it would be very 

helpful to the SEC process. He stated that other formats would be welcome and they were not 

restricted to a particular method for gathering information. 

A question was raised about the particular agenda and flow of the upcoming meeting and if 

petitioners would have the opportunity to speak to the Board and he explained that NIOSH 

would give a presentation and then there would be a period for the petitioners to have their say. 

He encouraged anyone who wanted to address the Board at the meeting to make sure that they 

were on the agenda. 

He explained that he believed that the petitioners would receive a copy of NIOSH’s presentation 

prior to the July meeting and thanked them again for coming. 

Final Minutes 21 of 21 07/13/07